She needs to become someone else. Something more. Something less. Something.
Michelle drives, and she's so stuck on the adrenaline and terror and paranoia of every car behind her (because what if they're following her? What if they are? What if, as soon as she stops, they drag her back to suffer Joker's wrath?), pulling over every mile or two just to walk along the side of the road, pacing, pulling at her hair, scratching at her skin. She should feel better now that she's escaped. Saner.
If anything, she feels even madder than before.
Her thoughts whizz by without slowing for any other thought; they stumble over each other, meld, mix. A melting pot of insanity and guilt and terror and perfect awareness of that ever-fragile line that separates the sane from the mad. Of all the times she has her mental breakdown, it's now. Not when she's trapped under constant threat of death, not when she's double crossed by the one man she thinks loves her, not when she presses the switch that takes the lives of innumerable parents and children. No. It's on the escaping ride, on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Gotham City.
Her body still aches. She feels filthy. Like a whore. Like a cheap whore. There are no words to describe how badly she wants to shower, and get the scent of dispassion and gasoline out of her hair and remnants of sweat off of her skin. Her hands, though, are shaking too hard for her to drive without sending herself into a ditch. An eighteen wheeler roars by and Michelle heaves, retching. She's sobbing, tears staining the makeup, a mixture of smeared blood reds and brighter cherry reds and whites and blacks and even grays, the now thick tears dripping down to the ground. She can't handle this.
Why is she crying?
Why are you crying?
Why am I crying?
I don't know.
That's the only answer she has. She doesn't know why she's crying, why she's sick, why she's so afraid and why she's so regretful. Why she's not happy. She can't even think coherently, much less riddle out why she's so…everything.
An hour later, she's in her stolen van again, driving into Gotham. She ditches it in the slums and grabs her stolen coat, wrapping it tight around her as she stalks through the rain. She needs a new identity. A new face. A new hair color. A new name. A new wardrobe. A new car. A new job. A new life. She can't go to the police. No police. They'll find out who she is. They'll out her. He'll find her again, through them, through dirty cops. No media. They'll do the same thing, except fifty times faster. No Nathan. No James. No Michael. Nobody. Cut all ties with Michelle King. That's not her name anymore. That's not the woman walking down the sidewalk of a thick Gotham night, rain soaking through her clothes and plastering her hair to her face.
She's got two hundred dollars in her pocket and a heavy shade on her shoulders.
Six months later, a woman with honey blond hair sits in a dimly lit jazz bar in Gotham, listening to a Miles Davis cover band and sipping a scotch. She was once Michelle King, but she's been running so long that she can't even remember that name. It's written down on a piece of scratch paper still shoved deep in her pocket for when she wants to remember. All the names. All the lies. All the different faces. She can't stay in one place for too long, but she's never left Gotham; can't bear to tear herself away from this dirty, dangerous city.
She turns around in her seat, fingers tracing the lip of her glass, as a thick haze of smoke makes everything hazy. Her eyes are a glassy blue, a hard change with her naturally green eyes. Not impossible, though. Contacts. She's gotten rid of her tattoo, a long, excruciating process; it was removed through laser removal techniques and for every visit to get it off, it literally felt like hot grease was being splashed onto her skin.
It was worth it, though. She's a veritable ghost; a woman without a name, haunting Gotham city, and always running. Joker has been raining hell and fire upon Gotham City ever since he got loose, pure unleaded chaos. It's always too close, too; no matter how much of a phantom she is, he's always able to root her out and she always escapes only by the skin of her teeth. It's no life. It's pure terror, twenty-four seven.
But right now, it's life. It's calm here, too, in this jazz bar, as the band starts playing Blue in Green and the nameless woman raises her cigarette to her mouth, inhaling before letting a slow, hazy cloud of smoke lift upwards towards the ceiling. She's gorgeous, because she's made sure to eliminate every trace of the meek, dull Michelle. She's worked so hard to make herself a bombshell. Blonde, big blue eyes, ruby red lipstick on full lips, and, since she's never been able to hold a tan, creamy pale skin.
Michelle King is gone, and now, there is only Julia. Her last name is never constant. She's just Julia.
Dumbly, she wonders if her hotel room is safe tonight. She's going to move again, when the week is up; one day till then. Her long black trench coat, since she's always found them so tasteful and elegant, is tied around her waist, and it hides her from easy view in the dark bar. She glances up at the bartender and pulls out her wallet, laying what she owes for the drink on the table. She hides, runs, charms her way through life. When she hears someone moving through the door, she gives no notice. Not until the chair beside her scoots, and someone settles into the seat beside her.
"I didn't expect to find a woman of your class here. What's your name?" A man says, and it's in an Italian accent. Michelle takes a sip of her scotch, ice clinking against the glass, before setting it back down and turning her head to look at the man. He's Mafia. She can tell them at first sight, now; nice suits, suave manners, the habit of throwing Italian into their regular speech to try and impress her. This one is very forward and just asks her name, instead of trying to worm his way into a conversation with her. She settles her chin against the heel of her hand, smiling very slightly at him.
"Julia."
"Beautiful name for a very beautiful woman, miei caro." He very softly brushes the back of his hand along her left arm, and she chuckles very quietly.
