A camera assistant, used to the duller violence of commercial shoots, sat stiff in his chair, hands locked around the thighs of his jeans.
Next to him, the casting associate's face had gone perfectly blank, eyes locked on Marcus with the fear of a snake-watcher.
Nolan, at the head of the table, was no longer taking notes. He had, at some point, let the pen fall, and now both hands were flat on the table, bracing himself as if for impact. He watched every line, every intake of breath, and when the Joker went off-script, Nolan did not intervene.
The read plowed forward. Scene after scene: Joker rising through the rubble of a bombed-out gala, Joker kneeling in the street, hands stained with the blood of a city councilman, Joker in a cell, whispering poison through the glass to the cop on the other side.
Each time, the transformation deepened. The voice frayed at the edges, but the body stayed still as a sniper, the only movement the twist of the mouth or the tap of a single black-gloved finger.
Even between takes, when the line notes called for a switch or a reset, Marcus would not look away from Anne. He sat, waiting, as if daring her to meet his gaze for more than a split-second.
At first, she tried—she was Selina, after all, and nothing fazed Catwoman—but the way he held her, eyes steady and unblinking, made it impossible. She broke eye contact, each time a little quicker, until she just stopped trying.
Nolan called a ten-minute break at the hour, voice pitched too loud. The spell snapped, but only for a moment. Some in the room shifted, shaking off the paralysis; others stared at the walls, uncertain what had just happened.
Anne excused herself, walked to the end of the hall, and pressed her forehead to the cold glass of a fire-exit window. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her pulse, counting backwards from ten.
It didn't work.
She heard the Joker's lines, all of them, even the ones he had invented, ringing through her head like aftershocks.
She breathed in, then out, and when she turned to look back, she saw Marcus standing in the corridor, unmoving.
He had not followed her, exactly. He had just appeared, as if the two of them had always been meant to converge here.
He didn't speak.
He only stood, backlit by the wash of fluorescents from the table read room, and watched her.
She watched him back, and for a moment, the world inverted. Anne forgot her lines, forgot what city she was in, forgot that she was supposed to be acting. For a second, she thought she was someone else—someone who could be dangerous, too.
He smiled, but this one was gentle, almost secret.
Then he turned and walked away.
She stood in the cold for another full minute before returning.
The second half of the reading was worse.
The script supervisor had abandoned her note-taking, pen leaking a black Rorschach into the wood of the table. The rest of the crew was silent, watching now as an audience, not as professionals.
Each time Marcus spoke, the room contracted around him, as if everyone was holding themselves smaller to make space for the thing that had appeared in their midst.
Joker's lines, which on the page were arch, even juvenile, became loaded with menace.
He would deadpan a joke—
"I used to think I was crazy, but then I met the rest of you"
—and the whole room would freeze, waiting for the punchline. When he delivered it, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with a whisper, it felt like the end of the world.
Anne did her best. She focused on the script, tried to hit her marks, tried to let Selina's resilience serve as a shield.
But she was rattled.
Her hands would not stop shaking, and every time she spoke to the Joker, it felt like stepping onto an electric rail.
They reached the last scene: Joker and Selina, alone on a rooftop, the city burning in the background. The script called for a confrontation, a reckoning.
Anne found the line, tried to steady her voice.
"You can't just set fire to the world and expect people to forgive you."
The Joker replied, voice soft and thin as a razor:
"Of course not. That's why I always bring matches for everyone else, too."
Anne was supposed to answer with bravado, but instead, she just looked at him.
Her mouth went dry.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Nolan, sensing the collapse, tried to recover.
"Selina?" he prompted.
Anne looked at her script, but the words would not resolve. She set it down, hands open, and just said,
"What do you want from me?"
The Joker smiled, the real smile now, and said,
"A good ending."
Silence.
Not even the lights dared to hum. The world compressed to a single point, every eye in the room pinned on the pair of them. Anne felt tears, real ones, stinging the corners of her eyes, and she let them fall. She did not look away from the Joker.
He looked at her, and for the first time all morning, blinked.
Nolan leaned back, exhaling so hard his chair creaked.
The script supervisor, staring at her ruined notes, let the pen roll from her hand and hit the floor.
Anne reached for her water, drank it, and then said, voice steady and low,
"That's your ending."
The crew stayed silent, afraid to move.
The reading had ended, but the Joker did not leave the room.
...
The silence, when it finally arrived, was absolute. No applause. No shifting of chairs, no nervous laughter. Just the click of the minute hand on the wall clock and the faint, compulsive rattle of the air vent.
Marcus sat motionless, gloved hands folded on the script in front of him, his Joker smile now only a suggestion, a line in the makeup rather than an expression. He stared straight ahead, seeing no one, but at the same time, holding every eye in the room hostage.
Anne set her script on the table with a faint tremor. Her fingers, pale and long, danced once on the cover, then retreated to her lap.
She tried to breathe in through her nose, but the air was too thick, so she switched to shallow, spaced breaths, counting each one until her pulse slowed. She reached for her water again, found it empty, and set the glass down so gently it didn't make a sound.
Across from her, the script supervisor's pen had bled an obsidian halo onto her notes. She stared at the ruin with the dazed incomprehension of someone finding their own blood on the floor.
Next to her, the DP clutched his notepad so tightly his knuckles blanched, page corners ground to dust under his thumb. The sound technician, eyes fixed on the Joker, tried to lift his coffee, but the cup rattled against the saucer, sending a brown river over the rim.
An assistant director at the end of the table swallowed, once, then again, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as if he had tried to speak and the voice had died on the way up.
No one moved.
No one wanted to.
Nolan stood up at the head of the table, not with his usual brisk efficiency, but with the caution of a man moving through a minefield. He placed both palms on the tabletop, fingers splayed, and let the silence breathe for a full ten seconds before speaking.
"Forget everything we rehearsed," he said, voice hoarse from disuse.
"Follow him."
He did not need to specify who "him" was.
The crew absorbed the directive, but nobody moved immediately. Instead, all eyes drifted, as if magnetized, back to Marcus.
He did not move.
The smile stayed on his lips, unmoved by anything in the room.
For a second, Anne thought he would speak, or stand, or at least acknowledge the existence of another living soul. But he only sat, as if to prove that he could.
Nolan gathered his materials with clinical precision, then walked the perimeter of the table, stopping at Marcus's side. He hesitated, then laid a single page—just one—next to the Joker's hand. No words, just the gesture. Then Nolan turned, scanning the room for Anne.
She lingered at her seat, unable to leave before the others. The crew filed out, one by one, each creating a wide berth around the Joker, as if he was radioactive, or holy, or both. Nobody turned their back on him; everyone kept him in their peripheral vision until they reached the door, then exited at double speed.
Anne waited until only three were left: herself, the Joker, and Nolan.
The director offered a subtle, almost secret nod in her direction, then gestured with a tilt of his chin. It was as if he was warning her to go, but also inviting her to stay. She stood, legs shaky, and gathered her script.
For a moment, she considered speaking to Marcus—just to see if he would answer as himself, or as the Joker, or if he would answer at all. But the thought of that voice, that gaze, made her hesitate.
Instead, she followed Nolan, letting the door close softly behind her.
She waited in the corridor, listening for any sign of movement from the table read room.
There was none.
Inside, Marcus remained at the table, alone now, hands folded, script unopened. The makeup had begun to crack along the cheekbones, but the mouth stayed red and perfect.
He smiled, this time with his eyes, and waited for the world to catch up.
.......
[Okay, I'm thinking we could set targets going forward with power stones. I don't know much about what would be acceptable but we could figure something out. Let me know what you guy's think.
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