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It’s one of those midsummer nights when the sun's heat lingers long into the night, long past 12:00, and the air sits heady and dead between the solid cement and tacky asphalt streets. He might still be a little rusty with his batarangs but he knows nights like these are best not pondered. Best to keep moving and ignore the sweat soaking down every inch of his covered skin. So he doesn't wait more than a moment before stepping over the broken glass and into Gotham's Helen Street Free Clinic.
“That’s not yours.” “SHIT!” The thief, a young woman in a ski mask, spins on her heels, sneakers screeching on the polished floor as she aims at him. By the looks of it it's a flare gun, still… it could blow his head off if he's not careful. She shakes her head. “My luck. The freak shows up. What do you think you're doing?” “Aparently… interrupting a crime.” “And what are you gonna do about it?” she growls “Alright…” he's still a bit rusty on how to negotiate in these situations, but he's learning. “Why don't you put that down, along with that bag?” “Go fuck yourself!” Okay, so maybe not open to negotiation. An appeal to morality then. “This is a free clinic. The only one for miles. Stealing from here only hurts the people who depend on this place for care.” She re-squares her shoulders and firms up her grip around the flare gun. “I know. I'm one of those peopel. Now get the fuck out of my way!” He leaps behind the reception desk as a bolt of sparks shoots across the room, setting the sterile space off in a hissing red glow and singeing the sides of the counter. After a single smoke laced breath he leaps over the top just before she can make it to the fire escape window. With one hand he knocks the gun from her hand and forces her to her knees. Still catching his breath, heart pounding in his ears, he cuffs her “You should have put the gun down.” She just glares silently at him in the dark. He clears his throat fumes still lingering from the flare, burning his nose as he rummage though her bag. Not what he expected. Six different disinfectants, antibiotics, some serious pain medications and a lot of gauze. “What is all this for?” he asks, shaking the bag and pulling the ski mask off her head. Gold locks tumble out and she just flashes her teeth, turning her nose up at him. He looks through the bag again. Besides the morphine everything would be of relatively low value should you try to sell it. “Are you treating someone? Why not come in during normal business hours?” Her clear eyes narrow, pinpicked in the dark but once again she has no answer for him. “If you or someone you know is in danger or hurt, I can help.” At this she snorts. “And who the fuck do you think you are?” “All I want is to make sure people are safe. I don't care what you've done if- She spits on his heels. “Alright.” It takes a long time to get her down the stairs. She kicks and screams, hooking her ankles into the railing posts and cursing him out the entire time. Dragging her through the smashed clinic door he hopes above all else that driving her toward the nearest police station will scare the truth out of her. He does not tolerate crime but if the person the medical supplies were stolen for dies in some dark corner of the city he will never forgive himself. Crime fighting demands a kind of moral agility he was not quite equipped for when he first started and he's still getting used to it. He looks down the empty street, not even one parked car. “Did you walk here?” “No Batboy, I flew, same as you.” she bites out sardonically. He sighs, shutting the batmobil door on the thief, and dropping himself into the driver's seat. He takes a second to wipe sweat off his face, facing the possibility that he might have to set this thief free in order to follow her back to her ‘patient.’ But first he will try and use the threat of prison. He just has to make sure she doesn't call his bluff. Gotham smudges across his windows as the bolt uptown toward the police station. “You know you're being selfish.” he adjusts his grip on the wheel turning down an empty Angel Blvd. “If that person is really depending on you for those supplies, they will be waiting-" BANG! - CRRRRRREEEECHCHCH! The Batmobil hits the curb. The next thing he knows he’s flying back down the boulevard. Boots pounding over asphalt and his heart in in iron vice as he sprints toward a bent up bicycle and person shaped heap crumpled under a streetlamp. There is blood everywhere. He fails to swallows his panic, bending to rest his hand on their pulse. It looks like someone has taken a cheese grater to their face. Under the mussel of her sternum her chest rises in beep fitful breaths. With each rattling inhale he can see the ribs stretch beneath raw red flesh. “You're going to be alright. You're going to be fine.” he pants even as the smell of blood coats his mouth and burns in his sinuses. It was like she had appeared from nowhere, one moment the street had been vacant and in the next a flash of white and red on his windshield, materializing out of the darkness itself. Eyes bouncing back and forth he thinks it looks like someone has tried to remove her skin entirely. For some seasons she's naked. Tears prick his eyes as he looks up from the gore to search for the remnants of clothes, for an answer, for a reason. He's only been at this for six months. He should know what to do. Hes trained for this. He can't kill someone. In the corner of his eye he catches her hazel eyes flying open. He jolts back and misses the set of handlebars that swing for his head, the wind of it grazing his scalp. Shocked he watched that raw red hand clasped around the handle, his mind fraying around passing seconds as each event made less and less sense. That near dead body twitches and he takes a sharp inhale in sympathetic agony as it lurches up to sit. A hand of blistered flesh rises to cover the bottom of her bleeding face. A distant voice he only barely recognizes as his own speaks. “I'm not going to hurt you. You've been hit by a car. You need to lie still. Your spine could…” he stops. She starts shaking, wheezing where he sits on the asphalt, a shudding through her shoulders and chest. That's when he finally hears it, barely audible, creased by a clotted sticky throat. She's giggling. Her hand drops, revealing a face torn open in a ecstatic laughter.
