Phew! That was some hardcore writing over the past week. First off, I have to say 'THANK YOU!' to put here 2 feel joy for her continuous support with this story and I've incorporated some of her brilliant ideas into this chapter. She's practically been here through the whole making of this chapter, with all our late night four in the morning talks about our obsession with the Joker XD. Next I want to thank all of you who reviewed the last chapter! It really meant a lot to me and I hope you continue to review and comment on you likes/dislikes of the story. I love hearing all of your feedback. Third, I'd like to thank Deathcab4kimmie for that awesome review you sent me earlier on today! You have no idea (well maybe you do :D) on how much that lifted my spirits and brought happiness to a whole other level. I still think your story kicks ass and takes names, it's brilliant! Well, I know some of you are highly anticipating this chapter, so I give you, Chapter 8!
P.S. Don't forget I love reviews XD
There was no time, no subdued moment to spare another thought as his signaling command poured out of the speakers; the Joker was going to blow his failed cavalry and the hostages to pieces. I didn't pause and remain standing in the broken line with fallen men and unsuspecting victims. The exposed burning wound in my arm felt like a thousand daggers peeling my flesh away, but I couldn't let it overwhelm my actions. This was my life to save. It was almost ironic that I knew the Joker's finger hovered over the contraption for one second longer before he pushed the button—as if he knew that I was worthy to escape death's clutches… just a little bit longer. I was his new pet; a fresh, sane mind to mingle his fingers into and coil into contortions until I lost grip on the morality of right and wrong. My feet carried themselves in vigorous, mercurial dashes away from the Commissioner, the explosives, and the innocent who hadn't a thought their lives would end in a blazing fire. I pressured my gun-shot wound with my unimpaired arm, and ran from the detonation area. The hostages had no time to react; neither did the Gotham City Police. Only the criminals who had minor wounds like mine, thank Gordon for having good aim, thought a step ahead of what the Joker's 'going out with a bang' performance would be.
I didn't dare look behind or hear the screams or the roar of faultless civilians going up in flames. It was selfish of me to care only for myself at the present time, where I spent years of work helping others. By human nature, we are all selfish, and I coveted nothing more than to fall into the safety of the streets, alive. A scorching heat followed by a formidable force of energy pushed into my back, sending my flailing body several feet forwards into the unscathed asphalt. As the explosive beam of light subsided into darkness, the most sickening realization about the escape filled me. I had no choice but to return to the warehouse to face the Joker all over again. He was my boss now, and though we weren't given orders after the dirty deed was committed, Williams' strong reference to the warehouse as the core meeting place pinpointed my direction.
Gasoline, charcoal, and burning skin permeated my sense of smell minutes later as I picked myself up off the ground, gripping onto my arm in an effort to subside the bleeding. Throwing off the clown mask in disgust, I tucked as much of the rubbery plastic into my back pocket as I could manage. I released a habitual shriek as I touched the bleeding contusion with my fingertips. The sweater would have to do for now. Ripping off a thick piece of the fabric, I wrapped up the wound as best as I could without removing the bullet.
"Alright." I groaned, wincing from the stabbing sensations running up the length of my arm consistently, once I began walking down the abandoned street. "Taxi, taxi, taxi." I repeated the words minute-by-minute, my tired eyes searching for a flash of yellow or burgundy under the dim street lights. I was still in the inner city, so there had to be transportation somewhere. My footsteps set a quick pace that broke out into a brisk jog, until luck seemed to finally stick by my side. From out of the corner of my
eye, I spotted one dropping off a late nightshift worker at her apartment. I waved down the driver before he took off, and he eased on the brakes until I settled into the car. I mumbled the street address the warehouses were situated on, and heard the driver's complaint as the ending response. One of my magnums was already out and pressed to the back of his head before he could utter any other word to his heart's desire. It was simply a warning, but somewhere deep inside, a twinge of hysteria bubbled up through me. "You either get there, bud, or I shoot you and drive myself." I growled.
Can't he see I'm a little injured here?
"Y-yes, ma'am." He shifted his taxi into drive, and floored the accelerator. I lifted the gun from his head, content… for now.
