As Jayde rolled over to an empty bed behind her, she sighed, the breath escaping her nose slowly, her right arm reaching out to the space next to her. Unsurprisingly, it felt cold, as though no one had ever been there, and yet her foggy brain could remember a few fleeting seconds of a hazy memory from just a few hours prior. She did not know what time it had been when she finally felt the Joker slide into the bed next to her but could vaguely remember the sensation of two sets of long fingers wrapping around her wrists, gently pulling them down away from her face, where her hands had come to rest on the pillow just inches from her nose as she had been laying on her side. She could remember the deep breath Joker had taken in, only to release it a few seconds later in a quiet sigh. The room had been completely black, as the sleep timer had since shut off the tv, so Jayde could remember opening her dark-accustomed eyes, only to find herself face to face with Joker.

He apparently had not realized she was watching him and as Jayde lay there, observing him semi-consciously through the tiny space between her eyelids, he seemed to be studying her hands with a furrowed brow, the way they lay together, her fingers interlaced comfortably in her sleep. It was then that Jayde had closed her eyes again, unable to keep them open any longer and with that, she had fallen back into a deep sleep.

Now, she lay in that familiar empty bed, staring at a long, wavy single strand of Joker's green hair as it lay noticeably, forgotten on his white pillow case and a tiny smirk met her lips when she reached out to pluck it from the material. As she brought it closer to inspect the noticeable line on the strand where his blonde roots had started to grow in against the green, she wondered vaguely if he had needed to leave early that day or if she would find him doing something random and interesting around the house. A few moments later, her internal query was answered.

That sleepy smirk from earlier expanded slowly into a full, relieved grin when her ears picked up the faint sound of rustling flimsy newspaper from out in the open house, through the partially open bedroom door. With her stomach now fluttering either with hunger or butterflies, she wasn't sure, Jayde pushed the sheets off of her, sitting up to yawn and glance at the time on her phone. Her eyes widened when she noticed the time had only just reached nine, but without even sparing a second thought on going back to sleep, she stood from the bed to walk to the bathroom, to hurry through brushing her teeth.

Joker glanced up from behind the newspaper, only to spot Jayde emerging from the bedroom, wearing a pair of her favorite, ankle-hugging skinny jeans, a tight-fitting t-shirt and a soft smile as she approached the carved kitchen table. He did not return the grin but merely cleared his throat and went back to the article although he not immediately begin reading again as he knew what was coming. Any second, Jayde was going to lean down and murmur-

"G'morning," she purred against his scarred cheek, pursing her lips to leave a soft kiss there. Joker glanced up from the paper but she was already walking away, seemingly content with the fact that he had not turned his head to meet her lips...yet another thing he was so grateful for. It seemed over time, she had grown accustomed to the fact that sometimes, he just wasn't in an affectionate mood and she apparently understood that perfectly without getting offended. "I'm surprised you're up this early," she was now commenting from across the kitchen at the cabinets where she had just flipped the on-switch on the coffee maker. "You didn't come to bed until kinda late."

Joker wanted to reply and explain that there had been some things he needed to take care of while she was not around, but he remained quiet, watching now as Jayde pulled down her favorite mug from the cabinet, his eyes staring intently at her. Across the kitchen, her movement slowed as she seemed to sense that she was being watched and she turned quickly to look behind her to where Joker was sitting, staring in an almost anticipatory way. Her hand dropped to the counter next to her as she apparently picked up on the way he was watching her.

"What?" she asked rather defensively, but Joker merely shrugged with a quick bounce of his eyebrows.

"Nothin'," he answered innocently, again rustling the newspaper as he forced his eyes back to the article he had been reading. From the way she was quiet, it seemed Jayde had decided there was nothing to worry about as Joker could hear her mug move again. However, the second he tried to sneak another glance at her, he jumped when his eyes met Jayde's a second time and she tossed her hands.

