Fifteen minutes had passed since Lights Out. The moon was virtually full and shone through the high little cell window, falling eerily on the Joker's broad white forehead. The skin there creased, throwing tiny shadows, as his facial expression communed with his thoughts. Etiolated crow's feet at his eyes grew and shrank. Laugh lines stretched and relaxed, then stretched again. The hollows of his cheeks vanished, reappeared, vanished. Yet all with some acrobatic symmetry.

His mind was moving too fast for his face to follow, and so each expression had a time delay of nanoseconds, being slightly out of date the moment it appeared. His eyes darted like budgerigars in twin cages, never perching for more than an instant.

Until finally, the facial foxtrot slowed to a halt. Garish lips drew back from gums, further than a man's lips should. He bared his teeth in manic glee, and lunar albedo reflected back at distant satellites. From behind this calcium curtain, little gasps of air became quiet giggles.

The Joker had a plan.

Purposefully losing his footing, he tipped over and fell with an effective expulsion of air. He cried out, in pain and annoyance.

"Guard! Guard!"

After a delay of moments, a face appeared nervously at the view-panel in the armoured door. "Y-yes?" The guard was new. He had heard so many stories that his legs had started to tremble.

Joker raised his upper body, his arms stiff and his narrow shoulders drawn back. He left his legs as they had landed. "Good God, Guard! I think I've busted it! The old peg-leg's gone out! I'm a tree swaying in the breeze and I fear none may picnic in my shade again!" He rolled his eyes dolefully, his crimson lips pulled down at the sides.

"Uh… excuse me?"

"My leg, you idiot! Stop lollygagging and help me!"

The guard was terrified. But not a single synapse suggested that he should obey the pallid prisoner. And anyway, he didn't have the key for the door. "I'm afraid I'm n-not auth— thorized… to do that… S-sir." He didn't know why he was awarding the Joker an honorific title, but it seemed a good thing to do when placating someone powerful. And even though he was the one on the other side of a heavily secured door, the guard had the distinct impression that that meant very little.

"Well then," Joker said sweetly, "perhaps you'd better pop off and find someone who is, hmmm?" His eyebrows were raised, like arching green caterpillars, and his expression made this suggestion seem very reasonable.

"O-kay… Just hang on…" And the guard was gone, off to find someone who could deactivate the panic button in his head.

Joker reclined fully once more, rested his cheek on a raised hand. The skin displaced by his hand and a growing grin formed furrows around his eye. "I'll do my best, Cuddles…"

Dr Charles Sykes didn't need this tonight. The Joker. The perfect end to a perfect shift. Still a psychotic patient was still a patient. Maybe the delusional white rat really had injured himself, with all his leaping about. Sure. And maybe Lauren was going to call him back. (She had no reason to be upset, but that's women for you. If she had any idea the sort of people he dealt with on a daily basis, then she could start making judgement calls. That was her problem. Lovely girl, but short-sighted. Insular.)

He stepped up to the view-pane, spoke through the little circular cutouts.

"What is it this time, Joker?"

From his prone position, all white limbs and attitude, the source of Sykes' present annoyance gave him a reproving frown. "A little respect, my good man! That's Mister Kerr to you. Or Joseph Kerr, esquire, if you prefer. I don't go around calling you Charlie-Pooh, now do I? Once we know each other better, I might let you call me Joe."

Sykes sighed, but knew that compliance was the route to expedience. "Apologies, Mr Kerr, what seems to be troubling your good self?"

The Joker was immune to his sarcasm. "My Good Self is suffering from a loss of leverage, most specifically of the left limbic variety. I suspect it's taken a sabbatical, which is extremely presumptuous, I must say."

"You say your leg's acting up?"

"No, I said something much more inspired than that, but the sentiment is more or less equal."

"I suppose you'll want me to take a look at it?"

"If you would be so kind." Sykes gave him a transparently dubious look, to which the Joker reacted by feigning woundedness. "What? Surely you're not accusing me of ill intentions, Doc! Why, I'm a model prisoner! Just last Tuesday I helped an old lady cross the street."

Sykes removed his spectacles, cleaned them on a red handkerchief. "She was a policewoman," he said dispassionately. "You kicked her infront of a truck."

"Maybe so, but the thought was there. And besides," his voice dropped a dark octave, "she was trying to clamp my car."