Leland tapped her pen boredly, waiting for the Joker to be brought in. It had been a stressful day as always, and after talking with Bruce Wayne yesterday, and therapy with Harley the day before that, Leland was not in the mood for the Joker's special brand of insanity. Especially since she was officially off-duty in an hour. But it was still her job.
The guards dragged him in and handcuffed him to the chair, the Joker not seeming to notice them at all. Instead, he stared straight at her. Smiling.
This was going to be a long night.
Joker had been grinning all day. Despite that he hadn't minded being back in Arkham - at first - things had grown so dull so quickly. But the boredom was soon to come to an end. Just the thought of the possibilities had him in high spirits - even higher than usual.
He might have been ignoring the guards now, but judging by the way their hands shook and the beads of sweat rolling down their faces, he'd obviously had a few choice things to share with them on the way here. Once he was secured, they were practically running for the door.
"Hiya, Joanie! It's about damn time you agreed to a session. I've been feeling frightfully neglected, lately. Not too sane, either."
"My sympathy for you is overwhelming," Leland drawled, doodling on the pad of legal paper. She glanced at the clock. 53 minutes to go. Damn it.
"So, you say you didn't react well to the medication we gave you?" she asked, drawing a lightning bolt along the margins of the paper.
"Well, if it was supposed to make me stoned and horny, consider it mission accomplished." He giggled as he watched her scratching at the pad of paper, clearly uninterested in attempting any kind of actual therapy with him.
"I must admit I was a bit disappointed when the dosage was leveled out, but a man can only jack off so many times in a day before it starts to get rather uncomfortable, not to mention monotonous."
He smirked as her pen stopped for a brief moment and she seemed to swallow back a gag.
Lost for words, Leland stared at him for a moment, the mental image burning the back of her retinas.
"Thank you for sharing," she finally said, rolling her eyes and returning to her doodling. Sheep, flower, or stick figure pyramid?
Her pen just touched the paper when the alarms started blaring. High-pitched and ear-shatteringly loud, they were designed to be heard throughout all of Arkham and meant that something very, very bad was happening. Ignoring the Joker, she sprinted to the door and yanked it open, to find that the guards had unholstered their guns.
"What the hell is going on?" she asked, shouting to be heard over the noise of the alarms.
"There's a prisoner riot in Block C," one of them shouted back.
Dammit. The high-security wing. She needed to be down there. Leland glanced back into her office, where the Joker sat handcuffed to the chair and smirking. She went back to her desk and pulled out a walkie talkie. "Don't do anything stupid," she said. The Joker started to laugh.
"I'm going down there," Leland told the guards. "You stay here. Do no let him out of your sight, and I don't care if his heart stops, do not uncuff him from that chair."
With that, she took off down the hall.
He continued to laugh as Leland sprinted off down the hall, leaving him to be watched over by a handful of nervous guards. His laughing drifted off slowly to a quiet tittering as they surrounded him, one or two trying to look threatening by fingering their weapons.
"Ooh... all of this attention riveted on little old me. I feel like I should be doing something special. Aside from being devastatingly handsome, that is."
Joker giggled as one of the guards pulled a disgusted face, then he was glancing to one guard in particular. He gestured with one hand where it was fastened tightly to the arm of his chair, hand circling slowly as Joker raised an eyebrow to him. "Any time you're ready would be just peachy, Philips."
Philips seemed to snap out of a daze and pulled his revolver, quickly shooting two guards and grabbing a third, pulling the man in front of him just as the final guard drew and fired his own weapon. The bullet hit the guard being used as a shield, blowing a hole in the man's throat that erupted with a spray of blood. Philips shoved his human shield toward the final guard, the dying man hindering him just long enough for Philips to shoot both in the head and covering Joker in blood and brains.
The clown responded with a wild cacophony of laughter as Philips holstered his revolver and began to unlock Joker's cuffs.
"I really do appreciate this, poopsie. It's just great to know I have friends in a joint like this."
