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You are a guard in Gotham.
Not a goon, miscreant, mafioso or whatever shit Two-face is calling it these days. A guard.
That, in itself, is strange. Especially because you are a guard at Arkham. It has a high mortality rate, usually people don't make it to even consider a retirement plan. Or a pension plan. Or a 4o1(k). Or a first paycheck but you've mastered this.
You've mastered everything, head low, mouth shut, back straight. If the alarm went off, no it didn't. If one guard wasn't actually dead and just pretending to be, no he wasn't, you were already mourning him and the non-existent relationship you had even if he stiffens at your touch. If Ted, the janitor, was making out with Lisa who was married? Wow they're really hugging, such good friends.
If Crystal Brown came in, telling you where her husband was, his whereabouts, with weapons that he had in her house, with one hundred dollars? No she didn't, that was an anonymous tip. (And you get to say hi to little baby Steph, giving her a lolly in the process. You always give one to her when she comes by for visitation. You like to take her away when they argue and show her the pictures of Batman, she would wait on the that bench when she came around.)
If Sister Anne paid you off so you could look the other way because Sister Juniper needed her pain medication and it wasn't allowed, you could only have prescribed medication from the lazy nurse who never prescribes anything? No she didn't. She doesn't have enough money for that. (Even if it was just thirty dollars.)
If Joker, the Devil of Gotham, wanted more blood red jello. Sure he can, it's in his meal plan.
If Riddler's bored and wanting to tell you riddle's? You're bored so you stand, outside his cell laughing at some stupid riddle-joke. That one you genuinely enjoy.
If Scarecrow wants blankets? Sure, it's inhumane to not give him any.
If Babydoll wants proper, actual, pads and not the paper thin ones? Sure, what can you do.
If the Killer Croc wanted a little bit of more meat and soft blankets? How can you say no? If he nicknames you Candy for the treats you bring? You accept it without question.
If Harley Quinn was expecting letters from the Joker? Yup, here you go, handwritten letters from her lover even though they clearly were not.
New, fresh, people from out of town don't last but you do. You do because you have mastered this. It's the same with vigilantes. You blend on to the background, you speak when spoken to and don't when not.
You stand outside smoking on your smoke break when you see a cosplayer. Because that's all he is, not Red Hood. Just a cosplayer.
So you are very, very proud of being alive. Of being smart, at being a Arkham guard, at being good at your job.
Until. . . .
Well it wasn't really your fault.
It really, really, wasn't.
You earned a reputation, of being the 'good one's', at being the one the kept shut and the one that rarely talked, the one that gave you necessities, that helped for a very small price. The bribing didn't help either. Who would've thunk it?
So, at three am, while you're in your underwear with a T-shirt covering the important bits, eating cereal, with music turned up loud and walking into the living room, you find a white haired girl knocking at your door.
"Are you going to put on pants?" The newly arrived girl asks as, you look around, then you look back at her. She's young, with choppy hair that looks like she cut it in the dark, and small little hands, she's wearing a bright purple shirt that just says 'SPOILER!' in bright pink letters which was a little strange given that Spoiler was purple, an oversight on the design.
"What are you doing here?" You ask, the girl looks around the apartment unhurriedly. "I need help." She tells you, after a pause" I've got two hundred."
Oh. A bribe, okay.
You drink the last drip of milk in your cereal," Okay? What do you need help with?"
"My aunt's there, at Arkham," She tells you.
You fill in the boxes," You don't want her to be there." You don't ask what she did, sometimes people did bad things but they ain't bad people. Sometimes bad people do good things but they're not good people. Jason's dad was a good man before the weight of his sins started to bleed into his love.
She nods," In the next breakout I want you to take her down the sewers." Oh, you've never actively participated in breaking someone out.
"What's her name?" You ask as you put the dish in the sink.
"Oda Kiseleva."
You nod, she looks at you," What's your name?" She asks.
You shrug," Croc calls me Candy."
(The name Candy circulates through the city.)
The next thing you know your alarm is blaring, giving you a headache.
And so, that's how you got involved in smuggling people out of Arkham.
It pays good money, the rich that got incarcerated for a reason don't want to be there.
