Follies of Fate

Chapter 1

Over the course of my life I've met the Batman probably close to a hundred times. Although many were only passing glances, so I suppose they wouldn't really count as meeting him. Actually if I think about it really hard, cobbling together all the conversations we'd had we would probably fit more into the category of 'depressingly aware of each other'.

Despite this, ever since our first real encounter I've found myself subject to being a hostage, a meat shield or an escape plan.

Such fun.

When this first started I was twenty one. I thought it was just bad luck. The 'wrong place at the wrong time' mentality, as it were. But over the years my bad luck seems to stuck to me and now most Supervillains and Superhero's in Gotham know my face, if not my name.

I'm not trying to be smug about it, because trust me, I don't feel smug about it, but I suppose I'm kind of like the Lois Lane of Gotham. In a dark and less exciting kind of way.

Everyone knows Lois Lane. The reporter from Metropolitan City who was always being saved by Superman? That's the one. Except unlike the beautiful Ms Lane, I've had nothing but traumatic experiences with cameras, I consider miniskirts impractical in every possible way and I don't openly go looking to put myself in trouble. It just kind of finds me and hits me so hard I'm left teary-eyed and dazed.

Plus there's the whole Superman, Lois Lane romance going on that certainly doesn't match the parallel between the two of us. So maybe I'm not like Lois Lane. Unfortunately I guess I'm just...

I'm just Kate. Kate Strider. Now a twenty five year old, disinterested participant in the superhero world, who is currently locked up in a small cellar. I can only presume I'm in the Jokers new lair. The laughing electric door knob and the hazy memories I have of how I got here tipped me off, though other than that I hadn't seen or heard anything from the clown since I'd opened my eyes.

One of the very un-glamorous elements of being a hostage that you never see on TV or in any of those true crime documentaries is the amount of time you spend doing absolutely nothing. Just sitting, tied up, or tied to something, and waiting. Waiting uncomfortably.

For me, that waiting also included being on the lookout for an opening to run, some sort of escape plan that didn't involve me sitting around while the Batman swooped in to save the day.

It would be a whole lot easier if Joker hadn't been wise to my tricks and stripped me of everything even remotely useful. He'd taken my mace bracelet, my shoelaces, the knife I'd stashed in my boot. I knew he wouldn't have left me with my bag but I longed for the lockpicks and little pearl handled berretta that was stored in the secret lining pocket. He'd even taken my damn hair pins and belt. I counted myself lucky that he'd left me with my jacket. It was cold.

Thinking about all the little dangerous things I have strapped or built into my clothing had, once upon a time, made me feel paranoid. Frankly, I think that's what comes from being associated with the vigilante king for near on five years.

Paranoia.

Possibly insanity.

But for now just paranoia.

Thinking back, a long ways back, I knew I hadn't always been like this. The first time I met Batman as in more than a passing glance was on the night of my twenty-first birthday and I was as far from paranoid as someone could be.

My boyfriend at the time, Mark, had taken me to the Iceberg Lounge for dinner. It was all very romantic...

Near on Five Years Ago...

"You look beautiful, Kate." I smiled pleasantly at Mark and flicked my hair a little. I felt beautiful in my new blue lace dress. I felt stunning and slim and sexy. I knew I wasn't all of these things, but this dress just made me feel it.

I'd found it coming home from work in a little vintage store I'd never noticed before and loved it on sight. Of course, it was way out of my price range, but after a fair amount of begging, and a most-of-my-paycheck-for-the-week deposit, the shop owner had agreed to hold it for me until I paid it off.

It was a remnant of the 50's style in all its glory. It was cut high in the front neckline, dipped into a 'V' at the back and had an impossibly pinched waistline that made it hard to breathe. But I didn't care, because when I twirled in it is fanned out from my knees and it made my usually flat hair seem shiny and perky. It made my eyes brighter and my step lighter and when we had walked into the Iceberg Lounge, surrounded by socialites, I didn't feel out of place at all.

"Thank you, Mark, you scrub up pretty well yourself."

He grinned proudly at me and smoothed down his hair with his free hand. The other hand was occupied with dessert. Chocolate Pie.

