Villain Stories.

[SilentType]

Many of batman’s villains have great back stories, but there are some who’s back stories are not as well known or compelling. What villains back stories would you change or elaborate on?

 

[SilentType]

I’ll admit, I just started this thread to post a little fanfic thing I did in my spare time. Its an off the cuff kind of thing so you’ll have to forgive spelling/grammer errors and some unpolished prose. And the poor formatting due to copy/paste from word.

MAD
It won’t be long now. I need to let people know what really happened. Madness is taking over, and making the sane seem mad.
I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole…
And the Jabberwocky comes.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son

Alice’s mother was beautiful. Stunning in every way. She could have been a Miss Gothem and found a rich handsome man to take care of her, but instead she went to school, earned a doctorate, and married a short, big headed little scientist without a penny to his name.
She would always carry around a dog eared copy of “Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass” in her purse, dragging it out to taste her favorite bits whenever she had a moment. All throughout the pregnancy she would talk about reading it to our little girl for the first time. Even as she lay bleeding to death on the delivery table, she made me promise that I would read it to our child.
Alice.

We called her Alice.

It was no surprise when Wonderland became Alice’s favorite. I was a neurosurgeon, mostly doing research, cutting into the grey matter of mice and chimps, trying to unlock the mind’s secrets. It was a depressing nightmare of a job, but when I got off work I would pick Alice up from daycare and we would go to wonderland. We would enter her room, painted in giant mushrooms and mythical animals, playing cards and chess pieces. We would sit around her little table, accompanied her velveteen march hair, her little stuffed white rabbit with a tin pocket watch, the unicorn, the mock turtle, humpty dumpty. We would sit with our cat Cheshire, our little Doormouse (a white lab rat I took from the office), the parakeet Alice insisted on calling Dodo. Alice in her little blue dress, and me in my 10/6 hat. We would all sit down for a mad tea party.
When her eyes got heavy we would curl up with the old battered copy of wonderland. As she was drifting off, Alice would always caress the book gently and say goodnight to her mother. That moment was what got me up in the morning. That is what got me through the day.
I tell you all this so you will understand my actions.
Alice was my life.

Twas brillig and the slythy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the waybe…

The darkness when Alice was 6 and enjoying her first year of real school. That’s when her headaches began. At first they were small; children’s Tylenol and a glass of water would clear them up. Soon the school was calling, telling me she was in the nurse’s office. And they got worse.
The tumor was inoperable. At least I thought so at the time.
The treatments left her weak. She lost her hair, her skin became jaundiced. She was dying. At night she would scream in pain. And fear. She saw things I didn’t see. She saw the bandersnatches, all bristled fur and yellow fangs. She saw Jubjub birds, waiting above her bed, waiting to pluck out her eyes. But mostly she saw the burning eyes of the Jabberwocky as it gurgled in the corner of the room. I didn’t believe her cries. I told her it was the tumor. The evil little lump in her head was pressing on her brain, making her see things that weren’t there.
Of course I know better now. I’ve seen the dark things that crawl from the holes in the world.
I felt helpless. The screaming was like nothing you’ve ever heard, unearthly. I cannot imagine the pain.
Soon she began to forget things. At first it was people’s names, movies she saw. Then she began to forget where she was, and what was happening to her. She could no longer walk or use that bathroom on her own. Eventually she forgot who I was. She would scream and tear at me, thinking I was some nightmare beast. Everyday my little girl woke up in a nightmare.
The one thing she could still hold onto was Wonderland. I could put on my big funny hat and finally see her eyes light up in recognition. She would ask me of the March Hare and the dormouse. She would ask why a raven was like a writing desk, and I would tell her to stop asking silly questions. Sometimes, when the pain subsided and the apparitions left we would have a tea party. The brightly painted wonderland spilled out of Alice’s room and began to take over the house. The living room became a giant chessboard, the walls became deep painted forests. The dining room was dominated by a long table, lined with child sized stuffed animals and covered in teapots and saucers and teacups of every shape and size. All to see that light of humanity in her eyes. Every tea set, every gallon of paint, and every giant stuffed toy bought her a little refuge from the nightmare. But even that wouldn’t last.
The money was running low. We had no family. And then she came. She fooled me then, when I couldn’t see the truth. That massive slab of a woman with frizzy red hair. She came into the lab one day, saying she was the new owner of the lab. She was shutting down the animal wing.
I lost my job.
I pleaded with her. Begged her for another position. Anything. I told her I needed the money for my daughter’s life. When the guards dragged be out of the building I knew it was over. I couldn’t pay for Alice’s treatments. I couldn’t pay for the house. Alice would die alone, screaming in a dark hospital room under the indifferent eyes of an overworked nurse.
I tell you this so you will understand my actions. So you know mine is not the work of a madman, as they will probably tell you. It was my only option.
And more importantly, it worked.
I asked the guards to allow me to return to my office to gather my personal effects. I retrieved my effects, along with a few other items I needed. This was a desperate action.

