Terra Firma

Ivy

I cannot give you a one-size-fits-all solution as to why women--too many women--fall for deviant, destructive men.

A lot of women stay out of fear. But that's not me. When you take a bath with a sociopath, you have nothing to be afraid of anymore.

For some of us, it is the "fuck you" attitude. For others, it's the tiny hope we have that they can be fixed, surrounded by a cycle of self-denial and clinginess (which, if you are any bit like me and have a lick of sense you know that cannot be accomplished), there's the sense of mystery, the interest of complexity, and the miniscule things done to redeem previous actions.

For myself, it's simply the fascination with fire in him. I liked holding my fingers over the flames. If I got burned, I didn't care. If he got crazy and burned up the room with me in it I didn't care. I would not try and extinguish or change it. I would always watch the heat and the anger dance.

Why?

"Because." I laughed stupidly within my homemade prison, blowing lank hair out of my face and waiting for Angel to give me the lighter, so I could go play with fire again.

I didn't care if it burned the forest down or not.

Joker

Would Gambol die?

More than likely.

Did I care?

Ehhh.

Was I wrong?

Sure.

Am I crazy?

"NO I'm not... I'm NOT." I giggled without control and dived into an alleyway opening, hitting a dull bump.
"Just a cat... Oooohhhahahahahaha!"

There was a loud song on my stereo, the kind with fast guitars and rough voices yelling. The kind Ivy would lean her head to the other side of the van and plug her ears hopelessly at. I stared off into the front seat, blinking.

"Goddammit."

gimmee her

I'd carried her bridal style after she'd fainted at Denty-wenty's little party. After I threw Ray... Ruh... Ratta-tatta-whatsherface out the window. Hey, Batty asked for it! Besides. I needed a diversion and Ivy was too wrapped up in the innocent side of her to do that favor for me. Not that I mind intervening.. but I still had to fight to keep my rage from spilling over completely. She was very weak and easily breakable that night...

(and you wanted to kill her so badly)

That was why I left, that night. The temptation had been smoldering in my head until then, but Daisy was the firestarter.

GET OUT. MONSTER.

Because I knew there was still a part of me that wanted to. That, in the end, would. I would end up being the cause of her end. My impulsions never turned off. They weren't like a faucet. The water would always drip (plink plink plink), a steady beat, and the blood would keep flowing.

But I couldn't leave. I would never leave. Fools don't run away.

A song played that reminded me of her.

It was annoying. The stupidest song I'd probably heard, with gunshots and some lady with an attitude telling me how powerful she was. The type that could run in high heels and didn't want to hear complaints from anyone, because she'd seen more shit than boys working in the cow fields.

Like I said, stupid song.

I turned it up all the way, humming off key.

Homer

"Do you have any mobster movies? We only have this night to stay up, then it's back to school. We might as well watch--"

"No." Gordon snapped.

"I was only asking. Or are you scared of those too?"

"Shut up... you retard."

"DON'T CALL ME THAT."

I could feel my 'friend's' face tighten in a different way, a more angry way. I snapped my mouth shut within his small and moderately clean room, the kind of clean you knew was only that way because his mom did it for him. What I wouldn't do for my mom--

(I HATE YOU YOU REMIND ME OF HIM!!

splash air bubbles blub blub blub

GARGLE GARGLE COUGH SPAT)

I flinched.

I'd never felt that way, never yelled like that at a person. But that word made me very ...angry. And sometimes angry feels good. Like fire. I don't know much about fire. Only that it is necessary for warmth but can melt the skin off your bones.

The silence grew and made me feel cold. I hoped Sis was okay, and pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose.

Gordon opened his mouth again. I could tell even before he spoke. His breath smelt like Oreos:

"Mom saw what you did."

I stayed quiet.

"She saw the blood you tracked in the house on your foot."

"It was paint."

"No, it was blood and you know it was... otherwise you wouldn't know where the ball went." His words were hurried and scared and I smiled.

"It was paint and you know it. Otherwise, you would have found the ball with me."

A pause, "Did you see him? The Joker?"

I wished I could turn my head all the way around on my shoulders. I wanted to scare him more.

My smirk did well enough, "Alas, said he to himself, what kind of people have I come amongst? Are they cruel, savage, and uncivilized, or hospitable and humane?"

Cosette

"And... here we are!"

It was as I expected. And much more. There was a chill in the room, a detachment. I felt as if I'd walked into a morgue. Everything... almost everything... in his space was metal or glass. Hardened and impersonal things. It wasn't a stereotypical killer's space--no blood dripping off white tiles, no newspaper clippings with a mess of scribbles upon it. No rats, no spiders. Nothing. In fact, it looked as if nothing organic could thrive within. Only fake things.

I looked down at the dress I wore, ironically printed with daises. I suddenly felt strange.

"No one's ever been invited in here... Not even old Two-Face! You should feel lucky."

I was about to respond grimly, but two huge doors, so white they gleamed like the enamel on a toothpaste commercial--caught my eye. I turned and began to open one in my curiosity, but he was faster than he looked, and got there first. His quick, smooth hand shut the one that stood ajar with a loud thud, making me jump like the unfortunate victim in a horror movie.

"Ah, ah, ah, that's private, my dear."

I looked at him, frowning, "What's in there? Can you at least tell me?"

His eyes darted, and the one word he definitively uttered sent shudders through me:

"Traps."

I blinked, staring around the plain room, the full realization of the danger I was in hitting me like

A glass bottle to the head?

