Voyeur
For the first time that night, luck was on my side. The patrons of the diner were mostly unscathed. The bang of my head against the diner's door had been enough to give the patron's cause to look outside, at which point they saw him and all had vacated the diner before the explosion.
The police were interviewing the few remaining patrons who hadn't run off into the woods behind the diner. I helped the paramedics prop up Blake, still adorned in his full uniform with identity intact. I was there to assure none of the medical staff got any ideas about the medical necessity of seeing The Batman's face while he was only semiconscious. His pretty eyes were fluttering open intermittently and he finally held enough tension in his muscles to sit up on the side of the ambulance as gloved hands flittered over him.
A big backpack caught my eye in the growing throng of people outside the smoldering ashes. The pack was on the back of a young man with a crew cut that was just beginning to walk down the debris-strewn road.
I remembered what The Joker said… assault rifles tucked into their backpacks.
"Can you hold him up on this side?" I asked, a pointless question as I was already sloughing off Blake's heavy arm around the neck of a wary-looking EMT.
"Sure," he agreed. I had just turned to leave when the wavering tone in his voice stopped my footsteps momentarily, "Is it true? The Joker is back?"
His eyes were bright green and earnest. He was a tall, handsome young man. Considering the worry dripping off of him, I wondered who in this man's life The Joker had killed.
I nodded. I turned away, swallowing against the swell of emotion that threatened to crush me.
"Will you stop him?"
In an uncharacteristic move, I pretended that I didn't hear him and continued my beeline for the man with the backpack. I attempted to keep my glass-crunching footsteps to a minimum, choosing to mostly walk along the grass strip next to the shoulder of the road. If the man truly did have a gun, I wasn't eager to tip him off.
The backpack man walked on, seemingly unaware of his stalker. He busied himself with lighting a cigarette. Two twin curls of smoke glided over his shoulders and back toward me.
When I was close enough, I slipped behind him and effortlessly yanked his backpack from his shoulders. The backpack was heavy, sparking my hope that perhaps my effort would result in a lead.
"Hey!" he interjected, spinning around with outrage on his features. His initial outrage faded to a tight-lipped worry as he took me in.
"I'm sorry to do this," I lied through my teeth, inspected him carefully. "If there's nothing dangerous in here, then you don't have to worry."
I ignored his immediate protest, quickly unzipping his backpack. Two heavy-looking hardback textbooks initially came into view.
"You're a little old to be a student, don't you think?"
He didn't say anything, just took an anxious puff of his cigarette and darted his eyes around. In what I knew was a dickish move, I pried the books from the backpack and let them fall to the pavement with a loud clatter. They looked brand new, as if they just came out of the college shrink wrap. The backpack was still heavy as hell and had taken on a malformed shape that hinted at its contents now that it didn't have the textbooks to fill the rest of the space.
My hand reached in a found cold metal. I pulled out a compact rifle and let the backpack fall to the pavement next to the books.
I unclipped the magazine quickly and tossed it over my shoulder as my eyes rose to meet his. One foot was postured away from me and his chin was beginning to turn over his shoulder.
"Don't even think about it. You're going to jail one way or another, it's just your choice if you stop by the hospital on the way," I threatened coolly.
Nervous eyes met mine. The man's skin was deep, his build on the shorter side. He looked far too put together to be one of The Joker's usual goons. I could tell he was sizing me up and I assumed he was wondering if he could take me. Luckily for me, my reputation seemed to precede me and he seemed uncertain enough of his chances that he remained still.
"I don't think you could probably take me, either. But you're welcome to try."
The man scratched his scalp a bit erratically with the same hand that held his still-lit cigarette, "I wouldn't try, anyways."
"Why's that?" I stepped closer to him.
"He said to leave you alone. He said you're his to hurt," the man smiled cruelly in a moment of confidence.
Anger flashed through me, starting in my sternum and bolting out.
"Are you going to tell me everything you know about him or am I gunna have to hurt you?"
He held up his hands, still shifting his weight back and forth between his feet nervously, "You don't have to hurt me. He told me that, if I got caught by you, that I could tell you everything."
Anxiety trickled down my spine at his unexpected response. I had no way of knowing if the information he would tell me would be correct if he gave it so willingly. I eyed the henchman up.
"And you'd go willingly to the police if I forced you now?"
