Title: The Magic Trick
Part IV: Jack of Knives
Summary: "Sometimes I look at you," Jackson said softly, cradling her face with just the tips of his fingers on both hands. "Sometimes I look at you, and I think—how easy it would be to just snap your neck." The drunken father, the butchered mother. The gambling troubles, the pretty and assaulted wife. It's always about a lady… "Do you wanna know how I got these scars?" An in-depth character sketch, complete with romantic interlude. :)
A/N: Again, my ignorance rears its ugly head. I have no idea the legalities of a case as illustrated below…I am completely making it up as I go. Also, please forgive if this chapter isn't up to par—I spent the last week away so I haven't had a whole lot of time to develop this more thoroughly.
You know the drill: don't be mean! :)
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
When the MCU was blown to pieces, the Joker was just intending to leave. He didn't know that his schizophrenic little friend—Jon? Jim? Harry?—with the voices would be arrested. When he'd originally planted the phone bomb in the man's stomach, it had really just been a whim, just to see if he could.
Luck worked like that for him, sometimes. Chaos, fate. He supposed it was nature's way of making up for all the things it took.
The Lady danced on the periphery of his vision, her brown curls swirling, spraying stars and sparkling drops of water.
It was certainly fair.
He scowled angrily at that thought and strolled through the MCU when—unexpectedly, pleasantly, his eyes landed on Lau. He glowered into the cell where the accountant sat, frail and fragile, clutching weakly at the cage bars.
The Joker plucked the keys from an unconscious guard, bemused, and then jangled them at Lau, a little more viciously than usual. The man was pale and greasy as cheese, and soft-limbed as a girl. The Joker eyed him in distaste.
"Hello there," he said nastily.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Summer was too long, in Jackson's opinion. He should have gotten a job on campus, he realized in retrospect. He hadn't thought about it at the time—silly, really, but Evelyn did that to him—but he could easily have gotten a job doing summer research for the science department.
He mostly just tried to stay out of Donald's way. It was relatively easy—Donald was drunker than ever, and had gotten used to the boy not being at home. Half the time, he forgot the kid was even there.
So Jackson worked at a nearby auto repair shop. He came home and went to his room. He thought about Evelyn and what she was doing, the way she smiled, made him laugh. Her fingers smoothing his forehead gently. Her murmured words: "So serious…"
The memory alone made him smile.
Which was how his father found him one day when the old man was drunk and angry—smiling wistfully on his back on the bed, looking happy—too damn happy.
"What's got that stupid smile on your face, Jacko?" Donald slurred. His eyes were narrow and dark and mean, like a pig's.
The smile fell away. "You smell foul, Don," Jackson said sharply, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the brute. Time away at school had made him too comfortable. "Go shower."
Donald lurched forward with new purpose. At the last second, Jackson's eyes flew open and he scrambled back, but he was too late—the fist caught him square in the nose. He heard it crunch. Pain blossomed like fireworks. His vision spotted, grayed out as he tumbled off the bed, wrenching his ankle in the process and banging his head on the corner of the nightstand.
Donald advanced again. "How can you be so happy when your mother is dead?" Donald bellowed. "How? How? How? You ungrateful little swine—"
Blindly, Jackson moved backward, bumping into the wall as Donald Napier lashed out again. The blow caught him in the jaw, and something snapped where the contact was made. Blood flowered in his mouth and he gagged on the pain—which only made his jaw hurt more. He thought he was going to vomit, and his vision blurred in and out. He scrambled to his knees, trying to get past the old man, but Donald's boot caught him in the shelf of his hip and sent him crashing against the wall. The back of his head, already bloodied from the end-table, sent red splashing over the wall and he nearly passed out again before her felt something clamp on his neck and slam him against the wall once more.
His feet scrambled for purchase on the floor and he clutched his father's wrists, struggling to breathe, bile rising in his throat from the pain in his face and jaw. He saw himself, six years old, riding on his dad's broad, clean-shoulders while his mother brought them lemonade—
"Don," he rasped, his voice scratchy. Blood sprayed onto his father's face. "Dad—"
The fist tightened. White gathered at the edges of Jackson's vision and suddenly, clearly, he saw the rivulets of sweat on his father's face. He saw the throbbing vein in Donald's thick throat and felt his own heartbeat in his ears. His hand—which was numb, and he didn't know why—slipped into the waistband of his jeans. He felt the satiny wooden handle of the switchblade under his sweaty fingers and—without thinking—he popped the knife and reached across his body, slicing quickly and raggedly across his father's throat.
