Burn

by HoistTheColours

It was a pleasure to burn.

10. Ignite

Ignite

"This girl who stands so quiet and grave at the mouth of hell.

This girl who is all quietness and sanity and innocence.

You wondered why I wanted her?"

—Charlotte Brontë

Ressling lays her down in the backseat.

He has to crawl over her to do it, hunching down low, one leg braced outside the car and the other knelt on the leather seat next to her hip as he gets her onto her back, scoops an arm under her knees so he can tuck her legs inside. He pulls her skirt down, too, maybe out of some chivalrous instinct. Maybe as a courtesy.

The Joker clenches his jaw as he stands outside the car. Watching.

Taylor's head lolls to the side once she's down, cheek pressed to her shoulder, mouth parted. He can see her over Ressling's left shoulder. Eyes closed, lids fluttering wildly, like a butterfly that senses its wings are about to get pinned. She's dreaming, lost inside some nightmare only she can see. Her skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat, barely perceptible in the darkness, and her cheeks are flushed. She's out hard—probably will be for at least another few hours, maybe more.

He grabs Ressling by the back of his jacket—impatient—fisting the leather along the middle of his spine as he hauls him backwards, out of the car.

"Looking a little sentimental," he muses, a curious lilt to his voice, even as his eyes narrow. He's still riding the high of killing Tetch just moments ago, but catching Ressling lingering like that over her makes the muscle in his jaw twitch when he works his mouth. He tongues at the ripple of scar tissue on the inside of his left cheek—the larger one, less clean than the other—his good side. He can feel Tetch's blood on his face, wet and warm, still, and he tastes the bitter tang of copper on his lips, wipes it away with the back of a gloved hand.

It's not surprising that Ressling's started to care for her—she has that effect on people, whether she realizes it or not—and he wonders sometimes about the minutiae of their time together, what words have been exchanged between the two of them, if Taylor's ever tried to talk to him before.

He's forbidden Ressling from speaking to her, but even the Joker knows it's a lofty command—if not impossible. He knows what Taylor's like when she won't shut up, when she is bursting at the seams with so much to say. Still, he's made efforts to limit their time and exposure together, as he does for everyone in Taylor's life. She's made it clear on more than one occasion how much she despises Ressling, and the Joker is well aware of the little grudge she holds against him, all of her anger misplaced and directed at Ressling instead of its rightful owner. He didn't even have to plan it, didn't have to pull any strings. He knows her to be a forgiving individual—perhaps to a fault—but Ressling is the one person she cannot pardon, the one person she levels with all of her vitriol, all her hate. It's a hatred that bubbles up inside her with the kind of insistence she can't force back down, a hatred that burns so badly she's forced to purge herself of it and lay it down somewhere else. And he knows just how she has to do it, the exact mechanics of how she must seek absolution, the way her hatred burrows inside her and festers into guilt, into an open wound that throbs with conscience. The way she has to dig out the hatred and then suture the wound back up. Pat it reassuringly, after. Tell herself it'll be okay. Tell herself her anger is justified, that it's right—even if deep down, she knows just as well as he does that it's been misplaced, that she's pinned it all on the wrong person.

But that's the beauty of lie, isn't it? You tell it often enough, you start to believe that it's true.

There's a moment of tension as the Joker waits. He's not expecting a response—Ressling knows better than to talk back, or to challenge what he says—but Ressling still takes a minute to look at him there in the darkness, in the light misting of rain. There's a flash of heat lightning that momentarily brightens up the sky behind him, shades of black and purple, like a fresh bruise.

When he doesn't reply, the Joker roughly lets go of him, the moment defused.

He pushes a ring of keys into Ressling's chest, and then rounds to the other side of the car, gets into the backseat with Taylor. He lifts her head up so he can slide in, her head and shoulders pillowed on his thighs. She's hot to the touch. Burning up. His mouth is drawn into a thin line as he fists some of her hair, pulls her head back so he can get a better look at her.

Ressling gets in the driver's seat, turns the key in the ignition, and then there's the screech of tires across wet asphalt as the car peels out of the parking lot. They've already wasted enough time.

Taylor whimpers when he adjusts her head in his lap, her eyes still closed, brows knitted tightly together, like she's in pain. It's dark in the backseat, and only the streetlamps racing past provide an intermittent flickering of washed-out light. He scrapes the sweat-slicked strands of hair out of her face as he looks at her. He wants to know what she's dreaming about, wants to know what sort of monsters are digging their claws in, what's lurking around inside the depths of her mind, her memory. He knows Tetch's little tea isn't at all dissimilar from Crane's toxin, especially when administered in such a concentrated dose. Tetch would've wanted to ensure she was fully immersed in Wonderland for a long time—he wouldn't have been satisfied with keeping her under for just a few hours. He would've wanted a few days, at least, anything to keep the fantasy alive for as long as possible, without interruption.

The Joker studies her face carefully, his dark eyes raking over the old blood streaked there, the dirt, the pale tracks of her dried tears. The blood doesn't appear to be hers, which he finds curious—there's certainly evidence of her trauma, but no lacerations on her that he can see that would be deep enough to warrant that amount of blood. He wonders about its origins for a moment, wonders if she fought with someone, or if she was forced to bear witness to a fight she wanted no part in, hungering for the details of what he did not get to see.

He wonders, too, how much she'll remember when she wakes.

His eyes narrow into slits the longer he looks at her, and anger blisters through him, red-hot, scorching through his insides. His lip curls into a grimace when he pushes her onto her side, her cheek pressed against his thigh. He's filled with a new urgency when he leans forward, shoves two gloved fingers into her mouth and down the back of her throat.

She gags immediately, her head lurching up as she dry heaves around the fingers in her mouth. She tries to pull away, but he holds her steady with his other hand clamped around the back of her neck—gripping her spine—as he pushes his fingers deeper into the cavern of her throat.

This time he's successful, and his fingers retreat from her mouth just before she heaves up something brown and watery onto the floor. He keeps her on her side so she doesn't choke, and she shudders and gasps through two more episodes of emesis before he's forcing his fingers back into her mouth and making her do it again.

He gives her no reprieve, doesn't care how much he's hurting her as long as she's still breathing. He wants that shit out of her—can't fucking stand the thought of any part of Jervis inside her, tainting her. The hallucinogen is already well into effect, but he'll be damned if he doesn't force the rest of it out, force the rest of Tetch out of her.

She's too weak to fight him, can't even lift her arms to pull his fingers from her mouth, only sobs and retches a few more times before it turns to dry heaves—only then is he convinced she's finally rid of it, that she's gotten it all out. He catches Ressling's concerned eyes in the rearview mirror when she's done and shuddering for breath, but Ressling's smart enough to know he shouldn't be looking, and he quickly diverts his gaze back to the road.

He wipes his hand off on the outside of his thigh, and then he gathers her hair into a loose fist, pulls her down until she's sinking back into his lap, helpless to resist. Her whole body trembles as she shudders and gasps through several desperate attempts to suck in more air. He knows her throat burns, that her lungs are tired and her diaphragm is sore. He releases her hair to smooth a hand over her forehead instead, where she's hot to the touch, heat he can feel even through the barrier of his gloves.

"Come on," he murmurs. "Nice and easy…."

He doesn't know if his voice is capable of penetrating through the veil of the hallucinogen, and even though she's dispelled most of it from her system, she is still incapable of resisting its effects. She sinks readily back into Wonderland, tumbling back down that rabbit hole, her eyelids shuttering closed again as her breathing starts to slow. A passing streetlight momentarily catches on the fresh track of tears shining on her cheeks. The shimmer of her soaked eyelashes.

He continues stroking her hair until the rise and fall of her chest returns to normal. He can award her this small intimacy after what she's endured.

It's hard not to wonder what things will look like after this. The risk he took was a calculated one, to be sure, but there are some things even he can't control. The physiological effects of the mind control run deep—even in the depths of Wonderland—and he won't be able to assess just how deep until after Tetch's hallucinogen has run its course.

He'd spent weeks trying to flush out the incompetent weasel after that first encounter with him and Oswald, where he'd been summoned like some kind of lapdog for hire. That was Tetch's first mistake. Still, the Joker had been confident the incident at the dance would draw him out of hiding, what with him blowing up half of Tetch's, uh, clientele, but Tetch stubbornly remained out of sight in the weeks that followed. And as the weeks turned into months, the Joker was forced to plot alternative measures. He had what Tetch wanted, after all, and it was almost amusing how easily the puzzle pieces fell into place once the gears were put into motion. Uncovering the little mom-and-pop trafficking ring at Taylor's new job was almost too good to be true—and forcing Tetch's hand in it had been all too easy—that Tetch had been willing to pay such an exorbitant amount for her made him wonder if Tetch's fascination with her wasn't steeped entirely in revenge, as the Joker had once originally thought. There were plenty of other Alices to choose from, after all. That Tetch would fixate so obsessively on Taylor simply added more fuel to an already raging fire. Tetch would die—and it would be excruciating. The little weasel must have thought his plan was genius—foolproof, even—buying Taylor out from under his nose like that, like the Joker would be oblivious to it.

Still, kind of a shame, he thinks, that it all had to end as soon as it did; he liked Taylor in her little uniform. The schoolgirl skirt and the tucked-in polo, how tired and worn out she was when she came home. How easy. Compliant. How ready she was to be loved and fawned over at the end of a long, hard day at work. Are you coming to bed now, Mr. J? she'd ask, hovering near his desk, biting her lip because it embarrassed her to have to ask. It's the closest she could get to asking him to curl up behind her, rub her back as she drifted off to sleep as he sometimes did. In a little bit, sweet pea. He'd reach for her and give her a little pat on the back of her thigh, just below where the hem of her oversized t-shirt hung. He'd squeeze the flesh there in a moment of unmitigated indulgence, dig his nails in. Hard. He just wanted to see her flush, wanted to watch the sudden crease that would form between her brows because it hurt. And then the sweet little way her eyes would widen in surprise, because she thinks maybe she liked that, and it confuses her that she did, even though it was painful.

Always so easy to read, his girl.

He likes that about her, how open-book she is, paperbacked and soft, her vulnerability so pretty, so easy to manipulate. He's tearing pages from her by the fistful, and she just lies there and lets him, glad for his careful attentions, desperate for him to fill in all her blank spaces and then lovingly piece her back together. Her story so incomplete without him.

He thinks back to the first time Tetch had taken her—blindsiding him, snatching her right out from under his nose—and how too close for comfort that had been. How badly things could've gone if Tetch had had his way with her. Ressling had been the one to sound the alarm first, had watched her wander into that park, watched her climb into the back of Tetch's vehicle. The Joker had assembled his men in record speed, then. Oh, Tetch was brazen, taking her in broad daylight like that, bringing her to his evil secret lair. The Joker rolls his eyes. A little too Machiavellian for his tastes.

Still, there had been the risk of losing her that night. The almost-taste of fear, rancid on his tongue, the nasty after-tang of something that's gone sour and then shriveled with age. Something he hasn't tasted in a long, long time. He couldn't allow her to die. Not yet. Not when they were just getting to the good part. Not when he still had so much in store for her. For them.

It takes almost thirty minutes to get to the first stop. Some non-descript parking lot for an industrial plant on the outskirts of the city. There's a row of concrete-mixing trucks lined up just beyond a barbed-wire fence. A smattering of cars pockmarked throughout the parking lot on the other side. No lights. No cameras. It's drizzling lightly when Ressling stops the car, pulls the keys out of the ignition and cuts off the interior lights.

"Doesn't look like we were followed," he says.

The Joker doesn't reply. He yanks on the door handle, pushes the door the rest of the way open with his foot and gathers Taylor into his arms so he can haul her out. Ressling already has the back door of the other car open for him, parked right next to theirs, and this time it's the Joker who lays her down in the backseat, sprawled out on her back. She's not anymore lucid than she was before, and her head lolls to the side again, her limbs falling into place exactly as he sets them, like a puppet on a lax set of strings.

He grimaces at the sorry state of her and shuts the door. When he turns, Ressling offers him the new set of keys, which he snatches. Then he leans forwards, prods at the center of Ressling's chest with his pointer finger, the keys curled inside his closed fist.

"Keep me in the loop," he says, the warning clear. He still expects to be kept abreast of any goings-on while he and Taylor are on their little vacation away from Gotham. He doesn't expect any form of retaliation from Roman, but he knows he can't be too dismissive of the possibility, especially with someone as volatile and egotistic as Roman. The two of them usually keep to their own turf—purely out of chance—and Roman so rarely gets his hands dirty in the muck and the mire that the chances of their paths crossing is exceedingly rare. Let Roman booze it up with the socialites and the mob, where he cherry-picks freely from both pies. The Joker knows it can't last, that an empire built on lies is ultimately one with a weak foundation. He can't wait to watch the whole thing crumble.

The Joker opens the driver's side door, sinks into the seat. When he goes to close the door, however, Ressling's hand shoots out, holding it open. The Joker pauses, rolls his eyes upwards to look at him, as if to say, Yes?

"Who the fuck is Red?" Ressling asks, clearly annoyed by the fact that he doesn't know. The Joker grins, his eyes dark.

"He belongs to the Bat," he says, watching Ressling's face carefully. "Well," he amends, smirking, "used to."

He can see the gears turning in Ressling's head, the tightening of his jaw, how he's wondering if Red's double-playing Roman or the Bat, weighing which option is going to be a problem and which would be more advantageous.

"He knew I wasn't with Tetch. He knew the moment I walked in that room," Ressling says. Then his brows pull together, and he looks angry, suddenly, like the Joker had something to do with it. "Is he gonna be a problem?"

The Joker grins again, turns the key in the ignition and lets the car rumble to life. "Wouldn't count on it," he says, easy. Dismissive. "In fact, he's practically already dead."

He pulls the door shut after that. He'll let Ressling work out the technicalities of what he means by that. His priority now is her.

