Chapter Text
John’s feet tapped impatiently against the floor, animated by the same thin red string of energy that snapped the rest of him to attention, sitting up straight as a rod on his cramped white bed and staring eagerly at the locked brown door. He could tell from the position of the sun out his barred window that visiting hour was coming soon, and that meant Bruce would be here.
Bruce had made a point of visiting John in Arkham every single day, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes if he was busy with business meetings and ribbon-cuttings, and sometimes for hours at a time, which they would spend talking about anything and everything; John’s mental health, Bruce’s mental health, what food Arkham gave John each day, what stuck up new business people Bruce had to deal with, and everything else under the sun.
Bruce made sure to ask lots of careful questions about how good the asylum had been to John. He was almost obsessively concerned about making sure that his money was actually doing what he had promised it would. John assured him that his money was being put to good use. The hiring criteria for orderlies was higher now, because they could afford to pay them more, and everyone who had hurt patients was long gone. The food was better, the conditions were better, and the vibe was all-around better. There was really no reason for Bruce to be concerned. John knew Bruce was babying him, but he didn’t mind being babied. It was proof that Bruce still cared.
There was no reason for Bruce to come to the asylum every day. He knew that John was being taken care of, and even if he didn’t know, he could still have rested easier on the premise that John was locked up and couldn’t hurt anyone. Not that he would hurt anyone again - at least, not without a really good reason. He doubted that anyone else alive would ever give him another really good reason, now that Bruce had learned from his mistakes and was actually making sure John was okay instead of just assuming he was.
The way John had felt in Ace Chemicals and in the funhouse - just thinking about it made John scared.
He had killed himself in so many ways, wanting to be reborn. He had almost ruined everything, nearly killed Bruce, all for what? What had he been trying to prove? That he was big enough to affect things? Oh, he had affected things.
But anyway, the point was that Bruce could stay far away if he wanted to - and he still chose to be close to John. Not out of any ulterior motive, but just because he wanted to. Finally, John was confident that Bruce would stay by his side even when he didn’t benefit from it in some way. John’s presence was enough, even after all the horror that he had done.
Bruce was really amazing.
What had John been thinking about originally? Oh, right. He was sitting on his bed, fortunately with no bloodstains, waiting for the visiting hour to start and for Bruce to show up.
Then John heard a few sharp gold knocks on the door, and his back bristled. The door swung open with a creeeeeeak.
“Doctor Leland?” John said. “Do you have a new pill to give me or something? Ooh, did you bring those coloring books I asked for?”
“I’m not Doctor Leland.”
A young man stepped through the door who John had never seen before. He was wearing the customary clean white lab coat of all Arkham orderlies (in the past, before the renovations, it had been a stark contrast from the dirty, rusty scrubs of the patients), and it was a little loose on him.
“A new doctor?” John said, flashing the man a big smile. “How old are you - early twenties? You must be a prodigy or something!”
“Thanks,” the man said with a small smile. “You’re right, I’m pretty new on the job. I haven’t even gotten a nametag printed yet.”
“Be careful, then,” John chuckled. “The inmates here can be a real handful.”
“That seems like an understatement,” the doctor said. “But don’t worry about me. I’ve worked at places like this before. I know what I’m doing.”
The doctor was making small talk, making an effort to establish familiarity with John. And it was working - he seemed polite, funny, willing to treat Arkham’s patients as people - John knew first impressions could be wrong, but so far this doctor seemed like a great potential friend.
And John had used the same strategy before: making small talk right back. Giving the doctors a sense of security, that he wasn’t one of those inmates. That they could feel safe around him. It made it a lot easier to do illegal things if they weren’t expecting him to, and people saw what they wanted to see. He didn’t want to do illegal things anymore, though. At least, he thought he didn’t. He hoped he didn’t.
“Where have you worked before?” John asked.
The doctor listed the names of a couple of asylums in neighboring cities. John had heard of all the asylums before - he didn’t know why he knew them, but he knew them - and he knew that none of them had the same reputation as Arkham.
“So, why did you come to Arkham?” John asked. “Are ya an adrenaline junkie or something?”
The man brushed hair out of his eyes, and gave John another small smile. “I suppose I just like a challenge.”
“So, what’s your name anyway?”
“Oh, sorry I didn’t say it sooner.” The doctor held out his hand. “I’m Doctor Jonathan Crane. Pleased to meet you.”
John grabbed onto Doctor Crane’s hand, and shook it firmly. “Nice to meet you too.”
The doctors at Arkham had always said John had a great handshake.
“Do you want to be in an experiment?” Doctor Crane said.
“What kind of experiment? You’re not going to make me like Bane or Mr. Freeze, are you?”
