#the necklaces are just cords filled with lost things the citizens have lost over the years

[little-pondhead]

The Curse Of Hope

_

Danny is in another universe. He had a reason, but he doesn’t remember anymore. He can only stare, horrified and disgusted, at the sickest city spirit he’s ever seen. Shivering and swaying with every step, core exposed, and ectoplasm leaking from wounds that are decades old. A ratty blanket was thrown over their shoulders, barely hiding the spirit’s pale grey skin and protruding black bones.

The spirit didn’t even sense him until he reached out to touch its wispy shoulders. The spirit flinched, clutching at the dozens of trinkets hanging from their neck and tucking in on themselves like they were expecting a blow.

“Oh, shit,” He swore, floating back a few feet, hands in the air, to show he meant no harm. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not here to steal from you.” The spirit shivered again and rolled a pearl necklace in between their fingers. A nervous habit. “Uh, I like that pocket watch? It’s very nice.”

That got their attention. They peeked at Danny, and he saw that more tattered cloth was covering their eyes, blending in with the stringy hair that reached the ground. Their blanket fluttered weakly, revealing hundreds of thousands of tiny marks etched into their skin. Scars, really. Scars that wrote out curse after curse onto the spirit’s very being. They burned with evil intent, and even reached inside the spirit’s body and wrapped around their core.

Occasionally, blinding specks of color raced across their body, temporarily erasing the writing, but it always returned quickly. He watched, a little detached, as one particular line rewrote itself across their rough forearm, drawing fresh ectoplasm like someone was writing it with a thin knife.

“Are you…alright?” Danny stuttered. A stupid question.

The spirit cocked its head. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he felt their burning gaze as they pondered the question.

“The pain of others becomes mine own.” They rasped. “The lights of the city dim as rotten wealth clogs mine veins. Magicks long forgotten have eaten mine skins, pulled mine cloak, and darkened mine skies. Helios has refused to grace mine doorstep, and the seasons of the Earth have revoked their kindness.”

Danny held his breath. It felt like he was the one with the exposed core, not the spirit.

The spirit shivered once more. “Tell mine soul, little lamb. How could this Forsaken City know peace, when it was long since ripped from mine hands?”

Shit, he needed Frostbite. And maybe Clockwork. Now.

-Or-

Danny meets the spirit of Gotham City. The villains and rogues that have plagued the city for decades are literal curses that are taking quite the toll on Gotham, and honestly, Danny isn’t sure how much longer they can hold out. The heroes seem to be doing some help, and are probably the reason Gotham made it this far, but the poor city needs help from the Realms if they want to get better.

Luckily, Danny can provide that help.

But only if he could get Gotham to leave their city behind. Because recovery is going to take a very long time.

#dpxdc #pondhead blurbs #Gotham is very lanky and tall and had dozens of necklaces around their neck #the necklaces are just cords filled with lost things the citizens have lost over the years #like bits of glass or wedding rings or hag stones made from a destroyed gargoyle #actually I have a weird picture of Gotham in my head I might draw it #it’s giving Bloodborne to me but idgaf #basically Danny meets Gotham and is trying to convince them to go with him for medical help because what the fuck #those curses are the equivalent of leaving hundreds of leeches stuck to your body for ten years #Danny is BEGGING Gotham to come with him #there’s potential for angst but if you want crack then Danny probably replaces Gotham #I think there’s already a similar fic where he becomes the new spirit of Gotham but I haven’t read all of that #anyways the Batfam are like #invasive animals that are actually helping the ecosystem recover from an even WORSE invasive species #but they aren’t supernatural heroes and they don’t understand that the issue is deeper #I’m calling this the Curse of Hope because Danny is offering hope to Gotham #but Gotham is just so tired and sick and hurt that they don’t want to risk it #they think Danny is another curse come to plague them #should he just straight up adopt the city at this point? #idk it probably depends on how it’s written #sad course is to let Gotham die. happy ending is where they are treated and returned #crack ending probably has Danny adopting the city and introducing them to his own city spirit Amity Park #oh shit is that a new ship #guys please I can’t keep doing this #Gotham City x Amity Park #how the fuck do you come up with a name for that #Burger Joints? #Wet Pavement? #bro idk I’m putting this down before I make something I might regret #low key wanna write this but like. I have so much to do

[exolovek]

Innocence Died Whispering

Title inspired by Hozier’s From Eden

This is how it stars:

The eyes of the citizens of Gotham City are turned towards the rich,  as the sons and daughters of the city are congregating on the steps of the city’s museum, waiting for the hour to strike so that the rich can disappear into the doors and behind the velvet rope that separates them. But while many of the sons and daughters of Gotham are walking into the museum, the Waynes are walking out of a movie theater in a place that is yet to be known as Crime Alley.

