Author's Note: Sorry, y'all. This really is the last of these notes, I promise! Just saying that after a lot of delays/procrastination on my part my short story is up, so give it a look if you're interested. Link's on my profile. And, also, that I will be responding to last post's reviews, but figured you guys would rather get the post a day early first. Enjoy.
Chapter 26: Reversal
"MR. J!"
Leena's shriek was so loud that even Andi's sore ears didn't have any trouble hearing her. She leapt at him, clinging like a spider monkey, arms around his neck, legs around his waist. "Mr. J, I was so worried about you, all those nasty policemen and mean people, but you got out, I sent Andi out to get you and Ivy helped and Mr. J I've got the Batman!"
The Joker bent his face towards Leena and waggled his eyebrows, whispered something Andi couldn't hear. Whatever it was, it made her giggle and snuggle into his chest like a child… or a lover. "I knew you'd be proud of me."
Bruce was lying still now. So still. It had been an hour and forty-five minutes. Andi tried to step around the intertwined couple to get to the work table, but the Joker flung out an arm to stop her, staring avidly at the Batman. "Yesssss…" he hissed, moving towards him, Leena still stuck to his chest. "Oh, little Harley…"
Suddenly Leena fell off of him as he sprang forward, kicks landing hard in Bruce's chin, his ribs, stomach. Even with the body armor, he'd still be feeling those. Laughter, wild, jarring, insane as he pummeled Bruce, hit him again and again and again. Andi sprang at him, panicked, unthinking, only for someone to tackle her from the blind side, shove her to the floor.
Pam yanked Andi up, seized her around the waist, and hoisted her to the wall of the greenhouse. She ignored Andi's struggles like she would those of a child. "Don't be a fool," she whispered in Andi's ear. "You try to interfere with this maniac and he'll kill you."
"No, NO! You promised, Pam, you promised." Andi's self control, hanging by a thread all night, broke apart and she thrashed like a wild thing in Pam's arms. "The medicine, Pam, you don't understand, I have to get to it. PAM!"
Harley heard them, looked up at them from where she'd been dropped on the floor and covered her mouth with both hands, eyes round as dinner plates. "Oh goodness, Mr. J, you need your medicine! You've gotta take it Mr. J or you might get really sick!"
She leapt up from the concrete and sprinted to the lab table, filled another needle with clear liquid, then approached the madman. She tried to roll up the Joker's sleeve, but he dealt her an almost casual blow to the face. She didn't even get a second glance as she tumbled to the floor, the glass syringe somehow still intact, while he kept kicking and kicking and kicking Bruce.
It would have been comical if it wasn't so sick, him intent on the Batman, Harley intent on him, and the way he tottered around, now jumping and bouncing on Bruce's limp body, exultant, powerful, a heathen god of fire and laughter. Andi shrieked wordlessly and, as he punched Harley in the stomach, she saw a snarl cross Ivy's face too. She might be corrupt and broken, but she was still Leena's friend. She didn't like the Joker hurting her any better than Andi did.
And suddenly she knew what to do.
Andi broke a hand loose, tangled it in Pam's red hair, and yanked the other woman around to face her. Had to figure out a way, so damn close—
"Pam, Pam listen to me!" This could work, it would work. "I know you don't like the side I've chosen, but you've got to let me stop him."
"Why? He's who Harley wants…" But as Leena hopped back up and tried to chase after the Joker again, only to be slapped away, Pam faltered and stopped, looked uncertain for the barest second. Andi seized on the chance.
"He'll kill her, Pam. He already broken our best friend, and now he'll kill her eventually—maybe by accident, maybe just when he gets tired of her, maybe when she does something to tick him off. Pam, I know you're still in there, I know you're not completely Ivy. Let me go, let me help her. Pretend I escaped, shoot me later if you want, just let me save them."
Ivy stared at her for an eternal second, and Andi thought she saw something of her friend flicker again in the depths of the terrorist's feral green eyes. She had to stop this, this had to end. Pam, please.
Her hold loosened. "Run," Pam whispered. "And kill that bastard."
She broke free just as Harley took a running leap and piggy-backed onto the Joker, needle in hand. He thrashed, reached up both hands to pull her off as if removing a shirt, but her fingers were fast and nimble. The needle flashed in and out of his neck and, at the same instant as she dropped five feet to land flat on her back, the Joker started to laugh hysterically, fingering the small drop of blood on his neck.
