Here it is everyone! The thirteenth installment! My most sincere apologies for the delay. I've been bringing in the green and what not. Again, never ending thanks to my reviewers for keeping my drive and inspiration up to keep writing this. The only thing I own is Elise, you know.

But without further ado, I give to you chapter thirteen! Happy reading.

Aw, jeeze, it's been a few days, hasn't it? I'm utterly sorry for keeping everyone waiting. Just a warning: I won't be able to write that much; I'm moving into my dorm on the 20th and start classes on the 25th. Everything is happening so quickly! It's insane. But my motivation is kicking into gear again, so I'm going to get on with this. Thank you for tuning in and happy reading!

Chapter Fourteen;

As Elise sat on a cold, stiff metal chair on the other side of the interrogation glass, she let her thoughts wonder aimlessly. She wondered how her uncle could bear to leave his family when they had just discovered he was back from the dead. Elise couldn't see herself being able to handle it, putting a job before family. But she let herself settle with duty is duty, although that conclusion didn't satisfy her in the least. She also thought about the Joker's chilling promise…

Did he truly mean what he had said? Elise was too frightened to answer her own question. She always envisioned herself as a strong person who could endure quite a lot of trauma and drama. She'd seen her parent's deaths at a young age and she watched more than one of her schoolmates succumb to and die from substance abuse. From that and various other experiences, Elise unconsciously built a thin shield of armor around her heart, letting only a precious few in to know the true person underneath. But she felt that since her captivity with the Joker that that thin armor, that sacred protection, had been stripped away. She felt like every single person who even so much as remotely glanced at her could simply see right through her. Elise tried to convince herself that she was only traumatized and that she just needed to give herself time to let life get back to normal.

Emptily, Elise raised her green eyes from the floor to look at the man who was bringing Gotham to its knees. He looked almost jolly, shaking his lime tinted head back and forth and pursing his lips in an action that looked like it could be silent whistling. The speakers were turned on, so Elise could hear him humming happily to himself.

'Damn it, he has not a care in the world, does he?' Elise thought to herself morbidly, 'This is all one big joke to him, one enormous laugh.'

Elise wondered if the Joker knew something they all didn't or simply found even the worst of situations creepily amusing. A few moments later, Elise's thoughts were broken when she heard the door behind her open and could smell by the distinct scent of his cologne that Uncle Jim was back at quarters.

He rubbed her shoulder in a silent hello, turned to the population of the room and asked them, "Did he say anything?"

Everyone in the room solemnly shook their heads in a unified, "No."

Jim sighed, tired and defeated but Elise knew he wouldn't give up the fight. He was about to turn away from them to walk into the room to exchange a few words with the Joker but before he did, he stopped and stared at Elise. She could feel his gaze on her and she had a faint feeling that he didn't want her 

there. Her eyes were at the boring, blank floor again and before he could say anything Elise informed him, "I'm not going anywhere, Uncle Jim," she looked up at him after that, stared at him straight in the eyes and continued, "Like I can't handle the interrogation of my captor."

She looked away from him and into the cell. To her shock, he was staring right at her and winked from inside the glass. But it was impossible to see anything on the other side when one was inside… or so Elise thought. Her breath caught in her throat and she quickly stood up, making the officers around her jump. Her small right hand rested on her chest as Elise nervously looked around the room, laughing shakily in a weak attempt to reassure everyone that she was okay.

Again, Jim Gordon sighed in atteptance. He knew all too well that his niece would do what she wanted to do. He began to walk towards the door and before stepping into the room, he looked back at Elise and said, "I'm trusting you to trust yourself, Ellie. But if anytime you feel you can't take it, you can leave. Just go to the house and Barbara will take care of you."

Elise nodded her head in thanks and gave her uncle a small, crooked smile in encouragement. Vaguely, she heard him ask Officer Ramirez if "he" was in there. Elise knew that the "he" was Batman and judging by the loud buzzing noise that filled the room like a sudden fire alarm, he was. When Elise looked back to the spot where her uncle was just been standing, the area was filled with his absence. She lifted her eyes to the large pane of glass and saw her uncle walking towards the simple metal table where, on the opposite side, the Joker sat, handcuffed and calm.

From the darkness of his corner, the Joker drawled, "Evening, Co-missioner."

