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The heat surrounding Gotham and burning every surface it touched was not an unusual feeling to Joker. He stood there in the streets, waiting for his “associates” to pick him up and he felt extremely nostalgic under the sun. The heat brought back memories of trudging through the desert with his fellow men and hoping for a second that something would happen. The worst part was waiting for something to happen because there was such a build up. Sometimes, it never even came but other times it all ended with tragedy. One minute they were all laughing and becoming intimate. Then, it was all gone.
Finally, the car pulled up and Joker put on his mask before getting inside. He couldn’t have them knowing it was actually him riding with them. That takes away the fun.
“Three of a kind, let’s do this,” the one driving says. It’s funny that if they didn’t all have masks, Joker’s not sure he’d be able to tell them apart. It wasn’t like with his brothers in arms where he could tell them all apart simply by their voices. These clowns mean nothing to him.
“That’s it? Three guys?” The one riding shotgun says.
“Two guys on the roof,” the driver says. “Every guy gets a share, five shares is plenty!”
“Six shares,” the shotgunner points out. “Don’t forget the guy who planned the job.” Joker thinks it’s at least nice they cared to remember him. Despite their massive differences, they remind him of his old friends.
“He thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice?” The driver replies.
The shotgunner laughs. “I know why they call him the Joker.”
Joker is slightly annoyed by their words but he sees the irony of the situation. The fact they don’t even realize he IS there, right with them. He laughs aloud about it and of course, the other two assume it’s just because of the shotgunner’s joke.
They don’t even realize they’re all going to be dead in about 15 minutes.
***
As soon as the trio arrive, they run fast into the Bank and immediately start shooting while the shotgunner grabs and takes down the security guard. A very bold, fast approach but it works well.
“Alright everybody, hands up and heads down!” The driver yells. “I said hands up, heads DOWN! C’mon, I’m making a withdrawal here!”
As the driver deals with the people, Joker takes over a table and starts sorting through his bag. It’s full of grenades he was able to easily steal from some military contractors and for a moment before he starts putting them in people’s hands, he looks at them longingly. He remembers sitting in a combat vehicle riding down the small desert town and seeing no life. Just him, his men and the color Brown. So much tan and brown everywhere. Then, a small flash of green hit straight through their window. A grenade. A brief five seconds of chaos and panic later, there was only one survivor.
Joker sighs under the mask and gets to work, putting the grenades in peoples hands. Each time he gives them one, he’s compelled by his mind to look at their faces. Their faces all remind me of so many different people. The residents of the desert, his fellow soldiers, Arkham doctors, his wife and his father. When he sees a face similar to his father, he almost loses it right there and then. He wants to attack. But he needs to stay focused on the mission. He can’t be caught, he can’t be sent back to Arkham to deal with the torture and experiments. It was almost as bad as the War.
The driver speaks again. “Obviously we don’t want you doing anything with your hands, other than holding onto your dear life!” Joker normally would admire the shameless disregard for human life but he’s been going through some bad memories today. It’s not a good day. But the damn mission.
He finishes setting up the grenades in people’s hands and for a moment, he can relax. He can deal with the memories and trauma in a more reasonable way now.
Suddenly, the security guard gets back up to try and attack the shotgunner but the shotgunner is ready. He slams his gun on the guard’s back and screams. “On the ground, stay on the ground! Nobody make a move! Nobody! Stay down!”
As he screams, Joker notices the office behind the shotgunner and sees the man inside raising up a shotgun. This is a mob bank so Joker was wondering when things would get bloody. As the shotgun blast goes off, Joker ducks behind the closet desk. He can’t let this interfere with the plan. At least the Shotgunner doesn’t need to be dealt with anymore. Joker will admit he didn’t know what to do with him.
More shots come his way. He moves up as fast as he can, almost tripping on himself and allowing the Banker to kill him. He can’t die, not yet. As Joker reaches the front desk with the Driver, the Banker yells out, “you have any idea who you’re stealing from? You and your friends are dead!”
Joker slumps against the desk, feeling a brief moment of terror. He’s back in the trenches with his brothers, screaming at the pain of his face having been carved. It’s almost unbearable. But the Driver snaps him out of it with his next words. “He’s out, right?” Joker thinks for a moment and realizes he can get the Driver out sooner than expected. He shakes his head and the Driver stands up to shoot.
Within the span of a few seconds, the shotgun blast goes off again and the Driver just barely survives. “What the-“ As the Driver falls back down for a second, Joker hears the gun. It’s out of ammo. He stands up quickly and moves to the side, before shooting down the Banker. He’s ok, the plan can go on.
The Driver stands up angrily. “Where did you learn to count?!!”
Joker looks over at him and stays silent.
The Driver sighs. “Whatever, I’m going to go check on the Vault guy.”
Joker smiles under the mask. Just as planned.
