She spends a month in the hospital before they release her, and she tries to leave in secret so the paparazzi don't ambush her. It doesn't quite work.
"Ms. King! A moment, please?"
"We have a few questions, Ms. King!"
"How was your imprisonment?"
"Did you personally meet the Joker?"
"Have you been assaulted?"
She's pinned against the building by the microphones shoved in her face, a bottle of painkillers in her hand. Someone grabs her by the wrist and pulls her out, through the reporters, and crushes her against their left side.
"She's not answering questions at the moment! Now, if you'd like to make a personal appointment…"
Michelle looks up at James, and she rears back and socks him right in the eye. The reporters go wild. "You asshole, don't try and act all goody-goody with me! You're the one that shoved me at him at the party and got me kidnapped in the first place!" She shouts, before stomping off down the street. Reporters are letting out a barrage of questions for James now, asking if it's true, if she's lying, and he ignores them and runs after her, hand on her shoulder. He wants to break her nose for that punch, but he's going to restrain himself. Right now, anyway.
"Michelle, your memory is fuzzy. You tripped. I tried to grab you, but…well, you can't expect me to try and fight off that psycho?" He tells her, hands on her shoulders, and though she shrugs his hands off of her body, he knows that she's confused. She doubts her memory. She's playing right into his hands again; she's so easy to play.
"Don't touch me. I've got a gutter to sleep in tonight," She snaps at him, before he wheels her around towards a limo. "I'm not staying with you, so you can just shove that up your-"
"It's not mine, it's Nathan's." He cuts her off, exasperated, and shoves her towards the limo. After a moment of hesitancy, she gets in (if only to escape the buzzing paparazzi) and he gets in too, and though as the car starts he tries to talk to her, to reconcile, to warp her memories so that she believes his story about her tripping again, she ignores him the entire time. When they arrive at Nathan's penthouse she doesn't wait for him and goes up the elevator first and not bothering to hold the door for him, and she smiles crookedly as the doors shut in his face and the elevator starts. It doesn't take long for her to reach the right floor, and she gets off. As the elevator rises again (this time with James on it) and as the doors are almost at the top, she hits the emergency brake and smirks, turning around and walking inside.
That bastard can wait in the elevator.
She walks in and sees Nathan sitting down on his nice couch (it's a very long couch), sprawled along it like some sort of lion, and he glances to her without a smile. Now that they're alone, they don't need to keep up appearances.
"Nathan." Michelle says his name in monotone, and she notices that he's staring at the left side of her face. The doctor wasn't lying when he said the scar was going to be bad; it's very noticeable, and dark against the pale tone of her skin. He gestures towards a chair near the head of his couch and she sits, staring blankly ahead of her. "What do you want me here for? You disowned me, remember?"
"Not…quite." He starts, sitting up and reaching towards an end table at the head of his couch and to Michelle's left, his fingers closing around a glass of what looks like scotch or brandy. It's only two or three in the afternoon. "I can't ostensibly disown you when you're so very popular."
She cocks her head, confused, and Nathan hands her a newspaper (everyone has a newspaper for her nowadays, it seems), and she scans the front page. It's a huge article about the Joker being captured and Batman killing people, which sounds a little crazy but whatever. On the second page, there's an article about her. It's got her picture, one from before she was captured and one someone snuck while she was in her hospital bed, staring blankly at the camera, bandaged to hell. The article itself is nothing but chattering about how she was rescued by SWAT (that's not true, not really, since Batman actually did it, but whatever) bleeding heavily, and how she was in the Joker's clutches for a month (only a month? It felt like so much longer) and somehow survived, and how she was blah blah blah blah. It's boring things that she knows already.
"So?" She asks Nathan, setting the paper back down. "So I've got a little bit of a spotlight right now. Doesn't mean I like it. I'm not exactly front page news, am I? I'll fade away soon enough."
"People think you're inspiring," Nathan deadpans, before sipping his unidentified drink. "They need some sort of a heroic figure right now, and you're the default."
"What about Batman? He's more heroic than I am."
"He's killed people. Nobody trusts him anymore."
"I do, though you probably don't care. Anyway, what about Harvey Dent? They did find him again, didn't they?"
Nathan looks at her like she's stupid. "You've really been out of touch with the news, haven't you? He's dead. The Batman killed him."
Michelle settles her face in her hands, and when she speaks, her words are muffled. She's offhandedly rubbing the scar along the left side of her face with her thumb. "And this is preventing you from disowning me how?" She really needs to leave if she's going to try and find somewhere to sleep before nightfall. Nathan sets down his mystery drink and steeples his fingers as he stares at her.
"If I throw you out on the street, I'm automatically the hugest bastard in the entire world. You're not going to be popular for very long, of course; new people will become heroic in Gotham's eyes, you'll fade into the city backdrop again, and people will forget you. But right now, you're important, to some extent. And so," He stares at her as she glances up between her fingers. "I'm offering you an apartment; nicer than the last one, of course, and I'll pay for all your expenses. That way, you get taken care of and I don't look like some sort of monster."
"But you are a monster."
"Yes, but I don't want to look like one." He smiles slightly, but it's humorless and Michelle nods to him.
"Fine; you've got a deal, Nathan."
"Wonderful. Oh yes, and you'll have to deal with the paparazzi wanting interviews."
