Disclaimer: This is strictly for fun. In no way am I profiting.
Warnings: Character death, language, and angst.
It should have been fire.
That's the first and sporadic thought that comes to mind when he enters the room. It's small, white, nondescript with rows of chairs, most of which are already filled. He recognizes more faces than he'd like, but thankfully protocol instructed a fairly strict silence, but by the way everyone is beaming at one another and practically bouncing in their seats, sharing real camaraderie, he would think a party was going on.
Or at least about to happen. Like New Year's Eve, a new year and a new start and all that, but it's the middle of September.
The guard posted at the door looks him up and down as do a few seated, sharp-eyed individuals in suits. Media representatives judging by their knee-jerk reactions to rise out of their seats and their constipated expressions advertising their sheer want to rush over and seize the first interview with a supposed celebrity, but the imposing presence of uniformed men stationed around the room keeps everyone more or less civilized. Bruce takes a short moment to acknowledge the respect he has for them because of that.
They are treating this as normal when it is everything but.
He keeps his eyes down as he claims a chair at the end of the third row, putting his neck at a sharp angle in order to face the window with the blue curtain displayed front and center. He'd prefer to get somewhere in the front -he deserves the front- but a solid line of people mutter and conspicuously check their cameras. At least where he's at now there is a chair between him and someone else. Because he's Bruce Wayne, he slouches in his seat, unconcerned for his charcoal gray Armani suit, and pretends to toy with his phone. He wonders if posting a tweet of his current location would be in-character for a billionaire playboy. He quickly decides against it and peers through his lashes to survey the other witnesses.
The relatives of the victims themselves is staggering on their own, so none were invited to attend. No death is more important than the other, so it wouldn't have been right to pick and choose. A small fraction would exceed the limit of this space and even a separate, couple dozen rooms with a closed-circuit television wouldn't be enough. He imagines a packed stadium or two and the broadcast on those garish, jumbo screens might come close. Just might be enough.
The visual only serves to feed the black vortex in his chest where it's numb and desolate and all those faces he'll never see nor names he'll ever remember become nothing more than an idle estimation.
Then there's the matter of kin of the sentenced... There's none, and even if there is, no one in their right mind would come forward and claim such a role. Bruce has the sinking feeling that he would come the closest, and the pad of his thumb drawing useless circles on his touchscreen stutters to a halt.
Jesus, what a sickening thought.
He shoves his phone away in his pocket, hastily silencing it before he does so. His lifted gaze snags on a familiar head of gray. In Commissioner Gordon's presence, he reflexively bristles. He knew the old cop would be here -wouldn't miss this, he had told GCN- but seeing him now sends a jolt through his system.
It wasn't the obscene news coverage announcing the court ruling, and his own press conferences expressing his protest and his willingness to pay for any alternative, because an eye for an eye isn't a solution no matter how humane certain individuals insist. It wasn't the wary crawl of his Lamborghini through a thick, mile-long crowd of misguided supporters and protestors with crudely painted faces yelling with signs all the way to the gnarled gates of Blackgate Prison; and it wasn't the strict security screening and numerous pat-downs and metal detectors he had to go through just to get here. It's Jim Gordon's pinched, slick-sallow face with his twitching mustache like he's reluctant to believe this is actually going to happen. That makes this real for Bruce.
Almost too real.
The steel chair back is unyielding against his spine, and he regrets his bull-headed determination to buy a seat to this like the several other curious and morbid "reputable citizens" able to afford such a show.
A live snuff film.
He reminds himself there was no other option but to be here. He's twisted and contorted it into being the right thing, and he clings to that harder than the belief that maybe there's still time to fix this. To correct an impending injustice when the greater part of his logic and half of his moral compass insists otherwise.
The fact of the matter is that this -what will occur in less than five minutes and counting- is justice being as merciful as it can be while stretched to its limit and desperate for any opportunity just to make it all stop.
The hideous face under his handsome, placid facade can sympathize with this. It has to end. He knows this, but not. Just not like this.
