Disclaimer: I do not own any DC characters or locations. I only own the OC's.
The inside of the 59th Street Diner seemed to have caught the highly contagious disease that had been spreading through Gotham like a chaotic, poorly contained mutation of the flu. Every other time she had been there, the inhabitants had been chatting noisily and eating, laughing about this and that, without a care in the world, without so much as a glance toward the huge glass windows that lined the front of the restaurant. But now, as Leila stepped inside, it became immediately obvious that something was incredibly different; she did not need much time to deduce why. In fact, seeing how Gotham had been in a near state of open anarchy for the past week, she found it downright surprising that anyone was there at all.
There was a rather obvious sense of barely restrained panic in both the patrons and employees alike, and as Leila and her crew stepped into the diner, she could not help but notice the way several people turned their heads quickly to look over at the doors. It almost could have been mistaken as a collective, compulsive tick.
"Geez..." murmured a voice just next to her. "It's almost like they expect him to come waltzing in any second. Like the next step in his elaborate plan is to shoot up a lower east-side diner..."
Glancing toward her shoulder, Leila rolled her eyes at Matt's callous attempt at sarcasm as he flicked a fuzzy ball of runaway gauze from the front of his black uniform shirt. Just minutes ago, she had caught him glancing up and down the street nervously as he climbed out from the back of the ambulance. She chose not to mention this for the time being.
"Yeah," she agreed, shaking her head. "But can you really blame them? He hasn't exactly been predictable."
Beside her, Matt had just opened his mouth to reply, but Leila's attention was suddenly shifted to the pocket of her black pants, where she could feel her cell phone buzzing away. With a roll of her eyes, she reached down for it, sliding her fingers into the material to retrieve the vibrating device and upon pulling it out, she noticed that the caller ID was currently displaying a number that began with the digits '1-808'. A low groan escaped her, causing Matt to turn his head and glance down at the phone in her hand. Though before he could comment or get a good look at the number, Leila pressed her thumb to the red button and slid the phone back into her pocket. She could feel his frown on the side of her face but did not acknowledge his expression, instead taking the opportunity to glance up at the overhead menu board with a sigh.
"I don't even know why I bother looking at the menu anymore," she grumbled in an effort to distract him, her eyes falling onto her usual choice. Beside her, Matt was doing the same, nodding as he folded his arms across his chest.
"Chili right? Hold the sour cream?" he asked, grinning sideways at Leila as she grunted a laugh.
"You know me too well."
Within moments, a rather frizzy haired, notably anxious waitress walked over to the counter, pulling a small booklet of tickets from the pocket of her waist apron, her eyebrows raising as she recognized the familiar team of paramedics. A pen followed the book of tickets and she clicked the top of it several times too many as she first looked to Jay, the ambulance driver and oldest of the team.
"Hey, guys," she greeted them with an air of familiarity, her words escaping in the midst of a heavy sigh. "What'll it be tonight?"
With an upward glance at the menu board, Jay opened his mouth to answer her, just as Leila and Matt reached the counter on either side of him. However almost the moment he began to speak, the small walkie talkie hooked to the pocket of his uniform cargo pants gave a loud noise of radio static, followed shortly by a female voice.
'Motor vehicle accident at the intersection of 37th avenue and Mott Street, Code 3, male driver priority two, in route to Gotham Municipal, requiring EMT response, two female victims, priority two and three.'
Jay turned to either side of him, where his team members stood watching, before he turned on his heel and marched quickly toward the door, leaving Matt to follow him closely, and Leila to turn back to the counter where the waitress was watching with a blank, almost bored expression on her face. Her face formed into what she hoped was an apologetic smile before she too turned and followed in her teammates' wake, out onto the curb where the back doors to the ambulance were already thrown open and awaiting her. She climbed in without hesitation, pausing only momentarily to swing the metal doors shut behind her, then turning to sit down across from Matt, who was rubbing his growling stomach with one hand, a stony expression lingering on his face.
"Kinda hard to believe we still have all the usual accidents to deal with, on top of all this Joker shit..." he grumbled a few moments after the ambulance had pulled away from the curb with a sharp lurch, the sirens now screaming noisily, rhythmically atop the truck overhead.
With a flick of her hand, Leila tossed her long, heavy ponytail over her shoulder, her eyes glancing quickly to the small, upper window of the ambulance, where she could see the red and white flashing lights reflecting brightly against the blurred, passing buildings. She cleared her throat, to raise her voice over the sound of the sirens.
"Just be glad we haven't had to deal with anything directly related to that stuff," she told Matt, arching one of her dark eyebrows when he rolled his eyes. "We've been lucky so far. You heard what happened to Scott's truck the other day after the mess at Loeb's memorial."
Nodding, Matt reached behind him for a pair of sterile, blue latex gloves as the ambulance came to a rather abrupt halt. "I still can't believe he got fired for that. I mean, Dent of all people told him to beat it but does he say anything to Mitchell? Nope. Not a word." At this, he paused, tossing another pair of gloves over to Leila, before reaching out to the open the back doors. "He definitely wont be getting my vote next term."
As she slid the blue latex gloves onto her hands, a smile grin met her lips when she noticed how much easier this was for her now after doing it countless times over the past year. On Leila's first night as a paramedic for the Gotham City EMS team, she had been so nervous, almost to the point of hysteria on their first call, which coincidentally had also been to a traffic accident, though that particular scene had been much worse than the current. The bag of equipment had felt like a tackle box filled with solid lead as she had dragged it from the floor of the ambulance, all while the red, blue and white flashing lights from the police cars and other emergency vehicles around her acted like something of a strobe, disorienting her and making her near state of panic even more severe.
But after a solid year on the team, of working thirty-five, sometimes upwards of forty hours a week, Leila felt she could attend to a simple car accident with absurd ease. The bag of medical tools and equipment could have been filled with stuffed toys for all the notice she took of it's weight, and within moments, she was at Matt's side, where he was kneeling down at the crushed driver's side door, speaking in a soothing tone to the middle-aged woman behind the steering wheel. Leila did not stop to listen but instead moved quickly to the other side of the car, where she could see a younger girl bracing her left arm while tears streamed steadily down her face. Without hesitation, she pulled open the seemingly undamaged passenger door to the sedan and leaned down.
"Hi, honey, can you tell me your name?" she asked gently, watching the side of the girl's face as she glanced over to the left where Matt was beckoning to Jay for the stretcher. Turning her head again, the girl's eyes were wide with panic.
"Is my mom okay?" she asked quickly, her voice frantic. Leila remained patient and leaned into the car, reaching across the girl to her left side, being infinitely careful not to nudge her injured arm while she unbuckled the seat belt.
"We're going to get her out of here and have a look over in the ambulance," she explained, using that gentle, calm voice she had developed and perfected over the past year. "But I need you to tell me your name, okay?"
