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"Twice tonight our lair's been invaded," Two-Face mused, considering the lovely Dr. Meridian. First it had been that gawky green stalker, hauling electronic toys and talking mile-a-minute nonsense. Intriguing ideas, and a spark of pure obsession-- always fun!-- but Two-Face had asked the coin, and it had showed its scarred face, spelling doom. At the far end of the room Sugar and Spice were bickering as they dragged his unconscious body out to the second of two secret exits.
"--should've blown his head off," Sugar was grumbling. He looked up, flashing a sweet, impish smile as Two-Face caught his eye.
"We'd all be burning in hell if the world was just," Spice drawled. "If Boss wants to put their finger on the scale sometimes, it's no more than--"
"Oh, muffin butter!" Sugar swore suddenly; at least, as much as darling Sugar ever swore. "Fudge!"
"What!?" Spice said, her hand moving instinctively to the studded whip at her side.
"His head's bleeding, look at this, there's blood on my second-best garter. Here, switch," Sugar demanded, letting his unconscious charge slump to the floor and holding his hands out for the bowler hat and the cane.
"Oh, like I want to get blood all over me?" Spice protested. Sugar raised one bleached eyebrow. Looked her up and down. "All right, of course I do. Here," she said, and tossed Sugar the hat and cane. Leather creaked as she bent to scoop up the Riddler by the ankles, then turned around and started walking backwards.
Sugar followed as she dragged him along, hopping a little as he worked his white lace garter down off one bare muscled thigh. Hard not to grin at the sight. Lovely boy.
Smoothing one hand back over a black lock of hair that had fallen over their forehead in all the fuss and flutter, Hilary Two-Face sighed and returned her attention to their second guest. She'd followed the Riddler in, but she wasn't with him, or so she said. Which meant she'd get her own coin flip. But not just yet.
"Doctor Meridian," Two-Face said. The good doctor was standing in the middle of the room, one foot metaphorically on sea and one on shore. Perhaps she felt it was the safest place to be, but the asymmetry was making Two-Face itch. "Let us put you at ease, dear." She stepped forward, putting their hands on Dr. Meridian's shoulders and backing her up across the border into the dark half of the room. Standing in the black, their hands tightened, and they pushed her down hard to land on the torn black silk of the sinister bed. "Sit down, sister."
She bounced slightly, bracing herself, and stared up at them. "What are they going to do with him?"
Two-Face shrugged. The coin had said-- scratch him-- but at the last moment their hand had twitched and she'd shot him in the shoulder. They couldn't contradict the coin, just like a lawyer couldn't ignore the law, but sometimes they could... bend it, to one side or the other. Hence, the off-center shot, a lot of dramatic screaming, and surprise! Dr. Meridian's presence revealed, like the prize at the bottom of a box of sugared cereal. An interesting woman, shadowing a wacko like that into an infamous villain's lair, watching him get shot, and still coming off as cool as a Gotham alley. "Our sweet and sour companions will put him in the back of a cab," Two-Face said with a shrug, crossing over onto Sugar's side of the room. "If he gets to a hospital, he'll live. Who knows, maybe someday he'll stop by for a second shot."
"Meaning a second chance, or a second bullet?" Dr Meridian crossed her legs, letting the slit in her skirt fall open to reveal some truly impressive stems, and leaned forward over them, letting her blouse gape open. Inquisitive. Just a little slutty. In a good way.
"Direct, aren't you?" Two-Face said, and laughed low, just one rumbling chuckle, an old tic they barely noticed anymore. Scream long enough and it gets stuck in your throat. Was that universal or just what growing up in Gotham did to you?
"Is that a problem? I hear you like strong women." Dr Meridian glanced over her shoulder.
"And beautiful men. Is that a problem?" Two-Face inquired with utmost sincerity.
Dr. Meridian didn't flinch. "Only if your dance card is full."
"Ohh," Two-Face said, drawing out the word. "You like to dance, do you, doctor?" They stood, and reached out an inviting hand, her fingertips barely brushing the invisible boundary that ran down the middle of the room. Dr. Meridian stood, a little startled, and took her hand, fingers sliding teasingly across their palm. Two-Face pulled her into a close, swaying embrace, slowly rotating on the spot as they circled in and out of the dark and the light. Somewhere in the shadows, someone turned on an old phonograph, and the music poured low from the speakers, a sultry shadow of an underwater voice, fading in and out of intelligibility.
"Leather, lace, heaven, hell; the world says, choose one," Two-Face murmured into Dr. Meridian's lovely hair. "But we're modern women, are we not? So why not have it all?"
Dr. Meridian still seemed a bit distracted. "If I were you, I'd be a little worried you've sparked something there. He's clearly vulnerable to obsessive thought patterns."
Two-Face barked roughly. "A round of psychoanalysis before dinner? But tell us, how would you diagnose him?" She tilted their head to get a look with their good eye.
