A/N: Written because of my driving need to fic him in the nurse outfit.

In The Offing

The nurse was standing, all gangly-legged in the short skirt— where on earth had this guy found that archaic dress, anyhow, its very existence was an offense to modern femininity, though that probably wasn't what the bloke was concerned with— watching with apparent cheer the death, devastation, and horror that was going on around him. It was probably a him, O'Neil thought, despite the dress. No one wanted to take bets on it, though.

Then the hospital erupted, like a volcano had gone off underneath it. The nurse freaked and ran; they could hear him giggling as he pelted towards the bus. Whatever else was wrong with this joker, there wasn't anything off about his legs.

He bounded onto the bus, exuding freakish good-will, and slammed the door behind him.

"And we're off!" he bellowed. The bus driver was waiting for this, this signal, and slid the vehicle into motion with a squeal of gears and a revving of the engine; the nurse lurched along with the rest of them and grabbed for the back of the seat to his right to regain his balance. He made a face.

"Be careful, Bruno! We're porting precious cargo here. Someone could get hurt." He grinned widely at the occupants of the bus, who were patients in fairly dire straights. He'd chosen the bus with the lowest chance of survival, should things go wrong on the way to the other hospitals; which, evidently, was going to happen. Whatever else, his very presence on their bus was a sure sign that things were not going according to plan. O'Neil shifted closer to her patient, who was breathing too shallowly to cough.

The movement attracted the nurse's attention; he snapped up straight with feral quickness, and darted his gaze to her.

"Got a plan?"

O'Neil blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Ooh, a Britisher! Welcome to our fair country." He sat down sideways in the seat next to him and leaned forward, putting his folded arms on the back of the seat in front of him. The skin of his arms looked peculiar next to his paint-blanched face; he showed his scars with something like pride. "Never mind that we're run by a bunch of dingbats and hos. I didn't elect 'em. I asked you if you had a plan."

To stay alive as long as possible, was what she wanted to say, but she didn't dare. To say something like that was to tempt fate. Yet she took comfort from the fact that he didn't appear to be armed, and that she recognized everyone around her; which meant that his only confederate was the bus driver. Bruno. Could that possibly be his real name? She wanted to look around and scrutinize him, but the Joker had pinned her with his gaze and she knew it would be dangerous, if not downright suicidal, to look away from him now. And possibly even worse to ignore him.

"No," she said. His eyebrows shot up.

"No? I'm disappointed, Limey. By the look on your face I thought surely you were thinking of inventive ways to kill me." He grinned at her. "I know I would be, if I were you."

She shook her head just enough to negate; then sat still and waited for him to pick on someone else. Which he did, almost immediately, panning his gaze around the jouncing bus— where were they going?— and saying, "What a bunch of sickies. Doncha think, Doctor Limey? Some of them look like they wouldn't last a day. And what's he on, oxygen?" He bounded up and walked unsteadily to Mr. Braddock, across the way and a bit forwards. Leaning into his face, he shouted, "Is the air not getting to your brain, huh? Need a little extra?"

He was reaching for the dials on the side of the tank when O'Neil stood up. Mr. Braddock wasn't her patient, but Kemelman didn't appear to be able to move. What else was she supposed to do? There was no telling what this madman would do, to the patients, to herself and the other three doctors. Clearly their lives weren't worth anything, from this point on.

Going on that assumption gave her the strength and conviction to push towards him, shove his hands away.

"Leave him be," she snapped. "He's done nothing."

"So?" said the Joker, blinking in a show of puzzlement. "Who says that you have to do something in order to have something done to you? Since when has the world worked on the principle of reciprocal punishment? None of you—" he waved a hand vaguely at the bus in general, "—none of you have actually done anything to deserve this, have you?" He swayed as the bus moved, and looked around at all of them. "If you have, I'd like to hear about it. Details, please."

"No," said O'Neil, as strongly as possible. "We've done nothing. And yet you're doing this to us— and all those other things you've done—" She shook her head. "Why would you do those things?"

He cocked his head, and took a step away. "Are you trying to get into my head, Doctor Limey? My twisted and unknowable thought processes? Because I've gotta tell you, I've had psychiatrists. The only good they did me was satisfy my appetite for, ah, sensationalism."

