Chapter Text
“Perfect submission, perfect delight…visions of rapture now burst on my sight…”
As Travis walked down the dim, narrow hallway, he heard the hymn drifting from the music therapy room. Halting, off-key voices, clunky piano. He passed the half-open doorway and saw people standing in rows with their heads bent, their mouths moving along with the words. A woman with limp blond hair glanced up briefly as he passed, a flicker of—excitement, hope?—in her expression. But as soon as she saw his face, she looked down again.
Travis absently smoothed his maroon jacket, which he wore over a plaid button-down shirt. It was his interview outfit. It was the same outfit he’d worn to his date with Betsy, in another lifetime.
A guard walked in front of him, footsteps echoing. “Music therapy,” he remarked, waving a hand in the direction of the doorway. “That’s what they call it, anyway.”
“Angels descending bring from above…echoes of mercy, whispers of love…”
“Right in here,” the man—Sullivan—said, nodding toward another door. “Just going to ask you a few questions. Nothing fancy.”
They entered. The room was small, with a single light hanging from the ceiling, a table and two chairs. Nothing else.
They sat down, facing each other.
Sullivan had a clipboard under one arm. Now, he set it on the table and flipped through the pages. He raised his eyebrows. “Marines,” he said. “Honorable discharge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you worked as a cabbie in New York. And then Gotham.”
“I did. I still do.”
“And now you want to be a guard.” He leaned back in his chair. The harsh glare of the overhead bulb fell on his face. “Why the change?”
Travis hesitated a few seconds before answering, “A man gets tired of driving around. I’ve driven a lot of people. Most of them, I never see again. And I saw you were looking for a guard. I want a job where I stay in one place.”
“A place like Arkham.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
A slow nod. “We get some rough types here in Ward E, you know. But given your background, I suppose you’ve seen some things.”
“I know how to subdue someone, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m pretty strong.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
Sullivan squinted at him. He looked down at the clipboard again and made a small sound in his throat. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re him.”
“Him. Him who?”
“They did a news story about you. Years ago. You’re the fella that saved that kid. The one in New York. The girl. Rescued her from those perverts, sent her back to her family.”
Travis looked away. “Iris. Her name was Iris.”
“So it is you. Thought your name sounded familiar. Bickle. Odd sort of surname. Not one you hear too often.” A smile spread slowly across the man’s broad, pale face. “You were a hero. Bit of a celebrity. For a little while, anyway. People have short memories these days.”
Travis kept his face blank. “Does it matter?”
Mr. Sullivan shrugged. He tapped his fingers against the clipboard. “We’ve got our own celebrity here, y’know. You might’ve heard. Calls himself the Joker.”
Travis’s pulse quickened, just a bit. “You mean Arthur Fleck.”
A nod. He smiled that unpleasant smile again. “Seen that TV movie?”
“No. I don’t watch too many movies. I did see the footage from the Murray Franklin Show.”
“Oh. You saw the real thing.”
“I did.” He had a videotape of it, too. It had been hard to find. But there were bootleg copies floating around. He’d watched the moment over and over. Dozens of times. Mostly, he’d watched Arthur’s face while it happened. A man killing another man was a hard thing to look away from. Travis wondered if that was how his own face had looked when he’d done it.
Well…Travis hadn’t been wearing clown makeup. There was that.
“Gruesome,” Sullivan said, “isn’t it?”
“Killing is like that.”
“I suppose you’d know.”
“Yes, sir.” Travis didn’t like the man. He didn’t know where this was going. But he kept his tone neutral, polite.
“Ever worked as a security guard?”
“Long time ago. I’ve had a lot of jobs.”
Another, slower nod. “You look a bit like him,” he said. “Murray Franklin, that is. I s’pose you’ve had people tell you that.”
“A few times. I don’t see much of a resemblance, myself.”
“I wonder—if Arthur were to see you now, what would he say?” The man chuckled. “Might be fun to surprise him. He’s been a little too quiet lately. Used to tell jokes. Now, he just stares into space. Bit of a scare might do him good.”
