Anne Hathaway arrived seven minutes early, because seven was a power number and because arriving any sooner might make her look eager, which was not the dynamic she preferred to establish with studio directors or unknown scene partners.
Especially not for chemistry reads.
The building was a matte obsidian cube nestled between studio sound stages, rumored to have been designed for war-room negotiation and not for the usual parade of auditioners.
The lobby was empty save for the receptionist, a mannequin of a woman with a headset pressed so tightly to her skull it must have left a bruise. Anne offered her first and last name, and the woman did not bother to check a list.
She simply gestured to a bank of elevators, said, "Third floor, then left," and resumed typing at a speed that suggested she'd already moved on to the next disaster.
Anne's heels echoed up the elevator shaft, then into the corridor, which had been stripped of any and all artifice. The floors were concrete, the walls undecorated, the light the kind that drained pigment from your skin and soul.
She walked to the end, where a single steel door waited for her, featureless except for a brass knob. She paused, took a breath, and let her posture settle—shoulders back, jaw soft, eyes bright.
The door did not yield with a gentle push; it required a full turn of the wrist and a deliberate shove, as if to warn you that crossing this threshold was not reversible.
Inside: a black box theater stripped even barer than the hall. Three folding chairs set against the far wall, a trestle table with a water pitcher and two glasses, and a single circle of light cutting through the gloom. In the center, unmoving, stood Marcus Vale.
No, not Marcus Vale—the Joker. He wore a velvet coat so deep in hue it read as shadow, lined with a slash of chemical green at the seams.
The hair was an atrocity of artistry: bleached and then battered into a corona of electric green, each strand a finger of static.
The face, though—this was the monument.
A mask of white, applied not with the gentle pat of a makeup sponge but with the violence of someone scraping marrow.
Black ringed the eyes, not blended but fractured, as if dragged out by a razor.
The mouth was a wound: red, still glistening, painted wide and then pulled wider, as if the smile were not decoration but an anatomical certainty.
He did not look at her. In fact, he did not move at all. Not the flicker of a blink, not the tap of a finger. Anne had worked with actors who could still themselves, but this was not stillness. It was the anticipation of a machine waiting for its cue.
She circled the perimeter, letting her gaze wander across the dimensions of the room before it returned to him. He remained at the center, unashamed and, more unnervingly, uncurious.
She stepped into the light, stopping two meters away, just outside the boundary of the circle.
"Hi," she said, with a professional warmth engineered for exactly this kind of audition.
"Anne Hathaway. I guess we're… dancing together for a while."
For a fraction of a second, nothing. Then, without moving his head, the Joker's eyes found hers. The pupils were so dilated they nearly swallowed the green.
He reached up, one hand gloved, and offered a slow, ironic bow, then straightened.
"Marcus Vale," he said, and his voice came out half an octave lower than the Joker's laugh you expected from culture, richer, with a torn velvet texture.
"Pleasure, Anne."
He pronounced her name in two syllables, like an inside joke.
She smiled, falling into the script.
"So, are you going to stay in character the whole time? I'd hate to have to call you Mr. J for the rest of my life."
His mouth ticked up, but only on one side, the expression uneven by design.
"Only if you call me Daddy," he replied, perfectly deadpan.
Anne's laugh came out before she could swallow it, a real, delighted bark.
"You really are as dangerous as they say." She moved a half-step forward, ]planting her heel at the edge of the light.
"Should we run lines, or do you want to improvise?"
He tilted his head, and this small movement changed the whole alignment of his body, as if gravity itself had shifted to accommodate him.
"I don't improvise," he said.
"I just say what's true in the moment."
She let that hang, then gave the smallest of nods.
"Okay. Truth, then."
Another movement—this time his eyes left hers, tracked the space from her neck to her jaw, then back up. The scrutiny felt clinical, the way a tailor sizes you for a suit that's going to cost more than your car.
He took a breath, and the breath was theatrical—loud enough to mark a transition.
"Truth," he echoed.
"You're the only one I wanted to see today."
Anne felt a flicker in her chest, a flush of pride and warning.
"Careful," she said, with her best Selina smile.
"Flattery is the deadliest weapon in this room."
He smiled wider.
"Only if you don't see it coming."
The banter found its groove, circling between them like a live current. Anne made jokes about the makeup ("Does it wash off, or is it like a soul tattoo?"), and Marcus volleyed back with a story about waking up to find his own pillowcase covered in green, then following the streaks out to his balcony like he was solving a crime scene.
They played at rivals, but the rhythm of the conversation was syncopated, Marcus occasionally dropping a pause that stretched just slightly too long, as if he were studying her reaction with a scientist's detachment.
After five minutes, she realized she had not once thought about her own performance. She was too busy responding, recalibrating, reacting. She felt it in the way her hands found her hips, the way her voice dropped lower, the way her body tipped subtly forward as she looked for his tells.
The director—Nolan, of course—was nowhere to be seen, but Anne could feel his gaze through the pinhole cameras hidden in the ceiling tiles. She wondered what the feed looked like, the two of them circling in the dull light, two apex predators sizing each other up with nothing but words.
Anne tried to lean in, break the cycle.
"So what's your tell, Marcus?" she asked.
"Every con has a giveaway."
He met her eyes, and this time he did not blink, did not smile.
"I don't tell," he said, voice flat.
For the first time, the banter lost air. The silence was not awkward, but it was unfamiliar. Anne tried to fill it with a movement—she brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, then let her hand fall to her thigh, drumming a silent rhythm with her fingertips. Marcus watched each motion, logging it, but made no move to reciprocate.
A minute passed.
She licked her lips, feeling the dryness, and tried again. "You know, when I heard you got the part, everyone said you were going to reinvent the character. But nobody mentioned you'd be method about it."
His smile reemerged, smaller, sharp as a needle. "I'm not method," he said. "I'm just already there."
She couldn't help it; she shivered.
He closed the last meter between them. Not with a lunge, not even a step—a gradual migration, as if he'd moved while she wasn't looking. Now they shared the circle of light, close enough that she could see the uneven cracks in the paint at his jawline, the blue shadow of stubble bleeding through the white.
He dropped his voice. "Do you want to run the scene, or do you want to keep pretending we're not already in it?"
Anne looked up at him, and for the first time, she was not sure if she was looking at an actor or at something else.
"Let's run the scene," she said.
He nodded, once, the gesture both a command and a benediction. "On your cue, Selina."
And just like that, the air changed. Every muscle in her body woke up, ready for the dance.
............
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