"Joker, I'm pregnant."
A faint, dull ringing seemed to fill the small kitchen immediately following Jayde's words. Joker blinked, giving a small shake of his head, thinking he had heard her wrong.
"Wait...what?" he asked, letting out a short laugh, and before Jayde could cut in, he went on with a dismissive roll of his eyes at her feeble joke. "Ok, I was kidding about the cancer thing. Seriously though, what did the doctor say is wrong with you?"
The silence swelled as Jayde stared back at him, her eyes now slightly wide when she must have realized that Joker simply thought she was messing with him. Nodding her head slowly, she leaned back in her chair, bringing her hands from atop the table to rest in her lap.
"I'm serious, Joker..." she murmured, her voice soft and somewhat delicate, her slightly reddened blue eyes focused fully on his. "I'm pregnant. The doctor said I'm-"
"Well, he's wrong," Joker cut in abruptly, shaking his head as he rose quickly from the table. "The test, or...whatever...it's wrong." A sudden burst of inspiration forced him to the kitchen sink, where he flipped on the water, held his hands out and brought some of the freezing cold liquid to his face, to rub vigorously. However, when he straightened up and turned off the water, to find that Jayde was still sitting there across the room from him, staring up at him expectantly, he sighed in disappointment Not dreaming.
"Here," she said, once he had wiped his wet hands off on the legs of his black pants. Those two pieces of paper that she had brought into the house with her were now held in her hand, extended out for him to take. Despite himself, Joker walked over and snatched the papers from her, unfolding both of them to look down and read:
"Urine and blood test confirms approximate 10 week pregnancy. Estimated due date: September 22, 2013."
More words had appeared beneath these two seemingly simple sentences, but Joker found that he did not need to read more. With a flick of his hand, he tossed the two pieces of paper back onto the table. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Jayde flinch at his sudden movement but he ignored this and instead reached out for the set of car keys on the carved table.
"I'll be right back," he said, moving around the place where Jayde sat, toward the garage door, which he flung open, and was about halfway through it when he heard the wooden chair at the table scrape against the floor.
"Where are you going?" Jayde asked from behind him, clear panic laced into every syllable of her words. Pausing mid-step and gritting his teeth to prevent himself from yelling and therefore revealing that he was very close to the verge of panic himself, he turned slightly to face her, motioning with one thumb over his shoulder to where the Escalade sat in the garage beyond him.
"I'm just going to the store," he answered. "I'll be back in about five minutes."
True to his word, Joker was stepping right back into the house just a short five minutes later, unsurprised to find Jayde sitting exactly where he had left her, with one elbow rested on the table and her forehead braced with the heel of her hand. Again, he forewent a comment and instead walked straight over to the cabinets, opening one of them to reach in and pull out a small glass. Turning again to the kitchen table, he set down the bag he had brought back with him before handing the glass to Jayde. For just a moment, she hesitated, holding the glass in her hand, while she watched as Joker began pulling out box after box of what were now revealed to be home pregnancy tests, one of seemingly every brand and price range.
"Joker..." she began, her voice once again light and adopting that same cautious tone she used when she knew he was feeling particularly unpredictable. Joker swallowed hard, again forcibly attempting to keep himself calm for the time being.
"Go pee in that," he instructed, pointing with one finger from the glass to the distant hallway that led to the bathroom. However when Jayde once again remained still, some of that barely restrained urgency seeped out of him. "Now" he added in nothing short of a bark. With another jump, Jayde finally rose from the table and disappeared around the corner, into the bathroom before Joker heard the door shut and lock behind her.
Some of the kits he had randomly and blindly chosen included two test sticks, some only came with one, but regardless, Joker laid all twelve tests out on the table, knowing he would not be able to accept the truth until the round dozen all read positive. He had just finished uncapping the last one when Jayde returned, holding a now partially filled cup of her urine. Under normal circumstances, Joker would have spared a falsely disgusted look and a snide comment about how it was still warm or something equally as stupid, but at the moment, any sort of joke was far gone from his mind. Though as he glanced up to take the glass from her, his eyes just happened to flicker up toward her face, where he noticed that a few fresh tears had slipped past her eyelids and dark lashes. Withholding an annoyed groan, he rolled his eyes, pointing at the chair across from him.
