XIV

I leave the bedroom door ajar—with the exception of the bathroom, I get the feeling that he takes a closed door as a challenge. Before closing myself up in the bathroom, I pull out some fresh clothes—the jeans are easy, black and tight so I'll have an easy time running, but the shirt is a little harder. I know he likes green, so I'll be damned if I wear it willingly for him. He'll read purple as a declaration of loyalty or—belonging, and red seems inappropriate, somehow. White shows bloodstains. Black with the jeans will swallow me up.

I realize after a minute that I've been standing in front of my closet for an embarrassing span of minutes, and, annoyed with myself, I grab a fuzzy v-necked thing, dark gray and blue-striped, gather everything into my arms, and lock myself into the bathroom. I feel foolish, putting so much thought into clothing, but the simple truth of the matter is that one has to put a good deal of thought into tiny details when dealing with the Joker—he doesn't miss much, and has the maddening tendency to read meaning in every little choice.

I undress, thankfully shedding my old clothes—brand new or not, they're a little funky after two days wearing them, and bloodstained to boot. I ball them up and shove them into a hamper, and then I turn on the water. As it heats up, I unwind the bandage from my arm, wincing at the sight of the raw flesh knitting itself clumsily back together. This shower, as welcome as it is, is going to hurt.

Soon, steam is rising from the falling water, and, too conscious of the open and near-open wounds on my head, stomach, and arm, I step gingerly under the stream. The sting of water is sharp and immediate, and I grit my teeth and duck my head, watching the water turn pink around my feet. After a while, though, it runs clear, and slowly, the pain begins to fade—including the many aches and bruises accumulated through days of dangerous living—as the hot water soothes sore muscles and tender flesh.

I put my body on autopilot, scrubbing myself clean and washing my hair as I set my mind free to think.

Something about bathing has always profoundly depressed me. Maybe it's the unnatural light, maybe it's the fact that I'm locked in a small room alone with no real mental occupation, but I never seem to be able to think positively in the shower. To be fair, of course, there's not a lot to be positive about. It seems like the more I struggle to free myself from the Joker's clutches, the more entrapped I become. Once again, perhaps as a result of my fragile state, my mind turns to the incident earlier in the night, where I nearly got myself strangled. I press my head against the wall as I recall the sensation of defiant relief that swept through me the second I realized I was probably going to die right there.

Suddenly, I feel both very old and very tired. These last few days have felt like weeks, weeks of pain and stress and hunger and interminable fatigue, and I find myself wondering why I didn't just let him gut me after the shootout.

Lazily, as the hot water courses down my back, I drift towards some sort of understanding. I'm stubborn, I'm contrary, and if the Joker offers me a choice—live or die—I'm going to choose live out of sheer rebellion.

It doesn't, however, mean that I actually want to stay alive.

I stand there for a moment, brain curiously blank, after that thought crosses my mind. I just absorb it, and then, as it finally starts to sink in, my thoughts begin to churn again. Maybe it's the weariness talking, but I've just about had it. I want to be free of him. I just want to rest. And dying might be the only way to do that.

It certainly seems inevitable. Everything he's said points to me being dead when this is all over, and right now, it just seems to be a question of sooner or later, by my hand or his.

But do I really want to die?

I raise my head and stare through the streams of water pouring down over my face. I'm not particularly excited about it, but I have to accept the fact that any living future I might have looks increasingly bleak. If the Joker does what he did last time and changes his mind at the very last moment (and I don't really see that happening; he doesn't seem too keen on telling the same joke twice), I'll still have to live with his shadow hanging over me, never knowing when he'll pounce again, or even if he'll pounce—he might think it's funnier just to leave the threat looming and watch me worry myself into an early grave.

I snort, sending beads of water flying. No, thank you. Right now, I am sick, tired, and definitely not up to the future I see laid out before me.

Killing myself always seemed… well, not cowardly, per se, but I never could summon the energy or effort to go through with it, especially not in my period of emotional lethargy between Joker encounters. Even now, thinking about the knife in the back pocket of my discarded jeans, the idea of opening the arteries in my wrist and lying beneath the stream of water, letting the red wash down the drain is… remarkably unsatisfying. As tired and frustrated as I am, I still don't think I can do it.

