Disclaimer: I, the author, am not racist in any way shape or form. Any slight on Leila, or her family's races are purely for the purpose of the story and do not express my own personal views.

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The inside of the Brightside shopping center was packed, even for a Friday before noon. Leila had already battled the hordes in the parking lot, all struggling for the same prized, twenty parking spaces closest to the front doors. It was another swelteringly muggy day so Leila could not blame the people for desiring a shorter walk, though she had to admit, she wished there were less of them to fight against. After making it inside and dodging an elderly couple moseying their way slowly through the first corridor of shops, Leila was on her way at a brisk pace, wanting to spend some money on clothes, but also wanting to spend very little time doing so. She had arranged a lunch date with her mother for one o'clock, which left her with just over an hour.

It had been a week and two days since she had heard from the Joker, which was the only reason Leila felt comfortable finally calling her mom back and agreeing to meet. He had not called her phone, nor made an appearance, and Leila had begun to wonder somewhat dreamily if he had died or been arrested. Part of her sincerely hoped this was the case, but another, frustratingly larger part of her hoped that he and his money were safe and sound. If she was about to blow a thousand dollars on nothing but clothes, she certainly prayed there would be more where it came from.

Around forty-five minutes later, Leila was on her way back out of the mall, two large paper bags bouncing against her legs and a smile perched on her face. As was usually the case for Leila, the first store had been a bust as far as finding jeans and pants went. Standing at five foot, ten inches and most of her height coming from her legs, finding jeans or pants that were long enough for her was next to impossible, so the fact that she had actually found several pairs that fit perfectly was something of a miracle. It had been so long, so painfully long since she had been shopping for herself and although she had already tried on all of the purchased clothing in the store, she could not wait to get home and try them on again, mixing and matching the various tops and pants to see what outfits she could come up with. However, she was due for lunch with Cindy Hawkin, so the 'home fashion show' would have to wait.

Upon climbing into her car, Leila hesitated, glancing over to the passenger seat where she had placed the two bags of clothing, thinking of the possibility that her mother may spot them through the window, ask her if she could see what she had bought, then perhaps wonder suspiciously to herself how her daughter had managed to afford such an extravagant shopping spree. Leila blinked, staring at the bags, wondering if she was being paranoid. Regardless, she felt she ought to take precaution wherever possible, as she had been doing at work for the past week. Grabbing the bags, she got back out of the car and proceeded to the trunk, figuring there they would be hidden from her mother's attentive eyes.

The mother and daughter had chosen a small cafe relatively close to both of their buildings, where, as Leila parked, she could see a small crowd of people milling about outside, either waiting for a table or leaving; she hoped it was the latter circumstance. Getting out of her car with her purse tucked securely against her ribs, Leila glanced up and down the street, looking both ways for any sign of her mother. As usual, she did not have to wait long before the characteristically bubbly voice of Cindy came calling to her from some presently unseen location.

"Leila!" came the squeal. She turned her head toward the direction of the cafe and the group of people standing outside, where she could see her mother, bouncing on the toes of her beige heels, waving with much more enthusiasm than was necessary. Leila felt a grin slide onto her face. As a teenager, she had thought Cindy's flamboyant, eager ways were the height of embarrassing, often hissing strong pleas of 'Mom! Stop!' whenever the woman greeted her friends. However, now at the age of twenty-seven, Leila thought she was absolutely adorable and would not have her change for anything in the world. Smiling, she waved back at her mom, though with a little less gusto.

"Hey," she greeted her once she had grown close enough to be heard without having to raise her voice. "Been here-" she paused, turning her head and leaning down slightly to receive the customary peck on the cheek and rib-cracking hug. "-Been here long?"

Pulling back from the hug and readjusting the strap of her expensive purse, Cindy waved a hand airily. "Oh, no," she answered, smiling. "I'd just walked up when I spotted you. Hungry?" Leila nodded, glancing to the inside of the crowded cafe through the glass front doors.

"Starving," she answered, but then motioned toward the doors with her thumb. "Is there a wait?"

