When she opens her eyes, Michelle is staring at a pair of all-too-familiar boots. Her hair is plastered to the side of her face by what she guesses is blood, as it's hot and very sticky. Maybe it's hers, maybe it's Bruno's; she can't tell which. Her eyes are open but apparently, he hasn't noticed her awake yet, as he's not making a horrible pun or a cheesy comment about her current predicament. She has scant seconds before he realizes she's awake and reads her thoughts like an open book, and realizes that she's planning something. Her slim black jacket's sleeves are very long; enough for her to slowly try and pull something out of her black glove; a back up last resort weapon, just in case this sort of thing happened. She presses her wrist against her thigh; she's lying on her stomach on the bottom of another van (what is his obsession with using vans?) and at the angle he's sitting, he won't be able to see what she's doing if she's careful. With her wrist against her thigh, hand obscured by her jacket's sleeve, she slowly tries to coax the weapon out of her glove and into her palm.
"Good morning, star shine; the Earth says, 'hello'." Joker says down at her, his tone faux-affectionate (mocking, derisive more than anything), and when she doesn't respond, he taps her head with the toe of his boot. "You need acting classes; I can still tell you're not asleep."
"Go to Hell." Michelle snaps, venomously, ignoring the feeling of déjà vu coming from this very familiar conversation. He presses his shoe down on her head and leans his weight on it slightly; she balls her hands into fists but doesn't let him hear her make a noise.
"Honey sweet, like always." He leans more of his weight onto her skull, and she rolls out from under his foot and moves to a sitting position, glaring hard at him. He's never seen her quite this angry with him before, and it's quite refreshing to see her not just collapsing at the slightest touch. Then again, he's also kind of happy because he'll get to break her back down again, so he's kind of looking forward to that. "Why so cantankerous?" He folds his hands in his lap and smiles down at her, as if his gloves aren't currently soaked in dog's blood.
"You're a heartless bastard," Michelle snaps, and Joker is somewhat surprised that she's being so bold, though he doesn't let it show and just keeps on smiling. "You're sick."
"You know," He leans forward but remains in his seat, his hands on his knees, "I hear that so much nowadays. You have no idea how much they like that word in Arkham." He reaches out and grabs her by the lower jaw, pressing his thumb against her cheekbone and the dark scar running down it. As soon as he does, Michelle lashes out at his face, or his throat, or whatever she can hit, and he sees the glint of a knife a moment before she does. He grabs her hand and doesn't flinch as the knife blade digs into his palm, using this grip on her hand to drag her towards him while keeping his grip on her jaw.
"Don't play with toys that you don't know how to use," He twists the knife out of her grip and flips it into his own, before cutting a deep gash in her hand to match his. She yelps and throws herself to the floor of the van, out of his grip, clutching her hand to her chest and glaring even harder at him than before, as he admires her knife. "Good taste, Michelle." He says distantly, pocketing her knife. He glances to her again, smiling in a rather friendly manner. "So, how's life treating you on the outside?"
"You screwed it all up for me." Michelle mutters loud enough to be heard. "I can't enjoy life because of you." She looks back up at him and sees that he's frowning, but it's obviously fake because he's overdoing it and it looks ridiculous.
"Oh? How'd I do that?" He's ignoring the gash in his hand almost completely, while Michelle is clutching her hand to her chest in agony. It's just another thing about him that makes him all the less human. Michelle closes her eyes and scoots to the other side of the van, pressing her back against it. She's done being meek and terrified of him; it's time for her to step up and probably die in an unspeakably painful manner.
"I don't have to answer to you. And I don't care if you think I do, and I don't care if you stick a knife in my face for saying it! Fuck off!" She shouts at him, and he just sighs and cracks his neck.
