HEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!
Wow. Once again, this took a long time. I'm sort of between huge events right now, but these chapters are gonna be super important in developing J and J's relationship. They'll be here and they'll be good, but they might take a little while to write.
I'm not going to abandon this story, just so you all know. So don't worry about that. It's just me being busy.
If character or anything is a little off, let me know and help me fix it. As always, thank you SO MUCH for your amazing reviews and favorites. I love you all.
And, I swear to God, every time I recieve a review in my email I write at least another paragraph in this. So keep sending them! I love them!
Listen to Pink Bullets by the Shins. It's... It's really kind of perfect for Joker's thoughts on Jess. And Passive by A Perfect Circle is the definitive song for the Joker/Batman fight.
This chapter has some drug and alcohol use in it. So, maybe consider it rated M.
The van sped along the streets of Gotham, the glow of the streetlamps outside just blurs of white in the falling darkness of evening. No one in the cab said a word; not to question where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there. Jess sat, white knuckled hands clenching at the sides of her short dress, anxious and excited about the coming job.
The Joker was driving the vehicle tonight and she had scored a front seat, far better than sitting the ride through in the blackness of the back. The only downside was that she had to deal with the Joker's presence, especially as she had been forced beside him by Jonny, who now occupied the passenger seat.
They pulled up beside a long row of apartments on 8th street and hustled out of the car into the cold air above the sidewalk. Jess shivered slightly when a breeze whipped by, goose bumps raising on the exposed skin of her legs, and watched the Joker climb from behind the wheel, casually adjusting the collar of his shirt and looking darkly at the entrance to the building.
"Here," someone beside her muttered, bumping her arm with a piece of cold metal. She turned to Drew, standing at her elbow, and frowned when she noticed that he was trying to hand her a handgun.
"I don't know how to use that," she said, backing away a bit. No way did she want to carry a gun. That was a little too real. But Drew persisted, holding it out to her. Her stared at her meaningfully.
"Boss wants you to carry it," he said, voice hushed.
Jess glanced back at the Joker who was with Tim at the door, picking the front lock, then again to the gun in Drew's hand.
"I…" she started to argue, but Drew shook his head and chuckled, motioning impatiently for her to take the weapon.
"It'll keep you safe," he muttered, and glanced behind him to where Schiff and White were just climbing from the back of the vehicle. " I don't trust those Arkham guys and I don't trust what the boss wants to do with them. So will you please just take the gun?"
Jess smiled and stared at Drew shrewdly.
"Billy's gonna kill you for giving this to me," she said, gingerly putting her hand on the cold metal.
Drew laughed quietly and put his arm around her.
"I know," he said, "but he'd kill everyone if you got hurt."
Together, they turned towards where the door to the apartment building was now opened and the Joker had disappeared inside. Drew and Jess made their way up to them.
"Where the hell am I supposed to put this?" Jess whispered, fingering the firearm.
Drew glanced over, looked pointedly at her chest and raised his eyebrows. Jess scoffed. No way would this rather large gun fit down her shirt. Instead, she kept it at her side, making sure not to even come near the trigger with her pointer finger.
She stepped in front of Drew into the darkness beyond the doorframe and followed the two or three people inside up the stairs to the third floor. No one spoke on their journey up the steps, no lights were turned on, people stepped lightly, and Jess realized for certain that they were not allowed to be in this building.
The Joker stepped up to a door a little ways down the hall and knocked confidently. Jess watched from a few feet away while, slowly, the door opened from the inside.
"Hello," the Joker said to whoever had answered--Jess couldn't see from where she stood--and made an almost miniscule movement with his hand.
The men hidden around the doorframe immediately cocked their guns and pushed their way inside, while the man who lived in the apartment exclaimed, "What the hell!?"
The members of the Twenty disappeared through the entrance, along with Schiff and White, and Jess stepped forward to follow them, coming up to the door and peeking into the small apartment. She glanced over at the grinning Joker beside her and he turned his eyes on her, raising his eyebrows, almost playfully.
Breathing deeply, Jess took a step into the room. The Joker followed her silently, closing the door behind him and sliding an arm around her waist to steer her the rest of the way inside. Rolling her eyes, not thinking about the way her heart had skipped a beat when he touched her, Jess paced with him past the entry way.
