X.

There was a hand over her mouth, a hand in a handkerchief, and the familiar smell of leather as well as something fragrant in the handkerchief, like strawberries. She thought for one terrible moment it was ether or poison, but as she breathed deeply, she could feel no ill effects. Two pairs of arms held her; one slapped a pair of what felt like handcuffs around her wrists. Then they let go, and she was pressed up against a human body. Her bare shoulders and calves met with warm cloth. A different set of hands was holding the handkerchief. She couldn't cry out and, backed against an alcove, within sight of the kitchens, within sight of the foyer, she couldn't kick her way out.

Then out of the shadows beside her the Joker stepped away. She tried to say something, but the gag was held tightly across her mouth. He held up a finger to his lips, clownishly, and then nodded to two guns—one jabbing into her rib cage, held by the so-far anonymous henchman, and one that he had aloft. Whatever was going to happen, she was meant to watch, and not meant to die. At least, not right away. She watched several more goons in clown masks, along with a short man in a trench coat, come through the elevator. They were all carrying guns.

Women in the foyer screamed. Cécile strained, not just to get away, but to see what was happening. Rachel had gone out on the balcony with Bruce Wayne. They had returned again, and Harvey had cut in. There had been a speech. Dent, Wayne, and Rachel had disappeared. The Joker had begun to terrorize the crowd, by the silence and scared titters and the grating sound of his voice. I should have warned her, Cécile thought. That's when she went limp in her attacker's grasp, because there wasn't any reason to fight. Her fears for her own skin had allowed whatever morality she possessed to be dwarfed. If Rachel died—if anyone died—it was her fault.

There was shooting. Cécile couldn't see very well through the frosted double doors that led to the foyer. There were raised voices. She squinted. Rachel was standing alone, away from the terrified crowd. The Joker was talking to her, brandishing his knife in her face. Holding her, caressing her. It was difficult to say from the distance what he wanted to do to her. Was the desire to tear her up with the knife greater than the desire to . . . well, whatever he wanted her for? Cécile felt she was watching a play, a stage play being enacted in front of her rather than reality. Rachel wasn't helpless, though. She fought back. She's better than me, thought Cécile. She knows what she does and doesn't want. Her vision was clear: Harvey Dent was a good man. That was why Rachel deserved him. Cécile had thought she and Luc deserved each other, because of what they were. Now, her heart sinking at her own stupidity, she saw the equality was very much a figment of her imagination. She didn't deserve Luc.

There were more screams. A black shape skidded into the room and knocked the purple shape to the floor. It was Batman, thought Cécile, and with excellent timing. She was surprised not to see Dent or Wayne bringing up the cavalry. Where were they? Batman, the henchmen, and the Joker fought between the terrified party guests. But Rachel hadn't gone skidding to the floor. Cécile strained again, eager to see. There was the deafening sound of shattering glass. Rachel screamed. Cécile's blood went cold. There was the Joker's hideous laughter and a large smash. Rachel screamed again. Before Cécile could even work out the logistics that far, she was being hauled by the handcuffs back toward the staircase. Instead of taking the elevator, the henchman holding her threw her with an almighty shove into the stairwell. The gag was gone with its strange strawberry odor, but she tripped on the stair with her high-heeled shoe and tumbled for a few steps. Dazed, she was in no state to resist when the Joker's men filed past, still rat-tat-tating with their guns, going down.

The handcuffs made a convenient apparatus for dragging, she found out, as the Joker materialized out of the party and pulled her in the opposite direction—that is, up the stairs. She tried to scream. For a horrible few seconds, she thought she had lost all power of speech. Was this what the strange strawberry-scented material did? Robbed a person of voice? She coughed and found she could not stop coughing. He was dragging her and chuckling, and at the back of her mind she wondered if he was going to chide her for her pack-a-day habit.

"We must stop running into each other like this," he said with nasty buoyancy. "I'll start to think you're stalking me."

If they kept going up through the stairwell, Cécile reflected, they were going to reach the roof. She calmed the tickle in her throat long enough to gasp, "Rachel—what happened to her? Glass smashed and something hit the ground—"

"Awww," he said, kicking open a door at the top of the stairwell. "You're awfully concerned about Miss Dawes." He pushed her first through the door. She looked down with sickening fear as she stood at the edge of the building, inches away from falling. The Joker leaned past her, threw out a piece of wood panelling and made a makeshift bridge between the penthouse and the next building over. "C'mon," he shouted, pushing her ahead of him. She'd never been particularly afraid of heights, but then she'd never had to scramble across a flimsy wooden plank at a height of twenty stories.

He gave her another shove and she was in complete darkness in an alcove in the neighboring building. She scrambled to her feet, too slowly, as the Joker pulled her hands and dragged her up another stairwell. She tried a scream. It died in her throat. He pushed her through another set of doors. She was half-right. They were on the roof, but in what had once been an aviary. There were demolished pieces of glass everywhere framed in steel, a turn-of-the-century pattern, it looked like, and hastily erected over this was chicken wire. There were as many gaping holes in the netting as there were in the glass, and the open, yet enclosed feeling, uncomfortably reminded Cécile of a prison. Still, how long could they hide there? Unless his intent was to push her off the edge . . .

