Chapter Nine- Identity Crisis (3rd Person)
"How long had he been like that for?" Doctor Munroe asked, after coming into the staff room and watching the Joker on the projection board with the other staff members, in complete silence, for at least five minutes.
All maximum threats in Arkham had security cameras rigged into their rooms, but the staff had found the Joker the most interesting inmate to observe. So they had gotten the technician to live stream his footage onto the projector to allow them to all constantly monitor and analyse his volatile behaviour.
To all the staff, the Joker had become as big a part of their lives as a new born child. All of them were trying to come up with rational theories for his actions, all of them desperate to publish a scientific paper on his being and become internationally renowned. However, so far none of their personality or behaviour concepts had proved to be true. The Joker was a walking contradiction, conflicting with everything they thought to be true in their science.
"At least seven hours," another Doctor answered. "Originally, we thought the system had glitched and was playing a sequence in a loop. But he's been like that all day."
"Perhaps it is a reaction to his medication. What drugs is he on at the moment?"
Doctor Michaelson, the latest psychiatrist to work with him and prescribe him medication, spoke up, "Carbamazepine and SSRI's for his possible Antisocial Personality Disorder, Clozapine and Olanzapine for his possible Bipolar disorder which also target Psychosis, and finally an added dose of risperidone to help his lower irritability."
The other Doctors nodded, agreeing to this prescribed cocktail. But Michaelson could've given him any drug and they would have given the same reaction, nobody knew what his brain was suffering from so therefore nobody contradicted anybody's diagnosis, having no evidence that their opinion was correct.
"Doesn't seem to be working." Monroe stated, frowning at the behaviour on the screen.
"They would work," Michaelson declared arrogantly. "The only issue is, he refuses to take them. We've had to grind up the pills and add them into his meals in order for him to consume them. And even then he doesn't get the full effects. The man hardly eats."
"Why would he not take the pills?" another Doctor questioned, not sure why anybody in his state of mind wouldn't want help and assistance.
"He claims he doesn't need them, he says that he is 'free'. It's the most worrying thing about him; he doesn't think he is insane." Michaelson explained.
"Funny. I would have said the most concerning thing about him was his desire to destroy the whole of Gotham to anarchy," Monroe spoke sarcastically, taking every opportunity possible to highlight to all the staff members her dislike for Michaelson.
She knew Michaelson from Medical School where he had gained the reputation for undercutting his fellow classmates, using them in order to progress himself further. But at the time she hadn't believed it. This shifted when she had trusted Michaelson with her Dissertation to hand into their Tutor. A Dissertation he had then put his own name to, and hers to his, causing him to graduate with flying colours, and her to have to retake their final year. It was safe to say, Monroe did not, nor would ever, trust Michaelson again.
"Why haven't you sedated him and forced the drugs into his system, like we do with the rest of the high security threats?" she questioned.
"Professor Lange, who was originally prescribed as his psychiatrists, did exactly that in his first session. We all know what happened to her the next time they crossed paths."
All the Doctors, including Monroe, shuddered at the memory.
Professor Lange was now in a psychiatric ward herself recovering from trauma. In their second session, the Joker had managed to wrestle out of his handcuffs, by breaking his thumbs, and ripped her tongue out of her throat.
They all fell silent again and continued staring at the screen.
The Joker had used the brown sauce from his meals to decorate the walls with two different words, 'Batman' and 'Alice', but the brown sauce hadn't been enough for his whole cells. So the Joker had used his own blood. They knew it had been his own blood because of the huge bite mark on his upper arm that went about a centimeter deep into the flesh, a wound which had only recently stopped bleeding. They had believed they had seen every behaviour possible in the Asylum, but this was something entirely new. The past seven hours he had been pacing up and down his cell, admiring his own handiwork.
Munroe noticed something more.
"Who is he speaking to?" she asked.
All the Doctors inched towards the screen, noticing that he was in fact in a deep monologue. His mouth silently and quickly made different shapes, every so often pausing to catch breath, or having a break so his tongue could lick his dry scars.
"He'll be speaking to Alice. He does that sometimes in our sessions, pretends she is in the room, laughing along with him." Michaelson figured.
"He's obsessed?"
"Entirely."
