Folie à Deux - a delusion, psychosis or madness shared by two people in close association;
'a classic case of folie à deux'
Chapter One.
I Started A Joke.
Would they notice my hands were shaking?
Would they tell I'd changed my shirt one, two, three and four times before wrestling myself back into the white one I'd first put on? White said serious. White said, ignore the blonde hair and baby blues, I know the Diagnostic Statistical Manual better than I learned my ABCs. Please ignore the fact I'm sweating all over your waiting room seats.
Fuck it, Harls, you're green as grass. I ignored my inside-voice. It was a good voice to ignore, given it thought six martinis and two tequila shots was an a-OK great idea. I'd had it locked in a box since I stepped foot into medical school. Hell, since my Daddy realised it existed he'd been trying to squish it out of me. No drink, no drugs, no sex. School and discipline, homework and family dinners.
I ever catch you like this again, Harleen Quinzel, I'll make you wish you'd never been born! The one and only time I'd let the jack out of the box and listened to my insides, Daddy had made sure there was never a repeat performance. I mean, you'd think he'd give a girl a break on her twenty-first birthday, right?
"Harleen Quinzel?"
I jumped out of my sticky leather seat, smoothing my skirt with one hand and offering the other to the blonde Doctor now regarding me, his head tilted to one side.
"That's me, Harleen Quinzel, reporting for duty." The words came out so fast they ran together as I shook his hand with enthusiasm, abruptly dropping it once I remembered how sweaty my palms were. Idiot, I cursed myself.
"Sorry." I shrugged, sheepish. "Nerves, you know."
"No problem." He made a show of wiping his hand on his lab coat and I giggled. "You looked like you were miles away. Careful, in here someone might mistake that for catatonia." He winked, grinning. He had one of those faces that's difficult to age. At a push, I'd put him at around ten years my senior, with a couple of extra lines to boot. I wondered if he was a resident, like me. I'd definitely seen him somewhere before.
"I'm Doctor Jeremiah Arkham." He tapped the name badge pinned to his pocket. Oh. Duh. "Jeremiah will be fine." He filled in before I could ask. "And you prefer…?"
"Harleen will be fine," I parroted him. Nervous mirroring, inner-psychologist Harleen chimed in. Possible predecessor to palilalia—a sign of social discomfort.
"Sorry about the late meeting." He shrugged. "Evening time is usually best for introductions. The patients tend to be more...subdued." Probably because there's a days worth of meds in them. "Let's take a walk, shall we?" He phrased it like I had an option. When you're a shrink, you never want to make your patient feel like they're forced into anything. It's not a healthy environment for shares and cares. Best to let patients think everything is their idea. This guy was good.
I followed as, instead of taking me inside his office, he began to walk the hall. His suit was clean-cut, his expression relaxed, his pace easy. It was at odds with the backdrop and the ghost of a five o'clock shadow hidden under his chin. There was a speck of blood behind his ear.
"Shaving incident?" I asked, gesturing to his ear when he looked confused.
"What? Oh, that." Unconsciously he lifted his hand to the dot, rubbing at it, a small frown on his face. "I'm afraid my thirty years of life haven't equipped me with the skills to handle a razor on four hours of sleep." He chuckled. "Enough about my morning habits." He waved a hand, brushing off his early-morning ineptitude. "I would ask if you're nervous, but I think we both know that would be redundant."
I nodded, twisting my hair around my finger without realising. I dropped it quickly when one of Daddy's warnings played in my head.
Dr Arkham followed the motion with his eyes. "I'm afraid there won't be much of a grace period." He half-smiled. "I'm a big believer in 'in at the deep end'. Myself or Dr Leland will sit in on your first few sessions, and then it'll be down to you." He rested a reassuring hand on my shoulder, squeezing a little. Probably imagining his own first day. When he moved his hand away, that teeny speck of blood had left a dot on my shoulder.
I cleared my throat to dislodge the nausea. I swear they mix that hospital smell in with the paint. "I'm glad for the opportunity, Doctor." My not-exactly-necessary glasses were sliding down my nose. I pushed them back in place, looking up at him.
He nodded. "Practical experience is invaluable for a young psychiatrist." He leaned in a little, lowering his voice. "Of course, you're aware of our more unusual patient roster."
"Yeah, you've got some real characters." Nervous joking. Unlike nervous mirroring, that one was a personality flaw.
