Eva woke up temporarily disoriented. She rolled from her side to her back, looking around in confusion before realizing where she was. She attempted to rub her eyes before recalling that her hands had been tied together. She felt like she had at least gotten two hours of solid sleep. She looked to the small window and saw daylight.
She got up and walked over to the window, peering out through the bars and screen. The window was so dirty it obscured the view, but she could make out patchy grass that stretched on for miles. There was nothing else in sight except for a few trees.
She entered the bathroom and turned on the water, flipping her long hair behind her shoulder before leaning over to drink from the faucet. When she was done, she splashed some of the water on her face and dried her face with her shirt as she didn't see any towels.
She returned to the center of the room, where all she could do was lay on the floor and wait for what was next. She laid with her hair splayed out around her head as she gazed up at the ceiling. She entertained herself by tracing the cracks with her eyes to make imaginary shapes.
She was humming, and had traced the outline of a bunny with a giraffe neck when somebody entered the room.
She turned her head to see them. It was the same goon as before. He held in his arms a towel and what looked like a moving blanket.
"Hola payaso, como estas?" she asked.
"Huh?" he said, his brow raised in confusion.
"Nevermind, what's that?" She asked curiously, pointing her chin at what he was holding.
He walked over and dropped them in front of her. "Towel and blanket. Can't imagine this cold-ass floor was comfortable. That is, if ya got any sleep at all. This is all we got, but better than nothin' right?"
She sat up, looking up at him. "Wow, thanks. Why, though?"
"You're not leaving anytime soon, so you'll need somethin'." He said.
She nodded. "Well, that's cool."
He stood awkwardly for a moment, hands in his pockets, before she spoke again.
"Wait, is your boss going to be okay with this?"
"The boss told me to bring it." He said.
She smiled, her face flushing. "Wow, that's... nice."
"You need me to cut that tie for you again so you can use the bathroom?"
"That would make it easier, yes. I've had to pee since I woke up."
He cut the zip tie for her again, allowing her to have her hands free so that she could use the restroom. When she was done, he used a new one and allowed her to keep her hands in front of her this time.
After tying her hands, he spoke. "Can I ask you somethin'?"
"Sure..." she said, reluctant.
"Why aren't you absolutely fuckin' terrified? You gotta be outta your mind to not fear the Joker. You're relaxed like this is some kind of vacation,"
"That's what they call him? Wow..." She marveled.
"So, I just wanna know what's wrong with you, I guess." He continued, his brown eyes genuinely curious.
"I've never stood a chance at being normal. You see my face, do you not?"
"How couldn't I? Those are some nasty lookin' scars you got. So you're tellin' me whatever happened to you was worse than what this guy can do to you?"
She nodded. "Oh yeah. Besides, I've never been afraid of clowns." She smiled.
"Hmm. Alrighty then." He shrugged before walking to the door.
"Wait, can you tell me where he is? When will he come back to talk to me?"
"Don't know. Him and the guys are busy. They should be back later, if all goes well. So uhh... just hang in there, I guess."
He walked out and closed the door, locking it.
She sighed, looking at the towel and blanket she now had. With her hands still tied together, she struggled a bit but managed to unfold them and spread out the blanket and towel on the floor and laid down on them. It was a little better than the cold, bare floor.
Her energy burst she had this morning was gone. She knew that her blood sugar was low and she mentally kicked herself for not eating something more substantial before leaving to deliver the flowers. She was feeling a bit faint and weak now. She hoped somebody would come back soon so she could ask for food. She hoped that they had something that came pre-packaged and sealed, something easy to inspect. Her fear of being drugged had never quite gone away, even all these years later. Maybe Jack would remember and not kill her for being so picky...
If she hadn't already spent a portion of her life in captivity, she would be going crazy already. But she had already learned how to escape and make the time pass by faster. She laid on the blanket and daydreamed for the next couple hours. Eventually, she drifted off, her body making up for the lack of sleep that night.
She was woken up by someone frantically unlocking and then opening the door, causing it to smack into the wall as they rushed in abruptly.
She opened her eyes to see the creepy bald man from last night standing at the door.
"Hey, you need to come with me!" The look on his face showed urgency.
She looked at him in confusion, but got up slowly, still groggy and weak.
She walked up to him, yawning. "What's going on?"
He quickly cut her zip tie with a pocket knife, then grabbed her arm, dragging her out the door and down the corridor. She had no idea where they were going.
They turned left down another stretch of hallway, almost running. He seemed panicked. What was going on, and why were they running?
There was a door at the end of the hall. She could see outside, but she couldn't imagine that the doors would be unlocked.
"Hurry!" He urged, panting. She was pulled into the last room before the door that led outside. It was an office.
