Chapter Text
Arkham, in general, was not as bad a place as he had initially thought. The building was mostly either a depressing gray, hopeless color, or a blinding, hospital-like white. The bright lighting in some rooms sometimes gave him a sharp headache, and the ward he was placed in resembled an animal box in an animal shelter. But overall, Arkham was not so bad.
After all, the psychiatric clinic was not much different from how he had lived before. Formally, there were even some "advantages" here. Fortunately or unfortunately, the patients were forced to eat several meals regularly, so his anorexia encountered a weak and conditional, but nevertheless, obstacle. There was no need to think about medicine, since they were given out free of charge here - and in much larger quantities than what Arthur was used to seeing before.
Being in Arkham was a road to nowhere, he could understand that. But what difference did it make, after all? He had nothing left to go back to. No one, nothing. Arthur knew that if he ever saw the outside world without the supervision of nurses again, he would probably just kill himself anyway.
The only thing that really depressed him were the mandatory sessions with the psychiatrist and the forced group activities. The psychiatrist, a woman who was now responsible for conducting corrective talks with him for an hour twice a week, might have seemed indirectly friendly, but she listened to him no better than the doctor he had seen when he was free. Arthur hated these conversations with all his heart and tried not to make any effort, so they mostly sat in silence, interrupted only by her mundane, too mundane questions and attempts to find out at least something from him.
But there was still some benefit from her. Arthur quickly realized that while food and medicine were ostensibly infinite resources in this place (though their quality was another matter), cigarettes, conversely, were not. Formally, they were not allowed to smoke at all. For a person who had suppressed stress and nervous breakdowns all his life with the help of tobacco, this turned out to be a real nightmare. The dull doctor conducting those sessions would allow him a few cigarettes per visit. But even this couldn't last forever, especially considering that Arthur was barely engaging with her.
Group sessions, well… that was different. He just didn't like being around people who seemed completely lost, insane, just as deranged as Arthur suspected he himself was. Some were completely unaware of where they were, others had already reached a terminal vegetative state. There was nothing socializing or fun about those gatherings in the common room every day after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.Not infrequently, he would have bouts of his own - fits of that stifling laughter - whenever some schizophrenic would start raving a little too close to him. Following his laughter, the other patients around him would be set off as well. The wardens seemed either unaware or didn't really care about the condition that was causing him to have these fits. He no longer had his medical card, and his doctor wasn't around 24/7 to remind them that his laughter was an uncontrollable reaction. So naturally, for disturbing the peace and spreading hysteria among the other patients, Arthur would get a beating, and then, thoroughly thrashed, he would be sent to solitary confinement, sometimes remaining there until the end of the day without food or sedatives.
No one in the room (except the staff, of course) seemed to have any idea who this new, thin young man was who had just suddenly appeared among them one late morning. None of the patients, of course, were allowed to watch the news. In fact, if they were allowed to watch anything on TV in the room that served as the "living room" or common room for leisure, it was usually children's shows or old, black and white movies. Arthur missed the comedy shows, almost missed the Murray's show. He wondered if someone new would host it now that the Joker... Arthur had killed Murray... when, exactly, was that again? A few days, weeks ago? A month?
No one knew who he was, and Arthur himself did not know if he was anyone at all. He found himself exactly where he had been all his life before. His moment of fame, so short-lived and illusory, had already passed. No bright colors, no makeup, no audience.
Time lost its weight. Feelings, it seemed, were also losing their saturation. If at the beginning of his stay in Arkham Arthur felt a wide range of emotions - anxiety, anger, pain, disappointment, then over time even such dominant emotions began to simply wash out of his body. Washed out by the drugs that forced them to take here, all of them. Some - a little more, some - a little less. His reactions slowed down. His limbs became more and more sluggish. His dreams were an erratic, disjointed mess of nightmares, and when he woke in the middle of the night to someone screaming at the end, or the beginning of the corridor, or through the wall, despite the weakness in his body, his heart was pounding wildly in his chest, threatening to explode.
Arkham resembled a distorted, perfected in absolute despair version of his life with Penny, his childhood, which he did not remember. It had erased the remnants of his personality, and encroached on the rest of his sanity that still remained. But, overall, Arkham was not such a bad place...
****
The month he had spent there had seemed like an eternity to him. And then time had suddenly regained its weight, had become material. It just happened, one day.
Usually Arthur was mostly indifferent to the other patients around him. If these people were not harming him, then such coexistence was already considered quite acceptable. He probably wouldn't have paid any attention to him this time either, if what had happened hadn't happened.
