My Voice of Desire

A Harley Quinn Tale- Chapter One

I was twenty years old when I first heard the voice of the man that I was destined to fall head-over-heels in love- my soulmate.

Actually, it wasn't his voice but instead his laugh. A booming laugh with traces of metal and fire burnt together to make some kind of metal flame. The most masculine of laughs there could ever be. The kind of laugh one would have if they had just discovered that the world was at their mercy. The kind of laugh that would make a girl like me doubt that they could ever be wrong. When I first heard that brilliant laugh, I instantly knew that I would follow that man to the end of the world and back up again. To shorten in down, the first time I even heard him I was totally doomed.

At first, other than being love-struck, I was hit by a tidal wave of imaginable terror as if someone had thrown cold water over me in my sleep. It wasn't even the kind of terror one feels when they realise that a stranger has just invaded their mind. The emotions behind that laugh were all too clear and I couldn't breathe- the pain, the sadness and the twisted joy. Whoever this man was, he had been reborn in some kind of way. At the tender age of twenty, I couldn't understand it and at the time it felt like I never would.

The only thing I remember of that night other than the laugh- obviously- was the aftermath. In my deranged mind, I was convinced that if I fell into sleep than I would never hear him again. I'd waited so long- too long- and I wasn't about to let him go just because my mind was tired. That night I must have stayed up all night was hot chocolate and red rimmed eyes filled with a twisted joy.

I was right when I had said that I had waited a long time. When everyone heard there voice at puberty, I was all alone. My mind was occupied by only me and no one else so when all of my friends giggled and gossiped about their voices I would lie and make up a persona. Pretending to be in love is the hardest thing that I think I ever had to do. The conversations that my friends seemed to have so much meaning and young love in them that I found it hard not to rip out their friends. Six very long years were spent with my wondering if there was something wrong with me- did I even have a soulmate? Then, I heard him.

Even now, I still wonder why I took me so long to hear him. Maybe I wasn't prepared for the chaos he was sure to bring or maybe he wasn't ready for purity that I was sure to bring. We were two very different people and I'm sure that if I heard him when I was younger, I would have avoided him at all costs. The thought of having those deep and powerful conversations nearly killed me. Instead of those conversations, all I heard was laughing- the same laugh that had shocked me to my core. Even now, I could barely breathe when I heard it. Sometimes, if I was really lucky, I would hear low murmurings so quiet that I could scarcely make out the words let alone sense of them.

After doing way too much research, I know that you can mostly hear a soulmate voice before you meet them when they are feeling emotions of great strength. I've always heard is laughter, the most powerful laughter I've ever heard.

If you ask me why I always hear my soulmate when he is very happy, I can't tell you. I guess that I always just assumed that he was a nice guy- the kind that's always laughing and cracking funny jokes. Knowing who my soulmate is now, it seems too much to handle. The only words I ever heard my soulmate is The Batman in scarcely a whisper. The two words plague my dreams as well as nightmares. Surely, this means that my soulmate lives in Gotham like me? When he says the batman, he sometimes refers to him as bats- a mixture of twisted happiness mingled with harsh, cold anger. It still scares me now even if I'm used to it.

At the time, I spent countless hours wondering whether or not he found it as hard to understand me as I did him. Did he know the obsession I had with him? The thought made me feel childish and awkward. If he concentrated very hard, would he know that most of the time I wondered who he was and where he was? Somehow, I doubted that. He seemed the time to not think enough to care about me.

My soulmate was a mystery to me then and he still is now. For some reason, I imagine him as devastatingly handsome in his own way with a smile that could turn a girls hurt into mush and- don't ask me why- he's very tall as well as lean. He'll be a total gentleman and won't beat me around like some people I know. His sense of humour will be so good that I laugh as much he does and for some reason ill always smile. When I imagine us together, I notice that I always seem brighter, livelier as if I have finally realised how to live.

