Malady

I definitely do not own anything brainstormed up by the various and sundry contributors to the lavish and twisted world of Gotham City. Whatever you don't recognize likely is mine, so you know the drill—don't take/repost/use without my express permission, and thank you for being considerate!

Note- This is a partner piece to Bad Jokes, yes, but you don't necessarily have to have read it in order to understand (and hopefully enjoy) this. It will help you understand some of the dynamics being expressed and quarreled over, but I'm sure you're clever enough to pick it up if you'd rather not read a twenty-something chapter Harley origin story. Now, with that said... it's business time.

I

Halfway through February, Gotham City was treated to a freak faux-Spring. The clouds rolled away, the sun shone down, and the below-freezing weather lifted to a balmy fifty degrees. Such an anomaly was not entirely unprecedented in the city, but for someone like me, who had spent her last several winters bundled up tightly in thick coats and ugly scarves… well. I was excited.

The week drifted lazily along, and I was just getting ready to unpack the shorts and swimsuits when winter came back with a frigid, blustering vengeance. I sullenly retreated indoors, reminding myself that Spring wouldn't technically arrive for five weeks or so, that it would probably be chilly several weeks after that, and that I might as well readjust to the foul weather while it insisted on looming over me.

And while I was admitting problems to myself, I begrudgingly decided to address another one. Namely, the rattling cough in J's chest. It had started up at some point near the end of January, and had softened up slightly during the warm week, leading me to hope that perhaps it was on its way out. However, with the advent of more icy weather, it had returned, and it sounded twice as bad as it had before. He'd be talking me or the guys, and suddenly, he'd start hacking away; awful, fierce coughs tearing holes in his vocal cords.

As soon as I could do so privately, I took the matter up with him. I expressed the opinion that he was working too hard. He expressed the opinion that I should shut the hell up.

After bringing up the topic on several different occasions over the next day or two, and after being ignored or rudely rebuffed each time I recommended slowing down, I finally got fed up. By that point, his illness had reached a genuinely disturbing level, at least for me—he could hardly speak without nearly choking, and each night when he joined me for a couple hours of sleep, the burning heat of his skin woke me without fail. I decided it was time to take serious measures.

I dressed down, jeans and t-shirt, black-rimmed glasses with plain glass lenses by way of disguise—it was amazing how glasses made people think "sexy hipster librarian" rather than "the Joker's harlequin partner-in-crime." Not that a disguise (flimsy as it was) was strictly necessary. There were plenty of short, cute, hippy blondes darting around Gotham, and there was nothing in my face or form that would generate undue interest from anyone but the occasional psycho who spent all his time studying the pictures of me from Arkham that had been released on the news and the internet as soon as it became apparent that I had thrown my lot in with Gotham's favorite domestic terrorist.

Still, even though I was confident that I could handle myself if I was recognized, I didn't want to make a production out of this. If J turned on the news that night and discovered that his li'l Harley had been involved in a deadly shootout at the neighborhood Walgreens, he might just get a touch suspicious, and we didn't want that.

Then again, I could always tell him that I was just buying tampons. J always gave me a vaguely disappointed look and changed the subject when the topic of my period came up. You could take the mind out of the man, I guess, but you couldn't take the man out of the mind. It always amused me to find habits in him that could also be ascribed to more typically "normal" men, probably because they were so rare. I don't think he was squicked out by it, necessarily (a man who dealt with guts and gore every day couldn't be, right?) but it was just one of those topics he dismissed as irrelevant (and maybe, maybe just a smidge uncomfortable).

I was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, but work at Arkham had necessarily involved some interaction with meds for the patients. I didn't prescribe them, but I'd certainly administered them, and was familiar with the names of sedatives both weak and powerful. A forged prescription, then, was an easy matter, and I reproduced Dr. David Wilson's signature with an easy flourish as the final touch.

The sedatives were acquired with a minimum of effort, the middle-aged pharmacist merely glancing up at me disinterestedly before going to get the meds. I tossed the bag and the receipt away as soon as I was outside, pocketing the bottle. Phase One complete.

