"Reset," called the first AD, voice shaky from coffee or adrenaline or both.
The room came alive, but only barely.
Eliza stayed seated, hands now pressed flat against her thighs, as the makeup girl dabbed away the streaks left by the previous take. The script supervisor tiptoed in, offering a wordless bottle of water and a tissue. Around the edges, the crew moved as though under orders not to disturb a sleeping predator.
In the hallway, Marcus stood perfectly still, eyes fixed on the mark taped to the floor. He did not speak to anyone, did not check his phone, did not request a touch-up. Instead, he toyed with the Leica, winding the film and pressing the shutter every few seconds, the repetitive click and whirr a metronome for his thoughts.
Nolan reviewed the take in silence, replaying the approach and the stillness, looping the frame where the Joker's eyes met Barbara's. The monitor showed the scene in brutal high-res, every flinch, every micro-expression recorded for future dissection. He tapped a finger on his legal pad, then called out:
"Keep the energy. Eliza, remember, he's not a man—he's a force. Don't look away."
She nodded, but her eyes drifted to Marcus in the hallway, as if seeking permission or warning. He did not return the gaze.
"On your marks," said the AD, but nobody moved until the Joker did.
He stepped into the set as before, body language unchanged, but this time he wandered. Instead of going straight for the kitchen, he veered left, running a gloved hand along the edge of the wallpaper, feeling the texture as if checking for seams.
He paused by a framed photo—two children and a dog, all fake, but the smiles so real they looked stolen. He picked up the frame and turned it over, inspected the stand, then set it down at a perfect angle to the light.
The camera followed, tight and handheld, as the Joker moved through Barbara's world. He lifted the lid on the music box, let the tune spill out, then closed it with a snap that cut the song in half. He moved to the bookshelf, trailing his fingers across the spines, then pulled one volume down—a biography of a cop, dust jacket faded. He opened it to the title page and smiled at what he found, then replaced it gently.
He kept moving, never once looking at Barbara, but circling her with the gravity of a slow comet.
Eliza—Barbara—watched from the chair, hands now fisted in her lap.
Her line was meant to break the spell, but she waited.
The room felt hotter.
The Joker stopped by the couch. He sat, sinking into the cushion with deliberate slowness, then pressed his face into the upholstery and inhaled, long and deep.
He let out a sigh of absolute pleasure.
"Lavender and vanilla," he said, voice soft but pitched to travel.
"Custom blend. You change it up every six weeks, but always back to this one. Why?"
Barbara blinked, caught off-guard.
"I—what do you want from me?"
The Joker patted the cushion beside him, then ran his hand over the fabric, searching for hidden coins or needles or perhaps just ghosts. He smiled wider.
"I want to understand," he said.
"You can tell a lot about someone from the way they arrange their world. From the stains on the carpet, the dust on the photos, the way the books are alphabetized but the music is in chaos."
He stood and wandered to the kitchen, opening a cabinet and inspecting the shelves. He picked up a chipped mug, studied the handle, then set it down, fingers lingering on the rim. He opened the fridge, peered inside, then closed it with a snap.
He drifted back to the living room, this time pausing behind Barbara's chair. He didn't touch her, not yet, but the proximity was electric.
"You know what I love about apartments like this?" he whispered.
"They're not really homes. They're stage sets. Everyone is just pretending to live."
Barbara said nothing.
The Joker stepped around the chair, crouched low so their eyes met at level.
"You've got a beautiful face," he said, the line delivered with such sincerity that the makeup girl in the corner stopped breathing.
"But it's all in the bones, isn't it?"
He reached out, slow and careful, and with a single finger traced the line of her jaw. The touch was so light it barely moved the skin, but Eliza shivered, and the camera caught every tremor.
"Cut in marble," the Joker said, voice lyrical.
"A perfect mask. But masks crack. They all do."
He straightened and circled the chair, fingers dancing along the upholstery. He leaned in close, pressed his nose to the crown of Barbara's head, and inhaled.
"You changed shampoos last week. You don't like it, but you're pretending you do."
Eliza's breathing was rapid, visible in the flutter at the throat.
The Joker leaned down, lips almost grazing the shell of her ear.
"You know what the best part of breaking things is?" he whispered.
"It's not the sound. It's not the mess. It's the split second just before—the anticipation. The beauty of knowing something will never be whole again."
