Leila was cold. It was the first sensation to arrive, even before her eyes had opened. Tan skin flushed, covered in small bumps as she shivered, curving her back to bring her bare arms closer to her chest. Vague wrinkles formed between her eyebrows as she frowned, feeling the soft comforter on her bed against the side of her face. She struggled to focus on her position without forcing her eyelids open, knowing the headache she was experiencing would only magnify tenfold once she did.

From the ache in her right shoulder, Leila could deduce with fair certainty that she was laying on her right side and had been that way for quite some time. Her knees were pulled up, long legs bent together and brought closer to her torso. It seemed, unconsciously, her body had attempted to keep her core warm during the night...or at least, she thought she had slept through the night. What time is it? she managed to wonder. And why am I so cold?

With great effort, she opened her eyes into tiny slits, allowing the smallest amount of light into her vision as possible. The white blanket billowed and bunched before her seemed to glow in the warm, golden sunlight. Leila heaved a small sigh of relief. So it is morning...at least I didn't sleep all day.

Moving as slowly as she could and wincing as her shoulder gave a pang of ache, she rolled onto her back, still gradually adjusting her itchy eyes to the light, her head swimming with the motion. The ceiling fan far above her bed was spinning rapidly, but Leila did not watch it for long; the movement made her dizzy. Instead, she focused on the renewed coating of goosebumps traveling along her shoulders, chest and arms, on why she felt so cold and bare. Lifting her head gingerly, she looked down at her body. She was naked.

Then everything came back.

A rush of heated memories from the previous night flooded her mind all at once, fleeting images of half-lidded black eyes watching her, hands resting lightly on her waist, fingers gripping a blue patterned shirt, pleasure and pain in unpredictable doses. Overwhelming nausea bubbled in the pit of her stomach as she sat up quickly, completely abandoning her attempt to stave off her headache. Her lips parted to allow a sob past as she noticed smudges of white, gray and red smeared randomly across her stomach and hips. A trembling hand reached out to touch one of the marks of greasepaint, as if her mind would not allow her to accept that they were real. Although as she did this, her eyes widened; the tips of her fingers were all covered in makeup. She had touched his scars.

Brown eyes immediately welled with hot tears as she flung herself clumsily from the bed, tripping in her haste and collapsing to her hands and knees on the carpet before her nightstand, her chest heaving. Without wasting time to notice the pain, she turned, frantically crawling toward her bathroom, refusing to believe that everything that had happened the previous night had been real. Something, some small part of it had to have been a dream, if not the disgusting sexual encounter with the Joker, then everything before it. Surely Max was still alive and well, not dead in her bathtub, murdered in her own apartment. That part could not have been real.

The tile might as well have been ice as she clambered onto it from the carpet, her entire body wracked with shivers and sobs, practically clawing her way to the tub, using her weak hands along the rim to pull herself up. Peering over the edge and into the basin, a very slim sense of relief passed through her; there was no body, no blood. Just an empty bathtub in an empty bathroom, in an empty apartment.

Turning, she placed the heels of her feet as far beneath herself as she could, rested her hands on the ceramic edge behind her and pushed down, groaning loudly as she hoisted herself upward to stand. Every fiber of her body protested the motion, begging her to collapse back onto the floor, perhaps sleep there for another few days. But Leila was determined. She had to see herself in the mirror, had to confirm that the smudges of makeup all over her body had been imagined and that the vague, nauseatingly pleasurable ache between her thighs could be attributed to something other than sexual activity. However as she rose to her feet and turned her head toward the mirror, crushing horror, sickness and panic swelled inside of her.

Her face, neck, shoulders and chest were all stained with greasepaint, random smudges and swipes, her lips surrounded by a grimy pink haze, her neck littered with dirty white and gray prints. Taking a step toward the mirror, she leaned in, using her own stained finger to touch one of the marks along the front of her throat and drag downward, smearing it further. Gasping in shock and disgust and feeling the urge to vomit burning the back of her throat, she turned herself away from the mirror, stumbling forward to the tub in preparation to empty what little contents her stomach contained. But then she saw it. A single, solitary red stain on the tile. One square inch of blood in the corner of the tub. It had been real.

All of it.

