For Laughs - Batman/Criminal Minds - Chapter 14 - 15/17
Title: For Laughs
Fandom: Batman (Nolan universe, mostly)/Criminal Minds
Links: Prologue + Chapter 1 + Chapter 2 + Chapter 3 + Chapter 4 + Chapter 5 + Chapter 6 + Chapter 7 + Chapter 8 + Chapter 9 + Chapter 10 + Chapter 11 + Chapter 12 + Chapter 13
Rating: T (overall), but ventures into M
Warnings: Joker-level violence, serial killer activities
Summary: If the BAU wants to catch the Joker, they'll need to profile the Batman. But will all of the team survive to close the case? Gen fic.
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any related characters in the franchise, nor do I own the television show Criminal Minds. Written for fun and sick kicks, not profit.
Chapter 14
Find the Monster Inside
The vat was out of date technology, the likes of which were probably still in use in the countries of the world that provided cheap toys for American retailers. It was a taper necked cauldron, intended to be manually stirred, and it swung on an iron support, easily tilted one way or the other to fill molds.
Reid wasn't sure what had originally been heated in it, but he knew what was currently inside. Two dozen eyeless, unpainted doll bodies worth of melted, flesh toned plastic, threatening to gum up in minutes if it wasn't slid into the oven again.
Seemed plenty hot to Reid.
The spout tipped forward, another drop landing on Spencer's bare stomach, a snap sizzle as it hit two inches from his navel. Reid clenched his teeth, but the cry left him, nevertheless. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Reid almost laughed at that thought. How horribly wrong had his life gone that melted plastic dripping down onto his body wasn't so bad?
Reid released the tension in his jaw, felt a tiny, sharp fragment against his tongue. A chip of enamel from one of his teeth.
"You know, it'll be our little secret."
The voice was higher-pitched. Pleased with itself. "See, kiddo, you're right, I don't want the world to know who Batman is. But I want to know." The Joker's voice lowered slightly, loosing some of its charm. "As you so thoughtfully pointed out, I need to know. And, unfortunately for you, Dr. Reid, the answer's in your noggin." Reid felt a fist tap his skull. "Now," the Joker whispered, as if afraid the lackeys standing outside might be listening in, "if you decide not to tell me his name, I'll have to kill you, to keep our little secret secret."
Reid redirected his blurred gaze, finding the Joker had righted the tilted cauldron and pushed it back. The clown leaned down next to the belt, pulling the red welding gloves off his hands. Reid didn't reply to the threat. He only shook slightly at the chill inside the building breezing over his cut open shirt, over the bare burns on his stomach.
"You still with me?" the Joker asked, overly-dramatic concern tugging his grin into a pout. "Don't check-out yet, Dr. Reid… I've still got plenty of steam left."
"I'm here," Reid managed, his head lolling back. The lights blinded him, and he recalled why he had turned his head to the side in the first place. "I'm here," he repeated, louder.
Because pretending he wasn't there, that exhaustion had taken him, would only lead to a bored unsub and a quicker death. And the team needed more time if they were going to get the job done. If.
The Joker sighed, looking over his shoulder to give the cauldron a forlorn glance. "I know guys who swear by fire, but me," he paused, pulling free a short blade from his wrist, as if performing an illusion, "I'm more of knife man."
"I hear," he began again, "that it has something to do with my sexual performance, but I gotta say, that sounds a little hooky. I've formed my own opinion on the matter." He tapped Reid's cheek with the flat of the three inch blade, his gaze lowered darkly. "Want to know why I use a knife, doc?"
"It's slower than a gun," Reid replied without hesitation, "more time to enjoy the connection between you and your victim. It's more personal." He stopped, chewing his lip for a moment. The Joker's silence put a fresh sheen of sweat on his cold skin. Reid repressed the shiver. "I don't believe it's sexual, either, not in your case. Your victims are diverse in race and gender and the wounds are more often caused by slicing motions instead of stabs, which would be a more likely substitute for the sexual act."
