Team Anarchy - Round 24 - fanfic - Shadows Like Dreaming, Chapter 3
Title: Shadows Like Dreaming - Chapter 3
Author: razothredfire
Prompt: Possession
Word Count: 4,751
Rating: NC-17 (eventually)
Summary: "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for awhile." -Westley, The Princess Bride
After an unfortunate turn of events, Bruce finds himself haunted.
Disclaimer: This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: graphic violence, mature themes, character death, angst, slash, necrophilia (if you count ghosts in your definition)
Finding an inconspicuous spot to park the Tumbler and patrol by foot and grapple was getting more and more difficult lately. Bruce knew he still had Gordon’s full trust, but Batman continued to be demonized by the city as a whole - and as such, by extension, a large portion of the people within law enforcement. While the good cops among them had certainly been grateful to have their crooked counterparts exposed and put behind bars, none of them were particularly happy to be upstaged and outperformed by what they perceived as a lawless vigilante, much less one held responsible for a number of deaths.
Bruce finally spotted an opening and took it, steering the Tumbler into a tight, dark alleyway near the Narrows while there weren’t any observers in sight. He set the vehicle to lock down and monitor its surroundings while it waited for him to return, then shot a grappling hook onto the rooftop of an adjacent building.
It was always a great deal easier to patrol from the rooftops. While criminals were more wary about watching for Batman now, most continued to keep their eyes mostly on ground level. Humans tended not to keep a paranoid eye on the sky; there was no evolutionary reason for them to expect a predator from that direction. Their complacence worked to Bruce’s advantage, letting him watch and listen with technology-enhanced senses from a safe distance before planning how to intervene.
The streets were quiet tonight. Bruce wasn’t sure whether that was a welcome change or not. While it was his goal to create a city where citizens didn’t need to live in constant fear, his work was a useful outlet for processing his thoughts and emotions. If his patrol was nothing but a clean, uneventful sweep, it left him feeling happy that he seemed to be making some progress… but unfulfilled on a deeper level.
/Need action, huh?/
Bruce started, having forgotten about the hallucination with his focus on the sights and sounds of the streets below. It had been silent ever since he’d started the patrol. I’d almost say it’s too quiet, like everything is going down behind closed doors. Or being planned for another night.
/It is./
Bruce bristled at that, his jaw clenching. How do you know?
/Experience,/ it purred, little fingers of cold air sneaking past Bruce’s cape and armor to brush the heated skin beneath. He shivered. /You want action?/
Do I need to spell it out for you? You should already know, he snapped back, irritated that his mind was playing games with him now. The thought sparked another worry; suppose he started to get distracted when it really mattered? What if something happened when he needed to concentrate everything he had on a course of action?
He resolved to do the research he’d considered earlier that day. Tomorrow, perhaps. Just because he was confident he could work through this issue didn’t mean he could afford mistakes.
The voice seemed to sigh at him, as if it was exasperated with his train of thought. /Wait here./
…wait here? The command made no sense, but no answer was forthcoming. Bruce decided to disregard it, continuing to move along the rooftops and scan the ground below. His frame tensed when a young man burst out the door of a local store, running with a bag in hand as fast as he could, but his suspicions proved invalid when it became clear the man was just catching up to a group of friends with his purchase. The store’s shopkeep moved past the window, completely at ease and going about business as usual.
Bruce sighed and grappled his way across an alley to the next rooftop.
/Told you to wait./
And that made no sense. You can’t leave yourself.
/Found you something./ Joker’s low, nasal tone was as smug as Bruce remembered. It unconsciously made his muscles clench, getting ready for the blow that would come when he least expected it. The man had never sounded like that without having some deadly trick up his sleeve, even if it was a metaphorical one.
What did you find me? he asked cautiously, suspending his disbelief in a moment of self-doubt.
/Action./ Cold lanced through Bruce again, his armor useless against the chill. /520 Rupert Street./
Bruce considered this, mentally pulling up a picture of the city’s layout and trying to remember what was there. 520 Rupert was just a few streets over, a small strip mall surrounded by dilapidated, low income housing. Whether his mind was just making things up or not, he reasoned that it was worth a shot. Nothing else was happening at the moment. What’s there?
/Side door. Basement./ The voice paused as Bruce hooked and ran his way across the tops of the buildings, heading for the location it had named. /I’d hurry./
…what? Why? The comment had thrown him off, making Bruce turn to look behind him for clarification from… someone who wasn’t there. Only empty night air met his gaze.
/She’ll die soon./
Bruce’s mind slid from its confusion into sharp focus, his body picking up the pace as he rushed towards the address he’d been given. He didn’t even stop to wonder if he was being foolish, following the advice of a hallucination… much less whether it might be a trap if the voice turned out to be real. The notion that someone might soon become a victim if he didn’t act had lanced through his mind like a metal shard, cold and burning and spurring him onward.
He couldn’t risk dismissing this. Not if someone’s life was at stake and he could have saved them.
All was quiet as Batman reached the right building, moving around the edges of the strip mall until he found a tactical entry point. The lights were off in most of the storefronts, the owners long since gone home, but one lamp was lit at the back delivery door of the address he’d been given.
If something was going on inside, they’d not expected much trouble. The one lookout posted near the back door was easily overpowered and went down with minimum fuss, not even managing to pull the gun from his waistband before he was dispatched. Batman kicked the gun away and ziptied the man’s hands before he continued. He couldn’t see anything yet, but the audio receptors in his suit were picking up sounds of a verbal conflict in a room somewhere beneath him. The concrete made it difficult to pick out what was being said.
Batman found the door to the basement and descended quickly, boots silent against the concrete steps. The sounds of conflict were getting louder as he moved closer. Someone’s pleading tones cut off sharply with a crack, a physical blow taking away the power of speech. Batman found what seemed like the right door, paused to inhale deeply, then turned the handle and ducked inside.
