A/N: This is an extraordinarily long chapter, about 30 pages, so if you don't have time to read it all in one sitting, I suggest you wait until you can read it all together. So grab some munch-munch and a drink and enjoy...
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As the Joker stepped into the house from the garage after parking the Corvette, he shivered slightly, wishing wildly that he had not left his coat at home before their horrible, enormously unsatisfying chase towards Jayde's phone but before he could walk any further toward the bedroom to go retrieve his gray sweatshirt, he paused at the table, where Dotcom was already sitting, gazing intently down at Jayde's phone. Before they had left the alley where they had found the Corvette, Dotcom had asked Joker for her phone but had not expressed why he needed it. Now, as time seemed to slip away from them at an alarmingly fast rate, Joker felt the need to ask.
"What are you doing?" he asked, rounding the edge of the table toward his usual chair, where he sat down, taking a deep calming breath to try and steady his nerves. Dotcom glanced over, but then stood up and turned from the table, to walk over to the fresh pot of coffee he had just started.
"Well, I looked through her calls to see if I could find the last number she had dialed," he explained, dumping his now cold mug of coffee into the sink. "And I found Charlie's number-..."
At this, Joker cut in, sitting up as another spark of hope shot through him. "Yeah? Did you try putting it in-" he started to ask hopefully, pointing with one finger at the computer monitors, but Dotcom was already shaking his head.
"Yeah, I tried, but his phone is turned off and the battery out, apparently. The number wasn't even showing up between any cell towers in Chicago." he stated remorsefully, now walking back toward the table with not one, but two fresh steaming mugs of black coffee. He placed one in front of Joker before he brought the other to his lips. When Joker looked up with a scowl, about to state his distaste for the beverage, he shook his head. "Trust me, you're gonna want to drink that. You'll feel a lot better after you do."
If Joker had not already been feeling so run-down and admittedly tired, he would have stood right up and gone over to the sink to dump out the coffee, insist he was fine, but seeing how he really was feeling more exhausted both mentally and physically than he had in a long time, he reached out and picked up the mug, taking a small sip before he cringed and set it back down. A moment later, both jumped when a loud knock at the front door broke the silence in the house like a gun shot. Dotcom's eyes grew wide as he looked over to the window and spotted the white and light blue striped Chicago police car parked on the street out front, but Joker was already rising from the table to walk calmly toward the front door. His hand had just reached out for the knob when Dotcom called after him, his voice a hushed whisper.
"Joker! It's the cops!" he warned.
Joker glanced back at him, pausing to roll his eyes before he turned the knob and opened the door, revealing an officer in uniform standing just beyond the threshold, a long, white tube tucked under his arm against his navy blue windbreaker. He nodded silently at the Joker as he stepped into the house, immediately moving toward the carved and cluttered kitchen table, his various instruments clinking quietly against his police belt.
"When was the last you heard from them?" he asked as though he and Joker had already been in the middle of a conversation and he lowered the tube from under his arm to turn it and pull a plastic stopper from the end. Joker was now walking over from locking the deadbolt on the door and he watched as Officer Parker slid several long, wide pieces of paper from the inside of the tube.
"This morning at about 3:30," he answered, glancing down at his watch before he stepped forward to take one end of the giant map of Chicago Parker was now unfurling. "We've only got until 3:30 tomorrow afternoon." he added rather gravely, glancing over to take a few thumb tacks from his 'confidential informant', Chris. The officer nodded and took a step back from the map they had just pinned to the wall behind the table, before he pulled a red permanent marker from the pocket of his navy blue uniform slacks.
"So you said you found her phone in the car at 1600 Washbourne?" he asked, glancing over to Joker, who nodded and watched as Chris leaned forward, circling a small area on the map with the bright red ink. "From what I could find in the system, Charles and Michael Craig live in the apartment building right there." he explained a few moments later, taking a step back to point at a small square on the huge map. Joker shook his head slowly...Why hadn't he thought to kill that little shit before something like this could happen? Ignoring this, he looked over at the officer as Dotcom watched from the other side of the table.
"Did you see any priors on either of them?" Joker asked, watching as Parker walked away from the map and over to the other side of the table, where he picked up several pieces of paper that had been inside the tube with the map.
"Charlie was clean," he answered, shifting one of the papers to the bottom of the three page stack. "But Michael has a couple. 'Drunk and disorderly' back in '01...had a 'resisting arrest' tacked on to that one...Had a possession charge for weed in '03 but it was under an ounce so it was filed as a misdemeanor."
Over by the map, Joker was still staring at the red circle, distractedly tracing the tip of his thumb along the scar on his bottom lip and chin as his mind ran circles around itself. Just that one gulp of coffee had done wonders to help wake him up a bit and as he walked back over to pick up the mug and force himself to drink more of the bitter liquid, he glanced over at Chris.
"Any wea-" he went to ask but the police officer was already on it.
"Weapons? Yeah, looks like he's got a Gloc 23 registered in his name, purchased in June of 2010, though I don't see where..." his voice trailed off as he flipped through the papers but Joker nodded, carrying the mug of coffee back toward the map.
"Gotham, I'm betting," he supplied, rolling his eyes. "He was probably all mad that I blew up his fiance' or whatever..."
"Is that what all this is about?" Parker asked suddenly, setting the papers down to stare somewhat dumbfounded at the Joker. "They're usin' the girl as leverage to get at you?" When Joker nodded, purposely keeping his back to Dotcom and Chris, he heard the officer let out a low whistle. "Damn...Sure would hate to be those guys..."
At this, Joker did turn around, gritting his teeth as all the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, bristling like an angry, territorial pit bull. "You have no idea..."
Jayde's eyes blinked slowly, heavily as she idly watched a drop of condensation slide down the outside of her bottle of water, forming a gradually growing ring of moisture around the base against the dark concrete floor. Her entire body felt as though she had been thrown against a wall repeatedly, having been sitting on the ground, leaned against that pipe for who knows how long. The silence in the warehouse was deafening and as Jayde's gaze finally slid past the water bottle, over to the giant windows, her stomach gave a lurch when she noticed that the sun had already started to set, leaving the far side of the long room once again doused in shadows.
At some point, the 'brothers dim' had decided to take turns sleeping, and seeing how Michael was still hopped up on coke, he had decided to take the first shift, leaving Charlie to doze with his back and head rested against the wall behind him. A few feet from him, Michael was fiddling around with his gun, releasing and loading the cartridge over and over, as though the sound of the metal piece sliding into place repeatedly was supposed to worry Jayde. For several minutes, she watched him, glaring at him from the other side of the room, hoping he could feel her gaze burning him.
