Work Text:
She comes to him when he's feeling low. It was a bad night, spent silently staring at the black. The black was empty and did not stare back. No matter how he glared, no matter how he snarled and threw himself at the walls, the black was silent. No voices, no lights. Nothing but cold dry cement walls without give. He battered his body against them, shoulder chest other shoulder back repeat, circling himself around until every side was bruised and sharp little pains twinged down by his lungs when he inhaled too deep. He spat and licked at the walls, scraped his face against them until he bled. Nothing. Nobody home. Nada zip zero zilch. In the end he knelt by the wall with his forehead pressed against it, just breathing in the smell of his own sweat and the constant smell of shit from the ancient sewage system and the smell of dust. Usually it smelled like victory, like fear and vacation and home. Tonight it smelled like failure.
The slow morning light comes outside, and even in the dark you sense daytime. The noises shift: plumbing, electricity, talk. It's a bunker but it's not soundproof. Not yet. That's coming someday, but today he's still in the old Arkham, the old brick and mortar monstrosity. Still in a place where the echoes of old things haven't been erased. He's quite fond of the place. His cell has been a nice constant over the years. Today, though, it's just a prison cell and he feels depressingly... Human. Average. Normal. It's horrific.
They come for him with due caution, which bolsters his spirits a bit. He makes a good effort to get the bulky one closer so he can bite the guy's nose off, but they've been around long enough to not be completely blank slates. He'll have to kill them on his next escape, keep them from developing too far. Home maintenance, pest control. Can't have any of the staff getting too real in his own home, oh no. That'll never do. He shudders at the thought and lies limply in their arms as they drag him down the hall.
They sit him in a chair that's bolted to the floor and spend fifteen minutes securing the assorted restraints. It's boring but comforting. He does not resist, snuggles down into the proof they regard him as dangerous and frightening. It's his due, after all, this respect. He croons happily, a little song he made up. The first verse is about giving away free puppies. They sweat as he sings. This batch don't know the other verses yet, but they know enough to know how everything ends with him. The bulky one makes the mistake of glancing up when they finish, accidentally meeting his gaze. He feels the grin stretch his face wide wide wide. The man pales and something inside his eyes withers.
"I *see* you," the Joker whispers. "I see you. Getting smart, getting experienced handling us. Yes. Getting good at this. Routine," he continues. The orderly gives a choked swallow and practically throws himself away from the last buckle, hands trembling. He's swallowing and as white as a sheet, like he's about to throw up. The Joker's laugh follows him out of the room to the bathroom, where he splashes cold water on his face without regard to getting his collar wet, then carefully dries himself off with scratchy paper towels. He does not once look in the mirror. He's been there for two years now, and this is the first time he's been truly afraid. The first time he's doubted the choice, the extra money.
He sucks it up because everyone has bills, and he's one of the lucky ones. Steady job, extra money, he's doing ok. Lucky, he repeats, and by the time he's back taking inventory, he almost believes it again.
@@@@
The orderlies are gone. He's alone. The brief buzz their fear have him fades, and fades, and vanishes. The buzz of a fluorescent light on its last legs above him replaces it, and gets louder and louder and louder until the world is nothing but buzzzzzzzz in his ears brain he clenches his teeth and closes his eyes and breathes in and breathes out but the buzz in his brain keeps going the door opens
She walks in.
He opens his eyes and her head is down bent looking back behind her someone is saying something last minute safety precautions don't cross the tape line she turns and her glasses flash her hair is mouse brown pulled back hard eyes hidden glasses huge lab coat huge and he hates her with every fiber of his being, because under this coat she has breasts, good ones, no giant lab coat can hide that. He hates her because she's trying to be plain but he knows she's not. He hates her because she is so. Fucking. Transparent.
He hates her because she's not real.
So he lets it out.
Little fuck puppet, he says, a low lethal snarl. She freezes with her hand hovering over the chair, her startled eyes suddenly up and they'd be meeting his if the lenses from her glasses weren't reflecting the fluorescent lights into his pupils. Hot little pussy getting your ass bent over at night. Or during the day, fucking typical repressed shit breaking out in the office, thighs shoved up against the big wooden desk, skirt hiked up and pantyhose shoved down and all that tightly bound up hair falling out of the bun you wrap it up in every morning while someone pounds their dick into you from behind because you think doggy style is dirty and dirty things are fun and you can't even see their face. Can't see anything, just feel it. You feel it right now, while I'm saying this, you feel the wet spunk dripping down your leg after they pull out and you grab a tissue off the desk and wiping up after they use your body feels better than their fucking you ever did, more satisfying and you try to hide it, hide how your fingers want to stick around and play in the mess but instead you turn to the dick and look up and smile a little and say something that makes him laugh.
