A bit of a long one. Sorry this took so long compared to the others. I have been SWAMPED. Thank you so much for your reviews! Go listen to Stupid Girl by Cold. I think you'll like what you hear.

Um... answers... I've gotten people messaging, asking when the romance will start, and I'm kind of like... really? I cannot see the Joker throwing himself at Jess right away, can you? And regardless of how sexy he is, she's not too impressed with him, either. It's gonna take a little but it will be fairly rapid compared to what he'd be like in reality.

Also, I loved the comment asking which of the two others was Drew. Well, CC... The guy on the left of Billy. The other one is Laurence. Isn't naming extras fun?

Ten points to whoever can find and point out the play references here! :)

Rate and review and I'll reward you with another installment. Love you all!

Jess couldn't sleep.

Billy hadn't come back yet and she found herself pacing around her little closet-room, anxious for him and the others. What had the Joker done with them? Why were they taking so long? What had they been doing, anyway?

It was no use.

Jess sighed impatiently and looked for the millionth time around her little room. It was past two in the morning by the battery operated alarm clock someone had placed on the ground in the corner and Jess had spent the entire day just trying to get used to being here, which entailed talking to the rest of the Lucky Twenty—and subsequently confirming her fears that they were now the Joker's men—watching TV and eating.

She'd had almost seven peanut butter sandwiches that day (the other food options included beer, cold ham, uncooked sausage, parsley, and more beer.) She told the men in charge of getting food that she was a growing girl and needed more than what they had offered in nutrition, so they wound up making her promise to come with them when they went shopping in a week's time. Jess had jumped at the chance to get out of this playhouse and see more of Gotham.

Most of the day was spent exploring the theater with Keith and Blake, which turned out to be extremely interesting. The basement and green room, apparently the Joker's private rooms, were locked and off limits, but the rest of the huge, beautiful building was open for investigation.

Three purses, filled with rotting wallets, old papers, and even a jeweled necklace or two, were found between the rusted, hole pocked velvet chairs in the auditorium. The stage still had a few props in a closet by the sound booth, including an old donkey mask, a hemp noose, and a pair of plastic, silver painted razors. Most of the backstage area, Jess came to learn, was organized in rooms much like hers, only with two or three more cots each, so that more men could sleep in them. She'd seen the lobby and spent a while playing poker over the concessions counter, had gone up in the catwalks—but without a harness felt the opposite of safe—had rifled through the old costumes in a trunk in one of the dressing rooms—the rest, she assumed, were in the Joker's basement—and had played lazily with a small mouse she'd seen come out of a hole.

Amidst all this activity she'd lost track of the time and before she knew it everyone was leaving the rec room, complaining about how tired they were, and Blake had shoved her off to bed, advising her that it was probably safer for her to stay in her room for the rest of the night. You never knew when the Joker would return and what kind of mood he'd be in.

It was sensible to be prudent, Jess knew.

But when had Jess ever been one to listen to sense when curiosity was so much more overwhelming?

She was bored. She was hot from the stagnant air. And she wanted to explore some more.

The stage seemed like the most obvious place to start, so start there she did.

She'd seen a trap door in the floor earlier and, as she crept down the darkened hallway, straying away from the exits where she knew guards kept watch, she wondered if it still worked.

She'd taken along the little digital clock to lend her a bit of illumination and found the backstage switchboard beside the heavy scarlet curtains, hidden in the deep blackness of the theater's immediate backstage. There's nowhere darker than an unlit auditorium, Jess mused as she raised the little clock and strained to see the operation buttons in the dim green glow.

Well, damn.

Jess had never been much of a techie and hadn't practiced much with working these things, especially one as old and beastly as this. The buttons were labeled with faded, peeling letters which read things like "All on" "L Forward" "Wash" and, finally, "Trap."

Closing her eyes and hoping this wouldn't turn on any lights or sound an alarm or something, Jess flipped the "trap" switch.

Gears groaned to life almost immediately and Jess looked excitedly towards the stage, where a square black hole was slowly opening in the center. She raced for it, wanting to check out the area to which she knew the trap door led—the basements. What was he hiding down there?

Stupid girl.

She jumped into the little hole while the trapdoor platform was still squealing downwards, landing on it with a solid bump that sent the entire structure into troubling little spasms, squeaking and squawking its protests to her weight. Her head dropped beneath the surface level of the stage as the lift rattled on downwards and she ducked lower, her heart pounding, trying to see everything she could in the enveloping darkness.

The stagnant smell of mold and stale fabric, rotting wood and earth, permeated her nose; she tried to avoid breathing in the heavy smell by inhaling only superficially, not allowing the oxygen to rush all the way to the bottoms of her lungs. Old sawdust drifted into her eyes from the wooden support beams crisscrossing above her as the elevator groaned to a stop at the bottom of its shaft. She was under the stage. In the basement.

