The seventh floor hallway of the exquisite, Branbury condominium building was filled with the most alluring, savory scent, hitting Leila's nostrils the moment she stepped out of the elevator. She inhaled deeply, inflating her lungs to capacity with the delicious fumes as she turned to the right, walking down the hall toward the door bearing a small gold plate, engraved with the numbers 712. Just from the smell, she knew exactly what her mother was cooking; baked ziti. Her favorite. Leila fought the urge to roll her eyes as she stopped in front of her parents' flawlessly white door.

She had been putting them off; Leila could not deny that. For days after the incident involving the Joker and her bed, she had declined to answer the calls and text messages that barraged her phone from her parents, knowing her mental and emotional state was nowhere near stable enough to hold a decent, wholeheartedly involved conversation with them. But after a week of absolutely no contact, when her mother had called and left a voice mail, begging her to come to dinner, 'or at least call me back so I know you're alive!', Leila felt she had no choice but to give in.

In all honesty, she did feel better. Work with Matt and Jay had been better, her mood swings were now all but nonexistent and she had not heard so much as a single beep from the cell phone connected to her other job. So after carefully assessing whether she could tolerate a few hours in the presence of her loving, caring parents, she called back, accepting the offer and informing her mother on which nights she would be available. Her mother had been so ecstatic, it was almost as if Leila had informed her she had been made president of the United States.

"Oh my God, I'm SO glad to hear that! I'll call and tell your dad right now, he won't believe it. Oh, what am I going to make?! Oh! I know! It's a surprise, you'll just have to wait and see!" Cindy had rattled off in a single breath, all while Leila rolled her eyes and flopped backward onto her couch.

Almost the exact moment her knuckles made contact with the white wood, the door swung open, revealing her blonde, petite mother, beaming from ear to ear and wearing a sage green apron. She flung her arms wide, inviting Leila into the condo and embracing her in a hug that nearly lifted her tall daughter off the floor.

"I'm so glad you could make it, sweetie. It's been forever! We were so worried, weren't we, honey?" Cindy raised her voice toward the end of her question, closing the door behind her, though Leila's father was already walking into the entrance hall, smiling warmly as he set his copy of American Medical Journal down on the breakfast bar. He held out his large, warm hands to her and Leila returned his smile genuinely, placing her palms in his and leaning up to accept a kiss on her cheek.

"We were indeed, dear," he answered his wife and giving Leila a very pointed look from behind his reading glasses.

Fortunately, the ziti had been pulled from the oven mere moments before her arrival, so while Cindy poured Leila a glass of chilled white wine from a freshly opened bottle, she sat down at the glass dining table, across from her father. Edward removed his glasses, placing them carefully in the pocket of his crisp, light blue shirt before grinning at his daughter, linking his large fingers together in front of him atop the table. Leila decided to beat him to the punch and ask a question before he could inquire as to why she had been so distant lately.

She took a sip from the wine glass Cindy had set in front of her and arranged an inquisitive expression on her face. "So has there been any talk of when they'll start to rebuild Gotham General? The fund raiser had to have generated some sort of revenue." Internally, she felt her stomach clench in annoyance. Why did her parents' presence always turn her into such a posh little dot, employing a tone of voice and words she normally would not have used?

Across the table from her, Edward inhaled deeply, his eyebrows raising as he nodded. "Yes, there has been talk but I'm afraid that prospect is still a ways down the road," he answered, watching his wife place the casserole dish of baked ziti onto a small mat in the middle of the glass-top table. "From what I hear, they've barely made a dent in the clearing of the debris. I even heard a rumor that a woman found a charred thermometer stuck straight up in her flowerpot over a mile away from ground zero."

While Cindy scoffed and rolled her eyes, Leila laughed, taking another sip of her wine. Maybe this was exactly what she had needed all along; to spend time with the two people who loved her most in the entire world. The two main reasons she had not quit her dangerous, consistently life-threatening job yet...

As per the usual, the ziti was perfection, delicious in every way and filling to the point where Leila could not even finish her second helping. Next to her, Cindy let out a little giggle as she watched her daughter set down her fork with a heavy sigh of contentment.

