Your Frown Is My Umbrella

At the sight of her bare hands, Reign’s heart was thrust into overdrive before she even had a chance to sit upright. She blatantly ignored the pain in her right arm as she did so, panting and staring at her naked hands as though they had just grown mouths and spoken to her.

Her mittens. They were gone!

Reign shrieked desperately and leapt off of the bed so quickly that if anyone had seen her in that moment, they almost certainly would have asked her where the fire was.

“Where are they?” she breathed, tearing the sheets away from the mattress. “No, oh no, oh no…”

They weren’t here! She didn’t have them! Where were they? Hadn’t she been wearing them when she woke up?

No. She was sure that her hands had been bare since she awoke in this hellhole; a hellhole that obviously had no intentions of helping her reclaim her lost treasures. Reign glared down resentfully at the bare bed and dropped the sheets to the floor.

Oh you never know. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been wrong. They could be here. You probably dropped them.

That thought seemed to reconstruct the foundation of her dwindling hopes, compelling her to whirl around and commence pacing. But, after circling the room exactly three times, she still had not discovered her tattered grey mittens.

That’s when the scattered bed sheets caught her eye.

Maybe they’re hiding under there…

She dropped to her knees without pausing to doubt this miniscule possibility, grabbing the blankets and yanking them up from the ground.

But they weren’t there.

So check under the bed…

She dropped the sheets, scrambled over to the bed, and stuck her head under it.

Nothing. Even in the dim light, she could see very clearly that the only thing hiding under the bed was the dirty carpet. It felt like greasy moss beneath her bare fingertips.

“They’re not here…”

A loud rumbling sound broke her concentration then, causing her to jump up in fright and smack the back of her head on the bed frame. She winced and cried out in pained surprise, slowly ducking out from under the bed and settling on the nasty carpet.

What was that rumbling noise? The bomb? No, she knew that sound anywhere; thunder. It must have been storming outside, and if there had been a window in this God forsaken room maybe she could have known for certain.

She stood up, rubbing the back of her head as she eyed the rest of the room. There was nowhere else to look! The only piece of furniture in here was the bed, and the rest of the room was bare.

She moved to massage the aching muscles in the back of her neck, ignoring how strange it felt without her protective mittens on. They had always acted like a sort of safety blanket to her; a peace of mind she couldn’t fully understand.

That thought was cut short as she felt something else that made her breathing hitch. As she massaged her throat, she came to realize that her mittens weren’t the only things missing.

Her necklace was, too.

There was no thin leather cord dangling loosely from her neck, and that meant the small black and white striped feather that hung from it like a pendant was missing right along with it.

You know who did this, don’t you?

That wasn’t the voice of her thoughts now. No, this was the Anger Monster. She tried to ignore it.

Come on! Look, you know who took them away from you, so why are you acting so thick in the head?

She grimaced. She knew it had to have been The Joker. But why would he do such a thing?

He knew they were important to you. He knew it would make you upset, so he went ahead and did it just to be mean. See? He’s out to make you miserable just like everyone else!

Reign sighed heavily, feeling the imaginary flames in her arm spread into her chest; menacingly caressing her lungs and fueling her bitter resentment for the man who was keeping her captive. He’d done this. He’d taken away her mittens, and her necklace. What gave him the right?

He has no right. You have to get him back for it. You have to kill him. Kill him before he kills you.

The screaming pain in her arm faded to a distant humming as the voice of the Anger Monster eclipsed her entire train of thought.

You know he wants to kill you. He kills everyone.

That was true. He didn’t look like the type who was aiming to develop long-term relationships with hostages. Still…

So you’re no different. The Joker will just play with you until he gets bored. Remember our little Cat and Mouse theory?

“Yeah,” she murmured.

Exactly. That’s all this is.

“Wh – what do I do?”

Wait for him to come back. Then you make sure he gets what’s coming to him.

Pressure swelled in her throat. Just the thought of turning the tables on him sounded so gratifying. It scared her.

