A/N: Well, here it is. I don't quite know about it yet . . . I'll work off of your feedback. I'm toying with the idea of rewriting it, but I wanted to post something at least. I did promise it on my profile and all, though I'm not sure how many of you saw that. I guess it depends on if you guys like it.

BTW, you guys totally misread me when I said I was taking a break! It had nothing to do with the number of reviews – that was disheartening, for sure, because I KNOW there are readers, as displayed by how many reviewed last chapter. BUT, I wasn't taking a break because I was pouting over that. Seriously, it was just because of college. I have like NO time.

Anyway, next chapter is getting completely overhauled and redone because I hate what I've written. So, could be that the next update is in mid-December. Sorry, broskis, but the college life of a pre-med student is tough.

I hope you all enjoy this! Please tell me if you do, or if you don't! Suggestions? I am in a rut & need inspiration.

She dealt her pretty words like Blades -
How glittering they shone -
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone -

~ Emily Dickinson

"Scream."

That was what parents always told children to do if a stranger ever pursued them, grabbed them, even looked at them funny. Scream. Run. Fight. Bite. It always seemed so obvious. So simple. Louise had always wondered why it was necessary to make such a statement, to bother reinforcing it over and over. Obviously she would scream and fight. What else would she do, stand there and let them rape her? Maybe in Iowa it wasn't common practice to keep away from strangers, but in the big city, Louise had been convinced you were just born knowing.

The problem was, when faced with true terror, it wasn't so simple. The constant reaffirming of the "rules" seemed understandable to her now, with the incarnation of evil itself pressed so forcefully against her she could hardly breathe. Her mind repeated those words over and over, trying to get her to obey, and yet . . . .

Scream. But she had no breath. Every command her brain sent to her mouth to open led only to strangled, gasping sounds that did not even resemble words. It was impossible to speak with a face like that smiling down at her; with the hands of a man who had killed hundreds of innocent people – her friend, teenagers, a little child – holding a knife to her throat. There wasn't a semblance of coherency in her mind – it was entirely blank, filled only with the outside stresses that were currently and completely dominating her being. White makeup smeared over pale skin; black pits for eyes; bloody red messily covering even messier scars . . . . and the scars. Those, more than anything else, let her know that for whatever reason she was dealing with The Joker. Not a crazy emulator, but the actual monster himself.

So if she could not scream, then Fight. But again, how could she? Her limbs felt paralyzed. She was terrified that if she moved even an inch from her current position the deadly steel of that knife would slice through her throat, as if she were made of nothing more than the creamy custard filling of the doughnuts she'd never allowed herself to eat. Finally, a thought:

She really wished she had indulged more.

With the elimination of those two cardinal rules, Louise was left with nothing. She could do nothing, say nothing. The only possible route was to simply wait for the man holding her life in his hands to do either of the things she currently could not.

All she could do was wait and wonder which he would choose: the Do, or the Say.

"Sorry to wake you," that voice drawled out, the one she'd heard a hundred times over on the Metropolis news but had never, ever imagined she'd hear from just three inches away from her while she lay helpless in bed, "when you were obviously having such a good dream . ."

In the state of uncomfortable pain and immeasurable terror she was in, it was difficult for her to comprehend exactly what the madman was referring to. Slowly her dream came back to her, one for the ages, the first time her mind had allowed her to see Jack Napier alive and well again in the past ten years. His inscrutable smile, the jocose tilt to his words, and his hands all over her, touching her, making her shiver . . . .

As realization dawned on her, a heavy blow to the chest, the Joker burst out laughing. That strange dream, the contradictory nature of it in relation to her own mind's disorder, stemmed not from a well-deserved reprieve but from the fact that the Joker had crawled into bed with her, crawled on top of her, and she'd unconsciously mistaken him for the man she still loved.

And he knew. She could tell he knew. She'd reacted to it. A lustful sigh, a murmur, the upward tilting of her hips, it was all indicative of what she'd been dreaming of, and he'd been there to witness it, had been on the receiving end of it.

Not only was she going to die, but she was going to die with the knowledge that before she did, she'd practically begged her murderer to fuck her.

"Embarrassed?"

