Your Frown Is My Umbrella

“Mister Wayne? Are you there?”

In his office at Wayne Enterprises, Bruce Wayne himself was being jostled from his early afternoon nap.

“Hello? Bruce? It’s Lucius.”

Still, the snoozing billionaire merely turned his head away from the buzzer on his desk.

“Okay. Well then, if you’re there, uh, I just wanted to let you know there’s been a fire in your penthouse.”

That got Bruce’s attention.

“What?” he slurred, snapping up in his leather swivel chair.

After frantically scanning the room, Bruce rubbed at his eyes and hit the call button so Lucius could hear his response.

“What? What do you mean there was a fire in my penthouse?” he demanded, leaning forward and out of his seat. “You mean the whole building, or just my place?”

“Well, that did it. You’ve been ignoring my phone calls, Bruce.”

Bruce’s jaw hung agape.

“What?”

“Oh cool your jets. I had to get your attention somehow.”

Bruce sat back in his chair and shook his head.

“So no fire?”

“No fire.”

“Oh thank God.”

“At least, not in your penthouse. Listen, I need you to turn on your TV to channel six. You can give me a call back afterwards.”

“Lucius, what’s all this about?” Bruce grumbled, trying to remain coherent in his groggy state of mind. He didn’t have time for this. He was tired. He had spent the past few hours doing job interviews, trying to find a new secretary who wouldn’t remind him of Rachel when he least expected it. As it turns out, it was harder than he had anticipated. “Look, I thought we were going to talk tomorr –”

“It’s important. There’s been an accident. Just see for yourself and get back to me.”

And with that, Lucius quieted.

Bruce shook his head again and reached for the television remote.

This better be good, he thought bitterly as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

The television screen came to life and once he turned it to the appropriate channel, his alertness level reached its peak.

“Eleven people have been taken to hospital with severe injuries.”

A blonde reporter was standing in the street, only a stone’s throw away from a blazing wreck in the middle of the highway.

“Six others were announced dead at the scene. Police are encouraging citizens to avoid the surrounding area, and not only because of the gawker delay. There have been several reports claiming that The Joker and his men were the cause of this seven-car pile up. For those of you who have not heard the news prior to this, you heard correct. The mass murdering criminal known as The Joker is on the loose again. After escaping from his Arkham cell earlier today, it seems that he is wasting no time in –”

Bruce blinked stupidly at the television set as the reporter continued to ramble off bits of information he had not yet heard.

So The Joker was loose in Gotham again. He was free, which meant the city wasn’t. This boded for nothing but absolute trouble.

The same kind of trouble that Bruce had hoped he’d never experience again.

*.*.*.*.*

Back on the docks, Joker removed his hands from Reign’s shoulders and took a step back before opening his mouth to speak.

“Get out of here.”

Reign flinched in surprise. A strange combination of hurt and excitement churned restlessly inside of her, causing her heart to beat faster. Had he just said what she thought he said?

“Go. Run,” he demanded, briefly licking his lips as he waved her away.

She swallowed hard. Part of her wanted to do as he said, but the other part wanted nothing more than to stay put. Surely there was some tricky fine print lurking beneath the surface of his command. Criminals like this didn’t just let people go, especially when the hostage in question had been accused of being a lying thief.

The Joker was the embodiment of chaos in its purest, most unadulterated form. Any normal person would gladly accept the chance to escape his presence. The human instinct to survive would take over, leaving no room for suspicion or logical thinking.

So why didn’t she take off running like any normal human being would?

That’s easy. Reign was (and always would be) anything but normal.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and waved her away again, obviously advising her confused self to get moving.

Still, she showed no signs of doing as he said. She didn’t believe he was giving her a legitimate chance for freedom, and why should she have? For her, paranoia and suspicion came as naturally as breathing. In her mind (and in most cases, reality) there was always something lurking around the dark corner. There was always a can of worms threatening to blow up in her face if she let her guard down. There was always someone ready to take advantage of her passive nature.

So, she merely took an unsure sidestep to the left, and then another. She squinted up at his dark eyes curiously, expecting him to pull out a gun and shoot her if she was stupid enough to look away.

