jester of genocide

Selene didn’t bother looking up—her warm, welcoming facade always melted away in the presence of criminals and murderers. There was no need to hide her true self away from those that shared a certain blood lust. When he stepped in, the door shut abruptly behind him and promptly locked itself. Setting the pen down, Selene sat back in her chair and regarded him for a moment. “You do know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?”

Joker raised an eyebrow, turning to look back at the door before his gaze flicked back to where she was sitting. “Little paranoid?” he asked, his head cocked to the side as he observed her. “Well, no one ever taught me manners, see,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket and settling down. “How do you think I ended up like this?” 

@notafacecard

June was loathe to return to the island or ever speak to Joker again in person. But she was tired of waiting, tired of arrangements falling through, tired of having to get her own hands dirty just to get what she wanted. That should’ve been someone else’s job.

She expected to be kept waiting. Then again, it was impossible to tell. Joker’s unpredictability (whether it was genuine or not) was grating. Once she was directed back to wherever he’d been, she let herself through the door and pursed her lips.

“We had a deal before. Are you still interested?” She’d been interrupted and arrested before being able to see it through the first time.

Joker tilted his head to the side, not moving his legs from where he had them lazily up on the table in front of him, a paddle with a ball on a string in his hand. He had kept her waiting on purpose. She was so easy to rile up, to annoy into such a bristly defense. Joker found it amusing, and now that he was spending his days biding his time on this island, he had to get his kicks wherever he could find them. 

Harley’s eyes widened and she let the gun roll in her hand before fixing her grip on it again, more firmly. “Ya ain’t gonna have a heart attack, are ya?” She wrinkled her nose. “'Cause talk about a real killjoy! What, ya don’t think we deserve betta entertainment than that?” The henchman shook his head anxiously as she traced his outline in the air between them with the barrel of the gun.  “’Kay,” she said chirpily, lowering the weapon. “Ya can go.” The henchman’s eyes widened and he went for the door without questioning her change of heart. 

She waited until he had his hand on the doorknob before shooting. The bullet struck him squarely in the spine and his legs gave out instantly. Squealing, she sat up as if to see better, but didn’t move from Joker’s lap. “They always believe me when I say that!”

Joker couldn’t help but grin at Harley’s antics. Even if they were hot and cold in the worst kind of way, Joker still kept her around for a reason. She was entertaining. She matched him. They were like symbiotic plants, trees that were growing together, intertwined and stretching towards the smog that hung over the city. Joker didn’t even flinch when she let off the shot, his eyes never leaving from her face. He waited for her to finish speaking before his hand came up and he roughly pulled her jaw around to face him. 

Dex wasn’t a man who could be intimidated by much. The only fear he felt was whatever he managed to conjure up in himself, about himself. Not from something external. Whatever feelings Joker usually managed to conjure up in people weren’t happening for him.

“What is it with you types and these suits? Is there a store somewhere that just sells clothes for lunatics?” A tiny voice in the back of his mind chimed, Maybe you should go there. “Take one more step toward me and it’ll be the last one.” He meant it, too. He had a gun on him, but hadn’t even bothered to make a move for it. There was a thermos of coffee in his hand and that was more than enough. The fact that Joker was there by Harvey’s invitation was the only reason he hadn’t already done it.

Joker knew that it would take a lot more than just some conversation to get Dex to break his loyalty to Harvey—and besides, Joker wasn’t interested in that. He had plenty of people who could do extraordinary things, and even if Dex was a particularly compelling head case, Joker had his hands full. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t poke and prod at every chance he got. 

“I’m not an expert, and I don’t want to be.” The less he actually knew about Joker, the better off he felt like he was. Just by virtue of having now met him in person more than once, he was already more aware of him than he’d ever wanted to be. “But it seemed like a safe assumption. I know enough to know you’re a murderer, and murderers usually don’t have to try hard to find people who will follow them.” Josh’s jaw clenched. “But I really don’t care what you do or who does it with you.” 

Joker couldn’t be stopped. No matter how uncomfortable Josh seemed, he knew that if he kept pushing and pushing, at some point or another he would find the pressure point to make Josh break. Then, Joker could use him as he saw fit. “Oh, don’t be so cruel, sweetheart,” Joker said, an exaggerated, mocking pout spreading across his features. “I thought we could be friends if we just tried.” 

June folded her hands on the top of her desk. “All right. As long as you remember that we need him alive.” Joker putting Jim Gordon through his own brand of mental torture brought little concern, so long as he didn’t do him any physical harm. He’d managed to stand against him in Gotham; there was little reason why he wouldn’t be able to handle himself. The risky part was arranging it without implicating that she had anything to do with their… clandestine meeting. It was far too early to draw suspicion.

When she’d first looked at the manifesto, Betty had seen it as nothing more than incoherent ramblings. Insanity. Once she’d actually sat down and uploaded photos of its pages, typing out key phrases that were only semi-legible, it occurred to her that the Joker might not be as crazy as everyone thought. It was a horrifying prospect. 

