AN: This chapter's a bit shorter than usual, sorry.

Thanks for the reviews!

"Are you insane?" Nigma had all but forgotten the Batman was in the room, completely focused on the detonator in the Joker's hand. "You'll kill us all, yourself included!"

"True, but." He paused, sucking on the scars from the inside. "In the words of Isaac Asimov, 'If my doctor told me I only had six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.'"

"What?" His hands were unfastening Jonathan, as he cast a glance back toward the doorway. Batman remained still, watching the situation, thus far without comment. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing." The Joker exhaled, rolling his eyes. "Fine, if you need it to make sense, how's 'I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter" work for you?"

"I think what he's sayin', Mistah J, is that he doesn't get why you wanna blow yourself up to begin with?" Harley offered, taking note of Nigma's actions and undoing Jonathan's other wrist strap. "It's because livin' isn't as important as making a good punch line, I think. Understand?"

He nodded, trying to control his panic long enough to figure out how to get off the bed without provoking an attack from the Batman. He didn't look to be in the best of moods—not that Nigma could blame him—and he'd rather not be close by if the man charged. Leaving the room was out of the question, doubtless, even with the Joker threatening to blow them to kingdom come, he was sure Batman wouldn't risk letting them break out. Moving as far as the next bed back could be allowable, but he had no idea how to bring the subject up at a moment tense as this.

"Batman?"

Nigma started a bit, before he could catch himself. Beside him, Harley did the same. He turned to regard Jonathan, who no longer looked seconds away from a heart attack. Not that he didn't still look horrified, just somewhat less. For the first time since entering, the Batman's eyes left the Joker, though he remained silent.

"C-can we move?" He tilted his head toward Nigma. "The two of us? Before you almost-but-not-kill him?" His eyes moved to the Joker, stiffening as if from fear of retribution, but the clown didn't move, his own gaze still locked on Batman, idly rolling the detonator in his hand.

"We're not involved in this," Nigma added. He'd think that was obvious, given that Jonathan had been restrained and his own response to the detonator, but for once if there was one person in Gotham he'd want to make sure he was entirely clear with, it was the Batman.

"Move."

"Thank you," Jonathan said, as Nigma half-pulled him up. He was still shaking rather badly, but his voice was more Scarecrow than his own as he spoke next. "This may not be the best time to bring it up, but I think you were wrong, about Arkham being helpful and all." He shot a pointed glance at the Joker. "Just a thought."

"You're not dying anymore."

"Actually," the Joker said, scars turning down at the corners of his mouth, eyes narrowing as he waved the detonator, "considering that I can kill us all at any moment, he kinda is, Bats."

The vigilante looked back to the Joker, the tension in the room so thick it was almost tangible. Nigma recalled the paradox he'd once heard the Joker state in regards to his relationship with the Batman: a unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. A paradox really, was a riddle, and this riddle had a number of possible answers; the force destroys the object, the object stops the force, or the force blows up itself, the object, and all the innocent—and not-so innocent—bystanders along with them. He was fine with either of the first options, but the third was less than desirable. Extremely less.

"What do you want?" Batman asked, his tone implying that he wanted nothing more than to pound the Joker's head against the wall until there was nothing left. Nigma fought back a shiver. And he'd thought the Bat was frightening when intimidating him. It was nothing compared to the air he was projecting now. No wonder Joker considered himself the Batman's arch nemesis.

"I wanted to see you again," Joker said, tossing the detonator from hand to hand, making Nigma go cold with his callousness. "Didn't disappoint, for once."

"You put hundreds of lives at stake for that?"

Joker made that hideous rasping sound that must pass for a laugh, in his mind. "I put lives at stake? How long have I been out, Batsy? How many people have you let die by letting me slip through your fingers, time and time again? For having only one rule, you twist it a hell of a lot, don'tcha?"