Louise still couldn't speak, the knife still pressed firmly to her throat, slicing into her skin with every breath she took. Any more, the large gulp it would take for a scream for example, and she'd be introducing her windpipe to the sharp edge of a blade.

"Ah, so sorry. Ya can't talk with this," he said, as if just realizing what he'd been doing. He removed the knife and dangled it over her face, pointed down, held by the very tips of his index and thumb, "against your throat, can you?"

Louise felt her eyes cross in the effort to keep them both on the swaying motion of that knife, so precariously held, her own personal Sword of Damocles. If he dropped it, by accident or by his own designs, it would stab right through one of her eyes. She squirmed frantically underneath of his heavy weight, bucking her hips in an attempt to throw him off or at least get her body out of the direct path of that wicked looking instrument.

Before she could move more than three inches in either direction the Joker had slammed his palm against her chest, knocking the wind out of her and holding her firm against her pillows.

"I think we've had enough of that," he pressed his hips firmly against hers in demonstration, "tonight. Didn't you get enough with that suit you picked up? Or didn't he know where . . ."

The leathery tip of one of his gloved fingers dipped beneath the neckline of her top and brushed along the swell of her breasts.

"To . . ."

Strands of wavy hair tickled her cheek as he lowered her face to hers, painted lips brushing the hollow of her throat.

"Touch?"

Louise was breathless with fear. Her chest rose and fell rapidly against the Joker's hand. With every scrap of will left in her body she prayed that this was all a nightmare, that even after all she'd done, how horrible she'd been, the way she'd defiled her body, that her God might be forgiving and take pity on her now. She couldn't believe that she deserved this. That whatever came next were her just rewards. Over the past ten years she'd drank too much, slept around too often, and cared too little about other people, but she didn't deserve to die. Not like this, not at the hands of a man who was infamous for the way he killed.

"Please," Her staggered breath whispered out of her throat with far less intensity than she imagined it would; laced with fear and quavering, "I –"

What came next was undecided, but Louise didn't need to worry about that, because with a roll of his darkly painted eyes, the Joker cut her short.

"You would think," he began, tongue running along his bottom lip and then retreating back into his mouth, "that after all that time you laid there speechless, you'd've come up with something a li-ttle more imaginative than 'Please'. I'm disappointed, Louise. Try again, try again."

The way he said her name bothered her. It was familiar, as if he'd known her for years. It was taunting, as if he was daring her to tell him to stop using it in such a way. It was almost sarcastic, mocking, as though he were making fun of it.

It brought to mind the confusion she felt at his being there, at his targeting her, and since this was the only thing she could think of as his knife swung like a pendulum above her face, waiting for her response and getting lower and closer every second she did not speak, she blurted out the only thing she could.

"W-Why? What did I do?"

The knife halted in its swaying descent, and from where he was perched astride her hips, pressing her firmly down, the Joker paused and appeared to think.

"There's no reason to do this. To use me or kill me or whatever you're doing, just – just please, I'm not worth it. Nobody will care. I only just came to Gotham, I - I haven't got any connections, I don't know anybody important. I have no family. I don't know why you're doing this but I promise, I promise, it's a waste of your time."

She finished in a rush, her speech breathless and raspy. Every hair on her body stood on end as she waited for the monster's response, some sort of clue as to why he was here, why he was doing what he was doing. Because of her face on the news? Because she'd lived when he hadn't wanted anybody to? Just because? It all seemed too wild, even for a man who dressed in purple and painted his face like a clown's. There had to be a motive. There had to have been something she did to provoke this. There had to be some way to change his mind; some way to stop this.

Louise could not wrap her mind around an instance where there was not a way, because that would mean that everything was coming to an end right then, and she was helpless to stop it. And that was inconceivable.

