The gatekeepers arranged to get rid of Bane; the man stood to ruin their perfect scheme, after all. They got some college kid who'd signed up for university-funded drug testing to do it. Jack didn't know the details, and he didn't care. All he knew was that Batman had retreated—wouldn't be drawn out for anything.
"Do you have any idea why this may have happened," a large, frazzled woman holding a clipboard like a blunt weapon asked. There were streaks of premature grey in her dark hair. Even her sensible shoes and stylish pantsuit couldn't disguise the fact that she was ugly, a bone-deep ugliness of spirit that reeked. Jack didn't bother to face her as he replied.
"Maybe because his sidekick was publically murdered," he said flatly.
She didn't even have the grace to flinch. Somehow, even killing someone in cold blood didn't put honest fear into these people; Jack thought they'd been getting more and more inured to any sort of violence the crazies could think of to dish out on their marching orders. His reputation just didn't cut it anymore. His box of tricks didn't seem to thrill anyone, least of all him.
"But we need Batman," the woman repeated, as though saying it again would change a single damn thing.
"Join the club," Jack said.
/
He and a whole group of the old crowd were let loose on Gotham, to cause trouble until Batman showed up. Jack spent the first few weeks on a ratty couch in one of his bolt-holes, sleeping, eating, and only getting up to piss in a bucket. Finally though, his endless supply of canned goods lost their luster. He crawled up from the depths, sat on the cracked concrete porch and wished for a cigarette. He didn't have any money. He patted his pockets—nothing. Wandered back inside and poked through the place singlemindedly—nothing. At last, the stench registered, and he wrinkled his nose. "What a sty," he said, looking around. It was the kind of place a rat would go to die in. He tossed the bucket, lugged away the dirty cans to a trashcan lying open and dented on the road, and threw a bottle of bleach on the floor. The bracing chemical smell cleared his head, and he even hummed while he pressed his good suit, and stood posing before the mirror. Still, it didn't feel good anymore, the way it once had. He didn't know why.
For a moment, even the thought of planning a heist was too much. He sagged to the floor, wishing desperately for Harley; but she'd kept to her word. She was gone. By the time he'd gotten out of solitary after Robin, she'd been gone, and no one would tell him where she went. Only digging had lead him to the fact that she'd been moved to another facility; that she was working to get out.
Good for her.
He didn't think he could forgive her, even if he could never stop loving her. He wasn't sure he could forgive himself. He knew they were over. Still, without her, life had become a bewildering set of obstacles, simple though they might be. Batman was still a no-show, and it was his fault. All of it was his fault. He'd try to kill himself if it weren't more trouble than he could stand.
All right. Baby steps. Bank heist first. Then cigarette.
He walked to the nearest bank, gun in hand. Paused at the door, put on his menacing swagger, and burst in with a few warning shots and trademark laughter. He went up to the till, found some fresh-faced blond trying to bleed out behind the counter and co-opted her.
She looked like Harley.
She was so young, so terrified. He didn't want to leave her like that, with drying blood dribbling across her forearms, not when she trailed behind him without a fuss. So he decided to play: called her Harley, once, on a whim. Kept doing it, wondering what, if anything, would happen, or if he would leave the bank without her after all.
But when at last she called him mister J he could feel the very slightest tug of a smile at his lips. That sneaky girl. She'd taken the bait; whether through self-opportunism or self-preservation it didn't matter.
"Good job, Harley-girl," he said magnanimously, as she deposited the last bag of cash, and she spun on her heel and squealed, in a way that reminded him… not of Harley. Not of the Harley he'd ended up with, anyhow. Maybe Harley one day when they were both young and stupid, believing that just loving each other would be enough. He couldn't let her go, couldn't let this young kid kill herself behind the counter of a bank. He opened the door of the vehicle they commandeered for their getaway car, the driver's side, and she got behind the wheel and drove, taking the turns as he directed her without a word of protest. There was a sparkle in her eyes, some kind of determination that was growing with every moment, every proof of her own ability.
As the sirens wailed behind them, she even laughed, and that was what clinched it: it was a sound of pure joy and power. He looked at her, her wide smile, the crinkles around her eyes when she turned her head to look at him, and he smiled indulgently in return.
