Terra Firma

Ivy

We had five minutes till lunch.

Five minutes for me to bust out of this shit hole, five minutes to leave the white walls of 'sanity' behind.

"Hee hee hee... it's time, it's time. Chaos, clocks, switchblades...."

I smirked at his ranting against the wall.

"Jack." I said.

"Whatty flippin' do?"

His voice was crazy, but as I turned to look at him he suddenly looked sane again.
He smiled at me, the second real smile in a row. He must've been in a very good mood. A very "stable" mood.

Which wasn't saying very much at all. I knew him too well.

"Want to see a magic trick?"

He laughed, I shut my eyes, letting angry thoughts envelope me.

Sounds of my partner, my friend, my lover, getting kicked against the wall. The face of the goon that harmed my little girl and gave her a scar she'd have to hide for the rest of her life. My uncle. Every other male I'd ever met in my entire life, promising me things, promising they'd never hurt me, yet somehow always doing it. The doctor telling me at 17 that the baby was dead.

"But you didn't want it anyway, did you? Kids your age never do." He'd grinned at me, scrawling words on his little clipboard as I cried hopelessly in my hands.

I heard a crack. Slowly, the walls of the cell began to chip away. The earth was shifting.

Maximum Security of Arkham Asylum was in the basement, in the earth. Well, that was just perfect.

The boy I thought I loved back in high school, holding my hand after visiting the doctor and saying:
"I think we need to take a break."

He'd promised me everything. That we would get married and that the baby would be okay. That he would never ever do anything to hurt me.

The Joker never promised any of those things. Just that he wouldn't kill me.

Crane's face. The men who'd tried to flirt with me, even when I was labeled a 'psycho', a 'bitch', a 'freak'. The government officials in my cell, holding me down, cutting the vine on my arm with a pair of shears, injecting me with shit I did not know the contents of.

A strange sound as the thick wall of cushioned concrete crumbled and the earth shifted.

Then, they started being nice, even tried normalizing me. Asking me questions.

"What are you doing in here, Miss Queen?"

"What are you doing out there?" I'd smiled.

"We know you went on that ferry for a reason. You're not for chaos, are you?"

"Oh, I'm for chaos. Just as long as the children and the mothers stay out of it."

"Why?"

"Because."

One final vision. Rachel. Rachel going up in flames in the back of a warehouse, leaving me and Harvey to wrestle with our demons and move on.

Well, I was able to move on. Harvey was probably dead by now.

So I thought. So the world thought.

It's a funny web we weave, built on assumptions and normalities. But as The Joker always said,

"Assume makes an ass out of you and me."

Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.

A final crack and the earth stopped. I blinked my eyes open. I felt sick and dizzy and extremely exhausted. I stared at the large gaping hole that now connected The Joker and I with the outside world.

"Three minutes," He mumbled, dragging himself up--an amazing feat for a man who was malnourished, bruised, and wrapped tightly in a strait jacket. He hobbled over to the mouth of the hole, catching himself on a jagged edge of metal sticking out of the wall, to feat criminals who got the chance to dig their way out. But I could twist anything against earth.

It caught and he threw himself at the ground.

RIIIIIIIP.

I was watching this all against the wall, feeling too tired to do anything.

He twisted and writhed in the thing like a snake. Soon, his arm was free. He used it to tear the thing off himself, with a quickness Houdini himself could never muster. Then, he rushed at me, hands outstretched and eyes wild. I thought for a second of an old zombie film and flinched.

"Hands. Hands. Hands." He said over and over again insanely, unbuckling and unzipping the strait jacket roughly. He shook it over my head, freeing me. The ivy in my arm, overexcited, began to shift all over my body. He pushed me against the wall, laughing:

"We're back! We're back!" He thrust his hands in my hair, kissing me for the first time in four years.

It was so good to be back.

