Louie's hand shot up in the air as the bus turned onto a road that, from its passengers' perspective, appeared to go straight up.

"What is it, Lou?" asked one of the guards, leaning over the back of his seat.

"Do you think they've got puddin' here, Mr. Hank?" The patient's bright but swollen eyes reflected the inner lights of the bus like mirrors.

Hank sighed. "I dunno, buddy. You'll have to wait and see."

"Oh I hope they have puddin'. I love puddin'…"

"Can it, Louie," growled Frank from across the aisle. "I'm sick-a hearin' your voice."

"Well I-" Louie shrank back into his seat, his face falling to the floor. "Sorry…"

They drove higher and higher, twisting around two hairpin turns and a stretch of road that the driver swore was something out of an Escher drawing. But as the road leveled out and the trees gave way to a large clearing, the silhouette of their destination rose into view. The two top windows of the building itself were lit, giving the appearance of giant, unmoving eyes which sat in a shadow before the dying fire of a sunset. Hank looked out the windshield and shuddered inwardly. It looked more like something out of Scooby Doo than a prestigious hospital. His apprehensions faded a bit when he met the guard in the security booth. He was a young, friendly fellow, who smiled and shook his hand as he explained where they had come from.

"Yeah, go right on in, sir!" The younger man fiddled with the brim of his hat as he opened the gate. "We know who you are."

When the bus pulled to its final stop, two guards from inside the asylum came out to greet them and the patients, one by one, were ushered out. While Louie complained and asked nervously about pudding and Frank brooded over the very idea of being in what he referred to as a 'dump', the Joker was strangely calm, at least by their standards. He yawned and stretched dramatically as he stood up and barely said a word on their trip into the facility.

"Welcome to Mount Massive," said the man at the door. "We're glad to have you here."

The hall forked left and the last of Arkham disappeared from sight, for now anyway. The staff were friendly for about thirty whole seconds, guessed Joker because as soon as the door to the end of the hall slammed, the nurses split them up and everything took to business as usual. Their initial assessment said he was only 'slightly uncooperative' and 'seemingly uninterested.' Perfect. As he settled in that evening, he could hear music- beautiful, soothing music, sung by at least two inmates down the hall. It sounded a little pitchy, but nothing that couldn't be improved with a practice and fewer guards and doctors screaming "Put the knife down, Tommy!"

Then his mind briefly turned to Batman. What would the masked anomaly do without his best friend? Gotham would fall into absolute ruin without their games, he thought as the image of his rival in a pink bathrobe watching chick flicks and eating ice cream to console himself accompanied it. Ah well, it would have to wait. He had more important things to worry about. All vacations must come to an end and this would be no different. And what stories he could take back home! At present, he would enjoy this getaway lodge and all it had to offer.

The next morning, they sat him down to be interviewed- he figured some kind of therapy would not be far behind.

"Good morning," said the doctor as he shut the door and pulled up a chair opposite of the Joker. He laid his clipboard on the table and flipped a page or two before meeting the gaze of his patient.

"4479, eh?" he mumbled "My name's Dr. Kaffman."

"Bless you," said Joker.

He sighed, adjusting his glasses. "I get that a lot, actually. Moving on- how are you today? How was your trip?

"You got a first name?"

"It's uh… It's Calvin."

"Calvin Kaffman… Try saying that one three times fast."

"Could you answer my question?"

Joker sat quietly, staring at the pattern on the other man's sweater vest and Kaffman began to wonder if he was being stubborn or was simply distracted.

"Okay, we'll come back to that one if you like… Dr. Arkham's told us you're a… well, a bit of a handful, is that true?"

"Anyone's a handful when there's bad communication though, right?"

Kaffman scribbled something on his clipboard. "It says in their notes that you prefer to be called 'Mr. J'. We like to be as friendly as we can with our patients- it builds trust, you see. And I believe trust is the first step to recovery."

"Oh, I can be friendly. You shoulda seen my last roommate- we got so close he just died of happiness." He fanned out his fingers to punctuate the magic of it all.

"Alrighty, then!" The doctor wrote for another minute or so on one page, then another. "So before Arkham, looks like you were causing some big trouble in Gotham." He began to read, "'Murder, assault, theft, acts of terrorism'- it just goes on and on. What was that all about?"

"Have you ever heard of the finch, Cal?"

"Yes, why?"

"See, one time this guy named Charlie studied all these tiny little birds on an island. He noticed that some of em' were better at getting to food than others- the ones with tiny beaks got the bugs, the ones with bigger beaks got the nuts. When the nuts ran out, the big-beakers all died and the little-beakers survived. But y'know what he saw after a while? The little baby birds got different beaks than Mommy or Daddy bird dependin' on what there was to eat. The birds that refused to change strategy all went the way of the dodo, but the clever birdies," He leaned in closer, "Oh, they got whatever they wanted. Food, lady birds, all the best nesting spots… Point is, if you don't adapt to circumstance, you die. That's that."

"So you're saying you just adapted to some kind of change, then?"

"I never said I was the bird, Calvin."

Kaffman shifted uncomfortably and wrote some more. Joker leaned back in his seat to watch, idly rubbing one tooth against another so that it created the softest of scraping sounds.

"Do you have any hobbies, Mr. J? Anything that might make you more comfortable here?" Kaffman peered over his glasses and tapped his pen on the page.

"I would love to have a pony."

"Within reason, of course…"

Joker sighed, sneering a little. "Fine. Got any cards?"