He drew back, then snapped the Leica up, taking another photo from just above her shoulder.
"Smile," he said, as the shutter clicked.
Eliza flinched, her hands rising in reflex to shield her face, but the Joker was already gone, prowling the edges of the room, searching for a new weakness.
He found the music box again and opened it, letting the tune play to completion. He hummed along, pitch perfect.
Barbara gathered herself.
"Why are you here?" she demanded, voice cracking at the edges.
The Joker turned, tilting his head so the brim of the hat shadowed his eyes.
"Because I want to see what you do when the script runs out," he said.
The line wasn't in the script, but nobody stopped him.
He sauntered to the bookshelf, pulled a photo frame, and hurled it to the ground. The glass shattered, the sound sharp in the silence. He smiled at the fragments, then knelt and picked one up, careful not to cut the glove.
He carried it to Barbara, offered it like a flower.
"Beautiful, isn't it? Look how the light catches the edge. See how even a broken thing can shine."
He held it close to her face, watching her flinch from the nearness of the glass.
The Joker set the shard down on the table, careful and deliberate, then returned to his mark in the kitchen.
Nolan's voice, low and reverent, called, "Go to the next cue."
The Joker nodded, as if agreeing with a ghost, and approached the chair. This time, he moved fast—a blur of purple and green, Hawaiian shirt bright as a bruise.
He grabbed the arm of the chair and spun it to face him.
Barbara gasped, twisting away, but the Joker caught her chin in his hand. He grinned, close enough that the lines of his makeup blurred into skin.
"Do you know why they call me a villain?" he asked.
"Because I don't pretend the world is anything but broken. I don't waste time on hope."
He leaned in, so their foreheads touched.
"I like you, Barbara. You never pretended to be whole."
He released her, and she sagged back, breathless. The camera caught the way her tears started, then doubled.
The Joker looked down at her, head cocked in mock sympathy.
"Let's put a smile on that face," he said, the words as intimate as a secret.
He drew the Leica, pointed it at her, and pulled the trigger.
The flash was rigged to strobe; the set lighting snapped to blackout, leaving only the afterimage of the Joker's smile in the dark.
In the silence, a gunshot cue echoed—prop, but loud as real. Barbara slumped in the chair, body going slack, legs folding beneath her.
The Joker circled her, slow as a priest at a funeral. He set the camera down, then knelt beside the chair.
He leaned in close, lips to her ear.
"There's poetry in helplessness," he whispered.
"A kind of peace. You don't have to pretend anymore."
Barbara—Eliza—let the tears run.
She did not move.
The Joker rose, hovered over her, then delivered the last line:
"Goodnight, beautiful."
He stepped back, coat swirling, then exited the set without looking back.
For a long moment, nobody said a word.
The sound tech, white as paper, stared at his levels, hands shaking so bad he could not adjust the dials.
The script supervisor blinked away tears, scribbling notes in a hand suddenly illegible.
The makeup girl watched, frozen, as the tears ruined her best work, streaming black down Eliza's cheek.
Behind the monitor, Nolan stood. He let the moment breathe, then whispered:
"Cut."
Nobody moved. Eliza stayed in the chair, legs still as a corpse, mascara running down her jaw. The crew stayed at the walls, afraid to enter the space the Joker had left behind.
In the dark hallway, Marcus waited, hat in hand, eyes closed. His breathing was slow, almost meditative.
On set, the only sound was the music box, playing a broken lullaby to a world that was suddenly, beautifully, broken.
.....
For a long while, the set was dead.
No one dared move.
Even the second hand on the wall clock seemed suspended, tickless, unwilling to intrude on the silence.
The lights burned hot, but the room was cold. The smell of sweat, paint, and ozone pooled at ankle level. The air was dense, charged. Every surface reflected the last image it had seen—Barbara frozen in the chair, Joker's hat left behind, the Leica still spinning from where it had landed on the couch.
In the shadow of the boom, the sound tech's hands rattled against the mic stand. He clutched it for ballast, white-knuckled, while sweat dripped in a slow arc from his brow, painting a dark stripe down his temple and onto his collar.
The camera operator, closest to the action, held his rig as if afraid to set it down. His left hand hovered over the focus ring, fingers twitching with the ghost of adrenaline. His face was blank, but his eyes were damp, and every few seconds he blinked hard, as if refusing to let tears interrupt the shot.
