Sideshow01f: 'now bring us some figgy pudding!'

A/N: ehehehe hey guys i'm back. :D The Bat-universe I've dropped J into for this is a gleeful hodgepodge that basically mashes together my favorite canons in a manner I find charming. Lots of stuff from the nineties cartoon is included right alongside a modern interpretation of early Silver Age Dick Grayson, among other comics-only materials. Tim Drake's first sight of the Batcave really emphasized the gleamingly smooth floor. 'Phase oscillator' as the name of a dimension-traversing device comes from Batman the Brave and the Bold, the glorious retro-pastiche Batman team-up cartoon. Etcetra. I guess I've effectively crossed Jokester over with the Batman who lives in my heart?

"Uh, Gwynplaine'll do. Joey Gwynplaine." He thrust out his right hand, cheerfully ignoring the firm body-language social cues telling him not to, because he was an uncultured barbarian and he obviously didn't know you weren't supposed to shake hands with the help.

From the quirk of the older man's eyebrows as he accepted the handshake, he got the reference, and Robin—knowing already it was a pseudonym—let out a snort of laughter somewhere deeper in the cave, wherever he was lurking. Masked Man did not offer any name in return, which was probably punishment for inflicting handshaking. Heh.

Little did he realize he was dealing with Gotham City's champion nicknamer. Not telling the Jokester what to call you was an invitation.

Batman led the way up the slope, with the domino-masked character actor who might or might not pilot giant robots or be made of tiny robots bringing up the rear, and Jokester let himself be herded, taking his time to look around. He spotted three tunnels that were possible exits, one of them on the far side of a vasty chasm, and was impressed by the immense size of some of the stalactites. He couldn't hear running water, though there was a distant dripping. They were at least a hundred feet above sea level, and deep underground. Obviously they'd gone up, as well as probably-north.

Bristol Heights, almost definitely. Another point on the Wayne-o-meter, hehe.

The décor was hilarious. There was a nine-by-twelve-foot computer screen looming over the whole raised area, which would've made J assume the room was used for some kind of class, or group presentations, except that the space in front of it was set up like a normal workstation, which only gave the person sitting below a few feet of clearance. Even if Batman was secretly nearsighted, J didn't see how he could focus on the whole screen from that distance…

On the other hand, there were also a twenty-foot penny and a full-sized model tyrannosaur in evidence, so maybe Batman just liked giant things. It would fit with the car. Awww. Big bad warrior bat was really an eight-year-old boy at heart. (Of course, that could be Robin's input. Fair's fair.)

He liked those decorating touches, whosoever's they were, blending bombast and whimsy both at odds with the businesslike gleaming surfaces of control panels and steel countertops, and whatever industrial sealant had been used to coat the raw stone floor and turn it easy-clean smooth, and under other circumstances J would have scampered off to poke the dinosaur and rap on the penny, to see if it was solid copper. But he was trying really hard to be good, because Harley was not going to wind up a single parent while he was still alive, no way no how.

Robin was seated at a more reasonable-sized screen off to the left of the huge one, typing, and he briefly raised a hand in greeting as the three of them arrived, but didn't even turn around before getting back to work. He didn't even bother gloating over having beaten them here. The bike parked below had been its own gloat.

J appreciated this. He'd been in this universe a couple of hours, and one person had already refiled him under 'normal.'

…if he did get stranded here, he was going to take Joker's evil reputation and ram it down his throat. This Gotham was going to get used to the idea that there was more than one kind of creepy-looking clown if it took him the rest of his life.

He sat on that thought and stuffed it in a jar. When was he going to learn not to jinx himself? Heh.

"This way, Mr. Gwynplaine," said the round, dry tones of Batman's batman, and J with a shrug peeled off to let Batman go do whatever he was going to do, and followed the neat black suit coat in the other direction, toward a little medical bay that had clearly already been prepped. Antiseptics, swabs, giant scissors, suture kit, all that stuff.