His first view of the situation kicked him into high gear; a couple of men were ganging up on a ragged woman kneeling in the center of the room, their leader standing off to one side and toying with a handgun. Batman moved before they had time to react to his entrance, batarang slicing through the air to knock the firearm out of the leader’s hand. The two lackeys immediately turned, ignoring their intended victim to concentrate on the intruder.
“Fuck,” the leader growled, holding his bleeding hand and scrambling for the lost gun now hidden somewhere on the garbage-strewn floor. “Take care of him!”
The henchmen didn’t answer, their concentration taken up by simply trying to avoid getting hit by Batman, looking for a space to get a few blows in of their own. For someone with a muscular frame, laden down with armor, Batman was surprisingly agile. Every time one of them thought they had spotted an opening and took it they ended up stumbling, the vigilante having flowed smoothly out of the way to use their own momentum against them.
One man eventually got impatient and charged in angrily, his rage only serving to facilitate his quick descent to the floor. He yelped in pain as Batman’s counterstrike dislocated his arm, the tendons and muscles of his arm sending jolts of agony through his nerves. The other henchman tried to take advantage of the situation to launch an attack from behind. Batman easily sensed and ducked the blow aimed at his head, giving the man a couple of broken ribs for his troubles.
The vigilante deftly secured the two men on the floor, his gaze locked on the remaining man who seemed to have given up on finding his gun. He’d turned and was running for the door. Batman stood swiftly and closed in, blocking off the room’s one exit. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Wh-what do you want?” Bruce had more time to observe the little details, now that he only had one last person left to deal with. The man before him seemed to be the usual street dealer type - slight build, musteline features. He’d pulled a knife as one last, desperate line of defense against the armored shadow in front of him, the trembling of his hand betraying his nerves. The woman they’d been beating up was still lying in a subdued heap in the middle of the room, a glazed look to her eyes even as her torso rose and fell in a steady rhythm - whether it was drugs, a concussion, or a combination of the two, Bruce couldn’t tell at the moment.
“Just let me go, man. Keep the money. Hell, keep the girl if you want,” the scumbag whined, feinting from side to side as he tried to find an opportunity to flee. “You’ll never see me again, I swear…”
“I know I won’t,” Batman growled, eyes with anger behind the mask. He moved forward in deliberate, slow motions, every movement designed to project an ominous aura. “You’ll see me, though. In your nightmares, every night in your cell once you’re put where you belong. Behind bars.”
The man’s terror overwhelmed his good sense, the hand with the knife striking out in a self-protective impulse. Batman blocked the attack with his gauntlet, twisting until the knife caught on the ridges and was pulled out of the criminal’s hand. He grabbed the man’s lapel as he tried to flee, throwing him to the ground and knocking the air out of his lungs. His hands were pulled behind his back and ziptied like the rest.
Batman grabbed the communicator at his belt, tapping in the command that would connect him with Gordon. He moved to check on the woman as a familiar voice answered. “Batman? What’s going on?”
“I need you to send a couple of squad cars and an ambulance to 520 Rupert Street,” he responded quietly, his attention only half on the conversation as he got out a penlight and checked the victim’s eyes for signs of a concussion. Something was wrong with her besides the obvious injuries, but Bruce didn’t want to risk moving her and making any injuries worse than they already were. “Hurry. There’s a woman here who desperately needs medical care.”
He flipped the communicator off, trusting Gordon to respond to the request as quickly as he could. Bruce scanned the area around the woman. She was giving off all the typical signs of someone dealing with a drug overdose, but he didn’t want to risk giving her any sort of treatment unless he was certain what he was dealing with. There has to be something…
A flicker of movement caught Bruce’s eye, gone as soon as he turned his head. /Yes, over here./ He left the woman’s side for a moment, moving towards where he’d spotted something out of the corner of his vision. Cold touched his bones again. /MS Contin. Down./
Bruce knelt, spotting a small metal toolbox hidden beside a battered crate. He opened the lid; sure enough, small baggies of different colored pills were hidden among other drug paraphernalia, all of them used in processing morphine. Morphine was the main active ingredient in the MS Contin pills stashed in the box, and the woman’s symptoms were all consistent with that of a morphine overdose.
Bruce picked up the box and carried it back to the center of the room, knowing that the medical team would find it and draw the right conclusions. His hand moved to his utility belt and took out one last thing - a small emergency kit he kept on hand in case he was dosed with something. He’d learned from his experiences with Dr. Crane and his toxins.
It only took a few moments to prep and administer the naloxone that would start combating the opiates flooding the woman’s body. Bruce left the small bottle beside the box of drugs. The anti-opiate couldn’t be traced back to him, and the ambulance team would need to know that an antidote had already been applied. Bruce could leave safely, knowing that the naloxone would kick in within a few moments and keep the drugged woman from dying of an overdose.
/Happy now?/
Bruce stepped over the prone bodies of the criminals he’d subdued, making his way towards the exit now that he’d done everything he could. If the men were conscious they didn’t let it show, perhaps frightened that they’d provoke him into attacking and giving them a whole new set of injuries. …yes. He ran up the stairs and exited the building, then grappled onto the rooftop of a nearby building to watch and wait. He wanted to see how quickly Gordon’s team would react; such things were useful for estimating how much escape time he had to extract himself from crime scenes before police arrived and started firing on him.
Minutes seemed to crawl by, but soon enough the red and blue flashing lights lit up the streets. A couple of squad cars and an ambulance pulled up to the building, just as requested. A bit of relief started unraveling the tension at his core as he watched the officers and EMT enter the building. How did you know?
/What?/
How did you know? Bruce repeated, frowning at nothing in particular. The building, the situation. Where the box of drugs was.
