The Archetype

[tinhuviel]

Yeah, a new Joker fic. It's not a date and it's not funny; rather, it's a noodly appendage that grew out of a conversation about J a handful of us had here on the Cliffs a few days ago. This Joker is far from the original version of him I imagined for the Date Series. His feet are planted firmly in occult and mythological ground, so it's not surprising at all that the only musical reference in this story is to a Barry Andrews song. Funny how that happens. If you read, I hope you enjoy. If you don't enjoy, I don't know what to tell you, mate.

The Archetype

“You have no records, no history, nothing. Who are you?”

The Joker looked at his new interrogator, who had replaced Commissioner Gordon when the good commissioner could take no more. She was an attractive woman in a typical detective pants suit, but it….suited her. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a loose knot so it wouldn’t get in her large green eyes as she studied the sparse file she had open before her.

“A better question would be, who are you?”

“I’m Detective Ree – “

“Detective Arwen Reese, 37 years old, 15 years on the force, a detective of 3 years. Your parents were big Tolkien fans, thus your first name. They’d still be fans if they hadn’t been stabbed to death in Reynard Park ten years ago while taking a romantic midnight stroll. Their case has since grown..cold. You’ve never been married and only had two boyfriends, despite being quite lovely and catching the eye of both school-mates, when in school, and coworkers. Don’t even deny that. You graduated from Gotham Community College with an Associate’s Degree in criminal justice at the age of 21. You joined the force, and I don’t mean that in the Lucas sense of the word, at the age of 22. You spend your evenings surfing the Internet and trying not to think about how cold your parents’ case has truly grown. You also like to write, watch movies, and go ice skating. Most importantly, and something your employers don’t know, you’re a student and practitioner of the occult.”

Arwen just looked at him, her jaw dropping with each word that came out of that impossibly twisted mouth of his. He smiled, then continued.

“Reynard Park is in an interesting place. It was named for Mark Reynard, a politician from days of old, but do you know that Reynard has a much older and more colourful history? The name, not the politician or park. In Medieval Europe, Reynard was the name of a popular character in a variety of tales. He was often called Reynard the Fox, and he was a trickster, a wily character who always outsmarted his duller, dumber fellows in the stories. Strangely enough, he was also a folk hero. Some think he’s the inspiration for the equally mythical Robin Hood, who was later turned back into a Fox by Walt Disney. I like Reynard Park. I….identify with it. Or the name at least.”

The Joker cocked an eyebrow at Detective Reese and licked his lips. His hands constantly moved in front of him, his fingers locking and unlocking, his long nails clicking on the metal table. He seemed oblivious to the handcuffs. It was as though the Joker didn’t care at all that he’d been caught by the Batman and taken back into custody by the Gotham police. He seemed to be in his own little world.

But Arwen Reese knew better than that. The Joker’s little world had a way of imposing itself on the real world. The death and destruction left in his wake in the past few weeks was evidence of that. And how did he know so much – no – anything about her? To her knowledge, this was the first time either of them had laid eyes on the other, even though she had seen him on the news. Well, who hadn’t? She fought the urge to ask him how he knew her.

“You have turned this city upside down by your criminal actions. I want to know why and I want to know who you are. You’re not going anywhere, not this time, so you may as well cooperate.”

“I come and go as I please, in case you haven’t noticed, Arwen Evenstar,” the Joker replied lowly, using the full nickname Arwen’s father always used. She tried not to be freaked out by this. Everyone knew that the literary Arwen was also called ‘Evenstar.’ It wasn’t a stretch for the Joker to draw such a conclusion. She kept telling herself that and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

“Tad nervous?” the Joker asked, clicking his tongue against his cheek.

“Some of your tongue in cheek humour there, Joker?” Arwen came back. “Tell me who you are.”

“Oh, you know me all too well, Arwen. You of all people here know who I am.”

“Jog my memory,” the detective suggested. Maybe she’d encountered this man before, but didn’t recognize him with the face paint covering his features. She’d remember meeting someone who sported a Glasgow Smile, though, especially one as drastic as the one the Joker had. What she heard next was not what she expected.

“Y’know, people in this city,” the Joker breathed, his eyes half-closed as if he were trying to envision the people he was talking about. “They’ve endured so much insanity over the past coupla years, it stands to reason that their collective unconscious would begin to manifest corporeal representations of their madness. Ever think of that? Hm?”

“What are you trying to say to me?”

The Joker lifted his hands, spreading his fingers in mock supplication to Arwen Reese. “Kinda hard to have a record when your fingerprints change to fit the occasion.”

