Heroes of the Squared Circle 36: Watch the World Burn
Title: Watch the World Burn
Relationship: Clark/Bruce
Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Joker, Harley Quinn, Jason Todd
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion ( click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count 2800
Summary: The Joker works on refining his gimmick, with some help from Jason Todd.
In its own twisted way the wrestling business is kind of like a real life Never Never Land in that wrestlers are allowed to extend their childhood: dressing up in costumes and playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or whatever else. --Bruce Hart
The dim cool glow of a phone screen woke Clark. “Wha?” he mumbled, looking vaguely around the hotel room until his eyes focused enough to take in the sight of Bruce glaring ferociously at his phone. “Bruce. Bruce.” He reached out and tried to cover up the screen; Bruce yanked the phone away and kept tapping at it. “If Luthor finds out that you’re trolling the wrestling forums, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“It’s not trolling,” snapped Bruce. “It’s correcting.”
“Bruce,” groaned Clark, “He’s never going to get over like Dick. He’s accepting this better than you are. You have to let go of it.” He sat up in bed and kissed the side of Bruce’s neck, wrapping his fingers around Bruce’s clenched hands. “Let it go, my warrior, my samurai, my hoplite.” One by one, he pried Bruce’s fingers off the phone, murmuring the only endearments he had ever been able to use that didn’t sound ludicrous. “Sleep, get some sleep, my knight. Let the world take care of itself for just a little while, my bold cossack, my cavalier, my heart.”
He whispered against Bruce’s skin, rubbing at his tense shoulders until they slowly unknotted, until his breaths came slow and easy.
And then he hid the phone under his own pillow so Bruce couldn’t retrieve it without waking him.
Nightwing and Arsenal--Speedy had chosen a new name to mark his new commitment to being a good father and keeping clean--were on the screen, pulling off yet another amazing match against Gizmo and Mammoth. Bruce was watching Dick perform, and Clark was (surreptitiously) watching Bruce. There was something unbearably charming about the way his brows pinched together when a difficult move was being set up, the way he bit his lip whenever Dick was in midair.
“That’s brilliant!” Joker’s cackle of laughter sliced through the conversations in the common room. “Harley, you never cease to amaze me.”
Clark turned as Napier and Quinn entered the room--and frowned. He started to ask, then bit the question back. Others were not so tactful: “Napier, what the hell did you do to your makeup?” asked Billy Batson, looking up from his Gameboy.
“Like it?” Napier gestured at his face, the makeup no longer sharp and defined but blurred and smeared as if he had scrubbed his hands across his face. His eyes were black, skull-like hollows, and the red marking his lips had been stretched partway across his face, mimicking scars at the corners of his mouth. His hair was no longer neatly combed back, but a wild tangle around his face.
“You look like hell,” Billy said.
Joker hunched up his shoulders in a gleeful giggle, grabbing Harley. “It’s perfect, Harl! Perfect!”
“I know!” Harley threw her hands out and did a quick pirouette, coming to an abrupt stop with a huge grin on her face. “Joker and I were talking, and we think his image needs some updating. A darker take to match the Dark Knight, ya know? We want him to be dangerous, something really cool, something real!”
“The whole ‘dapper clown’ angle was great, but it’s time to step it up a notch,” Joker explained, dusting off his lapels. “True art consists not of simply making people laugh, but of showing them the darkness in their own souls, the gaps and slippage between our image of the world and the messy, horrible reality. Introduce a little anarchy, a touch of uncertainty into people’s neat little narratives.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Hey, Lex!” he called as Luthor entered the room, gazing down at his phone. “How do you feel about weapons in the ring?”
“Fine, as long as you don’t plan on actually hurting someone with it,” Lex said absently.
Joker’s laugh cut off into an annoyed grimace. “Geez, Luthor,” he said in an utterly normal voice, “Just how crazy do you think I am? You think I want to lose my job?”
“Mr. J is a professional,” Harley snapped.
Luthor rolled his eyes as Joker threw his lanky frame into a chair. “God save me from professionals,” he muttered.
“No one understands me,” moaned Joker. “No one understands my art. Okay, you do, Harley,” he conceded to the crestfallen Quinn.
