#and if you don’t know the dw ref half of the angst is Akechi unseen hearing all of this

[bitterseaproduction]

AU Idea #53 of the day: A Post-P5R story that just straight up recycles that River Song/The Twelfth Doctor episode. Some lingering Conspiracy agents or Metaverse threat trying to use Wild Cards as puppets for something swipe Joker and say their job is basically done since they can use him as bait to capture the last loose thread: Akechi Goro.

And Joker’s not shocked they’re claiming Akechi’s alive—he believes it himself down to the bone—but he laughs right in their faces for thinking AKECHI would risk capture for HIM.

And the enemy protests, say all data or whatnot point to Joker being his most important person! Joker darkly replies that’s a low bar (thanks to people like THEM) and means nothing. Akechi might save him out of context, might definitely risk his life for him, but he would never risk near-inevitable capture for him. He does not put Joker above his own goals or freedom. He never has.

And he’s not lying. Be it due to some sort of lie detector or just Joker’s vehemence, they can all tell he believes what he says.

They still flail, reach desperately for JOKER’S actions, how HE considers Akechi important! Loves him! Would do anything for him?! Very presumptuous of them, but Joker is deathly blank as he says he never claimed otherwise. And again, he’s not lying. And it’s terrifying, the pain-honed icy rage in Joker’s voice when he says they captured the wrong one. He laughs at his captors without a care and says it was their mistake, sorry, they should have tried it the other way around! That would work in an instant! But he gets why they didn’t, that Joker was easy to find, and Akechi was impossible. Because Akechi doesn’t want to be found—

Then he’s interrupted by one of his captors screaming, falling to the ground. A serrated blade sticking out of his back.

Joker stares, his mind frozen numb as he looks up from that blade, at the man standing behind the victim. At the man everyone around them is staring at. They all grapple for weapons that already brought JOKER down, and sirens are going off, and it could all fall apart in a heartbeat, and still the figure doesn’t move, stares back at Joker with a face half masked in black, and half unreadable.

And just before all hell breaks loose, they each find their voice. “Crow?”

“Hello, Joker.”