Still confused and disoriented, she looked at him, about to ask him why he had brought her here.
Just then, he cupped his hand roughly over her mouth and pressed his body into hers, shoving her backward onto the reception desk. He pressed his body down on hers, pinning her onto the top of the desk. Old paperwork and a clipboard were knocked to the floor. She screamed, but it was muffled by his hand. She tried to wiggle out from under him, but he was more than twice her weight. She could barely breathe under the pressure of his body, crushing her lungs.
He had already unzipped his pants, now grabbing hers and trying to pull her jeans down with the small knife still in his hand.
"Oh, you little sneaky thing. You tried to run away, but I gotcha. I just did what I had to do! Clothes got torn off in the struggle." He said, breathing hard, flashing the knife in front of her face.
"I can get past that face. I do like petite things like you." He reached down and pulled harder at her clothes, the front of her T-shirt being ripped from the collar in the process. His hand moved around her body, groping her in between attempts to unclothe her. He managed to unbutton her jeans, but she twisted and wiggled, making it impossible for him to pull them down.
He held the knife in front of her face again. "Stop struggling, bitch!" he warned.
She managed to get her arm free. Suddenly, the man shouted in pain, pulling back off of her as his hand went to his side. She had stabbed him just under his ribs.
Then, she slashed his face with one quick swing through the air, blood spouting everywhere as she had cut an artery in the side of his face. Her eyes were wild with adrenaline. As he stepped back, she delivered a hard kick to his chest with both her feet, sending him to the floor and his head smacking into the wall.
"I leave you kids for five minutes-" The Joker's nasally voice startled her and she looked up to see him standing in the doorway, knife in hand.
He looked at her small trembling frame, seeing that she was covered from head to toe in blood, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. He looked down at the man who was holding his rapidly bleeding face, sitting against the wall. His pants were down around his knees.
Eva, still trembling, slid off the desk and walked up to the Joker. She held up his switchblade, closed it, then offered it to him. He held out his hand, taking it. She looked to the bald man who sat bleeding on the floor looking pitiful and guilty.
"I don't think he'll be of any use to you now. Do what you do best." she whispered.
He had a look of surprise and bewilderment as he watched her march past him out of the room. He turned his attention to the rapist on the floor. The man stared back, paralyzed. He knew it was over for him.
Eva found her way back to the room where she went to the bathroom sink and rinsed out her mouth. As the man bled over her, some of it had gotten into her mouth and eyes.
The Joker walked into the room a few minutes later as she was spitting into the sink a sixth time, attempting to thoroughly rinse the taste of the rapist's blood from her mouth. She looked up at him, wiping her mouth with her forearm as she turned off the water.
"So, ah, you're a little magician, are you?" He asked, approaching her.
"You could say that. I'm sorry, but some of your men have 'predator' written on their foreheads; I stole your blade just in case."
"Well uh... my men aren't angels, doll." He said, putting the toilet lid down and taking a seat.
She looked at him strangely, but walked over to the tub and sat on the edge, facing him.
She took a deep breath, trying to get her breathing back to normal and calm the adrenaline rush. "Thank you for taking care of that."
He gave her a subtle nod and a blink that said 'you're welcome'. He licked the scar on his bottom lip as he looked down at her bloody clothes. He would have one of his scrawnier men give her their spare clothes, he thought.
"By the way, uh, you're wrong about what I do best."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm an agent of chaos-ah. What I do best, is uh - upset the established order, you see. These... schemers, have plans. Like Harvey Dent. I simply take their... plan... and turn it in on itself. What I do best, isn't killing people," He said, shaking his head. "But I am good at thaT." He said, raising an eyebrow with a subtle smile.
She stared into his dark eyes as he spoke. She wasn't scared or freaked out by any of what he was telling her... she was fascinated. Her eyes were wide with enthrallment, like a child learning about the great vastness and wonder of outer space for the first time.
"Y'know... In their last moments, my dear, people show you who they really are."
She nodded slowly, then furrowed her brows as she wondered. "Jack, why do you think people aren't honest until the very end?"
He gave her the most subtle smile, genuinely surprised and grateful. He had never had anyone get, or even want to get what he was saying. Actually have a conversation about it. And most who heard it didn't live for long. "Fear," He stated. "People want to believe in something... they'll believe in lies, as long as it makes them feel better about things. I show them the truth."
"So, you show people their true colors?"
"Mhmm," he purred.
"And you show people how pointless all their planning and heroism is?"
He clicked his tongue. "You got it."
She cocked her head to the side, squinting at him as she came to a realization. "You know what... I told you, you bean!" She mock-scolded him.