He shrugged. He took a long drag of his cigarette and fluffed a cloud of smoke up, reminding me of the near-carnage of the explosion earlier.
"You'd be willing to do all that for him? What does he have on you?"
"My sister."
"He's holding her captive?"
"No, he's paying for her college."
How altruistic. I smiled.
"I can pay for her college and rent if you do me a little favor."
My fingers stayed fixed on my work, though my mind was still back at the diner ten hours ago. Early morning light pressed into, but didn't penetrate, the thick curtains pulled tight over the windows of our safehouse. Little slivers of light fell across the blonde hairs on Blake's arm, bringing my attention to the dirt and blood still on his skin.
With each puncture of the needle into the skin surrounding his wound to his ribs, I remembered a terrible thing that The Joker had said.
I tied the thin black thread off. A pulse of pain from the back of my head made my eyelids flutter. Come on, let's play, hellcat.
The small river of blood dripped warm drops onto my bare foot. Ready to say 'uncle?'
I snipped off the thread with a small pair of scissors that were still bloody from the last time Blake had stitched me up. How about that bottom lip, hm? Or did you think the lipstick covered it up?
I distantly dove the needle back into his skin, watching my hands as if they belonged to someone else. Blaze, Blaze, Blaze.
I pulled too hard on the thread and Blake's abs tensed. I'm going to have fun making a liar out of you.
A longer, tanner hand caught mine. It was Blake, his other hand poised to come up to my face. His fingers pulled away and I saw they glittered with moisture. I looked down to see that it wasn't blood that had been dripping onto my foot, but my tears.
I stood, letting my hands drop the instruments precariously with a thin metallic clatter onto the kitchen table.
"No," I snapped preemptively at the reassurance I felt bubbling up from Blake, "I am fucking done crying and being a victim."
His warm hand closed on my shoulder. I was facing away from him, my head buried in one of our laptops I'd brought down from our equipment room after cleaning up Blake's wounds in the bathroom. I booted up our tracking software and drummed my bloody fingers impatiently as it considered loading.
"Blaze," his deep voice warned lowly over my shoulder when he took note of the icon that popped up on the computer screen. His tone was all gentle dominance, a trait which I usually found attractive but now sparked only annoyance.
When I continued to drum the counter and ignore him, his hand clapped down to immobilize my hand.
"We're in no state to go after him right now."
I spun around, ripping my hand from beneath his defiantly. One of his eyes sported a blackening half-moon beneath it. A large, freshly sewn gash disappeared into his dark hairline and he looked paler than usual, no doubt due to his blood loss from earlier, "No, you're in no state to go after him."
"Same thing," his fingers touched my chin gently. The gold in his eyes was seemingly gone for the moment, replaced with calm blackness like a still ocean, "You are not going to him without me."
"Every moment we wait is another moment that he could find the tracker I planted on him and use it against us. It has to be today."
"He could have already found it. When we come for him, we have to be at our best. We just got the absolute shit kicked out of us tonight because he saw us coming from a mile away – what makes you think this will be any different? You were smart enough to set up a contingency with the henchman from earlier, let's see where that takes us."
"No," I snapped, pulling my chin from his grip, which was too close to the grip that The Joker had used earlier, "I am not waiting another goddamn second for him to get the upper hand again."
His hands fell on my hips when I tried to move past him and he pulled me back. Not forcefully, but with tenderness. I felt the annoyance in my eyes dim as I took in the pain in his expression. His thumbs soothed slow circles into the skin of my hips which was exposed slightly by my sweatpants.
"Blaze," his voice cracked, the dominance from earlier gone in favor of despair, "Do you know how hard it was to watch him pull you away through that house? To see him punch you in the parking lot?"
I pressed my lips together, "You saw that?"
He nodded.
"What does he want from you?"
The back of my head pounded fiercely, still tender from the many times The Joker slammed me into things. I studied Blake's face, trying to think of a kinder lie than the horrific truth.
"Don't do that," he cautioned, his large hands moving up to cup my shoulders, "Don't lie. Tell me the truth."
He knows me so well. I closed my eyes for a moment as if his words had hurt me, "He wants to be with me again… I think."
Blake's eyebrows drew down over his darkening eyes, "To torture you again?"
"I don't know… Not exactly. He seemed almost happy to see me. The way he was looking at me while we were fighting… I think he might be fond of me now," I spat out the word like the venom it was.
