Bad Jokes

Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Batman, the Joker, Harley Quinn, and all of the wonderful inventions that Frank Miller and others have come up with over the years. I’m just borrowing them to play with. That being said, this is my writing. Don’t steal my ideas, please.

Some notes before you begin

On Harley – Harley Quinn is an astonishingly amazing character, adorable and dangerous at the same time. In both the cartoon and the comics, she’s kooky, cute, and funny, though she has an incredibly brutal streak in her. This story marks my first attempt to “Nolanize” her. She will be a little more serious, at least to start with, though she will still cling to several key aspects of her personality, such as her naïveté. Since Nolan has effectively remade the Batman characters (making them distinctively more badass, a credible feat, since they were badass to begin with), I don’t feel bad about giving her character a makeover. The skeleton of Harley will remain. The flesh covering it, however, is my interpretation (I hesitated to call it Nolanesque. My ego isn’t that grand; I’m no genius). I hope you will be able to identify and enjoy.

On The Joker – Ledger/Nolan’s Joker is nothing short of beautiful. They took the comic book character and transformed him into something terrifying, so wonderfully unique, the perfect black to Batman’s white. He’s so much more than a movie crush, the usual authoress’s reason to write a romance fiction—he’s an inspiration, a perfect tempter, seductive in his lawlessness and freedom. I read a movie review that said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Ledger is effectively playing Satan.” My lovely friend Doug, however, stated a little more accurately (again, I’m paraphrasing): “Holy shit, I just realized something. He’s Loki. He’s perfectly portraying the god of mischief; he has no motive but mayhem.” I loved that idea, the perfection of the statement. This Joker is a beautifully effective, modern-day Loki. What makes him more terrifying than that ancient myth, though, is that there are no other gods to step in and chain him to a rock under a venomous snake, to remove him from the picture. Batman is the closest thing, and he and the Joker are locked in a permanent stalemate. It’s gorgeous, really.

Ahem. Anyway. The unique nature of the character also means that he’s gloriously difficult to write. Since the average human mind operates on different wavelengths than the Joker’s, it’s next to impossible to get inside his head. I have done my best here to capture his persona, to make you see in your head the Joker that Ledger personified, to capture every nuance, every variation of speech, every little twitch. However, I fear that to complete this task perfectly is impossible. Therefore, I ask you to use your imagination to its fullest extent, to fill in the blanks that I couldn’t manage to capture. As always, never be afraid to critique my portrayal, to tell me if you think even one word is uncharacteristic. Everything helps.

On the “romance”/tone/rating of the Story – Romance first. If you came here looking for fluff or drawn-out sex scenes, you’re definitely in the wrong place. If you want a romanticized view of the Joker or his and Harley’s relationship, ditto. The relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn is deeply abnormal, sadomasochistic, and disturbing—and for these reasons, it’s one of the very few canon ships that I support. It’s deeply sexual, true, but not in the sense that they’re banging or making out all the time—it’s more of a pansexual thing, a gratification that they get from being near one another, playing off of one another. There will be moments—Harley is needy, after all, and the Joker finds it beneficial to indulge those needs at times to wind her more tightly around his finger—but they’ll usually be anything but sweet. Remember, the Joker always has an ulterior motive, even if it’s simply to fulfill his own damnable physical needs.

On the tone of the story—it’s dark. Come on, it’s a 23-chapter story about Harley losing her mind and spiraling into the Joker’s anything-but-safe world of mayhem. However, as a requisite, there are moments of gallows humor. I’m not sure about you, but I laughed maniacally every time the Joker was onscreen. He was funny, in the darkest way possible, and I wanted that to carry over into this story. Anyway, it’s rated teen because the content never gets horrifically graphic, despite the general dark mood of the story, which probably should have received an M. There are smatterings of “bad” language, some pretty explicit violence, and some veiled sensuality. If you can handle these, then proceed.

