Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

~ A Little Introduction ~

The Joker here is based solely on Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight - I love him to bits!

I've improvised when he's "being Jack", so that's just my own interpretation of Jack Napier - he's supposed to be softer, the way I've written him. Eleanor is his tormented love interest, falling for both his personalities. Their relationship is a deep, passionate one with many obstacles, twists and turns in the way. There is no happy ending for these two...

(I've been writing fan fics for years, but this is my first time publishing a story on a website so I'm very nervous about it!)



My Cast

The Joker/Jack Napier - Heath Ledger
Eleanor Cole - Liv Tyler
Commissioner Jim Gordon - Gary Oldman
The Chechen - Ritchie Coster
Batman - Christian Bale

The man in the newspaper headline was all too familiar to Eleanor. He was dubbed by the media as many things, from the Clown Prince Of Crime, to Gotham's Painted Terrorist. Eleanor knew more about this man than most other people did. Or at least, she used to. The man she once knew was called Jack Napier. The man he had become since then, was now known all over Gotham as The Joker. And The Joker was an evil man.

He had always been...odd. Distant from people, had no empathy for people's feelings in general, and was too eagerly interested in knives and guns. Eleanor had felt quite uneasy about it. She had severed her ties with him for that reason. But over the last few years, he had changed from a strange man, into a violent, psychotic criminal mastermind.

The Joker was quite a young man, 28 years old. His dark blonde mid-length hair was oddly tinged at the ends with green dye. It was a little matted and looked like it hadn't been washed in two weeks.

His trademark was the strange facepaint he wore. He covered his face with white greasepaint, with garish smudgy black rings around his (actually attractive) deep brown eyes, and crimson paint crudely smeared around his lips and halfway up his cheeks. The red was to draw attention to his gnarled facial scars, which spanned from the corners of his mouth, up each cheek.

The scarring had been caused by a knife, slicing the corners of his mouth into a permanent "smile". How he got the scars was anyone's guess. A violent abusive father who took a knife to his young son's face, was one story. Another story was that he took a razorblade to his own face in sympathy to an ex-wife, whose face had been disfigured. And another rumour was that he had mutilated his face himself, just for the hell of it.

No-one knew the real story behind the permanent smile on The Joker's face. Not even Eleanor. And she was the one who should have known.


"Jeez, he never lets up. What's he done now?" she wondered out loud to herself, picking the newspaper up from the stand in the mall. Reading the headline that accompanied the picture, she sighed and put the newspaper back on the stand. The man she once knew was unrecognisable now. Not only under all the strange facepaint, but under the violent, wicked exterior he had taken on.

The Joker liked to brag about himself being, as he called it - an "Agent Of Chaos". Everyone in Gotham City knew about it. His latest exploit, the one Eleanor had just read about, was blowing up one of Gotham's big cop shops, killing dozens in the process. Not that he cared, he did things like that to piss people off and "upset the established order". It was "his job".


This wasn't the man Eleanor once knew. This wasn't Jack. This was The Joker. And she despised The Joker.


Eleanor was 29, pretty, with long black hair usually worn tied back. Her figure was slim but curvacious, although she was too hard on herself and preferred using the words "chunky" and "fat ass". She blamed her curves on "slow metabolism", which had never been the same, since before she was pregnant with her little boy. Elijah was four now, a real handful but also the apple of his mommy's eye. Being a single mom, and holding down a job as a bank clerk with long hours in Gotham City Bank, was tough. She had little help from anyone, and relied on Elijah's pre-school classes a lot.

Dressed in a smart trouser suit, looking sharp, pretty and business like, she sat behind her teller's desk at the bank, punching some information into her computer. She wished the day was at an end, when in fact it had only just started. She was bored already.

"Well, helloooo beautiful." a man's husky voice leered at her, from behind the glass panel on the booth.

The voice made her heart jump. She looked up from her computer. She knew who the voice belonged to, even before she looked.

"And you are beautiful." he continued, watching her through the glass.

She eyed him, surprised that this man was standing right there.

"Hmm, how long has it been?" he said, and winked at her. "Too long!"

The Joker casually leaned his elbow against the strengthened glass window of the clerk's booth. Wearing a long dark purple trenchcoat, a green waistcoat and mismatching blue shirt and tie, with dark pinstriped pants and brown shoes, and purple leather gloves - he was a walking contradiction, in terms of image. Quite decently dressed, but the unkempt hair and garish "look at me" white, red and black facepaint combination didn't quite "go".

"Jack! I never expected to see you here...um...what do you want?" Eleanor asked a little nervously.

It had been a long time since she and The Joker had last seen each other, but that was deliberate on her part. She didn't want to associate herself any more with, as she put it so eloquently - "a fucking psycho".

"Oh, that's niiiiice. Such a touching way to greet an old friend!" The Joker held his hands up mockingly. "So how the devil are ya, Ellie?"