His eyes twisted shut in pain and he rubbed at them, "This is my fault. I should have known that he was expecting us, I should have never taken you to that waterfront."
"It would have happened eventually," I said, hating the truth of it.
His eyes opened again, now red and irritated as well as deeply serious, "I'm sorry. I won't let it happen again. Next time, I'm going solo."
Anger bubbled up inside me sharply, "It's not your decision! If he captures you, then he can use you to flush me out anyways. If I go alone, I'm the only person that he can hurt."
"He knows who we are now, so he can hurt either of us whenever he'd like."
"I'm not arguing this with you. You've been nearly killed twice by him because of me," I moved to brush past him.
I was halfway to the stairs when his quiet voice cut through my mental haze, "Blaze, come on. Don't make me do this. We're supposed to be partners."
My mind and feet stopped. I revolved to face him. "Do what?"
He took begrudging steps toward me. I could see something deeply unhappy, but resolved, in his expression.
"Say that you and I will rest for tonight and you'll let me go after him tomorrow when I'm more healed and we can figure out a better game plan."
I crossed my arms, the skin of which had erupted in goosebumps. There was a rawness to Blake now that I had only seen right before we sparred, "No."
His lips pressed together. His eyes followed my slightest of movements and the slink of his hips as he moved toward me reminded me of a cat tracking a mouse, "Just know that I'm sorry. I don't want to do this to you and potentially scare you after what you've been through in the past twelve hours. But, just know that this is to keep you safe."
I bristled, fighting to keep my arms crossed instead of assuming a fighting posture. "This isn't funny."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
His hands came around my waist and then I was being hauled deeper into the house. He tucked me under his arm like a football.
"What are you doing?!" I squeaked, fear surely flickering through me momentarily as I remembered The Joker's lavender patterned sleeve tight over my midsection instead of Blake's.
"I'm sorry," was all he had to say for himself as he continued his descent through the house.
He kicked open a door. The basement. He was headed down towards the safe room, I figured out with a pang of surprise. He means to keep me locked in there tonight!
"Enough!" I screamed, twisting out from his grip easily. I fumbled my landing but scuffled a few steps away from him. He considered me apologetically.
"You don't see reason when it comes to him. He knows that you'd want to come for him yourself, he's planning on it."
"I don't care!" I screeched, trying to stifle the sting of betrayal from touching my voice without much success, "It's not your choice to make!"
"And what about my choice in all this?!" his voice boomed back at me with unexpected ferocity. My jaw snapped shut and I recoiled. He had never spoken to me like that in all of our years together, "Can I choose not to see my only reason for living mentally and physically tortured? Can I do choose to do everything in my power to keep you from playing into his hands again?"
I raged silently, glaring up at him as he continued, "Did you really think that I would let you go back to him alone after what he did to you tonight?"
A scarlet blush crept up my neck and I forced myself to hold his gaze, "Nothing happened."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes!"
"So, he didn't touch you again on that boat? He didn't threaten to hold you captive? He didn't tell you he knew your name?"
My spine jumped as though I had been shocked with a cattle prod with each admission, "How do you know - ?"
"Because I could hear it, Blaze," his eyes were wide and wild and he had inched toward me without me quite noticing. Competing skews of light threw strange shadows over his face which was inches from mine, "You couldn't hear my correspondence, but I could hear every word he said to you and you to him. I had to be the unwilling voyeur to the assault of the only person I've ever truly loved. Again," his voice broke and his Adam's apple bobbed, but his eyes never left mine, "I won't do it a third time."
Sympathy softened the edges of the sharp betrayal I felt surging through me. My lips moved though they were fighting to keep up with my formulating thoughts.
"Okay! Okay. We can go together after we rest, later tonight, but you can't lock me up in the basement like a prisoner."
His eyes finally broke their feverish stare into my own to dart around my face. His eyelids narrowed as he considered me, "You're sure?" his voice was cautious.
"Yes."
After another moment of inspection, he straightened. He stayed silent and we watched each other. I hated this newfound distance between us and felt the urge to fold him in my arms and comfort him. He, like me, had lived through something horrific tonight. Everything from the fold of his hands to the pleading in his eyes spoke of tired pain. It had been selfish and short-sighted of me not to consider his point of view. He was the only man I had ever loved and I should have known that he would have never let me go alone. I should have just gone to fight the The Joker after he had fallen asleep, when he would have been none-the-wiser. Judging by the resolve in his gaze at this moment, I knew that there was no way in hell he would actually allow me to leave the house now.
