Title: The Magic Trick

Chapter I: About A Lady

Summary: "Sometimes I look at you," Jackson said softly, cradling her face with just the tips of his fingers on both hands. "Sometimes I look at you, and I think—how easy it would be to just snap your neck." The drunken father, the butchered mother. The gambling troubles, the pretty and assaulted wife. It's always about a lady… "Do you wanna know how I got these scars?" An in-depth character sketch, complete with romantic interlude. 

A/N: A slow start (especially for those of you looking for romance)…please bear with me! Also, I realize some things may not be entirely accurate (I have no understanding of chemical combustion/pyrotechnics whatsoever, and I realize that when the Joker's character was younger, the world of academia was much different than it is now)…also, I'm used to just doing one-shots now. Wanted this to be one too…I think the chapters breaks it up funny…but it started to get long and I wasn't even where I wanted to be yet. Anyway—this is just for fun. Don't be mean! 

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"Let her go!"

In spite of the mask and the make-up, the Joker could read the desperation in the Batman's eyes, could taste it. He licked his lips and grinned to himself, chuckling, almost giggling.

"Poor choice of words," he teased lightly, flexing his fingers on her skin—and he released her.

The Batman plunged after her recklessly, diving head-first from the window in the most…unexpected…maneuver that the Joker had seen yet. Bemused, he stared briefly after the Bat and into the darkness, his mind working in overdrive, a hundred directions at once.

His tongue darted out, wetting his upper lip.

"It's always about a lady," he told his audience theatrically, and gestured to his thugs.

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"College?" Donald Napier sneered, his lips twisting like the word had a foul taste. "What the hell do you wanna go to college for, boy?"

Jackson scowled into his practice test-booklet, ignoring his father. Strands of blond-brown hair, clean and smooth but dulled from years of being washed with cheap soap instead of shampoo, hung over his narrow face.

"Well?" the man insisted, glowering over the kid. He pounded his fist onto the kitchen table, a smidge to the left of the boy's open hand—almost crushing the fragile, bird-like bones there. "Well?" he shouted.

Jackson finally looked up, eyeing his father dispassionately. "Go have another beer, Don," he said coldly.

That was it.

In spite of his intoxication—or perhaps because of it—Don found his strength increased tenfold at this snide remark. Who was this boy—this skinny-necked disappointment, this foul little brat—to call his own father out? To make these sarcastic comments, to mock him?

His arms were slabs of fat and muscle, and it took nothing for him to knock the wiry kid out of his chair and against the wall. The thin plaster cracked. The boy wheezed briefly, then cast a smirk up at his father.

Donald Napier was incensed. "Well, Jack? Well, Jacko?" He loomed. Without warning his fist slammed into the drywall next to Jackson's head. White dust flew everywhere, stuck in his sweat and the creases of his face. But Jackson was used to these outbursts; he no longer even flinched. He'd gotten used to them back in middle school, back before—

—before his mother died, Lydia, Lydia with the shining hair, who smelt like vanilla and almond-cream, who cuddled him in her arms back when everything was safe and Donald was "dad" and no matter how crummy things got there was never any yelling or alcohol or stale sweat—Mama with her guts torn out in the alley and Dad crying—

"You think—what? You think what, boyo? You don't need no college. What's wrong with a trade school, huh? Huh, Jack? Gotta get a fancy degree?"

Jackson listened to the tirade, looking bored and scornful all at once. Furious, Donald Napier pulled back his meaty arm and dealt a heavy backhand across the boy's face. For the hundredth time, Jackson's lip split against his teeth on the inside, his mouth burning. "You think you're better than your old man?" Donald bellowed. "You think you're high-class?"

Jackson's tongue flicked out to taste the blood on his lips. Coldly, then: "I know I am, Don."

It was amazing that the voice of a boy could do, when carefully honed under the right circumstances. For instance, in this case—delivered not with arrogance but simply with a calm certainty and a deep contempt, almost a growl—it made Donald's stomach turn over right inside his beer-gut. For a second, he was suddenly very afraid of his young son, with the burning brown eyes and the olive skin, the dull hair that was the same burnished color as his mother's.

Shakily, Donald drew back. "Think you're smart, huh, Jacko," he murmured, not a question but a pale and trembling statement that would have liked to sound vicious and mean, but only fell flat on the bitten apartment carpet like a mouse with its tail in a trap. "A regular joker, hey, kid." He turned, walking heavily back to the kitchen, his mind already filled with images of his dead wife. "Think you're better'n me. Think you're high-class." He pulled a beer limply from the fridge and fumbled with the cap. "You're not, and you're crazy if you think so. Just…fuckin' crazy."

