Jake Chambers (i_throwplates) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-06-28 01:09:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jack napier, jake chambers |
Ready to Play (Jake and Jack)
Jack had kept up his routine - or rather, lack of routine - with Jake. Nonstop. He set alarms for himself, and sometimes he would wander into Jake's room a little groggy. His actions made even less sense at these times than normal. Hard to believe, perhaps, but true. When Jack was still under the spell of sleep, even he didn't know what he was going to do when he went to see the boy, right up until he did it.
He could tell that there was pain. He could tell there was confusion. Jake had a gaunt look to him. Perhaps because he didn't eat at regular times, perhaps because about half the food Jack brought him was junk. Perhaps he was just worn down. Jack couldn't know for sure. Oh, what he would have given for a mind reader. Somebody to break into that fragile little skull and tell him what was going on in it. He could break in himself, of course, but that would be the end of playtime for him. And he'd put so much time and effort into this that it seemed a shame to ruin it all now. Just to know what the squishy bits looked like. He wouldn't even be able to read them, or anything. Jack didn't think one could read brain matter like one could read tea leaves.
It was a bright and warm morning. There were birds chirping and they could be heard from every window at Arkham. Well. All of them except those that were soundproofed, the ones that were made for the screamers. Jake was not in a Screamer Room, though. So Jack hoped that he was hearing the birds. Seeing the sun. Wishing to be out there. He also hoped that he'd broken the boy. That he would walk into the room and find himself... well... himself. A younger, angrier, psychicer version. That could fling a plate with glory and determination.
He had yet to decide what he was going to do with the little monster once the creation process was over, but hopefully they could decide that together.
With a tray full of pancakes and bacon and eggs and orange juice and milk and some toast (Butter, jelly and syrup too, of course), Jack opened Jake's door with a grin. He looked the boy over, pausing for a moment, wondering how this day would go.
"It's time for brekky. Wakey wakey eggs and bakey! And pancakes and some other shit too."
His former ka-tet wouldn't have recognized him. Jake was pale and gaunt, far too thin, with blackened smudges around his eyes. Eyes that were once clear and blue were now dull grey, lit from behind with some maddened intensity. His hair was starting to grow back in fluffy ragged bunches around the scrapes and cuts lining his skull. He smiled a plastic smile when Jack entered.
"O, Discordia!" he said, his voice cheerful. "Hile, Father. Thankee big-big!"
This was followed immediately by a soft moan locked in his throat as Jake's stomach churned at the smell of the food. It smelled delicious, and healthy, and he craved it. But mistreatment and malnourishment were taking a harsh toll. He could barely stomach water lately. Jake's eyes squeezed shut, trying to suppress a gag reflex.
Jack set down the tray and eyed the boy again. It was a good reaction. Perhaps not good for the rest of the world, but good for him. From now on, it would be sweetness toward the child. Anger only when the boy did something wrong. But Jack didn't think the kid would misstep much, if at all.
He pulled a bottle from his pocket and set it next to the tray. "These are anti-nausea pills, boy. Take one and then wait about ten minutes before you eat the food. Then the food will stay down." He'd really done a number on the kid's system, hadn't he? Well, it could be fixed.
"We should also give you a mohawk today. Your hair has come in just enough to give you something spiky. I'll give you the razor and show you how." He didn't want to offer to do it himself. If he were Jake, he'd remember the awful moments that had been when Jack had had the razor in his own hand at the beginning of their time together. He didn't wish to broach that and risk breaking this fragile shell of obedience.
The boy flinched visible when the razor was mentioned. His eyes slipped out of focus as Jake tried to climb back into his own mind to escape, but then they brightened as understanding dawned. He looked at Jack. "I get to play with the razor?"
A faint smile appeared on his lips, looking distant again. "He taught me to use his knife. I shot a deer and we ate it. I made boots. Moccasins. Oy had ruby booties on his paw-paws when we went over the rainbow."
Then the boy shivered, wrinkling his nose. "Over the dark side of the harvest moon. Eddie got shot. I could see his brain. Why did the dead baby cross the road?" He let out a boyish giggle. "Because it was stapled to the chicken!"
Jack laughed. It was a mixture of true laughter and malicious joy. He'd really done a number on this kid. He doubted if anybody would recognize him after he started talking. Even Jack didn't understand half of what the kid was saying. But it didn't matter. It was madness. Delicious, brilliant madness. What he had been working for.