“I get it, man,” said Jason suddenly, closing the book he’d been reading. “You just want to remind people of the chaos underlying everything. That we make up stories to give meaning to the world, but the world doesn’t give a damn about our neat little stories. It’s all randomness and cruelty underneath, so you might as well laugh at it.”
Joker sat up straighter and looked at Jason, his eyebrows raised. “Well!” he said, impressed. “You seem a bright and perceptive young man. I’ve got some ideas about that six-man ladder match coming up, how’s about we talk about it?”
Clark watched the three of them settle into a spirited conversation. He turned to make some light comment to Bruce about strange bedfellows, then stopped.
Bruce was staring at the television screen with Dick and Roy on it, but his eyes were unseeing, his shoulders tight. “Hey,” Clark said, taking his elbow and shaking it lightly.
“That’s all we’ve got,” Bruce said, his voice very low, not looking at Clark. “Stories are all we have. You can’t laugh at them.” He looked up then, and Clark blinked at the raw pain in his eyes. “You can’t just laugh at stories.”
Then he seemed to slowly take in Clark’s concern; he shook his head as if to banish dark thoughts, and some of the tension went out of his face. “Anyway, that’s my point of view. But not everyone agrees, I suppose.” He pointed to the screen with his chin, clearly changing the topic. “They’re doing great, aren’t they?”
Clark glanced up to the slow-motion replay, Dick’s body arcing from the turnbuckle into his opponent. “They are,” he said, squeezing Bruce’s elbow just a little before releasing it.
“You know what?” Joker announced, throwing his arms out to address the crowd, the black pits of his eyes staring out at them, “I don’t need that scaly lizard as a tag team partner anyway!” Killer Croc had recently decided he wasn’t going to take Joker’s abuse anymore and had turned on him, chokeslamming him in the center of the ring. “He never had a sense of humor. Just like you losers,” he said, waving a contemptuous hand at the audience. He paused and beamed at Harley, standing outside the ring and holding his purple coat, gazing up at him. “Other than you, Harley.” She jumped to attention, holding out his coat in readiness.
“I need a tag team partner who’ll really appreciate me,” Joker said as he climbed out of the ring.
Harley’s eyes sparkled and she bounced in place as if she couldn’t contain herself.
“Someone who knows how to work with genius.”
“Ooh! Ooh!” Harley squeaked, helping him into his coat. “Do you--do you have someone specific in mind, Mr. J?”
“I do indeed, my dear Harley,” Joker cooed, pinching her chalk-white cheek. He spun to address the crowd once more. “Scabies and Gentlenerds, allow me to introduce to you my new tag team partner, the only partner I will ever need…”
With a flourish, he reached under the ring and pulled out an object.
“Say hello to Mr. Crowbar!” he cried, flourishing it in the air, oblivious to the way Harley’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
The Dark Knight and the Kryptonian circled each other warily in the ring. “Say something, damn you!” rasped the Dark Knight; as usual, the Kryptonian merely sneered as Brainiac laughed from the sidelines. “The Kryptonian does not waste words on lesser life-forms!” cackled Brainiac.
The two battled around the ring, trading throw for throw and blow for blow, but it was clear that the Dark Knight was losing ground. A flurry of heavy punches left him reeling against the turnbuckle. The Kryptonian advanced on him, a cruel smile touching his alien, impassive face, his arms raised to deliver the finishing move.
And then the Dark Knight raised a hand to his mouth and blew a cloud of green powder at the Kryptonian.
The powder sparkled poison-bright in the spotlights, a glittering fog around the Kryptonian--and the Kryptonian covered his face and staggered backwards, his knees going weak like a marionette with its strings cut. For a moment, the Dark Knight clearly had the upper hand and the Kryptonian was unable to respond at all. Brainiac sputtered on the sidelines, furious and impotent, and although the “alien menace from beyond the stars” recovered to put in a good fight, he was obviously weakened by the contact with the powder that still clung to his sweat-sheened skin, which enabled the Dark Knight to finally pin him and win the match.
“I don’t understand,” Clark said later, as he combed green glitter out of his hair. “What was the point of that move?”
