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The door to Edward’s hideout was unlocked.
He had definitely locked it before leaving for his (predictably unproductive) meeting with Crane in the backrooms of the Iceberg Lounge. Which meant that Edward was facing one of two possible situations.
A) One of the henchmen under his employ had turned off Edward’s complicated lock puzzle from the inside in order to leave, in which case Edward now had to execute the miserable sod for disobedience and stupidity. Murdering an employee was always inconvenient, mainly because it always had to be directly followed by hiring a new employee, a process that became more and more difficult the higher your employee kill count became.
B) Someone solved the puzzle lock from the outside.
The first was an annoyance, but the second had the potential to ruin his entire operation. He’d been setting up for his next heist for over a month, and having to restart everything from scratch now would be an aggravating waste of resources. Not to mention the possibility that he might end the night in Arkham.
Edward took a step backwards, putting his hand to his chin as he contemplated the best course of action. The good news was that it probably wasn’t Batman. This particular hideout had a skylight, which had been a necessary feature for the set-up of a brilliant riddle trap he was excited to see the Bat try and struggle out of (assuming he had the brain capacity) when the series of clues Edward would be planting led him back here.
It wasn’t impossible for Batman to find Edward before he left riddles pointing to his location (henchmen were both fallible and interrogatable, after all). But if the Bat had entered, he would absolutely have crashed through the skylight instead of going through the effort of unlocking the door. The man was pathologically obsessed with dramatic entrances, and he wouldn’t have been at all deterred by the armed guards Edward had posted directly under the skylight. So unless Batman had misplaced his grapple, or spontaneously developed a newfound appreciation for the art of puzzle solving... it wasn’t him.
Edward took another step away from the door. Despite his carefully manicured reputation, the Bat was not the most dangerous person in Gotham City. There were a number of people far more hazardous to Edward’s life and limb that could be waiting for his arrival.
He decided quickly that the best option would be to retreat to a safehouse and wait for his henchmen to contact him through one of their secure channels. If they did, then Edward could safely determine it was option A, return, and kill whichever one of them had caused him all this unnecessary grief. If they didn’t, then he would assume the hideout was lost and work from there accordingly.
Satisfied with this conclusion, Edward straightened up, ready to turn back in the direction he’d come from. And then the door opened.
“Knock, knock!” exclaimed a terrifyingly familiar voice. The greeting was followed by a ghoulish white face peering through the crack between door and frame with a grin.
God damn it.
“Joker,” Edward said warily, wondering whether it would do anything at this point to turn tail and run for where he’d hidden his car.
“No, that’s my line,” Joker said, opening the door all the way and leaning against the frame. “You’re supposed to ask ‘Who’s there?’”
Edward sighed. “Who’s—?”
“Well it doesn’t work now, Eddie,” Joker said impatiently, making an exaggerated show of rolling his eyes. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to overcommit to a bit?”
Edward glanced analytically over the Joker’s person. "Possibly," he said. The clown wasn’t outwardly armed, but he likely had more than one weapon sewn into the tailoring of his purple suit. “It was hard to make out anything specific over the general drunken slurring.”
“Ha!” Joker cackled, leaning against the doorframe before looking back up at Edward. “How’s the old woman doing?” he asked, still smiling. “She dead yet?”
Edward narrowed his eyes. Was that an attempt at a threat? If so, it was a poor one. “Yes,” he replied. “Cirrhosis. Eight years go.”
Joker’s face fell. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said somberly, straightening up.
“Why?” Edward asked, wrinkling his nose. “I wasn’t.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. But it always felt good to say.
Joker shrugged, gesturing with a tilt of his head for Edward to follow him inside. Having no better options, Edward did so.
“There’s no closure in having your parents die from something uncontrollable,” Joker said over his shoulder, leading Edward into his own lair. “It’s the kind of thing that can lead to a lifetime of psychological issues. Far better to kill them yourself before anything else can get to them.”
There was an implied invitation to ask Joker if he killed his parents, which Edward absolutely refused to do. Even if he trusted the clown to tell him the truth— which he did not— he had no desire to hear the gorey details.
