**NOTE: Revamp of these chapters! I'm going through and editing what I did more than a year ago, the better for your reading pleasure!**

Hey guys! So this is my first attempt at a Joker fan fiction... I started it the night after seeing the movie because I thought the idea was so weird and cool.

To explain: the OC is a girl in our world, not a comic book one, but at some point or another the two universes, that of DC and that of reality, collide. In the comic books, the Joker was the only character who seemed to know that there was a world beyond the pages, so I decided to use that to write this.

That being said, this is DEFINITELY an attempt at Heath Ledger's Joker. He is the only man who ever did real justice to the character... Nicholson was great but Heath... Heath revolutionized it.

I know probably everyone says this, but this was really inspired by a dream... so it can get kind of surreal.

Please PLEASE review! Reviews get me through the night. Anything would be helpful, ESPECIALLY clues as to where I'm going wrong with the Joker's character. That's something I'm REALLY struggling with. So anything would be awesome. Thanks! Enjoy!

Funny, how trying to fight it just made it harder. Or more complicated.

Weirder.

Funnier.

Definitely funnier.

But fighting the inevitable was a waste of time, no matter how much you wanted to keep yourself intact. No matter how hard it was to be ripped apart.

Hard.

Or funny.

That wasn't to say it was all bad. Not bad at all, really.

They'd had their share of laughs (oh had they!) and they had cried. At least, she had cried. She wasn't so sure about him.

They always said the world saw him laugh but only she'd seen him cry. Well… not her. A different her. A harlequin. Or a Harley Quinn. But Harley had never arrived for the opening act, so the show went on without her. And now there was only one her for him and she had seen him cry.

Or had she? Sometimes tears turned out to be laughter.

You can't spell slaughter without laughter.

Looking back now, it all seemed so insignificant. She was playing a game, an innocent game. Not a Game-game. A literal game. An Alternate Reality Game, actually. On the internet.

You know; you go to sites, find fake phone numbers, watch phony news footage claiming to be real live videos of the goings on in a fictional town, call the numbers, hear the voices of the actors as they say things their characters would… It was all very thrilling at the time.

She had given her number to every site she could find that had to do with the movie. It was coming out soon. She was thrilled for its release and hoped every day that she would be one of the millions of numbers picked to perhaps receive a real call from a character. How cool would that have been?

Imagine her joy when she received such a call.

She was a young thing then, only eighteen, just out of her senior of high school. Too young for him, but who was counting anything but money those days?

The phone call came in the middle of the afternoon, while she was lying on her bed, wasting the day away.

She answered the unknown number with a reserved, "Hello?"

Imagine, please, her shock and awe when that voice, a voice she'd grow to know very well, answered on the other end.

"Jessica Anderson? This is the Joker." It, the voice, paused and she waited for the rest. "This is Jessica, right?"

He paused again and she realized she was meant to respond! This meant the call wasn't automated, as they had been before.

"Yes…"

"Hi there." His tone was almost conversational. There was—there always was—a slight bitterness to it, covered by the ever present sound of laughter in his throat. It wasn't necessarily pleasant, not a sexy voice, higher pitched and throaty as it was, but she immediately liked it.

"I assume you know who I am."

Jessica made a noise of acquiescence to this immediately. He had said he was the Joker. Was she really speaking to the actor who played him? Probably not. An imitator at most. But this was official, ARG stuff! She was getting called!

"How… are you?"

She almost laughed at that one. This was weird, but certainly cool.

"I'm fine. And you?"

A noise, caught and stretched brutally somewhere between a guffaw and a giggle, came through the earpiece, as though she had delighted him.

"Fine, I'm just fine," the Joker's voice said. "See, I'm just calling to let you know that I've chosen you as one of my Lucky Twenty… My own little group to personally serve as my new assistants, helping me spread… uh… chaos further than my meager reaches here in Gotham. Assuming you accept. D'you accept?"

"Of course!" Her enthusiasm was insurmountable. Part of the Lucky Twenty, now that sounded promising. Of course, she didn't believe the "twenty" part for a moment. The game was huge and popular. Twenty? More like hundreds. Still, she was being asked to join for real and she was not going to let that go.

Funny how not knowing all the facts like that can get you in trouble, huh?

"Great," the Joker said, a little dryly. This voice actor was really good, she thought. Very villainous. "I'll be asking you to do just one or two tiny favors for me, up until the eighteenth of next month. Sound good?"

"Yeah!"

"Good…" His tone was neither impressed, nor pleased. If anything, he was sardonic. She thrilled. This voice actor was really, really good. "We'll be in touch then. You'll hear from me very soon. Take care, Jessica Anderson."

And with a click, the line was dead.

Jessica lay back on her bed and screamed into a pillow.

It wasn't how he had promised it would be. It wasn't how anyone had said. Letting those dreams go was probably the hardest part.

For a while she was confused but excited.

No one knew anything about the Lucky Twenty. She searched the internet for a mention of that name, but nothing having to do with the DC universe came up, much less the Joker. Finally, after going on a message board, she got in touch with a man who called himself Billy and claimed he had received a similar phone call, but besides her had met no one else who knew a thing about it.

The creepiest thing about Billy's predicament was that he hadn't even been playing the ARG. He hadn't given his number to anyone, but the Joker had called him all the same; knew his name and where he lived. She thought it might be a trick, that they lived near each other and someone who knew them was messing with the both of them. Upon bringing this theory up, however, she discovered that Billy lived in Maine, across the country. At least, he said he did.

You could never tell with a faceless personality you had met on the internet.

Turned out, Billy did live in Maine and he never lied to her. The phone call from the Joker was not a trick.

Funny, how far that man was capable of taking a joke.

All the same, Jessica wanted to play the game. The thought of giving it up was torturous. If it got too intense, too scary, she could simply stop. She had the number of the first caller saved to her cell and if she ever so desired, she could simply not pick up when he called. Or write to the people who regulated the game that she was dropping out and to cease contacting her at all.

That was the worst case scenario. She thought it wouldn't get that far.

She knew it wouldn't get that far.

Always wanting to play the game, never wanting to miss out.

That could get you into trouble, too.

Funny, huh?

Hope you liked the first installment. A lot more to come. RATE AND REVIEW, S'IL VOUS PLAIT! Thanks.