Branches

Title: Red is the Color of Laughter (Part 1)
Prompt: knightvsanarchy: red
Word Count: 1043
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jokester, Owlman
Summary: Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is.
Disclaimer: This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: Disturbing imagery. Earth-3 alternate universe.
 

Red is the Color of Laughter: Part 1

Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is. Gotham is grey in every sense: in sight, in sound, in smell, in taste, and in touch. Even when the sun is bright and not smothered by stormclouds or haze, all the light does is bleach the streets and smog-stained buildings like a spotlight casting over rubble while the cockroaches and spiders scuttle into deeper black cracks where the brightness can't reach them. The stains just stand out more starkly during the day than they do at night.

Even death is without color, Jokester has noticed. People don't die with loud shrieks of bursting crimson; they die with quiet gurgles burbling black from their throats, or with shredded screams that sound like rotting cotton being ripped apart. They die in dank, filthy alleyways, blood oozing down nearby drains like thick ichor. They die with their bellies opened and smelling like sewers. They die feeling cold and with greasy grit roughening the pockets in their skin.

Jokester is different. When he drops down onto the streets of Gotham in his bright clothing and circus smile, he looks like a hole in the universe. He wears the vibrant Phoenician purple of ancient royalty, but he laughs and dances like a court jester. His scars aren't black and rotten with the smell of fear; they're painted brilliant red and they laugh even when Jokester cannot.

Jokester remembers believing that life in Gotham would be freer, that he could start over once more and finally escape the bullies and bad luck that had diseased his life up until then. Everyone had said that college is incomparably better than high school, and that big cities afford opportunities that he would never see in a small, quiet town on the outskirts of Arkham.

Maybe that was true for other big cities, but not for Gotham. The bullies are just bigger, and armed, and they don't stop chasing you once you make it home from school. No one can stand on the sidelines, and no place is safe. Everyone knows it, so everyone who stays in Gotham buries their dreams beneath the dust.

Well, not everyone. There had been Eve.

But Eve is gone, Jokester thinks. Eddie is gone, and Duela is never coming back. Stop dwelling. It's almost showtime.

Jokester slinks down the alleyway, ten feet above the ground and boots silent upon damp roof shingles. He can be as stealthy as shadows when he wants to be; the would-be muggers are closing in on a young couple who had thought to take a shortcut through Gotham's back alleys. Stupid move, even in the middle of the afternoon. They must be new to the city.

Thanks to Jokester, they'll live to learn not to make the same mistake again. He drops down mallet-first into the midst of the muggers and whacks their skulls until they see blinding white stars and nothing else. No blood--only bruises. Jokester doesn't kill--not because he doesn't want to, sometimes, but because he wants to prove to Owlman that he can survive without shedding his colors, without becoming as black and dirty as everyone else.

Maybe he'll have to break that rule someday, but he's not going to break it for mere alley trash.

He ties the muggers up while they're still unconscious and pins a dandelion-yellow smiley button to each of their shirts. The couple is gone; they'd darted away the moment that the fight had started. Jackie can't blame them. The guy that beats up the people who attack you is more likely to be the new crime management than your savior. And besides, even people who know Jokester is the good guy don't hang around long enough to thank him; where Jokester goes, Owlman is likely to swoop in.

Where is that flying rodent-eater, anyway? Jokester wonders as he monkeys back to the rooftops and darts in search of more crime to bust. He hasn't seen or heard of Owlman in days. That makes Jokester nervous. It means that Owlman is planning something big.

But there's no sense worrying about that, either. Jokester has no one to go to for leads. Not even a crazy person would spill information about Owlman, no matter what Jokester threatened to do.

A sharp, strangled noise catches Jokester's attention. He veers towards it and perches over the rain gutter to squint down into the darkness. The daylight doesn't reach this deep in the Narrows, so he can't find the source at first. He listens, and then he hears it again: a small child's burbling sobs. He sees the kid's shape in the the shadows as a quivering blotch of grey that doesn't quite fit into the black around it.

Aw, man, Jokester thinks. That ain't right. He swings himself over the roof edge and lands, polished boots clacking brightly against the dirty concrete. He hears the child's breathing hitch, followed by the scuffle of cloth. "Hey, kiddo, it's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you," Jokester says reassuringly. "Are you hurt? Lost? Where are your parents?" Probably dead, Jokester thinks, but here's hoping otherwise.

He gets close enough to make out details. The child is a boy, no older than seven. He's thin, scraped, and terrified. He has his arms huddled around his chest beneath a worn jacket. Jokester pauses six feet away and crouches down. "Don't worry. I'll protect you. I'm the Jokester. Are you hurt?"

The boy stares at him with wide black eyes. He does not blink. His arms twist beneath the jacket, and Jokester thinks that maybe the boy is hurt after all, so he steels himself for the sight of something ragged and ugly.

Instead, the boy's arm emerges with something small, black, and cylindrical clutched tightly in his fingers. He yanks a shiny metal bit out of one end, hurls the object at the Jokester, and dives beneath a metal box that Jokester hadn't noticed until now.

Jokester has enough time to think, well, I always wanted to go out with a BANG, before white floods his eyes and stinging silence stuffs his ears. Vaguely he senses a strange-smelling cloth pressing against his nose, and then nothing more.