A/N: Would you look at that, I actually updated! I have no excuse, except that I refuse to push out a chapter when I have writer's block, because that would mean it would be a crappy chapter. I hope by now none of you expect me to update regularly ;)
Enjoy!
14
Bells woke slowly. She didn't want to open her eyes just yet, because as soon as she did reality would come crashing down. No more Joker.
She could hear the faint drip of an IV, and the steady, irritating beeping of a heart monitor. Her wrist was throbbing with an intensity that almost matched the pain in her ribs, which she could feel were tightly bound in bandages. Bells went to lift a hand to touch them, but was hindered with the soft clink of a handcuff. She was bound to the bed. For a moment she couldn't remember why the hospital staff might have considered such a drastic measure necessary, but after a few groggy moments it all came rushing back to her. The feel of the gun in her grip, the metal warmed by her body-heat and clammy from the sweat of her hands. The harsh sting of a needle. She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut before opening them with a sigh, blinking at the bright white light directly above her.
Bells craned her neck to the side, ignoring the corresponding twinge in her ribs. She couldn't see anybody in the room. That's strange, she thought, frowning at the white ceiling. You'd think I'd be a high priority patient, considering I'm the Joker's… What had Marko called her before she killed him with the gun? Oh, that's right. I'm the Joker's whore.
How ever empty her room may have been, the corridor behind the door was anything but. Bells could hear running footsteps pounding past her, accompanied by the squealing tires of hospital stretchers and the moaning of the patients presumably on them. Panicked voices filtered through, but Bells couldn't quite make out what they were saying. The whole thing had an air of mayhem and alarm, and here she was, handcuffed to a hospital bed.
'Hey!' she yelled, her voice cracking from disuse. Bells waited for a few seconds. Nothing. Well this was getting just a little bit ridiculous. If they were evacuating patients because of an unknown, probably fatal threat, shouldn't she be surrounding by bustling, well-intentioned nurses by now, getting her the hell out of here? Especially as she was the only one that could give the inside scoop on the Joker. Not the she ever would. She wasn't suicidal, after all.
'What the fuck,' Bells muttered, pulling on the handcuffs that tethered her to the bed. Didn't they usually only handcuff one hand? Clearly they'd gone all out after she tried to shoot Gordon. It was actually somewhat gratifying that they considered her a serious threat. At least she knew she hadn't undergone all of that training for nothing. To be fair, she wasn't going to actually shoot Gordon. Maybe just threaten him a little bit. She actually quite liked Gordon, in a mustachioed, grandfatherly sort of way.
Bells liked Gordon a hell of a lot more than she liked her current, increasingly untenable, position. She spent a few minutes throwing her arms around in anger, succeeding only in drawing rings of blood around her wrists and clattering the handcuffs back and forward on the rails. A sharp pain in the crease of her elbow told her that she'd also managed to pull out her IV. Bells watched as blood welled up and dripped down her arm and onto the floor. She slumped back onto the hard pillow, and thought that maybe she'd just sleep the whole situation out. Speaking of sleeping, just how long had she been unconscious?
Forgetting about her plan to snooze, she sat up, hissing as the handcuffs pulled at her bleeding wrists. On the wall hung an electronic calendar of sorts, displaying the date and the time.
'The sixteenth?' Bells said aloud in surprise. She'd been unconscious for around a week, apparently. She must have been drugged. Come to think of it, the only reason that she was awake now was probably because somebody had fucked up and forgotten to keep her comatose. Most likely because of the currently occurring ruckus.
