AN: Hi all, just a quick author note so everyone knows what they are getting with this story – don't worry, this should be the one and only. This is going to be a rebranding of a story I originally created almost a decade ago involving the Joker and an OC female character that I wrote before I even knew about the existence of Harley Quinn. It was pointed out to me, in a pretty dickish way I'll be honest, that the OC was very HQ-esque and my inexperienced, teenage self did not handle this super well and abandoned the fic. So I've edited it up and re-written a bunch to be a Harley x Joker story. I will be messing around with canon plot and how they originally met, heading in a slightly AU direction though hopefully not undermining the characters themselves. Full disclosure, I am only familiar with the movies and not the comic storylines. So Harley Quinn will draw from Suicide Squad and The Joker will also be Suicide Squad with a small dose of the Dark Knight thrown in. Please enjoy and let me know what you think.
Prologue
"Have you seen the latest video?"
She sighed audibly over the phone. He took that as confirmation.
"A psychiatrist's dream patient, wouldn't you say?"
"That is no patient," she said, speaking for the first time. "That is Pandora's box."
"That is the most interesting man in Gotham."
"Even more so than you?" She deliberately taunted him.
"I can't compete with him. You've read the summary proposal - what are your thoughts on the matter?"
"I have no thoughts as there is no matter."
"Now, now, play nice. He's exactly your type."
There was a quiet scoff. "I prefer my madmen a little more… kempt."
"Is that really holding you back?"
There was a pause in the conversation. He could practically imagine her recrossing her long legs and rearranging herself on the leather couch, mulling it over. She was visible perfection. But it was a mask hiding one of the most manipulative minds he'd ever known. It was a beautifully ironic display of dichotomy.
It made her his equal. Almost.
"Maybe I don't think I can compete with him either."
"I thought that, of all things, would spur you into action."
"Jonathan, look at him. He has no natural desires. He is pure and absolute - a sociopath in the most extreme form! What makes you think I could tempt him?"
"My dear, you could tempt Satan."
"Regardless," she brushed away the flattery, "he doesn't care about physical beauty."
"No but he does like an enigma."
Another pause. "Go on."
Jonathon Crane clenched his fist in victory. He had her now.
"He is a man who likes to understand everything about him, likes to read people. What better way to deduce the perfect manner in which to thrust our world into spiralling chaos?"
"A pretty description." She sounded bored.
"Not pretty at all. Powerful. Manic."
Her breath hitched and Jonathan knew it wasn't fear. He grinned, already feeling the flush of success.
"See my dear, your reaction is absolute evidence of your suitability for the job."
"Am I to assume that my job is to be the enigma in question?"
"Who better?"
"You mean, who more sick and twisted?"
"You have the intellect and the training. You could be my femme fatale."
"So you're saying I am sick and twisted?" She was forcing him to say it. She wanted to hear him say it.
"Ever notice how the ones drawn to our profession are usually the ones most in need of dire attention?" He evaded the question with his own.
"That isn't an answer."
Jonathan refused to relent that easily. He'd make her work for it if she really wanted it. "How would you describe it?"
"Morbid curiosity."
He let out a low chuckle. "Yes but with you that's less of a description and more of a clinical disorder."
"I'm ground breaking."
"In more ways than one. Am I to assume you are committed?"
"No but you can assume that I am willing to hear more details."
Jonathan had a full blown smirk. The Joker was getting a therapist.
Harleen Quinzel was a fascinating creature and it wasn't because of her beauty. In the day and age of plastic surgery, flawlessness was common place. On first meeting her in college he had dismissed her out of hand. A lovely shell but nothing terribly unique. Just a kid on a scholarship desperate to prove that she was more than her lower class background.
Jonathon was a teacher's assistant at the time and he honestly didn't think she'd last long. He was even more certain she'd be gone by the end of semester when her grades had plummeted.
He was stunned when the opposite had occurred. Her marks had risen steadily until she'd eclipsed even the brightest in her class. It puzzled him no end and he had no idea how she achieved it. She smiled pleasantly in class, exchanged polite conversation but never got too close to any of her classmates.
Unable to resist himself, after all he'd been much younger at the time, Jonathon had cornered her after class one day.
Trying to crowd the provincial beauty he'd leant across the desk in an attempt to intimidate her. "So, Harley, what's your story?"
She'd met his stare evenly and as he watched, her agreeable smile melted away leaving nothing but a cold, calculating gleam in her eyes.
"I prefer Harleen."
Maintaining eye contact, she'd carefully lifted herself out of her chair and strode out of the classroom without another word.
Simultaneously impressed and annoyed, Jonathon remembered that moment as the start of their friendship. What he discovered was a smart woman with a visionary mind almost completely devoid of ethics.
She'd eventually confessed that when she'd first come to university, she'd been so overwhelmed with that sheer volume of work that she'd begun to fail. Harleen had used her skill in gymnastics to get out of the hovel she'd grown up in and managed to earn a full ride to university. But even then she knew that her chances of making money long-term in competitive gymnastics was slim and she was not going home under any circumstances. Unable to bear the prospect of failing after fighting so hard to escape, she'd commenced a sexual relationship with a number of professors. Harleen had used her body first to get a stay of execution and then used it to gain access to some of the best minds in the university.
Harleen had admitted this to him after one too many glasses of vodka. She'd expected he'd be disappointed in her. Jonathon had found it very hard not to kiss her that night.
From there on Harleen began to forge her own identity. She discarded any innocence or naivety that had survived her childhood and replaced it with something of her own making. Jonathon's expert eye caught glimpses of her old self; that need for validation, the fear of being helpless, the craving for respect – but he only saw it in the most miniscule of doses and less and less as the years went by. Harleen Quinzel became elegant and lavish but hard as a tack underneath.