He didn't respond. Nigma wondered how he could respond to that, really. It wasn't as if the Joker didn't have a point. True, Batman hadn't killed those people, but as a result of inaction or failure, they'd still died. Actually, each death could be considered a direct result of Batman's (and the court system's) failure to put the Joker down. God knew therapy wasn't going to stop him, though a jury of his peers didn't seem to grasp that. When is a hero not a hero? he mused, as much as he could muse with the threat of death still so close by.

"What else do you want?" The else was as close to a shout as it could get, without being yelled. Nigma was able to keep his composure, but beside him Jonathan shuddered.

"Nothing." Joker's tone was singsong, legs swinging back and forth over the side of the bed. "Just you." Off the Batman's look, he giggled, straightened. "God, it's always business with you, isn't it? It's as if you don't care to see me at all. That hurts, you know?"

He got no answer. Nigma thought, for a second, that he saw a tremor run through the Bat's form, and that made it his heart race, even faster than the sight of the detonator had. He'd never managed to enrage the man this much, and least, not that he knew of, and he thanked his lucky stars for that. If it weren't for that one rule, the Joker would be lying dead in hundreds of pieces by now.

He might end up like that still, the way things were going.

"Loosen up, tight ass," Joker said, scars turning up. He was either too insane to know he was chancing death, or too insane to care. Nigma couldn't tell which, and he didn't particularly want to find out. What he wanted, more than anything at the moment, was to get as far from the clown as possible, before they were all killed. "Fine, if you insist on knowing exactly what's going on right this minute, I want you to take me back to my cell, okay?"

There was a pause, in which everyone—excluding the Batman, he seemed to be too angry to feel much shock—gaped at the Joker, Harley included. Nigma guessed her lover hadn't actually bothered to explain the plan to her before this moment. That, or he'd changed his mind halfway through. The choices were equally likely, as was just about anything when it came to the Joker.

"You want me," Batman repeated, voice unnervingly flat. "To take you back to your cell."

He nodded, hard enough to send his hair whipping violently around his face. "Yep. I'm giving myself in. Her, too," he added, glancing at Harley like an afterthought. "Though, I really don't care who takes her back. But you're gonna be my escort, or…" he looked away from his bewildered girlfriend to the detonator. "Kaboom."

Unbelievable. Nigma was torn between shock, and simple disgust. He'd risked all this because he wanted attention? Unless there was more to the plan, but he didn't want to consider that possibility. He wanted the Batman to drag the Joker to a padded cell, and leave him to rot. Or kill him. Or anything, as long as it got the detonator out of his hand.

"If you're giving yourself in, why do you need me here to do it?" His voice was still unnaturally steady, with an undercurrent of quiet rage. Nigma was reminded of a tightly coiled viper, right before it struck. He just hoped he was out of range of the fangs.

"'Cause you make me feel secure. Arkham's a scary place, you know, I don't like coming back without a familiar face to see me off." He paused, eyes breaking his staring match with the Batman to take in the rest of him. "Not that I can see all that much on your face…don't suppose I could persuade you to take it off? As a favor, you know, to—"

"Enough." Oh, if words could kill, that one would have been slow and excruciating. "Why do you want me here, really?"

"Broken record much?" Joker frowned again. "I mean, listen to yourself. Always all 'why this, why me, what do you want?' Communication's not one of your finer points, huh?"

"Joker—"

"Okay, okay, don't get your Kevlar in a bunch. What are you so angry about, anyway? I thought you liked it when criminals gave themselves up willingly." He tilted his head back in Jonathan's direction, without turning. "Certainly took advantage of the opportunity when that little whore let himself be caught, didn'tcha?"

Jonathan made a choked noise that Nigma realized, after a second, was supposed to be a laugh. It had all the humor of a funeral dirge, and made him wonder if his friend hadn't gone back over the edge. "You called me pathetic?" he asked, in a scathing tone Nigma hadn't heard from him in a long, long time.

