"Mrs. Waller, while I do appreciate that you have bought me an incredibly fancy dinner, I don't think we'll be capable of doing anything," Steve Rogers sighed as he glanced down at his plate. A large sirloin steak sat amongst figs and lemon potatoes, juices red and enticing as he cautiously cut into it, taking a bite. The woman sitting across from him glared as he chewed, ignoring her own plate of ribs and mashed potatoes. Her white suit gleamed under the light of the restaurants bulbs, and it made it hard for Steve to look at her directly.

"Mr. Rogers, I don't believe you have a choice," Amanda Waller stated coldly, "as I specifically asked Fury to appoint your team for the job."

Steve gulped. Of course she would have gone right to Fury. Fury always opted for the tough ones.

"Is that so?" Steve gulped down his meal, "Well, I guess we have no choice, as you said. What's the-"

"Gotham City, a woman named Dr. Harleen Quinzel." Amanda cut him off, reaching down for a purse that sat on the floor next to her chair. Rummaging around, she pulled out a manilla folder, sliding a few pictures over the table to him. The images were glossy, and the Captain had to glare to get a good look. In total there were two photos. One, a young woman's mugshot, a wide smile on her face as she stared at the camera. Her brown eyes were glazed over, and her platinum blond hair was tied into twin pigtails, one dip dyed pink, the other dip-dyed blue. Her skin had the look of makeup, with its streaky paper white surface, and small black lines created tiny tattoos of hearts on her cheek.

"This her?" he asked.

"She was caught after a sloppy diamond heist," Amanda explained, taking a sip of her glass of wine. "Not that bad, really." Steve nodded, staring at the way her painted red lips curled into a malicious grin, almost taunting the superhero as he looked at it.

"The job we have for your team is to find her and protect her," Amanda explained calmly, "no matter what."

Steve raised an eyebrow at her, "I'm sorry?"

Her knife screeched against the china plate like nails on a chalkboard as she ignored his question. Steve checked his ears for excess wax- had he heard her correctly? He glanced down at the photo of the woman again. It was obviously a mugshot- A creepy one at that, Steve thought as he went to pick up the other image.

This one was of a man, who was equally as painted white. His short hair was dyed green, and his lips colored the same dark, menacing red, if not a bit more scarlet. He sported the same maniacal smile as his female counterpart, with silver grills capping all of his teeth. Tattoos littered the surface of his skin, some in neat cursive, others in a brash graffiti style.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"You've probably heard of him," the woman said, placing her glass down with a soft clink. "The Joker."

Steve had to stare at the photo again. Sure, he had heard of the Joker, but this guy wasn't exactly what he had pictured. The man in the photo didn't look like an insane sociopath, he looked like a punk who had taken tattoos and piercings too far. His face was gaunt, but he could see well defined muscles in his body (at least the shoulders, considering a mugshot was taken from the neck up), and he thought he could see just the tops of the man's ribcage, although the light in the restaurant was too dim to be sure. Chatter seemed to be everywhere now that he and Amanda had stopped speaking, and the woman sitting across from him was giving him an expectant look, her eyes boring into him like daggers.

"I have heard of him, yes," Steve finally answered. "What does he have to do with her?"

"Everything, Mr. Rogers," was Amanda Waller's answer as she took another bite of her meal. His steak, however, had begun to taste like dirt, slowly grinding against his incisors until he could no longer eat it, as if it were rubber and he a band. He waited for the piece of meat in his mouth to snap in half, but t remained chewy, refusing to break.

"Well, I guess we have no choice then, huh?" Steve said, although the statement was made at least a few times within the first few minutes of the conversation. He couldn't help it. It felt like an anchor, an excuse for everything the Avengers had done. The Battle of New York. The Battle of Sokovia. Heck, even their own separate battles when the team was not part of the Avengers.

And now this. Finding and protecting this woman from one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

"We did establish that, thank you," Amanda Waller said, not amused at the smirk he tried playing off. "As you may know, Harleen Quinzel was… involved with this man for a very long time." Steve nodded- he had always read the news, although he needed some help navigating finding articles on the internet. Out of all the new technology, the internet was the one he had difficulty mastering.

That, and using email.

"You said that she was his psychiatrist at that hospital they put him in," Steve reminded her.

"Yes, well, she had taken a liking to him, as some would say," Amanda sighed heavily, straightening her spine as she sat up in her high-backed chair. Coughing into her fist, she continued, "After that, she helped him escape, and he took Dr. Quinzel with him."

Steve cast his eyes down at the photo of the young woman. He had heard of stories such as these for a while- a lot of the time involving veterans of war, after they had let their delusions take over. Was the Joker a war veteran? He looked like one, with the tattoos, but Steve had never seen a veteran so young. And they surely didn't end up with silver capped grills in their mouth r green hair.

