The whole wasn’t the easiest way to get back inside the room my mother and I, along with the rest of the hostages, were kept in, but it was the fastest, and with the mood the Joker’d be in when he’d get up, I was going to need the speed. Not that I was afraid to get beaten. I was used to it. But human instincts never die, and if I had a choice, I’d rather not get pummeled. Not that I had a choice. I was getting pummeled either way, but at least I’d earned it this time. And I was just as glad I did.

It wasn’t the first time I’d returned Batman the favor he gave my mother and I, though I doubted he remembered it. Only it had only been with a thug, so it wasn’t half so difficult. I simply knocked some boxes with some heavy stuff over him, which fell right on top of him, and scrammed before anyone saw me.

I’d tried to avoid being seen again, but I couldn’t avoid it this time, and he wasn’t exactly moving fast enough to avoid that board, so I had a choice. Keep some skin and loose the only light of hope my mom and I still clung to, or well, not. I simply had to go with the second choice.

I looked up as I began to stand up to see my mother, her face full of worry and hurt.

“Emily, how could you!” she said desperately.

“Easy! You see, I just climbed through this hole, then I-“

“That’s not what I meant and you know it! Oh, you’re just like your father!”

I knew it vexed her no end, but I liked being like my father, not that I had a clue who he was. Mom didn’t like to talk about it. She loved him, and missed him, and I think she was simply afraid of bringing up the past. So I stopped pressing the matter.

“I’ve helped before,” I said, snatching up a stick and scratching some letters in the ground. I didn’t have a reason. I just did that occasionally, for the practice. The problem was, I only did it in deep thought, so my letters would accidentally switch from English use, to French, to, occasionally, the German mom was attempting to teach me, so that it was uncomprehendable mess of letters, unless you realized I’d switched languages somewhere along the middle

Mom had taught me pretty well, actually. With sticks and dirt, she taught me to read, write, do math. She taught me French, which I had mastered, and was starting German with me. Even if I might never get the chance to use it in the real world, learning was still learning. Besides, what else was I going to do all day? We occasionally would get our hands on some newspaper articles, and save them. They were stacked under one of the boxes we slept near.

Mom also tried to teach me religion, and did rather successfully, to the point where I had a good concept about around five different world religions. Mom was Christian, though she said dad hadn’t been. I never particularly cared to follow mom on that road. If God was so kind and wonderful and good, then why had Joker kept me and mom and used us as punching bags. Not that we were treated special or anything. He kept a few different hostages, simply to take his stress out on. The ones that lived to tell the tale were few, and some he simply blew the brains out of. Most of the live ones were on the brink of insanity, and in some ways, so was my mother. She was always nervous, and was looking so pale and sickly lately. Nothing seemed to affect me though. I guess it’s easier to survive a barren waste land if you were brought up in it, than if you were simply dragged into it. And so was the case of my mother.

But she still believed, and it was He and I that kept her sane. Every night she’d say “A light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it.” Every night.

“Yes but never like this,” she said, looking more and more afraid by the moment. Had I really gone to far this time?

“BAM!” The steel door was wrenched open.

“EMILLLLLLLLLYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!”

I though maybe I had.

He snatched my arm, hoisting me up off the ground, while Harley merely stood in the background. I knew she hated seeing me get beaten up, but she certainly was a far cry from stopping him.

“Why, whatever is the matter?” I said in my cute and sinless voice.

“Don’t you play innocent with me; I know that was you who knocked me down.”

Damn. I hated it when he was right. I cut the innocent act and scowled.

“You seem to forget our meeting with Mr. Led Pipe!” he said, holding up a rather dented looking pipe. And some of the dents were molded from me.

“No, I haven’t. But what are you going to do? Kill me? Ha! As if you could! I’m not like the rest of your little pawns! I was raised in the hell, and I haven’t had the spirit knocked out of me like the others, and you know it!” I said, spitting in his face. “In this world there are fates much worse than death!”

Bad move McNight. Very bad move.

He whipped the spit from his face, looking about ready to burst, and was suddenly as calm as a breeze. These were the times that he scarred me the most.

He dropped me, walking coolly over to mother. He savagely twisted her arm around her back.

“No, you won’t break for yourself, but how about your mother?!”

