AN: To answer dewdiamond101's question, Murphy's Law states that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

Next chapter will be straight back into the hack and slay goodness, I promise. This, however, refused to go away until I wrote it, so here it is. Speaking of things that refused to go away, my brain nagged me until I illustrated Joker's imaging Jonathan as a princess today. It's really rushed, there's no shading, inconsistent coloring, and totally lack of quality (look at the way I draw hands, or rather, don't draw them) but since I'm a sadist I put it online anyway, and should you choose to see it, just copy the following into your address bar and remove the spaces (be sure to have Brain Bleach on hand): http: // i158. photobucket. com/ albums/ t92/ Lauralot/ princess. jpg This is what happens when I have access to colored pencils, people.

Oh, and upon watching TDK again, I realized where my mental image of Knox came from. Remember Joker's first scar story? His henchman in that scene with the braids who smiles and nods after one of Joker's lines, that's Knox.

Thanks for the reviews!

"You're bleeding again," Jonathan informed Joker, who sat up in the bed beside him, blood dripping from his nose. "What did you do, crash into the headboard in your sleep?"

"Possibly. Something that reopened it, anyway." To Jonathan's disgust, he licked off the blood rather than wiping it away.

"Is it painful?"

"Nah. I like how it feels."

Jonathan stared. "I'm sorry, you find pain to be pleasurable?" He'd always assumed that the Joker laughed at his injuries out of irreverence, not actual enjoyment.

"Yeah. What's wrong with that?"

He shook his head. "You really are crazy."

"Am not. Excuse me for being a little different." Joker turned his gaze away, his eyes seemingly focused on something far off, though he wasn't looking at anything in particular. "Look, I don't remember much of my life. Maybe there was a lot of pain in it. Maybe that's why I don't remember, because it hurts too much. Maybe the hurting got so bad I needed it to feel good to be able to survive. That doesn't make me crazy."

Jonathan moved closer to him, their lips meeting. He ignored the coppery taste in his mouth when he pulled back. "I'm sorry."

He waved a hand. "It's fine. And it could be that all that's a bunch of crap and my brain's just wired funny. Or I'm a masochist." He wiped away blood again, glancing down at his stained hand. "I'm gonna go take a bath. Wanna come?"

"No."

"Aw." He did wipe the blood away then, from the spots his tongue couldn't reach. "I thought you got over the water thing."

"I got over my dislike of rain, which is completely different. And anyway, I'm not saying no out of a phobia, I'm saying no because lying in a bath of our combined filth doesn't appeal to me."

"I'll find a way to make it appealing," Joker said, standing and stretching in the doorway like a cat. "Just you wait."

"Oh, be still my beating heart," he muttered, watching the clown disappear down the hall. As the minutes ticked by, he decided that whatever the clown was planning regarding baths, he wasn't going to enact it today. Bored, he picked up the remote from the end of the bed and switched on the television, flipping through the stations.

He wasn't looking for anything good, or anything at all, really. Just background noise for when he went back to work on the toxin. Besides, even if he found anything interesting, the Joker would just switch it to the news when he came back. No, he only needed something not too loud or obnoxious, and as soon as he found that, things would be good. Unfortunately, it being the week of Halloween, most of what he flipped through seemed likely to arouse anger. Stupid marathons of so-called "horror" films that were little more than gore effect showcases. That wasn't fear, it was idiotic. But it pandered to the masses, so that's what every station seemed to hold.

Until, that is, one made him flip back, the split second he'd seen catching his eye. Black and white, a woman dressed in '40s clothing—Simone Simon, or at least, that's what he thought the actress was named—sketching a panther. I know this one, he thought, all concerns about research and experimentation going out of his head as he sat, transfixed.

He hadn't moved half an hour later, when Joker returned to the room, drying off his hair, leaving green streaks of dye on the towels. "What are you watching?" he asked, sitting beside him.

"Cat People."

For a moment Joker stared from Jonathan to the screen, head tilted. Then abruptly broke into laughter.

"What?"

"Whaddya mean, what? Cat People, kitten, it's funny. Not to mention it sounds like a bad sci fi flick and you're watching it like it's Citizen Kane."

