Author's Note: Wow, that was a lot longer of an absence than I'd intended. So so sorry about that! ): I'll spare you the excuses until the end of the chapter, because we all know that you're more interested in the story than in what I have to say—and rightly so. So, I really, really hope that you enjoy! Thanks for being so patient!

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Bruce almost caught himself—almost. But the impact was too unexpected, the blow too violent for him to be able to recover completely, and Rachel heard his skull crack audibly against the wooden floor.

She felt his pain in her bones. "Bruce!"

"Ah ah ah." The Joker punctuated his warning with the click of the gun's safety. Rachel froze, her muscles seizing up, her thoughts instinctual, basic; Bruce lay still on the floor, unmoving. "I just want to talk, that's all." His voice was carefully casual, but the gleam in his eyes said otherwise. He held her gaze for a long moment, his scarred lips curling up into a hungry smile. He'd won, and he was relishing his dominance. "Now, I think we can all be adults about this, right, princess?"

Bruce grunted from his prone position on the floor, and Rachel tore her gaze away from the Joker. The fear was visible in his eyes, and the fact that she knew for certain that he was not at all afraid for his own safety—only hers—hurt her worse than anything. His lips pressed tightly together, his jaw clenched, and Rachel could almost hear what he was thinking: Run.

But she would stay. She would find a way to get Bruce out of this nightmare she created, even if it meant that she would be caught by a monster.

Never letting the gun stray away from her, the Joker approached Bruce slowly, his scarlet grin growing wider and wider with every step. With the toe of his shoe, he flipped Bruce onto his back. Bending over him, the Joker said, "You look different from your pictures. Paparazzi really know how to choose the flattering angle, don't they?" He laughed, his red tongue darting out and wetting his lips. "Although, really, I think no angle flatters you more than you lying prone on the floor."

Something snapped behind his eyes, and Bruce surged up.

Bang!

The gunshot split through the silence of the study, the sound shattering Rachel to pieces. A high keening noise strangled her, different pitches struggling to escape her at the same time and leaving her breathless. Splinters from the door behind her bounced harmlessly off her legs.

"Were you not listening?" the Joker said, his voice the same, maddening calm as before. His gun arm held steadily in her direction, he lowered himself to his knees, straddling Bruce, knees hugging tight to his waist. "I just want to talk. I don't know why you're making this so difficult, Batsy."

"Get off of me," Bruce growled.

But the Joker planted a firm hand in the center of Bruce's chest and glanced briefly but significantly over to where Rachel stood trembling. He watched Bruce's eyes follow his line of sight, watched the way his face changed when he saw just how vulnerable and fragile she was, and he grinned. Slowly, he inched his hand up Bruce's chest, until his gloved fingers brushed against Bruce's cheek. "I've been waiting for this moment for ages. Literally, ages. You should feel honored, Batman, to have held my interest for so long."

"You sick—"

"Ah ah." The Joker lazily waved his weapon. "One more peep out of you and my aim won't be so bad next time."

Bruce settled back, reluctant, and looked over at her to meet her eyes—or he would have, if she could have brought herself to look at him.

"There are so many things that could have gone wrong, gotten in the way of our—" He paused, not searching for the right words—he knew exactly what he was going to say—but to make sure he didn't miss a single second of Batman's outraged convulsions. He wanted to savor this moment. "—consummating this bond of ours. In fact, if it hadn't been for princess's help, I don't think we would have ever met." He ran a hand roughly down the length of Bruce's cheek, hungrily drinking up Batman's anger. "Wouldn't that have been a shame?"

But Bruce was caught on one word. "Help?" His eyes entreated her, and she wished that she could tell him what he wanted to hear. But then she would be lying, and she'd done more than enough of that for a lifetime.

"Please," she said breathlessly. The only way she could escape from the budding horror in Bruce's eyes was by closing her eyes. "Please. Don't."

"What help, Rachel?" His voice sounded weak and vulnerable and it cut her. After she'd been so careful, after all those years of keeping Bruce's innocence, she'd destroyed it in one heartbeat, delivered the worst possible blow to his faith. She wasn't ready for him to realize just how wrong he'd been all along about the people he was trying to save, about her.

The Joker leaned forward, bringing his face closer to Bruce's. In a criminally innocent voice, he said, "You mean she didn't tell you?" He turned towards her, his voice completely incongruous with his words. "Naughty, naughty girl, princess. What have I told you about lying? But," he sighed, "I guess it's too late now. He's found us out. We may as well tell him the truth."

"No," she snapped, fear making her stupid. "This wasn't part of our—" She caught herself, biting her lip. As if she weren't damned enough already. The look Bruce was giving her told her that there was no going back ever. She had made her choice a long time ago, and no amount of regret could change that.

The Joker was practically crowing. He grabbed Bruce's chin in a tight grip and forced him to look up into his eyes. "Do you want the truth, Batsy? Do you want to know what your princess does without your oh-so-good influence?" He tugged hard on Bruce's face, forcing him to nod, although Bruce stared back in tight-lipped hatred.

"She led me to you."

"You're lying," Bruce snapped. But that was all he said.

He leaned forward, holding Bruce's head in place, close enough that he was certain Batman would feel every word. "She sold you. To me." He let this sink in for a moment, a giggle rising in his throat when Bruce eventually had to look away. "She agreed to sacrifice your life if I could get her a mob boss to confess for her trial." The smile never left his lips. He furrowed his brow in mock concern. "How does that make you feel, that she values the life of a criminal over your own, her oldest friend? Hm? Would you like to talk about it?"

She wanted Bruce to defend her honor, she wanted him to come back with a passionate argument in favor of her virtue, even though she knew that she didn't deserve it.

He didn't. His silence hurt her more than her slowly healing scars; even Bruce realized that she didn't deserve his kindness. Tears burned her eyes, a sob constricted her throat. She felt like an idiot. She'd brought all this on herself; she didn't deserve to feel sorry for herself.

The Joker lowered the gun; no one was going to fight him, not now. "There's no winning," he murmured, "so why even try? Give up. You can't tell me that you haven't been thirsting for a taste of anarchy."

Her voice sounded more together than she felt. "Why are you doing this?"

The Joker jerked his eyes over to her, as if he'd forgotten for a moment that she was still in the room. As he regarded her for a long moment, a lazy smile passed over his mouth. "Because, princess." He licked his lips, voice sickly sweet. "I wanted to break you. I wanted you to betray Batman of your own free will. I wanted you to realize that you aren't as just and as perfect as you pretend to be. I wanted you to take a cold, hard look at the side of yourself that you refuse to admit exists." He grinned wide. "Know thyself."

Her stomach twisted, all sound muting and colors dimming, everything but her disgust and horror fading to insignificance. She should have known. She should have seen it. She should have—

"Aw, don't give me that look, princess. It breaks my heart." He punctuated his words with impassioned blows to Bruce's chest with his gun hand.

Rachel's hands flew up to her mouth, her eyes wide open and watching the loaded gun with mute horror. It was so close to his head—just one twitch of a muscle, and he would—

"Why so serious?" Smirking, the Joker tossed the gun away into the shadowed corners of the room, and with the same movement reached inside his coat pocket and took out his knife. "Better?" he said, handling the blade easily. "We don't need guns, do we, Batsy? Guns are so impersonal. We know each other better than that." Holding Bruce's head still with one hand, he ran the flat of the knife over his cheeks, the blade just barely biting into the skin. His voice dark, he murmured, "And I would so enjoy getting to know you better."

Hazy memories of That Night swirled in front of Rachel's vision; her scars burned like acid. She couldn't let that happen to Bruce, she couldn't let the Joker destroy him like that. "Joker," she said, as forcefully as she could manage. He didn't even bother looking up, but the blade paused in Bruce's mouth. "Maybe we can make a deal."

At this, he looked over. Raising an eyebrow, he said, "Another deal? My, my, my, princess, you really do like playing with fire, don't you? You see how your last deal worked out. What will you lose this time, hm?"

"I don't have anything left to lose," she said bitterly, locking eyes. And this was true: she'd lost Bruce, she'd lost his trust, she'd lost her dignity.

He smiled dismissively at her. "Oh, I'm sure I can find something." He pressed the knife into the corner of Bruce's mouth. "There's always something."