As the cuffs popped free, Joker stood and wiped gore from his face, flicking a piece of skull from his hair. He turned to Philips who was now standing awkwardly to one side, looking a bit dazed. Joker smiled broadly to him and stepped close, his long hands reaching out to stroke at Philips' face. The guard flinched for a moment, then a smile flickered across his face as he leaned into the attention, his own hands finding Joker's waist.
"You've been very helpful, sweetie pie." Joker's fingers stroked at the guard's cheek for a moment before he took a firm hold on the man's head. With a sudden wrenching action, Joker snapped his neck, dropping him casually to the floor. Joker snickered as he began to collect discarded weapons and headed for the open door.
"Who says you have to be female to seduce the help?"
His exit down the hall was punctuated by howling laughter and a few gunshots.
Block C was chaos, guards and doctors trying to control the rioting prisoners with limited success. If the sounds of screaming were anything to go by, the riot was beginning to spread to the other blocks.
"CLOSE THE CELL DOORS!" Leland screamed into her walkie talkie, ducking a chair that had been thrown her way. She and three other doctors, along with a squad of guards were crouched behind an overturned table. "Get the prisoners in the other blocks in their cells, and lock the doors. NOW!"
She turned to the guards. "We've called the police?" The guards nodded. "And they called Batman?" They nodded again. She took one of the guns they offered her, and peered over the table. "We might have a chance, then."
Within minutes, Joker had expended most of his bullets into virtually anyone who crossed his path, be they inmates or staff. It didn't matter who they were, just that they were in the way.
He was busy gleefully macing a nurse in the face when the walkie talkie dropped by a dead guard nearby crackled and Leland's voice came from it in a garbled, panicked rush.
... everyone to Block C right now... outnumbered... inmates are armed... we need help...
Her message was disrupted by gunfire and static. Oh, this was going to be so much fun!
Oh god, I hope I'm not killing any of them, Leland thought as she brought a fire extinguisher crashing down on the head of one of the inmates. He slumped to the ground with a thud, and the nurse he'd been choking slumped next to him, gasping in pain.
"Get to the safe zone and get out!" Leland shouted, gesturing to an area across the block, by a set of double doors, where the guards and doctors had made barricade of tables and chairs. It was hardly safe, but it was where they had been able to hold the line. From the staticky reports Leland had been getting from the other areas of Arkham, things were going slightly better, but not by much. Block B had been sealed off completely. Block A had been evacuated. Block D was also rioting. She had no news from the kitchens or the basement.
Block C had been sealed off from the outside, thank God, aside from one other exit and the door by the safe zone where employees where being evacuated.
Which was good, beacuse Block C was in chaos. Consisting of two entire floors plus cells, it contained far, far more makeshift weapons then Leland had realized. Not to mention the electroshock and surgery rooms. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Leland thought, as a patient she recoginzed came at her with a scalpel.
She lunged forward and shoved his hand upward, slamming him back against the wall. Twisting his wrist until he dropped the scalpel and howled in pain, Leland brought the gun up and pressed it against the side of his head.
"And you were doing so well, Davis," she said sarcastically.
"He said it would be ours, the whole place and everyone in it," laughed Davis, eyes unfocused. "All ours, all ours."
"He?" Leland asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
"He laughs and laughs and laughs," said Davis, smiling up at her with mad eyes.
"Oh God," Leland muttered, before clubbing Davis with the butt of the gun.
"Fall back!" she screamed into the walkie talkie. "Fall back and seal off Block C. The Joker planned this!"
It was at that moment that the alarms stopped and the speakers in the hallways that normally played soothing muzak crackled to life. A familiar laughter came then, sending Leland's heart plummeting to her feet.
"Hello, hello, hello! Gooooooooooood Evening, Arkhaaaaaaaaaaaam! Hope everyone's having a good time. I know I am. It's your old pal, Joker here. In case you hadn't noticed, we're currently in the process of establishing new management. Please excuse us while we make this transition. Things might get a bit hairy, I would imagine, but it'll all work out in the end, I'm sure. It would go much more smoothly if the old management would just accept their new Overlord of Insanity."
He paused to let out a stream of laughter, then continued. "It's come to my attention that we're losing staff left and right and I just can't have that."