The apartment was small and dingy and the men had already started to go to work on it, knocking over bookshelves, smashing in the TV, pulling the phone from the wall. Bullet holes were peppering the plaster whenever the man who had answered the door or the roommate they had found in the apartment struggled and the Twenty members let off some silenced rounds to keep them quiet.
As of now, they were being held at gunpoint by Jonny and Tim. Both victims were yelling, attempting to act tough, and Jess felt a little sorry for them. If this was their only form of defense, it wasn't working.
The Joker sauntered in with her at his hip, chuckling a little at the two men who, as soon as they saw him, stopped speaking and stared in a sort of hypnotized horror at the face they had doubtlessly seen many times on television. Jess couldn't help but let out a little laugh at their expressions and the men turned their gaze on her, too, obviously wondering who the hell she was. This made Jess laugh harder until the Joker's fingers dug into her hipbone in a sort of warning and she stopped.
"Hello, gentlemen," he said, reaching out and tilting a picture frame on the wall to his left so that it was crooked. "We're here for the, uh…" He tilted his head, staring at the picture frame as though trying to see if it was straight--which it obviously wasn't as he had just moved it. He tilted it to the other side.
"We're here for the poker game," he finished, turning to the petrified men and grinning.
Once more, he looked back to the picture, tilted it to the opposite side again, then made an irritated sound in the back of his throat and flicked it off the wall where it shattered on the floor. The two hostages flinched.
"Y'know," the Joker said, breaking away from Jess and making a slow inspection of the small room, picking up books or CD's between his gloved fingers and tossing them unceremoniously to the ground. "This is a nice place. Just… classy."
He was being ironic, of course. This place was a dump.
Every so often one of the hostages would struggle and another round of bullets would go into the walls. Jess leaned against the support beam beside her and watched the Joker with interest, a half-smile playing around her lips.
He was so… captivating. It was as though he'd been doing this all his life; playing with people, scaring them, wreaking destruction and havoc. It was such a part of him that he did it casually and that concept was so foreign to Jess that she almost admired it in him. Certainly she admired how easily all of this came to him when it was so hard for her to even begin thinking about how to spur on chaos.
Yes, admiration.
No hate, nor disgust. Not anymore.
Sure, she hated what he did, what he was sometimes. But, somehow, even though she hadn't been given any evidence to suggest otherwise, she knew that what he was was not who he was. There was someone beneath the criminal, like there was Billy beneath the thief and lock pick, like there was Blake beneath the gangster and Drew beneath the kidnapper.
There had to be someone beneath the Joker. Or, if not one person, many. And that concept absolutely fascinated Jess as she watched the Joker play with the hostages, finding a wad of bills in a drawer, raising his eyebrows at it and pocketing it, much to the chagrin of the two men.
"Hey, boss!"
Blake pulled something out of a drawer and turned to show it to the Joker, smiling widely.
"Aw, come on, man, no!" one of the hostages exclaimed, seeing what Blake had in his hands: a small Tupperware container out of which he pulled a few little white tablets and a plastic bag with about an inch of white powder laying along the bottom.
Jess would have loved to believe that the pills were medicine, but the powder she could not deny. She'd never seen cocaine before in real life, but she was pretty sure that was it.
The Joker had heard the hostage's outburst. It was sad to Jess that he would endanger his own life just to protect his drugs, and the Joker found some sort of horrible hilarity in it, too.
"What? Sorry?" he said, leaning towards the man who had spoken. "No? No?" He chuckled hideously and motioned for Blake to pocket the drugs.
"Man, you don't understand," one of the junkies said.
The Joker raised his eyebrows and turned on him slowly.
"Yeah?" he asked. "What don't I understand?"
"Man, those are our lives," the other man explained. "We need those."
The Joker chuckled and patted him roughly on the cheek.
"Not for long," he said, stepping away from them and motioning to White and Schiff, who cocked their guns and grinned evilly.
"What?" the hostages exclaimed. "No!"
"Kill 'em," the Joker ordered.
Jess gasped as White and Schiff moved into position in front of the pleading men and the Joker came to stand by her, draping an arm around her shoulders.
Before she could move to put her hands in front of her eyes, the guns went off and she watched in horrified silence as two bodies dropped to the ground, her mouth open in terror. Jess had never seen a real dead person before, much less anyone being killed.