Night in Gotham was a whole other reality from daytime. The alleyways held a morbid presence to their dark corners, as criminals-in-waiting sat crouched for a naïve woman to become their prey. The citizens unseen to the street-walker's eye were all situated in their living rooms or tucked away into the secure warmth of a bed, knowing their fate if they tried a walk at this time. Streets were nearly vacant except the spare occupants of every other car trying to make it home for the day. Lovers were inevitably close-fitting, kissing each other goodnight to another tomorrow. The haunting melodic tune of the night air whispered approaching death and spared life every day. Its mysterious actions only definable through the sands of time. And I fit into none of these categories. I had a date with the devil, who I envisioned with a bone-chilling, over-stretched crimson smile of rage when he saw the survivors pulling themselves back to him unwillingly in defeat.
The driver pulled up beside a demolished curb, his silent demeanor a tell-tale he wouldn't ask for money. I stepped from the cab, instilling a trusting feeling in the pit of my stomach before I'd be overrun with terror. The building's lights were slightly lit; enough illumination to make your way around the rooms. My hand pressed harder into the bullet wound as I kicked open the half unhinged door from its locks. Three other injured lackeys stood in the center of the room, each bullet implanted in a different area.
"I'm home, boys." My grin was menacing under the layer of sweet sincerity in my tone. "Did ya miss me?"
They would have attacked me, by the looks in their eyes, if it wasn't for the fact that they could bleed to death.
"Ooh,look-ie here, the pups came home to their daddy for a bone. Daddy's not very happy." The Joker slicked back his greasy, green-tinted hair and approached the four of us in exaggerated, high steps. He stopped in front of the man beside me, almost nose-to-nose in height so that their eyes were forced to be locked. "Do you remember what I specifically told you? Huh?" The Joker shook his head up and down in a yes motion, cupping his hand to his ear.
The man's face remained composed throughout the staring contest, but his answer came out in a mousy whisper.
"You, you said that if Commissioner was winning, that I should shoot the hostages, Boss."
"Yess, yesss… and what did you do?" He pressed his cupped hand to his ear again, expecting a plausible answer.
"Nothing." The man uttered breathlessly.
"Nothing?! Nothing!! HA!" Joker laughed mercilessly. He had withdrawn his switchblade before the man had an understanding of what was going on, and slashed a cleanly deep line across his neck. After all the death I witnessed tonight, this man who fell right beside me was nothing but a memory of the first criminal falling out of line at Gordon's gun. "The failing cutthroat." He giggled, caressing the bloodstained blade with precious care. Then, his hollowed black eyes fell on me. The Joker unfurled a stack of money in his pocket, waving it in my face like I'd fall to temptation. "Our La-cey, back from the dead! Here's the money, ya want it? C'mon, take it." My face reflected his frown, turning aside when he shoved it into my view. "TAKE IT!" The low, demonic gnarl made my body jump into a brief spasm.
"I don't want it." I heard myself, Lacey, ring out in spite.
"And why not, toots?" He smacked the stack of folded bills against my cheek. "Not enough?"
"Money's for the desperate." The courageous voice built up and spat out in his face. "I'm not desperate. I'm the willing."
"Ah, a woman with a crave for theatrics, and without pay!" He slid his crimson-coated blade across my jaw line and up my face, scrutinizing the heavy, unnatural gaze I was enveloped in. He looked away from my played-up smile, the darkness of his eyes darting in several directions through fragmented thoughts. The blade never ceased its perdition of smearing death's paint over my cheeks, disdainfully threatening a false move. "That explains the lack of weapons. Orr…" His tongue poked through his parted, red-stained lips and dragged over the raised scars. "You came here assuming I wouldn't kill you. Why?" Joker's laughter rang out around them. The wounded lackeys seemed to disperse in the midst of our conversation, not daring to walk off in fear of a more severe bullet wound. I held my tongue to the rhetorical question, eyes following him when he circled over me like a crooked sky-scraper. He tilted his face down towards me, almost mocking the snide smirk that settled onto my lips.