---

He has to allow some time for the dust to settle—but the length of their time away from Gotham will be almost entirely dependent on her, how long it takes for her to emerge from Wonderland, and whatever lingering trauma he'll have to reckon with when she does.

He drives another half hour in the opposite direction, towards Blüdhaven, gets them to a quiet, rank-looking little motel, the kind where no one asks any questions and they don't require a name on the books so long as you slap down enough cash. The room's been paid for in full, and he already has a key. Ressling left instructions for the room not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and, per the Joker's request, it's a room on the on very end. The room next door has also been paid for, as a precaution; there's no telling how belligerent or how loud Taylor might get as she starts coming up out of her drug-induced fog.

A red neon sign that simply reads MOTEL sits atop the flat roof of the L-shaped establishment. It's the kind of electric neon that buzzes and flickers at intervals, desperately trying to hold onto all of its constantans and vowels. There are leaves collecting in the gutters and clusters of rain-soaked pine needles rimming the edge of the parking lot, where the woods are starting to encroach. The door to every room alternates between the color teal and an obnoxious mustard yellow.

He parks outside their room, the front tires bumping against the concrete parking block in his haste. The headlights shine hot and bright against the two windows, nearly blinding before he shuts the car off, yanks the keys out of the ignition. Then he's getting out of the car, red and yellow light bleeding onto the pavement, all shiny and slick from the earlier rain. The hinges creak when he gets the back door open, pulls Taylor into his arms and hauls her out of the car, hoisting her over his shoulder, where her head dangles near his lower back. He glances around only briefly, assures that he isn't being watched, and then slips the key into the lock, crunches it around and jiggles the doorknob until the door breaks from the seal and pops open with a swift kick delivered at its base.

It's ice cold when he gets inside, but he'll deal with that later. He makes quick work of assessing the room—skates back the folding closet door with one hand, makes sure it's empty—before kicking open the bathroom door and flicking on the light. He braces an arm over the back of her thighs to hold her in place over his shoulder, kicks the faucet on in the bathtub, the roar of water filling his ears as he turns around, kneels down outside the tub and lays her down on laminate tile. She whimpers and tosses her head for a moment as if in pain, and he watches, fascinated, as the cold floor sends a shock of goosebumps crawling over her heated skin.

He makes quick work of her clothes, reaching into his jacket for his switchblade. He yanks her skirt away from the skin of her waist, slices the knife through the band—too impatient to look for the zipper—cuts it just enough for him to be able to tug the rest of it down her thighs. He cuts through her top, too, damp with sweat, and peels her arms out of the sleeves, his movements rough. Hurried. He tugs off her sneakers, her socks, moves back up her body to slice through her underwear, and then her bra, careful not to nick her skin in the process. When he's peeled everything away and she's finally there, naked and pale and splayed out, his jaw clenches, and he has to take a moment to look at her, sweep his gaze over every bare inch of her.

He's seen her enough times to have memorized all her little indelicacies: the burn scar on the back of her left thigh, just above her knee. A perfect circle, courtesy of a lit cigarette and her junkie whore of a mother. Mommy gets angry sometimes, she'd once told him, all those years ago. And then the tan, scrambled egg-shaped birthmark on the outside of her left ankle, the little freckles dotted along her inner thighs—the same ones that dusts the tops of her shoulders and the bridge of her nose in the summer. The inner folds and whorls of her bellybutton, the shape of her jutting hipbones, the smooth curvature of her kneecaps—how those muscles and bones feel when they're shifting beneath his hand. And the tiny, soft blonde hairs on her forearms, the lines engraved on the palms of her hands, lines he's memorized. The delicate dip of her spine, and those two little notches on her lower back. The feel of her throat when he's got his hand around it, the wild pulsing of her carotids when he squeezes just a touch too tight. And the J, embedded on the back of her right hip, the exact texture of that scarred skin, the slight roughness of its raised edges, the way she purrs like a kitten when he strokes over that branded flesh, how it feels so different than when she does it herself.

He knows her—perhaps with an intimacy with which he does not even know himself—but this is different. This is a vulnerability he's yet to witness—her asunder beneath him, shipwrecked and at his mercy, completely helpless to stop him, to shield her delicate innocence from his ravenous eyes. He wants to touch her, taste her, hear her—wants, wants, wants, with a greed that astounds him—but he knows the satisfaction he would receive from gorging himself on her now would ultimately pale in comparison to the satisfaction he will receive later, when she's awake and writhing underneath the heat of his touch, whining and arching her body towards him, begging him to touch her, keep going, please, don't stop, Mr. J, please, please, please…

His eyes shift further down to stare at her cunt, and satisfaction coils low and hot in his belly. She shaved for him. All her little curls gone, everything completely bare to him, the lips of her sex visible, petal-soft and pink. The flush of razor burn prickling along her mound, and even that's pretty, this evidence of her first time primping for him, readying herself for him. For sex. It makes him smirk, how she must've thought—hoped—she was going to get lucky again, maybe fantasized and wished for a repeat of their last performance, perhaps with his mouth this time instead of his hands.

He tugs his gloves off and discards them on the floor. Then he shifts onto one knee instead of two, cocks his head to the side as he reaches between her legs and slowly parts her lips with the rough pad of his thumb, nudging her clit with the downward stroke. He looks up, briefly, when she squirms, the muscles in her belly jumping, a crease forming between her brows—but his eyes are quickly drawn back to the soft heat of her. It's enough to make his mouth water, make him feel like a man starved.

There is, of course, the urge to push her thighs apart and shove his tongue so deep inside of her that it renders her drunk with pleasure. It'd be so easy. Lick her bone-dry, until she's begging him to stop, oversensitive and blissed out. She isn't the only one who's fantasized about a repeat of their little couch show—he wants his fingers inside her again. His whole fucking fist. That tight, wet space. How she had felt clenching around him, drawing him deeper.

That hole is his.

He's done a lot to ensure her virginity. Even in orchestrating her defilement at the hands of Nathan, he had taken measures to ensure that her cunt remain untouched, that he would be the one to claim that first. It's a small thing, in the grand scheme of it all, but he think it's fitting, that he should be the one to take her virginity. He's already taken practically everything else.

It takes some effort, but his gaze skates back up, past the taut skin of her belly, past her pretty ribcage and the gentle swell of her breasts. He stares at her face, now, the dried blood there, the dirt, and the urgency from before surges through him once again, orienting him, reanimating him to his original purpose. He twists around to check the temperature of the water, adjusts the nozzle so that it's lukewarm, and drops the stopper in. Then he takes a moment to stand, stretch his legs and shrug out of his purple jacket, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt and rolling the sleeves up to his elbows. He watches her the whole time.

He crouches, finally, to scoop her into his arms, carefully sets her into the slowly-filling tub, where water splashes up past her ankles, and then her knees. She whimpers some, her eyelids fluttering but never fully opening, and he guides her to lay back, where she can rest her head against the wall. He makes her lay her casted arm on the edge of the tub, so it doesn't get wet. There's a soap bar and a washcloth on the sink's edge, and he reaches behind him in the small, yellowed bathroom and grabs both.

Cupping the back of her head to hold her steady, he washes her face, first, scrubbing the blood from her cheeks, all the grime, the dried emesis on her chin. The washcloth comes away so dirty he has to grab another, and he washes the rest of her slowly. Clinically. Her eyes remain closed the whole time, and she barely reacts to his touch, only occasionally whimpering, still too lost in Wonderland to do much else.

He scrubs gently over an open cut on the meaty pad of her shoulder, his eyes narrowing a little when he takes note of the telltale bruising of what he knows to be from an oversized needle, jabbed into the skin too roughly. She's always bruised so easily, her skin peach-soft and delicate, even after years of near-constant abuse.

He doesn't intend to wash her hair at first, but there's blood and tangles streaked throughout, and he can't be carting her around like that. It would shock her to look into the mirror upon waking, see all that blood and the aftermath of the trauma she's suffered.

With that in mind, he works shampoo through her hair, a little impatient at first, but then somehow finding himself lost in the moment, scraping his nails over her scalp, working through the tangles. It's impossible not to think back to when he had done this once before—the first time. How she'd sat in that dingy bathtub, humming to herself, happy and splashing water and playing with the soap suds while he'd stood in the doorway, watching. It's almost funny how frequently she is capable of catapulting him to the past—to remembering—all the little things she does that remind him of when she was little. The memory of how she was supposed to burn, and then didn't. He wonders how different his life would be without her in it, all her honeyed sweetness, the special tenderness she reserves just for him. How much it invigorates him to be the recipient of love that is so wildly pure, so unfettered. How much she needs him…

He remembers, suddenly, the feel of her warm, soaked cunt sliding all up and down the inside of his wrist. The way she'd shamelessly used him, the sounds of her huffing and puffing as she worked herself to completion. He knows he could've taken her then. Opened her up for him, spread her onto her back and fucked her into oblivion, into some astral space outside of even God's own reach. Coaxing her over the edge, over and over and over again. How she would have gazed up at him with so much adoration, so much love, riding high on wave after wave of bliss, like he's all she's ever wanted, like he's the only thing that matters, like she'd do anything for him, and he knows that she would—she's proven that in spades.

It's impossible not to marvel at how she opens her heart up for him daily, allowing him taste after taste, letting him lap up the exterior of that engorged muscle, where the tender edges of her heart taste especially sweet. Always ripe for the taking, where he wants to peel her heart into rinds and gorge himself on her, on that little feverish muscle that pulses just for him. She'd cradle his head in her hands while he did it, whisper thank you, after, like she'd been wanting him to devour her. Needed it.

He could've done it then—taken her apart—but he knows it wouldn't have satisfied the urge, wouldn't have scratched the surface of this feeling he's been so hungry to sate. He knows that when he does take her, he wants her drunk on her own need, wants her bleeding with the kind of raw, wanton desperation she will find so shameful but ultimately unable to resist.

He's been playing the long game, and patience has been key, even if she's tested the boundaries of his control more times than he cares to admit. And she's been getting better at learning how to push his buttons, like her nasty little habit of masturbating right in front of him, trying to give herself the pleasure that only hecan award. Trying to entice him into making the first move, even though they both know she has to ask for it. So frightened of the things her body craves, but too shy to tell him what she needs, too scared to ask outright. He knows what she's doing. Her lust—coupled with the delicate roots of newfound confidence she's recently unearthed—have made her impudent. They're going to have a conversation about that later, about all the little ways she's been gunning for his attention, standing tip-toe in the kitchen in just a t-shirt, knowing he's watching—he's always watching—and pretending she doesn't feel how hard he is for her when she drapes herself all over him on the couch, squirming around until she's all settled and comfortable, and sometimes he has to put his hands on her hips and grit through his teeth for her to sit still just so he doesn't bend her over the arm of the couch and fuck her blind.

Or the sweet little way she's taken to kneeling on the bedroom floor to fold their clothes—her ass nestled on the back of her calves as she lovingly tends to his slacks, his shirts, folding them with the utmost care, tenderly smoothing out all the creases. He knows it isn't intentional on her part—she isn't trying for his attention—but it gets him hard anyway, because it's her, because it riles him to think of her caring for his belongings with so much affection. He knows her intent, how full her little heart is for him, and it burns him from the inside out to know just how devoted she is to him.

And sometimes he watches her from his desk while she's drawing—when she's all curled up in the overstuffed chair in the corner, her sketchbook balanced on the armrest or her thighs—and he finds himself staring at the way her tongue pokes out of her mouth, her brows all furrowed together, so lost in concentration she doesn't even feel the heat of his burning gaze.

The way he both hates her and wants her should be enough to level her flat, obliterate her, yet she just takes it, hungry for whatever he deigns to give her, the way he's conditioned her to crave both pleasure and pain—how the two aren't mutually exclusive.

He cups her head with both hands, guides her down into the water until her scalp is submerged, keeping her face above water. It's concerning that she doesn't struggle, that he could probably hold her underwater in the same way he'd nearly drowned her mother, and she wouldn't even fight him.

He dips her back down into the water, rinses the remaining shampoo from her hair. The drain gurgles when he unplugs it, and then he hoists her out of the tub, lays her on her back on the floor. Wraps her in a towel.

He leaves her there while he goes back to the car and retrieves the bag in the trunk that Ressling had packed. Just enough to get them by for a few days. He pulls the chain over the door when he's back inside, draws the curtains shut over the window until there's just a sliver of red light that slices through, slanting across the bed nearest the window.

He crouches on the bathroom floor with the bag and fishes out her clothes. It amuses him that Ressling chose functionality and comfort over the kind of outfits that they both know she usually favors—her summer dresses and the blouses with the puff sleeves and her jean shorts. He pulls back her towel to slip clean underwear up her legs, followed by a soft pair of blue cotton shorts. He tugs a white t-shirt over her head and gets her arms through the sleeves.

Goose bumps ripple over her arms when he scoops her up and carries her into the bedroom, pulls back the heavy comforter and lays her down on her side, on the bed farthest from the window. He stands there and watches her for what feels like a long time, sweeps the wet hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She doesn't even react.

In the bathroom, he strips off his suit, lining his gun and knives along the sink's edge. He leaves the bathroom door open while he showers—keeps the curtain only half closed so he can keep his eyes on her while the water rains over him. He scrubs the dried blood from his face and neck—Tetch's blood—and washes away the greasepaint. He spends a long time stripping the green out of his hair, too—it was mostly faded, anyway—and then towels off with the same towel he had used on Taylor. He pulls on a pair of slacks and a t-shirt and shakes his wet hair out like a dog.

He looks at the aftermath of their clothes pooled on the bathroom tile, like a bad parody of the aftermath of a quick tryst, like he fucked her in the shower.

He drapes his suit over the back of the door—no good allowing it to wrinkle, even if it'll be a while before he's wearing it again—and thinks that maybe he'll wash the blood out of it later. He leaves her shredded clothes on the floor. She won't be missing those.

