Buried in Time
Summary: For starry-eyed fantasies, some of the dreams she has about him aren't very nice. Joker/Wendy, higher than usual creep factor.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, I just torture them for fun. :D
For starry-eyed fantasies, some of the dreams she has about him aren't very nice.
Oh, they have their moments; when his fingers move softly over her skin, gently pushing her clothes aside and leaving trails of electric tingling sensation; when his skin is warm and soft beneath her lips and his hands tangled in her hair.
And different kinds of moments, the same kinds they have on the increasingly frequent nights that he comes home with her and Junior to finish up some last-minute issues before the work day is allowed to end, and just sort of forgets to leave.
Silly, undignified moments that make him human; moments when she accidentally pokes him in the eye and can't stop laughing even as he glares and gives her a swat across the bottom, or when he has to push her off and readjust because his knee has begun to ache and she rubs it better whether he likes it or not. Or maybe the phone rings in the middle and he sends her to answer it because he doesn't like loud noises, but he does like watching her trying to muddle through a work-related phone call with no clothes on. Or maybe she accidentally knocks over a lamp and he jumps like a startled kitten at the smash.
(In fact, she can remember at least three instances of each off hand. Maybe not the lamp one; she stopped replacing that lamp after the second time she broke it.)
She was a little surprised when these familiar, mundane little details began to creep in, because reality has no place within a starry-eyed fantasy. But then, reality is more than enough for her, and it still happens seldom enough that she can't imagine getting tired of it.
And anyway, imperfection adds charm, and she's getting a little old for rose-coloured, rainbowey little-girl daydreams that are all about perfection and idealism instead of him.
(Because Lord knows, he's far from perfect.)
But recently, moments of warm, familiar detail have turned to something else entirely; something sharp, vivid, and sometimes terrifying.
Just the other night, she dreamt that he sometimes liked to keep his hands wrapped loosely around her throat, fingers tangling in her hair, thumbs brushing whisper-light over soft skin, as he took her. And when she started to tense beneath him, hands at his back pulling him closer, biting her lip against a pleading noise, his grip tightened abruptly. Panicked, she squirmed and fought and scratched and tried to scream, but with each pitiful little squeak, the pressure grew more and her air grew less and the tears rolling down her cheeks grew thicker.
The wave of searing pleasure caught her entirely by surprise, and as she shuddered hotly around him, he released his grip and brushed his lips gently over the red marks, and the air rushing back in hurt, burned like hell, and through the whitehot stars filling her vision and her mind, she heard him laughing gently against her ear.
That dream left her light-headed, limbs aching, and cold and trembling with horror, even more than the one where he tied her up and took a belt to her everywhere that wouldn't show the next day at work.
And it doesn't make sense that she would daydream about being tied up and whipped. The thought of his voice when he ordered her to hold still or you'll earn more, his eyes when he held her after and his good girl, my good little girl brushed her forehead, shouldn't set her squirming uncomfortably, choking back soft gasps and cries.
(She's just not into that sort of thing.)
One hand works impatiently at the buttons of her pyjama top. Slender fingers find one breast, rolling the rosy bead gently. She muffles a sharp gasp in her pillow.
(Well, maybe a little.)
The nights that she ends up in silly things like little pleated skirts and aprons and tight little nurse outfits aren't so bad. He makes a very good corrupt teacher, and exploitative homeowner, and lecherous doctor.
(She's not quite as fond of the times that he dresses her in frilly little nightgowns, just like she used to wear when she was a child, takes his little girl in hand and gives her a hands-on lesson about the facts of life. But it's not his fault that it echoes foggy memories of two decades ago with terrifying, nauseating familiarity. After all, he has no more control over what she dreams than he had over her real Daddy's nightly ritual of climbing into bed next to her and putting his hands under her nightgown.)
He never stops and calls off the game just because he's made her cry, only slaps her again and shoves her more roughly against the wall, pounds into her harder and gags her so the neighbours don't hear.
(Nothing, she thinks airily, with all of her vast experience on the subject, ruins the game quite as quickly as a dominant who breaks character.)
But there are still lots of dreams that aren't so nice.
Like the night he tied her tightly to the headboard and showed her the little pocketknife he kept handy in case he couldn't untie the straps afterwards.
(She really likes that headboard, and wonders absently if she helped him pick it out and just forgot, because she knows it's his room as well that she knows she's in hers when she has these dreams, but she still has yet to see the inside of his room.)
Clear as day, with none of the haze of a dream and none of the rosy hue of fantasy, she held her breath as he ran the sharp, narrow tip lightly down her throat, over her collarbones, and over the curve of her waist through a thin layer of cotton, but released it on a terrified squeak and tried desperately to wriggle away when he slipped the knife under the straps of her camisole. He shook his head disapprovingly at her yelp as the blade nicked her shoulder. Don't squirm like that, then.
