Rodin's, "The Joker"
Puzzled, the Joker blinked. Why was the world suddenly shimmering like water undulating in a fish bowl? Here he had the Bat at gunpoint, yet couldn't focus on him anymore. The shipyard was becoming a blur…
"Puddin'! The Green Team is here!"
The Joker began a clumsy lunge forward but halted, when he saw that he was in his tattered, purple easy chair, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. His Pagliacci painting was on the wall in front of him, reassuringly crooked as always, and a splatter of what was either old blood or chocolate sauce was still a few inches beneath it. Yes, this was definitely home, but…
What was going on? Had he been hallucinating the whole Batman thing? Somehow, that seemed unlikely; the shipyard had seemed more real to him than his current surroundings now did. He could still smell the nitrates the lightning had left in the air and the acrid odor of the polluted ground being rained on. He ran an experimental hand through his hair to see if it was damp, but it wasn't. It was just its lush, boisterous self.
Looking around the hideout, as if for confirmation that he was really awake, he struggled to remember what he'd been doing an hour ago. Hell, even 10 minutes ago would do. He could hear the hyenas in the other room, their chuckles low and conversational. The noise didn't bother him, though. It was a sound of normalcy, which helped clear his head a little.
Closing his eyes, the clown took a deep breath and tried to shut out the clutter that was his psyche. Striving to correctly recall the events that transpired around him was always difficult work. More difficult than anyone knew. The Joker was a tactile, instinctive creature. Self-analysis had little appeal for him.
His fall into the vat of chemicals so long ago should have killed him, but hadn't. It had mutated both his physical appearance and his body's chemical composition, and now he was crazy. Doctors debated whether his insanity was due to the emotional trauma of his accident, or a haywire reaction to his new body chemistry, but neither group had ever reached a satisfactory conclusion.
Personally, the Joker suspected it was a combination of the two, though he didn't really care. He wouldn't trade his charming grin and enviable green locks for anything. Not even a sack full of Froot Loops.
The 'emotional trauma' advocates had a harder time proving their case, as they lacked hard fact about what kind of man he'd been before his fall. He could've been equally as crazy before, and no one would've known. Therefore, it was difficult to state that the accident had made him insane.
The 'chemical anomaly' advocates, on the other hand, had specifics to point at when presenting their case. They had discovered you could pump him full of anything from Paxil to Thorazine and not get a correctly anticipated response from him. This made sense, they pointed out, because all engineered drugs were constructed with normal human chemistry in mind. However, since the Joker didn't have a normal chemical make-up, the drugs couldn't be expected to behave properly in him. The result of this discovery had led them to try exotic (and even potentially lethal) combinations on him. Years of that kind of treatment hadn't really done much for his memory. Nor had the electroconvulsive therapy, for that matter.
Pushing this tangent from his mind, he concentrated on trying to remember lighting the cigarette he'd awakened with. That suddenly seemed very important to him, though he had no idea why. At first, no recollections would come, save for those in his…what? Trip? Daydream? He remembered walking out the hideout door, and hearing the flap of the Bat's cape in the darkness…
After a moment, though, he suddenly recalled flicking open his joker emblazoned Zippo and lighting up. However, this was bothersome. He was now putting out that same cigarette, unsmoked, and it was almost down to the filter. How long did that take to happen without any puffs? Five minutes maybe? Seven? Could he really have lost seven minutes of time and not realized it?
Perhaps aliens had abducted him!
"Hey, Puddin'!" Harley called again, startling him from his pondering. "Come say 'hi'!" Sighing, the Joker rose from his chair and rejected the alien idea. He didn't feel as though he'd been tested upon, nor did he have any memory of little green men. Besides, being held at space-ray point and forced to board a ship for an anal probe was just silly. He tittered at the notion.
Abruptly, he decided that he would dismiss everything. All of it. From his Batman hallucination to his thoughts about Grays, he was done with it. Probably just some weird, isolated incident.
He reached into his jacket pocket for another cigarette, hesitated, then declined to have one. He felt almost apprehensive of the things, suddenly. But that was silly, too. He was smoking Pall Malls, not weed. They'd had nothing to do with his psychotic episode.
Muttering to himself, he wandered toward the sound of Harley greeting the Riddler and Query. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had such a freak out, he supposed, unconsciously slipping back to worry over his shipyard hallucination, and undoubtedly it wouldn't be the last; but it had certainly been a bizarre one.
He had been Batman, and also himself. He'd seen through the Bat's eyes. And Guanohead had been very delicate around him. Thoughtful…kind, even.
He shuddered and wondered what was wrong with him.
That was sick!