Andi ran. Harley shrieked and jumped up, fists raised, ready to fight if Andi came anywhere near them, but Andi didn't. She dashed away from them all, towards the lab table, shoved her hands underneath and, with a rush of adrenaline she'd thought long since burned out of her system, upended the entire thing.
Glass bottles of poisons and cures and lab equipment crashed and banged like a musical explosion, smashed into one congealed mess on the floor. Andi darted around, stomping hard on the shards, making sure that not a single piece of the thicker glassware had escaped destruction, then turned around, glaring, hands clenched at her side. For a second everyone, even the Joker and Bruce, stared at the mess. The Joker's laughter trailed off into snickers, and the sudden quiet made every bit of exhaustion and pain rush back at her. Cold sweat pooled in the crevices of her palms and Andi leaned forward, hands on her knees, trying not to be sick. Done.
Then Harley began to laugh.
"All that work to protect your sweetheart and you destroyed his cure, Ands? You destroyed his cure? I think you're as crazy as me'n'Ivy now!" Her hysterical laughter lasted for almost a minute and only stopped when the chemicals finally affected the Joker enough that he collapsed to the ground, still whimpering giggles, biting his lip strangely as if trying to hold them back. Andi focused on her breathing, on trying to calm herself, still hunched over. She wiped her forehead and realized that, for the first time in this hellish night, her hands were shaking.
"Harley, I've got a joke to tell you."
"Great!" Leena chirped, perching on a potted plant and still grinning wildly.
"I don't think you'll be happy to hear it."
"Ha!"
Andi sighed. "You didn't give the Joker the antidote."
There was silence for several seconds. Andi saw Pam's eyes widen, but Leena just cocked her head quizzically, then shook her head. "I'll give ya points for sarcasm, Ands, but if you want a good punch line you need a decent set up too."
"Alright. How's this for a set up?" Andi took a deep breath. "When I came into the greenhouse, I couldn't figure out what was the poison what was the antidote. And then I realized… I didn't need to. I pretended to be panicked and scared and lured the Batman in to rescue me. And I let you inject him, watched which pile you chose from so that I could tell how you'd sorted the poisons and antidotes. But what you didn't know… are you ready for the punch line?"
"Hit me with it!"
"It wasn't the poison that you injected him with."
The room went dead quiet, this pause even longer than the last one. "What do you mean?" Leena was looking distinctly uneasy now, and the grin on her face seemed to be plastered there rather than genuine. "You said you didn't even know which pile was which. So how could you have stopped me from choosing the poison?"
"I switched them."
"You what?"
"I switched them. The piles. I didn't know which was which, so I just exchanged both sets and let you do it yourself. You attacked the Batman with the antidote, not the toxin. And that means that what you just injected the Joker with…"
Harley's eyes went round and panicked, her eyes darting desperately from Andi to the table, to the Joker, and back to Andi. She started to whimper in the back of her throat. "No, no, no, please no, you couldn't have, you'd never—"
"That's right. You gave him the concentrated toxin Leena. And I've just destroyed all the cures."
It seemed like an eternity that they stared at each other.
Then Leena bent over the Joker, desperately shaking him with both hands. "J! Mr. J please! No no no no no!"
Her head jerked up, tears glinting like fire as she glared at Andi, all the happiness burned away. Her body tensed, her hands clawed at the gun in her belt. She drew and suddenly Pam leapt at her, knocked the shot aside, twisted her wrist until Harley dropped the weapon. Harley snarled, tried to leap at Andi, and Pam quite literally caught her in midair. She pulled her backwards towards the hole in the greenhouse Bruce had made earlier, hoisting her up by the waist when Leena tried to dig her feet in.
"Come on, come on, Harley, we've got to go, if the Batman's got the cure he'll be up and active soon and we need to be out of the way—"
"MURDERER! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU! YOU LIAR, YOU—YOU TRAITOR! I'LL KILL YOU BOTH! YOU AND THE BATMAN! I'LL HACK YOU APART, I'LL WATCH YOU DIE AND I'LL LAUGH! YES I WILL, I'LL DESTROY YOU BOTH, SLICE YOU INTO LITTLE PIECES IN FRONT OF EACH OTHER AND WE'LL SEE WHO'S LAUGHING, WE'LL SEE WHO'S LAUGHING THEN YOU MURDERER, I'LL WATCH YOU DIE! I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF, DANCE ON YOUR GRAVE AND—"
They disappeared into the night.