Even the heat of his mouth on her, tongue swirling gently over the shallow little cut, couldn't quiet her panic as he ran the tip of the blade lightly up the inside of her thigh and traced her folds gently through the knickers to match the camisole he just destroyed.
(Any bets on whether the bastard intended to pay for it?)
And when his lips descended on hers, she gagged slightly around the salty copper taste on his tongue.
(He has some very strange ideas of fun in her imagination.)
Sometimes she thinks she's going crazy.
(The rest of the time, she just laughs, well, of course.)
But at least she's not too far-gone yet, because no matter how hard she tries, she can't generate anything but the panic and nausea of six years old and helpless when she thinks about the dream she had last night.
It wasn't a surprise that the informal dinner party at Mr. Joker's flat was bright with detail and perfectly familiar, because she knows all about these; knows how ghastly dull it is to sit still and look pretty while these inexplicably powerful acquaintances of his banter back and forth with jokes that aren't funny and witty comments that aren't witty.
It surprised her a little bit in her dream, like it always does in reality, that he insisted she put aside several other pressing issues in order to be present, but then, she's still trying to get used to the idea that she's good for more than fetching, filing, and research.
As for him, he just watched his guests with a half-amused, half-pitying little smirk, and sent her the occasional warning glance when he caught her trying not to roll her eyes or yawn.
She expected him to corner her in the kitchen, like he's had to do more than once, and remind her that he was more than a little bored with this himself, but that was no reason to behave like a petulant, difficult child.
Instead, he announced his intention of going out for a little air, and asked her to keep everyone entertained.
After that, the sharp clarity began to melt, sounds and sights slidingcrashingmerging into each other in a terrifying muddle. She isn't sure when it started, if the first one caught her by the arm and dragged her in for a heated (slobbery, disgusting, whiskey-breath) kiss before or after Mr. Joker came back, or exactly when it was that she heard the rasp of the first zip.
She thinks she could remember all the details if she really wanted to, just like she could probably remember why she didn't just wrench free, lunge for her purse, and put a bullet between each man's eyes in turn, finishing up with the bastard who let them do it without a single move to help her.
But she'd already kind of like to forget the details she can remember, so trying to remember more would be silly.
Already, she recalls vividly his hand gently at her cheek, smoothing her hair back into place; recalls his soothing, steel-edged voice, the one he always used when they played the Daddy's-little-girl game that she hates, as she tried to squirm away from the hand shoving her skirt up to her waist.
Come on now, Wendy, is this outburst really necessary? It's hardly an exclusive venue, is it?
(When the sonofabitch knows perfectly well that she hasn't had time for a social life outside of work in the past four years, let alone a love life!)
She remembers clearly the look in his eyes, trying to be detached and amused but still sparking with anger at the clasp of hands on hers other than his, the sound of different men groaning as they spill their release into her two ways at once.
(Come to think of it, those things made her a little annoyed too, thank-you-very-much.)
And she remembers when he held her, painfully tight, after the other men were gone, stroked her hair, wiped the tears from her cheeks while she trembled and retched uncontrollably, and promised viciously never again, I can't stand sharing you.
(She doesn't know why she should so enjoy being held by him after that, but she can't stop herself from smiling a little at the thought, even as she downs half a bottle of caffeine pills and prays that she won't doze off again before morning.)
Sometimes, she thinks she's going crazy.
(The rest of the time, she just laughs, well, of course.)
And throughout both, she thinks it's just as well that she barely has time to sleep anymore.
Ever since she had that dream, he's been acting differently.
(Although, she hasn't really been helping, with her sudden mortal terror of his voice and his touch.)
He's taken it upon himself to see that she gets home safely in the evening, since I can hardly trust you not to get into an auto accident like this, and he's developed an irritating habit of waiting at her desk in the mornings. She longs to ask him why he doesn't just go that extra step and accompany her to the ladies' room, too, but then he might use the soothing, steel-edged Daddy's-little-girl voice, and then she'd have to explain why she was just sick all over her daily task list.
(I'm sorry, Mr. Carpenter, you've been doing some very ugly things in my dreams lately. Why, yes, I have gone completely off my nut. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to randomly perform musical numbers on the street.)
And she's been dreaming more than ever recently, since he started taking her home and putting her to bed (just like her dream, just like years and years ago, ohGodthisisn'trightIdon'tlikeitMummyhelp) after he found her trying to start her desk with her car keys in an exhausted haze. Sometimes it's a nice dream, and she almost forgets why she wants to scream when he kisses her on the forehead and pushes a sleeping tablet gently between her lips. But most of the time, it's the one where she ends up a trembling heap in his arms, stained with four mens' sweat, and he swears never again.
