A/N: Some of you will like this; some of you will hate it. I must state right now that any religious beliefs expressed within this story are not necessarily my own. There is ONE more chapter to this story after this.
I'm going to say this now: This journey has been long and incredibly rewarding, and I'm thankful to all of you who followed me through to the end, and to those who continue to read after this story is complete. I've learned so much about writing, about myself, in this process, that I really can't express it all in such a short space. So I won't. Suffice to say, you all have helped me nurse this, my baby, my pride and joy, for over three years, and I love ya'll immensely for it. : )
~ B
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
~ Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII
After leaving the Joker, Louise checked herself into a seedy motel room, bars across the window and strange stains on the mattress. She was too exhausted – mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually – to care about any of this. Louise peeled off her clothing and fell naked into the grimy bed, shivering under the lumpy covers. She tried to remember the last time she had been truly warm, inside and out, but she couldn't. Her eyes closed, and she dreamed.
"It's almost over." The blonde girl tilts her head to the side, hair rippling over her pale shoulders. For the first time, Louise can look her square in the eyes – Jack's eyes. Louise feels like weeping.
"Why didn't you tell me it was you? All this time . . ."
"Why, you think you woulda listened? Tch." Lola shakes her head ruefully, but Louise can tell that she's in good spirits. "You're too stubborn for that."
"You looked so different, so healthy . . . Your voice . . ." Her voice had been clear and succinct, her words articulated, not slurred, no slang. That's what she wanted to say, but after years of Lola's absence, Louise has somewhat lost the knack of speaking to her candidly.
"You heard what you wanted to hear. This is your head, ya know."
They are sitting in a tiny house somewhere in Gotham. It feels familiar to her, though she is certain she has never been to this place before. They are sitting at a rickety kitchen table with steaming cups of tea in front of them. She takes a sip, but the liquid has no flavor, no substance. Lola smiles at her in an encouraging, pitying sort of way.
"Can you taste it?" This is not the question she wants to be asking, not the question she should be asking, but for some reason, it seems very important. Louise's throat feels tight as she looks down into her cup, blue floral china pattern with a chip on the handle. It is exactly like a tea set she would buy.
Lola takes a dainty sip, letting the liquid steam inside of her mouth for a long moment before she swallows. "Mm, green, with a little jasmine. Your favorite, right?"
The desperate feeling in her gut intensifies at these words. Louise looks around at her surroundings. There is brilliant, clear light streaming in from behind the lacy white curtains. She wants desperately to look outside, but the idea terrifies her, so she focuses on the wallpaper instead. It is bright and cheerful, yellow and white, the perfect space in which to cook breakfast.
Though the act is essentially meaningless, Louise picks up her cup to take another sip. Her hands shake. She takes another tasteless drink and then sets the teacup back on its little china dish. It clinks loudly.
"I'm so afraid," she whispers to Lola. To her surprise, the girl only smiles back at her reassuringly.
"Well that's stupid, isn't it? Does it look so bad?"
She wants to say that no, it doesn't look that bad, doesn't feel that bad, and yes, she is comfortable here in this house that looks so much like the home she always dreamed of having, more comfortable than she has been in months, years, a decade or more, but she doesn't say this. Louise stares miserably down into the depths of her teacup.
"This is just a dream I'm having, right? Just a dream. You're nothing but a figment of my imagination. Something I made up to make it through this . . . this hell."
"You seem pretty sure of yourself. What's there to be afraid of, then?"
Louise takes another glance at the window with its unearthly light, a shiver running through her. "What if there really is nothing, afterwards?"
Even in this dream, speaking such a fear aloud feels blasphemous.
Lola reaches out one slender hand, lacing their fingers together. Louise can feel the warmth of the girl's body more than the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the window, more than the steam coming off her tasteless tea. Lola feels concrete, real in a way the rest of the dream does not, and her eyes hold only comfort and assurance.
"I guess you won't know until after," Lola says. "I wish I could stick around, but I gotta go. I won't be seeing you in your dreams anymore."
Louise blinks in surprise, fear bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. The dreams with Lola – even before she knew it was Lola – are the only calm, hopeful element in her life. Without them, her future stretches on endlessly, bleak and torturous.
Louise reaches out to grab her young friend, but Lola is already across the room, opening the door to the backyard, awash in sunlight.
"Don't leave me," Louise pleads from her spot at the table. The tea in front of her has gone cold. "Please, you're the only thing that's kept me going. I can't face him again without you."
Her hand is on the doorknob, her foot half across the threshold. Already, Lola seems to be fading. Louise can feel the discomfort in her back and neck from sleeping on such an uncomfortable bed; she can feel the itchiness of her legs and arms from the coarse bed sheets and, most probably, the bed bugs. Her throat tightens. She wants to call out to Lola, plead with her to stay, but her voice is stuck. She is paralyzed and waking.
Lola looks heartbreakingly sad. "Don't worry," she says softly. "It's almost over."
Louise does not need to ask what she means. She already knows.
For a long time, Louise wandered aimlessly around the city. With no job, no home, and no contacts, she had very little to do besides sit and reflect, which is exactly what she did. She did not waste time in any churches, even if the desire to confess all her sins was stifling in its intensity. What good would it do her, anyway? Everybody was redeemable in the eyes of the Lord, or so she had always been told, but what if all that was just a lot of made up garbage? A bedtime story to tell the children in order to get them to be righteous, to get them to obey and behave? A pleasant source of hope to dwell on when the thought of death left you feeling breathless and panicky? Louise had given up trying to figure out what would happen afterwards. Lola was right – she would find out for herself, when the time came.
