Sideshow 01: 'good tidings to you, wherever you are'

Welcome! If you came here without reading Cirque de Triomphe you may experience some confusion, but are no less welcome. These sideshows generally will not be part of Cirque de Triomphe continuity, since that would damage the tenuous independence of that setting, but a mirrorverse calls out for its complement. Or, you know, I just think this kind of crossover is funny.

For context this one should be considered set several years after 'Harlequin' and a few before 'Beware the Court of Owls.'

Jokester rang his bell with more enthusiasm than tunefulness and stroked his big white beard. "Ho ho ho!" he bellowed, in the deepest voice he could manage. "Merry Christmas!"

The young couple strolling arm in arm smiled at him, and the woman reached out to tuck a ten-dollar bill into the slot at the top of his little red metal pail. "Ho, ho, season's blessings on you, young lady," J told her, holding his big false belly as he laughed. "You're a very lucky fellow!" he added to her beau, and they both smiled again and strolled on through the winter wonderland of a decorated Hampton Park, generous with love and holiday cheer. Jokester grinned after them.

He loved this time of year. Admittedly, the weather had its downsides—finding warm beds for people who'd otherwise freeze to death was an ongoing project every winter, and wherever he was staying in a given year usually had some serious drafts, and who liked cold feet? Nobody.

And Harvey got especially grouchy about hypocrisy and avarice around the season, and lonely people seemed to get lonelier and celebrating Christmas was culturally exclusionary toward non-Christian Americans, and the new meta girl, Pamela Eisley, had a thing about Christmas trees and he got all of that, but…it was about being happy. About giving things, and making other people happy, and people who were too proud to accept help the rest of the year would relax a little around Christmas and let you do things for them, because of Christmas spirit.

He wasn't, J admitted to himself as he settled on a slightly icy park bench for a bit of a rest and rang his bell again, really sure about religion, but bits of it were things people needed to get from somewhere, and he'd never tell anyone not to do what felt right to them, so long as it wasn't hurting anybody. And Christmas meant lights and glitter everywhere, shimmering off the frost, and the colors were red and green and white, and if he strung a little purple in there he usually got away with it and felt like the celebration was sort of his. Which, for a guy without a birthday, was nice. And now they had little Ella, he and Harley could not borrow enough happy family Christmas traditions to share with her. She was big enough to help cut out cookies now!

And as always, he loved an excuse to wear a costume. The Prospect Street Mission loaned him this one every single year. They said he was the best collector they'd ever sent out. His main secret was impersonating the department store kind of Santa in parks and shopping districts full of well-off children, whose parents then felt obliged to chip in for other people's Christmas dinners. Not infrequently, he was recognized, which sometimes led to awkwardness due to his…complicated relationship with the law, but was mostly fine, especially as far as the kids were concerned. Grandstanding heroics paid dividends, whatever sensible people thought.

"Hey, Jimmy, look! It's Santa!" said a woman's voice behind him.

"Not like it's the real Santa," scoffed a little boy, but when J turned and waved to him, adjusting the little round spectacles perched on his nose, he scampered forward, well ahead of his indulgently smiling parental types. He was about seven, with a cap of smooth brown hair and his cheeks all bright from cold, and waved a little shyly.

"Well, if it isn't little Jimmy," J chuckled in his Santa voice, dropping a gloved hand onto the lad's shoulder.

"You heard Mom say it," Jimmy pointed out.

"Oho, so I did, so I did! But I also think I remember you from my List. The nice one, of course. Why, you're so sweet—" J performed a special twist of his wrist, "—you've got candy coming out your ears!"

Cynical as Jimmy might be, he was young enough, and non-spoiled enough, for his eyes to widen in delight at the trick and the peppermint pinwheel. He unwrapped the cheap sweet and popped it into his mouth with a rush that suggested he knew that if his parents caught up they wouldn't let him eat candy from a stranger, even if it was Santa. His eyes flicked to the nearby trashcan like a well-brought-up young man, and then, suddenly, back to Santa, where they caught on a patch of skin that wasn't covered by beard or wig or hat, or the makeup that gave Santa his traditional rosy-red cheeks and strawberry nose, and realized Santa was kind of improbably the same colors as the peppermint…

Jokester grinned down through his big false beard, the corners of his famous smile just peeking over the top, twinkled through his tiny spectacles, and winked. "Ho ho ho!" he said conspiratorially.