He pulled a knife from a tight curl in my hair, hidden from all outsiders ignorant enough to check my entire person upon entry to this stink hole, but not smart enough to search through one of the best elements of my wardrobe. My blood red hair.

"Thanks for keeping it safe for me." He separated from me, eyeing it wildly, juggling it in his hands.

"Jack... Jack ....we need to go." I said feebly. My neck felt as if a thousand angry knives were piercing through it, down to the bone. My head? A thousand bees, buzzing, whirling in my brain. The psychological part of my power, what I called "the green" was especially hard on me.

"Sh, sh, sh. You need to rest for a second or two."
I leaned back lazily, staring at him. He played with his knife, grinning.

The door swung open.
"Alright you bastard, lunch---"

"Hiiii DENNIS!" He pounced, bringing him to the ground. Dennis struggled back, grunting.

But The Joker, despite his outward appearance against the mammoth of a man beneath him, held fast.

"Can I ask you something? Does it make you feel good, messing with a guy like me? A guy who's weaker than you? Cause you know, that only makes you worse than what I am. How does that make you feel Dennis? Hm? Cause ... uh, it makes me feel really good."

Dennis cried as The Joker pulled out his knife.

"Wanna know how I got these scars? I had this dentist... liked to uh, mess with his patients sometimes. And one day I came in complaining of a toothache? See? And he pulls out a scalpel, pinning me to the chair. He says, "Open up, buddy, or I'll make you open up." I didn't. I don't like dentists, you can probably tell. Yeah? Yeah. So he says it again, "Open up! Open up!" And he sticks this blade in my mouth...."

Dennis blubbered strangely and The Joker smiled.

"You won't be getting a lollipop after this, I'm afraid."

He slit, giggling. I could tell he was trying to stay quiet because he didn't want anyone to be alerted just yet. It wasn't working very well. He would shriek randomly as he finished Dennis off. Fortunately, no one was alerted by this. There'd been many times where he'd scream like that alone. It woke me up at night.

He let the blood get all over his hands, smiling. Emotion had long since flown from his now black eyes and I suddenly felt afraid. I'd never seen him like this, never seen him kill a man like this. He smeared the blood on the wall like a five-year-old messing with finger paint, drawing two circles and a crooked smile. At the bottom, he smeared the words:

SO LONG, SUCKERS. IT'S BEEN FUN.

-J. I.

He giggled, eyeing his handiwork and nodding. Then he turned to me, the madness in his eyes burning, but only half as much.

"Ivy?"

"Hm?"

"I think we need to take a break."

"...What?" I snapped up suddenly, the ivy in my arm twisting angrily.

He laughed, "Oh ho ho, you. I didn't mean us. I meant this city."

"..Oh."

I couldn't believe I was that possessive over him. Then again, he was just as bad. We were both so moody, so insane, so maniacal and sociopathic that we fed off each other, in both a mutual and parasitic way.

He was lifting me up by the arm, making strange shushing noises. I fell against him, frustrated. I was so weak sometimes it made me sick. My head was still filled with that buzzing feeling, it felt as if my life energy was set to the lowest point. But what I couldn't do in that moment, he made up for.

"Come on, come on." He pulled my hair gently, touched my face and lips. His fingertips were warm with blood and I shivered. He took me up, Half carrying, half dragging me through the tunnel I'd made with the will of my mind.

"What about....?"

"She's happy for now. We don't need to bother her. Yeah? This city's, uh, boring. We'll come back when there's something more... interesting... going on."

I nodded lazily, catching a glimpse of sunlight.

"Hey... can we go visit someone before we go?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, ah. We've got time." He chuckled, pulling at my ear, "Who do you wanna visit with?"

"My best friend." I smiled. He placed his hand in that strangely threatening yet sensitive way on my neck.

Penguin Fair Grounds, 12:10 P.M.

"Hey, Mr. Penguin, uh.. sir?"

"What what, what is it?" I growled impatiently, setting my earnings statement aside. No profits this month, probably be in the red again.