Over the past 18 hours, Jayde's mind had ventured down hundreds of avenues, but the one place she kept returning was the house on the corner of Lincoln and Platt. Her heart ached so hard it physically hurt when she thought of Joker and where he was, what he was doing, even what he was wearing as he struggled to find a way to locate her. At first, part of her, the less optimistic half of her, had wondered if he was even trying to find her in the first place, thinking that maybe he had just written her off as a loss. But as her mind then took her back to his words from over a year earlier, she had sighed, a slight feeling of bolstering relief washing over her.
"So when I say that I care about you...you'll know I'm tellin' the truth."
However...if he did not manage to find her with the thirty-six hours, Jayde at least hoped Michael would allow her one last phone call to him, just so she could tell him she loved him one last time. Jayde choked back tears as she imagined the sound of his deep, gentle voice foolishly telling her not to worry as she sat there with a gun to her forehead.
The hours passed, one by one, more quickly than Jayde would have liked, each one announced methodically by the church bells in the distance, the beautiful, peaceful sound like some highly contradictory alarm, reminding her every sixty minutes that she was one hour closer to either a miraculous rescue or her death. The time had now reached eleven and as the last chime from the church bells echoed off into silence, Jayde's eyes slid across the room to where Charlie was now awake and sitting up against the wall, tracing his finger along the floor in front of him in an almost bored sort of way. She watched him for several long moments, wondering where along the line she could have spotted this coming from him. Yes, she knew that his brother was a hop, skip and a jump from clinically insane and that Charlie liked to complain about him, but never in a million years would she have predicted that he would so corrupt his younger brother into kidnapping and possibly killing a fairly innocent person in order to get back at the Joker for what he had done.
Seeing how Michael had left almost an hour ago to go do god knows what, leaving Charlie alone with their hostage, Jayde's previous train of thought led her to open her mouth.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked bluntly, her gaze hardened and solid as ice as she glared across the room at Charlie, who was now lifting his head to glance over in her direction. He shook his head, standing up to pull a familiar, half -empty pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his sweatshirt.
"Don't talk to me." he said, bringing one of the cigarettes up to light it. Jayde ignored him.
"I mean, why are you letting him make you do this?" she asked, suddenly thinking that if she were to get the brothers to start arguing, her window at escape just might widen again. "You're a smart guy. Your brother is-..."
"He's not making me do anything," Charlie suddenly snapped, pausing to glance over at her from the opposite side of the room as he ceased pacing for a moment. "The Joker deserves to die for what he did to my brother's wife and Sarah...plus all the other hundreds of people he's killed." At this, he paused, turning to face her as he exhaled a stream of smoke. "You really have no issues with him killing people?" he then asked, his voice laced with high levels of incredulity. Jayde hesitated, unsure of whether she wanted to follow the sudden turn in flow of conversation. A moment later, she looked down.
"It's not my favorite part of him, but..." she paused, sniffing hard as her eyes began to warm with oncoming tears. "I love him. As long as he treats me well, I could care less about-"
"He doesn't even treat you well!" Charlie suddenly shouted, cutting across her as he took a few steps toward her. "How can you love him after everything he's done to you? After what he did to your face?"
Jayde sat up, her eyebrows furrowing as cold chills ran up and down her spine. "He didn't do this to my face!" she screamed back, her voice cracking in her struggle to express her point. "HE SAVED MY LIFE!" Here, she paused, watching as Charlie rolled his eyes and continued pacing the floor. "And he's gonna do it again..." she then added quietly, folding her arms. "...Just watch."
The silence in the house was almost enough to drive Joker past the brink of insanity as he sat there at the cluttered table, staring up at the large map on the wall, his arms folded across his stomach as he chewed anxiously on the inside of his cheek. He was tempted to glance at his watch again, but seeing how it had only been about five minutes since the last time he had, he was betting the time would only stand about 1:35 am and he didn't think he could handle the sight of tangible evidence that he only had about 14 hours left to find Jayde. And yet, there he was, sitting on his ass, as if waiting for some miracle to happen, some window of opportunity to open up.
Dotcom jumped slightly as the front door swung open and there stood Joker in the way, the light spilling onto the patio from around him as he leaned out. Folding his arms across his chest against the cold, he took a step out and gazed out over the dark street beyond the yard. From the burning, itchy sensation he felt on the side of his face, he gathered Dotcom was looking up at him but the moment he looked over to catch him staring, he looked away quickly, taking another drag of his cigarette.
"You really should try and get some sleep, Joker," he put lightly, pointedly keeping his gaze on the yard. "Or at least eat something..." At this, he glanced up but Joker was already shaking his head, turning to face him.
"I'm not tired and I'm not hungry," he growled in reply, but before Dotcom could flick his cigarette out into the yard, he went on. "Are you sure there's nothing else we can do-...Nothing else we can try." he asked, but as Dotcom shook his head, he groaned, rolling his eyes. "Come on, there's gotta be something!"
"No!" Dotcom answered, finally standing from the chair nearest the door to close the edges of his coat across his chest. "We have Jayde's phone, we don't know Michael's and Charlie's is off. There really is nothing else we can do but wait for them to either call or make a mistake."
At this, Joker tossed his hands, shifting where he stood as that anxiety took a turn for the worse. "We can go drive, go look for places that are near their apartment build-" he went to suggest but Dotcom shook his head.
"We can't risk having them call while we're out, away from all this equipment." he shot Joker's idea down with a surprising swiftness but just as Joker was about to open his mouth to suggest something else, Dotcom shook his head, motioning toward the open door behind him with one hand. "No, you need to at least try to sleep. Go lay down with your phone. I'm going to make something for us to eat..." he murmured, forcing his way past Joker and into the house. "Starving ourselves is not gonna bring her back or help us figure anything out." he then added, waiting just inside the house until Joker had walked past him before he shut the door and walked to the kitchen, leaving Joker to trudge back to the bedroom irritably.
With a groan, Joker threw himself onto the bed on his stomach, forcing himself not to take a deep breath in when his face met the place where Jayde usually slept and instead, he held his breath, scrunching up his features against the sheets as he fruitlessly tried to suffocate himself into an epiphany. If only there was someway he could go back in time, back thirty hours ago and just tell Jayde he loved her, even if he didn't mean it, just to keep her at the house. If only he had stopped her, said something to prevent her from leaving, even if he had to go out and slash all eight tires on the two vehicles if it meant that she would still be there, safe and laying in bed with him.
