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The first time Jeannie sees the Joker, bright and blurry on the front page of the Gazette, she scoffs at another costumed maniac in Gotham, turns to tell Jack exactly what she thinks of that sort of thing and stops.
It's been two months.
She's getting used to it, slowly, pieces of heartbreak crammed into a routine she can't afford to change. So she's down at the diner all day, ignores all the questioning looks the girls keep shooting at her, smiles through all of Mrs. Burkiss' reassurances that she's better off without 'im and nearly forgets how empty it all feels.
A half-hearted missing persons report--
(and didn't Jack always seem like he'd bolt one day? Jeannie thinks she might've liked that look in his eyes, cornered and wild with hope underneath muted awkwardness)
--solves nothing, just like she knew it would. The cops don't make any promises, tell her about the sheer number of disappearances in the Narrows, whole families swallowed up by the city itself, and leave it at that. Not quite a priority is what Jeannie's missing husband is bound to remain.
Jack, for all his dreams of making it big, sounds like she's made him up. No family, no friends, odd jobs and scattered appearances at Gotham's worst comedy clubs don't make for much of a trail.
There's nothing to go on and no one's trying. Jeannie isn't either.
Arguments silenced months ago echo around the apartment, remembered too clearly to have been shared with a life cut so short. She thinks of how fidgety Jack had been that last day. He'd hugged her for too long before he'd gone out the door, gangly and clumsy with it as usual, pressed closer than he'd dared in years, like he'd known he had to make it count.
What Jack knew, exactly, is his alone to reveal. For the sake of her own peace of mind, Jeannie pretends she doesn’t breathe easier these days.
---
It's a slow Wednesday night, long enough past disaster that Jeannie's all out of excuses when she messes up an order and she's starting to think this might be what moving on feels like.
Maybe it's easier without the definitive sentence of death. Jack could still be out there, trying to make someone else laugh. She'd quite like that.
Summer Gleeson's endless droning on Gotham Insider doesn't help much with the sheer monotony of overly long hours but more than half the diner's turned towards the TV mounted on the wall and the sudden lull in conversation makes Jeannie look up too.
The image is clearer here, no longer the blur of colour offered by the Gazette. Clear and unmistakable and familiar. Jeannie starts laughing before she can help it. It's the sort of laughter that ends with tears and not the good kind either. She takes her one break right then and there, points Sharon in the direction of the table she'd been on her way to and slips out the back.
Safely tucked away in the alley behind Al's Diner, Jeannie lets herself slide down against the grimy wall and vaguely wishes she'd taken up smoking.
That was Jack.
She covers her mouth and stifles a sob.
That was Jack, on TV, dressed as a clown and throwing some sort of exploding pie at a police officer. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out, just a distraught young woman in a deserted alley.
The smile's stretched too wide, unnatural on naive features turned cold, but it's him. Someone's played a trick on Jack's monochrome little existence, painted him in greens and purples that don't belong to him.
Jeannie knows it's him. The Joker, absurdly, carries himself the same way he always did -- permanently jittery and slightly hunched over, animated to a fault. Whenever Jack found it necessary to stumble through a story, his gestures always did the talking.
A failed comedian in the guise of a killer clown.
It'd be funny, if Jeannie were inclined to give him that much credit. She's not though and isn't too inclined to believe it's makeup either. They were both atrocious with makeup, especially around Halloween.
Jack Napier is dead after all. There are no illusions to entertain here. Jeannie wipes her eyes and goes back inside.
---
When Jeannie gets in at around 5 AM, the first thing she sees is the girls huddled together in an empty booth, all hurried whispers and loud giggles. They’re poring over a newspaper but she’s too far to see anything more than a few crumpled-looking pages and the faint lines of a headline.
It’s easy to ignore them as she goes about her morning -- inconvenient but not the earliest shift she’s had either, she’s still barely making ends meet as it is. There’s selfish relief shoved in here though, something to be said about supporting no one but herself.
“--like we need any more of those freaks around here,” comes Darlene’s nasally voice, followed by eager murmurs of approval. “I saw him last week, y’know, I think the Bat was chasing him.”
That’s enough to give Jeannie pause.
It could be any number of freaks Gotham’s got to offer. She thinks she knows the answer.
“Whatcha got there?” Jeannie asks, making Sharon and Polly scoot over so she can slide in the booth.
“I saw the Joker last week,” Darlene offers, smug like it’s a badge of honour, perpetually smelling of bubblegum and cheap smokes. “I was just gettin’ off work when he came running outta nowhere, laughing his head off.”
