AN: Wow. Please, don't kill me...everyone... I am SO sorry this chapter took forever to put up! In all honesty, most of it was already written out, but I didn't have the time to look it over or finish it up until tonight...school is taking away lots and lots of time. :x I do promise though that I will finish this 'fic as soon as I can, maybe even try to post up some chapters every weekend...it all depends on how much work school decides to throw at me, hah. But I'm sure you all understand that, school makes life pretty hectic indeed...

Anyways, here is chapter 11 (finally), and the rest will come sooner than this installment...I promise you...especially chapters 14 onward, while 12 and 13 might be a tad slow to come. 14, I'm pretty sure, is the super mature chapter, a quarter-to-half (maybe even more) of which is going to be posted on because it's too mature to just post in its entirety on this site. :\ But I'll have a link to it in the story when the time comes, don't worry! I think I'll be ending this around 18 or 19 chapters with an epilogue (which was already written...heh), so...yeah, this 'fic still has awhiles to go ;. I'm not finished having fun with everyone yet...

And yep, it just gets darker here on out folks. Consider...um...chapter 12 onward to be upped to R/Mature rating.

Also, for the letter coming up, since does not do strikethrough formatting, Italics will be Rachel's thoughts, or how she would have originally written the letter without scribbling her thoughts out, and normal, un-italicized type is...how the letter is actually written. Okay? Okay!

So, as usual, feedback is loved, read and...ENJOY!

Love,

xxnadsxx.

Dark Humor

Eleven

"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

"Dear

Bruce,

Please stay

I'm so sorry

What I do is none of your busin-

It's a little ironic that my last note wasn't exactly the farewell I had intended it to be. That, right now, this is my final goodbye, and there really isn't any reason for you to see me again.

I don't really think you want to anymore, anyway.

I hope you don't see me as a criminal, or doing this out of some petty reason. It's funny, but I hope you don't hate me after this. Even if you want to forget me completely, or even if you're angry at me, or feel as if I've betrayed you, somehow—please don't hate me. Please don't stop believing in people, because even after all this, you should still believe that we all have some good in us no matter what. Gotham is counting on you to believe in that.

But you don't have to have any hope for me anymore. You don't have to worry about me. I no longer qualify as a 'person'—for now, in my mind, at least, I'm a vendetta. And I'm doing it for you, and for Gotham as well. Please believe me when I say that I wish things could have turned out differently for both of us, but they haven't and it's too late so don't get mixed up in this—

but all we can do now is pick up the pieces, and try to move on.

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me,

Your frie—

Rachel."

oOo

Fingers clasped the crisp envelope in a grip so firm she knew it was only to keep herself from letting her body pry it from her fingers. Rachel was standing at the door of Wayne Manor, the gigantic abode towering above her and making her appear as feeble as she felt, her lips pursed in a thin line, her hollow, sleepless eyes dark-ringed and staring at the door she had just knocked once, twice. There was no need to appear presentable, when the rest of the world seemed to be in shambles—anyway, it was impossible not to see the wraith hidden beneath her glassy blue eyes.

Hours seemed to pass before the heavy door abruptly swung opened, Alfred's kindly face peering through the shadows of the manor recesses at the crack of dawn. She could make out the fatigue that lined his face, obviously having woken him up from a deep sleep, yet hadn't been anticipating the surprise that accompanied it. There was no hostility in those gentle eyes, and for that she was glad. She wanted to see his face for the last time as an imprint of kindness in her mind—as a constant.

Alfred's pale, wrinkled face curled into a small smile as he briefly looked over her stiff frame, resting with a long pause upon the envelope, then meeting her eyes again.

"It's good to see you again, Miss Dawes," he began automatically, a broken record in her memories, "Have you come to see Master Wayne?"

The tone in his voice seemed an already-answered question, carrying a heavy, almost sympathetic finality that did not go unnoticed by her sharp ears. She kept her gaze as resolutely fixed upon his as she could, fingering the envelope unsteadily before pushing it forward between their still hands,

"I wanted to give him this before…before I left."

