I could wish for something softer

but you know me.

I love a tragedy.

I love when it's urgent.

—Caitlyn Siehl, Daydream

Part V

Finale

*Same content warnings for previous chapter still apply.

He lets her stay the night.

He makes her think that he doesn't want her to, that it interferes with some other previously laid plans—that she is ruining something important. Makes her plead and cry and wring her hands. She's so pretty when she begs, after all, and that's why he makes her do it. Tears well in her eyes, such is the force of her desperation—her need to be with him—and it fills him with such a sense of raw satisfaction that it lights up every single nerve, so that he is thrumming with pleasure, hot with it. He has to work to feign indifference, dim the fire behind his eyes. He is crouched on her level, where she still sits on the couch, and his gaze darkens as she scoots towards him to be closer. He can tell she wants to reach out to him, lay her hands on his arms, touch him in some way, but she hesitates, and her hands fall back into her lap.

"Please, Mr. J. Please."

And oh, her little lip quiver, how can he say no?

He stands, takes several calculated steps away, like he has to mull over this decision—whether he'll allow her to stay, or send her back home to the big bad wolf. She waits and antagonizes and bites her lip. He thinks about how important it is to put distance between them in moments like this, how it's essential to make her go out of her way to initiate contact between them—make her want it, need it—this visceral throb, the aching tug and pull on all her little tender heartstrings. His own heart pounds when he thinks about it, this game he's playing, all the calculated movements of his pieces across this elaborate chess board of his own design.

He turns around to look at her, spins on his heel slowly, drawing out this moment for as long as he can. He sees her gripping the edges of the couch with the sort of force that leaves her knuckles shiny and white.

"You can stay," he allows, like he's reluctant to say it, like he's relenting, like he didn't know from the moment she arrived that she would be spending the night here, with him. Like this wasn't exactly what he had intended.

Taylor exhales in something that isn't quite relief but is close enough, this great weight momentarily lifted from her shoulders. He can see in her eyes the feverish throbbing of her heartbeat. It takes a moment for her anxiety to fade back into the recesses from which it had come, for her to breathe normally again.

"Mr. J," she says, so tenderly—and he relishes in the way she always says his name, the way she cradles the consonants inside her mouth, like it's something she can taste—"it—it hurts so much," she whimpers, wanting some form of validation from him, acknowledgement, sympathy. As if he could actually give her those things.

"What does, sweet pea?"

Her frown deepens, like she wasn't expecting him to ask her this, to not know what she's talking about. And of course he knows. But he delights in hearing her voice her discomfort, in hearing her give voice to the nasty, grotesque things she's too embarrassed to say. Something enchanting in watching her mouth form and take on the shape of such foul words, words that she'd blush to say, even if whispered in the safety and oblivion of the dark.

"Everything hurts," she sobs. Her answer is a cop-out. They both know this. They both know what hurts, this thing that is too taboo to say.

She sniffles, wraps her arms around her sides in a self-administered hug. Perhaps she wishes it was his arms around her instead—and when she looks up at him and meets his gaze, he knows this is true. He doesn't take his eyes off her as he reaches inside his jacket for a cell phone, a burner, which he tosses into her lap.

"Call her," he orders.

She looks at it as if she's never used a phone before. But she doesn't have to ask to know he's talking about Evelyn. She wipes the snot from her nose with the back of her hand and sniffles.

"What should I say?"

"Tell her you're staying a friend's house. Someone from school."

Her cheeks turn warm. "I don't have any friends from school," she says. He knows it bothers her to have to say this, too conscious of how this portrayal depicts her in his eyes, like she's a loser, an outcast. A freak.

He leans forward, slight, just enough to intimidate her into doing exactly as he says. "Then make someone up," he says. He knows she can see the irritation in the way he works his mouth, the slight tilt of his head.

She nods, both over-eager and apologetic, and he steps away, feigns as if he has something else to do, but really he is watching her from the corner of his eye as her thumb trembles over the appropriate numbers. He listens intently from across the room when she says "Evelyn?", listens to her explain she's having a sleepover. Emma. Emma Robinson. I don't know that girl, he can imagine on the other line, and Taylor wets her lips and falters.

"She's new. She just moved here, I—she's in my math class." A beat. "It's just a sleepover… please?" More weighted silence, and then Taylor heaving a visible sigh of relief, uttering thank you.

She hangs up the phone, and the Joker raises his brows when she looks up and meets his expectant gaze. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

He watches her bite her bottom lip. "I'm not a very good liar," she admits, like this too embarrasses her.

He grins as he stalks towards her. "Of course you're not. You're too sweet to tell a convincing lie. You just need a little practice." He kneels in front of her, on his haunches, all business, and she watches him with rapt attention, which pleases him. "It's all in the eyes," he says, "in the things you don't say. You have to look the other person, right here," he says, gesturing to his own eyes, hunching closer, crowding into her space, "and you have to look at them and you have to not look away. One blink, one little glance in another direction, even if it's just for a second, and they'll know. Liar, liar, pants on fire," he sing-songs. "People will see right through you."

"People like you?"

Her question surprises as much as it delights him. He never does know exactly what she's going to say. For a moment, he doesn't say anything in reply, and then his mouth splits into a grin, and he cuffs her on the cheek.

"People like me," he agrees. "But you'd never lie to your Mr. J, would you? Not my girl."

Taylor swallows and then shakes her head. "I'd never lie to you," she agrees, eyes full of open promise.

"Hm," he says, tilting his head back, eyeing her from over the bridge of his nose, like he doesn't believe her. "Pinky swear?"

Taylor bites her lip and can't help but crack a smile, the first of the day. She curls her pinky finger around his own proffered digit and meets his eyes. Her cheeks flush at the skin-to-skin contact, and he thinks, so easy at the same time she says, "Pinky swear."

"That's my good girl," he says, affectionate. Ruffles her hair. Stands. "'Cause I'd know if you did. And liars have to be punished."

Taylor swallows—afraid, suddenly—and the Joker turns away, so she won't see his smirk, knowing that she'd take any punishment he doled upon her. Knowing that, when this is all over, she'll be sick—feverish—with the need to be punished, that he'll having her begging for it.

He pulls out his pocket watch to check the time, twirls it once on its chain before tucking it back into his slacks.

"I'm glad we had this talk."

She wakes to a wet circle of drool beneath her cheek, and the careful shades of dawn, all the early, fragile grays of it. And the greasy orange couch, the one that smells like the pried open maw of gasoline and old sweat, the one he'd bent her over when he'd held her down and branded her, transcribed himself forever in a secret place only she would see. Of course, now she's not the only one who has ever laid eyes on it.

Fucking sick, who did that to her?

She thinks about how they could be watching the video of her right now, huddled around each other, laughing, or how they all probably have their own copies on their cell phones. Maybe they're palming themselves right now, jerking off, thinking of all the things they wished they would have done that there wasn't time for. She wonders if they posted it online, if Nathan's shown it to friends from school, if it's making the rounds, if she'll return to school in the fall and everyone will be muttering "slut" under their breath when she walks past. She wonders if a teacher will accidentally see it—the 'J', too—and suddenly she'll have to try and explain where it came from, who did that to her. And then maybe the police will get involved, and they'll know, somehow they'll know it's Mr. J, and they'll take him away from her and she won't ever see him again, and then she'll be alone all over again, forever, and she can't go through that again, she can't. She won't.

She presses her fingers to her eyes and tries not to think about it, tasting that sharp burn of bile crawling up her throat. Swallowing it back down. That's it, good girl, Mr. J would praise.

She doesn't remember falling asleep, doesn't remember pulling a blanket over her, or having taken her shoes off, but when she wakes up that is exactly what she finds, and she flushes at the thought of Mr. J having done these things for her, at having removed her shoes, leaving them on the floor beside the couch, or having tucked a blanket over her to make sure she doesn't get cold. She thinks she remembers the phantom pressure of fingertips on her face, someone tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, but perhaps she had dreamt it, like the way you do when you want something so, so badly, something you hadn't even put a name to. Hadn't he given her something to help her sleep as well, a pill, or something, or some funny-tasting water?

She sits up and sways for a moment, her head both heavy and light, like it's stuffed full of cotton. The inside of her mouth tastes foul when she runs her tongue along her bottom row of teeth. She wants something to drink. She has to pee. Her neck is sore.

Other places are sore, too.

She gingerly peels back the blanket and stands, and when she does she is awarded with a fresh wave of pain that nearly makes her keel over. Her insides burn. It feels raw. Used. It's a pain so foreign and new to her that she struggles to process it. There is no position that alleviates her discomfort. It hurts to stand. It hurts to sit. It hurts to walk. It hurts to do nothing at all, and that is a manic sort of pain.

She limps to the bathroom. Shuts the door. She sits on the toilet and it spreads her open in a way she hadn't anticipated, and she grits her teeth and tries not to cry, gasping with the exertion of simply trying to hold herself in that position so that she can finish. Her thighs tremble with it, taut from the strain.

She zips up her shorts afterwards and washes her hands, splashes her face and rinses her mouth with lukewarm water that tastes brown, like pennies. She stares at herself in the square, cloudy sheet of mirror, something that someone slapped on the wall above the sink in a hurry. There's dried blood and a scab forming above her upper lip and on her chin, and a nasty looking red scrape down the whole left side of her face, like a really bad rug burn.

She feels ugly. Disgusting.

Worthless cunt. Hole to be fucked.

When she goes to him, finding him tucked away in his office, her face is blotchy with tear tracks, hastily wiped, and her eyelashes are wet. She stands obediently in the doorway and waits for his attention.

He doesn't immediately turn to look at her, which bothers her a little, but when he does spin in his chair, and lays the full weight of his gaze upon her, Taylor forgets her momentary annoyance and feels herself warming up from the inside out, suddenly hot under his full attention. She squirms in the doorway.

"Good mooorning, princess. Sleep well?"

She nods. She did sleep well, which surprises her. She knows—with much more certainty than before—that he must have given her something to aide her slumber, but she doesn't know what, or when. She barely remembers anything beyond coming here, begging him to let her stay. All she remembers is her fear, her pain—pain that ravages her now and makes it difficult to stand. She shifts her weight to her other foot and grimaces when she does.

"Here," he says, gesturing to the desk where there is a brown, paper bag, free of any logos or defining trademarks as to indicate its origins. "Eat."

She doesn't need to be told twice. She limps to the desk and peers inside the bag, retrieving some sort of grilled sandwich with fried egg, bacon, tomato, avocado, and cheese. She tastes the grill marks on the bread, and even though it's cold now, it melts in her mouth, and, for half a moment, she can almost forget how much she hurts.

Mr. J nudges a plastic cup in her direction, a Big Gulp with fruit punch or something, and Taylor picks it up with both hands and pops off the clear plastic lid and finishes it in one go. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand when she finishes, and when she looks up she realizes Mr. J's been staring at her the whole time, like she's a wild creature, like she's fascinating. It makes her face hot, his full attention. She shifts her weight again and presses her lips together.

"Th—thank you. For the food."

"Anything for my girl."

Taylor preens, bites her lip and stares at the floor. She loves when he calls her that. My girl. When she looks up, she briefly meets his gaze—dark, unreadable—and her eyes drift to something familiar on the table behind him. She frowns and makes as if to step towards it.

"Is that—is that my yearbook?"

Meredith's, actually. She knows because she recognizes Meredith's name hastily scrawled in blue Sharpie along the spine. Taylor would flip through it sometimes when Meredith wasn't home, act out imaginary scenarios with imaginary friends, give the faces before her new identities and backstories and names. Pretend they were people she had never met. People that liked her, and wanted to be her friend.

Mr. J reaches behind him with one hand, snapping the book shut. The abruptness of the sound startles her, and she jumps a little.

He shoots her a grin that reads more like a snarl. A warning. "Just a little research, pumpkin. Why don't you go lie down for a bit?"

She contemplates his suggesting. She is feeling tired, even though she just woke up. It almost feels like a drowsiness that is beyond her control, like she's fighting an instinct. She stares at the Big Gulp cup and wonders, then manages to tear her eyes away.

"But—but I want to stay here. With you." There is a touch of panic in her voice when she says it, and she hates that. She doesn't want to be sent away like some errant child. She doesn't want to be alone. Not right now. She wishes more than anything he would just beckon her closer, maybe pull her into some kind of embrace, even if it's malicious. Put your hands around my neck again, she thinks, wildly. Bend me over your knee. Punish me.

God, please. She'd take anything.

She squirms in the doorway and gnaws on the inside of her cheek, wishing she could find some way to voice this feeling, this desperation that has so carefully sunk its teeth into her and will not let go. She knows it'd sound pathetic to him. Weak.

She doesn't know where this acute need for skin on skin comes from, but it's a need so feverish and hurried it blooms inside her like a cancer, metastasizing at an alarming rate. She just wants to be close to him. Enveloped.

She wishes, maybe, that he could swallow her whole so that she might just live inside him. She could slither down, over his palate, down the warmth of his throat, recede into his crevices, fill up the hollows of his insides, his lungs, make herself a home inside his organs and bones. She could bask in the heat of him from the inside. She'd be safe, there. Untouchable. Only his. It could be their little secret. No one had to know. She could slip out only when it is safe, only when she has to. A necessary regurgitation.

"Daddy is busy," he says. She remembers the last time he said those same words to her, and it makes her anxiety coil somewhere low inside her, just far enough out of reach where she cannot grab ahold of it to snuff it out. He is not quite angry when he says it, but he is curt, and his voice doesn't leave any room for further debate. He looks at her in a way that warns her not to push, even though they both know she never does. She is a good girl. She listens. She obeys. He likes her better when she's compliant, doesn't he?

She lingers in the doorway for a little while longer, wringing her hands, hoping he'll change his mind, but he doesn't, and he turns away and ignores her, hunching over his work. Her legs start to quiver from the strain of standing for so long, in so much pain, and she does want to lie down, but maybe that's just the power of his suggestion.

She hobbles away, and he must think she isn't going to return because he either does not notice her when she does, or is choosing to ignore her. It doesn't matter either way, as long as she can be close to him. She fluffs up a greasy, ratty towel to use as a pillow, and then she gently lies down in the open doorway, draping the blanket from the couch over her, curling herself into the shape of an S, watching him, knowing this is as close as she can get, uninvited. She'll take it. She has to.

She drifts off to sleep much quicker than she imagines. She dreams that, as she's drifting off, Mr. J rolls back in his chair and crosses his arms over his stomach and watches her for a long time, sleeping there in the doorway.

Or maybe she doesn't dream that at all.

The Joker is finished mapping out the more tedious details of their trip. The motel, the transportation, the days leading up to the big event itself. It's a lot of work, but it's necessary work, and he does it all himself. Faster this way. Easier. No middle men.

Excitement ripples through him the closer they get. He knows their time together is close to reaching its climax, her metamorphosis almost fully complete. He knows she senses this too, the end of this little game. It's why she's been so clingy, so goddamn needy.

He has her on a rope now—no longer just a string—and knows that she'll follow where he goes. She comes without even having to be pulled, and the synchronicity of this, the two of them, is truly a thing of beauty. Her desperate compliance—she will do anything for him. She loves him.

