Oooh chapter six! I hope you like it. More Joker very, very soon, I promise.

Review please!

"Jess… Hey… Jess… Wake up, please…"

On some level, she knew she was dreaming. But it scarcely mattered to her at the time; Jess couldn't remember a time when she'd been more comfortable and content. She was in a quiet place where a light breeze blew across her face to cool and refresh her. She was wrapped in smooth, draping silk which kept her pleasantly warm.

"The kid can sleep…"

Everything was soft white and translucent. She sat there happily, thinking of nothing but how comfortable she was.

"What the hell's taking so…"

Suddenly, too suddenly to really register, a shadow fell over the place and the atmosphere changed drastically. The light breeze turned into a gusting gale. The whiteness turned dark. The soft silk pricked into her skin. She was cold. Dreadfully cold. And scared. And alone.

"Transition's been hard…"

"Can't blame her for…"

"Just tell me when she…"

Then the laughing started. It filled her head, echoed in her brain; behind her eyes, across her forehead. It was tangible, but unpleasantly so. She could taste and smell it. She could feel it. And the force behind it was the one she dreaded meeting.

"Never seen one go so long…"

"What'd they do? Knock her…"

Smiles and laughing faces rushed at her from the darkness, cruel and malicious. Evil, even. They came, faster and faster, until they blended into one huge white blur, which grew its own monstrous grin. Jess felt that she was going to die looking at it.

"This is getting bad…"

"Maybe she's, like, in a…"

"Is this all stress induced or is…"

"Like I said! Transitions like this are harder on…"

The huge smiling mouth stretched wider and wider until it could literally engulf her, then raced at her. Jessica threw her head back and screamed…

And woke up.

Jess sat up suddenly, straight into the arms of the man sitting beside the cot on which she'd been laid, fully clothed, drenched in cold sweat. She recoiled immediately, completely unaware of where she was or who had been holding her.

"Jess!" the man said, his arms still stretched out wide to catch her again.

She blinked and looked blearily into his face, but for a moment he wasn't recognizable. A wave of disorientation swept over her and for a moment she was close to passing out again. But then, suddenly, the man's features clicked in her memory and she narrowed her eyes.

"Billy?" she asked weakly, her voice hoarse and dry for some reason.

The handsome, auburn haired guy sighed, shoulders relaxing hugely, obviously relieved, and instantly reached for the paper cup filled with water on the floor beside the cot. He held it out for her, forcing her to drink, and when Jess opened her mouth to take a sip she felt her dry lips crack at the strain and start to bleed. She put a hand to them.

"What the hell…?" she croaked, looking at the blood glistening on her fingers.

"Three days," Billy said wearily.

"What?"

"That's how long you've been out. Three days."

Jess blinked at him as the words slowly sunk into her sleep-fogged mind.

"I'm sorry?" she said, her mouth slack, unable to move. "Th… Three?"

Billy nodded grimly.

Jess swallowed and fought to breathe as she struggled with this. Finally, unable to voice anything, she mouthed, "How?"

Billy shook his head and touched the hand in which Jessica held the cup, directing her to drink from it again.

"The boss said you might be fragile. He said some people handle this whole… coming here differently than others."

"I'm sorry," Jess said, staring at Billy in disbelief. "The boss?" Billy looked down at his hands, folded in his lap, and Jess straightened in bed, dropping the water cup on the dirt stained wood floor. "Billy," she said lowly, "please tell me you're not talking about…"

"What else are we gonna do?" Billy asked, looking up at her with pleading eyes. "Huh? We sure as hell can't run. This… this isn't our city. This isn't our world, here, Jess. He, at least, offers some kind of protection."

Jess decided to ignore that, or at least hope he meant it figuratively. Despite the observable clues, she couldn't believe any of this was… real. She shook her head forcefully.

"Fight," she replied, her voice a little stronger but still wavering. She couldn't believe she was waking up after three days and immediately having this conversation. She could hardly think right now! "There're twenty of us, Billy. We can fight."

