Broken Toy

The air left his lungs in a sudden rush as he felt the bullet tear through him. Jonathan Crane stared at the red spreading over his white shirt. "What…?" His trembling fingers touched the stain clumsily, coming away wet and warm. The blood dripped away with the rain falling.

The damn harlequin had shot him. Shot him. Slowly his brain connected the dots through the numbness that seemed to have taken over him.

She shot you. Bullet wounds equal loss of blood. Loss of blood equals death.

But not immediate death – slow, painful death, for he knew there was no hospital he could go to without receiving a one-way ticket to Arkham, and in his present condition he could hardly treat himself. The only person who might possibly give him treatment had already chosen his side.

"Joker," breathed the ex-doctor, lifting his gaze from his shaking hands to lock eyes with the clown. Jokers' eyes glinted with mirth, not a hint of concern; a single gloved hand rested on Quinns' shoulder, praising her. Jonathans' knees buckled, and he went down swiftly, hitting the pavement hard.

The back alley swam in front of his eyes, water soaking his hair and clothing until he was freezing. Yet he could feel fire burning him, spreading out from his stomach to every corner of his body. How one could be so cold and yet so agonizingly burning at the same time, he didn't know, but God, it was something he had never wanted to feel.

"Joker, please…"

His quiet plea was lost in the loud laughter that left the Clown Prince of Crime, and at that moment he knew there was no chance Joker would help him. And he had always known that, hadn't he? Given the choice, the madman would always return to the obedient toy, rather than the constantly lying one. And now the lying toy was broken – there was no need to play with it anymore.

'You're gonna be the broken toy, Jonny, y'know.'

Those words, spoken so long ago in the middle of the night, he had thought it was some sick joke or a misplaced threat. But now, he could see reality. He no longer provided any form of entertainment for the clown. There was no longer any need for the toy.

"Ya know, I always thought ya'd have straw in ya, Scary," a cheerful voice chirped at him, and he tore his eyes from the figure in purple to look at Harley. There was nothing but hatred in his gaze, as one hand remained pressed to his injury. She giggled for a moment, then yelped as Jokers' hand claps her hard over the back of the head.

"I make the, uh, jokes 'round here, Harl."

"Sorry, puddin'," she whimpered, leaning into his side in an attempt to gain his affections once more. "Forgive me?" He chuckled, grabbing a fistful of her hair in that familiar, commonplace way he always did as Jonathan watched what he could never have. And he had been told, time and time again, that he would never have it. The ease the clown had around someone who was completely and utterly devoted to him.

Jonathan Crane, who had always kept his eyes on his experiments, his focus on moving forward, had paid the price. Those two little words, whispered by massacred lips into the blonde womans' ear.

Pull it.

And the gun had gone off, the bullet lodging itself in his insides for merely a second before tearing out of his back, leaving him with a hole somewhere above his appendix. He fumbled with his hands, looking down at his now red soaked shirt.

"Smile, Jonny," ordered the madmans' voice, and suddenly a hand was gripping his hair, lifting his head up. "Smile, like a good little boy, huh?" Jonathan could barely breathe, staring into those black eyes and trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. He was vaguely aware of tears of absolute agony spilling forth from his eyes.

"Please, please," he breathed, a thin – positively skeletal – hand lifting to reach out to the clown. A silent plea hung in the air between the two men: Choose me.

"Do I have t' make ya smile, Jonny?" And in that short sentence Jonathan heard his death sentence. Joker wasn't going to choose him. Joker would never choose him.

From the beginning, Jonathan was destined to end up as Jokers' broken toy – he was no different from the others who had been destroyed by the Clown Prince, he offered nothing new for the madman to marvel over and amuse himself with. Perhaps a small part of him had always known that and been content with the moments of pleasure and satisfaction as they occurred, without glancing to where he knew he was headed.

The glint of light in the darkness revealed the blade grasped firmly in a purple gloved hand, and Jonathan stared up at the man who brought him so much happiness and so much destruction, prepared to reach the end of his meagre life without the fear that had so fascinated him.

For the life of the broken toy was the one he had always resigned himself to living.