Bruce’s eyes glinted. “Just putting it on the table for a possible future storyline,” he said.
“Wheels within wheels,” Clark laughed.
“You know me so well.”
“What’s that, Crow?” Projected onto the Jumbotron as though a camera just happened to catch him backstage in a private moment, Joker leaned close to his “tag team partner,” listening.
He pulled an apologetic face as if being chastised.
“I’m sorry, I should have said Mr. Crowbar. I know you don’t like people being too familiar. But what’s that you say?”
He leaned close again, pressing his face against the dark metal.
“Oh, that’s such a good point! Hold on, brother, and I’ll fix that for you.”
Joker moved so his back was to the camera, blocking the view of the crowbar as he whistled happily to himself. “Ta-da!” he announced, holding up the crowbar--now with two large googly eyes attached to it, giving it a jaunty “face.” “Better? Thank you, I think so too!”
“Hey!” Jason called out over the chatter in the common room. “Keep it down, will you? I gotta hear this.”
On the monitor Joker was cradling his crowbar, crooning to it. As people lowered their voices--some with grudging looks at Jason--his voice pierced the room:
“What’s that, Mr. Crowbar? You think I should smash one of these shiny monitors? But that would be vandalism, wouldn’t it?”
A rapt pause as the audience screamed in delight, chanting ”Smash it! Smash it!”
“Geez,” said Killer Croc. “He got a lot of heat before, but listen to ‘em now. They love him.”
“Well, they love ‘Mr. Crowbar,’” Selina said, wrinkling her nose.
“I think they just love wanton destruction,” said Diana.
“Didn’t I just say that?”
Joker laughed as the audience egged him on, then bent back to his weapon to address it. “Oh, very well, Mr. Crowbar. You make a valid point, and so--”
The Joker’s long, skinny body arced as he hoisted the crowbar and brought it down with a shower of sparks and shattering glass on the monitor, pounding at it until it was no more than fragments. Announcers and camera crew scattered in panic; the crowd howled with glee.
“Wow, Mr. J!” Harley enthused--from a safe distance. “That was spectacular!”
“I don’t know, my dear,” sighed Joker, looking down. “I fear I went too far.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Joker pulled a tragic face. “Just look! Mr. Crowbar has lost an eye! And we’re just about to begin our big match against the Dark Doofus--he’ll have to fight injured!” He cradled the crowbar tenderly as he moved toward the ring. “Hang in there, brother!”
“Man,” said Jason, looking at the monitor, where Joker was brandishing the weapon at a looming Dark Knight. “It’s like a damn magic trick or something. Smash a few monitors, sell how dangerous it is, and no one will notice that you practically never get around to hitting someone with it.” The crowbar whiffed through the air over the Dark Knight’s head. “And then when you actually do use it on someone--”
The Joker jabbed at the Dark Knight with the crowbar, putting his hand between it and his opponent at the last second to cushion the blow; Bruce tumbled backwards as if he’d been bludgeoned and a collective gasp of horror rose from the crowd.
“It’s all in the selling,” said Clark. “And no one sells like Bruce.”
Jason frowned at the monitor, his eyes narrowed intensely. “I’ve got to learn how to sell taking a beating better.”
“Robin! Excuse me, Robin?” Clark Kent, mic in hand, chased down the wrestler in the hallway after the six-man ladder match.
As he drew close, Robin turned on him: “What?”
Kent ignored the frazzled tone in the wrestler’s voice, pressing closer: “Robin, you came really close to climbing that ladder, grabbing the briefcase and winning yourself a shot at the championship title,” said Clark Kent, holding the mic up to Robin’s distraught face. “And if it hadn’t been for the Joker, you might have pulled it off. Now Sinestro’s the one going up against John Stewart. Any thoughts?”
“I don’t understand it!” Robin threw his hands in the air, exasperation and anger sharpening his voice. “Joker could have gotten the championship shot himself--all he had to do was climb the ladder and take it! Everyone else was down, the ladder was wide open. But instead he came after me and let Sinestro recover enough to get up there and grab the briefcase.” His face twisted with baffled fury. “Why? Why did he pass up winning the match to bash me a few more times? It doesn’t make sense!”
