Title: Madness, Like Gravity…
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Joker (2019)
Characters: Joker (Arthur Fleck)
Setting: A certain eventful car ride…
Rating: Teen.
Length: 694 words.
Summary: Joker admires the beauty of it all.



It was like waking from a long and dreary nightmare—only to find that Halloween night, Christmas morning, and the Fourth of July had suddenly decided to happen all at once.

Flaming-car bonfires. Icy sparkles of shattered glass. Fireworks of road flares and smoke bombs. And everywhere, up and down the street, crowds of running, shouting people. Masked figures cavorting amidst the wreckage, brazenly hauling their looted goods like trick-or-treaters or holiday shoppers; humans who had abandoned all pretenses, simply reveling in being the animals they were.

With his painted nose pressed to the window of the patrol car, the avenging clown named Joker took in the spectacle with a childlike glee. Gotham felt right like this, its grim canyons of filth transformed into a phantasmagoria of light and color… and he felt right for the first time in his life, liberated from the too-tight skin once known as Arthur Fleck. Not a single lie remained to tie his spirit down. That would have been enough for him all on its own, but the idea that he had any role in kicking off this party was sheer icing on the cake.

On the other hand, the fact that they gave him all the credit was the best joke of all.

At least at the start, as Arthur, he had been only the match that first lit the fuse; an incendiary splinter with no agency of his own, simply used and discarded by others. That match was more than figuratively struck by the hand of Gotham itself: personified by Penny Fleck who imprisoned him in an illusion of a life, Thomas Wayne who sneered down from his ivory tower, bully-boys both rich and poor who took pleasure in inflicting pain, even that idiot Randall who schemed behind a smile.

(Of all his kills, in hindsight, Randall was the only one Joker might have contemplated with even the most fleeting moment of remorse. If his fellow clown hadn’t put a gun in his hands, he might have remained a pathetic nonentity for the rest of his days—and that was a terrifying thought to him. Maybe he should have been a bit more grateful for that contribution to his journey of self-discovery… Nah. The guy was an asshole either way, and now he wouldn’t be around to torment Gary, which was just as well. And besides, Joker actually had thanked him before he shanked him.)

No, it really wasn’t Arthur who had started this ball rolling. The empty husk that he was could never have harbored such a power—until his yearning hollowness was filled, not by love or kindness, but by every bit of cruelty and hate the city had vomited out. It was only as Joker, a living embodiment of Gotham’s collective madness, that he finally realized the ability to shape events of his own volition: a newfound talent for weaponizing chaos.

And it was all so easy. Just one little push to tip over what was already on edge. Tear off one guy’s mask, and a subway car erupts into a brawl; fire a few well-placed bullets, and an entire city burns.

To think of all the years he’d wasted trying to entertain others, when he could merely have sat back and entertained himself with the absurd delusion of civilization that called itself society.

Nor was he alone now in seeing the world for the grand morbid joke that it was.

Outside the window, rioters flailed and cheered in the light of burning trash piles. Some were dancing, just as Joker himself felt in his heart like doing, while muffled whoops and cackles dimly penetrated the glass.

As the most beautiful irony of his life dawned upon him, a laugh fluttered up within his own chest, like a butterfly taking wing on the winds of Gotham’s lunacy. Nothing at all like Arthur’s desperate, wrenching hacks, it was instead an astonishingly soft and gentle sound of sincere pleasure.

Penny was right about one thing after all. He really had been meant to bring some joy and laughter into the world.

It just didn’t happen in a way either of them could ever have expected.

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2019 Jordanna Morgan