Your Frown Is My Umbrella

The next morning while Reign McLeod was fixing herself breakfast, a very giddy clown was taking part in his weekly therapy session on the other side of town in one of the many psychoanalysis rooms of Arkham.

“Stop laughing and just answer my goddamned question!” Doctor Elizabeth Riley screamed over The Joker’s laughter.

“Alright, that’s enough,” a large black guard said sternly, making a move towards the hysterical clown.

“No! We’re not finished!” Doctor Riley shrieked, slamming her hands on the table. The guard backed away. “I know I can get him to talk. I know it!”

She stepped around the table and grabbed Joker by the shoulders. She stared into his painted face and tried to smother her fear with pure molten rage.

“You listen here, you son of a bitch,” she seethed. “Either you start cooperating, or I’ll be forced to get a little more unorthodox with your treatment.”

Joker’s giggling subsided and he sighed adoringly. “Hmm, uh, not sure that’s much of a threat there, doll face, but it is very vindictive. I like that in a woman,” he purred, raising his eyebrows at her, “especially one with such pretty green eyes. You know that’s one of my favorite colors?”

“Ugh!” she growled, and had to throw her hands behind her back to keep from striking him in the face.

Even though he had just formed his first full sentences of the session, Doctor Riley was not impressed.

Joker rolled his eyes. “Someone needs to learn some manners. I gave you a compliment. I believe you’re supposed to thank me?”

“I’ll thank you when you stop acting like a five year old and give me some real answers!”

Joker’s face contorted into a look of mock surprise. “What? Five? I’m insulted.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a secretive whisper. “I turned six yesterday.”

At this, Joker burst into another fit of laughter and Doctor Elizabeth Riley screamed in frustration.

“You're impossible!” she cried. “You haven’t told me anything I can use!”

Joker stopped giggling and shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I told you pull-lenty of things.”

“Oh, right!” she mocked. “I remember now. You told me your favorite color! As if I didn’t already know that. Everyone in Gotham knows that!”

Her arms shook at her sides as she rubbed her thumb against her fingertips, and to The Joker it almost looked like that greedy money gesture that was meant to imply something was expensive. He had come to realize this was a nervous habit of hers. It looked like she was trying to rub away her fingerprints with the friction, and she was visibly intimidated. Maybe that was why she tried to come off as so strong. She was overcompensating for her insecurities.

It was only their first meeting, but he thought she was already getting ready to give up. She wasn’t going to last any longer than the other ones, which was probably lucky for her. His previous doctor had ended up in the cell next to his after only a week.

“Please,” she begged, sitting down in her chair across from him and resting her elbows on the table, “just give me something I can use. Anything. The name of an old family member, your home town? Look, I’ll even settle for the name of an imaginary friend! Just give me something!”

Joker turned around to glance at the guard, and then faced Doctor Riley again. She tugged restlessly at her long brown hair, and he decided this was another nervous habit of hers.

How did such an insecure woman manage to survive in a field so mentally taxing?

Scratch that; how did she even manage to get the job as his doctor?

“Just give me something,” she repeated miserably and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Anything.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said smoothly. “I’ll talk, but, only if we go off record.”

She gawked at him. “What good would that do?” she demanded, grabbing the tape recorder defensively. “Without proof, no one would believe a word I said.”

“But you’d know,” he added, licking his lips.

Her mouth opened to say something, but no words came out. This made Joker smile. She was actually giving some thought to his little proposition.

“Ted,” she said to the guard and flicked off the recording device, “take a walk.”

Ted shook his head. “I really shouldn’t.”

“It’s fine. He’s restrained. I just need to talk to him privately.”

“I could get in a lot of –”

“I understand that you're new here and afraid to get in trouble, but if anyone has a problem with this, you can tell them it was my decision to continue the session in private. He might be more open to conversation if it’s just the two of us. I’ll take the blame.”

Ted stalled for another moment, and then shook his head in disbelief as he walked towards her. He handed her a small black device. “There. You have your pager. If anything goes wrong –”

“I know, I know. I’ll be fine,” she said shortly and watched as the guard unlocked the door with his key and left the room.

Joker ginned wider as he saw the door shut. Step one; complete. “Good show!”

“Now,” she said seriously, setting the dead tape recorder to the side and running a hand through her mousy brown hair, “I believe you have some explaining to do.”

“Um, I changed my mind,” Joker said simply, leaning back in his chair.

He would have folded his arms across his chest then, if they hadn’t been already. Straightjackets are such fun.

“What?!” she shrieked and jumped up from her seat.

For a second he thought she was going to leap across the table and throttle him right there. He smiled sweetly. It was so funny to watch her go from ‘calm doctor’ to ‘bitter bullied child’ in the blink of an eye. All she wanted was to play Doctor. She just wanted to be the one who finally managed to worm inside his brain and comprehend the complexities of his inner being. Well, that was never going to happen.

No one was ever going to be able to understand him, and if they tried, they were going to lose themselves in the process.

“I said I changed my mind,” he repeated, enunciating each word carefully to aggravate her even more.

Her fists shook angrily at her sides. “You said you’d talk.”

He grinned. “I am talking.”

“No! Don’t you dare get technical with me! You thed you would if I turned it off! I even thent Ted away, and you jutht wanna’ thit there like a fucking –”

“Tah tah tah, language, please,” Joker interrupted in his nasally tone, and she slapped a hand over her mouth in horrified humiliation. Joker merely pretended he hadn’t noticed her momentary lisping. “I highly doubt such words are condoned in your little fancy pants therapy textbooks.”

She blushed a furious shade of red and slowly pulled her hand away from her mouth as she sat back down. She took a deep breath. “Don’t give me that shit,” she ordered slowly.

Joker grinned menacingly at her. He could tell she was terribly embarrassed and just struggling to maintain control of herself. Good. He had completed step number two and worked his way into her head. In order to stimulate all sorts of resented emotions in her subconscious, he meant for his smile to be both sympathetic and aggravating.

It worked.

Doctor Riley’s face twitched angrily as she sprung from her seat for the third time that session, and her tone suddenly grew so loud and frantic that it sounded like shattering glass.

“You like this, don’t you?! You goddamn fucking clown! You just love making people miserable! Why, huh?! Why?! Does it make you feel big?!”

Joker stuck out his lower lip and would have scratched his chin to emphasize his thought process if his arms hadn’t been wrapped around his chest.

“Uh, that’s what bullies do,” he said slowly and then shook his head. “No, I’m not a bully.”

He could tell Doctor Riley was slightly unnerved by his sudden seriousness. The fact that they were all alone in a quiet room only seemed to make things all the more intimidating. But she wanted answers. Joker could tell, and she was not going to throw her arms in the air and call it quits just because she got a little spooked.

He decided she most certainly did have a past that involved a lot of constant belittlement and degradation from both family and friends. Why else would she be so desperate to prove herself?

“Okay, okay.” She cleared her throat. “If you don’t see yourself as a bully, then what are you?” she asked hopefully and sat herself down.

He could tell her hopes were rising like the blood pressure of a hostage right before he pulled the plug on their existence. Joker pondered over what would be the best response. He could lead her on for another few hours, feeding her intricate tales to make her believe she was getting somewhere. Or he could just stop talking altogether and leave her to deal with the disappointment.

Oh, but that would be too…boring. This was going to be his last therapy session in Arkham, and he wanted to make it count. And so The Joker picked option number three; improvisation with a little extra zip.