Hello, everyone! So, as it says in the summary, this will be a Joker/OC story. I reckon that the first half will focus on Jack Napier, or how the Joker came to be, and the latter half will skip forward about ten years to focus on our Mr. J himself. I have a feeling that this is going to turn out to be quite long, so expect regular updates. Please leave a review letting me know your thoughts, and hopefully you'll find it to your liking!

DISCLAIMER: Nope, don't own anything.

1988

When Freya Miller was seven years old, the Napier family moved in across the street.

It was the most exciting thing to happen to her that summer, as well as one of the most unusual. The suburb, an area on the mainland with spacious lawns and large, sprawling houses with the pleasant name of Bridlewood Heights, used to be its own separate town before Gotham had swallowed it up during the economic boom of the seventies and claimed it as yet another district. Through the trees that lined the coast and across the bay, the city skyline stretched out in the distance, covered by an omnipresent layer of smog. The residents of Bridlewood, New Jersey, as it used to be called before its inception into the city, were mostly all aging baby boomers, too old to have children but too young to be sent to a nursing home. The vast majority of them had lived in the houses since they were built, and it was rare for anyone to move in or out. It was even rarer for them to have children.

As long as she could remember, Freya and her brother had been the only people under the age of thirty on the entire block. That was why a new neighbor was a momentous event.

It was a hot July day, the height of summer, and the air hung heavy over the neighborhood, stifling and oppressive. The cicadas buzzed loudly in the grass, and even the birds seemed too hot to sing. Freya had been sent outside by her mother, who had a headache and couldn't rest with her "incessant chatter", or so she called it. Freya had asked what "incessant" meant, but her mother had just gone up to her bedroom and shut the door.

Now she lay flat on her back in the tall grass in the front lawn, her hair spreading like a fan around her head as she tried to find shapes in the clouds drifting by. She thought she saw a unicorn in one, and became very excited until the cloud had broken apart and started looking more like a donkey. Now she was sure it had turned into a frog, and eagerly pointed up at the sky. "Ben! Look!" she called, but there was no answer from her brother, who had been sitting beside her just a moment ago, trying to catch cicadas.

Ben was ten to Freya's seven, and the more adventurous of the two. He was always attempting ridiculous dares, and often got in trouble at school. His so-called immaturity was the reason Freya wasn't allowed to go in the swimming pool without adult supervision—she had nearly drowned after he'd deliberately pushed her in when she was five. Freya had always held a grudge against him after that, though she was willing to let it go for several hours on days like today when she had no one else to play with.

When her brother didn't immediately answer, Freya pushed herself up onto her elbows, confused. He was nowhere to be seen. "Ben!" she yelled again, shaking the grass from her hair. "Where are you?"

"I'm over here, dummy!" she heard him say, faintly, but the cry came from above her.

Squinting against the harsh glare of the sun, Freya tilted her head up to see Ben perched on the topmost branch of the willow tree that hung over the street, sitting in it as calmly as if it was a chair. His legs dangled as he swung them over the edge, the branch creaking slightly with his weight.

Freya gasped. "Ben, you're not allowed to climb that tree!" she shrieked. "Daddy said not to!"

"But he's not here now!" Ben argued. He laughed, and the motion sent him tilting slightly to the side. His face froze in fear for a moment before he quickly righted himself.

Freya scrambled to her feet, the clouds forgotten. "I'm going to tell!" she said stubbornly, planting her hands on her hips, but made no move to run back inside the house. She didn't want to upset her mother; besides, there was a part of her that was fascinated at what Ben had managed to do.

"Aw, come on! Don't be a tattletale!" her brother called down. His eyes took on a mischievous quality. "You're just jealous because you can't climb," he taunted.

"I can too!" Freya argued with all the determination and recklessness of a child. She ran over to the tree and hoisted herself up onto the first branch, maneuvering herself into a crouch. She wasn't more than five feet off the ground, but her legs began to tremble all the same. A moving van turned the corner and roared down the street, but Freya didn't pay it any attention. Her desire to prove herself increased as Ben laughed down at her, and her brow furrowed in concentration while she doggedly pulled herself up onto the second branch. This one was even thinner than the first, and Freya feared it might snap right in two.

