THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH / JASON TODD.
CLOWNKILLER          VOL 1.

Angelica Alzona. / On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong. / The Good Place (2016–2020). / Tumblr users tyaz and alleycatboy.

KHRISTINA NOVIKOVA WAS ALWAYS FATED FOR TRAGEDY.

She was a daughter of Gotham, through and through—her blood was tainted from the moment she emerged from the womb screaming. Nothing good could come from the daughter of a Gotham criminal defence lawyer whose black book of clients hosted the names of the worst of the Gotham underworld's alumni, and a woman with no childhood record and more dead husbands than fingers. Weaned on manipulation and chunks of red meat, Tina could not become anything but a monster once girlhood released her from its clutches. She was a tragedy waiting to happen, a car set on a collision course.

That's what Tina had always been, really—more car crash than girl. She was broken glass shining in the cracks of asphalt, she was blood trickling from forehead wounds, she was wheels spinning on their axis and going nowhere. She was a spectacle, laid out on the road where she had been thrown from the front seat. She was a disaster that you couldn't stand to look at but couldn't bring yourself to look away from. When it came to Tina, though, everyone averted their eyes eventually.

Everyone, that is, except Jason Todd.

Khristina Novikova and Jason Todd were Gotham City's very own Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo was a streetrat turned hero and Juliet was a wolf in girl's clothing. He had loved her from the moment he laid eyes on her, she had loved him from the moment he never looked away. They shouldn't have worked, but they did. Jason hid a heart of gold under white–hot rage at a world that had never showed him kindness, and Tina hid knife–sharp teeth behind a syrup sweet smile until she went for the throat. If Tina was a car crash, then Jason was the witness. If Jason was a house fire, then Tina was warming her hands on the flames.

But house fires burn out eventually.

Tina spent the first month without Jason just as much of a corpse as he was, haunting her house with jagged movements and shaking hands. Jason's death had left her both car crash and witness: watching helplessly as she drifted through the days with nails pressed into the palms of her hands, hard enough to draw blood but never hard enough to pull her soul back into her body. Grief had made her a ghost.

And then grief brought her back to life, armed with a newfound purpose. She was no hero, no saint, no Orpheus prepared to journey down to the underworld and lead her Eurydice back out. What is done cannot be undone. She could not save Jason—but she was going to avenge him. She was in the driver's seat, and she was going to crash, but she wasn't leaving without casualties.

It was a dagger she saw before her, the handle toward her hand, and she was going to use it to draw blood from the city that forsook her heart.

It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood, and Tina will have the king's.

ABIGAIL MORRIS          KHRISTINA ANTONOVNA NOVIKOVA / 𝔓SYCHE.

AND I AM COMING HOME TO YOU / WITH MY OWN BLOOD IN MY MOUTH.

TAMINO AMIR          JASON PETER TODD / ROBIN II / 𝕽ED HOOD.

AND I AM COMING HOME TO YOU / IF IT'S THE LAST THING THAT I DO.

THE 𝕳ELLHOUNDS OF GOTHAM CITY.

LONNIE MACHIN / ANARKY.
SIENNA HUYNH / MAVERICK.
BENNETT LISTERS / CRASH.

AND:

BRUCE WAYNE / BATMAN.
RICHARD GRAYSON / NIGHTWING.
BARBARA GORDON / ORACLE.

HARVEY DENT / TWO–FACE.
JONATHAN CRANE / SCARECROW.
HARLEY QUINN.

ANTON NOVIKOV. †
YULIA BOROVSKAYA. †
IRINA SAVITSKAYA.
MIKHAIL SAVITSKY. †

FOOTNOTES /

⭒     she's baaaaaaaack! khristina novikova u will never mean less than everything to me.

⭒     i am genuinely so excited to be bringing this fic back, and in a new form. fortune favours will always have a place in my heart, but i wanted to shift from tina controlling fate to tina being controlled by fate — enter the tragedy of macbeth. macbeth is my favourite shakespeare tragedy, and i was a part of an adaptation of macbeth earlier this year, and the story fits so well with tina's that i couldn't help but syncretise them. also i'm just pretentious.

⭒     this fic takes place during and after UTRH, albeit with heavyhanded adjustments to some timeline and continuity aspects.

⭒     this fic is a love letter to batman's rogues gallery, arkham asylum, and the idea of devotion to the point of destruction. mental health and mental disorders underpin every part of this story. this fic has always, more than anything, been a way for me to explore arkham asylum and its patients. i have always wanted this fic to be a dissection of the mental state of gotham city and everyone who lives there. with the remake, i'm intending to deep dive much more into this.

⭒     tamino as jason. that remains the entire bullet point.

⭒     the comic cover style belongs, as always, to the incredible bayports. they were kind enough to give me permission to use this style in my own graphics, and have set the stage for comic covers all over wattpad. definitely check them out if you have the chance! she also inspired the layout, so full credits <3

⭒     this fic is dedicated to the jason todd girlies, to people who bottle up their anger, to people who believe in Something Bigger out there, and to anyone who has ever wanted to kill someone for their loved ones. and finally, this fic is dedicated to you. thank you for being here. <3

⭒     trigger warnings: this fic will canon–typical violence, murder, graphic language and violence, mentions of child neglect and mistreatment, vivid and sometimes uncomfortable portrayals of psychological disorders and treatments, self–destructive behaviours and some themes of unreality. tina's actions are often problematic or damaging, to herself or others, and i do not condone everything she says or does (even if i love her and at the end of the day am always rooting for her to get the happy ending she should have had the chance for). same goes for pretty much every character in this fic, really. this is a fictional universe with fictional people doing fictional shitty things.

⭒     disclaimer: i do not own or claim to own dc or any of its properties.