You need me!
This is how it starts.
Always. I'm… touched.
So maybe Bane was good for something after all. He set up their European vacation.
Late at night in Paris, they're sitting among the gargoyles, not yet ready to move on. They say all roads lead to Rome, but that's the end, they can both feel it, encroaching like the barrel of a gun.
"If we die here…" Batman says, apropos of nothing. Joker turns to look. He's staring out into the darkness, still, in the heat of summer, but the air around him seems to waver, ribbons of light spilling from his eyes; everything tilting, tilting, falling down around them.
"What, regretting it already?" Joker says, mouth dry. He tries to grin, but in the night it seems cracked, splintered into a thousand shards he can't call back. "It's not a bad death, though," he continues. "Isn't it?"
It wouldn't be, as long as Batman doesn't regret it. He doesn't think he could bear it if Batman regretted it. Belatedly, he wishes they'd figured out how to ever take a holiday without being forced into it by circumstance. This is something he could enjoy, he thinks. Being here, without the roles they're wont to play.
It's a lie. He's never been able to sit still long enough to rest without being tied up first.
"Have you ever thought about after?" he says.
Bruce blinks. Without the searchlights of his eyes, the night seems very cold and dark. He opens them again, vortexes turning toward him. "Not enough data," he says.
"Hm?" Joker's having trouble concentrating on anything but the darkness, the heat-wave emanating from the caped crusader. The world seems to refract around the black hole of his being.
"Not enough data to count or discount an afterlife," Batman continues. "I suppose I'll just have to find out when it happens."
"I wouldn't have pegged you for an agnostic," Joker says.
"Agnostic theist." Batman tilts his head. "What did you guess?"
"Catholic," Joker says.
Batman huffs, a sound that seems to carry a nostalgic warmth with it, like autumn bonfires. "You're not wrong. It was my father's religion."
"Not your mother's," Joker says.
Batman shakes his head. "Jewish. As you can imagine, that made for some interesting family reunions." He laughs that short, choked sound that seems like a tangle of repression; like wire and blood.
He knows this. He ought to know this; Batman is Bruce Wayne, after all. But he's never actually considered that the mask might hold a man with history. Thought that, like Athena, he sprang forth from the skull of a god of the skies.
"Well?" Bruce says. He gestures, holding out his hand. "What about you?"
It's enough to shake him from the feeling of falling, for a moment; he feels grounded. Ready for any lightning.
Joker chuckles. "I'm a nihilist!"
"I'd never have guessed," Batman returns, drily. "But for real. You must have a stance on the issue."
"Similar to yours, I suppose—no way to tell. (Though I don't know why you have to presuppose god; I'd prefer not to.) —Not that it matters…" Joker mutters. "So what if there's a supreme being? If every choice we made was pre-ordained, part of some great plan, the joke's on us. On the other hand… if the universe is nothing but chaos, a mass of inert matter with no consciousness, and we're all merely some kind of cosmic accident… well, different joke, same punch line." Joker shrugs. "Nothing we do matters." He looks at Batman. "You'd never admit to it, but you see it too."
"Au contraire, Joker," Batman says, with a grim smile. "Whether it's because we'll be judged for it when this is over, or because this is the only life we'll ever have… everything we do matters."
Joker sighs. "We're never going to see eye to eye on this, are we."
Sweat dries, tacky, on his exposed skin; under his gloves his hands, red and inflamed, itch. He's hot and terribly cold, blinking the dry scratchiness from his eyes.
"If we die here…" Batman says.
Joker laughs shortly. Wonders how many times Batman would race round the same track, if he let him. Batman turns to look, bemusement in the turn of his white eyes. He doesn't remember.
If they're lucky, and they both survive, Batman still might not remember any of this. It twists something uncomfortably inside him. He never wanted to be the one who had to remember. That was always Batman's job, for he was incomparably good at it. Who else would bear the weight of Joker's sins?
"Have you ever thought about after?" he says; the words harsh, blaring against the shivering darkness, swallowed up.
For a long moment, he doesn't think Batman's going to answer. Perhaps he's already forgotten the question; drifted away from the tether of reason that Joker's clinging to for the both of them. He's trying to hold on against the current, the shore lost in mist and his arms round the nightmare, but the bat-rope in his hand seems to unravel into sparks of live current around them.
"Sometimes," Batman says at last. "…I don't mean to sound romantic, but if not for Gotham, there'd be Paris."
Joker leans back, his elbows clunking against the stone. The tilting is back, or perhaps it's never left, a feeling of vertigo. He lies down, feet dangling off the edge, the precipice of cathedrals of grotesques. He thinks he must be imagining. Perhaps this all is nothing but a fever dream.
