WARNING: Long author rant, ye been warned
Hello, and welcome to my re-entrance into TDK fandom. I love it here, but for awhile there I lost a lot of confidence in myself, especially when writing the Joker, because he is a hard guy to perfect. And then I realized that my version of him doesn't need to be perfect, and nor does my writing. And so, after a dream very similar to this story, I decided that I love to write, I love the Joker, so why not do both without having to worry so much.
Therefore, I can't promise perfection, I will try my best to stay true to the Joker's true character, because I hate OOC characters. As well, the only person who has edited this is me, and only a little cos I'm pretty lazy. This is a multi-chapter fic, but it is all about one night and only really features my OC and the Joker.
Next chapter the rating will go up to M. Alright, I'm done now. Enjoy!
The Red Dress
As hard as it is to admit, all that happened was because of what Vanessa Boyden was wearing.
Well, technically all that happened was because of a certain deranged clown, but the only reason why she and he had anything to do with one another was because of her dress.
The dress was a gift from her mother for her twentieth birthday, and two years later it remained her favourite thing in her closet. A lacy red number; satin underdress, just two shades or so darker than the lace overlay. Sleeves to her elbows, skirt down to above her knees, and a slim brown belt to emphasize the waist. And a vibrant shade of scarlet. A bold colour, a perfect colour for her tanned skin and dark brown to caramel ombre hair.
That night she accompanied it with high-heeled brown ankle boots, black winged eyeliner, and a white flower stud in the cartilage of her ear.
But this is boring you, isn't?
You don't care about what she is wearing. You only care about how this girl could possibly have a connection to the criminal known as The Joker.
Quite simply, the Joker is a man of many whims, and Vanessa Boyden is a girl of sporadic stupidity. Oh, she is by no means a dumb girl, not with an eighty-five average in high school, and being top three in her media studies course at University of Gotham. But, like every young adult, she has the immortality complex. She is untouchable, unsinkable, nothing can hurt her, and nothing can kill her. And in a city like Gotham, that is a very dangerous mind frame.
Therefore, when she decided to turn in early after a night on the town with some of her girl friends, she should have taken the cab like her friends advised. But she wanted the fresh air, you see. But her apartment was only four blocks away, you see.
But there was a van, you see.
And there were orders, and there was an opportunity.
Vanessa did not even have a moment to panic before the van was beside her, a man was beside her, a needle was inside her, and the darkness was coming at her.
{/|\\\}
And here we are. Time for the tense to change.
{/|\\\}
Vanessa stares at a ceiling that is an awful shade between yellow and grey. Yellow from age, grey from decay. And, a shade that she is not familiar with. Her ceiling is beige, her parents ceiling is white, and her best friends' ceiling is light blue.
She does not know where she is.
She sits up, and the colours rush at her, so she slumps back down onto the bed, clutching her head.
"Ohh," she moans, her voice sandpaper and uneven edges. She blinks to banish the cobwebs, then she sits up more slowly. She looks around. She can't be sure, but she thinks she's in a basement. The room is a perfect square, spacious, and drafty. The only light comes from the bulb attached to the ceiling fan. There are no windows. There is a door on the wall to the left of her, and wooden staircase on the opposite side of the room that lead up to an off-white door.
The human mind is a funny thing. Rather than concentrate on the fact that she has been kidnapped (that she has no idea where she is, or why she is here), Vanessa's mind focuses on those stairs. She stands up from the bed, her legs wobbling. She wants those stairs. She feels like if she can just get up those stairs, she'll be okay. She takes a step, and her legs buckle beneath her. She lands on one knee, and the pain knocks some of her old sense into her.
Now when she looks around, it is frantic. Oh god, where is she, what happened? Why—
The van, the men, the needle.
"Oh my god," she says, and she scrambles for the stairs. She reaches the bottom of the staircase, tripping and floundering on her way there but always picking herself back up, and she is about to mount it when she hears something.
Voices. Men's voices. Loud, obnoxious, aggressive. The men who drugged her, who took her, who put her in this room. She falls back with a small cry, and crab walks back to the bed, and then hops onto it. Where's her purse? If she can find her purse, then she can call someone—
Idiot, as if they would let her keep her purse. And, where are her shoes? She looks down at her mismatched socks: one black, one orange with polka dots. They took her shoes. What else did they take? Her hands run over her body. Nothing painful, no aches. She checks her underwear, and her bra. They seem fine too.
What do they want, what could they want? A plaything, a chew toy? Someone to strap a bomb to? Ransom? But she's a nobody; her parents are nobody's from Star City. She doesn't have money; she has barely enough money to get a week worth of macaroni and cheese. She doesn't have connections, or important friends. She is just another face.
And soon to be another statistic.
