AN: So sorry this took forever. Classes just started and things have been hectic. Plus, this chapter was admittedly pretty difficult to write out. Forgive me for any slump in writing quality in this installment, the next will be much better, promised. :) Also, I will get to replying to ALL of your reviews very soon, as I've slumped in review replies, and for that I am really sorry. Expect replies to the last chapter promptly by tomorrow! And THANK YOU EVERYONE for taking the time to read this story! I refuse to abandon it…I've abandoned a lot of 'fics before this one but I am determined to finish this out to the end, especially since it's starting to get interesting. :)

Enjoy loves,

xxnadsxx.

Dark Humor

Ten

"A trauma powerful enough to create an alternate personality leaves the victim in a world where normal rules of right and wrong no longer apply..."

-Batman Forever

Her head cracked against the ground with a burst of hot, searing pain. Multicolored sparks shot against darkness for behind her eyes, her breath tangled in her throat. Gasping, she grabbed her temples and took in a deep breath, her vision refocusing as she lay against the floor just in time to see Batman peering down at her for a fleeting instant. He seemed satisfied she was alright, because just as soon as he had knocked her to the floor he was grabbing hold of the Joker's shoulders, forcefully dragging him away from her fallen frame, his eyes pitch and murderous within the mask. The Joker's feet were swinging madly in the air as Batman grabbed him, his lips uttering both half-chuckles and grumbles of protest,

"And look who came right at the punch-line to ruin all the fun! What would it kill for you to just live a little, Batsy?!"

Batman looked as if he would like nothing better than to throw the Joker's now tauntingly smiling face into the spreading fire behind them. His grip moved from the Joker's shoulders to his neck as he replied in his hoarse voice,

"You would take an innocent girl and twist her to play into your little games, Joker? Why can't you just do the dirty work yourself and leave Gotham's D.A.'s alone!"

The Joker was coughing against Batman's iron grip around his neck; but as the vigilante spoke, a high, twisted cackle rose from his cracked red lips,

"Twist her to play into my games?! Honestly, Batsy, this crime-fighting business is making you a lit-tle out of sync with reali-ty—"

"LEAVE RACHEL ALONE!"

Another cackle burst from Joker's lips as Batman's grip tightened; his face was flushed pink beneath the stark white makeup, yet he barely fought the vigilante back, his hands still hanging limply at his sides, his struggling breath caught between gasps of air and amused chuckles,

"Oh puh-lease, you think you can threat-en me at all if you don't even have the strength to kill me?! Why Ra-chel and I, we have a very, ah…special relationship,"

Rachel was pulling herself to her knees as she watched the two speak, momentarily mesmerized. The Joker enunciated the phrase of his last sentence by curling two fingers of each of his hands as if they were quotation marks—he even sought her gaze as Batman continued to steadily choke him, winking mockingly. She gripped her gun tightly, ignoring the searing pain against her knuckles as he continued,

"We both know that in or-der to properly save Gotham, we have to kill a few people here and there…and this time I was no-thing but an unwilling accomplice!—"

Beneath the mask, she knew Bruce was seething—he growled in bestial frustration and slammed the Joker down against the hard ground, the back of the madman's head hitting the floor so hard she could have sworn she heard a sharp crack. Yet he lay there in a fit of whooping, cackling laughter, blood matted against his greasy green-tinted locks of hair, his kohl-drowned eyes teary with both pain and intense mirth.

Batman hovered over the laughing, bloodied madman. His gaze, even partially hidden by his thick mask, sent horrified chills down Rachel's spine. It was pure fire, brighter and redder than even the bursting flames that cast his silhouette in an orange glow; fire and bloodlust and rage, almost matching her own. And the Joker was still provoking him, his face contorted in a fit of giggles rivaling the obvious pain lingering beneath the layers of face paint and mirth,

"You're just a freak, Batsy! You're the freak in this room for standing out, the freak of Goth-am, when everyone agrees with me! Besides, why would you even care when you were going to let little darling Ra-chel go KA-BOOM?!"

He went to grab the Joker again, digging clenched gloved hands into the green of his vest, the Joker's pure delighted laughter throbbing in her ears as he raised him again,

"Don't believe his lies, Rachel!"

"Lies?!" The clown spat back, scarred lips curling from his yellow teeth, "Go ahead and deny the fact you were going to save Harvey instead! Is that what a hero does, Batsy, leave their dearest friends to die? Maybe you're not such a hero after all!"

