Malcolm remembered someone — and not his father for once — telling him he'd never hear the bullet intended to kill him.
Logically, it made sense. A bullet typically traveled at a speed faster than sound.
What nobody thought to tell him was the sound the bullet made as it tore into human flesh. Malcolm likened it to the sound a wet mop made as it slapped onto tile.
It was a curious, but disturbing sound.
One Malcolm didn't expect he'd forget.
Ever.
The acrid stench of cordite mingled with the fetid smells wafting out of the alleyway behind him. A coppery odor rose above the rotted garbage and stagnant water to fill Malcolm's nostrils, curdling his already sour stomach further. Blood, Malcolm dimly realized as he swallowed back the bile that foamed into his mouth. It's blood.
Whose blood it was, he couldn't say. He was pretty confident it wasn't his, though. The lack of any sudden, blinding pain worked to support his theory.
The stench of the streets drug memories out of the bowels of his fractured mind.
Deep, dark, and immensely painful ones.
Images he didn't understand because they were bits and pieces of a puzzle he couldn't put together to form a whole picture.
His father behind him, guiding a hand with a knife he recalled him buying for him, murmuring soft words of encouragement.
What specifically he wanted him to do with that knife, Malcolm didn't know.
It wasn't good, he was sure of that.
As most things his father wanted him to do weren't.
Next came the whiskered man. Malcolm felt as if he was in the presence of a wolf. This man's dark eyes were different from his father's hazel ones. Hungrier, sharper. Predatory. His blood began to pump, quickly, helplessly as the man loomed out of the shadows.
"Hello, little Malcolm..." His lips split into a wolfish grin. "Remember me?"
He didn't.
That was the problem.
Malcolm had no knowledge who this man was or why he played such a huge factor in his memories.
It wasn't like he could ask his father about who the man was.
Well, I could, Malcolm amended as the wolf-man slowly circled him. I just won't get any answers.
As he typically didn't whenever he tried to ask his father any questions about his memories.
Especially those concerning a girl in a box.
His father, mother, Gil and Jackie, his therapists all told him there was no girl. She was a figment of his imagination. A product of his trauma.
Malcolm didn't believe them.
The girl was as real to him as his sister, Ainsley.
As his friend Raya.
Finally, the image which confused him most of all played through his mind: his ten-year-old self running through darkened woods, the bloody knife clutched in one hand.
How the blood had gotten there, who it belonged, Malcolm had no idea.
And he was terrified of the answer.
Feared what he could have done.
Who he might have hurt.
Killed, even.
A tremor — psychogenic, his therapist and father told him — snaked from the tip of Malcolm's fingers all the way up his arm. He clenched his fingers to hide the spasms.
Not that it stopped them.
No, his tremors got worse the longer he stood there.
Nothing stopped them. Not once they got started, anyway. Even the handful of meds he swallowed on a daily basis only kept them at bay for a short period of time.
His meds also didn't do anything to quiet the noise inside his head.
Malcolm learned to live with the white static.
The shadow creatures who taunted him, laughed at him, shouted obscenities at him were almost a comfort now.
They reminded him he was alive.
He existed.
They confirmed he had some purpose in this world.
Profiling was something Malcolm believed himself capable of doing. Something he could do that'd help others.
That's why Malcolm chose psychology as his primary focus at Gotham Academy. He wanted to understand himself, his father, and other killers, yes. He also hoped to take his knowledge and experience and use it in the law enforcement field by helping profile those men and women who commit heinous acts against people. He wanted to find and stop killers like his father. Before they amassed twenty-three bodies if possible.
He also enjoyed solving puzzles, locating the parts that were missing, figuring out what didn't make sense, and seeing how and why it all came together.
He didn't question or doubt himself while helping Batman or Robin build a profile from a crime scene.
He simply trusted himself to come up with the profile that'd lead them to the correct suspect. See them stopped before they could hurt anyone else If Malcolm was being honest, really honest, he'd admit he also chose this path because he didn't want to take the one Martin Whitly planned for him.
He had no desire to follow in the footsteps of the Surgeon.
To become a killer like him.
"We're the same, my boy," Malcolm heard through the buzzing inside his head. "Never forget that. We're the same."
Malcolm didn't believe that.
He refused to accept he was like Martin Whitly.
If he believed himself like anyone, it was Batman.
Batman with a side of Gil and James Gordon, Malcolm decided as sirens sounded in the distance.
That was the other reason why he wanted to enter the law enforcement field. It was to honor the men who played a pivotal role in shaping him into who and what he was.
Gil, Jim, and especially Batman taught him how to help people.
Not harm them like my father.
A wet gurgle pulled Malcolm from his dark thoughts. Puzzled by it, he turned and saw a silver-haired man staring down at a large red stain blossoming across the front of his snow-white dress shirt. A cursory inspection revealed a small, black perforation in the middle of the man's chest. A frown pulled at his brow as he watched the stain become darker and larger. Is that what a gunshot wound looks like?
The old-time gangster and cowboy movies Bruce favored were nowhere as realistic as this. Blood on a movie or tv screen looked more like thick syrup than it did this sanguinary ooze. How can something so small cause such damage? Malcolm found himself intrigued despite his horror and revulsion. More gurgling brought his gaze to the man's face. Hazel green eyes blinked wide and thin lips formed soundless words right before the man slumped to the cobblestone.
Like a puppet who had its strings cut.