"Told me what?"
"To stop planning everything. To stop fretting, trying to control and manage everything. I told you to let go. You finally got it after all these years, you stopped worrying. Now you're confident and formidable. I told you that if you just let go, you would become something powerful. I saw it in you."
"Well, uh, maybe you really are magic." He said as he patted her thigh. She rolled her eyes.
"Do you have anything I can wear? I want to take a bath."
"I don't know. This is ah, a good look for you." He winked. She rolled her eyes at him again.
"Weirdly enough, this isn't the first time I've been covered in blood. But that doesn't mean I like to be."
"I'll, ah, go get you something. Uh, in the meantime... don't go with strange men who offer you candy." He joked as he stood up from the toilet, straightening his coat.
"I just wanted the kitkats I was promised!" She jokingly whined, stomping her foot on the tile.
He cackled in response, then turned and left.
While she waited for a change of clothes, she turned on the water faucet and used her hand to rinse the dirt off the inside of the tub, pushing it down the drain. She brought the towel into the bathroom and hung it on the bare curtain rod above the tub.
She heard a knock on the door. She leaned backward, looking out through the doorway of the bathroom. Why were they knocking? It's not like she could open the door herself anyway.
"I'm not undressed." she shouted.
She could hear the door being unlocked, something fall to the floor, a grunt and a whispered, 'dammit' before they continued to turn the key in the lock. The door opened and it was the same goon from earlier, the one who had been decent to her since she got here.
He walked in holding a pile of things in his arms. She walked over to him, curious to see what he had.
"Boss had me bring you these. I got sweatpants, a shirt, some hygiene stuff... whatever we could find. Consider yourself extremely fortunate that he's doing this for ya. Nobody has been kept alive for this long, let alone pampered like this."
She took the pile of things from him. "Thanks. And I do."
"Don't get used to it. It can change at any moment."
"Yep, thanks for the advice." She said, turning on her heel and taking the things into the bathroom. The goon departed, giving her privacy.
She unwrapped the soap and set it on the edge of the tub with the comb. She hung the new clothes on the rack with the towel, as there was no other clean place to put them.
She drew herself a warm bath, peeling off all of her bloody clothes and throwing them into the corner. She almost forgot her cards. She took them out of the back pocket of her jeans and placed them on the sink.
She turned off the faucet and eased into the water. With the soap, she washed her body and her hair, removing the dried blood. She lowered herself under the water to rinse her hair. Next, she combed her hair out while it was wet. She had to work at it for a while to get out all of the tangles. Her fingers were pruney as she drained the tub, standing up to grab the towel from above and dried off. She threw the towel down on the floor to use as a mat as she stepped out of the tub.
After brushing her teeth, she got dressed in the clothes, a pair of grey sweatpants and a navy blue long-sleeve T-shirt. They were baggy on her, but soft and warm against her squeaky clean skin. She felt so much better now. She pulled her hair out from under the collar and tucked the bottom of the shirt into the pants so that it wasn't hanging all the way down to her knees. She tied the drawstring as tight as it could go, still having to roll it down once so that the sweatpants didn't fall off of her. She pulled on the pair of men's crew socks that were ridiculously huge on her feet.
As she was combing through her long hair a second time, someone knocked on the door. "Come in, I'm decent." she giggled.
Instead of walking in, the goon stuck his head in. "You hungry?"
Eva was reminded of the gnawing pain in her stomach. "Yeah?" She replied, thinking about how she was going to explain her issue with food.
"Well, boss wants you to come eat somethin'."
"Really? I can come out there?"
"That's what he said. He wants you to sit with him, too."
"Okay," She couldn't help the wide grin that spread across her face. This was probably a good sign that Jack wasn't still angry. Could he have really let go of twelve years of anger overnight?
She walked with the goon down the hallway, entering the dining hall. There were men spread out throughout the room, sitting at random tables, eating and talking. They all stopped to look at her as she entered the room. She scanned the room, looking for Jack, but he was nowhere in sight. The goon put his hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, Joker's in the kitchen. Go talk to him." She nodded and made her way to the large industrial kitchen.
He was sitting on the counter, his coat was off. He was chewing something like a rabbit and balling up the wrapper, throwing it to the floor. Jack always chewed loudly with his mouth open, which drove her crazy when she was younger. But now it was just another thing that had become endearing about him because she missed him so much.
"Well, hello..." he swallowed his food audibly. "Glad you decided to come out and be sociable. Love the outfit."
She grinned at him, the scars across her top and bottom lip pulling tight on her skin, causing her smile to be slightly crooked. He noticed how deep they were. He wondered how exactly she got them... that would have to be a conversation for later.