"I didn't realise he had the social capacity to form attachments." Another Doctor pipped in.
"I know nothing of their relationship," Michaelson admitted. "I don't know in what sense he regards her, but I doubt it's anything significant. In my professional opinion, his mind is unstimulated in this environment with little chance to harm others, and therefore he is becoming more prone to being fixated on certain objects, and even people."
"Still, I would be interested to see how the two interact with each other." Munroe spoke aloud, wondering how someone as complex as the Joker could be so infatuated with someone, who even though was clinically insane, wasn't all that remarkable.
Michaelson yet again stole her idea.
And that's how Alice and the Joker were once again reunited.
The Guards dragged Alice, who was kicking and screaming, into one of the many Cognitive Behavioural Therapy rooms in the Asylum. The room was pretty bare, save from the two armchairs and the table which lay in the middle of the room, the cameras which lay in each of the four corners, and finally, the two way mirror. They threw her to the floor and left, speedily locking the door behind them.
Alice, now alone in the room immediately, ran up to the two way mirror, oblivious to the huge number of Doctors and Professors who stood on the opposite side just a few feet away, and began hammering her tiny body against it. When the two Guards had bursted into her cell to drag her away, she had jumped to the conclusion that Quincy Sharp had changed his mind. She wasn't going to go down without a fight. A shard of glass would have done nicely for a weapon. Would have.
"Stupid bitch doesn't even know it's plastic!" Frank Boles laughed aloud on the other side. His shift had finished hours ago, but he had chosen to stay on to watch the scene play out before him, crossing his fingers that something bad was going to become of it. An event highly probable when the Joker is added into a mix.
Quickly giving up on breaking the mirror with her own body, Alice rushed over to the table. She planned on hurtling the table at the mirror, and if that still didn't break it then she would break off one of its legs and use it as some sort of baton. But that plan failed too, the little furnishings in the room had all been screwed down onto the floor, making them impossible to move.
So instead Alice stood right next to the door with the plan to ambush the next person who walked in with her bare hands.
But that plan also failed.
She was ready to spring into action hearing a key jingle but when the door opened she was left in utter shock. It wasn't a Guard, it was the Joker. He wasn't strapped to a hospital bed this time, he was strapped into a wheelchair.
One Guard wheeled his over to the table to face the two chairs, whilst the other guarded the passageway of the door, making certain Alice wasn't going to make a break for it. She did no such thing. Instead, she followed the first Guard in silence and sat down opposite the clown who she wasn't sure if she hated or loved.
The first Guard nearly sprinted out of the room, wanting to get away from the crazies as fast as possible, worried that insanity might be contagious.
Alice stared at the Joker, as he stared right back at her with an increased intensity that almost made her shift in her seat.
He was taking her all in. She had changed since he last saw her, almost a week ago. Firstly, she was dramatically thinner, her body having digressed from a woman's into a child's, all due to her refusal to eat the Asylum's food. Her skin had turned also turned a sickly yellow, and her pale blonde hair looked almost brown with greasy and dirt. But the Joker didn't care about any of this. What got his attention was the change within her eyes.
He searched for the pitiful sadness and pathetic fear in her eyes which he had caught glimpses of during their hospital stay, but he saw neither. Instead he had found a protective hardness, almost a sort of deadness that hid the fury which silently lurked behind hid her pretty blue eyes.
The Joker liked her more this way, perfection was overrated. He preferred his possessions damaged. And she was damaged all right, more so now than ever.
His black eyes narrowed in on her bandaged hand, and he became to chuckle at the thought of her in pain. But he froze in mid chortle. Somebody had hurt Alice. Somebody who wasn't him had injured his property.
"Who gotcha, Alice?" he asked in a low voice, seething. He leaned forward in his seat, oblivious to the painful pressure of the binds which dug into his skin when he did so.
"Oh, this thing?" Alice held up her hand. "I just fell."
She lied, consciously unaware that she didn't want the Joker to regard her as weak for have being unable to defend herself. But the psychiatrists in the other room had picked up immediately, all of them jotting it down in their notes.
"Aliceeeee," the Joker slithered, tilting his head to one side slowly, genuinely disappointed with her. "Ya know I can't stand liars."
Her pulse quickened and colour returned to her cheeks from shame and embarrassment of being found out.
