AN: I was leaving my screenwriting class on Friday, one of my classmates stopped me to ask if I was the girl who'd dressed as Harley Quinn on Halloween. I don't know which I find more surprising: that BSU students outside of my dorm remember the costume, or that he recognized me in spite of the fact that I'd had a mask, makeup, and my hair concealed as Harley.
Thanks for the reviews!
"I haven't thought of you in fifteen days, and today I still won't think of you.
And when I call you up and you're not home, well, I might not even care."
—Jonathan Coulton, "Not About You"
The cell was twelve feet by fourteen, padded, white. Of all the colors in the spectrum, they'd chosen white. It didn't even qualify as a color, just the absence of. Well, all the colors, in terms of light, but this was no time for technicalities. It was enough of a struggle not to die of boredom without getting caught up in such tedious details. White. It wasn't just dull enough to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, it was idiotic. Considering the type of patients held in padded rooms, it was a fair bet that said padding would be smeared with food or blood or feces, at some point. One would think they'd choose a color that wouldn't show human waste so well. But then, white was probably cheaper. And what did aesthetics matter when it came to saving a buck?
The Joker was forced to concede the possibility that he could grow to hate this place. At least they took the straitjacket off.
They hadn't been gentle about removing it, either. If it could be worn for extended periods without the risk of hindering circulation and causing excruciating pain—he wouldn't mind some excruciating pain at the moment—the Joker had the feeling they'd never take it off. Just leave him forgotten in the cell like a velveteen rabbit, only to be dragged out and dusted off when the ACLU came through to ensure that Arkham's crazies were as happy and healthy as anyone locked up in a loony bin could be. Even his wellbeing would matter to those people; at least, they'd have to act as if it did. The thought of anyone lobbying for his rights would be funny, if he wasn't bored to the brink of a coma.
He stalked around the perimeter of the cell, body tensed like a cable wound to its tightest, taut with energy he couldn't release. There wasn't much the Joker couldn't tolerate. Fatigue and hunger could be subdued, and the elements, be it rain or snow or blazing heat, didn't trouble him either. They could be ignored. Most anything could be put out of his mind until he cared to acknowledge. Injuries weren't important unless they were immediately life-threatening, and he welcomed pain, lusted for it when he knew it was forthcoming. His worldly experiences were akin to standing under a waterfall; he could drink in what he wanted, or move his hands through the water and change the course, but if he didn't want to interact, he could let it flow over him, stay unchanging beneath.
Boredom, though, that was different.
The world, as a whole, was boring. The Joker had resigned himself to that fact long ago; couldn't remember a time when he hadn't realized that. But outside, it was manageable. Outside, he had his suit. His knives. His arsenal, his henchclowns, everything he needed to add splashes of color to the black and white canvas that was Gotham City. Here, locked away without any of that, without anyone to talk to—people, for the most part, were also unbearably dull, but at least he could bounce words off them—the Joker couldn't keep it at bay. Hunger, thirst, and damage, he viewed as external forces, something he could battle until there was no other recourse. But boredom worked its way inside, twisting and fraying at the connections in his mind until it was broadcast over every frequency.
The Joker stopped pacing, kicked the bed. What passed for a bed, anyway. In reality, it was a futon, lying on the floor without as much as a mattress cover. No box frame, no mattress pad, no springs. His mouth twitched. It was a sin, really. There was so much fun to be had with springs. He couldn't even bounce on this.
Giving the mattress a glare that would have put grown men in tears, the Joker reached up to the gauze covering his Bat-wounds—soon to be Bat-scars, or Linda would pay in blood. He took the edge between his fingers, peeling it away slowly, savoring the sensation of the medical tape pulling at his skin. It was a weak hold, less sticky than a Band-Aid, but given the circumstances, he was in no position to complain. True, the wounds were still technically infected, but they'd been thoroughly cleaned and they'd already started him on penicillin. He saw no harm in scratching at them a bit more, especially considering that such a privilege could be denied to him in the future.
Scrape.
He remembered the glorious burst of pain that had accompanied the blades slicing over his skin, nailing the arm and chest but just grazing the face, a gouged line left behind, like a signature. "Batsy was here." He'd laughed, even before he fell—where does he get all those wonderful toys?—more amused than disappointed that he'd been one-upped, loving the fall, the night air, the wind flowing around him as he hurtled toward the ground. Loving, more than anything, the way Batman had saved him—though he wouldn't have minded death, not really, if it meant making the Bat break his rule—guaranteeing the death of more Gotham citizens, because he couldn't bring himself to cross that line. It was so cute. So perfect.
