Chapter One: Scars

She walked straight and tall as she made her way down the main hall of Arkham Insane Asylum. Behind thick plexiglass walls and iron bars she could feel the stares and hear the whispers of nearly half of Gotham's worst. She ignored as some called out to her and refused to even look at the vulgar sights of some of the inhabitants. She kept her gaze focused on the guards ahead. She reached the end of the hall and the guards stopped her and demanded her records of identification she had been told to bring with her as well as her belongings to be searched. She willingly handed the guards her certificates and briefcase while another ran a metal detector over her. When she was cleared for entrance she was given an employee ID card to slide through the reader of the next door to her patients cell.

She walks inside the room and slides her card through the reader. It chimes and asks her to place her hand on the security scanner. She raises her right hand and presses it lightly against the equipment. It beeps and the door clicks as the bolts slide back. She steps through and looks around the padded cell. In the very center of the cell he sits. Looking down at the ground, his feet chained to the floors and his hands cuffed together in his lap. He seems to be asleep. His hair is tinted green and he wears face paint paler than the moon itself. She kneels down quietly across from him on the floor. She looks up into his face and gasps in awe at the reason that she took this job. There, red face paint put haphazardly on his legendary scars. She reaches out to touch them but a hand whips up and grabs her wrist in a crushing force. "Lookie, no touchie." He says in a sing-song voice. She stands and he releases her hand. He lifts his head to look at her. His eyes are outlined in black.

"So you're the best that Gordon could do. He's losing his touch, you know." He licks his lips and stares at her, strands of green hair falling over his dark eyes. She straightens herself and hides her fear of him. If there was thing she knew, it was that you had to hide your fear from your patients. Especially one's as dangerously insane as him. She opens her briefcase and pulls out her clipboard and a pen, taking the chair that stands across from him.

"I'm here to simply ask you a few questions, you only have to answer if you want to." She crosses her legs and rests the clipboard against her knee as a makeshift desk, adjusting her glasses. "Now, do you mine telling me your name?" He smiles and begins to laugh his famous laugh.

"Do you want to hear a story?" He asks her in a serious tone not a moment later. "About how I got these scars?" He runs a finger over his never-ending smile that only instills fear.

"If that's what you'd like to tell me, then go ahead." She sits carefully, waiting. She'd always wanted to know about them, ever since she first saw Joker on the news. He smiles.

"well, you see, when I was a little boy," he watches her with intimidating eyes as she begins to make notes, "I never used to smile around my mother. So Mommy, being the dear she always was to me, looked at me and do you know what she asks me? She asks me, 'Son, why so serious?'" His voice is low and he drags out the s. "She looks at my sister, she's smiling and so Mommy Dearest asks her to go get Daddy's razor from the bathroom. So little sister skips off and brings back our mother the razor. Mommy takes my face and do you want to know what she does? She looks at me and asks, 'Why so serious?' and she," He pauses to lick his lips and stare at Dr. Quinzel, "She takes the razor and she drags it through my lips so I'd always, have, to smile."