Somewhere outside on the streets of Gotham a car alarm went off. Louise flinched violently at the noise but the Joker hardly moved, his body stoic, a black hulking shape against the shadowy darkness of her bedroom. She'd left the bathroom light on and, due to the thin rays of light which peeked out from the cracks in the door, she was able to make out more details that held her in awe as she waited:

The dark hair that fell almost to his hunched shoulders. The purple overcoat that hung heavily on him and which rested in two small bunches on either side of Louise's hips. A small swatch of his clothing underneath – a vest so dark it looked black, but which she knew to be green, and a button-down shirt in a pattern she couldn't quite make out. It was surreal looking up at him, almost an out of body experience,

In an action which stunned her, the Joker swung himself off of her bed, his feet landing on her floor with a quiet thump. Within an instant he'd switched on her bedroom light and stood by her bed, examining the knife he'd found tucked under her mattress with the handle poking out, so easy to spot.

"I wouldn't have had any fun carving you with this one," he informed her, the edge of his mouth twitching. "You should get better cutlery."

Unsure and stunned, Louise slowly pulled herself up into a sitting position. She massaged her throat, crisscrossed with tiny slices. In the light she could see the Joker fully, down to the flash of brightly patterned socks that hid under the cuffs of his purple trousers. Each line in his face was illuminated, beige peeking out from underneath of flaky white. He stood with his shoulders forward; his eyes intense and searching.

From inside of his overcoat he pulled out a knife of equal size and held it up for her to see: Two separate pointed sections curved up, one slightly shorter than the other. They almost resembled unequal pincers, or a pair of nightmare tongs. Four separate edges to inflict unimaginable pain, all packed into one, neat weapon.

"Now this is more like it."

Louise shivered at the tenderness in the man's voice as he examined the knife from base to tip. With her eyes trained on the Joker she began inching away from him, towards the opposite side of her bed. If, maybe, she got all the way to the edge, she might be able to hop onto the floor and make a run for the door before he had time to stop her. From there she wasn't sure; she'd have to make it up as she went. But staying put certainly wasn't an option. Despite how bleak her life had been, Louise knew she wanted to live. There was Mollie, and waking up to sunlight, and she hadn't been married yet, hadn't had children, hadn't even fallen in love again. For the first time she regretted all those wasted moments pining over Jack, when it was obvious now she might have been happy.

But it seemed like it was too late, now.

"You move another millimeter and I'll run you through with this."

His piercing eyes held hers as she caught her breath and froze; guilty, hopeless. For a long moment neither spoke, Louise held transfixed by a gaze so smoldering she found she couldn't look away.

"I came here tonight because I thought you knew . . . ." The tip of his glove tapped thoughtfully against the flat side of the knife.

As if in decision about something the Joker clucked his tongue against the side of his cheek and shrugged his overcoat from his shoulders. There was clanking as he took it off. The coat hung heavy in his hands. With somewhat uncharacteristic care he folded it and laid it across the top of her dresser, knocking several perfume bottles to the ground to make way. They shattered one by one, each tinkling of glass making her jump in turn.

When he turned back to her he flexed his shoulders, standing up even taller. The patterned shirt he was wearing was in clear view, hexagons, but that wasn't what captured her attention the most. It wasn't his wacky outfit; the fact that he may be undressing in front of her and all the implications which came with that; nor even his macabre visage, those horrendous scars.

It was his body. More specifically, his body.

In a flash of fever so overwhelming Louise nearly felt faint, her eyes soaked in the first body that had ever looked exactly like the one she'd searched for for ten years. It wasn't adolescent – rather, it seemed as if it was only a more mature version of the form she longed for. The shoulders were moderately wide, nothing extensive, flowing almost gracefully into arms that were lean, thinly muscled. Arms that hoisted heavy objects at times and were accustomed to work, but which were not toned to perfection by hours at the gym. She knew arms like that. She had felt them hold her; knew their steady assurance as they wrapped around her in the night.

She knew that chest, even hidden as it was beneath his vest and tie. How many nights had she rested her head against it; heard the heartbeat pounding away defiantly underneath of that skin? How many times had she kissed it as he hovered over her, head bowed and jaw clenched?

Seeing the long, spidery legs was like coming home after a long, exhausting day at school (the first day attended that week), and finding Jack home early, sprawled across the ripped and lumpy couch, his legs thrown over the broken arm, eyes closed, dozing.

And the hips . . . . she could write an epic poem, shocking in its content, about those hips.