"Seriously, what are you looking at?" she asked again, this time turning to fully face him as her hand met her hip in that characteristic stance. "Did you-..." she went to ask a second question but stopped as she glanced behind her at her mug on the counter. "Did you do something to my mug again?" Her third question came out sounding rather accusatory, which caused Joker to grunt a laugh as he shook his head.

"No, dear, I haven't touched your mug." he answered honestly, reaching out to pick up his own half-finished glass of orange juice. Again, Jayde was silent but when he looked back over to find her in the exact same position, with the exact same expression, he laughed more loudly. "I swear!" he then added, but paused with his own cup halfway to his lips as Jayde began to walk over, holding her empty coffee mug.

"If there's nothing in my mug..." she started, reaching out for Joker's half-empty orange juice. "Then you drink out of it." she then finished, setting her mug in front of him, once she had poured the contents of Joker's glass into it and she stood there, watching intently as Joker reached out for it. He brought it to his lips a moment later, taking a long swig of the tart orange juice from the perfectly untainted mug before he smacked his lips and let out a dramatic sound of refreshment. Seemingly satisfied, with a heavy roll of her eyes, Jayde turned to walk to the sink so she could rinse the remaining orange juice droplets from what was formerly Joker's cup.

"Do you have anything to do today?" she asked, now pouring some of the freshly made coffee into the freshly rinsed coffee cup. At the table, Joker shook his head, still watching her but as Jayde turned to raise her eyebrows at him expectantly, he reanswered her question, once he realized she could not hear his head move.

"Nope," he replied aloud this time. "I'm not doing anything. Why?" he went on to ask casually as Jayde sat down across from him with her steaming coffee. She took a long sip before explaining.

"I need to go to the grocery store and then I wanted to smoke with you." she answered honestly, grinning from around the curve of the mug when Joker's eyebrows rose.

"Weed?" he clarified in a surprised, somewhat falsely taken aback voice. "I don't do drugs, Jayde." he then went on jokingly with a playfully condescending sniff. Across from him, Jayde let out a short laugh.

"Yeah, sure you don-" she began to say but she cut herself off mid-word. Joker's eyes slowly began to rise from the bottom of the newspaper, meeting her now wide-eyed stare and she blinked hard several times as she clumsily set her coffee mug down on the table in front of her, with such force, some of the tan liquid sloshed over the side. By now, Joker was beginning to grin but raised his eyebrows innocently as her panicking eyes met his. It was obvious she was growing a bit dizzy as she swayed dangerously but managed to hold herself up straight for the time being. "But-..." she started, her speech already slurring. "I-...this isn't my-...yours..." Joker's grin had now expanded into a plainly mischievous smile, his scars stretching ridiculously and across from him, Jayde's rapidly increasingly foggy brain put everything together. "Oh, you son of a-...I'm gonna kil-..."

Just then, Jayde's eyes rolled back and Joker quickly rose from his chair, reaching out instantly across the table with both hands to catch her head before it could hit the wood with a loud thud. It was then that he started laughing, hard. From past experience, Joker had known Jayde would find his staring as she prepared her coffee suspicious and he had known that she would make some sort of attempt at foiling his plan, such as switching her mug with his, as if he hadn't predicted that exact move. For this reason, he had instead painted the inside of the glass coffee pot with a potent little mix of sedatives, which upon ingestion, was really only supposed to make the victim heavily woozy...not knock them out completely within moments. With his laughter subsiding, Joker rounded the edge of the table toward the unconscious Jayde, using his hands to tilt her head back so it could instead rest against the back of the chair. A slight frown tightened Joker's scars as he stared down at her sleep-like expression in confusion.

With two fingers against her carotid artery at her neck, Joker scowled down at his watch, waiting the allotted sixty-seconds while he counted her heart beats in an effort to estimate her pulse. It was at 70, which was normal, so he figured he had probably just gone a bit heavy in applying the sedative to the glass. He let out another low chuckle as he leaned down to scoop Jayde out of her chair, up into his arms before he carried her toward the open door to his new office.

