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The dark air weighs down on their shoulders, hunched over as they are. The rugged carpet scraps at their thighs where they sat criss-cross on it. The only light is the one shining down on their hands, swiftly moving back and forth. The room’s low ceiling creaks with the upstairs neighbor, the walls groaning their own protest to movement. The only decoration is a solitary mirror in the corner. The unmade bed sits behind them, the singular blanket low on the bed, the pillow long since flat against the headboard. A single doll sits atop the bed, resting. Little else surrounds them, little else could comfort them.
Slowly the fabric in their hands, stiff and unyielding cotton, comes together to form a face. Quietly they reach to their right, a plastic bag full of stuffing meeting their hand. The crinkle it makes is loud in the room. They grab a fist-full, and bring it to the round head of the doll. Packing the plastic into it they let the stuffing scratch at their hands, the little scrapes grounding them. The head slowly begins to resemble a man the more stuffing they fit into it, filling it to the point of bursting. Quickly, they close up the wound in the back of the head, the suture needle in their hand allowing no resistance from the fabric.
Finishing the doll is no work at all, and soon a little face of an ugly politician stares back up at them. Daniel Whitney, 54. The dark yarn hair, sprinkled with white at the temples, is brushed to the side and his little pretentious suit is creased in all the right places. This little doll shares the face of the man who has ruined the life of many, many people. Jordan smiles to themselves. This little creep isn’t their first doll. But it’s their most important. This one will be the first in a chain reaction. Change isn’t far from Gotham City.
And tonight will be Mr. Whiney’s last in peace. Tonight, they will go and visit him, in his pretentious and pompous mansion, where he sleeps in a bed separate from his wife in a room isolated from his family. And quietly, before he knows a thing, they will poison him. Only enough to ensure he doesn’t awake. They will cover his head with a bag, tie his hands and his feet in hard and rough rope, and they will drag his body out his window and into their waiting car. A little doll will sit on his bed, waiting. And through the city they’ll go, no one the wiser, least of all the Bat. And when they get to their little destination, far from where anyone will go searching, they’ll set him up. They’ll place him on a chair, rickety and hard, and tie him to that as well.
And when he wakes, he’ll be scared and frightened, but he won’t let it show. Least of all to the scum who would dare capture him. He’ll steal his voice and say, “I have money, I can get you whatever you want. I-I can get you a vacation on an island in the middle of the ocean, I can make it so you never have to work a day in your life. You just have to let me go.”
And they’ll laugh. They’ll laugh and tell him, “No. You would never give me that. You couldn’t even give me a right that would be cheaper to let pass through.”
And they’ll laugh again, and if it sounds a little more like a sob, neither of them are brave enough to point it out. They’ll leave him there. In the quiet. In the dark. Any sounds he makes echoing back at him, mocking him. And when they return to their apartment, dark and empty, they’ll let themselves fall into the bed, their only comfort the doll they left there, small and familiar.
When they awake that morning the gloom of their room is still unshaken. Behind the curtains they know the sun is just kissing the skyline, weak rays of light that will be soon snuffed out by the Gotham clouds. Swinging themselves out of bed they let out a weak groan, sitting for so long hunched over a doll never does good things to their back. But they don’t have room for a desk, and Jordan’ll be damned if they ever use the rickety dining room table their apartment came with. Sitting on the edge of their bed they place their little doll against the pillow, as it was yesterday. Somehow they always end up curling around it in their sleep. Almost as if they would the real version. If they focus just hard enough, they can begin to feel his heart rate, the warmth he always seemed to carry with him.
Standing, they force themselves to enter the hall, the walls and ceiling just as dingy as the rest of the apartment and their sad excuse for a runner carpet kicked to the side and curled in on itself. The walk to the kitchenette and living space is a short one, their apartment far too crummy for it to be anything but. They start the coffee machine, the whirring filling the empty air. While their coffee brews they put an Eenglish muffin in the toaster, something their dad always had for breakfast. Briefly the thought of what he would’ve thought about how they live crosses their mind, but they brush it aside.
Their toast pops up and they pour their coffee. A small slathering of peanut butter on their muffins and they’re off to their room again.
Settling into the spot on their floor in front of the bed is a familiar movement, and eating their breakfast in silence is nothing new. Today will be the first day of many that they will spend outside their own life. Living the life of another man. Putting their plate and empty coffee cup to the side they relax, allowing their body to fold into itself and rest on the bed. The first time they did this they awoke with a raging headache and a visible bump on their forehead. They’ve since learned to set their body up. They force a strong breath through their body, in through their nose and cycling through them, then long and controlled out their mouth. They do it again, and again, until they lose themselves to it.