Just the other night, she started having a very strange dream, where she was buying tickets for a one-way flight to Kolkata to see Grandma, one adult and one child, please, throwing together necessities for herself and the little boy, scrambling frantically into a taxi. She doesn't know what happened after they got to the airport, because that's when she always wakes up.
(Bloody well figures, just as soon as she wants to go back to sleep, find out what happens, she never can, ends up watching late-late-night television until morning.)
There's more to it; she doesn't know how she knows, she just knows.
Maybe she'll ask Mr. Carpenter tomorrow if he has some stronger sleeping tablets.
But she has yet to learn that there are some things she just doesn't want to know.
(Actually, she's known that for years. Maybe she should start taking her own memories a little more seriously.)
Like when she falls straight into an uneasy sleep moments after the little white tablet dissolves under her tongue, and finds out how her dream ends.
She didn't want to know how he might look with fury and guilt warring in his expression when he succeeded in prying the plane tickets out of her grasp, any more than she particularly wanted to know what the back end of a large, heavy gun to the back of the head might feel like.
(What sort of idiot brings guards with him to abduct his own employees from a crowded airport? Although, she wouldn't put much faith in his ability to lift her suitcase without several employees helping him, let alone his ability to lift her.)
And on the subject of things she really didn't want to know, she feels that she could have lived a perfectly full and happy life without knowing the sensation of his hand resting gently at her hair as he told her, voice warm with regret, that he was sorry he had pushed her too far, that he should have better known her limits, that she didn't have to worry, he would repair the damage he had done.
She tried to argue, demand what he meant by that, but he just called a nurse over to give her a shot; just a little something to help you sleep.
As the world faded into shimmering blackness around her, she dimly heard an unfamiliar voice asking if he would like the plane tickets returned for refund or disposed of, and heard his reply, heavy with guilt so utterly alien to him that she might have laughed, if she hadn't been so busy passing out.
No, I'd like to keep them, as a reminder that limits must be acknowledged and respected.
She's been at this for nearly ten minutes now, and she's still not sure why.
Not that sifting carefully through the contents of his office isn't fun - the first bottom drawer of his desk alone yielded a veritable treasure trove of interesting things.
(So, that's what happened to the little stack of science fiction novels she kept in her desk for lunch breaks! And she's been blaming Yomiko!)
Liberating two of her favourite Heinleins from the bottom right drawer, she moves onto the bottom left.
She knows she isn't going to find what she's looking for, because he can't very well have confiscated plane tickets from her that she never bought in the first place.
Nothing in the bottom left. She moves onto the top drawers.
(This is silly.)
Nothing in the top right. She's forgotten the middle drawer on the right.
(Absolutely idiotic.)
Nothing in the mid-right. She pulls out the top left drawer
(Completely--)
She freezes. Tucked neatly underneath a leather-bound day planner, two plane tickets, one adult and one child, to Kolkata.
It's obviously a coincidence. He's heard her summertime visit stories for years, and now he's curious. Maybe he plans to take Junior, make an attempt to actually get to know the boy.
(The fact that he hasn't taken a vacation in the past seven years, and has no more interest or skill in bonding with children than she does notwithstanding.)
She'll just ask him. There's nothing to be afraid of.
(Nothing at all. It was a dream. Dreams aren't real.)
At the sound of footsteps just outside the door, slow and uneven and as perfectly familiar as her own heartbeat, she panics. Shoves the tickets into the pocket of her blazer, shoves the desk drawer closed, and promptly trips over his chair.
When she looks up to find him staring down at her, eyebrow quirked in amusement, she scrambles to her feet.
"I was looking for a pen; you startled me," she explains hastily.
He laughs.
"Only you could injure yourself looking for office supplies."
She laughs too, weakly, and his expression changes.
"Is something wrong?"
One hand moves unconsciously to her blazer pocket, and damn him, he notices immediately.
"Wendy?"
"It's nothing," she says hastily. "I found a pen; I'm going to get back to work."
She tries to step past him; he steps quickly to the left to fence her in.
"I think you should show me what you took from my desk first."
"It's just a pen; all of mine ran out of ink."
(So much for just ask him, there's nothing to be afraid of.)
"I suppose every pen in the supply cupboard ran out of ink as well?"
She fidgets nervously under his gaze.
"I-I didn't think to look there."
"I see." His eyes narrow suspiciously. "I'd like the truth, please."
"I don't know what you mean, sir."
"I mean," he says, his voice sharper now, "that I know you've taken something from my desk, and your reaction confirms that it was not a pen."
A moment of lighting-quick thought gives her an idea, and with a feigned sigh of surrender, she stoops to pick up the science fiction novels she dropped when she tripped over his chair.
"I found my books, and I stole them back."
He makes a scornful noise.
