InsaneJournal

log: joker & dr. steph
Who: The Joker and Dr. Steph
What: The Joker's intake exam at Arkham.
Where: Arkham
When: Severely backdated.
Warnings: Violence, blood.



Stephanie Brown had very few steady constants left in her life. A combination of the hotel and her own doings shook almost everything down to the core and crumbled them right in front of her. Her family was in shambles, her marriage dead, the clinics gone, the city she loved recovering from yet another one of those unmitigated disasters caused by rogues or Passages or an unholy combination of the two. She should have learned from the last time that coming home after years away didn’t mean it was still home; it hadn’t felt like home for a very, very long time. And the people who wanted to help, those people who had been her family, who could still be her family if she let them? She was kind of pushing them away. Bruce asked, and she shut down. Others got abridged, edited versions of what she was really feeling. Holly got the run around, and then she was gone. Just like Barbara, like Cassandra, like Kara. Like Damian.

She was shutting down, and she could feel herself pulling away, and she knew how dangerous that was to do. Hell, she had seen the effects in her own life. But the unwavering loneliness didn’t help matters. Those bizarre nightmares definitely didn’t help matters. Endless, spinning mazes, handprints smeared against walls, nonsensical whispers, an inexplicable glow, spindly fingers trying to reach her. Stephanie hadn’t made headway of what the nightmares could mean, or its source, and she wasn’t completely positive that Crane wasn’t involved in some way.

Constant. That was a constant, those nightmares, the loneliness, the sadness, the guilt. Eddie, of course, had been right. She could think long and hard, and she would never shake off the idea that she wasn’t good enough. That she wasn’t a bad person. That was a constant, too. That would always be a constant. And, she was falling down the rabbit hole, and Flounder and Bandit and Bruce’s dog, Thomas could only do so much to help her grab the sides and hang tight.

Her days were becoming habitual. They bled into each other. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Rinse and repeat. Groundhog’s Day over and over and over. She knew that was dangerous, too. Somehow, even Arkham was becoming repetition. The cold sweat she got if she sat too long in her office, the dripping from the ceilings, the echoing screams, the interviews, the treatments. All of it blended in, one after the other. What was that Albert Einstein quote?

On that particular day, filling out some paperwork in her office, she received a call that a patient had just been dropped in by a Bat. She hadn’t heard anything on the comms or journals, and while she was irked by that, she would deal with that later. Who it could be? Well, there weren’t very many choices left in Gotham, were there? As she stumbled into the triage area in her lab coat and blonde hair messily pulled up, one flash of a look at that messy make-up on her new patient’s face was all she needed.

“Joker.”

One would assume that after practically handing himself over to the Batman, an inmate would cooperate with the booking process at Arkham. Of course, one would also assume that the staff at Arkham could strum together a Welcome Home banner for their most notorious patient. Surely the clown held some favor with the doctors and orderlies, he'd carved a place out in his heart for them! But intake hadn't looked very happy to see him, although that might have been because he bit two fingers off of a security guard.

Things went smoothly after that, thanks to some sedative. It was a familiar routine, gurney strapped and outfitted in Arkham orange. the Joker was rolled through intake, documented, and taken to medical triage for assessment of his wounds. Injuries documented upon arrival: gunshot wound to the right shoulder. It was a clean exit, no broken bones or excessive bleeding. It didn't look as if he would need surgery, a few stitches should suffice. They called in the doctor to confirm.

The clown blinked, watching the overhead lights, halogen bright and glowing like the call of mayhem from distant galaxies. The sedative was disorienting(something that Arkham had found to be essential until they were able to secure him in his old cell), it made his head swim like a drunk shark, chasing the scent of blood left and right, his head lolled. His hair was a mismanaged flop, greasy shamrock decay, a mass grave of mildew that was plastered to his pale face. His eyes rolled, once assessing the lights and then responding to the sound of his name. He smacked his painted mouth, the lingering taste of gasoline still present on his tongue. Eventually, after some difficulty, his eyes focused on the woman.

"Doc." He didn't recognize her, but he remembered this place having a speedy turnover when it came to staff and patients. The staff tended to get killed off or just come to their senses while the patients were always making fresh escapes. The clown hadn't begun to plan his own vanishing act, not yet. It was actually kind of nice to be back. Home sweet home.

"Is my room just as I left it?" The Joker's usual cell was always marked with his destruction. It'd been a work of art last time, walls carved with litanies and sinner psalms and irreverent literary lines. All formed with the edge of a meal tray before they'd started to keep those away from him too. If he remembered correctly, the last straw had been when he'd used it to knock a guard out cold with injury that required over thirty stitches. Those had been the days. It hadn't been his most impressive or most horrifying exploit, but in Arkham one tended to take little pleasures where they could find them.

