She's lost her name.
It's something so insignificant in the long run, but it's so damn important to her as she, for the millionth time, digs through her coat's pockets again. She wants to find it, because she already forgot that very important last shred of herself. It's all she has left of her old life, before things got so complicated. She sits on the floor of a cheap motel across Gotham, where the sheets are stained and the porn is free, and puts her head in her hands. She could cry, if it wouldn't mess up her makeup.
It's gone, she tells herself. It's gone now.
Then and there, Julia wonders if it was all worth it. Was leaving Joker worth the life she got in return? No money. No home. No friends, too dangerous. No boyfriends or husbands, too dangerous and because she's never found one that she actually cares enough about to consider marriage. She's got nothing to her name, and now, she doesn't even have her name anymore. There's nothing to her but Julia, the conniving, thieving hooker; the femme fatale that snatches wallets in the night and disappears into Gotham's depths. The woman without a last name.
Was it worth it? Did you find your happy life, M…M…Julia?
Did I? Is this…all, is it what I wanted? No…I wanted a life. I'll never have it, either. It's all gone. I was naïve. I thought I could escape and disappear, make a new life and live happily with a man I love. I can't. I can't bring myself to trust any of them anymore, can't help but run away and never bother, never hope to stop. Joker…I'm ruined.
What is she now but a facsimile of human life? An imitation; a very pretty imitation, but still, a fake. She lives only to flee.
Julia grabs her things and stands, heading out of her motel room and out of the motel itself, walking down the steps of it and down the sidewalk. Now she's got mafia men on her tail, and they want her dead. Joker, the Mafia; why don't we just add in Colombian drug dealers and the IRA, while we're at it? She walks down the sidewalk, and begins to notice that someone follows behind her at a respectable distance, but even as she weaves through the streets, impossible patterns for anyone with a real destination, he follows. She's panicking, but it's well hidden and she merely puts a hand on her purse. A purse snatcher? Or a Mafia hit man?
She walks down an alleyway to her left, and while the man loses sight of her, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a pistol, keeping it out of sight as she walks down to the dead-end alleyway and stops. When she turns around, it's not a groomed mafia man, it's a thug, what looks like a junkie.
"Purse." He snaps, and she aims a pistol at him. After he takes a moment too long to run, she fires off a shot near his head and he turns, running off down the sidewalk. Julia drops her arm, sighing in relief, before a metallic click behind her head makes her raise her hands slowly, in a defeated manner.
"Hands in the air…good." It's a man, and his voice is deep and emotionless. The man takes Julia's pistol and instead puts his arm around her, hiding the pistol pressed against her ribs as they walk down the street.
"Mafia?" Julia asks tersely, and he makes a slight 'hm' noise.
"I thought as much." She closes her eyes, as he continues to guide her down the street. As they walk down the sidewalk, she notices that they're heading towards a black car. When he opens the door for her, she seizes the moment of distraction and twists away, ducking behind a trashcan long enough to hear a bullet ping off of the brick near her head, before barreling down the sidewalk, hurriedly. She knows that they're probably driving after her and so dodges into a small café, rushing through the building and through the back door while dodging anybody that she sees. When she emerges from the building, she knows they're not far behind and so ducks down the alleyway she emerged in, seeing a chain-link fence ahead of her. She kicks off her heels and throws them over, before painstakingly clambering over the fence and dropping, putting on her shoes again and running away about the time they're shouting after her.
"Dammit! How'd…how'd the find me?" Julia breathes, ducking through seedy back alleys and eventually finding that she's lost them. She stops running, exhausted, and now walks along the sidewalk, staring up at the sky. It was around noon when she started running; it's sundown now. She's been running for six or seven hours now, dodging into random buildings, staying there a half hour or so, before dodging out and finding another building to hide in. Bars, restaurants, strip clubs; anywhere.
"Ugh…my feet hurt…" Julia stares up at the sky, sighing. She sees the glint of a car in the corner of her eye and walks, casually, into a café, sitting down in the back corner of the room as more mafia-esque men walk in, glancing around for her. They talk to a waitress and look back when a blond slips out the back door, and they shout after her and give chase. The first walks out the back door and is immediately smacked with a garbage can lid, and he goes down like a brick. She snatches the gun off of him right as the second runs into view, and he backs up slowly when she aims it at him.
"Get…away…from…me!" Julia snarls, walking backwards slowly, before someone smashes her across the back of the head with something heavy, while pulling the gun out of her numb hands as she slumps to the ground, black spots blooming in her vision.
"You guys are fucking useless." A man says behind her, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her over his shoulder, before quickly walking to a black car and tossing her in back. The man that apparently clubbed her sits in the seat next to her, rolling her semi-conscious self onto her back.