She fucking loves him.

He cranes his neck to look at her, asleep on the floor, her legs tangled up underneath her. Her hair fanned across her face and neck, all tangles and knots. And her lips parted, just slight. She looks younger than usual here. But laying down your defenses, softening the ever-present worried crease between the brow, it will have that effect on you.

He moves towards her, up and out of the chair as if drawn. And then he crouches down in front of her, resting on his haunches, studying her up close. He thinks about the evolution of their time together, this gentle push and pull, the careful threads of truth he wove. But the lies, too, which he spoon-fed to her, lies she couldn't get down fast enough, like the sweetest medicine, the kind that tasted like cotton candy, the kind that he knows little girls like her would have snuck greedily from the cupboard until she was sick from it. Puking up pink into the toilet bowl, praying for it to be over—the bargaining—thinking to God she'd never do anything like that again if the heaving would just finally stop.

He reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She huffs a little in her sleep, but doesn't stir. His eyes are dark as they freely roam over her curled up form.

All the bargaining in the world couldn't save her now.

Taylor snaps awake to the sound of a door slamming. She sits up, her blanket falling from his shoulders, and has to take a moment to let her eyes adjust to the lack of light. For a moment, she's unsure of her surroundings, doesn't know where she is. Then she looks up and sees Mr. J's workspace, and she remembers. Relief washes over her in a wave that is cut short and crashes halfway before the crest.

Where is Mr. J?

She stands, and the pain is agonizing—a combination of sleeping on the hard floor and yesterday's events. She doesn't know if she'll ever not be sore. She doesn't even remember what it feels like to not be in pain.

She limps a couple of steps, back out into the open hangar, where the bluish hues of dusk have filtered through the open skylights.

"Mr. J?" Her voice is hoarse from sleep. She calls for him again, louder this time.

No answer.

Her heart scrambles. She runs, or tries to, shouting his name only to be greeted by the lingering echo of her own frantic voice. She flings open the door to the bathroom, but he is not there.

"Mr. J! Where are you?"

She feverishly scans the interior of the hangar, seeing him nowhere. Her heart clenches into a fist, and she quickly puts on her shoes and limps to the oversized, dirty plastic flaps that substitute as a makeshift door.

She thrusts them aside as she forces herself through, hearing them thwap back into place behind her. She exhales in relief when she sees him, phone pressed to his ear, back towards her. He turns around just as she comes to a crashing halt, rocks shifting in the gravel beneath her.

He says something into the phone she cannot hear, and then slips into his pocket.

"What's wrong, honey?" He cocks his head at her like he doesn't know.

"I just—I," she falters, feeling dizzy all the sudden from having gotten up so fast, the adrenaline rush over just as fast as it had begun. "I just woke up, and… I didn't know where you were." She looks away, sheepish, and doesn't see him smirk.

"It's getting late," he says, he squints up at the sky for a second, then comes towards her. "I think your sleepover with Emma has come to an end."

Taylor fumbles around the reply tangled in her throat. She considers begging him to let her stay, just one more night, please, please. She wishes she had rehearsed an elaborate speech in her head, something to make him want to keep her longer. But she knows she has to go. Evelyn will be suspicious, and it looks bad if Taylor isn't there when the agency shows up for a random welfare check and Evelyn doesn't even know where she is.

Mr. J slips a handful of clean, pressed bills into her open palm, like the ones you get from the bank teller when you deposit a check. Evelyn used to talk about the fresh bills that would be delivered every so often, how the bank liked to exchange out the old ones for crisp, clean bills, the kind that had never been touched by human hands before, and how sometimes the bills were pressed so thin you had to lick your fingers to get two bills to separate. How all that money smelled so fresh and new, a curious mix of machine and linen.

She doesn't count the bills in front of him; she doesn't want him to think she's greedy. He sends her on her way to the nearest bus stop shortly after, and it's only once she's procured a seat in the back of the bus, near the window, that she pulls out the small wad and carefully counts them out on her lap.

"This is all for me?"

"Knock yourself out, princess. Get whatever you need. Get something… nice."

She knows she had blushed, like it was wrong to be given that much money, to spend on whatever she wanted.

Gotham passes in an industrial blur, silvers and grays and the fading hues of a city almost nearing sleep. She thinks about all the food she could buy with this much money, all the candy she could ever wish for, and her mouth waters at the idea of all that sugar, enough to make her teeth throb in want.

Taylor fingers the other item the Joker had given her. A banged up cell phone. It's another burner, something old, not like the cell phones kids at school have. There's only one number in the contacts, and the inbox is empty. He left her with strict instructions to only use it in case of an emergency. He had been very clear about that. "If you have to question whether it's an emergency… it probably isn't. Capiche?"

It's a long bus ride back home. She falls asleep once or twice, her head nestled against the window, the vibrations of the glass numbing her skull. She forces herself to stay awake and sit upright after a while, the knobs of her spine digging into the hard seat. She doesn't want to miss her stop.

The bus graciously dumps her just outside of her street, so she doesn't have to walk far. Not like last time—even if every hair stands on end, just from the short walk from the sidewalk to the door. Her heart throbs as she climbs the three brick steps to the front door. She swallows and glances behind her. It's a small mercy, but Nathan's car isn't parked along the side of the street, in its usual spot, so she knows he's not home. Yet.

Meredith is still up, watching TV—Taylor can see her through the slats in the blinds in the bay window in the living room where she sits on the couch, her legs folded beneath her. Taylor watches the lights of the TV flicker across her features for a moment. Rings again. Meredith begrudgingly comes to the door after Taylor rings the doorbell for the fourth time to be let in. Meredith huffs and sighs when the door opens, acting as though it's the biggest hassle in the world to walk the short distance from the couch to the door.

She doesn't say anything in greeting as she lets Taylor in, only looks her up and down as her features crinkle into a look of disgust, as if she's just sucked on a very sour lemon.

"God, you stink."

Taylor unconsciously folds her arms across her abdomen, hugging herself, as if that alone will prevent her stench from traveling any further. Meredith is usually an inch or two taller than her, but in her bare feet they're eye-level.

Her face heats in embarrassment, and she tries to explain. "I was outside all day, it was hot and—"

"Whatever. Just don't stink up my room, okay?"

Meredith flops back onto couch, and Taylor stands in the doorway and bites her lip and can't think of anything to say. She tiptoes up the staircase as quietly as she can and locks the bathroom door. She strips off her clothes and takes a cold shower to wash off the day. When she is standing in front of the mirror afterwards, with a towel wrapped under her arm, she thoroughly brushes her teeth and rinses with mouthwash. Watches blue spit spiral down the drain. And then she is staring at the pill bottle she'd hid inside the small vanity behind the mirror, a house for old junk that nobody ever uses. Cotton balls. Vapor rub. Moldy Q-tips. A nail file and a brown, crusty bottle of hydrogen peroxide, well past is expiration date.

She pours a handful of small, oval-shaped pills into her hand. Mr. J hadn't told her how many to take, so she swallows three and cups some sink water between her hands to help get them down and hopes that's enough.

The bathroom door croaks when it opens and the bottom drags against the frayed carpet in a way that makes Taylor have to shove her weight against it to get it to open all the way. She looks both ways in the hallway before darting the short distance to her and Meredith's shared room, closing the door behind her. She has to lean up against it and close her eyes after she does, will her heart to stop slamming against her ribcage.

It's fine. Everything will be okay, she tells herself. Meredith is here. Nathan's never tried anything with Meredith in the next bed over. Nathan is a lot of things, but he isn't a complete idiot.

Not that it matters if he did try something with Meredith sleeping in the next bed—Meredith already knows about the two of them. Maybe she wouldn't even try to stop him if he did come into her room.

Maybe she'd watch? Maybe she'd hear him groaning, the sound of skin slapping skin, and she'd flip on the light to investigate. Maybe Nathan would ruck up Taylor's shirt and say, "Hey, Mer, come take a look at this," and show her the brand on her hip, and then they'd both tell her what a slut she was, and they could laugh about it.

Taylor limps to her bed and hides her money underneath the mattress and then crawls beneath the covers. It's sticky hot—humid—but she pulls the covers over her head anyway and tries not to think of the places where she throbs.

Taylor is late.

The Joker drums long, spidery fingers against the steering wheel, impatient. He knows something must have come up to prevent her from arriving at their predetermined destination on time, but he also knows whatever it is, it isn't an emergency. He gave her the burner for that.

She shows up only a few minutes later, hauling a backpack. It bounces behind her as she jogs to the car. She smiles shyly at him as she slides into the passenger seat of the rusted 1989 Plymouth Reliant he just slapped brand new sparkly tags on, belonging to one John Smith. Both the car and the title are generic. Unmemorable. Neither will raise any red flags, when all this is said and done.

"Mr. J," she says, a little breathless. She must have run all the way here. Her eyes rake over him in an appraisal of both amazement and surprise. "You look so… different."

He smirks. He supposes he does. He's dressed for what the occasion calls for—tourist attire—an ensemble that consists of a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, flip flops, a baseball cap, and dark sunglasses.

He studies her in a similar fashion, behind the inscrutable gaze his sunglasses cast, but he does not readily give her the satisfaction of commenting on what she is wearing, even as she preens and readies herself under his gaze, biting her lip, so hungry for his approval, for a fleeting compliment. He doesn't have to ask if the dress is new. Paisley and eggshell blue. Her shoes, too, little white sandals he's never seen before. And… a bra. Definitely a bra. He doesn't linger on that, even if he does wonder what else she bought with the money he gave her. Her hair is done up in pigtails. She looks girlish. Cute.

All this for him. Even Batman has never gone this far out of his way to impress him.

"What took you so long?" he asks, stringing out the words. He hasn't started the engine yet. Taylor sets her bag down in the backseat. Turns to look at him.

"Meredith was suspicious," she says, still a little breathless. "I had to go to the library. I printed this."

She hands him a piece of paper which he snatches from her and unfolds it.

"I made it," she goes on, "to show Meredith. She wouldn't stop talking about how she hadn't heard of a summer school trip to Washington D.C., and Evelyn was starting to get suspicious too, so I made a permission slip. I just copy and pasted the school logo from the website, and…" she trails off. He sees Evelyn's sloppy, piggish signature at the bottom. But he has to give it to her—despite the misspelling of the word 'opportunity', it does look fairly official. "I hope you're not mad," Taylor continues, unsure of how to interpret his expression. "I made sure the ladies at the library didn't see what I was doing." When he doesn't say anything, she goes on. "Meredith shut up after that. I think she was just jealous she didn't get to go on a school trip, too…."

The Joker hums. He could berate her, tell her it was an idiotic thing to do—it put their whole operation at risk, after all—but Taylor's little clusterfuck of a surrogate family bought it, and that's all that matters. Plus, he doesn't want to spoil the mood.

He reaches for one of her pigtails instead, loops it around his finger and tugs, moving towards her at the same time he pulls her towards him, both of them leaning over the center console, their foreheads so close they're almost touching.

"Let's get this show on the road, hm?"

Taylor grins at him, and her eyes sparkle, all glossy and green. When he pulls back, the bloodrush that follows makes him have to shift in his seat.

He eats that shit up.

They cover a lot of ground on that first day. Taylor spends most of it in a fascinated trance, watching the world pass by in a blur of colors she's never seen before. She's never been outside of Gotham, she tells him, not once. And, well, he's honored to be her first, he says, and of course the way he says it makes her blush. After a while, the allure of the I-80 West wears off, as does the passing scenery and cars. She talks for a long time, about nothing, about everything. He stores all of it, for some reason. And when she's done, she tinkers with the radio after a while, and he graciously lets her.

"I don't really know what kind of music I like. What kind of music do you like?" She barrels on without waiting for an answer. "Maybe you don't really listen to music." She is still flipping through stations. "Ooh, I like this song!" She turns the volume up, something bluesy and twangy and soulful, and then turns her head to gauge his reaction, to see whether he approves. He reveals nothing, and Taylor is content to settle on that station, which proudly announces an array of the 70s, 80s, and Today. She lapses into silence, and then after a while falls in and out of sleep.

They stop for bathroom breaks. They stop to eat, and to put gas in the car. It's monotonous, or at least it should be, but she doesn't complain, not once. It's the most time she's ever spent with him at one time, and he knows she is enjoying every second of it. She smiles over at him from time to time, in that shy, lovesick puppy kind of way, just happy to be here, with him. It should sicken him. It doesn't.

He drives twelve hours on the first day, and sixteen on the second. They sleep in the car on both nights. On the second night, she curls up in the backseat and uses one of his jackets as a blanket. He reclines his seat back as far as it will go and sleeps on his back. Wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of her soft breathing, and turns his head to watch the steady rise and fall of her chest in the dark, fascinated for reasons he can't quite understand. The moon slides its long, pale fingers into the interiors of the car, smoothing over her skin in ripples, turning it milk white and soft. There's a swamp behind the convenience store where they're parked in the back, where bullfrogs croak, boarish and loud. They're shrouded beneath a heavy canopy of pines, sticky and leaking with sap he can smell. He closes his eyes, slips back into the weary hands of exhaustion, and sleeps.

He starts the car when the sky is the shade of gunmetal. It must have rained during the night, but the heat of the day is already coming into full swing, and steam rises from the pavement like a fog. Taylor is still asleep in the backseat. He doesn't wake her, sliding his eyes up into the rearview mirror so he can glance at her from time to time as he drives. He sees her eyelashes fluttering, still closed, and knows she's dreaming. He wonders what she dreams about. If she dreams of him. If she fantasizes about happily-ever-afters and tender domesticities, or if she dreams of something crueler and parlous, like all the times he's hurt her, his hands around her neck, not-so-distant memories of being bent over the couch, so shameful, the searing metal of his first initial pressed to her hip till it scarred. Or maybe something neither tender nor rough, just the two of them, just sex; he knows she thinks about him like that—he planted that seed early on, in the beginning, when this was just getting started. He knows she fantasizes about how good it feels to be wanted. Desired. To be loved. His touch, and skin on skin, all of their shared sharp edges, things that are warm and wet, the bite of bone, a hundred different carnalities involving just the two of them. How he warped affection and physical touch, so that she'd want it from him—need it—even if it hurt, even if it scarred.

She wakes sometime midmorning, the sun hot and bright outside the car, slamming into them from all sides, just it and them and nothing but miles and miles of cracked pavement. She yawns, long and hard, and huffs out a little sound afterwards.

"Was I asleep for a long time?" she asks, sheepish, as if knowing he had watched her this whole time.

"A while," he says, and she is content with this and with sitting in the backseat, staring at the hazy mirages that have gathered over the desert mountaintops in the distance. He stops so she can use the bathroom a little while later, and then they're back on the road, and a couple of tedious hours pass in relative silence. He thinks she is worn out from being cooped up in the car for three days. He doesn't push. He knows as they get closer, she is starting to think about what is to come, starting to remember that this isn't just some fun little road trip. He can see it in the careful slant of her eyes, that gentle furrow between her brows, a look of contemplation, excitement, and beneath all that, fear, the strongest undercurrent of all.

