Chapter Thirteen

Mnemosyne and Lethe

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She didn't want to talk. What was so hard about that to understand? She didn't want to think, she didn't want to talk, she didn't want to kiss or be kissed, cuddle or be cuddled. She certainly didn't want to deal with the men in her life right now- either one of them. She just wanted to be alone. She needed time to think, time to focus, time to reorganize her thoughts, marshal her feelings. She needed her space.

Ugh, she thought acidly to herself. How childish do I sound? "I need my space." Good grief.

"Well," Maggie whispered in her ear, head on her shoulder, "You do kind of need space. Because you and I need to talk, Rachel."

Rachel let her forehead thunk against the icy window of the limousine Bruce had provided to drive her home, since her car was part of the crime scene. The cops said they didn't know what to make of it, didn't know what was going on, or why anyone would want to shoot up a cabaret club owned by a rich playboy with no real enemies. There were even whispers of hiring thugs to attack the place to cash in on insurance money. Like Bruce needed it. But those were the kind of things an Assistant District Attorney picked up when she had her ear to the ground, listening in on the gossip.

She knew they were wrong. Wrong, or corrupt. Because Rachel had seen the intended targets of the attack. The shooting wasn't to hurt anyone, really, unless someone had stayed behind to spy or attack- someone like Maggie. Shooting up the club was solely for the purpose of clearing it out while the lights were down so that the goons sent in to do the grunt work could get a hold of the Damundo girls and Danielle Spinelli. For what reason, the ADA had no idea. There was no chance that the mob had found out that the four women were spies for the District Attorney's office- they hadn't even been contacted in the last eight months, or passed along any information. The reason they were still considered "rats" was because they'd been instrumental in testifying in closed court against Carmine Falcone a year ago.

Now someone was after them. Probably the mob. But it wasn't execution style. If they'd been in real trouble, there would've been an attempt to put bullets in their brains. None of this grabby-grabby stuff. So what, then? What could they have done to warrant this kind of drastic action?

"Hello? Earth to Rachel?" Maggie poked her in the shoulder. It was like being jabbed with a red hot needle. Rachel waved her away, and went back to thinking.

Could one of the girls have finally snapped? After all they'd gone through, after everything the mob had done to them, would it be such a marvel if one or two or all of them finally broke and attacked someone? Killed them, even? Except that there had been no such violent murders, and if the four women were going to snap, even individually, there was going to be a splashy enough death that everyone would've heard about it by now.

Like what had happened to those mob goons in the little theatre club. The violence done to those men was what the brunette woman expected to hear about if the girls had done something so naughty as kill someone. She had so many monsters in her life, including those four. But they were just baby monsters compared to the others in her world. The monsters who were also men.

How many men had become monsters in her life? How many? Less than a lot. More than enough. Her father, everytime he looked at the world through the bottome of a bottle. Her brothers, strung out on hypodermic bliss. Bruce, in his own heroic way, as the Batman. Harvey was a ruthless man, too. Hungry to destroy injustice, almost blind to everything else. But there was someone else... someone she couldn't quite remember...

Staring out the window fogged by her breath, she watched as the poverty-stricken, violent streets of Gotham City passed by in a blur of chrome gray shadows and amber streetlights flickering dimly in their pestilential state of decay. Everything here was falling apart. So many homeless, so many beaten and battered by people who should love and protect them. Beaten...

"Like us?" Maggie demanded, putting her feet up on the opposite window. Somewhere along the way, she'd lost her boots and was now in her black-socked feet, wiggling her toes against the chill mirror. "Like how we were beaten by the people who should love and protect us? Just because they were-"

"That's enough, Mags," Rachel snapped, and the ice-eyed woman glared at her. Just because the fictitional maniac in Rachel's mind was telling her the truth, didn't mean the lawyer wanted to hear it right now. She didn't want to think about anything at all, much less all the men who'd passed through her life. Her father, her brothers, Bruce, Harvey... Jack... No. Don't think about Jack. She wouldn't think about Jack. She didn't even remember Jack.

"Liar," Maggie hissed, and bolted upright. Her ice blue eyes blazed, almost white in the darkness of the backseat of the limousine. The streetlights gave her face an eerie ambience, as if she were holding a flashlight beneath her chin. But... how could it... "Lies!" She snapped. She crawled towards Rachel, predatory, graceful, and all too angry now. "Do you think I'm stupid? I'm in your mind, Rachel. You can't hide from me. You can't hide your precious, oh so innocent thoughts. Don't think I don't know what your trying so very hard to forget."

"Shut up, Maggie."

"Remember him, Rachel. He's the one that created me, remember? He helped you to survive and you repay him by dropping him off the edge of oblivion in your sweet little mind."

Rachel shook her head, hooking her hair behind her ears. She didn't want to listen to this. She didn't want to think about what Maggie was saying. After all, if she listened, then she would remember, and if she remembered, everything was lost. She'd go back to being what she was as a little girl after she was forced away from Bruce, back to what she became again when he disappeared for seven years. Jackie's girl. Jackie's beautiful girl...

"Jack," she whispered. Her teeth sank into her lip. "J-Jack..."

