A/N: Takes place post-TDK, and works best in conjunction with And Lifts The Latch as a set-up. This is the first of three parts. I realize the tenses are a little mixed up. It's intentional, though.

Part One: Let's Rob Roy

Perched high above the streets of Gotham, the dark figure waits for the moment, the right moment, the exact moment: the perfect moment. Timing was key; timing was practically everything, though guns and a little talent for mayhem helped a lot. Genius, he corrects himself; a little genius for mayhem. At this late date there was no use in denying himself every label he deserves; he's earned 'em.

Watching as his invisible net unfolds, he notices that one of his men is in the wrong place; not too big a deal, but it mars the perfection of his plan to have this idiot standing further up the street than he's meant to. The master planner, feeling like an artist who's had his newest exhibition installed upside down, narrows his eyes at the distant figure and pulls the walkie-talkie from his voluminous trouser pockets.

He hits a button; introductory static.

"Yezz bozz?" The voice sounds so tinny over the line, over the distance, that it makes him smirk a little; the new extension of the scars on his face hurts with the twitch of muscle, though, and he thinks about clasping his hand around the pain, squeezing it tightly in his fist till there's nothing left but the memory of sensation. Thinks about gifting it to someone else, unexpectedly, like dead roses in a box, or a rat, or a bomb. Thinking about it makes him smile again.

The smile doesn't show in his voice.

He holds the button down, angling his hand awkwardly up in front of his face, feels the glove slipping over the plastic surface of the walkie-talkie.

"You've got some comedian on a side-street who failed geography. Take care of it." He lets go of the button in time to hear some more static, then the voice of his overseer comes through.

"Uh, which side street, bozz?" The man is in the center of the net, as an overseer should be, and the Joker can see him turning around in circles, trying to figure out which way to go. Down the street, the prey is approaching. He sighs harshly, jabs at the button again.

"Forget it. Gordon at three o'clock."

He turns his eyes away before he can see his overseer, his chosen right-hand man, look in some confusion at his watch. But he knows it will happen.

In a considerable amount of irritation, he reflects that, really, good help is hard to find these days.

He sits down on the shingles as though on a bobsled, arranging his jacket around him, and slides off the roof.

She's been dreaming of progeny, and struggling not to feel doomed upon waking. The whole sleeping arrangement is strange enough to give her nightmares on its own merits, never mind what invariably comes shortly before. Mr. J was a man of ravenous appetites, for a variety of things in a variety of settings. He lived life large, and required her to walk the knife edge of his own existence.

It was knives, she harbors the secret thought, that got her into this mess.

She doesn't think much of how she came to be here. She knows the story behind it, but already she's heard so many different versions, variations on a theme, spilling from between his painted lips, that she fancies she's beginning to forget which version holds the truth. The tale has gained much in the telling.

To one victim she's the illegitimate daughter of the President, looking for revenge against a society that denies her very existence. She found an I Voted Republican badge and pinned it to her jacket, wearing it with a kind of ironical defiance that gave him the giggles every time he saw it.

To another, she was his older sister, and she called him Brotha J and he smacked her behind and indulged in lascivious leers, much to the heightened discomfort of the watchers, who were already quite discomforted enough. She liked that one. Gave a wriggle and a simper every time he looked at her.

To his enemy, once, when they met and she had tagged along to carry his extra knives, she was his archangel; she stood in the way, between her man and his disaster, and had to be dragged out afterwards, kicking and screaming, leaving a trail of her own blood smudged behind to show where she'd been. He played doctor after that, for a short while, about half an hour, before he got bored with her moaning and went to find someone else to inflict pain on.

They weren't all variations on the truth so much as they were variations on herself— on the Joker's jester, this woman, Ms. Quinn, Harley. His visions of herself circled endlessly in her brain, she considered them all each morning the way other women ponder which outfit they're going to put on. Sometimes when he left her behind she made up names for each one, called them into being and ranged them around the walls for company. Invariably they got in arguments.

She doesn't like being left behind.

The net is drawing closer to completion. It gives him a good feeling, a brilliant tinge of the skin, a color he'll never find in paint. Somewhere, not too far from here, a mere four streets away perhaps, Jim Gordon— Commissioner Gordon, God love him— was walking into a mousetrap with a tightly wound spring. Bait. Bait was what it all came down to, in the end. Different strokes for different folks.

He makes his way along the streets, secure in the knowledge that, though it is difficult to find good minions these days, especially in Gotham where human life is worth considerably less than it had been, twenty years or so ago, somebody somewhere is taking care of the net, tugging the drawstrings. He's working with a bunch of morons, sure, but by this point they're fairly well trained morons, at least. Gordon doesn't stand a chance. Not against these clowns.

This one in particular, however, is due for a comeuppance. He's used to stupidity in the lower class of criminal, but he's only willing to tolerate it just so far, and no further.

He considers giving a warning, or at least something that serves as an explanation, just so the guy will know how dumb he's been, messing up like that; but there's just no accounting for a so-called brain that can't figure out to stand on the shadowed side of the street instead of out there on the brightly-lit corner, and so the Joker decides the best thing to do is just put him out of his misery. He strides a few steps closer, and just as it dawns on the man that there's footsteps behind him, pulls the gun from its place, safely tucked in the back of his pants, and shoots without looking. He hears the grunt, and the fall, and takes a moment to roll the downed man over and look down on him; just a mask there for the face, the ubiquitous clown mask worn by the seven other men out there, tugging the strings. The Joker grins. He's started a trend.

There's bubbly sort of breaths coming from behind the mask, telling of blood, of pain and injury.