But, she realized with a sinking heart, it wasn't right. Not those hips. Out of all the men she'd met; all the men she'd slept with or searched through. Out of every one of them, this had to be the man who embodied the boy she loved best. A murderer. A man so awful that he was reducing an entire city to chaos, just for his own amusement; killing helpless people without even blinking an eye. While laughing. This was the man? Him?

It was so momentously unfair it was actually dizzying. All of her waiting, all of her praying, every single, breathless wish . . . . This is what the universe rewarded her with. This monster. One she couldn't touch, would not touch. A man who was contemplating killing her for, supposedly, daring to live through one of his catastrophic events.

She'd decided long ago that God must not exist, but this, this was the clincher.

No God could be this cruel.

With finality, decision, Louise shook her head and refocused. When she met the Joker's eyes again she was disturbed to find that he was studying her with a wrinkled brow and dark eyes, and had been the entire time she surveyed him.

"No . . ." he muttered, more to himself than to her, "You don't know. You don't remember."

"Know?" she whispered, barely audible, somehow even more terrified than before she'd recognized every feature she'd ever longed for on a man being casually flaunted by the intruder.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, as if she'd asked something taboo or forbidden and it had angered him. The very look he gave her sent pinpricks of dread through her body and she tensed, expecting his advance before he actually moved.

Three of those loping strides were all it took for him to cross the room and grab her face, jerking it so close to his own that she could smell his breath, something spicy that he'd eaten and the staleness of a late night. The dark eyes burned uncontrollably as she squirmed against him, opened her mouth to scream only to have him crash his hand against her mouth and nose, nearly suffocating her before he mercifully inched his hand lower, clearing her air passages.

"I came here because . . ." he paused, eyes wandering away from her face, flickering over her bare walls. His tongue prodded at his scars from the inside of his mouth, pushing them outwards, distorting them. She couldn't look away. "I saw your picture on the news. Imagine my surprise when I checked in to survey the extent of my damage and I realized . . . . realized that I know these eyes."

With his free hand he reached forward and traced a rough line across her cheekbone. "I knew them. You know how long it's been since I've remembered something before me? I thought I'd severed every tie I had, hacked my old life to itty bitty pieces, and then you . . . . You were supposed to be dead! Buried and rotting. You weren't supposed to be walking down my streets and falling into my traps. You weren't supposed to be out there breathing. Living. Sleeping with other men." He shook his head violently, teeth bared and eyes glowing with malice.

Louise stared up at him in shock, shaking her head and grunting against his hand, trying to make him understand the mistake he'd made. Whoever this man was, whoever he thought she was – it was all a mistake. Every bit of this nightmare had come from a case of mistaken identity. A comedy of errors.

His fingers tightened around her chin, pinching into her skin, keeping her from making any motions. "You wanna say it's not true, don't you sweetheart? You wanna think that you could have . . . never . . . had anything to do with a man like me, right?" The Joker laughed, high pitched and horrible. "But I was everything to you, and before I kill you I'll make sure you remember it!"

Louise groaned against his hand in absolute despair as he brought up the knife and pressed it to her cheek. That it would come to this, this, a madman slicing her into pieces because of someone she had never been, could never be, no matter how much she willed it. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs that it was wrong, he was wrong, she wasn't whoever he thought she was – a dead lover, long past? If only she could let him know, he might walk away. Let her free. . . .

But it was too late, now. Whatever ifs or buts there could have been; whatever police officer might have listened to her attentively, given her legitimate suggestions, helped her . . . it was too late. She was finished. Her life would be ending in agony in just minutes now, and there was only one thing left to look forward to . . . .

"D'you wanna know how I got these scars, Louise?"

In a smoky barroom a million years ago, Sara Burton told her that this was the last thing the victims of the Joker ever heard. A fictional story about how that grin got carved onto his cheeks and then . . . nothing. Pain, pain, pain, and then oblivion.

It was the end of the line, and the only thing Louise could think about was how long it might take for anyone to find her body.

The Joker ignored the tears leaking from her eyes and wetting the leather gloves he wore. He pulled her closer and spoke in a low voice, spinning a story for her. "Not many people know this, but I grew up in the Narrows. I wasn't born evil. People don't . . . pop out and start slashing away. No. People like me are made. I was normal once. I had a family. I had a sister."

