Author's Notes: Yay! I'm finally done with this chapter! :) I'm sorry I haven't replied to all the reviews yet...I ACTUALLY think I might be reverting to putting replies up all at once for each chapter in the Author's Notes, since it's much easier and less time consuming for me. I've been hella busy and I will be even busier this week so bare with me on the updates. But hooray for action and plot moving nicely :) Let's see...I'm still pondering whether I should have sex in this story or not. I can get away with not putting any, but at the same time it could also be integral to the story if I portray it a certain way. That's why I think I'd like the opinions of readers on this, because I'm not really sure if I should or if I shouldn't. Let me know in your review please because I am seriously stumped and don't know if it would ruin the story for some or if it's seen as a necessity for others...I am split 50/50 and it sucks. But anyways...enjoy...and only a few more chapters to go. Ah! :(
Love, xxnadsxx
Dark Humor
Thirteen
"A trauma powerful enough to create an alternate personality leaves the victim in a world where normal rules of right and wrong no longer apply..."
-Batman Forever
The sound of crackling static was the first she heard. Her eyes blurred, focused beyond the spots of light behind her vision. She saw a flash of purple, moving to and fro before her, and as her brows knitted and she gave a tiny moan at the throbbing pain in her forehead, she realized she was crumpled on the floor in an unknown room, lying right behind the pacing frame of the Joker. Her mind reacted at that—hostility mingled with sheer, violent panic, as if an alarm had set off within her head and her brain had snapped into survival mode. She was fighting to scrabble to her feet, uncaring if he turned at the noise, yet her leg gave way to a sharp onslaught of pain and she cried out uselessly and slumped back down against the ground. Rachel cursed beneath her breath at the sight of her twisted calf, the dried blood threatening to burst open in a fresh deluge with any wrong move.
The static intensified as she willed herself to actually focus on the scene before her, and she couldn't keep the curiosity from rising unbidden in her mind. The Joker's back was turned towards her, the greasy head inclined towards rows upon rows of monitors, stacked and piled one atop the other, broadcasting scene upon scene of the same flickering pictures—the News Station, flanked by what had just been discovered by the frantic news reporter to be corrupt policemen, the trail of blood from doorway beyond, the bodies found piled in the front of policemen who had foolishly struggled to join those guarding the edifice from the penetration of actual law enforcers…
Gotham appeared in frenzy. And the madman before her was the reason for all of it. Her fingers clenched into a fist, nails digging into skin, savoring the pain that set her nerves alight. Everything was because of him. The realization caused her to squeeze hard on her palm, increasing the pressure until she cut into skin and drew blood. She would rake her nails across his skin, savor the pain she would draw…know it would never be enough to balance the pain they had all suffered for so long, but it would be enough, to watch him writhe, to hear him scream…
a sigh, the high-pitched voice forming almost wistful words,
"Beautiful…all the panic. The mayhem. Beautiful."
Arms raised upwards as if to embrace the monitors before him. Rachel dug her blood-stained nails into the solid ground, struggling to pull herself forward, closer to the occupied form in front of her. Just as quickly as he had raised his arms, however, the figure lowered them and whipped around, slowly enough for Rachel to regain her composure and return his penetrating stare with an acidic glare. As he gazed upon her, his scarred mouth twitched in response to her opened hostility; then, his red lips tore open in a loud, amused peal of laughter, and his shoe connected with her head. Rachel gave a cry of pain as she fell backwards a good foot away from the space she had advanced between them, her fingers clinging to her throbbing head, cursing openly.
"Raaa-chel, Raaa-chel, Raaa-chel…what ever are we to do with you, dear?!"
He was making "tsk-tsk" noises with his tongue, wagging his finger at her like a naughty child. The Joker was advancing towards her, torturously slow, his kohl-darkened eyes plastered upon her as if hungrily devouring every expression upon her face. Any trace of human left in his features had been stripped away, leaving a bestial, growling form above her, his tongue flicking across his lips, his gaze slitted and savage and brutally violent and hungry. She wondered if he was a cannibal, the way he was staring at her. A grim voice laughed in the back of her head upon the realization that such a thingwas probably very feasible. She kept her head cradled carefully in her palms, doing her best to glare with opened hostility at him through the corner of her eye, her lip trembling as she spoke,
"You could leave me and this city the hell alone!"
