Team Anarchy - Round 1 - Fic - Title: Heartbeat of Arkham
Title: Heartbeat of Arkham
Disclaimer: If I owned them they would have less clothing while together
Rating: PG- PG13
Warnings: The Jokers mind
Characters/Pairings: Batman/Joker
Summary: “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
No one knew how Arkham worked. No one could ever understand what dwelled within its walls. Only its whirling occupants, its dark silent lovers understood it. No doctor or nurse or ward could withstand it, it called out for you in the night, drawing you in and making you its own. It was the thick insanity in the air, the feeling that perverted your brain when you walked in the door, the feeling that for a special brilliant few….meant home.
Arkham, the man, the last surviving his line, the Doctor…he was one of them now. A doctor still, in charge still, but he lurked the halls as they did, he sunk into his room and raved, he understood. Until Crane.
He was in the room, planning not his escape; it hardly needed planning, no, planning his next interlude with the Bat. What do you give a Bat as a token of love? He deserved so much. His poor hurting Bat, the prodigal son, the one member of the Arkham family that never seemed to make it home. Didn’t he know he belonged?
Maybe he did and that was the problem.
The plans were beautiful, laid out on the floor, another plan to bring the Bat closer to understanding, or at very least out to play. But he walked in. The fool. The bastard. Crane with a gun, how basic, how…human. And then the gun was smoking and Arkham was no more.
He watched the blood spread onto his papers. He wanted to laugh, to say how pretty it was if only the bits of brain matter would not block his view of the crimson stained plans...but there was a needle jutting from his arm. Like a porcupines’ spine it hung from him, its hollowed tip still embedded in white flesh, its plunger pushed down. Acid raced through his veins.
Arkham, their home and their prison, took a breath as its last living caretaker died upon its dirtied floor. It spasmed as the Joker slumped to the ground. Its heart was half dead and paralyzed.
He must have been swept through the pool of blood because it covered him now and there was never time to wash it off. Life was..broken, pieces of time and space in no order, hours, days, weeks went missing. How long had he slept?
Sometimes when Crane forgot him for a bit, when the injections were late… he remembered that he should be alive. Time enough not to heal, but to steal a breath before he was dragged under, only time enough to remember the Bat. Time enough to long for him.
But Crane was back. The syringe was rusty, maybe that’s why his body burned. How long had it been since he had spoken? Since he had woken up? Did the Bat miss him? Did he wander the night alone and in the back of his mind wonder where he was? The other half of his soul?
Gasps of fever. Of Pain. He remembered dizzied flashes. Waking in blood. Waking in vomit and waste.
There were pills now, serums, and the flashes changed. His arm was purple and sick, why wouldn’t the color change back? Crane was there. Always. Watching in the dark, Arkhams’ new soul, something worse than before. Watching from the walls.
His secrets, his life belonged to Crane now. The serums and poisons stole them from him, he did not have to remember to know that Crane had taken them, taken all his information, everything he had ever known. There was laughter. Like a murderer feeling the pulse of life flutter and die under his palm Crane laughed. Laughed when he said how he and the Bat were one.
If the fever remained he wished it would warm him the fuck up. If hypothermia was setting in he wished it would get to the blissful warmth and happiness part already. He lay like a dead thing on the floor, like the old realizing their own mortality, knowing their bodies no longer processed food, no longer made heat, nothing to do but wait for the end.
It was a flash of light, of life and consciousness, Crane was late with the needle again or was it an interrogation day? Night? Day? That laughter never stopped, it had become Arkhams pulse, a cancer that had invaded it, churning its insides to rot, readying it for its downfall because its heart was only getting sicker.
The door opened like a giant mouth, twisting open to swallow him whole, to inject his veins with poisoned hollow tipped fangs. But no greasy lolling tongue emerged; it was not the black cancer of Cranes ill frame. It was his heart, his soul, his Bat.