She gave his question thorough consideration and chose her words carefully. He’d found her too easily, the second she’d left the safety of District X, and she knew he could silence her much faster than she’d be able to alert anyone. “I thought it was… shocking.”

Joker was sure that if she posed any sort of threat, it would have come up already. Perhaps her association with Magneto should have been reason enough to leave her alone, but Joker didn’t consider that much of a threat. He didn’t care about his own death, and he had already made preparations for its arrival. 

But tonight wasn’t a night he was looking to get rid of her, not yet, but he was keeping the option open. His voice was dark, almost crooning at her as he stepped closer. “You thought it was going to be nonsense,” he purred. “You thought it wasn’t going to make any sense.” He got right up in her face. “But you see the logic.” 

“Well, you certainly made it hard to find you,” he said, a garish grin on his features as he danced down the alleyway towards Betty. “But it’s a good thing that I have a lot of friends keeping an eye out! Otherwise you could have disappeared altogether!” He tilted his head back and laughed. “What did you think of my manifesto?”

“Forever.” There were plenty of reasons he’d sworn off hurting people. The most important one, the one that had less to do with just plain morality, was that it had become nearly impossible for him to go back to healing afterwards. Causing pain or death wasn’t worth risking the one good thing he could still do, and there was nothing important enough in his life anyone could threaten to change his mind. Loneliness had at least that one little benefit.

He kept moving, half expecting Joker to come after him. “You have a kill squad already.” An assumption. Seemed safe to make it. “Leave me out of it.” He was going to have to say something to someone besides Matt. Like they all didn’t have enough problems already.

Joker simply hummed in response. He knew that it would only be a matter of time until he found the right pressure point—he just had to keep probing. It should have been easy enough, but Josh was proving to be surprisingly nuanced. Perhaps Joker had underestimated him based on his age, but he should have known to add a significant number of years to what was already there on account of Josh’s mutation. Mutant kids always had so much baggage. 

Joker had gotten his free run of the prison for too long. Now that there was a fresh-faced warden, he knew that he was, in all likelihood, going to have to work for it again, but he didn’t mind. In fact, Joker thrived on this kind of challenge. He wanted to get everyone in this city under his thumb. He walked into the prison as if he owned the place—the guards already knew him and waved him past—and he tapped his cane against the concrete floor as he walked back towards the warden’s office. “Oh, helloooo!” he sang out. 

Joker wasn’t sure how he felt about the toys that Harvey and June were always carting around—that magic boy certainly seemed far too annoying to be of any use—but the gunman was different. He had a certain charm about him that Joker liked. He was intrigued by the way he followed Harvey like a shadow. That was a quality he liked in his own henchmen. When he was downtown to meet with Harvey, he couldn’t help but pull Dex aside at the end of the night. “Now, where did they dig you up?” 

“That’s all I do,” Josh reaffirmed. He knew what he was capable of. He knew the potential costs, especially to himself, of using his powers to hurt people, and nothing Joker or anyone did was going to make him forget that.

He turned like he meant to start walking again. “I don’t know what’s kept you alive this long, but if you come after me in District X, someone will kill you.” He didn’t know who the ‘someone’ might be. There was a whole host of options. Just not him.

“For now.” Joker wasn’t an idiot. If Josh had this kind of power over the human body, then there was no way that it was restricted to just healing. That would be too boring—and certainly a reason for him to kill Josh just for the hell of it. 

Joker was a man who demanded attention and deference. June knew not giving him what he wanted could result in a problematic situation that she was not in the mood to handle. Straightening, she folded her hands on her knee and responded coolly: “And what is it you want?” It could be something simple or very outlandish. While June could read situations and people with sharp skill, the Joker had proved to be alarmingly unpredictable.

The henchmen’s fear fed a brewing dark energy and Harley gleefully tapped the gun against her chin. “One, two -” She paused in her counting to press her lips against the corner of Joker’s mouth, then sighed contentedly as she stretched her legs over his lap. “…Four, five…” Her gaze found the lackey again and she giggled. “Once I caught a fish alive!” 

She fired the gun just above his head and laughed when he yelped. “Aw, so squeamish, ain’t he, puddin’?” Her eyes were still shining as she drew the gun back and let it hang loosely from one finger. “Seven, eight, nine, ten… then I let him go again!”

Joker tilted his head forward so that Harley could get a better angle against his features, the cruel grin only growing as he felt her lips press against his cheek. He was sure her lipstick had left a mark, but he didn’t care. Their relationship was another way for him to show his charisma and power to other people. He would accept any markers of it. 

Tanya’s eyes twitched, as if they wanted nothing more than to narrow at his vague answer. Information out of someone. He was using this slow approach to his advantage - but the only thing this seemed to be doing for her was pissing her off. She wanted this little pow wow to be over and done with already, so she sucked in her cheeks slightly and curled her toes within her pumps. Her jaw clenched for a fraction of a section before she relaxed. Getting worked up wasn’t going to make this transaction move any faster. “What’s this something and who’s this someone?”