There came the sound of grinding gears and the slamming of metal plates as Arkham began a lock down. The previously open sections of the hospital began to close down and lock tight, keeping the remaining staff members from escaping.
The speakers crackled again, Joker giving a dirty giggle as he leaned in close to the microphone, so close you could hear the spit in his mouth as he spoke. "I have a special treat in store for you, Joanie. You're going to love it. Ready or not, babydoll. Here I come."
"Shit," Leland murmured, leaning her forehead against the walkie talkie. Dodging punches and objects thrown at her, she darted over to the safe zone. Many of the people clustered there were hammering at the doors, to no avail.
"Calm down, for God's sake!" Leland ordered. "You can't punch through the security doors, and the police are on the way!"
"He's got to be in one of the nurses stations, Leland," Dr. Adams said, her face tight. "It's the only place with intercoms and controls to the security doors."
"He said he had a surprise for me," Leland mused, eyes scanning the stairs and doors to the rooms for any sign of the Joker. "That means he's locked himself on Block C with us. Which of our nurses stations haven't radioed in?"
"We've lost contact with these three, ma'am," one of the guards said, gesturing to a map of the block. Three different points were marked on it, two on the first floor, one on the second. "The rest of them are secure, a hell of a lot more than we are."
Leland glanced at the chaos around her, and knew that if the Joker arrived, it would only get worse. He'd taken on boogeyman status for most of Arkham, and his appearance would escalate things. Grabbing a riot baton and checking her gun, she looked at the guards and doctors around her. "I'm going to go find him. Kill him if I can, distract him if I can't. Any objections?"
No one spoke.
"Good. Hold the line down here."
Joker giggled to himself as he flicked off the intercom system and played with the security cameras, occasionally giving his swivel chair a spin as he turned from one screen to another. This was all coming along beautifully. He'd managed to override a few safety systems that controlled the other wards and had opened the cells where the less problematic crackpots were housed. They probably wouldn't be too helpful, but hey! Why not let them have their fun as well, huh?
He fiddled with the CCTV system, cackling at what he saw. A gang rape in the dementia ward (he'd never liked that nurse anyway, she smelled like soup) played on Screen 1. Screen 2 showed a pack of naked geriatric schizophrenics shrieking their way down a hall, painted in what seemed to be zinc oxide and feces. But Screen 3... ah Screen 3. There was mean old Leland, gun in one hand and baton in the other, barreling up a flight of stairs. She was coming in his direction, by the looks of it. How fortuitous.
Joker spun in his chair again and bounced out of it, nimbly prancing to the door and flagging down a few of the more controllable headcases he'd posted outside.
"Say, could you fellas do me a solid? I happened to notice my doctor is heading this way, I'm guessing to finish our therapy session. It was so rudely interrupted, don't you know. Anyhoo, I'd rather see her down in the shock room, but I need to go get things ready first. Soooo... what I wanted was for you fine chappies to intercept her while I prep things, mmkay? Couldja do that for me? Peachy!"
He waved them off with a grin, then popped back into the nurses' station to find Leland again on Screen 7. Getting warmer. Joker leered as he blew the screen a kiss and ran out, heading for the electroshock room.
Leland crept up the stairs, gun in one hand, riot baton in the other. She knew that she was walking into a trap. Buy them time, she told herself, stomach clenching with nerves. That's all you need to do.
She reached the top of the stairs and glanced up and down the hallway. No movement. That wasn't neccesarily a good sign. She licked her lips, and moved up towards the nurses' station. Rounding a corner, she found herself face-to-face with one of the inmates, who leered at her.
"Where's the Joker?" she asked, raising the gun. The inmate simply smiled. Leland heard a several loud, grating noises behind her, and looked over her shoulder.
Oh.
Shit.
The doors to most of the rooms along the hall slid open, and inmates spilled out from them. All of them were looking at her. Turning back to the inmate blocking her path forward, Leland raised the gun and fired.
