"Leila! How are you, girl?" A stout, older black woman across the salon turned upon hearing the bell chime and instantly, her face was taken over by a startlingly white, toothy smile as Leila stepped in through the front door. Without waiting for an answer, Regina continued, raising her eyebrows at the sight of the frizz framing the young woman's face. "Lord, do you need your hair done, honey. Get over here and have a seat."

As Regina tugged a wide-toothed comb through the knots in Leila's unruly hair after she had sat down, she sighed heavily, glancing around at the salon, folding her hands across her stomach beneath the black cape. She had been coming there for so long, since the age of thirteen, yet the place had barely changed from then. The walls were still adorned with the same outdated pictures of smiling black women with ornate hair styles, demonstrations of different types of braids and fades and she was not sure why, but something about the consistency was comforting to her. Almost as though she had been reading Leila's mind, Regina suddenly spoke from behind her.

"I remember the first day you came in here," she said, shaking her head as that broad, dazzling smile appeared on her heavily glossed lips again. "Your mama had no idea what to ask for, just said she wanted you to have nice, straight hair."

Leila laughed, rolling her eyes as she thought back to that day. "I didn't know what to ask for either," she answered, picking at a stray fiber of her jeans beneath the cape. "All I knew was that I wanted to have hair like the white girls at my school. I remember one of them telling me my hair felt like a sheep." While Leila laughed, Regina clicked her tongue disapprovingly, shaking her head as she began to separate her hair into four sections at the roots.

"That ain't right," she grumbled. "You musta' been the only mixed girl at that school, huh?"

Leila nodded, grinning as she thought back to the rude, ignorant questions and comments made about her mother being white and her father being black. She shrugged, glancing up at Regina in the mirror. "Yeah, I was," she answered audibly, watching as the hairdresser shook her head again. "But that was a long time ago. They were just kids...probably didn't know any better."

"Mm-hmm...You mean they weren't taught any better," Regina answered from behind pursed lips, sounding unconvinced at Leila's attempt to defend the snobby kids at her former private school. She could not blame her for this and had to admit she found the woman's annoyance toward the rich, white girls endearing. "You just remember that you turned out much better than they did, baby," Regina added. The comfortable smile slid slowly from Leila's face. After everything that had occurred the previous night, she was not sure she completely agreed.

All morning, she had been trying to suppress it; the thoughts and memories of that poor, drunk man being stabbed, then mercilessly executed by the Joker, for he had served his purpose and was being disposed of like a dirty tissue. And the knowledge that Leila had been the reason for his death was gnawing at her, filling her with guiltiness. Fifteen thousand dollars should never have been the price for her to abandon her morals and yet, it was. She was in the salon, getting her hair done, pampering herself, something she had been dying to do for over a year with no real means to do it. Now, her bills were about to be completely paid in full, on time for once, her fridge would be stocked, her cat would be fed and she would still have more than enough left over for whatever the hell else she wanted. All of these reasons were still not enough to justify the man's death in the auto body shop.

But there was nothing she could have done, nothing she could have possibly said to change the Joker's mind about letting the man live. She could have fallen on her knees in front of him, begged him endlessly and all he would have done was laugh in her face, or otherwise kill her for being such a pest. Truly, there was absolutely nothing to be done over the nameless man's death. So perhaps, with this in mind, she ought to simply forget it, try to move past it, focus on how fortunate she was to be alive and well, with not one but two jobs...Even though, of course, one was vastly more risky than the other. Hitching a smile onto her face, Leila closed her eyes, sighing deeply as she leaned back in the chair, relaxing under the feeling of the brush applying cool white cream to her scalp.

It took over an hour with much prodding, slathering of stinky chemicals, washing, drying and flat ironing, but finally, Leila's hair was tamed and straight, falling halfway down her back and around her shoulders in sleek, shimmering dark brown waves. Her eyebrows had been waxed and freshly shaped, all traces of frizz were gone from around her face and at long last, she was feeling like herself again. A few times in the chair, she imagined, panicked, that she had heard her 'new' cell phone ringing and had wondered wildly what she would do if the Joker were indeed to call while she was sitting there with chemicals on her hair. How could she explain to Regina that she had to leave right in the middle of the process? However mercifully, the phone had remained silent through the visit. Leila could not imagine what sort of dire trouble he could get into at nine-thirty in the morning, though she was starting to get the feeling that he might just be the type to call her for nothing more than a band-aid. She rolled her eyes. He would totally do that.