As much as he hated to admit it, he had grown horribly and irreversibly attached to that girl and he honestly could not imagine his life without her at this point. There was no way he would have survived the aftermath of Tre's death without her...Ifhe were to lose Jayde, who would help him get through that? This thought dropped another sickening sensation to the bottom of his empty stomach and vaguely he wondered what Dotcom was going to make to eat. At this point, he was beginning to figure that he actually should eat something, just so there would be something in his stomach he could throw up if or when he found Jayde's dead body.
Flipping onto his back, he exhaled heavily into the dark room, practically squeezing his eyes closed in an effort to keep them that way. Through his mind flashed snippets of moments from the past year of his life, echoing clips of Jayde's voice that raised goosebumps along his forearms, even from beneath his warm, long-sleeved shirt.
"You wouldn't give a shit if someone tried to hurt me...There is no 'getting under your skin', Joker..."
At this, Joker let out a short laugh, slowly opening his eyes. Oh how wrong she had been in saying that.
Over the next hour, Joker did not spend more than five minutes in any one position, first starting out on his stomach, then on his back, then some awkward, sprawled out position on his side with both legs and arms stretched as far as they would reach across the bed before he eventually gave up and lay there, on his back, his hands folded over his stomach as though he were laying in a casket. It was truly surprising to him how tired he felt physically and yet how alive and ready to go he felt mentally. If Michael were to call right at that second with an address, he would have been up and out the door in less than three seconds flat and would have probably been able to run to the location faster than any car could have taken him...
Just then, Joker jumped up from the bed as the phone beside him began ringing loudly, as though he had known that was about to happen and as he darted out into the living room to the dining table, he glanced down at the screen to find that an unknown, unlisted number was calling. At the stove, Dotcom dropped what he was doing to march over purposefully and begin plugging those cords into Joker's phone so quickly, by the time the phone rang a third time, the tap was all set up again and ready to go, a set of headphones already placed in Dotcom's ears. Joker tried to ignore the trembling of his fingers as he pushed the green button.
"Yeah." he answered, closing his eyes as he awaited a reply. There was silence, before the distinct rushing of a passing car, then a voice.
"Well, it's been twenty-four hours and I still haven't seen you yet..." came that horrible, taunting, light-hearted tone from the morning prior. "Does that mean you're giving up on little Jayde?" Again, Joker's arm hair stood on end with goosebumps as he visualized ripping this man's head clean off of his body.
"It means you're really terrible at this 'hostage negotiation' shit," he growled into the phone, finally opening his eyes to glance down to where Dotcom was tapping away furiously at the keyboard, watching the map on the monitor with wide eyes. "You haven't given me anything to go off of so how am I supposed to-"
On the other end of the phone, there was another rushing sound in the background from which Joker gathered that Michael was standing on a street corner somewhere, likely using a pay phone. A moment later, the man sighed as if really annoyed by the whole situation.
"Well, damn you're not very good at this whole thing either, Joker. I thought for sure you'd have shown up already..." he paused but Joker was distracted momentarily by looking down as Dotcom glanced up at him in confusion, pointing to the screen where about fifty blips had just shown up. He ignored this for the time being and turned his attention back to the call.
"You gotta give me something. Just tell me where she is." he demanded, but went on. "Or better yet, tell me where you are, seeing how she's obviously not with you right now. Jayde can wait. I wanna take care of you first..." he growled, practically trembling with rage as that anxiety morphed rapidly into enlivening, refreshing anger. On the other end of the call, Michael was tisk-ing reproachfully before he sighed.
"Well, I'm not going to tell you where I am...OR where your precious little Jayde is. BUT-" he paused, and Joker swallowed the urge to feel hopeful back down. "-maybe if you hear her voice, it will give you an incentive to try a little bit harder to find her. I'll call ya back!" he then exclaimed, almost like a friend who needed to leave a lighthearted conversation but before Joker could call out, tell him not to hang up, the line went dead. Immediately, Joker set the phone down and looked at the computer screen bearing the map.
"Did you get anything? Where was he calling from?" he asked urgently but as Dotcom shook his head, he groaned, taking a few steps away into the living room.
"He was calling from an unlisted number, more than likely a pay phone!" he explained, turning to watch as Joker began pacing. "Even if I was to get an exact location on the phone, he would be gone by the time we got there!" Joker turned to face him again and walked over, his eyebrows raised as a bit of hope registered across his features for the fiftieth time.
"Was there anything in the background? Anything besides cars or...busses or whatever?" he asked, watching anxiously as Dotcom turned to the other screen and pulled up some program, but again, he was shaking his head.
"I was magnifying it while you guys were talking and all I got is traffic and static, nothing distinct." he answered but as Joker threatened to storm away again, Dotcom raised his voice. "Just relax! He said he's going to call again so we have another shot. He said he wanted you to hear Jayde's voice so he's obviously going to be wherever they're keeping her. We can try again when he calls."
By now, Joker was standing over by the couch, his back to the living room as he glared through the window and out into the gradually lightening front yard. From the silence behind him, he could tell Dotcom was watching him but he refrained from turning, finding himself unable to move as he thought through his next question.
"What happens if they kill her?" he asked rather quietly, closing his eyes as he imagined the taken back expression on Dotcom's face behind him. The silence stretched on, making Joker feel more anxious and angry for bearing his soul like that in such a simple, honest question but as Dotcom spoke, his eyes slid open again.
"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice quiet and low from the kitchen table. Finally, Joker turned to face him, unfolding his arms to drop abruptly onto the couch and lean forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"I mean, what happens to me...if they kill her..." he clarified, forcing his eyes to the white area rug in front of him, where he could picture himself and Jayde play wrestling with each other only a week ago. Across the room, Dotcom was standing up from the table to walk over and drop down into the arm chair to the left of the couch. He sighed through his nose, watching as Joker slowly lifted his eyes to meet him.
"You'll survive," he answered honestly. "-just like you always do. You'll be stronger and more...dangerous for it but...you'll live." Dotcom paused, leaning forward slightly as Joker looked away. "But that's not gonna happen, Joker.." he told him bracingly after a few moments. "We're going to find her."
Jayde jumped as the door to the warehouse swung open, spilling pale blue light onto the concrete floor from around him as the sun had just begun to rise on her second day as a hostage and Michael strode in, sniffing several times as he had apparently just taken another bump of his fresh supply of coke. She was not sure how long it had been but he had been gone most of the night, leaving Jayde alone with Charlie, who had taken it upon himself to sit there and glare daggers at her with that gun rested in his lap, smoking cigarette after cigarette from her pack. She watched as Michael walked over to Charlie and sat down next to him with a fat plop.
