Always and Always
Chapter 1
Joker lay on his back, completely and utterly content. One arm tucked behind his head on the cloud-like pillow; the other rested lazily on his chest in peaceful abandon, while his left leg crossed over his right. He heaved a deep sigh as he closed his eyes in satisfaction, letting the afterglow of a long and fulfilling day lap at his humming skin in soft angel-kisses. Gently heaving up his eyelids after a moment or two, he cast his gaze to the left, where the brilliance of a retiring sun sent warm echoes of pleasure over the world outside, bidding a quiescent farewell to the frabjous day that had passed.
Today had been so fully gratifying. And so much fun. He hadn't played at the games like that in a long while. He hadn't ever, actually. Not like today. The frolic on the grounds had been fun enough to start with, after the endless round of hide-and-seek, and then towards dusk the bats had come out to hunt…he could still hear the shrill squeaks of startled laughter from the three of them as they jumped up as high as they could, trying to catch one in their hands, only to let it go in a giggly scream of panic as it flapped about in their eager palms.
He sniggered softly to himself at the memory of her face when she had caught her first bat. She had named it Daddy. He had laughed at her choice of a name, saying that she was a girl, not a bat, so how could a bat be her father? She looked at him – that credulous, irresistible look of hers – and stated in her matter-of-fact tone that she had no doubt inherited somewhere, "But Daddy is a Bat, isn't he?"
He smiled wider than his scars would allow him at her stated question. So she had finally put the puzzle pieces together, and had connected the black suit with the creature and motives behind it. She had always been the smart one. Too smart for her age, and he sometimes felt as if she knew it. Knew that she was ahead of the curve. That she was different.
His eyes left the sunset outside the balcony and drifted to his right, towards the middle of the bed where she lay. Poor little squirt, so tuckered out she was almost asleep. She lay with her head just below the gap between two pillows, her tiny body curled up on her side in the personification of childhood comfort. She had nothing to fear here, for here she was safe, she was home. And she was loved. Loved so much it often surprised him. But, he supposed, for what – and who – she was, she deserved no less.
She was different – that much was clear, from just the look in her eyes, the way she carried herself as she discovered the world in ways that baffled most adults around her. She was smart, inquisitive, and altogether so beautifully innocent. That alone would have garnered attention from any criminal, not to mention the likes of him. But it did not fully encompass why he doted on her so much. That reason, most likely, stemmed from the reason of why she was different.
It was because she was his.
And, even more sacred, because she was his, too.
It still did not fully compute with him why he had brought it up that night five years ago. As all things did with him, it had started out as a joke. They had chuckled at the idea together, and had proceeded to carry on with the night as if nothing had been said. But it still nagged at the back of his mind, for reasons he couldn't fathom. Apparently, it had nagged at Bruce for a while, too, for he had brought it up again not a week later. And again, and again, it had wormed its way into their post-coital conversations, until Joker finally came to realize that maybe it was turning into more than just a passing fancy.
Night after night, they each dwelt on it alone in their thoughts, covertly feeling each others' flesh in soft, almost curious manners, knowing full well that they were both imagining what it would be like to join their flesh together. Not in the proverbial sense that they had already done for years, of bringing their bodies into "union" through copulation, but by literally combining and blending their features seamlessly together to create one living, breathing entity of both their images…
Somehow, some way, one night they agreed to do it. And he figured out just how to go about it, too. Being a high-profile crime lord had its perks, for the job naturally came with all sorts of connections. As always, the plan was held together with sweat, circumstance, and luck, but with the right amount of each there was a smidgen of a chance that it would work. Of course, the odds could be dipped into their favor with a certain degree of trickery, and that was an area in which he was unsurpassed.
The more difficult of the two he had to dupe had been Freeze. Fortunately the scientist had gone more than a little phrenetic in searching for a cure for his dead wife, and with enough sweet-tongued persuasion the harlequin had convinced him that the two vials' milky contents could be engineered to create a tiny version of her, to be carefully grown in secret until she could be resurrected. Thinking he was saving Nora, Dr. Victor Fries became the man who had performed the miracle Batman and Joker had been searching for: he had unified them together in the most primordial of ways. Once the zygote was formed, his lab was mysteriously trashed, and all products of his endeavors vanished without a trace.
The easier – yet more time-consuming and thus exasperating – stage of the plan was Harley. She would travel to the ends of the Earth and throw herself off the edge if her Mr. J ordered her to. And when he announced he was to make her fertile again…oh, how she had squealed with glee! The procedure was quickly carried out at Gotham General, and he had carefully and secretly implanted the single embryo within her, along with all his most hidden of hopes. Why he hoped for it to work so much, he wasn't sure; he just knew that it had to happen. For now that the plan was actually working, and that – if the planets aligned – it still could work…it seemed more real to him than ever before.