Alice was screaming again. Screaming at the burning eyes watching her in the dark. I went to take her in my arms, but she clawed at my, face screeching and writhing. She fell out of bed and scrambled into the corner, quivering in terror. I left her room for the last time. She didn’t know me anymore. I didn’t have a job, I couldn’t even take care of her. I was nothing. I took up my ?/? hat and my dress coat. I was the Madhatter. I had followed my daughter down the rabbit hole. Now I would pull her out again.

Dressed in the hatter’s finest and carrying my surgeon’s bag I approached Alice once again. Her lips twitched, a faint smile struggling to form on her worn face. The fit had subsided for a time. I took her up in my arms and carried her to her wheelchair. “Time for a teaparty.” I said. We had our last teaparty. With a special tea. After a few sips she sagged. Soon she slept.
I cleared off the teatable and lay her lighty in the center. It was time. They had always said the operation was too dangerous. They said it would kill her. But now it was the only option. I swabbed her head with the anesthetic and took up the bone saw. It was time….

When I was done there was blood everywhere. It pooled on the table, trickling onto the carpet with a quiet regular thudding. It coated my hands, spread across my coat; it was smeared on my face. Blood was everywhere, but my little girl was alive. She lay in her bed, her skin glowed with radiant life I hadn’t seen in over a year. Her golden hair, which had fallen out in ugly chunks, now lay fanned across her pillow. For the first time in a long time she was truly alive. I started to clean up the blood. It had to be clean when she woke up. But now it was time to sleep.

A week or so later some police came knocking on the door. They said the neighbors were complaining about a smell. I told them I didn’t smell anything. They asked be about my suit and tophat. I told them I was playing with my daughter. The officers were really playing up the smell. They held their sleeves to their noses and scrunched up their faces. One seemed to gag for a moment. They began to get insistent. I told them to leave us alone. I told them my daughter and I were playing, that she was getting over a serious illness. But they pushed past me. They said it smelled like death.
What happened next I didn’t understand at the time. I thought the world had gone mad. I guess in a way the world was going mad. It was being overtaken by creatures of madness. But I’ll get to that in time. For now you must hear how they took my child, the light of my life, whom I had saved from the edge of death. You must hear how they took my life and treated me as if I were the madman.
The officers pushed their way into my home and stopped in shock. I thought they were stopped by her beauty. As she sat in her little wheelchair, her light golden hair cascading down her shoulders, that beautiful smile that could melt the coldest of hearts. My Alice. One of them turned to me, his face twisted in disgust. He drew his gun and pressed it against my head. “Lay on the floor with your hands on your head you sick f**k. Get on the floor NOW!”
The other officer turned and vomited on our chessboard carpet. This was my first taste of real madness. I knew lab boss was cruel, but these men were completely insane. They were screaming like madmen, crying into their radios about corpses and psychopaths and the smell of death. The weak stomached one ran to the door and vomited onto our welcome mat. It was vile. He began to cuff me, and I realized I couldn’t let these psychotic cops alone with Alice. Who knows what horrors they would visit on a little helpless girl. I struggled to get away, but the cop had me firmly in his grasp. I lashed out with my head, kicked with my feet, anything I could. I couldn’t let them have her. I threw my head back and made contact with the cops nose, resulting in a satisfying crunch. He staggered back and called for his partner, but his partner was too busy puking his guts out onto the front porch to respond in an appropriately swift manor. I told Alice to try to get up, try to get out of the house, but she was still very weak. She just stared at the scene with a detached fear. My hands were cuffed behind my back, but I had to try to get her out of there. I staggered over to her chair. I managed to get the little wheel break unlocked, but that’s as far as I got. There was a sharp pain in my back and the taste of copper in my mouth, and I was unconscious. They had tazered me.

 

[SilentType]

MAD- CONT'D

The next few months were a blur. They must have had me heavily medicated. You see, they thought I was crazy. I remember being in court. I remember them saying I had killed my little girl. They said I had cut her head open and mutilated her brain. They said she died and I was living with a corpse for a week and a half. I tried to tell them that the police who came to my door were jibbering madmen. I tried to tell them that I had fixed my girl and THEY had TAKEN her away. Nobody would listen. They threw me into Arkham. Madness was taking over the world.