Speaking of which…
It had grown quiet in the corridor outside her door. All of the patients must have been evacuated. Bells strained her ears, but couldn't hear anything except clear liquid dripping onto the linoleum floor from the morosely hanging IV line. Looking to her left, Bells could see a pen sitting on a low table next to the bed. If she could just reach it, she could snap the plastic casing and use it to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Unfortunately, the goddamn hospital staff had decided to break tradition and handcuff both fucking wrists. Bells let her head slump back down onto the pillow. The pain was becoming harder to ignore, just possibly because the IV that had been feeding her pain killers was no longer attached to her blood stream. She did feel more alert though. Alert enough to hear the slow but steady footsteps echoing down the hall, coming closer steadily to her. Bells's heart gave a little lurch. She knew those footsteps. But how? she wondered. How had he escaped? Last she knew he was being bundled unconscious into the back of a police car. The footsteps stopped outside her door. Bells lay very still, her heart thudding in her chest.
The door creaked open. Bells shuffled herself into some semblance of a sitting position and turned to look at the doorway. A lopsided smile graced her cracked lips, one corner of her mouth higher than the other from the tough scar tissue that ornamented her cheek.
'Joker,' she smiled, forgetting the pain in her ribs and wrists. The Joker looked back at her and she stifled a giggle. He was in an unconvincing mockery of a nurse's uniform, his greasepaint applied underneath the surgical mask, wisps of orange curls poking out from under a white starched hat. His lean, stained fingers delicately pulled the mask down around his neck, and the Joker grinned at her.
'Bells,' he said. 'Fancy meeting you here.'
Bells grinned back at him.
'I suppose that you're the one behind all of the ruckus outside?' she asked, clinking her handcuffs at him to encourage him to get a move on and pick the locks. He sauntered over, pulling out a thin silver pick, spotted with rust. He leant over her left arm, fiddling with the lock.
'Who else would it be?' he replied, and the handcuff opened with a satisfying click. He leant over her to free her right hand, and Bells shivered as he trailed his bare fingers down her forearm.
She shrugged casually. 'Maybe some master criminal, showing Gotham that you aint nothin'?' She smirked up at him.
The Joker looked at her for a long second, pausing in his ministrations to her handcuff, and Bells suddenly thought that maybe the Joker didn't tolerate her bullshit as much as she'd thought he did. She tensed, but the metallic clinking resumed, and a second later her right hand sprung free.
'I like that mouth you have on you, Bells,' he said to her, and she could hear chuckle bubbling in his throat. 'But you gotta watch yourself sometimes. Making a man feel inadequate, you are.'
'You know I'm only teasing,' she smiled up at him. 'You're the only criminal mastermind 'round here, and all of Gotham knows it.'
Bells leant up to peck him on the lips, but the Joker roughly grabbed her chin. She stilled, tensely wondering what she'd done wrong.
'You better be careful,' he said quietly, the grip on her jaw becoming bruising. 'You're fun to have around, but you're not anything more than some girl who happens to still be alive because of my generosity.'
Bells didn't say anything. She was deciphering the meaning behind his words. He didn't like the familiarity, she realised. He didn't like expectations unless he was the one having them. She had to be careful with this pseudo-relationship that was somehow going on.
The Joker let go of her jaw as she nodded.
'Well then!' he said brightly, his grim mood vanishing. 'I've got some business with our resident bridesmaid.'
Bells thought back, assuming correctly that the Joker definitely wasn't in the mood to be married any time soon. Her previous conversation with him came back to her. 'Dent?' she asked. 'Is he here?'
'I put him here. Looking all pretty with a new face too. Miss Dawes, however…' the Joker trailed off, the glint in his eye that told her he'd perpetrated a murder.
'She's dead?' Bells frowned.
'You could say she had a hot date,' the Joker laughed. Bells didn't laugh with him. In a fleeting and semi-successful attempt of self-psychoanalysis, she tried to figure out how she felt about this particular piece of news. She hadn't known Rachel, but had been subconsciously classing her as some sort of kindred spirit, due to their both being the only females (as far as she knew) targeted by the Joker. Bells felt oddly alone at the news that she was dead, despite never even being introduced to the Assistant District Attorney.
