8: Girls' Night, a batman begins/dark knight fanfic

AN: This one has been in the works a while, but I couldn't get it knocked out until I sat down with my best friend, fed her too much caffeine and chocolate, and recorded her pretending to be Poison Ivy for twenty minutes. Seriously. Saved the story. So you have her to thank if you love (or hate) my Nolanverse Pamela Isley, because she's her. My biggest hope is that I haven't butchered any botanical knowledge in this one. Botanists out there, be nice. =P

Girls' Night

"That girl is poison…."

- "Poison," Bell Biv Devoe

Harley peeked over the dusty mass of fake plastic ivy, trying to get her bearings. Being in an empty mall at night, besides being a little creepy, was disorienting. Most of the neon signs above the stores were turned off, and between the red exit signs and the moonlight coming in through the glass dome, it all looked a little too Dawn of the Dead for her liking. Harley was hunkered down in the silent food court of the West Gotham Mall, trying to stay out of the way of the security cameras and motion detectors. The mall cop wouldn't give her much trouble – last she checked, he was out cold in his kiosk near the north entrance with half a po' boy falling apart on his stomach; but she was pretty sure there were motion-activated cameras in this part of the mall that triggered a silent alarm, and the last thing she needed was the real cops showing up – especially over a little thing like lipstick.

Harley had been running low on all her makeup supplies for a week or so now; she'd been making them last, going lighter than normal, but almost everything was down to the bottom of the bottle or stick. Not that she needed as much normal makeup as she used to. Greasepaint had pretty much taken up the majority of her face. But she still insisted on her Almay eyeliner and a thick coat of lipstick. The liner kept the black paint out of her eyes, and since greasepaint tasted like absolute dog crap, lipstick was a necessity. She did the dark circles and the smile in paint; but her red lips were always crème lipstick. Plus, if she ever had to go anywhere out of costume, normal makeup was kind of essential.

Tonight was supposed to be a clean robbery. Get in, load up on lipstick, eyeliner, and maybe lotion and deodorant, and get out. No violence, no destruction of property, and…for a change…no psychological manipulation. Harley sighed into the faux plant as she searched around for the store she was after. The Joker had "given her the night off." Which meant he and the boys were off doing who knew what, probably having a lot of fun doing it, and she was stuck trying to find some way to occupy herself. She wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve the temporary layoff. There was nothing she could remember that had caused it. Things had been pretty much normal – actually getting marginally warmer – between them right up until Thanksgiving, and then she had woken up Friday morning to being back to the status of dirt on his shoe. That was about a week or so ago, and the coolness in their interaction had since built up to mirror the rapidly chilling air in Gotham, until the frost had finally set in earlier that evening. And without so much ado, the Joker had simply ordered her to go "do whatever it is women do by themselves" until they got back, because he needed a break. From her.

Whatever.

The list of things women did by themselves didn't amount to much more than shopping, ice cream, and coming up with elaborate stories of wish fulfillment, but she supposed she could manage. At least she could occupy her time with something useful like this expedition for makeup.

Lifting her head slightly out of the plant, Harley scanned around for the right store. The food court was on the second floor of the mall, a circular space with an open center that looked down on the fountain on the ground floor below. This half of the circle was occupied by food vendors; across the gap was Harley's target. Clustered around the junction where the food court connected with the main drag of the mall were a handful of personal care products stores – Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, some sort of Chinese shop that sold herbal remedies and books on alternative medicine, and – snuggled between Victoria's and the obnoxiously smelly Abercrombie on the other side, was Harley's mark: Goddess. Harley took a deep breath and, ducking down to the floor, began to crawl. She inched her way along through the shadows of the railing, following the curve of the food court until she reached the other side. Another quick glance to ensure there were no motion detectors across the entrance, and she darted into the doorway. Thankfully, they had neglected to pull the portcullis down over the door.

Goddess was a sort of all-encompassing beauty store. You name it; if it had anything to do with the female appearance, they sold it. Their main draw was makeup, of course – and they had whole aisles devoted to each major brand – but they also offered selections of hair products, lotions, bath oils and salts, perfumes, skin care products, and vitamin supplements aimed at hair, nails, and complexion. The end result was a store that smelled something like a high-class whorehouse, and Harley wrinkled her nose as she entered the overly sweet atmosphere.

"Yuck," she whispered, sliding across the floor on her hands and knees, staying below the view of the security cameras as she looked for the right aisle. "Okay. Almay, Almay… where'd you go?" She shuffled along on her hands and knees until she saw the rows of familiar eyeliner along the bottom of one of the shelves. "Bingo…," she mumbled, and slid into the aisle before plopping down in the floor and opening the small messenger bag that had been slung over her shoulder. After a moment of digging, she managed to fish out a list. "Okay. Eyeliner," she told herself, "lipstick, nail polish, lotion, shampoo…."

Clink.

Harley's head snapped to the left. She convulsively shoved the eyeliner she had been holding into the bag, suddenly on her guard. The sound had come from the front right corner of the store, where the display of new brands was always spread out and illuminated – and it had sounded suspiciously like breaking glass.

"Shit," Harley murmured, stuffing her list back in the bag and closing it as quietly as she could. Either the dumb mall cop was awake and bumping into shelves, or she had competition. Neither was a happy possibility. She had to make a quick decision. Tucking the bag up onto her back, she began sliding down the aisle on all fours. She would peek around the end of the nail polish display; if it was the mall cop, she would cut and run. Makeup could wait until another night. If it was a fellow thief… well, she would try to take a few minutes to grab what she could. Silently. She had no intention of making conversation with another petty criminal. That could get them both screwed. Reaching the end of the aisle, she inched her head past the rack of polish until she could only just see the beginning of the next display. Her eyebrows immediately snapped together.

Sticking out of the next aisle was a canvas bag… and a knee.

Someone was sitting Indian-style in the far aisle, rummaging through a large canvas messenger bag covered in pins, buttons, and patches. That someone had broken a bottle – perfume, from the smell that was now seeping in Harley's direction. And from the fabric and cut of the army-green carpenter pants on the visible knee, Harley surmised, that someone was a woman.

"Well, damn," a voice murmured, confirming Harley's suspicions. There was a sound of things being moved around, and a tiny tinkle as the woman probably brushed glass shards aside. "If they didn't make these stupid things so delicate…." Another sound of shuffling, and this time Harley saw the canvas bag move. "Okay. Forget the perfume. I'll start with the foundation." Harley listened for a moment, but she didn't hear the woman move any inventory from the shelf to her bag. What was she doing? Letting curiosity get the better of her, Harley scooted a little further out of her aisle. What she saw left her just as confused.

The woman sat cross-legged at the end of the aisle, facing a corner display of a new cosmetic brand called Figura. Her dark green carpenter pants were paired with two layered tank tops (washed-out purple and a lighter green), a black flannel tied at her waist, and a beaten-up pair of Doc Marten's. Slung carelessly on the floor behind her was a hoodie so dark green it was almost black. But what Harley noticed most conspicuously was the woman's hair. It was red. Very red. With a capital R. The closest thing Harley had ever seen to that hair color was the Weasley family from Harry Potter. Except this ginger looked like it could eat that ginger for breakfast and still be hungry. Her hair hung down to the middle of her back in super tight spirals, which were starting to frizz from going too long without some sort of mousse – and the only metaphor Harley's brain could readily come up with was that it looked like someone had taken some curly fries from Arby's and set them on fire. The mass of curls was mostly obscuring the woman's face, as well as whatever she was doing to the bottle of liquid foundation in her hand. Steeling herself to run if she had to, Harley scooted the rest of the way into the aisle.

"No offense, Red, but you're new at this, aren't you?"

The woman snapped around to face Harley, and she looked as if she were about to pee her pants; the only thing stopping her from slapping her hand over her mouth was the glimmering hypodermic needle Harley saw was clutched between her fingers. Both women gasped, and sat back immediately on their heels.

"Look, just leave and forget you saw me, and nobody gets hurt, okay?" the redhead mumbled. Her shaky right hand held the syringe out in front of her like a gun. Harley felt her eyebrow go up in spite of herself.

"Whaddya gonna do, squirt me?"

"Maybe," the woman replied, instantly hardening her voice. "You wouldn't be so nonchalant about it if you knew what was in it." And with that insignificant exchange, Harley felt the dynamic of the moment shift; they were now accomplices in some unspoken adventure, and it had happened so quickly that Harley barely had time to notice. The woman puffed a heavy curl out of her eyes and went back to what she had been doing as if Harley wasn't even there.

"…Well?" Harley prodded after a few moments' silence.

"Well, what?" the redhead answered out of the corner of her mouth. Harley took off her bag and settled tentatively on the floor beside her.

"Well, what's in the needle, anyway?"

"Savin," the woman murmured without looking away from her needle, although Harley got the idea that she was sizing her up out of the corner of her eye.

"Okay…," Harley answered mechanically. There was another silence. Then the redhead sighed.

"You don't have a damn clue what that is, do you?" At this, she finally turned to regard Harley, and the two women got a good look at each other. Harley was a little taken aback – this woman might be a nutjob, but she was probably the best looking nutjob in Gotham. Paper-white skin, eyebrows that arched naturally the way most women plucked for years to accomplish, green cat eyes… she was a red-haired Vivien Leigh, and from the set of her face, Harley figured she could command attention and obedience just about as well as Scarlett on the porch of Tara.

"Nope," Harley admitted sheepishly. Something about her answer must have mollified the woman, because her face softened slightly and she returned a hint of Harley's smile.

"It's an extremely effective herbal toxin," she explained, holding the syringe up to the light. "Made from the plant juniperus sabina. In teeny tiny doses…it helps kickstart your uterus when it decides not to work. In this kind of dose…." She trailed off, and Harley saw a wicked glint in her eyes.

"What does it do?" Harley asked, not sure if curiosity or fear was the best response. The woman shrugged.

"If you swallow it…green puke, kidney failure, massive internal hemorrhage."

"But you were gonna squirt me," Harley followed. "So I'm guessing it does something to your skin, too, right?"

"Blisters," the woman smirked. "And in prolonged exposure, sometimes necrosis."

"Aaaand…you're putting it in the makeup," Harley finished, one eyebrow tilted. The woman's cat-eyes narrowed sensuously.

"Precisely." The two women eyed each other quietly for a few seconds, one deciding what to ask and the other deciding what to reveal. Then, the redhead leaned in closer to Harley and gave her a conspiratorial grin. "If you can think of a better revenge plot, I'd like to see it." After a moment's consideration, Harley returned her smile.

"Harley Quinn. Pleased to meet ya." And she held out her gloved hand. It was met with a light fist-bump from the back of the woman's needle-filled hand that was brusque but not altogether dismissive.

"Pamela Isley," she replied. "DOCTOR Pamela Isley. Biochemist. And I already knew who you were. You've been all over the news, Dr. Quinzel. Should I assume that your presence here heralds the arrival of Mr. Tall, White, and Ugly? Or have you started doing solo ventures?" Again, she didn't look at Harley as she unscrewed the top of another bottle of foundation, but her right eyebrow was raised. Harley immediately tensed.