***
Joker waits in the lobby for a while, walking around and thinking. With all this time to breathe he’s finally accepting the memories back into his head and not just the memories of War. The memories of finding a gun in his fathers cabinet, the memories of his mother’s illness, the memories of…his beautiful wife. Her disgust at him. Not just because of his new physical deformations but because of the stories he tells her. How horrified she is at the things he did that he seemingly feels no remorse for. To her, he just doesn’t care and that’s enough reason to leave.
He’ll always choose to believe it’s because of the scars. He still doesn’t realize his actions had consequences.
***
The Driver finally comes back with bags upon bags of money. “Hey, come help me with this!”
Joker walks over and helps him carry the bags to the front door. They’re extremely heavy and Joker feels happy just at the thought of taking this all from the Mob in Gotham. Lots of things have happened to Joker throughout his life but he’ll never forget what they did to him after he came home. They ruined him so he’ll ruin them.
“That’s a lotta money!” The driver says. “If this Joker guy was so smart, he should’ve brought a bigger car!”
Joker tries hard not to laugh, knowing what is coming in a second. He needs to compose himself. So he looks away for a second but then he hears a gun cock.
Shit. He should’ve predicted something like this would happen.
“I’m betting the Joker told you to kill me as soon as we loaded the cash.” The Driver’s gun is pointed directly at Joker’s head from afar. Joker decides he’s going to need to break his silent streak to get out of this.
“No no no no,” Joker replies. “I kill the BUS driver.” Silence encompasses the room for a moment. The Driver, despite having a mask on, seems stunned.
“Bus driver?” The Driver says in a confused tone. Joker just needs him to hold on for a few more seconds. “What bus driver?!”
The bus crashes straight through the building, running over and killing the Driver. Joker steps back calmly. He’s less nervous then he was before now that he’s got his panic attack and general anxiety under control. The trauma won’t affect him now.
The door on the back of the bus opens and out steps the Bus Driver in his clown mask. “Schools out! Time to go!” The Bus Driver steps down as Joker hands him the cash. “That guy’s not getting up, is he? Heh, this is a lot of money.”
After loading the money, the Bus Driver looks around, confused. “Where’s the rest of the guys?”
Joker makes good on his promise and shoots down the Bus Driver, tying up all loose ends. He grabs one last bag across the room and throws it in the bus but then he hears a voice from across the room. The Banker.
“Think you’re smart, huh?” The Banker says, his voice raspy. “The guy that hired yous? He’ll just do the same to you…”
Likely for Joker, he IS the guy so he’s not worried about that. He grabs an extra grenade from his pocket and starts walking up to the man. The Banker seems to be putting up a good fight and a strong poker face but Joker can feel the fear underneath him. It’s the same type of hiding emotions that Joker saw in the military from enemy forces and it didn’t work back then, so it won’t work now.
“All the criminals in this town used to believe in things…Honor, Respect!” This Banker still seems unable to realize that Joker simply believes in Chaos. He might be a schemer like the rest, sure, he needs to be able to know the rules to break them. But his end goal is what really matters. Though, Joker doubts anybody but himself could ever understand the mission.
Maybe his brothers would if they were still alive.
“Look at you, huh? What do you believe in, huh!? WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN?!!”
Joker decides to finally make this Banker shut the fuck up and puts a grenade in his mouth. But he’ll leave an answer for his question as well if he truly desires that. A method to the madness, if you will.
“I believe…” Joker begins talking, taking the Banker into his darkness with just a few simple words and an unmasking. “Whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you…”
Joker unmasks himself, revealing his greasy hair and makeup, along with his horrifying scars. Scars that tell a lifetime of regret.
“…Stranger.”
The Banker looks horrified and Joker laughs as he walks away. The Banker looks on and suddenly realizes the pin of the grande is attached to a string on Joker’s suit. As Joker jumps into the bus and moves up to the front, he starts up the vehicle. It begins to drive out of the bank into a line of other school buses. The pin is pulled…and…
It’s not an explosive grenade. A gas leaks into the manager's mouth, filling his lungs and he moans in pain. He feels absolute fear fill his bones.
Joker’s glad he stole some of Scarecrow’s fear toxin the other day.
***
The bus Joker escaped in easily blended in with the other buses, despite the big hole in the bank it came from. As soon as he could, Joker took the bus out of the bus line and traveled towards the bridge out of Gotham.
Now that step one is complete, he needs more time to lie low and continue scheming. As he brings out a cigarette and smokes it, he looks out over Gotham Bridge deep into the water. Back when he was stuck in hell (or as other people call it, The Desert), he never saw any natural source of water. Only the barrels of unclean water the military had obliged to supply the troopers with so they wouldn’t die of dehydration (Only bullets.)
Joker thinks about how since he’s been back home, which has been for years, he’s somehow never bothered to appreciate the beauty of all that he’s missed. He’s missed so much of it because of how bad things have been. But now he has time to plan and also, maybe relax.
Joker smiles to himself. “Maybe I’ll take a swim later.”
It’s a nice thought and idea. Even if he doesn’t do it. He needs to focus on the mission.
The Damn mission.