In a bright, sunny park, on a bright, sunny day, a child of five is shoved to the ground by a child of ten. The older child laughs, before marching off to destroy the sandcastle the younger boy had spent so much effort building, and the younger boy begins to cry. His whimpers are almost loud enough to be cries before he hears soft whistling to get his attention, and he turns big, pretty blue eyes framed by long dark lashes to a park bench not far away. His mother isn't watching him right now, talking with a friend, but he doesn't even give her a thought as he sees the pretty blonde woman sitting on a dull greenish park bench, big blue eyes like his and bright red lips, smiling and gesturing him over.

He's just a child. He doesn't even give a thought to walking towards her, slowly, because she's pretty. She looks nice. He comes to stand a little ways away from her, out of arm's reach at least, before eying her curiously.

"Hello there, little boy." The woman says, and her voice is warm and kind. There's a cane leaning against the bench and the boy stares at the long scar running down over her left eye, splitting her eyebrow. "I saw what happened. That wasn't nice at all." She frowns, and the boy nods slightly.

"I'm not 'posed to talk to strangers." He says, point-blank, and she blinks slightly at him, batting her blue eyes.

"Your parents are smart," She smiles again, "Very smart. My name is Julia. What's yours?"

"…Charlie…"

"Julia, meet Charlie. Charlie, meet Julia. We're not strangers anymore, right? So we can be friends now, can't we?" She cocks her head, like a curious puppy, and after a moment, he nods. The logic checks out with his childish mind; he can see no wrong in it. Besides…she looks so nice…she can't be dangerous. Dangerous people have guns and knives, scars and snarls. Bad people are ugly. Good people are pretty. Julia is pretty. So she must be good.

"That was a shame. About your sandcastle, I mean." Julia states, looking off at the ten-year-old stamping over the little sand building. It wasn't very good, but little Charlie poured his heart and soul into making it, and seeing the older boy stamp on it makes him sad and angry.

"I hate him." The little boy grumbles, ignoring his mother's words about not using the word 'hate'. When he remembers, he shoots wide blue eyes at Julia, speaking quickly. "Don't tell mama I said that! She'll get mad at me! I'm not 'posed to say mean things like that!"

Julia blinks, before nodding slightly. "I won't tell."

"Promise!" The little boy half-shouts.

"I swear. Cross my heart, hope to die." Julia crosses her heart with a smile, and it's so kind and warm and reassuring that Charlie calms down again, slowly. She begins speaking again, while Charlie, without really realizing it, sits down besides Julia. He likes her, so isn't scared of her. "Charlie…it's not bad to feel angry, or say you hate someone." The little boy turns his blue eyes to her again, and they're so bright blue that they're startling.

"But…mama said that we hafta say nice things…"

"We do, we do. But saying mean things feels good, doesn't it? Makes you feel better?" Julia queries, and after a moment, Charlie nods again. "And you know what? Revenge isn't bad either. It's no good to keep angry feelings inside you. It'll make you sick."

"Sick? Like a cold?"

"Like a very bad cold. Like a flu that hurts, right here." She points to her heart, and Charlie puts a tiny hand over his own. "Do you want to know how to fix that?"

"…How?" He asks, earnestly, and she reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a little round metal object with a red button on top, holding it out to him.

"When he makes you mad, push this button. But wait until you're so mad at him that you can't possibly stand it, okay?" Julia instructs, and the boy takes the object, nodding. He smiles at her and turns to go, before she stops him. "Here, it's a present." She tells him, handing him a bouncy rubber ball, bright red. He smiles wider, eyes glimmering, before saying 'thank you' to Julia and running off to play with his new toy. Julia sits at the bench, cane at her side, and watches with her gentle smile.

Charlie has ten blissful minutes of playing with his rubber ball before the older bully notices that he's got a new toy and comes over.

"Where'd you get that?" He demands, and Charlie clasps the ball against his chest, glaring.

"It was a present."

"From who?"

Charlie closes his mouth tight and shakes his head, because he's not going to let the bully get to Julia. He wants to protect her. The older boy marches up and grabs the ball away from him, laughing, before running back to his friends without giving Charlie a second thought. The younger boy is so angry that he's crying. Julia gives him a present and that boy has to take it away. He's so mad…he can't stand it…

"I'll show him!" He snaps, digging the metal object with the red button from his tiny jean pocket, and staring at the bully, hard. He's in the center of the park, sitting among picnic cloths spread out across the grass, showing his thieved toy off to his friends. His parents aren't far away, ignoring him, and Charlie's own parents are talking with them.

