lovejoker4ever

This one will go up on AO3 as soon as I figure out where it is going…

Strangely Sweet

There is something obscene about this scenario – or maybe surreal. Of course, these moments have never felt completely real to me, but tonight everything feels unmoored, insubstantial. I look down and see that the seat touches my armored legs, but I can’t quite feel the seat against my back and thighs or the wheel beneath my gloved hands. Maybe it’s his fault. His overbright eyes – looking at me so frank, clear, and open – they aren’t the kind of eyes that ought to look out of a monster’s face He sits like a child, fraying purple coat bunching up over his shoulders like wings; he’s right on the edge of his seat – visibly excited. Seeing him this way is disarming and the last thing I want to be in a small space with a knife-wielding maniac is disarmed.

“I’ve always wanted to see inside this thing,” he admits. There’s a softness to his voice, a certain exotic musicality and I wonder about his background. I wonder if he can sing and if he does.

“Don’t touch anything,” I growl back. The strangeness of the situation colors my tone; the sound of me is black volcanic glass studded with chunks of gravel.

He notices and gives the gentlest laugh; this is not the sound of the carnival clown, the jester of this grim, dangerous playground. This is the laugh of a friend who knows me too well and who is – by the sound of him – trying to get me to join in and laugh at myself. For a moment, it seems like his voice wants to build a golden bridge between us.

He must have injected me with something back there. I thought he was broken; I had to lift him up by his collar and there was plenty of blood in that alley, but he’s fooled me before. I shake my head. I am imagining the Joker capable of aural peace offerings!

Sensing my internal argument, he laughs again.

“Why are you laughing at me now?” I’ve tempered the timbre; now my voice is bold, heroic. Superman calls it “the very dark iced coffee voice.” Alter ego aside, he never was a very good writer.

“Don’t get your wings all ruffled, Bats. I was just wondering if your throat ever hurts – keeping up the super hero dialogue. I know what you sound like for real, you know.”

I don’t answer but push a small button. In front of him, a compartment opens to reveal a stash of lozenges and hard candies. He unwraps one and tongues at the golden sweetness before taking it into his mouth. It’s profane, but he reminds me of a nature show I saw once ; he’s like a bat taking nectar from a night-blooming flower.

His madness may be contagious; his blood has been on my hands enough times – maybe some of the taint seeped in?

“So where are we going since you went to all of this trouble to get me here?” I am surprised at his patience. I’ve been circling back roads, taking him away from people that he can kill, but he seems content to simply be here in the car. Maybe he has hostages stashed somewhere. Once in awhile his fingers reach out and stroke the interior as if it were a cat. Cats like him. I managed to get him back in Arkham once because during our chase he stumbled across a litter of kittens. Their mom had been killed and they were hungry, mewling. He let me pummel him, but he shielded them and I had to take them in and find them homes; he insisted on that from inside the police car. I had to make weekly reports until he was satisfied they were safe.

He’s quiet as if he knows I am meandering through a labyrinth of thoughts and memories, wondering about all of our other nights, wondering exactly what type of deranged arithmetic allows them to add up to this night.

“Waffles,” he says at last.

“Waffles?”

“I like them, but I never get to eat them. And who wants to eat waffles alone, anyway? I know a place.”

Again. Found this from “enemy’s territory.” Bruce Wayne as Ben Affleck and Joker as Jared Leto.

In this first panel, we have a composition which mirrors almost exactly that used in the last panel on page six. In the foreground, over on the right, we can see a little of the midsection of a young man in fairly down-at-heel clothing, most conspicuously, we can see his hands. They are perhaps a little grubby, with dirt beneath the fingernails, but basically they seem pink and unused to work. The fingers are long, sensitive and artistic, and the hands themselves seem to betray a sort of nervousness. Here, we see them nervously holding a battered old trilby that looks as if it’s long since lost its war with the rain. The hands clutch the brim, toying with it uncomfortably as the off panel person stands there holding his hat at waist or crotch level, wherever we saw the Joker holding his hat in the last panel of page six. Looking beyond this, we can see  the terrible cramped untidy room that the young man and his wife share. The wallpaper is peeling and was in any case awful to start with. In the room there is a washbasin, a small gas stove, two chairs a small table and a cramped looking double bed that would perhaps sleep one person comfortably. The room is so small that we can probably even see a lot of this detail in the first panel. There is a small window in the room, with grimy glass and faded curtains that once had a pattern and now barely retain its ghost. The window looks out onto a red brick wall situated six feet away across the alley. The room is littered with all sorts of stuff..food, newspapers, dirty washing. maybe there is a line hanging some where in the room..maybe over a radiator. On which some recently washed men’s underwear (the big white baggy old fashioned kind that my father used to enjoy and probably still does for all I know of the matter) is hanging to dry. There is a small and ineffective-looking electric fire, perhaps, or any other mundane and sordid-looking details that you feel like throwing in. Sitting towards the left, upon one of the wooden chairs positioned more or less exactly the same as the fat lady was upon the freak show poster, we see the young man’s wife, Jeannie. She is six months pregnant, and obviously hasn’t bothered to dress that morning, still wearing her housecoat, night gown and slippers. She looks quite sickly and washed out, and the fact that her body is naturally quite small and slight tends to emphasise the state of her pregnancy. Her hair is long and lank and greasy-looking, and while she isn’t unattractive, she’s certainly no beauty. C’mon Brian, you complacent old bastard, here’s a challenge for your jaded sensibilities: draw an average-looking woman. She looks up with a hopeful expression as the young man enters the room, hat in hand, up in the foreground. Jeannie: Well? Jeannie: How did it go? Did they like your act?