Old Scars (Part 37) - Finale 2/2
Ledger!joker x reader
Fem!reader is kidnapped by the joker and his henchmen while just trying to get a moment's reprieve from her boring, soul-destroying job ✨️
Tw: I mean, we all saw TDK, right? I'd say this story is has many of the same darker themes. Kidnapping, violence, mentions of minor characters (not J) being misogynist/threatening SA, reference to past traumatic injury. NSFW in one or two places but mainly this is narrative/story based first and foremost. Minors Do Not Interact! 🔞
Also - A lot of violence in this chapter. Threat of self injury/suicide, guns, knives, murder, etc.
By now you guys know the drill - this is the final chapter.
NOTE: PLEASE VOTE IN THE POLL AT THE END :)
Chapter 37 - Finale 2/2
Lunging for the nearest of his men, I stabbed the blade directly into his neck. He made a horrible sort of gasping, gagging noise as I quickly dragged it back out. My stomach turned at the sight of his shocked face and the blood spilling out from his clasped hands at his throat as he fell to his knees, clutching his fatal wound.
Knowing I had only the tiniest window of opportunity before I would get shot, I quickly made a stab for the other man. The element of surprise was fading fast and realisation was dawning on him as I drove the blade down toward him.
He managed to move just enough that it buried itself into his muscular shoulder, rather than his jugular as I had intended.
Shit.
He cursed in pain and made a grab for me. In a panic I dug the knife deeper into his flesh with both of my hands and slammed into him with all my might, sending us tumbling to the concrete floor. Leveraging my knees against his torso I managed to wrench it back out of his shoulder and drive it into his thigh as he brought it up to strike at me with a knee. I could tell in an instant that this wound was going to be fatal as the blade disappeared into his leg right around where his femoral artery would be.
We scrambled to our feet. And I looked up just in time to see him staggering toward me, the knife still wedged in place. Stupidly, he sealed his own fate by making a grab for it.
'Wait, don't!' I cried out.
But it was too late.
He'd pulled it out, only thinking of using it against me. There was a horrifying spurt of red and I had to look at the ground and try not to throw up at the gory sight. He seemed to be in a state of confusion and shock; advancing on me, knife in hand. Panic quickly overtook my revulsion and I snapped back into the fight for survival.
As soon as he got within my grasp he lunged at me with the blade, just barely missing my face as I ducked away from him. Next he drove it down toward my chest. In a moment of clarity I threw myself to the side and kicked the back of his knee forwards, buckling it. He fell awkwardly, slick with his own blood and his strength rapidly fading. The knife slipped from his grasp.
As the huge man came crashing down, he grabbed onto my arm, pulling me with him. The way he fell, he slipped over the edge of the elevator shaft, screaming as he tumbled down in the darkness, and very nearly taking me down with him. Thankfully his grip broke at the last moment, leaving me on solid ground with the reclaimed knife still gripped tightly in one hand.
I had to suppress a yelp of terror as I stared down into the dark tunnel he had been swallowed up by. His echoing scream abruptly stopped, leaving only darkness and silence as I struggled for purchase on the wet floor.
What had I done?
I just couldn't let them kill her and I didn't trust J to honour his word, not anymore.
Shoving myself forwards, I scrambled to my feet and dragged the chair and its occupant away from the edge of oblivion. I pulled the key out of the detonator and, wasting no more time, I frantically set about trying to cut his hostage free.
Just as I’d got her hands loose, she screamed and pointed over my shoulder.
"He has a gun!"
I glanced back just in time to see J, aiming a revolver at us.
"That wasn't one of the options," he said, his voice like a dark poison.
I froze, a horrible icy feeling spreading over my skin. I slowly raised both my hands.
"You wanted me to kill people.”
“Not the only men I had left.”
“I thought you liked chaos. I thought you’d just spent weeks encouraging me to go against the grain, to disrupt the plan." I protested unable to keep the slight smugness out of my voice at knowing that I'd ruined his scheme.
