She gets left alone a lot, though. Cindy is out doing things all the time. He doesn't have as much time to take her to the flying place. (Once, when he is out and she can't even ask, she hops out over the patio balcony onto the neighboring roof, and checks to see if there is anybody around, and flies a little bit, low and owl-quiet. She doesn't think anybody sees.) She builds elaborate structures. She solicits another box of pieces.
He leaves the news on, a lot. Pen mostly ignores it. She knows English, technically, but the pentagon didn't tell her the concepts her upbringing has left her missing.
"...of more than—oh my God."
The Joker bolts out of the kitchen just in time to catch the replay of the collapsing football field. He watches the screen intently, scrambling onto the closest couch for a better view, and the voiceover notes shakily that this is now coming in live as the camera pans over the flaming ruin that used to be part of the stands. Specifically, he is informed, the part of the stands containing the mayor of Gotham.
He has a sense of theatre, at least, when he brings out that scientist type and has him identify the big round thing as a nuclear bomb.
"Who can disarm it?"
"Only me."
As soon as he hears that, the Joker winces preemptively; half a second later, the masked man breaks the physicist's neck. Of course. How could he do anything else, with a setup like that? Telegraphs the punchline from a mile away. Effective, though, all the same.
Part of him is falling a little bit in love, but most of him is going in quite the opposite direction. This Bane guy has a talent for public speaking, but when you look at his actions, it becomes obvious that this is not someone with the best interests of any part of Gotham at heart. This is a con, and it's a con that's going to end with the city of Gotham becoming a glowing hole in the ground - if the part about the nuclear bomb is true, which he has to assume it is.
And then Bane is leaving.
The Joker rubs his face with both hands, hard. A few stray smears of makeup smear further. Now the news people are stuttering some more. He isn't interested. They can't tell him anything he wants to know.
He has to think. He has to—mm. Maybe. Not his usual style, but this is not a usual situation.
First things first, though.
"You get what the guy on TV was saying?" he asks, looking down at Pen.
"Mhm," he says. "He said he'll kill everybody in Gotham if anyone tries to leave or take his bomb away, and he wants to show us something tomorrow. I'm pretty sure that whatever he's doing, killing everybody in Gotham is gonna figure into it at some point, even though he didn't say so. So I wanna figure out how to take the bomb away without him setting it off. And I think I'm gonna see if Batman wants to help me with that."
"Don't know yet," he says. "I think I'll have to spend a night at the old place. And I'm gonna have to, mm, make a call first." He glances into the kitchen. "I'll finish lunch first, but then I gotta go. Will you be okay without me? I'll probably be back tomorrow morning. You can talk to me the magic way if you get lonely or run into trouble."
While the news is mostly occupied with discussion of Bane and his threat, several channels do find time as the afternoon wears on to mention that Wayne Tower has been vandalized again: someone spraypainted CALL ME across the back of the building, in black letters outlined sloppily in red over a background of white scribbles. Although the message is large enough to be seen from a distance, no one has yet come forward to report witnessing the crime.
So he cleans out the fridge, puts on his makeup from what he left here when they moved, dismantles the deadly traps on the front door, and settles in to see what happens.
He's not sure if that's a good thing.
He grins. "Maybe. All right, I'll lay out my cards. I want this new kid and his toy nuke the hell out of Gotham. Last I saw Batsy we managed to talk for five minutes without anybody doing any violence, so I thought I'd see if he wanted to help. Too many people all trying to move on this at once - I'm sure you can imagine." He makes an illustrative blowing-up gesture. "No good. Gotta work together. Less chance of somebody fucking it up that way."
"You already do," the Joker informs him. "The real question is, what're you bringing to the table here? I've got people. Resources. Not a lot, maybe not enough, but something. You? You're a rookie cop with a line to a man who's probably dead, and we can't count on him either way. From where I'm standinnng, you're just one more gun, and I'm not short'a those."