As he spoke, Batman growled and flung his arm back, his fist driving straight into the Joker's cheek. Blood splattered from the laughing mouth against white skin and the ground below, staining his scarred lips with glistening red spittle, the cracks between the yellow teeth red and dark and shining,

"Why try and prove your innocence to the Bat any longer, Ra-chel, when he wanted you dead in the first place?!"

A cry of outrage burst from the masked vigilante's lips, and for a moment Rachel saw nothing but murder in Bruce's eyes. It was as if she could no longer recognize him, as if he, too, were being changed, crumbling away with all the rest of Gotham,

"Don't play into his mind games, Rachel!"

Then he pulled his fist back again, and she knew this blow would be harder than the others, if only to silence the taunting, sneering bloodied face before him, if only to make him stop hurting her—

A scream of intense pain filled the room, cutting the tension like a razor to the skin. Both Batman and the Joker turned to stare at the twisted, agonized cries, the Joker's face alit and smiling with even more pleasure than moments before, Batman's eyes wide in sheer dread beneath the mask. Rachel turned just quickly enough to see the dark blur that was Batman rushing across the searing hot air towards Maroni, whose ankles were now dancing with hot, hungry flames, the fire exploding across his calves with frightening speed.

She was stunned to find herself merely watching, her legs like lead, when only days ago she would have gone to help Maroni before resorting to this.

"No!" The mob boss was screaming, his face shaking and bloated like a toad, his wide eyes seeming to quiver in their sockets, pink and teary with pain, "No, yous stay away from me, stay away!"

He was trying to kick Batman as the vigilante used a bat-shaped disc to hack away at his bindings, the resistance only allowing the fire to crawl up his knees towards his thighs, hungry and voracious. Rachel was on her feet, her gun in hand, completely silent as the Joker surveyed the scene with an immense, almost sickening smugness on his features. Blood trailed across the back of his neck, the side of his white face jagged with gravel, the black makeup running from his eyes to his cheeks, his ever-smiling lips curved upwards nearly ear-to-ear as he almost admired Maroni's body bursting in flame.

If Harvey were still alive, she may have been disgusted at the depth of his vicious ecstasy at Maroni's pain. She may have been anything but relieved, a strange fluttering joy in her stomach at the sight of Maroni's mouth opened in an orifice of pained cries, as Batman struggled to release him from his bonds. Yet the fire continued to rise up towards his chest, following the trail of gasoline, not strong enough to outright kill him. It was slowly burning at his layers of skin, reducing the tough flesh to oozing, bubbling liquid, snapping every nerve and leaving nothing but an eventual twisted mess of disfigured skin and bones. He would die an agonizing death, long, tortuous minutes before his life seeped painfully away.

God, it was so…horrifically wonderful, the way the image filled her with prickling warmth, as Batman hovered over Maroni's writhing body and struggled to push the protesting screaming man back and forth to futilely stop the fire. She wasn't aware of anything for that very small moment of bitter satisfaction until the Joker's howling laughter shattered her thoughts, and she saw the wraith-like face fixated on her expression, grinning and all-knowing as if she were transparent,

"This is Gotham's true form of just-ice!" He shrieked, his arms thrown into the air triumphantly as he skipped forward and kicked a worn leather-shoed foot forward.

A blade burst forth just beneath the sole of his shoe, and he brought it forward, kicking Batman straight in his back. The vigilante who had been so fixated with helping Maroni grunted in pain and fell forward as the blade slashed through his thick armor and bit into skin. Maroni was still writhing beneath him, the wooden chair knocked to the ground, the weight of the Batman pressed heavily upon his struggling figure, and for a sickening moment Rachel thought the flames had caught onto Batman's suit, melting into his torso…

"Stop!"

She screamed, as the Joker went to kick at Batman's fallen frame again, and almost comically, his foot swinging with the readiness of his second blow, the Joker froze in mid-air, craning a cocked head to watch her. She was holding her gun straight at him, her fingers quivering. Of course, her threat was empty—she could shoot him, but even if she did, he wasn't afraid of it. He welcomed it. Which was why, as she held her gun at his still frame, his abysmal eyes widened with the admiration of a mother teaching a young child to behave properly, his smile like blood in milk,

"Go ahead!"

She froze. Her fingers wouldn't work, refused to pull the trigger, though her gun was trained on him. Batman was hacking frantically away at the roping that now burned across Maroni's flaming body, the mob boss writhing free beneath him—

A cry of pain; the Joker's blade struck at Batman's back again, and he fell forwards against the burning, screaming man, his face dangerously close to the fire, and the Joker cackled and brought his foot forward again,

"Why don't we make that face a lit-tle less serious, burn some of the nega-ti-vity away?!"