Harley became a ticking time bomb from the day she tested positive, and Joker was growing more impatient by the minute for this one to detonate. He watched her abdomen swell with each passing day, stroking it at night with a smile on his lips, knowing just whose child lay within the surrogate mother.
When Ivy rushed to her friend's side to deliver, she barely had time to swaddle the baby before the room exploded in flame. He grabbed the bundle and fled, taking the child off to its other parent, who had unknowingly waited as impatiently for its – for her – arrival as he had. Just as nervously, too, they soon realized, as Bruce held their daughter in his arms for the first time.
Their daughter.
Joker's little girl.
Bruce's baby darling.
Their pride and joy.
All their own.
Theirs.
And no one ever knew.
It had been announced not a week after her explosive birth that Bruce Wayne had been spurred by an overwhelming sense of public duty and celebrity custom to adopt a baby girl, to raise as his ward and take her from rock-bottom to the peak of financial success. Meanwhile, all Joker's fellow villains believed him and Harley to have a bright-eyed, healthy four-year-old daughter, born of fire into the night as thus befit the Princess of Anarchy.
But no one, not even Alfred, knew that she belonged to both of them. She was their greatest secret. Their buried, closely-guarded treasure.
He moved his hand from his chest to stroke his treasure's hair, sifting through its soft, silky blonde curls that so mirrored his own (when undyed). Closer to her scalp at the nape of her neck, however, he found the flaxen locks gave way to a darker hue that bordered on brunette. Bruce's hair color. He weaved absently through the chocolate waves, just as he had done countless times with his lover, who lay on the opposite side of her in the same dream-like doze he had found himself in just moments ago. His eyes roamed to the man's forehead and cheekbones, so effortlessly engraved on the sweet young face between them. But her nose and lips, Bruce had often remarked, resembled Joker's best, and he took great pride in that fact whenever she pouted at her richer father if she didn't get her way. He knew he had shown that exact same expression to Batman for years, and it pleased him that it was a trait that lingered on through his genome.
It was a curious fact that he still couldn't completely wrap his mind around: he would linger on. And so would Bruce. Even when the two of them would inevitably die, they had a perfectly-built time capsule to carry on their blood. Their souls.
And their struggle.
For he saw it in her, little by little every day. How she would be torn between carefully unfolding a birthday present and ripping the wrappings to shreds. How she would catch herself squashing a cockroach without a care, only to turn around and wonder if maybe she should have given it a fair trial beforehand.
If they were two halves of the same whole, then she was the unfortunate conglomeration. She stood at the crossroads of their two chosen paths, formed from the same eternal bond that united them and tore their beings to ribbons in the effort to bind each other together. She was an anomaly, and he couldn't ignore the future for much longer. For how could he, when the future was etched on the unnaturally perfect face of the child who slept between the two warring forces?
But she couldn't even begin to fathom how special her case was. How she was a biomedically engineered black swan, who should never have existed but against all odds had written her name on the pages of time. How she was the genetic product of two men, one of whom killed while laughing and the other of whom buried his tears with justice. How no one could know of her true parentage, or everyone on both sides of the divide would stop at nothing to yank her over to their side, only to send her falling through into the chasm. How one day, her fathers would teach her to throw knives and batarangs, to carve smiles and stitch wounds, to paint her face and clean her armor. And one day, how the three of them would have to choose between their cause, and each other.
But until that day came, they would continue to chase bats around Wayne Manor, and laugh together as she was twirled high into the air, while her parents held her high, kissed her scraped knees, and wiped off her muddied face.
Joker grinned down at the pair of deep cobalt eyes that suddenly fluttered open to meet his own jade ones. They sent sweeping jolts of electricity to his core, and he marveled at how the girl's eyes could have such a similar effect on him as Bruce's did.
"There's my girl," he murmured softly, earning a sleepy smile from her. Immediately, she broke into a wide yawn, though she tried to contain it, knowing it would send her to her own bedroom.
Bruce, alerted to her awakening, leaned over to playfully whisper in her ear, "Shouldn't someone be in their bed by now?"
She gave a half-groan of protest, obviously not wanting to move. "I'm not tired…" she mumbled out, nearly falling asleep again.
Bruce chuckled at the fib. "Of course you're not. Since you're such a big girl who can stay up past little girls' bedtimes, why don't you walk yourself to your room?" The ploy was not missed by Joker, who met Bruce's knowing grin in equal measure.
"But I –" she started before yawning again, unable to argue and fight off her drowsiness any longer. After a moment of nearly drifting asleep again, she managed, "…can't I just…stay here…with you?"
