The Dark Knight, The Joker/Rachel Dawes, after the fire
Second of four stories
When Joker escapes it’s like he was never locked up and he might as well be frolicking through a meadow of flowers for all he seems to care about cops or even Batman. He enjoys seeing the city turn its back on the Batman. It’s a little weight off his shoulders but it will make it less satisfying when he clips the bat’s wings.
He all but skips into the Narrows and meets with the man he’s paid an awful lot for this, a man he can trust to be bought if nothing else. But there’s less satisfaction in killing him than there is in seeing what he’s been keeping.
She lies on a plain bed in a plain room with too-bright lights reflecting off of once-white sheets now discolored with filth and blood. She hadn’t been awake when he saw her last. He didn’t know what her mind was like, so it’s such a pleasure, such a great pleasure when she looks up at him without recognition or fear or distrust and asks him for help. Please. He touches the bandaging on her head and warm tears slip from her eyes when she closes them. He removes old bandages and inspects the burns, the barely there fuzz where what little hair could still grow makes the effort.
“I’ve got you, pumpkin,” he says. She seems grateful.
He bathes her, gives her a rubber ducky, and when she’s relaxed he slips his hand into the water and fondles her clit until her head rolls and she grips the sides of the bath and says simply, “oh”. When she opens her eyes it is with trust and lust and, he thinks, admiration, though it’s not something he’s likely to recognize. And then a strange thing happens.
She laughs at him.
And laughs.
And when she cries beneath it all he begins to laugh back.
He buys her clothes from a costume shop, a suit with a full cowl and head piece to keep her from being so self conscious or to keep the world from seeing the beauty he’s made, he’s not sure. He calls her Harley and she giggles, strutting, showing off her body in the black and red lycra. She giggles again, spinning to look at him and says “hah!”, and to his great delight she begins to dance about and as suddenly and easily as walking she is backflipping from one end of the room to the other while he claps for her, rises from his chair and embraces her from behind while she breathes frantically, giddily, turns to him, face in his neck and laughs. And laughs.
He holds her by the waist and the base of her skull, the bells on her costume tinkling in time to her high, desperate laugh, hot and wet and beautiful against his neck, and says simply, “Oh.”