Surprised, he laughed. "Very apt. Yes, we have a wide range of disorders, manias and psychoses. Some more 'professionally interesting' than others." He was quiet for a moment, brooding. Almost immediately he snapped out of it, turning his eyes back to mine. "Enough to keep you occupied, I'm sure. Right." He clapped his hands together. "I was thinking we could have a tour, and then I'll give you the relevant patient files to look over. Read through them tonight and in the morning, we'll get started. How does that sound?"
"Lead the way."
He shook his head as he went, amused. His coat gleamed greenish under the cheap fluorescent strip lights as he pointed out various fixtures. The light, unexpected humour began to dissipate as we headed deeper into the bowels of Arkham. Like moving closer to a black hole, the lights seemed to flicker, as though all the energy was being slowly sucked toward the centre.
The Doc's monologue faded out as I took in my surroundings. I was really inside Arkham Asylum. I'd been reading about this place for years. Wouldn't you, if you grew up in the shadow of Gotham's most notorious institution? Everyone loves a good horror story. In our secret spaces, we all like to read about the creatures that hide in the cracks of society. Me? I wanted to understand them. Identify.
Cure.
Doctor A's relaxed pace became a little more controlled. We were entering the patient quarters. He portrays calm, but he feels it too. The building itself is beyond redemption. Psychologist Harleen tilted her glasses. I concurred. I knew Arkham was no holiday camp, but I didn't expect it to feel so legit. As if the characteristics of the residents had soaked into the linoleum and the building, like a giant sponge, retained it all within the walls. Sweat, syringe contents, vomit, blood. Arkham was a dragon, hoarding its treasures. Walking in the door felt like being swallowed up.
Only one inmate I'd heard of who'd managed to tame it.
There were no pictures on the greyed-out walls. I don't know why I thought there'd be pictures. Not landscapes or anything hokey like that. More, spooky portraits of past curators. Curators, was that the right word? Like the inmates were art.
Terrible, terrible art. I swallowed a nervous laugh, felt it travel all the way to my unsettled stomach.
I realised then that there were no moans coming from the cells, no cries. No, these inmates weren't scared. They didn't know fear. Only pain, and anger. Only the mind-bending whirligig of medicated miasma. Whispers ran like a river, the occasional muffled shout as delirium broke the shell. I'd heard they overmedicated at Arkham, but jeez. I thought I heard someone whistling the theme to Looney Tunes in a distant cell.
"It seems like you've drawn the short straw, doesn't it?" Doctor Arkham chuckled grimly. "Not quite the glamour medical school prepared you for, I'm sure."
I blinked. "Well, actually Doctor Ark—Jeremiah, I asked to be put on placement here." A sneaky blush crept across my cheeks. Dammit, control yourself. Involuntary blushing. It's a real pain in the a—butt.
Great going, Harls, secret Harleen rolled her metaphorical eyes. Now he's gonna think you're a crazy.
Don't talk like that, I scolded her. They're not 'crazies'. They're people.
"Is that so?" He asked in an off-hand way, his focus seemingly on the paint peeling from the walls. He was using psych-voice on me.
"It is." He turned to me and I met his gaze, letting psychologist-Harleen shine through. He sucked in a cheek, surveying me.
"Psychology isn't about the glamour, Doctor Arkham. Not for me, anyway. Too many psychologists forget that patients are people, y'know? Underneath those fried neurons, encephalitic vesicles and dysfunctional dopamine d2 receptors that write the papers, there's an actual… human." It came out more forcefully than I'd intended. I bit my lip, worried I'd overstepped.
He rubbed a hand across his jaw. "I'm afraid you may not find many humans here. A lot of our longest-dwelling residents left those vestiges behind a long time ago."
'Vestiges'. There's a word you don't hear every day.
Shut up!
"Isn't that why they're called vestiges? Because they hold on, even when they become otiose?"
Otiose: Redundant, pointless. I can talk the talk too, Doctor A. Daddy would be proud.
"If you manage to salvage some humanity in here, Doctor Harleen Quinzel, I'll personally check myself in." He chuckled, holding two fingers up for Scout's honour.
I raised both eyebrows. "That's a hefty wager, Doctor A."
"Doctor A?" A small frown creased his forehead.
Oops. "Sorry."
"No, no bother. It's just... Never mind. Although, as I said, Jeremiah is fine."
"Always better to retain your authority, Doctor A. You are my boss, after all. In a place like this, lines are important. As in, of the not-crossing kind."
He nodded, acquiescing. "Truer words never spoken, Harleen."
An alarm tore through the air.
His face paled. "Oh dear." His bright tone belied his expression. "It appears your wager is about to be tested. Shall we?" He started back down the hall, half-running. Again, I followed. Thank God childhood dance lessons taught me how to run in heels.
"Me?"