"Remember how he used to treat us?" Maggie whispered back, and put her arms around Rachel, slender and strong as steel, a cage as well as an embrace. The brunette laid her head on her old friend's shoulder. She knew, intellectually, that Maggie wasn't really there, but she felt real. She smelled real, even, the same smell she'd always had- Mountain Breeze scented Tide laundry detergent, the soft and sweet scent of Johnson and Johnson's baby powder, the honeysuckle perfume of Winnie the Pooh brand baby shampoo. The leather jacket she wore smelled like leather, felt like leather under Rachel's cheek. If this wasn't real, then so what?

But she didn't want to remember Jack Napier.

"He was our friend, Rachel," Maggie whispered to the trembling woman. Rachel couldn't breathe. She was choking on the scent of Old Spice cologne- where was that coming from? It was so familiar, tugging at her senses. Why did it smell so familiar? Maggie went on, "Don't you remember? He protected us." Memory, and the scent of Old Spice cologne and aftershave (strange how they could smell so different from each other), clicked into place in Rachel's mind. She remembered the bottle, the belt, and the blade...

"He killed our father," the ADA managed to gasp out. Old Spice was pouring down her throat, choking her. Maggie stroked her hair back from her forehead. She shivered in the ice-eyed woman's grasp. "He killed... cut..."

"Yes," came the gentle, smiling reply. It was the smile of perfectly contented child. "Yes, he did. When Daddy was hitting us with that belt of his and we ran out of the house, we ran straight into Jack and he killed our father for us so we wouldn't have to. Remember? Jack saved us." Maggie's grip tightened around Rachel's body. The lawyer moaned softly, barely audible. Why didn't the driver hear her, she wondered? What was he doing? "And after he was done slitting our father's throat, do you remember what he said? Do you remember what he did?"

Rachel shuddered as phantom lips brushed her mouth, and whispered a butterfly of a kiss on her cheek, and touched her ear. She could hear the soft, baritone voice out of the past as if it were happening now, right this moment: Do you know what it's like to dance with the devil by the pale moonlight, Rachel? She sighed as the words caressed her mind. Why was Maggie forcing her to remember? She was wrong, Jack wasn't here! But she remembered...

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After an eternity lunging for an escape from her own mind and being knocked back into memory, the limousine pulled up in front of her apartment. She thanked the driver, and if her voice was shaky and her eyes wet with tears, the nice man didn't say anything about it.

Rachel took the stairs two at a time, anxious to be up in her room. She needed to take her meds. She needed to make Maggie go away before she did something unthinkable, like let her remind the ADA all about Jackie the Homicidal Maniac. With that thought in mind, she barrelled right on through the door, locked it behind her, and went to the counter, where her pills had sat all day, feeling lonesome.

Rachel popped a Valium, sighing as Maggie flopped down on her bed, lounging oh so casually. The brunette knew why the ice-eyed woman was still there. She wanted to talk about the past. She wanted to talk about old friends and old flames. She wanted, in other words, to talk about Jack.

But she wasn't going to. Instead, she washed the Valium down with her Quetiapine. It dissolved almost instantly in her mouth, and before she could start feeling woozy, she stripped off her jacket and Jimmy Choos and flopped down on the bed beside Maggie. She grabbed her two favorite stuffed toys- a weakness she still carried from her childhood. Mr. Bats and Jackie the Clown were her favorite toys, even now. It was why they were still here with her, when all of her other toys had been packed away and kept safe for her children's use- whenever she had any.

"Goodnight, Mags," she said. She was already so tired. Her eyelids were drooping even as she snuggled under the burgundy satin comforter, another gift from Bruce. It had seen better days- it was almost fifteen years old- but it helped her sleep.

"Goodnight, Rachel." Maggie's voice was soft and breathy, barely there.

"Goodnight... Mr. Batsss," she added, kissing the bat plushie, slurring her words. She knew she sounded drunk, but she just couldn't seem to get up enough energy to care. "Good... night... Jack..."

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Wow, a third chapter in less than 24 hours!

So, here's Rachel again! As you can see, she has her own problems. Because she's an already established character, I'm only hinting at her revious relationship with the Joker right now. I'm focusing more on my OCs. BUT!! Soon Rachel will be a huge part of the story.

Again, I'm hard up for ideas, as well as jokes for our favorite Clown Prince to use. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop me a line. Sorry the updates took so long.

Author's Note: the title is Greek. It literally means "Memory and Forgetfulness." Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory and the mother of the 9 Muses. Lethe is a Naiad in Greek myth (a very minor river goddess) and the daughter of Eris, goddess of Strife. Her river is the River Lethe in Hades, where if you bathe in it, you forget everything. At least, according to my textbook.

Anyway, reviews?

Next time, on Five Queens and a Joker:

Chapter 14: Now what was he supposed to do? Suddenly he had four psychotic wenches draped all over him like serial killing silk, their narcotic eyes focused on the television as a blond bimbo shot her backstabbing boyfriend. The conflicting fire and ice of their presence ate at him. He needed a fix, a fix of dynamite and death and delight. Either that, or a homicidal rendezvous with four luscious women. Either one.

Chapter 15: "There are monsters in the darkness. You and I both know that. Isn't it funny that a monster is afraid of the dark?"

Chapter 16: She'd kill him. One of these days, she'd cut him up into little pieces and hack him into bits and then feed him to a tank full of piranhas. Something violent and bloody. Anything. She'd kill him.

Unfortunately, right now, she had to have sex with him.