For about the eight times that day, I had to pull myself out of the dreams of my soulmate, whoever the heel he was. While people don't gossip about their soulmates all the time at this age, they are still a hot topic that I am still lying about. While I hear his laugh, I can barely hear his voice and even that famous laugh is becoming less rare.

HA!

Boom! That's it. I can barely breathe as I register the laught hat just seeped through my mind. Since I'm not with him and never have met him, I can hardly tell when his piercing laugh will shut through my mind. Whenever it does, my breathe becomes scarce and I can hardly concentrate on what's in front of me, even if it happens to be my very important exam people that I will need to help me pass my in criminal phycology.

For what feels like an hour, I'm off with the fairies, not caring about anyone who isn't laughing in my head. The daydreams seem so light, happy and distant from me and my life that I almost never want to meet him. No matter how much I feel like he's going to be perfect, there's no way he could be the man of my dreams.

After deciding the likelihood of me finishing my revision paper is about zilch, I grumpily get ready for work. Arkham Asylum is hardly the most glamourous place to work but I'm pretty sure that if I keep grinning and baring it than I'll be fine. To be honest, the amount of staff workers that have worked there that then get their own cell is a number that really shouldn't be there.

While I don't doubt that my sanity is perfectly intact, I am not so keen on the idea of having some of my work friends strangle me to death.

The drive to work is awful. The city of Gotham is never safe and you always get the uneasy feeling when you stop at a traffic light that someone is going to take the opportunity to shot you so that they can get a hand on your phone. With villains like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang hanging about on a daily basis, that's not as crazy as it may sound. When I finally get into the grey carpark to match the grey building, I can hardly breathe. Everything feels so different today. For some reason, my soulmate won't shut up. His laughter has caused me to nearly crash twice today on the way to work. Whenever I try and focus something like when to turn, his laughter pierces through my concentration like a knife. You'd think he was doing it on purpose. Anyway, I was happy that he was so happy. I'd idly wondered about screaming a big high in my mind and seeing if he saw it but I thought that I might look stupid so I didn't risk it.

Arkham Asylum is the kind of place that one knows that they are going to die in. Even I knew after a week of working there that if I don't work the hardest than the likelihood of me coming out of Arkham was slim. Most staff actually ended up as patients or dead so I was planning to work very hard on that revision paper but it was hard with someone laughing away in my head and what an attractive laugh hat was…

Harleen, the shock of someone saying my own name hat wasn't Dr Quinzel was pleasantly surprising, pull yourself together and stop thinking about him. This is not healthy. Not hearing him until you were twenty wasn't healthy but this is really unhealthy. If he can hear you, than he's going to think you're a stalker. Bad Harleen, bad.

My thoughts were becoming more and more deranged so I got out my care, grabbed my briefcase and slammed the door. Sometimes, my thoughts got so random that I could barely grasp the fact that I was indeed that mad man.

More irritated with myself than I usually was, I wasn't in a good mood as I slammed the metal doors of the Arkham reception shut with my key card. They could get as much funding from local playboy Bruce Wayne as they wanted. It didn't stop there being a breakout every other week and it didn't stop the staff feeling like they were about to be stabbed at any random time, even at home in the darkness of the still night.

It took about two seconds of my arrival that my superior, Joan Leland, came in and gave me a glare that could make the strongest of man weak at his knees. Considering the fact that I'm a coward, it didn't surprise anyone that I nearly fell over in shock. Leland hated me since she had never found her soulmate and she once happened to walk into one of my elaborate, fake stories about mine. She thinks that I have it all with love. Well, isn't she the brightest physiologist in the pack, even I knew that I was telling a bad lie and yet everyone else sucked it up like blood to a vampire.

After my scary moment with Leland, I briskly walked to the staff room. While I have my own office in the basement, I don't like the cramped room much and I prefer to socialise. When I get there, I notice that the whole staff are in the room, all looking like mad animals with their faces pressed up against the screen.

That's when I hear it.

