When he started coughing, he didn't think much of it. When his skin began changing, it bothered him a little bit. But now as he stared down at the blood in his handkerchief, he knew something wasn't right.

Running through a list of potential causes, he couldn't come up with anything that really jumped out at him. He's been stuck in Arkham for the past how many months, he hasn't had access to anything in his lab. Unless it's this damn medication they keep trying to force down his throat. He wouldn't put it past the staff in this hell hole to try to finally off him. He couldn't count on his and Harley's fingers and toes combined of how many people wanted him dead.

"Finally trying to kill me," he mumbled to himself before screaming, "YOU CAN'T KILL ME NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY, YOU ASSHOLES!"

Seconds later, two guards appeared at the door to his cell. "Is there a problem?"

"Well, now that you so kindly ask, yes there is indeed a problem," he said matter-of-factly, straightening his orange jumpsuit.

"And just what would that be?" the same guard asked, turning to the other and trying to slyly roll his eyes.

Frowning at this blatant arrogance, his hands quickly shot out from between the bars, grabbing ahold of the guards collar and yanking backwards. The guard's forehead and nose collided with the metal door, a sickening crunch filling the hallway. The other guard was yelling at him and pointing his gun, but he didn't care. If they were already trying to kill him, a bullet to the forehead after he attacked a guard would be the perfect cover up.

Maybe he was playing into their hands.

.

…

….

He didn't like that very much. No, not very much at all.

Grabbing the barrel of the other guard's gun, he wrenched it from the guard's hands, driving the butt of it back into the guard's nose. The first guard was now slowly picking himself back off of the floor, but he stopped that progress with a swift blow to the side of the head. But then he felt a slight pinch in the side of his neck. He grabbed at it and pulled his hand away, now holding a small dart with a smiley face on it. Just as he was able to throw the dart into the eye of the closest person, he started to feel light-headed. Everything shifted to the side, and it felt like he was falling but why would he be falling? As it finally dawned on him what they had injected him with, he cried out a gargled "NO!" before everything went black.

When he woke back up, he was in his usual solitary confinement cell, already fitted in his special straight jacket. At least here he could scream and carry on in peace without having to worry about the guards interrupting his persecutory delusions.

He went to stand up but found that he already was standing. Goddammit, they had him strapped to an upright gurney again. Can't a man even just pace during one of his psychotic episodes?! And when he went to start screaming, he noticed that they put the damn muzzle on him too. It's not like he bit someone this time!

Grumbling, he resigned himself to attempting again to figure out why he had coughed up blood. He already ruled out it being something from his lab, it's been months since he's been near any chemicals. Accusing the staff of slowly offing him only got him locked up in solitary, but he wouldn't put it past them so he decided to keep that as an option, at least for now. The only other thing he's done recently was inject himself with the Titan toxin, which he had already recovered mostly from those after effects, and fuck Harley. Not unless fucking the dimwit spontaneously produced a brain tumor - which wouldn't surprise him. Maybe he should keep this option open for debate too...

He then proceeded to think of every bad thing that came out of fucking Harley Quinn. He had to deal with a needy bimbo begging and trying to con sex out of him constantly. His only solace was here in solitary - well, until he got bored and when he finally got back into his usual cell, he always broke out that night to find Harley. But that's beside the matter. She's certainly become the anti-muse at times. God, it was more than difficult to think around that woman, all squeaky voiced and never able to leave him the fuck alone. He had to accommodate for two instead of only having to worry about himself, but, eh, most of the time, he left her for the Bat-

Wait, what was he thinking about again? Oh, he was thinking of why he could possibly be coughing up blood. Oh yeah, he came up with the Titan toxin!

He had mostly gotten over the side effects of the toxin; the tremors had calmed down, along with occasional hallucinations - okay, maybe they were a bit more than occasional but they had gone away about a month ago. The only thing that remained was the muscle spasms he got from time to time, but those were slowly abiding too. So why would this suddenly pop up now?

Sure, there was the coughing too. And they way his skin was changing. But could all of it be traced back to injecting himself with the Titan toxin? All of the others that had been injected with it had returned to normal and were fine now. So why would he be the only one dying?

That's right, that's because he's not dying. There's no way he could be dying right now. The coughing is probably because of these damn deplorable conditions they keep Arkham in now-a-days. They could care less about their so-called "patients", yeah that's why he's been coughing so much recently.

And the skin changing is probably as easily explained as well. He's getting kinda old, right? Nah, he ain't that old yet. Maybe it's from his first chemical bath all those years ago back at Ace. Who knows what all those chemicals did to him? They've sure fucked him up a good lot already!

So the blood must be a fluke or something. Nothing's wrong with him, he's still in perfect running condition. He's the Joker for God's sake! Nothing's ever going to happen to him, he's unstoppable.

Nah, this isn't happening to him.