ElseWorlds™: Saving James
Chapter 12
By: Christopher W. Blaine
e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: Refer to chapter 1 for the disclaimer for this entire story.
"Could this year get any worse?" Barbara asked as she pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. It was a habit that had plagued her father for decades and was now her inheritance. The smooth tobacco flavor calmed her nerves and the rush of nicotine to her brain made her fell slightly lightheaded.
Lois waved the smoke away, but it was no use. With the windows rolled up and the winter snow falling outside, there was no escaping the gray clouds. She looked over at Barbara, true concern in her eyes. It had been a terrible year for the both of them and Lois could not imagine it getting any worse. There was no possible way God could rain down more curses upon the two of them.
It had started nine months before when Clark had been killed. A part of Lois Lane had died that day as well and even now, many months later, she still could not feel like the person she was before his death. The world had been thrown into a wave of mourning not seen since John Kennedy had been laid to rest.
For Barbara, a piece of her had been destroyed as well after she had called Dick in Central City to tell him she was okay. Instead of getting her closest friend and confident, she got some green bimbo that had wormed her way into Dick's pants. Their relationship, which had been on hold, had been torn apart and the pieces thrown into the air. Barbara had been crushed and Dick could offer no explanation for his actions.
They had not spoken since, though it wasn't hard to keep tabs on the heir to the Wayne Fortune. The other woman, a model of all people, had helped his image. After all, who had respect for a woman who wouldn't abort the child of the Joker?
Lois snorted as she considered how small-minded people really were over the whole issue of James. Even people Lois knew to be conservative Christians were calling for the child's destruction because he was the Devil's Seed. Barbara had faced them all, taken every jibe, every insult and kept her chin held high. Nobody was going to tell Barbara Gordon how to live her life and it was obvious by the new demeanor her friend had assumed a persona that refused to take shit from anyone.
They now lived together, drawing strength from their shared losses. The running joke was to never date a super-hero; they only disappointed you in the end. Even Alfred had seemed shocked by Dick's actions and had tried unsuccessfully to get Bruce to rein him in. Bruce, for his part, was a man torn apart by his inner demons. Clark's death had shaken him to his very core and now he was becoming a voice of dissent among the costumed crowd.
True, Bruce Wayne didn't wear the tights anymore, but he still had an opinion and he was letting it be known to many of the old guard. Lois wasn't sure how she felt about that. Clark's legacy had inspired so many to take up the cause of justice, but Gotham's shame was doing the exact opposite. Even the Oracle Group had dissolved when Obsidian suddenly quit and disappeared.
The Huntress now ruled Gotham City, a black-clad bitch with a hard-on for violence and Jim Gordon. All of Lois's digging produced nothing she could use; the Huntress was adept at covering her tracks. Of course, she had received lessons from on of the greatest cops ever.
"Can you believe that little blonde whore?" Barbara said, inhaling. She was referring to Dr. Quinzel who had demanded that for the duration of the visitation that Barbara remain away from Arkham.
"We held it off for as long we could, but your lawyer even agreed that we couldn't win. Dick's little outburst in the courtroom definitely ruined your reputation." Lois pulled into the parking lot of the rest area. They would wait here until it was time to return and get James.
"I've got half a mind to put my costume on and go kick her ass." Barbara looked at the cigarette and realized she was in no shape to do such a thing. She rolled down the window and threw the smoke and the pack out into the snow.
Lois laughed. "The sure-fire way to get a woman to quit; piss her off." She reached over and rubbed the back of Barbara's neck. "Get off of those things and start going back to the gym. Do something for yourself."
Barbara laughed and closed her eyes. "Go back to the gym, eh? Am I getting fat?"
"No…lazy; you're not the same person who you were when I met you," Lois explained. She continued to massage as she spoke and adjusted the defrost on the car. "Hell, neither am I."
"It's the penis," Barbara said. "Put a cock on something and it thinks it can rule the world. It's a magic wand; it's a sword; it's a way to sign your name on someone's ass. I hate men."
"All men?"
Barbara thought for a moment. "I suppose not. Oliver Queen was okay for an older guy."
Lois stopped and her jaw fell open. "He's a womanizer. I mean Freud would have a field day with him. Chases women, uses arrows with multiple tips…"
Barbara laughed despite herself and then her eyes fell on the distant Arkham Asylum. "What if he hurts him?"
"There were twenty orderlies in the room, Babs," Lois pointed out. "Plus three security men, the Joker's lawyer and the blonde whore as you call her." Lois didn't say it, but that was her summation of Quinzel as well. "He'll be okay."
