Author's Note: This is my first story that isn't a oneshot! I'm pretty proud of myself, and am looking forward to completing this piece. For a more detailed description than the summary gave, this story really deals with the origins of the Joker's scars, and how they effect him still. I hope you enjoy, and please remember to review.
He wanted out. That's how this all started. That's how he ended up in this room, covered in dirt and God-only-knows what else. Former friends of his, the men he had grown close with, worked with on a daily basis, were the ones responsible for his predicament.
"You know there's no way out, buddy. You knew that when you came to us. You knew it all along, and yet here we are." A tall, broad-shouldered man stood before him. He was shaking his head, looking down his nose at the young man crouched on the floor. "Jack…" he held his hands out, palms up, and frowned. "…Why? You had such potential."
Jack looked back at him, bruised, dirty, bleeding. Unshaken. The boy should be cowering, pleading for his life, begging and sniveling… He spat blood, splattering the floor near the man's shoe. The man grimaced, clasped his hands together.
"Your choice. Beat him." He looked up, eyes dark and unfeeling, and pointed to one of the men holding Jack down.
A fist collided with Jack's face, sending a sharp pain through his cheek. He felt his brain rattling as blow upon blow landed to his cheek, his eye, his lip, his forehead. He was holding his hands out in defense, but didn't fight back. He wanted to die. He wanted so badly for it all to end. Who needed glory or respect after what he'd done. He was a monster. He hated himself every day he looked in the mirror, at his hands… knowing what they'd done. Knowing the lives he'd taken. He was responsible for the destruction of so many people's happiness.
He wanted out, and this was the only way.
Jack had been making a point to casually bring it into conversation with the men he worked with. He'd say "You know, some day I want to be so far from this all." Or "This is no way to live…" He had planted the seeds of doubt into his fellow's minds. He knew eventually one of them would snitch, as they always did. There was no faster way to climb the ladder than to pull someone else down.
He hadn't been counting, but there must have been four or five men pounding on his face. He felt his lower lip split, could feel the sweat and blood on his skin. He could feel nothing but knuckles crashing against his face. And then it happened. His mouth began to split. The same spot was being hit, over and over and over until it turned into hamburger meat. The flesh began to part ways, jagged and bleeding, slowly dying… His cheek blossomed open, pulling from the corner of his mouth towards his ear.
He knew he must have been crying out, screaming in pain, howling… he could feel it tearing every time his mouth opened. The pain was blinding. It felt like fire was leaping from his cheek. He was sure he was roasting alive, and gritted his teeth, screaming deep from his throat, willing himself to die.
They never stopped beating him. Never once was there a pause in the torture. Someone was gripping his chin with a firm hand, pinching it, turning his face to land another punch square in his mouth, on his nose, to his eye…
It all started to blur together.
He felt something cold on the other side of his face… felt the panic bubble up in his stomach, knowing his end would be near. He could hear the men shouting at each other, the tall man in charge having left the room. They were trying to decide what to do with him.
Brand. They were to brand him as a traitor and leave him to die.
The cold thing against his cheek pulled at the corner of his mouth, pulled hard until he felt the very molecules of his skin collapse under pressure and tear apart. His scream was deafening as they cut his other cheek: a clean cut from the corner of his mouth, now bleeding and bruised and swollen, towards his ear. They stopped half way up, his new smile lopsided. One half of his face was beaten open, the other was a half-smile. Someone kicked him hard in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He gaped, surprised, and let out of yell, screaming as his cheek tore, curling up towards his eye.
He was bleeding heavily, sweat on his forehead, his skin clammy and pale. He was going to die here. He wanted to so badly. Nothing would have been a greater relief now than to die. To slip into unconsciousness, slip away into nothingness… to slip away from the pain of his life, the pain of his beating, and branding…
His vision swirled, he tried to open his eyes, saw hands swinging, men looming, shadows… the ceiling light blinded him. He closed his eyes, unable to hold them open any longer. He felt the life draining out of him… felt the world becoming distant. He couldn't feel the fists anymore… he couldn't feel anything except the searing pain in his face.
Jack stopped his fight, bowed to the black that was swallowing him whole, and submitted to its will. It felt like floating, like sinking deep into water. The pressure in his ears was enormous, it filled his mind with sound, coursed through his brain and shocked his whole being. He thought his head would burst. Darkness fell in from every side, a sphere of singing black. And when he was nothing, compressed at the heart of all that dark, there came a point where the dark could be no more, and something tore.
He felt himself falling away from the shell of his body that he had come to know. His muscles and skin and bones seemed to melt away as he dissolved into the blackness inside. His humanity slipped from his grasp, and he felt oddly amused by it. His fingers could no longer hold what tied him to decency… What should be making him panic and scramble – it wasn't. He seemed hardly concerned.
In fact, it seemed awfully funny to him.
He snapped awake, sitting up in his bed quickly. His breath was heavy, and he could feel sweat on his brow. Hands shaking, his lifted his fingers to his face, the pain very real and sharp, and felt the familiar scars that cut across his skin.
He sighed, lowering his hands to his lap, holding them together tightly, and flopped back into the bed. He tipped his face to the ceiling, closing his eyes. He willed the images to leave his eyes, but they were playing like a movie on his eyelids. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. It was too real for him. He had swallowed that memory years ago, buried it deep inside of him, and here it was: haunting him. Why now? He thought to himself. Of all times to be trapped with that, why now?
A buzz sounded down the hall, and he heard the accustomed clink of the door to his ward opening and slamming shut. Another buzz, and then the footsteps he knew to be an orderly making his rounds. He lifted his arm, letting it fall over his face, and covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow.
He wouldn't be falling back to sleep tonight.