Arwen watched the Joker, who nodded and smiled at her as though they’d just shared an inside joke. Despite his manic behaviour on TV, the Joker appeared strangely subdued now. She still wasn’t sure what his cryptic answers meant, what exactly he was getting at. Probably nothing. His reputation as a criminally insane psychopath easily preceded him, so Arwen shouldn’t be surprised at all by his incoherence, even though the intelligence his words indicated was shocking and refreshing. Most of the criminals Arwen found herself dealing with could do little more than grunt their responses, their stupidity was so thorough. But she kept coming back to the fact that the Joker had rattled off Arwen’s personal statistics like a bad eHarmony.com advert. How? Why?

“We’ve cross-referenced you in our database, not just nationally, but worldwide. Given your unusual inflections, we thought it might be wise to check records in other countries. You don’t sound like you’re a Gotham native, or even a native of this state. Where are you from?”

“Oh, I’m from everywhere, and I have the most extensive record out there…for those who look in the right place. None of these single-minded goons in the Gee-Pee-Dee have the forethought to find that place. You might.”

“I’m tired of playing these games with you, Joker. If we don’t get the information we want here, I’m sure the professionals up at Arkham will be more than happy to pick your brain apart.”

The Joker laughed at this, genuine merriness shining through in his mad cackling. For effect, he pointed one spindly finger at her. The long-nailed finger quivered as he mocked her. Once he caught his breath, the Joker licked his lips and leaned forward, getting his face as close to hers as the table between them

would allow. “Are you playing dumb because we’re being watched by the knuckle-draggers behind the mirror,” he murmured, “or are you really that phenomenally clueless?”

“Get the fuck away from me, you sick bastard. Sit down.” Arwen’s voice was low with measured authority and rage. She hoped the frustration and fear had gone unnoticed. Something told her, from the smug look the Joker shot her, it had not. He plopped down in the straight chair, slumping back and ogling her, his black-smudged eyes moving up and down her frame as his head bobbled back and forth. He didn’t even try to hide the lust from his face and she knew he was doing this intentionally, trying to unnerve her. Arwen would be damned if she’d let him know it was working.

The Joker parted his lips and clicked his tongue against his teeth as he studied his fingers tracing invisible sigils on the drab table between himself and Arwen. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m the one who asks the questions here.”

“And I’ve answered them,” the Joker retorted. “You’re just too deaf or too thick or too deep in denial to hear them, to understand. Why do you even bother reading all those books on mythology, Witchcraft, ceremonial magick, and who knows what else? Why do you identify as a student of Aleister Crowley’s teachings, hm? Why do you cast Circles and make magick if you’re too closed off to see the world right in front of you?”

“Why does my personal life play into anything you’ve done to this city over the past few weeks?” Arwen shouted, her calm mask shattering in the wake of the Joker’s taunts. She found herself standing, leaning over the table and getting in the Joker’s face. He smelled like raw explosives, sweat, and some sort of nondescript spice. In spite of herself, she found the combination of scents wafting off his person arousing and irresistible. Suddenly, in her mind, she saw random flashes of destruction, death, and violent sex. As she was lost in this series of images imprinted on her psyche, Arwen was paralysed and incapable of stopping the Joker from leaning over the couple of inches it took him to reach her face. He captured her lips in his and kissed her with unmitigated passion. The flood of imagery threatened to drown Arwen as she lost herself in the kiss, and she felt thick moisture trace a slow trail down the inside of her left thigh.

The room was instantly overrun with police who covered the Joker, seven men securing him on the floor and away from Detective Reese. He laughed uncontrollably at their unnecessary roughness.

“That’s enough!” screamed Arwen. “It’s alright, guys. Please just back off. Back the hell off!”

The cops stepped away from the Joker, who lay on the floor awash in hysterics. His fingers curled in and out like cat’s paws making biscuits. As the cops trailed out of the interrogation room, one of them stopped at Arwen to see if she was okay. He handed her a handkerchief so she could wipe her face clear of the red “war paint” the Joker had deposited with his kiss.

“You sure you can handle this?” he said lowly.

“She can handle it better than any of the rest of you because she understands who I am, whether she realizes it yet or not.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, you sack of shit,” the cop said, prompting another wave of laughter from the Joker.

“Jeremy, please. Can you help him get back in the chair before you leave?”

The cop gave Arwen a grudging look, then nodded. He walked back over to the Joker, who remained on the floor, still laughing. When he bent down to pick the criminal up, the Joker was suddenly out of his handcuffs. He flipped his arms around Jeremy’s shoulders, spinning the cop around and pulling the cuffs tight against the policeman’s larynx.

