Disclaimer: Batman is owned by DC Comics and whoever else owns it. I in no way claim it as my own; I'm just borrowing. Any OCs are mine and the plot is also mine, except for anything from TDK.
A/N: It's finally gettin' good, but it's also nearing the ending. After this is the epilogue. :(
But, never fear! There's a third fic in the works which should be the last. (I don't have it totally planned out yet.)
I'll tell you the name of the next fic in the epilogue.
As always, review!
Queen Takes Pawn
by Syrenia
Chapter Thirteen - Gettin' Good
Days later, Chelsie and Crow were watching a televised press conference with the Joker as they sat in their shared bedroom and on the bed. In the flurry of events, Harvey Dent announced himself as the Batman.
Crow blinked Chelsie away and looked to the excited Clown.
"It's not him, shug. He's just takin' the fall like a good li'l soldier," Crow announced, eyes then shifting back to the TV. "No, there's something fishy goin' on..."
She huffed a laugh, "If I got outta this place more often, I might know what the hell's goin' on out there..."
"Well, dollfac-e, you migh-t be wrong this time," the Clown finally commented, turning off the flat-screen TV. "Remember how the Bat flew after her? I say, it migh-t be the White Knigh-t."
The bird girl grinned, gaze turning to the Joker, "How much you wanna bet on that, sweetums?"
He returned the grin, "Set the stakes, angelfac-e."
"Five k says Dent's not the Bat," suggested Crow, still grinning.
"You're on," agreed the Clown, the pair shaking on it.
And soon enough, the Joker was attacking Dent's ride to County.
Meanwhile, the bird girl waited in her bed, reading a magazine. She didn't feel like fucking around, only wanting to get news of whatever happened outside of the old factory from the Clown Prince.
'If you believe Dent isn't our suspect, then do you believe it's Bruce Wayne?' asked Chelsie from within.
'Sweetheart, I believe that anythin' is possible,' Crow returned with a grin. 'I also believe that the Joker's li'l game is goin' to wind him up in prison 'cause he has vague plans to go there out of a buncha foreseeable options. Where the mad dog's two steps ahead, I've already leapt by three... I'm not smarter than the guy, I'll grant, but I've had more time to think this through.'
'How did you come to the conclusion that the "mad dog," as you call him, is going to prison? I don't even--'
'Chels, you're not the brains of this outfit,' Crow cut her off. 'Let me do the thinkin' while you sit back and be my good luck charm, okay, sweetheart?'
Chelsie sighed inwardly and resigned herself to being Crow's personal rabbit's foot.
That night, while attacking the convoy carrying Dent, the Batmobile appeared and the Joker marveled. It could have been anyone. Only later did the Bat appear on his pod, providing evidence that Dent was not the Batman.
In the midst of the chaos, the Clown had enough time for one thought to his bird girl.
'Ah, Crow. You win, dollfac-e,' he managed to think before getting down to business.
Soon enough, with her TV flipped onto GCN, a breaking news alert interrupted Crow's attempt at reading a magazine.
She looked up to hear a report that the Clown Prince was caught.
"Finally," Crow muttered, throwing down the magazine and hopping up off the bed.
'Where are we going, Crow?' a curious Chelsie questioned within.
"We, sweetheart, are goin'," she began aloud, pausing for effect, "to the library."
'It's still nighttime, you know,' Chelsie pointed out.
"It is? Huh. No windows," the bird girl explained, then took off out the bedroom door, outwardly humming a familiar tune in between her words. "We'll just camp out at the place 'till they open. But first we'll stop off at the apartment and pocket our library card in case they ask for it."
Chelsie sighed, pressing for information as Crow made her way through the building, 'Why are we going to the library again?'
Now replying within as she passed some clown thugs, still humming outwardly, the blackbird answered impatiently, 'We're gonna look up all the news papers and internet information there is on your Bruce Wayne suspect. We'll be lookin' specifically for anythin' like a disappearance from Gotham - such as a paper purportin' the playboy's miraculous return from bein' all MIA for a year or two or three.'
