Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any aspect of the Batman universe, including the fictional characters Joker and Harley Quinn.

Sweet Tooth

A MAD LOVE STORY

"Is that for me?" Joker asked innocently.

Harleen nodded. In her open palm rested a gumball almost the same shade of cherry-red as her nail polish—she'd lost count of the amount of quarters she'd put into the machine before it finally gave her a red one—with Gotham's Sweetest printed in white across its clear cellophane wrapper.

"Oh my," Joker cooed, raising his eyebrows in feigned surprise, "did you go to the candy shop just for little ol' me?"

He already knew the answer. Of course she did.

Harleen blushed and smiled demurely as she tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear, allowing him a full view of her pinked cheeks and round glasses. The frames were often slightly askew, and today they were as crooked as ever, but he'd never bothered to point it out to her or taken it upon himself to reach across the interview table to adjust them (though he was certain she'd absolutely love to have his fingers brush against her face); this was in part because he simply didn't care enough, and partially because he found it somewhat endearing—like a puppy with lopsided ears, or a doll with one eye gouged out.

"I remembered you saying that it was your favorite," Harleen said coyly, "and that you had some happy memories there."

"Favorite" was more than an exaggeration: it was wholly untrue. Joker had never visited Gotham's Sweetest before, and only became aware of its existence after witnessing a new guard that Joker disliked and had been observing for vulnerabilities—first he'd snap in half the finger with the gold wedding band that desperately needed to be polished, deliver a sharp kick to those unpadded knees over and over again until he grew bored of the wet crunching sound, then drive his pale thumbs as deep as they would go into those beady, cold eyes that narrowed in undisguised repulsion every time they landed on him—reach into his pocket, unwrap a gumball, then pop it into his mouth when he thought Joker wasn't looking. Joker then decided that he wanted one too.

But Harleen didn't need to know that.

Instead he'd told her that a lifetime ago, long before his mugshot had been smeared across the front page of The Gotham Times in a cheap ploy to profit from his misfortune and his poorly-healed bones ached with a lingering pain thanks to the Bat brute, his mother had faithfully taken him to Gotham's Sweetest every year on his birthday and gifted him with the rare treat of a twenty-five cent gumball. She was a kind, gentle woman, as soft-hearted as she was beautiful, right up until the tragic day that she died of an illness they couldn't afford to treat and left him all alone with his violent drunk of a father. He had been only seven years old then, and it would take seven more joyless birthdays before dad finally drank himself to death and Joker was forced out onto Gotham's crime-polluted streets, drifting from place to place without so much as a coat to shield him from the cold and rain or a home-cooked meal to stave off the bitter gnaw of hunger, and—most heartbreaking of all he had suffered—never again did Joker encounter someone who truly, unconditionally, completely loved him.

Until he met her, of course.

Sometimes it was his father who was struck down by a terminal disease, and sometimes mom abandoned both husband and son by running off to start a new life where neither of them existed. Sometimes dad would put down the bottle long enough to bring him to fun events, like the circus or an ice show, and even burst into uncharacteristic laughter at comedic performances; but it would take only one trip to the bar to awaken dad's true nature, and any attempts to recreate their shared moment of happiness would only result in a beating made all the more painful by the accompanied sadness and confusion. Sometimes both of his parents would even die at the same time, usually in a car accident or robbery gone wrong, but Joker didn't use that tale often—he'd discovered that people tended to respond with more dismay and sympathy to the tragic loss of one parent and subsequent years of childhood abuse inflicted by the hands of the other. There was an explanation for this discrepancy, and he found it rather amusing: deep down, even they wouldn't dare admit to it, most people were downright fascinated by the suffering of others.

Harleen was no different.

She had hung onto every word of his story, gripping her notebook tightly in her hand as he spoke of love and loss and the pain of always being misunderstood, and when he was done she wiped away tears with the cuff of her white coat. Judging from the ball of hard sugar in her hand, she'd sworn to herself that she would bring him that little bit of happiness once again, just like dear dead mom had all those years ago.

She had even brought him one in red, the color he said he liked so much on her. Hah!

"You're too good to me," Joker said in a voice like silk, and opened his mouth obligingly.

Harleen tried—and failed, as he knew she would—to keep her fingers from trembling as she unwrapped the candy, its smooth shell glistening beneath the interview room lights, and slowly, carefully placed it in Joker's mouth. Her fingers hovered above lips even more rich of a red than the sweet, and for a fleeting second she wondered if he would bite her, and how she would react if he did. She imagined those big white teeth—some of them porcelain, their natural predecessors shattered beneath Batman's fist—grazing across her knuckles, down the nape of her neck, nipping at her own gloss-shimmered lips, just hard enough to hurt and to feel good, and with that thought she crossed her legs beneath the table and hoped he wouldn't notice the faint little whimper her discipline and careful poise had been unable to stifle.