In the bedroom, he uses the tracking app on his cellphone to pinpoint the location of Taylor's phone, with no success. He assumes it's been destroyed, but he'd already taken his own precautions anyway, deleting everything from her phone and wiping it clean—all done shortly after she'd departed for her little party, so she wouldn't notice. He'd saved her Google searches and her pictures in a folder on his own phone—for safekeeping, of course—and made sure she hadn't uploaded anything to the cloud. A lot of work, caring for his girl, making sure she's safe, but all necessary steps in order to keep her from falling into the wrong hands.

He understands the risks of their relationship being made public to the likes of men like Roman and Oswald, but he isn't concerned. Now, more than ever, it'll be easier to keep her on a short leash—and the best part is that she'll practically beg him to. She'll crave the safety that only he can provide. She'll want his protection, his promise that he won't abandon her, that he'll always look after her. He knows how to make her world incredibly small, how to create a space that's big enough for just the two of them and no one else. It's everything he's been working towards, all this time, and he knows how badly she'll want it, begging for the leash, and consequently his guiding hand.

In the bedroom, he checks her temperature again, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead, where the skin feels cooler than before. He watches the rise and fall of her chest for a while longer before finally stepping away to occupy the chair by the window. He slouches down into it, props his feet up on the bed and crosses his ankles.

He's vigilant—impatient—as he watches her in the dark. He knows it could take hours for her to come to. Still, this knowledge does nothing to sate the itch that has settled just beneath his skin, deep enough that he can't scratch, and he wants—is ready—to dive inside her mind, hungry to hear her firsthand account of what she's endured, wants all the nasty, sordid details. Perhaps what he hungers for most is the opportunity to console her, to soothe over her battle wounds with cloying sweetness and a touch so soft it renders her boneless, turns her into something so malleable; liquid ease, so that he might drink her down, feel her inside him.

Rains patters outside, and then gradually starts to pick up, pounding against the roof and the pavement, drowning out the mechanical stutter of the air conditioning unit that sags beneath the window. The room smells like bleach and stale cigarettes, but he settles in anyway, tries to make himself comfortable.

He stares at her in the darkness, bathed in the glow of red light that slices into the room through the open slit in the curtains, like the cut of a bloodied knife. He stares at her, and he thinks that, if he could, he'd reach down inside her and pull everything out himself.

He knows, however, that all he can do now is let the hallucinogen run its course, and allow time to do the rest.

Nothing to do now but wait.

---

He gets up a few hours later to piss. It's three AM. Quiet. The rain's stopped, and he can hear the hum of cicadas, the boarish croak of bullfrogs in the woods lining the back and sides of the motel. Headlights flash briefly through the window at one point, and he waits a few minutes until he hears the slam of two car doors before craning his neck to glance through the slit in the curtains. A drunk couple locked at the mouth, stumbling into a room several doors down. The man drops his keys three times before he can get the door open, and the Joker rolls his eyes, abandoning the window.

He sinks back down into his chair, but a moment later, his head snaps towards the bed when he hears the sheets rustle, followed by a pathetic, muffled whimper. It's the first sound she's made in a while, probably a few hours, and he waits a few more seconds in anticipation, wondering if she'll stir, but she doesn't.

Hours pass. It's early morning by the time he hears her shifting in the bed again. Gray light bleeds around the edges of the window and slips through the open crack in the curtain, where they're only partway closed, cutting a pale line across Taylor's covered legs.

When she whimpers again, this time tossing her head, he gets up and goes to her, his shadow engulfing her. He lays the back of his hand against her forehead, where her skin is burning hot again. She's breathing heavier, too, brows pinched together like she's in pain. He turns her head to the side, checks her pulse with the pad of two fingers, pressing down against the carotid artery that's exposed to him. He counts the beat for thirty seconds and then multiplies by two. Her heart rate is faster than what he'd like, and her running another fever is concerning, but he's not ready to pull out all the stops quite just yet.

He returns to his seat by the window after some time has passed. Later, he gulps down a shitty cup of instant coffee, and then follows it with a second cup, and then a third. He doesn't like caffeine, but it does the job. Not long after, he hears a car door slam, and he watches from the window as the woman from the previous night departs, sliding into the backseat of an Uber, a tear in her fishnets, her hair disheveled. Her high heels dangle from her hand, where she holds onto them by the straps.

Time crawls, as morning bleeds into noon, and noon into night. The stillness is maddening. He feels on edge. Irritated. He can feel the tightness in his jaw, the rigid set of his shoulders. He's never been a particularly patient man, but this has tried his patience in a way that threatens to cause spontaneous combustion. He can be patient, of course, when necessary, when the chips are in his corner, when he knows the payoff will be well worth the wait; but here he's unsure of the outcome, uncertain about Taylor's fate, and it only serves to make waiting that much more excruciating, like an itch he can't scratch. He thinks if he could just blow something up it might quiet his fever, the tingling in his hands—but now's obviously not the time to make a scene. Not when he has to lay low.

He paces for a while, needing to stretch his legs, needing not to be so fucking immobile. Sitting still for long periods of time has become tolerable only within the past couple of weeks, when there's an excuse for it, a reason, like when there's a warm body splayed in his open lap, snoring softly and clinging to him even in sleep. He fucking likesher like that, all sleepy and soft, pliant in a way that makes his hands itch, makes him feel like she'd yield to just about anything. He could fuck her like that, her on top, her arms curled loosely around his neck, her face pressed there, huffing and puffing little breaths against his skin as he thrusts up into her. Too sleep-drunk to do anything but lie there and take it.

He turns on the TV sometime around dark, when the need to stifle the incessant and growing static in his head has reached a fever-pitch. He's gotten so used to Taylor drowning out the noise that now her silence is deafening. How welcome her incessant chatter had become, her constant dialogue—even if completely irrelevant to his interests.

Still, he had stored all of it, unable to stop himself from doing so, like a bad habit, like a junkie savoring the hit, even as they're already thinking about the next dose. Every little anecdote about her day, her observations about the people and the world around her, every useless fact that piqued her interest that she was practically bursting at the seams to share. He knows more about animals and astronomy and nature than he ever cared to know. Her love for the working world and its mechanics, her childlike exuberance to know how things are made, how they operate—how that was her way of trying to figure out where she belongs in it all, what her purpose is supposed to be in all this chaos.

It amuses him, though, how the only books she'll sit still long enough to read are of the non-fiction variety, how made-up stories—no matter how fantastical, how thrilling, or how bright—have never been enough to capture and hold her interest. How only the real world has ever been good enough. Or perhaps that isn't exactly it, no. Perhaps it's that fantasy holds no truth for her, no merit. She'd been forced to abandon fairy tales a long time ago. The knight in shining armor. The frog turned into a prince. The princess rescued from her tower. True love's first kiss. No, no. Those are made-up stories, incongruent with the world she knows, the world she's been subjugated to for the duration of her life. She's never known a sweetness like that—like the ones promised to her in fairy tales—even if her little heart is so stuffed full of candied-sweetness it should have rotted from the inside out. The irony of it….

Her—his own little slice of heaven, God's orphaned angel, served to him on a fucking silver platter—trudging through the filth of Gotham, caught in its sticky, nasty web. Her heart at such complete odds with the circumstances that have shaped her life, beating to a different set of drums, something tribal, maybe, some battle-song reserved only for warriors. And the shit she'd waded through, time and time again, so much of it crafted by his own merciless hand, and yet she swam to the surface every time, gasping for breath, but alive. Her spirit tainted, but still bright. Always bright. If he were a different man, the kind of man who believed in angels, he might have thought she was one.

The way she is honey, and sunlight. So achingly tender it should have hurt. So soft, just begging to be split open—to be eaten raw. The way she prostrates herself at his feet, at the foot of a monster, supplicant, reverent at the alter of all his misdeeds. Loving him with a kind of fervor that only gods have ever known.

That is the irony.

He's in the bathroom after taking a piss—momentarily entranced as he stares at her ruined clothes, remembering her naked body sprawled out on the tile—when he suddenly hears a distinct thud.

His head snaps up, towards the mirror, where the image of her bed is reflected—empty.

He spins around, shoulders drawn up to his ears as steps through the doorway, pulse thrumming as he scans the room. His eyes lower, and he finds her there, on the carpet, on hands and knees, caught in the elongated stripe of white light that spills from the bathroom, light that is partially distorted by his lumbering shadow. When he moves, allowing the light to spill over her completely, she brings up an arm to shield her eyes from it, looking pained.

He watches her with rapt attention, unblinking. She's squinting up at him, trying so desperately to peel shadow from flesh, discern his shape.

"Late," she rasps, voice thick from sleep and from disuse. "Late, late…. " She sounds panicked, now, and her one arm trembles where it's braced against the carpet, supporting her weight.

He advances on her slowly, as if she were a skittish animal prone to flight if frightened, or some nighttime creature rarely seen. She continues to squint up at him, tilting her head some, still trying to shield the light from her eyes as he picks his way through the shadows.

"Mr. Hatter?" she asks, sounding frightened. Unsure.

He circles her slowly, rounding to her other side, forcing her to turn around on hands and knees to follow his movements. He doesn't answer until he's crouched down in front of her, his face now fully illuminated.

"No," he says.

She draws in a sharp intake of breath upon seeing him, stumbling backwards in her haste to get away. He doesn't think he's ever seen her look so terrified, and he's seen her when she's terrified, been privy to some of her life's most traumatic moments—he orchestrated most of them, after all. But she's looking at him now like she's seen a monster, some kind of feral beast with two heads and gnashing teeth. Her eyes are bloodshot—wider than he's ever seen them—and her chest is heaving as she frantically crawls backwards, away from him.

He doesn't like that.

He grimaces as he follows after her, lunging for her, his arm snapping forward with a speed she could not have anticipated. His hand snakes around her ankle, yanking her back towards him.

Taylor screams.

He slides her body across the carpet until she's caged underneath him, gets a hand over her mouth to try and muffle her screams, but she fights him harder than he expects her to, writhing and kicking, scratching and clawing and biting. She pushes on his chest with both hands, arches her hips up so she can dig her heels into the carpet and use them for leverage, commandeering a level of strength he's never bore witness to from her before.

It's a hell of a fight, one that might have impressed him if the circumstances were different, if he weren't so preoccupied with trying to restrain her; she even manages to scrape her nails along the side of his neck at one point—drawing blood—in a display of savagery that makes him hiss in pleasure-pain. He wonders if she put up this much of a fight against them, if she gave it her all.

He wrestles her into the carpet, primal instinct taking over as he finally flips her onto her belly, cages her against the floor with his weight.

She's breathless underneath him, still fighting, clawing at the carpet in a way that has him thinking she might rip up the carpet all together and start clawing at the floor until her fingers are raw and bloodied.

"Mr. Hatter!" she sobs, once, twice, and then three times, sounding so wrecked, her voice cracking. "Save me!"

He shoves her head into the carpet, too keyed up to care if it hurts, and draws his mouth close to her ear.

"Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh," he whispers, "it's time to come out of Wonderland now, sweetheart," he says, voice low. He licks his lips and shifts even closer, tightening his hold. "Mr. J's been waiting for you."

She lets out a long, distressed wail, squeezing her eyes shut, as if she can't bear to look at him, even from her peripheral. He watches a lone tear slip from her eye, slide past the bridge of her nose.

"Go back," she croaks, so worn out already, her fight starting to die down. She shifts underneath him, nails digging into the carpet, still trying to pull herself away from him, even as weak as she is, even though he's got her pinned. "Go—go back—have to…."

"Shhh…" He leans back slightly, just enough for him to sweep the hair back from her neck, damp with sweat, as she releases a shuddering exhale. When he squeezes his thighs tighter, where they're bracketed on either side of hers, it thrills him a little, even now, to feel how small she is underneath him. How warm. How right, like she was made for him.

She sniffles into the carpet, her breathing starting to slow, eyelids so heavy, a battle she can't win. She's still mumbling about being late, about Mr. Hatter, even though he can feel it when her body starts to grow lax underneath him. In just moments, she's falling back under, slipping back into the nightmare.

He waits until she's completely out before he removes himself from her, picks her up and puts her back in bed. He watches her like a hawk.

---

Shortly after midnight, they're back on the road, onto the next motel. Too risky to stay in one place for too long, especially with all the racket they'd made just hours ago.

The next motel is just as non-descript as the last, though a bit less isolated. He can hear the rumble of cars just off the I-195 exit ramp. The occasional police siren and its shrill, obnoxious whine as it speeds away. He stands outside their room at dusk, in a narrow hallway that keeps him relatively well-hidden from the rest of the complex. This one's two stories, and they're on the first floor and along the back, shielded from any prying eyes. The walls are stucco, the color of turmeric, with arched entryways, wilting palm trees, and a handful of oversized terracotta pots housing dead plants—a cheap mimicry of some Spanish-inspired tropical getaway. Taylor would like it, he thinks, if she were awake to see it.

He's joined by the hum of a vending machine that rests opposite him, where he leans up against the wall and exhales plumes of smoke, bathed in its ultraviolet glow. He lowers his cigarette and cranes his neck to peer inside their room. He left the curtains cracked so he can keep an eye on her, sprawled out on the bed, on top of a flowery duvet. Too hot for blankets. She's lying on her side, one leg hiked up, her knee level with her belly. Mouth parted and snoring. She'd slept during the ride here, but she's been fitful ever since he pulled her out of the car, and he thinks—hopes—it's the drugs finally wearing off.