An exhibitionist, she thought, all big gestures and twisted bravado. That was enough for her to know; more than enough. She had no idea what kind of person would actively seek to get inside his head. But still, those big gestures— even one of them was enough to condemn them to death. Just look at his hat trick with the hospital; mass destruction as performance art.

She said, "Why are you keeping us alive?"

He tilted his head the other way this time. "I'm willing to discuss alternatives. Are you?"

She glanced around her at her fellow prisoners; most of them were freaked, with reason, but a few looked steadfastly back at her: a few of them were big men, powerful and bulky. She allowed herself another slice of comfort from their presence, despite how obviously frightened they were. One medium-sized madman pinning them down like this— if anyone actually does get inside his head, finds out what makes him tick, the field of modern psychiatry isn't going to know what hit it.

"Where are we going?" she tried next.

"Straight to hell," he shot back immediately. "Along with the rest of the city. This is the part—" He paused to consider his words, smacking his lips in delight. "This is the part where I say 'Today Gotham— tomorrow the world!' But to be honest with ya, Doc, I don't know that I'd take the world if someone offered it to me." He pursed his scarred lips in thought. "Maybe Australia."

"But what are you going to do with us? Why are we here, on this bus, headed to hell? Oh, I believe you, and we're going there fast. But I want to know why. Please, tell me why."

"You mean, what are you going to do when you get there?" He raised his eyebrows at her. "Simple. I'm playing a little game of cat and flying mouse. I'm the cat. And the cat needs a little bait." He stabbed one finger at her. "You're the bait."

She didn't know what he meant by this, but she could tell it was nothing good; nothing they were likely to recover from. They had to get control of the situation and they had to get it now. She turned with urgency to the other doctors— as terrified as they were, they were her best hope. She had tried talking, and gotten nowhere— the only thing left is force.

"It's only the two of them," she urged in a low voice— not because she had any hope that he wouldn't hear or that he'd ignore, but because she already felt short of breath from her own rising panic, and she was afraid that if she spoke too loud she would simply pass out. "We're more than they are." In number and in spirit, she hoped. They all of them had to be better than the murderous clown and his bus-driving cohort who, much to her distress, didn't even look around, but only chuckled as though he knew something she didn't.

The clown skipped back, lightly. "Whoa there, Limey. Hold your horses. Stop inciting the rabble. You're gonna get more than you bargain for— bite off way more than you can chew."

"Empty threats," she said, with a certain amount of unrealistic optimism. The doctors, and some of the camera crew who were hitching a lift, started to stand up. The Joker held up one finger, motioning for them to hold on a sec, then bent over and reached underneath his skirt. A moment of awkwardness followed as he conducted a thorough search— they were all too stunned to move anyway. Finally he gave a satisfied grunt and straightened up. He had a gun in his hand.

"Velcro," he informed them brightly. "In case you were wondering."

O'Neil took a step forward, almost involuntarily, and he waggled the gun at her mockingly. "Ah-ah, Limey. Hold it, unless you want to see what else I can pull out of there. Stiff upper lip, remember. Recognize superior firepower when you see it."

One by one, they subsided into their seats. O'Neil was the last, and she balefully held the Joker's gaze as she sat down once again by her patient, who was now hardly breathing at all.

"He's sick," she said. "He needs to get off the bus."

"He'll get off soon enough." The nurse, the clown, the madman looked out the window, and grinned. "Mass exodus," he said, so quietly as to be talking to himself; but the bus riders were silent, the silence of anticipatory dread, and the words rang clear. The Joker looked them over, and shook his head. Obviously they were of some disappointment to him; had he expected less of a fight, or more? O'Neil wondered. Had he expected anything?

Bait. Bait for a flying mouse.

It had been a long two days; she'd been at the end of an extended and busy shift when the call to evacuate came, and she'd barely done more than catnap in forty-eight hours. The adrenalin was beginning to fade; there was nothing she could do except try and puzzle the conundrum out to its end. She leaned her chin into her hand, and dared to close her eyes.

She awoke, immediately aghast— to fall asleep at a time, in a place, like that!— to the smell of greasepaint, and unwashed hair, and a cotton-covered shoulder underneath her. She was being carried from the bus by— by—

She yelped, and struck out with both arms and both legs. The arm around her waist clamped tighter, and a testy voice said, "Hold still, willya?" She got him a good one in the nose, though, and he dumped her unceremoniously on the ground, clapping both hands to his painted face. Blood seeped out and ran through his fingers, and he eyed her balefully for a second. She gulped.

