A/N: Even though I said it was going to be a one shot...I LIED. :D This is from Joker's point of view. Be prepared children. O.o

"Come now, Jay!" Sister Prudence says as she grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowd.

I blush at her grabbing my wrist. Christ, I am seventeen aren't I? Is it so wrong for me to want to look at the the lions a little longer? what is with this woman?

Sister Prudence doesn't release her iron grip as she continues to drag me through a sea of people despite my protesting. I look at the big top with disgust. It smells of animal feces and burnt popcorn. God, I hate people.

I feel even more embarrassed as Sister Prudence forces me to sit next to her. She takes the last seat on the end. To my right is Sister Prudence and to my left is all the other snot nosed kids that belong to the orphanage. Emily looks up to me and sticks her tongue out. I frown at her and grab her tongue harshly between my thumb and forefinger.

"Ssstrrr Poodince!" she manages to say as I grip her tongue.

The nun gives me a disapproving look.

"Wipe that smirk off of your face, Jay," she growls.

I bring the back of my hand up to my mouth and pretend to wipe it off.

"Sorry, Sister," I say as I put more pressure on Emily's tongue, forcing her to start crying and trying to pull away, "it seems you were right, my face finally froze this way."

"Jay!" she whispers loudly, trying not to make a scene, "You let go of Emily this instant! For goodness sake, she's only eight! You're twice her age and you know better. What would the good Lord say?"

I reluctantly release my hostage but then smirk back again as I look back to the nun.

"Why are you asking me, Prudence? Between the two of us I'd think you'd be the one to know."

Sister Prudence spends the rest of the show glaring at me now and then. i ignore her and her icy stare and her strong perfume. She's gotten fatter over the years but she's always been a sturdy woman. She's got man hands, unpainted finergnails and face where her age is starting to show. She must be in her forties by now. I look away from her quickly. She doesn't deserve for me to pay this much attention to her, stupid old broad.

I try to pay attention to the circus but everything feels so predictable. When I was younger, I used to love the orphanage's trip to the circus but after you've seen it so many times, you get bored of it. Seventeen years of the same walls, the same trips, the same days, the same circus. It gets old.

Emily suddenly elbows my side as the crowd goes wild for the clowns. I glare at her. She's so annoying. For the record, she's nothing like a little sister. She tries to be but she's not. She all blonde haired and blue eyed. She acts like an angel around everyone but I know the truth about her. She hates everyone at the orphanage, from me to the other kids to the nuns. She does things like spitting in the food and breaking the other kids toys. Not that I care much about what she does to others. Hell, if anything more power to the little bitch but you don't mess with me. Ever.

I grab the back of her head and push her straight forward. She propels down and smacks her face into the back of another kid's head. The crowd progressively gets less wild in our immeadiate area as Emily lets out a banchee scream for the ages. I giggle a little at it. Sister Prudence rushes to her aid and lifts her up. Blood is spurting out of Emily's nose. I think I might have broken it.

Excellent.

I book it before Prudence can get all high and mighty on me and put her hands on me again. Besides, she can't chase me down and drag me by the hand when she's got an injured bitch in her arms. Not that she wouldn't try. You'd think she'd get tired of it but she doesn't.

I make it outside in the ensuing panic. I'm pretty sure I'll get caught eventually but that's the point, eventually. For now, I mosey on outside pretending the dank and damp smelling air is as fresh as the freedom I crave.

Who does that old bird think she is anyway? Dragging me everywhere, watching me all the time and telling me what to do? She's always in my face about growing up and becoming a man and helping with the children. She gives me a harder time than anybody else and you'd think with our history that the bitch would back off.

I don't want to help take care of children. Yes, the system has fed me all these years and housed me and that's all great and fine but I do not feel indebted in the least. I didn't ask to put in that Catholic Christian vortex and honestly, I tried to get out at every turn and corner. I think all those little fuckers would be better off in the streets anyway. Hell, I'd be there myself if the damn cops didn't keep returning me.

Of course, I did like something about the orphanage for a while but that was all gone now.

I look up for a moment. I've come near the edge of the circus grounds. I look to my left. Nothing but random tents. I look to my right. More tents and a-

There's a figure. Watching me. It's black with two long points coming out of its head and its eyes shine in the dark.

"Hello there," I call out to it.

The figure doesn't move. I wave a little to it. A hand appears from behind the tent. It waves back to me.

"Well, come on out," I coax it.

The figure shakes its head no.

"Shy?" I call again.

The figure suddenly darts behind the tent.

"Hey! Wait!" I yell.

