Disclaimer: Batman © DC comics
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The Heart
Part 07 —
love and two dead bodies having a laugh
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—his world tears.
In half.
Two theories. Countless outcomes. Summarized (and Bruce needs logos to guide him on this one, not the other one):
1. Jack is the Joker.
2. Jack is just a random citizen in a set up.
Both of them are mixed in or manipulated by remaining henchclowns, and the two theories say nothing about whether Jack is aware of this or not. That scares Bruce more than anything. No matter, it always ends in what he tells Jack: "I want to trust you but I can't." The situation would've been funny hadn't it been so serious, because he's still fucking what might be his nemesis. That alone shows insanity.
"I understand," Jack says, but he doesn't. Bruce lets him off at his little apartment. Jack gives him a tired smile. 24 hours together, lots of sex and joking around and no conclusion except more uncertainty because of trust issues. Jack won't give more info on the man he met because he doesn't trust Bruce not to freak out and Bruce can't promise to not freak out because he doesn't trust Jack to tell the truth. Fucking uroboros. No end.
It's the beginning of an end.
He becomes Batman that night. There have been more murders in the style of the first, hinting at a new serial killer. Or just an old one. The old one. Commissioner Gordon asks about the Joker issue, and Batman says the investigation is ongoing.
He calls Jack and says he can't come tomorrow because it's too much right now. Jack doesn't answer for a little while but says it's okay, but that little silence says Bruce everything he needs to know.
Breaks your heart, doesn't it?
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"Batman," Gordon says.
"Batman," Gordon yells.
"Batman!" Gordon screams.
Batman snaps up and twists around, cape fluttering around him like a great darkness. It's a stormy night, dark like motor oil and mercilessly cold. He's been standing on the rooftop for a long time. The bat signal was on, but there were no policemen there. No Gordon. So he waited, and in the dreadful silence came the thoughts like order and Jack and love. The memories streamed through holes in his cape and sewed themselves on his spine, reminding him of
Jack—smirking up at him from underneath him, licking a drop of cum from his lips, pushing his ass up into oh
JackJo—taking control for once, riding him, insisting on being fucked bareback, wild and hot and rough
JjjacJokJacJoker—laughing hysterically, apologizing for his ugly laugh, then laughs again, and Bruce can't help but join him
Batman shakes his head blinks, hard. He must become concrete again, inhaling, letting Gotham's dust fill his lungs. He hoarsely rasps ("do you have a cold, Brucie?" Jack had asked, winking. "Want me to take your mind off your sore throat, heheh?")—"What is it, Commissioner? Do you have a breakthrough on the case?" The case. The one with the bodies. The one that matters.
"Yes."
Gordon is looking at him again with that concerned, sad frown. Batman is reminded of the autopsy room with him, all those days ago. Batman wasn't there, not quite, not wholly. Fragmented. Dark. Bruce must stop leaving Batman in the dark!
("Don't leave me! Pl—please, d—don't leave me! Mommy! Daddy! J—")
What is it with these memories that keep resurfacing? He's not even supposed to have strong memories outside of Batman. Bruce is supposed to be a shell. Broken and hollow, not like a maniac in love, mixing in Jack with all his important memories like he can't remember a time before him. There was a time before Jack. There even was a time before the Joker. You need to remember that, Bruce.
"We found out what the victims had in common, except being bulky and cheating on their girlfriends," Gordon says. He lights a cigarette. Like always, the light won't catch and he fumbles with his lighter. His hands do not shake. Thank god for Gordon. "They'd all been henchmen for the Joker on one point or another. Some of them were small fry, skittish, used for small infiltration jobs. Makeup store robberies rather than kidnappings. Others had survived long in the business, known for keeping their mouth shut and mind clear. No one was spared. Whoever it is who's killing them is continuing."
Batman closes his eyes, hard. Bruce shifts and swallows thickly, but Batman does not.
"I know what you're thinking," Batman says. "He's doing it behind a new face."
"Yep."
"You think if we find him anew, we can put an end to this."
"Mm—hmm."
"You want me to find him."
Gordon shrugs. Batman doesn't like seeing him so helpless or sighing so deep that his rib cage rattles with the effort. "You know," he says, swelling with the humanity that Gotham will never break or she'll break the only commissioner good enough for her, "I actually really like the goddamn idea. The idea of a new start, I mean. Even for someone like him. But it ain't realistic."
"Gotham is not realistic." A hotspot for horror. Arkham, in a bigger dose. Batman continues, hushed, more to himself, "I am..." not.
"Hm. Still. I'd like it to be true."
They stand in silence for a little while. Batman gets ready to go. "Goodbye, Gordon."
