Author's Note: What do you say you and I, dear reader, start off with a clean slate? Let us pretend that the Joker does not yet meet Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow until this particular encounter, which takes place. . .oh, I'd say about three months or so after The Dark Knight. For my previous readers, try to wipe out anything you have "learned" about them from your mind - if you can, that is hahaha. Those who have not read any of my stories will not need to "freak out" - you should be able to read it by itself without any difficulty, as this has no relation to any of my previous fics. It goes against what I may have said before - but, whatever. As the extremely-overused Joker quote from The Killing Joke says, "If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"
This part of my first multi-chapter story, at least, is told from the second-person POV (because I love to use it so much) of a considerably-important henchman, whose obnoxiously-long name I will apologize for in advance - I was having a LITTLE too much fun looking up Russian names on the Internet ;).
I'll admit, the beginning does start out a little slow because I have to give a bit of background for the henchman and set the scene and stuff - but it'll pick itself up eventually, I promise.Rain.
It comes down in buckets, pattering fast - plip-plop plip-plop - cold and heavy and hard, down and down and down from the raging tempest that has seemed to overcome the dark clouded sky - a scorned goddess unleashing her utmost fury upon the vast metropolis. The droplets are huge - some even nearing the size of golf balls - instantly exploding upon their inevitably fatal contact with the broad flat roofs of the city's most towering skyscrapers, each prism bursting open and blossoming into a million tiny shards of pure mirror-crystal, each parent drop willingly sacrificing itself with the shared single thought that this next generation, this new life, will bring hope to the earth they plummet toward and break upon. But this tumultuous barrage of procreation in fact will prove more harm than good: the water-children merge with each other, bleeding quickly down the towers' outer walls - which are merely multi-paned sheets of tinted reflective window-glass - to the dangerous streets below, causing what little vibrancy the albeit vociferous city had to run and smear and melt into an endless pool of dreary gray silence that will soon flood and destroy absolutely everything in its path if left unchecked.
- - -
Undeniably bored, you hunch damply behind the wheel of an old, I've-seen-better-days type black Lincoln - stolen, naturally - whose annoyingly muffler-lacking motor idles obnoxiously without pause at top volume, heard over even the relentless drumming of the constant deluge upon the car's roof; you manage to feel slightly self-conscious about the noise even though the shady street corner has shown no signs of life since you had parked there nearly two hours earlier - probably because of the wonderfully-morbid weather, you had figured (of course showing heavy sarcasm at the "wonderful" part), and figure still.
And you never suspect for an instant that the drastic events you will witness later tonight will change your life forever.
You are known solely as Lefty, the proudly-born nickname earned for the killer pitch you had delivered to many an unlucky batter with that dominant hand during your not-so-long-ago high school baseball days - but who would really want to be called Vyacheslav Grigori Talik Artem Boris Kandichev IV anyway?
Just another faceless thug of the common variety - though you are considerably leaner and more wiry than your burly counterparts tend to be - never identified suitably by name to your employers. It's always "You! Go do this!" or "Hey, meathead - go do that!" (the latter of which you consider a great insult to your more-than-passable intelligence).
As if they could even remember your proper title anyway.
There is a sharp crack! as a fork of charged particles splits the night in two; you flinch violently and shrink away into the back of your seat. You had been struck by lightning while "hiding" from a thunderstorm - thinking you were safe beneath the large ancient oak as you gazed up at the sky in fearful awe - when you were barely three years old, knocking you unconscious; another flash merely seconds later and the rotting wood of the very tree above you was ablaze. You were later informed that your father had sprinted out of the house (your parents had not notice you slip outside to play only five minutes earlier), swept you up and laid you down on the sitting room couch - in your mother's gentle care - before taking the garden hose to the flames. In the end, you were left with a permanent streak of white in you hair, on your left temple, a terrible headache that sometimes comes and goes not quite unlike a migraine, and an enduring wariness toward most electrical appliances - though the poor tree, having been reduced to mere ash and cinders before your father could save it, was obviously not so lucky. Even now, barely twenty-five years later, the effects of the sky's strange power to produce very painful shocks is one that you still find slightly intimidating.
Okay, more than slightly.
