AN: Sorry, I mean to have this up yesterday, but I got distracted showing my friends awesome movies. And by "awesome movies" I mean Breakfast on Pluto. Which is actually only one movie, as I'm sure you're aware. I fail at writing coherently.
In other news, winters in Indiana are proof that there is no God. I thought I was used to it, growing up here, but southern Indy's got nothing on the north. Never before have I used the term "Hey guys, it warmed up to negative two" before. Or followed it mentally with "So with the wind chill that's, what, negative fifteen?"
Thanks for the reviews!
As soon as he got out of here, he was going to hunt down the idiots behind Ensure and kill them.
Well, perhaps that was a bit extreme. After all, it wasn't their fault that Arkham only stocked three flavors of the stuff. Vanilla, which was absolutely disgusting, coffee latte, which ironically enough, given his hatred for coffee, was his favorite, and milk chocolate, which he refused to try because it reminded him too much of eating fudge ripple ice cream with the Joker. He'd actually told the nurses this, in one of his less lucid moments, and he blushed every time he remembered that fact. It was pathetic enough to have flashbacks brought on by a drink flavor, and the fact that others knew about it made it nearly unbearable.
The moment the concentration of drugs got back to normal in his body, he'd be out of here. Even if he was still ridiculously underweight at the time. He could deal with that on his own; but he needed to be stabilized on the medication, or knowing him, he'd forget, and go back to the state he was in when the Batman brought him back. But as soon as he was sure that wouldn't happen, he'd be out.
Unfortunately, the antipsychotics had yet to go back to their full effectiveness.
The hallucinations were…well, not gone, but easier to ignore. At the moment, anyway. He was still every bit as badly off as he'd been this morning, when Nigma had forced him to eat, but Jonathan and Scarecrow were sharing control at the moment, which helped. The shaking hadn't stopped, though. Scarecrow's theory was that it was only partly hallucination now, and partly a side effect of the antipsychotic mixing with all the other drugs.
He drank again, almost gagging on what passed for coffee latte. By 'favorite flavor' he actually meant, 'one that makes me want to kill the least.' God, he was longing for the day when his body could handle real food without puking like a kid longed to hear Santa's sleigh bells on Christmas Eve. At least they'd unstrapped him so he could feed himself this time. That was why they were sharing the body, actually, to come off as controlled enough to warrant that privilege. Scarecrow and Jonathan still weren't on the best of terms. Together, they could agree that they should at least stay until the drugs stabilized, but apart, Scarecrow wanted out, now, consequences be damned, and Jonathan just wanted to hide under the bed sheets from the things he was imagining and sob.
"You're shaking. Are you still cold?" Isley asked, watching him from the foot of the bed. She'd convinced her psychiatrist to let her visit, and hadn't taken her eyes off him since coming in, even when speaking to Nigma. As if he'd break his skull or something the moment she turned her back.
"No." He took another drink that he really didn't want as Nigma explained the hallucination thing, and tried not to blush. Showing weakness like this made him feel completely emasculated. And annoyed. And he hadn't been cold, the only reason he'd requested the long-sleeved shirt he had on now was because Isley kept staring at the scars. She still shot glances to his bandaged hand every minute or so. Jonathan appreciated the concern. Scarecrow could have slapped her.
Yeah, like it would even hurt, said a voice that wasn't either of his. Hell, she probably hits less like a girl than you do.
He tensed, slightly, with the briefest shake of his head, as if to clear the voice. The visual hallucinations were one thing. Convincing as ever, but Scarecrow knew they weren't real, and was able to pick up on the way that no one else reacted to them. Voices, on the other hand, came into his head just like his own thoughts and were far harder to ignore.
His companions noticed, concern flashing over Isley's face before she could hide it. "Who's talking to you, Jonathan?"
"Joker."
"He's not—"
"I know," he said, before Nigma could make some meant-to-be-consoling remark that may well push him into killing rage. Not that he had any weapons, but he was fairly sure the earpieces of his glasses could jam into eye sockets. Isley said something, which he missed, still considering methods of death by eyeglasses. "What?"