He's still uncertain about the effects of the mind control, and how that might be playing into what she's experiencing now. He's annoyed at how long she's been out, almost as if Tetch's hallucinogen and the mind control are having a synergistic affect, as if they were designed to work together to keep her under for as long as possible. He wouldn't put it past Tetch—or Roman, for that matter—if that were the case; people are much easier to subdue when they're incapable of fighting back, and Tetch wouldn't have wanted a fight; with balls the size of his, he probably wouldn't have been able to hold his own in a physical altercation, even against someone as small as Taylor. And to her credit, he knows his girl knows how to pack a punch, if she wanted, if the circumstances were right.

The sky bleeds swirls of lavender and sherbet as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, and it's dark by the time he heads back inside, locks the door. Closes the curtains.

Taylor shifts some in the bed, whimpering. She's been more sensitive to sound and light since waking the first time. A good sign. Hopefully that means she's starting to emerge from her drugged haze.

He goes to her and crouches at the side of the bed, pushes the hair back from her face and tucks it behind her ear. His thumb lingers along the line of her jaw, and he strokes it back and forth for a moment, wondering what she's dreaming about, where she's at, and what she's doing.

Impatience blisters beneath this skin the longer time wears on. He keeps the TV on for background noise, hoping the noise might pierce through the veil of her dreams, the world that is keeping her shielded from him.

Later, he sits on the end of the bed, elbows propped on his thighs, eyes narrowed as he watches the news. No reports of Tetch's death yet, or the fire, and he finds that curious, wonders who's been running around doing damage control, and why. Ressling phones him a few hours later, and he paces back and forth in the bathroom as he takes the call, murmuring into the phone, giving instructions on what he expects to be done next. Ressling tells him it was the decision of Commissioner Gordon not to publicize Tetch's murder, fearing that it might start a turf war. The Joker grits his teeth in annoyance. He should have televised the fucking thing himself to ensure its publicity across the entire city. Surely Batman would find out on his own—wherever he was—but it lacked the impact, the grandiosity, if they weren't even going to broadcast Tetch's murder on live television. He wanted credit for killing the little weasel, for fuck's sake. And he wanted Batman angry enough to come out and punish him for it.

He's standing in the doorway to the bathroom, leaning against the frame, when he ends the call. Taylor's still sprawled out on top of the covers, lying on her side, though now she has her thumb in her mouth, and that's new. He quirks a brow as he watches her. It's been a while since he's seen her resort to that old habit, but it fascinates him all the same, knows that she only does it when she's in a certain headspace, when she's feeling vulnerable, in need of comfort.

He tongues at the inside of his cheek for a moment, deciding. Then he goes to her, slips his hands underneath the crook of her arms and hoists her up, her head falling against his shoulder, where her breath is hot against the side of his neck. He gets her legs around his waist and carries her into the bathroom. On the way, he grabs a paper cup from the dresser, where there's a stack of them next to the cheap coffee maker and the box TV. In the bathroom, he sits her on the edge of the sink, cups the back of her neck to hold her up while he fills the cup with sink water with one hand.

"Open up," he murmurs, placing the cup to her lips, tilting her head back. Her brows furrow when the water spills over her tongue, and she coughs for a second—eyes still closed—and then she starts swallowing, desperate for more.

It's encouraging, the fact that she's alert enough to swallow, registering her own thirst. He fills up the cup three more times for her, watches her with rapt attention as she drinks.

"That's it… good girl."

Her brows furrow again, as if reacting to the sound of his voice—recognizing, perhaps—and her eyelids flutter, like she's trying to open them but just can't, like the effort is too much.

When water drips down her chin, he sets the cup down and swipes the water away with his thumb. His fingers are slow to wrap around her jaw, and he takes his time in turning her face one way and then the other, studying it under the light, like a sculptor assessing all the hard and soft lines of his creation. The symmetry, the evenness of the curvature, the smoothness. His gaze flits over the thin, blue veins streaked across the back of her closed lids, framed by the soft bed of her lashes. Her pinched eyebrows and the flush high on her cheeks. Her wet, parted mouth….

His fingers dig into her skin with more force, enough to make her brows draw closer together in pain, and a small sound escapes her throat. It energizes him, makes him shift closer, between her spread thighs, so his own thighs are pressed up against the sink's edge. He leans down, slowly, until their noses brush, until his forehead meets hers, and he huffs a breath across her skin.

"Where are you, hm?" His voice is low, barely a murmur, and he traces the line of her jaw with his thumb as he holds her, keeps her face angled towards his. Their noses brush one more time before he pulls away.

She caves forward without his weight supporting her, and he picks her back up, lifts her off the sink so he can shuck her cotton shorts and underwear down her thighs with one hand. She whines when he does it, and he wonders just how far down she is, if she has any awareness of what's happening now.

He carries her the short distance to the toilet and sets her down, shorts and underwear bunched around her knees. She'd be mortified if she knew—but then again, she'd be mortified if she knew a lot of the things he's done to her. Like he said—he knows her.

He crouches in front of her and lets her lean against him, supporting the weight of her upper body, where her head rests on his shoulder, face turned towards his neck. He reaches up to turn on the sink, let the water run until she gets the right idea. He knows she must have to go. He presses on her bladder with the flat of her his palm until she looses a small sound and finally lets go.

He teases the knobs along her spine, waiting until she's done before shucking her shorts back up, carrying her back to bed.

Outside, he lights another cigarette, thinks about how much he hates the smell of nicotine, and he waits.

He waits.

---

Night lapses without incident, yet impatience continues to blister underneath his skin, starts to burn with an insistence that makes it impossible to ignore. He wants her back. He wants her back now.

She's been a little more vocal in the past few hours, whimpering and tossing and turning—a song and dance he's more than familiar with. He knows she's having a nightmare—he wonders if it's about him.

It's early morning when Ressling phones him again. The Joker slips outside into the pre-dawn warmth, where the air feels damp, already muggy, the crickets in the woods still screeching, though at a lower decibel. Ressling tells him that something is brewing, but he's not sure what yet. He's hearing rumblings, though, and he tells him that news of Tetch's murder is spreading through the underground, but still hasn't reached the airwaves. It's only a matter of time now.

He asks about Roman's technology, if he's heard anything new, and Ressling sighs into the phone. The Joker hears traffic in the background, the sound of honking cars.

"It's glitchy," he says. "The gamma rays aren't as strong as Tetch's were. And the technology doesn't last, maybe forty minutes. Tops."

The Joker considers this, turns to look at Taylor through the window, her cheek smushed on the pillow, long limbs all tangled in the sheets. Still passed out. The news should come as a relief—but it doesn't explain why she still hasn't woken up yet, why she's still so deeply under.

Silence bleeds over the phone, and he senses Ressling's question even before he asks it.

"Is she—?"

"She's breathing," he says. That's all the information Ressling needs to know.

Ressling doesn't say anything for a moment, but, as usual, his silence speaks volumes.

"I'll call when I have an update," Ressling finally says, lingering for a moment, as if he expects the Joker to say more, but the Joker ends the call, slips his phone into the pocket of his slacks.

When he goes back inside, he sinks into the chair next to the window. The TV is on, volume low, some informercial for Tupperware. He leaves it on for the light, the pale, white glow it casts over the room, so he can see Taylor's face.

Sleep eludes him, as it usually does, but he manages almost an hour of it, the room a little paler and slate gray when he wakes. He glances towards the bed and has to do a double-take when he finds it empty. The covers pushed back.

There's fresh blood smeared on the white sheets.

He's wide awake in an instant. When he sits up, back straightening and hands braced on the armrests of the chair, goose bumps erupt in waves over his arms.

He stands, slowly, taking in the scene. A quick assessment reveals that the chain on the door is still in place, and the room is exactly as he had left it. Still, his pulse thrums a little faster as he rounds, slowly, to the other side of the bed.

It's relief that washes over him at first, seeing her there on the carpet, curled in the fetal position and lying on her side. He cocks his head as he looks at her, notes the blood that has blossomed around the crotch of her shorts. There's a circle of vomit on the carpet, too.

She whimpers and rolls onto her back, fresh tears shining on her cheeks, and he watches, fascinated, as her lashes begin to flutter, her lids opening for the first time in days.

He closes the short distance between them and slowly crouches on the floor next to her, hovering over her prone form. Waiting.

It takes her a moment to realize he's there, for her eyes to find him. He watches her gaze roll around the ceiling before those big green eyes shift down and to the side, landing on his chest, first, before trailing up to his face.

For a moment, all she can do is blink at him, chest still heaving from the exertion of having thrown up. She's staring at him like she's not sure if he's real, like she might still be dreaming. Brows all furrowed, mouth parted and pulled into a confused frown. Adorable.

"Mr. J?" she croaks.

His name in her mouth is like fucking music.

He bites his cheek to curb his grin, staring at her as he plants a hand on the carpet next to her head, leaning over her.

"Shhh," he coos, "Mr. J's right here, baby." He brushes a strand of hair from her face, tucks it behind her ear. Strokes her cheek with his thumb. Sweat is beaded along her forehead, and she looks feverish—pale—but she's talking. She recognizes him.

Tears well in her eyes, and she opens her mouth as if to say something, but no words come. He cocks his head further, waiting for her to speak, but in the next moment, she's suddenly rolling over onto her side again, retching onto the carpet.

He grimaces from where he's crouched behind her, and she lays her head back down on the carpet when she's done, clearly worn out. Exhausted. Her back still to hm, he watches her shoulders heave from the force of her quiet sobs.

"I'm sorry—" she gasps.

He shifts forward onto one knee, rubs soothing circles into her back with a brush of his knuckles. "There, there," he coos. His eyes drift briefly to the blood stained across the back of her shorts, between her thighs, and a familiar heat sparks in his lower abdomen. Jesus, that's pretty. He's always liked the way she looks covered in blood. "Get it all out…."

He forces his gaze back up, staring at the back of her head. He's glad she's throwing up, getting the rest of Tetch's shit out of her.

She sniffles and shudders out little gasping breaths as she rolls onto her back again, watery eyes blinking up at the ceiling before they manage to find his. She blinks at him, and more tears fall, streaming down ruddy cheeks.

"Are you real?" she whispers, her voice cracking at the end, so hoarse from disuse.

The corner of his mouth curls, and he reaches forward for the collar of her shirt, lifting it towards her chin so he can dab at the corner of her mouth, wipe the mess away.

She watches him with rapt attention, wide-eyed and unblinking. When he releases her shirt, he nods in lieu of answering her question—just once—but it's all the confirmation she needs.

She sobs, overwhelmed with relief.

When she rolls onto her other side to face him, all she can do is cry, staring at him through a blur of hot tears.

Oh, his sweet, soft girl. Her reaction is even better than he could have imagined.

Seeing her cry for him fills him with unbridled satisfaction, a warmth in his belly, and when she tries to push herself up onto her hands, tries to inch closer to him, that warmth intensifies, spreads through his bloodstream, heating him from the inside out. He can feel the heat in his eyes as he watches her, the way she is staring at him with wide, frantic eyes, as if she's afraid he might vanish into thin air before she gets to him.

"Mr. J…" she cries. She painstakingly pulls herself the short distance across the carpet towards him, and it thrills him, seeing her desperation, her need for him. She'd crawl through fucking glass just to be eclipsed by his shadow.

"There, there," he says, gently, pulling her to his chest when she's close enough, and she cries even harder. He sinks to the floor with her, his back propped against the side of the bed as he gets her piled in his lap. Her knees are bracketed on either side of his thighs as she sobs against him, winding her arms around his neck, clinging to him with every intention of never letting go. The hard shell of her casts catches on the collar of his shirt, rubs against the back of his neck, and her breath is warm on his skin. She smells like soap and sweat and Taylor, and he digs his fingers into her waist, inhaling, nuzzling into her hair.

His.

Fucking his.

"Right where you belong, aren't you?"

She sobs into his shirt, and her nails dig hard into his shoulders in confirmation.

She cries for a long time, shuddering from the force of her sobs. He lets her. He knows how harrowing this experience has been for her, how desperately she's going to need his close attentions, his guiding hand, his undivided affection, and she's well overdue for some. He feels equally as ready to indulge her—hungry to draw her closer, to meld her flesh with his.

He skirts the tips of his fingers down her spine, traces invisible patterns across her back while she cries. Waits for her to catch her breath.

"I—I thought I'd never—never see you again." It comes out choked, barely intelligible, but the raw emotion tangled inside the sincerity of her words wrings something out of him, something feral. Possessive.

He waits until his shit-eating grin dissipates some before replying.

"You know I wouldn't let that happen," he says, voice low. His ducks his head, and his nose bumps against her cheek, his breath on her skin. "You know I'll always find you." If it sounds more like a threat than a reassurance, he's unbothered by it. It's just the honest truth.

She lifts her head from his neck, suddenly, sitting back on his thighs. Her hands slide from his shoulders to grip the front of his shirt, and she looks like she's seen a ghost. Her eyes desperately search his, her mouth gone dry.

"Mr. J, the—the girls," she gasps, "I—we—we have to save them, we have to call the police—"

He cocks his head, looking at her, watching her get so wound up. He's fascinated, but not surprised. Of course her first thought—her first concern—would be the little girls for sale who were left behind. The girls in the cages.

He reaches up to wipe a stray tear away with his thumb, smearing it across her cheek. So pretty like this, so right, with her lashes soaked from her tears, cheeks ruddy and hot. And her swollen bottom lip, flushed purple and red from the busted blood vessels underneath, shiny from the way the skin has been forced to stretch taut across it. A reminder of what she's endured. Her strength.

She tugs on his shirt to pull him back to the moment, looking so stricken. "Please, Mr. J!" She starts to shift, looking up, over his head, like she intends to get up, go straight to the nearest phone. He digs his fingers into her waist instead, gripping her tighter, while his other hand winds itself in the strands of her hair, cupping the back of her skull, holding her still. Forcing her to look at him.

"Shh, shh…" he soothes. He makes sure he has her full attention before continuing. "Mr. J took care of that already."

She blinks at him through her tears, eyes widening in a mixture of both surprise and hope. "You—you saved them?"