"Just another inmate. But it's fine."
"Doesn't look fine, Aliceee."
"I'm fine." She snapped, immediately regretting it.
But the Joker didn't retaliate from her disrespect, at least he didn't retaliate straight away.
Alice saw that she hadn't been the only one to change because of Arkham, he had too. There was something off about him. He was always crazy, but now he was particularly unhinged. It made her anxious, not only for herself but for him. Alice knew he was growing madder being kept locked up. He had needed her for his first escape, but she felt he now needed her more than ever. Her concern for him, made her more concerned for herself. If she was worrying about the Joker, than she felt that perhaps she was past the point of no-return in sanity-terms. She felt that maybe she deserved to be in Arkham.
There was a reason why the Joker had vandalised his own cell- he was protesting against leaving Gotham, something that only Michaelson, Sharp and the Joker were aware of.
Every since the Joker had been captured, Sharp had been in constant talks with Metropolis trying to sell him off for profit, and Michaelson had joined in the negotiations. Michaelson was more hungry than the rest of his colleagues to be the one who succeeded in writing the paper on the Joker's character, but to succeed he had to decrease the competition. He knew of Quincy's plan to transfer the Joker for profit, so blackmailed him, making part of the deal that the Joker was to have one, and only one, psychiatrist. Him.
Michaelson already had planned what he was going to tell his colleagues in a weeks' time when they were departing, how due to LexCorp running the complex, it had superior technology and alternative practices which may benefit the Joker. And how, it wasn't exactly healthy keeping him in the city which he had attempted to destroy. The plan would have played out perfectly, if the Joker wasn't so opposed to the transfer.
Metropolis had nothing for him. There wasn't any crime being the safest city in the World, the citizens did not fear him since they had not been affected by his violence that reigned through Gotham, and there was no, and had never been, a Batman who had unintentionally made the Joker who he was. In psychologist's terms, the Joker was currently suffering from what was classed as an 'identity crisis'. And this wasn't helped by the factor that they hadn't allowed him to keep on his clown paint.
"Why are we here?" she wondered aloud, unintentionally breaking the Joker from his violent thoughts which were being directed towards Michaelson.
Alice shifted around in her seat to inspect all the cameras which were pointed directly towards them and frowned curiously.
"It doesn't seem that I will be here much longer." The Joker stated, glaring knowingly at the mirror. Behind it Doctor Michaelson gulped. "This might be the last time we-uh ever meet."
"What are you saying?" Alice suddenly grew worried that he was planning on getting out without coming for her.
The Joker's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he licked the corner of his scars. "Me-tro-po-lis." He slithered out, sounding out every syllable individually.
Alice's jaw dropped, "What they can't move you! I need you here."
She was speaking literally of course, only concerned about escapism, Strange's experiments, and Quincy's drugs.
Behind the screen all of the Doctors and Professors turned to Michaelson questioningly whilst he remained silent, dreading the wrath which would be bestowed upon him once the two inmates had returned to their cell. None of them spoke, however, wanting to listen to the words the two inmates were exchanging.
"Gee, I didn't realise you liked me that much." The Joker grinned mockingly, his eyes dancing around tauntingly.
"But, but, how will we escape?" Alice panicked, the Joker clenched his fists together in anger, seeing the fear which was creeping back into her eyes.
He saw that she still requiring some work. She was still too human, too weak. She was in need of a few extra pushes.
"Shhhh, not so loud." The Joker hissed at her stupidity for being unaware that they were currently being monitored, "They're watching us."
His words had caused Alice's eyes widened further. She leaned forward across the table, their faces only a few centimeters away from each other. The Doctors immediately forgot what she had said, taking interest of their body language to try determine their relationship.
"You have a plan, right?" she whispered quietly and quickly. "I mean you managed to get into my cell, so surely you can think of something."
"Huh?" the Joker face was blank.
"Well not you but one of your goons." She searched his eyes for recollection, there wasn't any, so she tried to prompt him further. "The cards, the cake?"
The Joker's eyes darted around the room slowly, already bored of not understanding what she was speaking about.
Alice's eyebrows furrowed, "Oh c'mon," she laughed nervously. "That was you! It had to be you."