Billy, however, was shaking his head before she neared the conclusion to her statement.

"You haven't seen what he can do, Jess," he said. "I'm so glad you've been asleep…"

"Screw being asleep!" Jess cried. "I hate not knowing what's going on!"

"I'm trying to tell you!" Billy exclaimed. "We've got nothing here, Jess."

"No," Jess said, refusing to let the beginnings of nausea in her stomach distract her. "No, that's not true."

"Yes!" Billy said. "Yes. It is. Some… Most of the others are already…"

"What?"

"Well… Loyal is a bad word…"

"Loyal?" Jess shrieked, throwing the threadbare blanket that covered her lap to the floor. "To that freak in the clown makeup?" Billy launched himself at her, covering her mouth with his hand and casting a worried glance back at the door to the room.

"Shut up," he said, eyes wide with fear. "You do not want him to hear you say something like that."

"He thinks he's the Joker, Billy," Jess whispered forcefully, also glancing anxiously at the entrance. Billy's dread had rubbed off on her in a moment.

She looked around, trying to find a way to escape without having to go through the door, but there was nothing in the room but the cot, a large wooden box on the floor (presumably meant for clothes) and a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. The floor was scum covered wood and the walls were simple white washed plaster. It looked a bit like a large closet or an old prop room which, given that she thought they might still be in that theater, it probably was.

"You still don't get it?" Billy asked, frowning at her. "Jess… You know… You saw where we are…"

Suddenly, Jess wanted to cry. Billy looked so grim, so real, and she thought that, even though she didn't want to accept it, she knew deep down that this was no dream.

"Billy," she whispered, leaning back against the wall behind her, "there is no way… I mean… Gotham City, Billy."

"Yes."

"Like in… in Batman."

"Yeah."

"Like in comic books. In movies!"

"Really, I guess," Billy said, "what's the difference between their world and ours?" Jess's breath hitched and she let tears roll down her cheeks.

"Their world isn't real, Billy!"

"I guess you're wrong," Billy said. "I guess we were all wrong."

She stared at him as he looked down at his lap again. Something had changed there. He seemed so broken, so resigned and yet simultaneously so… hardened. A lot had happened over the three days she was inexplicably out, she could tell. But what had? She despised not knowing.

"What is that supposed to mean?" she demanded. He stared at her for a moment. "Billy, help me out! I hate playing guessing games!"

"I'm trying to tell you!" Billy cried. "We're not where we were, we're not who we were… Things have happened that I'd never thought possible. We are in Gotham City. We are, like, living a comic book."

"That's crazy!"

"Yeah," Billy agreed. "I guess the world goes a little crazy sometimes."

"No," Jessica said. "No, Billy. People go crazy. Like that man who goes around wearing clown paint and kidnapping twenty people and talking like Heath Ledger. That's crazy!"

Billy's eyes snapped up to meet hers, and in that moment she saw so much emotion that she froze for a second. He was bordering on wild, she saw, and she wondered how much effort it took him to stay in his seat.

"Jessica," he said, his voice so serious it was frightening, "you have to get this through your head. He is not messing around here…"

"I know! He's insane!"

Billy shook his head slowly.

"No. And I'm not messing around either. That man… The man who brought us here, with the makeup and the clothes… He is the Joker. The real Joker, Jess. And that is not a lie."

Jess stared at him for a second, slack jawed, unsure whether or not he'd really said that. But there was nothing on his face to tell her that he was less than completely serious.

"You're kidding."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Billy jumped up, pushing the chair away from under him, startling Jess. He pointed to his own face where, she now saw in the light of the naked bulb, a long scab was forming over a nasty looking cut. "This is not a joke!" he said. "That guy out there is the real-as-all-holy-hell Joker, Jess. The one. And this is Gotham. And, whether or not you want to believe it, we're here! So just accept it and we'll have a lot less trouble from you."

He had been yelling and Jess was cowering away from him. She'd never known him to be like this, as short a time as she had been acquainted with him, so it was so much scarier than if it had been predictable.

