AN: Thanks for the reviews!

"Don't sit like that." Joker reached over from the driver's seat and slapped Jonathan's leg, nearly steering the car off the road. "Girls don't sit that way."

"What does it matter how I'm sitting now?" Jonathan asked, shifting away. "It's not as if there's anyone around to fool." He supposed the ride would go much more smoothly if he just went along with it, but the day had been long enough, between the tape, the blood, the makeup, and being made to march up and down the hall in a dress and tights until Joker was satisfied that his movements were convincingly feminine.

"It's the principle of the thing, Jonny. If you don't keep up appearances now, you might forget it when it matters." He shot a scrutinizing glance at his companion, the second he took his eyes off the road being almost enough to veer them into the opposite traffic.

"Watch it!" Jonathan grabbed the arm rests of his seat, almost tight enough to rip them off. It wasn't death he feared, so much as the humiliation of his body being discovered in a dress, with lipstick. "You're going to get us pulled over."

Joker merely shrugged off their near death experience, though he did mutter several death threats in response to the shouts of their would-be victim. Once he was through with that, he gave Jonathan another glance, keeping his hands on the steering wheel this time. "Take off your glasses."

"I need them to see!" he protested. This was becoming too much. If he was going to run about in a dress, he at least wanted the ability to see where he was running.

"Yeah? Well, they put a barrier between your eyes and the rest of the world, and since your eyes are the most girly thing about you, we can't have that. Take 'em off."

"No."

"Kitten," he said, his tone warning. "I can take 'em and throw 'em out the window if you won't do this willingly."

And here I thought relationships were about compromise. Whatever. It wasn't worth the argument, not when there were so many more pressing concerns to be addressed. He pulled off his glasses, folding them and shoving them in the purse Joker had given him, alongside the video camera. "I need a knife. Or a gun. Something."

"You've got the laughing gas," Joker said, as if explaining things to an overly demanding child. "Tell me, Jonny, what's the point in having that stuff if you never wanna use it?"

Oh, if there was one thing he hated, it was being spoken down to. Gritting his teeth and trying to kept his voice steady, he retorted. "You don't get it. The toxin doesn't work the same way on everyone, and it works by affecting chemicals in the brain. In mental patients—like the ones that could attack us tonight, if they don't like us or take issue with being released, for some reason—when the brain chemistry is already altered by drugs or illness, there's a greater chance of the stuff not working at all, or provoking a different, possibly violent response."

"Ah." There was a pause in which Joker shuffled through the pockets of his nurse's dress, before pulling out a butterfly knife and handing it to Jonathan, who slipped it into his own pocket. "You know, you really oughta mention that sort of thing before I set the plans into motion, scaredy cat."

"Maybe if you gave me more than five minutes' warning before you started your plans, I'd remember to mention it."

"Hey now. You had an hour's warning at least."

An hour that had been entirely spent getting tarted up for this ridiculous idea, he did not say. "You do know that the police will show up, don't you? They're not about to let the Batman through with no trouble just so you can be reunited."

"No they won't, we're cutting the phone lines."

Unbelievable. How any of the fool's plans managed to succeed was beyond Jonathan. "Have you ever heard of cell phones?"

"Look, the police are going be a little busy while we're breaking in. I've made sure of that."

Jonathan felt a combination of excitement and dread. "What did you do?"

"Nothing major. I just happen to have a lotta bombs in various buildings around the city, and once we're inside Arkham, my men are gonna set 'em off."

Inelegant, but effective. "Here's a question: if you hate the GPD's interference so much, why don't you just blow up the police station?"

"Where's the fun in that? There's gotta be some kinda challenge, Jonny, or there's no point in trying at all."

But there's less chance of death. They rode on in silence for a few minutes, before what seemed like a rather gaping plot hole occurred to Jonathan. "Wait a second, if you've caused havoc all over town, how can you guarantee the Batman will come to Arkham?"

"Because of Harvey Dent, obviously. When Batsy's little police scanner or whatever he uses tells him the Joker's attacking Arkham, he'll drop whatever victims he was escorting to safety and come running. Plus, I had my boys steal a floodlight and put in on the roof."

Jonathan tilted his head. "A floodlight?"

"We've converted it into a Batsignal."

He nearly laughed, before he remembered what tended to happen on his run-ins with the Bat and shuddered. "He's going to be so angry."

"I know, right?" Joker said, sounding nauseatingly cheerful. "It's gonna be so much fun."

"Maybe for you. Not all of us enjoy pain."

