I've started on my next fanfiction early- a Harley/Crane romance, written at Athulis' suggestion. This is certainly going to be a stretch for me, as I have absolutely no experience writing (or reading) romance, so comments will be very much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters and never will. Any profits will go to help Arkham Asylum get some decent security.
It was Joker's death that finally did it.
Jonathan Crane glanced at the rolled-up newspaper and sighed. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes, still weary from last night's non-sleep in the din of Arkham. He already knew what the headline said—he'd read it thrice already. The Joker was dead. His bullet-riddled corpse had finally been found after another "daring escape" from the Batman. Apparently, he'd jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire—or, more accurately, into one of Anthony Thorne's business meetings. The guards probably didn't even know who they'd gunned down before it was all over. Crane idly wondered if it would have made a difference.
But they all knew the clown had been moving slower lately. Well, they'd all been moving slower lately. Time waits for no man, as Temple Fugate would have so eagerly reminded him. Even the best and brightest of men eventually yield to Time's slow advance. But the Joker… he'd always seemed so hideous, so chaotic, so… so invincible. Laughing hysterically while dashing through Gotham, committing heinous crimes of costumed villainy, escaping Batman with rocket-powered pogo sticks and exploding lemon meringue pies, falling to his "death" at least a dozen times... the Joker, dead? It just didn't make sense. The Joker was too ridiculous to die! Crane sighed again and shifted slightly on the thin, lumpy mattress. He'd never liked the clown—who had?—but there was always something about Joker that made him seem above it all. He could never imagine Joker as an old man. He couldn't really imagine himself as an old man either, but the mirror didn't lie. There were wrinkles around his eyes—crow's feet, he thought with a wan smile—that hadn't been there last time he checked, and he no longer found it child's play to twist his way out of a pair of handcuffs. Not that he got much practice; Jonathan Crane hadn't left Arkham for nearly two years.
Glancing up, Crane let his eyes wander down the hallway. So many cells were empty now. There was Ventriloquist's cell—Wesker had finally managed to suppress his darker half, and had been in a halfway house for nearly a decade. There was Killer Croc's old cage—the freakish man had been ironically killed by a rockslide when he failed to budge a massive boulder trapping him in the quarry. Jonathan Crane mentally ran through the list in his head—Baby Doll, whose condition had finally caught up to her; Riddler, who'd crossed the Black Mask once too often; Poison Ivy, permanently retired in Brazil; Two-Face, who'd finally won (or lost, depending on one's side in the matter) the ultimate coin toss; Jervis Tetch…
Crane's eyes lingered on the Mad Hatter's empty cell. He never missed Croc or that overweening Riddler, but Tetch had been a friend. Word had it he'd vanished about a year ago; at the time, Crane was drugged out of his mind and spending most of his waking hours in the electroshock chamber as part of a "radical new treatment" proposed by some dunce of a doctor… by the time his head had cleared enough to function, the Hatter had been missing for months. Crane noted that there had also been a rash of robberies at Gotham's electronics research labs at the time, and sincerely hoped that Jervis was enjoying his retirement.
The list was a long one. Crane mentally ticked them off one by one: Catwoman, retired; Clayface, dead; Clock King, dead; Victor Fries… well, Victor Fries was still alive. He had to admit that. The doctors were saying that, with his metabolism radically slowed by the cryonic liquid, he could very will live to be two, three thousand years old.
