What if there was a place...

She had sat in stunned silence as she saw his uncovered face for the first time there in the half light of the flickering lamps. For the next week, there were few words spoken between them, and Mae had her own faults to hide in the darkness. She had positioned herself on the bench carefully to avoid allowing him to see the journal as she wrote.

The words had flowed so easily in the days following that evening. It almost seemed effortless to write it, like the poem already existed and all she had to do was hold the pencil and let it glide over the paper. The words had settled in her mind as she wrote, and she held it easily in her memory. As she whispered the words here in her bed, she realized that the man who sat beside her in the station should never see it - he'd know, he'd know that her imagination had carved out this likeness of him in her poem. She'd have to absolutely ensure that he could never wrestle the journal away from her again.

She sat up and covered her face with her hands, trying to break free from her deep reverie and attempting to bring her senses back into the present moment.

The silence around her in the house finally made an impression on her, and she realized there were no sounds to show that her mom and stepfather were there. It was her day off, so she pulled on her jeans and an old sweater and carefully made her way to the kitchen. No one was here - they must have both left.

She stepped back, relieved and almost happy, realizing she had some rare freedom. She glanced at her phone, enjoying the silence. A thought suddenly came to mind - she had been wanting to find her notebook from years ago in high school, where she'd jotted down ideas for poems and stories. This would be the perfect time to locate it, with free reign of the house. It was just what she wanted, something to distract her from the poem she'd written at the station, and its main character.

She knew where it might be - in the chest of drawers that held odds and ends, rarely used, in the hallway. She began with the top drawer but didn't have success right away. She pushed aside envelopes, charging cables, and receipts, hoping her hand would fall on the smooth surface of the notebook. She knelt on the carpeted floor as she reached the last one, putting in some effort to pull out the slightly warped drawer. It finally budged and she reached forward to rummage around for the notebook.

It was full of junk, odds and ends, and she shifted a little set of screwdrivers aside to explore the bottom of the drawer. As soon as the tools were moved, she withdrew her hands and gasped. There at the bottom of the drawer was an orange-handled knife, the blade long and cruel-looking. Her fingers had run along the cold painted handle before she realized what she was touching. She didn't know much about knives, but she could tell it was no kitchen knife - it looked like a weapon.

Acting on instinct, she covered over it again, leaving the drawer as she had found it. She pushed it in again with some difficulty. Her search for the notebook forgotten now, she thought about what she should do. She'd have to tell her mother, that was the only thing she could think. And she knew it would be challenging, even impossible, to do it. Her mom wouldn't stand hearing anything practical, real, painful - she couldn't bring up difficult topics with her. It never ended well.

Mae had grown accustomed to the fact that when pushed to face some unpleasant reality, her mother would bristle and refuse to acknowledge it. Mae simply avoided addressing important issues with her, but this was one of those things she would have to bring up - she would have to try. She'd need to find the perfect time, when her mom was in a good state of mind and her stepfather would not overhear their conversation.

She couldn't remain in the house now, not with that knife as a companion. It was like she could see it there through the furniture's cheap wood paneling. She gathered her things into her bag and left, moving at a quick pace to remove herself as soon as possible from even being able to see the house. She had time today before she usually went to the station - it was cold, but the air was still. She pulled her coat tightly around herself and decided to walk in the city, on the main thoroughfares where it would be safe, with lots of people around her. She just felt like being on the move after her discovery.

She walked like many did that day on the streets of Gotham, in her own world, almost drowning in her thoughts. The regular rhythm of her steps gave her some relief from the worries echoing in her mind. What would a knife like that be doing in the house? Was it there on purpose, with some premeditated goal in mind? Was it for her mother? For her? But she shouldn't jump to conclusions. She tried to calm her breath and just focus on the pressure of each foot hitting the pavement as she walked.

She underestimated the distance on her next circuit around downtown, and ended up arriving at the station a bit later than usual. She entered through the tall doorway, still carrying the heavy weight of her discovery that day.

She found her usual spot and pulled out her journal, but only sat there tapping the pencil on the cover, her gaze focused staight ahead. The situation was spinning out of control at home, and she felt completely powerless to stop it. She had been able to create some comfort, maybe even happiness, for herself in recent weeks, but only by avoiding the house and stepping lightly around the silent hazards that haunted it.

Everything had been so quiet there, when she found the knife. But she could feel it - like you can feel the electricity in the air before the lightning strikes. Something terrible was brewing, and yet she was so young and inexperienced, she didn't trust her intuition. She thought she must be crazy, her mind alternating between self-doubt and a conviction that something wasn't right.

She heard the swish of his dark green jacket when he came to the bench, and she took the cigarette he offered. But she consumed it like a robot, automatically discarding it on the floor when it was finished. She didn't notice his glances - if she had, she would have seen a curiosity almost akin to concern, an unusual expression for this ominous man on the bench. He didn't speak to her - if he had, she knew that she would only have answered automatically, some type of rote answer that was meaningless. So they had silence, rather than words that meant nothing.

After some time had passed, she stood up, again responding mechanically, putting away her things and preparing to leave like usual. She turned back and gave him a wary look as she departed - it had been her only communication with him that day.

She felt alone, quite alone, as she stepped onto the cold concrete and let the heavy station door close behind her. She had no idea about how to proceed - to ignore the knife? To tell her mother about it? How could she even describe the feelings she had in that house - the impending disaster that seemed to be on its way since the day her stepfather had entered their lives, the hatred that hung in the air. She knew her mother was fragile, she knew that she couldn't handle it. And Mae herself wasn't sure whether her feelings were real or were based on paranoid delusion.

Her steps carried her surprisingly swiftly as she moved through the streets of Gotham on her way home. Maybe her pace seemed quick to her because it was taking her home all too soon - to face the situation there again. She came back to herself somewhat and slowed her pace, the one thing the conflicting thoughts in her mind all agreed on - slowing down so she could delay encountering the harsh reality of that place.

She found herself walking up the rusted flight of steps next to the elevated train. Traveling on the pedestrian bridge that ran alongside the train's path was part of her everyday walk that she usually ignored. But today she seemed to notice everything, as if her mind needed to focus on something besides her troubled thoughts. Below the pathway was the central terminal, where ground level trains came to empty out commuters so that they could scramble up to the newer elevated system and continue their journeys to various locations in the city. It was one of the busiest train stations in Gotham, and she was used to the rush of air that tossed her hair and the overwhelming roar as trains went by below. Though some still passed this late at night, the bustling activity had calmed and only a few travelers made their way through the streets.

She halted once she reached the top of the stairs, looking down. The flashy new elevated train that was on all the promotional images of Gotham passed in a sheltered tunnel beside her, but she looked down at the forgotten connecting lines, the rusted browns and grays of a past industrial boom that was now deep in Gotham's past. The lines that most working Gothamites actually rode into the city looked like a nightmare of crisscrossing tracks below her.

Her thoughts wandered to what it might have looked like back when the tracks were first laid and the busy streets were bustling, the shining trains the newest addition to the growing city, a source of pride for the residents. Somewhere in the constant flow of Gothamites she imagined pouring into the trains, what if the man and woman with the bobbed hair were there.... but what if she was getting on the train alone? Mae's thoughts were sad today, disjointed, and she thought of the woman separating from the man, giving him one last look. But the people swarming around them wouldn't allow him to even see her face - once they were separated, the crowd pushed them apart, and she disappeared, swallowed into the flow of people as they entered the train.

Mae broke out of her daydream and looked ahead again, making her way across the pedestrian bridge. She began to be aware of all the little details of the scene - the small nooks that branched off the main path and led to locked doors or ladders up to the tunnel roof above the elevated train. She veered off the walkway slightly, maybe just delaying her journey home a bit more. This must be an area only used by those working on maintaining the bridge. It would barely be noticed by the commuters that rushed by every day. She found her way to a spot she'd seen from a distance before, a small gap in the guardrail.

The protection against falling on the tracks was vulnerable here, a little forgotten space that led to the empty air above the passing trains below. The logical thought ran through her mind fleetingly - maybe this opening was used to access the supports of the pedestrian bridge more easily for repairs. Disjointed ideas about why the gap was there echoed through her thoughts, and she listened to the familiar rhythmic roar of a train passing on the tracks below.

She didn't necessarily feel a desire to pass through the gap and fall into the abyss below - she didn't have a clearly defined thought that she wanted to take her own life. It was more like a temptation, as if she just felt drawn to the danger in front of her, like it was some kind of siren song, luring her forward. It felt to her like it would be easy - for all her swirling thoughts to finally quiet - for all her doubts to vanish. She found her foot there, in front of her, in the space between the strong metal fence rails, this one spot that wasn't secure, wasn't safe. What would it be like, to fall here? To let it all go, to let everything fade away? She thought of the woman in her daydream, disappearing from everything in the swarming crowd, swallowed up by the rush of bodies around her.

The sound of another train below drowned out all other thought, and Mae began to take another step forward, like someone mesmerized.

Her senses had faded in that moment, but she realized she could no longer move forward. She looked up in confusion, breaking the spell that had drawn her to the tracks below. She came back to herself slowly, realizing there was a firm, immovable arm around her waist, which was what was preventing her from what had seemed like her inevitable trajectory. A dark figure had materialized beside her, and she quickly recognized the stooped posture and eerie grace of the man from the station. She turned away from the broken railing and focused on him, the dazed look in her eyes quickly turning to fear, like a helpless child who had been carried away by some momentary obsession. His face was shadowed heavily by the large hood, and his tall figure wasn't unlike images of death she could recall from old paintings, images she'd seen, that had frightened her as a child. His motionless strength in that moment made her shudder, as if she was held by a statue made of stone instead of flesh.

The train had since passed and the silence seemed deeper in this spot that was so often filled with noise. The deep quiet made the gravelly voice that found its way to her ears sound ominous, like something from beyond the grave.

"You know, little poet, you won't find pencils and notebooks under the ground."

The deadly weight and rumble of the word 'ground' flowed from his throat and fell onto her; it seemed to carry a special gravity with it. It frightened her, and brought her senses back from the numbness that had crept over them at the edge of the railing.

He was so close, his arm wrapped around her waist - her heart was pounding with fear and with something else - maybe just with his closeness, after so long, wondering what he would feel like, how he would hold her… but her mind was a tumble of thoughts, one rushing over the other, not giving her enough clarity to focus on any one sensation.

His hand grazed her cheek and traveled softly down her neck, the very gentleness of it, making her tremble.

"It would be a shame, for this… to be gone, buried, broken forever." His tone had been frightening, heavy, before, and the ominous drone of it was still there - but now it was overlaid with something else - almost, with sadness, it seemed to her.

For a moment, her attention was solely on his hand, traveling so softly down her neck, and his voice, the rumble of it softened, and she thought for a second, a passing moment, that maybe he was telling her the truth. Maybe he did think it would be a shame… but her deeply ingrained stubbornness rose up as she came back to her senses more fully, and she pulled away from his light caress.

"It's not your problem," she spat at him as an awkward rebuke, drawing herself away from the power his hold had over her. But he didn't fight back against her outburst. He let her free from his grasp and slunk back into the shadows of the night in Gotham, blending into the darkness as quickly as he had appeared out of it. But his voice still found her, even as he vanished from her view.

'It's not?' he questioned, leaving her to wonder at his meaning. Somehow she knew, despite his face being cloaked in the scarf, the hood, and now in darkness - she knew that he was smiling, under all that. She imagined a dry, empty smile that didn't spread to his eyes. Just his lips curving upward in an arc that aligned perfectly with the scars that had been so ruthlessly carved into his face.

She stood frozen, watching as the last remnant of his jacket disappeared. He had broken the spell that seemed to link her to the rusty tracks below that night. She took a shallow breath and didn't look back at the gap that led into the darkness. She walked quickly down the steps, back on her way home, her mind echoing with his strange, purposeful words, so clear in the cold unforgiving air.

It's not your problem….

It's not?

