After fifteen days, Harley decided that she didn't like this pregnancy thing at all. Oh, it was all well and good in theory, but the notion put into practice was absolute hell.
She found, after fifteen very uncomfortable days, that she had a bone to pick with whoever had decided to call it 'morning' sickness. That was, in her not so humble opinion, a terrible case of false advertising and misinformation.
Thus far, she'd been sick every hour on the hour with the express exception of those that were between five and nine in the morning. Which were, according to the books on pregnancy that the Bat had supplied her with, the 'normal' hours for morning sickness to take place.
A tiny, trilling voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like the Joker had chided her that she couldn't even get pregnant right.
She was silently inclined to agreed with it.
Something inside her chest cracked when she thought of Mister J. and a fresh wave of tears threatened to overwhelm her. There had been nothing but news coverage about his death in the weeks since it occurred and with each passing broadcast it seemed more and more surreal.
It just didn't feel like he was really gone.
Of course, deep down she knew he was and she attributed her feelings on the matter to the first stage of grief: denial.
The Bat hadn't returned to see her in those two torturous weeks, which made her angry. First he kidnaps her and hides her away from the rest of the world and then he doesn't come to see her...of all the ill mannered, bad tempered--
She stopped herself right there, clenching her jaw together tightly and slamming her head into the pillow behind it.
Harley knew why he hadn't been to see her. He was too busy on riot patrol since the Joker's death became the news item du jour.
The moment the story broke, the entire city was thrown into chaos. Now that Mister J. was gone, the position of the Bat's Arch Nemesis was up for grabs, and it seemed like every two bit hood in town was after the job. There was a rash of robberies and murders, some committed by career criminals like Two-Face, while others were perpetrated by unknowns who were trying to establish themselves as serious threats to 'decent' society.
But that wasn't the weird part of the whole insane situation.
The weird part was 'The Followers' who had emerged. The newsmen called them other things, but to Harley, that was the term that sprang to mind. She first saw them when the reporters of Gotham Tonight covered the public burial of the Joker, where he was lowered into the ground in a plain pine box in an unmarked grave and then unceremoniously covered over with mud.
After the grave was closed, several Gothamites took it upon themselves to spit on it and throw things at it, all of them doing these terrible, disrespectful things without the police batting an eye.
'The Followers' were different. They were a small cluster of people who went out of their way to protect the grave where others tried to defile it, and showed a fanatical devotion to the fallen antihero.
The scum of Gotham had embraced the Joker as the ultimate man against the establishment, the perfect punk role model in a world ruled by bureaucracy and the Bat. Now that he was dead, he had risen to the status of Martyr; a man who was the first and only to stand up against the Bat and match him blow for blow, emotionally and physically. It was something that they admired and aspired to.
Something inside Harley was gleeful at the prospect of her puddin' having such a devoted following, and her heart swelled with pride when she saw them on the news.
The first day of news coverage at Mister J.'s grave, there was one in the crowd, a young man in his twenties who was wearing white grease paint smudged under his eyes. The second day, the man with the grease paint was joined by two others, these wearing dilapidated boutonnières pinned to the left sides of their shirts. On the third day there were at least a dozen, and the fourth day even more.
By the time day five rolled around, there were at least forty of them. The biggest trend amongst them seemed to be a satin arm band that was a brilliant purple, tied on the left arm as a tribute to the clown prince of crime.
There were even a couple who wore red and black strips of cloth on the opposite arm as a tribute to the Joker's fallen paramour.
The first time Harley had seen a teenage girl wearing the purple, red and black together, she had burst into tears.
She blamed it on the hormones, unable to accept that it had been triggered by the highly potent image that represented her bond to her departed beloved.
She wept because the Joker was dead; she wept because to the rest of the world she was dead; but mostly, she wept because her beautiful child would never have the chance to know its father.
Harley cried until she was spent and then slid seamlessly into a heavy sleep, brought on by a combination of emotional exhaustion and morphine.
She dreamed of grease paint colored skies and men in pretty purple suits with beautiful smiles. Here she was safe in his arms, away from all the nasty lying people who said he was dead and tried to make her believe it. Here she had a gold ring on her finger and a baby in her arms and all was right with the world. She was warm, protected and above all else loved.
When she murmured his name in her sleep, she was unaware that someone was eavesdropping on her.
Someone who narrowed his eyes briefly and left the window curtains flapping after his departure.