My Version of Hell Was Much Funnier

"What would Batman do?" Squid asked bewildered. "What brought that up?"

Sim shrugged her petite shoulders. "I was just wondering what happened to Batman. I've been wondering that for while know, you know? He just sorta left. I understand that he was dealt a serious blow, but he just left us."

"Us?" Biggy asked over his shoulder.

"Gotham."

"Sim, shouldn't you be happy?" A curious glance was thrown his way on her part. He threw his legs over the side of the love seat, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together before him. "The whole purpose of The Joker was to dispose of Batman, let us see that even the best can fall. And you were there to help him along the way."

"Even though he says there was no plan, there was always something brewing up there in his mind," Sim explained. She sat a moment, staring in the direction he had left in. "There was always reason behind the madness. Now... it's just," she shook her head, her bottom lip quivering. "Madness."

Squid hesitated a moment, drawing a raspy breath. "You honestly don't believe that do you? I mean, yeah, things do change, but that -"

"You may have known him longer than I have, but you don't know him as well as I do."

Biggy stopped in the middle of the sentence he was reading and turned in his seat to face them, lit cigar still dangling from his parted lips, white dancers bouncing in the air above him.

"There's alternate reasons now. If those were truly his purposes he'd be over and done by now. There's something more that he wants - something he'll do anything to get. I just don't know what it is, and it's driving me insane."

"Of coarse, the addition to the group doesn't help," Squid said, throwing his head toward The Joker's closed door.

Biggy turned back to the table, pulling a deck of cards from the breast pocket of his large button up shirt. Taking the cigar between his two fingers he began shuffling the cards, adding a new noise to the atmosphere.

"I don't trust her."

Sim's eyebrows furrowed, as well as Squid's. Twisting in her seat Sim stared at Biggy's back. "Well established, I don't think anybody does, Big."

"Nah, Mama," he used her old nick name. "I really don't trust her. There's something..." he raised his head to look through a blacked out window, and finally shrugged his shoulder's, turning back to his game. "There's something untouchable about her. She's changed him. For the worse. The boss... well he's just a man who's not easily persuaded. This girl's got him eatin' from the palm of her gloved hand. It aint right. Sim in all her glory couldn't even get him to do that."

Sim's cheeks burned, and she turned back in her place.

"Name some of the things that have changed." Casey spoke, reminding of his presence. His fingers never left their positions on the wires, his eye's never straying as he tried to fashion a new bomb.

"He smokes."

Sim frowned. "Hasn't he always smoked?"

"Name the times you tasted nicotine on him." Her entire face grew warm. "The boss may smell like it, but he never did it. Always said that a man in his position could die any day, working with bombs, gasoline and within the vicinity of Gotham's crazed. Smoking would only speed the process, a process he would do literally anything to slow. He's not a dumb man. Being around explosives all day with a lit cigarette danglin between your teeth is stupid. He's gotta death wish."

"We could go in there and kill her now."

Squid looked to Sim imploringly. "He'd kill you once he found out."

"I'd leave."

"I'd leave with you."

"Squid, do me a favor and don't be retarded for once, please."

"You can't get rid of me that easily, babe, I'm sorry."

She looked to him, and he threw her a goofy smile. Her lips parted in a grin.

No matter what happened, Squid and her would stick together, that much she knew for sure. People like him scarcely come, and she'd do whatever it took to keep him alive, even plan something that could get her killed.