"I'll show him." Charlie mutters one last time, before pushing the switch to an 'on' position on the side, like Julia showed him, and pushing the red button down as hard as he can.

There are a series of loud explosions that follow moments after. The little red ball explodes, and a moment later, more explosions happen from their hidden places, and the park is covered with smoke and dust and screams. The little Charlie is bowled over and knocked to the grass, little hands over his ears, and he's terrified. He closes his eyes tight until the explosions stop.

When they do, he opens his eyes to a minefield.

There's blood and corpses and craters and languished cries that float over the breeze like dandelion puffs. He sees the bodies, but he doesn't recognize what they signify. He can't comprehend it. He just can't. What he does know, however, is that he doesn't know where his parents are. He runs towards where they were, shaking and tripping once or twice, until he finds them. They're not whole; the two were standing over a hidden charge, and blown to shreds. Charlie doesn't know that. He just knows that they're not moving and they're bloody. He whirls around and finds that the boy that stole his toy and broke his sandcastle is missing his hand and his face, the head a gory crater of blood and gray matter and bleach white bone.

Julia. What about Julia?

"Julia?" He asks, hollowly, before turning around to look at the seat. People are rushing towards him, paramedics that have been called very recently, two off-duty cops that are pulling survivors out of the small, decimated park. Someone begins to pull him away as he continues to hunt for the bench she was on.

"Julia?!" Little Charlie shrieks, as people pull him away, but when he finds the bench, there's no trace of the smiling woman. Julia is gone.

Julia walks down the sidewalk easily, her cane tapping against the concrete ahead of her as she walks. People are rushing all around her, but she remains calm and composed. Her cell phone rings and she leans her cane against the wall, answering it nonchalantly.

"Hello?"

"Julie…Schwarzy…you've been busy." She hears the voice on the other end that sounds like a croon, and she smiles.

"Just doing your bidding, oh chaotic one."

"You're making me blush." He sounds amused, and that's good for Julia-slash-Schwarzwald. When Joker is in a good mood, everyone is in a good mood. His tone abruptly changes, however, with the next line. He loses all amusement in his tone and becomes serious. "We're moving tonight. Get back here."

Julia blinks, before smiling slightly. "Alright, boss. Be back soon as possible."

"Make it quick." He answers, snappily, hastily, before the line goes dead. Julia ends the call on her side and shuts the phone, sighing under her breath. He has to be schizophrenic or something, with how his mood switches on a dime. Or maybe that was bipolar? Oh well, either one.

She hitches a ride with a passerby, telling them to head downtown. They make it halfway before the car slows to a stop beside a dumpster and the driver's body is dumped out of the driver's seat, a bullet wound to her head, and Julia drives the rest of the way back to their hideout, the chemical factory they've jumped back to. She walks in nonchalantly, the cane now thrown over her shoulder as she walks without the overdone limp that she uses to throw off suspicion in the city. Because what crippled, cane-using woman would be even remotely dangerous?

This one is.

She walks into the building and back to her room, dropping the cane and tossing her earthy-brown jacket aside. She pulls off the black slacks, and throws the black turtleneck sweater on the mattress, digging into her suitcase sitting beside the same mattress, pulling out a mishmash of black and white. It's her Schwarzwald costume, of course. The boots and gloves are sitting aside. Julia takes a moment to admire her fingernails, painted in alternating black and white, while pulling on the bottom and then the top of her costume that could be seen as a uniform of sorts, before pulling on the gloves and then the heels.

"Oh…damn…" She mumbles when she finds out that she's out of greasepaint; all three tubes are curled like bland white plastic worms. She can't go out without her face paint, can she?

That means she'll have to borrow some. And there's one person that has the colors she needs. She thinks over this new turn of events as she grabs her spray paint cans and sprays her hair; half black, half white. The scant spray paint marks on her scalp and forehead can be covered up with the makeup. Julia then spends a moment, while she brushes her now sticky and stringy hair out so that it's nice and straight and lovely again, pondering what the health risks were of using spray paint on her hair and inhaling the fumes while she did.

Oh well. It's not about thinking things through, not anymore. Joker's taught her that.