Arms, burning through the Kevlar, picked him up from the floor, cradled him against his chest.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Batman’s strong beating heart carried his own, showing it the way but he couldn’t keep up, he was tripping, falling… His head was heavy, hard to pick up, to drag to see the Bat, but he could see himself now. White skin now translucent, thick green veins pushed against it as if they would break through and escape at any moment, spray them all in the thick green poison. His purple arm was tinged with black.
“Joker.” The burning hand scorched his flesh but it lifted his face. Eyes like the sky he had forgotten.
Could he speak? If he could remember how had his throat rotted away? Turned to dust and fleshy pulp in his waking death? Footsteps like the footfall of winged devils on their way to see him, the weakening pulse of Arkham sang to him. Crane.
Blue eyes flashed like a storm, to the door, back to him. He could hear it too now, the call of Arkham. The feeling of hands tightening around him was all he needed. The Bat would never leave him like this.
He was on the floor again, the Bat sunk into the shadows. Did it feel like home? Sick and broken as Arkham was did it call to him? Invite him in? Welcome him home? Its savior.
But Crane knew. He knew and it was a henchman the Bat caught with his fists as the syringe sunk into his neck from the shadows. Not green. Red. Like blood, like death. The Bat fell. Crane was on him in seconds. Another needle of red jabbed into the putrid flesh of his arm, too dead to feel. Liquid fire poured though his dying veins as they burst and burnt. A path of fire on its way to his heart.
He had not moved in weeks. Crane did not expect the empty syringe to be taken from him, did not expect it to be thrust into his temple, to pierce his mind. The pitch of Arkham raised to a whining keen, the madmen locked in its doors were screaming. Could they feel the end coming?
Batman was crawling through the dark, eyes as wild as this place, as wild as the feelings he repressed. Black clad hands pushed at Crane, spun his body, the glass syringe shattered as it made contact with the ground, Batman’s hands searched on, uncaring. He burned. His face was becoming stark white. His beautiful Bat.
A vial came from deep within Cranes coat, tucked against his withered heart. An antidote. A backdoor. Batman uncapped it, their eyes locked over the vial. A single dose.
“If we split it it might buy us time.” He nodded, watched as the Bat tore off his gauntlet, his veins pulsing and inflamed. Could he feel Arkham screaming in his mind, its heart caught in that final stuttering rhythm? Half the vial went into Batman’s blood, his face twisted, eyes closed.
“Batsy.” His voice was gravel in a blender, it felt like boiling blood. The sharpened batarang in his hands stung as it bit into his hands. He waited for blue eyes, for the sky to open for him before he pushed-
And just like that all the poison was spilling out, all the life left in him spread across the floor. Arkham screamed for him but its breath was fading.
“Don’t be such an optimist Bats.”
He fell. A new blackness surrounded him, caught in the Bats arms, warm at last. The drugs were fading; his mind was slipping away from him as fast as he was regaining it. Poison and antidote battled for dominance in the heart pressed to his cheek. Its heady rhythm was anguish, the pulse of Arkham. So he felt it after all.
It was hard to breath, blood was seeping from his mouth, he could feel the still warm trickles pour from him like a gothic fount. He gasped against the Bats chest, blood splattering him as a deep gurgle spread through his chest. He needed to shout but the words drowned in his throat, he thrashed, sitting finally with warm arms around him he stared at the needle, half used on the floor. The Bat picked it up and stared deep into his eyes.
Batman injected himself with the rest of the antidote.
He was lowered to the floor, Batman carefully avoiding the impromptu dagger that remained imbedded so intimately in his body. Hands, one gloved, one human held his face, his vision was fading and it was hard to concentrate as his body seized, trying to take in air. A face hovered just above him. Sky blue was the last thing he saw.
He could still hear her. His Arkham. Its death dance still thrummed on, faster and harder, its heart like that of a fluttering bird but the sound was soft, almost drowned out in the deep steady thump of another.
“Thank You.” A mouth pressed to his, lips caressing his own, taking his last breathe. Lips that thrummed with the power of that beat.
As the world went quiet and the hard lips on his mouth faded with his mind Arkham welcomed home its only surviving son, its new prince and its heart.
