Very short chapter, but I swear it's still important: just another glimpse of Bats's head, and of the immortal, terrible hope we love him for. Oh, don't worry, I'll write also pieces about J; and for the romance, take it slow and it will come. Thanks to tihku, Dyn-in-Red and lovejoker, and to every reader. Your reviews are so important.

P.S.: I've a lot of finished pieces in the pocket, but I'm too lazy to translate it all at the same time. But they'll come, soon I hope. And the title is inspired by Katy Perry, because her music inspires me so much. (Katy Perry with the dark, painful lovestory of J and B? I'm insane.)

However, let's go!

Unconditionally

Batman

There are words that sink into the flesh, like curses.

It occourred to you as a child, while you were breathing tears and piss over your parents' grey bodies and repeating the only promise which kept the pieces together.

Never again. Never again.

Soon you discovered that those words hurt, because they germinate under the skin and the roots dig, dig down to the bones, to the heart, until they become a warm knot in the center of the chest that fills the breath and tastes like an empty chasm. You built all your life, all your justice, on that knot in the chest: the bashful knight of Gotham allows himself only faiths marked by blood.

And what you feel for the dark jester, you understood it, is terribly similar: this certainty too was born in blood, in your pain and in the gaze of another man's eyes. And even if you know that is an obscene trust, made of invisible nets of gestures and words, it changed into a point of light behind the flesh; and the vertigo which sears you everytime you meet him is the only hope you have.

I'll bring him back. I'll show him that there's something worth fighting for.

So you keep trying, tormenting both of you with your stupid hope, scraping your fingers against his sad arrogance, because in Joker there are too many things that scream and could never grow. You know it'll hurt; you know it'll leave scars, and gashes that won't stop bleeding, no one like who dissected his soul can tear the others' ones apart. But you know also that if he takes only a step toward you, you'll be there to grasp him: to expose the chest and hold tight onto the man in front of you, even if his hands can squeeze your heart.

Like a hero, like a man.

And for this reason tonight you're here again, trying to touch those too green eyes. Waiting for him to take that step, ready to jump in his dark.

Unconditionally.