She clicks through the hallways, breezily; tracing her way up to Joker's room, passing masked thugs preparing for the newest job, whatever it is this time. They barely even stare at her anymore, a blotch of whites and blacks that clash heavily against the concrete gray, because she's a resident now. She's been here for the three weeks since Joker brought her back and she began working for them without any of that useless, weepy bullshit. It's general consensus for those who care that Joker probably finally drove her off the deep end.

"Hey! Boss!" Julia, a few strokes of paint away from becoming Schwarzwald, calls at his door, rapping on it with her knuckles. There isn't an answer, though she's sure he's here; he's always in his room before a big job, getting ready. She raps on his door again, louder this time, and whines his name like a child would. Schwarzwald is much different from Julia, or Michelle, or whoever she wants to be. She could even be who Michelle Queen was supposed to be from the get-go; carefree, happy, and somewhat childish. Except with added sociopathic tendencies.

"Jo-ker!"

After a moment, she runs off of whatever stupid whim hits her at that moment and opens the door anyway, walking into the messy room. "I need to borrow your makeup!" She announces, before seeing the door to the bathroom, cracked. Without any thought of the repercussions at all, she walks in with a demand on her lips. It dies off, however, into a shocked sort of silence. She's interrupting something she shouldn't have.

Julia, Schwarzwald, either one, has walked in on the Joker before he's put on his war paint. He hasn't even spray-painted his hair green either (she was surprised to learn that when he said 'dye', he meant 'paint'). She hasn't ever seen him without either one, except maybe at his trial, and she was too terrified of him to even fully take in his appearance then.

She's very surprised to see that he's gorgeous. Breezy blond hair, an almost boyish face; he's very handsome, and for that one frozen moment, she forgets who he is. She thinks he looks angelic, since he's not snarling or smiling in that mad manner that makes him look monstrous, and he's just staring at her with the same surprised expression that she's wearing. She doesn't even see the scars, in her trance state of pure shock.

The only thing that snaps her out of it is when she looks into his eyes. They're the exact same as they always are; black pits, piercing; a pair of chasms teeming with untold horrors. They're terrifying when they're focused so intently onto her faux baby blues.

And when she comes back to herself, Julia begins to feel the terror of her situation. It's almost as if she's interrupted a holy ritual, viewing an event that no living man should see; trespassing into territory that she should never have entered. She turns to walk out and feels fingers knot in her long, still slightly wet hair, dragging her back with a yelp of pain.

"Didn't you ever learn to knock?" He growls, as she collides into him again and stares into the mirror, seeing his handsome face twisted with black rage. She's on ice as thin as paper.

"I…did…you didn't answer-" She begins, hurried, before feeling a harsh tug on her hair and gritting her teeth.

"I know. I didn't want to, because I am busy." Joker enunciates those last three words very slowly, very clearly, and she nods hastily, eyes wide. "What did you want?"

"Need to borrow…paint?" She says it as a question, as if that's going to pacify his anger at her intrusion. He growls under his breath, before tossing her against the counter, hard. She catches herself on it and ignores the searing pain of the sharp counter's edge pressing hard into her stomach, and sees that his paint tubes are already laid out.

"I'm sorry. I…that was stupid…" She murmurs, as he snatches the can of green spray paint and shakes it as if he were to throttle the nonexistent life out of it. The clicking of the can as he shakes it is rapid.

"Do it and get out." Joker spits, and Julia very quickly begins to smear her makeup on, keeping her eyes on her face in the mirror's reflection. She does steal occasional glances at him beside her, however, as he sprays his hair into stringy, dirty green. She finishes with the white, moving around her star tattoo, the one poised above her left eye and moving down along the long scar that Joker gave her that night before he was locked away. She had to get it again, and it was incredibly unpleasant. It at least covers her scarring from getting the damn thing removed. She does her red lips, erases it because she smeared, and does it again, slowly. She's staring at Joker as he does his own. The black around one of his eyes is streaking upwards too much and it bothers Schwarzwald.

"Hey…" She murmurs, not believing she's about to do this. He grunts slightly to show he heard her, and she turns to face him. "Look at me. Sir." Schwarzwald amends quickly, and he turns his head to glare at her.

"What?" Joker snaps, before Schwarzwald reaches up and smears her thumb over his white-toned forehead, before smearing it over the black smudge. She has to fix it or it's going to drive her insane. He's staring very pointedly at her, waiting. When she stops and pulls back, he examines her work in the mirror. "What was that?"

