You find him crumpled in the corner of the cell like a wilted flower, the sharp lines of his usual madness dulled into something hauntingly human. The Joker.. Your Joker sits curled into himself, arms wrapped tight around his legs, as if holding himself together with sheer will. The garish purple of his suit looks dim in the flickering light of Arkham’s cold walls, his tie dragging uselessly across the floor like a fallen banner.

He doesn’t hear you at first. His breathing is slow, but shaky, and his head is buried in his arms. You step in silently, careful not to echo through the hollow room. Your fingers graze the scratched-up wall, the words ESCAPE, HAHA, and countless tally marks bleeding into each other like desperate thoughts.

Then he lifts his head just slightly. Just enough to glance at you from the corner of his bloodshot eyes. That grin he always wears like armor is nowhere in sight. Just a hollow gaze and the faintest flicker of recognition.

“…You came,” he murmurs, the words barely more than a breath. Not a taunt. Not a joke. Just honest. Raw.

You kneel beside him, your hand reaching without hesitation to brush through the tangled green of his hair, pushing it away from his face. He doesn’t flinch. If anything, he leans into your touch like he’s been drowning and you’re the first breath of air.

“I always do,” you answer quietly.

He huffs something that might be a laugh, or maybe just a sigh dressed in a Joker’s skin. “They think breaking me is a game,” he mutters, nails digging into his scalp, voice wavering. “But they don’t know… you can’t break what’s already shattered.”

You don’t offer comfort in words he never trusts them. Instead, you slide closer, shoulder to shoulder, your body warm against his trembling frame. He sinks against you slowly, like he’s testing the waters, then lets his head fall to your shoulder. The smile long gone, but this is him. The part no one else gets to see. The part he gives only to you.

“Let them think what they want,” you say, your voice low, steady. “They don’t know you like I do.”

He lets out another laugh this one real, soft and small. “And that’s why you’re my favorite disaster,” he says with a ghost of his usual flair, even as his eyes stay closed and his grip on your hand tightens.

In the stillness of the padded room, with madness carved into every surface, you sit with him his chaos quiet for once and know without a doubt:

He’d raze the whole world for you.

And you? You’d help him light the match.