"Listen, Red, you forget that I'm armed too. You better watch what you call J around me." Her hand drifted toward the bag where her revolver was stashed. Isley snorted.

"Oh? And what exactly do you plan on doing?" At this, she finally turned to look at Harley, her green eyes sardonic. The expression changed as soon as she saw the set of Harley's face. "Geez, you aren't kidding. Okay, mental note. Don't make fun of the clown around his sidekick." She finished injecting the bottle and closed it with a sigh. "God, Stockholm Syndrome must be such a bitch." She reached for another bottle, then paused halfway there. "Ha…that was almost a pun. A really bad one, but a pun nonethele—agh!"

The syringe and the bottle went rolling across the floor as Pam was yanked off balance. Harley had her by the hair at the back of her neck, gloved hand dug in and wrapped around the red curls at the base of her skull. The cold metal of Harley's revolver was pressing against her neck just below the jaw line.

"Let's get a couple things straight, Red," Harley hissed into her ear, anger making her voice thick with its native accent. "One, in case ya forgot, we're both doctors here, so if you're gonna spout off psychology crap, get it right. Ya can't have Stockholm unless you've been kidnapped, and I was the one who broke J outta Arkham to begin with. He certainly didn't kidnap me, and for your information, we happen to be lovers. No syndromes, no disorders – other than the ones he's got floating around in his head. Call me a Stockholm bitch again and I'll kill ya. And two…I think you got the wrong impression about my role in things. Keep pretending I'm just a sidekick and not somebody to contend with, and it'll get ya in serious trouble. Farshtaist?"

"Yeah, sure. Mazel Tov. Now let me go." She let her breath out in a slow hiss through her nose as Harley let go of her hair and put the safety back on the gun.

"And to answer your question," Harley finished, shoving the revolver back into the bag, "J is not in attendance this evening. I happen to be doing some personal shopping. And when have you ever known a man to willingly join in for that?" Pamela let out a laugh before she could stop herself, and somehow the mood was restored. Harley felt the strange sensation of complicity fall over her again.

"You're Gotham's public enemy number two, and you still have to run errands?" Isley quizzed as she retrieved the syringe from the floor. Harley shrugged.

"I was out of makeup. And I had to find some lotion. Greasepaint is murder on your skin when you leave it on as long as we do." Scooting back into position next to Pam, she watched her unscrew the lid of a bottle of makeup remover and expertly slide the needle in through the seal, leaving a puncture so tiny it was nearly invisible. "Okay, your turn. What's a biochemist doing breaking into the mall at night and poisoning makeup? I mean, in my professional opinion, you don't exactly come off as the serial poisoner type."

"Like I told you," Isley murmured. "Revenge."

"On one person?"

"On the company." Pam replaced the bottle on the shelf and moved down to the lip glosses. "Condensed version of the story? They ruined my career, so I'm ruining theirs. Here. Help me out and start picking out anything liquid or oily off the shelf. I'm injecting everything this stuff will blend with." Harley obliged her by pulling some lotions and crème eye shadows down; she lined them up in front of Pam as she listened to the story. "I've been doing research with a grant from Gotham State University. Medical tests, using rare plant extracts to develop a new treatment for lymphatic cancer. Last month, our funding ran out. And of course, the board expected me to be able to magically produce either more money or instant results. I did the only thing I could. I went straight to Bruce Wayne. He's only an honorary board member, but it was his money holding up the program. I was practically ready to kiss his feet if he would extend the funding. All he had to do was sign the papers." She injected the next bottle with a little more force than was necessary.

"What happened?" Harley prompted, now genuinely interested. Pamela grimaced.

"Your boyfriend happened," she hissed, although careful not to provoke another outburst with her tone. "My dinner with Wayne was on Halloween night. You two attacked that stupid rehab center event, and Wayne had to go rushing off in the middle of my proposal to protect his investments. He never signed the forms."

"Hey, I'm sorry…," Harley murmured. Isley shrugged.

"Whatever. But the short version is, the people who test new colors and fragrances for Figura got the funding that should have gone to my program for another year. They're using my cancer research money to rape the rainforest and make all this Pretty in Pink and Ravenous Raspberry shit. Meanwhile, my mom has about six months left before her lymph cells eat her alive."

Harley gulped down the lump that was trying to form in her throat. "So I, um… I guess these Figura people don't use sustainable practices, huh?"

"Of course not," Pam said through gritted teeth. "They're wasteful. We took only handfuls of each plant. Enough to keep growing in our greenhouse for six months before we went back for more. These guys will flatten a whole square mile of forest just to get to one grove of what they want. Then they take the whole grove up by the roots, so they can't grow back, and they crush the plants to a pulp to get their dyes and scents. They print all this bull on their labels about being 'organic' and 'all-natural' because they don't use chemicals. And environmentalists buy it because they don't read any further than that. The whole company is full of lying bastards, and I intend to show their customers a little of the pain the executives inflict on nature."

"And on you?" Harley finished, and Isley flickered her green eyes to the side.

"Yes," she whispered decisively. "On me and my mom. See, the way I figure it will happen, everyone who uses this stuff – and the samples I poisoned earlier at Walgreens, Victoria's Secret, and some other stores across town – well, it'll take a few uses for it to start showing up. But pretty soon, they'll get rashes and blisters across any areas where the makeup touched their skin. If it's bad enough, or their skin is sensitive enough, it might even have to be cut out. Pretty bad scarring. And it'll serve them right for not reading up on the companies they buy from. But once enough people have reported the problem, there'll be massive recalls of Figura products. Probably some lawsuits. Even if they manage to make those go away, the recalls will drop the bottom out of their wallet. And even after all that goes away…there will still be a stigma around the name. Way fewer people will buy from them. And, with any luck, they'll go bankrupt."

"Seems like you've got it all figured out, Red," Harley commented, her smile forced.

"Thank you," Isley replied tartly. "I do."

"So, what if somebody gets too much of the stuff and dies? Or like, if a kid gets into their mom's makeup or something?" At this, Pam shrugged, but it was a gesture stiff with hesitation.

"Well, that would suck. But it's collateral damage. Can't be helped." She put down the empty syringe and turned bodily to face Harley, eyelids lowered sadly but knowingly. "It's scary what a person will do in the name of someone they love. Isn't it?"

Harley tried not to think about kitten sweatshirts soaking up blood and managed to mumble, "Yeah. Scary." The two women shared a silent moment, each with her own thoughts but undoubtedly on the same wavelength. Then Pam relaxed as she bent over to pull another vial of savin from her bag.

"So, listen," she began, her voice sounding as though the honest emotion was rusty from lack of use. "I know you said you were here doing errands or whatever, and I know that's probably true, but…. I mean, if you and the Clown don't have any shenanigans planned for tonight…. I remember you said your skin was getting screwed over by that paint, and I have this apricot and walnut scrub back at my apartment…and…we could, you know…hang out and do that. If you wanted. Maybe get some takeout. Or something."

"Are you inviting me over for a sleepover, Red?" Harley smiled, her face brightening a little. "The femme fatales of Gotham having a girls' night?" Pam focused her eyes on refilling the syringe so she wouldn't have to make eye contact.

"If that's what you want to call it. I mean, I realize you probably want to go back home to lover-boy, but I think having a girls' night every now and then is kind of—"

"Throw in a movie marathon, and you've got a deal." Harley smiled widely, and this time Pam actually smiled back. And Harley decided that she wasn't nearly as terrifying when she smiled.

"Let me just finish up this row of stuff, and I'll call it a night," Pam said, reaching for a bottle of vitamin E oil for treating scars. Harley reached out and stopped her.

"Can I make a suggestion?" she began. Pam's eyebrow crept upward to indicate she was listening, and Harley slowly pointed to the shelf below. It was lined with bottles of his and hers lubricants and warming gels, and beside those, boxes of vaginal suppositories. Harley grinned in an unconscious imitation of the Joker. "Wanna cause some real chaos?" Beside her, Pam's lips stretched into a vicious smile.

"Doctor Quinzel… I think I'm going to like you."

Three hours, two movie rental places, and a very fast drive later, Harley and Pam were discussing the relative merits and disadvantages of chopsticks as they sat picking through the remnants of their takeout boxes. Harley was aimlessly pushing around one of those tiny baby corn cobs and trying to decide why they even put those in; but then, she supposed, some people would eat them. Dan. Dan would eat anything.

"Ugh…God…," Harley sighed, stretching out on the end of Pam's couch. "With this one box of takeout, I have officially pissed off both sides of my family." Sticking her chopsticks into the leftovers at the bottom, she shoved the box back onto the coffee table. Pam pushed the rest of a snow pea pod into her mouth.

"How's that?" she asked around the vegetable. Harley grinned.

"Well, my grandma would be pissed because those pork chunks were definitely not kosher, and my Dad's side would all be pissed because they hate Asians. We never got Chinese food when I was a kid…except when my Uncle Sean got me takeout without Dad knowing about it."

"Ah," Pam replied after swallowing. "I was wondering which side the Yiddish came from. Don't tell me you have the stereotypical angry Jewish grandmother."

"Naturally," Harley sneered. "And she didn't even have the decency to be one of those annoying Jewish women like on Coffee Talk. That, I would have dealt with. But no. She's so easily annoyed by the world, she doesn't even like Barbara Streisand. Which is like…a mortal sin, to her sisters. And it was always, 'Harleen, you're dressing like a nafkeh; Harleen, why are you dating all these goyim, it's not right; Harleen, why can't you be more like your sister?' As if Esther was this perfect example of a young Jewish lady. Pff. She was just as Catholic as I was, thanks to Dad, but she knew how to fake it better. And she was better at keeping her mouth shut." Harley trailed off, staring at the TV. They had already made it through Little Shop of Horrors, and now they were half an hour into Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. They had decided it was an '80s kind of night. Harley didn't mind; this movie was yet another example of her theory about Jewish supremacy in the film industry. Spielberg, Cronenberg, Goldblum…ignoring the existence of Shumacher, of course, because who didn't try to ignore that?