For months I sat in that hell, surrounded by psychotics and killers. For months I listened to the doctor tell me I had to admit I killed my own child. I tried to talk to people. One man loved puzzles and riddles. I asked him why a raven was like a writing desk, but he was not amused. He almost hit me. I gave up on others for a time. Eventually I started to believe it. I began to believe I had done that horrible thing. That is, until (date), when I saw my little girl. It was her birthday. I was in the shared bathroom (The one with real glass. I was in the low security ward for good behavior). I was wanting her back so bad. Her and her mother. The ache was so deep. Deep in the it of my stomach. My vision blurred. It stared through the mirror, willing my vision back…and then I saw something. A movement, in the corner of the mirror. I peered harder, and slowly it came into focus. First just a smudge of blue, then I could make out arms and legs. And then I saw her, standing on the other side of the mirror, smiling at me. I wheeled around, but nobody was in the room. But when I turned back, there she was. Through the looking glass. I pressed my hand against the glass, but it didn’t give. I pressed harder, harder. There was a snap as a crack appeared across the mirror. Still I pressed. Blood began to seep from my palm. There must be a way through. I thought. If I push hard enough…then something else appeared in the mirror. At first it looked like Alice, but it changed. Suddenly it was that giant slab of a woman who took my livelihood, then the vomiting cop, then the arkham doctor who tells me I murdered my Alice. Yet no matter what face it took, its eyes were always the same. They were mad. But that’s what it’s like through the looking glass. It’s all madness. The beast contorted, growing hunched, bristling with fur and dripping yellow fangs. It grabbed Alice.
I rushed forward, but all I met was glass and my own unyielding reflection. The mirror shattered, cutting into my forehead, pricking my cheeks, driving into my nose. I staggered for a moment, but quickly regained my composure. I slammed into the next mirror, and the next. Blood filled my eyes, I felt flaps of skin hanging off my face and hands, but I had to get in. I had to get through the glass. I couldn’t see. I felt a dense fog as the blood ran out of my body. Unconsciousness overwhelmed my as I cryed for my child. At least now I knew where she was.
Shun the frumious bandersnatch
As I lay in the hospital bed, covered in bandages, I thought about a great many things. The other side of the lookingglass is full of madness. Everything they know is a reflection of our world, but distorted and backwards. And its full of beasts. Creatures, changelings, who wish to get out of their mad world, who wish to be part of ours. They want to be us. So they wait before the looking glasses, their windows to our world, waiting for us to come along. When they see us, they mimic us. Our look, our movements, our jestures. Yet, in the process, they block travel through the worlds. For as we press ourselves to the mirror, so do they. It’s almost sad, if you think about it, their overwhelming need to be part of our world is the one thing that is keeping them from it. It also seems that some have learned the tricks to pass into our world. They seem to have slipped through, becoming cops and bosses and psychological doctors. Yet, they are not truly part of our world. They are still Jubjub Birds. They are still the Bandersnatches. They are still products of an insane, backwards world. They are still creatures of madness. And that’s why they took her. They took my sweet Alice because she reminded them that they are mad. They look into that perfect beauty, that sweet gentle heart, and they see what they can never be. Human. So they tried to destroy her. They infected her with their world. A lump in her head, eating at her beauty and sanity and life. That is why the things from the world beyond the rabbit hole calmed her so. Because it was that world she was infected with.
The creatures of dark madness had taken his livelihood, taken his child, and was now trying to convince this world that I am the mad one.
I do not want to imply that all that lies beyond the glass is evil. No, the things that comforted my dear Alice, senseless tea parties and rabbits in waste coats, were those of colorful madness, a bright playful mindlessness that all children love. That happy madness drove away, for a short time, the darker insanities. It is one of these pure and goodhearted madmen that I met in that medical ward of Arkham. I did not see him at first, because my head was completely wrapped in gauze, but he introduced himself. He seemed to be in the next bed. He was lively and likeable, and always ready with a joke. But he also listened. He listened as I told him of my wife and daughter, and the horrible things that befell my family. He would chime in with the occasional “OH MY!” or “how awful” just to let me know he was listening, but mostly he kept quiet. Once I told him of the lookingglass world, and its mad beasts and joyous crackpots, he began to giggle. The giggle grew into a riot of laughter. “That’s what I am!” he called, “I’m a happy madman from the rabbit hole!” All of a sudden he was on top of me, tearing the bandages from my eyes. “BEHOLD!” he said. I saw before me a tall lanky man with the face of a clown. This was a citizen of Wonderland if I had ever seen one, and this was no dark, frustrated, envious lunatic, this was a joyful insanity. He was my angel. He helped me concoct my plan. He also helped me escape. My Clown Prince.