Laughter filled Bruce’s head, seeming almost to spill outside of it to echo across the lonely rooftop. /I looked, Bruce./
How did you look? Batman began making his way back to the parked Tumbler, his mind buzzing with contradictory thoughts. Logic told him that this was all a matter of listening to his subconscious, his instincts, coupled with some lucky guesses. Another part of him was wondering if there wasn’t more to this than there seemed. What if the hallucination, or whatever it was, could offer such help on a regular basis? Would it really be worth it to deconstruct it or drug the voice away, knowing that it could offer such assistance?
/I left, looked,/ the voice purred as Batman slunk through the shadows. /You get it./ Cold punctuated every stilted, brief reply, leaving Bruce longing for the warmth of the Tumbler and, later, home. /I can help./
Can help, or will? Bruce asked, still cautious about engaging this thing and perhaps unwittingly falling into a mind trap of his own making.
/Can./ Batman ran for the last few streets, spreading his cape to glide smoothly down to his waiting vehicle. The top slid open with a quiet set of metallic clicks, welcoming him back. /Depends on you./
Bruce mulled this over as he got in and started driving back to the lair, on alert now that the police were in the neighborhood nearby. The black tank passed through the streets like a ghost, unchallenged. If your help depends on my actions, that means you want something from me. What?
/Tell you later./
That’s not very helpful.
/Just was helpful,/ it pointed out, cold air swirling past Bruce’s skin even though he had the vehicle’s heat turned on high. He gritted his teeth in annoyance.
Could you not keep doing that? It’s unpleasant.
/Not yet,/ it admitted, the cold touching Bruce’s cheek this time. /Still learning./
Bruce drove in silence, wondering exactly what it was the thing would have to learn in order to stop pressing frigid air against his skin. He still refused to even consider that the voice might truly be a person, anything other than mental anomaly. Can you learn faster?
/No,/ it laughed, sounding almost apologetic. /Be patient./
Bruce grunted in response, more relaxed now that he was close to home. He’d be able to rest soon enough. Is your help really worth feeling like I’m in a freezer all the time?
/Yes,/ it murmured smugly, giving Bruce one last shock of cold before it fell silent.
Alfred was already asleep when Bruce returned. He cleaned and replaced the batsuit in its stand, only leaving to take a shower himself once that task was complete. He ignored the feeling of constantly being watched, turning his mind instead to everything that had happened earlier that night. While he hadn’t accomplished a major blow against that neighborhood’s crime by any means, the fact that he’d saved a woman’s life was a soothing balm for the angst and guilt that plagued his mind.
That, and the fact that there was one less dealer on the streets. One had to concentrate on the small victories. It all added up in the end. It had to.
Bruce ignored the terrycloth robe that had been left for him in the bathroom and walked to the bedroom after he’d dried off. If he’d been pressed to admit why, he’d have to reluctantly admit that the sensation of having a silent observer was having an impact. Walking through his home in the dark with nothing but his skin was a way of defying the paranoia, proving to himself that there was nothing there.
Bruce closed the bedroom door and slid under the covers. He turned on his side and settled in, confident that Alfred would know the right time to wake him.
It was always difficult to pinpoint exactly when the half-conscious meditative state of exhaustion crossed the boundary into sleep. Both had a sense of unreality to them, dragging out time and space to impossible dimensions. The dream tonight was odd, however. While he normally dreamt of various things from his life, from his childhood and parents to his nightly endeavors out on the streets of Gotham, Bruce opened his eyes in the dream to find himself in something that both was and wasn’t his bedroom. It was his bed, the furnishings of the room familiar, but something was slightly off. It didn’t quite match up to his memories of the real thing. The dresser was another shape, the armchair was one foot further to the left. Small changes.
That, and the sense of fingertips brushing his cheek. Bruce turned over slowly, his eyes struggling to focus in the dim light.
Someone was crouched beside the edge of the bed, one pale hand still hovering inches from Bruce’s face, hesitant. The wild hair and ghoulish makeup was just as Bruce remembered it. Oddly, he didn’t feel afraid. It was nothing but a dream, after all.
“What are you doing here?” he finally asked after the two of them had passed a few moments in silence, simply staring at one another.
“…oh good, it worked,” Joker answered cryptically, a slight smile pulling the corners of his scarred mouth. “I think you know what I’m doing here, Bat. I’m here because of you.” He licked his lips, brown eyes as full of manic, intense emotion as ever. Wherever Bruce’s mind was pulling the image from, it was startlingly realistic.
“Leave me alone. It wasn’t my fault,” Bruce muttered, steeling himself and deliberately turning his back on the ghostly image. He wanted to rest, and he wasn’t in the mood for his mind to conjure up another guilt trip.
The mattress dipped beside him, a creak of springs and a rustle of fabric reaching his ears before a warm presence pressed against his back. Bruce closed his eyes, trying to ignore it. A hand rested on his shoulder, insistent and keeping him from focusing on something else. “I know it wasn’t. That’s not why I’m here.” Joker paused, waiting until Bruce opened his eyes to look at him. “I’m here because I live here now.”
“You live here.”
“You certainly repeat me a lot. Are you a little hard of hearing?”
“No.” Bruce could have laughed, the situation was that bizarre: dreams of a murdered, psychopathic clown, sitting beside him on his bed, stroking his arm and informing him that he’d moved in with him. “What do you mean, you live here?”
“I didn’t go wherever I was supposed to go,” the clown shrugged. His eyes were drinking in Bruce like a man dying of thirst eying his one means of salvation. “I tied myself to you instead. I wasn’t done with you yet, and I didn’t want to leave.”
I’m not done with you yet. The recollection of those words made Bruce shiver. Dream or not, Bruce was started to get a little creeped out by the eerie nature of this conversation. It didn’t help that Joker was leaning over him, uncharacteristically gentle and hesitant even as his gaze reflected the same burning obsession Bruce remembered. “How did you tie yourself to me?”
