Wild Card

Disclaimer: If I owned Batman, not only would he be a lot more fucked up than he really is, but he would be routinely screwing the Joker. So don't be stupid and try to sue me, I'm just a lowly perverted fangirl.
Warnings: One-shot Batman/Joker slash; some blood and violence.

Wild Card
By Hades’ Phoenix

Waking up was an unusually painful experience. Acid sang through his veins and it seemed the Gotham construction companies had taken up residence in his tender skull, pounding away hollowly against the throbbing bone.

But Batman was nothing if not self-possessed, and with an inhuman strength of will he managed to push the agony to the back of his mind to focus on other matters. Like the thin wire cutting into his wrists, pinning them around the back of an industrial steel chair. Or the unfamiliar surroundings, as he was quite sure that Wayne Manor did not have any sort of catwalks along the high walls or a ceiling that had never been quite finished, so that the insulation hung down in long yellow strips. Besides, Alfred would never have stood for such a mess as the classically gothic spider-webs stretching over said walls, or the shattered lumber that seemed to have rotted and fallen from their original positions and were strewn about in a most unseemly manner.

Belatedly realizing that his thoughts were beginning to stray, Batman shook his head again; but the single bulb over his head refused to come into focus, and the shadows continued to writhe and crawl over one another. Swiftly demolishing the panic that tried to rise in his throat, he set upon finding a solution.

Bat-cave. He had seen the signal against the sky, and had quickly and efficiently suited himself up and roared into Gotham proper, to meet Jim. Bank—there had been a heist.

Joker.

The madman had set up an unseen perimeter of his lackeys, and waited until not only Batman but also several units of police were within range before he had smiled that demented smile.
Laughing gas. No doubt most of those men were dead.

But then…how was he still alive? How could he have been so careless?

“Good morning, darling,” a soft voice crooned into his ear. Batman jerked reflexively, but whoever had bound him had known what he was doing.

Rich, maniacal laughter floated from behind him at his pathetic attempt for defense. “Oh, sweetheart, that simply will not do.”

“What’s going on, Joker?” Batman hissed, blinking furiously to try and make his vision settle, the fuzziness leave his mind. Instead, the world seemed to spin slightly.

“Everything, Batsy, and nothing at all! You see, we’re in my humble little abode—my asylum away from asylum, you might say.”

“Where you should be,” the Dark Knight spat.

“Tsk, tsk, love, that’s no way to treat a generous host. After all, you are still alive, though you may soon come to regret that. Didn’t your parents ever teach you proper manners? Well, I suppose I’ll have to excuse the slight; it is rather hard to learn from corpses putrefying six feet under.”

A snarl rose in Batman’s throat at the cruel words, but he fought it back down, schooling his features—or what his mask showed, rather—into calm neutrality.

“Why did you bring me here, Joker?”

A pale, green-accented blur moved into his line of vision, and he tensed automatically at the cold touch that brushed against his jaw-line.

“To hear your dulcet tones rise in symphony, darling,” the Joker purred. “Like the darkest of the fallen angels. I want to hear you cry aloud your losses; I want to see you break.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” Batman muttered caustically, slightly comforted by this predictability. “What else am I to expect from an insane sadist?”

The Joker hummed in agreement. “Of course, love. By the way, how is the lovely female bat-counterpart? Still crippled?”

Batman refused to rise to the taunt, and remained silent.

“Now that is a rudeness that cannot be tolerated!” Joker admonished mockingly. “Naughty boys must be punished!”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Batman murmured confidently.

“Not my methods, no. Oh no, not you, you who wears his fear as a symbol of himself and his ideals. You know, Arkham’s shrinks would absolutely adore you. No, I know what you fear, darling.”

“Oh?” He raised a sardonic brow.

Suddenly acid-green eyes filled his gaze; he started, trying to lean away, but the chair held in firmly in place. The Joker remained close, his long nose a mere breath from Batman’s.

“Oh,” the murderer repeated silkily. “You fear, sweetheart, every time you pass a mirror. You fear what you see, but most of all, what you cannot see. You fear the hatred, the fury—the very things that have carved you into the beautiful specimen you are today. Like little Alice, tumbling forever and ever, amen, like Lucifer falling through Chaos until it is all he can do not to lose himself to the darkness.

“But most of all, you fear me, love, because you and I—ah, you and I, darling, we are so very much the same.”

“We are nothing the same!” Batman snarled.

Suddenly the Joker leapt back and spread his arms wide, ruby lips pulled back into its unnatural skeletal grin and horrid dark laughter spilling from his throat like poisoned wine.

“Did you ever hear of the young boy, born to the royal family and raised in the lap of luxury herself? He was loved, and revered, and was a good little boy like all little boys should be, but he had to wear a scarf about his head.

“You see, this boy, with all his sweetness and goodness, had been born such a monster that he made the worst of lepers seem a king. But no one ever told him, because he was such a good little boy.

“Then one day he met a man, and the man smiled and said, ‘Little Prince, do you want to know why you wear that veil?’ And the boy nodded, as politely as you please; so the man brought him a mirror, and lifted away the veil. And then when the boy saw his reflection, he screamed and screamed until blood bubbled from his mouth.