On the screen, Jeff Goldblum was explaining something in his esoteric way, full of umms and uhs, while Geena Davis (who looked remarkably like Harley's sister) watched with a blank stare like a fish. Harley let her eyes flicker away from the TV to the room around her. Pam's apartment was small – living room/dining area combo, itsy bitsy kitchen, itsy bitsy bathroom, and a bedroom – but it was full of character. That's the word her mother would have used in an attempt to be nice. To Harley, it looked like a medicine man's tent had exploded all over the walls. When Pam had said she liked plants, she wasn't kidding. There was some kind of potted plant on every flat surface – tables, TV, stereo, counter, windowsill, and even a really huge one just sitting in the corner with shiny, serrated leaves. And hanging from hooks, and from strings spanning the ceiling, were bundles of dried leaves and flowers. Herbs, Harley assumed, probably the kind you could make teas or medicines out of. Pam's biochemistry followed her home. But then again, Harley's own apartment had been full of psych texts, true crime novels, and DVDs of Criminal Minds, so she couldn't say much. Probably everybody's career bled over into their house. But it wasn't the plants that gave the place so much "character," Harley decided. It was the distinct randomness of the place. A lot of it was very New-Agey: a couple dragon statues in the window sill beside the Venus fly trap, three dream catchers over the couch, a bead curtain between the bedroom and main room, and most of the doorknobs had beads, coin necklaces, and ribbons draped over them in excess. And above the dining table, which was mostly obscured by plants, was a giant poster of a Bengal tiger surrounded by unrealistic purplish mist. The overall effect was that the tiger appeared to be stepping out of a mystical jungle on the table. Of course, interspersed with all the New Age stuff were random items that didn't seem to fit. A poster above the TV that looked like it had been ripped out of a guitar magazine; a print of Van Gogh's "Fritillaries in a Copper Vase"; a stack of Robert Jordan novels; a beaten up black Telecaster in the corner behind the scary plant; and Harley was pretty sure she had caught a glimpse of a plush Hello Kitty in the floor of the bedroom. Accompanied by the wisps of incense that were floating throughout the apartment, it made for a puzzling but interesting picture of what Harley assumed must be a very complex woman.

"So, I guess it's your grandmother's fault, then, huh?" came Pam's voice from beside her.

"What?" Harley mumbled, snapping out of her thoughts. Pam was sitting cross-legged on the other end of the couch, eyeing her serenely but thoughtfully, like the tiger in her poster.

"I said, I guess it's your grandmother's fault you're the way you are. That's what it sounds like to me."

"What way am I?" Harley asked suspiciously, pulling her own legs up onto the couch. Pam shrugged in a way that Harley was beginning to see was characteristic of her.

"Submissive. A lamb. A follower. Letting people dictate your role and your position."

"Excuse me?" Harley started. Pam waved a mollifying hand at her.

"Hey, it happens. Your grandmother trained all your independence out of you. I get it. But you'd think that being a psychiatrist, you'd notice and stop yourself before you became a victim." Her face was so matter-of-fact that Harley had to resist the urge to slap it.

"Boy, you've got a lot of nerve, Red. Do you always try to sabotage the self-esteem of every new person you meet? Or do you just have a system to try to keep from making friends? I thought we'd gotten this conversation taken care of already, but since I have to ask, what exactly am I a victim of?"

"Oh, please," Pam retorted. "Am I not supposed to notice that thumbprint-shaped bruise showing through the paint on your chin? Or the fact that your cheekbone is swollen? Or will I have to roll down your gloves and show you the bracelet bruises you've probably got on each wrist?"

"You know what, screw you," Harley growled, and shoved herself up off the couch.

"Hey, come back h—"

"SHUT UP! Okay? I didn't come over here to listen to you make all these assumptions about my relationship with the Joker. I didn't come here to have you call me an idiot, or a lamb, or a battered woman, or whatever the hell else. I thought I was coming for a movie night with someone who could turn out to be a good friend. Instead, I get the same crap as what everybody else gives me. And if that's how it's gonna go, then sayonara, because I'm leaving right now." And she made it halfway to the front door before Pam caught up with her. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, listen—"

"Don't touch me," Harley snarled. "If you're going to be such a self-righteous hag, then I'm bailing."

"Hey, listen, I'm SORRY, okay? Shit, don't have an aneurysm." Pam's face was still harsh, but she was attempting to soften it as she took Harley by the pigtails and turned her around gently. "Okay, look. I don't interact with people very often. Clearly. I'm not the biggest fan of people. So you'll have to excuse me if my methods are a little brash. And if you don't think you're a victim, and if you're perfectly happy with the Clown, okay. I'll shut up. But I've gotta know that you're not fooling yourself. If you're not delusional, and you know exactly what you're caught up in, and you're okay with it, then fine. You're a grown woman. But if you are delusional, I'm going to tie you up in my closet and un-brainwash you until you can make decisions for yourself again. Okay?" She tried a smile again, and this time it was more successful. "I'm just worried about you, kiddo. I don't want to wake up one day and find out that he's beaten you to death. Because then I'll have to kill him, and that's a lot of work. Okay?"

Harley crossed her arms petulantly, but Pamela's slowly softening tone was helping to ease her anger. "Okay. Just…don't call me a victim. Because I'm not. If I didn't love him, I wouldn't still be there. And I'm being honest. Friend to friend."

"But…," Pam began, her hands dropping from Harley's hair to her shoulders. "I mean, you aren't denying it. He hits you. Doesn't he?" This time both her eyebrows were up, and with her eyes wide like this, it was far easier to trust her. Harley sighed.

"Look, Red, part of it is the job. You know? We're criminals. We run, we jump in and out of moving vehicles, we get into fistfights with security guards and cops. I'm gonna have a higher frequency of cuts and bruises than your average girl anyway."

"But does he?" Pam prodded.

"Well…," Harley paused. "If it helps, he hits the guys too. He's not exactly a gentle, encouraging leader. And I know, I know, that's not what you mean. If you're asking me if I'm his bitch, like, if he treats me like a pimp slapping his whore around, then no. That's not how it works. Part of it is… I'm always right there, closer to him than the goons, so… I'm the first person to get slugged when he's mad about us doing something wrong. And part of it is that sometimes he gets in these moods where it's like he can't decide how he feels about me – I think it has something to do with whatever woman he was with before. I saw the tan line on his finger from a wedding ring. Whatever happened with her must have really screwed with his head, because there are days where he can be borderline romantic, and …then …well, there are days where I swear he could kill every woman he looked at just for good measure. You know? And sometimes, when he hits me, it's like he's actually mad at her, but she's not here, so I'll have to do as a surrogate." She had said all this quickly, eyes turned down to her folded arms; now she lifted her head slowly. Pam's eyes looked like cold, smooth jade.

"But he doesn't slap you around just for fun? Or to get you to do what he wants?" She reached out and took hold of Harley's wrists as she said this. Harley shook her head.

"Nah. He doesn't do much of anything just for fun, come to think of it… no matter what he says, I don't think he remembers what fun feels like…. And most of the time, I do pretty much what he asks me without him having to get crabby."

"What about sex?"

"What about sex?" Harley snorted, pulling her arms free. "It's a little rough, if that's what you mean…but some of us happen to like it that way." She gave Pam a cheeky wink as she returned to the couch. Pam, however, was not amused.

"You know what I mean, Harley. Does he ever…like…force you to—"

"Can't rape the willing," Harley quipped, finding the volume button on Pam's remote.

"I mean, like, anything embarrassing or degrading, or…"

"Gang rape?" Harley suggested. "Bondage? Voyeurism? Weird fixations?" Putting down the remote, she walked back over to Pam and took her by one of her longer curls, twitched it like a horse's reins, and pulled her gently back to the couch. "Look, Red, just because he's a criminal and possibly a little bit of a sociopath doesn't mean he's also a freak sexually. He doesn't get off on crazy stuff. Just sex. Honest. A little rough, like I said. But I've left as many scratches on him as he's left bruises on me, so…. Seriously. Chill. I'm not in any danger of dying. At least, not because of him. Run over by the Batman? Maybe. Shot by a cop? Probably. But beaten to death by J? Not likely. He pretends not to, but he enjoys having me around too much to ever kill me." And that was the honest truth, Harley thought to herself as she and Pam both stared, arms crossed, at the steak Jeff Goldblum was frying on the TV screen. With the exception of that stunning pistol-whipping on Halloween, of course. There was that. But other than that, the Joker usually seemed to want her around. He'd die rather than admit it, she thought, but if she left the gang, she was pretty sure the Joker would just fracture into a mess of purple and green pieces. It was simple psychology. She had become a stabilizing factor in his life…and if that factor was ever removed, his psychosis would likely devolve until there was a complete break. She'd seen it happen in too many other cases like his. And besides, she reasoned with a wry smile…men had a habit of not wanting to admit their need for a woman. In that way, he was like every other normal guy in Gotham.

"Okay, then," Pam sighed, curling back up into her habitual Indian-style pose. "Truce?"

"Truce," Harley answered, and began pulling the hair bands out of her pigtails. They were silent for a few more minutes while the scene played out on the TV in front of them. Then Harley spoke up as she dug her fingers through a tangle in her hair. "So what now?"

Pam's mouth twitched back and forth, almost rabbit-like, as she pondered. "Not a clue. What do women do on these girls' night things?" Harley thought for a moment, then shrugged.

"I dunno. Ice cream?"

A few miles away, across the river, the campus of Gotham State University was dark and nearly silent – at 2:00 AM, the only parties going on were the ones off-campus. The atmosphere was broken only by the lights of a handful of dorm windows, and the furious bursts of typing sounds floating up from the basement level of Kane Hall. In the top bunk of room I-14, Tony Rios was buried under both his pillows, trying to go back to sleep. The two pillows plus the comforter kept out the light pretty well, but didn't do so much to kill the clicliclicliclicliclic of his roomate's keyboard. He pushed the fabric tighter against his ears and tried to think about boring things. Quiet work-study in the library on Sundays. Ramey's math history lectures. His friend Ashley's voice.

Prrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnng!

Oh, God. The phone at two in the morning. He buried his face deeper in the mattress, hoping he could ignore it until his roommate picked up.

Prrrrrrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnngg!

"Eddie," Tony mumbled after turning his face sideways. No reply from below.

Prrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnng! Prrrrrriiiiiiiiiiing!

"Eddie!" Tony barked under the pillows. "Get the phone, dweeb." He listened, but he didn't hear movement.

PRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNNG!

Tony shoved the pillows off to the side and let his head flop over the edge. "Eddie, get the phone, or I'm going to murder you with this pillow, make it look like a suicide, and claim my free A for the semester."

On the bottom bunk, Eddie pushed the hood of his green-striped jacket on and off compulsively, making his dark curls pop with static. Frowning, he carefully placed his laptop off to one side, gently, like an infant. His whole college career was riding on the code he was in the middle of typing – it was possibly the greatest advance in computer gaming, and maybe in the whole field of computer sciences, in a decade, and he wasn't about to let one wrong keystroke get entered. He was turning it in a couple weeks from now, his final grade in his last design course before internship, and he would be paranoid until the second the project was off his hands. Once he was satisfied that the computer was safely positioned, he lifted himself regally off the mattress and stood up, letting the phone continue to ring as he looked up at his disgruntled roommate.

"I find that a highly unlikely scenario, my dear friend. I doubt you possess the forensic capabilities to create the illusion of suicide, especially after having asphyxiated me with said pillow, which I would be unlikely to do to myself. And besides….that would require effort." His eyebrows lifted with sardonic innocence. Above him, Tony made a disgusted face, and then slapped at him with the smaller of the pillows.

"Dude, just shut up and answer the phone."

