Author's Note: Chapter One! It begins! Let's go through the motions, shall we? I don't own any of the DC characters you recognize, as they are property of their respective company. (DC Comics, Warner Brothers.) This is an unspecified universe Joker fiction. I'd love some good ol' R & R for more suggestions on what to keep up with!
Dissimulo – Chapter 1
It was the sound of Harley's shrill, grating voice against his ears that shook him from the state of stagnant thought he had found himself in. He turned his head towards the ferociously obnoxious noise. Through narrowed eyes, he peered at her.
'If only looks could kill….' He thought viciously as Harley sauntered towards him, her lithe hips wagging, boasting the promise of ill news masquerading behind a blithe demeanor.
"Puddin'!" Harley squawked, her deliriously ridiculous grin contorting her features. He couldn't, despite his fondest efforts, amass energy nearly passable enough to satiate her silent request for a repost. He merely glanced at her, and, while his sight was cast upon her, his eyes were searching for something thousands of miles away. He gave her a soft hum, signifying he was acknowledging her presence.
"Yanno how ya sent me an' the boys to go do that thing?" Her anxious tittering was the catalyst to some pugnacious fire that scorched him in a way he would never even consider the words to delineate. He cocked a brow, feeling the muscles in his forehead strain so deliciously. It was the subtle kind of ache that aroused in him an indescribable desire for something even more wicked – some entirely deplorable infliction of barbarianism against another person. Often, he found, when his thoughts dogged, the victim of that desire was Harley. Perhaps it was the chipper way she carried herself, despite the knowledge that he was infuriated with her, or perhaps it was the disappointment at her blunders that would bungle his genius ploys, but whatever the reason, he was able to attain some sort of delight from embodying his fury upon her petite form.
"Well – an' it wasn't my fault –" She began to plea, wringing her attenuated hands rather obnoxiously. Somehow, that soft, tearful supplication was all he needed to hear before shoving himself away from the desk, over which he had been hunched for several hours prior, and struck her alabaster cheek with a vengeful force. He watched with boundless delectation as she, still reeling from his blow, stuck out the fullness of her lower lip, which trembled with the burden of an oncoming tempest of tears.
"I don't care whose fault it is! You've managed to spoil yet another elementary task, you simpering imbecile!" He hissed, winding his arm to pass her cheek once more, however, he restrained himself, content in the fear he had instilled in her. He witnessed it, the unyielding terror which permeated her atypically jubilant, naïve front. It was wonderfully satisfying, some sadistic beauty in it. Once the welling tears were aroused, he could stand the pleasure no longer.
He seldom needed the physical attention of her, no, instead what he craved as a bat craves the night, was the dread he knew he could poison her with. He could hardly distinguish wanton pleasure from the gratification terrorizing the young woman lent him.
"P-puddin…" She bemoaned, her cheeks now streaked with glassy tears. It was that pleading whine that led him to strike her again.
"Next time, there will be no errors…." he snatched her face between his tapered, gloved fingers, his vise-like grasp unforgiving against her jaw, "are we clear, 'puddin''?" He seethed between clenched teeth, which arched up his pallid cheeks to form a horrifyingly disfigured grin. Tossing her down to the ground with a stern force, she nodded meekly as her palms broke her fall to the concrete flooring of their current hideout. Although, it would be rather a farce to call it a "hideout", as the Joker kept a masochistic desire in his mind that they all knew where he was, that somehow, the Batman would know his tricks well enough to discover his rather glaringly apparent pattern of location.
Harley squirmed out of his barbed sight, afraid of another blow from either his fist or his cocked tongue, which always seemed to know where to strike her just so, just enough to break her resolve, and to let the uncertainty and fear dissolve the rest of her demeanor away. It was not a fruitless attack, no, as it always left her wounded in a myriad of ways.
It was not that he didn't care for her – in fact, he cared too much. His mind was always aflame with some ingenious ploy, mingling restlessly with some attempt to finally receive closure, either by being destroyed by the Batman, or annihilating his ire, causing him to break, to abandon the control he exercised so dutifully it made him sick. The fact that some affable girl could infect him, it disgusted him rather equally. She was a blithering idiot, or so it would appear. She used to be quite quick, he recalled. Their days together at Arkham proved she was not such a moron. However, she divested herself of that intellectual façade the moment she abetted his escape from within the sanitarium's walls.
As she excused herself with a silent glance, he returned himself to the rather pressing matter which bore down on his shoulders. How could he make the Batman change just as quickly as Harley had? The fool expended so much energy and time in a laughable attempt to convince people she was qualified to undertake a rather ponderous case as his own, and yet, the moment the opportunity presented itself, she abandoned it recklessly. But how, he questioned, raking his trembling hands across his face, tugging the skin violently as it made a path towards his hair, ripping at it as he considered, could he drive the Dark Knight to be as careless as Harley had been?
It was not that he was the common villain, so archetypal and predictable. He loathed that rather blasé approach, in fact. And while he could not deny many of his actions were of simple-minded habit, he knew that the one feature that would eternally distinguish him from the others was his passion for the anarchy he knew could only be released should one open their deplorable cages. His philosophy was something akin to that of Jerry's from the rather unsettling one act, called "A Zoo Story". God had turned his back on the whole ordeal long ago, and all people are vegetables, nothing but useless pawns, that is, until they manage to escape their cages, their prisons, and finally assume their animalistic, primal role. Then, an order, an order known as chaos, would arise.
Yes. Chaos. He quite liked that. Crossing his arms behind his head, he pondered with a contemplative grin what it would be like to be no longer the Clown Prince of Crime, but the King of Chaos.