Leila crumbled to the frigid tile floor in a naked heap, sobbing, clutching her tangled hair, shivering violently as tears streamed down her face. The previous night had been the culmination of her bad decisions, her failure as a medical professional and now, because of this, a man was dead and another man was somewhere out there in the city, feeling smug and triumphant. He had gotten his prize. The Joker had broken her down so thoroughly and taken royal advantage of her in such a vulnerable state. He had robbed her of the one thing she could still cling to. Even after everything, after deciding to accept his offer of employment, Leila still had her own body. She could control her own actions and protect the most intimate parts of herself. Last night, he had ripped that away from her, just as easily as he had pulled her skirt away from her body and thrown it across the room. He now had full and total control over her. The visible marks of filthy greasepaint marring her skin were evidence of that. She had nothing left.

It could have been hours that she lay there on the floor in her bathroom, perhaps even days; Leila was not sure and didn't care. Rational thoughts of the present were few and far between, although she did manage to remember that she was due at work that evening at four o'clock. A heavy, shaky breath slipped between her lips as she slowly forced open her eyes. Aside from the crushing guilt, betrayal and shame she felt mentally, her entire body felt as though it had been thrown repeatedly against a wall. Her shoulders, hips and knees ached, her head was splitting open along her forehead, her stomach churning. Over a year of working as a paramedic and she had never once called out of work, ignoring the occasional bout of sniffles or a sore throat, knowing that missing even a single shift would put a damper on her paycheck. But that day, there was no way she could work. There was no way she could look Matt or Jay in the face, not with the humiliation and overwhelming degradation so fresh in her mind...not when every physical movement reminded her of the mistake she had made.

Swollen, red eyes popped open as a horrifying thought occurred to Leila. She'd had sex with the Joker. Thinking the words alone filled her with horror and disgust, but it was not that fact alone that was now weighing on her mind...What were the chances that he had used protection? This question brought on a bizarre, almost foreign desire to laugh. Of course he hadn't used a condom. Leila could place a fair bet he didn't even know what a prophylactic was. It was hard to believe that the man was capable of such an intimate act in the first place, let alone taking anyone else's choices into account while performing it.

Fresh panic flowed throughout her as she quickly sat up, forcefully ignoring the stab of pain from her aching head to push herself into a standing position. Movement had to be made. As much as she would have liked to, she could not simply lay there on the floor all day and disassociate, wither away into depression, wallow in her guilt. She had to be proactive, take steps to ensure that there would be no lasting effects from her serious lapse in judgment.

Tackling the easiest of the tasks first, Leila reached for a towel in her closet, wrapping it around herself in order to walk out into the living room where she had set her handbag down the previous night upon entering the apartment. Her normal cell phone lay inside it, wedged between her wallet and her...other phone. Her stomach gave an ominous churn as her fingers brushed her 'work phone', but again, she pushed past it and dialed the number for the fire station on her iPhone. It began ringing. After a few seconds-

"Fire station house 14, is this an emergency?"

"No, may I speak with Director Mitchell?" Leila cringed. Her voice was raspy and deep, but she did not bother to correct it. She needed to sound as sick as she felt.

"One moment."

Another few seconds of silence passed.

"This is Mitchell," came the voice of her boss.

"Hey, Mitchell..." she began, adding a quiet cough for effect and closing her eyes as she sank into a chair at her dining table. "It's Leila."

"Leila, hey!" he replied, before pausing. "Wow, you sound horrible. You sick?"

Her hand met her forehead, bracing it as she leaned forward on the table. "Yeah," she said. "I feel terrible...I don't think I can-"

Mitchell cut in. "Oh, don't worry about your shift tonight. The guys will be fine. You just rest up and feel better, okay?"

A slow sigh escaped her as she felt a very small wave of relief wash over. "Alright. Thanks, Mitchell."

Step one was complete. She was given a free day to assess her situation, regroup and recover, both mentally and physically. Aside from the emotional turmoil she was feeling, Leila honestly did feel ill. Her stomach was in knots, her mind felt fuzzy although her senses still seemed slightly heightened, just as they had the previous night, but in a less sensitive form. Closing her eyes and hiding them behind the warm palms of her hands, she struggled to remember more clearly the events that had led her to awake naked in her bed, alone. For a brief moment, Leila allowed herself to be thankful that the Joker had left before she had woken. Waking up covered in his disgusting makeup and likely a good amount of his DNA was punishment enough. She did not think she could have handled waking to find him lying next to her with a shitty smirk of satisfaction on his face.