The blade of his knife grazed her cheekbone and Louise sobbed against that foreign hand. She could taste him on her lips, the last taste she would ever know. A taste of leather, of ash, of something tinny and metallic. It wasn't a pleasant mix, the same way the sight of him wasn't a great last look.

"Dad was a drinker who couldn't keep his fists to himself, and Mom, she wasn't around a lot, so I guess you can say that it was just me and my little sis, thick as thieves."

He faltered, and when the story resumed there was a more desperate tilt to his tone; something aching that almost made Louise believe each and every word that he uttered. She had to remind herself that this was what he did, this was how he played it with every victim. She was no different from the others; she was sentenced to the same appalling death. She was granted the same intimate story-telling, none of it truer than the last he had told.

"Until little sis gets sick one summer. Cancer. She gets so sick she can't even stand, can barely breathe, and we're so poor we can't even pay for her treatments. We live off of charity. Off of the generous donations of the rich and the priv-i-leged."

He spat out the last words, bitter. Louise found that she was hardly blinking. It wasn't just his tone that had her riveted. The story, that story he was telling, was so eerily familiar that it was hard to put it off to just chance; hard to tell herself that he couldn't read her mind, and that was how he was reciting her boy's past to her, torturing her. Was this his final stab? Except . . . Except how would he possibly know?

"But it's not enough. It's never enough. We can't afford to keep her alive. So I do the only thing that I can do. I sell my soul for a little bit of money. I get involved with the wrong people. I don't ask questions when they tell me to throw a trash bag dripping blood into the river. I kill people, and it pays, and it feels right, because for the first time I'm in charge of what happens to me, to my sister."

His grip tightened convulsively and she gasped as the pressure. It felt like he could break her jaw with ease, if he wanted. But even if he did she could hardly care, because his words, his words were ruining her, blasting her apart. For the first time, Louise looked past the black smudges around his eyes and saw the dark irises, flecked with green, alight with the thrill of the past, swept away by the retelling of this story. From far back she reached around for a memory and retrieved a sunny day, the taste of a toasted almond ice cream, a hungry little boy and Jack, standing in the sunlight, telling her the life of one single dollar bill. Swept away by a story.

He continued, his grip like iron, his eyes like coal, his voice grating and desperate, as if he was begging for an ending to this story different from the one he had on the tip of his tongue. Louise wanted to scream until her voice broke, sob unrestrainedly, because it was all dawning on her, and she just knew she couldn't take it. It couldn't be true, she wouldn't let herself believe it for one second, not yet. Even in her denial she was breaking apart.

"Until I got in over my head. I got greedy. I got cocky. I crossed one mobster . . . . too many."

The frenzy of his story built up to a crescendo and Louise could feel him shaking, feel the twitching of his fingers against her cheek; she saw the way his tongue continually wetted his lips, the way he chewed on the side of his mouth, almost in an unconscious tic, in the same way she used to bite her nails.

"I'm on the way home to my sister . . . my girl . . . . with the last of that money I would have ever made, when that mobster catches me in an alley with a few thugs and a crowbar. They beat me, hold me down. He pulls out a knife and . . . ." His breathing was labored as he trailed off, eyes wide, and Louise was crying so hard she could barely see him through the tears.

With a violent gesture he released her, threw her back against her bedding, allowed her to suck in air and let out throaty sobs that shook her entire body. His hand went up to trace his scars as she covered her face with her hands and moaned into her palms, the same word. No. No. No. She wouldn't let this be true, couldn't live with herself if this was reality. Jack, a murderer. Jack. It couldn't be. It wasn't right, not like this. She would not believe it.

But that story. Those eyes. That body . . .

"I wake up a month later and everything is gone. My little, innocent sister is dead. Buried without me. And the guy who saved me tells me that my girl is lying next to her. A casual-ty. I can't believe it." He shook his head violently. "So I check. The apartment it's, ah, it's bare."

He fell silent, crouched on her bed and peering down at her, just waiting for her to run out of other places to look. Her eyes were swollen already, her face wet with tears and her throat tight. That body, that voice, the man in the street. I'm praying . . . This is how I pray. Jack, on the street, a twelve year old child with bruises deforming his face. . . .

