Fic: Sweetheart (PG-13, Joker/Batman, Joker/Harly Quinn, Bruce Wayne/Rachel)
Title: Sweetheart
Rated: PG-13 for violence against faces (Stephen Colbert would not approve.)
Warnings: Light Slash (as in, Adam and Steve) and het (as in, Adam and Eve) and the Joker, so you know it's going to be sick.
Characters: The Batman, The Joker. (Harley Quinn mentioned, not by name.)
Ships: Batman/Joker, Bruce Wayne/Rachel, Joker/Harley Quinn
Disclaimer: I do not own the Batman or the Joker. I did once put on crazy Joker make-up, but that's irrelevant. I just like poking around their heads and looking into the Abyss.
Length: Almost 3000 words. One-shot.
Universe: The Dark Knight

Not: Please give constructive criticism. :) I have thick skin.

Summary: the Joker and Batman have a chat. They learn how the Joker got his scars, and Batman got his.

--

Two hours after the news reported the breakout in Arkham, and Batman had already found him. It was a good job, he had to admit. But he couldn't congratulate himself when it was so obvious that the Joker wanted to be found. It was also hard to congratulate himself on walking straight into an obvious trap.

He had tripped on a banana peel.

Yes. A banana peel.

The last thing Batman heard was that hideous cackle, and then the gas knocked him out before he could get up. He woke up tied with thick ropes to an old red armchair with the stuffing coming out of the cushions. It was obvious where he was: the sky scraper where he had last seen his funny old pal. It still hadn't been fixed up, due to some arguments over which of the mayor's friends got the rebuilding contract. It was completely dark inside this particular room, but the he could see the glimmers of the city through the cracks in the walls.

Immediately, Batman checked his surroundings so that he could assess the situation and form a plan to escape. He was still in his uniform, at least, and his legs weren't tied. The ropes would be easy to break, then he could find a door--

He heard the laugh again. It crawled through the air towards him, with no body to go with it, until the Joker stepped out in front. He held a flashlight underneath his chin, like a camper telling a cheesy horror story, but instead of saying, "Boo!", he just laughed. His white face was broken strangely by the light that hit him, like a cracked mirror, but his expression was clear: pure joy in every white wrinkle and crack and scar on his face, his red lips spread into a smeary, silent, bleeding grin.


The Joker threw the flashlight on Batman's lap, where it still faced him. He started to hum a rthymless tune and took something out of his vest. He twirled something made out of plastic between his fingers, like a neat coin trick. He hummed, made a little "ta-da!", and pressed a button in the side of the object. In one second, a long, serrated blade flicked out, a little worn around the edges but shiny as a new coin.

He just held the switchblade for a few seconds. No one had said anything yet.

"You know, I had a big speech planned out," he started in conversational tone, his voice low and gravelly like the rocks on a beach on a moonlit night. "Oh, I've been planning for a while. But you know the damndest thing is--I forgot it the moment I saw you!" He laughed a very crisp, loud Ho Ho, Hee Hee. Then, quietly and smoothly: "I think I'm a little nervous, that's all. This is a big night."

Batman thought, If he comes closer I can kick him unconscious and get the switchblade.

"Have you ever prepared to talk to someone really special, and just gotten so tongue-tied?" He flicked out his tongue quick, like a lizard.

Then I can bring the knife up with my feet and cut the ropes.

"What do you call 'em--butterflies in the stomach." The Joker stabbed the switchblade forward in the air, in the direction of Batman's midriff.

It'll have to be quick. Then I can call Gordon to pick him up.

He flipped the blade on the switch back and forth, just trying it out. Eyes roving all over Batman's face--what he could see of it, with the mask--so he could imagine exactly what it would feel like to bring the blade close. How the muscles would twitch and react.

Come closer...

The Joker did amble on closer, flipping the knife around at his leisure. He stopped, and laughed, "Silly me, silly me! My mind is just slipping today. I forgot to tie the rest of you up." His lizard tongue darted out and he made a little gecko giggle. "That's okay! I can aim.

"Now, I wanna show you something that I've been waiting a long time to do," he said, his voice still slow, gravelly, soft, his tongue still flicking out. He pulled out the switchblade slowly this time, letting it twinkle in the meager illumination of the flashlight. He flipped the knife in a somersault and caught it and came closer--but not within kicking distance--and Batman said nothing. If the Joker threw a knife with him, he could use it to cut his ropes. He could deal with the pain. He had to deal with pain, or he'd never have made it this far. He wouldn't be the Batman.

The Joker held his knife up, in front of Batman's face; moved it to the side slowly, like he was 

caressing that face; aimed; leaned over--stretched out and planted a big wet kiss on Bruce Wayne's lips.

