"Employee of the month?" Jazz looked up from her book, wondering if she had heard right. By Danny's radiant smile, and how he was floating a few centimeters over the floor, she assumed she had.

"Yep!" He crossed his legs in the air. "Boss said I had been a model employee this month and that this has been the longest since any escapes from Arkham."

"But that's because you have them all scared half to death."

"Heh," Danny appreciated the pun. "And I don't. I just tell them how things are. They escape, it is my job to bring them back."

"If I remember correctly, you tell inmates 'If you choose wrong I will drag you back conscious or not' or something like that. That sounds like a threat."

"Where did you hear it?" Danny wasn't scared of her retaliation. He had done nothing wrong. He even cut back with the spooky eyes!

"People talk. And it's my job to listen, you know."

"Who told you?"

"You know that what I talk with my patients is confidential."

"Whooooo?" He floated upside down, being as annoying as he could be, poking Jazz's cheek.

She swatted the hand away and sighed. "Ivy."

"Aha!" He did a flip before righting himself and stretching his legs. "What else did she say about me?"

"Danny…"

"I won't tell, I swear." He tried to pout and do a puppy face, like Dani has taught him to, but Jazz was used to them at this point.

Still, she relented. "She also asked if you were-"

"Single?"

"No. She is a lesbian, Danny, and I think she and Harley are going out." His sister put the book down, giving up on getting any reading done. "She asked if you were into underground fight clubs or something."

"Huh?"

"She's not the first one to ask me that, though," Jazz put a hand on her chin. "Dent was curious as well. He thinks he has seen you before in those kinds of places."

"Blue eyes and dark hair? That seems to be popular in Gotham. The Waynes are all over the theme."

The other rolled her eyes. "Now that's just mean. Bruce Wayne only adopts children that remind him of himself as a child when he witnessed his parents' murder. It's his way of processing trauma."

Danny lost height until his feet touched the floor, eyes fixed on his sister's. "That's… harsh."

"But it makes sense, right?" She shrugged. "Bruce Wayne saw something horrible happen and couldn't fix it, couldn't do anything to make it better, had no control. He was left alone with his butler in a city that would eat him alive."

"And he adopts children because… he wants to redeem himself?"

She nodded. "And makes him feel like he can control something, fix something. The feeling helps with dealing with the injustice he experienced."

Danny sat down for a moment, processing her words. "You have been thinking about this for a while, right?"

Jasmine Fenton could renounce her family as much as she wanted, but the smirk she donned was so similar to the ones Danny usually wore. "What can I say, I was interested in Gotham's own superheroes and then spiraled from there."

"Oh? Anyone in particular? Nightwing, perhaps?" Danny put his arm on the table and then leaned on his hand, a smirk on his lips. He was aware that his sister had a thing for the superhero.

"Nightwing doesn't operate in Gotham, so no." Jazz blushed, swatting Danny's shoulder. "Jerk. I'm so over that crush, you know."

"Aha."

"I am! No more superhero crushes."

"Except Wonder Woman."

The two siblings held each other's gaze. They nodded at the same time.

"Except Wonder Woman." Jazz agreed.

Bill had been at Blackgate prison when a rather violent breakout forced them all to be moved to Arkham until reparations were done.

Look, he wasn't that bad of a guy. He is a professional henchman, but he had to eat. He felt really really bad everytime he took part of horrible acts of violence, he didn't sign up to murder people just because. So far he didn't have to cross the line - he had done everything he could to lay low and accept the Bat's beatings and be thrown to jail in peace. He had food and a roof over his head. Jail was okay.

Arkham was not.

That place was made to try and 'cure' the worst of the worst - pure lies. It was a place where they could keep an eye on the Batman's rogues gallery until they managed to escape and do the song and dance all over again.

Arkham was a place where Bill was in danger, more than outside in the city. He and his buddies that came from Blackgate tried to keep it together, but it was widely known the hellscape that this place was.

At least he thought that until he learned something interesting at lunch time. All the low risk inmates were allowed to eat at the cafeteria instead of having food delivered to them; so when his buddies and him sat down to eat some sludge that shouldn't be called food, the rumors floated to their ears.

"No escape attempts in three months?" Bill turned at the guy that sat with them. He vaguely knew him, but apparently the guy had been in Arkham for a while. "You are kidding me."

"Nope!"

"Apparently there is this amazing guard?" Another Arkham veteran inmate said, mouth full of 'food'. "Since he started working here, no troubles."

"Peaceful." The first veteran inmate nodded.

"One guard?" Bill asked.

"Yeah, the new guard. Filson, Felton…"

"Fenton!"

"You called?" A new voice, too cheery for this place, suddenly appeared behind him. Bill turned carefully, finding a youthful face smiling down at the group. "What's up?"