Donald Napier gurgled and fell back, releasing Jackson's neck. He slumped down, eyes wide, while Jackson coughed and vomited until there was nothing left inside him.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Late August. Hot air. Students back on campus—move-in day.
Evelyn.
Jackson sat on the bench and waited, his face carefully turned. He had an open textbook on his lap, but he wasn't reading it. Instead, he was trying to figure out how he was going to tell her this, and would she look at him differently, and would he ever even see her again?
He jumped when her silky arms laced loosely around his shoulders and she pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.
"'Kisses are a better fate than wisdom,'" she whispered into his ear, quoting a line from the book he'd given her. He realized she was referring to the text in his hands, and thought it was probably one of the best greetings a man could get. Still, he didn't move, suddenly nervous.
He licked his lips.
Her arms tightened and she stroked his chest gently. "Why so serious, love?"
Jackson turned slowly, carefully, and Evelyn gasped, jolting a little before pulling back carefully, afraid to hurt him. "What happened?" she asked in a hushed voice, her fingers ghosting just millimeters away from his swollen, yellowed eye and taped jaw. "What happened? God, even your throat has bruises!"
He tried to grin, but it still hurt, even though the bruises had faded to a pale green-and-jaundice. Then his grin fell away completely, because nothing about this was funny.
"Sit down, Evelyn," he said firmly. His voice was still scratchy, gravelly, low. The doctors didn't think it would ever be quite back to normal—permanent damage to the vocal chords, they hypothesized. "I have to tell you something."
She sat immediately. "What happened?" she repeated again, her doe-eyes full of worry and concern.
He hesitated. "I probably won't be able to finish out this semester, Evelyn. Maybe I won't come back at all."
"Why not?" she demanded, sounding devastated. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, but she might not want to be there once she heard it all.
"I have to go to court. For a trial. It shouldn't be long, and the—the court-appointed attorney says I should be able to get out of any time because it was clearly self-defense, but…yeah. Who really knows?" he shrugged.
"Jackson," she said firmly, reaching out again and placing her hands on his. "Please. What happened?"
He forced a dry little chuckle. Flippancy was her best defense, right? Maybe it would work for him, too. "Chaos," he answered. "Complete chaos." And then—more seriously, and here was what it all rode on—"Evelyn, I killed my father."
She stared. "He did this to you?—Jackson—"
Did she not hear what he'd said? He'd killed his father.
"It's fine, Evelyn. I mean, it's not fine. It's patricide." He chuckled painfully at his own joke. "But…I'm okay, physically. And…I'll probably be okay legally, if that's what you're worried about. The lawyer doesn't think it's going to be too difficult, and he's obviously right or they probably wouldn't even let me come back here to school before my trial."
"Jackson," she whispered, like he was being unreasonable, and took his face tenderly in her hands. "God, Jackson, I thought I was being good by not pressing. I thought you'd tell me when you were ready. But dammit, Jackson, what has been happening to you?"
His stomach tightened. She still wanted him. Still cared for him. Maybe not later, when she had a chance to think about it—patricide—but for now, yes. He was still hers. Perhaps this was the kind of thing she'd meant when she'd talked about her unconditional trust in her loved ones—whatever it was, he'd take it, with a grateful heart.
He wrapped her in his arms and for a moment, it was all he could do.
"Come away with me," she whispered. "Let's just hang out for the rest of the day. I'll take care of you. We can talk. I have a single room this year. I missed you." It was a series of completely unconnected statements, but they made perfect sense to Jackson.
They went to her room. Half-full boxes still littered her room, and it made his stomach tighten to know she had come to find him first-thing, without bothering to unpack. Only her bed was made, and some stuff spilled out on her dresser—even her clothes were still packed. He sat a little nervously on the edge of her bed—the chair was stacked with boxes—and tried to smile with the good side of his face. She sat next to him, her eyes intent, and slowly eased the hem of his shirt up. He was surprised—but obviously, he let her. Everything else aside, he was still a teenage boy, and she was warm and soft and his.