With a scream, he collapsed forward, clutching his knee in agony. Leland sprinted towards and over him, headed down the hallway. She heard the pack of inmates shouting and follwing her, their feet thundering in the narrow hallway. She turned another corner, only to find that the door to the staircase was blocked by one of the heavy security doors.
"Oh," was all she said, before turning back to the mob pursuing her. With a shout, Leland lunged forward and cracked the baton across the face of the nearest inmate, hearing his nose break with a sense of satisfaction. The next moments were a haze of punches and kicks, as Leland found the mob all around her, tearing at her. The gun went off, then was torn from her hand. Her wrist cracked. Her feet were knocked out from under her. She rolled, curled into a ball, and kicked out.
Her foot connected with an inmate, but there were two more to take his place. Leland tasted blood in her mouth as her head was slammed against the floor over. She dimly felt them picking her up, taking her someplace.
Shit.
How long she was out, Leland didn't know, but when she next opened her eyes, she wanted nothing more than to simply pass out again. She was strapped firmly to a gurney; heavy leather straps passing tightly across her torso, wrists, thighs, and ankles.
An electrical hum came from her immediate right as Joker flipped on the machine and began to test the voltage, the hum going from a calm buzz to a violent shuddering sound that made her twitch in her restraints.
Leland closed her eyes tightly, then jumped and re-opened them as she was slapped across the face. She glared up to see Joker leaning in over her, his face obscured by a doctor's mask. On top of that, he had donned a surgical cap and scrubs. He'd obviously raided the surgery for props. He pulled the mask down to reveal his usual grin and leaned his elbows on the gurney beside her head.
"Sexcellent! The patient awakens! And now the fun can begin!" He pulled back and glanced about him, his smile faltering a bit before he sighed. "I was hoping for it to be a bit more dramatic. Maybe some Tesla coils or Jacob's Ladders. And car battery and jumper cables to spark in your face, at least, but I guess this will have to do."
He pushed away from the gurney and went to a tray laid beside her where he picked up a tube and dabbed conductive jelly onto his fingertip. "Ya know, Joans, I've never actually believed in the effectiveness of Electroshock as a legitimate therapy..." He leered at her as he rubbed the jelly on her temples. "But as a torture device? It definitely has it's merits."
He had begun to hum to himself as he set about affixing the electrodes to her temples. "I mean, considering it was developed by a guy who saw pigs being electrocuted into unconsciousness before they got a..." he passed his thumb across his throat and gave a gurgling noise. "... happy face. How he connected the two things, I just don't quite understand, but bless his heart, huh?"
Joker grinned broadly and picked up a black rubber block. He fidgeted with it, turning it over and over in his fingers before smirking and tossing it back onto the tray. "That's supposed to go in your mouth, as you know, to keep you from biting your tongue or shattering your teeth, but there's plenty I'm supposed to do that I'm not going to. Silly little things like giving you anesthetic or muscle relaxers. Or monitoring your heart."
He turned dramatically back to Leland and shrugged. "I'm not a doctor, after all. I just play one."
With a flourish, he turned away again and stepped to the machine where he began to fiddle with the knobs. He began to frown again, his bottom lip jutting out in a pout.
"Ugh! Even this lacks style! I don't even get one of those big switches to throw! Just dials and buttons! Boring!" He huffed a huge sigh and glared at Leland for a moment before brightening and popping his neck.
"Oh well. Can't let that distract me, can I? My Gran-Gran always had a little saying, Joans. When life gives you lemons, squirt them in someone else's eyes."
And with that, he turned on the voltage, his laughter accompanied by the queasy thrum of the machine.
It was like taking a hammer to the side of the head; that was the only way Leland could describe it. The electricity hit her and it was like every muscle in her body clenched at once, tightening to the point where it felt like they would snap. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and all she felt was pain.
The memories flashed by in rapid succession, neurons firing out of control as electricity surged through her brain.
