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Every new subscriber to this blog is a testament to my sins. Another person who has come to see my wares when my shop has been empty and my factory shut down for a while. 

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I Have Writer’s Block And Need To Do Edits. So Here, have Some Harley Quinn Backstory (P2)

….

“You’re already planning another attack on Batman. Didn’t you do that like, just last week? Shouldn’t we be planning something new.”

“You don’t understand, everything else we’ve been doing is appetizers. They’re just small tidbits to hold us off for the main course.”

“And he’s the main course?”

“OF COURSE HE IS! HOW COULD YOU EVEN ASK?!”

Joker was lying out Blueprints, sketches, and notebooks on the table.

“Besides this is just the planning stage it could take a while.”

“Ok Jeez, lay off. I mean sure he’s violent and pretty smart, but so’s Bane. How ‘bout we attack Bane? He’s got all those ‘roided up henchmen who are supa-dupa loyal to him. Can you imagine their faces if we broke him?”

“Harls, Bane is still a bit big fish for you. Maybe wait on him until you have your own followers.”

“We have men.”

“No, I have men. But feel free to take some of them to go fight Bane if that’s what lights your fire-cracker.”

“You’re just, letting me go out with an undefined amount of our guys to fight one of the most dangerous super-criminals in Gotham while you sit here planning your next caper with Batman?”

“Once again, my men. But yes, why?”

Her grin was feral. She simultaneously gritted her teeth while showing all of them at once. He heard them grinding from where he was.

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I’ll be going then.”

….

She didn’t actually defeat Bane, but, she did grab a few of his men and tear them apart, which gained her an enemy for life.

And she did not let go of the Batman issue.

They were so similar in so many ways that when there were rifts between them, she’d come up with these theories for why. She’d obsess. And he didn’t like her theories for Batman.

…..

“So you still like those dumplings?”

She pointed out to the take-out he was eating with her chopsticks, her own mouth half full.

“Who doesn’t like dumplings?”

“You stopped liking everything else I’ve ordered. The miso, the fried rice, the duck, the shrimp. You’ve just been eating the dumplings.”

“I mean it's your fault for ordering take-out from the same place every other day. I’ve tried mixing them, but that only made it exciting for so long.”

“Yeah, dumplings were the only things I didn’t order this month at all. I specifically didn’t.”

“Are these contemplations on take-out food supposed to mean anything to me?”

“Batman’s not special”

“The Hell does that have-“

“He’s dumplings. Everything becomes boring to you after you try it once. After a second time, it loses all its sparkle. It’s why we have to keep switching up our bedroom routine.”

 She shoved some more shrimp into her mouth 

”I get it. I’ve been the same way since my acid dip. But the thing is with Batman you spend so much time planning and prepping your meetings with him that your brain cools off. So he can still be special when you meet up with him. And you’ve done this for so long that you’ve convinced yourself he’s the special thing when it’s really just the way you treat him. You could trade him for another smart-guy in tights and as long as you space out your meet-ups with him it’d have the same effect.”

He put a gun to her head.

“Harls I like you. We’ve been having fun. But if you try to explain away the one person that makes life worth living to me one more time I will kill you.”

….

She tried to kill Batman to prove a point. She failed

Joker tried to kill her. He failed.

Their association ended after that.

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I Have Writer’s Block And Need To Do Edits. So Here, have Some Harley Quinn Backstory (P1)

Harleen Quinzel.

Oh boy. Their association had been a bundle of mistakes on his part.

Most of the psychiatrists didn’t interest him much, but her-. She’d been doing her residency at Arkham . So much about her, the tight way she held her shoulders when she was containing her anger, the rapid way she tapped her pen against the desk when she was figuring out a problem, the way she heard her voice dip in inflection when she was talking about her future plans- so much about it was so familiar.

It gave him a very peculiar sense of de ja vu. He’d seen those expressions in the mirror, he’d heard his voice move like that, he’d held that same tension in his shoulders before.

Most of the time Joker was fine with being a swirling mass of intangible memories. He could make up any story he liked about what he was and all of them were as true as the rest.

But sometimes- sometimes he wanted to know the other guy- the one that existed before he took up the skin. Were the prickers in his mind from him, or were they all created along with Joker. Were their desires the same. How much of Joker was the shattered remnants of another man and how much was he himself!?

