Work Text:
Rachel swims back to consciousness with the same weary determination she remembers from the few times she’s been truly drunk, mostly at post-finals parties in college. Except this time, her head is throbbing from more than just alcohol; it feels like someone’s thrown a wineglass at her head. Her eyelids flutter, and she leans her head back to rest on the wall. Ooh, yes, she’s got a lovely goose egg on the back of her skull. That’ll hurt tomorrow. And what’s this? Her arms are…tied behind her. Her arms are crossed, hands on the opposite elbow; rope is looped over her shoulders and pulled tight across her chest. And she can hear someone breathing, deeply, roughly.
It takes her a moment to process what she sees when she opens her eyes. She’s in a scuzzy public bathroom with ugly cracked tile and faintly yellow fluorescent lights that tinge everything a sick, faded color. Harvey – shit. Harvey is sitting on the toilet, tied like she’s tied, his ankles fixed together and his jaw clenched. He’s glaring at the entrance; the door is locked. He hasn’t noticed she’s awake yet.
“What’s going on?” she asks, and shuts her eyes briefly as a bolt of pain flares in her jaw. Whoever attacked them must’ve hit her on the side of the head as well. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” he snaps. “And as for what’s going on – what do you think, Rachel? Think I brought us here for fun?”
“Don’t talk like that,” she retorts, because she really hates this angry, defensive side of him that shows when things go drastically off track. It’s never been directed at her before, only witnesses who sass him. “It’s the Joker. Isn’t it?” She waits for his brief nod before continuing. Take-control Rachel, here to save the day, as always.
“He’s after you. You’re the one getting his thugs off the street. Is there any way to get out?”
He exhales heavily, then shakes his head. “I don’t know. Do you have something sharp on you?”
“In my purse.” She cranes her head – ouch, that hurts – and spots it lying half under the door of the nearest cubicle. It smells disgusting in here, like old paint and disinfectant and urine. Using the heel of her shoe, she hooks the strap of her purse and drags it to her; luckily it’s not a zippered bag, so she can easily flip it over and spill its contents.
There it is; the pocketknife she carries whenever she takes the Gotham Metro home from work, regardless of whether Harvey’s there or not. It makes her feel safer, like she can defend herself, and it’s actually coming in handy now. She scootches it toward her with her toe, then twists around, lying flat on the disgusting floor, to take it in her hands and flick it open. Her head thumps on the tile, and she hisses an unintelligible curse.
“Careful,” says Harvey, and she flashes him a quick, tight smile, awkwardly sawing at the rope. It’s not the best angle for this sort of thing; she’s nicked her wrist a few times already, but what’s a little blood loss when it comes to escaping from a madman?
The rope is all but torn through; just a few strands remain, and she rips through them with one savage jerk of the knife, although it takes her a moment to untangle from the binding.
“All right,” she says, more to herself than Harvey, and half-stumbles to where he’s seated. The muscles in her arms are burning from being bound, and she twisted her ankle at some point that night. But she can still cut away his bonds, even if they’re more complex and the rope is thicker than hers, especially around the ankles.
“Thank you, Rachel,” says Harvey, with that quiet, painful sincerity that makes her heart hurt for him. It’s like he didn’t expect her to stay and help him. It makes her want to kill whoever made him this way.
“I love you,” she tells him, and she can sense his smile in the way his muscles relax.
The door creaks open, and someone shuffles in. Harvey tenses.
“Shit,” he says. Rachel is frozen for a moment, weirdly concentrated on the patterns in the rope; she focuses on the twine, head pounding.
“Miz Dawes,” says that drawling voice, much eerier in person than on television. “So nice to have you with us.”
Adrenaline shivers through her body, and she grips the knife and spins, crouching in front of Harvey like a defensive lioness. Joker is tucking a key into his purple jacket, looking slightly sheepish, like he’s stumbled into the host of a party he wasn’t exactly invited to. In one hand he holds a butcher knife, ugly and efficient.
“Come on,” he says, gesturing at her pathetic weapon with his knife, “d’you really think you can take me on in a knife fight? I mean – ” he takes a step toward her, and she takes one back, bumping into Harvey, each heartbeat blurring into the other.
“I’m the professional here,” he continues, as if he’s confiding something embarrassingly obvious. “I think we both know who’ll win.”