"Why?" She asks, standing up again, and he doesn't move from his seat on the couch.
"Because if you don't, then they won't leave. I had enough trouble getting them to leave me alone when you left that adorable little note at Gotham PD." He does stand now, as she walks towards the elevator door, hitting the button for it to rise again. "What are you doing?"
"Letting James out of the elevator."
The elevator finally moves again and James glares at her as the doors open. She smirks at him again, before giving him a shove so that he hits the back of the elevator and then reaching around inside the elevator to hit the button with the down arrow. The elevator doors slide shut again as he rushes towards the doors and then the elevator sinks into the floor. Michelle is finding out that being a total bitch to him is a lot of fun.
"You're staying in the guest room here," Nathan tells her, and he's either amused or exasperated, from the sound of his voice. "It's in back." Michelle turns around, following him down the hallway, as he explains to her where the room is and how she's welcome to the kitchen.
The next afternoon, she's sitting in an interview room under harsh lights, answering what questions she can. She doesn't know which newspaper this is for, because Nathan set up the interviews for her, but the interviewer is rather intrusive with her questions.
"So, Ms. King," The interviewer begins, preparing to write, "What was it like?"
Michelle blinks in the harsh lights. "What was…what like?"
"What was it like to be imprisoned by the infamous Joker for an entire month?" The woman rolls her eyes, as if this was obvious, and Michelle glares but keeps her tone natural.
"It was…boring."
Yes, this is all she can come up with. Not 'terrifying', not 'harrowing', not even 'insane'. The interviewer just stares at her a moment, disbelieving. "Boring, you say?"
"Well…yeah. Yes, I mean. Most of the time I spent sitting in a concrete room, just…waiting for something to happen. Most of the time. He did take me out of there sometimes to, um, help out."
"What did you help him do?"
"Well...I think I helped attack an armored car with Harvey Dent in it. It was horrible."
"Yes, we know you were involved with that." The woman says impatiently, tapping her foot. "What else?"
"I watched Gotham General implode." Michelle deadpans, glaring at the woman. She already doesn't like her. "And the Joker had me help him put on his nurse's uniform. Is that interesting enough?" The interviewer blinks, not expecting that, and scribbles something down.
"Let's talk about your interaction with the Joker himself. SWAT team members have said that when they found you, the two of you were chatting almost pleasantly. Do you have any explanation for that?" She's worded it like Michelle had to defend herself against it, and she crosses her arms.
"I was in the middle of bleeding out on the floor, and he was hanging in midair, and we were alone. What else are we going to do but talk? Anyway," She adds, annoyed, "You can only spend so much time around someone before-"
"Before you begin to sympathize with them?"
"No, no! I don't sympathize with him. I was going to say," Michelle fights the urge to just walk out of this place, "Before you learn what to say and what not to say."
"So you do not sympathize with him?"
"Of course not." Michelle snaps, crossing one leg over the other and uncrossing her arms, then crossing them again. She wants this interview over with, and she wonders if Nathan scheduled any more of them.
"And the two of you- you and Joker, I mean –have absolutely no relationship other than captor and captive?"
"What?! Of course not!"
"That's funny," The interviewing woman says while digging in her purse, "Because he likes to mention you." She pulls out a paper, reading off of it while Michelle sits there, slack-jawed. "He has asked more than once about your well-being, and commented that he finds you humorous; he also refers to you as 'Harley'. Do you have any comment, Ms. King?"
"No." Michelle growls, her hand over her face, thinking that bastard that bastard that bastard over and over again, like some sort of mad mantra. "No, I don't. Can we finish this soon?"
"One last question. Have you been through a psychological evaluation since your release, to check for the possibility of Stockholm syndrome? Ms. King?" The interviewer watches Michelle stand up and stomp out the door. Michelle, meanwhile, is indignated. They're not even listening to her side of the story; they're accusing her of…oh, it makes her so mad. She's not even the victim anymore, like she should be; she's just as guilty to some people as the Joker is. Not even mentioning how the Joker is still fucking with her head, even though he's safely locked up by now. For a moment, Michelle wonders if they let him keep his makeup on and decides they probably don't, and then she tries to imagine him without it on. It doesn't work, and as she stomps out to the rented car and slides in the driver's seat, she pushes it aside and thinks about different things. Like the news interview she has in ten minutes.
She leans forward and thumps her forehead against the steering wheel, and jumps when she hits the horn.
The news interview goes much easier than the newspaper interview; they just ask her about what happened and how she feels, not going as rude as the newspaper interviewer did. She was a little insulted when they put makeup over her scar to make it look less 'noticeable' as they called it (they meant grotesque), and very insulted when a man came in, saw them trying to hide her scar, and then stopped them while saying, "No, no, don't do that; let it be really noticeable! It'll cause more viewer reaction, and they'll keep watching."
The news interview is nothing but mundane, expected questions: 'What happened in that month timeframe', 'what injuries did you sustain from him', 'what was it like being trapped by the infamous Joker', the things you'd expect. It's almost a pleasant experience to not feel like she's stuck in an Inquisition. Kind of.
She goes home (Nathan's penthouse, her temporary residence for now) and takes a very hot bath, and wonders about it all. What is she going to do? What can she possibly do now?
Life outside, life free of the Joker, isn't what she had expected. Or maybe it's the exact same, and she's just got a new viewpoint.