A/N: Here it is, the sequel to my fic 'From The Inside'. Its major events are explained in this fic, so you don't have to have read it to understand this one.

A wild scatty rhythm of saxophones and trumpets filled the air of the small room with a riot of sound, blending with the erratic tap-tap of an underlying drumbeat. Caterwauling cacophony up and down the scales, leaping between key changes with the ease of giants traversing mountain ranges. Staccato bursts of trumpet notes that assaulted the ears and then continued to rock them, pounding through the canals and arteries that made up the brain until they were trembling under the attack, left to the mercy of the music's might. All the rules were made to be broken, to be crushed under each and every golden note. Boundaries were chewed up and redefined in the majesty of that noise. All this and more was jazz and the Joker loved it.

He sat sprawled on the broken springs of a beaten, crooked armchair in his beaten, crooked apartment room with his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He breathed in the music, bathed in it and it didn't matter that it came crackling through a tinny set of cheap speakers because in his head it reverberated like the acoustics in the finest music hall. The lack of form and unpredictable measure suited him perfectly; it made sense to his way of thinking.

The song drew, after what felt like a lifetime but had only really been three minutes, to a close and the smoke-roughened voice of the radio deejay announced that there would be some more "sexy" jazz tunes to come after the travel update. Joker slowly opened his eyes and was mildly surprised to find himself still in his flat, an eyrie perched high above the streets of Gotham. Turning his head, he could look out of the grimy window and see the jagged skyline of the city silhouetted against the bloody red of a setting sun.

A smooth female voice on the radio informed him that there had been a crash on 43rd Street and it was recommended that drivers find an alternative route home because traffic in that area had slowed to a crawl. Joker thought about getting out of Gotham. There'd been a suicide attempt on the underground, so the trains would be running late, but there were plenty of other cities with suicides on the tracks. A little vacation could be just what the doctor ordered.

Joker was feeling run down, he was tired, bored. He'd tried to show Gotham the fun side of things, but apparently no one had got the joke because he'd ended up in Arkham Asylum. Although not the worst thing the clown prince had ever lived through, it was still not an experience that he was willing to repeat in a hurry. Of course, a whole different spin had been put on the matter when it turned out that the head of Arkham, Doctor Hugo Strange, had been using his inmate in a thought experiment that merged Joker's mind with the fugitive Batman's. But all that was over and done with now. Gotham had grown stale, uninspiring; it was time to move onto fresher climes.

Travel update finished, a new song had begun to play on the radio but now Joker barely heard it. His mind had moved on to where he would take his little recuperative vacation. A little trip would work wonders on his tired mind and have him cracking new jokes a mile a minute in no time. There was just the problem of where to go. He'd heard Hollywood was nice at this time of year; or maybe Washington D.C. with its deliciously corruptible politicians, just waiting for someone to come along and introduce a little anarchy into their grey little lives. Yes, he would go to D.C. and put a smile –

'Don't even think about it, Joker.'

Hearing that familiar voice sound in his head, disrupting the flow of his thoughts, the clown prince froze. A frown pulling at his forehead, he tilted his head on one side and banged on his ear with the heel of his palm, like a swimmer clearing his head of water. "Bats?" he enquired out loud, glancing around his poky little room.

'You really need to clean out your head, it's disgusting in here.'

Joker stood up and drew his knife from its place of concealment inside his long purple coat so fast that he shredded the lining. With a feral grin stretching his lips, he whirled to face the rapidly darkening room behind him. The space was barren, just a few threadbare pieces of furniture, not many places to hide but someone was in here, because someone was talking to him.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are…" Joker crooned as he stepped around the armchair he'd been sitting on, advancing upon the room. He twirled the knife deftly in his hand, prowling very slowly around the perimeters of the walls, checking behind tables and cabinets. "Uncle Joker is in no mood for playing 'Find the Bat'."

Suddenly, a strangled bark like that of a rabid dog erupted from his throat and he lunged for the sullied curtains at his window. One quick slash of his fist and a gaping wound appeared in the greasy fabric. Nothing behind that one, so he attacked the next, tearing it from the curtain pole above the window.

