Yellow spots, chapter 10
Yellow spots, chapter 10
Title: Yellow spots
Pairing: Batman(Bruce)/Joker
Rating: PG-13 (this one)
Words: 4600
Warnings: slash, violence, sexual content
Disclaimer: don't own anything
Summary: Something happens with the Joker, something that may change his life forever.
Thanks to my wonderful beta Liz! I love you, dear! <3 Another chapter, which just kicked my ass with its seriousness and darkness, but as i promised - the next one will be back to normal and easy to read :)
Chapter 10.
They don’t talk about the hallucination accident the next day, or the day after. As a matter of fact, they don’t talk at all.
Bruce makes sure to have put all the security system on the room the Joker now occupies, not wishing to go over his own mistakes once again. The Joker is locked carefully in the room, and only Alfred goes in to give the criminal some food.
Bruce knows he’s avoiding difficulties again. He knows that, but he also knows that he’s physically not capable of facing his problems. So he stays at Wayne Enterprisers till late at night and goes for work early in the morning, not wanting to stay home for another minute, being tempted to go to the Joker’s room and -
And, what, exactly? He shakes his head sternly and bites his nail, as he doesn’t know how to answer that. What was the whole idea at the first place? To get the Joker out of prison. Why?
The silence is his answer.
He’s completely lost for actions, or words he can say to the clown. He was confused enough before the whole… hallucination thing, but now he’s just… too perplexed. He can’t figure out what to do now, what to do with the Joker, and he’s infuriated with not being able to figure why he has been so stupid to bring the damn clown to his house at all.
He certainly can’t give the Joker back to police, but he also can’t put him in Arkham in his current mental state. And though his mind screams at Bruce to just shake the villain off at the mental hospital where that is their main aim - to cure mentally sick criminals - he can’t bring himself to do that, because he very well knows that there wouldn’t be any help for the Joker. Not with the way they’re treating their patients.
Bruce chuckles mirthlessly at the thought that he even cares about such things as their ways of treating sick criminals.
But, that’s just… unfair.
---
Today he comes back home in 2:46 am and he’s almost sleepwalking. His eyelids are so heavy that he’s forced to close one of his eyes in turn to let the other rest for a minute.
He goes straight to the living room and topples down on the couch, stretching his legs and letting his muscles relax. He yawns so hard there’re tears in his eyes and he lazily wipes them away. He’s so exhausted he doesn’t want to go to his room, not caring about sleeping fully dressed.
He turns around to change position and a sudden pain in the neck makes him wince and let out a weak moan, rubbing the back of his neck slightly.
What the fuck.
He gets up slowly, staggering on his weak legs, and heads to his room, determined to have a normal sleep on a normal bed. His neck aches immensely and he curses all the way along.
He pauses suddenly as he passes the Joker’s room, stopping to stare at the white door and the chink of light coming from it.
Joker never turns off the light. He’s sure there’s something in the darkness, watching him, spying on him, scaring him. All these childish fears may seem ridiculous to Bruce, but they are really driving the clown mad.
Joker is paranoid.
But who wouldn’t be, under his circumstances?
Sighing, Bruce turns to face the door completely as he suddenly wants to come in and check on Joker, just to be sure he’s not cutting his veins open now. He’s just worried Joker might have done something stupid, and he just wants to be certain everything’s alright. He nods to himself slightly, reaching his hand to unlock the door by supplying the password. Alfred made sure to set up all these devices on the room, so the Joker would realize that his attempts to break out are poor and brainless.
Entering the room, Bruce lets his eyes adjust to the sudden bright light and he wonders how Joker can possibly sleep with such illumination.
Joker lies on the bed on his back with his legs stretched out, one arm placed on his stomach and the other under his head. His face is relaxed and calm, and he looks so young and harmless that Bruce can’t match him with the killing clown psychopath he knows. His breathing is steady, chest rising and falling rhythmically, and Bruce can’t tear his eyes away for some reason, looking at the pink scars that are very vivid on the pale skin. He leans back on the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. His legs refuse to hold him and he slides down against the wall on the cold floor.
Joker doesn’t stir. Bruce watches him through half-closed eyes, and he chuckles at the thought of falling asleep in the Joker’s room and what the clown would think of him when he finds Bruce sleeping on the floor in the morning. He has to get out now, before such a thing happens.
He stands up heavily, like a ramshackle aged man, and slowly makes his way to the door. His hand is on a handle already when he suddenly hears a quiet but firm voice behind him.
“No.”