Struggling to resist the urge to continually run her fingers through her sleek, straight hair, she paid Regina with a generous tip and gave her a tight hug, promising that she would not let it go as long next time before returning. And with that, she was back out the door, onto the street and surprisingly, feeling better than she had felt in quite some time. She felt pretty again, confident, and though that nagging guilt in the back of her mind was still present, it was growing easier to ignore. Therefore, she had to wonder, if spending some money on herself had helped assuage some of the guilt, would spending more continue to ease her conscience? With a grin and shrug, she decided to find out. The grocery store was next.

It was a truly amazing thing to Leila how different grocery shopping felt without a limit. For once, she could buy whatever she wanted, stock up on the more expensive brands instead of the cheap, generic store brand. Of course there was no real need to buy a tremendous amount of food, seeing how she was the only person living in her apartment and she did not want it to go bad before it could be eaten. Regardless, she filled the metal shopping cart with all the things she liked to cook and snack on, plus several pounds of flour, sugar and other items that she would need in order to start baking again. For too long had she been unable to indulge in her secret hobby and finally, she had to means to pick it back up.

Around twenty minutes and roughly seventy-five dollars into her shopping trip, Leila was passing a meticulously constructed display of soda bottles when she glanced down at her purse in the seat of the cart before her to check the time on her phone, only to have her stomach drop to her knees. Her keys were gone. Stopping on a dime and uttering a breathy curse word, she thrust one hand into the bag, shifting aside both of her phones, her wallet and the other random items, listening for the jingle of metal, but the bag was silent. Slight panic began to flood her at the thought of getting a call from her new boss while her keys were missing and anxiously, she turned to look down the aisle from which she had just come, her eyes scanning the floor for any sign of them. Nothing.

Her heart was banging away painfully at the inside of her chest as she began to retrace her path through the store, keeping her eyes trained on the floor and in turn, almost running into several people along her way. How could they have fallen out from inside her purse? Had she moved the bag at all since entering the store? Had she perhaps shifted it to the side in order to fit something in the cart? Any second now, she expected to hear the shrill ring tone of her newest phone and any second after that, she would have to explain to the Joker that she could not come immediately to his aid because she had lost her car keys. Somehow, she did not think he would buy the excuse.

With that sense of barely controlled panic becoming overwhelming and after walking through what felt like the entire store, Leila finally stopped at the end of an aisle, forcing herself to stand still, take a deep breath in through her nose, out through her mouth, and think calmly about where she could have set the keys down or dropped them. She rested her hands on the cart, closing her eyes to try to visualize where she was the last time she saw them or handled them. However, almost the moment her eyelids had met together, a voice from just behind her caused her to jump with a sharp start. She turned quickly, half expecting to find the tall, daunting frame and painted face of the Joker standing there. Instead, she sighed in relief, placing a hand on her chest when she found an older man.

"Oh, I'm sorry to have startled you, miss," he said, his kind smile wrinkling the lines next to his eyes. "But I think you dropped these." From his pocket, his gnarled hand removed a set of very familiar keys. Laughing at her paranoia, Leila took them, shaking her head.

"Yeah, those are mine," she answered, tucking them deep into the pocket of her jeans. "Thank you so much! Where did you find them?"

The man shrugged, motioning over his shoulder with his thumb toward the refrigerator cases filled with milk. "They were back there on the floor," he answered. "I picked them up and was about to take them to the front desk when I saw you looking around. Glad I found you though! You wouldn't have made it very far without them!" Laughing politely at his cliché joke, Leila nodded.

"That's very true," she answered. "Thanks again, though. Have a good day!"

