The first thing he heard was laughter. Quick and sharp.
Oh God-
Gordon woke with a jerk that made metal ring loudly against metal as the cuffs pulled taut.
No- No I'm dreaming, he's dead. He's dead-
Jim Gordon struggled into a sitting position. He tried to force his eyes to focus faster, as if he could rid his body of the drugs by willpower alone. There were spot lights on him, he couldn't see past the glare-
But anyone who'd lived through this before could sense that grin like the smell of cyanide.
Oh God-
"Ev-ening, Kuh-mmishon-er."
"Oh God," Gordon gasped. "You're-you were dead. He killed you-"
A giggling fit, high and hysterical cut him off.
Moving.....to the left?-
And just like that it all came crashing back, all the dead bodies, all the gas attacks, all the burnt out husks of buildings-
Calm down....Just- Just breathe-
"I thought Batman killed you."
"Oh?" He chuckled.
And right again-
"Is that what he told you hmmmmmm?"
"You-YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH!"
The Joker tsked as the cuffs pulled taut again and Gordon scrambled as far forward as he could, his free hand clawing at the voice beyond the glare.
"Finished?"
"Where the hell am I?!" Gordon demanded.
He didn't get a reply.
After a while he thought he might have been left alone. He tried to stare through the lights, to make out the room beyond. The only things he could have sworn to were 'large' and 'dark'. His jacket was missing, and his wallet, and his GCPD badge.
The handcuffs-
The handcuffs were a pair of those old ratchet types the cops used in the 90s. Two adjustable metal cuffs separated by two and a half inches of steel chain, harder to escape from then the Darbys they used in the 50s, but with a lot more slack then the stiff modern Hiatts. They also had a universal key......
He twisted to examine the pipe and found it was far too sturdy for his liking. He started patting down his pockets, hoping a little frantically that he'd put his keys in his trousers-
He almost missed seeing the Joker step into his little half circle of light.
For a moment Gordon didn't recognise him; he wasn't wearing that godawful purple suit, he'd lost a lot of weight- And it was easy to forget how pale he was, to let your mind edge him slowly further to something mortal in his absence. But there he was, pale as death, his thinning hair the same colour and texture as dead grass and those thin bloody lips pulled back into that smile.
He wandered closer, crouching down to Gordon's level just out of reach. There was blood spattered on his jeans and wiped on the bottom of his shirt.
"Where is he kuh-mmishon-er?"
"Who?"
The corners of his lips edged upwards. "Batsy of course."
"Why should I-"
The Joker cut him off with a gesture and a grin. He raised his hand, waving it an inch from Gordon's face.
"Let me.....spell this out for you Jimbo. You're still alive right now because of these-"
His fingers curled and uncurled, making three flat white pills appear, one deftly held between each digit. The grin cracked, leaving Gordon face to face with a mouthful of chipped yellow teeth and a lungful of air that smelt of rotten tobacco.
"In six hours my supply runs out sooooooo.......I suh-pose you're on a timer......."
He was back on his feet and half way back behind the lights before Gordon could concoct a response.
"What makes you think I'll tell you where he is? What makes you think I even know?"
The Joker shrugged. "Maybe I don't.......maaaaybe I just want to have some fun- That sounds just like me..........doesn't it.......kuh-mmishon-eerrrrrrr?"
000
If it had been anyone else you could have described the pause as 'thoughtful'. Then the Joker had laughed.
"Congraaaatu-lay-shons Batsy, you've managed to come up with a plan even I think is crazy."
Which sounded very much like a resounding 'no', and the police were closing in, they would catch up any minute and the authorities had already blocked up the tunnel under Arkham-
"What the hell....." He'd whispered.
He followed it up with a grin and flung his arms wide, even though he was very probably sporting a cracked radius and a dislocated shoulder. Judging from the way he'd hobbled backwards and tripped it couldn't have been good for his balance either.
