Sucker for Pain//The Joker

Sequel Teaser

Sophie POV

"Sophie... they're beautiful..." he trails off, tears in his eyes. I lean back into the hospital bed, exhausted. I look up at the ceiling and shut my eyes tightly. Tears stream down my face from the corners of eyes.

"Would you like to hold them?" asks a smiley nurse. I shake my head weakly and reach my arms out. They feel so light in my arms, but I am filled with overwhelming joy. More tears start to stream down my face. In the corner of the room, J is on the phone with my parents telling them the good news. He hangs up and strides over, pushing back his auburn hair and wiping his brow that is lined with sweat. His icy blue eyes stare into mine as he leans over the bed. The babies have green-blue eyes, a perfect mixture of mine and J's.

"Finally, we can finally be normal," I whisper to them with a weary smile. My eyes meet J's, but he looks away quickly with insecurity. This change has been rough on him, it's been hard to abandon old habits. It's been hard for me too. But after the Villain Removal Program was set into place we didn't have much of a choice. It was either rot in Arkham for the rest of our lives, possibly risking that of our children, or go into hiding and promise to never return. Technically under this program it states that we would not be allowed to reproduce, but in our defence I was pregnant before it was set into place. We decided that if we wanted to stay together and if we really wanted to start a family, it was best to go into hiding.

For the first few months it felt impossible, we would have to go to therapy for days on end to 'renormalize' in order to be released back into society. For me it wasn't as hard, I had been newly exposed to the ACE chemicals and had been 'normal' before. But for J... it was just painful to watch. He went through shock therapy, kind of ironic, and he's on all kinds of medications now. All for our family.

I sometimes wonder if it was ever worth it, if I would have rather been thrown in Arkham Asylum, if I would rather not have gone through with the pregnancy, if I would have rather spared him the pain. But after looking into my babies' eyes for the first time, most of my regret begins to slip away. Most of it.

J is definitely not the same man he once was, sometimes I question if he is still the person I fell in love with. He tends to be more distant recently, he hasn't been all there. That might just be the pregnancy and the stress of being a father. I still think it's something bigger. The meds have made him moody and he hardly eats, this is the most emotion I've seen him convey in weeks.

J got a white collar job, working weekdays from nine-to-five. He throws himself into his work, often staying late or working through the night. On weekends he sleeps late and watches TV. He sits in the same beaten-up armchair staring at the moving pictures, sunken black holes where his once bright, icy blue eyes used to be.

I know he's still trying, though, he really is. Sometimes he gets up to hug me from behind while I cook, or at night he'll move in closer to cuddle, or sometimes he takes me for a walk through the park on Sundays, always holding my hand. It's the small things that keep me hopeful. I just wonder how long he can keep up this charade before he breaks.

I know he's unhappy, but what can be done? He won't talk to me about it, we can't go back to our old lives now. It would endanger our children, and it would endanger us. If anyone were to find out who we once were, and worse, that we had children... I don't know what we would do. It's safer this way, not better, but safer. We should be thinking of the family as a whole, right? Of that I wasn't so sure.

I hope you enjoyed this teaser! I will most likely start this story towards the summer, hopefully sometime in May :) Thanks for reading, 

-elkj13