Harley had left her costume behind, of course: still folded in their main hideout in the old joke shop, in the hall closet. He stood for one moment, coatless, while the kid waited uncomfortably on the couch in the front room, held it to his nose and breathed in the smell of her detergent. But, finally, he was able to turn, and take it out with him.
"I noticed you forgot this," he said playfully, smiling to show her it was only a gentle tease. "It really doesn't do to have my henchgirl forgetting her gear, you know."
"S-sorry, mister J," she said.
He had alcohol and bandages with him, and he took her arms and cleaned the wounds, before wrapping them up, watching the wariness in her expression, the way she almost shied away, then didn't, poised, caught between what she wanted to believe and her better instincts. He didn't look at her, talked softly, chattering about nothing in particular, until at last he had bandaged it entirely, and he held out his palms and smiled crookedly to show it was done. When he sat down beside her, picked up her hand and kissed the back of it, she only reached one hand to the back of her neck, shyly; and peered at him, coy, from under her lashes. He doubted anyone had ever made her feel like a lady before, made her feel loved.
It was a strange role to play, taking care of someone else; but he'd successfully taken care of pigeons, dogs, piranhas, three hyenas (though never more than two at once) and a monkey, and he knew that all animals, even the human kind, were basically the same. They were all selfish, greedy things, looking out for their own interests—(and, sometimes, the ability to share their living moments with another, if only for the briefest instant; if only to know that they weren't alone).
/
The gatekeepers came up with a stop-gap: a fake Batman. He called himself Azrael, and he did the job well enough, but he didn't fool the villains, and rumors were starting to fly. Everyone was getting antsy, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Then Batman returned.
With Robin.
It was a different Robin, he knew that at once: not only was the kid younger, barely a teen, but everything about him was different. He wore the same costume, but somehow for him it was a costume; he fought like he was onstage, like a bird who really could fly. Batman tried to keep him away, probably told him all the reasons why he should never tangle with Joker, but they ended up fighting, sometimes; the three of them. This New Robin was never at a loss for quips and jokes that made Joker smile and volley back; and despite Batman's best efforts at seriousness, their fights would end up a tennis match of puns.
Still, no matter how many goons Robin knocked out and tied up, no matter the kid's hopeful smile when the fight was over, Batman never had anything more for him than a nod: no, good job, chum, no hand on his shoulder, no ruffling his hair. And Robin would stare after the swirl of his retreating cape, frustration writ into his features, anger and something more than anger, something lost and hungry and uncertain.
/
Sometimes Joker tried to write letters, something that would capture the depth of his emotion, something that would encapsulate everything he'd ever thought and felt about Batman, and the strange thing between them.
There were two guys in a lunatic asylum… no.
There once was a man from Nantucket… better. Still. Words, no matter how rhyming, metaphors, no matter how brilliantly conceived, even the naked, ugly truth, became washed out on paper; paled beside the deadly brilliance of a twisted scheme, each perfectly-honed, incongruous, unnecessary part a perfect statement. This will be your end. Your final performance. This stage—but no; you'll find your way. Somewhere in all the seven extra steps, between the piranhas and the paperweight, falls your shadow— tripped before its time, the end is as much built into the mechanics of the death-trap as if you had predicted it;
you-dead and you-living
simultaneously
resolving, like a miracle of pixilated images, every time you survive;
re-making the world as it is and not as it could be.
(C3H5N3O9 + D.E.)
/
He couldn't breathe.
Probably something to do with the Bat's fingers around his throat, cutting off his air in a way that would leave vivid bruises. There was a time, Joker remembered, when Batman had been more careful—perhaps out of consideration to Joker. Perhaps out of self-preservation. Not wanting to be accused—
But the Knight has long-since learned Arkham will turn a blind eye to anything, even the mottled shape of fingers on skin.