"I'm aaaaaaaaaall yours Bats, darling."
Which had been close enough to agreement for Bruce.
000
It could have been ten minutes, it could have been seventy.
He turned the spot lights off and Gordon found himself blinking into a gigantic cave, lit by a vast collection of computer monitors and television screens a dozen or so metres in front of him. The Joker scowled at him.
"Weeeeeell?"
This is completely insa-
"You're the detective......." The Joker whined, gesturing vaguely towards the monitors. "Detect-"
Gordon stared. Splotches of green after-image were still blocking most of what he could see, his eyes hadn't had time to adjust and this was crazy and the Joker was supposed to be dead and how the hell were his men supposed to find him when he was busy having a 'conversation' with a dead man?
He wasn't nearly quick enough for his captor's tastes.
The Joker sighed melodramatically. "Do I have to do eeeeevvverything myself?"
The blow caught Gordon just below the ear. The after-images changed to stars-
Well, Gordon reflected when his ears stopped ringing and the pain faded down from mind-blanking-fog to a dull ache, he hasn't slowed down. If only my patrol-men could get cuffs open and on so fast-
He was yanked to his feet so roughly it sent him spinning. He aimed a clumsy kick in the direction of the cackling.
Missed-
The Joker slammed him into the wall. He didn't quite black out, but the world became worryingly frayed around the edges for a moment. By the time it was clear again the Joker had dragged him to up to the computer bank. He was pushed into a chair.
Gordon glanced at the monitors; two of them were playing news channels, GCN and the Times, a huge swathe of them appeared to be linked to surveillance equipment, watching individuals, most of whom were in cells and the rest...... The rest had blue-screened rather spectacularly. One of the central monitors was blinking erratically and occasionally demanding a password.
Great-
He turned his head a fraction, the Joker was a few feet away leaning against the computer bank and polishing his finger nails on the lapel of a non-existent jacket.
Just great-
"About oooooo five hours left kuh-mmish....... Better find him faaaast."
When, Gordon wondered, did all this become part of the job description?
000
If you hung around him long enough you learnt to tell the difference between the laughs, learnt to tell what they meant.
Assuming of course that you lived that long.
He laughed when he was angry, which was most of the time. When he was frustrated, which was common enough. When he was scared, which was rarely. When he was genuinely happy, which was even stranger. When someone else was in pain. When he'd had a good idea, or a bad one depending on your point of view. And of course when he knew something you didn't, which was perhaps the most frightening one of all.
And of course if you looked too deeply into any of it you'd start going crazy yourself.
000
Trying to get sense out of the Joker was like trying to pull out your own teeth with greased ladles. Gordon was smart enough not to try.
Since Gordon's plans didn't extend in any great detail past getting away from the grinning maniac to his left and living long enough to see the next day he had tried to get the computer working. It had bleeped mournfully, flashed blue and repeated its demands for a password. Gordon, being a man of a certain generation, had no real idea how coax the wretched thing to life. So he gave up, pressed random buttons and concentrated on trying to find an escape route.
The Joker hummed and muttered and giggled. His laughter was becoming worryingly frequent as though he was reaching some sort of internal crescendo.
When lights flared up behind him Gordon jumped, half-sure he'd been blown to hell before-
He turned.
Jesus H Christ!
A few metres away, lit by ground-lights and flood-lights, was a car.
It was sleek, streamlined and black, he'd seen it dozens of times, streaking through the streets and hundreds more as a blur on the news reel.
Gordon gaped. The Joker cackled.
000
He had started with the case file from Arkham. It was twice as thick as the Bible and as helpful as an essay on lima beans.
Everyone who'd ever examined him had a different theory and he went through doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and specialists faster than Bruce Wayne's play-boy persona went through women.
They generally agreed on some form of psychosis and mania.
They blamed everything they could dream up.
In the end Bruce took out the medical records, noted the drugs that they'd tried unsuccessfully and left the rest to rot.
