what comforts the disturbed // rotten apple [arkham knight]

prologue // the rotten apple experiment

DAY TWO.

dimmed lights, cold tiles, dried blood crusting over the ears, barbed wire fastened tight around the forearms.

jason was still at the asylum, that was for sure. it was his second time waking up to the sights, he still had life and energy-- hope and trust.

he caught eyes with another security guard, thought he'd try his luck. of course, he's already formulated four seperate escape routes, but the low tensile steel was digging into him too painfully to risk moving. the wheelchair would rock back-and-forth until his head hit the icy tiles with a crack. he's had to learn quickly, here.

"hey, what's joker paying you? i've heard dent's got better life insurance, anyways." taunted the boy beat bloody and blue, so young, so naive.

just talk until batman rocked up. that's all he had to keep doing.

joker never shut him up when he talked, as if defiance was something he welcomed into his rusty old torture room.

jason thought he'd seen longer days, the clown knew little of the tough life he was from. how he was so cocky and wrong at the start.

DAY SEVEN

it's been a week now. the green devil-bleached-white visited daily to administer treatment to his own personal patient. jason still babbled on sometimes, though never to the clown. usually to himself.

bruce never took this long.

jason contemplated if making him stay with the villain was his way of punishing his ward-- teaching him a lesson for trying to take matters into his own hands, for turning off the comms and running off on his own.

then again, bruce knew how dangerous joker could be, right? surely he wouldn't just leave jason here over that.

the door opened, young robin recognized the clicking of the heels. how he dreaded the sound.

"daddy's home," it taunted from behind. "miss me?"

jason braced himself for the oncoming onslaught, it wasn't getting any easier to resign himself to the wheelchair.

DAY TWENTY

jason was trained by the best. jason was trained by the best. jason could get through this. jason wouldn't break.

"please, god," the quivering words fell out of busted lips like begging.

that's all that jason's prayers were anymore. shaky, desperate. they weren't wishful thoughts to the dear deity he'd spent his time living in faith for. they were syllables of pain, of torture. each breath hurt in the name of his god.

almost a month. the run-over walls of the asylum reminded jason of bruce's failure to save him. save him before he could be hurt.

he used to naively think he'd be the last person bruce would ever let the joker maim, kill, hurt for kicks and laughs. he thought the proclaimed world's greatest detective would run to the corners of the earth to find him.

robin was wrong. robin was always wrong.

that meant jason had to know better.

DAY THIRTY-ONE

jason couldn't rack his lungs wide enough to breathe through his pain. tears had pooled in the bags that had formed under his eyes, spilling onto his scratched cheeks.

it'd been a month now. the joker promised something special for the occasion.

he brought in other inmates-- criminals who were tossed in the asylum after fighting jason and losing. villains, thugs, henchmen, goons.