Who Giggles in Gotham? Part Two
Completed
: November 18, 2008


"Care to take a guess on me?" a tall figure lumbered up to the booth.

That voice is what grabbed hold of Edward Nygma's attention; grabbed a strangling hold of it. He looked up from his book of crossword puzzles, preparing to flash his toothy smile and garish green jacket as he put on his show. Tricking the unsuspecting idiots out of their five dollars while he lied about their height, weight or what have you.
But when he looked up, he stopped cold. The moonlight hit the voice's face in such a way it cast a goulish pallor and shadowed reflection.

"Not going to guess my weight?" the figure leaned forward, giving Edward an unobstructed view of his face: It was ghostly white, but in caked grease paint. Complete with sunken eyes and a stretched smile. It looked as if one of the carnival clowns had gone over the deep end, and thought it'd be fun to pick on little Eddy again.

"Oh great Quizmaster," the voice rasped again, reading from the banner. And he knew this was no one from the carnival. It was like staring into a Stephen King nightmare.
"I'd hate to step on any toes…" this clown licked at his mouth and scratched his head with the tip of his knife, "but I'll be needing all the money you've got back there."

"I…I can't," Edward sputtered, "It's…it's not mine. I don't keep any back here."

"I may be a thief, but at least I'm honest about it," he reached forward, grabbing fistfuls of Edward's ugly green jacket, "You on the other hand; trick the poor saps out of their lunch money."

Edward shook. He had never seen anyone like this man, this creature. It made his swindling scheme seem childish and undeveloped. He wanted to be more, like the image before him. He wanted to strike the same kind of fear.

The demented clown rolled his eyes, dropping him like a puddle of green glitter on the dirt floor, "Never mind. I'll help myself." With an odd amount of grace, he leaped up and over the booth, rummaging through the crash box that Edward had used as a seat.

"Whooo," Edward tried again, clearing his throat with a wheezy succession of coughs, "Who are you?"

The jester stopped, his head turned on an odd angle to look him in the eye, "Oh Quizmaster... that's a riddle I'm sure you'll figure out." He flashed a yellowed, toothy grin before lunging over the counter again, "Soon enough, when you're a forgotten smudge, this whole city'll know me."

----

Five Years Later…

There was a body in the bay.

A woman.

The report came screeching over the police scanner. An unidentified caller tipped the police off: there was a woman floating in the river. And he was pretty sure she was dead. Considering the explosion and escape at Arkham, every available GCPD body was out on the street. Day and night for two days straight. Trying their best to return all of Gotham's beasts to their cages.

This had slipped through their fingers.

But Commissioner James Gordon was never one to sit behind a desk. He crouched by the edge of the water, next to a white-sheeted form. Gordon lifted the veil off the body, revealing a garish smile carved into her cheeks – from ear to ear. "With everything else going on we can't be sure, but we figure she's been in the water since the Arkham escape," he sounded sad and tired, very tired.

"Ruby Haring," a coarse voice crept up Gordon's neck.

The cop didn't turn, but acknowledged the living shadow over his shoulder. He figured the Batman would show up here. He was sure of it.
"She was seeing Bruce Wayne," Batman reported, quoted the many headlines that screamed out from the newsstand. Though of course, he knew the truth.

"I didn't take you for someone who reads the society pages," Jim quipped, turning his head only slightly. Upon receiving not response, he continued, "We've already got an ID. Ruby, or whatever stage name she was using on the billionaire, is a missing person. Was. Alyssa Stevens. Seems she was also a witness to one of the Joker's earlier robberies. Only eighteen at the time," Gordon cast another sad look at the girl's mutilated face and wide, glassy eyes before pulling the white sheet back up to cover her, "Family sent her to a facility upstate. Post traumatic stress, or something. But that's where she went missing from. Ran away."

And into the arms of a madman. Batman let the thought move through his head.

"Found this too, tucked in her dress," Gordon held up a sheet of paper, protectively housed in a plastic slip. The waterlogged paper was actually the crossword puzzle ripped from the weekend's newspaper. It read: Joke's on You in a careful scribble of ink. "Some sick joke, even for him." Gordon didn't have to specify how He was. The moment they saw the etched smile in the girl's skin, they both had the same thought: The Joker.

But something didn't fit. Something wasn't right.

"Think he's going after old witnesses?" Commissioner rose to his feet.
"No," came the reply from the darkness.

He cast another sad look at the young woman's cold form under the stark sheet, "Then what do you –." But when he looked back up, the Batman was gone.

----

It was only a mile up the River. The perfect vantage point to watch but not be seen. If no one was looking, he wouldn't have been found.