"Well, it doesn't look like your boyfriend's comin', little lady!" he shouted from across the room with much more volume than was necessary. Jayde rolled her eyes, turning her head to focus on something else, ignore what the idiot brothers were about to start saying. "Yeah, I just talked to 'im!" Despite how hard she was trying to block out Michaels' words, she could not help the pang of ache that shot through her when she thought of how badly she wished she could hear his voice. "Said he can't figure out how to find ya so he said we should just go 'head 'n kill ya!"
At this, Jayde could not stop herself and turned her head back to look over at them. "You're lying!" she called back to him, grinning slightly as she thanked whatever god she believed in for allowing her to be smarter than the Craig brothers. "You need me in order to get him here so you're not gonna kill me before the time is up. This is about Joker, not about me. I'm just a pawn!"
"Ah, I dunno..." Michael called back, shaking his head as he glanced at Charlie. "It sounded to me like he wasn't gonna come! Sounded to me like he doesn't give a rat's ass about what happen-"
"HE IS COMING!" Jayde finally screamed, rising up onto her knees. "He IS gonna come and when he does, you guys are gonna be FUCKED!" Here, she paused, laughing madly as she noticed the taunting, snide expression on Michael's face fade slightly. "He's the fucking JOKER and you're really gonna try and kill him? Do you have any idea how many people have tried that same thing and failed? He's gonna FUCK you guys up, I hope you know that."
Michael let out a loud bark of a laugh. "Yeah, yeah, we'll see about that...If he makes it on time."
Somehow, for reasons that were beyond him, at around ten, after Dotcom had practically had to physically force Joker to lay down and get some sleep, he managed to eat a few pieces of toast and drink a cup of coffee. He now stood in front of the map, feeling strangely glad that he had managed to get an hour of uninterrupted sleep and had eaten something as he felt leagues better compared to earlier that morning. He felt refreshed, more alert and focused although that insufferable knot of anxiety in his chest had seemingly tripled in size. He now had less than ten hours left to find Jayde and as his eyes scanned the map before him, he paused, glancing back at his phone, which sat still and silent on the table behind him. Michael had not called again and if Joker's predictions were correct, as they typically were, he would not be receiving that call back until he had less than sixty minutes remaining.
Dotcom had been floating in and out of the house for cigarettes every hour, occasionally checking the computer for updates on Charlie's phone, and whether or not it had been turned on. After the third or fourth time, Joker had learned not to even ask as the answer never changed; Charlie's phone was still off, inactive and they were no closer to knowing Jayde's location than they had ever been.
At some point during the earliest hours of the morning, Jayde had somehow managed to capture an hour or two of sleep although it had taken a while to get there, despite the fact that she could barely keep her eyes open. Every time they drifted closed on their own accord, she forced them back open and blinked hard, knowing that if she were to fall asleep and miss a chance at escaping, she would never forgive herself. But after this pattern had repeated itself multiple times and the brothers had not moved from their place on the far side of the warehouse, she had eventually given in and lay down on her side with her back to them, using her arm as a crude and uncomfortable pillow. The ground had been freezing and excruciatingly painful to sleep on but still, she had drifted off to comforting thoughts of her warm, Joker-filled bed at home and how excited she was to get back there.
Yes, Jayde had given up her doubtful thoughts, those horrible, paranoid ideas that maybe Joker wasn't coming for her and had replaced them with a hopeful, reassuring mantra. He is coming for me...He is coming for me... This helped brighten her outlook on the situation but she could not ignore the tiny tickle of fear that still managed to fester in the very back of her mind. ...What if he doesn't come for me?
Joker glanced at his phone as he sat down at the table across from Dotcom and his heart stopped. 3:57. That was it. The time had come, passed and there they still sat, on their asses at the house on the corner of Lincoln and Platt, no closer to an answer than they had been thirty-six hours ago. Dotcom seemed to know what was going on, even without glancing at his own watch and as he looked over at Joker, he shook his head.
"They're not going to kill her," he stated as though he had just established a clean line of communication with Jayde's captors. "They can't, they need her to get to you! They wouldn't kill their only way of luring you-" He had been half-way through a long-winded, encouraging explanation of how Michael and Charlie thought when both jumped as Joker's phone began ringing loudly on the table between them. He reached out immediately, picking it up to push the green button and hold it to his ear, just as Dotcom moved into position at the computers and put the headphones in again.
"You lying sack of shit," Joker growled into the phone right from the start. "You said you were going to call back and now it's-"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm callin' you back now," Michael interrupted. "It's been thirty-six hours and...you still haven't come for your damsel in distress, which I have to admit, is a little disappointing."
Joker ignored this, rising from the table but stayed in place in order to keep the phone connected to the wires. Again, cold chills of apprehension and anger slithered up and down his spine. "You told me you'd let me talk to her but my time is up now. So what do you want? You obviously haven't killed her yet so what-" From the other end of the call, Michael sighed in annoyance.
"Alright, look Joker, this is between you and me. So I'll tell you what- I'm gonna give you another six hours...That leaves it at 10." he explained and Joker rolled his eyes, tossing his arms as he raised his voice.
"Another six hours to do what? Start at street A and work my way to Z? You gotta give me something-" he shouted into the phone, but cut himself short, his heart stopping completely, his insides disappearing altogether as a soft, trembling voice broke through the other end.
"J-Joker?"
"Jayde..." he sighed, closing his eyes as he dropped down into the chair again, leaning forward to rest one elbow on the table as his other hand held the phone to his ear. His heart returned to bang hard against the inside of his chest. "Are you ok?" he asked stupidly, but went on to reword his question. "Are you hurt?"
"No..." she whimpered into the phone, the wobbling, higher-pitched tone of her voice indicating that she had just sunken into tears and Joker closed his eyes with a cringe, fisting his fingers into the front of his hair. "Are you coming to get me?"
At this, Joker opened his eyes, looking over to where Dotcom was now tapping furiously at the keyboard, his eyes wide as he hastily scrolled through something on the computer screen, something that mimicked sound waves.
"'Course I am, Jaydie," he answered, his voice calm and low, desperately trying to comfort her the best he could from over the phone and however many miles that separated them. There was a sniff from the other end of the call where Joker could just picture Jayde trembling and clutching herself...that was of course, if she had not been bound at the wrists and ankles. He swallowed hard, trying to push the image from his mind.
"Please hurry..." she cried quietly but before her voice could be taken away from him, he sat up, his eyes flying open.
