Assistance

My head felt like it was going to explode. I rolled over and groaned as the knotted muscles in my back throbbed. It felt as if I'd slept on hard wood. Why would I do that? And why did my head hurt so much? I opened my eyes slowly, wincing at the light bleeding through the windows. It took me a minute to process the fact that I was curled up on my living room floor. I started to pull myself up when I realized there was something clutched in my right hand.

A joker card stared up at me. I let out a small shriek, pitching it across the room as fast as I could and scuttling back until I hit the couch. This woke Erin who then proceeded to fall off the couch and hit the floor with a loud bang. All in all, it wasn't a great start to the day. My outlook on it worsened as I noticed what had been smeared across the palm of my hand. Red paint. The Joker had put his mouth on my hand.

"Oh, God."

"Sybil?" Erin asked as she used the coffee table to pull her body into a sitting position. Her eyes were surprisingly clear for someone who'd only just woken up but colliding with the floor probably explained that. "Are you okay?"

"No," I replied. "No, I'm really not." My head was throbbing, the light hurt my eyes and I was starting to feel seriously nauseous. I'd woken up with a freaking migraine, probably because I'd tried to do too much with my gift without proper training. Since Erin was alive I considered the migraine worth it. I just didn't like the idea of being unconscious at the Joker's feet. This led me to staring at the paint on my hand, which got me thinking about the other places he could have put his mouth and that… That didn't help the nauseous feeling. "The Joker was here."

"What?" I put my head between my knees and breathed deeply. Erin could use her eyes and figure out what had happened while I tried to collect myself. I had every faith in her observational skills. "The Joker was here last night?" Out of the corner of my eye I noticed her moving toward where I'd cast the Joker's card.

"Don't touch it. Might be useful to the police," I mumbled.

"The police… The police! I should call the police." The sound of her feet slapping against the wood as she ran for the phone made me wince. I needed pain killers, a dark room and a heating pad wrapped around my head to even begin to take the edge off this ache. Instead I was going to go down to the police station and be extensively questioned on the events of last night. I couldn't even be completely honest without exposing my secret. That meant I would have to somehow lie creatively while my head pounded.

Mornings suck.

I was extremely impressed by how well Erin handled herself after she called the police. She got dressed and fished out a bathrobe and Advil for me. Too much moving made the rest of my body want to cut my head off and see if it could go it alone. The Advil didn't help much but I liked to think it dulled the pain a bit even if I was just fooling myself. I was wrapped securely in my robe, left arm over my eyes to block the light and right hand extended and flat. It had occurred to me that having a sample of the Joker's make-up might actually help the Gotham Police Department with the investigation. Since he'd broken into my apartment and threatened my sister's life, I was more than willing to help lock him up in some dark place where I'd never have to see him again.

The cops arrived within ten minutes of Erin's call. My cynical self snidely commented that they would have taken more time if we weren't related to the mayor. I always got bitchy when I was upset but I tried to keep it in my head. Unfortunately my head was already suffering from too much pressure so a few of the rude comments were probably going to escape. The first one I wanted to say out loud was 'did they specially order shoes that sound like individual avalanches when they walked across a wooden floor?'.

"Erin," I mumbled, a little unsure of whether she would hear me or not over the sound of the officers doing whatever it was our tax dollars paid them to do.

"Sybie, what is it?" I winced. Sybie. The Joker had called me that after he'd heard Erin say it and now an affectionate childhood nickname was ruined. Instead of associating that name with cleaning Erin's scraped knees and checking for monsters under the bed I could only see a scarred face and gloved hands locked in my hair.

"My head is going to explode. I need to get to my room." It felt a little unnatural, depending on Erin to help me. But this thing pounding in my head was unrelenting and I needed her. Sadly, a certain lieutenant needed me.

"Miss Callaghan, I need to ask you a few questions." The voice was pleasant enough but I didn't want to open my eyes to look. I just leaned against Erin as she led me toward my room.

"She has a crippling migraine right now. Can't it wait?" I nearly opened my eyes then. That gently chastising tone had never come out of Erin's mouth before. Where had she learned that? Wait, I knew where she'd learned it. She'd gotten it from me but… when?

"I wish it could but the sooner we catch this guy the better," he replied. I smiled at the apologetic yet firm tone. This was a guy worth meeting. I straightened up and finally dared to crack my eyes open. He was my height, maybe a few centimeters taller. His light brown hair was cut short and I could make out a pair of smoky blue eyes behind his square brown glasses. His mustache was neatly trimmed and he gave off a general air of warm kindness. Well, as warm as a figure of authority could be. I liked him immediately.

"Call me Sybil. 'Miss Callaghan' makes me feel like a schoolteacher," I informed him casually. He seemed relieved when he offered me his hand. It was probably easier to conduct an investigation when the witness cooperated.

"Jim Gordon."

"Oh, right, you're the lieutenant I heard about on the news," I realized, feeling stupid. I held my right hand out, palm up. "I'd shake your hand but I don't want to contaminate what the Joker left behind any more than I have already." Lieutenant Gordon gently took my wrist and leaned over my hand to get a better look. Erin squeezed my arm to draw my attention.