His foot was about to drive down again; the blood-splattered madman cocking a head as if to examine Batman's hunched frame, at the fire traveling faster across Maroni's body, so close to Batman's head even as he struggled to pull himself upwards—

The Joker's piercingly high cackle shot through her ears as spurts of blood raked the air. Her chest heaving, dread tightening her stomach into knots, she fell to her knees as the gun collapsed beneath her. The madman was clutching onto his side, his usual mocking grin twisted into a grimace of pain and an almost savagely delighted snarl, his eyes bright against the black irises as he pulled away a blood-smeared hand and brought it to his lips, tasting the redness on his fingers. The bullet had grazed his side, yet it had done its damage, and her heart throbbed at the proximity of his death, at how close she had been.

She wasn't aware he was walking towards her until she saw that he was a foot away, his body hunched towards his left side, hand clasped at the gun wound, the right side of his makeup-smeared face upturned in a bestial leer beneath the permanent grin,

"I have to admit, Miss D.A., I didn't think you had it in ya! Now why don't we see what else you have in-side of you, hmm—"

Just as quickly as he had approached her, he was pummeled to the floor, a mass of purple and green fighting against winged black. Batman was pummeling into the Joker's chest, the laughing, sadistic clown's eyes filled with rabid excitement as he fought back with kicks of his bladed shoe and frantic slashes of the knife in his gloved hands, neither one seeming to truly overpower the other in the fight of hard fists against biting steel.

But she couldn't watch.

She couldn't watch, couldn't hope to pick up the gun and force herself to shoot again, because as she scrabbled safely away from the fighting, still sprawled upon her knees, she heard a piercing cry behind her. It was a cry she recognized immediately; a product of rage, hatred, pain. The kind of cry that had haunted her mind these past few torturous days, yet manifested purely in the physical, in the almost eery red glow that filled her vision as she turned her head to seek out the source.

"You stupid bitch! I'm gonna KILL you, you hear, I'm gonna KILL YOU!"

Maroni was running towards her, his body completely aflame, his face
barley discernable against the fire that began to burn away at his skin, as if it were Harvey come from the dead, flailing with the intent to kill her. She was frozen there, on her knees, watching him as he ran for her, as Batman and the Joker continued to fight as the fire relentlessly ate away at the warehouse, ate away at Maroni's skin and sanity. He was screaming as he ran, screaming wordless cries, his eyes alit with fire more intense than the flames that ate away at every part of his body, that shattered his nerves and undoubtedly caused him so much pain he was barely capable of any rational thought.
All he knew was that she should have been dead, she realized, and somehow she was avenging Harvey—and of course, it could only be her fault that he was in this predicament. That's what she presumed he was thinking, anyway, as he came closer and closer, his body flailing and shuddering and twitching, his arms held out to strike at her, hovering so close to her she could feel the heat of his burning body nearly scalding her, and he was reaching down and if he touched her she would burn and he was going to take her with him—

Bang.

He never had the chance.

His eyes rolled to the back of his head, blood sliding between them in thick black, a line of dark liquor to be voraciously consumed by the flames as he fell heavily backwards, inches away from her body, from the gun in her hands. Maroni was lying on the ground, the shot resonating through the air with enough loudness to nearly pop her eardrums as her heart throbbed inside of them, then gathered in pulsating quickness into her shaking fist as she held the gun that had killed him. The fire seemed more intense, now, more final as it swept across his still body in fresh hot waves, eating hungrily away at the thin layer of skin like paper. Her chest was heaving, her hair wet and matted against her face with sweat, her mind otherwise numb and mute and seething with primal, shameful ecstasy, consuming her like the fire itself that consumed the dead body before her. She was still alive, she had saved herself again, and the rush of her near-death was pounding inside of her like tribal drums, rampant and chaotic and melodious in its skewed rhythmic fervor.

She was alive, and the man who had been the very instrument of nearly killing her was gone, never to hurt her again.

He was dying as Harvey had died. The thought made her brain quiver with its implications, with the sweet irony of it all. She would have laughed hysterically at her predicament if it wasn't for the discomfort of the fire so close to her, of the eyes that penetrated into her skull even as she lay there, shuddering and struggling to regain her composure. Batman's stare was twisted beneath his mask, his eyes almost as frighteningly blank as the holes in which he watched her through, still as black stone even as the Joker stood near him. He seemed transfixed, distracted, as if he were
staring through her, seeing a phantom of what she had been for the very first time.