Eddie dodged the pillow wildly, waving his arms and squealing in exaggerated terror. Tony was back under the other pillow ignoring him, however, so he made his way across the laundry pile and picked up the phone. He knew it was probably Karlina asking him if he had cash to chip in for some Captain Morgan. To which the answer was, as always, a resounding no.

"Greetings and salutations, my nocturnal friend," he rattled as soon as the phone was in his hand.

The first sound he heard from the other end was a muffled chorus of giggles. "Who is this?" he grumbled, instantly suspicious. Last time he'd gotten a call like this from girls, it was the sisters in Beta Kappa, and it didn't end well for either side. In response to his question, the chorus broke up into its component parts, and Eddie could distinguish two laughs – one throaty, dark, and a bit sensual, and the other high and bright.

"Whoever you want it to be, sweetheart!" came the answer. That was the higher voice. The smoky laugh continued in the background. Eddie made a face into the phone.

"Well, before we begin any antics for this evening, please allow me to save you the time and effort by answering the majority of your questions before we begin. While my refrigerator is, in fact, operating at peak performance, as it is an inanimate object, it will not require being captured; I do not possess Prince Albert or any other royal personage in a can, and therefore will not need to let him out; I have not viewed any video tapes which might prompt my death within seven days; and no, I do not wish to show you the money."

There was another burst of laughter from the other end, followed by the bright voice again, saying, "Geez, who shoved a dictionary up your butt?" This was followed by even more laughter. Piqued, Eddie raised both dark eyebrows and made an exaggerated expression of incense.

"HA HA Ha Ha ha ha your biology education must have been woefully inaccurate, my dear caller. For your information, the human anus is structurally incapable of taking in an object of the size and shape of any standard dictionary or thesaurus, unless that text was contained in a cylindrical mechanism or small computerized dev—"

"Oh my God, give me the phone," the darker voice cut in. "I can't take any more of this. Listen, Einstein," the voice began, and Eddie got a distinct image of a commanding but very attractive woman behind it. "This has got to be the crappiest prank call I've ever participated in, thanks to you. Were you dropped on your head as a kid, or do you just not know how to interact in human society?"

"Actually," Eddie posited, lifting a finger as if they could see him, "if the former were the case, I believe it would have reduced my intellectual capacity; and societal norms are—"

"Oh, God, never mind. Here," the woman growled, and Eddie heard the shuffling sound of the phone being shoved back into another set of hands. The giggling started up again, and the brighter voice came back.

"Forget this, kid. We're gonna call somebody we can make fun of without getting a doctoral lecture from them. Go drag the dictionary out of your butt. It'll make sitting down easier. Bye-bye, sweet cheeks!"

There was the beginning of another chorus of giggles, which was promptly cut off by the click of the phone being hung up.

Eddie stared at the phone in his hand for a few seconds, one eyebrow sharply pointed into his frizzed curls. Then he laughed an odd, hollow little laugh, plopped the phone back onto the base, and shrugged as he trundled off to his bunk.

Harley was laughing so hard that she fell backwards, toppling Pam over onto the floor with her. Pamela feigned anger, but she started laughing again just as quickly.

"Oh, God, I haven't done that in years!" Harley gasped, stifling a hiccup. In fact, she hadn't done that since she was sixteen, the last time she and her sister had ever really had a good time together. She guessed that was what Pam was doing for her – giving her sister-time again for a change. The two of them were seated on the floor of Pam's apartment, the cordless phone between them. What had started as a nice, sedate tub of moose tracks near the end of The Fly had turned into two tubs, plus chocolate syrup and sprinkles, by the time David Bowie had started dancing with babies in Labyrinth, and eventually they had just let the movie play unnoticed behind them once the sugar had kicked in and they decided making prank calls was the best idea ever. Harley picked up her spoon and licked off the excess syrup. "Ha… I remember the first prank call I was ever in on… I was in, like… fourth grade, and my friend Mercedes was always the brave one. It was her sleepover. And she did most of the talking, because the rest of us were too chicken… I think we ended up calling the school principal, actually…."

"Bet he was easier to get a laugh out of than that guy we just called," Pam smirked, and they both started giggling again. "Do you want any more moose tracks?"

"Umm," Harley started, staring at the swirls of syrup in the bottom of the bowl. "Want, yes. Need, no. I've gotta be able to still fit in my corset when I leave here, and besides – all this chocolate can't be good for my skin." She handed her bowl and spoon to Pam, who stooped to pick up her own. Then, suddenly, she stopped in mid stoop.

"Skin…," she murmured slowly, then flicked her eyes over to Harley's face. "We were going to use that apricot scrub, weren't we? That's what started this whole idea. Wasn't it?"

"Yeah, actually," Harley laughed. "Okay. Let's do that, then. Want me to put my hair up to keep it out of the way?"

"Yeah, that would help," Pam replied, stepping into the kitchen and dumping the bowls in the sink. "You do that, and I'll go dig out the scrub and my makeup remover. We've got to get Lover Boy's crappy clown mask off you before we can let the healing begin." She started to turn toward the bathroom, but paused at Harley's reproving glance.

"Red," Harley scolded. Pam sighed.

"Okay. I told you I wasn't going to make any more cracks about you being a battered woman. And I'm not. Honest. But that doesn't mean I have to like him, does it?" One dark red eyebrow arced up fetchingly, and she stuck her hands on her hips. Harley relented, allowing herself a smile.

"Nah. I guess not. You get that one privilege. Now go get that scrub." And she waved Pam out of the room with an amiable swipe of her hand. "No hurries, though, Red. We got all night." She watched quietly as Pam ducked into the bathroom, mulling over a bundle of conflicting thoughts. She waited until she heard shuffles and clunks and the flat, hollow smacks of bottles on plywood, the sounds of Pam digging under her sink for the elusive bottle of scrub. Then she gave the room a quick, furtive glance – especially the dully watchful eyes of the tiger on the opposite wall – before picking the phone up off the floor. Harley ducked into the tiny corner formed by the apartment door and the kitchen wall. It would piss Pam off to no end if she knew what was going on, but after that last exchange… she couldn't help herself. That last mention of the Joker had reminded Harley exactly how many hours she'd been away from him – and exactly how subconsciously naked that had been making her feel. She peeked around the corner and looked at the bathroom door one more time before dialing quickly, thumb moving automatically over memorized digits.

Billy felt the cell phone buzz through the table when he put down his root beer. It set up a little clink in a couple of the other guys' beer bottles that were sitting too close together. There were all together too many of them on the table, in Billy's opinion. Not as many as there would have been – not since last week, when he'd had to dump Rob at some mob doctor's place and leave him after the Thanksgiving shooting – but still, way too much alcohol for Billy. Not that he minded a cold one from time to time; but he had a rule – never drink around anything that can kill you. And that list included cars, gasoline, sharp objects, bullets, and the Joker. He hadn't had more than one at a time since he fell back in with the gang…and he never had so much as a sip if the Boss was in a mood.

Tonight was one of those nights.

"Boss?" Billy mumbled as the phone vibrated again. The Joker ignored him; he was attempting to clean out a gun that Dan had gotten hopelessly gunked up with something, and he looked as if he would have liked to clean out Dan's skull along with it. He had sent Harley off into the wilds of Gotham earlier that evening – to keep her out of his head, Billy realized, although it was ostensibly because the guys in the gang had something important to do she wasn't to be involved in – and he wasn't looking much better off for the decision. Meanwhile, the "something important" had turned out to be just sitting around cleaning and reloading all the guns. And, for the rest of the gang, of course, drinking.

"Hand me that," the Joker said without looking up, waving his hand in the general direction of the tool he wanted.

"Huuhh…okay," Dan replied vacuously, and handed him three different tools from the pile, none of which were the correct one. On the edge of the table, the cell vibrated a third time. Billy watched the Joker's eyes, gauging whether or not he was interested. When he saw nothing, he reached over and turned the phone himself, checking the number. He didn't recognize it; but just his luck, if he ignored it it'd be important. He glanced up at the Joker one more time before pressing the button.

"Hello?"

"Billy? It's me."

"Harley?" Billy shoved away the Glock he had been cleaning. "Where—"

"Sorry," came the voice from the other end of the line. "I didn't figure you'd recognize the number, so I'm glad you actually picked up. Is J there?" The voice was perky and hopeful, none of which looked like good medicine for the Joker right now. Billy sucked in a deep breath for a moment and then let it puff out.

"Eh…physically, or mentally?" was the reply he settled on. Harley's sigh was exasperated, but he could hear the smile underneath.

"So, like usual, huh?" she giggled. Billy grimaced.

"Not exactly. When are you coming back? Where are you calling from?"

"Missing me already, sweetheart?" Harley teased. "I, um… I made a friend. Her name's Pam. I'm at her apartment over by the Botanical Gardens. You know, just girl stuff. Makeup, ice cream, movies… I think she's gonna give me a facial. Can I talk to J?" Billy could almost see the puppy-dog face she was giving him, and he glanced over at the Joker one more time.

"Well… he's…," he sighed. "Okay. Give me a second." Then he took another deep breath and walked around the table. He cleared his throat. "Umm…Boss?"

"What?" the Joker spat around the tool he was holding in his teeth. Billy held out the phone.

"It's Harley."

The Joker's eyes snapped up at Billy violently, and he got the distinct impression that he was about to have fire breathed on his face…and then the Joker spat out the utensil and snatched the cell viciously from his hand.

"Harl…," he rumbled, "this had better be good. As in, you'd better be bleeding in a ditch somewhere or have Batman on a leash." Billy tiptoed away, trying to distance himself from the conversation. He could hear a ripple of Harley's voice bleeding through. "Harl…" the Joker was muttering, and Billy assumed she was talking over him, trying to smother his irritation with her sweet talk. Which Billy also assumed wasn't working. "Harl… Har-ley… no, would y—HEY! Shut up and listen for a second. Hmm? Listening? Okay, here goes: I… don't… care." Another sound from the other end, and then the Joker pulled a face. "But PUD-din'," he mocked, and Billy put his face in his hands.

Crap, he thought. She's going to make him worse.

The fire spitting from the Joker's eyes as he glanced at him confirmed that suspicion.

"But J," Harley was saying as she checked over her shoulder. "I wanna tell you about Pam. I finally found a chick I can hang out with. You know, crime is really such a male dominated industry, know what I mean? But now I have another girl to keep me company in between shenanigans!" She glanced behind her again. She had thought she heard an Aha! coming from the bathroom a moment ago, which meant that Pam had probably found the scrub and was coming back. She had to be quick. From the other end, she heard the Joker make a sound down in his throat.

"Well, that's…just…fine, Harl. Really. Now why don't you go have a pillow fight, or something? Hmm? Yeah. Thaaaat's what I thought. See ya."

"J, wait!" she pleaded, and he didn't say anything, but he didn't hang up either. "Listen, I just wanted to tell you where I was—"

"Great."

"…and that I'm okay, and—"

"Great."

"Who are you talking to?" The phone nearly squeezed out of Harley's hand and she let out a surprised Eeep! as she turned around. Pam was standing behind her, hands on hips, a tube of apricot scrub clutched in one fist. She had pulled her auburn curls back in something large and messy that resembled a bun, and her left eyebrow was arched sharply. Harley gulped.