The fabric came up. Carefully, she moved it over his head, carefully pulling at the neck to keep it from jarring his face.
She sucked in a breath. "Jesus Christ, Jackson," she hissed, her hands skating over the yellow bruises on the upper edge of his hips, on his ribs. "That bastard—I'm glad—"
His hand came up quickly to her lips. "You're not, Evie." It was the first time he'd called her by that name. "Not really. Don't say it, okay? You'll regret it when you realize how fucked up I am now—even more than I was before." He took a deep breath. Time for confession.
"Sometimes I look at you…" Jackson said softly, cradling her face with just the tips of his fingers on both hands. "Sometimes I look at you, and I think—how easy it would be to just snap your neck."
She still didn't move, simply stayed there—trusting him. Jackson fervently offered a brief prayer of thanks to whoever was listening that fate had seen fit to put her in his life, even if it was only briefly.
"You'd regret it if you said it," he whispered. "You'll regret that it happened, soon enough. And—I regret it. I need to regret it."
It wasn't quite the truth. But he couldn't tell her that: that he didn't regret it. Not one fucking bit. But, paradoxically, he regretted not regretting it. He wished he could regret it. He thought it might make him more human, more the kind of man Evie deserved.
Evelyn silently disagreed. She wouldn't regret saying it, she knew. She was glad the bastard was dead. She was like a tigress over the people she loved, and while most people would describe her as foolishly forgiving, she considered herself—with pride—vindictive and vicious when harm befell her loved ones.
However, Jackson was right about one thing—she was sad that it had been him who'd dealt the killing blow. That would have to be traumatizing. It would have to mess you up, on some level. And no boy—especially Jackson—should have to defend himself against his own father that way.
Evie was sure, without having to think twice, that it had been a case of self-defense. She stared sadly, then laughed a little.
"My poor love," she whispered, and gently pushed him back on her bed. "So wise." She pressed her head delicately into the curve of his shoulder, kissing his throat lightly. "So serious. Long before your time." Her mouth moved gently over the fading bruises. He breathed slowly, trying not to shudder as she kissed his old wounds. She murmured over a thousand faded scars here and there, genuinely pained by the evidence of previous beatings and battles. A cigarette burn on his shoulder; a cut on his knee where the skin there had split during a beating. Stitches on his forearm, from the time his dad had broken the bone straight through the skin—compound fracture.
In moments, she had him nearly naked, and he didn't even know how it had happened. Her tenderness had him tied in knots, and for a second, he felt the space behind his eyes tighten. It was unfamiliar feeling, a tingling, and then his vision blurred and something wet slid down the side of his face into the hair at his temple.
Tentatively, looking shy, she pulled off her own shirt and curled in next to him. He skimmed his hand up her hip, from the waist band of her jeans to her back, afraid to touch. After all, she'd told him—and he could still see the faint silver lines of thin scars, a few shallow, quarter-sized valleys and knots where it looked like she'd been gouged. He imagined the boy with his switchblade, and her crying, the skin hanging off her in streamers.
She shivered back when he traced one thin scar from her collarbone to the swell of her breast, and he snatched his hand back like it had been a sin.
"It's okay," she encouraged, his voice unbearably gentle. He wanted to consume her.
Instead, he turned a little and kissed the top of her head while she drew patterns on his chest with her fingers. He was slim, fine-boned with long, taut muscles, like whipcords. He had lovely forearms in spite of the scarring, she realized, and she watched quietly as he slid his hand up and down her side. Sun streamed in from between the dorm-room blinds. He watched dust motes float in it, watched as it reflected off copper strands in her dark curls. She kissed his collarbone, and he licked his lips nervously, staring at the ceiling.
"My mother was killed in a drug raid in Metropolis," Jackson said.
Evelyn's fingers stilled on his chance in response, surprised at the sudden gift.
