Chapter Seven: Murderous Behavior

Strawberry: This chapter reminds me of the way I'm kind of…twisted, if you will. It reminds me of why I don't like the way my brain works. If I can write it down, means I've thought of it, right? Eh…I still like this chapter for the most part. Actually, I REALLY like it. I've read it like forty times x] My excuse is "proofreading". But I really like it.

A man in the corner was rocking back and forth, hugging his knees against his chest, his chin trembling. That was Charlie. Langston had tears pouring down his cheeks and his tied wrists shook with his dry sobs. Then there was Mark. He was the only one throwing a fit, screaming that he had to get back to his home. He did his best to deliver blows, but ended up hurting himself in the long wrong, tripping over his own jelly-like legs as his men held him down. Thomas Schiff looked silently eager, perhaps only for a release or for some kind of comfort. Randy was the only one fully cooperating as if he had always been a part of the organization, always been longing to be a criminal, always been wanting the thrill he was achieving. He was sitting with his feet stretched in front of his, swaying them back and forth. He was twirling his thumbs around each other and smirking idly at the commotion throughout the room.

When he entered, Mark gave a high-pitched plea for deliverance. "Sir, what should I—"

"Mr. Mark-kuh," he said, interrupting his servant. Mark froze, panting wildly as a rabid dog. "Let's me and you have a friendly talk. Come on, sit down. I want you to think about something for me. All of you. Think about…who you are. Uh…you, Schiff." Thomas turned his attentions on him. "Tell me why…you were locked up in Arkham Asylum. Hm?" Thomas looked instantly taken aback, perhaps offended at being asked. Or offended, rather, that he had been "locked up" in the first place. He was already making progress, he noted.

"Well—heeh, I…" Thomas swallowed. "I-I don't know, I never…"

"They never told you?" He plastered a look of mock concern over his face.

"M-Mom and Dad s-said I had a…a problem. So they…they l-eft me there."

"They left you." He gave Thomas a moment to think and accept that he had been abandoned by his family. "They left you, hm?" Thomas nodded, his teeth chattering, but his eyes welling with rage. "What did they tell you about that?"

"I—I couldn't ha-handle the world this way," Thomas answered. With a pleased grin, he noticed the man curl his fists. "I'm…d-different."

"Oh, you are. You're different. You wanna know how? You're…better than your parents. Better than all of those…people. And you know why they put you away like that?" Thomas shook his head. "They were scared of you. Not because you 'weren't ready for the world'. They were scared because you were more ready than them. They were the odd guys out. See, humans are simple. They want to live in a world where they…can be…the best. Lemme tell you what they look for…" He shooed one of his sweating green locks away from his face. "They look for the threat. They look for the people who are better." He nodded encouragingly. "You're ready for the world. What do you say…you show this world that you're more ready than they are?"

He had captivated the entire room. He could feel them all silently acknowledging in their minds that his reasoning must have been true. He knew that they all wanted to hear that they were above the rest instead of what they usually heard. "Now listen," he began, keeping a special watch on Mark Edinburgh. "I can show you exactly how to prove yourselves. Every…single one…of you." He pointed at each of them individually, watching the way their eyes lit up. "The mayor." Two of them leaned forward expectantly. "Kill…the mayor."

Four of them smiled. Randy was the sanest. He still glowered from under his brow, accepting the task but now approving.

He smiled with them. After all, he only needed four extra men to finish the job. With his crew, plus those four—perhaps five depending on how Randy determined—he would have twelve men to impersonate the academy members he had arranged to be kidnapped. It was all going as planned. Then again, even if it didn't, things would still be beautiful.

Her lip was bleeding.

Slowing her breathing as necessarily as she could do so, she pressed her fingers to her mouth and dabbed at the broken skin. She was not sure what had started it; perhaps she had bitten it when she was asleep and dreaming. Perhaps it was in fact because the air was dry and cold enough to split skin. Whatever the reason, it was of no consequence. She could taste blood. Her legs were tangled underneath her sloppily.

"You're looking a little gloomy." The moment she looked up, he was towering above her, standing right in front of her. Fana felt guiltily submissive as she was curled on the ground at his feet, as though at his mercy or in his service. Before saying anything else, he felt compelled to sit along with her, seeing as she was looking much too pathetic sitting on her own. They were paralleling one another. His fingers were clicking against themselves silently. "It's a sunny day, doll face," he went on absent-mindedly, smiling to himself as he looked off towards one of the boarded windows. "And I hate to see a frown on such a pretty day!" There was a rusty tinge to his voice. His yellowed teeth were bared in a grin.