"Stop crying and sit down," he told her firmly, watching momentarily as she obeyed and sunk heavily into the place he had indicated, where she folded her arms across her middle, to watch as Joker reached out and picked up the first test.
The process of dipping each stick into the urine before capping it again did not take nearly as long as Joker had hoped it would, and before he knew it, he was standing up again and rounding the edge of the table, glancing at the leather watch around his wrist as the first of the tests began to show a faint blue line. From what he had read on the boxes, each test supposedly used a different indication to dictate whether the result was either negative or positive, but as the first test he had dipped began to reveal a small blue plus sign on the screen, Joker quickly picked it up and dropped into the trashcan. He did not need to double check the box to know what the plus sign meant.
And one by one, each of the tests began unveiling their results, some bearing a plus sign, others giving two lines, some even going so far as to spell the word 'pregnant' in small blue letters. While Joker knew it was in his personality to not believe anything until he saw it and proved it for himself, he began to wonder, as he threw each conclusive test in the trashcan, whether it had really been a good idea to test this himself. Each positive was making him feel physically ill with anger and as the last of the tests finished processing, by displaying a small smiley face on the screen, that poorly restrained emotion bubbled out of him.
Jayde jumped with a soft gasp as that last test met the wall across the table with near explosive force and broke into several pieces of plastic, as Joker turned away, reaching up one flustered hand to run it through the front of his messy green hair.
"How did this happen?" he asked a moment later, his voice surprisingly quiet but rather dangerous as he looked back to Jayde. To Joker's immediate surprise, a small, rather sheepish smile appeared on Jayde's face, as she turned on her chair to face him and fleetingly, he wondered if she had mistaken his throwing the test at the wall as an expression of his happiness.
"Well...when a man and a woman have sex-..." she began somewhat sassily, but Joker cut in, taking a step toward her and holding up one threatening finger in her direction.
"Don't be smart with me right now, Jayde," he warned her, his voice raising slightly. Her smile vanished with record timing. "I meant, how did you get like...this, when I'm physically incapable of reproducing?" Joker's head cocked to the side and his eyebrows raised, as he waited impatiently for an answer that Jayde seemed unable to give. She shook her own head with a vague shrug of her shoulders.
"What do you-...I don't underst-" she stammered awkwardly, but again, Joker interrupted, tossing his arms.
"I'm shooting blanks!" he nearly yelled, watching as Jayde's expression suddenly went from rather confused to a frown. "I had a vasectomy a long time ago so this would NOT happen!"
"Joker, I don't-..." Once again, Jayde tried to cut in, but he spoke over her.
"So what I would like to know..." he continued, his voice now back at a very low level, but practically pulsating with anger. "-is how you got knocked up."
Joker was not sure if perhaps his choice of the words 'knocked up' had triggered something, but as Jayde suddenly stood up from her chair, a now equally dangerous expression on her face, he had to fight the temptation to take a step back from her; he had not yet forgotten how his missing back tooth had come to be missing. With her sharp eyebrows arched so severely that they formed a wrinkle between them, Jayde held up a hand to her chest, indicating herself.
"Are you accusing me...of cheating?" she asked in a highly incredulous, rather harsh tone of voice. When Joker simply tossed his hands with a shrug, she repeated herself, this time putting emphasis on certain words. "You are accusing me of cheating?"
Ignoring her connotation, Joker shrugged again.
"Do the math, Jayde," he began. "I can't reproduce and yet here you are, telling me...showing me that you're..." Here, his voice failed him. He could not yet bring himself to say the word-
"PREGNANT!" She finished for him, suddenly reaching the top of her voice. "I'm PREGNANT with YOUR BABY and your first rational thought is to accuse me of screwing around on you?!" It seemed the height of her volume was just enough to push Joker to match her.
"YEAH! IT IS!" he shouted in return, taking a half-step toward her. Unnervingly, Jayde did not back away from him. "How can I be responsible for that when I'm not even physically CAPABLE of it?!" he added, pointing one finger at the front of her body.
