A/N: Thank you again to my reviewers! Thanks to my anonymous reviewers too: Tasha, Censes , Jenn! The beginning of this chapter is Batman and Gordon, the second half is Anna musing and a flashback.
Disclaimer: I don't own Batman.
Enjoy!
"Gordon."
His grip tightened on the files in surprise, the harsh rasp issuing from the shadows to his left. One would think he would have gotten used to the other man's sudden entrances by now.
Bewilderment quickly under control, he was back to business.
"Evening, or rather, good morning. Any sign of her?" The commissioner couldn't keep the cord of worry from his voice, fingers drumming nervously on the rotten wood of his front porch. The woman had only been in his office a few times, and arguably the police commissioner had larger matters to concern himself with, yet he couldn't help but feel an omnipresent twinge of guilt. He shouldn't have taken her requests for protection so lightly.
The shadows enshrouding his form like a second skin, only the Batman's eyes were visible to his last ally. "No. I've spent the night questioning the filth of this city. Either they won't talk or they don't know anything."
Gordon sighed, running a hand wearily through his graying hair. It was as he expected, but the disappoint still settled like a stone in his chest. "So there's been no word at all?"
"Just the one televised two nights ago." The other man's voice was more strained than usual yet no less gruff, the plates of his armor clicking softly as he moved. "Seems he spread a message through the streets, though. Anyone who attacked someone fitting her description would have to face him. Personally."
"So we can only assume she wasn't attacked, and that he has her." Gordon leaned against the wooden railing of his porch, gaze fixed on a quivering puddle just beyond his steps. He shook his head, wishing he had thought to make himself a cup of coffee. "We haven't received any demands either. Something tells me… this isn't meant to end with you busting down the door."
The implications of that statement were something he couldn't afford to think about right then.
Silence returning as he let his words drift into the mist lingering along his darkened street, an inescapable exhaustion throbbed behind his eyes. Not bothering to turn, he held up one of the files, barely flinching as it was snatched from his hand.
"We managed to find out who the hostage is. A Loretta Barker from Lower East Main. A ticket operator, went missing from Gotham Central the night of the train explosions. She was working the rush hour shift, last seen at seven by a construction worker. No sign of her since."
The slight rustle of papers as the file was closed. The specter guardian made no mention of what he had heard, no doubt filing it away. "What did you get on Anna?"
Gordon shrugged, holding up another file for the dark knight's scrutiny. "No prior arrests, no police record. Turns out the surname she gave me was her maiden name, Fischer. At city hall we found a birth certificate and a marriage license. The groom's name on that document turned up no records whatsoever, so I can't even be certain the name is valid." Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he turned to face the shadows. "You?"
The other man tossed him a file. "Hospital records and a divorce petition."
"Divorce papers?" Gordon thumbed through the records, the same name appearing for the groom as he had seen on the marriage license. "We searched the divorce archives, couldn't find anything."
"Not the papers themselves, those are gone. Just a document saying that a divorce was filed and never completed." The harshness of the voice was oddly appropriate for the misty hours of the early morning, Gordon reflected, putting the letter aside and pulling out the collection of hospital documents.
"I'm not going to ask how you got these; we didn't have time for a subpoena."
The voice from the shadows seemed to brush away the comment, gesturing towards the stack of tests and scribbled notes splayed before the commissioner. "A woman by the name of Anna Napier was admitted to the ER at Gotham General four and a half years ago. Severe facial lacerations and critical blood-loss, brought in by a man who identified himself as her husband."
The commissioner paused, one name in particular practically leaping off the page. "There's that name again…."
He could barely make out the looping signature, its translation effectively printed beneath. "Goddamn, is this really him? Because whoever this is, it's like he doesn't exist. No driving license, no car registration, no tax information. We don't even have a birth certificate for him."
"He could have had someone destroy the records. Erase all leverage."
Gordon nodded, searching for something, anything, in the messy curves of the signature. This was all the man known as the Joker had left behind. "Then why leave the marriage license?"
"Same reason he destroyed the divorce papers."
Gordon let out a breath. "To prove she's his." The commissioner could only wonder what went on in this man's head, psychopath that he was. "Completely obliterates his identity, but leaves two things – one to prove he owns her, the second to celebrate her pain." The signature belonged to a sick, cruel man, but Gordon didn't need the newest turn of events to tell him that. He resumed flipping through the hospital file, a grimace gradually taking root upon his features.
A growl to his left, the rustling of a cape. "The cause of injury was given as 'mugging,' but it looks like mob work."