"Alice," he finally said, in a serious tone. "Have you been taking your meds?"
He only managed to hold his concerned face for a few seconds before cracking up.
"So it wasn't you?" Alice asked confusedly leaning away again, unsure if he was just pulling her leg. It wouldn't have been the first time the Joker had lied to her.
The Joker's facially expression morphed into a sarcastic 'really?'.
"You're wasting time with useless questions, Alice. Who knows how much longer I'll be here. Why dontcha listen for a change?"
Alice stayed quiet, she knew he was trying to tell her something, something very important. She'd try solve the mystery of the anonymous card in her cell when she had the spare time to think.
"Ya know Alice, a favourite animal can tell you a lot about a person," He started randomly, but his speech wasn't unplanned, he had been thinking of it for days. "People who like dogs admire loyalty. People who like lions worship strength. People who like-"
"Yeah. I get it." She cut in, annoyed that he had said she was the one wasting time and then gone on to speak about this.
His eyes darkened and he clicked his tongue, "Ya know, it's rude to interrupt a story." He brushed it off, getting back in his story telling zone, "Me? I like cuckoos. Wanna know why?"
"Sure." Alice said nonchalantly, not interested at all but willing to humour him.
The Joker glared at her insolence again, suddenly falling silent and looked irritably down at his binds, he clucked his tongue once again, and then asked- "Say-uh Alice, how bout you loosen these straps?"
Alice hesitated.
"C'mon Alice, don't you trust me?" he asked jeeringly, "And after all I've done for you. Got to say, I'm offended."
She watched the grin spread further on his face, but despite the huge smile, his eyes were lit up with darkness. But she ignored this, something about his lack of face paint made him seem so human though and that, combined with Alice's twisted sense of loyalty, compelled her to walk over to his wheelchair and undo the binds.
As she untied his ankles, unbeknownst to her, the Joker had sent out a mocking wink to the two-way mirror which had caused all the Professionals to gasp, and Boles to snigger.
"Should we interfere?" one of the junior psychiatrists queried from behind the screen.
"We'll see how this plays out." Michaelson sweated nervously, fearing he was losing complete control of the situation.
Inside the room the Joker, now freed from his wrist straps, stood up. His hunched back still towering above Alice. With one swift motion he threw Alice into the wheelchair and spun her in a full circle whilst laughing.
"Where was I?" he questioned, seemingly unaware that his swift actions had caused Alice to become lightheaded due to her empty stomach.
"The cuckoos." She prompted dizzily.
"Ah yes, the cuckoos." He began pacing in front of her, as she stayed seated trying to regain her balance. His tongue began dancing across his mouth with feral excitement. "Now, it isn't all cuckoos I like. Only a certain type. The smart ones.
"The ones that know how difficult and unrewarding raising a child is. How no matter how much time and effort you put into-uh their development…. they never turn out quite right. They always end up a disappointment." The words turned acid in his mouth. "So what do these cuckoos do? They lay their eggs in another birds nest. They pass on the task!"
The Joker started to chortle, "But wanna know the really, really funny part? The cuckoo's chic is even smarter. Once its hatched, it pushes all the other eggs and birds out of the nest. That way, it can get all the attention, all the food. And poor mama bird, she ends up fatting up the only child who isn't even hers!"
"Hilarious." Alice said without even cracking a smile, she wasn't much a fan of birds.
The Joker stopped pacing and grabbed Alice's face roughly, pulling her out of the seat and onto her tiptoes to face him.
"Point is, Alice," he rolled his eyes backwards in his head, before staring at her again. "Your favourite animal is a shark, mine is a cuckoo- what does that say about us?"
Alice frowned, more baffled by the fact he had worked out her favourite animal than that she was currently being manhandled by a homicidal clown, "How'd you know that?"
He knocked his knuckles against her head, "I pay uh-ttention. You should too. Remember that shark story you told me?"
She recalled it and his words after she had told it- "If you wanted to say you'd help me escape you could've just come out and said it. I didn't need a whole metaphoric allegory about sharks."
Her lips formed an 'o' in realisation. This was his warped way of asking for help.
"Good girl." He stoked her face gently with the back of his dry hand, taking her reaction as a yes. "Now before the lights go out, I want you to listen to me, carefully."