Her voice didn't crack. Perhaps she had more strength than she felt she had at that moment, with her shoulders hunched and her lips pursed tight, the very countenance of a rigid statue. Alfred's eyes flicked sharply to the envelope again before returning to meet her stare, understanding passing between the both of them. He would refuse to show it to Bruce, of course, just like her last possible death-note. Always the self-appointed caretaker, to pamper his master with lies, hiding away anything from the real world that could cause him harm in his vigilante pursuits.

She didn't blame him. She was once that way, too, a long time ago.

"Please."

The world fell from Rachel's lips as if it had come from a beggar on his knees. Sympathy poured from Alfred's wizened eyes, sympathy that almost overwhelmed her with its crippling strength. She could so easily wander into the recesses of the Manor, give into the sudden pull, rest her head against the guestroom bed and feel Bruce's hands against her, comforting, powerful, safe. She would be safe, if only momentarily—if only in theory, in hallucination.

What I would give to be ignorant again, to be under Harvey's wing, with my nose upturned and all the world beneath me, living valiantly in my little blanket of blind justice…

"Alright."

He nodded; and the envelope fell into his opened hands. It was done. Alfred was signing her away, somehow, knowing this was beyond him—beyond even Bruce himself. She couldn't bring herself to fully measure the sadness in those aged, knowing eyes as they watched her turn forcefully on her heel, descend the steps of the Manor one last time. She measured each step carefully as she went, curiously heavy with the eyes boring into her back, until she was feet away from the Manor itself, until she heard the door slam. Until the Manor was nothing more than a pinpoint of darkness, just another spot of black in Gotham's bleeding horizon.

oOo

It was dark in her new home. Dark, grimy, filthy—

She had trouble telling it apart from the rest of the world.

She had rented a room; she wasn't sure where, some dilapidated motel at the fringes of downtown. Faces had passed her as she wandered through the rank, dirty halls; faces of people she once regarded with interest, curiosity, faces that now passed in a blur of red and black and paranoia. She wondered if each one carried a hidden motive, if one would emerge from the pack, scarred and wild-eyed, to slash at her in a moment of weakness.

When she had shut and bolted the door, triple-checking the locks, she wished she could deny it was because she had lost her trust in people.

She was lying in her bed—a mattress on creaking wheels, as small and confining as a hospital gurney, a stretcher. She tried to ignore the wet spot at the edge of its badly torn surface, or the fact that the arctic air through the broken vent cast chills across her spine as she tried to sleep.

Sleep.

It was more like a struggle.

Who was she kidding? She couldn't even try, couldn't even get herself to close her eyes. All she could see were the twisting shapes of the darkness before her, infinite and thick and suffocating in her tiny new room, afraid it would somehow take solid form and batter her frail body. Her breath was short and shallow, and for a moment she felt like an object; a wiry basin collecting the cold and the dark and substituting it for oxygen until it slowly began to erode the thin wooden skin, her thin wooden brain.

Snap out of it, Rachel. You're just tired.

Tired.

The word was a cruel understatement. Tired. Who were the people to invent the diction of the English language, to twist complex emotions with mockingly simple expressions? Tired couldn't even begin to describe her; fatigued, exhausted, worn out, beat…

Slowly, compulsively, a giggle rose from her lips at her thoughts. Here she was, lying awake and damaged and beat at an hour where the portion of Gotham's finest citizens were asleep in their comfortable little homes, shrouded in normalcy and ignorance. The only people up this night were people asking for trouble, the homeless and thieves and criminals…

And the freaks.

No.

She wasn't one of them. She prosecuted them, punished them, locked them up and made sure they wouldn't wreak anymore havoc on Gotham's streets again. It ensured she was always a cut above, was always better, somehow. More moral, more stable, more confined, more restricted, living more of a lie—

"Stop. It."

She hissed to nothing, to no one, but the boring eyes of the darkness that watched her, breathing mutely with each cold chill pressing upon her bare skin as she lay confined in her stretcher-mattress. The darkness was so much like those eyes, those penetrating, violating black eyes in swirls that raped her with every unblinking stare; every gaze straight into her soul to grasp hold of her flaws and her imperfections and tear her carefully built foundation apart. It was more terrifying than any physical cut, any tear of knife against flesh. More devastating that the greatest weapon against herself lay within herself, breathing and conscious and growing like some black, demonic seed, eating away at everything until there was nothing left but a gutted emptiness where her heart and soul had been. She grit her teeth and clutched her thin sheet against her breast, for a sickening moment reduced to a child hiding its head beneath the covers, wanting to protect itself, thinking that if she couldn't see it then it wouldn't be able to see her. Hurt her. Kill her.