“You won’t win shit,” she spits out, vaguely surprised at the anger pumping through her body.
“And I thought lawyers were supposed to be logical,” Joker comments, and charges her.
Her instinct is to leap backwards – for all her tough words, she isn’t exactly the most experienced fighter – and she does, the only kink in this plan being Harvey. She slams into him, knocks him off the toilet, and hits the floor hard, but not before she hears his head smack the wall with a sickening crack. The knife skitters out of her hand, across the tile, and she knows the battle’s lost. It probably was from the moment the Joker entered the room.
The man in question looks down at her knife, which has slid to his feet. He flicks it away with his toe, an oddly feminine gesture, and when he does Rachel can see his ridiculous socks, absurdly patterned like he’d hand-stitched them together out of spare bits of fabric. She laughs, but it’s cut off by a groan; there’s something that rattles in her ribcage when she breathes in deeply. Harvey twitches beside her; his eyelids are cracked open but only the whites are showing.
“Too bad,” says Joker conversationally, scuttling closer to them. “He’s gonna miss the show if he stays out like that.”
He reaches down for her, and she cringes away, so he settles for grabbing a handful of her hair, and hauls her upright by that. She screeches, and he rolls his eyes.
“Shut up,” he snaps, “you sound like a dying pigeon. Squawk squawk!” He mocks her, and she just screams again, and starts to flail around, feeling like laughing and crying at the same time, slightly hysterical.
“Stop it!” she yells, and manages to land a few good scratches through the clown makeup; blood bubbles to the surface, leaking lines like crocodile tears to the red slashes of his scars. He pins her wrists to the wall, and sighs,
“You’re just making it – harder on yourself,” punctuating his statement with a savage knee to her lower abdomen. She’s been sore and tender there all day, and the pain makes her utter a choked whimper and she slides to the ground. He’s grinning at her, curled up on the floor.
“Good girl,” he says approvingly. “You’re going to stay there. Right?”
His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth on the hard t; saliva’s leaking out of the corners of his mouth, and he wipes it away with a gloved hand. She nods a little, clutching her stomach, and he turns from her and goes to Harvey’s prostrate figure.
“Harvey Dent!” he singsongs, and kneels, rolling the other man onto his back. Harvey groans a little and moves his head, like he’s trying to focus. “Time to wake up!”
“Rachel?” slurs Harvey, and Joker gives a little giggle.
“She’s here, honeycakes,” he says, almost teasingly, lowering his face to Harvey’s. It’s a weird scene; Harvey’s propped up against Joker’s knee, cradled like a dying Romeo. “Uh, Rachel? Say something.”
“Harvey,” she whispers, and her voice breaks. “Oh, Harvey.”
He lolls his head toward her, and struggles mightily when he sees her, crumpled like a ragdoll on the tile. Joker slaps him on the back of the head, shushing him.
“Harvey, it’s okay,” she says, fighting to keep her voice calm. Luckily, some level of acting is a must as an attorney, and she sounds almost believable.
“Listen to your girlfriend, Harvey,” Joker says, “she’s got the right idea. Don’tcha, Miz Dawes? Rachel?”
She doesn’t dignify this with an answer; instead, she watches as Joker picks Harvey up – still attempting to flail, bless him – and props him on the toilet, turned to face the corner Rachel’s slumped in.
“Y’see,” Joker says, addressing Harvey, “I was just planning on killing your main squeeze over there, maybe painfully, maybe letting her scream a bit, but now…well, let’s just say I’ve changed my mind.”
He stands a little straighter, his voice deepens, and suddenly, sickeningly, Rachel realizes he’s acting, like the star of some grotesque snuff show.
“Men like you, Harvey, you like to think of this little world you live in as reality, you like to think of it as…sane. And when everything goes haywire, men like you call it crazy. Destruction, and chaos, and death…! It’s nature, it’s the way – the world – works but you can’t handle that, oh no, enough glimpses of the real world, when you finally face the fact that humanity is mad, random, and pointless, you just go round the bend and end up slavering away in a straitjacket in Arkham!”
He’s so caught up in his monologue that spittle flies out of his mouth on his last few words, a few errant drops landing on Harvey’s face. The lawyer attempts to wipe them away with his shoulder, and hisses, “What does this have to do with Rachel?”