"Jayde, what color shirt are you wearing?"
This question was so random, so off-handed that Dotcom looked up from the computer screen, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he frowned up at Joker. His arms rose a second later as though asking 'seriously?'. Joker ignored him, closing his eyes once again as he waited for Jayde's answer, silently hoping, praying she understood what he was asking. After several seconds, her voice returned, stammering into her answer.
"...B-black..." She finally replied and Joker stood up from the table, pointing at the computer in a silent command but Dotcom just raised his arms higher, tapping the right headphone in his ear with the end of a pencil. "Please, Joker...Save me."
Joker had just opened his mouth to quickly spit out something comforting when an all-too-familiar male voice in the background broke through, accompanied by rough rustling.
"A'right, a'right, that's enough. You guys can catch up later..." the voice said in the distance, growing louder as Joker assumed Michael brought the phone to his ear. "...That is, of course, if you make it here on time..."
Click.
Without wasting even a second of time to get angry or worried, Joker instantly walked to the giant map on the wall, grabbing the red permanent marker as he went but before he could open his mouth or say anything, Dotcom was ripping the headphones from his ears.
"Listen to this!" he cried, rising from the table to reach down, tap his finger against the screen and within seconds, a playback of Joker's voice came through the speakers.
"-to do what? Start at street A and work my way to Z? You gotta give me something-"
Joker raised his eyebrows as he glanced from the computer speakers up to Dotcom's wide, excited eyes. "Yeah, that's what I sound like on the phone-" he went to give some shitty, sarcastic answer but Dotcom shook his head, leaning down to type a few things into the keyboard.
"No, listen again! Let me magnify it..."
A moment later, the same clip of sound played again, this time with Joker's voice coming through the speakers at a much lower volume and Joker's heart skipped several beats as the unmistakable sound of church bells began to play loudly through the speakers, ringing out some short tune before they began to chime away the time- one, two, three, four chimes before it quieted again.
"That's-" he started loudly, resisting the urge to start jumping up and down as Dotcom nodded, plopping back down into the chair to begin wildly typing again.
"Yeah! Let me just run it through a database, maybe match the tune to another one so we can find out what chur-" he went to explain but Joker cut over him.
"No! I know what church that is! That's the First Baptist Church off Murray!" he exclaimed, but just as Dotcom was about to stand up, throw his arms in the air and squeal in victory, Joker turned back to the map, uncapping the marker. "Alright, I asked Jayde what color shirt she was wearing and she said black, which doesn't make sense, right? She was wearing a white shirt when she left the house. So-..." he was just about to make his point when Dotcom interrupted, rounding the edge of the table toward him.
"What are you talking about?" he asked loudly, his expression suddenly concerned. "Joker, she probably doesn't know-" Joker was shaking his head adamantly as he wrote the word 'black' in the far upper right corner of the map.
"No, no, listen!" he interrupted, glancing down at Dotcom before he turned back to the map. "A few weeks ago, Jayde and I were watching this show on TV about police tactics and about how they ask a random question, then give the first letter of their location in the first letter of their answer. So since Jayde was wearing a white shirt, but said it was black, that means that the first letter of the street she's on is 'B'. Now..." As Joker drew a circle around the small square that was the First Baptist Church of Greater Chicago, Dotcom still stood next to him, shaking his head.
"Joker..." he started but Joker ignored him.
"SO," he started loudly, purposely cutting over Dotcom. "Those church bells can probably be heard for about three miles in all directions, so if we..." he paused to draw a large circle around the smaller circle. "-hit all the streets within three miles of the church that start with the letter B-..." Again, he paused to circle five intersections on the map before he turned to Dotcom, his eyebrows furrowed as a different thought came to him. "Did you hear what she said? At the end before they hung up, she said 'please save me'."
Dotcom shrugged, shaking his head as he grew further and further away from following Joker's line of logic. " I don't-..." For the third time, Joker ignored him and turned back to the map, reaching up to write the word 'Save' in big letters beneath 'Black'.
"Why would she have said 'save'?" he asked, clearly speaking now more to himself than Dotcom as he tapped his chin contemplatively with the end of the marker. "Wouldn't it make more sense to say 'please come get me'? Or...'please find me'?...But she said 'save'..." At this, he turned from the map and looked down at Dotcom. "Can you play that part back? When she said that?"
Surprisingly, instead of hesitating to ask where Joker was going with this particular train of thought, Dotcom immediately went back to the computers and tapped the screen, pausing before Jayde's terrified, trembling voice came through the speakers.
"Please, Joker...Save me."
Across from Dotcom, Joker had his eyes closed, his hands rested on the table as he leaned down on them, listening closely. He shook his head. "Again."
"Please, Joker...Save me."
At this, he stood up, opening his eyes as he pointed at the speakers. "Can you isolate just her voice? Cut out the background noises?" he asked, then watched as Dotcom nodded, leaning forward to type a few things into the keyboard before he hit the 'enter' button. A moment later, Jayde's voice came through again, stronger, louder than the time before.
"Please, Joker...Sev me..."
Instantaneously, Joker clapped his hands together in triumph as Dotcom shook his head in disbelief, his eyes fixed on the computer.
"My god..." he breathed, standing up from the table as Joker turned back to the map, his eyes scanning the paper rapidly as he reached up to write something beneath the words 'black' and 'save'.
"Alright, so we're looking for a seven-hundred number on a street that starts with B-." He was saying, tapping the marker against the map to leave five red dots in the middle of the five circles he had already outlined, but as he looked over to Dotcom, he frowned when he noticed that his nerd had disappeared. As he turned, Dotcom reappeared, applying his coat as he pulled his laptop from the table. He was grinning as he walked toward the garage door to open it and step out.
"So let's go!" he called over his shoulder and Joker moved to follow, but hesitated before stepping out.
"Hold on," he called out into the garage where Dotcom was now climbing into the driver's seat of the Escalade. "I gotta get something first."
After retrieving his black coat from the bedroom to apply it over his black, long-sleeved shirt, Joker walked through the living room, past the table and kitchen, over to the door to Tre's old room, where he turned the knob and stepped inside. At the dresser in the closet, Joker pulled open the top drawer, his heart skipping several beats, his stomach clenching up in excitement as his eyes fell down onto his favorite knife, resting clean and beautifully on a bed of purple material. He pulled it from the drawer without question and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, thinking quickly back to his very first birthday and the perfect woman who had given it to him...he could not wait to thank her in person.