"I said, 'pity Batman doesn't break his rule for that bastard.'"
"Ah."
"Well, look on the bright side," Nigma said, pulling at the elastic around his wrist for a moment, before Isley slapped his hand away. "Can't you just imagine the look on his face when he saw the news broadcast?"
He stared, expression blank, as Isley giggled. "News broadcast?"
"Yeah. You know, the one about Batman apprehending you?" Isley paused, fingers winding through her thick red hair. "Oh, I guess you were still unconscious when they aired that one. But it was great. That stupid clown must have flipped out over it so badly."
Jonathan tried, unsuccessfully, to shrug aside the horde of butterflies suddenly in his stomach, which turned out to be impossible. They seemed to hate coffee latte just as much as he did. That, or they were as terrified as their host. "There was a broadcast?"
"There's always a broadcast, now that the Batman's back to being Gotham's greatest hero. Especially when the security camera footage gets leaked. I mean, how many times do you get footage of the Bat holding a villain's hand as he escorts him back into the asylum?"
"He wasn't holding my hand!"
"I was kidding." Isley ducked as a pillow came hurtling towards her, just sailing over her head on its way to the floor. "But seriously, Jonathan, he always hauls us in unconscious. Of course a time when that didn't happen would be newsworthy."
Oh, fuck. "How newsworthy?" he asked, unsure he wanted to hear the answer. A nurse placed the pillow back on the bed, shooting them a mildly disapproving look before heading back to her desk.
"Er…Mike Engel talked about it on his show the next night," Nigma said, looking apologetic. "He had a pair of psychologists on the air, arguing about whether it signified Batman as having a positive influence, or creating some sort of mild Stockholm Syndrome."
"Oh, God." Everything he'd just drank was threatening to come back up, and now he was giving serious consideration to shoving the glasses into his own eyes. Isley realized what he was up to about a second beforehand, unfortunately, and took the glasses away.
Harley wasn't sure she'd ever understand the Joker's obsession with Batman.
When she was his psychiatrist, she'd gotten the impression that in a twisted way, Joker looked up the Bat as a role model of sorts, only instead of living up to his standard in the normal way, he subverted the other's morals. More of a rival then a role model, maybe. She'd assumed his fascination with the Batman was out of a desire to fight him, triumph over him. Kill him, eventually.
Then she began living with him, and realized just how wrong that interpretation was.
Oh, he wanted to fight him, all right, she definitely hadn't been wrong on that part. But as for winning; he didn't seem to care whether or not he came out victorious. Each failed plan that got them sent back to Arkham was met with the same happiness as each success. And he definitely didn't want to kill him. He didn't want to win, it seemed, so much as he wanted to corrupt. To bring the Batman down—or up, in Harley's opinion—to his level. And beyond that, Batman was almost a drug for him. He craved his presence, acted like an addict going cold turkey without it, irritable, dangerous, and not thinking clearly at all. It was painful to watch, in more ways than one. There were times Harley got the impression that Joker liked the Batman more than her. Many times.
And the irony of his habit of smoking cigarettes after his fights with Batman had certainly not been lost on her.
No, she didn't think she'd ever understand it. What she did understand, perfectly well, was that she could not let him see the reports of the Batman's latest victory, involving a certain ex-boyfriend of the Joker's getting the attention Joker had always longed for.
It was by sheer luck that she'd caught the news in time to distract the Joker from it. Time spent living with him had resulting in her picking up a similar sleep schedule, that being nocturnal. Normally she would have been asleep until around one in the afternoon, but as her –and Jonathan's—lucky stars would have it, she woke up at eight that morning and could not, for the life of her, fall back asleep. A remnant of her former life as a psychiatrist, maybe. Whatever the reason, an hour or so later found her sprawled on the couch, spreading cream cheese on a bagel and catching the morning news.
She'd nearly had a heart attack when that particular story came up.