Joker turned slightly, only enough to let himself see Jonathan in his peripheral vision, grasping tightly onto the detonator to dissuade the Bat from any sudden moves. With the brown of his eye blocking Nigma's view of the white from that angle, it blended in with the black paint, like a gaping void into his face. It was said eyes were the window to the soul, and for once in the Joker's case, that was accurate. Soulless. "Excuse me, Jonny?"

"You called me pathetic." Jonathan repeated. He was still shaking, though less so, no longer out of fear so much as the twitching he'd had ever since going off the pills. "For the c—for what I did. Look at yourself. You did all this, to make him pay attention to you for what, the three minutes it'll take to walk down the hall? That's pathetic. You're pathetic."

"Jonathan—" Nigma whispered. Great, so now the anger comes out. Wonderful timing.

"Oy, Casper," the Joker snapped, and Nigma couldn't be sure, but he thought his eyes narrowed. "This is between me and Batman. My nemesis. My other half. Mine. Say another word while we're talking, and the next rose I give you is gonna be shoved down your throat, got it?" He turned his head in their direction a bit more, glanced up and down Jonathan's body. "And what, can't even bring yourself to say cuuuuuutsss?" he drew the word out, inflection making it sound almost obscene. "Yeah, that's pathetic. Just. Like. You."

Jonathan reddened, breaking their eye contact. Joker smirked, and Harley looked back to find the Batman advancing. "Mistah J!"

He whirled back to face him, raising the detonator. "Ah ah, I wouldn't try anything if I were you. So what's it gonna be, Batsy? Are you taking me back to my cell, or are you gonna let yourself die, along with everyone else in this hellhole?"

There was a standoff, for a moment, in which the Batman and the Joker stared at each other, no words exchanged. The Batman's eyes were blazing with hatred, the Joker's with excitement. Nigma had the feeling the clown really didn't care about the outcome, that dying in such close proximity to the Bat—as a direct result of the man's failure to act—would be the high point of his life, if things were to go that way.

Then the Batman broke the moment, as Nigma knew he would. Still, it was a relief when it happened, to have it confirmed. "Fine. Give me the detonator."

Joker laughed. "Yeah right. If I do that, you'll just beat me unconscious and leave. Besides, it doesn't much matter if you've got mine, 'cause Harley-girl's got one too."

Everyone turned to regard Harley, who grinning, pulled a detonator from her boot.

"If I don't have a detonator, I have no reason to believe you won't set it off."

"I could give you my word as a Spaniard," Joker suggested, grin fading as the Batman remained stotic. "Look, Bats, I'm not gonna drag you all the way down here, get you to agree to what I want, and then blow you up. What sense does that make?"

"When have you ever made sense?"

"I always make sense. It's the rest of the world that's crazy." He noted the Batman's unchanged expression, sighed. "You'll be right next to me, the whole time. If I try anything, do you honestly think you would have much trouble, subduing little old me?"

Nigma had to force back a laugh himself, at that one. As if brute strength meant anything in a fight against the Joker. He'd seen the man fight, and despite his lack of balance or finesse, he fought dirty, and he fought well. The Batman seemed to feel the same, from his response.

"You could have any number of weapons hidden on your person."

"You're so paranoid." He shrugged off his jacked, holding a hand up in warning as Batman stepped forward. "Hold it, I'm not doing anything. Look, the jacket's gone, as is anything with it. Satisfied?"

"No."

"It figures," he huffed, then smirked, leaning back on his free hand. He licked his lips, tilted his head, and spread his legs across the mattress, one over Harley, like a stripper. An inexperienced one, who was trying to convey sexy and had no idea how to go about it. "Still not happy? Go ahead, search me."

He's dead, Nigma thought, disgusted, horrified, and unable to look away. He is so ridiculously dead.

AN: Joker's second death quote comes from Winston Churchill.

"Loosen up, tight ass!" is a quote from Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, and "I could give you my word as a Spaniard" is from The Princess Bride.

"Casper" refers to Casper the Friendly Ghost, one of the least frightening ghosts ever.