"Joker, how could I have cheated? When do you think I could have done that?!" she asked, matching him and advancing toward him yet another half step so that they were within two feet of each other, shouting in each others faces. "Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to hide something from you? Even something small?!"
Across from her, Joker hissed in incredulity, rolling his eyes. "Oh, spare me the bullshit, Jayde. I'm not here every waking minute of every day and neither are you! There are plenty of times you could have done this-" Just as Joker had been speaking, Jayde walked away with a shake of her head, around the corner and into the living room, and he followed her, watching as she snatched up a random item of clothing on the couch and prepared to disappear into the bedroom. But with the sense of drowning in a shallow pond, of fighting a lost battle creeping up on him, Joker took a deep breath and shouted at her back.
"SO JUST WHO WAS THE LAST GUY YOU FUCKED IN MY BED, HUH?!"
That horrible, ringing silence from earlier immediately swelled as the last echoes of Joker's loud voice dissipated through the room, and across from him, Jayde stopped cold in her tracks, and turned, dropping that random shirt back onto the couch as she began to walk slowly toward him. Rebelliously, Joker watched her approach, feeling a very slim sense of pride start to fill him at finally having the last word. But as Jayde grew to within a foot of him, looking straight up at him, he had only a split second to take half of a deep breath before she suddenly swung out and slapped him across the face with such force, Joker actually felt his neck pop. He groaned from between gritted teeth and behind a wavy curtain of green hair as small, twinkling lights burst momentarily in his vision.
"God, I hate it when you do that..." he hissed quietly, his left eye squinted and stinging as Jayde glared up at him with more hatred than he had ever seen in her face before. Ignoring this comment, she instead answered his question from just moments ago.
"The last guy I fucked in our bed was you," she said, her voice very low and calm despite the fact that she was shaking so hard, Joker could now see the tips of her hair trembling. "The only guy I've EVER fucked is you." Here, she paused, her hate-filled eyes scanning across Joker's face as he stared down at her defiantly. A moment later, she went on, shaking her head slowly. "How you could even entertain the idea of me being unfaithful to you is completely beyond me right now-..." Her voice was once again raising in volume at an alarmingly fast rate but despite this, Joker held his ground. "-When I've been NOTHING but good to you. Do you really think I'm STUPID enough to cheat on you?!" He took a stumbled half-step backward as Jayde suddenly shoved him as hard as she could using her hands against his chest, but as the distance was momentarily increased between them, she closed in again, glaring up at him. However, just as Jayde's mouth had opened again, to go on, miraculously, as though he knew to save Joker from the instinctual reaction of finally boiling over and hitting Jayde as hard as he possibly could, the garage door across from them swung open and Dotcom entered the room, though he hesitated as soon as he looked over and saw where they were standing.
"Oh..." he muttered, half-backing out into the garage again. "Sorry...I'll just go..."
"No, stay," Joker told him abruptly, moving away from Jayde and back over toward the table where the keys to the Escalade lay abandoned in the midst of all the opened and emptied pregnancy test boxes. "I'm going. I just need to-..." Joker began to try and explain what it was he needed to do, but his mind was still spinning, reeling from the past half hour and he found himself perfectly incapable of forming a sentence or even a thought to completion. "I'll be back later." Without another word, nor a glance back over his shoulder at Jayde, Joker moved past Dotcom to the garage door and disappeared beyond it, allowing the wood to collide with the frame heavily behind him.
As the roar of the Corvette's powerful engine filled the garage beyond the tense confines of the house, both Dotcom and Jayde stood perfectly still, listening to the gradually weakening sound of the engine as Joker backed the car out. The noise became more and more faint until it dissipated completely, and the two of them were left perfectly alone, Dotcom staring at Jayde with widened, apprehensive eyes, while across from him, Jayde was simply left gazing listlessly, wearily at the wall, where just moments ago, Joker had been standing. With a soft 'tsk' of his tongue against the back of his teeth, Dotcom walked toward her.
"Oh, honey..." he murmured quietly, holding out his arms to wrap around her shoulders. And this was seemingly all she had been waiting for, all day. Just some sort of comfort, some gentle touch to assure her that everything would be fine, that she would get through this...that she would not have to do this alone.
