First Days
"All right, where is it?" demanded the Joker, looking around at the assembled group of inmates in Arkham Asylum's Rec Room with his hands on his hips.
"Where is what?" asked Poison Ivy, not looking up from her gardening show on TV.
"Don't act all innocent – you know what!" snapped Joker. "Because you stole it! Or someone in here did! It wouldn't surprise me if you're all in this together in order to humiliate me!"
"That seems highly unlikely, considering how our team-ups always end," commented Jervis Tetch, as he moved a white knight on the chess game he was playing against Jonathan Crane. "We're not known to play well together."
"Yes, but the urge to show me up was just too much to resist, wasn't it, nerd?" demanded Joker. "Don't deny it!"
"Why don't you just tell us plainly what you're talking about?" asked Two-Face, looking up from his book. "Talking like this, you're worse than the Riddle guy."
"You take that back!" snapped Joker. "I am nothing like that freak! And I am talking about the thing you all stole from me while I was in therapy this morning, you lame bunch of losers!"
"Well, it certainly wasn't your wit which was stolen from you – that's as razor sharp as ever," commented Crane sarcastically, countering Tetch's knight with his bishop.
"Aw, I bet you wish somebody would steal your wit from you, Craney – then you might get to lose a few other things too, like your virginity," sneered Joker. "As it is, you're stuck as dame-repellent forever. Now who the hell stole my Twinkie?!"
"Really? That's what this is about?" asked Ivy. "Some disgusting snack food made of stale processed sugar?"
"Ok, first of all, Twinkies are delicious!" snapped Joker. "And second of all, you can't get them in this dump that easily, even though they're readily available in all good supermarkets since the shortage scare of 2012, when you better believe I stocked up! You don't wanna know how I smuggled this one in here originally, but I had been saving it for a very long time, waiting for a special occasion, since they last forever. And now somebody's stolen it from me, and when I find out who it is, the special occasion that I've been saving it for will be shoving it down their throat so they choke to death! So which one of you morons was it?!"
"Why would anybody confess when you threaten them with horrible death for doing so?" asked Tetch. "That's nonsense, if you'll forgive me saying so."
"That sounds kinda like a confession to me, Hatty," snapped Joker.
"I don't even know what a Twinkie is," retorted Tetch. "We don't have those things in England."
"So that's why you stole it – the lure of the exotic!" exclaimed Joker. "You never had one of those, and you just had to find out what everyone was raving about."
"I never heard anybody rave about them before," retorted Tetch. "And frankly, since you're the one doing the raving, I'm even less inclined to ever have one than I was before."
"So you stole it to spite me, not to eat it!" said Joker.
"J, nobody stole your stupid Twinkie," retorted Ivy. "And frankly, even if someone did, it's not worth getting upset about. It's not like it was a valuable piece of property. Honestly, that's what you get for leaving something around the group of notorious thieves and villains stuck in here."
"Wow, don't flatter yourself, guys," retorted Joker. "You are the lowest of the low, as evidenced by the fact that you stole a goddamn Twinkie! And I'm now starting to think it was you, Pammie, protesting too much like that!"
"Well, Sherlock, I'm afraid this is one case you're way off the bat with," retorted Ivy. "I wouldn't touch or eat that insult to my babies' deaths - it's not bad enough that you murder sugarcane, but then you add chemicals to it to embalm it in order to consume it. It's like people eating mummies."
"I would try it," said Joker, shrugging. "I would try anything once, except folk dancing and incest. But all this talk of mummies and folk dancing and incest is getting me off the topic of the Twinkie thief, which was possibly your plan all along, Pammie!"
"You're an idiot," she retorted. "I hope that Twinkie is gone forever."
"Did you ask Harley?" asked Two-Face. "She's probably the only one who knew you had a Twinkie in here."
"Harley wouldn't steal from me – she loves me!" snapped Joker. "Anyway, she didn't know about the Twinkie. No one did."
"So how could anyone have stolen it from you?" asked Crane. "If nobody knew about it, I mean."
"Someone obviously stumbled across it, genius!" snapped Joker.
"Well, where did you have it hidden?" asked Crane.
"Someplace where I thought nobody would stumble across it!" snapped Joker. "The admissions cabinet in the records room."
"It was probably one of the doctors, then," replied Crane. "While they were admitting a new patient or something. Why don't you go interrogate them?"
"No, this was the admissions cabinet from way back!" snapped Joker. "Nobody ever opens it because there's three inches of dust all over it, and because it contains all our original admission records, which have been filed away and completely forgotten!"
"Jesus, that is a long time ago," agreed Two-Face. "I bet the doctors were all so hopeful back at the beginning. But how times have changed."
"I don't think I even remember my first day here," said Ivy. "It was that long ago, and probably that unremarkable."
"I remember mine very clearly," said Tetch. "It's not the sort of thing one forgets. What about you, Joker? Do you remember your first day in here?"
