The Joker took a leap between First and Corioulus street. His mouth was sticky with the taste of iron and he kept licking his lips to ease his thirst. He tried to straighten out his purple jacket as he ran—he refused to be seen like this, with his blood smeared upwards across his pure-white face and his suit hanging off him in filthy tatters—but the shoulder seams were done for and it took all the energy he had to keep from losing one of his sleeves. The wind rushed into him, drying the sweat on his brow and making off with the flower on his lapel.

The flash of shattered headlights practically blinded him as he scrambled across the road. He did not know where all these damned cars were coming from at this obscene hour of the night, but he did know that one just nicked him in the moment before he hurled a rock, which he had been carrying for the last fifteen blocks, at the windscreen. The car swerved onto the sidewalk and took out a shop window and two street signs, people ran this way and that in screaming terror, a woman actually fainted, and he had to admit, it would have been pretty hilarious if he were not in such a sour mood. But he was and it wasn't. In fact, if it weren't for his left arm being snapped rather cleanly in two and the blood presently making its way into his esophagus, he might have brought a bigger rock. Whenever he moved, pain shot up his shattered limb and down the length of his spine-the sort of unnamable, excruciating pain that most sadomasochists only dream of. Honestly, he was just lucky his legs weren't broken.

But he didn't dwell on it. He didn't have the time.

Not when the Bat was on his tail.

Usually, he just decided to forego the whole 'dramatic chase scene' deal that all the other villains of Gotham seemed to have oh-so-much fun with, and sort of just hang around at the scene of the crime until the Batman showed up and they could exchange a bit of witty banter, because if anyone asked him, that was probably the thing he reveled in the most. If someone decided to make a chart featuring the ratio of the time Joker engaged in witty banter to the time he spent killing people, (he would gladly consider not killing someone if they agreed to make that chart. Maybe) they would be surprised to find that he spent at least twice as much time doing the former than the latter. Admittedly, this was probably because killing people was sort of like the thing people did when they were bored and needed a hobby, and really, it was a frustratingly quick process at times. Humans were miserable meatsacks at the best of times and annoying obtrusions at the worst, made of sticks and straw and other fragile, earthly things, more fit for entertainment than for sport. But the less time he spent on maiming innocent bystanders and their mothers, the more time he had to spend with his favourite black-panties vigilante.

But tonight, he was no different than the rest of his pathetic, unforgivably unstylish peers. Whatever they seemed to see in Batman all the time, for Joker it was a first. Never in his entire life—at least, the life that mattered—had he looked in the Batman's eyes and, for one stark moment, seen himself. Not like that.

He licked his lips again, swallowed down sticky saliva and blood. God, he was thirsty.

He looked at the sky, a rolling, unhappy black, and a drop of water fell into his eye. That actually made him chuckle a little as he finally collapsed into a heap in an alley between 'who knows' and 'what do I care'. Car lights flashed across the entrance, occasionally turning the blackness of the built up grime either completely sallow or ruby red. The hollow of the alley made everything on the outskirts sound louder, as though he was that stupid kid sitting on the windowsill, looking on the city, and thinking he could find the ocean in a shell. Thunder rolled, born from the roar of streetlights and city life, and echoed skywards. The Joker saw the silhouettes of gargoyles on the rooftops when lightning fissured the sky, saw the way they hung off the ledge tremulously as though they were deciding whether or not to jump.

Jump, he dared them in wavering silence. When you hit the ground, you'll still have fewer pieces than me.

He closed his eyes, too tired to keep them open but too awake to sleep. In the ground he heard the rattling hush of the subway beneath him, felt the entire planet shudder against its speed. The rain got harder, feeling more like prickles of glass on the skin and sounding like stones as it pelted the windows and dumpsters and dirt that made up the alley. The stench of car exhaust, of cigarette smoke, of human filth and rot, it all was pushed down and disappeared beneath the weight of the sky pressing down. The steps passing by the alley mouths became quicker and more urgent. A car let out a long, blaring howl. A child laughed.

He thought of the Batman.

Remembered the coldness in those black-framed eyes that looked down cruelly from above. Remembered being looked at as though he didn't even exist, though those taloned hands had him held up by the neck.

Remembered his breathlessness and his relief when he was dropped off the ledge and surrendered to gravity and the ground.

Remembered nothing.

Joker looked up again, this time not seeing a thing. He tried to smirk, to giggle, to laugh, but his ribs pushed back into his lungs and he gurgled on the blood rising in his throat. It really was amusing, in a perverse sort of way. After all that taunting and mockery, after the all the effort he'd put into forcing the Batman to realize that the two of them were, at their cores, the same, now that the bat seemed to be showing his true colours it wasn't half as fun as he would have thought.

In a strange, lucid moment, he opened his mouth and let raindrops pool in the back of his throat and slide down his lips. Water glittered on his eyelashes, green like his hair, and it looked like dew on a field. If he could have, he would have stayed. He would have just lied there in the dirt and broken glass and drunk in the sky and the city for the rest of forever. But he couldn't. He couldn't.

The wind let out a long, lonely howl and for a second there he thought he heard the rush of a cape batting away the rain. He wheezed—he didn't want to get up anymore—and got his working limbs reluctantly under him. His tie slid off from around his neck and fell in a loop on the ground. His ribs shifted inside him again, practically fissuring all the way down, and they pulled back and tried to puncture his heart. As thought I wasn't broken enough already, he joked to himself. Which ended up being pointless, since what was a joke if there was no one to laugh at it?

Hurpling as though he was a puppet cut at the strings, he pushed away from the ground and headed off in to whatever place would have him. In moments he was a smear of white and green in the torrent and the night, and just like magic, he was there—

-then he was gone.

… … … … … … … …

Hey again, everyone! Back by popular demand, it's the Batman and the Beldam!

After getting a message asking if I would write more joker, batman fics (you know who you are, miss!) I opened a word document and just started typing to see if anything would come of it. And thusly was this born. I got so much positive feedback from Indigo, I worry that I won't be able to live up to the hype, but I guess there's only one way to find out.

Thanks for reading the first chapter to a story that one hopes will entertain you.