She doesn't ask him any questions about it. About the plan, the plan they have not yet discussed. He thinks she's afraid to, like if she gives voice to it, suddenly it becomes something real and no longer just imagined. But it's okay. He'll wait for her to broach the subject when she's ready. Better for her to push than him. He has to be careful now, scrupulous about gently nudging her in the right direction. He has to make her feel as if she's gotten there all on her own.

She takes another nap in the backseat, and he realizes all those sedatives he's been feeding her over the past couple of days are probably taking a toll on her system; he makes a mental note to adjust the dosage. After a while, she wakes and crawls clumsily back into the front seat, limbs all askew, and then huffs a sigh once she's seated.

For a while, he catches her staring at herself in the passenger side mirror. The windows are down, giving her unmarred access to her own reflection. The loose tendrils from her French braid, the ones near her scalp, almost white from the exposure to sunlight, whip around her face in the hot wind. He glances at her from the corner of his eye, sees how intensely she is studying herself just now, unblinking, hard, angry. He thinks about how unnatural it is to look at someone looking at themselves in a mirror, how it feels like you've stolen from them this secret moment not meant for your eyes. But of course this moment is for him. He facilitated it, he is the very genesis of its design.

She reaches up a hand to the side of her face, the pads of her fingertips gently skimming over skin that is scabbed and vicious and angry red—in no particular hurry to heal.

When she drops her hand, he knows she is about to speak. He can always tell when she's about to say something, the little telltale inhale of breath, like she has to prepare herself. She always thinks about her words so carefully.

"Mr. J," she says, sounding uneasy. Unsure. "Do you… do you think I'm pretty?"

Whatever he was anticipating her to say, it was not this. She's looking at him, brows knitted together, genuinely unsure, and he decides to give her this, to humor her, mostly because he knows she needs the validation, and he is want to feed it to her.

"Sure, kiddo," he says, spreading it on thick. "I mean, look at you, gorgeous gal like you, why, you could have any guy you wanted."

She looks down for a moment, unconvinced, perhaps the first time his flattery has fallen on deaf ears. "People stare at me," she says. "Everyone can see it. I feel like… sometimes I feel like everyone knows."

She would feel that way, wouldn't she? Walking around, shame festering like a stinking, open wound, her humiliation a tangible thing, worn on her sleeve like a bright red patch, thinking everyone can see just by taking one good look at her face. She fears the judgement, the criticism: you were easy. You let it happen. You were asking for it. You wanted to be raped, didn't you?

He grips the steering wheel with one hand. The sun is above the car now, so he flips up his shades. Stares straight ahead.

"They don't know. Nobody knows." He looks at her. "You're only as ugly as you want to be," he says. "Take it from me. I know a thing or two about scars."

He can feel her eyeing him, her gaze soft and tentative and yet too hot, running all over his rippled scar tissue, like she's touching it with her bare hands. There's a question there, in her lingering gaze, but she wilts and doesn't ask it.

They stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere sometime later. It's midday and too fucking hot. They're close.

Taylor follows him and gets out of the car. The door whines as it closes. He watches her from the other side of the car as he fits the nozzle into the gas tank. It probably feels good to stretch her legs. She yawns, open-mouthed, and leans against the trunk, facing him. Her coltish legs and pale thighs, banged up knees—skin littered with concrete scrapes, purpled scabs, and tender, bile-colored bruises. The hem of her dress skirts in the wind, the same color as the sky. She doesn't bother to push it down, which he finds uncharacteristic of her.

She sighs and turns so her back is against the trunk, and he watches her look out over the landscape, which is no different from any of the other gas stations they've stopped at. He's drawn to the pale column of her throat as she lets her head fall back, looking straight up, now—bored. Irritated. Hot.

"Do you think I could get a snack or something?" she asks, squinting up at the sun.

He's still staring at her. "Is that how we ask?"

Taylor furrows her brows at him, embarrassed.

"May I?" she corrects. "Please?"

He hides his smirk behind a displeased frown and digs through one of his pockets for some loose bills. He holds out a five to her and she looks at it like he's just gifted her with a precious diamond.

"I can spend the whole thing?"

"Knock yourself out."

She squeals girlishly, bites her bottom lip, already halfway towards the Mini Mart.

A minute later, when the gas pump clicks, indicating the tank is full, he screws the cap back on and hangs the nozzle up. He opens the driver's side door and sinks into his seat. Waits impatiently for Taylor, feeling antsy. Pent-up. It's so goddamn hot out here—here, in the middle of bumfuck Utah. He already itches for Gotham. Batman. He doesn't like to be away from the city for too long, doesn't like the idea of Batman thinking he up and left, that he went to play in somebody else's sandbox.

He looks up and catches his eyes in the rearview mirror and looks away, only to look back again and hold his own gaze, riveted. It catches him off guard sometimes, to see his own bare reflection, unmarred by red or white or black, all that heavy war paint, like a second skin. He sits up a little straighter, tilts his head back so he's looking at himself down the sharp slope of his nose. Turns his head from one side to the other, all that naked, puckered scar tissue, the sheen of ruined flesh. He thinks there might have been a time—too long ago to remember now—where the sight of his own naked flesh might have angered him, that he might have felt disturbed seeing his own reflection in a passing mirror. Perhaps he had gone out of his way to avoid them. But now? Now he seeks them out, goes out of his way to catch his own face reflected back at him in a glass window or door, a black, glossy TV screen, or those big silver security bubbles on the ceilings in stores. He feels hungry for his own reflection, his own face, like he can't remember the exact shape of his scars, even though he tastes them all the time, laves over them with his tongue out of habitual want. Needing to feel, to remember.

Bored now, he lets his head fall back against the headrest and turns to look through the passenger side window. What is taking her so fucking long? He drums his fingers against the center console and waits.

Waits.

Too long. She is taking too long.

He tongues at the rippled tissue inside his cheeks, thinking she probably can't decide between the red Twizzlers or the licorice ones. He rolls his eyes as he gets out of the car, slams the door. He should have expected this from her—he thinks how she has never been given a choice in her life about anything—her clothes, all hand-me-downs, and the food she eats, the school she goes to her, her waste-of-space foster "family"—how everything that's been given or done to her has been without her consent, without her input or say. She takes because she has nothing, no other choice. But now that she has choice, even just a thin slice of it, she doesn't even know what to do with it.

He opens the glass door to the convenience store, hates the obnoxious tinkling of the overhead bell. A thick sheet of stale, recycled air washes over him. It's quiet except for the hum from the wall of refrigerators and the sizzle of overhead fluorescents. He doesn't immediately see her, which annoys him—but then he turns, and, flanked by the refrigerated sodas and waters, she is cornered by a brawny figure. Some biker with nothing better to do, by the looks of it, wearing faded jeans and a worn, sleeveless leather jacket with various insignias and patches. His arms tell an even more colorful story, overlapping tattoos interrupted only by the threading of thick veins, extending like a series of roped cords up his forearms. Taylor is there, looking up at the man with her big 'I'll-believe-anything-you-say' doe eyes. He hates that fucking look. The man takes a step near, crowding even more into Taylor's space, and the Joker decides he's seen enough.

As he approaches—slowly, because he wants to see what the man will do—he thinks maybe what he hates so much is that she is looking at someone other than him with those eyes.

He stands behind the man. Clears his throat for effect.

And the man, all brawn, beefy muscle—the kind of man who eats other men for breakfast—turns to face him. Taylor sees him for the first time, too, looking both relieved and frightened to see him standing there.

"Am I uh, in-ter-rupting something?" he asks, because he knows that he is. He cocks his head to the side in a way that makes Taylor swallow, like she knows she's about to be in trouble, like he's caught her doing something naughty.

The biker looks him over, a head-to-toe sweep that the Joker accepts. Take a good look. Take your time, he thinks. Like what you see? Then the other man folds his arms across his chest so his veins throb with an obscene sort of bulge. He's bald, but the Joker can tell from the color of his wiry goatee that his hair at one time may have been an ugly shade of shitbrown.

"We were just talking," the man says through a mouthful of gravel. The Joker can see the black stains on the inside of his gums, his teeth. Dip. "What do you want?"

"This is my friend," Taylor hastily interjects to the man, sensing the rising tension.

"Uncle," the Joker corrects, because it's better if people think that. Not that it really matters. He frowns a little, irritated that that this man is taking up his time.

"An uncle who is also a friend," he muses. "Huh." There is no mirth in his eyes when he looks at Taylor over his shoulder, then looks back at the Joker and fixes him with an interesting stare. "Funny. I can also be an uncle who is a friend, if the price is amenable."

Taylor frowns at the Joker, not understanding, and he looks at her in all of her helpless, naïve confusion. He loves her like this, when she is at his complete mercy, clutched within the palm of his own flippant and fleeting desires. When she has no idea of the fragility of her own life in his hands. When she has no idea at all of just how fucking rotten he really is.

"Amenable," he repeats. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Pretends to think. He's very good at pretending. He looks skyward, rolls his head to the side, as if mulling over this proposition. "I can be very amenable."

Now both men turn to look at her. Taylor clutches a yellow bag of potato chips in both hands, wringing the crinkly exterior of the bag, looking unsettled and unsure, the very picture of innocent fragility, of something beautiful just crying to be broken.

"I—I think I'm ready to go now, uh—Uncle J."

"Me too, honey." He gestures to the counter with a nod of his head. Tells her to wait in the car once she's done.

And then he watches her do as she's told. After she's paid and clutches her bag and her bottle of fruit juice and the extra change, she turns to look at him, unsure. He doesn't offer her any reassurance, and once she's outside, he sees her look over her shoulder at him through the window once more. He waits for the car door to close before turning back to the man still waiting at his side.

He smiles.

Taylor waits for a long time in the stifling, stale heat of the car. She has to leave the door propped open, one leg sticking out, so she doesn't feel like she's roasting in a sun-cooked oven. She's too anxious to eat any of her snacks, and she doesn't like being out here alone, even if it's a relief that she hasn't seen another passing car in almost two hours. She keeps looking into the window of the store, but the glare from the sun prevents her from seeing inside. The minutes pass by in agonizing slowness. She wonders if Mr. J is hurt, if she should investigate, if he needs her in some way. But he told her to wait in the car, and he might be mad if she disobeys.

Boredom crawls over her skin, as pervasive as an itch, and she opens the center console and combs through its contents, finding nothing of interest, and then does the same with the glove box, sifting through an owner's manual, a half-used package of Kleenex, a screwdriver, some empty CD cases, napkins, an unused straw, and various other items of insignificance.

She tries to shut the glove box, only to discover that it won't close. She shoves the items farther back into the console and tries again, but quickly realizes that something is preventing it from closing all the way. She frowns, feeling a bead of sweat slide between her shoulder blades, all the way down to her lower spine. It tickles a little. She shifts and leans forward to investigate further. She only has to rummage for a moment before discovering what the item in question is.

Everything for a moment seems to freeze when she sees it, and then it is as if her body resets on autopilot, the way her hand reaches for and clasps around the handle as she pulls it towards her, careful to point the barrel away from her, feeling as though this moment in time has been caught in a strange fissure, like a single pebble of sand pinned precariously between a forefinger and a thumb.

Her mind races. Is it Mr. J's? And if it is, why did he bring it? What is he planning on using it for? Did he think there'd be a need for it?

She watches the way its black surface glimmers in the afternoon sun. A lethal beauty.

The moment shatters when the driver's side door is ripped open, and suddenly Mr. J is there, sliding into his seat with a heat that is suffocating in its intensity, like the burst from a solar flare.

He looks at her, and then he looks at the gun, frowning as he takes it from her and tucks it somewhere on his person, out of sight.

"Do not. Touch," he says, but Taylor barely hears him over the sound of her own blood rush, the wild throbbing of her heartbeat in her skull, her ears; this acute paralysis of fear.

She looks at him, and all she can see is the unadulterated crazy in his eyes.

It's as if someone had turned on a switch. He startles her when he leans forward and reaches around her to grab her seatbelt, stretching it across her chest, buckling it into place with a harried sort of frenzy. For a split moment, her heart swells at this demonstration of care for her well-being, her safety, but then it dissolves when he pulls back from her, and her gaze lowers. She stares at what might be a fleck of blood on his chin and on the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, which is soaked wet.

She opens her mouth to ask, but he is already back in his own seat, smoothing back his hair, checking his appearance in the rearview mirror. Licking his lips. Taylor is riveted by his vibrancy, his energy. He turns the key.

"Don't, don't, don't talk to strangers," he says, his voice high and nasal. He doesn't appear angry, which relieves her, but there is something even more sinister bubbling beneath his surface that she cannot identify. "Don't they teach you that in school?"

Taylor stares at him, not sure what to say. Mr. J peels out of the gas station, back out onto the open highway, and she holds onto the handle of the door to keep from being jostled.

She stares at him. She has to. Twitchy and restless, thrumming with something dangerous, something electric, some powerful undercurrent, like if you reached out to touch him, you might get shocked. His edges bleed fire—heat—something recently scorched, and it's all Taylor can do not to gape at him.

"Mr. J?" she says, uncertainly. She is scared to tell him she thinks he's driving too fast, so she bites her lip and waits until they're comfortably under the full onslaught of the sun, pulled onto the expanse of highway once more, which stretches out before them like the long, black tongue of a reptile "Mr. J? Is that… is that blood, on your chin?"

Suddenly, he laughs. It is full-belly, loud and nasal and jarring, making the hairs on her arms stand on end. He laughs, and his body seems to uncoil along with it, like a balloon slowly losing air. A manic softness releases itself, winding itself around the interior of the car like a snake. There is a frenzied sort of tenderness in the way he tilts his chin towards the rearview mirror to inspect the so-called blood for himself, and then looks at her.

"Oh, that? No, no, no, no. Nicked myself shaving just now. Just wanted to uh, spruce up a bit before we get there."

Taylor mulls over this information, even as she notes the strange glimmer in his eye. A sparkling darkness. "And that's why your shirt is wet, too?"

"Of course, doll face. What else would it be from?"

He stares at her in a way that feels like a challenge, and Taylor bites her lower lip and looks down, into her lap.

"Where did that man go?"

"Don't know," he replies.

"What did he want?"

"Something that wasn't for sale." He doesn't look at her. "That's the problem with the world these days. People," he begins, "the world—they all op-er-ate under the illusion that everything has a price. But some things," he smacks his lips together, pop, "cannot be bought."

She's never really thought about it before, but she supposes she agrees.

He turns his neck to look at her, cuffing her chin, affectionate, smiling. "Not much longer," he says. He turns back to the dashboard, slides his sunglasses over his eyes. "Go to sleep."

She does.

Taylor wakes to an empty car. She jolts upright, gasping for breath, blinking in her surroundings.

Bad dream. It was just a bad dream.

She takes a shuddering breath and lays her head back against the headrest, breathing heavy, wondering if she's cursed to have these forever. As if what Nathan did to her wasn't cruel enough, now she must relieve the memory every time she closes her eyes. Even sleep can offer her no abditory, no safe space; all she has is dreams that punish, and she cannot escape what she cannot control.

I'm the only one who can save you now.

Mr. J had been right all along, from the very beginning, hadn't he? Offering Nathan to her like this, on a platter, his gift to her, this secret promise of vengeance. Retribution. Sometimes it makes her blood curdle with how much she wants it, particularly in moments like these, when the memory is raw and pungent, where the scab on her face throbs and burns, like it too, remembers.