'Well…' she murmured, the Joker watching her inquisitively to gauge her reaction. 'How about that,' she finally decided on, assuming that a neutral response wouldn't get her into any trouble. The Joker cocked his head to the side in the disarmingly endearing but dangerous way he had, but didn't seem to find any issue with her response. Deciding that it was time for her to be up and about, Bells swung her legs off the side of the bed, stood up, and stumbled straight into the wall.
'Balance is a little off,' she mumbled as the Joker laughed. It was only once she stood that she realised that she could feel a breeziness in areas where a breeze had no right to be. They'd stuck her in a hospital gown. Bells frowned angrily, and cast around for her clothes, perhaps conveniently folded on a chair. No dice.
She looked towards the Joker, who appeared to be amused by her predicament. He spread his arms, as if to say 'You think I have them?' and then began tapping his fingers impatiently on his thigh. Recognising the warning sign, Bells decided clothes would be an issue for later.
'So what's the plan?' she asked.
'Get to Dent, blow it up,' the Joker replied.
Deciding that she would leave the issue of 'blowing it up' alone for the time being, Bells nodded and headed towards the door, opening it and peering out into the hallway.
'All clear,' she said back over her shoulder, and stepped into the empty corridor. It was littered with abandoned sheaths of paper and various hospital things. She could see a stethoscope hanging oddly over an open door, as if a harried doctor had simply thrown it over their shoulder as they ran.
'Do you know where Dent's room is?' she asked as the Joker stepped into the corridor.
'Wouldn't be much of a plan if I didn't,' he replied, and without looking at her he strode off down the hall. Having not seen his bare legs before, Bells allowed herself a moment to look at them as she walked behind him. They were skinny but lean, and she found it oddly intimate to be seeing them. Still uncomfortably aware that she was naked under a thin hospital gown, she decided to distract herself with idle chitchat.
'So what've you been up to while I've been in an induced coma?' Bells asked brightly, peering into doorways as she passed them. All of the rooms were empty.
'Oh, this, that,' replied the Joker airily, walking with the air of a man dressed as a female nurse who hadn't a care in the world. 'I burnt my cut of the Chechen's money.'
Bells faltered mid-step. 'And what did you do to the Chechen?'
'Found out just how disloyal to him his dogs are.'
Bells found that she didn't particularly want to have any more details than that – the visual was already bad enough.
Finally, they reached Dent's room. There were no guards posted outside, something which Bells found very odd. However, as she paused outside the door, both she and the Joker heard hurried footsteps echoing down the hallway. Fluidly, the Joker pulled it open and pushed her inside. Bells was about to speak when he shunted her against the wall next to the door, pulling a silenced pistol from God knows where. The footsteps stopped, and a policemen walked nervously into the room, the door swinging around to hide Bells from view. He looked at the Joker, who was facing the dazed and slowly coming around Dent.
'Ma'am, we're going to have to move him now,' the cop said nervously, fingering his walkie-talkie.
Without fanfare, the Joker turned fluidly and shot him in the chest. Bells let out a tiny squeak at the rapidity of it – she had been expecting a little showmanship – as the body toppled down to land at her bare feet with a thud.
The Joker stepped closer to Dent, who was looking much more awake. Bells winced as she saw the full extent of what the Joker had done to him. Half of his face was completely burnt, the flesh raw and red and angry. His eye swivelled madly in its socket, the blue of his iris startlingly bright in contrast with the exposed muscles. His cheekbone could be clearly seen, straining against the taut sinew of his cheek, and without lips his jaw and teeth contorted his expression into a permanent angry grimace. He looked insane, something not helped in the way he pulled compulsively at the restraints around his wrists. Bells couldn't help but feel empathy for the ruined man in front of her. Her mind was flashing back to the bashful man at the Wayne fundraiser who was uncomfortable with being the centre of attention. She also felt a certain sense of comradery with Dent. They had both been moulded into something new by the Joker.
Bells stepped forward to the side of the hospital bed, watching Dent and the Joker interestedly. Dent looked towards her as she stepped into his line of sight, the maimed eye and the whole piercing her before he looked back at the Joker.