His buddies tensed, but Bill saw the veterans rather relax and smile back at the kid, as if they felt safer with him than in the rest of the prison.

"Hey, Danny! We were just talking to our buddies from Blackgate about the quiet months since you've been here!"

"Yeah. Did they give you that employee of the month award in the end?"

Danny laughed and rubbed the back of his neck as a nervous gesture. "Nah, but I hope so? Don't want to celebrate too early since there's still a few weeks left."

Bill shared a look with his friend Dave, who shrugged and kept eating.

"Are the rumors true, then?"

"What rumors?" This caught Danny's attention.

"Word on the street is that Arkham is changing - that the treatments are working and the crazies here aren't as violent anymore."

"First, rude. That term is harmful for the patients here." He glared at Bill. "And second, who the fuck-"

Bill didn't see the guard move, but he heard the shouts from other inmates. He looked up, seeing one man on the floor, covering his head as if he expected someone to hit him, and another pinned to the wall, wide eyes searching the room.

"No fighting." Danny's calm voice pierced through the now silent cafeteria as he walked towards the pinned criminal. He reached and pulled a spork from the collar of the prisoner's uniform, dangerously close to the skin of his neck, and shook the plastic cutlery in the face of the inmate. "I told you, Hank. Second strike."

Hank's face was pale. He opened his mouth, but the only sound that came was a high pitched tiny shriek.

"Sorry," the inmate could finally say, just as more guards rushed in to take him and the prisoner on the floor back to their cells.

Bill watched all of this happen and he now understood how only one guard had been the change this place needed. He understood the peace. He understood why on the streets other henchmen spoke of these rumors in whispers, almost as if the mythical figure of this guard was too fantastical to be true.

Was Fenton even human?

The first thing Joker was informed as he was shoved into Arkham for the nth time was that things had changed. That there was a period of peace, that a new alpha had come and ruled over the place, planting absolute fear into inmates and guards alike.

"A new experiment from Crane?" he had to ask.

The random, and disposable, henchman wearing a guard uniform (what a joke, how easy it was to buy guards in Arkham to join his side!) shook his head.

"No. A guard. Young, he says he's 24. He's been working here for around four months and there's been only one attempt at escape in that time. It failed."

"Only one? In four months?" The corrupt guard nodded hastily, looking nervously around him as if he expected to be followed here. Joker hummed. "And everyone is here? Harley, Ivy,..."

"Bane, Crane and even Dent. Everyone. No one will help them escape either. Too scary."

"More than the Bat?" Joker's eyebrows went to his hairline, his smile widening. This was interesting.

"I've heard them say that being caught by the Bat would be a mercy."

Joker stopped for a moment to observe how his henchman continued looking behind him, almost as if he expected the boogeyman to be there when he turned. The man was scared of his own shadow, the slight tremble in his hands showing that even if he tried to be calm and report, the man was afraid.

But not afraid of the Joker.

Afraid of this one guard.

Absurd!

Joker didn't like that. He was the boogeyman, he was the name people whispered because they were afraid of invoking his presence, he was the one that inspired this much fear into Gotham.

"Any other changes around here?"

The man swallowed slowly. "A new doctor. An intern. Young, as well."

Joker nodded. He could use this. It worked the first time with sweet Harley, no matter how ugly the thing with her ended.

"She… She is his sister."

"Sister."

"The… The guard's," the man leaned in, closer enough for Joker to bite his face off even from his side of the tiny window of the armored door. "The new guard. It's his sister."

Oh?

"Is that so?" Joker smiled. Yeah, he could use this.

He bided his time. He memorized the guard rotations and watched carefully as the new guard, Fenton, although he preferred to be called by his name, Danny, did his rounds. Danny didn't stop to make conversation with him, or tried to look into his cell, like all the other new guards excited to get their eyes on the Clown Prince of Crime behind bars.

How weird.

But let's not rush things with the boy. First, he wanted to meet the sister.

Dr. Fenton wasn't remarkable, and she didn't look like her brother at all. If he hadn't been told they were siblings he wouldn't have guessed. Also, the sister was very serious and tried hard to be taken seriously; but in a place like Arkham Asylum, people as bright and fresh like her were chewed up and broken really quickly. Usually by people like him.

"I'm impressed, doctor," he leaned back in his chair, smiling at the young woman on the other side of the bulletproof glass. She had spent the last ten minutes presenting herself and how his case had been registered. "You got me completely analyzed."

But Jasmine didn't say anything, just wrote something on her clipboard. Joker didn't like that. Usually new doctors took the bait.

"What? Don't you have any ground breaking diagnosis? Don't you want me cataloged and prepared for treatment?"

Dr. Fenton looked briefly up from her paper, but her hand kept writing. Impressive multitasking skill. "Do you want me to?"