Bruce looked back up to Joker with raised eyebrows, wordlessly asking if he had planned anything more intimate for the night. Joker shrugged. "Let her," he answered. Sometimes his mind found ways of even justifying postponing romance with Bruce for his daughter. And that was something he thought would never be negotiated. Kids change things, he mused.
"Alright," Bruce said to her, shaking him from his thoughts. "You can stay here." He brought his hand over to her face, turning her to look up at him. "Say goodnight first?"
She sighed sweetly. "Goodnight, Daddy. I love you." It was a much rehearsed speech, and she performed it as well as a sleepy four-year-old could manage. But, as always with four-year-olds, the sentiment was laced with a deep-rooted truthfulness. And Bruce knew it.
"I love you too, angel," he whispered back, kissing her on the nose. It was a gesture he had performed for the man with that very same nose many times before, and the parallel drew a buzz of warmth that swelled in Joker's chest.
Bruce gazed down at his girl for a while, before flicking his eyes to the quiet clown, and added to her, "And how about Joker?"
She stirred from Bruce's arms and shifted to the arms of the Joker, meeting his embrace with a warm cuddle. "Goodnight, Daddy," she spoke into his shirt. "I love you."
He smirked at how exhausted she was, and how much effort she seemed to have to muster up just to speak the age-old endearments. Never in a million years would he have envisioned himself in this position, if asked about it when his campaign for chaos began. Yet here he was, echoing the fabled paternal words into her ear as he murmured, "I love you too, sugar," then pressed a kiss to her sweet, angelic head. And of course, according to the private joke he had recently engaged her with a few weeks ago involving pebbles in a river, added in, "Always and always," provoking a hidden smile from the girl.
Bruce looked on, his eyes blazing with the overwhelming joy he felt when he watched Joker lavish affection on their daughter. It seemed she brought out the worst in them at some times, and the best in them at times like this. He slunk over to meet the two of them, and the three fell naturally into place with each others' limbs as only parents and their children can. About to enter the realms of peaceful and hard-earned sleep, her voice suddenly roused them all.
"What about you two?"
The two adults snapped their eyes open, unsure of what she meant at first. They then met each others' eyes as the wise little girl between them asked them again.
"Don't you love each other?"
They were quite taken aback by her unintentionally probing inquiry, but after a few seconds Bruce answered it nonetheless.
"Of course we do."
Joker slanted a smile sideways, twisting the scars grotesquely, and the pair laid their heads back down, gazing at their sleeping creation in half-dazed wonderment. At least, they thought she was asleep, until she mumbled out her last question.
"…always and always?"
Joker froze, and raised himself up on his elbow to meet Bruce's startled expression with his own. For a four-year-old, she certainly could ask the most unexpected of questions, whether she knew and understood their full implications or not. Silently, they searched each others' countenances with their eyes, looking for the answer.
From the deep breathing she exhibited, she had fallen asleep completely now. Whether they chose to answer her or not was of no consequence to her. But one day, they would have to answer. And the answer would decide the course of their fates from that day onward.
Slowly, though, they found a mutual grin had spread onto their faces, and they leaned up over their daughter's sleeping body to meet each other in a gentle, full kiss. A kiss the likes of which they hadn't shared in a long while, if ever. But now it was there, and now it answered their question.
Always and always.
As I said, major fluff, not to mention this was typed up at 5 this morning after working at it all night. I've always wondered...you know those copy-paste profile lists that give the ten reasons why gay marriage "should"(n't) be outlawed? And it talks about gay couples raising kids, and I guess that got me thinking, why can't Bruce and Joker have a kid? Y'know, after about 15 years down the road in their relationship, where they actually love each other and accept that and stuff...I mean, that's what they've subconsciously been fighting for this whole time, am I right? To have their beings completely merged together, because they represent a whole that broke in half and wants to be one again. So in comics and movies they release that through kicking each others' asses, in most slash fics they do that by shoving up into each others' asses, and here...they finally get it right. And I just wanted a feel-good fic about these two. Who wouldn't? :D
I guess this kinda follows the storyline of "Tense", where they were together for about ten years. Then this is five years after that, when they have the four year old unnamed daughter. I decided to keep her anonymous because no matter what I name her it's gonna sound unoriginal and fake and Mary-Sue-ish and it wouldn't sound like a name they could both agree on. Not to mention they would probably have to use different nicknames around society when she's Bruce's ward, and when she's with the lowlifes as Joker/Harley's kid. And then there's her real name when she's just with her dads. :D I wonder what Father's Day would be like for them...xD
Reviews make me happy. Always and always. ^.^
And is it just me, or is the formatting in Document Manager really messed up? I can't get my title to align with center, and the line breaks aren't showing up after I save...grrr