She wants it, and it makes her sick.

She licks her lips, mouth dry, tasting like cardboard and something artificial and tangy, maybe the bad aftertaste of her earlier fruit punch. The car is off, docked in the forgiving shade of a two-story pink stucco building, the color of cotton candy and Pepto-Bismol. She leans forward and looks up through the dashboard at the towering palm tree that looms over the car. She realizes she's never seen a palm tree before, not in real life anyway. Maybe a fake one, like on that school trip to the zoo she took in fifth grade. She unbuckles her seatbelt where it had been digging into the side of her neck and has left an obvious mark. She must have been knocked out for a while. The car smells stale and warm and a little bit like fast food that's been left out to marinate.

She cranes her neck, looking for Mr. J. Behind her, seen through the back window of the car, it's all flat desert planes for miles, dusty and brown, and then something craggy and unclear on the horizon, maybe a mountain, maybe a neighboring town, it's hard to tell for sure.

She slowly gets out of the car as the door cries in what has become a familiar protest. Taylor looks up, marveling at the open sky, a soft, lazy ribbon of lavender and pink. She inhales slowly. The air smells fresh and clean out here. She feels like she can breathe for the first time in a long time, like her lungs can fully expand. She turns slowly on her heel, moving in a circle, taking it all in; the stillness is like nothing she's ever experienced, but she thinks she likes it, finds that she doesn't miss the constant hum of Gotham, the city this mechanical beast that you cannot unplug.

She closes her eyes and smiles to herself, feels the hot wind on her face and the heat still radiating from the hood of the car, like the warm breath on your face right before a kiss. She is so entranced she doesn't hear the sound of shifting gravel behind her until there is a warm hand on the back of her neck. She squeals and hunches her shoulders up out of protective instinct, but then a second later she relaxes into the hold, knows it's Mr. J.

He steps closer to her, strokes the back of her neck gently with his thumb as she melts into his touch. She is unable to help herself as her head falls forward, chin-to-chest, as she lets him work the stiffness out of her neck. She's not sure what's brought on this sudden generosity, the kindness of his touch, but she does not question it for fear of making him take it away.

"I like it when you do that," she says, very quiet.

His voice is pitched low when he replies. "I know you do." He lets go and she feels his knuckles slide languidly down her back, skating over the grooves of her spine in a way that makes her shiver. It's light, almost a phantom touch, and she turns around to look up at him after, unsure if it was intentional, and cannot find anything in his expression to indicate that it was. He gestures with his head to the building.

"Inside," he says, stoic. She can never read him. Sometimes she thinks she'd give anything to know just what he's thinking, to be able to read whatever is happening behind those black eyes.

She glances into the backseat of the car and sees he's already taken her backpack inside, so she follows behind him and wonders if her legs feel like Jell-O because she's been cramped up in the car all day, or because of his knuckles running down her spine. She notices for the first time the neon sign near the side of the building, just next to the road. Paradise Motel, written in electric green cursive script, with a giant neon pink flamingo next to it. The word VACANY flashes at the bottom. It's obnoxious and outdated but for some reason Taylor likes it. Another sign just below that one, spelled out in block letters, reads FREE CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST & POOL. The parking lot is almost empty, dotted with a few scattered cars, weeds sprouting up from between the cracks, and faded white parking lines in desperate need of a repaint. Taylor steps over a cement parking chock and onto the sidewalk and follows Mr. J to the front entrance.

He holds open the glass door for her and allows her to enter first. A bell chimes above them. It's cold and dark inside, and the hairs on her arms stand at attention at the chill. She rubs her hands along her arms and stares at the maroon carpet, the green, textured wallpaper, the fake potted plants, the sagging, mismatched furniture. It looks nothing like the outside of the building, which promises a bright, sunny paradise complete with palm trees and poolside lounging, and Taylor sinks her teeth into her lower lip as she looks around. There's no one behind the check-in desk, but the office door just behind it is cracked and the light is on.

He leads her past a small dining area littered with more cheap furniture, plastic tables and chairs and vinyl pink tablecloths, like the kind you'd expect to find at a baby shower. A countertop pushed up against the wall, with leftover bagels and cold scrambled eggs, splashes of pulpy orange juice and cheap plastic silverware scattered in a little basket, next to the napkins. He leads her past all of this and down a long carpeted hall that smells like bleach and mothballs. The carpet seems to absorb the sound of their footfalls in a way that is slightly unsettling, like how she'd imagine it would be to step inside a noise-cancelling chamber. She'd read about one in her science class once.

Near the end of the hall, Mr. J slides a keycard out of the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and inserts it into the door. It clicks open, and she steps inside, tasting the sharp bite of cleaning chemicals and bleach at the back of her throat. Her eyes water a little. She looks around as he flips on the light. The room is small and cramped. There's a TV and a mini fridge and a Mr. Coffee coffee maker and a plastic table with matching chairs, and there are two beds. Her gaze lingers on this last feature, unsure of whether she feels relieved or disappointed.

She steps further into the room and runs her fingers along the faux gold and red striped comforter that feels slightly tacky and damp from humidity. The wall behind the two beds is a strange, garish orange, the other three walls are spackled in an off-white paint. She notes the brown water stains on the ceiling, and the air conditioning unit below the window huffs noisily, like an asthmatic struggling for air.

Mr. J tosses the keycard on the dresser next to the black coffee bags which are laid inside white filters, the kind that Taylor always thought looked like little snowflake doilies when you flattened them out. She watches him kick off his flip flops.

"Home sweet home," he says.

It's not exactly what she had been expecting, but it excites her, being away from home, being here with Mr. J, just the two of them, sharing a room. She glances at him from over her shoulder and feels her skin flush when she sees him staring at her from where he sits on the edge of the bed.

"It's nice," she says. She wants him to know she's appreciative.

He snorts at her in reply. "Well aren't you just easy to please."

She goes to the sliding glass door and pulls back the blackout drapes. She gasps in surprise when she sees the pool. She had completely forgotten about having seen it advertised on the sign out front.

"Look, Mr. J!" she says, holding the curtain open wider so he can see. "Can I go swimming?"

He shrugs, non-committal, and flops onto the bed. His lays his hands over his abdomen and closes his eyes. She supposes he's pretty tired from the drive, still, she takes his lack of response as a yes.

In the bathroom, she sets her backpack on the counter, next to the folded towels and the miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner. She worries over Mr. J hearing her pee, feeling self-conscious, and turns on the sink so he can't hear. Afterwards she washes her hands with pink soap, and dries her hands on a stiff white towel hanging from the rack. She is about to unzip her backpack when she realizes she did not bring a swimsuit. She didn't know there was going to be a pool.

She bites her lip and agonizes over this dilemma, eventually deciding to strip off her dress and pull on her oversized gray t-shirt, the one she had planned to wear to bed.

She steps out of the bathroom and half expects Mr. J to be sitting up on the side of the bed, waiting for her, but he's still in the same position as before, long legs stretched over the bed, bare feet planted on the floor, his back flat against the bed. She notes the steady rise and fall of his chest, and then stares a little too long at the blond hairs curling along his strong calves, and further up, his knees, and the pale skin of his upper thighs where his shorts ride up. She quickly averts her gaze.

She tiptoes to the sliding glass door, towel in hand, and gently skirts the curtain along the rod so she can slide open the door without waking him.

Outside, the air is warm and heady and the sky is a brilliant shade of orange, like the sunset on an Africa safari, the sun a brilliant gold coin, slipping below the horizon as if into the open clutch of a coin purse.

She pads in her bare feet across the concrete and opens the gate to the pool, setting her towel on a nearby plastic lounge chair. She feels brave, and she's all alone—so she takes off her oversized shirt and lays that on the chair, too, leaving herself in just her bra and underwear.

It's been almost five years since she's set foot in a pool. During one of her many stints with different foster families, she was, for a brief time, enrolled in swim lessons at the Olympic-sized pool at Gotham Tech, a community college that was close by. She was in a class with other girls and boys her age, for the sole purpose of swimming purported at the time to have some kind of healing capabilities. It can be very soothing to those who suffer from poor coping mechanisms and other traumas. Straight from the mouth of her guidance counselor. She went to two lessons before she was removed, her foster family done. Back to the orphanage. Back to the start. Another family. Another family. Another family. Somehow they all end up being worse than the ones before, as if she's personally being punished for the longer she stays in the system. As if she has any choice in the matter.

She approaches the pool slowly, reverently, almost. It's small and rectangular shaped, only six feet at its deepest end. The whole of it is cast in shadow now, but the water is warm when she steps in, having spent all day baking under the sun.

She lets the water lap at her ankles, and then her calves. It feels good. It's the best she's felt in a long time.

She slips further in, all the way to her waist, and then she is crying out, rearing back, out of water, so she's only submerged up to her thighs. The 'J' on her hip burns. It must be the chlorine that makes it sting so sharply. She forces herself to push through it. The sensation fades after a while, and she's able to swim unbothered. She smiles to herself as she dives under the water, swims with her eyes open, pretending she's on an underwater safari in some exotic waters off the coast of some unnamed, sunny country. She holds her breath as long as she can, intent on finding the ever-elusive, translucent-skinned pufferfish. She surfaces with a gasp, giggling to herself. She swims around the pool and chatters to herself about sea animals and deep sea diving. She plans an elaborate mission with her team of marine biology experts, naming each one, imagining in great detail what they look like, giving them personalities, talking with them about fantastical sea creatures that may or may not exist—playing in a way she hasn't since she was a little kid and had no other way of entertaining herself. It feels like hours. She is so enthralled she doesn't notice a secondary presence until she hears the squeak of a plastic chair. She whips around and sees Mr. J lounging on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward, watching her. She blushes furiously.

"How long have you been siting there?"

He smirks at her in a way that is answer enough, and she groans and dives under the water, wondering if he heard her talking to herself, holding herself underwater until her blush settles. When she surfaces, she swims towards him, to the edge of the pool, and props herself onto the ledge, the concrete cool and scratchy beneath her forearms.

"Do I look like a mermaid?" she asks, feeling playful, splashing her legs, batting her eyelashes up at him.

She catches the way his throat bobs when he swallows. He leans closer towards her. "You sure do, princess." He is staring at her in a way that makes her feel exposed. Naked. She feels her cheeks heat under his careful attention, and decides she likes this warmth. She likes him looking at her like this. It feels like maybe he shouldn't, but she likes it too much to pay attention to the small prickle of unease. She grins at him and dives under the water.

Mr. J sits and watches her and says nothing the whole time. "Do you want to come in, too?" she asks, hopefully, but he says no, and she doesn't ask him again.

She swims until her fingers and toes are pruned and shriveled and the water is too cold, and the pool is lit only by the stray light from the lamps in the parking lot.

She climbs out and shivers, dripping water everywhere, goose bumps rippling over her skin in a way that is almost painful. Her lips are purple and her teeth clatter audibly as she hurries to her towel. She remembers only after she's emerged from the pool that she's only in her bra and panties, and Mr. J is just there, looking at her. She wraps herself in her towel as quickly as she can, unable to meet his eyes. She knows her face is beet red. She bends to grab her t-shirt and then Mr. J is standing, following behind her back to the room.

She shivers in the air conditioning and tries to calm her chattering teeth. In the bathroom, she strips off her wet undergarments and then wonders what on earth to do with them. She doesn't want to hang them over the shower curtain where he can see. In the end, she ends up doing just that, and then slings her wet towel over them to hide them from view. That'll have to do. She changes into dry underwear, and throws her t-shirt on. She brushes her teeth, finds some lotion that smells pink and flowery to spread on her face, and then rings her hair out in the sink, lastly grabbing a dry towel to drape over the back of her shoulders as her hair dries so her shirt doesn't get wet. She doesn't stare too long at her reflection in the mirror when she's done. The scab is still healing, and looking at it only serves as a reminder as to why she's really here. She doesn't want to think about that right now.

She pads back into the room and sees a pizza box on Mr. J's bed. Her eyes widen in pleasant surprise, and she notices for the first time how hollow her stomach feels. He is already halfway through a second slice, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching TV. Local news. She gauges his reaction to make sure it's okay before she reaches for her own pizza slice, cradling it in a thin napkin and taking it to the other side of the room to the little plastic table hosted by two chairs. She folds her knees to her chest and then slides her oversized t-shirt over them to keep her legs warm. She burns the roof of her mouth on greasy cheese and blistering hot tomato sauce, and she is shivering from the air conditioning and her hair is stringy and wet and smells like chlorine from the pool, but she realizes, for the first time in a long time, she is really, truly happy in this moment. Mr. J chews noisily and with his mouth open, on his third slice now, and she hurries her slice down too so she can get another before it's all gone. Afterwards, her mouth is salty and warm and the roof of her mouth stings a little, and Mr. J gives her some loose change so she can get them something to drink from the vending machine in the lobby. She gets him a Coke and an orange soda for herself.

Back in the room, the TV is still on, and Mr. J is doing something on his phone. She cleans up her mess and stands in the middle of the room for a minute, expecting him to say or do something, but he doesn't even glance at her. She chews on her lower lip and decides to slip under the covers of her bed, feeling full and sated, and when she sinks under the covers, exhaustion settles itself heavily all over, weighing her down and making her feel weightless all at the same time. It feels good, she thinks. And her eyes are so heavy. She leans against the headboard and lets her skin warm beneath the covers.

She sighs when she thinks about how Mr. J's barely said anything to her since they arrived. She feels like he's distracted, preoccupied, and other than at the pool, it's been hard to get his attention. She looks at him on his bed, his back similarly resting against the oak headboard, his brows furrowed in concentration. She can't help but feel like the distance between them is too great, and she wonders how to bridge the space without seeming needy or obvious in her want for his attention.

"Mr. J?" she says. He grunts in acknowledgement, still not looking at her. "Do you wanna watch a movie or something?"

He does allow his eyes to slide up and over to her then, lowering his cell phone. He reaches for the remote control and tosses it to her, where it lands at her feet.

"Pick us something good," he says.

She smiles and flips through channels. It takes her a while of surfing and waiting for commercials to end before she settles on Jurassic Park. It looks like it's just started. She asks if it's okay and he hums in response. Mr. J stays on his phone for the first thirty minutes, and Taylor wonders exactly what it is that he's doing that's so important. She wonders if it has to do with Nathan, or if it's something else, something back in Gotham. A little while later, the phone is ringing, and he's taking the call out into the hallway where she can't see him. She huffs in irritation and doesn't really enjoy the movie now that he's not here to watch it with her.

He's gone for a really long time. Taylor slips a little further under the covers to get comfortable, and doesn't realize she's fallen asleep until she wakes up with a gasp. The lights are off and it's pitch black, and for a moment she doesn't know where she is. She sits up, breathing shallowly. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, and she remembers. She turns to look at the glowing red numbers from the alarm clock. It's just after three AM.

She listens to the air conditioning unit beneath the window cycle off with a stuttering series of clicks, like a lawn mower winding down, and then it's silent. She realizes this is the first time in a long time that she's woken from a completely dreamless sleep. It feels strange and a little unnatural.

