The Joker stared at the girl sprawled in his desk chair, one leg up and over the side. She was lean and leggy, and very, very pale. She was watching him with an abnormally cool expression, and that fascinated him.

"Sooooo," he said, drawing the word out to break the dead silence. His fingers flicked over the drawn knife in his hand, betraying agitation. She said nothing, but he frowned behind his painted smile as her strange stillness bothered him. There was something… wrong… about her. Her cold face broke into an icy smile.

"You're certainly keep me guessing," she remarked casually, "I expected a little bit of a scene, not a dumbfounded expression and absent knife-play." She raised a perfect eyebrow, and tilted her head, causing her hair to catch the light. It was not the brown he had dismissed it as, but a gorgeous coppery-bronze color that was impossible to name.

"At least I don't, you know, disappoint," the Joker said slowly, and began to stalk a little closer. She looked like a piece of living marble as she watched him approach behind lowered, dark lashes through irises that were black as night. There was no difference between them and the pupil. It sent a strange shiver through the Joker as he loomed over her.

"Indeed," she mused quietly, the smile fading. The knife apparently did not bother her as he placed the tip delicately against the corner of her mouth, slipping the blade between her lips. She stared at his face, studying it.

"You're… interested in my..." he paused significantly, turning to regard her from the corner of his eye, "Scars?" He was wary, but beginning to enjoy himself a little. This seemingly pliant, quiet individual made him excited to see how far he could push before she broke. His free hand came up to hold her by the jaw delicately, turning her face just so, and she let him. His heartbeat sped up, and a grin began to tug at his mouth.

"You see," he said, adjusting his grip to hold her face just a little tighter, pressing the blade harder against the corner of her mouth, "I had this girlfriend who was an alcoholic, and she was a little… cra-azy." He wiggled his eyebrows, and the playful gesture was threatening. He increased the pressure, but not enough to make her bleed, not yet. She had self-control, he was willing to give her that. "And at the time," he continued his story, hiding his growing unease at her total self-possession, "I had trouble keeping jobs. And I was kind of… well, depressssssed." He hissed the 's' in the last word and held it. He considered the end of the story.

"So, one night… I come home after another… ah, rejection, and she's drunk. Off her ass," he added, "And she gets angry with me when she hears that I still don't have a job, and she starts… laughing. Hysterics, you know," he said, nodding as if to himself. "And she keeps asking why I don't see the funny side of it, how she can keep a job and I can't, while coming at me with a knife from the kitchen, where we were, oh yes, standing." The girl's face seemed immutable, but the eyes seemed to darken while he watched. "So she puts the knife in my mouth and carves this, uh, smile into my face, all the while asking me…"

"Why so serious?" the cool voice said beneath him. The Joker stopped and nodded with a manic smile on his face.

"Yes, that's right," he said, gripping her face hard now and getting nose-to-nose with the girl, "Why… so… serious." He slashed at the corners of her mouth, seeing the blood fly while he began to cackle... And then he found himself seated at his own desk with the wood coming at his face altogether too quickly. There was a bang and he felt pain, but it had all happened too fast for him to really understand what, exactly, had passed.

"Huh. Well, you don't disappoint after all," the girl's voice rang loud and clear, dispassionately. The Joker put a hand to his forehead, shocked enough that his mouth was hanging slightly open. There was a brief silence before he recovered enough to say something.

"How many times do I have to tell people not to start with the head?" he said, unintentionally a little breathy. There was a muted 'thok,' and a sharp pain in his hand. He looked slowly at the source of the new throbbing to see his own blade between the bones of his hand, pinning it to the desk. Her fingertips were still on the handle, and they remained there.

"Better?" she asked, and he nodded mutely. The Joker was no fool, and recognized that he had been beaten. She pulled the blade cleanly out of his flesh, and turned the chair sideways to face her. The Joker examined his wound, and then waved his other hand in the air.

"How did you do that...?" he trailed off and flitted his hand about in the air. "That… thing?"

"I'm capable of it," she replied, and he stared at her, uncomprehending, his head whirling. There were no scars on her cheeks, no gaping edges to her mouth, carved in a permanent smile. All that was left was a little blood spattered on her shirt, lurid against the white. He was looking at her face, calculating, wondering, and a little afraid. Her lips quirked in a knowing smirk, but he was fascinated by the smooth, unmarked cheeks.

"Are you quite done?" she asked lightly, tossing hair out of her face in an elegant, casual way.

"Um, uh, well, ah, yes," he said a little reluctantly.

"Good," she said smoothly, crossing her arms over her chest, "Then I'd like to propose a… business deal. I've been watching you for a while, and you seem to be the best choice."

"Ahhhh," the Joker said, letting out his breath, and her eyes darted to his hand quickly before focusing on his face. "Well, you see, it all… depends."

"You need to lay low for a while," she said, turning away suddenly, arms falling to swing at her sides, "Having just escaped from Arkham and all. I'll keep you busy in here. So there's your benefit." The Joker launched himself out of the chair and at her back. She sidestepped easily and turned, cuffing him lightly across the back of his skull with his own knife.

"Damn it," she groused, "I thought you said you were done." The Joker straightened up, brushing off his vest with his uninjured hand.

"So then, what's in it for you?" he asked nonchalantly, as if it had been little more than reflex that he had tried to surprise her. Her blatant grin revealed two elongated, sharp-as-knives canine teeth.

"Entertainment. Some sustenance. A little stress relief," she purred, her expression turning wicked. "Nothing much." Again, things happened much too fast for the Joker to keep track of actual events. She had him trapped against the brick wall, her hand tangled in his hair and pulling his head back, and her teeth in his throat all at once. The Joker struggled against the slighter, smaller female, but the vampire would not be budged. The raw heat of pain in his neck was almost unbearable. He could hear fluid rushing, could hear her swallowing greedily, and he was weakening. The agonizing pain stopped, soothed suddenly by her tongue swiping over the puncture wounds, and then she was suddenly back in the desk chair, watching with a dark smile, lips stained with blood.

"Vampire!" The word slipped from his mouth in a reverent tone before he could stop himself, and the Joker was in awe. Within his grasp were immortality, supernatural power, and the ability to terrorize Gotham forever. Now he understood.

"Indeed," she answered, licking away the blood as unconcernedly as a cat.

"And tell me," he said, one hand touching the side of his neck and coming away with the little blood that was still smeared there, "Do you plan on making me like you?" Her eyes glittered as he licked his fingertips clean.

"No," she answered, "Though it's a tempting idea. Unfortunately, if I do, Batman gets his own dose of vampire blood and then you really will be locked together in combat for eternity." She smiled again, brilliantly this time. "And I don't fancy having the both of you as companions for eternity."

"Well, aren't you the good citizen? Thought I was entertaining," the Joker commented, approaching her cautiously. Her smiled was changing again, darkening wickedly.

"You are," she said silkily, "Now come here, and I'll promise we'll both enjoy."

When he woke up in the morning, she was gone, and he was scratched, bruised, and sore. As he tried to get up, he found that he could hardly move. When he found the note laid neatly next to his pillow, he cursed.

Joker,

I took enough blood to keep you down for month. Don't kill too many of your clowns, okay?

Love,

Your Vampire