He nods, twice. "Nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Everyone's safe and sound."

Taylor's eyes fill with fresh tears, her bottom lip trembling, and her arms are suddenly back around his neck again. "Thank you, Mr. J," she sobs, clinging to him. "It was so awful," she wails, "when I was—when they were… I was so scared…." She's crying too hard to finish, and he resumes rubbing circles into her back.

He'll coax the whole story out of her eventually—he wants to hear every sordid, nasty detail, straight from the source. He'll coddle her all night if he has to, if that's what it takes to get the story out. He knows most of the particulars already—it never hurts to have pawns on both sides of the chess board—but there are also parts of the story that only Taylor is privy to, and he wants those pieces, needs to know exactly what happened to her. What she's seen. What she's done.

His neck is damp from her tears when she lifts her head, looks at him with her lashes all soaked and clumped together. So pitiful. Perfect.

"They—they killed him, Mr. J. My—my—Ben," she cries. "Right in front of me… it happened so fast. And it's my fault that he's gone. It's my fault, and I—I—" she chokes on the words as she tries to get them out, and he coaxes her through it, rubbing her back. Waiting patiently.

It surprises him, her thinking Ben's death was her fault. But then again, her perception of certain life events has almost always tended to error on the side of tremendous self-flagellation and guilt. She blames herself for everything, believes she is responsible for every terrible thing that's ever happened to her and to those around her. It's a burden he himself has never had to bear, a weight that is so completely foreign to him that it's almost impossible to imagine what it must feel like. The way her shame shackles her, how she's forced to carry it with her everywhere she goes, like a cross she never asked to bear.

"I thought he was my friend, but he—he was going to—to—" She sobs again, looking way. She squeezes her eyes shut tight as tears streak down her cheeks in twin rivers. "I thought he was my friend…. "

This is perhaps the most satisfying end to that particular part of the saga—Ben's betrayal of her trust, the very implosion he had been so eagerly anticipating since the start of their little friendship.

He hums in affirmation, thinking over his next words very carefully. "Mr. J tried to warn you," he says, his tone perhaps just a touch too patronizing to warrant any credibility, "about getting a job. About Ben." He takes her chin in his hand, makes her meet his gaze head-on. "I told you Gotham is a nasty place, that it'll spit you out."

Something in her eyes seems to change, then, and his lip curls a little when she pulls her chin from his grasp and shifts away from him. It's slight, the way she draws back, resting more on his knees than his thighs—and she looks wary, suddenly. Unsure.

"You—you lied to me," she says, her voice just a whisper. Her hands are braced on her own thighs now, and her eyes flicker up, to meet his. "Why did you lie to me about—about him?"

Tetch. His chest rises and falls slowly as he considers his reply. It was inevitable that this would come back to him eventually. At the time, it had felt right to lie. Better to have her think that her kidnapping was all just a bad dream, something fictional. Made up. She couldn't hold him accountable for not protecting her if she thought it wasn't real. He couldn't exactly tout himself as her savior if he couldn't back his claims, so of course he had lied. He hadn't known, then, that her path would once again cross with Tetch's, that his lie would come back to bite him in the ass. It's a small miscalculation, in the grand scheme of things, but potentially a detrimental one, if he doesn't play his cards right.

Thankfully, he's had time to plan accordingly. He knew this moment would come.

He watches her very carefully, knowing he has to do this right. He has to spin it.

"You really put me in a bind, you know," he says, eyes dark, "when you hid in the trunk. When you disobeyed me."

She looks at him, eyes widening in alarm. "What do you mean?" she whispers.

"That's when he first saw you. Mr. Hatter," he explains, working his mouth, his tongue tracing along the scar of his bottom lip as he watches her. "And he just had to have you after that. Had to have my girl." He pauses, lets her digest this little tidbit of information, watches the emotions flickering across her features, the realization. The understanding. "But it's hard to keep you safe when you won't let me," he says. "When you don't listen."

Taylor's face pinches in distress, and she scoots forward to be closer to him again. She moves as if to brace her hands on his chest, but they fall away at the last minute, curling back in on themselves, into her lap.

"But—but you lied to me," she says, frowning. "Why did you lie? You told me it was a dream and I—I believed you." She swallows, trying to calm her trembling breaths, trying not to cry. "I still have nightmares about that, about—about all of it." She's starting to hyperventilate, her breaths coming faster and faster, and he knows he has to work quickly if he's going to talk her down from this proverbial ledge. "Why didn't you tell me the truth? I don't—I don't—"

"Because I was trying to protect you," he growls. He grabs her chin in his hand when she won't look at him, squeezes hard until she does. "I was trying to give you a normal life. You think you would've gone on like the way things were if you had known it was real? You think you would have just gone back to normal, acted like nothing had happened?"

"But I did. I did do that—"

"Because I told you it wasn't real. Because you thought the threat wasn't there. You would've been a basketcase otherwise. Too afraid to go outside. To go to school. Cowering away from the outside world. What would I have done with you then, hm? What good are you if you're just a shell of who you used to be?"

The words hit her like a gut punch. Taylor cries even harder, looking away, her eyes downcast, even with her chin still held in his clenched hand. "You make it so—so hard for me to trust you sometimes." She bows her head to cry, sounding so broken. So lost.

His grip around her chin softens, and he expertly changes tactics. A little emotional whiplash never hurt anyone.

"What a shame it is to hear you say that," he says, with just a hint of thinly-veiled disgust, noting the way her shoulders tense at the mention of the word shame. She'd rather die than have him feel ashamed of her. "You know, I really thought..." he chuckles a little, as if amused by his own stupidity, "I really thought that, now that we were, uh, boyfriend and girlfriend… you'd have a little bit more faith in me than that. But I can see now that I was wrong."

He lets go of her chin then, and the expression on Taylor's face is so priceless, it's almost an effort to school his features into one of disinterested passivity. She looks like she's just had the carpet pulled out from underneath her—and the floor, too.

"No—no," she whispers. He can hear the terror in her voice—the fear—that their relationship is over before it even really had a chance to begin. Oh, he can practically see how feverishly her little heart is slamming against her ribcage, how frantically it pulses with anxiety. "No," she says again, moving a fraction closer, "No, please, I—I do trust you."

He lifts a brow. "Do you?"

"Yes," she gasps, "It's just that I—I—"

"I could've lost you, when you disobeyed me like that. When you put yourself in danger."

"But you didn't!" she cries. "I'm right here, see?" She's frantic now, scooting forward to be closer to him, bridging the distance between them with her hands, gripping his shirt until her knuckles are white. "I'm right here. Everything—everything worked out—" Her voice cracks at the end, and he knows the words sound hollow even to her own ears.

"And at what cost to you?" he asks. "Look at what this has done to you. Disobeying me. Hatter was going to kill you—you know that, don't you?"

She gapes at him like a fish out of water, so scared. At a loss for what to say. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen," she wails. "I—I'm so sorry, Mr. J—"

"I'm afraid being sorry doesn't cut it." He stands, and she watches him from the floor, where she's been dumped from his lap and sits with her legs tangled underneath her, looking so little and afraid. She scrambles to get up after him. Touches his lower back. So soft.

"Please—what do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do..."

He cranes his head to look at her over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, like he's considering, like he's not sure if she's worthy of being awarded a second chance.

"I don't know if there's anything you can do," he says, laying on the disappoint so thick, it's a wonder she isn't crushed from just the weight of it.

"Please... please," she cries. "I'll do anything. Just—just tell me what I have to do..."

He turns to face her after a long moment of silence has passed, just past the point of uncomfortable. He has to be sure she's desperate enough. When he looks at her, his eyes are hard and penetrating, and she's staring at him like he's god, like he's about to decide where she'll spend eternity.

He leans down over her, invading her space, making her flinch when he does it, but not touching her. He clasps his hands behind his back.

"You're going to be a good girl from now on," he says. "You're going to do exactly as I tell you, when I tell you to do it. You're not going to ask questions. You're going to listen. Otherwise I'm going to have to do something you really, really won't want me to do... and next time I might not be quite as forgiving." He ends his little speech with a quirk of his brow, his eyes searching hers. "Are we clear?"

Taylor nods, overeager, silent tears spilling down her cheeks. So grateful for this second chance. "Y—yes, Mr. J. Please, I promise I'll be good. I'll do everything you say, just—" her voice lowers, almost as if she's afraid to have to say it, "just please don't leave me," she says, staring at the floor. "Please."

He smiles. Reaches up to wipe her tears away with his thumb. "I won't have to as long as you're a good girl. Can you promise me that?"

She sniffles. Nods her agreement. "I promise," she says.

"There," he coos, suddenly affectionate. "I knew you'd understand. My smart girl."

He smiles at her, and she looks up at him, offers him a half-hearted and watery smile in return. He can see the relief in the sag of her shoulders, like the weight of the world's suddenly been lifted and she can breathe easy again. Then she reaches for him and wraps her arms around his waist, burrowing into him. He pats her back and lets her hug him for a long time, until she's all cried out and her knees are weak from standing.

When she pulls away, she wipes the snot and tears from her face with the back of her hand, looks up at him a little sheepishly, like she's embarrassed.

He answers by cupping her face in his hands, sweeping his thumbs across her cheekbones, smearing the wet of her tears across her face. He's content to just look at, here like this, soaking up her compliance, but he watches the way her eyes drift up, past his forehead.

"You… you washed the green out of your hair," she says, sniffling, offering him another feeble, watery smile.

He grins at her, baring his teeth. Scars stretching taught on either side of his face. "What do you think? This fella still handsome enough for you?"

Her cheeks turn pink—he can feel the heat of from under the pads of his thumbs—and she has to look away when she answers, staring at his chest. "Very," she whispers, her eyes only briefly darting up to meet his.

Silence lingers in the room after that, and he allows it, giving her the time and space to take the conversation where she needs it. He can tell there are hundreds of words sitting there, waiting on the tip of her tongue, but she bites her lip and keeps them to herself. For now.

He watches her gaze flicker over to the bed, to the wet pool of blood that on the sheets that almost seems to wink at them, playful. Her eyes widen in alarm, as if only just now remembering the return of her period, and her cheeks flush hot with embarrassment.

With a jerk of his chin, he indicates the bathroom, and Taylor bites her lip. Nods. She moseys into the bathroom and he hears the shower turn on.

She doesn't shut the door all the way, which is a first. Normally her modesty would not allow for such scandal, but with anxiety threaded so tightly through every nerve—coupled with her fear of abandonment—she can't not.

The irony does not escape him: now they've both left the door open for each other, both of them so unwilling to be separated, so unwilling to be parted, even if just by a door. Even if just for a moment.

It's a quick shower, though once the water cuts off, he can hear her sniffling, knows she was crying again. He catches little glimpses of her reflection in the mirror as she changes, occasionally disappearing from view when she ducks down to ruffle through the duffle bag on the floor. He hears the tearing of plastic, knows she found the pads she was after, and then she brushes her teeth, keeping her eyes downcast, like she can't even stand to look at herself, can't stand the bruises and scabs and scrapes. He wonders if they remind her of Nathan. The aftermath of her rape.

The door creaks as it slowly opens, and he looks up as she emerges, making it look as if he hadn't been watching her this whole time.

She's wearing soft gray shorts and a little white camisole, looking so delicate and small he thinks he could break in her half, without even having to try. She looks at him from the doorway and bites her lip, starts to cross her arms over her chest when she finds him looking.

He knows she's embarrassed about not having a bra, doesn't miss the way her nipples pebble through the thin layer of her top. But he ignores this, beckons her over with a crook of his finger.

She pads over to him obediently, still trying to shield her upper half from him, reclaim some semblance of her modesty. She still has no idea that he bathed her. Touched her cunt and washed her hair and dressed her.

When he's close enough, he reaches for her left wrist and pulls her to him, between his spread legs, makes her stand there while he looks up at her and rubs his thumb over the inside of her wrist, tracing over the thin skin there, arteries and veins, little pulsing rivers underneath the pad of his thumb.

"Hungry?" he asks, already knowing the answer. She hasn't eaten in almost four days.

Her eyes widen a little, and she looks so relieved—so grateful—he almost thinks she's going to cry.

"Very," she rasps, her voice shot from all her crying, and he releases her wrist with a squeeze before reaching for his phone. He orders them a pizza through an app, the kind with cheese in the crust, which he knows is her favorite.

Just a few minutes later, when he goes outside to retrieve the delivery, he can feel Taylor's eyes on his back, watching him from the window. It satisfies him, to think that this might be their new normal, at least for a while. She's always been clingy, but now it will manifest itself tenfold, perhaps with an intensity that will rival her younger self, when she was just a little girl trailing at his heels like a lost puppy.

She's on him the minute he's back inside, bouncing on her heels a little. He underestimated just how hungry she would be, but he supposes that even the memory of hunger—back when she used to be regularly deprived of food, when there wasn't enough to go around or the pantry was locked or she had no lunch money—that's a hunger that's never sated. A hunger that never really goes away. The kind of hunger that clings to you, lingers menacingly in the peripherals of your mind like a wraith, always there to remind you that the hunger might return, that you should eat as much as you can while the food is still in reach.

The idea of exploiting this hunger—more than he already has—excites him to his core. It's why he can't allow her to have a job, why she can't have friends: only he can be the sole provider of her nourishment, only he can give her the sustenance she needs.

She takes the bottle of soda from him and goes to the dresser, pouring each of them a drink, filling the paper cups so high it nearly spills over the rim. She downs hers in one gulp, then refills it and downs another, this one a little slower.

He sits on the edge of the bed, facing the TV, and retrieves a slice for himself. He watches a little curiously as Taylor takes the box, lays it on the floor and kneels next to it, looking almost delirious from how hungry she is. He pretends to watch the TV while he eats, but all he can do is stare at her, fascinated, as she devours her slice and then goes in for a second. She's not watching the TV, either, staring off at some unidentifiable dark spot beneath the dresser, as if caught in a trance. She eats a third slice, finishes her soda, and then leans back, a hand on her full belly, looking sleepy and a little dazed. She glances up at him, cheeks reddening, as if only just now realizing how she must have looked.