Barbara nodded and the tears started to flow as if a faucet had been turned on. There were tears of sadness and some of frustration, but all of them were hot and every time she looked to Arkham, she felt a little piece of her soul coming apart. Lois reached down and squeezed her hand. "It will be okay."
Barbara looked to her, hope in her eyes. Lois Lane was much more than a friend; she was a woman Barbara had come to idolize. She had remained strong since Superman's death. She could have proclaimed the truth to the world that he had been Clark Kent and she would have been treated like a second Virgin Mary. Instead, she went about her business, never looking back with anything but fondness.
Superman had freely given his life to protect those who could not defend themselves. It not only made him a hero, but made him a fine damn human being as well. Lois was trying her hardest to live up to that example and it had started by taking Barbara in. Their relationship had progressed well beyond the point it had been before Doomsday and the reporter knew that Barbara looked to her to be her bridge over troubled waters now.
Lois nodded and pulled Barbara close, putting a light kiss on her lips. Barbara smiled as they pulled away. "I promise," Lois said.
"They are lovers," Harleen said, but the Joker wasn't interested. He looked at his son, playing with the assorted toys that had been provided with a bored eye.
"Is that all he does?"
"He's a child, dear," Harleen reminded him. She looked over and saw that the guards were outside of the room with the Joker's lawyer, discussing a variety of topics, while some orderlies stood around young James, watching him as he tried to pull the head off of a Joker action figure.
When that didn't work, James had the Superman figure jump up and down on the other toy. The Joker shook his head. "Can we eat him? How about a spanking?"
"No, what you need to do is identify with him on his level. Become his favorite playmate," Harleen told him, going over their plan. It was quite simple, really, just a series of events to induce the correct amount of trauma in the child to warp his mind.
"I won't have to…you know…"
Harleen told him that molestation was out of the question as it left physical evidence. "The little brat won't even look at me!" the Joker complained.
"He's unsure of what to do, so he's playing," Harleen told him, shaking her head. She loved his crazy ass with all of her heart, but sometimes it surprised her just how dense the Joker was. Maybe that was what originally attracted her to him, his ability to compete with intellectuals such as the Batman without the benefit of education. "Now would be a good time to introduce yourself."
"Fuck the little shit! I don't care! All I want is the photo-op so I can surprise old Jim-boy with an early Christmas present." The Joker nodded to the orderly with the camera equipment and he began to set it up.
Harleen rolled her eyes. "But think of it, puddin'," she said, referring to the Joker by the pet name she had developed for him. "You could mold this young boy into your legacy."
The Joker blanched at the thought. "The only legacy I want to leave is death, my dear. Before old Joker leaves this world, I want to fix it so I'm more popular than the Devil himself. I want people to get the joke; I want people to understand that this physical existence is nothing more than abstract thought in the mind of a bored supreme being. It doesn't matter what we do! There is no right or wrong!"
Harleen put a reassuring hand on the Joker's shoulder when the guards on the outside started to look in. Despite her best efforts and several attempts at seducing the guard captain, she had been unable to convince him to staff the security details with persons of her choosing. The Joker smiled at them and nodded to Harleen's comments.
He cleared his throat and once again looked over at the boy. He had a brief memory flash, a face in a mirror so many years ago, but then it was replaced by the multiple colors and screams that inhabited his brain. He assumed that the boy looked somewhat like he did at that age, but it didn't matter.
The Joker did not have the emotional capacity that others did. He simply did not feel pleasure or pain and his every action was a futile attempt to get something to register in his mind. It was his secret, the driving force behind his insanity. He had no dreams, no hopes, and no lusts; there was nothing except the screams and the colors and the nightmares. He sometimes desperately wished he could feel anger or sadness, but any emotions he displayed were all an act. He went through the motions, going from one extreme to the other in a vain attempt to kick-start that part of his soul that the chemicals had eaten away.
He looked at Harleen and saw the obsessive love in her eyes. He used her and she loved it and he just wanted to be sickened by it, or perhaps aroused. He screwed her every chance he got, sometimes even sharing her with others, but it did nothing for him. Even the act of sex held nothing for him except physical sensation. He understood beauty and when he looked upon his doctor's nude body writhing underneath him at night, he knew it was something quite spectacular to behold.
That didn't change the fact that having sex with a beautiful woman was no different to him than having sex with a corpse. So, every time he escaped from Arkham, he had to come up with even more extreme acts of anti-social behavior and every time he was rewarded with failure and emotional numbness.
The funny part was that all the Joker wanted to do was die and no matter what he did, nobody would kill him. Suicide was always an option, but then he would opt to try and get his emotions going again.