“Ah, Rachel. Pretty Rachel.” Joker rounds on her and advances. She cowers into the corner and silently berates herself for being such a coward. “She’s part of the fun! Part of the…experiment, as our favorite straw scientist would say. Because I like to see how far men like you can go. What it takes for you to lose it. And the best way to do that…”
He towers over Rachel and hooks his thumbs in his suspenders, grinning devilishly, and trails off.
“Don’t you dare.” Rachel and Harvey speak the words at the same time, hers terrified and his furious.
“I’m a daring fellow,” Joker smirks, and falls to his knees beside her.
She thrashes and smacks him in the side with her legs, which makes him flinch slightly – must’ve hurt his ribs earlier in the night, good information to have – but just as she moves to hit him again, harder and with more purpose, he grabs her shoulders and pushes her against the wall, cracking her head again, and while spots dance in her vision blood slowly trickles from her scalp.
“I could kill you,” he muses, sitting back on his heels and watching her speculatively, “I could still kill you, it’d break poor Harv’s heart, now wouldn’t it?”
“She’ll go down fighting,” Harvey says, fierce pride in his voice. “She won’t give in to you.”
Joker nods, as if he’s really taking Harvey’s words to heart. Rachel’s head hurts exponentially worse, the throbbing pain echoed in her gut, where he grabbed her shoulders, her legs. Everywhere.
“Yes, it’ll make you proud if she dies like this,” he says distantly, “if she dies with dignity. But!” and he snaps back into the moment exuberantly, “I’ve got another idea. One that’ll make you scream,” and is that last directed toward her or Harvey?
It’s answered when he shoves her legs apart and pins her to the wall. She cries out and struggles, but her skirt’s rucked up around her waist already and he’s pressing her down with his shoulder, and his fingers, oh god his fingers, she whimpers and tells herself it’s a sound of fear.
“Oops,” he says wickedly, and yanks off her panties, flinging them over his shoulder at Harvey, who’s speechless.
“Don’t do this,” Rachel begs, because she knows he will if she asks him not to, and what will happen when he touches her and his hand comes back red? No man likes that, he’ll hit her and beat her and that’s infinitely preferable to what else he might do. “Please, oh please don’t, anything, just don’t – ”
He bites the soft roll of flesh above her groin that she’s always so embarrassed about in reply, and she squeaks in indignant pain. Then a long swipe of his tongue, and she’s crying, so afraid of what she’ll do because she’s so sensitive and he’s so crazy and maybe he likes girls like this and she’s just so scared.
“Rachel!” he says, sounding surprised and somewhat delighted. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She’s shaking her head, but it’s obviously doing nothing. “No wonder you’re so emotional, if you’d just told me I would’ve let you slide!” His mouth quests lower. “Now, though – ”
He takes her tampon string by the teeth and pulls, and she whines at the sensation, something going out. It feels dirty and disgusting and delicious and then he’s at her again, nipping, biting, flicking, taking her hips and steadying her, and although she’s trying to writhe out of his grasp it’s only making her grind on his face and that, that makes her moan.
“Stop,” she sobs, “don’t, stop, oh god please don’t stop, oh – ” and with a flick of his tongue and a twist of his finger he brings her and it’s one of the hardest orgasms she’s had in her life, shameful and degrading and so good.
“Good girl,” he croons, “pretty Rachel,” and she can see she’s left additional decoration on his cheeks, garish blood coating the white paint and scars. She whimpers and curls into a ball, and tries to avoid Harvey’s eyes, tries not to hear his heaving sobs.
“What do you think, Harv?” Joker asks, “think she’s ever screamed that loud for you? Yes, no, maybe? Think about it, Harvey Dent, just think and I’ll get your answer – next time.”
Rachel can feel his presence above her, and curls tighter, trying to hide, but he only tucks her knife into the cradle of her arms.
“Thanks for the quickie,” he rasps in her ear, and his voice descends into giggles as he stands, leaves, the hydraulics of the doors wheezing as it closes.
Eventually, after what feels like an hour but is probably more like two minutes, she untangles herself from her safe space and goes to Harvey. They say nothing while she saws his ties, can’t even look at each other, and even though he kisses her hard before they exit, and whispers reassurances and sweet nothings into her ears, she can taste the rift between them. Game, set and match to the Joker.