He gestures to the pizza box with a nod of his chin, and she gets the idea, carefully hands him another slice, the pizza cradled in the palms of both hands, like she's offering him something precious and highly fragile.

"Better?" he asks, around a mouthful of cheese.

She nods faintly, still bashful.

They watch TV in silence—some movie with superheroes, he hasn't been playing close enough attention to know which one—and he watches her reflection in the mirror above the dresser, next to the TV.

He doesn't push her to talk. He knows she's not ready yet, that she's worn out and still reeling from everything that's happened. Still trying to process the things she's seen, and the things she was made to do. Maybe still processing the terrifying possibility of their almost-breakup—as if he'd ever toss her to the curb after everything they've been through. But it was simply too much fun yanking on her leash, especially so soon after tightening her collar. Threatening to end their relationship, twisting her argument back in on itself until it had folded and crumpled like Papier-mâché. There was something so satisfying in seeing how quickly he was able to flip the narrative, pin the blame on her, make her the responsible party for this whole mess, while he gets to play both the innocent victim and the saving hero.

He tongues at the inside of his cheek, eyes dark and trained on her. She looks exhausted—anxious, more than anything—and as she slowly starts to inch closer to him, scooting across the carpet, he doesn't stop her when she circles her arms around his lower leg, the one closest to her. He can still see her in the mirror, eyes focused on the TV, as she rests her head against the side of his knee.

He doesn't touch her, doesn't stroke her hair, or pull her up into his lap, even if the urge tugs at him, makes the nerves in his fingers itch, just below the surface. He allows her to sit there with her arms looped around his calf, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. He sees it the moment she succumbs to sleep, her eyes fluttering closed and then back open as she keeps jerking herself awake, trying to win what is clearly a losing fight.

Her body goes lax when sleep finally takes her, slumping against him, her cheek squished against the side of his leg, mouth open and snoring softly. Her arms loosen some around him, but she's still clinging, just like when she's cuddling that little stuffed otter that she so often likes to go to bed with.

And he does touch her, then, watching her face in the mirror as he slowly rakes his fingers through her hair, combing through the strands and scraping his nails gently over her scalp, her hair still damp from her shower. She looks cute—innocent—wrapped around him like this, so trusting, so needy for him, for the specific shelter that only hecan provide, and it's just another reminder of everything he's done to get her here, to this exact point in time.

He grins as he looks at her, feeling fond, of all things, but also excited, rife with anticipation.

This is just the beginning.

---

Wonderland is different than Taylor remembers.

She knows—without really knowing—that something isn't right.

Wonderland is wrong.

It's nighttime, and she's in the forest, but everything is upside down and too big—or maybe she's just too small? Yes, yes, that's it. She's shrunk down, to some impossible size, no bigger than a thimble, and she doesn't know how she got this way, but she knows that it makes her weepy, and afraid. She is very, very afraid.

So she cries and she cries and she cries, and she just wants to be big again. How does she become big again? Surely someone will see her distress and come to help her. Surely there is someone kind who can fix this.

Oh please, oh please, if you are out there, you must help. You must!

She shouts the words into the night—or at least, she thinks she does—but she is met with no assistance. Only the moon watches, so fat up there, looking pale and angry, as if she'd woken it from its slumber.

Hush, you! the moon roars.

The ferocity of its thunderous roar sends a gust of wind so strong that it blows her several feet away, until she is knocked down, into a thicket of nearby weeds. The ground here is knotted and tangled, and as she tries to get up, she keeps tripping in the underbrush, sharp vines from dead roses cutting into her soles, and, oh, ouch! Has anything ever hurt this much?

She cries as she brushes off her scraped knees and cut palms, and when she stands, finally freed from the tangle, she realizes she is no longer small, but back to her normal size. The knowledge does little to comfort her, though, and the forest still remains stubbornly upside down, and all the trees and all the flowers and all the bushes are turned wrong-side up. Worse yet, in the dusky blue light of midnight (it's never truly dark in Wonderland) she is suddenly mindful of the fact that she is not alone.

She realizes there are hundreds of blinking eyes looking at her, monstrous in size, their eyes glowing yellow and others red, watching her from inside the foliage of the upside down trees. She can see the gleaming whites of their canines—some already coated with blood, fresh from a kill. And she can hear the snapping of their jaws, saliva pooling on their big fleshy tongues, ready to feast. Ready to eat. Eat! Eat! Eat!

She screams, knowing that she is their next tasty meal, and she tries to run, oh, she really does try! Only, she trips again, and this time, something coils around her legs before she can get back up, something warm and scaly and impossibly tight. She hears a long, drawn-out and spine-curdling hiss, a sound that is so frightening it almost makes her forget how to breathe for a moment.

No, oh please, no! she cries.

She is met with the heat of a forked tongue—flickering beneath her jaw, tasting the brine of her skin—before she sees the rest of it. Its body curls itself around hers with an intimacy that's sickening. It intends to crush her—soften up her bones—before swallowing her whole.

She sobs for release, for freedom, but is granted none. When the ophidian beast encircles her arms—pinning them to her sides and slithering up, up, up, encasing her chest, successfully constricting the expansion of her heaving lungs and throbbing heart—she is expecting to be met with the giant, gaping maw of a python, with fangs so sharp and so large they cast her face almost entirely in shadow.

Instead, she is faced with the head of what is decidedly a man—one with deep-set, hollowed-out eyes, like blackened craters. Like scorched earth. And a red slash for a mouth, weeping blood. It's hot, dripping all over her chest as he leans in close and grins, barring his shark-like teeth. Rows upon rows of them, overcrowded and sharp, like a graveyard of unearthed scalpels.

She screams, but she cannot turn her head to look away, not when the creature's jaw unhinges, opening itself impossibly wide, preparing itself to swallow her down, down—

"Stop! STOP!"

Taylor wakes to blackness, to a heavy weight crowded over her back, pinning her down.

She comes back to her body slowly—to slowly—gasping for breath, trembling from the surge of adrenaline that's pummeling through her veins.

It was a dream, she realizes.

Just a dream.

She's pinned to the mattress on her belly, exhaling shuddering breaths, trying to get the air back into her lungs. Her heartbeat throbs inside her ears, and nausea swims in her belly. She feels like she's going to puke.

"Shh, shhh," comes a familiar voice, not at all unlike the hissing of the snake that had just planned to swallow her whole her only moments ago. Still, there's something soothing about that voice, hushing her, telling her everything is okay. She lets it wash over her, feels warm breath on the side of her face, cooling the sweat that's beaded along her brow. She realizes suddenly how uncomfortable she is—her clothes are damp with sweat.

Embarrassment washes over her as the room slopes back into focus, her eyes adjusting to the dark, vision correcting itself. There's a thin sliver of yellow light that spills into the room from the half-closed bathroom door. Then the closet next to the bed, with the bi-fold panel door. And as her breathing evens out, the familiar purr of the vending machine just outside. She lifts her head—dizzy, for a moment, face streaked with tears—and turns it towards the window, squinting at the light. The glow cast from the vending machine is milk-pale and a little blue, almost ghost-like in the way it eases itself into the room, the way it filters through the thin, gauzy curtains, like osmosis, like it only means to occupy the room for a short time, and then it will trickle on.

"Good girl," the voice above her murmurs. "There you are…."

She's coming back to it now. She sees the pizza box on the table next to the window, the two-liter bottle of Pepsi that's mostly empty. The weight above her shifts, and she realizes suddenly that the weight belongs to Mr. J.

She goes boneless, head falling back to the mattress, too weak to hold it up any longer. She feels how wet the sheets are beneath her cheek, unsure if it's from sweat or her tears. Maybe both.

"Oh, god," she cries. "What's happening to me?"

"Just a bad dream, baby." His breath is hot in the shell of her ear, and it makes her shiver. Makes goose bumps pimple in all the places where sweat's cooled along her arms and legs. "What were you dreaming about, hm?"

She frowns into the mattress, eyebrows pulling together, still panting. Even now, the edges of her dream are already starting to slither away. It's hard to remember what was real and what was not.

"You," she forces out, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. Croaky.

"Me?"

"No—not you," she amends, unsure. Her head hurts the more she thinks about it. Had that monster—the snake—had that really been him? "I think… I don't know," she huffs, dissolving into fresh tears, crying quietly, burying her head into the mattress, so he can't see.

A pair of thighs tighten on either side of hers, and then her arms are released—he had been keeping them pinned next to her head, and she realizes now how sore they are, now that they're free.

"Should get my girl some boxing gloves," he says, teasing, his voice low. "You were really going to town there. Almost knocked me clean out."

She knows he's teasing. Trying to make her smile. But all it does is fill her with guilt, and she cries a little harder, squeezing her eyes shut, more hot tears slipping down her cheeks.

Mr. J rolls off of her and onto his side—for a moment, she's afraid she's upset him by not laughing—but then he's scooping her up into his arms, pressing her face to his chest. He wedges a leg in-between hers, and the sudden intimacy is almost too much to bear. It makes her chest ache, thinking how this is all she's ever wanted, how he's giving it to her so freely. All she can do is give in to it. Let it happen. She curls her arms between his chest and hers, feels the scratchy outer shell of her cast snagging on her shirt, but she doesn't care. She sniffles into his chest while he rubs slow circles into her back, tracing wide arcs followed by smaller ones, and she lets herself sink deeper into the easy bliss he's trying to create for her. She's lulled by the patterns he's tracing, lets her eyes close and then tries to follow the circles in her head, imagining that he's tracing some secret code into her back, maybe an endearment. A love note.

"I'm sorry," she whimpers. "I'm so sorry if I hurt you."

Mr. J doesn't say anything for a long moment, and she thinks maybe he hadn't heard her.

"Shh…" he says at last. "None of that, now."

He switches from rubbing circles into her back to tracing long lines up and down her spine with the tips of his fingers. She's embarrassed that she's all sweaty and pressed up against him, but he doesn't seem to mind, and she needs this too much to pull away. She needs this so badly.

She feels the bump of his chin against the top of her head, his warm exhales of breath tickling her hair. She wishes she could fall asleep like this—she wants to; she's so, so tired—but she's too keyed up to sleep after her nightmare. Too anxious, and her memories too fresh. Thinking about the cages. The girls. The rabbits and the man with the black skull face. Wonderland.

Him.

Will he try to come for her again? Will he try to drag her back to Wonderland? And why does a part of her want that? Something in her brain feels wrong—like her neurons got unhooked and then were rewired, latched onto the wrong receptors or something. None of it makes sense. All she knows is that she feels off, like she's not where she's supposed to be, like her brain is fighting some natural instinct that isn't really natural at all.

Something must alert Mr. J to her anxiety—maybe she's breathing heavier than she thought—and he dips his face down, until his chin touches her forehead.

"What's going on in there, hm?"

She feels the familiar vibration of his voice, the deep timbre of it making her shiver all over, and she squeezes her legs a little tighter around his thigh, clinging to his shirt, trying to get as close to him as possible.

"Is he going to try and take me again?" she whispers, "Mr.—Mr. Hatter?"

"Mr. Hatter is dead."

He says it so abruptly—so matter-of-fact—that she can't even process it at first.

"You—you killed him?" She doesn't know why this makes her eyes burn with fresh tears—she should feel relief, she knows that—but all she feels is the iron-hard weight of dread low in her belly. It makes her feel cold. Afraid.

"Didn't have to," Mr. J replies. He's still running his fingers up and down her spine, but his hand has slowed considerably, like he's taking time to mull carefully over his words. "He did it himself."

"Why?" she breathes.

"Because he had a taste of his own medicine. The same medicine he gave you."

"Oh," she whispers.

There's so much she doesn't remember from that night—rather, there's so much memory intertwined with her dreams, to the point where she can't peel the two apart. Doesn't know what was real and what was imagined, the way it all blurs together in one giant glob of maybe-memory. It all felt real, as it was happening—all of it. And sometimes if she moves her tongue in a certain way, scrapes against a certain spot in her mouth, she thinks she can still taste it—Wonderland—right there on her back molar, or on the roof of her mouth. She can taste its citrusy sweetness, it's yellow-orange tang.

It's quiet between them for a while after that. She's not sure how much time passes, only that night waxes ever so slowly into morning, and Mr. J stays with her there the whole time. Solid. Warm. Real.

After a while he stops skimming his fingers up her back and just holds her, slips an arm underneath her and drapes the other arm over her waist, curling it over her back so she's pressed right against him. Somehow she still feels very far away from him, despite the proximity of their bodies, and she wonders if he can feel it too.

She nuzzles closer to him—as close as she can—her ear pressed flat against his left chest as she searches for his heartbeat, needing to find some familiar rhythm she can cling to, something that will ground her, tether her to this present moment.

Eventually, she falls back into slumber.

She dreams that she's adrift at sea—treading stormy waters—surrounded by massive black waves, walls and walls of them crashing down around her, heavy like a shower of concrete. She has to plunge herself beneath the surface to keep herself from getting pummeled.

When she surfaces, gasping for air, the spray of sea salt stings her eyes and makes her throat burn, as if bee-stung, or laced with poison ivy. Mr. J's heartbeat—her lifeline, her buoy—is nowhere to be found. In fact, there's no sound at all. No crashing waves. No angry crackle of thunder. She can't even hear her own cries for help.

There's just one voice. One voice, so soft it could almost be a memory.

Come back, little Alice.

We're not done yet.

---

They switch motels again sometime in the middle of the night.