"You have no idea how many times I've heard that bit of Italian, mister…?"
"Ah, I didn't know. And Cane. Alfonso Cane." He's very charming, and Julia isn't sure if it's genuine or fake as he takes her hand from her glass of scotch, running his thumb over the back of it. "Would you like to maybe have dinner somewhere?"
"You're very forward. What would my mother say if I said yes?" She laughs, and it's very quiet and reserved.
"I don't know, what would she say?" Alfonso leans in, speaking softly, and Julia turns away to sip at her scotch.
"Nothing, I suppose. She's dead."
It was rhetorical. Alfonso could kick himself for not noticing that. To try and salvage the encounter, he lays his hand over hers, smiling as smoothly as he can.
"In any case, about dinner…?"
"I…suppose." She smiles again, a very slight one, and finishes her scotch on the rocks with another swallow, pulling her black purse over her shoulder. Alfonso stands as well, walking with her to the door as Blue in Green comes to the ending piano solo, and Julia remains silent. She's still up to her old tricks, conning expensive men out of their money, except instead of having Nathan to fall back on, as a support cushion of sorts, she has nothing to fall back on but concrete. So she makes herself beautiful and uses her appearance as a bargaining tool instead of the promise of money.
Alfonso takes her to a very nice restaurant, and they find out that they have absolutely nothing in common. Then he drives her out to a nice hotel, and they have loveless sex. After he falls asleep, Julia steals the money out of his wallet, which is two thousand (why the hell does a man have two thousand dollars on him anyway?), and tucks it away in her own pocket. It occurs to her that, since this is her main scheme, she's kind of a prostitute now, and as she sneaks out the door, dressed, Julia wonders if she'd have stooped this low six months ago. Probably not.
It's not like she has a choice anymore, though. She's on the run, constantly, and can't hold a job because of it. So what if she's a very beautiful, very pricy, thieving hooker? They're not being hunted by the Joker. So fuck anyone that judges her for what she's done and what she's doing. She sneaks out of the hotel and heads down the street, flagging down a passing car and hitching a ride to her part of Gotham.
A week later, she's staring out of her new hotel room's window, a cigarette in between her pale fingers. That two grand had been great for her; it was a cheap hotel, but it was enough for her, and she could stare down through her second story window and watch the cars roll by. She reaches into her pocket and unfurls the curled piece of paper with a name on it. Michelle King. She smiles, slightly, before hearing a noise out her window and stuffing the paper back into her pocket, leaning out to look.
It's a black car. And the guys stepping out of it have nice suits on. And they're loading pistols.
"Damn." Julia breathes, as they walk in the door, hiding their guns. She knows they're mafia, she can tell. And she thinks that Alfonso is a bit sore about having his wallet thieved by a conniving hooker. How they hunted her down, she has no idea, but her paranoia is spiking. They're coming for her, they've got to be. There are footsteps approaching outside her door, and Julia crawls out the window with her purse under her arm, onto the fire escape. There are a few feet, maybe two, between her windowsill and the fire escape, but she crawls over deftly and then rushes upwards, as the door to her room comes open. She runs up the fire escape as a man leans out her window and catches sight of her, yelling. She turns onto the roof right as a bullet pings off of the metal hand rail right next to her, and after another climb, is on the roof.
So they want her dead. Why so sore, Alfonso? It's not like she hasn't done it to other, smarter men.
Julia runs down the rooftop, heels clicking as she does, before bullets are ricocheting off of the roofing near her feet and she's running harder. She reaches the end of the roof and, without anywhere else to go, slips down the side of the roof and drops, rolling when she hits the small grassy lawn around the building. They look down from the roof as she's disappearing down a small alleyway, a splotch of blond against dim brick walls and bland gray concrete. One of them cusses, before noticing something on the roof of the building. A scrap of paper that's fallen out of her pocket, apparently. He picks it up, reading off the name.
"Michelle King? What the…" He hears police sirens and quickly runs down to ground level with his partner, getting into the car and disappearing just like Julia did. He dials a number on his phone, before a man picks up.
"Yes?"
"Boss, we found her…"
"Is the whore dead?"
"No."
"Well why the hell not?!"
"She's too…fast. But we found something else."
"What the hell am I paying you bastards for…ugh, what did you find?"
"Julia? She ain't Julia. Michelle King."
"I've heard that somewhere before…Michelle…King…oh my god." Alfonso mutters in shock, as he recognizes the name. Everyone recognizes the name. She's the woman that escaped from Joker. Twice. Of course, the public thinks she's dead; disappeared. The Mafia, however, know that she didn't die, she ran off again. And they know that Joker's been hunting her down.
Alfonso laughs to himself. "I see, I see. Thanks." He hangs up on his thug, before dialing another number.
"Hey…Rocko? Tell your boss Joker I've got something I think he'll want to know about. A ghost."
((So, what do you guys think about the timeskip? I thought it'd kind of be appropriate, so it wouldn't be a disappointing 'Oh, she got away for two days but got caught again, lol' kind of thing. Kind of want to go for a noir feel, though; how did that go over? I want to know if I suck, of course. :D))