If you wish, You could totally read this sequel instead of the first. You may be a little lost yet, Don't tell nobody but this one, well, it's a little better than its beginning. Practice makes perfection I guess. Enjoy...

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βleeding ϟour Ҫhaos

the Sequel to Carving ϟou

Joker

Prologue

1

White as the Knight

The only thing that made hospitals impossible to sleep in was a constant hallway light. It can somehow go through the blinds, cracks and windows, keeping the patients completely awake to endure their sickness. But this didn't matter because the patient was already wide awake. He's been conscious from the moment he ripped the fluid-filled gauze from his face, never to close his eyes again, not with those nightmare awaiting. The last vision he could recall before the flames consumed his world was her. Her screams are always there, begging for his life, calling out to the one who lit the fire.

Harvey took in a sharp hiss as water fell from his scarred tear ducts and down his tissued cheek. There was no flesh to smoothly guide it, only vulnerable muscle tissue. It didn't stop until falling onto his opened mouth, unprotected by mauled lips.

She didn't love him.

He spent the last few weeks screaming of agonizing pain, misery, anxiety and failure. Gotham's white knight couldn't even save his damsel. What good was having power when it can't stop that one criminal?

He slapped his hand hard onto his hidden blackberry, secretly kept under the sheets from the nurses. Slowly opening the video file without needing to look at the keyboard. Its habit by now, been doing it every night. His thumb slid to the one button that's faded from being a multiple target of rage.

The horizontal triangle flashed across the little screen. Soon after, the video began to play and the small room filled with her screams. The same startling effect that's been his only haunting escape. Not long after finding the tape, the day she fell from the window ledge, he had converted the video onto his phone. Punishment for letting her fall, letting her become his.

The Joker appeared, practically sitting on her with the knife ripping the already bloodied skin. Muscles strained and trembled. He watched him finish her shoulder and turn to the camera. Jumping off the table, swaggering closer. "She's mine-" Stop button, giving the phone another crack. The screen created a static error and quickly shut off.

As soon as it does so, the door creaked open with one of the head nurses poking her head in. He smoothly slipped the device back under the sheets and closed his good eye. The other is left to collect dust without the protection of an eyelid.

"Just let me know when you're done," the nurse whispered.

"Thank you."

They entered the room after the attendant closed the door. He could hear them messing with the window blinds, letting in the early morning rays. A stool squeaked across the waxed floor, bumping into the bed's metal border.

"I know you're awake."

"What do you want?" Harvey spat.

"What you're hiding."

"Get out."

"You've kept it long enough-"

"I said no."

"You destroyed the tape before we even knew-"

"We're done here."

"Damn it Harvey! You're not the only one-"

"Don't you dare. The only one who loves her? You're the one who let him take her Bruce!"

The metal created a singing note as he kicked the rim with his boot, clenching fists. He flexed his arms down by his side and released the tension. "I'm lost. I've searched through all of Gotham, turned it inside out. No one knows, everyone who went with them are dead. I can't find them. I need to see the video, it may be the one thing that could point me in the right direction."

"No," Harvey knew what he was doing, this repetitious aggression was all he had now.

"Excuse me?" Bruce grits, urging his temper at bay.

"You're not going to be the one to find her, I am."

He held his tongue, steady, hold back. "Harvey, you're in bad shape alright? Recovery is all you need right now. Maybe once you get better. You just can't-"

"Don't tell me what I can't do! You took everything from me and let him finish the rest!"

"You're blaming me for what he did to you?"

"No, I'm blaming you for everything else-"

"He took her on our wedding day!" Bruce growled, rubbing his temples with so much force his skin seemed like a mask's rubbery layer. "I've been as patient and understanding as I can be, but you stand between everything I care about. This is the last piece of the puzzle and it's in your possession. Give me the phone." He watched his hand move under the sheets, thinking he was going to give in. But instead Harvey revealed the remote for the head nurse. Watching his thumb graze across the top. "Don't be like this."

"I'm not," he placed it on the bed and dug for the blackberry. "You want this? Then get me out of here."

"What?"

"You heard what I said. Get the hospital to release me," he pressed the phone into his stomach. "I've watched this video every night Bruce and each time, I learn something new that could lead me to her. You can buy the technology to push the clip to its full exposure. Zoom into whatever you find, clarify the most blurriest object, I don't. I know that. But even without it, I still have the greatest advantage that could place me right at his doorstep. An advantage you will never be able to have. All I need to do is get out of this mattress and you're going to help me do that."

They stare.

Everything he said was true, but not in the way Bruce thought. There was something much more sinister beneath Harvey's "advantage." What did he mean? It didn't matter, he needed the phone.

Because the Joker forgot one thing while he was engraving his property in blood, behind the table was torn paper. Barely visible, poking just above the edge. The only clarity, which drove Harvey into an obsessive viewer, were the letters: C - E C-M- the entire meaning was scratched out either on purpose or from years of studying.

Harvey twitched his thumb towards the call button while Bruce stared at the blackberry. "Fine, I'll talk to the doctors and pay them off," he held out his hand, his jacket sleeve sliding up his arm as he did so. A thick, professional slash poked out from underneath the leather, catching Harvey's attention. Just as he began to wrap his fingers around the phone, Harvey yanked it back.

"What the hell are you playing at?"

"What?"

"That cut on your arm! You found him didn't you? You lost her again!"

Bruce followed his gaze and saw the stinging flesh still reddened from the earlier battle. He should have known to cover it better before coming here. Its color was as vivid against the black leather than it was when he got it. "Harvey-"

"Get out! Get the hell out!"

Before he could reach for the remote, Bruce used his training, snatched the phone and sprinted out the door. Harvey screamed, cursed, raged with all he had but he was too quick. The strap from the hospital bed seemed to tighten across his chest and suffocate. "NO! DAMN YOU!" He'll find a way. Whatever means necessary, he'll take back what was lost from him.

a/n

Few youtube videos and deviant-arts under this story. Because I missed it terribly.

F e e l s G o o o o D