A loud, sob escaped Jayde as her knees finally buckled beneath the weight of her situation and the heart wrenching things Joker had just accused her of, and together, she and Dotcom sank onto the couch, his arms wrapped around her as she wept openly into the collar of his shirt.
The sun had set on Chicago, leaving the streets darkened and rather empty for a Tuesday night, but the Joker might as well have been driving with a blindfold on for all the notice he took of where he was going. He had already passed Tiny and D-boy's house without even a second thought of stopping there, and was now moving steadily into the innermost avenues of the city, hoping to put as much distance as possible between himself and the house at the corner of Lincoln and Platt. The place where Jayde's hand had connected with his cheek still stung and ached, making him feel, if possible, even more angry that he had been unable to have the last word of their argument. It was true, the two of them had argued before in the past, but never to the degree they had reached that night, just the residual sound of their shouting in the back of his mind filled him with an intense desire to mow through the crowd of people passing in front of the Corvette along the crosswalk. Though as tempting as this seemed, he knew it would do him absolutely no good to land himself in a heap of trouble with the law at this time...but then again...being in prison would mean that he was relieved of any sort of duty to Jayde and the thing she was apparently carrying inside of her...
This thought brought Joker's fist to the dashboard of the car as he slammed it there, a rough growl of anger escaping him from between gritted teeth. He had made a perfectly valid point back at the house! How could he be responsible for Jayde's situation when it was not even possible for him to reproduce? He had been nineteen years old when he made the decision to have a vasectomy and not for even a moment during the intervening years had he regretted this. He knew he was not the type that ought to be reproducing and he was absolutely positive that there was a lot of people who would agree with him on that. And yet, now here he sat, fuming, at a red light, struggling to comprehend how Jayde, the one and only girl he had ever entrusted to love him and be loved by him, was claiming to be pregnant with his child. It just couldn't be mine...he thought desperately.
But as was Joker's typical response to something he could not comprehend, he felt the need to prove it, figure it out for himself and if he could not do this alone, he would go straight to the source, straight to the person who, he felt, was truly to blame for his situation. As the light switched to green, Joker immediately turned left, his mind now on a new and hopefully more helpful destination.
The streets in this particular part of the city were practically squished between the tall buildings. Hardly anyone dared to park directly on them, and instead typically confined their cars to one of the numerous, multilevel parking garages available between the buildings. But of course, at the moment, Joker could barely spare a single thought on anything besides his current dilemma and hastily, he parked the Corvette right on the street in front of a huge, eight story building, pausing only momentarily to pat the inside pocket of his vest before he got out. Unless he got the answers he was looking for, he would not need to bring a gun; a single knife would suffice, just as it always did.
Despite the fact that the time was already approaching seven o'clock in the evening, Joker met no resistance at the doors to the building, which meant, hopefully, that the staff was still present and that he would not get all the way upstairs only to meet a crew of Mexican cleaning women. The lobby was sparkling clean but miraculously empty, which once again gave Joker a quick and easy path over to the elevators, where he stood glaring up at the lighted circles overhead and pounding his gloved finger relentlessly against the 'up' button. Within moments, the elevator car arrived, the doors opened and Joker rushed in, only to turn to the wall of buttons, where he hastily selected the small dim circle bearing the number '8'.
Soft, lighthearted music played somewhere above him in the elevator, but Joker could barely hear it over the sound of his teeth grinding together in the back of his mouth. It had been a very long time since he had been in this particular building, and thinking back to the last time he had ridden in this very same elevator, his heart gave a pang of ache when, somewhat instinctually, he turned his head to glance to his left, where ten years ago, Tre had been standing right beside him. Of course, the jokes had been flying about how 'ay, man, they betta' give you one of them plastic cone things to go 'round yo neck after you get fixed,' or 'hopefully now this means I can stop feeling that intense desire to piss on every fire hydrant I see.' A snort of a laugh escaped Joker when his mind took him back to the way Tre had laughed himself to tears over the self-described 'banana hammock' Joker had been forced to wear for the three days following his procedure. At the time, Joker had let him laugh, but all the while had been thinking delightedly about how he would never have to buy condoms again. That reminiscent smile slid slowly from Joker's face as he turned slowly to face the back of the elevator, as though he had felt someone watching him, only to find that one huge mirror covered the back wall. Vaguely, Joker felt a sense of surprise that the word 'Dad' had not written itself across his forehead in huge, bright red letters, although the place where Jayde had slapped him still ached angrily. He supposed that was sort of the same thing.
