The Joker drove, scaring Jonathan half to death in the process. Crane was sent into the off license and managed to nick two crates of beer pretty successfully by taking out the door bell and waiting until the shop keeper vanished into the back room to answer the phone.
He got back into the car, throwing the crates onto the backseat and the Joker smirked.
"Nice one, Johnny boy."
"I have my uses."
"Would never have expected them to be shoplifting!"
"Well…"
The Joker put his foot on the accelerator and the car lurched forward, throwing Jonathan's head back to the headrest. He nervously twitched towards the seatbelt, but Scarecrow prevented him from putting it on.
They lurched to a stop and he really wished he had put the seatbelt on. It felt like all the air had been forced out of his lungs and crushed against the car window. The Joker checked his gun was loaded and put it back in his inside pocket.
"Coming?"
Jonathan looked at the place they'd stopped at. It was a fairly upmarket place, looked expensive, and definitely not a takeaway.
"I don't think they do take-out."
The Joker sniggered.
"Well, no. Not usually, anyway."
He stepped out of the car, and Jonathan followed, wondering what on earth was going on.
Joker stepped into the restaurant and sauntered straight past the slightly harassed waiter who told them to wait while he found them a table. He made his way into the centre of the room with Jonathan following like a lost puppy before they managed to attract some attention.
Most people stared, but some gasped, and eventually one woman screamed.
"Ah, ah, ah," The Joker said, his voice fairly low but strong enough to make the whole restaurant stop causing chaos and look towards him. He headed towards the lady who had screamed first and grabbed hold of her face, his entering into her personal space and making her cringe.
"There's no need to scream, cupcake. All I want is a take-out."
One of the waiters, acting upon some sort of misguided sense of protocol crept over to Jonathan and whispered,
"Can you please tell your friend we don't do take-out?" into his ear.
Jonathan huffed a laugh, quiet enough for his personality, but loud enough for the Joker's ears to prick up, and for him to drop the woman mid-speech and stalk over to them.
"What?"
"They don't do take-out."
It was the Joker's turn to start laughing, and he did so for quite a while before wiping away imaginary tears from his eyes and slinging his hand around the waiter's shoulders.
The man tensed, and froze. Jonathan was fairly impressed by the aura the Joker had around him. He hadn't actually done anything, and yet the whole restaurant was on red alert.
"Ah, okay fella, maybe you misunderstood. Because I'm hungry and I've just got away from somewhere where the food is, well, terrible." He looked at Jonathan.
"I'm right, aren't I, Scarecrow?"
"Mhm."
"See! So, I fancied Chinese, because c'mon, Chinese is always welcome. And I heard about this great restaurant so I came here to it. And now you tell me I can't eat?"
"I just… We just don't…"
The Joker sighed, and his voice rose in irritation.
"Okay, let's make this simpler for you. Do you know who I am?"
The waiter nodded.
"Good. Then you'll know that I'm a man who gets what he wants. Now, me and Dr Crane here are pretty damn hungry so I think you better shuffle off into the kitchen and bring me back some food before I start getting bored and, well, killing people. Johnny here told me I had to stop hitting walls with body parts, but I don't think he'd mind so much if they weren't my own."
"Does sound better for you."
"See? Now, am I being clear enough?"
The waiter nodded.
"Then off you go."
The Joker pushed him towards the kitchen.
"Ah, sir?"
"What?"
"What would you like?"
The Joker shrugged.
"Just give us whatever's best. With noodles, and rice, and prawn crackers."
The waiter scurried off, leaving the rest of the people in the room sitting or standing stock still, terrified to so much as breathe. After ten minutes or so of sitting on a table, occasionally muttering to Jonathan, the Joker got bored.
"Pfft, what's wrong with these guys, Johnny? You'd think a maniac had just entered the room or something!"
He laughed, and wandered towards one of the tables.
"Hey. What you eating?"
The man pushed his plate towards the Joker, who waved him off.
"I'm fine. Expecting a kinda large meal. So, ah, you wanna tell us what we've been missing while Gotham's finest have been trying to drug me and Dr Crane has been getting his mind back?"
