Disclaimer: I don't own The Dark Knight, any of its characters, or DC comics. But I wish I did.
Prologue
The blood ran, ruby red, dripping from my chin in a steady stream. It fell into the sink below, diluted by the dirty water, swirling into the drain with painful calmness. What would happen to it? Would it just fade away in some dank sewer? I couldn't help but wonder, even as the sides of my mouth stung with pain.
I looked up and stared into the mirror in front of me, greeted by a pair of dark, sunken eyes. Bags that looked like bruises had formed under them, probably from my lack of sleep. Or maybe from other reasons. Was it anger? Despair? Probably both, I thought. You see, I had had a bad day. A really bad day.
I tore my gaze from the mirror and tried to distract myself from the haunting eyes. Walking to the other side of the small bathroom, I stared out of the grimy window to the scene below. Sprawling masses of nothingness spread throughout the landscape, in the town that was the epitome of "urban decay." A police siren wailed in the distance, invisible through the cloud of smoke that permanently clouded this part of the city.
I chuckled to myself, thinking about all the worthless souls that inhabited the tenements surrounding me. I thought of their mundane lives, their useless jobs, and their futile attempts to entertain themselves. I thought of monotony. Living every day exactly the same as the one before, until you die and no one remembers that you were even there.
Slowly I turned my back to the window and went back to the sink. I leaned heavily on it, letting fatigue get the best of me. An overwhelming sense of misery had swept over me, but I pushed it aside with sigh. There is no more room left inside of me for emotions like that, I thought to myself. That was the old me. The human me. What had I become now? A former shell of my old self? I had been so full of youth and happiness, always laughing, always smiling.
Smiling…the word bounced around my mind, almost tauntingly. It was funny how I had thought that, especially tonight. Then again, it's a funny world we live in. A messed up, sadistic, yet funny world.
I closed my eyes for a moment as the thought burned itself into my brain, leaving a scar. I looked into the mirror again but did not see the somber eyes, oh no. What I saw was much more reassuring. It was a smile. A freshly-stitched, still bleeding, smile. Suddenly I couldn't hold it in anymore. It started off as giggling, but became louder and louder until I was cackling like a content witch. My new smile burned with pain, but that just made me laugh even harder. I punched the mirror, sending pieces of shattered glass all over the bloodstained floor. I charged out of the apartment in an almost hilariously frantic dash. Still laughing, I ran down the dimly lit stairs into a dirty foyer, and out into the abysmal night.