AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Welcome to my first ever crossover here on . I think this will be one of my most challenging fics yet, because I'm going to hold myself to a personal standard of not only writing the Joker properly, but also Poison Ivy (never written her before) and other DC characters, along with my two personal favourites from Harry Potter; Voldemort and Bellatrix. Therefore, any and all constructive criticism will be much appreciated, so long as it's actually helpful. I do always love getting feedback, regardless.
This series came to me in the spur of a moment, and I had to get it started ASAP before I lose the thrill of it. Now, if you're a fan of my work, you'd know that I think anyone other than Voldemort for Bellatrix is absolutely sacrilegious, but we'll see how this swings.
Also, I can shamelessly admit that the beginning of this little scene was heavily drawn on from a scene in Batman: The Animated Series. That moment in time spawned my love for a potential Joker and Poison Ivy relationship, if one could call it that.
I wasn't particularly sure what 'Batman' to place this series under – the comics or the movies. For now, I'll put in the comics section, but I think that makes it even more imperative to keep my DC babies as IC as possible.
Much love to all! Hope I can entertain!
You know, for all the time Joker had spent in Arkham, one might think that he would hate it. However, despite the popular opinion of the guards, he loved the mental institution. Now, keep in mind that he had a distinction between loving the establishment itself, and hating the fact that he was locked inside for the umpteenth time in the past year. What he loved about the place was simple; a limitless supply of potential weapons, cowering doctors, and psychotic patients. It was almost as if they had specifically designed this place to be his own personal playground. For most of the day, he lounged about in his cell, eyeing the pretty new interns whenever they walked past the bullet-proof glass wall that sealed his enclosure. He had a cot to himself, a desk with no pens or paper, and a urinal in the corner. Mealtimes were a particular favourite of his, because the kitchen boys were never properly equipped emotionally to deal with his torment. Despite the fact that the food was nothing better than squishy vegetables in some weird mash, Joker enjoyed it. He didn't need to cook for himself, and his taste buds had become so accustomed to the dull, flavourless meal that every single one of them was a pleasure and a half.
His other favourite time of the day was recreational time. The patients were let out in groups into a large indoor den. There were a few chess boards with remarkably dull points atop their bishops, a pool table with no cues, and a singular television that requires some tampering with in order to get a proper signal. He liked to sit and watch the news, if he could, and fight with one Miss Poison Ivy for control over the remote whenever she was in his recreation group. She hated him. She despised every inch of him, but Joker had a feeling the redheaded vixen had similar thoughts about all men. Everything about her was delicious, when he was in the right mood. When he wasn't, he probably would have had more fun throwing her through a window.
Now, the Arkham guards liked to think they owned him. Whenever they got a spare moment in a corridor where there were no cameras, they certainly got their kicks in. Little did they know his tolerance for pain was remarkably high, and he nearly enjoyed every minute of their sorry efforts to break him. The only man who could ever do that was, perhaps, Batsy. And maybe that new Bane fellow he had heard rumours about, but he had yet to have the delight of meeting the fellow. Maybe one day. But Batsy… The Batman really got to him. The winged vigilante was too good at their game for him to kill, but Joker liked to think they were evenly matched. Unfortunately, Bats was beginning to pick up on his tricks, and as much as he tried to be unpredictable, the caped crusader was starting to realize his favourites. Gun powder. Huge explosions. Public displays. Drops from high buildings – other people, not Joker. Pitting two people against each other. All of that was right up his alley. Bats also knew Joker was more than willing to die in order to prove a point, and had successfully foiled that many times. In fact, it had happened so often that Joker had been put on suicide watch for a month when he arrived at Arkham last time.
Not that he would ever off himself in somewhere like Arkham. If he was going to die, he wanted brain matter to splatter on someone it would properly traumatize. No one in here would be able to appreciate the beauty in his death, and he was saving it for someone who would see the poetry in it. Bats might, but he knew the man would turn inward over his inability to save Joker, and that really wasn't as much fun. So, he kept himself in good condition. Well, as good a condition as one can be in with minimal sunlight and a lack of a proper diet. It wasn't difficult to understand why so many of the people that hadn't been out in the real world for a while looked like walking corpses. Joker had the sheer luck of having a solid outside crew who always had a knack for springing him free at the perfect time. That was generally around the time when his loving feelings for the prison turned remarkably neutral, and that was always a bad sign. He was a man of polar emotions, and feeling neutral was something that he considered unacceptable.
