Two of a Kind
Batman watched as the clown climbed to his feet, showing no signs of pain. He laughed, putting his hands on his hips.
"Dam, she got away!" he giggled, "You keep scaring my girl's off!"
Batman circled him. "She's not your girl, Joker,"
The Joker raised an eyebrow. "Do I detect a note of jealously in that growly voice of yours Batty?"
"You need to go back to Arkham Joker, where they can help you,"
The Joker sighed dramatically.
"Why does every body want to help me? Can't you see me smiling? I'm happy the way I am, thank you"
"I don't believe you…the things you have done make me doubt you. You could have killed Amelia West a dozen times except you haven't. What do you want with her?"
The Joker began to pace, running his hands through his hair.
"You know…maybe you're right Bats. I just want to be loved…I know that if someone invests their heart in me, I'll be good, I'll change. Do you think it's possible?"
"I think anything is possible where it concerns you Joker. But why her, of all people? She's been through enough in her life,"
The Joker gazed at him quizzically, linking his hands in front of him.
"Let me tell you a little story…about a boy who one day fell in love with the wrong girl…or you could say she was the right girl, just wrong for him! He saves her life then he leaves her…but part of him keeps thinking, maybe I'll go back…one day he sees her in the park, this park, on that carousel…but guess what…"
"She didn't remember you," Batman finished, the final piece of the story in place.
The Joker nodded violently, his tongue flicking to lick his lips.
"That made him a little mad…after all he'd done and she didn't even know his name!"
Batman stepped forward but the Joker skipped out of his reach. The clown flicked out his knife and the pair began to circle one another like a dance.
"She couldn't have known you, she was in trauma."
The Joker once again regarded him with a knowing look.
"Sounds like you're a little bit too familiar with her yourself. I don't know how that makes me feel…seeing how we're all sharing.." he rubbed his chest, agitated as though something was clawing at him inside, "I feel all…what's the word…jealous!"
His manic, chaotic laughter ran in Batman's ears.
He just hoped that he could distract The Joker long enough until Gordon got here with his back up. When it came to this clown, Batman took no chances.
In a second Batman flung a flare at The Joker's head, he had no time to react, exploding inches from his face, the gas made him dizzy and he leapt to the ground.
"I'm sorry we can't share her Batman but I got there first!" The Joker cried out as Batman appeared over him. The clown launched forward, having the pleasure of feeling his blade sink deep into that bat suit, watching in gleeful suspense as the Bat yelled, his grip loosening.
Undeterred Batman wrestled him back to the ground, binding his hands together behind his back. The Joker, face down in the grass, struggled defiantly as he was unceremoniously hauled to his feet.
"You're not touching her or anyone again Joker," Batman yelled in his face and the clown continued to grin.
Relieved to see the flashing lights of the cop cars in the distance, Batman dragged the Joker to the gates of Steeple Park.
"Don't you want to know how the little love story ends Batman?" The Joker chided him.
Batman ignored him, slamming the clown's body into the Iron Gate, binding his arms to it like a sacrifice.
The Joker hadn't stopped his manic nervous laughter. Batman stared at him through the blackness of the mask and the Joker's face sobered.
"It ends with you in Arkham," he hissed through clenched teeth.
"Well actually I have an alternate ending," he smiled, "She throws herself into the fire…just cos she cant bear to be without him…and they burn together, their twisted little hearts as one, forever,"
Batman ploughed his fist into the Joker's face and had the brief pleasure of seeing the clown screw his face up in pain as his head cracked the gate.
"You don't love her," he yelled, "You don't know how to feel…if you did you could never have murdered Rachel…."
The Clown raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"Me suspects the Bat has said too much," he giggled, "I'm not getting to you am I?"
Batman brought his face inches from The Joker's, his voice dark.
"If you love her, really, if you can feel anything for her…leave her alone. Because you'll only end up killing her, if you don't. And even you couldn't live with that,"
The sirens approaching jolted Batman back to reality. He turned deftly not wanting to be caught at the scene.
As he tracked swiftly across the park, the Joker's mad laughter rang in his ears.
"Who said anything about love?" The Joker screamed after him, squirming against the gate as the police ran towards him with their guns held high, "Maybe I just want to watch her burn!"