Clark’s eyes went wide as a figure loomed up behind Robin, dark-cowled and dark-caped. “Some men don’t make sense, Robin,” rasped the Dark Knight. “A wise man once told me that. Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like title chances or winning matches. Some men can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.” He looked beyond Robin, straight at the camera, making eye contact with each viewer.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
“Are you okay, Bruce? You seem...I don’t know.”
Bruce had shrugged off invitations to get drinks with the other wrestlers after the pay-per-view, his eyes distant, and Clark had made his excuses too. “Your loss,” Jason had chortled, still high on adrenaline from his match.
Bruce was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. “Did you hear the crowd tonight? At the end of the ladder match, when Joker went after Robin instead of climbing the ladder?”
“First off, of course I did,” Clark chuckled, slipping into bed beside him. “I was there to interview poor traumatized Robin, remember? And yeah, they were going nuts.”
“But they were cheering for Joker,” Bruce said, his voice low. “They wanted him to beat up Jason.”
“You mean Robin,” corrected Clark. “The character. They wanted one character they think is cool to beat up another character they don’t like. It’s not Jason, you know.”
“But it’s a bad story,” said Bruce. He closed his eyes. “Wanting the heel to win.” He sounded strangely young, and lost. “I understand people cheering against me, because the Dark Knight is built up to be strong and scary. But Robin’s just a kid. How can they want him to lose against a madman like the Joker? It’s not fair.”
“Sometimes people like to mess with expectations,” Clark said. Bruce seemed so far away, off in some private world that he couldn’t reach; he felt a stab of foreboding go through him. “They feel like Jason was forced on them by the powers that be, while they’ve embraced Joker freely, on their own terms. I don’t like it either, but...people can be perverse, you know? You can’t control their reactions.”
Bruce didn’t respond, and after a while Clark sighed and lay down next to him, letting one hand rest across Bruce’s bare chest as if to keep him pinned to reality.
He was almost asleep when he heard Bruce say very softly, more to himself than to Clark:
“Some people just want to watch the world burn.”
Relationship: Clark/Bruce
Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Joker, Harley Quinn, Jason Todd
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion ( click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count 2800
Summary: The Joker works on refining his gimmick, with some help from Jason Todd.
In its own twisted way the wrestling business is kind of like a real life Never Never Land in that wrestlers are allowed to extend their childhood: dressing up in costumes and playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or whatever else. --Bruce Hart
The dim cool glow of a phone screen woke Clark. “Wha?” he mumbled, looking vaguely around the hotel room until his eyes focused enough to take in the sight of Bruce glaring ferociously at his phone. “Bruce. Bruce.” He reached out and tried to cover up the screen; Bruce yanked the phone away and kept tapping at it. “If Luthor finds out that you’re trolling the wrestling forums, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“It’s not trolling,” snapped Bruce. “It’s correcting.”
“Bruce,” groaned Clark, “He’s never going to get over like Dick. He’s accepting this better than you are. You have to let go of it.” He sat up in bed and kissed the side of Bruce’s neck, wrapping his fingers around Bruce’s clenched hands. “Let it go, my warrior, my samurai, my hoplite.” One by one, he pried Bruce’s fingers off the phone, murmuring the only endearments he had ever been able to use that didn’t sound ludicrous. “Sleep, get some sleep, my knight. Let the world take care of itself for just a little while, my bold cossack, my cavalier, my heart.”
He whispered against Bruce’s skin, rubbing at his tense shoulders until they slowly unknotted, until his breaths came slow and easy.
And then he hid the phone under his own pillow so Bruce couldn’t retrieve it without waking him.
Nightwing and Arsenal--Speedy had chosen a new name to mark his new commitment to being a good father and keeping clean--were on the screen, pulling off yet another amazing match against Gizmo and Mammoth. Bruce was watching Dick perform, and Clark was (surreptitiously) watching Bruce. There was something unbearably charming about the way his brows pinched together when a difficult move was being set up, the way he bit his lip whenever Dick was in midair.