Usually the other patients didn't attach any importance to his existence either. But not so long ago, a new one had been transferred to their ward. Arthur didn't remember his name, but this one - a guy no more than 20 years old - noticed him. Perhaps it was his particularly quiet and withdrawn behavior that was the main reason, or perhaps the fact that out of more than 90% of those present, Arthur was the thinnest and weakest person. Maybe he was just unlucky, that's all. That guy - Bill, or maybe Bradley - in addition to having a dissociative personality disorder, also had problems with outbursts of irrational anger and ended up in Arkham later after he beat his own sister to death. Maybe Arthur had the misfortune of looking like her. Or maybe, and this is more likely, John or Joseph simply didn't like him at first sight.
Either way, when Arthur refused to lend him any tobacco - which, it should be noted, he didn't even have, having been deprived of even his cigarettes that week - this Steve or Stanley caught him with an elbow to the face, catching him off guard as he was leaving the communal showers at the start of the morning shift. The blow itself wasn't so bad; the impact of his skull against the cold, grimy tile was worse. The laughter that tore from his throat at that moment boded no good, for the boy, of course, didn't just take it as a taunt, but as a clear sign that Arthur had been lying.
"If you're so damn popular, clown, then why the hell don't you have some damn tobacco, huh? You think I’m some kind of a fucking idiot?"
The mention of the clown sent him into a fresh wave of laughter, more painful this time. He didn't want to recall. Arthur didn't want to remember - not like this.
What began as a chance encounter escalated into a habit within just a few days. The guards, of course, tried to pull the attacker away a couple of times, but Arthur’s laughter usually spoiled everything; so instead of protection, he received the same dose of punishment as his aggressor - if the latter even received any at all.
Then, on the fifth day of what was threatening to become a routine, that happened.
It was dinner, and Arthur was lazily stirring the mixture that had been poured onto his plate in a rather pathetic attempt to imitate soup. Either he thought it was, or the food here was getting worse and worse. Maybe it was a lack of funding - that's what he thought he heard, overhearing the kitchen staff talking while he waited his turn. Lack of funding, funding for medicine and hospitals had been cut. Well, of course. Whatever it was, the spoon stirred the cooling thing as if it were being used not on soup but on a month-old canned food, all lumpy, and...
Someone pushed him, so hard and suddenly that Arthur literally flew off his seat, along with his chair - under the feet of another patient who happened to be walking by. Already on the floor, hearing the clatter of his plate, he realized that what a moment before could have been his dinner ended up on the pants of the person he had run into. The patient's white uniform instantly darkens with green spots of the dirt. Maybe it was for the best - he would probably be sick if he had forced himself to eat this...
"Sorry! I didn't mean to, it's not..." Arthur begins, getting up on trembling hands, and the voice of the guy whose name he never remembered, in contrast to the force of his blow, already reaches his ears:
"What's the matter, dipshit? Mommy didn't teach you to sit up at the table?"
He hears his footsteps - the scuff of his shoes as he approaches, perhaps to kick him back down to the floor while the rest of the people in the room look anywhere but at them. At the far end of the ward, the guard only sighs in irritation, casting a glance at the trio - Arthur, the guy who pushed him, and the one he was pushed toward - before turning back to his conversation with another staff member. But nothing happens, so Arthur scrambles to his feet, glancing at them both like a hunted animal.
The patient he spilled his soup on must have been new too. Arthur didn't recognize him. The blond man, who looked almost his own age, wasn't even looking at him at the moment. His dark eyes were fixed on the other one, that one with the dissociative disorder, Michael or Miguel.
"Pull a stunt like that one more time, and they’ll be servin' your pretty face in that stew tomorrow instead of pig meat."
The guy flinches, clearly confused - he certainly didn't expect the anger to be directed at him instead of Arthur. Arthur, for his part, hadn't either. The calmness with which the stranger says it feels almost surreal for this place - people here either don't talk at all, like Arthur, or whisper, or shout. Well, they certainly don't give him the creeps. But this guy - he did.
The man makes a strange, clicking sound with his mouth and then lazily arches an eyebrow, as if to ask, 'Why am I still looking at your mug?
The guy gives Arthur a disbelieving look, then finally backs away, grimacing.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, he's just, erm... Thank you." Arthur wrings his hand awkwardly, looking from the receding figure to his new acquaintance. He hadn't noticed it at first, but he realized it now, holding his gaze on his face for a few focused seconds. The man was scarred. And as someone who had dealt with physical injuries for most of his life, he had to admit that it looked... bad. Striking, too. Long-healed, asymmetrical scars ran down either side of his mouth, giving the impression of a permanent smile, even if the man wasn't actually friendly or cheerful. That, along with his deep, pitch-black eyes, must have scared the other patient away.
The stranger is silent for a moment, narrowing his eyes. He looks at him, assessing him as if he were an object in a shop window - is it worth going inside to get it, or is this look enough to make him realize its uselessness? Arthur feels uneasy, almost nervous. He wants to walk away, but he can almost imagine that asshole's fist as soon as they are alone again, and he has no desire to hurry. Besides, something in the look in those dead eyes makes him stick to the spot - whether it's fear or curiosity.
