Hey guys! I am updating because my boyfriend is at work and I have nothing better to do… plus I've been meaning to this week.
So, I don't know if I told you guys, but I did decide to go ahead and do the 'update a different story per week' thing, so that's why I didn't update last week. If you're doing the math correctly, I won't be updating for another two weeks after this. So deal with it I guess?
I'm sorry. I over wrote myself when I started all these stories….
ENJOY!
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Shadows lined the room into which a young Jason Todd climbed in through an old creaky window. The room was messy, dirty clothes littering the floor along with shards of broken items long forgotten. The bare mattress had several knife marks in it, each having a story of when Todd had lost his temper with a pocket knife in hand.
He landed quietly on the cold floors of his beat down apartment that he shared with his mother. The pads of his feet produced a soft thud as he landed not-so-gracefully, but he didn't care. His mom was probably too drunk to hear him anyway.
Presently, the young boy pulled a loaf of bread and a necklace that sparkled faintly in the grim lighting out from beneath his battered shirt. Plopping a small chunk of bread into his mouth, he smirked at his evening's work. The necklace had been a difficult feat for the small thief, but he'd managed to pull it off the older woman while she wasn't looking.
Jason was a large boy, structure wise. However, he was scrawnier than any boy should be at any age, especially since he spent a great amount of time running and building up his muscles. He was strong, there was no doubt about it, but one would never guess from looking at him. He looked like little more than a skeleton with loose skin hanging off it's frame, with a mop of self-chopped black hair on top of his head.
After tasting the bread, he hungrily placed more into his mouth, savoring the flavor and silencing his stomach. The cinnamon and honey flavor seeped down his throat, oozing into his stomach and making his taste buds dance and sizzle across his mouth. Before he knew it, the bread was gone, his stomach greedily begging for more. He groaned in disappointment, his hands rubbing his still empty stomach. Lord knows it'd been ages since Jason Todd had felt the gift of an over-filled tummy.
As he stared into the dark of his bedroom, laying sprawled out on the bed with his arms folded beneath his head, waiting for sleep's welcoming arms to take him away from this life he led, the door slammed open, a blinding light flooding into his room. He squinted against the light as a slender figure stumbled towards him. Her face matched that of his mother, but the rest was unfamiliar.
She was curvaceous, her blonde hair tied into preppy pony-tails. A petite woman, she had long and slender legs, the feet beneath them small enough to fit into a child's shoe. Her eyes blue eyes drooped lazily, showing that she was drunk. As if the broken wine glass in her hand didn't already tell him that.
The closer she stumbled towards him, the closer he became to vomiting from the putrid stench of alcohol that wafted through the room from its origin: his unwanted guest.
"Mom?" he called out to her, leaning up from his semi-comfortable position on the beaten mattress. "Mom, go to bed."
Her eyes were wide, the blue in them shining now. Her smile was crazy, and it frightened the young boy on the bed. "What are you dreaming, Red?" she responded, lifting the broken glass in her hand high above her head. "I'm not your mom, brat!"
She brought the glass down, her arm swinging gleefully with as much force as her petite body could muster. Although, it was clear this woman was much like Jason: stronger than she looked.
Jason's body was unresponsive, proving him immobile to the woman's attacks. The glass cut through his forearm, blood spewing from the open wound like a fountain of gore. Jason bit back a cry, something within his mind begging him not to scream in pain at the stinging sensation the glass brought him.
She raised the glass again, this time her swing swiped across his cheek. A large gash opened there, and he thought it had completely punctured his cheek momentarily. He prodded the sore spot with his tongue, feeling a thin layer of flesh between the inside and outside of his cheek. It sung, causing his tongue to flinch away from the marking.
He looked back up, his eyes trying desperately to hide pain and confusion behind resentment and a well practiced stone wall. While he'd been distracted, however, his mother had disappeared, a court jester standing in her place. Her dark red lips stretched jaggedly across her face in the form of a smile, her eyes full of delight as she lifted a large, wooden mallet above her head.
It was obviously used, the flat end of the mallet smashed and crushed inwards from years of beating objects harder than itself. The handle was worn, the purple grip, made of thickly wrapped in ribbon, was shaped in such a way it would mold perfectly to a certain hand, and that hand was obviously this jester's.
"What do you want?!" Jason cried, trying to hide the frightened voice of a small child. He attempted to back away from the woman as she approached, but instead his body remained unresponsive, restraints suddenly holding him to his bed as she neared him.
"Shut up, kid."
Harley neared the hallucinating Red Hood, her mallet in hand. Strangely enough, the anti-hero wasn't unconscious, but was simply viewing everything differently, as if living a real nightmare. Harley briefly mused over this, before bringing the hammer down on his pelvis, eliciting a loud groan of pain from the boy's dry throat, the sound raspy and drawn out.