000
It had taken a while for the facts to surface, mostly because the majority of them had to be coaxed from the Joker.
The facts as far as Gordon could assemble them were that the Joker (previously presumed dead) had kidnapped him because Batman was missing. The connection had eluded the Commissioner initially, but then kidnapping high ranking state officials had always somehow summoned the Batman in the past and one could not expect the Joker to be logical. They were both now in Batman's- base where the Dark Knight had still failed to appear.
The big questions: why the Joker had been lying low for so long and how he knew where Batman's base of operations was for starters, were apparently things the Joker was not inclined to answer.
The figures on the security cameras, now that he scrutinised them, turned out to be Two-Face, The Riddler, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, The Penguin, the usual suspects. All in their cells. There hadn't been any break-outs from Arkham for a month or more, it had been a quiet night as far as Gordon could remember-
The car was sitting idle in the drive-way.
Next of kin-
Gordon sighed. "Does he have another car?"
The Joker stared at him for longer than Gordon was comfortable with. Then his face cracked into a grin again and he was laughing. Which was bad enough but the next minute he had left his spot by the wall and was beside the Commissioner, an arm draped lazily over his shoulder and long pale fingers like an infection in his hair.
Jim Gordon, who has been Police Commissioner in Gotham, of all places, for far longer than is strictly sane, who has served in wars and walked more murder scenes then most people have had hot meals, winced.
The Joker muttered something. He giggled. He fiddled with something on the gigantic computer. A map of Gotham flared on one of the screens for a moment, but Gordon didn't really see it.
It was hard to take your eyes away from that grin.
The Joker chuckled. "Sooooooo, Jimbo, fancy coming for a spin?"
The chair careened backwards, something hit the back of his head again.....
And Gordon blacked out.
000
The first thing he tried was the antidote to Joker venom.
It was a disaster.
He should have stopped earlier, but he kept telling himself it took time for any drug to have an effect. And hadn't learnt to recognise the laughter yet, hadn't learnt that that one was pain-
He'd expected the Joker to start refusing treatment after the first few days anyway, so he hadn't bothered to look into reasoning-
They'd administered most of his treatments forcefully at Arkham anyway.
And he'd expected the Joker to fake injuries, because his file recorded almost two hundred separate incidents, ranging from broken bones to kidney failure some of which had allowed him to escape-
So he'd ignored the fainting fits. They never lasted long, and the Joker always laughed when he got up, which had confirmed Bruce's belief that the Joker was........showing off......
He'd cracked suddenly, with no warning. All at once.
The laughter stopped. The jokes, the puns, the word-play, had all vanished. That manic energy had drained away, leaving a husk curled in a corner.
He'd stopped eating-
And eventually Bruce had gone in to check......
He'd taken him off the anti-venom and had Alfred put him on a drip.
He'd stayed in a coma for three days.
He stayed silent for two more.
Then he'd sighed.
"Batsy, that reeeeally wasn't funny."
000
Gordon woke up in the dark.
He tried to sit up and hit his head.
He realised he was in a car boot when the Joker decided to take a twenty mile an hour corner at sixty on two wheels and he crashed into a corner feet first.
He tugged at the hand cuffs, patted down his pockets properly just in case he had a spare key the Joker had missed. He didn't.
He tried to find the boot's release catch. There should have been one, but they'd only started installing them in new models five years ago, and not all the companies agreed on safety standards-
And of course an inventive crook could remove it.
The Joker rounded another corner at high speed and Gordon cursed his luck.
000
Bruce had gone back to basics, to science-
The Joker had become insane after a dip in that vat of chemicals at the Ace Processing Plant, assuming a chemical imbalance was as good a place to start as any.
And he doubted anyone else would have been able to persuade the Joker, conscious and sober, into an NMR machine-
He'd posed as a Gotham psychiatrist at Arkham, sent the scans out to Metropolis to a specialist.