"You get to play with the razor." Jack nodded. "And I'll even let you keep it. Like an heirloom. Father to son. You can use it how you like once you've gotten your mohawk finished. But you have to eat your breakfast before we can even do any of that. So take the pill, and we'll talk a moment while it works it's magic."
Jack sat down on the bed that had been left in this room for Jake.
"Dead baby jokes. I like it. Very good. You're a very good boy."
Jake eyes the pills with some residual suspicion, but the kindness in Jack's voice had him picking up the bottle obediently and popping a pill into his mouth, washing it down with a sip of orange juice.
When the Joker laughed and praised him, Jake's eyes lit up with happiness. He squirmed a bit, maneuvering slightly closer to the madman. Praise. Laughter. Acceptance. He drank it down like a man dying of thirst. "Ten minutes," he recited with a nod. His expression twitched a bit when the juice hit his stomach, but Jake tried not to show it. Instead, he gave Jack a smile. "I can keep it? Is it sharp? Sharp like a plate? Lady Oriza of the rice used a plate to kill Grey Dick, who murdered her da' and dinh. Do you know the story, Father?"
"It's sharper than anything you can imagine." Jack promised. He didn't know how sharp a plate could get, but he knew that he'd sharpened the thing with the best tools. The edge on it was fine and when you tested it with your finger, it took a moment for your finger to realize it had a gaping wound before it bled. Just the way he liked it. It could cut deep. It was, indeed, not the same razor he'd used on Jake's head. But he didn't need to tell the boy that. He'd already seen what bringing up past troubles could do. The boy was not yet solid enough to laugh off early encounters. But he was getting close. Especially if he could tell dead baby jokes. One day, the boy would tell of the way his father had shaved his head and laugh at each nick and cut.
"I don't know the story." His voice was calm and soothing. Fatherly and encouraging. He didn't particularly care about knowing the story, but it would get both of their minds off of the time they had to wait before Jake could eat. And maybe he could learn something useful about the world where the boy came from. So far, all he knew was that lobsters killed people and plates were used as weapons. And they were trailed about by strange, obnoxious beasts.
Speaking of beasts... Jack wasn't sure if he should introduce the creature back to Jake yet. He didn't know if it would have any influence on his thoughts. Then again, if Jake influenced the thing, perhaps it could work in his favor. Maybe he'd have to hold the thing outside the door. Gagged. To see what happened.
Jake brightened a bit at the sound of the madman's voice. "According to the story... Lady Oriza Grenfall invited Gray Dick to a dinner party in her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him the murder of her father, she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings. Grey Dick said nay, for she'd kill him soon as he arrived at her door. But nay said Lady 'Riza, for all weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee on the other. Ye'd conceal a dagger in you sleeve or a bola beneath you dress, says Gray Dick. And if ye don't, I will. Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked."
He took another sip of his juice. The tale was being recited cheerfully, spouting from an area of his memory that was heavy with the accent of the Callah.
"At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting hard at the sight of her bare breasts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her maiden's eye. He accepted her offer, and his men searched the banquet hall downstairs before he arrived and found no weapons - not on the table, not under the table, not behind the tapestries. What none of them could know was that for weeks before the banquet, Lady Oriza had practiced throwing a specially weighted dinner-plate. She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost.
"The dinner-plate wasn'e just weighted; its rim had been sharpened. Dick's men overlooked this, as she and Marian had been sure they would. And so they banqueted, and what a strange banquet that must have been, with the laughing, handsome outlaw nakes at one end of the table and the demurely smiling but exquisitely beautiful maiden thirty feet from him at the other end, equally naked. They toasted each other with Lord Grenfall's finest rough red. It infuriated the Lady to the point of madness to watch him slurp that exquisite country wine down as though it were water, scarlet drops rollin goff his chin and splashing to his hairy chest, but she gave no sign; simply smiled coquettishly and sipped from her own glass. An' after the second toast, Gray Dick says, "May your beauty ever increase", and the Lady said to him, "May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest." Then the lady threw her plate and it whistled through the air, true as can be, at the neck of her father's assassin. Gray Dick's head flew out though the open door and into the foyer behind him. For a moment longer Gray Dick's body stood there with its penis pointing at her like an accusing finger. Then the dick shriveled and the Dick behind it crashed forward onto a huge roast of beef and a mountain of herbed rice."