"I do hope," his guide added, "you are not one of those who prefers to evade medical attention until you are no longer able to flee."

"Nah, I'm a pretty big fan of wound treatment," J assured the old man with a laugh, turning on his heel to check out his sightlines from here. He could still see Robin at his typing, though Batman was striding off into some other part of the cave, cape fluttering with significantly less attention to maximizing drama, now that he was at home. "Not, like, to intentional injury levels. But a definite fan." He'd seen what happened when you tried to power straight through, or just curl up and hope like a wild animal. Not super fun.

Tuxedo-Mask accepted this with a grave nod that was probably only about 45% making fun, and gestured him toward a wide steel bench beside the medical table. J wrinkled his nose a little—he'd liked the comfy tank seats—but moved agreeably enough toward the spot. He'd already absently reshuffled this nameless old guy to the position of 'most dangerous.'

Because yeah, Batman was in most respects identical to Owlman, and could probably tear off J's arms by main strength if he really wanted to, but J had gotten a sense of him, now that his Owl-shaped assumptions weren't getting in the way, and he wouldn't. Not without plenty of warning as he nerved himself up, at least. He was dangerous, sure, in a fits-of-barely-restrained-violence, Harvey-Dent kind of way, only with epic ninja skills that Harvey sadly lacked, and Robin for his part was darn good at what he did, but the thin half-bald guy with the clipped vowels was the one who could strangle a man with a serviette, if that was what he decided needed to be done, and not change expression the whole time.

Not that J didn't like the guy, or anything. Butlerbot seemed super cool, and had a sense of humor and everything. He wasn't a butler expert—in fact his main source was basically Jeeves, who, fun fact, was actually a valet—but he was pretty sure the subtext he was getting off this guy didn't come with your standard model. He'd figure the old guy for a retired vigilante, except the energy between him and Batman was wrong for that. Respect both ways, more or less, but still…hm.

Maybe the guy was an actual butler and it was some kind of class differences thing; J'd have to get to know them both better to be sure. And he wasn't planning on sticking around long enough for that. Or maybe the old guy was a secret agent who'd infiltrated as hired help and Batman had somehow not noticed.

Bond, he played in his head, in the old masked man's prim voice. Jeeves Bond.

He caught himself humming 'I Wish I Had A Pencil-Thin Moustache' as he unbuckled the Santa belt, and made himself stop as he extricated the much-deflated cushion, pushing his fingers rather mournfully through the rent in the front of the borrowed coat. (Stupid blade-footed booby.) Butler07 clearly had a better appreciation for the absurdity of life than his boss did, but very few people liked being laughed at.

He did chuckle a little as he set the stuffed monkey carefully to one side, before piling up the Santa wig and beard, the funny little bola-cable he'd appropriated from around his ankles earlier, the half-full collections bucket, his wallet, and finally his now-grubby white gloves, which he laid together on top of the ruined cushion.

Robin's surveillance became a little less covert when J bared his hands, knobby and white, and as scar-speckled now as they had once been dotted with freckles. He froze for a split second, then threw a little wave at the kid, who turned back to his computer in obvious embarrassment. Batman now reentered the main cavern carrying some kind of crate; he at least evinced no interest in the state of his fellow crimefighter's dermal damage.

The Jokester wasn't embarrassed, darn it. Scars were proof you'd survived. He grabbed the bottom hem of his bright green sweater, wrinkling his nose at the bloodstained rip in the right side. At least the shoe-knife hadn't gotten deep enough to damage it in front, too. J glanced at the old man's domino mask for guidance. "Should I just…?"

The elderly medic reached for the giant steel shears. "I will take care of that."

…now that he thought about it, scissors a foot long really didn't make much sense for medical use outside a twisted Halloween special, and he should have noticed them being out-of-place, Harley would laugh at him, but J still goggled a little. "Uhm, no. Thanks."