"You know how I feel about you filling your head with this sort of trash."
"Maybe that's not your decision," she shoots back angrily, pulling the plane tickets from her pocket before she can talk herself out of it, and slamming them down on his desk. "And maybe this wasn't, either."
She shoves past him, and is halfway to the door before his voice stops her.
"What, exactly, possessed you to abscond with my plane tickets?"
"My plane tickets," she corrects sharply, forgetting in her anger that she wasn't going to look at him. "That you took, just before you had me knocked out and dragged from the airport!"
Hardly sparing a her a glance, he sets his chair upright again and sits.
"You're getting worked up over nothing."
"Does that mean it didn't happen?"
With a sigh of irritation, he sets down the pen he's just picked up and peers at her over folded hands.
"Sit," he finally orders, gesturing to the sofa. "Now, perhaps you ought to tell me exactly what you remember."
She casts him a murderous glance, nevertheless moving to obey.
"I remember why I bought those tickets in the first place, if that's what you mean."
He eyes her sternly from behind his desk.
"I find that hard to believe."
She stares down at her hands, folded in her lap to still their shaking.
"I dreamed about it. The night at your flat with the other men, buying the plane tickets and trying to leave." A long pause. "If you tell me that none of it happened, I'll believe you."
"And if I tell you that it hardly matters whether or not it happened?"
"Then I'll know it did," she murmurs, eyes misting over, because damn it, she doesn't want to believe the worst of him, even if it's true, doesn't want to believe that he's capable of doing it, and especially doesn't want to believe that he's capable of doing it to her, no matter how much he regretted it after.
With a long, weary sigh, he recaps his pen and rises from his chair.
"You weren't supposed to have any memory of it."
"Did I agree to the procedure?"
It takes him a moment to answer.
"It was for the best."
Her jaw tightens. In other words, no.
"Because I tried to take Junior."
"Among...other reasons. You weren't recovering; I don't think you'd slept since it happened."
"Because I've been sleeping so well recently."
He sits next to her, takes his time getting comfortable, and finally regards her with the vague indifference that means she's managed to make him angry.
"Among the details that have come back to you, do you happen to remember why you felt it necessary to take the little boy?"
She gives a thin, brittle laugh around the nausea choking her.
"After that? How was I to know that you wouldn't toss him into a room full of lonely men, too?"
"Don't be ridiculous, please," he requests coldly. "I've already told you that I have no intention of allowing it to happen again. Or did that part conveniently slip your mind?" When she looks, tight-lipped and silent, away from his scornful gaze, he sighs and continues. "It seems to me that you are completely overreacting. As far as I can tell, none of this has done you any lasting physical harm, and once we've discovered where the created memories began to slip out of place, we'll repeat the procedure and eliminate any trace of the incident."
"You can't make me agree to any of this."
"Of course I can't," he agrees soothingly. "I can only hope that you'll use your common sense. If you go, I can't guarantee that you'll be safe."
For a split second, she almost believes the concern in his voice over the threat in his words. But then that common sense he mentioned kicks in; she's reasonably willing to bet that if he ever felt more than a passing concern for another human being, he'd be at the doctor's office in a minute, insisting that this foreign sensation was an unwanted side effect of his medication.
But whether or not his concern is real changes nothing. If she's enough of a threat to him that he would have her killed, she's enough of a threat that she doesn't stand a chance in Hell of getting to Junior to get him out.
Even if she had the skill and stealth necessary to steal plane tickets from an unlocked office without being caught.
"If I'm to stay, then, the procedure will be mandatory?"
"I don't see why that should be a problem. You'll be far happier."
She starts to argue, to protest that it's not true; that forgetting the bits he doesn't like may make him happier, but she's not like that.
Then she thinks back to before she started having any of these dreams, to what it was to love him without hating him twice as much at the same time; to have the knowledge that he might do silly things, and selfish things, and outright horrible things, but he still held their goals in as lofty regard as she did, and would never utilize what they had all helped to accomplish for stupid and selfish things like getting himself out of hot water with his plaything.
It would be so nice to honestly believe that she's doing this, giving up and giving in, for the little boy's sake, and not because she's as good with reality as Mr. Joker is.
All she has to do is say the word, and it won't matter either way. Her dreams will just be dreams again, and even those won't last much longer after all of this becomes a forgotten past..
Maybe, she thinks as she nods her assent and he tells her with an approving smile that she's made the right choice, she is like that, after all.
End Notes: Wow. That was...um. I'm really not sure. I kind of like the idea of Joker screwing around with Wendy's memories, and taking out everything that made him less than perfection, "for her own good", because it seems so very, very him. So naturally, I took it in a smutty direction. What can I say? I'm a raging perv. XD
Anyway, I'm fairly proud of this, and not only because it's the first time I've written anything remotely creepy.