'I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us, Harvey,' the Joker said almost gently as he leant over and loosened Dent's restraints. 'When you and Rachel were being abducted I was sitting in Gordon's cage. I didn't rig those charges - '
'Your men,' Dent interrupted gruffly. 'Your plan.'
The Joker eyed him, a slight shake to his shoulders as he held in laughter.
'Do I really look like a guy with a plan, Harvey?' he asked. The Joker turned to Bells. 'Huh? Do I?'
'Not in the least,' Bells replied, grinning back at him.
The Joker turned back to Dent. 'Well there you go. I don't have a plan… The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know what I am Harvey?'
Dent didn't reply, meeting the Joker's gaze. Bells saw his hands trembling.
'I'm a dog chasing cars… I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.' The Joker's vice was rising hysterically. 'I just do things. I'm just the wrench in the gears. I hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So when I say that you and your girlfriend were nothing personal, you know I'm telling the truth.'
Bells held her breath as the Joker paused, looking over at Dent, who appeared to be shaking with uncontrolled rage. His good eye had closed into a slit, and she could see the exposed muscles attempting to do the same on his lidless eye. The Joker looked at her, and winked, before gently handing the pistol to Dent. Bells couldn't stop her sharp intake of breath as Harvey confusedly looked down at the silenced gun and then to the Joker, obviously fearing some sort of trick. Slowly, Dent raised the gun at the Joker, who leant forward and pulled the gun against his temple.
Bells stared, panicking. What would she do if the Joker died? However, her panic ebbed as she amusedly realised that the Joker's thumb was firmly pressed on the hammer of the pistol – there was no way the Dent would be able to fire a shot. She held in a grin at how seriously Dent was taking this, when he didn't even have a chance.
'It's the schemers who put you where you are,' the Joker intoned seriously. 'You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where that got you.'
Dent was staring up at the Joker, a sort of horrified fascination crossing his maimed face. Bells gripped the rails of the hospital bed, entranced by the master manipulation that was occurring. The Joker may be called many things, but one thing he was not was stupid. He could understand the inner recesses of the subconscious, and knew which mentalities to tweak just slightly to bring a thought to the front, somehow making it seem as though the manipulated had thought of it all by themselves. Yes. The Joker may be a sociopathic murderer, but he was also frighteningly intelligent with a master understanding of the psyche. Bells couldn't help but be in awe of him and his subtle manipulations.
'I just did what I do best,' the Joker continued softly, staring down at Dent. 'I took your plan, and I turned it on itself. Look what I've done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets.'
Dent twitched, and his finger jerked on the trigger of the pistol. The Joker let out a slight chuckle.
'Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.'
He adjusted his grip on the pistol, the shaking in his shoulders indicating to Bells that he was getting more and more excited. The was a hysterical tilt to his voice, which was rising in pitch with every sentence.
He continued, 'If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers gets blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan.'
The Joker's hands were shaking in earnest now, and Bells could see a blossom of colour under the messy white greasepaint on his cheeks.
'But when I say that one little old mayor will die - ' The Joker's voice was rising in earnest now, and his words were shaking slightly '- everybody loses their minds!'
He paused, appearing to calm himself, and his grip on the pistol seemed to slacken slightly. Dent was still staring up at him, apparently mesmerized, and his fingers were loosening and tightening convulsively on the trigger. Bells stood stock still, ignoring the blaring sirens that were filtering through the window.
'Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey?' the Joker asked quietly, staring down at Dent. 'It's fair.'
Dent looked up at the Joker, neither glaring nor calm. He just looked. Finally, he looked down at something in his hand. Bells followed his gaze and saw a large coin, the side facing up blackened by soot. Dent held up the good side to the Joker.
'You live,' he growled. He turned the coin to the other face. 'You die.'
The Joker looked down at him, almost admiringly. 'Now you're talking.'
