Hey guys! You reviewed the last chapter so quickly and so positively, I had to continue. Thank you so much. It all means a lot to me to hear that you like my work. You rock!

Here's the next chapter. Sadly, it's kind of the end of my current inspiration, so the rest of the story might take a little while longer after this, but I'll keep at it. I do want to finish this.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Joker or Gotham or whatnot. Those belong to DC Comics and Christopher Nolan. The OC is me, and mine.

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Tropical Torment

Chapter 10

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The Joker strolled rather unevenly across the sand, heading for the ship that was half-sunken out on the reef. I hesitated right where I was, once again, trying to acutely analyze the situation and judge whether or not this was the best way to proceed as quickly as I could. Salvaging the ship was still a good choice for our next move – I couldn't deny that. There were things there we just wouldn't find on the island.

It had just seemed so much simpler when I'd seen the ship from a distance, further inland up on the freshwater pool's ledge. Now that I was on the shore, I could see how frightening the wreckage looked, so many jagged edges and shattered support systems. The hole in the bottom of the ship's hull looked like vast, grinning jaws. It was like a sea-side haunted house.

I also remembered how long of a swim it had been from the wreck when we'd first arrived on the island – this certainly wouldn't be a fast search, and we would be carrying things back and forth as well, if we even managed to get back out of the ship. And then there were sharks and jellyfish and a whole manner of dangerous oceanic animals to watch out for…

Part of me wanted to back out and let the ship rot away and sink undisturbed. The Joker and I could just collect coconuts and bananas for the rest of the day…and maybe for the rest of our lives…

The fact that he was getting closer and closer to the water made me feel like my window of opportunity for backtracking from this idea was closing faster than I was making a decision, but I realized it wasn't really up to me whether or not he went out to the ship. It wasn't like he listened to me, anyway… Maybe he would get killed out there. Maybe the ship would collapse on him and drown him in those pretty blue depths, and then I would have one less thing to worry about…

Still, I couldn't get around the fact that I was curious about what was left after the crash. I didn't know what the Joker would consider worth bringing back from the ship, if he even brought anything back at all. I couldn't just leave him to this task. I wanted to search for myself.

Finally, my feet moved. I walked forward across the sand, heading for the shoreline that the Joker had already reached. The water was up to his ankles and he shrugged out of his purple jacket, tossing it back onto the beach, out of the reach of the waves. I guessed it impeded his ability to swim easily, remembering how it had made him look like some drunken manta ray yesterday.

I didn't take anything off – I'd never had a problem swimming in clothes, and mine were far from troublesome at this point, just shorts and a t-shirt. I also didn't feel like showing off my underwear to the Joker. I'd rather have to wash the salt off of my clothes again in the freshwater pool than feel any more vulnerable and exposed in front of him…

I took my shoes off as I entered the surf so I didn't lose them in the water, but I held onto them because I figured it would be good to have them on when we entered the shipwreck. I didn't want to step on broken glass or electrical wires or anything like that. The water was cool, but not cold. It felt good after being on the hot sand. I so wished I was just swimming in the ocean with my family on vacations like I had so many times before, but I couldn't make myself believe the lie.

I waded deeper and deeper out into the sea, the sand soft and smooth against my feet. The repeated washing of the waves had beaten it into the tiniest of grains, smaller than the chunks of shells and coral that littered the edge of the beach. The wreck of the Ocean Angel 5 was still quite a ways off on the reef, looming hideously on the midday horizon. The sun was high in the sky, glimmering off of the surface of the water, the tiny light rays dancing along the bottom.

The Joker was already out far enough that he was swimming freely, groping awkwardly through the water as he headed for the reef. He made small, musically-unrelated humming noises every time he reached forward with his arms for another stroke.

