In the Eye of the Hurricane - C1
Title: In the Eye of the Hurricane - Chapter one
Author: ladyofpride
Characters: Joker, Scarecrow/Crane and the Riddler. Batman will be mentioned (and will make appearances) as the story progresses, though he isn’t the focus of the story.
Rating: Pg-17 (if such a thing exists)
Timeframe: follows after the second movie
Warnings: violence, obvious insanity and the death of innocent (or not-so-innocent) bystanders...after all, this is about the Joker...
Disclaimer: I’m not making a profit off of this-nor do I have the desire to either. I’m just playing in someone else’s sandbox.
Summary: It’s true what they say. Sanity can only last so long...
The guards are agitated; the youngest of the three flinches away from him when they brush shoulders in the hall. The kid’s got guts but not enough to deal with the nuts in Arkham’s house-he avoids making eye contact with the Joker, more for the sake of his sanity than anything else, and does this fidgety little thing with his fingers as they near the criminal’s cell. The other guards are almost stoic; solemn. They shove their latest inmate inside and lock the door. Nothing much penetrates them nowadays and they have the atmosphere of the asylum to thank for that, for getting them to believe they’re impenetrable; invincible.
Arrogance is beast that bites the hardest.
It’s going to take more than a door to keep him in.
He hums, deep in his throat, testing the acoustics of the padded room as he wanders over to the ‘bed’ in the corner. The buckles of the straightjacket bite into his back as he lies down but it’s a little nuisance he’s willing to put up with for the time being. Everything can be dealt with-Aristotle would know: every man can find happiness in doing anything only so long as he does it for the sole sake of doing it.
It’s true. He knows. The Joker is the kind of guy that acts on impulse.
The Bat could concede to that.
But the Bat is busy cleaning up the ashes. Joker knows the vigilante has his work cut out for him with the unfinished business of the not-so-pristine White Knight of Gotham City-the news channels say it all. They show a pretty face-a whole face-that smiles humbly at the audience from the portrait of a dead man...The city’s true savour scrambles to save the city in the backdrop, a regular menace to society. He wonders if the Bat really does want Gotham to hate him.
The Batman’s written his tragedy and handed it to the public.
They’ll eat him alive.
Gotham is a vicious city-and he’s not referring to the crooks. It’s the people Joker’s worried about. It’s the people that dictate what’s right and what’s wrong. After all, the French government was overthrown by a body of students...
It’s terrifying what a mob can do. Amazing.
Ab-so-lute-ly amazing.
He loves the people. Really, he does. Without the people, where would he find his anarchy?
He licks his lips. The make-up’s gone but he can deal with that. He just can’t help but wonder how impenetrable Arkham Asylum and her guards really are...
There’s a sound down the hall, where the door is open and someone is being escorted to another floor. It’s a short, brisk laugh. Professional. And unprofessional. It’s from someone up there that’s taken the risk of staring too long into the abyss down here where all the oddities gather. It’s answered with a moan from another prisoner.
It starts a chain reaction. They’re all moaning and cursing by time the guard arrives but the Joker can’t understand what their matter is.
Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.
-1-Joker-1-
The doctor’s a good doctor (or so he’s told) but she doesn’t smile and she wears too much perfume. Her hair is pulled back in a tight, strictly-business bun and she stares at him over the rims of her crooked glasses with the look of a child examining a new insect through a magnifying glass.
She asks him how he’s feeling today.
But it doesn’t matter how he’s feeling-it only matters how she’s feeling. Everyone sees the world through their own special lens and she’ll see what she wants to see depending on her mood today. And doctors are moody people. Believe him. They expect to make miracles and brood when they don’t.
And then they scheme.
Her scheme is to cure him.
It’s not a clever scheme but (alas) to each his own. He sits and nods and tries to look vaguely interested in what she’s saying. Her left eye twitches twice when she pauses to write something down and he wonders whether it’s habitual or if there’s something wrong with her face.
She doesn’t look too pleased when he imitates her.
...Must be her face, then.
She cuts their session short on the basis that this is just an ‘introduction’ and to give him time to think over her questions. No rush. She has all the time in the world to work on him and he has all the time in the world to watch her try.
Prison really is a happy place.
Two guards come to escort him out-but not the pup from before. The kid is hiding somewhere. Somewhere small. The Joker knows they’ll meet again.
Arkham is only so big.
...It really is only so big.
In the hall he sees a man, though he can’t be sure if it is, in fact, a man...Arkham has a slightly skewed definition of what a ‘man’ is.
He’s tall and gangly. Nearsighted. He glances down the hall but his eyes don’t focus on anything aside from motion, flickering to another guard as security waltzes toward a frantic patient. There’s a certain darkness around those eyes that boasts of either exhaustion or the tail-end of a nasty head injury, and a certain darkness in those eyes that brags a wicked cocktail of hatred and ingenuity.
He’s the kind of guy the Joker wouldn’t mind having a chat with.
The man in question shrugs his shoulders to relieve the tension there and strains his neck to one side, stretching, as the only female guard the Joker’s seen so far grabs a straitjacket-clad arm and leads the stranger away. But not before said stranger glances back at him. The look speaks volumes on the scale of a challenge but there’s a bit of recognition in it too.
This would be Dr. Jonathan Crane, the man from before, the one ‘at large’ when the Joker found the love of his life in the wonderful Miss Gotham. He looks different. A little ill.
He looks ready to dance to a new tune.
And there’s a curl at the corner of his lips, that kind of ‘ah-ha-I knew it!’ sort of smirk the Joker usually finds on the face of someone decidedly smug. Either that or someone with a plan.
...Crane could be a ‘planning’ kind of guy but he’s been in the nuthouse for a while now and he’s had the privilege of enjoying the whole Arkham experience on both sides of the glass wall. If there ever was a man in the world that had lost his mind, the Joker would place his bet on him.
