The room is quiet except for the ticking of a broken wall clock, its hand stuck at a crooked angle just like him.

You find him like this, perched on the edge of a bench in the hideout, his fingers digging into his face, like he’s trying to hold everything in. But the tears still slip through the cracks. The Joker. Your Joker. All twisted limbs and chaotic brilliance usually impossible to pin down.

But right now, he looks… lost.

His coat is rumpled, his hair slightly deflated, as if the madness that keeps him upright finally let him slump forward. Behind him, you can almost feel the storm cloud brewing a mess of thoughts scribbled in his head, looping and snarling with no exit.

You don’t say anything at first. You never do in moments like this. He always notices you anyway.

“…You’re here,” he mutters, not looking up. His voice is hoarse like his throat is raw from holding in laughter or screams. Maybe both. You can never really tell with him.

“I always am,” you answer softly, stepping closer.

He chuckles dry, bitter, not his usual chaos. “I know. That’s the scary part.”

You kneel in front of him slowly, catching his trembling hands in yours. They’re cold, even with all the fire he keeps inside him. “Wanna talk about it?” you offer gently.

He finally looks at you, eyes rimmed red, face pale from whatever battle he’s been fighting in that brilliant, cracked mind of his. ”They all want the show. The bang, the punchline, the explosion. But you… You never asked me to perform.”

Your thumbs trace circles on his knuckles. ”I don’t need the act. I just need you.”

He breathes in sharply, then lets his head hang low again, his shoulders sagging as if your words took weight off them. You wait. Patient. Unshaken. That’s what you’ve always been to him.. his stillness in a spinning world. The one person who doesn’t look at him like a monster or a puzzle, but like a man who’s just trying to stay above the waterline.

He shifts forward, rests his forehead against yours. For a second, the chaos is quiet. The scribbles behind him pause their frantic dance.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he whispers, barely audible.

“I won’t,” you promise.

Because beneath the purple suit, beneath the mania and the fire and the grinning mask there’s this. There’s him. And you’re the only one he ever lets see it.

Not out of weakness. But out of trust.

And that’s stronger than any madness he’s ever known.