I found inspiration from several sources, namely the Hannibal series (especially The Silence of the Lambs) and Fight Club. Harley takes on the Clarice/Narrator type role, where the Joker is more Hannibal/Tyler Durden. Look for references. I’ve refused to touch any Harley/Joker fanfiction, though, for fear of losing whatever originality I have, so I’m afraid I can’t cite any other ff author’s works for you.

If these long-winded and way-too verbose notes have failed to send you packing, then proceed, and please enjoy. To that handful of faithful readers I have that will read my stories just because I wrote them (squee!), I love you all. To the newcomers, I offer a hearty welcome. Please review. I will reply if you're logged in and I can. Now. I’m off to indulge in the forbidden fruit of reading other authors’ Harley/Joker fiction. Y’all have fun, and thank you for giving Bad Jokes a chance.

Chapter One

“And now you do what they told ya.”

-Killing in the Name Of, Rage Against the Machine

When I was told what I was supposed to do, at first I thought that it was a joke—which would have been quite appropriate, given the situation. So, I asked.

“Are you joking?”

The question was directed towards my superior, Dr. Mike Stratford, the director of Arkham Asylum. We were sitting in his office where, seconds ago, he had informed me that I was being sent in to analyze the anonymous madman known only as the Joker, if I was willing to take the task.

If this was a joke, it would be a really bad one.

Allow me to explain.

My name is Harleen Quinzel—Harley to my friends and family. Doctor Harleen Quinzel—I keep forgetting. After a full eight years spent racing through school to acquire my Ph.D, you would think it’d be easier to remember my new title. Not so. The fact that I was freshly employed here at Arkham Asylum didn’t help much—not only was I just a newbie, but I was a newbie who only had my internship to look back on. The knowledge that there was a whole lot that I still didn’t know kept me pretty humble.

I figured this lack of experience would keep my superiors from assigning me anything too heavy. Apparently not.

Stratford leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. “This isn’t a joke. They really want you to do this.”

I fell into silence once more, unable to fully comprehend this assignment. Finally, I managed a monosyllabic question: “Why?”

Stratford sighed. “It’s difficult to say,” he said, a touch of brooding in his tone. “He’s been in custody for months now, but we’ve made absolutely no progress with him.” A hint of frustration leaked through into his tone. “We can develop theories, practice cures, but nothing is getting through to him. One of the higher-ups said that he might respond if someone a little younger was brought in, and I thought of you.” He looked at me over steel-rimmed glasses. “Was I wrong?”

I hesitated. From the start, I’d freely admitted to myself that I was attracted to Stratford. Along with that attraction, there was a desire to never disappoint him or let him down. It helped that I was an overachiever. But the prospect of analyzing the Joker was, quite frankly, terrifying to me.

I hadn’t lived in Gotham City my whole life, but I’d lived in a neighboring county, and nothing that had happened in the city could compare to the reign of terror that this madman had executed just months previously. For the longest time, everyone had no hope. Batman didn’t seem capable of doing anything, the police were definitely ill-equipped to deal with the man… about ninety percent of the city was on the verge of packing up and getting out until he had been captured.

The Joker was now being held at the fortress-like Arkham, his trial postponed until his therapists were able to come up with a credible analysis of the man. I don’t think the police felt safe with him locked up in a jail.

This was a man that grown men were terrified of. I was freshly twenty-six, still felt eighteen years old more often than not, was five-foot-five, and blonde-haired and blue-eyed to boot. I didn’t exactly put off a frightening impression. Who said I was equipped to analyze this man who had been giving the other headshrinks trouble from day one?

Still. Face your fear, right? You wanted opportunities—well, this is one you’ll never get again.

I looked up at Stratford. “I’ll do it,” I said softly.

“Excellent,” he said, and his eyes gleamed, giving me a fluttery feeling. I was suddenly absurdly glad that I had agreed.