"Hello, Ms. King. We've got somebody that wants to see you." He tells her, before wrapping her wrists up in duct tape.
"Fuckyou…" She mumbles, dizzily, and he puts another piece of tape over her mouth.
"I'd love you to, but we're busy right now." He responds, cheekily; the driver begins to…well, drive. Blood is running down into Julia's eye, and she closes it, before lapsing out of consciousness for a moment. When the car comes to a stop is when she's jolted awake again, and after a moment, the guy that clubbed her is dragging her out of her seat, an arm wrapped around her waist to support her, and he walks her into a warehouse. The door comes open and it's dim, dank, and the ceiling is dripping. Her blue eyes focus, very hazily, onto a group of people waiting inside.
"Alfonso, we got her. Hard to catch." The guy beside her says, and apparently, Alfonso is here and smirking at her battered person.
"Ah? Good. Get the little whore over here. He'll be here any minute."
He? Michelle is too dizzy to riddle it out, and merely leans against the guy guiding her, everything being hazy and hard to discern and even harder to keep track of. She still can't see out of the eye with blood in it. It's disquieting, and the lack of vision on the side Alfonso's on is very hampering.
The door opens on the other side of the warehouse, when did they start coming with two of them, and another group of people walk in, one at the forefront strolling in lazily.
"I hope we didn't keep you…waiting."
It's that voice. The one that snaps Julia out of any sort of haze she was in before. She shoots up, straight up, and the guy holding her is so startled that he lets her go for a moment and she's running in the opposite direction. He catches her, drags her back.
"She doesn't seem happy to see you."
"Of course not; you let a bird loose, it's really not going to want to come back to the cage, is it?" The Joker states, calmly, as he watches the woman across from him stare at him wide-eyed, still trying to scoot backwards and away from him. "Hello, Michelle. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Let's talk business." Alfonso cuts in, and Joker looks to him with a bit of annoyance.
"Fine. You know the agreement of ours; immunity…at least, as much as a man of my line of work can provide…to the Cane family."
"Agreed. Take the woman, and watch out; sneaky whore." He snaps his fingers and the man beside Julia drags her to the middle of the room, where a clown-masked thug grabs her by the back of the neck and drags her back to their side. She curls away from Joker, who ignores her for a moment before the two groups agree and both turn away, walking out towards their respective vehicles outside. The thug shoves her over and Joker catches her, an arm around her shoulder and guiding her out the door and towards another van, which seems to be his favorite sort of vehicle.
"Michelle, it's been too, too long. How's life on the outside been treating you?" He asks, casually, before noticing that she can't answer. He rips off the tape and lets it flutter to the ground as she coughs, her lips burning now, and then looks up to him.
"T…para…noid…" She mumbles, still trying to pull away from him. He laughs, tossing her into the van, and this marks the third time that she's been forcefully shoved into a van of some sort, against her will. It's getting too common for her tastes. He settles in on his own side as the van begins to move.
"You know, you caused me a lot of trouble, running off when you did. I was about to use you that next morning, for another idea of mine. But…I guess we can just make up for lost time." Joker notices that she's looking much different, and Julia's a bit offset by how curiously he's looking at her now. "You've changed."
"W…what?"
"You heard me, didn't you? Ah, I know you did." He smiles, wryly, and it's a grotesque thing because of his scars. "I said," He reaches over, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and dragging her over towards him, so that she's kneeling right in front of him, "You've changed how you look. I bet you were just getting yourself ready to see me again, right?" He's in a very good mood, Julia notices, and she's secretly thankful for that.
"Um…no, of course not." She closes her eyes and sighs the last part, momentarily forgetting that she's in the presence of a very temperamental madman. He knots his fingers in her blond hair and pulls hard enough for her eyes to shoot open and her head to jerk at an angle so that she's looking up at him, and he's still smiling.
"Pay attention. And that's too bad. I had fun at our last little…get together." He winks at her and she closes her eyes and sighs again, quieter this time, as he lets go of her hair and pulls her into the seat next to him. "Really, I did. We should do that again sometime."
"I thought you didn't like me trying that. You nearly strangled me last time."
"I was tired, wanted to get to sleep. A woman throwing herself at you is kind of annoying when you're tired."
"I wouldn't know." Julia sighs, leaning her elbows on her knees and putting her head into her hands. He sets his arm on her shoulder and pulls her against him, and he still reeks of gasoline like always. It's weird how he's acting, though; he should be angry with her, should be killing her. No, he's acting like they're old friends.
"That's a shame. Anyway, Michelle," Joker says cheerily, as the van comes to a stop and he guides her out of it and to the ground outside, "We need to get to business. Come on, let's go." He walks her up to their new hideout, a derelict warehouse building, and she's not at all uptight about walking with him to the very back, into a large room with concrete walls and floors. No, it's only when he walks around behind her and clicks handcuffs onto one wrist while ripping off the duct tape that she gets nervous again.