"See, this is why I prefer using a knife over a gun." The man who spoke had a face that shone bone white beneath the glow of the moon. "Guns are too quick. You don't get to enjoy all the little..." a garishly painted mouth, a wicked shade of red, curled back into a slippery smile, "emotions."
"My god..." A horrified whisper was all one of the men could muster. "You're a monster."
It started as a giggle but quickly grew into a chuckle, then it became a high, keening wail that sent chills rattling through Malcolm's bones.
"I'm not a monster." All traces of earlier humor vanished. As if the man simply shut it — or himself — off. "I'm just ahead of the curve."
"What do you plan to do now?" Malcolm swallowed around the lump in his throat. "What is it you hope to achieve with this?"
"Planned?" Another giggle spasmed in Malcolm's fingertips. Traveled up his hands, his wrists, his arms. "See, kiddo, I am not one for plans." A gleam went through the man's eyes — green as his hair — and pooled dread in Malcolm's stomach. "No, I am a man who just tends to..." a gloved hand waved through the air, "do things."
Mercurial, methodical, Machiavellian.
That's what this man was.
The ultimate predator.
Who didn't care about the people he hurt.
Or the havoc he wrecked.
A madman but not one who was mad. No hint of insanity lurked in the eyes locked on Malcolm's.
Nothing in the man's bearing fit the definition of criminally insane.
Malcolm suspected none of the diagnostic criteria in the psychology textbooks in Bruce's library applied to this man.
Because he defied those principles.
And he knows it, Malcolm realized as the man let out a long, low chuckle. He revels in his unpredictability. In the certainty he creates.
An agent of chaos.
That's what Batman would call him if the grim hero was here.
A man who fights against order and only wants one thing: the world to burn.
Is it possible he possesses a form of hyper-sanity?
That rictus smile suggested the man was completely aware of his actions. He understood what he did was wrong by society's standards.
He simply didn't care.
Right from wrong didn't matter to him.
No more than they mattered to his father.
Only, Martin Whitly concealed his predatory nature behind the facade of a loving husband and father.
This man didn't bother to hide his nihilism.
A breeze blew open his dark purple trench coat, revealing a purple suit over a white dress shirt and stylish brocade vest covered in black spades, clubs, gray hearts, and diamonds. His bow tie was green as his hair and threaded with purple and orange stripes.
"You don't have to do this." Reasoning with this man was pointless. Internally, Malcolm knew that. He still had to try, though. The three women softly weeping behind him were counting on someone to buy enough time for the grim hero who prowled Gotham's rooftops to arrive and save them. "You can let them go."
"Now, where is the fun in that?"
Oh, yes, this man was a bigger monster than his father.
Martin Whitly selected his victims for matters of research.
This man chose them for sport.
"Please," one of the girls, a year or two older than Malcolm's seventeen, pleaded. "Let us go."
"Aw, what'sa matter, princess?"Whimpers came from the women clutching each other as the man skipped over to them, his black and white dress shoes sounding like the devil's cloven hooves on the cobblestone. "Aren't you happy your ole Uncle J came along to liven things up?" A gloved hand waved to the man lying in an ever growing pool of red. "Teddy there found my joke to die for!"
Uncle J... A frown furrowed Malcolm's brow. Where have I... His eyes popped wide as the answer crashed over him in icy waves. The Joker!
It was the Clown Prince of Crime twirling around and cackling with glee.
A man who liked to get himself sent to Arkham whenever he needed a vacation.
And broke out whenever he got bored or felt he wasn't getting the attention he deserved from Batman.
"What do you want?" The man who spoke up earlier puffed out his chest. False bravado created by confidence in his social stature. "Money? My father can pay you whatever you want."
"Want?" Those mangled lips spread into a grin that left Malcolm cold to the marrow. "Why, who says I want anything?"
Monsters.
They were what he understood best.
The Joker was not Martin Whitly, though.
He wasn't like anybody.
No, the Joker was the one the other degenerates and criminally insane roaming this city feared.
A monster who was always laughing.
At them.
The moon glinted off the gun the Joker aimed at the no longer smug man. Malcolm didn't stop to think about options. He didn't consider the consequences. He simply jumped in front of the man, hands held out in supplication, and made an offer he hoped the grinning madman would accept.
"Shoot me." Gentle gasps sounded but Malcolm ignored them. He couldn't afford to take his eyes off the man a few inches from him. "I'm willing to die. I deserve to die, in fact." Because of all the people dead because he didn't put a stop to his father sooner. "Let them go. Kill me."
The Joker let loose a high-pitched laugh. "Have it your way."
And proceeded to aim the gun at the other man standing with the women. "Sorry, Frankie. No hard feelings."
"No!" Malcolm cried as the Joker squeezed the trigger. "You said you'd let them go!"
"Ah, but you see, kiddo, I never actually said I'd let them go." Another cackle shivered along Malcolm's spine. "All I said was have it your way." The gun then turned on him. "And since Frankie has gotten his just desserts..."
And the Joker squeezed the trigger...
A/N: Hello, all, and welcome! This piece follows my crossover piece, Mirror, Mirror. It is for my Bad Things Happen Bingo card, prompt: You said you'd let them go!
The ending is intentionally ambiguous. You can decide if Joker played a joke on Malcolm by using a prop gun that says bang!, Batman showed up before Malcolm was shot or Malcolm got shot and lived. I might reveal my answer in another Bad Things Happen Bingo slot ;)
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