Just let go! Stop trying to hold it back! Everyone else is allowed to get mad, so why can’t you? You’re only human.

She swallowed hard and twirled her bare fingers around the necklace that wasn’t there anymore. So what if she was only human? That fact had never stopped her from controlling herself before. She liked to think her restraint set her apart from the rest of the ugly world around her.

Yeah, and look where that got you. It’s do or die now, sweetheart, and you do not have the time nor luck to depend on the kindness of strangers. I’ll help you out. You can trust me.

But anger was always so… ugly. No good ever came from loosing control and handing over the reins to your primal instincts. Damian and The Joker were living proof of that fact, and they were hardly model citizens. She couldn’t bear the thought of letting go and acting like them.

Fine. Forget it. I guess you’d rather die than stand up for yourself. That’s fine. Totally understandable. We wouldn’t want you to risk surviving and having to face Damian again anyway. You really should just lay back down before you hurt yourself. That’s The Joker’s job now, you know, and you can’t spell ‘coward’ without ‘ow’.

Reign blinked stolidly. Now that accusation had a lot of jagged little edges to it, making it all the harder to swallow. Why, the voice was almost making it sound as though she wanted this fate. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Well, your lack of survival skills tells a different story, ma’ dear.

“I don’t want this,” she choked out, barely noticing that her voice had been reduced to a hoarse, seething whisper. “I don’t.”

Prove it.

She stood up, running a bare hand over the bloody makeshift bandage that dressed her clown-induced bullet wound.

“Fine.”

All these years, she’d been the timid little mouse trapped in the cat’s grip. She’d been the fly caught in the spider’s sticky web. She’d been the worm writhing in the beak of the ravenous bird.

It was time to try and change all that. After all, she was already out of Damian’s grasp for the moment. Now she would just have to make The Joker let her go, and then she’d really be free to live her own life, for the first time in her life.

And with that thought, she resumed pacing, humming her song all the while as her feverish little mind set to work on concocting a plan.

Rain rain, go away…

*.*.*.*.*

“That’s what you think this is? Really? Just a little rain?!” Jaclyn Coulter snapped disbelievingly as Joker rolled down his window in the passenger seat of her cherry red Porsche.

“Don’t be such a girl. This, this is nothing,” Joker insisted, sticking his hand out the open window. “It’s just a little drizzle, see?”

As if to disagree, the storm hurled yet another lightning bolt across the sky and growled in a thunderous warning. Jaclyn shrieked, and then quickly turned her attention back to The Joker only to find him sticking his head out the window.

“Hey, hey! Close it!” she ordered, slowing at a red light and smacking him. “Look! You’re getting my seats all wet!”

“Am not! They were like that when I got in here!”

He burst into a fit of giggles, earning a sharp scoff from Jaclyn as she slowed to a stop and began tugging on the shoulder length blue hair of her wig. Luckily there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic down this street at the time, otherwise she might have been a little more concerned at his reckless display.

Oh, who was she kidding? She just hated that he was showing such little respect for her newly upholstered seats.

If the window controls on her side of the car hadn’t been acting up, she probably would’ve closed it up right on his neck and watched him squirm like a dumb kid with his head stuck in a staircase railing.

Easy now JC, don’t get all excited. Let him have a little fun. At least try to make it through the rest of the night without starting a shouting match… or a shooting one.

“Just… close that window, okay?” she pleaded. “Otherwise I swear I’ll turn this car around and you can forget about blowing anything up tonight.”

She eyed him warily, gauging his reaction and preparing to make good of her threat and do a U-turn straight through the intersection if he refused to cooperate. Nobody, not even Joker, was allowed to mess with her car. She’d put far too much time and effort into this baby to allow anything to happen to it.

Luckily, Joker backed down and did as she asked.

“Kill joy,” he muttered, reluctantly pulling himself inside and rolling up the window.

Just as she was about to thank him, he started shaking off the water like a dog with a bad case of the chills.

“Ah! Stop it!” she shouted, smacking him again. “God, you’re such a child!”