Entering the body of one of their puppets is always a little horrific. As Jordan feels their own limbs slip away from them, they feel the fabric limbs of their puppet grow and mutate into something else. Something bigger. They stretch and flex and their seams rip apart. The bones of a man flit into existence in a body still too small and the fabric of the doll seems to strain itself into skin. There is no blood, only stuffing and pain and stitches tearing apart. Opening their eyes is agony, light reaching pupils that didn’t exist just a moment ago. Looking around the opulent room in the daylight is different than by the light of the moon. While the room does seem more alive, it’s still not lived in. The dresser that sits opposite the bed is undecorated, and all the linen is neutral. The paintings on the walls are, they assume, of random ancestors or something else that only rich people care for.
They stretch, letting out a deep and satisfying groan as they do. Their voice is deeper in this body. Folding over themselves they let their new body adjust to itself, pulling and twisting to relieve all the pain. Getting up from the soft bed they follow the wall to the solid wood door, tugging it open. Behind the door stands a maid, hand up and ready to knock. She stares at him in shock. They stare back just the same. They can feel the weight of their eyebrows, much heavier than their own, as they rise deep into their hairline.
“Good morning, Mr. Whitney!” the maid exclaims, her voice straining.
“Good morning,” they reply, the deep baritone of their voice resounding around their chest.
The maids' smile somehow strains even further, “Well, if you would just follow me I can take you to the dining hall for breakfast.”
They nod, and allow the maid to guide them around the halls. The opulence of the room follows them even here, the grand windows adorned with billowy light curtains, the floors topped with a soft red carpet running massive lengths before giving way for an identical carpet. That alone probably cost more than their entire apartment. The long halls eventually end in a room best described as gaudy. The dining table is long and overly detailed on the legs and sides, the walls are littered with paintings and other rich-looking doo-dads. Quietly, at the gesture of the maid, they sit at the head of the table. She leaves, and another maid enters carrying a tray laden with bowls and plates, and sets them out in front of them. There’s yogurt and oatmeal, some chopped fruits and other breakfast items. Far more options than what’s necessary. They dig into the food, savoring it far more than they did their own breakfast.
No one joins them at the table.
It continues on like that, working through the day of another man. Slowly, but not subtly, changing things, moving things along, making relationships with people Mr. Whitney would never consider. It goes on for weeks, shifting the odds in favor of a better world. They just need to make enough change, just enough to make a point. To show the world, once this is all over, that their people in power could be doing so much more .
A means to an end. That’s all this was.
When they weren’t living the life of another man they were out setting clues. And maybe they took a little inspiration from the Riddler, but who could really blame them? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all that. Little letters left for the Bat to find. Some of them had a little tuft of hair, which, they will admit, creepy. Others had a small sewing kit, put together from the scraps of their own supplies. Some had rhymes and children's songs, all about dolls and changelings and the like. Their most inspired, and most recent, was a little package containing a kit to put together a doll. The stuff was clearly meant for a child, and they chuckled a little to themselves when they were putting it together. They had taped a photo of ol’ Danny boy’s face on top of the pattern for the doll's head. At this point it would have been impossible for Batman to have not figured it out, even if he was stupid.
The day after that little clue was set out, they suspected that the Bat would make a move to either capture them, or Whitney. So that was the first day of many that they spent in their own body, in their little apartment, with the doll of Whitney sat happily on the pillow of his overly large bed.
While occupying the life of another, keeping their own body in shape had sort of fallen to the wayside. They ate, but only just enough. They slept, but not well. Their skin had gone from pasty to translucent and the bags under their eyes had only gotten deeper. So they decided to take the day for themselves. A spa-day, if you will. They went out for breakfast, ending up at the diner around the corner from their apartment. They’d never been before, but the atmosphere was homely. It felt familiar in a sense that almost nothing had ever been.
When they sat in a booth a stubby little woman, warm and round in all the right ways, hair gray and eyes wrinkled, greets them with a smile. Their own smile wobbly greets her back. She laughs at them when they stutter over their order, but not unkindly. The gentle chime of her laugh is a soothing balm over their burned heart. Settling into the booth they relish the warmth the pancakes and coffee offers them. They spend their morning like that. Warm and comforted.