“But… doesn’t this sort of seem like a last-ditch effort?” I asked, to get past that feeling and back onto the subject at hand. “I mean… next, you’ll be asking Dr. Crane to analyze him to get one insane man’s diagnosis on another.” I said this with a touch of pain. I had known Dr. Jonathan Crane when he was still a teacher, what felt like forever ago. He was a cold, unfeeling bastard even then, but I respected his intelligence immensely, and we had formed a relatively functional teacher/student relationship that I had valued.

Dr. Crane was the reason I had been so set on Arkham to begin with—I had wanted to know someone where I ended up. I had hoped that it would ease my residency. I had been very upset when I had arrived only to discover that the man who had once been the director of the asylum was now locked away in its bowels, as insane as any of the other inmates.

Stratford gave me a small, wry smile. “Perhaps. They’re starting to grasp at straws.” He paused, and I could tell that whatever he was about to say was important. There was a long pause, and then he finally continued: “Quinzel, I don’t think you know exactly what it is you’ve agreed to undertake. I had a session with this man. It was… unsettling.”

My heart started pounding, without permission from me. It took a lot to unsettle Dr. Mike Stratford.

What, exactly, had I agreed to?

As I was mulling it over in my mind, Stratford pulled open one of the drawers in his desk. He pulled out a set of VHS tapes. “Footage of most of the sessions so far,” he said, putting them on the desk in front of me. “I assume you have a VCR?” he questioned, raising an eyebrow at me.

I smirked. “Of course. It’s not exactly ancient technology.”

“Of course not,” Stratford said smoothly. “Review these. Along with this,” he said, fishing a thick portfolio out of the same drawer. “His case file.”

I nodded, reaching out to collect all of the things. Stratford stopped me with a hand on my arm, and I paused, looking up at him, wide-eyed.

“Be careful, Quinzel,” he said simply, and then leaned back. “Take the rest of the day off and study that,” he added, nodding at the stack of items on his desk. “You start with him tomorrow.”

My head snapped up; my eyes widened even further. “Tomorrow?” So soon? The unspoken addition to my question hung in the air—why couldn’t I have more time to study?

Stratford’s lips took on a grimly amused set. “I’m not sending you in there fully unprepared… but we figure that you’ll have better luck if you don’t have a… practiced air about you. The less you’ve planned out, the better.”

I nodded slowly and stood, gathering the case file and the tapes to my chest. It made sense. He nodded curtly at me. “Tomorrow, then, Dr. Quinzel,” he said, back to formalities.

I nodded again and turned on my heel, leaving the office.

The second I reached the little apartment that served as my home, I slipped off my shoes, put my purse on the counter, and went straight to the VCR. I wasn’t even tempted to engage in some meaningless recreational hobby with my unexpected time off. My new case was much more interesting than cooking or chatting with Pam or even my much-loved gymnastics would ever be. I could easily return to those any day; however, I had one night to fill my brain with as much information about the Joker as I could manage.

Nevertheless, as I slipped the first tape on the stack into the VCR in preparation, I had a fleeting thought: maybe I shouldn’t do this. Perhaps Stratford was right—in fact, he probably was. The less of an agenda that I had, the better— from what Stratford had said on the subject, I got the feeling that this man could smell schemes, like a dog.

However, curiosity won out. I had seen news footage, I had heard his voice several times, but that was nothing in comparison to what was being offered to me with these tapes. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to see him as soon as possible. These recorded sessions would do until I could indulge my curiosity with the man himself tomorrow.

The screen fuzzed and spattered, and then flared to life. I paused the tape the instant a picture showed up—the camera was situated somewhere around the therapist’s elbow, and as a result I couldn’t see who it was. I had a clear view of the Joker, though.

He sat there, frozen by the VCR, leaning back in his chair. His hair fell over his face and his arms were crossed, as much as they were able with the handcuffs, anyway. He looked like a sulky child. I got the feeling, however, that he was simply biding his time. Waiting for the interview to start.

I got up from my lonely armchair in front of the TV and retrieved the case file. Returning to my seat, I flipped it open and scanned it.