There's a sick, waning yellow light from the streetlamps in the parking lot that crawls in through a crack in the curtains, illuminating a sliver of floor and the corner of her bed, which feels too big and too empty all the sudden. She turns over and looks at Mr. J, his back to her, asleep on his side. He's so still, he barely looks like he's breathing.

She doesn't even think before she is pushing back her covers and crossing the short distance between their beds. She slips under the covers beside him, rustling she sheets, and she is terrified for several heart-clenching moments when he stirs. She waits in agonizing stillness, holding her breath.

He settles, exhaling, and she does the same, awash in relief.

She pushes herself up against him then, curling against the warmth of his back, the shape of her like a question mark. This close, she can smell him—ripe with day-old sweat, the chemical stink of gasoline that slides all the way into the back of her throat, and something else she can't put a name to. She dares to reach out to touch his back, spread her palm out, so gently, the way she flattens it against his spine, letting his warmth soak into her hand, marveling at the fact that she can touch him like this, give him the tenderness that she so desperately craves. She doesn't think about what he'll do in the morning when he wakes and finds her pressed up against him like this, if he'll be angry or upset. Maybe he'll feel disappointment—perhaps disgust.

Mostly she doesn't think about tomorrow at all.

Tomorrow—Nathan.

What she does think about is suspending this moment in time, wishing there was some science that would allow her to prolong moments like these, some kind of magic she could swing a lasso around and pull to her, so she could trap just the two of them in this specific crevice in time. Let the rest of the world go on without them, she thinks. Take them out of this timeline, let them exist in another, some secret dream place that only they can share. The two of them are the kind of people who no one will miss when they're gone. She knows this to be true, more than she knows anything else.

She thinks sometime during the night, he pushes back against her, like he wants to be closer. She thinks maybe he turns around and noses into her hair when he thinks she is asleep. Thinks she can feel him hovering over her in the dark, caged by the heat of him, his body crowded low over hers. Think she feels his warm, wet breath on her neck. Thinks she hears him groan.

Or maybe she just wants these things badly enough that she dreams them into a phantom existence. She'll never know for sure.

She wakes feeling sick to her stomach. He's gone—which shouldn't surprise her—but what does surprise her is that she is back in her own bed. Had last night even happened at all, or had she dreamt it? She snags her teeth on her lower lip and chews, pushing away her covers, as if they've personally offended her.

Morning sunlight forces itself into the room with hot insistence, and Taylor slides back the curtains—already warm—to let it in. The pool glimmers at her and winks invitingly. She wonders if she'll have time to go for another swim.

The bathroom door opens then, thick blankets of steam rolling out, and Mr. J emerges wearing attire similar to yesterday's. His hair—wet from the shower—curls around his nape, hanging just above the collar of his shirt. There's a toothbrush lodged in his cheek, hanging out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette.

He removes it to greet her. "Morning."

"Hi," she says, shyly, a little anxious, wondering if he has any recollection of last night. If last night was a thing that even happened.

"You hungry?"

She nods yes, and he lets her get cleaned up in the bathroom before she is following him down the dimly lit carpeted hall and into the lobby. She runs her fingers along the border that separates the bottom half of the wall with the top half, the pads of her fingers collecting gray tufts of dust. They pass a cleaning lady on the way there, parked outside someone else's door with a cart full of supplies. She's older and harried looking, heavy, rolls of skin pinched tight around her middle, under her bra strap. Midnight blue bags are stacked beneath her eyes, and her name tag is pinned precariously to a breast, lopsided, something in Spanish, something she can't pronounce with a lot of accent marks in it. She watches Taylor as she walks past, and Taylor can't help but look back over her shoulder at her, feeling unnerved by her stare. Like a warning. She walks a little faster to catch up with Mr. J.

They fill up clear plastic plates, buffet style. Taylor gets one of everything, and piles her waffles with maple syrup and whipped cream and sprinkles on a handful of blueberries. She lines the outer rim of her plate with big, fat strawberries.

They sit down for a feast, each of them with two or three plates each. Taylor takes a couple of bites, but she can't help but feel like she's in a reenactment of the Last Supper, and she's the only one privy to this knowledge.

Mr. J, at least, is in a good mood. Yesterday he had been so serious and distracted, and today he thrums with a restless energy, eating too fast, like a man starved. She can't help but want to gravitate towards him when he's like this, like she too wants to be enveloped in this fury of energy, fed sugary-tasting poison, taken under with urgent insistence, held there. Drowned.

And she wants to eat—she's so hungry—but her stomach's a coiled up ball of thick knots that won't untangle itself, it has been since she woke up, and it's with reluctance that she has to put down her fork. She sits back in her chair and stares at her food, and Mr. J either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

"Are we going to talk about tonight?" she asks, a little too abruptly, her irritability starting to bleed through. She is careful to keep her voice down even though nobody else is around. Come to think of it, she hasn't seen another patron since they got here, just those empty cars in the parking lot, and the maid. She folds her arms across her chest, feeling petulant all the sudden. How can he act so unaffected? "Are we going to talk about Nath—"

"It's all taken care of, sweetheart." Mr. J's leg is bouncing beneath the table, like he can't help it. But it stops, suddenly, and he startles her by reaching down, grabbing the legs of her chair and pulling her closer to him. She lets out a small sound of surprise when the front legs of her chair leave the floor. The back legs skid against the floor, and the front touch back down as he lets go. They're so close—Taylor can't breathe—as he tangles his legs with hers, so that she can't get away. He drops his head, leans forward to invade her personal space in a way that makes her heart convulse, like it's about to cave in. "Relax," he breathes.

It all happens so fast. She stares into his dark eyes, trying to find her footing in there, but it's like walking in a midnight forest and not knowing where her feet are going to land.

"Okay," she whispers, unblinking, feeling as though she's been hypnotized, like he's just cast a spell on her with that one simple command.

He sits upright. Clears his throat. She watches him shovel more food into his mouth, feeling the heat from where he still keeps her legs happily ensnared beneath the table with his. He gestures to her plate with his fork, grunting through a mouthful of eggs. "Eat your breakfast."

She does what he says. She always does.

It's noon, and she has time to kill. Mr. J is gone—he doesn't say where—but not without leaving her with less than specific instructions to be ready at ten o'clock.

"Be ready for what?" she asks. And he only looks at her as if she already knows, and that scares her, because she doesn't know. She has no idea what to expect, what he has planned, how this is going to go. He hasn't told her anything.

She keeps her shirt on this time when she goes to the pool, like it can offer her some extra layer of protection against her nerves. She tries to swim the nausea away, but the chlorine only exacerbates her anxiety as the afternoon wears on. It's a dry, hot day. No wind. The sun scorches the concrete around the pool, and Taylor can only tolerate it by standing on her tiptoes, and even then it's only for seconds at a time before she has to dive back into the pool for relief. She swims for a long time, nausea sloshing around in her belly, the taste of bile just a phantom burn in the column of her throat. She frantically swims to the edge of the pool twice with the abrupt need to vomit, but nothing comes.

She tries to play, tries to pretend she's a mermaid with evil pirates lurking just offshore, but the fantasy tastes bitter, and it's hard to think about anything other than tonight. How surreal it all feels, that she's here, that she let Mr. J whisk her thousands of miles away from Gotham, that she can innocuously swim in a pool while later tonight she will do something to Nathan that is irreversible, that will change things forever. Something that is terrible, perhaps more terrible than what he did to her.

Mr. J talks to her about retribution, about Nathan getting what he deserves. And while she doesn't think she could ever be capable of forgiving him, perhaps she could learn to live with the consequences of his actions. Her wounds will suppurate and fester, maybe she'll go septic before this is all over, she'll be kneeling and sick and wanting death, like being back on that bridge all over again. But then, maybe with time, her wounds could heal completely. That's what they always say, isn't it? Time heals all wounds.

But then she starts to think about all the hurt people she's encountered in the revolving door of her life, all the people who've been broken and beat down by the fist of life, force enough to stun you, or at least knock you out cold so that life can have its way with you, urgent and insistent, like an animal in heat. Mr. J would say it's dubious, that some people ask for it. They want it. But that's not right. It's insidious. And she thinks that perhaps wounds like that don't heal at all. Perhaps they just scar.

She's knows enough about scar tissue to know that the skin is never really the same, after. The nerve endings react differently, the sensations are altered, a little more sensitive, almost.

She wishes they could have talked about it. What is supposed to happen after all this? She can't go back to Evelyn's. Will Mr. J take care of her? She has nowhere else to go. Is this really what she wants? And why did she let him convince her that he would take care of everything? She has to know, she needs to know how this is supposed to play out, what is going to happen, what her role is, what he expects of her, she just needs—

She is out of the pool and hunched over in the plastic recliner, sitting cross legged, dry heaving into her own folded lap, gasping for breath as the sun beats down hot and unforgiving from overhead. She digs her fingernails into her calves, but the pain feels far away, and it's not enough. Her hair drips wet all over her bare thighs, and she can't feel that either. All she knows is that she can't breathe, she can't breathe, she can't breathe—

A warm hand on her shoulder, hesitant. Sobering. She nearly startles out of her own skin. She looks up, has to blink against the glare of the sun to see a figure standing over her. A pretty, translucent halo around their head, and then the figure bends lower, coming into view, and Taylor can see the tenderness spread openly over a concerned face.

It's a boy.

A boy, not much older than her, maybe even the same age. Short black hair, swept up, off his forehead. Square, sharp jaw and arctic blue eyes. He looks kind. Worried. Her eyes openly sweep over him, taking him in.

She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," he says, he takes his hand from her shoulder. "I saw you through the window—" he gestures to one of the second floor apartments on the balcony, tucked behind metal railings that are chipped with green paint "—and it looked like you were choking. I wanted to make sure you were okay…."

She looks up at him, wide-eyed, chest still heaving.

"I wasn't watching you or anything," he stammers, nervous. "I know that sounds creepy, what I said about the window and all, I was just bored, and I saw—" he stops himself, taking a breath. "Are you okay?" he asks.

Taylor summons all of her strength to nod her head at him. Her mouth tastes dry and acrid. She licks her lips and swallows, urging moisture back into her mouth.

"Thank you," she manages, in a cracked voice that sounds nothing like her own.

"Do you—can I get you something to drink? Water?"

She shakes her head. "No," she croaks. Her mouth is so dry, but she thinks she'd just throw it up if she tried to drink anything now.

The boy casts a welcome shadow over her curled up form, but it shifts when he bends down to pull up a nearby lounge chair, the plastic scraping against the concrete as he tugs it close and sits on the side of it, facing her.

"My name's Ian," he offers, ducking his head a little, trying to meet her gaze, which she's fixated on a wet spot on the concrete that is quickly drying. "What's yours?"

She looks up at him as she tells him, thinking how strange it sounds, coming out of her own mouth. And if he's at all put off by the giant rough patch of scabbed over skin adorning the whole right side of her face, he doesn't let on, simply looking at her like he doesn't see it at all, as if it weren't even there.

"Cool," he says, and Taylor is surprised to hear that he sounds genuinely interested. "So do you like… live around here?" he asks. "We're from Seattle, you ever been?" Taylor shakes her head know, and he continues. "My mom dragged me here with my new stepdad and then they abandoned me for the casinos." He shrugs, like he didn't really expect anything different. "I don't know why they brought me here anyway. Mom said she wanted us to spend time together as a family… so far the only family thing we've done—" he pauses to put air quotes around the word 'family', "—is eat at crappy local restaurants and tour this stupid glass museum." He scratches the back of his neck. "And then mom makes me hang out in the lobby every night for an hour so my stepdad can screw her."

Taylor looks at him, wide eyed, flushed, surprised that he's so openly divulging all of this information to her. That he's even talking to her to begin with.

"Shit. That was probably too much, wasn't it? I'm sorry. I've just been so bored, you're the first person here who's my age. How old are you, anyway?"

"Fourteen," she says, and then because she kind of likes him and his big mouth and his shock of black hair, she asks, "How old are you?"

He sits up a little straighter. "I'm fourteen too, but I'll be fifteen in November." He pulls his arm across his chest to scratch an itch at his elbow. "So where are you from, anyway?"

Taylor licks her lips, loosening her towel a little because it's so hot. "Jersey," she says, "you know, Gotham?"

His eyebrows nearly skate up into his hairline. "Are you kidding me? You guys are on the news all the time. They're always sending in the National Guard and stuff. I can't believe you live there… have you ever, like… met Batman?"

"No," she replies, out of instinct, only to realize a moment later that yes, yes she has. She watched him nearly beat Mr. J to death in all that blood-flecked snow.

"That's insane though," he says, his eyes lighting up, "I'd probably never leave my house if I lived there. All those crazies." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at her, so open and friendly. Taylor wonders for the first time if this is what it feels like to be friends with someone, to be friends with a boy. She's taken by the warm crinkles under his eyes when he smiles, and how he's such a flurry of movement and activity, like he can't sit still. The way he looks at her like he doesn't want to miss a thing, like he's storing everything she says for later, like he wants to remember it because he finds her interesting. It's so different from the way Mr. J looks at her. There's no purpose, no hidden intent in Ian's gaze, only genuine interest and warmth.

"So who are you here with anyway?" he asks.

"My uncle, we're driving across the country, doing this bonding thing." She shrugs, and then bites her lip, a little ashamed of how easy the lie comes. She feels a pang in her gut when she realizes she doesn't want to lie to him. Doesn't like the bitter sapor of dishonesty.

"Sounds awful," Ian grins.

They talk for a long time. Taylor almost forgets why the boy came out here in the first place. And later, as the sun begins to dip lower and their skin is hot from the sun and they're both sweating, he asks if she wants to go swimming, she says yes without hesitation. And this time, none of her previous anxieties or bouts of nausea accompanies her, for which is relieved.

Taylor tries not to stare at him when he takes off his shirt. The boys in her swim class always had to swim with shirts on, that was the rule. Ian seems unaware of her ogling him, and she bites her lip as she appreciates his long, flat torso, miles and miles of pale skin, the tight curve of his waist, his long, gangly arms that he hasn't grown into yet.

Taylor keeps her own shirt on as she wades into the pool, and Ian enters via a cannonball that sends water splashing everywhere. She giggles in delight.

"Do another one!" she encourages, her eyes lit up. "I'll score you."

"Like an Olympic judge?" he grins. He swims to the edge of the pool and hoists himself out onto the concrete, water dripping everywhere. "Alright, here I go." He strikes a ridiculous pose for the pretend photographers, and then very seriously salutes Taylor. She smiles as he backs himself all the way into the fence, giving himself a generous running start before sprinting forward and doing backflip into the pool. Taylor gasps in surprise, throwing up her hands.

"How did you do that?!" she cries.

Ian flips his hair back, smiling. "You like that? Tell me my score."

"Ten!" Taylor says. No question.

He grins like she's just told him he won the lottery. Or perhaps in this case, like he's just won the Olympics.

He swims to the shallow end so he can stand, then turns to face her. He clears his throat with a level of dramatism that has Taylor wondering if he does theater at school, and then he stands very stoic, as if perched in front of a podium. "I'd just like to thank all my generous supporters out there, everyone who believed in me, and all my fans for being here today for this record-breaking moment."