(You are a stolen life, a stolen body. You don’t belong here. Have you looked at your skin? You’re barely even human)

So he got invested in Dr. Quinzel. he asked her all sorts of questions about her life. Tried to see if any of the story beats sounded familiar. He tried to keep her as his psychologist as long as he could so he could observe her, watch every gesture she made and use it to scrape grime off the old memory box.

Then (when she’d been on the verge of leaving) he’d done the final test to see if she was anything like the old him- and dumped her in the acid pit. Or really, had her dumped in the acid pit, dragging her there was not a one person job. The chemicals from ace factory didn’t have a consistent effect on the people who fell in. Some came out crying, some came out only able to speak in childhood songs, some came out speechless monsters only capable of violence, It seemed to depend on the personality of the person.

Therefore, if he dumped her in the acid, and she came out as similar to him than the original Dr. Quinzel had been similar to whoever had been in his shoes originally. At least that was his theory.

It worked.

 It’s just- he hadn’t really thought through what he was going to do when there was a second him around.

She  came out laughing, screaming, and diving for his throat, all bleached skin and murderous rage, and newly affectated voice tones.

 In hindsight he truly should have seen that coming

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU TO ME YOU BASTARD?”

He’d had a goon or two with him, and they had brought guns, but they seemed very unwilling to get near the bleached Doctor.

It was that look in her eye.

“Harley, I wanted us to be together- now you can truly understand-“

She laughed in his face, loud and unhinged.

“You think I believe any ‘ah that? I was you psyche -ya dummy- I remember your utter narcissism. I know you wouldn’t do this for me.”

She had all her memories intact. Oh. good for her.

Ok new strategy.

“Harls, look I know you’re mad at me. But think about it- there’s plenty of other people you’re mad at right?  Those loan sharks that got you through college and have been shaking you down ever since, You’re angrier at them right? They’ve been tormenting you for far longer than I have, don’t you want to kill them more than me? They’re the reason you’re still stuck in Gotham, the reason you’ve lived in fear since you were 19.”

She blinked, and her face turned from unending fury to considering.

“You know I do want to kill them- heh- I – I don’t know what was stopping me before. All my troubles could end if they just died.”

She giggled at the prospect.

“They’d just be gone. No creepy phone calls at 3:00 am, no putting up with their leering eyes.  No asking for money I don’t have and threatening to burn my apartment! Just gone. NO! Not just gone. I’ll get to see them leave. I’ll get to see them choking out on their own blood as they scream out in pain. I’ll get to make them apologize and beg for their lives as I carve it out of them!”

Her fingers tightened on his throat as she got excited. Ah, he remembered when he was like that, when he was fresh from the pot and murder was new and exciting.

He tried slapping her arms to get her attention.

“YES. And I have men with guns. And if you  just- EXTRACTED YOUR nails from my throat I could give you the men with guns to SHOOT your loan sharks.”

She shrugged.

“Yeah okay.”

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Right now I’m just staring at my writing for chapter 13 thinking: “I’m this much of a dumbass, but I don’t think Bruce is, so I may need to re-write this.”

Agh.

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Any fighter with a slice of survival instinct started to leave out the back, quietly, the back row getting more and more empty. Leaving the feral, the desperate, and the over-arrogant.

The first fight was normal, but Joker was, disconcertingly quiet, looking down from the fight, scribbling down in a notebook he’d kept in his jacket. The noise of the audience slowly built around him. The normal shouts and boos and yells rising to volume once the perception of the safety was established, with the small exception of the bubble of people sitting close to him. They barely breathed.

The second fight he began making suggestions.

It blended in with the noise of the crowd first. People quieted down in reaction to hearing his voice but quickly joined him. Shouts of “hit him harder”, “Tear his head off” and “Get up already!” was already regular fair for the audience. His suggestions of “rattle their brains” and “reach inside them and pull out their organs” was more creative, but it was of the same spirit.

But then the fight ended. Or it should have ended by, any sane man’s measure of end. The loosing fighter was on the ground, his eyes flittering, breathing raggedly and slowly.

And he shouted, “Keep going.”

Someone tried to pull the downed man off the stage and he stopped them. Shooting them in the leg. The entire crowd went silent.

He pulled himself up on the railings, leaning with his arms hanging over them and stared directly at the winner of the fight. It was a young man, a scraggly-pup with too much teeth. He had a buzz-cut and a scar over one eye. Bruce hadn’t seen him stop moving the entire time he’d been here,  even when he’d been sitting down he was biting his nails and tapping his feet. His fight was filled with grunts that sounded almost like screams and desperation. His opponent was bigger. He hadn’t been expecting to win.

