Disclaimer:I do not own any Batman Begins/Dark Knight characters. All other characters are mine.
This chapter was fun to write, but wouldn't stop crashing so it's a miracle I got it done! Sit back and enjoy a few hours of googling 'crash fixes', losing progress, and the romance genre you all signed up for. :)
Stay amazing! XOXOXO -Improbable Dreamer
The normally bustling alley was blocked off, onlookers and grieving citizens lined the sidewalks and watched police walk past in dress uniform.
Police Commissioner Loeb was mourned by the entirety of Gotham, and yet it only took a whisky glass lined with hydrogen cyanide to bring him down. The Joker was particularly proud of this murder, and boasted about it while the armed van made for the service.
"All three, dead at once." He counted on his white-gloved fingers. "It's art."
Joker and his men had made a quick stop at a block of apartments. Caterina was locked in the back of the van and couldn't discern the happenings, but made an assumption based on the fact that they were all wearing 'honor guard' uniforms when they returned.
Joker had, once again, ditched the 'war paint' and with his unruly hair tucked into the cap, and his face reverted to normal; Cat begrudgingly admitted that he made that dress uniform his bitch.
"We all know the plan?"
Joker was reloading his stolen rifle and practically hopping in his seat with excitement.
"I'll join the Honour Guards, shoot the Mayor, and we rendezvous back here."
The thugs grunted in agreement.
"What if Batman shows up?"
The men all turned to her, surprised, it was the first spoken phrase that had escaped her lips in hours.
"I mean, I don't think he's as nocturnal as his name suggests." Cat mumbled, shrinking into her seat.
The Joker smiled at her in response, as if she was a new employee with promise.
"She's right, but I doubt the Batman would be welcomed into their little party."
The van turned into a side street beside a small bakery, and the Joker's men began unloading the van.
"Here you go, sweetheart, a little present for you." He wrapped something made of thick nylon around her neck and fastened it with Velcro.
"Just think of it as your kitty collar, if you behave it shouldn't be a problem."
As a sick joke, a silver pendent was attached to the front of the choker with her name engraved in the metal. Joker admired his work with a thumb between his teeth.
"Come on beautiful, we've got work to do."
She was pulled into the sudden daylight by her elbows, unfortunately her long skirt wasn't so graceful and it caught under her heels, sending her flying.
The ground began rapidly approaching her face, before she was spun around and held protectively from the potential face-plant.
Cat stared at his chest, not daring to raise her eyes, not daring to face the situation as it was.
"You should be more careful." He said, slowly, softly, not releasing her from his grip.
"Falling is a dangerous game."
They were frozen together, she felt unwelcome heat in her cheeks and her heart threatened to pound out of her chest.
It struck her how similar attraction was to fear, the symptoms were so interchangeable; she couldn't tell whether she was terrified or infatuated wrapped in the Joker's arms.
A walkie-talkie blared to life from his belt.
"In position, we're waiting for your signal." Croaked one of the thugs, and the spell was broken.
Joker hastily pushed her from him and brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth, responding and hurrying to the crowd.
She watched him melt into the mass of people and noise, trying to discern whether she was insane for feeling a twinge of disappointment.
Cat joined the crowd, since she didn't have an awful lot to do, and was very aware that her collar was resonating a soft hum of electricity.
The sea of policemen marched past her position on the avenue, in the centre were three grieving families and the honor guard. She strained her neck to distinguish her Joker among them, but she could barely see the street above the crowd. At the end of the avenue, standing behind a grand mahogany podium was Mayor Garcia.
"...and as we recognize the sacrifice of these officers," He was announcing to the masses. "We must remember that vigilance is the price of safety."
The elderly woman beside her began to stare and point at Cat, speaking rapidly in Spanish. Cat discerned the word 'Joker' amidst the babble and was surprised to learn that someone must be looking for her, making her face and situation known.
It might've been Bruce, but she imagined that without her interference, he was happily in love with Rachel.
Cat shook her head at the lady and gestured to her collar, which was an explosive if they had ever seen one. The lady let out a terrified shriek and backed down the street, elbowing through the crowd and pulling her two little boys as far away from her as possible.
Cat sighed; if only she could afford to be terrified.
The Mayor had wrapped up his speech and stepped away from the podium while the honor guards lined up their rifles. Any second now, he would be dead, and Cat would be shoved back into that tiny freezer with apple slices and hourly beatings.
It was a lose-lose situation.
Harvey Dent was beside the Mayor and had the same grief-stricken expression that the whole of Gotham seemed to paste over their faces.
In truth they probably didn't care, someone else would step up and the 'circle of life' would move on.
It was all so temporary, so fragile, like a child in a private school. Gotham had no idea about what true anguish and hardship was.
Try learning that your brother was murdered by a superhero.
Dent scanned the crowd and, to her surprise, his gray eyes fell on her. There was a moment of clouded confusion, then he registered what her presence meant and his eyes widened.
"Cat?" He mouthed and slowly rose from his chair.