She wasn't afraid of death. She knew that, she knew that he knew that; she had even confessed it. She was afraid of the other ways in which he could kill her. The other ways in which she was knowingly killing herself.

She hadn't eaten in so long; she could register this in the emptiness she felt, the weakness. So frail, nothing but papery skin and bone, not quite so sure of what remained of the organs that lay within her, the mythological existence of a soul. Her soul. Maybe that was what had been drained of her the past few days—her chance at salvation. At redemption. Maybe God—if there was some sort of God up there, in Gotham's dreary, faceless skies—maybe God had abandoned her, had left her to play mind games with Satan himself.

Or maybe she had chosen to slight Him, and she was slowly but surely disintegrating by her own will, becoming one with the darkness and the Satan that contorted it so expertly in his dancing black irises.

Another laugh, this one from deep down within her throat, more of a reflex; almost like breathing. She had never been one for dramatics, for all this self-pity. It had always been dedication to others, for the expense of herself; always like some sort of sacrifice, rushing headfirst into the D.A. position, an embodiment of the perfect, ideal justice that they all knew to be nothing more than a child's fantasy in the twisted playground of Gotham's streets.

She had never had time to concentrate on herself—to be so fully and utterly alone, with none there to whisper words of influence in her ear, no Harvey at her side to keep her vigilant, to keep her stubbornly believing, time and time again, that there would be some ultimate resolution, some full circle to outweigh the overwhelming crime that plagued Gotham with a miraculous downpour of justice. They had even counted on Batman to bring that ultimate justice, had even vainly hoped that one man behind a feeble little mask would be enough to battle the city itself.

We're all so foolish. I was foolish.

As if an afterthought, eyes lingered towards the crumpled papers at her side, wrinkled news headlines balled away in feeble fury, as if it would put an end to the contents within. Bold letters haunted her within the darkness, outlined as if illuminated from inside:

GOTHAM CITY A CIRCUS AT HANDS OF MASS-MURDERING CLOWN

CITIZENS GRIEVE LOSS OF WHITE KNIGHT

DENT'S FUNERAL FOILED: WHERE IS BATMAN?

Where is Batman?

As the darkness of sleep pressed around her, as sudden and final as a fatal blow, she wasn't sure if even a human as insane and enraged as Batman could save this city without dying inside.

oOo

Her phone was ringing. She was barely aware of its incessant humming against the quiet darkness; her hand slumped forward to stroke its side, her fingers falling slack and careless within seconds. Let it ring. It didn't matter anymore. She just wanted to rest.

Minutes passed; hours, maybe. Time was lost to her for the moment, as she shifted restlessly against the narrow bed, beads of sweat rolling across the nape of her neck. Burning, save for the cold metallic feel of the phone against her fingers. It was still vibrating as frantically as it had before, its bright green glow casting an almost sickly sheen against the darkness. She fumbled for it, her fingers twitching with every intent to fling it across the wall, watch it break into a million pieces, destroy destroy destroy because nothing seemed eternal or constant anymore, everything changed no matter how badly she wanted to preserve it all--

Of course.

Bruce's name lit the phone's glossy surface in fractured digits. She watched the voicemails pile, letting the vibrations hum through her palm for timeless minutes; five, six, seven, eleven...

Her teeth grit, the sticky heat only edging her onto frustration.

Hadn't she told him to leave her alone? Did he understand the implications of a farewell letter?

She couldn't deny the momentary flutter in her chest at the sight of his name, yet...it was fading. It was fleeting; nothing in comparison to the sickening ache she used to feel, the incessant tugging at her insides whenever he came near, as if they had been attached by a thin hook through their hearts, tugging them painfully together until the pain was unbearable the further apart they were. That was nonexistent, now; it was only smatterings of the past, and then the sickly churning of outrage in her gut at his stubbornness.