Unless you trick him.
"I'm going to bed, then," I turned on my heel and aimed for the stairs again. I felt myself keeping my steps soft as if I were sneaking up behind a potential assailant. I couldn't help but peek over my shoulder. Blake's masculine silhouette hung like a curtain in the doorway to the basement. In the semidarkness and from so far away, I couldn't see his expression though I knew that he was watching me intently.
"Goodnight," I chirped, perhaps too cheerfully considering the circumstances.
"Goodnight," he answered grimly. A deep part of myself that would forever be tethered to him knew he didn't believe me for one second that I was really going to bed.
I tried not to rush going up the steps. I knew I only had moments to put on my suit and jump out of the window as I was confident Blake would follow me eventually to make sure that I wouldn't budge from our bed all night.
A mighty creak sounded from behind me. I looked down to see him already with one bare foot poised on the bottommost step of the stairs. I felt a start of genuine fear at the dominating glint in his eyes.
I forced a smile and edged into our bedroom. I clenched my jaw as I tried to quietly nestle the door shut and painstakingly click the lock. He wouldn't be able to see that I had closed the door until he was about three-quarters of the way up the stairs. I needed every millisecond I could muster before he realized my plan to grab my suit and make a getaway.
My fist was just closing around the black leather of my suit when I heard the door knob jiggle.
"Blaze," his low voice warned. I had expected a franticness to his voice, but was instead met with a chillingly confident threat.
"I just need time to myself, I'm upset, honey."
The door knob jiggled again, this time more aggressively, "You never call me 'honey.'"
"Just trying it on," I tried to reassure as I stripped down to my panties. I was just beginning to stretch the suit over one of my legs when there was a great crash.
When I looked up, he stood in the splintered newly-doorless entryway. He was clutching the wound on his side, which was rebloodied. His eyes darted from my foot half-dipped in my suit and back up to my face.
"I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me."
"No!" I squealed, but the word alone wouldn't stop his rush toward me. He tried to grip my waist again to throw me over his shoulder. Abandoning my suit on the ground, I rolled backwards on the bed. I came to stand between the wall and the edge of the bed – he had me cornered.
Before I had more than a split second to react, his hand was laced around my wrist with gentle but inescapable pressure. Another curl of fear wafted through me. My mind momentarily filled in The Joker's bruising grip over Blake's. He began towing me towards the splintered remnants of the door.
My mind offered a hundred ways to make him let go of me and my reeling mind tried to find a way that would hurt him the least. Though we had sparred countless times in the past, we always did so without really hurting each other. The thought that I might have to actually hurt Blake tonight trickled through me like poison. But it was that or let The Joker get the upper hand today.
"I said 'no!' Let me go! I don't want to hurt you!"
He didn't look at me, just kept barreling down the stairs two at a time while towing my stumbling form, "You are hurting me by lying to me in your little and big ways. You should know better by now that you can't lie to me – I know you better than I know myself. I would have thought that we had cultivated enough trust between us by now that you wouldn't have tried to lie to me in the first place."
That's why he asked what The Joker wanted earlier though he knew the answer. He was testing me to see if I would lie.
We were halfway down the stairs now. I clenched my teeth and let myself go dead fish on him, forcing him to jolt toward me suddenly. He caught me and scooped me up without missing a beat, as if he'd been anticipating it. While doing so, he released my arm for a precious second.
I gave him a great shove and swung myself over the stair banister. Just as I released my grip on the wood of the banister to begin my descent to the ground floor, Blake's hands closed around my arm.
"Stop!"
Tears tumbled over his lower lash line, but his mouth was firm and determined, "I know this is scaring you. I'm sorry."
He began to haul me back over the banister with impressive ease considering my flailing. I released an outraged scream before instinctively lashing out, scraping my nails down his forearm. Bloody gashes appeared in their wake. Blake didn't react how I'd imagined by flinching back and hopefully letting me fall. Instead, his grip remained steady with no change in his expression though I know the injury must have hurt dearly.
"Blake!" I screeched as he put me on his shoulder. His arm was a hard restraint around my back.
