VIII.
Cécile was backtracking, trying to will herself to the moment she'd stepped into the bank. But it was useless, as useless as imagining what would have happened if she had not answered Duplessis' plea at the bakery. Would the harmless baker have been killed? Perhaps. Perhaps nothing would have happened. The Joker might have tried another way of vying for her attention. Like escaping from a bank robbery in a yellow taxi into midday traffic in Gotham with the wheels screeching against asphalt. She wondered idly if the police were going to catch up with them. Her attention was for the moment engaged elsewhere.
"So, boss, whadda we gonna do?" asked the accomplice in the clown mask, bulldozing his way through traffic in the front seat. "Cap the girl? Or she got some friends in high places?"
"You want to kill her, then?" asked the Joker, leering in the seat next to Cécile. She was staring at him, too shocked to say anything.
"I'm not sayin' that," said Combat Boots, ploughing through a red light and popping chewing gum under his mask. "It's just, she'll see the hideout. If we gonna keep her alive . . ."
"Ding!" said the Joker, holding up his gloved index finger. "I do believe he has a point. Fortunately, I came prepared." Cécile tried to shrink back against the seat but the swerving of the car made that impossible. He took out a thin piece of black material from the interior of his coat pocket. The coat she'd helped sew, with all the pockets . . . Being distant from what he did had made it easier. Now she couldn't look past the very purpose of the all the pockets was to store objects of destruction, with the intent to hurt, maim, even kill . . . She thought it was a necktie at first, but as it went around her face like a blindfold, she realized it had been made expressly for that purpose. There was probably a pocket just for that.
He didn't tie her hands or even try to pin her to the seat with a seatbelt. Blacking out her vision was just a new part of the game. Even though the goose pimples were bubbling at the top of her skin, her bruised cheek and sliced knee, she offered no reaction to being blindfolded. To struggle would be to antagonize him more. It was what he wanted. To be able to see her squirm while she couldn't see anything—could just feel the motion of the madly careening car, smell the caked makeup. And then there was a knife, slowing stroking against her cheek. She tried not to wince. She tried to keep herself calm. She would not act like an idiot. She would not get hysterical. She would get out of this alive. For the first time since she'd entered the bank she thought of Luc, and the absence hit her with guilt.
The knife held steady just below her right eye, as the burning cigarette had at the bakery. "So you finally got the message to come to Gotham," he said.
"I didn't come because of you," she said. "I came to get my degree at the Waterman—"
"—Institute of Art and Design," he said in a sing-song voice. She clutched at the seat as the car made a sharp turn and braced herself for the knife scraping along her cheekbone. To her surprise it disappeared—back into his pocket. He leaned over her, pressing her against the seat as the sound of a siren trailed behind them. The clown driver let fly a curse, but the Joker didn't seem to be concerned. "I know all about it, Marie-Cécile," he said in a voice that was lightly scolding, vastly condescending. "I even know about Lllllllllluc."
Cécile froze. For a stricken moment she wondered if he was the one who'd put Luc into that state. She took a shuddering breath, realizing it wasn't his style at all. No, Luc had just had a bad night. It was the drugs he insisted on taking. I should have been better to him, she thought guiltily. She took another breath, this time deep. She tried to revive her former insouciance. Why was she so afraid of the Joker? She thrust her shoulders back. She couldn't show fear, she couldn't even afford to feel it. It was her father's fault, she thought suddenly with burning rage. He was the one who hadn't shoved this freak out the door in the first place. "Then you'll know my father is dead."
"Funny old world, isn't it?" the Joker said in a curiously neutral voice.
"Don't think I don't hold you responsible."
He laughed then, his hideously un-funny chuckle. "I feel for you, I do," he said, between affected titters. "You had that whole affection-thing pretty well hanging together for Pops. But I didn't kill him. I could tell you that you did—"
"You sick—"
He shoved her back against the seat. "The truth is, you're better off with him dead." She tried to protest, but her second's hesitation made him click his tongue. "Ohhh, Cécile," he murmured, taking her chin between his gloved fingers and shaking it. "You know it's true. The truth hurts, and what could I possibly gain by lying to you?" Cécile could think of some reasons as she balled a fist, but kept breathing deeply, determined to be as indifferent, as uncaring as she'd been in the bakery. "You see, the old man didn't treat you well. And I should know." She heard him licking his lips. "His tongue was cut out. So he neglected his only daughter, let her get felt up by every French goon in the city. I don't really have experience with these kinds of things, but is that good parenting?"
Cécile felt her cheeks going scarlet. "Hey," said the clown with combat boots in the front seat. "What gives?" he said. "Is it private play time while I have to be the primary target here?"
"That's exactly what it is," said the Joker, and Cécile was pretty sure she heard him cocking his gun. He turned back to her, leaning in close until she could feel a strand of lanky hair against her cheek. "I'm so glad we got this chance to talk, Cécile. I wanted to ask you what you did with the money."