"We went through a couple times when we were really low—lost our apartment, didn't have any food. It was one of those times. We were dumpster-diving in an alley out behind an old warehouse and dumpy restaurant, and these jackasses—the dealers—burst through. One had a knife and he grabbed my mother—like a hostage, right?" He shook his head, still staring at the cracked plaster ceiling. "I had no fucking clue what was going on."
She bit her lip and ran her thumb in slow circles over his abdomen.
"The police were blasting through—just blasting. Fucking police—good for nothing. Careless. Anyway—shrapnel, exploding metal, pieces going flying—everything you can imagine. 'Cause there were still three or four guys who were in the open, right? No hostages, except for my mom. Fucking hell. My dad—he saved me, I guess." Jackson shrugged—it was no big favor in his eyes, but it still seemed a poor thing to repay with murder. "He shoved me behind the dumpster—tried to save Mom too, I think." Mama, with her shiny hair. "He was screaming for the police to stop, afraid they'd hit her. I think, in the confusion, they thought he was one of the dealers. Dirty money, you know?"
He said the last part fiercely, and she was surprised when he didn't continue—just stopped there, cold. Well, surprised, and a little not-so-surprised, too. It was painful, and her hands were shaking a little—she could only imagine what he was feeling.
"What happened?" she asked at last. "I mean, you know, if you mind telling."
His eyes were shining in the slanted sunlight. Tears, she thought—or something colder.
"They tore her apart."
She bit her lower lip, but she didn't flinch.
"It was an accident, I guess," he said dispassionately. "But they ripped her to pieces. Her guts were spilt out over the street. Her face was torn clean off—shrapnel, mostly; not gunfire. Lots of slices and gouges from ricocheted bullets or pieces of the dumpster. Part of her stomach was almost—pulpy—and part of it just poured out. Her neck had been cut too—a huge curve from side to side. It looked like a big, bloody smile. I guess I don't really know which it was that killed her."
There was a silence. It echoed.
"You saw all this?" Evie asked, her voice small in the barren, topaz light of the room. The space where her heart was seemed like a vacuum—tingling, empty. It wasn't quite pain; it was moreso that everything inside her had been shattered into little pieces and there was nothing to fill her up. There was only hollow space behind her collarbone and she thought she'd fold in on herself, like a black hole. The space behind her eyes tightened too, but without the release of tears.
Jackson shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I saw it after. My dad was sobbing over her. I'd never seen him cry before. He was holding her, rocking back and forth, running his hands through her hair and kissing her face. He had a mess all over him—parts of her, I realized later—like, tissue and blood and stuff. He'd been shot too, in the arm, but he didn't even notice it at the time. Well, I actually got a ricochet bullet too—"
She gasped.
"It was just in the leg. It still bothers me sometimes—I guess there was some deep-tissue damage or something—but I'm mostly okay. My dad though—he just kept crying and saying he killed her." He was silent for a minute. "He said it for years."
She was quiet, stroking his smooth chest softly.
"I decided nothing like that would ever happen to me or mine again," he said at last, his voice like ice. "I learned how to knife fight—use the same weapon that had been used on her. And guns, too. I'm a crackshot with firearms. But I'm just—more comfortable with the knives, I guess. Quicker. I can use them more easily in closer quarters, and people—attackers—they don't tend to notice them as quickly as they do a gun. They're easier to carry and more—more personal." He hazarded a glance at her, wondering if he had gone too far, but she just looked at him with patient eyes. "I've kept a switchblade on me since I was twelve."
She sucked in a breath. "How old were you when this happened?"
"Eight."
Her face crumpled and a flash of panic shuddered through him—he'd never seen her this close to tears. But she steeled her jaw and looked up at him. "Eight, when you saw your mother die."
He shrugged with one arm. "It's not what you're thinking. Like I said, I didn't see most of it. Don—my Dad, I mean—he shoved me behind a dumpster." His eyes turned back to the ceiling. "I saw her shadow on the ground, cast from one of the streetlights. It was perfectly clear. And I saw the shadow of her chest rise, and fall, and then it stuttered and hitched. And then it stopped moving." He paused. "And I knew."
Something hot fell on his chest and he actually jolted, thinking of the old cigarette burn, but Evelyn was quickly wiping away a damp spot. "I'm sorry," she muttered, looking flushed and furious with herself.
