Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-05 22:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman |
Who: Luke (narrative)
What: Taking care of one Mark Oakley.
Where: A motel in Vegas.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Violence, death. Luke is bad. :c
It took Luke four days to track down Mark Oakley, which was longer than it normally would have taken had he not been forced to deal with a very resistant Bruce fighting him every step of the way. He had no qualms with tracking the man down and turning him into the police, but that was not what Luke intended on doing, and he knew it. Four days, mostly nights, spent following leads and using whatever means necessary to keep the trail from growing cold, while Bruce never stopped trying to sway him away from the inevitable. There were times when the other man was successful, but this was not one of them, though the exact reason could not be pinpointed. Perhaps Bruce was too tired, the strain of Gotham taking its toll, or Luke had managed to scrounge up a particularly strong kill in this particular instance. Regardless, the end of the line was a run-down motel on the outskirts of Vegas, more desert than city, where cash was the currency and no one asked what went on behind closed doors.
Two hundred dollars, untraceable, ensured that the man behind the front desk left for an hour-- more than enough time to do what he needed to do and have enough time to make an escape. The man never saw his face, and the money made him not care; where violence failed, bribery usually succeeded. The motel was mostly empty, he knew, though he wasn't worried about interruptions. Not here, where even the police didn't venture on a regular basis. A dead man would simply be yet another occurrence everyone turned a blind eye to.
Mark Oakley was in 107. The television was on, the curtains were drawn, and every light in the room was switched off. He had a gun on the left beside table, and he was pacing back and forth. The front door was locked, of course, but it took Luke all of five seconds to pick the pathetic lock and enter the room. His movements were swift, calculated; two steps inside, pausing to shut the door, and another few strides to reach the man before he could get to his gun. The coward who'd beat his wife and son barely managed to get halfway to the table before Luke lunged at him, his body meeting the floor with a sickening thud. This man went after women, children, those who couldn't defend themselves, but he was none of those.
Luke was on his feet while Mark was still struggling onto all fours, cursing under his breath, mentions of that bitch and fucking kill you mingled in with more general threats. "Get up," he snarled, aiming a savage kick at the vulnerable flesh of his abdomen, knocking the breath from his lungs and sending him to the ground again. "What's the matter, Mark? Not so tough when it's someone who fights back, huh?" His voice was twisted with disgust, and this, this, was the side of him no one had ever seen. He was vengeance incarnate, no mercy in sight, allowing Mark to stagger to his feet only to tear into him with fists over and over again. Against a worthy opponent, the man was nothing short of pathetic. Soon his curses became cries of agony, which tapered off to moans and whimpers, mingled in with pleas for mercy. Mercy, he asked for, as his wife and son likely had, to no avail.
Mark was on his stomach now, attempting to crawl towards the door, broken bones and a battered face slowing his progress, which Luke put a definite stop to with a foot on his back to keep him in place. "What was that?" He crouched over him, a hand fisted in his hair to yank his head back at a painful angle. "Stop, you said? Will you behave if I do that, Mark? Will you go on to live as an upstanding citizen and never lay a hand on anyone ever again?"
The coward nodded, or at least tried to, but Luke knew better. Once, before he'd started down the path of the damned, when he still clung to his idealism, he'd given the people he hunted chances to be better. He'd wanted them to succeed. Instead, Luke had allowed criminals to reoffend. Not a single one had kept their promises of reformation and change.
When a little girl died at the hands of one of the men he'd set free, Luke had stopped giving chances.
"I don't believe you," he hissed, and the knife seemingly appeared out of nowhere, sharp silver whistling in the quiet as it slid out from his jacket sleeve. Bruce's roar of NO came as the blade sliced into Mark Oakley's throat, blood pouring in the wake of the cut. A gun would have been quicker, but Bruce's dislike for guns was inexplicably strong, and it was difficult to shoot anyone when experiencing the paralyzing fear of recalling a little boy's parents bleeding to death in front of him in an alley.
He left Mark in a widening pool of his own blood, the only sign of forced entry being the broken lock on the front door.
Bruce's disappointment was nearly suffocating, and it was, perhaps, even worse than his anger. This was yet another failure, in his mind, and the man took such losses to heart. Luke ignored the faint stab of guilt somewhere in the pit of his stomach as he dumped his clothes and headed for home, only half-listening to Bruce's somber lecture as the burning hatred, the anger, the rush that came with taking a life, all faded away to an empty sort of numbness that had grown stronger over the years.
The world was better off without Mark Oakley, yet Luke was not proud of himself. After the numbness would come self-loathing, as it always did, followed by attempts at justification before he managed to shove this death into a deep, dark part of himself along with the others and continue onward with what consisted of his life. It was a cycle, one that had continued for five years, too much habit to break. The masquerade had shown him what he already knew, but was reluctant to admit; Bruce could claim that redemption was possible all he wanted, but he was wrong. He couldn't be redeemed, and sooner or later he'd pay for the path he chose.
But not yet, he thought. Not tonight.