Joker smiled at him.

“C’mon, that pathetic lout is clearly done. But are you? I mean a performance like that will get you a spot as dumb muscle, certainly. You’ve got some spunk in you, kid. But do you want to be the guy who can take someone down, or the one who no one touches because they know you’ll take it farther than they were prepared to go, the one who makes people regret living. Do you want to be a simple thug or an untouchable monster? C’mon, kid I know you have it in you.”

The kid was punch-drunk, and dazed, to full of adrenaline  to focus clearly. The kid kept looking between Joker and the man on the ground.

Silence. Deafening silence.

Bruce looked down. The character of Dimitry wouldn’t engage.

He was already in the aisle. No. The kid was too young. All of this was too similar to Ra’s and him. To him being young and dumb, and needing to be something bigger than his body could provide.

Connell grabbed his arm.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Dimitry looked back at Connell with his whitened eye, and scarred face and sunken eyes.

“No. No мaкing of aнother мe.”

Connell let him go.

The kid started hitting the man on the ground.

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Bruce’s plan was a rough one.

It was barely a plan. It was just- humanity for humanity. If Joker was getting attached to him, then maybe he could use their connection to introduce behaviors that weren’t strictly violent.

If nothing else, Joker’s reaction to Bruce’s new behavior pattern from him should give him information about what to do next.

So, apologizing for the hug. Doing it with a gift seemed better, so Joker could accept it without admitting to weakness, make up some excuse for coming.

He was waiting in the back seats, sitting right near the aisle so he could see everyone who walked down. Fighters always sat in the back so they could slip out easily when it was their turn or leave quickly when the cops came.

Fighters stood in the back when he was here last. The place had gotten nicer. When he was 17 it had just been a basement, barely furnished. Now it had seats, nice ones, and mats, and someone vaguely medical on standby. There were even tickets now. Before the bartender had taken a cut of the gambling pot and left it at that.

What son of-a-don had paid for the gentrification of this place?

The ticket he’d bought for Joker was blood spatter seat territory, right in front.

Bruce felt two large hands clap onto his shoulders.

“Dimitry! I haven’t seen that scowly face in over a decade. You still missing the teeth I knocked out of you?”

Bruce looked behind him to see a very large man with freckles all over his face and a wild ginger beard.

Bruce tilted his head back and uses his thumb to

expose his right incisor.

“Stole someone else’s I see. At least that’s one improvement. The years have not been kind to you.”

Bruce’s disguise consisted of large scars going across the sides of his face and his neck. His hair had grey tufts in it near the temples and was cut wilder. He emphasized his eyes to look more sunken and his veins to stand out. With some contacts to make one of his eyes look slightly whitened out. He held himself hunched, kept his eyes down.

Bruce spoke in a thick Russian accent.

“Least Й looк gooд beфore. Your фace alвays ugly.”

He got a smack on the back of the head for that one.

“You learn English and all you can say is mean things. Why am I not surprised?”

“Niсe to see ю, Кonnell”

“Better.”

Connell sat down next to him and put an arm over his shoulder.

“What happened to your cute manager? The one who spoke for you before?”

“Бroke мy heart and stoлe мy мoney.”

It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Ah tale as old as time. Staying in Gotham long?”

“ нет, No. Just вisit. Short. Need кash.”

“Probably for the best. You look like you need a break, and this isn’t the city for it. Don’t die in your fight.”

“Saмe фor you.”

It was then that Connell took him by the shoulder and yanked him from the aisle, just in time to prevent him from brushing up against a purple suit.

Joker had arrived. Silence spread across the theatre room, as people turned and realized why the people next to them had stopped breathing.

He and Bruce made eye contact for a few brief seconds, just enough for Joker to glare at him for nearly messing up the crease in his pants, and for slight recognition to register.

His voice didn’t boom, it wasn’t deep enough, but it reverberated off the walls with volume, it bounced. He brought a walking stick with a clown head that clacked as he walked.

He sat in the front in the seat and sprawled, putting his legs up on the metal railings that divided the fighters from the audience.

“Is that a mat? No no, don’t be ridiculous. If I get a henchman from here I need to know he can hit the pavement and take it. You there.”

