Chapter Twenty

Crystallized

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Blood.

Her hands were slick with it. It was nearly black beneath her fingernails. It was the only flash of color in the washed out night, where her skin was pale expanses of ivory and her hair was nearly black in the shadows. Her tight pajamas were blindingly white, but seemed almost gray against the shocking whiteness of her skin. The blood, brilliantly scarlet against the paleness of her skin, made her eyes hurt.

"Stop looking at the pretty red stuff and hurry up, this hurts!"

Rose glanced down at the flashing, electric violet eyes of her sister, and snapped, "Shut up, you idiot. If you'd called for me when the fight started, you'd never have been stabbed in the first place."

She pulled on the needle, closing the third stitch. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip and her tongue slid between her teeth into her cheek as she concentrated on stitching her sister's wound closed. After checking on the amount of bleeding and then sticking a couple fingers into the wound, she'd decided that going to the hospital was an unnecessary luxury at this point, and decided to sew the wound closed herself.

"You're blaming me for getting stabbed by that fr-" Crystal began. Rose cut her off.

"Watch your mouth, Cryssie," Danni muttered, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her forearm. She had the not so enviable task of stitching the Joker up. Somehow, Crystal had managed to score a deep enough wound on his arm and another on his shoulder. The one on his shoulder, short but deep, had been quickly stitched closed. Now she was working on the gash on his arm, which was still bleeding sluggishly. The killer clown was watching her with a creepy grin and glittering eyes as the needle winked in and out of his tattered flesh.

"Are we not allowed to say the word freak anymore?" Crystal demanded.

Sadie, working at a bizarre angle to poke Rose's flesh with her own suturing needle. The vaudeville girl's pristine white pajamas were soaked dark over her hip where the painted clown man had carved his name into her skin. Sadie was trying to stitch the wound closed but Rose kept moving, kept twitching away from the needle while she worked on the blonde telepath lying still and tense beneath the show girl's skilled, almost surgical fingers.

"No," Rose replied.

"Why not?" The telepath asked. "Just because a clown man in purple moved into our apartment? Now suddenly our special word, the word we've always used to describe each other, our very own word, is considered taboo because of this… this man? What the hell happened to us, Rose? Why are you falling all over this male just because he's perfect for us?"

Crystal tried to move away from Rose, but before she could, Sadie moved and pushed her down, holding her until Rose finished the last suture. Then, finally, the girls let their sister up, and Crystal scrambled away, all flight and fury. Pressing her back against the wall, she glared at her sisters and Danni. She didn't look at the Joker. She knew better. One look at him, and she would fall into that viridian gaze like so much poison, slip into darkness without a whisper of protest. She'd lose herself in his eyes, and she'd be gone, swept up in the maelstrom of the psychotic clown man's personality until there was nothing left of her but broken bits upon the rocks. She wouldn't look at him, not him. Anyone else, any of the girls with their eyes like sparkling fireworks, but not the Joker.

"This isn't fair, Rose. It isn't fair that our life, the life we ripped out for ourselves, ripped out from this disgusting city and its disgusting people, is suddenly turned upside down for this clown man! And for what reason? Because he's perfect for us? So what? What does that have to do with anything?" Crystal was shouting now, her words tumbling out so that she could barely even follow her own argument. Fury was rising off of her in electric waves, shrieking through her veins as she continued yelling, gesturing wildly at the Joker even though she wouldn't look at him. "Rose, he's going to kill us all! Everything's falling apart and don't you see this is crazy? Why are we helping him? Everything will burn! Everything will be destroyed. The city will crumble to the ground, we'll all die, the Mob will be decimated, everything will fall to the ground. It'll all burn," she continued, voice dropping to a broken whisper as she sank to the floor. Her hand slid over her belly, trembling as she thought of the fire, the flame, the inferno.

