Bullet got through the armor. Can't tell if it broke skin, definitely bruised, chest hurts with each breathe. Have to suck in air quieter, they'll hear me. And no one can hear me.
Rolling sideways, I catch sight of a clown, and in one leap he's a crumpled pile of unconscious bones beneath me. Wrong clown, his face merely falls off and skids across the concrete.
Above me, the dying fluorescent bulbs flicker and spit, casting ugly yellow light throughout what once was a functional warehouse. Now it's just the dueling ground for me and a mad man.
I rise slowly, eyes closed, trying to find footsteps in a room of stacked, rotting cardboard. I can hear them, behind me, beside me, but none of these are the clowns I want.
Not here, gone. Outside? Up.
Grimacing, I make quick work of the beams above me and soon grapple my way to the ceiling, skipping across supporting steel till I find a staircase. Going up.
A trap.
I barely get one pointed ear out before bullets connect the dots on the wall above me, high, grating laughter bouncing off the tearing sound of gunfire. Crouching and waiting, I grip a smoke bomb with tired and aching hands, waiting to hear the click of changing ammo.
I hear it.
Flinging the smoking distraction as far in as I could, I emerge in a whirl of black and gray, taking out four clowns before even one shot is fired. But even that shot is wild and poorly aimed, my chest burning as the muscles stretch to deliver several punches to said poor-shot.
Six clowns.
Seven.
Nine.
A flash of purple up the stairs, I've found him now.
Racing after him, he taunts me and goads me, promising me death and life and him and nothing. And I answer in silence and tensed fists.
Our perfect union.
Suddenly in a blast of twinkling city lights and police sirens, we're on the roof and he isn't running anymore. I stop and stare, and like so many times before, the mirror stares back and I don't know what's more terrifying, me or him or us.
He's gasping in air and laughing and his paint is mess. My suit in a torn wreckage of bullet holes and knife scratches and I don't look any better.
A helicopter roars overheard and I can't hear what words seep out of his red-stained mouth.
Stepping closer, he grins, and he yells it to me again, so there are no lost words between us.
"I'm missing you already, Bats."
The helicopter explodes in a fiery cloud of orange and red, burning steel and charred former-pilot-parts lifting me off the ground and nearly back inside. By the time the world isn't a ringing silence anymore and my feet are doing what they're suppose to be, he's gone.
Of course.
And I am alone.
It kills me and it scares me how utterly alone I feel, and how angry I become. Hating that he's still out there, free to hurt innocents and free to bring about chaos and death.
Hating myself for how terrified I would be if he wasn't there at all.