Terra Firma

Homer

Strange blobs came to visit me as soon as Gordon exited the scene. Wanting interviews, wanting information. Holding sticks in my face and asking me questions in loud voices even though my ears were as in tune--more so than the average man--with the world as my nose.

The story was brought to light rather fast. And by brought to light I mean blown up bigger and bigger and bigger than a stick of well chewed bubble gum.

They kept flashing things at me, calling me a little hero. They thought I'd deactivated the "bomb" myself. Which I didn't understand because they still screamed in my ear in that, "do you speak english?" kind of voice--like I was deaf as well as blind.

Gordon would chase them off as he dragged me--not threateningly but in a fatherly sort of way--into the back of some special car.

I began to feel sick. I don't like cars. They travel too fast. And I think time travels fast enough.

Gordon's wise but continuously worried voice called stubbornly as he shut the door with a firm rattle.

"No more questions!"

Riddler

Oh, but I had so, so very many.

I knocked The Bat's helmet playfully, careful not to touch the points of it that would shock my gloved hands. Only an idiot wouldn't have taken those precautions. I could, in theory, take it off. He was sedated enough to not object while I tinkered. But I wanted to humilate him. Make him feel like a rat in a trap.

Or a maze.

I felt my lips curl in my habitual, almost ceremonial way as I stared into the glazed eyes blinking, the tongue lolling numbly out of the mouth. I held a syringe playfully in his cowled-mask face.

"How inattentive one gets with just a few simple ingredients within plastic tubes!" I laughed darkly as he tried and failed to reach for me, "Riddle me this, riddle me that. What drains the brain with the speed of a wildcat?"

A numb groan.

"Oh, not a very lively conversationalist. I figured as much, old friend. Even when you're sober, they say you growl."

I patted the handsome mystery man's jaw, heading out of the small room and down a long hall.

I tried to ignore the walls, covered in slightly smudged green ink from age. Other than the ghost of words the place was clear, aside from the walls and adjustments I'd set up beforehand with the help of Two-Face's well placed connections and funds. The idiot police had cleared it, haphazardly washed it, and left like a gang of children after hearing a noise in a haunted house, never to return. The superstitions didn't even allow them to knock it down.

All the better for me.

I turned into a room I knew well from another time. Now completely without the remnants of a smashed tv or a smelly old couch. Just an older, distinguished fellow--tied in a strait jacket I'd stolen--that found a cop named Joe trustworthy enough when ordered to follow his lead to the police cruiser.

Bad, bad move.

"Ah, Mr. Fox, comfortable?" I said smoothly, waving a gun in his face. I could not use the sedative mixtures I'd aquired and learned to mix during my druggie days on him. I needed his mind. For now. To my disappointment, he showed no fear. He stared up at me in the way a most stoic and noble man could.

Why do I always get the boring people? Even the dead girls were more interesting.

"Well," I tsked after a long silence,"I suppose you're wondering why you're here..."

He nodded simply, surveying the few modifications I'd already been working to perfection over the past few weeks. So silent! So peaceful. It made me excited to strike fear in him eventually. But for now, I pulled out the rest of the blueprints I'd been working on for the years and years I'd been feeding like a black leech on the thought of my revenge.

(SICKO)

I pointed simply to some designs.

"I hear you're quite the weapons expert, Fox. And I need someone with access... So.. here's what I want done, or you and this town's hero can say ciao before this game is over..."

Angel

The fact that it was over, really over, would not leave my mind as I stood frozen and damp in the same spot, shivering but not really aware of it--of anything--but the ripping sound of a bullet and water breaking below the bridge.

I can't tell you how long I stood there. I just stood. Like a marble statue, cold and beautiful and hardening with small memories and moments. I remembered the tiny half smiles and the little gestures, could visualize all the fingerprints he'd made upon the surface, now shining in the rain and the moon.

Droplets of water formed heavily on my eyelashes as the full brunt of my strange, short-lived "affair" with Two-Face indented itself in my mind.

I let them come.

....Where do you go from here?

Do you go back to the start... the old memories and the 'normal way of life', or begin anew, like the spring and the dawn and the turning of fresh sheets?

I think it's a little bit of both.

I gathered up everything I had within and turned to leave the bridge, pinching my nose in the spot that's supposed to stop you from crying any longer. As I looked back, still lost in full comprehension of what had happened, I caught a cold glimpse of a tiny circle calling from the hardened ground.

(must've dropped it when he...)

I walked back, bent, picked it up and shivered at the unlikely heaviness that suddenly graced my fingers. I felt the coarse side and the shining side, and looked to the water once more, stared as rain welled up on the edge of the tiny, insignificant peice of metal. I imagined leaving it there, envisioned people kicking it along, boys getting scolded for trying to pick it up, and others stepping on it until it corroded.

Once a weight of life or death for fifty some people.

(no one will ever know the horror that was Harvey Two-Face)

Coins have a lot of stories to tell. They travel and see many things through the eyes of the dead founding fathers, stay quiet and rarely yell. If you hear them jingle in the pockets, however, they whisper everyone's secrets.

I held all Harvey's secrets.

I pocketed the coin, turning silently, settling on doing what I had to return for the people I cared for most, pushing all affection and self-inflicted wounds aside.

Homer

"I need to know what you saw."

The way Gordon said the words to me made me feel more accepted than when Angel would ask me how she looked in a brand new dress.

So I smiled from across the kitchen table, ignoring the fact that I could smell his son hiding behind the corner near the fridge.

I opened my mouth, but a doorbell sounded. He got up to get it. I knew who it was before he even spoke the words.

Gordon

"Oh my god."