“Well, thanks for the advice,” Edward said, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm. “Next time my mother is diagnosed with portal hypertension, I’ll be sure to break into the hospital and smother her with a pillow before her organs have the chance to stop functioning.”
“You’re welcome,” Joker said cheerfully, rounding a hallway corner with a spring in his step. “You know,” his voice called back from out of sight, “I do think Batsy would be so much happier if he’d just killed mommy and daddy himself. He could have pulled it off, too! Not like that poser friend of his.”
Edward took the opportunity to draw his six shooter from the inside of his suit jacket, preparing himself for a potential trap. “I have a feeling that he wouldn’t agree with you,” Edward said, raising the weapon over his shoulder as he prepared to turn the corner.
To his relief, there was no waiting brigade of clown-maked henchmen; just Joker, waiting for Edward outside of the door to the warehouse’s old foreman office. If Joker cared about the revolver in Edward’s hands, he didn’t show it.
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Joker said patiently, like Edward had missed the point somehow. The implied patronization made Edward grind his teeth. “Batsy never does anything that makes him happy!”
Then Joker paused, frowning.
“Well,” he said, looking unexpectedly contemplative. “Usually.”
To Edward’s immense confusion, Joker didn’t expand on that point at all, instead taking the opportunity to disappear into the office behind him. Presumably Edward was supposed to continue following him, which seemed on its face like the worst possible option. Edward was on his own turf; he could easily take advantage of that to sneak out of the building. It had not missed his attention that the facility was dead silent. He doubted any of the henchmen who’d been here when he left were still alive. Much better to cut his losses now than risk joining them. Except...
He was curious about what Joker was here for.
“To kill him” was the most obvious answer to that particular riddle, since the clown was a psychopath who thought murder was the perfect punchline. He’d even shot Edward point blank before, with a revolver not too different from the one that Edward was currently holding in his hands. He’d survived, obviously, but he’d never been able to puzzle out whether that was intentional on Joker’s part or not.
Of course, Joker had only shot him in the first place because Edward had made what was, in retrospect, an extremely obvious mistake.
He’d decided a long time ago that he wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
There were a variety of other reasons that Joker might have come to his hideout and murdered all of his henchmen. He might have noticed the spies Edward had implanted in his gang and wanted to even the score by forcing Edward to replace his entire workforce. He might have been using the abandoned warehouse as a hideaway for something valuable and had come to retrieve his belongings. He might just be making his idea of a social call.
Or, as Joker could have been hinting with that last comment, it might have something to do with the Bat. And if there was some recent development with Batman that Edward didn’t know about... well, it would be prudent to find out, wouldn’t it?
Edward entered the office.
Joker hadn’t done any redecorating, which was somewhat unexpected. The room was still mostly as Edward left it, the walls covered in yards of colored string connecting photographs to newspaper clippings to shipping registries to satellite coordinates. His computers were also untouched, which was gratifying. He would have bet money that they’d all be bashed in with a crowbar.
The only difference was the presence of a large bottle of champagne, sitting among the cluttered papers covering the table at the room’s center. Joker was rummaging around the office, seemingly indifferent to Edward’s entrance. He hooted with victory when he found a neon green mug under a manila folder containing files on Black Mask’s real estate holdings, rushing to the bottle on the table in anticipation.
“Are we celebrating something?” Edward asked, watching as Joker whipped a pocket knife out of nowhere and stabbed the champagne cork with brutal precision. The clown yanked the cork out of the bottle’s mouth with a single, fluid motion, giggling happily as it hissed and foamed in protest.
“Aren’t we?” Joker asked absentmindedly, mopping up the spill covering Edward’s papers with another pile of Edward’s papers. He glanced up with a pointed glare in his eyes. “Playing stupid doesn’t suit you, Eddie. God knows how many pies you have your fingers stuck in.”
He held up the wad of soaking papers in his hand, as if they somehow proved his point. Then he tossed them over his shoulder. “I’m sure you heard ages before I did,” he added, the statement sounding suspiciously like a compliment. “I had to hear from Bane.”