I chase after him...it I mean. I don't know that it's a him. It could be a her. I hope it's a him.

The black figure darts and moves quickly. It takes a lot for me to keep up with him but I manage to keep a few paces behind. I reach my hand out, close enough to touch him. He's dressed in all black. He has a cape fluttering behind him. Fluttering just an inch from my reach. What's a guy around my age and height doing running about in cape and a...mask I guess? The two pointy tips of it bounce a bit as he runs. One's shorter than the other, chewed up and broken off it looks like.

"Can we stop running now?" I ask him as I continue to chase him.

I don't even know why I'm chasing him. Do I have a reason to?

...no, I guess I don't but I run after him anyway.

He suddenly ducks into a hole in one of the tents. It's a small tent and the inside is completely dark. Black seems to eke out of the tattered fabric. I pause, briefly wondering if this is a good idea.

I look back behind me for a moment. All that awaits me back there is being reprimanded, being taken back to the same four walls and living with the unwanted and the hypocrytical. That and it smells like animal shit outside. So my options are go back to shit or step in headfirst into the dark to chase after the...what is he anyway? A bat?

I go into the the hole of the circus tent. It's almost pitch black inside. I can see the barely there figures of my own hands as I bring them up to my face. I wonder for a moment what's supposed to be in here and then another pair of hands emerges from the dark and seizes my own by the wrists.

"Bat guy?" I ask, holding very still, "Is that you?"

I can hear him breathing. It's a little heavy. I'm breathing hard too. We must have been running pretty fast and I still don't understand why.

"Bat guy?" I ask again, my voice breathy as I regain myself.

He's holding onto my wrists tight. It reminds me of Sister Prudence for a second but I quickly brush her from my mind. I don't want to think about nuns or orphanages right now. I just want to be here in the dark with this stranger. Whatever that entails, it's better than going back out there.

"I know you," a voice says.

It's deeper than I expected. It's not quite adult but it's certainly nowhere near boyish. It rides on the verge quite attractively.

"Really?" I ask, my nasily intonation paling in comparison, "Who am I then?"

The other guy releases my hands. I almost want to reach out and find his again. It's like he's disappeared from me and suddenly I feel lost and terribly alone.

"You're...scared," he says slowly.

I laugh a bit.

"Scared? Hardly. It take more than a little dark to-"

"Not of the dark. Of the walls. You don't like the walls."

It feels like the air int he room got heavier. I struggle to breathe it in.

"What are talking about?"

"Walls closing in on you. Living alone. Dying alone. Eaten by the walls."

I take a step back and eye the dim light peering from the entry. I shouldn't have come in here. There's something wrong about this place. There's something so wrong.

"Who are you?" I ask angrily.

"I won't let them, Jay. I won't let them eat you. Not alone. They can take us together."

My mouth drops a little and I turn to run back outside but a hand shoots out and grabs my wrist forcefully.

"Jay!" the stranger yells at me as I struggle.

"Let go! I've had enough!" I scream.

"Jay, don't go. We've found each other! Don't leave now."

I thrash at him. He can't be real. No, he can't be. This has be a joke. A lesson set up by Prudence to teach me to behave. Or at least teach me to stay in my place.

"I'll kill that bitch for this! Let me go, you psycho!"

He grabs my other hand depsite my struggle and pulls me close to him. He's so strong. I still pull away, pushing my feet into the dirt to try and put distance between us. He drags me closer to the light and I can see him more. He is wearing a mask. His chest is bare and he's so pale. He's so fucking pale.

"Do you not belong to me anymore, Jay?" he asks me.

I get dead quiet. I look at him with harsh eyes. His own eyes look back at me, a couple of icy blues. I know the flecks of color in his eyes, the different shades of the calming color. They're all exactly where I remember them. Exactly as I remember them.

"...Ben?" I ask.

He releases one of his hands and brings it up to his mask. He pulls it off slowly, the poorly stitched fabric lolling off his head in this and that direction.

Ben looks at me, just as pale and sickly and beautiful as I remember him. I can feel myself resist the urge to tear up. My God, I thought I'd never see him again.

Ben was an older boy at the orphanage, not by much but still older. He arrived when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. A year ago. Was it really such a short time? I remember first seeing him and thinking, what the hell kind of cancer does this shmuck have?

Ben didn't smile much and didn't talk to anyone. He had a lot of private sessions with the priest. The nuns were always praying for him and whenever someone crossed paths with Ben, they'd do the old signing of the cross bit. Eventually, he came out of those secret rooms and meetings and managed to bunk down witht he rest of the unwanted, specifically with me.