"The sun would be setting by now," Fana said quietly. She bowed her head, feeling as though the sundown was the mark of the beginning of the end of her life.

"And does that make it any less sunny?" he proposed, offering a substantial argument. Fana shrugged, not up for debate. Licking his lips momentarily when he noticed a tiny welling of blood around her lip, he leaned in slightly closer to her and rolled his eyes. It was such a task, dealing with humans. Anything dealing with two people of different levels of intellect was too much of a task. He sighed. "Talk to me. I need a laugh."

She looked at him, stunned, eager to know why he was meaning to ask her to talk to him. Did he want her to vent? And if he did, what was the point of it all? He didn't care. "Talk to you?" she repeated. "Talk to you about what? The sunset?"

"If it floats your boat," he shrugged. "Roll with it."

She blinked several times until she was certain that her eyelashes would get stuck together if she tried once more. One of his knees was elevated, his other leg stretched out lazily to the side carelessly. His gaze was hardly at all interested in her, and more portrayed the persona of a man completely empty. No other alias, she thought deeply. No other alias was correct. The Joker was one simple madman, perhaps with a back-story and perhaps without. Either way he was simply himself and had no other identity; she agreed with him about that, even if he had never said it. After all, he was easier to deal with if she could just make up excuses for him. "The sunset is…" She rattled her brain, shaking it free of all the things she wished to avoid. She tried to focus only on what exactly the sunset was. Did she know? Did she really even care about the sunset when there were so many more important things to care about? "The sunset…it's…"

"Mmm…hmm?" he prodded, barely even feigning his interest.

"I…" She felt inhuman for just a brief moment. Without a doubt, he had noticed. As if reading her mind, his mouth curved against the scars and the greasepaint. "I'm a murderer."

His smile flickered, than grew. "Ah, playing the common interests card…" he said, reaching in his pocket. When he removed his hand, a card with a yellow jester was between his fingers. He tossed in on the ground between them; it landed face down. "What a co—wincidence. I'm a murderer, too." He leaned over, his back hunching over his hips. He placed his middle finger on the back of the card lying on the tile floor. Absently, he slid it around in a figure eight, ignoring Fana, though her words were circulating in his mind. "Are you really a murderer, Miss Fana? Or are you just yankin' my chain..?"

"It's not funny," she snapped. She hadn't been angry—not this angry—in a while.

"Oh, yes, it is," he chanted back. "It's always funny. Even if you'd like to say it isn't, the world…it's just a game. What happens here stays here when we die. And overall…there's just no point to it. We'll be fossils here, soon enough. It's selfish to bawl over yourself…selfish to say, 'I had to live with that all my life.' Hey, you did it! And you hurt somebody else. Why are you making yourself the victim? That's not funny. But if you turn it just a little bit to the side…" He spun the card counterclockwise. "…It's funny that even in selflessness, human beings are…selfish…"

"As you take the credit for analyzing everything," she said bitterly.

"Am I a human being?" he replied, raising his eyebrows.

"Hardly."

"Then I take the credit…blamelessly." He reached up and tapped her face with the palm of his hand. "You're still not talking enough. Keep talking. Nothing's on TV." When she didn't respond, he sighed submissively and said, "Tell me why you're a murderer. You want to. Better if you don't deprive yourself…" He almost sounded sincere but she was hardly inclined to put any faith in him whatsoever.

"My parents were hardly out of high school when…when I came along," Fana began. He narrowed his eyes. How I love a good back-story… he thought. And how I can't stand loving things. "I guess they were both a little messed up. You'd think someone would've wondered why they were so drawn to each other and no one else would give them the time of day. Dad was some kind of mental mess. He cried at least twice a day over something miniscule. He might have been depressed. And my mother was…"

He held out his hand. She made no movement to pick up into her possession the pocketknife he was offering her. "Take it," he said warningly. "Can't trust myself right now…" He forced it into her hand, giving no further explanation.

It wasn't cold as she expected it to have been. In fact, it was loitering around lukewarm. It seemed to instill a feeling of superiority in her as she sat there, knife in hand, in front of the Joker, whom was unarmed. All along he had seemed to have been providing her with sufficient means of power—enough to get her out of the place. Out of captivity, out of danger…

She flipped the blade up. His eyes widened hungrily. Fana pursed her lips, suddenly considering holding it to his neck and forcing him to find someone else to hold captive. But what good would it have done? There was no point, seeing as she had hardly been trying to escape at all. Maybe she didn't even want to.