The story itself was bad enough, but the footage accompanying it…well, if Joker ever saw that, she had little doubt Jonathan would be dead in a matter of hours. Or at least severely maimed. Again. And while keeping secrets from the Joker was a bad, likely deadly idea itself, she still had nightmares about that night in the Arkham parking lot, when her best friend had come so close to having all his bones shattered into dust. So she decided to distract him.
She left the apartment at around nine thirty, and by the time the Joker woke up at two, she'd returned home with several new pairs of recreational handcuffs, among other things, and raided the Joker's closet for one of his shortest, sheerest nightdresses. She wasn't quite sure why he had those to begin with, but he looked so pretty in them she'd never bothered to ask. And she'd paid a visit to one of the seediest, vilest adult shops in Gotham, to pick up a few of those locally made videos featuring actors portraying herself and her puddin'. Moral guardians called such films disgusting, unethical filth. Harley found them hilarious, and the Joker was always prompted by them to fly into a sort of sexual rage and show her how he really did things.
And when he did, she didn't complain.
That worked as a distraction for the first two, utterly exhausting days. The third day had been a recovering period, for the both of them. On the fourth day, the Joker discovered that the apartment below them was home to a pair of young siblings whose mother was far too preoccupied with working to pay the bills to believe her children's stories about seeing the city's greatest criminal, and the rest of that day, as well as the fifth and sixth, was spent traumatizing them for life like a demented version of the Cat in the Hat.
But on Friday, the now-mentally-scarred kids had gone to visit their father for the weekend, and Harley was left out of ideas.
She'd managed to distract him, thankfully, for most of the day with the Animal Planet channel. Seeing predators tear into their prey never failed to amuse him, and it helped that she'd mentioned she thought she'd heard they were doing a special on bats. They weren't, of course, but there were hyenas, which entertained him almost as well. Now he was off trying to figure out just how the laptop worked, so he could ask the all-knowing Wikipedia if hyenas could be domesticated and used like attack dogs.
Harley was making coffee and wondering if they had any sedatives to slip into it.
Still, it's been a week. The whole thing's probably blown over by now. She hoped, anyway. Her luck had been incredible so far, and it seemed due to give out. And they'd likely be needing a new laptop now. The Joker wasn't good with any technology that wasn't used to hurt people or blow things up, and their last two computers had been sent to earlier graves when he got sick of trying to puzzle them out, and shut them off using his guns. If her luck held, he'd be distracted for a few more hours before he broke this one.
"Harley."
It wasn't quite a yell, just her name spoken loudly. But he didn't need to yell. She could tell well enough that he was pissed, and something very, very bad was about to happen. With a sinking feeling, she made her way down the hall towards the bedroom, movement getting harder with each step. "Yes, Mistah J?"
He was sitting on top of the dresser, legs crossed with the laptop resting on them, and an expression that would have caused lesser henchwenches to faint. And it occurred to her that if he had, by some miracle, managed to work out the Internet, she'd set the homepage to GCN's website. Because he so loved hearing news about himself. And the site's main page had news stories for up to two weeks.
Oh, shit.
"You wanna explain to me what the hell this is?" he asked, turning the screen toward her. Her worst suspicions were confirmed.
Oh, double shit. That was it, she was dead. She was dead, and then Jonathan was dead, and probably all of Gotham, besides the Batman. Hell, maybe even him too. "Puddin', I know you're angry, but you've got to think rationally about th—"
"Who the fuck does Jonny Crane think he is?" He jumped down; the laptop went crashing to the carpet. It stayed in one piece, but the screen flickered to black, and she doubted she'd ever get it to light up again. "Batman is my nemesis. My other half. Mine."
Harley looked for something substantial to hide behind or shield herself with, and found nothing but a large stuffed fish mounted on the wall, left behind by the previous, deceased tenants. Hell. Oh well. It's what she deserved anyway, keeping secrets from him. If only it didn't spell Jonathan's doom as well. "Mistah J, I'm sure he didn't mean to—"
One of the Joker's shoes, which only seconds ago had been on his foot, went flying. Harley ducked, as the mirror on the wall behind her shattered to pieces. "Why doesn't he ever do that for me? Haven't I been the bigger threat? Why don't I get that attention?"