You bring them out when a breakout happens, usually a group, you pretend to not notice them leaving, and distracting people when they try to look.
Sometimes you go down there too, the sewers are bound to have some kind of thing in Gotham.
"I'm sorry," you say as the thing in front of you looks at you. It looks like a deer,( but the too teeth, the fur that isn't fur, wronwrongwrong) but something deep in your stomach says it isn't, maybe it was, but not anymore, or t it never was a deer. The not-deer nods, you take out a chocolate bar. Part of your midday snack, because as it is you are hungry.
But you're very good at your job, you apologize when superiors get mad.
"Here." You say, Ashley, the newest prisoner, shakes as you hold her hand—barely fifteen— you toss it. The deer catches it with it's teeth.
(A little too sharp, too many.)
"An apology, for breaking in." The deer keeps looking. You keep staring.
It walks away.
You don't come across any issues.
So through your logic you keep leaving snacks and such for it.
"Commissioner Gordon," You greet, putting on your hat.
He nods back as he turns around to talk to Batman.
"Hold on, officer Doe." You stop, cringing all the while.
"Have you noticed anything unusual?" Batman asks as he stands next to the Commissioner, he's tall and strong and could easily break you in half with his bare hands. He keeps looking at you, keeps making too much eye contact.
"Like what?" You ask back.
"Prisoners going missing?"
Play dumb.
"What prisoners?"
Not that dumb.
Thankfully they take it another way, Batman takes the lead," Oda Kiseleva, she went missing after her hearing."
Life sentence, you know, you were very nosey.
You shrug casually," Never encountered her."
Gordon and him share a look. "You were last seen with her."
You take a breath, you're good at your job, so you lie, masterfully you might add.
"I forgot. She really wasn't special, I encounter hundreds of cellmates everyday" You shrug. Gordon nods.
"Do you have an alibi?" Gordon asks, you nod.
You call Ted, the janitor.
"So, B? Did you find anything?" Nightwing asks.
"Nothing, the guard that was last with her has a good alibi."
Jason looks to the side, where Damian is practicing. He looks at at the suspect list mentally.
Three. There were three suspects, all very very shady.
They were one of the suspects, and although there was very little evidence there was one piece of damning footage. They were last seen with one of the prisoners.
"Do ever think that maybe, just maybe, you're wrong." He accused.
"The evidence is staggering, Jason, just because they were your childhood babysitter doesn't mean they're innocent." Barbie says, he rolls his eyes.
"They're innocent." He presses. "And they weren't my babysitter."
An argument bursts.
Steph stays silent.
The thing in the sewers likes you. Or at least likes your chocolate bars.
"Hello." You say as you walk next to it. It doesn't say anything just stares, it's eyes into your soul.
"I need help." You whisper into the endless tunnel that winds into Gotham, old and ancient, because you do need help, and you're going to go to prison forever.
"Batman's investigating me, he's going to catch me."
The deer keeps walking.
"I don't want him to, can you help me?"
The deer looks to the right.
"I'll bring you chocolate cookies?" You try your luck.
It looks at you and you walk together.
The next day one of your coworkers gets arrested for kidnapping and murder. He confessed to all the ' missing ' prisoners.
Body parts of the people who you smuggled out are found in his apartment.
(You call each and every one. They aren't missing any body parts at all.)
"See?" Jason tells Bruce. "Innocent." Although the timing was too perfect, too good.
You leave cookies for it, gratitude for the things it did for you. Something whispers, it could curdle milk with it's voice.
You put three more cookies.
So, when inevitably, you get caught it has more cookies.
Mrs. Brown visits you. You say hello and ask how she's doing, she says well and tells you where Mr. Brown is.
She's dead before nightfall.
You can't attend the funeral, but you send flowers. And a condolences card.
Steph doesn't send anything back.
You and her have long since drifted apart.
She stands outside of their door. She hesitates, going to knock, she's Spoiler nerves don't have effect on her, but Steph isn't Spoiler right now. She's a normal girl with a dead mom.
Would they even want to see her?
She hasn't visited in ages.
She won't start now.
It happened on a Monday.
Specifically, an evening at nine o'clock.
Even more specifically, a gang fight just outside.
