Chapter Five
"Jerome? Jerome are you listening?".
Jerome didn't like this one. She was annoying, commanding. Today was too important to for him to be distracted by self-righteous psychiatrists, he was fuzzy enough as it was.
They were giving him drugs, some sort of cocktail that had made him high at first, but had tempered down with the years to a light buzz. Jerome didn't like them. They made him think of cocaine, and he didn't like thinking of the cocaine.
Jerome didn't really talk to the shrinks anymore. At first he was alight with burning anger and wit, but eight years of Arkham would dampen anyone, and what Jerome lived for wasn't within these walls.
It had been hard to keep tabs on people on the outside from in here, but Jerome had managed. The TV was a great help, it meant he could keep track of the days, keep track of the news. And there were ways of contacting the people behind the walls, you just had to know the rotten ones. There were mildewy wardens that could be spotted from miles away, and someone just had to know what to look for to tap into them.
Luckily for Jerome, Gotham was still carious, and desperate people would do anything these days, if you could flash some cash that was. And as Lila's only son, Jerome's bank account was stashed full of drug money.
The psychiatrist gave up after five more minutes, and let him leave. She knew he wasn't going to say anything, and as long as Jerome swallowed the pills they gave him, they didn't care.
Jerome drifted into the patients lounge, trying to hide the distaste that welled up within him whenever he caught one of their eyes. They were crazy, he wasn't, but this was better than prison. Jerome smiled at the pretty blonde warden that walked past him, following her with his head. She glared and marched away quickly, not looking back, and Jerome's eyes drifted to the TV, maybe she'd heard of him? Some people didn't like it when they were housing a murderer, he supposed. He chose the chair he could get the best view from. A few other patients were staring at the screen, but Jerome was the most interested.
The news was on. Finally. Jerome's eyes hardened slightly, this was a delicate operation after all. They only had one chance. The police wouldn't know it was him, how could they? But Jerome would know. And that was all that mattered.
It was live footage of a convict during a trial. There was a reporter talking into the camera, Jerome already knew what she was going to say though. The court had just broken for lunch, and the man was being led away by the police, probably back to whatever holding cell he'd been in before the trial. Jerome's smile twisted into a grimace. This man had no right to a trial. What he'd done. The whole justice system was screwed up, and some people just deserved to die.
"Falcone says hi!", a woman yelled from the crowd.
A gunshot rung out, and the cameraman jostled. Some of the wardens stepped uncertainly towards the TV, but Jerome jumped to his feet and grabbed the remote. A few of the other patients started screaming, whilst the carers floundered. Jerome didn't look away, he needed to know it was done. A debt he needed to repay. A warden realised what was going on in the TV, and tried to pull the remote from Jerome.
Jerome's eyes were fixed on the screen as the camera panned in. The convict was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, and the shooter was being dragged to the floor by the police. The reporter was yelling, frantically trying to keep the viewers up to date with what was happening, but it was clear when the police stood up that the man was dead. Jerome let the wardens take the remote, and he was shoved to the ground.
The camera panned to another man whilst the warden with the remote fumbled to turn off the TV, and Jerome's eyes softened. A twenty year old Bruce Wayne stood stock-still, silver glinting from under his sleeve. Jerome laughed, the self-righteous Bruce Wayne? About to shoot a man in cold blood? Jerome had been right, of course he's been right. Jerome was almost sad he'd arranged the whole thing, but a debt is a debt.
A sharp sting in his legs was the only prelude to a soft fuzziness in his vision, but Jerome didn't stop laughing, not until the drugs had completely fuzzed his vision over with black.
•
"Why did you keep the wardens from the remote, Jerome?".
It was the same annoying, blonde psychiatrist again, trying to get Jerome to open up. They didn't suspect him of course, who would think a random, locked-up, insane circus performer had any connection to the culling of the man who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne? Jerome looked at the woman uninterestedly, before going back to his thoughts, and if there was one thing Jerome'd had time to do whilst in these walls, it was think.
He'd left a business card, on the shooters body. In return to the one Bruce had left him. It wasn't clear, didn't have a nice number or contact details, but it was a clue. A clue to the greatest mystery orchestrated in Gotham's history. Bruce wanted to be a hero, so he'd need a villain. Not just any old yahoo in a suit with unoriginal ideas though, no, Bruce deserved someone better than that. Jerome would be that villain, he'd be brilliant, original and devious. Everything Bruce needed. Then, when Bruce no longer needed a villain, Jerome would join him.
"Jerome?", he ignored her.
