The Dark Knight

[Nikki]

Something funny?
I wish the tears would stop; they're so obvious. They sew my heart to my sleeve in a way that no words can. My insanity. My love.
This mad love.
I'm still picturing him crawling home, showing up on the doorstep all battered and bruised, with a perma-grin etched into his face. About what *I* would do given the situation.
The smell of his blood is making me sick. This is real blood, though, from his broken arm, from his other injuries. It mingles with the image in my head.
I want to throw up, but hold it in.
You're making me insane.

[boo radley]

I decided waiting for something wasn’t the best, what with Harley going all crazy. Over whatever she was getting crazy, I didn’t care. “I guess we’re gonna have to figure out how to get me outta here, don’t you think?”

[Nikki]

I don't reply to him right away, on account of the whirlwind of emotions I'm suddenly experiencing. Am I actually losing it?
All he wants is out, Harl. With or without you.
"I have it figured out already, but it will require a little patience on your part." I glare at him sullenly. "A few sessions in, I can tell my higher-ups your conditions are improving. If they take my word for it, security will become more lax. From then on, if you can slip out a door, you're in good shape." I was starting to believe that no one around here really cared about the mental conditions of their patients.
Shut up, Harl. You're *so* not in a position to speak right now.

[boo radley]

"Wait...you don't want to come with me?" Odd. I thought we'd make a good dynamic duo. Of criminal atmosphere, that is.

[Nikki]

My heart leaps at this question, but my mind is gripping what's left of my sanity with renewed fervor. "I thought that all you wanted was a ticket out of here."
I thought that was all I was good for, is what I didn't say.

[boo radley]

"Do you think I'd be asking that question if I that's all I wanted?" Really. "It'd be nice having you around, you know. Someone to talk to," if anything.

[Nikki]

Is he lying through his teeth?
I hear this one prides himself on being a man of his word.
And in any case, does it truly matter what he wants from me? I can't think of one thing I wouldn't give him.
For a moment I wonder if he's feeling it, too. The strange, immediate connection between us.
Ah, who I am I kidding? He's probably trying to manipulate me into doing something he wants.
It would be nice if I could figure out what, though.
"One more question," I start off slowly, unable to really reply to his last statement, "you're all about the mind games, right? Then what one are you playing with me?"

[boo radley]

I laugh quietly, then louder and louder until it becomes similar to shrieking. "Games?" I stop laughing. "I already played my little game... I turned you into someone like me. Or at least, I formed a basis of it."
I licked my chapped lips.
"Look, the whole point," I clicked my tongue, "of having you with me, is so that I have an accomplice. It's always more fun when you're playing games with more than one person! You see..." I cleared my throat. "You see, I could've left this place whenever I wanted to. These people? They think they're perfect. They think they can guard it and leave. Well, let me put it this way: it's ridiculously easy to escape from any place, just as it is easy to break in." Hopefully Harley Quinn began getting the idea.
"Like...you know, I could've left. But I saw something in you. You know? Innocence, maybe. Doubtful. I've heard stories about you, how you...use yourself to get up in the ranks." I snort. "But whatever. I saw, at the very least, some sympathy. That's a new thing. No one sympathizes with a psycho. No one. But you... you did. 'Zat a good enough explanation?" I sighed. Hopefully. "You're now like a counterpart. The transformation? My game. The end." Of course, there was no end to this. There's never an end to me. I'm like a disease, with no cure.

[Nikki]

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! See the murderous, psychotic clown tame the ignorant young blonde!
Except I'm not really ignorant.
I'm not even a real blonde.
"And I thought I was just falling for your good looks," I snort, feeling like a caged animal now. Wondering if I'd laid on the sarcasm thick enough, because if anybody could call a bluff, it would be this guy.
When he'd laughed it took nearly all of my strength not to scream. There was something about that laugh that would break me if I heard it too often- and although I wasn't yet broken completely, I was teetering on the edge of insanity.
"And maybe they don't think they're perfect. Maybe they just don't care." I have to point this out. A guard had locked a young woman in a cell with a serial killer and left so he could get some beauty sleep.
I'm still alive and halfway sane at this point, but it's only 1:30 in the morning. A lot could happen between now and morning.

[boo radley]

I shrug. "So what do YOU think, hm?"