Tim Drake comes barrelling through your window that you have to pay.
Oh, how do you know it's Tim Drake?
Well, let me set the scene;
You're in your pajamas, a shirt and shorts. Listening to a documentary about lions and the rainforest, or something. And the glass breaks, Red Robin stands up, looks at your measly TV. Looks at you, without his domino mask and says," I love lions." Then, promptly passed out.
You just discovered a superheroes identity.
Holy—
You feel his neck, a steady pulse. Yay, thank the heavens that his last words were not that.
He's lightweight, for a teenager he's not supposed to be lightweight. He breathes softly, he lets out a gasp here and there when you jostle him wrong. "Red Robin?" You ask whenever he does it and he hums but you can see he isn't really all there. It's just like those drug addicts, the ones that aren't completely here, always in far away land.
You glance at him, askance, before going back to dressing his wounds. He does it a couple times.
You're good at your job, you have spent hours upon hours stopping people from bleeding out and at first it was hard to do so, you were so young and trying to stop a dead man from becoming a corpse, but it became like second nature, you learned to adapt you learned that there was no room for shaking hands. Pressure, even if it hurts.
You put on his mask after checking if he has a concussion. He does, but not a lif threatening one.
Stitch, stop, stitch, stop.Stitch, stop, stitch, stop. Hold the ice to his bruises, stop, stitch, ice, stop, stitch, ice. You're good at your job, so you know when to become focused when everything stops and all you can do is the thing you're supposed to be doing.
Stop, stitch, ice. Stitch, stop, stitch, stop. Stop, stitch, ice. Stitch, stop, stitch, stop, stop, stitch, ice—
Suddenly a pale hand grabs you and you stop, having to stop yourself from screaming.
Very unlike you, because you freeze.
***
Tim Drake woke up, groggily. His head was pounding, his muscles were sore, he felt like quite literally like he was dying. The cold radiating from his stomach didn't help, he reached down and—
Oh.
There was a person. They had to many eyes, to many teeth, to many eyes, looking, looking for sins and blood and—they had a serpents tongue, of didn't look human and maybe it never was. Maybe it came to eat him, it came to eat him,it came to eat him, it came to eat him, it came to eat him,it came to eat him,it came to eat him—
Until his eyes adjusted and he found someone perfectly normal staring back. Woah, major freak out for no reason.
"Oh thank the Lord." They sighed in relief, grabbed him by the hand and squeezing it tightly.
"You're alright, you're okay." The reassured, either for themselves or for him, he doesn't know. A civilian.
They look at him worriedly," Okay, do you have anyone?" His head felt like exploding. "—up?"
"What?"
"To pick you up?"
He nods. They give him a phone so he can call, it's ancient having brick numbers instead of a sleek 2D version.
Bruce, Batman comes around and he feels a little stupid for calling him as if this was just some regular old school pick up.
He has a sort of calm that comes with a concussion. This of course doesn't last.
Things go horribly wrong in the next two months.
The problem was that you have been craving meat more often then not. That was not the problem.
The problem was that animal meat did not meet the criteria.
One day, you get a cut.
(You have to stop yourself from cutting more.)
There is a boy in Arkham Asylum. He has a white tuff and scars.
His name is Jason, just like the Jason you used to know.
He is suffering. He's sedated and roommates to a clown. The clown in question is violent, who thought putting him with a kid was a god idea? Apparently the prison is too overcrowded. (People will go missing soon, and it won't be you're doing.) He is violent, bruises and blood covered everywhere.
Joker keeps making jokes. "Oh I thought I burnt that birdie," He says," I think someone clipped his wings." He giggles as if someone told a funny joke, but you stay quiet, a blank face, tight lipped.
The problem was that he was barely nineteen, twenty at most. You like him. He's a good kid, even if he's unresponsive most of the time.
"Hey, Jason," You say as you twirl your hat. The Joker giggles," Hello Candy." He says with vindictiveness. He opens Jason's mouth so it could look like he's talking. A puppet.
You don't stop. You never acknowledged him. That was the rules and you're good at your job and following rules.
Something very, very wrong with you because, in the last few days (or months?) you have felt hungry. By looking at the blood on his face you want to tear him apart.