Name: Unknown
Age: Approximately 27-30
Height: 6’1
Weight: 165

I skipped downward, to the list of his offenses. Murder was clearly his forte, though there were multiple charges of arson, theft… there were two or three claims of rape. Huh, that was odd. There was physical proof of the other charges, whereas the rape charges appeared to lack conclusive evidence. From what I could tell, he didn’t seem the sort to waste time with sex.

Then again, sex was a primal need rooted in everyone. Why was I eager to acquit him?

Further down were paragraphs and paragraphs of small type, theorizing what could be wrong with him. After looking over the list once, I gave up. Every psychological disorder known to man was listed, and there were a few that looked made-up. He couldn’t possess all of them. There was a good possibility that he was simply jerking his therapists along for the fun of it.

I wouldn’t know till I watched the tapes. I set the file aside and resumed the first.

“Ten o’clock, Wednesday the thirteenth of August,” I heard the therapist say in a low, smooth tone, and I recognized the voice—it was Dr. David Wilson, a psychiatrist known for his mild temper. He was much liked in the asylum, even by most of the patients.

“Good choice,” I muttered to myself.

Wilson moved his elbow, clearing the camera further. “Will you tell me your name?” he asked gently.

I half expected his patient’s behavior to match his sullen pose. However, it seemed that he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to speak. He looked up, and I literally gasped.

His eyes burned. That was the only description for it. The shaky footage I’d seen on the news hadn’t given me as good a look as this grainy, focused session recording. They burned.

“Well, now,” he drawled, his voice curiously high and lively. “You see… I’ve introduced myself time and time again. People always make you repeat yourself, ya know, Doc?”

“You were born the Joker?” Wilson asked without any trace of sarcasm. He was just asking the question. He was good at that.

The Joker’s voice, however, was laden with sarcasm. “Of course. I just popped out and my mother said… ‘Ohhh… he’s such a happy little guy!’ And a fella has to live up to his name, right?”

“I see,” Wilson said pleasantly. “She was a good woman, then, your mother?”

“Ah, now, why’d you have to ask that?” his patient replied, looking disappointed and leaning forward, putting his cuffed wrists on the edge of the table. “Delving into childhood… everyone has a traumatic childhood, but things are different with me, aren’t they, Doc?”

“I—” Wilson started, but before he could formulate a reply, the Joker smoothly cut him off.

“I find amusement in explosives… bullets and blood. And because I get my thrills from things that you—” and here he extended a long index finger to point directly at Wilson—“uh, that you find harmful, something has to be broken in my head, right? Something’s broken. So ya gotta fix it. But whaddya do when nothin’s broken? When you just think there’s a problem?”

“Do you think you have a problem?” Dr. Wilson asked smoothly.

And here, the Joker let loose a loud, unrestrained cackle. The sound was almost frightening— I was sure that it had to be much more so when one was actually in the room. He gasped once, twice for air, and then giggled some more.

“I’m not crazy, Doc,” he managed to say, still chuckling. “I’m not. I just see… things… clearly. Ya understand?”

I paused the video, finding that my mouth was suddenly dry. I got up, went to the kitchen, and drank a glass of water, and then returned. I took a deep breath and then pressed play.

“I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Wilson said after a moment. He didn’t sound unsettled in the least—good. It wouldn’t do to let this man see that he’d made an impact. He was the type that would take advantage of it. “You see the world in a certain way. You don’t understand why others don’t see it the same way.”

And that’s the definition of a sociopath, I thought. It was pretty obvious that Wilson was angling for that diagnosis. The Joker’s next words froze me.

“What, Doc… you think I’m some sort of… sociopath? Could be true… I mean, do you think it’s true?” His head was down again. I couldn’t see his eyes.

“I don’t know. Is it?”

The Joker stared, licked his lips, and detonated. “Now, see… I’m tired of answering questions. Questions, questions, questions—it’s all you people seem capable of doing; asking questions!” He lifted his cuffed wrists and slammed them down on the table. Wilson was silent for a moment.

I held my breath.

“Well. What would you like to do instead?” Wilson finally asked.