She thought about her writing and knew that was part of it, and also how familiar the space with the often flickering, unstable light of the antique lampposts had become. But she knew something else was behind the excitement she felt when she opened the heavy doors each evening - the companionship of the stranger who smoked. She always felt that something was missing, when he wasn't there. And she didn't want to admit to herself how much of her enjoyment of that solitary writing time had become connected to his presence beside her.

The way he followed her home each night became part of their routine too. She knew that it was wrong, but it was like an unspoken agreement between them now. She was sure that he wasn't going to stop doing it, no matter how she felt about it, and she had an illogical sense of comfort, of protection, knowing that he was there behind her. He always remained in the background, hidden, and somehow that helped her to accept him silently following her.

Especially at night, on those long walks home, the walks where she knew he was there, but too far away to see, her mind went to dangerous places, places she would never have allowed it to go in the daytime. She would feel embarrassed when she realized she was wondering what he was like under the layers of clothing. The heaped-on jackets made it so difficult to tell, but he carried himself with a strange, unnerving grace that she couldn't ignore.

The obvious strength in his hands was combined with a delicate touch that she had felt when he traced the lines of her palm so gently, only making her more curious about him. What would it be like, if he touched her again? Would his fingers be agile, like the skilled flourish of his gesture when he had first offered her the cigarette? Or would he be rough and unyielding, like his sharp eyes? Though the only touch she had experienced from him was light and airy, something about his gaze and the little bursts of anger she had occasionally glimpsed - she knew he had the potential to be demanding, even, perhaps, brutal. Sometimes she would glance behind her, reminding herself of his lurking presence in the shadows, trying to scare herself with the reality of the strangeness of this man, but it didn't help. She found herself still swimming in her memories of him, and the ghosts of his imagined touch.

She would shake it all off by the time she arrived home, preparing for the sober reality she would find inside.

---------❈❈❈---------

Today she was a little late, caught up at the restaurant until the next host arrived for their shift. She felt a sense of warmth as she entered the station and began to smile as she saw the telltale sign of him, the smoke drifting upward. But she paused to get a grip on herself and strove for a blank expression as she approached the bench to sit down. He nonchalantly offered her a cigarette as usual, not otherwise acknowledging her presence, appearing to remain focused on his thoughts.

The calm of the last few weeks gave her the courage to make a rare attempt at conversation.

"Did you ever think about leaving Gotham?" she asked tentatively.

He sat up, seemingly startled that she was speaking during their usual silent companionship. But whether he was actually surprised or had expected her to say something all along, she didn't know.

"No," he said simply.

"Why not?"

"I answered your first question. That's enough." He paused and turned his head to shift his gaze toward her, sighing as if in resignation. "So…. do you ever think about leaving Gotham?"

He said it with a bored sense of duty in his words, as if he was required to ask her the reciprocal question.

He was infuriating. "I really wanted to know, actually, I was curious about you," she said sharply.

He sat back as a haze of smoke drifted out from under the hanging scarf.

"Curiosity killed the cat." His deep voice rumbled in her ears, the tone disconcerting. But she decided to disregard it, refusing to let him get to her. She rolled her eyes and turned away.

When it was clear he wasn't going to say more, though, she replied, for some unknown reason, wanting to continue their talk. "Ok, yeah, I think about leaving, all the time. Every day."

"Why do you stay, then?" he asked, turning to face her.

Mae felt his gaze and knew she couldn't lie with him focusing on her like this. She tried to be as nonspecific as possible but still couldn't help sharing what tied her to this place. "My mom, at home, I have to, you know, watch over her, make sure she's ok."

He gave her a solemn look, regarding her carefully.

"So what's wrong with Gotham? Why do you want to leave so… badly?"

Suddenly, it seemed their conversation had taken a more serious turn. The station was silent around them, even the few passersby that sometimes made their way through absent at this moment. When he looked at her so intensely like this, it made her feel uncomfortable, like he was seeing right through all her carefully constructed falsehoods, all the little white lies she wove around herself. But at the same time, she didn't want him to stop that unwavering gaze.

"Gotham, it's harsh, it's cruel," she tried to explain. "Everyone is stepping on everyone else, just to survive."

"You could say that about anywhere. That's just people acting like people," he said dismissively.

"Gotham is different," she said, looking down, as if she needed to focus on the floor in order to concentrate, to bring herself back from his focused gaze.

"There is something wrong in this city, something broken. There's a darkness here." She stopped speaking, lost in her thoughts, trying to better describe what she meant. But then she looked up suddenly, sensing motion beside her.

He was removing his hood, pushing it back to reveal the mess of disheveled hair she had become accustomed to only seeing in the shadows. And now he had reached back behind his head to loosen the tightly knotted scarf.

"But the darkness hides our little… imperfections, doesn't it?" he said, enunciating every syllable so that the words were etched in her mind. His voice hung there in the air as he turned toward her and grasped the top edge of the scarf, slowly pulling it down to reveal the bottom half of his face.

The rough skin she had noticed at the edge of his lips when he lifted the scarf to smoke became clear. A jagged line of scars extended out from the corners of his mouth, creating a terrible semblance of a wide smile. She almost winced as she realized what deep cruelty would be required to wield a blade in a way that would leave such an irregular pattern of tears.

Her eyes took in the bubbled and deformed skin of the scars that cut across his cheeks, the contours of his jaw, his unsmiling lips.

She took a deep breath as she looked at him silently, shocked at what she saw, but not turning away. His face was harsh, defiant. It was as if he had been hiding the danger of his scars, the problems of his life, from her, under the scarf. The damage to his face looked so sharp, so vicious, and she realized he carried the pain of it in his eyes. That look had set him apart when she first encountered him. She thought it was alertness, a kind of energy - but underneath it all, was pain.

Her eyes went back up to his, bringing what she already knew into focus with this recognition of what was hiding under the scarf. She felt his hand under her chin, and she couldn't pull away. It was as if she was hypnotized there, under some kind of spell he had woven around her. She felt his thumb slowly drift over her cheek.

"What's your story, Mae? What are you hiding, I wonder?" he asked, his voice hushed to almost a whisper.

She returned his steady gaze, something about his look convincing her that he could already see everything in her mind, that he already knew everything about her. It sent a chill through her, to think of what her eyes, her breath, revealed to him.

They heard the squeak of the door to the station and he let her go, in one quick motion returning the thin mask to his face and tying it in a neat knot behind his head.

They didn't talk anymore that day; words seemed too straightforward, too simple to convey anything real. She gave him glances sometimes, but mostly just felt him there beside her, his presence all the more intensely etched into her mind now. She was disoriented, overwhelmed with this person beside her, spinning into some new world that she didn't understand.

The scars were grotesque, alarming. But that's not what stayed with her.

The violence screamed from his face, not only in the marks of it drawing back from his mouth but also in the roughness of his expression, in the sharp angle of his brow as it curved back and then ended abruptly over his dark eyes. It would be clear to any observer that he was no innocent victim - he embraced the violence of the world he was in. But no, it wasn't that either.

It was something else. As her eyes had wondered over the ruins of his face, it wasn't the scars, it wasn't the danger - the thought lingering in her mind as she left the station, all the way to when her head hit the pillow that night, was that - he was beautiful. It might be a fallen grandeur, but the deep angle of his jaw, the handsome line of his brow, the intense hunger in his eyes - those unique features are what stayed with her, haunted her sleep that night.

When she woke up, with a racing heart from some dream she'd had but already couldn't remember, an idea came to her for a new poem. She would start writing it tomorrow, in the safety of the station. It was very different from her others.

---------❈❈❈---------

She completed her morning tasks absently and managed to get out of the house before anyone had stirred.

As she went through the motions at work and the first guests of the day started filtering into the restaurant, she made a vow to avoid the station today. She didn't want to face him again so soon; she needed more time for the echoes of his touch to fade from her skin.

She was struggling with her plan on how to spend her time after work - should she duck into shops to escape the brittle cold outside, until they asked her to leave? Maybe sacrifice some of her meager wage to grab a coffee so that she could sit inside for a while? Suddenly, as if in divine intervention, the manager announced that the host for the evening shift had called in.

Mae spoke up immediately, with no hesitation: "I'll stay, I'll do a double shift today." And just like that, her problem was solved.

She was almost happy as she straightened the menus and wiped down the buzzers during the lull between lunch and dinner. No thought, no expectation - just work today. No chance to go to the station. And the busyness of the dinner shift promised to keep her mind occupied and make the time go by faster.

She was almost right - the evening did rush by, and it was a relief to have nothing to think about but work. But her imagination got the better of her, and the shadows that grew longer on the street outside as the day turned to night sometimes tricked her, when she looked out the windows beside the restaurant entrance.

Out of the corner of her eye, more than once, she thought she saw a hooded figure, very tall - but it always turned out to be a temporary illusion caused by tricks of light and shadow from the traffic of cars and people on the city street.

She shook it off, but in the middle of the busiest part of the dinner rush, she absentmindedly reached up to take a menu. The lamination had peeled off the edge, exposing the tough paper inside, and it sliced over the skin of her palm, creating a nasty cut. She gasped and pulled her arm down, surprised at the sudden pain and the thin line of blood appearing across her hand. It was just a minor cut, nothing to worry about, but somehow it awakened the feelings she had from the day before, when his fingers moved so softly over those lines. She felt like she could sense his fingertips there again, running in little veins out from the sharp pain of the cut.

She stood looking at her palm, silent and still, for some time, all the noise and bustle of the restaurant around her muffled to a low murmur. Finally a server appeared with a bandage and gave it to Mae, breaking her out of her trance. She quickly wrapped it around her hand and returned to the usual greetings and welcoming phrases, tired and worn, going through the motions until the evening was over.

She left the restaurant exhausted, the double shift having taken its toll. And her goal of putting the man in the station out of her mind by avoiding going there, had not worked in the slightest. His impression on her seemed to only strengthen in her evening away.

But, she told herself, it was a little extra money for the week and had at least occupied her time. She felt apprehensive as usual on her late walk home, though she managed to navigate the dark streets without incident.

When she opened the door and entered the empty living room, it seemed everyone was sleeping, adding to her good fortune.

Mae's relief was short-lived, though. She walked through the hallway to her bedroom and suddenly found herself cornered, her stepfather appearing right there in front of her. She tried to keep her distance despite the cramped space.

"You working evenings now, too?" he asked, as if it was just a casual conversation.

"Not usually, just today," she said, warily. Why was he up at this time? Had he been lying in wait for her? It wasn't even late night now - it was the early morning hours.

"It seems like you're never here. I think your mom needs help in the house, maybe you should stay home more to help her out," he said flatly, but the expression on his face showed that he knew the statement would hit its mark. Mae felt suffocated here - asking her to stay at home was like closing the prison doors on her.

She swallowed her anger, thinking about how he was home all the time, but never cooked or cleaned. Just sat, watching tv, or harassing her mother, lecturing her about what she should be doing.

"You always make everything better, Mae," he said, reaching out and putting his hand heavily on her shoulder. She stayed still, even though she wanted to shrink away from him, feeling her stomach turn with her anxious thoughts.

She knew that if things weren't good in the house, if there wasn't anything to eat, or things weren't cleaned up, she knew exactly what would happen. He'd start taking it out on her mom. He'd blame her, call her lazy, he'd use every rude word possible. Mae hated that - hated how he demolished her mother, one word at a time, making her already fragile mental state even worse.

He turned and left her there in the hallway, frozen and not sure what to do. She could come home early, skip the station again tomorrow - but that would put her here working in the house when he was awake. The noise from the vacuum might bother him, or worse, he might watch her work with an air of household authority that was intolerable to her.

She went to bed and waited for all the lights to go off and all the sound to cease, until she was sure that he was sleeping. Then she got up and began to work. She had it all down like she was a machine now - the gloves, the mop, the spray bottle. She did the bathroom first, it was always hardest. Then she swept and mopped. She couldn't risk running the vacuum, too loud. But hopefully, with everything else that she was doing, it would keep daily life in the house flowing smoothly, so that he wouldn't lash out, wouldn't be harsh with her mom. She was exhausted, but the thought of what she was avoiding kept her moving, gave her energy to finish these chores.