"Now look. You ruined my dress. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bloodstains out of whites?"

She suddenly felt that she simply could not cope any longer, and covered her face with her both hands, and clenched every muscle in her body as tight as she could. She could hear him walking away, and then one of his henchmen— wherever they were, they'd been joined by others— prodded her up and off the ground with the end of a rifle. In the near distance they were setting up an awning and a video camera; the rest of the prisoners were grouped around it, holding on to each other. They seemed to be doing alright without her, she was glad to see.

Through the windows of the bus she could see him stripping the dress off, shimmying it up and over his head, where it got caught briefly before he ripped it off and threw it irritably at the floor. His back was curved, remarkably hunched towards the shoulders, as though he'd spent his childhood in a box. Even from this distance she could see tattoos; a little closer, and she would see scars. She was sure of it.

She didn't go any closer.

She was prodded, again at gunpoint, towards the rest of the prisoners. She was right, they were doing just fine without her. Kemelman had risen to the occasion and was assisting O'Neil's patient as best as he could, given the lack of oxygen. They were waiting for something now— waiting for what? Nightfall, perhaps.

The Joker's men began to circulate among them, with electrical tape, with masks like the ones they wore. A strange and horrible surmise began to dawn in O'Neil's mind, and she turned to the Joker, who had emerged from the bus dressed in a dusty suit that, like him, had seen better days.

"You're disguising them. Why? What are you planning on?"

He regarded her stoically for a minute. His nose was still bleeding, though the gushing had slowed to a trickle. He licked it off his upper lip.

"Come here a minute. I want to talk to you."

He didn't wait for her, but clamped a hand around the back of her neck and quick-marched her several steps away.

"Now, look," he told her as they went, "I like you, Doc, I genuinely do. But your constant questions are starting to get annoying. Now, I like a laugh as much as anybody. More than most. But I don't want a panic on my hands, here. I'm just a guy who does the best he can, and as long as my plan works out okay, I'm not planning on doing any more shooting than I have to."

"You're just going to let others do it for you," she choked out. His hand squeezed harder, then released her so abruptly she stumbled.

"Not a bad idea," he said, as though commending her on her ingenuity. "I'll have to see if I can work that out."

She stood a few steps away from him, hands tied together; she'd fought with disease, warred with untimely death, but never had she felt so defenseless as she did now, facing him. He looked her square in the eye, and tilted his head inquisitively.

"Do you wanna know how I got these scars?" he inquired abruptly. "I was working the late shift, a security guard at one of those big corporate places, you know?" He waved his gun to emphasize his words. "A lady, some dumb dame who keeps her brains in her husband's vault, walks down the street on her own, and this gang attacks her. They've got knives. Sharp ones. I go to help— it's not my job, exactly, but it's the principle of the thing— and I get in their way, I mess up their fun. And there's more of them than there is of me. So they take the knife, and they put it to my face—"

"Boss," said one of his men, coming up behind them. The Joker stilled, and heaved a sigh.

"I'm always having my stories interrupted," he complained. "What?"

"We're ready to shoot the news guy."

"You're going to shoot him?" O'Neil repeated, aghast, and the Joker turned to her and laughed.

"Only in the sense he's used to. But nice— that you're worried about him. At a time like this." He looked at her with something almost like fondness. Almost, but not quite. "I told you how annoying you were getting."

"We're ready to go, boss."

"Head count," the Joker barked, without turning away from O'Neil, who stood watching his gun like a deer in the headlights.

"Fifty," supplied the man.

"That many? Hmm. We don't need fifty. Forty-nine'll do me." The Joker grinned at O'Neil, and leveled the gun. "Forty-nine'll do me just fine."

"You're going to shoot me for being annoying?" she said, a bit incredulously. She couldn't quite believe this. But then, perhaps she was failing to take into account what she already knew about the man standing in front of her: he didn't need reasons. Why use reason, when impulse will do?

"Lie back and think of England," he advised her.

She closed her eyes.

That night, forty-nine prisoners served admirably as bait. He found what he was fishing for.