He pointed to a man behind him with the stick, a sharp point sliding out from the cane.

“Would you be a dear and move this mat for me? The show needs a little bit more excitement.”

Three or four men stood up to move the mats. Quiet murmurs began to pass through the audience.

Bruce had almost forgotten how awful he was.

Connell looked at Bruce.

“You have poor luck, Dimitry. It’s the first time you’re back and this mad bastard shows up. Word of advice: slip out the back. Come a different night”

“You leaьing?”

“Oh, I can never turn down a fight. That hasn’t changed. I never planned to die in my sleep.”

“Й нeed мoney too muч.”

“Then I’ll see you in hell, my friend.”

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Joker was holding the envelope between two fingers of his right hand. He held a lighter in his left hand, holding the flame centimeters away from the bottom of the envelope.

He was staring into the flame, not moving the envelope any closer or farther away.

His belly was full, his fake-face hastily rubbed off, but his mind wasn’t any clearer. He sat on the roof of his hideout, letting the flame flicker blow out in the wind before relighting it again.

He hadn’t wanted Bruce to know he was ruffled, but he’d lost that chance to hide it last night when he was a mess. It was weak. Weak things were eaten in Gotham. It was squishy, gooey, soft.

He should burn the envelope now. Not go.  He should devote his time to preparing a session so cruel that Bruce would forget any moment of weakness, any memory of Joker being squishy.

Flick. Sharp metal on flint.

But then Bruce coming in with an apology, with a gift. It was so… soft. What was the point?

(He wants you soft. Soft for Soft. He’s trying to get you hooked on the feeling. Free samples before he pulls it out from under you and asks you to rip off pieces of yourself in turn for more. He wants you to melt.)

Joker let his memory flicker through images. Warm arms around him. Steady hands holding him up against the wall as he fell apart. Slow and steady hands bandaging and cleaning his wounds.

(Soft. Soft. Soft. Soft.)

It made his head feel heavy with syrup and his chest all warm.

He lit the envelope and let the flames eat the paper. It took a bite the size of a finger joint before he panicked and suffocated the flames between his leg and his hands.

He glared at the singed envelope.

(Pathetic.)

Apparently, He was going.

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“Bruce?”

Joker didn’t move an inch from where he was leaning over Bruce’s face. Someone in this car had just lost the last pieces of their grip on reality and he’s not sure who it was.

“Is this you finally trying to kill me? Because if you think I’m dying in the backseat of an anonymous vehicle parked in a no-name back-alley DRESSED LIKE THIS, then I really am going to leave you here with lead in your thighs and your knees pried off your legs. Do I make myself clear?”

“Colorful. I’m just here to talk.”

“And why should I believe that?”

“Have you been avoiding me?”

“What?”

He drew his face a little back at that.

“You didn’t show up yesterday, and the time before that you left -quickly. I thought we were having a good time and then you just ended it.

Joker fell back into the seat behind him. He needed a moment.

The car was nice,  one of those cute little numbers where the seats faced one another so that the riders could talk and drink champagne while knocking knees. It had soft seat-cushioning he could just bury his face in and scream into.

Bruce did look thicker than normal. He probably was wearing body armor.

Bruce was talking about their time with Lex. That was a moment that happened with Bruce where Joker left. Right.

What was the game here? Some subtle needling at what happened last night. A manipulation? They had been having a good time, but Bruce was always too much of a stick in the mud to admit it. Why had he hugged him anyway? Was that just a show for Lex?

He put his bound feet up on Bruce’s legs, using the other man as a footstool, and snuggling into the seat. Without the bag he could see they were kept together with a zip tie.

“I told you I was busy. My life doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Apparently” Bruce’s eyes were looking over Joker’s broken hand. His brow was furrowed, the silent question of “What happened there?” hanging in the air.

“And yesterday?”

“Anticipation. Nothing is exciting if it’s consistent. I wanted to see what you’d do if you had an entire day waiting for the knife to drop. Clearly the results were worth it. You’re taking more risks, in the bad side of town, imitating me. It’s not smart, but I’ll take it as progress.”

Bruce sighed and gave a small wry smile.

“Well, if that’s the reason, then I guess this isn’t an apology. But there’s no point in it going to waste.”

Bruce took an envelope and set it on Joker’s lap.

“It’s instructions for how to get into the basement of the Stacked Deck bar over in North Haven. It’s-“

“-An underground fighting ring.”