Thomas and Martha Wayne are out with their son, walking briskly to their car that is parked at the turn of the street, close to the theater but far enough that the walk is long, especially in the middle of the night, wearing some of their fanciest clothes hurrying because they are already late to an event they had helped plan.

The Waynes, for all their faults, are not stupid.  So they don’t enter any ill-illuminated alley and they don’t dally as they walk, and they make damn sure that that the street lights illuminate their path as they walk hand in hand with Bruce.

And they walk and listen to the boy in the middle of them as he tells them about his favorite parts of the movie they had just watched. About the famous “ Z ” carved on a tree, about the mask and the cape and the black boots.

And they walk until the car is in sight and a man is in front of them, and there is a gun glistering against a pale, blue-veined and shaking hand.

The Waynes aren’t stupid.

So, Martha takes off her pearl necklace, her bracelets, her rings, and her earrings and hands them to the man with the gun, she still looks beautiful, and the anger in her eyes is dangerous.

So, Thomas takes off his watch, his rings, and his cufflinks. He lets the mugger know that he is going to be reaching inside his pocket for his wallet (three credit cards, and $213.63 cash) and hands them over, and he is trying to look smaller than he really is so that the mugger isn’t treated by him.

So, Bruce takes his cufflinks and the small watch his father had gifted him with and hands them over as well as the five dollar bill he has scrunched up on his pants pockets.

The mugger says thanks in a weird show of manners and his hands are still shaking and he is walking away, and the Waynes are safe, they haven't lost anything worth more than their lives.

But they are still in the middle of the street and someone must have called the cops because there are sirens piercing the air and the red and blue lights are coming closer.

Thomas watches as the mugger startles and accidental fires his gun. He doesn’t see when the bullet hits his son, but he hears the impact and feels the hand on his hand go completely slack as his son drops down to the floor. Dead.

When Thomas turns to look down, his medical knowledge assaults his mind, the bullet had an exit wound, and after preliminary visual assessment, Thomas knows it had hit the C3 severing the cervical spine from the thoracic spine, and most importantly, severing the spinal cord from the brain. Putting a stop to all neuroactivity instantly.

Martha is also looking down at their son, and she drops to her knees and whispers, brokenly: “Bruce?”

Bruce.

There is a moment, were Thomas looks towards the mugger, the killer, and he is still there, hands shaking and something in Thomas snaps.

He is a doctor, he is supposed to help people heal, but at that moment that is the furthest thing from his mind. He is hitting the killer before he reacts, and he is hitting him and again and again and again. Until the man is on the floor, unconscious.  And his hands are red but he doesn’t care and he brushes his hair out of his eyes.

He turns around and thinks so, this is how my life ends.

Martha is still sitting with their boy, her hands are also red, and they are held against her mouth as she sobs and sobs and sobs And then a thought struck her, and no one would never know what it was because then Martha was laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. And she was still laughing when the police finally arrived, so late in fact, that the blood on her hands and mouth had dried, so late in fact, that the blood on Thomas’s eyes and hands had dried. So late in fact, that it makes no sense.

The cops saw many things that day.

They didn’t know it yet, but they saw Martha Wayne die and the Joker being born. They saw Thomas Wayne break into pieces that one day were going to be forced together to form Batman. And they saw an eight-year-old boy dead. In a place that was yet to be known as Crime Alley.

Bruce Thomas Wayne was buried on the 20th of October on the Wayne’s Manor east garden. In attendance only close family friends: Alfred Pennyworth who didn’t cry. Zatanna Zatara who did. The Kanes and the Foxs and Jim Gordon who has been the cop that arrested the killer. Martha Wayne did not talk during the service and Thomas Wayne did not look anywhere but his hands, were he felt blood still tainted them.

