The Harlequin
3.
It was well into the afternoon on her day off before Harley could bring herself to open her eyes. Her throat was dry and scratchy from shouting in noisy bars, and the taste of tequila still lingered on her tongue. She moaned and rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling, trying to remember how and when she got home but coming up empty. Her phone was on the pillow beside her head, vibrating with increasing frequency to let her know she had a voicemail. Unhappily, Harley snatched it up and squinted at the cracked screen.
There were five missed calls from Blakely. Highly unusual on an average day, let alone on her only day off. Harley had no desire to speak to him - or anyone else - and flung the phone back on the bed, forcing herself to get up and wander into the kitchen where she found a half-eaten pizza on the counter. Could be worse, she thought and picked up a cold slice to settle her rolling stomach before flopping bonelessly down on the couch.
Harley spent the rest of the day in that position, watching episode after episode of The Real Housewives of Gotham and occasionally dragging herself to the kitchen for more pizza. She ordered Indian food for dinner, getting enough for her lunch the next day too, and then settled back onto the couch with every intention of staying there for the rest of the evening.
Victoria Dumas-Hill was arguing with her nephew Daryl Crowne about how he would absolutely not be wearing sneakers to her daughter's wedding when Harley's phone rang in the bedroom. She sighed, knowing intuitively it was a work call as she slumped back to her room.
Sure enough, Blakely's bloated, miserable ID picture was staring up at her as her phone vibrated and jumped on the bed. Wondering why the man could not just learn to text, Harley answered, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"Hello, Neville," she sighed, her voice raspy from not being used all day.
"Harleen," Blakely sounded both pained and relieved by the sound of her voice. "Where have you been?"
"It's my day off," she replied grumpily, falling back into bed. "I do have a life, you know." It was a lie, and the silence on the other end of the line suggested Blakely knew it.
"Listen," he started apprehensively. "There's been an incident."
His tone made Harley sit up, her irritation forgotten. "What happened?"
"The Joker," he replied slowly. "He... there was an attack on an orderly. He um, he blinded Burrows."
"What!" Harley hissed incredulously, unable to imagine the Joker attacking anyone without a good reason, let alone blinding them. "Burrows weighs like three-hundred pounds! How the hell did the Joker... blind him?"
"He..." Blakely sounded reluctant to tell her. "He... Harleen, he tore both of Burrows' eyes out. With his bare hands... And then he bit him."
Harley heard her breath catch as her hand flew up to cover her mouth.
"What do you mean he bit him?" She demanded, panic prickling at her scalp as she remembered slapping down the photo of Ted Bundy's victim and cockily informing the Joker that the bite mark was how they'd caught him.
"I mean he almost took out a piece of his face," Blakely sputtered. "I can't bring myself to look at it again."
"I'm coming in," she blurted, thanking whatever deity was listening that she'd had the foresight to delete the recording of her conversation with the Joker.
"No, no, don't do that," Blakely protested. "Burrows' wife is here, and she's threatening to sue. Walsh is on the phone with the lawyers now. You don't want to be in the middle of this tonight."
Reluctantly, Harley agreed, knowing there was nothing she could do. She said goodbye to Blakely and drifted back into the living room, feeling dazed as she sat down on the couch and returned her attention to the TV. But there was no way she could concentrate on the antics of Gotham's wealthiest citizens while she was wrestling with the fact that Burrows was laying in a hospital bed somewhere missing both his eyes because the Joker wanted to send her a message.
A message she didn't fully understand.
Maybe it was a response to the way they had parted. She'd told him he wouldn't see her again and left him sitting alone in the session room. It was possible this was to let her know he wasn't happy about that parting. That as far as he was concerned, they weren't done.
Harley got to her feet and paced her small living room, rubbing her arms as she tried to work through the Joker's motivations.
Why blind Burrows? He was one of the more obnoxious guards, and everyone knew he was prone to baiting the inmates. Was it possible that the Joker just snapped and attacked him, then left him with a bite mark as a parting gift? Something to let Harley know he'd been thinking about her?