He absent mindedly licked the inside of his mouth where his scars were. A habit he was never really aware of, although Eleanor remembered him always doing that after he spoke. She'd guessed his mouth must've felt dry pretty quickly, because of the disfigurement.

"I was fine, until 2 minutes ago." Eleanor answered The Joker, dryly.

Feigning "sadness", The Joker put his leather gloved hands on his chest and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh Ellie, that hurts my feelings!" he said, winking at her.

"Yeah yeah," Eleanor was feeling impatient now. "Look, I have work to do. I'm really busy, so what is it? I mean, unless you're here to do a raid or something. That wouldn't surprise me."

"Hey, I like your style of thinking. Oh, such a waste. We could've been like a meaner version of Bonnie and Clyde, don'tcha think?" The Joker winked again.

"You're really wasting my time, Jack." Eleanor sighed. The Joker didn't scare her now.

"And - yeah, you know - I'm not so...keen...on you, using that name in public, so if you wanna keep that pretty little smile of your's - you'll knock that off pre-tty fast."

The Joker rummaged around in his trenchcoat pocket as he spoke, and produced a switchblade knife. He raised his eyebrows and nodded as he held it up to his own face, tracing his scars with the blade to show Eleanor what he meant. She, however, wasn't so concerned about that right now - only thanks to the pane of shatterproof glass between them on the teller's booth.

"Put the knife away. Security will see it on the cameras." she said calmly. "Come on, "Joker", I've got a lot of work to do. Is there a point to all of this?"

The Joker looked up for a second, as if in thought. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Hmm, probably not. I was just....paying...an old friend a visit. I heard on the ol' Gotham grapevine that pretty little Ellie worked here, so I thought hey! Why not drop in and say howdy." He gave her another wink. She'd counted his winks to her in the last five minutes. Four winks in five minutes - she thought that was overdoing it a little.

Eleanor shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"Okay, well we've said hello, now we can say goodbye. I really ought to get this stuff done, Ja-" She stopped herself in time. "Joker. I've got bills to pay and a kid to feed, so, y'know..."

The Joker turned his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. He pouted his permanently slightly swollen lips, and licked his bottom lip with his tongue, again another absent minded habit.

"A kid to feed, you say?" he repeated. "I never knew you had it in you. Both figuratively speaking, and liter-ally speaking. My my, pretty little Ellie's a mommy now!" He shook his head and laughed mockingly. Obviously the thought was strangely alien to him, that his old friend Eleanor could now be a mother.

"Yeah well now you know, so if you're quite finished." she mused, turning back to her computer to complete her work.

"For now." The Joker said, pressing his painted forehead up against the glass to look at her closely, leaving smudges of white on the glass. "Buuuuut...I'll be back, Miss Ellie. I'm very pleased that we've had this little, um...chat."

He gave her a fifth wink and twitched his painted red mouth, before turning quickly on his heels and sauntering away, almost happily, humming randomly to himself as he went. The few customers who were in the bank stared at him as he left, being careful not to move or draw attention to themselves, praying that he wouldn't randomly turn on them. This was the general fear that The Joker provoked amongst the citizens of Gotham. He knew full well that he was loathed and people were frightened of him. He enjoyed the rush he got from being feared. He lived for being hated.

Once the Joker had gone, Eleanor put her hand up to her head and heaved a sigh. She needed a couple of minutes to compose herself after the last strange few minutes she'd had. The Joker was a man she detested. But Jack as she once remembered him, was a man she had been very fond of.

And she mentally kicked herself for mentioning the existence of her child to The Joker.

"Dammit!" she hissed to herself, her head in her hand. "Why the hell did I say that?.."

A work colleage, who had seen The Joker talking to Eleanor, rushed over quickly and put her hand on Eleanor's shoulder.

"Are you alright, hun?" she asked. "Did he threaten you or anything?"

"No." Eleanor sighed. "No, he didn't."

Her colleague still looked concerned. "Are you sure? Would you like us to call the police?"

Eleanor shook her head. "No, really. It's fine. I'm fine. Really."

Her colleague patted her shoulder and nodded. "You know we always keep our eyes open for him anyway, right? You know security will take him down if he tries anything here. If he bothers you again, then..."

"Yeah I know, thanks but I'll be okay. I'm fine!" She smiled at her colleague, who then went back to her booth, and Eleanor returned to her computer.

But she couldn't quite shake The Joker's sudden appearance, after all this time, from her mind. It had jarred her. Five years had passed since she had seen him. Thoughts and memories of the Jack she used to know were coming back to her. Although it wasn't like she had ever forgotten him anyway.

And then she thought to herself - why the hell wasn't he in a prison cell after blowing up a police station two nights ago? Unless...well, unless he was on the run from the cops. That had to be it, she thought. But The Joker being The Joker, he was being very arrogant about it. Being on the run didn't seem to bother him. So that, to Eleanor, was a likely explanation.

This is what The Joker was best at. Causing panic and havoc wherever he went, and going on the run. It seemed he was always on the run.