She started to take deep, panicked breaths as the blood stained and saturated the carpet, her hands to her chest, the pistol dropping to the floor (and luckily not going off). She couldn't take her eyes off of the bodies and more than anything she wanted to be out of there, go, run back to the vans and wait out the job there but she was afraid of what the Joker would do. He hadn't left her side since the killing and his arm was still draped over her shoulder.
Jess wondered faintly if he was in some way trying to comfort her, though it didn't seem so. He was barking orders at the men to set the bodies up in chairs around the circular table.
Jess had to swallow bile as she watched the corpses being dragged into seated positions and draped across the table. With a little giggle the Joker glanced down at her to check on her status and when he was satisfied that she wouldn't faint, he left her to help set up the scene which, Jess was coming to realize, was a sort of macabre poker game, the two victims each holding a hand of cards.
Without the Joker's arm around her, Jess felt much less stable. She found herself missing him even though he was only a few feet away and she leaned heavily against a wall, trying to calm the dizziness in her head.
For some reason, she was feeling no sort of moral crisis. It was as though, because she had not been the one to fire the bullets that had killed the men, she felt less awful about their deaths. It was dreadful that they had died, of course. They were human beings, like her, and that was sad. But she didn't know them and she was fairly sure they were doing nothing with their lives anyway. So, somehow, the pain and horror was less. Was that horrible of her? Was she turning into some kind of monster?
Now that the shock was fading, she felt almost back to normal. She found she could distance herself from the fact that she was in a room in which two people had just been murdered. What kind of a person was she? Was it really just that easy for her?
She looked around at the members of the Twenty. Their noses were scrunched in disgust at the corpses but none of them seemed panicked either.
Jess hadn't killed anyone. Did that make it okay to be okay?
Every time she glanced at the poker scene, she felt her stomach turn. So she wasn't desensitized--definitely not--but their murders seemed so commonplace that she had to wonder if maybe she wasn't born to do this. Not to kill people, no--she promised herself at that moment that she'd never allow him to make her kill anybody--but perhaps to be a… what? An accomplice?
What was she, exactly?
A part of the whole, she supposed. An element of the group that acted as the villains, the better to contrast with the heroes.
A member of the Lucky Twenty.
Was that her calling? Was she born with such a twisted mindset that this all came easier to her than to others?
Then she remembered how difficult it was to wake up every day, how many obstacles she had to face on a regular basis. So maybe it didn't come easily.
Perhaps, instead of destined to be a villain, Jess was simply stronger than many. She'd kept her sanity this long, right?
Right?
She checked herself. No. She wasn't insane. Not even close. Nothing like the Joker.
But if she wasn't, why did she find herself so compatible with him?
Nothing made any sense anymore. There was no use thinking about it. Nothing was going to change.
Heaving a sigh, Jess shakily bent down to pick up her fallen firearm.
They returned home in high spirits, their mission having been completed to the Joker's satisfaction. Jess rode in the back of the van on the way to the theater, still a little shaky after what had happened.
At one point in the ride, Blake had laughed about her looking tired. He had asked if she had a headache and offered her a pill from the Tupperware container.
Telling herself it was just aspirin, stupid Jessica popped it into her mouth and swallowed it. From that point on, the rest of the evening was sort of a blur.
Jess jumped out of the van unsteadily when they had reached their destination, already forgetting about the murders and the guns, sucked in by the incredible glow of lights along the stretch of road by the theater. She laughed and spun around slowly, making them dance and twinkle, all for her, and when the ground tipped and waved in front of her eyes, she fell laughing against Blake, who looked just as amazed by the lights as she was.
By now it seemed the Tupperware had gone around to everyone in the van and, as a slight drizzle of rain started from the sky, Jess threw her head back and caught the cold drops of water on her tongue. They felt beautiful, interesting… like magic.
She couldn't remember ever having felt so alive. All of her senses were going haywire, her ability to taste and touch and smell overwhelming her ability to think.
She hugged Blake, silently thanking him for this, suddenly so happy, so ecstatic, she felt she would scream.
The Joker was laughing, like always, and in her state the sound was comforting, far away and melodious. It was home. It was him, the one who had started all of this. And she loved him for it. She loved everything. She loved the vans, the old, dilapidated theater, the lights. She loved Drew and his steadying arm around her shoulder, leading her inside, and she loved Blake and the way he thought he could just grope her ass like he was doing now. She loved all of the Twenty. She loved crime and money and guns and she loved drugs suddenly. She loved everything she hated and everything she had loved before now filled her with so much emotion she thought she would cry.