At the moment, he was in a state of love for Arkham. A fresh load of crazies had been brought in from psychiatric evaluation in Gordon's holding cells, and that meant there was new meat to pick at in recreational time. However, rather than zeroing in on one and finding out his own personal weaknesses, Joker decided to take it easy for the day and torment Miss Pamela Isley, also known as Poison Ivy. They hadn't had recreation time together for about two weeks because he provoked a fight with her last time, and she nearly gauged his eyes out. Ah, what a day.
Smoothing down the front of his patient uniform, which was a stark white pair of pants and shirt, easily transitional into a strait-jacket, Joker strolled casually through the rec den. There was a man who thought he was a bird sitting on the pool table, picking at the green surface, his face only a few inches above it, while across the room a young Doctor Crane played chess with the new inmate. Ivy had already claimed a seat in front of the television, and by the symbol at the top of the screen he knew she was on the Home Gardening Network. A smirk settled on his dry lips, and he slid onto the spot on the couch next to her with ease, startling her when she realized he was there.
"Fuck off, Clown," she said abruptly as she shot him a glare out of the corner of her eye. He pouted dramatically, and then placed an arm over the back of the couch.
"Why all the hostility, Red?" Joker inquired softly, his cracked lips now close to her ear, "Does that mean you didn't miss me while we were apart?"
"Get away from me," she snarled, and then shoved his arm off her as she scooted down the couch.
"Come on, baby… Together, apart, you've taken up the only slot within my heart-"
"Go fuck yourself."
"Quite an excessive use of the word 'fuck' today, Miss Isley," Joker noted professionally, adjusting a pair of imaginary glasses on his nose. "According to our research, that means your subconscious desires a good fucking."
"You're vile!"
Joker burst out laughing as she stood up from the couch and stormed off, calling for the guard and demanding she be brought back to her room. She must have been in a mood today, because normally he could have a little more fun with her before she went into the fight or flight mode. With a shrug, he slouched into the couch and snatched up the remote, pleased to have total control over the tube box for a change. He then flipped arbitrarily through channels until he landed on the news, and that was where he stuck. There was a lot of Batman bashing on the news, and as much as he liked it for a good laugh, it only cemented the notion that Gotham's media were idiots. How could they not see that this do-gooder was on their side? They should be bashing Joker, but then again, no one in media had any real balls to speak of, so that wasn't about to happen anytime soon.
Absently picking at the scar tissue on his lips, he rolled his eyes when the news station moved onto sports, and he then picked up the remote to find something else interesting. Nothing, however, managed to keep his attention for long, and he decided just to hold down the channel button and zone out as the channels changed in rapid succession. He did that for quite some time, until a guard snatched the clicker out of his hand and set it out of his reach.
"If you can't decide, I'll decide for you," the man snapped irritably. Then, just to make sure Joker didn't resume his activities once the man left, he actually had the audacity to take the batteries out of the device and leave him stuck on Ivy's fucking gardening channel. He glared at the screen as the camera panned through an elderly woman's leafy greens, and the redheaded bitch from before slid back onto the couch, a good gap between them. He looked at her, expressionless for a moment, and then stuck his tongue out.
"You're such a child, Joker," she sneered in response, and then focused her attention back on the screen. He grinned. If he wanted to, he could call all the other would be villains by their first names, but none of them could say the same for Joker. That was because most of these people had been Gotham citizens before they went all loopy, while Joker had sprung up from chaos itself, with no real history or background in mind. Hell, at this point, he didn't even know which one of his stories was true. Therefore, he enjoyed the strange power he had over the other criminals in here; they could take everything personally, while Joker was the exact opposite. Nothing was personal or permanent, and that was the way he liked it.
"What gets you off about plants, Pammy?" he inquired, his tone bored as he cocked his head to the side at the television screen. She pursed her lips at the interruption, and only gave him any attention when he repeated the question, word for word.
"They are perfection," Poison Ivy replied, a clear love for the subject matter in her voice, "and divine. There's nothing in this world that can match what they give us selflessly."
"Well, you gotta water 'em, feed 'em, take 'em out for walks…" Joker trailed off, batting his eyelashes at her as she glared.
"Those are dogs."
"Same thing."
She growled and crossed her arms over her chest, staring at the screen pointedly as she no doubt tried to ignore his presence. Oh baby, get ready. This was only the first wave of the attack. Joker turned his body to face her, arm on the back of the couch as he reached out to fiddle with a piece of her long, thick red hair. However, before he could get a grip on it, there was a loud explosion from somewhere within Arkham. He and Ivy immediately faced the direction of the sound, while he heard Crane chuckle as the new patient whimpered in the background.
