Method Madness

She surfaced to the alarm, but only in the technical sense. Her body rose from the mattress, navigated the gauntlet of cold floor and discarded scripts, and completed the basic tasks—bathroom, rinse, brush, some attempt at food—without once waking up all the way.

There were unread emails, a call sheet with her name highlit in yellow, a text from someone she didn't remember sleeping with last month, all blinking and waiting for her attention. She ignored them, answered only the muscle-memory script of morning.

By the time she reached the lot, the sun was up but the light felt artificial, like the entire city had been relit for a new act. The sky over Burbank was the color of old receipts, the air sharp with the tang of wet asphalt and burnt coffee drifting from the mobile catering truck.

She walked past the caterers, their hands already gloved and sticky with donut glaze, and ducked into the soundstage with the hood of her coat pulled low, as if she could hide in the shadow of herself.

Inside, the world was softer, everything muffled by black drape and the lingering hush that settled after the crew's last joke had run its course. She slipped past the wardrobe racks, past the PA who always smiled too wide, past the dry erase schedule that never quite matched reality, and headed for the makeup trailer.

The chair was cold. The mirror was colder. She watched herself appear out of the glare: hair a static mess, eyes sunken and bruised at the socket. The girl with the brushes—Caitlyn, or maybe Cait—offered a cautious "Morning," then reached for the foundation with one hand and the concealer with the other, as if hedging bets.

"You okay?" Cait said, voice feathered around the edge with actual concern.

"You look like you slept in a quarry."

Anne shrugged, letting the movement carry all the weight of an answer. She held still as Cait dabbed at the circles, working fast but gentle, the brush tip hot from her own skin. Anne watched her face go from ruin to passable in less than a minute.

"You want extra liner today?" Cait asked.

"The director said maybe push it a little. More noir."

Anne grunted assent, attention already tilting to the door. Every three seconds she checked the reflection behind Cait's head, waiting for a glimpse of the violet coat, the green-black hair, the sudden zero-G of Marcus entering the room.

He was not there, not yet, but she could feel the gravity of him, the way it bent the air even before he arrived.

She remembered the dream—no, the dreams, the serial of them—but did not let them touch her face. She'd learned long ago that the only way to keep a secret was to kill it before it reached the lips.

She let Cait finish her work, then thanked her and left, ignoring the way the girl's eyes followed her to the door.

On the way to the set, Anne moved through the corridors like a sleepwalker. The crew was already mid-build, grips and electricians locked in silent, deliberate war over the placement of an LED rig that looked like a robot's spinal column. Someone called

"Heads up," and a sandbag 'thunked' to the floor inches from her ankle, but she didn't even flinch.

She found her mark, stood, and waited.

The PA—different one this time, younger, less manic—handed her a script, even though the lines for this scene were tattooed on the inside of her skull.

"You ready?" the PA said, tentative.

Anne nodded.

"Marcus'll be here in a minute," the PA added, then retreated, as if afraid to be caught between her and the incoming storm.

She didn't wait long.

The first sign was the change in the air, a shift in humidity, a micro-echo of footsteps even when the set was dead quiet. Then, the silhouette: Marcus Vale, in the coat and gloves, hair slicked back and wet as if he'd just stepped out of a lake, skin powdered so perfectly the shadow of the jaw looked like a blade edge.

He paused at the threshold, took a breath, and entered.

Anne watched him, unable not to. Watched the way he moved, how the feet never seemed to touch the floor, how the hands were always in motion, even at rest. He made for the director's station, conferred in low tones, then turned and met her gaze across the empty space.

She looked away first.

The flush at her cheeks was not from makeup.

He approached, each step measured but loose, like a dancer who had memorized the room down to the last screw in the floor.

"Good morning, Miss Hathaway," he said. The voice was Joker, but it was also Marcus, and in that moment Anne could not tell which one was real.

"Morning," she replied, her own voice a half-step behind, unsteady.

He smiled, a private smile, just for her.

"You sleep?"

She considered lying, then decided it would be pointless.

"No."

He nodded, as if he'd already known the answer.

"Me neither."

For a second, they just stood, the world collapsing down to the diameter of their silence.

The grip team was watching—she could feel their eyes, the heat of them, the way a joke about her would already be in circulation by the time she reached the next set. She glanced their way and caught the nearest one in mid-whisper, mouth curled in a half-smile that was both cruel and affectionate.

She ignored it, turned back to Marcus.

"You ready?" he said.

She nodded.

"Let's give them something worth dreaming about," he whispered, so soft she could feel the breath of it on her ear.

She shivered. Then the director called for first positions, and the world snapped back to its normal orbit.

They ran the scene.

They ran it again.

Each take blurred the line between fiction and memory a little more, until Anne was no longer sure if she was performing or confessing. The Joker's lines bled into Marcus's, and Selina's into hers, and every word became a code for something else, something urgent and wordless.

Between takes, Anne found herself retreating to a corner, script in hand but attention nowhere near the page. She scribbled notes in the margin, then, when she thought nobody was watching, wrote in the blank space at the end of her sides:

He's what danger looks like in perfume and velvet.

She stared at the words, pen trembling, then closed the script and pressed it to her chest, as if the pressure could force the feeling back inside.

A voice broke the spell.

"You know, you could just talk to him."

It was the PA, hovering at her elbow. She looked up, caught off guard.

"What?"

The PA shrugged, awkward.

"Everyone's noticed, Anne. You two—" He gestured, vague, as if afraid to make the shape of the word.

"It's like watching two sharks circling the same pool. You don't have to be coy."

Anne felt the heat rise to her ears, the urge to laugh and punch the kid in equal measure.

She shook her head, but the PA just smiled, then scurried away.

She checked her phone—out of habit, out of need, she was not sure. No new messages.

At lunch, Marcus sat alone at the edge of the lot, a cigarette burning down between two fingers, the smoke curling in perfect, concentric loops. Anne watched him from the catering line, saw the way the wind never touched his hair, the way he seemed to generate his own weather system.

She wanted to approach, but something in the set of his shoulders said: Not now. Maybe not ever.

She ate alone, barely touching the food. A few crew passed by, some nodding, some giving her a wide berth.

Back on set, the scene shifted. Marcus was already there, waiting, the script in one hand, a prop knife in the other, spinning it in slow, lazy arcs. He glanced at her, caught her eye, then winked, a gesture so out of character it jarred her more than any line in the script.

They shot the next take, and this time, when the Joker put his hand to her throat, Anne did not flinch.

Afterwards, in the silence of her trailer, she sat with the afterglow, the phantom touch of his fingers still buzzing at her skin.

She opened her journal, wrote:

It's not method. It's something worse.

She stared at the line for a long time.

Then, on impulse, she pulled out her phone, thumbed his number, and typed:

Do you ever stop performing?

She hit send before she could change her mind.

The message marked as delivered, then nothing.

She waited.

She waited an hour, then two, then long enough for the sky to go from gray to black, and still there was nothing.

She watched the screen, willing it to light up, but it never did.

When she finally put the phone down, she understood: whatever this was, it was not going away.

She would have to live with it.

She would have to find a way to survive.

......

Okay we hit 100 power stones so here is your free chapter, I'm going to run out of free chapters at this rate so I'm debating upping this to 100 power stones per free chapter

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