"Oh dammit, dammit, dammit!"
Michelle King rushes around her apartment considerably stretched for time. She neglects to grab a rag or anything to wipe the paint off of her face, opting to use her costume's sleeve instead as she kicks off her shoes and goes hunting for that night's outfit. She had screwed up on her scheduling for this day; no hours at the bookstore, but she had thought she had enough time to do maybe one birthday party earlier on in the day and have enough time to run back and throw on her dress.
Well, it hadn't worked out like that. Her tire had gone flat on the way home, and it had taken a wrecker about two hours to finally get out to her and tow her car back home. He'd been staring at her oddly, since she was in full birthday clown regalia at that point in time, and she'd been rather irked by it while sitting in the passenger's seat of the tow truck and waiting, very impatiently, to get home. Her face paint is blotched and smeared in places where she's set her chin in her hand, bored out of her mind, or rubbed her face on accident, and it smears further against the sleeve of her costume as she wipes and wipes.
"God, I hope James can drive slow or something," She mutters, pulling the garish outfit off and dragging on her black dress, grabbing the heels and walking quickly to the bathroom. She glances into the mirror only briefly and, seeing no major splotches of color, quickly straightens her hair a bit by dragging her fingers through it, sprays a small burst of rose-scented perfume on herself (it's cheap, and its scent is horribly strong and overbearing, but it covers up the smell of sweat and grease paint still sticking to her) and pulls on her heels, already hearing a honk out front. She ignores it for the moment, rushing to finish adjusting her dress and shoes, before it honks again and she nearly howls 'Shut the hell up, I'm coming' in the direction of the door, but restrains herself.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" She instead calls out to the front door, impatiently, scooping her makeup into her small black purse distractedly and running towards the door. She hits her shin on the leg of the couch as she rushes without watching where she's going, and falls against the wall, swearing loudly, before rushing towards the door anyway.
"I'm coming, wait one damn minute!" She spits out at the expensive-looking car of James', turning and locking the door distractedly before running back to the car and dropping into the back seat. She looks back over her shoulder at James, still facing the window, and notes that he looks well-dressed and annoyed.
"What took you so long, Michelle?" He asks, tersely, as she pulls her purse into her lap and huffs under her breath. The car rumbles into life beneath them as she stares out the window, watching the scenery begin to move and change.
"A little rushed is all, James. There's no real hurry," She breathes, not facing him and her head supported by her hand as she stares out the window, and she hears him snort behind her back.
"No real hurry? It's a fundraiser for Harvey Dent! And that's not even counting who's throwing it. This is kind of important, Michelle." He says the last part in a patronizing, condescending tone, and she begins tapping her nails on the glass in a steady, rhythmic pattern. "What would Nathan say if he knew that you weren't taking things this seriously?"
"He wouldn't care," She replies, tersely, and gets no response. He's apparently ignoring her again, knowing that she was in one of her rare bad moods and that it was easier to just pretend she was mute. They don't look at one another for the rest of the ride, instead focusing on the streets and the lights of Gotham instead.
The party is as nice as Michelle would've expected. She and James step out of the elevator, standing relatively close to one another but not touching, and instantly, Michelle hears and ignores whispering that starts. She walks off on her own so that she can put distance between James and herself before she slips up and stops acting like the quiet woman he's used to, and he gets suspicious of her, and instead busies herself with a glass of wine. There's still whispering and it seems to be following her for some reason or another, but she's not really paying attention to it and hangs back instead, listening to the buzz about Bruce Wayne's big entrance that she and James missed because they were late.
Wish I could have been there. Sounds like an interesting sight.
"Michelle," She hears a familiar voice say her name in a strangled hiss, and looks over at Nathan across the room to see his expression equal parts strained smile and mortification. He gestures to his mouth, trailing his finger along his jaw line, and she knows that he's trying to tell her something. She can't figure out for the life of her what it is, though. And she notices that he's trying to get her to notice or do something, but without having to actually walk over and tell her what the hell he's motioning about and therefore implicate himself in being aware that she's even at the party.
"What is it? Just, come tell me Nathan!" Michelle hisses, loud enough to be heard over the din of the room but only just barely. She then sees him look at someone else and call them over, and recognizes it as James. Nathan points to her and James looks at her for the first time of the night, and he loses the color in his face as he sees her dumbfounded expression. He's wearing a nice suit for the night, like Nathan is, and is now fiddling furiously with the sleeves before starting to run his finger along his lips, trying to tell her something too. She shrugs to show him that she's got no idea what the hell they're on about, and James begins to walk speedily towards her.
