A/N: Hello. Now, what you are about to read is more of a prelude to an even greater fic, and it may only last for five, maybe six chapters. I often thought about how a meeting between Winona Ryder and Harley Quinn would be, and how Winona would get herself involved into the Gotham City life style. Would she choose the path of the hero or a criminal? Plus, when I read somewhere a few months ago that she is living in Brooklyn last year, and which is also the place Harley Quinn comes from, I couldn't resist the urge to try to work on this fic and see where I can go from there.

However, I took some liberties with her character and personality traits to be able to make her fit into that world, though is not deviating a lot from her character as she is in real life. And in no way is this story meant to insult Winona, or make fun of her. I just wanted to see how this woman could adapt into this world and whether this environment could bring the worse or the best of herself. Normally, I am against the celebrity featured fic, but I could make an exception for her, since I don't find anything offensive regarding her character and it was an idea that only I could have brought it up to its full potential, the way I saw it fit.

This is an AU fic, of course, where probably the Tim Burton Batman films never happened, but I may change my mind and make a reference to that in later chapters. It's rated T for language and some mature references, but not too complicated or diverse as my other fic will be. Don't forget to review and tell me what did you think of that.

All rights to the Batman characters are the copyrighted property of DC Comics, while Winona Ryder belongs to her own self. The story and incidents are all that I own, so don't sue me.

Chapter 1

It was already a matter of public record. The Hollywood actress that was known as Winona Ryder was about to quit acting and show business for a while. She had been thinking about it for some time and there was no time like the present. It didn't occur to her until the very end of 2012 that almost anything in the film community was now made for short profit and had little or no social relevance whatsoever. She may return to acting in the form of the stage, but she wasn't sure if the same could happen to her film one anytime sooner. Her worst fear had come true, they finally got rid of the actor, with all those graphics that could be easily created in a computer and how the marketing became even far more annoying and important than the art of film itself. Not that she could blame the producers and executives behind this ruthless marketing machine, since social issues were now harder to market anymore in the era of fast access of information through those Internet pages, and social media crap, like Facebook or Tweeter. The point is, there's no joy in just doing something that was pure product and without a sense of soul and love to it.

It wasn't that she didn't want to be part of business, since she had a lot of friends and other people she wanted to work with, but she felt that she needed a break and set a new goal for her life, aside the stage acting she had been contemplating for some time. Something that would fill her with excitement and adventure, just to take her mind off of the crap that was going on in Hollywood. She couldn't tell if that was a middle age crisis thing or something like that, but she was certain that her need could qualify as part of this kind of thing. There was even one time when she was ashamed of being an actress, because she felt it was a rather shallow occupation, but that was long ago.

And that's when it hit her: Why not go to Gotham City and start over again as a masked vigilante? Problem was, she didn't know how she could do that and she didn't really have any relation to the supervillain community, nor was she a part of the inner circle of people that surrounded the Batman at all times. Even though she read about the masked vigilante in the papers for the last five years, she couldn't really figure out why a man would dress up like a bat, unless he really had some issues that were far more worse than hers.

At the time she was at the Williamsburg apartment in Brooklyn, and she was trying to figure out how she could accomplish that. She was sitting at the kitchen table, with only one lighted cigarette on a ash tray, and used her right hand to play with a strand of her long brown hair, tapping her feet down in a rhythm of her own. She was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans. She had been waiting a call from her friend, if not exactly boyfriend, Scott, to arrange for the place they would meet and head back to Los Angeles. Maybe if she tried to talk to some of her fellow actresses and friends, she would have found a way to pass the time and stop thinking about things that could never happen.

She was about to go out of the house when she spotted an assortment of mail in the floor next to the door. She knelt down to reach for all these letter and went to her bedroom to lie down on her stomach and see what each of the letters were. Most of them were just tax reports and a few bills for the plumbing and the electricity, but the last two got her interest and she reread them so that she was absolutely certain they were addressing to her.

The one was a promotional leaflet for a competition in a Gotham tennis club that would take place this weekend and the other was a little map with the exact location of the place within the city. Now, she was absolutely certain that she should pay Gotham City a visit and take in a lot of the sights herself. Still, the brunette celebrity had no idea who or why anyone would send her these things to her, unless it was someone she already knew and wanted to surprise her, or an over-excited fan who wanted to meet with her and was eager to do what it could be done to get her to that spot. If all this was meant as part of an elaborated plot that could put her in a real danger as bait, she only hoped that this Batman or any other hero wouldn't be far behind to get her back to safety and feel relieved that she made it out of there alive. And yet, some danger and adventure would be a great remedy for all of her dull life as an actress that most people still thought of her as a teenager trapped in the body of a woman, and someone who never made a true transition to more mature roles. Despite of the fact that a decade or so has passed from that shoplifting incident, she was aware that in the eyes of the public she was a fragile young lady who had serious problems in terms of her psychological state and stability, and no ma

She stood up and saw from her calendar that today was Thursday, which meant that she could be able to be there by tomorrow night. It would be a three, four drive from where she was now, but it didn't matter to her. was to go there and find out about the person herself, even if the search proved to be pretty fruitless, and perhaps, the fan in question was some nutcase who wanted to make an awful joke on her due to her two month-year-old statement that she would be absent from the movie scene for a while. Either way, she had to go to Gotham and see the city for herself, even though she had a feeling that perhaps it wouldn't be more different than her current life in New York City was, though it was definitely worth a try.

