Disclaimers and thank you's in prologue. Special thanks to John, for just exhisting.



Who's Laughing Now?

Chapter 7

**

"The American Circus Clown provided comic relief between acts and filled in when staging was being changed. His most important function was to relieve tension between the serious and often times, dangerous acts of Lion Tamers, equestrians and trapeze artists." –The Circus and the Clown



~*~

Barbara wiped salt off the orange table she and her company were sitting at. "I can feel my arteries clogging, and I haven't even eaten anything yet," she commented. The place reeked of grease, and if cholesterol didn't kill her, she was certain food poisoning or filth from the dirty table would.

She looked around at the small store, it was just them and the cook, and a hundred gallons of oil at this hour. She wanted to just wait and have breakfast tomorrow or something, but her father insisted on 'purging' airplane food from his system.

"Do you know how long it's been since I've had a steak sandwich," James Gordon pointed out. "And everything else is closed. If I want grease, I'm going to have some grease."

Dick Grayson nodded his ascent. Grease made life possible. He'd lost his opportunity to tell Babs what his new-found problem was, but he did feel somewhat better, having come to the decision to tell her. Now all he could do was try to wait this evening out.

Barbara shook her head at Dick in disgust. "Ugg. I'm going to the bathroom."

Dick followed her with his eyes until she disappeared into the ladies' room.

"And you, young man," Jim said with humor, once they were alone. "When are you going to move to a more sensible city?"

Dick had to admit, retirement was agreeing with Jim Gordon. The man had been so stressed out in recent years, so under pressure from his job and the political engine, he hadn't smiled in a long time. "Metropolis PD isn't accepting transfers," he said wistfully, knowing that wasn't the answer Gordon was looking for.

"It wouldn't KILL you to look into transferring here," Jim pointed out. "Especially if you and Barbara are seeing each other again." He looked pleasantly bemused with the current situation, as though if this were the worst of his problems, he was suddenly doing very, VERY well.

"Who said we're… Ok, we are." Why bother trying to deny it? The point of this encounter was to establish the level of their going-outness. He felt his phone begin buzzing in his pocket. He began reaching in for it as he continued answering Jim. "I dunno. It's something to look into. Bludhaven's OK though. They've got this REALLY slimy cheese--"

There was half a scream, then a thud. Dick leapt to his feet as the woman's room door swung opened and the Joker gave a hideous laugh. He had a hand- full of Barbara's hair, and was dragging her behind him.

"I have this!" Jim hollered, trying to push past Dick, but he wouldn't allow it. He firmly placed himself in front of the former officer and made his stand. "No!" Jim harshly called to Dick, stopping in mid motion in his reach for his gun.

Jim must have thought that the Joker was here for him, Dick thought absently as he approached. Out of the corner of his eye, Dick saw a puddle of blood spreading past the food counter. The short order cook couldn't have been dead long. "All right, asshole," Dick yelled. If Barbara was dead, the Joker would be finding new meanings to the word 'pain.' He spread his arms. "Let go of her."

"Hehe. Electrified the restroom stalls. The girl lit up like a Christmas tree. I figured I'd go for round two on her," the madman said maliciously. He lifted his prize by the hair, holding a gun beneath her jaw. Dick saw that she was unconscious only, but couldn't tell any more.

Gordon tried to approach, but stopped his forward progress when he got a sharp, commanding glare from Dick Grayson. This was turning into a disaster, he realized. It was happening again. His life crumbling before his eyes.

"If you kill her," Dick said darkly. "They're never going to FIND all the pieces of you. You don't want her anyways, do you? You want me. Cause you know that you already got your jabs in with Him by hurting her. Now you want your shot at me." It was a viable theory. One he at least hoped it would work. And if not, perhaps the suggestion could be planted in the Joker's mind.

"Oooh. Got some rage-management issues going, don't we? But then, I already knew that." He pulled back the hammer on the gun. Now it would only take the slightest touch to blow Barbara's head off.

Jim saw that the Joker's full attention was focused on Grayson. He slowly began to edge around one of the hideous orange tables, hoping to make some forward movement possibly by distancing himself from the young man. If he could get far enough over, and pull his weapon out without drawing attention…

"Come on, you sick fucking clown. Let her go," Dick urged, his voice almost grinding like the Bat's. "You and me, we can go outside and settle this like men."

The Joker thought about it, or at least pretended to. His focus shifted from the gun at Barbara's neck, and Dick knew he was beginning to stand a chance.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Dick said indulgently. "You. Me. No gadgets. No Batman."

That made the Joker grin, his lips pulling back into some perversion of pleasure. "That COULD be nice." Suddenly, he bit his upper lip, then dropped Barbara on the floor. Her body hit with a sick thud on the glazed terracotta. "But you'd like that too much. No Batman to save you from yourself."

Dick dove to his left, even as he sensed the gun being raised. He felt the table beside him knocking to the floor. His head exploded and his ears rang with the sound of the shot. As gravity began taking him downward, he felt his body tear with the shot that had been intended for James Gordon.

Adding further insult to injury, his ribs smashed into the edge of the knocked-over table, sending pain shooting through his chest. When he FINALLY landed on the ground, he looked up. The Joker was gone.

Continued in part eight

Medieval moralists and theologians thought of the fool as an object of scorn. "He transgresses or ignores the code of reasoned self-restraint under which society attempts to exist, is unmeasured in the hilarity or in his melancholy, disregards the logic of cause and effect and conducts himself in ways which seem rash and shocking to normal mortals."

-- The Fool Throughout the Ages