Cat and Mouse

Chapter 19

It was dark.

Through my extensive time reading a limitless amount of books, I have amassed a collection of dozens of synonyms to the word 'dark'. But none of those could really describe this kind of dark. It was the dark that sent shudders up your spine. It was the dark that planted the suspicion someone was lurking right behind you. It was the dark that manifested in the furthest corner of your mind and spread like a parasite of paranoia until it overtook your senses. It was that kind of dark.

Chills skittered along my skin like the sinewy legs of spiders as I stood alone in the dark. My only solace, a flickering light residing in the comfort of a lamp-post, flashed once more before its sudden death, succumbing to the spreading darkness. I had no idea where I was, in the distance I could hear the faint hum of city life, an inkling that I was far from the main streets of Gotham. Snow seeped inside my boots, infiltrating my socks and overpowering my toes with a wet cold that froze my southernmost limbs to the bone, chilling them with the threat of hypothermia.

Blinded by darkness and numbed by coldness, I stumbled towards the busy buzz of the city, fumbling along whilst clutching onto the vain hope of safety. My pace grew to a clumsy jog as I tripped into piles of snow, wading through the sea of unknown.

Despite being previously enveloped in such a void of blackness, it was relatively soon that light finally returned. It was the faint glow of the Happy Hamburger sign, and it may have been the first time I was excited to see the food chain. My pace growing to a trot and then a sprint, I outran the spreading darkness and took residence under the sign. I would've opted to go inside to the warmth, but it was past closing and despite my desperate searching, I couldn't locate my keys to open the doors. Exhausted, I collapsed against the glowing sign, breathing out wisps of frozen exhales. Huddling into myself for warmth, I cuddled my fox tail, burrowing my face into its furry length as I tried to regain an average body temperature. In my desperate search for warmth, I hardly took notice to the figure on the ground.

When my cheeks had regained a healthy color, I finally looked up to see the shaded silhouette slumped on the ground, half-buried in the snow. Too tired to stand up, I moved to my hands and knees and crawled towards the body. As I neared the person, I noticed the snow around me taking on a reddish hue. A metallic scent hung in the air, mixed with the rotting smell of a corpse. Moving faster, my hands and knees became bloody as I slipped and slid along the snow until the body was right upon me. From the short hair, I identified him as male, his back facing me as blood pooled around his splayed out corpse. Risking a hand, I tentatively reached out and gripped his red-stained shoulder, pulling him over so I could clearly see his face. When his widened eyes, dulled by the absence of life and frozen with fear, met mine I couldn't help but gag and keel over as tears stung my eyes.

Blood, lathered everywhere like icing on a cake, crusted over his entire body in a sheet of dark crimson, frozen from the cold and mixed with the falling snow. His body was a tomb, opened and robbed of life, desecrated by a gash that disseminated from his left hip upwards to his right shoulder, revealing a canyon of congealed entrails swimming in a soupy mass of oozing pus and bubbling blood. It flooded out of the corpse, cascading down his body and skidding along the snow until it stopped at my knees, infiltrating the black leggings of my costume. The contact with the carcass of Andrew caused my entire body to quake, and the tears that escaped my eyes were accompanied by massive sobs that ripped through my entire body.They dropped from my icy face and fell into the river of flowing blood. I desperately wiped at them with gloved hands, but they refused to stop as they continued their wet onslaught. 

With eyes blurred by the endless tears, I reached out for the only real friend I knew, cupping his soft cheeks, pallid from the lack of life and the chilly air. I leaned over his body, painted red with his own life blood, as my tears poured onto his face, cleansing his serene face from all the dirt that previously occupied the space. His eyes were unblinking, staring up at the clouded upper atmosphere, his own irises clouded over as specks of frozen sky dropped on his dried-out scleras. With two shaking hands, I dropped my limbs upon his azure orbs, gingerly fingering his eyelids as I fluttered them close on his accord. 

With this new look, he seemed at peace. It brought the slightest of smiles to my face to gaze upon his face, immortal with the look of serenity. Cupping both cheeks with both hands, I lowered myself towards his frostbitten lips, my eyes closing as I bid him a final farewell. My breath fanned his lips, hot and fast as my heart raced with an unknown trepidation. I recognized the feeling, it was the same as when Andrew first kissed me. The memory was old and tattered in my mind as if it happened one hundred years ago instead of just a few nights. When our lips connected, I was met with a cold barrier, segregated by the wall that separated my life from his death. Disconnecting with a wet smack, I was satisfied by the fresh pink tint his lips took on, as if embracing my warmth and love in the only way he could. It was after I detached myself from the cold corpse that I noticed I was not alone in this tundra.

"I didn't think you'd show so much remorse for your victims." A voice piped up, a gust of wind ensuing as if catching on to the ice in his tone. Even with such cold fury mingled with the sentence, I recognized the voice. Unconsciously, my body whipped around immediately to face the figure, recognition dawning upon my features once I had viewed the masked man, standing proudly under the fleeting light of the Happy Hamburger sign.

"Robin." I said, voice cracking like ice on the lake, ready for more water to overcome me. I held strong, standing up and sloshing through a puddle of innards as I advanced toward the new acquaintance. My march was halted by his glare, which froze my footfalls as the gale blew flurries of frozen water that separated us once more.

"You killed him." His voice was faint, hardly cutting through the wind barrier that had erected itself between us. It was enough to send a shudder down my entire body and knives into my heart. I couldn't speak, my voice was too hoarse and choked with the threat of tears coupled with the whipping winds which only increased in the violent onslaught. "You were selfish to try to bring him into your ruined life, and now you've ruined his life as well." He continued, twisting the knives that stabbed my body. With the breath knocked from my lungs by the zephyr-turned-hurricane, I grasped at my throat and fell to my knees once more as I choked and gasped as the air was sucked from my body. "You have the gall to call yourself a hero, but you couldn't even save the life of your only friend." He spat harshly.

"Y-you... You're my... friend... t-too..." I coughed out, my voice escaping in nothing more than a whisper lost to the wind. But somehow, he still heard it.

"I'm not friends with murderers. And I'm certainly not friends with bottom-feeders like you, scum of the city whose only purpose is to ruin all the hard work the real crimefighters like Batman and I have done."

His final words said, his silhouette disappeared in a flurry of fast, free-falling flakes of snow. Left all alone, deprived of breath and stained with the blood of the only man I'd come to like, I felt utterly alone in a sea of depravity. 

I was alone. So very, very alone.

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A/N: Told you it would be up much sooner than usual! Well here's the next chapter, as soon as I finished it I published it for you guys! I'm hoping that you guys won't have to wait two months again for another update, so here's hoping for faster updates!

This chapter may be confusing, my writing has become a bit sluggish lately. I attached the music I was listening to when I wrote this, so y'all know where my inspiration came from. I dunno, I kinda feel like that song really matches the story from this point on. Things only get worse from here.

Final goodbye to Andrew! Yep, he's really dead! Who killed him? What happened to Amber? How about Robin and Batman? Find out later when I manage to write the other chapters!

-AceofSpadess