That rush of aimless anger bursts once again throughout his veins like a toxic, time released bomb, zipping up the ticking chords of his neck and locking his jaw. That night several months ago was untypical in the sense that nothing deathly tragic occurred. He'd been on patrol and heard through the police radio reports of an Arkham escape. Only one man (and sometimes he questions this categorization) he knew of could repeatedly pull off this feat. He hadn't been found far from the asylum, managing only a few blocks on foot. A tranquilizer dart from a second story rooftop had done the job, since the vigilante had been too weary for a physical confrontation. It took three in rapid succession before his quarry staggered and collapsed into a heap of trash, examining the red, fur-tipped projectile he'd pulled from his flesh with drowsy eyes and exclaimed a breathy chuckle. Then it was lights out.
He remembers his surprise at how light the other man had been, lying limp in his arms as he carried him through the flickering halls reeking of bleach and echoing with screams. A sack of bones that struck like a viper and took a hit like a cackling heavyweight boxer. Before, the physical assessment had been merely a surface observation meant to distract him from having to actually look at the scarred creature and the sickly, musky smell radiating off him, but now all Bruce can focus on is the thickness of his armor blocking the heat he would have otherwise felt in his arms. It had been solid though and real, and if he had known then what he did now he wouldn't have dropped him on the stained, lumpy cot in his cell and walked away; he would have ran and kept the other man locked away elsewhere; that way no one outside of him could make decisions they had no business making. Like falsified mental assessments proclaiming Sanity and assigning a public defender whose brother died with a rictus grin and saw no need for filing appeals.
He becomes so lost in his recollections that he doesn't notice the hush that falls over the tiny room until a last minute reporter slides past and plops down into the last empty chair beside him. Blinking away the glaze from his eyes, he absently looks around to find everyone frozen and focusing their attention on the front of the room. Bruce follows their united gaze and stills.
The curtains have been drawn back from the viewing window.
"Good evening, folks!" The Joker bellows, his voice sounding off and tinny through the speakers connecting the two rooms. He's positively beaming strapped down to a chair that resembles one straight out of a dentist's office. "And welcome to my- what's this again?" A frown lasts long enough for him to look askance to someone no one on the other side of the glass can see.
"Oh right." He nods and faces back towards his audience. The naked scars twisting up his face pull with his menacing grin. "My execution."
Bruce focuses on the madly glittering eyes instead of the intravenous tubes sticking out of the crooks of wiry, pale arms. Thin streams of crimson trail from the base of each needle most likely from being cruelly jammed inside the delicate flesh. Knowing him, the clown had probably hooted and hollered and asked for more; the thought actually makes the vigilante feel a little better. He focuses on the eyes, because they are something he recognizes from a face that looks foreign and human while the overall picture is clinically grotesque and surreal in its own right.
Bruises he hadn't left himself litter the areas that aren't concealed under the too large, burnt orange uniform, and irrational jealousy flows through Bruce like an angry wave at the sight. In his gut Bruce knows he's the only one that notices the abuse, because that's all it could be after months of solitary confinement, everyone else too morbidly fascinated by the animated rambling spilling steadily from thin -should be red- lips. All the monster beneath the playboy mask knows that whoever left those violet marks is going to pay; they had no fucking right. The creak of the plastic phone in his iron grip draws his attention away as well as the reporter beside him scribbling diligently into his notepad. The other man pauses long enough to watch as the billionaire forces a calmly interested expression on his face.
"Gotta say it took y'all long enough, though I feel we could have, ah, been a bit more creative, don't you agree? Like a firing squad or -oh- a good ol' fashioned lynching or-or the electric chair, ooooo. That would'a been something." The clown abruptly convulses, rolling his eyes to the back of his head, chirping and ringing his lips like fifty thousand volts were zapping inside him. As quick as he started, he falls still, laughing. "Did ya know they shove like a yard of gauze up your who-ha to lessen the mess?"
The society ladies in the audience gasp while the men harrumph and check their gilded watches. Bruce just wants them all gone.
A somber voice interrupts the clown's graphic description over the intercom. Chapped lips stretch open in offense, but the words that flow after are muted while the voice announces the name of the sentenced, Unknown, and the list of crimes, far too long. Bruce's panoramic gaze catches several smart phones conspicuously filming.