Or a cane?

Absentmindedly, I rubbed at the scar hiding behind untidy bangs.

Riddler

I hate memories.

They've always been my weakness.

Cosette

His face suddenly softened.

"It hurts sometimes, yes? Even though it's been healed for years."

I stared off at his leg. The way he leaned against his trademark cane looked normal and relaxed, until you really looked at it. I realized he probably couldn't get around without it. I think the reason was more psychological than physical, of course. But as you probably know, the psyche often has more of a grappling hold on us than we'd like to think.

Jay

You never, ever get the full force of how strong something is until it gets taken away.

Staring at the bottle, knowing he'd poisoned it with whatever chemicals he'd had stowed away in his nasty closet, I felt my brain was pouring out of my ears with the grimy rain. Pouring it out and putting all the memories and fears and wasted time into that bottle. Pickling it. Like something out the crappy rendition of Frankenstein.

Despite this strange, out of body, distilled experience in the alley--I did not think about the alcohol.

All I thought about, all I could groan in disbelief and horror at... was the lack of the pills.

I held shaking hands up to my irritable face. He took them away. Took them away...

He knew.

He knew I was getting attached to them. I slammed my raging fists to the ground.

"The clown always knows!" I shouted deliriously. I said a series of words that can't be written, because you or I or whatever psychotic freak in an alternative universe watching my every move

slightly paranoid I'm slightly paranoid

wouldn't know how to write it all down.

(I am playing the part of the has-been crazed bum quite well)

And--I didn't realize then but I know for certain now--for the third, second, fourth time in a row. In his own twisted, non-sensical way...

The Clown was saving my life.

Two-Face

She was breaking.

I could see it in the past few days, the way her hands shook as she stitched. Too slowly. Her eyes turning from bright to dull as she listened to me over the course of my venting of frustrations, her face lax and numb as she communicated back on occassion.

But I needed someone to talk to. And she was the only who'd listen in four years.

Angel

I could not take it much longer.

Never in my life had I dealt with a patient like him.

I know that's weird, considering I'd worked with the Joker and Ivy. But they were different. They did not try to spread their memories and sorrows to me. They were private and usually laughed when I asked them.

But he was a downer. To the hundredth degree. I twitched, growing to hate the sound of his public-speaker ex-politician voice.

Two-Face

"I mean, people don't know what it's like. Telling the one you love to hold on, telling them it's going to be alright.. when you know it won't, and you'll never see them again. You know I'm right Ra--"

She left. I turned from my detatched position facing away from her and chased, curious as to why she'd left. She was in that tiny bathroom, hands rubbing at her face.

She was staring into the mirror. Her eyes were dark and there were circles underneath them, reflecting the greyness of the color, like the reflective windows of the office building I once had.

Despite her cracked appearance, I found her beautiful.

I wouldn't let go of her... like I did to...

She spoke, pulling me out of my own morose thoughts, "I do know what it feels like.." Her voice trembled with conviction and came out quickly, "My m-mother was suicidal... she landed in the hospital after failing at her first attempt. Do you know what she did when I visited her the eve before my seventeenth? She told me she was crazy. She said it over and over again. She said she snuck a gun in. It was in the bottom drawer of the nightstand, to the left... She asked me. A-a-asked me to--"

She began to cry, and I felt strange.

"I told her to hold on. That everything would be alright. And you know what? She got worse. She tried to drown Homer before she left to 'get groceries' one day... he called me coughing and crying.. she's gone... I'll never get to ask why.."

Her voice trailed off. The dead side in me did not hear a word. But the other moved me to where I was standing behind her in the mirror, clutching the gun and the coin I always had with me down at my side.

She kept sobbing. I didn't know what to do.

(I won't let this one go

not now not ever)

"Would you like... a cup of tea?"

She paused, breathing slowed. She rubbed her eyes and looked up, blinking at my horrible reflection--as if she hadn't noticed I was there until now.

"Yes. Yes, Harvey, I would like that very much."

Cosette

I can't give you an excusable reason why I felt attracted to him. Aside from the obvious turn-off of being him a serial killer, he was way too high-maintenance. He was rude, selfish, egotistical. He probably used more hair products than I did (well I hardly pick up a comb but that's not the point), and I'm betting he carried a mini spray can of lysol everywhere he went. Everything I promised myself I'd never, ever go for.

Everything every other boyfriend or almost fiance failed to be.

Interesting.

Like now, I was not yawning as he took a clean sheet of paper out of his cold, white desk and flicked a pen out of his pocket. I was leaning forward, sitting on his desk.

"It starts with scribbles. Every good idea does." He touched the paper with the pen, smiling his signature chesire cat grin.

"Why green ink?" I asked suddenly.

He looked up, the dark, tired, endlessly shifting eyes meeting mine. There was something thick and foreboding in the air--but of a different kind than I was normally used to when around him. I felt like I did that night in the alley. I was struggling to hold something back on a very, very thin string.

"Well..." his eyebrows fixated in the usual 'I'm thinking' expression and I felt my muscles tense and my heart pound like a tribal, rhythmic beat.

Riddler

Her eyes burned. In an effort to get away from them, I forced my own to travel to other points of her person.

That didn't help at all. I was suddenly aware of what a woman she'd grown into, what I'd grown into.

I couldn't distance myself from the old crush

(obsession)

any longer.

"B-Because that's what you used to use."

Cosette

I licked my lip.

"Can't help it sometimes..."

Fate is always sealed with a kiss. Or in his case, two.