The very highest level of the building was surprisingly empty, save for one young woman behind a reception desk, just rising from her chair to lean over and pull out a purse from one of the drawers. She looked up with a smile as Joker approached, and he watched, feeling a very small stab of enjoyment as her grin faltered noticeably upon laying eyes on him; she recognized him, even without his characteristic greasepaint. Holding up one hand, she backed away from the desk.
"P-please, I have kids," she stammered, clear terror in her eyes. A shaking hand pointed at her purse on the desk between them as Joker stepped up close enough to rest his forearms on it. "There's my purse, take it! Just let me-"
At this, Joker finally stepped in, suddenly finding that the urgency of his situation was just a bit too dire for him to find much pleasure in terrifying this woman. He rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh of impatience.
"Take my purse, she says...God, that's insulting.."he grumbled under his breath, giving a shake of his head. "Look," he went on, holding up both empty gloved hands. "I'm unarmed, I'm not gonna hurt ya, and I'm most certainly not after the...maybe couple thousand dollars you have in your bank account-" he motioned to her purse with one of his raised hands. "No, I'm just here to have a little chat with Dr. Miller. He still here?"
It seemed the randomness and complete casualty in Joker's tone and mannerisms had rendered the woman completely speechless, and she blinked several seconds after he had finished speaking, as though she had only just realized he had asked her a question. With a jump, she nodded, pointing one finger down the hallway.
"Y-yes, he's staying late tonight to...finish some of his charts-" she stammered, watching the side of Joker's scarred face as a grin finally appeared there.
"Hmm...How fortuitous..." he growled, rubbing his gloved hands together quickly. Turning back to the woman first, he nodded at her purse. "Tell ya what, tuts, how 'bout you get the hell outta here, hm?" he asked, arching one eyebrow when she nodded immediately, as though she would like nothing better than to do just that. "But first," Joker went on, holding out one hand. "in repayment to me for not killing you, I want you to promise that you wont call the cops, okay?" he asked in a tone that suggested he was speaking to a child, nodding his head very slowly as the woman across from him did the same, her eyes darting back and forth between his face and the elevator. "Shake on it?"
At first, from the expression on her face and her hesitation, it was as though he had asked her to jump off the building, but after a moment, she extended one trembling hand very slowly toward Joker's outstretched palm, and cringed upon making contact with him, at this point clearly willing to do whatever it took to get out of that building with her life. However, just as Joker's fingers tightened around the back of her hand, he suddenly pulled her hand closer with a rough yank, in turn pulling her entire upper body closer to him across the desk. His gaze darted back and forth between her eyes.
"Call the cops, and I will hunt you down, understand?" he asked, his voice now barely above a whisper, his dark eyes watching her closely as her face was now just inches from his own. The fear in her expression was practically audible but despite how terrified she looked, the woman simply nodded, and with that, Joker released her hand. "Alright, now beat it." he finally finished, nodding his head toward the elevator behind him.
With the woman now scurrying away as quickly as she could manage, Joker turned to begin walking down the hallway, to where he knew the man's luxurious corner office was. From the quietness of the floor, Joker figured that the rest of the doctors and staff had already gone home, which he figured was particularly advantageous; in the grand scope of things that had not gone his way that evening, he felt he'd take a win wherever he could get it, no matter how small it happened to be.