Despite how truly horrified she felt, Leila could not deny that everything the Joker had done had felt good...really good. In fact, as much as she hated to admit it, his touches, his skin, even his hair had felt almost too good to be normal. It was true, she had not had sex in quite a while but she could not remember it ever feeling like that, so electrifying, so heated and dare she say it, passionate. The Joker seemed to have hit all the right spots, touched her in all the right places, even kissed her on the neck in that one place she liked...A loud, rough growl of hatred leaped from her throat as she stood abruptly from the table, marching straight into her bathroom and discarding her towel, forcefully ignoring the tiny stain of blood on the tub as she climbed into it.

The water came out as cold as ice at first but Leila was far beyond the point of caring. She had been cold all morning, felt dirty and slimy, so water of any temperature was a welcome respite, flowing over her, rinsing away the physical evidence of her mistake. If only the memory of the event could have been so easily erased. Gradually the water warmed, climbing through degrees until she could feel her skin tingling with oncoming pain. Sighing, she tilted her head back, allowing the water to splatter against her face, smoothing her hair down against the back of her head with her hands.

After scrubbing every square inch of her body, Leila pushed back the shower curtain, her eyes immediately seeking the mirror on the opposite wall, inspecting her naked, dripping reflection for any sign of greasepaint she might have missed. Her skin, though clean, seemed to be glowing pink, raw and prickling, but she paid this no mind and climbed out, wrapping a clean towel around herself as she went.

It was with aimless, unfocused movements that she went to her dresser, pulling open drawers, rifling through her clothing for something, anything, to wear. The pharmacy was very close to her apartment, and although Leila had never been one to put a great deal of effort into her appearance, that day, her desire to look presentable was at an all time low. Her hair was wet, hanging in lank strands along her back, and would no doubt dry into a frizzy mess, but she was not about to waste more precious time to attempt to tame it. Prevention had to be her main focus. She had to do what she could to not only rectify her mistake, but also prevent herself from suffering any lasting effects.

The phrase 'lasting effects' floated through her brain as she stepped into a clean pair of underwear. Bits and pieces of the previous night had been arriving in her memory in a slow trickle, particularly one that seemed to account for how foggy and unsteady she felt presently; the pill. Vaguely, Leila could remember wondering what the effects of that small, round yellow vessel would be. She could remember taking it from the Joker's hand and swallowing it, thinking 'Oh, well...what's the worst that could happen?'

Cringing angrily as more tears threatened to gather, Leila slammed the drawer closed, her shoulders hunching as she leaned forward to cross her arms and rest her forehead atop them. How could she have been so stupid? The man she hated, the man who had ruined her life had offered her a pill of what she could only assume was some form of ecstasy or Valium; in such a vulnerable state and she had taken it willingly. She had allowed herself to be manipulated, taken advantage of, controlled like a limp puppet on the end of a string. She had enjoyed his touches, craved the feeling of his hands on her body, even kissed him hungrily, all because of one small pill that he had fed her. Leila felt her knees grow weak as a crushing realization filled her;

She had been raped.

But could it really be considered 'rape'? She wondered this, reminding herself how she had taken the pill from him. She had gone to him when he had called her name. She had lowered herself onto his lap when beckoned. Every poor decision that had been made that night had been of her own volition. Yes, she had been manipulated, but she had allowed herself to be put in that situation. She had been given every opportunity to say no, to walk away, even run from the apartment. And yet she had stayed. It was no one's fault but her own. The Joker had only done what he does best and despite having sworn to herself countless times that she would not allow him to rule her, she had done exactly that. It was her fault.

Sniffing heavily in an attempt to choke back her tears, Leila raised her head and uncrossed her arms, straightening her shoulders as she pulled open another drawer. However, as her gaze moved to the mounds of sloppily folded t-shirts, her eyes caught sight of something foreign sitting innocently amongst the random items on the top of her dresser. Her stomach sank to her knees.

A neatly bundled stack of one-hundred dollar bills. Her next payment.

Fury such that Leila had never felt before coursed through her veins as she snatched the money from the surface, her heart pounding as she strode determinedly toward her dining table, toward the small paper shredder situated over a waste basket. This was the end, she was done. The money was not worth the torment and pain, the frustration and paranoia. Leila would go to the police, explain everything, tell them where the Joker could be found at the garage in the Narrows, then ask that she and her family be put into some sort of witness protection program. Sure, uprooting not only her entire life but also those of her parents would be difficult and heart wrenching, but at least then they would be safe. They could start over in another city, another state altogether perhaps and attempt to forget how calm and carefree their existence had once been.