And then she thought of Billy, and her eagerness to get into the theater increased tenfold. How much she wanted to hug him, to hold his hand and share her mood with him. She melted through the dark doorway into the blackness of the theater interior and vaguely heard herself ask where Billy was, sort of heard Blake answer that they were probably all in the rec room. She laughed and danced down the halls while the others sang crude songs to themselves and marveled at how dark it was.
It was dark, Jess noticed. Like ink or a hole. But it wasn't scary. Not tonight.
Tonight, darkness was beautiful.
Abruptly, Jess turned around, thinking about the darkest thing in her life right now and wanting to experience it, see how it morphed into something incredible as everything else had.
The Joker stood there, laughing at something with Tim, his sweat streaked makeup glowing red and white in the dim light. Slowly, he noticed the focus of her intent look and turned his eyes to her.
She stopped in the middle of the corridor, staring at him in utter shock. She scrutinized his face, noticing the way the lines of it met and melded, creating a truly handsome person. She looked at the scars and saw only sadness, pain, and a sort of melancholy loveliness. The way his shoulders hunched when he turned on her gave him an interesting sort of character, more interesting than anything she'd ever come up against.
He was shaking slightly, she noticed. Maybe he always did that. And his eyes were deep and sometimes they looked as though they weren't seeing the outside world, but some vision his head created. Jess wanted to know what he was thinking. And she wondered if perhaps she wasn't just a figment of the Joker's imagination, if perhaps everything here wasn't just inside his head.
If she was just his imagination, could she fly?
She certainly felt like she could.
"Joker," Jess whispered.
The Joker licked his lower lip and glanced around at the men beside him, then back to her, a little curiously. Jess walked slowly towards him, concentrating as well as she could, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. The Joker looked a little surprised, but only mildly so, and he blinked at her, keeping his face expressionless as she approached him.
The other men moved away uncomfortably, melting like ghosts into shadows as the Joker shifted, folding his arms, trying to figure out what she wanted. Truly, Jess wasn't sure what she wanted, either.
But this man intrigued her, his darkness captured her, his power and chaotic energy made her want to share it.
She knew she was high on some drug she'd probably never heard of, perhaps one that only existed in the world of Gotham. But in this intoxicated euphoria was the courage to get the answers she craved.
As long as this drug pounded through her veins, she didn't fear the Joker. She didn't fear anything.
She only feared losing this feeling.
She reached him shortly and lifted a tingling hand, watching as it blurred slightly around the edges, mesmerized momentarily by the trails of color floating from it.
Her target was his mouth, full and imperfect and red. She remembered his mouth and now his lips seemed like they would feel like velvet. She moved closer to him, reaching up to feel him.
When she touched the side of his face, right over the scars, he jerked, stiffened as if waking from a dream, and grabbed her wrist roughly. Jess had been a little taken aback at how warm his skin was--somehow, even though she'd kissed him before and knew what he felt like, she expected him to be ice cold--and when his hand closed around her arm, she closed her eyes, enjoying the surprising sensation of heat.
The Joker noted her expression and sneered at her in disgust while she smiled back at him, blissfully forgetful of the danger of him. His danger simply added to his appeal.
He was like fire. All energy, all random movement and motion. He was an element unto himself, one unlike anything around him; wholly and perfectly unique. He was hot, bright and sharp. He killed and destroyed and engulfed, but he was beautiful to watch. You couldn't take your eyes off of his action, but if you got too close, he burned you.
That was what he was doing now: Getting ready to burn Jess, suddenly wanting it more than anything, consumed by anger or madness. She could see in his eyes that she had done wrong by touching his scars, that he could easily kill her right now. And still she was not afraid. She thought that probably irritated him, but she wanted to know more about him.
"Joker," she whispered again, realizing she'd never called him that to his face before.
It didn't feel right, like she wasn't calling him by his name, but by his title. She wished he had another name.
She'd gotten his attention now. He stared at her, his lip slightly curled, one hand clenching her wrist, the other wrapped around his knife.
"Joker," Jess whispered for the third time, "what are you thinking?"