Jackson Napier licked his bloody lip and sat back down at his books.

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"This is impressive, Jack, but I don't know how I can sanction this," his professor told him helplessly, staring at the equations in his hands. "How can I possibly give you faculty approval for a project that could take your head off?"

Jackson snorted. "I have it all figured," he said coolly—like the man was an idiot. "You've read it, you see how it works. It would be the perfect final project for this class." Show the idiot-jocks and alcoholics who was really boss. No matter how tough they thought they were, some of the labs got under all their skins: dangerous chemicals, highly flammable minerals. They didn't think they could control them; got all nervous and sweaty.

Well, Jackson Napier had seen real fear—he'd grown up with it—and he knew life was going to throw at you whatever the hell it wanted anyway. Why try to stop it? He liked to think his kinship with explosives came from the fact that he never really expected anything from them. He didn't try to control them. He did his equations and if he happened to be right, they rewarded him. If he didn't—well, it hadn't happened so far. He liked to think of the chemicals and minerals as minor gods of chaos. He was simply paying homage.

Professor Atkinsen did not look like he was going to relent anytime soon.

"Look," Jackson said suddenly, trying to sound reasonable, "we could just do this out on the football field. It's not going to cause any permanent damage out there—"

"And what if you get your face ripped off? What if you get hurt?"

Jackson winced slightly. His tongue flicked out to lick his upper lip—a bad habit now, after the years. He hated that he did it—it made him look weak. Maybe no-one else realized it, but it showed when he was nervous or cornered. He could almost taste the blood.

After all, simply shrugging and saying, Then it gets ripped off, would probably get him an appointment with the Director of Campus Counseling, which was not what he was looking for .

You're crazy—fuckin' crazy, Jacko, he heard Donald Napier say in the back of his mind. Crazy if you think you're getting' out of here, if you think you're high-class. You're nuts.

"I'm not," Jackson said aloud, without thinking.

Luckily, Doc Atkinsen seemed to think it was a response to his question. He sighed. "I know you're good at this stuff, Jack. I know you are. But I just can't sanction this as a demonstration done by a student. It's too dangerous." He sighed again. "Look, you've done so much work already, I hate to just disregard this. How about if you just save this to use as one of your three theoretical essays at the end of the semester? It's long, but I'll give you extra points for it."

"It's a class based on chemical combustion and basic pyrotechnics," Jackson said tonelessly. "What more do you want?"

Doc Atkinsen sighed. Jackson thought he was singularly responsible for the global increase of CO-2 emissions. "It's wonderful work, Jack. I mean, really wonderful. But that's just it—it's basic pyrotechnics. You learn foundational chemistry and mineral combustion. You set off some higher-end, more complicated rockets and stuff. You don't…put together firework shows or build bombs. You just kind of arrange things hypothetically, with people more professional than even me handling the dangerous stuff. Jack—"

But Jackson didn't change his expression—not at all. Every feature was set in stone. He simply took the papers, formulas, and diagrams from Atkinsen's hand and walked out the door.

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When campus closed for the winter and Jackson went home for his first holiday break—simply because there was nowhere else to go—his father split his chin open.

It was a standard procedure. Donald was drunk. He spent the majority of his stupor lost in sweet memories—Lydia, Lydia, your burnished-gold hair; Lydia, like sweet almonds. Lydia breast-feeding their boy, smiling, pulling quarters out of the kid's ears—but Jackson knew that when Donald returned to reality, it would be that much worse. It was like losing his sweet wife all over again.

"I killed her!" Donald howled, his voice rotting with phlegm and tobacco. "I practically gutted her myself! ...Sweet, sweet Lydia…" a tear-stained, sweat-stained, sloppy mess, he collapsed on the floor.

"Get up, Don," Jackson said in disgust from his place at the table, pouring over his books. He didn't even afford his father a look.

Which was a shame, because a glance might have saved him the first of the scars on his face. Donald lumbered up like a bear and ham-fisted the skinny kid right in the face, knocking him out of the chair and breaking it in the process, to boot. "Do you think I'm a murderer, boy?" he screamed. Booze-scented spit flew across Jackson's face, slapping him wetly. Blood poured down his chin. "Do you think I'm a murderer?"

Jackson realized for the first time that in the last five months—since August, when he'd started attending the university on scholarship—he'd almost forgotten what a split lip felt like. He licked at the blood and ended up eventually driving himself to the hospital to have it stitched. It hurt like hell, of course. Blood flows fast through the lips, he found.

