Just a friendly warning- this chapter contains spoilers for the CI episode "Frame". Don't read if you haven't seen it.

The lawyer was thin and middle-aged, dressed in a musty brown suit yet carrying a sharp leather briefcase. He sat next to the Joker with his arms under the table and his briefcase on top of it. The Joker seemed to have forgotten his questions about Brady, instead focusing an excited attention on his lawyer.

After a quick, quiet discussion with his attorney, the Joker tilted his head to the side, pointing alternately at Goren and Eames. "I wonder... are you two the only members of your squad? I could have sworn the little pigeon told me about another..." He grinned widely as he spoke, and his yellowed teeth glinted.

Goren felt his heart drop. Fuck. Don't let it show. Don't let him know Mike is one of the few people in your world who doesn't hate you. Don't let him know. He's bluffing. He has to be.

"It'd be a shame if something happened to him, ahaha..."

"Is..." Goren put his head in one hand. "Is that a threat?"

"It's an offer. A suggestion for a tradeoff, Bobby."

The fingers on the hand Goren had laid on the table slowly drew inward until the hand was a tightly-balled fist. The fist hit the table, and Goren sat up.

Eames, doing a better job at concealing her anger, pulled up a chair next to Goren and sat down.

"Good, good!" said the Joker. "Down to business, then." He gestured for the briefcase, and the man next to him slid it over. The Joker clicked open each end, and began to lift it open.

Goren blinked, having been previously distracted with his concern for Logan and realizing a little late that allowing someone who had an affiliation with the Joker to bring in an unchecked briefcase wasn't the brightest idea. "Hey, hold o-"

The Joker started giggling, childlike and unbidden, loud and reverberating. The noise grew in intensity and had an unreal and otherworldly quality to it. Goren reached across the table to stop the Joker, but he'd acted too late. As the Joker was laughing he had brought his eyes to Goren's and pulled something heavy and metallic out of the suitcase.

Eames jumped back. "Sh-"

Goren, awkwardly leaned over the table, reached for his pistol as quickly as he could in an attempt to bring it up level with the Joker's smiling, laughing face. He would have, had he not felt something pressing the back of his neck. The guard at the door. Shit.

The window guard gaped, unsure of how to act. Still laughing and still looking at Goren, the Joker leveled his gun with the guard's head and pulled the trigger.

The Joker quieted his mirth, being satisfied with instead giving an order.

"Drrrrrrop it, Goren!"

The weapon made a hideous clanging noise when it hit the metal table. The Joker gestured with his gun, and his friend the assumed attorney lightly dragged it toward him and set it in the briefcase.

Goren looked around for an escape route, any escape route. Any chance. The Joker's eyebrows went up. "Door's locked, buddy, as is the one to the room on the other side of the glass. Nobody but your buds over there can see us, and thanks to this," he tapped the silencer on his pistol on the side of his head, "nobody's gonna hear us. Yous tarting to sweat, Bobby? You of all people should've seen this coming!"

Goren was still thinking. There had to be something he could do. The Joker motioned at the door guard, who threw him a set of keys with the hand that wasn't holding a gun to Goren's head. The Joker set his pistol down, then matter-of-factly unlocked his handcuffs, rubbed his wrists, and shook his fingers out.

He picked the gun back up, looking again at Goren. "Well, to be fair, ya did, didn't you? You were just a little late, especially for him, ahahaaa." The Joker gestured at the staring dead guard crumpled in the corner.

The man in the brown suit unloaded the rest of the case's contents. A gas mask. Guns. A canister. The canister was jet black metal, with a red plastic cap and a crudely drawn white skull and crossbones on the side. The Joker popped a cap off of the top of the canister, revealing a bright red button.

"Hey, boss, why's there only one gas mask?" The man to the right of the Joker frowned and adjusted his glasses. "You said we'd need one each, right?"

"Huh." said the Joker, looking down at the mask and shooting the man at his side twice in the chest.

Goren sneered and came to the conclusion that speaking could not make his situation any worse than it already was. "You, you're just going to end it like this, Joker?"

The Joker raised his eyebrows, frowned, and gave a "Why not?" expression.

"You pathetic, juvenile little clown, you-"

"Hey! That's hardly fair, now det-"

"You disgusting, you perverse little vagrant! You twisted little misfit monster!"

"Enough with the verbal abuse, ya twat! Don't act as if you aren't scared, Bobby!"

"I've known fear, Joker!" Goren, hunched over the table threatened by two lethal weapons and who knows what in the canister on the table, thought about the overwhelming dread he'd felt when he'd had to pry open the trunk of that police car with a crowbar, when he'd received the test results, or the times he'd realized that the beautiful blond English woman was back. "I've known... I've known despair, okay? The, the one person I was ever afraid of, she's gone. This, this is nothing. You're nothing, Joker."

The Joker pouted, putting the outside of one wrist under his chin and leaning on it.

Goren decided in that moment to take his chances. He lunged the rest of the way across the table, making a grab for the Joker's vest. He made it, knocking the man out of his chair and onto the floor, but the harsh blow on the back of his head from the man behind him stopped his attack from reaching completion. Eames used the Joker's momentary incapacitated state to reach for her gun, but her wrist was quickly grabbed by the guard.

