THROWAWAY CARD

Chapter 12

Disclaimer: Batman and related characters are the property of DC Comics.

Author's Note: It's taken me about a month to finish this chapter, and I have no idea why! I hope you're still out there reading. Review responses at the end of the chapter as always.

Outside room 17, Moreston Block, Selina suddenly realised that, bad as things were, there was something far worse happening that she had absolutely no control over.

The Joker grabbed Alison by the throat with a coquettish smile. "Lucky you, sweetheart, you won today's grand prize. A new car, twenty thousand smackeroos and a free trip to kingdom come." He laughed.

The woman, her threadbare coat rumpled in his white grip, was not struggling. Selina tried to lock eyes with her, wanting to give her hope, wanting to at least let her know she wasn't alone.

But the woman wasn't looking at her. Her eyes, looking massive in her thin, pale face, were fixed unerringly on the madman.

And that's the worst part, right there, Catwoman thought as she ran through hundreds of possible outcomes to this scenario in her mind. She's looking at him, and it's almost like she doesn't see him. It's like she doesn't feel the knife, the grip on her neck, doesn't hear the laughter that must be deafening in her ears. It's almost…

"What d'ya say, dear?" the Joker cooed, swinging her round and bending her over his skinny arm in a perverse parody of courtship. "Let me take you away from all of this."

"Let her go," Selina snapped, finding her voice at last through the blossoming sense of unreality that was threatening to swamp her.

…almost as if she isn't afraid of him.

"Don't mind her," said the Joker in hushed funereal tones, pressing his red mouth very close to Alison's ear. "She and I have some history together. She never forgave me for forgetting to pick up her mom after that traumatic ingrown toenail surgery. No, she and I just weren't meant to be. So sad, too bad." He wiped away a crocodile tear with the fingers poking out from the end of the somewhat battered sling.

"Joker, let her go." Selina cringed inwardly. Look at me, the heroine. "You can…let her go, you can take me instead."

"Tragic really," sighed the Joker, "her little girlish heart can't bear to see me with another woman." He shifted his grip on Alison roughly, getting a better grip. "Out of sight, out of mind? Toodles!"

He began to back away down the corridor, swiftly, the woman's cheap heels scoring marks across the battered linoleum as he dragged her with him. Selina watched impotently, wishing that the noise would bring the drug dealer out of his room, someone, anyone…

The knife bit a tiny nick into Alison's neck and she never made a sound. Her feet vanished around into the stairwell with two tiny clattering sounds as they caught the door-frame, and Selina leapt forward as soon as the door began to swing shut.

"If I hear you pussy-footing down these stairs after me," sang the Joker's voice, sounding slightly echoey in the stairwell as Catwoman stuck her head through the door, "I'll slit her throat from ear to ear..and then down 'ere as well…"

Selina turned in a whisper of sleek black and vanished from the doorway.

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon…

The elevator wasn't coming fast enough.

Hear me coming after you, Joker? How good's your hearing, can you hear the elevator bell?

She stabbed at the call button again, knowing it was pointless, but the pent-up energy inside her demanding some release. The decrepit mechanism groaned as the elevator rose. First floor…second floor, Christ, why did it have to have been in the lobby!

Frustrated, Catwoman turned again. I'm thinking like a normal person. Can't. Won't. Apartment. Window….be in the opposite alley before he even leaves the block…

Behind her, the door of room 17 went click.

"Bad night."

It wasn't so much a question as a statement. Selina's shoulders slumped, partly in relief and partly in annoyance.

Batman.

Gotham General Hospital, 7.47 a.m. Extract from the diary of Ari Kelly, 32 years old, doctor of this parish:

Only 40 minutes left until I get to go home after what surely counts as the weirdest night of my life.

I watch CNN in the break room with Dave and Nicky, the guys from the path lab. The news is full of pictures of the Joker, my secret patient. There's even a little documentary about him, things he's done, people he's killed. I want to say something as the guys talk, because the news is saying things that aren't quite true.

But I said I could keep a secret, and I can.