That was the obvious answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The Joker didn't snap. Everything was controlled and planned for a long-term payoff. It was all about the payoff. So how did blinding Burrows then biting him to let Harley know he was thinking about her fit into the equation? What was the long-term payoff this time?
It was an impossible question to answer without talking to him first, but Harley would likely never be allowed in the same room with him again after this. He would be placed in solitary confinement for at least a week to cool off - even if 'punishment' didn't work on psychopaths - and during that time the other guards would be sure to take out their anger over their colleague being brutalized on him.
Harley threw herself back on the couch and covered her face with her hands, wishing she'd never checked her phone. The doorbell rang, and her head shot up, paranoia pulsing through her as she slipped down the hallway and peered through the keyhole. But it was just the delivery boy with her food, and she sighed in exasperation, feeling stupid and overwrought as she paid him and tried to plaster on a nice, normal smile.
She tried to eat, but she was too anxious and jittery to do anything but nudge pilau rice around her plate as she thought about the Joker. Her brain was circling around and around and around what the attack on Burrows meant, why he did it, how it connected to her. And she needed to talk to him again to find out.
Bribing the guards to let her speak to him was one option, but she immediately shot it down because it was embarrassingly heavy-handed. That she was considering bribery in the first place was a hard pill to swallow. It suggested she wasn't being as rational and logical as she liked to paint herself.
After spending a few more hours on the couch obsessing over the Joker's attack, Harley finally took herself to the bathroom and dug out the old sleeping pills she'd been prescribed years earlier. She took two, reasoning they were out of date and less effective, and then she curled up in her bed and waited for the blissful relief of sleep.
When Harley arrived at Arkham the next morning, she was greeted with a flood with reporters, photographers and camera crews, and when they spotted her cautiously edging towards the front gate, they pounced.
"Dr Quinzel! Does the Joker's attack on David Burrows mean he's crazier than we thought?"
"Doctor! Doctor! What is Arkham's policy for inmates if they violently attack the staff?"
"Dr Quinzel! Dr Quinzel! Why the Joker would bite an orderly?"
"Hello! Doctor! How did Vicki Vale get her hand's on Arkham's security footage?"
Harley shrugged passed the reporters, keeping her mouth shut as she squeezed through Arkham's front gate and jogged up the front steps. The chorus of voices continued to echo behind her as she passed through the reception area, making her feel both persecuted and paranoid. And that last question about Vicki Vale made her head spin.
Once safely sequestered in her office, Harley opened the Gotham Gazette's homepage on her phone.
"JOKER MUTILATES ORDERLY AT ARKHAM ASYLUM."
A split image accompanied the headline. The first half an exterior shot of Arkham, the second half a grainy still of the Joker's painted face from a CCTV camera. He was smirking sinisterly, a promise of chaos and destruction that felt just as threatening now as it had during his so-called Reign of Terror, even if now he was behind bars.
"Shit," Harley hissed, slamming her phone down on her desk.
"You look well rested."
Harley looked up to find Walsh in his coat and hat hovering in the door, a sour look on his face.
"What the hell is this!" She demanded, showing him her phone screen. "Vicki Vale says she's seen our security footage. How did Vicki Vale get her hands on our security footage?"
"Obviously we have a leak," Walsh replied thinly, wrinkling his nose. "I'm sure the board will want to call a meeting to discuss."
"A leak?" Harley laughed, bewildered. "Who would leak our CCTV footage to the media?"
"Go about your day, as usual, Quinzel," Walsh snapped. "Blakely and I still need to go over this Joker interview with you."
Harley watched Walsh leave with her eyes narrowed, knowing instinctively that something was not right about how he was handling this. Arkham had never had a leak before, and Harley had seen plenty of things covered up in the time she'd been there. But the Joker attacking an orderly and the footage being released less than twenty-four hours later? Something about that wasn't right.