"I had a feeling you'd like that," she said, winking from behind the rim of her wine glass. Leila grinned guiltily. "My ziti was always your favorite."

Placing her hands over her stomach atop her blue blouse, Leila nodded slowly, glancing down at her plate. "You were right," she answered. "I smelled it the second I got off the elevator." Edward and Cindy both gave quiet laughs while their daughter smiled.

Then that moment descended. That itchy moment of silence where no one knows what more to say and all are privately scrambling for some topic of conversation to ease the hanging awkwardness. Being that Leila was so full and consequentially drowsy, her mind could not seem to function at normal capacity, so that gap was left wide open to her mother, to fill it with the question she had most been dreading.

"So where have you been these last two weeks?" she asked with every ounce of inquisitiveness she contained, even going so far as to turn her entire body toward Leila's end of the table. Her thin eyebrows rose in anticipation while Leila shifted uncomfortably on her chair. "We both tried calling and texting but we never got any replies! Has everything been okay?"

She nodded immediately, furrowing her forehead slightly as she twirled the stem of her empty wine glass. "Oh yeah, everything has been fine," she lied, keeping her eyes trained on her mother, yet feeling her father's heavy stare on the side of her face. "Work's just been keeping me busy and when I'm home or off, I'm either sleeping, cleaning the apartment or running errands." Shaking her head and frowning at her plate, she continued. "I'm sorry, I've just been lazy about returning calls. I won't let it go that long again."

"How has work been?" Edward asked from the opposite end of the long table. Leila felt her filled stomach plummet to her knees. "The hours aren't too demanding?"

Her immediate reply was 'no', but in order to preserve the lie she had just uttered, she shrugged. "Well, a ten or eleven hour shift is hard on anyone," she answered. "Going in at one or two and not getting out sometimes until midnight or later...I mean, yeah, it's a demanding job but-"

"But you're still enjoying it, right?" Cindy chimed in, her expression earnest as she glanced from her daughter to her husband and back again. "The work, I mean. You still like it?"

Leila nodded. "Yeah, I really love the job, it's just-"

"Because, going back to school is still an option, you know," her mother interrupted. Leila suddenly felt sick. She knew where this was going. "I mean if-"

"Cindy..." Edward's deep voice bore a hint of warning as he placed his cloth napkin on the table beside his plate. "We've talked about this."

"Dad-" Leila tried to cut in, but her parents were already headlong into the discussion. It was like a freight train; there was no stopping it now. Her skin crawled with oncoming annoyance.

Cindy tossed her hands slightly as she turned on her chair to face her husband. "Well, it's been almost two years since that! Leila might have changed her mind-"

"Leila did not complete medical school, and now, she is paying the consequences of one who does not do so," Edward explained, in a very paced, calm sort of way, one that clearly displayed that they had had this discussion multiple times in the past. Leila could feel that dusty, flickering flame of anger ignite within her. It was only a matter of time before one of them threw gasoline on it. "As a licensed physician, she could be running her own practice, working normal hours and making three times the amount she is now," Leila gripped her napkin, her eyes narrowing as she watched her father pointedly avoid making eye contact with her, speaking directly to her mother as though she were not even present. "But Leila chose not to complete her education, so until-"

"WOW," Leila suddenly interrupted, her voice raised, that flame inside her erupting into an inferno. "I guess the past two years have somehow altered your memory, Dad," she snapped. "I guess you forgot how hard I was struggling in school. I guess you forgot-"

"Oh, Leila, please..." Edward stopped her, holding up one of his hands. "We've had this talk before. My memory is not altered. I remember you giving up on school, not because you couldn't handle the course work or the long hours but because you simply got bored of it. You didn't want it badly enough."

"Didn't want it-...got bored-" Leila repeated his words in huffy, rushed bursts, unsure of where to even begin rebutting his statements, her eyebrows furrowed, shaking her head in disbelief. "You know what?" she finally gave up, tossing her napkin onto her plate as she rose abruptly from her chair. "You're right. We have had this talk before and I don't really feel like listening to another round of insults and condescension. So if you'll excuse me-" With that, she walked away from the table, toward the breakfast bar where her keys and cell phone lay; her hand strayed to the side of her breast, double checking that her other phone was still tucked into her bra.