"Because you're reckless." He grinned an over-stretched, scar-tugging smile. His eyes averted down to my scar snaking across the collarbone and up to my jaw, brushing his switchblade down the nerve-less light pink skin. He ripped away the cloth tied to my upper arm, and pressed a finger deep into the bullet wound to see my face falter just once in pain. My head jerked away with a light hiss at the burning sensation, eyes shut tight to ease off the feeling. "And cow-ardly. You ran away from your family, you
ran away from justice, and you ran away from death." Joker's face scrunched disappointingly, removing his bloodied finger and wagging it at her as if she deserved a scolding. "Ya see, Lace," he continued, his deep voice rising to its terrifying childish pitch. "I… embrace… death." His tongue glided across his lips, eyes rolling back to savor the copper smell of his most recent kill.
"And I embrace vengeance." I whispered harshly, turning my head back around to look him in the eye. The pulse of my heart thumped erratically in my chest as I stared up at him, afraid of his response to my disobedient mouth.
"Vengeance, my little blonde murderer, is sweet for only a moment." The Joker heaved a sigh and pulled my missing paring knife from his pocket. "It is breathed only once. Chaos… is a, uh, lifetime pleasure. You kill to feeel." He grasped my hand and placed the knife in my palm, folding it closed and patting it to seal the deal. "I kill to throw this already crumbling world off balance. The Batman is the key to Gotham's padlock. Aaand… I intend to bring that key to this city, even if it means burning every building to ashes." The Joker grasped my impaired arm, pointing at the hole in it with his own knife and shoving me towards a door at the beginning of a hallway. "Fix yourself, sweets, because working for me doesn't give you injury benefits. I play dirty, and you're either in or out. Meaning… I kill you or you kill under my cuh-mand."
I caught myself before I could fall at his harried push, his quiet laughter fading into the background when I managed to close shut the door of a worn down bathroom. Dirt, mold, and grime clung to the cracked tiles poorly pasted to the walls, inching through the crevices of the floor and the drain of the bathtub. The fissured mirror disfigured by dust and shattered pieces reflected my blood-painted face back to me. This face, the abstract features twisting in the mirror, was Lacey. She smiled back at me, the hardened blood falling off her face as the corners of her mouth raised. I opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, searching to any disinfectant before I delved into the process of bullet-removal. There was only a roll of gauze, a dirtied cloth, and a half-empty bottle of peroxide in the cabinet.
The persistent phobia of infection gripped me as I stared down at the bleeding perforation with wide, brown eyes. The blonde vigor of my hair faded over time to a dirty untidiness that looked more real than when it was first weaved into my hair. My true identity was becoming alien to me. The Violet persona I was born with, and grew up with, continued to remain. But it was slowly fading away with my appearance, morphing into the theory Lacey's mind was set in stone on: crime is to teach a lesson to people refusing to act on the world or to themselves. I was turning into someone else; someone the Joker could easily bend to his will more than Violet ever could. And Lacey was willing to do it.
I carefully washed off the remnants of virulent residue and grime packed into the wash cloth, wiping away the excess blood trailing down my skin from the Joker's jubilant poking at the abrasion. My paring knife needed to be disinfected since there were no prongs up in the medicine cabinet, and matches was one of the significant supplies absent for the process. I turned the faucet dial to hot as a last resort, dipping the knife under the current until scalding hot water ran across the blade. Unscrewing the lid of the peroxide, I poured a bit of the liquid into my wound, the hole filling up with white foam. I clenched my teeth together as it disinfected, and tipped some more peroxide over my paring knife.
Earsplitting screams were heard from the room where the Joker was, followed by a strained gag and a thump. A different voice broke into rapid chatter afterwards, one set of hollow footsteps pacing back and forth as they rambled on with their own poor excuses.
"Ha ha, hee, and you buh-leeve that I will spare you after that little show?" I heard him break out in a deep laugh through the walls, knife grasped in my other hand, entirely still. "It's not, um, hard to replace men like you. Now. Take your stack of greed, and go home." His growl resonated through the walls, and the man's diminishing footfalls left the room. The Joker sent out one last hysterical chuckle, snapping what sounded like a shotgun shell into place, and firing at the door.
I recoiled further into the bathroom and away from the wall. My attention was redirected to the cleansed wound, all prepped for a painful extraction. I bit down on the damp cloth, and plunged my blade carefully into the penny-sized hole. Shallow, fleeting breaths escaped through my flaring nostrils, the tears and surfacing screams beginning to form. There was a metallic hit when I felt I reached the base of the wound, and I reluctantly twisted around the knife to curve it underneath the bullet. The sobs reached their maximum limit, and I was nearly hyperventilating by the exertion it took to push the metal up through my flesh. There was a rattled knock at the door as I silently shed tears through the mind-numbing anguish forcing my body to tremble at its weakest.