With Hush out of commission due to his injuries, the city was tense and ready for another brutal showdown between Batman and the Joker. Few people were out on the streets, and the ones that were seemed tense, terrified, or downright crazy. Louise knew she looked like one of the latter, sitting with her hands folded on her lap and staring vacantly at everything, at nothing, for hours on end. She could think of nothing but Harleen Quinzel, of Jack, of Lola, of the Joker . . . these thoughts consumed her. She cared for nothing else. When she was hungry, she ate. When she was thirsty, she drank. It felt superfluous to her, but she did it because she had nothing better to do, and she felt like disposing of what little money she had left. She had the overwhelming feeling that she wouldn't be needing it anymore.
Around noon, she started wandering towards the places she knew. She went to Wayne Enterprises and stared up at the building for a long time, and she had the strong urge to laugh. She went to some of the shops she'd gone to as a teenager with Jack and Lola, the ones that were still around, and flipped through the clothing. She went to see the wreckage of City Hall where Sara Burton had died, and she went to stand in front of her old place of employment, the front steps literally piled high with flowers, candles, pictures, and teddy bears. Finally, she swung around to her apartment, now cut off to her unless she wanted a vigorous round of police questioning, and visited a few of the shops that she had enjoyed the most. It was there, in the street, just as she was turning around to go back to her lonely little motel room for the night, that a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
"Oh, my God. Louise. Louise! I've been looking everywhere for you! Jesus, where – where have you been?"
Arms enveloped her, squeezed her tightly against a warm, breathing body. All day she had felt like a walking corpse, and this contact with the living made her feel wrong, as if she were contaminating the person.
The person released her, but only just enough to take in her appearance. Louise stared up into the last pair of eyes she had expected to meet on the streets of Gotham.
"Mollie? What are you doing here?"
Louise said it so casually, as if it was a run-of-the-mill occurrence, a funny small-world type of happening, to find her friend, who lived and worked in Tennessee, standing right outside of her old apartment complex. Mollie's wide green eyes and freckled face took in her friend's disheveled appearance with obvious concern.
"What am I – I'm looking for you. I tried calling you again and again, and you didn't answer, and so I tried getting the sheriff from my town to track down some information on you because I thought you were missing, and he told me that practically everybody in your workplace had been killed, for Christ's sake, by some mass-murdering psychopath, and that the Gotham police suspected you'd been kidnapped by some other mass-murdering psychopath. I felt like I'd fallen into a freaking Twilight Zone episode, I swear to God. I took the first flight out here with my brother – you remember Oliver, right? He always had that thing for you – and we've been trying to track you down ever since. God, God, I can't believe it – where have you been?"
These words feel like the soundtrack to her life, her current life. Where had she been? Louise pondered this as she followed Mollie blindly through the streets of Gotham, passing by strangers who are turned in on themselves, shifty-eyed and anxious and afraid. She was like a ghost, a shadow, something ethereal, no longer part of the stifling crowd of humanity. Mollie's hand was grasping hers, tugging her along in the same fashion a mother might tug a young child through a grocery store. Louise didn't feel like a child, though; she felt weary, so horribly exhausted that it was too much of an effort to think of where they were going or to blink away the tears that the sharp February wind caused.
Perhaps it was seconds later, perhaps an hour, that they reached Mollie's hotel. She was staying in something classy, something with pillars and statues of beautiful women in togas out front, and it didn't even look vulgar or like something reminiscent of Vegas, either. The lobby was more of a surprise; it was swarming with elegantly dressed people and employees dressed in pressed black-and-white attire, wheeling Louis Vuiton luggage to a wall of elevators, each with their own attendant sitting on a little stool just inside the door.
"Isn't this too expensive?" Louise asked. Mollie glanced over at her with wild eyes, looked at her as if she were completely insane.
"My brother's paying, of course. Listen, that's not what's important right now. You need to tell me where you've been, Louise. People have been looking for you. I'm serious, here, all right? You're safe now, and it's time to pull it together."
Mollie and her iron-clad will, her unyielding personality even in the face of something as horrible as this, her friend's mental disarray and possible traumatism. Louise felt almost grateful to her for not pandering to the usual weaknesses, for not being awkward in the face of Louise's obvious distress, and yet she still couldn't take her seriously. What had she said, that Louise was safe? Safe?
"Yes, safe." The elevator doors opened on the fifteenth floor to admit a flustered looking couple, most likely tourists, who stood next to the elevator attendant and whispered excitedly in each other's ears.
"I didn't realize I'd said that out loud," Louise said as a response. "But it really wasn't necessary to come all this way. You shouldn't have, with the Joker . . ."
"Fuck the Joker, okay? Fuck him. Did you really think that I could just sit on my ass in Tennessee while you were MIA for weeks?" Mollie cast a glance at the couple, who had gone silent and were staring at the two women from the corner of their eyes. The elevator attendant, bless the old man's soul, was clearly either deaf or too used to hearing incriminating conversations to care. Nevertheless, Mollie lowered her voice and continued, "We'll talk in the hotel room. Our floor's coming up."
