Jason Todd is (thelazarus) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-29 19:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | red hood |
Who: Jack
What: Jack goes bugnuts insane due to Scarecrow injection.
Where: Silver's apartment, then around Vegas, then Max's warehouse.
When: The morning after taking Wren to Silver's.
Warnings/Rating: Blood, mentions of assault.
Once he felt adequately assured that Silver was not going to knock the door down in the middle of the night, Jack got a few hours sleep. During that short time, he had the nightmare again. That one. The one that had haunted him in the years following Helen's death, where she was being dragged into a house, screaming, teeth falling out, blood pouring from her mouth. When he got inside, she was usually dead already. This time, she was alive enough to ask him why it took him so long. She was angry.
He woke with a sharp start, and a quick gasp for breath. It took him a moment to remember where he was, too long. Right. Silver's apartment. His head was pounding for some reason. Sick? Maybe, that would explain why he felt so hot.
He didn't feel great, but it was well past dawn and he was supposed to go to work. Wren was asleep, breathing regularly. In the light streaming in through the window, her eyes still looked slightly swollen from crying. She'd be up soon, and she'd be able to leave on her own power. He tore a page from his journal and wrote her a short note explaining he'd left for work, that she was at Silver's apartment, and that she should call him once she got home. He felt badly not waiting around for her to wake up, but that would only lead to more awkwardness, no doubt, and it didn't make much sense to be late to work just to wait for her to wake up and leave. He knew Wren - she'd undoubtedly turn him down if he offered to escort her back home, and he didn't have a car there to take her anyway.
Jack collected his jacket from the floor, where he'd balled it up for a pillow, and slipped it on. There was no sound in the hall when he walked out. As he opened the front door, he heard a sound from behind him. He turned and looked, but there was no sign of anyone.
There was a low humming in his ears, and his headache hadn't gotten any better. He climbed onto his bike, kicked off, and rode quietly to the end of the street before gunning the engine. He felt...strange. Like he'd been numb, and his body was only now coming awake, pins and needles in his hands and legs. The rumbling of the motorcycle only made it worse. For the first time, prickles of fear began to sting at him. Maybe work wasn't such a good idea after all. He turned the bike for home.
He was driving into the desert.
He blinked, hard, shook his head, and looked behind him. Sure enough, he was leaving the city behind, riding out beyond the city and into the desert on the highway. How had he gotten here?
He checked his pocket, but there was only the journal there, no phone. It had been in his pocket when he left Silver's apartment, and now it was gone. That pins and needles sensation had gotten stronger, and he didn't know how he'd come to be here. The sun was higher in the sky than he remembered it being, roughly an hour higher. The desert extended on either side of the highway, a dust-beige yellow plain interspersed with tufts of parched vegetation. The air smelled of car exhaust and baking asphalt. Why the desert? His head pounded in the sharp, hot daylight refracting off the ground, and he squinted through the heat shimmers already on the road.
His stomach turned over. He remembered then that he'd turned his bike out toward the desert. He'd thought, maybe, it would be better if he was out there, far enough away that he couldn't hurt anyone. But why would he? He hadn't called in to work, someone would notice he was gone. He should have called them. He needed to call someone, warn them. Warn them about what?
There was a voice at the back of his head, fuzzy, rising in pitch, angry, like Helen had been.
Why was he driving into the desert?
He pulled off the road, stopped, and pulled his helmet off the back of his bike where it had been strapped, rattling against the bike's metal body all this time. He slid it on. That was better. It was hot in there, but he could see now, through the shaded visor. He dropped his jacket into the dirt, then kicked off again, back toward the city. He needed to go home. He'd been thinking he would stay home from work. Because he'd been feeling sick, he remembered that. His head certainly hurt, ached, and he felt so hot he must be streaming fire down the highway. But no one stopped, or paid him any mind.
He pushed the bike's engine to the edge, faster, faster, darting around cars on both sides of the road, turning the world into streaks of color on that bright beige background, until he was back in the midst of the city. Down the strip, then, gunning around cars, sirens behind him and red and blue streaks along with the rest, and then lost ten minutes later. Everything was becoming a blur of pain, the ache in his head intensifying along with that screaming hum. His fingers, clenched around the handlebars, were beginning to ache. He needed to get home, but he couldn't remember what he was going back for. He released one handle and his joints cracked. He reached that hand into his pocket, but his phone was gone. And who would he have called? Who could help him now? He was going back for something only he could find. It would have been no use.
