Laughing American comics, I am becoming more and more like a clown

Then he died in front of Batman with a bang, neutralized by the Joker virus...and the Laughter would not be born?

Is this right?

Lucien asked himself.

……

He suddenly lost all thoughts about Jack and immersed himself in his own genius thinking, but he did not forget to ask why - although Lucian himself had expected this answer, after all, he also loved this.

"—It's like the Buddhist enlightenment of the mundane world. My resentment has lessened, my desire for things has diminished, and I can see the beauty of what's right in front of me—the weather, the creatures, the people."

Jack explained, his green eyes no longer harboring danger, but instead were as gentle as spring water: "This makes me feel less like laughing."

……

Jack is always a clown. There is always a wound on the corner of his lip fixed by a U-shaped needle. Even if he doesn't mean to, the corner of his lips will always be raised and he can't help laughing.

But it was true that Lucien rarely saw him smile, and the crack became less disturbing and more like a simple wound.

……

Lucian thought about it, then suddenly asked, "How do you think Bruce will see you? Will he think... that I'm controlling you? That I've changed you?"

It is hard not to be suspicious when his personality changed so drastically that he became a monk.

Jack was obviously confused: "Don't I have a mouth?"

He said, "I'll explain it to him."

Chapter 216 IF Line: Possible Ending

William Empson tightened his tie and tapped his fingers unconsciously on his recorder.

This was his third application to interview this special patient, and the first two times were rejected by Batman.

“Here it is,”

The guard leading the way stopped, his keys jingling at his waist. "Lucian Emerson Turner, twenty-six years old. He's never escaped from prison."

"Not once?"

"Not once," the guard said as he opened the door. "Just recently, when Killer Croc broke out of prison last month, he broke his door. Not only did he not escape, he even repaired his door with bed sheets and metal pipes." He shrugged. "He doesn't fit in here... Honestly, I don't understand why Batman sent him in."

The door opened: "You can come in."

……

Unexpectedly, this was not the cell William had imagined, but a simply decorated reception room - if you ignored the furniture fixed to the ground on the wall and the table without sharp corners.

There were two chairs in the middle of the room, and on one of them sat the mental patient he was about to interview.

William adjusted his expression before walking in, making himself look more formal...but after sitting opposite Lucian, he realized that his efforts were in vain.

Because the first thing the patient said was, “Can you please undo my corset for a moment?”

William refused.

Lucian didn't seem disappointed. He just leaned back slightly, trying to find a comfortable position within the constraints of the straitjacket. "I just want to smoke a cigarette."

The request was so commonplace that William let his guard down. He remembered being spitted in the face during his interview with Dr. Pigface, and Firefly nearly lighting his tie on fire with a lighter hidden under his tongue. In comparison, Lucian seemed like an ordinary person who had strayed into Arkham.

“Okay,” he said as he untied the restraints, “but only one.”

William handed over the cigarette.

"Thank you." Lucian took a deep breath, the smoke swirling around his pale face. "Tie me up later. I don't want to embarrass you."

……

William flipped open the medical record, which was marked with a red pen: the diagnosis of severe depression and dissociative identity disorder. When he looked up, he found Lucian staring at him through the smoke he exhaled, a faint smile on his lips.

Seeing William looking over, Lucian didn't look away, but pointed to the medical record in his hand: "Can I see what you wrote?"

There were only a few records, mixed with gibberish. The only useful one was the final diagnosis, which William held up and showed to Lucian, explaining, "I didn't write this."

Lucien leaned in closer, saw the handwriting in the medical record, recognized who the real recorder was, and smiled: "It was Harley Quinzel, now known as Harley Quinn or Harley Quinn. She wrote this."

Yes, it was Harley Quinn. William could have guessed it even without him saying it, because there were occasionally one or two sentences in the graffiti on the corners saying crazy things like "He looks like a clown", "I'm almost confusing them", "A person", etc.

It seems that when Harley Quinn was still a psychiatrist, she was also treating Lucien - she must have been driven crazy by the Joker at that time.

Although William had never come into close contact with the Joker, he had experienced the Joker's crimes and seen the crazy face on TV... This was completely different from the one in front of him - Lucian didn't even have a scar on the corner of his mouth.

William smiled.

"I can't be a clown. Everyone thinks so." Lucian seemed to be able to see through William's thoughts.

Even now: "Don't be afraid, everyone thought this way before."

William laughed dryly.

……

Seeing no response, Lucien stopped talking. William realized that this was not going to work. After all, he was really curious about Lucien, so he mustered up the courage to ask, "I've heard many people say that you're another person like Harley Quinn who was driven crazy by the Joker."

He didn't rush to answer, and waited until he had finished smoking before saying, "I've heard a lot of people ask if I've been driven crazy like Harley Quinn."

