To Die a Hero ~ You Gotta Beat the Mind Games. Ch. 24

Amazing banner by Firewinged-Butterfly! I love how this goes so perfectly with the last chapter. This kid has got mad skills!






*shakes head* This girl worries me. I love her to death and she has got talent flowing out of her ears, but she does quite worry me. Many thanks for the beautiful banners, PurplePride89!


AWESOME banner by dyingsenses11! I just adore this one!

And last but certainly not least, the third and final version of an absolutely stunning hand-drawn banner by my insane ninja friend IceCrystal7!! Now on to the story!!

When I woke in the hospital twenty-four hours later, I was in a state of disbelief.

I mean, everything had been so unexpected. I hadn’t expected for there to be a leak in the Joker’s dogs and that Lassie of all people had been the traitor. I didn’t expect that Lassie would have fed Daniel the information he needed to know which train we were taking over and snuck him on as a hostage. There wasn’t an inkling to suggest that Daniel would have a way to catch us off guard, and there was no way I’d ever have thought he would have shot me. Twice. Even more surprising was that not only did Daniel get away, but so did the Joker. They had both escaped and were both wanted. Then again, given their records, maybe it wasn’t all that surprising.

But most astonishing of all was that I had survived the ride from Ambridge to Yorkshire with two bullet wounds, one lodged in my abdomen (which was ironically close to the fake stab wound), and one that had punctured my lung.

I had found out all these details, of course, from the Commissioner himself. After the doctors had told him I was well enough for him to come in, he had filled me in on all his speculations and findings. He tried to comfort me, tell me that now I was away from the Joker they could protect me, but all it did was make me feel sick. I was unsafe now, and I felt wary. Daniel wouldn’t come after me right away, not with that stab wound in his leg, but he would come after me. And the only thing that had been protecting me from him had been the Joker, and now that he was gone…

Anyways, I was in a frightening situation. Every time someone past my door, I expected it to be Daniel. I cringed from the shadows and jumped at the little noises. I was slowly becoming more paranoid by the moment.

Of course, there was interrogation. The Commissioner spent a large chunk of time trying to coax some answers out of me, some explanations of why I was still alive, some hidden meaning behind the Joker’s actions. Where was he hiding out? Why had he taken me hostage? Why hadn’t he killed me yet? Why was he so hell-bent on pursuing Daniel? What had the whole warehouse explosion been about? What was the point of the subway ordeal? Obviously, since I’m a psychologist, I must have some insight on the inner workings of the psychopath’s mind.

The lies came naturally, as most lies did for me. I actually didn’t see much of the Joker. He locked me up until he needed me. He didn’t talk to me. I probably spent a total of a half-an-hour with him. Not nearly enough time to understand his complex, twisted brain. As for why he had taken me, the keen interest in which he had given Daniel; it was anyone’s guess really. Did he even need incentive?

The Commissioner accepted my accounts disappointedly. He had expected more, you could tell. But if there was anything I had learned, it was the expected almost never happens.

Then it was my turn for questions. After I was out of the hospital, where would I be going? How close where they to capturing Daniel? What had happened to the Batman after the warehouse nightmare?

Apparently, I was going into protective custody. I didn’t have a clue what that meant, only that it sounded better than witness protection program. The Batman was alive and well, continuing his hunt for justice, or whatever it was that he did. The Commissioner was tight-lipped on the whole Daniel bit. They had leads, he told me, but refused to go into further detail, which meant he was as clueless as he had been a few weeks ago.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. All of this thinking, speculating, and lying didn’t happen until after I had been awake for hours. Let’s rewind to the exact moment I woke up and the blistering pain that welcomed me.

Unless you have been shot, dear reader, you cannot possibly comprehend the agony of surviving it. If you have been, then God be with you, and I hope that He sent you the same painkillers and anesthesia they had me on. I was numb, and for that I was grateful, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t in pain.

The was a dead feeling in my limbs that didn’t feel natural, and an aching in my muscles that I might’ve had if I had run a fifteen-mile marathon. I couldn’t move, not without the excruciating anguish in my stomach, which shot through my body like volts, quickly accompanied by waves of nausea. At the time, I was on a respirator, which in itself is a horrifying enough discovery to wake to, so I was feeling a quick panic at not being able to breathe by myself.

