Hello, world! Today I shall tell the tale of a young lady from Gotham, and her decent into insanity. I am speaking of course of Harley Quinn. Now, her origins have literally been done a million gazillion times, but I'd like to throw my hat into the ring.
Special thanks to Fancy Pants Penguin Jiao-Jie for being my first beta reader! Enjoy!
Harleen Quinzel was born into an upper-middle class family in a pleasant suburb about ten miles from Gotham City. She had anything she could ever want, but no one really seemed to notice her. When she hit high school, boys her age noticed her, but her father forbade her from seeing them. "You don't want that kind of attention, Harleen." Her teachers began to notice her too. Especially the men.
When her grades began to fall for the first time, all it took was some eyelash batting and some saucy notes left on the teacher's desk after class. But the more she got away with it, the more fun it became. Soon, she became a master of seduction. One class she never had to flirt her way through was Psychology.
The way people's minds ticked fascinated her, and she took to it like a fish to water. With her academic record, though, she knew she would never get into any university worth its salt. So she turned to gymnastics, a sport she had been competing in since she was five. She knew if she was awarded a gymnastics scholarship, she could transfer to the psychology department and get her degree.
After flipping and jumping her way into Gotham State University, Harleen quickly learned that college wasn't going to be as easy as she thought. She was going to have to revert to her old... "study habits". She found she didn't have to for long, though. After the first quarter, she was starting to catch up with the steady flow of schoolwork given to her by her professors. That day, the newly graduated doctor left the campus she had come to know so well with a diploma, her teddy bear, and a dream. A dream to be like Dr. Phil, only better. Her own show on T.V., a line of self-help books, getting lunch with talk-show legends like Oprah and Ellen.
But how to get there?
Harley had just had a very stressful conversation with her mother. "I don't see why you insist on languishing in Gotham City in some lowly apartment when you have a home with us."
"Because, Mother," Harley snapped, "I'm trying to make something of myself. I can't just drop everything and come home because you're clingy! I gotta go. I need to get some sleep. I start at my new job tomorrow." She hung up, not waiting for a response. It had been a long day, and she just wanted to eat some take-out and go to sleep.
After ordering some chow mein, she walked into the bathroom and grabbed a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet. Swallowing one to combat her new headache, courtesy of her mother, she looked at herself in the mirror. She sighed at the worry lines already appearing on her young face. It'll all be worth it, Harls. Her doorbell rang and she went to answer it, grabbing her wallet from her coffee table along the way. After paying for her takeout, she plopped down on her squeaky couch and switched on the T.V. The current channel was showing the news, which in this town was never good.
She rolled her eyes at a fluff piece about a big-name celebrity cutting off her hair and donating it to cancer. Oh, please, she thought, chewing on some chicken, you're a gazillionare! You want to help cancer research, try donating a couple thousand dollars. Harley felt around the cushions for the remote.Hell, I could donate some god-damn hair! Will the news run a story on me? No! She found it and was about to change the channel when a headline caught her eye.
MADMAN ROBS BANK, 5 DEAD, 12 INJURED
Police urge citizens to report suspicious behavior
Stuffing more sauce-coated noodles into her mouth, she cranked the volume up. A petite woman with a blonde bob stood in front of a bank surrounded by police cars. She spoke animatedly, making frequent gestures with her hands.
"The suspect reportedly fled the scene in a stolen school bus, making off with an estimated fifty million dollars in cash. This has been the fifth in a string of violent bank robberies in the Gotham area." A security camera still flashed onscreen of a man wearing a purple suit and makeup. "Due to his ostentatious appearance, citizens have taken to calling the perpetrator The Joker. But don't be fooled by this clown; he is believed to be heavily armed, mentally unstable, and extremely dangerous. If anyone has any information on the robber, they are urged to call..."
The reporter droned on, but Harley was barely listening. She was staring at the image of the dangerous criminal onscreen. He maintained a colorful outer appearance, but at the same time, harbored a dark, dangerous mannerism. What grabbed her attention were the scars twisting up from the corners of his mouth. Accented by red paint, they made him seem as though he was always smiling.
They flashed back to the blonde reporter and Harley gave a small grunt of disapproval. "With the police doing all they can to apprehend the suspect, all we can do is hope that the men and women of the GCPD can stop The Joker's crime spree. I'm Vicki Vale, reporting live from the Gotham National Bank for GNN. Back to you, Jack."
A man in a tacky yellow jacket and glasses sitting at a desk appeared onscreen. "Thanks, Vicki. Coming up next: The Batman. Menace or protector? We'll weigh in-" Harley turned off the T.V., her thoughts on the 'extremely dangerous' clown that had graced her television.
The Joker, huh? What she wouldn't do to dive into his psyche for an hour or two. She wondered what she'd see. Perhaps she'd solve the mystery of the permanent smile etched onto his face. She heard whispers that no one knew the true story of how he got his scars. He told a different story to each of his victims. She'd also heard that the few people who were brave, or maybe stupid, enough to ask were now taking up space in the bottom of a river.
She stood up to throw away her take-out box and chopsticks and noticed her trash bin was overflowing. It was dark out, and her building's trash chute had been "broken" since she moved in. Normally in these occasions, she would wait until morning to walk into the alley by her building and dump her trash into the dumpster, but she knew she had to get up early tomorrow for her first day of work, and in all of her excitement, she knew she would forget. She sighed and tied the top of the trash bag off.
