Title: Moment of Broken Calm
By: Amanda
Feedback: ;
Rating: T
Disclaimer: The Batman universe is not mine. And this is a labour of love, not profit. Please explain that to my credit card company.
Summary: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Competed: July 16, 2008
Notes: I blame this on reading too many Batman comics, trying not to combust every time I see a Dark Knight ad, and on watching The Order starring Heath and seeing far too many unintended Joker references. At least my madness is entertaining. Usually.
"You ever wonder why you don't just kill me?" The Joker leaned back; flinching from the pressure of a rib he knew was broken. Wasn't the one kick to the chest enough? Had Bats never heard of over-kill?
They sat there, opposite each other. No noise but their tired, haggard breathing among the broken alley debris. Neither of them had any fight left, not now anyway. This night they were done – one declared winner, the other loser. But neither was in any rush to claim their titles.
It was a moment of broken calm that they shared; a twist on reality that no one would believe, even if they saw it with their own eyes.
Batman turned his head and spat on to the pavement. Blood, either from the split lip or a cracked tooth, he wasn't sure. But he said nothing.
"We're too alike, you and I," despite the manic smile stretched across the ghostly pale skin, the clown was offering one of his sombre moments. A glimpse past the card tricks.
Over the years, this pair had shared some such moments. Even some rare glimpses of genuine humour, not that either would admit it.
Batman shifted and settled his weight with a groan; the wiry frame of his foe disguised a powerful force, much like how the jester hid a genius, of sorts. A curiosity to be sure. And it was both that left him exhausted on many levels, and often bruised in more than one place. Still, he said nothing, allowing the one sided discussion continue, as he was sure it would. It always did.
"Your pet Gordon would say we're opposites," he wiped at his nose, smearing blood and mucus, "the hero and the villain. But we both know it's not that simple – or that would have been the end of our little tour de farce. No," he looked up at the costumed figure across from him, "Nowhere near that simple." There was an odd, clinical quality to the way they Joker sized him up. More like a psychiatrist who could see past the Kevlar and moulded plastic than a psycho. Someone who could see the man under it all. That's what they were after all: men. But they were twisted in such a way that they refused to accept their mortality, which left a grotesque clown and an oversized Halloween decoration.
Slowly, it was growing harder to tell where one started and the other began.
"You're not the Ying to my Yang," he began again, slower this time. Each breath a laboured action, "besides, I don't subscribe to those philosophies of the Orient anyway." The Joker's pale wrist made a limp flail; as if directing his own twisted thoughts like an orchestra. "You're the chicken to my egg. Or the egg to my chicken. Either way, who knows for sure which came first…but you sure as sugar need one for the other."
The dark knight caught the wheeze behind the other man's words. That last blow to the chest must have pushed a rib through the clown's lung. Punctured it. And now he'd have to rush to find medical attention, demand it from the usual confused protests. Why fight to save a man, a monster, he fought so hard to defeat?
He watched the broken body slump like a cut marionette, and the eyes roll back in their sockets.
Because he was right.
Batman had often wondered who would be seated across from him if Jack and Bruce had never suffered such losses. Had never been kicked by the Fates. Would their lives ever have crossed? And was it that fractured smile that made the bat come out of its cave, or the winged vigilante that called to the clown?
He dragged himself to his feet, no fear in showing the slightest hint of weakness, not now. They had no fight left in them now. This night was finished.
It takes one bad day, the clown had once warned him, preached to him, but the bat knew that truth. Lived it. Breathed it. But it had taken much longer for him to accept it.
Batman heaved the Joker up like a rag doll, bracing him against his arm and preparing to drag the limp legs as far as he needed.
They weren't the same. He knew that. The jester would never offer the same courtesy, but they were too intertwined. Too alike, in that if one died the other would surely have their secrets exposed. Find themselves lost without their beacon.
You could never really know if it was the chicken or the egg, but if one stopped you could never really have the other. And if you get down to it, they are the exact same thing. At the core.
The emerald head lulled to the side, with a raspy chuckle, "chicken."
End.