"The loan sharks, probably. She fell into debt; they cut her up for it. " Gordon's stare roved over the myriad of treatment notes, wincing at the amount of stitches required. There was something oddly missing, however, something that had perplexed the commissioner since his first glimpse of her. "But why no skin grafts? No reconstructive surgery?"
"Look on the last page."
Gordon quickly flipped to the end, a slow current of pity beginning to edge into his heart as his eyes took in the hospital bill. In her case, reconstructive surgery was considered cosmetic, and not necessary for survival. "No money and no insurance. The hospital did what it had to in order to save her life, and no more."
He closed the file, reflecting bitterly that most of Gotham didn't have that sort of money. "It still doesn't help us find her or the hostage, though."
"No. But I have a feeling that whatever was on that train, never made it out of Gotham Central."
Gordon spun on his heel, confusion furrowing his brows. "Wait, what do you –"
His words reverberated uselessly in the shadows, his only company in the misty early morning.
A sigh escaping his lips, he turned and trudged back into his silent home, praying for at least an hour of the sleep that never came.
He had said he had to go collect some things – "toys and all that jazz, darling" – for her stay, checking up on the chaos he continued to stir.
That had been hours ago.
Truthfully, Anna had absolutely no idea how much time had passed, deprived of a clock or any natural means of light. It might have been two hours – perhaps even longer, shrieked the agony in her arms– since the clown had taken his leave of her with one of those childish kisses to her forehead and a backhanded blow to her cheek. The area still faintly smarted, no doubt preparing for the bouquets of black and cobalt that would reside there tomorrow, yet was overtaken by other, more pressing issues.
Tsking and clucking like some demonic mother hen, he had wrenched her from the bed, saying that with her concussion she couldn't be allowed to fall asleep in his absence. While he had a very bizarre point, seeing as how he was responsible for her state, she hadn't slept in over forty-eight hours and that was easier said than done.
To her misfortunate, he had apparently… provided for such an occasion.
Throwing open the doors to the closets, he removed a loop of rope from the arms of one of his henchmen, dragging her cheerfully into the musty interior. Brain a bit fogged over, she had thought he was merely going to bind her further and leave her in there, a prospect which was not entirely unpleasant given the alternatives. But as he sliced the ties binding her wrists and feet, masked men restraining her tightly, she began to think that maybe the bed wasn't so bad after all.
Turning her parallel to the closet, he had snatched one wrist, binding it to the hanger rod as far in front of her as possible. The other was efficiently bound to the rod behind her, stretching her limbs as far as they would permit, coming near to pulling one or both of her shoulders from their sockets.
He had left her then. Unable to kneel, unable to straighten, unable to move.
To make it worse, he had also closed the doors.
Left alone in the darkness, she could hear the scratching of rats in the walls, the scuttling of roaches at the very edge of her hearing no matter how she sought to ignore it. They were staples of life in the city, nothing new, but Anna had to admit she'd never encountered them quite like this. She could have sworn one brushed over her foot, and a reflexive gasp tore its way from her lungs.
No, there was no danger of her sleeping in here.
Her stomach was clenched tightly into a dozen or so knots, the last thing she had eaten being some Easy-Mac and potato chips from a vending machine what seemed like a day and a half ago. If he honestly was returning with supplies, she hoped to God that food was included.
Whatever knot he had used to secure her wrists, it was a proficient one, immune to tugging and any other sort of persuasion. Her fingers were already numb, back creaking from having been bent slightly forward for so long. Overall, she had all the strength in her body of a rag doll, a toy that he could take out when he wanted to play. And his games, she had found out from the first of their marriage, were rarely ever fun for her.
Yet, she had tried, hadn't she?
Before the gambling, before the drinking, she had done her best. It wasn't her fault that she could never quite achieve the intensity he desired, and it certainly wasn't her fault that he had no friends of his own. He had had some acquaintances from work, she remembered, but he seemed to regard them rather dispassionately, more like pawns than actual buddies. And if he wanted to sit at home at night instead of going out with her, that was perfectly fine. She could honestly admit she had no control over those facets of her marriage, and so swept them aside.
What she couldn't sweep aside, however, was the wall into which her mind had just careened.
It had never been her intention to leave Gotham, even after their separation. Of course at that time she had still been hoping for a divorce that would never come, determined to clean herself up and patch the remains of her life together into some sort of a whole. She had thought that divorce would be the healthiest option for both of them, rather than allow what remained of their marriage to curdle even further.
The dark swirling in tiny eddies before her eyes, she couldn't help but think of the last time she had seen him in his old life.