Her frustration continued to stoke and ebb with each passing second, the phone nearly making her palm numb in its urgency.

Twenty voicemails.

What was going on?

She needed to get him to stop. To shut up. To die away from her life, to make this process easier for the both of them. The heaviness of the days she had suffered weighed down upon her throat as she sighed, dialed the number and mentally composed herself for her calm, cool tantrum.

"Rachel?"

She hadn't been able to get a word out; the frantic voice didn't miss a beat. There was no guilt to drown her in waves at the horrifically twisted anxiety in his voice; she was blinking back tears of rage, biting down gently on her tongue to keep from shouting, the pain between her ears intensifying,

"Yes."

It was all she could say, a confirmation. She waited as the crackling pause ensued on the other end, each silent second blazing with panic on the other line, something unsaid, something hidden from her. Her nails dug into her palm, cut the skin with white-knuckled force, her eyes wrenching shut,

"Bruce, why did you call me? What do you want? I thought I made it clear--"

"Rachel, you need to get out of there."

She found it was her turn to go quiet. The rage went dormant within her, replaced by a tingling cold that chilled the sweat along her spine. Suddenly, she was aware of how compacted she was in this room, how confined, as if the walls were bearing down on her, grating her, watching her as they pressed upon her with crushing eyes. She pressed the phone hard against her ear, pulled herself to her knees,

"what are you talking about? If you think you can get me back into your manor--"

"No, goddamnit, no, Rachel, you have to listen to me!"

The voice on the other end was nearing a hysterical scream. She had never heard him like this, before, had never heard him so...panicked, so frightened in her life. It chilled her, brought the hellishly scorching room to a prickling subzero as she found herself pacing the creaking floor, her eyes darting frantically from one blank wall to the next.

"Rachel, you need to leave right now, and I don't care where you go, I just want you out of there until I can track you down and help you. There are people after you, nobody can be trusted, don't talk to anyone--"

"You're not making any sense, Bruce," she was hissing, her eyes wide as she grabbed her keys, pausing at the closed door as a part of her regarded his words with shocked skepticism, "I don't understand how I could be in any more danger than I am right now."

A pounding at her door.

Her ears throbbed with each forceful crash. Her breath halted, then quickened with her pulse, as she automatically jerked away from the door, eyeing the tiny window at the side of her room. Bruce was quiet on the other end, obviously having heard the noise as well--had he gasped?--and she was edging towards the little glass rectangle as each knock grew more frenzied, more frantic, more forceful. For a moment the door seemed to rock on its hinges, the series of strong knocks jamming forcefully into her skull with each second, confusion jarred with panic and fear. Was it the Joker, coming to claim her at last--to finally kill her?

"Open up!"

A deep, forceful voice boomed at the other end, the pounding so fast and so strong the door began to almost bend with each blowing force, and she was working the latch of the window, cursing beneath her breath as she began to pull it upwards, her heart beating frantically with the knocking.

"Rachel," Bruce was crying on the other end, "Rachel, stay with me--stay with me, what's happening, Rachel?! What's happening?!"

She had the window almost halfway up--it was old, stubborn, opening too slowly, and a scream caught itself halfway within her throat as a section of flimsy wood burst from the tiny door to give way to a bloodied fist. Oh God. Oh my God. She was wrenching the damned window up with all her strength, clutching the phone against her ear, swearing and cursing as she continued to push, the glass suddenly snapping upwards enough for her to reach her head through, then her shoulders, and then she was wriggling her way, almost half-way against the lonely outside, her shoulders digging into broken glass, biting her lip in pain as it cut into skin--

"Open the fucking door, we're not gonna hurt you! Just open the goddamned door!"