A thought begins to take vague shape in my mind, and I slowly turn around to let the water hit my back. I stand there for a long time, staring at the tiling directly in front of me, and I think, so slowly and calmly that I feel practically drugged.

Finally, the water starts to cool, and I pull myself from the trancelike state with a jolt. Still moving with dreamlike slowness, I get out of the shower, wrapping my hair in a towel and following suit, more gently, with my battered body. The hot water totally sapped my strength to the point that I have to sit on the closed toilet as I air-dry, which oddly makes me more certain of the plan that has formed in my head, of what I need to do next.

When I finally stand again, hair still damp but body dry, my limbs are trembling, but I don't think it's from fear so much as bone-weariness, what energy I had left drained from me by the hot water. Shakily, I discard my towel and find the first aid kit beneath the sink so I can start binding up the wounds. Again, the arm is tricky, but the stomach is easier—I tape a pad of gauze to the cut, which is slimmer than it initially felt now that all the blood has been washed away—still ugly, but not dangerous. The last injury is the fresh cut on my cheek from where the Joker struck me with the metal edge of the detonator in the van. The skin around it is turning blue, but the cut has stopped bleeding, so I just carefully dab it with cold water and then leave it alone.

The rest of the injuries are just bloodless scrapes and bruises, and so I dress slowly in the clothes I picked out, though the color hardly seems to matter now. Funny how much things can change in less than an hour.

I leave the bathroom, leaving the light on and the door open in lieu of turning on the brighter, harsher bedroom light, and I go and sit at the foot of the bed. Despite how tired I am, I'm not tempted to sleep. I just sit up straight and wait.

He must have heard me moving around, because it isn't long before I hear the floorboards creaking in the short hallway connecting the kitchen-living space to the bedroom-bathroom, and then a shadow appears in the crack of the slightly-open door.

I watch, certain that he's about to come in, but though the shadow hovers for a second, features indiscernible due to the faint light behind it, it soon falls back, the footsteps fading. I don't know how long I can stick to my resolution, so I sit up a little, calling after him. "Hey!"

The creaking stops, but the shadow doesn't return. My voice is hoarse again, an hour's disuse returning it to the state it had been in right after the attack, but I try to project it anyway: "Can you—can you come in here for a second?"

There's no response or movement from the hall, and I can practically hear him weighing his curiosity against his devilish enjoyment of refusing to give me his attention when I want it. I clear my throat, but it only serves to make my voice sound even more pitiful as I say, "I need—I want to ask you something."

Maybe it's curiosity, or maybe the quiet weakness of my voice is simply irresistible to him. The footsteps draw near again, the door swings silently open, and he stands still in the doorway, shoulders hunched and head tilted slightly to the side. I don't speak right away, instead scooting sideways on the foot of the bed.

It might be my imagination, but he seems wary, eyes rolling to their corners to watch me as he crosses the room. He dusts off the spot on the bed beside me, straightening his purple pinstriped pants and hitching the cuffs free of his shoes as he settles down next to me, heels together and knees apart. He's taken time to clean the blood from his face, but he hasn't concerned himself with bandages, leaving the wound open and clean. I can see a bit of roughness beneath the paint along his jaw and realize that he's going to need to shave soon.

As always, evidence that he is, in fact, human leaves me with a faint sense of wonder, and suddenly—irrationally—I feel… shy. Embarrassed, almost. I duck my head, damp tendrils of hair spilling down across my neck, and I half expect him to impose himself into my personal space and brush them aside—that or give me one of his characteristic hisses signaling impatience with my faltering.

He doesn't, though. He's perfectly silent and perfectly still, and I'm annoyed with myself for letting tedious anxiety get to me this late in the game—now, of all times, when it doesn't matter at all.

Still, despite my total awareness that it doesn't matter, I know I'm not going to be able to do this while looking at him. Encouraging myself silently—come on, what can he do that's worse than what you're about to ask him, anyway—I manage to summon a small bit of courage, my exhausted body's final effort to help me do what has to be done.

Keeping my head down, not daring to look into his face, I turn slightly and put an arm around his back, then another across his chest, locking my hands together beneath his opposite arm, which—surprise, surprise—he lifts in order to accommodate me, though he still says nothing (waiting patiently, I suppose, to see where this is headed). I press my forehead against his shoulder, where the lilac fabric of his shirt disappears beneath the vibrant green vest, and for a second, I let myself indulge in this, one final gift to myself, for once unmarred by the fear that he'll twist around and stick a blade in my spine.