With a smile that spoke plainly of pride and accomplishment, Cindy shook her head. "No, because your dear old mom thought to call ahead and put our names in for a table! Aren't I the smartest?"

Leila laughed, nodding her head as she fitted her hand into the crook of her mom's elbow, to turn her toward the doors. "Yes, you are," she answered. "And good thing too. Dad's kind of a dunce, isn't he?" Both women shared a laugh, bumping elbows with strangers as they wound their way into the restaurant.

Once seated and after both had ordered one of the cafe's famous sandwiches, Cindy looked across to Leila, examining her appearance as was customary. Leila quickly glanced at her surroundings, hurriedly casting around for something to distract her mother's attention, before-

"So you finally got your hair done, I see," she commented in what Leila could never mistake as an offhanded sort of tone. "I bet Regina was appalled by how bad it was." Cindy concluded with a chuckle. Leila rolled her eyes, resting her forearms on the table before her.

"Yeah, I did and yeah, she was," she answered, distractedly wiping her finger along the sweat collecting on the outside of her glass of water. "She made me promise I wouldn't let it go as long next time."

"Rightfully so!" Cindy exclaimed, wagging a very school teacher-like finger in Leila's direction. "It looked awful." Cutting over Leila's groan, she continued. "So how is work? How is Matt?"

This question earned her another heavy eye-rolling as Leila leaned back in her chair. "I love how you ask me an innocent question about work, then immediately follow it up with a loaded question about my co-worker," she grumbled, tossing one of her hands. "Very subtle, Mom..." Across the table, Cindy's face broke into a falsely astonished look of innocence.

"How is asking about Matt a loaded question?" she asked. "I just-"

"Because ever since you first met him a year ago, you've had this misplaced idea in your head that he and I are destined to be together," Leila answered, lowering her voice. "He asked me out one time. I said no. That's all that happened."

As she took a resigned sip of her sparkling water, Cindy's eyebrows rose behind the rim of her glass ever so slightly. "Well...I still think you should have said yes. You two would be so cute-"

"Mom, stop..." Leila begged, leaning forward to rub her temples with two fingers from each hand.

"Oh!" Cindy suddenly started, clearly having remembered something she wanted to mention. Leila knew better; she was trying to change the subject. "Dad wanted me to tell you that the hospital's fundraiser is on the twenty-seventh and he would like you to come!" she exclaimed excitedly, grinning from ear to ear while Leila's expression remained quite blank. She cleared her throat, taking an unnecessary sip from her water.

"He does?" she asked, once she had put down her glass and her mother's look of excitement had not changed. "Well...Where is it?"

"They're holding it at Gotham Municipal," Cindy explained, glancing upward at their waiter as he appeared at the table, holding their plates. "It's apparently a 'game night' theme. You know, with poker tables, Black Jack, all that," She glanced over at her daughter, but only to catch Leila sighing heavily with a bounce of her eyebrows. Cindy sighed. "Oh, come on, Leila, it'll be fun! I'm going! Even if you just stay for a half hour, Dad will be glad you came."

"Fine, I'll come," Leila eventually heard herself say. "But I probably won't stay long!" she added quickly when her mother gave a quiet squeal of happiness.

With both sandwiches eaten, enjoyed and the bill paid by Cindy after a silly argument over allowing Leila to pay for her own, the mother and daughter were parting ways on the street in front of the cafe. They hugged tightly for a moment before pulling back to arm's length, where Cindy squeezed Leila's elbows in an imploring sort of way.

"Please call me more often, sweetie," she said, smiling up at her tall daughter. "Dad and I really do miss hearing from you."

Leila nodded, smiling serenely, though the ever present knot in her stomach tightened once again. She could not make any promises.

Back at her apartment after retrieving the bags of clothing from her trunk, Leila supplied Murphy with a fresh bowl of water and a small snack of kibble before retiring to her bedroom, where her full length body mirror stood against the wall next to the bathroom. In an effort to prevent her new clothes from collecting more cat hair than was actually attached to Murphy, she left them in the bag but began digging through them until she had located the pair of pants she had been most eager to try on again. She grinned happily to herself as she pulled them from the bag, extending her arms out in front of her to inspect the faded, acid-wash denim under a different light.