When I got home, J and the others were clustered in the main area putting together explosives, and I was privy to the customary quick checking glances before they ascertained that I was me and I wasn't a threat and returned to their work. I closed the door behind me and paused for a moment to observe them with a little smile.

But for the deadly fruit of their labors, they could be a little old lady's knitting circle, complete with the spattering of gossip. The Joker himself usually kept quiet during these little sessions, but we had a couple of loudmouths on our team now, and they loved picking on each other while they worked. There was a lot of good-natured bickering going on at all times. J didn't necessarily encourage the chatter and quarreling, but he tolerated it, probably sensing that it improved morale. In a job where the life expectancy was anywhere from a month to a year (I still don't know where he found these guys), he must have known that it would benefit him to cut the guys some slack.

My affection died rapidly when the Joker broke suddenly into a coughing fit, tossing the devices from his lap as he doubled over in submission to the attack. It lasted a good minute, and when he finally straightened up, his eyes were streaming and I saw the spattering of blood on his hand before he wiped it away.

I frowned. The sooner I could enact my plan, the better. The last thing we needed was for his lung to collapse. We couldn't exactly traipse to the hospital and get him all fixed up. At most, we could kidnap a doctor, and I didn't like that option, either. There were still noble men in the city (albeit few) who would happily sacrifice their own lives if it meant getting rid of the Joker for good, and I wasn't exactly fond of the idea of allowing such men access to J's insides.

He cast me a wary look as I passed on the way to his room, probably made suspicious by my lack of response to the fit, and I made a mental note to step up the nagging so that he wouldn't (rightly) imagine that I was up to something.

We'd relocated recently, and I still wasn't sure what the building that made up our headquarters had been ten or twenty years ago—I'd say a jail, except jails weren't several stories high and they usually had bars instead of doors. I'd say an asylum, but asylums weren't typically wedged between other buildings in a ghost neighborhood of Gotham, where residents scarcely poked their heads out of their doors if they helped it. At any rate, there were no windows (ideal) and the iron bed frames were bolted to the floor (creepy). An out-of-business S&M club, perhaps?

The bolted beds had, in large part, influenced my plan, and I performed a quick search of the area around the base, getting rid of random paraphernalia—mostly clothes and newspapers, but I found some pins and little blades that could become problematic, and deep, deep under the bed, I discovered a cool, heavy hand grenade. When I pulled it out, I blinked at it for a minute before rolling my eyes and hiding it in a desk drawer.

It's a miracle that we haven't all blown up, I thought, completing my search and rising to my feet. Now. Time for Phase Two.

I hesitated when deciding on the dosage. One was never enough for him; it must have been the length of his body combined with his fevered, frenzied, powerful self-control. Two—we were getting there, but I wouldn't at all put it past him to go lunging around, drugged and hazy, getting into trouble. He was weak already, though. Did I really want to risk giving him three?

In the end, I decided on the triple dose, choosing the lesser of two evils—I would rather him be comatose for a day than half-awake and angry at being deceived. I'd seen him take heavy doses of Thorazine without so much as blinking at Arkham; I wasn't particularly worried that he'd be killed. I ground up the powerful pills and wrapped the resulting powder in a piece of newspaper, pocketing it. I then returned to the main room.

J had finished or discarded his immediate task and was watching the others work. I could tell by the brooding nature of his stare that he was feeling moody. Likely he was disgruntled at the inhibitions his illness was posing, unhappy that he'd been robbed of his normal efficient alacrity, having to sacrifice time every few minutes to that nagging cough that completely incapacitated him.

Aaaaaaaaand… annoying mode on, I thought, starting towards him. I didn't like being a pain in the ass when he was in such a state, but it was necessary to dispel suspicion and to accomplish the latter half of my plan.

I deposited myself in his lap without ceremony, wrapped my arms around his neck, and placed a kiss on the sharp line of his jaw. To my surprise, he tolerated the caress instead of impatiently shoving me off, as would be more like him in a bad mood. I leaned back and studied him, brow furrowed.

