His mouth brushed off her neck, his laugh rippling on her skin. The Joker pulled the soaking material of her dress up while edging his head forward and sideways to meet hers. His hands slid up onto her stomach as Anna brought her lips to his. But instead of kissing her he dragged his teeth along the edge of her mouth, running his hands along her rib-cage.
"A freak?" He muttered into her cheek and she opened her eyes to look up to his face, mouthing the word like he so often did, "Freeakkk."
The Jokers hand grabbed her face, gripping onto her cheeks. He tightened his hold on her jaw as he turned her around, pushing Anna onto the table, "You're so funny!" He grinned wildly before she frowned, "Shut up.", Anna grabbed his tie, pulling him in and kissing him. It was a wet, hot mess of a kiss, full of anger and frustration and the cocktail of emotions the Joker had described earlier. He pushed her legs open roughly, taking back the control.
Anna leaned in further to the kiss, pressing against him for only a brief number of seconds before he violently pushed her back once more. Her head slammed against the table with a disturbing slap. She tried to get back up immediately, reacting with an almost gagging sound as her hand reached to hold her bruised skull, but he snatched a handful of her hair. The Joker yanked downwards and her upper body was forced downwards once again.
Her arms clung to his hand grasping her locks behind her head, trying in any way to ease some of the tension that felt like splitting her scalp in half. His face hung inches from her own, his green strands falling down like short vines. He pushed some of the bits away from his face, tongue flicking off his bottom lip as his eyes lifted upwards momentarily before looking right back down at her.
Anna's breath caught painfully in her throat as he tugged her hair sharply downwards again, edging it towards the tables merciless surface. His head tilted upwards, clenching his jaw tight, grip straining deeper, the squeeze of leather clinching in his gloves ringing in her ears-
Her neck collapses, dropping her head in vain and momentary surrender. The short relief was followed by an immense resulting pain in her head which throbbed as her mouth opened, attempting to express some ache surrounding her, but nothing would come out. Her vision began to blur, blinded by the sheer strain. Anna closed her eyes, arms failing shakily and torso rising and falling rapidly.
The Joker pushed a loose green tangled strand of hair from his eyes above her, admiring his handiwork, "... Good girllll-ahh."
She tried to pull herself up at the sound of the grainy voice, the strain in her neck causing her muscles to tighten under the struggle. But his force just came crashing down on her again, snatching one wavering hand and shoving it down beside her, "Ah ah ahh, we're gonna have to get a leash... train you in-" Is that someone in her dream talking to her? Are they on a radio, why is the reception fuzzy? It's loud, she can tell they are so close, but it's cloudy.
"Wh-" Her head hurt so much, she had taken blows before this one and they were suddenly taking their toll after being set off by the most recent. She felt the sharp tang of bile hit her throat and she swallowed, forcing back the burning sensation.
Anna attempted to open her eyes once more but everything afflicted her vision, the once dark room seemed to bright, the Jokers face so white, his scars a torturing shade of violent scarlet. He is just a mass of green, white and red. The red is scary. Anna frowns, she doesn't like that red.
"Whyyy-" His voice graveled in the quiet like stones on concrete.
The Joker looked down at her in a short pause. Anna's hair was soaking wet, pushed completely off her face in straight, dripping lines. She was frowning, her face confused. Her body was shaking, from the cold or from the shock he didn't know.
The sopping material of the dress stretched across her torso, clinging to her body. He could see the outline of her ribs as she inhaled, the dip in the material at her bellybutton, the pale blue bow on the center of her bra.
"-I hope I'm not calling a bluff. You didn't think you could say all those badddd things-ah and not face the consequences?"
"Y-" Anna swallowed beneath him, the movement hurting her throat as she tried to find her voice.
"You reap what you sow." He ignored her feeble attempt to answer.
"You-" A startling shooting pain ran down her neck and she winced, arching her back.
"And you've just sown one hell of an act." He mirrored her frown, "Don't tell me you're thinking of retiring it before the show has even started?" Anna tried to digest what he was saying, the information seemed blurry to her, like it was coming in slowly and unclear, the clogs in her brain working on overtime as she strained to receive every syllable.