Now that his tale was done, Jake reached for his breakfast tray, glancing quietly at the man he was now calling Father. The tale felt important somehow, even if he'd locked away where he'd heard it. But he remembered the feel of a plate in his hand, the way it could glide through the air and slice a man open. Jake lifted a hand, stretching out his index finger to point it upwards, then slowly crooked his finger with a hissing sound. "Sssssss-splat. Dead Dick." And giggled.
"Interesting." And it was a very honest statement. So perhaps this is where the little plate thrower had gotten it. Or at least, it had come down through generations to land in his quite capable hands. All over an assassin. Jack then briefly wondered about throwing his own naked party. What fun that would be. Who could he get to come? Who did he want to see naked? What questions!
He watched Jake take a few bites and was glad to see it seemed to be staying down.
"That's a very good story. You know." He said, thoughtfully. "There is a scoundrel who sometimes appears in this city, who also has the name of Dick. Dick Grayson. Perhaps we can see if he's here, and you can have your own moment of glory at taking him down. What would you think of that, boy?"
Jack had no idea if the little Robin were still here, or come back, or gone. But by god, he was going to search him out now. How fitting, this story's villain was named Gray Dick. How easily it could be transferred over.
Jake beamed up at Jack. "With a plate like Lady Oriza?" He made a spinning motion with one hand, whistling along to the motion. Then he tilted his head back and the spin of his hand lunged at his bare throat. "Pop!" The laugh that followed was boyish with delight. "An' so fell Lord Perth, an' the countryside did quake with that thunder."
He chewed at his food rather cheerfully, desperately trying to ignore the myriad of voices in his mind. He didn't want to listen to them, and didn't think he should. Some of them sounded familiar, and those were the ones Jake was most terrified to listen to.
Sometimes, the voices even sounded like his own.
Hile, Father.
Jake shivered, then began to push the food around his plate, his head slightly tilted as if lost in thought.
"May I speak to you dan-dinh?"
"Just like that." Jack agreed.
The sudden apparent melancholy of the boy made Jack raise his eyebrows. He was about to ask Jake if the food wasn't good, or if he was worried it was poisoned. Silly boy. That would be a huge waste to poison him at this point.
Then the kid spoke.
"You can speak to me, yes. Of course." He kind of enjoyed the formality of that question.
Jake felt a bit of relief at the agreement. He knew what the term meant, to open his mind and his heart to the judgement of his dinh. But where he had learned the phrase... that was problematic.
"They cry out to me. Sai Jake, they call. Does 'ee hear not the Beam? Does 'ee hear not the Tower, an' the Rose? Does 'ee know not that ka is the wheel, the face on the water, an' shall there be water if ka wills it be?"
He squeezed his eyes shut. "The voices call to me, Father, and they hurt. They hurt to hear, and I don't want to listen. But some voices say to hurt, to hurt and to be hurt, and to take Gan unto myself and deal out lead in return."
He opened his eyes again, looking to Jack. "What voice do I follow, Father and dinh of mine?"
"Well, that's easy!" Jack was all smiles now. Encouraging to the boy calling him 'Father' now. Urging him along the path of the most fun. He could tell already that people would be confused by the child. Not know which way the boy was going to lean. Much like himself. "You follow the voice you feel like following when you feel like following it. If the one that's telling you to be a polite boy speaks up and you feel like obeying, why, you do so. If you don't feel like being a polite boy, then little Jakey, you don't do it. I myself tend to embrace the voice that allows me to have the most fun. But it's up to you, boy. Entirely up to you. As long as you're a good boy when it comes to Father, the rest just doesn't matter."
Important to put the last bit in there, he thought. If it wasn't emphasized, there was a chance the boy would start to disobey. And while that was good in general, Jack wasn't quite ready to lose complete control of Jake yet. Not yet. Maybe eventually. Maybe once the little one was secure in his madness, capable of carrying his heavy burden of dual moralities, maybe then Jack would step back and just let the kid go.
Ah, they grow up so fast.
"Do you understand that? That it's all up to you, boy? That it's all your choice? Because it is. Sometimes being one way serves a purpose that being the other way won't. And sometimes, if you can disguise your true intentions for a while, it's a lot more fun."
All up to him.
Which ones to listen to. Which ones to ignore. The ones that made him cheerful. The ones that made the hurtful ones go away.
A smile lit on his face. One that Jack might have recognized. One that the wily old Joker might have seen in a mirror once or twice.
"After my haircut, can we go out and play, Father?" His smile was sharp, eyes sharper than a 'Riza. "I want to play."