Car crash when she was seven, knee torn open to the bone by a stray piece of metal, bleeding, bleeding and upside down, make it stop-
Tattoo gun all up and down her back, like a million wasp stings over and over and God, why had she agreed to this, make it stop-
Bullet wound in the arm, had cut through muscle like butter, and they told her she was lucky it didn't hit the bone, but oh God, it hurt, make it stop-
Fire, Arkham was on fire, where was Harley, she couldn't breathe, it scorched her skin, where was Harley, smoke everywhere, make it stop-
Make it stop-
MAKE IT STOP-
The current ceased suddenly, and Leland slumped to the table. She felt as though her body had been stretched and snapped and glued back together wrong. There was blood in her mouth. Something was wrong with her arm.
She heard the Joker's voice, coming hazily from somewhere above her. "Again, Joanie?"
She closed her eyes, and screamed.
Joker burst into laughter before he leaned down to Leland, his hands to his face as he threw his head back beside hers and mimicked her scream. His scream trailed off into another fit of laughter as he leaned against the gurney, his face close to hers. He sniffed casually as he reached out a finger and tapped lightly at her nose.
"Well gosh, Joanie. That looked like it hurt."
With a giggle, he sauntered back over to the machine and checked the dials. "Oopsie! I had it turned up to four amps. You're supposed to start at one."
Leland moved her jaw, hearing it crack. Her teeth ached from where they'd slammed together. Her vocal cords felt raw. That had been one blast of electricity.
Keep him talking! screamed a terrified, cowering part of her mind. The cold, analytical part of her agreed. Leland blinked, took a deep breath. Keep him talking long enough for help to come.
"Batman will stop you," she said, voice sounding distorted to her own ears. "And one day, someone who doesn't have his one rule will find you. And they will kill you. I hope I'm there."
He had been fiddling with the knobs while she spoke, a cold grin on his face the whole time. His eyebrows raised as he kept his gaze on what he was doing.
"Reeaally, now? That sounds absolutely frightening, Joanie. Do you think they'd actually manage? I mean, others have tried, you know. And I've always managed to survive. Funny, that."
He glanced up at her, his grin widening as he reached for the control again. "But that's enough chit chat for now, I think. Let's see what this baby can do!"
Leland had barely a second to prepare herself before he'd turned on the machine again, his howling laughter cut out by the intense pain of the electricity shooting through her brain. The bastard had turned up the voltage.
Her arms slammed against the table as she convulsed, and in a distant place that wasn't taken up by the white, sharp, electric pain, Leland realized she had broken her wrist.
Random flashes of memory came and went, senseless and useless. Leland realized with dull horror that she couldn't control them.
Harely grinning, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes-
-Two-face with his hands around her throat-
-Her mother, smiling, pregnant with her little sister-
-The Batsignal against the cloudy sky-
-The first time she'd ever been in a fist fight, fifth grade and surrounded, blood in her mouth, hands scraped open-
And with the images came sound, nonsensical and uncconected. Snippets of high school French mixed with her neighbor's native Greek mixed with the last song she'd heard on the radio mixed with the sound of someone screaming over and over and over.
Oh. That was her.
The electricity cut off and she slumped to the table. Her heart was beating erratically, she could feel it in her throat skipping beats.
"Oh God," she rasped.
"WOOOOO! That's some fun, huh Joanie? That looks like a regular E Ticket ride!" He adjusted the dials again as he snickered, then wandered back over to the gurney.
"Almost makes me want to hook myself up. Wouldn't want to ruin your fun though."
He giggled as he began to examine her; pulling her eyelids back, checking her teeth, feeling her pulse, and giggling harder at the damage he found. When he got to her broken wrist, he grabbed it roughly and gave it a sharp waggle that tore a shriek from her throat.
"Oh dear, your wrist appears to be broken." He attempted to look concerned, but couldn't keep himself from smiling.
"Better make sure." Joker gave her wrist another rough shake, drawing yet another pained scream from Leland. He leered at her as he dropped her wrist back down, the sudden jolt making her wince and bite back a yelp.
"Yep, definitely broken. I wonder how that happened."
Joker leaned forward on the gurney again, his chin resting on his fists as he tilted his head and smiled. "You were saying something about Batman stopping me? Wonder where he is right now. Not here, that's for sure."
