Character(s): Joker and ~open~ Day: Day 1 Time of Day: Midday-ish Location: The good side of town omgwtf. Call it a cosmic fluke, or perhaps just that the Powers That Be are interested in having a bit of fun. Rating: PG-13 (to start with; no telling where it might go o.0)
They’d been keeping him in the straight jacket for the past day or so. It was punishment. For some, it worked because of the indignity of being restrained and trussed up. For others, it was the pain, because having one’s arms being forced into one position for hours on end is, as one might guess, an uncomfortable affair. Blood pools at the elbows. Hands become numb. Muscles get rigid. The shoulders alone become agonizing, from being tortured into so unnatural a position. But that was not his problem. Neither pain nor dignity ever came up as much of an issue. It was just the irritation of being unable to move. While it was better than the meds – the pills they slipped into his food which made all the anger and fury and those sensations that were really worth feeling unattainable and distant, or those needles that put him out like a light – it was still more than a little inconvenient. There was something infuriating about being unable to have one's arms do what one wanted to, especially when you were as antsy as he was.
So when he found himself, miraculously, with the evil thing off of him, he was too happy to notice anything else. His arms were on fire and his fingers were clumsy and stiff, at first, and it was a better feeling than any he’d had in hours. And that nasty fog that was usually an indication he’d been given something, voluntarily or not, was gone. He was seeing properly for the first time… well, since he’d first been admitted for his little stay. Senses were keen, nothing was fuzzy around the edges. It was good to be free.
Anyone who saw him now would not be seeing the face that had been, as of late, splashed all over the Gotham Gazette. It wasn’t just the lack of makeup. He was clean. And the greasy tresses of his hair were neither greasy nor indeed tresses. They’d given him a buzz cut a while back, to thoroughly rinse him of every aspect of his preferred persona. So now, save the scars on his face, there was little at all to suggest this was the dangerous criminal that had been the terror of Gotham, cops and criminals alike, before being securely locked up.
Now he was just a tall guy in a cheaply-made, city-paid-for, asylum-issued wifebeater and bright orange trousers. With a chewed up face. A stranger in a strange land. This might be a hallucination, some bad reaction to the meds. Or it might not be. He was a man who’d always believed that anything was possible.
He’d first gained consciousness – not to mention some sensation in his arms – lying on his back. No straight jacket. That was nice. That was what he’d noticed first. He’d gotten unsteadily to his feet, aching in a way that suggested he’d just been dropped from a long way up (though that wasn’t a bad description, really) before regaining his bearings. He stretched his arms, flexing his fingers and bending back, back until he could hear that satisfying pop. And he cracked his neck, inclining it first one way, then the next, in a gesture that made him look eerily feral, for a moment. Inhuman.
He was a dog off the leash, now; a caged animal let loose.
It might not be Gotham, but he was nothing if not adaptable.