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When Barbara felt Mr. Zsasz's hand coming to rest over her left shoulder she did her best to not flinch, even thought every rational part of her body was itching to brush him off and run away. She held her gun tighter instead, trying to ignore the sweat dripping from the palms of her hands, and moved one of her feet slightly to the left; she needed to find a point of balance, or else, she would fall backwards. Her target was not small. It was white and big, the black background behind it making it all the more difficult to miss, even with the long distance. The girls put a bag over its head, so the face would remain unseen, and let it be because of the concussion or just out of fear, the target was barely moving. It was humanoid enough, thought, to make her training amusing. She didn't know whether Mr. Zsasz had brought it because he knew what it would cause her (what desires it would awake inside her) or if he was only seeking to entertain himself. It was always difficult to tell, with this man.
“You keep your stomach hard and your back straight. The gun would do the rest.” He said, pressing two fingers hard into her low back and placing a hand over her ribs. Mr. Zsasz sounded pleased, and in spirits of keeping him that way, Barbara did as she was told with little protest, trying to concentrate in the gun and the target, and not in his cold hands over her body. His presence was always frightful, even when he wasn't feeling particularly murderous.
In truth, if it had been any other man (any other person) holding her from behind, carefully measuring the balance in her arm and the grip on her gun, it might have occurred to Barbara that they were taking advantage of the situation, and she might have or might have not broken their necks in retaliation. This was Mr. Zsasz, thought, and he was probably more interested in her 9mm and all the things she could do with it than in groping against her back. This was a trait of his character that could please or enrage Barbara alternatively, depending on the situation.
The practice was going well. She already knew how to charge her gun without looking at her hands or at the loaders, and she also knew when and where it was better to do so, if you ran out of bullets. She knew how to hide her spare pistol in the flounce of her dress, and she could tell whenever the loaders were full or empty without having to look inside. Barbara was doing fine for a three week's training, but she knew that fine was not good enough. The War of Gangs was not over, even thought the newspapers and the Police Department were constantly saying the contrary, and if tomorrow she decided to venture into the streets without Mr. Zsasz and the girls, she would most likely get killed. Barbara knew, after all, that all the knowledge in the world is worthless if you don't practice enough to master it.
Mr. Zsasz's hands were on top of her own now, making her point in the right direction, and his chest was hard pressed against her back, keeping Barbara steady. The night had fallen on them already, and the only thing illuminating her target were the yellow (almost phosphorescent) lights of the Shooting Yard. That was making things more difficult, but if Barbara ever hoped to finish a contract and not get killed in the process, it was better for her to learn these things from the start. Exciting as it was, cleaning was not an easy career choice. Three weeks ago, when they came to the Shooting Yard for the first time, Mr. Zsasz had told her that if something as petty as poor illumination kept her from killing off a man, then it was just a matter of time for her and her pretty looks to die on him. The Zsaszettes were not allowed to die on their boss. That was the first rule of the book.
Barbara supposed, despite the threats, that he was trying to help (help in the only way a man like him could help a woman like her) but his presence was, honestly, more distracting than helpful. For Barbara, it was practically impossible to concentrate in something whenever Victor Zsasz was around. Everything about him; the way he talked, the way he moved, the way he fired his gun, how he chased and killed and terrorized men, how he smiled whenever he was about to blow someone's brains out… it was all astonishingly heady. At least, heady enough to forget about his crooked smile and hairless skin.
Fear was something that always came along with those feelings, and Barbara knew that it was because, after all this time, a part of her was still afraid of this man who could turn the giants of the city into fearful little mouses; who could scare off the lots of the police station just by raising his voice, and could crush men and women alike as if they were ants under his thump. He scared her; there was no point in denying that. However, with every passing week Barbara grew more and more convinced that these strange feelings were not born out of fear but out of temptation. That insane, frightening sort of temptation that got innocents killed and sent people to the deepest pits of hell.
“Whenever you want, Barbie.” Finally, Mr. Zsasz let go of her, and as he backed away, that unnerving half-smile that showed all his teeth and never failed to make Barbara's skin crawl appeared on his face. “You call the shots, after all.” She tried to smile at the joke, but she didn't find it in herself to do so. She couldn't stop looking at the target, now that the time to shoot had come. It was squirming again, this time more noticeable than before. A weak, pitiful squeal escaped from the bag that was covering its face, and for a moment, Barbara considered lowering her gun.
Then, clenching the button stance of his suit with both hands and grinning in a way that made his missing eyebrows all the more evident, Mr. Zsasz asked her to shoot. It was polite enough, his request, but this time his smile was not wide and easy as before; even through the corner of her eye, Barbara found it sharp and restrained. Or perhaps, she wasn't seeing it at all. Perhaps, she could tell he was unpleased by his tone of voice alone, and the rest was an image born out of assumptions. Perhaps he wasn't smiling at all. For some reason, the thought made Barbara anxious. She fired the gun, with her eyes closed and holding her breath; not daring to look at the sad humanoid creature squirming before her.
