The Last Laugh
Chapter 1: Parole
By, Frank Hunter
The parole board sat assembled in the usual cold, dank room in the west wing of Arkham Asylum. Theirs was a tried and true routine. So many times they would come together and sit where they sat now, side by side, down the length of this steel table that divided the room almost clear in half. They, the arbitrators, had one side, wielding the power of fate in their very hands. On the other side typically sat something very different: the smoldering husk of a human being. An inmate.
Those people, if you can even use that word, the ones who sat on the other side, were always so incredibly sad. Remorseless, pitiful creatures that make up the population of Arkham, pulled here at the required times to discuss the possibility of ever leaving this place and starting something that could amount to a normal life. For most of them, this was not an option.
This was a room of so much wasted time.
But now, the person sitting on the other side of the table had a different story entirely; she was something the assembled board was not accustomed to. This person was a woman, a young woman with matted strands of twisted blonde hair that drooped down over her forehead. Her eyes stayed on the floor. She refused to look at anyone else in the room throughout the duration of her hearing. But her aversion was not out of anything that resembled stubbornness or pride. If anything, she was legitimately ashamed. At least, she seemed to be.
If the parole board members were exceptional at anything, it was detecting insincerity in an inmate during a hearing. Most inmates came into this room with one of two possible mentalities. First, some were hostile. They entered with the prior understanding that they were not going to be granted parole one way or the other, and chose instead to try intimidation or repulsion techniques just to get a rise out of the board members.
Alternatively, they could be repentant. Penance came in numerous forms, but it was usually either too over-the-top to be believable (the recent bid by Edward Nigma had been just that), or so incredibly somber that it must have been rehearsed. In short, it never looked quite so legitimate. Not quite like this.
The woman sat in the room and appeared as though she honestly could not care about anyone's opinion. She looked broken and miserable, and in such a state, strikingly and uncharacteristically sane.
"Ladies and gentlemen," spoke one of the members at the table, a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Sarah Connell. Her English was accented, influenced by a childhood spent on the moors of Scotland.
"We are all familiar with the crimes attributed to my patient. Dr. Harleen Quinzel, alias 'Harley Quinn.' Indeed, the whole of Gotham is familiar with her crimes. Dr. Quinzel does not deny having committed those crimes. But, it is a fact that they were committed while she was not in her right mind. While she was under the influence of a psychotic. Dr. Quinzel has, in many ways, been the greatest victim of this madman, known only as 'the Joker,' and has in no way been hurt more severely than during his most recent run of atrocities two years ago. Thankfully, they were both once again brought to us, for treatment."
Dr. Connell flipped through several papers bearing very official-looking type and big letters stamped in red ink at the top.
"Even given my time as a resident psychiatric professional here in this asylum, I cannot honestly claim to have come any closer in these last two years to understanding the motivations of this man, or any possible methods with which he may be successfully treated for his psychosis. His actions remain a horrific riddle to which we still have not found the answer. However, Dr. Quinzel's illness is strikingly clear. Through her multiple dependency issues and a pervasive abandonment complex, the Joker was able to influence and poison her. She had been deceived and, in the culmination of a lifetime of abuse and neglect, was psychologically compulsed to become a part of his machinations. Given the…violent and disturbing nature of his most recent string of offenses, particularly those committed directly toward Dr. Quinzel, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my patient has, at long last, broken the delusion of the connection she had felt toward this man. Through her therapy, she has come to acknowledge the abuse she has suffered at his hands, and has made a conscious decision to sever that connection. This has been a painful and difficult process for her, but one that has lent itself to strengthen her overall moral resolve and state of mental health."
The psychiatrist cleared her throat as she gave the declaration that would carry the most weight in this room.
"Considering my client's rational decision to move forward and ongoing state of mental recovery, I would strongly recommend that she be considered for early release, conditionary upon regular meetings with a parole officer, and continued therapeutic sessions with me."