He paused and leaned in closer, his voice a whisper, breath tickling her ear. "How long do you think you'll last, Joansie? Think he'll get here before I short circuit the old grey matter? Or blow out your heart?"
Leland felt almost disconnected from her body, aside from the parts that were in agony. The Joker's voice was out of sync with the movements of his lips. She wished she knew the symptoms of repeated electrocution.
"I think," she said, once the Joker's question sunk in. Her voice was thin and weak, "that I can take anything you throw at me. You are a piece of shit."
She laughed, and grinned up at him, her teeth bloody. "With bad shoes."
"What?"
Joker pushed back from her, his fingers grasping tightly at the edge of the gurney, his eyes narrowed and his jaw tensed as he leaned in over her.
"Bad shoes? My one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn, Armani originals? The ones I'll be getting back before I kill you and skip out of here?"
She was obviously trying to deliberately rile him. It was the same thing Lex did... and it was working. But where Lex did it in a setting that provided a modicum of safety, Leland was really in no place to be mocking anyone. Least of all, the Joker.
He took a few deep breaths and eased away from the gurney, his lips curling up into a malicious show of monstrous cheer.
"You know, Joanie, if I didn't know better, I'd say you had a death wish." He regarded her curiously for a moment and reached for a few more electrodes and the tube of conductive jelly.
"Never let it be said that I'm not accommodating, Joans."
He whistled as he set the electrodes and jelly on the gurney beside her, then wrenched open the front of her blouse. He raised an eyebrow and snorted back a laugh as he saw the dowdy beige bra she was wearing, then set about smearing dots of jelly to her chest and belly before affixing more electrodes.
Joker stepped back and frowned, his arms folding as he tapped at his chin, his brow furrowed in thought. "Let's see... where else would be interesting?"
A slow leer spread over his face as he met her eyes, then grabbed up a couple more electrodes and moved down the gurney. He teased his fingertips gently over her knee, giggling as she jerked in her restraints, her eyes wide and glaring. "Down here somewhere, maybe?"
He continued to trail his fingers along her legs, easing between her thighs, then finally hooking into her stockings ("Pantyhose... how frumpy, Joanie.") and tearing them open to the knee. A little more conductive jelly and a couple more electrodes on her inner thighs and he stepped back again, seemingly satisfied this time.
He sauntered back to the shock machine and readjusted the controls as he grinned up at her. "Let's see how you take this, doc!"
Once again, he had eased up the voltage.
Being electrocuted was strange. Leland felt like she could feel every inch of her body, lit up with white hot pain and energy. She felt the air in her lungs, the blood in her veins, the neurons in her brain, all of them being hit with volt after volt of electricity. It was a little like being high, if being high was also like being in Hell.
The first blast of electricity hit her so hard that she had no thoughts besides a screaming, animal awareness that she was in horrible pain. That she was dying. Her heartbeat was stuttering when the Joker turned the voltage down. He said something to her, but she couldn't hear, couldn't feel most parts of her body. Their was something wet on the back of her head, which she distantly realized was blood. She been convulsing hard against the table, restraints or no.
The Joker said something else, throwing his head back in a laugh. Leland closed her eyes. The electricity hit her again, and the world was gone in a rush of white.
Oh God. I'm going to die.
Joker switched off the machine again and scurried over to the gurney where he hunkered down over Leland, excitedly chewing at his fingertips. This was absolutely magical!
"Oh, why didn't I think to find a video camera for this? I mean, I'll never forgot a single second of this magical evening, Joan, but still - to have it on tape! What bliss that would have been! Sheer bliss!"
He chewed at his lip as he leaned down, his fingers trailing lightly over her sweaty brow. Her eyes were rolling in their sockets, tears streaking her face, blood on her mouth as she shuddered weakly in her restraints. He sighed as he knocked on her forehead with his knuckles.
"Anybody home in there?" Joker giggled briefly as he began to stroke her cheek, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Ya know, Joans, you're a tough one, I'll give you that. It's almost admirable. I'm almost inclined to let you go, just out of some strange type of admiration."
He straightened up and smirked, then he was moving back to the machine. "Well... almost. Hee hee hee! But alas! I've never been one to leave such a project unfinished!"