The paper shredder gave a quiet beep as she flipped it on, unwrapped the band from around the stack of bills and parted it into two piles, thinning it so the shredder could mow through it easily. A trembling hand advanced toward the machine, the thin, crisp edge of the money sliding slowly into the feed slot...but that was as far as she could go. Her eyes had fallen into the mesh basket below the device, to the shredded remains of her unpaid bills, the notices of service termination, of repossession, of everything her life had been only a month prior. She hesitated, pulling her hand back.

As much as she hated him, as hard as she prayed that he would die a slow, excruciatingly painful death, the Joker had, in essence, saved her from much heartache and financial turmoil. Yes, he had replaced it with yet more heartache and turmoil, but what good would shredding this money be? She could still go to the police, she could still be relocated, but it would be downright stupid of her to not only destroy the only evidence she had of her supposed employment, but also shred the last of her financial security in a fit of rage over something that was her own fault. No. The money had to stay. She still needed it.

After dressing distractedly in jeans and a loose t-shirt and sliding into a pair of flat shoes, Leila left her apartment, pausing in the kitchen momentarily to drop some kibble into Murphy's bowl. The cat had been mysteriously missing the previous night in all the commotion with Max and the events that had followed, but had recently emerged from his hiding spot to curl up on the back of her couch. She glanced over at him as she stepped through the front door. His eyes were perfectly round and yellow as always, but serenely calm. He blinked slowly as she disappeared beyond the door, shutting it behind her. She wasn't sure why, but something in that one look from her pet seemed to convey a message of peace, almost as though he was attempting to tell her, 'Be calm. Everything will be alright.' Leila took a deep breath in through her nose, exhaling slowly a moment later, her breath escaping between her parted lips as she began the trek down the stairs. As much as she wanted to panic, the imagined voice of Murphy was right. She had to stay calm, just as she had been trained to do. Everything would be alright...right?

Despite the drug store being only a few blocks from her building, Leila decided to drive, not only to shorten the amount of time before she could get her hands on the particular drug she needed, but also due to what little confidence she had in her legs. Every step she took, she could feel that dull ache between her thighs, and every movement reminded her of him. As her car pulled into a parallel spot across the street from the store, she shook her head roughly, attempting to clear it of the images of Joker's body lying beneath her own.

The pharmacy seemed mercifully empty; a small stroke of luck to which Leila did not feel rightfully entitled. If anything, she deserved to walk into a store full of people, all listening to her attempt to quietly ask the pharmacist for an emergency contraceptive. Then again, allowing herself to be coerced into sex with the Joker was punishment enough.

The counter for the main pharmacy was at the back of the store, so Leila made her way through the aisles, feeling another layer of anger creeping up on her as she passed a shelf of men's toiletry items, some of the same things she had bought for the Joker only a week prior. Kill 'em with kindness...she thought with a contemptuous huff. See how well that worked out for me...

In the form of another ray of lucky sunshine, the only person behind the counter was a young woman. Leila sighed heavily as she approached, clutching her wallet and peeking over her shoulder to be sure she was quite alone. The blonde looked up from her computer screen and smiled warmly, an expression which Leila attempted to return but only managed a weak sort of grimace.

"Hi! Are you here to pick up a prescription?" the woman asked brightly. Leila glanced down at her name tag briefly. 'Amber'.

"No, I um-" she paused, once again casting an anxious glance behind her. No one. She lowered her voice anyway. "I'm looking for the...'Plan-B pill'?"

Leila was not sure whether she was simply being paranoid or if a fleeting expression of judgment and pity had actually passed over the pharmacist's face. Either way, Amber seemed to force a friendly, casual grin to her glossy lips and she pointed over Leila's shoulder toward the aisles.

"All emergency contraceptives are 'over the counter' now. You can find the Plan-B boxes in the feminine hygiene aisle," she explained.

Leila felt her cheeks warming as she nodded, suddenly unable to make eye contact with the woman. "Okay, thanks..." she replied, turning on her heel to walk away, gritting her teeth. Just another layer of embarrassment added to her already heaping pile of guilt. If only she had thought to look first.