"Don't stare," the man says finally, lowering his eyebrows in what could have been a moment of irritation, but the moment passes with lightning speed, and his face quickly relaxes to its original expression. "It’s messing with your focus and stops you from thinking clear. And, uh, it gets on my nerves."
Arthur bites his tongue, instantly averting his gaze. Eye contact had never been his strong suit (if he even had any), but with this man, he felt especially clumsy. "Right. Sorry, I didn't mean anything by that..."
"You apologize like every third word or what?" The blond snorts, a twitch tugging at the scarred corner of his mouth. His drawn-out smirk turns slightly crooked. "Relax. Trust me, you'd know if I was actually pissed. Christ, they've really got you hooked in this place, huh? You look like a goddamn vegetable."
Arthur doesn't really know what to say, and he certainly doesn't want to earn himself another "fan", so he chooses to remain silent - yet he doesn't quite dare to just walk away. It feels like the other man is almost expecting something from him. Arthur isn't used to people noticing him, let alone holding their attention on him for as long as this guy was doing.
"Word of advice: don't swallow every bit of that crap they give you, or you’ll end up a total space-case. Get what I'm sayin'?"
Arthur understood, partly. He himself had noticed the state he had slowly fallen into since he had been here. Probably because of the meds. That state was a constant fatigue and weakness in his body, which dictated a delay in reaction, and sometimes a complete lack of it. But was it so bad not to feel the weight of reality, which was once again crushing him with the heel of its shoe? Arthur would hesitate to give an exact answer. Forgetfulness, as he had heard somewhere once, is a generous gift.
"They make it... easier for me," he shrugs. "The doctors say I have issues with aggression." Something tugs at the corner of his own mouth from the second confession.
On his third day in Arkham, Arthur nearly kills one of the doctors with the heavier side of his handcuffs after she asks him about his mother.
"They don't give a damn about your aggression. They just have an issue with you." The stranger grimaces, licking his lips. "Don't take the pills, Arthur." He shoots him one last look - Arthur catches it, looking up just in time at the sound of his name, his brows knit in surprise—then he turns and walks away without another word.
"You know my name?" he asks, a beat too late, but the blond head vanishes into the crowd as quickly as it had appeared. Arthur isn't sure why it rattled him so much, but for the rest of the day, he finds himself reflexively scanning the faces around him for scars. He doesn't see him.
****
The hospital staff had gotten used to him taking everything they had given him over the past few months, but they still had to check to see if the patients had taken their medicine. Arthur had difficulty biting the pill, hiding the two halves under different sides of his lip, but even so it worked, although the taste was simply disgusting. He spat it out as soon as he was in the room, his mouth watering with bitterness.
Why had he taken his advice? And how did the man know him? As the Joker, Arthur had managed to become famous for a short time, yes, but as Arthur Fleck? No one cared about Arthur Fleck before or after the red suit and bright makeup. He never introduced himself, not even on Murray's show. So how would this stranger know his name?
He started skipping his medication, and he got into the rhythm pretty quickly, although coming off it was like a seasoned alcoholic trying to quit. There was probably a strong habituation effect, which wasn't surprising, considering the dosage he was taking. And as soon as the drugs in his body began to wear off, reality around him became even uglier than it had been before. It was as if Arthur had been in a semi-asleep state (which he partly was), and now he was suddenly waking up again. His body protested, his mind painfully beating against the flimsy lattice of his skull. There was no one to tell him about it - this state was like being chewed up and spit out. Gotham chewed him up and then spit him out. Or was it Arkham?
By the third day, Arthur began to waver. His hands were shaking, and he was nearly out of tobacco because that damn therapist had told him he’d likely get nothing at all if he didn't snap out of it and start cooperating. He was due in court soon, for Christ's sake - didn't he care about his own fate? Arthur truly did not care about his fate. Nothing held much meaning at the stage where he was currently stuck.
The scarred man appeared as unexpectedly as the first time, although he did it so casually that Arthur fell into a momentary stupor from his unusual familiarity. He didn't speak to him, not right away, just sitting next to him during joint therapy. That day, a really good movie was shown on the old TV screen for them, and most of the patients watched with keen interest. Arthur, actually, too - he loved movies, although he had never had the opportunity to visit a cinema in his life... But when the man with the scars sits down next to him, he instantly forgets about the film. Subconsciously, Arthur expects that the man is about to speak to him, but the blond remains unmoved, not even turning his head.
"Hey..." Arthur greets quietly, coughing. Nothing. He is not sure why - he does not even know him - but this lack of reaction stung him unpleasantly. He was used to the fact that people do not tend to notice him, of course he was used to it, but if they did notice, and then forgot about his existence again, then Arthur's disappointment doubled with noticeable bitterness. Apparently, the lack of blunting of emotions against the background of the lack of medical "treatment" also had certain consequences.
