AN: I've never written grieving Joker before, so I hope it works.

Thanks for the reviews!

"It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear."

—Henry David Thoreau

No.

"Joker?" Ruth's hand was tugging on his, trying to pull free, and some far-off part of his mind recognized that his grip had tightened, that it had to be hurting her, and that this was what he'd set out to accomplish when he'd gotten up this morning, but that part was all but dissociated from the majority—which was only capable now of repeating no no no no NO—and he couldn't care if he was hurting her or grinding her bones into dust or digging his nails into her skin, because Gilda was lying there and Gilda wasn't moving and she had to be all right, he couldn't have made her a part of this, she had nothing to do with this, she was a dog and she wasn't involved and it was wrong.

He couldn't remember ever caring about wrong before.

"Joker, you're hurting me. What's—"

In his peripheral vision—how he still had that, he didn't know, because the only thing he was capable of really seeing at the moment was Gilda lying in the grass and not moving and no this couldn't be happening she had to be okay—the orderlies closed in and the Joker shoved himself forward, skin burning through the knees of his pants from the friction with ground before he managed to get up, to sprint, and his hand was still in Ruth's, dragging her for a few steps until the weight of her body caught up and slowed him and he let her go because she didn't matter, the only thing that matters was getting to Gilda because she had to be all right, and he had to see her, had to prove that his fears were unjustified.

Ruth was shouting something when he reached the bushes, knees and palms stinging from impact when he pitched himself onto the ground, and the orderlies had to be closing in behind him, but it didn't matter because Gilda was right there and if he could just pet her, touch her, talk to her, even, she would sit back up and lick his hand and everything would be fine, but the tongue hanging out of her mouth was purple and the fur around her neck half-gone, the skin beneath it bruised and swollen, and she wasn't moving, not when he said her name, not when he petted her, and not when he took her into his arms and held her tight, so tight that the orderlies couldn't pry his arms from her when they caught up.

Ruth was beside him, then—"What were y—oh Christ—Joker—oh my God, I—I'm"—and the things she said didn't matter because Gilda wasn't breathing, and he wasn't either, chest heaving in gasping breaths that never reached his lungs, eyes watering though the tears never spilled over. He never cried, wasn't human enough for it, not anymore, but he was human enough to feel this, and it felt like his scars had been torn open all over again.

He was shaking, and the orderlies were pulling his arms back, successfully this time, pulling them apart, and he tried to scream, kick, lash out and make them leave the two of them alone, but his vocal cords were as unresponsive as his lungs, and the strength he'd had when he squeezed Ruth's hand was gone, and Gilda was lying in the grass without him, and they were dragging him back toward the madhouse, with Ruth at his side—"I'll get the security footage, Joker, I'll find out what happened"—and he was screaming at them to let go, I have to go back, she doesn't like to be left alone but the screaming never left his head and they were moving down hall after hall and he didn't even know where they were anymore, until Ruth pushed the infirmary doors open and he was sitting on a cot and Jonathan Crane was looking at him over the top of his book and Teresa was beside her and she was talking to Ruth, but the words were too fast and too meaningless to be followed, only heard. "I need you to watch him, it's only for a minute, and the orderlies will—"

"What happened?"

"I have to see Dr. Arkham. Someone—one of the other patients must have seen his dog and—and they strangled it—"

"Oh my God—"

"And it should have been reported, but it wasn't or I'd have known, so I need you to help him relax while—"

"He did it."

They both stopped to stare at him as if they'd listen, as if anything would be done and as if it would be any more than a slap on the wrist if it was handled. "He did it."

"Joker, what—"

She kept talking. He didn't respond. He didn't listen. There wasn't any point. Gilda was dead and there was nothing Ruth could do to change it. Ruth was leaning over him, trying to coax words from him—she was cradling the hand he'd held onto against her chest—and then she was gone, patting him on the shoulder before she left as if that would fix anything, and there was only Teresa, standing in front of him, hands wringing and lips moving though she never actually said anything. He didn't know where the orderlies were standing; he didn't turn his head to look. Teresa was gone suddenly, and back just as quickly, purse in hand, and from the purse she extracted a camera. She was lifting his shirt, then, snapping pictures, and if the orderlies questioned it, he couldn't hear them over the clicking of the camera. She moved to his back as he closed his eyes, bracing himself for tears to slide out, though none came. He should be thinking of revenge. He should be using Teresa as a hostage to take the orderlies' weapons and car keys and be halfway to Hadley's house by now, shattering the windshield for makeshift knives.

But he couldn't move. He couldn't even speak, and he was stuck there, broken, letting Teresa shoot pictures for purposes unknown as Gilda lay in the yard, alone.

Jeremiah Arkham hadn't had any reports of animal violence.

That didn't mean it hadn't happened. The thought of an orderly, nurse, or even a doctor skipping on incident paperwork by failing to report losing control of a patient for the time it took to smother a dog was something Ruth could visualize all too easily, sickening as that was. The administrator's bewilderment only indicated that if someone had fucked up, it hadn't been him.

She had no way of knowing who it had been. The Joker's dog had been strangled in a blind spot between cameras.