Bells held her breath for dramatic effect, knowing the whichever side landed face up, it wouldn't make a difference. The Joker's thumb was still firmly pressed on the hammer, hidden from Dent's line of side by the barrel of the pistol.
Dent flipped the coin up into the air with his good hand. The coin flashed as it spun, a black and silver blur as the two faces flipped, until the coin fell back into Dent's outstretched hand. His fingers closed over it, and slapped it onto the table beside the bed. He lifted his hand.
'You live,' said Dent quietly, a shadow of something unidentifiable passing over his face. Bells's hands unclenched from the rail, blood returning to her white fingers.
The Joker closed his eyes briefly, as if relieved by the outcome. Slowly, he extracted the pistol from Dent's hand.
'I hope to see you around, Harvey. You're one hell of a guy,' the Joker told him seriously, before turning to Bells. 'Come on Bells. We've got a bus to catch.'
She nodded, moving away from the hospital bed and towards the door. She paused as she heard the Joker speak again.
'Oh, and Harvey? I'd make a move, and quickly, if I was you.'
Bells turned in time to see Dent nod towards the Joker, before the Joker steered her out of the room. They made their way down the hallway, the Joker only pausing to pull something black and box-like out of a cupboard. He pushed her on ahead.
'Get to the bus,' he muttered.
'Which bus?' she asked, turning around to him, but he pushed her forward.
'Find Slim.'
Bells nodded, a rushed forward. She reached to doors, which slid open with a calm swoosh that seemed out of place in the situation. Striding forward, she realised that she blended in perfectly. People in hospital gowns were milling in panicked circles, arranged around the strangely out-of-place school-buses that were parked haphazardly in the car park. Wondering how on earth she was going to be able to find Slim in all of this, she walked towards the nearest bus, intending to look in the driver's seat of all of them until she found him. She was halfway to the bus when she heard someone frantically calling her name. Looking stupid as she spun in a circle, she finally locating Slim leaning out the window of the bus closest to the hospital. Smiling in relief, she sauntered over, picking her way through policemen and doctors who appeared to have better things to do than to figure out that a kidnap victim wanted by the police was calmly walking through their midst.
Reaching the bus, she vaulted up the step, ignoring the ache in her ribs that had been getting steadily worse as the day progressed. Glancing back, she started as she realised that the bus was full of civilians, Mike Engel even sitting up the front with his hands clasped nervously on his lap.
'How was Dent?' Slim grunted, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel.
'Not the same man he once was,' Bells grinned, settling herself into the passenger seat. However, just as she had gotten herself comfortable, making sure that she wasn't flashing anyone, a shockwave rocked the bus followed by a resounding boom. The passengers screamed as Bells spun around to look out the window. The hospital was collapsing in on itself, walls crumbling with billows of smoke and dust. Even as a second explosion tore through the air, she could see fires starting in the rubble. It was a cacophony of screams and explosions, all conducted by the Joker.
Bells smiled to herself as she realised that he had kept his word and waited until the hospital had evacuated before blowing it up. It must have been the switch that he'd pulled out of the cupboard. She wondered where Dent had got to.
Her musings were interrupted by a scream right next to her ear, and with annoyance she realised that Engel had stood up and was leaning over her shoulder to shout at Slim.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he screamed, and Bells winced as his voice cracked up an octave. 'Drive, you idiot! Let's get out of here!'
Bells turned to him. 'Shut the fuck up you smarmy twat!' she growled.
His eyes widened as he realised who it was, and he pulled away slightly. 'But… but you're Isabelle Richards!'
'No, that's Bells,' came a voice from behind him. Engel gulped, paling rapidly before slowly turning around with the air of a man who knew his time was limited. The Joker was silhouetted in the doorway of the bus, a harrowing figure that was slightly ruined by the fact that he was wearing a nurse's uniform. Engel, however, shrank in fear even as Bells held back a giggle. She winced as there were several more screams from the bus as the passengers clued on to the fact that it wasn't a friendly nurse who'd just stepped into the bus, but basically the complete opposite. The Joker grinned at the effect he had made, and sauntered over to rest his hand on her shoulder, his fingers gripping her tightly. He turned to the passengers, whose screams had subsided to the occasional whimper and gasping sob.