Doctor Crane laughed. “No, of course not. I’ve pioneered a new method of exposure therapy, and I was hoping you would let me try it out on you.”
“What do you mean, a new method?”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Doctor Crane asked. “It feels a bit awkward just standing in the middle of the room.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry.” John scooted over on his bed, leaving enough room for Doctor Crane to sit down.
“I’ve invented a gas that I can inject into you to put you in a… vulnerable psychological state.”
“Like a truth serum?”
Doctor Crane laughed quietly. “Close enough. And I believe that when a patient is in this state, we can make a lot of progress on facing their fears.”
“Sure,” John said. “Sign me up.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to think more about this?” Doctor Crane said. “I don’t want you to feel pressured.”
“Don’t worry,” John said. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”
“Well, thank you for volunteering,” Doctor Crane said and smiled warmly. “It means a lot to me.”
“No problemo,” John said. “When are we going to start this, uh, therapy?”
Doctor Crane brushed his hair out of his face again. “We can start it right now, if you want to.”
“Right now,” John repeated. “Oh wow, that’s fast. Uh, sure, why not?”
A warm smile spread across Doctor Crane’s face.
“Perfect,” he said. “Then here, let’s walk to a different room.”
Doctor Crane stood up, the bed frame creaking under him, and John followed suit. He was used to being walked across places by orderlies, and he knew the drill. Agree with everything they said, nod and make appropriate humorous comments, and show them how good of a patient he could be. He didn’t want a repeat of some of the awful moments that had happened when he had first been sent back here after becoming the Joker.
The hallways were light and airy, worlds away from the creepy dampness of Before. Square patches of yellow light spilled down from the windows, and John hopped from light patch to light patch, avoiding the shadows.
“The room isn’t that far away, don’t worry,” Doctor Crane said. “It’s part of the new experimental medicine wing. I and other psychiatrists want to move forward from the old practices of locking people away here to die, and start figuring out how to actually help. You know, getting to the root of problems.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” John said, nearly falling over in his attempt to avoid a big shadow. But wait, the spaces under his feet were always in shadow! He had already lost the game! Oh well, that wouldn’t actually change anything and he could still do it.
Then Doctor Crane turned through a pair of double doors, and the windows disappeared.
Not as in, they physically vanished out of existence. As in, the new sterile white hallway Doctor Crane was walking into had no windows whatsoever.
“That’s kinda creepy,” John said under his breath, and walked forward.
Doctor Crane spread his arms and his eyes lit up. “This is the new medical wing. I’ve spent a lot of time here.”
He turned a left through another door, one that had a strong lock on the door, John noticed. John ducked through the door, and Doctor Crane closed it behind him.
The room was padded and empty, except for one white bed in the center.
“Wow, they really played up the ominousness for this wing,” John chuckled. “I feel like you’re about to murder me or something.”
“Don’t worry,” Doctor Crane said. “I have no intention of doing that.”
…
“So, should I get up on top of the bed…?”
“Yeah.”
John climbed up, and laid his head back.
“It feels like I’m at the dentist.”
“Now hold still,” Doctor Crane said. “I’m going to strap you on.”
“Wait, what?”
John felt a strap being buckled over one of his legs.
“It’s a precaution for the more violent inmates,” Doctor Crane’s voice said, out of John’s view and strapping down his other leg.
“Still though…” John’s smile wilted. “Is there any possible other option?”
No response as Doctor Crane strapped down one arm, and then another, followed by his head. John was motionless now, defenseless, and he couldn’t see anything except the ceiling, and Doctor Crane’s bright blue eyes peering down on him.
“Hey, is it possible for me to, like, rescind consent to this?” John said.
Doctor Crane reached into his lab coat and pulled out a… sack? No, a mask. A ratty, brown old mask. He stretched it over his head, completely obscuring his face.
“What does this remind you of?” Crane’s voice was muffled through the mask.
“A creepy lunch bag?” John said. “Or maybe a scarecrow, I don’t know… what are you going to use it for? Why do I have to be strapped to a bed for this?”
“Hold still,” Crane said, and John felt thin, pinching hands on his arm. Then a sharp pain. “That was the fear toxin.”
“Fear toxin?”
“I said this experiment was about facing your fears, didn’t I?” Crane’s voice was muffled through the mask. “It should kick in soon.”
John laid still on the bed for a long moment, and Doctor Crane walked out of view.
“Um, I don’t feel any different,” John said. “How long is this thing supposed to take before it-”
———
John’s eyes blinked open, back in his green padded room. Nothing was different. Wait. John looked down - there was an itching sort of hurt burning on his arm, almost like…
No, he hadn’t done this to himself in a while. He was really trying to get better.