His movements vaguely reminded me of the swimming sequence of Link from the more recent Legend of Zelda games, like Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, before he'd gotten anything that let him swim gracefully below the waves like the Zora armor or the Water Dragon's Scale. It had always seemed like a strange, inefficient way of traveling through water, and the Joker doing it didn't make it seem any more sensible…

I missed video games. What if a new Zelda game came out and I never got to play it? I shook my head slightly, knowing I couldn't keep grieving over everything I'd lost. It wasn't even guaranteed to be lost. Even if it was, I had bigger things to worry about than video games. I just…I had to focus on the task at hand. I had to focus on getting what we could from the ship and surviving. I quickened my pace, heading out until I couldn't walk along the bottom anymore.

We weren't even half-way there yet… I tried not to sigh heavily, for risk of accidentally inhaling a bunch of salt water. My lips already had the unpleasant taste of the sea on them. I wished I had goggles or something so I could look down into the water below me without making my eyes sting. I'd observe any tiny crustaceans or fish that might be cruising below me to pass the time and make the swim go faster – and, also, look out for sharks…

Just as I was trying to push the Jaws theme-music from my mind, I noticed a dark, blurry shape below the water in front of me. I paused, treading at the surface and trying to discern whether or not the object was alive. My stomach flipped over when I realized what it was: a human arm, sunken and bloated with too much water. The ragged end was still being nipped at by some small fish. I looked up, unable to handle the scene below me, only to see that there were many other things scattered along the bottom and floating just below the surface…

Dead bodies. Too many to count. I knew that there were people who didn't survive the wreck and the swim to shore. I knew that there would be dead people in the water, and that the ocean wouldn't let that go to waste. I just hadn't braced myself for the full effect of swimming right beside the carnage. I began to hyperventilate, my arms and legs not working well enough to let me stay afloat very well. I began to choke on water as I scrambled to turn around and head back to the shore.

Something grabbed my hand, making me scream loudly. I whirled, staring at the Joker wide-eyed and traumatized. Wordlessly, he pulled me through the water toward the ship, where the bodies were more-concentrated. I shrank and flinched away from them as much as I could, but they still brushed my legs on occasion. My stomach churned with my disgust.

The many crime shows that I used to watch with my family at night had disturbed me a little with how well the media had gotten at portraying death and what was left after it. I wasn't a squeamish individual, and I'd rather thought that all of the TV I'd watched would've desensitized me to things like this, but I was wrong. This whole situation was incredibly unsettling to me, far too real and present and tangible. I was rather surprised that I wasn't vomiting.

I didn't know how long the Joker swam through a gory sea and tugged me along beside him. It could've been ten seconds or it could've been ten days. I didn't know why he was doing it, either – maybe he wanted to keep me close so that I couldn't run off somewhere without him and ruin his little game. Maybe he wanted to show me something hideous or kill me on the boat. I had no idea why he would care whether or not I was there with him.

Really, I just tried to forget where I was and what was happening. I closed my eyes and felt the water stream gently, almost apologetically across my skin, and didn't respond to anything else until my knee hit something hard below the waves. It hurt enough to make me cry out. We'd reached the reef, and my knee was bleeding where I'd nicked some coral. I was immediately aware of how I was probably summoning sharks from miles away, but I still had enough awareness to hope that I hadn't damaged the coral.

I knew the reefs were important for oceanic ecosystems and I didn't want my clumsiness to cost this beautiful place anything. We weren't allowed near the reefs on snorkeling trips for that reason. Humans were so invasive in the natural world… I was careful now to watch where I let my limbs hang uselessly in the water so I didn't damage anything else. The Joker continued to pull me along by my limp wrist, not saying a word. He wasn't humming anymore, either.

Finally, the reef thickened and reached high enough that it broke the surface, letting waves leap against it in bursts of white spray. It was harder to swim around there, with the water washing back and forth so harshly. Still, it wasn't as dangerous as the one in Cast Away had been, when it had almost smashed Tom Hanks.

The Joker clambered up on the rocks, almost slipping back off the other side before he gained some semblance of footing, and then pulled me up beside him.