It was a never-ending cycle of failure and for the briefest of moments, he almost felt sorrow as he looked at the boy and realized that he had doomed this child. Desperately, he tried to cling to that small thread of sadness, but it escaped his mind's grasp and he was back to himself again. "Can you convince the little bastard to sit on my lap and smile?" the Joker asked.
Harleen sighed. She hated children and their constant whining, but she loved the Joker even more. She nodded and started to get up when he reached out and grabbed her hand. A shock went through her at his cold touch and she nearly had an orgasm there. He rarely touched her in such a way, with urgency and need. "What?" she asked, lust heavy in her voice.
The Joker picked up on her state but it did nothing for him. He would have sex with her later, not that he actually looked forward to it. It was simply something he had to progress to the next step of his plan. "You said something about lovers?"
Harleen sat down, a wicked smile on her face. Her lust disappeared as her intellectual side sprouted forth. "The way they look at each other, the slight nods, the pleading in their eyes. We know that Lois Lane lost her husband in the destruction of Metropolis and Dick Grayson is with the green girl now. They've lost the male influences in their lives, especially Barbara."
The Joker scratched his head. "That's how you make a lesbian?"
The doctor arched an eyebrow. "Some studies show that 50% of all women have bi-sexual tendencies and there is some research going on that indicate it may be even higher. Women require emotional bonds that most men can't provide. Your typical woman convinces herself to do without the emotion and settle for the stability that a man can provide."
"You sound like an expert on the subject, honey; anything I should know about?" the Joker asked with a smile. Harleen did not realize that he was simply adding more information to his mental file on her. She assumed it was a typical male response and it was there that her education, where she had been taught to recognize certain signs and draw certain conclusions, was failing her. If anything, the Joker was not the typical male. Be it one woman or a hundred women in his bed, it didn't matter. He did not have fantasies; he simply did what he did on impulse to feed off of other's emotions.
"So I like women, too; it's not a crime," she said getting back up, trying to play hard-to-get.
The Joker wasn't sure how any of this would play out until it dawned on him that if what Harleen observed were true, he would have an even bigger surprise for Jim.
Secretly, the Joker admired the former police commissioner. His ability to withstand all of the trials that the Joker subjected him to was simply astounding. In the past three years, the Joker's actions had been the catalyst for taking down the entire Bat-Clan (though he was really surprised the Batman had not killed him) and transformed Gotham City into a police state. Crime was at an all-time low, though the murder of criminals was at an all-time high!
Perhaps Jim was releasing his anger through the Huntress. The Joker had often pondered that and realized that if it were true, he and the elder cop had a lot in common. Both wrestled with inner demons of tremendous destructive nature; both of them were living a lifestyle that was going to eventually kill them. Both Gordon and the Joker had essentially eliminated or alienated any allies they previously had, and both of them had psychotic girlfriends that would kill for them at the drop of a dime.
Yet, Jim Gordon felt his pain and the Joker felt none. It wasn't fair, but it also meant that in the end, this game of moral chess would end with the Joker taking Gordon's figurative king.
If he failed, then the Joker would be dead and that's all he wanted anyway, deep down inside. Those thoughts rumbled their way through his mind as he posed for pictures with his son, the young boy making some attempt at conversation with his father. The Joker looked down and into the boy's eyes and felt absolutely nothing. His DNA was inside this small child and it meant as much to the Joker as if the boy were a ham sandwich.
When Barbara returned several hours later to retrieve the boy, the Joker made it a point to stand back in the shadows. He wanted to observe Lois and Barbara without them seeing him. He understood well enough that his very presence could incite the worst of emotions and feelings in people. In their exchanges between each other and Harleen, he did recognize the signs of two people who were very close. Again, a memory thread made its way into his brain and he saw the face of the woman who had once been his wife.
The memory was gone, leaving behind no emotional aftertaste, as it always was. However, lack of emotion did not mean lack of imagination and the Joker often spent his free time, when he wasn't conversing with inner demons, to formulate complex plans.
Originally, he had intended Jim Gordon to murder him, or to at least convince the Batman to do it. After all, the Joker had raped and sodomized both Jim and Barbara. Apparently, that wasn't extreme enough, so he tried to turn the system against Gordon. But Gordon, unrepentantly, had divorced himself from his daughter and that Batman, wrought with guilt over his best friend's moral demise, had given up as well, preferring to live happily ever after in the Greek Isles.
"Smart fucker," the Joker mumbled as he was led back to his cell. Even the upcoming doom of Nightwing, which promised to be a spectacular miscarriage of justice, would not be enough to drive Jim Gordon to that edge where he and the Joker would face off man to man. No, he needed something else and he still felt that his trump card was Barbara Gordon.
He had violated, demoralized, and humiliated Jim Gordon's daughter.
Now it was time to get serious.