Path lab. Yeah, that was a weird one, too, adding to the night's weirdness. The Joker's illness. Looked like flu, I'd thought, like the real bad kind we get here in winter. The blood scan had come back negative for anything like meningitis or septicemia.

Then I saw on the news that one of the places went up in flames tonight was Amway, and something clicked in my head.

We'd been expecting a delivery from Amway tomorrow night. One hundred cases of flu vaccine, shipped direct, just in time for the seasonal rush - and one small refrigerated case for the boys in the basement.

The basement here creeps me out a little, even more than the vegetable ward. It's like a nuclear plant, full of people wearing containment suits and masks and picking up tiny tubes with gloves and tongs.

They'd been expecting a new kind of flu vaccine down there. A better one, Dr Winthorne said, a strong one. Highly experimental. Not even past the first stage of development. Apparently it was a big deal, the fact that we got to develop it first, but then if I'd been really excited by germs at med school I'd've majored in biological sciences, so I'd just smiled politely and agreed with him that it was really something.

The Joker had been covered in soot and shards of glass when he'd been brought to me. The smell of smoke had been all over him, in his hair, his ruined suit.

So I sat and stared blankly through the sports report (the Gotham Knights had lost for the first time this season, but right then I just didn't care) as my mind considered the possibilities of being caught in the middle of a bio-chemically loaded explosion while one's body was weakened with sedatives and possible starvation…

I wondered if Batman was still puzzling over this, and if I should tell him what I thought had happened. But how the hell do you get in touch with the man in the cape if you have no bat-signal? It's not like he has his cellphone number pinned up next to 911 in call boxes. He is not the fourth emergency service. He's a shadow, a ghost, a legend: probably to get his attention without a damn great halogen lamp you need to sacrifice a black turkey under the full moon while waving a -

Christ, what was that?

Gotham General Hospital, Emergency Room, 8.05a.m.

The hospital's automatic door, sprung from its runners by the impact, made a sad little creaking sound as it struggled to remain in place despite being bent around the fender of a white pick-up. There was that single moment of stunned inactivity that follows a shock event, then hospital staff were rushing forward, the nurse from triage, the patients who could move -

Steam and smoke rushed up in a biting cloud from under the wrecked pickup's hood, filling the room with an ugly haze. People began to cough, and from the ceiling the fire sprinklers sprang into life, dousing the hospital lobby area in a fine spray of droplets.

"Is everybody all right?" shouted one of the interns, arm up to shield her eyes as the smoke began to clear. There was a rattling noise and then a clang as the driver's door of the ruined pickup hit the floor in one twisted piece.

The Joker stepped out of the haze like the iceberg looming up in front of the Titanic, his grin as bright as ice and his eyes red with fever and smoke. One thin arm was locked in a stranglehold around the throat of a pale, ash-blond woman, her only sign of life being her constant, frenzied blinking.

"I would like to register an emergency," he purred. "I'm told this is the right place to have one…"

Gotham Streets, 8.05 a.m.

Catwoman ran a gloved finger over the loose restraint buckles on the Batmobile's seat and gave them grudging approval. The engine of the car hummed against her knees. It was rather cramped.

"This thing wasn't built for taking a girl to the drive-in, was it?"

He didn't answer her.

"Are you angry with me?"

Stupid question. He hasn't spoken a word to you since he almost dragged you out of the block. Not that he ever -

"Why did you take him in?"

Selina looked up at the driver's cowled face. Batman was intent on the road, and his eyes were hidden in shadow. His very tone, flat and uninflected though it was, irritated her.

"Why isn't he already in?" she snapped. "That's what the papers think!"

No answer again.

"Oh, Batman," she said, her irritation turning into amusement and the desire to tease. "Don't tell me you put him back inside and he escaped again in the space of a few hours?" She crossed her legs with difficulty in the confined space and gave her swinging top foot a kick of glee. "You're slipping."

"He never escaped."

Selina was busy trying to think of a good retort to that when the Batmobile took a sharp hairpin left at its driver's command. She was about to make a sharp comment about safe driving, when the cause of his abrupt change of route caught her eye. Above the city, into the clearing skies of morning after the rain, a plume of smoke was rising.