I was silent, breathing heavily. No....Dear God no....He wouldn’t! He couldn’t.

“No, wait....” I said. He had put the gun to mother’s temple, with no intention to shoot, but should either of us make the wrong move…... I knew that, and didn’t make a move.

“Run Emily! Get out of here!” she screamed, trying to shove him away, which only caused him to pull the trigger.

“BANG!”

And that was all it took. I didn’t wait to see my mother’s body hit the ground, I was gone. I was like a flash of lighting, there one minute, and then out. No one could catch me. I blended in perfectly with the night, and there was no one fast enough to catch me. The warehouse was on the very, very far side of Gotham, and from a few maps I’d seen, I had the city memorized by heart, always imagining where I’d go and what I’d do once I got out.

It all hit me kind a hard. My stubbornness had just killed my mother. She was the only reason I stayed in that hell, and with her dead, nothing was holding me back.

Well, I was out now, and I would’ve given all the new freedoms suddenly thrust upon me to be back in.

Step One: Find Batman, and get him to help me find my father.

Step Two: Calculate a very cruel and tormenting revenge for the Joker.

But there was just one problem.

Step One.

Ok, so I needed to make a tracer. Easy enough. I made a crude one (and I mean very crude. I consider having to resort to duct tape rather crude), and tested it out with rats, then a cat, and would have tried it on people, but it was too large and cumbersome. It would have been noticed in an instant. But would it on a car? That’s what I was going for. Somehow, someway, I’d have to arrange someone to commit a crime (at the very least a mugging) and, with any luck, Batman’d arrive on the scene. If I was really lucky, he’d bring the Batmobile, and if God was truly smiling down on me, it’d stay on.

The odds were against me.

“Look, you don’t have to hurt anyone, and you don’t have to fight. But your fast, and all you have to do is pretend to mug someone, lure Batman away, and presto! You and I are both happy!”

“I’m still not sure...”

I sighed and pulled out the credit card I’d pickpoketed that evening.

“Oh! Good for ten thousand dollars, no payments for up to a year! My, my! Maybe I should just keep this, and-“

“Ok,” he said, reaching for it.

“Not so fast!” I said, pulling my hand away. “I’ll watch you. If you get Batman far enough away, it’ll be sitting there, waiting for you, underneath that trash can,” I said, pointing to one.

“How can I trust you?”

“I am hurt! You don’t trust me? Tell you what! If it isn’t there, may God strike me dead! Or the Joker. Whichever comes first.”

He wasn’t buying it, but believe it or else, the card was going to be there. I certainly didn’t care about the money, and what use did I have for money at this point? Besides, I had no ID. Neither did Tommy, that was true, but it wasn’t my fault if the kid wasn’t bright enough to figure out that he’d need and ID card.

“So? Deal?”

“Umm....”

“Going once...”

“Oh fine!” he said. “Two O’clock, this alley way, get him as far as the Expo Center, I got it! I got it!”

...

“Come on, just five minutes, that’s all I need,” I prayed. I wasn’t praying to God in specific. Hell, I’d pray to Osiris and Ra if they helped me. “Come on Tommy, he’s here so get it right!”

I lay, hunkered down in the shadows, impossible to see unless you had night vision goggles or something. And there I wait. Any second now….Bingo! That’s it Tommy, run like your life depends on it! (Which coincidentally, it did)

I tore out of the shadows, sliding the credit card under the trash can. I had about a minute to do this right.

“Please don’t let anyone else from the Batclan find me, and please duct tape, please really be what keeps the world together!”

Done! I tested it. The little dot beeped along with mine as the little map on the cell phone screen showed where it was, and where I was. Hopefully this would work.

“Uh-oh,” I thought, as batman came back into the alley way with Tommy’s arm pinned behind his back.

“...Who put you up to this?” He said, smashing Tommy’s face against the brick wall. If he squealed, he could just forget about that credit card.

“I told you! I don’t know who she was man! She just said she’d give me ten thou to mug someone! I’d never seen her before in my life!”

Good boy Tommy. Batman growled and let Tommy go; he took off as fast as his feet could take him. Operation Revenge was underway, with success so far, but I was far from out of the woods yet.

Truth be told, I was dead scared. I was almost dead certain, that one of Joker’s lackeys had been trailing me for the past day, and I was scared enough of Joker before. I had told him off on an adrenalin rush. Once the rush leaves you, you’re on your own.