Of course, he chuckled at this, not even bothering to reply. Instead he stopped barely a few inches before her splayed form, craning his head so that he was staring down upon her, analyzing her, like a man before he stomps upon a particularly interesting-looking insect.
"You look wonderful. The color 'bruised and bloody' really suits you, you know," he arched a painted brow, the vapid eyes taunting her, daring her, "I think all the damage fits, suits every little cut and scar, you know, up in here." He motioned with his fingers towards the side of his head, a lazy, half-circle, scarred lips slowly mouthing the sound: "cu-ckoo,cu-ckoo…"
She lunged at him. He laughed as she struggled to run, instead wobbling pathetically like a cripple, tears raking her raw cheeks as she flung her fist fruitlessly at his legs. He replied with a flick of his wrist, a glint of silver precluding the searing pain and flash of red that bloomed across her knuckles. The cry tore from her lips as his knife tore into her shoulder, biting at the skin and the fabric beneath, and she was on her knees, face twisted in a snarl, fingers gripping the freely bleeding cut and the torn strap of shirt above the tattered flesh.
The whooping laughter echoed through her ears, falling hollowly against her adrenaline-numbed brain. She was breathing heavily, the throbbing pain in her leg mingling with the fire along her freshly opened wounds and the constant aching hemorrhage of her heart. Scrabbling to pull herself back up to her knees, Rachel gazed up at him defiantly, her hair pooling free of its bun to fall in tangles and wild knots across her face, only emphasizing the twisted, murderous loathing seething beneath her eyes. She didn't realize the deathly ferocity of her own gaze mirrored his at that exact moment; intentions that went beyond the brink of physical suffering, transcending into something utterly inhuman.
Maybe I'm the cannibal.
The thought struck her as she kept her gaze steady, her heart pounding with the prospect of tearing this man apart, limb from limb, of tasting every inch of his pain, of reveling in it. Somehow, the idea wasn't so horrifying anymore. It wasn't so taboo, so inconceivable. She could see him stacked upon the row of bodies in the corridor, a pool of blood trailing from gashed, smiling lips; tied to a chair just as Harvey had been, his body decaying in sparks and flame. The twisting in her belly was insatiable, and for the first time since Harvey had died she recognized that strange churning sensation as a primal sort of hunger.
"What's the matter, Miz Dawes?"
The words came in a long, near-drunken drawl from the tip of yellowing teeth. He was gazing at her from beneath his mop of greasy hair.
"Cat got your tongue-guh?"
A snarl rose unexpectedly from her pursed lips, surprising even herself as it increased in volume and intensity. She was a dog, laid out on all fours, with her snarling face and acidic bloodlust tainting her widened eyes. All she wanted, all she needed, was to shut this man up, to make him stop, to make him suffer.
"I don't spare my words for petty criminals who kill everything in sight."
Her voice was almost unrecognizable. It no longer seemed to shake, yet held a savageness almost effortlessly beneath each syllable, rounded to a deadly lowness. Her words were sharp enough to cut; to draw sweet, pleasurable blood.
His.
Only his.
Brows raised along the Joker's blackened eyes, making the outline of his orbs appear almost comically huge, as if his entire face had widened in mock bewilderment,
"But…but…you're the cri-mi-nal here, Ra-chel! You're the reason that Harvey died! Don't try and sound like Bat-boy, now. We're different than him, haven't you realized?! You're almost as much to blame as him, anyway, because you were so pathetically weak, unable to keep yourself from trusting that…Rodriguez?—and getting yourself into that mess in the first place. And then, to be stupid enough to not even get out of your restraints…" a nasty leer formed along red lips, and she thought it resembled an opened wound, "Well, we both know why you came here. We know where your little trail of just-ice comes to end. When you're living by your own rules, the rule of cha-os is still the same: end it by ending yourself. By…your final…disappearing. Act."
