Paper Planes

XXII

A/N: Typically I like to stick to Joker pictures for the chapter headers, BUT I stumbled across this picture tonight and I literally screamed. Look at those earrings!!!!!! Omfg. Ya'll have officially been blessed.

YOU'RE WELCOME

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"The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
—Maya Angelou

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"Any threes?"

"Go fish."

Ember sighed, shifting forward in her seat as she retrieved a fresh card from the deck. The blood red tablecloth still clung to the circular wooden table, rows of extinguished cinnamon candles lining the island counter as Horton chewed his bottom lip.

"Any fives?" The henchman wondered, his gaze glued to his hand of cards.

Ember eyed her two fives, her chapping lips pulling into a frown as she maneuvered them from her hand and tossed them across the table.

Horton simply snickered in response, his pudgy fingers closing around the corners of the cards as he added them to his stack.

"Do you have a seven?" The woman groaned, leaning back in the seat as she irritably tapped her foot. Her eyes trailed over the table before her, the very same one that Joker had fucked her on just last night.

She felt a blush creep onto her cheeks at the thought of it, butterflies erupting in her belly as Horton raised a brow.

"Go fish." He murmured, slightly puzzled by the cheerful expression plastered on the womans makeup-less face as she let out a groan.

"I'm total shit at card games." Ember complained, tearing her back away from the chair as she snatched up a new card.

She tore the flimsy laminated paper from the heaping stack, flipping it over to view it when her heart immediately plummeted.

A joker card sat in her grasp, her breaths growing jagged as she immediately found herself missing the painted-face man.

"What is it?" Horton wondered, but his question was answered the moment the front door swung open.

The door nearly swung off the hinges, colliding with the already destroyed drywall as Grim stumbled into the house. Horton and Ember's eyes widened at the thrashing individual lay draped over his shoulder, his fists colliding with Grim's back as he shouted for mercy.

Grim and the unknown man disappeared from sight, most likely on their way to the very first room Ember lay in as she awaited her possible death that first night.

An abundance of purple finally entered the premises. The womans heart nearly burst from her chest at the sight of him, dressed cleanly in his trademark attire as he kicked the door closed with his heel.

His paint was messy, a smear of black sat several inches above his eyebrow as several sploches of skin on his chin and forehead were shining through. The red Glasgow grin was smearing, the paint seeping into the deep cracks and crevices of his scars as his dark eyes met Ember's.