Fan Fiction ❯ The Game We Play ❯ The Funny Farm ( Chapter 25 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Dark Jester 
Things can only get better... right?
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Angst / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 12.18.2002 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 232 | Status: Completed
Things can only get better... right?
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Angst / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 12.18.2002 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 232 | Status: Completed
Chapter 25 - The Funny Farm
In the blaring light of a small and poorly cared for cell, a pale and thin creature awoke.
*Why is it so cold?*
The sound of squealing wheels, someplace nearby, ricocheted off the walls and then faded into the distance.
A few moments passed, and then realization hit. The Asylum. Of course.
The air of the cell was carlessly left chilled, making the Joker's white flesh red from exposure. Pain flowed through his body, throbbing in his fingertips and pounding behind his brow. He felt hungry... weak... lifeless. Slowly, the Clown Prince struggled to sit up, finding that his body was sore and stiff. *Because of my impending death?*... No, of course it wasn't. It was from being on the ground for so long.
The cement ground of HIS cell.
Funny that he dropped by Arkham so often... that it was his. They even had his number on the doorway. And the word "Unknown" right above. How quaint.
He couldn't remember what had happened. One minute he was in Batman's car... and the next...?
But wasn't it obvious?
Joker's face was twisted in anger as he stood up, arms and legs clothed lightly in the pale blue of inmate clothing. His curls were wild, straying down into his eyes and wherever they pleased. A look of homicidal rage gleamed within the emerald, chasing away any false impression of a friendly mood.
HE had put Joker there. Batman had. Why not? Joker WAS just a criminal, afterall. He WAS just a psycopathic clown, hell-bent on the destruction of everyone who dared step into his path.
...Right?
Or was he Jack...? Was he misunderstood, crying behind a ruby leer, clawing for attention and craving it so badly he could only hurt rather than care? Was he a man that could love and be loved in return? One that had perhaps settled the heart of a wild beast...?
No.
Not if he was here. There could be no Jack in this place.
Joker glared at the mirror nearby, knowing very well that cameras and doctors were watching his every flinch. He took a long look around the room, his eyes sad to find his scribblings and pictures washed away. So much work destroyed.
There could be no Jack.
The clown sighed miserably, his few pieces of sanity slipping away into an empty blackness as the familiarity of his life returned. He padded silently over to the plexiglass window, pressed the palms of his hands - and then his body - into it.
There could be no... us.
"Bruce," he breathed.
There was nobody there who could call him back.
***
Bruce drifted uneasily through a drug-induced stupor, partially aware of what was going on, but unable, as much as he fought, to respond to anything. It was an agonizing eternity before he could open his eyes and think at all, nevermind clearly.
His vision swam and twisted like a kaleidoscope, and he blinked slowly, trying to focus on his surroundings. They were familiar. He knew that. He recognized the smell, but he couldn't place from where.
With disciplined preciseness, he tried to determine what the last thing was that he remembered. Dick had shown up, and attacked Joker. Then he'd taken his injured friend to Leslie's, and then. . . He'd had a cup of coffee. . .
That seemed to be the last thing he remembered.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs weren't co-operating. He felt a breeze on his neck and face. . .
That sensation got him moving. He forced himself to a sitting position and looked himself over. He was dressed in a jumpsuit of some kind, looked like prison issue, but it was the wrong color for Blackgate. He picked at the fabric on the left side of his chest clumsily, his motor control somewhat lacking, and looked down. His head swam with the sudden movement, and he took a moment to stop himself from falling over.
He definitely felt like hell.
When his eyes could focus again, he turned them on the jumpsuit. It was dark wherever he was, and he had to squint and shift to a place where there was slightly more light to read,
"TY OF ARK"
He flattened out the fabric.
"PROPERTY OF ARKHAM ASYLUM"
Bruce's eyes went wide. How had he ended up here?!
Leslie.
*No. Please don't let it be her.* He prayed silently.
Before he could continue down that road, he thought of something else: if he was here, where was. . . ?
He looked around the room frantically. It wasn't very big, and he was very much alone.
*No!* He thought. *He's sick! He's hurt! Where IS he!?*
He followed the faint sliver of psuedo-light that had allowed him to read the words on the jumpsuit to a small window in the door of the cell. He stumbled over to it, and peered out. He could see nothing but a hint of movement in the cell opposite him, and a small portion of hallway on either side.
*I have to get out of here!*, his panicked mind determined. *Fast. I have to find him. Help him. I have to find. . .*
"Joker." He croaked weakly, his vocal chords resisting renewed use. The sound of something other than the dripping and creaking and muffled groaning that was Arkham gave him a burst of strength. A burst of hope.