It turned out that her new favorite pair of jeans coordinated best with one of the plain black tops she had bought, but instead of removing them and putting them away in her dresser, Leila decided to wear them around the house while she baked a batch of cookies, just because she could. The tag from the shirt was discarded and left lying on the breakfast bar, where Murphy decided the plastic piece looked terribly fun. For a few moments, Leila stood there watching him bat it until she remembered the butter she had left out to soften earlier that morning.

While combining the ingredients, Leila had been infinitely careful not to get any flour, egg or baking powder on her new clothes and had succeeded much to her surprise, though there was plenty of it tossed haphazardly along the kitchen counters. Normally, she would have stopped right then to clean it up, but since the cookies were already dished out, baking away steadily in the oven and she was dying to apply a bit of makeup for fun, she left it, instead retiring to her bedroom and the bathroom beyond it. She clicked her tongue a few times, calling for Murphy to follow and keep her company.

The speakers on her phone were not fantastic, but as Leila stood in her bathroom mirror with her mouth hanging open, carefully lining her eyes with a thin layer of eyeliner, her favorite music was playing, echoing against the tile of the shower beyond her. One eye looked great by the time the song changed, though Leila knew better than to think she could get the other one to match perfectly. Capping her eyeliner and deciding to remove a bit of the black from the eye she had just finished, Leila let her head bob slightly to the reggae song that had come on, watching as she carefully wound a tissue around the tip of her finger.

Almost the second she had reached up to touch the tip of the thin paper tissue to the corner of her eye, Leila frowned, straightening up as she glanced down at her phone. She had heard the song that was playing many times before but had never noticed the sound she had just heard coming from her phone. It was quiet, almost unnoticeable, something like a faint squeak, followed by a click...

Then her heart stopped. The sound was not part of the song. It had been her front door.

Her heart was racing as she fumbled quickly for her phone to shut off the music, flinging her hand to rid her finger of the tissue before the bathroom fell silent. Breathing deeply and slowly to calm herself, Leila listened hard for any sounds coming from her bedroom or the rest of the apartment beyond. It was completely silent, but if she had never experienced it before, she might not have noticed the sensation for what it was. Beneath the silence was something more sinister, something she recognized immediately, something that caused cold chills to run down her spine.

Taking a cautious step forward into her bedroom, Leila forcibly ignored the hair rising along her arms, leaning forward to try and see around the corner toward her kitchen. A frown mangled her features. It did not appear that anyone was out there, though Leila was absolutely certain she had heard her front door open and close again. She knew she had locked it behind her upon returning from lunch and yet someone had come in, having obviously unlocked it from the outside. But how could they? Leila was the only person with a key, besides her landlord, and wouldn't he have knocked first? At least she thought she was the only person with a key...

Deciding that if she had encountered the Joker before and survived, she could take on whoever had just broken into her apartment, Leila took deep breath and launched herself around the corner into the short hallway leading from the front door to the inner living area of the unit. She stopped dead in her tracks, frowning, glancing sideways into the kitchen on her left. Both were empty. Turning, she proceeded into her living room, but only to inhale a sharp gasp of shock.

He was there, standing in the middle of her apartment, his scarred face tangled in something of a cheery grin. Before he could speak, Leila beat him to it.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in a surprisingly level voice, staring at the Joker, appalled that he was actually standing in the one place she felt mildly safe. Across from her, he took a step or two closer, shrugging his broad shoulders, which she briefly noticed were not covered by his purple coat.

"I was in the neighborhood," he answered, his clowny, casual voice rocketing another dose of chills up her spine. "Thought I'd stop in and check on my favorite-"

Whatever he was about to call her, Leila never did find out as within the blink of an eye, the Joker had crossed the few feet of space between them, grabbing her by the arms and pushing her back until her shoulder blades made sharp contact with the wall next to the open doorway to her bedroom. His face was suddenly deathly and serious, no trace of a grin, sarcastic or otherwise. His black-ringed eyes widened slightly, dilated as he leaned in toward her face, holding a glinting switchblade knife at her side. Leila attempted to put more distance between them by plastering the back half her body against the wall behind her and sucking in her stomach.