The factory was eerily quiet a moment, then the almost unrecognizable sound of a forced laugh echoed over the machinery. Hee hee hee, ho ho, hee ha… It trailed off. The knife lifted and found Reid's mouth.
The Joker leaned close, his free hand reaching up to clench onto Reid's jaw. Reid squirmed against the bruising grip, trying to jerk his head out of the murderer's tight grasp.
"Open," the Joker hissed, "open up…There you go, kiddo. Eat your peas. Good boy…"
The knife slipped pass Reid's parted lips, and the agent stilled out of shock and fear. Reid sucked in a shallow breath, afraid to move, his eyes wide in panic as the Joker slid the knife tight against the inside of his cheek.
Reid tasted metal pooling against his teeth and a subtle sting across his bleeding gums. It wouldn't do to beg, to plead for the man to stop; nevertheless, a whimper made it past his teeth.
"I do like a personal approach," the Joker hissed, "I really do. That's why I look into the people I'm working with. Find the skeletons in their closets, their weaknesses, which family members will be easiest to blow to smithereens, which co-workers are more susceptible to having their throats slit by serial killers…"
Reid shook at the thought, his eyes narrow in fury. The Joker moved his weight from one foot to the other, his shoes crushing the papers on the floor. Papers that told him about the agent's degrees, his IQ. And more? Reid swallowed the blood in his mouth, his adam's apple bouncing.
The Joker had noticed the movement, and his grinned was yellow stained, predator like. Animalistic. "Funny thing. It was a little hard to find out about Spencer Reid's loving DNA donors. And then, I get the best news. It looks like boy genius's mother is at the Bennington Sanitarium." His breath was hot against Reid's stinging cheek. "Now, I'm not a genius myself, but paranoid schizophrenia, that's genetic, isn't it?"
The Joker tightened his fingers around Reid's chin and forced the agent's head to nod along. The clown mimicked the movement. "That's what I thought," he said, "so, you might say, you have a certain inclination for madness." The Joker tilted his head forward, casting his dark eyes in shadows. "Now, I'm just thinking out-loud here, but I bet, it would take just a few teeny scars on the outside, a few little mutilations here and there, to make the ones on the inside show. If I were to, say, put a smile on that face, it might just do the trick."
The knife dug into the soft flesh, sending a new stream of blood trickling down Reid's throat, but the blade paused there, in wait.
The Joker licked his own lip, collecting the wetness at the corner of his mouth. "Dr. Reid, did I ever tell you how I got these scars?"
Surely not.
Surely Hotch had been kidding…right? Garcia snorted at the very idea. Hotch, kid? Never--well, not on a case where one of their family had been hurt...And another was still missing. Garcia stared at the phone box as if it might attack her, and she managed not to lose the eye contact, even as she released a calming breath and repeated her most recent mantra.
"Reid's okay. The team will find him. Reid's ok…" she whispered. The manta had changed only slightly over the past two hours, the name from J.J. to Reid, the her to him. Granted, her state of mind was considerably better than it had been when she'd thought her little family had lost their youngest, but it was still bad. Way bad. This wasn't fair, not at all, that two of the sweetest people she knew were currently… "Reid's okay. The team will find him…"
She had work to do, she really did, but she couldn't. Not while she was waiting for the phone call. Nervousness made itself known in the form of her second favorite fuzzy pen bouncing against a scrap of paper.
"This is ridiculous," Garcia finally voiced. Her fluffy blond and black highlighted ponytail bounced when she nodded in agreement with herself.
There was absolutely no way Aaron Hotchner had just told her to expect a phone call from a masked vigilante. From Batman. And it was an absolute impossibility that Derek Morgan had verified the information over their boss's shoulder. Except Hotch had called. And he had asked her to "help" the Batman in any way possible.
It was nuts.
The buzz of her direct line nearly knocked to her to the floor. Garcia took a breath and a shaky, blue-tipped fingernail tapped the line open. She opened her mouth, and for possibly the first time in her career, she was lost for words.
"Uhhh."