Jimmy screamed.

Heaping silent curses upon Owlman's head, J grabbed the charity bucket and bolted. This was not a part of town where he could risk sticking around; he didn't have the contacts to back him up if somebody went after him. Even in nice neighborhoods where he wasn't necessarily popular, though, his reputation wasn't normally so bad as to set kids screaming, which meant Jimmy probably hadn't recognized him at all, just seen something horrifyingly wrong with Santa and panicked. (Hence cursing Owlman for the scary face. Fear wasn't his thing, not really; he'd use it if he needed to, especially against the Owl's minions who'd been trained to respond to it so well, but he'd never wanted to scare kids.)

A fleeing Santa Claus wasn't exactly subtle, but J took a few alleys and cut across a few roofs and was able to stroll composedly into plain view again almost a mile away, in a somewhat shabbier neighborhood where he had a friend or four on every block. Charity Santa would get better reception but smaller donations here, but he needed the respite to get his groove back.

It wasn't long, though, before he realized something was wrong, wrong, wronger than wrong. This was his home turf, where he got invited round for dinner and summoned for middle-of-the-night emergencies. He'd performed at several local block parties. Scary face or not, he was a known quantity. He'd be recognized here, and he'd be trusted.

And yet even here, every kid who saw through his jolly red costume backpedalled furiously and ran like hell, some in tears. Several of them were kids he knew, even. Jacqueline and Rabi had joined him for a snowball fight a few days ago, but Jacqueline's face went almost as white as his when he called out to her, and she grabbed Rabi's hand and disappeared up an alley.

By the time he'd gone six blocks, word seemed to have spread and foot traffic had slowed to a trickle. He'd only seen Gotham go this quiet when the rumor mill churned up some solid news of danger, or a large-scale fight was obviously about to break out, or major tragedy had just struck. He could clear a street like this with a warning, but not usually with a visit.

What was this? Jokester sank onto the low brick stoop of #247 and burrowed one hand through his fluffy white beard so he could prop his chin on it. "It's like suddenly nobody likes me," he muttered, and gave his bell a disconsolate ring.

The chime spread cleanly through the little inlet of silence that had opened around him, and J closed his eyes to take comfort in its straightforward beauty.

Then they shot open, as instinct hurled him backward off the steps—the brush of shadow across his face, the slight reflection of the bell's clear note off a rapidly-approaching solid form, the faintest disruption of air; nothing consciously noticeable, but enough that he'd known. He barely missed braining himself on a fire hydrant, but escaped the swoop of the hell-kite now standing like a patch of pure night on the brick front steps of a Gotham tenement.

Huh. New outfit.

The birdsuit had gone through a lot of versions over the years, and now had apparently reached the apex of its long-running shift toward minimalism and away from feathers (which J took credit for inspiring with his razor wit), and plumage was now suggested only by an artfully scalloped edge to the cape. There was no sign of blue or white or bronze in the entire getup—in fact, if the cape had been crimson, he would have finally made a matched pair with Talon.

The glowering pillar of black, Jokester was willing to concede, made a statement. "Nice suit," he panted. "Very you."

He scrambled around to the far side of the hydrant, the cushion in the front of his coat swaying ridiculously, and threw one of his two smoke bombs. Owlman detoured around the smoke to attack, which wasn't ideal but gave J an opening all the same by controlling his trajectory. He launched a spinning kick, which didn't land, and ducked under the return punch, the fluffy white bobble at the end of his hat drawing wild arcs through the air.

Nuts. He thought he'd manage to bruise the tyrant's ribs, for a second there. He fell back a little, wishing fiercely for his hammer, or any gear at all. Or Harley. Or Harvey. Or Ed. Alonzo. Dulcita. Edna. Somebody. At least for moral support.

Okay, not Edna, not anywhere near this maniac; she'd be too good a target to resist. Feeling lonely wasn't the most propitious start to a fight, was all.

Still, he thought, leading the Owl over a treacherous patch of ice and evading a grab for his neck, he could do this much on his own.

They'd elevated it almost to a dance, by now. So long as he stayed alert and kept on the defensive, his feathered nemesis couldn't touch him. Usually. Most of his hurts happened when he took stupid risks, trying to save someone or get a hit in. Or when an accomplice stepped into play. He was keeping a sharp eye out for Talon—the boy was edging toward all grown up, and more dangerous than ever.

