Hi everyone! You may have noticed that I'm new to this particular area of – having been obsessing over The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger and just everything Batman recently, I thought I'd have a crack at writing a Harley origin story, set in the Nolanverse. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love for you to tell me what you think! Don't be a stranger!

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Chapter One

Secrets:

The girl in the office awoke with a start. Her head snapped up from the desk that had been her pillow for the last – she consulted the clock on the wall whose monotonous ticking filled the room, assaulting her desensitised eardrums – fourteen minutes or so. The outdated television she had wheeled in several hours earlier now displayed nothing but a blue screen, and the little digital timer on the VCR had counted all the way down to zero during her uneasy slumber. She sighed and straightened up in her leather chair, frustrated that she had fallen asleep and would therefore have to restart the tape, frustrated by how badly her body was dealing with, or not dealing with, these long shifts. As she reached for her polystyrene cup of black coffee, which had long since cooled far too much for her liking, there was a sharp knock on the door.

"Come in," she called, her voice more hoarse and tired than she expected.

The door opened, and a woman with red spectacles and dark brunette hair pulled back into a ponytail stepped into the office. She chuckled. "Go home, Harleen," said Dr. Joan Leland, pushing the television trolley to one side and sitting down in a generically-patterned plush chair.

"I'm just trying to understand my patient," Harleen explained weakly, the stinging pain in her eyes suddenly registering. She stood up, her stiff joints creaking in protest, and moved toward the baroque-style mirror on the eastern wall of her office in order to remove her contact lenses.

"As much as I love seeing you taking your work so seriously," she heard Joan say from behind her as the little transparent hemispheres fluttered into her hand. "I don't think exhausting yourself is going to make tomorrow morning any easier for you." She paused. Harleen threw the used contacts out of the open window onto the grass bank below and sat back down in her chair, facing her boss. Joan picked up the stack of video tapes on the desk and began reading their scrawled labels. "How many of these session tapes have you watched, anyway?"

"I'm on number twenty-six," said Harleen, combing roughly through her long blonde hair with her fingers and resting her elbow on the edge of the desk. Her eyelids felt as heavy as lead and she wanted nothing more than to close them, even if it was just for a moment. However, she knew that, if she allowed her mental and physical fatigue to take over, no matter how momentarily, she would find herself unconscious on her desk once more. "Well, I was," she amended. "I fell asleep." Harleen reached for the remote control but overbalanced, moved forward with too much momentum – her slim arm collided with her coffee and sent it tumbling to the ground. The cold brown liquid seeped into the lemon-yellow carpet.

"Shit," she groaned, but as she went to step around her desk, Joan stood up in front of her, halting her in her tracks.

"Harleen." Joan gripped Harleen's shoulders gently. Her tone was stern. "Go home. That's an order. You aren't doing anyone any favours by depriving yourself of sleep."

Harleen sighed in defeat. Her limbs suddenly felt weightier than ever, and it dawned on her that she had not slept for a solid thirty-six hours. At the start, she had thrown herself into this patient research project with a great deal of enthusiasm. This was why she had endured six years of college lectures and labs and term papers. This was what had inspired her to become a psychiatrist, specialising in the treatment of neurological disorders. This was the kind of high-octane, high-energy, high-profile case she had been waiting for since her graduation from Gotham State University three years ago. Harleen had felt willing and even a little excited to delve into the mind of Arkham Asylum's high security patient number 7791, to sit down face to face with him and discuss the nature of his behaviour, to attempt to scratch the surface of his criminal genius. But now, two weeks after Dr. Leland had assigned her this new patient, on the eve of her first session with him, Harleen couldn't help but feel a prickling twinge of fear in her stomach. Not only that, her head was spinning with exhaustion and she knew that, if she didn't get home and to bed soon, she would probably collapse.

She rubbed her eyes. "What about the coffee?" she asked lamely, gesturing to the brown stain on the carpet.

"The cleaners will deal with it," Joan assured her, striding toward the door and opening it wide. "Come on, I'll drive you home."

"Don't worry about it, my car's here anyway," said Harleen, fumbling in the pocket of her blazer for her keys.

"Leave it here. I'll pick you up for work in the morning. Harleen, if you try and drive in this state you'll wrap your car around a tree." Joan smiled, and they headed outside to her car.

Harleen settled back into the passenger seat of Joan's dark green Toyota, taking in the cigarettes-and-peppermint scent of its interior. When Joan put her key in the ignition and the engine shuddered to life beneath them, Harleen felt the gentle vibrations send waves of calm rolling through her body, unknotting her tense muscles. If she didn't fall asleep now, it would be a miracle.

