Title: Steps Away From Madness
Author: PhoenixJustice
Prompt: I can't remember when I had my first waking nightmare. They're too disturbing to call daydreams. - Devour (2005 film)
Word Count: 2488
Pairings: Batman/Joker,
Disclaimer: TDK, Batman, and all related products belong to DC. I only own this story and make no profit from this.
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: language, craziness, mystery, etc,
Summary: He kept following. Following. In the hopes that he could finally be released from the waking terror.
~*~ ~*~
I can't remember when I had my first waking nightmare. They're too disturbing to call daydreams, but they were no mere dreams, or nightmares for that matter. I was always awake. The times always random. The last time was while I leapt from building to building, chasing the enemy, hunting him down. I am grateful that it wasn't while I was in mid-jump, but nevertheless, hurrying across a decaying building, I stop cold.
"One by one, they'll hear my call, then this wicked down will follow my fall." Then the laughter, oh god, not the laughter. It echoed all around me, maddening me, piercing my ears, making me fall to my knees on the crumbling rooftop. I held my hands over my ears, but it did little to stop the insane chuckling, if anything, I could almost hear it more.
"Stop it. "Stop!" I call out, eyes squeezed shut, hands moving so hard against my skin, that they were leaving dents in it. "Stop!"
The laughter halts for a moment, growing softer before finally fading away. I sit there for a moment, just in case it might start up again without notice. Moments, then minutes pass, and nothing. I nearly forget about the reason I was out in the first place. I gather my wits about me and attempt to shake it off, but I couldn't deny that I was shaken. And grateful that this episode hadn't lasted as long as the first. Sometimes the periods were unbearable and I could do nothing while facing the assault of madness hitting me straight on. I hated feeling weak. I did what I did to help people, but also because it made me feel strong. It kept the fear at bay.
I stand and continue on my way, wondering just how much time had passed and whether or not I had lost the person I was chasing altogether. I could only hope that they were dim-witted enough to take the usual sorts of routes out. From the way they were acting, it appeared so.
I quickly scale down the building, scanning around to see if I could see anything. The night was unusually quiet. Even for this place. There was a deathly sort of stillness to the night and everything around me, nearly suffocating me with the feeling that I was utterly alone. I try and push the non-existant demons out of my mind, focusing solely on my target and look down the different ways, trying to figure out which way to go. My eyes dart suddenly to the right, where I think I see something, a piece of shirt maybe, as it passes around a corner.
I run hard, not attempting to mask my footsteps, unable to keep myself from running full out. Luckily the corner wasn't that far and I made it in a good amount of time. I halt in my tracks, heart thrumming wildly in my chest. I close my eyes hard, then open them back up. No. Still there. Was there a difference...but no, I soon forget all about any differences... Damnit, not now--
"Once upon a time, a boy was given a pony. Or was it a bike? Nope. A pony, he he. And they went everywhere together. Ha, B-but then the boy did something very bad. The boy's father decides he needed a lesson! He'd take away from the boy the thing he loved most--"
...Was that a gun in his hands? Just like that time then. He holds it up and I can see it clearly in my sight.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
I can't move; I'm frozen. I can't speak; but he laughs. And laughs. No shots ring out in the air. He was just jerking the gun up and down in his arms. He looks at me all the while, laughing while he does it. I must have let out a moan, because he starts to walk forward. My legs finally remember themselves and I take a step back. Then another. And another.
"No. Stay back. Get away from me!" I shriek, the sound echoing in the narrow alleyway, but there was no other sound that I could hear. Nothing. Not the chirps of crickets, the cry of a child, or even the sound of gunfire in the distance, which was rather common around here. Nothing.
I turn back to my living nightmare and find nothing there. A prickling on the back of my neck tells me to turn the way I came and I quickly do, with my eyes widening. The entrance out of the alleyway was gone, and in its place was a door. And he is there. He stands there, grinning at me, hands all but caressing the door, which in turn looked like an ordinary door in every way. Different again, right? But again, the thought passes out of my mind as soon as I think it.
"Just beyond this door lies treasure. A door to adore. Get it? Ha ha aha ha ha!!"
He opens it without turning his eyes away from me and a man stands in the doorway, ordinary looking, with short light brown hair. Looking terrified all the while.
"Please...please don't hurt me."
He turns to the man. "You know I never would have thought of it until you stupidly had to say that. Tala--hurt him." I could hear a growling in the background but I only manage to take a step forward before he closes the door to the man's screams. "Ha ha ha ha!! Reminds me of a story I've heard, but first...you might want to watch your heart. You never know when I may decide to attack it. Heart attack, get it? Haaa aha ha!"
He opens the door and steps aside, gesturing to for me to enter. There was no sign of the screaming man or the thing that growled. He gestures again, and I shake my head stupidly, unable to say anything.
"Come on. Don't tell me you have comedy block? Massive stage-fright? But don't worry. It'll be exactly what you need." He grins and I could see it clearly from where I stood, darkness and all. But soon the doorway filled with light and he gestures again and steps away. My mind, by this time, was a batch of confusion. I had forgotten my original purpose. I just wanted these living, breathing nightmares to end. Maybe if I kept on going. They would stop.
I glance at him as I pass through the doorway, but he was already disappearing and was gone before I finished walking through. The door closes immediately behind me and the light dims around me. I take a few steps forward. I notice my surroundings and see that I was at least a story up, and grabbing onto the rail in front of me, and carefully looking down, I could see large vats of green bubbling substances. I start as I feel a wetness on my cheek. I look up and see the raindrops falling down hard.
