Disclaimer:I do not own any Batman Begins/ Dark Knight characters. All other characters are mine.

Thank you so much for getting this story to 500 reads in such a short time, you are all so great! Our next goal is 1000 so please subscribe so that you can be the first to read each chapter, I love you all! (Warning: This chapter has a bit of implied gore in it.)

Stay amazing! XOXOXO -Improbable Dreamer

Consciousness ripped through her skull, and pulled her violently from sleep. Cat's eyes were still cemented shut, she was vaguely aware that neither her arms or legs could move and her spine was painfully stiff.

"-shipment of 68 Barrettas just arrived. You wanna let the boss know?"

"Nah, he's prepping for the funeral. Mayor's not gonna just shoot himself now is he?"

The other voice laughed in response. Cat tried to open her eyes, to hear who was plotting the murder of Mayor Anthony Garcia. As expected, her body's motor functions were still not responding to her and she was completely paralysed.

"Now, what the hell's he doin with this skank?" Grumbled a voice from over her shoulder, she felt the barrel of a gun jab at her arm in distaste. The other walked over with thundering footsteps.

"Who knows why that nutjob does anything? Just follow orders and he won't put a bullet between your ears."

"Nah, I heard he uses a blade, cuts you up, that's how sick he is."

"I don't remember him telling us we couldn't have some fun with her."

Cat tried, once again, to leap from the chair and run, but still her muscles were jelly-like.

"He won't mind if she's slightly used, eh?" The man chortled from directly behind her. A familiar sound of an unzipping dress echoed around the room, Cat felt warm fingers brush her shoulder blades.

"Hey, maybe you shouldn-"

A shotgun blast cut him off into a scream, both men leaped away from Cat and landed with a crash on the far side of the room.

"You know," a low voice droned from what she assumed was a doorway. "I never was much of a sharer."

"It was Coster, he touched your girl, I warned him but-."

Once again, he was cut off by a shotgun, this time accompanied by the loud thump of a falling body.

"I didn't like Coster," Joker laughed to himself. "He took everything too seriously. What about you Kane?"

"Me?"

Slow, deliberate footsteps approached Cat and the man called 'Kane'.

"Which hand touched her?"

"I-I don't understand."

There was the click of a switchblade. "Bad children get punished. Now, hold out a hand or lose your intestines, it's your choice."

Silence followed, a sharp intake of breath, a sickening slash, and Kane screamed as something wet landed on the concrete ground.

"Run along." Joker trilled, Kane didn't hesitate to march swiftly out of earshot.

Cat was fuelled by adrenaline now and managed to open her eyes, her heart pounding in her ears. Joker had his back to her and was wiping blood of a shiny blade with a stained purple handkerchief.

"Th-thank you." Cat rasped, she felt that despite everything, his actions had saved her from a repulsive fate.

His back straightened at her words, Joker turned swiftly and struck her cheekbone with the cleaned switchblade. She wheezed at the pain and felt warm liquid ooze down her jaw and drip onto her collarbone.

"Wanna know how I got these scars?" Joker loomed over her, mopping up the blood with his handkerchief since she was tied securely to the chair.

"Well," He took her silence as interest. "I was dating this girl for a while. Not nearly as pretty as you sweetheart," He landed a kiss roughly on her cheek and licked his lips in triumph when she recoiled, disgusted.

"I worked late nights at the office, to support her expensive lifestyle. I come home one day, tired, just looking for a little sympathy. What do I find instead?"

Joker knelt down before her, looking up with innocently raised eyebrows and she experienced a pang of unwelcome sympathy.

"I find my dear Maria dry-humping the furniture salesman. I have to do something, so I pull him off her by his collar. He didn't like that, not one bit. So, he comes at me with Maria's tailoring scissors, he was rabid, insane, cuts me up like I was a warm stick of butter. And most of the scars faded, but not these."

He rotated his face to showcase the long, jagged scars tearing a line from the corner of his mouth to the middle of his cheek. Cat couldn't help but empathise with him, a romantic unfaithful partner was something she understood all too well.

"And now, you."

"M-me?" She stammered, watching him drag over a second chair and swing himself onto it with ease.

"How did you get your scars?"

He was sitting a few feet opposite her, twisting the blade in his hands.

"I don't have…"

"No!" Joker shouted, grabbing her face roughly and squeezing her cheeks together.

"I don't mean this hull; Skin and tissue, it's all worthless. We're all just walking balloons of blood and water, no, no," His hand travelled across her chin and to her earlobe, where he began to roll the pearl earring gently.

"I'm talking inside. Underneath all this worthless CRAP!" With the pearl still pinched between his fingers, he yanked it down. Cat shrieked in anguish and stared at the bloody earring still in Joker's grasp.

"Because inside, you're disfigured, deformed, scarred, don't think I don't see you."

Fat tears were rolling down her face and her ear was exploding with pain she didn't know was possible to feel.

"Soon you'll see things from my perspective," He dropped the mutation of pearl and ripped flesh, instead leaning in again with a coy smile.

"It's like looking into a mirror." He sang softly, tracing her lips with the tip of his forefinger.

"We're nothing alike." She spat, her voice thick with pain.

Joker nodded slightly and stood up, stretching as he made for the exit.

"Well there is one thing," He paused, a gloved hand on the reinforced-steel door. "At the end of the day, I take off my makeup."

And with that, the door swung closed with a low thud and clicked into place. The small steel room was flooded in absolute darkness. The blood thudding in her ear and her own rasping breath were the only sounds she could hear, and she began to comprehend how alone she really was.

Cat fell into noiseless, gut-wrenching sobs.