She collapsed on the bed with only a few hours left for sleep, but in the morning her drowsiness didn't make her linger - she pushed through it and found herself in the restaurant as usual, greeting guests. Although her exhaustion hung over her, threatening to press down and force her head to sag onto the little wooden stand in front of her, she resisted it. And she felt safe again, safe away from the house and the confusing web of problems that always lie in wait for her there.

It seemed so soon, when it was time to decide whether to return to the station. Should she resume her usual habit?

Though she was reminded of it every time she closed her hand, with the pain from the accidental cut she'd given herself across her palm, she still hadn't really been able to process his strange caress. It was all so confusing. The smell of alcohol and perfume on him, reminding her of how utterly different his life must be from hers, how remote he really was, despite sitting so close beside her. And then the shift, the reversal of that, when he took her hand and traced all its shapes and lines. An intimate gesture, inappropriately intimate, from someone she didn't know, just a stranger.

But she was lying to herself, wasn't she? Was he still a stranger? They sat together for hours every evening, and she had gotten used to his infectious energy, had watched the smoke from their cigarettes intertwine in he air above her, for months now. And she had to admit she felt an odd sense of… of what? She couldn't quite identify it, but when he wasn't there, she felt something was missing.

Maybe that evening, maybe he was drunk. And he'd been hit hard, that was evidenced from his black eye and swollen face. She finally resolved to forget about it, to go back to the station and see if they could return to their usual interactions. Her exhaustion from the double shift the day before and then having so little sleep may have also worn down her reservations.

She knew the echo of his touch wouldn't be that easy to quell, but she could compartmentalize it now, push it to the back of her mind. She took her familiar walk to the nearly empty building and settled herself on the bench, near the light, as usual.

He arrived silently. She had been writing and looked up when she felt his presence there. He wore his usual long coat, more care taken with his appearance than the last time they'd met. The marks of whatever scuffle he'd been in remained, but were muted somewhat, and no loose tendrils of hair drifted over his face - he seemed to have secured it more effectively this time.

She gave him a very tentative, slight smile, as if she was telling him that she was willing to ignore his strange gesture, that she forgave him due to his drunken state. His eyes were sharp, curious - he didn't seem even slightly embarrassed and regarded her with a calm detachment. It made a small part of her feel as if she had hallucinated the whole interaction, although she knew it had really happened. There was no way that his touch had been a figment of her imagination. When she thought about it, she could still feel the tingle in the lines of her hand, where his fingers had so lightly dragged along their path.

In an effort to maintain the sense of normalcy she hoped to resume, she took the cigarette he offered and focused on her journal. He kept looking over at her, leaning forward so he could easily regard her. She was nodding off frequently, her head dropping and then popping back up as she woke herself again. Maybe he had noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the exhaustion shadowing her face.

He was so often looking at her that she stopped and turned to him, catching his gaze. His eyes were still calculating, but they were also warm, some kind of honey-thick depth there that caught her and stuck to her, making her feel protected, watched over, in this moment. Even though she shouldn't. She shouldn't feel this way about a stranger in an old bus station. But his eyes were so knowing, so sharp, she wondered if he saw it, saw what it was like for her when she wasn't here in the station, saw that she was like a hunted animal, understood the fear in her eyes. The way he looked at her, despite his imposing presence - it almost felt like he knew what it was to be hunted, too.

Long ago, had he gone through an ordeal that shared something with what she faced each day? She was curious, but though the warmth in his eyes tempted her, the coldness of his demeanor scared her away from questioning him. It was probably just her imagination getting the better of her.

Besides, words seemed too cheap, and she doubted she could put her thoughts into speech today, the way the drowsiness clung to her.

She always seemed to stumble over herself when she tried to communicate with him. The way he listened was unnerving, as if he somehow knew the currents of feeling that ran below her words, shaping them.

They didn't talk that day, but she allowed herself to look his way more, to let that feeling of protection surround her. She knew it was a dangerous game she was playing - who was this man, after all, who hid himself away in this old building most evenings, and held some kind of sway over Gotham's biggest gangster family? But it didn't matter that night, with his eyes so warm when their gazes met.

The time passed quickly. She was reluctant to go but knew that it was time to head home for the night. She took her leave silently, gathering her things. He watched her as she made her way to the station exit.

She opened the creaking door, and the still cold of the Gotham night in winter hit her immediately. There was no escaping it, it stung her nose and traveled like bitter water to her lungs, making her cough with the sudden bite of it. She walked quickly, realizing that even her double layer of leggings and dress pants for work were not enough protection for this level of late-night cold.

She finally reached the little street she lived on and turned off toward the house. The feeling hit her again, the feeling of being watched, just like it had on so many previous nights. But this time, it was unmistakable. She thought she smelled smoke traveling in the frigid air and she turned around, looking at the path behind her.

A dark figure leaned up against the brick wall near the corner of the shopfront that marked the head of her street. He stood there nonchalantly smoking, his head slowly moving back and forth as he scanned the street, finally coming to a halt as his gaze settled back on her. It was clearly the man from the station, obviously allowing her to see him, standing there like some inevitable evil she had to face. She was shocked to see him there, but why did she also have a creeping sense of warmth, a sense of being protected, as her eyes met his, his dark gaze centered on her? Did she like the strange attention? Did she feel that somehow this looming figure would protect her from the other monsters of Gotham, lurking in the shadows and waiting to strike?

He finished his cigarette and gave her a last look as he walked away, moving surprisingly rapidly with his strange gait and unsettling pace. She waited until her heart had stopped beating so fast and she had caught her breath, before she walked the few remaining blocks to her home.

He could guard her on her walks home, but he couldn't guard her from what was inside the house she entered. Her thoughts turned from the hazards of the street to the danger she faced inside this small, unassuming place.

She stopped her hand before opening the door and leaned against the cold brick of the house. She suddenly felt weak, like the strenth that held her up had simply drained away. The memory of what happened when her mother had just remarried came back to her, and she couldn't think of it when she was in the house, when she was in his realm. It would just be too much. She had to recall it here, before she entered.

She had just been starting her junior year of high school. She received her driver's license and was so excited to get behind the wheel. Like most teenagers, she relished the thought of having the independence a car and a license would give her.

Her mother had married her stepfather only months before, and at first everything seemed fine, although it wasn't a welcome change for her. It was like having an alien in the house, where before she and her mom had had free reign. But if it made her mom happy, it was something Mae was willing to get used to. She knew it was normal for any teen to feel a little antagonistic to a newcomer in the house, and she thought the feeling would fade with time.

Then there was the car - it was the first thing she had noticed them arguing about.

Her mom wanted Mae to have the car, to drive to the after-school practices and part-time job she'd just picked up. But he wanted to have access to the car. Of course, buying a second vehicle was not an option - there was no money. They argued late into the night, but the next day, her mom gave her the keys.

Mae hoped the storm had passed. This was when it all started, trying not to fall into the traps in the house. Trying to steer clear of him, avoid any interaction. She hoped that maybe in time, things could return to normal, despite how difficult it was. But that illusion was soon gone.

It was early morning, and Mae had gotten up in a haze of sleepiness to go to the bathroom. She was on her way back to bed when her stepfather accosted her. He had a terrible look on his face, like anger had worn itself into every crevice and then turned to hate there. She began to back away, but he grabbed her arm roughly so that she couldn't escape. She almost yelled out, but something about having so recently come out of a deep sleep and the bizarre situation stopped her and she only gasped, fear gripping her.

"What a spoiled brat, getting everything you want. So precious, Mommy gives you anything you ask for, doesn't she?" he hissed at her.

She had a level of trust of this man before - just that innate faith that people are generally good, and the fact that her mom had brought him into their home. But that all evaporated now, and she began to see him as a vicious animal, a menace to her and her mother, an inescapable danger that was now woven into their lives.

She felt his heavy presence when he had her cornered there, made more overbearing by the constricted space and the stink of his breath.

"Be safe, driving that car, we wouldn't want anything bad to ever happen to you, you're so precious," he had said with a malice that showed his meaning was the opposite of his words.

He let her go and she had run to her room and locked the door, struggling to catch her breath. She knew it now, there was a threat in the heart of her home. The next day, she gave her mom back the keys, telling her that driving made her nervous, that she would just take the bus instead. That's when home stopped for her - and she hadn't felt completely safe and secure since that time.

She had tried to hint at the problems with her mom, but the combination of the uncertainty that comes from youth, the unbelievable nature of his actions, and her mother's own unwillingness to face the harshness of reality, had never allowed her to succeed in actually telling her what had happened.

She stayed there slumped against the doorframe for some time, feeling trapped in the web of the past. But she focused on her breathing and came out of it slowly, the memories fading to the back of her mind again. Now she needed to check on her mom, make sure she had eaten something, and to go to bed, get some sleep so she could face the next day. She fitted the key into the lock with a strong resolve and muttered a whispered prayer that she and her stepfather would not cross paths.

Mae lay awake that night, thankful for managing to check on her mom, shower, and get to bed without encountering her stepfather. With her bedroom door locked, she felt like she could finally take a breath and let her mind wander.

She was exhausted after her lack of sleep the night before, but she found herself unable to drift off. As she began to let go of the immediate apprehensions of navigating her troubled home, her mind wandered back to the subject that often occupied it - the man in the station. The sense of safety she had felt while sitting beside him, and then the shock of seeing him standing just blocks from the house.

She settled back to try to analyze her own feelings, though the fog of drowsiness was now settling and making it harder and harder for her to think clearly. Shouldn't she be afraid of this man, this stranger, clearly following her in the night? Why were her logical feelings of apprehension mixed with a sense of warmth, of protection, when she saw him there? It must be the sharp angles of this mess of a city, this dark place, Gotham - that a man like him could even appear as a protector.

Her mind couldn't escape the image of him, standing there on the corner of the brick building, watching her. His long coat and the material obscuring his face - he seemed like a mountain of clothes rather than a person in the cold Gotham winter. But the layers of clothing did nothing to dull the piercing gaze that found hers in the night, and the easy way he carried himself on the street contrasted with the awkward and worn garments. She found herself mesmerized by his gait, by the way he disappeared down the street into the night. As if he'd never existed at all, and was just swallowed up by the thick darkness of Gotham.

But even after his long, dark green coat had blended in to the black night, she could still feel his eyes there, watching over her. It was frightening to her, but at the same time, she felt a warm comfort settle over her with his steady gaze, and realized that she might not feel so secure now walking on that street, if he wasn't there.

She saw him standing again on the corner, but the shadow of his jacket stretched further out around him. Stretched out across the sky, obscuring the cold light of the stars. And finally it reached her, covering her in a soft darkness that blotted out her churning thoughts and wrapped her in a comforting embrace that she melted into - her body was gone and now she disappeared into the inky blackness too, a relief… Mae fell into a deep sleep, and didn't wake up until she heard the relentless drill of her alarm going off the next morning.

She had arrived earlier that evening, glad to leave the cold drizzle of the street behind and settle into her familiar spot on the bench. But she had to admit that mixed with her relief was also a sense of disappointment that she didn't see her usual companion. He hadn't shown up, and now she'd stayed much later than she should. She told herself she had remained in order to avoid going home, but she knew it was also because she was waiting for him.

She was putting her journal away in her bag to leave when she recognized his tall figure sauntering into the station. He seemed jovial, almost a little drunk with the heavy way he walked. If it was possible, his clothes were even more disheveled than usual, looking like he'd been in a hurry to throw the jacket on. But now his slow and wandering gait showed he must no longer be in a rush. She stopped packing her things but also tried to avoid looking his way, attempting to appear unconcerned that he'd arrived.

He finally settled beside her after his slow amble among the benches. As he sat down he adjusted his jacket, looking like he was somewhat hot under the layers, despite the cold air around them. Some of that heat leaked out and she could smell liquor on him, and smoke, and something else… She focused her gaze on a lamppost at the furthest edge of the lobby as she realized it was women's perfume, something lovely, like the scent of a flower that blooms on summer nights.

She tried to put it out of her mind; after all, it was none of her business.

"Good evening," he drawled, looking over at her. He pulled out the pack of cigarettes and unceremoniously dumped its contents on the bench, throwing the lighter into the mix.