You pull a small black comb - a gift from your hairstylist-and-once-part-time-whore girlfriend (hey, if you need money you gotta do what you gotta do, right?) - from the left breast pocket of your shirt with trembling fingers, spit on it, and once again commence the routinely futile attempt to flatten your unruly (and currently fully-saturated) bangs - those wavy curls that stick up and then curl down and fluff back up again at the tips; after several minutes of this you finally sigh in defeat and slip the pick back into your pocket again. You subsequently snatch up the soggy black ballcap (with the United Postal Service logo on the front) sitting on the passenger's seat beside you and slap it unceremoniously on your head with a very wet squelch, tugging the bill down low over your clear brow - instantly ruining your meticulous handiwork. Even Sandy is unable to fathom as to exactly why you do that - smarten yourself neatly and then mess it all up again - maybe the naughty hairdresser part of her has begun to rub off on you through your close relationship. In any case, you have eventually come to admit even to yourself that this has become more and more of a nervous habit, ever since you began your work as hired muscle - and especially since you had found out you would be working for him.
It had started with a tragedy. Your occupation. That evening you had been coming home from a pleasant dinner-and-a-movie date with Sandy - only to find that your parents' mansion (Father and Mother had been Duke and Duchess, respectively, back in "the old country" before you were born - and before they were overthrown by a vicious dictator and forced to move over to America [you remember with a smile that you had always served as family translator from the time you learned English in school] - though not without a very small fortune) had been burnt to the ground, smoke and ashes scattered everywhere. Only the rear wall and the chimney had remained, a brief but terribly meaningful message - scrawled in huge uneven lettering - written in your parents lifeblood (or was it deathblood?) upon the crumbling brick.
HA HA HA
The next morning you had received a call ordering you to your current place of employment - well, current until yesterday.
You glance upward to check your reflection in the rearview mirror; the looking-glass is spattered with rain, blown inside the car by the occasional gust of wind, water overflowing from the two-inch long hairline crack spidering diagonally southward from the upper right-hand corner. The late-evening sky had been a clear navy blue only an hour ago; but then ominous gray-violet storm clouds had decided to sweep in, soaking you completely and turning your bones to ice as you wait for a manager whom you are beginning to think is never going to show up, growing more stiff and cold by the minute. And to top it all off the goddamn windows are stuck, rolled all the way down, and won't budge one shitting inch more either way - which is how you'd been drenched in the first place.
Fucking Gotham weather!
Scowling in irritation at the proverbial rainforest the damned crime-ridden city has seemed to become, you fog the mirror over with your breath and clear it with the sleeve of your black nylon jacket - wiping in squeaky little circles - finally able to catch the most fleeting glimpse of your reflection before the incoming precipitation smears it again, causing the light skin, hair so pale that bleaching it wouldn't have made one ounce of an impression whatsoever, and misty bottle-green eyes to run in strange rivulets down the speculum, melting - bearing an altogether creepy resemblance to your new boss's infamous visage.
Only yesterday you had been working through your eighth month for your first manager: the pompous, insanely-rich and overweight bulk of the short-statured, raptor-esque Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, whose immensely out-of-date sense of style - black-and-white suits seeming to belong more within a romantic Jane Austen novel than on this decidedly snooty figure - only enhances his physical resemblance to the round, flightless Antarctic bird for which the balding, dark-eyed, beak-nosed entrepreneur is nicknamed.
The Penguin.
But then it became known that he was on a thug-hunt - and Cobblepot, who had long ago tired of watching you fuss with your hair (mainly because he had received a shock: someone actually preened themselves more times in one hour than he did in a whole day), literally jumped at the chance to redirect you without even so much as a disparaging sniff to the madman's employ; you still feel as if you had been traded as one would a pack of set of baseball cards.
Well, at least this deck - if only now - is considered high-quality enough to work for the most-wanted and ruling criminal in Gotham City.
Out of nowhere you suddenly remember you have neglected to unlock the rear doors of the aged vehicle (you are desperately hoping that he will not choose to ride shotgun, though you had not locked that particular door just in case: you absolutely did not want the first impression you presented to be that you were trying to challenge his authority by "letting" him into the vehicle - which was certainly not what you were hoping to achieve); you turn around and reach over the back of your seat to flip the stiff switch near the inner door handle with a dull clunk - the once-elegant (in an admittedly large sort of way) Mafia-style Town Car is so old you are forced to release the catch by hand. You spare a quick glance to check that the passenger sitting in the backseat diagonally across from you with his head tilted back onto the cracked tan leather is indeed still unconscious before you face front again.
