I was so, so excited when someone reviewed, I can't even begin to describe it. Thank you so much! (The story hadn't even been up for twelve hours! The happy you have caused me, it is great.) Thank you very much, JokersOnlyFear, I will check out your stories tomorrow, post-essay I am writing. (The Dead Sea Scrolls. They're long. And deadly.)

I realised that I actually totally failed to explain where I got the title of this story from: it's taken from a long monologue by the Joker in Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke. The Joker is trying to drive Gordon mad, and gives his (dubious) explanation about why madness is preferable to insanity.

I am undecided whether or not it's my favourite Batman comic book, (Batman: Year One by Frank Miller takes some beating), but it's definitely one of the best things ever written in the graphic novel medium, in my humble opinion.

It the context of this story, of course, it's also a reference to Jonathan. After all, when the Joker asks you to come along for the ride, what response could you possibly give except "Yes."?

Chapter Two: You Got A Lot And More When You Get Caught

You got this thing that really makes me hot
You got a lot and more when you get caught
You got this thing that follows me around
You fucking bitch well I hope your insides rot

Babes In Toyland, Bruise Violet

Waiting on his mattress for the standard night of light groping followed by inescapable boredom, Crane believed himself to be in a fairly tranquil state of mind.

When he jolted from the bed as soon as the door opened, he was forced to concede that his nerves were still as frazzled as ever.

But it wasn't as if he was the only one. Today was the day that the Batman, (the hiss of distaste in Crane's mind was almost verbalised), finally gave the GCPD the man who had taken up Crane's mantle as Gotham's supervillain supreme.

The Joker.

Crane's feelings about him thus far were fairly ambivalent. He greatly admired how he had terrorized the insignificant ants that were the citizens of Gotham, and even if their methods were startling different, the end result of utter dread was the same. The fear caused by the Joker was fear borne of chaos, as opposed to Crane's by meticulous semi-legal planning, (although he suspected that anyone who escaped the GCPD in such a manner made many more contingency plans than he claimed), but he could respect it all the same. And the panic caused by Crane's fear toxin, in the end, probably caused far more chaos than any masterfully engineered explosion of the Joker's.

The Joker could only worm his way into people's heads figuratively. Crane's toxin literally took hold of their minds and ripped them to shreds.

And it had been so beautiful. His own Ninth Symphony. An act so great he doubted it could ever be improved upon. But oh, how he wanted to try.

Also, the Joker had incinerated Rachel Dawes. He needed to shake his hand for that alone.

As it turned out, most representatives of Arkham's administration were less ambivalent in their feelings towards the gruesomely scarred embodiment of sociopathy. Or, as he was considered for all of four hours, the orderlies' new punching bag.

The man with the undue interest in Crane had unwisely stood much too close to the Joker during the only time he was not strapped down for a full body search, (his clothes long removed. Nothing but knives and a plastic joke flower anyway.), which was not really within protocol when dealing with a terrorist, but he'd been so sedate for the previous couple of hours they made the decision that he was, for the few minutes the search would take, not to be considered a safety risk.

Apparently the Joker had an unusual ability regarding straitjackets and getting out of them in a matter of seconds. And the things he could do with a clipboard and pen did not bear repeating.

The Crane-Crusher got out of the way with relative speed, and thus was only briefly choked, during which he managed to wrestle the ballpoint pen from the Joker.


Kudos there, Crane thought.

The man to the Joker's right was not so lucky. And it probably would have been better for him if the other man had let him keep the pen. That way, the Joker might not have broken off the metal part of the clipboard and jammed it all the way through his eye socket. Might. Crazy is as crazy does. And whatever the Joker claimed, Crane thought, he was crazy. How could anyone wearing that suit not be?

Yes, Crane reflected, behaving well enough, (sane enough), to be allowed out of his room to talk to the other prisoners inmates had its – occasional – perks. Their conversation was usually so insipid, but this was wonderful.

For such a clever man – blindingly, shockingly, fatally so – one would have expected Crane to have considered the consequences this all might have for himself.

He did not.

Thus his shock only grew when he realised the click of the key in the lock meant his least favourite orderly was already locking the door.

From the inside.

Babes In Toyland were an American punk rock band who made really angry feminist music. "Bruise Violet" is one of my favourite song's of theirs.

Ninth Symphony is that of Beethoven, of course, which is generally considered his masterpiece, (although, personally, I think some of his piano sonatas are obviously superior).

The Joker's plastic flower is a comic book reference – one of the Joker's favourite tricks is filling a plastic flower with acid or something similarly horrible and inviting people to smell it.

Yeah, I know, I wrote something where the Joker went for the eye. Have I no imagination? Possibly not, but look at it this way: I think the Joker is a combat pragmatist. He had virtually no weapons, and going for eyes is always a reliable, and horribly painful, way of taking someone out of the action. Not to mention that it's almost always fatal. Mr J likes fatal.