"Is… is that stuff from his mouth?" I could easily read the disgust on her face and I sympathized. That's how I reacted when I saw it, too. Of course, whether or not I would have reacted that way if the Joker had been near me was up for debate. I lost my head when he was around.

"Yes," I replied before turning my attention back to Gordon. "Look, my head is causing me extreme pain here. Could we do this somewhere quieter?"

"Of course," he agreed and I saw empathy on his face. Apparently the good lieutenant had had a few migraines in his life. It was nice to be around someone who could relate.

My room isn't special. There are more bookshelves, a queen sized bed with a set of dark green sheets and comforter, and the door to my closet. Plain or not, I immediately appreciated its existence when the door closed and the noises from the other room were muted. Gordon had brought in a member of his team to scrape the make-up off my hand and bag it or whatever the correct term might be. I don't watch CSI or anything else along those lines so I honestly have no clue about how the police go about investigating things. I just guess.

Anyway, while my hand was being purged of Joker essence Gordon began asking questions. The first few sounded fairly standard. What was the time, what were you doing, etcetera. After we got that out of the way, he began to get much more specific.

"Did the Joker tell you why he was there?"

"He was interested in me," I replied. Saying it out loud made me feel ridiculous. In the world I lived in all the attention went to my sister. The Joker was interested in me when it was my sister that should have caught his fancy. I think it surprised Erin too since her eyes widened and she was uncharacteristically silent. "Last night at Bruce Wayne's party I half-blinded one of the Joker's thugs with my shoe. He returned my shoe when he visited last night."

"You blinded him with your shoe?"

"Stiletto heel," I explained and Gordon winced. "He wanted to play a game with me. If Erin woke up while he was there, then he'd kill her."

"What happened then?"

"We talked. I think he was trying to get inside my head because he kept speculating on my relationship with my sister. He said I was like a dragon guarding a princess. He called Erin a princess multiple times and… and he mentioned the fact that some of the people he worked with would be interested in getting their hands on her." I wasn't thrilled about talking about that in front of Erin. She'd already gotten pale and shaky. I had protected her since she was a baby. I had worked very hard to make her feel safe in a city where the idea of safety was laughable.

"Did he want to know anything about you?" Gordon asked. I blinked. First the Joker, now Lieutenant Gordon. When had the world begun to revolve around me?

"He asked about my scar. I told him I got it in the car wreck that killed my parents. It amused him. Then he told me about how he got his scars but I'm skeptical about whether it's true or not."

"Why?"

"Because I doubt he even remembers how he got them," I replied quietly. I had a choice to make now. Either I trusted Jim Gordon with the truth and hoped he wouldn't share it with the rest of the world, or I made up a convincing excuse. Well, I did have a way of finding out if he was trustworthy… It was a bit violating, though, and I hated doing it. Gordon had been nothing but nice to me. Still, he was a cop. He had to be tough to do the job he did. "Lieutenant Gordon," I murmured, raising my eyes to meet his. This was going to make my slowly fading migraine worse but I was a big girl. I could take a little pain. "Can you keep a secret?"

Then I looked into those smoky blue eyes and I saw him. Lieutenant James 'Jim' Gordon filled me up with memory and emotion. He was a good man. Honest, hard working and genuinely good. Gordon didn't do the things he did for personal glory. He did them because they were right. This was the kind of man you wanted on your side, backing you up through thick and thin. I could trust him with my life and, more importantly, my sister's life.

And, for a brief second, I let him see me.

"What in the hell," he gasped, jerking backwards a few steps. I collapsed on the bed and pressed a hand to my throbbing skull. "Who are you?" Erin reached out to help me but I waved her away. I met his eyes again but only as an exhausted woman, nothing more.

"I'm Erin's sister," I replied simply. "But now I think you know I'm a little bit more. My problem is that that 'little bit more' is inexplicably drawn to the Joker and something in him is likewise drawn to me. I don't want my sister to get caught between the two of us. We need help."

"How?" He'd calmed down significantly. It probably helped that I looked fairly pathetic and unthreatening.

"Security for Erin and keeping me in the loop. Any time I'm near the Joker I get pulled into his head. I have no problem providing you with information but I'd like some in return. Just let me know his movements."

"I can probably do that for you. As for security, that was going to be done anyway," Gordon informed me. He paused a moment before asking me what he'd wanted to while I'd been jabbering away about what we needed from him. "When you were in my head… What did you see?" I gave him a weak smile.

"I don't know your life story. I'm not, well, very good at what I do. I can't exactly describe what I am or how I do the things I do. I see things I can't make sense of and I feel… Look, Lieutenant, I don't know what I do. I just do things." That was as honest as I've ever been with someone about my gifts. I didn't know whether I'd regret it or not. Gordon sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"Okay, I'm going to need you to explain all of this to me from the beginning." I straightened up and performed a very sloppy salute.

"I'll do my best."