Sadie crawled towards her, and took her into her arms, holding her older sister as she shivered as if cold. For a long time, there was silence. Then Sadie cleared her throat, and she whispered to Crystal, "Listen to what you just said. Everything will burn. The city, the Mob, the state, all of us. Everything. And then it will just be void. There will be nothing but anarchy, nothing but chaos. Isn't that what we've hungered for, Crys? We've wanted chaos, destruction, mayhem. We want it, to wash away all the death, all the evil, all the injustice. We want bedlam. We want insanity. Isn't all that worth the fire and the flame? Isn't all of that, the achievement of our dreams, everything we wanted… isn't all of that worth the pain of being with the Joker?"

Violet eyes met eyes like acid gold. There was calm acceptance, even hope in that gaze. No fear, no terror, no anxiety. It was strange. The wrongness of Sadie's eyes made something cold shiver beneath Crystal's skin. There had never been a time that the blonde could remember when her younger sister's eyes were not bright with terror. Now there was only calm in the twin lakes of icy gold. Crystal trembled harder, and glanced into her older sister's poison green gaze. In Rose's eyes was nothing. There was only emerald blankness, like bottle green glass, like emptiness. Viridian void. Her eyes were blank and empty. Rosaline would not influence Crystal's decision. She wouldn't let herself. She was hiding her mind and her soul from the world. But Crystal could see the bloody slices in her sister's hip, the almost black lines that formed the damning word: Joker. A label, a brand, a claim. Lastly, she looked at Danni. Even as she watched, the brunette show girl licked the Joker's blood off of her thumb as if it were a splash of frosting or some other sweet thing.

Rage and terror pounded through her temples like blood. It felt as if all of her fury was pushing outward, shredding her veins and arteries, ripping at her flesh, trying to escape and unleash itself. She wanted to scream. The cry of outrage was pounding at her throat, choking her, strangling her with thick, immovable shadow fingers. The fury made her eyeballs boil, her blood bubble in her veins. Everything hurt. Her hands burned. Her mind screamed and clamored like a dying cat, reaching out to rake and claw at the vulnerable minds of those around her, but she beat it back. Everything was blindingly red, like blood. It was all blood, all of it scarlet blood. She gritted her teeth, tasted blood in her mouth. Everything screamed, everyone bled as her fury pounded through her. Rush, rush, ebbing tide and waxing madness, hatred like black lightning. The Good Child was reduced to mindless screams of fear, sobbing tears like black cutting ice. Crystal clamped her lips to stop the cries from escaping her mouth. She wrenched herself from Sadie's pixie frail grasp and staggered to her feet, surrounded by faceless shadows.

Rose watched calmly as Crystal's powers wrapped her up in a cocoon of madness. There was nothing any of the girls could do except shield themselves. Even Sadie's power didn't work on Crystal in this state. But it didn't matter, she thought to herself as she watched the Joker slip out of Danni's grip and get to his feet. He staggered as if drunk, but there was a pattern to how he moved. He was dodging the slashing violet knives of her eyes, moving toward her with dogged determination. His eyes were like viridian hell. His face was split by his rictus grin, brutal in its elegance and charm. Rose felt her heart tripping in her chest, swelling like it had been stung by a thousand poisonous scorpions. Her chest ached as she watched the clown man move towards her sister, switchblade bared like a single, silvery fang in the pale light of the single desk lamp illuminating the great room. The vaudeville girl blinked once, and the purple-gloved hand was wrapped around Crystal's neck.

Crystal felt the grip, the power running through it as it tightened fractionally on her throat. The crimson continued to crash through her mind, slamming into and shattering her barriers, dragging her deeper and deeper into that twisted kingdom of the psyche she feared in her heart of hearts. Everything was fragmenting, shattering, screaming as it exploded into dust and shards of brittle glass like sugar candy. Her head ached, her eyes stung, her body screamed as if it were on fire. Every nerve ending burned, and her heart thudded painfully against her sternum and spine. It felt like her ribs were fragmenting with every beat. She screamed as fire and fury slammed into her like a tidal wave. She screamed and fell into thick, strong, massive arms like steel beams, and they enfolded her. Her blood burned, sizzled, cooking her from the inside. Power, waves and waves of power, thudded through her. The liquid heat of her blood seared her, scorched her. Crimson pain painted her mind, acid red etching into her bones. She clutched at silk, cool under her hands. It soothed the burning, swept away pain in a cloud of violet shimmer. She let her forehead fall and it touched cool skin. She shivered.

