UNDERGOING REWRITE // Apples [Ledger Joker x OC]

Chapter 6: Triangles, in a Sensory Way

I know this is late, so so so sorry!! Take this picture of Joker as an apology. What a gift. Tbh. Such a blessing, my skin is clear, my grades are excelling, my crops are watered. That shot of his tongue saved my life and I love him.

... anywayyy enjoy the chapter :)

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Chapter 6: Triangles, in a Sensory Way

"He likes silent film," Painfully smiling Juniper Stoltz said to her bedroom ceiling, audio diary next to her and recording every word. Atop her bedsheets in nothing but her underwear and a moth-bitten shirt, she laid there with her arms behind her head, legs crossed over each other as every once in a while, she lifted them to wriggle her toes to avoid pins and needles. The curtains danced slowly as the soft midnight breeze whispered through the opened crack in her window, rain sneaking in so the succulent plants lining her windowsill could get some water. Lights off, the most peaceful place in the world when accompanied with total and complete solitude.

It was the same night after her 'session' with Joker in the rec room, and somehow, all she could think about was the blurred pixels she watched with him on the screen and dwell upon how vividly she could remember his eyes, widely watching, infinitely empty, and she clutched to her stomach at the thought that there was still tomorrow, another day, more time spent with trying to decipher the murderer she used to watch on live TV a year ago. She'd spent a while thinking over whether enjoying her sessions with him was immoral or not, and then tried to dig deeper as to the reason why exactly she loved them so much. He was brash, thoughtless, irrational and dangerous, but he was also so interesting that he was like a walking, talking book of constantly flowing knowledge, pages full of things she'd never seen before and each chapter was like discovering another secret that always lead to something else. And he was so animated. So vivid. A streak of neon paint that cast itself upon the dreary asylum walls.

June drew endless circles over the knee he'd touched that same day, sparking electricity from her skin. "He likes... moving pictures, I guess. Doesn't like the colours all that much... hates the sound..." She sighed calmly as her bronze irises eyed the cracks in the ceiling, teeth brushing tongue. Her voice was nearly a whisper, as if her thoughts should've been a secret- which they were. "It's amazing how human he is. I dunno, I guess that after all the years of treating patients and having it hammered into you that being mentally ill somehow devalues you as a person... it's all garbage. It's bullshit. Even if he is incurable... I don't care." The words lingered in her mind long after she'd said them, silence accompanied by the soft breeze of 12:31 a.m. The only one listening being her handy little audio diary.

Incurable. It actually hit her: sometimes illnesses just couldn't be cured, no matter how much you tried. It was quite scary to think of it that way, but she knew how it felt. It was like mourning the loss of a loved one. You never really stopped- they'd always be dead, nothing would ever change that- but to get over it, you couldn't fix the person who'd passed, you had to fix yourself. Of course, it was all easier said than done, but pills wouldn't fix the Joker. Stuffing him up with Prozac or Xanax wouldn't stop him from killing people, it'd distract him for an hour before he jumped back onto that train of thought he was catching. And besides, people with depression weren't cured overnight, it was a process; the ones with bipolar disorder were sometimes stuck with it forever, but there was a difference between enduring it and living with it. To suffer in complete silence and let it devour you whole, or learn to make it a part of you, and not let it get in your way. But him... she couldn't pin any illness to him. The Joker would most likely always be... the Joker.

"His eyes are open to the most obscure and minuscule things, but closed to the obvious wrongs he's doing. God... not looking into his memories is the hardest thing I've ever done," She laughed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "I love mysteries, but... I've been waiting on this case for a year, y'know? I suppose it's easy to forget that there's rules in the moment," She pondered, chewing her knuckle softly. "I just wanna know why he does the things he does. I like to figure out how people work. Watching them... do things. In the present, they're alive. Real. Sometimes you shouldn't define people by their past, y'know, their memories, but when they're so easy to just look into and find... it's hard not to. Memories are like... are like goldmines, but... that's all they are." Her hand dropped back down to her stomach, butterflies fluttering. "Memories."