The table rumbled into a slew of chatter and quiet murmuring. There was dissent, of course, but this testimony had only been the climax of nearly an hour of psychological insight, diagnoses, and opinions which had led to it. Everyone had been prepared to hear this, though the patient herself didn't so much as move. She still hadn't looked up. She, in fact, hadn't said anything through the entire discourse.
The man in the seat farthest to her right shifted uncomfortably in his chair. That seat was typically reserved for the board's only layman member. The brass name badge on the table read "Bruce Wayne," a name while not relevant in the field of psychoanalysis, was one everybody knew anyway.
No one on the Arkham board really understood why Mr. Wayne, one of the richest and most powerful socialites in the world, took an interest in the day-to-day activities in the asylum, but his company poured enormous sums of money into the institution to ensure that its facilities be kept clean and up-to-date, that the staff remain trained and capable, and that Arkham as a whole be maintained in pristine condition. But that kind of generosity did entitle him to a seat at this table, and Mr. Wayne rarely missed a parole meeting.
On this day, though, it was not Mr. Wayne sitting behind the name badge, but another man, a young man not yet out of his teens who, with express written permission, had come in the billionaire's stead. This young man wore combed, black hair and a gray suit worth more than he had any right to be able to afford. He had introduced himself to the board members as Tim Drake, Mr. Wayne's employee and personal assistant, and was to act as his surrogate at this hearing.
Tim had arrived with his arms crossed and his resolve solid, but his opinion had swayed over the course of the hearing into uncertainty. He sat now, spinning a black ballpoint pen across and over his fingers in a simple little twirling trick, mind adrift in contemplation. He had, or course, met Dr. Quinzel numerous times, often under stressful conditions. He had seen how she behaved when left to her own devices in the real world. The rest of the board, of course, had no idea who the man sitting to their right truly was, nor the secret life of their usual benefactor, Mr. Wayne. They did not know that Tim had time and again encountered Dr. Quinzel, dressed and made-up as her alter-ego Harley Quinn, in his own disguise as Robin. They did not know that he and Bruce, his mentor, the legendary Batman, had been the ones to bring her here in the first place. Had they known, they might not have been so open about the possibility of letting her out.
But that was the point of it all, and Tim was grateful to have been able to hear unbiased testimony. He had to admit to himself that this time something felt different. In all the fights he'd had with Harley Quinn, he had come to expect a lot from her. He expected moral ambiguity, a sick desperation and desire to please, and a mouth that would never just shut itself. They were getting none of that now. The silent, beaten figure before him wasn't the Harley Quinn he knew. He looked at her and he saw a woman that may actually be seeking redemption. Maybe Bruce wouldn't have been so compassionate. Hell, there was no maybe about it. But if he hadn't trusted Tim's opinion on the matter, he shouldn't have trusted him to come in the first place.
Before Tim could make a decision for sure though, there was one thing he needed.
"Excuse me," he called over the chatter of the doctors and sociologists, all the people who probably believed they had infinitely more right to talk than him. "Yeah, hey?"
He got their attention as they turned to him one by one. Once the room had gradually fallen into silence, he gestured toward Quinn with his pen.
"I think if Mr. Wayne were here, he'd insist on hearing what the patient has to say for herself. Would that be possible?"
The man at the centermost seat, a retired doctor and squirrelly little man in a tweed jacket and thin-rimmed glasses named Elliot Newman, coughed and nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I feel that would be appropriate." He turned to her, as did the rest of the board, who now sat quietly, waiting.
"Dr. Quinzel?" Dr. Newman prompted. "Do you have anything you want to add to these proceedings?"
For a moment, Tim wasn't sure she would say anything. She may as well have been a paraplegic the way she'd been sitting, though Tim knew he hadn't thrashed her quite that hard two years back. After a long silence though, a sniffle escaped, and then a string of words.
