Author's Notes:
Holy shit. I'M ALIVE. I'm so, so sorry for the lack of updates. I JUST had the time to update this 'fic and I had written out this chapter 3-4 weeks prior, but stupidly it is only in my laptop, and my laptop ended up breaking so I had to wait that period of time for it to get fixed and returned to me. But HERE I AM! YAY! I can't promise a weekly update or anything, but I CAN promise it will not take me another month or longer to update this story. I am sincerely sorry for that.
Now, moving on…I'm not putting a sex scene in. I figured the plot stands well enough alone without it; plus it took me forever to try and decide whether I wanted one for so long in this chapter that I decided it would be better just not to put one so I would stop delaying the update! So…here we go. Hopefully I will be able to pick up the story right where I left off and there won't be a noticeable slump in quality or any plotholes or anything. If there is, just let me know, and I will use my handy editing skills Anyway, here's the next chapter (which I technically call chapter 13-B considering it's a bit short, but oh well)
Enjoy, love you all.
Xxnadsxx
Dark Humor
Fourteen
"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
She was pinned. Her heart spluttered against her ribs as the full weight of him pressed against her, nearly crushing her already injured frame. She gasped and struggled to crane her head away from the sudden nauseating nearness of him; the bloody cracks of leering, yellow teeth, the sickly odor of unwashed skin, onion, dirt and decay, the white face paint splotched with purpling bruises and trickles of blood that dried across his throat. The knife glinted at the edge of her vision, barely pressed against her splayed fingers, its handle still against the tips of her left hand. If she could just push forward, reach for it somehow, without the Joker's crippling weight on top of her, without the bulge of his lower body as well as the rest of his girth pressing against her, taking away every last breath…
"How long…" He rasped above her, his ringed eyes partially hidden by greasy green locks, his breaths heaving slightly yet his grip indicating no slackening of strength, "…does it take…to con-vince you that you're pow-er-less? How much do I have to bleed you, to play with that thick little skull of yours to make you un-der-stand?!"
For emphasis, he grabbed her temples, fingers pulling hair as he slammed her head roughly against the floor. She gave a cry as pain jarred her vision and reached again for the knife, yet it merely pushed further away from her hands with her struggling. Rachel knew as pain enveloped her body in an aching accumulation of bruises, cuts and scratches, that there was no possible way she could make it out of this…freak's grip without resorting to something along his level of play.
"I—" The word came out as a choking, fluttering cry from the depths of her strained throat, an animal's whimper. He chuckled at the noise, his fingers scratching violently at her throat in response, the red welts searing heat on her skin,
"I…understand…that I'm—going to….kill you—"
A sudden slackening in his grip, and she summoned all the strength in her bloodthirsty veins to act.
He hadn't anticipated it; her mouth pressed ferociously against his in a mirror of previous actions, and all she saw for a flicker of an instant were eyes wide and bloodshot closing suddenly into black rings, the smell of rot and the feel of grime between her fingers as she gripped his green head, the momentary lapse of control for the hungry nibbling and biting of a scarred mouth, pressed up hot against hers, like a hungry dog…
Yet she was the one to bite.
Her teeth clamped down hard against scarred lips, so hard it was a kiss of venomous, passionate hatred, and as he howled—(yet in pain or pleasure, she would never know)—and bit back, for she was a dog biting at a bear, the searing flash of pain as her lower lip trickled with fresh blood did nothing to saturate the sheer pleasure through her veins as his own blood dribbled across her chin, the knife in her hands, her wrist flicking forward to cut across a pearly white cheek. The Joker flew backwards, his scarred face a fresh masterpiece of mangled white and violet red, trailing down his lips and trickling across his left cheek. A whooping torrent of laughter tore through his red bleeding orifice while Rachel pulled herself as far backwards as her body was willing. With a curious satisfaction, she touched her own bloodied lip and nearly relished the taste of the bitter iron on her tongue. She held herself fast to the wall behind her; pulled herself up, up up, despite the screaming of her nerves, the way her calf seared in pure fiery pain, continuing to point the dagger with quaking hands at the Joker's sitting form. He was rocking himself back and forth, holding back giggles and chuckles while running eager hands across his mouth, licking at the blood like a hungry puppy devouring his scraps.
"Ver-ry impressive, Miss Daweess!" He half-shrieked, an expression of sheer delight lighting up his features, "Now you fi-nally know how it feels. Don't you?"
God, she could barely stay standing, let alone stop from shaking. Hair flew in wildly untamed pieces about her face, nearly blocking the wide, near-opalescent sheen of her eyes, her furrowed brows. She found herself shaking her head, her feet moving ever so slowly to the door on the left side of the room,
"I don't know what you're talking about. Nobody does. You're alone, Joker."