When it was time to go over the admission interview with Walsh and Blakely, both men feebly scolded her for not recording the third session which Harley was now more relieved than ever to have deleted. It wasn't a very productive conversation, all three of them were flustered and distracted knowing there was a hoard of reporters right outside the asylum, dogging every person who passed through the gates for a comment.
Harley learned the Joker had been taken to solitary confinement and that he would be there for a full week which sounded more lenient than she would have expected. All day, as she attempted to focus on her work, she was aware that the Joker was locked up in a small stone room three stories below her underground, and she had to convince herself multiple times that she wouldn't attempt to see him. She wanted to ask him why he'd attacked Burrows, but the question was more loaded than that, and Harley didn't want to want to ask as badly as she did.
Some reporters were still at the gate when Harley's shift finished at 6 PM. She still had work to get through and usually would have stuck around for a few more hours to finish it, but she was too distracted, and the only thing that would help clear her head was training.
She caught the metro a few stops past Crowne Towers to her gym and changed into a leotard and leggings there, then set about warming up on the mat, absorbing the familiar sounds of the gym to help focus her mind. She wasn't quite in the shape she'd been in as a teenager, but she was still strong and fast. The physical exertion and need for precision gymnastics required made it easy for her to block everything else out while she trained, which was precisely why she still did it.
After stretching, she pulled herself up on the beam, her favorite station, and worked on an old routine. She nearly fell three times before she found the concentration she needed to jump and leap and twist high in the air with only a few inches of leather and wood to catch herself on. Soon she felt that beloved sense of control return, even if the Joker and Arkham were hovering just over her shoulder. So she pushed herself harder, and harder, and harder, not stopping until the gym's janitor finally waved her out and locked the door behind her.
Harley was already awake when her alarm started singing the next morning. She slapped a hand down on her cracked screen to silence the birds and sighed unhappily as she thought about the monotony of the day ahead of her. It would be the same as the day before, perhaps less stressful with fewer reporters, but no different really. Uncharacteristic paranoia made Harley feel the need to check the Gazette's homepage, to make sure Vicki Vale wasn't reporting anything that would affect her day.
Her brow creased when she read the headline, not by Vale but another Gazette writer reporting that the Batman had been spotted in the warehouse district of Tricorner the night before. A year earlier, Batman sightings were a dime a dozen, but since Harvey Dent's murder the Batman had only been seen a handful of times, and those reports were often sensationalist stories blaming him for crimes that couldn't otherwise be explained. But this time there had been a full-blown police chase leading the GCPD to an abandoned warehouse. They'd lost him there, but when they searched the warehouse, they found the last of the Scarecrow's fear toxin, which was now in the custody of the MCU.
Harley drummed her fingers on her upper lip, trying to figure out the best way to share this news with Crane while also getting more information out of him. She was still interested in this whole R'as al Ghul story, even if he said it was superfluous. To be honest, Harley could do with some superfluous material in her life. If Crane had a fantastical story about a ninja from Tibet wanting his help to develop a drug that would turn Gotham into a psychotic hell hole well... of course Harley had questions.
She climbed out of bed, mulling over her strategy as she limped to the bathroom. Her body was aching from training too hard the night before, but it was satisfying. It made her feel like she'd worked for it. Her old gymnastics instructor's voice still lingered in the back of her head, telling her that if she wasn't hurting, she wasn't working hard enough. Similar to her PhD mentor's voice, most certainly still in her head, telling her if she didn't feel she had the right answers, she wasn't working hard enough.
Oh, sure. With parental substitutes like those, who wouldn't have 'emotional issues.'
The shower was lukewarm, just like it was every morning, and Harley stepped beneath the spray feeling like she wanted to rip the shower head out of the wall.
There was only a trickle of reporters outside Arkham when Harley arrived for work. She ran into Rosa on her way from the station, and together they breezed past the remaining media, Rosa muttering aggressively in Spanish under her breath which Harley agreed with whole-heartedly.