Before she could start having second thoughts about it, she headed to her living room and picked up her cell phone. After dialing some number, she put it to her left ear and waited for the other end of that line to answer.

''Yeah, this is Scott Mackinley Hahn speaking. What could I do for you?'', exclaimed a male voice.

''Hi, Scott. It's me, Noni. I've got something to tell you.'', said Winona.

''Oh, Winona, what happened? I thought you didn't want me to come by to pick you up from...''

''No, never mind that, Scott, there's something else I wanna ask you. Will you be able to pick me up from my place at 7 o'clock and drive me over at Gotham City, if that's okay with you.''

A long pause was present and after a few seconds, the male voice responded, '' Well, what's there in Gotham that's so damn important than you have to leave? Is there a friend you want to visit?''

''No, it's not a friend, it's...I, you know, it's ...'', answered Winona, trying to find the right words to continue her sentence, ''...well, you could say it is a friend and wants to meet me at this tennis club. I have what you could say an invitation and someone wants me to go there and watch some tennis match. Would you so kind to indulge me and drive me over there. It's almost a four-hour trip from here and I think it will be good to have a change of scenery, get to see the sights of that town, maybe even...''

''A change of scenery!? In Gotham, where some of the most dangerous crooks and lunatics are roaming free almost the next day and you never know whether you might end up dead or alive? Are you nuts or something? ''

''Just do it, Scott, and try to be here by 7:00 P.M., or even a little earlier, and get me there. I just have to go and don't try to convince me to think otherwise, because I won't.'' retorted Winona back, and after drawing a heavy sigh, she went on, ''Okay, look, I am sorry for this, but I really want to be there. You know there's nothing much I can do in the Big Apple, so why don't we try a different type of city and people for a change. You could book in a hotel room and we could get back to L.A. during the next weekend. This whole tennis thing will be on Monday, so we can later go back to my place there and, you know, talk over all this stuff you wanted to talk to me and didn't have the chance to tell me while we were both here for this Broadway play we went to. So, what do you say? Will you take me there, or not?''

Winona still had the phone close to her ear and rolled her eyes while waiting her friend's answer. It must have been a few minutes before she could hear him saying, ''Okay, okay, fine. Just don't tell me that I didn't warn you, or you never listened to me all along, all right? I need to tell you though that this is perhaps the craziest idea a girl ever told me in my whole life, though, to get into the den of a fucking wolf like Gotham. But yeah, I'll play along and indulge you with that little wish of yours. However, I won't be responsible for whatever happens to you if you try anything foolish with these people, the Gothamites, that is. These are real crooks, and they wait for the right moment to exploit a person's misfortune at any given corner, whether the person is rich or poor. It don't matter to them, so you better be careful, or else I don't know what am I gonna do if something bad happened to you.''

''I will, Scott, and thanks. Try to be here on schedule, okay? Gotta go, I will talk to you soon if anything nasty happens.''

''Try not to get yourself into trouble while I am gone for today, all right? Goodnight, Noni.''

'' 'Night, Scott. Goodnight.''

And with that, she closed her phone and put it on a coffee-table in her living room. She thought a good evening sleep was all she wanted now, and decided to head to bed and tried not to worry anymore about her career, since she had some unexplained feeling inside of her that things might get a turn for the better after that trip. I was almost 6 in the afternoon, but she wasn't in the mood to watch any of the news on any tv channel. It would just be the usual stuff, like the political upheaval and unrest in Syria, whether the U.S. should be involved, or how America's superheroes, or superhumans, could offer a solution to the problem, even though most Americans had conflicting opinions on this issue and a huge percentage of them really was against the notion of having a bunch of superhumans trying to interfere into a subtle situation like this, where the lives of millions of innocent civilians were at stake.

As for her part, Winona learned from early on not to take the worries of the world in her shoulders, as she tried to did long ago as a younger person, because it will lead her to nowhere. She had to learn not to live in fantasies of utopias or dystopias, as in most of the science-fiction stories she read as a little girl, and tried to see the world as an ever-changing place where she could at least help creating a world that had a more human basis and the problems that beset society at that point would be new problems. She often questioned herself what fighting crime really is, like, arresting a mother who stole a loaf of bread because she wanted to feed her child, or going after the very people who were responsible for her predicament, and ironically, brought about her poverty in the most legal of manners? She shook her head of the thought because she didn't want to get all that philosophical, and went to her bedroom.

