Bruce finished his sixth vial of potion. Nothing had changed. He placed his hand on the wall and watched for another hour as the Joker lay still on the floor, unconscious, shivering and twitching. Perhaps this was all there was, Bruce began to think.
Maybe this was his escape. Bruce wanted to see the Joker freed and maybe this was how it had happened. He died. And Lucius did not want to upset Adriana so he didn't tell her. But that made no sense. Once Adriana had her gift back, she confronted Bruce about what he had done. He remembered the morning they came here together and she used her gift from above ground to tell Bruce that the Joker was okay. it made no sense, unless she was lying too, to spare his feelings.
But even that made no sense. Bruce kept trying to rationalize, and the conclusion that he came to was that the team got there in time. Adriana and Lucius wouldn't hesitate to tell Bruce if he was responsible for the Joker's death.
Bruce sighed and then he heard a noise. The Joker shifted on the ground and sat upright. He leaned against the wall and stared ahead. He wasn't dead yet, but Bruce could see that he was very close. A moment later, Bruce heard another sound. The elevator.
"Finally!" Bruce shouted, heard by no one.
Over five hours he had been here waiting for something to happen and not it finally was.
As the elevator platform came down from the ceiling, Bruce moved to his feet with his hand still on the wall. He expected to hear several pair of feet coming his way as the sound of footsteps broke the silence. One pair. There was only one person.
Bruce watched Adriana walk closer.
"Adriana?" Bruce asked, thinking somehow Adriana had found him and knew what he was doing. But she didn't react. She wasn't there, just like the Joker wasn't. He was seeing the past.
Bruce watched the shock on Adriana's face when she looked at the state the Joker was in. Even after five hours, Bruce was not remotely used to it. He looked horrible.
"How..." Bruce said. "When is this?"
Bruce had no idea that Adriana had seen the Joker at all. She never mentioned coming down here. Bruce felt a sense of betrayal.
"Go back," Bruce heard the Joker say to her.
Bruce listened to them talk and realized the Joker was perceiving her as yet another one of his frequent hallucinations. Adriana watched the Joker go to the sink and do what Bruce had already see him do dozens of times. Fling water at his face hundreds of time. His mind was broken.
Bruce lost the plot as he watched them. The reason he was here, he reminded himself, was to find out where the Joker was relocated to so that he could kill him. He watched the skeletal, weak, crippled man in front of him and wasn't sure that he could do it. Bruce never expected he would feel sympathy for the Joker. It wasn't sympathy, he told himself. But it was close. Things had become much more complicated.
Adriana used a laser to cut the chain on the Joker's ankle and Bruce watched him clasp her arm, squeezing it until he finally seemed to accept that she was really there. She encouraged him to come with her to the elevator to leave.
The Joker made the long, slow and obviously painful walk to the elevator and Bruce watched them begin to go up. He could hear a struggle, voices, a bit of shouting before they returned a couple of minutes later. It was confusing.
As Adriana and the Joker returned, Bruce could see the Joker was spooked. He looked like he had seen unspeakable horrors. Adriana told him they would try again. He was too afraid to leave.
The hurt in Adriana's eyes was unbearable so Bruce looked back at the Joker who slumped down onto the floor again, his shirt and pants still soaked from the water. Adriana left him there reluctantly. Bruce could feel the potion fading as the Joker was left along again.
Before he could completely disappear, Bruce saw the Joker grab his chest and lean forward. He fell down onto the ground again and squeezed his eyes shut. He was in pain. Bruce wasn't sure if he was having angina or a serious heart attack. The Joker went unconscious again and his breathing sped up. Bruce could see his rib cage moving up and down quickly, he was hyperventilating. Gradually his breathing appeared to slow down and stop.
As he faded away and the final vial of potion wore off Bruce was horrified. Would Adriana return the next day to find him dead?
He needed to see Twyla again. He needed more potion.
.
.
.
Adriana and Bruce were both quiet that evening. Both deep in thought about their worries.