Joker wondered if Batman had ever, really, been the gentleman he recalled, or if in the lack of him, in the time between that distant past and now, he'd reinterpreted it all, without anyone to hold him to a coherent story. He wondered if it mattered. He wondered—
If any of the old photographs he'd cut so carefully out of the newspapers; a smiling (smiling!) Batman beside him as Joker's dazed giddy grin, almost too intimate for a news story, hid in plain sight—meant anything. It had taken him so long to realize that he missed it, to realize how unusual an expression that was. Lost whatever chance they might have started out with.
But did he regret it?
That would require unraveling his whole history—
Finally, the fingers retracted, and Joker leaned forward, choking and wheezing and already reaching for the acid in his boutonniere. A squeeze, and the Bat ducked, and acid splashed sickly against the stone of the old building, some ruin that might have had historical significance, if Gotham was in any way respectful of the past.
It dripped down, fizzling black char.
Batman's leg had already swung out, crashed into his solar plexus and he went down. Nails scrabbling fruitlessly against the cold surface, he stared up at the open space that might have once been a window and now was only a hole. Icy wind seized the space. He groaned, coughed; his eyes rolled. Kicked out and got Batman in the shin with the retractable knife hidden in the bottom of his shoe.
A grunt, and Batman cracked the shoe, ankle and all, into the floor, till the point broke and snapped off, tinkling dully, into a shadowed corner. Joker huffed, scowled, and elbowed Batman in the face; it turned into a sort of frantically defeated wave with his fingers over Batman's nose.
Batman bit his wrist.
Joker crashed his forehead into the Bat's face, sending the Dark Knight sprawling backward, a thud of helmeted cowl against the ground.
Did it matter if neither was trying to kill the other, if they acted from that premise regardless? (or: weren't they?)
Batman rolled to the side, rose again, and pinned Joker down, hands on his skinny arms, straddling him with his heavier weight. Cheek smashed into the stone, dizzily, Joker spat out blood and struggled.
It was over anyway. The dead had already died, the hostages were already rescued, the wail of police sirens could already be heard like a faraway sound in a dream.
Joker breathed, raggedly, while his heart pounded, wondering if this was fear. He didn't think so, but it didn't feel like glee. It was too liquid, too low and rancid. He closed his eyes to keep the tears of pain at bay.
"Is this what you wanted, Joker?" Batman asked.
"Get off me," Joker said tiredly.
"I hate you," Batman said. It sounded pitiful. Like a confession.
Joker laughed, bubbling its way from his gut, a hot knife through intestines.
"I know."
/
Joker's new psychiatrist was a funny one, funny enough he felt like glancing to the side, like he would stare straight through some panel to an interested audience looking on with sympathy.
He abhorred her.
To give away the punchline before the fact, Miss Lune ended up admitted into Arkham as a patient. This was not so much a surprise as an expectation; there was a high insanity rate among Arkham's staff. (So it was a pun, so sue him; he might be pathological but his humor wasn't part of it).
"Do you understand what that means, Joker? Witzelsucht?" Miss Lune said.
Joker pursed his lips. "I understand," he said. "You think I'm not crazy."
"…One might expect you'd find that relieving," she observed mildly.
"You think I'm brain damaged," Joker said, with exaggerated tact. "I hardly see how that's supposed to be any better."
There was a long silence. She sighed. "Well, we'll get your scans back soon enough."
"And if it were true?" Joker pressed. "What then?"
"I would give us new areas for treatment—"
"So nothing would change," Joker said.
"Not entirely," the doctor said, perking up. "The compulsion with joke-telling is incurable, yes; but there's been some success with decreasing the urge to laugh."
"…lovely," Joker said.
"It would explain your reaction to these tests," she continued, pointing to the papers beside her, and who the hell thought to test him on humor? He owned humor. So what if he didn't laugh at other people's jokes or find them funny? "—and it would make sense, based on your known history with brain trauma."
"My what now?"
Had they, in fact, spontaneously entered a parallel universe where any of this made sense?
She looked at him with some surprise. "Your fall into the vat of acid."
"My fall into the—" he knew it wouldn't help but he couldn't stop himself from laughing, a wide grin stretching over his face. Now there was a joke—and there went the answer to that question, she wasn't one of the gatekeepers, didn't know about any of the lies.
