Page 176 of Joker

Just one brutal, silent shift.

Like I’ve thrown a knife and watched it land before I can take it back.

Joker doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Because I can see it. I can actually see it hit him.

For one suspended second, he just stares at me. Not angry. That would almost be easier. Not furious. Not explosive.

Just…hurt.

Deep enough that it strips something clean off his face and leaves behind a version of him I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Open. Wounded. Still as stone.

And Christ, I didn’t think he was capable of looking like that.

That’s the part that nearly drops me to my knees.

Not that he’s mad. That I hurt him enough to make him look human in the worst possible way.

His jaw works once. Then again. When he finally speaks, his voice is so controlled it almost sounds calm. “Too close,” he repeats.

I open my mouth immediately. “I didn’t mean—”

“Didn’t you?” That one slices clean.

Not because he raises his voice. Because he doesn’t. Because he says it like he actually wants to know. Like he needs to know whether what I just said came from panic or from some part of me that has quietly been putting him in the same box as the man who ruined my life.

And that thought is so horrible, so unfair, so deeply wrong that I feel physically sick.

“No,” I say instantly. “No, Travis, that’s not what I—”

He flinches. Not visibly enough for anybody else to catch it. Enough for me. Enough to make my stomach drop straight through the floor.

Because I used his real name.

Here. Outside his room. In the middle of hurting him. And somehow that makes it even worse.

He notices too. Something dark and tired flickers behind his eyes before he looks away.And I think, in some awful instinctive part of myself, that I would rather he yelled.

I would rather he punched a wall. Stormed out. Snapped.

Anything but this. Anything but the quiet. Anything but the way he’s standing there trying not to bleed in front of me.

“I know I’m not him,” he says after a second. His voice is still low. Still steady. But there’s a crack in it now that wasn’t there before. Small. Almost invisible. Big enough to wreck me. “I’m not doing what he did to you.”

He finally looks back at me then. And there’s nothing soft in his face. Not because he’s cruel. Because he’s hurt enough to strip all the gentleness out for a second. “But if that’s what this feels like to you,” he says, “then maybe I need to back the fuck up.”

“No.” The word leaves me instantly.

Too fast. Too panicked. Because no.

No, that is not what I want.

That is not what I meant. That is not what this is.

He gives one short, bitter shake of his head. “I’m not gonna stand here and fight you for the right to protect you if every move I make is landing like another set of chains.”

That one nearly takes me apart.