"We're a tad understaffed at present, actually. Not to be indelicate, but it's one of the reasons we were happy to take on someone without experience. Apologies," he conceded when my face fell. "It's nothing against your character. Your transcript was excellent. It's simply that Arkham takes a special kind of disposition, one that usually takes several years to acquire."
We were getting closer to the alarm, the shrill pealing scraping goosebumps up my skin. A maniacal laugh harmonised with the screeching. I shook my head, sure I'd imagined it. On my first day? No way.
Doctor A picked up the pace, frantically checking his pockets.
There were a set of double doors at the end of the hall, behind which some sort of mass brawl appeared to be occurring. Wait a second. Was that… music?
Bohemian Rhapsody? Seriously?
Doctor A crashed into the door at speed. I think he expected it to be barricaded, but alas, he fell into the room with the grace of a drunk mime, recovering himself in time to duck a swing from a freaking huge patient whose scrubs were already spattered with something I didn't think was ketchup. He slipped, his head bouncing against the floor. Not one for forward planning, this Doctor A.
I skidded behind him, pausing at the threshold.
It looked like some kind of mess hall, 'mess' being the operative word. Blood, food and hell knew what else pasted the walls, the floor. Several orderlies hid behind an upturned table. Others wrestled with patients, skidding on the slick ground. One orderly landed a swift kick to a male patient's skull, putting him out of commission. I gasped. What happened to 'calm and subdue'? Psychologist Harleen was incensed.
Effective, though, secret Harleen mused.
Aside from the orderlies' makeshift barricade, there wasn't a stick of furniture standing, except for a single table, on which stood a strikingly familiar figure.
Yeah, I should definitely be running. To get help. Or, you know, to not die on my first day at Arkham. I'd really rather not be that much of a cliché. More funerals than fun days, so I read.
Professional curiosity fixed me in place. I'd known when I came to Arkham my chances of ever being assigned to the Joker were non-existent. I was pretty sure they weren't even therapizing him anymore. Some things were…unfixable.
This might be my only opportunity to glimpse the Clown himself.
You're being ridiculous. Go find somebody, now! Doctor Arkham could be seriously hurt. Psychologist Harleen shoved me toward the door. I took a step backwards.
But then again, ain't this the stuff your books are made of, Harls? Here it is, in the bonafide flesh. My worse half pulled at me, tugging me on.
The music seemed to swell to a crescendo as I examined the haunting silhouette. He was directing the chaos like a maestro, pale arms raised, back to the door. Unmistakeable green hair, slicked back despite his Arkham-issued duds. Somehow hearing the double doors crash against their respective walls, he turned. I sucked in a breath.
His eyes pierced me, even across the distance.
"Cease fire!" He swept his arms down with a flourish. At his command, everything stopped. The music cut out, leaving only the muffled groans of the injured. Somewhere in the corner of my eye, I could see a person lying in an awfully large pool of blood for someone who was still ticking.
I couldn't bring myself to check, too transfixed on the Joker.
He stalked toward me. My feet were glued to the floor. I couldn't bring myself to breathe, let alone run. It was like being approached by a shark. Stay...still. Only my eyes followed his movement as he moved through the wreckage. The closer he came, the more impossible he seemed. Clover-green hair. Unnaturally pale skin stretched over cutting cheekbones, giving rise to dark hollows, his lips a red slash against his chemical pallor. His scrubs hung from his lithe frame.
I'd always imagined his face would be powdery, like he was wearing stage makeup. In reality it was smooth, like white marble. It looked cold.
If I reached out, my fingertips would brush his scrubs. I swallowed, bile burning my throat. His eyes followed the movement, saw my hands clenched into fists. Skimmed my shiny new name badge.
The red slash painted itself into an impossible smile.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the audience, allow me to welcome a brand new player." He extended his arms with a flourish as the patients looked on. "Introducing Doctor Harleen Quinzel." He drew out my name like he was exhaling smoke from a cigarette. I heard Doctor A groan beside me.
Sweat pooled in the small of my back.
"Doctor Quinzel," he purred, leaning close enough to touch. "Welcome to the show."
AN: Okay, so I've just reworked this Chapter because a few things have been niggling at me. I feel better now. Aaaand breathe. Working on Chapter Three as we speak so that should be up within the next few days. I also can't read anyone's reviews at the moment which is a real pain in the a—butt.
Hope everyone's enjoying this as much as I am. So difficult to get well-known characters just right. I welcome constructive criticism.
Also, there won't be insta-love in this fic. I just can't buy a Joker who would go gaga for the first gal who peaked his interest. I want to see how he falls for her.