The fingers of her right hand were black and blue and swollen. Teresa had given her an ice pack, but she'd spend the day working with her hands—shuffling through files and record logs, dialing the police—and she couldn't afford taking the break that using the ice pack would necessitate. She'd never seen the Joker react that way before. He'd blanked out when she'd mentioned Batman, and shown unease after she'd asked about his scars, but that level of emotional torment—he'd lost the only real friend he'd had in the asylum. She shuddered to think of the damage to his mental state.

She'd called the police in spite of Jeremiah Arkham's protests. Animal cruelty wasn't something she'd overlook in any circumstance, and besides, there was a chance that the dog had managed to scratch the assailant, or bite. She didn't know if any DNA could be salvaged from the corpse, or how they'd find a match, short of taking samples from every Arkham patient and employee, but if there was any chance of nailing the bastard behind this, she'd take it, public relations be damned.

This wasn't the work of a patient.

It was an accusation without evidence and Ruth knew it, but that didn't make it any less true. Before she'd taken the Joker outside, there had been two high security inmates brought out individually and one large group of low security patients. In a group, things could slip by unnoticed, but she couldn't wrap her head around the thought of someone strangling a dog in plain sight—it couldn't have been a quick process—without anyone else taking notice. And a high security patient would be hauled off the dog by orderlies before things went that far. She'd hunted down the doctors and the patients herself, and they all denied involvement. True, that wasn't proof of anything, but her gut told her that the time the murder must have taken and the fact that it happened out of sight of the cameras had to indicate an employee. Occam's razor: it was the simplest solution.

He did it.

The Joker's words had been running through her mind all day, along with the visual of his scratched arms and scraped face, like a surreal and minimalistic music video. Jonathan Crane had been targeted by the orderlies, and she imagined that they'd excused their behavior by reminding themselves of the poison he'd put in the water supply. The Joker had tried to blow up all the residents of Gotham fleeing from his sick games. How could she have been so stupid as to not realize that he was the most likely target in the hospital for abuse? How could anyone be stupid enough to challenge him?

Ruth flipped a sheet in her notes, trying to tell herself that her hand didn't flare with pain every time she moved it, and that it wasn't long past time for her to go home for the night. He did it. The Joker had been unresponsive when she'd tried to talk to him when she returned to the infirmary, shivering and almost hyperventilating and, for the first time since she'd taken on his case, entirely sympathetic. He wouldn't speak—possibly couldn't speak—not in the infirmary and not when they moved him back to his cell, but he knew what orderly—if it was an orderly, and not another employee or patient—had it out for him. There had to be some indication, be it in his notebook or her session notes. There had to be.

But so far, her search had been fruitless.

"Ruth?"

Jeremiah Arkham stood in the doorway. For fuck's sake. It was only the ache in her hand that prevented her from slamming her fists on the desk and shouting at him to get out. Her sense of self-preservation had left for the evening hours ago. "Look, if you're here to tell me that I've put my job on the line for bringing the cops here again, then I don't care, so why don't you just—"

"No, it's not like that." He stepped inside, looking more sheepish and awkward than offended, and Ruth didn't have the energy to feel relieved. "I wanted to apologize for this afternoon. What happened to that dog—you were right to report it. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

Translation: he'd realized that animal cruelty wasn't as juicy a news story as premeditated murder, so he was willing to let it slide. All right, so she was being needlessly cynical. Dr. Arkham had a conscience, even if he buried it under his obsessive need for good public relations and his more sympathetic need for funding. Still, Ruth was cold enough to believe that if Wayne Enterprises hadn't just granted them thousands to improve living conditions and weed out unsanitary personnel, Arkham would still be giving her the cold shoulder. "Don't worry about it."

He nodded, glancing at the paperwork spread over her desk. "How's he doing?"

"Not speaking or eating."

Another nod. Arkham wore the look of a man who'd realized that for all formal purposes the conversation was over, but still felt the need to carry on out of an attempt to establish companionship. His eyes fell to the notebook. "That's his writing?"

"Yes."

A pause. Ruth thought he might be leaving, but of course he had to speak again. "Morse?"

"What?" She was too tired for proper etiquette.

"Morse code." He tapped the pattern of rectangles and circles the Joker used to indicate paragraph breaks. "I learned it in the Boy Scouts. Well, it wasn't required knowledge, but my friends and I used it to pass notes—"

He was a Boy Scout. Why was she not surprised? "I don't think the Joker knows Morse code."

"No, that's definitely it." Arkham leaned forward, running a finger beneath the line as though that would make it legible. "It's a system of dots and dashes—let me see if I still remember anything…I think that's an H—"

Dots and dashes. Oh, Jesus Christ. Ruth grabbed the Joker's file and shoved the pages she didn't need out of the way, ignoring the flare of pain through her hand. The lights had gone on upstairs, and she was too busy praying that she'd remembered correctly, and that she had a chance at understanding, to care that it was Jeremiah Arkham who'd flipped the switch. The answer sheet for the IQ test lay before her, the page covered in the same rectangles and circles as the notebook. She took the pages in the hand that didn't feel as though she'd dipped it in kerosene, and held them out to the administrator. "Translate this."

