AN: I meant to have this chapter up at a reasonable time for once, but ended up watching TDK with my family instead of writing. Best movie-watching quote ever, by the way:
My Dad: So…now Harvey turns evil and becomes Half-Face?
Me: [snerk] Er…you mean Two-Face, right?
Thanks for the reviews!
"A bank," Scarecrow said, looking through the windows of the van to their intended target. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I hear on the news that you nearly had your head blown off during your last bank heist? Overlooked a manager with a shotgun, somehow?"
"Right." The Joker pulled a long, lethal looking knife from somewhere inside his vest. "Precisely why I chose such a place again."
"Run that by me once more?" Scarecrow asked, reflexively tapping the canister of laughing gas attached to him by wrist strap. If the Joker was planning on fighting mobsters today, that hadn't been covered under their agreement. Technically, the agreement had been with Jonathan, not his psychotic boyfriend, but Jonathan really should have mentioned it. They'd agreed that Scarecrow would be the one to test the laughing gas—he'd even agreed to observe the effects, not just stand there giggling—if he stopped trying to kill or maim the Joker at each new opportunity. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; he was sick of not being allowed out and none too eager to be sliced up again, but looking back it felt like Jonathan was shoving him under the restraints he'd always been so free from. Scarecrow didn't follow rules, and much as he could appreciate the Joker's fondness for sheer chaos, his need for revenge had barely lessened.
"Because it's exciting, scaredy cat. At as long as you took developing this new formula, I need some excitement."
"You try making precise measurements with bandages on your fingertips." He glowered down at the bright pink Band-Aids—the Power Rangers ones had fallen off and since been replaced with Hello Kitty, that the Joker had had on hand, God only knew why. "Remind me again what your obsession is with the nail biting thing?"
"It's all about control. Jonny bites his nails when he's nervous, see, instead of actually freaking out. It's one of his many little methods to keep composure. I wanna break his composure, thus the more methods I destroy, the closer I get."
"You know he's just started biting the skin around his nails, right?"
Joker shrugged. "I'll find a way to deal with that. Look, there's the signal."
Scarecrow turned to see Knox standing at the bank's entrance, a sign that the henchman inside had subdued all the staff and patrons. He'd been surprised when the Joker had agreed to this method of attack; methodical poisoning didn't seem the man's style, he'd expected an argument in favor of a way promoting more panic and disorder. Then again, the Joker didn't really have a style. As long as it was horrific, he seemed willing to go along with it.
"I still don't know about this," he said, as they stepped out of the van, mask clutched in his hand. Jonathan had had to make a new mask, as well as the toxin, as the bloodstains proved permanent in the old one. Sewing with bandaged fingers was also impossible, and Scarecrow could have killed Joker for all the needle stabbings he'd endured. He had to admit, though, that the moment when Joker had taken hold of Jonathan's hands and kissed the injuries had been nice. At least until lipstick got into the cuts. "This place is enormous. How do we know there aren't people your men have missed, holed up and waiting to attack?"
"You worry too much." Joker patted him on the shoulder, and Scarecrow only barely resisted the urge to slap him. "The phone lines are cut, and so's the silent alarm. And it's not a mob bank, so you don't have to be scared about employees with shotguns."
"I'm not afraid," he said. "I'd just rather not be killed."
Joker rolled his eyes, ushered Scarecrow in before him, Knox locking the doors behind. "So a psychiatrist, a clown, and a black guy walk into a bank…" They waited, but it became apparent he wasn't going to continue.
"Everyone's in the lobby, boss, just like you wanted," Knox informed him, keeping his distance from the pair. Scarecrow, remembering from that news report the fates of the henchmen in the last robbery, couldn't blame him.
"Fantastic." Joker took in the hostages, cowering on the floor, hands bound behind them with plasticuffs. "It's like an all you can kill buffet."
Putting Jonathan's glasses in his pocket, Scarecrow pulled the mask over his head. "You know, for the 'Clown Prince of Crime,' you're not all that funny."
