Your Frown Is My Umbrella

“Uh, Boss?” Mr. Gruff voice called over his shoulder.

Reign immediately hurled her legs over the seat and landed in a heap on the floor.

“GET HER!”

Her chest was now racking with the sobs she had been holding back for the entire ride. She launched herself over the next seat and shrieked when the side door opened, revealing a large black man.

“Hey!”

It was Mr. Gruff Voice.

She squeaked and pushed herself out of his reach as his bulky arms tried to grab her.

“No!” she cried and threw herself into the driver’s seat.

She made a mad grab for the ignition in a futile attempt to see if the keys were there.

They weren’t.

Then the passenger door opened. She immediately clutched her door’s handle with a trembling gloved hand and threw it open.

She never had a chance.

Before her feet even hit the ground, The Joker had his hands on her shoulders. Petrified, she merely squirmed in his grip as he pulled her rigid body out of the van. Reign couldn’t bring herself to physically fight him off and try to make a break for it. When it came to the ‘fight or flight’ reaction, her body always chose ‘flight’.

She gawked at his decorative tie, which was just in her line of sight. The rest of her surroundings simply blended into the background, so she barely noticed the lapping of the waves against the dock. Tears continued to stream down her face, acting as a sort of adhesive for the strands of jet-black hair that clung to her cheeks.

“Well, what do we have here?” Joker crooned, holding her against the van with one hand and using the other to smear the tears across her face.

The men laughed and continued unloading the sacks from the back. They were obviously used to these situations.

Reign shuddered and choked on a sob that had solidified into a lump in her throat. This was not going to end well. Any minute now, he was going to start tearing out her intestines and choking her with them. Just like Damian warned…

Was it bad that she began hoping he would show up and save her?

“Hey, look at me,” Joker ordered childishly and grabbed her chin. He was so much taller than her, and he had to bend over quite a bit just to level his gaze with hers. “Come on, oh yeah, there’s a good girl!”

She whimpered once again and blinked up at his dark eyes. Her knees buckled at the sight, and Joker straightened her up against the side of the van while eyeing her curiously. His proximity was so close that it made her eyes want to go cross, almost as though he was some sort of hideous optical allusion.

This couldn’t be happening, but it was. This wasn’t a dream, and this wasn’t a memory. This was real.

“There we go. That’s it. Say, you got yourself some pretty eyes there, sweetheart. But ya’ mind telling me what you were doing in my van? Hmm? You and your friend practically ruined our little outing, you know. What, were ya’ trying to make a steal?”

Reign closed her eyes again and shook her head stiffly.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Hey, look at me.”

She opened her eyes slightly and murmured her response. “S-sorry. I was hiding.”

“Oh is that right?” Joker teased and licked his lips. “That doesn’t seem very likely…”

Reign opened her eyes fully and furrowed her brow a little.

“I – I was,” she insisted meekly.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his flick knife. With a natural flourish, he twirled it in his fingers and then pressed the blade against her cheek.

“Mhmm. Listen, you look a little uncomfortable. Are you lying to me, or is it just the scars making ya’ nervous? Hmm?”

At the feel of cold metal against her hidden scars, a jolted memory flashed before her eyes. She jumped. In a fraction of a second, she saw a startling montage of images that included the reflection of lightning in a bloody puddle, a dirty brick wall, a broken window, and a beer bottle being shattered on asphalt.

When that little episode of hers ended, Joker was running his free hand over the scar on the left side of his face and squinting at her accusingly.

“Yeah, it’s always the scars,” he muttered, lightly skimming the blade of the knife across her cheek.

Still shaken, Reign examined his scars with a keen interest. She had to stop herself from reaching out to touch them. She was lost in thought; mesmerized.

They looked far more grotesque up-close. Even beneath the caked on layers of greasepaint, she could see every fleshy bump and indentation that the scarred skin had tried to heal over. Instinctively she reached a hand up to her face and placed a single mitten-covered finger on the side of her mouth.

*.*.*.*.*

The Joker stared into her large grey eyes and tried to make up his mind about her. She was strange, he knew that much. Metallic silver irises, black hair, pale skin, tiny frame… and what kind of person wore wool mittens in the middle of spring? Sure, he wore leather gloves, but that was… different. It just was, because he said so. He couldn’t have anything in common with her. When you start finding similarities in the person you're about to kill, it just makes it all the more difficult to get the job done.

This little lady looked so fragile and helpless, like a tiny porcelain doll. There was barely a trace of pink on her pale tearstained cheeks, and whatever color they did possess was only a result of her sobbing.

She was obviously scared out of her mind, but there was something else. Something in her eyes that looked close to… admiration?

No, that was crazy. Then again, she did kind of look like a small child staring up at a fireworks show; somewhat frightened, but in awe just the same.

Her eyeballs bulged slightly from their sockets, giving her the appearance of being bug-eyed. Her tiny nose and lips only made her look all the more childlike. Her thick, tangled black hair flowed just over her shoulders, framing her angular face like two tattered curtains.

She looked so odd.

She was kinda’… cute.

He flinched and banished the thought, pulling the knife away from her face. That thought was a sign he needed to get rid of her as soon as possible. He couldn’t let himself believe she needed to be kept. Last time he tricked himself into that kind of situation, it hadn’t ended well. He had promised himself that he would never let that happen again, and everyone knew he was a man of his word.