After the shock and pain had subsided, I was met with bittersweet relief. Relief at being alive, but not safe. Not here. Then I had felt as though something was very off, and I realized what it was after a moment or two’s deliberation. I wasn’t wearing the white (though now mostly red) dress that the Joker had given me. Having worn it for so long, it felt odd to look down and see something entirely different. I was in a hospital gown that opened in the front, instead of the back, so that when I pulled away the polyester fabric I could see the two long tracks of stitches. In due time, I would be sitting pretty with two lovely scars. All thanks to that bastard Daniel.

I hoped he was in hell right now, kicking himself for what he had done, obsessing with whether I was alive or not. He had almost killed me without a chance to break me. I prayed it was torturing him. And maybe he would think twice about aiming a gun in my direction again.

Or, for that matter, ever letting me touch another knife. I hoped his leg was throbbing half as much as my head was. As sickened as I had felt when I had stabbed the son of a bitch, I felt some sort of satisfaction and complacency at getting my chance for a little revenge, for causing him pain instead of the other way around. Of course, he got the last laugh.

But whatever.

Now, because my days in that boring white room were rather uninteresting and uneventful, we shall skip to the first thing of notice that happened to me, which occurred four days after I had been shot.

The Batman came to visit me.

And it happened a lot easier than you would think. I had been released from the hospital the day before, in good health, though unable to wince if I moved too unexpectedly, and was now officially under protective custody, which basically meant hanging around and playing cards with the cops down at the station. Even though these cops were lazy, there were a lot of them, which meant that there was a slim chance that the Joker or Daniel would get to me, short of blowing the building up. Slim, but not impossible.

Anyways, the Batman didn’t even have to get through all the cops to get to me. In fact, he didn’t need to even get into the building. Nope, he simply asked the Commissioner to come fetch for me. Like a dog.

It was with some apprehension that I followed the Commissioner up the stairs and to the roof. I mean, as of lately, I was always on alert; just on the edge of panic, and all it would have taken is a small push to send me spiraling into it. Sure, it was just the Batman, but with the uncertainty that I had been regarding all things lately, who knew what could happen?

So, it was with hesitation that I crossed the threshold of the staircase and out into the cool night. It was with certain suspicion that I observed the Batman, nothing more than a shadow on the ledge. And it was with explicit alarm that I noticed the Commissioner had left the roof, going back down the stairs, and closing the door behind him, leaving me alone with the masked, and possibly unstable, vigilante.

So what? I told myself. I’ve dealt with crazies before. I should be looking forward to the challenge.

It certainly appeared as though the Batman was about to challenge me, because he was very still, studying me through those dark eyes, under that dark mask. “I can’t figure you out.”

Somewhere, deep inside, I felt an explosion of frustration, so hot that I really just wanted to cry. What did I do to deserve this? Because it couldn’t be possible, no way in hell, could I possibly have three nutcases trying to decipher me.

Luckily, though, the Batman didn’t seem concerned about my mind, but my morals, which I quickly discovered as he clarified. “I can’t figure out whether you’re a good guy or a bad guy.”

At first I wanted to laugh with relief, thankful he hadn’t meant what I thought he had, but then I stopped myself. Because it really was dangerous, what he was saying. This suspicion with which he regarded me was a danger, and I had to figure a way to calm it before it sunk in and became a stain.

“We’re all some of both,” I told him thoughtfully, not loosing a beat. “It’s not all black and white, you know? But I’m not a bad guy; that much I know. I’m still not sure whether I’m the protagonist, but I’m not the antagonist of this story either.” I was instantly reminded of the conversation I had had with the Joker, not a week ago. We’re not the villains, I had told him, and not the heroes either. We’re the people that make things happen. At the time, I had been bullshitting him with all I had, but now I found that there had been truth to my words, truth that I hadn’t even known was there.