"Haleigh," the girl finally answered distractedly, once again looking toward her left where Jay was wheeling up the stretcher and Matt was unbuckling the woman from her seat.
"Okay, Haleigh?" Leila used her name to catch her attention and distract her from the sight of her mother's blood dripping slowly along the far side of her neck. "Do you remember what happened?"
"We were just driving home and the light turned green and this guy just...hit us as we drove past this street," Haleigh began to explain, using her uninjured arm to point to her right, where she assumed the opposing street of the intersection lay. She did not seem to notice that the car had been hit so hard, it was now perpendicular to that street after making a full one-eighty degree spin. Leila did not tell her this, but instead turned her attention to her arm when Haleigh gave a hiss of pain. "I think it's broken..." she whimpered, her large blue eyes again welling up with tears.
"Alright, well, here's what we're gonna do, okay?" Leila started, turning a bit to face the girl and seat herself gingerly on the edge of the car, with her back to the dashboard, while at the same time reaching into the massive, organized bag of bandages for a makeshift sling. "I'm going to have you put your arm in this sling until we can get you out of the car," she then explained, moving again to place her knee on the floor of the car between the girl's feet, to get a better, head-on look at what she was doing. "Then once we get you out, I'm going to walk you back to the ambulance so you can ride to the hospital with your mom. Everything sound alright to you?" Haleigh nodded hastily, lowering her head slightly so Leila could slide the strap of the sling onto the back of her neck.
After several whimpers and a few more tears, Leila managed to guide Haleigh's broken arm into the sling, before she removed herself from the car and reached out to help the girl to her feet, using gentle guidance for every step. It did not seem at first glance that Haleigh was injured in any other way, which she had to admit privately was rather fortunate as they walked quickly back to the ambulance; her mother did not look very good at all. It seemed the driver of the other vehicle had hit them at such a speed that the door and window next to her had buckled and shattered, sending a rather large shard of glass into the side of her face and crushing her left leg. Leila could not help but wonder how the firemen were able to open the severely damaged driver's side door without assistance from the 'Jaws of Life'.
The woman was laying on the stretcher with her neck in a sturdy brace, but seemed to be conscious as Haleigh and Leila approached, crying and whimpering through her pain as Matt and Jay hoisted the collapsible stretcher into the back of the ambulance.
"My daughter...Haleigh, is she alright?" she asked, her wide eyes swiveling up to Matt's face as he locked the wheels on the stretcher.
"Mom!" Haleigh cried out, and before Leila could insist on helping her, she reached out with her one usable hand to pull herself up into the back of the ambulance alongside her mother. "I'm right here, I'm fine!"
At the sound of her daughter's voice, the woman let out a relieved cry, holding out her left hand as far as she could beneath the strap holding her to the stretcher.
"Haleigh, I'm so sorry, sweetie..." she groaned, her tone strained and choked with pain and tears. "I didn't even see that other car."
"Hawkin, grab the doors," Matt instructed, shifting somewhat awkwardly around Haleigh and her mother's embracing hands, while he pulled a long measure of gauze and blue towels from a bin overhead. Immediately, Leila moved to comply and as she leaned out of back of the ambulance to slam shut the heavy doors, the siren and lights overhead once again exploded in a spectacle of sight and sound, though she did not flinch; it had been a long time since that noise had caused her to jump. Now it was just another part of her everyday life...and she loved it.
It was beyond probable that the sound of emergency sirens was not exactly a comforting experience to many people, as it likely brought about horrible memories of lost or injured loved ones, of traumatic times and terrifying moments. But to Leila, the earsplitting scream of the ambulance and fire truck sirens bouncing against the close buildings was something of a love to her, something that reminded her of all the hard work she put into school, of how proud her mother and father were of her career choice, even if it was not her original plan.
Within just a few minutes, the wheels of the massive, dark green and white ambulance were pulling into an emergency bay, where several nurses and an ER physician stood waiting, pulling stethoscopes from around their necks and preparing to receive their newest patients. Leila was the first to throw open the doors and jump down, reaching out with both hands to help Matt with lowering the stretcher's legs to meet the ground. A doctor in ugly green scrubs was at her shoulder in an instant.
"What do we have?" she asked, her tone professional yet calm. Leila took a step back to allow the stretcher room to turn around.
"Two females involved in a traffic accident," Leila started, pushing the back of the stretcher toward the wide, open doors leading to the inside of the hospital. "Priority two, lacerations to the face and neck, crush injuries on the left leg, no tachycardia, one-forty over ninety, otherwise stable. Younger female with a possible broken arm, priority three."
"Alright, people, let's get her in!" cried the doctor, reaching out both hands to grip the cotton mat on which the injured woman was laying, which she and a team of nurses transferred to one of the hospital's own stretchers, leaving the one belonging to the Gotham City EMS team behind. And with that, the team and their patient hurried off into the depths of the over-crowded emergency room, with a scared and confused Haleigh in their midst, leaving Leila and Matt quite alone, slightly out of breath but otherwise empty handed. With a sigh, Matt held up one dry bloody, gloved hand for a high-five from Leila, who grinned and swung out to meet him, their hands meeting with a satisfying smack of latex on latex.
"Good work, Rookie," he said, smirking as he reached out for the barren stretcher once he had discarded his gloves in a nearby bio hazard waste bin, to begin pushing it in front of him back toward the end of the hallway. "I think you might be finally catching on."
With a roll of her eyes, Leila shook her head, crossing over in front of him to help fold the legs of the stretcher back into position, to once again push it back into the ambulance. "Well, ya know, after a year of school, plus another year on the job, stuff starts to stick. Maybe with another couple years, I'll be able to move past 'rookie'!" she exclaimed jokingly, though before Matt could answer, she called out to Jay, who was already in the back of the truck, tossing out the bloody gauze and towels. "Oh, and thanks, Jay! I can't imagine what we'd do without you," she commented sarcastically, leaning against the open doors as Matt did the same opposite her. Inside the ambulance, Jay shrugged, holding up both gloved hands in an innocent gesture.
"Hey, you guys had it all under control," he said, dropping his pose to drag the top of his forearm across his glistening, bald pate. "Besides, that was an easy call. I could'a done that one by myself." Both Leila and Matt made noises of annoyance as Jay hopped down to the pavement between them.
"Oh, okay, so the next call, we'll just sit back and relax. Let you handle it all by yourself," Matt answered, climbing into the ambulance past Jay. Leila followed, grinning privately to herself as the two guys continued to bicker, but only for their voices to be interrupted by yet another fateful burst of static from the radio that was once again clipped to Jay's pocket. However, just as the team turned their attention to the call, expecting a different, though calm voice belonging to some 911 dispatcher, Leila, Jay and Matt all frowned in unison when a familiar, male voice came through instead.
"All units report to House 14 immediately," said the voice of their supervisor. "I repeat, all units report back to House 14 immediately."