As Amber had directed, the emergency contraceptives were indeed in the feminine hygiene aisle, not without irony, between the condoms and pregnancy tests. Leila grabbed one of the Plan-B boxes and moved on hastily toward the register at the front of the store. While the woman rang her up, a brief moment of panic seized her, forming the concern of whether she ought to go to the hospital, or even call her father, to see if he could arrange a highly confidential and 'off-the-record' pelvic exam. However, upon thinking the idea through, she decided strongly against it, knowing it would do her absolutely no good to get her family involved. It went without saying that Edward Hawkin would demand to know who had done such a thing to his daughter and would undoubtedly get the police involved, throwing Leila headlong into a greater mess than what she had started with. No, this event had to stay private.

Her apartment somehow held a different vibe as she stepped inside. It seemed less welcoming, she felt a certain bitterness toward it, as if it had failed in its duty of protecting her. True, the Joker had been in possession of a copy of her key for a while by then, but the confines of her home now felt even less secure. An increasingly paranoid part of her wondered if he had installed cameras at some point, if he was watching her at that exact moment, snickering to himself as he watched her attempt to open the Plan-B box with trembling fingers. Shaking her head, she pushed this idea away. He did not need to see her to know what sort of effect he was having on her private life.

Leila had never before taken an emergency contraceptive, had never needed to take one, so after opening the box and emptying the contents onto the counter, she picked up the instruction and drug information booklet. She absorbed every word. She could not afford to misunderstand the directions. The side effects included the usual 'nausea, fatigue, headache, vomiting', but she did not pay this much mind. A little upset stomach seemed hardly unmanageable after the turmoil she had experienced that morning.

The instructions told her that one of the two small pills should be taken immediately, within at least seventy-two hours after unprotected sex. The words 'unprotected' and 'sex' leaped off of the page, causing her stomach to give an uneasy lurch. She closed her eyes, shaking her head as she turned to the cabinets for a glass. It still seemed so surreal, so horrifyingly outlandish that she had actually allowed herself to be stripped naked and taken advantage of by the same man who had very recently suffocated a man to death in her bathroom, the terrorist who, only a month prior, had taken more lives in a shorter period of time than any other criminal in Gotham's history. Leila filled the glass with water from the sink and immediately tossed the round, white pill into her mouth. One small pill to rectify the effects of another. The information booklet told her that she would need to take the second pill twelve hours after the first. Glancing at her watch, Leila deduced that the time would be around midnight when she needed to do this, but it did not matter to her in the slightest. She would likely still be awake, wandering through her apartment or else listlessly pretending to watch television.

After setting an alarm on her phone, though she doubted she would need a reminder, she marched determinedly into her bedroom, grasping the corner of her bedsheets and dragging them away from the mattress. If she could not force herself to forget the entire experience, she could at least attempt to wipe, scrub and disinfect every ounce of evidence from her apartment. The Joker had laid on his back on her bed, gripping her hips and hair, watching her grind atop him, smirking and growling in pleasure. The effects of what Leila could only assume was Ecstasy had completely worn off, making her memory of the night clear and in sharp focus, like a perfectly adjusted camera lens.

With both the fitted and top sheet, plus all four pillowcases stuffed into the washing machine with a more than adequate amount of soap, Leila turned her furious cleaning spree to the bathroom. It made her feel sick just to walk in, but then again, that may have simply been an effect from the contraceptive pill. She had not stood still long enough to determine if she was experiencing any real side effects.

Sweat began to bead along her frizzy hairline as she scrubbed bleach into the thin lines of grout between the tiles, her knuckles white with the pressure she was applying to the brush. The small blood stain in the corner had been washed away by her shower earlier, but Leila did not take that to mean that it was gone. Leaning over the tub, she gritted her teeth, using every bristle on the brush to reach as far into the corner as possible. Vaguely, she managed to wonder what had been done with Max's body, where the Joker's thugs had laid him to rest. The thought of that young man lying in a ditch somewhere, dead, bled out from the holes in his side and choked to death filled Leila with an overwhelming sense of mingled anger and sadness. No one deserved to be disposed of like that.

Every square inch of her shower and tub was coated in a foamy, frothy layer of bleach and soap but she did not rinse it. Figuring that she should allow the chemicals some time to work away at any remnants of blood or DNA, she closed the bathroom door behind her and instead stood next to her bed, staring around at her bedroom, looking for something else she could clean. Staying busy was helping keep her mind away from what had happened, but Leila was no stranger to that concept. Sooner or later, she would have to sit still, allow her mind to wander freely, dissect every movement, every breath in her ear, every touch of his hands on her body. She could not fight the memory forever.

