... [Dance, for it's your last night alive] ◌ೄ
drabble (2.292 words), requested by a friend, so fem reader. Read with caution; I am a bit unsure of what trigger warnings to use, but violence, neglect, regrets and grief might fit, as well as passive suicidal actions
You never were meant to live, by the Gods, your death was the one thing you looked forward to when you lost the ability to dance. The ability to fly amongst those you love so dearly, amongst those you danced with. You lived for your craft, you fought for your health because you wanted to be able to dance. And now? Now you are no longer in that circle, not because you aren't welcome, but because you have outcasted yourself. Your last dance injury has kept you from returning to the craft that you fought hard to perfect, even when your family never acknowledged it. Even as you could feel your maternal family slipping away as you grew obsessed with being the perfect ballerina even when it affected your health to a point you barely looked like yourself. Like the child your mother left behind, you are just a shell of yourself. A shell that could break any second.
Perhaps that's why the Joker is making you dance, perhaps it's his version of a cruel joke. As he makes you dance to the tunes your mother used to play when she was still alive, as you move your body with precision you cannot feel fear. Not when you feel like a swan reborn, not when you feel like this is your last performance.
And what type of ballerina would you be if you delivered a poor final performance? It's why you tune out Joker's ramblings as he tries to get you to mess up. You know that the second you stop dancing is the second he shoots you, you know he will make it harder for you the longer you are dancing.
But you are (Name) (Last Name), the one who would rather cut her own throat than leave behind the craft she loves more than herself. Even when your company no longer scheduled and trained you for performances you still danced in their rooms, you taught the youngest girls what you knew. And you taught them to listen to your bodies, for you have always been kinder to anyone but yourself.
"How boring," Joker suddenly whines, it catches you off guard as he stops playing, but you don't stop. No, you'll dance until the second he shoots you. "this is no fun! You aren't even begging for your life like your brother did!"
Now that catches you off guard, Jason. He's talking about Jason, he has to be, because one of the few things you know of your father's side business is that Jasond died as Robin by Jokers hand. But to the world it was Jason Todd that was tortured to death by the Joker, a story that was later twisted to it being a coma. You still wonder how Bruce managed that.
You have stopped dancing, you step closer to him as you ignore the glass he had laid down on the floor. Glass you had danced around previously, so the Joker knows you could have avoided it.
"Why should I beg for a life that has never existed?" you ask the Joker with a condescending tone as you get in his face. "Why should I beg for a life that has never truly been mine?"
You tilt your head, awaiting an answer. And for just a second the Joker looks concerned, not because of your actions. But because this could affect his joke! His performance! How dare you not play along?! Why can't you be a good victim like your brother?
You grab the Joker's hand as you grab the gun on the piano. You shove it in his hand and you guide it towards your heart.
"I should say, Joker," you purr out, as you smile blissfully. "that truly has been one of my best performances. Your control of the piano is quite impressive."
If Gotham was worried for you, they finally realise they shouldn't have been. Because it was truly the Joker who was being used. You don't care if you live or die. No, you care if you could dance during your final moment.
It pisses the Joker off to the point he just shoots you, he has always been impulsive. You fall on your back, bleeding not just from your chest but from your feet as well. Yet you feel numb in the final seconds that you are aware, pain has been all you have known for a while. Something that you knew in an intimate manner while you barely knew those related to you by blood.
You wonder if now they will care, if now they'll ask your ballet company for copies of your performances. But it doesn't matter what you wonder, for you are dead now.
Batman was once more too late while saving one of his children. Only the change is that one could argue you killed yourself. But even if you wanted to live, you wouldn't have left that building alive. Or without a few injuries. Perhaps that's why he's cradling you like he once cradled Jason as he whispers apologies to not just you but your mother as well. He knows that your mother's ghost must be screaming at him, he knows he's going to hell for all he have done. And this might have been the final nail in his coffin, because if all his good deeds outweighed his terrible ones he now knows there is no saving him.
For he as let another one of his children die, and one of the biggest sins a parent could commit is leaving their children to face the dangers of the world alone. With no safety net in sight. A sin he has commited twice.
Which is why he let's Jason punch him.
"You promised me," Jason whispers as he holds Bruce's capes. "no more."
But can Jason truly blame this on Bruce? Or is this something he must blame on himself and those around him?
"I know," Bruce whispers back as he hangs in head in guilt and shame. "I thought she would be safe outside of this world."
But you would have never been safe, not with your physical and mental pain haunting you with every step you took.
But hey, at least your dance company is hanging a picture of you in their hall of fame. A picture where you smile so brightly it reaches your eyes, a picture that circulates the internet and Damian's class as he hears whispers about his crazy sister's final performance. As he hears whispers of her dancing so perfectly even as her own body fought against her.
But what bothers Damian isn't their whispers, no, what bothers him is that you died without him ever knowing you. He wanted to know you, just like he knows the rest of the siblings wanted to know you. But with their side job it was easy to forgot you, easy to neglect you to the point that Alfred had completely taken over your care.