I waited and as soon as the batmobile took off, I hunkered myself into the shadows, to wait to see where it’d stop. At three A.M it finally seemed to have found a permanent nesting place, so I moved. I ran for miles and as fast as I could. I had pretty good stamina for someone like me, but after a mile, I had to reduce to a walk for a little ways. It must have been at least six in the morning by the time I reached the solid rock wall that my tracer said the batmobile was just behind. True, it’d be highly probable for my tracer to go on the frits, but I wasn’t buying it.

I pocked around the wall. There had to be a secret button, or trap door or something! While looking so intensely, I lost focus, and tripped over a stone, landing right smack against the rock wall. Only I wasn’t against the wall. I was through it!

“Of course! A hologram! That’s genius!” I thought aloud, then quickly shut up, hearing voices.

“You don’t thank that the girl we saw last night had anything to do with this, did you?”

“I don’t know...And the boy didn’t even actually mug anyone, so what’s the point of sending me on a wild goose chase?”

I looked around for something to hide behind, realizing that I was merely around a corner of the cavern, and could easily be seen if I didn’t find a place to hide myself. I saw the batmobile, and hunkered myself down behind one wheel. I looked back up, to see what Robin and Batman were talking about, but Batman was gone.

“Uh-oh,” I thought to myself.

Some one grabbed my shoulder from behind and I shrieked, crumpling into a little ball, crying out in French.

“No Joker, don’t hurt me again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I was whimpering in French....I had vivid memories of the unfair beating I’d gotten and couldn’t move for days after Batman had spoiled one of Jokers traps. I often reverted back into French when I was begging the Joker for mercy. Don’t ask me why, it’s just something I did. The way my letters switched from French into English.

Batman looked kind of startled.

“Who are you?” He said, getting me to stand up, though I still looked petrified. “Why are you here? How’d you get in here?”

I took in a few deep breaths to regain my composure.

“Could I sit down? I’ve been running for three hours, and-“

“Three hours?”

“Well, your cave wasn’t exactly conveniently placed,” I said.

He motioned to a chair, and I sat, Robin sitting just across from me, a confused look on his face.

“First off, how’d you get in here?”

“That wall wasn’t exactly solid,” I said, rubbing the bruise on my cheek forming where I’d hit the stone floor.

“How’d you find the Batcave?”

“My tracer,” I said, tossing him my handheld. It really was just a bit of a converted cell phone, but it worked fine. I pointed out the other one, still being held on by duct tape, under the car, by the back wheel.

“Why are you here?” he asked me.

“I...I was hoping you could help me.”

“Help you? How?”

“I’m...I’m trying to find my father and…well, I don’t know who he is, or where to look or anything!”

“But why not go to the police?”

“That would only complicate an already messy situation....”

“Oh? How?”

No...I really didn’t want to talk about this…about my mother being dead....

“When I was little….my mother and I were used as hostages by the Joker, and we stayed alive, along with a few of the other hostages he kept....and, well....last night, when I helped you-“

“So that was you!”

“Well I couldn’t very well watch you get killed, could I?!” I said angry and upset. “Well, he knew it was me, and so, instead of killing me, he…murdered my mother!” And I suddenly burst into tears. I hadn’t cried over my mother’s death for the past forty eight hours. There wasn’t enough time. It was too sudden and too much of a shock for me. I simply ran, planned, and executed. Now, for the first time, I was crying over it.

I whipped away the small amount of tears. No, I was going to get through this. It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

“So? Can you help me?”

Batman was silent for a while, thinking.

“What’s your name?”

“Emily McNight.”

This seemed to strike him. The rest of my information seemed to put him ill at ease, but the look of shock on his face now was startling.

“Uhh...did I say something?”

“I’m gonna need to take a blood test,” he said, swiftly turning around and opening a file cabinet with all sorts of syringes and pills. “It might hurt a little,” he said, poking me and drawing out my blood. I sat perfectly still. I felt like saying after being used as a punching bag for twelve years, having a little blood drawn wasn’t so bad.

“Robin, go get her a blanket and some food while I look at this,” Batman said.

But blood tests don’t lie.

“My God...” I thought aloud, yet softly to myself. “I have a daughter...”