"And what happened next? They turn to a life f crime together? Bonnie and Clyde?" Steve attempted to joke, but it fell flat, and he took a sip of his own drink. The wine was bitter, he decided, burning as it slid down his throat.

"They would have put Bonnie and Clyde to shame, in all honesty," Amanda said curtly, furrowing her brows, "They slandered and killed and stole everywhere they went. It wasn't long before they were both put in a high-security penitentiary."

"And?"

"We had to separate them because…" Amanda's face became contorted with pain as she trailed off, trying to find the words, "Joker was gettin' a little hands-on with D. Quinzel."

Steve felt his eyes twitch. Things like that… that was just disgusting, even for someone in a high-security prison.

"She at first thought it was just his way of showing he loved her," Amanda tapped Harleens picture with a perfectly manicured nail, "of course, after time passed and he frequented her cell more often than usual, it was becoming obvious that this was a dangerous situation."

"That's a dangerous situation for anyone right off the bat," Steve retorted, "I mean, even if you're in prison, violation is violation." Amanda smiled at him, her lips tight.

"Always a gentleman," she teased.

"That's not being a gentleman, Mrs. Waller, it's called being a decent human being."

"Well, being a decent human being is not up the Joker's alley," Amanda said, "after a few months, she complained to one of her guards. We tried moving her to a different facility the next day, but when we reached her cell to collect her, she was gone."

The moment of silence gave him the obvious answer. He didn't even need to ask who took her. He learned later that Mrs. Waller had decided to set up a sort of group- similar to the Avengers, was what she had said, for those who she thought would be able to turn themselves around.

It proved harder than she thought.

Katana, a woman who was the group's swordsman, skewered herself with her own weapon, found lying in her cell in a pool of crimson, babbling that she didn't want to deal with anything anymore. She was ready to go.

Captain Boomerang had disappeared to his native Australia, never to bee seen or heard from again.

Killer Croc (who seemed like a rather ugly version of the Hulk) had disappeared into the sewers, helping (ironically) diminish the rat population in New York.

The Enchantress had driven herself to death with her own magic, her powers eating away at her body until she simply disappeared.

And then they had found the rest of them out on a patrol- Rick Flag, Deadshot, and the one and only Dr. Harleen Quinzel. But as Amanda Waller told the tale, Steve felt his blood running cold. Something was off- they were villains, he knew, but from what he had heard, they had good intentions in the beginning.

"We found them running around Arkham Asylum, those three," Amanda cut through his thoughts like a knife through bread, "terrorizing the guards and letting patients roam free, whether they were dangerous or not. As part of the program, they were given weapons, however, we had devices implante in each weapon in case they used them on themselves."

Steve was confused, "But you just said Katana-"

"That sword was one handed down through her family," Amanda interuppted, "We thought she could handle it. But the rest chose weapons- and Harleen had played it safe, picking ot use a baseball bat."

That made Steve laugh. What could she do with a toy?

Apparently a lot. Amanda went on to explain that while the group had run amok, she had started to get followed by some of the former patients, and used the baseball bat in self-defense. Some of them did manage to grab hold of her, and the results were not pretty, the ordeal ending with blood and brains splattered on the wall, skulls smashed into unrecognizable shapes. Steve shuddered as she said they had found her screaming ehr head off, swinging the bat against the dead bodies until they would no longer move, only to switch her target to the brick wall, smearing the crimson spilling from the patients.

"What was she saying, if I may ask?" Steve asked, his voice now a whisper as he tried to imagine the scenario. It was too terrifying ot even think about.

"She was saying something along the lines of 'Mr. J. doesn't like when you touch his things'."

Steve shook his head. His chair scraped the floor as he went to get up, offering the woman a small smile as he slipped on his coat.

"So is that all we have to do? Save her from this Joker guy?" Steve asked. Amanda nodded, seeming to have finished the meal herself. From the looks of it, telling such a story was not something she enjoyed, her face having paled. It was a sad story, yes, and from the pained look in her eyes, it was an absolute horror to retell.

"You need to make sure he doesn't get his hands on her at all costs," Amanda Waller ordered harshly, her tone clipped, on the verge of crying, almost.

Steve nodded, "And where can we find her?"

"When we made that team, we took them and put them in the hole," was the reply, ominous in its own right. From the beginning of this dinner, Steve thought Amanda Waller was intimidating, from her perfectly pressed white dress suit to the way she chewed on her food, squaring her shoulders to take up more space.

Steve assumed she meant Arkham Asylum, and asked, "And where can we find this hole?" A smirk played on her lips, turning into a deep chuckle as she shook her head.

"Let's just say I threw away the hole."