On floor eighteen, Louise and Mollie exited the elevator. Once again, Mollie grabbed Louise's hand and guided her along, to the end of one hallway and past an ice machine. When they were standing outside a door that was indistinguishable from all the other doors save its number, Mollie swiped her key card through the lock and let them in.
Mollie's brother, who Louise thought looked vaguely familiar in a morning-after sort of way, was waiting just inside the door. He was on the telephone when they entered, but obviously not with anybody important, for the moment he saw Mollie was with her, he bid a hasty farewell and pocketed his cell before the man on the other end was finished saying goodbye.
"Where did you find her?"
His tone was brusque and businesslike, but it was obvious that this man, too, had spent some amount of time worrying over Louise's whereabouts. It made her very sad, for a moment, that she could scarcely remember the instances in which they had met. A fancy dinner with Mollie's latest waste-of-space boyfriend, too much champagne, and Oliver's dirty blonde hair and green-flecked brown eyes were all that she could remember of him.
"Just wandering around outside of her apartment building on the street. Oliver, she's not in a good state. I can't get a single answer out of her that isn't elusive or edgy. I think we should take her straight down to the hospital."
"Calm down. Let's just . . . think this over, first." Oliver passed around his sister and took a seat on a couch opposite from Louise. He gestured at a nearby chaise lounge and said, "Sit down, Louise."
She was glad that he hadn't asked this of her, and that there was no quavering awkwardness in his voice. For this reason, and because her feet and legs were killing her from walking all day, she complied. Oliver knit his fingers together and rested his elbows on his knees.
"Can you tell us what you were doing outside when Mollie found you? Let's start there and try to work backwards, all right?"
"I was sort of . . . thinking. That's all. Just taking inventory of it all."
This was a bullshit answer to anybody who wasn't in Louise's head and she knew it, but Oliver obviously cared more about the questions he was keeping on the tip of his tongue. Immediately after she answered, he asked, "Are you hurt?"
She thought about this in some depth before she responded. Was she hurt? Her legs, ankles, feet, and thigh were obviously quite tense and throbbing, but it was nothing that wouldn't get better with a few day's rest, or at least nothing that required these two people to rush her to the hospital, just about the last place she wanted to go besides the police station.
"No, I'm not hurt."
Mollie sat down beside Oliver after this, looking both relieved and bemused at the situation. Louise knew her old friend – funny how she thought of her as that, now, when only a few months had passed since they'd parted – well enough to know that Mollie was anxious to jump into action and do something, even if it wasn't the right thing to do.
"I'm glad to hear that," Oliver said softly. "Would you like a glass of water? Something else? I can give you some wine, if you'd like something a little stronger."
Again, a wave of appreciation for this man she hardly knew washed over her. For the first time since she'd entered this lavish hotel room, Louise took in her surroundings, including the two people in front of her. The hotel room itself was typical for such a high class deal: a small sitting area with a bar, table, and TV, two queen-sized beds in an adjacent room, a bathroom leading off in the opposite direction. More interesting to look at was Mollie, with her windblown dirty-blonde hair and Tennessee clothing, thin V-neck sweater and jeans, that must have been hell to walk around Gotham in. More interesting still was Oliver, who was looked as though he had come from a day at the office, though Louise knew very well that he lived somewhere on the west coast, like in Washington or something. His shoes were shiny, he was wearing black dress pants and a button-down shirt, and his hair, identical to his sister's in color, was combed smartly. He was the picture of control and assurance, and Louise knew automatically that he was the one dealing with authority figures.
"Just water." Mollie stood to go fetch the water from a mini-fridge beneath the bar. It was in a glass bottle, and the label looked Swiss. "I mean, tap would have worked, too."
Mollie just rolled her eyes and handed Louise the drink, which she downed in less than a minute. She had not realized until then how parched she had been. Mollie went to get her another.
"Tell me what happened when the Joker attacked your workplace, Louise. You weren't inside, were you? You went out for something. One of the men who survived said that you'd spoken to him just before it happened, that you were going to get coffee."
"Glenn? Glenn is alive?" Louise thought about the man she worked with, his outrageous laughter and his hilarious jokes at the coffee machine before their morning meeting.
"Yes, Glenn Bradley lived. He was shot once in the shoulder, but he's going to be fine."
Louise was glad, so glad that she immediately felt lighter, her muscles looser. Her rigid back relaxed, and she slumped where she sat, shoulders rounded forward. One person hadn't died; one person she'd liked, one person she'd cared about in even the smallest way, had not died. Even this felt like a victory to her.
"There was a witness, an older woman, who said that she saw somebody that matched your description get pulled into a van by the Joker."
"Yes, that's what happened."
She could have lied, of course. It was her first instinct, the natural response to such a question. She had been lying for months, not only with what she said, but with what she didn't say, the things she did not reveal. She had shielded the Joker, shielded the man she thought was Jack, from everything because admitting that she knew him was admitting that the boy she loved was gone forever, and she didn't have it in her to do it. Something was different in her, now. The night she had spent with the Joker had changed things, not only about their situation, but something within her, as well. She wasn't protecting him, anymore. Why should she? The Joker was as separate and distinct from Jack Napier as another person altogether; he had his memories, his outline, but the rest of him was warped.