Gordon jumps, staring after him, eyes like dinner plates. Batman never says goodbye.
"What the hell are you up to now, son?" Gordon asks. The wind answers him simply by howling.
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The call comes at midnight.
Batman doesn't register it at first, just thinks the buzzing is an extension of the black drone of wind. He continues through the abandoned warehouse where the corpses were found, hoping to find clues, yet he's very... aimless. After 3.5 seconds Batman's fine hearing takes the buzzing apart though, and clarifies it as something else than white noise. Batman finds the phone irritating and dumb, holding it in his glove, growling at it like an inhuman beast who doesn't understand technology, wondering why did he bring him with him, why is someone ringing him now, why does it spell Jack—?
Bruce shoves Batman off. He has to breathe a bit before he answers the phone.
"Jack?" he asks, trying to be blasé but ending up tentative.
Sobbing, at the other end.
"J?" Bruce tries again, using the nickname only when he's agitated. Jack said it was a cute habit. There's nothing cute about this situation. The sobbing worsens, mending in with static and weather noises.
Batman growls: There's wind. He's outside. Not too loud, so he's standing next to something covering him. An alley? So many allies in Gotham. Find location. Ask for it. Force it out.
"B—Bruce..."
Jack only uses Bruce's full name when he is agitated.
"What? What is it, Jack?" Bruce tries to be hard and logical—tries to be Batman—but ends up sounding like a little boy again, lost with his loved ones suffering beside him, unable to help.
"Killed someone..."
Bruce's world freezes. No. No no no nononono—
Batman growls: Told you so. "Describe your location," Batman demands, never questions, into the phone. "If you have a newer phone then use it to send me your location. I need to find you as soon as possible." You and your victim both, murderer. Inside, Bruce starts to sob. Coward. Weakling. Child. "Jack. Answer me. Now."
"Sorry! Sorry... Um, uh, it's a... a space between two buildings, y'know..." God, he's forgotten the word alley. It's so Jack that Bruce wants to laugh but it gets stuck in his throat and comes a gulp. Batman is silent. "It's near Darling Buds, I think... Walked for a long while, tried to clear my head... Didn't see the car following me until it was too late, or I might've seen it but I didn't care, I was so sad..." More snivelling. "I—I can send you the location. Message you, I mean. It's here, the little arrow, yeah? The little arrow... Oh fuck, fuck, shit... He was telling me these things... horrible things... I'm so sorry, Bruise, so fucking sorry..."
Street accent is back, too.
Bruce almost starts to cry again. What can you do when your loved one is in so much trouble and pain, while at the same time you're fighting a battle with yourself? Shush, Batman commands. Save it for later. Focus on order. On containing chaos. I am order.
No you're not, Bruce thinks. No... we're... not.
He has never moved so fast in his life.
His life moves in a bunch of blinks. Street lamp. Wet pavement. Flashes of passing cars. Light reflected in windows. The motor cycle. Speeding up. Avoiding light, any light—avoiding drunkards in the middle of the road. Almost running over a hobo, ripping up his little box home in the process. Forgetting to mentally write up to fund another homeless shelter. Darling Buds. Left? Right? He checks his phone, curses himself for not doing it earlier, and finds the location. Tries not to tremble when he puts it into the cycle. Off again. Scaring old ladies in windows, wrinkled faces stretching in horror. Fuck them, Bruce thinks, and Batman shushes him again. Stripping off his armour in some alley. Sprinting.
Find Jack.
Find Jack.
Find Jack.
Find
a paste white figure, standing over a body beaten to death with a metal pipe, still fresh with blood. The alley is dark. Abandoned. Windows nailed shut with planks. Almost suspicious. The standing figure is leaning down, hands on his belly, and judging by the stink there's a pool of vomit nearby. The figure's hair is greenish in the dark—ha, what a time to discover Jack's coloured it. Black, though. It's black.
Murder scene mapped, Batman growls. Murderer, found. Take him out.
"B—Bru—Brucie."
It ends on a shrill note.
Batman walks towards him in confident steps, only faltering when he comes close enough to smell Jack's familiar smell. The smell of dirt, and flowers, and that expensive perfume he accidentally shattered with a wild leg during sex after Bruce discovered he was ticklish. "J," Bruce says, despairing, and runs over to—
Take him out!
—embrace him, tightly, as if the world was falling apart and he didn't care because Jack was here in his arms and you're safe now. The hug is returned, immediately. Clutching Bruce, hard. Clawing into him. Wanting to enter him, almost, not in a sexual way, but as if he could thread his spine onto Bruce so that they'd never leave each other. The reverie is quickly destroyed, because the pretence of dead is too near, and Jack's eyes glide over to the body wide wide wide so endlessly wide the eyeballs might burst
"Don't look, Jack," he says quietly.