"Damn!" said the Joker a few moments later, slamming one forearm on the table and pulling himself back up. Goren groaned and started to rise from the table, but the Joker (still attempting to stand) brought his gun level with Goren's eyes.

"I didn't know you had it in you! Ahaha!" The Joker pulled his chair back up off of the floor, slammed it on the ground, and sat, leaning back with his legs apart. He then looked at his (watchless) wrist, made a startled expression, and mumbled something about time.

"Oh, ah, must've gotten that from your father, eh?" The Joker reached into his vest and pulled out a switchblade, which he happily flicked out, revealing a polished and very sharp knife. "Let me tell you about my father."

He grabbed under Goren's chin, placing the side of the blade on his face, just to the left of his mouth.

"Stop it!" yelled Eames, trying to pull her arm away.

"Just... just go on and get it over and done with!" said Goren. "I'm tired of this, you sick little f-." The Joker pressed the knife harder against Goren, then pursed his lips, looking contemplative. "Okay!" he said suddenly, with a smile. He sat down the gun and knife, strapped on the gas mask, and moved the canister to the center of the table, pushing down hard with his thumb on the top.

A hissing noise filled the small room.

Goren managed a morbid smile. "That's it, then?"

"Yep!"

"I thought I was a new friend of yours, Joker."

"You think alotta things." He gestured to the container and around to the colorless gas escaping from it, filling the room. "You've got about twenty seconds before this takes full effect, by the way."

The guard, bemused, turned toward the door. "Hey, uh, Joker..." the Joker looked at him and sighed. "Wh, what about-" Two in the head. The guard finally let go of Eames.

The Joker again checked his imaginary watch. "You two have got about fifteeeeeen seconds!"

"You're just going to-"

"Twelve, buddy! I enjoyed it, rest assured! The accomodations weren't the best, but..."

"But, you-"

"Ten seconds! See you later! I rrrreally do hope so, at least! Ahahahaaaaaa..."

Goren felt his world slipping away. He'd always fancied he'd be killed in some sort of conspiracy, or by a disgruntled suspect, or that Nicole would have finally enacted her fit of revenge on yet another man, or, hell, that he'd end up dying in prison.

A blurred Joker nodded towards the mirror. "I'm going to unlock the door out of that, ah, room over there. Let's hope your superiors make it in here on time, hmm?"

Things were getting so hazy. Time? What?

"Oh, and your friend. The, uh, the unpleasant, smartass guy. He's fine. On his way back from a burger place, in fact. Wait'll he sees what you two've gotten yourselves into!"

Everything seemed so quiet and peaceful now, and Goren couldn't see anymore. He was numbed, but he thought he felt Eames slowly fall on top of him. He heard the Joker laugh and laugh and laugh, a noise that seemed to echo upon itself and reverberate endlessly. Then everything was quiet.

Goren! Hey!

Goren!

What?

Eames! Detective!

Detective Eames! Hey, Goren!

Damn, they-

We what? Wait, we're not dead?

What the hell happened? Eames, why is she-

HEY! Goren! What-

We're alive?

Shit! What the hell did he do to them? And how the hell did he get out?

Don't ask me! Look, if you two can hear me, an ambulance is on its way, so hang tight, okay?

Okay.

"I, uh, I could hear you guys," said Goren, now awake and wearing a worried expression. Carver, Logan, and Deakins jumped. Goren had refused to rest, and had just entered the previously silent room with the hospital bed Eames was in, her small frame taking much longer to come back to life. "When you all came in."

"Knock next time, would you?" asked Carver as genially as he could.

Logan and Carver stood at the front of the bed, and Deakins had reclined in a chair near the head of it before being startled. Goren, still in a hospital gown, pulled up a chair opposite Deakins.

"I could, uh, hear you guys when I was in-and-out."

"Hmm," said Carver, "Well, that would be fair, considering how we had to stand by and watch as that madman assaulted and tormented two of our finest officers." Logan rolled his eyes. The finest officer who was awake raised his eyebrows at the flattery.

"I, uh..." Deakins turned in his chair toward Goren for emphasis. "I didn't think he was going to stop, to be perfectly honest."

"He's, he's really..." Goren sighed. "He'll never stop. He, uh..." Goren turned around, scratching the back of his head. After staring off into space for a moment, he looked down at Eames. "This is a guy who won't ever stop."

Carver shook his head. Deakins turned again to Goren. "They figured out what he used on you two, by the way."

"I was thinking, but... not nitrous oxide, though? Something, something like xenon or sevoflurane?"

"Yes. Goren, h-"

"That's what I thought. I mean, that's what I... that's what I'd hoped. The Joker. Laughing gas. But, uh, but nitrous oxide would have come out of the canister wrong, it would have been too cold, and, and it wouldn't have fit his theme, his theatrics, haha..."

Carver put a hand on his forehead. "Either way, you two should be quite fine." Goren raised his eyebrows. Carver smiled. "Physically, anyway."

Goren smiled down at Eames and brushed some hair out of her face.

"I, uh, I'm going to go find my things and change. I think, I think that I'll be okay to do that." He looked up at Carver for permission, and Carver frowned and nodded.

"Let's just hope he's not waiting in my room for me with that fuckin' grin on his face."