II

I wake up with a headache, though "wake up" is perhaps too generous a term, considering how dizzy and sick I feel. Following a suspicion, I reach up and touch my left temple gingerly, wincing at the sudden flare of pain.

Damn it. So it wasn't just a dream.

Groggily, I struggle upright, fumbling for my bedside lamp. The flutter of fear I feel in the two or three seconds before I find the switch is almost gratifying—I thought I'd forgotten how to be afraid, but apparently, the thought of flipping on the light to find the Joker sitting inches away from me accomplishes what walking down dark streets alone in Gotham could not.

Imagine that.

The light goes on to reveal—no Joker, but I'm fairly sure the room shouldn't be spinning the way it is. Moving before thinking it through, I lean over the side of my bed—and promptly fall off, earning another stabbing pain in my head for my trouble. If I had a choice, I'd pass out again right here, but my body is alive with pain and fear, sensations that shouldn't be familiar after the months I've had since I felt either in such excess, but are—and I'm nowhere close to unconsciousness.

Nausea, though, I can get on board with that.

But now's not the time. Just because the Joker's not in my room doesn't for one second mean he's not still in the apartment. I seem to remember promising myself that I'd shoot him if he ever invaded my home again, and I do my best to go about following through with that promise now, scrabbling blindly under the bed for the shoe box that holds my gun.

I can tell as soon as I get my hands around it and start dragging it towards me that the box is too light, but gamely, not exactly trusting my perception after that stunning blow to the head, I get it out and pop the lid off to check anyway. Some ammunition remains, but bullets are pretty damn useless without a gun.

I groan, pressing my hand to my head injury, which appears to be bleeding lightly. Grabbing the bed with my other hand, I hoist myself to my feet and stumble towards my purse, which is hanging on the closet doorknob. I overturn it, not particularly concerned with the noise I'm making—if the thump of me falling off of the bed didn't alert him to the fact that I'm up and about, then he's gone deaf (which is perhaps more of a possibility than I'm giving it credit for, considering how much time I presume he spends in close proximity to explosions) and I shouldn't have to worry.

A few seconds of sifting through the contents of my purse later, I accept defeat. My stun gun has been removed as well. I've got one more weapon before I'll be forced to leave my bedroom in search of kitchen knives, and I move towards the closet. The room hasn't stopped spinning, and I have to grasp the doorframe to keep from falling over. Unwilling to step fully into the closet—I feel fairly sure I'll trip and fall if I do, and if I don't, then I get the sneaking suspicion that someone will come up behind me and lock me in—I grope gingerly around the edges, searching for…

There.

My fingers close around the cool handle of my aluminum baseball bat, and unsteadily, I drag it out of the closet. I haven't had much opportunity to use it since I got my stun gun and at the moment I feel like a stiff breeze would knock me over, let alone a confrontation with the Joker, but I refuse to face him completely unarmed. Not this time. Even if I can't swing the bat without falling over, I might as well put up a strong front.

This established and bat in hand, all I have left to do is find out where he's lurking.

I don't have far to go. My bedroom overlooks the combined living room and kitchen area, and as soon as I open the door (with a horrifying creak), I can see the back of his head rising up over the back of the couch. The TV is on, some awful noisy cartoon providing the only illumination in the room and turning the place blue, and as I catch myself on the doorframe, his head moves, turning just a little—not enough to reveal his profile to me, but enough to let me know he's aware of my presence.

"Don't hover, Em. Take a seat."

His voice isn't loud, but it carries over the obnoxious screeching of the cartoon all the same, raising chills I'd thought I was no longer capable of getting along my skin. For a second, I think about cracking him hard in the head and making a break for it, but I know him too well. He'll dodge or shrug it off, and anyway, in my position, I wouldn't manage to get past the locks on the door. That is, assuming they're still there.

Swallowing back the sudden metallic taste on my tongue, I make my laborious way across the room, finding it wisest to obey him at the moment. I give the couch a wide berth, moving tremulously instead to the armchair arranged perpendicular to it—it puts me much farther from the door, but on the plus side, it means I won't have to share the couch with the Joker, ergo I can keep a close eye on the bastard. Not that it'll matter if my vision doesn't straighten up soon.