The words would have driven ice through her lungs, paired with the very real carnal thirst in the predator clown's eyes. Yet now they seemed to fall empty and numb, and she bit back a bitter, hollow laugh. She was peering at him through fallen locks of hair, her nails digging into the floor beneath, her body tensed to spring. Like a dog. Like an animal, Rachel. You're an animal.
"The only way…that I'm going to disappear, Joker, is if I take you with me."
Black eyes seem to bleed kohl, the irises disappearing completely into the makeup with their widening. An ecstatic squeal burst from cracked lips as the Joker jumped once, twice, his fists raised to his chin like an excited little schoolgirl,
"Oh, what a glorious day! When Miz D.A. decides to take just-ice in her own little hands! Oh, and I'm so proud, so proud to be a part of this…this…awakening. Too bad I'll have to kill you before you finish your little game!"
With a flourish, he pranced towards her, with the near-grace of a dancer, his blade flicking expertly between his fingertips. Rachel was pulling herself to the side, cursing at her throbbing leg, too slow, too slow, and he was cackling viciously as his knife bore down upon her a second time, this time seeking throat, this time barely missing with a whish against the air as it cut against her collar instead because she had managed to move a fraction of a millimeter away, the pain searing and hot and trickling along her skin, and she was crying out in agitation and swiping at his ankles with her bare hands and he responded with another delighted cry as his knife greeted one set of knuckles, re-opened the bloodflow on the other, and she was clinging to her hands and crying out and biting her lip and screaming in utter frustration rather than pain, because pain didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was that he wasn't in pain, and she could and would die here at the hands of Harvey's murderer and the murderer of her fucking sanity…
"Where's Batman now?!"
His voice was a shriek, high-pitched and perversely aroused, and suddenly he froze above her like a frigid statue, and she was taking in heaving, shuddering breaths as she gathered her composure from a hollow slash to her side. With a moment's pause he was licking the blade clean of her blood, his eyes half-opened, irises boring towards the back of his skull, a low guttural groan of pleasure filling the air as his tongue caressed the knife's sharp edge and she hoped to God he would cut the damned thing off so she could relish his screams. Yet he simply continued to speak, the knife still half-way in his mouth, caressed languorously by his careful tongue,
"Thing is, honey, if you were Harvey…you'd be a bit. More. Indisposable. A bit more useful to the Bat. But since you're not, well…you can be a lost cause—you can be the little sacrificial lamb. Don't you realize that? Batsy led to Harvey's death by his choices, and you're the one suffering for it—right. Now."
In a flash he was pouncing again—she was prepared for it this time, lunging with her torso sharply to the side, and his upper half crashed towards the ground, his knife flying wildly. It connected with air and cut away locks of her hair, landing to cut a narrow gash along her scalp. She cried out and instinctively flung her hand out to shield her head, and his knife was biting into her fingers, her legs scrabbling for control yet finding none as the pulsing pain in her calf wound intensified with the beating of her frantic heart. Suddenly, she found her fist shooting forward to connect with the Joker's jaw as he brought his head towards her, his smiling upturned-face reduced to an "O" as her bloody hand punched into rows of yellowing teeth and chalk white skin. She watched with almost-perverse satisfaction as his head flung backwards and blood splattered his chin and throat, yet as he pulled his head back forward it was a peal of laughter rather than pain which burst forward from the depths of his being. She was pushing herself away as he laughed, his deep throaty cackles intensifying into whooping and wheezing amusement, her entire body stinging from the fresh wounds and an all-too human fatigue.
Her mind buckled with panic as he wiped the blood away and admired its color against pale fingers for a split second before pulling himself to his feet, his lips rippling in a low, throaty growl. She wondered how much she could go on hurting him once when he could swipe at her ten, twenty times inbetween—who would die first, then? How did she stand a remote chance against this madman, when he didn't mind feeling pain, when his cries of discomfort were replaced by shrieking laughter? And even now he was advancing upon her, ignoring the wet red blood dribbling down the side of his chin as if his smile slanted straight down across his body, a momentary red grimace. He was a wraith with his wide, eager eyes, his pale and battered form that still ached to draw blood.