"You're mine," a voice snarled, like an animal. A growl caressed her, shuddering over her body like velvet bondage. Her nerve endings shrieked. "Mine," the voice repeated.

Her knees buckled as pieces of her shattered under the onslaught of her own power rebounding back on her. Her ribs popped and cracked, her fingers stiffened. Her joints creaked and burned. The marrow in her bones boiled. She clutched at the solid shadow that held her, that wrapped a leather clad hand around the pale, swanlike column of her throat, and screamed. Her organs fried in her body, and she collapsed into the arms of the shadow as something glinting and wicked sparking sharp pierced her body, right over one collar bone and carved down, a blazing burgundy ravine parting her flesh and spilling ruby wine.

"No," she moaned. "No…."

Burning crimson ran over her pale white skin, and the heat inside her, shredding her to scraps, faded slightly. That sparking talon of cold iron dragged down, parting the flesh of her breast. She shuddered in the shadow's arms, moaned, but it wasn't pain. Her hands found rigid silk that almost cut the heated flesh of her palms. Lines of electric silk pulsed against the flickering feel of her heartbeat that echoed in her palms and wrists. The iron kiss brushed against her ribs, piercing and caressing, a long sweet stroke of silver ice against her feverish skin.

She heard whispers, soft and familiar and soothing, questions, but she couldn't make out words. All there was in her world was the blinding fire, the aching burn in her body, the agonizing heat that tortured and tormented her, and the safe, sable shadow that held her close and cut into her body with his iron fang, tasting the heated blood that beaded, welled up, and flowed like vermillion honeysuckle. Only the shadow, arms crushing her until the breath could barely wheeze past her parched, cracked lips, silver ice shard cutting into her while she moaned in its arms. The fire was oozing out of her, blood flowing quickly, coolness replacing the fire in her veins as she shuddered.

"Mine," the shadow breathed against her skin. His breath was Plutonian, ice cold, frigid as Jack Frost's lethal kiss. "I'll burn you to the ground. Let it all burn. Everything burns. Even you. Even me. Let it burn."

"Burn…." She moaned, her voice a hoarse thread of aching sound.

The sharp ice of silver grey sank into belly, bringing with it a soft, sweet release. The fire was dying, breathed into inhumation by the black ice breath of the shadow. The knife - she realized it was a knife, but vaguely, distantly, barely - drew sideways, slashing her skin. Blood, hot and wicked sweet, ran down her skin in crimson rivulets. She gasped, arched into the blade's touch. The knife withdrew, plunged in again. Midnight fire, cold with erotic sensuality, blazed through her nerve endings as the knife thrust into her, parting her slick flesh. Sweat drenched her forehead, and her eyes sparkled like sugared violets as she stared into eyes like emerald hellfire and felt herself falling forward, her body shuddering as it tensed, winding tight. The knife moved in her, cutting through. Everything was being cut away with the keen edge of that blade. Every pretense, every unconscious lie, was carved away, and her body was cresting a wave, a wave of agonizing pleasure and sweet pain.

"Stop," she breathed, a soft protest against the darkness. It flickered, her protest, like a candle flame in the wind, and then guttered out, a wisp of smoke vanishing on the breeze. The knife plunged into her with a vicious thrust, she cried out, and liquid pain and liquid pleasure flowed as she fragmented into nothingness and sank into oblivion.

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So, what do you think? Sorry it took so long. This is a gift for The Queen of All Canines, my bestest friend (besides Nightmare Queen, who won't read my fic for some reason /cry/). You've been patient, and I hope this is everything you hoped. If not, I cry some more. But just so you guys understand my problems, I'm currently on welfare and am unemployed, and Queen of All Canines, who was loaning me her laptop, has gotten in trouble with her dad so now I can only do this while at her house (which is weekends). So bear with me, 'kay? Loves to you all! Reviews?