Elise's immediate reaction to his voice was a distinct, obvious shiver that creeped down her spine and down her legs until it suddenly halted at her feet. The simple two words brought back a whirlwind of emotions and memories that Elise cared to forget. Desperate to take the shivering away, Elise wrapped her hair-raised arms around each other and forcefully rubbed them together as her uncle informed the Joker that Harvey Dent never made it home. After that, everyone's worst fears were confirmed when the masqueraded man replied casually, "Of course not."

Elise let out a breath that she was not aware she was holding and turned her head away from the sight in front of her. From her left, Officer Wuertz came to her and questioned almost shakily, "Do you need something to drink, water, a Coke, anything? You look as if you're gunna be sick, miss."

Raising her eyes to the aging man's face, Elise saw fear and concern there but she could not place it as genuine or fake. This scared her; she was usually able to tell what was real and what was being fronted rather smoothly, but tonight she felt all her personal attributes slowly fade away with her hope. She nodded and replied, "Yes, a Coke would be great, thank you."

Officer Wuertz nodded only and swiftly brushed past Elise, making her sway slightly forward. Feeling as if she was going to lose her balance, she roughly sat back down on the metal folding chair. Still rubbing her arms, Elise looked back up to the glass. By this time, her uncle had removed the Joker's handcuffs and was walking away from him, informed him, "If we're going to play games, I'm going to need a cup of coffee," and hit the red button that would allow him to let back out to where Elise and the fellow officers were located.

Gleefully the Joker asked, "The good cop, bad cop routine?" He smiled widely and made a loud, obnoxious click with his tongue that made a sharp pain shoot through Elise's head. She groaned quietly and put both hands to either side of her head, trying to soothe away her pain and wondered, irritated, where the hell Wuertz was with her Coke.

As Elise massaged her temples, a sudden hollow bang resounded on the other side of the room, forcing her to look up. Elise immediately noticed that the scene had changed dramatically within a matter of seconds. All of the fluorescent lights were on and, in place of her uncle, Batman now stood behind the 

Joker. He was in the midst of raising his head from the top of the table and saying that one should never go for the head and was cut off by Batman slamming his fist on top of the Joker's.

Forgetting about her headache, Elise slowly stood up and walked, almost trance-like, to the front of the glass. Behind her, she felt a presence. She assumed it was either her uncle's or Wuertz's, but momentarily didn't care. She was fearfully awaiting the next scene to unravel in front of her eyes.

In his deep, raspy voice, Batman declared, "You wanted me. Here I am."

Still sitting calmly in his seat, the Joker smiled, which threw Elise off caught, although she didn't know what else she could expect from a man, no, a creature like him: A complete sadist who took pleasure from an innocent's pain. As the Joker replied with something along the lines of not disappointing him and letting people die and something about letting someone take his place, Elise's thoughts forced her to remove herself from tuning into the interrogation.

Elise slowly, almost unknowingly it would seem to the outside person looking in, folded her hands across her stomach and began to think back deep into the caravel in her mind that contained the great portion of her good memories. She recalled swinging on unsteady, wooden seated swings in the park across from her house at age eight with Rachel. The first fight they got into ever, which occurred in the seventh grade over a useless boy that they both grew to hate, came into her mind. Elise remembered crying for the entire day when Rachel claimed she "hated" Elise. The next day, things were back to normal and both had pretended the pointless fight had never happened. Elise couldn't remember feeling so enlightened before that point.

Dozens of series of memories of times long past came flying back as if they happened yesterday. As an intermission to her memories, Elise did something she never did before, save for a few times when she was younger and believed in everything and anything: she prayed. Lightly resting her head upon the glass, Elise prayed that no harm would come upon her oldest and best friend and if anything did happen, that she would make it out alive, still the same beautiful soul she knew.

As Elise poured every prayer she could out in silent and desperate form, she was unaware of the chaos unfolding in front of her face, literally. By this time, Batman had lost all of his self control and her uncle could see the disaster, ready to explode like a bomb. But Batman was a step ahead of those in the observation room, for as Jim Gordon was running to the door to stop Batman from unleashing his rage upon the Joker, Batman simultaneously put a metal chair beneath the door knob to prevent anyone from entering.

Before Jim could return to where he had left Elise, Batman, unable to see where anyone on the other side was located, threw the laughing Joker against the glass wall, in the same general spot where Elise was resting her head. The impact immediately hit Elise, causing her to fall backwards onto the ground. She gasped loudly and began to back away in fear of what had happened. She finally caught her sense and balance and stood back up to see that Batman had left a huge crack in the glass where he had slammed the Joker. She walked back to where she had just been standing and when she saw the scene taking place, she raised a hand to cover her mouth and quietly muttered, "Oh, my God…"

She felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped slightly at the touch, but calmed down once she discovered that it was only her uncle. Without taking her eyes off the fight, Elise asked, "What the hell just happened?" A fraction of a second later, Batman screamed at the Joker to tell him where "they" were and backed his threatening demeanor with a harsh, angry punch to the cackling Joker's jaw.

