Bloodshot, tired eyes stare at heavy, painted, concrete blocks, grey stubble from the inability to shave highlighting his chin and jaw, a single light illuminating the eerily silent back holding cells.
He lets out a whistle, a random tune just flittering past his chapped lips, wondering what time it is.
It's gotta be 2:00a.m., at least.
His song goes on for a few moments, until he stops, sighs out, and leans his head back against the wall, tired of being tired, and pissed off from being locked up so damn long for something he had done years ago.
Surely she would've gotten over it by now, especially since she's cancer free - allegedly.
She certainly looked like it, at least.
Healthy as a horse.
So why punish him now? Why run her fucking mouth?
She was more keen to blabbing about his one indiscretion against her, than she was about telling about Joker, and he'd done worse to her than Tom ever did, at least in his mind.
Letting out another whistle, a long one, before closing his eyes, he takes in a deep breath and tries to relax.
Gia's got a hand out of the ceiling tile, clipping the wires of the security camera, her feet on a sturdy wood beam in the crawl space, quietly pulling her hand back up and putting the ceiling tile back in place.
He's the only one in the holding cells, the others being shipped off earlier in the night.
Very convenient, if you ask her.
Possibly too convenient due to that being the only chance of a witness, unless one of the officers on duty comes in before she's gone.
She picks up a tile further down once she gets out of the corner, lifting it up, grabbing the wood board she's crouched on and kicking her feet off, dangling from the ceiling before dropping, landing on her feet, quietly.
More quiet than she should be able to.
Tom furrows his brows when he hears his random tune whistled back to him, growing closer and closer, opening his eyes, seeing vivid, dark brown hues staring right at him, even in the near dark, her thick hair shrouding her face, fingers resting against the bars...
His lip curls, angry tears in his eyes, as he shakes.
"You bitch." He grits out, standing up to walk to her.
Out of habit she takes a step back, keeping her hands on the bars, but she reminds herself that she can do a hell of a lot more to him than he can to do her, and this eases her.
She's seen bigger and badder than him, anyways.
She steps forward back to where she was, looking up at him.
"Here to tell me you're sorry for selling me out?" He grumbles.
"I'm here to give an opportunity to ask for my forgiveness." She tells him, already orchestrating exactly how she's going to kill him.
"If I wanted forgiveness I'd find God." He sneers.
"Maybe you might need to." She tells him.
"Why's that?"
Her gloved hands are quickly snapping his neck through the bars, his body thudding to the floor and she reaches her arm into the cell and grasps a hold of his tie, dragging him closer to her and standing up, pulling him up and wincing as she climbs onto the next horizontal bar, grasping at the one above her head, and climbs up until she reaches one that's believable for Tom to have hung himself before she ties it the best she can while he dangles against the steel cell bars.
"Don't look at me like that." She tells him, staring into his half open eyes, feeling a small tinge of guilt.
Such a quick death for someone whose cruelty forced her to endure years of torture in such a slow, dragging manner.
A part of her wants him to burn.
The other part of her hopes he has some sick sense of peace on the other side, because he obviously had a lot of issues to make him so fucked up in this one.
Upon her arrival to her apartment, she's opening the door, taking note of the silence, an absence of their dog digging that void.
She slowly steps inside, deciding that Jason surely isn't back by now, he was supposed to come back in a couple of days, unaware of the fact her rapist had been caught and Jim, everyone, now knows.
She knew if she had told him, he'd be up here to handle it before she could.
Making her way to her room, quietly, she sees why Rambo is nowhere to be found.
He's at Richard's feet as blue and black spandex covers his body while he sits and waits for her, swallowing the lump in his throat at the site of her.
"Where've you been?" He asks her, furrowing his brows, and she takes her shoes off.
"Out." She's short with her reply, going to the bathroom, and she follows after her.
"At three in the morning?"
"You're out at three in the morning, so, why not?"
She turns the shower on and starts taking her clothes off, Richard's eyes averting from her, his throat running dry.
"Not like you haven't seen all of it anyway." She scoffs, finding it amusing before she pulls back the curtain and gets in.
She hopes he'll leave, but all he does is lean against the wall and wait for her, practically assuring her that she'll be furthermore interrogated, and she is.
The water cuts off, her hand reaching to grab a towel from the towel rack, opening the curtain and wrapping herself up, noticing his eyes straying up her legs, stopping himself before they go higher than her thighs.
She's grabbing her hair to move it aside, ringing it out the best she can before she steps out of the tub and stands in front of the counter, putting her night cream on before grabbing her comb to brush through her hair..
He furrows his brows at the print of fingers on the back of her neck when she grasps her hair to get the tangles out of the ends, seeing the array of bruises.
"What happened?" He asks, his voice full of concern, reaching out to run his hand over it without thinking, and she scrunches away from him, only for him to follow swiftly, grasping at her gently to see a cut on the side of her temple that he hadn't seen before.
She must've covered it up.
"Richard!" She snaps, abruptly pulling away from him sharply, glaring at him.
"Who did that to you?" He asks her.
"Nobody, just leave me alone."
He wants to argue some more. He wants to bite at her the way she's been biting at him...but he doesn't.
"Does Jason know?" Is all he asks next, and she doesn't know if he's referring to Tom being found out, or her ordeal with the Joker that resulted in her bruising and cuts.