He cocked the hammer of the revolver with a loud snap.
"Step away from her and put the key back, this isn't over," he demanded, his tone like ice.
I raised my blood-soaked hands and very slowly got to my feet. My back was still to him as I decided my next actions very carefully. I slowly turned to face him, deliberately keeping myself between Sarah and his line of sight.
"Are you finally going to kill me now?"
He stared me down, unmoved, so I continued to talk.
"I asked you that once before. You said no - gave me your word, but only if I didn't interfere. I'd call this a pretty big interference," I added.
He was still silent.
"Are you going to kill me now?" I asked again.
His dark eyes continued to bore their way into me.
"I don't think you really want to do it," I said finally, accusation in my tone.
"What makes you so sure?" He challenged with a sadistic glint in his eye.
I shifted my weight to the opposite leg, trying to hide some of my discomfort.
"Well, the way I see it, you've killed the Batman, or at the very least put him into a vegetative state... so no more fun and games there. Apart from me, who else in this city understands you? Who else is as entertaining? With me gone too, you'll have to just settle for going back to picking off the mob."
He let out an exasperated growl. He knew I was right.
"Let her go," I said, the words firm but quiet.
"No," was his immediate answer.
He took a step forward, keeping the gun trained on us.
"I'm not moving."
"I can make you."
His words dripped with venom and my blood ran colder still as he stepped closer again. My heart was pounding in my chest, barely contained in it's cage but I stayed fixed to the spot.
Suddenly, there was a deafening crack as he fired a shot.
I flinched, for a moment thinking one of us was hit, but realising quickly that it was a warning shot as I saw the gun pointed skyward. Sarah screamed in pure terror, giving way to a new wave of startled sobs behind me.
"It's okay," I whispered to her, reaching behind me to try and calm her by grabbing her hand. I wordlessly got her to take the still bloody knife so that she could cut the final bind keeping her legs anchored to the chair.
"The next one will be for you both if you don't move aside," he threatened.
I laughed a little in hysteric disbelief.
"Don't you know me by now? You think that kind of threat is going to work on me?"
He rolled his eyes as if to say 'it was worth a try'.
"Are you really going to take a bullet for her?" He asked, genuine confusion in his tone.
"Why wouldn't I protect her? This is how we met. You won't change and neither will I. I guess we're at an impasse," I stared him down defiantly.
"You truly are incorruptible!" He laughed.
I didn't like how close he was getting - as soon as I was within reach it could be over for us. Hurriedly, I tossed the detonator key down into the open void of the elevator shaft behind us.
His eyes widened and narrowed again, burning with barely restrained violence. It was as if the fire dancing in them now could have torched the entire city - razed each building to the ground.
"Did you forget I've done the same for you - mutliple times? I've risked my life for you, when I had no reason to!" I sputtered out in desperation, trying to recapture his attention as he stared in disbelief at my total ruination of his plans.
This seemed to give him pause, while he remembered the specifics, so I continued.
"And - and! You returned the favour. You got me the antidote to the fear toxin. That saved my life. You didn't let me die. Why's that?! Just so you can shoot me here? How boring!" I was clutching at straws now - and I knew it. The sheer desperation was palpable in the cracking of my voice.
I could tell from the look on his face that he knew just how afraid I was.
"I won't shoot her through you, but only because I won't need to... you will give her up," he answered, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.
So now we were deadlocked into a deadly game of chicken.
I reached behind me to take the blade back from Sarah's shaking hands into my own.
"Let her go," I commanded, making my voice as flat and calm as I could possibly manage.
"No," was his predictable answer.
I had one last final trick up my sleeve, one last ace to play: I raised the knife to my own throat.
"Fine. Enjoy the solitude," I muttered, backing away from Sarah very slowly, much to her panic and dismay.
He looked from her to me and back again, startled by my final hand.
