Ok, so here is chapter 3, sorry it took me a while, but it's here.
Note: I do not own Batman or anything related.
Please enjoy this chapter.
Harvey wasn't terribly obliged to talk with her after viewing the wedding fiasco, it seemed he was almost scared it had had some sort of effect on her sanity. "Listen, maybe you should take a week, let Dave heal up." He frowned as she put a head in her hand. "Don't talk to me about Dave! Dave will live; Dave is fine. Now I'm ready to take this on, I need this to keep my mind occupied until things are straitened out, I need the distraction." She looked at him with a pleading smile, "Can you help me out?" Harvey smiled nervously, "You've got dangerous ambition's Ms. Winslow, very dangerous ambitions."
"So what with the wrecked wedding, and the being threatened, you're still going to be ok with this?" Bruce Wayne, seemed vaguely concerned, and requested to see her himself regarding giving her time off to work with Harvey Dent. "Yes, you know, what's going on, what needs to be done: it's all fresh in my mind, I know first hand what's happening out there and how people feel when subject to this…cruel experimentation." She kept up with him as they headed for the elevator. "Well, you have my support Ms. Winslow, and since I worry about the blood thirsty media damaging my prized public relations worker, I'm sending some of my best people with you, you'll be safe as possible." Trish felt a bit overwhelmed, and even over protected, but Bruce assured her they'd stay out of sight so not to endanger her cause. "No, I think, even if something were to happen, I'd just like to rely on the police department, it would help the people's faith in them as well." She declined politely, Bruce Wayne smiled, "Well, then if you get back without harm, we'll discuss getting you that job you actually wanted, for now, good luck." With that the businessman left her in the elevator. Trish, excited about the mention of a promotion almost didn't notice, but something flew out of his briefcase and onto the floor. She lifted the little paper, and found a playing card, a joker, but the symbolism didn't interest her. It was clear who had left this message by the note scribbled in red over the card's dirty surface. It read: "Dear Wedding Girl- Cross me, and people will die! –See You Soon."
Trish's hand shook lividly as she read the messy scribbles, wondering what kind of threat this madman thought she really was. It made her smile, messing with the bad guys before you even make the speech, that was an art, but despite her rash excitement, she was scared, scared that what the card read was true and it would be a repeat of her wedding. You shouldn't have told him how much you value life you idiot. She thought angrily, desperate people did things you wouldn't imagine, desperate children could do unimaginable things from one sentence of a conversation, with a bit of imagination, and a giant craving for attention. She thought vaguely about all the people like that she knew, and the elevator stopped, giving her a clear view of the lobby. People she knew traded apologies for miserable, sickening advice, mainly "Don't do it!" She walked on proudly, she was going to give this city of speech it never forgot, and make it realize that until they believed, nothing could be done! That was how Trish thought going into the event; she was not in the same mood afterward.
She approached the stand set for her, the flashes of reporters' cameras, the mayor's handshake, they made her feel comfortable; opposite the effects they would have on some people. "Good Morning Gotham City," She announced in a large voice, looking up from the large stage which emphasised her relatively small stature. She smiled brightly, and spoke in her biggest voice, hoping to capture her crowd early on. "It is my hope, as I represent Gotham's police department, and our new attorney Harvey Dent, that when you leave this spot today, you will have faith. Faith that our streets will be safe, and we will be able to live without fear, without crime." The speech continued, it should have been legendary, legendary because it was a beautiful assortment of words and feelings, it never ended, but it was famous anyway.
Chewing gently on the inside of one cheek, The Joker watched the intense crowd, chuckling quietly every time he struck a raw spot in his mouth. His scars left pain, but pain was just another form of pleasure as far as this man was concerned and he savoured every twinge of it, barley paying any attention at all to the world-class speech. He wondered vaguely, what it was like to have to draw your power from others, and not just find enough motivation in your own will. People were such a funny mystery, with their hope and their religion. "I am my own god!" He exclaimed, spreading his arms out over his head, making himself as tall as possible on his rooftop. The little people bellow him were subject to grim, twisted amusement, and his eyrie laughter, almost sounding a bit strangled, echoed down through the buildings to it's final resting place in the ears of his prey. "All hail me! The god of laughter, the god of all that is funny," He started an oddly cautious decent from the top of the unfinished building, cackling madly until most of the crowd was starring at him. Trish did not stop speaking, but in fact began speaking louder with more power, letting him justify her cause as she preached it. "Oh, little wedding girl," He jeered, a darker tone to his voice, which became genuinely scary, and not just oddly disturbing. "You will be the most fun to break!" And with that, his face appeared brightly smiling on the screen, meant to be providing a view of the lovely guest speaker, who finally shut her mouth, regarding the video in action with a kind of tense regret. The screen switched to a man, covered in sweat and grime, so real, so afraid, the Joker could almost taste the salty blood, which was steadily pouring from an open head wound. It gave him a shiver of excitement, the same as that of a child watching his hero in action, except in this movie, there were no heroes. "I'm, I'm already dead." The man whimpered to the camera, and five others are on the end of f…five guns," He stuttered as he repeated something he was obviously just hearing. "If Ms. Winslow can't pick two to live, then all of them die…they all die!" He broke into indignant sobbing, and the camera switched to a face none too easy to forget. "Pick two numbers, any numbers." The Joker told her from the giant screen, as she wrinkled her nose with the faintest irritation. Not entirely unlike her childish foe, the video's raw emotion had leaked into her imagination and was now running rampant. She could feel the draft in the dingy unkempt, unfurnished apartment, she could smell the mould and the old liquor, and she could taste the oily face paint in the very air… She shook her head, listening to her audience scream. "Quiet!" She called, with surprising results. "We mustn't let ourselves become what this man is trying to force us to be, we are not savage beings, and we do not chose who deserves to live and who doesn't. We will catch this Joker, and when we do he will pay for this mindless torture!" She paused, trying to catch her breath. "Are you with me?" The people looked up in confusion, perhaps, the faintest spark of hope danced through the crowd before someone loudly disagreed and the whole area was in turmoil again. "Please, you need to get out of here before any harm befalls you!" A policeman took her by the arm. "No!" She insisted, "I am not scared of him, and I will not leave this like a mouse fleeing a crowded room." She stood defiantly where she was, not sure what she was thinking, or even if she was still capable of doing so. Come on, she thought when she had realized her situation. Come wreck this like you did my wedding or leave so we can all calm down, don't put me here. "How does it feel?" A mocking voice caught in her ears, tearing open cuts in the back of her mind, it was something she'd never dare to admit she actually liked about the man who had made it his duty to ruin her life. It was the little catch that history had taught her everything had.
