"And back to our main headlines tonight. Shown here is footage of the Batman being led out of the Arms Hotel, where he was arrested last night following his attempted assassination of Commissioner James Gordon. The Commissioner refused to make a statement, but we were able to talk to Officer Wayland, who shot Batman during the struggle to arrest the criminal. Our reporter Charlie is with him now. Charlie, over to you."
As the picture on the small television set separated into split-screen in order to accommodate Charlie, Joker threw back his head and laughed until his chest felt like it would burst. "Oh Batsy, Batsy what are we going to do with you?" he grinned, sitting up weakly and wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Someone's been a very naughty boy."
He glanced triumphantly across the room at Ventriloquist, who was sat in maudlin contemplation of the bandage around his arm. The schizophrenic's wound had become infected, so to aid the healing process, Arkham doctors had thought it best if Ventriloquist was separated from Scarface for a little while. Without the dummy to hide behind, he'd become even more fearful and retiring. Now, the man who a few days ago had tried to pick on the Joker flinched and fidgeted under his former intended-victim's look, not daring to say anything.
The guard on duty started forwards in a warning, but Joker was satisfied with the other inmate's cowering and turned back to the screen. He still couldn't quite believe he had been treated so leniently about the whole stabbing incident. After a few days of Solitary, Cavendish had came and told him that he was being let out early because of 'good behaviour'. What exactly this 'good behaviour' had been was beyond Joker, all he had done in that miserable padded cell was lay on the floor, knocked flat by the vivid but fragmented hallucinations that had filled his head.
He remembered one of these hallucinations most clearly. Some man with a gun had been attacking a woman and he had wanted so badly to join in the chaos, show that man how it was really done. He had even tried turning the hallucination back around and marching it back to the previous scene. Then a strange sickness had come over him and he didn't know what had happened after that. Know-it-all Cavendish had told him he'd suffered a minor epileptic fit even though he had no history of epilepsy, which was another reason why they had let him out of Solitary early.
Joker secretly reckoned that the fit had been brought on by an overload of boredom. His under-stimulated brain must have just turned in on itself, all guns blazing. He was glad to be out of Solitary and now the news of Batman's arrest and the attempted murder of Commissioner Gordon. This was quite possibly the best week of Joker's life. Nothing could spoil it.
"That's not Batman."
Joker twitched ever so slightly and made a sound of derision as he turned to the man who had spoken. "What would you know about it, Riddler?"
The inmate sitting beside Joker, one leg crossed prissily over the other, gestured delicately at the screen. "I happen to know quite a lot, my fine felon. Batman is the greatest riddle of all, thus I have been studying him for a long time. I know everything about the way he speaks, thinks and moves; every idiosyncrasy and every nuance in his voice is as familiar to me as my own. So believe me when I say that was not Batman."
The authority in his voice was enough to make the other man glance dubiously at the television, but the news had already moved on. Forest fires were sweeping the outside world it seemed.
"You've done your homework wrong," he growled irritably. "If you know so much about him, then who is he?"
He smirked at the falter this put in the man who introduced himself only as Riddler's smug expression.
"Like I said, Batman is the greatest riddle of all. Why is a raven like a writing desk? Who is the Batman? Life's greatest unsolved riddles, but I will find the answers out one day and at any cost."
Feeling suddenly vexed by the whole conversation, Joker leant forwards and violently snapped the television off. He felt strange and jittery altogether, like something was going on that he didn't quite know about yet, a mental itch he couldn't quite get at to scratch. "No wonder you're locked up here," he muttered.
Riddler pointedly ignored the jibe. He clasped his thin hands over his knee and fixed the only acquaintance he had in this godforsaken place with an eerily intense look. "If you ask me, the supposed Batman was displaying more of your characteristic traits."
This struck some kind of chord that sounded a note of sense to Joker, although he wasn't yet prepared to admit it. Settling back again, almost enjoying the conversation, he rubbed absently at a half-registered pain in his leg. "What are you, a psychiatrist? What can you tell me about my 'characteristic traits'?"
"People are riddles and I like riddles. You'd see the similarities between you and him if I pointed them out to you."
It occurred to Joker how nice it was to have a simple argument with someone and how long it had been since anyone had spoken to him like this, like an equal. Prepared to make the most out of it, he ran his tongue out across his lips and crossed his arms in an argumentative manner as he got into a rhetoric niche. "But you're not going to point them out to me, are you? Because you're making it all up."
"I assure you, I'm not."
Joker thought about this. Then, leaning in a little closer to the other man he said quietly "What about the riddle of combination locks on safes? How do you feel about them?"