I was sitting in the common room when hy new friend approached. “HATS! I think I know how to get your girl back.” I understandably lit up at this prospect. “You should kill the changelings. Then they…” I stopped him. I told him I am not a killer, and that I may not be able to tell a changeling from a human, and might commit murder. He frowned at this, but after a moment of thought, he had a revelation. A huge grin spread across his face. “You know, I was in wonderland, and a squirrel in goulashes told me that they were bringing your daughter next week. He said that they infected her again, undoing all your hard work. She forgot her poor father… and that she looks different too. But, leave it Jokes to find a way. You must understand, she thinks she is the daughter of one of the other inmates, and she thinks she is visiting her mommie. But as soon as you get to her and cut out her infection, you can be a family again. Capeash Hats?”

And that’s how it went. I didn’t see him for a couple days. I began to worry something might have happened to him. But he came back. He came galumphing into the common room holding a towel under his arm. He told me that they were bringing in my daughter that day. He said he knew one of the assistant psychiatrists that could get me into a vent room. Then he gave me directions to the visiting girl’s bathroom through the vent. He said that Alice had been brought here before, and that he has been watching her, and that she always went into the bathroom to make sure she looked pretty. I told him that is not something Alice would do, and I asked him why she was here at all. He shrugged and said “They’re crazy, who knows why they do these things. And she’s infected. That’s why you have to get her.” Lastly he handed me the towel. He said they were some surgical instruments and a syringe of sedative he nicked from the hospital ward.

The plan began well. At lunch, a little blonde doctor led me down the hall and let me into the vent room. She blew me a kiss and closed the door. Crawling through the vents was easy due to my small size and the huge ancient vent system. I soon found myself looking into the bathroom. I had to do was wait. Eventually she entered. She did look different. She looked a year or so older, and her beautiful golden hair was darker and shorter, but when I looked real hard, like I did when I saw her in the bathroom mirror, suddenly I knew, without a doubt, I had at last found my daughter. I crept slowly from my hiding place in the stall. As she preened her hair, I threw my hand over her mouth and stuck the needle in her neck. She screamed and clawed and struggled as the drugs tried to take their effect. I wished I had my Hatter hat. It would have calmed her down. It was unfortunate she once again didn’t recognize me, but I was going to save her. I locked the bathroom door and began to work. The tools were primitive, a hand drill with a wide bore tip and a steakknife, but they did the job. By the time I was done, a man was banging on the door shouting for his “daughter”. I felt like telling him I knew what he was, that she was mine again. Again blood was everywhere, but she was alive, and this time she was awake. She opened her eyes just a crack and peered at him. She seemed blank, far away. “come here, baby” I said “your with daddy again.”. She stumbled to her feet, and slowly, like a zombie, she shuffled over to me. The left side of her face sagged and a bloody tear ran down her cheek, but she was alive. I embraced her and never wanted to let go. This was the happiest moment of my life. I promised her things would never go bad again. Suddenly there was a scream from the hallway outside. That beast that pretended to be Alice’s father was screaming in pain. Then came a knowck on the door. A familiar voice called in. “HELOOOO! THE CLOWN PRINCE has come to take you away from all this.” I opened the door and found my newfound friend wearing a purple suit and standing in a pool of blood left by the father-beast that was pounding on the door. On his arm was the blonde Psychiatrist, now dressed in a red and black leotard. Down the hall towards lockup was a trail of carnage. “They were evil mirror-whatsits. Come on lets go” I started to follow, calling to Alice to follow. She shuffled out of the bathroom and followed us down the hall, her left leg dragging, her head lolling grotesquely. I told them that something was wrong. Mr.J (as the blonde psychiatrist called him) turned and told me something that made my heart sink. “Oh, my poor Mr Hatter, sadly I was mistaken. That is not your daughter, it is a horrible Mirror-thingie, and it has tricked us all.” Yet He must have seen my pain, because he added (in a tone I would have though insincere if it was coming from a less respectable man), “But your daughter is out there somewhere, and you have to keep looking for her. Once we get out, you must go out on your own and find Alice, and fix her. If she is “wrong” after the tuneup, you will know it’s an imposter and you will have to find another Alice. You’ll have to do one after another, but one day you WILL find the real one. You have to keep up HOPE!” Throughout the whole speech, the little blonde doctor was stifling a giggle, which I thought very rude, but when he was done, he joined her in a great peel of laughter, as if they were sharing a little joke. I didn’t get it.