She hadn’t seen this Joker in person; truthfully, she hadn’t seen any Joker in person. Unless, of course, you counted the fearless Underground Justice League leader she and Eddie followed and worked with for five years on Earth-3. Thankfully, with his caked on make-up and scarred maw, he looked nothing like the man she had seen beheaded years ago. It was a relief, and while she stood at the doorway for a moment to regain composure, she didn’t have a freakout like she had when he first arrived. When he could speak in a similar way to the Jokester, and she could feel him able to twist and turn her brain. Now, she was okay. She took a deep breath and strolled into the room with almost clinical ease.

“You’re getting whatever room we give you,” Steph told him, voice cold and even as the nurses adjusted his straps to make sure he was going to stay put, that he wasn’t going to pull any of his tricks. Sedatives were in place already, and there were more waiting on deck, just in case. As she neared him, she had to fight the urge to knock him out entirely and forget about treating his wounds. But, she couldn’t. So, she approached him with caution, eyeing his body for wounds. “We’re going to treat your injuries, then once you’re cleared, you’ll be sent to your room to wait for treatment and therapy.” Whether treatment and therapy would actually be implemented was another thing entirely.

Clearly fatigued, she began her examination, looking for broken bones or burns or bullet holes. The bullet wound to the right shoulder was the only thing she saw upon examination, but she still eyed him warily. “Any discomfort? Pain? Burning? Aside from the bullet wound.” Her voice was clinical, sure to keep her gloved hands away from his mouth. She’d heard the stories.

"I'm just fit as a fiddle, Doc." The statement rode the curve of his smile, although it was a little lopsided due to the drugs. Despite his proficient, star spangled, bloodsplattered and beyonce-flawless escapes, the Joker always enjoyed his time here. It was a twisted vacation of sorts, the kind of place that he could easily take a timeout and craft the next great plan in order for his rap sheet. Those plans tended to involve a lot of bullets and explosions, very little payout. He wasn't at all surprised that the Cat had shot him tonight, they were two entirely different symptoms of Gotham. Two fucked up little children, one reaching or rust and tetanus, the other for the silver spoon. Where the Clown was an excellent madman, he was rarely a very good criminal. Riches had never been an inspiration. Of course the Cat wouldn't understand that. Couldn't. It went against her life's meaning, just as playing by the rules went against his. Hence the bullet hole in his body. Not that he minded. He didn't appreciate or admire when others did precisely as expected, but it gave him something to keep rallying against. It gave him buttons to push and lids to pry off. All that skin that get under.

In Arkham, the staff tended to be just as sick as the inmates, so he was really right at home. He tried to remember if the old straw man was still in good standing with his medical license or not, but didn't ask the doctor standing before him(she seemed irritable). Doubly irritable, as the drugs left him seeing two of her. He squinted one eye to steady the double vision. Punch drunk and dopey, he smiled again. There was blood smeared in with the lipstick, and he could still taste it.

"Although I might need an x-ray…" He'd been coughing up blood earlier and that just couldn't be good. "Have you ever parachuted off of an exploding ferris wheel?" His voice rasped, and he coughed for a moment, savoring the taste of blood in his mouth with a lip smack. "It seems like one of those things that practice makes perfect."

Stephanie’s irritability was two-fold. One part because of the man strapped to the gurney in front of her, and another because of the fatigue she was feeling in her bones. The nightmares had gotten worse since her scuffle in the basement, hours upon hours of those mazes, of those hands grabbing to reach her. And her waking moments? Weren’t that much better. The whispering in the back of her mind was getting worse, she was cutting off what little human interaction she had, and the lack of sleep brought her closer and closer to the edge. Her bright blues were dulled, the purple bags under her eyes covered with caking of her own makeup, and she was thinning.

She paused as he eyed her, his beady dark eyes blinking one after the other, closing like she was a hallucination. (Was she a hallucination? Sometimes, she didn’t even feel real anymore.) A lick of rage told her to just sedate him completely and throw him in the cell without any treatment. Another lick, and she wanted to punch the smirk off of his face. Yet another, and it was all she could do to not dig her fingers into his eyes until they bled.

There was a sharp inhale, and she turned back to her examination. She’d heard from Selina about bullets, but she hadn’t heard anything about explosion. Stephanie didn’t even know what kind of state Bruce was in at the moment. Fuck, she still hadn’t seen the man that she felt was her father since she’d come back. (Why would he want to see her anyway? She was just a waste of space.) Just as the Joker prattled on about parachutes and explosions, Steph pressed into one of the broken ribs that she suspected he had. Probably a little too hard. There was no apology in her look, just a quirk of her blonde eyebrow behind thick-rimmed glasses. “I try not to make parachuting a big part of my regimen. You should consider it.”