Scrape.
His sense of self-preservation—which, much like his inner scrutiny, he usually ignored—warned against daydreaming on the Batman. It wasn't the danger of nostalgia, though it was true that, say, the food in a dream couldn't nourish the body. No, this was like a junkie in withdrawal fantasizing about a fix. Not only did it fail to provide even temporary solace, but it threw reality into harsh relief, making the need and the pain all the greater. It wasn't as if he didn't realize that longing for a worthy companion would only make time go slower.
But it wasn't something he could help, either.
Scrape scrape scrape.
"He ate it. He actually ate it." Teresa twisted the hemline of her shirt in her hands, wrinkling the fabric around it. "I mean, I made him spit it out in time, but I think he might have swallowed it, if I hadn't. Do you?"
"Who can say?" Elizabeth sat the lunch tray down on the bed nearest Jonathan Crane's, placed a hand on the man's thin shoulder. He didn't stir, still deep under the influence of the morphine. No one could say, that was who, but it wasn't about to stop Teresa from going on and on until something more bizarre or sordid came along to captivate her interest. And as she was occupied by the Joker's antics, that was unlikely to happen. "He didn't, and that's what matters. Jonathan."
He shifted under the blankets, still too tired to open his eyes, let alone sit up or eat. Or provide a change of conversation. The infirmary's other occupant, Sylvia Everson, had come to Arkham two days ago, straight out of emergency surgery to save her from attempted suicide by way of drinking Draino. Still adjusting to the pain of partial esophageal replacement, she could barely eat, so speaking with her was out.
Which left Elizabeth alone with Teresa's neuroses. As if she wasn't on edge from being in the same hospital as the clown already.
"Jonathan. Wake up; I've got your lunch."
"Do you think he's really insane, Liz?"
If she'd been the praying sort, she'd be petitioning God to put His hands over her coworker's mouth about now. Friends or not, these were the type of conversations that made her wish for cold and flu season, if only for increased patients to serve as a distraction. Didn't they deal with enough human misery without throwing a terrorist's psyche into the mix? "I don't think a sane person would act that way." She didn't want to comprehend a sane person committing all those unspeakable crimes. "Come on, Jonathan."
His eyes opened, sluggishly tracking her movements as she helped him into a sitting position. His arms were still bruised a violent black and blue, poor thing, with only a faint ring of yellow that hadn't been there yesterday around the markings to indicate that they were healing. She shuddered to think of how the bruising over his ribs must still look, forcing herself off that train of thought by looking only at his eyes, free of injury, if not the haze of drugs. "Can you eat by yourself?"
It took him a good minute to process the question, eyes drifting as he thought. Elizabeth had been the one to examine him when he was first admitted, and the change in his demeanor from one infirmary visit to the next made her stomach turn knots, if she dwelled on it. During his check in, he'd been silent as now, but an angry silence, as though he wanted to scream but couldn't trouble himself to put forth the effort. He hadn't quite pulled away when she examined him, but his body language had made it all too clear that he didn't appreciate the touch. She'd thought he acted like spoiled royalty then. But a spoiled inmate disturbed her less than one too lifeless to move or speak. Sure, he was doped, but Elizabeth doubted that accounted for all of his lethargy. She tried not to focus on it.
Jonathan nodded, and she placed the tray on his lap, making sure it was balanced. His difficulty in picking up the fork made it immediately apparent that he wasn't able to eat by himself, or at least without supervision.
"So you don't think he—"
"Is Sylvia all right?"
Teresa, who'd now twisted her scrubs so badly Elizabeth wasn't sure an iron could get them out, paused mid-question, brows furrowing. "What?"
"Is she having trouble eating?"
"Um." Teresa pulled at the hem of her shirt for the final time, before walking off toward Sylvia's bed to check.
Elizabeth shook her head, as if that could clear her anxieties away. Sick patients, injured patients, patients who tried to kill themselves with cleaning supplies. It was bad enough without adding killer clowns to the mix. She was starting to feel like one of those cops in suspense movies; lecturing on how people in their line of work had to put disturbing images out of their heads, or be torn apart by them.
So she willed herself to stop thinking about it, and focused on helping Jonathan Crane properly hold a fork.
"I mean, he's somewhere in this building." Karen moved as if she was going to impale a piece of pizza on her spork, turning the utensil at the last second to saw through the dough instead. It took skill to slice something—particularly something as rubbery as Arkham's pizza crusts—into bits with a spork. Karen had it down to a science. "Can you imagine?"