"Alright you two, social time is over."
It was sickening, it really was. Constant interruptions every time things got slightly interesting. Moving with careful deliberation, Joker pressed his lips tightly together, glanced up at the guard standing over him and then back to Riddler. He seemed about to say something else, but thought better of it and silently stood up instead.
"Nighty-night Riddler, I hope the guards don't bite," he bid his farewells accompanied by a mockingly deep bow. Obviously in the mood to antagonise he leered and winked at the waiting guard, who did his best to ignore it. The other inmate nodded a more polite goodbye.
As he was being escorted from the room, Joker abruptly stopped in his tracks and turned back to face Riddler, one finger pressed to his forehead as if he had just remembered something. "You do realise dear Riddler, if that was indeed the real Batman, then your life's mission is about to be made redundant. They're not going to go to all the trouble of arresting him without also unmasking him to the nation. Someone else is going to solve your riddle."
He didn't get to see what effects his words had on the other man because the guard yanked him forwards by the arm, growling "Come on, you're already late for your evening medication."
Evening medication consisted of waiting in a small side room whilst a nurse, flanked by two orderlies in muscle-strained white t-shirts, counted out various pills tailored to the individual maniac's needs. Joker watched dully as her pudgy fingers manipulated the medication into a little Styrofoam cup. There went the lozenge-shaped white sleeping pill to keep him quiet throughout the night, a slightly larger tranquiliser tablet to discourage riots at the breakfast table, the small pink anti-depressant and the one for taming ADHD-type symptoms of the mind joined it, even though Joker still thought he didn't need the last two. With that done, he should have been allowed to step forwards and collect the little cocktail of drugs, but before he did he saw another pill being added. One of a sickly yellow colour he'd never seen before.
When prompted to take the cup from the nurse's table, he firmly placed his hand over its rim, blocking its dubious contents from sight. "What was that fifth one?" he demanded with a false politeness that dripped with hostility. "I haven't been told about any new medication."
The nurse's behemoth shoulders heaved in an impenetrable shrug. "Standard addition, all the patients are receiving it."
"Mm-m… But what is it?"
It was bad enough that he had to take all the other rubbish every night. After his unpleasant experiences in Solitary, he wasn't prepared to take any chances on some new drug that might put him through the mental-wringer again; he could do that perfectly well all by himself. The nurse stoically ignored his question, so he drew back his hand and prepared to knock the cup to the floor. A small statement perhaps, but effective enough to get his message across.
Before his palm could even reach the cup on its intended course of action, the thick hand of one of the hovering orderlies intercepted it by grabbing his wrist. Looking up, Joker recognised the steely-eyed glare of a man who is prepared not only to use violence but also to enjoy it, so he decided to get in the first move.
With no particular plan of what he was hoping to ultimately achieve, knowing only that he didn't trust that little yellow pill, he sharply kicked out at the orderly's knee. The man buckled under the sudden hit with a yell of pain, letting go of Joker's wrist. The inmate had time to wish that he'd been allowed to keep his boots with the knife embedded in the soles before he was grabbed between the uninjured orderly and the guard.
Holding Joker's arms behind his back, the two of them slammed his head down onto the table. Beside his ear he heard the pills rattle in their cup as grey flowers bloomed across his vision. He groaned quietly to himself, giving a few angry jerks against the rough hands that held him pinned down.
"This is hospital brutality," he complained, his words muffled by the table top that was pressing against the side of his face. "All you're doing is reinforcing my aggressive behaviour patterns and justifying my negative schema. By banging my head against a table, you're telling me that it's alright to react violently when challenged. Which," he added, struggling again as his arm was pushed painfully up behind his back, "is not what Doc. Cavendish has been telling me."
Apparently this didn't bother anyone present in the room because he felt a hand sink into his hair and forcefully drag his head up. For a moment he was faced by the blank, doughy visage of the nurse, who stared at him without emotion, and then his head was pulled back further and he was engaged by the vicious smile of the orderly whose knee he'd damaged. Agitated, he smiled back just as humourlessly and licked the corners of his lips.
"Are you having as much fun as I am?" he laughed softly.
"You sick bastard," the orderly growled down at him.
Joker opened his mouth to reply that this wasn't a very valuing thing to say to someone interned in a psychiatric hospital, but his tongue was stilled by foul-tasting fingers forcing themselves between his jaws, holding them open. Realising what was about to happen, the criminal struggled violently but the pills were still inserted into his mouth and his tongue was depressed enough to activate his gag reflex and make him automatically swallow. He almost choked on the pills, but they still went down.
Then the blow to the head must have caught up with him, because everything went black.