"Certainly," Bruce allows, "there are other cities I could call home, but I don't think there's another that could make me feel it. I've actually entertained the idea, that once this calling of mine cripples me, time spend in a wheelchair on the banks of the Seine would be good time. Worth the life that preceded it."
Above, there's nothing but darkness, darkness with the moon looking down like a flashlight's beam on a curtain.
"Sorry…" Batman says. "That does sound romantic…"
"No," Joker says. "No, it's all right."
"Is it?" Batman says. He looks down, and the dark spires of his ears pierce through the moon, hiding them. "I wouldn't have thought you'd approve. I thought you wanted to do this forever. Go down swinging…"
"I thought you would," Joker says, choking down a laugh.
"Well," Batman allows with a smile, "I didn't say it was likely… but fantasies rarely are."
"It's okay," Joker says. The words seem crowded at the roof of his mouth, tumbling at his throat; he needs to speak, to promise before something changes, shatters the night again with the call of sirens, of bells. "I'll remember it for you."
/
Joker kept waiting for New Harley to make a move on him. He knew he had her for a sucker, knew she was in love, and that was how normal love went; he'd seen the movies; heard Harley complain enough times about his lack of interest, how she always had to be the one to initiate sex.
She hadn't waited until she was his henchgirl; all it had taken was stringing her along in the asylum, when she still thought she was in charge. The moment she forewent therapy to crawl over him on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt, touching him everywhere, he'd known he had her. If not as an ally than as blackmail material, because it didn't look very good, now did it, for a psychiatrist to abuse their patient this way.
New Harley was different, and it made him jittery. He kept waiting, and nothing kept happening, but she didn't seem to lose interest; didn't stare at him with that expression of disappointment and self-recrimination. Instead, she seemed to unfurl; every day a little bolder, her smile a little freer, without that shadow behind it. She didn't have Harley's gymnast fluidity. She moved like a girl, all unselfconscious force and gangly limbs; she couldn't kick a man over with only her feet and a twist of her body, so she improvised: found herself a mallet, somewhere, and to his amusement that did the job nicely. But it was when she started making the costume her own that he knew she was there to stay, and the jittery feeling started to subside. First came black boots: better for her propensity to stomp than Old Harley's slip of a shoe meant for light weight, ease of movement. Then the cowl came off, leaving her face uncovered, her blond hair free in its ponytails. Finally the rest of the costume went: replaced by dual-colored tights and sleeves, fingerless gloves with diamonds cut above the knuckles, shorts she'd wrangled with, tearing the seams of the two, black and red denim, that she'd bought, stitching each side up the middle with much cursing and stabbing of needles; a t-shirt ripped above her belly. It was all a bit outlandish, made him realize how young she was, but he didn't care. It made her happy, it let her move freely, like she knew she looked good in it, because she did.
He felt overdressed next to her in coat and waistcoat, so he ditched the coat and the waistcoat. Couldn't part with his suit-pants and suspenders for something as uncomfortable as jeans, even if that was all the rage these days, but instead of a dress shirt found a collection of Batman t-shirts and cut it short to match hers. She giggled, when he waltzed out of his dressing room and struck a pose. "Now, tell me truthfully: do I look fabulous or do I look fabulous?"
New Harley tilted her head sideways, looked over him with deep concentration and mock seriousness, though he could see the delighted grin still bubbling at the edge of her mouth. "I think you look fabulous, boss," she said finally.
"Now we match again," he said, with deep satisfaction, curling close to her on the bed and holding her hand. For a moment he wondered, will it be now? Is she tired of waiting, after all? But she only reached to take his hand, and curled his fingers in her own.
They slept there, on the top of the covers, and for the first time since Robin, he slept without nightmares.
/
They were pulling a heist; he spun the knob on the radio, changing it from the news (boring, always the same old thing) to music. A jazzy beat stirred him, and he hop-skipped, his feet falling into familiar twirling steps as he followed the sound around the room. It was a hold-up, a group of rich hostages at a swanky party all staring in abject terror at the masked men with their clown-painted faces; at Joker.
"The night was splendid
And the melody seemed to say
'Summer will pass away
Take your happiness while you may…'"
He came to a stop in the center of the cleared ballroom, beside New Harley, who giggled quietly, glancing at him with a soft smile. "What?" he said, buoyant.
"You're cute when you dance, puddin'," she said.