Or maybe he would let her run away to a certain point, and then just gun her down like Rick in the alleyway.

“What the hell are you waiting for?!” Joker shouted suddenly, practically lunging forward like a venomous viper as he threw his arms into the air. “Get out of here!”

Without a second thought, Reign wheeled herself around and took off sprinting in the direction they had first come.

She blocked out her tear-blurred surroundings and merely focused on running away from him as fast as her trembling legs would allow. Now it didn’t matter whether or not it was all a trap. If he wanted her dead, he’d find a way to kill her.

Reign wiped a gloved hand across her eyes and took a deep breath. For a moment she thought to look over her shoulder for one last look just to make sure he wasn’t chasing her. Then she decided against it.

It wouldn’t be a good idea. If their eyes met again, the death glare he was sending her would probably turn her to stone.

And wouldn’t the act of looking back signify regret, or some sick kind of longing? Was that what this feeling was?

No, no no oh no. Just keep running. Forget it. He let you go. Forget him. Yeah. It’s nothing. Okay? It’s over. Just keep running.

Right. It was nothing. There was nothing to feel, but fear itself.

So, despite the dizzying tension that had gripped her fumbling body, she continued to run. By now her nerves were so high-strung that it made her feel as though they had solidified into a virtual tightrope beneath her feet. The wire itself may have been nonexistent in the real world, but the vertigo that accompanied it was nothing short of intoxicating.

Dizzy and confused, she stumbled past a blurry yellow building, a red truck, another building…

How much farther would it be until she met the road? And why was she even able to run at all? She should have been dead by now. Hadn’t she been told that The Joker was a mindless killing machine? Hadn’t she been told that he was incapable of sympathy or reason?

Stop thinking about him, she told herself. You’re over thinking everything! Just be grateful!

But she couldn’t help thinking about it. If you crossed The Joker’s path, you already had one foot in the grave as far as fate was concerned. Death was practically a guarantee. Surely if he had killed her, it would have been considered normal by his standard, right?
The fact that he hadn’t killed her seemed more like abnormal Joker behavior. So, she was lucky to be alive.

If she could have smiled then, she would have. Had she really just gotten lucky? Had fate decided to lead her out of harm’s way for once, instead of leading her straight into the eye of the storm where she was sure to be beaten and humiliated like so many times before?

Just as that thought crossed her mind, she heard shouting. Then, a pair of thunderous, all too familiar bang sounds exploded from behind her.

Before Reign even had time to acknowledge the fact that her fear had increased ten fold, searing hot pain tore through the back of her right arm. Her eyes widened in shock as she cried out, instinctively jerking her shoulders upwards.

By the time Reign realized she had just been shot, she was already facedown on the pavement.

She groaned deeply and felt her eyes roll back in her head. A gushing stream of blood crept out from behind her hair only to trickle down her face and onto the pavement. Another torrent of the crimson liquid seeped from the throbbing bullet wound in her right arm.

So, she thought deliriously, looks like I’m not so lucky after all. Big surprise there, huh? Ha.

Her mind came to the conclusion that The Joker never had any intention of letting her go. This had been a trick. A hoax. A scam. A joke.

He had only let her go so that he could literally shoot her high hopes right out of the sky like a hot air balloon. Now he’d just leave her to bleed out the rest of her angst. Maybe he’d take her home and chop her up into little bitty chunks so she could literally rest in pieces.

He was like a housecat playing with a live mouse; just swatting and teasing. He could have killed her right in the beginning and saved her from having to ride this roller coaster of emotions, but where was the fun in that? You can’t hunt down dead bodies; only live ones. Even she could understand where he was coming from there.

So he had lifted his paw and let her scamper away, just long enough to get her hopes up. Yes. And then, just when she thought she was home free, he reached over and snatched her up again. Oh but he had no intentions of letting her go a second time. With brutal force, he had driven his claws deep into her flesh and impaled her right in the palm of his hand – or paw.

She grimaced confusedly, feeling the world spinning around her aching body. Oh this wasn’t fair.

Her entire life had been a game of cat and mouse.

Just once, she would have liked the chance to be the cat.

That was her last thought before darkness stole her away.