She had been waiting for nearly half an hour, perched at the end of her seat and awkwardly making conversation with her lawyer. Her husband would arrive, the attorney her parents had found reassured her, and it would all be over. As it is, she can only tap her fingers impatiently, the fabric of the woolen sweater beginning to irritate her neck. All she wants to do is have him arrive and sign the papers, so that they both can go before a judge and have this nightmare be over.
That's not all she wants, she supposes, but it's all that is possible.
The tiny room boasts bookcases on three walls; each novel displaying its title like a general would his badges. Her eyes glance them over, unseeing, attention perennially concentrated on the door. There would be no sweeter sound, she thinks, than the opening of that door.
Fifteen more minutes pass, and disappointment chokes her mercilessly. If she had any tears left to shed, she would be sobbing on the wooden table by now.
It is nearly an hour past the appointed time when he finally arrives, mechanically throwing open the door and marching inside. The wounds upon his cheeks are still inflamed, kept from fully healing by the ministrations of his ever curious and probing tongue. The rosy length of it is sweeping across his lips as he sits, and Anna can feel the lawyer next to her instinctively recoil from the behavior. It nearly turns her stomach to see such wounds again, and not in a mirror this time, though admittedly she isn't surprised. He looks awful, she notes, with circles like ocean trenches beneath his blood-shot eyes, his hair unkempt and only mostly clean. The suit he wears for the occasion is rumpled, an off-color green tie loosely fixed around his neck.
She can't help but think of a noose.
Their eyes meet across the table, a jolt passing through her at the sheer deadness of his stare. It's as if he no longer cares any more, she thinks – about himself, about society, about the world. He could sit back and watch it all burn, and she would bet nothing human would flicker within that gaze.
But she's spared from traveling down that path by the soft cough of the attorney, beginning the meeting that should have begun long before. He reads her formal complaint for a divorce aloud, eyes glancing up nervously even though Jack hasn't moved. Her husband only sits there, almost catatonic, as the proof of his failure washes over and drowns him in a sea of acid.
The lawyer comes to the end of the main document, his normally strong voice a little shaky in the tiny room. "You now know her rights as well as yours. So, any questions? Clarifications?"
Jack merely sits there, staring straight into her soul. She squirms beneath his gaze, guilt eating away at the foundations of her mind. Eager to get this over with, she gestures to the attorney, allowing him to continue.
"Well in that case…" The attorney clears his throat, pushing several documents and a gleaming pen in the direction of the other man. "These are copies of the divorce papers you already have. As per Gotham's law, all assets are split fifty-fifty, unless some other agreement can be reached. There isn't much, but my client is willing to surrender her ownership of the apartment to you, as well as the refrigerator, two of the kitchen appliances, the bed, and your bureau. Under the law, you will be left with two thousand dollars, and she gets the rest." Jack hadn't so much as looked at the divorce papers. "Do you uh, agree to these terms?"
Without warning, he leans forward and grasps one of her wrists, roiling gaze not breaking contact with her own. His fingers sear her skin; despair, fury, and a thousand other emotions swirl within the maelstrom that is his gaze. The catatonic calm is shattered, yet his voice is mockingly light.
"I don't want the fridge. Can I ah, have your arm, instead? Or how about a le-g? How about both, and you can have the bureau too."
"Jack, this isn't funny." She remains outwardly calm, yet fear is coiling deep within her stomach. "Let go of me, Jack, and just sign the damn papers."
His tongue slithers from its cavern, wheedling away at the stitches still in his reddened flesh. It tears one easily, and droplets of blood begin to well at the surface. "Your little lawyer just asked me if I agree-d… and it turns. Out. I. Don't."
Anna tries to rip her hand away, but his grip holds fast. "Then what do you want?"
Silently, his other hand flutters across the table, interlocking within her own. She doesn't know if he realizes his own action, since the fury within his eyes has not diminished. "I just want what is mine, Anna. Fifty-fifty. And you are mine."
He removes the hand clutching tightly to her wrist, and in a flash the papers are scattered about the floor. Squeezing her hand as if in a promise, his bloodied lips part in a smile and pucker the horrific wounds to either side. She thinks he is about to speak, but he doesn't, merely releases her hand and pushes away from the table.
As she watches him walk awkwardly out the door, she realizes that he didn't have to say a word for that promise to be oh so clear.
Her head snapped upward at the sound of the door closing, animated voices once more filling the apartment. The rustling of bags and a dull thud wafted through the walls to her closet, and she could hear the squeak of his shoes as he sprung cheerily down the hall. His nonsensical humming kept time with his steps.
He certainly was a man of his word.
A/N: Also, I liked this flashback, since I wanted to convey his idea of her as a possession, as well as his degeneration.
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