"Let's take a walk." You say, the Joker giggles again.
"Oh, goodie! I haven't have a walk in ages." He killed the last guard he went on a walk with, strangled.
"Not you." Trying to keep the bite out of your tone," I'm talking to Jay." Joker stops smiling. Instead he pouts.
You just broke the rules. A sigh escapes you.
You go inside, and the Joker grabs your arm. Yellow fingernails scraping. "Let go." You say, he smiles long and wide showing his just as yellow teeth," You know the rules, let go." He doesn't instead he tightens his gangly hands, try to leave a bruise. You sigh, pulling out the work issued taser. He seizes, laughing all the while and Jay has tensed at the laugh.
You sigh again.
"Come on, Jay." You try to pull him away but he's still looking at the white faced man on the ground.
He stays looking, you can't convince him to walk anymore.
On the rare moments where he's not sedated he wants out. How you know this? He says so.
"I want out."
You nod. "Is there a form I can sign?" He asks.
He shows up with newer bruises more often then not.
"Nope." You pop the p.
"Can I at least get a new roommate?"
You grimace.
You don't say anything, you don't have to.
He pretends he isn't shaking. You pretend you don't notice.
One day the Joker gets mad.
Jason appears with a bleeding forehead and a slash across his face.
He cries sometimes, sobs as they force medication down.
You're forced to watch, waiting on the sidelines. You're coworker—you despise her— waits for the inevitable violence so she can beat the boy bloody.
She doesn't smile, but you can see the tremble of excitement as she grips her baton. The twitch whenever he gets a little to rowdy. You can see it all. You're good at your job, you know when someone's violent.
(He's not.)
So you decide, as you see him be pinned down and as the clown prince of Gotham laughs his signature laugh from his cot on his barely-matress that this wasn't happening anymore.
You are not going to be in the sidelines.
Your knuckles become white as you tremble. It's not from excitement.
"Da'?" Jason slurs," Ya' there?"
"Pay twenty bucks and I can snuggle you out." You rush out as you lift him by the arm. His roommate no where to be found, maybe having another evaluation made.
He hums, you grimace.
At ass o'clock in the morning you go to the sewers. The deer is waiting for you.
"I need help." You say as you get the sense of dejá vu. Jason giggles as a slob of blood rolls down his cheek. Why did he have blood? You don't know you haven't checked him for injuries.
You prop him up on the deer, waiting for it to bite you with it's too sharp teeth. But it doesn't and as you put him on he hums lazily, you give him your phone. You needed an upgrade anyway.
You hear a slow clapping noise. As you turn around you see the same yellowish teeth with the same white painted face.
"Well, well, well! I didn't expect to see you here! Come here often?" He giggles. You don't say anything.
"Joker." You greet hand already twitching towards your taser.
He sighs dramatically," I guess you don't want to hear my joke?"
"No."
"Too bad," He starts to walk away. Until he stops, jagged like someone cut strings," What did the guard say to the clown?"
You don't ask. You never ask.
He sighs again. "Nothing, they were to busy screaming!"
He turns around and you taste something acidic, and your eyes burn, you yell at the not-deer to go. To run and never look back.
(It does so without question.)
Something is clouding your vision and someone's crying from afar and someone's yelling.
You can smell spoiled pomegranate, it burns your lungs and leaves your mouth with a sour after taste—
And you try to move but—
Your foot is stuck in a bear trap and someone's yelling at home and there's a man, he's on the ground dying and you need to stop the bleeding, he needs help he bleeding he's looking for you, you need to help—
—And your under your table and you need to help the building but something got your foot and you need to run cause there going to—
—They're falling and they're not supposed to fall, leaving a son, a baby boy all alone, a son, a son, a son, a son, a son, a son, a son, a son—
Someone's yelling laughing
someone's whispering—
—Your home is on fire and Batman's laughing and he's mad and," You're going to be arrested," and you're never ever going to be free again—
There's been a breakout in Arkham. Blood trails the hallways. The Joker's lifeless body laid on the concrete, throat bit out. Harley sobs at her lovers feet. "What happened?" The people ask.
And someone always responds back with," A miracle."