She's barely conscious for it, so exhausted she can't even hold her head up when Mr. J comes to get her. She has to be carried to the car. She drifts in and out of sleep in the backseat. Occasional flickers of light pierce through the thin veil of her closed lids, but the motion of the moving car keeps her lulled. Sometimes she's jostled awake by a pothole, or when the car slows to a stop for a red light, and during those times she catches a glimpse of the city lights reflected on the windows. Light that's blurry and golden. The color of honeycombs.

She wakes in a new motel room, curled up on the bed, with Mr. J close by. Watching.

It goes like that for a week. In and out of fitful dreams, waking up to the sound of her own screams, drenched in a cold sweat and shivering. During the day, she sits by the window and stares out at nothing from between the slit in the curtains, watching the passing cars, studying the patrons coming in and out of the parking lot. It rains a lot. Sometimes she wishes she had her sketchbook, but that desire is usually quick to fade. She doesn't really feel like drawing. She doesn't really feel much like doing anything.

She stares out the window, the drone of the TV in the background, and tries not to think about the cages. The girls. Him.

Sometimes she feels like crying—for herself, for those girls, for biting off Ruby's ear, and for Ben—but lately the tears just won't come, like she's all cried out. Like she finally has no more tears left to shed. Maybe this is what it feels like to be completely numb, like the pinch of a needle as it sinks into fleshy gum tissue—just a little bee sting, they always say—and then the sweet, empty relief of Novocain. You still hear the drill, that awful whirr and the scraping of metal on bone as the big hands in your spread-open mouth get to work—but you don't feel it. You just feel… puffy, after. Weird.

Mr. J brings her food in paper bags and plastic takeout boxes, but she doesn't have much of an appetite, and everything seems to make her nauseous. She spends a lot of time kneeling in the bathroom beside the toilet. Sometimes she falls asleep on the little bathmat in front of the shower. Sometimes Mr. J comes and sits on the edge of the tub, scoops her hair back as she pukes up what little food she managed to eat that day. She sobs through her dry heaves and tells him she's sorry. Sorry for being sick. For wasting the food he's given her. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

At night, she curls up in bed under the glow of the TV and sips ginger ale out of little Dixie cups and nibbles on saltine crackers. She falls asleep alone, but always wakes with Mr. J close by, either on top of her or pinning her down to ease her thrashing, always there to bring her out of the darkness, to remind her that she's safe. That she's okay.

It doesn't feel okay.

She doesn't even know what day it is. Can't seem to keep track of the time, the way one day blurs into the next, like watercolor painting where the paint just keeps dripping, never seems to dry.

One night, after another session spent puking up her guts in the bathroom, she's left breathless and crying, but Mr. J's there with her, too, sitting on the edge of the tub. She crawls between his spread knees—panting and exhausted—and sobs against his pantleg.

"What's wrong with me?" she wails.

He rakes his fingers through her hair, shushing her. He pets her hair until she's all cried out, until she's so exhausted she can barely keep her eyes open. But he never answers her question, and his lack of a reply is probably the most terrifying response of all.

If Mr. J can't fix her, then no one can.

The sun makes a grand appearance, for the first time in days. Taylor sits in the little chair by the window, knees pulled up to her chest, the curtains open a little wider than usual. She's perfectly rooted in a patch of yellow sunlight, and she can't help closing her eyes and tipping her face up to it, letting it warm her skin, letting it breathe life and color back into her aching bones, all the half-healed bruises and cuts that mottle her skin.

She has her arms curled around her shins to holds her legs to her chest, but after a little while, her right arm starts to sweat inside its cast, and when it sweats it gets itchy, and when it's itchy it's the worst. She sighs as she lowers her head, looks down at her cast with the intent to scowl at it, but all she does is blink at it instea, suddenly thrust into the memory of when she'd woken and looked at it the first time, there in the ER, after the car accident, after… Ben.

Ben.

God, it was hard to think about him in some kind of way that didn't leave her feeling like she's had the wind knocked out of her, some way that didn't leave her feeling gut-punched and gasping for breath.

She couldn't wrap her brain around his betrayal, couldn't process it, couldn't… make some kind of sense of it, even now, even after she's had all this time to replay the events over and over and over again, like a record caught on loop. She'll never forget the way Ben's body had crumpled to the ground after being shot, how quickly he had turned lifeless. How he was fighting and so alive one second, and then gone the next. How could it have happened that fast?

And all those things he had said to her at the end, about caring for her and wishing he could stop the wheels that were in motion, but how it was already too late… was that all just a ruse? Was it just for show? Was he trying to sell her a lie so that she wouldn't hate him? But then why risk his own life trying to fight for hers when he could have just left unscathed?

And god, the shame she feels, almost as debilitating as her pain. She couldn't stop thinking about how Mr. J had warned her about Ben, had told her that Ben only wanted one thing from her, that Ben didn't really care about her at all. Maybe if she had listened to Mr. J, none of this ever would have happened in the first place. Mr. J was always telling her that Gotham and everyone in it wanted to cut her down… she couldn't have realized how right he really was. Mr. J was always right.

It horrifies her to think she had been friends with someone who had preyed on girls—befriended them and then pawned them off to be sold. She's fucking stupid. She remembers the anime girls that Ben had drawn in his notebook—the ones with the knee-high socks and schoolgirl skirts—and she feels nauseous. She should have known then. She should have walked out the door and come straight home.

Still, the truth is a painfully hard pill to swallow, and even now, there's a part of her brain that refuses to let go of the idea that Ben was still her friend. She couldn't just… forget everything that had happened between. All the stuff they had talked about. The secrets they had shared. He was the friend she had laughed with and shared fries with, the friend she had told some of her most intimate secrets to and the friend who had comforted her when she had needed a shoulder to cry on. The friend who had gone out of his way to cheer her up and make her laugh when she was feeling down.

A part of her thinks she might've loved him, a little bit, like the way you would love an older brother, how badly you want that love to be reciprocated because you just want them to you're cool and funny and smart, and you want them to feel like you're important, like you're worth hanging out with. He had made her feel like she was more than just some loser orphan girl with no family and no friends. He had made her feel special—and it was hard trying to find some way to reconcile these happier memories of him with the actual truth: the truth that Ben's intentions had not been honest, that he had been using her from the very beginning, and that he had taken advantage of her trust.

But he had tried to save her, in the end, and… and didn't that count for something? Did that mean he was ultimately a good person? Could one last, final effort to right what was wrong mean that she should forgive him? Was it wrong to feel angry at him? Was it wrong to feel betrayed by the person who had ultimately died trying to save you—even if they were the reason why you had needed saving in the first place?

The worst part was that she missed him. She missed him. Missed his friendship. His bear hugs. The thick, woodsy smell of his body spray. Cedarwood or pine. Maybe both. And the way he would sneak up behind her and tickle her sides until she was squealing with laughter and begging for him to stop. The stains on his apron, and how goofy he looked wearing it. His awful impersonations and bad accents. The way he looked when they were sitting out back at the diner on those wooden pallets, when the sun was setting and his hair looked jet black, slick like an oil spill, shining so brilliantly. She'd thought so many times how she wanted to draw him like that, capture the lines of his profile. His broad nose and thick neck, his wide shoulders. All his beauty marks and freckles. The hard set of his eyes, and the shadows that lay just beneath them—that way he looked when he was staring off into the distance. All of him so big and so loud, she wondered if someone like that could even be contained on a single piece of paper.

Was it wrong to miss someone and hate them a little bit, too? It felt so impossibly strange to feel both emotions curling inside her, like two warring tornados in the pit of her belly. She imagined them coiling in on each other, absorbing the other until they were one. Maybe then whatever emotions she felt towards Ben would actually make sense.

A part of her wanted to ask Mr. J, explain this… this pain that she felt. But the other part of her feared what he would say, afraid she already knew his answer. He would tell her the truth she didn't want to hear—that Ben wasn't her friend. Mr. J would tell her that he had tried to hurt her. That he had only been nice to her so that she would trust him. He'd tell her that it was because of Ben that she had been taken away from him. It was because of Ben that she was almost lost to Wonderland, possibly forever.

She tries to imagine what her life would be like without Mr. J in it, but the ache it brings is visceral. Hot like the slice of a knife. She can hardly bare to imagine it, even if she's been forced to do so more times than she cares to count. She can't live without him. She just can't. It's why she had gone to the bridge that night—practically a lifetime ago, it feels like—when she thought he had abandoned her. Life just didn't feel like living anymore knowing he was somewhere out there in the world and she was somewhere else and they were not together. He was all that she had.

He's all she's ever had.

It's early the next morning when she stumbles out of bed in a half-blind panic, finding it empty.

"Mr. J?" she croaks, her voice swallowed up by the empty room, the clinking of the ceiling fan as it spins leisurely from the ceiling.

She rushes to the window, nearly trips on one of her long socks, hanging halfway off her foot. She hops to the window on one leg while pulling the sock up her calf with one hand, holding onto the window ledge for balance when she reaches it.

She exhales a breath of relief when she finds him in the parking lot, talking to another man. She presses a hand up against the glass—there's condensation collecting on the other side—and squints through the morning fog to assess the situation. She thinks at first that the other man is Ressling—he's the only man she ever sees Mr. J talk to, even though there must be other people who work for him—but upon closer inspection, she realizes it's someone else. Someone she's never seen before. She's tense as she watches them, thinks she sees some object being passed between them before it's hidden in the recesses of J's jacket.

It's almost a little strange, she thinks—though very welcome—seeing Mr. J wearing normal clothes and not his trademark purple suit. She hasn't seen him wear that since that night she was rescued, and his lack of green hair dye only further solidifies his desire for them to keep a low profile. But she likes him like this, wearing normal clothes, his dark blond hair parted to the side in that way she likes, the way his hair is a little curlier now that he's showered and there's no grease to weight it down. And his bare face, totally free of any lingering traces of greasepaint, for the first time in what feels like a long time. The thrill of seeing his naked scars up close, and his pink lips, that little scar on his lower one, so much more prominent when it's not buried beneath layers of red paint. And then his eyes next, how, without the greasepaint, they look almost chocolate brown instead of black. She looks at him and feels like she's looking at the man he was before he became the Joker, and she realizes, perhaps a little fearfully, that she doesn't know that man, that that man is a stranger to her. She's encountered him only a handful of times, like on the rare occasion she successfully sprung a peal of genuine laughter from him, not that cackling laughter she hates, but real laughter. Or that time he bent down low next to the bed and pressed his lips to her forehead when he thought she was asleep. She shivers at that memory—still so fresh in her mind's eye. It was a tender kiss. Featherlight and sweet. A kiss that could've belonged only to the man he was before. She doesn't know that man. She only knows the Joker—her Mr. J—but who was he before that? And are there any more traces of the man he once was that had been left behind for her to discover?

These thoughts leave her feeling a little bashful when he comes in, catches her staring. He looks her up and down and she curls her knuckles against the windowsill. She probably looks ridiculous. One sock riding below her knee and the other slipped down to her ankle. Hair all mussed in a messy ponytail, her oversized t-shirt barely covering her underwear. She's probably still got that sleepy crusty stuff in the corners of her eyes.

She quickly wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, blinks at him until her vision clears.

"Who was that man? Is everything okay?"

She doesn't usually ask questions like this—better to stay out of his business, and she thinks he prefers it that way—but after everything that's happened, his business is starting to feel like her business. Or perhaps the two things have simply merged in a way that was inevitable; this is the price she must pay for loving someone that society has deemed a monster. And when you love someone as notorious as the Joker—practically a celebrity in his own right—it was harder to keep secrets close to the chest, and she was his biggest, most well-kept secret, wasn't she?

At least until now.

People know about her now. Bad people. Like the man with the cane and the one with the skull mask and the man in the brown leather jacket. And were there more? Goose bumps erupt over her arms when she thinks of them, and she can't help the full-body shiver that follows, the memory of them alone enough to chill her, enough to make her heart throb a little faster.

Maybe Mr. J senses this as he looks at her. He latches the deadbolt in the door and slides the chain into its rectangular metal cubby.

"Everything's just peachy, baby doll." He says it so breezily, with such ease, that it must be true. "Got a little, uh, treat for you."

Taylor blinks at him, her eyes widening. "For me?"

Mr. J raises his brows, craning his neck this way and that in a melodramatic display of inspecting of the room, as if he's looking for more occupants. "You see anybody else in here?"

She flushes in embarrassment. "No."

He bites the inside of his cheek and grins. "Didn't think so."

He crosses the short distance between them in two strides, plops himself into the chair by the window, where they're separated by a small, round table.

"Sit," he says.

She delicately peels the chair away from the table. Sits down. Then she scoots forward and pulls the chair with her because she's curious. The legs scrape against the carpet, and the sink in the bathroom gurgles, even though nobody's using it. She thinks she can hear the television playing through the wall, from the neighbors next-door, but none of this matters. Her eyes are fixated on Mr. J's face as he reaches for her arm—the casted one—and gestures for her with a jerk of his chin for her to lay it on the table between them.

"Stick 'em up, put 'em right there," he says, in a ridiculous accent that sounds suspiciously like a cowboy drawl. He pats the table a little impatiently with his hand when she's not fast enough to comply.

She cracks a smile at that—the first in what feels like days. "What's going on? Why are you being so funny, Mr. J?"

"Because I'm a funny guy," he says, serious, like this should be obvious. She lays her arm on the table between them, a little wary but mostly confused, and watches as he slides his hand back across the table and then grabs her arm in one big hand, gives it a little shake. "Whadd'ya say about getting this thing off, hm?"

Her eyes widen in surprise again—hopeful. "Really?" she asks, her mouth parting. She stares at where her arm is still encircled by his hand. "I mean—you can do that? Did the doctor say that was okay?" That must have been who he was talking to in the parking lot, right?

"Bah." He pulls a face, sticking out his tongue like she's just said something that's left a bad taste in his mouth. "Who needs a doctor when you've got good old Mr. J to tell you what's what? I know a thing or two about bones, you know. You just say the word and we take this thing off right now."