Seeing him in my room was surreal. He was sitting on the top bunk, shirtless. He had muscles, toned and small on his body but he was so pale, so tranluscent white that he almost looked like a ghost. But that wasn't the worst of it. What really got everyone was his shoulder blades. They seemed to jut out of him. It wasn't too severe but it was definitley noticable.

"So, what the hell are you doing here?" I asked him casually, "Aren't you supposed to be out getting healed or are they trying to exorcise you?"

I remember him looking up at me. His eyes were so bright and light blue. It was like looking at the sky. No, the sky had never been that clear and cruel. I don't know what came over me but suddenly wished my tongue wasn't so sharp and my ass wasn't so smart.

"I live here now," he said flatly.

He wasn't angry with me. He wasn't annoyed or irritated. It was like he saw through wasn't depressed but distant. He was so flat line I wondered if he was dead.

"Okay," I mumbled stupidly as I walked over to my own bed.

Our beds were just a few feet apart. Four steps and bam, you were at your neighbor's domain. I never shared my room with anyone. I tended to make other kids cry but there was something different about Ben.

The first few weeks were awkward for me. He was always there, sitting up and hunched over, his shoulder blades trying to creep over him or he was face down on the bed, the abominations popping out of his back like spiteful cave formations.

I did everything I could to stave off the inevitable but one night, it came. I sat up in bed and realized for the hundredth time that I would be stuck in this same room for the rest of my life, just another unwanted face shoved into a church and screamed at to find salvation. I was going to die here. I was going to die as nothing and no one. Alone.

The anxiety was overwhelming. I couldn't breathe and the breath I managed to take in and out sounded shallow and broken. My hands shook and before I knew it, I had tears rolling down my face.

God, I'm going to die. These walls are going to eat the space I take up and then I'll be nothing. Nothing.

"Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me. Please don't me." I chanted in a whisper as I tried to calm down.

I don't want to die. I don't want to be eaten alive. I am alive! I exist!

"Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me. Please don't eat-"

"I realize that I look a little monstrous, but you are old enough to realize that I'm not a monster right?" Ben asked suddenly, his voice clear and cutting into the silence I felt arpund me.

My motto disappeared and suddenly my breath got shorter and choppier. I'd been caught. There'd be no riding this episode out. I'd never been caught before.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Ben asked.

"I-I'm going to die," I said, despite my desire to stay quiet.

"Die?"

"The walls- the walls are going to eat me."

I could hear Ben russle in his covers. He was probably moving up to his sitting position, forcing those bones to further crack out of porcelain skin, breaking with each move.

"Eat you?" he asked again, his voice surprisingly serious, almost investigative.

"Because I'm just space. I'm only space and soon the walls will cl-close in and I'll be nothing. I am nothing."

I curled into a ball and began sobbing and choking all at once. I felt like it was happening right then. I was being eaten alive.

"You're not nothing," Ben said quietly.

I almost didn't hear him. The words barely registered.

"I live for nothing and I exist for no one," I managed to get out.

All I could hear was the reverberation of the house's quiet and the choppiness of my own breathing. There was nothing Ben could say to that. He knew I was right. We were all nothing. We were all unwanted.

"I don't belong to anybody," I cried high as I buried my face in my knees.

That's when I heard it. An interruption in the normalcy of my attack. A soft thud on the floor. It was gentle but purposeful. Then there was a second. Then a third. Finally a fourth and then there were these two arms, pale ghost arms with muscle and warmth on them. They wrapped around my shoulders as I felt the weight on my bed shift.

"You can belong to me," Ben said quietly as he rested his head in the dip of my shoulder, "You can exist for me."

I didn't know what to say. Would anybody know what to say? I just reached up and touched my hand against his. He curled fingers around mine and held them.

"I'll show you how," Ben said softly.

I felt his lips against the side of my neck. They were warm and little wet but soft. He looked so ghostly but he was so warm. He looked like death itself what with his bone disease and everything and yet he felt so alive. He turned me around to face him. Even in the dark of the night his eyes shone clearer and brighter than any sky I've ever seen.

"You belong to me and I'll belong to you." he said, staring into me, "And we'll exist for this."

Ben gently put his hands on my face and pulled it close to his. His lips pressed against mine softly. My heart rate slowed and suddenly I felt like I could breathe again. The more he kissed me, the more I could breathe. The more he touched me the more I was alive. The more love we made over that year, the more I existed and belonged. I never knew that touch could be so healing, so necessary.

"Ben," I say as I rest one of my hands on his face.

He closes his eyes for a moment and kisses my palm.