Wasn’t I the hero in this story? I wasn’t as sure as I would have been a month ago. Did the heroes let loose murdering criminals for their own benefit? Did the heroes toy with a corrupted cop’s mind until he begged for death? Did the heroes strike deals with the mob and put a number of hostages at risk, all for their own safety? Did the heroes kiss the psychopathic murderer back and quite possibly enjoy it…?

No, I wasn’t the hero, not anymore. But I wasn’t so gone that I could consider myself the villain yet. It was like I had told the Joker: I was someone who made the shit happen.

Then who was the hero?

Was it the masked vigilante in front of me, or was it possible that there was no hero to this story? How could the clash between good and evil exist if there wasn’t any good anymore? Would the story only persevere because of the people like me and the Joker, who kept it going and kept the shit happening?

I really needed to stop thinking so profoundly.

The Batman was still eyeing me warily, perched so precariously on that ledge that I wondered why he wasn’t afraid to fall, and my psychologist senses started tingling all over again. Who was this guy?

After another moment’s suspicion, he seemed to ascertain that I wasn’t much of a threat, and relaxed, throwing both of his legs to the ground and sitting on the ledge, not perching. “Do you always speak in puzzles?”

I smiled in a way I hadn’t smiled in a while. “It comes with the job.” There was a comfortable pause, and I tried to decipher the guy in front of me. He was set apart from the average crazy. In fact, and maybe it was because of the alertness in his posture, the calm urgency in his voice, I was starting to doubt that he was crazy at all. Was he just a normal guy, trying to bring justice to this godforsaken city?

Normal guys just don’t wear bat suits.

I was oddly curious about him. Perhaps it was because I had nothing to do but sit on my bum for the past few days, or maybe because I wanted so assert my control on someone after feeling so powerless and paranoid in waiting, and the only way I knew how to do that was to use manipulation. For whatever the reason, I wanted to understand, to gain some sort of insight on him. “How did you get away from Daniel? Back in the warehouse?” I found myself asking, truly wanting to know.

He shrugged his massive shoulders, weighted by his suit. “I didn’t have to. He was gone before I woke up.” Although I was unsatisfied by the answer, I kept quiet. It was his turn for questions, as though we had an unspoken agreement that even as we relaxed around each other, this was still an interrogation. “Why hasn’t the Joker killed you yet?”

Ah, the question. The same one I couldn’t avoid with a lie, like I had done for the Commissioner. The Batman knew that the Joker had set up the whole warehouse thing for me to talk to him. He knew that the Joker would have done no such thing if we had a strictly hostage/kidnapper relationship and limited communication.

Perhaps I could use it to my advantage, lure the Batman into trusting me by showing him that we shared a connection? I remembered the Joker’s words: He isn’t fun anymore. Which meant the Batman must’ve been fun to the Joker at one point, and the fact that he was still alive was a testament to that. So I wasn’t really taking a shot in the dark. I prefer to think that I know what I’m doing at all times.

And if I don’t, so long as I look like I do, it doesn’t matter.

In answer to his question, I tilted my head thoughtfully to the side, choosing not to give him any straightforward answers. “In some aspects, we are alike, you and I.” He looked taken aback by such a preposterous notion, just as the Joker did when I proposed we were the same. “And when it comes to the Joker, we are very similar indeed. We had both fascinated the Joker, intrigued him with our resilience, yours to keep your humanity, and mine to fight for survival, past the point that he would be able to kill us. We’re too much fun.”

The Batman absorbed this silently, and I rubbed my chilled, bare arms, the fine hairs standing on end. I think it might have worked for a moment. That showing him this correlation might’ve started to build some sort of link that I could use to gain further understanding of him. I felt like a black widow slowly weaving her web and entangling her prey, so silent and deft that the moth would be done for even before it noticed it had been caught in her trap.

But this moth; he was clever. He had sensed the thin fibers and was now resisting. “Why does it sound to me like you’ve manipulated him? That his intrigue with you has nothing to do with your desire to survive? Why do I get the feeling that you are using him for protection from Daniel? That you are pulling the strings?”

How many times have I been accused of being the puppet master? I wondered. The manipulative bitch? The one with control? I may have control, but I am no master schemer. I never intentionally set out to turn the Joker into some security guard for me. I never meant for the Joker to be fascinated by me. I was just as surprised, as unexpecting, as anyone else.