She felt as limp as a wet rag doll in his arms, her dead weight making her feel a bit heavier than she normally did, but Joker still set her down with ease, on top of his favorite new toy- his brand new, shiny metal surgical table. It was exactly like it's Gotham predecessor in every way possible, from the four locking and unlocking wheels, right down to the lever that lowered and raised the height to suit his current need. With a smirk, he stood there, staring down over Jayde's limp body as she lay there on her back before him, her face peaceful, as though she had not just been about to start screaming at him before she had passed out...A small smirk tugged upward on Joker's lips as his mind took him back to a particular memory.

The very first night Jayde spent in that mansion out in the far reaches of Gotham had been surprisingly low key. She had not really struggled too hard to resist him, she hadn't really attempted any form of an escape, almost as though she had been hoping and praying something exciting would happen to her life. It almost appeared as though she didn't want to leave as she had merely gone upstairs and into that room in what could have been considered a willing manner. Joker could remember feeling somewhat surprised and rather disappointed at the time that she had not been putting up much of a fight but had decided to count it as a win in his books that he would not have to put forth much effort in keeping his new 'toy' subdued.

In the present, a tiny, nearly unnoticeable shudder wracked his spine as Joker gazed down over Jayde on the table, reflecting back on what his original plan for her had been. Upon getting her back to the mansion, he had fully planned to play with her, rape her, torture her, watch her scream in agony, watch her cry and beg for her life, as he had done with so many other female victims before her. He had planned the next few days entirely around her, around the slow death she would experience at his hands. Sure, he had thought she was uncommonly pretty at the time, but that had never stopped him before. Women were fascinating to him; he loved studying the psyche of a female while under such traumatizing circumstances. Jayde would have been immensely entertaining to watch in the throes of her death and Joker had been beyond excited to get started. He had drugged that water bottle in the 'guest' bedroom, had set out a set of razor sharp scalpels, hypodermic needles, even surgical clamps in his office... and yet something had changed almost the exact moment he had gotten her onto that table. Some sort of light bulb, some small voice in the back of his mind had gone off, telling him to wait...maybe give her a few days...just to see if she would be of any use to him. Perhaps she can be a long-term toy...something to fuck after a long day, something I can corrupt, destroy slowly...the voice had sounded incredibly convincing, as if it knew exactly what it was talking about...so Joker had listened. Instead, he had tattooed a large, intricate 'J' into the middle of her back, to brand her as his property for the rest of her life, however long that would turn out to be.

Of course, over the next few days, weeks, eventually months, he had come to find that Jayde had been everything but corruptible, dispensable. Over time, he had found himself wanting to spend his rare free time around her, learning about her...kissing her. She was someone that could not, would not, let herself fall into his mindset, someone who just wanted to be near him, despite his psychological games, someone he could let loose with, until eventually, he had grown to trust her more than any other human being walking the face of that earth. He still could not believe how far he had deviated from the original plan.

And now there she lay, in front of him on her back, one arm draped lightly across her middle, the other, left arm dangling uselessly from the edge of the table. With a slow breath escaping through his nose, Joker reached down, to take her left hand in his before he brought it up closer to his face, inspecting her fingers closely, just as he had the night before. They were not too short, but not terribly long either and as his mind continued to wander and dart through the past two years, that smirk from moments earlier returned to assault his face when he thought back to the first time she had wrapped those delicate fingers around his dick. She had been so unsure, so prude even and, at the time, Joker had found it rather amusing yet slightly endearing. Her hesitation in touching him had been so severe, it had almost seemed as though she feared she would be stung by some unseen stinger or that he would lash out and kill her if she did it wrong... In the present, Joker shook his head slowly back and forth with a quiet grunt of a laugh. She had come a long, long way since her first time and nowadays, it was somewhat common for Jayde to just walk up and grab him by the crotch if she wanted him...and Joker looooooved it...