Time slowed, and the whole thing blew up.
One rifle in the honour guard swung to face the Mayor. Jim Gordon somehow noticed this in a nanosecond, and leaped towards the Mayor, slamming him to the ground and sheltering him from the gunshots. Two bullets ploughed into his back and left holes ripped into his suit.
The entire street fell into pandemonium, screaming, the crowd rushing to save themselves.
Cat recognized one of Joker's thugs, and watched him get shot in the leg and fall to the asphalt, creating a circle of passers-by that didn't want anything to do with the 'wounded soldier'.
The rest of the thugs melted into the chaos and confusion and Cat was suddenly unsure as to the state of her imprisonment. She could run, run to Harvey who had lost sight of her but was scanning the crowd with the assist of three policemen.
She would be safe, but the collar hadn't stopped its threatening hum.
Cat backed away from the scrambling crowd until she hit the brick wall of a convenience store. With shaking fingers, she peeled away the Velcro and lowered the collar from her neck. It landed innocently on the ground, the metal tag winking in the sunlight.
She was free.
The bustling street worked well to hide her from view as she picked her way to the podium, where police were leaning over the body of Gordon. Just a few more steps and she would be safe...
"No, no, no, no."
The singing came from right beside her ear, and two strong arms wrapped tightly around her waist. However, Cat had tasted freedom and felt a new rush of hope in her veins.
She grabbed Joker's index fingers that were intertwined around her stomach, and pulled them violently in the opposite direction.
He yelped and swore, dropping her to the ground.
Cat jumped up and sprinted forward. The stage was only a few metres away now, in fact, one of the policemen was noticing her and shouting. "I've got him in my sights."
The handgun emerged from his pocket, pointed directly at Cat who was obscuring the policeman from the Joker.
"Wait!"
She tried to scream but the man was blind to all else, except the person who had murdered Jim Gordon.
He clicked the safety off, squeezed the trigger, and Cat shut her eyes for the inevitable.
The blow hit her from behind, propelling her forward so she collided with the ground hand-first.
A gun fired and the remaining crowd was thrown into chaos once again. Cat lay on the asphalt, experiencing death.
There wasn't much pain, except in her left wrist which was scraped and jutting out oddly. Her fingers felt like they were being pulled from her hand with strings; but a broken wrist wasn't the same as a gunshot.
She looked over her shoulder to assess the situation, and found a baffling sight; Policemen were jumping from the stage, yelling orders and brandishing weapons at a specific spot in the avenue. There, lying with his arms spread, was a man in honor guard uniform.
The confusing string of events began to piece themselves together and Cat realized that she had been saved, saved by a psychopath.
It wouldn't be long before the police got to him, arrested him, if he didn't die first.
She slowly turned and made for the remaining security on the stage, but her feet wouldn't take her more than a few steps.
Joker had saved her.
The man who killed for fun had risked his life to keep her from getting shot, though he always had an ulterior motive for everything, she couldn't work out what it was for this.
"Fuck it all." She grumbled under her breath and ran back to her captor, her wrist still burning.
Cat knelt beside him, Joker had a bullet wound in his chest that was bleeding profusely, staining the ground below it a sick burgundy.
"Oh god." She gagged into her elbow, but applied pressure to the wound using her palms and looked around for a plan. The blood was warm and dripped down her knuckles.
Cat struggled not to puke.
He still had a pulse, despite the unconsciousness, and she knew she only had minutes before he went into shock and the small blips in his neck ceased.
Elevating him could risk a spinal injury, but the policemen were still approaching and she decided to chance it. Cat wrapped one of his limp arms around her neck and took his weight against her hip. Carrying a wounded man seemed so easy in the movies, but in reality, it was like dragging a stubborn sack of rocks in slow motion.
Eventually, the pain in her wrist and legs subsided to a dull ache and she picked up a steady momentum.
A scarlet ambulance caught her attention amidst the parked vehicles and Cat increased her speed with the newfound goal. It was still slow work.
She reached the ambulance and propped Joker against the side of the car while she got it started.
"What the hell?"
A medic emerged from the driver's seat and stared in horror at the bleeding man and exhausted carrier.
"Help us." Cat managed, through gulps of oxygen.
The medic made no response but slowly brought a walkie-talkie to his mouth, as if performing the action gradually would keep her from noticing. She forgot that Joker's facial scars were well-known to the public from the ransom video, and once again swore under her breath.
"Don't fucking do it."
Unsurprisingly, he did fucking do it.
He began rapidly to tattle to the police.
Cat landed a sweeping kick to his ankles and watched him fall to the ground, hard. The problem was solved, but the blood pooling from where the medic had hit the curb might pose further complications.
She had no time to worry about the state of the man's head, and lifted Joker into the back of the ambulance. A quick bandage was wrapped tightly around his torso, before Cat jumped behind the wheel and started the engine.
It was a nail biting drive, she had stupidly forgotten to secure the Joker so with every sharp turn she heard his body thump against the sides of the ambulance; maybe there was some truth to her parents warning her never to enter the medical career.