He raised his knife and her entire body tensed as she pushed herself as far backwards as she possibly could in her battered state. She was sliding across the hall behind her, aching palms pressing against slick ground, heart pounding in her ears, eyes wide and prickling with tears of sheer hysteria, her mind still numb and inactive save for the responses of her body, her stupid foolish weakling little body that refused to push her faster, faster, faster, refused to register the fact that he was raising his knife again, murderous lust and thirst in his gaze, and he was bringing it down faster than she could pull herself, faster than the breaths that escaped her lips for perhaps the last time—
Instead, the Joker's foot landed hard against her ribs in an almost crushing blow. The breath knocked from her body in a soundless cry of pain as she fell backwards flat against the floor, her head snapping roughly back against the ground, the goose egg that had already formed aching with fresh pain. She felt wetness in her hair, the unmistakable stickiness of blood, and spots of light danced before her for a moment before her breathing became strained yet normal enough to keep her alive and she stared up at him in sheer defiance. He was waiting for it, waiting for that violent gaze of his to be returned, for a smug sneer rippled across the still white plains of his face as he buried the sole of a dirtied shoe roughly up against her aching torso, pinning her down and making her whimper,
"Why are you a D.A., my pretty little Raaa-chel? Because you have a sick, twisted little get-yourself-off fetish for bringing people in. For making yourself better, somehow. Worth something."
He nodded vigorously as he spoke, his foot continuing to move back and forth along her undoubtedly bruised ribs, sparks of pain making her nerves ache. Then he pointed to his chest, cocking his blood-stained face with an air of know-it-all self-righteousness,
"I know people like you, and I des-pise them. Why, before…"
He motioned to his scars, then, the gesture half-hearted and quick, as if an afterthought,
"Before I found myself, I was even crazier, like you, always with my stupid little values, my orderly little…life. Well, that didn't get me anywhere, and look where it led you,"
With his knife, he pointed down towards her prone frame, a mocking leer making the scar-extended smile stretch from ear-to-ear,
"About to be killed by…by a freak clown! Isn't it ironic, how you put all the mob away and a clown comes along with the power to kill you? Isn't it…exciting, don't you just want to make me buh-leed?"
Rachel was scrabbling beneath his hold upon her, her struggling causing him to giggle and push down even harder against her ribs. She gasped, tears of pain prickling behind her eyes, staring wildly for a way out of her predicament, knowing the Joker's intent to kill her wasn't just an empty threat any longer. She had played his game, had served as his pawn, and the game would have a very macabre final act in store if she didn't act now. And since she was practically breathless, squirming, utterly powerless to stop him if he shot forward to stab at her jugular or made her smile that very moment, she thought of the second best thing she could do,
"Yes…yes, I want to kill you, Joker," she practically rasped as the pain continued to bloom and wrap around her torso, her fingers digging into either side of the ground below her, "but…I'm better than that. I'm better than you. You know if you kill me instead, right now, that the people of Gotham will be after you…Batman will get your head on a fucking platter."
The Joker's head cocked to one side, lolling lazily against his shoulder. Blackened eyes rolled with sarcasm, almost like a child's, and he mock-sighed and held his knife out. Rachel watched its sheen carefully, felt the pressure on her ribs loosen slightly as he spoke,
"no one cares. Hu-man-ity is a cess-pool, people looking out to keep themselves from rotting. But what's the fun in hiding what's underneath the skin in the first place? What's the fun in being the sane one, when we all die? If I were you…I'd rather be unrestrained. Maybe then, you'll get your sense of worth! When the Bat. Puts you on the slab again…you won't have any-oneto blame but yourself. And you're so scared of what's lying in that pretty little airhead of yours, what I can see right now, smiling at me through all your de-ni-al…"
Slowly, slowly, his hold on her ribs seemed to lessen and lessen. She shut her eyes and gasped in a gulp of sweet air, her entire body aching with the effort, yet not unpleasantly. She was alive. She was still alive, if only for a second longer. A part of her didn't care if she died, a part of her thirsted for it, but that same primal aching in her mind to kill held the overwhelming urge to live, to breathe, and it scared her that it was possessing her, that nothing else seemed to matter but living and killing and vengeance.