He never tried to call her Harley again. Like her vulnerability, it was something she wanted left in the past.
Harleen had been an integral sounding board when he had developed his fear elixir. She'd been excited by the revolutionary and cruel concept. Harleen had a deep seated attraction to chaotic minds. Not the pathetic, whining patients that they often treated and diagnosed with the standard boring disorders of schizoid paranoia. She loved her sociopaths, the criminally and clinically insane, the split personalities, the mastermind unhindered by morals. At times they'd both wondered if their own brains mirrored their patients.
She'd been out of the country when it had all come crumbling down around him and the Batman had sent him into his own asylum. He had never worked out if this had been happenstance or by design on her part but Jonathon didn't hold it against her. If she had played a part in his downfall then her assistance now would more than repay her debt.
Jonathon had also kept his silence on her involvement in creating the serum to spare her a turn in jail with him. He'd never felt the urge to protect another human being before. That in of itself was notable. He wanted her back in the cesspool that was Gotham and back in his life. Harleen was the closest thing he had to a friend and, he believed, a soul mate. Jonathan suspected she felt the same but it would be too simple to admit it to each other. Almost a weakness. Neither was going to be the first one to break.
She was the only woman capable enough to help. The only one with such a predilection towards the insane.
Jonathan didn't have a strong interest in The Joker. He thought him a little too brash. A little too vulgar. Certainly he was a fascinating animal but he was far too public. Insanity was fine, tolerated by society even, as long as you do it in private.
The Joker was broadcasting on national TV, revelling and wicked in his self-created pandemonium. Taunting the masked vigilante.
Inside his own fractured mind, Jonathan recognised an opportunity when it presented itself. He was pragmatic to a fault. He acknowledged The Joker as the force of nature he was and was downright gleeful with the potential of that type of power. He just needed the appropriate person to guide this force. Edge it in the right direction.
See, Jonathon had made a deal with the authorities. In exchange for his freedom, he would catch the most elusive madman to terrorise Gotham. The problem was, he knew The Joker wouldn't give him the time of the day. He needed someone non-threatening who would also pique his interest. Harleen was the obvious choice. In fact, she was the only choice. Even if his name wasn't mud in professional circles he would have turned to her for help.
And as for getting her to agree, that was simple enough too. Just a casual mention of all the awards and accolades she would get once she was responsible for catching The Joker. Behind all her walls, those flaws still existed – waiting to be exploited by a person who knew her well enough to find the cracks.
There was a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that Harleen might get hurt in the process. Too insubstantial to be defined as guilt but there all the same. Still sacrifices must be made.
…
She was only Harley in two places. In her childhood home, which she hadn't visited in years, and inside her own head. Despite her best efforts to be Harleen inside and out, years of hearing her parents call her nothing but Harley had made it hard to shake.
Harley reclined in her chair and swirled her glass of red wine. Expensive but she loved her physical pleasures. She could remember all too clearly what it was like not to have enough. Not enough food, not enough heat, not enough clothes. She'd never accept 'not enough' again.
Jonathan was using her for his own ventures again. He might be the epic love of her warped life but he would manipulate her straight into her grave for his own advancement. It was one of the large motivators behind her decision to take a sabbatical in Europe.
She knew all this so she had to think his proposition over carefully. He likely thought her acceptance was a given but it wasn't. What was in it for her?
Certainly the promise of professional admiration had sweetened the deal. Unsurprisingly, Harley hadn't been able to lose the taint of her affairs with her professors. It was grating and it would be nice to not have people whisper behind her back whenever she walked into a conference or delivered a lecture. She'd more than proved herself since those beginnings.
But was that worth risking her life to achieve?
Harley had arrived back in the city for the social event of the season it seemed. This Batman had turned the city on its head, sweeping back the shadows and the corruption that had provided such fertile grounds to do whatever the hell one wanted to.
Harley had always wanted to do a number of things. Most of them of questionable morality. And while she had liked Europe, nowhere did degradation the way Gotham did.
There was one shining beacon of hope for people like her. The Joker. A man so terrifying Harley shuddered at the idea. She wondered if there were any remnants of a man inside him or if he was made up entirely of ideology and anarchy.
Harley hadn't been attracted to him either despite Jonathon's implications. There was something alien about him, more feral animal than man. However, the more she saw, the more she wanted to know.
She had been quietly disappointed when he had been thrust behind bars and she cursed Batman for protecting a society that hunted him. But yesterday had brought thrilling news. He had escaped. It also brought Jonathan's proposition.
She returned again to the ultimate question. How could this benefit her?
It would be a tantalising social experiment. The man was such a byzantine combination of contradictions. He claimed he had no plans but since he had pulled off such artistic debacles he needed to have some cohesion and organisation.
His origins were unknown but his behaviour reeked of professional training. An uncanny understanding of fighting and explosives. An absolute fearlessness and disregard for pain but strong survival instincts. And then there was the downright eerie knack of pin pointing exactly a person's weakness.
There was no known motivation or background. The makeup mask contorted his angular face into something frightening. Still as unusual as he was, all of this could be written off as a jovial nut job's desire to cause chaos. In those flashy clothes it was easy to dismiss him as a criminal showman. That was Harley's original assessment of the situation. But then she had seen the first tape broadcasted. The crackly camcorder and that high pitched, trademark giggle all accounted for. She hadn't been giving it her full attention.
She really should have.
"Look at me!" he had snarled. His voice no longer nasally or lilting but steady, rasping with malice.
Three simple words and he revealed the unadulterated darkness within and gotten right under her skin.
Now he was free and playing games once more? Well Harley wanted to play regardless of the stakes.
Morbid curiosity indeed.