The Joker’s head came up too suddenly, like some sort of animal targeting prey. “Well. Let’s talk about you, Doc.”

Wilson was silent. I could tell what was going through his mind, the internal dilemma—let the Joker inside of his head? At what price? He might find out something important about his patient, but was it worth it?

The Joker wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Dooooc-terr… Will-son,” he drawled, sounding the name out, testing it. “Yer a real nice guy, Doc. I can tell just by talkin’ to you. Real nice.” His eyes were fixed on Wilson. It was the stare a predator gave to his prey. My stomach clenched.

“Thank you.” Wilson’s voice was firm, I would give him that. There was no hint of the apprehension he must be feeling.

“But you know something that I find a little… weird? You’re, uh, you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“That’s right.”

The Joker worked his jaw, and then blinked. “Well, why not? You’re powerful, you’re nice, you’re—” he waved his hand vaguely as if he was describing a concept foreign to him “a handsome fella. Come on. There must be someone.”

“There was.”

“Oh, no, David,” I muttered. Wilson’s voice was getting a little clipped. His cracks were showing.

The Joker saw.

“Ah,” he said, blinking and leaning back. “There was. What happened? She leave? Is that what happened; did she… leave you?”

“I don’t think this is a wise topic to pursue,” Wilson said.

“Oh, but I wanna pursue it. Were you just a little too nice? Helping some pretty young nurse get… adjusted? Some smart little doctor? Some… other woman?”

“There was no other woman,” Wilson said. His voice was terse.

The Joker lifted his hands, palms out to show he meant no offense. “Sorry, sorry… some other man, then?”

I could tell from Wilson’s stony silence how upset he was getting. That meant that the Joker could definitely tell as well.

“Just kidding,” the Joker said jovially. “But, really now… why’d she leave you?” He sat there, watching, and when Wilson didn’t answer, he said, “Were you not… good enough… for her?”

“Shut up,” said Wilson. I brought my palm to my face. It was painful to watch, but I peeked through my fingers regardless.

“Oh, I’m with you,” the Joker assured him. “Women. Can’t live with ‘em… can’t dismember ‘em and leave them in a dozen different dumpsters. Well. Not legally, anyway,” he said, with an exaggerated wink.

I could see some movement on Wilson’s part. Nothing big, barely perceptible. I would guess that he just tensed up. The Joker saw it.

“Uh-oh. Some girl of yours subject to violence?”

“It’s my turn to ask the questions,” Wilson said, struggling to regain control of the conversation.

“Not the wife, though… no, you’d still be wearing the ring, if she was dead. Uh, a sweetheart?”

“Stop.”

“Ya know, dark alleys in Gotham are so dangerous. Always some fuh-reak waiting to jump out at you, right? To cut and stab and rip and tear. So much you can do to a little girl.”

There was a loud scrape as Wilson pushed his chair back. I heard no further movement, and the Joker just raised his eyes, presumably to look at Wilson’s face.

Then, footsteps, heading away from the camera. Then, the first session was over.

Around eight o’clock in the evening, my father called. I was lost in the session footage, and probably wouldn’t have answered if I hadn’t glanced at my screen out of habit. At the realization that it was my dad, I quickly paused the tape, jerked my mind out of Arkham’s affairs, and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Harley,” he said irritably, “why didn’t you answer your phone last night?”

I winced, remembering that I had awoken to several missed calls from him that I hadn’t yet found the time to return. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “You called late; I had gone to bed.”

“You went to bed at nine o’clock?” I could hear his incredulity. “What are they feeding you there? I couldn’t get you to go to sleep before midnight, even when you were a kid.”

I smiled. “Some days are more tiresome than others.”

He hmphed. “I was calling to check up on you,” he said. “How’s the big, bad asylum been since the last time I called?”

Tell him about the Joker, I compelled myself. Tell him about this new case you have.

I refrained from spilling the news. “It’s… good.”