'Looks like you folks hopped on to the wrong bus,' he said, chuckling slightly. 'And Mike,' he continued, turning to Engel, 'We're going to have some fun with you and that camera of yours.'
Despite Bells not thinking it was at all possible, Engel paled even further. His face now had the unhealthy pallor of a man who had spent several years locked in a windowless room. His right eye twitched slightly and his mouth opened in a soundless whimper.
Bells grinned at him. She felt a slight personal grudge against Engel, seeing as it was him who had been broadcasting the details of her original abduction in every morning and nightly news slot. It hadn't made walking down the street very easy.
Bells was pulled out of her thoughts by the bus's engine roaring into gear, and she was thrown into the Joker as Slim haphazardly reversed out of the car park, swinging onto the road and switching into gear with, clearly, no thought for the comfort of the passengers as they were thrown around. Bells somehow ended on the Joker's lap, her bare thighs on the crisp white skirt of the nurse's uniform. The Joker looked down at her, his face unreadable.
'I'm glad you're not dead,' she said quietly. 'Or in prison.'
The Joker grinned slightly.
'I feel the same way about me, too,' he said, and she frowned at him for not taking her seriously. The next moment, however, she stopped caring, because the Joker had turned his attention to her neck, biting and sucking on her pulse points. Bells flexed her hands as tendrils of fire shot down, and she couldn't help but let out a little moan.
There was a shocked gasp from behind her. Bells ignored it.
'Whore,' a man said quietly, not thinking that she could hear him.
The Joker paused, pulling away from her to see what she'd do. Bells stilled, and her hands closed into fists.
'Excuse me?' she asked, slowly turning around in the Joker's lap. Engel's cameraman flushed, meeting her gaze.
'You heard me,' he said defiantly, raising his voice slightly over the rumble of the engine. At the wheel, Slim stiffened, waiting for the inevitable conclusion.
Bells felt cold. They didn't understand. Nobody could understand her, or the Joker. She didn't need to take this. She knew it was only the first comment of many to come, but a sense of righteous rage overtook her. How could they possibly judge her, they who didn't even know what she'd been through? Wordlessly, she held her hand out to the Joker, waiting, not taking her eyes off of the quickly reddening man's face. She felt the cool handle of a throwing knife settle into her palm, and the brush of the Joker's calloused fingers. Breaking the cameraman's gaze, she looked down at the knife, which fit nicely in her scarred fingers. She narrowed her eyes. In a fluid motion that had been drilled into her, she pulled her hand back even as she swivelled in her seat, and twisted the knife in her fingers as she threw it. It connected with a solid thunk in the shoulder of the cameraman, who let out a strangled cry as he scrabbled at the hilt, his fingers quickly becoming slick with blood. A red stain bloomed on his white shirt.
Bells watched him, her head tilted to the side. She looked up at the Joker, who watched her with amusement.
'I was aiming for his head,' she frowned at him, ignoring the yells that were emanating behind her. 'I was too angry. It threw off my aim.'
The Joker grinned down at her, the greasepaint worn and sunken into his scarred cheeks. 'You really know how to grow on a guy,' he chucked, pulling her closer to him.
Bells felt cold, and it was nothing to do with the thin hospital gown she was wearing. It wasn't like she'd killed the guy, even though she meant to. The words 'Stockholm' and 'conditioning' filtered briefly through her mind before she was distracted by a pair of lips on her own.
It was fine. She was fine.
A/N: I welcome constructive criticism! I really do. Let me know what you think, reviews make me feel bad about not updating regularly. It you're a firs time reader, chuck this story a follow! :)