The police wouldn't think anything of it yet, it would just be a random piece of evidence that had been on scene. It would get squirrelled away, deep in an evidence locker somewhere, to be found later by a disbelieving police officer. That was what Jerome wanted. He'd leave breadcrumbs through Bruce's life, to be followed back one day, back to the root.
"Jerome? Why did you try and keep the remote from the guards?", Jerome frowned, she wasn't going to shut up. He leaned forward, smiling fiercely, and as she recoiled, he hissed, "Oh, you know how it is, darling. A man has needs. It was the first death I've been able to witness since I killed my mother". The psychiatrist began to frantically scribble in her notebook, a soft blush colouring her cheeks and Jerome leaned back slowly, a plan starting to fall into place in his head.
If Bruce needed a villain, Jerome'd better start acting like one.
•
Bruce was running. Not literally, in reality, he was walking at a steady pace into the docks, but he was running none the less. He wasn't drawing any unwanted attention thanks to the raggedy coat he had acquired from a homeless man after the incident in the bar. It hadn't been Falcone, despite what the hit woman had said. That meant it had been someone else, someone who had something more to gain from the death of the Wayne Murderer. Bruce needed out, he needed time to get his act together. There was a cargo ship up ahead, and if Bruce could just make it that far, he was free.
He couldn't stay here anymore. Gotham always dangled things in front of his face before taking them away; his parents, Rachel, a normal life and-. Bruce stopped that train of thought where it stood. He didn't think of him anymore. Bruce just wanted to leave. He wanted to finish what he'd started and get stronger, strong enough to protect everyone who needed protection.
Bile bubbled up his throat when he though of the gun at the bottom of the river. He'd almost killed a man. After all this time, he'd been trying to get stronger to help people, but he couldn't let it go. Even now. He couldn't let it go. He hadn't been able to get justice for his parents, (and perhaps a part of him was a little relieved he hadn't pulled the trigger) but he could get justice for everyone else. Everyone else who had suffered from street crimes or lost loved ones because of Gotham's corruption.
Bruce pulled himself up onto the ship's deck, glancing around to make sure there were no crewmen who'd seen him, then slipped into the cargo hold.
He peered out, eyes soaking in the graphite skyscrapers against the bleak skyline.
As soon as he had found himself, he'd be back. Bruce swore it, before he shrunk down against the crates, getting ready for a long journey.
•
Jerome smiled innocently when the carers put everyone in their cells that night. It wasn't an unusual day. The whole remote-snatching thing had blown over after a few weeks (despite the fact that he'd been banned from the common room) and none of the guards were really paying him any attention. That wasn't to say it wasn't an important night though, quite the contrary. Tonight was the night Jerome would get out.
He waited on his bed for lights out, staring at the ceiling. He wasn't nervous, in fact he was rather calm about the whole thing. Money could get you anywhere in this world, it was the key to Gotham. Quite literally. Jerome pulled a heavily fashioned key from his pocket, rolling it between his fingers thoughtfully. Well, money and charm.
The lights turned off.
If he wanted, he could let out some of the truly insane, the ones who killed thoughtlessly and carelessly. It would cause quite the distraction, but it would take longer, perhaps too long for Jerome to make his escape successful.
The door moaned quietly as it was unlocked and pulled open from the outside, and Jerome inhaled deeply. "Do you smell that, Miss Quinzel?", he smirked, "That's the smell of Gotham City welcoming its Prince back home". The blonde psychiatrist stuck her head in nervously, "We'd better go now, Mr J", Jerome sat up and walked to the door, he paused before he left the room, giving it a last once-over. He'd spent a good quarter of his life in that dump, rotting and forgotten; that was their mistake. He spat on the floor, before smiling indulgently at Miss Quinzel, "Let's get out of here, darling".
The corridors seemed almost too long, and in the dark, the groans and screams of the patients were positively scary. Jerome didn't fear them, though, he was in his element here, moving quickly through the dark. Harleen stopped in front of a barred door, and looked at Jerome meaningfully.
Jerome twirled the key around a finger, winking at the blonde psychiatrist, who giggled quietly, before pressing it into the lock. "As soon as you turn that key, the alarm is going to go off. It's a run to the front door. If we make it that far, it's home ground", she whispered, glancing around them nervously, Jerome smiled, before leaning forward and pecking her cheek. She smiled sweetly, and Jerome turned his back.
The moment she couldn't see his face, the lovey mask snapped, and he was single-minded once more. A smile ravaged his cheeks, and with one twist of his wrist, the air around them became host to a wailing siren and misty red light. Jerome took off, tearing down the corridor. He didn't look back to see if Miss Quinzel was following him, he just ran. The front door bobbed in front of him as he ran down the stairs. His red jumpsuit tugged into the joints of his limbs as he raced towards the door. The way was clear, all he had to do was get the key into the lock and he was free.