“Pretty sure he’ll be able to tell the difference between me and Murray Franklin. I’m a lot younger.”
“Oh, sure, sure. I’m only fooling.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Come on. I’ll show you the ropes.”
“So…I’m hired, then? Are you the one who decides that?”
“Well, you’re more than qualified, and we have an opening to fill. One of the guards quit recently. Stress of the job. Our guests can get a bit rowdy.” He smirked. “Would you like to meet him?”
Travis froze.
At his silence, Sullivan added, “Joker.”
“Where is he now?”
“In his cell. He has a meeting with his lawyer today, or so I’ve heard, but that’s not for a few hours yet.”
Travis had been harboring the half-formed expectation that he would, at some point, meet Arthur. That was—if he forced himself to look at his reasons—why he had applied for this job in the first place. He couldn’t explain his own fixation, but he couldn’t deny it. Still, he hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. “I…”
“He won’t hurt you. He’s been a model patient. Meek as a lamb.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”
Travis stood slowly. “Bring me to him.”
* * *
They walked. Ward E was filled with shouts, crazed laughter and curses drifting from the cells. Travis was very conscious of his pulse, his own breathing. There was no sunlight here, just the dingy glow of the ceiling lights. This place—it was like a submarine. Sealed off. They could’ve been in the deepest part of the ocean or in outer space. It made him think off his own childhood fantasies of being on a spaceship, far away from everything. Just him and the stars.
Sullivan stopped in front of a door. He knocked a few times and said, “Arthur.” No response. He banged harder. “Arthur.”
“Hey, man—if he’s asleep, we don’t have t—”
“What?” The thin, creaky voice drifted from beyond the thick door.
“I’d like to introduce you to a new friend, Arthur.” Sullivan spoke in a faux-jovial tone, that little smirk still sitting on his lips, making Travis’s skin crawl. “You’ll be seeing him ‘round these halls a lot more, soon. Thought you might want to say hello.”
Travis stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, hanging back.
Sullivan opened the door.
Sunlight filtered in through a tiny, barred window. A man sat on the edge of a bed wearing baggy, shapeless white clothes. The way they hung off him made it clear how thin he was. Thinner than he’d been on TV. The sunlight fell on his gaunt face, illuminating its angles and planes, the lines in his forehead, his large, green eyes. It had only been two years since that video of him at the comedy club was aired on TV, two years since he killed Murray Franklin, but he looked so much older.
Travis stepped forward. He removed his hands from his pockets and stood with his arms at his sides. They stared at each other.
“Does he remind you of anyone, Arthur?” Sullivan asked.
Arthur said in that thin, scratchy voice, “Oh yeah.” A smile stretched his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You look like someone I killed.”
“I’m not him,” Travis said.
“Are you sure?” Arthur was still smiling that empty smile. “Are you a ghost? Are you here to haunt me?”
“I’m just here to do a job. My name is Travis Bickle. I’m the new guard.”
“Oh.” Arthur raised one hand to his lips, two fingers extended, as though he were holding a cigarette. He closed his eyes and took a slow drag off of the air, then exhaled an imaginary cloud of smoke. He pushed himself to his feet, faced Travis, and affected a breathy, high-pitched Southern belle voice: “Well, are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to kiss my hand?” Smiling, he slowly extended one arm, his wrist limp.
Sullivan burst out laughing. He elbowed Travis and said, “Real hoot, isn’t he? Go on, Bickle.” He smirked again, and there was a mean glint in his eyes now. “Be a gentleman and kiss the lovely lady’s hand.”
Arthur remained standing there, hand extended. His mouth still smiled, but that blankness remained in his eyes, as if nothing could touch him. As if it didn’t matter much what happened next.
Travis stepped forward, into the cell. The sunlight fell on one side of Arthur’s face, illuminating the deep grooves, the graying stubble on his jaw. His eyes were very green. Greener than they’d appeared in that TV interview.