The shot made echo in the dark field, ringing loudly on her ears, but Barbara didn't need to look up to realize that she had missed. The target was still alive, still moving, and she didn't want to shoot it again. Barbara didn't lower her gun, thought, and she didn't raise her gaze either; her throat was dry and her eyes were itching, and suddenly, she was struck by the always haunting feeling that she had done something wrong. She couldn't react. She couldn't even move. Barbara only stood there, in the middle of the dark Shooting Yard, full of dread and resignation; like a dog waiting to be punished by a strict owner. It was her seventh attempt that night, and she had failed again.
The loud, high pitched laugh that came from behind her made little to improve Barbara's mood. The feeling of defeat washed over her again, fairly familiar by now. Long ago tired of her long, boring and uneventful training, the other Zsaszettes were now placating their weariness by laughing at Barbara and her poor talents with a hand gun. It made her heart boil with anger, but it had happened so many times during this unending night, that she couldn't bring herself to feel indignant anymore.
Yukio, the self-entitled leader of the group, was a short woman with beautiful brown eyes hidden behind asian like eyelids. She had a great aim, and she could discharge two 9mm guns in a single road without missing any target. Like all the other Zsaszettes, she had a bizarre sense of fashion, and no matter how uncomfortable she felt in it, she would never go out to clean without wearing a tight mini-skirt and a magenta silk top. She was the one who always started to laugh whenever Barbara missed a target; the other two, Terrie and Mathilda, were most likely following her lead out of costume. They were all stupid, uneducated and prideful girls, and since none of them was good looking enough to call her attention, most of the time Barbara preferred to ignore them. She disliked the three of them all the same, no matter who was in charge.
Mr. Zsasz was the one who was teaching her how to shoot, why did they have to come along? Why did they have to follow him around all the time? Couldn't they leave them alone, at least once? Barbara was almost tempted to raise her gun and end with their high pitched giggling once and for all, but before she could do as much as lift a finger against them something grabbed her from behind, gripping tightly at her right shoulder, and made her spin on her heels and turn away from the Zsaszettes.
It took all of Barbara's will to not scream out of sheer panic, even thought she knew Mr. Zsasz was not going to hurt her. Whenever the boss started to get impatient or made a too sudden movement, when he looked angry or unpleased or things just didn't came out as expected, Barbara would remember what it felt like to be young and naïve, and fearful. When they were standing face to face, just inches away from each other, as they were right now, and his grip on her arms became hard and unyielding, her long dead fear towards this cruel, bloodthirsty man seemed to fire back to life.
“Don't… close your eyes.” He said, in a frighteningly calm voice. Barbara took a deep breath, and reminded herself that in this sort of situations, the best thing she could do was stay still as a stone, and wait. Practically everything that Mr. Zsasz did was sooner or later bound to get him a reaction from people. He liked to scare his acquirements, before starting to break them; that's why he liked cleaning so much, even when he didn´t get to enjoy a slow death. That was also the reason why he was the best in the business. Barbara could tell, for this strange, almost sadistic thrill that came with terrorizing another human being was something that she had felt in the past.
If Leslie Thompkins hadn't showed any fear when Barbara chased her around the apartment with a kitchen knife on her hand, she wouldn't have found any joy in killing her. If her parents hadn't looked so shocked, so utterly terrorized when she was ordered to finish the Ogre's work, she wouldn't have enjoyed killing them either. It made her feel powerful; as if she had the upper hand for the first time in her life. This was the pleasure that drove Mr. Zsasz to kill people, she was certain, and this knowledge always kept her from showing any type of fear (any type of emotion that could have been dimed as weakness) in front of him. As long as she didn't, Barbara could stay at his side and remain perfectly safe.
“Don't close your eyes.” He repeated, tightening the grip on her shoulders for a second, before losing it again. Barbara found herself nodding without meaning to. Whenever Mr. Zsasz stumbled on his words like that, it meant he was running out of patience. “This… is something you want to do.” He reminded her, making her turn on her heels again to look at her squirming target. Mr. Zsasz took her hands on his own again, making her point at it again. Even with the bag covering its head, it still looked human enough, and she couldn't decide whether that was making things easier or more difficult.
“You want to see their fear, when you point your gun at them. You want to see them fall and scream when you pull the trigger and hit the target.” Mr. Zsasz unlocked the gun again, slightly caressing her hand with his thump. His index finger was lingering above the trigger, and Barbara could feel her heart pounding harder at the view. “You want to see the life slowly pouring out of them, until they are left empty inside.” He said, almost invitingly, on the shell of her ear, practically choking in the last two words. “That's why we are here. That's why we are doing this… isn't?”
