Broken Pieces

A few days passed while J did all of the organizing and planning. He was building the bomb himself, and it was taking him longer than he'd expected apparently. He'd often come up from the basement covered in sweat and swearing at it. She would have expected him to be much better at bomb-building, but he kept saying that this was the first one of this type he'd made.

Finally, he finished it and they were ready to go. They'd decided to go on a Sunday because J had done some research and figured out that that was the facility's least busy day and there were less people on staff for them to worry about getting out. Basically, the plan was to go for the staff first and get them all out and far away. Then they'd go for the patients, taking them either to other hospitals or to wherever else they wanted to go.

As they walked into the building, J stopped her and kissed her lips hard. "I love you," he told her, smiling down at her.

"I love you too," she whispered, kissing him again.

They parted ways and then met back a few hours later after they'd gotten everyone out. They parted again as J started setting up the explosives and Adelaide did one more check for stray people they may have missed. She wandered around aimlessly for a while and stopped dead in her tracks when she reached a certain office door.

She ran her fingers over the letters on the name plaque outside the door, all the way from the 'A' down to the 'N'. She pushed her sister's office door open carefully, almost like she was afraid someone else would be there. She stepped into the empty room and was instantly hit with a flood of emotion. She did her best not to think about her sister at all usually, but here in this room that was absolutely consumed by her sister, it was impossible not to. She moved around the room, running her fingers over everything in sight until she stopped at a set of two filing cabinets set in one corner of the room.

She popped the drawer with the letter 'K' on it open and dug around until she found her file. Pulling it out, she skimmed through it and read all of the things her sister had already told her about herself. The last page was one she hadn't heard before, though. Her sister had probably written it very soon before she'd died.

"Karson, Adelaide

Final Patient Summary:

I am sorry to report that we seem to have hit a stopping point with this particular patient. This facility has tried everything within its power to help and guide patient, but she is refusing at this point to cooperate. Her mind seems to have been too corrupted by outside forces. Memory extraction was unsuccessful. Removing the problem from the equation was unsuccessful.

Patient has begun to exhibit more and more psychological steps backwards and we are worried that her mental state may be deteriorating much more quickly under the influence of the Clown than we'd expected.

Unfortunately at this point, the only course of action we see fit is complete extermination..."

Adelaide stopped reading and threw the file across the room. She couldn't believe her own sister had said those awful things about her. Calming herself slightly, she searched through every drawer in the cabinet that made sense for J's file and came up with nothing. She switched to the other cabinet and found it easily. She flipped through it and saw records that dated all the way back to his days in Arkham years and years before. She flipped to the last page and saw a page-sized photograph of him with a giant red 'x' scrawled through it. She looked at it, confused, and started to read the patient summary.

"Joker, The

Final Patient Summary:

We have tried with this patient in every way we know how. We have tried our method of curing. We have tried things that his old records from Arkham Asylum suggested. We have tried everything we can think of, and nothing we can do seems to be making any sort of dent in his damaged psyche.

Patient is a great danger to himself and everyone around him.

It has been determined by this facility and its doctors that the only option for this particular patient is extermination by lethal injection.

Injection Carried Out On: August 15th; 12:52 PM

Official Date & Time of Death: August 15th; 1:10PM"

Adelaide stared at the file, not able to believe the words she'd just read. Tears rose to her eyes and she began shaking her head wildly, as if that might clear it.

All of a sudden, she moved the file a certain way and two Polaroid photos fell out the bottom of it. She picked them up and stared at them, her mouth hanging open in surprise. The first photo showed J, very much alive. His eyes were glowing faintly red like they did when he was absolutely furious. He was bruised and beaten and angrier than she'd possibly ever seen him. The second photo showed him again, his head slumped over and his eyes closed. There was a monitor attached to him on which you could clearly see that he had no heart rate. He was... dead.

"No..." Adelaide whispered to herself, dropping the file and the photos to the floor. Suddenly, she was overcome by emotions and memories. Her vision blurred and she fell to the floor as she saw herself doing awful things. She was holding a gun to Rory's head and making him leave the office the first day she'd been back at the club. She was robbing small businesses around Gotham. She was teaching waitresses in the clubs to pick-pocket every man they danced for. She was building a bomb in J's basement and living in J's deserted house. It was her. It was all her.

When she could think clearly again, her expression was unreadable. Without thinking about it, she moved across the room to a mirror on her sister's office wall and pulled a compact out of the backpack that was slung over her shoulder. She dipped her fingers into the product and when she looked up again, she was smiling maniacally back at herself, her bright red lips and pale white face seemingly glowing in the low light.

She made her way back to the entrance of the building and across the street. She slammed her hand down on the detonator of the bomb, watching with wide eyes as the building became nothing right in front of her.

"Goodnight, my love," she whispered, looking at the fire one more time before turning and walking the opposite way down the street, cackling wildly as she went.