Falling Apart

"J! J, help! Why won't you help me? Please!"

The Joker shot up in his bed, shaking from the nightmare. He'd been having them consistently since his beloved, Adelaide, had died a month before. Every time it was the same; she was tied to the chair in the office of the dingy club that she'd been in before she'd died. She sat there as he stood across the room from her, staring at her. He wasn't able to make himself move to her no matter how hard he tried, and he was powerless as the man cut her head off moments later.

A tear slipped down his cheek as he grabbed the blanket that he'd taken off of her bed and held it to him. It was the only thing he'd been able to make himself move in her room down the hall in his mansion. Other than the blanket, her entire room was exactly as she'd left it. He'd written a letter to her younger sister, Adrianna, telling her she was welcome to come take anything she'd like to keep, but she had never shown up. He wondered if he'd even gotten the right address.

"I love you, Adelaide," he whispered, laying back down and trying to sleep.



Adelaide's eyes fluttered open slowly, and her entire body felt like it was on fire. It took a good few minutes for her to even be completely aware of herself. She thought she was dreaming at first, but then became very aware of the searing pain around her neck area. Her hand instantly went to touch it and she found the thick scar tissue that had developed all the way around. As she touched it, memories flooded back to her like a hurricane; J, the club, the men, her getting hurt... no, her getting her head... cut off?

"What?" she whispered to herself, getting out of the crisp bed she'd been in and padding across the cold floor to a tiny mirror on the wall. She had to stop herself from gasping at what she saw. Her skin was paler than it had ever been and there were deep dark circles dug in beneath her eyes. She looked... dead. But the weird thing was, the more she looked at herself and the more she stood, she didn't feel dead. She felt... fine. Other than the gnarled scar tissue around her neck, she didn't seem to have a mark on her. She didn't know what to make of it. She'd been dead, she was sure of that. She remembered the machete and the murder in the men's eyes. She knew they'd killed her, but somehow there she was in some dark dirty room. She knew she should have been scared, but somehow she wasn't. Somehow she just felt strong. Mostly, she just wanted to see the Joker. She knew he had to be worried sick about her.

Suddenly, the door across the room from her opened loudly. A shadowy figure walked in, and Adelaide hurried back to the bed while the figure's back was still turned, talking to someone behind them. The door shut just as Adelaide closed her eyes. She heard the person walking across the room toward her and did everything in her power to look like she was still out.

"Hi, Addy," a familiar voice said, jolting Adelaide upright in the bed before she even thought about it.

"Adrianna?" she yelled, standing up to face her sister, who now had a shocked look on her face.

"Addy?" Adrianna asked, looking dumbfounded. "How..? How long have you been awake?"

"Only a few minutes. You wanna tell me what the fuck this is, though?" she asked, pushing down the urge to hug her sister. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd seen her. Addy couldn't wrap her head around the fact that she was even there, standing in front of her.

"I... You..." Adrianna stammered, seemingly unsure what to say.

"I know I died, Adri. Wanna start from there?" Adelaide asked, and Adrianna nodded.

"Okay... Well, I got this letter about a month ago telling me you'd died, and then sure enough, your obituary showed up in the paper a few days later. I did some research and figured out where you were buried, and then we brought you here and-"

"Wait, wait, wait. First off, what exactly is here and who is we?" Adelaide demanded, cutting her sister off mid-sentence.

"Well, here is a facility for people like you, and we is my partner and myself."

"People like... me?"

"People with mutations. You think I don't remember all the times things didn't add up when we were younger? How you always healed instantly when you fell and got a scrape? How you threw me across the living room when we fought because you didn't know your own strength? I remember everything, Adelaide," Adrianna said, and Adelaide couldn't help but think she sounded a little bit... jealous?

"Okay, so how am I alive?" Adelaide asked, and Adrianna seemed annoyed by the question.

"Obviously, we sewed your head back on. It took a while, and we had to give you a lot of antibiotics and other things, but it finally stuck and the skin started growing back. That was about a week ago. We figured you'd wake up soon, but I had no idea it would be this soon," Adrianna told her, and she took a moment to take it all in. Adelaide couldn't help but be just a little bit wary of her sister suddenly. She didn't seem as excited to see her alive as Addy felt like she should. She almost seemed pretty indifferent to the whole thing.

"Well, thank you so much, Adri, and I owe my life to you and your people here, but I have to go... there's someone I have to see," Adelaide said, and Adrianna was shaking her head before the sentence was even done.

"I'm sorry, Addy, but I can't let you go back to him," Adrianna said, spitting the last word like it was on fire.

"What do you mean? Who?" Adelaide asked, playing dumb just to see what her sister would say.

"You know exactly who. Who else in this city sends letters signed with just the letter J? Who else leaves a trail of bodies behind them wherever they go? Who else forces girls to work for them and then gets them killed?" Adrianna exploded, coming closer and closer to Adelaide's face as she yelled.

"He didn't force me into anything, Adri. Not really. He offered me opportunities. He paid me ridiculously generously. He made me happy. He didn't get me killed. If I hadn't met him and fallen in love with him, honestly I probably would've ended up killing myself. I had nobody when I met him. Lord knows you were nowhere to be found," Adelaide shot back, trying her best to stay level-headed.

"You... you think you love him? You know that he didn't even try to save you, right? He just buried you and moved on with his awful life," Adrianna screamed, her eyes flashing with anger.

"How in the hell was he supposed to know to sew my fucking head back on? I wouldn't have even thought that would work, and I don't fault him at all for not trying it because I definitely wouldn't have!"

"You know what, Adelaide? Fine. Get the fuck out of here if that's what you really want. But I want you to know that if you leave this facility and you go back to him, I won't stop until you're as far away from him as possible, even if that means killing him myself," Adrianna told her, her voice suddenly deathly quiet.

"Like I said earlier, thank you for your help. You're my sister and I love you and I will be forever grateful to you for bringing me back. But I'm going back to him, and there's nothing you can do about it. No matter how ridiculous you think it is or how much you hate him for one reason or another, I love him. He's not the monster everyone thinks he is, not all the time. There's a real person in there, and I love that man. So, all I really have to say to you is this: if you're so determined to keep me away from him, if you're willing to kill him, I'll be waiting, and I'd like to fuckin' see you try," Adelaide told her sister, staring her in the eye. Adrianna seemed to physically flinch just slightly at the last few words but made no other move to respond.

Adelaide pushed past her sister on the way to the door, and as she stepped out into the dark hallway, she was surprised to see that there were easily ten to fifteen more rooms, just like the one she'd been in. She wondered absently who those people were and if this facility actually had the good intentions that Adrianna had made it seem like it did.

As she stepped out into the cool air of the night a few moments later, she became instantly aware of the fact that she had no idea where she was and was only wearing a thin pair of pants and shirt similar to nurse's scrubs and was walking around barefoot. Sighing, she started walking in one direction, hoping that soon she'd see something she recognized.