With a shriek, she was wriggling through the tiny window by her waist, her hips pressed against the outline, her palms digging into asphalt, pushing the weight of her body further so she could slide through. But she was too slow, too afraid, too panicked, and Bruce was screaming into her ear, screaming at her to stay with him, to tell him what was happening, and the door was breaking, she could hear the wood splintering away, could hear its dying yawn as the hinges began to break off, and whoever was on the other end would be grabbing at her ankles within minutes, oh God, they were shouting with their heavy voices, dangerous, they were going to kill her--

With a cry she landed onto asphalt, pulling herself to her feet, just in time to hear the ringing shotgun blow that crippled the door to her room and gave way to a pair of dark faces on the other end. They could see her, free or not, they would be after her within minutes, their faces were contorted in determination and unmistakable primal thirst--

She was running. She was running to her car, running across the long expanse of asphalt, running until her feet were tired and aching, her breath heavy and laboured against the phone that never seemed to stop crying out in her ear to hold on as she found the streak of black that her mind barely registered was hers and unlocked and pulled the door opened, slammed it shut, started the ignition with a frustrated cry at the barest sounds of frantic footsteps bounding so close to where she was sitting like a helpless little mouse, again, the mouse--

The dark faces were looming, pressing towards her against her rear-view mirror. With a frantic cry she pressed down hard against the gas and zoomed forward, bursting across the road like a blur, her mouth dry and every part of her screaming. Another shot pierced through her ears, but it was too far to reach her now--she was zooming past, her skin prickling with sweat, feeling viciously and incredibly intact and alive. The phone was dead against her lap; Bruce was gone on the other end. She wondered how he thought he could find her.

She wondered what the fuck was going on.

As if to answer her, the radio was crackling; Rachel's fingers prickled with the urge to shut off the unsettling noise before the high-pitched cackle filled her car. Nearly swerving as her stomach hit rock-bottom, she kept her composure steady while the madman's crackling words, somehow broadcast over the radio, filled her suddenly tiny, vulnerable vehicle.

"Good eveeeening, people of Goth-am! I hope you've all been, ah...keeping in touch with the news recently, I'm sure you've all been as di-li-gent as Mister Reese here, all tied up and eager to hear my...broadcast."

The voice paused for a moment, as if to allow the audience to register his words. Rachel's throat burned as a peal of the horrifically familiar laughter scorched the night air.

"Good. I really do hope we've all been on the look-out for, uh...my lovely accomplice, as well. Rachel Dawes, your...um...for-mer D.A.? Ya see, we've been...working together for quite some time now, and we agreed on...a little deal,"

she could feel the grin spreading across the sickly red lips, the tongue snaking over scars, as if to taste the blood beneath,

"If one of the good people of Goth-am doesn't play my part for the night and bring me their lovely...little...Ra-chel. Then I will simply have to blame her little no-show on the rest of you! Ya see, Rachel here knows who Batman is, she's just been keeping it a secret because she loves to let the crimes toll up, loves to be everyone's little pro-tect-or, the shoulder we cry on to clean Gotham up! You can blame her for all those deaths...and for the ones to come."

Her entire body prickled with raging heat; her eyes burned with unshed tears. She could feel her lip quivering, her heel digging into the gas pedal with the crushing force of wanting to dig her heel into rib, to break bone. The voice was taunting, twisted, sickeningly delighted in its own sound...enjoying the fact that she was out there, somewhere, squirming with each syllable. Each and every truthful little lie.

"If I don't get Ra-chel right here where I can see her by, oh...let's say, an hour, I will blow up a hospital in downtown Gotham, because I know how you all like to see things burn."

The sound of a tongue smacking against lips, reptilian and thirsty. Bloodlust in each syllable; she couldn't quench her own urge to shut him up, to hurt him, to make him bleed.

"Buuuut...if she's here by the time specified, I won't harm a single soul..I really can't guarantee her well-being, anyway. You have an hour to play my game. Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

She was blinking back tears as she dug into the gas pedal, her car whipping sharply past curbs and abandoned street lights, heading full-speed towards where she knew to be the news station. A dull vibration shot across her lap again; it was Bruce, yet she cursed and concentrated on the roads before her, refusing to allow him to put the lives of others at stake for her own.

Her mind suddenly seemed to blank as a thought hit her. What had he said before?

...Until I can track you down and help you.

Her lip curled in disgust as she gauged the full meaning of his words.

Sonar.

Bruce was tracking her down through her phone, tracking her like a criminal.

And so was the rest of Gotham.

As the realization registered within her mind, her eyes darted instinctively to the rear view mirror.

She only caught a glimpse of the police car before it rammed straight into her.