After the fiasco with her keys, Leila only needed to grab a few more things before she was walking up toward the cash registers, smirking contentedly to herself about how the amount of items in her cart was likely to reach the one-hundred dollar mark with ease...and how she was able to pay for all of it, with ease. Despite the small mishap, she was happy to find that she was indeed feeling better about her situation and had all but forgotten about the man in the shop the previous night. Things could only get easier from there, right?

Leila was not sure how she had not thought of it at the grocery store, but carrying a hundred dollars in groceries up six flights of stairs was no easy task. Sure, her building contained an elevator, but it was located on the farthest opposite corner and she could not see the point in walking that far with her groceries when the stairs were right at the entrance to the parking garage. Five flights up, however, she began to regret that decision, as she was huffing and puffing in a way she had not experienced in quite a while.

"Good thing I can afford a gym membership now..." she grumbled aloud to herself as she hoisted her bags up the last few stairs.

At the door to her apartment at last, Leila stopped, dropping one handful of bags to the floor to reach for her keys, once again mentally thanking the older man who had found them for her and hoping that wherever he was, he would have a good day as karma's repayment for helping her. Thumbing through the keys and shifting them around in her hand allowed her to select the one belonging to her front door, but just as she began to push it into the lock, she frowned when it stopped halfway in and stuck as though it had caught on something. She pulled the key back out, her frown deepening when she lifted it toward her face, where her eyes caught sight of a small chunk of something white trapped in one of the grooves of the metal. Sighing, but not allowing anything to ruin her good mood, she set the rest of her bags down on the ground to give her the use of both hands.

The white chunk was hard as a rock and seemed to be positively melded to the metal, stuck between two rivets as though placed there by force. Using her fingernail, Leila attempted to pick it away from the key. Surprisingly, it came away without much force and fell to the ground at her feet, where she stared down at it for a moment, confused. Another half second later, she shrugged and pushed her newly functional key into the lock where it turned easily, deciding she really did not care what the white stuff was. Her keys had been on the floor of the grocery store for who knew how long and had been in the pocket of an older man shortly after. There was a good chance that it was something gross. She would have to wash her hands as soon as she was inside the apartment.

The inside of Leila's apartment somehow felt cleaner, nicer, prettier despite the lack of attention and as she put away her groceries, she found herself humming a tune, wondering delightedly whether she had time to do a little cleaning before having to leave for work at two-thirty. A moment later, she let out a short laugh as Murphy wound his way between her ankles. There would be plenty of time for cleaning the next day when she was off, so she figured it could wait until then. All she wanted to do was have a nice, quiet lunch and make a list of the clothes she wanted to buy. Three o'clock would arrive quickly and she would be damned if she did any physical labor before doing more physical labor during her shift that night.

Getting dressed in her uniform did not seem like such a chore, feeding Murphy did not make her mildly depressed as it usually did, even the drive to the station house did not seem to take as long, and Leila was climbing out of her car, smirking contentedly to herself when Matt rounded the back of his Jeep in the parking space next to her. He sighed heavily, dragging his hands along his stubbled cheeks. Leila arched an eyebrow as she pulled her bag from the back seat, taking in the sight of his untucked, somewhat wrinkled uniform shirt and uncharacteristically pomade-free hair.

"What happened to you?" she asked, turning to walk alongside him toward the docking bay, where both could see Jay climbing down from the back of the ambulance. Matt shook his head, a rather sick look coming across his face and only then did Leila notice that he looked a bit pale.

"I went out last night..." he grumbled, using the knuckle of his middle finger to push his heavily tinted sunglasses further up his nose. "Woke up about an hour ago. Hungover...Stupid decision, I know..."

Leila laughed with a bit more gusto than usual, reaching up a hand to pat him on the shoulder. "Hey, you said it, not me."

As the pair approached the waiting ambulance, Jay stepped out from behind the open door to the cab, his hands on his narrow waist. He was grinning from ear to ear as he noticed the 'not to be messed with' look on Matt's face. Leila mimicked Jay's expression, suddenly finding everything much more funny than normal.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Jay exclaimed using more volume than was necessary. Matt flinched at the noise, squinting from behind his shades.