He turns around sharply, afraid of the Joker finding out that Bruce secretly watches him during the night, but the clown is deeply asleep, frowning at something he sees in his dream.
“No,” he repeats, more aggressively this time, wincing, and the hand on his stomach curls in a fist, knuckles whitening. Bruce watches, mesmerized, as the Joker’s expression changes to a sore one. He winces as if from pain he feels and bites his lower lip hard, his breathing quickening. The next moment there’s an expression of absolute horror on his face and he gasps in his sleep.
“No,” he says quietly, his hand clutching the material of the white T-shirt he’s wearing. He opens his mouth again and mutters something, and Bruce strains to hear it.
“Yellow spots.”
Bruce frowns at the meaninglessness of the words. Yellow spots? What spots? He looks closer at Joker. His face is now an expression of pure pain, but Bruce is sure somehow that the pain is not physical.
“Bruce, Bruce… oh why?” the Joker whispers, his voice weak and tired, and Bruce raises his eyebrows, surprised at hearing his own name. Joker dreams about him? But the clown’s expression tells him very well that there’s nothing good in the dream, and Bruce shudders at the thought of being some monster in the clown’s nightmare. “Oh Bruce,” Joker sighs shakily. “Yellow. Yellow spots.”
He turns around to his left side, now facing the stunned Bruce. Joker’s eyelids tremble and then he suddenly opens his eyes, blinking and frowning.
Bruce just stands there, like a kid, caught doing some prank, not knowing what to say or do. Joker’s gaze shifts on him and he focuses his eyes on Bruce, staring at him.
“You are here,” he half-states half-questions. “Right?”
He must be wondering if he’s not imagining me, Bruce realizes, nodding.
“Yes,” he says hoarsely, and coughs to clear his throat. “I came to check on you before I go to bed.”
His voice is somewhat… awkward, and Joker notices it too. So Bruce asks a question quickly to break the awkward silence.
“What were you dreaming about, Joker? You were… saying my name and… some things.”
Joker frowns, and his hand goes up too rub his scared lips. He looks somewhere past Bruce, not really seeing, as he confesses, “I don’t remember.”
He tells the truth. Bruce sees it in his eyes; he really doesn’t remember, but Bruce wants him to, wants him to say that Bruce wasn’t his nightmare, wasn’t doing anything horrible in his dream. He doesn’t know the reason for this irrational need, he just wants to hear it.
“So, Brucey comes to me at nights to admire my slee-ping beauty,” Joker drawls, smirking, and Bruce is affected by the words, by the fact of how true they are.
Fuck, he wasn’t admiring the clown. He was just very tired.
It all is the Joker’s bloody fault.
“I’m touched, Brucey, I truly am touched,” he continues as Bruce doesn’t respond. “I consider you to be ve-ry handsome, too.”
Bruce grits his teeth as the ridiculousness and absurdity of the situation strikes him. What the hell is he still doing here?!
All of this enrages him suddenly - the Joker, the fact he’s always in his house, he’s dreaming of Bruce, Alfred’s fucking confessions - all that enrages him all of sudden within seconds. His hand goes down in his pocket automatically to take out a Thozarine bottle and he pops one dry. What a mess he’s created, again!
“Oh, why so serious, Brucey?” Joker teases, and Bruce isn’t sure whether the Joker is in a good mood or just wants to piss him off. “You’re always so serious and angry. How can you live with all that anger?”
And Bruce explodes. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouts, his hands curled in fists, and in the back of his mind he sees himself from the third person and he doesn’t understand what he is so angry about.
The Joker’s face hardens. “Why are so angry with me?” he demands, his tone serious, and that makes Bruce laugh mirthlessly.
“You seriously don’t understand why I’m being cross?! You’re a fucking murderer, maybe that’s why?!”
“Oh stop it!” Joker shots back, his eyes darkening “You knew it from the beginning, you knew I killed and would kill again, and that didn’t stop you then! It’s your problem you act before you think, so quit being a stupid kid and face the problem already!”
“Oh yeah?! And what can I face? A clown psychopath I locked in my room because I don’t know what to do with him?! Or Alfred telling me he’s done some god only knows what horrible thing and then shutting me out?! Or the fact I can’t sleep at all, using pill after pill to get myself calm?! What can I face?!”
All that cumulative offenses, incomprehension, emotions he doesn’t want to feel, all of that gets out right now because the Joker initiated it. The tense ball inside his chest loosens a bit as he tries to shake all this shit off himself, saying it finally, saying it out loud.