Domino-Seven made a pretty insistent case for his loppers, but J held his ground and did it his way, peeling sweater and T-shirt up over his head. (Speaking of putting himself at people's mercy, heh.) If he could get through a whole fight with the owch in his side, and climb in and out of the stupid tank, he could undress just fine, and he liked this sweater. It was warm and really soft, and Edna had made it for him. He said as much, without mentioning Edna. "I'll put a darn in later," he shrugged, returning to a comfortable slouch now that his clothes were no longer in danger. The old guy was looking exasperated. So it went.

Lightheadedness returned as he dropped onto the bench—note to self: learn not to pop up and down after blood loss, already, funny man—so he almost missed the way the Englishman's critical eye caught on the wedding ring swinging across his chest on its steel chain. Only almost, though.

One hand plastered itself defensively over the little bit of gold as soon as he noticed, and the rapid motion brought Batman and Robin's attention snapping back around, before they saw what he was doing and relaxed again. Aw. They were worried about their medic-robot-person. It went both ways, too.

J moved his hand to the edge of the bench and grinned engagingly at Mr. Received Pronunciation. "Medic?" he prompted. "Or am I doing a shirtless scene for the entertainment of the cave toads?" It wasn't a secret to anyone how things were between him and Harley, and nobody here was going to go around stealing people's keepsakes. Crying out loud, J. Get a grip.

The actual treatment went smoothly, wound cleaned and packed all brisk and sanitary, and bandages wrapped all around his stomach at the end, rather than a taped pad. More secure, better pressure, he figured, or maybe The Mighty Buttle was just old-fashioned. Well, he was definitely old-fashioned. The pain wasn't going to go away any time soon, but pain was no big deal. He'd whine a little when he got home. Anybody who doubted his story of 'going to an alternate dimension and being shot by his evil twin' got to be shown the bullet hole. And of course somebody—probably Harvey, maybe Alonzo, maybe Ed or Waylon or even Harley—would say that him getting shot wasn't unusual enough to prove dimensional doubles, and he'd say you think that's weird, my backup was Owlman's good twin. He dresses like a giant bat.

Then a hypodermic needle appeared, and Jokester's attention snapped back to the present, and his eyebrows popped up. "A simple antibiotic injection," Butlerman informed him, tapping the syringe to get all the air to the top and avoid causing an embolism.

J's teeth sank into his lip. He was in favor of antibiotics; Harley applied them fairly liberally when they could afford them. "Can we not and say we did?" he hazarded, watching the sharp end of the needle as a few drops of transparent contents rocketed out, chasing the air bubbles. This definitely crossed the line into invasive.

"What, are you afraid of needles?" Robin shot at him, white teeth showing. (J really liked this kid. Staring and all.)

"Yes!" Jokester said at once, seizing on the excuse. Lucky the gouge had been too wide to suture, so they hadn't seen him versus needle already. "Totally afraid. Phobic, even. I may faint."

He'd oversold it in his hurry, he could tell, but waited to see if any of them was willing to call his bluff. It was Double-Oh-Domino who did. "I really must insist, Mr. Gwynplaine. Please turn your head aside and try to bear it."

"I'll catch you if you faint," Robin threw in, the smirky little rat. Batman was staying out of it, but he was watching.

J edged away down the bench, as Butlerman finished his prep work and advanced with syringe in one hand and alcohol pad in the other. "Really. Seriously. I can get by without. I mean, it was a bullet, not a fence spike or something. How biotic could it be?"

Nobody was giving, and the medic kept coming, even as J ran out of bench. He changed tacks. "Okay, okay. How about Robin does the poking, though? Robin plays the doctor like a champ, I liked that part."

All the expressions—not just the ones on their faces (Butlerman's face didn't actually change at all) but the ones in the wrists and shoulders and knees—went darker, and J backpedaled a little, cuz he wasn't trying to be rude here. "Not that you aren't really good," he assured the old guy. He wasn't trying to be insulting, honest. Was trying to avoid that.