The best chocolate pie I'll ever eat in all my life. In my new blue lace dress.

Mark's grin didn't subside as he put down his fork and went to refill my empty champagne glass. I'd had quite a lot of champagne tonight, more than I usually drank. But I didn't really mind the warm feeling growing steadily through my chest, because it was my birthday and I'd probably never come here again unless I married into a rich family or won the lottery.

Mark didn't get far in refilling my glass. He poured the few drops still left in the bottle into the delicate flute and frowned.

"That went fast." He said solemnly, putting the bottle down and continuing to frown at it. I felt a trill of concern run through me as he raised his hand to summon the waitress for another bottle.

"That's ok." I grabbed his hand before he was noticed by the scantily clad servers and smiled. "I think I've had enough anyway."

Mark chuckled and squeezed my fingers tenderly.

"It's ok, Katie. I told you already, I've got this." He proved it by catching a passing waitress by the arm, motioning to the empty champagne bottle. She smiled and nodded politely before tottering off on her far-too-high heels.

I couldn't fathom for the life of me how Mark was paying for all this. He was earning less than I was, and I wasn't earning much. On top of that, I knew from the in-house gossip at work that you had to book at least a year in advance to get a table here unless you knew who's palms to grease. Mark and I had only been dating 8 or so months, there was no way he could have gotten the booking on his own.

Mark's big brown eyes slid back to me across the table and he took my hand in his, distracting me from my pondering and concern. He had a way of doing that to me. He was the first man I'd every really loved. Sweet and kind and with an electric touch that made my heart dance and my stomach tighten.

"Katie…" He paused, and for a moment I thought he was about to ask me to marry him, until he lifted a forkful of chocolate pie to my lips and raised an eyebrow "Are you going to help me eat this?"

I laughed and ate the offered dessert as delicately as I could, trying not to giggle manically through the chocolate mousse coating my lips.

"Well, well, well. Isn't this a pretty picture! Such a lovely couple!"

I jumped and choked a little on my pie as a bottle of champagne was thrust down to the centre of the table and turned away, covering my mouth and attempting to clear off my chocolate covered lips.

As I turned my head back to smile at the waitstaff, I caught the gobstruck and slightly petrified look on Mark's face and wondered for a split second why he looked so scared. Then I turned fully to the man looming over out table and understood completely.

Anyone who had seen a newspaper or watched TV in Gotham city knew who the man before us was. In a single moment his beetle-black eyes, sunken in his head like a dead mans, brought me back to childhood fears of monsters hiding under my bed. He was grinning down at us, his horrid yellow smile rimmed with uneven red that stood out against his bleached white skin. I wanted to scream but something deep down in me cut me off short and seized my breath before it reached my throat.

Standing before us, was the one and only Harlequin of Hate himself.

I had never been more terrified.

"…J…Jok…Jok." Mark was stuttering, his hand still poised halfway across the table with a now empty fork. I could see his arm trembling out of the corner of my eye.

"J…J…J…JOKER! That's right buddy boy! Give the man a prize." Joker slapped a hand down hard on Marks shoulder before propping himself on the edge of Marks chair. "You're detective skills are mar-vel-ous! Say, you wouldn't by chance be…" He lent down as his sentence trailed off, drawing in close to Marks ear. There was a dramatic pause as the Joker twisted his head this way and that, over exaggerating his movements as he looked for anyone listening in. "BATMAN!"

Mark jumped when the Joker screamed in his ear, the colour draining from his face as the madman twirled away from his chair with a hysterical cackle.

I held my breath, praying selfishly that he was done with our table and would be moving on. My prayers went unanswered when his sickening empty eyes dropped to me.

"Well hhheeelllooo." He grinned and stopped spinning, coming to lean over me instead. "What have we got here? Nicely done, nicely done buddy boy!" He thrust a thumbs up to Mark without looking at him, then paused and stepped back, crossing his arms and tapping his chin with his index finger. "Though you could really have done better with the jewels! She's only hostage material without any diamonds sonny-jim."

Mark sucked in a breath, and I just stared, frozen as he assessed me. He was leaning back on his heels when he spoke next, his hands making a frame for my face as he 'hmmed' to himself.