With a heavy sigh, she trudged toward her couch in the living room, not bothering to brace her fall as she collapsed onto it, rolled over on her side with her face pressed against the back cushions. Her hair was still damp from her shower but she didn't care. There was nothing she could do about it at that point, exactly like her situation with the Joker. Earlier, she had briefly entertained the idea of going to the police, even gone so far as to begin mentally rehearsing what she would say to the Chief of Detectives and the officers assigned to her case. But once she had thought it through, that same, tired, repetitive argument floated back to the surface. She needed the money. Her parents needed what little safety they could get while she was employed by the Joker. Going to the police was just too risky, for everyone she cared about.

But for the life of her, Leila could not let this occurrence slide. She could not just lay there on her couch, sink away into nothingness and depression and let the Joker win. She could not just roll over and admit that he had conquered her, owned her, taken something so precious from her. It made her sick with rage, the thought of him holed up in his shitty garage or some other dump outside the city, gloating, grinning to himself at the memory of her moaning to him in the darkness. What could she do? She couldn't call him from her small, black phone. She had been specifically ordered not to. But she also could not simply wait around for him to show up, on pins and needles for what could have been weeks before she saw him again. No, she needed to confront him. Head on. Face to face. If he killed her for it...well, Leila just hoped she could take a piece of him out with her. Full of determination, she got up, snatched up her keys, gave Murphy a hurried pat on the back, and rushed through the door. He would not know she was coming, hopefully giving her a small advantage.

The sun was low in the sky, casting orange and pink rays of light against the buildings as her car passed between them. Her heart was pounding a furious rhythm against the inside of her sternum, as though it were attempting to beat its way out of her chest. Her mind whirred with possible scenarios for what she was about to encounter at the garage, perhaps he was going to be angry or surprised, more probable, he would laugh in her face for coming all that way just to confront him. Would he find the whole event as catastrophic and important as she did? Leila laughed out loud as that question floated through her mind. Of course he wouldn't. To him, she was just another poor, defenseless soul he had mutilated, another person he had destroyed through careful manipulation.

As her car mounted the bridge leading into the Narrows, her insides seemed to both disappear and fill with bile all at the same time. It was not a normal sensation of nausea but one of paralyzing dread and fear. What could she possibly say to him? What purpose could going to find him serve? It was not as though he would apologize to her, offer to never see her again, or any of the other favorable outcomes she could dream of. No, the only thing she could leave that garage with, if she did leave that garage, was more pain.

The moment her tires had touched down onto flat asphalt, she spun the steering wheel, hooking a sharp right in the opposite direction of Riverside Auto Shop, before taking yet another right turn, onto a steep, dirt side street; the same sketchy little road that led to the area beneath the bridge. It was exactly as it had been the night she had come to meet the man with her phone and new medical kit, the night she had officially signed her life and well-being away to the man she now hated more than she thought was possible. Huffing in an attempt to hold back her tears, Leila climbed out of her car, wrapping her arms around her middle as she trudged toward the murky water's edge.

Everything was her fault. She wanted desperately to blame the Joker, but how could she? He had only done what he knew to do best- manipulate. And Leila had allowed herself to fall victim to it, knowing full well that this man was notorious for exploiting the weaknesses in people. Clutching her ribs, Leila doubled, sobbing quietly as those tears began sliding down along her cheeks, landing in the sparse blades of grass that managed to exist next to the filthy water. How could she have been so stupid?! If she had only obeyed her instincts and run from the apartment after Max's death, everything would be fine. She wouldn't be standing under a derelict bridge in a shady part of town, feeling sick and tired from a pill that would prevent her from becoming pregnant with the Joker's baby. The thought of this caused her to let out a groan of misery as she knelt down to her knees, balancing on her heels.

A sudden noise caused her to jump, a hated, loathsome voice from a short distance behind her.

"Ya know..." Cold chills crawled along her skin. The hair on the back of her neck rose. "...if you're gonna jump, you should probably be on top of the bridge...Not under it." A cruel snicker followed his words as Leila struggled to stand up, sniffing hard and wiping her cheeks hastily before she turned.