Mollie cursed at Louise's admission; Oliver simply looked stunned.
"Louise, you aren't seriously telling us that – that you've been with the Joker this entire time? It can't be, you have to be lying, you can't be –"
"Mollie, shut up." Oliver was no-nonsense once again, his composure regained. "Can you tell us what happened after that, Louise? Where did you go with him?"
The van, the kiss, the fall. Louise played it back in her head like an old, familiar tape, and she couldn't quite believe she'd been such a willing participant in it all. "We went to the Narrows."
"The Narrows is closed off, Louise. You couldn't have gone there."
"You think I don't know where he took me? You know who we're talking about, don't you? If he can break out of Arkham Asylum, I think he can break in to the Narrows."
"You're right, of course," Oliver conceded easily. She couldn't tell whether he believed her or if he was just humoring the whims of a disturbed woman, but who cared? Louise was content to submerge herself in the ease of this exchange, the back-and-forth of their discourse that was no longer emotionally vexing to her. All she had to do was tell the truth, after all. Say what happened. These people weren't cops, they weren't out to use her information against the Joker, and even if Oliver passed what she told him along, what was the worst that would happen? The Joker's capture? Could Louise really desire anything else?
"So you after he took you to the Narrows, where did you go? Why did he take you?"
That was a more complicated query, and Louise chewed on her bottom lip for some time before attempting to answer. "He used me. For one of his plans against Hush. It wasn't the Joker who attacked my building; it was Hush setting him up, which was why this whole . . . Battle of the Masks has been going on since then. Hush was so stupid . . ."
"What plan did he use you in?" Oliver pushed forward, pulling her back on track. Louise looked at him apathetically. Days ago, revealing this information would have been more than she could bear. Now it felt easy, so easy it seemed almost silly, comical.
"He dressed me up like a whore and sent me to spy on Hush's men during their little victory celebration for killing all my coworkers. The Joker . . . likes to play those kinds of games."
"You talk like you know him," Mollie blurted, shrinking under the withering glare Oliver sent her way because of this comment. Louise felt no ill will towards her friend, towards either of them, for questioning her as they were. She wished she could place her hand against their cheeks one after the other and tell them to stop worrying, that she was past all this frenzy, past wondering why this had all happened.
This action would only raise red flags for them; they were on a different level of reasoning. Did this mean she was crazy? She knew that the insane often thought themselves sensible, perhaps even more sensible than the people surrounding them. Had she gone insane, or was she simply entering that elusive stage of grief: acceptance? For a grief so monumental, so ongoing, Louise's acceptance was of a singular and perplexing kind. Of course they wouldn't, couldn't, understand.
"I'd like to go to bed now. Please don't tell the police anything I've told you. You have to know it will only cause more problems for me. I want to leave after this. Take me away from this place. I don't need to see the graves anymore."
Who needed graves when the dead painted their faces, reached out to comfort you in dreams?
Mollie looked outraged and confused at this request, but Oliver hushed her. He looked Louise directly in the eyes and said, "I understand. You can take my bed. I'll sleep out here."
There were no more words. Louise stood with her glass bottle of expensive Swiss water and drifted into the adjoining room. With the stiff movements of an automaton, she shed her clothing, wrapping herself in the plush white heaven of a hotel bathrobe. At the end of Oliver's bed, he had laid out a pair of his boxer shorts, probably in anticipation for a morning shower, folded neatly. Louise picked them up, such an intimate detail, and ran her fingers along the soft fabric.
She wondered what it would be like to be married, and for just a moment, she closed her eyes and pretended that this was her life, that the kind man in the other room was her husband, and that horrible things had not happened to her. She pictured herself teasing Oliver for folding a pair of underpants, of all things. She imagined that she could love him completely, the way she had never been able to love another man after Jack. She imagined trading stories about past relationships, childhood sweethearts, that all went their own ways and did not meet terrible fates at the hands of angry mobsters.
Then she let it all go, every last bit of longing and bitterness and hatred. She let it flow out of her in waves, let it crash around her feet, staggering amounts of wasted energy that had been weighing her down for more than a decade. She was empty as she climbed into bed and clicked off the light, empty in a way she had never been before. It was not like loneliness, not like loss. She felt wiped clean.
A long bar of light cut across the room as the door clicked open. Mollie slipped inside, trying desperately to be quiet, but only succeeded in stubbing a toe on a dresser and letting out a strangled hiss of garbled swear words.
"You can swear all you want; I'm not asleep."
Mollie's outline paused, one hand still grasping her foot. "Did I wake you up?"
"No. I was just thinking."
Mollie did not ask Louise what she was thinking about. Louise guessed that her friend assumed it was filled with all sorts of horrors, the likes of which Mollie could never imagine. In a way, Louise supposed this might be true, and if this meeting had happened a month ago, it would have been. As it was, there was nothing but a peaceful sort of void within her mind, a quiet place the terror of her past couldn't touch. Only the desire for human contact remained. Louise imagined this might be very much what a newborn's mind felt like.
"Would you sleep with me tonight?"
"Yeah. Yes, of course."
The other woman asked no questions, but immediately shed her clothing and pulled on the first soft nightshirt she could reach in the dark. Mollie's long body slipped into the bed beside her friend's. Beneath the blankets, Louise reached out and curled her fingers into Mollie's open palm.
