Alex went back to her apartment to find a worried Harley waiting for her. 'At least the cops aren't here yet,' she thought to herself as her best friend wrapped her up in a huge hug.
"Harley, you have to get out of here," Alex warned.
"Why?" Harley asked, pulling away.
Alex proceeded to tell Harley everything that had happened in the past twelve hours. Harley listened intently.
"Alex, I don't care if the cops come for you! I'll protect you!" she insisted. "Plus, I wanna play around with your new abilities!"
Alex chuckled. "Listen, Harley, come back tomorrow. We can mess around with my new abilities then. I want to be alone."
Harley frowned. "Are you sure? Isn't being alone what caused you to panic and get in this predicament in the first place?"
"While you have a point, I am more confident now. I don't know why. It probably has something to do with the accident. Just... let me go tonight, okay?"
Harley hesitated before answering. "Well, alright. But before I leave, I think you'd like to know that I saw Johnny at Arkham today!"
Alex gasped and smiled. "You did! Oh, and don't call him Johnny."
"Sorry. But I think I might have a liaison with him!" Harley squealed.
Alex's smile grew even wider. "What! I can't believe it! Who?"
"One of his lunchmates is my patient. Jack White, a.k.a, the Joker!" Harley told her. "Is there any message you want for him to pass the next time I see him, which I believe is Saturday?"
"Of course! Tell him I love him and I need him more than ever because things are falling apart without him," Alex said solemnly.
Harley smiled sadly. "Will do, hon. And remember, things will get better. They have to." She gave Alex one more hug before she entered the elevator and left.
Alex sighed and got dinner prepared for herself. she decided to have tacos tonight. She sat down to watch some Spongebob as she ate, needing to take her mind off of everything. After she ate and mindlessly laughed her ass off for a while, Alex decided to turn in for the night. She found it so strange as she changed and lay down in bed. She wasn't scared. Normally being alone and in the dark was one of Alex's least favorite things, but tonight was different. She felt comfortable. Content even. With those thoughts floating around in her head, she slowly drifted off to sleep.
________________________________________________________________________________
This time she heard him before he had the chance to sneak up on her. At some point during the night, Alex must've subconsciously turned on her enhanced hearing, because she could pick out the suspicious swishing sound of a cape amongst the soothing sounds of the city far below.
Her eyes snapped open, and she looked over to her window. Sure enough, even through the fabric of the closed curtains, while using her enhanced sight, Alex could make out the ominous silhouette of Batman looking in.
But he was ready this time. After her first incident, Alex had taken to keeping a gun under her pillow, and a knife in her bedside table's drawer. She sat up and got both out as Batman almost silently opened her window and slipped inside.
Alex could tell she startled him by already being wide awake with weapons in her hands, but he quickly recovered from the shock. He towered over her bed, trying to intimidate her, but she felt a strange sense of calm like she knew that he wouldn't hurt her at all because that's not how Batman did things.
"What are you doing here?" Alex asked confidently, although she had no idea where the confidence came from. "Get out." She cocked the gun.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Batman warned. But Alex held his gaze and didn't lower her weapons.
"I said, get out."
Batman growled. "What were you doing at Ace Chemicals last night?"
"Nothing illegal," Alex answered shortly.
"But you were there when Ace Chemicals blew?" he interrogated.
Alex nodded.
"What happened? Why didn't you get out of there? And why did you leave your Jeep and not go to the police?"
"Slow your roll detective, one question at a time!" Alex exclaimed. "You have no right coming in and questioning me like this. Come back when you have a warrant. Oh wait, you don't get those."
"I am the warrant," Batman sneered.
Alex scoffed. "Not legally you aren't. So get out! Shoo, scram! Vamanos!" she exclaimed.
Batman realized that he wasn't going to get anything else out of her, so he went over the window. "This isn't over," he grumbled before jumping out.
"Ugh. His rude ass couldn't even close the window," she muttered, getting up to do it herself.
________________________________________________________________________________
The following morning, Alex was in the middle of making breakfast when she heard some police sirens from outside. She didn't need her enhanced hearing, her windows were open. She went to her balcony to check, but the cars blew right past her building. She breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed another car pull up to the building. She squinted and her vision sharpened so she could make out the letters on the hood.
𝐆.𝐂.𝐏.𝐃
Alex froze as two detectives got out, along with an officer. One of the detectives she recognized as Bullock.
"Shit!" she exclaimed, rushing back inside. As fast as she could, she scrapped her breakfast and crammed the dishes in the dishwasher to make it look like she wasn't home. She turned the lights off and febreezed the crap out of every room. Then, she heard the elevator ding.
"Fuck you Ken, you couldnt've held them off any longer!" she whispered to herself, darting into the library. She squeezed herself between some of the pipes in the organ and prayed that the detectives wouldn't think to look there.
Then, Alex waited, turning on her enhanced hearing.
"She's gotta be in here somewhere."
"I don't know, the place looks deserted."
"She's the wife of a sick criminal, she knows what she's doing."
"I don't know boss, she-"
BEEEEEEEEEEEP
'Fuck,' Alex said inwardly. She forgot to turn off the oven. The sound rang around in her head, teasing her.
"She's got to be here!"
"I told you! You, search upstairs. You, the living room and balconies. I'll search these rooms over here."