Jeannie considers telling her she’s seen the Joker every day for years on end. “Oh?” she says instead, all contrived curiosity.
“He had this gun with one of them li’l Bang! flags, pointed straight up at the rooftops. I’m guessin’ Batman was there or something,” Darlene finishes, indifferent to any inner turmoil among her small group. “Jeez, I swear I can’t imagine why all these weirdos settle down in Gotham. And the clown’s worse than any of ‘em!”
Caught in the midst of deja-vu, Jeannie gives in to the brief stirrings of a protest, only getting as far as “I’m sure he’s not that-- ” before making her excuses and heading back to her duties, thoroughly rattled.
These kind of discussions used to be a dubious commodity back in the day, familiar enough that she’d slipped right back into the one thing she’d always done. Between his aunt Eunice and the daily struggles of being himself, Jack hadn’t had it easy in high school. In that nightmare shared among the musings of lonely orphans with starkly dissimilar stories, Jeannie had always found it necessary to be the one to spring into action.
All Jack had ever been offered was hope. They’d gotten out as soon as it had been possible, dirt poor and half in love. Jeannie had just slipped right back into old patterns, eager to defend him in front of the world and her own doubts.
It’s not quite as easy as that these days. Jack-- Joker doesn’t need it anymore, does he?
She’s seen the atrocities on every front page for the past two years, everyone’s seen them. The Joker, her own bright dead thing, is looking less like himself each time time Jeannie catches a dizzying glimpse of him.
Now there’s Batman and Arkham and no place for her, which is just fine. She just wishes old habits decided to die a little quicker, at least where mass murderers are concerned.
Jeannie had looked up The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane once, huddled in front of an old computer at the library, tapping impatiently on the keyboard until the page loaded. It wasn’t much. It was barely anything at all, in fact.
A few pictures of the asylum’s grounds, some information on its enigmatic founder and a gallery of the more famous patients, orange jumpsuits included, was all the website had shown her. Just enough, Jeannie supposed, to know it looked like--
It looked like a prison.
There had been late nights and panic attacks and, on one memorable occasion, a smashed mirror accompanied by a visit to Dr. Thompkins’ clinic. Jack had been the one in need of stitches but the looks she’d gotten had been quite enlightening. He’d never been a violent man, not to anyone but himself. She hadn’t pretended to understand, still wouldn’t, but there had been talks of hospitals, of the possible cost of it all.
It was, in the end, both impossible to afford and an unnecessary smear on Jack’s already dubious record. They’d gotten by, as always.
Nothing like Arkham Asylum had ever occurred to either of them.
It’s easy enough to get lost in the motions of this reality dictated by muscle memory alone. Jeannie lets the traces of gossip fade into the background as she wipes down the counter or hands a menu to their one newly arrived customer. Easy but not enough to escape what her heart’s got to say about the dead man that might have once been her husband.
Jeannie can’t, or rather won’t, tell anyone, though she hasn’t quite decided why yet. It seems crucial to let Jack’s new beginning run its course.
---
There are specks of blood on Joker’s shirt, just around the collar, small explosions of red on an otherwise blank canvas. He’s all blank canvas. A ghostly apparition shattered only by a purple suit and that green shock of hair. Even his gloves are dirty white, right hand pressed tightly against what must be a broken nose.
His left hand, however, is gripping a revolver -- the old kind, like Jeannie’s seen in westerns.
It’s a glimpse that’s lasted far too long.
She’d stared and stared until she’d been yanked down by a helpful hand. The girl next to her can’t be more than fifteen, looking significantly more level-headed than Jeannie feels. It’s something of a testament to Gotham’s standard procedure for hold-ups.
Venturing as far as the Gotham National Bank isn’t anywhere near standard though and neither is--
Well.
Jeannie’s never seen the Joker before, not in person, certainly not technicolor in a city’s that been grey for so long.
She’s heard Joker’s got a flair for the dramatic. This doesn’t seem like much of a show at all, there’s nothing but barely-suppressed panic in the fluttering, agitated movements of a spike-thin body. Jack had never been quite that skeletal, gaunt and unnerving and strange.
The Joker darts from one place to another as he waits for the vault to be opened, whispers something to his henchmen and alternatively points the revolver at any hostage that happens to be close by. It’s all seemingly random, what with the way wild eyes keep glancing to the door. No alarm has gone off, no one’s dared move.
