“What’s the matter, Princess?” he said after I did not respond to his kiss. I couldn’t help it. I just stared. They were the eyes that I had been dying to see, the lips I had wanted to feel so badly. The smirk was so clearly fixed upon his face that I was forced to believe it wasn’t just my imagination. His gloved fingers suddenly grasped my chin tightly, but I had become so used to that. I barely even responded to it either. “What’s wrong with you?” he said again. It sounded as if he was speaking more to himself than to me. Again, I said nothing, though my lips had parted as if I were going to. I wanted to; I just didn’t know what to say. But before I could think of anything, he tossed my face to the side with a frustrated snarl. “Go through all this trouble to save a woman, and I don’t even get a thank you.”
My head snapped back up. I gritted my teeth. All this trouble to save me? I wondered how much trouble it took him, and wished that it had taken even more. He noticed my reaction finally and approached me again, the same smirk planted across his red lips. For a moment, we just stood there under the fluorescent lights. His face was a cool smirk; mine had turned into a dangerous glare. I waited until his mouth opened, until the red lips moved to form more words. After that, I threw all my weight into my right arm. It instantly shot back and then forward again, a right hook that went straight into the Joker’s jaw. It made me even dizzier to do it, but he deserved it. I watched him fall to the ground from the force of my punch, laughing while he did so. And then I got down onto my knees, pressing my right one into his back to keep him on the floor. “Save me!” I cried, finally finding my voice. I grabbed a fistful of the greasy hair and pulled his head up, forcing him to look at me. “You let me rot!” I shouted in his face. “I sat here and took shock treatments and medication that I didn’t need!” My voice rose from shouts to shrieks within seconds, until I was almost in tears and screaming in his face. “You let him rape me! For months! I laid in this damned room at night, wishing I would die, that I could kill myself!”
My breathing had increased from my incredible anger, and I picked the Joker’s head up even more and then slammed it straight into the tiled floor. There was no response from him whatsoever when I brought it back up. “You went through so much trouble?” I screamed and slammed his forehead down again, until a line of blood began to trace its way down his face. “And you want a thank you?” Again, and the blood increased. So did his smile. So did my anger. “FUCK YOU!”
I thought I was going to kill him. Part of me wanted to do it, and I even began to lift up his head again by the green strands of hair. But the Joker caught me completely off guard and rolled over to the left. I lost my balance, underestimating how strong he was. I had forgotten, and I had probably lost a definite amount of weight while in Arkham. My right knee fell to the floor instead, making me straddle his waist. His hands instantly seized my wrists to keep me from fighting back. The Joker brought my arms down to the floor then, pinning my forearms to the tile with his hands. I was forced down close to him, so that our lips almost touched again. “I’m sure you want to,” was all he said. The blood had dripped onto his lips now, and he licked them before laughing right in my face.
I snarled with my jaw clenched tight, fighting to try to bring my arms back up from the floor. But he wouldn’t let up. “Let go of me!” I shrieked, pulling left and right to try to loosen his grip. Suddenly, all at once, he let go. I flew backward from trying to pull away so hard and fell onto the floor. Before I could fight him back again, the Joker stood up and wiped the blood from his mouth and side of his face. Looking at the blood on his hands, I saw his eyes move back to me. Without warning, he brought the back of his bloodied hand across my cheek.
He used the same hand to restrain me again, this time by wrapping his fingers around my neck. He clenched it tightly, tighter than he ever had to me before, that I could remember. I reached up and grabbed his wrist, with both of my hands. My fingernails began to dig into it, struggling to get him to let go. But he didn’t; he only lifted me up against the wall from the floor. “You want me to let go?” he muttered, dangerously. Like mine, his voice rose quickly, to a furious undertone. “You want to rot here again?” His grip tightened. I had to fight to breathe. “Or do you still want to die?” he continued. “Because I can do that too! I got through it when I thought you were dead, and I can do it again, especially if I know for sure that you’re no longer breathing and that it was by my hands, Princess!”