Once there, she took off both her black shoes and jeans, leaving her only with her underwear and her bare feet touching the cold floorboard. She left her jeans in a nearby chair and tried to find her sleepers to put her feet on, but she only found a pair of white pink sandals. After putting them on, Winona gave a deep yawn and decided she was just too tired to take her shirt off as well, so she went to her bed as she was and she laid down, with her right arm under the pillow and the other on top of it, next to her face. The brunette woman turned her brown orbs at all directions to make sure that nothing like bugs or something like it was in the room.

Feeling relieved that nothing of that sort was around her, she put her hair behind her left ear and put the covers up until her midsection. It was a warm day near the end of August, she thought, and wasn't in the mood to let herself get too sweaty than her back was now.

She reminded herself that she locked the door, and if she got hungry when she wakes up in the middle of the night she could eat some freshly baked brownies she saved a few hours ago, and it didn't bothered her if they got any colder than they were in the meantime. She wasn't a fan of sweets and candy, but she had to look after her diet and avoid any serious stomach problems, like the ones she had in the past.

She rolled herself on for a few times until she settled for a position to the left side of the bed, where her head was facing the window where the rolls were slightly closed and allowed a shaft of light to enter the room, though it didn't reach her face and she was content that she could finally get her mind to clear out her last remaining thoughts and tried to enjoy the peace and quiet that seemed to permeate the place.

She tried her best to close her eyes once she was comfortable, but all she could do for a while was stare up in the ceiling, or to an opposite wall. Maybe she was up because of all that coffee inside of her. It would wear off eventually, and she could get her much needed rest. She was contemplating Scott's advice that perhaps she was just asking for it and if she stayed that long in that place she might end up in big trouble. Still, she was just too damn stubborn at the time to admit that maybe she should stay away from visiting Gotham after all. Without any reasonable argument that could persuade her to do otherwise, she had at last felt enough tired to even flinch from her current place in bed.

It took a little effort on her part to feel comfortable, but after a while, she couldn't help but feel more peaceful within her own skin, and without noticing it, she had drifted into a peaceful, serene afternoon sleep.

It was 10:25 P.M. back in Gotham City. Inside an apartment in one of the cobblestone buildings, the perky and somewhat happy-go-lucky sidekick to the Joker, Harley Quinn was surfing through several channels on the television with a remote in one hand and a small plate of chips filled with oregano in other in the living room of a hideout apartment Ivy had prepared for some time now. The Joker was incarcerated once again within the confines of Arkham Asylum, while Harley was somehow able to elude from the Dark knight himself and manged to contact her redhead friend to let her stay for a while until this whole mess blows over.

She wasn't wearing her jester suit, nor did she have any of her trademark make-up on, just a plain white shirt and a pair of blue jeans, while her blonde hair was caught in messy ponytail instead of her usual pigtails.

All she could see in most of these channels was a number of reruns of decades old Mexican soap operas that for some odd reason were still in heavy rotation these days.

''Ain't nobody in Hollywood believes in real love and kissing no more?'', Harley thought to herself, turning the TV off and went to the kitchen to read something and enjoy the peace and quiet before her friend returned from some sort of business she had to attend to. Something that had to do with a rare plant species that had to be protected from the savage nature of man, as she once out it to her.

With the few remaining oregano chips, she went to the kitchen and read the yesterday's newspaper that she didn't have time to read then. Once Harley grabbed ahold of it and went with the usual and unspectacular news about an increase in crime rate and a wave of film piracy that had found its way into most Gotham malls and movie theaters. She started to feel a bit sleepy when she got near the middle of reading that paper. Not in the mood of changing and going to the bed, the blonde woman went to the couch and with a ocean blue blanket that was left there she covered herself up until her shoulders. Making sure that the living room window was not completely shut so that it let a little gash of air to come through the room and cool the warm atmosphere inside, she rolled her eyes and tried to get into a comfortable position within that couch, and she eventually decided to have her head resting on one of the sofa pillows and face the opposite the wall.

Harley was plagued with the the thoughts of what was going on with her pudding, but since she couldn't do anything about it, she closed her eyes and tried to get some sleep, even if she didn't take the time to digest some of the food in her system, which could lead her into waking in the middle of the night and having more difficulty to get to bed. But after a few minutes, the young blonde relaxed and without noticing, she drifted into a peaceful night sleep, hoping that the next day will be a bit better than this one was.

A/N: Well, what did you think of it? Tell me any of your thoughts about it. As in Winona's case, all other real-life people that are mentioned and/or included in this fic belong to the people themselves and the fic is no meant to ridicule them in any way. A few more chapters will come and I will consider the possibility of a sequel, but that's another story. If that happens, this other fic will change over into M for some themes and ideas that belong there.

Until then, watch out for the next update.