Hello there!
This is my first Batman fic. I was watching The Dark Night the other day and decided to have a go. Needless to say I don't own any Batman characters, but obviously I do own OCs. The Joker in the early days. Please review after reading! I really appreciate it!
LV
XX
"Ace."
The girl and the boy stop in their tracks. They look at each other and then for the source if the voice. The dark and the rain try their best to conceal the figure sitting under the metal staircase in one of Gotham's darkest alleys, but their young eyes find her. A dim light from a nearby cracked window gives her a faintly visible outline. There is a moment of silence where all that can be heard is the rain on the pavements, the wind rattling the metal stairs and the familiar wail of a distant siren. Then they hear her two soft clicks and two cards are flung out from the shadows. One lands at the girl's feet and the other at the boy's. They bend to pick them up, but a voice cries out, stopping them halfway down. They pause, straighten up again and look to where the figure in the shadows has now stood up.
"Traditionally an omen of bad luck," the figure says, "It's a little known fact in today's society that it used to be thought of as the "death card". Myth and folklore claim it to bring bad luck, but who listens to these tales nowadays? Nobody takes the warnings of the last few gypsies seriously, not with all the modern science and technology around to prove this, that and the other. Over the years the Ace had evolved along with the games we play. Now it is often the highest playing card, so turning over an Ace gives one the feeling of happiness and good fortune rather than the sickening dread it used to bring to those who touched it."
"Does it really bring bad luck?" the girl asks, drawn in by the stranger and her tale of the Ace.
"Does it really bring death?" the boy's eyes are wide.
"Time will tell," the woman murmurs. Both children shiver. "King," she continues, louder this time, but in the same breath. "Rumoured and linked to historical figures. Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and King David have all been likened to the Kings in the deck of cards. Some see this as an honour and think it a good way for them to be remembered by, but others see it differently. They see the once great and respected, powerful men reduced to nothing but prints on shiny pieces of cardboard that are then swapped and fought over by drunken men."
"What do you think?" asks the boy, tilting his head to one side.
"I think there is little honour left in being great," she replies. The boy frowns.
"So, you think it's better to be bad?"
"Queen," she says as if he has not even spoken. "Also linked to historical and biblical figures- Rachel, Judith, Pallas and Argine. Naturally, the card is one step below the King which proves nothing but the inequality of the sexes. Historical prejudice has a way of seeping its way into modern-day life and staining it a little. It may be a small stain that goes more or less unnoticed, but it's there nonetheless."
"Can it be removed?" the girl asks.
"What's done is done," the woman claps her hands together, making them both jump. "If history did not leave its irreversible mark on us how would we learn from it?"
"But-"
"Hush, child. You want to know of the suits, don't you?"
The girl nods.
"Spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds," the stranger lists. "Four suits, four seasons. Thirteen cards per suit, thirteen weeks per season. Each suit has its own element and its own representation of class. Spades- a name taken from "spada", the Italian for "sword", which is what the symbol used to be until it was changed to avoid the inevitable confusion of the English people. The element of air and the class symbol of nobility. Clubs- representative of peasants and fire. Diamonds, the symbol of the Earth and the merchants and hearts belong to the water and the clergy."
"Who decided this?" the girl asks. Her eyes widen at the meanings behind symbols she knew well. Hidden things in a pack of cards she had never given much thought to. It puzzled her that she had neither wondered nor questioned the symbols on the card, why they were what they were and how they were chosen.
There is no answer to her question from the stranger in the shadows. "Joker," the woman says slowly. "The lunatic, the madman. He has no suit. He cannot be tamed. He is fickle. No suit. No mind."
There is a silence. The children wait for her to speak again, but she does not. She turns away from them and they watch her walk back into the dark of the alley. The air seems still around them.
"Wait!" the boy calls as the darkness blurs her outline and begins to merge with it. "You forgot your cards!"
They both look at the cards still lying by their feet, but when they look back up again the woman and the dark have become all but the same entity. They look at each other and then back down at the cards. They bend to pick them up. The wet pavement has stuck to the face of the cards, so they have to slide their fingernails under the edges to prise them away. Neither of them looks at their cards until they are standing upright again. They stare at the back of them for a moment as everything they heard from the stranger fills their heads. Then, simultaneously, they turn the cards over and study their own.
"What did you get?" the girl manages to ask through a dry lump in her throat.
"You first," he presses, still transfixed by his card. She sighs and rubs her thumb across the face of the card as if it might change it.
"Ace," the girl speaks and flips the card round to show the boy. "You?"
He shows her the front of the card. "Joker."