Gotham General Hospital, 8.11 a.m. Extract from the diary of Ari Kelly, 32 years old, doctor of this parish:

It sounded one of the orderlies had let go of their trolley - a shattering of glass, a fall of metal to the ground. It was two floors up, in the ER, and the sound was muffled, so it could have been anything, really, anything or nothing.

Until the fire alarms began to ring.

I could hear the staff in the canteen two rooms away begin to down tools and turn off ovens: I could hear feet running above and below me. A fire in the hospital was a serious thing. About five months ago one of the day janitors set off the sprinklers smoking in the morgue. We had five fire engines surrounding the place in about ten minutes flat and the poor guy went as pale as one of the stiffs when they caught him.

He was fired, of course, and the papers had a field day. We missed a couple of law suits from outraged family members whose dearly departed were lying in the cold drawers by barely a whisker. Strange…people can handle the idea of morgue humour, but the thought of cigarette ash on the body's uncaring skin drives them crazy…

In a moment of quiet as the echoes of running feet began to die away, I heard it , and even as I moved, feet taking me automatically towards the fire exit, I froze inside, the hairs all over my body springing to attention.

The laughter. Oh god, the laughter.

I think I'll hear it forever whenever I lie back at night and there's a lull in the traffic outside: I'll hear it when I find a quiet moment to step outside into the dawn for a smoke.

Oh god, oh god, I hope I live through this, even if I have to hear that laughter in my dreams. He's come back.

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Review Responses:

LexLuthor13 - :KJ chuckles: I guess some people in Gotham read too many comic books and think superheroes are very cool, so meeting one is no more disturbing than going to a comic convention. And yeah, I was happy with that little piece of Joker-0-drama. He does make me laugh.

Dark-Lady-Devinity – Yes, indeed they are. :smiles: It may turn out to be 3 chapters. I'll have to see how carried away Joker gets…

giveGodtheglory – He's perpetually having fun, I think. :watches Joker get wapped and giggles: Ah, don't complain, you green-haired idiot, you deserve it.

Eatone – That's a very great compliment. I'm really pleased that my writing can make you happy! I agree, Joker is an amazing villain, and I'm constantly worried I won't live up to his comedy standards. ;)

Cyn Wraith – Thankyou::KJ hugs: I hope this chapter was up to standard.

Nightmare1 – Yes indeed, the mystery will all be over very soon – I just hope it doesn't disappoint!

Killinjoke – Thankyou! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Meow – I don't think I can ever stop writing – the characters get into my head and bully me until I continue. :D Thankyou for the wonderful encouragement.

Robster72 – Thankyou! I love little details. Especially if it involves light, it's one of my favourite things to describe.

Asano - :KJ smiles: Thankyou so much for reading. Seeing as you answered your own Leslie question…I'll move on to continuity. No, it's not anywhere particular, although probably after "Death in the Family" and before "Killing Joke" and certainly way before "Hush". I certainly didn't have anywhere specific in mind..I just started writing and it played out the way it played out. ;) I hope you enjoyed reading it.

SpiderFreak – "Story board" …I am so happy it feels like that to you. It's how it looks in my head, you see, while I write. It may be 3 chapters….who can tell. :D I may get carried away.

Operameg123 – Heh, yes. I love that graphic novel;….it's so clever, well written, and the art is beautiful too. Try not to take too many cities (you might put Joker's nose out of joint!) – I'll update as fast as I can::KJ looks shifty: To tell the truth….sometimes I channel him too….

Farthingale - :KJ bounces and glomps: More annotations, you clever person you. I have no idea about "sweets"…maybe one of my American readers can enlighten me. :) I have taken very careful note of your corrections (in red pen with a note that says "can do better") and will go and edit when I have some time! Aside from that, I'm very glad you liked my little J characterizations – I've always thought if I can please you, the ultimate coulro, I can please anyone. And yes…he is rather impish…oh dear, now I've had a vision of a green-haired Santa's helper and the presents are NOT for ages three and up…

Foxdude33 - :KJ bows, almost embarrassed: That is a wonderful thing to say. I was so pleased when I read your review. (Only I'm sure your story isn't anything like dust….I'll have to go read sometime…)