And she realized that she had just sabotaged his mission, had killed what he had wanted to keep alive…

Clapping, nearly on the other end of the room, echoing across the silence and the crackling of the flames as they spread to devour the wooden columns, the walls, the rafters. It pounded in her numbed brain just as forcefully as the bullet had, the bright red smile dripping in the heat like the blood between Maroni's eyes,

"Oh, brav-o!"

The Joker's clapping was fast as he paced across the end of the room, too far for Batman to reach in time if he had decided to run for the door, too far for her bullet to hit if she had wanted to shoot him again. He seemed unfazed by the blood along his side—if anything, he looked gleeful, even happier than he had appeared before she had wreaked havoc with her gun. It was almost…smugness in his gaze, his beady-eyed stare flushed red and demonic against the fire that ate away at the walls, his stare nearly as unnerving at Batman's.

The two men were staring at her—Bruce, as if he had never seen her before in his life, and the Joker, as if she were some great work of his that he leered at with pride, as if he had created her somehow…as if she were his. And the difference in those boring stares unnerved her to no end, brought her to her feet, shaking and backing away from them with slow steps.

"We've put on quite the show for Bat-sy, haven't we?! Well I'm sure you know what the, ah…the mo-ral of this story is, don't you?"

His arms crossed before his chest as he cocked his greasy head, the black eyes pools of depthless ridicule as they watched Batman, the vigilante's fist curled, his lip forming a bestial snarl,

"Cha-os is supreme. And not even your stu-pid little laws can stop it, not even your little girlfriend can keep herself from being, ah, cor-rup-ted! I hope you know, Batsy, you're the real FREAK in this room. Because when all the…the cards are laid out, be-lieve me when I say that your D.A. dar-ling is going to topple with Harvey and come down to our level—"

His words erupted into a fit of cackles as Batman rushed for him, cape fluttering behind him with the speed of his lunge, nose flared and snarling like a bull, power in his raging limbs. The Joker was skipping backwards towards one of the warehouse doors, giggling and whooping as Batman came nearer only to be distanced again by the clown's retreat, throwing his arms out tauntingly before him,

"Time's up, time's up, time's upppp! I'm late for a date, wouldn't you
know, I'm afraid I'll have to jilt you, Bat-sy! But it's okay—I left some fuh-riends to play with!"

As he said this, the clown-masked goons from before burst through the door, three of them headed straight for Batman. The Joker was watching with vicious delight as Batman gave into the distraction and fought their assaults, his head turning for a millisecond in her direction. She could do nothing but stare at him as his cracked, bloody grin shot from ear to ear, a gloved hand tracing his side where her bullet had nearly penetrated, a knowing look in those abysmal eyes.

One in the same, that gaze hissed tauntingly to her, we're one in the same and you've just proven it, even to your little Bat-boy. Now what will you do—now that you're a freak, too?

She found no answer to the silent words as he turned and, his arms still waving in the air, nearly flew out the door with a jump, two of his henchmen following. The others lay upon the ground within minutes, beaten badly by Bruce, whom she could only guess to be beyond the point of frustration, submerged in a dangerous rage.

No, I can't let him sink to my level. I can't let him fall with me. He shouldn't have to mourn me, shouldn't have to end this way…

It shouldn't have been this way in the first place. But they weren't able to make that choice. He had made it, and now she was the one to take the fall for it. And in his eyes, as he watched her in silence, the burning body between them, the fire churning around them, she knew from that point that they were utterly unsalvageable. There was no way to quench the fire inside of her—her only option was to let it burn, to let it destroy, until everything smoldered into ash and she was left with the barest bones of herself. As he merely turned his head and walked away, betrayal in his eyes, she stood there with her gun, watching everything around her burn.

She didn't bother leaving as the rafters began to fall, the first sign of the building's collapse. Instead, she merely stood there for a little longer, the way a loved one would while overlooking the grave long after the funeral. Watching the pieces fall away, watching the control slide from her hands, realizing what little power she had over her life, how little control she had always had. Rachel was staring at a grave; not Maroni's, as he lay there, his body quickly wasting away in the fire, limp and slack and disfigured. Her own grave lay there, somewhere, slowly digging its way into existence with each passing day, her body already lying in wait. All that was left was the burial.
She finally turned, walking towards the door as the sound of sirens from far away pierced the evening air.

But she couldn't help but look over her shoulder as she left, watching her former self alight in flames, devoured utterly by chaos.