It was Tuesday, and Harley's new workload included trialing the latest Elliot drug on inmates who had committed non-violent crimes but were still deemed unfit for Federal prison or Blackgate due to their mental health. This was part of the reason Blakely had been weeding out the mob types Crane had declared criminally insane to keep them out of prison, but there were almost certainly a few of them left in the bunch.
Take Sammy 'The Snake' Romano, as he called himself. Harley watched the orderlies strap him into the chair in the A Wing session room and felt personally offended when he started performing 'duhhh's and 'dohhh I dunno doc's for her when she'd seen him speaking thoroughly competently to the orderlies out in the hall.
Harley tapped off the recorder and folded her arms over her chest, her mouth puckering.
"Why don't we cut the shit," she suggested. "You're sane. You're one of the mob's lackeys that Crane put in here."
Sammy looked between the tape recorder on the table and Harley's unamused face then offered her a lascivious smirk.
"I like your style, sweetheart, "he chuckled. "Falcone paid Crane enough to keep me in here. I got one more year, and I'm out."
"I don't know if you're aware," Harley replied flatly. "But both Falcone and Crane are locked up just down the hall."
"Sure, I'm aware," Sammy shrugged. "Lemme tell you something, go have a word with Sal Maroni. He'll take care of ya so long as you keep your mouth shut."
"Mr Romano," Harley stood slowly, slipping her hands into her lab coat as she rounded the table. "I can keep you in here, legitimately if you like." She braced her hip against the table and peered down at him. "A few rounds of electroshock therapy, maybe a few... experimental drug trials. You'll fit right in, hmm?"
She met his gaze evenly, a smirk slipping onto her lips when she saw his entitled mob enforcer schtick fall apart. Now he looked nervous.
"Look, uh... Doc, I didn't mean to cause offense," Sammy backtracked carefully.
"Sure you didn't," Harley waved at the CCTV camera and the session room's door buzzed loudly before unlocking, allowing two orderlies to come in.
"So, what's gonna happen?" Sammy demanded as the orderlies unchained his feet from the floor and forced him to stand so they could frogmarch him out. "Hey, doc, whaddya gonna do!"
"I guess you'll just have to wait and see," Harley replied airily, enjoying watching him panic as they dragged him away.
But she felt rattled once he was gone, unsure where that burst of sadism had come from. She considered herself to be quite a nice person even if she could be a little... relentless in her pursuits occasionally. The inmates were rude and abusive to her all the time, but she never let it get to her - or at least that's what she told herself.
Not sure how to feel about her behavior, Harley acted on an impulse that had been nagging her for two whole days. She took the elevator down to the basement, determined to get some clarity on at least one thing that was been bothering her.
It was wet and dank in the basement; the walls made from crumbling brick and mortar inlaid with rusted iron. There were lower levels still, where patients used to be tortured a hundred years earlier - or even a year ago when Crane was in charge. Solitary confinement was one level above that, still deep underground and only a shade above torture if leaving a person alone for a week at a time could be considered anything less. That was the point of solitary, to punish and control the inmates.
Harley wasn't sure the Joker could be either punished or controlled.
Chavez and Fogarty were standing guard outside the small iron door leading into the solitary wing. They were talking in low voices with their heads close together; a phone squeezed between them — the Gazette article about Burrows, no doubt.
"Hi," Harley said, sounding tired. She was exhausted, physically, and emotionally.
They both turned to look at her, looking like they'd been caught at something. They exchanged a glance before Fogarty headed for the elevator to give Harley and Chavez some privacy.
"How can I help you, Dr Quinzel?" Chavez asked, polite but suspicious.
Harley shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said awkwardly, shoving her hands into her lab coat and looking at the damp floor before she raised her eyes to Chavez. "Has he mentioned me?" She asked quietly, knowing she was making herself vulnerable, but somehow feeling it was better to know and be vulnerable than to not.