"What about me?" Taylor pipes up from the deep end, flushing a little when he tilts his head at her and smiles.

"Are you kidding? You're my biggest fan. I'm sharing my prize money with you."

Taylor giggles, and they swim towards each other, meeting each other halfway somewhere in the middle of the pool, where they still have to doggy paddle to keep their heads above the water.

"What are you going to do with your half of the prize money?" he asks, a little breathless from the exertion of keeping float.

Taylor looks at him, thinking. "I'm not sure," she says. "I've never thought about what I'd do if I had a lot of money." She bites her bottom lip, unsure. "Buy a whole bunch of food, I guess."

Ian looks at like she just told him she was going to spend her entire fortune on a set of encyclopedias.

"Food? That's so boring! Do you know what I'd do with my half?" he asks, and Taylor swims a little closer, panting with the effort to stay afloat, their breath mingling, their legs slippery and smooth beneath the water, sliding against each other accidentally, but she kind of likes it. "I'd buy my own island—a private one—and I'd build a house and I'd just stay there forever and I'd do whatever I wanted."

Taylor's mouth parts, eyes wide, fascinated by this. "Don't you think you'd get lonely?" she wonders.

He grins at her. "Nah, I'd have you there to keep me company."

Taylor's eyes widen in surprise. "Really? You'd want to take me?"

"Sure," he says, shrugging easily. "You're really cool."

Taylor blushes so hard that she has to look away. She ducks under the water for nothing better to say, and he follows, and they make a game of tag out of it. At one point he grabs her from behind and wraps both arms around her middle, and she screams in glee and flails her legs and he doesn't let go, and she thinks maybe that this is the happiest she's ever been—a happiness so pure and unfettered she doesn't think she really knew what it meant to be happy before. She spins around in his arms and instinctively coils her legs around his waist to hold on, and she throws her head back and closes her eyes in a smile she can nearly taste. He holds onto her waist under the water to steady her, and when she straightens, and they're both eye level again, he's looking at her with his mouth parted, something like wonder in his eyes. She's never seen anyone look at her that way before. And this time it's him who blushes, except it's only the tip of his ears that turn red, which Taylor thinks is adorable. She unwinds her legs from around his waist and he lets go, and the insides of her thighs still feel warm from where they had touched the bare skin of Ian's stomach and waist.

"My fingers are all pruny," she giggles, breaking their silence, showing him her hands.

"Mine too," he agrees, crinkling his nose. "And I'm starving." He scratches the back of his neck, looking unsure for a moment. "You wanna come to our room? We've got leftover Thai food from last night, there should be enough for both of us."

Taylor nods eagerly. She never passes up food.

Ian looks relieved, smiling at her, and they both swim back to the shallow end and climb the steps of the pool. She feels exhausted, and so happy.

Taylor retrieves her towel and wraps it around her shoulders, following Ian out of the pool area and up the metal staircase to the second floor. She waits for him to unlock the door, and when she takes a minute to look out into the desert, where the sun has just begun to set, she marvels at how the drooping powerlines dotted along the landscape glimmer like gold chains. It's so fiercely pretty it nearly takes her breath away.

Ian goes in first and she follows, inspecting the room as she closes the door behind her. It's almost the same as her room downstairs, with the added addition of a larger mini fridge and a microwave.

Ian bends down and starts taking plastic cartons out of the fridge, lining them along the edge of the dresser. The curtains are pushed open, and the sunset looks even more beautiful from here. The whole room golden and warm and tangerine orange, like the afterglow of a slowly dying fire, where the embers are still hot.

There is luggage strewn around the room and personal belongings on the dresser, a little bottle of perfume, scattered pieces of jewelry that Taylor assumes belongs to his mother. A can of aftershave next to the sink, spied from the open door to the bathroom. A pillow from home on the bed, in a Star Wars pillowcase. Taylor smiles a little.

She's overwhelmed by the smell of them—Ian, his mother, his stepdad. This is what family smells like, she thinks, this inimitable smell you carry with you everywhere you go, permeating through whatever little space you happen to be existing in at the time; a corner booth in a restaurant, the inside of the family car, or your usual pew in the middle row at church, on Sundays. Taylor knows this smell. She was envious of it, as a little kid. In some ways, maybe she still is.

She is invited to Jennifer Henry's seventh birthday party one summer, right before the transition back to school. It was a pity invite, one of those invitations that got passed around to everyone in the class regardless of whether you were a friend or not, just so you wouldn't feel left out when everyone got a pretty purple envelope except for you.

She remembers so acutely walking through her front door, a cheap gift wrapped in yellow tissue paper, tucked inside one of those generic gift bags that had been recycled a million times, clutched in a sweaty hand. Walking through their hardwood foyer, like walking the plank, her foster mother's hand at her back, a sharpened sword urging her forward. And the smiling faces on the walls on either side of her. Family portraits, a timeline of togetherness. Unity. A father's arm clasped lovingly around the shoulder of his wife. The mother, the beautiful matriarch, with a tender hand on the thin shoulder of a boy with just enough freckles, not too many, and his little gap-toothed smile. The smile of a boy who loves finding frogs in the garden and throwing a baseball in the yard with his dad, whose bedsheets are probably printed with colorful cars and tractors, or different kinds of dinosaurs. And the little girl, Jennifer, hands folded oh-so-gently in her lap, a little lady. All that lace and frill, the pink ribbon in her hair, her soft blue eyes. Taylor's stomach feels as if it's furling in on itself, a sail that's bowed to the wind, caved in from the strain. It's so lovely and perfect. This is what want feels like. Jealous, needy want, bubbling desire, this unforgiving pulse in her belly. Her palms are too sweaty to leave behind falcate prints, so she clenches her fists harder, desperate for her nails to break through that skin, just a little bit, needing the cheap sobriety that only pain can bring. This is a storm she cannot weather; her stomach roils, churning like craggy waves at sea, and she purges something green and acidic all over those beautiful glossy floors, and no one understands.

"Hey, Ian? Is it okay that I'm here? Your parents aren't going to be mad?"

"They're not gonna be back for hours. I'll probably already be asleep." He stops to look at her still standing in the doorway, dripping water everywhere, clinging to her towel. It's just as sopping wet as she is. "Here," he says. He gets up to rummage through a green duffel bag, producing a gray t-shirt. "You can change into this."

Taylor takes it from him appreciatively. She changes quickly in the bathroom, taking off her bra and her own t-shirt, but leaving on her panties, even though they're still wet. She can't exactly take them off, and the shirt he gave her just barely skirts past the tops of her thighs. She brings the collar of it to her nose. It smells like him. She doesn't know why that makes her feel so warm and happy.

She emerges to find that Ian's finished heating everything up in the microwave, and he's spooning out a variety of different noodles and chickens and spicy-smelling sauces onto two paper plates. He passes one to her and smiles. Taylor sits in the middle of one of the beds—the one with the Star Wars pillowcase—and Ian joins her, sitting next to her, both of their folded Indian style, plates in their laps, warming their thighs, their knees touching. He turns on the TV to a movie they both like, and neither of them pay attention, too busy talking with their mouths full. She laughs until she cries when Ian sticks a pair of chopsticks up his nose and pretends to be a walrus. It's stupid and goofy and she loves it.

She doesn't realize how sunburned she is until Ian prods at her knee with his finger, and they both watch as the skin turns pale before returning to a hot shade of pink. Ian's sunburnt as well, she can tell from where the line of his boxer shorts rides a little lower than his swim trucks had, revealing a track of pale skin.

He scrunches his nose, almost as if he were apologetic. "Guess we were out there for longer than we thought, uh?" he grins.

He asks her about her favorite music then, and her favorite movies, and halfway through his plate, he gets up to rip out a blank page from his mom's day planner and eagerly scribbles down all of his recommendations. Taylor likes the way he holds the pencil to his lips when he's thinking, and the look of intense concentration on his face when he bends his head low to write.

"Oh, you'll love this song. It's one of my favorites."

Taylor smiles at him, and their fingers brush when he hands her the paper—it's full, front and back. She admires his sloppy handwriting, tracing her fingers over it.

"Thank you for this," she says, earnest. No one's ever done anything like this for her before.

"You're welcome," he says. They stare at each other for a moment, and Ian's throat bobs when he swallows, looking like he wants to say more. "You know, you… you don't look like the girls who go to my school," he says at length. He traces a series of loops and swirls on the bedspread with a long finger. Then he's looking up at her with big blue eyes, his forehead creased a little. "You're like, really pretty," he says, and she can see his ears turning red when he says it. He has to clear his throat. They both look away.

No one's ever told her she was pretty. No one except Mr. J.

"I saw you yesterday," he blurts, panic spread over his features before he smooths it out. "Swimming in the pool, I mean." He opens his mouth. Closes it. Thinks about what he's going to say, looking sheepish. "My parents were out, and I was so bored…." He looks down to pick at a piece of loose skin around a fingernail. "I wanted to come down and talk to you then. It looked like you were having fun, but then that guy was there…." He trails off, finally looking up at her. "Was that your uncle?"

Oh, shit.

Taylor's eyes are wild as they dart to the digital clock on the nightstand. It's almost eleven o'clock. Her heart drops into the pit of her stomach, and it feels as if it's stopped beating entirely. Oh, shit, shit, shit. How could she have forgotten? How could she let time slip away so easily?

She can feel her face turning white, pale, all the blood draining, embarking to some other place, like it too does not want to be present for what is about to occur. Her extremities tingle, arms and legs, like they've fallen asleep. She can't feel anything but her own terror, laid down inside of her like a slowly encroaching poison.

"I—I'm so sorry, I have to go," she stammers. She is already scrambling off the bed.

"Hey, hey, wait," he says, so tender and concerned. He gets up as well, holding up his arms, like the way you do when you're trying to calm a startled animal. He approaches her as if she were a bird with a broken wing. Like he doesn't want to scare her away so that he can fix whatever is wrong. It makes her heart ache. It makes her want to cry. "Is it your uncle? Do you have a curfew or something?"

"Um," she swallows, "Something like that." She is trembling so hard. She can barely stand. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She pushes past him to the door, throwing it open, where it hits the wall with a force she didn't intend. She can hear Ian behind her, running to the door as well. Her name all tangled in his mouth, shouting for her—apologizing, for some inane reason, as if this is at all his fault.

She sprints down the stairwell, and the metal groans beneath her weight. She jumps the last three steps and lands on the concrete on her hands and knees. She gasps, the pain dizzying. She moans as she stands, looking at her kneecaps, where little slivers of blood have started to ooze out from her skin. But there's no time to focus on the pain. She gets back up and races past the empty pool, shrouded in the night, awash in the milky caress of the full moon. The way it illuminates the water, so still, now, as if she and Ian hadn't been splashing around it only a few hours ago.

She slides open the sliding glass door, and the sound it makes as it slides across the partition is urgent, desperate, like a shrill scream.

"Son of a bitch."

The hairs on Taylor's neck and arms stand on end at his voice. She's never heard Mr. J swear before. She barely has time to register him stomping across the room before his hand is around her throat, so hard she cries.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. J," she gasps. The brutality is alarming. Tears are streaming down her face. Her legs give out beneath her and she goes to her knees, almost as if in supplication. A sinner begging for forgiveness before their god.

Only, this god is not so benevolent, and as his hand tightens around her throat—she knows forgiveness is something he will not award.

"Where the fuck have you been?" he snarls, spittle spraying on her face. Taylor closes her eyes against his onslaught, the intensity of him, heavy, crushing, too much. His hot breath on her face scorches her, and she has no choice but to inhale, gasping for air, his fingers so tight. She feels as though her lungs have caught fire, burning inside her as easily as paper. Through her blurred eyes, she sees his flared nostrils, the red in his eyes, a daylight monster—not the kind that hides in the closet or under the bed, no; the kind who has no qualms about being seen, who exist in the world so transparently you maybe don't recognize them at first. The kind who follow at a close distance, but by then it's too late. The claws are in, the fangs are out, and you're so stupid to never have noticed them before. That's how she feels. Stupid.

"I—" Her hands are on her neck, over his, fighting him, and she is gasping and everything is sort of fuzzy around the edges, and her legs kick uselessly and her eyes are starting to roll back into her head—

Slam.

Her head against the wall, now, her body following, legs all tangled up beneath her. He presses her there, kneeling in front of her, down on one knee, and her head lolls, her eyes desperately trying to track him as the world swims and swirls. When he releases her neck, she gasps for air, sucking in oxygen. She looks up and see that his eyes have changed, his demeanor different all of the sudden. His hands are in her hair, petting her in a way that feels deranged as he shushes her and coos. His voice, far away and too close all at once, telling her it's okay, everything's going to be alright. Then her head pillowed against his chest, his arms around her middle, holding her to him, so tight. The hug she's always wanted, only, she is incapable of returning the gesture, her arms limp at her sides. She cannot find the strength to move them. She shudders out a series of sobs, terrified of having his hands around her neck again. She really thought he was going to kill her.

"Mr. J," she gasps, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Please." She presses the words into his chest, close to his heart, wishing her words could pierce straight through all his layers of clothes and skin, straight to that mass of pulsating muscle.

Funny, to so desperately beg for forgiveness from a god who doesn't give a damn about you, and perhaps never did.

She reaches up, finally, to cling to the bulk of his forearms, still dizzy from the lack of oxygen as the room slowly fills out, melting into all its familiar shapes and shades.

"Shush, shush, shush," he coos. He pulls her just far enough away that he can look down at her, a string of saliva connecting her mouth to his shirt. She's embarrassed as she wipes it away with the back of her hand, sniffling. And Mr. J only cocks his head in that familiar way she used to love, only this time there is something in his eyes that frightens her, something sharp, something urgent.

"You're late, late, late," he says, "for a very important date." His voice is all honey, melodic, too sweet, the kind that leaves a sour film of sugar coating on the tongue. His thumbs brush the tears from her eyes the way a lover would, and it feels wrong. He licks his lips and cups her face in his big hands, lowering his own to be closer to hers. She can smell his tacky greasepaint, fresh applied. "It's okay," he says. He rubs his nose against hers, intimate, sick, his hot, rancid breath on her face, his mouth hovering over hers in a way that might have been tempting, before. He hums under his breath and Taylor swears she can feel the vibrations of it, rippling through her insides. "I'm glad you're here now," he breathes. "But you are being very rude to our guest."

Guest.

She whines at him and shakes her head, already beginning to pull herself away. "No, no…." She knows she sounds like a baby, whimpering and pathetic, but it doesn't matter. He does not listen.

He rips her up from the floor, yanking on her upper arm until she is standing. Her thighs tremble in a way she's never felt before, and her skin prickles and overheats and she is cold and sweating and on fire, at war with her own body, and all she can do is let herself be half led, half dragged across the room. This is what it feels like to be marched to the guillotine, driven in a flaming chariot to the gates of Hell. Brought to that place that only exists in your nightmares, the one where your fears are all hidden behind a series of unmarked doors, you only have to choose which one it will be.

"Mr. J," she is reaching out for him, trying to grab hold of his sleeve, something, anything. "Mr. J, wait—"

He drags her past the beds, the dresser, the TV. She is breathing so hard and fast she thinks she's going to pass out.