“Yes, I know Batman’s coming!” comes Joker’s voice, breathy, the end of that sentence dissolving into a sort of high-pitched giggle. There’s not a hint of amusement in it. “What, you think I did this?” He pulls his hand away to reveal the blood smeared around his nose. A few steps bring him closer to the one goon that had dared to bring up the Bat. It transpires that Joker himself doesn’t have too much faith in his own death traps.
Jack, who tended to snort when he laughed, had rarely been anything other than warm, too bad of a liar to have even aimed for insincere. Jeannie considers her own grief and thinks of the assumptions that have carried her here these past two years.
She could ask.
She could actually ask.
And Jeannie nearly does, something tugging at her insides with the sheer need to know, when Batman bursts through the skylight. The sudden shift is tangible. Joker drops the stacks of money he’d been holding and stands up straighter, a sort of feral elegance seems to mark his every move, like a cruel feline just waiting to lunge.
“Bats!” Joker exclaims, bright-eyed through the rain of glass from above. “You finally made it!” His arms are open wide, waiting for a hug that’s unlikely to ever come.
It’s love. Jeannie doesn’t need to hear the ensuing monologue to know it’s love. Jack’s never looked at anyone liked that, certainly not at her, part worship and all adoration. Batman grunts as a first punch cuts Joker off. Her heart skips a beat and she wonders on a loop what else she might have missed. If this is somehow her fault, if--
Discordant laughter rings out over the silent immensity of the bank. There’s something bat-shaped sticking out of Joker’s arm. The henchmen, clown-themed themselves, are spread out all over, tied up or knocked out. It doesn’t make for a pretty picture.
“Now, now, if you wanted some alone time, baby,” Joker starts and never gets to finish. The Bat acts fast, effective, quick retorts don’t even seem to be in his repertoire -- a creature of the night in broad daylight. Away from his rooftops, Batman is no more man than than Gotham’s gargoyles themselves.
The Joker is handcuffed in the blink of an eye and Jeannie has quite forgotten what she wanted to ask.
---
Home, as in the terrible apartment they’d shared for three years, looks cramped even when it’s just her. Jeannie knows the drill by now, or she would, if it wasn’t her one night off.
There’s no mindless work to get lost in. Jeannie doesn’t notice her hands shaking as she closes the door and slides down against it. There are no traces of Jack here. Not here nor anywhere else. She half-expects to see a jacket draped over a chair, the comedy books and chewed pencils spread all over or else, when the clutter got too much even for him, the faint murmurs of jokes repeated endlessly in the bathroom mirror.
One thought alone is guiding her as she picks herself up. It must be the shock from the bank, from seeing him up close, sharp and twitchy, looking likely to flicker out of reality with every passing moment.
There had been no shots fired though, there’s nothing to mourn except the same death as always.
It’s only hard because she’s making it hard, Jeannie’s sure of that much. That still doesn’t stop her from rummaging through cupboards and drawers, there are so few of them, she must have put it somewhere safe. Jack would have known, sentimentality and chaos had been his expertise.
When Jeannie finally finds what she’s looking for, it’s in a shoebox shoved in the back of the closet. Some of Jack’s clothes are there too, she’d given away the rest.
She sits down right there, back against the closet door, and only stops long enough to kick off her shoes -- flats, which had been her one comfort during the robbery. Jeannie dusts off the box and makes herself open it, trepidation only in the form of undue memories. It’s full of pictures, polaroids mostly. There were good times once.
Skipping the close-ups of her own smile or the miniature glimpses into a life she knows too well, Jeannie goes straight to the last picture in the box.
She hasn’t touched it since that first night. Alone in a bed that had never allowed more than one person to rest comfortably, Jeannie had sat and stared at the picture. She knows it by heart, she thinks she might have always had.
It’s from their wedding day and quite literally the only picture she has of Jack, nineteen and smiling so wide, his eyes a little red because he’d spent the whole day crying. He’d never liked having his picture taken but he’d laughed, sheepish, and nodded when Jeannie had asked for the picture, the two of them holding hands tightly in front of the camera. No one but the necessary witness had been in attendance.
Her dead mother’s wedding dress had been about twenty years past fashionable. That’s not what Jeannie’s looking for. It’s the suit, Jack’s awful rented suit, that she’s found herself tracing the contours of. Nothing ever seemed to look right on Jack’s gangly body, certainly not that.
Joker must have gotten himself a tailor, it’s the funniest joke he’s ever managed to come up with. Jeannie wants to laugh. There’s so much she didn’t or, rather, doesn’t know about Jack.
Their wedding night hadn’t consisted of much beyond burgers and milkshakes. It had been nice, collapsing in bed in their new apartment, achingly happy and exhausted. They hadn’t had a lot, they’d just had each other. She hadn’t suspected anything, Jack had never been one to initiate more than kisses. He’d never even kissed anyone before her.