His eyes were heavy-lidded and his skin was practically burning, even hotter than usual. I estimated that the Joker ran at about a hundred degrees anyway instead of the average ninety-eight point six, so this was a bad sign.

"Any change?" I asked softly, searching his face. He glanced at me and drew in a long, labored breath. He clicked his tongue and lifted a boneless hand aimlessly in response.

"Ohhhhh, yeah," he hummed. "I feel like… dancing. You wanna dance, Harls?"

I frowned. "Is there any way I can convince you to take it easy until the worst passes?" I asked, ignoring the question.

He closed his eyes, shook his head with a long exhale, and leaned back against the chair, the picture of exhaustion. I watched him, feeling the frown grow. I'd never seen him like this, too worn out to even put the usual bite into his retorts to questions he considered inane, or to even respond to them at all. I glanced around and spotted his coffee cup on the table in front of him, half-drained.

I took the opportunity. I brushed the side of the face with the backs of my knuckles, a move to which he only responded by twitching his nose in annoyance, and then got up and picked up the cup. "I'll go freshen this for you," I said as he opened his eyes. "Maybe a hot drink will help."

He waved a hand lazily, dismissively, and bent forward to pick up some materials from the table as I disappeared into the cramped adjoining kitchen. One thing I learned in the past months with J and his men was that coffee was almost always brewing. J was a veritable caffeine fiend, drinking the stuff more often than he drank water, and so I felt comfortable getting the sedatives to him in this way.

I cast a careful glance over my shoulder as I dumped the cold coffee down the drain. Hearing the chatter pick up again, I felt slightly safer, and I set the mug on the counter and pulled the little packet out of my pocket. The powder coated the bottom of the mug beautifully, and I chased it with a generous serving of coffee from the heated pot.

The Joker usually drank his coffee completely black, but I suspected that it was just because he was always in too much of a hurry to take the time to sweeten it, since he'd displayed a tendency of stealing my one-cream double-sugar cups whenever I didn't watch them closely enough. Keeping that in mind, I added sweetener and milk, stirred it up, and took a tentative sip.

Bitter, but not necessarily unduly. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice—coffee had a tendency towards bitterness anyway, and the sugar softened it up. I spat the mouthful out into the sink and took it out to him.

I didn't offer more touches or sympathy. If he was running a fever, as I suspected, then his skin would be fiery and sensitive and contact would be unwanted and necessarily painful. I just set the mug on the table and went over to an overstuffed armchair, taking a sheaf of newspapers with me. These I pretended to read in search for news of us, Batman, or copycats of either (the Joker despised copycats and took a personal interest in punishing them) while in reality keeping an eye on him.

I felt a quiet little triumph when he at first downed half the cup in one go, then continued with little sips here and there as he worked. He finally finished and cast the mug aside, redoubling his focus on the bomb. Then came the wait.

At least half an hour passed. I kept sneaking tentative glances over at him, and as time kept ticking past, I began to worry. That dosage would have taken down a horse, I thought vehemently. There's no way. No way.

As the minutes marched on, I disconcertedly began to admit to myself that I might have misjudged J's stamina. No fair, I whined internally. He should be out by now. I cast a disgruntled look at my newspaper. Maybe I could just spring on him when he decided to sleep. If he ever went to sleep.

I heard him sniff and looked up instinctively. He was blinking one eye hard, the heel of his hand buried in the other eye, and as he brought the hand down, he joined gazes with me. I looked away sharply and then cursed myself. Way to indicate guilt, Harley. It was too late now; he knew I was up to something and that the "something" was probably related to his sudden sleepiness. The Joker was a genius, but even a man of average intelligence could have put two and two together. I could only hope that the drugs kicked in hard, and more importantly, soon.

I couldn't help looking at him again. He was now staring intently and scowlingly at me. Oh, he knew. I suspected that the only reason he hadn't yet come to physically confront me was because his drug-enhanced exhaustion was pinning him to the chair. He glared as he sluggishly removed the primed explosive from his lap.