Then, suddenly: the blinding white fluorescents of the bathroom, sharp and unexpected, like a papercut.

A familiar figure tied to a chair.

Nathan, with a pillowcase over his head, a rope tied around his neck to keep it in place, like a noose. He's in a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else, and Taylor can see the rivulets of sweat dripping down his chest, the trembling muscles in his arms, which have been pulled behind his back and tied to the chair.

There's a broken zip tie on the floor next to his feet, and Taylor wonders how Mr. J even got him here, what sort of force was required to bring Nathan to this exact moment, where he's helpless and defenseless and completely at their mercies.

His head lolls, this thing too heavy to burden. Chin to chest, all hunched over, looking vulnerable and pathetic. Nathan perks up at the sound of her entrance, raising his head, and he must have something lodged in his mouth to prevent him from talking, because all she can hear is his heavy, muffled breathing, something mumbled from behind a gag, something she can't make out.

Taylor makes to take a step back, but Mr. J is there behind her, the solid bulk of his presence blocking her exit. The door shuts with a definitive slam, jolting her. She nearly pisses herself.

She spins around, her hands on Mr. J's chest, grapping at the lapels of his purple jacket. "Mr. J," she whispers, desperately, "I don't want to do this anymore. I—I changed my mind," she stammers.

"Aw, baby," he sing-songs, "don't back out on me now." His voice lowers. "You're being very wishy washy about this and I don't. Like. That." He grins at her, all teeth, feral and gleaming, and she shrinks back, letting go of him, only, there is nowhere to go. "This is my gift to you, remember? I'm going to be very upset if you don't accept."

She shakes her head at him. "It's not right—"

"No," he interrupts, grabbing her suddenly, his hands on her upper arms, shaking her, "it's necessary." He lays his eyes into hers, holding her gaze with a force she cannot fight. "Need necessitates no choice between right and wrong, good and evil. It just is. You get me?"

Taylor shakes her head again, refusing to meet his eyes. She can't afford to look at him, to grant him the power he has over her with just his eyes.

She has to get out of here. She doesn't want a part of this. Not anymore.

"Listen to me." He shuffles closer, and his grip loosens some, but she already knows she'll have the purpling bruising of his fingertips on her skin to inspect later in the mirror. "How will I know you're worthy if you won't do this? Good girls listen. I told you, you need this." He pauses to reach up with one hand, caressing her face, the line of her jaw. She thinks that, at one time, she would have loved this. She would have wanted this, begged him for it, even. But right now, his touch makes her skin crawl, and she has to fight to not jerk away. "I know you're a very good girl," he says, lowly. He licks his lips, leaning forward to fit his mouth near the shell of her ear. "I know you want to do this for me, to prove that you love me. So do it. Show me."

There is something sliding into her right hand. She has to look down to see what it is, and it's as if the night on the bridge comes back to her as a wave, full force, the kind of wave that drags you under and tumbles you, so that you don't know up from down, so that you're trapped and scared, can't breathe, trapped beneath the surface. Memories shouldn't have that kind of power, she thinks. Memories should not be capable of making you lose your balance. Memories should not make your gut twist and clench, like a belly full of parasites, the crunch of masticating jaws. Memories should not make fear such a tangible thing, a thing you can taste, a crawl of bile up the throat, a sour, filmy tang on the tongue.

He spins her around so she can face Nathan, then lays his hands on her shoulders, another burden she must carry.

"He's been waiting for you. He can hardly sit still." She can hear the smile in his voice when he says it. She watches as Nathan squirms and writhes in the chair, trying to break free. He's still mumbling behind his gag. "Come on, come closer." Mr. J pushes her forward. She goes against her will. And there's a moment—just a moment—where she is close enough that Nathan can feel her body heat, can hear her breathing, and she watches as his own body tenses up, drawing back into the chair. He is afraid. He is afraid of her.

She feels a rush of something she's never felt before, something hot and scalding and liberating. Goose bumps prickle over her skin. It's a sensation so new and foreign it's almost hard to identify at first. But she realizes this feeling rippling through her is power. She cranes her neck to look back at Mr. J, wondering if he noticed, if he can feel it too.

He stares back at her as if Nathan not's even there, as if they're the only two people in the room. As if he's going to devour her.

She doesn't know why, but she derives power from that, too.

She can't help but shiver, feeling deliciously raw, like her nerve endings are all exposed. She swallows as she steps closer, wishing suddenly she could see Nathan's face, wanting to bear witness to the fear blossoming behind his eyes, the same fear she'd felt that day in his car, pinned down by him, all those hands roaming over her skin, touching the secret places of her, and the excruciating pain of being been torn in two—a pain that is still so unbearably fresh.

When she steps closer towards him now, it's as if drawn, fascinated by her own dominance, this wave of heat radiating off her. The power she derives in knowing that Nathan can feel it too.

She feels brave when she stands directly in front of him, his thighs spread open so that she can step in between them. Standing this close, knowing he can't hurt her—it thrills her in a way she never could have anticipated. Perhaps Mr. J knew it would all along. It should make her feel sick. This is wrong, after all. But she's wanted this, and he knew that she would, even if she fought him, even if she constructed weak walls of resistance.

She thinks maybe she understands what Mr. J was saying about need. She does need this.

"Take him out of the chair," she says, too fast, almost tripping over the words with how much she wants it. She looks behind her, at Mr. J. It's probably the first time she's ever given him an order, said something to him that didn't have a question mark behind it, and for a moment, she wonders if she's overstepped, if this is too much.

But he only grins, stepping past her to make quick work of the ropes, cutting them, uncaring of how he nicks Nathan's skin in the process.

She's surprised when Nathan's body slumps to the floor, right out of the chair, like he has no control over his body's mechanics. He lays on his back like a limp fish, incapable of moving his arms, his legs.

Taylor stands over him with the knife and doesn't know where to start.

She feels like a child of the woods, a varmint of Mother Nature, a malediction. Something that was birthed in the dark, something sinister and vile, something that had to be put away, hidden. Some creature of the night who has been lying in wait for this exact moment, this moment where she can finally gorge herself on the remains of naughty humans—bad people—crouched low on her haunches, sucking warm, wet blood off bones, feasting on tendons, the sharp crunch of them between her masticating jaws. The indelible hum, the thrill of human flesh.

She doesn't remember climbing on top of his prone body, straddling his waist, the way she beats, and beats, and beats on his chest, the knife forgotten. Slamming into him again and again with her fists. The fist of life. He asked for this, Mr. J would fists rain down, a monsoon, a torrent of flesh on flesh. The skin doesn't bruise immediately, and it makes her angry, because all she is is this leftover canvas of purple and yellow and blue, these lingering marks of violence that won't heal, skin that is too tender to touch. She beats some more. She's not sure if she's shouting or if she just imagines that she is. Her anger blinds her, or maybe that's just her tears, hot and salty, burning her eyes. She can't see. He just lies there and takes it. He has no choice.

She wonders if he knows it's her. Maybe he recognized her voice early on. Maybe the fear incapacitated him to the degree where he can't really hear at all. Maybe he recognizes the feel of her body, even if their positions are reversed. She hopes that he does. She wants him to know that it's her. She wants him to know why he's being punished.

With a sob that sounds like it's been torn from her, she collapses against him, exhausted, sweating. Tears streaming down her face.

She feels him shift beneath the weight of her, just slight—he has no strength to do much else—and she is suddenly disgusted to be lying on top of him. Her skin crawls in all the places where they touch, and she pushes herself up, breathing shallowly, out of breath from the exertion of her fury.

She is still leaning forward over his body, her thighs bracketing his waist, her arms on either side of his head. She knows she must look deranged, looming over him like this, her sharpened canines on display, the carnality in her eyes, like something undomesticated and feral.

As her final act, she loosens the rope around his neck, slides the pillowcase off, over his head. She doesn't ask Mr. J if that's okay, and he doesn't move to stop her.

The shock of seeing his face is sobering in a way she hadn't expected. Tears stream down his face, unhindered. The gag in his mouth is saturated with spit, and drool is dripping from the corners of his mouth, his neck and shirt soaked with it. He's sporting an impressive black eye—a gift from Mr. J, no doubt. And the fear in his eyes doesn't taste as good as she thought it would, especially when the fear transforms into recognition, and then confusion.

She wipes the tears from her face with the back of her hand. "You won't ever touch me again," she whispers. She shoves on his chest for good measure, and there is some satisfaction in seeing him flinch.

"No." Mr. J's voice above her startles her. She looks up to see him crouching down next to her, a knife in his hands, this one different, this one longer and thinner and sharper. He offers it to her. "No, he won't."

She hesitates at the proffered item. Her eyes flicker back to Nathan, to where he watches her with wide eyes, still under the effects of whatever Mr. J drugged him with. He thrashes his head back and forth uselessly, the only thing he has any control over. She stares at him, knowing he's been broken, that there is no more damage to inflict. She thought she would feel satisfied, having taken her revenge, having made him hurt, but all she feels now is hollow. She wants no more. Looking at the pain in his eyes, all she feels is sick.

"I—I'm done. No more," she says.

"Done? Done?" Mr. J laughs, high pitched and nasal, a sound that crawls right under her skin and makes her itch. "He's still breathing."

Taylor's head snaps up to look at him, realization prickling over her skin. "You said we were going to hurt him. You didn't—" her eyes drift to Nathan again, where he is begging for mercy with his eyes, mumbling around his gag. Her eyes flicker back to Mr. J's. "—You didn't say we were going to kill him." She can barely force the words out from behind the gates of her teeth, like just speaking the words into existence is enough to accomplish the deed.

He stares at her. "What did you think was going to happen? You thought you were going to hit him a couple of times, make him cry, make him beg for you to stop, and then send him on his way with a warning?" Mr. J laughs without any mirth. "This only ends one way."

She shakes her head. "I don't want to," she whispers. More unshed tears burn at her eyes. "Please, please don't make me."

Mr. J slides up behind her before she can get away, tucking the length of his body against her back. They're both straddling Nathan now. The feel of him behind her like this sends her brain skidding to a halt, like a cartridge caught in a groove. That one memory she can never let go of, startlingly clear, not even the long, arduous passage of time could have cast a shadowy veil over it. It's pristine in detail, the way she can see just the two of them knelt on the floor, the body spread out on the bathroom tile. Even the location is the same. It's like he's purposely recreating that memory just for the two of them.

He takes her hand and curls it around the knife, which she now recognizes as a scalpel.

"Feels familiar, doesn't it?" He knows. Of course he knows. He sighs against her neck, his breath fanning out the hairs there. "Oh, you're doing so good so far," he murmurs, just so she can hear. Pleasure ripples down her spine at his praise. She can't help it. It's what she's wanted from him all this time, even though she knows she shouldn't. He loops his forearm around her middle, pulling her tighter against him, so she can feel every part of him. She likes that too, even if there is something inside of her that screams that she should be repulsed by him, something that is suddenly at war with everything she thought she loved about him. "Don't stop now," he urges. "I'll help you." And then his hand is on hers, helping her guide the scalpel. His breath hot and humid on the shell of her ear. "We'll go right down the middle."

It's his hand guiding the knife, she tells herself amidst her growing hysteria. She has no control over where he guides the knife. She makes the mistake of looking up at Nathan as the blade is about to touch done. A mixture of snot and drools and tears sliding down his neck, beads of sweat gathered along his forehead. His desperate, muffled begging for them to stop. She never could have imagined him like this, on the precipice of breaking, the very same precipice he brought her to only days ago. It should feel just, what they're doing to him, but she surprises herself by discovering that she feels sorry for him, even as she hates him. The two emotions converge in a way that is complicated and confusing. She wants to try and explain it to Mr. J, maybe he could understand. But the wheels are already in motion, and there is no way to stop something that is barreling forward with this much force.

That is what she thinks about as the blade comes down, against her will, sliding through layers of flesh as easily as a knife tears through paper. Nathan's back arches off the floor and he screams through his gag. Taylor wants to yell too, but her voice only catches on a sob that's lodged somewhere high in her throat. She tries to close her eyes, so desperate to look away, but his body cavity is opening up, split from sternum to naval, and it's Biblical and riveting, like the parting of the Red Sea.

The cut is not that deep, not really, but it's too much all the same, and the amount of blood that pours out in rivulets is horrifying. Taylor can feel the vibrations of Mr. J's laughter rolling along her back, but she can't hear anything at all. She feels like a soldier on a battlefield after a bomb's just exploded, and all she is left with is this incessant ringing in her ears.

He lets go of her hand, his arm unwinding from around her waist, and she falls forward without his support, catching herself at the last second, her hands slip-sliding on Nathan's chest, in all his blood. She cries out, trying to sit up, but Mr. J's weight is heavy on her back, forcing her to bend at the waist, so she's lying on top of Nathan, so she can feel his warm blood soaking through her shirt.

"Aaaall the old familiar places, hm?"

He wants this to feel familiar, she realizes, wants her to think of the first time they did this together, even though everything is so different now. Now, she is armed with a reason, with justification for her cruelty. But he's severely misjudged the depth of her compassion, and she can't go through with the punishment. She won't.

Taylor sobs as the blood spills out. She wants to shout, scream, make some sort of noise that would alert somebody out in the hall, in the neighboring room, perhaps, if anyone is even there, but she can't suck in enough air to produce any noise. She just gapes with her mouth open, feels as though the wind has been knocked out of her, like her lungs are caught in a spasm.

He allows her the mercy of catching her breath, and when she does, she is struggling to get out from underneath him,

"I don't want to do this anymore!" she shouts. "Let me up! Please!" Her voice cracks on her plea, and Mr. J smiles against her neck.

"Shush, shush, shush," he coos. "We're just getting started, sweetheart."

Nathan's blood soaks through Taylor's shirt, all warm and wet and slippery, and Taylor sobs, open-mouthed, and fights with everything she has to get away.

"I said let me go!" she screams, finally able to find her voice. Her tears feel hot sliding down her face as she rears her elbow back and catches Mr. J square in the jaw. It's enough to knock him back slightly, to relieve some of his weight that was holding her down, and she crawls off of Nathan and slides herself backwards on her elbows, edging herself beneath the sink, shaking so hard she knows she wouldn't be able to stand.

Mr. J is rubbing is jaw, working his mouth from side to side, as if she'd loosened something he needs to pop back into place. When he looks up at her, still kneeling over Nathan's prone form—his head bowed lowed, staring at her from beneath his brows—the look is so feral that it sends a frisson of fear shooting straight down her spine. She instinctively draws further under the sink, making herself as small as she can.

"You need a reminder of why we're all gathered here, don't you?" he growls.

Taylor doesn't know what he means by that. She shakes her head at him and then draws her knees to her chest, burying her face there, trying not to look at Nathan, at what she's done. She dares to peek over the bent valley of her kneecaps and sees all his pooling blood on the tile, settling into all the cracks and grooves as if to make a home there. Then she makes the mistake of raising her eyes farther up.

Mr. J, crawling towards her on hands and knees. His eyes dark and glittering, hands leaving a trail of bloodied prints in his wake, like a beast straight from her worst nightmare.

