"So, how's the dress for this evening?" Angelface asks, now attempting, haphazardly, to put on lipstick in front of the mirror. She's having a hard time doing it, seeing as she can't tell her lips from the parted open gouges in her cheeks and can't really guess where to stop with the carmine lipstick.
"Expensive. At least make it look expensive." Crane tells her, standing at her right and fixing his tie. It's a very peculiar feeling to be dressed professionally again. He's wearing a nice black suit, though it was picked up at a thrift store not too far away. It's amazing what people will throw out on account of a tiny little rip in the sleeve, one that Angelface easily fixed with a needle and black thread.
"I think we look expensive enough," She tells him, wiping away the ruby red lipstick and beginning again, for the fifth or so time. She's wearing a curvy white dress, and it looks expensive too. They picked it up at the same place they got his suit. She recently touched up her blond-dyed hair, as her red roots were showing, and now her hair is a vibrant blond again. She'd be beautiful if it weren't for her scars, but she's finished her lipstick, finally, and is in the process of smearing concealer over them to make them less noticeable. They're still very noticeable, but less so than normal. She had to take her silver rings out, to look more presentable and less like a thug.
Looking at Crane in his suit and Angelface in her dress, you'd never guess they were two escaped mental patients planning to bring the greatest city in the world to its knees.
They're getting ready for a party, and an important one. A Halloween costume party that they've had to arrange, arduously, to get invitations for. All in the plan.
"Are we ready?" She asks him, messing with her hair, trying to make it perfect as it tumbles down her shoulders and back. He nods, slightly and almost jerkily, picking up their case. You can't very well walk into a ritzy party in your costume, can you? They'll change once they get there, like everyone else will. The two of them walk out of the shitty Narrows apartment they've been squatting in, and make their way to the equally expensive-looking car waiting out front.
"Joker's being pretty thorough in keeping up appearances," Angelface notes, sliding in back, and Crane sits down a moment later, putting the bag with their costumes down into the floorboards and giving the driver a slight nod.
"Why wouldn't he be? Our part of the plan is important enough, and we have to look like we're legitimate." He pulls off his glasses and polishes the lenses with a cleaning cloth, before putting them back on and examining the passing streetlamp to see if there are any streaks. There are. He pulls off his glasses, sighing in frustration, and begins the arduous task of trying to polish his lenses to perfection. They're going to a ritzy party, and they have to look like they're supposed to be going to this ritzy party.
The drive to the Wayne manor isn't that long. And when they pull up in front of the building, though there's a fifteen to twenty minute wait as they inch forward in the line of other cars. When they do eventually get out, Crane walks around and opens the door for her, she shivers in the chill October night air, and he gives her his coat, just as rehearsed. They walk side-by-side up to the door, though an attentive person would note that they're not touching, and stop at the two men watching the door.
"Invitations?" One asks, and Crane produces two, one for him and one for Angelface. "Alright, Mr. and Mrs.…Bateman?" He gives a glance up at them, and neither Crane nor Angelface falter at his stare. "Anyway, we need to search the bag. Safety procedures."
"Of course," Crane hands them the bag, and they open it up and search, finding nothing incriminating in it. No guns, no knives, no little metal canisters filled with mystery liquid and/or gas; just a perfume bottle, a mask, a dress, unimportant and mundane things. "Wouldn't want to compromise our safety."
The bouncer-type man closes the bag and hands it back to Crane, clearing the way for the door. "It looks fine. Enjoy the party."
They nod and walk in, sliding around servers and party guests now staring at the two of them, though none of the bluebloods seem to recognize Crane (as he assumed they wouldn't) or his blond company, though they see the scars instantly and whispering starts up. To Crane it's annoying. To Angelface? Nostalgia. She hasn't been to a ritzy party in at least a year, maybe two; time just slips right past her nowadays. And the last party she was at ended with a kidnapping.
"Never thought I'd get into a Wayne party without Nathan close by or a rich boyfriend on my arm," She tells Crane in a quiet voice barely above a whisper, and he makes a noise in his throat that she can't decipher as either affirmative or annoyed that she's making useless chatter. Either way, it sounds nonplussed. They mingle, not too well seeing as Crane's a misanthropic recluse and Angelface is a psychotic with a Chelsea smile from ear to ear, but they do try. At five 'til midnight, Bruce Wayne himself addresses the crowd of partygoers and invites them to get into costume for the midnight events, and Crane slips away with Angelface down a hallway as other guests crowd in the bathroom(s), until they find what looks like a closet of some sort. It's a very large closet.
"Let's get ready," He tells her, unclipping their case and opening it quickly, as they have about five minutes to dress and get back out there. He pulls on his Scarecrow mask at about the same time as Angelface slips out of her nice white dress and into the girlish white one splotched with her blood and covered in tears and gouges where she was cut or shot, and she smears her carefully-applied lipstick with her thumb, until it's in the same Joker smile that got her into this entire long mess in the first place, that long ago night in the penthouse party. As a final touch, she rubs some of the scarlet onto her cheekbones in a small red oval, to make artificial blush spots that would be sort of cute if she didn't look so detached from reality. Her hair is pulled out of the delicate pins that make her look like a movie star and she musses it up to make it wild again. As a last touch, she kicks off her heels and goes barefoot.
She's no longer Michelle or Julia or any other name that was on her invitation, and he's no longer Crane; they're Angelface and Scarecrow, and they've got two minutes to get into position before the real party starts. Crane pulls the top off of her perfume bottle and pours the liquid into a small metal canister, closes the canister tight while tossing the bottle aside, and shakes it up for a few seconds before hiding it up his sleeve. The two of them walk out of the closet like a psychotic James Bond with a Glasgow Bond girl on his arm.
Scarecrow slips away as Angelface walks into the party again, bloodstained dress and new makeup garnering great amounts of attention, and it's not too long before people approach her as she stands in the corner of the room, sipping wine.
"Hello, dear," A rich woman says, blond hair pulled up and pinned behind to her skull, and watches Angelface closely. "What a lovely…costume you have there. And…realistic, too."
"Yes, very…realistic." Her boyfriend, husband, beau, whatever comments, as her friend nods from behind her back.
"Very. How did you make…those look so real?" She gestures to Angelface's bloodstains on her dress, and Angelface smiles, too wide.
"You know, this and that. I'm glad they look so realistic." She takes a drink of wine, knowing that they're avoiding the obvious topic and question that they want to ask, and when the woman finally points at her face and asks, 'how did you get those, dear? They are fake, right?' Angelface laughs, a noise that starts out harmless and eventually gains a slight tone of hysteria to it. Wine runs out of the slits in her cheeks.
"Nope." She tells them, right as the clock hits midnight.
"Happy Halloween, ladies and gentlemen!" A coarse, mad and highly familiar voice calls out from the doorway, as all the guests turn and gasp. Someone screams. Angelface's heart skips a beat, from what she insists to herself is terror or surprise, when Public Enemy Number One walks in with Harley Quinn at his right, toting what looks like a tommygun. He mock bows to everyone in the room, as Scarecrow steps into view, holding what looks like a detonator of some sort, thumb poised on a button. The Joker beams at the entire horrified room, including the suitably excited Angelface, and when he speaks again, it's in a tone that suggests dark things for the night ahead.
"Why wasn't I invited to this ritzy party?"