A shout echoed down the hall behind him, and Jerome ran faster. Huffing laughter escaped from his chest as he jerkily turned the key in the lock, ignoring the quickly approaching running steps. He was going to make it. They weren't close enough.
He burst through the doors, whirling around for a moment before he spotted the car, and was running again. It wasn't his, of course, he'd just payed off the thugs inside to get him away once he was out. The guards swore as they barged through the front doors and saw Jerome yanking open the car door.
They began to swarm towards him, but Jerome just waved and leapt into the backseat of the car. He watched through he back window as the thugs pressed the accelerator to the floor, and screeched away. The guards and Arkham got smaller and smaller as Jerome got further and further away. His smiled disappeared, he'd lost eight years of his life to those damp walls. He needed to make up for lost time.
Cold eyes found those of the thugs in the rear-view mirror, "Take me to Wayne Manor".
The foreboding house looked exactly the same as it had eight years previous. It was distant and refined, with expensive fixtures and fountains scattered generously through the grounds. Jerome grimaced, he didn't like it. It was too harsh for Bruce.
The thugs dropped him off at the gate, satisfied with the promise of the rest of the money going in tomorrow. Jerome walked up the drive, looking at the one lit window upstairs in the manor. It wasn't Bruce's room, and Jerome frowned slightly. Something wasn't quite right.
He climbed up one of the ornate drainpipes, nose wrinkling at the gothic style. Creeping along the stone ledge linking the windows on the second floor, back to the wall, Jerome breathed deeply. The fresh night air was a luxury he hadn't enjoyed in Arkham, and a sweet smell wafted up from somewhere in the grounds. He continued to edge towards the lit room, and as he neared, he began to register the sound of angry conversation.
"What do you mean, 'You don't know'!", it wasn't Bruce, that was for sure. Jerome listened closer, "How does one just lose the richest man in Gotham! It's been three weeks! Someone has to have seen him!", it was the Butler, Jerome realised suddenly, being dragged back to that day in the hospital.
Ice trickled down Jerome's spine. Bruce was gone? Where? He couldn't just vanish. His fists clenched unwittingly; Bruce was an excellent fighter, someone didn't just lose that, fighting was like riding a bike! So unless he'd been viciously outnumbered, he'd left on his own. Jerome edged back along the ledge and down the drainpipe. He was looking in the wrong place, Bruce would have gone somewhere far away, and if he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't.
Jerome stopped and looked back at the mansion. Bruce would be back, he had too much invested in this city to just abandon it, so Jerome had better wait for him. That was okay, he was good at waiting. In the meantime, Bruce would be training, getting faster and stronger, so Jerome would have to compensate.
Jerome had better build a nice, anarchic little society for his hero to crush, and for that, he'd need to be iconic, a wild-card, he'd need to be remembered. Nobody would give a shit about a twenty-six year old nobody, so he'd need to become better than that. You needed to kill the bad guys to make a better city, stamp out the stain, not just hide it away to fester. Jerome needed to show Bruce that, to prove him wrong. He'd clean up this city from the inside. He'd manage to place himself in a position where he was perfectly hidden in Gotham's court, where nobody would suspect him. He'd just need to wait for his king to return.
Jerome stopped, looking down at his reflection in a puddle. He'd need to be Gotham's Joker.
But first, before he could do any of that, Jerome needed to pay a visit to Haley's Circus.
•
It had started off as such an average day.
A nice little bank robbery to keep the mercs happy, and top up their growing cash pile. Jerome swung a handgun around his finger by the trigger guard, the upper half of his face concealed by a clown mask. Not that he needed one, the Joker was pretty well known in Gotham by now, but he was sentimental about this mask (it went so well with his scars), as he was about the ones the thugs around him were toting. "Okay boys, wrap it up!", Jerome said lightly, kneeling by one of the hostages, "Don't worry folks, if you keep your mouths shut and stay still, you might just make it out of here alive!". He patted the man on the shoulder, straightening when he let out a muffled whimper.
Jerome wasn't lying, this job wasn't really about the money, that was just an added bonus. This job was about who he was stealing the money from. Specifically, Don Falcone. The Joker had decided that Don Falcone's cash had gone untouched for too long, and switched from raiding Maroni's banks. They had to be kept in line, and interested. Jerome wanted to string them along until Bruce came back, then he'd make an example of them.
The two men had just finished loading the last of the money into the van, and Jerome strolled up to them before jumping into the back. "That's all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed the show", he grinned, and laughed when one of the thugs shot the other in the back of the head. The hostages recoiled when the body hit the floor, and Jerome smiled from behind his mask, before tightening his grip on the handgun, and shooting the other through the skull. Those idiots never learnt.