He didn’t need another little puppy dog following him around the place, but he couldn’t just let her go, either. That wasn’t his style. If only he would have finished the deed right then and there instead of deciding to stall and play around with her head. He would have saved them both a whole lot of trouble.

*.*.*.*.*

The moment only lasted a few seconds, but to Reign it seemed to go by in slow motion. She snapped out of her little trance and winced when he pinched her cheek.

“Nice mittens,” Joker teased and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “So what am I gonna’ do with you?” he pondered aloud, pulling away from her slightly and squinting up at the sky. “I can’t just let you run along so you can steal from some other unsuspecting criminal…”

Reign opened her mouth to say something, and then immediately shut it. If this man was anything like Damian, he wouldn’t want to be argued with.

He glanced at her gleaming silver eyes again. She didn’t know it, but he liked looking at them. He liked the way they sparkled in the sunlight like a cold, freshly sharpened blade. They held a certain luminosity all on their own. As he wondered what it would be like to watch the light fade from them, Reign simply stared back. His eyes were so deep and dark. It made her think of a crystal clear pond that had a thick layer of oily sludge slicked on the surface; clouding and polluting the aquatic beauty below.

She knew there was something (whether it was beautiful or not, she didn’t know) to see behind the darkness in his eyes, but it was impossible to guess what that something was.

Her lips twitched, and that was when Joker averted his gaze to her mouth. Reign shifted cautiously as his face flinched. He leaned forward and examined her lower face with a baffled interest.

It was then that she knew her foundation wasn’t waterproof.

He opened his mouth and squinted.

“Uh, what’s that on your face?”

*.*.*.*.*

The parade had finally come to an end, and Benjamin Crenshaw was on his way home with his wife, Kim. In honor of a successful celebration, they gave him the rest of the day off. He knew he’d have to make it count. His new job as the District Attorney was sure to be full of late nights and unexpected outings.

“That was great,” Kim commented, rolling down her window. “I’m so glad we made it all that way without a single hitch.”

Ben grinned and glanced over at her briefly. “Me too.”

He reached over and put his hand on top of hers, giving it a little squeeze.

“And now you have the rest of the day off,” she continued, gazing out the window. “I was thinking we could go to the park with the kids. Melissa has been begging to try out that new swing set they put in last week. Nanny Alice could come, too. We could make it a picnic.”

Ben nodded and smiled. “Sounds good. And I think it’s about time I taught Tyler how to climb that big old maple tree. The kid’s gotta’ learn sometime.”

They had just stopped at a stoplight when a screaming police car whizzed past them, straight through the intersection.

“What the –” Ben muttered, and then noticed something strange in the distance.

“What is it?” Kim asked, craning her neck. “A chase?”

No, it wasn’t. There was a black cloud of smoke billowing into the city air several blocks away. Through the smoke, they could make out the flashing lights of ambulances and police cruisers. There had been an accident, and a pretty bad one by the looks of it. The entire road up there was blocked off.

Ben was just about to turn on the radio to see if there was any news on the accident when his cell phone started ringing. He retrieved it from his suit jacket. With a flick of his thumb, he opened it up and then pressed it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Ben! Thank God I got a hold of you. We need you back at the office. Something’s happened.”

“Chris? What? Why? What’s wrong?” Ben demanded, making a right turn to bypass the accident.

Kim reached out and squeezed his arm worriedly.

“It’s about The Joker. We – we just got a call from the staff over at Arkham. It turns out he escaped during his therapy session this morning. And listen, a bunch of people around here said he –”

“This morning?!” Ben hollered and pulled off onto the shoulder. “You mean he escaped this morning and we only found out about this now?! It’s practically noon!”

“I know, I know. It’s weird, to say the least. The point is, there’s a huge accident at the corner of –”

“Eighth and Orchard, I know. I just saw it.”

“Okay, I want you to avoid that entire area. People say The Joker was the one who caused the whole thing, but no one knows where he went. And, well, we thought Commissioner Gordon would want to, uh, meet with you to discuss an action plan or something. But it turns out he doesn’t want anything to do with you. Something about protecting you, or –”

“Well that’s too damn bad. He can stop treating me like I’m the next Harvey Two-Face already. That man had issues way before The Joker got to him,” Ben spat and signaled back onto the road. “I just gotta’ drop Kimmy off at home. I’ll be right there.”

He snapped the phone shut, tossed it over his shoulder into the back seat of his car, and sped along the road.

“What happened?” Kim asked worriedly, sucking in her cheeks like she did when she was nervous.

“The Joker. He escaped this morning,” Ben told her, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

Kim paled visibly and shook her head.

He knew what she was thinking. She was terrified. Ben had never been in office while The Joker was loose, so he had been lucky enough to start off his term with a Joker-less city. But now…

“You can’t go after him,” she pleaded. “What if, what if he finds you? What if he finds you, or the kids, and –”

“It’ll be fine, Kim,” he reassured mechanically, looking over his shoulder before switching lanes. “I swear.”

Like The Joker, Benjamin Crenshaw considered himself to be a man of his word.

But even The Joker knew you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.