"I'd tell ya to bring a map next time," he says to the dying man, "but, well— there isn't gonna be a next time. Is there?"

He bends over, flipping the tails of his jacket up over his back, out of his way, and pats the guy on the plastic forehead.

"See ya!" he says, gives a salute, and strolls on.

In all this dreaming of progeny she's been doing, it starts invariably with a stirring, a quickening, and ends with a pain, like a knife to the gut, like starting scars. Squalling babies smothering her with pillows, or maybe it's Mr. J, who's grown tired of her snoring. She'll wake herself up with a start, thinking she's holding something in her arms, and he's almost always awake, sometimes sitting at the window, staring blankly; not plotting, not planning, because that's not how he operates, oh no, but there's something mighty, something devious, churning underneath that fantastically marred skin. Rucked up like a blanket, like their blankets, like her bed that he won't sleep in. She understands insomnia, and apart from telling him cheerfully to count sheep she leaves him alone.

In the morning, if it comes, she'll watch him shave carelessly, often cutting himself again on the thick scars; and reapply his paint, if he feels like it. On bad days he'll push her out of the room and slam the door behind her, and she can hear him in there, slamming doors and breaking windows. On good days he paints her face himself, with his own two hands, with care and precision and his dirty fingertips, like he'd done at the very beginning.

When she wakes up, she reaches to her face and smudges the paint, to get it on her hands and remind her that this is real, and what she's been dreaming— isn't.

But one of these days, if she finds out it is? She's trained in psychology; she's knowledgeable about human experience, human emotions. She's also more than a little delusional, she's fairly sure about that, though she's not quite positive what about. About Mr. J, about how much or how little she meant to him, about how long her life expectancy really was, about how much she needed him. Could be any number of things, really.

She held her realism about her delusions as nothing more than evidence of her reasonableness, if not of her ability to learn from her mistakes.

So this time, when he leaves her behind, she sits for a long time running her hands across her belly. She remembers what it feels like, that starting life. She thinks very hard about whether this is an echo of past experience, or the real thing. Eventually she reaches a decision. Children will be okay, children will be just fine, because Mr. J would steal anything but a child. She needs have no worries on that score.

She doesn't want to be alone at a time like this, so she writes him a note for when he returns, and disguises herself, and leaves.

The plan— not a plan, actually, more a series of events that happen to coincide with a definite objective— has gone off without a hitch. Not that the Joker minds hitches; he kind of likes them. Like bumps on a road, that could just be the vagaries of the pavement or could be roadkill. Hard to tell, but fun to ride.

He likes to look on the bright side of things.

Six men follow him back to what he calls his office, in singularly grating, mocking tones, complete with exaggerated air quotes when the moment called for it. He leaves one behind, the dead one, because what good are the dead? None. Not even as targets, 'cause they can't feel a thing.

But there's one waiting for him, for all of them, when they reach the abandoned high rise. He's been asleep, but startles awake when they come in, reaching for his gun and not relaxing even when he sees that it's the Boss, come back and triumphant.

"Alright?" he says, to the group at large; they slide their masks off their faces, up and over their heads, revealing sweaty, tired features. The Boss has put names to them, utilizing his rather peculiar sense of humor; Gorgeous, in particular, revels in the ludicrousness of his assigned moniker. "Where's Gordon?"

The Boss stabs a gloved finger at him. "First rule. Never crap in your own nest."

Gorgeous raises his eyebrows as the Joker strides past him to collapse with drama onto a couch, which emits a cloud of dust. "Which means?"

"We dumped him," supplies Little One.

"We'll go back for him tomorrow." The Joker strips off his gloves and cracks his knuckles. "Spending the night tied up never hurt anybody. It'll probably remind him of his college days."

"Where were you, anyway?" Brains questions. "Thought you supposed to be point man. Wasn't that the plan?"

The Joker is looking into thin air, thoughtfully, and says almost absently, "Not— a plan."

"Right." Brains rolls his eyes, confident that the Boss won't see. "Chaos is the driving force. Got it."

The Joker rolls his eyes back at him, and it's more dramatic an effect with the black paint that surrounds his. He strokes a hand carelessly through his hair, getting it tangled in the greasy strands. "Chaos is not just the driving force. It's the only force. It creates force. You've heard of the Big Bang Theory? It's this theory, see, that there was this big bang. Chaos, my friend—" His point made, he narrows his eyes at Brains, who subsides into quiet, and goes back to silent contemplation.

Gorgeous coughs. "Anyway, Harley said she wanted to play point man. Said she was bored, hanging around like a housewife."

The Boss looked up, keen-eyed of a sudden, vitally, almost violently, interested. "She is a housewife. What's she got, delusions of mediocrity? Where'd she go? She's supposed to be here, sewing buttons and vacuuming and—" the Boss flips his hands around in the air, to indicate the variety and essential pointlessness of Harley's designated tasks. "Shining my shoes! She's supposed to be here!"

There's a fit coming on, the men can tell.

"Dunno," says Gorgeous, doubtfully. "Guess she was following you. Wanted to play— point—" He faltered off under the force of his boss' stare. "Guess she walked when I wasn't paying atten—"

The gunshot came quickly, far more quickly than he would have expected, and of course there was no chance that he could move out of the way. The Joker slaps his empty hand on his knee, stands, and sticks the gun back in his pants.

"Alright," he says grimly. "Now we're gonna have some fun."

There's a note for him on the bed, whenever he chances to find it; for the present, it waits.

He robs the poor to feed the rich

He burns their houses down

Lock up your wives and daughters tight

The Joker's back in town