"Joker." He said again, this time more loudly. His head felt clearer. He could think properly.
He took a deep breath.
"JOKER!"
His voice echoed through the cell, and, he hoped, down the hall outside it.
***
"Think you're clever, do you? Hm?"
Joker stared down the mirror, his eyes wide in challenge. There was a strange look about them this time. They were desperate.
"Think you know me SO well!" he exclaimed, his lips curling into a snarl. Mockingly, he brought his hands up to his face, danced around in a small circle and exclaimed, "Oh, just put him in there! He'll talk to his cockroaches and draw pictures for us and rant about BATMAN! Oh, we're so smart! Look at how clever we are! Oooooh!"
All at once, his fists slammed into the two-way glass. "Well, you're WRONG! You're just like all the other idiots out there! Just like ALL the other doctors! Boring and stupid and mind-numbing..."
Joker lost his train of thought and stepped away, shaking his head with disgust.
"You think that ALL I think about is HIM! He's all that's ever on my mind! Batman, BATman, BATMAN!" He growled angrily, his fists clenched and shaking aggressively through the air. "Well, I'll tell YOU something!"
A thin finger crooked and then shot out accusingly, poking the glass with a minute 'thump'.
"I don't EVER think about Him! EVER! He never even crosses my mind! And I'll tell you something else!" Joker flew into the mirror and snarled. "I'm going to kill him!"
The words burned and nagged at the back of his mind. How could he say something like that?
With a renewed sense of anger - feeling that he had been quite obviously abandoned - he shrieked, "I'll kill Him! I'll kill Him! I'LL KILL HIM! I'll..." He trailed off, stumbling backwards as a fire erupted inside his head. "...ki..." The room wavered and tilted. "...kill..."
Joker slumped down onto the floor, a soft giggle lofting up to the speakers. "...Him..." His voice was barely above a whisper, mingling too much with the increasing pant of laughter to be heard. Over the course of several very painful minutes, the laughter choked out and turned into breathless sobbing, dry racks throughout his body as he lowered himself onto the cold concrete.
"Bruce," he cried into his palms. "Why'd you leave me here?"
A shudder of misery rendered him silent, leaving the room an icy shell for what used to reside there so proudly.
***
Bruce frantically looked for a way out, feeling claustrophobic for the first time he could remember. Granted, his memory was likely still a bit spotty, but. . .
No, he'd felt this way in Blackgate, too. He'd felt caged, felt like he NEEDED to get out. He slid down the wall into a seated position, trying to remember how he'd gotten out of there.
He'd picked a fight, he remembered. So he needed someone with whom to pick a fight. That meant getting a guard in there.
He slid over to the base of the door and started banging on it incessantly.
***
Joker sat quietly, his shoulder pressed against the wall as he curled up further on top of his dirty mattress. The room was bright - it always was - and hurt his tired eyes. Clenched in weak fingers was a dark bit of charcoal, abused and worn down on several different sides.
They'd given him a 'toy'. Something to occupy his mind... and theirs.
All along the walls, pictures and words were cluttered into delirium, messily scrawled over each other and entangled until there was nothing that made sense. For a while the doctors thought he'd been writing a story... drawing pictures for it to give it life... but then they became lost as the words stopped making sense. He'd started doodling, again.
Bats and rowboats and hangmen littered the area nearest him, closing in on the tiny section of bare wall that had been spared... or saved?
The Joker hadn't said anything coherent in a long while, now. The last time he'd made a sentence or any acknoweledgement of the doctors had been two days ago - the night he'd been brought back.
He was beginning to get... boring.
The doctors debated for a while, chattering amongst themselves with their clipboards in their laps and coffee mugs in their hands. It was quite obvious that the Joker needed to be 'jump-started', as it were. Something had changed, and they wanted to know what.
A while later, two men with long metal devices entered the room. Both were entirely too large, built like oxen... and had brains to match the animal. They approached the psycopathic clown with a sort of lumbering walk, smug grins plastered onto their ridiculous faces.
Across the hallway, a short man with shoulder-length hair lifted one eyebrow, peering through his plexiglass window and into that of the Joker's. A sudden flash of light filled the hall and lit up his face, the grin of the Mad Hatter visible even in the late hours of Arkham's lonely nights. "How... intriguing," he muttered.
A horrified scream echoed throughout the hall.
***
Bruce lifted his head up off the ground as he heard footsteps approach. He pulled the wire he'd been fiddling with back out of the hallway, and stashed it under the thin mattress... then grabbed a book and pretended he was reading. A few moments later, he heard the sounds of the door to his cell being unlocked. He looked up from his book.