Under strict - and thankfully final - orders from Cobblepot (whose position over you did not truly end until he had abruptly broken the cell phone connection without even confirming whether you had comprehended the given information or not - Penguin was simply passing on a message from him, so it didn't really matter to the asshole birdbrain if you were "disposed of" for failing to comply with instructions properly), you had gone to the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane only this afternoon. Having efficiently disguised yourself as a UPS worker - knocking a real employee who had appeared to be about your size unconscious for the uniform and then "borrowing" one of those infamously bulbous trucks - and having armed yourself with an empty cardboard box and a clipboard (stuffed with fake "sign here, please" forms) and pen, you had been permitted to enter by the dull-witted guards after presenting the excuse that you had a special delivery that you were supposed to hand personally to the chef (you knew far better than to try and give it to the head physician himself - you had heard of what the deadly "medication" he administers to his patients is capable of) - and after you were literally forced to swear on your mother's unfortunately occupied grave (bless her soul) that you wouldn't cause any "disturbances" among the inmates.
You had evidently succeeded in you pitiful - okay, very reluctant - attempts to "flirt" with the head cook, a crotchety albeit easily-flattered old hag whose warped and sagging appearance appeared to merely enhance her dragon-like authoritative demeanor (despite her small stature), for she had taken the small glass vial you had given her and had promised to "discreetly" pour the translucent liquid contents into your passenger's water glass at dinner without question.
After picking up your captive you had swapped the truck for your Lincoln back in the parking lot of the Penguin's posh office complex; you will be needing something a mite more inconspicuous (though perhaps in the case of the Town Car "inconspicuous" is a bit of a stretch - just a bit) for the services you will perform tonight - to say nothing of future jobs if all goes well - and you would have needed to eventually move the Town Car nevertheless because now you officially don't work there anymore.
Let Penguin's goons worry about the van - you never gave a shit about them anyway.
And then, once again merely following instructions, you had ended up here.
One thing is undeniable: if he ever comes out of this alive, Dr. Jonathan Crane will be certain to inspect his food and drink for hidden contaminates from now onward. (Unbeknownst to you, Crane never had to double-check what he consumed before because of his Scarecrow persona's fearsome reputation over his staff and the "patients" at Arkham - one merely had to look at Crane wrong to receive a lethal dose of his patented terror-inducing toxin.)
Without warning a flash of purple fabric is reflected for a fleeting instant in the driver's side mirror, snapping you out of your reverie as the left rear door of the vehicle is spontaneously yanked open; your stomach flips as a sodden - though ultimately still very deadly - figure scrambles into the backseat, the entryway he has just crawled through clicking shut behind him.
You goggle openmouthed in horror at his blurred reflection in the rearview mirror, struggling to get over the shock of actually regarding him face-to-face (well, face-to-duplicate image, anyway); everyone has seen him on the ten-o'clock news, obviously, but to do so in person proves far more terrifying.
Morbid brown eyes meet the likeness of your fearful green ones.
"Drrrrriii-vuh," the Joker snarls.
The next moment you blink, the sound of the deep yet whining voice seeming to break through the cloud of fear that has fogged your mind, and shut your mouth; the clown throws a quick glance over his shoulder, out the rear window. Hysterical giggles - which you sense are coming from him - influence icy chills to skitter up your spine as you switch the gears from NEUTRAL into DRIVE, completely lacking regard for Gotham's never-enforced-so-who-really-gives-a-damn-anyway safety laws - receiving a ticket for "conveniently forgetting" to wear your seat belt is currently the least of your worries.
Quiet sniggers morph horribly into high-pitched shrieks of maniacal laughter as you stomp on the gas and pull the Lincoln away from the curb in a horrendous squeal of tires burning rubber.
A sinister leer finally greets you.
"Hello, Vyacheslav-vuh."
Oooh - CLIFFY! (If I may borrow a term from a reply I had received for a review I had given - thanks in advance, that is positively ingenious.) Where are they going? How does the Joker know Lefty's real name - or at least part of it, anyway? What part does Crane have in all this? You'll just have to read on to find out! The other chapters won't be as dull as this one, I promise. Will update ASAP.
To a certain reviewer-friend of mine: the "good part" is up next! ;)