He parked the bike outside the warehouse, and walked up. He didn't turn his comm on, hidden in the recesses of his pants pocket.
He remembered, now. He'd seen them drag her screaming in here. She was in one of these rooms.
He took the stairs carefully, quietly, stepping just so to be sure they didn't creak. He needed to come up from behind them. But he had to be quick, too. She'd died so many times that he couldn't afford to go slowly. He never got there in time, but this would be different.
Jack heard them, rustling at the end of the hall. The voice in his head had gone silent now, or was it one long, hoarse scream? One blended with the other, which blended with the humming, high in his ears. It was hard to hear the rustling around all the other noise, but he caught it. Then there was a short cry, a woman's voice, and he moved faster. He picked up a hammer that he'd left in one of the side rooms while he'd been fixing them up. He tested its heft, and then he approached open doorway on the other side of the hallway.
Her cries continued, short, sharp, rhythmic, with the low chuckle of drunken laughter mixed in.
This time, he wasn't too late. He came up behind the man on top of her and struck him so hard with the hammer that his skull cracked open like a cocoon, like it was splitting under the weight of something inside escaping. It did escape, splattering pink and grey fragments and red on the floor. As he swung the hammer, he felt it all flood back - the tunnel vision, the righteousness, the yawning black despair that made him want to never stop screaming, never stop killing, not until she somehow came back to him.
He wasn't too late this time. She was still alive, but she had already been stabbed so many, so many times. He helped her up, one delicate, blood spattered white hand in his. Her dark hair was matted with blood. He'd come back for something. He'd come back for her.
She closed her other hand around the hand that held the hammer, and she smiled, tentative. He could feel the cool touch of her skin there, soothing the pins and needles, making them go away. Her eyes were white, both of them, split down the middle, all the pigment already leaked out. She still had her teeth, but they were pink when she smiled. She closed her hand around his, and her smile was encouraging, still sweet. Go on.
Jack knew, somehow, something was wrong. Something was wrong. His fingers were on fire, and the man wasn't on the floor anymore. There were only paint smeared tarps, and a paint brush. It seemed important.
He remembered a needle, and someone else screaming. He didn't have much time to be afraid again, because there wasn't much time left to think it over. It didn't matter how he'd gotten here, not anymore. There was no one to call, because he'd left his phone somewhere, and what did it matter what they thought? His fingers shook with rage, white-knuckled grip like the one on the bike. He'd killed the man who'd disappeared, and he'd find the rest of them. They were here. Her grip grew tighter on his. They were here in this city, fragments of their souls hiding inside a thousand men, and he needed to kill each man before the last one would come out of hiding. He wouldn't disappear then. He'd be a reality weight, dead on the floor, and he would keep the world where it belonged.
She kissed him, and he tasted blood and honey. She'd go with him. She'd pick them out for him because they were hard to recognize sometimes, but he couldn't go with just a hammer. She talked without moving her mouth. He needed a gun. He'd forgotten to take a gun with him when he left, which is why he'd come back, just in time. He needed a gun to make sure they didn't crawl out of their skins, like cocoons, and infect anyone else.
Back then, when it had happened, he'd come back to the house because he forgot his phone there, and found her on the floor. They'd hit him from behind, and he got to watch, just in time to see her die because he forgot his phone. Of all the meaningless things. Well, the phone was missing, but he could get his gun. He could make them pay until there were none left. When the world was empty of men, he could turn the gun on himself, and they could go on their honeymoon. A real one, this time.
That fear flickered again. What was he scared of? People being hurt, people he cared about, but he was always afraid of that. He tried to hang onto the fear for reasons he couldn't remember, tried to see clear of it, and her image flickered in his sight. He remembered that after she'd died the last time, words had held him steady, and he reached for them then.
"Am I not a discord in the heavenly symphony, thanks to voracious irony, who shakes me and who bites me?" She wasn't going away. She was staying. She'd always liked poetry. "She's in my voice, the termagant. All my blood is her black poison. I am the sinister mirror." His voice cracked, and she squeezed his hand again. There was something wrong, but he couldn't remember what it was, or why it upset him anymore. "I am the wound and the dagger," he said, as she wound her arm around his waist and walked from the room with him. "I am...victim and executioner."
I'm the vampire of my own heart
— One of those utter derelicts
Condemned to eternal laughter,
But who can no longer smile!
He stepped outside, and felt those last golden threads of words swallowed up by blackness. He didn't need them anymore.
He needed a gun.