Oh, we belonged to each other, up until the moment we were torn apart.

It was two weeks before Ben's birthday. He'd be turning eighteen and we both knew that meant he had to leave. Of course, the orphanage had a system for that. They'd find him a job and a place to stay but after that he was on his own. I was a little scared for him though I'd never say so.

To be honest, I was more afraid for myself. I still had a year left here before I had my shot at freedom. What was I going to do without Ben? How could I bear this place without him? The past year had been more than tolerable to me. Sure, I'd survived without Ben before but he was- he'd become- my everything. What was going to happen to me without him?

I became hasty and my thirst to be close to him was unquenchable. We were careful in the year that we were together. We had to be. If anybody found out- well it was a religious institution, it's not that hard to figure out.

But I wanted him at every turn and corner. I had to be close to him, to touch him and kiss him and make love to him all that I could before he had to leave me. He didn't deny me either. He was just as desperate. We knew our time together was coming to an end.

The end came too soon.

"Jay?" Sister Prudence shouts as she looks into the tent.

I turn around, just as panicked that she's discovered us now as when she'd discovered us then.

Ben and I were in the middle of making love. He'd promised to come back for me soon after he left. He'd try to adopt me and if that didn't work he'd help me escape the place for good. He told me that he was looking to move up north for cheaper medication and to meet a doctor who said he might be able to help with his problem. We were going to live together in a little apartment. New walls. God, I'd never been so happy in my life. I had my reason for being, I had the love of my life, and I was going to have new walls. Ones that protected me and served me instead of trying to suffocate me.

Ben had just climaxed inside of me and I spilled out as well when the door swung open and Sister Prudence began screaming. That's how my and Ben's last together ended, with Sister Prudence screaming and screeching and throwing Ben outside of the room.

They never helped him get a job. They never got him another place to live. They threw him out and with him, they threw out everything I was and everything I might have been.

"Ben?" Sister Prudence asked with shock.

Ben quickly ducked into the dark but I reach out at the last second. I grabbed a hold of his cape and gripped it with all my might just as Sister Prudence came in a grabbed me. She dragged me out of the tent and I dragged Ben, holding on for dear life.

"I won't let you go!" I yelled as he struggled.

"Jay, we're leaving now!" Prudence commanded.

"No!"

"I said now! Let's go!"

"NO!"

We all fell into the light, the three of us. It seemed to blind me, brighter than circus light should be. I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. I needed to find Ben. I looked to my left and saw Prudence with a look of horror across her round face.

She screamed and pointed behind me. I turned and felt myself jump back.

"Ben?" I asked.

Ben's cape had been torn in the fall and now his shoulders were exposed for the world to see. Ben never moved up north. He never got cheap meds. He never saw that doctor.

Ben's shoulder blades- no, something came out from where his shoulders used to be. They're bulky and gnarled looking, sharp in places and stretching that pale albino flesh. They're other worldy. They're surreal. They almost look like wings but-

"Demon!" Sister Prudence shrieks as she grabs hold of me.

I back away a little myself out of shock. Prudence holds me close against that sturdy body of hers. She smells like flowery perfume. Nuns aren't supposed to wear perfume and I pull away from her soft breast and her abundant stink.

Slowly Ben looks over his shoulder and straight at me. I can see his face, molded with bold lines. His cheeks look a little hallow. His eyes are so blue. So fucking blue.

"Ben..." I cry softly.

"Demon! Help!" Sister Prudence continues to scream.

Suddenly a man appears and seizes Ben harshly by the arm.

"Who let you out of your cage!" he yells, "I've told you a hundred times not to wander around! You'll scare the kids! You're the nighttime, late night, freak show, damn it! Why don't you ge that!"

The man, Ben's handler I'm assuming, gruffly takes the mask Ben's been holding onto and forcefully puts it back over Ben's head.

"That man is a demon!" Sister Prudence cries to the man.

I take a step towards Ben and Prudence grabs me harsh by the shoulders.

"Do not be tempted, Jay!" she commands me, "That is an abomination!"

I am so fucking sick of her. I fucking hate her and that she keeps grabbing me and holding me. Like she can keep me. Abomination. Yeah, right. She would know plenty about abonimation, wouldn't she? Always touching me. Not like she used to but still touching me. She knows I'm too old for her games now. She can't smile at me and promise me candy if I follow all her directions. She can't make me touch her but she still tries to hold a grip on me. Always trying to hold me and smother me and make me belong to her.

I'd rather be empty space than belong to her.