"Umm…."

"Oh, God," Pam muttered disgustedly, crossing the living room in two large steps. Harley sucked in her bottom lip.

"Well, …come on, Red, I've been out all night. I was supposed to be back hours ago, so I figured I should let him know I'm okay!"

"Isn't the point of a girls' night to cut off the boys and just…you know…do girl stuff without having to report back to the commander?"

"Well, I wasn't reporting back, I j—"

"Give me the phone," Pam demanded, holding out her hand. Harley widened her eyes.

"But—"

"Phone. Now." And her extended hand was sufficiently authoritative that Harley handed over the telephone with a sigh. "Thank you," Pam snipped, and made a triumphant face as she slapped the phone to her face. "Well, hello there," she sang. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing the illustrious Joker?" Covering the mouthpiece, she mumbled to Harley, "Don't worry. Pleasant chat with my friend's boyfriend. I'll keep it cordial."

Somehow, Harley didn't think that was going to happen.

Billy watched as the Joker's eyes took on a flat, impassive look. "I think," he was growling, "it would be wise…for you to give the phone back to Harley…now." Crap, he thought again. As if Harley wasn't bad enough, now her new "friend" was going to wind him up even further. As cautiously as possible, Billy tried to sneak around behind the Joker, close enough to hear bits of the conversation from the other end.

"… need to do that?" a woman's voice was saying. "I just felt as though I should get a chance to talk to the so-called Clown Prince that my new bestie just can't stop talking about. Or mooning about. Or reporting back to. Do you keep this close tabs on all your goons? Oh— sorry, employees…? My bad."

Billy cringed. He didn't know who this woman was, but she didn't seem to give a damn that she was antagonizing Gotham's favorite psychopath. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying it. Maybe she's got a little touch of psychopathy herself, he mused, a mild horror trying to well up somewhere near the base of his brain. In front of him, the Joker's face was turning icy.

"Give…her…the…phone…," he rumbled. Billy sat with his hand clenched over his mouth as the woman's reply bled through.

"Why, so you can give her more orders? Yank the leash and tell her to come home?" Billy groaned as he watched the Joker's fingers dig into the sides of the phone.

"I can see that, ah…that we're not going to get anywhere with negotiAtion, soooo—"

"Oh, why would we need negotiation when we're having such a lovely chat?" the voice sang back. The Joker's eyes flashed cold fire.

"LISTEN—" he barked, then made a concerted effort to bring himself back under control. "I don't suppose your parents ever taught you that it's RUDE to INTERRUPT?" Pam laughed icily.

"Well, my dad never taught me much of anything except how to wave goodbye from the cab of a truck. Mother taught me to always have the last word." Her smug expression was almost visible through the sound waves. "Listen, Mr. …J? May I call you Mr. J? That's what our mutual friend Harley here calls you, although it may be presumptuous for me to use it so soon in our acquaintance. Listen, I'm just trying to have a friendly chat, trying to get to know the important people in my new friend's life. That's what friends do, I'm told. And I'd venture to say that you're rather important to Harley, being her employer and al—"

A whisper cut in through the white noise behind Pam, and the woman took a deep (and apparently uncomfortable) breath before continuing.

"—I'm sorry, her boyfriend. I've been told that's your official position. What's Harley's?"

"What?" the Joker managed to answer. On the other side of the phone, Pam let out an exasperated sigh.

"Her position. In the hierarchy. Queen? Knight? Pawn? I mean, I have my own opinion on that, but it'd be nice to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Or…on second thought… maybe she doesn't have an official position. Maybe she's just the token woman you had to hire to prove to yourself you're still straight. Must be difficult to keep one's direction clear when you're surrounded by nothing but testosterone. Having a set of boobs among the balls makes it easier. Am I right?"

For a moment, there was nothing but a very pregnant silence. In the apartment, Harley was making venomous faces at Pam, who covered the receiver as she stuck out her tongue. On the other end, Billy was rubbing the back of his neck furiously to ward off panic. In the quiet, he could almost hear the circuits shorting out in the Joker's brain. The Boss's face was dead still, like concrete. Billy wondered if someone had finally shut him up. It would be a first. Then, the silence shifted, reminding him of the quiet click of a clip being pushed into a gun. And suddenly, the Joker's face danced back into life.

"You know… my father said something similar to me the night I got these scars."

"Oh God," the other three murmured simultaneously – Harley and Billy beneath their breath, Pam disgustedly and out loud.

"A-hem…," the Joker prompted, feigning offense. Pam sniffed.

"Oh, no, please, continue. I understand sociopaths need their rituals." And she waited in silence. The Joker growled softly in his throat, then began again.

"You see, my, ah… my father… was—"

"Mm, let me stop you," Pam interrupted. "I think I've heard this one on TV. Don't you have any that don't involve deadbeat dads?" At that, the Joker hissed violently, and Billy prepared for an explosion; but it didn't come. Instead, he watched the Joker's face change, as if he had suddenly shifted gears and decided to play along. Billy wasn't sure which was worse.

"After I watched my mother die, I n—"

"Nope. That's the plot of Bambi. Try again." Billy could hear the woman smiling. The Joker took a deep breath.

"Mother was killed by a… terrifying predator, who left me, maimed but alive—"

"Wrong again. That's 'Finding Nemo.' Come on, you can do better than that." Billy heard the Joker make a frustrated sound behind his teeth.

"My parents were killed in an alleyway on the way home from the movies, and I was forced to watch in terror as—"

"Oooh, strike three. That's Bruce Wayne. What, are you running out of stories? If I were you, I'd settle on something and stick with it – it's a lot easier than having to come up with something new every time."

"Oh, you know," the Joker rumbled, his voice sliding into the pleasant baritone it always took on when he was playing with his food before biting off its head. "If I, ah… If I've gotta have a past, I'd prefer it to be multiple choice. Keeps it interesting."

"Mm-hmm," Billy heard the woman reply sarcastically. "And it also keeps the cops from finding out who you really are, right?"

"It …helps," the Joker acquiesced. Billy thought he heard the woman snort through the static.

"Hmm. Well, then, why don't you tell me a version of the cold-hearted ex-wife story? That is one of the choices, isn't it?"

For a few seconds, there was dead silence on both sides of the phone. In the apartment, Harley slapped a hand over her mouth. She instantly regretted mentioning anything about J's past to Pam – even something apparently insignificant like the fact that he'd once worn a wedding ring. But how was she supposed to know that Pam would start digging with the sharp edge of the knife? She didn't know exactly what effect it would have on him, but she knew it couldn't be good. Harley had seen enough from his behavior around her to know that there was a deep wound somewhere under the surface that was infected and painful, and Pam had just jabbed at it with a fork.

On the other end, Billy watched in shock as the Joker's face went through expressions he'd never seen on it before. There was a split second in which his eyes simply went dead, like the power had been cut off. Then they dropped to the floor. Billy had never seen the Joker drop his eyes like that. It was disconcerting. His lower lip twitched – almost imperceptibly, the kind of twitch you wouldn't even see if you weren't watching closely. Then Billy saw his jaw tense, and that, he recognized; it was the way a man tensed his jaw when he was trying not to vomit. Billy put a hand on his gun. Just in case.

Back in the apartment, Pam turned to look at Harley.

"Well, well. I think I just sunk his battleship, don't you?" She was smiling, but Harley just gaped at her in abject terror.

"God, Pam, I wish you hadn't said that. Shit. Shit."

"Relax, Harley," Pam whispered. "Still there, Your Joke-ness?"

There was another tense moment in which the Joker didn't answer. Billy watched him like he was a dangerous animal; the tension in his jaw seemed to surge down through the rest of his body, and all the flames in his eyes sizzled down into a deadly black sludge.

"Put. Harley. Back. On. The. Phone." Each word seemed to be a struggle, like if he didn't keep his teeth clenched, fire would come out and consume the phone and his hand. "Put her back on. Now. OR—"

"Or what?" she quipped. "Gonna torture me through the phone? Use some sort of… super-villain electrical device to electrocute me with my own cordless? Send a hit-man? Somehow force-feed me a steak without being physically present?" She had a delighted smirk on her lips, clearly enjoying the psychological volleyball match. Behind her, Harley's head was in her hands. On the other end, Billy was cringing, and hoping the Joker didn't decide to force-feed anyone a grenade.

"How about…," the Joker began with restraint, "I turn you into a steak, and then I feed you to the giant pitcher plant down at the Botanical GARdens? Hmm?"

"Oh, you mean Molly?" Pam answered readily. "Oh, no, we're good friends. I visit her all the time, being so close and all. But if you're looking for a pitcher plant, I've actually got one in my bedroom. His name is Clark. Of course, he's a little too small to eat an adult – pitcher plants are more partial to babies – Hey! There's an idea. We could feed your kid to him, if you had one. Of course, that would imply that you were actually able to make one before the Missus dumped your ass. Or… oh… or is that what you did with your firstborn? Is that why she left? Didn't like you feeding kids to pitcher plants? A little too Shop of Horrors for her?"

"Listen, you b—"

"Ooh, and that would explain why you keep Harley here on such a tight leash – so she can't disappear on you like the first one."

"Oh, you want to talk disappearing? You know, why don't I show you my famous disappearing pencil trick, hmm? I could make it disappear right up your lady bits, it'd be a new experience for BOTH of us." There was a defined bark now under everything he said, and his words were coming fast and thick. By now, the rest of the gang had gradually laid aside tools and weapons and begun staring, horrified; they couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but they all knew what the tone of the Boss's voice meant, and even Dan wasn't drunk enough not to be worried. Billy and Peter exchanged glances. Quietly, under the table, Peter pushed a clip into his gun and held it ready.

In the apartment, Harley had grabbed Pam by the elbow, trying to drag the phone down from her face, but Pam was taller and longer-limbed; she held Harley at a distance as she smiled her response.

"Okay, sweetheart, but keep in mind, I get paid upfront and I only take cash." She swatted Harley away again, ignoring her hissed protests. The Joker growled.

"Oh, you think this is FUNNY, hmm? Yeah, you think that until I find out where you LIVE. I—"

"Village Apartments. Corner of Myrtle and West Malcolm, between West Village and Grant, uptown. Right across from the Gardens. Bright green curtains. Can't miss it." She paused just long enough for the Joker to take a deep, preparatory breath, and then cut him off again. "Of course, coming all the way down here isn't really necessary, is it? I mean, Harley is just fine where she is, and you're just fine without her there, so what's the rush? I'll send her home in a day or two. We've got movies to watch and facials to do. You know, girl stuff. But… if you do come… bring chips and salsa, and maybe we'll all share the couch. 'Kay? Buh-bye, now!"

And then there was a beep as she hung up the phone.

For a moment, neither woman moved. Then, Pam turned slowly, slipped the phone back into its cradle, and crossed her porcelain arms. She tossed Harley a smile.