Joker said the name with the kind of distaste people usually reserved for particularly loathed politicians. That made sense; the two had never cared for each other. What didn’t make sense was whatever Joker was under the impression that Edward already knew. The clown’s faith in his investigative ability was gratifying, but that sense of pride was completely undercut by his annoyance that he had no idea what the Joker was talking about.
As Edward ran through a mental list of things that Bane might know about that he didn’t, it occurred to Edward for a single, horrifying moment that Batman might be dead. Bane was, arguably, more likely to kill the Bat than Joker himself. And recent Batman sightings around Gotham did nothing to refute his death, as his allies had plenty of motivation to pretend he was still alive— especially if he was killed in his out-of-costume identity, which Bane had long implied he was aware of.
But that didn’t make sense with Joker’s earlier comment about Batman doing things that made him happy. And, as flattering as it was to think that Joker’s response to Batman’s death would be to visit Edward, it seemed incredibly unlikely.
This line of thought allowed him to relax somewhat, though he was still on edge as he tried to puzzle out an answer to the riddle Joker had inadvertently posed.
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” he said eventually, hoping that he hadn’t allowed too much time to pass between Joker’s statement and his reply.
Joker didn’t look suspicious of Edward. He was currently occupied by trying to pour champagne into the coffee mug, a process that was abruptly interrupted as it became obvious that the mug still contained coffee. The clown hooked one of his long legs around a nearby garbage bin, dragging it over to the table so that he could dump the mug’s contents inside.
“I suppose I’m feeling a little nostalgic,” Joker admitted. He poured more champagne into the mug, swirled it around, and dumped the resulting brown-tinted liquid into garbage as well. “Besides, I was thinking you could be my plus one,” he continued, setting the mug on the table and filling it again. “Or I could be your plus one. Whoever gets his invitation first.”
Invitation?
“I haven’t received one,” Edward said casually, gambling that this wasn’t too much information to give away. Joker laughed, though to Edward’s surprise it was less ‘cackling madman’ and more ‘surprised and self-conscious.’
“Well, that’s a relief,” Joker said, hopping onto the table. He set the mug down in front of where Edward was standing, then sat down with his legs crossed in the middle of the surface. “Er, no offense, Ed,” he added after a moment’s consideration. “It would just infuriate me beyond all reason if it turned out that the Riddler of all people was higher on their list than I am! I’m sure you get it.”
“Your attempt to insult me is obvious and pathetic, so no offense taken,” Edward said, picking up the mug. The champagne inside was definitely still more brown than it was supposed to be.
“I’m afraid it’s not the most expensive,” Joker said, gesturing to the champagne, as if that was the issue at hand. “It was just what Roger had in his pantry.”
Edward took a sip. He spat it out immediately and set the mug back on the table. That had not been recent coffee. “Who’s Roger?” he asked, still gagging slightly.
Joker opened his mouth to speak, then paused.
“You know, I’m actually not positive,” Joker said, grinning apologetically. “That was a couple stops ago. He was a sweetheart, though. Let me borrow his mailbox. I think he had a daughter? He kept bringing her up when he was begging me not to kill him.”
Borrow his mailbox. As a drop? Was Joker communicating secretly with someone? He wasn’t usually one for subtlety, but that would explain how he’d learned something Edward hadn’t.
“And did you manage to recover what you were looking for?” Edward asked cautiously. “Other than Roger’s champagne.”
The glare Joker fixed him with was beyond murderous. Edward actually took a step backwards, on instinct.
“Of course I didn’t,” Joker said, his voice much calmer than his expression. “I just told you that I didn’t have my invitation yet, didn’t I?”
Edward nodded, as if he was following. “Do you think Roger might have taken it?” he asked, hoping to direct Joker’s ire elsewhere. “I mean, if it was arranged to be delivered to his mailbox.”
Joker shook his head, raising the champagne bottle back for a swig. “No, no,” he said, wiping his mouth and smearing his lipstick. “Roger was a darling man! Fantastic sense of humor. He’d never do that to me. And I killed him when the mail came anyway, so he wouldn’t have had the opportunity.”