As Leila looked at both Matt and Jay, she let her eyes bounce back and forth between them, watching as the two men did the same back at her. Her frown deepened as she motioned with one finger to the radio now resting in Jay's hand.
"Have either of you ever heard him do that before?" she asked, struggling to keep the hint of apprehension out of her voice as the two guys shook their heads confusedly. Matt was the first to answer verbally as he leaned down to secure the wheels of the stretcher.
"No, I don't think he's ever done that," he said, sitting up to look back down to where Leila and Jay stood on the pavement. "So we better haul ass over there. Jay, flip the lights on, let's go."
As Jay hurried up to the driver's seat of the ambulance, Leila copied Matt and sat down, forcefully attempting to ignore the vague sense of fear that had begun to well itself up in the pit of her stomach as the sirens and lights came to life overhead. Despite how comfortable she felt in the field of emergency medical care, no matter the situation, no matter how badly injured a victim was, or how severe the accident turned out to be, something about the urgency and somewhat randomness in Mitchell's voice over the radio had caused a rather surprising reaction from her more baser instincts. It had been quite a long time since she had experienced the sensation of panic, but with effort, she ignored the first flutters of this emotion, so she would not give this away to Matt when she spoke.
"Do you think something happened?" she asked, finally peeling off her own gloves to toss them into the bin across from her. "Like...with one of the other teams?"
Directly opposite her, Matt shrugged, turning his head to glance up and over his shoulder through the window, as if to gauge how fast Jay was driving by judging how quickly the buildings were sliding past. Leila did the same, noticing just then as a solid red traffic light passed overhead; it seemed Jay was feeling some of the same urgency.
"No idea, but I hope it's nothing serious," he replied, shaking his head, though a second later his blue eyes met hers, where she could now see some of her same apprehension reflected there. "Though I can't really imagine Mitchell calling us all back just to have a simple chit chat, you know what I mean?"
Leila could not dispute his logic, so she stayed quiet, temporarily lost in her own musings. Matt was right. It did not seem like their supervisor would recall all the teams on the street unless it was something really important, or to warn them of some unknown danger, and seeing how 'unknown danger' was at an all-time high lately in Gotham, she felt that perhaps her sense of growing fear was justified. She could just imagine Mitchell telling all the paramedics that they needed to evacuate their ambulances so they could be searched for bombs that had been possibly planted there in some cunning diversionary plan by the Joker. A moment later, Leila wrote this off, realizing that Mitchell would likely have just told them that over the radio, to save them from getting back into the trucks. No, nothing seemed to make sense to her at that time, every idea seemed wildly farfetched to the point of paranoia, so Leila gave up trying to guess and turned her attention to remaining calm and professional, just as she had been trained to do. It would not be long before she and her team were told the news.
Within only a few minutes, the ambulance slowed, gave a bounce as the wheels pulled into a parking lot, then stopped rather abruptly and within seconds, Matt and Leila unlatched the doors, only to stop short when their eyes found the scene that lay before them. The two monstrous firetrucks belonging to Firehouse 14 had flooded the parking lot, their drivers and crews all getting out and sharing the same looks of uncertainty as they glanced around. Nearly all of them were talking, huddled in their teams and Leila wondered if they were having the same paranoid ideas as she had been having just minutes before when Jay suddenly rounded the back of the ambulance.
"Parker just came over and said that Mitchell and Craig are going to brief us in the bay," he told them, his eyes glancing around at the other teams, who were obviously being told the same information a few yards away. "We should head up there now."
After climbing down, Leila followed Jay and Matt toward the lit station house, where the huge sliding metal doors bearing the massive number '14' had already been raised, exposing the inside of the docking bay where their ambulance and its two firetruck brothers were usually parked. Two men stood there, both wearing black uniforms not unlike Leila's, and both wore the same expression of extreme smugness, but also urgency as they watched their employees and co-workers walk toward them. All muttering came to an abrupt halt as the firemen and three paramedics reached the cover of the tall docking bay. Craig, the Captain of Firehouse 14 spoke first, his eyes glancing from face to face.
"I'm sure you're all wondering why we've called you back here, but Commissioner Gordon has asked for radio silence," he began, his tone quick and sharp. Another knot of nerves dropped into Leila's stomach and she glanced quickly over at the side of Matt's face. He did not do the same, but she could tell he felt her looking at him as a muscle near his jaw gave a tick. "It seems there is some sort of commotion down at the docks, between the Prewitt buildings and the bridges. Now, I know we were warned earlier about bomb detection being done along the bridges and tunnels, but I guess the Joker..." the Captain gave a short pause here as several hushed murmurings broke out amongst the small gathering of firemen. He continued, raising his voice over the noise."...was using that threat as a diversion. It's been confirmed that the bombs were placed in the lower decks of the two ferries, which are currently floating in the bay-"
"Are the people already on them?" one of the firemen interrupted abruptly, his eyes slightly widened as he stared at Captain Craig, who nodded quickly a moment later.
"Yes," he answered curtly. "One of the ferries is carrying civilians. The other is carrying a load of prisoners from the island. So the commissioner and the mayor have called all emergency staff down to the docks, to be on standby. The missing patients from Gotham General have been removed from the Prewitt building and are being evacuated to Gotham Municipal, so our EMT's are needed there now. Grayson," Craig paused, looking to Jay, who raised his eyebrows upon being addressed by his last name. "You take Hawkin and Park down there, find Captain Lee from House 8 and ask him where he wants you guys stationed. Ang, you take your team-"
Craig continued to rattle off orders, but Leila was no longer listening as she turned to follow Matt and Jay back toward the ambulance, her steps quick and light as she trotted ahead a few steps to hear what they were saying.
"Just figures this shit would happen," Matt was saying, glancing over when Leila reached his side. "We're the only team that hasn't had anything crazy happen this week and now we get called to this," he grumbled, once again flinging open the doors of the ambulance so Leila could climb in ahead of him and take her usual seat on the far side of the stretcher. She nodded distractedly, unsure of what exactly she was agreeing to as she had only been half listening to Matt. Relief was calming her nerves from earlier, but at the same time, newborn anxiety was seeping through her. From what she had gathered at the 'briefing', the two ferries had been rigged to blow up, but if they hadn't already been detonated, then what was the Joker waiting for? He had already displayed a knack for not caring about how many people he killed or how much property he destroyed, so what was stalling him now? Vaguely, Leila had the feeling that there was more to this situation than what the fire captain had so hastily explained.
Before the ambulance had even begun to slow, it became obvious that they had reached the docks, as Leila looked up at the window to find it practically glowing with flashing blue, red and white lights. The air beyond the truck was thick with shouting and sirens as other police cars and emergency vehicles approached around them and inside her chest, Leila could feel her heart banging away, her blood pounding in her ears. She could not imagine the sight that was about to greet her eyes.