Jayde could feel Charlie's gaze burning her as she struggled with great effort to quiet her tears from the recent phone conversation with Joker. When Michael had handed her the phone, she had first thought hearing his voice might do her some good, make her feel slightly better about her situation, possibly encourage her to not lose hope but of course the moment he had said her name, she had burst into strong tears that caused her entire body to tremble. He had sounded so calm and collected yet weary as she was assuming he had been going without sleep for the past near on 40 hours now and she wished with everything she had she could have seen his face, touched him, something to convince him that he was not going through all of this in vain. Her love for him had never been so strong as it was at that very moment, which was now making her efforts to stop crying near impossible. She jumped as Michaels' harsh voice shouted from the other side of the warehouse.
"SHUT UP!" he yelled, his voice echoing slightly. "Sniveling like a baby isn't going to make him find you faster, ya know."
Next to his brother, Charlie was shaking his head, leaning forward to rest his forehead on his knees as he sat leaned against the wall. He had been unusually quiet since the call to Joker over two hours ago and as the sun began to set beyond the windows above them, Jayde could just make out two dark rings of exhaustion beneath his eyes, behind his glasses. Her efforts from earlier to force some sort of rift between the brothers had not been for nothing; he seemed to be growing more and more tired of Michael's voice and excessive use of cocaine by the second.
A moment later, Michael stood up, sniffing heavily as he wiped bit of excess white powder away from beneath his nose with the sleeve of his shirt and he made a bee-line toward Jayde, his expression fixed and manic as he approached. Jayde whimpered in fear, backing into the pipe behind her as he closed in and leaned down less than a foot from her.
"Now listen here, girly," he growled, his voice shaking with false adrenaline from the drugs in his system. "I'm gonna run out to do one thing...If your boyfriend isn't here by ten o'clock, I will shoot you, understand?"
Jayde's breath was now escaping through her nose in ragged, short intervals but as she nodded her understanding up at Michael, he abruptly stood and walked away, barking the same announcement at Charlie, who merely rolled his eyes and nodded, waving the gun to indicate that he had things under control. Jayde then watched as Michael walked jumpily to the door before he stepped out into the freezing night air and disappeared down the stairs.
Please, Joker...Please find me...
Dotcom looked back from the steering wheel as Joker jumped back into the Escalade from the fourth stop on their list of street names and he immediately pulled away from the curb as Joker sighed, running his hand anxiously through the front of his messy green hair. Number 17 Brower street had held nothing but a crack den, 1700 Broadway avenue had been an enormous let down as well, as the lot where the building that formerly stood there had been demolished. All of Bratting street had been a complete waste of nearly two hours as Joker ran from building to building, peering in through all the windows before sprinting back to the car and now, as they pulled away from the curb of Begonia street, Joker glanced down at the list in his hand...Only one location remained and if Jayde wasn't there...he really wasn't sure what he was going to do.
It was fortunate that Blackburn street was so close to Begonia as the time now stood at 9:37 and Joker's knee could not have been bouncing faster if he had tried. From up in the front seats, Dotcom was saying something so Joker turned his head to listen, forcing his ears past the sound of his own pounding heartbeat to focus on what Dotcom had to say.
"Alright, this is...our last stop so...if you were right, she should be here...right?" he finished his statement in the form of a question, glancing back into the middle seats of the SUV to where Joker had once again turned his head to peer out through the heavily tinted window as they passed the street sign, bearing the name 'Blackburn St. 700'. His heart leapt up into his throat; this had to be the street she had hinted to him.
The entire length of Blackburn street was dark, no streetlights, no other cars, every window completely black save for one building on the left of the road, down at the very distant end of the street. Joker felt his blood pressure rising as he reached forward, into the leather pouch along the back of the passenger seat before him, pulling from within it's depths a wonderfully familiar, silver Desert Eagle 50 cal. The cartridge made the most satisfying noise as Joker slid it out before back in, double checking that it had already been loaded with enough bullets to thoroughly destroy both brothers. The Escalade was approaching the building at the end although despite how badly Joker wished Dotcom would flat out floor the pedal, he was grateful that he was taking it at a normal speed and that he had turned off the headlights...The element of surprise was not only crucial but always vastly more fun.
As the SUV pulled up along the curb outside the three story, run down warehouse, Joker leaned to the side, the hair along the back of his neck raising as a white van pulled up ahead of them, shutting off it's headlights as it came to a stop, just next to the curb and Joker watched, his entire body practically vibrating in anticipation as a shorter, stocky man got out of the driver's side and stepped out onto the sidewalk, pausing momentarily to turn and lock the vehicle behind him. Without even a look at his face, without any solid confirmation whatsoever, the Joker was positive beyond all doubt that this was the man with whom he had been conversing over the past 40 hours. He took one moment to take a deep, steadying breath in before he slid to the left seat and opened the door, keeping his eyes fixed on his target as he slid noiselessly from the Escalade and silently shut the door behind him.
Along the south side of the building ran a tall, rickety set of stairs, which creaked and groaned as Michael began to climb them and as Joker trotted after him silently through the darker shadows, his shoulders hunched like a stalking lion, he leaned down, grabbing a fist full of rocks from the gravel drive before he threw them, hard, off into the distance beyond the stairs.
Halfway up the steps, Michael stopped, his drug-induced hyper-vigilance picking up the sounds of movement below him but as he peered out into the darkness, the Joker was already slinking up the steps behind him, sliding that birthday knife from the back pocket of his jeans. Over the next two seconds, several things happened simultaneously, in almost complete silence.
The Joker's right arm reached out quickly, wrapping around Michael's arm before his hand reached to the other side to catch the other one and lock him tightly into place while his left hand brought the knife to his throat. Even one step below him, he was still taller than his newest victim and his teeth were bared in a terrible, livid grin as he laughed, breathlessly, cruelly in Michael Craig's ear. The man in front of him gasped, his voice suddenly more shaky and leagues less bold than it had been on the phone earlier.
"J-Joker?" he stammered, turning his head slightly to try and see over his shoulder and he struggled at first, but as Joker brought his knife more closely to Michael's throat, he held perfectly still. Behind him, Joker was still laughing excitedly, madly as that familiar, thrilling sense of power began to spread through him.
"Oh..." he started in a falsely disappointed voice. "And here I was, wanting to keep it a surprise..." Here, he paused to laugh again, giggling in Michael's ear as he leaned forward. "You didn't really think you'd get away with this, did you?" he went on to ask, cocking his head tauntingly as he watched the side of Michael's now pale white face. "Did you?" he asked again, shaking him slightly as his rage threatened to burst out of him. Before him, Michael's mouth seemed to have gone extraordinarily dry as he swallowed several times from beneath Joker's knife.