The slam of a door from nearby startled her, and she spun around guiltily, thinking it was their mother. But after a moment she realized it was coming from the wrong direction, and instead of her mother's stern, lecturing voice, she heard the high-pitched, excited voice of a child.

Instead of jumping to the ground, Freya pulled the layer of dangling leaves in front of her aside, secure in her new hiding spot, and peeked through the crack. The white colonial-style house across the street, the one Freya vaguely remembered as having belonged to an old, funny-smelling woman with lots of cats, now had a moving van in in the driveway, the same one she had seen earlier. The front doors were thrown wide open, and big, burly men wearing hard hats and orange jumpsuits were carrying boxes inside. Freya's eyes widened; a new family must be moving in!

Ben was calling down to her again, probably wondering why she had stopped climbing the tree, but Freya's attention span was as quick as a butterfly's, and she was suddenly engrossed in this new, exciting development. She was wondering where the old lady had gone when a tall, blond man wearing a business suit strode out of the house, watching the men bringing the boxes inside. Freya wasn't close enough to see his face properly, but she could tell that he had a pointed chin and receding hairline: he looked like the men her father worked with—they were so boring; all they did was drink coffee and talk about business. Freya disliked him immediately.

Now a woman had climbed out of the van—she was tall, too, and slender, like the models Freya saw on television. She had blonde hair like the man, but with dark roots that hinted at a dye job. Freya saw diamond earrings sparkling in the light even at her distance, and she leaned forward, fascinated. She could already tell the woman was very beautiful. Her arm reached back into the car and pulled out someone else, but it wasn't immediately clear who it was: they were short, a child's height, but stooped over so much that they appeared younger than they were. The mysterious stranger wore a black shawl even in the scorching heat, draped over their head and shoulders so that it was impossible to tell what they really looked like. The woman glanced around furtively, as if making sure no one was watching, before she led the shawl-covered figure inside the house, supporting it as if it couldn't walk on its own.

Freya was now leaning so far forward that she was in danger of losing her balance. But she had heard a child's voice shouting…where was the child? Had it been the covered person? Maybe she could make new friends…

But her question was answered a second later when the van doors opened yet again and a boy her age appeared, lugging a heavy backpack behind him. He wore a pair of ripped, torn jeans and a checkered shirt pushed up to his elbows that was far too big for him; Freya thought she saw bruises on his arms. His hair was blond, curly, and very messy, as if he'd constantly been dragging his fingers through it. Unlike the woman, he didn't rush up to the house; instead, he stayed in one spot, examining his new surroundings carefully.

By now, Freya was too excited to contain herself. "Hey!" she called, and hopped down from the branch onto the ground. The boy's head snapped around in her direction, and Freya dashed madly across the street, not looking both ways to check for traffic.

She stopped in front of him, face flushed from the heat and smiling as widely as she could. Up close, she could see that not only were his arms covered with bruises, there was one at the base of his throat, a ghastly purple color. He quickly pulled down his sleeves when he caught her staring. He had bright brown eyes that were narrowed suspiciously at her, and he was taller than she'd thought. But Freya didn't let any of that deter her. "Hi," she said enthusiastically. "I'm Freya Miller. What's your name? I live in that house—" She jerked her thumb back in the general direction. "I'm seven and three-quarters. How old are you? Is your family living here now? Do you know what happened to—"

"My name is Jack," he interrupted, and his gaze turned from suspicious to searching. "I just turned eight." Freya couldn't help but wonder if he was lying; there was something about his eyes that looked much older, even older than Ben.

"Do you have a last name?" Freya asked eagerly, desperate to begin their friendship. "Everyone has a last name."

The boy's lips twitched upward as if he wanted to laugh, but his eyes stayed blank. "Napier," he said after a long moment.

Freya was nearly dancing from foot to foot with joy. "So can we be friends now, Jack?" she asked happily. The blond man was watching them from the doorstep, his mouth set in a thin, hard line, but she barely noticed. "I'll show you our pool and maybe we can go swimming when Daddy gets home—"

"No," Jack mumbled. He looked away from her, down at the ground, and scuffed a rock with his shoe.