“Oh, I see, you like sulking,” Joker suddenly says, narrowing his eyes at the vigilante.
“What?!”
“You like feeling miserable, feeling guilty. You think if you blame yourself that much, no one has a right to blame you more, as you’ve already punished yourself enough,” Joker explains, staring straight at Bruce’s soul. He keeps silent, lost and confused, irritated with Joker’s crazy assumptions.
“That’s bullshit, Joker,” he says, straining to keep his voice cool, but it still appears shaky with emotion. He suddenly wants to beat the living daylights out of Joker so much his hands ache, and he puts them in his jeans pockets to stay away from temptation. “It’s just… so unfair.”
Great, now he’s complaining.
“Oh yes,” Joker nods, his eyes still narrowed. “Your two favorite words, fair and unfair. I wonder where do you put anything else, beyond these two categories? Beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’?”
Bruce keeps silent, furrowing his brow, hating every word that escapes Joker’s mouth but still desiring to hear it all.
“I’m sure, for you it’s all about justice, the way you see it,” the clown continues, his tone dead serious and voice quiet, and Bruce can’t match this… dangerous, somehow, manipulator with a sleeping, harmless young man he observed less than five minutes ago. “You made up the Batman in a burst of a sense of duty, because you believed this is justice, this is fair, but I’ll tell you now, Bruce, and do listen to me because there’s NO such a thing as justice!” Joker raises his voice sharply, now almost shouting, and Bruce backs away automatically.
He’s the Joker, he reminds himself. He’s a dangerous criminal and he’s smart and manipulative and he can talk me into anything, Bruce tells himself firmly, but there’s little consolation. The Joker’s words affected him, got under his skin already, and he can’t back off now until he hears all of this.
He’s burning with fury, though, his hands curled in fists as he listens to the Joker so readily deny everything Bruce’s been taking for granted for his entire life.
Joker’s wrong, Bruce knows it, he just can’t figure how to prove it to the villain, how to put his muddled thoughts into words.
“Everyone has his own morals and ideas of justice, concept of ‘fair’ and ‘unfair,’ and in this variety and chaos, tell me, how can you find any fucking justice if there’s none?! The lath you’ve set up for yourself doesn’t fit others’, Bruce, so how the hell can you possibly expect people to fit into whatever sick morals you have on your mind?!” He’s panting now from the shouting, his jaw tight, nostrils flaring and eyes flashing.
Bruce doesn’t respond, his mind going over the words again and again even as Bruce wishes it wouldn’t. He doesn’t want to think about it this way, doesn’t want to let Joker spoil everything he believes in, doesn’t want to, afraid the words might be true and then what will it be left for Bruce? His morals and rules are the only thing he can rely upon, so what will it be without them? What will be left of Bruce?!
“Fair - is to protect innocent people from scum like you, Joker! People, who don’t deserve the things you do to them,” Bruce spits through painfully gritted teeth. He won’t let that fucking clown get him, he won’t let him make Bruce doubt!
“Oh, and here goes another piece of bullshit!” Joker exclaims, looking wild, like a caged animal. “Remember, once and for all, Bruce, there’re no innocent people in the entire world!”
“What the -”
“Tell me, c’mon, who do you consider to be innocent, huh? People without sins?! Do such exist? Tell me, then, where lies the thin line that ends innocence?! What does a man need to do to go from your ‘good’ category to the ‘bad’ one, hmm?!”
Joker shouts at him, and Bruce distantly thinks about waking up Alfred. He doesn’t know how to respond to that, can’t figure any possible response that would be reasonable enough. He’s burning with emotion, and his guts leap, the cold uneasy feeling deep inside his stomach that twists and turns his insides and goes up his spine. There’s suddenly a clot in his throat, preventing Bruce from breathing freely, and he can’t think of anything better than to turn around and rush out of the room, running from the problem, as usual.
Both the kitchen and the sitting room are dark, illuminated only by the moonlight through the large windows, and Bruce can see only outlines of furniture around. He paces to one of the windows, looking at the city beneath him as he braces himself desperately, his eyes stinging.
Is the Joker right? Is Bruce just too blind to see all of these? Does he still take his childish ideas for granted instead of growing up finally and facing the world, all the masks out? Is it really so… pointless, what he’s doing? It so is, if the clown’s right.
Bruce stands there in the dark, forehead pressed to the cold glass of the window, breathing deeply and slowly, trying to calm himself down but failing. Joker’s words already took their places in his brain, ringing in his ears over and over again as Bruce screws his eyes shut, suddenly getting cold.
