AN: Sorry about the delay, got a bit distracted with work and Christmas and whatnot. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday, I know I did. In regards to the chapter, I'm not really sure where these characters came from, other than that I wanted to portray the type of people I thought the Joker would attract. The 'knock someone over and give them a cookie' bit was inspired by a flashback in the fantastic movie Sybil, where Sybil's mother does the same to her, only on stairs. It seemed a Jokery thing to do.

In regards to Jackie—it's a variant on what's commonly thought to be his name, and something he likely made up on the spot when they asked.

Thanks for the reviews!

"I am begging you," Jonathan said, teeth clenched as he felt what little remained of his dignity fall to pieces. "Just take me home. If I bleed out, I bleed out. I've lived a good life, and you've got the toxin now, even if it doesn't work exactly as planned. I only ask that you cremate my body."

"I'm going to assume that you're talking this way because of blood loss," Joker said, with a glance at the bloodstained mask Jonathan was holding against the cut. "'Cause if you're actually suicidal, that's no fun at all."

"All right, you don't even have to cremate the body. You can defile it in any way you want, just turn the car around."

"Nice try." He accelerated, grinning at his companion's aghast expression. "Necrophiles fuck dead people because they're afraid of being rejected by a living partner. I fear nothing. So that fails as incentive. Really, kitten, how didya become a psychiatrist if you don't things like that?"

Jonathan buried his face in his free hand.

"What are you so scared of, anyway? You have a bad experience with a doctor once or something?"

"No. But I've heard stories." He shivered.

"Like what?"

"Back in college, I had a friend who interned at an ER. One night, he said they brought in a girl who'd had a failed attempt at an abortion. I don't know if she was too poor to afford a legitimate one, or what, but she'd tried to do it herself with a broken glass bottle."

Joker winced. "What, she didn't have any coat hangers?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Well, she came in, bleeding and unconscious, with what they thought was the umbilical cord hanging out. Which turned out to be part of her intestines."

"God."

"And that is why I don't like the idea of letting anyone but a trained professional treating me for anything."

"You're not getting an abortion, Jonny." He put his hand on Jonathan's shoulder, making his driving even more erratic than usual. "We're talking stitches here. It's not brain surgery."

"I would still rather bleed to death."

"It would be a long and painful process. You know that, right?"

"For a while. But the final stage of blood loss is euphoria."

"So not gonna happen." He took his hand off Jonathan, putting the car in park. "We're here, so the debate's over. Think you can walk?"

"I'm not moving."

"Well, then I'm moving you." He was over the Joker's shoulder in seconds, watching cracked asphalt move by as the clown walked.

"Let me down."

"No, I don't think I will."

I hate my life. He watched from under the Joker's arm as they approached an apartment building that looked about twelve seconds from collapsing. Lovely. He was going to die from infected stitches going septic, a long terrible process, just because the Joker was too self-centered to take him back injured. A real friend would let me bleed out.

Joker knocked, in a strange pattern Jonathan thought might be the rhythm of a song. "Is that a secret code?"

"No. I just thinking knocking the normal way is boring."

"Maybe they're not home," he offered, without much hope.

"It's been like five seconds." The door opened as he spoke. Jonathan, from his position upside down and behind the Joker's body, couldn't see of the figure in the doorway, beyond that it was a young woman with long hair. He could, however, perfectly hear the near ear-piercing shriek she let out.

"Jackie!"

"Jackie?" Jonathan asked, and the Joker didn't have time to answer before the girl collided into them. He was almost dropped. "Ow."

"Watch it, honey, I'm carrying something breakable."

"Jackie, how have you been? Are you all right? Where's Harley? Is that Harley?" She tapped Jonathan's shoe. "Doesn't look like Harley."

"It isn't." There was a blur of motion, and Jonathan found himself in Joker's arms, staring up at a girl in her early twenties, brown hair and eyes. "This is Jonathan. Jonathan, this is Abigail."

"Your name is Jackie?" he asked, dazed.

"I dunno. It could be."

"He's adorable." She reached out, stroking his bloody hair.