"Yes, we can, and none of us want to." In contrast to Karen's almost full plate, Victoria's was empty, save for a few wayward crumbs. Just like always. In all the time that Lucy had been here, Victoria always finished in the first ten minutes, waiting for the other patients who couldn't go until their plates were clean before she'd leave, chatting away while everyone else filtered out of the cafeteria. Some days, Lucy, being one of those patients, resented it, feeling she was a burden.
But days like today, she appreciated it. They needed to stick together, when there were monsters like the Joker lurking the hospital halls. She stared at her own plate, and the half-finished slice of cheese pizza there. Nauseating. It wasn't the amount—it hurt to eat that much, true—that bothered her, so much as the content. Cheese pizza: two hundred and seventy-two calories. Brownie: two hundred and forty-three calories. Fruit salad, straight out of the can and loaded with preservatives: two hundred and ten calories. All of them empty, and loaded with carbs besides. Arkham really should re-evaluate what it considered a healthy diet.
"I'm just saying. The police couldn't hold him." Karen readjusted the hat—contraband to all patients whose hair wasn't falling out from malnutrition—lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. She'd been in the infirmary when the Joker threatened to make Gotham play by his rules. She'd missed the worst of it, the panic and rumors spreading from patient to patient like the flu, and that horrible news report with Mike Engel hanging upside down. For her, this was verging on entertainment, and that turned Lucy's stomach as much as the pizza. "What if we can't—"
"The police didn't have sedatives," Lucy countered, poking at a cherry in the fruit salad and wincing at the syrupy sheen on it. "They'll have him strapped to the floor and drugged unconscious."
"Exactly." Victoria twisted the end of her ponytail, threatening to pull it loose from the hair tie. "Look, my parents were on that ferry. I don't want to think about what could have happened, and I don't want to think about him. He checked in, he's in the secure ward, and we'll never—"
She went on, but that was the point that Lucy stopped listening. He checked in. He must have, everyone did, but she hadn't thought of that, hadn't considered that he'd be in the infirmary. She'd tried not to think of the Joker at all, though that had proved inevitable this morning. Lucy had been in art therapy, waiting to move to group, but the supervisor had held them an extra five minutes, explaining that the Joker was being moved, so the hospital had gone into lock down. It was to keep them safe.
It had almost given Lucy a panic attack.
Routine was the only thing she had to cling to, in a place like this. It was the only stable thing in her world and this clown had come and torn that to bits just by walking down the hall. Truth be told, that frightened her as much as his presence. She'd forced herself to breath evenly—he's never getting out of his cell, this will never happen again—and managed to recover, forcing him out of her mind.
But he'd been in the infirmary.
"Dr. Crane's in there."
It wasn't until she raised her head to see Karen and Victoria staring at her that Lucy realized she'd spoken aloud.
"What?"
"Dr. Crane." Her palms were sweating, heart already starting to pound. "He's still in the infirmary." God knew how long he'd be there, after what the orderlies had done. "He was there. With the Joker."
Her fear was met with blank stares. "And?"
"The Scarecrow probably swapped crime stories with him." Karen slipped a miniscule piece of pizza into her mouth, chewing slowly. "I really doubt his life's in danger."
"Don't call him that." They hadn't met Dr. Crane, didn't understand. For them, the doctor existed only in news reports and horror stories: the mad doctor that had tortured his own patients, and tried to poison all of Gotham. For them, Dr. Crane existed in black and white.
For her, he'd been a doctor. Just a doctor. Cold and quiet, never speaking about himself in their sessions, always forcing her back on topic when she tried to evade, but far from evil. He'd never tortured her, or drugged her and used her to distribute toxins into the water lines. He'd been a last resort after her insurance had run out and she'd moved to the state hospital, and with him, there had been improvements, talk of release.
Until the night of the asylum breakout, when everything had gone to hell. She'd lost her stability, she'd lost half the staff and patients she associated with, and the Narrows poisoning had shaken her badly, badly enough to slip back into old habits after the antidote had been administered.
She ought to hate him for that. But he'd helped her, and Lucy couldn't bring herself to forget it. The world was make up of black and whites—routine, chaos, fat, thin, good, evil—but people were more complicated. Trusting him might be masochistic, but she couldn't flip her emotions off like a light switch, or force herself not to care.