"No way, man...Don't start-" Matt began to reply in a gruff voice, but Jay was already continuing, glancing up at the high ceiling above them contemplatively.

"Let's see..." he began, drumming his fingers against the patch on the sleeve of his uniform shirt. Leila leaned against the ambulance, crossing her arms over her middle. "Hot mayonnaise on week-old lettuce." Jay concluded, and almost the moment the words finished leaving his mouth, Matt let out a loud gag and doubled over the nearby, large biohazardous trash can, causing both Jay and Leila to groan, laughing at the sound of stale liquor hitting the bottom of the bag. Matt stood up straight a few moments later, spitting once more into the can.

"Dude..." he mumbled, shaking his head. "Not fair..."

Jay shrugged, glancing over at Leila with a very innocent, unconcerned look on his face. "Judging by how pale you looked, I used my medical knowledge to deduce that you had not vomited up the liquor yet. So by inducing that function, you should be feeling better within a few minutes," There was a pause after his words before he shrugged again, looking over at Matt, who was now glaring at Leila as though daring her to agree with Jay. She copied his shrug, raising her eyebrows at Matt.

"He's right," she told him, laughing as she stood up straight to step forward and take his arm. "But you still need to drink some water. Come put your bag away and I'll get you a bottle."

After putting their bags away and after Matt had emptied his stomach a second time in the bathroom, Leila supplied him with water before both exited out into the docking bay, where Jay was climbing into the front seat of the ambulance. Luckily, Matt seemed to have overcome his nausea but was drinking steadily from his bottle of water as he and Leila took their usual places in the truck. He sighed, leaning back against the cabinet behind the bench seat while Leila slammed shut the doors. She could feel him eyeballing the side of her face as she sat back down but refrained from looking over until he spoke.

"So you seem...chipper today," he commented offhandedly. Leila could not deny the hint of suspicion she heard in his tone of voice, but once again wondered if she was just perhaps being paranoid. In an effort to appear as her normal self, she shrugged, finally turning her head to look over at him.

"Do I?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Are you sure it's not that you're feeling really bad and everyone around you just seems happier than usual?" Leila laughed at the slightly surprised, taken-aback look on Matt's face as he contemplated her words, and his eyebrows bounced a moment later when he shook his head, taking another swig of his water.

"You're probably right," he grunted, closing his eyes as he crossed his hands over his thoroughly empty stomach. "I just hope we have a slow night. Anything too strenuous and I might be on that stretcher."

It seemed surprising for a weekend night, but Matt's words were almost prophetic in predicting how slow their night turned out to be. They had one minor call in their district for a case of dehydration and subsequent fainting, but beyond this, the team was almost what they could call bored. The time was slowly inching toward nine-thirty and the ambulance had just rounded the same corner for a third time when Matt let out a loud yawn, leaning to the side to bang hard on the small window separating the back of the truck to the cab in the front. Jay gave a jump in the driver's seat before glancing over his shoulder quickly at the window. He rolled his eyes, reaching forward to take the small hand radio from the dashboard. The inside of the large back cabin rang with a crackle of static before Jay's voice broke through.

"You know you guys have a radio back there..." he said. Leila laughed, watching as Matt rolled his eyes, rising from the bench seat to take the other end of the radio from the upper corner of the wall.

"I'm hungry," he stated loudly into the speaker of the radio, causing Leila to laugh again harder as they saw Jay start in surprise through the window at the volume of Matt's voice.

"Yeah, I bet you are, Princess Puke Pants," Jay answered. "You guys want to run by the diner for a bite?"

Of course, Matt's immediate answer was yes, and since Leila didn't care either way, the ambulance was soon heading in the direction of their favorite work-time standby, the 59th street diner, where, as they climbed out, Matt was already talking about what he wanted to eat.

"I am starving," he groaned, massaging his growling stomach as they walked toward the front doors of the small restaurant. "I swear, if we get a call right now, that person will just have to wait because I could seriously eat one of the tires off the truck."

The same frizzy-haired waitress, as always, greeted them at their table once the team had sat down, clicking her pen several times out of habit as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, chewing noisily on a piece of gum.