"You already have company, hm?" he asked in a deep voice barely above a whisper, his eyes flickering toward the doorway on her right. "How rude of me to intrude..."

Leila shook her head frantically, swallowing hard, wondering what on earth he could have heard that she did not. "Company?" she repeated in a dry croak, balling her hands into fists at her side in preparation to fight back in whatever way possible. "There's no one here but me! I swear!"

Never before then had she truly noticed how terrifyingly tall the Joker was, looming over her; he had to be at least six foot, three or four. His eyebrows rose, stretching the black around his eyes. "No?" he asked in that same low, quiet voice. "Then who am I hearing in your bedroom?"

The moment of finally understanding what had set him off came as such a relief that Leila nearly let out a laugh. She shook her head instead, using her right, pinned arm to motion into her bedroom. "It's my cat, Joker, I swear to god! Look," At that, Leila used her tongue to make the soft clicking noise that often attracted her pet, glancing up at Joker's face as he frowned down at her. Please come out here, Murph...she thought desperately. Please...

The sight of her cat meandering slowly and nonchalantly through the doorway had never been so welcome in all the time she had owned him. Breathing a sigh of relief, Leila motioned at Murphy with her hand. "See?" she asked, glancing up at Joker's face to see if he was seeing the animal, which apparently, he was, judging by the deep scowl that was currently causing his jagged scars to pucker slightly. Leila practically held her breath, letting her eyes bounce all over the side of the Joker's face above her, until finally he moved the hand holding the knife away from her, jabbing it twice in Murphy's direction.

"It's fat," Joker stated baldly. Leila tutted, frowning, but could not force her eyes away from the knife still rested in his purple glove.

"He's not that fat," she countered, unable to wrap her mind around the fact that she was really standing there, defending her cat's weight to the most wanted criminal in the country.

"He just-" She went on, but paused, staring down at the ground as, to her utter surprise, Murphy let out a quiet mew and began to wind his way between Joker's ankles, rubbing his chubby gray sides against the purple pinstriped material. Leila blinked. "-likes you..." she concluded her previous statement with a thoroughly astonished shake of her head.

Across from her, Joker laughed loudly and took a step back, using one of his brown shoes to nudge the cat away from him. "And here I thought animals could sense evil or whatever," he said, holding out both hands and wiggling his gloved fingers with a roll of his eyes. Leila nodded, struggling not to let out a loud sigh of relief as Joker replaced his knife in the pocket of his pants.

"I did too," she answered, glancing over at toward the kitchen as the timer on her microwave dinged, indicating that the cookies were done. Figuring that she was being allowed to walk away from him, she did so with haste, moving toward the kitchen to open the oven. To her dismay, Joker followed.

"Your cat must be defective," he said, pausing in the doorway of the kitchen to lean against it and fold his arms across his smudged, green vest. "I can uh...dispose of it if you want."

Feeling mildly more comfortable with his presence now that he was more than three feet away from her, Leila cast him a dark look as she pulled both trays of cookies from the oven. "No, thank you. I'm happy with my cat the way he is," she answered sternly. "...Even if his judgment is a little...flawed."

Across the kitchen, Joker held up both hands defensively as he stood to his full height. "Hey, it was just a friendly offer, doc," he said, disappearing from sight momentarily before reappearing on the other side of the breakfast bar. Leila turned to face him, that frown from a minute earlier returning to tug downward on the corners of her lips as she watched him remove his gloves. The apartment grew very quiet and the Joker had just looked up in confusion at her descent into silence when-

"How did you get in here?!" Leila asked this question with much more volume and vehemence than she had intended, so much so that Joker gave a dramatic jump of surprise, holding up both of his large, bare hands.