"Oh my god," she says again, her voice breaking off into a sob. And the levy breaks, and the tears flood.
{/|\\\}
There is no way to be sure how long she cried for. Enough to make her skin feel raw from the salt, and her eyes prickly and dry. She takes several deep breaths, squeezes out the last two tears, then she stares at the stairs again. Even with some lucidity, she still wants them. The stairs are freedom, and oh god she wants it, she wants out of this fucking basement. So she strains her ears, and she listens. And she hears—
Silence.
The loud, obnoxious, aggressive voices, they are silent. Are they gone? Did they leave, step out, assume she's still knocked out so it's safe to go? She doesn't care, the silence is golden, and so are those stairs. She teeters to her feet, the cement ground icy even through her socks. She keeps her eyes focused on those stairs, like if she looks away they'll disappear. She's at the foot of the staircase. There are seven wooden steps. She takes the first one, the second, third.
The fourth one creaks.
The sound is startling enough to make her yelp, and jump back down, landing on her butt on the hard cement ground. Her eyes, she thought they were too dry, but they fill with tears at the pain in her backside. She stands up, rubbing her backside absentmindedly, cursing through gritted teeth. She takes the first step, second, third, skips the fourth right to five—
Movement. Far off, somewhere else in the building, she hears a door open. Shut. Footsteps.
Her reaction is instant. She crouches on all fours on the stairs, and peeks through the crack at the bottom of the door. The light is greyish and grainy, but she wants to bathe in it, and then run as fast as she fucking can, call the police, and go home. But the footsteps. Who is it? Is it one of the men? Has he come to hurt her? Her fingers start to tremble, so she closes them into a fist, but the vibration spreads through her body. She is shivering, not from the cold and not even from fear. Impatience. She wants out.
Right fucking now.
So she presses her ear to the door, and listens. If there is only one person there, she thinks she can take them. She may not be a fighter, but she is not some cherubic little thing. She's the tallest in her group of friends, a respectable five foot eight. Not huge, but certainly no goddamn pixie. And with the adrenaline speeding through her blood vessels right now, she can't see how she won't have a chance at beating whoever is in the house.
But she doesn't want to be hasty. She wants to play this smart, make it clean. So she listens to the footsteps. They move around the house, the speed leisure. They get closer, they veer off, and for a moment she can't hear them at all. She blinks, confused, and she ducks down to stare through the crack. The grainy light spreads over her face.
And then it doesn't.
Twin shadows take up the light, and it's all she can do not to reel back, and scream.
He is in front of the door. He is standing right in front of the door. He is right. Fucking. There.
Vanessa slaps her hand over her mouth, squeezing at her cheeks, forcing even her breathing to be more silent than death. She watches those two twin shadows, praying to God (who has clearly been ignoring her lately). Please let them go away, please please.
Then, a miracle. Footsteps walk away from the door, and from the sound of them, to another room.
Vanessa slowly releases her mouth, ignoring the numb feeling, unaware of the white marks her hands left on her face. She presses her ear to the door, and she hears the footsteps disappear. She takes a deep breath, then another, then she stands. She stares at the chipped, greasy looking doorknob, her fingers twitching. She closes her eyes, readies her muscles to run and run and run and run and run—
She grabs the doorknob and —
So does the person on the other side of the door. The violent twisting of the knob makes her scream, and jump back. Luckily she doesn't fall this time, only stumbles back toward to the middle of the room. Panting heavily, sweat beading down her nose (that's where it always starts, the sweat starts at her nose) she stares at the door with eyes that are all kinds of wide, as it swings slowly open.
A figure.
Obviously male. Tall, looks thin, but it's too dark to tell. No features can be seen. But there is something about the way he stands in the doorway. Something about the way she can tell he is staring at her. Needles prick at her skin under the influence of his gaze, and the air grows heavy around her. She jumps violently when they door is slammed shut. Her breathing is too loud in her ears; she is taking up all the oxygen in the room with how heavy it is. But she can't slow it down, she can't ease it out. She can't seem to get enough air.
The man takes the first step down. She flinches. The second, third. She jerks back a step when the stair creaks at the fourth step. Fifth, sixth—
"Oh god," she whimpers, too quiet for him to hear.
He steps into the light.
Oh god.
Oh god.
Oh God.
She knows this man; the whole of goddamn Gotham knows this man. He is infamous; he is a damn household name.
Deep purple suit, sickening green vest; the colour of bruises. Green hair to match: greasy, tangled, too long, the roots showing.
And his face, oh god it's hardly a face.
It's a swirling mess of white, black and red. A cruel, sick joke on a child's war paint.
Oh yes, she knows this man.