The only fragement Damian has ever seen of your dancing is Alfred shouting at you that you are going to die if you keep dancing. That you are going to give your body irreparable damage.
"I'm not going to die if I keep dancing," you had hissed at the butler while Damian hid in the corner listening in to your conversation like a common spy. "I'm going to die if I stop."
So the day that the whispers became too much, he picked up his pencil.
Damian started to draw, and it was you. He found a clip online of you dancing a solo as Giselle, one of the plays he's been quite upset at for a time. He had found out that the 2016 mad scene wasn't the original one, something that pissed him off. But your company had decided to do the original one, one that requires little technique but where the acting tells such a story that it's barely required.
He drew various versions of you from that clip, the look of madness in your eyes the same as when you guided the Jokers gun to your heart.
But than he finds out you also did the new version of Giselle, the one where the mad scene seems to be more internal. And he couldn't draw you from that, not when it seemed that you threw your own pain in that dance. Not when he realised you danced because that's the only way you could truly feel.
A performer always performers with emotions close to their heart, that's something Richard Grayson knows. He has seen it in the circus, performers that performed with their emotions on their sleeves. That their emotions could be translated into their acts, their best versions of themselves always when their emotions matched the act.
It's something Cassandra understands better than any of them could, she barely speaks. Her emotions translated in her dance, and if she had just looked at yours she would have known. The pain you felt as you danced, the resentment you had held towards Bruce. If she had just looked she would have known, but she was afraid to approach you. Afraid to taint the last 'normal' person in the manor, afraid to traumatise the last person who deserved it. Because you made sure Cassandra couldn't read you, at the time she had thought it was kindness towards her continiously overstimulated state. But now she knows it was protection, protection you shouldn't have felt you needed.
It's why she sits in front of your coffin as people come by to pay their final respects, it's why she acts like a dog that cannot understand their owner has passed away. Simply waiting beside your body as she begs to any deity to save you, to save you from yourself and the cruel world.
Dance was your final stand, so Stephanie, Barbara and Tim made sure that you have legacy. A legacy that would be remembered, a charity that centers your ballet students. That centers your teachings, because you were strict yet kind.
You made sure none of the girls felt like they had to lose weight, like they had to look like the norm. And the company accepted that, not because they wanted to be different by showing progression. But because they actually agreed, something quite hard to come by.
It's why your company will be supported by Tim's endless money, it's why Stephanie will take your students to your funeral when it's time. It's why Barbara makes sure to track the Joker down, it's why she ensures that he can be taken in before your final resting day.
But she was too late, Jason got to him first. But it was never truly Jason that got to him, no, it was Red Hood.
"Give me one good reason to not kill you?" Jason whispers as he holds his gun to the temple of his head. He had traded his blanks with actual bullets, he doesn't know why he's even asking the Joker for a reason to stop his actions. His dreams, but it seems like the Joker doesn't need to convince him.
Because Superman is here, he has been for a while. Bruce had asked him to take over for a while so that he could drown his sorrows by drinking until his liver could give out. So just like the time he stopped Bruce from killing the Joker, he now stops Jason.
"Is this what she would have wanted?" Superman had asked after Jason had at least knocked the Joker out.
"I don't know," Red hood admitted, his voice angry and harsh. "do you?!"
Because who is Superman to ask him what you would have wanted? When Superman knows you even less than he does.
because Superman knows you, in a way your family could not. The Kents always had something called; we help everyone with no questions asked. And when Lois wanted to get an interview with you, an interview yet to be published, Superman had gotten to know you as Clark Kent.
And as Clark Kent he had told you to follow your dreams as long as it doesn't end your life. That he understands you want to be the dancer you always dreamed of being, but that your life is more important.
In the end it seems you didn't take his advice to heart, because you chose dance over who you could be.
To an extent Clark understands, he doesn’t know who he would be if he was just Superman. He wouldn’t know who he would be if he didn’t have his parents, a privilege he had compared to you. Because truly you never had anyone to teach you right from wrong like he had, you didn’t have anyone to tell you to slow down.
And partly was that by your own design, for dance was the only way you could connect to your mother. The mother you wish was alive instead of your father who was nothing but a pain in your ass.
You are just like Connor, because he knows how much the clone fights for his approval, how Connor fights for his dreams. And all he ever did was acknowledge him as a cousin, and he barely even did that. But when Clark Kent looks at your lifeless body? He rethinks his decision, he calls Connor the second he leaves the Joker in the hands of Gotham PD.
“I own you an apology,” Clark whispers as he flies in the sky. “could we talk tonight?”
Well your last dance truly has left an impact, an impact that you will never see because you are up in heaven loving your mother like you wish you had when she was still alive.
How terrible that Bruce isn't just drinking, he's searching for a way to bring you back to him. He just needs to convince his kids that this is truly the route they must embark on, because when you are back he will keep you hidden. He will keep you from the world, he will keep your soul all to himself.
His family can just enjoy your warmth and your emotions from the side lines if they do not agree with his actions.
Tell me if you guys like it enough for a second part in which Reader is brought back, part two has been written :P