Cindy was right on her heels, hurtling apologies and pleas for her not to leave just as fast as they could leave her mouth. "We're sorry!" she exclaimed, trotting slightly in an effort to keep up as she followed her daughter to the door. "Please don't go, Leila, we won't mention it again. It was my fault, I shouldn't have brought it-"

Slam.

The entire drive home, Leila's heart pounded with anger inside her chest, her phone vibrating wildly in her back pocket, likely with calls from her mother, full of apologies that she did not want to hear. That same scenario had played out many times before, but in the past, Leila had contained the patience and calmness to wait it out, have a rational discussion with her parents, explaining her side of the story as to why she did not finish school. But something had switched within her that night, some sort of trigger had been pulled, releasing a flood of impatience and something that felt remarkably like arrogance, launching her out of her seat and through the door. She had never been one to storm out on her parents, even as a teenager, but she knew if she had stayed, she would have ended up shouting, screaming at the two people who loved her unconditionally. She did not feel they deserved that, no matter how unfair the two of them had been.

By the time she pulled into her garage, her blood pressure had seemed to stabilize, her heart rate slowed and as she parked in an empty space near the stairs, she sighed, closing her eyes, resting her head against the seat behind her. Her phone had stopped buzzing, finally. Leila knew she would have to call the next day, apologize for the way she left, the way she had spoken to her father, even if she did not feel entirely sorry. Edward Hawkin was a man who demanded respect and Leila had always felt that for him. With another heavy sigh, she opened her eyes and sat up, turning off her car and taking the keys out of the ignition. She would call them in the morning. Right then, all she wanted was to go upstairs and collapse on her bed.

Faintly, as Leila got out of her car, the sound of an engine starting elsewhere in the garage caught her attention. Glancing down the row of parked vehicles, she noticed a pair of red tail lights glowing and something in the very lowest part of her gut churned. Her fingers fumbled with her keys as she hurried to lock her car, unsure why that familiar feeling of panic was welling up within her so quickly. As her key slid into the door, she chanced another quick glance up, only to see that a large, black van had pulled out of the parking space and was now turning in her direction. Through the windshield, she could see two men, one in the driver's seat and one in the passenger's. Her panic ebbed slightly, her breath releasing through her lips slowly. At least it wasn't the Joker...

However, as she turned toward the stairs, the high pitched whine of improperly oiled car brakes behind her caused her to freeze, clutching her keys and phone tightly, the hair on the back of her neck rising. Then, the mechanical sound of a window being rolled down...

"Ay, Doc,"

The voice was not one she had heard before, and for a brief moment, Leila considered not turning around, instead launching herself into a sprint toward the stairs. Only one person and his goons called her 'Doc'. Panicked, Leila wondered if she had perhaps somehow missed a call on her second cell phone. But how could she have done? It had been in her bra all day, the ringer on the loudest setting. There was no way she could have-

"C'mon, Doc," the voice came again from behind her, this time flat and bearing a heavy note of impatience. "You won't make it very far up those stairs and I really don't feel like chasin' ya."

Gritting her teeth, Leila slowly turned, her eyes falling onto the black, solid paneled van and the greasy, bearded man leaning out of the passenger window, his hairy arm rested on the edge, a cigarette dangling between two of his chubby fingers.

Tossing her hands slightly, she shrugged in false nonchalance. "What?" she asked, hoping to portray the image that she was not as absolutely terrified as she felt.

The man nodded his head toward her car, then used his cigarette to motion to the sliding back door of the van directly behind him. "Get your kit and get in."

Leila hesitated, her eyes shifting to the trunk of her car, where her medical kit for the Joker remained at all times. "Where are you taking me?" she asked, forcing every ounce of strength into her voice as she could muster. "Is he-"

"Girl, just do what I say and get in the van before I have to get out and make ya, 'kay?"

Leila blinked. There was no option for her. The strange man had been right; she would not make it very far up the stairs and he looked as though he had at least one hundred pounds advantage over her. She would be tossed over his shoulder and thrown into the van like a rag doll, thus risking injury. If she was going anywhere with these people, she would at least like to do so by her own choice.