"If you shoot her, I'll do it. You won't be able to stop me in time, I'll cut my own throat and fall thirty floors. Overkill, really. No chance of you dragging me back from that," I called out as my feet found the very edge of the open elevator shaft.
It took every ounce of courage in me not to fall apart. I didn't need to see the drop for the fear to sink its claws deep into my cold flesh.
"You can't have it all. You can kill us both, or you can save us both. Your call. That's the choice I’m giving you."
A tear rolled down my cheek as I weighed up the full scope of this new bargain.
"No, don't! Just let him shoot me! Don't!" Sarah protested, finding her own voice suddenly and springing up from the chair.
I closed my eyes and smiled.
"No. I can't do that. Just promise me you'll leave Gotham the moment you get the chance?"
"I will, I promise, just don't do this," she pleaded, voice cracking.
I nodded decisively with eyes still closed and prepared myself for the ugly end. I hoped she was right, that she would get free, even if I couldn't.
J's incessant need to be proved right could always outweigh any feelings, or obsession, he had for me. The final move was a total gamble and if that was the case, I was done for. If he didn't intervene, I really was about to fall from the tower.
Flickering images of my nightmare passed though the cinema of my mind's eye - there I was, slick with mud, struggling to survive - struggling to hold on. And there he was - watching from above with a cold, vacant expression, until I tumbled down into the dark.
So, this was it; the game was finally over.
"Stop," J interjected, his voice low, almost a whisper.
My ears pricked up to the sound.
Had I imagined it? Had I manufactured what I wanted to hear?
I needed confirmation so I ignored him and readied the blade, teetering as I swayed backwards ever so slightly, just finding the edge of my balance. Of course, I didn't want to do it, but if he really killed her, it would be easier to take than living with that. The guilt and hatred of him would destroy me.
"Stop!" He barked, desperation breaking his voice in two.
My eyes flew open and very slowly, I lowered the knife.
"Get out of here," he hissed through gritted teeth at Sarah.
The disheveled girl hesitated for a moment, understandably distrustful.
He saw this and tossed the gun aside.
"Go now, before I change my mind!" He roared, angrier than I’d ever seen.
At this she took off like a startled doe for the stairwell and disappeared into the dark.
Overcome by the relief, and gasping for breath suddenly, I lurched forward. It felt like my body had been struck, but the feeling was internal, as if the stress of the situation had all fallen on me at once like a pile of bricks. My legs buckled and gave way. I couldn't stop it even as I realised where I was.
The floor was still slick with blood and I slipped as I came crashing down. The knife clattered out of my hand and spun forward, dancing for a moment, spinning in circles, as I clawed at the smooth concrete for purchase. Half of me was already spilling over the ledge and I was slipping further and further over.
Just as my grip failed and my centre of gravity shifted, my body lurching down, my arms failing to keep me held forward, I was yanked to a stop. J stood with one leg braced against the wall and had me gripped by the arm.
He had a look of the closest thing to panic I’d ever seen on his face.
My arms were already struggling to keep their grip on his. I looked up with pleading eyes. Pure terror. He was in danger of slipping too, and if he did, we were both doomed. I forced myself to stop flailing and try to be still. My breaths were ragged and panicked.
As his face twisted with the exertion, he slowly began to pull me back up with both hands and I clung to his arms. He was having to use his entire body, legs driving against the wall framing the open pit, pulling backwards like a rower. As soon as I was up far enough to get one foot back on solid ground, I used it to push myself forward and scrambled out of harm’s way, dragging him back away from the danger with me. We both collapsed onto the floor at a safe distance from the elevator shaft, groaning in pain.
"Why the hell did you do that?" He said in stunned irritation as soon as we both caught our breath.
I stayed where I’d fallen on the floor to ground myself as I felt like I might actually be about to pass out, clasping the knife in my hand. As my full-blown my panic attack waned, I tried to answer him.