The question surprised him. He immediately dropped her wrist and stared hard at her, lifting the hand in which he held his knife up to her face level, as though he just longed to carve her. But something was preventing him from doing so, though Jess wasn't sure what. His eyes were wide, a little insane, and he opened his mouth as though trying to think of something to say to her. She felt the room sway and tip, and swayed with it, knowing even then that the hallway was completely still and she was under the influence of something that could get her into a lot of trouble. She smiled through it, though.
That was how you got rid of the menace: smiling through it.
Maybe that's why he did it so much. Maybe smiling made you the menace.
The Joker stared at her for a long moment, choosing his next action, and then suddenly made a discontented sound in the back of his throat and pushed past her, heading decisively towards the rec room. Jess slowly spun around and watched him leave, wondering why she hadn't gotten the answers she wanted.
A song had started playing loudly in her head and she followed him, humming the tune under her breath, melding with the darkness around her, finding warmth and comfort in it.
Jess woke up the next morning, sprawled on the couch in the rec room, her head in Billy's lap. She closed her eyes tightly against the sun streaming in through the windows and put a hand to her head as it immediately started to ache. Her stomach ached, too, as did her back, and when she became aware that she was still lightly gripping something in her hand, she looked down to find the floor littered with empty glass beer bottles.
Jess groaned. There'd been a party last night, probably to celebrate the successful job, and she'd been right there in the middle of it.
Now, if only she could remember.
Glimpses and flashes of glimpses raced through her aching skull. She'd lost sight of the Joker on the way to the rec room and she remembered Billy's concerned, yet highly amused, expression when he'd seen the state she was it. She remembered loud, pounding music that necessitated yelling to get any conversation across and Blake's flirtations whispered into her ear. She felt a rush of annoyance that he wasn't above taking advantage of her like that.
But Billy had been there the whole time, offering her water as well as alcohol, dragging her away from Blake with various excuses, telling her that if she needed to just sit down, he'd definitely walk her to her room.
She'd been demanding about the Joker's whereabouts the whole night, she realized, a blush heating her face. She hadn't been able to let where he'd gone off to go. She only hoped that everyone had been just as messed up as she had been and would forget any awkward questions.
The Joker hadn't even gone into the rec room. He'd taken a turn down some hallway between it and the front door and lost her. He'd gone off to revel in his own thoughts, probably talking to himself quietly.
Had she done something to him last night? She remembered wanting to touch him, wondering if he would feel as good as everything else… But had she?
For the life of her, Jess could not remember what she'd said or done. Oh lord… what if she'd done something truly embarrassing? What if she'd said something that would have repercussions later on?
She felt like shit.
She groaned and sat up, holding her head. Billy inhaled sharply behind her and she felt him shift, stretching and yawning.
"Morning, Jess," he said, his voice tired but pleasant.
Jess turned around to look at him sheepishly, hoping she hadn't done anything to embarrass herself with him, either.
"Hey, Billy," she replied, cuddling up next to him. He yawned and patted her head. "Crazy cool party you threw last night."
"Me?" Billy asked, smiling at her teasingly. "I wasn't the one dancing on tables."
Jess stiffened.
"What?!"
"I'm kidding, Jess," Billy laughed.
Jess hit him and relaxed, her racing heart slowing down. She wasn't that kind of girl, but she had been out of her head last night.
"Was I awful though?" she asked, an extension of her previous thoughts.
Billy shrugged.
"Not half bad," he said. "Actually, I was impressed. Blake told me you popped a pill and then with all you drank… I was surprised you could form cohesive sentences by three a.m. Tim got to the point where he was just laying on the ground, touching his face."
Billy pointed to a body sprawled halfway across the room. Tim lay sleeping, a very content look on his face, and Jess had to keep herself from bursting into giggles.
"It was fun," she said. "You all know how to have a good time."
"Well, we heard the job was a success," Billy said, "and so we figured the least we could do was reward you for all your hard work." He paused, frowning a little. "The Joker wasn't around much. Made it even better."
Jess didn't respond to that. She couldn't trust herself to.
Conflicting emotions made it difficult to form opinions.
"Thanks for looking out for me," she said, getting up to get a drink of water. Her lips were seriously chapped and her head hurt like a bitch. Hydration was the number one concern now.
"No problem," Billy said from behind her.
She looked back to watch him close his eyes and lay back on the couch, ready to drift off to unconsciousness again. Jess drained a glass of tap water, refilled it, and took it to her room.
If no one was doing much today, she could use some more sleep, too.