"Hey, guys," she said, poising her pen in preparation to write. "The usual for the three of ya?"

Matt looked up at her without even glancing at his menu, sliding it toward her along the table. "I'll have the number three with a coke, please, Stephanie," he told her, using the characteristic, charming, slick voice and flashing the toothy, sparkling smile that made both Jay and Leila fight not to roll their eyes. Stephanie spent a second longer than usual returning his grin before glancing down at Leila.

"Chili for you, hon'? Hold the sour cream?" she asked. Leila felt her teeth grit together in the back of her mouth as she nodded with a forced smile; if there was one thing she hated, it was pet names, especially from someone she did not know that well. Luckily, the waitress was gone only seconds later after taking Jay's order, leaving Leila to finally roll her eyes in her absence. Matt laughed.

"You really hate it when people use nicknames, don't you?" he asked, fidgeting with the corner of his paper napkin under the stress of his hunger. Leila shook her head, hanging it slightly and joining his laugh.

"Pretty much," she answered. "I don't know why either. It just annoys me. That girl barely knows me beyond what I like to eat here but feels the need to call me 'hon' and 'sweetie'." She laughed again, tossing one hand as she glanced over her shoulder to make double sure Stephanie wasn't approaching behind her. "I'm probably at least seven or eight years old her than her. If anything, I should be the one calling her 'honey' and 'munchkin' or whatever..."

While the two guys laughed, Stephanie returned momentarily to place their three drinks on the table, before leaving the team alone once again. Simultaneously, the paramedics took sips of their sodas, but once they were replaced in front of them, Matt was the first to speak.

"So Leila," he began, folding his hands together atop the table before him and leaning forward slightly as though he were about to begin an interrogation. She felt her stomach sink but did not allow this sensation to convey itself on her face. "I'm feeling better now and you still seem more...upbeat than usual." Leila's stomach sank even further; she had so been hoping he would not bring that up again. To her dismay, on Matt's right side, Jay was nodding his agreement.

"Yeah, I noticed that too," he added to the conversation. "I just thought you were taking pleasure in Matt's misery but you do seem different." At this, Leila managed a laugh, shrugging her shoulders.

"I don't see how I'm acting any differently than I normally do, guys," she answered, taking another sip of her Sprite that she did not entirely want. "I'm just in a good mood today, I guess."

Matt nodded, reaching out for his plastic cup of coke, seemingly satisfied with her answer, but Jay went on, grinning cheekily at her as he leaned toward her by a few inches across the table. "Is there a new guy in your life?" he asked, dropping his voice. Next to him, Matt coughed into his soda while Leila laughed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. You could say that...she thought somewhat miserably, thinking of the small, mercifully quiet cell phone in the velcro pocket of her black cargo pants. Sometime over the past two seconds, Matt's eyes had grown rather wider than usual and as Leila glanced back and forth between her two friends and co-workers, she tossed her hands.

"Guys, there is no 'new guy' in my life, nothing has changed or anything like that," she implored them, grinning. "Honestly, I'm just having a good day! If something major happened, you two would already know about it." A little drop of guilt sank down into the pit of her growling stomach.

By the time the team finished eating, chatting and laughing their way through several topics, the time was nearing ten-thirty, which would give them just enough time to pay for their meals and head back to the station house before their shift was due to end. Leila was slightly relieved at this. Her evening at work had been more fun than usual, but she could not pretend like Matt and Jay's questioning of her newly obtained happy-go-lucky mood did not shake her. It wasn't as though she had been a total misery in the past, but if they had noticed such a change in her overnight, after she had obtained money from the Joker, surely they were bound to start asking questions if this continued. She would have to remember to remain as normal as possible over the next week, at least until the thrill of having so much money had worn off.

At the door to her apartment, Leila sighed, shaking her head as she remembered the loud 'Say hi to your new boyfriend from us!' Jay had shouted to her across the parking lot while climbing into her car back at the station house. She knew there would be further questioning down the road, so she figured, in order to keep their suspicions in one place, she might as well just let them believe that she was indeed dating someone. Perhaps that would be enough to keep the guys convinced that this was the reason behind her new, more upbeat demeanor. Fortunately, she was off from work the next day. Hopefully, she thought, the guys would forget all about their idea that she 'had a new man in her life'.