"Up-suh-daisy!" he said, startling me at the sound of his voice, seeing as I hadn't heard him speak in what felt like quite some time.

He released my hand after I cleared the water. I swayed unevenly on my own, wincing as the reef bit into my feet. I quickly put my shoes back on, very glad that I'd brought them with me. The wreckage of the ship was looming a few yards away from us, spearing high into the sky like some ghastly, mechanical mountain range. The spray of the sea spattered against my face, making me taste salt on my tongue. My injured knee was throbbing and burning.

I stood there for a moment, almost in a dream. It felt like a good point to wake up – the ocean of dead bodies had already been cleared, at least in the sense that it was all around me but I wasn't currently in it, and we were just about to walk into the very heart of darkness. Dreams never carried on in such a way. A dream wouldn't make me actually go through with this. My subconscious wasn't that cruel… And then I realized it wasn't a dream at all. This was too hellish to be anything but the truth.

The Joker strolled forward across the rocky crest of the reef, heading for the ship. I could hear him licking his lips above the sound of the crashing waves, which was weird. The salt water must've been stinging the cuts I'd left when I scratched him, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

I followed after him, taking careful steps and trying not to fall back into the water, limping on my hurt leg. I saw the remains of the annoying stewardess from the day before, the one that had tried to prevent me from going and talking to "the captain." Her eyes were wide and staring and she bumped mindlessly against the edge reef, nudged by the waves again and again. Her legs weren't there anymore.

I gulped, swallowing the rising bile in my throat, and focused on staring at the ship, which wasn't much more comforting…

The Joker and I reached the entrance, the giant hole that had been created when the boat rammed into the reef.

He leaned around the corner, peering into the darkness from the side like they do in cartoons. He chuckled to himself, and didn't explain what was so funny. I didn't care to ask.

"Shall we, then?" he asked, stepping aside for me and extending his hand with a bow, as if he were accompanying me to some beautiful dance.

I made a face, hating how much he mocked any sort of normalcy when all I so desperately craved right now was for something to make sense and be perfectly acceptable. Him welcoming me into a sinking ship was far from normal, and I knew I wasn't the only one thinking that. He did it to bother me, I was sure.

I brushed past him coldly, without meeting his eyes, and I heard by his footsteps that he followed me into the wounded, dying ship.

The halls were dark and flooded, water filling the majority of the passages near the entry hole up to my waist. The salt made my knee sting. We'd entered the lower part of the ship, and the amount of water made that evident. Most of the electricity was out, ornate hallway lights occasionally sparking with radiance before going black once again. Some of the rooms were locked. Some of the doors were already broken down. There was still the occasional floating corpse, even so far inside.

We couldn't enter most of the back end of the ship, just because it was already submerged. I didn't fancy swimming down there and trying to look for stuff in the dark, anyway. That gave me chills and reminded me of the film, The Abyss, when they'd found bits of (what I'd always thought was) floating lettuce and ship debris and dead men with crabs crawling out of their mouths.

The Joker and I eventually split up – He more or less just wandered off in a direction I didn't really feel like going, down a random hallway that was darker than the others. I felt better after he was gone. He remained in the shadowed, lower levels of the ship and I headed higher, wanting to get out of the cold wetness.

I passed the control room with the door still knocked down, which let me see the steering wheel of the ship and the blood all over the floor. The dead captain's body, already showing signs of putrefaction, had been hurled into the corner during impact and was now splayed in a crumpled, bloody heap on the ground. I hated that room and everything it had started in my life right now. I hated myself for going to see the captain, for finding the Joker, for "catching his fancy" or whatever it had been that had let me be the one that was still alive instead of all of those passengers.

I shook my head and left the room behind, entering a random nearby bedroom instead and looking around for anything useful. I couldn't hate myself for everything that had happened. That wouldn't get me anywhere. The bottom line was that I was still alive, and that being alive was better than being dead because it put me in a position where I could take action and make a difference. Perhaps I was still alive because I was meant to do something that I hadn't done yet.

