Title: Pretty When You Cry
Type: Crossover, AU
Fandom/s Used: 10 Things I Hate About You and The Dark Knight
Setting: Joker's interrogation
Synopsis: Kat knows seeing him again is easier said than done. The Joker knows this, too, and toying with her seems like so much fun.
A/N: The idea for the original came to me when watching "10 Things" whilst home sick. Now, a few years later and completely dissatisfied with the level of work put into the story, I thought it was time to start afresh and see where my writing skills have improved. Enjoy x
She stood in the dimly lit room, grimacing slightly at the streaks of matted green that stained his once gorgeous chocolate brown curls, at the way his tanned skin seemed to crack and ebb a glossy red, the fact that after all this time, she still found him striking.
God, how she did. The stained, hideously garish teeth and hair, the smeared greasepaint and the hideous smirk didn't change the torch she'd had burning for him - she could still remember, even in the darkest of days, how he used to hold her, each kiss he'd pressed against her lips, how he'd snuck out of detention when she flashed the damn teacher and how he'd gotten in that mess all for her, anyway.
His pitch black eyes seemed to twinkle, although he hadn't spotted her yet, almost as if the predator could sniff out his prey as if on some miraculous whim.
A wolf would be foolish to turn a lamb away from his door, after all.
He seemed to be humming something unintelligible, Kat realized as she smoothed down the crinkles in her pencil skirt. To her left, she sensed Gordon, a steaming mug of coffee clutched in his trembling hand, and he peered at her over his thick-rimmed spectacles.
"Are you sure?" he pressed her, taking a hasty sip of his drink. "I mean, it's not like we get calls like yours everyday. You're just -"
Raising a thin eyebrow, Kat took a small step toward the dumbfounded Commissioner. "I may be, in your eyes, Gordon," she said lowly, and to the curious pause of the other officers near the door, she continued. "But I know him. I know who he is, I know what he's capable of. Maybe his heart's still there."
"He's insane," came the scoff of Detective Stephens, his arms crossed over his chest in disbelief. "It's a mistake to think you'll know what he'll do."
Gordon silenced him with a withering gaze, and nodded, as though considering the quality of The Joker having a heart, into his coffee. "Kat, understand where we're coming from, here. If this is really the person you ... used to date back in high school, then you are obligated by law to give us any information you can, anything at all. We've no records on him, nothing he can be traced back to. You may be our only saving grace."
Kat pressed her lips thinly, considering the weight of Gordon's implications. "He ... he used to be so different," she murmured, half to herself.
"Now, that, I can't imagine," Gordon said wryly, tipping the remains of his polystyrene cup into a trash can. "You're ready?"
"Absolutely," Kat agreed.
She was standing in an impossibly bright interrogation room - the gloomy slabs of wall, white and impossibly tacky, something black and smelling like rot (possibly mould, Kat decided) creeping up from the bottom of the slabbed mirror.
"Well, hello there," the clown grinned, sitting upright at the sight of his old flame. "Long time, no ... see."
"Don't think for one minute that you can just start that shit," Kat snarled, forcing herself to take the seat opposite him. "I'm here on my terms, not yours. Now tell me where they are."
The Joker cocked his head, a straggly curl of green falling past his cheekbone as he did so. Puckering his lips in an annoyingly childish interpretation, he mocked, "Who?"
"You know who," Kat sneered, rising up and pressing her hands on either side of the table between them. Smirking, the clown opposite her offered a sickly grin, much more animalistic than human, his yellow fangs regaling Kat cruelly.
"Hmm, oh! Harrrrvey," he drawled, puckering his lips with a wet smack. "Y'know, he has all these rules and he thinks they'll save him."
"What difference does that make? Honestly, I'd thought you'd changed, you used to be so human."
"Aww," he growled, making the cute gesture seem impossibly deranged. "I'm wounded. I mean, what happened to you? Didya settle down, get married, the whole ... stchick? I think before ya judge, take a little ... look at yourself."
Alarmed, Kat took a hasty step back, confirming his point with an air of wounded pride. He chuckled to himself, shifting his hands as if he were desperate enough to get them around someone's throat ... her throat.
"Don't be a ... a scardey cat," he snickered. "I wouldn't dare. Frankly, I'm a little insulted that you'd think I'd try something that ... cold."
Turning scarlet, Kat took a bated breath and returned to her chair, determination rife in her dark gaze. "The fact you think I'm that fucking naive goes to show you're still as pig-headed as you were when we first met, Pat." Her withering tone whipped through the space between them, causing an indecisive hush rippling throughout the room. She felt, rather than saw, his lips twist in an insipid grin, before the rumbling cackle that seemed to stir deep within his chest. She let him have his private joke, allowing her eyes to travel to his form, wondering, not for the first time, where exactly his life had bent out of shape.