"Ha ha," he says flatly. "Let's be clear about something here. We might be working together on this, and I might not have been with the force in '08, but you're still a terrorist and a cop-killer and if I ever think you're about to seriously hurt someone I don't want seriously hurt, I will shoot you."
He discards several responses that amount to 'you started it', because that seems like it would be really unhelpful right now, and is left with...
"You're right," he says—reluctantly, but he says it. "I was out of line."
...well that is not a direction he expected this conversation to go. Although maybe he should have. Unless he's imagining things? No, he is not imagining 'honey', and he's not imagining that smile, either. Should he say something? He probably should have said something several seconds ago.
Except that when he is most of the way through, a little before lunchtime, the news anchor says the words "...live from the steps of Blackgate Prison" and he puts down the shotgun he was examining and looks up intently at the screen.
Bane is there, climbing out of a vehicle with an interestingly familiar silhouette. He'll have to see if John knows anything about that. Maybe it's just a coincidence.
Symbol of oppression, yeah, sure. The Dent Act is fucked up from the inside out, but the Joker still isn't buying what Bane is selling. Burn a picture of Dent, yeah, good one. It's a pity there are no pictures of what he looked like with half his face burned off. But what's this? He knows. Bane says 'the truth about Harvey Dent' like someone who understands exactly what he's talking about.
"Jimmy's gonna pop," the Joker murmurs when Bane starts quoting from Commissioner Gordon's unpublished, undelivered resignation speech. "If they haven't killed him yet."
The speech rolls on, all the way to the end. Bane's delivery is perfect.
'The things we did in Harvey's name brought desperately needed security to our streets... But I can no longer live with my lie. It is time to trust the people of Gotham with the truth, and it is time for me to resign.'
And of course Bane asks the crowd, "Do you accept this man's resignation?" And of course they start cheering. He's got them in the palm of his hand now. On he goes, all about taking Gotham back from the wealthy and the corrupt and giving it to the people. Well, that would sure be nice, except for that tiny insignificant problem of the nuclear bomb he's got rolling through the streets. Fat chance of anybody else remembering that now, though.
They bust into the prison and let everybody out. Arming them on the way, of course. Bane keeps talking. He's good at that.
The Joker watches.
He puts all the guns away after lunch and gets out his knives to check those, also in front of the TV. Some time later, he puts those away too. He washes his face. He changes into comfortable clothing: one of his nice blue shirts, unremarkable black pants, and a faded old grey sweater with a band logo on the front and the words THE FREAK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH on the back.
He says, "Still wanna meet this guy?"
He hesitates for a moment, unsure how much he should be revealing, and then realizes that his hesitation signals that he has something to hide and there's really only one thing he could be hiding about the answer to that question, so he probably just gave it all away. Good work, rookie.
He still hasn't mentioned the Joker to Gordon. Maybe he'll explain who he's been meeting at night and Gordon will shoot him. But who is he to talk? Wasn't he just saying that someday John would be grateful to have somebody around to dirty their hands for him? There can't be many people more qualified for the job.
His hands sketch the result in the air, a dispersal of violence through the streets of the city; he shakes his head.
"I think a lot of people believe in what Bane's selling, but I don't think he does. 'Cause take it from me, what he's done so far is a great plan if you want a lot of people killing each other and feeling good about it. If you start out thinking about freedom and equality, you don't come up with this."
"Not even a 'depends on the favour'? Don't tempt me." But he flaps a hand, dismissing this subject. "No good playing tricks when we should be working, though. Nah, there's a couple people I want you to find. Nothing too dangerous. Not even too shady. Well... comparatively."
"For the last little while, I've been playing tag with a mob boss. New kid. Calls himself Mmmoriarty. Hasn't done much, but he's been sniffing around. I want to talk to his people. But in case his people don't want to talk to me, I don't want to show up in person right away." He spreads his hands.
"It's not very nice of me," says the Joker, "but I really hope Moriarty's in town. He's kind of a shady character. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he bailed when Bane rolled the ball into that stadium, or even that he was never here in the first place. If he's here, though, I bet he's smart enough to work with me, and that'll be better for everybody."