The split had been messy—not clean at all—and when Jackson got back to school to start his second semester, it was with black Frankenstein-stitching across his chin horizontally, and vertically up to his lip.

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"What is that from?"

They all wanted to know. Jackson tried to smirk but found it painful. He licked his lips instead, softening them so they wouldn't pull so much at the stitches.

"Bar fight," he told one kid.

"Rapist I took down in an alleyway," he said to a cute girl.

"Evil twin," he said to a professor, and then—

"Beat up some asshole who opened his stupid mouth too many times," he sneered to Dave Monroe, who looked nervous for the first time in his last few months of harassing Jackson.

Dave Monroe liked to pick fights. Jackson guessed it was because he was a loner who got good grades and looked scary—and scary he did look, he'd decided one day while gazing in the dorm-room mirror. Good-looking scary, maybe—he had good bone structure and nice hair now that he'd gotten some real shampoo—hair like Mama's—and good eyes. But there was an intensity about him, maybe something feral, that said: I don't lay down for anyone. I make my own way. Bring your worst—and I'll tear you apart.

Girls liked him, he thought. Or they liked the look of him—dangerous, skinny but well-muscled, a bad boy. The scar helped. But they were too scared to try anything with him, and hell if he cared. Sometimes he wondered about what it would be like to fuck a girl—or to love one—but fuck-all if he wanted to get caught up in something like that. Women were nothing but trouble, and he firmly believed that.

A belief which he voiced—perhaps unintelligently—in his Women's Studies class one day. Although, in retrospect, he couldn't say if it had been a stupid move on his part, or a gleeful if subconscious effort to stir up a little trouble.

Sometimes he liked to do that, just to see where it went.

"It's not that I don't like the ladies, or think they're inherently evil," he said after a comment garnered angry protests from the women around him. "It's just that they cause trouble."

No-one could tell if his comment was serious or mocking.

"They can't help it—they don't do anything wrong. Not really. The problem is simply that men go stupid over them. Take Helen of Troy, for instance. Or the Sirens. Or any one of a number of historical—"

"Mythological," a blond girl with glasses corrected.

"—characters in our past." He turned to the girl who'd interrupted him. "Mythological—okay, maybe some of them. But still—doesn't that say something about our human mindset?"

"That guys are pigs," someone from behind him snapped.

"Circe—another great example, turning men into swine." He smirked. The stitches pulled painfully. "The fact of the matter is women are powerful. They're catalysts. Men have fallen into ruin for the love of a woman."

"As women have fallen for men," a curly-haired brunette reminded him.

"Fair enough," he conceded. "Maybe it's just my personal experiences, then," he added, thinking of his father—Oh Lydia how could I have how could I have how could I have murdered you sweet Lydia—"but I have seen a number of decent men go crazy over the loss or heartache caused by loving a woman. Great tragedy, heartache, loss, rage—deep down, it's always about a lady."

And at that point, he'd set back and let them argue without saying another word. The topic twisted away from prejudice against women and into matters of active and passive love and objectification. He liked to watch the little debates he set in motion morph into different conversations or, conversely, out-and-out arguments.

It was later that a vaguely familiar-looking girl approached him while he ate his sandwich in the courtyard. It was indoors, with a glass ceiling, and a great way to enjoy the outdoors in February, but no-one else was there. People tended to stay away from the dangerous boy who threatened Dave Monroe and had scars on his face and started deliberate arguments any time he could, just to see the effects.

"Why so serious?" the brunette asked lightly, coming over and sitting at the little table across from him.

He lifted his head and stared, too startled to hide his surprise initially. Well, this was a first.

Jackson swallowed his bite of sandwich—pastrami on rye. "I don't have anything to laugh about," he said icily. "Although, now that you're here…"

She startled him with a laugh—"Ouch, cold"—and offered her hand across the table. "I'm Evelyn Harris. Friends call me Evie."

He stared at her hand like it was diseased. "That's nice…Evelyn."

She laughed again—as though he were amusing!—and took her hand back. "So—you really believe all that stuff you said in Women's Studies?"

Ah. That's where she was from. As women have fallen for men, she'd said.

He shrugged. "Yeah, probably."

She wrinkled her nose. Jackson thought she looked like a moron, or a baby pig. "'Probably?'" she repeated.

He shrugged again and turned his attention back to his sandwich. My dad fell apart when my mom died, he thought about saying. He hates everything. He destroys everything he touches. Yeah, I believe what I said.

Evelyn Harris dropped it though. "Why are you even in that class? No offense, but you don't seem the 'Women's Studies' type."

He stared down at his sandwich, very obviously willing her away. "I like to see what makes people tick. It's a good class to do that in."