A rush of muggy, salty air filled the ambulance as Matt pushed the doors open, the muffled sound of voices and sirens now magnified and cleared. Jay had apparently stopped the truck on the far side of a blocked two-lane street, directly across from the docks and as Leila followed Matt onto the pavement, she immediately turned her head toward the water. The bay was black under the late night sky, rippling as though paved with tiny gems, reflecting the lights from both the emergency vehicles and the temporary spotlights that had been set to point upward at the towering Prewitt building. As Leila stared out over it, she could make out the forms of the two ferries, floating helpless like bobbing corks. Just beside her, Matt let out a low whistle from between his teeth as he took in the same sight.
"I can't even imagine..." he murmured, shaking his head as his hands met his narrow waist. "Those people must be so scared."
Nodding, Leila was about to agree when suddenly Jay appeared at her side, accompanied by a man she had never seen before, though the stripes on his sleeve were unmistakable. He wore a harried, anxious expression and a bulletproof vest, emblazoned with large yellow letters spelling 'GCPD SWAT'. Without introducing himself, he pointed quickly up at the Prewitt building, which stood dark and solitary along the bank of the bay.
"We have SWAT teams in the building now securing floors," the man said, his voice hoarse and strained, apparently from having been shouting for the past two hours. "The Batman is in there now, attempting to capture the Joker," he went on, but at this, Matt broke in, pointing one hand out toward the water.
"What about the ferries?" he asked loudly, raising his voice momentarily as the firetruck from House 14 went past. "Are the bombs still active?" Turning her head again toward the SWAT team captain, Leila waited for his answer, hoping he would have some sort of good news. However, at Matt's question, his sweating face blanched slightly as he shook his head.
"No, and that's the catch," he answered, casting one quick glance over his shoulder at the massive, partially constructed building behind them. "The Joker gave the detonators to the opposite boat and told them that whichever ferry blew up the other first, he'd let that one live," he paused for just a moment while Matt and Jay both groaned. Leila felt her stomach clench and goosebumps crawl up along her exposed forearms. "But he said that if neither of the boats blew up, he'd blow them both upat midnight." the captain concluded, bringing up his wrist to glance at the time, while Leila, Matt and Jay all did the same; 11:48. Matt swore next to Leila's left shoulder, dragging a hand down the top of his head. "The other medic teams are taking the hostages from Gotham General over to GMH now, so we need you guys to be on standby here. Gordon has the radios all silenced so I'll have an officer over to keep you guys informed as soon as I know something."
As the captain trotted away, shouting orders to a few nearby policemen, Jay turned to both Leila and Matt, shaking his head as his eyes glanced over toward the water. "Doesn't seem right, does it..." he commented. "Normal people having to decide whether or not to kill a bunch of criminals."
Leila nodded her agreement, glancing sideways as Matt took a half-step back to sit on the metal step of the ambulance. "And you can just imagine those poor guards on the boat with the prisoners," she added to Jay's observation, suppressing a shiver with difficulty. "I'd be surprised if there wasn't a full blown riot on that ferry."
Minutes ticked by slowly, the ambient sound of sirens dying down occasionally, then picking back up when another emergency vehicle would arrive and as Leila watched the ferries, she could not help but wonder what was taking the Batman so long. The whole city of Gotham viewed him as some dark, mysterious hero of sorts, capable of rescuing them from the clutches of crime, and yet he seemed to be having so much trouble with just one man...but then again, Leila remembered, this was no ordinary man the city was dealing with. Yes, they had encountered serial killers or snipers or mob hits, but they had never seen chaos on this scale of grandeur before. A day or two earlier, Leila had overhead someone in a Starbucks equating the Joker to a terrorist, and at the time, she had rolled her eyes, thinking this had been a bit of a stretch. But now, as she stared out over the water to the ferries where a least two hundred people sat helpless, trapped together and facing their impending doom, she felt ready to agree with that idea. The Joker was indeed a terrorist, and as she turned her gaze upward toward the building, she found herself sending a silent word of encouragement to the Batman, if he really was up there attempting to subdue that madman.
Just as Leila's eyes adjusted to the new distance between herself and the uppermost levels of the building, she squinted, frowning when she noticed something apparently falling through the air, though she was too far to tell what it was just yet. However as shouting and screams broke out around her, Leila gasped, bringing both of her hands up to her mouth as Matt and Jay both turned their heads, looking up to where her eyes were focused, watching the small figure of a human body falling rapidly toward the ground.
"Oh my god..." she vaguely heard Matt mutter next to her as he stood up from his place on the step of the ambulance. Her wide eyes squinted hard again, straining to see what had happened. From the distance, it appeared that the body had stopped falling about halfway down the building. It now looked to be suspended there, having seemingly hit an invisible block. On her right, Jay took a single step in the direction of the building, as though just one foot closer would help him see better. "What's going on?" Matt asked of no one in particular, glancing quickly to Leila and Jay.
All around them, the shouting had given way to voices at normal levels, all seemingly asking the same questions, of who had been thrown from the building, and now, how that one person had seemingly been rescued. At first, Leila had to wonder if perhaps the Joker had somehow managed to push the Batman off, but almost as soon as this thought passed through her mind, she realized that this idea meant the Joker would also have had to rescue him...which seemed highly unlikely. Just as she was about to open her mouth to ask Jay what he thought had happened, the same SWAT captain from earlier went tearing past them, shouting something into a radio as he sprinted toward the base of the building. Leila folded her arms across her stomach, using her hands to try and discreetly rid her forearms of the chills that had once again coated them as she watched yet another SWAT team assemble at the base of the Prewitt building.
"I really hope they tell us what's going on soon," she mumbled, wishing privately that the weather had been colder, giving her an excuse for the sudden shiver that ran up and down her spine. "It's almost worse to just stand here and wait-" she continued on, but paused, turning her head quickly when Matt suddenly let out a cry upon glancing at his watch.
"Hey! It's after midnight and the boats are still out there!" he exclaimed, pointing unnecessarily with one arm out toward the water, where indeed, the ferries still floated somewhat serenely in the bay, unharmed. Leila let out a sigh as she released the hold on her arms.
"Oh, god, I hope they got him," she groaned, shaking her head as she again turned her attention to the base of the building, where that newly assembled SWAT team had disappeared. On her other side, Jay let out a low hissing noise as his weight shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath, kid," he told her darkly. "Knowing him, he's got some other crazy-ass scheme up his sleeve. I got a feeling this ain't over yet." With a tsk-ing noise, Leila used the back of her hand to swat him on the arm, causing him to jump, while Matt groaned with a roll of his eyes. "Hey! I'm just sayin'," Jay went on, holding up two hands innocently. "We all thought he was done when they caught him a few days ago. Now look what happened!"