Leapfrogging back over a parked car out of the way of a punch, J caught hold of a street sign by the pole, kicked off the curb, and whirled himself around it fast enough that the Owl was the one falling back hurriedly, to avoid a double-footed kick in the throat. J gave a cackle and let go, just as his spin hit maximum velocity, sending himself careening through the air clear across the street.

"Whoooohoohohohoho!" he shouted as he tumbled, to distract himself from a hint of motion-sickness. "Santa can fly!" He kicked off the front of the yellow brick building to spin his feet under him, and landed behind his archenemy.

Who had not been prepared for the maneuver, but unfortunately prioritized getting turned around, drawing back, and generally protecting himself from flying Santas highly enough that J barely got one solid hit out of it. A second later, the shower of some weird new matte-black beakarang-shuriken things he must've had made to match the new suit kept J pinned down long enough that his advantage was lost.

So far Jokester had been kind of enjoying the fight. The simple absoluteness of it was as comforting in its way as the bell had been; survival left no space for fretting.

But now things got complicated: as he took a step forward, hoping to keep the bird on the retreat a little longer because giving any sign that he might be in any way even slightly afraid of Jokester ticked Owlman off like nothing else, which made it the funniest thing, his peripheral vision caught motion—Talon, he thought at first, swooping in to take him down hard, but when he spared a second to look straight on, he found it was two things, neither of them a ninja bird of doom. One was the round, terrified face of a small local boy he knew as Billy Seavers (who'd apparently made the unfortunate fashion choice to buzz off his stylish cornrows sometime in the past week, how sad), plastered against the side of a parked pickup truck.

The other was one of the elongated throwing stars the Owl had hurled at him earlier, wedged in a crack in the granite foundation of the yellow house…one end blinking with the steady baleful light J recognized as a promise of imminent explosion.

J dove forward, abruptly devoid of thoughts unrelated to getting Billy out of the blast radius.

The thing was, he wasn't the only one diving.

Before he could get to Billy and throw him clear, his shoulder slammed against Owlman's. J rolled with the impact and up across Owlman's back in time to drop to his knees between Billy and the bomb as it burst, scattering shards of stone like little knives.

Only two made it through the heavy Santa padding enough to sting in his back, and at first he thought the layer of polyester stuffing had swallowed up most of the slivers entirely and Billy hadn't been in all that much danger after all, until he turned and found that the Owl had straightened behind him as soon as they'd parted, and, unfathomably, taken the bulk of the shrapnel on his body armor.

J's mouth fell open and got full of synthetic white hair, around which he asked, "Did you…do that on purpose?"

The response came with a familiar look of austere scorn. "Not for you."

"Well duh—look, sonny, get moving already before something else blows up."

The Owl followed Billy with his eyes as he took Jokester's suggestion and fled, just barely not crying, but didn't try to stop the child. "Y'know him?" J hazarded. He didn't see how he could, but it was the only thing that made sense. He'd intentionally avoided saying Billy's name just now, to see whether Owlman would betray knowledge of it.

The big man shook his head.

"But…you did that for him, right? For just some kid?"

A long second of considering silence, and a stiff nod.

"Since when d'ya care?" J burst out.

It overlapped eerily with Owlman's gruff but better-enunciated, "Since when do you care?"

J leapt into the resultant second of silence, full of affront. "Since when wouldja think I don't? It's always been about helping people, featherhead."

"Really."

The word was sardonic, clipped, incredulous, with more than a hint of that aristocratic sneer that made J keep coming back to the Wayne theory, but that incredulity alone made it one of the most human moments the Owl had betrayed in years. Maybe the even-more-stylized outfit reflected a profound personal crisis or something, and the bastard was finally going to start loosening up.

J snorted as he got to his feet and brushed slush and dirt ruefully off his formerly white gloves. At this point he was going to have to call the costume a loss and do his best to pay back the folks at the Mission. Darn it. It was bad enough he'd already abandoned the day's donations. "Yes really. I know you're an egotist but I didn't think you really thought I let myself in for this kind of grief just to get to you."

The Owl was standing again, too, tense to move, and J stayed ready to dodge. "What was the point of this?" the Owl demanded, instead of attacking. Looking J in his Santa suit up and down. "The costume."

J squinted, favoring first one eye and then the other. "Are you asking me what's the meaning of Santa Claus?"

"Joker."

