Title: Chelsea Grin (1/?)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Genre: General, eventual crime drama-ish
Characters: Now - the Joker, with a special appearance by Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Later - Bruce/Batman, Harvey Dent, Jim Gordon, Scarecrow, etc.
Summary: "That's my favorite kind of laughter – the painful, uncontrollable kind. The kind that goes on and on and on until you can't breathe anymore and it feels like you're just gonna die if one more howl lets loose from your lungs."
Word count: 1,582
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to DC. I'm just messing around.
Author's Note: Sort of a follow-up to Hang 'Em High, but you don't have to read that to understand this. Also, I don't really know where I'm going with this. I'm just going wherever the Joker takes me. :)

I don't think much about Harvey Dent. What's the point? Harvey's over and done with, thanks to the Batman. Apparently. Ooh, boy – when my lovely stupid doctor told me that little piece of news, I laughed myself nearly to pieces! And ohh. Did that feel good. That's my favorite kind of laughter – the painful, uncontrollable kind. The kind that goes on and on and on until you can't breathe anymore and it feels like you're just gonna die if one more howl lets loose from your lungs. People don't laugh like that often enough, I think. If they did, I wouldn't have to make them.

But then that goody-goody doctor had to go and give me a sedative. Fucking sedatives. They ruin everything, and she ruined my fun. I laughed, I cackled, I giggled until the very last moment, when I told her with a slurrrrr, "That, doc, is the funniest joke I've ever heard."

And it was. It truly was. My Batman, kill Harvey? Now, that is what I call bullshit, my friend. I, uh, know for a fact that Batman would've thrown himself out a window before he ever let Harvey the, uh, "Hero?" die, and he would've turned himself in before he ever killed the guy.

Makes me wonder how many people Dent killed before Batman, haha, "killed" him. Must've been a lot, if darling Bats was taking the rap for the good DA. Which, weirdly enough, makes me proud of Harvey. Yeah, proud, I'm prooooud of Harvey Dent! See, he did to Batman what I did to him – he took the flyin' rat's plan and turned it inside out.

He made Batman a killer.

Look, I tried so. Fucking. Hard. To make Batman break his one ridiculous little rule, but hey. I don't mind if Harvey beat me to it, I don't, really! He got it done, didn't he? Good ol' reliable Harrrrvey, Harvey Dent. Who knew he'd turn out to be my own little protégé?

Even when I'm sedated, the thought sends me into a fit of giggles.

You know, Harvey Dent's memorial service was broadcasted on every news channel in Gotham. And, deee-lightfully enough, the good doctor in charge made all the prisoners watch it, even the maximum-security prisoners like me. Good thing, too. Because that was some damn good television. It was just so funny. Perfectly farcical – inane, even. Gordon's eulogy was particularly entertaining, especially the "not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed" bit. I hoo-hoo-hoot-ted with laughter at that little remark. Jim Gordon, police commissioner and comedian extraordinaire! Ha. Ha. Ha.

Seeing that service, though – it made me think of my one meeting with Dent. Sometimes I remember it different than others, and the more I think about it, the more I think what actually happened, didn't happen. Sometimes Harvey's coin lands on the scarred face, and he blows me straight to hell; other times, it lands on the pristine face, and he shoots me anyway. Or maybe it lands on the scarred face, but surprise, Harvey! I tricked ya – the gun's not loaded at all. I just wanted to see if you could do it. And he keeps pulling the trigger, like I'm joking. It's just too bad, isn't it, Harvey, that I used those bullets already?

The events sometimes change, but the words never do. Those words are important. Those words changed Harvey Dent into Harvey Two-Face. Sometimes I think that those are the best words I've ever spoken, those words that manipulated Dent and made him his own worst enemy. I spoke the truth, but I lied with every word, and I played him a vi-oh-linnnn. Just call me maestro, ah ha ha.

One thing in particular comes to mind. "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?" I said to Harvey, oozing sarcasm. If Harvey had been, well, haha, sane, he would have known that, yes, I did have a plan. I always have a plan. My plans just never seem like plans, because I'm not trying to scheme anybody – I'm just trying to get by. And it helps, y'know, that my kind of chaotic logic makes sense only to me. My plans keep people guessing, 'cause to them, they aren't plans at all. They're, uh, random acts of violence, or the trappings of a, ah, madman. But I'm not a madman. They just don't get that.

