How long has it been since she was rotting in a concrete room? Michelle can't quite remember.

She went to the Joker's trial to give testimony, not that she was actually needed to win the trial. The vote was unanimous anyway; he's going to rot in a padded cell in Arkham for life. She did see him without the makeup, which was the only reason she came in the first place, more or less. It was almost insane to see him without the red gash of a smile and the black raccoon eyes, though his hair was still dirty green; he didn't look any more human, though. And for the love of dear god, he saw her and waved. She turned ashen. He laughed.

"Nice scar," He tells her as she gets off the stand and walks past his table, and she looks at him with her face as white as paper. "They're fun, aren't they?" She keeps walking while he laughs and the judge tells him to quiet down, Michelle sitting down again in back and closing her eyes.

It's been a month or two since he was sent to Arkham. Gotham is quieting down again, recovering from the terror. Michelle has her apartment and her own car now, and she still gets stopped on the street by citizens asking her about her time with the Joker. She's interesting to them, Nathan tells her, but Michelle doesn't buy that.

She's like a leper. Someone you want to watch for the pure bile fascination of it, someone you're interested in for a little while for the entertainment, but ultimately someone that you're going to abandon and forget about soon enough. Someone you kind of have interest in, someone that you pity more than anything else, but someone that you don't want to have around you for extended periods of time. She's different from them, and the scar along her face is the gold paper Star of David that proves it.

But that's just how she sees it. Maybe there's something wrong with her.

The police interviewed her too, before the trial even started; they asked her what he did to her, and she told them in gruesome detail; slashing her across the face with a switchblade, gouging her with the blade in his shoe, breaking her fingers, punching her, dragging her around by her hair, the normal things. She's very emotionless as she outlines her time in captivity, her voice a cool, calm monotone. They ask if he raped her, and she tells them, in no uncertain terms, that she doesn't even think he has any interest in women. That gets their attention, and they ask why she thinks that. She says that he never so much as gave a second look when she was in the same skimpy nurses' uniform that he was, and they quit asking about it.

They put her through a test to see if she has Stockholm syndrome or any other psychological problems as a result of her imprisonment. She doesn't seem to sympathize with the Joker or his men, but she doesn't show any anger towards them or even blame them. She doesn't even seem like she's really…there. She's distant, doesn't pay attention, and stares off at nothingness. She tells them that she's unhappy with her life; the world seems cold, thankless. They tell her that she might be depressed, and to see a psychologist. Nathan has been sending her to one ever since she got back. The therapy isn't working at all. They send her on her way.

Michelle's viewpoint has definitely been changed.

Ignorance was bliss. She could walk among all the plebes and could turn away from the grimier parts of Gotham and the people living in it, because she was rich and could afford to look away; her life was very slow, a calm current of work, work, dating for dinner, parties, work, work. It was easy then. But now, something is different. She can't help but see, but balk at the fact that though they all ignored her when she was just another person, and reviled her when she needed them the most, when she was rotting in a jail cell next to the Joker. Can't forget how Nathan disowned her over the phone because she would damage his reputation. But now that she's (in)famous, she's got so many more friends; people talk to her with smiles, ask her about herself and what it was like being a captive of the Joker (she's so sick of that question), invite her to ritzy parties.

It's fashionable to be friends with Michelle King. That's the only reason they don't revile her anymore; because she's the next classy thing to have at your party. She's a wonderful decoration.

Michelle can't help but see people for what they are now. She sees how superficial they are, how they only care for themselves, how they're just pigs operating off of jealousy and lust. Even Nathan only keeps her around so that he can still look like a kind, caring man. She's cynical now, trusts nobody; she's got a gun in her purse because everybody is suspect, she can't trust any of them.

It's a horrible life made up of seeing all of the bad, all of the horror, all of the tragedy, and being unable to enjoy any of the light.

Nobody tries to help her. She can't rely on the shrink to help her, because no matter how much she tells him about how dark the world is, how horrible and cruel and unfair life seems to her now, he says that it will pass. It will pass, it will pass, why don't you go see a clown? She howls in laughter at that suggestion, before the therapist realizes what he's said and apologizes profusely, trying to smooth it over. She leaves. Giggling.

Where's the adrenaline? There's no point in living if you can't feel alive, and Michelle might as well be in a coma from how alive she feels. Where's the point in it all anymore? Things are so…boring. She gets up, walks down to the large bookstore where she works now (the small, quiet one closed down while she was gone) and spends hours rushing around, getting asked that same damnable question (what was it like? What was it like?) fifty times a day, gets so many pitying stares from passersby that stare at her scar, goes home, takes a shower, and goes to bed.

There's no point in anything anymore.

And then one morning, there is.

She gets up at six AM sharp, and turns on the TV to the news. She does this so that she can hear the weather as she gets ready for work. But now, there's something else on the news, and it's something that almost everyone in Gotham is watching at this moment.

He escaped. Somehow, through the help of God or Satan, pick your poison, the Joker escaped Arkham Asylum.

Widespread panic. The news anchors are having panic attacks. Police are buzzing around like angry wasps, trying to find him before he can disappear again. Michelle is glued to the TV, watching with rapt attention. The police can't find him anywhere around Arkham, though they've found his abandoned jumpsuit near a cache of what appears to be supplies set up just in case he was ever caught, probably civilian clothes and some money. He's gone.

Michelle knows that she's probably near the top of his 'To Visit' list, maybe under Batman, and she knows she's in horrible danger. She's in the damn phone book, for Christ sakes. It's only a matter of time until he tracks her down and maybe guts her for testifying against him, or does that 'strap-a-bomb-to-you' thing he was talking about that one time.

After a moment of pondering what to do, Michelle switches off the TV, grabs her keys, and heads out to her car to go to work.

What else can she really do but hang onto the tattered remains of her normal, sane life?