Disclaimer: If I owned them they would have less clothing while together
Rating: PG- PG13
Warnings: The Jokers mind
Characters/Pairings: Batman/Joker
Summary: “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
No one knew how Arkham worked. No one could ever understand what dwelled within its walls. Only its whirling occupants, its dark silent lovers understood it. No doctor or nurse or ward could withstand it, it called out for you in the night, drawing you in and making you its own. It was the thick insanity in the air, the feeling that perverted your brain when you walked in the door, the feeling that for a special brilliant few….meant home.
Arkham, the man, the last surviving his line, the Doctor…he was one of them now. A doctor still, in charge still, but he lurked the halls as they did, he sunk into his room and raved, he understood. Until Crane.
He was in the room, planning not his escape; it hardly needed planning, no, planning his next interlude with the Bat. What do you give a Bat as a token of love? He deserved so much. His poor hurting Bat, the prodigal son, the one member of the Arkham family that never seemed to make it home. Didn’t he know he belonged?
Maybe he did and that was the problem.
The plans were beautiful, laid out on the floor, another plan to bring the Bat closer to understanding, or at very least out to play. But he walked in. The fool. The bastard. Crane with a gun, how basic, how…human. And then the gun was smoking and Arkham was no more.
He watched the blood spread onto his papers. He wanted to laugh, to say how pretty it was if only the bits of brain matter would not block his view of the crimson stained plans...but there was a needle jutting from his arm. Like a porcupines’ spine it hung from him, its hollowed tip still embedded in white flesh, its plunger pushed down. Acid raced through his veins.
Arkham, their home and their prison, took a breath as its last living caretaker died upon its dirtied floor. It spasmed as the Joker slumped to the ground. Its heart was half dead and paralyzed.
He must have been swept through the pool of blood because it covered him now and there was never time to wash it off. Life was..broken, pieces of time and space in no order, hours, days, weeks went missing. How long had he slept?
Sometimes when Crane forgot him for a bit, when the injections were late… he remembered that he should be alive. Time enough not to heal, but to steal a breath before he was dragged under, only time enough to remember the Bat. Time enough to long for him.
But Crane was back. The syringe was rusty, maybe that’s why his body burned. How long had it been since he had spoken? Since he had woken up? Did the Bat miss him? Did he wander the night alone and in the back of his mind wonder where he was? The other half of his soul?
Gasps of fever. Of Pain. He remembered dizzied flashes. Waking in blood. Waking in vomit and waste.
There were pills now, serums, and the flashes changed. His arm was purple and sick, why wouldn’t the color change back? Crane was there. Always. Watching in the dark, Arkhams’ new soul, something worse than before. Watching from the walls.
His secrets, his life belonged to Crane now. The serums and poisons stole them from him, he did not have to remember to know that Crane had taken them, taken all his information, everything he had ever known. There was laughter. Like a murderer feeling the pulse of life flutter and die under his palm Crane laughed. Laughed when he said how he and the Bat were one.
If the fever remained he wished it would warm him the fuck up. If hypothermia was setting in he wished it would get to the blissful warmth and happiness part already. He lay like a dead thing on the floor, like the old realizing their own mortality, knowing their bodies no longer processed food, no longer made heat, nothing to do but wait for the end.
It was a flash of light, of life and consciousness, Crane was late with the needle again or was it an interrogation day? Night? Day? That laughter never stopped, it had become Arkhams pulse, a cancer that had invaded it, churning its insides to rot, readying it for its downfall because its heart was only getting sicker.
The door opened like a giant mouth, twisting open to swallow him whole, to inject his veins with poisoned hollow tipped fangs. But no greasy lolling tongue emerged; it was not the black cancer of Cranes ill frame. It was his heart, his soul, his Bat.