"Erm…sorry, boss. Just…bothered me." She answers, sheepishly, looking over her own makeup in the mirror again. "I'll go then." She turns and walks towards the door, before he grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her back and around to face him. His makeup is done, and so is hers, but he's staring at her very carefully, almost as if he were appraising her. Schwarzwald is uncomfortable, very much so. "Um…is there something…?"

"It's too neat." He tells her, point-blank, and she stares at him, not comprehending. "Your makeup is too neat. Clean. It's not intimidating at all." He repeats, and she blinks.

"But…that's kind of my thing…" Schwarzwald murmurs, before Joker stares at her harder. She shrinks in his grasp, as he's in his paint again and is once again terrifying to behold. She's devoted to him, has been ever since he helped her through her transition into this mad world. He helped Alice into Wonderland, and he helped her decide that the mad world was the one she wanted to live and thrive in. Why shouldn't she devote herself to him and all his silly whims of chaos, death and destruction?

Besides…what point would there be to her if she didn't? A crazed woman that dresses up like a colorblind clown and has found her niche in wreaking havoc isn't really an accepted member of society. They'd lock her up in Arkham faster than she could blink, because she'd be easy to catch without a guiding hand. Anyway, she owes him a great debt for helping her out when she needed help, and for saving her from a perpetually unhappy life of playing arm candy for various rich boys who want some of her rich brother's money and working various dead-end jobs until she drops dead or someone stabs her. She's happy to die for him, because she can at least die happy.

Stockholm? Maybe. But does it make her happy? Definitely.

"Um…what are you…?" Schwarzwald murmurs, staring up at him curiously, about a moment before she feels the edge of the counter dig into the small of her back and she's being bent backwards over it, highly uncomfortably, and he's shoving his tongue down her throat. She's not even expecting it and by the time she can react, to try and at least push him back and ask 'What the fuck', he's got her wrists caught in one hand and pinned against her chest. And lord, his eyes are open and he's staring into her wide pair, and she freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. It's only a few seconds before he pulls back and lets her go, examining his makeup in the mirror, and she's wheezing against the counter.

"What was that?!" Schwarzwald snaps, and she thinks that she might taste greasepaint from that habit that he has of licking his lips when he's excited, and he doesn't even look at her as he speaks.

"Fixing you." Joker looks back, and he's cool and impassive, not flustered like Schwarzwald. She's almost angry about it. He can't even pretend? She looks in the mirror now and sees what he means. The clean red lipstick-like application of the paint on her lips is smeared, and it looks kind of like a scar-less version of Joker's smile, because the ends of it are turned up in a smeary, greasy smile. He was right about it making her look more terrifying; she looks less like a Cubist painting and more like an unhinged, something-is-not-quite-right-with-her sort of woman.

"…Oh. Did you really have to-"

"I'd never get it right if I did it with my hands. That sort of look isn't something you can just pull out of thin air. Greasy…messy…flustered?" He adds on that last word with a cruelly amused sort of smile, making fun of her obvious state of disconcertion. They both know that there's absolutely no romantic connotation to what he's just done to her; it's a game under the guise of a task, and he likes seeing a composed woman so very thrown off kilter. She huffs, annoyed, and turns to leave again.

"Oh, don't be so uptight." Joker grabs her wrist and drags her back, turning her around and wiping his thumb across his bottom lip, before smearing it onto her cheekbones. Red blush marks, Schwarzwald realizes, as she sees her reflection in the mirror again. "You need to have more fun with life. Try to be too serious and you'll turn into Harvey Dent."

"And?"

"And then you'll fall out of a window and die." He adds, with a black sort of cheer, and she huffs again.

"Oh, you're a laugh riot." She mutters, as he laughs in her ear at her mood.

"I bring Gotham the giggles. Let's go." Joker shoves her towards the door and she obliges, letting him pass her and then following behind him closely down the hallway. Despite his nasty trick, Schwarzwald regains a bit of her good mood and playfully bumps into him, trying to get him to play with her. He responds by putting a hand on her shoulder and shoving her into a wall, continuing to walk. She hits it and crumples, before he whistles at her like a dog and she moves to her feet, staggering after him.

They're kind of like children, in a way. Clown-themed, insane children with heavy arms, but still, children. And everyone knows that there's nothing so innocent and cruel as a child.