"I've been waiting for you to say that," He tells her, standing up from his side of the van and walking towards her, as she stands up and braces herself. "Two forces can only press against one another for so long until one has to…break." He snaps his fingers at that last word as the van comes to a stop almost eerily timed to him reaching her, and she dodges his grab and throws open the doors to the back of the van, dashing out. It's not the old warehouse base that they're at; this is a completely new place, and it looks like it's an abandoned factory of some sort. She knows she can't win if she actually fights him, but if she can distract him somehow…maybe she can-
"Going somewhere?" He hooks his fingers in her long hair as she runs, and Michelle curses herself for not cutting it when she had the chance as he drags her back, laughing. She coughs slightly as she hits his chest, and he grabs her wrists and pins them to her chest, speaking in her ear. "Am I the one you're really angry with? I don't think I am." She seems to quiet down a moment, hanging her head, before suddenly jerking it back and hitting something hard with the back of her head. His grip loosens, enough so that she can twist in his grip and flatten her hands over his chest, shoving hard. He staggers back a step, a hand over his face, still giggling.
"How do you even know!?" Michelle shouts at him, her hands balled into fists. "You don't know anything about me! And I am pissed at you, you heartless fuck; you killed-"
"Your pooches?" Joker cuts in, dropping his hand from his face, smiling. "I didn't kill either one of your mongrels; you killed them. Well, one of them…"
Michelle is already charging, common sense be fucking damned; she swings at him, a wide, almost drunken swing at his head that he catches easily, before dragging her forward and slamming his knee in her stomach. She doubles over, gagging; he slams an elbow into the middle of her back and she goes down.
"You're not angry with me; at least, not exclusively." He states, and as she tries to get up, he places his boot on her back and forces her back down into the dirt. "No, I think you're angry that everything is so…unfair." Michelle flounders in the dirt, and the more she struggles, the harder he pushes her down to the ground, until he just lifts his foot and stomps on her back. She stops struggling after he does that. "You're mad that no matter how hard you try to live normally, you just can't catch a break."
"That's not-"She begins, before he stomps on her again.
"Shh, I'm not finished. I was right, wasn't I? Now," He drags her up by the arm, and tugs her around (she's limp as a ragdoll) so that she can see the Gotham buildings (Michelle guesses that they're on the outskirts of Gotham, from the distance to the buildings). "You see them like I do, don't you? They're animals, tearing one another to shreds for petty change and their own inflated egos." Her head lolls against his shoulder, his arm hooked around her waist and pinning her against him so that she doesn't collapse and interrupt him. "They're helpless, useless; content to wallow in their mud and dirt as long as they scratch out a little more profit than the people next door." His voice rises and falls as he speaks; it's obvious that he's very passionate about this, and Michelle just listens, having little choice. "They're miserable and can't even tell!" The last sentence ends in a laugh, a high-pitched hyena-like cackle. As he starts again, however, the humor fades from his voice and he growls out the next sentence.
"It's…so…pathetic."
Michelle raises her head, weakly, to look at him from her peripheral vision. The annoyed expression (maybe even a snarl) flickers to a smile, a crazed smile that chills her. "That's why they deserve people like me. People like you. People like the Batman. As long as they stay so animalistic, so disgusting, then Gotham City is going to stay ground zero for the crazies." He looks down at her; smiling in that crazed manner that suggests mental illness (more like screams it). "Don't you think so, Michelle?"
She doesn't answer. What do you possibly say to that kind of speech; 'Oh…totally'? So she asks something else instead.
"What do you mean, 'People like you'? I'm not…like you." She tries to keep disgust out of her tone on that last word, and fails. He just smiles though, and it's both insane and, at the same time, knowing.
"Oh, you'd be surprised exactly how much like me you really are. You'll see." He winks at her, almost mischievously, before loosening his grip on her and letting her collapse to the ground, falling to her knees. "Take your last look at Gotham, Michelle; make it fast." He tells her, the good mood in his voice disappearing and replaced by a more serious tone. A goon grabs her by the upper arm and drags her back towards the factory, jerking her around to face forward, and she sees that the Joker is already walking towards the building. She twists around to see the tall buildings in the distance once last time, before they walk into the cool shadows of the factory building and a door shuts in her face.