The Dark Knight

[Nikki]

He's getting closer and closer as he talks, trying to get his point across. I try to distract myself from this without backing away. If I take a step back, he'll pick up on it. I've seen it a million times with a million victims.
I don't even know if he knows what he's doing.

[boo radley]

I make a sarcastic sniff - if that's remotely possible (well hell, I'll make it possible) - and start walking. Rain + makeup = no good. Especially not when the white face paint serves as a concealer over scars of the past. Damn straight. Life should just end, and death should begin. Then the world's lost its entire cosmic cycle, and people get thrust into chaos.




Fun.

[Nikki]

There's an abandoned basketball laying nearby- I pick it up and throw it angrily, missing his head by about a foot. I don't know what's gotten into me. It's like I'm not even human. I'm a mass of red and grey sadness. I could evaporate into thin air.
Maybe if you have the guts to do something for once he'll stop looking at you like he's so disappointed.
He'll kill you if you try anything. He'll just pick you up and strangle you right there. Then he'll leave your body for some poor kid to find the next morning.
But I was already running after him, shouting horrible things, stringing expletives together that made no sense but would have made any grown man cower in shame. I hated his stupid purple coat and I hated the way he walked, all hunched over like some demented monster from a fairytale, and I hated the way his makeup was thinning from the rain and I hated the splotches of real human being I saw from the missing parts of the whole.
I had screamed myself hoarse. He'd paused for a moment at my cursing, peering over his shoulder like I was something interesting to look at and something that might die shortly. When he faced me, I made a grab for his shoulders. I was really going to hurt him this time, because I loved him. I loved him so much that everything in me was him, and everything in him was so completely overwhelming I wanted to bleed it out of me.
He forced quick arms with surprising strength up to stop me, but that was before my teeth clashed with his. The pain of it numbed everything for a moment: I'd closed my eyes and there was only darkness and nerves sending signals, and then just my mouth on his. I bit down on his lower lip, drawing blood on accident, the iron taste sharpening the precariousness of everything I'd done.

[boo radley]

This catches me by surprise. And to top it off, I actually slip in the rain, and fall.

I never fall.

I never let myself be broken.

And when I taste the iron blood in my mouth - the sick, coppery taste - I can remember the past coming right back. Harley's flung on the ground, but I'm staggering, trying to stand up. And then the past comes back and flashes me in the eyes. Next thing I know, I'm limp. Weak. Dead. Mentally messed up. Whoop-de-doo! It's like a fucking ferris wheel. One second, I'm on the top of the world. The next I'm on the bottom, buried by my past.

And it came back when I least expected it to.

Not sure if I should say "good bye, Harley," or just stay quiet. Right now, I'm opting for the latter. Because there're too many memories and I'm not sure which ones to believe are true.

[Nikki]

I just sit there, visibly trembling. Not from fear. He didn't really throw me off- he just dropped like a ton of bricks. "Oh," I say stupidly. The ground is so wet and cold.

[boo radley]

Reeling, I stand up. No, this part of me is a monster locked in a box, chained to the cold, and dead. Broken clasps were sealed again, and they'd have to be now, once more. Never. Never again. And it's all Harley's fucking fault - the blood, the...

And maybe it isn't.

Maybe it's just the rage unleashed.

[Nikki]

I stand up and steady him because I'm afraid he's going to fall again, but then I take a measured step back. "I didn't mean to do that," I say. "I mean. . .I meant to do that, but I didn't mean to make you bleed."

[boo radley]

I don't know if she expects me to turn and say, with a face of utter pity, "It's okay, dear Harley. You didn't do a think. I just bleed when people bite me." What is this, "Vampires Suck?" But what I can say is that I'm feeling somewhat out of it. The world spins. And I'm not spinning with it. I don't feel the... kill-and-beat mood coming on. Instead, I just feel a numbness. A heart-hearted, no-nonsense response. A nothingness. And when I'm sure I'm steadied, I walk away, slowly, suit blotched with mud. Hey, it's Barney the Dinosaur!


The world will stop spinning when I start to.

[Nikki]

I watch him limp away, standing there with my bruised arms and my bruised mouth, and then I walk back to Falcone's in a daze.
I go home. I run scalding water for a bath. I sit in the bath. I get out of the bath. I look in the mirror again.
I burst into tears.
I fall over my own feet slipping into shorty shorts, landing fullout on the floor.
And then I get an idea.
The upstairs has an unused loft room with a hardwood finish. I blast music so I don't have to hear my own thoughts.
One last thing before I shuffle off the planet
Fifty pushups.
I will be the one to make you crawl
A hundred pushups. My arms give out and I land face first on the hard surface.
So I came down to wish you an unhappy birthday
If you won't punish me, I will.
Someone call the ambulance
I used to be a gymnast. Now I'm not as flexible or balanced as I once was. I start with a simple cartwheel and land quietly on my feet.
There's gonna be an accident
I try for a back handspring and fall hard on my knees. The tears are drying on my face, forgotten in concentration of the pain.
I'm comin' up on infra-red
I stick the next back-handspring, but when I do that, I see his face. I see his lips, I see the complete confusion right before I
There's no running that can hide you
I'm getting desperate. I break into the splits, which I know I can't do, my lips parting in a scream as I force myself all the way down anyway.
Cuz I can see in the dark
I fall on my side and curl up into the fetal position, feeling the bruises purpling everywhere on my body. Tears leak out of my eyes as I slam my head against the floor, over and over again, begging the world to shut off. It doesn't. It won't. I want to go back out into the rain and find him but for all I know he wasn't even real.
Harl, your imagination isn't that good.

[boo radley]

After wandering mindlessly through the abandoned old areas of Gotham City - the outskirts, the suburbs - I find my way back to Falcone's. It's odd. It's a hellhole, but a residence. A deathtrap, but a roof-over-the-heads. I would never call it home.
I push my way in through the door, turn the TV on as loud as I can make it, and flop back on the sofa. My eyes stare at the screen, but my mind isn't processing what's on there. I'm thinking. Thinking out loud, but inside my head. I want war, something... over-the-top. Something that will make me forget what I remembered and ought not to. And that something is probably Hell.