But they can’t stay there forever, so they take to the Gotham streets. Wandering around the alleys and roads and letting their feet take the lead. The dark buildings loom over them, the ever-present mist dousing their clothes and hair, weighing them down. They know this is likely to be the last time for a while that they’ll be able to do this, so they let it all hit them. The way each person around them weaves and bobs, rushing to this place and that. The coldness that they greet strangers with but the glow that shines on someone they know. The graffiti on the bricks of the more run down buildings. The way it was put there by someone. Someone came here, and chose to spend their time on this one little thing. It was worth it to them. Each person who brushes past their arms probably has a life and a home, a family to get back to. A world all of their own.
They miss having a world like that. A warm home to return to. A smile that greets and comforts them on their worst days. They miss him . They miss when he would laugh and the little dimple on his cheek would peek out, they miss how he would make the worst little jokes just to see them smile. They miss his bad breakfasts and their late nights and the world they had built with him. They were going to marry him. There was a bill in the works that would finally, finally let them get married. They would be able to spend the rest of their life with him. But it didn’t go through. And he couldn’t take it anymore.
That's why they have to do what they do. They need to make sure that no one else can ever feel that same pain. The betrayal.
They spend the rest of the day on the streets. Their lunch and dinner come from corner stores and street vendors. The dark hollows of the puddles in the sidewalks follow them as they trudge through the city, chewing on their food. They retrace their steps back to their apartment.
Silently they walk through the halls of their building, the same old water damage and rough patches coat the walls. Their keys jingle in the quiet of their hall as they fit it into the door. The dark of the apartment welcomes them, as does their closet of a room. They guess they’ll miss this place too. In an odd and round about way. It’s served them well.
At the very back of their room, though it’s only 10 feet from the door, is their actual closet. The bi-fold door is old, the hinges rusty almost beyond repair. It squeals as they open it, and inside at the bottom of the closet is a shoe box. Quickly they take the box from its place and plop it onto the bed. There they take the top of the box off, and there greets them a red jester hat. They snort a little at themselves. The whole outfit had been made when they were of little higher hopes, so they went all out. Underneath the jester hat is a full ‘super-villain’ suit.
Carefully, so as to not let their hard work go to waste, they adorn the outfit. Putting on the pants is a bit of a struggle, its high waist and low crotch make for a great tripping hazard. They stagger and stumble before catching themselves and getting it on. The pants are tight around their midsection and calves, but loose everywhere else. They put on a black long sleeved undershirt before putting on the jacket. Its high collar, reminiscent of those ruffs people used to wear in the renaissance, wraps around their neck like a scarf, hugging their chin just a little. The sleeves are also made to look straight out of a fairy tale, big puffs around their shoulders making them look far broader than they really are. Those quickly slim down into form fitting sleeves just below their deltoids. The shoes are, quite frankly, ridiculous. The toes point up like an elf’s. The whole outfit is made of the same deep, blood red, in the dark of the night it’ll almost seem black. The hat is the finishing touch to it all. It jingles a little when they put it on.
Despite every effort not to, they find themselves in the mirror in the corner. Their eyes are bloodshot and drawn. Their hair, blond and dry as it is, peeks out from their hat. Against the red of their suit they look… Washed out. Sick. Just looking at themselves almost makes them actually sick. They’ve changed so much in just six months. They can’t back down now. They’ve come all this way, they just need to enact the last bit of their plan. Shakely, they steal themselves for what comes next.
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop the stagnant Gotham air seems to come alive. The wind rushes through their hair and wipes away the involuntary tears that fall from their eyes. Their lungs burn and heave, but they keep going. The Bat behind them is swift, unyielding and patient. He knows they’re leading him somewhere. And he knows that they are far slower than he. And they know it too.
They must look ridiculous, scrambling and tripping over the Gotham skyline. Hell, even Scarecrow made a better getaway. But the harbor isn’t far now, and the shipping yard they stowed Whitney away in is so close they can taste it. Literally, the air is starting to feel stuffier, and they can taste the salt in it. All they need to do is avoid the Bat’s half hearted attempts at stopping them and get there in one piece. The jingling in their hat, something they thought would annoy the bat more than anything, mocks them as they jump unsteadily from one roof to another. Their shoes pinch, and they think they’ll have blisters on their heels come tomorrow.
Finally, with one last wobbly jump, they reach the entrance to the yard. They land heavily with an audible ‘oomph.’ Quickly they turn to face the Batman. He lands with far more grace then they, crouching in a solid hero pose before rising to his full height. He’s probably a full head taller than Jordan. They feel their hands shake a little, but they stand their ground.