"I hear the cops fished a mermaid out of the river," the Joker sat on the edge of the bridge, half-hidden by the darkness, legs dangling over the edge as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"I think you already know all about that poor girl," Batman stood a few steps away. An easy arms length, in case the clown made a move.

"Maybe. But I'm surprised you care so much to make a private appearance," he kept his watch over the police scene; carefully taped off with their yellow streamers and flashing lights. "Funny. We have so many of the same interests. My little herring: her dark eyes, that soft mouth. Long tangles of dark hair – well, it's such a treat to find a girl willing to play dress-up."

"You monster!" Batman spat. An unnamed rage bubbling inside him. Disgust. Part of Bruce Wayne's desperation, "She loved you."

"Did she?" the Joker watched his legs dangle over the edge, above the cold, rolling water, "Did she really? What kind of woman would love the likes of me…or you?" He turned his head sharply to look up at the Bat. His head at an odd angle in the early moonlight, revealing his naked face; his mouth hanging against the twisted scars of his face and the natural, deep circles around his eyes. Just as sharply, he pulled himself back into the shadows, "Can't blame me though," his voice returned to its sticky sweetened tone, "You know what happens to the women who fall for the likes of us." He sprang to his feet, "They end up dead!"

Batman recoiled slightly from the abrupt movement.

"Poor Ruby –"

"Alyssa," the gravely voice corrected.

The Joker shrugged, "Whichever – she cracked under the pressure. And widdle Rachel fell to pieces," he flexed his fingers to mimic the warehouse explosion.

He sprang, slamming the Joker back against the support beam, making his teeth chatter in their sockets.

But still the clown managed to laugh.

"Why?" Batman snarled, "Why did you kill her?"

The Joker's head snapped up, "Kill her? Why would I kill her? I wasn't done playing with her," his slick tongue darted out to lick the scarred corners of his mouth. "Someone took my toy away, and I wanna know who."

A sick and twisted image floated through the Batman's mind. He fought to ignore it, fought to suppress Bruce's shudder. That girl had seemed so…so much like he had wanted to see her as. He really had no idea about the woman in the brunette wig. He looked to the Joker, and for a flash of a moment saw the man standing before him; sloppy clothes and messy hair. Within the lunatic hid a man. Human.

"Than what's the meaning of this?" Batman pulled out the note that had been found on Ruby's body.
"Stealing evidence?" the Joker clicked his tongue as if chastising the bat. "Not at all my style," he narrowed his eyes at the paper, disgusted, "Seems the Carny went to the big top."

"What?" he snatched the paper back from the Joker's greedy hands.
"I would have left the Queen of Hearts, I should think. Seems so much more fitting after all. Don't you agree?" His tone and manner seemed casual, but the Batman had caught sight of something.

The other man's wheels were always turning.

"Do you know who did this?"
The Joker watched him through slanted eyes, "You'd be the first I'd tell."
"The police will arrest him," even as he spoke those words, the Batman felt how hollow they were. How they would carry no weight, no real meaning.

The Joker chuckled, "And they do such lovely work." The Joker tickled by the fact that there he stood, on the wrong side of the law, while not one boy in blue could find him.

It was only then that Batman realised the Joker was still clad in his Arkham issued jump suit. Not really inconspicuous in the least. But they were talking about the same men who couldn't find a man dressed up as a bat, when he stood in front of them.

Silence settled with them for a moment: the uncertainty of the moment. According to the GCPD, both were on the wrong side of the law. But would the Batman capture the crook, or use him to catch the one who hurt Ruby?

The Joker waited, a smirk twitching at the side of his mouth. He had so many ideas about the bat, and his curious nature wanted to see each one play out.

Before the Batman could decide, or give into fate, a pair of search lights illuminated them.
"Police! Freeze!" a pair of officers on patrol had spotted the unlikely cohorts. They had their gun trained on them, but neither officer seemed confident in their position.

"Sounds like a plan," the Joker flashed a toothy grin before diving off the side of the bridge, and into the dark, icy water below.

Batman darted his eyes back and forth between the Joker's escape and the uniforms. Shaking his head, he fired a ripcord in the opposite direction. Rip tailing up a safe enough distance away, to another building, carefully hidden by the unnatural shadows of the city.

He crouched against the brick wall, keeping a careful eye on the dumb founded police on the bridge, who were aimlessly directing their flash lights down into the Sprang River. He slipped a small computerized screen from his belt. The small, beeping beacon on his GPS told him that the clown had made it safely out of the water, just a little upstream. He'd follow him; sure he would lead him to the author of the note, and the girl's killer.