"Pardon?" was all Alice managed to say before the Joker pinned her to the table and began suffocating her.
The Doctors and Guards were in such a frenzied panic to get her out of there that the only person on the other side of the screen who noticed that the Joker was lowly whispering words into her ear as he performed the act was Boles. But Boles mentioned nothing.
Black Mask hovered over the tied and gagged body of Bill Parsons, stroking his hostage's face with head of his gun, wondering whether or not to finish the job quickly without getting messy or to take his bitter sweet time with the killing.
His cell phone vibrating within his suit pocket broke his concentration.
"Sorry to be unprofessional, but you don't mind if I take this?" He said mockingly, smiling under his mask as Parsons' quivering body shook his head frantically in response.
"How's the Kid?" Sionis asked immediately upon answering, not bothering to exchange customary greetings.
"Alive." Was the solitary answer from the muffled voice at the other end of the receiver.
"Yeah. Well let's keep it that way."
"The inmate who tipped us off," the other side continued. "He wants a gift."
"Course he does. Nobody works for free. What does the freak want?" Sionis questioned, slapping Bill across the face with the butt of his gun when he noticed Parsons' pathetic attempt to manoeuvre himself and his seat towards the window to signal for help.
"A white rabbit."
Sionis grunted, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
"They don't call him the Mad Hatter for nothing." The voice continued, "Word down the grapevine is he's taken a liking to your Alice. If we aren't careful, she might become one of his next 'tea party' guests."
"We'll have her out of there long before he has the chance."
"I can have her out today if you want."
"No. We wait." Sionis ordered. "Have you visited the Morgues yet?"
The voice on the other side hesitated, "Listen Boss, I don't know what to tell you but there's no sign of him. We got a team of divers out in the river checking to see if someone dumped his body there. Seriously though, nobody could've survived that wreckage. You're fine."
"No body found, yet you still try to convince me Maroni is dead." Sionis' paranoia seeped out, but it did him well; he hadn't got this far in the game by being careless.
"We'll find it."
"Triple the number of divers. Until we find his body, Alice remains in Arkham." Sionis commanded.
Black Mask had enough to handle, maintaining order in the criminal underworld and finding Maroni. Both tasks were proving to be difficult. The order he had restored in the mob was hanging on a thin thread which threatened to snap at a moment's notice.
In two years, Gotham's scum had bowed to three different crime lords- Falcone, Maroni, and now Sionis. The constant change in management meant that loyalty was nearly non-existent. The Narrows threatened to erupt into anarchy against the establishment nearly daily, and the last thing Sionis needed was another murderer to keep a constant eye on. Therefore, for the time being, Alice had to remain in situ.
"Got it. Anything else?" His most trusted and loyal henchman asked.
"Send a disposal team over to Wayne Enterprises. I'm currently in a meeting with one of their Chair members."
Sionis hung up.
"Now, where were we?" Black Mask asked the terrified hostage. "Oh yeah, I was considering how to kill you."
Underneath his gag, Bill screamed.
Black Mask pointed his gun and drew the trigger. Bill fell silent, beginning his sentence of eternal silence.
The news about Maroni had ruined Sionis' torturous mood, but he still managed to feel faint wisps of satisfaction as he watched the ruby red blood pour out from Parsons' eye socket and trail its way down, seeping onto the floor. If he could frame the scene, then he would.
Roman Sionis did not care for many things, but he did appreciate art. And to him, watching another person's life slip away by your own hand was one of the finest pieces imaginable. His favourite had been when he murdered his own parents, he had found it to be pleasingly symmetrical. They had brought him into the World, but it had been he who had taken them out of it. But Sionis thought he would soon have a new favourite. Bruce Waynes.
How wrong he was going to be.
Authors Note: Thank you all so much for your support and kind words, it means so much to me! So after waiting impatiently for a year for its release, I saw 'Suicide Squad' the other day, and although I do agree with nearly everything the critics are saying about it, I actually really liked it! I think my love for DC may have biased my opinion… It has nothing on 'Batman: Assault on Arkham' an animated film that features the squad, but I will still probably buy the DVD to see all of the Joker's cut scenes. If the Joker or Harley Quinn don't get a solo film, I'll be so upset!