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The Joker's wings are a fucking disaster.
They hang limp behind him, dragging on the ground. Sometimes, they leave trails of blood as they drag but he gives no indication of pain or even noticing. The feathers left are patchy, limp, filthy. If Joker ever even notices they exist it's to express irritation at how they mark his clothes with dirt and oil.
But then, with zero indication it's coming, they'll spring into motion, flare out to their full span, move with his gestures. He'll use them in fights as blunt objects and emote with them. Arkham actually designed an entire new wing containment system specifically because of the Joker's willingness to throat punch people with them.
And they're bleach bone white which makes it even worse, makes the Joker look like some kind of disturbed injured swan. Sometimes he's seen with colors painted into them, in haphazard ways. And sometimes in a fight they bend in supplication in a way that the man never will.
Batman hates, and weirdly, privately, self-hatingly covets the Joker's wings.
Bruce Wayne, in what seemed a public fit of vanity, funded research into a feather dye that’s environmentally friendly and completely comes off in one wash. He makes it available in a rainbow of colors and is out on the town with elaborate patterns dyed on. Wayne loves metallics and reds, showy and boastful and proud as the persona is. And really, dyeing feathers is just instinct to the bearded vulture, which is the heritage of his wings.
Batman keeps the flat black dye all to himself. Oh there’s a black for sale, but not this black. A black that took its cues from VantaBlack, something so dark that the human eye struggled to register it. A black that’s a void, rendering his wings invisible against his cloak and a disturbing sight if he does spread them. His wings are naturally dark, this is something else entirely.
And with the Joker in his bleached-white wings, it feels weirdly appropriate.
That they’re both removing colors or adding them on.
Batman isn’t all-knowing, and sometimes his timing isn’t perfect. The night it all happens, he’s late.
It’s freezing and sleet is falling in a fine, bone-chilling mist, and there are bodies in the alley, and the Joker is leaning on a building wall, gasping for air, bleeding profusely. Dropping lightly from above and considering the situation, it’s fairly obvious what happened. The rogues gallery doesn’t always get along and, bizarrely, Joker’s people had been forced on the defensive.
Apparently, the people who had come at him had forgotten that even on the defensive, he’s still Joker.
He’d won, but had been shot during the fight. Plugged right in the outer thigh, one gloved hand gripping over the wound, staring at Batman with his wings up in a wavering position, defensive then dropping down, showing as much surrender as Joker’s eyes show defiance.
“Bad night?” Is what Batman asks, voice dry.
“Fuckin hell, Bats, can we do this later?” Joker sounds exhausted, waspish, in pain.
Arrest is the obvious option here. He’s in no condition to run away, taking him into custody and calling for police and an ambulance would be simple. He has more than enough medical supplies on his person to act as a field medic as they wait. But, he’s also stopped by Arkham hours after taking Joker into custody and seen wounds still not tended.
It’s hard to blame the staff at Arkham. A lot of the people there are hostile, and the Joker is considered the worst of the worst, with a long history of lashing out at medical staff at the slightest provocation. Not to mention the number of police who would just as soon the man just die.
The man already bleeding out and visibly weakening as Batman looks at him.
“No.” He moved forward, pulling cuffs and grabbing the Joker’s wrists.
“I didn’t figure you’d agree but do you have to be an asshole about it?” It’s too much of a whine to be properly acerbic, and his jaw clicks shut when he’s cuffed in front, not behind, pushed to lean back on the wall before Batman kneels, using a batarang to cut his pantsleg open. “What?”
“I can’t do stitches here but I can bandage it.” His gloves give him all the delicate care of a blacksmith and he ignored one of Joker’s wings flailing at him, the only protest given.
“What are you doing.”
“Saving your life.”
“Why.”
“Because no one else will.” He stood up and grabbed his cuffed wrists, using that to lift Joker into a fireman’s carry. The feeling of the smaller man going dead weight, almost like a corpse on his shoulder isn’t new, and neither are the filthy white wings now spilling down him, hanging limp on either side, too close to his own.
He never gets used to it.
He’s been told, several times over the years that this conflict of theirs has lasted, to just let Joker die.
Not kill him. Just not intervene. Not save his life.