Bruce was worried about Adriana seeing him as a cold blooded and inhumane killer all this time. Adriana was worried about the Joker. He had left the building a couple of hours ago. He was relocated to an apartment in the city where he would be staying for two days while he investigated Brake's stabbing and tried to find out which enemy of his was behind it.
Bruce planned to see Twyla first thing in the morning and wanted to leave work early again to see the rest. As he considered it, he thought of asking Adriana outright. Twyla was right, Large doses of this potion had made him impulsive.
"Is he dead?" Bruce asked Adriana as soon as she stepped out of the shower.
Adriana raised her eyebrows. "Who? Brake? He's...you told me he was fine and the surgery went well-"
"Not him," Bruce said, not wanting to worry her. "He's fine."
"Who then?" Adriana asked and squeezed her hair with a towel and walked into the bedroom.
"The Joker," Bruce asked.
Adriana began to shake her head.
"He's not?" Bruce asked her.
"No...he's alive," Adriana said, and Bruce could hear it in her voice that she didn't want to talk about it.
"Are you sure?" Bruce asked. "He could be dead. Lucius could be lying to us both."
"No.." Adriana said. "He's alive. I know it."
"I paid Lucius to send a team down there to get him," Bruce said. "And to move him to an isolated secure location. A prison essentially. He could have died at any point."
"He's not dead, Bruce," Adriana repeated. "Okay?"
"There's no way you can know that for sure," Bruce said. "Unless you saw for yourself that he was alive when they extracted him."
Adriana looked down.
"Did you?" Bruce asked. "Did you go down there?"
She wasn't answering. Bruce took it as a yes.
"And you never told me," Bruce said.
"Lucius thought...it wouldn't be a good idea for others to go down there first," Adriana said. "He thought it would traumatize him."
Bruce swallowed. "You went alone."
"Yes," Adriana said.
"Tell me what happened," Bruce demanded.
"Why? Who cares?" Adriana said, her voice changing to anger. "Not you! If your would have seen the condition he was in-"
Bruce waited for her to say more.
"Why haven't you told me the condition he was in?' Bruce asked.
"Because you nearly killed him," Adriana said, still angry but forcing her voice to remain low.
Bruce felt his own anger building. It was the potion, he knew it. He felt audacious and irrational.
"And who would have lost sleep over that!?" Bruce shouted.
Adriana stepped back.
"Why are you yelling at me?" she asked.
Bruce cleared his throat. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "Just tell me what happened. Tell me how you found him and what condition he was in."
"No," Adriana shook her head, obviously upset. "I'm going to bed. I don't want to talk about it."
"Did he require medical attention? Did they send a medical team with him on the flight out?" Bruce began to impulsively ask questions even though Adriana didn't want to discuss it. "His location can't be too far then if he survived the trip-"
"Bruce," Adriana interrupted. "Stop."
"And if he was in as bad of a condition as you say-" Bruce spoke again, almost unable to control the impulse to speak.
"Get out," Adriana said.
"What?" Bruce asked.
"You're not sleeping in here," she told him. "Get out."
Bruce was surprised. It was the first time she had kicked him out of their bed.
"I just need to know one thing," Bruce said but Adriana began to grab a pillow.
"Fine, I'll sleep in one of the guest rooms then-" she said and then Bruce walked over and grabbed her arms.
"I apologize," he said. "I will stop."
"I know you will," she told him. "I meant it. Get out."
Bruce felt words coming up again. All of the questions leading towards finding out where the Joker was now. Without a doubt Adriana knew and Bruce knew it was useless to keep asking her more prying questions for clues. He pressed his lips together to prevent himself from talking. He kissed Adriana on the cheek after he turned away from the kiss he tried to place on her lips.
He thought of the death he had stopped. If he would have just comforted Adriana in her sadness and let Wyatt die this would all be over. In a way, Bruce felt that the Joker had suffered enough. The only reason he still felt the need to kill him was because someone needed to die and soon. Bruce was worried that something would happen to Adriana or Arsenio. He hated it.
"Goodnight," Bruce said before leaving the bedroom.
Adriana said nothing to him and went back into the bathroom.