The ambulance was fitted with a GPS system and she followed the woman's voice to 'St Mercy Hospital'.
It was a monster of a building, with towering white walls and a carpark the size of a basketball court.
Cat dragged Joker, who had thankfully not been killed by her appalling drive, through the front doors and past the waiting room, followed by shouts of the receptionist; "Miss? Miss, you can't go back there. Miss!"
She exploded through the double doors of an emergency room and stood breathing hard in the doorway. A balding man in surgical clothes was sewing up a middle-aged man, who appeared to have some sort of knife wound.
"Doc, I need your help."
He pulled down the procedure mask and stared at her.
"I'm…I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment."
Cat was tired of the excuses and had tried too hard to be thwarted by a stubborn doctor.
"I wasn't asking." She sighed, and pulled out the XD 40 from the Joker's coat pocket.
The doctor jumped back at the sight of the gun and looked at her like she was a lunatic.
With the blood running down her arms, the fancy black funeral attire, and the casual way she threatened his life; she probably did seem insane. This did the trick, however, and for the next two hours the doctor performed surgery on the Joker while Cat watched.
It was a slow and tense process.
Every so often the monitor would explode with beeps to indicate that his heart had stopped and the doctor would hurriedly inject something into his neck. She couldn't discern whether it was a successful surgery, until the doctor sighed and stepped away from the table, wiping drips of sweat from his receding hairline.
"Well?"
Cat leaned over Joker to decide whether the doc had betrayed her and just killed him, that would really piss her off.
"He'll be fine, should wake up in a few hours with enough morphine."
He then proceeded to approach her, adjusting his oval glasses.
"Now, let's see about that wrist."
He took her hand in his and rolled it gently, she shrieked as pain stabbed like a knife through her palm.
"If you don't shoot me," He said, casually. "Can I say that I know who you are."
Her response was another yelp as he bent the hand backwards, almost purposefully causing her pain.
"Mhm, I need to reset it." He mumbled to himself, obviously referring to the fact that it was oddly bent and out of place.
"Brace yourself."
He twisted sharply, this time she was ready for the exploding pain and only winced in response.
"You're that girl from the news. The one who was kidnapped."
Cat squeaked a response.
"And I assume that's the criminal."
He nodded at the table, where Joker was still in recovery and the monitor bleeping away.
"So, I'm a bit confused and very concerned." He stated plainly and wrapped her hand in thick bandages, securing it with a clip.
The question burned her mind, lingering like a bad aftertaste.
Why?
What screw was loose?
How could she possibly save him?
"Truthfully," She muttered. "I think I'm going mad."
The doctor finished with her hand and sat back on the white stool, regarding her broken expression.
The silence between them was broken by a crashing sound, a groan, and the monitor's obnoxious seizure of bleeps.
Cat stared at the now empty table, and at the Joker who was holding the doc in a sleeper hold.
"What's go- "Joker fell into a fit of coughs and dropped back onto the table in defeat.
"It's okay, I already threatened him." Cat reassured the struggling man and nodded at the doctor to leave, he did so with a ghastly pale face.
"Well, this has been fun." Joker rubbed at his stitches and eyed her curiously. "And you're…you're still here? You know the collar was a fake, right?"
"Yeah." She lied and took the doctors previously occupied stool. "But you were dying."
"It'd take a lot more than some bullet to kick my bucket."
But Joker seemed unsure, even slightly afraid that he'd come so close to losing.
"You saved me." He said, almost more to himself than to her.
"You saved me first." She pointed out, and he barked maniacal laughter.
"Sweetheart, I was using you as a human shield. But you had to go and fall, didn't you? You really can't do anything right."
She dubiously smiled at his attempt and ran a hand through her tangled hair, funny how you don't realise the benefits of hairbrushes until you don't have one.
"It's okay to care, you know, saving me wasn't a bad thing."
"I don't care," He sniffed, suddenly preoccupied with the hole in his uniform.
"Unless it causes unimaginable pain, I don't care about it."
"Yeah, you do."
Joker looked up in surprise, the muscle in his jaw tensing.
"What gives you that delusion?"
"Because, despite what you may say to yourself," Cat leaned forward and brushed her lips against his temple, he didn't move. "You're only human."
She swore that a hint of a smile played over his lips. Not the usual, deranged smile; but one that was foreign and sweet.
That was before he ruined it by kicking her to the floor.
"Listen, sweetheart," He spat, either aggressive or defensive, she couldn't really tell. "You talk that kind of shit again and we're going to have a problem."
Cat let him kick her a few more times, accepting that she'd pushed him to this.
Finally, he was worn down by the physical activity and slumped out of the room, coughing into his elbow. She lay for a few seconds, unsure as to whether to grow angry or miserable.
"Coming, kitty?" Joker called from the hall and Cat stood up, before she knew what she was doing, to follow him.
Somehow the both of them knew that an 'explosive collar' or 'armed thugs' weren't needed anymore.
They both knew that she'd given in.