He pauses to inhale a harsh breath and looks at her properly for the first time, because she hasn't done what he expected, and that's interesting but also disgusting and it makes him furious. If she were totally fake she'd be sobbing out in the corridor by now, but she's not. She isn't running away. Her body has slowly collapsed, not away from him, but into the chair to face him. Her hands are limp little things with the cords cut, her mouth open a tiny bit. He still can't see her eyes but... She's flushed. Pink.
She closes her mouth and draws in a gulp of air, and he watches in stunned shock as she collects herself. Remembers her hands, pushes her glasses up with a shaking finger, settles herself down, composes herself.
She's wearing makeup. Just a little lipstick that's worn off the insides of her lips. She doesn't wear makeup much, not if she can't do lipstick, he thinks, but she's wearing it today. A confidence boost? A bit of courage? He jerks forward, lunges, inhales sharply. She jumps but gets control and she is wearing perfume. She is wearing sensible shoes and nude nylons and a skirt that covers her knees and when she speaks she has a deliberately soft voice, careful, controlled, modulated. He has no idea what she's saying, couldn't care less. But under that control is a faint backwoods trash accent. He can hear it there, a dirty trailer and scabby knees and beer cans in her past. He sucks in a breath because, because, she's here, she's maybe not entirely unreal, and there is a distinct possibility that she could be for him.
He's never had a pet before. Well, that's a lie, but stray dogs you feed and brush and eventually poison and vivisect for fun don't really count, do they? Not really. He can only vaguely remember them anyways. He's never had a - "What's your name?" He interrupts something pointless and soothing she's saying. She pauses, holds, replies. "Doctor Quinzel," she says, and he can see her rationalizing telling him, that trust must be earned by showing trust, when really she is his. His. He boggles at the novelty.
He laughs, head thrown back, pure delight. She gapes at him. He lets it all show- trust, after all. He lets all the wild out in the laugh, a full on belly of glee at this precious wrapped-up-tight present some idiot fucking God has dropped into his lap.
Eventually his laughter dies down. He can feel the tear streaks on his face tracking through the blood and dirt and scratches. He still grins, can't help it. "Oh, my dear, dear, Doctor Quinzel, how astonishingly happy I am to meet you! I've never had a Doctor Quinzel before, and I am oh so very looking forward to unwrapping you." He meets her gaze directly, lets his frank admiration show. Grins.
She inhales sharply. Her lips are parted, her cheeks a confusion of pale and pink. He watches terror and want go to war inside her with anticipation, watches her press them both down and press her legs together.
He thinks idly about tying her up and making her scream in horror and grins wider. Mine, he thinks, a new toy to play with. He knows she'll be his way out of here this time; he thinks she'll be dead when he's done. But she leans forward. Her face is unemotional for a moment, but the angle of the shadow blocks the light from her glasses, and he can see her eyes for the first time. They are alive, sharp, and somewhere down in there is something that was fierce but got broken, a little wind-up carousel missing a few horses. She's all tarted up right now, but he can see it's a patch job.
She sits back hard in the chair and he realizes he was talking out loud. Whoops. He giggles and makes a shocked face, and she stands up abruptly and walks out.
It's ok. It's all ok. He feels it, the warm glow inside. It was missing last night but she brought it back. The guards slam him into the floor when they pull him out of the chair and the floor is warm and a little bit bouncy. Like a hard rubber surface with a thin layer of concrete paint, just like it's supposed to be, just like it is all the best times in his life, when all the electricity comes into him and everything flows and gets clean like cutting crystal and nothing can stop him. Nothing.
It's coming. He writhes in the grip of the guards all the way back to his cell, laughing and laughing and laughing, and when they throw him in without taking off his straight jacket he bounces off the far wall and lands on his feet without using his hands at all, and throws back his head and *howls*. They slam the door and don't turn on the lights.
"Storytime!" he shouts at the little gap in his cell door. "Storytime! Storytime! Storytime!" He chants it over and over and feels the other inmates on the long hall get up, come to their doors. He's calling them up out of whatever drug-induced stupor they're in until they pick up the chant, sto rey time, sto rey time, and once it's self sustaining, once they're all in synch and caught up, he throws back his head and howls again.
The guards, sensibly, retreat without turning their backs, in an orderly, not-quite-panicked group.
He drops his head and watches them go in silence as the audible chaos he started up rages on without his input. He looks at the faces of the guards he needs to kill, memorizing, and the last thing they see before they close the hall door is his bright red smile on his pale pale face, floating framed in the dark of his cell by the hole in the door.