“NoNONONONO!” Arwen screamed, pulling her weapon. “Somebody get in here! Please!”

Again the room was filled with the police, all of them pointing guns at the Joker. “Let the officer go!” One of them said.

“I don’t think so,” the Joker mocked in a sing-song voice, pulling the cuffs tighter and cutting off all of Jeremy’s air. “Arwen, how do you think these cuffs got off? Arwen, why won’t you use all that arcane knowledge and understand? Arwen, open your eyes!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Let the officer go or I will shoot you!”

Despite his slight figure compared to the officer he’d overpowered, the Joker remained immovable as Jeremy engaged in death throws from his strangulation. He didn’t even break a sweat as the death throws intensified in desperation. Shots were fired, but none of the bullets hit the Joker, even though everyone in the room was an ace marksman.

Jeremy’s eyes began to bulge, the blood vessels popping from the pressure of his strangulation. His struggling weakened and slowly stopped while his comrades strangely just stood and watched him die at the hands of this madman. Arwen was no better than any of the rest of them but, inside, she raged at what she was witnessing. The entire time, the Joker’s eyes never left hers. They spoke to her, as though to say, “Understand. Understand.”

Once Jeremy was dead, the Joker let him drop to the floor at his feet like a useless rag doll. He looked down at the dead cop and dropped the handcuffs on his body, then stepped over it and approached Arwen. The cops followed his path, their guns pointing impotently at him as he made his way to the detective.

“You can’t hold me. Like I told you, I come and go as I please,” the Joker said to her, licking his lips slowly and deliberately. “I always have.”

When he reached her, the Joker took Arwen’s gun out of her hands and placed it on the table. “Don’t you see now, detective? See why it is I complete the Batman as much as he completes me? A man once sang ‘Sometimes we’re only the action figures of ourselves.’* You’re in a story as old as time itself, but I was there when the telling of it began. Go home and pull out your books on myth. You’ll find my rap sheet somewhere in one of them…all of them. My ‘crimes’ are manifold. Cast yourself a Circle,” and he leaned in to her, nodding slightly and smirking. “For protection. Then turn on GCN and don’t forget to laugh. Because, really, everything is a joke. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone.”

The Joker kissed her again. She could taste the madness as his tongue swirled around hers. When he pulled away, he chuckled at her trembling arousal. “Oh, and your parents? That was me… See ya in the funny papers, detective.”

Smoothing his hair back, the Joker skirted around Arwen and walked out of the room, past countless cops who seemed frozen in the moment. He skipped down the stairs to the first floor, out of the police department building and into the night. The minute he left the building, the spell, or whatever it had been, was broken and the police scrambled to the exit in the hope of retrieving the Clown Prince of Crime. Arwen called for a bus for officer who was down, even though she knew it was too late for anyone to do anything for Jeremy now. She then went downstairs to see if the Joker had been stopped, knowing that he had not. Seeing the disappointed faces of her comrades, she knew it was too late. Arwen asked the policeman at the front desk of the building which way the Joker went.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, genuinely perplexed. “Up until a few minutes ago when everyone ran down here, I thought he was still up there with you. Besides, I’ve had my own problems down here. Did you know there was a fox trapped in the offices upstairs? It ran down here a few minutes ago.

“What?!” Arwen exclaimed. “You sure it was a fox?”

“It looked like one to me, detective. It sure as hell wasn’t any kind of dog I’ve ever seen before. Thankfully, when I opened the door, it ran right out. It probably wandered in from Reynard Park. The place is full of wildlife.”

Arwen felt numb. She left work and went straight home. Locking the door behind her, she leaned against it for a few minutes, squeezing her eyes shut in an effort to keep the tears at bay. The Joker’s words echoed in her head….Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.

Eventually Arwen stepped away from the door and walked into the extra bedroom she’d turned into her ritual room. Against one wall was a tall bookshelf filled with all manner of volumes on esoterica and the occult. She stood there studying the books’ spines until she found the book she wanted. Pulling it off the shelf, Arwen went to the middle of the room where her modest altar stood. She sat down at the altar, placing the book on the wood pentacle. She opened the book to the chapter she wanted and began to read.

The name of the chapter was Trickster: finding the God of Chaos in the Modern World. She understood now, and Arwen found herself laughing and crying quietly as she read the Joker’s extensive criminal record and wondered when the explosions would begin to rock Gotham City again.

©Tracy Angelina Evans
Darth Shriek
27 May, 2009

In loving memory of Heath Ledger

*Barry Andrews as Stic Basin, from the song “downthere.”