Two Heads About Everything
Chapter Twenty-Five: Crane and Ace
After Ace and Joker's intimate rendezvous, Joker went beddy-bye in the tent. Ace left the scene, exhausted but satisfied, and she crossed the fair grounds to sit upon a dusty concession stand. She pulled her long blonde hair up in a messy ponytail. Ace glanced around the fair grounds, mesmerized that she still managed to have a hold of her situation. She had been at this place since she left Chance. Looked like she was the only person to hold a safe haven. A smirk.
Ace leaned back over the stand's edge, reached behind her to grab a cold beer from a plugged up refrigerator, then sat up straight. She was caught off guard, though, but a looming figure in front of her.
"Fuck!" she cried out, fumbling with the bottle. It crashed beneath her in shattered shards of dusty glass; she frowned at the figure that she realized was Scarecrow. He was wearing his mask. Ace reached behind her, grabbed a baseball, then wielded it at him.
He dodged effectively and laughed.
"Quite a temper. For such a wild girl," he added, indicating Joker's tent.
"Piss off." Ace hissed.
"Are you always this colorful afterward?" he inquired her behind his mask.
"Are you always this annoying?" muttered Ace. She took a spare beer from the fridge behind her, wanting to at least get the top off before he startled her again.
"Looks like I might have unnerved you." Scarecrow said slyly.
"You didn't unnerve me." Ace retorted, imitating his accent. "Your horrible Halloween mask made me puke in my mouth. Apparently, I react on my feminine instinct after all: trying to protect myself from psychopaths."
"You don't have to make a smooth recovery with me, Ace. I know you were startled. Too lost in thought, perhaps reminiscing what happened a few minutes ago."
"Are you a pervert or something?" said Ace seriously, staring at his eyes through the mask.
He laughed.
"No. I'm not a pervert. The matter is this: most of us enjoy sleep. Your bitch moans wake the neighborhood."
Ace grinned.
"See, that's sheer honesty." Ace popped open the bottle and drank from it. "Want one?" she offered, indicating a finger from around the bottle, pointing toward the stand casually with an attractively, sincere smile of her own.
"Why not?" he accepted.
Crane took off his mask and sat on the stand beside her. She handed him an unopened bottle.
"So, Crane," said Ace, "what's got you pecking at night? I recall you being a much heavier sleeper when Chance and I are were working with you?"
"I recall that you were working for me." Crane said.
Ace took a drink and shook her head.
"Mmm, no...I remember precisely that I didn't work for you; I worked for Chance."
"It was a good design," he said dotingly.
"It was." Ace agreed. "You, the scientist; Chance, the strategist; and me doing my talented trade: knocking the scumbags who deserve to die into place by threatening mass murder and mayhem." She smirked. "It was a good design."
"I can't help but wonder why it fell apart, though. All the pieces fit together, then suddenly..." Crane glanced at her. "It just didn't work."
"It was your fault." Ace told him in a blunt manner.
He frowned.
"It was." Ace told him as if to reassure him. "You brought that girl down. Dawes had never found out if you hadn't brought her to the basement."
"She'd have figured it out anyway," said Crane passively, glancing at the bottle in his hand.
"Chance wanted to bide time." Ace told him. "I knew that."
"Then why don't you ever wait like she instructs?" said Crane curiously.
"Because that's not fun. Keeps her on her toes," Ace added with an impish grin. "But," she continued with a sigh, "you are right, Doctor. It have happened inevitably so. Dawes is quite the clever woman, if not a noble one. Perhaps you know something about her, Crane?"
"I didn't get to know her." Crane retorted.
"So you have no idea if she has any dark secrets? No skeletons in the closet: no affairs, dead husbands, misplaced children, killed mothers, missing bosses, secret identities, secret jobs, missing high school record...?"
"Not a thing about any of those. Dawes is a straight arrow." Crane said.
Ace tapped her fingernails on the bottle.
"Well, Chance has always said that the shinier the picture, the darker the body. She might be wrong. Unless..."
"Unless what?" said Crane, honestly curious.
"It's a stretch." Ace muttered.
"Ace."
"Hey, I'm not all certain..." Ace told him impatiently. She drank the last of her beer bottle. "But I've always had a theory. Dawes is a noble person, no secrets of her own. She must be covering somebody."
"That is a stretch." Crane told her seriously.
"I'm not talking about her covering for some lunatic in a bin." Ace rolled her eyes. "It's someone she knows."
"She knows a lot of people."
"You know, you're not really smart when you touch alcohol." Ace retorted.
"You think she'll forgive me?" he muttered.
"What?"
Ace glanced at Crane. He looked a bit solemn now. He was looking into his beer bottle as if he was trying to see the future. Ace sighed.
"What are you saying to me, Crane? You want her back?"
"It wouldn't hurt." Crane admitted.
"She sort of involved with Two-Face." Ace informed him. "Though I think they're a bit racy."
"Racy?"
"You know...Grrr." Ace mimed a lion. "Not exactly a happily married couple. They fight quite a bit nowadays. You want to talk about waking the neighborhood? I'm actually surprised that Batman hasn't found us yet. Or that Gordon hasn't come here after being called for a domestic dispute."
Ace sighed.
"Anyway, that's what I have to say, Crane. I'm going to tell Chance what I think."