I'm so tired that I'm tempted to just let this be it, to sit here until he shoves me off and then crawl to the head of the bed, curl up, and wait to die. Fortunately, though, he speaks, sounding completely normal despite my unusual move. "Ah. Is this it? You wanted me to come in and cuddle?"

God bless his meanness. The mockery in his tone reminds me of the future I don't want, and I draw a breath, lifting my chin and resting it atop his shoulder, though I still keep my eyes steadily down, studying his shirt. There are swirling patterns on it that I didn't see before, due to their being almost identical in color to the shirt, only a bit bluer. Quietly, mindful of his ear only an inch or two away, I tell him, "I want you to do it."

Silence. It stretches out for a few seconds that I would find uncomfortable if I had the energy or inclination to care anymore, and then he says, "Ahh. Do what, Em?"

Oh, good. He's not going to make this easy for me. I fight off the urge to just give up, go to sleep, and wait for him to set his own plans in motion. I don't want to wait; waiting is half of the horror of it. More than half, really. It takes me another moment to repeat myself, and I find myself biting the inside of my cheek, hard, until I taste copper. The taste of blood prompts me to instinctively relax my jaw, and, keeping my voice as level as possible—though it's harder when I literally don't have physical control over it—I say, "I'm ready now. I want you to kill me."

I might feel his breath hitch, although that could just as easily be my unsteady arms, which have started shaking again with the mere effort of holding on to him. I feel his shoulder shift as he turns his head to look at me, but I stubbornly keep my eyes down. I may have found the courage somewhere to ask him that, but I don't think I'll be able to hold on to it if I see it coming.

In a voice atypically clear and free of embellishment, he says, "I might believe you a little more if you actually look me in the face and say that, Em."

Not going to make this easy for me, indeed. I'm so tired, but I know that I have to comply with his wishes if there's even a chance of him obliging me, so slowly, mid-blink, I roll my eyes up. By the time my lids sweep back open, I'm staring into his face, and after waiting a beat to give it a little more strength, I say again, clearly: "I want you to kill me."

He stares at me without blinking for a second, and I can't tell if he's breathing. The tip of his tongue creeps out from his painted mouth, running slowly and meditatively along his upper lip before disappearing back inside, and then he blinks once, twice, rapidly. Matter-of-factly, he asks, "How do you want me to do it?"

Now that I'm looking at his face, I search for any tells that might give me an idea of what he's thinking, but I can't find a damn thing. He's just watching me, eyebrows lifted patiently, and I would scoff if I had any energy to spare for scorn. Bastard is testing me. He wants me to prove that I mean it.

Lifting my chin slightly away from his shoulder, I say, "Gunshot to the head would be my preference, though I figure that's probably not your style in cases like mine."

He pulls a face of sympathetic pain, the smudged paint exaggerating every line. "You'd be surprised at how often a simple bullet to the head fails to do the trick. You could be left a vegetable."

"Well, I'm sure a guy like you knows how to do it properly," I say, insinuating the slightest tone of challenge into my voice.

He doesn't fall for the bait. Barely waiting for me to finish my taunt, he says rapidly, "You don't wanna die, Em."

I blink and draw back a little, my arms falling away from him, but he reaches up with one hand, catching my right wrist and pressing it back against his chest—holding me in place. Eyebrows furrowed, a little flabbergasted that he could miss so obvious a point, I say, "Well… duh, I don't want to die, but I'm going to, right?" When the only answer I get is an expressionless, dark-eyed stare that could mean anything, I prompt him, a little aggravated: "Right?"

He tilts his head towards me, almost forehead-to-forehead, and says, "Everybody's going to die. Still, you don't see millions of people offing themselves in the streets just because they know it's gonna happen eventually."

"Yeah, but I think I've got a slightly better guess as to when I'm dying than the rest of them do," I say, a little bitter laugh escaping me unbidden.