With trembling hands, Leila selected her car key from the ring and unlocked her trunk, the hinges groaning loudly in the echoing garage as the top swung upward. Her kit was right where she had left it and she wasted no time in grabbing the handles, hoisting it carefully from its place beside her spare tire. Her mind was spinning, whirring with possible motives for this visit to her home, why they were asking her to get into a dark, dingy van with them. Where was the Joker? Why hadn't he called? Was he dead? Or was he so perhaps so gravely injured that he could not manage a phone call?

As Leila closed her trunk and heard it latch, another startling thought occurred to her. What if the Joker was dead and this was his way of tying up loose ends? Had his last dying instructions been to dispose of his medic and any evidence of her link to him? Was that why they had asked her to bring her kit? Was she about to be killed and her medical kit destroyed? Leila felt her mother's carefully and lovingly cooked meal churn in her stomach as she placed her hand on the cold door handle of the van. She hadn't even said goodbye to her parents...She had stormed out of their house without so much as a look back at them...

The moment the door slid open, Leila's eyes fell onto a long leg, hanging from a back bench seat, the familiar pinstriped purple material faded and dusty. A truly bizarre mix of relief and fear spread through her as she climbed into the van, her nose suddenly full of the stench of gasoline and body odor. Apparently, he had not been using the soap she bought him.

The van moved forward with a lurch as soon as the door had slid closed behind her, thrusting her into darkness and causing Leila to hastily grab hold of an old seat belt to keep from toppling over sideways, her eyes straining to see in the fresh blackness. The Joker was indeed there, stretched out, draped along the bench seat. His white face and black, fathomless eyes were all she could see thus far. A deep, wet-sounding cough came from his chest before he spoke.

"A pleasure to see you, as always, Doc."

Leila felt her forehead contract into a frown. His voice sounded different, so completely opposite from what it normally was that, for a moment, she wondered if it were actually the Joker laying there and not some imposter. Her eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dark.

"You couldn't call me?" she asked, inching toward the bench seat, her knees protesting painfully against the metal floor of the van. As they passed under a streetlight, Leila was granted a momentary glimpse of the Joker's face and body; it was him, but he looked weak and slightly diminished. Another rattling cough escaped him, which he did not bother to stifle with his hand. She grimaced, fanning her own hand in front of her face to disperse the airborne germs. "What's wrong with you?" she asked rather bitingly.

"Well, if I knew that-" he paused to cough again, a small hint of clowniness returning to his abnormally deep and raspy voice. "-I wouldn't have dragged myself all the way here to you, would I?"

Leila gritted her teeth, pulling her stethoscope from her kit and moving closer to him, using one hand to steady herself against the seat while the other placed the listening pieces of the scope into her ears. "Take a deep breath," she instructed him, wincing internally as her bare fingers brushed against the small patch of hair in the middle of his chest. His skin was warm, heat radiating from him like a furnace; a fever.

Joker obeyed, his broad chest expanding and Leila frowned as she listened to what sounded like small pebbles rattling around inside his lungs. Moving the pad of the stethoscope a few inches to the left, she said "And one more."

Again, he consented, inhaling deeply. The same sound came to Leila's ears through the scope, that same rattling, wheezing, muffled noise. She sighed, removing the stethoscope from her ears and placing it around the back of her neck.

"What other symptoms do you have besides the cough?" she asked, watching his face now as he seemed to wince, swallowing hard and using his arms to prop himself up a bit further. Leila used the moment to reach for her kit and begin digging around blindly inside it for a thermometer and throat scope.

"My throat hurts like it's lined with sandpaper or somethin'," he grunted, using two fingers to massage the front of his neck indicatively. "Tired...cold..." There was a pause before he continued. "Call me paranoid but I think I might'a been poisoned."

I wish...

Leila nodded, choosing to temporarily ignore his last words and instead, glancing over her shoulder at the driver of the van. "Could you try to keep it steady for a second while I do this?" she asked him, surprising herself with the level of calm professionalism in her voice, despite how irritated and angry she felt in the presence of the sick man laying before her. Turning back to the Joker, she nodded at him. "Open your mouth and tilt your head back."