Joker reached across the space between them and took Jonathan by the hand. "C'mon, kitten, I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time we worked together and Batman arrived, didn't I end up in traction?"

"I wasn't in the room at the time, was I?" He stopped holding Jonathan's hand and slid his own to the side, linking their little fingers together. "Look, I promise I won't let the big scary bat get you if I'm around to put a stop to it."

As the Joker had an attention span of about five seconds and was liable to wander out of the room in the middle of a fight because he'd seen something shiny, that wasn't as comforting as it should have been. It did help, though. "Okay."

"We're here." He put the van in park, and Jonathan looked around the asylum's parking lot, with a growing feeling of unease. Being back here brought up all sorts of unpleasant memories, not to mention a reminder of how easy it would be to get caught.

"We're half an hour early," he said, tapping the clock on the dash. "The nurses whose pass keys we stole, their shift doesn't start until six, right?"

"Yeah." He pulled the keys from the ignition, shoving them in the dress's pocket. "So, whaddya wanna do for the next half hour?"

Try and talk you out of this? Yeah, like that was going to happen. And maybe he really was worrying too much. After all, none of the Joker's other plans had gotten them killed, and they'd all been insane. Then again, none of their other plans had been so certain to bring Bat-wrath upon them. He shrugged.

"You know," Joker said, glancing around the vehicle's interior. "We're switching this out for a different car when we make our escape. So this was the last ride in our faithful van."

Jonathan arched a styled brow. "So what?"

"So," he said, as he unfastened his seatbelt and leaned toward his companion, "whaddya say we make some memories here?"

"You cannot be serious." He leaned away, back pressing into the door. "I'm not having sex like this!"

"Like what?"

"In a van!" The Joker really had no sense of romance. Or tact. "Can you not see the thousand and one things wrong with this?"

"Ah." He straightened up, disappointed. "What, you want your first time to be on satin sheets covered with rose petals or something? I guess I could do that, but it's gonna have to be after this particular—"

"First, I've already had a first time, and second, no, I'd just rather it not be in a van. Besides, people could see us, you idiot."

"The windows are tinted." His tone suggested that made the idea perfectly acceptable.

"No! Absolutely not." This is what my life has become. Fantastic. "Anyway," he added, as the Joker still had that look in his eye. "We've only got half an hour. There'd be no time to do foreplay or anything."

"Sooo…" and the Joker was back on him, dragging him out of the passenger seat and toward the back. "Do you just wanna do the foreplay? I never finished earlier."

"Shouldn't we be focusing on your grand scheme?" he pleaded, knowing it was a losing battle but unable to just surrender.

"Grand schemes are extremely erotic."

"But the makeup, and the wig, and the—"

"Here." Joker took hold of his long dark curls and pulled them off. "I'll put it back in a minute, and that way it won't get all tangled, okay? Problem solved." He gave the hair in his hand an almost forlorn glance. "Though you do look really pretty with long hair. It reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara."

"I look nothing like Scarlett O'Hara," he said, confusion overshadowing panic for a moment. "And neither did my hair."

"Not lookwise, exactly. But in terms of personality, come on. You're both cunning, with horrible control of your tempers, and able to manipulate everyone except for the man you love, who can see right through your little schemes."

"What, so you're Rhett Butler?" Jonathan snorted. "He's a little too…put together for you, wouldn't you say?"

"Excuse me if I'm not obsessive about showering. C'mon, if I walked around a la Bruce Wayne, with nary a hair out of place, I'd be so boooring. Now, don't freak out on me, all right?" His hand was on Jonathan's thigh again, right where the tights ended, trailing up the skin. It felt cold this time, as though he'd lubricated his fingers with something, but as to what, Jonathan had no idea. Unless it was the hand sanitizer, and he sincerely hoped it wasn't, shuddering at the thought of the alcohol burn.

"Wait!" he said, tensing.

"Yes?"

"You…you look like a girl." Oh, well spotted, Jonathan.

"What's your point? Don'tcha think I'm pretty?"

"Well, yes, but…" What was he supposed to say, 'it makes you look submissive and I prefer you dominant'? No, that was idiotic. It was hard enough to admit to himself he didn't mind not being the one in power for once, never mind trying to explain it to another. Besides, that was dangerously close to saying he felt secure around him, and he wasn't about to make that mistake again. "I like you more as a boy."

"Fine." He pulled his own wig off, brushing out his hair one-handed as the other hand went back to advancing up Jonathan's body. "Happy now?"

