Chapter 2

Her

My name is Dr. Harleen Quinzel.

I have suffered from a rough past full of unsparing mental, emotional and physical suffering and abuse. Yet, rather than breeding in me a mindset of self-pity and bitterness, the pain has birthed in me a desire to help those who have also suffered and are suffering, particularly, the mentally unfit. My heart goes out to the minds that too few have the knowledge, much less desire to help.

To my fortuity, I have always excelled in school. I have an inborn thirst for erudition. Complimentarily, my intelligence thrives in the environment of mental infirmity. I find my work captivating and I throw myself into it completely. It is my sense of purpose.

I have always had an attraction to extreme personalities. I find myself drawn to them. I connect to them because I myself have had the experience of being lost in my mind. There are times where I feel like I still am. I often ponder what it is like to be truly loved, as I know they do- whether they have been deprived of it in their lives like myself, or have forgotten, the memory lost in the depths of their damaged minds.

I do not have one particular set of rules of conduct I follow, or a specific view of how things should be. I see the world as far too complex and flexuous to try to rein it under one confined position of mind, especially being that my mind is flawed due to its human nature.

However, there are two things I am certain that I believe in, two things I am sure I stand for. One is compassion. Without that, my life's work would be pointless. The second is that no human being is beyond saving unless they truly, deeply have no wish to be saved.

Today is the day I have decided to take on the most daunting challenge I have encountered yet. A challenge which I am honored and thrilled to undertake. That challenge is gaining an understanding of the Joker in order to incorporate him into my research. Perhaps, in the process, I will maybe even be able to help him.

It is daunting because I have theorized through prior research that it is that he is not insane, incurable, or unfit. Rather, that he is twisted, the wires in his mind so intricately entangled that I cannot know if I possess the ability to make sense of them.

I know that there must be at least a shred of humanity in him, however small. I have hope that along the way I might be able to find it and maybe, just maybe somehow convince him to grasp onto it.

First and foremost is my research, but to not try to help him would be to forsake my only beliefs, to turn away from my only purpose on this earth.

So I shall.