"Oh, by the way Miss Lune, what's green, hanging on the wall, and squealing?" he asked, turning to face her as he was escorted out of the room by an orderly. It sounded uncomfortably like a threat, particularly as the psychiatrist was overly fond of the color, always coming in wearing olive pantsuits and coral earrings, and he was pleased by the way her eyes widened and she swallowed, gaze darting about as though looking for some way to run.
But in fact, it was a red herring.
/
The New Robin had a regrettable tendency to be kidnapped, which was the kid's only downside. Joker heard about the latest occurrence, one time, passing by; took a detour to the death-trap and realized Batman wouldn't get there before the kid died. It didn't even take a moment's thought before he was running in, looking over the pulley and lever system, the gears and the whirring blades. Robin's eyes followed him, wary and uncertain, but unable to call out through his gag. Slowly, surely, Joker disabled the mechanism; came in, untied him, and sat him at last on the warehouse floor, leaning against a pillar.
The kid unknotted the gag and spit on the floor, reached to his wrists, rubbed red from the ropes around them, and tried to massage them.
"Why'd you save me," he said at last, wary; skittish, the way the other Robin had never been, to his peril. He had something neither his predecessor nor Batman had: a healthy sense of self-preservation and a keen sense of where danger actually was, without ever moving into paranoia.
Joker shrugged vaguely. "Batman wasn't going to get to you in time."
That, somehow, was too much: though it was true. Robin's breath hitched, and then he was crying, all of a sudden; wrapping his arms around himself, the bruises raw and ugly.
"Hey… hey," Joker said, awkwardly, crouching down beside him. "It's all right. You're ok now. Just let Uncle J take care of it, ok?" He reached out, gingerly petting the kid's hair until he calmed down, until his sobs had changed to snot-filled gasps. Joker reached into his pocket for a handkerchief—Bat-print, his favorite, but perhaps not the most tactful—ah, that was better, a nice, colorful bunch of pinwheels. He handed it over, and Robin blew his nose noisily.
"Batman's gonna be so mad," Robin said at last, staring at Joker with red-rimmed eyes.
"Why would he be mad?" Joker asked, confused.
"Because I got captured again," Robin said. He wiped one arm roughly across his face, trying to dry the tears. "I know I'm not a very good soldier," he confessed, as though he were sharing a terrible secret.
There were a number of disturbing implications to unpack right there, but Joker skipped straight to the crux. "What do you mean? You're perfect. How could anyone not like you?" he was truly baffled, stumped. This Robin was everything he could have hoped for to bandage up Batman's raw psyche; he was good at his job, he enjoyed it, he followed orders to the letter and (to Joker's eyes) understood that this was all a game. The important part was to have fun. Even if he hadn't been perfect, Joker wouldn't have tried to go after him: he'd had enough of being a Robin-killer. Fortunately, Batman was continuing his usual destructive ways, so it was a non-issue.
Robin just looked at him, almost pityingly. "You don't understand," he said.
But Joker thought, uncomfortably, that he might. "You're not the only one who was never good enough for Batman," he muttered at last, looking at the floor.
Robin laughed a little, then pressed his lips quickly together.
"What?"
"You killed him," Robin said, disbelieving. "Why do you think he hates you?"
Joker's mouth dropped open. "Why you little…"
Robin just stared at him challengingly.
"Take my comfort and repay me like this, would you?" he said, stung.
Robin shrugged. "It's true."
"How about you, then?" Joker said. "What flaw did the brooding bat find in you, that he can't even bring himself to show you common affection?"
Robin flinched, and looked away.
"It's not like that," he said at last. But his voice told that he agreed: there must be something. Surely, if he only tried hard enough, was good enough, he'd figure out how to gain Batman's love.
The poor kid. It was fruitless. The Bat was broken, and all the Robins in the world couldn't put him back together again.
/
"What is green, hanging on a wall and squealing?"
Answer: "A herring."
Why is the herring green?
"Well, it's my herring, I painted it as I pleased."
But why is it hanging on the wall?
"It's my herring, I can hang it anywhere I wish."
But why is the herring squealing?
"I added squealing to make it harder to solve my riddle."
talkreason (.org) /marperak /jokes /armenrad. htm (a page of Armenian jokes)
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