"Well," Chavez's face twisted, he looked conflicted. "Yes, he asked about you this morning."
"Right," Harley nodded slowly, unsure how to feel.
"Did he get in your head?" Chavez asked sympathetically, and Harley sighed unhappily, hoping it wasn't as apparent to everyone else.
"Can we keep this," she gestured between them. "Between us."
He nodded, giving her a tight smile. "Sure thing."
Harley returned to her office, feeling drained and confused, and the only thing she could think of to do was go to the gym and train. So that's what she did, training hard until the gym closed and she had nowhere to go but home.
It was Wednesday morning, and Harley couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. That was roughly when she decided she was depressed and should probably see a doctor about it. It had been a stressful week. Interviewing the Joker and coping with the repercussions of his attack on Burrows. An attack she was sure was a message for her, something she was glad no one else knew. But she was disgusted with herself for letting him 'get in her head' like Chavez suggested. It made sense that she would be overwhelmed and depressed; she just needed to make an appointment with a doctor, she told herself. Or maybe open up about her past to a therapist, work through her feelings, take up yoga and meditation. That all sounded reasonable and normal.
But then she saw the headline on the Gotham Gazette's homepage, and everything changed.
"INCOMPETENCE AND CORRUPTION: ARKHAM DOCTOR HARLEEN QUINZEL MISMANAGED JOKER CASE"
Somehow, Vicki Vale had gotten her hands both on the Joker's admission interview and a source to tell her about the process of completing the interview. Vale also named Harley as the psychologist in charge of Arkham's drug trials, all but refocusing the whole Elliot Pharmaceutical scandal entirely on her.
"Quinzel, it is reported, found it difficult to be in the same room as the Joker, potentially due to her inexperience. She has worked at Arkham for less than a year, primarily running the institution's corruption-plagued drug testing for Elliot Pharmaceutical, leading some to suggest that she should never have been assigned the Joker's case, which has been marked by mismanagement and incompetence thus far..."
Harley jumped out of bed, fuming as she hurriedly tied back her hair and got dressed, skipping her lukewarm shower and other morning routines.
Oh no, she was not depressed. She was fucking furious.
When Harley got to Arkham, late for her shift and wearing wrinkled trousers with a shirt buttoned too low, the media were at the gate again. This time they were there just for her, wanting her comment on the Gazette's story, or anything she had to say about her work for Elliot Pharmaceutical and the Kane Company. Oh, and if she blamed herself for the maiming of David Burrows.
No doubt whoever had leaked the CCTV footage of the Joker's attack on Burrows had also leaked the admission interview and given Vale a highly edited rendition of how the interview had been completed. There was a tiny pool of people who could have provided all three to Vale, and at the top of Harley's list of suspects was Walsh. She went to his office before she went to her own, but his secretary told her he would arrive later that morning to meet with the board.
Harley had utterly forgotten about the board meeting, which was now sure to focus on her and the asylum's leaking problems. She headed for her office to calm herself down, her suspicions over Walsh running wild. What she couldn't understand was why. Why would Walsh want to make Arkham look bad?
Members of staff popped their heads into Harley's office all morning to tell her how outrageous everything Vicki Vale said about her was. How the Gazette was nothing but a rag that printed sensationalist stories, and all of Gotham knew Vale was a hack with no credibility. The solidarity with her colleagues was nice, but Harley was still fuming, making it nearly impossible to get any work done at her desk, and by lunchtime she gave up, pulling on her lab coat and storming down to B Wing, where the only person she could speak to resided.
Crane looked up from his copy of Horney's The Neurotic Personality of Our Time when Harley blew into his cell, the door slamming shut behind her with a CLANG and a loud buzz as she flung herself into the chair beside his cot.
"Harleen," he nodded at her, setting his book aside and crossing his slippered feet at the ankle. "I take it something is wrong?"
