UNDERGOING REWRITE // Apples [Ledger Joker x OC]

Chapter 10: Solitaire

YIKES SO GUESS WHO'S BACK AFTER TWENTY SEVEN YEARS I SKIPPED SCHOOL TO UPDATE THIS AAAAAA!!! Gosh y'all have no idea how sorry I am for leaving you with the last chapter for so long, hopefully this extreeeemely long chapter filled with drama will make up for it... eek! So the beginning of this chapter is a little lengthy but TRUST ME. If ur into the drama, ur gonna wanna read it. Take a fucking sip, babes

So just in case y'all need a recap since it has been like,, September since I updated: June n Joker got frisky [but y'all knew that] and Dr. Arkham asked Mara,, the snake,, to run an investigative errand for him. Drama ensues, the plot thickens, etc. In this chapter there's just.... a lot.... but it's all important to the plot so please read. PLUS i introduce one of my all time fav characters so. Yea!

Also another important author's note at the end for those who want some gossip and to uh. Follow a special Heath/Joker themed twitter I made specifically to post ab them shameless self promo....

Enjoy! The next chapter will probably take pretty long too but hopefully since I'm getting my mental health more under control it won't be AS long. Thank u so much for the lovely support and messages I've been receiving lately!!

[p.s. roughish version so i'll come back to edit later lmao]

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Chapter 10: Solitaire

Apartment 818, right at the very top of the complex in centre Red Hook, six flights up. Juniper Stoltz was sure that the stairs in her complex was where half of her calories disappeared to. Of course, she wondered how Colter could ever bother sometimes stalking her all the way home when he had to trek this many stairs- drunk, too- but she never doubted the persistence of the predatory male.

Red door, faux golden handle. A rusted door lock. Handbag slung over her arm, she sighed, steadying the first lopsided 8 that hung on her door, tilted to the left thanks to a missing screw. Ever since the owner of the complex yelled at her for Colter having broken her peephole (which wasn't even her fault) she'd been far too nervous to ask about the slightly jammed doorknob or the broken number on her door (which had also been Colter's fault). She simply made do.

Scoffing to herself, June rubbed her forehead. Why was she thinking about this, of all things? Of all the trivial happenings in her life, what the hell was so interesting or concerning about her own door that it was worth worrying about over, say, the Joker discovering her clairvoyance? Her diary? What the inside of her own mouth tasted like? Why wasn't she scared? Why couldn't she feel anything?

She was numb, she supposed. To all of it, she was numb. There had been bad times in her life, years of depression, bouts of loneliness and death, and, Death- that to even bask in something as wrong as touching her patient was nothing less than sane and responsible in her head. So backwards she was now, her brain twisted upside-down, that she really did trust the Joker to keep her secrets so long as she had a firm hold of his. And yet here she was, staring at her beaten door, thinking that to be the worst inconvenience since their session that day. Priorities.

She turned the key in the lock and jiggled the handle, waiting for it to pop back into place before pushing through the door. Inside, she slammed it shut and dropped her bag. For a few moments she stood there in the soothing silence of her living room, feeling as though she'd come back home a different person, a changed spirit in the wrong body. The body of a doctor who she could hardly pretend to be anymore, as there was someone on this earth who'd broken through that façade and seen who she really was.

That was when the image of him briefly glinted in the front of her mind; June's face contorted into one of pain (and pining and wanting and desperate, desperate craving) and suddenly she ran into the arms of her sofa stomach-first, hiding her face in the cushions. Him. Him, oh, him- butterflies in her stomach- why, why him, of everyone? Why was it that the only person who seemed to understand her was someone as mad, as sick, as lonely and as deranged as the Joker? Someone who saw murder as murder but also as art, someone whose beliefs were opposite to hers, and yet in the same exact vein? Why did he have to nod at her, and say yes, Junie, I believe in you. Yes, Junie, I understand, Junie, yes, Junie, you're just like me. Me. Who is 'me'? June asked this endlessly every night to empty rooms and shadowed bedsheets: who is 'me' to the Joker, a man who has no 'me' but the 'me' that was created less than three years go? The 'me' that sprung up from nowhere, the 'me' with no name. Such a peculiar 'me', she thought, and with a hidden smile pillowed by her wrists, shut her eyes and remembered how roughly and attentively that 'me' set his lips on her own, teeth chafing teeth, mouth agape in welcoming her into his humble abode- his mouth- the mouth of a man with no 'me', but the mouth of a man that tasted so sweet as to trap her thoughts to his tastebuds, silently and perpetually wishing to taste them again.