His hands were on the controls again, his face bright with a sadistic smile. "Say good night, Gracie."
The machine thrummed back to life, shooting an unending stream of electricity through her body.
At first, in the place beyond her body where she could still think and function, Leland thought that it was the same rush of memories that had occurred before. Some bizarre side effect of having her brain shot through with electricity. But the memories kept coming, good and bad and so familiar that she would have wept if she hadn't already been crying. Her life was flashing in front of her eyes.
She felt her heart stuttering again, its rhythm crackling in and out like an untuned radio. Beat she found herself pleading. Please beat. But it wasn't, oh God, it wasn't. And her arms and legs went numb.
She might have begged for mercy, if she could've done anything but scream. Leland like to think she wouldn't, though. Let her go out strong. Let her never beg the bastard for anything.
Her vision failed.
I don't want to die. No, no, scared, please, no, no, I DON'T WANT TO DIE-
She heard the sound of laughter, from very far away.
And then Leland was gone.
Leland's body shuddered as Joker began to ease down the voltage, then went limp as he switched it off completely. He stood still, his fingers still on the controls as he watched her carefully. She wasn't moving. Not even the faint rise and fall of her chest to indicate she was still breathing.
He smirked as he walked slowly to the gurney, taking off his surgical cap and tossing it aside as he leaned down and held his ear over her mouth. Nothing. He felt for the pulse in the side of her throat. Nothing. His smirked widened to a grin as he reached for her wrist and felt there. Still nothing. Not even a flutter.
Joker stood back and pressed his fingers to his lips, his eyes wide and bright with excitement before he pumped his fist in the air and gave a shout of joyful laughter.
"She's dead!"
He began to dance around the gurney, singing. "Ding dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch?" He gave the gurney a shove that sent it spinning in a circle. "This wicked old bitch!"
He fell against its side, laughing hysterically, then leaned down to grasp her lifeless face. He moved in close, his eyes searching her slack features before he giggled and gave her a chaste kiss.
"It's been fun killing you, Joanie," he whispered. "You were a real trooper."
Joker straightened up and shrugged off his scrubs, draping them over her body and pausing before he covered her face. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find my bad shoes and dance on out of here."
He finished covering her and danced out the doorway, shuffle-stepping his way down the hall.
Fighting off countless inmates - many of which that Batman himself was responsible for landing in Arkham in the first place - was not an enjoyable experience in the least, especially not when those inmates had nothing to lose and considered this fighting as fighting to the death. Batman couldn't kill them, of course, but they tried their damnedest to kill him; by the time he had managed to reach Block C to talk with some of the remaining employees that hadn't gotten their brains blown out, he'd broken more bones than he could count and smashed in more faces than that. The employees were rather as frightened of him as they were of the patients, so they were of little to no use to him whatsoever. Batman had to do things himself, as always.
Batman took the steps three at a time, his cape billowing out behind him as he went. He observed some of the bodies lining the hallway with little interest, noting that they were all alive. There were a few here and there that looked as if both of their arms or legs were broken, but as far as he was concerned, most of them deserved it for trying (succeeding?) to take Arkham over. He stepped over them carefully and continued down the hallway, occasionally looking into the rooms lining the sides to make sure the Joker wasn't in any of them. It wasn't until he turned a corner and actually saw Joker walking jauntily down the hallway right out in the open until he knew the extent of control he had. Batman moved quickly, and Joker's head was cracking against the wall before he had bothered to announce his presence.
"Where's Leland?" he asked, speaking abruptly. One of the only coherent things he had managed to get out of the other non-dead employees was "L-L-Leland w-went t-t-that way".
Joker let out a sudden burst of laughter that spattered Batman's face with a fine mist of spittle as he was slammed against the wall.
"Well, well... the Dork Knight has appeared at last!" He giggled as Batman growled and slammed him against the wall again, forearm pressing on Joker's throat just hard enough to hinder his breathing, but not enough to keep him from talking.