"Penelope Garcia?" a voice asked. It was low, raspy, and Garcia hated to admit a little sexy, if she could get past the throat cancer patient resemblance. "I was told this was your direct line."
"Present and accounted for, and this is indeed the office of all obtainable knowledge," she chirped, and made a face. So not the time. "Is this, umm, Mr…Batman?"
She listened carefully, hearing the sound of an engine, or maybe neighboring traffic. He was on the move, that much she was certain of. Her heart fluttered a little. Did that mean he knew something about Reid? "Sir?" she prompted.
"Yes," he finally replied. "Agent Hotchner contacted you?"
"And told me to service you in any way necessary--" Penelope slapped her forehead, leaving a pen mark behind. She made a face, flustered. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Not that I have a problem with men in body armor or tights. I mean, I really commend you on the costume thing because it…because it really shows how secure you are in your masculinity. I for one--"
Batman cut off the babble, not a hint of annoyance or of humor in his voice. Garcia hoped that meant he hadn't heard a word of it. "I have a few leads on where the Joker might be holding Dr. Reid, but I'm afraid I might not have the time to check them all, even with the help of the agents."
Garcia nodded, face lined, serious. "What do you need me to do?"
"There might be a way to narrow down the location," Batman continued. "It hadn't occurred to me earlier but Victor Zsasz mentioned being in contact with the Joker. Dr. Reid's cell phone wasn't found at the location of his kidnapping. It could have been in the hotel room but…"
Garcia threw up a hand in a flutter, her fingers already landing on the keyboard. "But he might have still had the cell phone on him, and the unsub might have found it convenient to use. It's a long shot…"
"Can you use this to narrow down the area?" Batman asked.
Garcia smirked, tapping "enter." She lowered her gaze at the computer. "Oh, sweet cheeks, if you have to ask, you don't know me very well…If the Joker used Reid's phone, we're in business."
Penelope thought the sound on the other end was a sigh. Of relief. She took a moment to blink at that, not expecting the masked man to be invested enough for such an emotional display. Before she could question it, though, his gravelly voice reappeared in her ear.
"I'll be in touch."
And he cut off his phone.
The Joker's knife was tight against the inside of Reid's cheek, the madman's fingertips brushing lips. "See, kiddo, I had a sick Mom, too. She was a little on the unstable side." His tongue flickered out, licking his scar, and his gaze bounced, an excitement there, in their wet reflection. "One day, Mommy dearest was having one of her fits…"
His voice trailed off when his gaze landed on Reid's face. The Joker's smile hardened into a thin line of red paint. He pulled the knife free, nicking the corner of Reid's mouth, but leaving the cheek undamaged. A tear of blood slid down the young man's face, a mocking, temporary, resemblance of the scars puckering his captor's jaw. But Reid didn't seem to notice that the threatening blade had been taken away. He stared up at the Joker, brow wrinkled in sympathy.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" the Joker snapped, shaking the man's face with his free hand before his finger's released him and found a wad of his open shirt to hold on to instead. "What? You don't like my story?"
"I thought," Reid said, and he swallowed in hesitation. His teeth were stained red when he opened his mouth again. "At least two of the people in our records have reported back the stories you tell about your scars. Each was significantly different, and I ventured that you changed the story on purpose depending on your victim. It fit the profile. The stories would help establish your instability, make you appear more unpredictable than you truly are. I assumed the changing story was to allow you to force a connection between you and your victim, to increase their state of fear. And you probably do tell it to your victims for all of those reasons, but there's another reason, too. It's a form of transference. You become a different person in each story and apply your own imagined tragedy, not because it's easier to lie… but because you don't know the truth."
Reid paused, shivered against the coldness of the room. "You can't remember how you got those scars, can you?"
Reid was expecting, from the glower on the Joker's face, a violent reaction, but instead, the Joker only shook his head in exasperation. "You know, kiddo, if you didn't want to hear the story, all you had to do was say so." He released the agent's shirt, patting out the wrinkles, bringing the two sides together, and dropped the small knife to the floor. It clattered against the cement. "Then we could have skipped straight to this part."