Even though some would be bold enough to call him crazy...
The Joker waves, just lifts his hand a little and gives it a small friendly shake. Crane doesn’t catch it-the tart little guard on his left has already shoved him into the room-but the men on either side of him do and he catches the wary side-glance they exchange with one another before escorting him to his cell.
It’s the first crack on the glass, a glance at the ground before they fall. Invincibility really only lasts so long.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen...
-2-Joker-2-
The powers that be can’t decide whether his wave was just an instance of insanity or a sign of the apocalypse. His therapist, doctor what’s-her-name, suggests that he and the ‘Crane’ remain separate from each other until either of the two show improvement in their sessions. Most of Arkham can’t decide if they knew each other from before or if they were somehow communicating with plans of an escape.
Crane doesn’t say a thing-“Mum’s the word”, so to speak.
Smart man.
The Joker doesn’t need to scheme-everyone else will do it for him. They argue and debate, set up boundaries and guidelines to quell any escape before the end of step one, and really-that’s fine with him. You can’t break into a joint without a layout of the place and you can’t get the layout until someone’s written it up for you. That’s logic in one of its purist forms.
He’s really starting to like this place.
So he sits in his sessions and nods at random times in what’s-her-name’s little speech. He’s not sure if she thinks he’s making any improvements (he doesn’t actually give her what she deems a ‘straight answer’) but Crane must be because security doesn’t fret when one of the valves in the good doctor’s hall bursts, flooding almost the entirety of the second floor. Several of the inmates freak out (as is their nature) and three of the lucky gents are moved up to the fifth floor with the Joker and his merry band of lunatics.
Crane is one of them.
The guards are hesitant to lock the infamous Scarecrow in with any of the other inmates. John 1 and John 2 are stuffed into the same cell near the emergency stairwell and Crane is shoved into the room two doors adjacent to his own. What a delight. The guards shut off the lights and warn everyone against disturbing the peace.
As if peace actually exists in Arkham.
He knows a bad joke when he hears it.
“It’s cold...” one of the old folks moans. He’s prone to do that every second or so night but John 1 (or is it John 2?) is none the wiser.
“Oh, would you shut up...”
“It’s cold...”
“Who cares?”
Joker smiles.
The crazy rises to the bait, as he always does when someone eggs him on, and continues his mantra until the newcomer is just about tearing the hair from his head. Sooner or later the guards will drop by and they’ll put an end to tonight’s entertainment.
Another voice starts up but this one is familiar to him. It’s the laugh from his first night in the asylum.
“Be kind,” Crane chastises in an almost sing-song voice, “We are, after all, guests.”
John 1 falls silent. The Joker wonders if the man’s been cowed by Crane’s sudden interference or if he’s just gathering the balls to say something in return.
“Well...what are you going to do about it?”
“Oranges and lemons,” Crane replies.
“What?”
Crane clears his voice and then recites... “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head-‘chip chop, chip chop,’ the last man’s dead.” (1)
“...That’s not funny.”
“It isn’t?” Crane sounds entirely too amused for his own good. The Joker is entranced, “Well then, why don’t we talk about it...”
And they do.
Until John can’t breathe anymore.
-3-Joker-3-
The guards, apparently, aren’t fans of suicide.
John 1 is found a few minutes after his already traumatized roommate starts howling at the moon like a man on fire. At least the crazy has the decency to wait until after his companion is cold and dead before sounding the alarm. The torn pillow case is still wound tightly around his neck as the guards unlock the door and barge inside. They’re disgusted.
Nobody mentions Crane.
The man has the voice of an angel...Maybe a fallen angel. It’s smooth. Seductive. Crane doesn’t waste any time getting to the point and it takes him less than five minutes to drive the man over the edge. It’s commendable-means that the good doctor doesn’t need his fear toxin to get the job done.
The inmates of the fifth floor are scared stiff.
Joker giggles.
At first, the powers that be suspect him. They’re wary enough keep Crane in the corner of their eyes but never openly ask anyone on their floor about him. They ask about the Joker. Only the Joker. After all, Crane’s the one that’s making an ‘improvement’.
But it isn’t him and they have no reason to keep him in detention. After a couple of weeks, he’s allowed into the recreational room with tight supervision-they take him at a time when no one else is expected to be in there and he’s stuck with the just television for company. Gotham’s still enamoured with him. They speak of his past indecencies often-up until another crazy dons a costume and starts parading across the city. They call him the Riddler. He leaves riddles.
Go figure.
They show a picture of a young man-late twenties probably. His hair is auburn, brushed forward, cut short, and the next photo the newscaster flashes at the audience is a dim shot of the kid with a domino mask and a bowler hat.
It`s blurry but his slick business suit looks green. That’s about all the security cameras at the bank can catch of him before something causes them to blow. Nevertheless, the Joker’s intrigued-he knows Crane will be too. They should throw him a welcoming part.
Once they get out of Arkham, of course.
Whoever said the Joker wasn’t a generous guy?
[Next chapter: (Chapter two)]
A/N: I wanted to put down a limit for how long the story will be but I’m actually not sure about the length. In any case, I hope you enjoyed the first installation. Only leave a comment if you feel like it; I don’t mind not getting reviews. On the other hand, if you think something is wrong (especially if you think the Joker's OOC) just slap me and I'll try to remedy the problem.
(1) These are the last three lines from the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons”. The rhyme touches down on the executions at Newgate Prison which commenced after the tolling of the bells (at nine o’clock on Monday morning). Apparently, at one point or another in the vast comic universe, Crane supposedly recited such little rhymes when they suited the mood of his current heist. Additionally, Crane also managed to talk a couple of inmates into committing suicide when he was in Arkham. I just decided to play off of these ideas.