He gives one of his little tic-like half-shrugs. "Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't," he mutters, glancing at his feet, and I get the impression that he's speaking to himself more than me. Before I can call him on the cryptic bullshit, though, his head darts up again, and he says clearly, "You are just tired, hungry, and depressed. Y'know, it happens sometimes late at night. Or... so I'm told," he says, forehead furrowing for a moment, and then he jumps back on track. "Anyway, buck up. There's lots to live for."

I choke back a laugh that rises out of nowhere. The Joker? Cheering me up? This is gonna be good. "Oh, yeah?" I ask, just to see what kind of things the Joker thinks life is worth living for. "Like what?"

"I dunno," he says, vaguely waving his spare hand around, like he can snatch the answers out of the air. "Puppies… Cadbury eggs…"

I wait for a second, but when it appears that he's reached the end of his list of things that he apparently thinks give normal people's lives meaning, I say, trying not to laugh, "Uhmm—I'm allergic to dogs, and I've never had a sweet tooth."

He lets out a brief huff of annoyance. "Formaldehyde, then," he says impatiently. "Who knows what you're into?"

Damn him, making me smile when I'm serious about this. I duck my head again, working hard to wipe all traces of amusement from my face—it isn't hard once I remind myself what I'm after. After a second, I'm able to lift my head and look at him, expressionless once more. "No thanks. I'll take the bullet."

He stares at me for a second, as if not quite able to comprehend that I'm serious. "Maybe we should talk about this in the morning."

I shake my head stubbornly, refusing to let him wiggle his way out of this so easily. "It is morning. Well, close enough."

His head sways to the side, eyes narrowing and lips drawing back in a slight snarl. I can tell he's annoyed, pissed off that this task has fallen to him—he's not exactly in the business of talking people off of ledges; I imagine he's much more comfortable standing on the sidelines, talking them into taking that final, fatal step. Hell, I'm fully aware that he only wants me alive so his plan to bait Batman will go off perfectly—the only real reason he threatened me earlier is because I was endangering him, not because he wanted me dead at that exact moment. After all, what good is a sacrificial lamb if it's brought to the altar already dead? It lacks that extra oomph.

I begin to realize that his irritation might just work in my favor, and so I lean forward another inch, speaking almost directly into his ear. "You didn't seem to have a problem with it earlier tonight. Come on, really—if I'd kept fighting, you'd have done it, wouldn't you?"

He blinks, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. His tongue flicks out to swipe at his lower lip, and I notice that his fingers are twitching—almost like he'd like nothing more than to get them around someone's neck.

It's encouraging. I might actually be able to goad him into doing this, after all, I think, and running with the thought, I chuckle in his ear, a bit more throatily than normal due to the injury. "Come on. Don't tell me you haven't been waiting to consummate this—whatever little thing this is between us—since the beginning. Is it because I'm asking you now? Because I'm sure I'll fight back once it's actually happening. It'll still be fun."

I'm hardly aware of what I'm saying at this point—the playing field has shifted beneath my feet and the game we're playing has changed again. Only this time, for once, I have the strangest feeling that I've got the upper hand, if only because he has a plan and I don't. I don't even plan to survive anymore, and this liberates me entirely—I get to say and do what I want, and if he wants me to stop, he's got to give me what I want. Simple as that.

Or not, I think in the split second it takes him to tighten his grip on my wrist and jerk me sideways. His other hand clutches at my waist as I collapse into him, and in a dizzying whirlwind of speed and motion, he flips me easily onto my back on the bed—a second later, his chest crushes into mine; his forearms, bearing the brunt of his weight, pin my wrists to the mattress beside my head, and he half-straddles me, one leg beside mine and the other stretched obliquely across my thighs, keeping me from getting one free to knee him in the balls.

It's the quickest and most thoroughly I've ever been pinned. However, aside from the initial moment of alarm, I have no intention of letting him scare me into giving up. Lifting my head from the mattress as far as I can, pushing my way into his face the way he so frequently does into mine, I say, "Oh, what are you gonna do? Kill me?"

He lowers his chin, looking me in the eye, and with the appearance of total calm and maybe a little—is that amusement?—he says, "Settle down, now, sweetie. It just sounds to me like you're forgetting a couple 'a little details."

"Details like what?"