Since neither Matt nor Leila could argue with this, they both remained silent, but it turned out, neither of them needed to say anything, as their conversation was ended when a different man wearing yet another GCPD vest came trotting up, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb toward the Prewitt building, inhaling deeply to catch his breath before he spoke. Leila felt her stomach clench again.
"We got him," the man finally exhaled, causing Matt and Jay to turn toward each other and high five over the top of Leila's head while she smiled. The SWAT official shared their enthusiasm with a weak, but happy grin of his own. "Batman left him strung up there like a freakin' pinata so our boys are bringin' him down now." At this, Leila's smile disappeared. 'What?' she asked hastily, but the man ignored her and continued. "So Gordon told us we need to have him checked out and any injuries documented before we get him back to MCU and into the high security cell, just in case his defense attorney tries something along the lines of police brutality. So if you guys could pull up there to the back of the building, he'll be coming down any minute now."
And with that, the man trotted away, leaving Matt, Leila and Jay to all turn and stare at each other, their jaws hanging slack as the magnitude of what they had just been instructed to do set in. Leila watched as Matt shook his head, taking a step back from she and Jay, holding up his hands while a disgusted expression appeared on his face.
"If they think I'm going anywhere near that guy, they're just as crazy as he is," he immediately stated. "You guys are gonna have to do it."
At Leila's right shoulder, Jay rolled his eyes, pulling the keys to the ambulance from the pocket of his black cargo pants. "Oh, c'mon, man, it's not like you gotta give him a back massage. You just have to check for head trauma, listen to his lungs and all that jazz," he said, walking around to the front door of the truck, to climb in, while Leila hopped up into the back where Matt was already seated in the jump seat, his arms folded tight across his chest and a very sour look on his face, like that of a stubborn toddler. She laughed at his expression, tossing her hands as she sat down on the bench across from him.
"Seriously, Matt, how many crazy homeless guys have we had to examine?" she asked, glancing to her right through the open doors of the ambulance as Jay began to drive backwards slowly along the crowded two lane street, toward the base of the building. "Just think of it like that," she then added with a falsely nonchalant shrug. If she was being perfectly honest, Leila was not exactly thrilled to death over the idea of having to be less than three feet from the man who had terrorized Gotham over the past two weeks, but she did not dare convey this to Matt or Jay. For reasons unbeknownst to her, she felt it was absolutely crucial that she be able to keep up with the boys, handle just as much as they did. Across from her, Matt seemed to sense this small insecurity as he raised his eyebrows, nodding decisively as he leaned back in the seat.
"So you can handle this then? You can do the exam, and I'll do the documentation?" he asked in a mockingly bright tone of voice, clearly hoping to get a hasty 'no way!' from Leila in response. However, when she simply shrugged, nodding her head, his sarcastic smile faded quickly from view.
"Sure, that's fine with me," she answered, turning slightly in her seat to pull out a pair of blue latex gloves, hoping beyond everything that her voice sounded more confident than she truly felt.
But yet what she had just said was perfectly true; their team had experienced victims of all kinds over her past year as a paramedic. They had met some seriously insane patients, people suffering from dangerous psychotic episodes and no one had yet been harmed. Leila just figured she should treat this particular patient like any other- with calm, determined professionalism. It should not matter that he had killed over a dozen civilians and city officials alike within the span of two weeks.
As the ambulance came to a halt, with its back tires a mere ten to fifteen feet from the bottommost, back doors to the unfinished Prewitt building, Leila could feel her heart rate increasing with what she wanted to pretend was excitement that Gotham's nightmare had come to an end. Any moment, those doors were going to open and the most dangerous criminal mastermind the city had ever seen would be escorted toward her, and into the back of the truck, where she would be forced to be near him, within arm's reach, within strangling distance. Her racing heart had nothing to do with excitement after all and she was a fool to pretend otherwise. She looked over when Matt appeared at her side.
"We should get out..." he murmured, his eyes trained on the doors across from them, as though he expected the Joker to come bursting through them like a rabid dog out of a cage. "You know, just so he can get in before us or whatever," he then added, making it perfectly plain that he had absolutely no intention whatsoever on allowing himself to be cornered in the back of the ambulance with the Joker between himself and a route of escape. Leila had to admit that this sounded like something of a good idea, so she followed him out onto the pavement, where she turned and stood with her back to the open truck, her eyes fixed, unmoving on the doors across from her. Any second now...
His face was the first thing she saw; a dirty, yet glistening white skull looming through the dark shadows of the powerless Prewitt building doors, two fathomless black holes where his eyes should have been. As the SWAT team around him pushed open the doors to lead him through and out into the night air, the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles around them illuminated the red paint across his lips, which had been smeared upward, accentuating the now visible deep scars on either side of his mouth. Leila fought back a shiver; he was every bit as visually disturbing as the news and police had made him out to be.
Moments ago, she had been wondering curiously to herself whether the Joker would be fighting his captors, straining against them with every ounce of strength he contained, struggling to get away, but to her surprise, he was not. In fact, there was almost a sense of calmness about him, something somewhat happy about the way he was smirking contentedly to himself as he walked benignly between the two large officers on either side of him. He had already been shed of the long purple coat she had heard about, and which she noticed was being carried carefully by another member of the SWAT team, held out before him with one gloved hand as though it was something recently dead.
As he neared her, waves of some foreign energy seemed to radiate from him, pulsing the air around him so strongly, Leila could practically feel her eardrums throbbing from it. It was a sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced. It made her skin crawl, her mouth dry and her legs shaky; fleetingly, she wondered if anyone else around her could feel it as well or if she was particularly susceptible to the evil emanating from this man. Swallowing hard on the newly formed lump in her dry throat, she tore her eyes away from the Joker, to the SWAT team member on his left, who was speaking to him.
"Gordon wants you checked out before you go downtown," the man grunted, nodding his head toward the ambulance in front of them, where Leila and Matt were both standing. She held her breath as the Joker tossed his head slightly, attempting to fling some of his stringy green hair away from his face without the use of his hands, which she noticed had been cuffed tightly in front of him. A malicious grin spread across his mutilated face as his black eyes swiveled from Matt to Leila and back again.
"Ahh..." he growled, using that same clowny voice that Leila had heard so many times on the news over the past week. "Gotta make sure I'm all in one piece before I get a fresh uh...tune up down at the big house, hm?" the Joker asked the officer on his left, bouncing his eyebrows twice as the man used a tight grip on his upper arm to push him toward the ambulance.
"Something like that..." the officer replied.
As the Joker and his entourage of guards grew nearer, Leila glanced over at Matt, only to find that his face had cleared of any color and the expression there was almost like that of one who had just watched someone being sick. Her eyes did not spend much time there as her senses were suddenly inundated with a wave of mingled scents, brought to her nose on the wind when the Joker was made to stop within a few feet of her. The smell of gasoline was particularly strong though a hint of body odor lingered just beneath it, as though the man had not bathed in several weeks. She ignored this forcefully as the officer in front of her leaned to the side to lower his voice.