"With my key," he answered calmly, reaching into an inside pocket of his vest to produce a sparse ring of metal keys. He jingled them on the end of his finger. "Like all normal people, duh."

Leila's frown deepened as she placed one hand on her hip. "But how did you get a key? I only have one and it's-" she paused, her mind spinning as a very mischievous, shitty grin began to form on Joker's face. "You..."

"I..." Joker repeated her in his characteristically raspy voice, leaning forward over the counter to pluck a hot cookie from the tray.

"...made a copy of my..."

"-key...while you were..." He broke the cookie in half slowly, watching the melted, gooey chocolate chips separate.

"At the grocery store last week!" Leila finally exclaimed, slapping her hand on the counter beside her. "That old guy that found my keys! He did it, didn't he?!" she demanded loudly, suddenly angry that she had been so grateful to the elderly man at the time.

Joker swallowed one whole half of the cookie before he answered, holding up a finger. "Ah...'Found your keys'?" he asked, smirking. "Or do you mean 'stole your keys'..."

The indignant look on Leila's face deepened as her jaw dropped. "He did steal my keys! He works for you?" she asked, watching as Joker swallowed the other half of the cookie he had taken before he nodded.

"Yep," he answered proudly. "And I bet you thought he was just a sweet, old man, didn't you?"

Shaking her head, Leila turned her back to him, reaching out to turn her oven off. "Just goes to show...can't trust anyone anymore. I thought he was a nice man, helping me out. Never would have guessed he was a criminal..." she was grumbling more to herself than to Joker, but it seemed he had heard her as he let out a low grumble of a laugh behind her.

"Makes ya wonder if people will think the same thing about you, huh?"

Leila's stomach plummeted to her ankles. He was right. She was no better than that old man in the store. Pushing past this moment of internal unpleasantness, she turned back to the breakfast bar, but only to find that he had walked away, into the living room where he was standing with his hands on his narrow waist, staring around at her furniture and flat screen television. His lips smacked together as he scowled at her collection of DVD's.

"Pretty nice digs for a poor little pauper like you," he commented, turning his head toward her with one eyebrow arched. "How'd you manage a place like this on your lowly paramedic salary?"

Lowering her head, Leila pretended to focus on rinsing out her mixing bowl. This topic was never something she liked to discuss and normally, she would have avoided answering or even lied to forgo telling the entire truth. But it was the Joker. She had the feeling he was rather adept at detecting an untruth. She cleared her throat before answering, keeping her voice quiet in the hope that he might mishear her.

"My dad-" she began but jumped when Joker called out a loud 'HUH?' from the other side of the room. She started again, with more volume. "My dad got me this place for finishing my EMT training!" Leila practically shouted.

"O-o-o-o-h...I see," he replied, a hint of unmistakable delight in his voice that his question had obviously annoyed her. "So daddy's a rich guy, I take it?" Joker asked, dropping down onto her couch heavily to cross his scuffed and filthy shoes on her coffee table before him.

Leila spared a disgusted look at his casual, invading pose before shrugging her shoulders, picking at a spot on the wet bowl in the sink; she prayed her couch would not smell like him once he got up. "I guess so," she muttered evasively. There was a contemplative hum on the couch across the room.

"What flavor are you anyway?" Joker's obnoxious voice once again called out a few seconds later. "Some kinda Asian?"

Leila's teeth gritted together in the back of her mouth, struggling not to roll her eyes at his crass question. "I assume you're asking what my race is, right?" she asked, glancing over in time to see Joker wave his hand dismissively. "I'm mulatto," Leila explained, finally pulling the clean bowl out of the sink to place it in the dishwasher. "Mixed race."

Over on the couch, Joker turned toward her, his eyebrows raised in what looked to be interest. "Ooooh, do tell," he insisted, rising to his feet to walk back toward the kitchen, once again stopping in the doorway, where he stood watching Leila continue to load the washer. "Is mommy black? Or is it daddy?"

Leila hesitated, wondering for a split second whether she ought to lie, make it harder for him to find out who her parents were, assuming of course that he did not already know. Though there was every chance he could have been testing her to see if she would do exactly that. Taking a deep breath, she stood up after closing the dishwasher, drying her hands on a towel.