Cécile gulped. She could remember the feel of them, the American dollars that had at the time been so foreign and absurdly green in her grasp, rescued off the floor beside a ravaged éclair. And he was near enough to her, she was sure, that he could feel her hesitation and guilt even if he couldn't read her thoughts. "One could say that you're as baaad as me now," he purred. "I stole the money, but you took it, after that noble speech about not being tainted—" She opened her mouth to protest, but he quieted her by drumming a finger against her lips.
"Look," said Cécile as calmly as she could manage. "I don't know why you gave me the money in the first place. I used it to buy a computer, okay?"
"Hmmm, okay."
"And if I'm tainted because of it maybe it's meant to be, because I was never so 'appy as I was until yesterday." She remembered that he had given her the money after she'd mentioned her difficulties paying the bills because of her father's drinking. Had that been a shred of compassion? A slice of human feeling? "You must have given it to me for a reason."
"That's sweet, but—"
"So if you've got any feelings at all, you'll leave things the way you left them at the bakery."
He seized her by the collar. "You think I owe you something?" he snarled. "For a few conversations and some hair dye? Feelings?" he derided. "Someone's got a high opinion of herself." He let her go, then, and she held her breath, waiting for the knife to come out. "Getting that lovesick puppy to follow you around has done wonders for your self-esteem, Marie-Cécile. Frankly, it disgusts me. I wonder, though . . ." He brushed the hair away from her right ear and whispered into it. "Did you show Luc your scars?" She jumped as if she'd been pierced by the knife. "Or am I still the only one who knows about them? Come to think of it, I never even got to see them . . ."
Incredibly, it was Combat Boots stepping on the brakes that saved Cécile. How she would have reacted had he not braked would forever remain a mystery to her. She went flying into the front seatback, though the Joker wrapping an arm around her waist at the same time meant she was spared careening through the windshield. "Are you trying to die?" he shouted at the driver.
"We're almost to the hideout," said Combat Boots in a convulsed voice. "So it ain't right to do that." Cécile shrunk back in the seat, sure any minute he would be rewarded for his compassion with a rain of bullets, or a knife in his stomach. Instead the blindfold was wrenched from her face. She adjusted to the cold light; they were in a tunnel somewhere. It was true; she could no more identify their whereabouts than she could jump out of the speeding cab.
"I think I should have you guess," said the Joker, as if completely negating the entire exchange and the near-crash in the tunnel, "who I've been hooking up with in your absence."
Cécile's head reeled. Hooking up with? He was clearly exaggerating with sarcastic, comic intent, but what was he talking about? Then she remembered the newspaper clippings. The angry-looking assistant D.A. The harried woman with the broken heel she'd seen just the day before. "Rachel Dawes," she said involuntarily.
"Right in one! I tell you, this kid is good."
"Why her?" Cécile asked, watching the blankness of the tunnel moving silently by, as if they'd fallen down a very deep rabbit-hole.
"Not jealous, are we?" He made a mocking face.
"I mean, but why? Have you even met her?"
"I don't have to," said the Joker, leaning back in the seat beside her. "It's her inherent moral goodness. She's just r-r-r-ripe for the plucking."
Cécile winced at the analogy, at the horrid slickness of his tone. She had no idea how serious he was being. Did he conceivably have some kind of misplaced passion for this woman? Well, anything's possible, she thought. But why tell me? Why send me the clipping? He thinks I'm going to be jealous? Does that excite him? Was she ever going to get out of the car?
"Hell," he said, "I'd go for Harrrrrrrvey Dent if I swung that way." Cécile stared at him, bemused. "Just the idea of corrupting that self-righteous—" He stopped and looked at her, his tongue snaking out of his mouth. "You're still wondering. You're always wondering, always these motions going through your brain," he said, shaking his head convulsively. "The marvellous tick-tick-tick going on in there. You're not like most of them. You're not worried if I'm going to blow off your kneecap with this Gloc or carve the driver into dog-meat. You're thinking about the package I had hand-delivered to your door. What does it mean? If it means anything at all." He moved closer to her on the seat, the purple pinstripe of his trouser leg rubbing against her bare and sweaty calf. "I can tell what else you're thinking."
"Go ahead," she said drily.
He leaned in to her ear again and said, this time in perfect French, "Comment serait-il, lui embrasser à ce moment?" Startled, she pulled away just as the car drove up to a dingy, unlit underground parking structure. What would it be like, to kiss him? The man in combat boots pulled off his clown mask and looked back at her in one fluid movement. BLAM.
She'd never seen anyone actually die in front of her before. At that close range, she knew he wouldn't survive. And suddenly she wasn't afraid. She'd seen the worst that the Joker could do. As she turned to him, the cab began to rock back and forth. Cécile cried out, the first time she had throughout the entire ordeal, as an enormous THUMP from the roof assured her someone was on top of the car.