"Who was that you were looking for? Leland was it?" He smirked as the arm against his throat pressed a fraction harder. "No Lelands here, I'm afraid." He snorted a laugh and craned his neck forward as best he could, whispering hoarsely.
"Not anymore, anyway."
Batman grabbed a fistful of Joker's hair and bashed his head into the wall once more, not caring about the blood that he could see smearing against it. He didn't need the Joker, not really.
"You're not escaping," he said, knowing full well that he was wasting time that he could be using to save Leland... if it was possible anymore. "Where is she?"
He winced slightly as his head was slammed against the wall, eyelids fluttering as he allowed himself to luxuriate in the pain that bloomed in his scalp for a moment. But then he was grinning as he nodded to the doorway he'd just come from.
"If you really must know, Batsy, she's through there. Seems to be taking a bit of a nap. She's a heavy sleeper, that Joanie. Dead to the world, I'd say."
He hated, hated the way that Joker infuriated him, the light way which he dealt with murder making Batman sick to his stomach and wanting nothing more than to make the Joker feel what he made other feel, to making him stop laughing for once. It wasn't right. Batman had enough presence of mind to know, as he smashed his elbow across Joker's face several times in quick succession, that he could be doing this far more efficiently without getting blood everywhere, that perhaps smashing Joker's face ought not to be what he was doing.
Batman was breathing far too heavily and erratically for his own good and of course Joker was still laughing and, as usual, got the better of him. Justifying his anger with the fact that Joker was a murderer and he wasn't going that far, he threw Joker to the ground, smashing into his stomach with one foot until they were both winded. Somehow the Joker still managed, with his wheezing breaths, to laugh hysterically.
Batman kicked him in the mouth.
Batman's kick threw Joker across the hallway where he hit the opposite wall and slid to the floor. One hand clutched at his mouth as he pushed himself back up, leaning against it for support as he watched Batman look into the shock room. Despite his injured mouth, Joker smiled, letting out a muted giggle. He tongued his front teeth and winced as he felt that two of them seemed loose. Ah well, another trip to the dentist.
But then he was laughing again as Batman gripped at the doorway, body tense with anger.
"Too late, as per usual, Batsy. You're making quite a bad habit of not saving the day lately."
Batman ignored Joker in favor of moving further into the room, quickly checking Leland's pulse and chest movements to make sure that Joker wasn't jerking him around. He took Joker's discarded scrubs from her body and threw them to the ground, lifting her roughly into his arms and exiting the room.
Glancing over to where the Joker was still on the ground, Batman hesitated for a moment. It was clear - he could not save Leland's life and apprehend the Joker at the same time.
Joker let out a mean laugh as he saw Leland's limp form hanging in Batman's arms, the Douche Crusader clearly debating which course of action to take. Attempt to save Leland if there was any chance whatsoever of her being revived, or try to bring Joker to custody in the midst of anarchy.
"Ya know, I'll make this one easy for you, Batsy. You carry on there and I'll just be liberating my personal effects and making myself scarce."
He giggled as he edged down the hallway, his eyes on Batman, Joker snickering as he saw the tight set of Batman's lips. Oh... Batsy wasn't enjoying the failure, but really - what else could he do?
"I'd really like to stay and see how this ends..." Joker paused and began to sing the next words. "I'm glad I came, but just the same I must beeeeeeee, goiiiiing. Toodle-oo, Bats."
We waggled his fingers in an effeminate wave, then hurriedly turned and sprinted down the hallway, trailing a girlish laughter as he rounded a corner and disappeared.
Batman let Joker go. A life was more important right now.
He stalked down the hallways, occasionally punching an inmate in the face on his way down. Sometimes they came at him with their homemade weapons or a gun they had wrestled away from a guard. He threw Leland over his shoulder to make it easier for him to fight off any inmate that threatened either of them, conscious of the fact that each second he did not bring her outside was another second closer to her eyes never opening again.
The sunlight was blinding as Batman walked outside, in the midst of all of the police cars and ambulances. Batman is here, he heard around him, everything will be okay. Batman left Leland with an ambulance and looked around at the cops. Before they could apprehend or thank him, he was gone.