Jack doesn't, shoulder slumped, head hanging down. But he lets go off Bruce, taking a step back. The body is wearing a clown mask, of course. Skull crushed to pieces. Jack looks like he's going to laugh, part his thin lips so widely that the sides of his mouth will rip, but he doesn't. "How can people do something like this?" he asks, and although his words wobble there is still raw terror there.
"I don't know," Bruce lies. He's experienced the darkness firsthand, seen it coil underneath his fingertips, trying to escape like a thousand spiders. There are spiders in his own heart, too. He twitches in their wake. Jack contains eggs. Little black babies roam in there, needle legs tapping at the shell. Madness, knocking, begging to be let out. We need to get away from the crime scene, Batman growls.
"What did he say, Jack?"
"He spoke about you."
Bruce stills. Even his Bat side is stunned. "What?!"
"He didn't get to me at first, talking about me and my life. Tried to get under my skin by saying I was miserable. Failed. I didn't think I was. Not all the time, anyway." Another sob. "Then he spoke about how you were gonna die soon. How this was part of some great scheme, me and you, all planned out. Gave me the location and everything. Some amusement park or something. He said you were gonna die I killed him. For you. It was so easy. He didn't fight it. Hit him with the pipe even after he was dead." Jack sounds broken.
The man has killed.
For Bruce.
Batman twists.
"It's alright," Bruce forgives—and it is the closets he ever was to murder.
Jack is back in his arms in a second, hugging him, exhausted. "I wanna go home," he says.
"Let's," Bruce agrees.
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They go straight to bedroom. It's dusty. The sheets, the floor, Jack's eyelashes—everything seems to be covered in it. It dances in the thin light provided by the street lamp outside the bedroom window. Bruce finds some candles to make it more homely, while Jack just sits there on the bed, vacant eyed.
Bruce starts removing Jack's clothes, stained by another person's blood. His own, too, and they sit there side by side in a room lighted up by hundreds of candles.
"Jack, please, say something."
"What is there to say?" Jack speaks like he's already dead inside. "I killed someone, Bruce. Slaughtered them in plain sight just 'cos they pissed me off. I'm not better. I'm sick." Bruce reaches for him and his hand is swatted away. "Should've known. Should've known when you said you didn't trust me. You knew, didn't ya? That I wouldn't be able to handle life outside the boutique, staying in my own controlled little world, shoving my fingers in earth, living among plants which couldn't fucking hurt me—?" His voice breaks. "Why do you do this to me? Why do you...?" Jack's tearing up, but he's cried for so long (probably before the murder, too, hiding under the covers swelling with sadness and whys) that no tears come. Pain, so much pain. He's numb with it. "Why do I love you so fucking much?"
And it is a confession, although a tragic one.
Like the ones muttered in moments before death.
Bruce shakily exhales. "Jack. Jack, I lo—"
"No you don't. You don't trust me, and you don't understand. I'm mentally ill, Bruce! I'm fucked in the head. I love you so much I want to kill somebody, I want to rip them open, and I don't like to think about it but I do! Okay? I'm not... I'm not..."
Worthy?
"Damn it, J," Bruce curses, "I'm not perfect either. Trust issues and PTSD; the shrinks would probably love to get their greasy fingers in my brain. Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes, mental illness. Sometimes life shoots both your parents in a dirty alley when you're eight and you spend time somewhere far inside yourself to avoid your problems. It doesn't matter and it doesn't dictate your worth. I trust you. You, Jack. No one else. I don't care what you were before or what you are now, because you're all I got."
Jack's eyes are dark. "I was someone bad, before, Bruce. Someone real bad. I think I know who, too, although the doctors never said it out loud."
It is true. End this.
"Jack."
Batman makes one last, dying twist, No no no don't even think about it—
"I'm Batman."
Jack blinks at him. "Oh god."
"...You don't have to call me god."
A moment passes.
Then they both break into wheezing laughter, all the tension in the room bubbling down to this. Jack throws his head back. Bruce watches him the entire time, engrossed in the love of his life, willing to drink in every single detail and find it perfect. Bruce loves this broken little man, even if he can't say it. Jack dries a tear, "Jesus, Brucie. This is... this is a lot to take in." He turns more serious, but the smile remains, sad happy and tired all at once. He seeks a connection—not in the form of sex though—and creeps closer to Bruce, who helps them undress properly and slide under the covers. "We sure are a fucked up couple."
Couple.
It makes Bruce smile. But Bruce is a coward, he knows, and won't say "I love you" until Jack is sleeping tightly on the pillow beside him. He soon falls into sleep himself.
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When he wakes the next morning, Jack is gone.
