Mad, Mad World

Ronan looked back towards the end of the medical center as he saw the doctor give him a tight, disapproving grimace and then closed her office door on him like a high school principal who'd grown weary of his antics. He brushed his fingers over his lips, still enjoying the quick violent daydream of dragging her across the tile floor enough to replay it and then felt his mood darken as a sudden vivid image of Brooke opening her eyes burned through his mind like a nuclear blast, the quick, unexpected agony of it enough to make him wince. He looked back towards the metal cage as he saw Lance disappear into a storage closet and patted his shirt pocket quickly, pulling out the lone pin-up card lying against his chest as he smoothed it out gravelly.

It was a rare Joker pin-up girl, the kind of lush color image that would've once looked right at home on the side of a B-17 Bomber, lost to a world before photographed pornography had cornered the entire market of male hearts and minds. In it a girl in a long red robe sat at an old-fashioned dressing table and examined her face in the mirror, the angle of her body exposing her breasts almost completely. Ronan ran his finger over the girl's lips, her long, glossy black hair falling across one wide green eye and then closed his eyes as he allowed himself to get close to it for a moment, watching the drawn image of Brooke come to life while he felt the pain of her absence hollow him from the inside out.

Soon, he thought, rolling his shoulders as he began to feel the white-hot flood of rage rush to fill the emptiness inside him like a sonic boom. Soon, soon, soon...

***Explores themes of dark sexuality, violence and dubious consent***