"I'm, uh... Arthur, remember? You told me to..." he looks around, wary of anyone overhearing his small confession, but the patients around him, of course, have no interest in his whispers. "You told me to, well, stop taking the medicine. And I stopped. But now everything is getting... like it's getting worse. I don't know, I don't feel well..." The man, as before, doesn't turn to him, but Arthur sees it - the scar on the side of his face that he can see twitches slightly, as if promising a smile. But perhaps his mouth has simply twitched. The healed cuts had a way of making him look like he was grinning, regardless of whether he was actually in the mood. More involuntarily than by choice, Arthur’s gaze lingers on him again, pinning itself there - the way eyes lose focus when one pleasantly "zone out" into the void. Only in this case, the void was a scarred patch of a stranger's face.
"I never promised you’d feel good." His steady, almost purring tone snaps Arthur out of his trance. The blond lifts a brow slightly, his eyes drifting toward him. In the cold hospital light, they look black under the heavy shadows of his eyelids. He’s pale - they all are here - but Arthur can’t help but notice that he looks significantly better than the rest. Better than Arthur himself. The stranger almost looks like a healthy man. If it weren't for those scars... "A clear head comes with a, eee, price. Especially in places like this, huh?" Now he was smiling. His tongue runs over his lower lip. "But you’re going to need it."
"Do you know me?" Arthur asks, whispering again, though his companion doesn't seem the least bit concerned about disturbing anyone. The woman in front of them glances back, but something in the blond’s gaze quickly convinces her to turn back around. People seem to have a tendency to feel... uneasy around him. Arthur only halfway shares that feeling. "We... we don't know each other, do we?"
"You don't know me," the man nods, his smile widening. His eyes are lazy, almost bored, yet their intensity is piercingly observant. "But, I... mm, I'd say I'm an admirer of your potential, Arthur."
He says his name in a slightly odd way, pressing the "T," but at this point only his psychiatrist has addressed him by name.
"What do you mean?" he asks, though he guesses. That hungry hole inside his mutilated soul easily detects any hint of recognition. He's been recognized. He doesn't know how, but this man has recognized him.
The man looks at him sideways, occasionally glancing back at the television. The boredom on his face matched the tics he occasionally performs - wiggling his fingers, tapping his foot a few times, shrugging his shoulders.
"Your little short-lived show caused quite a stir. People were losing their minds in the streets - it was one hell of a spectacle." The blond licks his lips, a movement that contrasts with the overall boredom of his posture. He’s brimming with interest, with thrill, as he stares ahead - but not at the TV, no. He's looking way past that old box.
Arthur remembers that night with a stabbing pain. His stomach pulls, like hunger, but food couldn't match that feeling. A sense of belonging, a sense of importance. He was everything, during that night he became everything. And then he was nothing.
"It doesn't matter anymore..." He shakes his head, looking down. "It's in the past. I have a trial coming up, and the doctor says..."
He should feel something about this - just something: maybe fear, maybe remorse. Arthur felt nothing. Death didn't scare him, because it was hard to be afraid of something you'd been subconsciously yearning for for a long time. In fact, sometimes it felt like he was already dead.
The scarred man snorts, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, let’s just break out then. No defendant, no trial." He says it so simply that for a moment Arthur gives a wry smile, feeling cheated. This man, like everyone else in his life, was probably just mocking him... But when several minutes of silence pass and the blond says nothing more, Arthur belatedly asks, a bit too loudly:
"Wait, you serious?"
"Fleck, shut your goddamn mouth. Now. Or you’ll spend the next few days in a padded box." The guard hisses at him, standing a little way off to the left of the group. Arthur wants to protest, glancing back at his strange companion several times, but the orderly’s gaze is fixed solely on him. In the end, he shuts his mouth just as quickly as he’d opened it.
By the end of the movie, he thinks about it, nervously scratching the skin near his nails, pondering it several times in a circle, and these simple three words awaken in him a childish delight. But Arthur was not stupid or retarded. Breaking out of Arkham might sound good in theory, but in practice, it feels almost a hundred percent unrealistic. It’s simply impossible, period. And yet...
Immediately after the movie, while the rest of the patients are leaving for their treatment rooms or wards, Arthur is taken away for another session with the psychiatrist, so he does not even have time to ask his name. The scarred man winks at him, then walks away, and Arthur nearly cranes his neck, looking back at him, as the same nurse leads him out into the direction of the now familiar office.
"Jesus, look ahead! See something interesting on the wall? Ahead of you, not behind you, damn it!"
****
The doctor tells him that the trial is supposed to start next week. She tells him about the lawyer he will be given by law, and something about his psychological state being taken into account, so it would be in his best interest to...
Arthur doesn't listen. He feels his body temperature rise. It must be his body noticing the lack of medication. He interrupts her, asking for a cigarette.