Months passed and Martha still didn’t talk and Thomas still didn’t look.

Eventually, Thomas remembered the cave in which his son had fallen and the bats that had terrorized him and he went to his son grave and promised him that nothing like this would happen to anyone else.

He packed his bags and left, still not looking anywhere but his hands.

Martha Wayne did not talk, she roamed the rooms of her home and didn’t see anything but ghosts and she decided, talking to ghost was better than not talking at all. So she talked to the wall were Bruce had painted a masterpiece in crayon, the chair that had been ruined with spilled blue milk ('like the one in Star Wars mama!' the chair screamed at her.) She talked to the bed that had so recently cradled her son, to the tea set the boy preferred, to the books left bookmarked and unfinished, until her voice was hoarse.

The ghosts in the Manor were so loud they didn’t stop screaming at her. Screaming and screaming. The way her boy hadn’t because he had died in less than a second. The biggest love of her life, one of the only joys she had gone. Gone. Gone.

Alfred Pennyworth would watch his Mistress staring at empty spaces and she would laugh and laugh and laugh. He took a decision that didn’t correspond him, but Master Wayne had left the Manor in the night, without a word of goodbye or an address to locate him and his wife was lost in her grief. So, he called the Arkham Asylum and he sent the once proud Martha Wayne to receive treatment for her madness. She had gone where she was lead, passive in a way she had never been and was walking by herself when Alfred forged Thomas signature and admitted her on the Asylum.

Thomas found out way too late that his wife was gone.

Thomas throws his will into training, into fighting, into learning everything he can to war against injustice. Martha remains sitting on her room, rocking herself to sleep, singing the ghosts a lullaby until they quiet and let her sleep.

Months and months pass and Gotham forgets about the Waynes and their tragedy. Gotham still hosts Wayne Enterprises, that is being run by a combination of Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox and they are the ones that remember most.

Alfred visits Martha often and he talks to her, lets her know what is going on with the word, tells her that Thomas called once, on Bruce’s birthday and wanted to let Martha know that he was safe.

Martha makes no sign that she is listening as she hums. Hush little baby, don’t you cry.

A year after Bruce is killed, Martha escapes Arkham Asylum, killing two nurses and the man that had been on guard at the front door.  She laughed as she did, and once more her mouth was stained red with her own handprint. No one paid attention to the under-dressed woman that walked barefoot in Gotham that laughed at a joke no one understands.

She breaks into a warehouse because the ghost tells her that the name is funny, and it reminds the ghost of the roadrunner and coyote all it was missing is the m between the c and the e. Ace Chemicals the sign read.

Martha Wayne entered the room, walked on a walkway above tubs filled with green liquid, she put one foot over the handrail and then another one. And then the ghost that had been following her for a year disappeared. So Martha jumped. Because she really had nothing left to lose now that the ghost was gone gone gone.

There was already something damaged inside of her, the pain of the chemical on her skin only finished breaking it.

She came out of the tub and her skin was bleached white, her once dark brown and lush hair was now an ugly orange, her nails had fallen off, and there was now a twitch on her neck, her bloody handprint had been burned into her mouth, disfiguring her.  She laughed through it. This pain, this never-ending ache was nothing compared to when she lost her baby.

She walked towards a clothing store and stole a beautiful white dress, and the blood of the man that had been closing down the store contrasted beautifully against it.

No one would ever look at the Joker and think this woman once was named Martha Wayne.  

No one, except one person who was in the middle of the Himalayas, climbing a mountain with a broken wrist, training under a man named The Demon's Head.

Thomas was a different man from the one that left. He could no longer call himself a doctor, not with all the bones he had broken instead of a set, with all the bruises he had left on the stomach of untrained man. He didn’t know what to call himself, his name, that had been so important in Gotham, had no meaning in Pakistan, Russia or Nigeria, his money couldn’t solve the fights he was constantly getting into and his title of father had been taken as abruptly as it had been given. So for now, he was just called Detective by the Demon’s Head.