'That's all we're looking for?' the host asked incredulously.
'It's a start, sweetheart; the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,' Crow purported some fortune cookie wisdom, making her way out the front door.
Breaking into a van, she hot wired it and promptly stole it, driving off to their apartment as she hummed Diana Krall's version of Bye Bye Blackbird once more.
Stopping off at their shared apartment, Crow changed her clothes to Chelsie's old standard wardrobe, throwing her costume into a garbage bag.
She also picked up their library card and raided a secret stash of hidden cash for emergencies.
Items in her pockets, the bird girl threw the garbage bag over her shoulder and made her way out.
When stopped by the landlord during her flight downstairs, she was able to hand over the overdue rent and paid ahead for two years straight only because she was packing some pretty big bills in her pocket.
The landlord was curious and suspicious, but let her go freely; the old woman had too much money in her grubby hand to look a gift bird in the mouth.
Eventually, Crow had driven them to the library and there they waited in the van for the next day when it would open, the car radio on and playing some CDs she found.
They sang along with Bad Religion and The Loved Ones as they patiently waited.
When morning came and the eventual event of the library opening its doors arrived, Crow led them both in the building and slipped them to the front desk.
She got the okay to go on a computer and as soon as she had Google up, she searched keywords of "Bruce Wayne," "Gotham City," "disappearance" and "reappearance."
Easily, she found an online site with old Gotham articles, an entire page story dedicated to the return of Bruce Wayne to Gotham City.
'Look at the screen, sweetheart,' Crow pointed out, Chelsie looking through their shared stormy eyes.
After she read the page, Chelsie marveled, 'Maybe I was actually right...'
Bringing up a new tab, Crow searched Google for a date of Batman's first appearance in Gotham City, eventually finding a page about his offical arrival. She matched it up to the time Wayne returned and found the distance not too far apart.
All she needed now was some information on Rachel Dawes, the thought of said woman causing Crow to wear a grin, her recent tasering of the woman's pretty little face in mind.
That information, however, was harder to come by, but she eventually found a shocking mention that read, "Rachel Dawes, childhood friend of billionaire Bruce Wayne."
On a pad of paper supplied by the library with a pen as well, Crow wrote down her findings and the consequent website addresses.
'This is proof enough, sweetheart, that your billionaire suspect is, undeniably, our Batboy,' Crow reasoned. 'This information was so easy to pull together as long as you knew where to connect the dots... It's surprisin' no one else has made these connections, but I guess no one thinks quite like you and I, sweetheart.'
'Yes, but now what will we do with this information, Crow?' inquired the other half thoughtfully.
'We could give it to the Clown once he busts out, but all he wants is anarchy and chaos,' reasoned the bird girl as she leaned back in her chair before the computer. 'Or, we could take the path less trod and give our information to Jonny boy and his Scarecrow. What they would do with it is a real stumper. Or there's option three of keepin' it to ourselves until the opportune moment...'
'So now what do we do, Crow?'
Crow grinned and closed her browsers, then tore her sheet of information from the pad, minding to rip away all sheets containing an indent impression of the information. She then ripped three more past that point for good measure, stuffing the useless pages in her pocket before folding the useful one carefully and gently pocketing it in a back pocket.
'Now, sweetheart, we go back to the apartment,' Crow told her counterpart simply.
'Why?' Chelsie asked, not following on her reasoning.
The bird girl sighed as she walked through the library, heading towards the front doors.
'We need to put back the clothes I'm wearin' and then put on our costume, for starters,' began the blackbird in her patient explanation. 'Next, we shred the pages with residue of our information in that nifty shredder we bought for gettin' rid of important documents. Then we put back what I took of our cash stash. Then we put back our library card. And lastly, we place our piece of paper with information and the website addresses into our hidden safe behind the flat-screen TV.'
'Then what?' asked the host.
'We go back to the Joker's hideout and wait.'
'For what?' Chelsie pressed on.