She shouldn't be here.

Teresa's shift had ended three hours ago. She'd clocked out and left, drove straight to the nearest supermarket with a one-hour photo, and handed over the memory card from her camera. She didn't what to think of what the employees must have thought of the pictures it contained, let alone the fact that she'd asked for double copies. She'd spent that hour in the supermarket's deli, staring at the sandwich she'd ordered and trying to work up the appetite to eat it. She'd wanted to go home, to shower or at least change out of her scrubs, but she hadn't let herself leave. She'd have lost the nerve if she left, and she knew it.

She had gone home after she'd gotten the developed photos, but only to sort out the photos that hadn't fit—patient abuse and her father's birthday party didn't exactly mesh together—and to leave one copy of the pictures at her house. It wasn't like she was expecting Dr. Arkham to grab them from her and destroy them. Teresa didn't know what she was expecting. Only that this had gone too far.

Seeing the Joker—the Joker—sitting on that cot and struggling not to cry was the final straw. Monster and murder or not, no one deserved that, just as no innocent animal deserved to die for the sake of hurting a mental patient. It was heartbreaking and appropriately, it was her breaking point, and it had gnawed at her even after the Joker was taken out of the infirmary. She couldn't work at a place where the patients were tormented this way. And, unless the conversation she was about to have promised changes, she'd walk away. Take up fast food or move back in with her parents, if she had to.

God, she said it as if her legs weren't about to give out from under her.

I should leave. Go home, take a bath, forget it. Better than tracking down her boss and telling him that either he'd be shaking up the system or she'd go to the papers. It wouldn't work. It might make things worse; show the management the flaws in their system and, by extension, make it easier for them to sweep things under the rug. She could be assaulted to be kept silent. She could lose her job—

It's not worth keeping. Teresa tried to tell herself she was confident, brave. It didn't work, but she clung to the mantra regardless. I can't do this. I can't live with myself if I know I'm letting this go on. No matter what the cost, she had to try. She had to pretend she was strong.

The receptionist had said that Dr. Arkham was in Dr. Adams's office. In a way, that made things easier—she couldn't imagine that the doctors liked people beating their patients—but then again, Dr. Adams was cold and stern and, in Teresa's current state of panic, terrifying. She'll be on my side. She has to be.

She was in front of the office now. The door was open. Teresa tried not to vomit on her shoes, listening for conversation. There were murmurs from inside. Well, she should wait until a pause in—no. If she stopped here, she'd never have the courage to try. Teresa straightened, swallowed hard, and stepped inside.

"Dr. Arkham? I need to talk to you."

One hundred seventy-nine.

Ruth had pulled up a Internet search on Morse code to verify Arkham's translations. She'd checked the results twice, and both times, it had been the same. One hundred seventy-nine. It wasn't a perfect score—of course, outside of fiction, the odds of anyone achieving a perfect score was laughably ridiculous—but for a test normed at one hundred, it was high enough to make her numb. One hundred sixty-five was four standard deviations from the norm. She didn't know what one hundred and seventy-nine was, not off hand, but considering that one hundred sixty-five equated to about one person that intelligent out of thirty thousand, the Joker's score was almost unheard of.

A genius. A manipulative genius. As if he wasn't horrifying enough before.

"I could be wrong—"

"You could." They were speaking in hushed tones, she realized, as if the Joker's ears were as sharp as his mind. "But I doubt that every website the search pulled up is."

"Dr. Arkham?" Teresa stepped through the floor, pale as the wall of the hall behind her. She held something clutched to her chest. "I need to talk to you."

"Teresa? Arkham glanced between them, as though Ruth had any clue as to why the nurse was here. "Isn't your shift over?"

"Look, I—I took these when the Joker was in the infirmary." She reached out with a shaking hand, extending what Ruth took to be a small stack of papers before Arkham took them and she realized they were photographs. "Look at them. Those can't be self-inflicted."

Ruth watched over Arkham's shoulder as he flipped through the stack. Bruises. Enormous bruises, to the point that more of his flesh was purple than peach. And stopping just at the point where his sleeves and shirt would end. It felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her.

So it had been an orderly. How could I have missed this? How long had her patient been suffering while she sat by, oblivious?

"The orderlies—they're beating him like they beat Jonathan Crane, don't you see?" Teresa. How long had Teresa known, and sat in silence? Ruth wanted to hate her. She was too stunned to feel much of anything, yet.

Arkham turned to Ruth and, grant from Wayne Enterprises or not, the color drained from his face. "Ruth?"

"He—he never mentioned it. But today, after he saw the dog, he indicated that someone had done it on purpose. To hurt him." Oh, Christ. That intellect, mixed with that emotional turmoil and his mental instability—shit.

Ruth ran out the door, and Arkham, presumably realizing at the same time she had that genius plus rage equaled bloody massacre, followed straight on her heels, with Teresa shortly behind.

He can't have gotten out—he can't open the doors from the inside—he has to be there. He has to be.

But, as she found when she swiped the key to his cell and threw the door open, he wasn't.