Goddammit...

Goddamn kids with their video games, their MTV. Didn't leave any room for a good old fashioned carnival anymore. I'd been trying desperately these past few years to capture interest and so far it hadn't been working. I sighed, grumbling.

"Riddler here to see ya."

"Send him in..."

I looked up as the sound of a cane clacking rhythmically against the ground reached my ears.

Oh, fantastic. The crazy one again.

He'd come to me four years ago, demanding a part in the freak show. I'd been playing around with a brightly colored square puzzle as I laughed at his request.

"You're too good looking to be a freak kid, get outta here. All you got's a fucked up leg. Scram."

His eyes fixated on the puzzle.

"What's that?" He asked.

"Rubix Cube. Been trying to crack the damn thing for months..."

He snatched it out of my hand faster than I could get angry.

His hands whirled the thing skillfully, almost how an artist spins his brush, a writer chews his pen, a madman grasps his knife.

Less than 15 seconds later and the thing was sitting on my desk, perfectly aligned and in order.

I eyed him, "What's your name, runt?"

".... Riddle."

He stepped in now, walking with a funny limp in his one leg. I had no idea how he'd broken it, no idea of his past. He'd come with the badly made cast so his leg was crooked, almost useless by itself. His skin was pale, his eyes dangerously intelligent. I knew he was a wack-job. You could see it in the eyes, no matter how neat they dressed. He twirled an emerald bowler hat in one hand, slicking his blondish-black hair back with the other. He smiled a white smile and sat down in front of me, suddenly pulling a paper from his dark green coat. It looked old and as if it had been folded many times. He threw it on my desk, smirking.

"So, a birdie tells me business is slow?"

I frowned, "And? It's these kids these days... don't have interest in..."

"Freaks? Madness?" He raised his eyebrows. His talk was as slick as his hair--eloquent, quick, with a stylish, charismatic air. His hand clutched his cane. He straightened his tie with a question mark on it as he pointed to the newspaper twice. He always pointed and knocked in even numbers.

Kid was a loon, I tell ya. Probably walked out of a crazy house.

"What? This is three years past, it's old news, Riddle. Go bother someone else with your conspiracy theories."

"...No, no, no, no. Penguin, you've got it all wrong. I'm trying to help you out. Be a friend." He took a cigarette in his jittery hands, twitching and mumbling as he lit it and took a drag. This kid was always moving, always thinking. The gears in his brain never switched off.

"You see from the picture on the front page, I'm sure. This town craves a carnival."

"You fucking kidding me? After all that clown-poison-ivy shit happened? They'll be jumping every time somebody asks to show 'em a magic trick."

"Exactly. They'll want more. They eat it up like candy on Halloween. Imagine, everyone talking about your show, your carnival. That Barnum bullshit? He can just shove it. We'll make the show something to remember."

"I don't know, Riddle..."

"Not to mention the money."

"Hm..."

"Two things."

"Aw, not your demands again. You know how much I paid for that suit and cane?"

"Yes, yes, but you'll get it all back. Listen to me. Are you listening?"

I nodded. Something about the guy intimidated me. It was his eyes, the loony eyes. He leaned forward, forcing me to stare into them.

"I headline."

I nodded.

"Oh, and..."

"What?"

"I'll need a new cane."

His unforgiving eyes bore into mine, and for some reason, I said yes. He took another drag on his cigarette, nodding in approval.

"Ready the show. You have two weeks. Then..."

My head felt strange. I waved my hand, encouraging him to continue. I hated when he was in the room with me. He made me give him money for things I didn't want to spend it on, made me think whatever little scheme he had running around that head of his was the perfect thing to do, the right thing to do. Kid could've told me to jump off a bridge and I probably would've done it.

He stood in the entrance, putting on his hat and taking another puff of the cigarette, cocking his cane, smiling that chesire grin.

"To Gotham."