'For more news on the Clown, of course,' snapped the bird girl impatiently. 'We'll keep the news station on twenty-four-seven, sweetheart.'
Parking the van where she found it, Crow got out of it and walked back to the old factory hideout. She had stopped off at their apartment and carried out her business, changing back into her costume.
She walked in and through corridors, passing thugs who probably didn't even know the Joker had been captured and probably didn't care that she'd even left.
The bird girl stayed silent all the way to her and the Clown Prince's bedroom, Crow walking in and shutting the door.
'Aren't you hungry? It's been a long time,' pointed out the host.
'How can you think of food at a time like this?' demanded the blackbird before she sighed deeply. 'I swear, sweetheart, you're really unique.'
Flopping onto her side of the bed, the bird girl grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV to the news station. GCN, of course.
Eventually, a program with Mark Engel came on and caught Crow's attention.
"...he's a credible source; an A and M lawyer for a prestigious consultancy. He says he's waited as long as he can for the Batman to do the right thing..."
The shot cut to a little man who nodded before Engel spoke once more.
"Now he's taking matters into his own hands. We'll be live at five with the true identity of the Batman. Stay with us..."
"Son-of-a-bitch!" shouted the bird in outrage. "You mean some fuckin' twit got to it before us?"
Her nostrils flared under her beak as she looked away from the TV.
"No way," she muttered. "No fuckin' way."
The program eventually went on, Engel taking calls on air as Mr. Reese, the little twit in question, had a confident air about him that pricked at Crow's nerves.
A caller then spoke, "I wanna know how much they're gonna pay you to say who Batman really is."
Crow snorted.
"That's simply not why I'm doing this," insisted Reese, Crow snorting again in an unflattering manner.
Clearly, the bird girl was pissed.
"Caller, you're on the air," Engel spoke.
"Harvey Dent didn't want us to give in to this maniac," the new caller pointed out. "You think you know better than him?"
"If the little bastard has Batman's identity, ten to one he knows better than any of you li'l shits," Crow retorted at the TV in her deep anger.
Engel replied, "Guy's got a point; Dent didn't want Batman to give himself up. Is this the right thing to do?"
"If we could talk to Dent now, he might feel differently--" Reese tried.
"And we wish him a speedy recovery," said the newsman. "God knows we need him now. Let's take another call."
An old lady's voice came on air, "Mr. Reese, what's more valuable: one life, or a hundred?"
Crow cocked a brow, staring at the television intently.
"I guess it would depend on the life," Reese answered as best he could.
The old lady replied, "Okay. Let's say it's your life. Is it worth more than the lives of several hundred others?"
"Of course not," replied the little man.
The bird girl watched in fascination, an inkling as to the caller's identity in her mind.
"I'm glad you feel that way, because I've put a bomb in one of the city's hospitals," announced the caller, Crow suddenly grinning from ear to ear, her inkling justified. "It's going off in sixty minutes unless someone kills you."
Engel immediately questioned, "Who is this?"
"Just a concerned citizen," the old lady's voice began before dropping pitch to reveal the Joker's unmistakable tone, "an-d regular guy."
After that, the Clown went on about a vision of a world without Batman, but Crow tuned it out.
"Hey," Crow started. "He managed not to talk funny for a few minutes!"
Chelsie slapped herself mentally, 'That's not important! He's gonna blow up a hospital unless someone kills Reese!'
"Well, whatdaya want me to do about it, go out there and try to assassinate him?" questioned the bird out loud with annoyance. "No, thanks! I'd rather see a hospital go boom, sweetheart!"
'Harvey Dent is in a hospital, Crow! Ten to one, the Joker--'
"Ten to one, the Joker knows which hospital Dent's in, sweetheart, and if he decides to blow that one, he'll get Dent outta there 'cause he can use the guy. After all, we both know the Joker set it up so Miss Dawes would die, a fate neither of us lament," interrupted the blackbird. "Now calm yourself down, sweetheart; things are just gettin' good."