"My mom is white," she answered, resigned. "My dad is black."

"Ahhhh...It all makes sense now.." Joker growled, closing the distance by taking two steps toward her where she stood at the sink with her side toward him.

She frowned, fighting to ignore his attempt at creeping her out, despite the fact that it was working. "What makes sense?" she asked, forcing her tone to remain level. Joker stopped mere inches from her left side, his black eyes examining the profile of her face.

"It makes sense to me now how you managed to keep some meat on your bones being as poor as you were," he elaborated. Leila jumped when two of his fingers suddenly reached out to pinch a fold of skin at her curvy side. "Daddy's black genes keep you thick."

Before Leila could stop herself, before the rational half of her brain could scream at her not to react to what was a blatant attempt to anger her, her right hand swung around, fully prepared to make contact with his cheek in a slap. However, in an instant, her swing was stopped, caught in midair by the Joker's left hand, his long fingers wrapped completely around her wrist. Defiantly, Leila stared up at him, glaring holes into him as he yanked her closer by the hand. His black pupil glanced back and forth between her eyes before he snarled an evil grin in her face.

"I thought I told you it was rude to touch without permission."

For a moment of clarity, Leila had to think of when he had ever said this to her. After a second, she remembered; he had said this in the ambulance the night of his capture, when she had been about to remove his makeup to clean his wounds. She wrenched her hand out of his tight grip, taking a step away from him and lowering her eyes from his intense gaze. As much as attempting to slap him had caught her off guard, having him catch her hand had been even more shocking and for some reason, she could not look him in the face at that moment, almost as though she was feeling embarrassed. Luckily, he seemed to bounce back from this quickly as within seconds, his voice and mannerisms were right back at their normal level. He walked away, meandering curiously toward her bedroom, where she had been upon his arrival.

"So what have you bought with my money?" he asked, helping himself to a seat on the edge of her bed, next to the two bags of clothing from earlier that morning. Leila hurried after him, hoping and praying his curiosity would not propel him to go fishing through her purchases, which unfortunately included both bras and panties. She knew that immediately going over to snatch the bags away from him would only further his desire to see the contents so she attempted to ignore both him and the bags, instead continuing into her bathroom to finish applying eyeliner to her left eye with her trembling hands.

"You mean the money you stole from innocent people?" she corrected him, leaning toward the mirror slightly to avoid feeling his glare on the side of her face.

"Yeah, something like that," he answered distractedly. Leila's heart sank when she heard his hand rustling the paper of the bags in the bedroom. "Hmm, what have we here?...Seventy-five dollars on these pants...thirty for this-" he paused and Leila chanced a glance into her bedroom where she had to stifle a laugh at the look on his face as he held out a frilly, floral yellow top in front of him. "...thing. And...oh, how nice..." Her heart sank even further; he had found her new panties. "I never took you for a pink thong kinda lady, doc, but that'll work..."

"Okay, stop," Leila suddenly cut in, dropping her eyeliner onto the counter to rush into the bedroom, and snatch the underwear from where it dangled on his finger. Before she could do this however, Joker leaned away from her, back onto the bed, extending his free hand, in which his trusty knife had appeared once again. Propped on his elbow behind him, he shook his head.

"Ah, ah, ah," he scolded, wagging the knife at her. "I paid for these, therefore I get to examine them all I want," he explained, smirking. "Just count your lucky little stars I'm not making you try 'em on for me, hm?" Joker winked, causing Leila's stomach to churn in disgust as she turned back into the bathroom.

It was hard trying not to care that the Joker was going through her new clothes and undergarments, but Leila did the best she could, listening to him 'hmm' interestedly upon pulling out a different item. However, as luck would have it, she was running out of things to keep her busy in the bathroom, which meant she would be forced further into his presence sooner rather than later. In an effort to distract him from the pair of turquoise lacy boy-cut undies he had pulled from the bag, Leila stepped into the frame of her bathroom door across from him, where he was still seated on the edge of her bed.