"You made me kill two people; I made you save two. Turnabout is fair play," I whispered, waiting for my heart rate to come down.
He was a silent for a moment before he broke into a chuckle.
"This is why I need you around. You do keep things interesting, you're right about that," he said, finally getting back to his feet and hauling me up with him.
"Is that the only reason?" I asked, betraying the hurt I felt.
He looked down at me confused his eyes searching my face as he tried to discern exactly my meaning.
So that was how it would be.
His desire for me, in whatever capacity, was dangerous, the blood I was covered in was proof of that. I was forever tainted now, and like Lady Macbeth there would be nights I’d scrub my hands raw, convinced that some trace of the stain remained... He'd set me on a path that had started with being a victim of kidnapping and ended with committing double homicide. If I kept spiraling, where would I end up next? If I followed in his wake, death and destruction would be around every corner.
With sudden passion, he pulled me in close, his lips crashing into my own. For a moment, I let it happen. I almost lost myself entirely, kissing him back feverishly. Whatever I wanted to think, whatever mantras I repeated to myself, I had never felt such a raw intensity of emotion. I had never felt this kind of violent affection for anyone. I had never fully understood how love could drive people to the brink of their sanity. I thought it was a kind of romantic exaggeration, pure melodrama, or at least, that a love so deep was something reserved for classically attractive, affluent people. Not people like me. The endless depths of my rioting emotions only made the bite of his betrayal sink deeper, all the way to the bone.
Somehow, I managed to pull myself back to the surface for air. I couldn't drown any longer. I knew what I had to do, as much as I didn't want to. As I broke away from the kiss, catching my breath, my eyes fell on the two bodies lying in the shadows. The sight of the still motionless form of the Batman and the lifeless stare on the face of the man I'd removed from the ranks of the living gave me a renewed kind of resolve. I pulled him back into the kiss.
Initially, he didn't even react as the blade slipped between his ribs. I pulled away from my Judas kiss, watching as his expression changed to one of confusion and surprise. He looked down at my hand and back to my face and began to laugh, between grimacing in pain.
I pulled out the knife with a slight twist. I hated him for what he'd done to me, for bringing this out of me. I never wanted any of this. My life had been miserable, and boring, but simple! Not a perpetual bloodbath, not this dog-eat-dog world he'd dragged me into. I would've been quite happy to never have been forced into the role of a horror movie 'final girl'.
"I think I love you... but loving you would be annihilation," I said finally, as he slid to his knees, gripping my arms.
He was still laughing.
"I don't just want to survive anymore; I want to live. You would never have let me go. You want to control me, I can't live that way... I tried to warn you," I said, my voice breaking with the strain.
"You, ah, you... with my own knife. That's cold," he managed to say, mockingly.
I cradled his face with a bloody hand.
"I could have shot you. It would have been easier for me."
He looked at me with a kind of twisted admiration at this confession and clutched his side. The red stain growing on his blue shirt was like a flower blooming beneath his fingers. Hot tears brimmed in my eyes and began to spill down my cold cheeks.
"I was right... about you," he said, smugly.
"That I was capable of terrible things? Maybe," I answered, my chest heavy with guilt.
"You are magnificent," he wheezed out, face contorted by pain.
"I'm sorry, J, I really am," I said with a sob as I let him fall to the floor.
His laughter rang in my ears as I shakily turned around. I was too much of a coward to stay and watch him bleed out. I stopped at the form of the first man I’d killed. His eyes, frozen open in shock, disturbed me to the core, so I knelt beside him and forced them closed. I saw then that he had my empty beretta in his holster and decided to take it back. I couldn’t part with Tony’s gift to me, not when it meant so much to him, and I hoped to any god who might be out there that he’d made it out alive. J’s laughter was punctuated now by a choking cough. I stole a glance back at him as he lay sprawled out on his back. I felt like I was leaving a piece of my heart behind to die with him in the cold. I would always carry that scar...