Jeannie’s not sure what she’s hoping to find on this misaimed trip down memory lane. That snapshot of real happiness is still staring her in the face. Jack had been so careful around other men, anxious and too eager to impress, she’d just assumed--
After high school and--
It could have been something else. It must have been something else.
That familiar relief comes in waves, brutal in its efficiency. Jack might have found himself in the Joker, at a cost too great for Jeannie to entertain.
What they’d had together might have even been real.
---
The Narrows are a spectacle of darkened corners and forgotten alleys, going through houses and apartment buildings whose slow decline started long before they were built. At night, it’s much worse.
Jeannie’s spent the better part of her life walking home through here. It’s nearing 4 AM though and the dark looms over her even before she spots the glint of a gun in the glow of the sparse street lights. That, too, is familiar. She ducks into an alley before she can help it, rummaging through her purse for keys, pepper spray, anything.
The man, she’s sure it’s a man, follows without hesitation, steady footsteps stark against the rapid click of Jeannie’s worn heels. It’s a dead end. Of course, it’s a dead end.
She turns around, keys clutched tight in her fist, and finds the spike of panic in her heart made redundant. Batman leaps from above. The suit has evolved into an armour since the last time Jeannie’s seen him this close. He’s quick as ever though, less brutal than she would have imagined but sparing no words for the mugger-to-be. Jeannie just watches.
“I could have handled it,” she finds herself saying, eyes on Batman’s white lenses. Her voice doesn’t wobble. “It’s happened before.”
The Bat grunts but doesn’t grapple away. Jeannie glances one last time at the handcuffed man they’d left behind and follows Batman out of the alley. “Are you going to walk me home?” She wonder if he can even talk, if there is a man behind the mask.
No answer comes. Batman’s tall but everyone’s tall to her, he’s imposing through the sheer broadness of him. Jeannie can’t imagine how a man like that has ever managed to disappear in the shadows. She’s bursting with questions, she even wants to risk asking a few. It’s hard not to believe in awkward silences when you’re walking side by side with Batman.
“How’s the Joker?” Jeannie doesn’t quite understand how she’s managing to sound so casual, hands shoved in her coat like her life doesn’t depend on it. The Bat stops before she does. “What?”
“What?” Batman repeats, lenses gone wide. His voice is gruff, unnatural and Jeannie’s startled to realise she’s never heard it before. The modulator works hard to hide his surprise.
Jeannie coughs to hide her smile. “I just thought you’d know.” She can’t tell why she wants to know.
“He’s in Arkham,” Batman finally admits, like that explains it all. The brief delicacy of surprise has passed and a “where he belongs” goes unsaid. They’ve resumed walking by now and she doesn’t push further until Batman adds, “Is there any reason you’re…?”
“Oh.” She considers it. Jack Napier’s disappearance means nothing without the rest of the puzzle, Jeannie doubts Batman had ever looked into it. It’s not her secret to tell. “No.”
Batman looks tired, even through the cowl obscuring everything except his stubbled jaw. He’s drawn the cape around himself but seems intent on letting Jeannie lead the way back home. If it’s a service he extends to most women wandering alone at night, he’s certainly yet to learn any comforting words.
“I think he’s getting help. In Arkham.”
Batman doesn’t seem to believe it quite enough but his voice shatters the silence all the same. Jeannie hums, no more interested than when she gets caught up in some customer’s long-winded story. She’s learned too long ago that Joker isn’t Jack.
She remembers the pictures of the police commissioner at the Bonus Brothers Carnival that had been plastered all over the news a few years back. Jack used to love that place.
Not anymore.
The distance she’s forced upon herself treats her well, Jeannie’s almost forgotten the wound that used to eat away at her. She’s merely satisfying her curiosity here.
“I’m sure he is,” she agrees and doesn’t mean a word of it. What survived of Jack isn’t enough for love to tide her over. Jeannie’s never lived for love alone, everyone’s seen the lengths the Joker is willing to go to when it comes to his Bat. “Do you know who he really is?”
And just like that, all the cards had been flung on the table. Batman has the firm disposition of a lifelong idealist. Like Jack. Like Joker, too.
“He’s the Joker,” Batman says. It’s sounds like it’s enough even for Gotham’s greatest detective.
She stops at her front door, a single lamp post serves as a makeshift lighthouse in the night. “We’re here.”
The Bat grapples away without another word. Jeannie smiles.
Maybe Jack’s made some good mistakes.