"You're insane!" He hisses to her when he finally reaches her, grabbing her by her upper arm and trying to steer her away from the crowd.
"What are you two even talking about?" Michelle snaps at him quietly, jerking her arm out of his grip and looking him straight in the face. He growls under his breath, putting a hand over his eyes.
"You. Look. Like. A. Freak! Of all the times you picked to do something stupid, it had to be now! Had to be here! How hard is that to understand, Michelle?"
"If you'd just tell me what the hell you're talking about, then maybe I could know why!"
They're arguing in whispers now, though it's easy to tell that they are arguing back towards the back of the room, James trying to keep her out of sight and Michelle demanding to know why. And at the loud sound at the front of the room, she and James fall silent, as everyone else does, and turn around to see what it was.
And they both proceed to freeze when Gotham's own resident terror comes into view as a blotch of purple among the somewhat soft tones of the room, greeting everyone as genially as a murderous psychopath firing off a shotgun can. Someone's scream echoes out in the room and breaks the silence for a moment, before it settles again. Both Michelle and James are in the back of the room, obscured slightly by other guests but fully able to see the Joker as he moves among the guests, thugs at his heels (and heavily armed as well), haranguing random people.
"You're kidding me," James whispers next to her, his voice hollow, and Michelle remains silent, glancing across the room to see Nathan as still as a statue, the color in his face fading as well. Even though she's still in this horrible situation, Michelle can feel at least some satisfaction at seeing Nathan as terrified as everyone else is, for once, instead of acting superhumanly calm and controlled. That satisfaction fades quickly, though, and Michelle notices James slowly creeping backwards, moving behind her.
"You asshole, I'm not your human shield!" She hisses, as quietly as possible, but he's already behind her and she isn't going to make herself noticeable by moving too much. They watch the Joker walking through the crowd, smiling, chatting one-sidedly with someone here and there, before starting to seemingly interrogate a woman that Michelle couldn't quite recognize at the moment. Whatever they're talking about she's not listening to, because she's a selfish woman that would more like to argue with James over him using her as a human shield between himself and the psychopath and company currently harassing everyone.
"You're going to get us killed, you dumb slut," James hisses back at her, between his teeth, and she stamps her heel into his foot, feeling him flinch and swear as quietly as possible, his hand on her bare shoulder now tightening its grip painfully. They're definitely not going to stay together after tonight, if they don't end up dead.
More noise, more commotion, and the two of them realize that someone's now fighting in the center of the room, and they almost sigh in relief.
"Oh, Batman's here," James sighs quietly, relieved, calming down a bit and loosening his grip on her shoulder. Michelle jerked her shoulder out of his grip, not wanting him to touch her, and instead watching what was happening. And they've been arguing so long, that they only look back in time to see the Joker blowing out a window, saying something neither of them can quite catch, before tossing the woman out. The thugs are apparently out of commission too, since Michelle can't quite see them around at the moment, though that could be because she's back in the crowd. And then the one person that can go toe-to-toe with the incredibly dangerous killers in the room dives out the window, after her.
"You're…kidding me…" Michelle queries rhetorically, her voice vapid with shock, as the Joker turns and surveys the room, seeing the fact that he is the only one on his side armed in a room full of people that are already starting to grab makeshift weapons and inch towards him. He glances around the room, beginning to walk at a good clip as he does, and James and Michelle freeze when he seems to spot them and, instead of glancing away, keeps staring. Mainly at Michelle. A moment later, he bursts into a peal of rabid laughter, already heading towards them.
"I didn't know I had fans," He begins with an unsettling smile, and Michelle, being confused, looks back at James questioningly for a moment, before back to the Joker advancing towards them.
A moment later, James puts his hands flat on her shoulder blades, and shoves her.
Michelle lets out a small gasp of surprise and hurtles forward, staggering as she tries to get her footing again (damn the heels), and lets out a small 'oomph' as she runs right into the Joker's chest. She barely hears James say, "Take her!" from the shock of what's just happened. She tries to push away from him, turning away and run, but a deceptively strong arm hooks around her throat and pins her back against him, a knife against her cheek. Immediately, the people advancing on him freeze now that he has a hostage, and instead watch Michelle turn paler and paler by the second.