Those final silk strands broke free.

I rubbed my temples. I may not be the hero, but I was sick and tired of being called the villain. “Listen Batman,” I began, a sort of exhaustion in my tones that I hadn’t known I had in me. I was twenty-eight years old, and already I had faced more fears, seen more horrors unfold, and felt more emotional and physical pains than someone had well into his or her life. I was in the most depressing and terrifying of situations, and it was unlikely that it was going to turn out in my favor. I was felt so tired all of the sudden, so tired of being me. This abrupt and unexpected tiredness washed over me thoroughly, bathing me from crown to toe.

“Listen,” I repeated, trying to get a grip. “I’m no nut case who lives by some psychotic, illogical morals and laws that only make rational sense to myself. I don’t murder for fun, like Daniel, or to send a message, like the Joker. I don’t take pleasure in pain or the torment of others. I’m just a woman who was gifted, or cursed, with the ability to understand these people. I’m just a woman who has been caught in-between a rock and a hard place with no way to get out. Perhaps I do take advantage of my understanding of the psychopaths, but who wouldn’t? Maybe I do have a selfish bone in my body and want to avoid being strapped to a chair and letting my worst nightmares happen to me. Sue me for it.” I met his gaze with a firm one. “But, tell me this, Batman. How many people, innocent civilians, has the Joker killed since his escape? How many banks has he robbed, explosions has he let off? How many terrorist threats have you received from him that were actually followed through? So you tell me, is it such a bad thing that I’ve managed to establish some sort of influence over the Joker? I sure as hell ain’t making the damned puppets dance, but at least I’m holding enough strings to keep them from attacking the audience.”

The Batman was silent for the longest time, and it was in this silence that I received my burst of inspiration, like a bright, dazzling light. A very tight web would have to be spun, but it could work…

I continued on this strand, this malicious thread of logic that not even the Batman could deny was there, but might be thin enough to see right through. “But now that I am out of the Joker’s orbit, who knows what hell he could get up to? Without me to focus on, and my plans, he will start having to make plans of his own to fill the boredom.” My voice had grown casual. Now, I had a scheme. The tiredness was fading away. “Either that or he will come for me. You know that he will come for me, Batman. He and Daniel both. Cops will die for the purpose, possibly innocent bystanders, or maybe we should take potential hostages into account. So many people pointlessly losing their lives for me when I should be somewhere else entirely, working to prevent senseless deaths.”

I would wait, like the black widow pauses to make sure her prey is still within reach. “So you’re saying,” the Batman worked out slowly, “is that even though the entire Gotham police department and I have been working tirelessly for the past few weeks to get you away from the Joker, you want us to bring you back to him? You want to go back to the psychopath?”

Here it was. It was out in the open now. The prey had seen the black widow in its entirety. “No,” I corrected. “I want you to bring me back to him. The cops wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t recognize that some civilians need to take things into their own hands. Sometimes,” I appealed, “there are things that only one person can do, not the cops, and just because that person is a civilian, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the opportunity to make a difference. You, of all people, should know that.”

It stewed for a long time, what I had said to him. As cold as it was out there, the air felt thick and hot with tension. There was nothing but the roar of the city now, the car horns and screeching tires.

I think he met my eyes, but it was hard to tell because his face was in the shadows. “What is it you need me to do?”

Thus is the beauty of the relationship between spider and moth.

*banging head on desk* Yes, I already know how boring it was, which is why I had combined these two boring chapters so you only have to suffer for one week instead of two. Sorry about the awkward split and sorry for all the stupid metaphors. I was in the mood for metaphors when I wrote this. Rating would be lovely, likewise to messaging me your thoughts.
Oh, and quick and awkward question: Does anyone, erm...actually like Daniel? Because I know one person who is obsessed with him, though I won't use names, *cough* PurplePride89 *cough*, and she claims there are others. Is this true? If it is, kindly message me so I can understand how exactly your twisted minds came up with a crush on Daniel, when, well...his intended purpose was not a fan club.
Anywho, a funny thing or two before I go....





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