When I finally reached ground level, I tugged off my sweater and used it to wipe as much of the blood off my hands and the knife as I could, tossing it aside. For some reason I felt compelled to keep the switchblade, flicking it shut and placing it into my pocket - a reminder of my strange love.
I blinked in the weak rays of winter sunlight which signaled the oncoming dawn. A smile spread across my tear-streaked face as the light touched me. Stepping out of the concrete skeleton of the unfinished skyscraper, I started my journey back to the hordes of citizens getting ready for another boring work day, as vans of SWAT officers tore down the street in the direction I’d come from.
No one tried to stop me, in fact, none of them noticed me at all.
Little did I know that things had not ended the way I had left them in the tower:
The joker, increasingly delirious with blood loss, became aware of a shadowy figure looming over him as he lay sprawled out on the frigid concrete. The batman, despite everything in him screaming to let go, despite the bodily agony he was experiencing, knew that he still couldn't break his rule. With a sigh, he resigned himself to saving the joker's life. If nothing else, the villain who had terrorised Gotham yet again deserved to rot in Arkham, not slip away peacefully here. The people needed to see that the city was capable of containing his madness, and keeping it at bay.
Realising that he was not alone in the world after all, a smile spread across the Joker's face. Y/n might have been sane enough to leave him, but the batman would not abandon him, even after everything that had transpired. Then, as he felt his body being hoisted from the ground, the realisation dawned on him, like the fiery sunrise, that y/n had said that she loved him... did she mean that? It was true, she could have simply shot him with the revolver. And she hadn’t gone for the jugular, which he had seen she was more than capable of mere moments before.
Weakly, he began to laugh. Yes, she did. How strange she was – a puzzle that kept shifting and changing; he couldn’t pin her down. It only added to his sheer fascination. The sight of her covered in blood, beauty and violence together, was seared into his mind. He would never forget it. He would think of nothing else during his long stretch of re-incarceration in Arkham Asylum’s high security wing.
Back in my apartment, I stuffed various clothes, and the few personal items which were important to me, into a battered old suitcase. There was nothing like a third near-death experience to put everything into perspective. I scrawled out a note for my landlord and taped it to the door, contract be damned, I was leaving today. And I wasn’t going to pay the arrears the red letter slipped under the welcome mat demanded. Maybe if he'd dealt with the damp and mold issue, faulty wiring and broken kitchen appliances, I'd have considered it.
I took a shower, letting the stream cascade over me for a long time, washing away the gunpowder, ash, and blood. The reddish-brown water swirled about my feet before spiraling down the plughole. I had never felt so thankful for the most basic part of my day, as I massaged the shampoo and conditioner into my scalp, and scrubbed the dirt from my oily flesh. I didn’t even care that the temperature never got above lukewarm.
When I finally emerged and towel dried myself, I looked at the tapestry of bruises, scrapes, and cuts I’d gathered from the ordeal. Despite the damage, the eyes of the naked woman staring back at me were alive with a fire I’d not seen before. A kind of resolve and self-assurance had settled into my bones.
I had survived the unsurvivable.
As horrible as the whole ordeal had been, I felt alive for the first time in a long time. With both the Batman, and the Joker gone, the GCPD would not be able to find me. They had proved their incompetence many times, and in the wake of the deaths of the figure heads of the city’s weird underground, attention would be elsewhere for months. Without intel from either of them, I would be able to fly under the radar. Even if, somehow, one or both of them survived, by the time the dust had settled, I'd be half way across the country.
Giving the dingy rooms a final look over, I turned out the lights for the last time and slammed the heavy door shut. The sounds of kids screaming in the stairwell and the loud TV set my neighbour had running at all hours would not be missed.
The sight of a phone booth as I rounded the street corner with my case in tow gave me reason to pause, an idea forming rapidly in my mind. I slipped in some loose change, punched in the numbers, and listened as it rang.
"Hello, this is Stephanie, who is calling please?"
