Newsflash from my side:

Hospitals suck.

So, yes I was gone for a long time and I am so sorry. I missed you all so terribly. Ummm... so yeah. If you PM me I'll tell you why I was gone for so long. This is a really weird interlude that popped into my head while I was.... absent.

"Bruce!" The voice was so familiar, so loving and playful as it laughed out his name, but he couldn't place it.

"Bruce?" A man peered around a corner his blue eyes dancing A man whose face had in Bruce's memory become fuzzy and lost.

His father was shorter than he remembered, his hair thinning a little in the front.

"Bruce?" Now his father was worried, The deep laugh lines turned into wrinkles. It took Bruce a moment to realize that his father was aging right before his eyes. Skin turned past white with a tinge of yellow, bright white, straight teeth turned inward on each other and yellowing like old parchment.

"Bruce where are you hiding?" The old man croaked as his spine bent.

It was as though Bruce was invisible to his father, who was now almost eighty years old. Hair fell out to the ground in tufts of white. Eyes had glazed to blindness but they still roamed around the room, searching for Bruce.

"Come out come out wherever you are."

His face was changing again,melting and rearranging itself. Hair forced it's way out of a regenerating skull. Suddenly time snapped back and he was staring at scarlet scars stretched across a leering face.

"Bruce?" It was still his father's voice, but unfamiliar lips distorted it into an insane chuckle.

"Daddy?" There was a small boy under the stairs. Bruce reached out to a small version of himself. He had been so young once...

"Hey there Bruce." The Joker knelt and Young Bruce ran into his open arm.

"No, get away from him!" Bruce grabbed the Joker's arm and dragged him backwards. The Joker looked up, stunned and hurt, but those eyes were pitch black and malevolently evil. He could see Bruce. Really see him.

Young Bruce had run up the stairs, not seeming to notice what was happening in the hall below. "You're it, Daddy."
"Go play." The Joker called, his eyes not leaving Bruce, his face paint seemed to be dripping off his lips and eyes, the black and white and red dripping down his cheeks like water. Melting together in a grimy mess.

Young Bruce disappeared up the stairs still laughing.

The Joker and Bruce looked at each other for a long time, Bruce couldn't think, his mind was all fuzzy.

"What do you want?" That deep frightened voice was his father's but the face was the Joker's.

The face paint was nearly all gone. But it was still the Joker's face. The color of the skin didn't change those eyes.

Bruce couldn't answer, the Joker was a handsome man, boyish looks untainted by age, light laugh lines that framed a pale mouth. Lank greenish hair paled to a dark blond.

"Get out of my dreams." But it wasn't his voice, it was Batman's.

The Joker's eyes lightened with relief. "Batsy, you scared me." He beckoned for Bruce to help him up but he wouldn't have touched the Joker for hid fortune.

"Stop with the games Joker. You don't belong here." Once again Batman was using him like a puppet. Speaking to the Joker without Bruce's mind making a response.

"Ah, but the game keeps us both alive, and I'm not the bad guy in this place." the Joker giggled and snapped his fingers before Bruce could lunge at him. Everything went dark.

Bruce's arms that had been reaching out to trap the Joker snapped backwards with two loud cracks. He was naked from the waist up his legs tied together and his hands stretched sideways by an invisible force, he hung there, the sun only getting colder against his skin, Gotham lay sprawled below him. But it wasn't the Gotham that he remembered. People were rioting in the streets, cries of pain and violence echoed out of the miniature city.

It was still beautiful though, the old Victorian houses on the east end still rose majestically from the streets and the narrows with it's abstract, crooked apartments sprung up underneath him. It was floating rocking slightly in the wind.

A building exploded, and then another, piercing screams echoed up at him, tinny in the great emptiness that extended in every direction.

Bruce had to help them, had to reach them, but his arms couldn't move. He was forced to watch as the city was engulfed in flames.

And then without warning, the pain struck. Bruce had endured a lot in his escapades as batman but this was something entirely different, this was as if his stomach was being torn apart from the inside, his heart exploded in his chest. His head was being ripped from his shoulders.

He bucked on the invisible wall. His ribs heaving as he fought the fire that was engulfing his entire spirit.. His entire being.

And then as suddenly as it had come it was gone, leaving a duill ache in his bones. Warm liquid was running down his face. He knew what that substance was, he had felt it often enough.

Blood.

It ran from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, streaming off his chin onto the burning city, snuffing the explosions.

Bruce couldn't feel anything, his head was getting fuzzy and his head dropped to his chest. The city was once again bustling, it's citizens jumping in the pools of his blood, children splashed each other, some workers wading across the bloody streets to get to thier4 destinations.

And now it was no longer his face bleeding but his chest and arms. Shallow cuts every where, focused on his forehead and wrists. His hands and feet, all lacerated. Blood dripping slowly onto the building. Dogs and cats were drinking the rain. Men were clearing it off their cars only to drive through flooded streets.

And Bruce hurt because he couldn't save the city. Because he couldn't stop trying, because was destroying himself.

Because his only demon was Gotham. Because the city had his soul. Captured it, and bottled it up. Fed it to it's streets.

So yeah... review!