"What are we doing?" Julia asks, as he guides her towards a chair and has her sit down. He closes the other handcuff to the chair, before waltzing over to the back of the chair and quickly tying her up with rope he's hidden there.
"We're going to make a movie. Now…you don't look convincing enough for an actress in my movie. We need to…oh, rough you up a little bit." Joker says, offhandedly, almost cheerily, before facing Julia and rearing back, laying a hard punch right in her left eye. She cries out with the blow, before biting her lip and looking up at him.
"What the hell was that for?!" She snaps, angrily, as he's looking her face over. He doesn't answer, just backhands her as hard as he can, and then punches her again on the right cheekbone. By the time he's done 'roughing her up a little bit', she's got a black eye and her pretty face is swelling up horribly, blood running down from her split lip and bruises all over. She's sobbing, too, and her makeup is running.
"There we go! Now you're pretty enough to be in my movie. It's for a very selective audience," He says, walking out of sight and returning with a cheap video camera, "And they really like it when the actress is a little beaten. Gets more emotional reaction, you know." He turns on the camera as Julia hangs her head, and begins to narrate in a very alien, very excited voice.
"What's your name?" He asks, and she can hear that he's on the verge of laughter. She raises her head enough for her blond hair to fall aside and the once-pretty face to show in the dim lighting.
"J…Julia…"
"Julia? When did you change it from Michelle?" He sounds like he's about to crack up laughing at how pathetic she looks.
"When…when I got away from you…again." She sneers the last word, and the giggles in his voice immediately silence. When he speaks again, it's very calm, and very controlled.
"Do you think anyone's coming to save you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"…Because…" Julia starts, slowly, "Nobody…cares…about…me…" She trails off, ending in a near whisper. Joker laughs again.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because they all think I'm…like you. Sick. Out of my…mind. Cray-zee as a fucking shithouse rat!" She shouts the last sentence, and he snarls, grabbing her by the face and slamming her head into the back of her wooden chair. She goes limp, and he steps back, regaining a soft bit of laughter in his voice.
"Julia…are you afraid?"
"…No."
"Well, you should be." He growls the word, and she stares in terror at him. "Because we're going to play a game with Gotham PD. And you know how they are with hostages." He turns the camera around, walking up to Julia as he talks.
"Ms. King here…oh sorry, Julia here is going to be at a specific place at a specific time, waiting for someone to come save her. I want Officer Michael Keegan to come, alone, and see Michelle again. She was all broken up when you broke her heart, you know. Pitiful sight." He laughs at 'pitiful', and then directs the camera at Julia again.
"Isn't that right, Michelle?"
"…Go fuck yourself." She mutters, loud enough to be heard, and is backhanded again, and she knows that he's letting the camera catch this.
"Watch your mouth; we're on camera, after all. Don't want to say anything the kids at home wouldn't be allowed to hear." He laughs as he speaks again, looking into the camera and talking. "Keegan shows up at 1617 Straighten Road, warehouse number thirteen, at noon tomorrow, alone, or Michelle ends up on Gotham PD's front doorstep, in pieces. Goodbye, Gotham!" He shrieks in laughter at those last two words, before shutting the camera off and setting it aside.
"Good actress. You're lucky I changed my mind at the last minute; I went into this thinking that it was going to be a snuff film." Joker is smiling now, slicing the rope and unlocking the handcuffs, and Julia doesn't move.
"Michelle? We awake in there? I didn't kill you, did I?" He snaps his fingers in front of her face, and she stands up shakily and begins to stomp away from him. It's not five steps later that she collapses, and he's grabbing her by her upper arm and dragging her along.
"Didn't think you'd be able to walk after that one." He notes, and she jerks out of his grip and tries to walk away from him. He catches her by the arm again. "Don't be so difficult; it's just the job. I'd do your makeup too, but I only know how to do one face, and it's not the one we need to make you look like a battered victim."
"You're a monster." Julia murmurs, and his grip tightens.
"And you're a whore. You see, we both have unsavory titles attached to our names, don't we? You don't call me the ones I don't like, and I don't remind you that you're a pickpocket gutter whore. Sound fair?" He ends on a high, pleasant note, and after a moment, she nods slightly. "Good, good. Let's make this as enjoyable as possible." He guides her to a spare room, and walks her in to the mattress thrown on the corner of the room.
"After all, I might be the last person you ever really talk to ever again." Joker adds, cheerily, while walking out the door of her room and slamming it behind him. After a moment of silence, Julia buries her face in her hands and she cries.