She smirked, watching the whites of the teen's mask widen in pain before narrowing a large amount, his arms struggling to go to the area she'd just hit, his back arching as he tried to curl into himself. She had probably hit an area where no man deserves to be hit, but she only smiled at the thought of causing him that much pain.
He continued to groan, his voice deep. "WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" he shouted again, this time his voice far more strained, the veins in his neck pulsing erratically. His muscles clenched and un-clenched involuntarily, probably as an effect of the drug, tightening against the handcuffs that bound him to the bed.
She pulled the hammer up once more, swinging it down with not only all her force, but also the sheer weight of the large mallet. It slammed down on the muscular teen's already-cracked ribs, a loud thud satisfying her. Although, the loud grunt that came from a winded Red Hood didn't exactly make her sad.
"You know, Red," she said, putting down her hammer and sitting on the bed, wrapping her legs firmly around Red Hood's waist-line. She ran her hands along his well-toned chest, digging her finger nails particularly deep into the several wounds she'd inflicted on him. "I'm going to miss all our fun when I turn you over to Mistah Jay."
His body moved against hers, flinching away despite there being no way to go. His actions brought a small smile to her face; the way he acted like a frightened child, the way he acted afraid of her as though she was the mother who had betrayed him early on.
Harleen Quinzel had always known that that members of the Bat-Clan had been crazy. Being a psychiatrist, she'd known that they had probably suffered severely traumatic events as children, scarring them emotionally to an extent they tried to stop the same pain from being inflicted on others. She'd have never guessed that Red would be so messed up that his nightmares would consist of his apparently abusive mother, though.
He looked up at her, the whites of his blood red mask wide, portraying his horrified expression. He looked so frightened, so raw. It gave her a thrill to see him so vulnerable.
"But you'll have to, my dear." Joker said from the next bed over. He stood, using his crowbar to lean on and toying with his open switch blade as he made his way over to where Harley was climbing off Red Hood's waist. "It's my turn."
His cackle mingled with a quiet gasp of fear as it echoed through the warehouse.
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Barbara Gordon walked casually through Gotham, blending in with the Saturday afternoon crowd better than she'd like to admit. She wore a purple tank top and black skinny jeans, her fiery red hair in a pony tail and her Converse sneakers making little to no sound against the pavement. On the bridge of her nose rested a pair of sunglasses, hiding her sea green eyes. She did not want to be recognized as Barbara Gordon.
The breeze caressed her bare shoulders, almost making her wish she'd worn a jacket or something. It probably would have helped her hide her identity more, although it also could've made her more of a liability to being suspicious. Few wore a hoodie during the warmer months.
In downtown Gotham, there was a cute little café; very classy, a place one would find more than plenty of hipsters at. It was a small hole-in-the-wall kind of place, two small tables set for two or three at most in front of the building and a few more inside, a blue and white awning outside. It was carved out of an old boutique that was popular in the 50s, complete with a large display window that had once been used to display the latest fashions but was now used for advertisement. It had red and gold, hand-painted letters on it advertising the week's special.
Barbara chose this particular café for a very secretive mission, one that was off the records. Dick was not to know about it, or Tim. Barbara strutted up to the steps, before a flood of golden hair gracefully pooling over a familiar face's shoulder caught her eye at one of the outdoor tables.
Turning towards Artemis, she smirked and sat down at the small table the blonde had already declared theirs.
"So, where'd you send Wally?" Barbara asked, sipping her pre-ordered coffee. Pumpkin spice latte; damn, Artemis had her down, and she was silently grateful for it. "He's not out with Dick and Tim is he?"
"As if those three would go out right now," Artemis scoffed. "But yeah, they're still working on this 'secret mission' that we're not allowed to know about." Her ashen gaze turned down for a brief moment, before settling back on Barbara with a newfound determination burning behind the silver that filled her irises.
"Well, that's why we're here, isn't it?" Barbara said, determination filling her own heart up to the brim, awakening her inner detective. Being born a police commissioner's daughter, Barbara had always been curious of the things around her. She wanted to know things, to be able to successfully predict a situation and react accordingly, to figure out when someone was lying to her, to find the truth herself rather than be fed lies by those who sought to 'protect her'. Becoming Batgirl had only fueled this need to figure things out, being trained by one who was said to be the World's Greatest Detective.
Artemis had the same desire, the raw determination to never lose. She was raised to compete to survive, and that was an ideal she'd carry for the rest of her life. Now, she was trained in several areas. She could kill you fifty different ways with her bare hands. She could steal from a guarded safe within five minutes carrying everything within its contents. Artemis was physically trained to a peak, and she wasn't exactly stupid, but she wanted to know more. She had an unquenchable thirst for winning, and if knowing was what she had to do to win, she would learn.