Arms, burning through the Kevlar, picked him up from the floor, cradled him against his chest.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Batman’s strong beating heart carried his own, showing it the way but he couldn’t keep up, he was tripping, falling… His head was heavy, hard to pick up, to drag to see the Bat, but he could see himself now. White skin now translucent, thick green veins pushed against it as if they would break through and escape at any moment, spray them all in the thick green poison. His purple arm was tinged with black.
“Joker.” The burning hand scorched his flesh but it lifted his face. Eyes like the sky he had forgotten.
Could he speak? If he could remember how had his throat rotted away? Turned to dust and fleshy pulp in his waking death? Footsteps like the footfall of winged devils on their way to see him, the weakening pulse of Arkham sang to him. Crane.
Blue eyes flashed like a storm, to the door, back to him. He could hear it too now, the call of Arkham. The feeling of hands tightening around him was all he needed. The Bat would never leave him like this.
He was on the floor again, the Bat sunk into the shadows. Did it feel like home? Sick and broken as Arkham was did it call to him? Invite him in? Welcome him home? Its savior.
But Crane knew. He knew and it was a henchman the Bat caught with his fists as the syringe sunk into his neck from the shadows. Not green. Red. Like blood, like death. The Bat fell. Crane was on him in seconds. Another needle of red jabbed into the putrid flesh of his arm, too dead to feel. Liquid fire poured though his dying veins as they burst and burnt. A path of fire on its way to his heart.
He had not moved in weeks. Crane did not expect the empty syringe to be taken from him, did not expect it to be thrust into his temple, to pierce his mind. The pitch of Arkham raised to a whining keen, the madmen locked in its doors were screaming. Could they feel the end coming?
Batman was crawling through the dark, eyes as wild as this place, as wild as the feelings he repressed. Black clad hands pushed at Crane, spun his body, the glass syringe shattered as it made contact with the ground, Batman’s hands searched on, uncaring. He burned. His face was becoming stark white. His beautiful Bat.
A vial came from deep within Cranes coat, tucked against his withered heart. An antidote. A backdoor. Batman uncapped it, their eyes locked over the vial. A single dose.
“If we split it it might buy us time.” He nodded, watched as the Bat tore off his gauntlet, his veins pulsing and inflamed. Could he feel Arkham screaming in his mind, its heart caught in that final stuttering rhythm? Half the vial went into Batman’s blood, his face twisted, eyes closed.
“Batsy.” His voice was gravel in a blender, it felt like boiling blood. The sharpened batarang in his hands stung as it bit into his hands. He waited for blue eyes, for the sky to open for him before he pushed-
And just like that all the poison was spilling out, all the life left in him spread across the floor. Arkham screamed for him but its breath was fading.
“Don’t be such an optimist Bats.”
He fell. A new blackness surrounded him, caught in the Bats arms, warm at last. The drugs were fading; his mind was slipping away from him as fast as he was regaining it. Poison and antidote battled for dominance in the heart pressed to his cheek. Its heady rhythm was anguish, the pulse of Arkham. So he felt it after all.
It was hard to breath, blood was seeping from his mouth, he could feel the still warm trickles pour from him like a gothic fount. He gasped against the Bats chest, blood splattering him as a deep gurgle spread through his chest. He needed to shout but the words drowned in his throat, he thrashed, sitting finally with warm arms around him he stared at the needle, half used on the floor. The Bat picked it up and stared deep into his eyes.
Batman injected himself with the rest of the antidote.
He was lowered to the floor, Batman carefully avoiding the impromptu dagger that remained imbedded so intimately in his body. Hands, one gloved, one human held his face, his vision was fading and it was hard to concentrate as his body seized, trying to take in air. A face hovered just above him. Sky blue was the last thing he saw.
He could still hear her. His Arkham. Its death dance still thrummed on, faster and harder, its heart like that of a fluttering bird but the sound was soft, almost drowned out in the deep steady thump of another.
“Thank You.” A mouth pressed to his, lips caressing his own, taking his last breathe. Lips that thrummed with the power of that beat.
As the world went quiet and the hard lips on his mouth faded with his mind Arkham welcomed home its only surviving son, its new prince and its heart.