Alex gasped and held her breath as she heard the door to the library creak open. Through a small gap in the pipes, she saw the rotund detective Bullock saunter into the room.
"Hello, Crane. If you're in here, come out now, and no one will get hurt."
He checked behind some chairs and under the table.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are..." he crooned, peeking behind some shelves.
"Hmmm... an organ? Of course, that boojee little Scarecrow would own an organ. How impractical. I mean, what if you have to move? You can't move this." He remarked.
Alex curled her hand into a fist. John loved his organ just as much as she loved her Jeep. But she needed to stay calm, or else she would be discovered.
"Let's see, how to work it, shall we?"
Alex couldn't switch off her enhanced hearing quickly enough before Bullock brought his hands down on the keys, emitting a terrible sound from the organ.
Alex clasped her hands over her mouth and let out a silent scream as her eyes watered from the agonizingly skull-shattering sound of the organ that filled her head. She felt like her brain was leaking out of her ears as Bullock let up and sighed. She heard him mumble something, but she couldn't make it out, as the ringing in her ears was too loud. She did hear the door slam though, so she waited a few minutes before falling from her hiding place and curling up into a ball on the floor. She prayed that they were gone, but she couldn't be sure.
Alex stayed curled up in a ball on the floor beside the organ for what felt like hours, until the ringing in her head slowly died away. Even then, she still had a massive migrane. She stumbled to her medicine cabinet and found some Asprin. She popped a few pills and laid down on the couch. When she looked at the clock, she discovered she'd only been lying in the library for 45 minutes. She groaned and closed her eyes. Not long after she fell asleep, the elevator dinged again.
She scrambled to her feet and prepared to run, but when the door opened, it was Harley. "Oh, geez Harley, you scared me. I thought you were the cops."
After she explained what had happened that morning, Harley smirked. "I think I know what'll get rid of that headache AND destress you. I booked us a wine tasting tour on Gotham Harbor to test out your new senses."
Alex smiled. "Mmmm, that does sound nice. But don't you hate wine?"
"Eh, I'm more of a beer girl, but I'll suck it up for you," Harley explained.
Because Alex didn't have her Jeep, they took Harley's pickup truck to the Harbor, where they got on a yacht and took the tour. It was a great opportunity for Alex to test out her greater sense of taste and smell. She could pick out the taste of the individual ingredients in the wine when it hit her tongue, and she could immediately tell what the aroma of it was without even bringing the glass up to her nose. The other wine tasters and the yacht's staff were so impressed that they started covering her eyes and testing her by giving her food to taste or smell and identify. Alex had a wonderful time, and was starting to like her new senses, even if they were a pain sometimes.
The next day, Harley was working, so Alex decided to stay home and clean around the penthouse before her dreaded date with Dick Grayson. She was in the middle of cleaning the windows when her phone rang. She picked it up and looked at who was calling.
𝑼𝒏𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓
She frowned but picked it up anyway. "Hello? Alexandria Crane speaking. Who is this?"
A voice from the other end of the line chuckled. "Well, this is quite disheartening. After everything we've been through together, you got rid of my number."
Alex's heart stopped. "Oswald. Oswald Cobblepott. Damn it, I knew I should've blocked your number when I had the chance."
"Well, quite frankly, I'm glad you didn't. Otherwise, I'd have to drag my ass up to the penthouse to talk to you. But I don't think you'd want that. No, I'm quite comfortable where I am." There was a pause on the other end of the phone, but Alex said nothing, so Oswald continued. "The windows are looking nice, by the way. Very clean."
Alex gasped and squinted to look outside. She scanned the nearby rooftops for him, and found a man she assumed was him looking in her direction with binoculars, sitting at a nearby rooftop bar. Sure enough, he put down the binoculars and waved, confirming it was him.
"Jesus Ozzy, what are you doing here?" Alex hissed.
"Oh, I always loved that little pet name you had for me. What was yours? Ah, yes, you were my slutty ducky," Oswald teased.
"I hated when you called me that," Alex grumbled, watching him roll his wine glass in his hands.
"Don't lie. You loved it. It made you lust for me, didn't it," Oswald growled playfully.
"Oswald, please, get to the point, or I'm hanging up," Alex huffed.
He sighed. "Well, at least you said please. Now, I need you to go down to the parking garage for me. There's a little surprise for you in there."
Alex made her way over to the elevator and paused before calling it. "This 'little surprise' won't kill me, will it?" she asked, knowing how his mind worked.
"No, no. No tricks. I promise," Oswald cooed.
She rolled her eyes and called the elevator. The whole ride down, Oswald was babbling in her ear, but she blocked him out. "All right, I'm in the garage," she told him. "What am I doing here."
"Use your eyes, dear. You were always bad at that." Oswald laughed.
Alex was about to yell at him when she realized what Oswald wanted her to see. "My, my, my... MY JEEP!" she exclaimed, running over to it with tears in her eyes. "Ozzy, did you do this? Why? Wait, it isn't trapped, is it?"
"Always so suspicious of me, love, and why? After all I've done for you? Come on now... there is no catch... except for this." Alex groaned, but Oswald kept talking. "Yes, I broke it out of the police compound for you, or rather, a few of my men did, but I needed you to have it. Meet me in the Iceberg Lounge in an hour. And dress your best," Oswald told her before hanging up.
Alex sighed and looked at the time. She had a few hours before she needed to meet Dick, so she decided she could make it and went up to change.