Joker stopped for a moment, not sure how to take it. He flipped his switchblade in a curving arc—snick-swish—and caught it again, without thinking. Probably not good for his image to have someone say he was cute and get away with it; not even his henchgirl. Old Harley wouldn't have said something that was so obviously not with the program. He'd taken her to task for it before. But—ah, hell—it's not like the captives would care.
Defending one's machismo only took one so far; and he was too old to worry about it anymore.
"C'mon, join me," he said, holding out an arm.
New Harley blushed, but hesitated. He gave her a sharp glare, though, and she complied. It was only when they were close enough to whisper that she said a bit apprehensively, "I don't know how to dance, Boss. Not like that."
"Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?" he asked. He looked up for one moment. "Take the exit, Rocko," he said.
"Sure thing Boss," Rocko said, settling on the side of the room, gun in hand. He'd been Joker's henchman for long enough to know the drill, and Joker felt safe enough leaving him in charge for a moment to focus on this.
"When I step forward, you're gonna step back," he said, easily. "No, don't look, just trust me—follow what I'm doing, you've got it—"
"…There 'neath the light of the moon
We sang a love song that ended too soon…"
Years back, he'd been a scared kid playing at being bigger and better than he was. He'd gone straight from high school to crime-ridden Gotham, spending days holed up in smoky back rooms planning heists, nights practicing his safe-cracking skills and telling whatever jokes he could manage to think up in between. It hadn't left much time for culture, though the radio had always been there. After that was prison, the Red Hood and then Arkham; he'd known how to run, sure, but he didn't know control, couldn't make his steps follow any rules.
It had taken Harley to show him that. Frustrated, one night, she'd flopped on the bed and complained she hadn't been to a proper nightclub in years. "I just don't have a partner," she said, looking at him meaningfully.
"…Eh?" Joker replied, oh-so eloquently.
"Dance with me, mistah J," she said, sitting up, leaning toward him with that look of supplication on her face he never could refuse. So he did—tried to—standing stiffly, sweat pouring down his back as the music revved up like police sirens, trying to figure out how to fake it as she slid into the steps of a simple swing dance. She didn't let on she saw how he stumbled and stopped; and inch by inch he relaxed, smug in his own superiority, his unparalleled ability to bluff. And night after night they practiced, her guiding him while seeming to follow, until they really were dancing; and something clicked in his head: he loved it. And he loved her. Twisting their way through the room as they avoided the piles of junk they could rarely be bothered to pick up, practicing more and more daredevil stunts. Harley was up for anything and her gymnastics ability never failed, even when she had to swing from his shoulders or do flying flips.
It had been like learning a new language; and when he tangled with Batman, he found himself stepping forward, back, to the side as if they were dancing too. Because that's what it was, even if Batman never admitted it out loud.
"Uh-oh!" New Harley said, her feet going the wrong way; they crashed into each other. She stared into his eyes in apprehension, as though waiting to be scolded. Joker giggled, then shook his head, grinning.
"Well, you ain't a natural, kiddo, but we're getting there."
New Harley laughed too, and her grip on his shoulder relaxed.
"…The moon descended
And I found with the break of dawn
You and the song had gone,
But the melody lingers on."
/
"Have you ever thought about after?" he asks.
"All the time," Batman replies. The look in his eyes—still glowing, leaving trails behind him, like a 3D image viewed without a lens—is knowing, and sad. Joker doesn't know how he could have missed it before—the eyes weren't blanked out. They never had been. They were open, and blue, dilated pupils staring into him; the view from the bottom of a well into open sky.
"I've always been drawn to Tibetan practices, particularly Dzongchen," he says, this time. "As something to aspire to, though I haven't gotten far."
So many layers of answers, multiple choice: all true. One on top of another like a nesting doll. Will he ever reach the end?
Does he want to?
Only later, the word singing its way back from his mind into his eyes, he looks it up, because he's never been able to resist the call of knowledge. Of trying to understand.
—Because its essence is empty, it is free from the limit of eternalism
—Because its nature is luminous, it is free from the extreme of nihilism
—Because its compassion is unobstructed, it is the ground of the manifold manifestations
He doesn't understand.
Perhaps that's the joke.
/
Joker was the first to admit that his fights with Batman were usually a little one-sided. But like any couple, they liked to switch it up sometimes.
It only happened when Batman was in a better frame of mind; when he felt confident enough to relinquish control for a little while, assured that he had enough power, enough command, in his persona. But Joker was always on the lookout for those three little words. Darting through the broken-down theater at the edge of the docks, wind and rain blowing through in sheets, as they crashed about the place, stepping on broken chandeliers and ripping moth-eaten curtains to shreds, trading their usual taunts.