“Eyes on the road, JC Penney,” Joker chided, giving her head a shove to the front. “Green means go.”

Jaclyn took a deep irritated breath and readjusted her wig. This disguise really was outrageous, but she liked it. In fact, she always had fun disguising herself for her nighttime outings with Joker and the gang. It was the only way to ensure no one recognized her as the daytime doctor she was.

Jaclyn proceeded to drive slowly through the intersection as Joker pulled down the sun visor and revealed the little mirror. She fought back a smirk as he started humming; dabbing fresh paint over the spots that had been smeared away by the rain. This man hadn’t changed a bit. Sure, he was one of her oldest friends and she’d missed him while he’d been locked up, but there certainly were times when she wanted to lock him up and swallow the key herself.

This was about to become one of those moments.

Joker closed the mirror, humming all the while as he absentmindedly (deliberately) rubbed his grimy, paint encrusted fingers on her new, imported, ivory colored seat covers…

As JC opened her mouth to release an inarticulate cry of protest, Joker shoved his hand over her mouth and put his other hand on the steering wheel.

“Okay, relax,” he demanded and then chuckled humorlessly. “It’s just a little bitty paint. But if you don’t lighten up a bit, I’ll be forced to give your car a real paint job you’ll never forget. Hmm?”

Jaclyn eyed his hand on the steering wheel and nodded stiffly. She didn’t doubt his intentions for a second. Hell, he’d crash her car right into a tree and set it ablaze as soon as take another breath of air.

“But I still don’t see why we had to take my car,” she muttered sulkily a few moments after he’d let go. “Sometimes I think you’re just trying to make me miserable, you know that?”

“Well I don’t have to try very hard. Besides, the guys took the van. I wanted us to take the helicopter, but someone thought that was a bad idea.”

“Again with the copter,” Jaclyn sighed.

He wasn’t going to let that go. When she’d arrived at the hideout after her shift at the hospital that night, he’d been hell-bent on taking said hospital’s emergency helicopter. And since she was the only one in his little group who had access to it, she was the one who had to tell him no.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” Joker demanded. “Time’s a wastin’! We don’t have time for ‘no’!”

“It’s not safe,” Jaclyn argued. “I won’t do it.”

“Not safe? Oh come on! It sounds perfect! Do a guy a favor. Consider it a little welcome back present, hmm? For me?”

“No. It’s storming out there! You’d have to be crazy to –”

She stopped mid-sentence when Joker raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“Let me rephrase that,” Jaclyn said slowly. “You can’t seriously expect to fly in this weather. It’s suicide!”

“You’re being overdramatic.”

“Well you’re being under-dramatic! We’d crash and burn before takeoff!”

“Oh it’s not that bad. Twenty bucks says we make it off the building first.”

For a man who so often accused others of being simpleminded, he sure had a hard time accepting what was right in front of his face. What, did he have to get struck by lightning before he could see that this storm was a bit bigger than the ‘little drizzle’ he thought it to be?

“I’m not getting into that again with you,” Jaclyn announced, passing a slow moving minivan. “Let’s just say I owe you a helicopter ride. Okay? Preferably sometime when we’re not at risk of being skewered by lightning bolts. And you, you owe me a cleaning for this seat.”

“Okay okay. Wouldn’t want you and your precious little car to blow a gasket, now would we? Hey, uh, we gotta’ make a stop at that hardware store first. Pull over.”

Jaclyn frowned.

“It’s past eight already. It’s closed.”

Joker scoffed. “Is that what they’re calling it these days? Oh well. I’m sure it’s nothing a little ole’ crowbar can’t fix… or break. Ha!”

Feeling an excited smile creep across her face, Jaclyn pulled over into a parking space on the side of the road. She supposed there was no real rush. The distraction bomb was being planted in some random fancy-pants apartment building as they spoke, and it’d be going off within the next twenty minutes or so.

Now after this, the two of them could head to their real destination. As she turned off the car, pulled up the hood of her sweater and followed Joker to the back of the building, she found herself hoping he wasn’t shopping (or, shoplifting) for anything too deadly.