Andi slowly sank down onto the concrete, her face ashen. She looked again at Bruce and saw that his eyes were open, that he was watching her.
"Hey." The word was a shaky whisper. Forgive me. "How do you feel?"
"Better than you probably." Bruce turned his head slowly, as if testing the ability of each muscle to respond. His voice was gruff and Batman-ish. Of course. The Joker was still in the room, possibly lucid even, if his normal state could be considered 'lucid.' Strange to think that she'd forgotten about him. Once Andi looked at him, though, she couldn't unlock her gaze. He was mesmerizing, still snickering to himself, rocking from side to side on his back like an overturned turtle.
Bruce very carefully sat up and pushed himself closer to her, wrapped an armored arm around her shoulder. Andi leaned in to him without thinking, still staring at the Joker.
"That didn't go like I wanted," she muttered.
"What did you expect? That she'd suddenly become Leena again?"
"Expect? No. But I… I hoped…"
'I'll kill you, you liar… traitor…'
Andi shuddered, and it took everything she had to keep speaking.
"I… I know you don't kill. And I didn't want to do it. But… I couldn't… he hurt her… I had the chance and I didn't even… I didn't plan for it to happen that way, things just kept moving and I went with them, and then I saw an opportunity and…"
Bruce didn't answer.
"But it wasn't just for Leena!" Andi said fiercely, his silence making her more defensive than an accusation ever could. "It was for every parent in Gotham who's lost a child. Every cop and child and innocent he's killed and to protect all those he would have killed if he'd been allowed to continue. He had to be stopped. Not just for me, but for others. For Gotham. Like I promised."
He still didn't answer, and as Andi stared at the Joker she started to realize why. Because there was no answer. Because maybe it had been the right thing to do, but that didn't change the facts, didn't change her actions or her choice. Right or wrong, selfish or sacrificing, he was still going to die. And, despite all the justifications, the fact that she hadn't even been the one to do it…
"His blood's still on my hands isn't it?" Andi finally asked in a very small voice. His arm tightened around her. They both knew the answer to that. Forgive me. Leena. Bruce. Even you, Joker, whoever you are. Forgive me, but I can't say that I'm sorry.
Bruce finally cleared his throat. "So it was a cure she gave me?"
"Yes." Andi's voice was faint, but she tried to gather her thoughts. "My original plan was just to have them inject you so I could find out what the antidote was. Then things… went farther. I broke him loose to stall Pam and Leena from hurting you, figured that you'd be well enough by then to take him down if I could just bring him back here, but then she heard me mention the medicine… and I saw that…" Andi cleared her throat. Bruce knew well enough what had happened after that. "I injected Gordon with the serum too when I was breaking into Arkham, although he thought it was the toxin. As long as nobody finds him before the pain wears off, they should be able to get an unpolluted sample of the proteins from his blood. If not, they'll have to get one from you. That was the whole idea behind why I… why I let you get… oh, God, I'm sorry. What you must have thought of me, doing that, agreeing to help them so I could stall for time and…"
"You did what you had to."
"Your DNA isn't in any database. Believe me, I've checked every one of them." A few weeks ago. A lifetime ago. Perhaps even in an alternate reality. "We should be able to work up enough smoke and mirrors they won't even suspect the source of the blood when they examine it. Giving them a sample shouldn't compromise your identity."
The Joker's body jerked, his laughter increasing slightly in tempo. Bruce stood slowly and tugged her wrist until Andi pushed herself up too.
"Come on. We don't have to see this."
Andi didn't break her eyes from him, transfixed by his shaking form, by the way his tics seemed to be accelerating as the toxin really set to work. His tongue ran around his lips, he touched his ear, his giggles became louder, broke into a sequence of outright laughter, died down again, he ran his hand through his lank green curls, his face changed expression like a chameleon changed colors…
"I do." The man I killed. The man I destroyed. Somehow she couldn't summon guilt, only a horrible exhausted numbness.
Bruce stayed still and Andi could sense his agreement. Slowly he pulled her against him, wrapped both arms around her. The contact was comforting, the last anchor in a turbulent sea. Andi clung to him while they both stared at his nemesis, at the man who had broken so many people, destroyed so many lives.
Forgive me. She didn't know who she whispered the words to now, but she repeated them over and over in her mind through the long hours of their vigil. Neither she nor Bruce spoke again that night.
The Joker died laughing.