His funeral. The daisy she placed on the top of his empty grave. There had never been a body, but somehow Peyton Riley's assurance that he was, in fact, dead, seemed like enough. He had never come home. . . .

Because when he'd been able to, she'd already been gone.

"Oh, God . . ." she sobbed, sitting upright and burying her face in her raised knees.

"So now that the ghost of your past has caught up to you, baby . . . . any last words?" There was a snarl on his face. It still looked foreign to her. That paint masked it so effectively that even in her current state of dawning recognition she still had trouble making out the boy who had meant everything to her. Perhaps it was due to the scars, which now seemed a thousand times more horrible. Or maybe it was the look in his eyes. A look that the boy who'd loved her would never have had.

A look that told her he was going to kill her.

What could she say? She'd prayed for this truth, that Jack was still alive somewhere, but never had she imagined this. This warped, nightmare permutation of her deepest wish. Jack, her Jack, the boy she'd loved, the boy who she'd seen dote on and care for and love his sick baby sister – him, a murderer, so obviously insane. There was no way to describe the way she felt. It was all conflicting emotions, battling against each other, equally strong. There were no winners. Not in this.

Louise knew that out of the disjointed mess of thoughts and questions that she had in her mind, there was one thing she had to say, one thing she'd thought she'd never get to. It was something she owed to the best friend she'd ever had, something that was more important to speak aloud than any question burning on the tip of her tongue.

"L-Lola," she gasped out.

In an instant that hideous mask he wore, the snarling expression, froze, and Louise knew she had enough time to continue.

"She wanted me to tell you, when you came home, that she – she didn't want you to be angry about what happened to her. That it wasn – wasn't your fault." With a wet, tremulous breath she rushed on, her words breaking. "I'm so sorry. I'm so – I'm so . . ."

She watched him breathe, his body crouched over her and his muscles tense. In, out, in, out. It was such an ordinary action, out of place on him in those clothes; with that face. But it reminded her of one all-important fact: He was human. Strip him bare of everything and he was only a man. He was a man she knew, once, better than anyone.

The furrows in his brow deepened; his shoulders slumped. Instantaneously, Louise knew she was looking up into familiar eyes; that what she said had struck him deeply, somewhere past the insanity that ruled him. Now, if ever, there might be a chance . . .

With a shaking hand she reached out and placed her fingers against his exposed throat, bare of makeup.

Just like that, it was over. The eyes darkened and his fist curled, and she knew, even before it happened, that he was going to hit her.

Louise clenched her eyes shut tight, anticipating the blow, the blinding pain, perhaps even the unconsciousness. The seconds ticked by like minutes . . . . through the papery thinness of her eyelids she saw a bright light come from the direction of her bedroom window, brighter than the moon emerging from the clouds. The weight on the bed shifted. She felt cool air hit her thighs where the Joker had been crouching over her, her life in his hands, ready to snuff it out.

When she dared to look next he was at the window staring up. The white of his face glowed, ghastly, sending chills through her once again. He was smiling.

He moved rapidly, snatching his overcoat from her dresser and showering her floor with more of her belongings, most glass or porcelain that broke instantaneously. It wasn't until he reached her doorway and turned back to look at her, still lying on her bed, waiting for the heavy hand that didn't seem to be coming any longer, that she realized he was, inexplicably, leaving.

With one foot over her threshold he paused. Their eyes met.

"Don't get too comfortable, Louise. . . ."

In one fluid motion he slid on his coat, adjusted the sleeves, pulled his gloves further up his wrists.

"We're not finished yet."

The words hung on the air even after he'd swept from the room, the hem of his violet overcoat whipping out of sight last.

Louise laid stunned, breathing shallowly, until she heard a window slam in her living room; clanging footsteps as he scrambled down the fire escape. It was only then that she pulled herself out of bed and stumbled over to find the source of the illumination.

There, floating like yellow fog in the sky, was the Bat signal. Restored; repaired. The first time it had kissed the Gotham night sky since a year before, after the death of Harvey Dent. After the disappearance of Batman.

The citizens of Gotham were crying out, belatedly, for help. And it was that cry that saved her.