Yeah. Something like that… Blood dribbled down my injured leg.

The room had a bed that was flipped over but not ruined. I gathered some of the blankets, remembering how much I'd wanted them last night when the tropical island sun had gone down and left a cold cavern to sleep in. I didn't know if the chairs or tables would be of any use. I guessed we could use them for fire-wood or something… Still, I wasn't sure how well I could carry them all the way back to the island. I looked around for other things that could be useful, especially things more easy to transport.

I found a purse and a few more suitcases. I cleaned out the drawers of clothing, more adult stuff that I wouldn't fit in very well but that was still better than wearing the same outfit for the rest of my life. There were also more toiletries like shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and soap in the bathroom. I tore down the curtains, thinking we could make clothes or a sail for a boat or shield the inside of the cave from the elements or something like that.

There didn't seem to be much else I could use in that room, so I left.

My arms were already almost full. This wasn't promising if I needed to search…probably over fifty more rooms. I found a staircase that led to the upper decks and dropped my first load of stuff off there. I wanted to gather a bit more before I left the general vicinity of this floor. After resting on the stairs and tying a towel around my cut knee, I set off again on my search.

One room had a dead elderly couple in it, so I didn't go in there. Their resemblance to my grandparents made me cry for a little while. In the other rooms, I found more clothes and blankets, more toiletries. I salvaged a copy of the Bible – I was definitely going to need that if I wanted to remain sane…

Then it hit me how I might never get to go to Church again. I might never get to receive the Body and Blood of Christ again… I paused, the magnitude of it making me feel weak. Missing one Sunday Mass made me feel uneasy, but now I might miss all of the rest of them? I slowly sagged against the nearest wall, trembling slightly.

I couldn't believe how much my faith had slipped from my mind since this whole, hideous ordeal had come about. It was ridiculous how far I'd fallen… But I wasn't done yet. It was always advised to cling to faith in times of adversity, because God was closer than ever. I couldn't give up on him now… I said the Our Father repeatedly as I continued to explore the rooms of dead people.

After I'd searched ten rooms and compiled quite a haul of various items in the stairwell, I decided to head up onto the deck and get some fresh air – the bowels of the boat smelt of death and moist, mildew-y decay and I couldn't take any more of it.

I squinted in the harsh afternoon sun, my eyes having become accustomed to the damp darkness within the ship. All of the deck chairs and tables with fruity drinks on them had long since smashed into the back of the ship or fallen into the sea. Towels were strewn all over the place.

The entire ship was tilted, making my movements across this flat surface rather difficult. I kept close to the railing and crept cautiously down toward the lower portion of the deck. The pools had spilled and were half drained. Much of the drinks at the bar had evaporated in the sun's heat, and I wasn't quite old enough yet to have alcohol… That seemed rather silly, but it was true.

I found some novelty bottles and large cups with sealable lids that could be used to carry water back from the freshwater spring and store it in the cave so we didn't have to go all the way down there every time we were thirsty. I grabbed as many as I could carry while still being able to hold onto the railing and headed back up to the stairs, putting the cups with everything else I'd gathered.

I moved up to the front of the ship, but there wasn't much there. It was smashed to hell after the impact, and anything useful there had fallen into the sea or slid down to the back of the boat. I glanced over the edge of the railing and started with surprise – there was still a lifeboat attached to the side. That was perfect! We could get all of the stuff we found across without ruining it in the water!

I leaned over the edge, reaching for the rigging that was secured against the side of the boat. My fingers successfully curled around the rope and I hauled the lifeboat upward to being level with my face. I grabbed the side and pulled, but it wouldn't move much, only swinging slightly more than before.

It was heavier than I first expected. Perhaps the rigging mechanism was jammed as well. The crane-like apparatus above my head did look a little crooked. I pulled again, only budging the lifeboat. It wouldn't come loose enough for me to get it inside the ship.

