Old Habits
KINGLY QUEEN

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They belong to Christopher Nolan and DC comics. I make no profit from this story


I swallowed thickly as I sat underneath the scrutiny of Commissioner Gordon's cool gaze, and felt a coil of dread unfurl in the pit of my stomach. I was really getting the full treatment here; the dimmed lights were suitably ominous, and the room was barren save for concrete walls, a cool metal table and what I guessed to be a two way mirror. The overall effect was intimidating – the fact that I couldn't see the Commissioner's eyes didn't help any. The light overhead reflecting off his glasses caused a blank white sheen that successfully hid his eyes from my gaze. I had to wonder if he was doing it on purpose.

Probably.

I crossed my hands on the table in front of me and licked my lips, trying and failing to conceal my nervousness. "Uh," I offered hesitantly.

Suddenly he leaned forward, and I could see his eyes again. They were cool and calculating. On television he always seemed like such a kind man – more somebody's grandfather than a man in charge of a whole city's safety. But now, seeing his detached pragmatism I couldn't say I had anymore doubts about his capabilities. It made me wary. I watched him carefully as he opened a dossier and pulled out some pictures, setting them down on the table in front of me. "Ms. Ward, do you know who this man is?"

I looked at the photos and studied the face I saw. I looked at his limp green hair, his scars, the cut and color of his clothes. I almost flinched, but I could feel Gordon's eyes on my face, watching for each minute reaction. I kept my face blank and my voice toneless when I replied, "He's one of the men who robbed Gotham Royal yesterday." I looked back up at him. "Gotham news reports call him the Joker."

"I can be cracked, I can be made; I can be told, I can be played. What am I?"

Commissioner Gordon nodded gathering up his files, but I noticed that he failed to retrieve the pictures. He kept them spread around on the table in front of me and I frowned, looking away from them.

"He calls himself the Joker. He's left his calling card all over the city," the commissioner said derisively, holding up a joker card. "Call it his personal stamp of sorts."

I swallowed and nodded stiffly, unsure of what to say.

"What goes all around the world but stays in one corner?"

"I have your statement from yesterday, Ms. Ward, but could you please tell me again what happened yesterday?" he queried, setting his folder aside and propping his chin up on his joined fingers.

I frowned. Telling the story had been hard enough the first time, but I sighed, not wanting to make a fuss. "I went to Gotham Royal yesterday around maybe three o'clock. It was busy that day so I had to wait in line. I was waiting for maybe ten minutes when a white van came crashing through the entrance. Some men in clown masks came out and fired up into the air," I recounted, swallowing hard. "Everyone screamed and got to the ground." I shook my head. "After that I couldn't see anything, but I could hear them. They told one of the bank clerks to lead them to the safes." I paused, uncertainly and looked up at the commissioner.

Can he hear the quaver in your voice?

"Go on," he said, nodding encouragingly.

I closed my eyes and replayed the events in my head struggling to keep my hands from shaking. I was clearly going to lose that battle, I decided, and simply slid them off the table and folded them in my lap. "Some more shots were fired. I – I think someone was thrown out a window." I let out a small bark of a laugh. "How sick is that?"

"Very," the commissioner replied succinctly. "When did you see the Joker?"

When?

"I saw him when his men told us to get up and stand by the wall. He didn't have his mask on so I could see his face."

"Did he speak to you?"

"No."

Lie.

"Communicate with you in any way?"

"No."

For a long moment the commissioner was silent as he looked at me, and there was nothing of that warm kindness I had grown to associate with him when I'd seen on Gotham news channels. His eyes appraised me coldly, watching for signs of weakness, clinically taking in signs of deceit and falsehood. I steeled myself to meet his eyes, and was rewarded when, eventually, he was the first to look away.

"Very well, Ms. Ward. Was this the last time you saw him?"

Inwardly I sighed in relief and shook my head. "No, his men were wiring explosives to the whole place, but he told them not to bother. I guess they must have been running out of time or something, but they got into the car and left." I stopped. "That was the last I saw of him."

