Title: Bath Side Manner
Rating: T
Genre: horror
Characters: Joker, OFC
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own it.
Warnings:none
Summary: Joker and his victim battle it out in the bathroom.
Author's Note: The next chapter is better AND is in the Joker's POV!

"Bath Side Manner"

The first thing she tried not to feel in the morning was dread. But that was a particularly hard task for her, seeing as she had a psychopath calling himself "The Joker" out for her blood. But she tried not to be down about that daily failure. That kind of knowledge was enough to ruin a saint's day. And she was no saint.

The second thing she tried not to do while cocooned in a pale pink comforter, was think of him. Try not to wonder if there would be any more of his surprises left for her. A car bomb, exploding bathrobes, arsenic in her cereal...Wondering these things, however, only succeeded in making her ponder her own mortality and fail all the more completely in her two goals.

Having failed by 7:30 in the morning, she slid out of bed and stuck her feet into her slippers; it seemed her morbid thoughts had been rewarded though. She yelped and kicked off the right slipper when an electric shock, painfully violent, blazed up her leg like a phone call running through a telephone line. Cautiously, she bent down and probed at the fuzzy shoe, the carefully picked up the culprit.

It was a zapper, one of those things that people hid in their palms so as to shock the person they were shaking hands with. Growling furiously she hurled the device across the room, perversely liking the way it broke into neat pieces against the opposite wall.

Her anger temporarily satiated, she headed down the hallway of her apartment, wanting a cup of coffee, preferably boiling hot, that she could hurl at the madman if she ever got the chance. If she ever got the courage was more likely though...

It was the red beeping light of her answering machine that stopped her, a beacon that both fascinated and frightened her. What if it was the...the Joker? What if he was calling to tell her that her brother's blood was in her milk cartoon? That her father's head was on his chandelier in his lair? That she had exactly 27 days, 9 hours, and 33 seconds to live? The 'what if's that chased her sanity around like a cat did its prey were endless.

No no no no no! If she let this keep happening, she truly would go insane. She'd end up in and insane asylum. A sanitarium. Bedlam or Arkham. Shock therapy; gruel morning, noon, and night; other crazies; and the Joker as a bridge partner on those rare occasions when he was caught. Just the notion made her cringe.

"Let's see what this says. I'm not afraid. I am woman. Hear me roar." she muttered. "Right. Let's just get this over with." She pressed the blinking button with a shaking finger.

"Hi Katherine, it's Melissa, down at Commissioner Gordon's office. You haven't come into work for awhile now, so you better be really sick to deserve all this time off. But Mr. Gordon says if you don't come back in by next Monday, you're fired. I uh...have a nice day, I guess."

What a relief! The soft, sympathetic voice of one of the secretaries at the Commissioner's office was a welcome sound. It also reminded her that she did have responsibilities. Things that needed to be done in a real world that wasn't terrorized or held hostage by madman. Things that didn't care if she was having a personal crisis or not. That was nice to hear. It was professional, demanded and actual purpose from her, and was everything she needed to hear.

Of course, fate always had a way of messing everything up.

"Katherine, is it? I like it."

She, Katherine, turned around slowly, fingers clenching her nightgown. Terror and disappointment collided within her, but she was strangely unsurprised.

And there he was, leaning against the hallway wall, arms folded across his chest. He'd forgone his customary purple velvet jacket, instead dressing his upper half only in his spotted, blue-green, button up shirt and a purple vest. His purple pants were a little too long for him. His hair was parted on the side and slicked down with some sort of hair gel.

"You look different." she blurted out before she could stop herself.

Whether he was surprised by her candor or not, there was no flicker of such reaction in his eyes. Instead he pushed himself up from the wall and advanced on her. Joker kept walking forward until her back was to the wall and his chest was to her, aggressively male.

"Really?" He smoothed his green hair with his hand for show. "Mysterious? Handsome? Charming?"

When Katherine didn't reply, he sighed, as if exasperated by her. "You know, my mother's name was Katherine. Did you know that? Did you?" Joker questioned in a high voice.

Katherine cried out as he dug his fingernails into her arms and forced her back down the hall. Her fingernails scraped the wall and tried to gain some leverage, some way to stop. She took a framed painting off the wall with her free hand and hit him with it in the side. The sharp wooden corner dug into his hip.