It's almost too good to be true. She wants this cast off so badly. Her arm itches like crazy and she hasn't been able to draw or do practically anything with her right hand, plus she can't shower without having to wrap it in plastic, and it's just such a hassle.

She frowns a little, though, the more she thinks about it. "Are you sure it's okay? I mean… what if it's not time yet? What if it's not healed all the way?"

Her worst fear is having an arm that flops around like a limp noodle after the cast is taken off. Then she can't draw, or cook, or do her hair, or anything. That's her right hand. Would she have to become a leftie? Could she even do that?

She fires off a few more anxiety-riddled questions. She can't remember what the ER doctor or the nurse had said about when the cast could come off—she doesn't even remember getting it put on in the first place, and so much of that night—the before—was such a blur. She only remembers him and her. Them. The couch and the coffee table. Her blinding orgasm.

"Sweetheart," he says, so cloyingly soft and sweet that it sends her train of thought to a screeching halt. "It's been on plenty long enough, hm?" She stares at him, feeling a little delirious from his sweetness, but he just barrels on. "Y'know," he says, withdrawing his hand from her cast, "a guy's kinda worried you might be growing a third arm underneath this thing," he says, poking a finger into the side of her cast.

That breaks the spell. Taylor smiles again and rolls her eyes a little, drops her gaze to her cast. Maybe he's right. Maybe it has been on long enough… and it'd be so good to get it off. To have her freedom back.

"Okay," she finally relents. Her eyes flicker up to meet his after a long beat. "Let's do it."

A slow, wolfish grin stretches across his face, and he strokes a long, unhurried line from the top of her cast to the bottom, where it circles around her thumb.

"I hoped you'd say that."

She's so enamored with him in this moment—his roughish playfulness, his amiability, the way he's smiling and grinning at her like they're the best pals in the whole wide world—that she doesn't notice at first the item that he pulls out of his jacket and lays down on the table between them. But by then it's too late. Her eyes bug, and she goes to retract her arm, but Mr. J's hand shoots out like a snake, encircling her wrist, holding her firm.

"Ah ta ta," he chides. "Don't back out on me now."

"What is that thing?"

It looks like a miniature chainsaw. It looks terrifying. There's no way he's coming near her with that thing. No way. She squirms in her seat and tries to twist her arm out of his grip, starting to panic a little, and to her surprise, when she looks up to meet his gaze, his eyes are curious. Intrigued. He lets go of her arm and Taylor's immediately pushing back her chair, standing, her back pressed to window and her arms tucked behind her back so he can't get to them.

He watches her almost as if amused.

"It can't hurt you," he says, smiling a little, like this is funny or something. "Look." She watches him turn on the mini saw, hears it whirring to life, and when he brings it to his skin to run it across the flat of his left palm, her eyes widen in terror.

"Mr. J, don't—!"

But to her immense relief, nothing happens. He runs the device across his open palm, and the skin undulates a little, shifting beneath the saw, but there's no blood. There's not even a scratch. She looks up to meet his eyes and finds he's completely unaffected.

"See?" he says. "Not even a pinch."

She frowns at him, her heart still racing, but she dares to take a tentative step closer. "Are you teasing me?"

"Of course not, baby," he frowns, as if the very idea offends him. He turns off the device, holds up two fingers. "Scout's honor—" he says, and then dips a finger down to his chest, slashes the shape of an X across his heart, "—and hope to die."

Taylor's shoulders sag, and she bites her bottom lip as she looks at him. She hates that saying, especially coming from him. She doesn't want him to die. He can't.

"Don't… don't say that."

He cocks his head at her, smiling a little. "You wanna pinky swear on it instead?"

Taylor thinks about it for a moment and then nods, biting back a small smile. They always pinky swear. It's kind of their thing.

He's too impatient to wait for her to come for him. Warmth blooms in her belly when he shifts in his chair, reaches forward and grabs the front of her shirt, tugging her across the carpet towards him until she's standing in between his spread thighs, looking down at him.

She pretends to scowl at him, narrowing her eyes, as if she's trying to suss out the real truth. She's also trying and failing to curb her smile.

"Do you promise you're telling the whole truth, and nothing but—"

"Pinky promise," he interrupts. His lifts said finger for her, holding it level with her chest, waiting for her to take it.

The word pinky sounds so ridiculous coming from him that she has to laugh, and she does, shifting a little closer as she finally hooks her pinky finger around his, giving it a good, firm shake.

"Pinky promise," she repeats. That seals it.

He ushers her to sit and lay her arm back down across the table. He's so excited, vibrating with so much energy she'd have thought he was getting a cast off. But his mood's infectious—sizzling and bright-hot—and she can't help loving him when he's like this, when he bleeds so much warmth, when the full force of his affections are pinned right on her. When she's his sole focus. It feels right. Good.

She swallows a little nervously when Mr. J reaches into his jacket to retrieve his switchblade, but he only uses it to cut through the outer wrapping of her cast—the netting or whatever.

"Have you ever broken any bones, Mr. J?" she asks, full of genuine curiosity.

He smirks, eyes briefly darting up to meet hers, like he's delighted that she asked. "Plenty," he says. "It's a miracle I'm still in one piece."

His attention returns to her cast, and she can't help but stare at his hands as he works. He has strong hands. Working hands. A man's hands. She studies the bump of his knuckles and his long, slender fingers. She thinks about how she knows the callouses on his palms almost better than she knows the softness of her own touch.

"I'm glad you're still in one piece," she says, softly. She keeps her eyes downcast, blushing a little, and she doesn't even have to look to know that he's satisfied by her admission. That he's smirking in that way that makes her belly do little somersaults.

"Me too, cupcake," he says.

He finishes with the switchblade and then reaches for the saw. She flinches when it turns on, even though the buzz it emits is much quieter than a traditional saw. She squeaks when it makes contact with her cast, but Mr. J holds her still with one hand, holding onto her wrist to keep her in place. He works from the top of the cast to the bottom, where her fingers are, and she watches, fascinated, as the cast slowly splits open, parting so easily, white stuffing like snow bursting from around its split edges.

Mr. J turns off the saw when he's finished, and then her bare arm lays between them, looking gummy and soft and pale. Naked.

"Ewe…" she says, her face scrunching up as she draws her arm off the table to study it more closely. "Feels… weird," she says. "Is this normal?"

Mr. J makes a face, looking uncertain. "Don't know, baby doll… might just have to lob the whole thing off to be sure."

Taylor's head jerks up, eyes widening in fear, and only when she looks at him does she realize he's joking.

She clutches her arm to her chest protectively. "Not funny," she grumbles.

Mr. J is wearing a shit-eating grin, his eyes dark. "It's a little funny."

In the shower, it feels so good to let the water wash over her bare skin. No more plastic bags. No more sticking a fork or a pencil or a chopstick or a ruler down inside her cast to try and scratch a maddening and impossible itch that she just can't reach. She holds her arms out side by side under the rain of water, frowns at how her right arm looks smaller than the other, kind of sickly and pale, but at least it's not crooked, doesn't stick out at any weird angles, and she supposes that's something of a relief.

It feels good to have the cast off. Liberating. Maybe now that the constant reminder of is Ben is gone—of everything's that happened—maybe now she can start to heal. Maybe.

Mr. J gets them a late lunch—tacos this time, in those white Styrofoam boxes, with a hearty helping of chips and salsa on the side—and they eat at the table by the window, the setting sun orange and warm and toasty on her skin. She feels like one of those chubby tabby cats dozing off in a golden patch of sunlight, all snuggled in the windowsill, happy and warm and well-fed.

But the feeling fades almost as quickly as it had come, the excitement of having her cast removed wearing off, and she finds she doesn't have much of an appetite, is only able to eat a third of her meal. She's not nauseous like usual after eating, but she does feel a little shaky, and she shrugs off Mr. J's hard, penetrating stare as she gets up from the table, mumbles something about going to lie down for a bit.

She climbs onto the bed and sinks into the mattress, lying on her side, facing the window, feeling the sunlight on the back of her closed lids, nice and warm. She knows Mr. J is watching her, but for once she's too tired to feel self-conscious about it. Exhaustion has clung to her with stubborn insistence, as if it had claws, as if it were anchoring itself somewhere deep inside her, like her bones. She tries not to sleep because sleep leads to dreams, and dreams to nightmares, and nightmares lead to Wonderland, to him—but she can only fight off sleep for so long before it finally takes her.

She falls asleep almost immediately, doesn't even get the covers pulled up before she's conked out, bathed in sunlight.

She wakes sometime in the early hours of the morning, when it's still dark. She's gasping for breath, disoriented and confused. She moans, turning onto her side, and then she feels the mattress dip a moment later, a warm hand stroking in a repeated downward motion along the slope of her waist, as if to smooth out the creases of her shirt there.

She relaxes under the familiar touch, reality shifting back into focus, bleeding in around the edges, and she blindly reaches for him, for Mr. J, pulling him closer, until he's slotted next to her, body parallel to hers. He keeps his hand on her waist, and the weight is solid. Grounding.

They stay like that for a long time, until the room starts to blossom with traces of early-morning light. She feels like she's might finally drift off again when she feels him shift, his arms starting to slip away from her. Her body seizes up instinctively, and she tightens her fingers where she'd had them tangled in his shirt, holding on with a vice, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

"Where are you going?"

He smiles at her as he gently unpeels her fingers from his shirt, pulling away so that he can look at her.

"What do you say we get out of here, hm?"

Leave? But why? She feels like they just got here.

"Where are we going?" she croaks. Her mouth is so dry—she needs something to drink. "Are we going home?"

"Not yet."

"Then where?"

"Somewhere you'll like," he says, cryptic. There's a glimmer in his eyes that's hard to ignore, some little secret, and it has its intended effect—now she's curious.

He unpeels himself from her first, slipping off the bed, and Taylor stares after him.

"What if I don't?"

Mr. J turns back to look at her, and she's suddenly struck by how handsome he looks, how… how man he is, standing there, backlit by the sleepy blue morning light, in a black t-shirt and dark slacks. No greasepaint. His messy blond hair, curling around his ears and the nape of his neck. It makes her lower belly throb a little, seeing him like that, even despite the knot of anxiety that tugs at her.

"Tell you what," he says. He plants his hands on the mattress—shoulder's-width apart—and then leans on them, looking at her, the shape of him like a leopard about to pounce. "You don't like it, then we leave. Sound good?"

She feels her cheeks heating up for some reason, maybe because of the way his hands are spread on the bed. Maybe because it's still such a thrill to have his full and undivided attention like this.

She swallows. Nods. "Okay."

She takes a shower to wash the sweat off before they go. She finds another a pair of soft shorts and a t-shirt in the duffle bag, one of her old thrift store finds, advertising some soccer tournament she never actually played in, but she's quickly running out of clean clothes. Mr. J must have been in a hurry when he packed. Plus, he picked all the clothes she keeps in the very bottom drawer—the stuff she never really wears anymore, unless it's to bed.

She's grateful for the steam that clouds the mirror after she climbs out of the shower. It's still hard to look at all the cuts and bruises scattered across her face, even if they are starting to heal. She doesn't even see herself in her own reflection anymore, which is the most disconcerting thing. She doesn't know who that is looking back at her, but it's not her. She almost doesn't remember what she used to look like before, before all the scrapes and the bruises.

But what she does remember is him… his gnarled, clammy hands caressing her face, and the way it had felt when the sharp metal across his knuckles had sliced across the thin skin of her cheek.

Her hands start to shake as she's braiding her hair, and she inhales a breath that seems as though it shudders through her lungs. She has to grip the edge of the counter when her knees buckle. Steady herself.

The memory of him is so visceral. So real, as if he were still here, lurking close by. Mr. J says he's gone—dead—but is he really? Can she really trust Mr. J to tell the truth?

Mr. J has their stuff packed and ready to go by the time she's finished in the bathroom, wiping stray tears from her cheeks. She feels like she's forgetting something when she steps outside, when the door shuts behind her with a resounding click, but it's not like she brought much of her belongings with her anyway. She follows Mr. J out to the car, sticking close to his side up until the point where the hallway ends and she's suddenly caught in an onslaught of too-bright sun. It's strange to be outside in the sunshine again, the way it feels on her skin for real, not through the glass barrier of a window. But she feels as though she's woken up from a very long nap, or like she's been in a coma or something. She raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, squinting into the empty parking lot, where the rays scintillate off the blacktop, further blinding her. When her eyes finally adjust, she sees Mr. J standing near the passenger side door, staring at her, head cocked, and she feels a flush creeping over her cheeks. She must look so stupid standing there, all squinty-eyed with her arm thrown up to cover her face, nose scrunched.

She goes to him, and he opens the passenger door for her with a dramatic flourish, bowing, and says, m'lady, which makes her crack a smile as she slips into her seat.

She slides her hands along the edges of the velour seat. She never asks about the new cars, usually a new on every three to four weeks, but she always notices when he gets one. She knows it's for safety, so that it makes it harder for him to be traced. Still, it always feels like she's in a car of a stranger, like she shouldn't make herself too comfortable, or put her feet on the dashboard. Roll down the windows.

Mr. J sinks into the driver's seat. Starts the engine. His energy is not at all unlike that time when they were in the car together before—so long ago, now, the memory distant, but still there, like a half-remembered dream—at that gas station in the middle of nowhere, when that man had come up to talk to her, had started asking her all these questions before Mr. J had shown up, interjected himself into the conversation and then told her to go wait in the car.

And then, when he had returned, little flecks of blood on his shirt, on his chin… the way he was vibrating with energy, practically crackling with static, like a livewire, like she'd electrocute herself if she dared to reach out and touch him.

She watches him a little warily when he rests his hand on the back of her headrest and looks at her, grinning.

"Let's blow this popsicle stand."