For a paragon of selfishness, the Joker was extremely intuitive. Gotham was his tuning fork, and he was in touch with every far reaching corner of his city's mutilated carcass. He was the necromancer overseeing his city's precious return, Gotham was his blood diamond to be carved out of an industrial revolution. It was true that he was a newcomer to this particular Gotham, but that didn't keep him from romanticizing the potential. He remembered the city as a shrine of chaos, her night time music rising to his bloodsoaked gloves, orchestra overseen, three ring circus choreographed beautifully. Gotham wasn't meant to be caged, and neither was he. Arkham was never his favorite vacation spot, but there was a time and place for everything. When he wanted to see some old faces, Arkham was just the place he needed to dock for an evening or two.

The mad dog bared his teeth when she pressed on his broken rib with enough force to not be accidental. The bitten blush of his lips were spread with the significance of a smile, but there was something decidedly unfriendly about the sickle curve. That seemed to hurt, but what kind of misshapen heart would have sympathy for the Devil? The kind that took up residence in medical fields that catered to the mentally deranged, probably. "Ouch," the sad clown stated, utterly fucking deadpan.

Void of inflection one moment and bright light beaming the next, he caught hold of what little information Blondie offered. "And just what is a big part of your regimen?" A sweep of the eyes let him consider, "Booty boot camp?"

Stephanie took a moment to tell herself that this wasn’t her fearless leader from Earth-3. That his voice was just a little off, that yellow teeth bared and the stench of stale breath was this Gotham. There was a deep inhalation -- she hadn’t thought about Earth-3 in a while -- and when her finger retracted from their explorations of his battered body, they shook at her side for a moment. God, she needed some sleep. She needed these nightmares to stop. She needed reprieve from all the pain burrowing in her stomach. Blame whispering in the back of her mind, she tried to push it down. She tried to tell herself to just focus on what was going on then and there.

“Third rib right side, probable fracture. Patient should be wrapped,” she dictated to the nurse who was on the opposite side of the bed. Stephanie smiled sweetly down at the man who had cause so many people she loved so much pain. “Extra tight so the patient doesn’t do any unnecessary damage.” The comment about...well, whatever he was implying made her stomach lurch though, and she bit down on her lip to get rid of a look of disdain. Him there, strapped to the bed, and wouldn’t it be so easy to just take care of everyone’s problems right then and there? Smother him with a pillow, give him just a little too much of his medication.

Stephanie shook her head. Her thoughts were getting darker each moment she was in this godforsaken place, and the logical part knew she needed out, but she was a dumb, dumb bleeding heart sometimes. The sneer slipped across her mouth, and she stepped away from the bed. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Maybe I can arrange some real sweet trainer for you. 200 lb body building behemoth should work fine.”

"How generous of you." Rosy red paint peeled back in a pretty smile that suggested maybe he was born with it, maybe it was Maybelline. Sweet wasn't native to Gotham. Even in the so-called civilized bracket, the aristocracy swamped in their furs and blood diamonds, knew that sweet wasn't any way to survive in this world. Ends meet still needed to be carved from the bone. Sense of self stripped clean by a knife, a syringe full of drugs, or a poor taste punchline. The tool depended on the trade, and a repeat offender like the Clown here had no misconceptions about the kind of professional that was attracted to Arkham. Most of them were Crane knock-offs, just another would-be inmate with a nicer suit. As for where this lady doc fit in on the scale, that was yet to be seen. There was always potential for aggressive influence. A living testament to that fact was committed to a stay in these very walls, if the rumors were anything to go by. The Arkham staff was rarely incompetent enough to place the Joker and the Harlequin in the same cell block, but less competent things have happened.

At the doctor's instruction, the nurse stepped up to the gurney, a nervous expression on a thin lipped face. There was a bandage roll in white knuckled hands, the nurse crept closer to inspect the place where the doctor had indicated broken ribs. With latex gloves stretched in place, the nurse carefully unbuttoned the patient's shirt and peeled the tacky green fabric away from injured ribs. The exposed flesh was pale, stretched lean over scrappy muscle and sharp bones, ribs held shadows like charcoal smudges on marble headstones. There were scars, angry red and old white. There were burns, recent and blistered. There were bruises, a bloomed funeral bed of hollyhocks and hemlock. Purple and green and painful, it was an infamous trademark and it looked at home on him. The nurse made sympathetic eyes, and she went to work forcing the roll of bandage under the small of his back, dragging it beneath him and wrapping the broken bones with a gentleness that didn't speak to his Arkham memories.

He liked the doctor. She had sneers and venom. She had an echo of the same resilience that he took to like a lifelong challenge… but the nurse wouldn't last. She was soft, and when she asked the Joker if his bandaging was comfortable or too tight, his response was teeth. All he could really do was lift his head up from the neck, and the drugs made the room swirl like a high dive into the Mariana Trench, but his mangled bite caught flesh and tore like a hungry dog with a bone. There was blood in his mouth, on his face. His side was killing him and the drugs ate the light. There was screaming, a lullaby when the dark came. Guards were rushing into the examination room, somebody was shouting, and he was laughing. A riot club came down on his head, and when unconsciousness came, his laughed echoed on.