"That's just your opinion, scare—wait, the Clown what?" Joker turned from their captives to regard him, expression amused.
"Clown Prince of Crime," he repeated. "What, you haven't heard that? You can't go a day without listening to a news report on yourself, but you don't even listen to what they call you?"
"It's not what they say that I care about, so much that I'm there." He smacked his lips, pondering. "Clown Prince of Crime…that's beautiful. Clown Prince, Dark Knight, it's like a regular fairy tale."
He scoffed. "One of the original Grimm kind, I take it, and not Disney?"
"Don't be jealous. It's not my fault if the media can't come up with good nicknames for you. You can be the princess, if you want."
Scarecrow gritted his teeth. Can I please test the laughing gas on him? He wouldn't mind, he likes laughing.
No, Jonathan said, firmly, from the back of his mind.
Oh, come on. I won't even hit him full force. It'll barely hurt him.
Absolutely not.
Killjoy. He sighed and went back to the conversation at hand. "Shouldn't Harley be the princess?"
"It's a polygamous kingdom. I can have as many princesses as I want."
"Of course." He knelt down before the nearest hostage, taking a moment to enjoy her tears and whimpering, then raised his wrist and blasted the toxin. The effect was almost immediate; a second or so after inhaling, she collapsed to the ground, the screams of the surrounding captives not enough to drown out her laughter. Her face stretched wide, though not wide enough to rip, and he watched, entertained, until her heart gave out a few minutes later and she went limp, light draining from her eyes. The smile didn't stay, regrettably. Well, maybe the subject had been an anomaly, and it would remain on others. Only one way to find out.
Research, he found, as he moved down the line, wasn't so bad. It was so tempting, so easy to start a massacre, moving from victim to victim without looking back, but the effects were every bit as entertaining, even the ones with unexpected results. Those…well, they weren't fun, exactly, but they were intriguing. Watching the subtle differences from subject to subject, he could see why Jonathan got so involved in this stage of the experiments. For all his talk on the impact on humanity and the importance of understanding fear, Scarecrow knew his motivations weren't so complex as to understand the emotion or so noble as to understand fear to remove it entirely. Really, his alter ego enjoyed it every bit as much as he did, and for the simple pleasure of terrifying others, nothing more.
"Hey, scaredy cat," Joker called, breaking him from his thoughts. "None of the dead ones are still smiling."
"I can see that," he said, standing over a victim whose face had ripped, though only slightly. He poked at the tattered flesh with the toe of his shoe, wondering what made this man's reaction more adverse than the others. Pity he'd never know; he doubted the Joker would let him drag corpses home for further study.
"What's that mean?"
"That we'll have to alter the compound again, obviously."
"More waiting?" He wasn't facing the Joker, but he could tell from the sulky tone in the clown's voice that he was pouting. "And I'll have nothing to do the whole time."
"No, nothing at all," he said, spraying another. "Just watching yourself on the news, planning your next attack, thinking of ways to get Batman's attention, harassing myself and your men, or any number of hobbies in you could take up. You're right, nothing to do. How perfectly dreadful."
"Leave the humor to me, friend. I'm better at it."
"Of course." They go on in silence for some time, Scarecrow poisoning and Joker laughing at the dying in their final moments, or holding conversations with the corpses. His men returned from the vaults carrying bags filled with money, and watched silence, either in awe or from terror. Maybe even detachment, given how many of them were insane and the rest possibly desensitized. Knox seemed to be entertained, at least as far as Scarecrow saw in the glance he shot him.
He reached the end of the line, waiting until the hostage stopped breathing before turning to Joker, who was currently holding an animate if one-sided conversation with the body of an elderly woman about where his scars had come from. This time the story seemed to involve a woodshop class project gone horribly awry. The ghost of a smile twitched on Scarecrow's face, beneath the burlap. Infuriating as the clown may be, he was amusing in a twisted, idiotic way. "Joker?"