He stared at her for a second, took a deep breath, and turned slowly towards the door.

"Sorry," he said as he reached for the knob. "I'm really glad you're awake. Boss says you should come out when you're ready. Bathroom's down the hall. Don't try to… like… escape, Jess. It'll just cause more pain. I don't want you hurt." All this was said with his back to her in the gravest, saddest tone she'd ever heard. "I want to protect you," he said. "Don't make it difficult." With that, he opened the door and left.

It took Jess more than a few moments to compose herself and trust her legs to keep her steady, but when she was ready she climbed out of the cot and stood for a long time, looking around her little cell. Frustrated, desperate tears leaked out of her eyes and, for the first time since coming here, she really let herself cry, standing in the center of the room and sobbing helplessly into her hands as she wondered what the hell she was going to do. Even Billy—who, despite the little time she had known him, she'd thought of as an ally in all of this—had told her to just give up and accept it.

Not even he was going to help her. She wondered, still, if anyone would.

The next feeling Jess experienced, besides sadness and desperation, was a deep, aching hunger. She put a hand to her growling stomach even as she bawled, realizing that she must not have eaten the three days she was asleep. Of course not. How could they have fed her?

Her stomach growled again, this time almost painfully, and she dried her tears slowly, deciding to brave the unknown of whatever was beyond this room in the search for food. She opened the door and looked out to a long, wooden hallway, pretty standard for that of an old opera house.

She turned around and looked at the long worn sign on her door. Sure enough, the plaque read "Props."

That's fantastic, Jess thought dryly. She shook her head and turned, trying to decide where she would most likely find some chow and, more importantly, where she would be most unlikely to run into the Joker. She chose left.

Backstage was deathly silent; there were no signs of any life besides footsteps in the layer of dust on the ground. When Jess saw an emergency exit, she ran towards it and tried to force it open, but found it had been barricaded or the locks broken somehow. No amount of force would work and she was scared to make too much noise trying, so after a while she left it, continuing her hunt for food.

Upon turning the next corner, Jess heard voices farther up the way—familiar, pleasant voices—and she quickened her pace towards them, a little frantic for company. Being alone here was eerie.

She came upon them suddenly, the shadows dissipating in the light of a little lamp on a table right by another exit; two men, both members of the Lucky Twenty, playing cards.

"Jessica!" one of the men, she remembered his name was Keith, exclaimed.

"Sleeping beauty awakes," said the other, whose name she had forgotten, with a large smile. They didn't set down their cards.

"Hello," she said warily, glancing at the door. Keith followed her gaze.

"Nope," he said, "you can't go through here. Sorry."

Jess looked down at him, frowning.

"Come on…" she whispered. "Just let me out."

The men glanced at each other grimly.

"Sorry, kiddo," the other man muttered, his face softening as he looked at her. "No one wants to hurt you. You'll be okay."

"I don't want to stay here!" Jess said, feeling tears prick at her eyes again.

"And we don't want you to die," Keith said. "Believe me, if we let you go, between the boss getting angry and the other thugs on the street around here, chances are you'd get hurt."

"Let me out, please… I'll take my chances..."

"Boss wants to see you," the other man said, ignoring her last statement and pointing off down the hall. "He's in the green room, I think."

"Sounds right," Keith agreed, taking a card from the pile and adding it to his fold.

Jessica could tell they were avoiding talking about her escape, but the sadness in their eyes told her that they wanted to help. They just didn't know how. She wondered if she could try to fight them, but two to one didn't seem like the odds were good. When she looked down and noticed they both had large guns, that plan flew out the window.

"You could just let me out," she said softly. Keith snorted.

"I've got way too much survival instinct for that," he said. "The boss is in the green room. You should probably go to him."

And the two pointedly returned to their game, signaling that the conversation was over. Jess sighed, cast one last forlorn look at the way out, and left down the hall, determined to meet her fate. There was nothing else she could do now.