I turn and grab her fingers. I start to bend them backward and she begins yelping. I'm not twelve anymore. I can overpower her now. I'm not a little boy anymore.

I hear a snap and she begins screaming. I'm not satisfied. I keep pulling them backwards even as she tries to fight me. The man is yelling at me to stop but I ignore him. Her fingers spurt blood and suddenly the man tackles me.

He's a heavy guy but he's not much bigger than me. We roll around as we fight. I manage to land a cheap shot. A roll up quickly and see a shovel off to side of the tent. Prudence is still screaming. She's fallen to her knees and is holding her broken, bloodied fingers to the helm of her dress.

The man begins to plead with me but I don't care. Nobody talks to Ben that way. Nobody treats him like an animal, like a freak! I bring the shovel up high for a swing as Ben watches.

I black out.

I feel exhausted as I come to. I don't have the shovel anymore. I'm facing Ben. I'm looking straight at him as I breathe heavily. I feel like I've just had an anxiety attack. I take a step towards him, we're only a few steps apart, but he takes a step back. His eyes are wide and brows are furrowed. He doesn't look scared exactly. He looks-

"What are you?" Ben asks.

"I'm...I'm Jay," I answer, a little confused.

"Look," Ben says as he points behind me.

I turn slowly, so slowly.

The man is dead, his face beaten beyond recognition. Prudence is laying face up, a shovel protruding from her stomache and all of her fingers are broken and bleeding.

I can't breathe. This can't be real. This couldn't have happened.

"You're a monster," Ben says as I quickly turn away form the scene and back to Ben.

"No!" I say, "I'm not! I- I had to! I had to do it!"

"No, Jay! You killed them! You tortured them!" he raised his voice, icy and full of disgust.

"I-I-" I look back at the victims, it was more than self defense, anyone could see that, "-I'm only human, Ben! I had too!"

"No, you wanted to. You're a fucking monster." he scrutinzes.

I look at him and the large, batlike wings on his back. The fleshly extensions are disturbing but even then, he's still Ben to me. He'll always be Ben to me.

"I don't call you a monster!" I point out, "You'll never be one to me!"

Ben takes a step forward, then another, then a third and finally a fourth. We're nose to nose. We're close enough to touch.

"Don't compare us. I'm nothing like you," he says, his blue eyes turning cold and dark.

Ben steps into the dark of the tent. He disappears into the black and leaves me there in the light of the circus.

He leaves me here.

He leaves me.

I'm a monster.

I'm nothing.

The walls are closing in again.

No.

NO!

No walls! NO MORE WALLS!

Fucking burn them! Burn everything- burns!

Kill everyone! Kill everyone-kill- kill the the bat!

KILL THE BAT!

"Batman!" I yell as my eyes open.

Batman's hovering over me. My arms and legs are useless as I go to move them. For what purpose, I'm not sure. Batman's undoing the straps slowly.

"Oh, Bats, I had a terrible dream," I complain as he works on the strap across my chest, "I think you were in it but I'm not sure. Say your name isn't Ben is it?"

"No," Batman grunts as the strap comes undone.

"Well then, maybe it wasn't you but there was an undeniable bat motif in there. Never thought I'd be one for a teenage romance. Nice ending though..."

"Would you be quiet?" Batman growls as he finishes with the lower strap.

I go to jump up and out of my position but I barely manage to pick my head up. I feel disoriented and...woozy.

Batman suddenly picks me up and swings me over his shoulder.

"Hey now," I joke, "I'm all for taking intiative but shouldn't you buy me dinner first?"

Batman punches the back of my knee. I take like a man of course and notice Crane sitting in a corner looking beat up as hell. I smirk a little.

"Cheeky, overachieving bastard. Did he interrupt our fight?"

Batman doesn't respond. As he begins carrying me out I notice some notes sitting on a table. I grab it quickly and begin to read aloud.

"'Subjects Joker and Batman seem to be fixated on one another'." I read, "Hm, what do you think that means? Something Fruedian, Bats?"

I earn a punch to the back of my other knee and I drop the clipboard of notes. So much for reading material on the trip. Huh, trip...

"Say, not that I don't love surprises, but where are you taking me?"

"To the Batcave," Batman replies, all gruff and manly as usual, "I need to run scans on both of us to ensure that the serum Crane was using hasn't effected us in any long term way and to make sure it's not contagious or-"

"So what you're saying is," I pause for dramatic effect, "we're going to go play doctor back at your place?"

Another punch to the knee.

"Touchy, touchy," I scold.

A/N: Could this possibly be a three chapter short? Or will I end it hear? THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW. O: