She can't believe it. She absolutely can't believe that this is happening right now.
"We're going to be late if you keep dragging your feet," Joker mutters, as he drags Michelle by the upper arm through the building. They're using the hostages as makeshift clowns, and the heartless bastards are setting them up right in front of the window. It's going to be a slaughterhouse. She's still in her nurse's uniform, cool night air nipping at her bare legs as they head through the maze-like building. She thinks of what he's going to be late for; what could he possibly be late for?
"You always hurry, you know that?" She, for some ungodly reason, tells him, and he glances sideways at her, confused.
"What?"
"You do. You're always late for something." She's so strung out from all the stress and the danger and the abuse that in this very moment, she's almost serene, and it's creepy. He continues dragging her, looking back ahead of him.
"I'm a busy man, after all." He strolls into an office and tosses her to the floor in the center of the room, and she just sort of sits there, with a lack of anything else to do. Not long after that, Joker whistles, and a couple goons dressed as doctors lead in a pack of snapping dogs. They come to crowd around the Joker's feet as the 'doctors' leave, and he offhandedly kicks one aside while pacing around the room. He pulls out a cell phone, and begins to narrate a plan to…somebody. Michelle has no idea who. It sounds like a highly unpleasant plan, a game as he would probably call it, and she's glad she's not them. At least, until she remembers that she's here instead.
Oh well, at least she's not them. At least she's kind of used to being around Gotham's premiere clown-themed terrorist.
She watches him hang up the phone and dial another number, and she has no idea who he's talking to now. He walks over and grabs her by the hair, dragging her to her feet.
"Right now, I have the broken bird of Gotham here with me. Say hello, Michelle," Joker tells her, and gives a hard jerk on her hair, causing her to yell in pain. "She says hi. Anyhow, if SWAT so much as puts a toe inside the building, then she takes a swan dive off a skyscraper. She's going to be very unhappy if that happens, I'm sure." He snaps the phone shut, Michelle staring off at the floor as he lets go of her hair and lets her sit there, numbly, amongst the growling Rottweilers.
"Who was that?" She asks, dumbly, as he begins to pace again.
"Your brother." He tells her, agitated, as she sits there on the floor. After a moment, there's commotion downstairs, and he grabs her by the upper arm again, dragging her to her feet in a grip so tight that it'll definitely leave bruises. Michelle can tell that he's very excited, agitated; he's waiting for something, and she has an inkling of what. "Look alive now," He smacks her cheek a couple times, not enough to qualify as a slap but enough to sting in his attempt to make her look more aware. "You do need to look like a convincing hostage."
"But I am a hostage," She states, and he laughs in a sharp, cutting way.
"You're not a very convincing one." Joker tells her, and, after thinking a moment, walks over to the wall and slams her head into it. She crumples to the ground. "Now that I think about it, you'll just get in the way. Stay there and I wouldn't try running." He pats the head of one of the dogs, as a wordless warning. She doesn't move, just watches dizzily from her spot on the floor as he turns, looking at someone in the doorway.
"You came. I'm touched." Michelle notes that, for being cornered by Batman, he sounds happy. She hears something about a detonator, but it's kind of muffled by the noise the dogs make as they leap onto Batman. She sits up against the wall, hand over her head, and watches them fight. She hasn't actually seen the Joker really fight somebody before, and now that she does, one thing comes to her mind.
He fights dirty.
It's all she can come up with as he pummels Batman, kicking him towards the glass. He knocks him out the window and after another moment, kicks out a wooden support beam and nearly crushes the Batman's neck with a pipe, stepping on it.
A very crazy, very suicidal idea comes to her mind. She runs with it, because she's stopped caring about what might happen, what he could do to her. She just acts.
She charges at Joker, aiming to shove him out the window or at least distract him enough for Batman to get the upper hand; she thinks he can't see her, is too busy with his prisoner to notice her coming behind him.
She's wrong, and she realizes this as he turns and smiles at her, crazed, and brings his switchblade down in a slashing arc across her face.
"I'm busy." He growls in a low, guttural tone, and she realizes that he's not smiling, he's snarling at her. Her hand is over her wounded face, blood seeping between her fingers, and she looks down at his boot just in time to see a blade click out of it, before he flat-out roundhouses her. She can feel the blade slice into her chest and the concussive force of the blow knocks the air out of her, and she gets knocked back a few feet and drops to the floor. The free hand comes to cover her new stab wound, red already soaking into (and staining) her white nurses' uniform.
Oh god, this is how I die. She thinks, dimly, as she watches the two of them out near the ledge. This isn't how it was supposed to happen.
She sees motion again, though her vision is blurring; she can hear better, and catches snippets of conversation.
"You're alone." She hears a low, growling voice, and for a moment, wonders if Batman gargles with razorblades.
"Oh, but I'm not. Just ask Michelle." She hears the Joker say, before muttering about having to do everything yourself. There's a flurry of motion not too much later, and Michelle watches Joker sail over the side of the building, before being dragged back into view, hanging upside-down. He looks happy hanging off the side of a skyscraper, caught. The two men talk for a moment, Michelle hearing the Joker offer to share a padded room with Batman, and she closes her eyes, sure that she's going to die now. She does roll onto her back, though, to get more comfortable as she dies, and when she hears someone walking past, she opens her good eye to see Batman glancing down at her.
"Hey," She says, smiling wryly. "Michelle King. Joker said he'd introduce us."
He doesn't say anything to her and instead hurries out of sight, and it's just her and the Joker, alone. After a long moment of silence, she hears him talk, as if he hadn't just maybe fatally stabbed her and slashed her face.
"So...no hard feelings, right?" His voice is almost grinning from how happy he sounds, and she opens her good eye so that she can roll it at him.
"Oh fuck you, man."
He giggles slightly, hanging upside down and seeming to swim in the air. She stares at him a moment longer, and then can't help but ask.
"You're not worried in the least about being locked up in Arkham, are you?" She deadpans her question, and catches sight of him looking at her again.
"Of course not; a change of scenery does a man good. You should join me. I hear the food is good."
"There's not going to be room if you, me, and Batman all share a padded cell."
She hears him genuinely laugh now, and it's still as chilling as ever, though the terror is somewhat dulled by the fact that she's bleeding to death. "I think I'm rubbing off on you, Harley."
She glares at him from the corner of her eye. "What happened to Missy? And lord, I hope not." She can hear people shouting, moving up towards them, and knows that SWAT is coming soon. Joker just hangs there, watching her and the door, alternating between one and the other.
"Harley rolls off the tongue better. And don't worry; soon enough, you'll see things my way. I promise you that, and believe me, I am a man of my word."
That's about the last thing she hears from him as the SWAT moves in and towards the two of them, and she allows herself to black out.
The next time she wakes up, everything is white.
It's a hospital, she realizes from surveying the abnormally clean white surfaces, and the smell of antiseptic and sanitation. Why am I not dead? I should've…what the hell? She lays a hand over the left side of her face, and feels bandages where she was slashed. She's alone in here, just her and her IV. A few minutes later someone walks in and checks her chart, before noticing that she's awake.
"Oh, you're awake."
Well, that was helpful.
"Yeah." Michelle answers, staring. She can hear a buzz outside the door, people talking, and before she can react, there are reporters swarming her room. They're all talking at once, asking her questions, about this, about that, about her time in captivity, about what it was like to be a prisoner of the Joker. The nurse chases them all out, turning to her again. Every time she turns away, Michelle expects the Joker to turn back around, laugh, and say, "Just kidding." This nurse having the same red hair doesn't help calm her down, either.
"Ms. King, wait just a moment." The nurse begins, and before Michelle can ask any questions, the nurse leaves and a doctor walks in a few minutes after. He sits down in the chair by her bedside and stares, before talking to her like she's five. It pisses her off.
"Hello, Michelle. How are you feeling?" He asks, still speaking to her like she's a child, and she glares at him and deadpans her answer.
"Like I've been cut up by a homicidal clown."
"…Oh." The doctor mutters, not sure how to come back from that one. He reads her clipboard again, clears his throat, and starts. "Well…you've been asleep for fourteen hours…malnourished, dehydrated…" He mumbles, and she's still glaring.
"I know. What's the damage?"
"I don't think that it would be…prudent, to discuss-"
"I think it would. What's. The. Damage." She stops after every word, making sure that he knows that she thinks he's a jackass. He glances at the board again and then speaks.
"Well, you were slashed from right here," He taps above his left eyebrow, about an inch, inch and a half, "Down to here." He slides his finger down from that spot to his cheekbone. "No damage to the eye, thankfully, but…it's a nasty wound. It's going to scar pretty badly." She listens closely, and he goes on. "One of your fingers was broken in two places. We set it, but the first break had already started to heal itself and so your finger might be a bit crooked, but that's not really the most important one. You've got a deep gash in your stomach, right along your bottom ribs. It nicked them, and cut in between the last two sets of ribs from the slashing motion."
Michelle stares at him a moment. "Am I going to live?"
"Yes. We had to stitch you up, and you're going to have to take things easy for a while, but you're going to survive." He smiles at her, reassuringly, and she glances to the door past him. He seems to grimace when he follows her line of sight. "Yes…you have visitors. But I don't think that it would be good for your health to get all that excitement right now." Michelle nods, in agreement, before laying back in her bed.
"Thanks, doc." She wants to go back to sleep, before hearing the doctor stand.
"Oh yes, and when you feel up to it, your brother wants to talk with you."
"Tell him to fuck off." Michelle growls, and the doctor seems to awkwardly shuffle out of the room (there's another blast of noise from reporters as the door opens and closes), and she stares at the ceiling.
"It's over." She states, to the ceiling and to herself. She can't convince herself that it really is over, for some reason, but she's sure that it'll hit her over time. She can go and live a normal life now.
Alone.
In the gutter.
With no job.
And possibly about to be arrested by the police.
She, for a moment, does think about what the Joker told her. About the world and all its random injustice and all that. Maybe he's right about that, at least, even if he's insane. She lets herself slip into a light sleep, contented with the idea of dealing with all her problems later on.