Amelia's bare feet hit the stone floor of her apartment block stairs, loosing her balance momentarily. She had run so fast that she hadn't taken a breath.
Gripping the staircase for balance, hand on her chest, she continued to run and didn't stop until she had locked her apartment door behind her.
Safely inside, she slid down the door onto the welcome mat, breathing hard.
"You're so stupid!" she sobbed, exhausted from running, her chest tight.
She had walked, willingly and knowingly into The Joker's trap.
She felt utterly confused.
He said that she wanted to control him, to try to change him, but yet it seemed like some distant part of him was crying out for that change.
Amelia admitted to herself now that the reason she'd gone so willingly was because she wanted to see him, not the Joker, Jack. She'd wanted to see if some part of the boy she remembered was still there.
But in the park, she'd found the man he'd become and that man had other plans for her.
She shivered in disgust, standing weakly. Looking at her cell she saw that she'd had ten missed calls from Bruce. She threw the phone away from her miserably, not wanting to hear the concern in his voice.
After all he'd done for her and she'd nearly gotten herself killed! She hated herself for lying to him.
It was nearly four in the morning, her eyes were like slits but she knew she had to talk to someone.
She sat numbly at her kitchen counter and dialled a number.
The voice that answered on the tenth ring was bleary,
"Daddy?" she sobbed and she heard him clear his throat at the other end of the line.
"Millie…what's wrong? It's four in the morning!" he sounded frantic.
"I'm Ok….well I'm not Ok…Daddy, I remember everything that happened to Mom,"
She was sobbing down the phone. But hearing his voice at the other end, only served to remind her of what had happened. Of how he had done nothing to help them.
"Amelia, what happened to your Mother, wasn't your fault. You couldn't have done anything to help her that night,"
She pressed her mouth shut, forcing down the anger that was reaching its boiling point. After all these years and he still refused to accept responsibility for what happened.
"But Dad…" she whispered, "Why didn't you do something?"
The line was suddenly silent at the other end and she could hear her father breathing quietly. He was thinking.
"I think we need to talk about this another time, when you're better. You've been through an awful ordeal and everything is so fresh. You're not seeing things how they really happened, everything is mixed up…poor baby. Go back to sleep,"
"But Dad…"
"Millie, please. Don't you think this is hard for me! Why don't you make an appointment with that therapist of yours and you can talk it out with her? Or Bruce, he's always been there for you?"
"Yes," she replied weakly, "Yes, he has,"
"There you are! Now darling, I have meeting in three hours. But promise me, we will talk about this soon? I love you,"
"I love you too Daddy,"
The line went dead and she threw the phone back in its cradle. That was his answer to everything. Go back to therapy.
She remembered the arguments before the divorce. She remembered going with her Mother to hospital, preying this would be the last time she would put herself through the agonising procedure.
Abbott West used money to buy his way out of emotional confrontations. But he hadn't used it to save his own wife and child.
She stumbled into bed, cold and tired and slept fitfully. She dreamed of Jack and The Joker, the two very different images blurring into one.
When she woke with a start at five in the morning, she could have sworn that she'd seen a shadow by the bedside table. She flicked the bed side lamp on, her heart slowing when all she saw was the curtain blowing in the breeze.
She now suspected that Batman had been the one following her when she'd walked to the park earlier, his dark shape never completely out of sight.
She got up, aching all over and closed the window tight, gazing down at the traffic already building at this time in the morning.
Momentarily she stared at her reflection in the glass and a scream froze in her throat.
Stumbling she dashed to the bathroom and flicked on the bright florescent light, staring horrified at her face in the mirror. The frozen scream escaped her throat.
Her face was coloured white with thick, grease paint, crude finger marks running down her neck. Her eyes were like two black coals staring back at her and her mouth was fire engine red, a nasty, cruel smile curling up over her cheeks.
On the bathroom mirror there was a note, again, childishly scrawled, written in red ink.
Amelia ripped it off the mirror, furiously and held it up with shaking fingers.
She read the words over and over, not daring to look at herself again. The image in the mirror was sickening. She didn't dare imagine how, yet again, he'd strolled into her home, hovered over her bed and did this to her while she slept.
She collapsed on the bathroom floor, alone and shaking, the note fluttering to her ground beside her.
It read,
"Two of a Kind,"