Her voice seethed with venom, yet shook along with her body. It was still so frail, despite the hatred that fueled it. The Joker rolled his eyes, crossing his arms smugly, wearing the trail of red pooling and crusting against his suit like a second skin,
"Or maybe you're just the one that's al-ways been alone, Rachel? Why else would you have come running here…and to kill me?!"
His shoulders upturned in mock disbelief, neck craning towards the side, the permanent crimson leer upon his face curving into a quizzical smirk,
"Well, if everyone out…there, outside of this place, knew about what you were doing, pointing my knife at me, intending to hurt…me? Tell me, is that what Harrveyy taught you when you were under his little…wing? Was that what you knew to be the real way to deal with Gotham's criminals all along? And yet you hid it, tried to hide your little violent streak behind your job as a law-abiding little slave, second to Dent, hiding in his shadow to make you feel a li-ttle bit better about your own existence."
"That's not true."
Her voice was a hiss; a reflex. She had stopped in her tracks, holding the quivering knife before her, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. An inescapable torrent of emotion filled her at the bastard's words; herself as a child, wide-eyed and innocent, wanting aching to find some way to avenge the murder of her best friend's parents; the aching in her heart when Bruce had gone missing for so long, numbing her worry with files upon files of manila cases, every person locked away another satiation for her soul; the kindness of Harvey's eyes, the way his gaze would fill her with such strength—strength she had channeled all this time, the strength to endure, the strength to cast away the thoughts in her sleep, of simply killing all those mobsters who would hurt the innocent without a second thought, of breaking the laws that did nothing time and time again but backfire and lead to more failed trials, more lives lost, yet she had placed her heart and soul and mind and body in Harvey, had become a vessel, something anything anything to lock away the violence, the thoughts that would make Bruce ashamed…
"I think you know it is, lit-tle Rachel. This…is the most a-live you've felt in a very long time."
She was hunched over at the sudden sharp pain in her calf, her breath hitched, her fingers still adamantly gripping hold of the knife. Slowly, she pulled herself across the wall towards the door, and at that moment, the Joker was getting up on his knees, inching nearer towards her as he made his way to his feet. He was a testament to chaos more than he had ever seemed before; the blood that matted his green hair, dried and clumped and smattered in damp patches against his forehead, the stark white face and black eyes marred with that same red that trickled across, smearing into the constant leering smile. The purple suit coat was torn open in a portrait of pain, pale chest badly disfigured with deep gashes and purpling bruises that, from this angle, oddly resembled smiles, the stitches sewn sloppily, whispering wanting tempting her to tear them open and make him bleed again.
Her knife was pointed in his direction, eyes never leaving his. Amusement rippled across his features in the widening of his lopsided grin, the quirking of chalky eyebrows, as if she were struggling to defeat something godlike, something eternal and endless; and with his body bloodied and still standing so still and composed (as composed as he could ever be), she could not deny the assumption.
Maybe that was why she was suddenly so afraid of him.
"Leave me alone." She meant to hiss; yet her voice came light, frail, like a little girl's.
The same thought seemed to cross his mind. Another grin, this time bearing teeth; a white lion, crouched to leap forward and tear out her jugular. He had found his opportunity, and suddenly she raised the knife higher, anticipating his pounce,
"Leave you alone, dear? You want me, Rachel. You need me. I am the part of you—of so many of this city's pathetic human pop-u-lace—that's just so much FUN! I wanted to teach you a little bit about all that chaos inside of you, and all that you've been holding back. Ya see, I've been doing you a fa-vor! And don't think that I ever meant to kill Harvey purposely, as I've told you. Chaos…is random. Chaos is fair. And I'm just…a dog chasing cars! I hurt,"
he wringed his hands for emphasis, drawing nearer, so close, so near, and she whimpered and pushed herself away faster, faster against the wall, her eyes wide as she took in his words,
"people at random. I ruin plans, I don't have them. Bat-man does, Gordon does, Ra-mi-rezz did, Ma-ro-ni did. And all I did was take their little plans and twist them and turn them upside down! No…whatever happened to you, my pretty little Rachel, happened because of Batsy. And we both. Know. That."
Her legs felt like lead as she stopped, again, partially because the pain in her calf was so overwhelmingly strong that she was afraid if she walked any further it would have literally split. Tears raked the corners of her vision, her mind feeling a sloppy jumble of confusion and stifled emotion as she suddenly fell towards the ground, fell towards her knees. Yet a strong hand—his hand, gloved and slippery—gripped her wrist with vicious force, pulled her back up so sharply she could almost feel the bones crunch. The knife still dangled on her side as she cried in pain, and he held the small of her back with his other hand with such force it wasn't as if he had been helping her to stand—he had her in a death grip, cradled in the arms of a killer.