He laced his hand over hers. "Are you crying for me, Evie?"
She looked up slowly and placed a soft kiss on his scarred chin. "Keep talking to me, Jackson."
He caught the back of her head quickly with one hand—snap, he imagined—and brought her forehead roughly to his lips so he could return the favor. Her chaste, tender kisses were meaning more to him than he'd thought anything could ever mean.
"At first, Don was good. I mean he was really good. He loved my mom so much, Evie. He was head-over-heels for her, and he loved me too. I was a part of her, I think. So he buckled down, got an apartment, took good care of me at first. I did love him, once."
She kissed his shoulder, soft and full, putting all of her compassion and sorrow and love into that single contact of flesh-on-flesh.
"Then he started drinking. He worked hard—did nothing but work and drink—we never lost our home again. Which is shocking, because I have no idea how he functioned some days. And he got depressed. He'd say he killed her—Mom—and that he was responsible for butchering her, that he might as well have held the knife himself. He just kept—blaming himself. I guess I probably did too, a little, at first. Before I understood. But I don't anymore—not for killing her."
Evie rolled over and touched a light finger to the scar on his lower lip, where his chin had split. "You blame him for this," she whispered, suddenly feeling very wise. "And this." Her fingers skimmed the tape on his jaw, gentle.
His tongue darted out, and he licked at his lip, imagining the blood there. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "I do." Another pause; then: "He tried to kill me while I was home. I mean, I think he was really trying to kill me. Maybe he didn't realize he was doing it at the time—he gets like that sometimes. Got like that sometimes. But it was definitely close to being over."
She hissed between her teeth, trying to quell the sudden plummeting of her stomach. She was nauseous at the thought of it, at the thought of not being with him when he needed her, even if there'd been nothing she could have done to save him. Still, in her head, she imagined a hulking man like the one who'd attacked her at the party and whose face she'd smashed in with a phone receiver. Maybe she could have distracted him—she imagined hitting him with a chair, a lamp, a textbook—knocked him out so Jackson wouldn't have to go through this now—she'd be resourceful—a hundred different ways, she imagined sparing him this pain.
Though she knew it was useless and silly, a worm of guilt slithered into her stomach. It rolled into the pit where she was already feeling sick with sadness and empathy and love and fear, and she fought back a wave of hot saliva that might have preceded throwing-up.
"I pulled out my knife and I just didn't think," Jackson continued, his voice sandy and bruised. "He was choking me and I was already bleeding everywhere. And I just slashed out the way I learned years ago, without bothering to think about it."
Which was mostly true. It had all been instinctive—but he knew what he was doing when he did it.
Evie lay there, her eyes sad and watchful.
"I got him across the throat," he said finally, quietly. "Now that I think about it—it was just like Mom's." He licked his lips again, remembering the taste of blood, then vomit, and how every convulsion brought more blinding, white-hot pain through his brain and just made him puke more till he passed out in his own puke. Crawling to the phone ten minutes later—when the pain woke him back up with white lights and more gagging—had been the most excruciating moments of his life. He'd found he couldn't talk without choking on pain and had simply moaned to the 911-operator until they'd traced the call and broke down the door.
Evelyn was trembling. All she could think was how empty and tight and fragile she felt, just hearing about his pain, imagining what it must have felt like. She placed her hand flat on his abdomen, gently, like he might break.
Jackson drew in a shuddering breath. "What happened to Mom—it was crazy. An accident. Chaos. Nothing could have stopped it, nothing he could have done differently." His face twisted suddenly. "But he had a choice. And look what he did choose—what he let himself become. A hollow shell. A slob. No purpose. Nothing."
She tilted his face toward her and gently kissed the scar that ran his lower lip. Reluctantly, he turned his eyes from the ceiling onto her, and they glowed.
"You don't…hate me?" Jackson asked after a moment, licking his lips. He knew the answer, but he didn't understand it. For all he understood about the human condition, nothing prepared him for her.
"Of course not," she whispered back, her voice both gentle and fierce. "I could never be against you, Jackson. I'm for you. I'm with you. Always. I'll be at your side in all of this, and after."
His shoulders quivered against her.