What was being offered here?

“Right. I signed up to participate in one of the fights, and I’ll be in the audience before that. It’s tomorrow at nine. It’s not one of our days so it won’t get in the way of your plans. You don’t have to come if you’re busy. but I’m going either way. I know how much you like seeing my blood get spilled.”

Bruce took Joker’s box-cutter from his pocket and put it underneath the zip-tie.

“May I?”

Joker nodded. His brain was static radio fuzz

In one swift cut Joker’s ankles were free. Bruce left the box-cutter and the switchblade on Joker’s lap. And left the car.

“Take your time."

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In one quick move, the bag tightened pulling his arm to his sides but leaving his hands free.

Hm, kidnappers? Human traffickers?

No matter, they were about to have a really bad day either way.

He let the box cutter tucked in his right sleeve drop into his hand then turned around to stab his attacker. He found himself stumbling forward. His attacker had stepped out of the way leaving him to fall into the lunge. An extra elbow was applied to his back, sending him face-first to the ground.

Oh ok, so this was a higher quality of kidnapper-

Before he could finish his thought, something was going around his ankles, tying them together.

Ok, whoever this was, was going to get their kneecaps pried from their legs the moment they set him down.

He could feel his gut collide with the attacker’s shoulder as they hoisted him up like a sack of potatoes.

Joker took the switchblade from his left sleeve and stabbed it into the assailants shoulder he heard a small. He heard a muffled Ah and the knife was pulled from his hand, but he wasn’t dropped.

Body armor or just dumb endurance. Maybe one of Bane’s men. Was he important, or could he be killed without anyone noticing? Or, dang it, not killed, but left somewhere with significantly less body parts.

He was shoved into what he assumed was a car and had something go over the bag and wrap around his arms to keep them pressed to his sides. Then the top of the bag was cut open.

He lunged from his seat, ready to bite the nose off of whoever grabbed him.

His neck ran into a forearm.

He was 3 inches from Bruce’s face.

“Well, Hello to you too.”

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Ch: 13- The Date

Now in Joker’s opinion, Bruce had a lot of material to work with. First of all, there was all that lovely sadism and violence. There was definitely some control issues, likely paranoia, and all that trauma at a young age had to lead to some sort of emotional stunting, maybe even some decent abandonment issues.

There was a buffet of complications in the head of that single-minded man, and Joker hadn’t been working with any of them! Not really. When Bruce had first agreed to their deal, Joker had taken the opportunity to beat the ever-loving hell out of him for nearly killing Joker, and getting him run out of his current hideout, taking his rage out on Bruce’s flesh. It had seemed like a good idea. It had been wearing Bruce down mentally and physically, so that he’d be susceptible to whatever Joker decided to do with him, and it was fun.

It was a perfectly good plan for someone who had all the time in the world.

But now, he was on this strange deadline of “drive-Bruce-insane-before-he-finds-out-you-have-a-sudden-touch-addiction” and he was rushing to find an issue of Bruce’s to focus on and amplify. Joker had a cork board of different plans that currently looked like a mangled spider web of red yarn and sticky notes.

What he wanted to work on was making Bruce care about people less. But after workshopping the idea on the god-forsaaken board he realized that would probably make him less exciting. All of his most violent and entertaining actions were results of him caring about people. His rage towards Mr. White had been on behalf of other people. Joker had gotten Bruce to agree to be tormented, for the sake of other people. Even as Batman, all of his violence was a result of threats to Gotham. While his stupid little moral code tied him to some arbitrary meter that prevented from going full throttle into his repressed rage, Joker couldn’t get rid of it without threatening to remove the very same engine that drove his most his explosive actions.

No. No. If Joker wanted to unleash the monster out of the man, he probably had to go in the opposite direction, make him care more. If Bruce thought he could fix something for someone, almost anyone, he very quickly accepting of violence, sometimes begrudgingly, but frequently wholeheartedly. The worse the sins of the people he was attacking the more whole-heartedly he accepted violence. Lex had shown that.

Psychological torture versus physical torture, who was Bruce trying to lie to, Joker or himself? Bruce hadn’t even shown guilt that time.

Riots.

There was something there, wasn’t there? Bruce had caused a peaceful protest but it could have been a riot, add a little bit of energy to the anger and there could have been destruction. You just had to have one idiot go too far. Something-something about the little guy punching up to the big guy and you could get guillotines involved.