"Good evening, Bruce." One of the doctors said as half a dozen of them entered the cramped space. McMurrich, Bruce thought his name was.
"It's evening, already?" Bruce asked regally, turning his face downward toward the book. "Hard to tell when you're in a room with no windows."
"Well, we're working on that." Dr. McMurrich said. "Hopefully we'll be able to move you fairly soon into something more appropriate. How are we doing tonight?"
"I'M fine." Bruce answered, objecting to the condescension but still not looking up. "If you don't know how YOU are, I'm not the one who should be in a padded cell."
He turned a page.
"What are you reading?" The doctor asked. The others that had accompanied him looked eager to write down whatever he said.
Bruce said nothing. He held up the book instead.
"Alice in Wonderland." Dr. McMurrich observed. "An interesting choice."
"Therapy." Bruce said. A woman of about twenty-five, probably an intern, giggled in spite of herself. Bruce looked up, flashed her a charming smile, then went back to his book.
Dr. McMurrich looked at the intern, obviously unimpressed. He made a quick note on his pad of paper.
"So," he began again. "I'd like to talk some more about your parents. I. . ."
"They died when I was six." Bruce said quickly, cutting him off. "What's to talk about?"
"I think that's precisely why we should talk about it."
"Talk about it all you want, I won't stop you." Bruce winked at the intern, having pegged her as an easy mark. The young woman blushed.
*Another Harley Quinn in the making.* Bruce thought ruefully.
"Ms. Ross, please leave." Dr. McMurrich groused. The embarrassed intern turned to leave.
"Can she come back later?" Bruce asked with a fair bit of eagerness.
McMurrich just looked at him and wrote 'emotionally stunted -- makes a point of proving masculinity through conquest of women.'
Bruce shifted during the scribbling for the doctor's benefit, then said "Look, I had PLENTY of therapy for the whole deal with my parents. If that's the reason I'm locked up here, then I think it's a bit extreme."
"You're here because the Joker was holding you hostage, and you refused to leave even when you were rescued." The doctor explained for the umpteenth time.
"Yeah yeah, Stockholm syndrome, I've heard this garbage before." Bruce said, batting a hand at the air dismissively. "The Joker didn't kidnap me."
"You were brought in with him, Bruce, and we've been told that he was manipulating you. Forcing you to do things."
"By who?" Bruce asked, incredulously.
"Batman." The doctor explained seriously.
Bruce blinked at him, then started laughing.
*
In the blaring light of a small and poorly cared for cell, a pale and thin creature awoke.
*Why is it so cold?*
The sound of squealing wheels, someplace nearby, ricocheted off the walls and then faded into the distance.
A few moments passed, and then realization hit. The Asylum. Of course.
The air of the cell was carlessly left chilled, making the Joker's white flesh red from exposure. Pain flowed through his body, throbbing in his fingertips and pounding behind his brow. He felt hungry... weak... lifeless. Slowly, the Clown Prince struggled to sit up, finding that his body was sore and stiff. *Because of my impending death?*... No, of course it wasn't. It was from being on the ground for so long.
The cement ground of HIS cell.
Funny that he dropped by Arkham so often... that it was his. They even had his number on the doorway. And the word "Unknown" right above. How quaint.
He couldn't remember what had happened. One minute he was in Batman's car... and the next...?
But wasn't it obvious?
Joker's face was twisted in anger as he stood up, arms and legs clothed lightly in the pale blue of inmate clothing. His curls were wild, straying down into his eyes and wherever they pleased. A look of homicidal rage gleamed within the emerald, chasing away any false impression of a friendly mood.
HE had put Joker there. Batman had. Why not? Joker WAS just a criminal, afterall. He WAS just a psycopathic clown, hell-bent on the destruction of everyone who dared step into his path.
...Right?
Or was he Jack...? Was he misunderstood, crying behind a ruby leer, clawing for attention and craving it so badly he could only hurt rather than care? Was he a man that could love and be loved in return? One that had perhaps settled the heart of a wild beast...?
No.
Not if he was here. There could be no Jack in this place.
Joker glared at the mirror nearby, knowing very well that cameras and doctors were watching his every flinch. He took a long look around the room, his eyes sad to find his scribblings and pictures washed away. So much work destroyed.
There could be no Jack.
The clown sighed miserably, his few pieces of sanity slipping away into an empty blackness as the familiarity of his life returned. He padded silently over to the plexiglass window, pressed the palms of his hands - and then his body - into it.
There could be no... us.
"Bruce," he breathed.
There was nobody there who could call him back.