There’re quiet footsteps behind him and Bruce expects it to be Alfred, probably awoken by Joker’s shouting, so he’s both surprised and angry to see the clown himself making his way through the doorway and into the room, as Bruce mentally curses for forgetting to lock the room back up.
The Joker makes his way to Bruce, slowly and noiselessly, and Bruce can’t see anything besides the dark silhouette of a man until he comes closer to a window and lets the moonlight illuminate his features a bit. There’re odd shadows dancing on his face and the rough skin where his scars twist his mouth makes the villain look especially dangerous.
“Bruce, I -” he begins, but Bruce cuts him off, venom in his voice.
“I don’t remember allowing you to leave the room,” he spits out, glaring at Joker, and the clown shivers.
“Please, Bruce, I didn’t -“
“Get the hell back to the room before I throw you there myself,” Bruce hisses, turning fully to face the Joker, his insides burning with rage and something close to self-pity.
The Joker constantly glances around his shoulders, such a desperate, paranoiac motion that Bruce suddenly remembers that Joker can’t stand the darkness anymore, so it must be damn hard for him to stay there like that.
He lets out a long-suffering sigh as he walks to the wall to turn on the light, his vision getting blurred for a moment and he lets his eyes adjust to the light. Joker stands in the middle of the room, looking rather ridiculous in the T-shirt Bruce gave him, which is too large for him, hanging on him like a sack. He’s bracing himself, looking at Bruce with a regretful and hopeful expression, asking him silently to hear him out.
Bruce pauses, not sure what to do now, whether he should be stern and stand his ground, or give up, again, to the clown’s manipulative speeches.
“Please, Bruce, do listen to me,” Joker begs him, motioning to the couch he’s standing near, and Bruce finally makes up his mind. In three large steps he’s by the Joker, sitting down on the sofa. The same one he’d almost fallen asleep on before going to the Joker’s room.
Joker follows him, sitting next to Bruce clumsily, hitting his hip on the armchair in the process and nearly ending up on Bruce’s lap. He’s too clumsy for such a great world destroyer, Bruce thinks sardonically, moving aside a bit to leave more room for the clown.
“Sorry,” Joker murmurs, positioning himself near the vigilante, still too close to him, but Bruce lets it go, too tired to pay attention to such things.
It’s still difficult for him to believe that he’s right now sitting peacefully on a couch with the most wanted criminal in Gotham, who also happened to be a psychopathic clown bastard with a manipulative character, who considers himself to be the most intelligent and sensible person in the city.
Well, Joker is intelligent, Bruce has to give him that. He’s the kind of man who marks all these tiny unnoticeable things about a person, catches all their words, to use them later against that person. He’s also smart enough to figure a man’s character by the way he dresses, behaves and speaks, so he lets himself toy with people and their feelings, their lives, after all, he believes they are all way too obtuse to be anything besides his entertainment, and -
“Look,” Joker begins. His voice makes Bruce snap out of his thoughts and he blinks, his gaze focusing on the clown. “I didn’t mean to be that harsh, I really didn’t. I was just being … overemotional, I call it. Anyway…” He claps his palm on his knee, his eyes wide and he leans closer to Bruce, as if going to tell him some secret of great importance. “I’m now gonna tell you a story, so please hear it and don’t interrupt old Uncle Jay, ‘k?”
Bruce doesn’t respond, simply too dazed by the Joker’s words. A story? Either of us must be insane, Bruce thinks as he leans back to the couch back.
“Once upon a time -” Joker begins like a professional story-teller, and Bruce can’t help a chuckle that escapes his mouth involuntarily. He shakes his head slightly, a tiny smile on his lips as he realizes the Joker has just turned him from a raging beast to light-headed, interested listener in a matter of seconds. Joker makes a disapproving face at him, clicking his teeth and frowning, and Bruce lifts his hands defensively in apology, encouraging the man to continue.
“So,” the clown goes on again, his gaze fixed on Bruce’s eyes, “once God sent on earth an old wise archangel and a young inexperienced angel,” he says in a smooth voice, and Bruce stares at him, wide-eyed as the meaning of the words sinks in. What kind of a story is it, and more important, why is the Joker telling him this kind of things?
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ‘Joker can’t possibly believe in God!’ but can you pleeease let me finish?” Joker grumbles discontentedly, and Bruce nods, still dazed with what he’s hearing.