"Arthur, I can't help you if you keep avoiding help."
Arthur wants to say that she should go to hell, but instead he remains silent, picking at the wound on his arm.
"I'd say I'm an admirer of your potential, Arthur."
He is still not allowed to smoke.
****
Jack was almost bored.
His current stay in Arkham is a pure formality, the freedom of his own choice. He himself had chosen to enter this sick place, permeated with hopelessness and weakness, only because, among the rest of the ordinary madmen, he was kept here, by the condescension of fate.
Arthur Fleck had extraordinary potential as a card in his future game, even if he himself had no idea about it. He looked completely destroyed, oppressed in the way that a person with mental problems could be oppressed by the medical system and society, and although from the outside such a picture looked uncompromisingly pitiful, Jack knew: Arthur had not yet managed to lose his usefulness. The inhabitants of Gotham, of course, had no interest in Arthur Fleck himself, but the influence he had on these people, the disorder, the lawlessness he stirred up, was exactly what Jack wanted most. Well, at least something that was among the primary requirements of his plan.
So he organized a little tour of Arkham, getting there under a different name, address, and diagnosis. No one really cares what the inmates look like, and no one, of course, remembers their faces or questions or analyzes their story of arrival at the Asylum in any great detail, so it wasn't even particularly difficult or demanding. You have a depressive episode, borderline personality disorder, or a previous suicide attempt? Welcome, next one.
There was nothing difficult about getting his attention either. Jack had realized that the moment he saw Arthur in person. This man would have reached for any hand that took the slightest moment to pat him on the head. The only problem that arose was, of course, the fact that the drugs they generously fed to patients of his kind, combined with a general lean toward melancholy and apathy based on his diagnosis, made Arthur a damn passive, insecure, and sluggish fool. It was like trying to convince a corpse to crack open its coffin lid and swing its legs over the edge.
Jack was a very patient man by nature, and in fact could wait for weeks, if not months, if he wanted something and was convinced that the process was irreversible. Here, in Arkham, his time was limited by external factors. The Shadow was coming to Gotham - at least that was the rumor in certain circles in another, hidden part of the city - and by the time it had completely covered him, he would have preferred to have Arthur in his hands.
The tendency to be impulsive, violent, and angry could not be erased from any human being, Jack was convinced of that. All Arthur Fleck needed was a push, and he was going to push him as eloquently as possible. Arthur had fallen before, he knew it almost for sure, he had felt it when he watched that show where he had shot that old fool right in the middle of a live record, but his fall from the edge of sanity had happened before he had even entered that room. Jack did not know exactly how it had happened, but he was going to give him the only approximate version of that catalyst that he could recreate in this hole.
The patient who loved to harass Arthur, and especially to exert physical force whenever his fevered brain desired was, in fact, nothing but a foolish child, easily swayed by the opinions of others. Despite the fear and dislike that Jack had aroused in him at first, the boy reacted the same old way to a banal bribe as any other man does. He didn't even need the money. All this fool wanted was to hear his own sick delusions confirmed by someone else. A little flattery, a little encouragement, a few cigarettes, and a little attention would decide Arthur Fleck's fate for the next 48 hours.
Arthur was caught out in the open. It was one of those rare days when he was let out to walk the hospital grounds, gray and damp from the constant fog. He rarely stuck with the rest of them; instead, whenever the chance arose, he’d smoke alone near the edge of the spiked fence that cut him off from the rest of the normal world. This time he had only an unsmoked cigarette that one of the hospital workers had left on a table outside. The butt was damp and tarnished, but the nicotine was making his already heavy head throb with a sickening pain, and Arthur was just trying to light it when his attacker pulled his hair hard from behind.
"What did you say? The fuck did you say?"
Arthur tries to brace his fall, but it's uselessthe - cold muck stains his hospital whites as much as his palms, the skin of which he scrapes raw against the ground.
"I didn't say anything..." He tries to explain, but after the first blow, the breath stops him. The lack of medication in his body has indeed affected his perception of reality, including his level of pain perception. And, oh, he feels it much more acutely now.
He doesn't care why this guy, whose name he can't remember, has decided to beat him up today. After all, people have proven to him over and over again throughout his life that it doesn't take much to hurt him. So all he does is roll in the mud, covering his head - he's always subconsciously worried about his head...
Jack watches this seemingly hopeless endeavor from the sidelines - it's his day in the fresh air too, of course. The doctors are generally very neutral and democratic towards him, because he's new, and hasn't caused any problems since he's been here. He thinks it's laughably stupid. Of course he won't be a problem, not yet, of course. Right.
Arthur offers almost no resistance, and for a moment, Jack’s eyes narrow in disbelief. Perhaps his intuition had failed him this time. Weaning off the medication followed by starvation should have awakened the old symptoms within this guy - anger, in particular. Sure, he didn't have a gun, but so what? You can hurt someone with almost anything if you want it badly enough. Arthur was, by all accounts, an impulsive and easily flustered man. He should have had at least a modicum of motivation.