Another swig. Joker tapped his chin with a gloved finger. “And it wasn’t... arranged, per se. But Batman had to send it somewhere, sometime. And Roger’s mailbox was somewhere, sometime. So. Y’know.” He meshed his fingers together repeatedly, as if this somehow illustrated his point.
“Ah,” Edward said. “Yes.”
So, the clown was definitely having some kind of breakdown. Roger was probably just a random Gotham civilian whose mailbox was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was good, because it might mean that Edward wasn’t out of the loop on something after all. It was also bad, because the last time Joker was this out of it he shot Edward point blank in the stomach, which was not an experience he was looking to recreate.
“Where did you go after you borrowed Roger’s mailbox?” Edward asked. If there was anyone in hot pursuit of the homicidal clown currently sitting on top of his blueprints for the Natural History Museum, he might as well know now.
Joker narrowed his eyes, frowning. “I want to say... Kartaksho, Pakistan?” he said, his painted fingernails tapping against the green glass of the bottle. “I don’t know. I don’t speak Urdu. I just know there’s an old fort there that the Demon Girl used to live in. I wanted to know if she’d gotten an invite.”
Demon Girl, a fort in Pakistan... Edward rushed over to his computers, bringing up his security feeds for the building. “The Demon’s Head?” he demanded, flipping through camera footage. “If you brought the League of Assassins to my doorstep, I swear I’m going to—”
“Relax, Eddie Bear,” Joker interrupted, rolling his eyes. “She wasn’t home. Probably hasn’t been in years, I’m not really on top of the whole ‘international intrigue’ scene. The only assassins fort-squatting were the masked ones. And you can kill those, their management doesn’t really care.”
That didn’t sound right to Edward, but he couldn't see any assassins swarming the building on the security footage, and he didn’t have enough firsthand experience with the League to dispute it. He did see that the warehouse’s production floor was covered in the green-clad corpses of his henchmen, but that was almost certainly from Joker.
“And then you... came here?” Edward asked, surprised. He still wasn’t sure what kind of gathering Joker was seeking an invitation to (assuming it was even real enough to be defined as anything more than the disembodied concept of An Event), but it was still flattering that he thought Batman would invite Edward to the same party as his ex-girlfriend the Assassin Queen.
“Well, there were a lot of airports in-between,” Joker clarified. “Stopped in Paris for a couple of days. Ran into Hush... somewhere?” He made a face. “Now that’s a real weirdo. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have even told him that Batman is getting married, but I wanted to see what he’d do.” Joker shook his head. “And of course, it was plastic surgery. I don’t know how I didn’t see that coming. It’s always plastic surgery with—”
“Batman is getting married?” Edward shouted, his mouth finally catching up with his brain. Joker responded by throwing the champagne bottle at the wall directly next to Edward’s head.
“DON’T REMIND ME!” he bellowed, then bit his lip when Edward stumbled backwards in panicked surprise.
“Sorry,” he said, somewhat petulant. “Sore subject.”
Edward started pacing back and forth, trying to put his thoughts into motion. “How did he— who is he— Selina?” he managed to stammer out, still reeling.
“Et tu, Kitty Cat?” Joker muttered, picking a shard of broken glass off of his lapel.
“But...” Edward stopped pacing, turning to face the clown. “But she’s a criminal!”
Joker stared at him.
“That’s your objection to this?” he asked, visibly offended. “Edward Nygma, I’m ashamed of you. It’s the 21st century. Cat burglars and bat vigilantes have just as much of a right to get married as a normal couple.”
“Batman can’t marry a criminal!” Edward protested, internally despising that he was even engaging with this lunacy. “He’s Batman.”
“Look, Edward, if you could just wrap up denial and move on to a more productive stage of grief, I would appreciate it,” Joker said impatiently. “I’d recommend either anger or bargaining. I briefly did depression and it ended in me sitting in a bar with a plastic surgery addict who makes ski masks out of medical gauze.”