Her biting response to the Joker's mocking caught in her throat, trapped there by surprise as she took in the sight of him. For whatever reason, he had replaced his purple pinstriped pants with plain black slacks, opting for a white shirt against the blue patterned one he normally wore. The scuffed brown shoes had been replaced by shining black, only slightly dusty from the walk down the dirt road toward her. Leila cleared her throat, finding it unfair and disgusting how she could not stand to look at him, regardless of the fact that he was not wearing his usual greasepaint mask. The stringy green hair was pulled back away from his bare face, held in place by a simple black fedora, pulled low over his eyes. The scarred corner of his lips twitched upward as he smirked, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning back against the grimy concrete underside of the bridge. Leila cleared her throat, shaking her head.

"How did you know I was-" she began to ask, but suddenly realized that she didn't care. She had pulled off to the side of the road to avoid going through with her plan of confronting him and yet there he was. He had sought her out, just to rub her face in her mess. The urge to attack him was greater than it had ever been. Mustering every ounce of strength she contained to resist this temptation, she waved a hand, turning her back on him. "Nevermind, it doesn't-"

"How did I know you were here?" he asked from behind her. Leila clutched the edges of her t-shirt tightly as the sound of his shoes crunching loose gravel grew closer. "You don't really think I'd give you a phone without a GPS locator in it, do you?"

Leila was not sure what it was. Perhaps, it had been the mocking tone of his voice, or the fact that the last time she had heard him speak was the previous night when he had been touching her so gently, or just hearing that he controlled yet another part of her life with that phone. But the next thing she knew, she was sobbing into her hands, her shoulders heaving as the warm shadow closed in on her. He gave a soft 'tsk' with his tongue against his teeth, rounding her left side and leaning down.

"Oh, don't cry..." he crooned, his voice laced with cynical, derisive laughter. His rough, heavy hand rested gently on her shoulder but Leila tore herself away from him, letting out a shriek of rage as she glared daggers at him from behind hateful, watery eyes.

"You took advantage of me last night," she spat, her words seemingly laced with venom. Across from her, a horrible, evil grin began to spread its way across Joker's face, his eyebrows arching sharply atop his narrowed eyes. She continued, forcing herself to get it all out. "You gave me some kind of Ecstasy, then...then you-" she paused, taking a deep breath, then used the one word she swore she would never utter aloud. "-you raped me!"

The Joker tossed his head back, barking a laugh at the bridge overhead. "Oh, you...you..." he growled, taking a step toward her, unfolding his arms to wag one finger in her direction. "It's not 'rape' if you were willing and trust me..." he paused to grumble a low chuckle. "-you were more than willing."

Leila let out another sob, shaking her head defiantly as he closed in on her. "You gave me a pill," she whimpered, deflating under the leering, murderous look in his eyes. "I didn't want...I didn't want it-"

Again, Joker laughed, lowering his head to peer down at her from just beneath the brim of his black hat. His eyebrows bounced twice as he licked his lips, allowing his gaze to drop quickly down over her figure and back up again. "I have scratch marks all over my chest that say otherwise." She froze, unable to stop her eyes from drifting to the front of his white shirt, as if trying to see through it to the marks on his skin. He continued, smirking devilishly. "So let's not make this into a whole...thing. You enjoyed yourself last night and that's what you can't handle." At this, Joker paused, before nodding his head in the direction of her car. "Now, scram. You shouldn't be out here alone, at night. 'S dangerous, ya know..."

At these words, Leila was seized by an insane desire to laugh, and she did; one short burst of a laugh. Summoning as much courage as she felt she could muster, she took a bold step toward him. "After what you've done to me, I think it's safe to say I'm not afraid of anything anymore."

With that, she turned her back on him and walked away, starting her car and leaving the devil, grinning, under the bridge.

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A/N: You guys were SO AMAZING about leaving reviews for the last chapter! I received more on the last chapter than any other chapter I've ever posted, for any of my stories. I cannot thank you enough! To clarify, the previous chapter was NOT a dream, in case I didn't make that clear enough in this chapter ; ] Also, you guys seriously need to add me on facebook, because those who are friends with me over there were treated to a sneak peek of the first three pages of this chapter long before I finished the final edit and posting. So if you have a facebook account, please add me! Search for Haven Queenofmean Hunter and there I'll be! Just please be sure to include the password 'TFR', so I know you're someone from this site. Also, I have recently deleted my Tumblr account, so if you were a follower of mine, that is why you can't find my page anymore. It was just too confusing and I never really used it!

Again, thank you so much for reading and being so amazing about reviews! I couldn't do it without you! 3 -QoM

P.S. The song for this chapter is Warm Shadow by Fink, hence the chapter title.