That could be something they did together.

Joker’s stomach rumbled.

Ah yes, food. He couldn’t solidly recall the last time he ate, which meant it was time to eat again. Thoughts might be less scattered after food. He wondered if the falafel stand, he liked was open. The owner was a dead-eyed man, who already served him once while he was in full attire.

He looked out the window to see the sun only starting to lower itself over the horizon. Ugh. That was a hard no.

Joker painted on his normal-face, got in his drab overcoat and hat, stuffed some of the money he’d snuck out of his last hideout into his pockets, and began the danger filled descent to the lower floors of the mall. It always made him feel better after he put his normal-face on.

Two blocks away from the mall a bag went over his head and arms.

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My brain is fried. I will return 9/7/2020 when the plot machine is refreshed. 

Sometimes a short pause is what is needed to retain quality.

See you then.

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Playlist 2-II

6+7+8: Two songs I used to try to get a grasp on Joker’s emotions while in the Batmobile. (8 only for the chorus)

Bonus: Song that goes through Bruce’s head during any social event/ charity thing 

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Playlist 2-I

This chapter was a doozy.

1. Song for how Joker approaches his fights with Batman when he isn’t infected.

2. Song for how Joker approaches his fight with Batman after a few months of being infected.

3. Kinda the song I used for Batman’s view in the “interrogation scene”. I think it responds to the song above nicely, and gets some of the tone of the scene, but truth is to write the scene I turned off all music and focused on all my repressed anger.

4. The song for the mood once Batman starts to pull out of the fight. Just imagine it with 300% more tension and underlying explosive emotion under the surface.

5. The song for both of them dealing with the situation above. I know I had this in my last playlist, but sometimes I reuse songs for different scenes. So it’s back.

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Bruce looked down at the keyboard, letting his brain stutter-start a few times before continuing.

·         Theory 2c-1: The way that Joker expresses emotion and affection is exclusively  through violence and other forms of expression are foreign and possibly unpleasant to him. He ran back to what was familiar to him, extreme violence, which in his mind Batman could always guarantee.

 ·         Theory 2c-II: Bruce, by responding to the Joker, had pushed the relationship farther than he’d expected it to go. He’d seen it as some level of platonic or casual, and Brue had pushed it into a romantic category that had been further than he’d been expecting and he’d freaked out and ran back to what was familiar to him.

 That last one was probably him seeing old pains in new situations, a result of his experiences with Catwoman. But he’d have to admit there was some bitter comedy to the idea that he’d once again triggered commitment issues while this time being unaware that he’d even been flirting.

He pressed his palms into his eyes. He was getting too tired to repress his thoughts about Selina.

Time for bed.

                                                                 .....

As Bruce trudged up the stairs his room his brain continued to wrestle with the idea of Joker’s sudden onset attraction to his civilian persona. He didn’t know how to handle it.

Bruce really hoped this was some mess created by Tetch.  Subjects of Tetch’s mind control were unable to recall their time under hypnosis. If it was Joker would forget what happened last night and go back to acting normal. Normal was still torturing Bruce, but that was more comprehensible than the alternative.

If it wasn’t well- Joker would still be upset wouldn’t he? Regardless of whether he’d gotten what he was looking for from Batman or not, Bruce Wayne had still crossed a line in his mind. So, he’d be looking for retaliation something to regain distance from or control over Bruce Wayne.

What then?

Then Bruce would retaliate, and Joker would retaliate back, and they’d keep going, over and over in infinite loops.

Bruce was sick of patterns.

He was stuck on the stair where they’d made their deal. Joker had agreed not to kill here, and one bit of a loop had broken.

If Joker was getting emotionally connected to him, then they didn’t have to stay in a loop, did they? Joker was changing, showing more emotion than he usually did, trying to get connected to another person. If he could just accelerate those changes, lean into them, he might be able to get them out of this cycle of violence before it calcified.

And just like that, there was a small bit of fluttering hope in his chest.

Bruce Wayne slept dreaming of infinitely turning wheels breaking.

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Tetch was back in Arkham.

Jenny was back with her family.

Joker had left the moment his bandages were done.

Which left Bruce sitting in the Batcave staring at the Bat computer. He should be in bed but his brain wouldn’t shut off.

