He relished it. Drank it in like fine wine, and breathed out the perverse joy of being its cause. It was only laughter, the only benign thing he had left to twist. He watched gleefully as the grieving mother's face contorted with rage and grief. She went pale when she crumbled and clutched her husband's arm.
The Joker sighed, and rolled his eyes heavenward. He had already explained through the laughter and the mocking apologetics, that he never meant to kill their daughter. That the dead, shattered blonde had only been collateral damage.
That they should be happy that Daddy's little princess would be remembered. And then he smirked, as he gave them his most charitable assessment of killing their kid:
The Joker really hoped that she was resting in peace and not pieces.
He remembered shrugging as the mother's face twisted, how the father wailed in raging grief. How she clawed at her husband,
groping like a wounded animal, and how he snarled and lunged towards him.
The Joker remembered that the father-fat, balding, middle-aged, had bellowed like a shot bull, nostrils flaring, feet stomping.
It took four prison guards to restrain that sad, fat father. The Joker recalled, vaguely, the father's panting surrender, flinging his hands high, and sobbing.
With such waterworks, maybe it would have been better if the Joker really had intended on killing their kid. Maybe then, this hysteria would be worth it.
"Send that bastard to hell for what he did to my little girl!"
The father's scream was a swell of sound, that roared through the silence and then echoed through his skull.
The Joker slid his tongue from his mutilated mouth, allowed it to grace his teeth. The grin grew larger as he winked at the parents.
The judge pounded the gavel, demanded order, as the jury dissolved into disagreement. The emotional tension in the room had been humming as loud as an electric current. When the Joker grinned sadistically and blew them all a kiss, the fireworks began.
He remembered the searing hatred of that father's glare, as the jury forewoman stood solemnly, and read the verdict.
"We find the defendent guilty, your honor."
He cooed at their curses, winked and smirked. The witnesses and the good and proper citizens writhed and choked like a trapped ocean wave against the barricades.
"...sentenced to death..."
The finality of his sentence still lingered in his disjointed thoughts. They were going to kill him?
Whoopie. He grinned.
Bored. He was bored with the whole thing.
Eyes, glazed and glassy and rigidly fixed on the bright arch of sky outside the prison walls.
Breath, slithering and hitching in the brittle chuckle, as the shadows winked around his scars. Docily, the Joker allowed himself to be escorted back to his cell. Calm as a cow going to the meat factory. Or as resolute as a damned person going to hell.
The Joker mentally noted to ask for hotdogs. No point in wasting all that fire awaiting him.
Days crawled by, as he watched the swaths of sunlight gliding over concrete. Nights were spent in his little concrete cage, as he lay pondering the ceiling on the flimsy cot and the itchy blanket.
They fed him, watered him, allowed him his one hour of time to exercise in another cage. He had his little metal toilet and the chance to make his peace with God. Lawyers chattered at him, guards boredly shuffled him through his routines, delivered his food through the slot, and always, always watched him.
The Joker never thought he would see the day where he would actually get sick of having an audience. Doctors, do-gooders, social workers, head-shrinkers. All there, always wearing their white coats, and scribbling away their little notes and trying to figure out how in the hell he had wound up like this.
He entertained himself by concocting stories of tear-jerking quality. They drank it up, swallowed the lies eagerly. It made him sick at how easily manipulated the sheep truly were.
He wove the noose masterfully. Sometimes, he gave them sob stories of being beaten and worse as a defenseless child. Sometimes,
he would work up tears and trace his scars and apologize for becoming such a monster.
And sometimes, he would tell them the truth for his own amusement, and relish their flinches.
Fractured. He had been fractured. The scars...they arched over his flesh, bone deep, too far carved in his face to be removed.
At one time, in the murky inocence of his early years, he remembered putting a palm to a smooth cheek and thinking nothing of it. And now, even as those scars had become skin, he still couldn't stand to have his own hands over his face.
Flaunted and haunted. Did he wear them? Or were they like parasectic things, that laced over his skin and wove their poison to his core?
Those thoughts made him laugh. At one time, they made him cry. And now, they both felt eerily the same.
Normally, it would have taken years to finally kill him, were the Gotham legal system not so eager to see him off.
He was hated, he knew that. He expected no less, and did not trouble himself to give a damn.
But, the last day of his life arrived, far, far sooner than he liked.
The last morning of his life was gray. He hadn't glimpsed the sky in quite a while, but he heard the snatches of conversations from his keepers. The stench of rain over the streets. The ripple of thunder outside.\
He heard the solemn finality of well-polished shoes against the tile. The clack of heels, and the glass plated window on his door being slid open.
One of his court appointed lawyers, with a veneer of giving a damn, politely told him that the appeal had been lost.
The Joker snorted at the good news.
Mundane scrapes of keys against locks, of shuffling chains and nightsticks and guards barking orders. The sharp clang of the cage bars clacking open and shut like mouths.
The Joker heard the indifferent voice from the other side of the steel door, as the slot was opened, and breakfast was shoved through.
He grimaced at the mush, jabbed at it distastefully with his non-functional eating utensil. Gleefully, he overturned the tray and dumped the goo outside the door.
Time crawled, swirled, halted, and then raced. He stared at the empty walls, the metal cot, the shining toilet.
His head echoed with voices, but he didn't trouble himself to listen.
Something as monumental as his execution deserved far more fanfare than this quiet solitude,
in the tomblike cell.
Surely he should have more of an audience for his final show than that shimmering toilet or the walls. Surely...
He scowled, and he waited, boredly. As if he was being hindered from going to an appointment, rather than going to hell.
If they were expecting him to piss himself in panic... to hell with them, as well.
No. He planned on skipping to the death chamber, if the shackles would permit the movement. He planned on laughing, bright, and crazy and sickening until they strapped him down, and whatever they did finally killed him.
He stared at the discarded napkin from the uneaten meal, and wondered if he should shred it for confetti. Palming it, he wadded it it, mouth quirking at the memory of shredding things far more difficult.
The Joker flung the wadded remains high, and breathed, watching them flitter around the cell like snow.