Freya's face fell; she had never been rejected so quickly or so matter-of-factly. "Why not?" she whined. "Am I too ugly? Ben says I am, but—"

"I can't," Jack said shortly, but he sounded as if he was reciting a line that had been fed to him a hundred times before. "I mean, I don't want to."

Before Freya could respond, the man on the doorstep was suddenly standing above them, his hand on Jack's shoulder. Jack flinched away from him, his head still bowed. "Come inside now, Jack," the man said. He didn't bother to acknowledge Freya aside from a cold stare—his eyes were even darker and more piercing than Jack's—before leading his son up the driveway and into the house.

Freya sniffled, her eyes stinging. She hated that she was crying, and she hated Jack for making her cry. "Fine!" she screamed up at the house as loudly as she could. "I don't want to be your friend, either!"

A hand clamped over her mouth from behind, and Ben, who'd climbed down from the tree as soon as he'd seen her speaking to Jack, roughly dragged her backward, kicking and screaming. "Shut up!" he hissed in her ear. "What is wrong with you?"

Freya was by now sobbing so hysterically there was no calming her. Ben shook his head in disgust, and muttering something about girls, glanced up at the house one more time. A face had appeared in one of the windows at the sound of Freya's shrieks—a young girl's face, with blond hair shorn to her ears and large eyes. She stared down at them without moving or blinking, and with a jolt of terror that Ben didn't even want to admit to himself that he felt, he thought for a split second that she was a ghost.

Grabbing Freya's hand, he pulled her back across the street, through the front lawn, and back inside their own house, slamming the door behind them. When his heart had slowed, he turned around and lifted the curtain from the window.

The girl was gone.

Shuddering, Ben ran off to play with his video games and left Freya to the mercy of their mother, pushing the unease out of his mind.

That was the first time Freya saw Jack Napier.

At dinner that night, the subject of their new neighbors was brought up once again. Nicholas, the patriarch of the family, was a prominent banker at Wayne Enterprises, and as such was rarely home. Usually Ben and Freya were delighted at the chance to spend time with their father, but tonight both of them were unusually silent. Ben pushed his peas around his plate with his fork, one hand supporting his head, and Freya was swirling her mashed potatoes into her ketchup, but she didn't seem to care.

"So," Nicholas announced, surveying both of his children with detached affection, "I'm surprised neither of you have mentioned the new family that just moved in across the street."

"I hate them," Freya declared, glaring down at her plate. Nicholas glanced questioningly at his wife, Patricia, but she just raised her eyebrows as if to say, What can we do about her?

"What happened to Mrs Jones?" Ben mumbled. "I liked her. She would bring me lemonade and cookies whenever she saw me." He didn't mention that her house had also been ghost-free.

"Mrs Jones could no longer take care of herself and was sent to a special home last month," Patricia, the neighborhood gossip, said after she'd finished scolding Freya for playing with her food. "The Napiers bought the house right away."

"I was talking to George Napier when I got home," Nicholas added. "He has a son Freya's age, named Jack, but George asks that neither of you play with him. Apparently the family likes to keep to themselves." He snorted. "I suppose they think we're not good enough. Just because George is a professor at the university…" Shaking his head, he pushed away his plate and stood up.

"I heard that his wife used to be a model," Patricia murmured. She no longer looked tired; her eyes were sparkling with the thrill of gossiping. "She gave it all up to have children."

Nicholas paused on his way out of the dining-room, stopping to look back at her. "Children? George only mentioned Jack. I was under the impression they only had one."

Patricia smiled. She couldn't wait to tell the other women in the neighborhood the knowledge that she'd heard through the grapevine weeks ago. "They have a nine-year-old-daughter too—Gladys told me that there's something not quite right with her. She was injured as a baby and has permanent brain damage. The Napiers don't like to talk about her."

Ben remembered the apparition he had seen in the front window, and shuddered. To cover up his fear, he kicked Freya under the table. She began to howl, and while Nicholas and Patricia were distracted he ran out of the room, stopping to peer through the front curtains in the living-room. Across the street, the moving van had left, and now the house looked perfectly peaceful again without even a light visible in any of the windows.

As if no one was living there at all.