The blonde nodded, allowing Barbara to continue. "So, got any ideas?" She asked, sipping her coffee once more.
"Well, they play on your home turf, so I figured you'd know how to get into the main frame and see what it is they've been up to." Artemis said, a small smirk playing at her plump lips. "You always were better at computers than Dick."
Barbara took the compliment in stride and continued thinking, her brain bouncing around ideas like a racket ball game. She thought, the fans in her mind churning to cool the computer she called a brain. "The Bat-Computer is different, though." She explained. "Bruce set the damn thing up so that if someone were to ever hack one of our profiles, they couldn't get into anyone else's. Every account on that computer has a completely different set of firewalls that Batman, Nightwing, and Batgirl set up themselves."
"So it's basically un-hackable?" Artemis asked, nodding her understanding. She sipped her own latte, downing it in one last gulp before tossing it into the trashcan without looking.
"No, I could hack it." Barbara said, nodding, though her expression remained one of frustration and confusion, an expression uncommon for Barbara Gordon's face, and it didn't look too comely. "But it would set off all sorts of alarm. Dick would know within five minutes of me even clicking on something wrong. It could take hours, which we don't have."
Artemis' confidence was swiped down a notch, but she quickly recovered, already thinking to get a new idea. "We could always just plant bugs."
"Impossible." Barbara immediately shot the idea down, practically scoffing at Artemis' logic. "There are no possible places to hide a bug in that cave where no one would find it. If Tim didn't find it, Dick would. And if Dick didn't find it, Alfred would." It's not that Barbara didn't trust Alfred, (Quite the opposite. Despite being the only Bat-family member who doesn't actively fight on the field, Barbara trusted Alfred with her life.) but she wanted as few people in on this plan as possible.
"Okay," Artemis said slowly, rolling her eyes at her friend's negativity. "What if we just asked?"
Barbara didn't say anything, merely offered her friend a look that said: Are you fucking kidding me?
"You know," Artemis said, pointing an accusing finger at Barbara, who only smirked at her friend in response. "We'll never get anything accomplished if you keep being all negative."
Barbara laughed, clutching her stomach and trying to force air into her lungs again. She didn't mean to laugh, but she'd known Artemis was trying to lighten the mood, even if she wasn't trying that hard. "Well, sorry Archy (1), but that's how good plans are made."
Artemis rolled her eyes, both at her stupid nickname Babs had given her and at the insane similarities between Barbara and Dick right now. "You'd be amazed at how much you sound like a Bat right now."
The two shared a small giggle, laughing just to ease the pressure. These times were so stressful lately, with all that was happening. Dick had a lot on his plate, meaning everyone else had a lot on their plates. This Joker issue was only a speed bump on the cracked, twisted, and bumpy road that stretched a great distance ahead of them.
Once they'd finally calmed down, Barbara sipped the last of her own beverage before following Artemis' disposal actions. "Well, don't worry. I've got a decent plan and we might not get killed for it."
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GASP! What are they planning?!
Yes, I gave you more Jason because I have an immense amount of feels for his pretty face and he's cannon in this show (AND ONLY THIS SHOW) and I can. So deal with it.
We'll check in on the guys next chapter. Pinky swear. :D
By the way, I'm sorry this wasn't a weekend update like I promised I would. I'm a day late because I had things to do this weekend. I had to plan and throw my step mother's baby shower plus I have finals and I had to dye my hair and then I had a computer malfunction because freaking iTunes decided that the ONE TIME I actually sat down to finish this story (I started on like…. Wednesday?), my computer crashed because I tried to upload new music from a few new CDs.
Moral of the story: I'm sorry I didn't update this weekend. I'm honestly surprised I was able to update tonight. Just so you know, if I get busted on the computer right now, I'll be grounded for at least a week. So YOU'RE WELCOME. ;)
Anywho, I noticed several of my favorite reviewers aren't reviewing any more, and that makes me sad. D: So please review, because I get depressed when you don't. :(
QUESTION GAME: since I KIND OF ran out of questions a long time ago, you guys get to ask me questions! I call it TMI Tuesday, although I'll have to think of a different name since I generally update on weekends…
Here's how it works: you review any question for me you could possibly think of, and I have to answer. The only exception is if I feel just insanely uncomfortable answering it (i.e. personal information, things that bother me in general, something where you're actually trying to make me argue with you, etc.). I don't get uncomfortable easily. If you'd like to ask anonymously, feel free to PM me and I'll answer through that rather than the review answers.
REVIEW ANSWERS:
I don't have time right now, because, as stated before, it is far past my bedtime. I'll try to PM all who reviewed last chapter, no promises though.
~Charlie~