A PA at the edge of the frame excused herself, but nobody noticed. She slipped past the flats, up the hallway, and into the service stairwell, where she sat on the second landing and sobbed, face pressed into both hands, knees tucked to her chest. Her radio squawked, but she did not answer.
At video village, Anne Hathaway leaned in close to the monitor, her hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wide, irises ringed in white. She watched the loop of Joker's approach, the moment he touched Eliza's jaw, the way the tears started before the gunshot even landed.
Anne's own breath shuddered, and her other hand gripped the armrest hard enough to leave divots in the foam.
She whispered, "Jesus," but nobody heard.
The makeup artist crept onto set, dabbing at the salt on her own cheeks, eyes red. She hovered over Eliza, afraid to touch her. The mascara had pooled and then dried on the skin, but the makeup girl did nothing. She just stood, unsure if she should revive or leave the corpse as tribute.
Nolan waited for a full minute before moving. He stood with both hands on the back of the director's chair, then released his grip, letting the chair roll away as he stepped onto the set.
He approached Marcus from behind. The Joker was still standing over the chair, eyes locked on Eliza, smile frozen and absolute.
Nolan watched, close enough to see the seams of the makeup, the way the sweat had broken through the paint at the temples, the tremor in the muscle beneath the skin.
He let the silence go on.
Finally, he leaned in, just enough to make it private.
He said, "This isn't method."
The words hung in the air, more accusation than compliment.
"This is memory."
He said it soft, but the words carried. The first AD, hovering in the doorway, heard it; so did Anne, and the makeup girl, and the sound tech.
Marcus did not move. His gaze stayed on Eliza, even as she began to stir, her breath rapid and small, her hands inching to her lap, legs refusing to unfold.
The makeup girl knelt, finally, and reached for Marcus's face. She wiped at the paint, but her thumb came away smeared with blood—bright, unreal, and fresh. She looked up, startled.
Marcus bared his teeth in what might have been a smile or a warning. His lips had split, two fresh cuts at the corners, the blood mingling with the red of the lipstick.
The makeup girl stared, mesmerized.
Nolan reached out, put a gentle hand on Marcus's shoulder. The contact was brief, a pulse, and then he stepped away, letting the Joker collapse or survive as he saw fit.
Marcus remained upright, motionless, eyes burning, blood wet at the mouth.
The camera operator, finally, let the rig drop to his hip. He exhaled, once, hard, then turned away, blinking back more than sweat.
In the director's village, Anne dropped her hand from her face. She wiped at her eyes and did not bother with the mascara, letting the wetness show. She watched Marcus through the monitors, then looked away, shaken and changed.
The PA in the stairwell returned, face scrubbed, but the red would not fade. She hovered by the door, unwilling to reenter the world that waited inside.
On set, Eliza stood, hands still trembling, legs slow to obey. She looked up at Marcus, then to Nolan, then to the makeup girl, who was now wiping her own tears with the back of her hand.
Nobody spoke.
Marcus blinked once. The smile lingered, but something behind the eyes had gone out, like the last ember in a fire that would never truly be cold.
Nolan said, "That's a wrap on the scene."
Nobody cheered.
The crew dispersed in silence, each carrying a private tremor.
Anne left the monitor and walked the perimeter of the set, stopping just out of Marcus's line of sight. She watched him from the safety of the shadows, shivering, then smiled, small and involuntary, as if daring the world to do better.
In the end, the makeup girl took the Leica and the hat, left them on the coffee table, and closed the set for the night.
Only the broken glass from the photo frame remained, catching the overhead lights and throwing them back as rainbows, sharp and beautiful and ruined.
And the blood, red and bright, painted a smile on the cup of Marcus's mouth.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand, then turned, and left the set with the same stillness with which he had entered.
Nothing would ever be the same, and everyone who saw it knew it.
That was the joke.
And the punchline had yet to arrive.
.....
[Okay I've decided to put a target out there! If you want more chapters then gotta trade for power stones! I don't know if 50 per extra chapter is fair but let's start with that for now. You can complain here if it's not and let me know! Next I will also trade youa chapter per 5 extra reviews... seems excessive but we can change it later if it's too much but it seems achievable if you really want extra chapters.
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