"How could you kill her," Cécile said coldly. "when I thought you liked her?"

He worked his jaw, as if seriously considering the question, then grabbed her arm and pulled her to the outermost edge of the aviary. He leaned over the edge to look down at the street below and brought her with him. "She was going to fall," he said, "but I knew Battsy wouldn't let it happen." Cécile looked down, conquering an un-heroic sense of vertigo, as the police cars streamed and an ambulance dashed through the traffic.

"Is that why you came up here? To be alone with Batman?"

He took his hands off her at last and roared with laughter. "Privacy was uppermost in my mind, Marie-Cécile, but I wasn't thinking about the Bat. I don't wanna marry the guy!"

"Could have fooled me," said Cécile. She was looking down, squinting to see if Rachel was badly injured. She was tempted to ask for the full story from the Joker, but couldn't bring herself to show the morbid curiosity. What if Batman hadn't been quick enough? Would the Joker have let this woman he affected an interest in to plummet to her death? What was stopping him from sending Cécile down in the same fashion? If he wasn't preening for attention from Batman, Cécile could only conclude his violence was arrogant and random, making sense only to him. Which could very well be.

Cécile looked cautiously down at her handcuffs. She'd been trying to wrest her wrists from them for some time, but they were holding. She turned and looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. The Joker was bending down, picking up a shard of glass and peering into it. Cécile winced. She couldn't imagine many things more painful than being impaled with a piece of glass on a rooftop, her body swaying and falling to the pavement. Except a Glasgow grin would be exceptionally painful, she thought, amazed at her detachment in considering such a thing. What was he doing? Why wasn't he trying to escape?

"Your moooom liked opera, didn't she?"

Cécile jerked sharply. Unless her father had somehow found the means of conveying this to the Joker, there was no way he could have known it from conversation. The thought of such a personal revelation being common knowledge sent sickly spikes up and down her spine. At one point she had even thought he cared for her, saw her as an equal of a sort! What had she been thinking?! She saw that he was looking into the glass like a burnished scrap of mirror. "She ever play you any Don Giovanni?" Cécile could hear the Overture in her head, but she said nothing. "That's how I feel about Miss Dawes—I want to corrupt her because I can—no reason—just want to." He threw the piece of glass down on the rooftop, waiting for the accompanying shatter. "It feels good to get what you want, doesn't it?"

Cécile tested the chicken wire with the pad of one shoe. Would it hold if she stepped out onto it? Rachel had her savior. Would Batman be able to catch her if she fell? "Why corrupt me?" she said dully. "I'm not good like she is."

"You're barking," he said in a rush, grabbing her and pulling her back from the edge, "up the wrong tree. Surely even a dense frog like yourself can see the difference between you and Rachel Dawes." Taking the handcuffs, he spun her around and pinioned her between his body and the steel frame overlooking the edge. From where she was trapped, she could still see the ambulance, the constant stream of onlookers pushed back by barriers. That was twice in one night she'd been a spectator in what seemed a costume drama. "C'mon," he sneered. "If you're so worried about how I roughed her up, let's do some re-enac-ting." She heard him smack his lips. Her stomach did flips. "So you can play Rachel," he said in his sing-song, babyish voice, "and I'll play . . . oh, I know! Me!

"So, let me paint the scene for you. The heroic Miss Dawes has just issued me with a stern reprimand for my behavior. I pause a moment to look presentable for her—" Cécile felt his hands move from her shoulders; she imagined he was slicking back his hair. "I get a little closer to her and bring out my knife." Cécile breathed deeply as she felt the slick, sharp blade dance across her cheek. "So I say, 'I heard on TV that you're into bondage, Miss Dawes.' "

Cécile tried to jerk her head away as he nestled his chin against the side of her neck, but there was the knife on her right side and the steel bar on her left. "So she said, 'Let me go!'" Despite herself, Cécile could recognize that he was providing her with a pretty accurate imitation of Rachel's voice. "She gives a little perfunctory shove, like she doesn't want to get away but she doesn't want to admit that to herself." Playacting or not, his chest was hard against Cécile's shoulders, his hips hitched up alarmingly close to hers. "C'mon, Cécile, give us a little shove." All too aware that her final moments could be spent messing about in role-play games, Cécile was loathe to accommodate him. "I've got what's called highly-developed fourth wall awareness," he said. "Pretend we're doing this for the benefit of an audience, okay?"

Cécile gingerly tried to push him away, certain she was going to get slammed against the steel frame if she resisted too much. His chest rumbled with laughter. "Not a bad shove. Okay. So I said to her, 'Aren't you going to ask whether or not that's a knife or if I'm just happy to see you?'"