“I’m not telling you that.” If Bruce didn’t know better, the look the clown had given him was positively paranoid.
“Fine. So what you’re trying to get me to believe is that you’re the voice I’ve been hearing?”
Joker nodded. “I don’t know why, exactly, but it’s easier to talk here. I haven’t figured everything out yet, so talking when you’re awake drains me pretty quickly.”
Odd, that he’d directly reference Bruce being awake in a dream. Bruce regarded the man skeptically, then raised one hand to touch his visitor’s arm. Joker’s eyes widened perceptibly, though whether from excitement or fear, Bruce couldn’t tell. He certainly felt real enough. “You’d told me you could help me, depending on what I do. I’d asked what you wanted and you said you would tell me later.” He took in the strange expression on the criminal’s face and sighed. What the hell. It’s a dream, it doesn’t matter.
His fingers closed around the dark purple of Joker’s sleeve, pulling him closer. Bruce could’ve sworn he saw the other man swallow nervously. “Now is later. What do you want, in exchange for your help?”
Joker laughed quietly, the sound containing a panicked edge to it that Bruce couldn’t recall ever hearing before. “…you, just… you, any way I can get you. I’ve tied us together, so neither of us can get away… but I’m not going to let you just ignore me for the rest of your life. Not like you ignored me in mine.”
“I didn’t ignore you,” Bruce growled, angry just thinking about all the things the man had done when he was alive. “You attacked people, baited me, and I responded. You killed people I cared about, people-“ People I thought I was going to have a future with. He glared at the clown. “You never gave me anything to respond to but emergencies, people put in danger because of some twisted philosophical point you were trying to make.”
Joker just grinned in response, more amused by Bruce’s anger than anything else. “I gave you plenty more to respond to. You were just too blind or stubborn to take those offers.”
“You never gave me any offers.”
“Blind, then. Really, Bat, you’re normally so sharp, one might think you were being purposefully obtuse,” he teased, the serious look in his eyes contradicting his tone. “I was playing with Gotham at the beginning, but you were my real goal. You were what I really wanted.”
“You have a strange way of showing affection, hurting the ones you love.”
“I could say the same for you,” he snapped, the monstrous insanity Bruce remembered flickering behind the man’s expression for a moment before disappearing beneath the surface again, not even leaving a ripple. “Is it really so much to ask? You, in exchange for everything I have?”
Bruce paused, watching Joker gaze down at him with a peculiar, melancholic expression. “…you would’ve stopped, if I’d let you-“ What? Torture me? Fuck me? “…do what you wanted with me?”
“I don’t know if stopped is quite the right word, but something like that.” Brown eyes flicked downwards, staring at Bruce’s mouth. “The offer still stands. You could use it, and I’m not just talking about my help. I’m not the only one who lived in isolation.”
Bruce’s stomach clenched, full of revulsion and curiosity and, though he was loathe to admit it, loneliness. Joker’s words had hit their mark. Aside from Rachel and Alfred, Bruce had lived his life alone. All of Bruce Wayne’s acquaintances, his so-called friends, all the women he dated, none of them were real. None of them came anywhere close to touching his true core; he wouldn’t let them. He’d bet everything on Rachel, and now she was gone. He still had Alfred, but the butler wasn’t getting any younger. Bruce knew very well that in a few years, he’d be truly alone.
He turned his gaze to the madman sitting beside him, wondering if he was going mad even to consider trying this in a dream. It wasn’t real and he couldn’t be physically hurt by a dream, but part of him wondered if it might leave psychological scars. “I agree to give you attention, and you continue to help me like you did tonight, with the woman?”
Joker gave him a look of pity. “You still think I’m just a figment of your imagination, don’t you?” he murmured. He swallowed again, then leaned down and cautiously touched their lips together.
Bruce watched him as he came closer, morbid fascination keeping him still until the man was actually kissing him. It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined; there was a taste of greasepaint, then something comfortably warm and human underneath. He’d expected Joker to behave like a rabid dog, all vicious teeth and claws and the potent smell of life lived in the gutter.
It slowly became obvious that the madman didn’t want to break contact, so Bruce did it for him, lacing fingers through tangles of green hair and pulling him back slightly. Both of them were breathing heavily. Bruce didn’t want to analyze that fact too closely. “You agree, then?”
“Not just attention, Bruce. You,” Joker insisted. “I wouldn’t bother doing all this for anyone else.”
“Why?” Bruce was legitimately curious, wondering exactly what could have driven the other man’s obsession in life.
That infuriating smile slipped into place again, a too-wide arch of ragged skin and yellowed teeth. “You won’t believe me, yet. I’ll get to the point where I can prove to you that I’m real, that I’m here. Then maybe I’ll work on getting you to believe why.”
The surreal nature of the dream was hitting Bruce again, his gaze flickering sideways to take in the familiar setting before returning to the form of Joker hovering mere centimeters above him. He sighed. “I’ve agreed. Now what happens?” he asked.
“Now you sleep.”
Well, that hadn’t been the answer he’d been expecting. “That’s it?”
“Are you asking if I’m going to take advantage of you?” Joker chuckled, shooting Bruce a hungry look. “I could, but I think you’d deeply resent me for it later, once you realize this is real. I’d rather not have you angry at me for the rest of your life while we’re stuck together.” Pulling back from Bruce, Joker slid off the bed and stood. “Just sleep. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a little longer.”
Moving back into the shadows, the clown shot Bruce one last warning look. “Remember, Bat. Don’t ignore me.” Bruce watched as his outline shifted, melded into the darkness of the bedroom, leaving him alone in the dream.
He shivered, turning over on his side to keep an eye on the spot where the madman had disappeared. Soon enough, however, his exhaustion pulled on him, even in the dream. Bruce sunk into unconsciousness for the second time, dead to the world as he floated in a dreamless sleep.