Yes, he was making the right decision. Everything, and he truly meant everything about this girl was perfect for him, in just about every way possible. She was smart, funny, plainly adorable but not in a forced, purposeful way. She did not anger too easily, she was beyond patient with him and most importantly, she understood him. She understood that he didn't always want to be touched, that he needed his time to be alone, to think, to plan, to gather his racing thoughts. She understood that he cared more deeply for her than he had ever cared for anyone in his entire life but yet, also knew that that simple fact alone did not give her the right to take advantage of him. She still respected him, still feared him in a way. She was still fully aware that any given day, at any given moment, he could snap and kill her and that no one would ever find her body...And yet, she trusted him, entirely, completely, in the most passionate, unyielding way possible...And for this, Joker loved her.

A killer and his girl... he thought randomly to himself, as though reading the tagline for an intense romance/thriller novel and that smirk widened slightly as he set Jayde's hand down next to her waist. None of it made sense to him and he didn't really think it ever would, but then again, there was a lot about his life that didn't necessarily make sense, so he figured he was still on the right track.

The latex gloves were exactly where he had set them the night before, just next to the rolling metal, multi-leveled tray table, atop which sat his faithful tattoo gun, attached by a long cord to a small black, power box. After applying a pair of the tight-fitting black gloves and rolling over a short swiveling stool, he sat down and was just about to reach for the ink and needles when he suddenly remembered the loaded syringe just below the tattooing stuff on the second tray. He glanced at Jayde to the right of him. She seemed pretty unconscious still as she had not moved besides the slowly rising and falling of her stomach, but just to make sure she would not wake up halfway through her 'procedure', Joker reached out, using his middle finger to flick her hard several times in the cheek. To his surprise, she flinched slightly after the second or third time and let out a low groan, so quickly, Joker reached for the syringe and rubber tubing, to tie a tight tourniquet around her upper arm, to help raise her veins on the inside of her elbow. Then with the syringe cap between his teeth, he hastily pushed the needle into the fat, raised vein before plunging the clear liquid directly into her blood stream. And with that, Jayde was pushed further into a state of deep, painless sleep...She shouldn't feel a thing...

Jayde's eyelids felt uncommonly heavy, and her chest felt as though someone had been sitting on it although she did not struggle to breathe. Her wrist was sore for reasons that were beyond her at the moment, as her brain was full of a foggy, vaguely familiar mist that made thinking clearly somewhat hard to do. She tried to open her eyes, but the bright sunlight filtering into whatever room she was currently in made her head feel as though it were moments from exploding, so she kept them closed, resorting to a heavy, quiet groan. Instead of looking to see where she had ended up, Jayde took a deep breath in through her nose, hoping the smells she encountered would give her some indication as to where she was. But as she recognized a faint, familiar scent of masculine cologne and something sharp, like medical soap, she realized that someone was sitting near her...and that certain someone was about to be in really serious shit. Without even opening her eyes, Jayde took another deep breath.

"What...the fuck...Joker..."

From his place on the floor with his back against the edge of the couch, Joker turned his head, that characteristic grin already in place as he shifted to face Jayde, as she lay on her back. Her eyes had not yet opened but the expression on her face was unmistakable...She was pissed. He did not speak yet, but waited to see what her next words or actions would be and a few moments later, she slowly started to force her eyes open.

Her forehead wrinkled heavily as she squinted hard against the bright, early afternoon sunlight, glaring unhindered through the large window behind the couch. Her breathing was moving through her nose at a slightly quickened pace as clearly, she was assuming the worst in her state of drug-induced lethargy. Joker finally spoke as she turned her head to groggily glance to her right, but only to find herself facing the cushions.

"Good morning, sleepy-tits," he growled in that clowny voice of his, his teeth now exposed in a grin as Jayde slowly turned her head to glare groggily up at him. "It's about time you-"

"You promised..." she mumbled, and at first, Joker's grin faded slightly as it appeared that Jayde was speaking incoherently. He paused, to see if she would go on with something less inane-sounding...and she did. "You promised you would never drug me again, Joker."

At this, he finally let out a quiet laugh, turning toward the couch more fully when he realized what she was talking about. "I didn't drug you, Jayde, I just-..." he began to explain, reaching out to lightly take her hand, but Jayde snatched it away from him in a surprisingly quick movement.