“That’s brilliant!” Joker’s cackle of laughter sliced through the conversations in the common room. “Harley, you never cease to amaze me.”
Clark turned as Napier and Quinn entered the room--and frowned. He started to ask, then bit the question back. Others were not so tactful: “Napier, what the hell did you do to your makeup?” asked Billy Batson, looking up from his Gameboy.
“Like it?” Napier gestured at his face, the makeup no longer sharp and defined but blurred and smeared as if he had scrubbed his hands across his face. His eyes were black, skull-like hollows, and the red marking his lips had been stretched partway across his face, mimicking scars at the corners of his mouth. His hair was no longer neatly combed back, but a wild tangle around his face.
“You look like hell,” Billy said.
Joker hunched up his shoulders in a gleeful giggle, grabbing Harley. “It’s perfect, Harl! Perfect!”
“I know!” Harley threw her hands out and did a quick pirouette, coming to an abrupt stop with a huge grin on her face. “Joker and I were talking, and we think his image needs some updating. A darker take to match the Dark Knight, ya know? We want him to be dangerous, something really cool, something real!”
“The whole ‘dapper clown’ angle was great, but it’s time to step it up a notch,” Joker explained, dusting off his lapels. “True art consists not of simply making people laugh, but of showing them the darkness in their own souls, the gaps and slippage between our image of the world and the messy, horrible reality. Introduce a little anarchy, a touch of uncertainty into people’s neat little narratives.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Hey, Lex!” he called as Luthor entered the room, gazing down at his phone. “How do you feel about weapons in the ring?”
“Fine, as long as you don’t plan on actually hurting someone with it,” Lex said absently.
Joker’s laugh cut off into an annoyed grimace. “Geez, Luthor,” he said in an utterly normal voice, “Just how crazy do you think I am? You think I want to lose my job?”
“Mr. J is a professional,” Harley snapped.
Luthor rolled his eyes as Joker threw his lanky frame into a chair. “God save me from professionals,” he muttered.
“No one understands me,” moaned Joker. “No one understands my art. Okay, you do, Harley,” he conceded to the crestfallen Quinn.
“I get it, man,” said Jason suddenly, closing the book he’d been reading. “You just want to remind people of the chaos underlying everything. That we make up stories to give meaning to the world, but the world doesn’t give a damn about our neat little stories. It’s all randomness and cruelty underneath, so you might as well laugh at it.”
Joker sat up straighter and looked at Jason, his eyebrows raised. “Well!” he said, impressed. “You seem a bright and perceptive young man. I’ve got some ideas about that six-man ladder match coming up, how’s about we talk about it?”
Clark watched the three of them settle into a spirited conversation. He turned to make some light comment to Bruce about strange bedfellows, then stopped.
Bruce was staring at the television screen with Dick and Roy on it, but his eyes were unseeing, his shoulders tight. “Hey,” Clark said, taking his elbow and shaking it lightly.
“That’s all we’ve got,” Bruce said, his voice very low, not looking at Clark. “Stories are all we have. You can’t laugh at them.” He looked up then, and Clark blinked at the raw pain in his eyes. “You can’t just laugh at stories.”
Then he seemed to slowly take in Clark’s concern; he shook his head as if to banish dark thoughts, and some of the tension went out of his face. “Anyway, that’s my point of view. But not everyone agrees, I suppose.” He pointed to the screen with his chin, clearly changing the topic. “They’re doing great, aren’t they?”
Clark glanced up to the slow-motion replay, Dick’s body arcing from the turnbuckle into his opponent. “They are,” he said, squeezing Bruce’s elbow just a little before releasing it.
“You know what?” Joker announced, throwing his arms out to address the crowd, the black pits of his eyes staring out at them, “I don’t need that scaly lizard as a tag team partner anyway!” Killer Croc had recently decided he wasn’t going to take Joker’s abuse anymore and had turned on him, chokeslamming him in the center of the ring. “He never had a sense of humor. Just like you losers,” he said, waving a contemptuous hand at the audience. He paused and beamed at Harley, standing outside the ring and holding his purple coat, gazing up at him. “Other than you, Harley.” She jumped to attention, holding out his coat in readiness.
