Team Anarchy, Round Four, Fanfic: Cold, part 2/2
Title: Cold (part 2/2)
Words: 831
Disclaimer: DC Comics and Warner Bros. Inc. own Batman and the Joker, and I'm not making any money off of this story.
Prompt: Role reversal
Warnings and rating: PG-13 for violence and masochism
Summary: After Alfred is murdered, the Joker finds Batman teaching his murderer a lesson, and doesn't enjoy Batman's fall as much as he thought he would.
“Of course not, Bats, but I’m just tryin’ ta offer some perspective here. I mean, do ya really think this is what your butler would want?” He just stared at me in disbelieving silence for a moment, apparently too stunned by my words to say anything, and I didn’t blame him. I’d just said the first things that came to my mind, and what did it matter if it didn’t line up with what I would normally tell him? I had the right to change my mind, didn’t I? I had a feeling I was going to have to up the ante, though, if I was going to get the reaction from him I wanted. Match, meet oxygen…“Do ya really think it’s what Rachel would want, for you to become a murderer, like me? You know, she was so desperate to save the man she loved, that she went down on me, thinkin’ I would spare her Harvey-”
Before I even saw him make a move towards me, he’d slammed me against the wonderfully hard stone wall. Damn. I wanted ninja training. Maybe I should ask him to teach me. I wonder how good he’d hurt me, then.
“Don’t ever speak her name again!” Ah, there was the anger I missed so much. I watched with fascination as the ice cold not-Bruce shattered into a million pieces, and all that was left was that wonderful hot rage, and grief so deep that I could barely begin to comprehend it. Had I ever felt that way for anybody, to miss them so much? I didn’t know, but I suddenly wanted to, more than anything. Grief was better than Bruce’s emptiness, and it was better than… Who was I? It was funny, I had never let myself think on it, and it had never bothered me until now. What kind of person doesn’t even remember his own name?
I was rudely shaken out of my rumination when he slammed me into the wall again, then pinned me there by closing his hand over my throat in a vice-like grasp. My eyes rolled back into my head in bliss as I tried to gasp for air and only succeeded in becoming more lightheaded. “You murdered her just to push me over the edge, and you dare to complain now that I’ve started to see the world the way you do? That man is a worthless piece of slime, and I am going to rid the world of people like him, starting with you.”
I laughed and moaned in the same breath, wheezing through his crushing grasp, and he dropped me to the cold cement floor, repulsed.
“Go ahead, Bruce. Kill me. KILL ME!” I demanded as I knelt before him, licking nice salty blood from my lips. I must have bitten the inside of my mouth at some point in this exchange.
I met his enraged gaze unblinkingly, knowing there was something about the way I looked when I was actually serious that shook people to the core, even him. “I’m sure mommy and daddy would be so proud of you for ridding the world of a monster like me. Until they, uh, found out that you started fucking me in dark allies months after I murdered the woman you said you loved-ah!”
He’d tackled me fully to the ground and I was in a haze of pain and bliss as his fists bruised the tender tissue of my arms and legs and, mmm, yes, split my lip, but all too soon, all the wonderful pain stopped. He collapsed on top of me, shaking with what I at first thought was laughter but soon realized were tearless sobs.
“God dammit!” he growled, pounding his bloodied knuckles into the cement on either side of my body, and I squirmed with displeasure, wondering why he’d stopped hitting me. The plan had worked, but he was supposed to take his anger out on me, not…not this.
“They all die, they all die and I’m still here! I can’t…” he trailed off, the grief evidently becoming too much to voice. When I felt the first cool tears fall onto my neck, I froze, horrified, but relieved even more. Batman and the Joker were gods, but I’d realized that so much of what I craved about Batman was just… mortal. I felt dark amusement turn up my lips as I held him and whispered sweet little nothings in his ear-don’t you worry Bruce, you’ll surely stress yourself to death before anyone else you care about shakes off that mortal coil-and began to lick that wonderful mixture of blood and tears from his face.
Bruce was back; he’s never hard to find under all that anger, but now, now there were unwelcome questions spinning around in my mind that had never even mattered before. I leaned into the warmth of his body as closely as I could, coldcoldcolcold, and oh my God, who was I?