Jeannie woke with a start, her hands clutching the sheets and her breathing erratic. She was covered in sweat and her heart was pounding crazily, although she couldn't even remember the dream.
The room was dark and cold; much colder than she remembered. Jeannie reached over to pull the blankets around her again, but instead of landing on fabric her hands landed on warm flesh, her fingers wrapping around a pair of wrists. She gasped as the person lying next to her shot up, rolling her over onto her back and straddling her. "What is it, Jean-nie?" a voice whispered playfully in her ear.
"Jack," Jeannie breathed, and suddenly the room was flooded with light. She was lying on the old, hard bed that she and Jack had shared during their few years of marriage, and the room around them was their tiny apartment in the building that was now a pile of ashes in the middle of the Narrows. Her hands immediately went to her stomach, but it was completely flat, the same size as it had been before she'd given birth. Her hands were smoother too; less lined and wrinkled.
But the most shocking feature of all was Jack, Jack as she had known him, Jack as she had loved him. He couldn't have been older than twenty, his curly blond hair falling across his face, his brown eyes lit up with a wicked but not malicious grin, and his scars stretching across his face.
Jeannie reached up to bring his face down to hers, kissing him fiercely and molding her body to his, with none of the regret or guilt she felt whenever she was physically close to the Joker. "I love you, I love you," she whispered, holding him close and breathing in his warm, familiar scent. "Oh, Jack...what do you want from me? I want to save you, Lily, and the baby...but I fear that all of us are beyond saving now."
Jack drew away from her, but kept his fingers entwined in her hair as he ducked down again, pressing his scarred face to her jawline, her throat, her collarbone. "You already know the answer, love," he breathed, his voice sending shivers down her spine. "You just don't want to face it yet."
"Face what?" she began to ask, but with a rush in her ears and a great shudder, Jack suddenly disappeared, and she was left with only empty air, her arms wrapped around a ghost.
The next time Jeannie woke, she was so warm as to be uncomfortable, and the bed she was lying in was thankfully much softer. Her hands were resting on her ballooning stomach, and she felt a wave of despair surge through her as she remembered the dream. If only she could speak to Jack one more time...even if it was just to tell him goodbye...
Just as she was about to close her eyes again, something moved in the shadows across her room. Jeannie's heart immediately kicked into overdrive, the rational part of her mind trying to calm her down and reason that it was just Lily, but Lily would have called out for her by now or crawled into bed.
Seconds passed, and as Jeannie stared into nothingness, she told herself that she was just imagining things. There was nothing there; nothing but harmless shadows.
She slowly sank back down into the pillows, and just as she closed her eyes again the floor creaked.
"Hello, tiger," said a quiet, sneering voice from the end of her bed.