But taking advantage of his distraction, Bruce caught the Joker's wrists and, with one heave, threw him to the floor. Rachel gasped, taking a few stumbling steps backwards, her back pressing against the heavy door. The knife flashed in the dim lamplight, and Bruce grunted in pain. With a loud thunk, he slammed the Joker to the floor, jamming his shoulders hard into the ground.

The Joker barked, a coughing laugh, grinned up at him. "No hard feelings?"

Bruce's face contorted in fury, and he slammed his fist into the Joker's jaw. When the Joker tried sitting up, Bruce gripped the man's face in his hand and ground him into the floor, leaning all his weight on his arm.

But he couldn't stop the laughter. Nothing could stop the laughter.

He pushed himself up suddenly, jumping back as if he'd been burned, clutching his side. Purposefully looking anywhere but her, Bruce stumbled to his desk, grabbing the phone with bloody hands. His chest was heaving, his breath labored. Pure hate burned in his eyes as he stared the Joker down.

"I'll take this as my cue to exit," the Joker said, rubbing his jaw. He grunted, tipping to the side as he tried to stand. "Not that the cops scare me. I just—" He broke off, laughing. "This was fun, Bats. We will do this again. Soon." When Bruce proved to be an unmovable statue, the Joker gave him one last lecherous grin and sauntered towards the door.

As he passed her, he reached his hand out, brushing his fingertips against her waist, drawing them over her stomach. Rachel recoiled from him, feeling sick and tainted. His laughter echoed down the hallway.

Bruce slammed the phone back into its cradle, breaking Rachel's paralysis. Her heart set off again, pounding painfully fast in her chest. He was injured, but what scared her most was that he'd finally seen her for what she really was. She ventured quietly, "Bruce?"

He didn't answer, leaning his head against his desk, turning away from her. Crossing the room in a few tentative steps, she reached out to touch his shoulder, but he flinched away. "Don't touch me."

Rachel stepped back, clutching her hand to her chest. The silence pressed down on her. Finally, faintly, she whispered, "I'm sorry—"

"Sorry?" Bruce spat. "Sorry doesn't cut it, Rachel." He ran a bloodied hand through his hair roughly. When he met her gaze, his eyes were dark, bitter, venomous. "You revealed my identity to my most dangerous enemy. Don't you get it? I wear this mask to protect you. And you—" He slammed his hand down in frustration, rubbing it angrily over his face. "Just—just get out. I can't talk to you right now."

She hesitated, unsure, wanting to make things better somehow but she didn't know how.

Bruce turned the full force of his anger on her. "What are you waiting for?" he growled. "Get out. Go!"

Rachel stumbled back, driven by the sheer force of his words. Pausing in the doorway, she stared back one last time, even though she knew she shouldn't. He didn't look at her, didn't move, his stiff back immobile and pained.

Her ears filled with white noise, her feet slammed down onto the ground with mechanical regularity and she was running, running, running, her mind as empty as a void. She didn't even process falling, kicking off her high-heels, didn't even feel the gravel of the driveway digging into the soft soles of her feet. She was running, running, running from the monster she'd become.

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Author's Note: Excuses, excuses, excuses. School has me crazy busy a lot of the time, and the fact that now I have a social life to balance on top of all of that (it's hard not to when you live with people your age) means much, much less writing time. But the end of the semester is fast approaching, which means I'll have a really long break coming up, so hopefully I'll be able to make good headway on this story over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll even be able to finish it! That would be amazing!

I need you to be tough on me. If there are any inconsistencies that you see, don't hesitate to call me out. It's been a while, and even though I read through the story, I can't promise to catch everything. I'm really really anxious that I wasn't able to keep them all in character, so I'd like your opinions on that. I'll be seeing the movie again December ninth, for sure, so at least I'll be able to brush up on their characters again then.

I'm steeling myself to the fact that probably some of my readers have dropped off (my fault, for making you all wait so ridiculously long). Those of you who are still reading, I really hope you enjoy this! Your support has pushed me to aim at actually finishing this story. I can't let you down! I won't! I won't! I really really hope you enjoyed this, and I hope that this at least sort of makes up for how long you've had to wait!