He is being Timothy right now, and he is in public right now, and nothing too bad is supposed to happen right now.
He is also with his father right now, but that barely even needs to be said. If he is not completely and utterly alone, then he is with his father. And being with his father doesn't mean nothing too bad will happen. Usually, it means the opposite, even the exact opposite.
But that is a wrong thought, wrong wrong wrong, and not in a right-wrong Father-approved way, so he pushes that thought away, far away, as far away as Gotham is getting from the plane they are in.
He has left Gotham before. He knows he has. He sometimes is hopeful about it when they leave Gotham. It usually means getting to be Timothy for a while. Sometimes it even means being Timothy at fancy events where he gets to soak in the precious moments when the men shake his hand and the women pat his cheek and some of the people go as far as to talk to him, actually really talk to him!
This time, though, is not one of those times. This is a time when he is being Timothy on the plane, but when they get off the plane, they change where they're going and he has to change who he's being.
He won't get to be Timothy where they're ending up.
He'll have to be Joker Junior instead.
He… He doesn't like being Joker Junior. And that's wrong wrong wrong too, never right-wrong, he's supposed to be Joker Junior fully deep down, Timothy is supposed to be a cover, but he doesn't like being Joker Junior. He doesn't like being Timothy most of the time either, to be fair. Only once in a great while, usually at those fancy events, is it nice to be Timothy. But being Timothy is usually nicer than being Joker Junior.
Most of the time, it'd be even nicer to not be any of those things.
It might even be the very nicest to not be anything at all.
He sneaks a guilty look at Father, as if Father could see his thoughts and realize how ungrateful he's being. He's pretty sure Father doesn't read minds, but he doesn't take anything for granted.
But no, Father is leaning against the wall and chatting away happily with one of the other passengers. Father looks entirely at ease. Father does not look at all like he knows his son is being so bad, so very bad in a wrong way.
So he tries to fix himself before his father comes back over. He tries to concentrate. He tries to think through the plan.
He doesn't like the plan either. Right now, he likes it even less than he usually likes plans that happen while he's being Joker Junior. This plan is so right-wrong in that way Father likes the very best. It makes his head and his stomach and his heart hurt so much.
But he has to hold it together. He has a part to play here. Father wants to teach him a lesson and wants to use him to teach a lesson to someone else too, so he has to be just the perfect version of right-wrong.
He has to hold it together.
He can barely hold it together. And that's just for now, just on the plane. He's dreading continuing on and keeping holding it together, always just barely holding it together, trying to stifle his laughter in public as Timothy and trying to silence his sobs in private as Joker Junior. He doesn't want to think about how hard it will be to hold it together when they land, and when they disembark, and when they change their travel plans, and when they change their appearances back to their permanent states of Father's Joker self and his own disfigured Joker Junior self.
He really doesn't want to think about how hard it will be when they set up the trap.
He really, really doesn't want to think about how it will be to spring the trap.
He really, really, really doesn't want to think about anything they're going to do in Ethiopia.