"As for the rest…" she trailed. "You're not nothing. You'll always have purpose—you're too strong-willed, too passionate. You won't let that kind to hollowness happen to you. You will always be setting new things in motion." She eased herself over him, careful of his bruises, and the soft flesh of her breasts spilled just a little over the top of her bra, pressing against his skin. "You're the opposite of nothing, Jackson. You're everything."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
She was a goddess in bed.
It didn't occur to him till afterwards that she'd had more experience than he did—if you could call nonviolent assault "experience."Still, she knew what body parts went where, and what would make him feel good, and what made her feel good. It only galled him to know that it had been Alex to teach her—Alex, when she'd been eager to please but unwilling to go quite so far. Alex, who took advantage of her generosity, her passion.
She'd moved slow, and sometimes had seemed embarrassed and tentative, but while he had laid there in bruises she carefully navigated the waters of sex to provide him with maximum pleasure and minimal work. She'd been terrified of hurting him further, but he also thought maybe it had been for the best that he'd looked so mangled. There had been no room in her for fear or flashbacks—not when, for all intents and purposes, she thought he was more physically vulnerable than she was.
His weakness was an illusion, in a way, he supposed. He was used to pain and it didn't detract from his ability to move, to muscle, to be threatening. Emotionally, however, he was overwhelmingly grateful for her gentleness, the generous gift of her intimacy.
Instead she had soothed him with light touches, distracting him from pain. Her kisses had been slow and wet down his chest, butterfly-touches on his shoulders and chest as she rode him carefully. He prayed he would keep that visual till the day he died: her brown curls, spilling down her back and over her breasts—the way the light slanted over them as they bobbed above him. The feel of the curve of her back as he ran his hands over her spine, the way her breasts looked when she arched backward.
He woken up late in the evening, when everything was colored with dusky blues and purples. Evelyn was awake already, watching him.
"I think I'm supposed to be creeped out right now," he joked weakly. She threw back her head and laughed loudly.
"Please don't be. I'm sorry," she apologized, still chuckling.
He found himself smiling with her. "I'm not," he responded. "It's nice, to have someone watching and keeping the monsters away." He cringed, suddenly embarrassed. "I mean, it's just been a long time—since—"
She kissed him gently, square on the scar tissue of his lower lip, to hush him. "You can return the favor in the future," she whispered, and snuggled against his shoulder, still carefully avoiding the fading marks on his body. "I have lots of nightmares," she confided. "Since I imagine we'll be sleeping together a lot more now, I think I can afford to take first shift." She kissed his chest again, right over his heart.
"Go back to sleep," she whispered. "I'll keep watch."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dent was alive, but injured. The Joker wasn't sure exactly what this meant for Gotham, so he had some of Maroni's inside men smuggle some of his favorite toys into Gotham General. The story he'd told the Latina policewoman—Rodriguez?—had given him an inspiration. For a moment, he really believed his mother had been in a bombed hospital years earlier. He thought it would be a nice bit of karmic justice to turn around and do the same thing here.
Entirely honest with himself—or as honest as he could be—the Joker admitted he didn't know yet whether he'd blow up Dent and the rest of the patients or not. He'd wait to see if the good people of Gotham killed that nasty little maggot from Wayne Enterprises—tattletale, ruining the fun with the Bat—but that still didn't mean he was planning on killing everyone. He might do it just for fun. Or he might decide to let them evacuate first. He figured he might as well give them a fair chance of sixty minutes. He'd see how he felt after talking to Dent. And he was a man of his word.
The hospital was chaos. It was easy to get in. You just had to pretend like you knew what you were doing and where you were going, and no-one looked at you twice Not even if you had rings of black around your eyes. In Dent's room, he flipped through the charts. So the boyo was refusing pain meds, huh? This could be used to his advantage. You couldn't think clearly when you were in that much physical pain—much less the emotional assault. The Joker knew this. He had experience.
An idiot police officer entered with words on his lips. The Joker turned without a thought and shot him while waiting for Dent's bed to raise.
He took off his mask, sat down, and smiled awkwardly at Gotham's former district attorney.
"Hi."
