Well, yes... it's been a long time... I am VERY ashamed.
Forgive me?
And review?
The train rocketed along it's frozen tracks. Gotham got cold at night. Too cold and with the train's underfunded budget the heaters were grimy and poorly maintained. The cold didn't seem to bother the Joker. He sat his legs stretched out before him, a brown trench coat gripped tightly around his body.
Gordon couldn't help but stare at his captor. The Joker was thin, too thin. The clown's stomach was pulled in tightly it looked almost comical if it weren't so scary, it was like one of those posters of the starving children in some far off country. The Joker's makeup leered in the bright white lights that illuminated the long car that the commissioner and the Joker were now sharing. Almost no one rode the trains, most had been shut down and reconstructed due to Wayne enterprises renewed interest in public transportation. It was crazy to think that The Joker was riding on Batman's train with the police commissioner who was on the run from his own officers and the vigilante that was supposed to save Gotham citizens every day was a billionaire playboy. It was as if the world had turned upside down. It was madness.
The Joker was knocking his head against the train's thick window, making a small wooden sound as his skull connected with the glass. The Joker could never be still, his face was always in movement, always showing some emotion or another. But now his face was still, silent, reserved, and it scared Gordon more than anything he had seen so far tonight. The Joker kept up a stream of conversation as they had made their way across the city, not bothering to ask where they were headed. But as soon as they had boarded the train he had fallen silent and had merely sat down and brooded.
Gordon hadn't gotten used to the Joker's presence. It was like a wolf in a pack of deer. He was frozen unable to move as the dog moved in on the kill. It wasn't a nice feeling, helplessness.
But the Joker was angry, he was always angry but now all that passive-aggressive energy had been focused on one object, Gordon.
The clown's eyes were bloodshot. And while it was mostly the madness that Gordon had seen before so many times, they were now full of something much more profound, and the Commissioner didn't like it.
The Joker didn't love, he didn't care he didn't understand people. He just knew them, he knew their value and worth like some twisted jeweler who scrutinized people found their flaws and discarded them. But the Joker had felt something for Batman, it might have been hate, it might have been something akin to love. But more than anything it was interest.
The Joker had exploited and killed almost everyone he met on the street but Batman had been such a challenge such a new idea. He hadn't taken Batman's appearance lightly it was as if the two lived in some sort of alternate reality where there was only Batman and Joker and people were score points in a game.
And Gordon was stuck in the middle, always pulling to one side, trying to keep everyone in a semi-normal state of decency. But he had corrupted that in the Joker's eyes. He had 'killed' the one man who the Joker refused to kill, the one person that the clown had ever dreamed of showing a spark of something besides indifference.
The Joker didn't see people or money. What he saw was what Gordon was feeling now, the unbalanced upside downs of life's little ironies.
The Joker had always had a very special brand of humor. The Joker was evil, he was in fact, beyond evil. He was the nemesis of man kind the fear that lurked in dark corners yet he was attractive, not in the usual sense of marriage and babies but there was a charismatic feel to his personality, an aura of knowing more than the person you're talking to. The Joker wasn't someone you looked up to but he was someone who, like a magnet, pulled you in his direction.
The real question was why the Joker was following Gordon around like some sort of bipolar pit bull puppy with anger issues.
The train rattled on it's hinges the grooved wheels squeaking in protest ad it came to a halt, the Joker's head gave one last bump against the windshield. Gordon could see smudges of blue outside the vandalized, scratched and frosted glass but he knew that color, he had seen it almost everyday for the past seventeen years, he had worn it. Before he knew what was happening he was grabbed by the collar of his jacket and pulled along the car to the back. The doors behind the Joker and Gordon started to squeal open and with one jerky movement the Joker jerked the door that linked the two car apart and stepped outside, pulling Gordon with him. Three police officers stepped inside the train, unknowingly being watched by the two of the five most wanted criminals that they had been assigned to look for.
Gordon pulled the door closed and ducked beneath the window. The Joker had his ear pressed against the cold metal doors.
Something was pressed into Gordon's leg and he looked down. The Joker had his knife held loosley pressed against the steel door. It was freezing outside but the Joker didn't seem to mind. Gordon however had chills running races up his exposed face and arms. But all of his attention was on that knife, if he could maybe wrestle it away...
He inched his hand slowly to the blade, his eyes flickering to the Joker's intent face every so often. Whatever was going on on the other side of the door must have been interesting because he wasn't even keeping one eye on the Commissioner.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Gordon inched a shaking and toward the knife. It was so close...
The Joker's paint splashed fingers were splayed across the brushed metal. Gordon would just have to reach the knife, slip it out of that grasp...
Then what?
…
It didn't matter, he would get to that when the time came.
His numb finger tips were against the hilt...
And suddenly Gordon's attention shifted to the Joker's face as it was pressed against the door, everything was balanced on the clown ignoring him.
The murmuring of the police officer's in the train were not important. The penetrating cold wasn't a factor. It was the knife and the Joker and Gordon, all in a blank space, waiting for some determining factor... and then.
With one simple tug the knife slid into Gordon's grip and the Joker's head was turning toward him... The bark of laughter from some comment inside, the squealing as the train started, the frozen air, the sweat that had dripped from Gordon's brow. It was all in one continuous moment.
And Gordon slid the knife underneath the Joker's chin, smashed his hand to the train with a knee and grabbed the Joker's right hand in his own. It was a ridiculous posture, uncomfortable and somehow personal. Gordon's old, overused joints screamed at him but he held his pose, waiting for the next signal to tell him what to do next.
The Joker's face was turned towards the sky pulled slightly sideways as he was leaning towards his trapped hand. But his eyes were still dancing and he was holding back laughter, Gordon just knew he was, and it infuriated him. Couldn't he, just for once let Gordon have the upper hand?
So yeah...
FORGIVE ME!!!!!!!!!
I'M SO SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review anyone?