It gets so bad that I stumble and fall—directly sideways into the chair, fortunately, and I immediately use the bat as a sort of cane to push me upright, though I still can't seem to find the energy to sit as tense and vigilantly as I should.

The Joker appears to pay me no attention whatsoever. The black eyes are fixed on the television screen, lips pursed as he probes the inside of his cheeks with his tongue, blue light reflected off the white paint covering his face. Normally, I'd be more than happy to wait for him to start talking, totally willing to sit and stare at this rare demonstration of the clown in repose (and apparently taking Adventure Time as seriously as Schindler's List), but the pain in my head just seems to be getting worse and I'm afraid that if I leave it too long, I'll pass out again.

I can't do that, not now that he's here, so taking my cue from the pain in my temple, I rouse myself enough to ask, "What… did you hit me with?"

Aside from twitching his hand, the Joker makes no response, but the motion turns out to be all the response I need. I recognize my revolver, resting treacherously in his loose grip.

"I thought you didn't like guns," I mutter, the pain in my head too intense for me to summon the will for louder tones.

"They have their uses," he replies, eyes still locked on the TV. The cartoon finally goes to commercial, though, and even as he lifts his other hand to mute the volume, his eyes roll sideways in his skull, finally coming to rest on me.

In the brighter light provided by the commercials, I realize that his pants and waistcoat are dotted with damp, fresh stains that look black in the light, and I wait for the fear to spike again, but it stays steady. Guess his presence isn't a cure-all after all, I think sarcastically, and without pausing to think it through, I nod at him and ask, "How much of that blood is yours?"

He seems surprised and looks down at himself, as if he's forgotten that he resembles Patrick Bateman on a bad day. After a second, he looks back up at me, and, eyebrows raised speculatively, he guesses, "Uhh, about ten percent?"

Oh. Good. So he's not nearly as incapacitated as I might have hoped. Well, that makes one of us, I think, sighing heavily with the pain and slowly leaning back against the chair, the bat loose in my grip. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I'm still bothering to hold it—the pistol-whipping, as I'm sure he intended, has made me damnably docile for the time being, and I doubt he's going to wait around long enough for me to recover.

He's looking back at the TV, watching some old Billy Mays infomercial (pointless since the TV's muted, if you ask me), apparently perfectly content to let me steer the conversation. I reach up with my free hand, caressing my injured temple with a wince, and I say honestly, "I was expecting you sooner."

I get the immediate feeling that it was the wrong thing to say. His eyes roll devilishly towards me and the corner of his mouth twitches. Belatedly, I remember the very last exchange we had, realize that he'll take my expecting him at all as proof that he was right (he's not, screams a little, panicked voice in my head, I just know I'm not so lucky), but before I can scramble to cover my tracks, he clears his throat into a fist and finally strings more than two words together.

"And I—uh, I thought you'd be states away by now, with your hair dyed black and a shiny new name. It's good to know you're not the only one who was wrong, isn't it?"

No… no, when he says it like that, it just makes it look even worse. Like I was intentionally waiting for him. I respond sharply, an easy thing to do considering the pain I'm in. "If I did run, would it have kept me safe?"

"Come on, Em," he says, catching his bottom lip between his teeth in exaggerated disappointment, "nobody's ever safe. Not really."

I clench my teeth together. Understanding finally penetrates the hazy pain—this is wrong, this is all wrong, and it makes me uneasy. We shouldn't be sitting civilly across from one another in my living room, chatting like only slightly-hostile exes, not after our last encounter, not after all I've been through since then. We should be duking it out, but with that one well-placed blow to my head… well, I'm not exactly feeling feisty, and he shows no sign that he's in the mood to push things further.

Still, I'm not willing to just sit here and while away the night catching up with him. I'm not so thrilled by the reappearance of my fear, as sporadic as it seems to be, and I'd like to know how much I've got in store for me this time. Still, not exactly strong enough at the moment to ask what he wants (and not entirely sure I won't get an answer that's pure bullshit, either), I defer, asking sluggishly instead, "So why now? What made tonight special?"