Dad’s tone turned incredulous. “Good? That’s all you can say? Last time I couldn’t get you to shut up about it.”

No, last time you cut me off and told me you have work to get done and that you couldn’t listen to me gush all day. “Things haven’t changed all that much, Daddy,” I told him. “People are still troubled; I’m still trying to help them with that.”

“I never could understand why you wanted to spend so much time with people who’ve killed their wives and kids and chopped ‘em up and stuffed them in the wall,” Dad said bluntly.

“I’ve told you before, Dr. Crane—”

“Dr. Crane is one of them now, Harley!” Dad exclaimed. “He almost destroyed Gotham last year! Or don’t you remember?”

I sighed as softly as I could manage—if my father heard the quick exhale, he’d accuse me of being disrespectful, and that would be just another argument to beat to death. “I know, Daddy. But when he was sane, he had a lot of true things to say. He convinced me that I had potential in this field and that I should go further with it.”

“You should have stuck with your gymnastics,” my father told me. “You were so good at that, Harley—you could have gotten to the Olympics before you knew it.”

Yeah, Dad, keep telling yourself that. I wasn’t nearly as deluded as my father about my skills as a gymnast—I loved doing it, I was good at it, but I didn’t have the dedication to go all the way to the Olympics. My life got in the way.

“Well, we kind of already spent the money on my schooling, Dad,” I reminded him softly, and then winced. Oh, no. I’d given him something else to latch on to. Sure enough—

“That’s another thing!” he said, almost triumphantly. “For the money we spent, you could have gone to medical school and become a psychiatrist! Tell me again, why did you decide to get your Ph.D instead?”

“Several reasons,” I said, working to restrain my temper. “First, I’ve never been interested in medicine. I’m not nearly as fascinated by different chemicals’ effects on the human brain as I am by actual therapy and getting to know your patients. Second, psychiatry would have taken more than ten years after I was done with high school, and I did not want to spend that much time—”

“You finished high school a year early and raced through your bachelor’s degree,” Dad interrupted blandly. “You could have had your doctorate in psychiatry by now.”

“Yes, Dad,” I said, finally losing my patience, “but then I’d be required to spend another four years as a resident somewhere! Right now, I’m through with my internship and I’m already twenty-six. It’s time for me to start actually living and working without being looked at as a child!”

“From what I hear, you’re still being treated like a student at Arkham,” he reminded me. I sighed and pushed a fist against my forehead.

Tell him now. Tell him you’re moving up.

“That happens to everyone who starts a new job, especially one in a heavy field, like this one” I said, forcing myself to calm down. “The second someone with less experience than I have starts working there, I’ll start getting treated with more respect.”

“Well, it’s your life,” he said resignedly.

Then why on earth do you keep trying to run it?

“Anyway, I’ve got to go,” he continued. “I just wanted to catch up.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Thanks for calling, Daddy.” There was a pause, and then I blurted, “I love you.”

The words appeared to catch him by surprise, as usual. After a few seconds, he replied, almost abashedly. “I love you, too. G’night.”

“Goodbye—” I started to say, but he’d already hung up.

I sighed and took my phone away from my ear, staring moodily at it. My father and I had a complicated relationship to say the least, which one of the other reasons I’d moved all the way into Gotham to work at Arkham.

He hadn’t always been the way he was now—dominating, expectant, critical. No, he’d turned that way after my mother died of lung cancer when I was sixteen. It was likely that she’d asked him to make sure I would succeed in life or something of that matter, because just a month after she died, he was constantly on my case about my future, about my work, about my plans.

I loved my father. I’d had a good childhood and good parents, and I didn’t go through that usual teenage rebellion to any real extent. I wanted to make him happy. So, instead of waltzing through the last two years of high school like I’d planned on doing, I doubled up on my coursework and finished at age seventeen. Three years later, I had my bachelor’s degree, five years after that, I’d finished with graduate school and had acquired my Ph.D, and now, at twenty-six, I was finally through with my internship and out in the real world.