He smiles lazily at her beautifully baffled expression, to exhausted to be anything more than utterly stumped.
Her head slammed sideways this time, against the table her right temple hit, causing her to cry out in agonizing pain. He pulled her up off her back so that she was staring him in the face, her hands trying to free themselves from his grip.
The Joker tilts his head this way, then that, looking into her pain-wrenched eyes. Her brows furrowed, eyes brimming with tears she was forcefully holding back. Her mouth gaped, any little ounces of pain catching in her throat.
"Ohhh don't give me that look!" The Jokers eyes narrow with great disapproval. "Mmm no, no, noo...- This ones on you, Anna. I'm under your command. You gave me the order, who am I to disobey? Hm? You wanted to see what, ahhh, 'we should have done months ago'..-?"
This is what he thought they should have done? Bash her head against a table? "You," She tensed the muscles of her face stubbornly, refusing to let tears fall, " You... want to hurt me..?"
He suppresses a high pitched giggle, muffling it in the back of his throat, "Do, do I-" His mouth twitches in apparent amusement, "-I wanna hurt you? Hm?"
"That's what you thought we should have done months ago? Hm? Me, me hurting you? Oh stop-aah-" The 'P' makes a distinct popping sound and Anna winces slightly away, "-I wanna teach you, I wanna show you things, I wanna-" His head tilts upwards, tongue slipping briskly across the side of his mouth, "-do things to you-ah...-."
His eyes wandered to her right temple, where a trickle of dark blood slowly had begun to creep slowly down her face, "So technically, you're right. I'll give it to you," His hips role slyly against her body, "But you gotta hit me with the specifics next time, Sugar. 'Cause 'hurt'...-"
A hand leaves one of her shoulders, reaching over to brush away a piece of her hair, "-is just one, big, broad umbrella... And underneath, is a vast array of endless possibilities." Anna twitched her head ever so slightly to the side, leaving his hand hovering where it should have touched her hair.
The Joker smiled, a fleeting change of expression which lit up his face into something far more harrowing than a sultry gaze.
He applied force to her other arm, the heel of his palm jolting outwards in a very specific motion. Her shoulder popped out of its socket with one sickening clip, forcing her limb to bend and twist into a disturbingly awkward angle. She screamed, her eyes squeezing closed, forcing the tears she had been trying to hold back to slip down her cheeks.
"Ohh, that's it-ahhh...-" He inhales deeply through the gap between his teeth in hearing the scream. His eyes close momentarily in deep satisfaction, hands grazing against Anna's legs now, not that she would notice. All she could focus on was the pain, in her shoulder, her neck, her head... between her legs as he pushes her thighs further apart, lodging himself between them.
She can smell blood, the coppery metallic scent so strong she could taste it. Actually, she can taste it, her tongue is bleeding. She grasps hold of her shoulder trying to cradle it, but it hurts even more when she tries to move it at all.
"Mmmm," His head tilts against her neck, eyes scanning her shaking skin, voice rumbling, "-I like that sound... I like it...-" Her skull feels so soft, like a football, "-when you screammm..-" She wants to slap him but she can't, she wants to scream again but she won't. Her head slants in response to his, but in the opposite direction, veering away from his touch once more.
He tuts at her, grabbing her jaw and forcing her to look at him even as her head tries to escape his grip, jutting to each side, "Ah ta taa, you have to play... After all, it is your game-" He searches her eyes, flicking from one to the next. He's looking for fear, she can tell. He wants her to cower and he's close to getting her there but all that stares back at him now is anger. Hurt and anger, from the pain in her body, and he knows it.
"Tell me-" His head inches closer and she tries to jerk her face away, "-no, no, c'mere... I just, I wanna ask- c'mere... you a question." His hand is crushing her jaw, she doesn't know how he expects her to answer any stupid question.
"Is the physical pain, worse than what going on in your head?"
Anna blinked. Not the kind of question she was expecting.
"I mean, the guilt must be...-" His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, "...torturous." Anna's face was still blank, but it was okay, as if he wasn't expecting her to catch on straight away.