“I need a tag team partner who’ll really appreciate me,” Joker said as he climbed out of the ring.
Harley’s eyes sparkled and she bounced in place as if she couldn’t contain herself.
“Someone who knows how to work with genius.”
“Ooh! Ooh!” Harley squeaked, helping him into his coat. “Do you--do you have someone specific in mind, Mr. J?”
“I do indeed, my dear Harley,” Joker cooed, pinching her chalk-white cheek. He spun to address the crowd once more. “Scabies and Gentlenerds, allow me to introduce to you my new tag team partner, the only partner I will ever need…”
With a flourish, he reached under the ring and pulled out an object.
“Say hello to Mr. Crowbar!” he cried, flourishing it in the air, oblivious to the way Harley’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
The Dark Knight and the Kryptonian circled each other warily in the ring. “Say something, damn you!” rasped the Dark Knight; as usual, the Kryptonian merely sneered as Brainiac laughed from the sidelines. “The Kryptonian does not waste words on lesser life-forms!” cackled Brainiac.
The two battled around the ring, trading throw for throw and blow for blow, but it was clear that the Dark Knight was losing ground. A flurry of heavy punches left him reeling against the turnbuckle. The Kryptonian advanced on him, a cruel smile touching his alien, impassive face, his arms raised to deliver the finishing move.
And then the Dark Knight raised a hand to his mouth and blew a cloud of green powder at the Kryptonian.
The powder sparkled poison-bright in the spotlights, a glittering fog around the Kryptonian--and the Kryptonian covered his face and staggered backwards, his knees going weak like a marionette with its strings cut. For a moment, the Dark Knight clearly had the upper hand and the Kryptonian was unable to respond at all. Brainiac sputtered on the sidelines, furious and impotent, and although the “alien menace from beyond the stars” recovered to put in a good fight, he was obviously weakened by the contact with the powder that still clung to his sweat-sheened skin, which enabled the Dark Knight to finally pin him and win the match.
“I don’t understand,” Clark said later, as he combed green glitter out of his hair. “What was the point of that move?”
Bruce’s eyes glinted. “Just putting it on the table for a possible future storyline,” he said.
“Wheels within wheels,” Clark laughed.
“You know me so well.”
“What’s that, Crow?” Projected onto the Jumbotron as though a camera just happened to catch him backstage in a private moment, Joker leaned close to his “tag team partner,” listening.
He pulled an apologetic face as if being chastised.
“I’m sorry, I should have said Mr. Crowbar. I know you don’t like people being too familiar. But what’s that you say?”
He leaned close again, pressing his face against the dark metal.
“Oh, that’s such a good point! Hold on, brother, and I’ll fix that for you.”
Joker moved so his back was to the camera, blocking the view of the crowbar as he whistled happily to himself. “Ta-da!” he announced, holding up the crowbar--now with two large googly eyes attached to it, giving it a jaunty “face.” “Better? Thank you, I think so too!”
“Hey!” Jason called out over the chatter in the common room. “Keep it down, will you? I gotta hear this.”
On the monitor Joker was cradling his crowbar, crooning to it. As people lowered their voices--some with grudging looks at Jason--his voice pierced the room:
“What’s that, Mr. Crowbar? You think I should smash one of these shiny monitors? But that would be vandalism, wouldn’t it?”
A rapt pause as the audience screamed in delight, chanting ”Smash it! Smash it!”
“Geez,” said Killer Croc. “He got a lot of heat before, but listen to ‘em now. They love him.”
“Well, they love ‘Mr. Crowbar,’” Selina said, wrinkling her nose.
“I think they just love wanton destruction,” said Diana.
“Didn’t I just say that?”
Joker laughed as the audience egged him on, then bent back to his weapon to address it. “Oh, very well, Mr. Crowbar. You make a valid point, and so--”
The Joker’s long, skinny body arced as he hoisted the crowbar and brought it down with a shower of sparks and shattering glass on the monitor, pounding at it until it was no more than fragments. Announcers and camera crew scattered in panic; the crowd howled with glee.
“Wow, Mr. J!” Harley enthused--from a safe distance. “That was spectacular!”