It was like kissing a slobbery dog covered in paint. Bruce could feel the slimy, creamy make up transfer over to his face, surely leaving a big red gooby mess. A ridiculous red mess, ruining his serious costume. It probably looked hilarious. A real clown. The Joker was delighted. Batman could feel the bile in his throat, like the Joker had just vomited happily all over him.

Worst of all, he forgot to kick him.

"What?" demanded the Joker, already backed out of striking range. "No fireworks?"

Batman managed to ask, "...wh, why?"

"'Cause I like you!" said the Joker, and his face contorted to say duh.

It was just a sick joke, that's all, though Batman. To disorient him. "You like me," he mimicked.

"Oh boy, do I ever like you! I'm just mad about you, darling, just wild. You know why?" He flipped the knife again. "You make me laugh." He caught it. "And you always keep things interesting. You keep up the spice in the relationship."

"My only relationship with villains like you is to put you in jail," said Batman, hoping that his voice had the appropriate tone of menace.

"Villains like me?" The Joker frowned so that his lipstick reached his chin. Some of his make-up had smeared off, leaving a patch of clammy gray skin on his cheeks, and red-and-white splotches on Batman's. "And here I thought I was special! One of a kind!" he sighed theatrically. "Oh, but I am special, darling, I am a be-a-u-tiful snowflake." Then he added, "You wanna know how I got these scars?"

Oh, the classic. Batman felt his lips stinging and he was losing the feeling in his arms now too, but he decided to sit through the story rather than try to knock over the chair.

"I had a sweetheart once," said the Joker slowly, bringing his blade close to his heart like it was the focus of the story. "My therapist at Arkham. She liked me best of all the inmates--I mean, patients. Said I was unique. Took I a real liking to me." Seeing Bruce's confused face (or, more accurately, his confused chin): "I know, right? Why? Some people are just so hard to understand. And this person, well, she was just cra-azy --" he blew out his lips and spun his finger around his ear in the loco symbol "-- about me. She even said she'd try to get me out of Arkham. But first--furst--she had to understand me. She says she wants to know the real me, to get in real deep, down under the skin and muscle and right up into the veins. She has to know! Who am I? What am I? What do I like, what makes me tick? So I tell her what I like.

"I like killing people. Slowly. With knives.



"To aid in her research, I sure her what I mean." He stopped, to take a breath, lick his lips, and then really picked up steam. "Soon she looks like one of those harlequin clowns, checkered red all over. She starts begging--you know, stop stop!," he gasps, "oh no!," he gasps, "crying, what I usually get. She begs for mercy, she says, if I could only feel her pain, I'd stop. I say," and then he leaned forward real close this time, and Batman forgot to kick him again because the air was running out of the room, "Of course I feel PAIN, babe, my LIFE is pain, and I gotta LIVE a little! I love it! It makes me--" and he motioned with his beloved blade on either side of his cheeks "--smile. But, you know, she has a point! So, just to be fair, I put the knife on myself. Now I'll always remember how she feels, every time I smile."

He added, "Batty, I just wanna ask you:" and he smiled, such a bright smile: "You think I can't feel pain?"

Batman didn't say anything, but he hoped to God he could.

"Think I can't feel pain? You think I can't feel PAIN? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hooohooohoo. Hoo. Hee. Hee. Hehehe."

He coughed, his voice a little hoarse now from the shouting. "Oh, but the story isn't over yet! See, despite being not so neat -- blood everywhere, what a mess -- I want to get back to the job at hand. Her face is still a bit too serious. So I bring the knife back down--and push it in--and push--but then--then she says--get this--" he waved his arms up like a conductor at the crescendo, at the punch line: "I love you."

The laughter exploded out of the red stain on the Joker's face, like a grenade. "Oh boy! That was a good one!" In a falsetto, he mimicked, "I understand now. I understand you. I love you!" He repeated the words, his voice lower this time. "I love you. I love you." For a moment, Batman couldn't read the Joker's eyes.

Then they were back to dancing merrily. "Oh man, it was the nuts! She keeps on repeating it. Says we'll bust out of Arkham, live a life of crime, ride off to the sunset like Bonnie and Clyde--even tries to kiss me, now who would ever wanna do a thing like that?--but then--THEN--" His grin widened till the red marks reached his ears and his grimy green hair. "This is my favorite part. She takes her finger and draws a--draws a heart with my blood! Oh man! It's GREAT! I love it! We really laugh it up together, a total classic, I gotta say, a regular Ko-dak mo-ment. I mean, people are usually very interesting when they die, even if they say the same things, but this? This one was special."

He chuckled, as though to say, good times, good times. Then he was quiet. He said nothing for so long that Batman asked, without thinking about it, "Then what happened?"