Now I must tell you of a great horror. Although the thing I operated on was not my Alice, I was in high spirits after Mr. J’s speech. I was ready to get out of Arkam and begin finding my little girl.
But out of the shadows it came. The darkest of all beasts. It came to stop us.
The Jaberwock with eyes of flame!
It leapt from the darkness and landed in front of us. I stood in horror, but my companions were quick to action. Bravely the Clown Prince and the Dr fought the thing, but it was a flurry of shadow, and they had no chance. I turned to the drooling beast that had moments ago disguised itself as my child. “Get the jabberwok!” I cried “attack the black beast!” It shuffled forward and latched onto the Jabberwoks wing, just as it was tying up the blonde Dr. The jabberwock looked almost man shaped when it looked down at the small girl-like zombie that was ripping at its wing with mindless conviction. It would have looked almost human if not for the claws running up its arm, or the pair of horns jutting from its head, or the massive black wings that billowed in its wake. Oddly the Jabberwock would not attack the child-beast. Perhaps because they the same.
Whatever it was, the distraction allowed the clown prince to smash the Jabberwoky over the head with a trashcan. The beast was barely phased and turned to grab him by the neck. “Run Hats,” he managed to choke out “you’ve got business to attend to! Don’t worry! I’ll just escape again later!”
My paralysis broke and I began to run. The Jabberwocky turned to grab me, but Mr. J grabbed the child-monster that was still clinging tenaciously to the Jabberwocky’s wing. “Bats! If you chase that crazy little guy, little miss lobotomy gets it.” The Jabberwocky turned away and grabbed joker instead, twisting his arm and making him drop the girlish thing.
As I ran out the door I heard Mr. J say “Hey bats, you’re going to wish you had gone for that guy and left veggigirl to me. He’s gonna cause some trouble.” And let loose a peel of laughter.

When I got away I laid low for a time, hoping the beasts would loose my scent. Eventually I returned to my old home. The whole neighborhood was dilapidated and borded up, and my house didn’t look like it had been touched since Alice was taken. Some child had written Hawnted on the fence in black pen. Everything was still inside. Even, as it turns out, the role of cash I had saved in the basement so I could make one more house payment when we went broke. I also found the spare key to the lab I had made. I was always loosing keys. Lucky for me they hadn’t changed the lock on the back door in all those years. The drug storage wasn’t hard to break into either. I got enough dope to knock out a heard of elephants for a year. And the high RPM bone saw and self sharpening scalpels.
I remember the true start of my journey vividly. I put on my Hatter outfit (it was pretty ratty, but I fixed it up rather nice) so she wouldn’t be too scared. She always knew me when I was the Hatter. I headed out to the park. I figured that’s where ALice would be on such a nice morning. I sat there all day, and no Alice. No Alice the next day either. But on the third day, sitting out there on the bench, she came to me. She was smaller than I remembered, and her hair was red now, but when I looked closely, really closely, I knew it was her. She ran up to me, crying saying she was lost. I told her she had been found. She started to turn and run off, so I had to stick her with the needle. I didn’t want to, but I had to. I brought her home and sat her at the tea table next to March Hare. When she woke up I told her she was home. I told her everything would be ok, that she could stay here forever. She seemed terrified. It was obvious to me that the procedure would be necessary. But first I would die her hair. I didn’t like it red.

I wish I could tell you that I found my little girl. But I can’t. I preformed the procedure on 14 girls so far, and all of them ended up being looking glass beasts.
I’ve seen on the news that the city is in panic, that “girls” are disappearing, that they are showing up as mindless husks with their hair bleached and bloody little holes in their skulls. They say it’s the work of a madman. The MadHatter, who dresses like a funny little character in order to abduct children off the street and turn them into sex zombies. It makes me sick. They think I’m a psychopathic pervert. But now everyone can know. These mosters you all think are innocents, these bristling bandersnatches, they deserve anything they get. I destroy monsters and fight for my child yet they villianise me
And now the Jaberwocky has found me again.
He’s getting closer.
I won’t go down easy, though. I’ve learned that if you cut the brains of these mirror creatures just right, It destroys them in a very certain way. If you cut them just right, they losse all sence of themselves. They’ll do what you say. I’ve been collecting them. The big redhaired lady from the lab, the vomiting police officer (I had to kill his partner, I can’t take two at once), but mostly the ones that pretend to be homeless people, waiting in the shadows jibbering about their backwards homes. I have many, and they are waiting for the jabberkocky to come through that window over there. I’ve tied wood to their fists, I’ve put nails into their fingers. They may have lost all their intelligence, but the can be single minded and vicious. They are waiting silently in the dark.
I’ll never get out of here, but I will wound the beast. For taking my life. For taking my Alice. Afrer this night, that Jaberwocky, that “Batman” will never be the same.