"Gordon wants every wound documented," he said somewhat quietly. Leila noticed his black glove tighten its grip on the Joker's arm as he glanced over hastily. "Just try to be quick. He wants him downtown ASAP."
She nodded, wondering fleetingly if this last bit was true, or if the man was just simply trying to get away from the Joker as soon as possible, though she thought that if the latter was really the case, she could not blame him at all. Just then, she felt her heart give a jab of surprise when the Joker suddenly leaned closer to the guard, his eyes glistening madly.
"Secrets, secrets are no fun..." he sang slowly, letting out a quiet, breathless laugh as his gaze slid quickly to Leila, who immediately felt her tan, freckled skin flush along her cheeks. With a jerk, the officer gave the Joker a rough shake, gritting his teeth irritably.
"Get in there, you son of a bitch. I've about had it with you," the man barked, lifting upward on the Joker's arm until he could climb in with him and Leila watched them go, glancing quickly over at Matt, who did the same to her. Though just as she moved to follow the two men into the truck, he reached out to her, using his hand at her shoulder to turn her so both of their backs were to the ambulance. He then spoke, barely moving his lips with his voice little more than a whisper.
"Don't say a word to him," he murmured. "Just ignore him, okay?"
To this, Leila was not really sure what to reply, so she remained quiet, swallowing hard once again as she finally turned and pulled herself up into the ambulance.
The air within was as thick as a blanket, still and heavy with the presence of the terrorist, as though all the souls of the people he had killed were sitting right there, crowding the space, watching. Leila glanced at the Joker's dirty hands as as she passed him, imagining how he had so carelessly washed blood from them, wrapped them around the barrel of a gun or another human's throat, laughing as he drained life from them. He was a true horror to behold, his evil simply oozing from him like the sweat beaded along his white forehead. Leila felt it rather difficult to breathe as she took a seat across from the stretcher, what with the stench of gasoline, smoke and some scent slightly reminiscent of death. Whether this was just her imagination or not, she could not be entirely sure.
Indifferent to the devilish aura around him, the Joker had clearly mistaken the long stretcher as a comfortable lounge chair and had settled himself onto it, to lay on his back with a dramatic sigh of relaxation, his cuffed hands folded lightly across his dirty green vest. The once black makeup around his eyes now appeared a coal gray under the bright lights in the truck and was creased across his eyelids as he closed them. He wiggled his shoulders slightly to get into a more suitable position. Leila let her eyes pass over him briefly, from the tips of his stringy, greasy green hair strewn out under his head, down to his scuffed and tattered brown shoes, hanging easily from the foot of the stretcher. Despite her strong inclination not to, she opened her mouth, hoping and praying her voice would not betray her lack of confidence.
"Sit up, please," she said, in a more direct, waspish tone than she had originally meant to, and this was evidenced by how quickly the Joker opened one eye to peer over at her, his black eyeball rolling slightly in her direction. Leila held her breath, unable to force away the imaginative vision her brain conjured of him throwing himself toward her to wrap his large hands around her throat. Though to her surprise, he immediately sat up, swinging his long legs down from the stretcher to turn and face her with his cuffed hands in his lap. His new position putting him so close to her, the dusty knees of his purple, pin striped pants brushed against her own. She glanced down quickly, eying the new smudges of dirt along the black material, transfer from all the places she could only imagine he had been over the past week. Forcing herself not to flinch, she noticed out of the corner of her eye as the guard standing at the back of the stretcher moved closer, the hand bearing his gun twitching ever so slightly. The Joker seemed to ignore this as he licked his lips and leaned forward, his black eyes boring holes into her brown ones.
"Yes, ma'am..." he growled, that horrible, evil grin once again sliding across his painted face, forcing goosebumps to crawl across her arms and up her shoulders once again. In an effort to prevent him from seeing the raised bumps along her skin, she reached quickly to the side, pulling a small penlight from the pocket of her cargo pants, clicking the end to turn it on. Again, she opened her mouth, but found that her chills had become so severe, she was momentarily quite incapable of speaking. She cleared her throat, before attempting again, her forehead furrowing slightly as she spent an unnecessary amount of time adjusting the cap of the pen. Though as she finally lifted her head to look at him, her eyes immediately dropped to his lips as though drawn there by magnetic force, her curiosity once again getting the better of her. She found instantly that looking at him was equivalent to the phenomena humans experience when witnessing a car wreck, or an animal being slaughtered; it was terrible to see, hard to watch, but it was also impossible to look away, no matter how badly one wanted to.
His scars were even more horrible in person, violent and jagged as they tore their way down his cheeks to either side of his mouth, glistening with what appeared to be traces of fresh blood that had dripped down from the cuts in his face. Even with the red paint covering them, the bumps and grooves in his skin were so deep that it was almost impossible for Leila to resist the urge to run her own tongue along the inside of her cheek, just imagining what it felt like to have such a deformity. A moment later, a quiet, clowny voice nearly caused her to jump, finally breaking the dense silence still hanging over the ambulance.
"Beautiful aren't they..." he crooned, tilting his head to the side slightly and using his tongue to poke at one of the scars along the inside of his cheek, as if to show her that he had caught her staring. Leila forced her eyes up from his mouth, blinking slowly as though she had been thrown into a trance, all while the Joker grinned at her, his gaze admiring her own, full lips. "I bet you wanna know how I got 'em..." he then added, his voice dropping dramatically by an entire octave, causing the goosebumps along her arms to become almost painful in their severity. However, just when Leila was about to respond that yes, she actually did want to know how he had gotten them, she gave a small start when the guard standing behind Joker suddenly jabbed him in the middle of his back with the barrel of his gun.
"Shut up," he snapped at Joker, before nodding his head at Leila. "Hurry up and get this over with."
Struggling against her desire to take a deep, steadying breath, to avoid inhaling a whole lungful of the Joker's potent scent, she sat up straight, tossing her hair over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed quickly on the movement of her ponytail, like a wolf that had just seen a rabbit, his gaze now glazed over, watchful and alert, almost animalistic as she moved her hand to hold the penlight properly. She forcefully ignored the almost painful, foreboding flutter in the pit of her stomach and instead instructed, "Look straight ahead at the light."
Though just as she expected the Joker's eyes to move past her face to the window behind her, in the direction of the light, they did not and instead remained fixed on hers, his pupils already wider than was normal. His gaze was searching, almost invasive as though he was attempting to read her mind, but Leila ignored this easily, wanting nothing more than to get this examination finished; just being in the same location as this man was filling her with an intense, very primal desire to run. Focusing her attention on just his right eye, she moved the penlight back and forth across his line of vision, watching as his pupil widened and retracted, the black circle dilating large enough to swallow her whole if she stared any harder.