She glanced over at the piled-up cigarettes and carefully chose one from the top of the mess he'd created, removing it and the lighter as if it was some delicate formation that she dared not disturb. She had avoided looking directly at him, but as she lit the cigarette she felt that she had to turn to him. It immediately became clear that he'd been in a scuffle - she could see a pronounced mark under his eye and realized the whole right half of his face was swollen.

"What happened to you?" she asked, alarmed.

"Oh, I just had a talk with a… colleague this evening," he said, as if it had been a friendly chat and he was no worse for the wear. "It uh… ended on a bad note, but I think I got my point across."

"A colleague? What kind of a colleague would do that to you?" she asked in disbelief, motioning to his discolored and swollen face.

"Just one of Maroni's lackeys," he said lightly, facing forward again and leaning back to take a drag on the cigarette.

"Maroni?" she questioned, with caution in her voice. "I don't know… just… isn't he a dangerous man?" She wasn't sure what to say, but her eyes brimmed over with concern, almost worry, for the strange figure beside her.

"You think Maroni's dangerous?" he said in a low voice, still reclined but turning his head lazily to meet her eyes. His voice had a mocking tone but the quiet, slow way he enunciated the words suggested something else, something ominous, as if he wanted to give her a hint about how he fit into Gotham's complex underworld.

She sensed his meaning despite his few words, and trying to avoid confrontation, stumbled as she spoke.

"Yeah, I think he's dangerous, but just from - just because everyone in Gotham knows that."

She hoped the conversation would end there, because she didn't feel completely comfortable with the direction he seemed to be taking it.

He appeared to drift off into his own thoughts again, and Mae began to relax enough to think over the question she had planned to ask him. Her mind wandered back to his encounter with Maroni's man. Maroni's people were like gods in Gotham - no one got in their way. What was he, that he could bully a gangster like that? And then tonight, he had come in after some kind of a fight with another of Maroni's goons. That he could be against Maroni and still be alive meant something - what kind of a player was he in Gotham's underworld, that he could behave this way?

But being a powerful gangster seemed so out of keeping with his eccentric, laid-back demeanor here in the station. Maybe he was just… crazy? What would some giant of Gotham's underworld be doing here in a bus station, spending many of his evenings here, smoking away his time and looking up at the high windows, like her?

She took a deep breath, and he turned to her before she made a sound, as if it was so obvious that she was about to address him. It was unnerving and almost made her decide not to ask her question at all.

"Go ahead," he said, like he was addressing an inexperienced child who had some mundane and unnecessary inquiry.

"Um… why do you come here?" she asked, feeling that her voice sounded brash and loud. She quickly closed her mouth afterward and stared forward again, as nervous as she would be if she had addressed him with some deeply personal question, despite the innocuous nature of what she'd asked.

He seemed to enjoy her discomfort, taking his time, turning his body so that he faced her and drawing one leg up onto the bench. He raised his hand to hold his concealed chin. It was a thoughtful posture, but heavily exaggerated, like he was some kind of second-rate actor practicing for an upcoming play.

His purposeful focus on her was unnerving, making her wish she had let things be, that she hadn't addressed him at all.

"Well, I suppose coming to a place like this, it lets me be… anonymous, for a little while. Completely unknown. It helps me think. It's nice to be hidden, to disappear somewhere, where you know no one can find you. Well, except for that little mishap the other day, but that's taken care of now."

His voice came off amused, perhaps a little condescending, but not insincere.

"I suppose, at least among my... associates, I'm a little bit uh, famous." His voice became lighter and trailed off into a dry laugh, a laugh that was strangely hopeless, and wasn't comforting to hear. "So it's good to get away, where no one knows me. And, you know, this place has its charms."

He gave a knowing little shake of his head. His gaze lingered on her for just a moment too long, and she froze, forgetting to breath. But then he rolled his eyes toward the discolored mosaic tiles on the wall and the lofty ceiling above, as if proclaiming that he was only talking about the historic architecture of the station.

"What about you, who are you hiding from?" he asked abruptly, with one of his gazes that seemed to be dissecting her, separating the pieces to find out what glue really held her together. The mood changed instantly, the silence suddenly deepening. Mae took a quick breath and looked away as if deflecting his stare, telling herself to keep things casual, reminding herself that this was just a conversation with a stranger. Still, she couldn't help letting some of the truth leak out in her few awkward words.

"No one, I'm not… famous," she replied. "I just want to have a place to write, and I just… I don't want to be at home, any more than I have to be."

He seemed to sense her reluctance to explain any further, and turned away again, watching the smoke rise to the ceiling.

She went back to her writing, wondering what kind of person would come to this worn-out bus station, just to be anonymous for a little while. The layered clothes, the covered face, it certainly did conceal his identity. Most passersby must have thought he was a homeless man, just a little more eccentric than the rest with the scarf over his nose and mouth. Few would have given him a second look.

Though she'd felt a little less on her guard with him in his slightly drunken state on this night, something about the smell of the perfume lingered with her, this hint of his other life, and she felt she simply wanted to leave. As soon as she'd finished her cigarette, she began to gather her things again.

His eyes rolled toward her to watch her preparations, but he didn't turn to her, as if he wanted to show how little he cared for her comings and goings.

"Oh you're leaving, just when the fun is starting? Well, that's good, I'll have some peace here while I think," he said dismissively.

Despite her caution, she did almost smile at his words. He sounded as if her quietly writing beside him was a distraction, as if she was a real menace to his private reveries.

She was just grabbing her journal, for the second time, when she felt his hand on hers. It appeared there suddenly, almost as if he was a drowning man and had reached out to save himself from the dark waves around him.

The air in the station seemed to still and she froze, stopping her preparations for her departure and turning to him, watching how his eyes travelled to her hand and became fixed there.

She felt she couldn't breath, and yet she did, a long slow breath that filled her lungs as she watched him, unblinking. His fingers drifted over hers, coaxing them to open, telling her to turn her hand over with their touch. She obeyed in a kind of dazed confusion. He ran his fingers over the inside surface of hers, slowly, deliberately, as if he was savoring the contact of his fingertips on her skin. When he reached the bottom of her fingers, he began to follow the fine lines of her palm, barely skimming across the top of her skin.

She had read a book about palmistry long ago, when she was just a kid, and the memories of the names of the lines and structures of the hand came to her as he ran his fingers over them - the heart line, the life line… He ended by dragging his fingers up the inside of her wrist, centered on the tendons there, and she felt his hand close around her arm in a warm grasp, under her sleeve, before he let go.

She had sat there like someone hypnotized, and now she felt the traces of his fingers on her skin like an electric current, all the lines on her hands alive and her nerves dancing. He gave no explanation for his caress and returned to smoking, shifting himself away from her with a casual disregard.

Mae held her hand in her lap protectively and stared forward at the neighboring bench, unable to ignore the feeling echoing up her arm, swallowing hard as she tried to process his strange gesture. Once she got her breathing back in check, she moved slowly to deposit her things in her bag, and stood up, leaving without a goodbye. She walked mechanically, without thought, not knowing how to act.

The cool air and her nerves about the walk home quickly brought her back to a sense of normalcy, though, as she left the station. She refused to allow herself to speculate tonight about what might be going on around her in the streets of Gotham. She avoided thinking about the memory of his touch on her hand, her wrist - she just maintained a laser focus on getting to her door.

The feeling of an electric current running from her hand up her arm didn't leave her, even when she was bundled in blankets on her bed. The feeling had spread through her like some kind of infection, her nerves tingling all the way to her shoulder now.

Her thoughts centered on the stranger at the station. How had he become so all-important in her mind? Just like his light touch on her palm, his everyday interactions with her in the beginning hadn't seemed so deep or lasting. Just sharing a cigarette, sitting together on a bench. But somehow in those hours his presence had begun to make a deep impression on her, and now there was some kind of a bond between them. What kind? She wanted to put it out of her mind, but the way his touch woke every nerve, she knew it already - it wasn't just friendship, it was something more, some kind of craving that he had awoken in her.

The look in his eyes, it wasn't innocent - and then she wondered - what about her own eyes? What could he see there? Why was her mind racing now, thinking of his hand traveling further up her arm than it had - traveling over her skin, so lightly, so deliberately… Something about his touch made her feel completely exposed, even under her layers of clothing. She could feel his touch running over her bare shoulder now, lingering on her collarbone, and she knew she wouldn't be able to move, wouldn't be able to breath when it happened - if it happened - no, of course it would never happen.

She cut off her train of thought, forcing herself out of the bed, focusing on her nightly tasks. A quick voyage out to the bathroom to brush her teeth, her sweats and t-shirt for bed, and then making herself close her eyes and think of anything, anything except him. But the feeling of his fingers on her skin would not leave her that easily. She was tormented by his touch, even in his absence, and only found a restless sleep that night.

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He didn't want to be known to the general public - not yet at least, and the GCPD's embarrassment at being beaten by a clown only made it easier for him to stay in the shadows. But he had already crafted his image for Gotham's underworld. The long purple jacket, the makeup that highlighted the gruesome scars at the corners of his mouth. The bright red accentuating but also disguising the broken skin, making it all into a show. It was all a show, wasn't it?

He smiled at nothing as he strode across the empty dance floor.

He had already taken control over the smaller, less powerful players in Gotham. Now he was weaving his net around Maroni, waiting for the right moment to spring his trap. He was patient - oh, so patient. He didn't live for the end result, that moment when steel jaws snap shut around their prey; no, he was an artist - he lived for the process - he was now sewing the drawstring into the bag methodically, slowly. When it was time to close it around Maroni, the string would draw taught perfectly and completely, because of the time he was taking to prepare. And if he appeared to be weaker than him now, that was fine, even preferable. He liked it - loved it even - because he knew no beating, no abuse, could really hurt. He was beyond being hurt - but he, he could do more than hurt Maroni. He could bury him alive. Completely cut off his light, his power, everything. With one well-planned pull of the cord.

Tonight, though, he was here to see Maroni about that intrusion at the station the other day. He knew how to put him on edge, he knew he could make his point. How would Maroni like it if the Joker sent some of his men to his home, the place where he felt secure with that little family he had?

Sure, it wasn't like the station was the Joker's private home, but it was as close as he would ever come to some sacred place that was far from the violence he had embraced in his life.

It was supposed to be separate from all that, and Maroni had invaded it with that idiot of a lackey serving as his messenger. Yes, he'd have a message for Maroni, but now he knew he shouldn't seem too eager, too bothered - he should sit, smoke, pretend he was there for the entertainment the club offered.

Maroni's club was the tip-top of the establishments in Gotham, the cream of the crop. It had the look of an old fashioned speakeasy, all the counters made of dense oak. The tables had a weight to them, everything heavy, seeming to drip, almost wet with the wealth that obviously ran through the place. Liquor was here that mayors, actors, presidents hadn't even sipped, so expensive it was kept in a safe.

And the women performing on the stage, they were the best Gotham had to offer too. Only the finer things in life could be found here, all for the men in tailored suits hired by Maroni. For the Joker, though, the pleasures of places like this had quickly worn off in his rise to prominence in Gotham's underworld, and he only rarely made an appearance in them.

But tonight he'd play the part, why not? A seat had been prepared for him in front, near the stage, of course one of the best spots to view the entertainment. After all, he was the Joker. Those gangsters who still competed with him also feared him, his unpredictable temperament, and his refusal to play by the unspoken rules of the criminal underworld.

He was beginning to feel the heat of the club creep up his neck from his tightly secured tie, the collar flush against his skin. It was like a sauna. He knew the paint would be melting down his face now, the black around his eyes bleeding into the white makeup that covered his skin. No matter, those little inconveniences no longer bothered him. He'd grown used to wearing the heavy purple jacket in every situation - he wore it when he was crammed into the backs of cars with other armed men; he wore it in the stale air of hidden rooms to meet with Gotham's most notorious criminals.

Still, he found himself craving the coolness of the station, the almost freezing temperature suiting him with his layers of clothing. The quiet, the cold - it soothed his frazzled nerves, it gave him some solitude and peace in this world. This place was just the opposite, hot, meant to excite the senses and drive one into a frenzy.

