AN: I'd like to take this time to recommend two of my favorite authors on this site, Twinings and 4ofCups. They're brilliant and you're missing out by not reading their stuff. More recommendations to come!
Sorry about the delay on this chapter, my college was showing The Dark Knight, and I don't care how soon it comes out on DVD, I'm not passing up the opportunity to see it on the big screen for free. Not that I ever had to pay for it during the summer. Working at a movie theater rocks. Too bad I never saw it in IMAX though.
Really, random, somewhat strange thought for the day: It occurred to me that my portrayal of the Joker is mostly based on the Nolanverse version, but also partly inspired by my older sister. Weirder than that? She takes it as a compliment. I wonder what that says about our upbringing.
Thanks for the reviews!
One more day. Twenty-four hours. One thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds. Minus however long it had taken him to do the math. Whatever, it all boiled down to the same thing. One day left. One more day until they met with his suppliers and got the chemicals necessary to make the laughing gas a reality. Which would lead to his freedom, if there was any justice in this world.
So of course, the minutes were crawling by about as quickly as a quadriplegic could run a marathon.
The past two weeks had been about as pleasant as he imagined the ninth circle of hell would be. Or worse. He'd tried to continue passing the time by sleeping through it, but the Joker had other ideas. For reasons Crane could not begin to fathom, every time during the day that he fell asleep, the clown would wake him up. They didn't even do anything once he'd been awakened either, not usually. Occasionally, there'd be a news broadcast about them or something similar, but those had dropped off immensely once time had gone on. Usually, he just woke him up and then went on his way. Crane guessed it was to annoy him, or some sort of 'if I'm bored and awake then you will be too' kind of logic. What every the reason, it was certainly not appreciated, given that it was hard enough for him to fall asleep in the first place and he had nothing much to do when he was awake besides stare at the walls and wish he was elsewhere.
Even staring at walls, however, was preferable to the times when Joker actually wanted him to do something. Those 'somethings' were always either extremely irritating or soul-scarring. There were only so many times he could play poker or watch the news, or tell the Joker what he thought of his newest pair of boxers, which thankfully had only happened once. Once was enough to last a lifetime.
To make things even more horrible, which he hadn't even thought was possible, the Joker seemed to have noticed Crane's little 'attracted-to-my-psychotic-captor" problem. And, as to be expected, he was exploiting the hell out of it. If he woke up one more time to find the clown hugging him or stroking his face, he might just die. Even that wasn't as traumatizing as the time the Joker had come in wearing only boxers—thus leading to the conversation about whether or not Crane liked them—however. If that happened again, he might just kill himself.
He sighed, wishing he had a watch, or some other method of telling time that didn't involve asking the Joker. He should be happy the clown wasn't bothering him, he knew that, and in a way he was. But it had also made him increasingly paranoid. Whatever the Joker was doing, it couldn't be good. And every second he wasn't being a nuisance could be time spent coming up with some truly horrible method of torment. Thus the rock and the hard place; leave the bedroom and be harassed, or stay and go mad from worry.
He ended up choosing the former. One of these days, curiosity really would be the death of him. He made his way down the hall, resisting the urge to run back and grab a pillow to use as a shield, trying not to look apprehensive. He had a theory that the Joker could smell fear, like a dog. It made no logical sense, but spending time around the clown was slowly destroying the logical part of his mind, he guessed.
Whatever he'd expected as he walked into the living room, it was not to find the Joker sprawled across the sofa, book in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. He'd have thought reading and the Joker would go together about as well as a Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland. "Hello, kitten."
"Is there a reason," he asked, sitting, "that you feel the need to make nicknames for everyone?"
"You're the only it bothers. Whaddya want me to call you?"
"You couldn't just call me Jonathan?"
"Nope," he said, after a drink. "Flattered as I am that you wanna be on a first name basis, I like annoying you too much."
Crane chose not to answer, turning his attention to the book in the clown's hand. Catch-22. Ah. He supposed he could see the Joker reading that. Now that he knew nothing ominous was going on, he wondered if he could leave the room without interference.
"Whatcha thinking about?"
Well, there was a no. There was no walking away from the Joker once he'd started a conversation. "Nothing." Perhaps if he was a boring enough conversationalist, Joker would lose interest.
"I betcha wanna know where I found boxers with the Bat logo on 'em, don'tcha?"
He'd never wanted to think about those again, actually. It was bad enough to know such a thing existed, worse that he'd found the Joker's thin, scarred body to be oddly beautiful. "Where?"
"They sell 'em all over Gotham, actually. T-shirts and hats and stuff, too. You'd think it would have stopped after the whole city got duped into thinking Batman was a killer, but no. If I were Bats, I'd sue." He lay the book down and drank again. "They tried doing it with me once, at one store."
"I take it you didn't appreciate that?"
"Not one bit. It's one thing to cash in on Batsy's image, quite another to try and turn me commercial."
"I'm betting you did more than give them a stern talking to."
Joker smirked. "There's probably still parts of 'em stuck in the carpets. I had a hammer and a lot of, uh, motivation."
"Lovely."