Which brings me to Arkham. You know, I could escape here twenty different ways, and no one would know until I was looooong gone. All it takes is a pen. Maybe a needle. Yeah, I could manage with a needle. It helps that I've got a ton of them stored up in my mattress. Sure, that makes my bed a little prickly, but honestly, who sleeps here?

I could do it, if I really wanted to. But I just don't feel like it yet. I'm having too much fun to want to leave. If nothing else, I'm sticking around for my, ah, one-on-ones with my lovely, lovely brain-dead doctor. It's thanks to her that I got all those needles. Methinks she has the, uh. Dropsies. Ha.

Our first session, I didn't really do much. I just let her talk. Listening? Nononono, I didn't do much of that either. She said something about exorcizing my demons by – what was it? Talking through them – with her? Ha. Yes. I remember that. Huhhh. Demons. I never realized we still lived in the, uh, eighteenth century, did you? Well, anyway, whatever the century, I certainly did not want to do that – not because I don't think I have any demons, but because I know they're perfectly obvious, and this doctor is a complete idiot if she doesn't see that. Besides, why would I want to talk about my – hee hee – demons, anyway? Demons are so much more rewarding when you act on them, not when you talk about them, but this pretty little doctor doesn't seem to understand that.

Yet.

So, for our second session, I'm gonna have some fun and make her understand.

She comes in with a smile, but mine is bigger - it's always bigger, always will be. She says, hello, how ya doing, and I say I'm bored out of my fucking mind, and she just laughs – it sounds like a retarded bell, slooooow but bright and high-pitched. In other words, annoying.

I lick my lips, grinning with my face but not with my mouth. That time, I wasn't making a joke.

Our first topic of the day? Knives. I love knives – lovelovelovelovelovelove – but I don't say anything about 'em. Instead, I ask about my neighbors, the infamous Dr. Crane and the unfortunately, permanently incapacitated Carmine Falcone. I tell her it doesn't make any sense, that I'm right between them. She says, well, that's not for me to decide, and I change the subject – to, hahaha, the pros and cons of calendars. That throws her a little. I like that.

I change subjects more times than I care to count, and she gets a little more miffed each time. But she – yeah, she's a professional, and nothing shows on her face, so she thinks I don't know. But I do. I notice ev-er-ree-thiiiing, including her tip-tapping little toes. I'm so busy babbling on about everything and nothing, and she's so busy being a professional, that she doesn't notice that I'm studying her. Not the other way around.

I let her get slightly less uncomfortable before I pull out the big guns and ask her about those itty-bitty, barely visible scars on the inside of her left wrist. I tell her she did a good job hiding them, better than most people, but me? I got an eye for scars. If they're there, I'll find them, no matter how faint or well hidden they happen to be.

That scares her, I can tell. She pales – no, no. Her lips pale, the rest of her face stays the same peachy pink color – and she tries, oh soooo desperately, to change the subject. She's, ahh, she's not very good at it. Her attempts are pathetic, clummmsy. I could do better with my mouth sewn shut.

It doesn't take me very long to break her. It's almost too easy – the more I talk, the more she stammers and recoils at my raaazor-sharp words, just as sharp as those kitchen knives she used to slice herself with – and it suddenly occurs to me that, hahaha, we're talking about knives now, just like she wanted! – until finally, she can't take it anymore. That's when she tells me about Dent's apparent demise, blurting it out like it's her daddy's dirtiest secret, the one she promised never to tell.

She writes in her notes that just the mere mention of Dent sent me into hysterics, and that no one should ever mention him to me again.

Like I said, this bitch is stupid.

Oh, what a dazzling session that had been.

It was quite awhile before I saw her again, but when I did, I just grinned and purrrred, "You know what I could really go for right now? A couple-a nice, juicy cherries."

She blushed, and I cackled, "The fruit, doc. I'm not one of your – ahhh ha ha ha! –crrrrazies with the sex drive of a, uh, thirteen-year-old man-boy!" And I cackled some more.