Richard's not even sure which one he means.
"I'm not having this conversation." She shakes her head, about to get into the shower.
"Do I need to tell him?" His question arches her brows and rolls her jaw, as she slowly looks at him, daring him to repeat himself. "He needs to know, Gia. You can't keep hiding things from him...from all of us."
"What am I hiding, exactly, Richard?" She asks him boldly, despite the lump in her throat from the nerves knotting in her stomach.
He doesn't reply.
"Exactly." She pushes past him, stopping suddenly when he grasps her bicep in his hand, holding her there.
"Where've you been, Gia?" He asks, jaw tensing, and she pulls away from him.
"Out." Is all she says, which isn't a lie, before he lets her go and she steps to her room as she adds, "don't you have some hall monitoring thing to do?"
"I'm doing it, now." He states, her brown eyes rolling as she quickly responds, "You're wasting your time. It's nice to know you're still Bruce's little bitch boy, though, even at thirty-eight."
"Bruce has nothing to do with this, Gia. I'm here because I have questions of my own."
"Jason's told you everything, I'm sure."
"I know what you did." He says next, and she walks to her closet to get some bed clothes on, rolling her eyes.
"Oh, I'm sure."
"You killed Tom Bryer."
She grabs one of Jason's t-shirts and drops her towel, pulling it on before going to her chest of drawers to get a pair of panties and puts them on.
"I saw you at the G.C.P.D. I saw you break in the roof-top door. I heard the police radio when it was reported that he'd been found dead in his cell."
"All of this happened in the last hour?" She asks him, furrowing her brows as if to say, "gee, that was fast."
"Gia." It's said shakily, and she turns to him.
"I didn't kill him. I went in there to talk and he was already dead."
"Why didn't you tell anyone there?"
"What makes you think I didn't?"
They stare at one another.
He knows better. He knows she's lying. Right through her teeth.
And he might just have bought it if he weren't trained to known better.
There's a falter in her eyes, an exhaustion of lying, and she's letting out a breath.
"Are you going to go tell on me?" She asks him, softly, crossing her arms over her chest, and he thinks for a moment before she adds, "He hurt me. He's hurt other people. He was going to die at some point, if not me then Jason would've done it as soon as he found out and it's already hard enough keeping him out of trouble with the cops, if he killed Tom then - "
" - So, what you did was an act of nobility? Doing it so Jason wouldn't take the risk of getting caught for it for inevitably killing him, anyway?"
"Jason would've made him suffer, Richard." She explains, the two of them knowing it's true. "You can't tell my brother. You can't tell anybody."
"You killed somebody, Gia."
This is an all too familiar conversation, the two of them practically hearing the echoes from the last one ringing in their heads.
"I didn't have a choice, Richard, he was threatening my brother - "
" - You tell me you baited my brother to have him beat to death and blown to hell and all you can say is that you didn't have a choice?!" His voice shakes with anger, tears in his eyes as he pulls his clothes on, feeling disgusted at the site of her.
"I didn't want to, okay, I didn't want to do that but I didn't want Joker to hurt Jim and he was going to if I didn't do it. I didn't have a choice." She repeats once more.
"You had a choice! You could've told me or Bruce and - "
" - Like he wouldn't have found out?!""You killed Jason!" He outbursts so loudly that it makes her jump in her skin, bedsheets hugged tightly to her chest, hair disheveled, tears staining her cheeks."Oh, my God." He voices next, shaking his head, hands rubbing his face nearly raw. "What the fuck am I doing?" He asks himself, reality setting in."Richard, I'm sorry, okay? I'm so sorry, just please don't tell anyone." She begs him, crawling to the foot of the bed, grasping at his arm, terror in her eyes...He feels sick, nausea pulling bile from his stomach to his throat and he's scrambling to get to his bathroom before he vomits, leaving Gia in his room, reeling with guilt with what she just told him whilst in the foggy haze of post-orgasm bliss, which has now been completely shattered with the wrenching truth that she helped kill her boyfriend...and was now sleeping with his brother."I'm sorry." Is all she can offer up, now, though it's known between them that she's not sorry she did it.
Even behind his mask she can see the disappointment in his eyes, the acceptance that he's got another secret to help her keep.
She's not sorry she did it...not at all...she's sorry he now has another burden to bear from her indiscretions, that he won't tell a soul about.
Red hair splays across white satin, staring up at the ceiling, wide awake - despite it being nearly four in the morning - blue eyes flicker to the empty side of the bed that's shared with an absent fiancé.
She knows he's driving himself crazy trying to figure her aunt out.
He's been beating himself up about it.
Barbara didn't understand it, though.
Sure, Gia had gone behind Bruce's back and cured herself, but it worked. And she's better.
There's nothing else to it - at least there shouldn't be.
She hears the window slide up, Richard coming back to the room he'd left several hours prior, and she makes a point to let him know she's awake as she says, "Did you catch any bad guys?"
"No." He smiles, shaking his head, gritting his teeth together in an attempt not to cry. "No, I didn't."
"Better luck next time." Barbara says next and he steps to the bed and leans down, kissing her chastely before pulling away.
"Always a next time." He states, standing up, pulling away to get a shower.
Her brows knit together, a familiar scent wafting in her nose, before she looks at him while he walks out of the room.
He smells like Gia and Jason's apartment - Gia in particular...the perfume she wears.