Exhilaration and heart-pounding, mind-numbing fear ripped through her and she almost pressed the button on the control panel at the side of the lift to go back up, but stopped herself. She'd come this far. The Joker wouldn't be back tonight and she certainly had no loyalty towards him which would prevent her invasion of his privacy. Perhaps, if she got enough information on him, she could find a way to escape.

Jess carefully stepped down the short flight of steps at the bottom of the platform and swung her pale green light around, trying to see as much as she could down here. Since her top priority was luminescence, when she caught sight of a light switch in the corner she made a beeline for it, cautious to avoid bumping into the props and sets down scattered about. A second after flipping it, the light came on with a wavering buzz and she was able to look around.

Jess gasped.

A space had been cleared in a large section of the basement opposite her, the walls completely plastered over with hundreds of posters and pictures and newspaper clippings, each having something to do with Gotham, each scribbled on and annotated heavily. Almost every single picture of a person had a design marked over it—two heavy black circles for eyes and a red slash for the mouth, eerily mimicking the Joker's choice of face paint.

Jess slowly approached the area, staring closely at the pictures, trying to discern what about them had caught the Joker's interest.

Batman. There was one topic. And of course. Most of the articles featured in one way or another the caped crusader and those that didn't were mostly political. Harvey Dent—the name of Gotham's new District Attorney—was repeated constantly. Jess remembered the comic book episode in which he had first appeared as Two-Face; how badly he had scared her when she was a kid. She shivered. He was real, too.

The Joker had scrawled HAHAHAHA over many of the articles and Jess noticed a desk near the corner on which a pair of scissors was left abandoned in the middle of cutting pieces and words out of various papers.

She skimmed a few of the articles plastered to the wall curiously, reading what she could past the scrawling red pen, and came to the startling conclusion that most of the city disliked the Batman (he'd been outlawed three months ago), the Joker was second in importance to the mob in the eyes of Gotham PD (something Jess was sure would soon change), bands of vigilantes impersonating the Dark Knight had recently been detained and arrested—along with the Scarecrow—and Harvey Dent was inducting controversial investigations into the police department, including Jim Gordon's unit, Major Crimes. Salvatore Maroni was the suspected heir to the Falcone crime family and Bruce Wayne, since the destruction of his mansion, had been living in a penthouse near city limits.

Jess raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, taken up in this rush of information, impressed by it all. It certainly drove in the reality of this situation a little deeper, but she still had difficulty fully believing that she was suddenly in this different world. It was such an alien prospect.

Distracted by all of this, she didn't hear the footsteps tromping heavily down the stairs in the opposite corner.

"Now what," the Joker's voice said softly, hoarsely, from just behind her, "are you doing here?"

Jess jumped violently as his fingers rested against her hip and, suddenly terrified, she tried to turn around, but abruptly his hands were on her, forcing her forward violently. He had her by both hips from behind, pressing her roughly towards the wall. She braced herself with her hands to keep her face from slamming into the paper covered brick as the Joker shoved her forwards, his breathing accelerated with exhilaration. A low giggle escaped him as he watched her whimper, face to the wall.

The Joker leaned forward and grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling it back sharply, making her lend him an ear as he whispered.

"I thought I told you not to come down here," he said.

She shuddered and closed her eyes to try to block it out. Not receiving a response, he giggled, using the hand that was not ripping her hair from her scalp to ironically brush a wisp of bang from her face with exaggerated faux tenderness.

His body was securing hers against the wall now, his stomach warm on her back. She tried not to think about it, tried to swallow the bile that rose in her throat at the thought of him touching her, tried to calm her fluttering heart. She choked in an attempt to tell him to let her go… please… but it came out as a sort of pathetic half-squeak.

"Huh?" the Joker demanded. "What. Was. That?" He gave a tug on her hair with every word.

"P-please," Jess sobbed, "don't hurt me."

"Oh…" The Joker made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Oh, Jesster, Jesster, Jesster…" His hand seized the back of her neck and pushed her face against the wall, leaning in to whisper right in her ear, so close she could feel the brush of his lips. "You keep breaking the rules," he said. "How can I let you play the game if you keep breaking the rules?" Jess sobbed, sure now that she was going to die right here in this horrible basement, with this horrible clown's sour breath in her ears. "Y'know, I really didn't want to hurt you, kid," the Joker said. "I really didn't."

"Don't then," Jess pleaded quietly, lips to the papers. "Please don't. I promise, I'll do anything you want. From now on, no resistance. I swear!"

The Joker said nothing for a long time. Silence stretched on between them until, suddenly, the pressure of the Joker's hand on her neck was released and his presence behind her shifted away. Slowly, breathing shakily, Jess was able, somehow, to turn and face him.