"Birdbrain." J stuck his tongue out, which wasn't as good an outlet for his feelings as thumping Owlman over the head, but you couldn't have everything. He guessed he couldn't complain about getting his name mangled, though; he'd started that one. Way back at the beginning.

The Owl stood still. He really hadn't brought any minions, it seemed like, and he was out in broad daylight, and he'd tried to shield a kid with his body. Compared to that, and the new suit, standing still wasn't weird at all, but it sent a prickle up J's neck, and he yanked the itchy wig and hat off with a grimace and flung them pettishly at his enemy.

Who dodged, like he expected the Santa hat or the fluffy beard to be stuffed with explosives or something—which, alright, not totally out of the question if he'd been expecting to fight today, though throwing explosives around a populated area was kind of a super last resort—which gave J a much bigger window than he'd been expecting to withdraw. He had no idea what they were even fighting about exactly, besides the general mutual hate, and he was done for the day.

Even he had a craziness quotient, especially when none of his friends were around to play off of and get up a proper banter.

He was around a corner and halfway up the next block when the Owl landed in front of him in a billow of cape. "Aw, come on, Scrooge!" J howled, flinging a slushball in each hand and going for a legsweep that very nearly almost worked, due to the distracting qualities of slush all up the side of the jerk's stupid head. "It's Christmas! Can't ya give a guy a break?"

His uppercut just brushed the end of the man's chin, and since he didn't have time to move back out of reach before Owlman recovered from that, he kneed him. Not in the groin—he'd fractured his kneecap last time he tried that—but further up the abdomen, where the creep couldn't have rigid armour because it would impede his ability to bend. That knocked him backward and off-balance enough for J to take a back handspring out of reach, a move from Harley's playbook that he had adopted with relish.

The Owl didn't attack immediately, and J took the opportunity to get his feet firmly planted and look around for any good improvised weapons. There was a rusty steel barrel that had recently held a fire, two rickety folding chairs, some newspaper, and half a brick.

He threw a chair. Wished he still had the Santa hat because then he could put the brick in it and have an excellent bludgeoning weapon; getting a sock off would take too long and mean he was half barefoot, and his gloves weren't nearly big enough to fit even half-bricks.

The chair hadn't hit, and he fell back and threw the brick, too, since he wasn't going to be able to make a flail. He should just stop leaving the house unarmed. And possibly get Ed to look into making radios they could carry everywhere because he was starting to need backup, stat.

"Are we really doing this today?" He clicked his tongue when Owlman ducked under the brick and kept coming. Scooped up another couple handfuls of slushy snow and stayed on the retreat. "I mean, doncha have holiday-related responsibilities, big guy? Family and friends to shop for? Okay, maybe not friends."

He laughed, but not so hard he took his eyes off his opponent. "Second cousin? Office party? Pet cat? Please tell me there's somebody in your life more important than little old moi or I might just cry—" He caught the moment when irritation slipped into the distracting early bubble of real anger and struck, a gravel-laced snowball right in the kisser and one over the eyes—the headpiece protected old featherface from the worst of it, unfortunately, but the initial sting and the muck plastered across his vision was all the opportunity Jokester needed to snatch up the abandoned fire-barrel and smash it over Owlman's head.

The barrel burst in a scream and crash of rust and a massive cloud of ash, and by then Jokester was already running, down the block and into an alleyway and tarnation this fence was not here last week, scramble up, jump like a squirrel, fire escape, dumpster, fire escape, roof, new alley—

And then something spun tight around both ankles, jerking them together, and he hit the dirt and skidded another couple of yards on his stomach. If he hadn't had his arms free he would have wound up facefirst in somebody's used condom, ew ew and also ew, but he stopped his slide and was just shoving himself up onto his knees to see about untangling the whatever-it-was, when something hit him from behind like approximately two hundred and forty pounds of highly trained bricks, and his face was in the dirt again.

Where had the little round Santa glasses gone exactly? 'Not poking him in the eye' was probably all the answer he was going to get. He shook with the kind of laughter that happens when you don't have enough breath to make any noise, and tried for a double-footed kick, since there was no one to pin his legs today. Even if he wasn't sure how they'd wound up tied together. New toy? Maybe somebody had been opening his Christmas presents early.

The kick landed, but with no real force, and in response Owlman grabbed him by the back of the head and pushed it meaningfully down. "No tricks."

Part two pending. Please let me know what you think. ^^