"I've answered quite a few people's questions." Lucien listed them all: "The answers are in Jerome's 'The Madman', Estoppel's 'Arkham Records', and Mazzarojan's 'I and the Mental Illness'. You should buy a few and take a look."

William had seen it all, and this was something he needed to understand in advance. But William wanted to hear him speak in person, but after meeting his eyes, William fell silent again.

He definitely knew what was in his mind.

William felt a little embarrassed and asked again, "I've seen these, and one of your answers was: You're not crazy, you just think it's cool, including the Joker, Arkham, and Batman, you think it's cool."

To William's surprise, Lucian laughed sarcastically: "Too childish."

To be honest, William could understand the answer of refuting himself for the sake of the mentally ill person.

"Don't be nervous." Lucian looked at William again with his green eyes. "I'm not having an attack. That's exactly what I said."

"So what?" William didn't ask the whole question, but Lucian obviously knew what he meant.

He laughed and said, "My original words at the time were: The Joker, Arkham, and Batman are all cool, and they want me to be as cool as them, but unfortunately I'm not that cool."

Perhaps his meaning was misunderstood, William asked curiously: "Aren't you angry?"

Instead, he asked William, “What’s the point of being angry?”

William turned his pen and looked at Lucian, and he understood that he was an indifferent person, and an unusually indifferent one.

Lucian was smoking quietly, with the light shining from above making his eye sockets look like flickering will-o'-the-wisp fires.

……

William lowered his head and sorted out the notebook he kept for what he should ask in case he missed anything. But before William could ask, Lucian spoke again: "Aren't you curious?"

“What are you curious about?”

“Curious why I call this childish.”

William took a moment to react before realizing that the childishness he was referring to was the misinterpretation of the words, and asked, "Why?"

He said, “Have you ever read novels? Hamlet, One Thousand and One Nights, those kinds of novels… those with cool villains and heroes.”

William understood what he meant. "You mean they're like in the novels—Batman and the Joker, so they're cool?"

"Yes."

“Do they want you to be a good guy or a bad guy?”

"Yes."

“You’re not cool because you haven’t become?”

"Yes."

“Why do you say it’s childish?” William actually understood why he said it was childish, but William was worried that the people he was interviewing might not understand. So he listened to Lucian:

"It was a game of pretending. Batman was trying to seduce me, and the Joker was trying to tame me. Being the Bat-Joker was pretty cool. If I hadn't understood the world, I would have become one."

"Understand the world?" This was a territory that the previous writers who had written about Lucian had never ventured into, so William perked up and asked, "What do you understand?"

"The world is a novel, a comic, a story, meant to be seen. None of this has any meaning. I don't exist, nor do the bats, nor the clowns. We are all puppets on a stage."

He looked at William and said, but it wasn't like he was looking at William. He said it, but it wasn't like he was speaking to William. Even his words sounded familiar, as if he had said them a thousand times: "They stand on the stage, playing heroes or clowns. They have no freedom, and maybe their thoughts aren't even their own."

"But I'm different," he said. "I'm not the cool one. I don't have to be like them."

He let out a small smile from the corner of his lips: "They are childish. But I am not."

……

Nihilism, this gentleman fell into nihilism, perhaps too much so that he would think that even the sun did not exist when he closed his eyes. William wanted to point it out, but felt that he was afraid that he knew what was wrong with him.

Just when William was about to say something, Lucien suddenly raised his hand and pointed at the door: "Close it, lock it, and use anything to prop it up."

"Someone broke out of jail."

The next second, William heard a commotion, but before he could react, the door was opened from the outside, and someone rushed in in a panic, almost falling to the ground. Seeing that the person inside was Lucian, he was a little surprised and muttered, "I thought the clown was here."

William looked at Lucian and saw him pointing in a direction as usual: "Your boss is in cell 0108."

"Oh, okay." The man stood up straight and walked out, saying, "Thank you."

……

William was completely stunned… He had come into contact with mild patients in Arkham before, but Lucian was his first serious case, so he was shocked. He hesitated for a long time and didn't know what to say. He just said, "…Do you want me to close the door?"

Lucian glanced at him. "You'd better not. There will definitely be some idiots who think the Joker is here. If you don't want to be broken into repeatedly during this interview."

……

William noticed that Lucian's cigarette was almost finished, but he didn't seem to be in a hurry to take the last few puffs, but let the ashes accumulate slowly.

“So,” William decided to change the subject, with the door open and the noise outside unusual, “you think Batman and the Joker are characters trapped in a story?”

"Not just them." Lucian flicked the ash off his cigarette. "Everyone is like this. The difference is that some people know it and some don't."

“What about you? Do you know you’re in a story?”

Lucien finally took a last puff of his cigarette and then threw the cigarette butt casually on the ground.

“I know,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter.”

William frowned. “How can this not be important? If the whole world is fictional—”