Harley smoothed back her hair and tightened the bun at the back of her head, trying to collect herself.
"The Joker attacked an orderly," she started, and then explained the ordeal with Burrows, the leak of the CCTV footage, and now the admission interview leak and Vicki Vale's depiction of Harley. She refrained from mentioning the biting - Crane did not need to know about that.
"Walsh," Crane's lip curled when she'd finished.
"Exactly," Harley spat. "But I don't understand why."
"I couldn't tell you," Crane replied thinly. "Except to say that he believes he will somehow gain from... exploiting the Joker's presence here."
"He's a second away from letting the trust fund brigade pay to see him," Harley shook her head. "Like a sideshow."
Crane exhaled loudly through his nose, his mouth pinched. "He has turned my asylum into a joke," he said bitterly.
"There's more," Harley added, not voicing aloud that it was Crane who had destroyed Arkham's reputation. "Your fear toxin. The MCU found a supply of it at a warehouse in Tricorner." She pulled her phone out of her lab coat and found the story on the Gotham Gazette's website, then handed her phone to Crane, only realizing once he had it that she was giving an inmate her phone, giving him access to all manner of problematic things. Maybe she was incompetent after all.
Crane read the article, his lips twitching sourly, and when he passed Harley back her phone, his hand was trembling.
"The Batman," he hissed through clenched teeth, his nostrils flaring in anger. "I don't know why I'm surprised he's back."
Harley's eyebrows jumped up into her forehead. "The Batman?" She frowned, confused. "They chased him into the warehouse - it sounds like it was an accident they found it at all."
"Oh, please, Harleen," Crane sneered. "It's no accident. The city was demoralized after the Joker's psychotic clown show and without Harvey Dent to stop them, the mob is up and running again. If the Batman thinks it's business as usual for Sal Maroni he could never stay away, regardless of if the city hates him or not."
"You know an awful lot about the mob," Harley narrowed her eyes, watching Crane's pale blue eyes dart away from hers. "And the Batman."
He licked his lips, looking like he was being forced to eat something foul. "Carmine Falcone's drug routes into the city were the easiest way for me to import the blue flower I needed to make the fear toxin. I had to go into business with him, which meant doing each other... favors outside of the remit of our original agreement."
"Oh..." Harley replied dumbly, taken aback by this revelation.
"Harleen," Crane twisted, so he was facing her fully, his pale eyes projecting urgency. "I like to think we can trust each other."
"I think we can," she confirmed warily.
"You know I am not insane," Crane continued. "I do not belong in here."
Harley's eyes widened. "Don't ask me that," she said before he could go any further. "You know what you did was illegal and even if you don't belong in here that means you belong in Blackgate, and I don't want to see you in there. At least here it's... comfortable."
"Comfortable," Crane sneered. "How quaint."
Harley indulged Crane for as long as she could, edging him away from escaping Arkham - which in itself made her doubt his mental competency - and eventually, she made her excuses and left, hoping he would come to his senses before she next saw him.
Then it was time for the board meeting, which she was dreading. They usually were dull, administrative affairs, or otherwise focused on Harley's work for Elliot, but today she had a feeling it would be something completely different.
Around a large mahogany table inlaid with gold leaf swirls sat two women and four men, all looking grim. There was Marie Kane from the Kane Company and her cousin, Jacob Kane, a middle-aged alcoholic still living off his trust fund. Between them was their nephew Bobby Kane, a playboy philanderer the whole city knew from his role on Made in the Diamond District and frequent appearances in the tabloids. The other board members were elderly, aristocratic types with links to the Arkham family. An old man who looked like he'd been around since the asylum had been built, a woman wearing a dead fox around her neck and a look on her face like she was smelling sewage, and a distant relation of Jeremiah Arkham who bore a creepy resemblance to the asylum founder's portrait hanging on the wall behind him.
Harley sat beside Blakely and prepared herself, ignoring the anxious looks he was shooting her.