She thought he must have known what she was planning. The night she'd spent with him had been too far out of his control, too gentle, for his violent and vindictive nature to handle. He wanted to punish her for winning a battle against him, petty as it was, considering he'd been winning everything until that point.
Was he keeping tabs on her? Did he know that Oliver Singleton bought three tickets to Tennessee and that she was going to be one of the passengers? They had used a fake name, fake papers, to get as far as they did, and yet somehow, Louise didn't put it past the Joker to have figured it all out. Then again, maybe it was coincidence. He had yet to target an airport, and Gotham International was the perfect place to make a statement. Louise felt, at this point, that her luck was so terrible, anything was possible. She may just be struck dead by a comet falling out of the sky, for all she knew. She was just that unlucky.
Mollie was fidgety the entire ride to the airport, casting sidelong glances at her friend, just dying to dig up the dirt about what had really happened. Oliver was silent for the ride, only taking his eyes off the road to shoot warning glances at Mollie whenever his sister opened her mouth to speak. Louise rode with her forehead against the cool, frosted glass of the window, enjoying the dancing swirls of light February snow that dusted the ground. Life seemed altogether bearable in the state she was in – sad, terribly sad, but bearable.
And beautiful, too. How had she not seen it before? Dirty as Gotham was, Louise was spotting beauty everywhere. A man walking headlong against the wind, coat billowing out behind him, head bowed, nearly took her breath away. She felt that the smooth surfaces of her fingernails, smooth and beige like the surface of a pebble, could be artwork hanging somewhere in a museum.
As they were waiting for their plane, Mollie ripped through about ten magazines and then, throwing them aside impatiently, declared, "Let's talk about France. Do you want to go back there? In a few months, once we get settled in and all. It'll be like a mental holiday."
"Or an actual holiday. I think that's what you call it when you go abroad and forgo actual responsibilities." Oliver looked at Louise in amusement, and Louise found that she had actually surprised herself by being so quick. "Shouldn't I find a job or something? I can't mooch off of you forever."
Mollie rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Oliver is picking up the tab for everything. God knows he doesn't need all his money, anyway. He's not even married, and he doesn't have kids. By the way, whenever you feel like giving me nieces and nephews, I'm very ready."
Their tone was playful, and Oliver returned the jab with an equally sarcastic comment about Mollie's string of lay-about boyfriends, but there was a noticeable tension in the air. The two of them were beyond anxious to leave this city and take Louise with them. She could already imagine the type of therapy she'd be forced to endure once she stepped onto Tennessee soil. Strangely enough, Louise herself was quite at ease. Gotham seemed very manageable to her as of late, perhaps because she figured what the hell else could it throw at her that she already hadn't encountered? Oliver and Mollie were rookies when it came to this type of living, but Louise was a seasoned veteran; even the massive crowds of angry, swarming people within the airport didn't faze her in the slightest, though it was putting Oliver visibly on edge.
"There are too many people here," he commented eventually.
"Everyone's high-tailing it out of this hellhole," Mollie responded, eyes nothing more than slits as she looked around her at the crowds of people packed within the terminal. "Can't say I blame them. Who actually wants to live in this place?"
"It breeds a very particular type of person," Louise responded. "Some people might say that alone makes living here worth it. Knowing those people. . . But then again, you can only say it's worth it if you're alive, right?"
It was one of those moments when Louie's audience was caught in a state of confusion: what was the correct response to a comment like this? A laugh, a sigh, a quiet shake of the head, a glance of pity? Neither Oliver nor Mollie seemed to know, so they both stayed silent, looking at one another for assurance that they were doing the best they could, considering the circumstances. Louise felt like sleeping, and yet the thought of another night without Lola's presence was unfavorable to her.
"It's almost over," Louise repeated aloud. The words tumbled over in her mind again and again. Almost over.
"What's almost over?"
At that moment the lights flickered, the PA system crackled. Oliver sat up straighter in his seat and looked around at the confused and agitated faces. A hush swept through the crowds of people. They were most of them from Gotham, trying to escape, and they knew. Mollie and Oliver were still oblivious, looking about them with wide eyes and commenting in small voices about how the weather didn't look bad enough to cause electrical problems. Louise felt sorry for them, immensely and deeply sorry.
"It's not the weather. It's him. It's the Joker."
The next moment they all heard it, his long, exaggerated throat-clear booming out from every corner and crevice of the airport. Several people immediately began to cry, breaking down completely. A woman not far from them crumpled, knees giving out beneath her, and Louise watched on as the man she was with held her up. The terror warped the stranger's face, pummeled her body like a physical force, and Louise was struck by how incredibly alive that woman must feel at this moment, to react in such a way. More alive than Louise had felt for some time, now.
"I've heard . . . that leaving the party early is unfor-give-ably rude."
Louise sat back in her hard plastic chair and stared straight ahead of her. Had he known she was going to be here, or was this purely coincidence, yet another comedy of errors that led her straight into his path? Knowing the Joker's temperament, Louise suspected that it was the former. He had known, just as he always seemed to know, exactly where she was and what she planned to do. Only this time, the novelty of it all was wearing off. She was exhausted, and she didn't want to play this game anymore.