"You're wrong," She could only sob as her eyes still shone with rage, staring into his chalk-white, almost expressionless face, "You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong."
"Am I?" He asked, and for once the amusement took a twinge of exasperation, "When Batsy picked and chose Dent-tuh over you…well how did that make you feel? When you thought that you were going to be the one to die, lying there all tied up in that chair, ready to be blown apart like fireworks in the sky. How did you feel about just-ice, Rachel, when just-ice stabbed you in the back?"
A gloved hand clamped about her face; the fingernails dug into her skin, and the way his fingers moved with a sharp yet careful caress across her cheeks, it was almost like he was stroking her,
"The only thing completely fair in this world…is cha-os. Not your little laws to keep you feeling safe at night, when you know you let someone else die because your verdict didn't get through. How many times have you laid there, thinking of each and every mangled face staring back at you from the slab, whispering to you that it's your fault, knowing now that one of them is Harrveyyy, haunting your dreams, and all because of Batsy boy?!"
She didn't protest. Her tongue felt numb; stuffed with doubt, empty and void of words. Her hands trembled enough to nearly drop the knife; yet he raised his head, studying her much like an artist to a bowl of clay, and she realized all too late that he had been raising his head to expose his bloodied neck to her.
"Now you can fix all of that," He said quietly, his hand gripping her other wrist and setting her nerves alight, fingers guiding it towards his throat. His knife glinted, shaking wildly against his skin, any inch nearer enough to pierce his jugular, "All you have to do…is learn how to kill what's really in your way."
She didn't even have time to register the gasp leaving her lips before her hand twitched to life. Mechanically, as if from the very depths of her soul, her fingers clenched upon the knife beneath the Joker's iron grip, moving it to scrape across the bloodied skin. Her vision was a pumping, whirling mass of adrenaline and lust, the chalk-white skin magnified before her senses, his heartbeat throbbing in her ears, so close so close so very close to being punctured and stilled forever…
Her breath racked her ears, intermingling with his furiously pumping heart, with the pulse fluttering beneath her hesitant fingers. She sliced a shallow cut across the near-translucent flesh and heard a hiss of arousal, her eyes half-opened, ecstasy filling her veins as if she were drugged. And she was, at that very moment, as droplets of blood began to pool against already caked skin, as she edged the knife deeper to a low carnal shudder from the madman who she was so tantalizingly close to killing.
His eyes bore through her and her heart was clenched by ice; her grip was firmer, she was tearing deeper through skin, not quite near the jugular but enough to hurt, and any more pressure and his heart would slow and he would feel pain and the pleasure rushed through her body in hot flame between her legs as she cried out in bloodlust and pulled the knife back suddenly to thrust forwards—
A crash.
Windows burst behind them; instantly she was thrown to the ground as dozens of SWAT barreled through the air, landing just between her fallen body and that of the howling criminal opposite her. For a long time she had laid against the ground, dread filling every part of her body, her stomach twisting in sickening defeat as the sound of hailing gunshots and the feel of rough fingers checking her pulse and dragging her upwards made her innards scream.
He was gone.
She was being dragged across the ground, identical rows of blank faces passing like clouds against the blank panic of her mind. She struggled yet she was too weak; her limbs did nothing but flail, her mouth did nothing but whimper. Seas of blue uniforms and red blood; seas of questions that died into rippling waves with her silence, flooding her skull.
Batman hadn't come.
Rachel fell against the ground, limp, like a doll, a fresh wave of pain crippling her leg yet doing nothing to quell the blankness in her mind. Men were ordering for stretchers, their voices assaulting her senses then filtering away like the sound of faraway static. Her knees bit into glass, debris strewn across the ground, her gaze consistent at asphalt smeared red.
It was then that she stared at the scattered shards of glass on the ground, taking in her reflection.
He had drawn lines across her face with the drying blood on her lip. Red lines across her cheek, forming the perfect curve of a smile.
*
She saw him momentarily, a flash of fluttering black against the pitch night sky. It had been before she had been placed like a doll into the police car, before her empty gaze and broken mind had registered her surroundings, so he had been more of a near-dream, perhaps a mere hallucination. He had been watching her from a perch against a low building, like a mourning raven, eyes soft behind the hardness of his vigilante mask, and for a moment she could almost bring the name to her parched lips, almost recognize the kind, worn face beneath, the face she had once professed her love to, a very long time ago, when they had thought themselves immortal.