And it terrified her that she wasn't nearly as afraid of it as she should have been.
"Yes."
The word came from her lips like a curse. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her breathing quickened and frantic, the full realization coursing through her body in renewed adrenaline and strength. Her wounds were pounding with her heartbeat and the blackness in her eyes was a bleeding, violent red. She felt, rather than saw, the Joker's eyes narrowing, his foot twitching as it edged away from her ribs, his head cocking in the other direction, utter curious bewilderment in his voice.
"What?"
"Yes…yes, I want to kill you right now," A grunt from the Joker, as if sincerely not expecting her confession, and she continued frantically, "I don't just want to kill you. I want to make it a slow death…I want to torture you, I want to hear you scream. I want to savor every little drop of blood that comes from that pathetic smiling face of yours, every little laugh that you disguise to hide your pain, knowing that you're suffering how I've suffered, how all of Gotham has suffered under you. I want you to beg for mercy. I want to take away your control and make you die knowing you've never had it in the first place."
A violent twitch against her body accompanied her last sentence. She opened her eyes quickly to see the Joker's face, savoring the expression; what she guessed to be vicious amusement at first at her near-sadistic confession, then a twisting of his lips, a near-rage that crossed his face in the furrowing of his brows and the narrowing of his eyes at her threat of taking away what he valued the most—his control. And then a low, empty chuckle rose from his lips, as if to fill the biting silence between them, as if to erase her words altogether from spoken memory. It grew and grew in pitch until it was shrieking, whooping laughter, near-hysterical, near-desperate, and she could see straight through it, could see how she had managed to unnerve him and how he sought to subdue her temporary seizure of power.
But that won't happen. Not tonight.
Suddenly, a silver glint flashed across her vision, almost out of thin air. She gasped and reacted just in time to catch the blade in a clenched fist right before it would tear at her cheek, and the Joker was growling like a rabid animal, his eyes flashing with bloodlust, his knife digging into the skin of her mangled fingers as she pushed the blade away with all her strength, pushed as he pushed forward, knowing if she faltered he would cut right through her, snip and snap at skin and bone until there was nothing left. She was weakening quickly, her fingers trembling and raw with overwhelming pain as the knife sank within her skin, dangerously close to the bone, and tears fell freely down her cheeks as she bit back a whimper from the hurt that ached through her and for one insane moment she imagined him cutting straight through her fingers and watching them fall useless to the ground, but no he wouldn't do that she wouldn't let him, she had to get him off and away from her, had to get him to stop—
With a cry, Rachel lurched forward and used her good foot to kick straight upwards between the Joker's legs.
He howled in pain at the unexpected move, doubling over momentarily, and that was all she needed. She twisted the knife roughly from his hands; it cut further into her fingers, nearly mangling them with thick blood. Beyond the pain, beyond the throbbing and the aching and her screaming nerves, she felt ecstasy twist through her heart and soul and veins as she dove the knife straight forward into his right knee. The Joker gave a savage snarl of utter frustration, just as quickly becoming a giggle as he fell backwards onto the ground, and she was on top of him, straddling him, her knife to his cheek, her face hovering over his own. He didn't move an inch beneath her; instead his eyes were fixated upon her own, his breathing ragged and quick and almost disgustingly excited, the smell of his rancid breath filling her nostrils and making her gorge rise.
The near-perverse glee swept through her again at their predicament; she allowed a low, scathing chuckle to burst from her lips. Something sparked in his eyes at that, his lips twitched in a semi-grin, and she knew he heard the recognition in that laugh, hated him even more for it.
"I hate you," she hissed, leaning forward so that her knife now pressed against his already-scarred cheek, as if to re-open old wounds, "I hate you and this goddamned city that you've destroyed. I hate its entire people, I hate the Batman, I hate everyone who's been powerless to stop you."