"I'm going to the bathroom," Louise stated firmly, standing and making her way through the crowds before Oliver and Mollie could so much as open their mouths to stop her. Everybody was riveted to the Joker's words, terror in their eyes, hands reaching out to clasp their neighbors. How funny that the Joker – a complete madman – could cause even the most distant of strangers to reach for one another in their time of need. Did he know that he had this effect on people? Wasn't every one of those small acts a victory for Batman, a loss for the Joker?
Louise pushed her way to an isolated ladies' room tucked back into a corner and stationed next to a door crisscrossed in red paint and marked "Personnel ONLY." The bathroom was understandably empty. Everybody who had been lining up outside to use the restroom had dispersed to find their families or loved ones, and the people inside had likewise finished their business in record time. Louise was left alone to stare at her spotty reflection in the mirror. She splashed water on her face to calm her nerves. All around her, the Joker's voice echoed as he etched out his next plan, his next tortuous "social experiment" that dictated that, amongst themselves, they choose which members of society were valuable enough to live. Doctor, lawyer, schoolteacher? Did your profession dictate your worth as a human being? Did your gender, or your age, or your appearance? Were you more important, did you have more of a right to live, if you were wealthy than if you were poor?
Those who were deemed worthy of life were to be sent off in designated planes and left alone. They would escape unharmed, but with the massive guilt of knowing that for their life, a hundred others had died. Those left behind, the swarms of average people without special qualities to recommend themselves, would die. The air ducts, massive and pervasive, would be quick to deliver his newest device of death to the hundreds crammed within Gotham International's confines.
In every grating word, Louise heard Jack's rage. The Joker was punishing innocent people because, years ago, his little sister had died, and he had never understood, could never accept, that maybe it couldn't have turned out any differently. Maybe Lola was just too sick.
If only he could have the dreams she had once had, Louise thought to herself sadly. If only he could have seen his sister looking beautiful, alive, vibrant – happy in a way she had never been in life. Was it all a product of her imagination? Did it matter if it was, if it helped to ease one's grief?
Louise bent over the sink to splash water on her face once more. She had no desire to return to the throbbing, shrieking mass of people outside of the ladies' room door. If only Oliver and Mollie hadn't been pulled into this, as well. She grieved for them already.
As she was wiping off her face, the door opened, and Louise inwardly sighed. It had been such a promising solitude.
"It's you, isn't it?"
The voice that filled the tiled bathroom stunned Louise, straightened her spine and struck her nerves until her entire body was thrumming with acute pain. She knew that voice; more importantly, she knew the dull ache beneath Harleen Quinzel's words, the intensity of her jealousy and desperation. All of that rage, all of that passion, had been Louise's not so long ago.
Louise answered her as calmly as she could, using the last of the paper towel to wipe her face dry and look at the woman standing just inside the restroom door. "Is what me?"
Harleen was dressed to the nines to stand at the Joker's side, in flexible leather dyed black and red. Diamonds ran up one thigh and one rib in opposite colors, black-red-red-black. Her hair was blond, pulled taut into jaunty little pigtails that looked chillingly girlish. Her face was painted, black diamonds over the eyes and a perfectly applied lipstick smile. She might have looked to be in costume if it weren't for the wildness of her wide eyes. In her hand, she held a gun.
"You're the reason we're here. He's doing this . . . for you." Harleen's eyes narrowed, a lovely shade of blue, and Louise was struck by how pretty she must have been before all this, before the Joker had made her promises he never had any intention of keeping. "Who are you?"
"I'm Louise. Please don't point that gun at me. I just want to leave this place and never come back."
"Louise." Harleen tasted the name, rolled it around her tongue and then spat it out on the 'e.' "Well, Louise, I'm not lettin' you leave. You think you can get away so easy after you fooled around with my Puddin' behind my back? Did you honestly think you could steal him away from me? We're meant to be together, ya know."
Louise wanted to be frightened of the gun pointing at her chest; she felt she ought to be thinking of ways to escape, to overpower this lithe young woman and flee into the crowd. None of these things appealed to her. More than anything, Louise wanted to sit in this quiet bathroom, away from all the chaos outside, and just be. For just a little while, Louise wanted to think about nothing, to do nothing.
"Well?" Harleen demanded impatiently, and Louise realized that the young woman had actually been expecting an answer from her.
"Listen, Harleen –"
"Harley."
"Listen to me. I know why you've fallen for him, really. I know why you love him because I loved him once, too. But please, listen to me when I tell you, he can never love you. Don't you understand? He had that emotion in him once, but it's gone now. You can still get away from this, Harleen, you can still –"
"It's Harley, and I don't want to get away from him! You don't know." She brandished her gun and took a step closer. Louise did not move; her heart did not beat faster or slower. "You think you can take him from me? You think that you can ever give more for him than I have? He's mine, okay? I'm the only one who's got enough chops to stand by his side." Another step closer, a snapping intensity in the blue eyes. Louise, perversely enough, felt that what Harleen was saying was true. There wasn't another person in Gotham who could do what this poor, pathetic young girl had given up everything to do. "I'm not gonna let some old hag like you get in the way of that."
It's almost over.
All Louise could think to say that would express her feelings was, "I'm sorry."
And she was. She was so terribly sorry that another young woman would have to experience the deep chasm of rejection, guilt, and anguish that had already tormented Louise. She was sorry that there was nothing she could say that could stop Harleen Quinzel from facing a thankless and violent future. She was sorry that, once again, the Joker had won.