"So what are the arrangements for tomorrow?" she asked lightly as they drove away from Arkham, hoping that the effort required to maintain a conversation would keep her awake.

"Well, your session isn't due to begin until eleven." Joan shot a glance her way before moving her eyes back onto the road. "My shift's at ten-thirty. I know yours is supposed to start in the early hours, but how about you come in at ten-thirty too? That way you get a couple of extra hours to sleep and I can give you a ride to work."

Harleen had to work hard to keep the smile from her face. "That would be fantastic, Joan."

Joan laughed once. "It's really no problem." She paused, biting her lip, before glancing toward Harleen again. "Are you nervous?"

"Nervous?" She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Not really. He's just another patient, right?"

"Harleen, you and I both know for a fact that this guy is not 'just another patient'." Joan swallowed hard. "He's been at Arkham for the past eleven months, and during that time has been through seven different psychiatrists, all of whom have permanently transferred to different rehabilitation centres or are on long-term leave due to symptoms of mental disorders of their own."

"I know, Joan. But I'd be lying if I said I was nervous." A lie in itself. It came out smoothly, seamlessly, as Harleen's lies always did. "I'm... eager, if anything."

She peered out of the car window into the dark street. Joan was either driving dangerously fast, or Harleen was merely too delirious to force her brain to make sense of their surroundings. Outside of the car was a shadowy world of blacks, browns and greens.

"What makes you say that?" asked Joan, the corners of her thin mouth twitching slightly.

"Well..." Harleen cast around for an explanation, quickly settling on the one which she had used on her application form for her Human Psychology course at Gotham State. "I've always been attracted to cases of extreme personalities. They have the most secrets, waiting to be tapped into."

They were away from Arkham now, had crossed the bridge that separated the asylum and the run-down surrounding area of the Narrows. As they entered the suburb that formed the northern border of Midtown Gotham City, with its harlequin-green square lawns, white picket fences and lagoon-style swimming pools, Harleen couldn't help but feel the usual pang of jealousy she experienced when she drove along this road every single day. Despite her position at Arkham, the top neurological research centre in the state, her salary wasn't great – presumably due to her age and lack of experience with high-profile cases – and was the only source of income in their household. With her fiancé James out of work for what she knew would be a lengthy period of time, there was no way they would be able to afford one of these houses any time in the near future.

Joan bit her lip again. "Harleen?" she asked. Harleen looked up. "Do you ever consider that, maybe, there are some patients that just don't want to be helped?"

"Of course," she said, nodding. "But Joan, I'm not going into that office tomorrow morning in an attempt to 'help' him." She made quotation marks in the air with her manicured fingers. "Seven psychiatrists have tried and failed. Those seven psychiatrists proved that he can't be helped."

"So what's the point?" asked Joan, her voice soft. As Harleen had guessed from the beginning, this wasn't a genuine interrogation as to her feelings on the subject. Joan liked to question her staff on situations such as this to gage their ability to provide thoughtful, eloquent answers, answers that not everybody would come up with. Harleen thought back to her first year of college, when her lecturer had asked the class to state and jot down a reason why a human being would kill another human being. It turned out that every single student of the thirty-eight others in the room had decided upon 'because they hate them'. The lecturer's eyes had widened as Harleen read out her answer. 'Because they love them,' Harleen had said, before being given an A+ for that lecture. Outside thinking, that lecturer had called it. The opposite of one's immediate response.

"If I can't help my patient, then I'm going to do whatever I can to understand him." They were outside Harleen's faded off-white apartment block now. She glanced up. The curtains in her living room were wide open, and the flickering quality of the light visible suggested that James had lit a candle. She swallowed, feeling a lump rise in her throat and her heart rate increase in tempo. "Thanks for the ride, Joan. I'll see you in the morning?"

"No problem. Goodnight, Harleen." Harleen waved half-heartedly as Joan pulled away from the kerb and headed back the way they had come. She turned to face the building. Sighing, she fumbled once more in her pocket for her set of keys and made her way up the front steps.

She climbed up to the fifth floor and stopped outside apartment number 26. "James?" she called uncertainly as she gently pushed open the already unlocked door with her fingertips. No response. The hallway was dark, but the eerie light emanating from the living room was definitely being cast by a flame of some sort. Harleen considered leaving the apartment straight away, calling Joan on her cellphone, staying over at a friend's. Was she able to deal with this now? She released a breath she felt as though she'd been holding forever, raised her chin and strode down the hallway, pausing in the doorway to the living room. Her eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. Oh god.

James lay on the leather couch in front of the television, which seemed to have the volume switched off and was playing a rerun of some eighties game show. His long ash brown hair flopped down lazily over one eye, and in one hand he held a two-thirds empty bottle of value Scotch. All of these things took a while to register in Harleen's mind. The first thing she noticed was the lit candle in the centre of the wooden table by the window.