The man opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but said nothing.
"No?"
He sighed again and got to his feet, beginning to pace between the tables like some sort of angry predator while Jonathan watched on to make sure that no one was doing anything stupid.
"Anyone?"
He looked around.
"No one. No one wants to talk to us."
He stopped dead at a table and pressed his face to one of the diners.
"Why so serious?"
The kitchen door opened and the waiter walked out and back over to them, the relief that everyone was still alive evident on his face. He handed the food to the Joker, who smirked at him and turned to leave.
Jonathan had noticed a man placing his mobile phone back into his pocket, and coughed.
The Joker placed the food down and spun to face Crane, who pointed at the man.
"Hmm. So I've been in Arkham for a few months, right? And while I've been in there, my whole world seems to have spun upside down. My henchmen have run off, Batman is being hunted for being a murderer, I have to threaten people to get food, and, I can't even trust someone to sit for fifteen minutes without calling in the cops."
He walked over to the man, who had turned completely white, and placed his hand on his shoulder.
"I don't blame you, I, ah, know that these scars cause a little bit of… upset. Don't look so worried. You wanna know how I got them? Yeah?" He licked his lips and scars, the man in front of him following his every move with his eyes.
"Well, I got myself into a situation similar to the one that you're in yourself. Where a bad man walked into somewhere he shouldn't have been and I, ah, told the cops where he was. He got arrested, but he wasn't charged and caught up with me when I was somewhere I shouldn't have been, with a lady friend. Now, he offered me the choice – he could carve her face, or mine. And she was beautiful, so she stood and watched while he took a knife to my face. She left, soon after of course."
He sighed, and his eyes flicked to the young lady sat next to him. She seemed to be fairly air-headed, the type of girl that hangs round rich men to get her face in the tabloids. She half smiled at the Joker nervously, and he smirked back.
"Pretty, like your girl. But, you did betray me and so I'll have to do something back. So, make your choice."
The man looked to the woman and gulped.
"Her."
Her eyes widened, and she gasped.
"Say that again, so that we can hear."
The man swallowed, "I choose her."
The woman started to panic, "Oh my God, no. How could you?"
The Joker grabbed her hair and placed his knife into her mouth. She was crying hysterically, and was whimpering into his palm. Jonathan was beginning to get nervous, even raising an army to bring down the Joker wouldn't take much longer. But how could you tell the Joker to stop messing around and hurry up?
"You see, sweetheart, I was braver than he was. I wouldn't want to mess up a pretty little face for the sake of my own. This is why you shouldn't put money at the top of your priority list. I mean, what does money do, anyway?"
He took the knife out of her mouth and she let out a sigh of relief, sobbing quietly into a napkin. The Joker walked towards the man, eyes narrowed, before slitting his throat as he walked past, completely nonchalantly.
The blood spray managed to miss him, but sprayed over the already traumatised woman, who screamed, starting the cycle of fear and chaos all over again as people began to leap to their feet in an attempt to escape. Scarecrow stirred.
"Pass on the message!"
The Joker shouted, before picking up the food and walking out with Jonathan at his heels to the sound of sirens closing in.
They got into the car and the Joker sped off, abandoning the car by the docks and throwing a match into it, cackling as it caught flames.
They ate their food on a pier, feet over the sides, shivering slightly against the cold while the beer warmed their blood. They talked about things that didn't really matter and ate in a companionable way until all of the food was gone.
"Well, Johnny, it's, ah, it's been nice."
Jonathan looked up at the Joker, who was scrambling to his feet, swallowing his mouthful of beer. They hadn't been around each other for too long, but he'd gotten used to the Joker's presence.
And threat, Scarecrow added. You like being around someone physically intimidating. It makes up for your shortcomings.
Jonathan ignored the voice and got to his feet himself, holding out his hand.
"It has."
The Joker shook it, and smiled, almost genuinely.
"I'll see you around, maybe?"
He nodded, and smiled. And then the Joker walked off into the darkness.
So it was back to normal life for Jonathan. Starting with him finding an apartment, locating his journals and then setting his experiments back up.
The Joker, well, he was hunting bats.