Blinking quickly, she pulled the light away abruptly, glancing to Matt, who until then, she had almost forgotten was even sitting there; her nerves calmed slightly upon remembering that she was not alone.
"Pupils reacting normally," she informed him, watching for just a moment longer as he scribbled a note on the paper, before she reached for the stethoscope around the back of her neck, the movement of it pulling her ponytail back over the front of her shoulder. For just a split second, she wondered if there was any other way for her to listen to his lungs without having to touch him, but without hesitation, she pushed past this moment of cowardice, bringing the earpieces toward her face, where she rested them against her jaw in preparation to place them in her ears. He was just another patient and should be treated as such. Raising her eyebrows, she addressed the Joker once again.
"Are you having any sort of chest pain?" she asked casually, this time giving him clear indication that she was not afraid of him, that his form of intimidation would not work on her while she was in her house, in the ambulance she loved. Across from her, the Joker's eyes rolled upward slightly as he took a deep breath in through his mouth, before exhaling slowly through his nose. He licked his lips a moment later, bringing both of his cuffed hands up to his chest, where he pressed two fingers against his disgusting vest, his black eyes twinkling malevolently.
"Right...here..." he murmured, indicating what Leila could only assume was his left lung. His red lips parted into a sinister grin when he must have noticed her withholding a sigh of disappointment that he might actually be injured, thus giving her cause for having to touch him. Despite that sense of foreboding growing stronger with each second, Leila shifted forward on the bench, desperately trying to avoid touching his knees with her own as she placed both ear pieces of the stethoscope into her ears.
The air was growing heavy and dense again as she reached out her right hand bravely toward him, hesitating only slightly once her fingers brushed the material of his green vest, moving it slightly to reach behind it and press the pad of the stethoscope to his chest. Her gloved fingers could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. That throbbing in her eardrums intensified, the Joker's now audible heartbeat accompanying it, following the rhythm perfectly in time, slow and steady, a deep, strong thump in his chest. She listened for several long seconds, studying it, mildly surprised to find that he was not entirely hollow inside and as she moved the stethoscope again, to the area he had indicated previously, her fingers tightened their grip on the instrument.
The Joker was very slowly moving in toward her, the upper half of his body leaning closer, tilting his head very slightly as it passed on the left side of her face, in a position that nearly appeared as though he were trying to hear his own heart beating through her head, or whisper something in her ear. Leila felt her entire body stiffen in preparation, and everything inside of her screamed for either Matt or the unnamed guard to stop him, say something, anything to distract him. Despite herself, she spoke quietly, slowly, in an effort keep her voice calm enough to prevent him from striking out.
"Take a deep breath," she instructed, and listened, closing her eyes against herself as the Joker inhaled deeply against her shoulder, where she could feel his nose pressed lightly against her ponytail, taking as much of her scent into his lungs as he could. With a jerk, she sat back quickly flinging her ponytail over her shoulder, yanking her hand away from his chest as though his clothing had burned holes into the tips of her latex glove. A heavy, disgusted scowl registered on her face as the Joker let out a quiet giggle and just next to her, Matt suddenly opened his mouth, his face contorted into an equally strong look of loathing.
"C'mon, Leila..." he murmured, still keeping his eyes focused on the Joker. "Let's get this over with."
"Chest sounds are fine," she skated over the moment hastily as she looked to Matt with wide eyes at his seemingly accidental use of her first name. He instantly seemed to realize what he had done as he quickly looked down at his clipboard, leaving Leila to replace the stethoscope around the back of her neck, before finally turning her attention to the cuts that had started to bleed along his face. They marred his skin in several different places, all traveling horizontally as though he had been whipped with something sharp. A few of the lacerations were shallow, while others deep and bleeding steadily, the bright red liquid dripping along the blotchy white makeup coating his skin. The drops from one of the particularly deep cuts had already dripped along his jaw, slid down his neck and onto the dirty collar of his blue, hexagonal patterned shirt, leaving dark red stains near his neck. Leaning to the side slightly, Leila avoided his once again penetrating gaze to count the injuries.
"Five...six lacerations on his fac-"
"Leilaaaaa..." sang the clowny voice. She felt her insides seize up. "That's a pretty name."
Leila swallowed hard, ignoring him forcefully as she leaned to the side, reaching down into the bag of supplies for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a roll of gauze. On her left, she could practically hear Matt glaring hatefully at the side of the Joker's face, despite the fact that it was his fault the most dangerous man in the city now knew her name. She made a quick mental note of this to bitch at him later. For the mean time, she remained focused on her patient and squeezed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide so a very thin stream of the clear, liquid disinfectant sprayed onto the wad of gauze she held between her gloved fingers. She then weighed her options within a split second. One of two possibilities were now figuratively staring her in the face as she looked over at the Joker, where he sat across from her, blinking serenely with a very perceptive smirk as though he could see the cogs working behind her eyes. The greasepaint makeup across his forehead was already fading from one corner, the white running into the black, the black down into the red, lined and streaked from the wrinkles of his face, some of the blood from his cuts already dried and caked into the paint. There was absolutely no way for her to clean the lacerations without having to touch him, and more importantly, it would be impossible to apply the narrow sterile strips to the cuts to close them without removing at least half of his makeup. But what if he did not want it removed? Should she ask him if it was alright?
A moment later, Leila's instincts made the decision for her and she reached out toward him, once again reminding herself that this was just another ordinary patient and under normal circumstances, she would never hesitate to do her job to full completion, nor allow a patient to make decisions for her. She had already decided that this man should be treated the same way every other victim had been treated in the past. However just as the cold, damp wad of gauze touched the upper corner of his face, Leila let out an audible gasp of shock when several things happened all at once.
The sound of metal clanking broke the tense silence in the ambulance like a gun shot as the Joker suddenly reached up with both cuffed hands, wrapping all five of his right fingers around her wrist in a surprisingly tight, vice-like grip, his dingy, broken fingernails digging into the soft flesh there. The guard behind him lurched forward at the same time that Matt leaned over, but Leila's moment of temporary paralysis had passed and she held up her other free hand slowly to show the two men that he was not hurting her...yet. She stared defiantly back at him as the Joker once again seemed impervious to the other movement around him, his black, glossy eyes glaring deeply into hers.
"Awfully rude to touch without permission, don't you think, Leila?" he asked, his voice light and bouncy as though he were simply asking her opinion on the weather and she swallowed, her throbbing brain just barely able to register his use of her first name for the second time. The Joker's gaze drifted slowly downward from her eyes, to her lips, where they lingered for just a second longer, before he continued down her chest, to the silver name badge pinned to her uniform shirt. His eyes then shifted quickly to her hand, clutched in his tight grip. A terrible smirk once again slid onto his painted face as he turned his own wrist slowly, rotating her hand so that her gloved fingers were facing him.