Chase's perfect red mouth quirked to one side. She started to speak; thought twice. Probably wise. "Typical gatekeeping behavior. Insecure in himself; hides it by taking on the role of interlocutor, setting tests for everyone else. Objective-- or supposedly objective-- questions, with one right answer and a world of wrong ones."
"The simpler the riddle, the louder the goddamned bastard laughs behind his mask that you haven't gotten it yet!" Hilary cackled. Oh, they'd known men like that. They knew a Bat like that. She spun Dr. Meridian loose with a twirl, holding onto her hand and leading her to the dining table. "Sit down, won't you? Why, we'd just love to have you for dinner." She gave the doctor their place of honor, the bifurcated seat, and pulled up a chair from Sugar's side, sitting down across from her. Symmetry was satisfied. "You can tell us all about... riddles."
"Well, to start with, most riddles aren't fair," Dr. Meridian said, and smiled as if she knew how much of a tease she was being. "Most riddles are culturally specific. No one these days is going to know how to answer the medieval riddles where the answer is a chatelaine's belt of keys, or the spindle of a spinning-wheel."
Two-Face sipped the champagne that Sugar had set at their right hand. "And which are you, Doctor Meridian? Bluebeard's wife with keys in trembling hand, or the witch who didn't get invited to the party and wants to watch everyone else bleed?" They pushed a small plate of lemon souffle across the table. "Please, be our guest."
"I'm your guest until you flip the coin again. Is that right?"
"Until we need to." Two-Face's voice dropped. "Do we need to?"
Dr. Meridian didn't blink... at least, until she took a bite of the lemon souffle. Her eyelashes actually fluttered, and Hilary snickered lowly. They really ought to have more dinner guests; Sugar didn't get to show off his culinary skills often enough.
"You're right, of course. A riddle doesn't test intelligence just like the SATs don't test for anything but the right side of the tracks. Just another way the world pretends to be fair... pretends to give us all the same chance... Tell us, Doctor. What do you think of Batman?"
Dr. Meridian reached for the champagne and sipped. "I'd bet that in real life she's a real cool girl," she said, smiling sharply as Two-Face's eyes widened. "Whatever life she lives during the day, I'd bet it's just as much a mask as the Bat. A plastic Pollyanna, seeking approval from others in everything she does. Never complains, never cries, always putting others first. If someone criticizes or misunderstands her mission, it probably keeps her up all night. Well-- she's up all night anyway, I suppose."
Two-Face reached across to Spice's side of the table and threw back a shot of rotgut from a cracked mug, setting it back down again carefully. "...She?"
"You already knew," Dr. Meridian said. Perceptive. "I mean, come on. The outfit! The codpiece. The muscles. The car. The voice. Even the name! Why not just 'The Bat?'"
"Doesn't every man enact a performance of his own masculinity?" Two-Face challenged, leaning across the table. "If Batman is using a big engine and a lot of expensive toys to make people think he's a real man, well, so is most of the male population of Gotham. Look at you, Doctor Meridian. Were you born with lips so red, with legs so sleek, with hair so perfectly coiffed? Look at us! 'One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman!' Two women, in our case, our deepest apologies to Simone de Beauvoir, but we think her point stands!" She stabbed their steak-knife deep into the table, and Dr. Meridian jumped. "We're all of us what we pretend to be, are we not? And mostly what we pretend to be is exactly who and what we are."
"It's true." Dr. Meridian took a deep breath. Two-Face liked her more all the time. "The body is a crucial means of identity performance. But there's a difference between performing your own identity and playing a role. The Batman performs the man in much the same way she performs the Bat-- as an oversized symbol, a metaphor more real than reality. A way to express the needs and wants that she can't access as herself."
"Both lies, then," Two-Face said, cocking their head. "Two lies make up the Bat, just as we are made up of two equally true truths; we like that. We like that very much."
"You are the truest expression of your selves," said Dr. Meridian, tipping her head slightly from one side to the other, as if she were studying a painting. "May I be quite frank? I find it fascinating-- and appealing. Most people have an inside/outside split. A Bluebeard's door, never opened. All whitewashed placidity outside, all the pain and passion inside, oozing out of the cracks."
"Fear, rage, revenge, sorrow, all locked away in a snap-tight bin, like Christmas ornaments in a dusty attic. What a hideous waste!"
"Oh, yes," Dr. Meridian said, and shuddered. She leaned across the table, red lips parted temptingly. "But you're different. For you-- there's nothing hidden, nothing repressed."
"Oh, not at all. Hell is empty, Doctor Meridian," Two-Face said, and slid their right foot forward, letting her sock-clad ankle slide against the good doctor's. "All the devils are right here."
"Please," Dr. Meridian said, and slowly began to smile. "Call me Chase."