Shreds of curtain draping across his arms, he panted "How now? A bat? Dead for a ducat, dead!" with a fearsome grin on his face.

'Hamlet, Act three, Scene four,' the voice in Joker's head commented dryly.

"Get out, get out!" the criminal roared, punishing his temples with both fists. "You can't be in my head; the psychic link between us was broken when Doc Strange went into a coma." In one wild plunge he was across the room and flinging open his apartment door.

"Coco? Coco?!" He roared down the corridor, hanging from the doorframe. When there was no answer, he kicked viciously at the safety banister surrounding the top of the stairs. The wood splintered noisily under his assault, half of it breaking off and tumbling down the treacle-thick darkness of the stairwell. Joker thought abruptly of someone tripping over a piece of safety rail and breaking their neck and that made him laugh, although the sound came out as more of a barking shout than an indication of good humour.

'I'd get out if I could Joker, believe me. You think I want to be in here?'

"Shut up."

Joker's recently employed henchman, Coco, appeared like a rat out of a hole from a door further down the corridor. Dressed in sagging boxers and a grubby muscle shirt, he yawned and rubbed at piggy eyes with a ham fist.

"D'you call me, Mister Joker?" he asked through a mouthful of sleep, scratching at the substantial portion of gut that hung over the waistband of his undershorts.

With all the speed and ferocity of a dervish, Joker was upon his luckless employee, an arm wrapped securely around the man's shoulders to hold a knife to his throat as he was roughly escorted into the clown prince's apartment. Once inside, Joker glanced around and nervously licked his scars, before pressing his painted forehead to the side of the aptly-named Coco's head.

A thug of the first degree, it didn't take much to scare the henchman, but he froze completely at the insane criminal's touch. His heart pounded in his mouth like he had never known it to before. He'd heard things about this Joker, this madman, and all of a sudden he wished he'd stayed in school and gotten a quiet desk job in a nice company, like Wayne Enterprises for instance.

'Don't hurt him, I'm watching you.'

Joker flinched a little. "Do you, ah, do you hear anything?" he asked the thug he had ahold of. Gone was the towering fury in his voice, now it oozed with a caressing sweetness that was somehow even more threatening. Coco could hear a slight churning sound by his ear as Joker ran a tongue across his lips, which made his stomach roll over. He nearly lost all control of the vital organ when he felt the blade of the knife at his throat being inserted tenderly, absentmindedly, into the corner of his mouth.

It took him only a second to reply, even though his immediate future hung in the balance of his words. "Just… just them tunes on your radio, Mister Joker."

As if by magic, a gun appeared in Joker's free hand. A couple of ear-shattering gun shots rang out, silencing the radio forever. "What about now?"

'He won't be able to hear me; I'm in your head. We need to work out why this has happened.'

"N-nothing, Mister J, I can't hear nothing," Coco stammered, on the verge of sobbing. It was so difficult to talk with a blade cutting into his cheek, threatening at any moment to open up his tongue, or even his entire mouth.

'Something must be going on with Strange, that would explain it.''

Uttering a barking snarl, Joker threw his henchman from him in frustration. Luckily the man escaped no worse injury than a small cut on his upper lip. He cowered on the floor where he had fallen, watching fearfully as the boss set about beating his own head, thrashing from side to side with a gun and knife held in either hand.

Suddenly, Joker stopped and stood up straight, a smile stretching his grotesque scars. "As much as I love playing with you Batsy," he leered aloud to thin air, "I'm going to have to pass on this one. This is going to end now. You see, I have places to go, things to do, people to kill, and I can't have you hanging over me like some bad smell. As much as it will pain you, I've moved on, we couldn't have lasted forever. It's not you, it's me. Perhaps one day…"

'You're sick.'

"Perhaps, but I'm going to make myself better." Breaking into a wild laugh, Joker turned and stalked from the room, spreading his arms like wings as he called out "Start running Batsy, I'm coming for you!"