"Or should I call you Miss Hawkin..." he then added, dragging his eyes back to her own, having clearly noticed the lack of a spiky bulge beneath the blue latex over her left ring finger. Choking down the swell of panic that threatened to overtake her, Leila blinked slowly.
"Please let go of me," she said quietly, calmly, once again calling upon every ounce of courage she contained. Across from her, there was a shift in the Joker's expression, a subtle one, but a change in the flow of events none the less. He blinked quickly, his head cocking to the side as his grin expanded. However just as he opened his mouth to speak, Leila flinched when the Joker's shoulders lurched forward slightly, but not of his own doing; the guard behind him had shoved his gun roughly into the space between the Joker's broad shoulders.
"She told you to let go," the man snapped and Leila watched as the Joker's eyes narrowed, sliding away from her face, toward the side where the guard was standing just over his shoulder. She noticed a muscle lining his jaw give a twitch beneath the white paint as he undoubtedly gritted his teeth together in the back of his mouth. Then as quickly as it had happened, the grip on her wrist was released and the Joker's cuffed hands dropped back down into his lap. He then slid his black-ringed eyes closed, tilting his face upward resignedly so she could continue where she left off, at the top corner of his forehead.
The greasepaint was surprisingly easy to remove with the use of the peroxide, but before long, Leila had gone through several wads of gauze, having used every possible corner of the soft material to remove the makeup until the entire square would be gray. The flesh-toned skin beneath began to reveal itself as she neared his right eyebrow, unveiling freckles and wrinkles along with it, which left Leila feeling mildly surprised. What had she been expecting to find beneath the makeup? Despite what she felt to the contrary, everything she had seen thus far indicated that this patient was indeed a normal man, from the dirty blonde roots showing through his greasy green hair, to his heartbeat and the dark red blood now beginning to ooze steadily through the cut she had just reached along his eyebrow. It just did not seem possible for any true human to commit the crimes that he had.
The new, clean pad of gauze passed over his arched eyebrow, taking the first of the black paint along with it, and she continued down, using her pointer finger to very gently pass over his eyelid, once more revealing normal flesh beneath it and the eyelashes that lined the edge. His nose was next, though Leila kept her attention focused to the right of it, where the majority of the deeper cuts had been made. The makeup there had been creased and furrowed from what she assumed was his laughter, the kind that had likely made his belly ache and the bridge of his nose wrinkle. She continued on again, fully aware that her path of cleaning was drawing horribly close to passing over the jagged groove of his curvy, more symmetrical scar, where it traveled upward from the corner of his lips. For a moment, she considered stopping just above it, but if she were being perfectly honest with herself, her curiosity was at an all time high.
The Joker was being surprisingly docile for the time being, so as she approached the scar along his cheek, she pushed on, struggling with great effort not to shiver as the tips of her fingers passed over the upper corner of it, feeling the even, smooth skin transition suddenly into bumps and depressions. A sudden twitch from the Joker caused Leila to glance down at his hands in his laps, where to her surprise, she could see tiny goosebumps rising steadily along his exposed forearms. The urge to grin was almost unbearable as Leila wondered whether he was maybe enjoying her ministrations a bit more than he cared to admit.
With the right half of his face clean and the gauze in her hand filthy, she tossed it aside, before preparing to wet a new piece, though just as she reached back toward his face, with a fresh, peroxide soaked pad, she hesitated, her fingers faltering; his clean right eye had opened and was watching her with an expression that very closely mimicked curiosity. Finally pausing to take in the entirely flesh-toned, right half of his face, she felt her stomach turn over inside of her; the Joker's eyes were brown. She cleared her throat, tearing her focus away from this to lean forward and very gently press the wad of gauze to the cut just next to his eyebrow.
"I'm going to put a few 'steri-strips' on this cut to keep it closed," she explained, both to the Joker and Matt, who she could hear scribbling away on the clipboard next to her. "They're not meant to get wet so try to avoid doing so, at least for the first day or t-"
"You're not afraid of me, are you, Miss Hawkin?" the Joker suddenly interrupted, once again displaying a knack for overturning Leila's momentary streak of boldness. She stalled for just a moment, her eyes shifting to meet his from where they had been focused on the gauze next to his eyebrow. She blinked, once, before bringing her hand away and turning her head to toss the bloody pad into the bin.
"No," she lied defiantly, reaching out again once she had applied adhesive to the tiny strips of sterile material. Carefully, she stuck the opposite ends to the skin on either side of his cut and pulled gently in either direction, forcing the wound closed. The Joker blinked, his bare eyelashes brushing lightly against the material of her glove.
As Leila began to pull her hand away, his shoulders suddenly lunged toward her, his hands shifting quickly to rattle the chain of his handcuffs, and a rough, loud growl escaped his throat. This forced her to give a sharp jump and practically fling herself up into the window behind her as a completely instinctive, unpreventable squeak of fear and shock immediately flew past her lips when she recoiled. Then suddenly the ambulance was full of manic, evil laughter as the Joker bounced giddily a few times where he sat.
"Liar," he growled, once again leaning toward her, though this time, the guard came to her aid, rushing forward to snatch the Joker's arm in his black glove. Then with a quick yank, he pulled the Joker to his feet, so quickly that the top of his green head nearly collided with the ceiling of the ambulance.
"That's it, we're done," the man said loudly over the peals of laughter still emanating from the terrorist. "We'll get that documentation from you tomorrow. Gordon wants him now."
And with that, the Joker was practically thrown from the back of the ambulance, where the rest of his guards appeared at once, grabbing hold of his arms and walking him determinedly toward a waiting, armored police vehicle. Unable to help herself, Leila stood from her place on the bench to watch them go, her hands still shaking. Almost in slow motion, she watched as the Joker turned his head, casting one last look, filling her with undeniable fear and dread. Unless she was very much mistaken, this would not be her last encounter with the terrorist.
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A/N: Welcome to the new story! I'm SO excited about this endeavor and I really can't wait to share it with you guys! There is an incredible playlist for this story, along with pictures of the characters and lots of fun stuff on my fanfiction Facebook page. Just head over and add me by searching for 'Haven QueenofMean Hunter'. From there, you can add me as a homie, or invite yourself to my Joker-centric group called 'The Man with the Glasgow Smile' for tons of pictures and fun posts about our favorite villain.
For those of you who have read my three part series featuring the Joker and my first OC, Jayde, please be aware that this story will be entirely different. As you may have been able to tell, I'm sticking a little more closely to the portrayal of the Joker by Heath in the Dark Knight, while still giving him little twists and turns along the way. So I thank you VERY much for reading and I hope you'll stick with me as we start this new story...
I'd also like to thank both ClownQween'69 and Auriellis for reading and re-reading this chapter for me, just to make sure it was absolutely perfect for you guys. = ]
And as I always say...
LEAVE ME YOUR LOVE/HATE IF YOU WANT ANOTHER CHAPTER! -QoM