"Hey. Jonathan's my friend." Joker took a step back. "And he's injured. Is your brother around?"

"Yeah. Come on in." She stepped through the door. "Hey, Adrian?"

"Joker, who are these people?" Jonathan asked, head aching with each step the clown took.

"Friends."

"You have friends?"

"Sorta. It's fine, all will be explained."

Abigail was over top of him again, accompanied by two new faces; one, a man in his late twenties with the same curly dark hair she had, and another, a girl identical to Abigail, aside from shorter hair and what appeared to be bright turquoise hearing aids in either ear. "What happened to him?" the man, Adrian, he assumed, asked, running a hand over the mask held against the injury.

"Little accident with some broken glass."

"You can never have a normal date, can you?" Before Jonathan could protest, he moved his hand, turning away. "Bring him into the dining room."

"Right. Hey, Anika."

The short haired girl was standing above him. "Yeah?" She spoke a little too loudly, the word making Jonathan's head pound.

"Get the blood off his glasses, would you?"

"Hey—" They were off. "I need those."

"You'll get 'em back." She patted him on the shoulder and was off.

"Joker, this is unacceptable."

"You just don't like people, that's your problem."

He was put down on a chair, Joker's hands still on his shoulders as if he didn't trust him not to fall over. A moment later Abigail—or he assumed it was Abigail anyway, she appeared to be about the same height and wearing the same colors the woman had had—entered, placing something on the table in front of him. By the sound it made upon contact it was heavy, and by the scent it was cookies.

"They're chocolate chip," she said. "I know you like the sugar ones better, but we didn't have any around. We can make some, if you think you'll be here long enough."

That's it, the world has officially gone mad, Jonathan thought, his headache now from confusion more than the injury. Joker having a back alley doctor, that was one thing. Most criminals did; after all, who else would fix you up after a bullet wound without asking questions or filing incident reports? Joker having friends, on the other hand, friends who called him by what could be his first name—the idea of the Joker having a name was also oddly off-putting—and baked him cookies, that was just insane. Try as he might, he couldn't make heads or tails of it. He was vaguely aware that Joker was speaking and listened, hoping to hear something that would make sense of this.

"No, don't worry about it. Hey, I'm gonna use your refrigerator. I've got ice cream I'd rather not have destroyed."

Well, that's helpful. "You got ice cream?"

"Yeah. It's, uh, fudge ripple, and you better enjoy after all the trouble I went through."

"After what y—excuse me? Who got his head cut open, again?"

"That was your own fault for being an idiot. Who turns their back on a hostage?"

"You had hostages?" Abigail asked. He couldn't make out her expression, but her voice sounded interested and not the least bit alarmed. "What were you up to this time, Jackie?"

"Nothing much. Stealing food, making out in front of security cameras, testing poisons, that sort of thing."

"Sounds fun."

"It was."

"All right, I've got everything." Adrian's voice, unless there was another man in the apartment he hadn't seen yet. Something else was placed on the table, and then a light was shining in his eyes, bright and painful. "Don't blink," he was instructed as his eyes narrowed, "let me see." Another moment, and the light was gone. "Do you know where you are, Jonathan?"

He tried shrugged, then realized it didn't work with the Joker's hands on his shoulders. "An apartment, somewhere in the Narrows. I wasn't paying attention on the drive over."

"Do you remember what you were doing before you got hurt?"

"Yes."

"How's your coordination? Do you think you could walk if you needed to, or do you feel too dizzy or tired?"

"I could walk." There was a hand on his wrist, suddenly, feeling his pulse. Startled, he tried pulling back, only to feel the grip tighten.

"It's all right." The hand was gone. "There aren't any signs of severe blood loss or a concussion."

"Where would you get blood," he asked, unsure he wanted to know the answer, "if there was?"

"We're all type O," Abigail said.

"Universal donor," Adrian explained. Jonathan had already known that, but the idea of the three draining each other's blood to treat patients made him shudder.