"It's fantastic," he said, mildly annoyed. "It's regarded as a classic horror film. It's about a woman—" he pointed to her character, "who's afraid that if she consummates her marriage, she'll turn into a cat."

"Jonny, that is possibly even dumber than the night-gaunt thing."

"I mean a big cat. Like a panther. It's not really about cats, anyway, so much as the fear of sexuality."

Joker snorted. "Now it's even more up your alley."

"Oh, shut up."

He stretched out on the bed, propped up on his elbows. "Tell me, you ever watch normal television? Like, stuff that people have actually heard of?"

"Yes."

"Such as?"

Don't admit that you watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer, you'll never live it down, he instructed himself, thinking it over. "Er…The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents—"

"Anything not meant to be scary?"

He paused. That was harder. "Jam?"

"The hell's that?"

"Six episode British comedy show. I've got it on DVD. It's a sketch show."

"Like SNL?"

"Er…sort of. Only, more unsettling." He paused, thinking of how to explain it. "Dead baby comedy, you could say. In some cases, literally."

Joker raised an eyebrow. "Eh?"

"One of the skits was about a woman calling a plumber because her baby had died. She reasoned that since organs were essentially a series of tubes, the plumber ought to be able to fix it. He rewired the house's central heating through the corpse. The mother was happy."

"This is comedy? I mean, mainstream comedy, not things that only people like you and I watch?" he asked, sitting up.

"It was controversial. I think you'd enjoy it, though. They made a corpse play a saxophone in another skit by pumping on its chest."

"Yeah, that's entertaining. But you know what?" he stood, making his way to the shelf beside the television, covered in DVDs. "We're gonna watch something normal, for once."

"But I like this movie," Jonathan protested, uninterested in the movies the apartment's previous tenants had left behind. He wondered if the owners had been killed, or only scared off.

"Too bad. I'm not watching movies about asexual kittens, I've got enough of that as is. Hey!" He brightened. "Jonny, they've got The Wizard of Oz!"

"So?"

"So?" Joker repeated, incredulous. He spun around, shoving the DVD case in Jonathan's face. "So it's incredible! Not to mention the movie that inspired your namesake, scaredy cat."

"I didn't name myself after that scarecrow." Jonathan rolled his eyes, examined the case. "Aren't those shoes the wrong color?"

Joker glanced at the case, then back at his companion. "What?"

"Aren't they supposed to be silver?" He hadn't heard the story in a long, long time, but he was fairly certain on that.

"Only in the boo—wait, have you not seen the movie?" Joker asked, suddenly looking more serious than Jonathan had ever seen him.

"I haven't seen either."

"You haven't seen the movie," Joker repeated, as if it were a mortal sin.

"I grew up without a television."

"You haven't seen the movie."

"I don't particularly care to. It's not—"

"Blasphemer!" Joker had the remote from his hand before Jonathan even realized he was moving, flipping on the DVD player. "You have to see it!"

"I don't like kids' movies," Jonathan protested, only to have a hand thrown over his mouth.

"It's not a kids' movie, it's a classic. And it's scary." Off Jonathan's looked, he went on, "No, I mean it. Wait'll we get to the flying monkeys and just try and say it isn't horrifying."

"Flying monkeys?" he repeated, pushing the Joker's hand away. "That's about as frightening as—"

"Shut up, it's starting."

He sighed, resigning himself to an hour and a half or so's worth of torture. As the overture began, he recalled that the film was a musical and got the feeling the Joker would sing along to all the songs. Lovely.

"So, what didya think?"

Jonathan stared at the screen, blank now that the DVD had been ejected. "That was fantastic."

Joker giggled. He had sung along the whole movie, but somehow it hadn't detracted too much. "Told you so."

"Absolutely fantastic."

"And scary."

"I wouldn't say scary. Not to anyone over seven."

He snorted. "Right, so we're ignoring your little freak outs?"

"I didn't freak out!"

"When the witch threw fire at Scarecrow, you practically tore my hand off, you held it so tight," he said, eyes glittering. "And need I remind you of when they threatened to drown Toto? Your little asthma attack?"

