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Lonnie doesn’t know why he’s bothering with this, bothering with a possible father that would have manipulated, killed him if he weren’t dead.
When he was 16, he had celebrated the death of the original Joker. Now, almost five years later, he mourns. Not for the man (because he had been a man, only man could be so cruel), but for… something that he’s now trying to grasp in the current Joker, the son that he had raised.
Or at least claimed to.
Rumors say that Joker Junior - though no one aside from Harley Quinn calls him Junior - was originally Robin. Whether he was the second or third one depends on who’s telling it.
(He knows he’s the third, memories of when he was 14 in juvenile detention after his first stint as Anarky and continuing his work with the few hours he had on the computer as Moneyspider.)
(They used to be bright back then and Robin had fallen from a much higher flight than him.)
They speak of his intelligence, his skill, the eyes and ears he has everywhere. The careful, meticulous planning of his cruelty, still less cruel than his father even in its measured preciseness.
They speak of a gunshot that had rung true in a warehouse filled with electrical equipment and IV drips of toxins.
Anarky had tracked him to a safehouse, an apartment that had no locks on the windows and sturdy fire-escapes. Designed to be found by the right people (whether from sentiment or planning, he doesn’t know, but the sills had not been worn), though he doubted he was included in those intentions. He slides open a window that leads to a rather bare office aside from the sticky notes with writings that range from “buy milk” to nonsensical ramblings that cover the wall the desk sat against.
Joker hadn’t even batted an eye at his entrance, still absorbed in his computer screen. He’s not even nefariously planning anything, just simply clicking one clickbait headline after another. Normality makes Lonnie very awkward.
“Did you need something?” Joker finally looks up. “Unless there’s a political uprising in my apartment that I hadn’t noticed.”
He looks nothing like his “parents,” he doesn’t know why he was expecting otherwise. It’s not as if an acid bath changes bone structure, doesn’t change his square chin to Joker’s pointed one or his sharp cheekbones to Harley’s rounded ones. It had changed his skin to a morbidly pale color that somehow looked leagues healthier than his predecessors’ and his hair was dyed a dark green, so dark that it was difficult to discern from the black roots. He looks more muted than the original.
He’s probably funnier too, considering Lonnie’s more fond of dry wit than morbidly out-of-place knock-knock jokes.
The original Joker was not a comedian, despite his claims otherwise.
For the sixth time since Lonnie made his plan to talk to him, the awkwardness of explaining to a guy that was presumably brainwashed into viewing a murderer as a father that you suspect you’re biologically the son of said murderer crosses his mind.
It feels like spitting on the grave of who Joker Junior, Robin, used to be.
“It’s… a personal matter, not business,” he starts. “About the Joker, the original one.”
The clarification is clearly unneeded, since Joker’s hand stills over the mouse for a split second, before opening another clickbait.
“Most people don’t talk about him when I’m near,” Joker intones absently, a very false absently. “For good reason. The last one who did threw himself off the warehouse roof in a bout of insanity. What matters could you possibly have that would save you from a worse fate?”
“I think he’s my dad.”
Lonnie hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. Had meant to lead into it with the story of how he began to suspect. Distantly, he thinks that he might as well say his prayers now if he weren’t a vehement atheist. Although, maybe he’ll take his chances with Wonder Woman and the Greek Gods that he wasn’t entirely convinced weren’t just a visiting, somewhat benign alien species.
His wonderings on whether Zeus or maybe Nemesis, he thinks Nemesis would like him if he ever gets on her radar, would or could answer his prayers are interrupted by a sharp laugh.
It’s not manic, filled with sadistic glee, or the horror-panic of Joker Venom victims. In fact, it simply looks as if it’s Joker Junior’s genuine first reaction to any sort of emotion, conditioned into him.
The laughter dies down, but the empty grin is still there. “So why have you come to me?” he practically purrs, “Hoping for a brother, or are you hoping I take his place like everyone else? Would you like being manipulated into complying with my schemes--”
“Stop.”
“--Would being used and thrown away suit you, Anarky? Or would you prefer the title of Junior, would you like calling me--”
Lonnie goes to slap a hand over Joker’s mouth, or maybe punch him he hadn’t decided yet. His arm is easily twisted behind his back in a painful hold that threatens to snap his bones. Bastard had probably anticipated the reaction and still carried on. “Sorry,” he mutters when the grip tightens.
“Clearly, you don’t like the idea of being a sidekick,” Joker says with dead (ha) humor in his voice. “So why has the fly come to the spider’s web?”
He jerks his arm, not enough to actually make it seem like he was trying to get out of the hold, just enough to make his displeasure clear. The other man lets him go with no fuss and Lonnie takes the moment to straighten his costume as he thinks about how to answer.
“I said I think he was my dad. I’ve known I was adopted for most of my life, but in an argument with my mom, she… carelessly told me that the Joker was my biological father.”
The argument had been over his fake death, something about how he didn’t truly care for anyone like the man who sired him. It must run in the family.
“That can’t be the only reason you’d seek out a Class-A rogue,” Joker sounds disappointed as he drops back in his chair.
“It isn’t. I knew I shouldn’t have taken her words seriously, but I looked into my adoption records and my birth mother. She’d been arrested a lot for things like destruction of property and it was all in his name. She was a fucking groupie for a mass murderer and what if they had actually…”
He makes a humming noise, “Funny, how you’re looking for a father in the same mass murderer she worshipped. Genetics are a wonder.”
“I’m not looking for a father in him.”
“Then why do you care so much?”
And wasn’t that the million-dollar question.
He has no answer besides, “I just need to know.”
There’s a beat of silence before Joker offers, “If it’s any consolation, he would’ve been an absolutely shit dad, and I’ve burned through three of them.” Lonnie doubted that his predecessor had actually been anything remotely close to a dad, had probably just conditioned the man before him to simply associate him with the word.
“Thanks,” he says awkwardly.
The awkwardness continues as a silence blankets over them. Joker seems content to let it stew, probably thrives on the discomfort he causes others, no matter how small, and Lonnie is too wound up to do the same.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, “Did he say anything about me?”
Joker smiles wryly, “I assure you, in the months we were together, he would’ve been delighted to talk about a new brother for me.”
Lonnie realizes that’s probably the only thing resembling confirmation he’ll get. The Joker’s body had been cremated, there were no DNA samples (though Batman most likely had some on hand), and no one had ever known his true identity. Or, more accurately, his past identity.
He ignores the part of him that tells him that the Joker might not have known he had a son. That maybe his biological mother had never told him of it, knowing on some level that her child wouldn’t be safe with him despite her worship.
“So he’s not my dad,” he says to himself. He repeats it again to affirm himself.
Something inside him breaks when he does, but he now recognizes it as guilt. Guilt, for bringing a falsehood to a traumatized man’s home. Guilt, that he had clung to the idea of a criminal for a father because he couldn’t feel worthy of his real one, the one that would have gladly gone to prison for his son. Guilt, that his blood wasn’t the cause of his shortcomings, but just who he was , that despite his loving parents, Lonnie still ended up fucked in the head and wrong .
This whole situation was truly masochistic of him. Lonnie doesn’t know why he had expected anything else.
A hand tentatively touches his arm. Joker looks at him with clear discomfort on his face, as if touching another person in a positive way was a foreign concept. It probably was. He still appreciates the effort, that he had offered silence rather than commenting on Lonnie’s tears.