Using her thumb to turn on the light on the scope, Leila leaned forward over him, doing everything in her power to keep any part of her body from touching him. The last thing she needed was Joker thinking she was trying to cop a feel in the back of this disgusting van. A low hum came from his throat as he obeyed her instructions, causing her skin to crawl in hatred. If his hand moved, even just a little, and he touched her, she would shove the scope down his throat and watch him choke on it. Talk about a sore throat...she thought in morbid delight.

The Joker's throat was as she had expected it to be; raw, red and inflamed, looking quite painful, she had to admit. His tonsils were at a normal size however, so she turned the scope off and leaned back, stowing it back into her kit and removing the thermometer from the sterile plastic wrapping. She could feel Joker's black eyes watching her every move, though he remained silent. Leila felt it was a mark of how bad he really felt that he was not making any rude or snide comments, as she was absolutely positive he was tempted to ask whether this was a rectal thermometer. She could practically hear the joke whirling around inside his brain. Part of her wanted to take pleasure in his misery but the other, smaller part of her knew how he felt and sympathized...but she really did like seeing him in pain.

"Ok, put this under your tongue and hold it there until it beeps," she told him, extending the thermometer toward him, fully expecting him to take it from her. However, when he simply opened his mouth and lifted his tongue, her eyebrows relaxed in annoyance. Using more force than was absolutely necessary, she thrust the thermometer into his mouth and used her knuckles under his chin to shut it again. His red, scarred lips twitched with a crooked grin as he watched her glare at him from behind half-lidded, makeup-creased eyes.

While she waited with growing impatience for the device to beep, she removed her stethoscope from around her neck and replaced it in her kit. "Any nausea or vomiting?" she asked, although she felt she could already guess his answer with fair accuracy; she only needed something to break the awkward, heavy silence. He shook his head, indicating no. Leila nodded, reaching toward his face when the thermometer finally gave the signal that it was done reading his temperature. Upon pulling the plastic device from his mouth, however, she felt a surge of fresh irritation flood her when he held onto it tightly with his teeth, teasing her playfully as he prevented her from taking it. Anger flared inside her and before she could stop herself, her other hand was at his face, her bare thumb digging against his cheek, wedging her finger between his back teeth, thus forcing his mouth open. He grunted, releasing the thermometer, and scowling at the side of her face as she read the numbers on the small, digital screen.

101.2

Clearing his throat with another grimace and slumping back against the seat, the Joker crossed his hands over his stomach, watching Leila as she turned off the thermometer and put it back into the kit.

"So what's the diagnosis, Doc?" he asked, his voice raspy and baritone. Leila sighed.

"Well, I have good news and bad news," she answered, shifting uncomfortably on her knees as she finally looked up at him. The black rings around his eyes stretched as he raised his eyebrows in anticipation. "The good news is that you just have a cold, maybe a touch of the flu."

The Joker's expression flattened with startling rapidity. He gave a short cough before speaking. "How is that not the bad-"

"The bad news-" Leila interrupted. "-is that you haven't been poisoned and that you're going to live."

A heavy moment of silence descended through the van. Leila could even hear the man in the passenger seat turn to look back over his shoulder, clearly surprised by the boldness of her words. A flood of dread passed through her body as the moment of silence dragged on. Defiantly, Leila stared directly into his eyes, unwilling to show weakness or remorse for her words by looking away.

"And how is that bad news exactly?" he asked after what seemed like a decade, his deep voice coating her in sharp, prickling goosebumps as it crawled from his mouth like venom.

Leila swallowed hard on the anxious lump in her throat before replying with as much daring as she could manage. "I never said it was bad news for you."

Another moment of silence, before he spoke again. "And what makes you so certain that I haven't been poisoned? Ricin, for instance-"

"Look," Leila began with a sigh, hanging her head impatiently. "If you had been poisoned with ricin, your symptoms would be ten times worse. You would be vomiting, your fever would be higher, you'd have had multiple seizures, and you likely would have been dead by now." She paused, her gaze bouncing back and forth between his black, abysmal eyes. "As disappointed as I am to say it, you have not been poisoned."