The man in the hospital bed jolted upward at the sight of his make-up, struggling against his bonds, pulling and straining. Sweat immediately pricked through on the side of his face where there was still skin. The Joker thought briefly of his own scars and guessed that the pain Dent was feeling was probably even worse than his own. He wondered if, when he let this mad dog loose, Dent would wreak havoc on the city, or simply kill himself.
It would be fun to find out.
"You know I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us, Harvey. When you and, uh—"
He paused, genuinely trying to remember the name of the pretty brunette Ramirez had dropped off at Avenue X. She had reminded him of someone important, but he couldn't remember who—and he'd liked her sass. It was a shame, really—
"Rachel!" the former DA screamed. It sounded like his throat tore with the force of his words.
"—Rachel. Were, uh, being abducted? I was sitting in Gordon's cage!" He tried to make his voice as earnest as possible, wanting Dent to understand, to really understand. He'd really liked the girl—been amused by her, anyway. And he'd had no way of knowing, for sure, how it would work out. It all depended on how much the Bat loved her, and how much Dent loved her, and mow much Gordon loved her, too. It was fascinating to see how these things blossomed. Eagerly, seriously, he explained. "Now, I—I didn't rig those charges."
"Your men," Dent hissed. "Your plan."
The Joker lifted his lips in a rueful expression. "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"
Dent blinked—with his good eye, at least.
"You know what I am?" He grinned, almost charmingly abashed. "I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it!!!—" The prospect itself seemed to get him excited, giddy. Then he calmed down and lifted his hands airily. "I just…do…things…"
Dent had lost focus. He stared blurrily at the Joker through his good eye. His gaze wasn't the best through the other—temporary cornea damage, he seemed to remember one of the doctors saying. When he looked at the Joker again, the man didn't seem to realize he temporarily lost his audience.
"…schemers trying to control their little worlds." The Joker eyed him seriously, and then spoke confidingly. "I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are." The Joker thought of the Batman: his other half, his former self, so distraught over a woman…by the laws of nature, you couldn't control things, especially in matters of love and war. It was a lesson they all had to learn. This was his purpose—his greater objective, his raison d'être.
"So, when I say, come here—" he gripped Dent's hand, trying to be companionable even when it was obvious the man wanted nothing more to kill him "—when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I'm telling the truth."
Dent phased out again. His pain was unbearable, both physical and mental. He had found in the last few days that he couldn't always control where his attention was. Sometimes he was here, in the hospital, hating the world, hating everything, furious, missing Rachel, staring at his father's coin. In those moments, he didn't know himself, couldn't fully comprehend the depth of his own fury and lust for revenge. But other times, he was away—fully himself, the old blond Harvey Dent, Gotham's White Knight, and Rachel was laughing.
Harvey Two-Face, he thought, and came back to. He turned his face against the pillow to follow the Joker with his eyes. The madman was now on his left, and he nearly blacked out again when the raw muscles and nerves of his face scraped against the cotton pillowcase.
"Nobody panics when things go according to plan," the Joker said, almost bitterly. "Even if the plan is horrifying."
Pain. And Rachel. And pain. And Rachel. The cotton seemed to scrape at his sticky wounds. His eye was dry without a lid or lubrication. His teeth on that side of his mouth were loose, and the muscles in his face were aching, trembling, tight—times a million. The doctors had prodded and poked and pulled every pebble and bit of gravel and dirt from his burns, but they still felt gritty and hot.
Something cool and heavy and metallic was slapped into his palm. He looked down and focused briefly on the gun and the Joker's surprisingly clean, neat hands. Some part of Dent had expected dried blood under the nails.
"Introduce a little anarchy," the Joker urged, his voice a low growl. "Upset the established order, and everything becomes…chaos." He grinned and pressed the gun to his forehead, holding the DA's hand firmly, bracing it. Would he do it? Would he do it? Did it matter? Did he want it?
The Lady watched, intrigued, sad. She was still dripping with water, the light reflecting gold on her drenched, dark hair. She smelled like honeysuckle again, and he thought briefly of coming home. The scent clung to her.
"I'm an agent of chaos," the Joker said matter-of-factly. He eyed Harvey Dent, read in him his pain and agony, and made his final play.
"And you know the thing about chaos?...It's fair."
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