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In the moments after the explosion, none of it felt real.
Not the ringing in in his ears, not the way warm and tacky blood soaked and spread under the armour on his chest and left shoulder, not even the pain the sparked to light when he tried to shift his arm. Or the taste of dust and iron on his tongue. Or the way it made one of his breaths catch on something at the back of his throat and sputter out a guttural cough flecked with red.
He didn't know how long he spent, staring at nothing, lying in a hard bed of old bricks, wood, and steel. The pressure of it on top of him, pressing him into the jagged corners of shattered pieces of rough concrete slap.
But he did know that he was alone. It probably wouldn't have even mattered if he wasn't.
His thoughts were locked behind a soundproofed door and his world was muffled behind thick fogged up glass, it simply didn't apply to him anymore. The only thing that made sense, the only thought that struggled its way through Eather, was the desperate and persistent need to move.
The instinct should have felt like an old friend by now, but the way it dragged him against his best efforts time and again and painfully from whatever new depths he'd dug for himself made him hate it every time.
He didn't have it in him to fight it. It was the only path open for him to take.
So he poured the dredges of his strength and focus into bracing his forearms, pressing up and shifting the slabs off his back. Then into dragging himself out and to his feet. Blood pouring out from under his glove when he finally remembers the wound at his neck and presses a hand to it to delay the inevitable. Using whatever techniques he can distantly remember to separate himself from his body just enough to ignore the pain, as he moves and picks himself over what remains. Taking another wet breath in that tastes thick with iron when he finally reaches solid ground and limps down the first dark alleyway he sees. Breaths giving him less and less air in his lungs around all the blood coalescing at the back of his throat and the pressure and weight building in his lungs. Sloppily shouldering and half slumping on the walls of the alley and only barely keeping himself from tripping on any of myriad of stuff he can't keep himself from stumbling into in his relentless push forward.
No plan. No destination. Not anymore.
It's funny, he manages to think. The bombs have already gone off, he knows that and he can see the proof of it. He remembers the explosion going off and taking the building down around them. He set the timers himself.
But more than once, through the ringing in his ears he has to keep telling himself he can't hear the consistent beep of a timer. He keeps finding himself bracing for the moment when it stops.
It never comes.
Instead, the world tilts sideways barely a street or so away from where he'd started. Still far too close, still nowhere near far enough away from the silent chaos he'd left behind.
And yet, as his skull rebounds on concrete and the black spots finally overtake his vision, he can't bring himself to feel anything but relief.
Miles away, The Joker long since handed off to those that will treat him, the man beneath the cowl stares blankly at what little he has left of his son, and tells himself, more than anyone else, that nothing has changed.
When he's finally aware enough again, it's immediately obvious that something has changed. Years with the League and Talia's contacts has more than reinforced the instinct to never let any potential persons there with you know that you're awake until you have more information on your surroundings, especially if, like now, he has no idea where he is or any recollection of how he got there.
The air is different. That's the first thing he noticed. There's a definite lack of weight, but a stillness to it and the distinctive lingering smell of hospital food and cleaning products. The gentle pressure under his back and the rougher texture of a blanket underneath his fingers on top of that is enough to tell him at least where he is, but as for how he got there…
He doesn't have time to unpack the flashes of agony that accompanies what he last remembers. Not when they make his already stinging throat tighten and him fight to keep his face from wincing when he tries to swallow it down. Not when the memory of why the pain is there - the look on Bruce's face, the flash of a batarang in the lowlight too fast to react with his hands full and shaking fingers on the trigger as he realises what he has to do - is still enough to make him want to scream.
He's never been the best at containing his emotions, not when it mattered. But it doesn't stop him from slamming the lid on that particular line of thought and locking it all down tighter than Fort Knox.
One thing at a time.
Instead, he focuses on keeping his breathing even, and his body still in the bed. Counting out 20 minutes as he maps out the sound of the room around him and focuses on rooting out even the subtlest of breaths or movement.
Only then, when he's as sure as he can be that he's alone, does he finally crack open his eyes.
It's crazy just how unfamiliar and bordering on fictional the mundane sight of a standard private hospital room feels after all this time. Even cloaked in the familiar shades of night.
The clock on the wall reads 3:25am. It turns out he was right in his assumption that he was alone, there aren't even any signs of any unknown visitors beyond the doctors and nurses who set him up here, and nothing to suggest that he's been detained. That's a good sign at least, he's not sure if Bruce or anyone else he knew would have deigned to leave some kind of message for him, not after everything, but it's at least half a point in favour of him not knowing where he is. That, and the lack of cuffs or the typical Arkham room layout of course. Though it's still not quite off the table enough to make him relax.
There don’t seem to be any cameras, even well-hidden ones, but the monitoring equipment might be a problem if he wants to get out of here without being noticed. Especially if he wants to scope out the hospital long enough to steal the info he needs to scrub his presence from the record and get the full run down on what he missed while he was out.
Right now the money's on Talia, despite his insistence that she keep her nose out of his business in Gotham. But that was besides the point.
According to the clipboard at the end of his bed, he's been admitted under the Alias of Patrick Jacobs (which as far as he's concerned is another potential point to Talia) and transferred out of state to a private hospital in Delaware, which is still far too close to Gotham for comfort. He's been in and out for the last 2 days thanks to the surgeries and drugs they've had him on. Main concerns being the laceration to his neck, which he already knew about, but on top of that apparently there'd been a few broken bones, burns and internal bleeding he hadn't noticed or considered whilst dragging himself out of the rubble that night.