In the end, despite his expectations, nothing happens. Arthur gets a few more good kicks in the ribs and head, and then a staff member notices them, walking quickly past Jack. The other patient is dragged away with some effort - he must have had a real episode. Jack purses his lips, chewing the inside of one of his scars. It looks like it’s going to take a little more work than he’d expected. But you can't make an omelette without breaking egg, as they say.
* * * *
Arthur was led into the treatment room, a place he rarely visited - it was mostly where they brought the unruly to be injected with sedatives, or the sick for physical examinations. In his case, it was the latter. At first, the nurse feared he might have a broken rib, but it turned out he didn't; so they simply cleaned his torn hands with cheap rubbing alcohol and gave him some painkillers - medicine he actually took, because he truly wanted to. The woman who examined him was probably one of the most normal nurses and treated her work normally, as well as the patients themselves. She offered to let him stay the night in a separate ward usually reserved for the sick, just so he could be isolated and left alone. Arthur, naturally, agreed. Truth be told, he would have preferred not just isolation, but to crawl into some kind of box - tight and dark, like that refrigerator back at his place... He missed that sobering cold. He kept quiet about that, but he did ask for cigarettes. She allowed him to have a few.
Arthur slept through the rest of the day in that familiar feverish, restless slumber he’d known ever since arriving at Arkham. His sleep was somewhat deeper than usual, or perhaps his body was simply giving up on him, growing weaker with each passing week. Yet, despite the tight, anxious grip of a dream in which he lay until the evening lights-out across the building, something finally wrenched him from his unconscious state.
At first, Arthur didn't even understand what had pulled him out of his sleep. His eyelids are heavy, and his head still echoes uncomfortably. The room is dark, but a little dim light from the hallway leaks through the window in the door, enough to make out some of the shapes in the room. He strains his eyes as he stands up, and then he notices it: a figure sitting on the empty bed opposite him. For a moment, he feels that burning animal fear that makes him jump up. He thinks it’s the same guy who’s been beating him up today. And then he recognizes the voice.
"You know, you really ought to stop putting up with all the shit they put you through. I thought you’d moved past all that by now."
The man with scars sits there in the semi-darkness, his back hunched over, his hands on his knees, his chin in his hands. Arthur blinks in confusion, relaxing a little, but still alert.
"You scared me," he says, finally, sitting up in bed. His throat is dry and his body aches from the beatings.
"Goes with the territory," the man chuckles, a short exhale through his nose. Arthur doesn’t get the joke, but stays silent. Before he can even open his mouth, the man abruptly adds: "Your survival instincts are truly pathetic. You don't scrap, you don't even flinch when someone comes at you. Shit, even slaughterhouse birds have more fight in 'em than you do."
Arthur is lost, looking down. It's true, his whole life he's been incapable of standing up for himself...
"Why are you here?" he asks instead. Although he's flattered by any possible attention and recognition, this person remains a complete mystery, and every time Arthur meets him, the questions only grow.
"I'm being rehabilitated, Arthur. We’re in, uh, a psych ward, aren’t we?" The man smiles crookedly, licking the corner of his mouth. The mockery in his tone barely perceptibly annoys Arthur, but he doesn't object.
"No, that's not... I mean... what do you want?"
The man sticks out his tongue again, tracing his entire mouth. Arthur watches this as if spellbound, involuntarily licking his own dry lips. "I thought I told you already - I’m planning to get the hell out of this shithole. And for that, it’d be great if you’d stop being such a pussy and, well, finally get a grip. 'Cause I’m not interested in dragging around dead weight, you feel me?" He strokes his dirty blonde hair, slicking it back.
"Why?" Arthur blinks, nervously clutching at the skin on one of his fingers. "What do you need me for?"
"Because you made some noise. A hell of a lot of noise. Just think about it: some nobody, a total loser from the bottom of the barrel in a God-forsaken neighborhood, and in just one week you’ve got the whole damn city rioting, striking, and burning shit down!" The man laughs - a sharp, jagged sound that makes Arthur worry it’ll draw someone's attention. He sees the glint in those deep eyes in the dark - pure, unadulterated fascination. "Gotta admit, I haven't seen anything like this in a long-ass time, if ever. You’ve got this knack for waking up people’s primal urge for violence, for, uh, destruction. And I, pal, am very much interested in people like that."
The way the scarred patient talks about his origins should have offended him, but it doesn't, for the simple reason that Arthur can't hear a single hint of mockery or joke in his voice. It's a fair statement of fact: he was a nobody, but look: he accidentally kills 3 people in self-defense, and the city goes crazy - it turns out that he has expressed something that has long been in the minds of a thousand strangers. Without noticing it himself, he awkwardly lowers his eyes, smiling.