"All your friends, your family... all the innocent people who have suffered." He's talking slowly all of a sudden, his voice is low but he's so close to her he has her full attention. Anna's body no longer struggles because she is far too preoccupied, completely engrossed. And so is he. The Joker is focused on her eyes, waiting for something to happen, because it's coming. He tilts her face ever so slightly upwards so that he can get a full view of her familiar blue eyes, as though he doesn't want to miss a split-second of her reaction.
"Your aunts, cold, lifeless body is rolling in her grave-"
Bingo.
There it is. Her eyes soften before she can help it, the fierce anger simmers and shakes.
"-as her only niece-" His tone is that of not disapproval, but bitter disappointment. "-snakes her hand around the belt of the 'merciless' and 'inhuman'-" Anna almost cringes as her own insults come back to bite her hypocrisy, "-'worthless criminal' who slit her throat and watched her blood spill out-ahh."
Her head jolts back and he lets her go this time, but she still stares at him, face abashed in a mixture of horror and denial. Yet he continues, "Your aunt, who gave you everything, who died saving your ungrateful soul as you spit on her memory. Jeremy-"
"No...-" The word escapes her trembling lips before she can stop herself, "Jeremy...-" He repeats, taunting her as if she were a child interrupting a bedtime story. "You'd let the 'lowlife clown',"
His voice emits a snarl, and Anna clearly feels the anger accompanying his disappointment, "-who broke his legs with a sledgehammer, who cut his eyes out with a knife..."
Pause for effect. Her hands shake beneath her, somehow forgetting about the physical pain she's in. Because it's being numbed, by pure horror. Anna starts to break, cracks forming in her composed and angry exterior. She no longer angry, she's terrified. Terrified that he is right.
"-play with his favorite little toy,"
"No-" She repeats the same word but its no use. At this point its as if she saying it to herself, but she knows whats coming.
His mouth dropped downwards in an exaggerated frown and his brows knitted together. Then his neck inclined and she could have sworn she heard him hmm? underneath his breath as he slumped his head to one side to observe her. He frowned deeper, his expression tightening, the element of humor fading away as he inspected her. After a moment of staring into his eyes, she regretted the second she'd opened her mouth at all.
"-the same one that he trusted, the same on that brought him into this mess, the same one whose fault it is he's dead."
"Stop...-" The Joker's hand grabs her throat before she can get out another syllable. A short, gargled cry escapes her mouth and her eyes close, trying to shut it out. He's letting her breath, leaving enough leeway to survive, but not enough to resist.
"Every innocent bystander, every Gotham resident, victims of collateral damage." His grip lowered her down, her head resting on the table surface. "You'd disrespect their lives, their legacies. All those that were rooting for you...-"
She wants it to be over, her head shaking violently, but he's not finished yet, "...Your own conscience, good vs. evil." The side of his face brushed off hers, his scars rough against her skin, "Everything you believe in, everything you've prided yourself in from day one."
His teeth hit off her ear and she whimpers, to upset to fight back, "Me! Even I was starting to believe in you. I thought maybe, maybe... Anna Hart won't be like that." The Joker's voice is suddenly chirpy, reminiscing on good times, "When the chips are down, Anna wouldn't forget her morals." He croons in a sickeningly false voice, "Anna would always stay true."
"You'd disregard that-" His hand tenses slightly against her, voice grinding into a deep, terrifying rumble, "-in a heartbeat, just to to stay alive, to survive, to ahhh, stay ahead of the game."
Tears are streaming now, her face is wet, the Jokers body heavy on her own. His hand still cupped around her neck like a choker. The sound of the belt being slowly undone sounds distant, so very far away from where she moans an inaudible no, head to heavy to shake. He can't hear her but he can see it, because he's watching her lips, her eyes closed tight, fresh tears still spilling out.
"You wanted to be a Batman,"
His words buzz off her skin, its like she can feel his smile as his scars stretch against her own cheeks.
"-you're just a Harlequin."
Sorry for the wait, there are plans for more to come but unsure when. Thank you Lucykins for a review that sparked something. Enjoy!