His lips fall downward in an exaggerated frown. "What, I gotta have a reason to visit you now?"

He's not doing much to discredit that slightly-hostile exes association. "No, but I bet you've got one all the same. Is Batman taking the night off or something?"

A part of me, muffled by the pain, is dimly aware that I shouldn't be sassing him. He's already been putting up with my mouth with remarkable forbearance for him. The next smart word could well be the one to make him snap, but despite the timely return of my sense of fear, I seem to have reverted to the recklessness that characterized our last few meetings. Nine months, gone in a blink. Who'd have thought his return could so easily demolish everything I'd worked to establish?

For his part, his eyes seem to glitter in the dim light in what could be either amusement or warning (or maybe both). "Why don't you tell me? Have you… seen him around lately?"

I give a short, humorless bark of laughter and slouch further back in my chair. "Only once. Shortly after he put you back into Arkham."

"Really."

On some level, I realize that I should be more worried by his tone, but I can't seem to shut up. "Oh, yeah. He thought I should move. I told him I doubted it would slow you down too much."

"Atta girl," he purrs. "Didja know he's been lurking around you like some big, hulking peeping Tom?"

"I did not know that," I reply after a second, though already my brain is making the logical leap. "Let me guess—he was making routine checkups on me once you broke out? You waited for him to decide you'd forgotten about me, to stop taking the time to look in on me before you pounced?"

"Who's pouncing?" he demands, sounding almost playful. "I haven't laid a hand on you."

"No, just the butt of a gun," I say wryly. The pain is still bad, but the dizziness is starting to recede, thank God. I tighten my hold on the baseball bat again, feeling a bit more game for battle if it comes to that. I don't know; this visit has been unusually low-key so far. It may well just be a pre-emptive catching-up-with-you call before the real fun begins.

He regards me with something that I would fondness if it wasn't couched in that bitterly unnerving face, and clears his throat again. "Well, uh, Em," he says, casually adjusting the edges of his purple greatcoat, "to answer your question, I'm here because I was in the neighborhood, doin' a little business, and I happened to think of you. I thought, 'hey, it's Christmas, and I haven't gotten Em a present.'"

"I don't need a present, thank you though," I say immediately, instinctively understanding that if I allow him to go on, my carefully-constructed world of the past nine months will crumble beyond repair right before my eyes.

I may as well not have spoken at all for all the notice he takes of me. He lifts his chin, eyes rolling thoughtfully up to the ceiling for an instant before he picks up seamlessly where he left off. "So, I got to thinkin'… what is it that Em wants? Clothes? …no. Jewels? No, no—she's not that kinda girl. Guns? Now we're getting' somewhere, but if I know my Em, she's been proactive on that score. And whaddya know, I was right," he says with a touch of smugness, lifting the gun again to catch the glint of the muted TV.

I'm silent, though my fingers tighten so hard on the bat that I feel my knuckles grow cold as the blood leaves them.

The Joker releases a long, hissing breath from between his teeth. "So," he resumes, lowering the gun again and this time tucking it away, "what do you get the woman who, er, doesn't have much on her wish list?" He levels me with a look that's entirely too predatory and self-satisfied for my comfort. "You know what I decided on?"

I manage—just barely—to stop myself from snapping back "Tickets to Cirque de Soleil?" Instead, I just stare at him, waiting.

As previously established, he doesn't need an interactive audience in order to put on quite a show. He lifts a bony white hand and puts it dramatically to his bloodstained shirt, over his chest, and answers his own question. "Quality time with her best friend, of course."

The only sound for a second is the whine of the muted TV—I'm not even breathing for the moment immediately following the declaration. Finally, though, I shatter the tableau by voicing the very first half-pitifully-confused, half-scornful thought that crosses my mind. "You are not my best friend."