This wasn't right. His guys shouldn't be getting him out now. He wasn't bored enough yet. He rose to his feet, but suddenly found a nearby guard pointing a gun at him.
"Sit the fuck back down!" the man shouted as another explosion rocked the building, "Like hell we're going to be responsible for you escaping again!"
"Relax, friend," Joker grunted, holding up his hands peacefully. "Nobody's supposed to be here for me today."
"Bullshit."
"If I was fleeing the coop, I would have already had you on the ground," Joker informed the man as he ignored the previous order and walked around the couch, staring at the door as the guards bolted it shut. He had a feeling rec time was going to be more interesting today than he had previously hoped. His female companion was also on her feet, and suddenly she was beside him.
"Are you getting out today?" she whispered. He shot her a look, and then smirked.
"Suddenly I'm not so bad, eh?"
The look of disgust meant she still saw him as unappealing, but he figured she would jump on any chance to get out of here and get back to her beloved plants. That was Ivy's weakness; she had no human counterparts to work for her. Sure, plants were great when you can control them, but she couldn't count on a tree to come bust her out of here.
He shook his head at the sound of men screaming on the other side of the locked door, and then arched an eyebrow, "My guys aren't here today. Maybe it's for Doctor Demento?"
"I happen to enjoy my sentence," Crane remarked, causing them both to flinch at his sudden appearance at their side. "I assumed it was for you… No one else breaks out of here in such boisterous style."
"Not guilty," Joker stated, making a cross over his heart, "though I'd like to be. Fastest break-in I've ever seen… Maybe Bats wants to spring us?"
"He doesn't like you as much as you think," Ivy remarked callously, only to scream in shock as the door of the rec room was blasted open. These guys had to be packing some serious heat if they had gotten in here this quickly with this many explosions. Joker shielded his face slightly as bits of wall and rubble shot back at him, and the criminals were finally given a chance to get a look at the people who might be their ticket out of Arkham. However, there wasn't really much time to get a good picture of them, and their appearance made matters worse. They were completely covered in black robes that swished with each movement, and their faces had a white mask to skew their appearance. They all seemed a little too dramatic, and Joker wondered if they were part of the League of Assassins.
Those fuckers were actually all kinds of crazy.
Crane backed away as the figures swept into the room, and Joker felt himself being dragged back by Poison Ivy. Well, that was surprising. He watched as the guards raised their guns on the intruders and opened fire without hesitation. Remarkably, the masked avengers waved their little sticks in the air, and deflected the bullets with ease. Joker grinned.
"Gotta get me one of those," he laughed above the roar of bedlam, pushing Ivy off his arm as he took a few steps forward, eyes hungry for more action. Before he could hope for long, the men flicked their sticks and shouted words in Latin, and bright jets of light shot out of the end of the sticks. When they hit a guard, the man was sent flying backward, and from what Joker could see, he was knocked out on impact.
Definitely got to grab one of those. These guys had to be funded by some government agency, because no one else out there had laser sticks. Or. Whatever the hell they were called. Joker stood perfectly still as the cloaked figures stalked toward him, and he cocked his head to the side curiously as his wide eyes studied them. Arms hanging limp at his side, he blinked lazily, more interested than intimidated.
"Joker?" a gruff voice demanded from beneath the mask, and Joker came to the acute realization that there was a British accent present. Wonderful; he loved welcoming foreigners to Gotham. He liked to think he was the city's Poster Boy.
"Who are you?" Poison Ivy asked as she stood by Joker's side. She sounded much less pleased to have the intruders in her prison, despite her previous eagerness to escape by his side. The figure before them raised his weapon, and in an instant a beam of light shot forward and hit Ivy square in the chest. She plummeted to the ground, eyes wide open, and appeared frozen in time. Joker stared down at her for a moment, and then swung his fist upward into the attacker with full force, cracking the man's mask upon impact. The man's companions were soon rushing toward the scene, and Joker shrugged passively.
"Tit for tat, Stranger," he trilled as he crouched down over the fallen man, his mask cracked from the nose upward. Too bad he couldn't see the blood. Joker reached out, fingers stretching to remove the ambiguous white face from his sight. He wanted to see what was underneath. Too many people wore masks these days! Unfortunately, before his fingers could touch the glorious covering, a beam of light flew into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him into the black abyss.
Foiled again.