How is she able to move? Is it shock? Does she think he attacked her? Why is she laughing?
His last shred of reason is twisted out of his shaky grasp as she slumps to her feet rising on thin stumbling legs all the while swaying and swinging that bike handlebar like pendulum through the air, smiling at him in horrid glee.
Wooosh.
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Wooosh.
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Wooosh.
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“Hi doll-face.” She grins and it's an awful sight but he can't look away. His heart is thudding like a jackhammer against his ribs. “How-... Is- is this a joke?” She buckles over in pure guttural laughter, smiling lazily. “Oh, do I hope so!” She continues in her crackly sing-song voice, “You really should have seen your face. Priceless! Where's your kodak when you need it, am I right?” She lets out a long exasperated sigh. “Oh well. I'll just have to save it away in my memory bank. Not much there at the moment.” She spits blood on the road and swings at his head. Trapped in a fog of confusion he just manages to duck out of range. She's slow, sluggish, and catches her arm in his grasp. A tatted sheet of her skin slides off in his grip. Stepping back, dazed, he looks down at the limp rag of flesh. It's real , still warm and wet with blood in his hand. The woman bites her bleeding finger “Oops!"
THWACK!
A sharp pain shoots through the back of his skull. The world collapses into black. He blinks vaguely aware he's on the ground. “Wait!” she shouts. He sinks further, falling to the road unable to stop himself, the pavement still hot on his cheek. He tries to move but his limbs wont obey. “You want to let him live!?” says a different voice. He drags his gaze up. She's talking to the thief, the woman from the clinic. She must have broken free of his cuffs some how and snuk up behind him. She’s standing over him with a brick held in her hand. That's when it all hits him. The woman who collided with his car is the 'mystery patient'. “He's funny, Har! And you owe me big time! ” “I didn't make you get hit by a fucking car, J! That was your stupid idea! And why are you naked?!” Bruce groans in a mix of pain and self loathing. This entire thing has been a the most harebrained rescue mission ever conceived. someone would have to be insane had thrown themselves in font of his car and assume it wouldn't mean instant death. Hes not sure how he could have possibly anticipated this but that doesn't make the failure burn any less. Now his life is at the mercy of two of the most aberrant and unpredictable criminals he has ever come across. For now they seem content with completely ignoring him. The ‘skinless’ J shrugs. “Shock value? What was I going to do? Let him take you to jail? I don't think so.” "You didn't seem so worried when you let him cart me off at the clinic?? How are you even upright??” "Oh pumpkin, It's called 'bidding my time'.” Bare bleeding feet on the hot asphalt, J totters a bit where she stands. “I waited till you guys were down the hall and shot myself full of the good shit, I can't feel anything, Har. It's amazing... Booking it through Haughty Park, I was just able to catch up in time.” Har rips her sweater off. “Put something on for Christ's sake.” Hissing J stretches it over her raw open flesh and gives Har a hurt look. “We will tie him up and go back and see if the clinic is still good. After I'll buy us candy." Har pouts now. “You mean steal. I know you’re flat broke. I should kill you myself.” “Can't kill me twice. Don't be mad Har. You know I can't handle it.” “That was reckless. I was really freaked out…”
“I was never going to let him take you to jail. Never.”