The sting of his bare hand left Reid seeing stars. A second slap followed immediately, and the Joker gripped his collar, jerking him up as far as the restraints would allow.
"Tell me who the Batman is," he hissed, spraying spittle over Reid's face. "Or I gut you," he added, somewhat more cheerfully, "like a fish."
"That's not what you really want to know," Reid insisted. "You're obsessed with Batman, but that's not the reason you took me."
"Tell me who the Batman is," the Joker repeated, and dropped him, letting his head bounce against the conveyor belt.
"You don't remember why you're a monster," Reid continued, "that's why you assume that everyone is a monster, deep down inside. You know that you couldn't have been what you are now, back before the scars. You know that you must have appeared normal, just like everyone else, and then something horrible happened to you. And it let the evil loose." He paused, his breath rapid as a wave of adrenaline pumped through him, urging him to get away. But the restraints were still tight.
The Joker hopped onto the metal lip running alongside the table and threw one leg over the agent, straddling his burnt stomach. Reid gasped at the sudden weight, loosing his train of thought when the pain sent stars across his vision. Reid coughed, spitting up blood from his damaged gums.
"You're good, kiddo," Joker growled, "got me all figured out, don't you?" He leaned forward, putting more pressure on Reid's bruised ribcage. The Joker ran a finger over the line of blood at the corner Reid's mouth, painting the agent's cheeks with a faint, matching smile. "If you're so good, you should be able to tell me what I need to know, shouldn't you? Give me his name, doc, and I'll make sure you're even better at your job…"
Reid shook his head from side to side. "That's not what you want to know."
The Joker gripped Reid by his hair, his thumbnails digging into the scalp. "Did ya see Dent, kiddo, after I got through with him? Half a face. Pretty interesting effect, visually." The Joker ground his teeth, talking them through them in a rage. "Good work, huh, and can you believe that was entirely unintentional? Be hard top that one. But I bet I can." His fingers tangled, the thumbs pressing down hard on the skin of the hairline. Reid screamed out when they cut into the tender flesh. Wetness rolled over his temples, but instead of letting go, the Joker drug his thumbnails down another centimeter, tearing at the skin. "How about a man without a face? That's something to write home about, isn't it? A real show stopper. F.B.I agent loses face." The Joker paused, laughing at his own joke. "What do you think, kiddo? That the type of monster you want to be?"
Reid bit the torn inside of his mouth, his own fingernails digging into his palms. He tried not to cry out again. If he did, he'd lose his breath, and with the weight atop him, he'd never regain it.
"Not everyone's a monster inside," he gasped. "Some people just aren't capable of being as evil as you are."
The Joker lifted Reid's head and slammed it down again before pulling his thumbnails free from the sheath of skin. They came away bright, stained. "Tell me who Batman is!" he snapped. "Tell me!"
Reid stared up at him, meeting his eye. "I won't."
"Tell me," the Joker growled, "tell me! Tell me who he is! TELL ME WHO THE JOKER IS!"
The clown paused, stunned. His lips moved, wordlessly, in an almost comical display of confusion. The Joker slipped off of Reid's body and put his back to the agent, his hands held up to cover his face. A short, stilted sob escaped.
When he turned around, his head was lowered. Reid stared at him in shock, but couldn't see the other man's face. The Joker's hair hung down, a mess of green, and shadowed his expression. Where the light did grace him, Reid could see his own blood smeared against the man's chin and jaw.
"Joker?" Reid asked.
The villain didn't reply. Instead, he reached over, picking up a knife from the worker's table. It was longer than the other, a good six inches with a handle nearly as long, and it glistened in the harsh factory lighting.
Reid struggled against his bindings. "Don't," he breathed, "don't or you'll never know…"
The Joker held the blade up with both hands, its sharp point two feet above Reid's chest. But, still, the clown didn't raise his head. "Hey, kiddo," he said, his voice soft, distant, "wanna see a magic trick?"
He plunged the knife down into the agent's sternum.
READ CHAPTER 15