"Hm," the commissioner hummed thoughtfully. "You're a very brave woman Ms. Ward."

I blinked at him. "I'm really not, sir."

He shook his head at me, a small smile on his lips. "Now, that's not true. Give yourself some credit. Your testimonial was a great deal of help to us. The other witnesses were blubbering messes – we couldn't make heads or tails of their statements at all." He paused, fixing me with a serious look. "But you, you're factual, coherent, and matter-of-fact. Almost cool." He considered me for another long moment. I tried to refrain from fidgeting in my seat but at the same time wondered if all cops had to take mandatory courses in effectively staring people down.

Suddenly he broke out into a sudden booming laugh. "You do this kind of thing often?"

"By 'thing', I'm assuming you mean getting tangled up in bank robberies?" I laughed weakly. "Only every other month or so, I wouldn't call myself experienced."

The commissioner smiled and held his hand out for me to shake. "Well, Ms. Ward, thank you for taking the time out of your day to come down here. Let's hope it's the first and only time you'll ever have to."

I laughed sharply and took his hand. "God, I hope so, sir."


Jim Gordon and Officer Ramirez watched the surveillance tapes showing that their witness had just left the Gotham Police Department.

"Well, sir?"

There was a quick pause before the commissioner replied, shaking his head with a sigh. "Have someone watch her." He turned his head slightly and noticed the officer fidgeting. "Go ahead and ask me why, Ramirez," he said with a knowing smile.

Jim watched in amusement as the officer paused hesitantly, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Well," he said slowly, "me and the rest of the fellas were wondering why you'd choose to target her, of all people. She seems harmless enough."

Jim Gordon barked out a laugh. "You're too soft hearted, Ramirez."

The other officer looked flustered but went on determinedly, showing no sign that he'd heard the commissioner. "We went over the surveillance tapes from the robbery yesterday and we've already identified and apprehended three of the Joker's accomplices but you haven't even spoken them yet." Ramirez looked at Jim Gordon and hastily added, "With all due respect, sir."

Jim Gordon shook his head ruefully. "You're a good police officer, Ramirez. You have quick instincts and you're smart." He folded his arms over his chest. "But you've been out of the academy for what, three or four years now? When you've been in the force for as long as I have, you'll find that going by the books only goes so far. Sometimes it pays to go by your gut."

The other officer looked confused. "Sir?"

Gordon beckoned him to the video surveillance room with two fingers. "Come on and take a look at this."

Yesterday, their whole division had sat in a darkened room, staring dead eyed at the array of screens that displayed recordings of the robbery from Gotham Royal's surveillance tapes. They'd been poring over the footage for hours, and discerned no more than what they already knew: the Joker was the mastermind behind this, and he was a madman.

For hours they watched and re-watched tapes of him strolling jauntily through the doors of Gotham Royal, decked out in purple and war paint, a manic grin on his face. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of his actions – he defenestrated a bank teller, he bludgeoned an ATM, he shot one of his own accomplices in the knee and left him screaming on the floor.

"These tapes won't tell us much more than what we already know, Ramirez. The suspects that we've apprehended won't talk. The license plate on that van will be tracked down to an owner that's been dead for ten years."

The other officer sighed in frustration, raking a hand through his hair in an impatient motion. "So what are we missing here then, sir?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe something." Jim replied ambiguously, rapping the monitor with the back of his hand. "But look at this. What do you see?"

The younger officer leaned closer to the monitor and after watching its proceedings he straightened, no more enlightened than he'd been a few minutes ago. "There's not much to see here, sir. The Joker's standing there, the hostages are in front of him, he's surveying the damage that he's done to the bank, decides he doesn't have time to detonate the bomb and then he leaves."

"Ah, but that's not quite it."

"What?"

"Look at his eyes," Jim replied, tapping the screen again. When the other man failed to understand, Jim Gordon sighed impatiently. "Look at him. He's not looking around at the bank at all. That is not the expression of a man admiring his own handiwork, Ramirez." Jim Gordon stared shrewdly at the screen, following the Joker's every motion.