Together the two girls take hold of his limp arms and drag him to the lamppost. His head lulls limp on his neck. Har secures him there using the bike chain and lock while J, who should be in a coma if not dead, tries to bend the rusty bike back into working order. “What happened to-” “Shut up.” snaps Har. He can feel the blood dripping hot down the back of his skull. Looking at J struggle to refit the handlebars he notices the odd streaked pattern to her wounds, the way it eats way the skin and worsens at the joints and crevices.. unlike burns... “Acid??" Har snaps her teeth at him but its as good as a confirmation. "You need to let me go. Let me get you help. Whatever is keeping her alive. It won't last. She needs doctors, skin graphs, a sterile environment. That's not even mentioning the internal bleeding-" “You say something Batsy?” J perks up from the middle of the street. He raises his voice across the empty road. “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.” “Oh.” Even from afar he can see blood and clear puss drips off her cheek. “You think?” she saunters up to them. “I hear where you're coming from but it's been weeks and I just don't seem to have it in me. Hell, I can't even sleep.” Weeks? “Let me help.” “He's just trying to get free.” mutters Har.
“No. No, I don't joke about people's lives.” “Shame.” J pouts examining him up and down like something dead she found on the road. “And here I thought we might share a sense of humor, batboy.” He shakes his head. “I just want to help.” She couches low in a wide squat so her brown bloodshot eyes and macerated face are level with his. “How charming. He begs to save my life when he really ought to be begging for his own." He feels the slimy crusted texture of her raw hand close around his chin and pull his face up. She smells of copper and rot. “I put a big dent in that shiny Cadillac of yours. Not to mention the dent Harley left in your skull.” “He deserved worse." J rolls her eyes, the whites standing out against the thick mesh of blistered flesh. “Even so… Pray tell, mister bat, where is your backbone? ” “I don’t need one if it means losing my morals.” “Morals!” J balks. “This city has really gone to the dogs.” Harley stands over her shoulder glaring daggers at him. “I wasn't going to turn you in if it meant endangering someone I knew nothing about. I was just planning on scaring you.” “Sure. Like I believe that!” Spits Harley. “I know you law humping freaks. No one meets muster in your world. Everyone's trash.” Joker laughed. “She would have sooner let me rot then give me up.” He swallows spit, his body feels too hot and the world is still swaying a bit under him. “You deserve treatment.” “You don't know what I deserve, Bat!” She shrieks. “I like you Batsy... you might have a massive moralizing stick up your you-know-what, but there's something rather fetching about your whole... shtick.” "Its not a "shtick"." "Its AALLL a shtick, my dear. This world is to real for sincerity. But for what its worth, I admire your commitment to the bit." “What's your name?” “Whyyyyy?” she drones out, burnt eyebrow arched. “So I know how to find you in the obituaries." he states coldly. J laughs, this time it a clearer sound that rings out and reverberates off the walls of abandoned buildings that line Angel Blvd. She spends an unrushed moment trying to catch her wheezing breath. “You… You are funny.” “It's not a joke, it's a warning.” "I don't care for semantics." The limitless glee on her broken bleeding face is something straight out of a nightmare. "Hows about you call me Joker?” Harley rides the bike up to them, braking with a screech of tires. Batman just glares up at 'Joker’ without response. "Well," she bights her blood red lip. "I guess we should get going." She hops up onto the handlebars with a sticky smack. They swerve for a moment on the top heavy bike, making a wide arc in the road. Harley gives one farewell middle finger and as they disappear down the road into the chasm of darkness Joker waves, shouting into the black expanse, “I will see ya when I see ya, Batsy!” The entire night feels like its been some kind of strange fever dream. Defeated and slumped under that lone lamppost, he sincerely hopes he never crosses paths with either of the strange duo again. And he might get his wish with full body burns like the ones that woman had. But as the tic-tic-tic-tic-tic of their old bike wheels fade into the night, Batman doesn't know what to believe.