"Then explain to me why I'm laying on the couch and I don't remember how I got here!" she suddenly exclaimed, her voice now at a normal, angry level. Joker blinked. Was that sedative supposed to wear off this quickly?

"I needed to get-" he went to speak yet again, but clearly Jayde was having none of his explanations as she suddenly sat up off the couch. "Jayde, you really shouldn't-..."

"No!" she cried, her voice wavering slightly as drug-laced tears met her eyes. "You promised me you wouldn't-...I don't really care." she stammered, first in another accusation that only ended in an answer to what he had been about to warn previously. Joker fought back another laugh as he moved to sit up on his knees.

"Jayde, just listen," he started, again reaching out with both hands to take hers. "Just sit here and lis-...Jayde!" At that moment, she had decided to get up quickly from the couch and move to storm off, but just as he had been about to warn her, the residual drugs in her system and the fact that she had been laying down for two hours, caused her knees to give way and she stumbled at the end of the couch. Joker's arm caught her waist just as she had been about to fully fall and he pulled her back gently, forcing her to sit down on the couch facing him, where she suddenly slumped her shoulders. A rather pathetic sniffle escaped her, causing Joker to grunt a laugh as he rested his arms on her legs. "Jaydie..." he cooed quietly, but it seemed she had already moved past anger into hurt.

"No, not Jaydie..." she whimpered defiantly and adorably, shaking her head groggily as she let her hands come to rest on his forearms, despite how upset she clearly was and Joker laughed again quietly as he reached up to push some of her loose curly hair away from her face. It sounded like she was crying but as he revealed her face, he found that her eyes were perfectly dry and she was merely pouting heavily with her eyes closed. "No," she demanded yet again, this time moving her body to the side away from his hand. Joker sat back to shake some of his own hair out of his eyes, sighing exasperatedly through his nose.

"Well, fine then. I'll just leave you alone." he said a few moments later and he moved to stand up, but of course, the second she felt him about to leave, Jayde reached out with both hands, to grab his arms, although he had only moved slightly. Joker's grin expanded.

"No..." she whimpered again, shaking her head as she finally opened her eyes. "Just-...just tell me why." she went on to ask, this time in a more steady, even voice as she forced herself to make eye contact with him. A moment later, she frowned, releasing her grip on his forearm with her left hand. "Did you cut me? My hand hurts..." she asked confusedly, bringing up her left wrist to twirl her hand, wincing as it smarted slightly as though something had been strapping it down...and that was when her eyes finally fell onto her finger.

"I needed to knock you out so I could give you a new tattoo." he eventually explained, his voice quiet as he watched Jayde's eyes widen slightly.

There, on her left, fourth finger, the one just right of her pinky, was a fresh, black tattoo, the letters 'J-O-K-E-R' carved into her skin in the shape of a band. Jayde's mouth opened and closed a few times, wordlessly before she could mentally register the right question to ask.

"Is that-...what is-...is that your name?" she asked somewhat stupidly, but was already shaking her head in preparation to ask another question when Joker cut across her, nodding his head.

"Yeah, and so is that," he answered her, using his hands to turn her smaller one over, stretching out her fingers to reveal yet another new tattoo on the underside, in the same fashion as the one she had just seen.

'K-I-E-R-O-N'.

The two tattoos nearly connected around her finger, forming one band of the Joker's two aliases, and Jayde looked up quickly from her hand to meet his slightly squinting, grinning brown eyes.

"Are you saying..." she asked baldly, the remaining drugs in her system rendering her unable to come up with a more covert question in which to ask whether or not this meant what she thought it did and Joker nodded, hoping to answer her question without actually answering it. However, when she did not react, he went on, clearing his throat.

"I'm saying I want you to be...mine.." he answered somewhat awkwardly. "...forever."

This was not the response he had been meaning to give, but it seemed, from the way big, fat tears began to well up along her bottom lids, that this was the response Jayde had needed. She sniffed once, shaking her head in slight confusion.