A gleeful laugh; his eyes suddenly shone with unrestrained excitement, bordering perversion in the snaking of tongue over lips.
She could see the blood settling between each individual, yellow tooth as his scarred lips pulled back in that mockingly hard laugh, could practically feel the spray of stray red droplets against her seething face. He was laughing in the face of an imminent death, laughing in the way only the soulless and vapid would laugh; those who had nothing to die for, nothing to leave in their own lives but life itself.
It almost frightened her, how much she suddenly saw herself in those black-rimmed eyes, even with their glazed tears of madness, even amidst the extreme mirth that filled the Joker's eyes with a haunting viciousness. They both were ready to die at any time, and she held the knife in her hand that could very well do the deed at any moment.
Then why were her hands shaking so fucking much? Why did they have to shake whenever she held a weapon, even now, now when the man beneath her could flip her over as easily as a feather and crush her? Now, when he undoubtedly had more knives lying in accessible wait, knives which he could very easily pull from nothingness to impale her with?
God dammit Rachel, just stab him like you want, like you said were going to. Cut him. Kill him. Do what he did to Bruce. To Harvey. Do what he did to you!
Her lips quivered at the thought as she stared down at the hard, clown-like face, at the rabid humor in that stark white stare. She would be exactly like him, using this knife to sever his life away, never able to wash the blood from her hands.
Why was she hesitating? Why, when moments ago she had been so ready to destroy him completely?
"Shit," She suddenly sobbed in frustration, clenching the knife so tight in her white-knuckled hand it stung against her wounded fingers.
It was then, in her hesitation that strong hands thrust upward from beneath her and wrapped around her neck. Rachel cried out against the vice-like grip around her throat, each finger pushing with bruising force on her tender skin, weighing down at veins and arteries. She felt tears prick at her eyes as she struggled against him, his hands gripping harder and harder around her neck yet his body still beneath her, each moment making it harder and harder to breathe. He was choking her because she had been so stupid to think twice about killing him, and now she was writhing in his grip as if she were the one beneath him, staring into the eyes that still swam in that vicious black mirth, laughing and mocking at her expense—
Rachel gave a desperate cry against the crushing force of his hands around her throat before slashing the knife across the Joker's chest. With a whooping cry of pain that immediately twisted into pleasured cackles, his hands flew from her throat and she took in long, frantic gasps of air, watching the red blood smear against his green vest, making a pool across the fabric. Her stomach churned in bestial satisfaction at his pain, , and she avoided his penetrating stare as she gave a grunt and found herself tearing away at his shirt, longing to see the blood as it streamed from his skin, to see that she had hurt the bastard in some way, had damaged him just as he had damaged her.
"Ohhh, oh yes!" The Joker was hissing beneath her, his breath sharp as she used his knife to rip away at the fabric across his torso until she made out the sallow-pale skin beneath, "That's right—hurt me, make me bleed! I didn't know you had it in you, Rachel! So violent, so much like me—"
"Shut up!" She cried, and her hands moved automatically, the blade slashing across the exposed skin a second time to shallowly cut across the blood-splattered skin between his nipples.
The Joker gave a cry again, dissolving into even more hysterical laughter, his breath heavy and rancid as the striking redness of his blood trickled and matted against paper-white skin. He was lean and muscled, yet seemed so gaunt beneath her at that moment, ribs poking beneath flesh layered with countless scars, some white and faded, others infected in purple, badly-sewn gashes against his skin. A carnal pleasure bubbled within her to know that some of those scars would be of her own doing, her own vengeance, one of the largest the one at his side, wrought by her own bullet. His knife was caked in his own blood, and though he laughed excitedly as he received each wound she had given him, she found herself growing more satisfied and thirsty with each blow.
She was thirsty to see him in pain; to see him scream. To see the man who had triggered Harvey's murder in the first place to fall.
"I'm…nothing like you," she hissed as she pulled herself close towards the Joker's face, the smell of his sour breath mingled with the saltiness of sweat and blood.