It wasn’t enough. I sometimes got the feeling that it would never be enough—that he would always expect more out of me than I was able to give. That would have been fine if I was just able to shrug it off, but no, I constantly had to try to rise to his expectations, to try and earn his praise and respect.

That was why I’d been so tempted to tell him about the Joker case. It was certainly an assignment to be proud of, even though I was fairly certain Stratford hadn’t given me the case for my brains. Still, something held me back.

Maybe it was the enormous potential for failure—why tell my father about a case that I was almost certain to screw up somehow? Maybe it was the fact that my dad might choose this day to get protective, to demand that I give up the case, to insist that the Joker was dangerous and that I didn’t need to go anywhere near him. Maybe it was the fear that Dad would react as though he had no idea why the assignment was such an achievement.

I studied my television moodily. The Joker had been in the midst of one of his cheerful, sinister laughs when I froze the screen, face creased with mirth, lips pulled back to bare dingy teeth in an almost threatening manner.

I couldn’t screw this up. I turned my phone off, and then lifted my remote and pressed “play”.

I barely slept that night. I was equally enthralled and horrified by the footage.

The Joker tore absolutely everyone apart. Male, female, young, old—he found some weakness and widened the crack in the façade until it was a gaping hole. He reduced his therapists to raw bundles of nerves.

They’d only sent in one woman—an older lady, Dr. Fitzhugh. The Joker, to put it plainly, informed her that she was a dried-out husk of a woman with nonexistent sexuality and that no one would ever find her attractive or taker her seriously again. It wasn’t that straightforward—his delivery had been flawless; he had been so certain of himself. She left the room in tears.

Stratford was informed that he was a recovering alcoholic with a power complex. He didn’t break down or lose focus, but neither did he volunteer to return.

He got Dr. Laurence on his unaddressed sexuality. He called him on the fact that he was a closeted homosexual, saying that if they were going to give him a shrink, they might have the courtesy to give him one who wasn’t as screwed up as they thought he was.

That was just the first three. No one had more than two sessions with him—he was too unnerving, too vile, too damn focused on his goal of showing his shrinks the worst side of themselves for them to stay for longer.

I was nervous.

That was an understatement. I had almost thrown up once or twice, and now, at 4 AM, I was pacing back and forth with a blanket thrown around my shoulders, trying to figure out what my greatest failing was and whether or not I would break down, should he figure me out and decide to take me down.

Part of me had no hope. If all these other more experienced therapists had been taken down with no effort by this man, how on earth was I supposed to survive in there?

The other part of me was equally sure that I was the only person for this job. I didn’t loathe him automatically, like most of Gotham. I knew no one that he’d killed. He could figure out my issues with my dad, sure, he could call me on my overachiever status as a result of my father’s criticism, but would that really be enough to reduce me to tears? I doubted it.

What else, then? My home had been loving and there had been a distinct lack of personal trauma in my life.

Maybe that was what he’d call me on? I was just a rube, after all. I didn’t know the dark side of things. I was just playing at it. That was what he would say, anyway—if I gave him anything about myself.

I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I could keep myself a mystery. He’d see my cracks and he’d pry at them until my guts lay out on the table in front of us for him to pick through. Still, I could try to play my hand close to the chest, at least until I knew what I was dealing with.

I looked at the clock again. 4:49 AM. How had that much time passed?

I rubbed my eyes, which were burning. I needed to go to bed—I would need some rest before undertaking tomorrow’s task.

I curled up in my bed, not bothering to get undressed.

Tomorrow, I would face the Joker.

A/N -- Ooh, daddy issues and foreshadowing... fun stuff! I forgot to mention that the chapters will take their names from appropriate song lyrics-- I have a playlist for this story; I'll refer y'all to it sooner or later. Just know this: the theme song of this story (and, I would say, of the Joker) is Burn by Nine Inch Nails. Seriously, go to Project Playlist and listen to it. It's... breathtaking.

Thanks for reading! Please, please, please review to let me know what you thought, and I'll have another chapter for you soon!