Joker yelped and spun her to face him more directly. He backhanded her, sending her slamming into the wall. "Bitch." he commented, contrasting the fiery word with his cool tone. Breathing deeply, he ran a hand through his hair and retrieved her bruised arm.

When he spoke again, his voice was more calm and good hearted than ever. "I'll just bet you knew her name, I'll bet you did, you sneaky little bunny rabbit you. But you're not going to tell me you knew, aren't you? You're going to pretend you didn't I can see." he muttered, lips close to her ear. By then they were at the entrance of her bathroom.

The bath tub was already mysteriously full. But really, was anything explainable with him?

Joker sat Katherine down by the edge of the tub, and carelessly left her there as he readied things for their latest encounter. He tested the temperature of the water and made sure that he bath mat was down flat. He checked to make sure that the fan was on so that the mirror wouldn't get fogged. And the last thing he did was strip her of her pajama shirt and place a bath towel around her naked upper body.

"Wouldn't want to ruin this pretty thing, would we?" he explained, picking at and ruining the lace on the edges of her shirt then tossing it onto the toilet.

Katherine struggled fruitlessly as he stood her up again and turned her around to face the tub. She clenched her fists and tried to elbow him but he kept her still in a ruthless grip. "Shh shh shh shh." Joker murmured against her flinching cheek.

"What are you going to do? What will make you leave me alone?!" she voiced, unintentionally letting the words bubble up from her stomach and leave her mouth. The tile on the floor was icy against her feet as the anticipation and anxiety over his answer wound a knot in her throat.

The hands that held her still gentled not in the least. "Well m'dear, you are a burr in my saddle blanket. A knot in my hair. A kink in my neck. Or, in other words, if you're not comprehending me correctly, a fucking nuisance!" His uproarious laughter echoed in her words and the mirth that shook his body also shook her own.

He turned her around again, and she was so close to him that she imagined she could see the muscles moving under his skin as he bit at the beginning of one of his scars, oddly, awkwardly. "Wh-what do you mean?" Katherine asked, mentally berating herself for such a stupid question.

Joker's hands danced up and down her arms like medieval jesters performing to a hurdy-gurdy. "Well, as a nuisance you have to be...ELIMINATED!"

It was a movement more sudden than Katherine had ever seen before as he forcibly bent her backwards and shoved her head into the water.

The heat of the liquid burned her open eyes and she shut them, even as the awkward position made her overbalance and fall, taking the Joker with her. Her back and his elbow crashed into the edge of the tub, but he didn't let go. She let out an unconscious gasp of pain and water rushed down her throat and up her nose.

She struggled and thrashed furiously, desperately trying to get out of his hold and bring her head back up above the level of the water. She even succeeded for a few brief, precious moments before Joker took control again and plunged her back down. But that was enough to bring oxygen back into her lungs and to gift new strength to her limbs for the fight.

Her nails punctured his arms and scraped his neck. She arched her body and slid back and forth, trying to unbalance him. Her knees hit his sides and bruised his back. She splashed and drenched his front with the searing hot water. She tried to overbalance him into the tub and make it a mutual grave. She even tore the sleeve of his shirt in an effort to pull him in with her.

Finally, finally, it seemed the heavens were shinning down on her, for her hands smacked into his face and poked his eye in a blindly vicious jab. Joker backed away, hand over his eye and Katherine slid limply out of the tub to sit against it on the floor. Her breath was coming in pants and wild, heaving gestures, as was, she realized, his.

Injured eye somewhat calmed, Joker knelt down in front of her. Katherine's arm lashed out on an instinctual level to favor the other eye before she could even think about it, but it was futile; the psychopath had better reflexes than her and caught her wrist just as it was about to connect with his face. For good measure, he claimed her other wrist in his opposite hand.

They stared at each other, assessing, wondering – much as they had done in the strip mall not so long ago. Then, cracking a wide smile, Joker asked, "Want to know how I got my scars?"

AN - And that, ladies and gentemen, was the fourth chapter. How'd you like it? Was it good? Was it okay? I have one other chapter written and beta'd, so was have at least that before we're dead in the water again, 'kay? Cool.

Please review, as reviews are the food of an author's soul, and if you don't feed me…then I couldn't possibly write a thing! (smiles slyly)

THANKS!