"Well," he says, settling more firmly atop me as he pretends to think about it, his weight pushing me down into the mattress in a way that's damnably not-unpleasant, "I've got a thousand ways to make you cooperate without resorting to the threat of death. For instance—well, no, you don't have any loved ones to threaten, but…" His eyes stray away for a second, apparently finding the shaded window at the edge of the room very interesting. As if speaking an afterthought, he casually says, "Well, there's pain."

I actually laugh at that, which proves to be a mistake, because he's suddenly grinning in my face, amused by my flippancy, and through his smile he says, "I could easily demonstrate for you, Em. There are a hundred ways to hurt you—really bad—without verging into the fatal stuff, or even the crippling stuff."

"You're full of—"

"What about your fingernails?" he interrupts, leaning closer towards my face. "If you're so determined to die, you won't need 'em. So you won't mind if I yank them off with a pair of needlenose pliers, huh?"

The threat is sobering, serving to bring me down from whatever suicidal high I've been riding. My scornful smile fades, and I look him in one eye and then the other, trying to figure out if he means it.

"Or," he continues, warming to what is doubtless a favorite subject, "your teeth. Pluck 'em out, one by one, back to front—and feed 'em to you. See if your stomach can handle dissolving those—on top of all the blood you'll be swallowing, of course."

I swallow compulsively. My cheek is still bleeding from where I bit it earlier, and the taste of blood on top of the grotesque vision he's spinning makes me feel vaguely sick.

He leans back a little, head twitching left and right to shake rumpled green hair back from his eyes. "Or, you know, if we're gonna move to torture anyway—maybe I won't kill ya. Hmm? Playthings are much more fun when they c'n talk—now that I think about it, maybe I'll cancel all this—" he purses his lips, looking over my head, gaze scanning the room as if it's the city—"and take you somewhere quiet. Break your knees and elbows, set 'em backwards, let 'em heal. We can figure out a way for you to get around." He chuckles, and the sound raises goosebumps. "Maybe—I bet you'd look like a little crab, scuttling here and there."

I'd thought I was beyond tears, but here they come, outraged and horrified, gathering fast in the corners of my eyes. I turn my head, trying to avoid his gaze, to keep him from seeing, but he just leans down to mumble into my invitingly-upturned ear.

"And then, once you'd learned how to manage the deformity… Em, didja know it only takes a screwdriver to give someone a lobotomy?" I screw my eyes shut, and he chortles high against my ear. "It's almost too easy. I'm getting' really good at it, too. You see, you go in through the eye socket, between the eyeball and the tissue there—"

I manage a choked sob, feeling suffocated now by his body stretched out on top of mine. "No."

It's just a whisper, barely even that, but I hear him lean back a little. "No?"

I shake my head, keeping my eyes tightly closed, folding my lips into my mouth for a second in an effort to regain control of myself. "Please."

He gives a little huff, faking frustration flawlessly. "Well, I mean—I'm just brainstorming here, Em. You're the suicidal one; I'm just tryin' to give your remaining days a little pizazz."

I'm panting by now, the effort of breathing while crying and being half-crushed by a man nearly twice my size taking a toll. The heady delusion of power has disappeared completely; even if his threats (which I know he's perfectly capable of carrying out) hadn't made that clear, our physical positions have—I couldn't get away from him now if I tried. I was an idiot for thinking I could make him do anything—a desperate, exhausted idiot, but still an idiot.

He shows no sign of being willing to move until I answer him back, and so, struggling for breath, I say, "I just… want to be free of you. I'm sorry. Everything hurts, and I just—" I draw in a ragged breath—"I just want it to end."

I don't dare open my eyes to look at him, but after a second's silence, he shifts. I feel him rising, practically stepping over me, and the floorboard creaks as he steps off the bed. Air comes to me in a rush now that the weight of him is gone, and I manage to turn myself on my side, curling up, too tired to fight off the tears. I expect him to just leave me alone now that his point has been made, but the bed dips as he sits down again, behind me this time, his folded knee poking me in the shoulderblades. His fingers find their way to my hair again, and I tense up, expecting them to tighten and pull, but they just work their way through the damp curls. He continues in silence for a moment or two, and I feel myself relaxing despite myself, my body's reaction to the first soothing gesture I've received for some time.

"We-ell," he says finally, sighing, "maybe I am being a little hard on you. After all, you've done pretty well, all things considered."