Travis took his hand, bowed his head, and kissed Arthur’s knuckles. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. He looked directly into Arthur’s eyes, held his hand a second or two longer, and then released it and straightened, maintaining eye contact.
For the first time, he saw a flicker of something in those eyes. Arthur blinked a few times. A tiny furrow appeared between his brows. “Why are you here?” he whispered.
To protect you. To get you out of this place. He wasn’t sure where the thought came from, but as soon as it rose within him, he knew it was true. “Like I said. Just here to do a job.” At Arthur’s silence, he said, “How’s the food here? They got a cafeteria?”
“All food tastes the same to me, now.”
“They got pie?”
“On Fridays,” Arthur said. He raised the imaginary cigarette to his lips again and pursed them, taking an imaginary drag.
There was a brief silence. “All right, then,” Sullivan said. “I’ll be around in a bit to help get you shaved and prettied up for your meeting. Enjoy your…cigarettes.”
“Mm.”
“Come on, Mr. Bickle. Let’s get your paperwork filed.”
Travis stepped back, toward the door, without taking his gaze from Arthur’s face. “Be seein’ you.”
Something flickered across Arthur’s face. Then his gaze twitched away. He sat down slowly on the edge of the cot and gripped his own arm, his face turned toward the wall. His feet, Travis noticed, were bare.
Once Travis had stepped out into the hallway, Sullivan closed the door. The man turned and resumed walking. Travis followed.
“He’s very thin,” Travis said. “You guys don’t feed him?”
“’Course we feed him. But the docs keep him pretty doped up. Some of the meds don’t play well with appetite, I’m told.”
“He’s very quiet.”
Sullivan cast a glance over one shoulder, in the direction of Arthur’s cell. “That’s the liveliest I’ve seen him in a few weeks. Hard to get more than two words out of him these days.”
Travis walked with his hands in the pockets of his maroon jacket—a bad habit of his. He forced himself to pull them out again, to hold his hands at his side. “You said he’s meeting with a lawyer? Does that mean he’s going on trial?”
“So they say. He did kill five people.”
Travis had killed more than five, over the course of his life. Some in the war, but that still counted.
“That young lawyer, Dent? He’s gonna push for the death penalty.”
Travis stopped walking. A ringing filled his head. “They want to kill him,” he said.
“They’ll try.”
“Isn’t he sick? Isn’t that why he’s here in Arkham instead of a regular prison?”
“Sick or not, he’s a murderer. His lawyer will probably go for an insanity defense. Say he didn’t know what he was doin’, that he didn’t know right from wrong when he did it. But that’s a hard thing to prove.”
“Yeah, well. It’s innocent until proven guilty, isn’t it? That’s how things are supposed to work in this country. If there’s reasonable doubt that he was in control of himself, then they have to spare him.”
“Well. That’s the idea. But things in this world don’t always work the way they’re supposed to, do they?” At Travis’s silence, he said, “What? You’re worried about him? He’s a maniac, you know. He’s docile enough now that he’s in a cage and drugged to the gills, but don’t let that fool you. If he were set free, he’d do it again.”
“A man can change,” Travis said.
“He hasn’t changed.”
“I’m not saying if he has or hasn’t. I’m just saying that a man can change.”
Sullivan squinted at him, then made a noncommittal sound and kept walking.
Travis followed. He kept his face neutral.
For years he had been drifting without a purpose. For years he had defined himself through regret over the things he had done. Maybe his soul was already damned, but he’d promised himself, anyway, that he was done with killing. The world was wrong: Travis Bickle was not a hero. He was a sick dog. But a man could change. He had resolved to become a person like other people, to live simply, to accept whatever came. Still, the gnawing ache in his center had remained. He’d felt himself collapsing into himself.
Now, though, his inner gravity had shifted. Arthur Fleck was a man like Travis Bickle. They were of the same substance, and so Travis had to save him. Things were not as they should be, but he could change that. He felt it.
He thought about Arthur’s eyes in the sunlight, and he felt everything within him turning toward those eyes.