None of what had just transpired made any sense in relation to Joker. Joker may play at unpredictable, but Batman had fought him for years, he knew his style, and that wasn’t it.

First of all, every single Joker scheme was planned down to a T. The stage where they’d fight was always set, decorated, and lit. Henchmen were given strict task lists to follow, and there was at least three death traps in Batman’s way. This event had zero preparation, as far as he’d seen. It’d been piggy-backed off of Mad Hatter was doing. An action the normal Joker would spit at.

Second of all, he’d actually cooperated. He never did that

And THIRD of all: the emotion.

So Bruce was comparing footage of their earlier confrontations to the one that happened tonight. The Batcowl had cameras embedded into it that recoded every fight, and Bruce kept the footage meticulously sorted by date and perpetrator.

He wanted concrete proof that the fear response he saw in Joker was faked. He wasn’t getting it. All the evidence he was viewing confirmed that Joker and Batman’s fights were very important to Joker. Joker chose the locations where there would confront eachother, after Batman had defeated all his henchmen and undid all his death traps, and the rooms they fought together in were always the most heavily decorated, always the best lit.

Likewise, while Joker showed clear signs of enjoyment when he got to stab Batman, he showed the same amounts of delight when Batman cracked his ribs or hit him in the face. His ghoulish grin didn’t change much, but he had different laughs and the one he let out when either of them were receiving pain was high and delighted. It only changed into the lower pitched angrier laugh when Bruce had him fully disarmed and was leaving.

So, apparently, Joker’s given reason for his freak out (What kind of person starts the show and then quits halfway through?) did match with his prior psychology, but his reactions were all wrong. He’d never been this open or vulnerable

·         Theory 1: His brain had been altered. He’d been interacting with Tetch, maybe some hypnosis gone wrong? It should fade in a day or two if that was the case. Had Tetch been trying to use Joker to distract Batman and given him the wrong commands?

·         Theory 2: Something recently had triggered a stronger than usual desire for Batman. It would explain the rush job of an attack, and the more desperate need to fight, and the skipping out on his appointment with Bruce Wayne, which, up until that point he’d been obsessed with.

That last thought made him pause. Joker had been obsessed with him, hadn’t he? More intensely than he’d been in his prior victims.

Bruce pulled up the files on the other people Joker had driven insane.

Charles McGavey: Said he felt eyes on him all the time. Cat died with a grin, objects shifted around his house, multiple incidents of him loosing time and then waking up with signs scrawled on the walls and markers held in his hands. This occurred over the course of two months. Encountered the Joker in person three times.

Heather Fortire: Worked in life insurance. Started finding dead body parts in her home, then in her friends apartments, and at the places she liked to eat served in her food. Saw a headstone put on the foot of her bed and the names of the already dead written on her walls. Never encountered the Joker himself but saw his henchmen following her five or six times.

James Ramsley: Started to suspect all of his food was poisoned, no matter where he’d gotten it from, heard faint music playing inside the walls of his apartment that he couldn’t track the source of, woke up nude in the middle of a parade float when he had social anxiety. Saw the Joker in person twice.

Joker normally kept a distance from his victims, messing around with their lives from the background, but rarely confronting them directly. Bruce saw him in person every time. He was more obsessed with Bruce than anyone he’d tortured before.

·         Theory 2a: Joker’s odd behavior with Batman had something to do with his intense obsession with Bruce Wayne.

Then Bruce started to wince as he remembered the odd way things had been left specifically between Bruce Wayne and Joker.

·         Theory 2b: The trigger to Joker’s odd behavior with Batman had been Bruce’s initiation of non-violent physical contact.

It then occurred to Bruce how his assistance in the destruction of Lex Luthor’s life, and even the way he dismantled Joker’s life after he got fed-up, might appear to a man who destroyed people’s lives as a hobby. It might seem as if they had similar interests. The offer to destroy someone’s life together may have even appeared as an offer to hang out doing something they equally enjoyed. It may even have appeared as… flirting, somewhat.

(“You have such a lovely face of sadism when you twist the knife in. And I forgot to get one last time.”)

Oh shit.

[longformbatjokesfic]

“Oh. That. Yes, this place used to be mine. A long time ago. I cut the entrance out back with a little bit of love and a very large chainsaw. It was nice for a time, but I outgrew it. The mall is much bigger and more exciting, much more befitting my station, and so was the steel mill before-

Before someone decided to anger our mutual enemies on my behalf.