"I know, right?" He regarded Crane, his expression almost piteous. "I haven't see anyone try it with Scarecrow, sorry to say. I don't think you've made quite the impact that I have, Jonny."
"How tragic."
"Aw, don't be jealous." The Joker's hand was on top of his, his other hand swirling the glass, slightly. The whiskey inside spun, glinting off the light. "I mean, you try to be intimidating, it's not for lack of effort. It's just that most people aren't afraid of a guy with a potato sack on his head, scaredy cat."
"I turned half of the city into a hallucinating, panicking mess."
Joker shrugged. "And what've you done since then? Besides mix your toxins with drugs, which by the way, has gotta be the worst business scheme ever?"
"For your information, I did that to conduct research. The money was just a benefit."
"Whatever. The point is, for a guy that calls himself the master of fear, you're kinda not. At all." He ran his fingers over the scars on Crane's hand. "And I think you know that. Subconsciously, I think you want yourself to fail. Otherwise, you would've gotten a costume that would scare people over the age of five. And you wouldn't have sliced yourself up like this."
Crane stared. "As hilarious as your attempts to psychoanalyze me are, I feel I should inform you that the mask happens to work quite well when those looking at it are suffering the effects of my compound. And I didn't do this," he nodded to his hand, "in a fit of self-loathing. This was an accident, from when I was cleaning up the mirror you threw Harley into."
"Nice, try and blame your poor coping skills on me." He drew his hand down Crane's, stopping at the start of his nails, pushing down. It stung in places where the skin was raw from being bitten. He tried not to show it, that would just encourage the Joker to push harder. "Even if that was an accident, you still did all this."
"Biting my nails counts as self-mutilation now?"
"When you do it that much? Yeah." He lifted Crane's hand, scrutinizing it. "You're ruining your nail beds, by the way."
Fantastic. The Joker, of all people, starting in on his personal hygiene. While giving him a lecture on his failing at life. What next, a critique on his skills as a psychiatrist? Or maybe, if he was really unlucky, the clown would turn the conversation to Crane's sexual repression, or whatever he'd dubbed in the past week.
The Joker took another drink, and a way to make the time pass much, much faster, dawned on Crane. "Give me some of that," he said, pointing to the glass with his free hand.
Joker blinked. "What?"
"The whiskey. I want some."
"You're on antipsychotics. You've told me you can't drink with those."
"They just make the effects of alcohol quicker and more potent. As long as I don't drink to excess, it'll be fine." Of course, not being disposed to drinking, at least not often, Crane wasn't exactly sure what his threshold was, so it was very possible to reach excess without realizing it. Still, what harm could one glass do?
"Harley wouldn't like it." He was shaking his head, but with an indulgent smile, like a mother who caught her son with his hand in the cookie jar but didn't feel like punishing him for it.
"Harley's not here." If she was, you'd be bothering her, and then I wouldn't need to drink.
Joker looked as if he was considering which would be better sport; denying Crane and watching him get annoyed over it, or letting him drink and hoping he got hilariously drunk. After a moment's thought he nodded. "Fine. I'll be right back."
He disappeared into the kitchen, gone for long enough that Crane was considering stealing his book. When he finally reemerged, it was with a glass in one hand and his video camera in the other.
"What's that for?" Crane asked, apprehensive.
"Just in case." The Joker sat, handing the glass to his companion, who nervously took it.
"In case of what?"
"In case you're a total lightweight. 'Cause if you are, that'll be something I wanna get on tape."
"That's ridiculous. It's one glass. No one's enough of a lightweight to become spectacularly drunk off of one…" he trailed off, staring down at the glass in his hand as if he expected it to leap up and bite him. Come to think of it, the clown had taken his time in the kitchen. God only knew what could be in here. "You didn't put date rape drugs in this, did you?"
The Joker seemed genuinely taken aback, but then, most of his expressions seemed genuine. "Date rape drugs?" he repeated. "Jonny, I am shocked, shocked, that you could even think that. That's sick. Even I have standards, kitten. Yeah, like I'm gonna give my friend date rape drugs. It makes me sick that you'd even suggest it. Besides, I don't have any."
Crane remained unconvinced and un-drinking.
Joker sighed. "God, you're so paranoid. Here." He pulled the glass from Crane's hand, sipping and holding his mouth open afterward, to prove he'd really swallowed. "See?" He wiped the rim of the glass with his sleeve and handed it back. "There, I even cleaned it, so you won't get AIDS. Drink."
He started. "You have AIDS?"
"Yeah, and Ebola too. No, I don't have AIDS."
Crane gave the glass another dubious look. The Joker might be crazy enough to drug himself too, but he doubted it. That would inhibit his inability to work the camera. Well, if he was counting on Crane to becoming staggeringly drunk and make a complete fool of himself, he was going to be disappointed. Sure he was on antipsychotics, and not a drinker to begin with, but one glass was not going to make him do anything idiotic. At least, he highly doubted it.
What could go wrong? he asked himself, and drank.
AN: Jonathan's never heard of Murphy's Law, it seems.
If you haven't read Catch-22, you should. It's classic, hilarious, and just the sort of story I think the Joker would get a kick out of. And if it's Joker approved, you know it rocks.