"Harley," he said, and stopped.

I shifted the papers to the side and went to him. His head was already drooping to his chest, but as I kneeled by his chair, he summoned enough strength to get a hand around my throat, iron fingers pressing and bruising and speaking of the annoyance of the maltreated.

His strength was short-lived. The gesture seemed to sap the remnant of his energy, and his hand loosened and dropped uselessly as his eyes closed and his head lolled to the side.

I coughed and breathed deeply, taking the slightly bruised windpipe as par for the course, and then climbed to my feet. I searched the men's faces for a pair who would help me most willingly.

"Javier. Anton. I need your help."

The men looked at me warily, but rose from their chairs. "What are you doing, Harley?" Javier asked in that friendly, unassuming tone that he used so often with me and the Joker, a tone that made me think he would have made a great psychiatrist had he gotten the opportunity.

I gave him my most innocent smile. "The boss is sick and exhausted, and I don't exactly want to leave him to sleep in his chair—he needs a good rest. Help me move him to his bed."

The two men exchanged glances. They were aware that this was unusual and dangerous—J had fallen asleep out in the main area before, and we'd always let him be, unwilling to go in and poke a sleeping tiger. At some point, he would wake up, and at some point, he would want to know who had moved him. What happened afterward would be anyone's guess.

However, he was sick. Very sick, and the men weren't stupid—Javier, at least, would suspect the real reason behind his boss's sudden unconsciousness, would see that I was behind it, so moving him was less of a risk. Also, I had established myself as de facto leader when J was out of the picture. I was telling them to move him. When he was around, my commands would be completely disregarded if I ever felt the need to give them (I didn't), but to ignore them now would be… well, J was unconscious and I was not. I'd made a bloody display of dominance several times before. I'd do it again.

"I'm moving him either way," I said, sweetening the pot with a lift of the eyebrows. "If you help me, I'll tell him I dragged him alone. If you don't… you're both going down."

"Damn it, Harley," Javier grumbled, but he and a reluctant Anton bent to collect the Joker from the chair.

The drugs held. J was as still as a corpse in their grasp, and I led the way, clapping happily as the boys struggled and swore. "I'd help, but I'm worried I'd get in the way," I called back to them.

"Sure," Anton grumbled, seeing the insincerity—it was punishment for their initial unwillingness to obey.

I threw the door to J's room open and indicated the bed with an airy wave. "Heavy bastard," Javier swore as, with one last wrench, they deposited him on the bed.

"See?" I chirped when J failed to stir. "Out cold. He doesn't know a thing. Otherwise he'd be rearing up to kick your ass for calling him fat." I giggled at the thought.

"Better be," Javier said crankily. "If I get in trouble for this, I'm taking it out on your pretty hide."

"Deal," I said, perching on the desk chair and grinning. Beautiful. "You guys can scoot. Let him sleep."

The two gave me disgruntled looks and left. I launched Phase Three.

I dug around in one of the desk drawers and re-emerged with a roll of duct tape. Going over to J, I peeled a long strip free and wrapped it around his left wrist. I wound tape midway up his forearm, doubled it, and then tossed the roll across the room.

I reached under his head, beneath the pillow for the handcuffs I'd stashed there earlier. I locked one end around the solid steel frame, and with a satisfying click, the remaining cuff closed around the Joker's protected wrist, just shy of being uncomfortably tight, and then he was imprisoned until I deemed him well enough to go free.

A/N - I was scared writing this one. The Joker and imprisonment don't really mesh, unless of course he has his own elaborate plan that involves his temporary incarceration, which... isn't exactly the case here. Still, the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so here I am testing it out. Also, I wanted to revisit the Bad Jokes universe temporarily, since I'm about to delve all-out into the Batman world again with a new(sort of?) Bruce-centric story and a sequel to Bad Jokes (I... think?). The result was this, a little five-chapter piece to tide me over until the semester ends and I can really focus. So we'll see how it all works out. Let me know what you think!