"I mean, isn't that the whole point of your job? Curing me?"

Her mouth twitched, but she kept writing.

"Are you ignoring me? What a boring doctor! At least Harley kept the conversation going."

This made her hand stop. Finally!

The doctor looked at him in the eye, but didn't look away when he smiled. Huh.

"I am aware of your mind games, Joker. I know about Dr. Harleen's case. I know how you work. If you are trying to take advantage of my youth and inexperience to get into my mind, let me tell you it won't work. I'm immune to mind control," she smirked a little, as if this was an inside joke of some kind.

He didn't like not being in on the joke.

Jasmine continued her writing on the clipboard, sometimes looking up, twisting her mouth a little and then looking back down at her notes.

"I heard you have a brother," Joker tried again after being shut down so harshly. Jasmine stopped her hand again and swallowed. Yes! A soft spot. "I heard he is a guard here."

She nodded. "He is." But didn't offer any kind of information. If they were such good siblings, as the reports from his people inside the prison said, she would have made a comment about him.

"I heard he keeps the bad guys in."

"It's his job." She shrugged.

"How is he adjusting?"

"We aren't here to talk about my brother." She shut him down again, but this time, instead of continuing writing on the clipboard, she put it down on the table. Joker looked briefly and read something like '... thinks he is like Walker, but he's more like Boxy, in a way…'. What did that even mean?

"Then what are we here to talk about! You just sit there silently taking notes!" Joker noticed he had tensed in the chair and forced himself to relax. "That's kind of unprofessional."

She just shrugged again. "Whine all you want but I'm still assigned to treat you. We will see each other pretty often."

"Is that a threat, miss?"

"Doctor, please." She picked up the clipboard and looked at her watch. "And it's not a threat, I'm just doing my job. Our time is almost up. Do you have any last comments?"

Joker leaned in, the chains around his cuffed hands clinking against the metal table.

"I have to ask, do you really think I can be cured? Be reinstalled into society?"

Jasmine tilted her head, thinking about her answer. Joker expected her to say that yes, she could. Almost all the young ones hoped to become famous for curing the horrible Joker.

"Cured? Maybe. Reinstalled into society is not likely. Too driven by obsession to really settle back among humans."

Joker lifted an eyebrow. "That means you'd rather kill me?"

"With how into your theme you are already it is likely you'll come back as a ghost. And having to deal with that? Not in my priority list." She smirked as she stood from her seat, looking down at the clown with piercing blue eyes. "No, before I give the order for your execution, I would first make sure your existence will be wiped from the Infinite Realms after your last breath."

She left without looking back.

Somehow her words were harsher than all the other times people threatened to kill him. Was it how she spoke of it like it only was a matter of time? Was it how she used the words 'wiped out', like he was a mere stain in this world? Or was it the cold eyes that even the Bat would envy, so out of place in such a young face?

Joker didn't usually feel small, but this disturbing exchange almost made him feel… mortal. He hadn't been in control since the young woman entered the room. She ignored him and didn't bite any of the bait he left out to reign her in.

This doctor had to die. He didn't like her.

Joker was still fuming when, hours later, the young guard everyone was raving about passed by his cell while doing his rounds.

"Hey, boy." He said. The guard, Danny, turned to look, his soft smile freezing and turning into a frown when he saw who was calling him.

"Joker." He simply nodded, but walked a bit closer. The other guard way behind Danny pulled out his radio and talked in whispers, probably informing the other guards about the conversation. "Everything okay?"

"I met your sister." Joker was too angry to start any games. It did the expected effect, as the guard tensed and narrowed his eyes. "Charming girl."

Danny's expression didn't change, but his body was ready to jump. "That she is."

"Are you proud of her?"

The guard tilted his head. "Very."

"Did you follow her here? Or the other way around?" Danny arched an eyebrow, but didn't answer. "I can't imagine how such a sweet thing like her would willingly work in this place, with people like me."

Danny glared at him from the other side of the glass, but didn't say anything. Joker was taller than the boy, and the ability to smile down at the guard was… refreshing. Especially after the distasteful experience with the other Fenton.

"There are really dangerous criminals here, lad. Something could happen to her."

It was instantaneous. The boy's eyes widened before settling back into a glare, and Joker had to laugh at how comical it was to see such an expression in such a young face. Yes. Yes! This was better. He felt better, more in control.

"Maybe some deranged wrongdoer would need to knock her down a few notches. You know." Joker's smile widened when he saw a muscle in the boy's jaw twitch. "Just business, obviously. Nothing personal."

Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, probably to calm his nerves. Good. Only a little push and the Fenton duo would know that with Joker in Arkham, things would go back to normal. What was this nonsense about peace and quiet? A little bit of controlled chaos was what was needed in this place.