"But! She would make an excellent hostage!" He started cackling again.

"What is the meaning of this?"

I jumped as another voice cut through Jokers cackling and turned as much as my fear would allow to look at the newcomer. It was another face I recognized immediately. Penguin. Or Mr. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, owner of the Iceberg Lounge.

"Pengy! How nice of you to show you pointed nose tonight!" The Joker crowed and danced over to Mr. Cobblepot, holding out a hand for Penguin to shake.

He didn't shake it.

This only proved to make the Joker cackle some more and slide his once outstretched hand through his hair.

"Too slow!"

"Joker, we had an agreement! You gave me your word you would not come here!"

I was transfixed on the exchange until I noticed a burly man with a painted face forcibly removing a woman's necklace at a nearby table. I let out a woosh of breath as the same man happily relieved the woman's companion of his wallet, watch and cufflinks. A robbery?

This was a robbery?

Well duh Kate. Why else would the Joker be here? To ruin your night?

"Ah yes. I remember that little chat we had! But that was before you double crossed me."

I snapped back to the conversation happening before me when the Jokers light tone suddenly dropped an octave and became a menacing growl. The sound made me shiver. His words snapped to dark, angry noise. "You sold me out…put a knife in my back…made me ANGRY!"

I jumped again as he roared over the mulled noise of the other guests.

It went quiet, you could hear a pin drop. There was no screaming or yelling or pleas, just soft, tense whispering as people handed over their jewellery and wallets at gun point. Did the Joker really make everyone here that scared? I knew I was terrified, but everyone?

As the Joker seethed over an obviously pissed off Mr. Cobblepot I knew I didn't need an answer. Yes, he scared everyone in this restaurant. Scared them all enough to just do as they were told.

The tension in the giant hall grew steadily as the Joker and the Penguin faced off, I held tight to the tablecloth of our table, wondering if the table would be enough to protect us if bullets started flying. Something told me the answer to that was a resounding no.

Then Jokers laughed and it was like the world had started spinning again.

"And…I'm broke! This is the last place Batsy boy would think I'd rob, so it's the perfect place for me to be!" He giggled happily and tapped Penguins shoulder "You know what they say-"

"There's no honour among thieves." A new voice chimed into the conversation. Deeper, dark and gravely and hard. The voice made the Joker freeze, made his grin falter for a split second before it plastered itself tightly back onto his face.

The next few moments were a blur, and when they were over I was dizzy, my forehead was burning painfully and all I knew was I was standing up and something very cold, and very wet was dripping down over my dress.

"Nice to see you Bats!" Jokers voice was so close to my ear the noise sliced at me like a knife and made my head ache. He had me pinned against his chest, his right arm tight across my collarbones as his left waved something about in front of him. I looked up, catching his mad grin as he gnashed his teeth. Then I blinked, confused as something warm trickled down over my eyebrow and caught in my eyelashes.

"Sorry I'm late."

I looked forward, trying to orientate myself to the voice that had just spoken. The same weirdly and upsettingly deep sound as before. When my eyes landed on the source of the voice, any air left in my lungs literally gushed out in a sort of 'eep'. If I had been more aware, I would have been ashamed at myself for such a noise.

Standing before me, somehow seeming to blend into no existent shadows, was the Dark Knight himself. I'd never seen him up close, but I'd admit I'd fantasized about him a fair bit. What girl hadn't?

Suddenly all my fantasies seemed stupid and whimsical though. The man before me was huge, over 6 foot, with massively broad shoulders. His black cape encompassed him, and I understood in that moment the fear he induced in people as he stared forward at me with those glassed out invisible eyes. He was all black, and hard lines, the only hint of his humanity was the angry line of his jaw, peeking out from his cowl.

"Oh well! Better late than never! Though with you Batsy, I would prefer never." The Joker swung the thing in his left hand around menacingly. I took this moment to realize that it was a broken champagne bottle. The one he had brought to the table when he first announced his arrival.

The once full champagne bottle.

Which was now broken, and sharp, and empty.