The Batcave isn’t a hospital but, it might as well be. The amount of times that Batman has saved his own life, or has had it saved by Alfred, in this space is probably too many to count (he knows the number, he has that exact tally in mind, always). And behind the Bat family, the person saved the most amount of times in the cave is the Joker.
“I hate this place.” Joker’s still awake. Surprising really.
“Makes two of us.” It’s warmer than outside at least and he’s got heaters close enough that the circle of light he’s working in is actually pleasantly warm. His gloves are off in favor of medical gloves and the Joker is handcuffed behind himself now, to a chair, with Batman kneeling again in front of him doing actual wound care. “I don’t have blood on hand but I do have plasma, I’ll set some up after this.”
“No needles!”
He looked up and just stared at him, in the middle of a stitch.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
He went back to what he was doing, shaking his head once. “You’d rather have Arkham do it?” That got the silence he thought it would, Joker’s head turned away and jaw working silently.
So he sets up the IV with plasma once Joker’s gunshot wound is cleaned, bullet pulled out, stitched up and bandaged again, and the Joker gives no indication of pain at the IV except for a seismic twitch of both otherwise limp wings.
That’s when a terrible idea works through his mind, standing there staring at those seemingly half-alive assemblages of bone flesh and feathers. He’s silent and still for long enough that the Joker actually cranes his neck to look up at him, silent but the what? Is obviously telegraphed.
It takes him a few minutes to run a hose to a hot water tap, and to find a bottle of wing wash, then he’s back on one knee, one hand holding a wing steady and the other turning the water spray on. The Joker’s shout is inarticulate, shocked, both wings arching up stiff and away but the one is held resolutely.
“I don’t know if this is hilarious or disturbing.” The crown prince of crime’s voice sounded strangled, twisted to look over one shoulder as much as his position allowed, eyes wide. “No one fuckin touches my wings, Bats.”
He ignored the protest, because his wings have gone soft and accepting, the one he’s working the warm water through pushing up into the attention. Loose feathers and grime, a mix of old paint blood dirt and who knew what else washed away slowly as he moved the spray in careful lines and loose, massaging circles.
“I did not consent to this. Dammit, stop!”
It went on like this, for a bit, him continuing to ignore the Joker’s demands, then pleas, sad and not shocked when his voice gives and he dissolves into helpless, sobbing whimpers under the onslaught, apparently unable to process just the simple act of being groomed.
Given, it’s an intimate act. You don’t groom a stranger. It’s reserved for family and close friends. They’re neither, the farthest thing from that. Until this point all physical contact between them had been violence, or Batman being pressed into being a field medic.
The wing wash loosens up layers of old, bad wing oil and grime. He worked shoulder to tip and back again, and when finally satisfied with one he moved to the other, taking a moment to move a heater closer before he started all over again. And after he went through a pile of towels before getting a proper dryer, regarding his handiwork after.
The Joker, hunched forward in the chair with his head hanging down, and the cleaned, groomed white wings that bent to Batman in utter submission.
“Well. That’s better.” He decided, drying his hands and pulling his gloves back on.
Joker hiccupped once. “Fuck you Bats.”
The ride to Arkham was dead silent.
Usually the Joker took pride in being the most annoying prisoner/passenger possible. Now he was curled up with his back turned, seemingly refusing to acknowledge who he was riding with or why. It was only once they were stopped by the prisoner intake entrance, snow falling silently outside the Batmobile and the only sound the rumble of the engine, that Joker spoke up.
“I hate you so fuckin much.”
“Yes. I know.”
“What the fuck gave you the right to do that.”
He exhaled slowly. “Someone has to look after you when you can’t. Apparently that’s me.”
That got a laugh, something high-pitched and brittle, a crackle of glass, bright and sharp. “I don’t need to be looked after. Least of all, by someone like you.”
Batman couldn’t argue that. It’s both true and the worst lie.
Arkham staff appeared, dressed for the weather, and he moved, opening the Batmobile and pulling the Joker out. They took the information that their frequent patient had a patched bullet wound in stride, putting their own restraints on before Batman took his off.
Joker, for his part, didn’t fight at all, sagging into the grip of many orderlies and only looking over his shoulder once, gaze full of hate and something impossibly sad.
Sometimes, Batman has to wonder if Joker says I hate you because he doesn’t know how to say anything else.