Prologue

Strife.

Gotham was a warzone. Ripe with strife, opposition, and struggle by domineering giants and, on the lesser end of the spectrum, the obtuse carriage of the poor, Gotham had been a warzone from the very beginning. An Americanized and romanticized upper echelon of crime pervaded through the city from its very origin.

One thing was clear; whether trapped or inside of the game on account of one's will, most criminals, fanatics, politicians, authorities, and officials made it a mission to run the spectrum or at least make a living quietly.

Gotham was a place of peril. Unsafe to anyone except those insane enough to run the possibilities of not dying by a random shot of gunfire on the daily basis or those that believed they had perpetuated a stint of control beyond the upper echelons' influence, Gotham, a city of some hope amongst its constant crime, death, and agonizing labor to reconstruct the city by hardworking people whether in or out of a state of power sufficient in the clamoring noises of gunfire, crime, and general insolence by the mixed population of the city, was ultimately hopeless. There was no way around it.

No way around how hopeless the city appeared to be on first design if one were to scrawl upon its surface before looking at the deep, dark underbelly of the corruption Gotham experienced on a basic level.

No way around how death seemed to be knocking on the doors of the highest officials in power at any minute due to poor security precautions and little scaping of those willing to protect such officials given how fear permeated every single step; every single doorway in Gotham's infrastructure after a lethal attack had been planned on the commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department.

In lieu of such event, a familiar face and playing card haunted the screens of several stations across Gotham's streaming lines.

A Joker playing card, that is, haunted the screens of televisions, phones, and general devices designed to stream and display information.

Asylums, jails, prisons, penitentiaries, mental hospitals, hospitals, police stations, police departments, homes with sufficient electricity and an adage of some stability among the lack of survivability of Gotham were all haunted by the playing card distinguished by an epitomic lack of any context.

The face it resembled was that of a criminal; insane, ruthless, and vile, another one, like the rest of the madmen and lunatics that failed in causing a stir locked up in an asylum cell as of a recent event after apprehension through the interference of the Gotham City Police Department after making an attempt on the commissioner Jim Gordon's life in an attempt to startle the department.

The law enforcement of Gotham, of the past week in recent times from the perspective of some, arrested several groupies committed to acts of homicide, drug trade, and violence. Those bunkered in their houses or outside underneath bridges in Gotham's irony of architecture cheered, rejoicing temporarily, knowing well that, whether it be another day or the day after, the same madmen, lunatics, serial killers, and depraved homicidal inmates would perhaps stage a breakout due to the electrical inefficiencies of the city's complex. Those on the street without any homes were worrisome, wondering when another breakout would happen, or when they themselves would be put behind bars due to a growing drug war destabilizing the currents of the city.

The vulnerabilities of the power grid and the insufficient, wavering state of the commodity known as electricity in Gotham posed another problem for another time, constantly being exploited by criminals and lunatics alike.

In silence, a man quartered in his cell with his head down and a glint of insanity in his eye recalled how violently he was put down, forced into the cell like a wild animal.

He was a wild animal. He'd made it his goal as of late to do something that could've cost him his life. If not for the 'by the book' treatment of the official whom he offended with his homicidal desire expressed regionally over the substantiated extent over Gotham's terrace lines and topographical current, he would've been dead. Shot dead with lines of coke tracing the body, labeling an untrue attachment of suicide to his death when he was really shot in blood by an officer.

The hypothesis of his alternate fate made him produce a sickening howl of laughter through his crooked, bent teeth.

His lips, dabbed in a severe aesthetic of red, had microscopic and macroscopic cuts visible to the eye, but he didn't care. Nor did he care about his bandaged wrist, broken pinky finger, and his lack of proper eyesight from the beatdown he sustained at the hand of officers when his plot had come tumbling down to a halt.

He just didn't care.

All of it mattered little to him; the outcome of his situation, whether turning into death, or seemingly a byproduct of something else only gave him time to reflect on what to do next, and he simply concluded that he did not care one bit about the result. He'd never graced an asylum before except the situation corresponding to his unfortunate circumstance at the moment, but knew well that there were madmen, lunatics, and killers as well as criminals who did crimes he could never dream of committing himself.