The Joker smiles at her, baring his yellowed teeth, and the instinct to drop to the floor is overwhelming. In the animal kingdom, baring your teeth is a sign of aggression, and there is something awful, something raw and intensely feral about this man, and something in her responds to it. Something in her urges her to either prostrate herself in the hopes of mercy, or run, and don't fucking stop.
At the moment, she is unable to do either. Her legs lock her in place, and her eyes lock onto him. The Joker drinks in the attention for a moment, before sidling closer. She responds with a firm step back. He doesn't seem to mind, his smile just gets bigger.
Oh god, oh god, what does he want, what does he want, whatdoeshewantwhatdoeshewant—
"Ah, hello," oh how she jumps. That voice, it's been on the TV countless times, talking, laughing, yelling. But it doesn't prepare her. It makes her stomach turn, and her ears ring. Clowny and sibilant, teasing and threatening. Popping syllables, stressing consonants, putting emphasis on odd words. Wrong, so wrong. Everything about this man-creature-thing is so wrong.
The Joker frowns, his (mangled) mouth drooping dramatically. He takes another step. She takes another one back. There's something primal about his posture. Shoulders up, rigid, like all his muscles are coiled. Ready. His head aligns with the awkward line of his shoulders, his neck stretched out. His head lolls on his neck, and his walk is more a lope, an animal stride, than anything else.
"No hello back, doll face?" he asks, his tongue snaking out to swipe over his lips. It makes the red make-up glisten in the low lights, like blood. She feels nauseous. More sweat beads down her nose. Her muscles wail at her, but she is afraid that if she moves too suddenly, he'll see an opportunity to leap at her, to tear her apart.
His eyebrows lift expectantly, waiting for her response, but her muscles in her jaw are clenched too tightly. It's not about defiance, not really. It's about feeling out of control. She feels like she doesn't have control over her own body now, and she is afraid that somehow, if she speaks, he will have all the control.
Click
Her eyes, if possible, widen further, at the familiar sound. She knows the sound of a switchblade being opened. Her brother loved to play with his, until the day their mother took it away from him. And then he just got another anyway. But with Stephen, it was just her stupid little brother, playing around, and she was always more worried about him hurting himself.
This knife is ghastly looking. Sharp, glistening. Held tight in gloved hands, the leather squeaking as he tightens his grip. A threat, oh she knows this is a threat. So, she finds her voice.
"Hello," she croaks, a sound she has never made before. She is the one who laughs the loudest, who makes the most crass jokes, who doesn't have an inside voice. This person she's being, this scared little thing— she doesn't know her. She doesn't like her.
Instantly, the Joker's face brightens, but he doesn't put the knife away. She keeps her eye on it. He abruptly starts walking toward her, his worn shoes squeaking on the cement ground, and the reaction is instant. She backs away rapidly, until she realizes she is running out of space. A few more steps, and she'll collide with the bed, and she really, really does not want to be on a bed with him in the room. So she swerves last minute, avoiding the bed, and backing closer to the left wall. The Joker notes her change of direction, and snickers, licking his chops zealously. He stops, not far away enough to be comfortable, but enough that she can keep the panic at bay.
"So, uh, Vanessa," she starts, then recoils at the sound of her name on his lips, and he notices, because a foil grin curves over his painted face, "It is Vanessa, isn't it?" he hisses, rocking on the balls of his feet. She can feel the restlessness radiating off him. He is just playing around now, just teasing. Leading up to the main event. Foreplay. She shudders.
"That's what the ID in your purse says, anyway," he goes on, bobbing his head up and down rapidly, his eyes, black, the whites too white, looking side to side impatiently. A crazed beast, a rabid dog, does the same thing. She is silent again, and the air thickens with his growing frustration. She isn't playing along. He doesn't like that. He smacks his lips, and he eyes her, his face contorting. By his side, his fingers dance impatiently in the air, then clench together, then release, over and over. She stares back at him, afraid to look away, afraid to make a sound. Finally, he's had enough. He snarls in his throat, wholly unsatisfied by her silence.
He starts toward her again, and this time she cowers, squeaking out a single "Please."
The Joker stops, blinks and the frustration is gone. He is mercurial, he is unhinged, and she is trapped in a room with him.
He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He pauses, and then takes a moment to fully drink her in. His eyes, dark eyes that remind her of gasoline, meander over her body, in no hurry. A tourist seeing the sights, an artist admiring his handiwork. It's enough to make the shivers physically vibrate her until she is a ball of shuddering dread and barely concealed whimpers.
"They did good."
Yes, I enjoy cliffies. Sorry I'm not sorry. So, I have about three chapters done, but I can't guarantee how often this story will be updated since I am finishing up my last year of high school right now (actually, this one of my many sources of procrastination, I should be working on school work right now).
If you have the time or the urge, please send me a review, criticism or the ilk. Have a wonderful day.
linnie