A/N: One more chapter snuck in under the deadline. As a reminder, this story will be continued at batsandknives.
Author: razothredfire
Prompt: Possession
Word Count: 4,751
Rating: NC-17 (eventually)
Summary: "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for awhile." -Westley, The Princess Bride
After an unfortunate turn of events, Bruce finds himself haunted.
Disclaimer: This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: graphic violence, mature themes, character death, angst, slash, necrophilia (if you count ghosts in your definition)
Finding an inconspicuous spot to park the Tumbler and patrol by foot and grapple was getting more and more difficult lately. Bruce knew he still had Gordon’s full trust, but Batman continued to be demonized by the city as a whole - and as such, by extension, a large portion of the people within law enforcement. While the good cops among them had certainly been grateful to have their crooked counterparts exposed and put behind bars, none of them were particularly happy to be upstaged and outperformed by what they perceived as a lawless vigilante, much less one held responsible for a number of deaths.
Bruce finally spotted an opening and took it, steering the Tumbler into a tight, dark alleyway near the Narrows while there weren’t any observers in sight. He set the vehicle to lock down and monitor its surroundings while it waited for him to return, then shot a grappling hook onto the rooftop of an adjacent building.
It was always a great deal easier to patrol from the rooftops. While criminals were more wary about watching for Batman now, most continued to keep their eyes mostly on ground level. Humans tended not to keep a paranoid eye on the sky; there was no evolutionary reason for them to expect a predator from that direction. Their complacence worked to Bruce’s advantage, letting him watch and listen with technology-enhanced senses from a safe distance before planning how to intervene.
The streets were quiet tonight. Bruce wasn’t sure whether that was a welcome change or not. While it was his goal to create a city where citizens didn’t need to live in constant fear, his work was a useful outlet for processing his thoughts and emotions. If his patrol was nothing but a clean, uneventful sweep, it left him feeling happy that he seemed to be making some progress… but unfulfilled on a deeper level.
/Need action, huh?/
Bruce started, having forgotten about the hallucination with his focus on the sights and sounds of the streets below. It had been silent ever since he’d started the patrol. I’d almost say it’s too quiet, like everything is going down behind closed doors. Or being planned for another night.
/It is./
Bruce bristled at that, his jaw clenching. How do you know?
/Experience,/ it purred, little fingers of cold air sneaking past Bruce’s cape and armor to brush the heated skin beneath. He shivered. /You want action?/
Do I need to spell it out for you? You should already know, he snapped back, irritated that his mind was playing games with him now. The thought sparked another worry; suppose he started to get distracted when it really mattered? What if something happened when he needed to concentrate everything he had on a course of action?
He resolved to do the research he’d considered earlier that day. Tomorrow, perhaps. Just because he was confident he could work through this issue didn’t mean he could afford mistakes.
The voice seemed to sigh at him, as if it was exasperated with his train of thought. /Wait here./
…wait here? The command made no sense, but no answer was forthcoming. Bruce decided to disregard it, continuing to move along the rooftops and scan the ground below. His frame tensed when a young man burst out the door of a local store, running with a bag in hand as fast as he could, but his suspicions proved invalid when it became clear the man was just catching up to a group of friends with his purchase. The store’s shopkeep moved past the window, completely at ease and going about business as usual.
Bruce sighed and grappled his way across an alley to the next rooftop.
/Told you to wait./
And that made no sense. You can’t leave yourself.
/Found you something./ Joker’s low, nasal tone was as smug as Bruce remembered. It unconsciously made his muscles clench, getting ready for the blow that would come when he least expected it. The man had never sounded like that without having some deadly trick up his sleeve, even if it was a metaphorical one.
What did you find me? he asked cautiously, suspending his disbelief in a moment of self-doubt.
/Action./ Cold lanced through Bruce again, his armor useless against the chill. /520 Rupert Street./
Bruce considered this, mentally pulling up a picture of the city’s layout and trying to remember what was there. 520 Rupert was just a few streets over, a small strip mall surrounded by dilapidated, low income housing. Whether his mind was just making things up or not, he reasoned that it was worth a shot. Nothing else was happening at the moment. What’s there?
/Side door. Basement./ The voice paused as Bruce hooked and ran his way across the tops of the buildings, heading for the location it had named. /I’d hurry./
…what? Why? The comment had thrown him off, making Bruce turn to look behind him for clarification from… someone who wasn’t there. Only empty night air met his gaze.
/She’ll die soon./
Bruce’s mind slid from its confusion into sharp focus, his body picking up the pace as he rushed towards the address he’d been given. He didn’t even stop to wonder if he was being foolish, following the advice of a hallucination… much less whether it might be a trap if the voice turned out to be real. The notion that someone might soon become a victim if he didn’t act had lanced through his mind like a metal shard, cold and burning and spurring him onward.
He couldn’t risk dismissing this. Not if someone’s life was at stake and he could have saved them.
All was quiet as Batman reached the right building, moving around the edges of the strip mall until he found a tactical entry point. The lights were off in most of the storefronts, the owners long since gone home, but one lamp was lit at the back delivery door of the address he’d been given.
If something was going on inside, they’d not expected much trouble. The one lookout posted near the back door was easily overpowered and went down with minimum fuss, not even managing to pull the gun from his waistband before he was dispatched. Batman kicked the gun away and ziptied the man’s hands before he continued. He couldn’t see anything yet, but the audio receptors in his suit were picking up sounds of a verbal conflict in a room somewhere beneath him. The concrete made it difficult to pick out what was being said.
Batman found the door to the basement and descended quickly, boots silent against the concrete steps. The sounds of conflict were getting louder as he moved closer. Someone’s pleading tones cut off sharply with a crack, a physical blow taking away the power of speech. Batman found what seemed like the right door, paused to inhale deeply, then turned the handle and ducked inside.