Angel smiled weakly. Her long hair was a soaking sheet of brown around her too-white face, her eyes hollow in the dark. Her bony hands were clasped together, shaking. Lightning ripped through the sky and her cheekbones caught it.

"Ah. Gordon. You look like you just saw a ghost."

Cosette

I had been trying to muster up the the courage to open them ever since he'd left, which was a long time ago. Again, I can't tell you the exact time. Everything just melds together like my distorted reflection.

But I couldn't open them. I had every right. Being down here gave me that right. I had every right to turn my back on a man who left my at random points throughout the day, hardly returning. Hell, I could leave then. I could walk right out of this stupid little office, down the long halls, find the stairs, breathe in the air outdoors and perhaps parade down to where Angel or Jay...

Where were they anyway? Did they care anymore?

I sighed, suddenly jumping at the sound of a cane rapping sharply against the ground.

"Find anything interesting... friend?"

I flinched at the expression on his face and the spitting of the last phrase in the question, backing away as he stared intently at the shiny surface.

He smiled simply, "No fingerprints."

Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief that curiousity hadn't gotten the best of me.

(I could totally handle this right?)

He set down a plastic bag on his desk.

"I bought every book you've written today," He said whistfully, "And also..."

He paused, revealing a book from behind his back I was familair with but had not written.

I took the tattered thing in my hands and hugged it to my chest.

"You found this for me?"

His smile this time was very convincing. Too convincing, but denial whispered into my ear and the moment passed.

"Of course. Of course."

I beamed. So he did remember. He did care. Happy was there.

Riddler

I always did know how to get the girl.

Ivy

"He was meticulous about keeping the location a secret. He distracted me with his endless chit chat, blindfolded me, held the gun to my head. I think I bumped into a chair on the way out? I can't even remember..."

I paused, not because I was shaking the intricate folds of my brain for more information, but because I was staring distantly at the dirty, fidgety hand resting supportively on my knee underneath the "table"--something I swore was found in a trash heap when we'd first arrived.

I turned, confused, but Jack wasn't looking at me.

Gambol continued, "Well it must be a bar then. Some bar. Geez, that helps a whole bunch."

I frowned. The hand squeezed, almost clinching.

"Look, I couldn't leave that room. He threatened me. He used me and he used her. He's probably still using her."

Jay nodded, "It's cool, it's cool. I was just saying." He then got up quickly, taking his scratch sheet of paper and moved to the door.

"Thanks. It's about time for me to go."

"What?" I cocked my head up at the young man. No goon had ever left us, unless it meant going into the next life.

Well, except for Happy... And look what he'd become.

"You heard me. I'm out. I gotta do this myself if I'm going to get anywhere."

I whirled, looked at The Joker. His unpainted eyes blinked simply and he got up silently, walking over to what looked like a cookie jar resting in the corner of the old place. He opened the jar, stared into it. I watched, puzzled, as he held the jar to the boy who'd spent a very long time asking me questions.

"Take one," The young man hesitated, "Just do it. C'mon."

Gambol looked halfway surprised, but shrugged, reaching in and pulling out a half mask decorated brightly with sequins and gold paint. It was something from mardis gras, that was for certain.

The Joker snickered playfully, "Figures."

Gambol looked halfway insulted, then smiled.

"See you around, clown."

"Once a goon always a goon." They punched each other, a strange tribal ritual men used to show brotherhood.

Gambol turned and left and I got up, rushing,

"We have to help him. We have to catch Happy," I messed with my hair and bit my lip as he stubbornly grabbed me by the waist and pulled me backwards, "He's going to kill her, Jack...."

"May. Shut up."

I turned, blabbing like I usually did in my panics, "She doesn't know any better! He's got her and she thinks it's okay, I paid attention! Sometimes they'd talk outside my door. We need to get her away, he's dangerous and he's making her into something... he's dangerous..."

Jack stared at me, licking his lip.

Riddler

"Oh, oh I know, that character is like--"

She laughed, dropping the book at her side in mild frustration and shaking her head with a smile.

Her smile was the prettiest I'd seen. The most perfect I'd seen.

"Are you going to let me actually read this, Happy, or what?"

I blinked. Happy. She'd called me Happy.

There was quiet for a few minutes and she picked up where she left off. With each word that flowed, I became more entranced. Deeply embedded. In my simple scheme for getting her to fall hopelessly for me, I had neglected to acknowledge the fact that I'd fallen long before her.

(I know what you're going to say before you say it

happy dont)

I sighed. Good thing the game would be over in no more than a few days while Fox put up the finishing touches. Because the longer I played it, the more I fell. The more I twisted, the more things turned.

Soon, I reassured my busy and conflicted mind, puffing again on my ever present cigarette through a half smile.

Soon,

(like the snake I was)

I was going to bite my own foot.

Joker

"Dangerous. Uh... Sounds familiar."

She just stared heatedly into my face and I glowered back. Why are people so goddamn blind all the time?

Homer

Because we all feel better in the dark.

But for a boy who only knows dark, any source of light makes me happy. I like TVs. I like happy songs. Long stories. I like chocolate and fires and glowly rays of sunshine.

Which is why I rushed to my sister in a hurry and hugged her. Quietly, but for a very long time. I didn't care if she was wet and cold with the rain and smelled like

(death)

I just wanted my sister to be happy. Isn't that what we all do? Try and be happy? Even though we liked it in the dark.

Ivy

He was right. He was always right. He knew people better than anyone else, knew me better than anyone else. Which was partly the reason why I hated him.

I started to cry.

"Oh sh sh sh." He cooed in his usual maddened way, reaching to touch and run his sloppy fingers through my hair.

I didn't want tears, I'm not usually a woman for tears. But I let them come.

That's the only thing you can do at times, as a woman.

Let them come.

(let the words out)

"Jack, I--"