“And he became a true monster, and slaughtered his parents, and all the people that had only ever loved him despite his terrible appearance. Then he laughed and laughed and laughed!”

The Joker twirled about like a small child, his insane laughter echoing in the decrepit place.

“Was that supposed to be a twisted life story?” Batman retorted.

“Oh, and they say you’re intelligent,” the Joker sighed. He pouted, before a decidedly sinister smile crept over his lips; he moved towards Batman with a languid grace to his long limbs, head tilted like a predatory animal. Which was, essentially, what he was.

Cold hands braced themselves against his broad shoulders, sliding ever so slowly down his chest to press lightly against his torso.

“So, how’s your little boy blue? Blown your horn recently?”

“Get away from me, you disgusting son of a bitch,” Batman sneered furiously.

“Oh, ravish me, darling!” the Joker cried, flinging his head back dramatically. “Make me yours! But be gentle—I’m delicate!”

“You filthy—“

“What’s the matter, Batsy?” he cooed, “is it not funny enough for you?”

He said the last few words in a dangerously low undertone, breath ghosting over Batman’s jaw. The Dark Knight tensed, every thought commanding his body to fight, to lash out, to kill the skinny bastard that had crippled Barbara and murdered Jason and was now pressed very close…

“Trying to escape, love? I’m hurt.”

The Joker had slid a hand around his waist and felt the discrete fidgeting of the Batman’s fingers, trying to loosen his bonds.

“Feel my heart breaking,” Batman whispered sarcastically, as the madman tightened the bindings so that he could feel something hot and wet dripping from his fingertips.

“Oh, I intend to.”

But then he drew back again and seized a chair from somewhere to his right, spinning it about and sitting on it backwards so that he leaned his bony chin on crossed forearms, facing the tied-up hero.

“But first, let’s talk, get to know each other. We can make a party of it!”

“Talk about what? The meaning of life? The lack of variety in the diet at Arkham?”

“Everyone knows the meaning of life, Batsy,” Joker snorted derisively. “Though you do have a point, the cooks at Arkham are not working there for their five-star talents. Do you remember Pearl, dear?”

Batman’s eyes narrowed.

“An artist, she said to me,” the Joker mused, resting his chin on his folded arms and gazing at the bound hero with acidic eyes. “What makes an artist, darling? Is it the trappings and the do-ups and the grand shows? Does a canvas an artist make?”

With his utility belt gone and the monofilament cutting too deeply into his wrists for a quick escape, Batman knew he had little choice but to play along with whatever game the Joker had devised in his warped mind. But he had spent years dancing precariously with him, tipping on the fine line between sanity and madness, the Gotham of daylight and false political smiles and the Gotham of the broken and insane and desperate—and sometimes, that line disappeared, so that innocent people like Jason died and monsters like the Joker walked free. By now, he knew the measure of the Joker, knew the depths of cruelty he could see in the hooded, knowing gaze that seemed always at odds with the mocking laughter.

“An artist must be able to capture the imaginations of the people. He must be able to draw their reactions.”

“He must be able to shock people out of their chronic apathy,” countered the madman.

“He must be versatile, and understanding.”

“He must always be evolving, changing, seeking.”

“He must be unafraid of criticism.”

The Joker lips pulled back into the darkest, most sinful smile Batman had ever seen on the pale face.
“He must be able to capture emotion and hide it away like a dirty little secret,” he murmured silkily. “He must be able to see the irony of life, the crudeness of our existence. An artist must be able to look into the mirror and see every disgusting little facet of himself, of his loved ones, of the people laughing and fucking and crying!”

Batman had the feeling one gets when he or she realizes that they have, somehow, just lost the game by playing directly into the opponent’s hand; something sick pooled in his stomach and his heart twisted, like a thing had crawled between his ribs and was dragging its claws in long, slow strokes over the bone.

The Joker stood and kicked his chair aside, ignoring the screeching it made against the plain cement floor. Batman suddenly realized that he was always in motion—whether he was pacing, or laughing, or gesticulating with those pale, long-fingered hands that were too delicate to belong to a murderer, obvious even through the white doeskin gloves. They were a woman’s hands, perhaps. A musician’s. An artist’s and a monster's.

Then the Joker was moving forward again, very close. His breath ghosted over the Dark Knight’s bare neck, his hand coming up to brush ever so softly over the other cheekbone.

“Are we artists, then, love?” he whispered. “Are we outcasts from society, doomed to forever be misunderstood?”

It was hard to think, with having another person invading so very bluntly on his personal space and the poisonous voice all but sighing into his ear. And the words themselves, spilling from red lips like the blood of a corpse, were echoing the thoughts he had only dared to think of at night, alone, so that they seemed to be reincarnated into a reality.

A teenaged face surfaced in his frozen mind, and Batman growled low in his throat.

“You’re not an artist, Joker,” he spat. “Just a beast.”

But instead of drawing back in fury, the Joker laughed. “Are we Beauty and the Beast, then, sweetheart?”

“Get away from me, you fucking piece of shit.”