"His attention is focused on something very specific." He drew a straight line to a redheaded woman standing against the wall. "On her. Sophie Ward." Jim Gordon looked back at the officer and saw the unconvinced expression on the other man's face. "The Joker has no compassion. He doesn't see his victims as people, if he even notices them at all. From the minute he enters that bank, he's all business. But suddenly, just as he's about to leave, he stops in his tracks and looks at her like he's seen her for the first time." He tapped the monitor. "Don't you find it odd Ramirez?"

He went on. "Now look at her, look at her face. She's looking straight back at him, and her expression tells me she's more surprised to see him than she is afraid." He waved a hand at all the other hostages crowded against each other. "Everyone else looks terrified out of their minds, but not her."

Jim Gordon leaned back, folding his arms over his chest, and looked determined. "The money's being loaded into the truck, the bombs are being planted, and these clowns are firing random shots into the air, but in the midst of all that, these two…" Jim Gordon tilted his head thoughtfully. "… They only see each other." He shook his head grimly, and began to pace the room, now seeming to speak more to himself than Ramirez, who was staring at him with his mouth agape.

"And in the end, you can see the bomb all set to blow after they escape. We would never have made it in time to dismantle it before it exploded and killed everyone in the bank. Everything's ready, and all he needs to do is get in the van and leave. What's he waiting for? Why the sudden change of heart?"

Ramirez recovered and said uncertainly, "Do you think she's in on it then?"

The commissioner looked over at him. "Not quite that. But she knows more than she's letting on." He sighed.

The younger officer shook his head. "I don't know sir. You said so yourself, she's a tough one. Maybe she just wasn't afraid…"

Jim Gordon looked at the man incredulously. "Ramirez, a psychotic clown drove straight into Gotham Royal yesterday and proceeded to wave around some machine guns. As far as we know, he has no history, no motive and no weaknesses. If he pointed a gun at you, wouldn't you be afraid?"

The other officer mashed his lips together, but grunted out a begrudging "Yes, sir."

The commissioner nodded. "Frankly, so would I, and we're cops." He looked at the other man seriously. "So why wasn't she?"


I made my way home on wobbly legs, kicking off my heels as I entered. I leaned back on the door, feeling it close behind me and with shaking hands I locked it and latched the deadbolt. With a shuddery sigh, I sank to the ground, tucking my arms beneath my chin and curling into a ball.

"Oh God," I groaned to myself, burying my face in my hands. I felt so tired. So weary that I could feel it in my bones. If I could only drag myself to bed, the couch, or even the damned rug in the living room, I knew I'd probably sink blissfully into sleep and not wake up for days.

Did Commissioner Gordon notice that anything was amiss? I was so sure he could hear the tremor in my voice, the way I forcibly kept my face blank, how I couldn't look at those pictures for any longer than a few seconds. But at the same time, I asked myself why I was so nervous. It hadn't been as though I was lying.

It was something that I'd been telling myself over and over on the drive back home. You weren't lying to the commissioner today. There's nothing to be nervous about. You didn't do anything wrong.

And it was true, because I didn't know the Joker at all. I had never even heard about him until he stepped out of that van yesterday, clothed in green and purple. I didn't recognize the white, black and red war paint on his face. I didn't know those scars or that hair. I'd never heard that grating, nasally voice in my life.

But.

And there it was. That word. That one little word that spoke volumes for how much doubt I was in.

Yesterday had felt so surreal, like I was moving underwater, even though all the images that came to my mind were bright and sharp. I could only remember things in a sequence of snapshots. Everything else was simply a dark, dim awareness. Things I noticed but didn't quite register. The whole time I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, my whole body desperately pumping blood and adrenalin, as though screaming for me to live, even as I numbly complied with all the Joker's orders. In my head, I felt like a deer in the headlights, frozen by shock and fear.

But there had been a single moment of clarity, one that shook me out of my stupor like a splash of cold water. It was such a strange, fateful thing. If I hadn't looked up then, it might not have happened at all. I might have been somewhere else, happier without the heavy weight of this knowledge sitting like lead on my chest.