"How does it feel, to be the reason people die, hmmm Ms. Humanitarian, hmmm Wedding Girl?" She bit her lip, a pensive expression she usually saved for inner problems. "I will not be the reason people die." She replied, standing still where she was, as the Joker moved slowly closer. "You are killing them, you are the reason they are dying!" She shook, her body betraying her and her fear surfacing. "You don't have to, kill them and I will not chose which lives are more valuable." The only reply was a wide, cutthroat grin. "Then five will die, and you'll be standing in the way of happiness for two people."
"Wrong!" Trish declared, twitching nervously, and with deeply rooted grief. "You won't release them even if I do chose, they'll all be dead, and that makes me the fool."
The grin only widened, "So much spite, you need to lighten up honey, why so serious?"
Trish found the effort to speak useless, five people, dead because she could not put a value on life, when two could live, five died. Each death was jumbo sized on the giant screen, with full surround sound. They echoed in Trish's ears, just like the smell of burning flesh-lingered days after she'd smelt it, each tragedy clamped down on her heart, and each tore gaping holes in her subconscious, leaving nothing but these painful memories, who's imagery would haunt her for life. "I warned you wedding girl!" A joyous voice reminded her. "I warned you, only you could have stopped this, yet here you are."
"I…I" Trish starred dumbly at the tittering figure, showy and exaggerated in his very loud purple suit. She found her self, all at once and for the first time in her life, at a loss for something witty and righteous to say. She just felt hollow and empty, sucked of what power and will she'd fought to keep, she could have just curled up cried until someone, most likely mister smiles himself, had the decency to just shoot her. Gotham however, would not see this, or evidence it could ever have happened. Their newest source of hopeful promises would not break, though she would bend, at the hands of whatever demons the Joker released. She stood coldly glaring at him instead, speechless, helpless and yet still defiant in his presence. She really hoped she wouldn't have to act long.
"I think, Wedding girl, we have to lay some…ground rules." Up on the stage now, he approached her smiling in a way that would have been utterly hilarious on someone who wasn't probably going to kill here some time in the future. Unable to gather enough of her wits to respond, she let her eyes wonder across that bright, candy apple red smile, and below it, to the scares that lay like crocodiles, waiting, well hidden: nearly submerged, until it was too late, then you definitely saw them. So that's that madman behind the clown, Trish thought numbly, a cold-blooded killer with a big toothy crocodile smile. And though she dismissed the idea, intent on listening to what he was actually saying. They were captivating, and she hadn't the slightest clue why, but she knew those scars, she had them burned into her mind like the traces of a recurring dream, a savage dream, one you couldn't escape from.
"Hello? Wedding girl?" She realized she was starring, and despite all chaos, felt mildly embarrassed she'd been caught. "What?" She answered, paying little mind to whom she was talking to, she was still very stuck on those scars. "If you like the smile so much," The joker leaned up, smirking as he put his elbows on the microphone stand. "I'll just give you one of your own." He took a small knife from his pocket and flipped it open, inspecting it admiringly. "If you believed my story the other night," He added, making a large point of backing her against the building the stage had been placed in front of, "You could say it's a family business." Trish swallowed hard; guessing day was quite possibly the only thing that stopped Batman, as her sarcastic, cynical side crept up on her in response to her fear. She recalled grimly, that he hadn't stepped up to rescue her on either occasion. "Say cheese wedding girl!" Said her impending doom, obviously content on giving her plenty of time to contemplate her latest beauty decision, and perhaps a reasonable cosmetic surgeon for afterward. "I don't whimper, or grovel, or beg, if that's what you're waiting for!" She snarled defensively, but her anger was only met with more gleeful laughter, "Oh, don't be so glum my dear, after all life is only as fun as you make it. It's all just a game." The tip of the knife came dreadfully close to the edge of a hateful sneer. "I'd share your optimism, but we can't all run off and join the circus you know" She said fiercely, ignoring the face and staring down at the knife running up her cheek just light enough so as to leave a faint scratch, barely noticeable. For a second, Trish could feel the bloodlust of the man standing opposite her, especially as her took her jaw and pried her mouth open enough to slide the knife in at the edge. She braced herself for pain, but instead, the blade was rather carelessly removed from her face and once again, there was only laughter.
Ok, well, thanks for reading, and stand by for chapter 4.
I'm sorry, I don't have a ton of writing time, and this stories writing itself a bit slower than I hoped, oh well.
Tune in next time and see how this ends.