"I didn't actually do anything, it’s just that people... I think we're all just tired," he shrugs, but his bashfulness is only half-genuine. Truth be told, Arthur was deeply flattered by even this kind of attention. Subconsciously, he craved it - and even more so, the offer of an escape... "Alright, but when do you want to, well... when are you planning on doing it?"
The other man smirks, clearly amused by Arthur's fleeting mood swing. He stands up, towering a few steps away, and something cold creeps into his tone, though Arthur can tell he's still smiling.
"You’ll know when. What’s more important, Arthur," he steps closer, unexpectedly dropping a hand onto his shoulder - his fingers give a faint, firm squeeze against the bone, "is when you, mm, are ready. The real you, not that pathetic little nothing you’ve been up until now." Arthur feels something pressed against his body at the site of this unfamiliar touch. It is small, hard, and cold. The man with the scars deliberately waits until he reaches out his own hand, almost touching his palm, then lowers his hand so that the object passes into Arthur's.
"Give that little fucker what he’s got coming to him."
Arthur squeezes the small object, feeling the slight protest of the skin. In the dim room, his eyes make it out with a slight delay. It is a pair of tweezers, new, with sharp edges that are ready to cut the skin of a finger if he press hard enough. He stares at it, still feeling the ghost of that hand on his shoulder, until he finally snaps out of it. By the time he calls out to him, the other patient is already slipping out of the room.
"Wait," Arthur calls him, a little too loudly, as if into the silence of Arkham's night. "I still don't know your name?"
The man by the door freezes for a moment, then makes a barely perceptible movement in the dimness of the chamber - turns his head to glance over his shoulder at him.
"Ain't got one," he shakes his head, smiling. Arthur frowns... "But you can always, mm, call me The Joker."
"One small thing: when you bring me out, can you introduce me as Joker?"
He clenches the tweezers almost painfully as the room refocuses its nocturnal embrace of darkness around his lone figure on the bed.
* * *
Carrying those little, cold tweezers was like a burning secret that could not be told to others because it was a rule violation, and the inability to share that secret gave it that same unsettling pleasure. Arthur wasn't sure he liked the concept of it. The last time he had secretly carried a firearm, it had ended badly... But he did like the small, sharp piece of iron. Not least because it allowed him to "ground" himself in those rare moments when things around him didn't seem real.
He had a similar fear the next morning, when he was transferred from the infirmary back to his ward, and the night's conversation seemed increasingly unrealistic. What if he just made it up? Was it all a dream? Had he been asleep? The presence of the tweezers, though, seemed to prove otherwise. Its cool blade against his skin was soothing. The pain was real. The scarred man probably was too. He was okay. It wasn't a hallucination. He was offered an escape...
Arthur didn't cut himself too deeply or too often because, of course, he knew that the doctors might notice at any moment if he made a mistake in their location or size, and then God knew what else they would force him to admit and maybe tighten their surveillance.
But the staff didn't care, after all. No one was in a hurry to expose him for possessing a dangerous object. So the days passed, and since the stranger had disappeared again, Arthur had to convince himself of the normality of their last dialogue by the only method available to him.
"Look at this chicken, carving himself up for Thanksgiving already!"
Unfortunately, there were other possibilities for what might have happened if someone had noticed him cutting himself.
He must have noticed a few fresh red streaks on Arthur's shoulders when he was getting dressed after his shower. Or his shirt had simply been riding up inappropriately on his arm at some point during the day. But the son of a bitch who regularly took out his frustrations at being enslaved within the walls of the Asylum on him decided that this was a good enough excuse to get him this time.
Arthur was a skittish man by nature, constantly looking over his shoulder in almost every corner of Arkham - likely because his paranoia about being hunted by the police hadn't let go, even after his involvement in the murders was a proven fact. But he couldn't keep it up forever, which meant that guy could sneak up on him whenever he pleased. In any case, there were times when he would hit him without even trying to hide it.
Michel - maybe his name was Michel, Arthur thought in those next few seconds - ran into him in the hallway as Arthur was walking from the psychiatrist to his ward. The old bruises hadn't completely faded from his body, so when the blows started to land in the same places, he involuntarily tried to dodge once or twice before finally finding himself on the dirty tiles of the floor.
"Why are you doing this? Sto... Stop..." He tries to fend him off, the question slipping out involuntarily, followed immediately by a surge of laughter. This was the detail that always seemed to piss that guy off the most, so Arthur realized with a jolt of dread that everything was about to get much, much worse.
He never called for help. Not in the hospital, and not back then with her. Not even as a kid, when…
He didn't call for help now, either, as the attacker deliberately squeezed his mangled shoulder, pressing down on the cuts.