"That wasn't panic, it was a coughing fit. Nothing to do with fear. I don't scare easily."

"This from the guy who couldn't sleep for a week because 'there's a big, vicious rat in my cell, nurse?'"

"I wasn't afraid of that thing," he said, blushing. "I thought it might be rabid. You didn't see it. You don't know."

"Right. The point is, it's a great film and now you've learned not to question my tastes, right?"

"Hardly."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

It was Jonathan's turn to laugh. "You tried to get me to watch Saw last night."

"So?"

"So it's stupid. Nothing but blood and guts. Horror should be scary, not disgusting. If you were to throw up on the floor right now, I would be disgusted, but I wouldn't run off screaming. That's all movies like that are, the vomit of the horror genre."

"Okay, Mr. Getting-Way-Too-Caught-Up-In-Cheap-Entertainment, I don't watch it 'cause I find it scary. I watch it because other people's suffering makes me laugh."

"Why am I not surprised? Well, it's still stupid. It's desensitizing the next generation; making them think all they need to do to be scary is film some fake intestines hanging out. They're killing horror, just like those stupid vampire romance novels. Vampires suck blood, human blood, and kill, they don't become rock stars or sparkle in the light."

"Breathe, Jonny."

"Or Halloween itself."

"Come again?"

"Based in the Celtic holiday, Samhain. The Celts believed that on that day, the veil between the mortal and spirit worlds was thin enough for the dead to cross over, so they wore masks to blend in with the evil spirits, to protect themselves. Now it's become an excuse for the candy companies to do more business, and for people to slavishly recreate costumes from films instead of trying to strike fear. It's idiotic, and demeaning to history, and it's—"

Joker cut him off with a kiss. "Relax, kitten. If it bothers you that much, why not just take matters into your own hands?" He paused. "And mine, too."

Jonathan blinked. "How's that?"

"Make Halloween scary again. Do something dramatic, something frightening. Make 'em remember what the day's all about, hiding from the big bad monsters. You can make a new laughing gas by the end of the week, right? Halloween's when we'll make the attack."

He felt a smile spread across his face. "What are we attacking now?"

"Gotham General just reopened a few weeks ago. I don't think we can let them settle in too smoothly, do you?"

"I love you," he said, kissing the Joker's cheek, ignoring the bitter taste of the paint. "You're brilliant."

"Aren't I?"

"Self-centered idiot," Jonathan said, with absolutely no irritation. "Affection is supposed to be mutual."

"Sorry, you're right."

He waited. "Well?"

"I love me too."

AN: The rat thing comes from the Sandman comics. In one of Jonathan's appearances, he complains that he's too afraid of a rat in his cell to fall asleep and about how crazy things have gotten in Arkham lately, so the Sandman puts him to sleep, along with the rest of the hospital.

I'm actually an Anne Rice fan, but I don't think Jonathan would be. The constant sexing would turn him off, I imagine.

I didn't mean for this to turn into "huge advert for shows Lauralot watches" though that's kind of how it turned out. Never seen Cat People, but hearing about it, it seemed like Jonathan's kind of film, very subtle, leave it to the imagination horror, for the most part. Jam (clips of which are on Youtube) struck me as having the twisted sense of humor that would amuse sadists like Joker and Jonathan. Wonder what that says about me, for liking it, though sometimes even I'm not amused. My favorite sketch, "Casual Parents" is in my opinion, a brilliant show of deadpan, black humor, but to those who don't share that sense of humor, I'm sure it's insanely offensive (It's about parents who are absolutely unconcerned that their son's gone missing). "Woman in Trouble," my second favorite, is not offensive at all, just very bizarre for a sixteen second sketch.

I think a lot of comics have Scarecrow disliking The Wizard of Oz, but the way he quotes it in one of Tim Sales's comics, and a cover I once saw (or possibly a fanart) of Scarecrow with Batman, Batgirl, and Robin tied up and put in Tin Man, Dorothy, and Cowardly Lion costumes made me think he'd be a fan. Plus, both Scarecrows are concerned with being scary (at least at first) and that amused me.