***
Bruce drifted uneasily through a drug-induced stupor, partially aware of what was going on, but unable, as much as he fought, to respond to anything. It was an agonizing eternity before he could open his eyes and think at all, nevermind clearly.
His vision swam and twisted like a kaleidoscope, and he blinked slowly, trying to focus on his surroundings. They were familiar. He knew that. He recognized the smell, but he couldn't place from where.
With disciplined preciseness, he tried to determine what the last thing was that he remembered. Dick had shown up, and attacked Joker. Then he'd taken his injured friend to Leslie's, and then. . . He'd had a cup of coffee. . .
That seemed to be the last thing he remembered.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs weren't co-operating. He felt a breeze on his neck and face. . .
That sensation got him moving. He forced himself to a sitting position and looked himself over. He was dressed in a jumpsuit of some kind, looked like prison issue, but it was the wrong color for Blackgate. He picked at the fabric on the left side of his chest clumsily, his motor control somewhat lacking, and looked down. His head swam with the sudden movement, and he took a moment to stop himself from falling over.
He definitely felt like hell.
When his eyes could focus again, he turned them on the jumpsuit. It was dark wherever he was, and he had to squint and shift to a place where there was slightly more light to read,
"TY OF ARK"
He flattened out the fabric.
"PROPERTY OF ARKHAM ASYLUM"
Bruce's eyes went wide. How had he ended up here?!
Leslie.
*No. Please don't let it be her.* He prayed silently.
Before he could continue down that road, he thought of something else: if he was here, where was. . . ?
He looked around the room frantically. It wasn't very big, and he was very much alone.
*No!* He thought. *He's sick! He's hurt! Where IS he!?*
He followed the faint sliver of psuedo-light that had allowed him to read the words on the jumpsuit to a small window in the door of the cell. He stumbled over to it, and peered out. He could see nothing but a hint of movement in the cell opposite him, and a small portion of hallway on either side.
*I have to get out of here!*, his panicked mind determined. *Fast. I have to find him. Help him. I have to find. . .*
"Joker." He croaked weakly, his vocal chords resisting renewed use. The sound of something other than the dripping and creaking and muffled groaning that was Arkham gave him a burst of strength. A burst of hope.
"Joker." He said again, this time more loudly. His head felt clearer. He could think properly.
He took a deep breath.
"JOKER!"
His voice echoed through the cell, and, he hoped, down the hall outside it.
***
"Think you're clever, do you? Hm?"
Joker stared down the mirror, his eyes wide in challenge. There was a strange look about them this time. They were desperate.
"Think you know me SO well!" he exclaimed, his lips curling into a snarl. Mockingly, he brought his hands up to his face, danced around in a small circle and exclaimed, "Oh, just put him in there! He'll talk to his cockroaches and draw pictures for us and rant about BATMAN! Oh, we're so smart! Look at how clever we are! Oooooh!"
All at once, his fists slammed into the two-way glass. "Well, you're WRONG! You're just like all the other idiots out there! Just like ALL the other doctors! Boring and stupid and mind-numbing..."
Joker lost his train of thought and stepped away, shaking his head with disgust.
"You think that ALL I think about is HIM! He's all that's ever on my mind! Batman, BATman, BATMAN!" He growled angrily, his fists clenched and shaking aggressively through the air. "Well, I'll tell YOU something!"
A thin finger crooked and then shot out accusingly, poking the glass with a minute 'thump'.
"I don't EVER think about Him! EVER! He never even crosses my mind! And I'll tell you something else!" Joker flew into the mirror and snarled. "I'm going to kill him!"
The words burned and nagged at the back of his mind. How could he say something like that?
With a renewed sense of anger - feeling that he had been quite obviously abandoned - he shrieked, "I'll kill Him! I'll kill Him! I'LL KILL HIM! I'll..." He trailed off, stumbling backwards as a fire erupted inside his head. "...ki..." The room wavered and tilted. "...kill..."
Joker slumped down onto the floor, a soft giggle lofting up to the speakers. "...Him..." His voice was barely above a whisper, mingling too much with the increasing pant of laughter to be heard. Over the course of several very painful minutes, the laughter choked out and turned into breathless sobbing, dry racks throughout his body as he lowered himself onto the cold concrete.
"Bruce," he cried into his palms. "Why'd you leave me here?"
A shudder of misery rendered him silent, leaving the room an icy shell for what used to reside there so proudly.
***
Bruce frantically looked for a way out, feeling claustrophobic for the first time he could remember. Granted, his memory was likely still a bit spotty, but. . .