"You liked that part?" repeated Batman, like it was a threat, and J gave him a funny look.

Then, "Oh! Ew, oh, come on. Really? I just meant…" Jokester trailed off, shaking his head and laughing. Wow. This was why he didn't usually do caution. See what it got you. "Okay, okay, maybe we all need to lighten up. Stick me." He offered Butlerman his arm.

"Your phobia is suddenly cured?" said the old man dryly.

"Like you believed that for a second." He was an okay liar, as these things went—had a knack for misdirection, at least—but had also this tendency to retreat instinctively to the truth when he had nothing specific to hide, or if you took him off-guard. He wasn't ashamed. Of either part. Or, well, much of anything, really.

"I am curious," said Butlermedic after a second's pause, without advancing to deliver the needle now that it was allowed, contrarily enough, "what difference you expected it to make to have an injection administered by Robin, if it was still from the same syringe filled by myself."

Jokester looked around at Batman's grim-flatness and Robin's pinched-concentration and realized they weren't going to let it go. He huffed out a breath. "Because if it was gonna kill me, you wouldn't let him be the one to do it," he explained, with a rolling shrug of it's-not-a-big-deal-really, with a little should-be-obvious. "I don't think you'd even ask him to do that to himself knowingly, but there's no way you'd let him play executioner without giving him an informed choice."

From the way they were looking at him, the idea that they'd kill a man under the pretense of hospitality was somewhere in the range from sickening to profoundly offensive. Well, yeah. There was a reason he'd tried to take precautions without saying why.

The Mighty Buttle said, cool and brittle, "You put a great deal of faith in my character, for a man who has profiled me as a murderer."

J laughed, a little. "Not so much a murderer," he disagreed. "I met the Joker, remember? If you think I'm really another of him, and I've seen this much…" He shrugged. "It's not how I roll, but there's a difference between people who'll do anything to protect their own and people who're bad." He almost clapped his hands to dispel the heavy atmosphere, then remembered the way the Joker had kept clapping his and waved them floppily in the air instead, trying to dismiss all of this unpleasantness like a bad smell. "Anyway I didn't seriously think it was poison, but it could be all kinds of drugs and I didn't live this long serving myself up on a platter." J smiled. He was getting the knack of not stretching his face into expressions that made him look more like the Joker than he could help. "Well, without an escape route, anyway."

Gah, now he'd gone and hurt the feelings of his nice fellow vigilante maniacs, and he didn't even have the excuse that he'd been panicking. This was what being sensible got you. This. Why did he ever even.

"Look," he said, mostly to Robin because the kid was his favorite and his hostility was showing signs of breaking down. "It's a nice gesture letting me see inside your secret base, but just remember you look exactly like the people who've been working on torturing and murdering me and everybody I care about for years, and we're in a secret underground cavern with a giant pit to drop things down, and no chance of anybody hearing the screaming. Yeah?"

He flapped his hands again, this time in expostulation toward the echoing chasm. "And the only reasons I have to believe you're good guys is that the Joker hates you, the cops tolerate you, and gut instinct. Luckily, I run my life on gut instinct." He grinned, crooked and wry. "I mean, what if you got banged up in my world, and I took you back to my House of Jokes, and Harley came at you with a needle?"

Considering Ms. Quinn's determined attempts earlier to poison as many hostages as possible, J wasn't really surprised when Robin gave a little shudder. "Okay, point. Have you got a history with your world's…Agent A?"

And the Buttlemeister had a name at last! Obvious pseudonym though it was. J rolled his shoulders. "Nah. Just figured him for the type to take on dirty jobs to spare you two."

That was it, he realized, kicking his heels a little under the bench with the satisfaction of placing the sense they'd been giving him. Agent A was parental, in an extremely weird, stuffy, hands-off and deferential sort of way, probably because there was an outsider here, and under the layer of professional-soldier stuff, Batman was dadding Robin. Almost as weirdly as A was, but he had it now. They were a family.