"Here, Jonathan." Another voice, a loud one. Anika. He felt his glasses being pressed against his hands and put them on, the room snapping into focus. Any previous conceptions about being treated in a filthy, badly-constructed shack went out of his head at once. Despite the apartment's outward appearance, the inside was not only clean, but suggestive of wealth. Looking over the doctor and women—who he assumed were Adrian's sisters, given the resemblance and blood type—the idea was enforced. Their clothes seemed to be custom, fitting them perfectly.

Anika was still smiling down at him. "Do you need anything else?"

He shook his aching head as he tried to puzzle out this latest conundrum. If they were wealthy, why run an illegal operation to begin with? Anika turned to walk away, crashing to the ground a moment later. He looked down to see her sprawled on the floor, the Joker's foot sticking out from the side of Jonathan's chair. She stared up at the clown. "You tripped me."

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Why not?" He held out his hand, one of the cookies in it, and to Jonathan's ever growing confusion, she took it without question or anger, getting back to her feet and walking to another chair, without a word, biting into the cookie.

The hell? This made no sense, no sense at all. Why were these people allowing a psychopath into their home? They had money, clearly, they didn't need to be doing this, and if they'd been threatened into it, Joker was showing none of his usual malice. The most he'd done was trip the girl, and she didn't even seem to care. They weren't just tolerating him either, they were being friendly. Why? "How do you know the Joker?" he asked, curiosity getting the best of him.

"Long story," Adrian said, threading a needle with surgical twine.

"I've got nowhere to go."

"I'll tell it," Abigail said, straightening. "It all began the night the Scarecrow's fear gas was unleashed on the city. Where you there then? You know what I'm talking about?"

Joker snorted. "Of course he does. This is the Scarecrow."

There was a pause, all three siblings turning to stare at Jonathan. He was starting to become extremely unnerved by the silence, when the sisters jumped up, running toward his chair. He ducked, raising his arms to protect himself, which did nothing to prevent the girls from hugging him. Even more unnerving. "Er…what—"

"Thank you so much!"

"You're responsible for the best day of our lives."

"None of it could have happened without you!"

"Uh…okay?"

"You're scaring him," Adrian said, standing. "Besides, you're in my way. I can't stitch him with you there."

"Sorry." They let go, heading back to their chairs.

What the fuck?

"Anyway," Abigail continued, as if she hadn't been a part of the disruption to begin with. "Anika and I were here when the poison was released, but we weren't hit with the full force of it, because we were smart enough to realize that when steam or whatever it was starting pouring out of all the taps, we should probably get anyway from it. We were holed up in the living room with the doors closed and towels plugging up the cracks, so we weren't badly affected by the stuff."

"This," said Adrian, from behind Jonathan, "is going to sting. Sorry." He felt the needle push into his skin and winced.

"Ow."

"We've got vodka," said Anika, "if you need a drink."

"I don't drink."

"Do you want some hot chocolate or anything?"

"No thanks."

"The point is, we weren't affected, but everyone around us was. So this guy stumbles into our apartment, tripping on your toxin—"

"He broke down the door. Completely shattered it."

"I'm telling the story, Ani! Anyway, he managed to break his way into the living room, and at that time we were poor, and only had one gun, which was with Adrian at the time, and Adrian wasn't in. So this psychopath grabbed hold of Anika and started slamming her head into a wall, right?" Abigail pointed through to the next room, a spot on the wall that looked perfectly unharmed to Jonathan. "Well, you can't see it now, but there used to be a huge dent there. We had it fixed. So I ran into the dining room to get a chair, you know, to hit him over the head with, and I guess I breathed in a little too much of your drug on the trip because I got a little overenthusiastic when I hit him."

"She bashed his brains out," Anika added. "It took us like a week to clean it all out of the carpet."

"I did what had to be done. So Anika fell over, unconscious with blood pouring out of her ears—"

"Never fully healed." Anika pointed to the hearing aids, every bit as stoic as she'd been when the Joker tripped her. Somehow, Jonathan realized, that was worse than if she'd been emotional.

"This was the best day of your life how?" he asked.

"I'm getting to that. Jackie, do you want to tell the next part? Seeing as how I wasn't there?"