The phone call had come a week later-
"-very interesting." The specialist had said. "What was it?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What were you giving the patient, and how much? Because the effects are extremely potent-"
"Nothing."
"Oh come on." The Metropolite had wheedled. "Everyone knows what goes on at Arkham. Strictly off the record, what was it? Amanita? Scopolamine? Ibogaine? I mean it couldn't be anything widely used for recreation because the inspectors would pick it up in tests, so LSD's out of the question but-"
"Nothing." Bruce stated, perhaps a little harshly. "No one gave the patient anything."
There was a long thoughtful pause.
"Which of them was it?" The specialist asked, in a tone close to awe.
Bruce hung up.
He looked the terms up later. They were three separate species of hallucinogenic flora, a mushroom and two plants, the medicinal use of which was outlawed in the United States.
Everyone knows what goes on at Arkham-
He'd started investigating the next day.
000
They'd stopped. He'd heard that hysterical giggling briefly.
Then it had stopped.
He heard loud, sharp, bangs and tried not to imagine the Joker with guns. He heard screams, yells-
Gordon concentrated on trying to get out of the boot. He shifted so that his back was jammed against the body of the car and kicked at the boot and what he hoped was the lock. If it didn't give then may be someone would hear it, someone would call the police-
He tried not to think that he was probably still in Gotham, where people did not generally call the police when they thought someone was trapped in a car boot, but crossed the street to avoid it instead. He tried not to think about what might happen if it was the Joker who heard and came back-
He had quite a long list of things not to think about.
Smilex would be at the top-
By the time he stopped kicking he was sweating and out of breath. The stuffy, trapped air only made it seem so much hotter.
Gordon slouched against the collection of dents he'd made in his metal box.
He heard voices. He heard laughter.
He's going to kill me, Gordon thought briefly, until it occurred to him that he recognised the second voice.
It was deep, gravelly, words rasped so that the voice couldn't be identified-
Batman.
"What?" The voice began. "How did you-"
It trailed off with a long suffering sigh.
"Why did you bring the maserati?"
Somewhere nearby, the Joker started to laugh.
000
The first real improvement came after they worked out how to get him to sleep. Properly sleep instead of knocking him out, drugging him or waiting until he collapsed from exhaustion.
Alfred had noticed it initially, as a steady drop in the amount of miscellaneous damage, but then he'd attacked Batman again-
Bruce had been restrained. He only broke one of his legs.
When he'd woken up in the Batcave he'd started laughing and Bruce had been prepared to resign these drugs as another failed experiment-
"They're reeeeeeeal!"
"What?" Batman had growled.
"The baaaaats." The Joker had replied as though it was all perfectly obvious. "They're- heh heh, act-ually reeeeeeal!"
He threw back his head and laughed as though reality was the best joke in the world.
000
"You have no concept of subtlety do you?"
"It's your car daaaaar-ling." The Joker drawled.
"And it was in one piece when I left it-"
"It's still in one piece!"
"The wing mirrors are missing-"
"Aawwwwwwww I gettit........poooooor widdly Batsy, are you feeeeling all- uh- emasculated?"
"What?"
"You knoooooow......being the- uh damsel in deeeee-stress-"
"Joker?"
"Yes honey-cakes?"
"Shut up."
"But Batsy-"
"How did you manage to burn that door?"
"Heh heh, you know that's a funny story-"
"And why are the dents in the trunk angled outwards?"
There was a pause.
"Who's in there?"
"Santa Claus." The Joker suggested. "No? Kennedy-"
"Jackie-"
"Gordon then."
From inside the trunk Gordon heard a thump then Batman sighed.
"I'm sorry about this Commissioner."
The boot was forced open with a clank. For a long time he was blinking away the light-
When the after images faded and the world finally focused Gordon found himself looking up not at the mask he'd been expecting but the scowling face of Bruce Wayne-
Leaning against the burnt door, hand over a split lip, the Joker was laughing.
-000-