He watched the perfect bodies of the women on stage in front of him. Maroni did know how to pick them - the scant clothing they were wearing hugged their curves and accentuated their nakedness rather than hid it. He sat back and took a drag of the cigarette, watching them through the haze of smoke he was creating.

The contrast of the almost tropical climate and the cold of his usual haunt, the station, brought something else to mind. The girl he had found there. He thought of her, so insistently writing with those ridiculous gloves with the fingers cut out, her small form completely hidden by the large puffy coat she wore to stay warm in Gotham's ferocious winters. He chuckled at the contrast with the tall, nearly naked beauties dancing in front of him, paid just for his entertainment.

He had taken an interest in that strange little creature at the station. She was so easy to pick out from the others, obviously not homeless but also somehow lacking a home, unsettled, trying so hard to focus on the pages of her journal. Writing poetry in the city of Gotham - that alone made him laugh sometimes, during moments of solitude when he let his mind wander.

Interacting with her, it was… delicious. He could so easily predict her responses, was so quick to push her buttons when he wanted to. But he also had to admit that she was quite resilient, really, despite her weak ego. What a child, the way she had tried to lash out at him - and in fact she had hit a nerve, if he was going to be honest, when she questioned what he was disguising with the scarf.

And he had to admit too, that he had begun to require her presence there at the station - he'd grown so used to her. He had pursued her at first, he thought, just to push her and see what she'd do - an experiment to occupy his restless mind… But now, he was finding it a requirement that she be by his side.

The night before, he wasn't lying when he told her to be careful on her walk home. She didn't know that path she walked was along one of the most dangerous streets in Gotham. It was fine by day, sure, but at night it was a hotspot for drug deals. It was where exchanges went down that provided Gotham's wealthier classes with their taste in illicit substances. The money flowed there, and with it, the crime. That's why he'd taken to following her home, his steps gliding behind her like some kind of watchful spirit keeping her in his sights until she came to her street. He didn't want her path to cross an idiot petty thief or someone who wanted to take something more valuable than money away from her. She'd never come back to the station.

Her little face there, giving him her curious, worried looks. He liked having her there beside him, and he didn't need to ponder it much further than that. He liked it, and he would keep her there. If that meant he needed to watch her on her way home, then that's what he'd do.

He forced his attention back to the present, to focus on what was happening in this suffocating club. One of the women, a blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty, he guessed she was probably Maroni's current favorite, came up to him. He supposed she was doing the rounds, lap dancing for the prominent guests here this evening. He leaned back to allow her room to perform her routine. She was good, bringing her bare skin so close to the patterned material of his pants, the perfect curve of her hips almost making contact, but not quite.

Her flawless back was there, hovering above his lap, and the hair she flipped back tickled his face, when he remembered. He remembered the way the girl in the station had looked when she took a drag of the cigarette, the first one he had offered her. He had watched her, more attentively than she realized. It was obvious to him that her body craved it, that she must have smoked in the past. He had noticed all the little subtleties as she relaxed and let her head fall back on the bench. A series of unwelcome thoughts entered his mind, spawned by the vivid memory. He shook his head as if to clear it from the onslaught of images, and tried to focus back on the searingly hot atmosphere of the club.

He looked at the shining gold hair this woman was parading in front of him. He knew that any man would be delighted to crush these gleaming strands in his hands while he took his satisfaction from her. A smile crept over his face as he thought of the station again, of the girl's lifeless brown hair tucked behind her ears, like it was nothing but a nuisance to her writing. He reached out and flipped a handful of the woman's hair over her shoulder, to watch how it flowed like a blonde river over her well-tanned skin, just to make the contrast even more extreme.

He could have her, this beauty in front of him, right now, if he wanted. But that's not what he wanted. Of course. He never wanted what he could have.

Really, the joke was on him. It always was.

He began to laugh and didn't stop. It started as a profane giggle and ended with such a loud uncontrolled uproar that other patrons turned to him, and the woman lap dancing for him made a quick escape.

Yes, now would be the perfect time, he thought, to go tell Maroni what he thought about that little intrusion. He'd be sure that his oasis in Gotham, the dirty, run-down station, was never bothered again.

Mae sighed. This was why she never followed the news. It was always more of the same - lots of talk, very little actually accomplished.

"As far as knowing what's going on behind the scenes, the GCPD is committing every resource to finding out what is driving this." The official's voice sounded tense. "We…"

Mae heard the hesitation in his voice, making her wonder what was coming next.

"We think that there may be a new person or group in Gotham, someone consolidating power. We haven't been able to discover very much about them - as you know, the system of organized crime in Gotham runs so deep that even our informants are afraid to give us reliable information. But there is talk of a figure or a group calling itself…" he trailed off, the strain in his voice almost seeming to give way to embarrassment.

"What? Calling itself what?"

"The Joker."

The official stopped at that, another voice breaking in, shouting, "No further questions."

The restaurant manager unlocked the door and gave the server a look, making it clear the phone needed to be silenced. As the first guests filtered in, Mae considered how chaotic the crime situation was in Gotham. So the gangs that held sway over different areas of the city, the high level of corruption in politics, all that was not enough. Now there was some new figure called the Joker? She almost smiled, since it did seem somehow appropriate that a criminal figure in a city this ridiculous would also have a funny name.

Mae was thankful for the momentary distraction, actually. In these empty moments before the restaurant opened, her mind had been occupied with thoughts of the man in the station. The look he had given her in response to her casual smile - an accidental smile, really. She hadn't meant to be that friendly to this stranger.

That had been nearly a week ago, and when she had visited the station since then, she had sat alone - he had been absent. Plenty of time for her to turn that last interaction over and over in her mind…

Even though the scarf was disguising his face, she could easily tell that he hadn't smiled back at her. Instead, he'd given her that piercing stare.

At first, she'd felt that it was cruel and arrogant, a sign that this man was not someone to be trusted. But something about it kept clinging to her, and her mind couldn't puzzle it out. Today, as she stood at the host's desk, she realized that what bothered her wasn't the apparent meanness of not returning her smile. That would somehow be easier to handle. No, it was something else.

She took a startled breath as she finally recognized the answer - there was something immensely honest about that look, maybe harsh, but honest. Maybe more honest than her polite smile had been. A polite, shy smile - a complacent way to be nonthreatening. A way to create some appropriate distance. But he had responded in the most uncomfortable manner possible, giving her an intense stare that broke past the pleasantries of normal everyday interactions. She grew to be less offended by the way he'd acted, but she also felt a chill as she remembered his unwavering gaze.

She just shouldn't have smiled at him, she told herself - she should keep things the way they were. Take the cigarette, look down at her journal, keep it all neutral. That would fix it - everything would go back to the way it was before...

---------❈❈❈---------

She hoped that perhaps things would fall back into their usual place today as she stepped into the twilight of the station and made her way to the bench. He wasn't here yet - maybe this would be another day of absence.

She felt a sense of relief but found herself looking up rather often, expecting to see the trail of smoke making its way up to the clouded windows on the ceiling. She wondered if she had just gotten used to the sweetness of the nicotine rush she got every day he was here.

At least an hour must have passed when suddenly she felt a shift in the air beside her - she had not heard anything at all, so it frightened her when she looked up to find him there, beside her this time instead of opposite her on the other bench. Had he floated in, making no sound on the tiled floors? The thin scarf over his mouth and nose was motionless, as if he was some unbreathing apparition, materializing here beside her. He brought the bitterly cold air from outside with him - she could feel the chill of it clinging to the surface of his faded jacket.

She reacted immediately, giving him a wide-eyed stare as she stood up, closed the journal, and looked for some other place to sit. She had already walked a few paces away when she heard him speak.

In all these weeks of coming to the station, he had never said a word.

His low cloying voice snaked its way to her, surprisingly clear and unmuffled by the material he had draped around his face.

"You've smoked several of my cigarettes."

She stopped dead in her tracks, the hiss of each syllable exerting a kind of power over her, demanding to be heard.

She started to question herself. Maybe it was harsh of her, rude even, to refuse to sit beside him. He was right - she had smoked a considerable number of cigarettes. Maybe they were precious to him - maybe he was as lacking in funds as most of the other regulars here at the station, and it had been a significant gift for him to share them with her.

She slowly turned back and sat down hesitantly, as if the bench was made out of something that might break if she settled down on it incorrectly. She looked over at him wordlessly, his dark eyes unreadable and unsettling in their still contemplation.

She shook it off, wanting to present herself as unbothered by his presence, and pulled out the journal again to write. She felt a nudge on her arm and rolled her eyes over to meet his, unsure of what he was doing. But it was just the box of cigarettes, he was offering them to her. She took one and soon they were there side by side, both contributing to the hazy atmosphere.

She heard his voice again, almost felt it, as if the subtle vibration of it was traveling along the frame of the bench. It had a low, gravelly sound, but there was an almost mocking tone overlaying it that put her on edge.

"So why do you write with a pencil and paper like that? Why not on your phone like everyone else?"

Their conversation had an eerie quality, as she looked at him but couldn't see his mouth when he spoke.

She sat silently, thinking about his question for a moment. She had to get over her initial shock that he would even talk - he had been so silent these weeks that they'd met at the station. And then she had to digest the question, which caught her off guard. She had considered her old-fashioned choice of pencil and paper before but had never put her thoughts into words.

"Because I… I like it. It makes me… think more about what I'm doing."

He waited, obviously expecting her to say more, seemingly unsatisfied with her response.

She stared off into the distance. "I like the texture of the pencil, I like the way it pulls at the paper, like it means something when I write." She was lost in thought now.

He turned his head toward her abruptly, and grabbed at the pencil she held limply in her hand, breaking her concentration. He took the pencil up to his eyes as if he was studying it closely.

"No, you have an oral thing, you like chewing on the pencil. Just smoke two cigarettes instead of one and write on your phone. Much simpler."

His abrupt response, his dismissive shortness, and the rudeness of his words grated at her. He had gotten under her skin so quickly, so effortlessly.

"Give that back," she demanded angrily, grabbing the pencil from his hand.

"You know, those aren't good for you," she said, motioning to his cigarette. She was anxious to shift the subject away from her embarrassing habits.

"Not good for me," he mimicked in a low, measured voice. She saw the scarf move with the slow smile that must have been forming on his face. "I'll uh, keep that in mind." An uncanny laugh escaped from him, an unsettling laugh, and his eyes glinted darkly, reminding her that she knew nothing about this bizarre man.

He had so easily swatted away her attempt to rebuff him. Her anger spilled out into her words as she tried to find something, anything, that could sting him with the same force that he'd used against her.

"So why do you cover up your face like that? What's wrong with..." She cut herself off, realizing she had crossed a line and regretting the meanness of the question immediately. She had been so upset that she spoke without thinking.

His eyes grew cold.

"Wrong question," he said icily, dropping the cigarette on the ground and snuffing it out with a turn of his foot. He brushed past her, rudely knocking her legs with his as he left. Was it on purpose? Did he even notice that he had done it?

She found herself feeling empty, sitting alone on the bench in the chilly air.

---------❈❈❈---------

Mae stayed away from the station for a few days, nervous about seeing the stranger again. But she finally relented, the necessity of having a place to go in the evenings overwhelming her concern about the offensive question she'd asked him.

She wondered if he might be staying away himself, but as she entered the lobby and closed the door against the cold outside, she saw the winding smoke drifting upward and knew he was there.

She felt guilty for her rude question when they had last been here, but she also remembered his harsh words and his ability to so easily grate at her nerves. The guilt won over, though, and she went over and sat by him gingerly, giving him plenty of space and glancing at him hesitantly.

He seemed to ignore her, but then slowly turned his head and gave her a critical look. She wasn't sure if he was angry with her or found it all funny - it was hard to read his expression with only his eyes available to her. Though a strand of curly hair, a mix of brown and blond, had escaped from his hood, most of his face remained shrouded in darkness.

She found herself wondering, despite her apprehension, what he looked like, under the tightly bound scarf.

He continued smoking for some time without addressing her, and she left it at that, just getting her journal out silently and starting to draft some ideas she'd had on her walk to work earlier that day.