To the punch that could have and would have brought a sane man down to the ground, begging for mercy, the Joker only spat out a sizable about of red and white substance from his mouth and told Batman that he had absolutely nothing to threaten him with. Crushed, Elise knew he was purely right and she assumed Batman knew it, too.



Elise then turned to her uncle, who was refusing to look at her or answer her question. It was that moment that Elise knew something was deathly wrong.

Again, she asked, "Uncle Jim, what the hell is going on?" Her eyes demanded an answer.

Still refusing to look at her, Jim Gordon replied, "He's got Harvey…"

Elise turned her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at her uncle, "You know I know that. What else is going on?"

When her uncle bit his lip in hesitance and glanced down at the ground, Elise knew her worst nightmares were coming true right in front of her. With dread heavily coating her words, Elise asked, "Rachel?" She heard her voice crack with the solo word and her eyes grew into large emerald orbs.

Without responding, Jim Gordon looked into the interrogation room and saw the Joker slumped on the floor against the opposite wall and Batman storming out of the room. Elise realized that her uncle had not been listening to what she had said. Something else had gone down. Then, he began to walk away from her, leaving Elise stranded alone. Before he took off, Elise could hear, scattered, two different locations that she knew were on the exact opposite sides of town. Then, she heard her uncle ask Batman which one he was going after, to which he replied, "Rachel."

The same single word which had been ignored by her uncle was, at that very moment, Elise's downfall. She felt herself go into panic mode and couldn't breathe. Back to the ground, Elise fell to her knees and began to mutter, "No, no, no, no, no," continuously over and over again. She didn't feel the hot, untamed tears fall from her eyes and down her face. She didn't feel anything but loss. She knew at that moment that the Joker had planned his all from the beginning. She didn't know if it was to get under her skin, to get under Batman's, to screw with everyone in Gotham's head. Maybe it was a sickening combination of all of all options. The only thing Elise knew one hundred percent was that Rachel, wherever she was, was not coming back ever again. Defeated and broken, Elise rested her elbows onto the cold floor and began to wildly beat her little fists against the ground in anger. She wanted desperately to feel anything else but the pain in her chest she felt now. Faintly, she could feel the bones in her hands shake and shift. Little did Elise know that she was bruising and almost breaking them with all the force in which she was slamming them down. Like she had done when she thought she saw Uncle Jim got shot, Elise opened her mouth and screamed, "NO!"

The single syllable word rang through the entire station. She didn't think she screamed so emotionally and so angrily even when her uncle "died." No, this was her sister, her best friend, the book of her life. And suddenly, Elise felt responsible for everything. Suddenly…

"Oh, Elise…?"

Her sobbing stopped immediately and she froze at the sound of the voice much like a deer would when it was caught in the middle of bright headlights on a midnight road.

He knew she was there.

Slowly, Elise picked herself up from off the ground and turned around to see that the Joker was still slumped in the same position. But now, he was smiled softly. She imagined that he could perfectly picture her standing there, sniffling pathetically and face blushed beat red with angry and heartbreak, her eyes just as red from rough crying.

The Joker, with his makeup fading and melting off with his own sweat, cleared his throat and said, "I know you can… you can hear me, so darling, I really need you to listen up, okay?" He nodded wildly. And even though he couldn't see her, Elise nodded slightly.



"I need you to know that I'm…" he smacked his lips together and continued, "I'm coming back for you," he titled his head back against the wall and looked away from the observation glass, "Tuning out," he muttered quietly.

Trembling, Elise fled the observation room and hoped to whoever resided above that her uncle MCU was as safe as everyone so loyally claimed. She passed Officer Gerard Stephens, presumably the unwillingly one to guard the Joker. She felt his confused gaze upon her back but did not pay it mind, simply continued to run until she reached the main headquarters in the center of the building.

There, in the presence of the officers left behind, Elise began to sob, for everything. Everything she had done, everything she hadn't, for the times long past, for a life that would never be the same.

Her hope was gone.

I really didn't expect it to be ten days between updates! I'm really sorry! But I honestly hope you enjoy this and thank you for reading. Review, review, review!