"Well. I think that went well, don't you?"

The whole warehouse was stagnant with hot, poisonous tension as the Joker hung up the cell phone and let his arm fall to his side. Nobody moved. They didn't dare. But after a few minutes passed, Billy knew he had to say something or the Joker might just stand there until he exploded. He took a cautious step toward the Boss, but he didn't take his finger off his trigger. Not just yet.

"Boss?" he began, softly. The Joker didn't move, but Billy thought he saw one eye flicker in his direction. Moving closer, he could see now that the Joker's shoulders were quivering with contained rage. Damn, he thought. Chick must have hit him really close to the mark. I've never seen him— But he stopped himself. He had seen the Joker make that face before, just once. He had made that face on Halloween night, about two seconds before he pistol-whipped Harley almost unconscious. He's about to flip his shit, Billy thought matter-of-factly. He swallowed a lump in his throat that wanted to be a scream, steeled himself, and took another step toward the Joker, reaching a hand out. "Boss, y—"

THWACK.

Billy jumped back instinctively, but the motion wasn't directed at him; the Joker had flung the cell phone at about the speed of a striking cobra, and it had shattered against the far wall. The sound that had come out of the Joker's mouth didn't sound quite human. Still not actually speaking, he whirled around and began to reach for the assault rifle in one of the empty chairs. Billy stopped him before he got there.

"WHOA, easy, Boss. Easy. HEY." He tried throwing an arm across the Joker's chest to hold him still, but the Joker shoved it aside easily; Billy tried again, this time shoving his gun into his pocket and using both hands. He managed to dig fingers into the lapels of the purple coat and jerk the Joker to a stop before he reached the rifle. "Hey, come on. HEY. Boss. Look at me, Boss."

The Joker looked up, and Billy's stomach did a flip. If looks could kill, Billy was pretty sure this one would be one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse.

"What?" he spat, but Billy got the impression he was just talking so he'd be let go. Billy gave him a gentle shake, enough to make him really focus.

"Boss, talk to me. Don't just flip out on me and go on a rampage. Clue me in. Tell me what's happening."

"What's… HAPpening…," the Joker growled, "is that YOU… are going to get your hands off me, …and I am going to go kill that smart-mouthed feminist vegan WACK job who's keeping Harley in her aPARTment. COPY?" He jerked away from Billy's grasp, but Billy didn't let go.

"WHOA, hey, not so fast," Billy soothed. "She's not keeping Harley, Boss, you heard them. Harley is just fine. They're having a sleepover, or whatever it is chicks do. Okay?"

"Oh, I HEARD them, Billy. I heard them JUST… FINE. Especially all the parts when she insulted my intelligence and declared that being in my gang was bad for Harley's HEALTH. I leave her there overnight, we might not get her BACK. Gloria Steinem over there might just convince her to ditch us for good." His eyes were spitting fire, but he had at least stopped trying to jerk away. Billy eased up his grip, but only a little.

"Boss, I thought you said you wanted Harley out of your hair for a while."

"YEAH, well I didn't mean GONE. I just meant…." He let that sentence dangle, but Billy got the picture. It all followed from what he'd realized back on Thanksgiving. They were getting too close. Harley had found a crack in his armor, and she was quietly snuggling her way down into it – so quietly that, for a while, the Joker hadn't noticed, not until she was already halfway in. And that had rattled him. He probably hadn't expected it, Billy surmised, when she'd broken him out of Arkham – he'd seen her as a means to an end, and it had never occurred to him that she might make him feel something. And now she was crawling around in his brain like emotional lice, and he was trying to keep from losing control. So he'd needed her out of his sight for a while. But the idea of her being out of sight permanently… Billy tried to keep the realization from showing on his face. The idea of Harley being gone permanently scared the Joker almost more than the idea of having feelings for her. He needed her. And that royally pissed him off.

"Yeah, okay," Billy began, moving his hands from the Joker's lapels to his shoulders. "I get that, Boss. And we're not gonna let her break Harley away from the gang. But you don't have to kill anybody. Okay? Let's just go pick Harley up, and you can threaten the chick, or whatever, but… just take a deep breath first, hmm? Come on. You get sloppy when you get angry. Just… breathe. Think." He waited until he saw the flames subside behind the Joker's eyes, then he eased his hands off him. The Joker just stood there for a minute, breathing heavily, looking around. The goons at the table still hadn't moved; they were too afraid to. Dan was staring in dumb terror, like a deer caught in headlights. Dionté wouldn't look up from his tools. But Billy was glad to notice that Peter still had his gun ready. Just in case.

"FINE," the Joker eventually barked. "Take this." He slapped the AK into Billy's hands and walked around the table. "And give me the Garand. Billy, you're coming with me. Peter, you're in charge while we're gone. We'll take the van. OH, and give me those pruning shears."

"Um…," Billy responded as Dionté began handing the Joker various sharp implements from his selection on the table. "I thought we had decided on not killing anyone tonight." He eyed the M1 Garand uneasily as the Joker took it from Dan. The Joker closed his coat full of blades and came back around the table.

"Oh, we did. But that doesn't mean I can't make her think I'm gonna kill her. And besides. A Garand is a heck of a way to make an entrance, wouldn't you say, Billy Boy?"

Of course, Billy couldn't argue with that one.

"I'm sorry, okay? I just… I get carried away sometimes."

"CARRIED AWAY?"

Harley's fists went to her hips as she stood in front of the couch berating a subdued Pamela Isley, who sat cross-legged with a pillow in her arms. Harley was working very hard to keep her grandmother from coming out in her voice, but it was a battle she was losing.

"YES, carried away," Pam protested. "Jesus, Quinn, come on. We all have our little personality flaws. You let people boss you around, I don't know when to shut up. Clearly, I'm not the best people-person. I do better with plants…."

"No kidding," Harley snorted, but she did at least come back to the couch and sit down. There was quiet for a minute or two, and then Harley turned to look at Pam. "Can you really feed a baby to a pitcher plant?" Pam lifted her slitted green eyes to Harley's blue ones; then she burst into laughter.

"Hahaha…. Maybe if it was a nepenthes rajah and the baby was premature, I guess. They eat rats sometimes. So I suppose if you had a small enough baby…." She trailed off then, her eyes wandering. "Listen, Quinn, I'm sorry I ragged on your boyfriend so much. I just…. Okay. I'm on a couch with a shrink, even if she probably has lost her license at this point, so why the hell not." Pam put down the pillow and turned so she sat facing Harley. She was picking at her fingernails as if her own honesty made her nervous. "Listen. Number one, I hate men. I mean, not necessarily every single one of them, but every damn problem I've ever had has been caused by a man. You know? My dad, my brother, my piece of shit uncle, every ex I've ever had, my graduate fellowship coordinators, Bruce Wayne, and now the Joker… I don't know. I don't think I know how to talk to men anymore. I only have two settings when it comes to them – sexy enough to get what I want, or borderline psychopathic indifference. It's a problem. I get that."

"And I guess there's more to the piece of shit uncle story that you're probably not going to tell me, right?" Harley regretted it as soon as she said it, because Pam gave her a look that could wilt trees. "Sorry. Sometimes I put on my therapist hat without meaning to. I don't want to pry." But that look had gone pretty far toward confirming her suspicions, so she took a different angle. "But …I mean …you're not even interested in dating anymore?"

"I dunno," Pam sighed, picking the pillow back up. "I tried it for a while. But sex is all they want, and it's pretty much all they're good for… and frankly, I can get the same satisfaction from a woman without all the irritating attitudes of supremacy. Women are givers, men are takers. That's pretty lopsided math, to me. Frankly, I don't know how you put up with it."

"Eh, men can be givers too," Harley said softly. "You just gotta find the right ones."

"Yeah, well, you find me one, and I might give it a try again. But until then, I'll stick with estrogen, thank you very much." It was a tart answer, but she followed it with a faint smile, and somehow the tension was broken and the feeling of complicity settled back over them both. Pam got up and went to turn on the radio, looking over her shoulder at Harley as she did. "So, tell me then, Doctor – is the Joker a… giver?" There was a smirk on her lips, and her eyes were cool like a cat's. Harley returned the smirk.

"Metaphorically, or… physically?" And she let herself giggle, which Pam acknowledged with a soft chuckle.

"Ooh, I think I know the answer to that one, and it's more information than I want." She came back to the couch as the radio worked out its static and settled into an 80s rock station playing "Paradise City." Harley smiled softly.

"Nah, he's not as bad as you think. Like I said, he has moments when it's like he almost wants to be romantic, but he doesn't quite remember how to do it. I think maybe he used to be a giver, once. But something broke."

"Something to do with that potential ex-wife that I probably shouldn't have razzed him about?" Pam said apologetically. Harley pursed her lips.

"Yeah, probably."

"Listen, Quinn, I'm sorry about that part. You told me some sensitive information, and I decided to use it as a poking device. I shouldn't have. That's not friend-behavior."

"He'll survive," Harley grinned. "Although you might not, if he decides to get back at you. Listen, do you do that to everyone, though? I mean, the… find an injury and decide to poke it with something sharp… thing?"

"Unfortunately," Pam sighed. "Like I said, I don't know when to shut up. I don't do it on purpose. Well…." She stopped, and then smirked to herself. "Not always, anyway. Sometimes it is fun to poke the caged beast and see what happens."

"You might be a borderline psychopath, are you aware of that?"

"Oooh, you flatter me, Doctor Quinzel. Keep it coming." Her voice dropped to a sultry alto, and she again reminded Harley of a red-haired Scarlett O'Hara. On the radio, Guns N' Roses had given way to Madonna. Harley stretched out on the couch and dropped her feet onto the pillow Pam was putting back on her lap.

"Hey, if you're gonna embrace your psychiatric disorders, you might as well declare yourself an official member of the Gotham villains club. Especially since you've decided to be a serial poisoner. That counts as a city-wide crime spree. You've got all the requirements covered."

"Hmm. Would that make me public enemy number three?"

"It would if you publicly took responsibility for the crimes," Harley grinned, knowing Pam was going to do no such thing. Pam snorted.

"Ugh, please. Like Gotham would take me seriously as a criminal mastermind with a name like Pamela."

"Hey…," Harley began, sitting up. "Hey, that's what you need – a good name!" Pam lifted one eyebrow, evaluating.

"You mean like one of those dumb comic book supervillain names? Forget it. I refuse to be addressed as anything with the word The in front of it."

"Hey, you can have an alias without a The," Harley placated. "I don't have any articles in my name."

"And nothing that ends with Woman," Pam went on. "Please. It just screams I Wear My Underwear Over My Tights."

"Or, I Wear A Pointy Metal Bra?" Harley quipped, gesturing at the radio. Pam chuckled.

"Exactly. It would be nice to be a female supervillain who's known for something other than a costume that looks like lingerie."

"Hmm…." Harley mused. She tapped the side of her face pensively. "One word, or two?" Pam thought about it for a minute.