His first view of the situation kicked him into high gear; a couple of men were ganging up on a ragged woman kneeling in the center of the room, their leader standing off to one side and toying with a handgun. Batman moved before they had time to react to his entrance, batarang slicing through the air to knock the firearm out of the leader’s hand. The two lackeys immediately turned, ignoring their intended victim to concentrate on the intruder.
“Fuck,” the leader growled, holding his bleeding hand and scrambling for the lost gun now hidden somewhere on the garbage-strewn floor. “Take care of him!”
The henchmen didn’t answer, their concentration taken up by simply trying to avoid getting hit by Batman, looking for a space to get a few blows in of their own. For someone with a muscular frame, laden down with armor, Batman was surprisingly agile. Every time one of them thought they had spotted an opening and took it they ended up stumbling, the vigilante having flowed smoothly out of the way to use their own momentum against them.
One man eventually got impatient and charged in angrily, his rage only serving to facilitate his quick descent to the floor. He yelped in pain as Batman’s counterstrike dislocated his arm, the tendons and muscles of his arm sending jolts of agony through his nerves. The other henchman tried to take advantage of the situation to launch an attack from behind. Batman easily sensed and ducked the blow aimed at his head, giving the man a couple of broken ribs for his troubles.
The vigilante deftly secured the two men on the floor, his gaze locked on the remaining man who seemed to have given up on finding his gun. He’d turned and was running for the door. Batman stood swiftly and closed in, blocking off the room’s one exit. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Wh-what do you want?” Bruce had more time to observe the little details, now that he only had one last person left to deal with. The man before him seemed to be the usual street dealer type - slight build, musteline features. He’d pulled a knife as one last, desperate line of defense against the armored shadow in front of him, the trembling of his hand betraying his nerves. The woman they’d been beating up was still lying in a subdued heap in the middle of the room, a glazed look to her eyes even as her torso rose and fell in a steady rhythm - whether it was drugs, a concussion, or a combination of the two, Bruce couldn’t tell at the moment.
“Just let me go, man. Keep the money. Hell, keep the girl if you want,” the scumbag whined, feinting from side to side as he tried to find an opportunity to flee. “You’ll never see me again, I swear…”
“I know I won’t,” Batman growled, eyes with anger behind the mask. He moved forward in deliberate, slow motions, every movement designed to project an ominous aura. “You’ll see me, though. In your nightmares, every night in your cell once you’re put where you belong. Behind bars.”
The man’s terror overwhelmed his good sense, the hand with the knife striking out in a self-protective impulse. Batman blocked the attack with his gauntlet, twisting until the knife caught on the ridges and was pulled out of the criminal’s hand. He grabbed the man’s lapel as he tried to flee, throwing him to the ground and knocking the air out of his lungs. His hands were pulled behind his back and ziptied like the rest.
Batman grabbed the communicator at his belt, tapping in the command that would connect him with Gordon. He moved to check on the woman as a familiar voice answered. “Batman? What’s going on?”
“I need you to send a couple of squad cars and an ambulance to 520 Rupert Street,” he responded quietly, his attention only half on the conversation as he got out a penlight and checked the victim’s eyes for signs of a concussion. Something was wrong with her besides the obvious injuries, but Bruce didn’t want to risk moving her and making any injuries worse than they already were. “Hurry. There’s a woman here who desperately needs medical care.”
He flipped the communicator off, trusting Gordon to respond to the request as quickly as he could. Bruce scanned the area around the woman. She was giving off all the typical signs of someone dealing with a drug overdose, but he didn’t want to risk giving her any sort of treatment unless he was certain what he was dealing with. There has to be something…
A flicker of movement caught Bruce’s eye, gone as soon as he turned his head. /Yes, over here./ He left the woman’s side for a moment, moving towards where he’d spotted something out of the corner of his vision. Cold touched his bones again. /MS Contin. Down./
Bruce knelt, spotting a small metal toolbox hidden beside a battered crate. He opened the lid; sure enough, small baggies of different colored pills were hidden among other drug paraphernalia, all of them used in processing morphine. Morphine was the main active ingredient in the MS Contin pills stashed in the box, and the woman’s symptoms were all consistent with that of a morphine overdose.
Bruce picked up the box and carried it back to the center of the room, knowing that the medical team would find it and draw the right conclusions. His hand moved to his utility belt and took out one last thing - a small emergency kit he kept on hand in case he was dosed with something. He’d learned from his experiences with Dr. Crane and his toxins.
It only took a few moments to prep and administer the naloxone that would start combating the opiates flooding the woman’s body. Bruce left the small bottle beside the box of drugs. The anti-opiate couldn’t be traced back to him, and the ambulance team would need to know that an antidote had already been applied. Bruce could leave safely, knowing that the naloxone would kick in within a few moments and keep the drugged woman from dying of an overdose.
/Happy now?/
Bruce stepped over the prone bodies of the criminals he’d subdued, making his way towards the exit now that he’d done everything he could. If the men were conscious they didn’t let it show, perhaps frightened that they’d provoke him into attacking and giving them a whole new set of injuries. …yes. He ran up the stairs and exited the building, then grappled onto the rooftop of a nearby building to watch and wait. He wanted to see how quickly Gordon’s team would react; such things were useful for estimating how much escape time he had to extract himself from crime scenes before police arrived and started firing on him.
Minutes seemed to crawl by, but soon enough the red and blue flashing lights lit up the streets. A couple of squad cars and an ambulance pulled up to the building, just as requested. A bit of relief started unraveling the tension at his core as he watched the officers and EMT enter the building. How did you know?
/What?/
How did you know? Bruce repeated, frowning at nothing in particular. The building, the situation. Where the box of drugs was.