The eighth floor of his office building had been redone, updated since Joker had last been there. The walls of the individual offices were now fully glass, completely transparent, making it easy for him to locate his prey up ahead toward the end of the hall, where the row of unlit rooms was punctuated by a single desk lamp, illuminating a lushly furnished office. It seemed Joker had not yet lost his ability to sneak up on people as the man now visible inside the room did not look up when he stopped in front of the door, on which the words "Dr. James Miller, MD" had been sealed in frosted letters. For just a moment, Joker watched through the glass as the familiar man, now with a full head of gray hair, sat at his desk on the other side, typing on a keyboard in front of a flat screen computer monitor, clearly unaware that a predator stood a mere ten feet away. However, just as Joker began to wonder numbly if he was the only person on earth who possessed the ability to feel when he was being watched, the doctor's fingers abruptly stopped moving, just before his head slowly turned toward the glass door. He suddenly turned in his rolling chair and backed away from the desk, rising to his feet. Joker took his as his cue to let himself in.
"Doctor Miller," he began as he stepped into the room, his voice carelessly light and clowny. One finger wagged at the man across from him as he tilted his head to the side. "Boy, have I got a bone to pick with you..." At this, Joker paused, frowning slightly as he assessed his last statement. "Probably the wrong use of words, given your specialty-" Dr. Miller did not seem to be listening very closely as his eyes were roughly the size and shape of saucers.
"Kieron...I-" he began, his voice surprisingly smooth for a man who was currently radiating such waves of anxiety, Joker could practically smell it. Ignoring this, Joker shrugged, squinting slightly as he walked over toward the desk, opposite the doctor.
"Well, that's not really what they call me anymore but it's encouraging that you remember me...Should save us a few moments of awkward niceties," Joker replied, dropping down casually into one of the plush chairs across the desk from Miller, who was now ogling him as though he found it hard to believe that the Joker had ever exchanged anything close to what he would call 'niceties'. Instead of commenting on this, the doctor slowly moved back toward his chair, keeping his round eyes focused on Kieron, clearly afraid to lose sight of him for more than a few seconds. Once seated however, he pulled himself up to the desk, taking a deep breath.
"Of course I remember you," he said quietly, his hazel eyes now raking across the Joker's face, taking in what the last ten years had done to him. The scars had not been there the last time Kieron had sat in this exact chair. James continued, shaking his head slowly. "You were the youngest patient I ever had. And I'd never had a patient pay me to keep their real name off of the files-...And of course, I saw you on the news from Gotham...saw what you had done and-..." Again, Dr. Miller paused, to inhale deeply. "I just always had a feeling I'd be seeing you again."
All of this, Joker had been only half-listening to, the other half of his brain focused now on how he was supposed to go about wording his questions to this man; a man he had not seen in a decade. It was clear from the vague sound of what Joker could swear was reverence in his voice that Dr. Miller viewed him as something of a legend, perhaps even a myth, a mere shadow of the young man he had met ten years ago, which made explaining his situation even more complicated. How was Joker to explain that he, one of the most feared criminals, terrorists, in the country, had met a girl, gone absolutely stark raving crazy for her, and was now wondering how he could have gotten her pregnant? In an effort to stave off the moment in which he would have to admit all this aloud to someone he barely knew, Joker went back to the last thing he had just said. Leaning forward slightly on his chair, he arched one eyebrow.
"What, pray tell, gave you the idea that I might be back here?" he asked, not only out of procrastination, but also pure curiosity; this seemed an odd thing for his once, former doctor to say. Across the desk from him, Dr. Miller shrugged.
"Well, I thought you'd want to update your surgery," he answered somewhat sheepishly. "You paid cash last time so-" James went on, but Joker was already interrupting, shaking his head like a dog trying to rid it's ears of water.
"Wait, what do you mean, update?" he asked, his voice raising slightly and losing that hint of clowniness. For just a moment, Kieron was sitting, once again, across from his doctor. "I thought that was a permanent decision...that once it was done, it was done, unless I chose to have it reversed?"
In the aged face across from him, Joker noticed just a hint of urgency register there, before Miller shook his head, his gray eyebrows furrowing.
"Kieron, a vasectomy is only an affective form of sterilization for five to seven years," he answered, glancing down at his desk to shift several piles of paper to the side, searching for something, though he never did manage to find it before the Joker had returned to his being. Suddenly, James Miller found himself being picked up out of his chair by the front of his shirt, clasped tightly in two large, rough hands. He gave a shout of mingled pain and fear when his back collided heavily with the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall of his corner office, and opening his eyes, he found the Joker's scarred, devilish face just inches from his own.
