My last written chapter of this little Joker series. As I am posting a larger, planned out Joker/OFC story called "Honey I'm Home" on my next posting date (April 1), i'm not sure what the fate of this series will be. Sorry. At least though, you have another Joker story to look forward to!

Synopsis of "Honey I'm Home": Jack Napier and his wife Ellie are just like any other couple. And they love each other very much. Until one day, Jack gets in too deep with the sharks. And he changes. And Ellie, well, she leaves. In his grief and rage, Jack turns into something...else. And now, two years later, he wants her back.

"Her Tears Are Different"
Summary: Joker reflects on something surprising and starts to see Katherine in a different, if no less deranged, way.

I've never let my victim's tears touch me – in any way. I don't let them annoy me or soften me or make me angry. I don't react to them or tell them to stop or to keep going. They are just things, just plops of water that fall on cheeks and collarbones and the helpful shoulders of friends.

But her tears are different. They look the same as any other; they act like any other. But somehow, the look in her eyes give them a whole other meaning. I can't help but watch them as they drop off the tips of her eyelashes to land tenderly on her cheeks. As they drip off her chin to hit her collarbone and slide farther down, beneath her shirt. As each new tear follows in the footsteps of the ones that came before it...

...Fuck.

Look at me.

Look at what she's done to me!

Already she's made me into some goofy weakling. A fucking whipped puppy waxing poetic! And all because she's crying! But I still can't help it. The tears keep coming. And you want to know the difference? The difference? No one has ever cried for me before.

I'm not saying that no one has ever cried in front of me. Sure, hundreds of lack wits have sobbed and pleaded for their lives, pathetic and squirming like worms – that, at least, is nothing new. But nobody, no one single person, has ever cried specifically for me. Specifically because they feel sorry for me. And I know that's what she's doing. Its that look in her eyes that make those little bits of water so different than any others.

This one, this woman, Katherine, isn't crying because she's hurt. Or because I nearly drowned her. Or, possibly because the next season of the show "Sons of Anarchy" is going to HBO. Nope. Not a chance. Instead, I've told her a lie and she's crying for me because of it.

It was just a little old lie. A tiny one, nothing serious, nothing on the '7 Deadly Sins' level. All I did was tell her how I got my...singular sensation of a grin. Or how I want her to think I got it. When I tell most people that, they are horrified. They are sickened. They are, at least in one particular case, insanely jealous. None of those people ever really believed me though; deep down, past all that topical fear and disgust, in that special, primal place where all of us are like me, where there are no cursory feelings like love and fear, they don't believe me. Not one bit.

Even better is that they don't realize that I can see this. Those people take me as a thoughtless, monstrous, moronic freak. That I have less brains than the headless horseman. In fact, that's their way of rationalizing me. They don't want to think that someone like me, who is so like them on the inside, could act this way. That I think like they do. That they could "become like me".

They want to categorize me as far away from themselves as they can. But deep inside, in that place that knows I'm lying, they know. They know that I'm. Just. Like. Them.

Or that they're just like me. Either way, they don't realize that sanity is like gravity. All it takes is one push, and poof!

But this one...she's soft. She's got too much softness. Too much heart, and that makes her different from them, and me. She doesn't seem to have that ancient, instinctive place that would allow her to sniff out lies. Or fear – if she was a dog or a "red injun". Katherine, my pretty little Katherine, she...she is...

Hmm...I've not got a word to describe her.

We're sitting on the floor in her bathroom when she starts to cry. The water from the tub is soaking her pajama pants and the knees of my trousers; before my revelation about her tears I happen to realize that water seeping into my pants feels just like blood. Go figure. I'm still holding her wrists like I'm going to help or comfort her, or possibly tie her to a bed from a romance novel and have my wicked way with her.

Not that I've actually read any romance novels...

So I say, "Katherine, dearest, do you want to know why I smile the way I do?"

And she says, (at least in my mind she does), "Why yes Joker dearest, I would."

And then I explain it all to her. And the explanation comes pretty easy, because it makes sense to me. Some of my stories don't even do that, but this one manages to accomplish more than the others.

Imaginary Katherine smiles like a débutante from the Antebellum South and says oh-so-sweetly (complete with accent), "Why Joker, I do declare. That is the most fascinatin' thing I've heard in a long time." And then she invites me to tea with her. Which I decline. There are more pressing things to do.

Real Katherine looked up at me from her position on the floor, her eyes growing ever wider as the story continued. She didn't say anything when I finished triumphantly. She didn't move or struggle or make a break for it or even ask me if I do the fandango. All of those things, I would have been prepared for. Hell, her simply crying because she was in pain - I could have handled that.

But somehow, not this. Not this. It's hard for me to deal with pity. With compassion, especially when it's aimed at me. I've had such little experience with it that its like an alien to me. I feel like raising my right hand and solemnly reciting, "I come in peace." whenever it peeks its cowardly head out at me.

My usual reaction to this foolhardy emotion is increased aggression. Its because I have some sort of complex that makes it so hard for me to deal with it. That or I have something against it. Or both. Something happened to make me the way I am – cause and consequence. Everybody's a psychologist and even I'm enough of a shrink to realize that.

But if everybody has that much mental education schooling, everybody is that versed in the chemicals and ways of the mind and brain, shouldn't they all realize that they shouldn't blame me for what I've done because someone else made me this way? Shouldn't they punish that person for making me take up that whole 'cause and consequence' philosophy?

I feel like that's what she would say if she could speak. And I mean Katherine when I say 'her', not any of those others. And by 'others' I mean the other women that I've killed. Like my mother. Like the first stranger I ever harmed – that bank lady in the horrible taupe suit.

Katherine is making little gasps, little jumps within her chest that shake her entire frame. And she's shivering from the cooling water absorbed by her clothes from the tub and I can tell that I'm turning into that whipped puppy again as I think this.

I don't want to slap my knee like a country bumpkin and swear "Damn it!" because she's done this to me. That would be acknowledging that she's affected me more than I've already detailed. I don't want to rage against her and smash things against walls and throw heavy appliances out the window like in really annoying laundry commercials. That would accomplish everything the other method would, just in a more violent and satisfying manner.

I want to destroy her. Almost. The only thing I really know that I want concerning this little minx is something that almost scares me. But isn't my personal philosophy something along the lines of "nothing like bungee jumping with no rope"?

I strip off one of my gloves, wipe my palm on the side of my pant-covered thigh, and clean away one tear from her face with a single finger. It sits trembling on my fingertip for a flesh tender second before I put it to my lips to taste it.

You know, I think I told her the truth.

Hmm...

AN - So I really really like this chapter. I'm really proud that I could delve that deep into his head, and hopefully you guys don't think that it sucks...

Late March