"Why Bats, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were enjoying this!" Joker crowed, and swung a crumbled block of reinforced concrete toward the caped crusader. Batman ducked, and it dented the wall.
"You're deluded, Joker," Batman said. "You always act like you want to kill me—but we both know you need me."
Joker stopped short. In the shadows of the theater, Batman's eyes were dark, swept over with glittered pinpricks of rain.
Then Joker's mouth quirked up into a smile. "You don't say. Well, Bats…" he walked forward nonchalantly, noticing Bruce tense as he got near, and then follow him, confused, as he walked on by, "that's a pretty pickle, isn't it? What am I to do with you?"
Batman lunged, and Joker leaped: off the edge of the crumbled stage into the pit, laughing as Batman followed after. Joker landed lightly, but the force of Batman's weight sent him down again, breaking through the unsteady floor, falling into the basement below, and Joker took a forward flip to meet him.
He could hear Batman breathing heavily, curled up on the ground.
"Not injured, I hope?"
"You wish," Batman said.
"Good," Joker said. He shuffled around till he found a candle he'd stashed here and finally managed to light it; the wavering flame cast strange flickering shadows dancing on the wall.
It was harder to carry supplies now than it had been when his costume included an overcoat as a matter of course, but Joker was nothing if not prepared. He had sheathes in his high-tops, and he pulled out a good collection of small, sharp knives: from his pockets he pulled a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, a few bandages, and, of course, a handkerchief or two.
"Not the smiley faces," Batman groaned.
"Shush," Joker said. "You're my prisoner, and prisoners can't complain. Now open your mouth." Batman did, grimacing as Joker shoved a smiley-face handkerchief into his mouth gleefully. Batman rolled his eyes.
Joker straddled Batman, letting his hands ramble over the Bat's chest as he wondered, out loud, what he ought to do with the captured him. He waited until the heartbeat under his hand went pitter-patter, until Batman could barely keep himself still. He managed though, bravely, clenching his hands into fists, and Joker rewarded him: brushing his black-painted nails over the gloves, coaxing Batman's palms open and carefully sliding the gauntlets off. The hands were the same; familiar. One ropey scar across the right, another memento. Different than the rest.
Do you remember when I saved you?
Do you ever think of it at all?
He picked up a knife and brought it across the top of Batman's arm, carefully, so as not to injure him. One stroke after another, all without a speck of blood, Batman's hand held trembling in his own—and then, at the finish, one artistic stroke to barely break the skin.
He climbed off Batman and pulled the gag from his mouth, letting him gasp in great heaves of air.
"Feeling all right?"
Batman grunted.
Joker poured a little alcohol onto the wound, laughing a little at Batman's hiss and the pout he sent Joker's way. "Now how is it," he asked, "that you can deal with broken bones and you're up and about like it's nothing, but one little scratch and you're a baby?"
"Shut up," Batman said.
Joker bandaged him and pulled the glove back on his hand, then curled down on the packed dirt. Batman put one arm over him and they lay on the floor while thunder boomed from somewhere deep outside, unwilling to get up just yet; watching the storm far above.
/
He'd expected New Harley to be angry. Old Harley always had been, when he spent the night fighting with Batman. But, as always, he was letting his perception of one cloud the other: New Harley didn't care.
When he walked back around dawn, humming a jaunty tune in the grey light, the rain turning to a steady, pinprick drizzle, she was waiting on the couch, curled up in quilts and blankets. She opened her eyes sleepily as he came in.
"Mmm. Have a good time with Bats?" she said, yawning a little.
Joker stopped short, sticking his hands in his pockets guiltily. "Yes," he said at last.
She smiled at him. "I'm glad," she said. "You always get a bit restless when you can't play with him. But you're all right now?"
"Yeah," Joker said. There was something choked up in his throat, and he had to turn around for a moment and blink quickly, clearing his throat before he could speak again. At last he crawled over the arm of the couch to snuggle under the blankets with her.
"Ugh, is it raining outside or were you under a sprinkler?"
"It's raining," Joker said. She put her hands on his exposed stomach, sucking her breath in at how cold he was; but soon they had warmed up enough that she began to drift off once more.
"How," Joker said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, watching the drip of rain slide down his hair onto her skin, "did I ever get lucky enough to find you, kiddo."
Harley giggled. "S'I'm the one lucky to find you."
"Then," Joker decided, "since we can't both be lucky, it must have been fate after all."
And that's the thing with fate: just when everything can't get any better, it gets worse.