Surely it wouldn’t take more than a little rope and duct tape to keep the DA’s family at bay, right?

*.*.*.*.*

As it turns out, JC wasn’t the only one feeling a bit high-strung that night.

By the time Jaclyn and Joker had turned on to the street inhabited by Benjamin Crenshaw and his family, Bruce was just about to head out and meet Alfred and Lucius at the bat-lair located on a section of private property owned by Wayne Enterprises.

The two men had been working on some precautionary upgrades for the Bat-suit while Bruce had simply laid low in his penthouse and tuned in to the Gotham Police Department radios.

He’d spent the afternoon listening in, jotting down every tidbit of information that caught his attention. Most of the reported witness claims were utter nonsense (it was highly unlikely The Joker had disguised himself in a balaclava and spent the afternoon playing chess in the park with an old man), but Bruce took notes nonetheless and planned to gear up and check each site later that night.

Well, ‘later that night’ had rolled around, and as Bruce snatched up the keys to his Lamborghini, he could feel his nerves entwining with dread and anticipation.

The catastrophic car accident from that afternoon had already been cleared up, but Bruce knew that was only the beginning. And so, he merely braced himself for the worst as he made his way through the building to the main lobby.

Expect the unexpected…

The elderly clerk cleared his throat as Bruce passed the front desk.

“Uh, you sure you wanna’ be going out in this weather, Mister Wayne?” the man asked, curious, propping his elbows up on the tabletop and gesturing to the window. “It’s getting pretty nasty, you know.”

“You know how it is,” Bruce replied, smirking. “A man’s gotta’ do what a man’s gotta’ do, rain or shine.”

“True enough,” the man agreed hesitantly. “Well, make sure you drive safe then.”

“Always do.”

Later on when Bruce reflected on the next few moments of his life, he would find the details would linger in his memory for years to come.

There had been a mother and her young daughter sitting on the sofa reading an old book with suitcases piled at their feet. One of the bags was covered in large white daisies.

A young male intern with a yellow tie had been standing behind the front desk, talking to someone on the phone; someone who seemed to be having trouble understanding that the apartments came with included utilities, not utensils.

A sweet old woman with a bright red umbrella had just entered through the revolving front doors, keeping a small Pomeranian puppy warm and dry inside her thick fur coat. Even the irony of that fact had not escaped him then.

Before Bruce even had a chance to expect the unexpected, that’s when it happened.

An earsplitting roar flared behind him, which was immediately followed by a surge of hot, impossibly bright light that had Bruce wondering momentarily if the storm had torn away the roof and dropped the sun into the lobby. Before he could react to this violent change in atmosphere, he was hurled forwards, up and into the air as the fiery force of the explosion pounded against his back with the strength of a giant volcanic fist.

Sense of reality escaped him then as he tumbled through the air, flailing in vain as he sailed headfirst towards the revolving glass doors. The sharp searing pain clung to his body with a vicious, savage-like determination, but he barely even noticed. He thought he was hallucinating. Surely this was a dream. This couldn’t really be happening, and the fact that time had seemingly slowed to a snail’s pace only comforted him further. This couldn’t be real.

The dark burgundy carpet and sparkling light fixtures blurred in his sight like the remnants of a soggy watercolor painting. The faint, eerie blend of thunder and classical music was overtaken by the roaring inferno behind him, leaving nothing but billowing waves of noisy hot air and smoke surging through the room like a flood of boiling water.

His head hit the glass first, and the rest of his body followed suit. The ghastly sound resonated throughout his skull on impact, giving him the last, fleeting thought that his very brain had shattered as well.

Bruce lay unconscious in the heap of broken glass in the doorway; the upper half of his body sprawled out on the pavement outside the building, and his legs still motionless inside the blazing lobby.

As it would turn out, Reign wasn’t the only one being dealt some of Fate’s infamous wildcards. Gotham was going to be going through some big changes, and it should only be expected that the citizens would have to change with it.