Crossroads

"Gooood morning..."

Her one good eye briefly fluttered open, and in the haze and crust of sleep she saw her brother's watch, wrapped around a pale wrist, shaking her shoulder gently.

"Sam...?" she muttered in her delirium, head lolling onto the shoulder where the hand lay. Her eyes closed again.

A snicker. "Yep, It's me! I'm alllll better now!"

She opened her eye again, and for a split second her stomach lurched; the red and the smile reminding her of the torn flesh, and all the blood. She almost believed it was him for a second, come back to torment her. But then reality came crashing down, and she flinched away from the hand, pressing herself further against the wall and spitting; "Don't touch me."

"Tsk tsk, is that any way to treat your brother? Don't I get a hug?" he opened his arms with raised eyebrows, and she just blinked, perplexed. He lowered them, eyes rolling. "Still a bit sore, huh?"

Cue a few seconds of stunned silence.

"Who the fuck are you?" This was not the Joker. The memories, the nightmares of him snarling and tearing and breaking, that was the Joker.

"Who do I look like to you?" He loomed over her, head tilted to the side, scrutinizing her just as deeply as she was scrutinizing him.

Dead, chalky-white skin. Bottomless eyes. A screaming red slash of a mouth.

"You look like a monster." she had meant to inject that sentence with bitter malice, but instead it had come out simply and sincerely.

His lips curled back into the most disgusting grin she had ever seen, scarlet lipstick staining yellow teeth.

"Perfect. Now get up."

She looked down at her legs, currently folded into herself. "I don't think I can."

He huffed in annoyance, hooking his hands under her armpits like she was a small child and lifting her onto her feet. She let out a small scream and crumpled against him, sobbing quite pathetically into his shoulder.

"Shhh, shhh sh," he muttered, stroking the back of her head with a faux kindness.

When all of the sobs and the pain and the weakness emptied out, she pushed herself off of him, until only the painful pressure of his hands remained, gripping her elbows. This part was necessary, because without it she would probably collapse.

"Why aren't I dead?" she stared, unflinching, into his eyes, which appear to be glinting with a sort of sick mirth. Black against green, amusement against anger, once again.

He let out a strange titter, loosening one hand to wave airily around his head.

"Politics." his answer is cryptic and vague, of course. "Do you wish you were?"

That threw her off.

"...no."

"Don't want to rejoin your brother, in that big mob house in the sky?"

Her gaze flickered to Sam's watch, wrapped around his wrist, and her eyes darkened.

"I'll rejoin him," she spat venomously, "once you're dead."

A heavy silence.

That was probably the stupidest thing she had said, ever. But, as most foolish people do, she stuck by it.

The Joker simply stared at her for one, two, three seconds, as she watched with glaring eyes, but with her heart thumping irregularly in her chest.

Then, he started laughing, cruel snickers and giggles that seemed to crawl out of his mouth and scuttle up her arms, into her ears. Her mouth twisted into a scowl, but before she could say anything the grip on her elbows was released, and she crashed into the cold concrete floor below.

The pain was all-consuming, blocking out her vision, her hearing, even her sense of feeling beyond the sharp shards of agony. She sobbed openly into the air, until the pain had died down to a bearable throbbing, and her senses had returned, however blurred.

"Yeeaaahh," the Joker drawled, placing a foot on her ribcage and lightly pressing down, "Good luck with that, doll."

She winced, gritting her teeth as the pain from her side began to flare up again - but that act was nothing compared to the pain he could inflict. No, this was a show of dominance. A sneering exclamation:

I could crush you.