Fic: Regret pt. 5 - Potential
Title: Regret
Part 5 - Potential
Series: Dark Knight/Batman
Pairing: Gen
Summary: A six-part series covering Rachel Dawes' funeral, each part showing the regret of a man watching - Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon, Mayor Garcia, Harvey Dent, and the Joker.
Notes: Since I was a little cheapskate with Harvey Dent, here's the Joker!
--
For some men, regret is a vague void; the potential for a little bit of pleasure, a little bit of fun, that never got fulfilled.
--
The Joker smacked his lips at the attendant who was giving him a wide berth, giggling when she jumped so badly that the syringe she was carrying fumbled out of her hands. His arms flexed against the soft restraints, fingers twitching, as she snatched it up and scurried out of the room, losing the resolve to give him the medicine on her own for the third time that week. And he hadn’t even done anything yet.
To the disappointment of most of Gotham, he had qualified for the insanity plea quite easily, garnering a cushy little room that was more like a hospital than a jail. He was strapped to the bed at all times, but it was a nice little home away from home while he rested up for his next big tryst with the Batman.
A small, black and white television was mounted in the corner of his room and probably had not been touched for decades. He had taken a small break, a teensy tiny break, from the restraints on his bed to plug it in and adjust the antennae. He left it on and tuned to the news, which unnerved his nurses for some reason. But, as he told the doctors, it kept him occupied and not bored. After he had to get up a few times to flip on the power, they finally got the picture and graciously allowed him to keep the television on.
It was obviously a slow news day, because Gotham Cable News was broadcasting a funeral. It didn’t draw the Joker’s attention until his name was mentioned, and he realized with delight that the funeral was in honor of the late Miss Rachel Dawes.
Belting out a laugh, the Joker shifted around in his bed to get a better angle on the screen. “Oooh, ol’ Harvey’d be so happy!” he muttered to himself. Seems the whole city had turned out to celebrate the death of his little girlfriend. There was that cockroach-mayor giving a riveting speech about her life, very poetic. The Joker’s gaze scrambled hungrily over the assembled.
If anything good could be said of Harvey, it was that he sure knew how to pick a woman. She had Commissioner Gordon puffy-eyed and Gotham’s favorite billionaire playboy looked like he might snap off the mayor’s head when they shook hands at the podium. And that wasn’t even mentioning a certain caped crusader she had wrapped around her little finger.
The Joker watched, entranced, as Bruce Wayne stumbled through his eulogy, his dark eyes not matching his casual voice as he recounted some trite childhood memory. The Joker laughed at all the right segments and repeated Wayne’s sentences after him, but he was mostly intrigued by the billionaire’s rigid stance and the well of emotions he kept back from the audience. Who was this woman that held even the notorious Prince of Gotham in sway?
The nurse returned with a small army of medical personnel to give the Joker his sedative, and he greeted them with a pleasant grin. “A real shame about that Rachel girl, isn’t it?” he told them, nodding to the screen. They all regarded him warily, and some even tossed him murderous looks, but he meant it. Just thinking about all the things he could have done with that girl before baiting the Batman had made him jittery with excitement and frustration. It took five of them to hold him down, and the one who finally stabbed the needle into his arm was none too gentle about it.
The cloudy blackness tumbled over his mind and he promised to visit her grave whenever he got tired of the cushy hospital room. Leave flowers or… something…. a little... more……….fun………………