I don't respond to that, focusing instead on regaining some sort of emotional and physical equilibrium. I keep expecting him to either turn on me or get up and leave, but he doesn't—he just sits at my back and keeps petting my hair innocuously.

Since this is the Joker, and since the Joker doesn't do innocuous, I turn over to face him as soon as I feel able. He doesn't stop, though, merely lifting his hand for a moment as I shift and then replacing it once I'm settled facing him. If I had the energy, I'd scoff. Of course. His little puppy overstepped its bounds and he had to pull out the rolled-up newspaper; now that the punishment is over he needs to pet it and reassure it that he still loves it.

The metaphor makes me feel ill, but I can hardly recoil in disgust. If he even let me (and something tells me he wouldn't; on the surface he might be offering comfort, but beneath it all this is a powerplay and I am—as always—right where he wants me), I'm not sure if I would. By this point, I'm starved for tenderness, even the false, cheap kind, and so I lie here, breathing softly and taking unwilling solace in his touch.

After a few moments, I begin to feel drowsy, but I'm unwilling to drop off and just waste this—this, which could well be the last peaceful moment I get… well, ever. I decide that there's little risk in speaking up and chancing one of his mood swings—he's already held the threat of torture over my head tonight and I'm hoping that'll have cooled him off for now.

Stirring slightly, tilting my head a little so I can see him without sitting up, I peer at his face. He's not looking at me, his gaze focused on some spot across the room, and I watch him for a minute, appreciating the opportunity to watch him while he's not watching me back. After a second, I reach up and curl my fingers around his wrist, stilling his hand, which pulls him from his thoughts—he looks down at me, forehead furrowed in what looks like surprise, as if he's forgotten that I'm still here.

In my patchy voice, I say softly, "Want to know a secret?"

His eyes twitch, irises darting back and forth in a millisecond's time. Beyond that, nothing betrays what he might be thinking as he parts his lips, gives me a passing grin, and purrs, "Suuure."

I stare up at him, and for a moment, I really believe that I'm going to tell him—that he's wrong about my taking some sick pleasure in his murder and mayhem, sure, but also that increasingly, I'm becoming aware that he's right about me liking him. I'm going to tell him that I didn't crave his attention and his presence to begin with like he accused me of doing, but that I've begun to now, so what's the point in quibbling?

I look at the mildly-expectant face, planning my punch line—I think I'm losing my mind. I don't intend to do this with the expectation of any comfort. He doesn't do comfort, not really, and especially not when I'm affirming practically everything he's suspected of me in the past few days. Even so, it seems like something I need to do, to seek absolution for all of the things I feel and have done from the only person I've had any sort of real contact with for quite some time. Of course, I doubt he'd grant me absolution even if he could, but that doesn't seem important.

I take a breath to start spilling the secrets, but before I can speak, I blink. It's only a split second break in the eye contact, barely an interruption at all, but it serves to bring me quietly back to my senses.

Cut the shit. The only thing a confession would accomplish is that it would provide him with a shitload of ammunition he can use to tease and torment you for the remainder of your short life. Never tell him that he was right, even if it's true. Always pretend you're at least an arm's length away from him, even if you both know that's definitely not true. Don't ever tell him what he wants to hear, unless the idea of emotional torture sounds fun to you.

I blink twice more in rapid succession before I realize that he's starting to look a little impatient, his fingers clenching a little more tightly against my scalp. I flounder for a 'secret' to offer him, and after a second, I land on one—lame, but serviceable. "I don't think Batman's going to come for me."

He stares at my face for a lingering moment, and I think I can see a trace of disappointment, though that could easily be me projecting. After a second, he bends his head down a little closer, conspiratorially. "And why not?"

I've always been fairly good at thinking on my feet, even if my proclivity for thinking out loud at the same time tends to get me into trouble. I quickly set my mind free and follow along its path. "Well," I begin hesitantly, "I mean—if I'm wrong, say so, but it's no coincidence that you came for me at the same time you started plotting against Falcone, right?"

An arched eyebrow engraves ripples in the greasepaint smeared across his forehead. It's the only response I'm going to get.

"Right, well… the best reason I can think of for you to do that is because you want Batman's attention divided. I haven't seen the video yet, but apparently, you've publicly challenged him to come find me before I bite the dust, right?"