Without looking over, he offered her the box of cigarettes with the lighter tucked into the plastic liner. She helped herself and soon returned to writing as she welcomed the comfort the little burning ember in her hand brought.

He sat back, glancing at her journal and seeming to observe her writing there. She shifted to limit his gaze from perusing the pages.

"So what are you writing? Are you a spy, writing down your observations?" he asked coldly.

"No.. I.." She really didn't want to tell him about what she did, especially with their last antagonistic interaction. But her regret for their last talk together got the best of her again, along with her intuition that he would not tolerate any frivolous lying.

"It's poetry. I write poetry, it's just something I like to do, it's not any good." She focused her eyes downward, her cheeks flush with embarrassment, as if she had confessed to some shameful crime.

She took a sudden breath as she realized his cloaked face was right beside hers, and felt his fingers under her chin, gently raising her head. "I'm not surprised, you do have a poet's face," he said in a softer voice than he'd used before.

The unexpected intimacy of his gesture and words shocked her, and she sat frozen in place, her lips parted with some unspoken word.

But a wicked smile must have grown on his face under the scarf as he quickly slid the journal out of her hands, taking advantage of her moment of utter surprise, turning away from her and opening the pages. His gentleness was a ruse, just meant to distract her so that he could take her journal.

"What are you doing?" Mae's voice was purposeful, insistent, but also hushed to avoid drawing attention from the few people scattered on the benches that night.

She was afraid to touch him and yet so angry that she dared to pull on his arm, trying to get the journal back within her reach. She immediately realized she didn't have a chance - his arm didn't budge an inch in her grasp. He still held half a cigarette between his fingers, seeming to exert minimal effort to hold the journal away from her.

She settled down and put her face in her hands, despairing that her innermost thoughts were in the hands of a stranger. At the same time, somehow, she felt a sense of exhilaration. She was unwillingly exposed, and yet there was a small part of her that did want to be seen. After all, she hadn't been sharing her poetry with anyone lately, since most of her friends were busy in college or had moved away from the city center. Some part of her mind was aching for someone, anyone, to read what she'd put her heart and soul into.

Either way she felt, it didn't matter. He had the journal. She simply sat and waited, hearing the faint sound of a turning page.

He turned back and surveyed her discomfort, surprising her by closing the journal so soon. She breathed a sigh of relief - he must have only read the most recent few pages.

He sat silently with it on his lap, she thought likely smiling under the thin scarf, as he leaned back on the bench. She was glad he hadn't said anything, and yet she was curious. Without anyone reading what she'd written, she wanted to hear what he thought - even from this odd resident of the station, she wanted to get some kind of a reaction.

And he seemed to be waiting for it, looking at her with raised eyebrows as if he was just waiting for the question.

"What… what did you think of it?" she said, her voice tentative and quiet.

"Oh it's nice, very sweet. A hidden flower in the snow, lovely," he said, his voice dismissive, unconcerned.

Though his words were positive, it was clear from his tone that he wasn't impressed. She wanted to know more - she had thought that it was one of her better poems.

"It sounds like you don't really think it's good," she said, her voice coming out much more youthful and petulant than she meant it to.

"Yeah, well, it's just clear you haven't been covered in shit yet," he said gruffly, looking away and taking a deep drag from the cigarette.

"My whole life is shit," she said, directing her gaze over to him accusingly.

"Then it hasn't changed you yet. It will, and then you won't be happy, but you'll write better poetry."

She reached for the journal, pulling at it with all her strength, and he lifted his arm, allowing her to take it. The amount of effort she had exerted was so overdone that she fell backward into her seat, the journal clutched firmly in her hands.

"Why are there so many pages ripped out?" he said, turning back to look at her.

"When I don't like something, I just get rid of it. I don't want to see it there every time I go to write something new," she said impatiently, still angry about his quick and dispassionate appraisal of her life and her writing.

He looked at her as if he was surveying some alien creature. Perhaps he was picturing her, viciously ripping out pages, so intense for such a young person.

"Maybe you shouldn't throw the rest away, maybe it's not that bad. How do you know?" he said, his voice lighter, she thought, almost kind, if it was even possible for his voice to be kind.

"I know," she said darkly, looking at the dirty floor in front of the bench again.

"You don't know shit," he said, getting the last good out of the stub of the cigarette and tossing it.

She clasped her fingers around the journal, glaring at him, her breathing stifled by anger.

She was debating whether to simply get up and leave in her frustration, when her attention was suddenly drawn away from him and toward the station door. It had opened to reveal an unlikely sight, a young man dressed to the nines, striding in like he owned the building. She wasn't familiar with the extensive underworld of Gotham, but like all other residents of the city, she knew from his look and his clothes that he was one of Maroni's men. Maroni, one of the most prominent gangsters in Gotham, his hands in seemingly every business venture and government deal.

The man sitting beside her had noticed too.

"Well this has been a nice chat, but it looks like I have some business to attend to," he announced, the annoyance dripping from his voice, as if this was some needless and petty interruption.

He held his hand over his pocket and walked toward the man lounging near the door, coming close to him, looming over him as he drew himself up to his full height. Despite his disheveled clothing, he was obviously in a position of power over this sharply dressed young man, who now appeared to cower, looking more and more like a misbehaving child. Mae heard the voice she had begun to get used to say in a low angry murmur, "I told you, never bother me here." He looked back over at her and then took the man's arm, pulling him outside the heavy metal doors so that she could no longer see them.

He returned after a short time, back to his usual unconcerned demeanor.

He was making slight adjustments to his clothing, pulling the wrinkled zipper of the jacket to the center of his chest, adjusting the hood over his wandering tendrils of unruly hair. As if he wanted to show that he was a proper businessman of some kind. It only confused her more, because she had a hard time telling whether he truly wanted to improve his appearance, or whether the motions meant nothing and were just a tactic to unsettle her even more than the meeting she had witnessed.

He sat down beside her, and his pocket fell open, revealing a flicker of metal in a shape that meant only one thing - it was a gun. He quickly adjusted the jacket so that it became invisible again. It had only been a glimpse, so fast that she could almost have dismissed her observation as some kind of illusion. But all the same, she stared forward to avoid looking at him, feeling she had seen too much of his hidden life.

"It's just business. You understand, don't you?" he said nonchalantly. But something about his tone sent a chill through her, and she continued to stare forward, afraid to look over at him. She nodded.

"You know, I didn't use it," he said, patting his pocket. "Too loud, too much of a scene."

"What did you do, then?" she asked, the words escaping her before she had thought them through. She immediately regretted speaking.

She turned toward him reluctantly and could see the scarf stretch out over his face in the way it always did when he gave a wide smile. The only answer she received was silence, and the dark glint in his eyes seemed to tell her to stay well enough away. She did.

He began to smoke again, staring forward, his mind obviously elsewhere, looking as if he was puzzling something out. But then he leaned back and turned toward Mae again, a contented look in his eyes, as if he was watching some kind of sweet, innocent entertainment.

She tried to keep her focus on the pages in front of her, but really it was all nonsense today. She was just trying to stay calm and escape his eyes, two goals she was definitely not achieving. It had excited her more than she had expected, for him to read her poem, and then he had angered her so easily.

And now, she didn't know what to think of this stranger, a man who treated what could only have been a messenger from Maroni like an unwanted door-to-door salesman. Her emotions were scrambled, confused.

"I think I'm a distraction, today. I'll go," he announced.

"No," she said, hesitating for a moment, regretting how quickly she replied.

"Just, you don't have to go, if you don't want to. You can stay," she tried to correct herself, attempting to sound unconcerned.

"Hmm, moody Mae. Wants me to stay," he said, raising his chin to look down at her as if he was somehow appraising her.

"See, I just made my own poem. Is it good?" He had reached over, his hand perilously close to her knee, but then closed his fingers and withdrew it hastily.

"How did you know my name?" she stammered, alarmed by his words and his gesture.

He pointed silently to the journal on her lap, taking no notice of her consternation.

She looked down at the journal and realized she had written her name on the inside of the cover back when she'd bought it. He could have seen it on these evenings when she opened it to write, or when he took it from her earlier. But it was still unnerving that he picked up on it so easily.

She tried to maintain her sense of calm as he seemed to return to his private reveries, leaving her in peace. She slowly regained her composure and pretended to write, turning over the events of the night in her mind.

In other cities, it might occur to someone who had seen what Mae had witnessed to report it to the police. But in Gotham, organized crime had intruded so much on the power structure of the city that very few citizens would even think to contact the authorities.

And somehow, as menacing as it was that her companion on the bench had pulled Maroni's man outside, it was also a consolation. Because there was something about the way he acted that made Mae feel that those glimpses she had of his other life, whatever he was outside the station, he wasn't going to allow it into this place. She thought to herself that she was foolish for thinking so, but as she stole a glance at the man beside her she felt that somehow, this place was an escape for him too.

She finally rose to leave, late into the night. He turned to look at her, while he leaned forward to light another cigarette.

"Leaving so soon?" he said in a soft droning tone as he took a few quick puffs to bring the burning end of the cigarette to life.

"It's late," she said, feeling as if she was apologizing for leaving. And surprisingly, she found herself regretting the fact that she had to leave.

"Well, be careful on your walk, you know Gotham can be a dangerous place, at night," he said ominously.

She sighed and glared at him. He was getting under her skin again, right after she had begun to weave some sense of comfort around herself. What was wrong with him? And how did he know exactly where to strike at her anxieties, her weakest points? She had often thought of the hazards of the city at night like this, when the streets were almost abandoned.

The fear hung over her as she left, pushing the heavy doors aside and stepping into the still darkness of the street. It was hard to even believe she was in a bustling city on this night - everything seemed completely still, utterly quiet. She could hear her own footsteps as she walked and the swish of her jeans against the slick material of the puffy jacket. She walked quickly, as if a fast pace could save her from the demons that roamed the city at night.

She heard a crunch under her feet as she walked through a patch of broken glass. The brittle sound somehow seemed appropriate to the freezing air, as if glass was the correct precipitation for winter in Gotham.

She had already come to the next block with her brisk strides when she heard something - she was sure it was the crunch of a footstep in the glass. Someone was behind her, walking through the pieces sprinkled on the street.

She stood stock still, like an animal trying to be invisible by being motionless. But when she caught her breath and turned around, there was no one there. She scanned the street, delving as far as she dared into the shadows with her eyes, finally deciding the best option was to continue, this time jogging, giving her adrenaline something to do and letting it propel her forward.

By the time she arrived at her street, she had slowed down and managed to push her apprehension to the back of her mind. Maybe she had imagined the crunch of the sole of a shoe on glass? It was easy to explain away the uncanny feeling she'd had, the feeling of being watched, on these recent walks home - it could easily be paranoia or her mood. But this was more difficult - she was sure she'd heard that sound. She reasoned to herself that perhaps someone had crossed the street behind her, going about their own business, disappearing into an alleyway before she could catch them when she turned.

She had always been prone to an overactive imagination, and she told herself it was probably just creating dilemmas for her where there were none.

As she entered the house, she hoped that the late hour would allow her to go to sleep right away, into a deep slumber with no dreams to remind her of the man in the station.

She tried to convince herself that he was just another drifter passing through the station, but it was impossible to ignore the intense energy he carried with him and the uncomfortable depth of his gaze.

In her fatigue and the cool darkness of the street, though, she did find it possible to soften the reality somewhat. There had been days in the past when she had not seen that trail of smoke in the station lobby. Maybe tomorrow would be one of those days… or maybe the problem would just disappear, maybe it was some momentary impulse and he would leave her alone from now on.

She brought her attention back to the problem at hand - she was home. Despite the long walk through Gotham, she always felt she arrived here far too swiftly. Here to this little collection of narrow houses, some of the few that remained in this part of the city. In the future it might become valuable real estate, but for now the run-down buildings and plywood covered store fronts made it clear this was a forgotten corner of the city.

The house itself was an inheritance from her mother's parents, and thankfully, they were able to rent out the upper floor to another family, providing them the income that allowed them to survive. Employment always ebbed and flowed for her mother and stepfather. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't, and their finances seemed unstable at the best of times.