/
New Robin was now Nightwing; and Batman had gained another partner in a cute redhead calling herself Batgirl. Joker liked Batgirl: she was spunky. Unfortunately, she was also sane. Unlike Nightwing, she hadn't been in the Bat's clutches from the time she was small, and she'd grown up with her own set of what counted as reasonable assumptions, and the guts to speak her mind. She might have been a Robin kind of problem, except that Batman rarely seemed to actually listen to her.
Still, her constant screeches of "of God, the pedestrians" really started to get old. She had no sense of theater.
Something had changed, though. Joker tried not to let it worry him, but Batman had been off for the past few weeks. He didn't know the problem; could only try to distract him from his pain with their old song and dance, and it seemed to work. He hardly even had to try to aim these days, to end up with enough requisite destruction to satisfy the gatekeepers. Something was going to crumble; he could feel the roof tiles slip-sliding under his feet.
He'd been tipped off to a warehouse of some interesting substances recently. Took one of the bottles of pills back to the old homestead and put it under the microscope, taking notes in red crayon. It was a brilliant formula, whatever it was. Something that had to have been engineered specifically to un-do the cosmetic effects of his own Joker formula. That left very few contenders. It wasn't Crane: Crane's work had a subtler, more elegant touch. The only other person who knew that Joker could… change; was Harley. If he needed any proof, the addition of antipsychotic medication in the mix would have clinched it.
It was a nasty formula. He was wary of the way these things would act, if taken for long enough. (If he guessed right, and he wasn't known as a first-rate chemist for nothing, they would slowly lose their efficacy, and he would revert back to his ordinary chalk-white hue.) It was a formula that could only have been made by someone who hated Joker enough to try to destroy him, and loved him enough to do it sideways, to ease their own conscience, to convince themselves they were trying to help. He wondered if Batman knew what Harley had been getting up to with the freedom he'd bought her.
Maybe he should find out.
It was a brilliant scene. The audience was grand, and horrified; Batman might have had some idea to hold back in front of witnesses but Joker knew just what buttons to push. He targeted Batman's family, his effectiveness, his purpose. Riled him up, trying to see what would work the best this time. Trying to see how far Batman was from snapping, and why. Something was making Batman lose his grip, and it wasn't Joker.
"We're a team, Bats! I don't expect you to acknowledge it," he said. "You are, after all, the distancer. I'm the overly-complicated one!"
"You only pretend we're a team because it gives you purpose and makes you feel special. But your ego won't let you see the truth."
"And what's that?" Joker said.
"You don't matter," Batman said. "Not to me, not to Gotham. Not to anyone."
Bats had anger issues; that was hardly news. It didn't bring Joker any closer to figuring out what was wrong with him. In a better time, perhaps Batman would have questions to ask about the pills, and what Joker's game was with them; perhaps he would have dragged them both away from the crowd and beat it out of him later. But he was doing badly, and so there was an audience: not that Joker minded, for it fit his plan perfectly. A little something to take care of Harley's plot and bring a bit of spice back into his and Batman's relationship in one fell swoop. He didn't need to know what was wrong to know how to fix it: Batman needed mystery, he needed something to obsess over, something complicated and puzzling to take himself away from the emotions that were tearing him apart.
And Joker? He'd been noticing the way the derelict spots of Gotham grew smaller every year, to be replaced by cheap high-rises. There wasn't much further he and Batman could go before their usefulness to the gatekeepers was over. And he wasn't ready to go down like that: without anyone ever having known the truth.
He had a case by now that was flawless. All it needed was a little push.
"If I can get better, I can get the city back on track… finally show you… that you need me." He could barely get the words out around the blood on his mouth and nose; tears of pain fell from his eyes; and maybe more than that. He hadn't been planning for his heart to be hurt tonight, but push Batman too hard and of course he would push back, and then they would both go tumbling to the ground.
You don't matter. Not to me, not to Gotham. Not to anyone.
Surely Bats didn't mean it. He couldn't. But then: he'd never actually said. That this whole relationship between them was ever meant to be anything more than a fling; a distraction. Joker was no stranger to the emotional power in never saying I love you; he'd done it to Old Harley all the time. First by accident, then in annoyance, in anger. All those silences after those three words, as though unbalancing a broken scale could make it weigh even.
Batman's glove was covered in blood when he took the pill bottle from Joker's outstretched hand.
"Fine," Batman said. "You want to get better? Then open up!" He forced Joker's mouth open and poured pills in, making him swallow until he vomited blood-specked foam.
.
.
.