Chapter 6
Without Direction

"And we couldn't have just stopped the car?" Bruce asks in outrage, breaking the few seconds of awkward silence that followed. He looks back at a staggering Gregory trying to hurry off of the road and seethes. Sure, he might not have particularly liked the guy, but that doesn't mean that he deserves to be thrown out of a moving vehicle.

Especially to the whim of a madman, no less.

His only response is a strangely cheerful, "Nope!" The Joker, smirking, throws the pen on the floor then rests the gun in a comfortable position atop his leg, still trained on Bruce.

When Bruce starts talking again, probably with the intention of scolding his captor, the Joker reaches out for the radio dial.

His protests are drowned out by static, then after some channel switching the clown settles on a station and leans back, looking for all the world like a cat that caught the canary. The steady rhythm of violin and country music comes from the speakers while Bruce gives a death glare.

The song is about half-way through but damn him if he doesn't know what it is: 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia', by the Charlie-fucking-Daniels band.

"Change the station," Bruce says in exasperation, eyes rolling skyward as if to request help from a higher power.

He could use some divine intervention right about now, honestly, if only to give him the strength to get through a couple more hours without attempting to bash the Joker's head into the dashboard.

"But this is one of my favorites."

"Really?" His skeptical question isn't met with an answer, only another wide smirk, which has the potential to mean any number of things.

"What does that cloud look like to you?" The Joker asks out of nowhere as he lounges back in the passenger seat, head resting against the window, gun long-forgotten on the floor between the two of them.

Bruce doesn't think that the safety is on.

The billionaire can't see that well out of the corner of his eye, but gets a very vivid mental image of white greasepaint smearing along the glass, though chooses smartly not to comment on both that and the absolutely ridiculous question.

He doesn't answer for a few seconds, because hello, he's driving, but as soon as he feels comfortable enough to look up at the clouds, he squints in contemplation.

"A lion," he blurts it out as soon as it occurs to him. The clown scoffs, he can just about hear his eyes rolling, and Bruce suddenly feels affronted. "Yeah, it's one huge lion face."

He hums in disagreement. "I think it's Santa Claus."

"What? The nose is too big."

"Santa can have a big nose," the Joker points out, lifting his face from the window, revealing smudges of white and grey in his wake.

Bruce's eyes dart along the cloud in question. Again. "There isn't enough room for the beard," he says, pointing, as if the action alone will make his captor understand.

Instead, his head thunks back against the window as he makes this sort of groaning sound in the back of this throat; he thinks it's supposed to be a growl. His arm flails out, exaggerated. "And now it just turned into the abominable snowman. Looks like we're both wrong."

Bruce snorts in amusement. Some minutes later, when a new arrangement of clouds form above them, Bruce is the first one to gesture to the sky. "What about that one?"

"A sewing machine."

"A dragon head." This conversation can't be real, he tries to convince himself. He can't be sitting in a nondescript gray sedan, kidnapped, a gun laying between their seats, already on the fast-track to South Carolina, with the Joker - his alter-ego's arch nemesis, mind you - in the seat next to him finding shapes in clouds to pass the time like they're old pals.

"What about that one?" The Joker asks.

"A scorpion." He contemplates it for a few more seconds. "With a huge claw."

The Joker immediately rejects the scorpion. "No no no, that is Casper the friendly ghost." He is so resolute in his rebuttal that Bruce does actually start to see the ghost-like qualities of that particular cloud.

Then he looks over to the other side of the car, gesturing to another one. "And that?"

"A chicken."

Bruce gives him a look. "With a disembodied head?"

The Joker laughs.

A few minutes later, he gets really excited, practically jumping in his seat as he jabs a thumb out the window in the general direction of a new cloud formation. "Oh look, it's a fighter jet."

"Hnng." Bruce voices his disagreement, scrunching up one side of his face. "Deer skull. What about that one?" He gestures to yet another cloud on the other side.

"Another dragon head, but with its brains blown out," the Joker says.

"A shoe."

"Hey, speaking of brains bein' blown out," he begins, shifting in his seat to face Bruce, and Bruce doesn't like the sound of this already. "I did something similar when I was younger. Got some friends of mine together because we all loved fireworks. So beautiful, yet so destructive, depending on whose hands are on 'em, don'tcha think? So we were setting them off, keeping them all nice and pretty. We kept throwing them near each other cause that's just the kinds of people we are, and when one went off too quickly for me to get far enough away..." He stops there to lift up his leg, pull up his pant leg to reveal some rather nasty scarring on his upper ankle.

Bruce's breath catches in his throat. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, is the Joker going to kill him with a firework? With a gun? With a needle? He doesn't want to die. He needs to protect Gotham, he needs to see Alfred again, he needs to know that his city will be safe.

The Joker gives him a wicked, knowing grin. "So I get real pissed at the guy and, well. Let's just say that another firework went off a liiittle too quickly."

Bruce suddenly feels all dizzy.

He has to stop the car, and he gets out just in time. The Joker stays in the passenger seat, innocently examining his nails as Bruce retches into a nearby bush. He can hear 'Highway to Hell' playing out of the speakers, and he doesn't think that a song could be any more fitting.

It takes Bruce a while to calm down, to realize that if his captor wanted him gone, he would've been lying dead in a ditch by now. He has to keep reminding himself that things have been fine so far.

It doesn't help, not really.

Because it still doesn't change the fact that this is the Joker, somebody who is completely unpredictable in every sense of the word.

He doesn't know why this time was any different from all the others.

Doesn't understand why reality has decided to choose this moment in particular to slap him in the face, and make him see that he's currently sitting next to a homicidal, manic, dangerous guy that probably gets a kick out of killing children at their own birthday parties.

He's seen this man inject people with random things, has seen him kidnap another guy and make him jump out of a moving vehicle, has been at the wrong end of a gun since this little road trip started, has witnessed the whiplash-inducing mercuriality firsthand, has gotten this guy angry with him over useless things, and has seen just how little regard he holds for human life, yet his brain decides to freak out over a couple of fireworks.

It doesn't make any sense.

But he gets back in the car anyway, because the gun is still totally an option. Because apparently bad things can happen to Bruce Wayne the Idiot.

And even he can't outrun a bullet.

A few more station changes later, they find themselves on an unfamiliar stretch of road. With one hand on the steering wheel, Bruce uses the other to dig around for the printed sheet of directions that the Joker had brought along. After switching glances from the road to the paper a few times, he sighs in defeat. "Shit."

Then the Joker rips it out of his hand and looks at it for himself, then pinches up one side of his face. "You got off on the wrong exit back there," he says.

"No kidding."

"You did this on purpose." Bruce isn't sure if he's imagining the slight whine to his voice or not.

"Uh, no."

"Just pull over there." He glowers down to the paper as he points to the side of the road.

He doesn't even have the energy to bitch about it. As Bruce pulls over to the side of the road and parks the car, the only sound he can hear is the engine and the music coming from the speakers.

When he listens closer he realizes that the song is 'Backseat' by New Boyz and oh god, that has to be turned off right this second.

For his own sanity, Bruce pretends that he doesn't see the look that the Joker gives him when he reaches for the dial, cutting the song off right in the middle of a chorus.