"There it is..."
I whip around and see him looking at me. This time I did notice the difference. It was superficial, or it wasn't. I wasn't sure. But it was still him. He walks beside me and I stiffen up noticibly, but he appeared, for once, to not take any notice. He points down and I see a figure running the rain soaked walkway. Wearing...
"The Red Hood...I was just a criminal then. Just an ordinary criminal." His voice was laced with disgust. "Before I became...what I am now." He gestures at the scene again and I could see another figure chasing after the first man. "This is where it all began." He turns to me and grins and I take a step back. It looked as though his face was melting, with raindrops hitting it, mixing, such a grotesque site that I could no longer take it.
"Get away. Get away from me!!"
I run for the door and open it up, slamming it behind me immediately. The large grin was the first thing I see, but for the moment, it wasn't directed at me.
"Hiding until night...prowling the darkness..." He muttered. "Your plan is to make Gotham suffer as you suffered, isn't it? Why did you rescue me from its cold grasp? Because you knew that I had suffered as had you."
There was a recurring theme going on here...
"You reached out to me, a fellow sufferer--a victim of a cruel city's harsh, vindictive ways.
You gave wings to my shackled soul, tearing me away from its greedy clutch. Because you wanted to know--"
He turns to me, mouth widening, grinning a pointy grin.
"Fear."
Things change...
~*~ ~*~
A door opens, and it closes again. I was in a cell. Not a jail cell, and not quite a padded cell either. My eyes widen as I see the pair of people in front of me, one standing in the doorway, wearing black, the other lying against a pillow, in orange.
"Hmmmm and what brings this visit? Don't tell me...don't tell me...Is it Saint Patrick's Day? Kiss a vigilante week? Oh...I get it." The man on the bed grins and this smile was somehow more tolerable to the me than the others I had been seeing. "This is the day I blew your little sidekick to tiny, eensy bits! Hee hee ooh ha ha!"
The man in the doorway grabs the man on the bed and pulls him up hard, and my eyes widen as he yanks him close by the collar and kisses him roughly. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The man in orange's eyes close and kisses back. I stood there stunned. At the sight and the fact that they were apparently ignoring me.
Or...or did they not notice me?
The man in black pulls away and then hits the man in orange.
"I'm not in the mood." The man in orange wipes at his chin to where a small bit of blood flicks onto it. Then grins.
"You're in some kind of mood." At the man in black's growl, he rolls his eyes. "Here for information then. Well what do I get out of it? A little quid pro quo? You rub my back, I rub yours? Something behind number three? I know what you're looking for. The Harbor Angel. The ferry, stupid. She's in the trunk of a car. Better hurry. Hide tide will be in twenty minutes! He he..."Threatened the man in black.
"If you're lying I'll be back."
The man in orange looks away from him. "I'm not lying. But you'll be back anyway."
As soon as the man in black is gone, the man in orange looks up. At me.
"Well helloooooo there. Starting to see it now?????"
I could feel the madness pressing on me on either side of me. The building I had now entered this time seemed to be infected with it. The masses of grinning faces, of the leers, the growls, the howls, the muttering, the screaming.
"Loosen up, tight ass!"
It really was a madhouse. And it felt like the house was the most angry of all.
Harboring filth and filth!
I could almost hear it say. Murder, murder, murder, murder!
Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Welcoming you home with its open, bloody arms.
~*~ ~*~
"He's out there...watching me."
I turn towards the sound of the voice. It was him. But he looked much more different than he had in the earlier times. Glascow smile accompanied by a grin that stretched his slightly craggy, painted (or was it?)face slightly.
"Work." He sighs, turning to look at man in a white suit. "I got into this business to avoid it. There's the rub, Jonny-Jonny--it is a business. You never know it at first--gettin' that free taste in the alley choking whores for milk money. No...it isn't in any handbook or something someone can, or will, tell you. We got to work for what we keep. No matter how small or big a thing we got."
Gunshots soon follow, moments later and they come running out of an italian restaurant, with me there, unable to move at first, only able to follow after them, dimly listening to what they were saying.
"Hmm..." He started. He was looking up into the dark sky, where there wasn't a cloud in sight. "Not enough for you,huh? Need me for more of your dirty work?"
The moment passes and the next thing I could see, was a bridge where he and the white suit guy were standing. "Uh, god. You disgust me. You have no charm at all. None. Just...obviousness," his lips pull downward. "Dumb. Dull..."
He looks up at me suddenly, gun in hand and pointing it at me.
"Disappointing."
Bang!
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
He wakes up with a gasping breath, looking around frantically as the sleep starts to ebb away. He pulls out of bed, walking over to the dresser in front of the bed and grabs the small-ish mirror on top. He looks at it intently.
"No...I understand. I won't disappoint you. Not anymore."
"Is...something wrong?"
He glances over at the sleeping man in his bed and smiles. He sets the mirror down and walks back over, sitting on the edge of the bed. His smile deepens as the man in front of him grabs some of his startling purple hair, twisting it around and around. The owl was looking concerned for him and that was a nice surprise. Before...they hadn't said much to each other, instead letting their bodies do all the speaking for them.
"Not at all, Brucie, not at all. Not anymore."
He grins.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~