"Puddin'—" she dodged the other shoe, feeling jealousy along with fear. It just figured. Even after the worst breakup ever, Jonathan still dominated his thoughts. "I don't think he lets anybody take him back to Arkham willingly. Batman was probably goin' to kill him, and he just agreed to come quietly so he wouldn't get hurt more—"
"Who are you talking about?" he asked, brows raising. The dresser drawer he'd pulled out and been preparing to throw stopped dead, his hands lowering slowly.
"Who are you talkin' about?" she asked, taking advantage of his distraction to hide on the other side of the bed.
"The Batman, idiot. Not Jonny."
"Oh." So Jonathan wasn't going to be horribly killed? Maybe things weren't going as badly as they seemed. "Well, puddin', he probably doesn't do that with you, 'cause, um…"
"I'm the bigger threat to the city!" The mattress shifted against it as he threw himself on the bed, like a child having a fit. "What does Jonny ever do? So he cut up a few people, big fucking deal. When I kill people, I don't soft skirt around the issue. I rip 'em apart. By the dozen."
"I know."
There came a sound of splintering wood, and she didn't have to look up to know that somehow, he'd managed to tear off one of the bedposts. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later, when he threw it against the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster.
"I've been out since September. Fucking September. That little idiot in a burlap mask gets out two months ago, and he gets escorted back into Arkham like some goddamn princess? He didn't even knock him out! Why hasn't he come after me?"
"He has," Harley said, and ducked, in case another bedpost came flying her way. "Twice, remember? The first time you stabbed him in the ribs, and the second time you set him on fire."
"So what, this is my fault now for putting up a fight? We're supposed to fight, that's what makes things fun!" His voice was a strange combination of anger and despondence, as though he might break into frustrated tears at any second. It was exactly like a little kid having a tantrum, but her heart went out to him all the same, and she risked sitting up enough to look at him. He was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether to shout or sob.
"Mistah J, I don't think it's fun for him. He always says he doesn't want to fight, remember?"
"So what, I'm supposed to give up like some submissive little bitch? Where's the game in that? Where's the challenge?"
Harley reached out, stroked his hair. He didn't move. "Maybe the challenge is findin' how to put the game in that," she suggested. "Give in without really givin' up, you know? That'd really throw him off, wouldn't it?"
For a moment there was no response, and she thought he'd gone into one of those silent rage moods he had sometimes. Where he wouldn't speak, or eat, or move, or so much as look at her, often for days at a time. She got that sinking feeling again. She hated times like those, always reduced to hovering at his side, feeling useless and wondering if the whole mess was her fault.
But suddenly, before she could react, the spark came back to his eyes and he had hold of her wrist, pulling her up on the bed. It was painful; her arm nearly came out of the socket. "That's it! I've got it, Harl, I've absolutely got it."
"Got what?" she asked, unable to hold in a gasp of pain. He let go, and she rubbed the injured shoulder, wincing.
"How to get his attention, of course." He was off the bed already, pacing around the room as he often did when a brilliant idea came to him. "How to make him pay attention, get him to treat me just as nicely as he did Scareslut, and more."
"Um…that's really great." She sat up cautiously, in case he was still in the mood to throw things. "How are we goin' to do that, Mistah J?"
He didn't answer, occupied with dialing the cell phone he'd pulled from his pockets. "Get your coat, Harley-girl. Because this plan starts yesterday."
AN: I can absolutely see Ledger Joker hiding under a little kid's bed, for no other reason to scare them shitless. I imagine a lot of the children I saw being taking into TDK when I worked the theater for that movie had nightmares about him. *sigh*
Starting the move back to sane!Jonathan, because crazy!Jonathan is depressing to write. Fun, but depressing.
I imagine Arkham's security people have no integrity at all—hence the leaked tapes—but haven't been fired because no one else wants the job. Seriously, who—besides fangirls like myself—would ever want to work there?