“I don’t know, my dear,” sighed Joker, looking down. “I fear I went too far.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Joker pulled a tragic face. “Just look! Mr. Crowbar has lost an eye! And we’re just about to begin our big match against the Dark Doofus--he’ll have to fight injured!” He cradled the crowbar tenderly as he moved toward the ring. “Hang in there, brother!”
“Man,” said Jason, looking at the monitor, where Joker was brandishing the weapon at a looming Dark Knight. “It’s like a damn magic trick or something. Smash a few monitors, sell how dangerous it is, and no one will notice that you practically never get around to hitting someone with it.” The crowbar whiffed through the air over the Dark Knight’s head. “And then when you actually do use it on someone--”
The Joker jabbed at the Dark Knight with the crowbar, putting his hand between it and his opponent at the last second to cushion the blow; Bruce tumbled backwards as if he’d been bludgeoned and a collective gasp of horror rose from the crowd.
“It’s all in the selling,” said Clark. “And no one sells like Bruce.”
Jason frowned at the monitor, his eyes narrowed intensely. “I’ve got to learn how to sell taking a beating better.”
“Robin! Excuse me, Robin?” Clark Kent, mic in hand, chased down the wrestler in the hallway after the six-man ladder match.
As he drew close, Robin turned on him: “What?”
Kent ignored the frazzled tone in the wrestler’s voice, pressing closer: “Robin, you came really close to climbing that ladder, grabbing the briefcase and winning yourself a shot at the championship title,” said Clark Kent, holding the mic up to Robin’s distraught face. “And if it hadn’t been for the Joker, you might have pulled it off. Now Sinestro’s the one going up against John Stewart. Any thoughts?”
“I don’t understand it!” Robin threw his hands in the air, exasperation and anger sharpening his voice. “Joker could have gotten the championship shot himself--all he had to do was climb the ladder and take it! Everyone else was down, the ladder was wide open. But instead he came after me and let Sinestro recover enough to get up there and grab the briefcase.” His face twisted with baffled fury. “Why? Why did he pass up winning the match to bash me a few more times? It doesn’t make sense!”
Clark’s eyes went wide as a figure loomed up behind Robin, dark-cowled and dark-caped. “Some men don’t make sense, Robin,” rasped the Dark Knight. “A wise man once told me that. Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like title chances or winning matches. Some men can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.” He looked beyond Robin, straight at the camera, making eye contact with each viewer.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
“Are you okay, Bruce? You seem...I don’t know.”
Bruce had shrugged off invitations to get drinks with the other wrestlers after the pay-per-view, his eyes distant, and Clark had made his excuses too. “Your loss,” Jason had chortled, still high on adrenaline from his match.
Bruce was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. “Did you hear the crowd tonight? At the end of the ladder match, when Joker went after Robin instead of climbing the ladder?”
“First off, of course I did,” Clark chuckled, slipping into bed beside him. “I was there to interview poor traumatized Robin, remember? And yeah, they were going nuts.”
“But they were cheering for Joker,” Bruce said, his voice low. “They wanted him to beat up Jason.”
“You mean Robin,” corrected Clark. “The character. They wanted one character they think is cool to beat up another character they don’t like. It’s not Jason, you know.”
“But it’s a bad story,” said Bruce. He closed his eyes. “Wanting the heel to win.” He sounded strangely young, and lost. “I understand people cheering against me, because the Dark Knight is built up to be strong and scary. But Robin’s just a kid. How can they want him to lose against a madman like the Joker? It’s not fair.”
“Sometimes people like to mess with expectations,” Clark said. Bruce seemed so far away, off in some private world that he couldn’t reach; he felt a stab of foreboding go through him. “They feel like Jason was forced on them by the powers that be, while they’ve embraced Joker freely, on their own terms. I don’t like it either, but...people can be perverse, you know? You can’t control their reactions.”
Bruce didn’t respond, and after a while Clark sighed and lay down next to him, letting one hand rest across Bruce’s bare chest as if to keep him pinned to reality.
He was almost asleep when he heard Bruce say very softly, more to himself than to Clark:
“Some people just want to watch the world burn.”