Mae unlocked the door and walked into the narrow hallway, putting up her bag and jacket and trying to swallow her apprehension. The quiet was unsettling. Mae understood the different atmospheres and feelings of this house. She knew that something had happened, an argument, an angry outburst, something. Now, her stepfather would be sulking, watching tv, and her mom would be alone in the kitchen, reading one of her books, or going through her cards. She carefully avoided the living room and entered the kitchen to find her mom exactly where she had pictured her, a small package in front of her on the table.

"Hi, Mom," said Mae, breaking the silence. Her mother's faraway gaze and frazzled hair gave her a neglected look.

"How was work?" she replied. She always asked about work, but never seemed too interested in Mae's reply. But Mae didn't mind that - she knew her mother just couldn't handle the mundaneness of everyday life. Her mom always had hobbies, collections, that she ran through. None ever stuck, but she never tired of finding some new obsession. She always had to be living somewhere else than this world, flying above it somehow.

"It was fine," Mae said lightly. "What did you get?" she asked, motioning to the package, knowing that the question would wake her mom and bring her expression back to life.

"I'm just about to open it - it's a new deck," her mother explained with growing excitement.

Mae's eyes wandered to the carefully arranged rows of tarot cards behind her mother. Though the shelves were made of cheap plastic, no museum curator had a more artfully, more thoughtfully arranged collection than this. Her mother had the boxes organized and a sample card from each laid out in front, so it was easy to see the varied artistic styles the creators of each deck had used.

Like an impatient child, her mom took out the scissors and traced the sharp edge over the tape on the package, freeing its contents. Mae pulled up a chair beside her, watching as she opened the deck and scanned the vivid colors of the first few cards, like a wine connoisseur appreciating some delicate variation in the scent of a new bottle. Mae didn't have the same interest in tarot as her mother, but she did enjoy the artful color schemes and obvious care that had been taken to design these collections. She let her mother hand her cards, one by one, and listened to her comments, happy to see the excitement she experienced every time she saw a new illustration.

After they went through the deck, Mae got up delicately to try to avoid ending the moment of happiness her mom was experiencing and went to the refrigerator to get out some leftover soup, warming it up and placing it in front of them both. She always did this, because her mother often forgot to eat. She certainly wasn't a practical person, but she did have a gentleness and a passion for beauty that made up for it in Mae's mind. She looked at her mother, not understanding why she would have married someone who couldn't appreciate that otherworldliness, who saw her character traits as faults.

Mae got up, hoping that she could avoid any interaction with her stepfather. But she heard his unmistakable footfalls just as she was planning to leave the kitchen, coming in and walking to the sink. He didn't have a threatening appearance - in fact, he was very nondescript and average, with features that could easily be mistaken for a hundred other Gotham residents. An onlooker might be reminded of a middle-aged politician. But Mae knew from experience that there was a meanness there, something always hiding behind his blank expression. Mae was careful of it, like a spider dashing here and there avoiding the crushing steps of a crowd. His eyes scanned over the few dishes Mae had used to warm up the soup.

He grabbed a drink and left the kitchen without glancing at Mae or her mom. Mae let out a sigh of relief, thankful that he hadn't said anything. She cleaned up the pot and dishes, and came back to the table, touching her mother's hand.

"Good night," she said simply.

"Good night," replied her mother distractedly. She was only half done with the soup but had resumed flipping through her new cards, seemingly occupied with the fine details of the images.

---------❈❈❈---------

Mae was thankful for the quiet as she awoke the next morning. She could tell that she was the only one up and breathed a sigh of relief, easily slipping into her morning routine. She put on a pair of black pants and a button-down dress shirt for work. Looking into the mirror, she thought that she should try to do something with her hair, rather than letting it just hang down lankly like this. But she really couldn't afford the time in the house.

She sighed, noticing the freckles sprinkled over her face, making her look younger, immature, she thought. Brown freckles, brown eyes, brown hair, everything the same dull color in the mirror. Well, it didn't really matter, did it, she said inwardly. The important thing was to get out before risking an interaction with her stepfather. She was gone in a moment, leaving the house and entering back into the city streets of Gotham.

Now she was on her way and a feeling of freedom washed over her - why was she always happiest when she was between places? Maybe because she wasn't trapped - trapped at home, trapped at work… She felt free on the street, and at one other place… the station.

And with that thought, the memory of yesterday's encounter with the man wearing the scarf came back to her. Her heart sank. Yesterday night she had hoped that perhaps he would be absent, but in the sober light of morning she remembered all those days in the past when she'd seen the smoke slowly rising to the ceiling. She knew he'd be there, like a permanent fixture in the station.

She tried to push it all out of her mind and followed her usual routine, stopping to get coffee at one of the little corner stores and finally arriving to work. The frost had gotten into the space between the buzzer and the doorframe, so she had to tap it several times before the button went down and the manager unlocked the door for her. She entered the dimly lit restaurant, shaking off the cold and hanging up her jacket. She did some housekeeping, putting the menus back in order, wiping away the fingerprints of grease on the host's station from last night. This was an easy job, she supposed, but also tiring, especially on busy days. She put on her nametag and stood behind the desk, ready to greet those who entered.

During the busy hours, she didn't have time to let her imagination roam. But on mornings like this, before the lunch rush, she would sometimes sit on the tall stool behind the desk and imagine different characters entering the restaurant. It was an old-fashioned rotating door, another relic of Gotham's past. Her mind went back in time, now imagining the smartly dressed couple she had pictured in the station coming here to the restaurant. Maybe he loosened his tie as he walked in, ready to relax away from the stress of his work and the hustle on the street. The woman would look over at him, happy to see him comfortable here. They came to the restaurant often, and had a favorite table, over there by the window….

"Hello? Miss?" asked an exasperated voice, breaking Mae out of her daydream. A group of middle aged women had come in, waiting to be seated.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Mae, getting up quickly and grabbing a stack of menus from the cubby. "Let's go over here, by the windows. Would you like a booth or a table?"

---------❈❈❈---------

She stepped out of the restaurant after her shift, happy to be finished and moving on to what was usually the only part of the day she looked forward to - heading to the station to write.

But she was also hesitant today - would he be there again? Would he play that little game, staring at her and then looking away, coming to take her seat? It was so… strange.

Today was another day - maybe it wouldn't be like yesterday, when he had been there, across from her on the bench. At least, when she entered through the heavy doors, she didn't see him. And he was hard to miss, with that crackling energy he seemed to carry with him. She had a seat in her usual spot, getting out the notebook. She found it almost impossible to concentrate, distracted by her nervousness that he would show up again.

Eventually, though, she still managed to get lost in her writing, under the lofty ceiling of the station. It was nearly time for her to head back to the house when she noticed the familiar smell of the cigarette. She knew he'd be there as she looked up, and she was right.

He was sitting across from her again, on the bench facing hers, dressed the same way, as if he'd never left - long jacket hanging wrinkled and worn, scarf tightly bound over the lower half of his face. He raised his eyebrows in a way that seemed to proclaim his innocence from his actions of the day before.

She made a special effort to ignore him, letting him know she wasn't going to be chased away again. She committed her eyes to the page in front of her and refused to look up. But the words swam over the paper, her concentration ruined for the evening. Nonetheless, she kept her head down, forcing herself not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his presence had disturbed her.

Suddenly she couldn't close herself off anymore, that energy just felt so close. She glanced up and gasped involuntarily- he was standing there, right in front of her. He was leaning over to make himself a little closer to her sitting height, but he still towered above her. His eyes were so close she thought she could see her reflection in them, a young woman sitting there below him with her pencil and her journal, deep in the dark brown, almost black, of his eyes. She froze for a moment.

But she had to shake it off and pay attention to what was happening. What did he want?

She realized he was holding out the box of cigarettes, inviting her to take one.

She didn't want to weld a connection with anyone in this station, and especially with him. She was ready to politely refuse his offer, saying, "sorry, I don't…" but something about his manner, the way his calculating eyes didn't miss anything, made it impossible to try using this little white lie.

"No, thank you," she corrected herself, giving him an honest refusal. Despite the scarf covering his face, she could tell he was smiling as he retreated, raising his arms and opening his hands as he shuffled backward toward his seat facing her, as if he generously accepted her refusal.

She realized that he was tall, very tall, just as she had thought, despite his stoop. She found herself trying to guess his age, even though she had promised herself she would stay immune to his presence.

He was obviously much older than her, but his clear unlined forehead revealed a connection to youth and belied his affectation of a stoop. It was really the only patch of him she could see, besides his shadowed eyes, which carried a weight that seemed much older. She had to guess he was at least a decade older than her, in his 30s - but whether he was nearer 30 or 40, she couldn't say. It was too difficult with his camouflaged face.

Mae returned to her journal, trying to block out the stranger's interruption. She flipped through the pages, as if she was looking for something there, some reason to be here at this bus station, spending her evenings writing. But at the moment, she didn't feel very inspired.

She read slowly through her work from the last few months. There were a few lines she liked, here and there, but overall, she couldn't say that there was one verse that would be so flawless that she thought it was even worth sharing with anyone. She closed the little journal with a sigh, and looked up to the ceiling.

But soon she sensed motion across from her, and she focused again on the man there. He was drawing himself up from the bench, catching her with his eyes as he rose. He walked over to her, one shoulder slightly hunched down, his gait unnatural and stilted. At the same time, there was a smoothness to his steps that cut the distance between them surprisingly quickly. His movements gave the unsettling impression of a cat trying to fool a mouse by hiding its natural grace with a limping gait.

He bent down on one knee in front of her, frightening her with the unusual position, and her mind made frantic plans for escape. But suddenly he produced the box of cigarettes with one hand, and with the other, made a skillful flourish with his fingers and revealed the lighter there. She wondered at his slight of hand - was he a street magician? If so, she didn't think many people would be comfortable enough to stop and give him money, with the unsettling way he performed his magic.

She sat still and upright, her discouraged state of mind now taking his offer rather more seriously, despite the bizarre way he had made it to her. She had smoked casually with friends in her brief time in college. As much as she didn't want to be connected to this stranger, the memory of the relaxation she felt when she used to smoke got the better of her, and she went ahead and took him up on his offer. She took one out of the box and in the next moment he had the lighter there in front of her, the flame dancing over the end of the cigarette. The proximity of his calculating eyes and outstretched hand was unsettling, to say the least. She got it started with a few quick puffs and breathed a light "thank you" so tentative it sounded like a question. She eyed him suspiciously as he retreated and returned to his seat opposite her.

She leaned back, letting her notebook sit idle for once, pulling in a deep drag and feeling the smoke fill her lungs and filter into her blood. These were lovely - too expensive for her now, and of course not good for her, but so, so, lovely. She leaned back and looked at the reflections of the lamps glimmering off the dusty windows so high above her, parting her lips to let the smoke escape slowly.

She could feel it, his eyes were on her, but she wasn't inclined to be too disturbed just now, with the warm feeling buzzing through her body. Still, couldn't he look somewhere else? She shot him a glance and wondered if he had a smug smile under the scarf that disguised his face, satisfied that she had given in to his offer. He quickly looked away once her eyes found him. She returned to her reverie, trying to make it last, but finally she took her last puff on the remaining stub and tossed it away onto the floor. Somehow staying seated made her feel less exposed in front of this strange man, and it hardly seemed worth the trouble of journeying to the trashcan when the station floor was already littered with bits and pieces of rubbish.

The days flowed on, one into the other. Treading lightly at home, work, and then the station. He was not always there, but when he was, he always sat in the same spot, opposite her. He would silently offer her a cigarette. She would accept his offer quietly, not feeling a need to thank him anymore. She would watch the smoke drift up to the glass panes in the vaulted ceiling, now coming from her and him.

