The Ballad of the Knight and the Jester

by Grigiocuore

Once upon a time, in a city of skies and concrete lived a knight and a jester. This is the story about how they bleeded, about how they fought, and how they finally reached for the other. A series of one-shots and flashfics that explore Batman, the Joker and their link. Eventually slash.

2. His Hunger

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your reviews: your comments are so deep and complete, they satisfy every little doubt I can have. This is a short and heavy chapter, and it's the first one I wrote. I hope you'll like it, and I promise more action to come.

See you soon!

Hunger

Batman

The first time you met him, you didn't know that he would devour it all.

You didn't know that your dance would crack your home, drown all the seeds you would be able to cast; you didn't know that his sneer, his broken automaton sneer, would mark your nights and your beloved ones' eyes.

Joker gave up long ago the tidy streets of men, the ones where all the shadows are along the edges and you could pretend they don't exist; Joker is morbid, fierce, unpredictable. And above all, Joker is greedy. Greedy for blood and pain and laughs, ready to swallow the whole life even if it has a cyanide heart. For this reason during the years he tore off from you all he could, bite after bite; he ate Barbara's legs, and when you watch her you can't prevent yourself from thinking about the days when se smiled running with you in the wind, the cape blown up against Gotham's lights like a pair of wings; he ate Jason's life, and now he's just a name carved in marble. He chased you, he tormented you, everytime bringing you a little closer to the abyss. And even if you always came back, you had to leave to the dark a splinter of your heart; you had to become a little less human. And for someone who built his strenght on having the same hands as the ones he defends, there is no crueler exchange.

Joker ate it all, the space for your comrades, your friends, your lovers, leaving a hole that burns and lets enter too many shadows; and then he slipped in the gaps and choked the void in the center of your chest. When the night falls, and you observe the city above a gargoyle's monstrous head you often walk around those still rooms under the skin, searching for a trace, for a sacred corner where you can restart; calling the ones you lost or the ones who are too far to hear you. But the only eyes in the void have the atrocious green of acids and are caught by an hunger without redemption. And even if looking at them poisons you, you can't let it go.

Can you call enemy someone who pierced through your bones, Batsy?

You didn't know, when all began, that he would be able to dig such gashes in your flesh.

You didn't know, when all began, that no one else would be here to fill them.