But there they were, ruined skin and raised redness and already pooling little rivers of blood, scratched into the inside of his arm. Had he done this to himself while he’d slept? No wounds from someone else could have been as focused as this - he knew exactly the force and the repetition required to break the first layer of skin. He knew it all too well.
An uneasy fog rose in John’s stomach, and on in the room. Mist was rising, seeping in from who knows where, pale green mist with a feverish red edge to it.
What was going on?
John turned towards the door, to ask for an orderly to come and do something, anything- but-
where was the door?
John whipped his head around in all four directions.
Padded walls.
Padded walls.
Padded walls.
Padded walls.
No furniture, no doors, no windows, no way out, just the dark, grimy, green, padded WALLS-
John had never much been one for claustrophobia, but now he found himself leaning up against a wall, as if magnetized to it by some invisible force, and he found his hands moving of their own volition, BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG -
John’s wounds started to bleed, oozing down and dripping one tentative drip onto the floor, where it spread in thin red ribbons of cloud, down through the tiles and into the drain.
John looked at his hands in disbelief. Why were they bleeding?
His eyes prickled, and his legs gave out until he sat down on the cold hard floor, shivering from the cold mist. He wrapped his arms around himself like a straightjacket. The room seemed to be getting darker, and the mist was crawling at the edges.
His white asylum uniform was thin, and cold, and wet. Blood was seeping through more and more of the fabric, too much to come from his hands. Frantically, John brushed his hands over his legs and abdomen, looking for some hidden wound. There was none.
John turned around.
The sickly green of the room was deepening into a dark blue, but John could still see the hunched form of a body, his body, with messy green hair and almost white skin, curled in the fetal position on the floor, pressed into the corner between the floor and the wall.
The other John’s arms were pressed over his chest like a straitjacket , and coated with dark red blood that was collecting in a growing puddle on the floor.
The other John’s face was smiling. It looked carved on, like a doll.
John grabbed the body’s stiff, cold arms and pulled them aside, exposing the gaping hole in his chest. On closer look, the other pair of his hands were coated with dried blood under the fingernails. He had done all this to himself, then.
Blood trickled over the teeth of the body on the floor. The wound was dark on the inside, and a strong smell came from it, metallic and familiar. John’s mouth was full of the taste of it.
Suddenly, the body grew warm under John’s hands. No, not the body itself - something was burning green and purple inside of it, glowing through the cavity in his chest.
The hole was big enough for a person to fit through. John could count as a person for this.
He reached his hands inside the body, the blood from his wrists mingling with the blood from the wound. It was surprisingly easy to crawl through the tangled nest of bones and organs and shredded tissue, and the green and purple lights burned just ahead of his vision, pulling him on.
The last of his limbs slipped through, and then John was free.
He knew where he was now. It was an escape. He looked down at his own body, not the dead one he had crawled through but the one he inhabited, and saw his old Joker trench coat on himself, just as scratchy and warm as he remembered.
His head whipped around, and he was confused by the extra weight on his head until he remembered how the two spikes of gel had felt. He was in the funhouse where he had been born again, as a much happier man, or at least one who smiled more. That was probably something he should be doing now, he realized, and he tipped his head back and let out a sharp red string of laughter.
John’s foot collided with something, and he looked down to see another curled-up form, her blood mingling with the red and white panels of wood making a striped pattern on the floor. The corpse was Waller, blood staining her suit and a glare on her eyes, even in death.
Her mouth, though… her mouth was different.
A smile stretched across her face, definitely not a real one. Her cheeks seeped blood just like the rest, running across her teeth and over her eyes.
No, no. This wasn’t right. John had hurt Waller, but he had never killed her.
…Right?
Well, it didn’t matter anyway. He had never liked her. He had wanted her dead. It was Bruce that had stopped him, with a Batarang through his hand and a million other stinging wounds. Not all the scars on John’s skin had come from himself.
He took a moment to kick Walker’s corpse, and then walked through a low door into the next room of the funhouse.
The only illumination were strings of purple and green lights, and the carnival music was playing as a perfect soundtrack to the brokenness of John’s mind. For this was his mind, not his old one, but the new one he had forged for himself, out of the corpses of three nameless Agency soldiers whose bodies were splayed out in the next room, limbs bent at grotesque angles and faces staring at John in silent condemnation.
“Oh, hush,” John said sharply. “You know what you did.”
The faces stared.
“I had to do it!” John snapped. “You deserved it. He deserved it.”
Then he remembered who he was talking to, and he walked on into the next room. It didn’t matter what he had done to those agents, anyway. Bruce hadn’t blamed him for it. Somehow.
