A/N: Hmm, and we come to the end. I see that some of you have been less than impressed with the developments in the last few chapters, and I believe you have points. Depending on how you feel this chapter completes the story, I'm considering going back and revising a bit, with the possibility of leading into a third part—if I've got the energy and inspiration! We'll see. For now, enjoy.
XIII.
"Okay, Miss Blandine, you've got ten minutes." Cécile could tell the daytime orderly was nervous being in Block E, and not just because he was afraid of losing his job. The most dangerous, the most insane criminals were kept in Block E. And for some reason, Gotham seemed to teem with them. Not just the savage and the amoral mob bosses; they abounded in any city. But the twisted, the utterly devoid of sense, grew like moss out of Gotham's sewers. The former Dr. Jonathan Crane was kept in this wing. So was the Joker.
"If Mr. Wayne wasn't a trustee, I'd be sacked," the orderly continued.
"It's okay," Cécile said, her cool, indifferent voice more calm than she felt. "I promise to be out in ten minutes. You won't get into trouble."
"Damn right I won't," said the orderly, pulling at his collar convulsively. He unlocked the observation room door and allowed Cécile to sit down on the bare wooden chair. The window led to a two-way mirror into the Joker's cell. Cécile felt like she was at the Toronto Zoo.
Once the orderly left, still muttering to himself, Cécile looked into the cell. There was a young doctor in a white coat, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham his name badge said, which she thought was an amazing coincidence. But who was he questioning? She was about to buzz the orderly to say she'd been put in the wrong observation room when she heard the peerless chuckle. So that was him? She realized with a shock that sent her straight to her seat again that she'd never seen the Joker without his makeup—or without a version of the suit in purple and green.
His hair was dark blonde now, still greasy and a little longer, more unkempt. The green hair dye must have faded weeks before. The scars on the sides of his mouth were almost more obvious than they had been under the makeup. She found herself literally unable to look away. His hands without the gloves looked naked. Unconsciously she thought of Luc, who painted his fingernails black, and was somehow surprised—with a twinge of disgust at her surprise—that his weren't. Somehow wearing the massive coat had always swallowed him up, given him a grungy ability to be a hulk in the background. Only wearing the Arkham-issued uniform, which was a boring and versatile light blue, could she see just how broad his shoulders were.
"So we have no information on you at all," Dr. Arkham was saying, looking down at his notes. "No fingerprint matches, no birth certificate, no record that you exist."
"Maybe I don't exist," the Joker chuckled. "Had you ever considered that, Doc? That I'm just a figment of your imagination?"
Arkham ignored him. "Do you have a name?"
"J-O-K-E-R. It's just that simple." He sang it like the jingle for a used car dealership. It was almost unbearable to watch him smile. The scars were deeply cut into his face, painfully puffed out, as if they'd never healed correctly. She remembered that strange night on the roof of the penthouse when he'd rubbed her hands against them, when he'd sucked her fingers into his mouth. The scarring had felt impossibly thick and bumpy on the inside of his cheeks. Did they still hurt? she wondered.
The doctor cleared his throat. "Okay. We have at least sixteen narratives on record that you've provided giving anecdotal evidence for how you received those mutilations. Which one is it?"
The Joker laughed delightedly. "Oh, they're like hats, Doc—one for every occasion." He leaned over the table, his handcuffs clinking. He licked his lips, though the corresponding smacking sound wasn't quite the same. "How boring just to have one history. Making it up as you go along—that's a lot saner."
"Maybe it's because you can't even remember anymore what actually happened," Dr. Arkham countered.
The Joker frowned. Cécile realized that, even when he'd been holding her close and looking right into her eyes, the makeup had never quite done justice to his eyes. They were perfectly normal brown eyes, she could see. They almost looked . . . sad. "Hey, Doc," he said, "you got a pencil I could borrow?"
"Let's talk about the suit," said Arkham. "No labels, so it was tailor-made. Who made it, and why?"
"Speaking of the suit, I'd like to have it back, please."
"Why?"
The Joker rubbed his hands through his greasy hair. "My skin . . . itches without it! If you're trying to get your loonies to open up, take my advice and give them back their costumes. They'll be a lot calmer, much more amenable to answering your questions." He grinned, showing all of his teeth.
"I'll see what I can do. Tell me, then, about where you got it?"
"No way."
"Why not? Who are you protecting?"
"Not you, Doc, since your tailor seems to be retarded."
Cécile waited, holding her breath. Why wasn't he admitting it? It was common knowledge, at least in Québec, that he'd been Blandine's customer. If Arkham had done any research at all, he would have known this. The Joker had nothing to gain by keeping the Blandines anonymous.
"Hmmph," Arkham muttered, clearly getting frustrated. "What about the queen of hearts? Who or what is that?"
The Joker cackled uproariously. "Oh-ho, you're worse than Freud! Next you're going to be telling me I paint my face because I have an oral fixation."
Arkham looked down at his notes. "You do have an oral fixation."
"Takes one to know one, Doc."
Arkham ignored the lascivious grin and underlined something in his notes. "Queen of hearts?" he asked again.
Cécile never got to hear the Joker's response, as the orderly opened the door and ushered her out peremptorily.
"Okay," Cécile said to herself. She was standing in an alleyway behind the apartment complex with an empty trash can in front of her, a tin of gasoline at her feet, and a lighter in one hand. She placed the package into the trash can, putting in each neatly folded garment piece by piece. There were the purple pinstripe trousers, the purple and green argyle socks, the green tie, the green silk vest, the blue dress shirt, and the purple coat. They'd been FedExed to her a few days after she'd visited Arkham, after she'd bought her Greyhound bus ticket home to Trois-Rivières, having withdrawn herself from the Waterman Institute of Art and Design. The college had agreed to enact no penalty on her early withdrawal due to her "personal situation."
What had he expected her to do with them? Keep them neatly pressed in a hatbox for when he got out? Display them on a mannequin the way her father had in his workshop? Deliver them to Batman for inspection? Did he want to implicate her? She felt sure this was not the object; he wouldn't have so vigorously denied Arkham's grill for information. So she would burn them as she threatened to do the winter before.
As she tossed the coat—which rather revoltingly smelled of sweat, sulphur, and strawberries—something fell out of it onto the cement. She picked it up. It was a playing card, probably from one of the decks she had given him years before. It was the queen of hearts. By that time, everyone had seen the evidence from the Joker's summer of terror—the torture videos of the Batman-wannabes had gone viral on the internet, YouTube favorites before they were banned—including the calling cards that had accompanied the deaths of Judge Serillo, Commissioner Loeb, and the others. Like those, this one had a typewriter script irregularly going across its white space, over the mouth of one of the stylized queens printed on its front. "Wish you were here" it said.
THE END
A/N: And we've come full circle. The quotes that kicked us off have guided us through Cécile's experience of someone who's amoral, but perhaps in some way sympathetic because his mysterious past leaves us guessing what kind of trauma, if any, inspired his viciousness. The Killing Joke says the Joker chooses "multiple choice" histories for himself.
Dr. Jeremiah Arkham is the property of Alan Grant in his story Madmen Across the Water.
If you're dying for more Joker fic, I'm posting "Making It Stranger," a TDK/Doctor Who crossover, momentarily.