His tongue swam past his lips to moisten them, and he purred, "You're wondering about the scars."
She nodded, not even denying her curiosity. "Pat, you have to be honest with me, okay? Tell me. What happened?"
His eyelids fluttered, something like nervousness, but then again, he never was nervous. "Y'see, that's another funny story." Pausing to give his old flame a mocking leer, he snickered, "but I figured that's a story for ... another time."
For the first time since they'd last met, she really, truly, looked at him. The air of absolute confidence, the dark, empty eyes and the smeared paint just felt so real, yet so complex. Relaxation seemed to glow around the jester like electric currents, cutting through the impossibly near space between the pair, and he breathed shallowly through his nostrils, regarding her with a polite, if not amused and calculating, expression. Something in his surprisingly sinewy body seemed to churn, and he offered her a sickly grin before adding, "You must've really ... missed little old me, hmm? Dropping in after all these years?"
Disgusted, she drew her hand away from the increasing contact, glaring at him through heavily lidded eyes. "I'm here because Harvey and Rachel didn't make it home. You've obviously done something, otherwise we wouldn't have any trouble, now, would we?"
His leering brown eyes flickered in annoyance, hardening in a way she never thought possible. "Who, me?" Pat snarled, rattling his cuffs with a flourish. "I was right here ... I wonder who Gordon left him with ... his people?" He scoffed at that, his impossibly dark eyes rolling with a burning, almost sickly, scorn. "Assuming, of course, they are still his people, and not ... Maroni's."
She flicked an eyebrow upward, rebuking him silently in a way only she could. "Where is he?"
"Those mob fools want ... him gone so they can get back 'to the way things were,'" he grinned, crossing his muscular arms over his wiry chest. "But I know the truth - there's no going back. He's changed things ... forever."
"Then why do you want to kill him?" she blurted, smoothing the kinks in her fine hair. "I mean, if he really means that much to you, then you -"
A bubble of maniacal laughter cut her off, echoing off the tiled surface of the room, shaking Kat deep to her core as she listened, a twisted feeling knotting her chest.
"W-why would I want to kill him?!" came the wheezing giggle. "What would I do without him? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no ... no! No, he ... he completes ... ME!"
"You're garbage who kills for money," she snarled back, "and I can't believe what I ever saw in you."
"Nonononono, y'see, you can't start talking like ... one of them, you're not! Even if you'd like to be. See, to them ... you're just ... just a freak." The insipid snarl he used to convey the insult was rife in his tone, and Kat knew how he'd loathed it so. How he'd hated it in his early high school days, and apparently The Joker had inherited the same trait. "Like me. They need you right now, but when they don't ... they'll. Cast. You. Out. Like a leper. See, their morals ... their - code. It's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show ya, darlin' ... when the chips are down, these, uh, these civilised people" - he shifted his weight a bit, giving a mocking and savage sneer at the window, the ruby lips puckered back in absolute disgust - "they'll eat each other. Y'see, I'm not a monster ... just ahead of the curve."
Kat felt her eyebrows knit softly, her brain stewing over his monologue, her senses struggling to keep up with it all. On the one hand, what he was saying did make some sense. On the other, she knew too many acts of good will, committed for seemingly no reason, and she couldn't bear believing his twisted reality, his belief that people were as fucked up as he was. People weren't evil, nessecarily. But then there are always those who you fail to save ...
Harvey. Rachel. Focus!
"Killing is making a choice, you know," came his mocking purr, and she struggled to meet his vacant, chilling glare. "Choose between one life ... or the other. Your friend, the district attorney's little bunny ... or her handsome groom to be ..."
She moved so fast she could hardly comprehend it, but the angry blotch, she knew, would stain his cheek years after the fact. Shame, she'd realised at a later age, was five-fingered - but all the clown did in his seat, as if it were a throne, was giggle at the stinging blow. She watched in a morbid contempt as he shook off the pain as if he were a shaggy dog, shaking out his large frame almost childishly.
"Don't ... worry," he grinned, and at this she did look at him, seeing the way his eyes twinkled in the harsh light, a stamp against her thawed heart. "I'm gonna tell ya where they are. Both of 'em. And ... that's. The. Point. You have to choose. He's at 250, 25nd Street, and she's on Avenue X, at Cicero."
"So, it was him." She met his searching blue gaze for a fleeting moment before turning the corner and heading out into the cold Gotham night, sensing he would follow. "Which one are you going after?" he demanded of her, panic strangling his throat for a split second.
Kat merely had time to glance up at the haunted Commissioner before answering, "Harvey."
He'd modded in response, barking orders at his officers nearby and carrying out his own duties obliquely, the darkest sound in all of Gotham a dark, harrowing cackle that pierced through Katarina Stratford's fragile mind.