Desire was burning in his chest cavity. He transferred his weight to his knees and moved forward, very slowly, almost with no progress all. He was crawling—positively crawling towards the blade. "Do it," he hissed. Fana's eyes darted to the side, dropping her arms to her side, doing her best to pretend she had not even considered what she now knew he wanted her to do. "Come on," he whispered, still inching closer to her, his eyes fixed on the shining blade. "Come on…I want you to do it. I want you to do it, I want you to…" His heart was racing. Hurt me…

He reached for her hand. She seemed in a trance, not even resisting when his gloved hands wrapped around the fingers that she had curled around the handle of the knife. He dipped his head down, shaking his head once to calm himself. He guided her hand to his mouth until the slick blade was pressing into the corner of his lip. The scars were searing, just at the familiar feeling. "Tell me the story," he growled, his mouth closing on the knife. "Show me what it feels like." Fana's eyes were wide, but in the back of her mind, she knew better than to disobey. She didn't have to hurt him. Even in the end, it may have been better that he know how it felt when he shoved his blade in some victim's mouth and spat a story into their face. It would have been better if he knew.

Undecidedly, she lightly cupped her hand around the side of his neck, just below his ear. He grinned wildly. She adjusted her hand on the handle, her fingers feeling awkward around it, half-wishing he had never taken it out at all. "My mom…hated everything," she said uncomfortably, almost drawing her hands back. "I was at the top of that list…" He moved forward, and Fana instinctively pulled her hands further from him so as not to cut him. She did pity him. In his case, the last thing she wanted was to push him further over the edge of insanity. "She, uh…sh-she wanted me to go away." She was shrinking under his hungry gaze. "Both she and Dad always…always pretended I was doing something to make them annoyed with me. So when Mom left, the excuse was that I was never happy enough." He was turning his head dangerously to the side, his mouth pulling against the knife she was holding. He never broke his stare. She adjusted it, shaking. "She got in an accident…when she…decided to come home. I was…trying to go help her, but my dad kept pulling me back…so I couldn't. So…she died, when the gas caught fire." His face was mere centimeters from hers now, their noses quietly brushing against the other. She knew the white paint to be smearing onto her face.

He was breathing in all the air available to her. He was still fighting to get the knife to puncture him, but she would not have it. She felt slightly dizzy having him so close to her. He was moving around, fidgeting with the floor around her legs. She shut her eyes, giving up on stealing the oxygen back from him. Her brow was knitting together, and she gulped, making her throat ache.

"Are you going to finish the story?" he murmured. When she opened one eye to look at him, she noticed that he had let his fall shut as well. He looked peaceful, and perfectly in place with her poking a knife at him. "I wanna hear the rest…" He jerked his head to the side and his cheek brushed against hers as he tried to force her into slicing his face.

"Uh…" She drew her hand away from his neck and felt around for the ground behind her, holding herself steady. "He…um…he…"

"He called you a murderer," he finished grimly for her. Their foreheads came in contact for a moment before he leaned into the knife again. "Let me be the outlet. You wanted to kill him. They destroyed you…" She looked up at the ceiling, frantically trying to escape the sight of him desperately begging for her to reprint the scars around his mouth. "Do it to me. Do what you want…it's easy…I'll help you do it, I want you to…" His eyes opened slowly. "Make me pay for the pain I've caused."

Before he was aware of anything, she had ripped the knife out of his mouth and tossed it behind her. His spirits fell, but he knew she had done it because she was trying to avoid doing what she could not deny wanting to do. And as he thought it, she had gotten him into some sort of…headlock? He could not determine what; all he knew was that the side of his face was plastered against her collarbone. She was breathing in the foul scent of his dingy hair. She didn't much care. It was the least she should have suffered for what she had been so close to doing…

"You're…" He was propped against her legs. "…not good at telling stories." She ignored him. "I can hear your heart beating. You sound like a schizophrenic."

"You can't trust people," she said, mirroring his teachings.

"I know that," he replied. He could hear the pensiveness in her voice, but did not bother to trouble himself with discovering her thoughts. Although…she was an awful lot of…stuff. "Hey…hey, I'm mad at you," he said, feeling too…normal to stay silent. He escaped her grasp and immediately she drew her legs up to her chin. He turned with his back to her in mock offense. "I told you…to give me a kick in the face. I see you…don't have enough guts to do it. Little-bitty girl…no one else is gonna show you any mercy. If you do, you'll be stepping into that space at the bottom of the food chain. Not very smart of you…" He crossed his arms. Peering once over his shoulder, he leaned back against her legs. "You dwell on the past. Don't be a weakling." He laughed. "Be a little…murderous…"

She muttered something as she stared into the back of his head. "What was that?" he asked. Fana rested her head on her knees.

"You wouldn't hate yourself so much if you'd just change a little," she said quietly.

He couldn't make his legs work for the next twenty minutes.