"Thought you'd never ask. See, I'd been running around the Narrows that night wreaking havoc, as usual, but on this particular night more people were inclined to, uh, fight back, thanks to your toxin, Jonny. Through a series of events that I'd rather not discuss, I found myself lying on the sidewalk, stabbed and bleeding out. And all of a sudden, Adrian was standing over me, and said—tell him what you said, Adrian, it was priceless."

"Sir, you appear to be injured," Adrian said, deadpan, still stitching. "Are you in need of assistance?"

"Right. Like I said, priceless. And I was lying there, thinking 'Well, thanks, Captain Obvious,' and wondering if it was worth the effort to pull out my gun and blow off this idiot's head. The only reason I didn't is because the next thing he said was that he would save me if I paid him—some ludicrous amount, I can't even remember it anymore. But it was insane. We're talking really obscene here. Well, uh, such avarice amidst such panic and destruction seemed interesting enough to me to save his life."

"And it happened that he was carrying that ludicrous amount, so I saved his," Adrian explained, tugging on the thread. Jonathan winced again.

"So I stopped the bleeding as best I could there and brought him back to the apartment to find Anika half dead on the floor and Abigail sewing, and—"

"Sewing?" Jonathan repeated.

Abigail nodded. "I'd got the bleeding stopped, but I'm not doctor, so I figured she was better off without my help. I'd been making a skirt before all the madness started, so I went back to that. Anyway, Jackie got stitched up, and then Adrian went to help Anika, and Jackie snuck up behind me, watched for a few minutes, and said, 'Hey girlie, I want you to make suit for me.'"

So that's where it came from. "Wait, you agreed to make an outfit for some stranger you hadn't known for five minutes?"

"Not at first, of course not." She wrinkled her nose as if the idea was somehow more ridiculous than any of the other mad things she'd said so far. "I mean, I didn't know this guy, and I don't make things for strangers. Besides, fabric is expensive, if you want it to look good, and I had no idea if this guy'd actually pay for it. So I said, 'Hell no,' and the next thing I know, Jackie's hands were around my throat and I was against the wall, and he said—"

"It wasn't a request, you little bitch," Joker supplied.

"Right." Her smile was as genuine as ever. What in God's name is wrong with these people? "Anyway, Adrian had his gun out by this point, but instead of firing, he said that I would make it, but it was going to cost an obscene amount again. And Jackie said okay and let me down, so Adrian put the gun away. And that was the beginning of this beautiful friendship."

"So that's the reason the apartment looks so nice?"

"Yeah."

"And you weren't at all concerned when the man you made a suit for showed up on the news torturing people?"

"Wasn't happening to us," Anika said, shrugging.

"And he gave us money," Abigail added.

"And back alley doctors are accustomed to deal with criminals in the first place."

True. But the Joker was his own class of criminal entirely. If there was ever a living, breathing definition of the word 'amoral,' he imagined it would be this family.

"Aren't they fantastic?" Joker asked, as if reading his mind. "The true neutral to my chaotic evil. It balances things out."

Jonathan stared. "The what?"

"Character alignments. He plays Dungeons and Dragons with us sometimes," Anika explained.

Jonathan tried to picture that and realized he did not want to picture it. The day he envisioned the Joker fighting off a horde of orcs would be the day his mind broke. Or broke the rest of the way, anyway.

"Done," Adrian said, and Jonathan heard the click of scissors behind his head.

"Fantastic." Joker reached into his coat and pulled out a stack of money, placing it on the table. "I think that should cover it."

"Indeed."

"Well then," and his hands were on Jonathan, pulling him up, "we should be off."

"Already?" the girls spoke together, pouting.

"Do you have to?"

"We were just about to play Monopoly. Sure you don't want to stay?"

"Tempting, but no. Thanks for the offer."

To Jonathan's wonder, they actually hugged the clown goodbye.

"How do you do that?" he asked, as they were driving back.

"Do what?"

"You seem to have a talent for attracting people messed up enough to find no fault with your actions, or even go along with them. And it seems to take no effort on your part. It's as if you're the Pied Piper of Madness or something ridiculous."