“Oh, and now you're handling this well?” Edward snapped, furious at the condescension. “Waiting at random mailboxes hoping he’ll make you his Best Man? You’re a serial killer who’s obsessed with the groom, Joker, you’re not getting invited to their fucking wedding!”
Edward clapped a hand over his mouth. Oh God, did he say all of that out loud? His fingers tightened around his revolver, trying to decide if he trusted himself to shoot faster than Joker could draw.
Except Joker wasn’t drawing any weapons at all. He didn’t even look angry.
“Do they even still do that thing at weddings?” Joker asked, resting his chin on his knee. “The ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ thing? Or is that all...” he paused, raising a hand and wiggling his fingers in the air. “You know. Hollywood?”
“Um,” Edward said, his heart still racing at far too many beats per minute after what should, by all rights, have been a near-death experience. Did Joker not care? Had he even heard what Edward had shouted at him? He seemed to be listening now, based on how expectantly he was staring in Edward’s direction.
“I mean,” he continued, watching Joker warily, “that line in a wedding ceremony was intended for legal objections to the union, which... I guess might apply to their situation, if one or both of them were getting married under false identities... but neither strike me as particularly religious, which means they’re probably having a civil ceremony, in which case there’s no reason to ask for legal objections, because the only ‘higher being’ invoked is the government and they can just refuse to issue a marriage licen—”
“Hollywood,” Joker concluded, shaking his head. “Well, there’s nothing for it.”
“Nothing for what?” Edward asked, confused and more than a little annoyed at being interrupted. “That’s it? You’re just not going to do anything about it?”
“I didn’t say that,” Joker said, and Edward flinched as the clown slid himself off the table. He didn’t attack, however; just stood up and brushed the detritus off his suit.
It occurred to Edward, watching him, that Joker might be planning on doing something drastic— might have already been planning something drastic before he even arrived. Was that why he was here? Did he want Edward to talk him down from something? He honestly had no idea what Joker’s idea of a drastic course of action would even be, but he doubted it would be good for anyone involved.
“It doesn’t have to matter, you know,” Edward tried. “He can still fight us, if he’s married to Selina. He was already dating her. Functionally, nothing changes.”
Joker just looked at him. He didn’t have to say anything. The inside of Edward’s head was screaming objections all on its own.
“Fine,” Edward said stiffly, refusing to vocalize what he didn’t want to think about. “Then let’s kill him. We could do it, the two of us, if we did it together.”
Joker didn’t say anything, just kept staring at him. He didn’t so much as twitch when Edward slammed his palm down on the paper-covered table.
“Selina loses, we win,” he said insistently. “And Batman doesn’t get to be happy. That’s what you want, isn’t it? It would work. You know it would work.”
For a moment, Joker seemed to consider it. Then he shook his head.
“Terrible punchline,” he said, and Edward only narrowly stopped himself from attempting to strangle him.
“Fuck you, then,” Edward spat, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Why are you even here? Obviously I don’t have the answer to whatever delusional breakdown you’re going through. Wouldn’t your time be better spent shooting up bridal shops than killing my henchmen?”
“Probably,” Joker said. Edward had to clench his fists to prevent himself from going for the clown’s neck. “But... I don’t know.”
Edward had to bite down his surprise— and his terror— as Joker stepped toward him, leaving only a few inches between them.
“The last time I felt like this,” he said slowly, “you put a lot of effort into trying to make me feel better.”
Edward swallowed. “But... it didn’t work.”
“It didn’t,” Joker agreed.
He put his hands on Edward’s shoulders. There was basically no distance between them at this point. Was he going to... was he going to kiss him? Did Edward want Joker to kiss him? The idea wasn’t scaring him as much as it should be, especially given the circumstances. Joker leaned closer. Edward could smell blood on his skin, probably from Edward’s henchmen. Joker tilted his head, a slow and delicate motion. Their foreheads brushed.
Edward exhaled. “I...”
Joker’s head whipped back, then slammed into Edward’s forehead with enough speed and force to stop his thoughts entirely, replaced with a white-hot pain that blared throughout his skull.
And then everything went black.