Title: Joker's 20 Truths.
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman in any of its forms. They belong, it belongs, whatever belongs to Warner Bros. DC Comics/Animated, the works.
Warnings: This will be a little angsty, but I hope it will also be insightful. Slight Joker/Harley, Joker/Batman. Hints from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and a few excerpts from the DC Comics.
Summary: Facts from Joker's point of view during and in-between his bouts of mania and clarity as Jack Napier.
This will be written in Joker/Jack's point of view. It may be a little confusing, but then Joker is a confusing character all together. It took me an eternity to write this, all because I read fifty fanfics on the clown, watched half of the Bats TAS series and went even further by looking up comic pieces with him—and still this didn't feel entirely right!
1.)
I am not everything I appear to be. When I took that chemical bath, I was going through not only a bad time in my life, but through a breakdown as well. Now, I can't seem to get out of it and every bad thought that comes into my head cycles around until I can't help but bring it out.
2.)
I do not love Harley. I hate her so much that every time I hit her, my day lights up and my smile grows to adulthood. The only reason I brought her into my life is because I thought I could make her into the woman I lost. She has the hair, the smile, the figure. But she is not my wife…
3.)
I try my best to keep from killing Batsy. He is the only person in the world who could kill me if I can't get out of this deep, dark place that is my miserable life. If he died, nobody could kill me, and I don't want to live forever like this.
4.)
I had a wife. She had dirty, dark blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was a wonderful cook, always feeding me red shrimp and lobster and any baking recipe she could master. Her smile was my smile and I loved her so much…
5.)
I was going to have a son. He would have inherited my name, my happiness and my hair color. But, he died along with my Jeanne, and now I just have memories of what might have been.
6.)
Looking at the Boy Blunder all grown up makes me feel nostalgic, sometimes… I was around when he hit puberty after all, so it's like watching a son go off to college when I find that's he's gone away to the screwed up, darker bitch of a city next door.
7.)
Bud and Lou, the worthless hyenas, will not listen to a thing I say. I sense they'd eat me if they ever got the chance…
8.)
Me and Harley have a deal. If she gets pregnant, I will kill her. Or at least, that's the deal I offered her the first time we screwed around… I may have explained it while she was unconscious…
9.)
There is some minor shame that I feel in the deepest depths of my sleeping hours, recalling just how many people the reporters and cops say I have filled the Gotham cemeteries with, but as soon as it's there, it's gone again.
10.)
I won't lie. It's true that, yes, I have slept around with those other than Harley—some women from the streets, some men in suits with big guns and actually less than impressive "equipment", some former lackeys—but it doesn't mean I'm not monogamous. I don't get any joy out of sex with other people…not anymore.
11.)
It's stupid, but before all of this started, I could sing all the lyrics to the Beatles' songs 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'…These days, when I'm off alone and plotting something especially made for Batsy, the only song from those British yobos that I can even remember and flows through my ruined vocal chords is 'Hey, Jude'and I don't really mind, for some reason.
12.)
I lost my virginity when I was eighteen to the woman who I would eventually marry. What she ever saw in some gangly, pimply scarecrow looking kid with oversized clothes, the constant scent of pizza and brown hair that reached my shoulders, is anyone's guess.
13.)
When I worked for the mob, a long time before the incident with the chemical bath, I must have chain smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. And not those crappy ultra-light ones; I smoked the heavy smog filtered, get cancer in around five years kind of smokes that left a horrible smell around the house. But I never smoked insidethe house.
14.)
I can barbeque. And the funny thing is, I've never incorporated this into any of my schemes to get Batsy down to the ground. I think about it all the time, but then, I always dismiss the idea and make Harley go buy something I can make on a grill—stolen or otherwise.
15.)
Ivy sleeps with plants and that's way crazier than anything I do, thanks very much.
16.)
The rumors among the other Rogues are most likely just the result of being spiteful towards me, but I still can't help from biting my lip when I overhear them wondering aloud if I've got a thingfor Bat Guano. It's not true, and not accurate, but it's still disturbing.
17.)
If anyone ever asks I will deny it and then spray my laughing gas—or better yet, my acidic chemicals from my flower—at them, but the answer is yes: I have on occasion taken a peek at the other Rogues in the showers at Arkham. I can't believe the cretins that call themselves doctors make us shower together at all, but as it is, I have spied with my little eye, that the guys are almost as unsightly as I under our prison clothes or befitting garbs we wear on the outside.
That said, Eddie is probably a nine to my ten on the scales of attraction. But nobody will hear that from me.
18.)
Stargate Atlantis is the only sci-fi TV series I can watch without shooting out the screen of the television set.
19.)
I can keep up shouting, "Now we see the violence inherent in The System! Help, help! I'm being repressed!" from the moment Gordon and Bullock sometimes drag me into the station for booking, until they call Batman with that oversized flashlight or scrounge up a paddy-wagon secure enough to take me to Arkham themselves. And the reaction from the fat cop never gets old.
20.)
I really miss being called Jack. Someday, I might get the chance to use it again. But not today.