"Dr Quinzel," Marie Kane said with a tight smile, an excess of plastic surgery limiting her facial mobility. "These are unusual circumstances. We've been so happy with your work for the asylum thus far."
"Thus far?" Harley replied indignantly, struggling not to look to Blakely for help.
"Dr Quinzel," the Arkham relation butted in. "The board is very concerned with how much negative press the Joker is bringing the asylum."
"As am I," Harley countered, folding her arms across her chest defensively.
"Dr Walsh says you think it would be best to treat the Joker with talk therapy," Arkham's relation rolled his eyes. "Do you truly think that will keep him from murdering and maiming the staff? Wouldn't it be better to keep him in his cell as was originally agreed until he's moved again?"
"I don't think that," Harley protested, bewildered, she turned to find Walsh and scowled at him. "I do not think the Joker would benefit from talk therapy."
"Dr Quinzel, your specialty is pharmacology," Marie Kane was saying. "What medications have you prescribed the Joker?"
"None," Harley replied curtly, and all members of the board began to mumble discontentedly amongst themselves. "He is not receiving treatment of any kind!" She half-shouted over the din of voices.
"No medication at all?" The woman wearing a fox demurred, fingering the tail of the stuffed animal. "That is very concerning, Ms Quinzel."
"Why wouldn't you medicate him?" Jacob Kane looked aghast. "He's a monster!"
"I'd need drugs just to be around that guy," Bobby Kane chuckled.
"I think you've made a grave mistake there, Dr Qunizel," Arkham's relation shook his head, disappointed. "Perhaps if he had been medicated he would not have attacked Mr Burrows."
"We agreed that there would be no treatment," Harley insisted. Her skin was starting to feel hot, and she was struggling to stay seated. "That includes medication and therapy. All we have done is complete the admission interview at your request."
"The citizens of Gotham want to feel safe," Arkham's relation shook his head. "That is why the Joker is here - it is the safest place for him - but if there are orderlies being blinded and bitten we can't claim to be making the city feel safe, can we?"
The elderly man agreed heartily. "Indeed! Instead, they're treated to yet more fear!"
"That's another point," said Marie Kane. "How did that footage leak?"
"We're looking into it," Walsh spoke up quickly. "Dr Quinzel, you will no longer be working with the Joker. Your time is more valuable spent elsewhere."
The look on Walsh's face suggested he thought nothing about Harley was valuable.
"Yes, I agree," the woman with the fox intoned. "Dr Walsh, couldn't you make time to... deal with him?"
"I shall try to make time, Magda," Walsh said firmly, a shitty little smile on his shitty little face. "But truly, it may be interesting to speak with him say, for the sake of a book?"
"Isn't it a little soon for a book?" Marie Kane frowned. "Shouldn't we give Gotham time to heal?"
"Of course, of course," Walsh agreed airily. "But eventually, perhaps... we would interview him for a book..."
"So long as it's you speaking to him and not Ms Quinzel," Magda agreed, eyeing Harley warily.
Harley had a sudden vision of strangling her with the fox.
"Yes, no doubt Dr Quinzel is talented in other ways," Arkham's relation added, frowning at Harley as if she was something he didn't fully understand. "But I think we can all agree she has failed with the Joker."
Harley's eyes widened, and her mouth nearly fell open, unable to believe what she was hearing.
"Yes, yes. Quinzel is off the Joker's case, we all agree she's not qualified," Walsh placated.
Harley looked down the table at him, her mouth puckered, and her eyes blazing. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, warning her to keep her mouth shut, the coward.
"Superb," Magda reached for her cane and began to stand. "It's a dreadful situation. I don't know how you put up with it, Murphy."
"Ah, well.." Walsh shrugged and gave her a confident smile. "It's what I signed up for."
Feeling as though there was a small bomb about to go off inside her, Harley stood and marched out of the room, not able to listen to whatever else Walsh might have to say. She turned left and then right and then left again, so flushed with anger and humiliation that she wasn't paying attention to her route - she just needed to keep moving.