She smiled. "Fair enough. So, since I gather you won't be making the introduction yourself—Jackson Napier, right?"

He huffed through his nose. "Jack," he ground out.

She smiled. "I like Jackson better," she said lightly. "Besides, if you're going to call me Evelyn…"

He scowled.

"So along with probably believing everything you were talking about in Women's Studies—what's the deal with the scar?" she asked with a slight smile, changing the subject before he could open his mouth to tell her to fuck off. "It's a big mystery, Jackson. You're a big mystery. I've heard a hundred things—that you single-handedly busted a drug deal. That you saved some girl from getting raped. That you went ahead with that project Atkinsen rejected and got chopped up in the process. What's the real story?"

Jackson slowly put down the rest of his sandwich suddenly no longer hungry. He stared at the girl, who was very obviously not leaving. He didn't know whether to be pissed off, friendly, or to hit on her.

"I like my past to be multiple choice," he said at last, half-irritated, half-amused. "That way I can pick any story I want." He thought of Donald breaking open his chin over the holidays—best gift ever—or the time when the old man had deliberately stepped all his weight on the boy's hand and broken a dozen of the tiny bones there. No—those were not the stories he would chose to tell. He couldn't see how they would benefit him.

Evelyn grinned though—liking his answer, he guessed. He noticed that she had pretty teeth—white, straight even. Years of dental work, he guessed. Probably expensive. He thought of his own crooked teeth, which hadn't seen a professional cleaning since before his mother died. Even when money was tight, she would always scrimp and save to make sure he got his dental check-ups, his school-clothes, his shots. A little money set aside when possible for his college-fund—You're crazy, thinking you're high-class! What do you need college for? Even when they were sleeping on the floor in a cold apartment with no furniture, she wanted everything right for him in the long-term. She was careful like that.

"You're starting to like me, Jackson Napier," she predicted, a kilowatt smile on her face.

"I wouldn't bet on it," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching against his better nature.

She just nodded knowingly, that grin still on her face. He noticed her hair was bouncy and shiny and dark—curly ringlets, with pretty red-gold tints. "Oh, I'd make that bet," she responded, wrinkling her nose again and winking before she walked away.

Piglet, Jackson thought, a little derisively. It still wasn't cute, but maybe it wasn't so bad as he'd first thought.

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"He's not the Batman," the Joker grinned, staring at the TV. "But my, this does liven things up a bit, doesn't it?"

It was too theatrical to be a real confession. And too controlled. Sure, the Batman was a mess of control, but the Joker was pretty damn sure if Dent had been the one to leap out the window after his lady, he would still be sporting some sort of emotional chip on his shoulder over the near-death of his beloved. at the time, it had seemed like it had to be Dent—now the Joker knew with everything in him that it wasn't.

He understood people better than that.

Besides, the jawline was all wrong, and the Joker just couldn't see Dent sporting thick black eye-makeup like the Bat did.

But they key was the lady—he was sure of it. Maybe there was some way—

He looked at the goon on his left—Larry or Bob or Dick or something stupid like that. The man was big, ham-fisted—reminded him of his pops. He could smell the stale sweat and booze.

His eye twitched. It was hard to keep up when his brain was moving so fast, sometimes.

"I'm thinking car chases, Larry," he said to the goon. "Definitely some car chases tonight. A semi, maybe. Something amusing." He grinned. "Big guns, but we know where to find those, don't we, Chuck?"

The goon looked around him, confused, before realizing that though the Joker had switched names, the clown was still referring to him."Uh—yes, sir," the goon—whose real name was Mason—agreed.

"Also, oil drums," the Joker said, rubbing his hands together. He liked the sound of the leather on leather and rubbed them faster before flicking his tongue to his lip. "Lots of those. I can rig up something quick. And..the girl. We'll need the lady obviously. I'm not quite sure for what yet."

"Uh, sure, boss," Mason repeated. "By—by when, sir?"

The Joker looked at him like he was an idiot, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows incredulously. "Edward, Edward, Edward. By tonight, you twat."

Mason gulped. "Tonight?"

The Joker slung an arm around him and started walking him toward the door. "We're gonna use Harvey Dent to draw the Bat out," he said slowly, as though talking to a child.

Mason glanced nervously at the Joker. The man was a genius with a vision that Mason could never quite see clearly ahead of time.

"You got a plan, boss?"

The Joker snorted."Don't be ridiculous," he snapped, throwing the man out into the next room where the rest of the thugs and former inmates had been lounging. Now they were staring incredulously. "Of course I don't have a plan. We'll just—" he made an airy gesture with both hands "—see where it goes."

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