"Two," she said cautiously. "As long as the first one isn't a color word. I have no intention of being the Grey Ghost. Or the Green Ghost. Or Green Anything. Just because I raise plants doesn't mean everything has to be green." Harley opened her mouth to make a suggestion, but Pam read the look on her face and stopped her abruptly. "And don't you DARE call me Venus Flytrap. There are enough bad vagina jokes in the world without making any more."

Harley pretended to be insulted, then giggled. "Haha, okay. Scratch that one. How about… Molly Pitcher?" Pam shook her head.

"Too obscure. Plus I already named a plant that."

"Hmm. Toxic Temptress."

"Absolutely not. I will refuse any name with alliteration."

"Madame Venom?"

"Too close to a Spiderman character. You're really bad at this, aren't you?" She said it bluntly, but there wasn't any animosity in it. Harley was beginning to be able to tell the difference. Grinning, she dropped her head onto her hand.

"Well… I mean, come on. My name kind of made up itself. Ya know?"

"Your name just lost some letters," Pam corrected. "It wasn't exactly a huge leap." She leaned back against the couch arm, turning over possibilities in her head, and beginning to feel sleepy for the first time all night. Outside, the dark sky wasn't quite acquiescing to dawn, but it had eased into a lighter shade of navy. On the radio, Madonna's voice was replaced by an announcer reminding listeners that he was playing the Top 100 Hits from 1989! and congratulating them on choosing such a fine radio station to fill their wee hours. That voice then retreated and was supplanted by distorted guitar and echoing drums. Harley spoke up just as Alice Cooper began singing softly.

"Well… we could use your real name as a template, like I did, and just modify it. That way you'd at least have the same initials."

"Yeah, because P.I. doesn't sound like a reference to film noir at all."

"Hey, what's wrong with film noir? You've kinda got that Rita Hayworth / Ava Gardner thing going on anyway. Maybe a little Bette Davis in the eyebrows." Pam looked mildly flattered, but took care not to show it too much.

"Yeah, but I want to be the femme fatale, not the Private I. So it's got to be feminine."

"And have a reference to your abilities as a poisoner."

"And my plants. Just not too much of a plant pun." They sat in silence, listening to the drum crescendo in the song. Then Harley tilted her head.

"Poison…," she mumbled, in time with the song. "Poison… poison…. Heyyy…." And suddenly she was grinning. Pam looked at her suspiciously.

"What?"

"Ivy's a girl's name," Harley stated, looking quite pleased with herself. Pam just kept looking at her, one dark red eyebrow arched, waiting patiently for the rest of the explanation. Harley bounced a little in her seat. "Poison Ivy! Think about it! No The, no Woman at the end, no color words or bad predatory plant jokes… it's your same initials, but not actually your name, and it's dangerous but also girly at the same time! It's the perfect villainess name!"

"Hmm…," Pam contemplated. Across the couch, Harley looked as if she might emit high pitched squeaks while waiting for validation. Pam let her vibrate for a minute before finally relenting. "Oh, alright, fine. 'Poison Ivy.' Why not."

Having gotten her answer, Harley did squeak, and Pam winced. There was a huge grin on Harley's face.

"Yay! Okay, so if the criminal underworld starts asking about who's doing the poisoning, now I have something to tell them. Poison Ivy, newest member of Gotham's criminal elite! And it'll eventually make it into the newspapers and the internet and stuff, too. You got a new identity, babe!"

"Joy," Pam sneered, but there was a smile behind it.

"Course," Harley amended in a quieter voice, "I'm still probably just gonna call you Red. You know. When it's just us girls."

Pam's face softened. "I think I can handle that." There was a second or so of silence as the song ended and the DJ put on Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal." Harley was about to suggest finally doing that facial. After all, it had been the whole reason for the sleepover, and they kept getting distracted from it. She reached over to where the apricot scrub sat on the floor by the couch.

POW!

Both girls screamed simultaneously and hit the floor as the knob and lock on the apartment's front door disintegrated into shrapnel. The sharp report echoed like a firecracker, but Harley knew that sound, and it wasn't fireworks. It was a Garand with a silencer. Slowly, she rolled over so she could see exactly how much danger they were in.

The Joker was standing in the open doorway, Billy on the balcony behind him, both backlit by the flickering streetlight on the corner. The door was swinging on its hinges, a splintery, foot-wide hole where the knob had been. The Joker tossed the Garand to Billy, but didn't speak, which was the scary part. Normally he'd have a speech. A speech meant he was enjoying himself. No speech meant he was pissed. Harley opened her mouth to try to placate him, but Pam beat her to it.

"Jesus, you couldn't have just KNOCKED?" she barked from where she had crawled under the coffee table. The Joker stomped into the apartment and shoved the table away from her with his foot.

"KNOCKING is for POLITE people," he growled down at her. "Do I look… POLITE?"

"No, you look like you just made out with Marilyn Manson."

At that, the Joker hissed and started feeling around in his coat for the pruning shears. Billy made it from the balcony into the apartment in three gigantic steps and threw an arm around the Joker's chest.

"WHOA, hey, remember we promised no killing, right?" The Joker growled at him like a displeased German Shepherd, but he did at least withdraw his hand from his inside pocket. Harley watched Pam's eyebrow go up, and she could almost see a sassy comment about dominance forming on her lips; as quick as she could, she scuttled across the carpet and slapped a hand over Pam's mouth.

"Hey, Puddin'!" she tried, putting on her most winning smile and looking up at the Joker with wide blue eyes. He didn't look placated.

"Get in the car," he said flatly. "Slumber party's over." Harley started to give him a soothing answer, but by then Pam had managed to wiggle her jaw out from under Harley's hand.

"THERE it is," she came up saying. "There's that good old male dominance. Can't feel like a man unless you're ordering her around, huh?"

"Red!" Harley hissed, trying to cover her mouth again and failing. Pam shook her head.

"Oh, no. Listen, Quinn, if you're really his girlfriend or partner, and not just his toy, you'll sit right here on this floor until he asks you to come home nicely." The sentence was directed at Harley, but she kept her green, slitted eyes on the Joker the whole time she was speaking. The Joker's eyebrows had been drawing together as she spoke, and now he leaned forward slightly, one hand toying with the pocket that held Cupid.

"I don't take orders from cows."

"OOooh, I like that," Pam sneered. "I'm not sure if it was a reference to my vegetarianism, my weight, or my ability as a female to produce milk. An all-purpose slur, how very economical of you!" She was actually smiling now, and the Joker's eyes clouded in what might have been disbelief.

"Do you ENJOY pain, hmm?"

"Oh, yes, please, baby, hurt me!" she breathed, putting a little cry in her voice. "But just don't forget, the safe word is chauvinism." By the end of the sentence, the sultry edge of her voice had gone back to being harsh. There was a grin beginning to prick up one corner of her mouth, and Harley could tell she was quite proud of herself. Quickly, Harley grabbed Pam's face and turned it from the Joker back to her.

"GEEZ, Red, I thought you promised to cool it!"

"I DID," Pam barked, trying to evade Harley's hands. "Right up until he started cracking his whip at you! I'm not gonna sit here and let him treat you like a slave, Quinn!"

"Well, what about before that? You didn't have to start out by making him mad before he even said anything!" Harley shook her just a little, but Pam wasn't fazed. She crossed her arms.

"All I did was make a harmless joke, which I think was pretty GRACIOUS of me considering the man just blew a HOLE in my DOOR. And BY the way," she spat, turning to face the Joker again, "how exactly am I supposed to lock my apartment now, huh? Do you plan to replace my door, or are you just going to compensate me for all my stuff that's going to be stolen the next time I leave?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the Joker sing-songed. "I guess you'll just have to throw up a bead curtain, or a… rainbow flag, or whatever else hippies put in doorways."

"How's that supposed to keep my shit from getting stolen?"

"I don't KNOW!" the Joker cackled. "Maybe you should have THOUGHT about that before you tried to STEAL Harley!"

"More like liberate her," Pam returned, but before she could finish the sentence, Harley tackled her to the floor and covered her mouth again – this time, with both hands.

"Is that what this is about?" she laughed, trying to seem unconcerned. "J, nobody's gonna steal me! That's ridiculous!"

"SAVE it, Harl," the Joker dismissed. "Doooonnn't think I don't know she's been trying to convince you to defect ever since you got here. Hmm?" He had now taken out the knife and was wiggling it in Pam's general direction. On the floor, Pam's eyes were flashing green fire, but they were the only part of her that could move. Harley was sitting on the rest of her. She tried not to look down at Pam's face, because the Joker was, in part, right. Pam wasn't exactly thrilled that Harley was attached to the Joker, and she hadn't made any pretenses about it. But she hadn't explicitly told Harley to leave the gang. And that was what counted.

"J, she never said that," Harley soothed. "She's just…." Harley stopped for a moment; how did a person explain Pam? On the floor, Pam raised an eyebrow as if to ask the same question. Yes, Harley, the eyebrow asked. She's just what? Harley gulped. "Listen, J, she already doesn't get along with men too well, okay? And then you're not exactly a ray of sunshine, added to the preexisting animosity. Ya know?"

"Oh, I'm not SUNNY enough for you?" the Joker grimaced, and Harley winced.

"Hey, come on, J. I'm your girl, you know that," she simpered, trying to be as attractive as possible while still holding Pam to the floor. "You and Pam just have… personalities that don't mix. Okay, babe? That's all. But I'm not going anywhere, Puddin' – honest. I just spent a night out with a friend because I thought you wanted me out of your hair for the day. That's all. And so what if you're not her favorite person in the world? That's not gonna make me drop you, just because my idiot friend can't bring herself to be nice." She pointedly directed the last sentence to Pam on the floor, who responded by biting her hand, forcing her to let go. "A broch!" she hissed. "GOD, Pam, what was that for?"

"You weren't being nice," Pam sneered, extricating herself from Harley's grip and crawling up onto the couch. She sat there, cross-legged, glaring at the Joker, but her face was at least somewhat subdued. Harley stayed on the floor, muttering at her sore hand in Yiddish. Billy took the momentary lull as his cue. Carefully, he insinuated himself between the Joker and the girls.

"You know, I think this is all just a case of us all forgetting how to be civil, okay? So why don't we just—"

"SHUT up," the Joker spat, aiming the Garand at him. Billy backed up, his hands raised deferentially.

"Sure thing, Boss," he replied automatically. Behind him, Harley was in the process of holding her hand out to Pam to show her the bite marks she had left, her lower lip stuck out indignantly.

"Well, what did you expect?" Pam whispered, rolling her eyes. "Besides, I'm sure you're accustomed to bite marks by now." She made a point of saying that part a little louder, and was rewarded for her efforts by the sudden creaking of the Joker's gloves, which were stretched taut over fists that were clenching and unclenching convulsively. But instead of looking at Pam, he kept his eyes on Harley and took a deep breath.