He takes this in stride, blinking heavily once, twice, and then demanding, "Who else, then? Hmm? Batman? The… Commissioner? I'm all ears, sweetheart, but I gotta tell you, I don't see anyone else taking time out of his, ah, busy Christmas schedule to come visit you."

I open my mouth to say I don't want anyone visiting me, think better of it (who knows how he'll twist and interpret that declaration in that mind of his), and blurt instead, "It's only December twentieth. I mean—twenty-first now, but—"

"Is it?" he interrupts, feigning surprise—or maybe it's real, I don't know. I doubt he keeps track of the date unless it relates to one of his schemes. "Oh, good. We've got some time, then. On that note—" he reaches into his waistcoat pocket, and I tense, not knowing what to expect, but he just withdraws a ticking silver pocket watch, flipping it open to consult it. "Ahh. You've had about forty-five minutes to shake off that head injury. What do you think; are you good to drive?"

Shock ripples through me. Pain momentarily forgotten, I stare as he squints questioningly at me, either unable or unwilling to understand what he's asking me. "Wh—what do you mean?"

"Well, you see," he says, clicking his watch closed and tucking it back into his waistcoat as he stands, his bones snapping and popping as he straightens his back, bracing his hands against it and stretching with a groan, "I've got a little holiday fun planned for this Christmas, and, ah, Em? You're coming with me."

To hell with that. I weigh the advantages of standing up (he won't be looming over me like Nosferatu, at least not quite as much, and I'll have more room to swing my weapon) against the disadvantages (it'll almost certainly whip up my dizziness again, plus it'll decrease the distance between us). I decide it's worth it, and I struggle upright, clutching the bat. "If you think I'm leaving this place with you willingly—"

"Oh, who said anything about willingly?" he counters rapidly, looking baffled. "I mean, sure, a guy has hopes, but you gotta be prepared for all eventualities. At least, that's what my scout leader always said."

I've had about enough of his bullshit. I put my other hand to the handle of the bat, fully prepared to crack it across his ribs and follow up with a blow to the head, but the sudden sound of an electric crackle freezes me in place. From one of the many pockets of his heavy coat, he's produced a stun gun—my stun gun, and he triggers it in warning.

"Unless you wanna know what, uh, a million volts feels like, Em, you'll abandon whatever schemes you're hatchin' in that little head of yours and cooperate." I stare, mesmerized (and not in a good way) by the blue sparks jumping between the two prongs of the weapon. He glances over at it, and then, conspiratorially, hunches forward a little, confessing, "I kinda hope you choose to behave. As fun as it would be, seeing how long this li'l thing knocks you out, I'd be pretty grumpy if I have to drag you all the way outta here."

"Oh, you bastard," I say flatly, but what can I do, really? Sure, it's tempting to just be a pain in the ass and force him to physically carry me out of here, but the bottom line is that I'll be leaving with him one way or another, and do I really want to add to the head injury? I'm fairly sure I'll be racking up war wounds soon anyway; I don't think I want to take my chances with the stun gun just yet.

I drop the bat. He nods as if he'd expected nothing less, licking his lips once before powering down the weapon and gesturing pointedly towards the front door.

"Move."

A/N - Wow. You guys are the most amazing. I don't know why I always forget how wonderful you are at reviewing- I've got the most thorough, analytical, encouraging reviewers ever. You had me so amped up to find out what you thought about this chapter that I rushed home right after midterms (which went well, thank you for the well-wishes) so I could update ASAP.

Hopefully, this didn't disappoint. I know, it's... kindofanothercliffhanger, but I swear it was the logical cutoff point. It might hearten you, however, to know that most chapters will be longer than these first two- not the 8000-word affairs that made up Vivisection (since that story was much more connect-the-dots-between-separate-instances/one-shots-and-maybe-it'll-end-up-being-a-comprehensive-story than this one will be), but longer than these first setup chapters, for the most part. So there's that.

I'll try to update again at the start of next week- it might get delayed a couple of days if homework and work demands end up being more rigorous than expected, but I promise I won't leave you suspended for too long. Leave impressions/complaints/incoherent shrieking in the box below and I'll love you for it!