For a moment, just a split second before Harleen's resolve hardened, the wide blue eyes of a once-medical student, once-gymnast, once-daughter, looked lost and unsure. Then, so quickly Louise did not have time to register the change, Harleen's eyes flashed, hard as diamond, and she replied, "You should be."
It all happened in what felt like one breath. There was a shattering, ear-splitting noise that resounded again and again within the confines of the bathroom, and it was this sound that affected Louise most. It was so piercing it was painful, splitting her already frazzled nerves into halves and then zipping up her spine and cracking each vertebrae as it went. Louise couldn't move, couldn't speak, because the breath had been knocked from her body. Everything was on fire from that sound, and Harleen's lips were moving but Louise couldn't hear the words, couldn't understand anything at all.
She thought of Sara Burton, and the purple and green fireworks, and the way that child perched atop her father's shoulders had stretched out one chubby fist toward the blackened sky. She thought of Sydney White's cigarette stubs as she smashed out their glowing tips with the heel of her sneakers, untied laces flopping. She thought of Commissioner Gordon's exhausted face, of the dull glint of his wedding ring.
Her hand crept toward her abdomen, and when she looked down, Louise saw that her fingers were dripping crimson. Blood. She was bleeding.
She was bleeding?
Louise fell to her hands and knees, a great, pervasive weakness rendering her limbs limp and unresponsive. The bloody palm slipped from underneath of her, leaving a trail of sticky scarlet behind as her body toppled sideways. Dimly, Louise was aware that her body was shaking, that her breath was uneven, and that her heart, her heart, was palpitating in a furious, uneven sort of way, in a truly alarming way, in a way that convinced her, through the ringing of her ears and the sudden coldness of her limbs, that she was dying on the floor of the ladies' room in Gotham International.
It's almost over.
Should she hate Harleen Quinzel? Should she summon up the last of her energy to curse the woman who was slipping out unnoticed and disappearing into the crowd of screaming people? She wanted to, truly she did, but the only emotion she could muster up was pity, pity because that blond intern with the winsome manner of speaking would never, never experience anything beyond the pathetic façade of a relationship with the Joker. Pity because it Harleen would never have what Louise had had with Jack Napier, if only for a few years in the heart of the Narrows.
Louise's vision was swimming, and the tiles around her body were flooded red. What a mess she had made, after all. What a mess.
There wasn't a barrage of memories; her life did not flash before her eyes. Louise did not come to any soul-shattering revelation in her last moments, nor was she aware when the door swung open and the Joker entered in his lackey's clown mask. She felt his hands as he felt for her pulse, felt the strangest ghost of a tickle as his hair brushed her cheek. He whispered something in her ear, then, but whatever it was, she didn't hear it, and there was nothing he could say that would ever set things right anyway.
When she closed her eyes, it didn't feel like going to sleep; it felt, strangely enough, like waking up. Her rigid body, going cold and stiff there on the bathroom floor, felt light and warm. It felt like she was awakening after a long and exhausting nightmare, and somewhere deep, deep within her mind, Louise understood that when she opened her eyes again, she wouldn't be alone.
When she wakes, she is at the graves. The stone slabs are blank, chipped and moss-covered and crumbling at the base. Ivy and wildflowers, dandelions and clover, make a soft matting of the earth. The weather is warm, chill when the wind blows, and Louise wraps her arms around her chest.
Her chest.
She gropes around on her abdomen for something – what is it? Something wrong, something missing, something pierced – but finds only the firm suppleness of a much younger body. Seventeen, eighteen, can she remember what if feels like to run without getting winded and cartwheel and make love at twilight in ninety degree weather?
Yes. She remembers. She lives it there in front of the empty graves, runs and runs and runs and always comes back to this spot, circling through the misty surroundings without getting anywhere. She feels beguiled and laughs as if it is all a prank someone is pulling on her.
It is strange, because when she breathes, she has no real breath.
A tree emerges from the mist, behind the graves. It is tall and spindly and its limbs are drooping down low, boughs creaking under the weight of plump red fruit that look like peaches but smell like grapefruit. Louise reaches up and pulls one off, the limb snapping back and bouncing a little. Gravity. Here?
Here. Finally, she realizes. She is not where she was before. This is nowhere she has ever been. This is someplace she will never leave.
"You catch on fast." Lola is sitting on her tombstone, now, dressed in cherry red and dark-wash denim, the barest traces of a woman's curves gracing her once-wasted figure. Lola as she always should have been.
"I'm dead?"
"Almost. Not quite. Close your eyes. Can you still feel him?"
She closes her eyes and yes, there he is, hovering at the edges of her frantic mind. If she thinks hard enough, wants it desperately enough, she can just make out the tone of his voice – a little frenzied, a little furious – alternately murmuring and barking at her. She cannot, hard as she tries, make out his words.
"Yes," she says, opening her eyes. The place she is at seems far more threatening, now. She has brought back some of him with her; he lingers on her dying skin like perfume. All at once, she feels like weeping. "Oh. Oh."
"Do you remember when I told you that you'd know? What happens after you die?"
