A/N: I like the idea of every male character being at least a little bit in love with Harley for whatever reason, and I also like the idea of shipping her with Jervis because they're both so unlucky in love, though this story has it entirely onesided.
There are times when he can't help but look at her, and these times are becoming more and more frequent.
When he first heard of her, through the grapevine during his first (but certainly not last) stay at Arkham, he pitied her, for the most part. There was a certain foolishness to her actions, but he could not hold her entirely accountable for her actions. He of all people could not.
~X~
Somehow, the story of his time with Alice had reached the asylum before Jervis did, and on his first day, everyone he came across seemed to know. His recreation hour was spent ignoring their jeers as people accused him of "letting some girl land him here", and worse. As the insults got more and more vulgar, he could not listen for he had to try to keep himself calm. He was not strong enough to win the fight that would ensue if he listened.
It was like that for a few days, and he grew so used to it that he could ignore anything that was said to him. He got so adept that blocking them out that he almost missed the first time that he heard about her.
"You're not the worst to end up here cos of love," someone said to him. "They're just making fun of you so much because they couldn't make fun of her. On account of her being a girl and all."
"Who?" he asked, surprised that this stranger seemed to be attempting to offer some sort of comfort.
"What? You don't know about Harley Quinn?"
"Of course I do," he replied. "She's that jester-type girl who occasionally works alongside the Joker. But I fail to see what that has to do with me."
"I guess you wouldn't. You did just get here. You weren't around back when she wasn't here as an inmate."
"And what exactly was she in as?"
"A doctor. Dr. Harleen Quinzel. No one knows exactly what happened in here sessions with him, but one day she just went wacko and busted the Joker out. Ever since then, she's been following him around, convinced that they're some kind of hot item, even though I'd bet good money he's tried to kill her more often than he's ever tried to kiss her."
Imagine that! A doctor who fell so in love with her patient that she uprooted her entire life for him, only to be rebuffed again and again. He wondered how anyone could be so stupid, but then he remembered just how strong of a hold love could have and he understood. She was not a victim of her own circumstance, she was a victim of the same pain he knew all too well.
Their situations were different, but, in a way, she was just like him.
~X~
The first time he actually saw her in person, he did not recognize her because he knew her only as a woman in a red and black jester suit, hair covered by a cowl and face painted white with a mask. He did not recognize the girl with the blonde pigtails and blue eyes. He could not help but notice those things gave her a passing resemblance to Alice, but she was not similar enough for him to really think much of. No one could ever really take Alice's place, he was sure.
He honestly didn't really see anything worth committing to memory about this girl, until he heard somebody call her "Harley". Could this be the same Harley he had been told about, the Joker's unfortunate henchgirl? It seemed strange to him that the very same girl he had recently compared himself to would be the same one he had briefly compared to Alice, and his curiosity about her grew.
~X~
The next few times he saw her, it was around town after both had escaped. Sometimes she would be following her "lover", sometimes she would be alongside Poison Ivy, but she was always concealed by that costume of hers and it seemed that the more he saw her in it, the more he tried to remember her out of it, and the image got blurred. Perhaps she was not so different looking from Alice after all, but he wouldn't know unless he could really see her again.
She knew nothing of him, yet he began to think about her consistently. This girl, this Harley, interested him in ways that he had not been interested in quite some time, and he wanted more than anything to strike up some sort of friendship with her. Anything that would give him an excuse to talk to her and see if she was at all what he had imagined her to be.
But there was no way for him to get close to her. He had never been on particularly good terms with the Joker, and hanging around in an attempt to get closer to her would certainly not go over well, no matter how disinterested the clown acted. A possession was still a possession in his eyes, after all, and so Jervis had to remain content to watch from afar and imagine.
Could he really be blamed for imposing his fantasies on the situation?
~X~
And now when she passes him in Arkham, being lead to her therapy session, or when he catches glimpses of her during recreation or meal times, he is less and less able to look away from her. How could he have been so mistaken initially? Without her costume, she is almost the spitting image of Alice, he is sure. Perhaps even a better Alice than Alice herself could ever be.
And so he watches her, and he wonders what could be if only he could get up the nerve to approach her and talk to her. He wonders if he could someday persuade her to have tea with him, and if they could then become friends, and then, if he could coax her away from her terrible lover once and for all. He wonders if, after all that, he could convince her to shed the jester costume forever and replace it with a blue pinafore.