Murphy was in almost the exact same position as she had left him earlier, laying flat on his back in the middle of her bed with his fat belly spread out, comfortable as could be. Leila sighed, grinning as she approached him, dropping her bag lazily at the door to her room and flinging herself onto the bed beside him. Her hand met his tummy gently with a few quiet thumps as she patted him there, her smile widening when the cat gave off a tiny mew and stretched his paws out.

"Hey buddy, have a good day?" she asked him, stroking her hand along his soft fur. When Murphy simply blinked serenely up at her, Leila sat up, sighing as she dug around her pocket for her normal, personal phone, to check up on what sort of messages she had received over the past nine hours.

First on the screen was a missed call from her mother, along with a voice mail. Leila grinned, using her thumb to locate the correct button on the touch screen to listen to it.

"Hey LeeLee, it's Mom! Just wanted to call and check up on how you're doing. Passed an ambulance on my way home and I honked at it, but I don't think it was you..." Leila let out a laugh at her mother's ever-growing level of cuteness. "Anyways, call me back tomorrow and let's get lunch or something, okay? My treat! Love you!"

Glancing at the time and seeing that it was only eleven-thirty, she figured her mother would still be awake if she had been driving home a half hour ago, so without hesitation, she swiped her thumb across the screen, highlighting the number to her mom's phone. However, almost the moment the screen switched to show the words 'dialing...Mom', she jumped, gasping in surprise as yet another phone began ringing in her apartment, very close to her.

For just a split second, Leila's brain somehow managed to form the incoherent thought that she had dialed her own phone, until she realized that the shrill, high-pitched tone did not belong to any device she owned. The ringing was coming from the velcro pocket of her black pants. Her heart was racing as she quickly ended the call going to her mother's phone and instead hastily fumbled to undo the pocket. The small black phone's screen read the word 'Unknown'. Her mouth was suddenly dry.

"H-hello?"

There was a pause.

"Hey there, doc," came the horrible, nasally, clowny voice of the Joker, crooning and rasping to her through the speaker. "Have a lovely day of being filthy rich?"

Leila shuddered openly, closing her eyes in disgust at the vehement way he had just spat the word 'filthy' in her ear. She ignored his question, hoping to get straight to the point.

"Is something wrong?" she asked rather more timidly that she had meant to. "Do you need me?"

"Oh!" Joker exclaimed through the other end of the phone. "No, no...Just calling to check up on ya...curious to see if you would answer..."

There was another pregnant pause wherein Leila's eyebrows contracted across her forehead. She licked her lips, struggling to force more moisture to her mouth.

"Well...I did. You said you'd kill me if I didn't," she answered, dropping her voice into a very mirthless level. There was a soft click on the other end of the call; Leila could just imagine him leaning back in whatever chair he had situated himself in, ticking his tongue against the back of his yellowing teeth in a very amused sort of way.

"Indeed I did," he answered after a few seconds, his voice no longer bearing any hint of clowniness and instead rumbling out of him from what seemed like the deepest reaches of his lungs. Goosebumps spread all over Leila's arms. "Anyway," His tone was high and bouncy once again. "Have a great night, peaches. I'm sure we'll be in touch soon."

Click.

Pulling the phone away from her ear, Leila leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees, closing her eyes as her head hung forward. Maybe the call back to her mother could wait until the following day.

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A/N: Guys, I totally suck for the long wait. -_- I am sorry. I have no excuses beyond life getting in the way. But alas, this is a short, somewhat uneventful chapter though it was necessary as set up for the next few chapters. Lots of Joker in the following chapters, plus some funny stuff, plus some mounting sexual sexy tension so I'm hoping you all will forgive me for the long wait and lame chapter because you will LOVE the next ones. I PROMISE! = ] Thanks so much for reading, and as always, feel free to leave me your love or hate! -QoM