But how? How did he get to an asylum? How could a man like the man pictured in silence, head down, lips dabbed in red with the picturesque sighting of macroscopic and microscopic lip cuts, a broken pinky finger, and a blurry eyesight combined with mucus and blood sorely contained in the eyes end up in an asylum? The medical care he sustained prior to his arrival was inefficient, and he could find himself getting dizzy and dizzier. Not wanting to sleep, he readjusted his position from one of sitting, standing up.

At his full height, he seemed a giant compared to other inmates. Six feet and five inches tall approximately according to length if one were to take into account his immense lankiness and underweight stature as well as his zany flash of hair painted with green adding onto the height he possessed, he was not exactly menacing or intimidating except for minor intrusions of the smile he possessed, ear-to-ear at all times even when he experienced visible despair, pain, and anguish.

His name...?

The Joker.

A man with a white, pure skin complexion resembling a clown and dark, boiled, red lips wielding many cuts and scars of the distant past.

His playing card had become a staple across the asylum. People called him a clown. A joke. An embarrassment.

He peered through the bars which constrained him to a single cell with limited space. Alternating square tiles consisted of the space and it measured a mere uncomfortably small space for the lengthy, lanky clown, enough to drive those of claustrophobic fears down a hole of insanity and soul-crushing fear.

But hey, he mused to himself in his head.

It was better than a cage.

They were considering putting him in a cage like a mad hound. Like an experiment gone wrong. He didn't care anymore; not after how much the horrible treatment accelerated his pain and suffering. He didn't care. If he screwed up one more time, he thought, then he would be subjugated to treatment the equivalent of a slave; an obedient sketch of a slave designed to fulfill the demands of the security officers who seldom provided the clown company.

An uncomfortable, minimal amount of space.

He'd done everything in his power with his exhausted, mentally inefficient condition to get guards concerned.

Bashing his head against the wall and drawing profuse amounts of blood, letting his poisonous, copious amounts of blood stink up the shared solitary confinement area to leave a stench for any guards that would need to check on him to ensure that he didn't do anything crazy or possibly escape given his unpredictability in the environment, and generally being scary was enough to draw enough notoriety from the security.

Security was seldom ever there in person. They often took reports, shifted tabs, and did not do anything to actively ensure the humane treatment of the broken, sad man in the cell restrained by iron bars and dense, stone walls, kept docile by a furnished bed, toilet, and a broken, dirtied sink for the half-assed attempts of cleanliness by the aforementioned man in the cell.

It was horrifying. A total nightmare for the man inside of the cell.

A total nightmare on the first day after he was caught, beaten down to a pulp, and forced inside of the cell. Forced to sit out his pleas of insanity and decries of anger, violence, and suicidal tendencies ranging from the stripping of his own flesh and skin in an attempt to mend together some redemption for all the suffering he endured, he was in complete silence, only standing, hooking his head through the bars and staring at the exposed ground of the asylum in his lonesome.

Over the intercom, an announcement was made.

"Inmate #0801, you have an appointment with Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel."

The sad man, an inmate in solitary confinement, heard his number. Characterized by a number and a number only, he took a gaze down to the number written on his wrist. #0801. His number. His identity in all practicality.

The sound of keys rattling down the long hallway leading to his solitary cell bred promise for freedom, but it was instantly eliminated when he saw correctional officers with utility belts strapped around their waists, pepper spray attached to their figures. Two of them were present.

The first one he saw was a fat, hefty, big man, a few inches shorter by comparison whereas the second was an ordinary, plain man, hardly applicable to be an officer.

But he figured that he were to go and be taken calmly rather than put up a fight. The fat security guard took out one of the keys the clown inmate presumed he heard rattling, inserting it into the keyhole and letting the cell open.

Joker freed his head from the bars as they came up and the two guards hooked him by the arm, beginning to walk with him, seemingly carrying him by force to the area where he would be talking with his psychiatrist, Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel. Joker had never talked with his psychiatrist before.

And down the long hallway, the sad, broken inmate known by the tagline #0801 was sent into a quiet room. A room where he could see a small space; a window where officers were watching him after the security guards pushed him into the room. His psychiatrist, a counselor for any emotional conflicts of sorts, was Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, but he didn't know what she looked like nor what possible motive she had aside from presumably helping him.

The guards were cruel, direct, and honest with him.

They told him to stay put.

And so, he presumed, he'd stay there. He had no other choice.