Still no response, but I'm on a roll now, so I go on regardless: "And on the other hand, he's gotta know that you and Falcone are battling it out and that a lot of people are dying. Problem is that if he devotes himself to one case more thoroughly than the other, then he risks losing out on the neglected case completely… but if he tries to cover both of them equally, there's an even bigger chance that he'll lose both. He's going to have to choose in the end. I don't think he'll choose me."

The Joker presses his lips together, purses them, tilts his chin up, and then rolls his eyes down to look knowingly at me. "You wanna—uh—tell me how you've reached that conclusion, Em?"

My eyes are watering again, but it's more pure weariness than emotion this time. I lift my hand to dry the hollows beneath my eyes, and as I do, I say, "Just math. You know, if he decides to save me, Falcone will probably die—as will a lot of his men, and some of yours. If he picks Falcone, though, I'm the only guaranteed loss. It doesn't take a rocket scientist—and saving lives has always been his shtick, right?"

"Saving innocent lives," the Joker corrects me, abruptly and unexpectedly pressing the tip of his index against my nose. A smile seems to be forming in his eyes and the lines of his face, as though he's sensed a joke waiting to be made. "And, uh—as if to prove how arbitrary and nonsensical the concept really is—he sees you as the only innocent person involved in this little mishegoss."

I'm silent, digesting this. He licks his lips and adds, almost as an afterthought, "I also happen to know that ol' Bats has a soft spot for helpless little women."

I glare at him. Immediate instinct tells me to deny that I'm helpless, but considering what just transpired, odds are pretty good that he'd only laugh in my face. I don't need to speak, though—he reads my annoyance in my expression and grins leeringly down at me. "Don't take it personally. It's not your fault he's got a white knight thing goin' on. All I'm sayin' is… instead of turning in early cause you think you know how it's all gonna turn out, why don't you wait and see?"

There are a dozen reasons not to stick around—not the least of which being that I've had quite enough pain to last me for some time, thank you, and hanging around the Joker is just inviting more, but…

It's not exactly a negotiation. The Joker wants me alive for now, and I'm not determined enough to kill myself just yet. Giving up any pretense at power, I swallow back my bitterness and mutter, "Well, it's not as if I can say no."

He grins as if I'd given my wholehearted consent. "Atta girl," he says, and then, startling me, he bends over and presses his lips to my cheek—lest I be tempted to read any tenderness in the gesture, he makes sure to target the fresh cut there, sending a flash of pain across my face. I wince and turn my head away, and he gives my head one last condescending pat before standing up. "Now, go to sleep. Tomorrow's Christmas Eve, and, uh—Santa's elves still have a lot of work to do. You're gonna need the rest."

"Sure," I mumble, but I'm too tired to seriously contemplate staying awake just to spite him. As he goes to the bathroom to switch the light off, I crawl to the head of the bed and burrow beneath the covers. The welcome sensation of being in my own bed after all this time away from it is better than any sleeping meds. The last thing I'm aware of is a vague impression of his silhouette in the doorway, the words "Nighty-night" floating towards me through the darkness, and then sleep drags me under.

A/N - So Emma's behavior/decision. Think it makes sense? Think it makes no sense whatsoever? Think she subconsciously knew he was going to say no and was just exploring ideas? Talk to me.

You know how a few chapters back I mentioned that I leave myself notes in my story that I promptly forget about and almost always nearly publish by accident? Well, this time I found one that said "that paragraph is an alliterative masterpiece ok don't look at me." And I was right. The alliterations in the paragraph that starts "Maybe it's curiosity" are both ridiculous and completely unintentional. Just thought I'd point it out, maybe lighten the mood.

Oh- guest reviewer Bubbles: I thoroughly enjoyed your review, and I think it shows a pretty good understanding of Emma and her patterns of behavior, as well as the potential consequences of her relationship- for lack of a better word- with the Joker. Also I'm sitting here laughing at "But I also want the joker kidnapping her to be a thing" because did you read my mind? ;)

Next chapter- well, I can't promise it'll lighten the mood, but I do think it'll make some of you happy. Or completely, wrathfully unhappy, depending on how you look at it. I'm going to stop dropping cryptic hints now! Leave love, hate, questions, comments, and/or utter indifference in the box below and I shall return in time with yet another moderately long (and hopefully interesting) chapter!