"You killed my Alicia..." he practically whispered, his entire body trembling now in what Joker considered hilarious fear and he nodded, making a sad noise through his nose as though Michael's story had really touched his heart.
"Aww...Well don't worry...you'll be seeing her soon.." he then growled into his ear, laughing as he pushed Michael forward, onto the next step toward the door to the warehouse. "Now let's go inside, shall we? I want your baby brother to watch you die..."
Jayde's head shot up from rested on her knees as the sound of the door being thrown open echoed like a clap of thunder through the entire warehouse and heart leapt up into her throat as her savior, her love, her hero, the Joker forced Michael into the room ahead of him, a familiar knife clutched in his hand against her captor's throat. She pulled herself up onto her knees, her heart instantly banging away inside her chest as Charlie jumped up from his place across the room to run out into the open. He immediately raised the gun in his hands, although even from where she was sitting, Jayde could see how visibly his hands were shaking.
"LET HIM GO!" he shouted, his voice cracking slightly from the strain of trying to sound as threatening as possible. Jayde's eyes darted quickly across the room to where Joker had just tightened his grip around Michael's arms and she felt a thrill of excitement shoot through her when she saw Joker dig his knife harder against the front of his throat.
"Now, see? You took something from me...So I took something from you!" he stated, his voice clowny and bouncy as he laughed, glancing to his right at the side of Michael's now terrified, white face. "Funny world we live in, isn't it?" he asked, his voice only barely audible as he spoke closely to the side of Michael's head, his eyes sliding across the room to Jayde's where he winked quickly, just barely noticeably and she could not help but allow a tiny grin onto her face. "We try so hard to make things right, try so hard to get even...Only to end up losing everything..."
"NO!" Charlie suddenly screamed from across the room, lurching forward a few steps as Joker suddenly stabbed Michael in the side of his neck as deep as the knife would go, before he twisted it hard, using his other hand on the opposite side of Michael's head to force the knife further into his thick neck. Normally, Jayde would have looked away or closed her eyes, but instead, she watched, wide-eyed, in pure ecstasy as Joker then threw Michael's gagging, draining body onto the floor beside him. He leaned down a moment later, reaching his left hand out to lazily wipe the man's blood from his knife and black glove, onto his dirty white shirt in an almost bored sort of way.
Jayde was so busy watching the blood drain slowly from Michael's quickly dying body that she nearly failed to notice Charlie approaching Joker until he was only about twenty feet from him, but just as she was about to scream out his name, warn him to look up, Charlie was already pulling back the slide on his now dead brother's gun, his entire body shaking visibly now as he raised his arm to aim directly at Joker. He rose slowly from the body, his face still livid and alive with malicious evil as he stared Charlie down and took a slow step to the side, away from Michael's body.
"Now, Charles, let's be grown men about this..." he started, slowly raising both hands to either side of his body as he held his knife delicately between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm sure Jayde wont mind if we share-"
"SHUT UP!" Charlie suddenly screamed, shaking the gun at Joker as he took another step closer. "You have NO idea what you did to my brother's life! What you did to MY life because of it! You ruin everything you touch, you worthless piece of SHIT!" At this, Joker's forehead wrinkled in a frown and he dropped his arms to his sides abruptly.
"Words can hurt, ya know..." he grumbled but again Charlie shook the gun, blinking hard from behind his glasses as he struggled to see through his tears.
"Yeah, and so can bullets." he then answered in a surprisingly calm voice. Jayde held her breath, her eyes wide with both relief and yet staggering, blinding fear as she watched Joker become slightly cornered. Charlie nodded his head toward Joker. "I know you have a gun with you so just take it out slowly, show it to me." he paused, but when Joker made no move, he shouted again. "NOW!" Jayde silently begged Joker to move, obey Charlie just for right now and she watched, holding her breath. Joker was frowning slightly as he held out his hand with the knife and slowly reached behind him with the other one, under the edge of his shirt before he drew out his silver Desert Eagle and held it up. Charlie wiggled the gun again, pointing it at the floor. "Dump all the bullets out on the ground."
Jayde watched as Joker took another step to the side, her heart racing so fast, she felt slightly lightheaded as he released the cartridge from the handle of the gun before he slid it out and began pushing the bullets from the clip with his thumb, one by one, each one making a light tinking noise as it hit the concrete floor. Once empty, he held it up and showed the empty clip to Charlie before he pushed it back into the gun and leaned down, resting the now unloaded gun on the floor a foot or two in front of him.
It seemed now that Charlie was struggling with what to do as he kept looking over at his brother's lifeless body as though expecting him to give him further instruction. Joker seemed to pick up on this and glanced from the body to Charlie.
"You really sad he's dead?" he asked, his voice suddenly somewhat quiet as he took a step back from Charlie while he was looking over at his brother. Jayde noticed this, but was still holding her breath, hoping beyond all hope that Joker was not about to make any snide or mean remarks to the only person in the room with a gun at this point. "He seemed like a total di-"
"Shut up!" Charlie screamed again, raising the gun to aim more accurately at the center of Joker's chest. "You don't know ANYTHING!" Across from him, Joker shrugged, glancing to the side as though he understood a bit more than he was letting on.
"Well, I saw enough to know that despite how much you disliked your brother, you sure followed him around like a little bitc-"
"JOKER! SHUT UP! PLEASE!"
Both men turned to look as Jayde's panic-ridden, hoarse scream split the air in the warehouse, and she glanced from Charlie to Joker and back again, her bright blue eyes brimming with tears and fright as Charlie suddenly turned back to Joker, his arm once again holding the gun straight out, shakily. At this, Joker smirked, squinting slightly as his eyes locked onto Charlie's and he cocked his head to the side, taking another slow step to the left, continuing his gradual circle.
"He's not gonna shoot me, Jayde..." he growled, shaking his head slowly as he kept his eyes fixed solely on Charlie. "He doesn't have the stomach for it, no heart...No guts...No brother to tell him what to-..."
A loud, deafening gun shot seemingly shook the entire building and Jayde screamed loud enough to tear her vocal cords clean in half as she watched the Joker clutch his chest and fall backward, seemingly in slow motion, landing on his right side, his arms strewn out in front of him, that memorable birthday knife still rested under his left, motionless hand. Another scream left Jayde as she fell forward on her knees, those tears from earlier streaming down her face. There was no reason to live anymore, she had absolutely no reason for wanting to stay alive and as Charlie walked toward his lifeless brother slowly, lowering the gun to his side as he went, she almost cried out after him to beg him to come back and shoot her as well, put her out of her misery. Instead, she rested her head on the concrete in front of her, sobbing deep, painful breaths of air as she fought hard to keep herself from looking over to where the Joker's body now lay across the room from her on the floor.