Karen and Victoria exchanged a look, shook their heads. Lucy's free hand clenched. "Sorry. But Lu, they wouldn't let him run wild in there, either. They probably had him chained up as soon as he stepped in."
"Right. The Sc—Dr. Crane is fine. You'll see."
Hospitalized and assaulted was far from fine, but thinking of the man's current predicament was just as bad as worrying over his hypothetical situation. With a nod and an inward sigh, she forced herself to forget about it, and relented to take a bite of the sugar-saturated salad. She chewed fifty times, each of them slow, wondering if the calories she burned moving her jaw would offset the calories in the fruit.
Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."
The Joker wasn't sure why he'd started singing. Lunch had arrived—he'd kicked the futon again upon realizing he wouldn't be removed from the cell to eat—soon after he'd peeled back the gauze. He'd relented aggravating the wound in favor of consumption, discovering that Arkham made pizza a hell of a lot better than it prepared scrambled eggs. He'd tried to entertain himself with the tray, once it was empty, but the plastic refused to snap and it didn't make for a good Frisbee. Not that there was anyone to throw it to. After a while—he had no sense of time without a window or clock—an orderly removed it, shaking all the while. The Joker had bared his teeth at him; watched the man race from the room, all but wetting himself.
It had been amusing, for a time. Then that had faded.
Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape.
"You make me happy, when skies are gray."
There had been dinner, after that. The Joker wasn't sure what he had eaten then, and he didn't want to consider it. He wasn't about to judge the entire cafeteria system based on a day's worth of meals, but if things carried on this way, he'd have to write a letter of complaint. Even if the pizza had been delicious.
And again he was stuck with nothing to do but let his nails and mind wander.
Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape.
"You'll never know dear, how much I love you."
His nails, of course, had returned to his face, and his mind had returned to the Batman.
The Joker had found out what happened while in the cell at County, of course. The death of Gotham's "White Knight" would have been news enough. But with the lie about the Bat's involvement in the murders accompanying it…well, he'd have to have pencils shoved through his eyes sockets and ear canals not to have heard about it. Part of him was impressed. He'd never seen it coming, and losing to the Batman amused him more than anything else.
But the other part was furious. They'd shattered the Bat-signal. All the work Batsy had done in the city, the connections he'd made, the criminals he'd terrorized, gone. All of that, for nothing. He'd have to start over, without the aid of the police—or at most, with a fraction of it—working his way from the bottom up for a second time. It would give the mob power again. And while the Joker doubted his Bat would be foolish enough to disregard him in favor of the mob a second time, the Batman's schedule was going to get far more hectic.
You're supposed to be at my beck and call, Bat. No one else can have you.
Ironic, really, the little hells the Batman had made for the both of them. The Joker imprisoned in a colorless room, and the Bat imprisoned in the streets of his own city, the territory where he used to fight freely. What goes around comes around, though the Joker hadn't put much stock in the saying until now. I can break out of this cell eventually, Batsy. Can you get out of the bed you've made for yourself?
Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape.
"Please don't take my sunshine away."
His fingers were wet. No, not just his fingers. Everything from the tips to the bottom of the palm. He pulled his hand away, examined it. Blood. He hadn't realized he'd scratched that deeply.
The light in the cell went out, with only the glow of the hall lights through the door's window to illuminate the room. Probably an indication that he ought to be sleeping. With a shrug, the Joker sat on the futon, running bloodied fingers across his cheeks to make the smile they'd taken. He wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours later than he finally drifted off.
Just that, when he did awaken, there was a group of orderlies standing over him.
AN: "Not About You" (www. youtube. com/ watch?v=E0MCMEn8DDg) is a song by Jonathan Coulton, best known for his songs "Still Alive" (the ending song to the game Portal) and "RE: Your Brains," about a zombie trying to lure a former coworker out of his hiding place. He's one of my favorite musicians.
The Velveteen Rabbit is a children's story about a toy rabbit.
I don't see the Joker as a self-injurer. I do see him as having no tolerance whatsoever for boredom and doing anything to alleviate banality, including scratching at himself.
"Where does he get all those wonderful toys?" is a question posed by Jack Nicholson's Joker.
Lucy is named for the song "Lucy at the Gym." "Lucy at the gym, she's there every time I go, and I don't go that often." www. youtube. com/ watch?v=9XqOnoR6Bi8 Karen is named for Karen Carpenter, and Victoria after Victoria Beckham.
The Joker's scratching himself to the tune of his song, if that wasn't obvious.