It had a regularity to it, a comfort that dulled some of her initial doubts. Such a familiarity that when she was leaving one day, she smiled at him as she rose to go. An involuntary smile, just a natural curve of her lips. Once she realized she'd done it, she half-expected to see the scarf tense up around his cheeks, the tell-tale sign of his smile. But she didn't; instead, the scarf remained still while his eyes grew sharper, seeming to cut her apart into pieces, looking past the polite expression she had shared. Her smile quickly fell away and she left hurriedly, as if her steps could take her away from his look. But she found that night that the unsettling power of his gaze wouldn't allow her to easily fall asleep. It was profoundly unsettling, she thought, and it reminded her that she sat by a stranger each night. Though she'd been lured into some since of familiarity with this man, she told herself, he wasn't a friend....

She had noticed the smoke on these dim evenings in the station ever since she started coming here. It appeared to originate from some barely visible figure with a cigarette, seated at a distance from her in the maze of benches that stretched through the large station lobby.

Though the way it drifted in the still air was ominous, it also made the station feel lived in, familiar, somehow. Sometimes she watched it, curling up toward the ceiling, as she was waiting for the next words to come to her.

Mae came to the station to write poetry. At least, that's what she told herself. She knew it was also about limiting her time at home to the bare minimum. After finishing her job as a lunchtime hostess at a downtown restaurant, the only job she could find during this economic crunch, she'd make her way here, to one of Gotham's forgotten ruins.

She was at the 42nd Street bus station, what used to be Gotham's central train station, hastily converted when the trains no longer came to pick up passengers in this part of the city. The tracks were boarded over and the old ticket counters long ago closed, but the crumbling ornateness of the architecture made it clear that this had not begun as a bus depot.

She let her eyes wander to the ceiling above her. It still held a graceful elegance despite the years of neglect- the arched support beams and the windows between them that formed the ceiling rose several stories, built before the only goal of city stations was practicality and getting people from place to place. This station was one of Gotham's oldest, with its soaring roof and mosaic tiles. But now, the city didn't seem to appreciate the historic significance of this place, and it had fallen into decay. A few of the upper windows had broken and were haphazardly corrected with pieces of plywood. The breezes coming in through the gaps didn't matter much for the temperature - the city barely heated the station, just keeping it warm enough for the water pipes not to freeze.

Nonetheless, she liked looking up at the arched structure, wondering what it must have been like when the station was new and the doors were first opened. She would imagine men and women dressed to the nines in Gotham's boom days, the 1920s, when it was the most prosperous city in the region. She would picture them wearing clothing she had seen in movies about the era - the women's delicate hats, the crisp lines and jaunty appearance of the men's suits.

She knew from the dusty historical plaque in the station lobby that there had been thousands of people traveling through here every morning and evening in Gotham's heyday. Their voices must have echoed off of the shiny tiles and freshly mopped floors. Streams of people would have flowed through this building, giving it life and energy. Sometimes she liked to imagine a couple walking arm in arm to their train, perhaps the man leaning over toward the woman with her short bobbed hair peeking out from under her hat, murmuring something into her ear, the din of other voices offering them the privacy they couldn't find anywhere else…

Mae had discovered this place after the city had closed the Gotham City Library. Budget cuts, they said, they just couldn't support keeping it open. Money seemed to be tight everywhere, with the recession that had begun last year. And it had hit Gotham especially hard, with so many people in the city already living hand to mouth. But it always seemed that the first budget cuts to happen hurt those who were already on the lowest rung of the ladder. Especially in Gotham, where money, power, and politics were so deeply intertwined. It seemed in keeping with Gotham's power structure that the city would close a warm place to stay for people who had nowhere else to go.

She was one of those people, but she wasn't exactly homeless. She had a home, but it had ceased to be a place of comfort a long time ago. Everything had changed in high school when her mother married again. The house became a danger zone, a place full of traps to avoid. Her mother had taken to buying things and stacking them up in the rooms, in the hallway, as if that would protect her from him. As if filling the house with obstacles would act as a barrier.

Mae tried to shake it off. This was her place to escape, to get away from all that. No need to dwell on it, anyway, it wouldn't help. She knew that from experience.

She had tried to break free and go to college last year, but it didn't work out for her - something about the deadlines and never really excelling at anything - she didn't feel she belonged there. And in the end, she just didn't have the money or the ambition to continue.

She was back at home now, suffocated and feeling like there was no way out. With the economic disaster that hit Gotham, it was nearly impossible to get a stable job. She would have to wait until she could save up enough money to pay a deposit and rent on an apartment, a difficult task in the lowest-paid position at the restaurant. She really had no place to go.

But this, this was her one reprieve. She would leave work and walk here with rushed steps, for once during the day excited about what was to come - getting to write a half remembered phrase or concept, weaving her thoughts together into a cohesive set of lines.

She braced herself against the cold on the bare wooden bench. She sat at the furthest edge, in order to catch the maximum amount of light from one of the streetlamps that were scattered among the seats. Long ago, in some ill-thought-out attempt to save money, it looked like the streetlamps that must have originally been outside surrounding the station, had been relocated indoors. The old-fashioned lantern style of the light fixtures and the ornate wrought iron posts contrasted with the roughly welded bases, a later addition, that anchored them to the floor.

From time to time, the wiring seemed to be faulty, when first one, then another, of the lamps would flicker, in a chain that would zigzag across the station, threatening to plunge the whole place into darkness. But then the lamps would blink back to life again, restoring the dimly lit atmosphere of the station in the evening.

Not many people transited by bus here anymore, and the few that did hastily made their way though the imposing lobby. The only others she regularly saw here were the homeless citizens of Gotham, reclining on the benches around her or setting up makeshift shelters on the floor. It was a place of refuge for them too.

She took out her notebook and pencil, ready to begin. Her bare fingers started to feel the cold immediately, since she wore cheap gloves with the top half of the fingers cut out to help her write. She wondered if perhaps she looked a bit like a relic of some forgotten era herself, sitting in the remains of this century-old station, writing with pencil and paper. But something about writing this way worked for her, somehow it was more direct, more real, than sliding a finger across the screen of her phone to create her words.

She barely noticed the cold seeping into her hands from the still air as she recalled the lines that had come to her on the walk here. She flipped the page over to begin a new poem and pushed her lanky, shoulder-length brown hair behind her ears to keep it out of the way. She took a deep breath, finally feeling relaxed, knowing that no one would find her here, and got to work.

She was lost in her writing for some time, not really noticing what was going on in the station around her. The intermittent sounds of the squeaking brakes and puttering engines of the buses didn't distract her anymore, it was just background noise. But sometime later, maybe seven or eight, when the final light of the day had died and the lamps glowed faintly, she looked up, feeling an eerie awareness that someone was looking at her. But no one was there.

The smell of a burning cigarette was thick in the air and she realized that the trail of smoke she often noticed was now much closer to her, just one row of benches away. The smoker himself facing away from her, hunched forward, the hood of a jacket obscuring any view of his features. She stretched her arms and dismissed the feeling.

She returned to her writing. She was in a thorny portion where she wanted to say something about the delicacy of a flower - but she just couldn't find the right words. Anything she came up with seemed tired, used, forced, like someone had written it a million times before. She sighed, wondering if she should just sit here in the station and forget about her attempts at writing for the day. Her nerves wore on her, causing her to give in to a regular habit that she was trying to stop - chewing on the metal holder of the pencil eraser. The few people she had encountered in the station seemed to be living in their own isolated worlds, and she didn't worry too much about showing this childish habit here.

But then there it was again, much stronger this time, the feeling of being watched.

She jolted and sat rigidly upright, becoming aware that the figure she had seen a row of seats away had suddenly appeared across from her, wreathed around in smoke. He was not looking at her now, his head instead turned away toward some empty corner of the station. She refused to let her eyes dwell on him, trying to avoid confrontation if possible, still wondering if she had imagined his look. All she caught in her brief glance was an impression of a scarf, wrapped around a face, the eyes sharp and unyielding.

She tried to get back to her writing, trying to remember where she was at and what she wanted to do next with this section.

But then she felt eyes on her again, and had to look up in reaction. Again, the figure in front of her was staring over at some undefined space in the station. It was as if a fly was buzzing around her and landing just long enough for her to feel it, but not long enough for her to have time to swat it.

She snuck a look at the man in front of her, just to try to gage what was happening a little better. In one sense, he matched the other residents of the station - he seemed to be wearing layers of old clothes for warmth, a long, army green jacket as the layer she could see. But his continuous smoking and the sharpness of his presence contrasted with the usual muted demeanor of the others who found refuge in the station. He seemed incredibly… awake. He would have be very quick to escape her eyes when she tried to catch him looking toward her. She just wanted to make sure she wasn't going crazy, that she wasn't imagining it.

He seemed tall, quite tall, but slumped to such a degree it was hard to tell. Much of his face was hidden by the material pulled across his nose and mouth and the hood of his jacket. The covering wasn't completely effective, though. Especially when he turned to the side, unkempt strands of curly hair surfaced around his neck, emerging from the darkness of the hood.

The scarf was thin, like a bleached out bandana, obviously not there for warmth but instead to conceal. The only thing she could compare it to was images of desert nomads she occasionally saw in newsfeeds on her phone, the material tied around their faces to keep out the blowing sand and relentless sun. Of course, neither of these could be found in Gotham in the winter, so the scarf gave him an unusual, out-of-place look.

He was slumped down into his collar and well-concealed by clothing, but every time he took a drag of the cigarette, he pulled up the scarf, not taking much care with the action. In one of those brief moments, she noticed a hint of something almost gruesome near his mouth - the skin there was puckered and discolored. A burn? The remains of some kind of illness? But she didn't dare take too long with her glances.

She drew a deep breath and decided to look straight at him before she felt his gaze, to try to catch him at whatever game he was playing. On the rare occasions she had trouble with the regular residents of the station, it had always been the case that if she made it clear she noticed what was going on, they would stop and back down.

She had just looked up to find him staring elsewhere, faked a glance back at her notebook, and then snapped her gaze back to him almost immediately. She succeeded in her goal - he was looking right at her. It was unsettling that he seemed to be focusing on her lips, but as soon as he realized she was returning his gaze, he moved upward, to her eyes. Normally, it would be easy to stare down someone like this. But with him it quickly became impossible. His gaze met hers with an intensity that seemed unwarranted for the situation, and she realized his eyes were darkly shadowed - maybe it was the poor lighting in the station, or maybe he had not slept for some time - but it gave his stare an unsettling quality, only increased by the dramatic slant of his eyebrows. Something about the blankness of his concealed face, the unsettling steadiness of his gaze, and his darkly shadowed eyes - they quickly overcame her. It seemed like he was taking all of her in through those eyes, and it made her extremely uncomfortable. She looked back down to her journal, accidentally snapping the pencil onto its surface and making an unintentional loud clack as it hit.

She looked up again and was thankful he had turned to the side. But she found it supremely unsettling how crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes and his cheeks pushed outward on the tightly secured scarf - despite the covering, it was clear he was smiling. She decided to get up and walk around - maybe he would take the hint and leave her alone. Besides, her hands were freezing, aching with the cold. It would be good to get her blood moving a little. She placed her notebook in the bag and got up to take a loop around the station.

She walked far away but something about him seemed to stay with her, something she couldn't shake off. To have a stranger look at her like that, it was more than unusual. Maybe he was delusional and thought she was someone else? But she had encountered many people who seemed detached from reality in her time at the station, and the feeling she got from this person was not that he was out of touch with the harsh edges of the world around him. Instead, he seemed fully immersed in it. Maybe too immersed? Too present?

She tried to shake it off and finally turned back to walk to her seat. At first she was relieved that he seemed to have moved - she didn't see him there where he had been. But then her heart sank as she realized where he had relocated - he had now planted himself precisely in her seat, still smoking and staring forward, now looking over at his old spot. He raised his head to look at her as if he was waiting for her reaction. It was hard to see because he was so drawn into his clothes, but as he took the next drag from his cigarette and turned to glare up at her, she thought she saw a glint of yellowed teeth and part of a mirthless smile there in the shadows.

She really didn't want to go home this early - the longer she could stay away from that place, the better. But this new hazard was getting stranger by the minute. She refused to return his gaze and instead left the station, deciding to take a roundabout way home. Maybe she could stop by the convenience store and take a few laps before they asked her to leave, when they realized she wouldn't be buying anything.