The voice ends with the final question. "Does the inmate have any last words?"
The Joker's nasally voice clicks back in mid-sentence. "-forgot the cannibalism, the sodomy, the taxidermy, and the one time I stole a pair of pink lacy panties from a K-Mart, but ya didn't hear that from me. Now where's my Last Supper? Hmmm? Can't pump me full of drugs on an empty stomach, that's just not healthy!" He loudly rolls his tongue in his mouth and sucks his cheeks with a pensive look on his ghostly white face. "I gotta hankering for nachos and... a Caesar salad, calamari... and ah hell I'll be naughty, a shamrock shake. Don't tell my trainer!"
Bruce strains his ears in hopes to hear the ringing of a certain red phone, but it's impossible to and even if he could he knew he wouldn't. There's still a part of him that's realistic after all, even though his legs are twitching and his fingers keep curling and tangling with each other, because he needs to move, needs to stop this, do something, help, save, run, smack the smile off the maniac's goddamn face-
"If the inmate has nothing to say, then we will proceed."
Bruce stills immediately.
Grinning sleazily, sunken hazel eyes drift across the small sea of faces watching him and he even snorts at the small, black camera lenses staring coldly back like he isn't surprised. But after each scan, his gaze narrowing and snapping faster back and forth -searching- the curl to his lips sag.
"Wait."
"May God have mercy on your soul."
"Wait!" The Joker jerks in his restraints, and for the first time since the Judge sentenced him to Death, he looks alarmed. Panicked. Scared. "No, wait! This isn't- but he. He's not here. He has to be here!"
The vigilante feels the unfeeling vortex in his chest caving in. His mouth goes dry while his vision stings. Any moment now those three IV tubes will systematically start emptying into the other man, and finally he and his enemy both agree on something: They're not ready for it.
"This only works if he's here. That's- that's how the joke is set up, how the punchline works..." The rant loses some of its steam, and the look of stunned devastation warping a face made for laughing cause more than a few spectators to shift uneasily in their seats.
All the oxygen is sucked from the vigilante's lungs. He struggles to swallow the down the pressure building in his throat. He blinks slow and almost doesn't open his eyes again.
"Commish, call- call him! Probably -heh heh- lost track of time saving little old ladies or... Asleep! Bats, uh, bats sleep during the day, y'know." He chuckles but the snag in his brow is all wrong for it. "Call him."
But Gordon just sits there, bewildered and shaking his head. Everyone knows the Batman is an outlaw, and it's only a matter of time before he's strapped in the very same chair the clown is in now. The Commissioner maintains the ruse masterfully.
The vigilante just isn't sure how he can possibly do the same at this moment.
A soft click sounds, and the first tube of anesthetic steadily drains. The Joker trills a mangled giggle, his focus twitching from face to fascinated face. Bruce isn't surprised that after thirty nerve-rattling seconds the clown is still awake, whereas the Sodium Thiopentac would drop a normal person in that time frame. It's a precise art, this humane killing, and Bruce -God help him- can't help but bark out a sharp laugh, because of course this chaotic knave won't adhere to the rules.
It would fucking kill him if he tried! The vigilante thinks this, and his hacking laughter is lengthened much to the shocked and appalled faces of the people turning towards him. Lucky for him they assume the billionaire showed up to this coked up or drunk or both, with his red face, highly inappropriate cackling, and the tears streaming unabashedly down his angular cheeks. This will probably make it on the news, and he. Just. Doesn't. Care.
Bruce can't stop even though he can't remember the exact reason it started, but all that keeps ringing in his head is that he gets the joke. A joke of his own understanding with its own brilliant perfection in the simple fact he doesn't get it at all. He doesn't get why he keeps laughing -choking- his stomach cramping and his voice going hoarse. Or why he feels like he's being torn apart from the inside out and wondering why the guards haven't dragged him out, because -even though he's Gotham's favorite son- being quiet is part of the rules.
He can taste the salt of his mirth catching on the corners of his upturned mouth yet all at once again feel like that little boy in Crime Alley staring at crimson splashes and glinting pearls scattered across grimy asphalt with the sound of lethal thunder cracks carved into his eardrums.