“Where is he,” growls the Batman.
Jordan smiles, “I think you can probably figure that one out yourself, can’t you? I’ve given you so many clues already.”
The Batman’s glower, somehow, gets deeper.
“You know, I’ve heard about how scary and big and crazy you get. This big bat in the night. Keeping all the criminals in line, saving people,” they take a small step back, “And now I’m just left wondering where that knight in shining armor is. Certainly left Mr. Whitney waiting long enough.”
They tilt their head. Their hat jingles. Batman pounces.
Running through the maze of the shipping yard is a lot easier than on uneven rooftops. Jordan wonders how the hell the dock workers don’t get lost, each turn leaves them running into three more. Their lungs burn and they can taste iron in their throat, but they don’t stop. The red and blue containers blur by them. They can’t hear the Batman, not past their own straining breath, but they know he’s hot on their tail. Three more lefts, a right, a left. They’re almost there.
One last turn, and it’s a dead end. They crash to a halt just in front of the container at the end of the alley. They turn slowly this time, they know the Bat will wait for them. He knows they have no way out. They meet his scowl with a grin of their own. They know their dead eyes and pale skin makes their smile look manic.
“Looks like you’ve got me!” They laugh, and if that sounds a little manic as well, then who’s to blame them.
“Where do you have Daniel Whitney.”
“Oh-hoh-hoh! Don’t get ahead of yourself, Mr. Bat! I’ve got a monologue to give, haven’t you done this before?”
They smile and let themselves look a little more… wrong. Their spine bends just a little, they let one leg relax and twist while the other takes their weight. The door behind them, the storage container caging them in, begins to creep open. They know that as it opens it’ll reveal a tied up, pathetic man, gagged and tied to a chair. They don’t turn to watch, but they can tell when Batman gets the full picture by the lines in his face deepening.
“You see, I didn’t just do this for no reason, or to any old corrupt politician. This man,” they swing their arms out, “is important . But you wouldn’t know it. No, he works behind the scenes, throwing his money and affluence around to just the right people to get what he wants.”
They let their smile drop and turn their head just a bit too much, “Kinda like you, huh, Batsy?”
“What do you want? You’ll get nothing by boasting to me.”
“Oh but won’t I? You’ve got some power behind you, don’t think I don’t notice. You don’t just have all the fun little gadgets and cars and things that you do without power. Either the man behind the mask is some rich guy, or the man behind the Bbat is.”
They shrug, and turn their head. They can hear the man behind them struggling to talk, the gagged words just barely audible. Turning back to the Batman they drop the act, just a little.
“He uses his power in all the wrong ways. This world would be a better place if he wasn’t in it. And he’s not even the only one! Without his decisions, we wouldn’t be here right now. So many people would be so much better off,” their voice hitches, “So many people would still be here.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want to get out a message. And I know you have the power to get it out there. Put it in the papers, the news, I don’t care. But they need to know one thing. They all need to know one thing.”
The Batman nods minutely.
“Do better.”
A soft humming fills the empty, hollow air. Again they sit against the foot of their bed, through this time on the solid concrete floor. The walls and door of their cell are also solid, and cold, and gray. Their humming echoes around the room, their only comfort. The cold of the floor seeps deep into their bones. They can feel the claws of Arkham's insanity scratching at their brain. This place isn’t built to make people better. No, no no no. It's just a cage to silence the canaries.
It wasn’t hard to smuggle in some fabric and needles, and their dental floss works quite well as a thread. Slowly, stitch by stitch, they pull together another doll. This one is younger, a charmer. He’s rich and powerful and does wonderful things with his influence. Really does sound like a strapping young man. They giggle a little. Strapping. Stupid word. They know he’s not the worst of the worst, but he’s got secrets deeper than any other man in power.
He was the first man to start speaking out against corruption after their arrest. He’s the only one to put his money where his mouth is. He added more safeguards against bribery and actually spoke out against the fraud so deeply built into their city, pushing for better laws. They stroke the little doll's head. His dark hair is soft against their hand -- they almost feel sorry for having to get rid of it. He’s the one who acted just a little too quick. A little too swiftly.
Bruce Wayne. The man behind the bat. Either he’s the Bat’s benefactor, or the playboy billionaire dons the mask himself.
They smile to themselves. What a ridiculous man. All the power and money in the world and he chooses to support a bat. Falling to their side they hold out the doll, “You’re gonna do great things soon, Dolly.”