She instantly felt her pupils dilate as she watched the little flame flicker, her blood roaring in her ears. She cocked her head to one side and stepped closer, staring at the burning wick until it hurt her eyes. All those shades of orange, yellow, smouldering red, writhing and twisting around each other in a beautiful, seductive dance that pulled her closer, begged her to join in... for a second, there was nothing Harleen wanted to do more than caress the molten wax, lay the candle down to burn against the oak table, watch the fire lick the walls that surrounded her, see the entire building eaten up by flames.

She forced her eyes closed and tried to regulate her breathing. Remember training. Remember therapy, she repeated to herself, internally or aloud, she wasn't sure. Reigning in her emotions, keeping control, she walked as calmly as she could to the sink, filled a plastic cup with cool water from the tap and, releasing another breath as she did so, extinguished the candle on the table. The room faded to darkness, the only light filtering in from the streetlamps beneath the window, and all she was left with a little pale grey smoke and the sulphurous aroma of a burnt-out flame.

Now she turned her attention to her fiancé. "James," she coaxed gently, slipping the Scotch from between his fingers with ease and setting it down on the coffee table. She rolled him onto his side and felt his forehead – his temperature seemed normal. Harleen had become an expert in dealing with James when he drank himself into oblivion, something which, unfortunately, had been a regular occurrence since he lost his job two years previously.

James' eyes flickered before opening. "Harley..." he murmured softly, reaching out and wrapping a strong arm around her shoulders.

"I'm right here, baby," she assured him, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. She got up onto her knees and leaned toward him, resting her head on his chest. "I'm right here."

Moments later, when James' soft snores again filled the room, Harleen lifted her head as carefully as she could and gently pulled her arm from his grip. "Harley..." said James. She turned and went to leave the room, but before she could, James came around, his eyes opening, his body stiffening. "Where are you going, pet?" he asked, his Irish lilt prominent, his breath permeated with alcohol fumes.

"I've got to sleep, James, I have work tomorrow," she explained slowly, carefully, inching away from him.

His iron grip tightened around her wrist. "You can sleep here with me, can't you, Harley?" he asked, his voice dangerous. His stormy grey eyes bore imperiously into hers.

"James, I'm going to bed," she stated as firmly as she could, but her voice had begun to shake.

James' hand tightened even more – he held her wrist so hard that it was painful and would surely bruise. Harleen winced, her eyebrows pulling together. "I'm sorry, pet, am I frightening you?" he asked, a malevolent half-smile forming around his lips, a smile that didn't touch his eyes. Harleen remembered a time when James would smile, really smile, and the beauty of it would knock the wind out of her. The sharp pain in her arm brought her quickly back into the present. "Stay with me, Harley. I'd really like you to stay with me."

"Okay," she bit out, her voice barely audible.

James lay back down and made a space for her beside him. Harley's slight frame nestled easily, perfectly, into his arms, as though the two were a pair of corresponding puzzle pieces, manufactured from the start to fit together. This was how it had always been. They were soul mates – there was no doubt about it – but James' addiction to drink and violent personality were becoming a major issue and driving a wedge between them, forming a rift, a rift that, as much as Harley hated to admit it, she wasn't sure could ever be healed.

She was enveloped in warmth as his arms closed around her, his fingers lacing with hers over his heart. He tilted her chin upward and kissed her tenderly, playfully, the way a couple in high school would kiss in the movie theatre or outside the front gates at school to incense a teacher. Despite his stale breath and the pain he had just inflicted upon her, she kissed him back, feeling him smile against her mouth.

"I love you, Harley," he whispered, slurring slightly, his lips brushing her ear. "I love you and you're all mine."

She couldn't tell if this last statement was a threat or a promise.

"I love you too," she said quietly, her wrist throbbing. A frown adorned her face. She was allowing her personal life to take over. She should not be thinking about herself at a time like this, on the eve of one of the most important events of her career so far. She had to concentrate on tomorrow. Tomorrow. The day she would meet the Joker.

The thought of his name, the name of the most dangerous criminal mastermind Gotham had ever seen, conjured vivid images in her mind. The white greasepaint. The gruesome scars that formed a permanent smile on his face. The piercing green eyes that stared down the camera lens in every session tape she'd watched so far. She heard his maniacal laughter ringing in her ears.

Tomorrow, she would be thrown in at the deep end. And, by God, she was going to stay afloat if it killed her.

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So there's chapter one. What did you think? What did you like/dislike? What information have you gleaned about our dear Harley so far? Leave me a review, it would make me so so happy!