A few moments, or maybe years later, she sat up, her chest heaving, her frizzy hair stuck to her tear-streaked face as she looked over through the blur to where Charlie was kneeling over his brother, the black gun now laying on the floor behind him. For a split second, Jayde considered jumping up to run toward it, grab it from the ground before pulling the trigger and ending Charlie's life, but before she could even get her brain functioning enough to move her numb legs, Charlie was already rising slowly from his brother's body, leaving the gun behind on the floor as he walked slowly toward the back of Joker's body.
Jayde watched through the haze, her chest heaving as Charlie knelt down behind the Joker, reaching out with his left hand to brace himself on the floor in front of Joker while his right hand reached out, placing two fingers against his neck, clearly to feel for a pulse, even though it was painfully obvious to both that the Joker had finally met his end. But just as Jayde closed her eyes to lean her head back in absolute utter defeat, she jumped when Charlie suddenly let out a shout.
Across the room, on the floor, the Joker had just reached out with his right hand, pinning Charlie's wrist to the ground in front of him before he swung out with his left hand, digging that knife into Charlie's neck as he turned over onto his back. Joker was immediately on his feet again, as though he had just risen from the dead and Jayde watched, her mouth hanging open as Joker walked slowly after Charlie, who was now crawling away on one hand and his knees through the scattered bullets on the floor, his other hand up against his neck, trying desperately to stem the free flowing blood. Joker seemed to find this funny as he stalked after him, and he laughed, more loudly than Jayde had ever heard before, his voice echoing deeply in the warehouse.
"DID YOU FORGET WHO I AM?" Joker shouted at Charlie's back who was now nothing more than a wounded animal. He closed in, using the heel of his shoe to kick Charlie onto his back where he lay still, gasping and gurgling as he stared up into the demonic, evil brown eyes of the Joker. Somewhere along the way, he had picked up his Desert Eagle and was now pulling back the slide, before he aimed down at Charlie's forehead. "I'm the Joker." he then stated, his scars stretching widely in a smile. "And there's always one in the chamber."
With that, Joker fired the single remaining bullet from his gun, sinking the giant, fifty-caliber bullet into Charlie's forehead and instantly, he was still, dead, growing gradually colder. Across the room, Jayde was shaking more violently than she ever had before in her life, watching through her tears as Joker leaned down, placing his knife at the very corner of Charlie's motionless mouth before he dragged the blade upward to his ear before doing the same on the other side and once satisfied, he stood up, placing his gun quickly into the back lining of his jeans.
Jayde sobbed, holding out her bound hands to him as Joker ran across the room toward her, sliding to his knees in front of her, his hands reaching out for her face where he pulled her closer and met her lips firmly with his, however the pain of her still broken and excruciatingly tender face caused her to cry out and pull away. Her hands remained closed tightly around the front of his shirt as she cried.
"Jo-...Jo-..." she tried to speak through her near hysterical tears, watching through the blur as he quickly brought his knife down, easily but carefully slicing through the duct tape until her wrists were released. Despite how weak she felt, Jayde threw herself into his arms, sobbing against his neck as he wrapped one arm tightly around her back, his other hand smoothing her hair down the back of her head.
"Jayde, it's ok...I'm here...You're safe..." he murmured against her hair, closing his eyes as he held her as close as humanly possible but as she pulled back, only to melt against him, she reached out, placing both of her hands on either side of his handsome, scarred face.
"I th-thought you were...dead, Joker..." she could barely speak through her tears of relief but as Joker laughed, she did the same, weakly.
"Well, I had to make it look convincing..." he answered, bouncing his eyebrows as Jayde broke down into another bout of tears, dropping her hands to his chest as though aching to feel his heartbeat, know for sure that he really was alive. Joker leaned forward, reaching out more gently this time as he placed his hands on either side of her jaw, to tilt her face up toward him and soak in the appearance of her perfect blue eyes, watching as a few more tears leaked from the corners to travel down her bruised and dirty cheeks. She shook her head a moment later, reaching up to rest her hands on his strong upper arms.
"Joker, I'm so sorry," she started, her voice now level but hoarse and raspy from strain. "I should have never lef-" Suddenly she pulled her left hand away from his right arm when she felt something warm and sticky against her fingers and she gasped as she noticed bright red, shiny blood coating her skin. "He shot you! Are you-"
"Jayde, I love you."
These three words were almost more deafening to Jayde than either gunshot had been and as she met his eyes, she was surprised to find him staring back at her, his gaze focused intently on hers.
"Y-you do?" she asked, almost as if she had not heard him correctly, but Joker laughed quietly and inched toward her, nodding his head as he took her hands in his.
"Yeah," he answered. "I do."
Jayde's nose wrinkled in another bout of fresh tears as she reached up, lightly placing her hand against his chest.
"I love you too, Joker." she answered finally and as Joker looked up from where his gaze had settled on her hand rested in his, he squinted slightly, tilting his head to the side.
"...Promise?"
"I promise."
With that perfect, cheeky smirk tugging upward on his left scar, Joker leaned forward, pulling Jayde gently toward him until their lips met and he sighed against her, suddenly realizing that yeah...he was in love...and he didn't give a shit who knew about it or how uncharacteristic it seemed. With Jayde practically in his lap, he pulled back, reaching up to lightly tuck a bit of her frizzy hair behind her ear before he met her eyes, smiling as she gazed lovingly back up at him.
"You wanna go home, or what?" he asked, smirking down at her as she nodded her reply and as he stood from the cold concrete floor, to gently scoop her up with him, Jayde kept her hand clamped tightly around his.
It had taken a while, they had been through more than just about any other couple on earth, but he had finally said those three little words to her and as Jayde followed him to the door of the warehouse, she grinned to herself...She had always known it was only A Matter of Time...
The Beginning
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A/N: Yes, boys and girls, this marks the end of the JnJ saga. I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it over the past three years. Joker and Jayde will always be my favorite FF couple and I hope they have secured a place in your hearts as well. = ] Thank you all SOOOO much for the outstanding support you have shown me and my stories over the past three years. I could not have finished it without your help and love. HOWEVER, I have one last request of you. PLEASE, leave me a review on this last chapter and just let me know what you thought, share with me a couple of your favorite moments from all three stories! If you doooo...I just might have one more little surprise up my sleeve.... ; ] -QoM