"Are you telling me that I've been able to have my own little bastards for near on five years now?..." Joker asked, his voice growling through gritted teeth, his eyebrows raising as his black eyes bounced back and forth between Dr. Miller's fear laden gaze. What felt like a lead weight dropped into the pit of Joker's stomach as the doctor mouthed wordlessly at him, seemingly stunned into speechlessness. With a rough growl, Joker shook the man so that his back banged against the window ominously, threatening him with the eight stories he was currently lording over the pavement just on the other side of the glass. "Gotta answer, doc, or so help me, I'll throw you through this window." Gulping audibly, Dr. Miller nodded his head hastily.
"Y-yes, the body will-...will repair itself after ab-bout seven..seven years!" he gasped, shifting slightly as he attempted to balance on his toes from the way Joker had him raised to eye level against the window. That ball of lead in his stomach dropped another few inches and gained weight, but he did not allow this sensation to manifest itself in his eyes as he shook the doctor again.
"And why, pray tell, wasn't I told this ten years ago?" he asked, his voice adopting that clowny note as Dr. Miller's eyes grew wide. Joker knew that look; the doctor had found a glimmer of hope.
"I did tell you that!" he practically shouted in defense. "I tell all my patients that! It's explained in great detail in the packet of information I gave you before the procedure! Honestly, you have to believe me!"
Despite himself, Joker's grip slackened ever so slightly on the man's shirt, as the weight of what he had just been told, the second bit of devastating news in one day, came crashing down on him. To his immense surprise and horror, Joker felt his legs become light and his vision grew dim for just a moment in time, symptoms which he knew almost always accompanied a rapid and unexpected hug with the ground. But fighting hard against the fainting spell, he managed to take a deep breath in through his nose and fight it off, to focus on the man still clasped by the shirt in his hands. With a rough growl, Joker shoved him away from him, into the glass, where the doctor immediately crumpled to the floor, shaking and sweating stains in his light blue business shirt.
There was nothing else Joker could say, nothing else he could ask that would make any difference. Sure, he could kill this man, but what good would it do, really? It was his, Kieron's, fault. He had simply tossed that stack of paper away all those years ago, having only skimmed the contents for what little information he cared about. Now, the damage was done. Dr. James Miller had done nothing wrong, and although this was never normally a factor in Joker's decision to kill someone, he just could not feel at all justified in killing this man for what was ultimately his mistake. With an angry hiss through his teeth, Joker stepped away from the trembling man on the floor at his feet.
"Consider yourself at the height of lucky to be leaving with your life tonight, Dr. Miller," Joker said over his shoulder as he moved toward the door. However, just as he reached out for the handle, though he had not been expecting any sort of a reply whatsoever, he paused when the doctor's voice broke the heavy silence. Joker did not turn back to look at him, but instead used the opposite wall of glass to watch the reflection as James slowly got to his feet behind him.
"If you want your surgery updated, K-...Joker, I'll do it for you," he said, his voice slightly calmer but still quivering. "Free of charge, keep your name off any record or surgery roster."
With his back still to the desk and the doctor standing behind it, Joker took a very deep breath in through his nose, his eyes sliding shut as he reached out for the handle of the glass door.
"That's an awfully generous offer, doc, but-..." Here, Joker paused, finally glancing back over his shoulder as he pulled open the door to the office. "It's a little late for that now."
Leaving a stunned but likely relieved man standing in his luxurious office behind him, Joker ventured back down the hallway toward that same elevator, but bypassed it, instead moving past it to the stairs, where he threw open the door and began to descend. Every step downward, a new directive beat itself into the front of Joker's brain. Your fault, your fault, your fault, your fault...
Now, there was only one thing left for him to do.
.
.
.
.
.
A/N: I sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter as I know it was a bit heavier than the last. Things are not going at all well for Mister Joker, are they?! Haha Please leave me a review and let me know what you loved or hated about this chapter along with your prediction for the next and I will be SURE to get the next and final installment out to you as quickly as possible! So as I always say, LEAVE ME YOUR LOVE/HATE IF YOU WANT THE NEXT CHAPTER! -QoM