Joker: Decision
Jan. 13th, 2020 05:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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prose_alchemistTitle: Decision
Author:jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Arthur and the (now mostly dead) Wall Street guys.
Setting: During the subway shooting.
Summary: Arthur chooses what to do with the still-smoking gun in his hand.
Disclaimer: Joker belongs to DC Comics and Warner Brothers. I’m just playing with him.
Notes: Written for the prompt of “Suicide” atgenprompt_bingo.
Two men lay dead on the floor of the subway car, and a third was running; and as Arthur reeled to his feet, gasping, the shock of it all overwhelmed him.
He had taken human lives. Surely that meant his own life was now over as well.
For an instant, the gun in his trembling hand turned toward his own head… but he was stayed by the wordless impulse of some far more primal will.
I don’t want to hurt myself.
Arthur had already hurt every day of his damn life. If it wasn’t the physical violence of strangers with Gotham’s poison in their souls, it was the embarrassment and despair of just being the freak he was. He’d never asked for any of it. He didn’t deserve it, when all he wanted was to make others happy. So why should he lie down and die, while those who hurt him lived on without a care?
The thought evolved to its logical conclusion:
Why shouldn’t the people who try to hurt me be the ones who hurt instead?
As he heard the third man crying for help somewhere ahead, a new resolve gripped him like steel.
…This time, they will.
End Notes: Most everyone seems to agree that Arthur’s shooting of the first and even the second subway attackers has some degree of grounds as self-defense, but the third who he actively pursued… not so much. Of course there is a practical motive for him in eliminating a witness, but it’s quite clear he was driven by something deeper. In the heat of the moment, I don’t believe it was a sudden newly-discovered enjoyment of killing (yet; he was certainly there by the time he shot Murray). Rather, I believe his hunting down the third man was simply a feral urge to lash out and return the pain inflicted on him—not only by the three suits, but by everyone who had ever been cruel to him. The overkill of the multiple shots fired into the man’s body may point to this as well.
© 2020 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Arthur and the (now mostly dead) Wall Street guys.
Setting: During the subway shooting.
Summary: Arthur chooses what to do with the still-smoking gun in his hand.
Disclaimer: Joker belongs to DC Comics and Warner Brothers. I’m just playing with him.
Notes: Written for the prompt of “Suicide” at
genprompt_bingo.Two men lay dead on the floor of the subway car, and a third was running; and as Arthur reeled to his feet, gasping, the shock of it all overwhelmed him.
He had taken human lives. Surely that meant his own life was now over as well.
For an instant, the gun in his trembling hand turned toward his own head… but he was stayed by the wordless impulse of some far more primal will.
I don’t want to hurt myself.
Arthur had already hurt every day of his damn life. If it wasn’t the physical violence of strangers with Gotham’s poison in their souls, it was the embarrassment and despair of just being the freak he was. He’d never asked for any of it. He didn’t deserve it, when all he wanted was to make others happy. So why should he lie down and die, while those who hurt him lived on without a care?
The thought evolved to its logical conclusion:
Why shouldn’t the people who try to hurt me be the ones who hurt instead?
As he heard the third man crying for help somewhere ahead, a new resolve gripped him like steel.
…This time, they will.
End Notes: Most everyone seems to agree that Arthur’s shooting of the first and even the second subway attackers has some degree of grounds as self-defense, but the third who he actively pursued… not so much. Of course there is a practical motive for him in eliminating a witness, but it’s quite clear he was driven by something deeper. In the heat of the moment, I don’t believe it was a sudden newly-discovered enjoyment of killing (yet; he was certainly there by the time he shot Murray). Rather, I believe his hunting down the third man was simply a feral urge to lash out and return the pain inflicted on him—not only by the three suits, but by everyone who had ever been cruel to him. The overkill of the multiple shots fired into the man’s body may point to this as well.
© 2020 Jordanna Morgan