Jester

Hall of Mirrors.

She made it back to the funhouse, and as much as she would rather not listen to the clown she looked around the building for the hall of mirrors he spoke of. Wandering around the halls of the funhouse wasn't any fun, whispers kept calling to her but she ignored them.

That is until she felt a pain in her chest. It was getting hard to breathe and she fell to her knees.

"How many times must we go over this my little Jester?" It was the clown again. She focused a little more on the memory and not the fact that her shirt was now bloodied.

She was in the funhouse, but it was better lit. Like it had been in previous memory clips she noticed.

"You aren't the hero. So you need to stop acting like one or we'll have an unfortunate accident." He sounded angry, but it was the quiet kind.

"There were innocent children in that building." He laughed at her remark.

"No one is truly innocent. They just haven't grown up yet."

"They don't deserve to die because of what they might do in the future." The clown glared at her and she could feel the fear pulsing through her veins.

"If I didn't know any better I'd say you still had a bleeding heart for the city that abandoned you. Every citizen in Gotham knows who I am. Any one of them could save you from me. Instead, they turn a blind eye to your begging." He got so much closer and grabbed her by the throat. "I guess I'll just have to cut it out of you." He let out a menacing chuckle and pulled out a knife.

A second clown joined the first and shook his head.

"You know this wouldn't be so painful if you just accepted the memories instead of fighting them back." The second clown waved off the memory like it was nothing. "Like the real version of me said, you should look through the hall of mirrors. Your memories will come to you, and without fighting to keep them out you shouldn't gain more of those scars."

She closed her eyes and opened them again slowly. Her hand was covered in blood, but the other clown was different than the one she's seen before.

'Is my subconscious a version of him?' She wondered as she picked herself up and made it to the hall of mirrors. She walked through the first part of it not really understanding why she was there in the first place.

"It'll be okay, baby. I know Mr. J can get moody at times, but he had the best intentions I'm sure."

She looked in the mirror next to her and saw a blonde woman with smudged white makeup.

"I know mama. It still hurts though." The woman was bandaging one of the tally marks she had branded into her back. The fourth one by the look of it.

She moved her hand to cover the scars that had surfaced the other night. In the mirror, a hyena ran into the room and licked her face.

"Hey, Bud." She smiled and pet the hyena. The woman smiled and also pet the hyena before the image disappeared. No scars surfaced with the memory, possibly because the scars were already there, but she'd hoped that maybe the other potential scars wouldn't surface.

She continued down the maze of mirrors since it wasn't really a hallway. Kinda misleading but she didn't choose the name of the place.

There wasn't any sound to the images on the mirror, but she watched anyways.

There were two guys in the mirror, in a place that looked like a cave. One hit the other one and the two exchanged words. The one that did the hitting walked in her direction while the other one kept up his hurt. He didn't look all that hurt, but he was sure acting as if it hurt. The image in the mirror blurred before changing the people and location in it. They were on a ship and there was a black-haired woman sitting with her. It was comforting, even if she felt at a loss for the memory. The image faded away and she moved on to another one.

The next memory didn't show up in the mirror, but the slight burning under her skin brought her to her knees. She could hear laughter but her vision was blurry, almost like she was underwater.

"I told you to stop fighting it. This is your trip to Ace. But it seems you already know that don't you?"

She shook her head trying to get the clown out of it. Opening her eyes again she noticed her hands were in a puddle of black. 'Where did this come from?' She got back on her feet and glanced at a mirror. Her hair was a bright auburn, and her skin and eyes were a lighter shade. Looks like instead of a scar, she's reverted back to an old appearance.

Unsure of the time that's passed she kept walking through the maze with the mirrors showing her different memories of hers. Some pleasant, some she would have been fine not knowing happened to her at all. It seemed that the second clown was right about the scars. With each memory that she saw through the mirrors, no scar surfaced. She was grateful for that since she watched two separate memories with explosions in them. Not to mention after the first explosion two of her limbs were replaced with bionics.

By the end of the maze, she was more sure of who she used to be and who she needed to be from now on. Not everything was back, that she was sure of but now she had some work to do.

Pulling her old Jester costume out of the pocket she glanced back at her reflection in the last mirror from the maze.

'You can do this Jessica. They'll need you, even if they don't show it.' Her reflection was supportive and she nodded back to herself. She wrapped her broken hand so it would somewhat heal in the right place and not look all mangled, honestly, she shouldn't be using it but there was work to be done.

Over the next couple of weeks, she dug up some old data and filed away some new information. Now all that was left was to reacquaint with old contacts. Good thing it was Halloween, she could hide in plain sight and none would be the wiser.

She dawned on the old costume and pulled her car back to her through a pocket. 'Hopefully, Conner wouldn't be too mad,' she thought with a sad smile. This time she would be her own Jester and not Joker's brat.

She situated her car with the supplies she'd need and hit the town. Batman wouldn't be too happy with her, but she needed to get this done. If only Robin and his little crew of women didn't try to stop her.

She kept driving hoping to deter them from following, unfortunately, they didn't seem to understand. Using an old trick that Joker suggested during a chase, she opened a pocket in front of the car and within the pocket, she turned the car around and drove in the other direction. It tripped the young heroes up a bit, but they seemed to want to keep chasing her.

With a shake of her head, she opened multiple pockets and transported each of them to the Batcave.

The four teens looked at each other than at their surroundings.

"That can't be good," Robin stated just as Batman entered the cave.