"Oh, she died. I mean, jeez, she was bleeding like crazy. I really did a number on her." He darted out his tongue again, as though licking the salty blood off his face. And his eyes showed nothing. Nothing at all.

He'd never understand, Batman realized, never understand what the Joker did or why, any more 

than he'd learn how he really got his scars. He didn't want to. Batman realized that the Joker didn't kiss him because was gay or straight or anything. He did what he damn well felt like and he was what he did. He could kiss or kill him right now. He was nothing, and he was everything. He was happy, and he was free.

He was evil. He was sick and evil, thought Batman, and took comfort in that truth.

"It's too bad I never got to talk to Rachel like that," commented the Joker.

Batman's chest cracked inside, like ice. For the only time in his life, he was glad that Rachel died the way she did, and not by the Joker's knife. Glad that at least once, Batman had saved her from the villain's evil clutches, caught her as she fell, and saved the day.

But just one day, and she died a few nights later.

"Do you know why I chose Rachel, Batty?"

The part of Batman's chest that he never touched, because it was too close to Bruce Wayne, and Bruce couldn't face it either, tightened that much more.

"You chose Rachel because she was Harvey's...girlfriend," he said dully. "He loved her." He stated the facts. "So you made us choose."

"No, no, baby, I made you choose. Rachel was quite a beauty, wasn't she? And such a sweetheart, I heard. Surely not just Harvey was eyeing her." He said, "Bruce Wayne too."

Batman chose his words, then tried to force them out of the ice in his throat. "What does he have to do with this."

Another laugh grenade exploded so that his mouth was just a red blur. "Brucey, Brucey, darling! I knew it was you the whole time!"

The red stain over the Joker's yellow teeth seemed to grow, filling Batman's vision. Everything was red, he wanted to punch that face until those teeth cracked into a thousand shards of glass, but he couldn't, he couldn't, move. He had to ask.

"If you knew it was me...why did you kill those." He breathed. "People. So I would take off the mask. Why did you make us." He forced it out. "Choose."

"I thought you'd look better without the mask." The Joker then looked deeply into Bruce's handsome eyes. The Joker's eyes were red-rimmed, and full, and dancing. "And who did you choose?" His eyes danced, his knife danced, he flipped it up and down... "Who? Who, Brucey baby?"

"Rachel," he said. His lips were dry, but the word sounded wet. He screwed up his eyes tight. "Rachel."


Then all the pain came through in his heart like the long slick trail of a razor, like the lighting of a match, like the explosion of gasoline. He wanted to cry. He wanted to call out her name. He wanted all his years without her back, all his centuries without his parents back, he wanted Batman to die and Bruce Wayne to ride off into the sunset for once.

Most of all, he wanted the Joker to die. Specifically, he wanted to kill him.

But he knew nothing would make the Joker happier. The clown's face broke into a big smile, the eyes knowing and just begging him, come on, come on, put the pistol to my head. It's a carnival game, shoot the clown.

But the Batman didn't do it. That was the only thing that kept him good. He didn't kill unless he had to. Even if it made no sense, even if he had every reason, every duty in the world to kill the Joker, even if his principles were stupid and stubborn and meant nothing, he wouldn't do it. He had something, a rock, something that would never change, and that was what made him better.

Or at least saner. So he chose to believe.

It didn't help with the Joker flipped the blade out, lunged forward--and cut Batman's ropes. And handed him the knife. And stood back, arms outstretched.

"I know what you want to do. Hug me, baby!" the clown cried.

Batman flung away the knife, and the flashlight than had laid on his lap the whole time. "I don't need weapons," he said, but he thought his fists would do.

Boom! Punch! Kapow! went the action-packed sound effects. Then Hee Hee! Haw Haw! went the hysterical laughs.

"Now now, this ain't nice!" screeched the Joker, real excited now. "Why acting so...batty? HAHAHAHAHA--"
God, he wanted to kill him. The puns just made it worse.
"--HAHAHAHAHA!"

The Joker sang, "When I'm with you, I just can't help but smile," he laughed and laughed, and that god-damn laughter of the man who killed Rachel and killed Harvey Dent and almost killed Gotham was ringing in his ears, and then wham! boom! punch! The cold, clammy gray spots where the make-up had smudged off were replaced by bright, shining, happy new blood. There was real blood on the Joker's face right now, not just make-up, and he was knocked out cold.

It was dark. But Batman could find the knife again easily. Or simpler than that, break his neck. Bruce could just do it now, and make sure that this man never tortured someone again.

He could have. But he had his code to follow. The Batman called Commissioner Gordon to come pick him up and take the Joker back to jail.