Joker opened his mouth to hammer the last nail in the coffin, when the guard opened his eyes.

Green eyes. Glowing.

Huh. A meta? In Gotham? How wonderful! Oh my, when the Bat learned about this… He needed to tell him about this new guard hiding in Arkham, of all places! Once he escaped this place -

"Listen to me, and listen carefully." Joker blinked, feeling his body freeze in place. Fear? No, it wasn't fear that pinned him down. "I will only say this once." A loud bang! Resonated in the cell when the guard slammed his hands on the door. "I'm playing nice because I really like my job here, but if you do anything, especially touch my sister, I. Will. Not. Hold. Back."

Joker opened his mouth, but as he looked into the green pools that were his eyes, he could feel the air leave his lungs. His body stopped obeying him as well, frozen in place, literally frozen in place, as he could register the temperature dropping inside his cell.

"She believes she can cure you - that if she tries hard enough she could make this prison a more humane place." Danny's eyes were bright, so bright. What was he saying? The Joker couldn't focus. The green. The green was bleeding everywhere. "Sabotage her and I will kill you. Try to hurt her, and I will make your afterlife a living hell."

What was going on? Joker tried to focus back into his body, but he couldn't. He saw Danny figure out he was paralized, and the guard smiled. But it was wrong. Wrong. The smile was too wide with too many teeth. Where was the other guard? Why wasn't anyone coming to check what was going on?

"Humans. You always think that death is the worst thing that could happen." Danny chuckled, but the sound was distorted in Joker's ears, with an eerie echo. Somewhere in the background, radio static dialed in, becoming louder and louder. Why wasn't anyone hearing this!?

"I-" Joker managed to strangle past the knot in his throat.

"No, you don't get to speak. You will stay put and let my sister treat you. You will NOT try anything against her." The static was getting into dangerous volume now, almost making Danny's words impossible to hear. Weird enough, the next thing he said he heard clearly. "Don't you ever try to escape, Joker. Death won't come for you." A green tongue licked the uncanny white teeth in a too wide mouth. Joker couldn't close his eyes. He couldn't look away. "Because I will find you first."

Danny slammed his hands against the metal door again, startling Joker out of his paralysis. He fell down on his back, consciously fighting the instinct to crawl far away from the door. Joker didn't feel fear. He didn't fear anyone! Not the Batman, not this sole guard!

He quickly jumped towards the little glass window, expecting to see Danny smiling there with his green eyes and inhuman mouth, but there was no one there. Not even the other guard, who definitely should have seen everything.

Joker looked down, still feeling cold, expecting to see the ice that pinned him down. But the cell was as it always has been. Empty. Clean.

Somehow that didn't make it better.

Danny was sitting again at the desk of Alfonso Ramírez, the Chief of Security of Arkham. The last time he was here, the wide man looked at him like he wouldn't last a week, too tired and too overworked to really stop and consider Danny as nothing more than a temporary employee.

"I must admit," the man swallowed loudly, "I'm impressed, Mr. Fenton."

"Danny is okay," he smiled. It was nice to be complimented.

The Chief pulled a cloth from his uniform and wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking down at some papers in his hands. He looked back up at Danny.

"Four months in Arkham and only one escape attempt, which failed, thanks to you. The morale, for guards and inmates alike, is off the charts. And two weeks since Joker was admitted and no incidents reported, at least not after your 'talk' with him."

Danny nodded slowly. Jimmy had radioed everyone that Danny had talked with Joker, but didn't approach enough to really listen in to what was said. Also, the other guard didn't see any of the spooky stuff he let the Clown glimpse at; only that Danny had said some strong words and slammed the metal door a few times.

Five days after the incident, Jimmy confessed that he had bet twenty bucks that Danny would have been found killed in 'suspicious circumstances' less than three days after the argument with Joker.

He wasn't even mad about it. It wasn't like the Joker could make him be deader than his current state.

"The board had decided to offer you a raise and a new position as Supervisor, as well as the employee of the month award. And cafeteria benefits."

Danny blinked. He had hoped for the employee of the month, but not the other parts.

"I didn't expect… I mean. Thank you?"

The Chief frowned a little. "Do I hear a 'but'?"

"With all due respect, sir, I like my job as a simple guard." Easier to stay inconspicuous, especially after the almost slip with the Joker. "The cafeteria benefits are cool, though." He shrugged.

Chief Ramirez looked at him as if he had grown a second head. He looked down at the papers. Looked back up at the strange but really useful guard.

"Whatever makes you happier, kid. Danny." The man corrected after he saw the guard open his mouth. He hated being called 'kid'. Maybe it was time to start listening to him. "Then how about employee of the month and the cafeteria benefits?"

Danny's smile was sheepish. "Is the raise tied to the Supervisor position?"