Laughter filled Bruce’s head, seeming almost to spill outside of it to echo across the lonely rooftop. /I looked, Bruce./
How did you look? Batman began making his way back to the parked Tumbler, his mind buzzing with contradictory thoughts. Logic told him that this was all a matter of listening to his subconscious, his instincts, coupled with some lucky guesses. Another part of him was wondering if there wasn’t more to this than there seemed. What if the hallucination, or whatever it was, could offer such help on a regular basis? Would it really be worth it to deconstruct it or drug the voice away, knowing that it could offer such assistance?
/I left, looked,/ the voice purred as Batman slunk through the shadows. /You get it./ Cold punctuated every stilted, brief reply, leaving Bruce longing for the warmth of the Tumbler and, later, home. /I can help./
Can help, or will? Bruce asked, still cautious about engaging this thing and perhaps unwittingly falling into a mind trap of his own making.
/Can./ Batman ran for the last few streets, spreading his cape to glide smoothly down to his waiting vehicle. The top slid open with a quiet set of metallic clicks, welcoming him back. /Depends on you./
Bruce mulled this over as he got in and started driving back to the lair, on alert now that the police were in the neighborhood nearby. The black tank passed through the streets like a ghost, unchallenged. If your help depends on my actions, that means you want something from me. What?
/Tell you later./
That’s not very helpful.
/Just was helpful,/ it pointed out, cold air swirling past Bruce’s skin even though he had the vehicle’s heat turned on high. He gritted his teeth in annoyance.
Could you not keep doing that? It’s unpleasant.
/Not yet,/ it admitted, the cold touching Bruce’s cheek this time. /Still learning./
Bruce drove in silence, wondering exactly what it was the thing would have to learn in order to stop pressing frigid air against his skin. He still refused to even consider that the voice might truly be a person, anything other than mental anomaly. Can you learn faster?
/No,/ it laughed, sounding almost apologetic. /Be patient./
Bruce grunted in response, more relaxed now that he was close to home. He’d be able to rest soon enough. Is your help really worth feeling like I’m in a freezer all the time?
/Yes,/ it murmured smugly, giving Bruce one last shock of cold before it fell silent.
Alfred was already asleep when Bruce returned. He cleaned and replaced the batsuit in its stand, only leaving to take a shower himself once that task was complete. He ignored the feeling of constantly being watched, turning his mind instead to everything that had happened earlier that night. While he hadn’t accomplished a major blow against that neighborhood’s crime by any means, the fact that he’d saved a woman’s life was a soothing balm for the angst and guilt that plagued his mind.
That, and the fact that there was one less dealer on the streets. One had to concentrate on the small victories. It all added up in the end. It had to.
Bruce ignored the terrycloth robe that had been left for him in the bathroom and walked to the bedroom after he’d dried off. If he’d been pressed to admit why, he’d have to reluctantly admit that the sensation of having a silent observer was having an impact. Walking through his home in the dark with nothing but his skin was a way of defying the paranoia, proving to himself that there was nothing there.
Bruce closed the bedroom door and slid under the covers. He turned on his side and settled in, confident that Alfred would know the right time to wake him.
It was always difficult to pinpoint exactly when the half-conscious meditative state of exhaustion crossed the boundary into sleep. Both had a sense of unreality to them, dragging out time and space to impossible dimensions. The dream tonight was odd, however. While he normally dreamt of various things from his life, from his childhood and parents to his nightly endeavors out on the streets of Gotham, Bruce opened his eyes in the dream to find himself in something that both was and wasn’t his bedroom. It was his bed, the furnishings of the room familiar, but something was slightly off. It didn’t quite match up to his memories of the real thing. The dresser was another shape, the armchair was one foot further to the left. Small changes.
That, and the sense of fingertips brushing his cheek. Bruce turned over slowly, his eyes struggling to focus in the dim light.
Someone was crouched beside the edge of the bed, one pale hand still hovering inches from Bruce’s face, hesitant. The wild hair and ghoulish makeup was just as Bruce remembered it. Oddly, he didn’t feel afraid. It was nothing but a dream, after all.
“What are you doing here?” he finally asked after the two of them had passed a few moments in silence, simply staring at one another.
“…oh good, it worked,” Joker answered cryptically, a slight smile pulling the corners of his scarred mouth. “I think you know what I’m doing here, Bat. I’m here because of you.” He licked his lips, brown eyes as full of manic, intense emotion as ever. Wherever Bruce’s mind was pulling the image from, it was startlingly realistic.
“Leave me alone. It wasn’t my fault,” Bruce muttered, steeling himself and deliberately turning his back on the ghostly image. He wanted to rest, and he wasn’t in the mood for his mind to conjure up another guilt trip.
The mattress dipped beside him, a creak of springs and a rustle of fabric reaching his ears before a warm presence pressed against his back. Bruce closed his eyes, trying to ignore it. A hand rested on his shoulder, insistent and keeping him from focusing on something else. “I know it wasn’t. That’s not why I’m here.” Joker paused, waiting until Bruce opened his eyes to look at him. “I’m here because I live here now.”
“You live here.”
“You certainly repeat me a lot. Are you a little hard of hearing?”
“No.” Bruce could have laughed, the situation was that bizarre: dreams of a murdered, psychopathic clown, sitting beside him on his bed, stroking his arm and informing him that he’d moved in with him. “What do you mean, you live here?”
“I didn’t go wherever I was supposed to go,” the clown shrugged. His eyes were drinking in Bruce like a man dying of thirst eying his one means of salvation. “I tied myself to you instead. I wasn’t done with you yet, and I didn’t want to leave.”
I’m not done with you yet. The recollection of those words made Bruce shiver. Dream or not, Bruce was started to get a little creeped out by the eerie nature of this conversation. It didn’t help that Joker was leaning over him, uncharacteristically gentle and hesitant even as his gaze reflected the same burning obsession Bruce remembered. “How did you tie yourself to me?”
“I’m not telling you that.” If Bruce didn’t know better, the look the clown had given him was positively paranoid.