He trained for three and a half years and then packed his bags and returned home. The guilt of leaving eating him alive, but knowing that saying would have killed him too.

When he got home, the manor was deserted, full of dust, spiderwebs, and humidity and as full as it was, it was also empty, there was no Martha to welcome him home, no Alfred with tea, he should have expected it but he didn’t.

He walked inside the tomb that was his once vibrant home and went to visit his son. The tombstone was clean and there were two fresh roses lying against the grave. He took one with him and went to the garage to take on of his cars to town. But once he gets through his own threshold a voice stops him.

There is a short man with a gun raised, dressed in black, his silhouette illuminated by the blue and red of his car lights. And he questions Thomas and takes him to the precinct and Jim Gordon takes one look at him and tells him we thought you were dead.  And then Alfred comes and tells him Martha is gone. And then the Batman finishes setting. Thomas broken pieces finally coming together into a child's nightmare turned masked hero. El Zorro and the bats merging into one entity, a child’s hero and its worst fear being held together by what was left of Thomas Wayne.

The newspapers, over the years, read:

THE BATMAN DEFEATS THE PENGUIN  and then THE BATMAN: GOTHAM’S KNIGHT and THE BATMAN BUST DRUG DEAL and THE JOKER ATTACKS YET AGAIN and  THE JOKER KILLS 743 IN GAS ATTACK and THE BATMAN ARRESTS THE JOKER and THOMAS WAYNE IS BACK and FIVE YEARS SINCE THE DEATH OF BRUCE WAYNE and MARTHA WAYNE: STILL MISSING and WAYNE ENTERPRISES BUYS LEX CORP and LUCIUS FOX APPOINTED CEO OF WE and JOKER ESCAPES ARKHAM ASYLUM YET AGAIN and BATMAN AND JOKER ENGAGED IN BATTLE OF WITS and THE JOKER KILLS 43 and GCPD DENIES ASSOCIATION WITH GOTHAM’S BAT YET AGAIN.

The newspapers never read:

The Joker

Real Name: Martha Wayne née Kane

Sex: Female.

Blood Type: O-

Threat Level: Five.

Number of Kills: Unconfirmed.

Diagnosis: PTSD and DID.

Treatment: Cognitive Behavior Therapy and benzodiazepines (Valium and Klonopin)

Prognosis: Bad

Appearance: Joker is a five foot two woman with bleached white skin and orange hair that rest just above her shoulders. There is a chemical burn in the form of a handprint across her mouth. Her eyes are dark brown and the sclera of her eyes is a pale yellow. She has various scars all along her arms and legs, the scars from different letters more frequently are the letter B followed by the letter T and then the letter J. She has no nails and she is missing part of her helix on her left ear.

She is often seen wearing white, a pearl necklace and diamond earrings, she also often holds red flowers. More frequently, red roses.

Usual Hiding Spots: Crime Ally’s movie theater. Warehouse number 19 on Gotham Harbor. Wayne Manor east garden.

Known associates: None.

Personal Comment and/or Observation: I just want her to come home.

This is how it ends.

Batman is on what is known as Crime Ally, the movie theater is long gone and he is walking during the day on a street that is no longer illuminated by street lights because this part of the city has fallen into oblivion. He is wearing his usual black and red suit.

And he is walking until a woman is in front of him, and there is a red rose being held against a bleached white and shaking hand.

The Waynes are long gone.

But, Joker comes to stand next to Batman and she leaves the red rose on the floor, she isn’t laughing, she isn’t talking.

But, Batman takes a red rose from his utility belt and leaves the red rose on the floor, he isn’t fighting, he isn’t looking.

Bruce Wayne is long gone and he does nothing.

And they stay there, in the middle of the street and in this part of town no one calls the cops anymore and they remember the boy who was taken from them nine years ago.

Batman watches once more, like every year, and how he will watch for the years to come, as the Joker falls to her knees and in a moment of clarity whispers, brokenly: “Bruce?”  

Bruce

And then, it begins again.

The laughter.

ao3

#batman #batman fanfiction #martha wayne #thomas wayne #bruce wayne #jocker #alfred pennyworth #im terribly proud of this story and i crave attention #writing tag