"Playing cards? Sure, we can do that." Kaffman jotted down a few more notes, then stood and re-clipped his papers onto the board. "That's all I need for now- we'll talk more soon in your first therapy sessions, alright?"

The Joker nodded listlessly, allowing them to lead him back to his cell.

"So what do you think?" asked Dr. Beaumont as Kaffman gathered his things for the next patient.

"I'm not sure yet." He stared at his notes for a second before tucking them away in a file.

"Then why're your hands shaking?"

Kaffman paused, realizing that his palms were unusually sweaty and wiped them swiftly down his lab coat.

"Surely it wasn't that bad. Thought you were the one that volunteered for this, Cal."

"No, it wasn't. That's what's making me nervous. I can't help but think he was dodging questions on purpose…"

"Or maybe Arkham was exaggerating like we thought." Beaumont nudged his colleague encouragingly with his elbow. "Plus, if any of these goons get outa line, it's not like we can't stop em', y'know? That was Arkham's problem- too soft on their patients. Too accommodatin'. We're gonna be needin' some volunteers soon and as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil first."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks, Greg."

Kaffman slid the requested playing cards across the table as the first therapy session began.

"Alright," he began, "I'm going to start by asking you a few base-line questions so I can try to understand the situation a little better. First of all, did they ever do this kind of thing at Arkham- counselling, therapy, etc. or have you ever sought help on your own?"

Joker sat back in his chair with his hands folded upon the table, just left of the little card box. "Oh, they asked questions and showed me diagrams and inkblot pictures- I liked those a lot, actually."

"Oh? What about them?"

"Sometimes, if you tilt your head just the right way, it starts to make sense- it turns into something profound- something you've never seen before- the answer to all of life's questions…" He paused. "Then you realize you've been staring at a silhouette of some guy's junk. Kills me every time."

"Oh, okay." Kaffman began to write again as they spoke. "Sounds like they did what I'm doing now then, right?"

"Oh yes."

"What would they normally ask you about?"

"A little of this and a little of that. 'How's your week been, 4479?'," He raised his voice into a falsetto mockingly. "'What seems to be the problem here? What made you decide to strap the mayor to the underside of a jet last month?'"

Kaffman nodded. "So you don't deny that you did all those things?"

"That's what it says on paper, right?"

"Yes, but do you know and accept that you did them?" Kaffman adjusted his glasses.

"Listen, Cal, the best advice I ever received was from some guy in a turtleneck, though I think he might've just been ripping off somebody else- he said to live every day like it's your last and I try to do that. It's a good code, I think. But to live it properly, you always have to look forward."

"Yes, but-" It was clear that he was already being irritated by his patient's evasive ways.

"Yes," said Joker simply, his expression becoming quite blank. "But I can't dwell on it or else today will have been wasted."

"So you believe in living life to the fullest then?"

"Absolutely-" He grinned a little. "-Somebody that never bothers to rock the boat, well... maybe they should be thrown overboard when it sinks."

"And who sinks the boat?"

"The one that rocks it the most."

"And you think that's… you?"

The grin spread a little, showing off Joker's narrow, yellowed teeth. Kaffman nodded.

"I'm only doing my part in this world, Cal. If I don't shake it up a little, who will? It'd be chaos."

"So you think you're creating order?"

"I don't do a thing- I just introduce the idea. Within every species is the ability to fail or succeed. Those that think and react in all situations get to live, those who stick with the wrong beaks, well... I just provide the situations. It's just like the theatre- you have your actors, your director, producer, audience and the elements in the story itself. The actors get the stage- I'm just the inciting incident."

"I see…" Kaffman wrote some more, glancing up occasionally into the patient's dark eyes. "Do you think that we're stopping some kind of scripted event by keeping you here?"

Joker chuckled softly, surprising the doctor. "The funny thing about scripted events is they happen no matter what. Sleeping Beauty always pricks her finger on her birthday, Mufasa always falls to his death, Joe Keller always shoots himself… It's necessary."

"Not this time, I'm afraid," Kaffman smiled in a feeble attempt to fight off the trembling in his fingers. "Because we have a divine sanction as well, you see."

"And what's that?"

"It's something we believe will change the world- something that we probably couldn't stop now even if we tried to."

Joker could see something in Kaffman's eyes- a mix of arrogance and what he guessed was fear that he found oddly comforting. He mulled the statement over, interested in what could be so important and so free that they trusted a mere therapist to know of it.

"Anyhow…" the doctor scrawled down something more. "Where were we?"

"Are you okay?" Joker asked suddenly, an unsettling amount of concern in his voice to tip Kaffman's wavering metaphorical lifeboat. "Your hands are shaking, Cal."

"Yeah, I'm- I'm fine." Kaffman took another look at his clipboard and paused. "Actually, I think we might be out of time for today."

Joker hissed softly through his teeth. "It was just getting to the good part, too." With that, he slid the deck of cards off the table into his lap.

Kaffman planned on taking an extra long smoke break today, no matter what.

That night, Joker played solitaire and listened to the strange tapping sound that had been emitting from the toilet for at least an hour. As he laid down the king of diamonds and five of clubs into their proper spots, the message became clear. He realized whoever was in the cell above him was tapping out the same word in some form or fashion, sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards, sometimes mixing in extra letters here and there, but they all pointed towards the same thing. He listened closer this time, grinding one tooth against another softly as the message was spelled out for the final time.

W-A-L-R-I-D-E-R