That last question was a test; Barbara knew it before having to ask.
She swallowed hard, closing her eyes for a moment. Was she like Victor Zsasz? A bloodthirsty woman, just waiting for the right moment to take her fill? The night of her parents' death had been one full of fear and apprehension and repressed anger, but Barbara would be lying if she said that she had not liked watching or participating in the show. She had enjoyed killing before, but she had seen those deaths as a personal vendetta, not a sport or a profession. Was that a line that she wanted to cross? Should she please Mr. Zsasz? Or should she refuse him? Did she even had a say in all this?
“Yes… Yes, we came here to kill it, and… I knew it from the start.” She said, sounding calmer than she actually felt. It was just matter of making a decision; she could decide to shoot and hit the target once and for all, and she could decide not to. Neither of these decisions would have major repercussions in her life, even if she managed to kill it. The cops would not find it (they would make sure of it) and even if they did, there would be no repercussion once they found out the killer had been one of Zsasz's girls. The question before her was not really that difficult, and yet, something made it seem much more important than it actually was.
When Jason Todd shoot her mother in the chest and she started to bled out, so very quietly, so very slowly, in the couch of the living room, Barbara didn't felt guilty. The wound in her father's shoulder, growing darker and darker as the blood poured out of him and into the carpet, didn't even made her flinch. A dark, vengeful side of her, that until that long past summer night had never be seen by anyone else, was cynic enough to think that they deserved it. When Jason put a knife on her hand, sharp and glowing under the full moon's touch, ordering her to finish the job he had started, Barbara hadn't hesitated.
Later, when she was already in Arkham, she had fantasized about killing other people. Normally, they weren't important people. Most of them didn't even had a name; just guards who took too many liberties when manhandling her, inmates who harassed her with crude comments and salivated whistling when walking down the hallways; chicks who kept glaring at her way whenever a prison lord made a move on her. Other times, when she was feeling particularly hateful, specific names would come to mind. Leslie Thompkins and Jim Gordon were the more frequents. In time to time, René Montoya appeared on the list too.
“You want to see him dead. I can feel it in you.” Mr. Zsasz's fingers were still lingering over the trigger, but no matter how much he wanted to (and Barbara knew he wanted to) he would not pull at it. She had to be the one to do it; hold the gun while he did the actual job was cheating. “If you want to see it so badly, why do you close your eyes?”
Barbara had been very creative, when it came to her vengeance; disgustingly creative, if anything else. In her imagination it had been pleasant, entertaining even; but every once in a while, when imagination wasn't enough, she would want to see the real thing. Taste the blood and hear the screams, watch the fear washing over them in waves, crushing them, drowning them; all because of her. That had seemed impossible back then; a fool's dream, a nighttime fantasy. Now, things had changed. She was a free woman now; she was holding a 9mm gun on her hands, she had a scared, pitiful target just waiting to get shot, and Victor Zsasz himself was teaching her how to get the job done. Right now, if she decided to fire the gun and hit the target, what had once been a fantasy would become a certain future.
This was, perhaps, what was making her hesitate.
Suddenly, a thought popped into her mind, and Babara held the gun tighter. If Jim Gordon were the scared, pitiful thing that stood trembling before her, she would not doubt a second in killing it. She would pull the trigger one, two, three times in a road; she would disfigure his charming face and pull out his soft, baby blue eyes. She would discharge all the loader in him, and then another, and then another, until he was so full of holes as a chase grater and not even his beloved Leslie Thompkins would recognize him, and then…
“You are right…” Barbara said, ever so softly, her voice shaking a little (if out of fear or out of excitement, she couldn't tell) and even thought she couldn't see him, she could have sworn that behind her, Mr. Zsasz was smiling. Or perhaps, that was her imagination, too? “Yes, you are right…” She repeated, feeling suddenly engulfed by this man holding her from behind and his blood stained hands. Feeling a sudden and most irrational desire to be like him; to be broken and put back together again like all his other girls, and turn out better.
The angle of the gun was just right, and as long as she kept her footing, she would not fall backwards. “Why should I close them?” She asked herself, in a whisper. Her hands were not sweating anymore, and her breathing was right and easy. “Why should I close them…?”
Barbara's heart felt lighter than it had ever felt in her entire life. Mr. Zsasz was still behind her, measuring the balance on her arm and the grip on her gun, and all of a sudden, the other Zsaszettes and her annoying little giggles were not important anymore. For once in a lifetime, they were alone. His right hand was resting above Barbara's ribs and his chest was hard pressed against her, keeping her stomach hard and her back straight, and she knew she would not fall backwards this time. Mr. Zsasz was the one holding her, and this time she would not fall.
When Barbara took a harder grip on her gun, pointing it right to the squirming creature's forehead, and finally pulled the trigger, his cold breath against her neck felt like a kiss.