"So then the table saw slips and—what, Scarecrow?"
"I'm through here."
"Ah." He straightened up, glancing down at the body. "Well, sorry to rush, but places to be, lives to destroy, that sort of thing." He turned away, walking off toward the men's room. "Go ahead and load up the van, men, I'll be right out—"
The thought of the Joker being slammed in the face with a metal trashcan by a patron who'd be hiding in the restroom, which the henchmen had apparently been too stupid to check, was highly amusing. Seeing it in execution, however, was not. Well, maybe for a moment, but when he fell to the floor, red running down his face that definitely wasn't lipstick, things became decidedly darker.
Later on he would assure himself that he was not acting out of concern; merely outrage that someone other than himself cause the Joker injury. At the moment, though, he moved without thinking, grabbing the nearest henchman and shoving him full force at the Joker's assailant, knocking them both to the floor. He closed the space between them so quickly he wasn't even sure how he'd gotten there, feet flying out into the man's ribs, feeling the crunch of bone over and over but not stopping. He was too enraged to even enjoy the screaming, and he kept on long after the body he was kicking had ceased to function, screaming and lashing out until he felt a hand on the collar of his shirt, dragging him away.
The mask was pulled off his face, and whatever idiot had done that was lucky not to be in his line of sight, or they'd be sucking laughing gas faster than they could say "I'm fucked."
"Jonathan. Breathe."
"Knox?"
"He's dead," Knox said, releasing Scarecrow. "Kicking him isn't helping the boss. You're the doctor here, see if he's okay."
Scarecrow nodded, and knelt beside the Joker, who laid unmoving, eyes closed. The blood on his face came from his nose, bloodied but not broken, at least, not as far as he could see. There was a lot of blood, mixing with the face paint to make the surrounding white a pale pink, but not enough to be worrisome, and it seemed the bleeding had stopped. "Joker?"
No response. Scarecrow frowned, trying to ignore the flutter of anxiety in his stomach. Had he passed out from pain? No, that was ridiculous, Joker took blows far worse than this all the time without so much as a whimper. Maybe he'd hit his head on the floor hard enough to faint, but he hadn't seemed to have fallen that hard. Gingerly he reached out, touching the Joker's shoulder. "Joker? Get up."
Still nothing. The anxiety was now impossible to ignore, and shifting into outright fear. "Joker!" What the hell had happened? What if the hit knocked something loose inside his brain, caused a concussion or skull fracture, and the clown would never regain consciousness? "Joker! Damn it, get up!"
A faint flutter of movement from the Joker's lips, a whisper of sound.
Scarecrow leaned closer. "What?"
"Kiss me." It was almost inaudible.
He stared, for a moment too stunned to be angry. "The hell?"
"Kiss me. Fairy tales, remember? Kissing heals all."
The moment was over. "You son of a bitch!" He slapped the Joker's face, blood and paint coming off on his hand. "I was worried sick, idiot! Why the hell would you do that?"
"I wanted to be sure you cared." He still hadn't opened his eyes, lying there like a dead thing, save for the movements of his mouth. "Jonny loves me, but you, I wasn't sure on. Now kiss me."
Scarecrow glared, feeling relief that the other wasn't seriously hurt and hating himself for feeling it. "Princesses don't do the kissing, stupid. They're the one the kissing saves."
Joker sighed, opening his eyes. He sat up slowly, until the two were eye to eye, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand. "I was trying to overcome gender stereotypes, this being the twenty-first century and all. But fine, if that's how you wanna play, then we'll do it like this."
"Like wha—" Scarecrow began, when suddenly he was on the floor, Joker lying on top of him, hands digging into his arms.
"Like this, princess." Their lips met, before the security cameras, corpses, henchmen, and all, and to Scarecrow's amazement and self-loathing, he wasn't too annoyed by it.
AN: Ever read Peter Pan? The scene where Wendy pretends to be dead until the boys build her a house was the inspiration for the ending bit.