For just a moment, she feared that her life had just been ended by those words, that any moment he was going to lunge toward her, wrap his dirty hands around her throat and throttle her to death right there on the floor of the van despite how bad he felt, just as he had done with Max two weeks prior. But when he opened his mouth and began to laugh, a low, raspy, crackling laugh, she felt a drop of relief flow through her. Silently, expressionlessly, she watched him clutch his ribs and rock slightly on the bench seat, hating every fiber of his being.

All this time, as she had been speaking and while he laughed, Leila's hand had moved slowly into the pocket of her kit, her fingers wrapping around the narrow barrel of a syringe and gripping it tightly. If ever she was to make a threat against the Joker's life, it had to be then, when he was weak, when she was feeling stronger than she'd felt in weeks, when her hatred for this man was at a high peak. His laughter was subsiding into a fit of coughing and the cap of the syringe slid away from the needle.

"You know..." she began, leaning forward on her knees and resting her elbow on his shoulder, applying just enough to pressure to both steady herself and keep him in his current position. Her hand came away from the pocket of the kit, bearing the syringe. She held it up in front of his face, watching his eyes narrow, focus on the tip of the impossibly sharp point. He licked his lips slowly. Her skin crawled but she held her ground.

"All this time, you've warned me about how easily you could kill me and everyone I care about..." She paused, using her thumb to pull back on the plunger of the syringe, drawing air into the chamber. "I wonder if it's ever crossed your mind just how easily I could kill you...?" Her heart was pounding as Joker's glossy gaze moved slowly from the needle to her face, where he stared deep into her eyes. She did not look away from him. He needed to understand. "One wrong dose..." she continued, shaking her head slowly. "...One tiny air bubble into your blood stream and you would be dead in seconds...both of which are nearly undetectable during autopsy." Her voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned even closer to him, their faces mere inches from each other. Power and control such that she had never felt was coursing through her like electricity. "It would be so easy..." she hissed.

Slowly, his glimmering eyes slid from locked with hers, down to her lips and back up again, before he licked his own, his tongue moistening the cracked crevices and faded red makeup. He suddenly moved toward her the slightest bit, his shoulders lurching up off the bench seat. Leila did not flinch nor even move a muscle, but instead stayed perfectly still, holding the syringe and ready to plunge it into his neck if necessary. Beneath her, the wheels of the van come to a stop.

"I guess all I can say is..." he paused, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. "-better not miss."

Wrenching her hand away from his grip, Leila hastily shoved the syringe back into her kit and climbed out of the van, not caring where they had stopped, but surprised upon opening the door to find herself looking at the back of her own car. The van door slid closed again behind her, but before it could pull away, she turned back to the passenger window where the bearded man was smoking another cigarette. She glanced over at the driver and back again.

"Might want to stop by a drug store and get him some Nyquil or Ibuprofen to take his fever down. If he's not better in a few days, call me." she said the last two words with a slightly raised voice, making sure the Joker in the back seat could hear her. She then took a step back, away from the vehicle, in preparation for it to take off into the night. However, almost the moment the wheels began to roll forward, a familiar voice called out from elsewhere in the garage, only a few feet away.

"Leila?"

She turned quickly toward the source of the sound, feeling the warm exhaust from the van against her leg as it pulled away with a squeal of rubber against concrete. Her stomach dropped and that flurry of panic rushed through her once again.

It was Matt. His expression was unreadable.

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A/N: Another long wait, I'm sorry. I won't make excuses but life has been crazy lately. I'm sure you all understand how that goes... ANYWAYS, I know this was a short chapter, but if I had continued on, it would have grown to be wayyyyyy too long and it felt better to split it up. But have no fear, the next chapter is already underway and coming along at a steady click so it should be up much sooner than this one was. For those interested, the song for this chapter is The Undertaker by Puscifer. And for those also interested, I've created a Tumblr for personal use and for occasional updates on the story. Feel free to follow me (I follow back, just be sure to send me an 'ask' saying that you're a reader :) : eloquentlunatic . Tumblr . Com

Thanks to those who are continuing to read and follow this story! Your support, as always, is so helpful and I love getting your reviews and follows and adds, etc. Feel free to drop me a line at my email or on facebook (Haven Queenofmean Hunter) or on Tumblr. The next few chapters are gonna be craaaaaazyyyyyyyy so prepare yourselves. ; ] Until next time, lovies. -QoM