"Now, as you can all probably guess, anyone makes any rash movements and she dies," Michelle hears him speak in her ear, the arm around her throat moving to hold her around the waist instead and the knife pressing against her jugular. She glances at Nathan and sees that he's averting his eyes, focusing on the far wall instead, and when she looks for James, he's gone. She then feels him walking backwards with her, towards the door, and he's almost giggling in her ear.
"Wonderful choice of makeup," He states, and Michelle cranes her neck as much as she dares, looking confusedly at him. It's a bad choice, since actually seeing him terrifies her even further, but the question's been plaguing her all night and she's probably going to die pretty soon, so she wants to die knowing what the hell was wrong all night.
"What?"
He looks confused for a moment, as if she's crazy for not knowing, before Michelle catches her reflection in the steel elevator walls as they back into it and sees her own face, though blurred, with a large slash of red on it. It's blurry and hard to make out, but her heart sinks into her stomach when she realizes that the red of her Pagliacci getup's face paint is smeared across her mouth. It was probably when she was hurrying before the party, wiping her wrist across her face to get the makeup off quickly; the red slash across her face is almost like the deep red paint Joker's got on his own mouth.
The entire party long, she's been walking around with a Joker smile. No wonder Nathan was mortified.
"Oh God," Michelle groans, as the horror of it washes over her a minute and she forgets the somewhat worse situation that she's in at the moment. She is reminded, however, when she sees the elevator doors beginning to close and glances up at the watching guests, plaintively, almost begging for someone to come help her. Nobody moves, and the elevator doors slide closed in her paper white, horror-stricken face.
On the ride down the elevator floor is, surprisingly, not coated with her blood. The Joker just sort of keeps her pinned, and waits for the elevator patiently. Michelle's quaking, her mind racing and blank. She's got no idea what to do now, and, honestly, is waiting every moment to have her throat cut. She does, however, risk a quick glance up at the Joker, and he's just staring off at the doors, seemingly not paying attention to her at the moment.
"You feel like a drum," He says suddenly, and Michelle jumps, before trying to calm herself down.
"Kind of…expected, no?" Is all she manages, in a hoarse rasp, and the thugs seem to tense up when their boss cracks into another bit of high pitched laughter that echoes off the walls of the elevator painfully loud. The elevator stops and the doors open, before he's dragging her out.
"I suppose you've got a point."
He drags her out of the building and down to a vehicle, the knife pressing harder and harder into her throat as they walk (or in her case, stagger). As they stop in front of the car, he lets go of her and shoves her forward, as she trips and falls to the concrete.
"Kill her," Michelle hears him say dismissively, and the goon in front of her levels a gun at her face at such an angle that she can see down the barrel. In terror, she lashes out like an animal and hooks her foot behind the masked man's, giving a good jerk and watching him fall. Thank God for small mercies, like Nathan paying for self-defense classes so she wouldn't be held ransom or something like that. As the masked man falls, she rises to her feet and starts to run blindly past him, trying to get away. He recovers quickly, grabbing her by the ankle and pulling her down to the ground, grabbing his gun and pressing the muzzle of it against the back of her head, hard.
"Stupid bitch," She hears him mutter, and closes her eyes to wait for him to kill her. A gunshot rings out, but instead of death, she opens her eyes to see gore sprayed across the concrete in her field of vision and feels something heavy slump against her. There's wetness all along her neck and the back of her head, and she rolls over quickly to see a corpse with a hole through its head lying on top of her. She screams bloody murder and shoves it off, seeing but also not really recognizing the blood and gray matter now coating her body. The cold night air bites at her skin as the breeze blows on her wet body, and she shivers for that and another reason.
"You're pretty funny, did you know that?" The Joker states, tossing his shotgun at the masked goon driving, and he starts laughing again at her terrified expression as she looks up at him, blood coating her. Michelle tries to scoot away from him as he walks towards her, grabbing her by the upper arm in a grip so tight that it's sure to leave bruises, dragging her to her feet. She doesn't even try to pull away from him until they walk around to the back of the van, which is when she attempts to wrench free of his grip.
"You aren't making this easy," He half-mutters in annoyance as she struggles and the back of the van is opened, and as she thrashes again, he cups the left side of her head in his hand and then slams her skull against the steel wall of the van. Michelle goes completely limp as black spots bloom in her vision, and he pulls her up into the van as someone closes the door behind them. She hears the Joker speak one last time before she passes out on the floor of the van where he tosses her, and there's laughter in his voice as he speaks again and the van starts to move under them.
"You should calm down, you know. Too much stress is bad for the heart."