The Joker giggled incessantly. "If that's who I think it is, I'm going to have to leave you for the moment. He's gearing up for the entr'acte before we've even gotten to the overture!" He seized the bag of money from the front seat and unlocked the door. "We'll continue our discussion later." In one motion he grabbed her hand to kiss it at the same time he riddled the roof of the car with bullets. The action left a smear of red paint across the back of her hand, like a scar or a badge of honor. Cécile recoiled as he leapt through the open door and disappeared into the shadows. Stumbling, she crawled out the door. Something huge thunked in front of her.
It was a titanic shape, a billowing body of black with two burning brown eyes issuing from somewhere in the mass. She held up an arm weakly, pointing in the direction the Joker had run. Her mouth didn't seem to work. A voice like grated ball bearings came from the man costumed in darkness. "Are you all right?"
Cécile's face ached, and she wiped her running nose on the back of her hand. "Yes," she said, making an effort to speak English. All she could think of was Luc. She knew she had neglected him and had not cared. She was responsible and could not face it. She stood firmly in her shoes. She wouldn't collapse, not in front of this Batman person.
"You're bleeding," he said. She felt at her lips for blood, but none came off. But her hand did come away red. The makeup stain the Joker had left on her hand had rubbed onto her lips. She shuddered.
The incessant barking of the Dobermans on the side of the chain-link fence were making Luc's head pound. He was half awake, half sleeping.
The face he was met with was not the cool Dr. Crane's, but a burlap sack from nightmares, carved into the shape of an effigy. "You haven't seen me in full costume, Mr. Proux," came the chilling voice from inside. "This is the Scarecrow, who, thanks to the successful testing of the verita serum as I've christened it, now knows all your fears and secrets."
"Which is exactly why," said Luc, "I've come to kill you."
He waited quite sincerely for the dogs to be loosed, for men with clubs and guns to descend. But there was only the pale, luminous, thin silhouette of the Scarecrow standing in front of him in the alleyway. "Why would you want to do that?" asked Crane in that saccharine psychologist's voice. "I see you've tried to go back to . . . what's her name? Cécile?" Luc grunted. "And it's only human nature to want to. I completely understand."
"She'll never love me," said Luc.
"You're very right about that," said Crane airily, "if what you confessed last night is any indication. To be quite frank, and I'm no great admirer of women, she sounds like a downright bitch." Luc snorted. Part of him was keening at the betrayal and the pain being dredged up to the surface like poison, but part of him revelled. "What you need, Proux, is a new start."
"And you can give me that, I suppose?" asked Luc sarcastically.
The Scarecrow came down the steps toward him, all angles and lines. "I'm looking to expand beyond Gotham. You could be key to hitting the market in Canada." Luc stifled a laugh. There was no trusting someone like this, insane but with the workings of a true man of genius, a psychologist with a sadistic side. But maybe he could get something out of it. He was certainly up for the ride. "And," said Crane, "you could help me break Batman and the Joker."
Luc steeled. "And why would I have any interest in either of them? Just weirdos in costumes. No offense."
"Batman's an annoyance with a penchant for the grand gesture and heroics. He put me in Arkham and then prison. So the retribution is all personal on that account, I can assure you. But the Joker's something new, and I've given him the chance to burn Gotham. While I wait."
"For what?"
"There will always be ruins from the city. If Gotham survives, I'll be in a position to benefit. And, if you are honest with yourself, you probably wouldn't mind seeing him burn along with it."
"Why's that?" asked Luc, mouth dry.
"Well, this Cécile woman," said the Scarecrow condescendingly. "She seems quite taken with him, don't you think?"
"No," said Luc hollowly.
"If we just look at the evidence," said the Scarecrow, "and I'm a scientist, that's what I do, you'll find she's cut him rather a lot of slack. If you watch the evening news, I think you may find she's even developed the Stockholm Syndrome."
"What—what do you mean?" It was one thing for Luc to attack Cécile in the abstract, but if she was really in danger—
Crane sighed, as if addressing a child. "The Stockholm Syndrome is—"
"I know what the goddamn Stockholm Syndrome is," said Luc, rubbing the piercing in his lower lip. "What happened to her?"
The Scarecrow examined the button on his suit. "If I said she was now unattainable, would that in any way alter your reaction, to my offer?"
Luc made two fists. "No."
A/N: Credit to Paul Dini again for "Kinda Like Family" and reminding me about the Stockholm Syndrome. I'm sorry, kind of lame for Cécile to get kidnapped, but it's the only logical way to create drama and get them together in the same room, now that Blandine's Tailor Shop is no more. I must admit some unflattering descriptions of Batman in this chapter owing to KatxValentine's Harve in Dark Side of the Moon.