“Fine. So what you’re trying to get me to believe is that you’re the voice I’ve been hearing?”
Joker nodded. “I don’t know why, exactly, but it’s easier to talk here. I haven’t figured everything out yet, so talking when you’re awake drains me pretty quickly.”
Odd, that he’d directly reference Bruce being awake in a dream. Bruce regarded the man skeptically, then raised one hand to touch his visitor’s arm. Joker’s eyes widened perceptibly, though whether from excitement or fear, Bruce couldn’t tell. He certainly felt real enough. “You’d told me you could help me, depending on what I do. I’d asked what you wanted and you said you would tell me later.” He took in the strange expression on the criminal’s face and sighed. What the hell. It’s a dream, it doesn’t matter.
His fingers closed around the dark purple of Joker’s sleeve, pulling him closer. Bruce could’ve sworn he saw the other man swallow nervously. “Now is later. What do you want, in exchange for your help?”
Joker laughed quietly, the sound containing a panicked edge to it that Bruce couldn’t recall ever hearing before. “…you, just… you, any way I can get you. I’ve tied us together, so neither of us can get away… but I’m not going to let you just ignore me for the rest of your life. Not like you ignored me in mine.”
“I didn’t ignore you,” Bruce growled, angry just thinking about all the things the man had done when he was alive. “You attacked people, baited me, and I responded. You killed people I cared about, people-“ People I thought I was going to have a future with. He glared at the clown. “You never gave me anything to respond to but emergencies, people put in danger because of some twisted philosophical point you were trying to make.”
Joker just grinned in response, more amused by Bruce’s anger than anything else. “I gave you plenty more to respond to. You were just too blind or stubborn to take those offers.”
“You never gave me any offers.”
“Blind, then. Really, Bat, you’re normally so sharp, one might think you were being purposefully obtuse,” he teased, the serious look in his eyes contradicting his tone. “I was playing with Gotham at the beginning, but you were my real goal. You were what I really wanted.”
“You have a strange way of showing affection, hurting the ones you love.”
“I could say the same for you,” he snapped, the monstrous insanity Bruce remembered flickering behind the man’s expression for a moment before disappearing beneath the surface again, not even leaving a ripple. “Is it really so much to ask? You, in exchange for everything I have?”
Bruce paused, watching Joker gaze down at him with a peculiar, melancholic expression. “…you would’ve stopped, if I’d let you-“ What? Torture me? Fuck me? “…do what you wanted with me?”
“I don’t know if stopped is quite the right word, but something like that.” Brown eyes flicked downwards, staring at Bruce’s mouth. “The offer still stands. You could use it, and I’m not just talking about my help. I’m not the only one who lived in isolation.”
Bruce’s stomach clenched, full of revulsion and curiosity and, though he was loathe to admit it, loneliness. Joker’s words had hit their mark. Aside from Rachel and Alfred, Bruce had lived his life alone. All of Bruce Wayne’s acquaintances, his so-called friends, all the women he dated, none of them were real. None of them came anywhere close to touching his true core; he wouldn’t let them. He’d bet everything on Rachel, and now she was gone. He still had Alfred, but the butler wasn’t getting any younger. Bruce knew very well that in a few years, he’d be truly alone.
He turned his gaze to the madman sitting beside him, wondering if he was going mad even to consider trying this in a dream. It wasn’t real and he couldn’t be physically hurt by a dream, but part of him wondered if it might leave psychological scars. “I agree to give you attention, and you continue to help me like you did tonight, with the woman?”
Joker gave him a look of pity. “You still think I’m just a figment of your imagination, don’t you?” he murmured. He swallowed again, then leaned down and cautiously touched their lips together.
Bruce watched him as he came closer, morbid fascination keeping him still until the man was actually kissing him. It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined; there was a taste of greasepaint, then something comfortably warm and human underneath. He’d expected Joker to behave like a rabid dog, all vicious teeth and claws and the potent smell of life lived in the gutter.
It slowly became obvious that the madman didn’t want to break contact, so Bruce did it for him, lacing fingers through tangles of green hair and pulling him back slightly. Both of them were breathing heavily. Bruce didn’t want to analyze that fact too closely. “You agree, then?”
“Not just attention, Bruce. You,” Joker insisted. “I wouldn’t bother doing all this for anyone else.”
“Why?” Bruce was legitimately curious, wondering exactly what could have driven the other man’s obsession in life.
That infuriating smile slipped into place again, a too-wide arch of ragged skin and yellowed teeth. “You won’t believe me, yet. I’ll get to the point where I can prove to you that I’m real, that I’m here. Then maybe I’ll work on getting you to believe why.”
The surreal nature of the dream was hitting Bruce again, his gaze flickering sideways to take in the familiar setting before returning to the form of Joker hovering mere centimeters above him. He sighed. “I’ve agreed. Now what happens?” he asked.
“Now you sleep.”
Well, that hadn’t been the answer he’d been expecting. “That’s it?”
“Are you asking if I’m going to take advantage of you?” Joker chuckled, shooting Bruce a hungry look. “I could, but I think you’d deeply resent me for it later, once you realize this is real. I’d rather not have you angry at me for the rest of your life while we’re stuck together.” Pulling back from Bruce, Joker slid off the bed and stood. “Just sleep. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a little longer.”
Moving back into the shadows, the clown shot Bruce one last warning look. “Remember, Bat. Don’t ignore me.” Bruce watched as his outline shifted, melded into the darkness of the bedroom, leaving him alone in the dream.
He shivered, turning over on his side to keep an eye on the spot where the madman had disappeared. Soon enough, however, his exhaustion pulled on him, even in the dream. Bruce sunk into unconsciousness for the second time, dead to the world as he floated in a dreamless sleep.
A/N: One more chapter snuck in under the deadline. As a reminder, this story will be continued at batsandknives.