But the city was moving on, filled with new heroes and new villains. There was talk of a man who had flaming hands, a contortionist who could slip through anything, a murderess who took the names of her victims, a surgeon who did bad operations. Some days Crane wondered if people still remembered who he was. Once, he would be glad to be forgotten, biding his time until he struck with the strength of surprise, but his frightening alter-ego had been strangely silent lately. Weeks went by without a stir of Scarecrow, something that pleased his therapist but added to his own depression. Didn't they understand that he needed—he needed—Scarecrow? Who had stood guard when he'd been sent to the basement and kept the shadows at bay? Who had comforted him in the chapel when Grandmother locked him in and loosed her infernal crows? Who had stood by his side and kept the phantom birds away after he'd been exposed to his own toxin time and time again? He and Scarecrow were supposed to be one and the same, eventually; it was only thanks to the pills the doctors force-fed him through the years that weak, cowardly Crane remained. But now, ever since that "treatment program", Scarecrow had been growing quieter and quieter…
With a disgusted snort, Crane tipped over the newspaper, disrupting a large black fly. He eyed it apathetically, watching it buzz lazily against the bulletproof glass, thin wings droning loudly. Once, it would have afforded him hours of entertainment; trapping it, pulling the wings off, terrifying it for hours, and finally slipping it down the neck of an unsuspecting—and mildly insectophobic—orderly… now, he merely found it annoying. He missed Scarecrow's dark glee, the sick pleasure of power, the guilty warmth that surged through him… it wasn't that he wanted to go back... well, maybe he did, but… Crane shook his head slowly. It was so hard to tell with things like this anymore. Privately, he blamed the medicaton they forced into him every morning. It tended to make any serious thoughts of Scarecrow rather heavy and slow.
He glanced back at the front page of the newspaper, now splayed on the cement floor. A huge picture of the police loading up a body bag covered the front page, just under the headline JOKER FOUND DEAD—POLICE SUSPECT GANG SHOOTING. In one corner, the Joker's face grinned up evilly from a police mug shot, a picture taken in "happier" times. Harley had been caught on the same night, and most of Joker's gang had defected to Black Mask or the Falcone, so the Joker's body had been consigned to a public burial plot. Crane sighed. He wondered if anyone would even remember Joker in a few years. Then he shook his head. There were still a few thousand grinning Jokerfish in Gotham Bay, not to mention the twenty-seven Gothamites who'd survived the Joker gas and now sported a permanent smile. No one could forget Joker… at least not for a few hundred years. But in the end, what was he really but a small ripple in the surface of time, easily—
"No! No! You can't do this to me!"
Crane looked up. He recognized the high, almost girlish voice, although he'd rarely heard such… fear coming from her before. He focused on the word—fear—almost hopefully. Usually Scarecrow would jump in about now with a long, crazed rant about the power of terror, earning Crane a straitjacket and a cell in the solitary wing. No such luck.
"You're lying! You're all lying!" Harley Quinn sobbed, as she was dragged into Tetch's old cell by two burly orderlies. Her blonde hair, no longer quite as bouncy as it had once been, flopped wildly about as she struggled.
"Look, miss, the Commissioner doesn't lie," one sighed. "Joker's dead. You gotta accept that."
"Not true! Not true! You're all a bunch of liars!" Harley collapsed onto her bed and began weeping.
Crane turned away uncomfortably. He wasn't quite sure what to feel. Logically, he knew pity and compassion was in order—at least, for a normal person—but he also knew that he should be feeling some sort of villainous glee as well. Or was that Scarecrow? He shook his head slowly, feeling the familiar sluggishness as Scarecrow unsuccessfully tried to rouse himself.
"Professor Crane," Harley sniffled, not looking up.
"Yes, child," Crane replied automatically.
"Do you think Mistah J's dead?"
Crane heaved a long sigh.
"Yes, I believe he is," he replied.
This sent Harley into fresh hysterics. Crane watched her silently, tracing a pattern on the brass bedpost with a forefinger. He wondered if she would keep crying for much longer. Joker's unpredictability had rubbed off on Harley; she might keep the waterworks going for hours, or lapse back into denial for a few days. Crane shrugged and looked back at the newspaper. He'd read and re-read it, but there was nothing else to do besides listen to Harley's pathetic weeping. He stared at the headline, trying to think of an anagram for it. Nothing came to mind. Crane shook his head, a little sadly. He used to be quick—almost as quick as Riddler. Things change.
Across the halls, Harley's sobs grew slower and quieter, subsiding into hiccups and finally silence. Glancing over his shoulder, Crane saw her kneeling by the bed, her head buried in her arms. He shook his head. It still seemed so… impossible. The Joker couldn't really be dead. He'd been "dead" before… but never with a body. The Joker, dead? Crane snorted a little. Joker had just been in here, just a few weeks ago, laughing it up like always. He couldn't be dead. Crane could still picture him in his mind, large as life and twice as natural… as Jervis would say. But, watching Harley's shoulders finally relaxing into empty silence, it really hit home. It was the end of an era.