That was alright, then.

"You are not precisely wrong," Agent A himself allowed, after a moment. "But we do not kill people, Mr. Gwynplaine."

"That's good," J said brightly.

"And we're not going to drug you, either," said Robin, firmly. And somewhat coldly. Yeah, J had definitely bruised some feelings.

"Also good! Sorry," he added. Twiddled his thumbs awkwardly. "My friends are always telling me to be more cautious, but it never works out when I try. Janus is going to have kittens when I get back. Which—I apologized, A-Man, can you stab me and let's get on with these tests? I'm trying to worry Harley less. Also, I'd like to get to put a shirt on. It's a bit drafty in here."

Agent A shot him up with a couple different drugs, all of which he carefully let J read the labels off of first, and drew three ampules of blood for testing, then sent him into a sterile little bathroom enclosure with a pile of charcoal-grey fleece. The water came hot from the tap with barely any waiting, and Jokester wished he'd thought to ask for a shower before the bandages went on. He worked around that to scrub up—the soap was emphatically unscented, and in fact seemed designed to eliminate smell as a useful sense. Rad. He wondered if Batman had to sneak past guard dogs a lot or if it was just a ninja culture thing. He wished he knew more ninjas. Ninjas were cool.

He came out feeling like a scentless baby penguin in fleecy charcoal jammies that seemed a size or so too small for Batman and way too long in the leg for Robin. Agent A had disappeared, along with J's clothes, the ruined cushion, and the monkey, but waiting for him were a pair of comfy charcoal slippers and a big mug of cream-of-tomato soup, marked drink me with a lavender post-it note.

Some orders, J was okay following.

The soup was awesome.

Having put on his comfy charcoal slippers he felt about four years old, which made it the perfect time to go manfully over and see what kind of progress Batman had made.

He'd unpacked some of his collection of boxes, and now a funny squarish device with very large lenses on one side and a periscope on top was about half-disassembled all over the very clean worktop. Batman was prodding at a tiny gear with what seemed to be an even tinier screwdriver, but maybe it was something specialized and J just couldn't tell the difference. He was an okay mechanic and could do basic wiring, and he really knew his way around a sound system, but Eddie had long since despaired of him ever developing truly high-level technical knowhow. Left to himself, he'd try to tackle all problems with a hammer.

"Whatcha doing?"

Batman didn't look up. "Rebuilding this DIOD, so we can gather data to calibrate the phase oscillator and hopefully return you to your native dimension."

J nodded. He understood the important parts of that. "Can I help?"

"No."

Well, that was plain enough.

"I'm gonna go poke around, okay?"

"Hm," Batman acknowledged, still not taking his head out of the machinery. Apparently it was okay, then. Maybe they thought exploring would make him feel less like their cave was the kind of place where people got killed and flung into abysses. Maybe Batman just wanted him out of his hair.

"Call me when you're ready to take those readings," J said.

"Hm."

"Splendid!"

So Jokester went off to look at Batman's interior decoration. He had a good feeling about this.

He checked out the penny first; it seemed real. Smelled like copper, rang like copper when he tapped it with his nails. If it had a zinc core, the copper jacket was pretty thick. If he hit it with something hard he could probably tell because zinc was so stiff, but he might dent it or something. That would be poor guest-courtesy. On to the next attraction!

He looked over the safety railing into the abyss for a bit. It was really neat; he'd never been spelunking for fun but he moved it up on his to-do-if-opportunity-knocks list. He found two more exits. He decided to work his way over to the dinosaur, and look at some of the stuff on display as he went.

It really was kind of cute. At least, serial killers sometimes did the obsessive trophy thing, and the ominous stygian atmosphere should have promoted that vibe, but it didn't. There was an unvarnished innocence to it, somehow. Like a little boy's bug collection, he thought. All tagged and pinned behind glass. Only instead of species it seemed like Batman was trying to capture—memories, or moments, or maybe victories. Maybe it was like J's photo albums, only instead of smiling faces Batman preferred to map out his history in private museum exhibits. Well, he had the space for it.