"HARley," he began, obviously choosing his words carefully (and also obviously wishing he could just shoot something). "Would you. Please. Get. The keys. To the Bug. I would prefer… if you came back now." He chewed on the insides of his scars for a second before letting the last word drop out of his mouth. "Please." His eyes were half-lidded in irritation, and Harley knew she was probably in for it when they got home, but still…. She raised an eyebrow appreciatively anyway. The Joker had just asked her to do something nicely. Well, nicely in the spectrum of Joker behavior, but nice was a relative term. She gave him a smile.

"Of course I'll come home, J," she grinned, hopping up and heading for her bag across the room. "I wouldn't stay away from you too long, Puddin', you know that." She stroked his arm briefly as she walked past him, and he turned to follow her, his face starting to crack with anger again.

"I TOLD you to stop CALLing me that!" he barked. Behind him, Billy cleared his throat gently. When the Joker whipped around to glare at him, Billy looked up at him from under raised brows.

"Nicely," he whispered. The Joker growled at him and whirled back around to Harley.

"WOULD—" he began, then swallowed whatever he'd been about to say with an audible gulp. After a moment of tangible effort, he tried again. "Harley. I would apPREciate it… if you would STOP… using that nickname. I do not LIKE being referred to as… Puddin'." He pronounced it with thick disdain, but it was at least in the calmest voice he could muster. Harley swung her messenger bag over her shoulder and grinned.

"I'm sorry, J. Honest. I'm trying to come up with another one, but… can you deal with Puddin' until I can think of something better?" She eased up next to him then and began fussing with the knot in his tie, slowly turning her eyes up to him and hoping they were cute enough to be distracting. For a few seconds he just stared at her.

"If I must," he said finally, and Harley grinned again before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He growled and jerked away but made no further move to retaliate, which she counted as a victory.

"Well, come on, then," she quipped, adjusting her bag and heading toward the door. "You wanna go home so bad, then let's go. I guess Billy's taking the van back and you're riding with me?" It was a question, but the answer wasn't entirely necessary, and she was already digging the key out of her bag. Billy moved to follow her, making apologetic faces at Pam.

"Sorry about your door," he murmured. Pam surveyed him with her green cat eyes, but her gaze was at least neutral instead of disapproving.

"Mmm. Well, boys will be boys, and you do so seem to enjoy forcing your way into things," she replied glibly. "I suppose I should be glad that was the only thing you decided to punch a hole in."

"For the record," Billy offered, ignoring her insinuations, "I did tell him to knock."

"I heard that," the Joker griped; Billy shrugged by way of apology and went on out the door, jingling the van key in his pocket. Pam turned then to face the Joker, stretching out on the couch like a lounge singer in a bad jazz film. She laid her head on one hand theatrically and gave the Joker her most sultry expression.

"Now, was being nice really so bad?" she said. The Joker threw an arm around Harley, herding her toward the door.

"Ah, yes," he sneered. "And I, ah… I think you of all people should know that, considering that it's nearly imPOSsible for you."

"Ha! Something we have in common, imagine that!" Pam cackled. The Joker's brows were coming together again, and Harley squeezed his arm to ward off another outburst.

"Bye, Red!" she said hastily, before either of them had a chance to start lobbing verbal grenades again. "I'll come back and see you the next time the boys want an all-boys night. Okay? And hey, in the meantime, you call me whenever. Here." She slipped a pen out of her bag and leaned over to the wobbly table by the door, brushing splinters off the magazines piled there and scrawling something on the one on top. "That's our guy Pete's burner cell. He gets another one every so often, but if he's gonna, I'll let you know ahead of time. Okay?"

Pam nodded softly. "I guess I can call every so often to make sure you're still alive." She tried to say it coolly, but Harley could tell there was some kind of actual affection under it that Pam didn't quite know how to display. She responded with a grin.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, let's go," the Joker said abruptly, giving Harley a hard nudge in the direction of the door. Harley waved at Pam, who sat up straight on the couch as they reached the doorway.

"Hey, Quinn, wait a minute." Harley turned just in time to catch the object Pam had thrown at her. It landed in her hands with a dull thwack. "Since we didn't get around to it," Pam explained. Harley looked down. It was the tube of apricot facial scrub. She smiled.

"Hey, Red, you don't have to give me this – what if you need it?"

"Ha," Pam snorted. "With my flawless face?" She batted her eyelashes and threw out her chin like a forties movie star, and then the sarcasm bled through and she smirked. "Listen, I'm not the one walking around with greasepaint on her skin for days at a time. You need it waaay more than I do. Consider it a… friend… sharing… thing. Whatever. Just… shoo." She waved them away, but Harley could hear the edge creeping back into her voice – as much as she disliked people, Harley figured she also probably disliked being alone just as much. Shoving the scrub in her bag, she ducked out from under the Joker's arm just long enough to reach over and give Pam a stifling hug.

"Take care, Red," she mumbled into the woman's mass of red curls. "And make sure you get your door fixed, huh?" Pam grimaced at the unaccustomed contact but didn't complain.

"Sure thing, Quinn. Oh, and… I mean… you too. Don't die. I hear that's bad for your health." She tried to say it with complete sarcasm, but there was the barest hint of a smile beginning to prick up the corners of her lips.

"Ya think?" Harley giggled. Then she let the Joker herd her through the doorway and out onto the balcony.

Pam watched them through the splintered door until they disappeared down the balcony stairs. Even then, she stayed where she was on the couch, listening to the echoes of their footfalls on the metal stairwell and then, more faintly, on the concrete of the sidewalk below. She heard the resigned rumble of the van engine as Billy coaxed it back out onto the road; there were two metallic thunks she knew were the doors of Harley's Bug slamming shut; then for a few minutes, there was nothing. Probably sitting in the car having a nice little argument over her, Pam thought wryly. It happened. For some reason, she had that effect on people. In the quiet, she started imagining exactly how the conversation was going, seeing if she could time it to the moment the car started. There would be some dead silence from the Joker, which knowing Harley, she wouldn't be able to handle, and so she'd have to start apologizing profusely, which is what women like her always did (and Pam had resolved never to be one of those women, and to never apologize for anything, if she could help it). The Joker, being the kind of man he was, would probably smother her apologies with a command to shut up. He didn't strike Pam as the type to put up with whining. Then why the hell is he with Harley? she found herself asking. Then she decided that she really didn't care why a man like him did anything. Instead of ruminating on it, she simply shrugged and waited for the Joker to (probably) give Harley some kind of threat of punishment that Harley could vaguely interpret as a veiled sexual innuendo – men like him were good at that, too – before giving the command to drive home.

"Three… two… one…," she counted down. Right on cue, she heard Harley's engine start up below her, and she grinned smugly in spite of her distaste for the situation. She got up from the couch, pulling the coffee table back into its place as she did, and wandered over to the radio. The same countdown was still playing when she turned it up, and Poison was right in the middle of getting sentimental about roses and thorns. Pam chuckled at the irony and let her hand fall from the radio knob to the leaves of the plant on the table beside it. It was hedera hibernica, with its tiny winter berries just beginning to form. She stroked the waxy surface of the leaves, enjoying the intense green of them – but of course, what else would one expect from an Irish ivy? Bending down, Pam held one of the leaves between her fingers, studying it, musing. People were almost always wrong about ivy, she reflected. The thing they all called "poison ivy," toxicodendron radicans, wasn't even an ivy species at all – it was more related to mangos and cashews than ivy, really. That's what people do, though, she thought as she released the leaf and took hold of a smaller one, comparing their color. That's what people do. Call something what it isn't based on what they see and not on the genetic truth.

"But we know the truth, don't we, precious?" she murmured to the plant. She let go of the leaf abruptly, which made it bounce up and down on its vine as though it were nodding in agreement.

The truth was that all ivy was toxic. Oh, not that it would give you blisters just from a random touch, she corrected mentally. But those pretty black berries that would be ripening in a month or two would be a very pretty way to get sent to the hospital. And it was the same all over. Pretty much every species of ivy that grew wild in America had a little poison in it, sap or berries or leaves, some more than others but all with just a touch. People were like that, too. Everyone had a way to kill you if they wanted, whether it was with fanfare or subtly, from the inside.

"Hmm. Maybe Quinn's nickname was better than I thought," Pam said, to the plant and to herself. It was a workable metaphor. She certainly seemed to leave blisters on everyone she touched, even when she tried to make friends. "Of course, blisters go away," she defended, touching the plant again with her fingertips. "At least I'm not killing her from the inside." Like some people I could mention, she finished silently. But really, wasn't that what love did to everyone anyway? "Hmph," she scoffed. "I've seen no evidence to the contrary." She started turning toward the kitchen, thinking maybe she'd make some chai tea before attempting to clean up the disaster at the door; then she saw how long the ivy was getting. A few arms of it were almost touching the floor under the table, and she noticed with annoyance that it was starting to grab onto the back legs and branch out along the radio cord. "Shit," she whispered. If she left it alone, it would probably climb all the way across to the crack in the wall behind the TV, and then before she knew it, her neighbors would wake up in the middle of the night with leaves poking in their mouths. Hibernica could be an insidious little pest when it wanted to be. The stuff was even banned in some states – once it got hold of a tree, it could cover a whole forest. One shoot next to a dead trunk (or a table leg) was all it took. With a sigh, Pam put "discipline the Hibernica" on her to do list, right below "make tea" and "new door."

"One thing at a time, chica," she said aloud. "One at a—"

Something occurred to her, and she stopped mid-thought, looking at the ivy with her head tilted to the side, her cool green stare lost on the unbothered plant. One shoot next to a dead trunk was all it took. That's how Hibernica worked. Well, most ivies, actually. They were toxic, but that wasn't the most common way they killed. Usually they simply took over. They wrapped their little green arms around something larger, usually something not lively enough to resist, and then they kept squeezing and spreading and climbing all over their immovable neighbor until they had taken complete control – until there was nothing still visible of the old plant. Unless, of course, that plant was still alive enough to keep growing underneath, in which case the ivy and the tree usually grew into each other, becoming so entwined that they were impossible to separate. Sure, ivy sap could give blisters. And sure, eating the berries would be a bad decision. But really, it was that tenacity and willingness to cling to a surface that didn't want it that made the Hedera genus so dangerous.

"I stand corrected," Pam said aloud, as if she and the ivy were having a serious discussion on the matter. "I guess Quinn isn't as helpless as I was making her out to be. Because if there's one thing she definitely knows how to do, it's cling."

She wondered for a moment if Harley's tenacity would have the same result as the ivy's – if the Joker would awaken one night to find her growing into parts of himself that he couldn't get her out of. Maybe he already had. Maybe that's why he hasn't killed her yet, Pam realized. Then she finally turned and headed for the kitchen. Harley wouldn't be able to completely smother the Joker like a dead tree, she decided. He was still too aggressively alive for that. But Pam had a hunch that the Joker had already found parts of himself so wrapped up in Harley's little green tendrils that he couldn't extricate himself. Oh, he would try. He might light himself on fire or allow himself to be frostbitten in the attempt. But it never worked. Hibernica resisted frost. In the end, the tree would still be covered, alive or dead.

In the end, the ivy always won.