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His life is ruined.
Donnie is only 16, and his life is ruined.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own, really, that he got home that night smelling of tears and acid. Batman told him the whole way there that it wasn’t, but he knows the truth. Joker’s biggest tact may be manipulation, but Donnie knows better than to fool himself. He’d been a fool enough that night.
Nonetheless, now Donnie stands, staring at his backpack. It’d fallen to it’s side on the floor, carelessly thrown down after school earlier that day when he was so excited to go out and be doing something with his life that he couldn’t be bothered to set it upright. With a flash of fury, he walks over and kicks it, his foot narrowly missing the water bottle he refuses to use.
The bells on his collar jingle with the action. In the anger of remembering why he was wearing it in the first place, Donnie grabs at his neck and pulls. The snap releases mercifully, and he chucks it at the wall. The shoes(if you’re feeling generous enough to even call them that) come off next, this time getting shoved into the depths of a closet that wouldn’t get cleaned for another few years. Then, there’s the pain of the top. After struggling to unzip the back for a good three minutes, what Donnie can only describe as a straitjacket is tossed onto the floor, then a pair of black tights are piled on top.
It leaves Donnie in the only tolerable piece of wear Joker gave him; a black sleeved shirt that functions as fingerless gloves under the costume. After shoving on the closest thing to sleepwear he has- a pair of loose basketball shorts- Donnie settles himself in front of the mirror he looks in while getting ready for school in the morning. To think that just earlier that day, a completely clueless and downright stupid boy watched himself in it made Donnie more furious than ever before. The urge to smash it is strong, but he isn’t particularly fond of spending hours in the bathroom tweezing glass shards out of his knuckle when all he wants to do is sleep.
In the mirror, no longer does a boy stand, ready for a day full of jokes and pranks he’d thought up himself, wanting so badly to see if his classmates would finally begin to like him. Now stands a small man. A small, skinny, blonde, wide-eyed man, who’d done a stupid thing and ruined his life.
His life is ruined.
He’s only 16, and his life is ruined.
The worst part is: he knows he deserves it.