Joker frowned. "I'm not sure I had a first day, come to think of it," he muttered. "I think I've just always been in here. Just like I was always the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in that one movie, or at least the actor who played me was…"
"J, you had a first day," interrupted Ivy. "Everyone had a first day here."
"You just said you don't remember yours," said Joker, sticking his tongue out. "So how do you know you had one?"
"Oh, I remember a little of it," sighed Ivy, flicking off the TV. "You were already here, J, but you were the only one I remember clearly."
"I am kinda hard to forget," agreed Joker, nodding.
"This was after I had just tried to murder Harvey for destroying my babies," continued Ivy, ignoring him.
"Boy, you have to keep bringing that up," muttered Two-Face.
"I don't specifically remember much else, but there's gotta be some notes in that filing cabinet, right?" asked Ivy, standing up. "Let's go take a look."
"We can't just barge into the records office in broad daylight," said Crane. "We're meant to be locked in the cell block."
"Aw, widdle rule follower," cooed Joker, ruffling his hair. "Bless his ickle heart! Until you lose that goody-two-shoes mentality, you definitely won't be losing your virginity, pal."
"I am not a rule follower!" snapped Crane. "Which is why I'm an inmate in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane!"
"Well, you sure ain't a bad boy," retorted Joker. "And dames love a bad boy."
"Some women do," retorted Ivy. "Some women also like nice guys. We're a diverse group of people with different preferences, surprisingly."
"Well, nobody in here likes nice guys, that's for darn sure," retorted Joker. "You only really fell for Harv after he went all bipolar – before then you were just using him in order to kill him, which makes you a dame after my own heart."
"I think Harley would be interested to know that," snapped Ivy.
"Harley would be interested to know what?" asked Harley Quinn, entering the room at that moment.
"I thought you were in therapy, Harl," said Joker, turning to her.
"I was, but then Dr. Leland had to cut it short," said Harley, nodding. "Apparently all the guards did a mass walkout in order to protest for better pay and working conditions, so she's got her hands full with that now."
"Perfect distraction!" exclaimed Joker. "Ok, let's go, guys!"
"Where are we going?" asked Harley, as they all filed out of the Rec Room.
"To the records office to see our old admission records," explained Tetch. "I think everyone's in the mood for a walk down memory lane. Do you remember your first day here, Harley?"
"You mean as a doctor, or as a patient?" asked Harley.
"Whichever you like," replied Tetch.
"Oh yeah, I remember them both clearly," said Harley, nodding. "Different set of circumstances, of course. You were all already here before me though – I think I must have been the last in this group to arrive as a patient here."
"Well, these look to be in order of arrival," said Ivy, as they entered the records office and she opened the dusty file cabinet. "Yep, here's Harley's on top," she said, handing it to her. "And then we've got Tetch, Dent, Crane, me…"
Her eyes narrowed. "Weird. I can't find you in here, J," she said, flicking through the records.
"I told you, I've always been the caretaker," retorted Joker.
"Don't be ridiculous – it was probably just misplaced or something," said Ivy. "I'll keep looking," she added, opening random folders.
"This was a great day," sighed Harley, glancing over her file. "I think everybody's probably heard about my first day here as a doctor, when I met Mr. J's eyes across a crowded cell block like in the great romantic songs, but I don't think anybody's heard about my first day as a patient, which was even better."
"We remember it – we were literally all there," retorted Two-Face.
"But it would be nice for you to refresh our memory, my dear," added Crane.
"Well, for those of you who haven't heard it, I'll recap my first day here as a doctor…" began Harley.
"No, we've all heard that story a million times," interrupted Ivy. "And frankly, I was sick of it the first time. You saw J, he winked at you, and that disgusting objectification of you by an entitled man was all it took for you to abandon your sense of professionalism and ethics and dedicate your life to a disgusting abuser by becoming his willing and eager slave."
"No, Red, it wasn't like that at all!" snapped Harley. "Apparently you haven't heard the story often enough! I mean, he did wink at me, and I thought he was really cute, and then he left me a flower in my office like a sweetheart, but we got to know each other through our sessions first before I jumped him so hard he got sofa burns on his back. Which is how I think it always should be – the best relationships are based on mutual trust and respect and friendship, and not just how good you are together physically. Although that's dynamite, and sometimes literally involves it."
"Are you actually trying to say your relationship is a 'best' relationship, and that it's based on mutual trust, respect, and friendship?" demanded Ivy. "How delusional are you? Didn't he just tell you a pack of lies about his past at your sessions together?"
"Yeah, but I knew even then he was the one," sighed Harley. "Anyway, he doesn't lie to me anymore, at least, not about important things."
"Only when it's convenient for me to do so," agreed Joker, nodding. "That's a big step when you think I used to do it all the time just for fun."
"Yeah, you've really reformed him," sighed Ivy, rolling her eyes. "I think I told you that you never would on your first day as a patient here."
"Oh yeah, I guess that was our first real meeting!" agreed Harley, beaming. "What a great day in so many ways! And I remember it as if it were yesterday…"