-I had a little bit of trouble with the neighbors. I still come here for sentiment sake. I named myself here after all. ”

He paused and reconsidered his words. That had been more than he wanted to say.

“I found Hatter burrowed here and let him have it until his presence became inconvenient.”

…

Thousands of old memories dug into Joker’s skin as Batman tore down that curtain.

There had been a time before Joker, when there was just- a pale man with no memories waking up on the shore of Gotham Harbor, with a trail of of dark sludge leading from him to a bubbling green pool in the water.

He couldn’t remember having a name (or a home, or a purpose, or anywhere to go, or anything) and was upset about it. There was a lot of…screaming and crying  mixed with coughing green sludge out of his lungs. It had not been pleasant.

He’d spent hours after that just wandering the city, trying to recognize anything. He’d gotten a few flashes of familiarity that quickly faded, grabbed a few people along the way and asked if they recognized his face. None of them did. A lot of them screamed.

He’d found that funny at the time. He remembered thinking something along the lines of “Well If they didn’t recognize me before, they certainly will now. They’ll be thinking about that encounter all night. All week even.” That had been ridiculously funny, and he couldn’t figure out why.

The Neon Theatre was the first place he knew he’d been before remembered. He could feel it in his legs as they walked him down a familiar path. It was the place with the bright pink lights, and the women, and the blue lit bar, and the smell of cigarette smoke that had made him feel out of place there. He’d been on the stage there or sat in one the chairs there watching the stage a lot. The memory felt like a fuzzy dream where he kept switching spectator positions.

But that wasn’t important. What was important was he’d been there a lot and someone would know him there. The lights were off, but that didn’t deter him. He’d wait until morning until someone came. He was going to figure out what his name was.

He’d opened the doors to find bullet holes in the walls and all the chairs turned over. There was broken glass over by the bar where bottles had been shattered

It was then that he realized that no one would be coming back for a very long time.

He hadn’t left after that. There were beds, after all, and a bathroom, and it was still the only place familiar to him.

There were a lot of firsts here. He’d tried lipstick for the first time after finding it buried in the dressing rooms and decided he liked his face better with it. He’d stolen a generator, dragged it back and hooked it up to the stage lights and found his love for technicolor lights. Another homeless person broke into the place, and he got his first convert to his way of thinking and his first hench. He made the place look like him as he found out what him was, scrawling his thoughts all over the walls in eye searing colors.

But he also had a lot of uncomfortable breakdowns here and he had outgrown it. He’d gotten too many henchmen, stopped being afraid of people finding him. He needed a place that was solely his that he didn’t slink in the back walls of.

He found it fitting that Hatter was hiding in the place that small, proto-Joker used to hide in. They were about on the same level. He’d just found intensely irritating when that pathetic little scrub began taking up Batman’s time and attention

[longformbatjokesfic]

Bruce handed Joker an icepack to hold to the swollen eye.

“Come here.”

Batman pulled Joker’s chair closer  with his foot so that he could work on cleaning out the cuts in his face and put some basic adhesive over them. It felt off to be working on Joker. His medical knowledge was basic, meant for keeping him and anyone he saved out of critical condition. But he didn’t like what he’d done, and this is the closest he could get to undoing it.

Joker looked away, making it easier for Bruce to work with the cuts on the side of his face.

“So, a staple gun. That’s an interesting thing to have in your medical kit.”

“Stab wounds. It’s mostly there because of you.”  

Bruce was staying out of the conversation Joker was having at him while listening for useful information. This entire night had been a mess of unexpected turns and unanswered questions, so he was focusing on the one he could handle.

How had Joker known the Hatter was here, and how had he not seen Jenny if he’d known about the secret compartment?

This place didn’t look intuitive to find. Had Hatter mentioned it while they were both in Arkham? Had Joker suggested it, to him? Were they working together before?

While he was reaching for the rubbing alcohol, he noticed something. Underneath the white curtains that the hatter had nailed up he could see a hint of the corner of the wall underneath, with spray-painted letters spelling “HA HA HA” in orange.

He looked to the curtain nearest to him, and yanked it off the wall and yanked it down to reveal a mural of violent imagery in spray paint, with rude illustrations of impaling’s, and faces filled with agony interspersed with spelled out laughter, doodled stage lights, and smiley faces with too much teeth, all depicted in neon.

He looked at Joker.

“Would this be yours?”