Cécile flushed. "You d-d-didn't really say that to her. You didn't really do that. You only talked to her for a few—"

"Curiously enough," he said, "she reacted just like that. I could tell she was wondering if the uncomfortable bulge digging into her lower back wasa knife, just like you are doing now. But she said, 'Whatever it is, it's going to get kneed in a second!' So I laughed, 'cause I like a girl with spirit. And then she said, 'What do you want?'

"And I said, smacking my lips as I do—" and he did—" 'I think it's fairly obvious.'" The knife had mysteriously vanished from Cécile's cheek, and he was pressing up against her, hard enough so she couldn't possibly miss his meaning. Rachel wasn't a little girl by any means—as assistant D.A. she must have maturity to transcend all the nastiness that no doubt got thrown her way. But Cécile wasn't an innocent, either. His persistence was noted, more brutal, more animal than Luc's had been, but the inspiration and the need for satisfaction was the same. Cécile shook her head. "Why, why are you doing this? You couldn't possibly have had time to say all that."

He spun her around. "I'm giving you the choice I didn't have the chance to give to her."

It was her turn to laugh, such an ugly laugh she instantly regretted it. "What choice?"

He flipped open a switchblade and held it in his hand at eye level, no more regarding it than he would a fly. "Well, for example . . . you could try to wrest this away from me, slit my throat, which you'd love dearly to do if your expression is any indication. Or . . .?"

"Or what?"

He rummaged around in his pockets with his free hand. "Key? To the handcuffs?"

"How do I get that?"

He licked the corners of his mouth. "You could persuade me." She stared. He played with the knife. "Be creative."

She turned away, pressing her forehead against the cold metal. She'd been afraid—and yet, secretly titillated—that it might come to this. She had persuaded herself to be indifferent as much as he'd persuaded himself to complete lack of empathy. But there were cracks in the best—and worst—of intentions. Her shoes sounded hollow on the rooftop stepping over the glass, and if she was really still, not only could she hear the sirens below, but that he was breathing—raggedly.

He was prepared for an attack, but not when she leaned in and kissed him. His lips were warmer, less sticky than she expected. He didn't kiss her back at first, giving her the satisfaction he was sufficiently surprised. He didn't try to hold her. She almost pulled away when his tongue entered her mouth, and she had to subdue her natural impulse to bite. He tried to tease her tongue into his mouth, at which point she balked. "Good surprise," he grinned.

"Good enough?" she asked, inhaling silently.

His eyes were glassy, dull amongst all the caked black, and a real smile was elusive. He grabbed her wrists suddenly. She was expecting him to break the bones. Instead he brought one hand to his face. She trembled, her heart thundering in her ears. He rubbed her fingertips against the scars on his mouth. He parted his lips and kissed the pads of her fingers, each in turn. She winced, wondering what part of the twisted game he was playing now. Because this was almost tender. He pulled her hand forward. "What are you doing?" she snapped.

"I promise not to bite," he said with a wicked grin. He sucked a fingertip into his mouth, then ran it against the inside of his cheek, where the scars were. She pulled messily away, wiping her hands on her skirt. "And here I was thinking this was foreplay," he said darkly.

"Only you would equate foreplay with knives."

"Now you're talkin'," he said.

She held out one hand, balled up in a fist. "Key. Now."

Dark lines melted through the caked white paint; he frowned. "That part wasn't in the script."

"What are you talking about? I did what you wanted, now give me that key and let me go."

He chortled. "So you can do what? Go back to your classes on Fashion Image and Footwear and Accessories? Your Luc-y-poo has vamoosed for the dark side, in case you didn't know."

"What nonsense are you—"

"Ask the Batman, if you get a chance. He'll tell you the whole story." She saw his hand flicker into his pocket, and he threw her the key. She caught in a split-second before the sky above her began to hum like angry bees. When she looked back to where the Joker had been standing, there were only quickly-lengthening shadows. She looked again at the sky, and saw there was a helicopter beating the air above her head. Bright lights sawed into her eyes, and she realized that G.C.P.D. had launched an aerial attack.

She screwed the key into the handcuffs and was amazed to find they opened the lock easily. From somewhere she could hear the Joker's voice. "Feel free to keep them, as a souvenir. Sorry to cut our discussion short again—I hope we get to pick up where we left off very soon." She spun around, rubbing the sore spots on her wrists as the helicopter dashed its eerie light across all the nearby rooftops. Where had he gone? What was she going to do?

A/N: I was faced with the same dilemma as in a chapter of my Phantom of the Opera story Scars—to kiss or not to kiss? I resisted the impulse there, but I couldn't quite here. I admit this was a Jokachel scene originally—sorry, Kendra—and I tried ever so hard to make it work. You could still take it that way, I guess—who is he lusting for more? What's performance and what's reality? Again, a bit lame, but the setting—surely Peter Petrelli's going to fly by the rooftop any minute.

My absolute favorite part of Use Your Illusion was the description of the Joker smelling like mint and gasoline. I couldn't come up with anything as good, so you get strawberries. But is nice, yes?