We had been shoved to the side of the bank, presumably so that the Joker's men could freely load the money into their van. We all crouched against the wall, too afraid to move for fear of being singled out and being made an example of, like the bank teller was. I could still hear him screaming as he was thrown out a window, right after the Joker had claimed he could make a man completely disappear.

I was kneeling on my hands and knees, pieces of broken glass digging into my palms. My head spun, and my stomach turned queasy circles; I felt so sick. If I didn't think I'd be shot for it, I probably would have thrown up right then and there, but as it was I forced myself to breathe deeply through my nose. I could smell the kerosene, then. And the chemicals.

Oh God, I thought. They're going to blow us sky high.

"Boss," I heard one of the men say. "We're nearly done loading the money, and the bombs are all ready to go."

"Alrighty, then!" said the Joker excitedly. I could hear him rubbing his hands together, though I didn't dare look up. "Let's get this show on the road, Johnny boy; I wanna see me some fireworks," he cackled, pacing back and forth, his shoes crunching on broken glass with each step.

My arms began to tremble when I saw his feet enter my line of vision. I didn't move a muscle. I didn't breathe. I was so still that I nearly jumped out of my skin when he let out a sudden whoop. "It is hot under here," he said, enunciating each word in that odd manner of speech of his. "Robbing banks works up quite a sweat."

There was a quick shuffle before a clown mask plopped to the ground in front of his feet. He shook head like a wet dog while blowing air out between his lips. "Ah," he breathed throatily, his voice less muffled. "That's better."

For a moment, I was so curious. I wanted to look up. I wanted to see the face of my murderer. What was I afraid of? That he would notice me staring and take a knife to me? What difference did it make if I was going to be blown to bits anyway? Rational thought bid me not to look up, that it was dangerous, that I was better off not knowing, but I didn't listen. The urge to look was too much stronger.

When I glanced up cautiously, I was confused. For a moment I thought he hadn't taken his clown mask off at all, before I realized that it was paint on his face. Bare patches of skin showed beneath the garish, white, red and blank greasepaint that made his face a nightmarish mess. I could see the scars, like twisted rope lining the corners of his mouth, stretching up to mar his cheeks. The hastily slapped on red paint slathered on his scars made them look fresh, like they were still bleeding. The Joker was horrifying. He looked like a monster.

So why couldn't I look away? Because when I looked at him, my chest ached. Because I—

Just then, the Joker spared a brief, disinterested look at us. His eyes darted at each face, and when he got to me, our eyes met briefly before they swept right past me, and in that moment I wasn't sure whether to sigh in relief or cry out. I watched numbly as he made to move past me – but suddenly his eyes swung quickly back to my face, too quickly to be explained as casual interest. His eyes were narrowed and shrewd. I stared breathlessly up at him, and for a moment I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do anything.

Because I knew this man. This man who was walking around with a gun, robbing banks and killing people. The man who would be my murderer. Only I hadn't known him as the Joker. In what felt like a lifetime ago, he hadn't worn purple and green, painted his face or had those scars. Everything about him was so different. Only one thing stayed the same – those eyes. Cold, brown eyes that were fixed on me. Narrowed and focused and faintly puzzled.

The Joker had frozen altogether, his shoulders hunched and his head slightly tilted. His eyes were narrowed, and his gaze was inscrutable. His look could have meant he was either trying to figure me out, or he could have simply been wondering what I looked like with my guts all over the floor. I watched, frozen, as his eyes traced my face, their heavy weight almost like a physical touch. Like a finger sweeping over my mouth, counting the freckles dusting my cheeks, up the slope of my upturned nose before locking onto my eyes – everything that confirmed what he already knew.

You know me. I know you.

Recognition seemed to settle over him like a blanket – his shoulders suddenly went tense, his mouth downturned in displeasure while his hands became fists at his side. At the thunderous look on his face, I quailed, but I couldn't look away.