"Are we, uh, having some fun in there?" Joker's giggle was muffled through the wood of the door, but it was enough to make my body shudder into a second set of spasms. If I answer him, I'd have to let out a wail, and the Lacey side of me refused to speak.
The shimmering silver of the bullet peaked through the gaping hole in my arm, falling to the ground with an echoed clank. Relief washed over my demeanor the moment the metal left my body, and I was at last able to answer the Joker's self-uplifting question.
"Loads of fun… I guarantee." I answered in a hidden attempt to force out the pain in my voice.
"Now that you're… healed, I suggest picking a room. Because you're not leaving." He opened up the bathroom door as I finished wrapping my arm, leaning against what was left of the door panel in impatience.
"And why not? We all left yesterday." I remarked, pretending to be distracted
by placing every item back in the medicine cabinet so I wouldn't have to look him in the eye.
"And look where they ended up." His scars perked up into a sinful grin, gliding his darkened gloves against the edge of his switchblade.
"Why did you spare me?"
"So many questions, Lace. Sparing doesn't exactly cut it. I simply held off your death for a couple days. Why waste a corrupted, intelligent mind like yours when the fun hasn't even begun? You haven't puh-rooved yourself to me you can walk the city at will. So birdie's gonna stay in her cage a little longer before she's set free." The Joker walked forward and grasped my chin in his powerful grip, jerking my head upwards. Violet wanted to look away, but Lacey challenged him with her eyes. "Got that, toots?" He leaned in close enough to be nose-to-nose with me, his ringed darkness staring at me with a keen sense of annoyance.
"Got it, Boss." I replied without looking away. It amazed me, how just by my intelligence, my death was delayed. Or how much I puzzled him with the alternating expressions every time my emotions held me back. Minute-by-minute, he was being fooled, but at the same time I was waiting on him hand and foot. His little servant of destruction was beginning to come into play whether I wanted to or not. I wondered what the next action would be tomorrow. Countless more murders, threats, and bombs, I suppose. No matter the cost, even if we were alone right now and I could very well send in reinforcements, it wouldn't be the same. I planned to get this man to see Lacey as a criminal of his status, and I was beginning to think that my limits would need to be surpassed in order to survive in Joker's game. The recklessness was overwhelmingly tempting, and I felt I had no choice.
My room was indecent, but I wasn't expecting anything better than a stained mattress and a blanket anyhow. With a fortunate quickness that rarely enters my nighttime routine, especially when I was only feet away from a maniacal killer, heaviness began to pull shut my eyes. His presence entered the room on the brink of me falling under, and through the slits of my eyes, I watched him take a seat in the corner. The whiteness brought a frightening contrast to his shadowed eyes in the fallen darkness as he remained immovable watching me. The purpose was unknown, but he never moved from the spot even when my eyes fell to unconsciousness.
The Joker gathered up quite a number of men the following day for his new scheme. This strategy, however, required miles of space. I was partially alone when sent out on the job, save for one of his men to assist me with the demolition charges.
"I don't care that you have special treatment, or whatever the others said, from the Boss. You're just a girl, and I'm the guy here. So we do what I say and get this over with, deal?"
Men.
I rolled my eyes and shoved him into a parked car, a revolver emerging from the hidden strap tied around my hips.
"No deal," I sighed in boredom. The thug stared up at me, caught off guard when the heel of my shoe collided with the bridge of his nose. "I'm in this because I like it, not here for the money. That makes me, what? At least a level or two higher than you in criminal status? We do what I want to do, and that's setting up these charges, deal?" I threw another kick—this time to his ribs—in case there was objection. Grasping his bleeding nose, he shook his head in agreement, carrying off the bag of explosives towards his station.
I shrugged it off and turned in my assigned direction, picking up my own duffle bag. From the corner of my eye, a hand shot out in blinding speed and grasped onto my arm. My first instinct was to fight back. But, as I was pulled around the corner, my shouts muffled by a rough hand over my lips, the voice I'd missed hearing when I thought my old life was eternally lost filled my eardrums.
"Gordon?!"