"Hungry?" He asked, opening a foam cooler that was on the counter next to where he sat. Her smile faltered, realizing she would have to remind him of her "issue".
"Yes, but... is there anything that's sealed really well?"
He remembered her issue. It had to be easy to tell if it hadn't been tampered with, or she wouldn't eat it. He never gave her crap about it, as he knew the reason why she didn't trust anything that had been opened or could have been spiked with something.
"Jello?" He asked, licking the deep scar on the side of his mouth as he fished around inside the box. "Uhh... Cosmic brownie?"
"Jello would be fine!"
He tossed the Jello to her, impressed that she caught it easily with no heads up.
"Spoon?" She asked.
"No, no, sweetheart. That's a Jello."
She groaned, rolling her eyes, causing him to smile in amusement at her annoyance. "I'll look for one."
She opened a couple drawers, finding only very rusted ladles and dust.
"Here." He said, now standing behind her. He handed her a plastic spoon.
"Thank you! Bean." She said playfully as she took it from him, using her personal insult which nobody understood but had always been her 'thing'. He followed her out to a table where she sat, as far away from the men as she could get. He sat down across from her, a new snack in his hand. It was that cosmic brownie he had offered.
Jack sat back and chewed as he watched her take a moment to examine the Jello, then peel back the lid. She finally took a bite of it, looking up to notice that he had been staring at her the whole time. She smiled slightly and then stared back intensely, watching him eat.
"Hey, that's my last jello, man!" a guy complained from another table. He was turned around in his seat, glaring at her.
She turned to him. "Fight me." She challenged, taking another bite of the Jello as she stared him down.
"I, ah, would mind my own busi-ness if I were you." Joker threatened his goon.
The man stopped harassing her, turning his back to them.
Jack leaned in, brushing his hands together as he was finished with his brownie.
She had finished with her Jello, and set the empty cup in the middle of the table with the spoon in it.
"Why did you want me to come out and eat with you?" She asked.
"I just, uh, thought you could use a little break."
"Oh, well thank you."
There was an awkward silence for a moment before she spoke again.
"Will you teach me how to use a gun?" she asked out of the blue.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "A gun?"
"Yes. The thing that goes 'pew pew'," she said, making a gesture like she was shooting at him. "That thing. I know how to do almost everything, but I don't know how to use a gun."
He thought for a moment. He had things he needed to do, but he could squeeze that in.
"I can, uh, take you somewhere tomorrow and teach you."
"Really? Oh, thank you so much! I've wanted to learn for so long!"
"We'll have to make it quick. I have uh, things to take care of."
"I know, I know. Busy man, nobody else is going to upset the established order but you. I understand."
"Glad you get it. Tomorrow, we'll uh, go for a little ride somewhere I know."
"Thank you."
Jack noticed something on Eva's hand that he hadn't noticed before. It was a ring, one of those vending machine rings that came with a "birthstone". It was the one he had given her when they were 12 and 14.
He grabbed her hand, pulling it closer to look at it. She looked at him strangely before realizing what he was doing.
"You uh, kept that thing all these years?" He whispered so that his men wouldn't hear him.
"Of course I did. I don't take it off, even though it turns my finger green," She said smiling to herself, turning it where the stone was straight. "My best and only friend gave it to me." She looked back up to meet his eyes.
With just the most subtle smile, he gazed back at her. His best friend. The one who held the part of him he had decided died the day he'd gained his scars. Was that part of him really dead, or did she take it with her when she was ripped away from him years ago? He truly thought it had died that day, when he thought she had abandoned him. But she hadn't, he knew the truth now. He even did some research and learned more about what had happened to her.
Now, she was here. And she held onto that ring, a symbol of their eternal friendship, all of these years...
He abruptly smacked his hands down on the table, startling Eva. He stood up from his seat, leaned over her with his hand on the back of her chair.
"I would love to do this again soon. But uh, unfortunate-ly, my men and I have some business to tend to. Can't keep Gotham waiting, my dear."
She nodded. "Okay. So back to the cage?" she said with a smile.
"Back to the cage you go, little birdy." He sang as he escorted her back to the room.
Back in the room again, this time without any zip ties at all, she spent the rest of her day. She couldn't stop grinning, couldn't contain the excitement she felt at the idea of Jack teaching her how to use a gun. Of course, she really wanted - and needed - to learn how to use a gun, especially after what almost happened to her today. But the most exciting thing was the idea of spending time with her best friend. She would take anything to just be by his side, hearing his voice.
As the sun set outside the dirty window and the time came for her to close her eyes, it was like Christmas Eve. She almost couldn't get to sleep.
Their little date tomorrow was the best thing to happen to her in years.