"Whadda'ya want?" she asked mopily. Her voice was, as always, piercing and nasal, ringing with hints of an east-coast upbringing and a childhood of slumming. "You wanna hear how sorry I am for what I did? You wanna hear that I'll never do anything bad ever, ever again?"
"We'd like to hear your own opinion on what your doctors have been saying about you," Dr. Newman said.
"My doctors?" she scoffed.
She didn't seem to have anything else, so Dr. Newman poked again. "About your association with the criminal, Joker?"
"I don't wanna talk about him," Quinn said, mumbling slightly.
"Beg pardon?" asked Dr. Newman.
"Mr. J…" she sighed. "The Joker, let me believe that he loved me. I guess he never said so himself, but he knew. He knew how I felt, and he just treated me like a used tampon. I was good to help him out every so often, but I get a little bloody, and he'd just throw me away."
A few of the board members cringed at the analogy and Quinn paused slightly while the streams of tears ran down her cheeks, but she wasn't done. "The more I believed him though, the more I was willing to do to keep him happy. I'm just that kinda gal, I guess." A little chortle escaped from her. "I don't wanna talk about what he did to me last time. It's too much. But no, Doc, I don't want anything to do with him ever again. I wish you could keep him locked in a hole for the rest of his life. I wish even more that the Bat had splattered his brains across the side of a building."
Her hand clenched into a fist as she said all of this. She finally raised her eyes up to the board members, and Tim felt his stomach flutter. He hadn't thought about it before, but now he realized that even though he'd squared off with Harley dozens of times, he'd never before seen her without the extensive makeup, whiteface, and mask that had been her trademark. He'd never really seen the raw human underneath. He saw it now, and it was stirring. Her eyes were blue. He never knew.
"I gotta move past him. Even more, I gotta forget him, and forget everything I've done…everything I've been since I got caught up with him. And I'm tryin' to do that, Doc, but it's hard.
Dr. Newman cleared his throat. "How can this board believe in the sincerity of your statement this time, Dr. Quinzel? You've reverted to a life of crime before."
"I don't give a flippin' flop what you believe," Harley said. A hint of her old irreverence was floating to the surface. "Believe whatever you want. I'm not healin' for you. I'm healin' for me. And to tell'ya the truth, I don't really mind where I do it. Arkham would be fine. It's just…"
She paused for a moment, seeming to collect her thoughts. The board waited patiently. Tim could see her, fighting for the words she needed. Articulation was something else he'd never particularly expected from Harley Quinn.
"It's just…this is his place. He's still here, ya'know? And I don't just mean it literally, though I can hear him laughing that laugh down the halls. His laugh…" she grimaced, remembering what Tim expected was the high pitched cackle of the Joker, a sound that, once you heard, couldn't be unheard. He had to fight a grimace at it himself. It had accompanied so many horrors in his past that it bothered him too.
"Even when he's not nearby," Quinn went on, "he's in the walls, and the rooms of this place. I met him here, fell in love with him here. He's the nut, and this is the nuthouse. It's his place. And it'd be easier to forget him if I wasn't around him everywhere I went. That's the only reason I'd ask to leave now. It'd be easier anywhere else." She set her jaw and glared at them. "But I'll do my best at it one way or another. You'll see."
After this declaration she fell silent and didn't speak again for the duration of the meeting. Some debate and discussion kicked up once again among the board members, but none of it held any new revelation. It was mostly just rehash of the tired, old details they'd already covered twice over. Tim was intrigued by the situation at hand, though. Was she actively trying to give up on the Joker? More importantly, would she be able to do it if she could just get away from him? Harley's recovery would be a milestone, a seldom-achieved victory in the war that he and the Batman waged on the criminal element of this city. So few of them actually sought to reform. Less of them succeeded. But if there was a chance with this one, would it be worth taking?
It wasn't long before the board came to a vote, one that split the group nearly in half. Tim cast his vote, Bruce's vote, where his heart knew it was right. Before long, the whole ordeal was over.
Harley Quinn would be released on parole in two weeks time.