"Are you-..." she began, but paused and Joker nearly rolled his eyes. Why was this so hard for her to understand? He waited for her to go on this time. "Are you...proposing to me?" she finally asked in a highly incredulous tone of voice and at this, Joker did roll his eyes slightly, but just as he did, he glanced down at floor beneath him...

He was on one knee.

With a grin, he nodded once as he brought his eyes back up to meet hers.

"Yeah, I guess I am," he answered a moment later, but went on when Jayde's eyes lit up. "But you don't get to say no." he went on to explain hastily, motioning toward her hand with his head. "That tattoo is permanent."

From the way Jayde let out a teary laugh, it seemed her anger from just moments earlier had dissipated rapidly and she was now grinning girlishly as she shook her head in what Joker could only assume was either surprise or...yeah, surprise. She sniffed a second later, meeting his eyes again.

"So...does this mean I'm your...wife now?" she asked in another blatant, honest question and she watched, in heavy anticipation as Joker's eyes drifted upward again to squint contemplatively at the ceiling before he shrugged.

"I prefer...'domestic partner'...or...'willing, permanent hostage', but...yeah," he finally answered, the corners of his eyes wrinkling slightly in his grin. "Wife...that works too. Not as many words, easier to sa-" Joker had been in the process of rambling awkwardly but Jayde cut him off by leaning forward to catch his lips against her own, instantly silencing him and he hummed quietly against her mouth. His left hand moved toward her face, to move her hair from the side of her neck so his fingers could be there instead, but it seemed Jayde was ready to look at her new tattoo again as she pulled away from his lips only a few seconds later. She laughed, shaking her head.

"I really can't get over this!" she exclaimed, in a completely lucid voice now. "I mean, you didn't really have to drug me to do this, you could've just-..." At this, she stopped speaking abruptly but Joker was already answering with another roll of his eyes.

"You would've asked me five million questions and probably wouldn't have held still long enough for me to-..." he was in the process of explaining his logic when Jayde reached out with both of her hands, to take his left one into her lap, where she stared down at his ring finger...

'Jayde'

Her name had been tattooed in the same fashion as Joker's, in black, curvy script against his skin, forming a thicker band across the top of his finger. Those big, warm tears from earlier immediately returned to her eyes, welling up and spilling over as she brought her gaze up from his hand to where he was now watching her, a satisfied grin stretching his scars. Before she could ask, he cut in.

"The guy wears one too right?"

At this, Jayde nodded, her face crumpling into more tears as she leaned forward to place her hands on either side of his neck, to kiss him gently, and he responded for a second or two before he laughed against her lips and pulled back slightly.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, glancing back and forth between her eyes as Jayde too laughed and shook her head.

"I'm happy!...I didn't think...I had no idea you even felt like...this..." she explained somewhat awkwardly and Joker grunted a laugh from before her, still on his knee in front of the couch.

"I didn't either, I just...figured I might as well," he answered. "I didn't want you going out in public and people thinking you weren't already accounted for. Which is why..." he paused, momentarily releasing Jayde's hand to reach behind him into his back pocket. A second later, his hand reappeared, where Jayde's eyes found one plain, silver band resting around the tip of his pointer finger. "-You're going to wear this when you leave the house...Just to cover my name so you wont get asked a thousand questions."

Again, Jayde's lips tightened together as a few more tears dripped down her cheeks and again, Joker paused to laugh at her silly, girly reaction to something rather simple before he took her left hand, to push that silver band onto her finger. As Maggie had estimated, it fit her perfectly, was just wide enough to cover his name and as he let go of her hand, Jayde raised it front of her to sniffle and admire the way it looked against her skin. She seemed momentarily speechless so he spoke for her.

"So how 'bout it, kid," he started. "You wanna be Mrs. Joker?"

In front of him, Jayde lowered her hand to take both of his and with that, she nodded with a gentle smile.

"I do."

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Read the author's note in the next chapter, please!