He took a step forward his mouth opening, as though about to say something when one of his clowns jogged up, panting. "Boss," he croaked. "We're done. We got all the money, and we rigged the bombs to go off in five minutes, like you told us to. We gotta get outta here."

My stomach lurched at the thought. The Joker snapped his gaze away from me and looked over at the barrels of kerosene stacked together, ready to explode and kill us all. He turned his head slowly to look at me again, his tongue darting out to lick the corner of his mouth. For a long, terrible moment his eyes were cold and appraising, flicking between me and the bombs.

That's when I knew it. Oh God, I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

I closed my eyes, clenching them shut as I tried not to imagine the explosion, the terrible heat, the screams, the fact that he would be the one to kill me. I was in the middle of a full blown panic attack when I heard him suddenly growl.

"Forget it." His voice cracked like a whip, low and annoyed.

My eyes snapped open to fix on him, only to find that he had already turned away from me, though I couldn't tear my gaze away from him.

"B-Boss?" said the clown uncertainly. "You're tellin' me you want us to—"

"Yes, muttface," replied the Joker emphatically, bending down to loom over the other man threateningly. "I'm telling you to go shut it off, before I decide to change my mind and blow this place up with you tied to a barrel."

The man skittered off, and I breathed a sigh of relief, my eyes still glued to the Joker's form. He stood there stiff and unmoving, as if he could feel me staring holes into his back. His head was half turned toward me, and I wondered what he was thinking. My throat worked as I opened my mouth, probably looking like a fish, and wondering what I should say to him. So, I see you've been busy these past ten years or Not sure I'm a fan of your new look. Or attitude. Or anything. Or maybe, Thank you for not killing me in a horrible explosion or even worse, Where did you go? Why did you leave?

I hadn't quite figured out what I'd wanted to say when I heard him speak. "Over three hundred banks in Gotham," he said slowly, his tongue darting out to wet his scars, "and today you just had to choose this one." He was still facing away from me and there was a dull beat of silence. "You haven't changed a single bit," he muttered flatly. It didn't sound like a compliment.

For a moment, he sounded so familiar that I forgot to be afraid and was indignant instead. It wasn't like he was in any position to judge how I turned out. I opened my mouth to retort when I was abruptly cut off by the vicious look he pinned me with over his shoulder. The menace in his eyes stopped me in my tracks. His eyes had gone dark, almost obsidian and were full of loathing, and disgust. He looked so vicious, and hateful, and I wondered if he was having second thoughts about not blowing up the whole bank and me in it.

My teeth clicked together as my mouth closed.

The Joker shook his head, scoffing, and without another word strolled toward the van and got in, slamming the doors shut without ceremony or fanfare. The tires squealed as they raced off, and it wasn't until I couldn't see them anymore that I let out a shuddery breath and slumped to the floor. I hadn't moved until the police had arrived – one kind officer had given me his coat and something hot to drink before he'd taken my statement.

That had been yesterday, and since then I hadn't been able to get the Joker out of my head. I tried to reconcile his face with the face of the boy I had used to know – one that had disappeared ten years ago. There were alarming differences – so many that they could have been two different people altogether.

But that didn't explain why the Joker had looked at me with Jack Napier's eyes.


Author's Note: This will be an origin story. Yes, I'm new to the Batman fandom, and yes it's Joker/OC which has its own stigmas, but you can bet your ass I'll do my utmost to make sure it's not a Mary Sue self fulfillment fic.

The next chapter will be approximately... fifteen years before the events of this chapter? Well, anyway, the Joker and Sophie Ward will both be children; time is relative, it doesn't matter how old they are. Anyone whose read my Labyrinth stuff knows I like turning back the clock, and how certain things in childhood still leave their marks today. Mostly, I wanted to see what would happen if the Joker had to encounter and deal with someone he couldn't simply ignore or blow away into smithereens.

A warning: this story will be dark. It starts off cute enough, I guess, with them as children (I listened to really poppy, upbeat music while writing them), but it'll only go downhill from there. But we'll get to that when we have to.