The madman's eyes examined her own with pure skepticism, brows raised to disappear beneath green-tinted hair matted against a makeup-caked forehead,
"No? Then why are you tor-turing me right this inst-ant? Please, dear, I'm right after you in the asylum's most wanted list—"
"No," Rachel interrupted angrily, her voice twisted with growing rage at his words. She angled the knife almost expertly in her ire, pressing it against one of the infected purple scars against his torso her teeth grit, "I'm torturing you because you'd do the same to me if you were in this position. Because…because if it wasn't for you, Harvey would still be alive. Because…"
She was blinking back tears; tears of anger, of collective rage. He had stolen so many things from her; Harvey, her position as D.A., her relationship with Bruce, her sanity…how else could she ever show him the extent of her loss by doing anything but what she was doing now? The smell of him beneath her, of unwashed skin and grime, of blood and sweat and decay, only added to the disgust she felt for him now, the heat of her rage almost passionate as it twisted within her stomach. Carnal, primal heat, the fierce joy that lit in her heart when she watched the blood rise from his skin, wanted to spill it endlessly, to make his face contort in pain…
"Because I am going to be the one to kill you tonight," She hissed, her voice so low she found herself leaning dangerously close to his face as she said it, running the knife along the tip of the infected scar, "I want you to feel every ounce of pain that I felt when you set Harvey up to die and took everything I ever loved along with it—"
Her mouth was crushed hard against biting teeth and wrestling tongue, a hand clamping to the back of her hair and pulling her down against scarred, rough lips. She was crying out against the force of him against her, her hands pushing against the ground in an attempt to pull herself away, yet he kept her there with his teeth clamped against her lower lip, biting down so hard that white hot pain shot through her body, the blood between his teeth flowing down into her mouth and the taste of bitter iron and garlic and hot breath flooding her senses as she struggled to pull away, to pull away from the pain of her searing hot, bloodied lip, from his lapping tongue that greedily devoured the pooling blood and stung her. And then she remembered she had a knife, and she slashed it blindly across skin, again and again, making shallow cuts across a pearly white stomach, and his laughter masking the pain of the knife's biting touch across his flesh echoed throughout her ears as he freed her and she nearly fell backwards across him, clutching onto her bleeding lip with her free hand. The blood was soaking her fingertips, blood which she found herself licking away to try and staunch. She looked down to find he was grinning up at her, his arms behind his head, defiantly licking away her blood across his scarred mouth, red against red, his eyes half-closed and rolled to the back of his head as he tasted her, a perverse groan shuddering throughout his body as if her blood were the most delicious thing he had ever experienced.
She touched her nearly split-lip and felt his arousal building beneath her with a wave of disgust. Her attempted "torture" of him was arousing him; it wasn't giving him any pain, at least not pain that he willingly recognized. She was exciting him by hurting him, by making him bleed, and as he groaned and licked away the remainders of her spilled blood from his mouth, half-closed black-rimmed eyes in a state of mock ecstasy, his hips pressed up against her own in carnal thirst. She realized just how hopeless her situation was, and as if in opposition to logic, the anger merely intensified within her at her knowing helplessness.
"You're so beau-ti-ful when you're bleeding and cra-zy, Ra-chel," He purred as his freely bleeding wounds stained his white stomach red, snapping closed eyes opened to watch her, a smirk on scarred lips, "Ya know,I used that knife myself in many similar ways…though I have to admit I wasn't as, ah, blood-thirsty as you. But really, the way you hold it, it's almost you like you're a na-tu-ral…tell me, how many times have you fantasized about using it, about killing criminals, about using it on little old Har-veeyyyy when he was being dis-o-bedient—"
"Shut UP!"
Rachel shot the knife forward towards the Joker's chest again, the sudden anger overwhelming her. She gasped as the knife stopped short in the air; the Joker was gripping it with astonishing strength in his fist, much like she had done earlier, a sickeningly smug sneer on his lips as he watched her suddenly horrified expression, savored it.
"Let the games begin."
With another twisted grin, he lunged at her.