He laughed. "I like that. I dunno, I guess I just have good people skills."

"It's still incredible. Almost as incredible as the fact that you have what could be considered friends."

"What's so surprising about that? I'm charismatic."

"You're also homicidal. I find it strange that you haven't killed them yet."

"What, you wanna do it?" Joker asked, decelerating. "We can turn around now, if you wanna test the laughing gas on them."

"No! God." He supposed it was only to be expected. The Joker didn't have friends, not really. He might be in fear for his own life if he didn't know that the Joker found him entertaining. Actually, that only alleviated the fear a bit. "Tell me, do you value life at all? Besides Batman's and your own?"

He licked his lips. "Not really. Other people don't count."

"Don't count?" Jonathan repeated. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning we're the only two that matter. The only, uh, 'real' people, so to speak. Everyone else is so boring in comparison, there may as well not be a world without us."

"Boring? I thought you found me entertaining?"

"Well, yeah, but not on the same level as Bats. See Jonny, when it comes down to it, most people's minds are like ribbons. A boring straight line. Sure, you can get it all knotted up and twisted, maybe even ripped, but in the end it can be untangled. Look long enough and you can see everyone's problem and exactly how to fix it, but they never listen when you tell 'em."

"Everyone?" Grandiose sense of self worth, yet another sign that the man was a sociopath.

"Take yourself, for example. It's not hard to see that your whole deal is a mix of fear of people and rejection, and uh, need for attention. That, and a desire to treat others the way you've been treated."

"I don't have a need for attention!"

"Like hell you don't. I've seen your files. Your mother never gave you any, so you're obsessed with being important. That's why you invented the Scarecrow persona, to lord over your experiments, to make 'em remember you. Tell me, why'd you need a Scarecrow mask? What, a normal gas mask wouldn't have worked? No, it wasn't dramatic enough, and it didn't have that sweet little irony of using the thing the other kids made fun of you for looking like, right?"

He sighed. "Do not try to psychoanalyze me. You're not good at it."

"If I wasn't good at it, you wouldn't be so defensive."

"What's your mind then, if everyone else's is the oh so predictable ribbon?"

"It's a Moebius strip."

"So it can't be untangled, then?"

"Yeah."

A fitting metaphor, Jonathan supposed.

He sucked the last bit of fudge ripple from his spoon, refusing to admit to himself that it tasted good. Very good. Beside him sat the Joker with his own bowl, flipping through the stations. "Hey, look!"

He felt the clown's elbow collide with his ribs, and turned to regard the television. The station was GCN, and the image on screen was currently a grainy still taking from the store's security cameras. It was of the pair locking lips. "Christ." He could feel his face burning at once. Joker wouldn't care, he knew, Joker would be thought of as frightening no matter what, but there went any respect he'd have managed to gain, right out the window. It was too much. He leaned against the pillows and felt himself give up, sink into himself. Let someone else deal with the world right now, he'd had enough crap for the day.

Joker's was over his. "Great, isn't it? Let's see the Batman ignore this." It didn't seem worth responding to, but he noticed the faint glimmer of ice cream on the man's lips and leaned forward, licking it off, running his tongue over one scar, then across the other, before coming back to the middle. There he worked his tongue into the Joker's mouth, taking his friend by the head and slowly moving him closer, so the kiss could be deeper, more passionate. God knew he could do with some compassion right now, but since that was unlikely coming from the Joker, passion would have to substitute. Besides, it was hot.

"Whoa." Joker's eyes widened when they pulled back for air. "Not that I'm complaining, Jonny, but what brought that about?"

He smirked. So Mr. I-Know-Everything-About-Everyone-Forever couldn't tell the difference between them. It was fine, he didn't mind surprising him. "Dr. Crane isn't here right now. But if you'd like to make an appointment?"

He watched those still-wide eyes light up with comprehension. It was amusing. "Scarecrow?"

More than amusing. He couldn't help but giggle as he raised one hand and gave a small wave. "Hi." Oh, this was going to be so much fun.