In the next room, Harley’s body was pinned up against the wall, her face missing. Puncture wounds all over her body- her death had been slow. John had cursed her to a slow death, when he mourned their train wreck of a relationship. Many times he had yelled out angry cries for her to get what she deserved, after what she had done to him. His eye ached, and when he put up a hand to his face, he found that the old bruise was there.
His hands came away white and black and he realized he was wearing his Joker makeup. Yes, this was funny. Harley and Waller had gotten what they deserved! And John was free!
He just needed to find the exit out of the funhouse, and then he could find Bruce. Bruce would be happy to see him. Bruce had been visiting the asylum. Bruce still cared about him, somehow.
“Hmm, let’s see…” John rapped his fingers against his thigh. “I think it was… that door!”
He brought a hand to the doorknob, and pulled it open.
“Huh?”
He didn’t recognize the room he had stepped into, but it wasn’t the outside. Well, he would keep going! He skipped forward through a long, dark hallway, humming in tune with the carnival music that echoed off the walls. Suddenly his foot snagged against something warm and soft, and he fell to the floor with a THUD.
“Rude,” he said, glaring at the body he had tripped over.
It was another Agency person, one of the three he had slashed through in a laughing fit of madness, while Bruce looked on in horror. But Bruce had forgiven him. And these Agents deserved to die too.
John felt something plip on the top of his head, and he looked up to see the other two Agents dangling from the ceiling, blood dripping down from their bodies and splattering across John’s coat and face.
“Oh, real nice,” he said, and glared up at the lofty dark ceiling. “I thought you would enjoy being chandeliers!”
That was enough time spent in this room. John stomped forward, and he knew he was being childish, but hey, so were they, going and ruining his special outfit. Or maybe enhancing it. The bloodstains would certainly inspire dread in his victims. Maybe then they would know how to behave.
The end of the hallway differed from the rest, in that there was yellow light coming through the cracks of the door. The rest of the funhouse was as dim as night, so that was a good omen. John brought his hand to the doorknob and swung the door open, glancing at the sign above as he walked in: WAITING ROOM.
The walls in this next room were white. Uncomfortable blue chairs lined the walls, cornered by end tables stacked with magazines. One one side of the room was a reception kiosk, and it was all itchingly familiar.
Bruce sat with his legs crossed in one of the chairs, brow furrowed with concentration as he flipped pages of a magazine titled, WHAT ARKHAM CAN DO FOR YOU.
“Bruce!” John said, a real smile breaking out across his face so wide that his cheeks hurt. “I knew I would find you!”
“Huh?” Bruce looked up with a vague expression of annoyance. “What is it?”
“Brucie, it’s me!” John grabbed Bruce’s sleeve and shook it like an excited toddler.
“Who?”
John’s smile flickered.
“What do you mean, who?”
Bruce’s face was blank.
“I’m… I’m John Doe, I’m your friend…”
Bruce opened his mouth, and fireworks burst in John’s chest, he was going to remember-
“Sorry, but… where do we know each other from, again?”
John’s smile shattered.
“I think you might have the wrong guy,” Bruce said lightly, as if he hadn’t just sent John’s entire world up in smoke. “Uh, good day.”
Bruce stood up, and walked quickly out the door on the other side of the room. The door closed behind him, and John’s gaze lifted to the red EXIT sign above it.
This was a dream. It had to be. He couldn’t be happening. Bruce would always remember him. Bruce was in love with him. John knew he wasn’t making that up; Bruce had said it. This had to be a bad, bad dream.
John concentrated, and strained to open his eyes.
…
…Open.
…
Come on, OPEN!
…
He couldn’t wake up.
He couldn’t wake up.
Maybe if he walked through the exit door… John swung the door open, and ran through it, praying to wake up under his breath.
He was just back in another funhouse room, back with the darkness and the dampness and the smell of blood. He was still wearing his long-destroyed Joker coat; he was still stuck in the bloodied skin of someone he didn’t want to be. He didn’t. He swore he really didn’t.
John looked behind him, and the door was gone. He was really back in the funhouse, or in this nightmare version of the funhouse, and he sunk to the ground and found his fists once again banging over and over on the floor.
“Wake up,” he said at almost a whisper. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
Nothing changed. Nothing was changing. Nothing was changing. The smell of blood and the damp and the dark were still there, the green and purple lights were still there, the coat was still there, and John’s voice raised in pitch and volume as he begged.
“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
He banged over and over again on the floor, and his knuckles hurt but he didn’t care, because none of this was real. It couldn’t be real.
“WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP!”
Tears squeezed out of John’s eyes, and his throat ached as he screamed.
“WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE-“
———
“I have exposed your fears,” Doctor Crane said, watching John as he convulsed and screamed under the restraints tying him to the bed. “Now, it’s up to you to master them… or not.”