The wet feeling seeping through my dress came back to me. The Joker must have smashed the bottle on the table when he grabbed me, leaving the fizzy, sticky substance to soak my dress. My new, perfect, blue lace dress.

Did he know what champagne would do to immaculately kept 30 something year old lace? It would destroy it, that's what it would do!

I was foggy headed from champagne and god knows what else and all I could think for one crazy, delusional second was:

You bastard.

So, I picked up my foot, bent my head as far forward as I could and slammed my stiletto heel into his pointy clown shoe.

That made him scream.

And while he was screaming, I snapped my head back up towards his face. The resulting impact hurt.

But by the sickening 'crunch' and high pitched squeal, I could only assume it hurt him a shit load more than it hurt me.

His arm drooped away from me and I stumbled forwards into the waiting grip of Batman, faintly noticing there was something warm and wet now trickling down my back as well as into my eyelashes. I was gently let down in under a second and Batman had the Joker on the ground and cuffed before I could turn and watch the whole thing end.

Everything got a little blurry for a while after that. I recognized the police uniforms streaming in and faintly noted someone was carrying me at some point. Someone with pointy ears and only half a human face. The next thing I knew I was being loaded into an ambulance with a panicked Mark staring down at me. He kept saying something over and over again. It took me a while to click with what it was.

"Why did you do that?"

I frowned up at him and slurred an indignant answer.

"He ruined my dress."

Turned out the warm sticky stuff trickling into my eyelashes was my own blood. The Joker had slammed my head into the table before he grabbed me, using enough force to split the skin around my eyebrow and leave a nice little scar. I got my own back though because the stuff running down my back was the Jokers blood, from his hopelessly broken nose. It never did set back quite right.

The door of the windowless room I was sitting in snapped open with a dramatic thud and I looked up, shaken from my memories. I knew who it was before he even made it into the room and heaved a sigh as the purple suited clown jigged through the doorway. He grinned at me through his parted red lips.

I wasn't scared of his face anymore. The shock factor wore off after a while and he just started looking like an idiot with too much face paint on. Though I never really got over his eyes, those dark black orbs that shrunk into his head and peered out at you madly.

"Kate, Kate, Katie! Baby doll! Fancy seeing you here!"

"Yeah, fancy it indeed. I was just thinking about you." I smiled nastily back at him as he cooed at me, forcing myself to stand from the cross legged position I'd been stooped in for the better part of several hours. Joker pulled his hands to his heart dramatically and swooned.

"About little old me? Why Kate, who knew you cared."

I shrugged, rubbing the sore spots on my wrists where the metal cuffs had started to bite.

"You remember my blue lace dress don't you?"

The Joker crossed his arms and tapped his index finger to his chin, a pose I had learnt was his 'thinking' pose. It took a minute of baited silence before he clicked his fingers and called 'uh-huh!' to the empty room.

"The night we first met! You know I never did care for you in blue." He slinked closer and bent so I could feel his breath puffing out over my face "I think you'd look better in…" Her grabbed my chin and stepped back a little, turning my face roughly from side to side. "Purple." He finally declared.

"Really?" I mumbled, squeezing my hands into fists behind me. "I hate purple."

The Joker threw his head back and burst out with his insane cackle. It echoed horribly and bounced off the plain brick walls around me. I wanted to punch him. Maybe break his nose again like I did all those years back. But I knew better, if the Joker had come to pay me a visit it wasn't without his floozies, so even if I got past him I'd be stopped less than 50 paces into my escape.

"Ah Katie, you're always good for a laugh!" He danced away from me towards the door, still grinning stupidly. "Just wanted to check in sweetums, make sure the facilities were to your liking and you weren't fading away without the pleasure of my company." He paused, eyeing the room I was in and then me with long, far too focused sweeps from those beetle black eyeballs of his. "I can see you're enjoying yourself immensely."

Then he was gone without another word, the door slamming back into place with a loud smack that left me alone again in darkness. I could hear his cackling fade as he walked away…

That bastard.

Authors Notes: So what do you think? all those in favour of continuance review 'Iae' all those apposed review 'Nae'

Please Read and Review. It makes me smile.