"What, you're cutting yourself, for real? Seriously? Christ, you're just like that dead bitch!" Arthur wasn't sure who exactly he was talking about, and he didn't want to know. "So, maybe I should help you with that? You like pain, you freak? You like it?"
He did not like it.
All his life, people had hurt him, and his damned body had made him make sounds that imitated happiness, but he did not like it.
"Give that little fucker what he’s got coming to him."
It echoed in the back of his mind as that guy shouted something else at him, but Arthur only paid attention to either of those sounds indirectly. His hand reaches for the small object he carried behind the waistband of his pants, almost reflexively. As if the body remembers what it's like to fight in the last moments, when the brain refuses to act.
No, when he pulls out that small metal object and swings it blindly, he's not thinking about the man with the scars, only about himself. That feeling, that searing wave of anger and despair that had been locked up in his brain while he was being drugged, while he was drugging himself before Arkham, and here they are - naked but unchanged, the same as before. And when he punches the man holding him down and hits him in the neck, he's not really thinking about anything, not even about himself. He's acting on his feelings, on the animal instincts that are finally catching up with him.
The other patient clearly didn't expect this. Not that Arthur will suddenly try to fight back, after so many weeks, nor that something sharp will suddenly appear in his hand out of nowhere and pass along the side of his neck in a sharp, blurred motion. Arthur swings again, just as blindly, against the hand that tries to shield another person's body from the blow.
It scratches his palm, then hits him in the face - the cheek, to be precise. Then again in the neck, this time almost in the center. He doesn't realize that it's time to slow down, time to stop.
It reminds him of those shots, in the subway... One, two... Several in a row, when he caught up with that scumbag.
He hears nothing but a sickening ring in his ears as the other man’s body slides off him like a dead weight, slumping to the floor beside him. Time stands still, and in that moment, he feels nothing at all. His brain is a hollow, gutted place, void of thoughts, feelings, or emotions. His hands are smeared with blood, and the tweezers slip limply from his palm. Arthur inhales, and then the sounds slowly return. He slowly turns his head to the side, to the guy he'd fought off so desperately just moments before, and... His glassy eyes stare past him, blood slowly seeping from the wounds on his face and neck.
Oh God.
What has he done? What has he done? Did he kill him?
His heart jolts back to life - or maybe Arthur’s just starting to feel his body again - and he finally hears it thumping against his ribs, getting louder with every passing second. He tries to push himself up from the floor, dazed, his limbs trembling treacherously as he frantically glances down both ends of the corridor. God, there are cameras here, one in every corner of the hallway!
"Well, well... mm, you aren't wasting any time, are you?"
His fright is so intense that his first reflex is to reach back for the tweezers before looking back, but Arthur doesn’t. Instead, covered in blood and bruises, he looks around instantly, ready to run anywhere at a moment’s notice. At first, he doesn’t recognize the woman a few meters away, and the fact that he sees an Arkham worker standing there, next to a recently murdered patient, partially smeared in his own blood, makes his heart sink to his stomach. The nurse stands there, towering over him, and Arthur feels his body go numb. But she doesn’t scream, she doesn’t call for help, she doesn’t rush at him or away from him. Shocked, he doesn’t immediately realize that she has rather broad shoulders and arms for a woman, and her voice is already familiar to him – a bit harsh, with high notes.
“You…” Arthur stammers, and the man steps closer, pulling the hospital mask down over his face, revealing a pair of asymmetrical scars that he’s already familiar with. “It’s… You… I, oh God, I think, I… I think I killed…”
"Yeah, you killed him. Now you better shut up, pull yourself together, and listen to me. In a few, uh, in a few minutes, half the guards and docs in this place are gonna be crawling all over here, so we’d better stop wasting time unless you wanna lock in your ticket to the chair. You don’t want that, do ya?"
Arthur barely understands what he’s saying to him. His hands are still shaking as the blond grabs one of them tightly, pulling him into the room to their left. He keeps staring at the lifeless body sprawled out in the middle of the hallway as another strange hand slaps him across the cheek.
“Hey. Hey! Snap out of it, Fleck, goddammit. You hear me or what?"
Arthur blinks, looking around. They’re in someone’s room, maybe even this man’s room, but he thinks absolutely nothing of it. All he thinks about is that body over there, and the hallway, and—
"Get changed, come on. Now. And make it snappy, Artie, move those little hands of yours."
The scarred man shoves clothes into his hands – a white uniform – and after a moment he realizes that they are a woman’s hospital uniform, just like the one he is wearing.
“What is this? Why, what… what are we doing? Fuck, he’s just lying there... just...”
His hands are shaking, but because he doesn’t know any better, Arthur actually starts changing, constantly looking back at the door. His fingers don’t obey, he gets tangled in his sleeves, in his belt…
"We’re getting the hell out of here, Fleck. This is it – it’s now or never.”
Only then does the realization sink in: every damn thing about this is real.