The good news was that they'd fixed most of it the night of, while he was still in Gotham. The bad news, or one of a series, was that he'd be out of commission far longer than he would ever be comfortable with, even with the lingering effects of the Pit, which based on the charts was probably the only reason he was still alive right now after… everything.
He was going to have to steal a lot of drugs before he left, wasn't he?
Sighing, and wincing again as the motion burned at his neck, he made a catalogue of what he'd need and a half-baked plan of action. He didn't have the equipment needed to properly falsify any of the signals needed to keep the staff none the wiser for as long as he would like, and he wasn’t particularly interested in finding and knocking out his own substitute, so it wasn't going to be nearly as clean or as much time as he would have liked, but beggars can't really be choosers.
Besides, it was hardly sneaking out of any of the well-guarded compounds he'd come to expect through his training, so he didn't really know why he was so focused on that fact. It shouldn't be too difficult to slip out with what he needed even if the place did go on lockdown, and realistically he knew he'd have all the time he needed to avoid a confrontation even if they did suspect he was even half as dangerous as he was.
If he was honest with himself, maybe it was because he was feeling just a little bit too vulnerable, after months of finally feeling like he was in control.
So, swallowing down the feeling, (in a way he only barely kept himself from wincing at again, because he's an idiot) he slipped the clamp off his finger before he could think about it, and made for the door.
It shouldn't have surprised him how easy it was to sneak around. These weren't highly trained assassins, or anything close to as jumpy or paranoid as the hired muscle he'd spent the last few months giving the run around before he had them permanently silenced. Even with the alarms it would be at least 30 seconds before someone noticed he wasn't in his room, and another minute or two to alert the other staff on shift. The most it took was ducking behind a column or open door and waiting for them to pass whenever they got close enough to potentially pose an issue, or pressing the call button in a sleeping patient's room to get any remaining nurses to leave their posts long enough to take advantage of an open computer or unattended set of keys.
Once he had the details and passwords he needed, along with a swift change in clothes and a sufficient amount of meds and bandages, it really didn't take all that much effort to slip out a side door and hotwire a car to his nearest cache before jumping ship to the closest out-of-the-way Motel.
The guy at the desk barely even acknowledges him when he paid him in cash, just told him to fill out a form before handing over a room key and some vague directions.
Honestly, the longest part of the entire process was reading through the intake forms and medical records from the hospital he'd hacked before he finally cleared any mention from their systems. Gotham would take more time, and given that Bruce probably already knew everything anyway, there wasn't really much point beyond his own peace of mind, so it could wait.
From what he could gather, Batman, or some other good Samaritan had called in the cops and rescue services after the explosion to survey the damage. Someone must have found him and handed him off to an ambulance not long after that, but either someone had done some serious covering for him, or Gotham PD really was just that lazy and stupid, because despite his attire (lack of helmet notwithstanding), he'd been admitted as a John Doe until a supposed family member had identified him and had him transferred.
The part that gave him pause, was the fact that he had been reported to be healing fast enough for someone to consider some kind of metagene was involved, and given how injured he still was after everything… how he remembered how much blood he lost, and how hard it was to breathe near the end there...
He slammed the cheap laptop shut with enough force to hear something crack. Knuckles white and gripping the edge of the shitty table hard, as rage bubbled and churned like a torrent under his skin trying to force itself out.
He'd been angry at Bruce long enough to know the ins and outs of why and how it felt. Where his rage ended and the song of the pit in his veins began. Angry enough to spend years planning his revenge, gathering all the information and resources he needed to make it hurt. Angry enough to finally force Bruce to look at all the horrors he'd created with his inaction. Forced him to confront his naïve and stupid plan to stick the monsters who didn't fucking care, even a fraction of enough to stop, into a revolving door of an asylum, knowing full well that they would eventually get out and kill and torture even more because that's what He always. Fucking. Does.
He didn't even know how to describe the agony, that was knowing Bruce not only protected the man who murdered him from the consequences again, but almost killed him -- almost broke his precious rule -- to do it.
The man he once thought could have been his father, the one who never killed that Monster, or any of them, because of some stupid, naïve and inflexibly pointless moral code, that only ever brought more death.
The man with a 'No Killing' rule, had chosen to kill his son, over his murderer.
And that’s where the damn broke, and everything he didn't know he was holding back slammed into him all at once.
Because there was no making sense of that. No explanation or line of reasoning that could ever make it okay.
The green in his vision had been building and building ever since he was reminded of the outcome of his last desperate attempt to prove to himself that it wasn't all for nothing. And while his control over the impulses and sheer overpowering rage of the pit had gotten better with time, right now he wanted nothing more than to finally let it tear itself through him. Regardless of the consequences. Heedless of how it would destroy him in the process.
He drew the curtains on his room and bolted and barricaded the door for good measure.
Blood and energy beating underneath his skin, fingers twitching and teeth grinding hard enough to make his jaw ache. There was no other recourse for a rage like this. Nothing to do but finally let the monster out before the buzzing burst out from under his skin.
He never even stood a chance.