Chapter Text
A knock sounded upon the door of the disused warehouse the Jokester’s Gotham Circus had recently adopted as their primary base. No answer came. Two knocks. Another silence. The visitor lifted his hand one more time, and rapped out a widely familiar, unmistakable rhythm. Tap-tap taptaptap!
One more silence lingered, almost unbearably, and then the door was wrenched open on a glowering clown in a checkered shirt. “Two bits!” he snapped back, and looked his visitor up and down. “We know you?” he asked, as his suspicious eyes landed back on the man’s bandage-swathed face.
The tall man shook his head. He was wearing a long coat and a brimmed hat, giving him overall a vague resemblance both to the notorious Question and to the Circus’ own Janus. “Mister Jokester,” he greeted. His voice was deep, smooth, posh, and unfamiliar.
“It’s Quinzel,” the fugitive bit out. “J Quinzel. You got a name?”
“You may call me Mockingbird.”
“Or I may not. Guess we’ll see.” Jokester paused a moment in an attitude of contemplation. “Nope,” he announced after the moment had passed. “Don’t think I will. Have a nice day.”
He stepped back and shoved the heavy steel door sharply closed, but Mockingbird was in motion first, and jammed his booted foot in the way.
“Yow!” exclaimed Jokester, catching the door against his shoulder as it bounced open again, wide-eyed, as though he was the one who’d just had a body part slightly crushed. “Use your words, man, sheesh.”
He folded his arms and gave a sniff so casual it almost concealed the slight hitch in the gesture, that might have come from a heavy object being passed from his left hand into his right, as they switched places as ‘hidden’ and ‘visible.’ “Whaddya want, already? I’m warning you, getting your foot in the door with us takes a good bit more than just getting your actual foot caught in an actual door.”
“You hate Owlman,” said the bandaged man, not withdrawing his no-doubt-aching extremity, in case the door closed as soon as he did, but not crowding forward either. “Right?”
The clown drummed his fingernails on grey-painted steel. “Duh.”
“And Bruce Wayne?”
Jokester sighed. “They’re actually the same person, y’know.”
“I wasn’t sure you did.” Mockingbird laid his palm flat on the surface of the door. “I’m here to talk about revenge.”
Jokester sucked in a long, thoughtful breath through his teeth. He tried to search his visitor’s face, but even the eyes were shadowed enough by bandages that all he could read was very intense mummy. “Wait here a minute,” he directed, and then very deliberately shut the door in Mockingbird’s face, giving him plenty of time to get his foot out of the way.
The white-faced man had not smiled once through the whole exchange. Any Gothamite who’d paid sufficient attention over the years would know this was probably a bad sign.
Mockingbird was still waiting after eleven minutes, when the door swung open again, and Jokester wordlessly beckoned him inside. The space was darkened now, except for a single light over a lone wooden chair near what was probably the middle of the room, unless they’d erected a lot of internal subdivisions. On the far side of that stood arrayed, dimly, in an arc that cut the chair off from everything except the exit, the entirety of the known Gotham Circus. Even Basil Karlo, the shapeshifter, last heard of in Bialya foiling an assassination attempt on Queen Zazzala.
“Have a seat,” the Jokester invited, gesturing grandly toward the chair.
“A tad theatrical, don’t you think?” Mockingbird inquired, though he did sit down.
“It’s what we do.”
The big man shrugged, allowing this as a fairly reasonable statement, or at least declining to debate it. “You’re willing to hear my proposal?”
Jokester shrugged. “Yeah, but no promises. I guess you know everybody by reputation—this is the Reformer, though, in case you don’t. Guys, he says we should call him Mockingbird.”
Ivy looked different, wearing jeans and a sky-blue turtleneck rather than a green bodystocking and living vines, but she was even more lovely with her face showing, even dressed in a less flattering color than emerald, and if you were looking for it, unmistakable. She drummed her fingertips on her elbow, and looked down at Mockingbird through hooded eyes. “You’re not going to introduce yourself any more than that?”
“I prefer to maintain…plausible deniability.”
Jokester snorted. “That would be fine if we already had a pretty good idea about you and your motives, but Bandage Man, we don’t know jack.”
Red Hood, also maskless, shifted his stance a hair in a way that managed to convey agreement. Enigma, the only one in his full costume, small mask over his eyes concealing almost nothing because his vigilante identity had been tied conclusively to his real name years ago, leaned forward into the light. The shadow cast by his hat-brim hid his face better than mask or gloom had.
“You know who we are, and we don’t know you. You’re the one who came here asking us to trust you. That’s a two-way street.”
The man called Mockingbird sat still in his surrounded chair for a few seconds, and then reached up to take off his own hat. Silence reigned as he began to unwind the mask of bandages. The face that emerged matched his voice perfectly, cast from the same general mold as Wayne’s, or Harvey’s before his injury—clear, strong lines that spoke of careful breeding and more careful rearing. Glances passed around the encircling Circus, each met by a shake of the head. No, nobody knew him.
He took a moment to gauge their expressions, blue eyes hard to read. “My name is Thomas Elliot,” he announced. “I’m a surgeon.” He took a small breath, as though for strength. “My mother was the first person Bruce Wayne ever killed.”