The Joker sighed, though he still had not moved any farther away. “Is this about your little red bird? Really, Batsy, he was in the way, and carrying on quite childishly. I really had little choice in the matter.”

“So you beat him to death with a crowbar?”

The Joker shrugged, raising a suggestive brow. “One should always take pleasure in their work.”

Those cold, cold hands found him again, but Batman could not move, and realized that through his anger the effect of whatever soporific drug had been used on him had not completely left; he blinked several times, trying again to make the single light focus.

“I suppose I should be thanking you, Batman,” said the Joker into his ear, and through the thin Kevlar Batman could feel the fine-boned hands sliding farther down his torso, until they traced nonsensical patterns over his hipbones. “Without you, I would never have become what I am—never tasted the freedom of madness.”

“Madness is not a freedom,” Batman hissed, “it’s an invisible cage, letting you see everything else but itself.”

“Oh, but it’s so much fun,” the Joker chuckled. “Do bats ever have fun?”

“Sadists like you running rampant leave little time for Disneyland.”

“Then take your chance, Batsy,” the Joker coaxed. “I’ve never seen you let loose; perhaps I can show you how to have fun. After all, isn’t that what clowns do?”

Every muscle in Batman’s body tightened when he felt the long-limbed man straddle his thighs and cold hands slide around his neck. Unconsciously his lips pulled back to bare his teeth in a snarl.

“Fight me, Batman,” the Joker said with a sudden ferocity, a mad bloodlust in his unnatural eyes. “Tear me apart, like you’ve always wanted to! I want to see you look at me with pure hatred because you know that if you had only made one choice, one little action done differently, it would be you in Arkham!”

The Joker’s hands had been so cold, like death; but his body, pressing obscenely close against his own, was as warm and alive as he was. And suddenly, Batman hated that fact more than anything, because he had stolen so many lives, left so many broken hearts and weeping loves…yet Bruce was cold, smiling falsely and pretending that there was not this gaping, empty hole, and this indescribably heartless monster felt more heat…

“You filthy, fucking degenerate!” Batman roared, “you’re sick—“

“Yes, darling, I am! And you know what?” The Joker leaned in closer so his lips brushed Batman’s. “When your little Robin lay bleeding and broken and regretful on the ground, I loved it. He died hating you, sweetheart, because you weren’t there to save him. Just like you can’t save yourself.”

Batman cried out like a ravaged animal, and struggled against the bindings; the Joker crushed his lips into a bruising embrace, teeth biting until the coppery tang of blood welled up in both their mouths. The deathly hands raked painfully, deliciously, down his back, until they met the bloodied tangle of wire holding Batman in place.

The Joker grinned an incarnadined smile, cruel and daring and hopelessly insane.

“Come out, come out, Batsy, and play with me.”

A knife slid from within his long sleeve into his thinly gloved hands—an efficient movement cut away the wire from Batman’s hands and ankles.

It was like unleashing a maddened tiger; Batman surged upwards, throwing the psychotically laughing Joker to the floor, and two fell to biting and striking and snarling like rabid animals, reduced to the basest of furies.

While Batman was certainly fast and much stronger, the Joker was quicker, and his psychosis did not allow for such trivialties as pain or remorse. Blood flowed free and skin broke and bruised, and the Joker’s laughter rose to ever-higher levels of dementia.

Batman was no longer cognizant of the fact that he was lost in a warehouse somewhere, with his greatest enemy and an unknown drug in his veins that blurred his vision and threw him off balance; he knew only the rage and hatred he so usually kept tightly locked away that was now rising and flourishing and pouring over from its blackest depths. He wanted the other man—the one that had taken so much from him, picked apart his mind so many times and yet never bothered to learn his mundane identity—to feel the same agony and guilt and despair that he had, for the blackness that was spilling over his soul to fall into him.

Cloth was parted beneath merciless fingers. The Joker cried out when a harsh blow cracked one of his ribs, and with a bloodstained mockery of a grin he clawed deep scores into Batman’s face in retaliation. Bruises bloomed with beautiful violet and midnight intensity, as though the sickening truth of their very natures were being wrought upon their flesh.

The Joker howled with crazed laughter, caught up in the blood and passion and fury, and he twisted against Batman so that his back arched and his smile was absolutely demonic, fingers pulling at the other’s dark clothing. Then he screamed, as their battle rose to a crescendo and he was brutally taken, ripped into two and falling together in the wrong order. And Batman bit deep into his shoulder, wanting desperately to possess and ruin, and losing himself so that the Joker’s madness did not seem so mad, and stretched on for an eternity until he forgot where the real world, his world, ended and the Joker’s lunatic world began.

Somewhere in the darkness and the crazed emotion, the Dark Knight realized with a morbid fascination what he was doing, and that he loved it. And by the brutal, malicious smile spreading across the Joker’s bruised lips, the sadist also knew; so that although it had been Batman that had proven himself the stronger, Batman that had taken and possessed and torn, he had still lost the game. He been broken and put back together with all the ill-fitting pieces that made him what he was.

“Let’s play another game, Batman.”

And he was lost to madness.