He did.

But Joker did not close his mouth until she had returned her hand to her lap, and Harleen watched as he crushed the gum's shell between his teeth and began to chew, his gaze never wavering from hers.

After a moment she shook her head and blinked, as if snapping out of a dream she wasn't quite ready to leave, before clearing her throat and straightening in her chair.

"I wasn't supposed to give you that," Harleen said matter-of-factly, her demeanor as prim as she could muster. "Unapproved food items are considered contraband and a violation of patient conduct, to say nothing of the inconvenience I might find myself subjected to should anyone disapprove of my...treatment methods."

She cleared her throat again and cast her eyes to the floor, unwilling to meet his gaze, for if he were to look into her eyes Harleen knew that he would see through her newfound rigidity and recognize the stern act for what it was: a performance more for herself than for him, to ease her own mind and make herself feel a little less guilty about the relationship with her patient, and the fact that she fully realized it was inappropriate but had no desire to put an end to it. By telling herself that she had at least tried to be good, tried to do right, she could pretend to be innocent for a little while longer, until the inevitable day arrived when she would have to make a choice between what she had spent years building and what she really wanted.

"I trust you'll swallow that before you leave?" It was meant to be a command, but in Harleen's timidity it sounded more like a suggestion.

That decision-making day was approaching soon, quicker than she thought, and he already knew what—who—she would choose. But he'd play along with her for a little while longer. It made the days pass by quicker, at least.

"You're the boss, doc," Joker said playfully, and when he blew a pink round bubble Harleen could not stop herself from smiling.

Her life was different now.

The tidy bun of blonde hair now sat atop her head in two messy pigtails, as lopsided as her glasses once were. A wardrobe full of smooth pencil skirts and button-up blouses and black stockings that gripped her thighs with lace had been left behind, along with that prized white doctor's coat worth thousands of dollars in student loans checks made out to Gotham State University—all traded in for the first costume she'd grabbed off the joke store rack with one frantic hand as she reached for a smoke bomb with the other. White greasepaint left behind oily stains on the red and black of her jester suit, on the brim of her cowl and the fingers of her mismatched gloves, and sometimes when she grinned flecks of black lipstick smeared across her teeth. Her blue eyes were often wide with child-like fascination behind her mask, drinking in the sight of Gotham's slithering underbelly and all who roamed and fought and feasted within it.

No longer did she have to hide the part of herself that felt intrigue where others felt outrage, whose heart raced with excitement every single morning when she drove through the asylum gates, who lived and breathed for that one hour a week where there was no wall of cool glass to separate her from the only person in the world who would ever completely love her and she could pretend that they were together and free, until a bulky man in a guard uniform arrived to take him away and break her heart all over again. Harleen had endured months of simultaneous euphoria and despair, forced to keep her true feelings secret for fear of being shamed—it was not the loss of her reputation that frightened her, but the prospect of having the pureness of her love condemned by those who could never understand it. In their ignorance and their envy they would warp her passion into something perverse, something wrong, and thrust upon her the eternal judgments inflicted onto all misunderstood women; they would call her confused, hysterical, damaged, crazy and weak and foolish, but never would they call Harleen the one thing she truly was.

Loving.

The night she'd broken Joker out of Arkham he approached her for the first time in his full splendor, uncuffed and handsome in purple, with those big white teeth that were about to do all those things she had only dared dream of before, and whispered into her ear "good girl, Harley". Only then did it dawn on her that she had been irreversibly changed by a rash sequence of actions, and that the life she had occupied only hours ago was effectively over; never again would she walk through the door of the apartment she'd lived in since graduating from college, or sit on the couch painting her nails while half-listening to Gotham News Network, or read a chapter of a romance novel before falling asleep in her own bed, or say hello to whatever security guard was working as she swiped her asylum clearance badge, or drink a cup of bland coffee in the staff lounge, or any of the other innumerable mundanities that comprised Harleen's now-former existence.

But the realization did not startle her, nor did she feel even the faintest twinge of regret. It excited her.

Dr. Harleen Quinzel was gone forever, and in her place was Harley Quinn—or perhaps she had been Harley all along, and Harleen was nothing more than a distraction to keep her from noticing how unfulfilled, how terribly lonesome she truly was before he'd come to her rescue.

The first time she felt a stranger's blood spray across her face, sticky-hot and smelling of pennies, Harley instinctively flinched in surprise. Joker had pulled her towards him and began to smear the blood across her face with his thumbs, pressing into her skin with such force that she was certain she would bruise, before tearing the cowl from her head and running his thin fingers through her pigtails, stopping only when her blonde hair was muddied with streaks of clotted red and Clown White. As the man at their feet lay dying Joker kissed her hard.

The next time she did not flinch. He kissed her even harder.

"She's someone who kinda loves a little bit too much and too unwisely, and that's her downfall." --Paul Dini