"So that's what it takes." He was grinning at her madly, only a little ways away, still too close for comfort. She sighed in relief. There was no sign that he was going to kill her anymore. "A threat on your life and you're suddenly so compliant. Hmm. That's a little selfish, don't you think, Jess?"

Jess frowned, irritated, and looked down.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"Sorry?" he asked. "Why? I'm impressed. You pulled out all the stops to protect yourself, not those…" he waved a hand distractedly towards the staircase, "hooligans upstairs. You know where your interests lie. You won't play the sacrificial lamb. You know better. Like me."

Jess felt disgust at herself boil up in her chest as he compared her to him. She wasn't as strong or generous as she'd always thought she was... At first she'd thought that her decision to stay had been born out of fear for the other men… but now she wasn't so sure. Perhaps fear for her own well-being kept her here; fear of having to make it on her own out on the streets of Gotham. Or perhaps it was a mixture of both. But in any case, it bothered her that she had this survival instinct. It seemed so self-centered now.

The Joker saw her inner conflict and grinned, leaning back against the desk in the corner.

"Don't look so disappointed," he said. "I like what you've done here."

Jess turned from his sardonic expression. He knew she hated the thought of him being pleased with her, of him finding a parallel in her. He was a total jerk, she realized, thinking it a little absurd to mark him with such a casual term. But he was. He was playing the villain simply because he could. She'd never done anything to him besides fear him.

Using this newfound anger as a tool for bravery, although she was still on guard against his sudden mood swings, she found she could at least look at him without flinching.

It wasn't much, but it was improvement.

"I'm not listening to you," she told him defiantly. "You and I, we're nothing alike."

The Joker seemed delighted.

"Oh yeah," he said, "but we are, Jesster. And, in time, you'll see that too."

"No. That's totally not true," Jess said, raising her voice, trying to convince him as much as herself. This was really upsetting her, and she cast aside all thoughts of his danger as she continued. He was wrong and he was an asshole. And he needed to know that.

"I don't think like you," she continued. "I don't toy with other people's emotions like you do. I don't enjoy seeing people hurt or afraid. I'm not like you."

The Joker giggled and pushed himself away from the table to come at her again. Shit. She'd done it now. Stupid, Jessica! Stupid! She always let her big mouth run away with her.

"Maybe you don't do the things I do," the Joker said, coming steadily closer, "but that doesn't mean we're not alike. You oughta know that. We are."

"How?" Jess's voice shook as she dared him to come up with a similarity, a single one, between the two of them. The Joker's response was immediate.

"Conviction," he said, looking her directly in the eyes, his face much too close, as always. "We've got ideas. And we'll do anything to see them realized." He licked his lips.

"Everyone had ideas," Jess said. "That doesn't mean anything. You're just spewing nonsense!"

"Not ideas like ours," the Joker replied. He tapped a finger on the side of his head. "The thoughts up here mirror the thoughts you have. Maybe they got warped in translation but essentially they're exactly the same. Know why?" Jess shook her head. "Because we're coming from the same place, you and me."

Jess wasn't sure what he meant by that, but she was really uncomfortable. He spoke with such confidence; it was hard not to believe him on some level. She looked to the side and tried to slide away from him, but he braced a hand on the wall to either side of her head.

"Let me go," she whispered.

"Oh I can't do that," he said. "Not now that I've found you. You know, you're like…" he looked at the ceiling, trying to find the right words. "You're like the extra little zing in this whole operation. You're what makes the clock race and the men work. You're what brings them all together. You're the missing piece!"

"This isn't a game!" Jess screamed, angry and frightened and hysteric. The thought that she had fallen so perfectly into all of this, that he was completely manipulating all of them, was suddenly too much to bear. The Joker leaned back a little, eyebrows raised, watching her face go red and her breathing accelerate. When she didn't say anything else he patted her cheek, none too gently.

"Yeah it is," he said, a little melancholy tinting his words. "You'll learn that as we continue to play."

He stared at her for a moment. His hand was still resting on her face after patting it and, slowly, as he had upstairs earlier that day, he ran his thumb along her lower lip, looking at it analytically, as though wondering how badly he could cut it before she started to scream. She let him, not knowing what else to do. After a moment, he backed away.

"Go to bed, Jesster," he said. "We've got a long day ahead of us."

Jess stared at him suspiciously, almost not believing her luck that she was getting out of here with nary a scratch. (Yes. Nary.) She walked forward slowly and he watched her closely, a little grin back on his face. As soon as she was past the point where he could simply reach out and grab her, she started to run, racing up the stairs and through the metal door at the top. She could hear his laughs resound through the basement before the door slammed close on the noise.

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