Chaos, In Theory (1/?) (original) (raw)

Title: Sensitivity to Initial Conditions
Pairing: Eventual Joker/Bruce
Rating: R for implied torture, language and excessive internal dialogue. This is NOT a happy fic people. You've been warned.
Disclaimer: The Dark Knight belongs to Christopher Nolan, and the characters belong to DC Comics. But don't you think they'd have more fun with me?
Author's notes: Currently without a beta, my first attempt in this fandom, and my third fic ever. Concrit is welcome, and please slash responsively.

You made a deal with Gordon. Two weeks after John Doe, alias “The Joker,” was admitted to Arkham Asylum, he committed suicide by hanging himself with an orderly’s shoelace. You, and all of Gotham breathed an unremarked upon quiet sigh of profound relief but for vastly different reasons. Because that was just the official version, the one that you and Gordon fabricated for the requisite paperwork. One male, unidentified, a suicide, reduced to six pounds of ash at the cost of one thousand, nine hundred forty-seven dollars and fifty cents to the state. You sigh with relief because you finally have a free hand. You can determine the future, because you are in total control.

Because the Joker is very much alive, and you are hiding him in your basement. No, hiding implies collaboration and you are not collaborating with that sick, painted fuck as much as you are denying him death and all the release it implies. You wonder what it says about your state of mind that you so easily imagine death as a release.

But then lots of things are a release these days. The sheer amount makes you wonder how things got so fucked up as to need so much releasing, but then you feel the shock of the blow reverberate up your arm, and your soul vibrates in key to its tuning-fork ripples. You think that the music of the spheres must sound like this, all harmonizing violence and turbulent tones hurtling through space. Fuck Zen, and fuck detachment, because being at one with the universe, being whole, is totally violent and utterly shocking, and makes you tremble from the exertion. Desire isn’t the root of suffering. Suffering is the root of existence. And your rage is the tune to which his suffering dances, the melody that echoes the music of the spheres.

The mad laugh ruins the harmony.

You grit your teeth and twist the pliers, but the laugh continues, shrill and utterly mad in a screaming, shrieking crescendo. But it isn’t a scream.

He always ruins the fucking harmony.

You have to make it stop.