"You never did finish telling me why you're even here," she stated, giving his stringy, greasy green hair the critical eye she had inherited from her mother. Joker shrugged, dropping the underwear back into the bag before linking his hands together between his knees with a plop.

"I pay your rent, doll. This is my place as much as its yours," he answered casually, shrugging his broad shoulders, which Leila randomly noticed were somewhat oddly proportioned to his narrow waist. His eyebrows rose. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Leila's face remained very blank. "No." she answered adamantly, watching in apprehension as the Joker rose to his feet, wincing as he twisted to crack his back.

"Luckily," He paused to let out a groan as his spine gave an almighty pop. "Your opinion doesn't matter. All that does matter is that I have a key, I have your money and if you want to live to see Mommy Cindy and Daddy Edward again, you won't change the locks."

Leila's stomach twisted into a million tight knots. Of course he knew who her parents were. She shook her head, angered to feel tears gathering at the inner corners of her eyes. "You know who they are?" she asked in a hushed, horrified voice, taking a half-step back as the Joker approached, a look of false concern dawning across his painted face when he noticed her tears. His hands reached out toward her upper arms, his fingers wrapping around them.

"There's no need to cry," he said, his clowny voice taking on a hint of mock comfort. "They aren't in trouble unless you're in trouble, understand? As long as you keep being a good girl, there won't be any problems." His left hand released her right arm, but only to pat her cheek firmly with two fingers. Leila closed her eyes, twisting her head away from his mocking comfort and her arm from his grasp. She then looked up at him, staring defiantly into the black eyes she had once noticed were brown.

"I've already promised to follow your rules," she began, hoping beyond anything he would listen and take her words to whatever heart he contained. "But if anything happens and I do end up in trouble with you...please don't hurt my parents. You can do whatever you want to me, just-" She paused again, absolutely loathing Joker as she noticed a smirk begin to form across his mangled lips. "-please leave my parents alone."

Only a moment passed after she had finished speaking before Joker tossed his heavy arm around her shoulders, pulling her along with him as he walked toward the door to her bedroom. "Now that is a valiant and noble offer, Doc," he said in what could have been mistaken as a serious tone of voice, without a hint of clowniness audible. Leila felt relief flood her body as he turned them both toward the front door to her apartment. Maybe deep down, he wasn't as bad as he appeared, and she wanted to thank him for being understanding about the one thing she cared about. But only a second before she could turn to do so, this delusion of empathy was shattered as he yanked her around to face him. His scarred, creased face loomed before her eyes as he leaned down slightly to be at her level.

"But I don't make deals with criminals."

With a low growl of a laugh, he rose to his full height to pull open the door and step out into the hallway, casually humming a tune to himself as he walked away.

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A/N: Ladies and germs, we have officially reached the beginning of the fun stuff! From here on out, the story will begin taking on it's posted rating of 'M' for Mature. I'm not making any promises for lemons in the next chapter, but I want to make sure all of you understand that this IS a 'mature' story, and if you're not on board for the more adult content, please turn back now. I'm posting this warning ahead of time because this story is (as forewarned) darker than my previous Joker/OC stories. So please, if you're not alright with reading mature, sometimes controversial content, PLEASE stop reading here. I don't appreciate flame reviews complaining about the content of my chapters when the posted rating is clearly marked M. That is why I am writing a personal note to you readers, just so there is NO WAY any of you can say you were not warned.

As always, thank you so much for reading and keeping up with this story! I am absolutely loving it so far and it is really encouraging to know so many of you like it too! Feel free to PM me or email me, or even add me on Facebook (Haven Queenofmean Hunter) if you have any questions, concerns or you would like to see pictures of the characters! I LOVE chit chatting with my readers! Also, a big thanks to those of you who have been reviewing! Your feedback is truly the icing on the cake so to speak, even if it is only constructive!

Also, thanks to my beta, Auriellis for proofing my chapters for me, and to Lacey ClownQween'69 for reading and giving feedback when I need it!

SORRY for the long author's note! See you next time! -QoM