But the recognition died out like a flickering candle, leaving nothing but darkness in its wake. As they shut the car, she found she couldn't even remember his real name.
She had forgotten him entirely.
*
"Where's the safest place we could put her right now?"
Gordon's voice, exasperated, along the edges of her mind. She was sitting in a chair, fiddling with her fingers; her face had been washed, her wounds tended to, as if the incident had never happened. The small television monitor in Gordon's office had been turned off at her entrance; presumably because it had been broadcasting the Joker's latest massacre in full detail, including questions as to what exactly went on in the building when the Joker had secured his hostage. Of course she hadn't replied to the questions, walked through the gauntlets of flashing bulbs and snarling reporters' faces as if it were mere air.
Everything was like air now, flowing through her fingers with the least pressure imaginable. Haunting her, like a ghost, clinging to her in perspiration and dreams. The officer at Gordon's side, a portly man who cast a wary eye in her direction before speaking, shrugged his shoulders,
"Hell if I know. No place in Gotham's safe—just like last week when the fucker burned the MCU to the ground. City's up over its head. Can't even trust the goddamn police force."
A frustrated sigh from her lips. She was pulling her knees to her head, burying herself against her lap. Her head ached. There was too much noise, too much of their talking and squabbling, too much screaming in her head, too much static in her brain. Her thoughts were skewered jumbles and then patches of empty nothingness, her nightmares flickering scenes of massacre and bloodshed from the past few weeks in grainy film. Who cared where they put her? What was the goddamned point, anyway?
"Miss Dawes?" Gordon's voice, strained and gruff with worry, pierced the chaos of her thoughts like a spear, "Are you all right?"
"What's. The point?" The words came in a near-stammer, her teeth clenched.
The portly officer's gaze, along with Gordon's, fixed upon her slight frame. She was kneading her hands as if they were dough, raking them with her fingernails, over and over, a nervous habit accumulated within the past few minutes. Her eyes stared down at the little white streaks on her skin with a sickening relish,
"The Joker wants me. Wants Gotham. And he's going to get it, sooner or later, no matter how many people he has to kill along the way. And I'm just one of the population he'd be glad to destroy, since we all don't get the message he's trying to spread. But even then…he just wants chaos."
The word spat itself from her lips like a bitter curse, a corrosive acid aching to escape her tongue for fear it would burn her from the inside.
Awkward, tense silence from the two officers. A cough, and Gordon was fumbling with the glasses on the bridge of his nose, pinching the skin at the top,
"Rachel…we're working with Batman to do all we can. We found you last night in the nick of time, and if the Joker ever lays his hands on you again, we'll rescue you and make him pay. Now we're going to shelter you in the safest place we can think of, and we don't want you leaving under any circumstances. Is that understood?"
The silence stretched on for what seemed an eternity. Finally, her blue eyes squeezed shut and she licked her lips, yet it did nothing to hold back the immense, near high-pitched giggle that escaped. It was all she could do not to howl, as she threw her head back and felt the throbbing ecstasy of the pain in the back of her head, the nod to her system that she was alive.
"Don't you understand, Gordon? It's too late. We could have just killed him and rid Gotham of him before he started taking lives like ants on a sidewalk. That's what we have to do. That's what…what Batman has. To do."
She craned her head to stare back at them, respond to the boring feeling of their gazes in her skull. She wondered vaguely what they saw when they looked at her now. Gordon seemed more troubled than ever, his gaze near-twitching behind his glasses, the larger officer pale as he regarded her. She wasn't aware she had been smiling until she felt her lips stretched out at a near-painfully taut angle, her cheeks straining to hold it in place.
"Rachel, we'll do what we need to do to put the Joker in custody and away from Gotham for good. Now you sound like you're in a bit of shock, so perhaps it would be best if you stayed overnight in the hospital, just to sleep and recollect yourself—"
It burst forward again, this time, stronger, less human. The laughter rippled from the depths of her insides, desperate and high-pitched and keening, a laughter that resonated with the screams within her soul, the bitterness, the exasperation in the human race and all its naivety. She was laughing because it was all she could do, seeing the faces she had murdered in her minds' eye over and over again, at the countless others dead because of her, at the people she had lost, the people who had never been locked away, the people like a stain on the earth with their stupidity and their maliciousness and their greed, and as she thought about how hopeless it all was, how hopeless everything had always been, her laughter bubbled and burst and frothed from within her, in great rippling currents in the air, until she was drowning drowning drowning in laughter, even when she was grabbed by the shoulders and thrown into a bed and, mercifully, oh-so kindly of them thank you dear doctor sir!, the syringe plunged into her shoulder and she saw blackness.