"Come to daddy."

"Don't!" she screams, but his hand, stained and wet with blood, is already around her ankle, pulling her out from underneath the sink. She slides across the tile, screaming, and he wrestles her until she's pinned underneath him, holding her down with one hand, the other searching inside the interior of his breast pocket, maybe wanting another knife.

She frowns up at him, panting, but goes still when he produces a cell phone.

"You think you can't kill him," he pants, he's doing something with the phone she can't see, "but you just need a friendly reminder. Just a little push." He grunts as he readjusts his position to pin her underneath him better, applying more weight, fitting himself over her thighs so she can't move her legs. "Look," he orders.

At first, she doesn't. She fights him, turning her head away, her cheek pressed to the cold tile as he holds the cell phone above her. She is determined not to give him the satisfaction of obeying—but then she can hear the crackle of a video starting, the jostle of a camera and poor sound quality she's come to recognize as homemade videos. It's accompanied by laughter that sounds familiar for some reason, laughter that makes her skin prickle. And… the words from a familiar voice.

Gonna fucking ruin you.

Her blood runs cold.

In the video, she hears herself scream.

Please, please don't do this! I'll do anything!

She jerks her neck forward to look, hating that she has to see, but unable to stop herself.

Her shorts ripped down, Nathan's cock just as he forces himself in. Her bloodcurdling scream. She looks away. Can't breathe. But it's not because of the contents of the video. Her eyes slide up to meet Mr. J's.

"How do you—" Her chest rises and falls with her growing panic, her disbelief. Tears slide down her face, slow and unhurried. "Where did you get that?" Something inside of her has opened up, a truth she had always known but would not allow herself to believe. Too horrifying to even consider. Too wrong.

I only let it go as far as I allowed it to.

Just how much of this had he fabricated? How much of her suffering was by the calculated design of his own hands? "Did you know?" she cries. "Did you—did you plan this?" She hears her voice crack at the end, and she has to wipe her tears away with the back of her hand so she can see him clearly. He doesn't respond right away, looking at her with his head cocked, his eyes dark and unreadable, and it's under this careful scrutiny, this piercing stare, that she explodes. "DID YOU KNOW?" she screams. Her hands are balled into fists at her sides. Her whole body is trembling with a kind of fury she's never felt before. She scrambles out from underneath him, forgetting about Nathan, forgetting about everything but this sharp, stabbing pang of betrayal.

She backs herself against the closed door, hyperventilating, staring at Mr. J, seeing him as the monster he really is.

All this time, all this trust she had placed in him. She… she'd actually loved him. She had given that to him. She had given him parts of herself she had never given anyone before. She had given him everything.

She stares at him, a million questions printed on her tongue, clinging to the roof of her mouth, coiled like a spring in her throat. She doesn't even know where to start. There is no question that can accurately capture the depth of her despair, no question that leads anywhere other than straight to the foul, rotten truth.

He rises to his knees, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing blood. Grins.

She feels hot all over, suddenly, boiling, like something about to break open and burst, something that's been left too long on the stove and is about to burn, the water all dried up.

"I hate you," she says, just whisper at first, but then her legs tremble, and her whole body is shaking. She can feel her nostrils flaring with the intensity of her anger. "I HATE YOU!" she screams.

She lunges for him. He must not be expecting her, or maybe he is, and he just doesn't put up any resistance to stop her. She knocks him on his back with her weight, and then she is clawing at his face with her bare hands, snarling, crying, trying to reach him, trying to hurt him. And he is laughing, laughing at her, shaking with the intensity of it, like this is the funniest thing in the world, like he hasn't just broken her heart, creating a chasm right down the middle, like he hasn't caused her insufferable amounts of pain. It's all him. It's been him from the beginning.

"You don't hate me," he says between wheezes of laughter. "You don't hate me at all." He grabs her suddenly, flipping their positions so that she's flat on her back, trapped underneath him. The curtain of his hair blocks out the light as he leans down over her. "You love me," he breathes, shaking her. "That's what's so funny."

Taylor turns her face away, squeezing her eyes shut tight, wishing this was all a bad dream, wishing she could wake from this nightmare that is her life. Every truth she's ever held about the two of them, every hope she clung to for their shared future, it was all built on a filthy lie that he sold to her over and over, and over again, without shame, without conscience.

She sobs without restraint, and he takes the opportunity to nuzzle into the side of her neck, nosing at the rapid pulsing of her carotid artery, so beautifully exposed to him.

"You do love me," he says. "You will always love me, no matter what I do."

"No. No, that's not true," she cries.

She still won't look at him, so he lowers himself even closer, his face hovering over hers. She does turn to look at him then, overwhelmed by him, seeing that, even through her blur of tears, he's looking at her lips, and her heart short circuits when he presses his own to the corner of her open mouth. Not a kiss, not really, just his open mouth on her skin, tasting her, her heart slamming up against her ribcage. Maybe he can taste that, too.

He lets out a sound that sounds like a growl. "Open your mouth," he says, and Taylor's so dizzy from the heat of him, she doesn't understand what it is that he is asking, what he wants. She turns her face further away instead, disobeying, and he grabs her by the back of her neck and sinks his nails into the tender flesh there. She gasps involuntarily, jerking her head back, skull hitting tile.

It hurts, and it's exactly what he wants as he dives towards her, down, forcing his tongue inside her open mouth, licking the roof of it, running his tongue along her rows of teeth, laving at the insides of her mouth like an animal that's been starved for days. It's nasty. There is no finesse, just his urgent desire, eating her up, taking this little bit more from her that she hadn't yet given to him. She whines and tries to close her mouth, push him away, but he hooks a finger behind her lower rows of teeth and wrenches her mouth further open so he can continue his ministrations. His heavy breathing and the sounds their wet mouths make should repulse her, it does repulse her, but there is something else, too, something warm coiling in her lower belly, this thing she's never felt before.

Some people want it.

She doesn't know what this feeling is, or why it feels so good when he slides his thigh in between her legs, and she squirms against the pressure, creating accidental friction, and for some reason that feels good, too.

He removes his finger from her mouth, slotting his lips over hers, and for some reason she doesn't fight him, even though she knows she should. She's always wanted this. She's dreamt about it—not quite like this, in her fantasies it was always more tender, soft—but being the product of his lust, his desire, it takes her breath away.

She kisses him back. At least she thinks she does. She's never done this before. She kisses him like she has something to prove, like she's hungry, too, like his mouth is her battlefield and she is not done wreaking bloodshed. He feeds his tongue into her mouth and groans, and she reaches up—having half a mind to push him away, but instead she grips the lapels of his jacket, needing something to hang onto, to ground herself with.

Their teeth crash and it's ugly and wrong and she's still crying, and she thinks she can taste the salt of her own tears in her mouth. But she supposes it's fitting he should take this from her—the innocence of her first kiss—since he's already taken everything else. Maybe he was meant to have this, too.

When he pulls back, she is breathless and dizzy. He tongues at the little y-shaped scar on his lower lip, his breathing shallow. His lips are all wet, the whites of his eyes gone. She can't imagine how she must look to him.

"You really will let me do anything, won't you?"

She throws her head back and cries out, furious, disoriented, arching her body up to get away, but he doesn't budge.

"Why?" she shouts, crying so hard. "I just want to know why!"

His weight shifts on top of her, where he straddles her hips. His bloodied hands are cupping her face, her jaw, and she has to fight back the bile that wants to creep up her throat.

"Taylor." Her eyes snap up to his. She's never heard him say her name before, not since… not since before, when she was a child. The way he says it now is both sobering and mesmerizing. He cups her face in his hands and she is riveted. "I told you, this is my gift. Everything I did was for you. To save you."

"NO! You're lying! Everything you've said to me has been a lie!"

"You are not. Seeing. The bigger. Picture," he snarls. "You are nothing without me." He shifts his weight above her, and she takes the opportunity to suck in a breath, trying to get air back into lungs. "Nothing without my guiding hand. You will be nothing, if you don't finish this."

In the background, the video is still playing—she had forgotten it momentarily—but now the sounds of Taylor begging for mercy, screaming over and over again, seem to reverberate off the bathroom walls. The disgusting sounds of Nathan's groans, his skin slapping against hers.

"Come on," he urges. She gasps when he licks a hot stripe up the side of her neck, over her pulse point."Finish it. Ruin him."

They both turn to look at Nathan, still very much alive, his chest heaving, split open, so pale beneath the lights, almost luminescent. He's trying to look at the two of them. She can't imagine what he must be thinking.

She shakes her head. Has to look away. Nathan's already dead, one way or the other. She is too ashamed of the significance of her role already. She wants no more part in this.

"I can't, I can't," she sobs.

The Joker exhales, heavy. He was hoping that it wasn't going to have to come to this.

The video did not fulfill its intended purpose—but that's okay. It's better that she knows the truth, here, at the end. Better that she knows that it was him all along, pulling her strings, knows that he was the one who so meticulously stitched those threads into her skin, one by one by one, until there were enough for him to gather into a fist, so that he can play her like a marionette, bending and animating her exactly as he wants her. No need to operate under false pretenses anymore; he knows her love for him is unrefined, unconditional. A love so deep-rooted, so heavily ingrained, there is nothing he can do to take it away.

That is power.

There's a rush to tell her everything, all the sudden, to see just how far he can take this, how far he can push her. And oh, the horror on her face when he tells her the big truth: I killed your mother, the only living family member you had left. Taylor might not believe him, not at first, but he's kept the memory fresh for years for this specific purpose, and he knows he'd be able to rewind the clock, describe the scene to her in all its gory, excruciating detail. But he thinks he'll give this to her later, save it for another time, something else he can store in his arsenal of weaponry to utilize against her.

"I can't, I can't," she sobs, over and over. "I don't want to!"

He is tired of her blubbering.

"Then I'll make you," he snarls.

He reaches for with an intensity that takes her off guard. Grabbing onto the collar of her shirt—warm, soaked with blood—he manhandles her into a kneeling position next to Nathan's body once more. Nathan, who was so easily coaxed into the Joker's web, all he had to do was take the existing seed of the idea and water it, set it in the windowsill and wait for the sun. It didn't take long, the birth of this ugly, festering weed.

Kneeling next to the body like this, Taylor crying as she tries to fight him off, all he can do is shudder from the warm familiarity of it.

"Just like old times," he whispers to her, knowing that she remembers too.

He fits the knife in her hand. No more stalling. He curls his hand around hers, making her hold it, but her strength surprises him, her adrenaline kicking into high gear.

She thrusts her elbow back, into his abdomen, while it's sudden and unexpected, it doesn't hurt. It does, though, make him pull back some, awarding her the leverage to do it again, this time higher, this time her elbow soaring into his solar plexus. He grunts as he falls backwards, and she pushes herself up, crying. He knows she'll go for the door.

He lunges for her, for a leg, for an ankle. Fingers brush against soft flesh. Misses.

She throws open the door with a gasp, gone. He is not smiling as he rears up and goes after her.

It's dark in the bedroom, and the only light is the fluorescents that come pouring out of the bathroom. The fresh air is fortifying, the stink of metallics and sweat momentarily removed.

She is by the sliding glass door, trying to open it, but it must be jammed on the runner because she cannot get it to budge. She turns to him at the last second and ducks out of his way when he lunges for her. He catches her around the waist as she ducks low. She screams, and the force of their sudden movements sends them both crashing to the carpet. Both of them landing on their fronts, with him on top of her.

Taylor lets out a gasp that sounds sharp and wet. Not right. There are words in his mouth as he gets off of her, angrily flips her onto her back—but whatever he was going to say falls away as he looks at her, looks at the knife, wedged in her lower abdomen.

It's almost as if it isn't real, the absurdity of seeing a knife sticking up, this foreign protrusion wedged inside her flesh where it doesn't belong.

She looks down at it herself, seeing for the first time, and he thinks there must not be any pain from the way she is looking at is, as if curious. Intrigued. She looks up to gauge his reaction. And then she moves to reach for it, to remove the knife from her stomach, he thinks, and he slaps her hand away. She'll kill herself if she pulls it out.

"Don't," he snarls. Something catches in his throat when he says it. Christ.

He's angry—frantic—as he shrugs out of his jacket and uses it to apply pressure to the wound, using both hands.

She frowns at him, confused. "You knew it was going to end this way, didn't you? This is—this is what you wanted."

It takes him a moment to compose himself enough for an answer. There's so much blood.

"No," he growls. "No, it's not what I wanted." He spits out the words as if they disgust him. And then he looks at her, pointed, needing her to understand this is not how it was supposed to end. Not like this.

And then, bizarrely, as if she had expected this all along, she finds the strength to smile at him. She huffs out a little laugh, but it's hard, like there's something bubbling in her throat.

"Then… then I took something from you, too," she pants, smiling, because it's so funny. Because she knows she is going to die.

He doesn't say anything, just presses harder.

He can feel her studying him closely in the dim lighting, the soft warmth of her eyes, taking him in, memorizing his face, her tender vulnerability bleeding out, all over him. She is so calm, even as her chest heaves, and he can tell she is starting to feel it now, the shock wearing off.

He wants to shout at her, berate her for her fucking stupidity. He needs to call someone. His cell phone is in the bathroom. He needs to stop the bleeding. He needs to position her so the blood drains back to her heart. He needs sutures. Peroxide.

"Mr. J?" she says, and here comes the blood, sliding out of her mouth, down her chin. It won't stop. He can't stop it. "You were right about one thing," she whispers, her voice so weak, something broken, something that cannot be fixed. Her eyes are starting to flutter shut, and he applies more pressure, panting. Somewhere, there's the sound of sirens in the distance. He grunts as he shifts closer, as if his presence alone can breathe life back into her.

"I—I will always love you." She forces herself to look up at him as she says it, holding onto his eyes. "And now you'll never get to see."

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Author's Notes: As we arrive here, at the end, I find that I have little to say that I haven't said already. Writing this has been an adventure as well as a learning experience—it has challenged and tested my abilities as a writer in a way I never thought possible. Every single word on these pages comes to you with the utmost careful cultivation of thought. I've never enjoyed working on a project as much as I have enjoyed working on this, and indeed, I am very sad to let it go. My one wish is that you leave this story adoring it just as much as I adored writing it. I find myself coming back to it to reread it over and over and over again, which is very uncharacteristic of me. It seems I can never quite get my fill of it—I hope you leave this story feeling a similar way.

As for the ending: I'd imagined several different scenarios taking place, and spent a long time tinkering and toying with all of them, wanting to choose an ending that offered closure but that also stung a little bit emotionally, too. I chose this one because it was the only one where I felt like Taylor got to come out on top, even though she dies. She still wins, and it's the Joker who is left floundering in the end, having underestimated her heart, as Taylor so astutely points out earlier in the chapter.

To conclude, your comments and constructive criticisms have truly made this story into what it is. So many of you came forward with thoughts and ideas that I was able to incorporate into the story, or that provided additional fuel for my own ideas. I hope you will never doubt your power as a reader, even if all you have to utter is a single explanation mark of shock.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. This story may be over, but Taylor and the Joker's story will continue on in Blackout, which has my full attention now that this AU has been completed. Thank you once again for reading.