Grabbing a small can of pepper spray and her keys from a drawer by the door, she briefly wondered if this was a good idea. Harley took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway. She looked both ways and locked her door behind her, trying not to make a lot of noise. She knew that the Fergusons down the hall would be arguing late into the night, so she had some leeway as far as noise went. Speeding down the stairs, she jumped over the third step from the bottom, seeing as how it creaked very loudly whenever it was stepped on. She was lucky to only have to climb one flight of stairs to get to her apartment. Her dorm mate at the university, a forensic science major named Lanie, had a four-story walk-up. It had a nice view, though. If you like looking at parking lots and brick walls, of course.
Opening the door to the lobby, a woman who looked as though she should be on a street corner eyed her suspiciously. The woman walked past her into the stairwell and as she did, Harley could smell wine, cheap perfume, and cigarette smoke. She coughed and hurried on towards the front doors. She stopped just before the doors and took a deep breath. "You can do this," she whispered to herself. "Just go out there, toss the trash in, and come back. No big deal."
She opened the doors and stepped out onto the poorly-lit sidewalk. Dressed in a hoodie and a pair of shorts, she was an easy mark, especially since she had decided to sweep her long blonde hair into pigtails. She walked quickly, doing her best to look natural, despite the fact she had forgotten to put on shoes. She sneaked a glance down the alley before tip-toeing to the dumpster, narrowly avoiding stepping in a puddle of God-knows-what. Cursing aloud when she noticed the lid was closed, she set her trash down on the ground and struggled to lift the lid just enough to squeeze her trash in. She had almost done so, when she heard a small splash near the mouth of the alley.
She froze and placed a hand on her pepper spray in the kangaroo pocket of her jacket. She called out, "Hello?" It echoed slightly in the small space, her Brooklyn accent ringing through the air. Harley risked a glance behind her and saw nothing but an empty street. She released a breath she didn't realize she was holding and crammed her trash in the dumpster. Brushing her hands on her jacket, she walked back out to the sidewalk. She had just exited the alley when a gloved hand over her mouth pulled her back in.
Harley tried to scream, but the hand muffled it. She was pressed against the brick wall of her building, where her face, for the most part, was hidden in shadow. Her attacker's face, on the other hand had just enough light on it so she could see a few features.
Features such as two bright red scars running from each corner of the man's mouth up his cheeks into a permanent smile.
Harley's muffled screams intensified as she came to the realization that she was closer than she ever wanted to be to Gotham's most notorious criminal.
The Joker.
His tongue flicked briefly across his painted mouth and the corners twitched up slightly when he saw a tear falling from her eye catch the light. "Now," he drawled, "what's a pretty little doll like you doing out here this late at night?" She closed her eyes and whimpered. "Oh, shh, there, there, sweetheart. Let's see what we've got here." He reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her pepper spray. She could practically feel amusement radiating off of him. "You live in the Narrows, and your best defense against loonies and crack heads is a can of pepper spray?" She could hear the can hit the ground a few feet down the alley.
She kept her eyes screwed shut, and tilted her face as far up as it would go with his hand on her mouth. "What's the matter, dollface? Scared? Is it the scars?" She feverishly shook her head 'no'. "Do you wanna know how I got 'em?" Harley whimpered again and shook her head more quickly. "Look at me." She kept her eyes glued shut, hoping that this was all just a bad dream; that she had fallen asleep on her cheap couch watching the news. He grabbed her by the chin, pulled her head back down and growled, "LOOK AT ME!"
She reluctantly opened her eyes and found that his face was inches from hers and she was staring into muddy green eyes. Oddly enough, she wasn't afraid. She felt something else break the fog of her fear. Something akin to the feeling she got the first time she held Jeremy Parker's hand in middle school. Joker must have felt it, too because he let go of her chin and stumbled back a step. His hand left her mouth, but she didn't scream. She couldn't have made a sound even if she wanted to.
He mumbled to himself for a second, while Harley looked on in stunned silence. "Go," he said more clearly. She was frozen to the spot. He didn't look at her, but he held up the hand that hadn't been covering her mouth and she saw the glint of a blade in the dim light. "Get out of my sight before I change my mind." Harley suddenly recovered the ability to walk, and walk she did. She sprinted to her apartment, not caring who heard her as the third step from the bottom protested loudly beneath her feet.
She reached her apartment door and dug her keys out of her pants pocket, eventually unlocking and opening the door of apartment 122. Running inside, she quickly closed it behind her and slammed the deadbolt shut. She stood there, leaning on her door, panting part from fear and part from all the running she had just done. Her keys fell from her limp hand and landed with a jangle on the floor. The Joker, she thought. Of all the people in Gotham I could meet in a dark alley, it just hadto be the Joker, didn't it?
She slid down the door until she was sitting with her back up against it. She reached up and felt around her countertop until she found her phone. She dialed in a number and as it rang, the reality of what had just happened came crashing down around her. Tears streamed freely down her face and she began to sob. Her call went to voicemail, so she left a message. "Mom? It's me," she sobbed. "Are you awake? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You're not clingy. I love you so much."
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