It's the same laugh but this time it's as loud and clear as it's ever been. The quiet chuckling this morning can't even come close to comparing to it. All it takes is my hand to slip off the door handle for me to go crashing down, briefcase last, onto the floor. Despite everyone rushing to my aid, I don't mean to brag but my bubbly personality and big smile make very popular with the gloomy people of Arkham, I can barely focus on anything. The laughter is so loud that I'm nearly howling with laughter myself, my breathing is irregular and I don't even know if I'm actually doing it. Am I breathing? Breathe, Harleen, for the love of god, breathe.

The laughter sounds so happy and so triumphant that my eyes are blurring and all I can make out are pale blobs instead of my co-workers. They've sat me down on a sofa, assuming that my soulmate must be having a fight or something, and have turned back to the TV. What's going on? If this had happened any other day, than I wouldn't be able to hear the end of it. Blurrily, I try and focus on the TV. TV presenter and local heart throb Mikey Davies is nearly shouting with excitement. Apparently, their ace reporter, Beth Martins, has some brilliant lead and their going live with it now; I want to tell them both to shut up because the laughter is banging my head around as if I'm at a rock concert. My hands, I barely recognize, and shaking like leaves and my breathing, while I'm actually doing it, is hardly normal.

"Hello, I'm Beth Martin and let me just cut to the chase," the blonde haired reporter, I can barely recognize and burbling with an excitement so loud that it sounds like she's a cat on a chalk board, "As we all know, The Joker had been Gotham's most active criminal around this week and now he's finally doing something so bad that The Batman cant risk coming out of hiding to show us!"

I always felt sorry for The Batman. Other than the obvious fact that my soulmate cares about him far more than he does about me, the batman always seemed rather nice. He fights crime for nothing and if it wasn't for him than I'm sure Gotham- as well as me- wouldn't be alive at this moment in time. Still, he gets so much hate that I really wonder if he needs his own cell in here so he can address all his feelings. Even though my head is spinning, I let out a giggle at the thought of big, scary batman crying over the way that the civilians of Gotham are treating him.

Beth, who seems to have gotten more higher and louder if that's humanly possible, looks as if she's going to give a girlish scream of delight as the camera pans away from her, "There he is!"

My heart stops in my chest for a second. Even the constant creams of laughter in my head can't compete with the man that is standing on the roof top. His skin is so white that snow couldn't be whiter. His hair dyed the toxic colour of green ands been too slicked back to be recognized. It's his smile though. It's as if he couldn't care whether he over leans on the railing and falls to his doom. Despite the obvious danger he is, he looks at peace as if he's been sleeping or just remembering his best memory. He's single handily the most beautiful person that I have ever met and my eyes cant tear away from him. He's also the Joker, who would kill me without blinking a single eye.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

The voice in my head is so loud that I'm sure that I'm screaming for it to stop. I can't even breathe. My eyes won't leave the screen and if the volume wasn't on max than I think they would have sedated me by now. My screams aren't being heard even though they sound like pleas for help in my mind. Hoe can everyone ignore me? How can the Joker and The Batman still be living after the punches they are taking? How is my voice not shutting up?

My soulmate is starting to really annoy me. I watch, transfixed, as the Batman punches the joker so hard that I'm certain that his teeth are going to fall out. In fact, if you look really closely, I'm sure that a few do. Beth won't be quiet as shrilly screams at the camera man to zoom in more or straighten out his camera. While normally I would have hated her for being so rude, I can hardly focus on anything that isn't dressed like a bat or has vivid green hair.

That's when it happens.

The Joker starts to laugh.

Ha!

Oh god please no!

Ha!

I recognize that laugh.

Ha!

It's like a metal flame.

Ha!

Its official The Joker, who is the most evil man in Gotham or possibly the world. The Joker, who has murdered thousands and just planted bombs around the city for fun. The Joker, who would snap me neck and then drink my blood for a drink, is my soulmate…