He managed to make it down a few more steps before I flipped and secured his head between my thighs. Giving a great yell, I used my leverage around his head to flip him onto his stomach with a practiced twirl. It was a move I had used on him a million times in the training room. His reaction to it now made me think that he had been taking it easy on me during training, as he was instantly to his feet.
Before he could lock me in his sights again, I scrambled away from him. I fumbled down the rest of the stairs and entered into the kitchen. Though I eerily couldn't hear so much as a footfall behind me, I knew he must be in pursuit. My hands were just touching to the still-open laptop hoping to take it with me out the front door when hard hands restrained my arms behind my body.
My panic inside me was no longer a whisper, but a full-on scream. It made no difference to my still freshly traumatized mind that Blake's hands were gentle, only holding the pressure necessary to keep me from breaking away. In my head, The Joker stood behind me with a mocking smile and threatened to snap my bones with the strength of his grip.
"Stop!" I squealed, hating how pathetic I sounded, "You're reminding me of him!"
That verbal jab earned more of a reaction than any physical injury I had caused him. He released a shaky breath that was a stone's throw from a sob. But his fingers didn't relent.
"I know. I'm sorry. I won't let you be hurt by him again."
He was dragging me by my arms toward the basement's ajar door. I dug my heels into the hardwood before us, but it was no use and he continued to push me forward from behind.
"You know I can get out of this! I don't want to hurt you!"
"Go ahead," he answered coolly, again not looking at me and only his goal down the hall, "It's what I deserve. Besides, nothing you could do to me would hurt more than letting you walk into another one of his traps."
"It's not your decision!" I tried to reason, but he wasn't having it.
"I'm making it my decision."
He felt me tense, anticipating my intent to break from his hold. His other arm fell around my chest like an iron bar, keeping me pinned to his wide torso behind me. Another sting of betrayal hit me. He was using his experience as my partner to anticipate my moves.
"Stop!"
Instead, he lifted me off the ground and jogged down the stairs as my legs flailed to kick out at him. I landed several good hits, though he continued on as though he was carrying a disobedient cat by the scruff. I saw one of his arms reach forward to grab the handle of the panic room, which was suddenly in front of us. I felt his hurried breath on my scalp. I lurched my head back with a grimace, knowing that I was going to impact his already-hurt face.
At that, he grunted and loosened his arms ever-so-slightly. I kicked out against the door and sent him flying backward into one of the columns of wood in the basement. He released me to catch himself from cracking his head open.
I stood quickly, feeling his fingers ghost over my ankle without quite securing a hold. The dim bright blue of the panic room's control panel was the room's only lighting. The blood trickling down from the cut on his face looked black.
I realized with a start that I was situated with my back to the panic room door. Blake was on me before I could correct my mistake. The door opened with a metallic groan and I stumbled backward into the small cold space with a sharp shove from him, falling onto my ass hard.
He followed me into the room, leaving the door open to his back. He just stood there and stared down at me. I got to my feet quickly and glared at him.
"Never in a million years would I have thought you could do something like this to me. Knowing what I've been through! How could you?!"
Tears fell down his handsome and bloody face. He looked tired and hurt in the blue of the control panel, but still has determined as ever.
"You're right. What I'm doing is inexcusable."
"Get out of my way."
"I can't."
I slapped him hard and he let me. His head whipped to the side, his cheek smarting red. I considered him for a moment, fighting the urge to apologize for my cruelty. His eyes stayed down until I started to move past him towards the door. His arm fell around my waist and he shoved me back into the room again. My back impacted the metal shelves hard, sending a couple cans of food to the floor with a loud clatter.
There was a massive crash. Blake had put his fist through the control panel inside the room. He removed his bloody hand, illuminated from the dying sparks of the panel, and began to move backward.
"No!" I howled, trying to launch myself between the closing door and the wall but I was too late. Instead, my hands pummeled the metal of the closed industrial door. There was a loud mechanical click, signifying the locking of the door. Without the control panel inside the room, I would not be able to open the door.
"How could you?!" I shrieked again and again.
I wasn't sure if my words reached him until I remembered the monitor. I peeked over at it, a small real-time video recording of our front door greeting me. Chest still heaving from my struggles, I clicked through a few views of the internal part of the house before I paused. In the video, Blake sat with hunched shoulders against the metal of the door. His bloody hands covered his head as if to protect himself from the blows of my words.