“As I was saying, God sent them to earth for the young angel to learn all this… uh, holy-stuff from the older and wiser one that would be archangel. So the old one took him to the first house that the archangel picked, pretending to be real people, and they asked the family in the house to let them in for a night, as they were poor travelers. The family appeared to be ve-ry poor themselves, beggarly, I would say, with lots of kids and a tiny place to live and only one cow, which they milked, and sold its milk to earn a living. But they still let the angels in, and gave them the best place in house for the night and fed them the best food they had.”
Joker makes a meaningful pause, letting Bruce digest the words. “Kind people they were, weren’t they? And imagine how shocked the young angel was when in the morning he found out that the archangel killed the cow during the night, the family’s only way to get money for food.
“He asked him ‘Why did you do it? They were so kind to us!’ But the archangel said nothing, and they set off to the next house.
“In the evening they picked another house, and the family there appeared to be really wealthy, just like you, Brucey, with fancy horses and a large house and all that stuff.”
Bruce rolls his eyes, but the clown ignores him.
“Nevertheless, they didn’t give the angels anything to eat, and provided them with a tiny ramshackle barn to sleep in, along with the dirty stray dogs. So when the angel woke up, he was shocked again to see the archangel sealing up the cracks in the walls of a barn. So, again, he asked his mate why he was doing this work for such horrible, greedy people.”
There’s another pause and Bruce finds the Joker’s intensive shrewd gaze on his face. He swallows convulsively, as he thinks he knows where the story’s going.
“And what d’you think the wise archangel answered, hmm, Brucey? He said, ‘You didn’t notice it, but there is an old treasure buried in the walls of this ancient barn. If I didn’t seal the cracks, these people would find it and become greedier and vainer. You also missed the fact that the cow in the house of the kind family was ill with rabies, and if the family drank its milk once more, they would become fatally ill. So I killed the cow to prevent it from happening.’”
Joker falls silent, and Bruce suddenly can’t force himself to meet the man’s eyes. He looks away hurriedly, the words ringing in his ears. The clown sighs deeply before saying, quietly but firmly, “What I’m trying to say, Bruce, is that people - any of them - are too… narrow-minded, too dim-witted and stupid to see the whole, true picture! They just aren’t capable of seeing further their own nose, of trying to dig deeper and understand anything around them! And if people can’t even understand their own lives, how can they possibly judge anything else?!”
Bruce doesn’t respond; he simply doesn’t know what he can answer to that. The Joker is too close to him in that moment, dangerously close, both physically and mentally, making Bruce vulnerable, and he doesn’t like it. He feels the heat radiating from the villain’s body and he presses his stinging eyes shut for a second, wishing for this moment to last longer, the moment where Joker’s human side is so vivid and tangible. He opens his eyes and the delusion is washed away.
“Everyone judges as far as they’re concerned, Joker,” he hisses through his gritted teeth. “It’s our only way to live and stay alive. The only sensible way.”
He stands up sharply, face away from the Joker, not wishing to hear his sick philosophy any longer. Enough of this, at least for now.
“Get up,” he orders in a cool tone, and he hears the Joker sigh quietly before moving obediently from the couch and making his way to the room, his head ducked down. Bruce opens the door for him, waiting for the man to come in so he can lock him. Just before Bruce closes the door, Joker turns to him, his eyes narrowed.
“You know I’m right,” he says quietly, convinced, eyeing Bruce shrewdly. His piercing gaze goes to the billionaire’s soul, and Bruce feels completely exposed.
“I don’t want to look at the world from your dark and pessimistic point of view,” Bruce growls, so tired with all the talk and incomprehension, questions and enigmas, but before he steps aside to supply the password on the door, he hears Joker’s voice. His knowing tone annoys the hell out of Bruce.
“But do you have a choice now?”
He slams the door with a loud crack.
---
On the way to his bedroom, Bruce gets out his cell phone, dialing to check his voice mail in a desperate attempt to distract himself from the fucking Joker and his fucking stories.
He indeed succeeds in that as his attention flicks to a voice in his phone, a voice mail from Lucius Fox, informing him there’s a result from the searching.
Bruce swallows nervously at the thought they might have come upon the tracks of the Joker’s captor finally.
He makes his way to his room, thinking over the possibilities of the bastard’s identity.
Absentmindedly, he thinks of the fact that their recent shouting in the sitting room didn’t wake Alfred, who’s usually very keen on each noise and sound. Now he remembers he hasn’t quite seen Alfred in the evening either; not a sign of the butler in the house since dinner. But he doesn’t let his mind dwell on that, as the more important news rings in his ears again.
They finally traced the sadistic bastard.