Suddenly another pair of hands, encased in purple gloves, latched onto the side. I started, looking over to see the Joker suddenly standing beside me. He was sopping wet, his green hair curled and dripping, his make-up beginning to run down his face in grotesque streams.

"Well done, Beautiful. This will certainly, uh come in han-dy…" he said with approval. I didn't say anything, still recovering from the shock of his appearance and wondering why I hadn't heard him approach. I put some sort of biting retort out of my mind and just settled on tugging on the lifeboat again. With his help, we were able to release it from the busted rigging and successfully haul it onto the deck of the Ocean Angel 5.

"Where were you?" I asked without really being curious, feeling like it was a proper thing to ask at this point after we'd been apart for so long. I began to carefully crawl back down to the middle part of the ship, trying to hold onto the railing and prevent the lifeboat from slipping out of my grasp at the same time. If we let go, it would slide all the way down and probably smash into all of the junk gathered at the back of the ship, and then we were out a means of transportation for all of our supplies.

"Grabbing some yummy cooking supplies from the galley," the Joker replied with a snicker, as if knowing the terminology of the ship was somehow vastly amusing to him. He didn't seem to have too much trouble with the sloped terrain of the tilted ship, but I figured that was probably because he walked like he was on top of a giant Jell-O mold all the time. This ground was finally weird enough to suit his bizarre manner of walking, making him appear almost normal.

Getting cooking supplies was an oddly practical thing of him to do. I'd rather expected him to just have been swimming around in the flooded rooms and maybe giggling at the bodies of the people he'd killed. He'd actually done something helpful to our continued survival. I cleared my face of surprise or approval before he noticed and commented on it.

We returned to the stairwell where I'd stored all of my stuff from my first round of room-inspections. The Joker had placed the large pots, pans, and various knives and implements that he'd gathered from the kitchen there as well. They would be good for storage, and maybe for hunting if there were any sort of pigs or deer on the island. I wondered if I could use them for self-defense, as well, should the need arise…

We put about half of what we'd gathered in the lifeboat, seeing as we didn't want it to sink. Together, we hauled the lifeboat down the stairs until we reached the flooded portion of the ship. There, the boat floated and was much easier to maneuver. The Joker made the first round of taking the lifeboat to shore and unloading it and bringing it back. My knee was still bleeding, and I didn't want to chum sharks – or swim through all of the dead bodies again. I gathered more stuff from the rooms while I waited for him to return. The ship groaned and quaked on occasion, unnerving me even further…

It took us hours to get all of our loads to shore and come back for more. The sun was beginning to go down by the time we'd finished, too tired to continue. We'd been at this all day, and I could feel it. My muscles were aching and my skin stung all over with a terrible sunburn. I didn't remember the last time I'd exerted myself so much physically, and this was after the strain of yesterday, without any time to recover. Ugh…

I'd been forced to swim back through the bodies and risk a shark attack when The Joker and I made our final trip back to shore, seeing as the lifeboat had been full of stuff we didn't want to lose, but I made it without losing my mind or my limbs.

We'd got an entire wardrobe of clothing of all sorts, pots and pans for cooking and transportation, all sorts of bags and purses for carrying things, knives for hunting and protection, quite a few things to keep our hygiene in check, bedding to make the cave a little more comfortable, and the Joker had even found some food in the kitchen – some meat and veggies that hadn't completely thawed and rotted yet in light of the freezer system failing.

Even with all we gathered, I was sure we'd missed a lot.

The best things that we'd managed to gather, in my opinion, were the books and all of the paper and writing utensils. I'd found all sorts of novels and travel guides and magazines in the belongings of the dead passengers, some things familiar to me and others not so much. I found plenty of notebooks and a few journals that had been barely started – the ones that had been started or almost finished already were more on the reading-material end of my interest.