Boxes of beetles and butterflies had a generally gloomifying effect no matter how gorgeous, but none of these trophies had ever been alive so far as J could see. So no one had killed them to put them here.

He ambled along the rows of trophies, admiring things but not lingering too long anywhere. Snickered over a pearl-encrusted mirror displayed alongside what appeared to be a random segment of lead pipe, followed by an ornate dagger and then some knotted strips of leather with teeth marks in them. He was sure there was a story to go with each item. He spun away to look up at the giant penny from a little more distance again, breaking into a distracted sideways two-step, more for the sense of motion than because he really felt all that dancish.

He tried to put his heart into it anyway, and gave himself some music. "Oooowowowo. Keep pushin' 'til it's understood, and these badlands start treatin' us good. Ooh, poooor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be kings, and a king ain't satisfied, 'til he rules everything…!"

"You making a point?" asked that bright young voice, and Robin popped out from behind the dinosaur.

J laughed. If he were making any sort of point with that song, it'd be to himself, reminders: 1) I believe in the love 2) I believe in the hope, and finally the very important 3) It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive, because between the Joker and the cave he was feeling a tad bit off-color. He wondered if Springsteen didn't exist in this universe or something. "Nah. I mean, Owlman in a nutshell, but your boss doesn't seem like a megalomaniac."

Control freak, yes. Not remotely normal. But not the type that wanted to own the world.

"He's not," Robin agreed. J half expected Firefly's usual And he's not my boss, but it didn't come. Apparently Robin was secure in his sidekick identity.

"What're you getting him for Christmas?" J asked, by way of a new subject, and Robin's face wrinkled like he couldn't believe the question, but he shrugged.

"Cufflinks. I found a jeweler whose style I think he'll like, commissioned a custom design."

Well. That answered a lot of questions at once. And ow, hopefully the big man wasn't spying on them right now. It'd be a poor return for funding his present for Ella to spoil Batman's present from his own boy. Hilariously opulent as that gift might be.

"Guess he's a hard guy to shop for," J smiled. Flicking his fingers around the collection and the equipment and the general accoutrements of a man who clearly had everything.

"Like you wouldn't believe," Robin huffed. "And it's really his money I'm spending, so it is literally only the thought that counts."

J nodded sympathetically. "If you're not sure, you could always make him something."

Side-eye. "I think I'm a little old for that."

J knew his grin was dopey at just the thought of when his little girl got big enough to make craft projects all by herself and give them as gifts. He chortled. "I wasn't thinking so much the paper-machê end, though I bet he wouldn't mind if you went there. After all, something you made yourself is the only thing he can't get without you. Or you could, hm, bake a cake!"

"A—Agent A would probably object," Robin gave an easy, rolling shrug, almost covering the way he'd started with an a-as-in-apple sound before switching hastily to a-as-in-agent. "It's his kitchen."

"So get him to supervise." J treated the kid to his Most Responsible solemn-eyed face, all pouty with sincerity. "Cooking is a life skill, you know."

"Cake is not a life skill."

"Sure it is! You know how many friends you can make via cupcakes?"

A/N: Cupcakes are a valid stratagem. This was, once again, supposed to be the last chapter! Hah.

^^ Batman's meticulously catalogued collection of souvenirs was a Big Deal in the Silver Age, when every red-blooded boy in America might be expected both to buy comic books and to vie against his peers for the possession of the Most Amazing Collection of something, but even now it hangs around on and off, mostly to add background detail to Batcave scenes.

Dick is adjusting to J really well, partly because in the 60s he was remarkably chill with brand-new Titan Duela Dent, still in her Joker costume from her initial period of villainy, riding pillion on his motorcycle, etc. XD Therefore I conclude that 'looking like the Joker' does not in itself bother him that much, at this age. Later this may change.