Red Hood and Harley

A Snap

Several days and explosions later Althea had Jack with her and Jerome in the penthouse. The villainous has a crate opened in the living room and was pulling out journals looking for one to show to Jack, she was by no means giving him anything of her father's but he could read the passages himself.

"As you could see the crate is covered in dust from storage, this isn't something I just threw together. Ah ha! Here it is, his journal from after the acid dip."

She thrusted a simple black leather bound journal at her older brother.

"This is the first of his journals. See pops was a forgetful fella after his acid baptism so he decided to write everything down."

Jack stared at the journal brushing his fingers across the cover before opening up to the first page, he gasped softly as he read the first page.

I am slowly forgetting who I am, or is it who I was? I'll never be Jack Napier again, that life has been left in the bottom of the barrel of acid I fell in a week ago.
This hideous transformation leaves me bitterly happy that Jeanie and the baby died that night. She could never love the monster I've became. No child would accept this disfigurement Batman has left me with.
I don't feel sad, I'm not angry. This is the biggest joke in a long line of pranks the universe has pulled on me. I guarantee there will be no more jokes on me. I will rain chaos down on Gotham and I will kill the Batman. This city will bow before me and join me in laughter or die.
I say good bye to Jack, he was a pussy anyways. No more Falcone family.

No more hits. I am The Joker and I work for no one but myself.

Jack stared down at the words with rage,

"mom must have known. She must have been able to see his father even with the pasty skin. He was supposed to be her soulmate. That lying bitch. She had to have known. She let him live with that heartache of thinking I was dead."

Althea shook her head with forced empathy.

"Hunny I ain't gonna lie to ya, he forgot about you by the end of this journal. The acid did a number on his memory. I told ya, he journaled for a reason. There's another somewhere talking about my ma being pregnant with his first child. My brother Jester. He didn't do it on purpose, I doubt he remembered Jeanie."

Jack stared at the alabaster women before him,

"Maybe he wouldn't have been so angry if she had came to him? Maybe he wouldn't have wanted to burn Gotham to the ground."

Althea shrugged,

"I doubt it. He was a psychopath. Acid didn't do that, maybe his one bad day did it. But I doubt it. My momma is a psychiatrist, she sad he was always a psychopath but that the acid bath and everything took it to another level of homicidal. I hear voices, Jester hears voices. I'm guessing you hear em too. Sorry bro, daddy was a lunatic from the start."

Jack nodded and looked somewhere between angry and amused,

"I've heard em since I was 10. I never said anything to my mom because I didn't want her to lock me up."

Althea smirked,

"Ya ever killed anyone?"

Jack nodded,

"The Brooklyn bay is full of people who annoyed me. Haven't been caught yet! I came to Gotham to have some fun, heard a battle with the Bats is a rush."

Althea shrugged,

"Eh, the Bat is a bore. Never gets the joke."

Jerome cackled and finally spoke up,