I was a small comfort in light of how difficult everything still was, but they meant the world to me. I was a writer, and the ability to keep writing was a gift from the heavens.

I sat on the edge of the mouth of the cave, my feet dangling over into the empty air, eating a banana and drinking coconut milk as I watched the sun go down.

We'd left a lot of the stuff on shore, a lot of the cooking supplies and some of the bedding and clothing, things we could pick up tomorrow after they dried off more. I took my books and papers with me, setting them out to dry in various spaces around the inside of the cavern. I was clinging to them with everything I had aside from actually physically holding everything in my arms at the moment.

I could smell the mouth-watering scent of meat cooking behind me. The Joker had made a small fire pit in the center of the cave and was cooking some of the steaks we'd salvaged from the ship. When they were done enough, he speared them with sticks and brought one to me. I hadn't really expected him to do that, so my thanks sounded rather awkward.

He sat down next to me, a few feet away so that I wasn't too uncomfortable, and began to noisily tear at his meat. I hadn't expected him to have stunningly eloquent table manners, so this wasn't as surprising to me. The watery red juice dribbled down his chin, and I looked away, gnawing at my own stake as quietly as I could. I'd never liked the noises of chewing, be they mine or someone else's.

The sunset was positively gorgeous, brilliant with reds and oranges and violets. I wished I'd found some crayons or markers to capture the sight in one of my new journals. I reached over and grabbed the nearest notebook I'd acquired that day, a thick brown one with slightly yellowed pages. It was my favorite one, so full of paper for me to write upon with a hard, heavy cover made of some sort of cardboard-like material – sturdy and resistant to damage. It was perfect.

The Joker must've noticed my expression as I stared at the book, because he then spoke up and startled me by saying, "Well, that's the, uh, first time I've seen you smile…"

I looked up at him, caught off guard by the personal focus of his observation.

"Um… well, I'm a writer, so… This is one of the first reasons I've had since the ship crashed to smile…" I murmured, blushing slightly and trying to sort through my tangled emotions. Would it come across like I was trying to blame him and make him feel bad? Was it like I was trying to avoid giving him any sort of window into my deeper passions and interests? Would he think I was pitying myself and being ungrateful about being alive yet again? I wasn't even sure exactly what I'd meant when I said that, so…

"Hmm…" the Joker mused, as if deep in thought. I wondered what kind of thoughts he went deeply into. He turned away, taking his sharp black gaze off of my face to stare out at the jungle below us. I rather expected him to comment on how beautiful my smile was or something, just because he seemed to enjoy pressing that button, but he was oddly quiet for a raving lunatic.

I followed his gaze, staring out at the ocean that was now glistening with the light of the moon.

I'd made it through an entire day, getting up and going back to sleep on this island.

I couldn't help but sigh heavily as a sense of exhausted dread pressed down on my chest.

"This is going to be the longest time of my life, isn't it?" I asked out loud, more to myself but still audible to the Joker. I knew not to assume that the Joker wouldn't kill me just because he hadn't killed me yet, but it kind of felt that way. I had a sense that I would be waking up here and eating fruit and fish and going back to sleep here for a long time.

The Joker laughed loudly all of a sudden, as if I'd said something hilarious. It scared the hell out of me and made me drop the coconut shell I'd been holding. The discarded brown casing clinked as it bounced down the mountainside…

"And you thought it was going to be the shortest only yesterday…" the Joker said, throwing his head back and laughing again so that the moonlight glimmered on his teeth and his lips and his scars.

I didn't see what was so funny about that, but I didn't bother to question it.

I got up and went inside the cavern, leaving him out there with the echoes of his own laughter. The fire was dying, but it provided just enough light for me to locate a sharp charcoal pencil from my stash in a crevice of the cave. I opened up my favorite notebook and put two tiny tally-marks in the front cover.

Then I opened to the first page, wrote "Day 1," and started recording my time in paradise with the Clown Prince of Crime.

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There you go! Read and review!

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