"It's almost over," Louise repeats numbly. The strange little fruit in her hand feels heavy, so monstrously weighty. "If I eat this, it's all over. If I don't –"
Lola doesn't laugh at her childish assumption. "No, it's not so simple. Or maybe it's simpler. The fact is, you're going to die no matter what you do. If you eat that thing or throw it at my head or claw up the dirt or rip out your eyeballs. You're going to die. You're dying now."
"But I'm not dead yet." Lola shakes her head again. "So you're not real, then. This is just like before, just like the dreams. I've made you up. I've created you to comfort me."
Lola, and the papery thinness of her skin, and the way her round eyes blinked up at her on the first day they'd met, suspicious and a little awe-struck. Lola on the last day she'd breathed, the last day she'd lived, asking Louise where her brother was.
"Maybe," the young girl says a little sadly. "But I don't think so."
And Louise stumbles forward, already anticipating the great relief, the ceaseless calm, she will find in the arms of her oldest, dearest friend. Lola steps forward to catch her as she falls, broken and dying at last, a marionette whose strings have finally been cut.
In the twilight of this not-world, of this maybe-heaven, Lola Napier cradles Louise Speller in her arms and tells her that everything, yes, everything, will be all right.
The Joker took inventory of his failed plan. Batman, a furious fight with Harley, a reckless drive through rain-soaked streets. He'd come from the airport, and nobody had died, nobody, nobody. Just her.
He looked over to the passenger seat where she was propped up into a sitting position, head slumped against the fogged glass of the window. She was wearing something too big for her, a yellow sundress of some kind that didn't quite fit in the chest or the hips, and it was drenched brown, that sickly sort of color that blood makes when it dries. She could almost be sleeping.
He swung the van he was driving around a turn, suddenly furious. One arm shot out and pushed her shoulder, hard, so that her body pitched forward and her forehead made a sickly clunking sound as it struck the dash, arms still dangling at her sides, in the first stages of death, of rigor mortis, that he had observed with apathy and interest on so many other bodies.
Two blocks from the cemetery, he skidded to a halt and laughed, laughed so hard he had no breath left, laughed until he was slapping the steering wheel with both palms and hooting with a dry, unforgiving sort of mirth. It took some time for him to regain control of himself and drive on, but he didn't feel quite right after that outburst. When he stopped in front of the cemetery gates, he stumbled on the way out of the van, a tumble of uncoordinated limbs with an unchanging face, like a ventriloquist's dummy come to life.
He pulled her out and dragged her body along behind him. He was weak from loss of blood and exertion and her dead, dead, dead weight was too much for him to carry. Her white legs, exposed in her soiled dress, made a slippery sort of noise against the dirt and brown grass as he maneuvered her body around gravestones. When he finally got to his plot of land, he dropped her without ceremony. He glanced at the child's name, Lola, etched on the grave to the left, and again he felt unsettled. He wanted to bury the bitch and never think of this again. He wished some compulsion stronger than himself had not dictated that he bring her here.
The earlier rain had softened the ground, but not enough to thaw deep under the soil, where winter's roots had frozen his grave into one block of solid earth. He dug with his hands like a dog beneath the words "Jack Napier" until his fingers bled, and then stumbled back to the van to retrieve a shovel, and then continued to dig. It was furious digging, limp hair swinging with his frantic motions and hot breath streaming out into the dead air.
When he finally hit wood, he briefly wished that he could keep going, dig forever and lose himself in it, in the rhythmic, monotonous physical exertion of it all. With one toe, he rolled her body over until she fell, a broken twirl of black matted hair, into the grave. When her body thumped against the lid of the coffin, he was certain, with striking clarity, that he would vomit. He turned aside and retched, hands on his knees and body doubled over, but he hadn't eaten for days and nothing came out except the barest trickle of old coffee and stomach acid.
After this, he jumped down into the hole with her, pushing her aside long enough to unlatch the warped wooden lid of the coffin and prop it open. The lining had been white, once, but it was eaten away by time and other things deep within the ground. There was a jumble of personal items that filled the box, and he threw out what he could to make room, scattering pictures and tattered garments without stopping to examine them. The sweater at his right foot was a soiled, worm-eaten rag with a faded and incomplete image of a face and three hands holding apples. The photograph in the top corner of the grave was of two strangers, a radiant girl with blue, blue eyes and a handsome, smiling boy he wouldn't have recognized even if he'd looked at it for years. He did not want to remember the face he used to have, so he didn't. He didn't want to remember his past, so he wouldn't.
Finally, finally, he managed to pick up her body long enough to deposit it within his own empty coffin, lying atop a bed of old photographs and the clothes his adolescent body had once worn. By this time her body was filthy, face streaked with mud and blood. He closed the lid to the coffin so he didn't have to look at her and stumbled backwards, overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo. It felt so familiar, this scene, and he half suspected a scarred mobster to be standing at the lip of the grave when he looked up at the rectangular patch of sky above him.
He had dreamt it, once, and he wracked his mind to remember the particulars of this dream, the why and how and when, because perhaps he was a prophet with some greater universal purpose after all. But all his weary mind came up with was a startlingly clear memory from long, long ago, in which the woman he'd just locked inside a wooden box looked up at him wearing a crisp school uniform and scuffed black shoes and laughed, laughed, laughed until she cried.
There, six feet deep in his own grave, Jack Napier cried out one long, agonized scream of despair into the stale, empty air.