Hi! Kurohana here! Just a heads-up about this story: the O.C is a character from my comic, WONDERLANDtakeII. He's the main villain, The Hatter (though he's NOTHING like Jervis Tetch). I thought it'd be fun to write him into a relationship/story with The Joker. Enjoy!

The first thing he realized was that his head hurt. Perhaps 'hurt' wasn't the right word. His head felt as though it might explode from the sheer pain. He reached up to touch his forehead (the spot where it hurt the most) when his wandering fingers came across a strange circular pattern of scars surrounding his left eye. He stood quickly, his head swimming, and he wandered over to the bathroom-area. Looking in the mirror he saw himself. The face he saw was both new and familiar. He remembered his face-shape, and the way his nose was like a narrow ski-slope, and his cheekbones and his dimpled chin and his heart-shaped face, but some of the other things were new. His hair, once blond and short, was now a shocking shade of cobalt blue. Not only that, but one side was brushing his shoulder while the other side was choppily hacked off, as though he'd cut it off with a razor (thinking back, he probably had). His skin was pale, his eyes were a deep violet (!) and then… And then there were the scars. The scars were also tattoos, as though someone had carved his face and then rubbed ink into the wounds. They wound a spiral pattern around his left eye, and a similar pattern wormed its way from his neck to his cheek. He turned his head this way and that, hoping to remember—Oh. Oh, right.

He'd been fighting the BlueJay. That damn bird. Anyways, he'd been running. Running? Running, down an alleyway or something like that. Running away from the bird, because the bird had wanted… what was that again? Oh, yes, yes, information. And the family in Hatter's employ hadn't shown up (damn lazy brits), so he'd been cornered. Wait! They'd not been in Vundercalle. He'd escaped by train to a different city! Gotham was it… Yes, yes it was. And right before the BlueJay could swoop ("hahahaha, swoop. get it?") down and arrest Hatter once again, some fetish-suit guy had jumped in front of Hatter, knocked him out and dumped him… Here. Where ever here was.

Hatter stretched as it all came back to him. Being knock out always had adverse effects on people.

"Dammit, Jay, where are you?" He screamed to the ceiling. Usually, when he was beaten to unconsciousness the bird was there to greet him. Instead of the deep, harsh tones he was used to from the BlueJay, it was a voice that spoke in a nasally falsetto that replied.

"Here. Who wants to know?" Hatter walked to the door of his cell and looked through the bars. Across from him there was a cell (#11940) with a man who stared at him. The man had dark brown eyes and dirty, greasy green hair. His lips formed a permanent smile, thanks to the scars on either side of his mouth. Hatter touched his own lips and found a handful of small scars around them. He sighed.

"Not you. Different person. The BlueJay." He said. The other man tilted his head to the side.

"BlueJay?" He asked. The Hatter chuckled.

"Some childhood-trauma case who thinks that becoming a vigilante will solve all his little problems… Ah, well…" Hatter chuckled again, more heartily this time. "We all know that never works out…" He paused, inspecting the bar. "So, how hard is it to break out of this place?"

"Not very hard." The green-haired one replied. "What do they call you? Blue-boy?"

"Funny!" Hatter replied, deadpan. "No, no, I'm not Dutch. I'm Hatter, but you, my good sir, can call me Hattie." The other laughed.

"I'm called The Joker, but you can call me J." Joker said. Hatter considered this.

"I'll just imagine that you're the letter and not the bird." He said.

"So, are you Jervis Tetch the 3rd?" Joker asked. Hatter titled his head curiously.

"Huh? No no, I'm… Well, my real name's a secret, shh—" He put his finger to his lips. "And Hatter wasn't MY idea. If you want to, blame my so called family."

"Family?" The Joker asked. He was entirely curious about anyone who wasn't afraid of him.

"Shh, shh, here comes the yummy-meal time tray!" Hatter sing-songed, sitting back on the bed and crossing his legs flamboyantly. True enough, there was a nurse with a tray of breakfast walking down the hall. Hatter sat on his bed, smiling like the Cheshire Cat, and certainly, if he could, he'd have been purring. The nurse looked at him, and broke out into an easy smile of her own. Nothing was known of this new one, not even what crime he'd committed, so he was being credited as 'non-threatening'. But Batman still said to put him here, for safety's sake. But the Nurse (Dawn), upon hearing his exclamation and seeing his idiotic grinning, surmised that even if he was crazy, he wasn't harmful. She opened the door to the cell, and instantly Hatter was upon her.

"Hi, Dawnie." He said, his 'grin' now a malevolent sneer. He grabbed her wrist, elbowed her in the back and forced her to the ground, her neck in the doorway. Looking around he surmised that the hallways near him were empty.

"Open up for your medicine, DAWNIE!" He yelled gleefully as he closed the door on her neck until it had been brutally snapped and hacked at. He dragged her body into his cell and changed into her uniform ("Good thing I'm not very tall, or else there might be an unfortunate skirt/flashing incident."). He'd just finished hiking up his knee-socks and re-strapping the Velcro on his prison-issue shoes when he saw something that made him grin even wider. Her keys and her pass-card. Grabbing her things and securing what he could of his long blue hair under the nurse cap, he walked over the Joker's cell.

"Wanna have a nice, long chat, J?" He asked, unlocking the cell.

"Certainly. And by the way, the uniform looks smashing on you."