His watery eyes canvas disapproving faces until they land on one through a plane of glass. Drooping hazel eyes stare keenly back at him, and his breath hiccups in his chest, quieting him some.
The saline flush signals it's finished, then the second tube of the paralyzingly agent depresses.
Bruce's grin falls entirely into a grim line.
There is no me without you.
The Joker, that... that fucking crazy bastard, gets it then. He understands where Bruce can't and damn him for it. His eyes flare with recognition against their struggle to stay open. Slowly, as his muscles relax and his lungs finally rest from an era of unrelenting hilarity, a smile creeps across his twitching lips, tugs at his scars, and stays there.
Finally, when the Potassium Chloride does its work and a narrow chest only minutely jolts to signify cardiac arrest, Bruce barely flinches through his own heart's stutter. His outburst apparently forgotten, sighs of relief and gratitude flutter around him before the physician even checks for a pulse and nods with a tiny quirk to his mouth.
Bruce knew this minutes ago, because he seems to be the only one to hear the shrill beep of a flat line like background music to a celebration.
He knew this right when it happened, because a part of him just withered away.
Now that the show is apparently over, everyone files out of the room to happily tell the world all that they'd seen. They whisper excitedly to each other and text on their phones -posting to YouTube and Facebook- while giving him a wide berth. The reporters so eager to talk to him before now tiptoe past him; not that the billionaire notices the bodies shuffling around him, some of them even bumping into him, he just sits there. Sitting and staring, his blank gaze very much dry.
When the last of the witnesses leave, even Gordon had left in a hurry after receiving a call, Bruce carefully rises to his feet. His limbs are lead weights while his head feels light and ready to float away like a balloon. He doesn't remember deciding to walk, but there the glass is cold under his hand.
He's seen plenty of corpses before -and that's what he's looking at, a corpse- but it's never been this puzzling to him. Dead things don't move, so why is he expecting the too still figure slumped in front of him to jump up and yell, "Gotcha"? He focuses on a body he's broken and bruised and thrown like a rag doll, avoiding the slackened, scarred face wearing a faint smile.
When he does gather the strength to look up, his throat tightens and his eyes burn all over again, and he wishes they would fucking stop doing that, as his teeth clamp down hard on his lip.
He sees a face that he knows better than his own.
A face that smiles while his can not.
He sees death where there should be life.
Peaceful repose where he should be seeing war and gleeful pain.
He sees a face of memories and now missed opportunities, of what is and what should never be.
A face as ugly as his own, but in another life would have been just as destructively beautiful.
He's lost staring at purple eyelids, foolishly wishing them to open, when his phone vibrates in his pocket. It's pure habit to retrieve it and glance down at the message from Alfred on the screen. A new terrorist holding hostages at the Stock Exchange. A smirk sprouts in his calm expression and he glances up from raised eyebrows at the Joker, silently asking if he is somehow responsible or maybe the clown was just right: It never stops. There will always be someone there to help the world burn.
And Batman has to be the one to make sure it doesn't, even if there won't be horrible puns or corny jokes to greet him or the face will be all wrong but he's going to bury his fist in it anyways, because that's what he does.
He's the big, damn hero.
It's like tearing off his skin to turn away and walk to the door. Where there was no feeling before, his chest is aching and tugging him back, but he can't. The medical examiner running late has to take the body away and people have to be saved and the police need someone to chase after he swoops in and does their job better without even firing a bullet.
Yeah, it could have been a gun or a knife or a massive explosion or even something ridiculous like falling into a vat of acid. It could have been any of those things or none of them, but all he knows when he stops at the threshold and looks back one more time at the piece of him he's leaving behind and utters a whisper of a growl is,
"It should have been me."
fin.
A/N: Here this is, written faster than I thought humanly possible for me when I should be correcting the long wait for my next chapter of BD. This was something I had an idea for a long time ago, so I thought it was perfect to get the creative juices flowing again. It's not as great as I'd like it to be, but I hope at least it brightens (or glooms, considering the content) your day. I don't presume to know everything that goes on at a lethal injection, everything I've learned comes from movies and, funnily enough, Wiki How.
Please don't forget to tell me what you think!