Shadowed Threads

Chapter Sixty: Painted Nightmares

The first thing Marinette noticed was the taste.

Sharp. Bitter. Like copper and chemicals stuck to the back of her throat, clinging to her lungs with every breath.

The second thing was the smell-something sickly sweet, artificial, cutting through the stale air with a cloying heaviness.

The third?

Laughter.

Not her own.

Not anyone's she recognized.

Just a constant, distant sound, as if the walls themselves were laughing with her, at her, inside her-

Wait.

She was laughing.

Marinette's heart lurched in her chest, panic clawing up her throat.

Why was she laughing?

She wasn't amused.

She wasn't happy.

She wasn't anything but terrified.

Yet the laughter kept coming, spilling from her lips in breathless, choking gasps.

And that's when it hit her.

The Joker had drugged her.

⸻

Marinette's vision wavered, the dim lights overhead flickering like a dream trapped between frames.

She was lying on something hard-a table? A steel slab?-her wrists and ankles bound in thick leather straps.

She tried to move-too slow, too clumsy.

Her limbs felt detached, like she was watching someone else try to escape her own body.

Then-footsteps.

The slow, deliberate click of dress shoes on concrete.

A shadow moved across her vision, too tall, too thin, wrong angles bending under the light.

And then-

A face.

A grinning face.

Too white, too bright, painted in a nightmare of red and black.

Joker.

His smile stretched wide as he loomed over her, hands folded behind his back like a proud artist admiring his work.

"Oh, sweet little Bug." His voice was mockingly soft, dripping with amusement.

"You're even prettier up close."

Marinette's breath hitched-and another fit of laughter escaped her.

She clenched her jaw, trying to force it down, force her body to obey her, but her chest convulsed with the forced hysteria.

Joker's eyes sparkled.

"That gas is something special, isn't it?" He twirled a gloved finger in the air. "Not just any laughing gas-oh no, no, no. This one is tailor-made for you."

His grin widened.

"I wanted to see what would happen when a little ladybug got caught in my web."

⸻

Marinette forced herself to breathe through the tremors, through the phantom laughter curling around her ribs.

She could handle this.