He leant out to grab Dan and Owen Lloyd's masks from the floor, placed a small, rectangular piece of card on one of the bodies, before he pulled the back of the van doors shut and backed out of the broken glass windows. Jerome turned round, admiring the loot. He'd done rather well for himself this time, but after three years of working his way up to crime boss, Jerome would be ashamed if he couldn't pull off a little heist nowadays. And Falcone and Maroni couldn't touch him, to his delight. He was too smart, too powerful and too fast.
Jerome drove all the way to the dodgy warehouse where he kept his cash. There was quite the mountain in there by now, millions of dollars just sitting there. Maybe he could hold a candle to the Wayne fortune, especially considering he was a self-made man.
"Boss", as Jerome jumped out the front seat of the van one of the clowns ran up to him, "There's something you're gonna want to see, it's about the Waynes". He'd made sure all his employees knew that they had to tell him if anything interesting ever came up involving Wayne Enterprises, they just thought it was because Joker wanted to stage a large-scale theft, which was convenient. Jerome's eyes sharpened and he nodded, but the thug paused, "Where's the other guys? You got twelve men in the back of that thing with the money too?".
Jerome pulled off his mask, the greasepaint on his cheeks crinkling as he smiled, "They didn't make it, there was, ah, technical difficulties". The mercenary frowned, aghast, "Technical difficulties?", the corners of Jerome's mouth turned down, and he frowned for a moment, sighing, before lifting his handgun to shoot once more.
"Anyone else got any questions?", he snarled towards the other subordinates as they began to unload the money, "No? Nobody else here wants to doubt my judgement?", predictably, they shrunk away.
Jerome stepped over the body. One more dead criminal, he was doing Gotham a service. "What was he going to tell me, before he got cocky?", Jerome walked around the mound of cash, admiring it. When nobody spoke up, he whirled around to face them. "What? Are you all mutes?", he began to stalk towards the nearest thug, "I said, What. Was. He. Going. To. Tell. Me!". The thug stared at the floor, flinching when the Joker grabbed his chin, "I-I don't know, boss", he mumbled.
"Don't know!", Jerome let out a high pitched, jittery laugh, "Don't know?". He grabbed the man's throat suddenly, growling out, "Then what do I pay you miserable excuses for?". Jerome sneered and let go, allowing the thug to stagger back behind the others.
He took a deep breath, before lifting a hand daintily, "So! Whoever can tell me what nosey over there was going to say about Wayne right now gets one million dollars!". A skinny clown with a frowny mask stepped forward uncertainly, and Jerome bowed dramatically, "Ah, we have a volunteer".
"I-It's about Bruce Wayne sir, rumour is he's coming back to Gotham", the thug flinched away from Jerome's gun as the young man twirled on the spot, laughing, "Ah, so the King returns? And I've set up the board so nicely for him!". He stopped suddenly and took a step towards the frowny clown, "Are you sure? Are you completely sure he's coming back?". The clown nodded frantically, "Y-yeah! Yeah, I saw 'is butler take off in the plane, 'n my mates in the station confirmed it". Jerome smiled, before grabbing one of the duffle bags and throwing it at the man's chest, "Now don't go spending it all at once", he said teasingly.
Jerome laughed, falling backwards into the pile of money, "You think it's been fun so far, boys?", rolls of hundreds slid over each other like balls in a ball pit, "The show hasn't even begun".
•
"Master Bruce, sorry to be so intrusive, but might I ask what you meant in the plane earlier", Alfred asked casually. Bruce had his hands carefully clasped in his lap, and was staring out the window at Gotham's skyline, "I meant exactly what I said, Alfred, Gotham needs something to believe in". Alfred coughed, "Very good sir. Have you caught up on the current icons?".
The Bentley turned into the grounds of Wayne Manor, driving up to the main entrance. Alfred walked round to open Bruce's door, "There are a couple of new faces on the streets, new crime bosses", he continued, leading the billionaire up the steps. Just as Alfred's hand touched the doorknob, a loud bang echoed through the grounds.
Bruce leapt backwards, head swivelling as he tried to pinpoint the origin of the sound. A firework had exploded over the manor, and a soft fluttering filled the air, as something landed next to Bruce's feet. He bent down to pick it up, realising it was a rectangular piece of card. More began to drift to the floor, hundreds and hundreds of these little pieces of card.
Bruce's eyebrows creased together in confusion as he examined the rectangle. Every single one was a playing card, they were all jokers.
Alfred walked up to his young master, examining the playing card cautiously, "The new crime boss I was telling you about? He calls himself the Joker".
•