"Ye—ow, ow, ow. Yes," he muttered, eyes shut. "And when this starts to feel good, it had better be worth it."

"So," Joker said, glancing in the rearview mirror as he rearranged the red wig, smirking. "Was that worth it?"

Jonathan, who wasn't sure if he'd fully regained the ability to speak, nodded vigorously from the floor, burying his hair under his own wig.

"Thought so." He grinned in a way that made Jonathan wanted to slap and kiss him at the same time. "C'mon, we're gonna be late." He stepped through the door, straightened his skirt, then helped Jonathan through. "You can walk, right?"

"Yes," he said, blushing furiously as they started moving.

"Good." Reaching into the pocket of the dress, he pulled out a surgical mask, slipping it over his ears. "Let's go."

"What's that for?"

"To hide the scars, obviously."

"But there aren't surgeons in Arkham."

"You don't have to be a surgeon to wear a mask, genius. You could just have a cold you're trying not to spread."

"Well, it's going to draw attention. Along with the dresses. Remind me why we couldn't have worn normal nurse clothing again?"

"Because it's boring."

"You know, that's not always a bad thing. In fact, in some cases I'd say it—"

"Excuse me, miss?"

The pair froze at the voice from behind them, Jonathan turning his head slowly to see an orderly staring at them. Oh hell. We're dead. We're fucked. That's it, it's over, we've been found out. And not even in an exciting way, no police, no Batman, just an observant guard. Fantastic, bloody fantastic—

Joker elbowed him in the ribs, which he took as an indication that he'd be the one doing the talking. And it occurred to him that he'd never tried imitating a woman's voice before. Oh hell. Well, there was nothing like desperation as motivation. "Yes, sir?"

Beside him, the Joker blinked, and Jonathan felt himself do the same. It wasn't the voice—it was a passable mimic of a woman's, at least, he thought so—but the accent. He'd unconsciously imitated his mother's voice, right down to the accent. That was unexpected.

The orderly seemed to think nothing odd about it, however, as he only held out Jonathan's glasses, holding them by one of the ends. "I think this fell out of your purse."

"Oh," he said, with entirely unfeigned relief. "Don't know what I'd do without those. Thank you." Taking his glasses, he slid them back into the purse, deeply, as the orderly gave a 'you're welcome,' and turned, walking away into the parking lot. He must be heading home. Well, that could have been worse.

He raised his head to find the Joker staring at him, brows furrowed. "What was that?"

Jonathan held in a sigh. If there was one thing he didn't want to discuss, it would be his past. "That was Georgia."

"And Lady Jonathan is Georgian why, exactly? Is this because I mentioned Scarlett O'Hara?"

"No. I don't know. I grew up in Georgia." He started walking toward the asylum again, wondering what the odds were that the discussion would end here. Probably very low.

"So, why didya come up here?" Extremely low.

"Because I got a full ride to Gotham University."

"So your family's back in Georgia?"

"Actually, my mother's in Gotham. The man she married lives here, they met when he was in Georgia visiting family." Lovely. Now the clown knew he had relatives around. He wouldn't be surprised if Joker designed some mad scheme to meet his boyfriend's parents.

"Why don't you have an accent, then?"

"Because I taught myself to enunciate," he muttered, stepping through the doors.

To his never-ceasing astonishment, no one gave them so much as a second glance as they made their way inside. In fact, once they'd swiped the keys, the doors were held open for them, one by a doctor, and one by another orderly.

"Thanks, y'all," Jonathan said over his shoulder as they walked off, dumbfounded.

"Jew knooow," Joker said, stretching out the vowels in a mockery of Jonathan's own accent. "I think jew might sound a liddle more like Paula Dean than O'Hara."

"Make fun of how I talk again, sugar, and I'll rip off your balls and make you eat 'em," he said brightly, still as a woman, though the hall was mostly empty.

It was also, he noted with surprise, not the way to his old cell. "Where are we going? I thought you wanted to see Harvey Dent."

"Patience, kitten," Joker said, pulling out his pass key and pausing at a door. "There's another old friend we need to see first."

Harley, he thought, both eager and heartbroken as Joker opened the door and stepped inside.

AN: As far as I know in the comics, Jonathan's mother didn't leave Georgia. I don't know, I like the idea of having her nearby should I ever want to include her, and it's not the first liberty I've taken with his backstory.

I imagine Jonathan's girl voice as very close to Cillian Murphy's, but with a Georgian accent instead of an Irish one.

The fear gas/laughing gas, I think, is trial and error. No two people react in the exact same way and it certainly isn't foolproof.