"Hi. It's (y/n)," I began.
There was a long pause before she finally spoke, as though she couldn’t believe it.
"(y/n), my god... you're alive! The cops told us you were dead."
"Of course they did," I muttered, rolling my eyes.
"We erm, we didn't know why you didn't show at first so there might be - I left some messages on your phone," she said sheepishly.
My phone was long gone, of course. If she hadn’t told me, I’d never have known.
"Let me guess, telling me I’m fired and berating me for no-call, no-show?" I chuckled.
"Um, yeah. But - but we can of course reinstate you, now that we know what happened!"
I began to laugh uncontrollably at her inadvertent callousness.
"Oh no, don't bother with that."
"Sorry?" She asked, evidently confused by my sudden hysterics.
“Yeah, I’m not coming back. Do you, do you even know what happened to me, Steph?”
“I, I think they said that you were killed in a shooting,” she stammered out sheepishly.
“And you thought I’d want my job back?”
“Well, yeah. I mean obviously it wasn’t your fault what happened so, we can reinstate you.”
I chuckled.
"Uh-huh. Well, I just called to say fuck you. Fuck you for how you treated me, and I hope you like doing your own paperwork, at least until you find some other poor sucker to replace me.”
There was a stunned silence on the end of the line as I hung up by slamming the phone back into its cradle. I sighed deeply. It was as though I physically felt the enormous weight lifting from my shoulders. I didn’t have to deal with her bullshit anymore and it felt so good.
I couldn’t help but smile as I stepped out into the crowds of commuters and slipped unseen into the morning rush hour. Suddenly, life was ripe with possibilities. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but it was a fresh start. I was finally free to leave the city. Free to start over somewhere new.
THE END.
End credits song 😂
IMPORTANT!:
Thank you all to those of you who have been with me on this journey from the start - and those who have dropped in along the way. I love and appreciate every single one of you more than you know, especially those of you who have commented! Please write me something below if you liked this as I really value any thoughts you have, good or bad - even just a keyboard smash!
The only other person to really thank is someone I'll never get the chance to meet, but who I've always felt a kind of connection to (hopefully in a way that isn't too para-social!). Heath Ledger gave us this truly iconic character, by putting his heart, soul, and passion into his performance. It cannot be overstated just how iconic and game-changing this version of the joker was. He became so cemented in pop culture that he remains in the global collective consciousness 17 years later, despite the many other versions of the character there have been since! My story would not exist without Heath's craft and I think it's quite beautiful that despite his untimely death, part of his legacy will always be the inspiration of other artists to create.
If you are reading this, my request of you today is that you keep creating, even if you start to question the value in it. Do it any way! I never made it through to the end of any of my extended writing pieces before, and am so pleased I managed to keep that creative outlet open this time. Your art, in whatever form, is important! In a world of AI and prioritizing profit over the fun of artistic expression, don't give in! Keep making it. Make it for yourself even if no one else seems to notice.
Oh, and, one last thing:
Why so serious?
Daisy xoxo
Would you read a sequel?
Yes - I want to see more of the characters and find out what happened after this
No - I think this story is already complete
Playlist I wrote to including some of the music actually mentioned in the course of the story:
Tag list:
If i forgot anyone or you want to be removed please let me know ❤️
@dis0rderly-cl0wn-nerd
@dance-like-a-clown
@furisodespirit
@heath-ledger-jokers-wife
@sunfyrejoker
@lightsabergirl
@clowning--around
@ruby-da-archangel
@harleenqvinn
@helchronicles
@ostricx
@knoepfl
@jumpingjellyfishhaha
@nicklet94
@torossosebs
@all-bi-myselfs-blog
@myassisasolarsystem
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@mikuley
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@geomoreira13-blog
@clownfluencer
@3andeline3
@sunnyx07
@fluffysourpatch
@moonfairyacid
@i-tried21
@judyfromfinance