No, he'd felt this way in Blackgate, too. He'd felt caged, felt like he NEEDED to get out. He slid down the wall into a seated position, trying to remember how he'd gotten out of there.
He'd picked a fight, he remembered. So he needed someone with whom to pick a fight. That meant getting a guard in there.
He slid over to the base of the door and started banging on it incessantly.
***
Joker sat quietly, his shoulder pressed against the wall as he curled up further on top of his dirty mattress. The room was bright - it always was - and hurt his tired eyes. Clenched in weak fingers was a dark bit of charcoal, abused and worn down on several different sides.
They'd given him a 'toy'. Something to occupy his mind... and theirs.
All along the walls, pictures and words were cluttered into delirium, messily scrawled over each other and entangled until there was nothing that made sense. For a while the doctors thought he'd been writing a story... drawing pictures for it to give it life... but then they became lost as the words stopped making sense. He'd started doodling, again.
Bats and rowboats and hangmen littered the area nearest him, closing in on the tiny section of bare wall that had been spared... or saved?
The Joker hadn't said anything coherent in a long while, now. The last time he'd made a sentence or any acknoweledgement of the doctors had been two days ago - the night he'd been brought back.
He was beginning to get... boring.
The doctors debated for a while, chattering amongst themselves with their clipboards in their laps and coffee mugs in their hands. It was quite obvious that the Joker needed to be 'jump-started', as it were. Something had changed, and they wanted to know what.
A while later, two men with long metal devices entered the room. Both were entirely too large, built like oxen... and had brains to match the animal. They approached the psycopathic clown with a sort of lumbering walk, smug grins plastered onto their ridiculous faces.
Across the hallway, a short man with shoulder-length hair lifted one eyebrow, peering through his plexiglass window and into that of the Joker's. A sudden flash of light filled the hall and lit up his face, the grin of the Mad Hatter visible even in the late hours of Arkham's lonely nights. "How... intriguing," he muttered.
A horrified scream echoed throughout the hall.
***
Bruce lifted his head up off the ground as he heard footsteps approach. He pulled the wire he'd been fiddling with back out of the hallway, and stashed it under the thin mattress... then grabbed a book and pretended he was reading. A few moments later, he heard the sounds of the door to his cell being unlocked. He looked up from his book.
"Good evening, Bruce." One of the doctors said as half a dozen of them entered the cramped space. McMurrich, Bruce thought his name was.
"It's evening, already?" Bruce asked regally, turning his face downward toward the book. "Hard to tell when you're in a room with no windows."
"Well, we're working on that." Dr. McMurrich said. "Hopefully we'll be able to move you fairly soon into something more appropriate. How are we doing tonight?"
"I'M fine." Bruce answered, objecting to the condescension but still not looking up. "If you don't know how YOU are, I'm not the one who should be in a padded cell."
He turned a page.
"What are you reading?" The doctor asked. The others that had accompanied him looked eager to write down whatever he said.
Bruce said nothing. He held up the book instead.
"Alice in Wonderland." Dr. McMurrich observed. "An interesting choice."
"Therapy." Bruce said. A woman of about twenty-five, probably an intern, giggled in spite of herself. Bruce looked up, flashed her a charming smile, then went back to his book.
Dr. McMurrich looked at the intern, obviously unimpressed. He made a quick note on his pad of paper.
"So," he began again. "I'd like to talk some more about your parents. I. . ."
"They died when I was six." Bruce said quickly, cutting him off. "What's to talk about?"
"I think that's precisely why we should talk about it."
"Talk about it all you want, I won't stop you." Bruce winked at the intern, having pegged her as an easy mark. The young woman blushed.
*Another Harley Quinn in the making.* Bruce thought ruefully.
"Ms. Ross, please leave." Dr. McMurrich groused. The embarrassed intern turned to leave.
"Can she come back later?" Bruce asked with a fair bit of eagerness.
McMurrich just looked at him and wrote 'emotionally stunted -- makes a point of proving masculinity through conquest of women.'
Bruce shifted during the scribbling for the doctor's benefit, then said "Look, I had PLENTY of therapy for the whole deal with my parents. If that's the reason I'm locked up here, then I think it's a bit extreme."
"You're here because the Joker was holding you hostage, and you refused to leave even when you were rescued." The doctor explained for the umpteenth time.
"Yeah yeah, Stockholm syndrome, I've heard this garbage before." Bruce said, batting a hand at the air dismissively. "The Joker didn't kidnap me."
"You were brought in with him, Bruce, and we've been told that he was manipulating you. Forcing you to do things."
"By who?" Bruce asked, incredulously.
"Batman." The doctor explained seriously.
Bruce blinked at him, then started laughing.
*