Suddenly it all made sense. Walsh wanted to write a book about the Joker, and he was testing the water with the leaks. He allowed Harley to take the blame for the bad press they'd received, her 'incompetence' with the Joker was to blame, not the actual leaks themselves. Then he left her to be ravaged by a board who only knew what Walsh told them.
They were cowards and fools.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her vision started to blur around the edges, the hallway in front of her twisting like a funhouse. She imagined what it would feel like to rip out Walsh's beady little eyes with her fingers just like the Joker had done to Burrows. Just slip her thumbs in and pluck them right out while he screamed for her to stop. But she wouldn't stop. She wouldn't even try to stop herself.
Her vision took on a red tint, like dye released in water, and she stumbled, grabbing the wall to keep herself upright. The hallway was still shifting and twisting from side to side, and though she could feel her feet on the ground, the rest of her seemed to rise up, up and away like a balloon released in the wind. She lost her balance and slipped down the wall to sit on the floor, her head falling back against the old stones.
"Harleen!"
Blakely was squatting in front of her, shining his penlight in her eyes, his expression concerned as he took her pulse.
She felt herself return to her body; the balloon popped and fluttered back down to earth, and the red slowly retreated from her vision as Blakely's weary face came into sharp focus.
"Nurse!"
"No," she mumbled sluggishly, grabbing his arm. She cleared her throat, trying to pull herself together. "No, I'm okay. I'm just... hungover," she lied weakly.
Blakely shook his head. "I'm sorry for what happened in the board meeting. Walsh is awful."
"Awful," Harley chuckled, still sitting on the ground with her head against the wall. She didn't feel ready to move yet.
"You should go home," Blakely said, his mouth forming a hard, thin line. He reached for her wrist to take her pulse. "You're very pale."
Harley nodded weakly, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of Arkham. She let Blakely help her to her feet and walk with her - but not hold her arm - to her office. Once there, she offered him a strained smile as she exchanged her lab coat for her jacket.
"I'm okay," she promised, shrugging on her jacket, even as Blakely continued to stare at her with deep concern wrinkling his face. "I'll just go home and rest."
At Blakely's insistence, she let him call her a cab. There were still reporters at the gate, and Harley's head was still spinning, so it was a relief to be tucked in the back of a taxi instead of having to wade through the journalists and photographers shouting at her. Once the car sneaked out the front gates, the guard shouting at the reporters to move aside, and pulled onto Elizabeth Arkham Avenue, Harley finally exhaled a breath she'd been holding since she'd fallen in the corridor.
What the fuck was happening.
The next day was Thursday, and much to Harley's relief, there were no reporters outside Arkham. She arrived well in advance of her shift to start making a dent in the work that was steadily piling up on her desk and tried to tell herself that everything was fine. As if her boss hadn't had her slandered in the press to help him garner interest in a book about the Joker. When she thought about it, it made her so angry she had to stop what she was doing and take a deep breath, promising herself that Walsh would get what he deserved, eventually. Whether that be poor book sales, a knife in the gut from a mugging gone wrong (so typical in Gotham) or a slow and painful death from some slow and painful form of cancer.
These were dark thoughts, but they calmed her down enough so she could get back to her work.
At lunchtime, she caught the metro over to the University District just south of Downtown. She had a lunch date with her mentor Dr Joan Leland, the head of criminology at Gotham University.
They met at a cafe on campus near the psych building where they ordered tea and panini, reliving lunches they'd shared while Harley was still working toward her PhD.
Joan was in her sixties and aging gracefully, just like she did everything else. Her light ebony skin was still smooth, and she kept her black hair in a short, practical bob. Everything about Joan was practical, from her neat pastel pantsuits to her approach to clinical psychology. When she was younger, Harley had tried to emulate this practical grace in every way she could. She'd always thought if she could be like Joan Leland, then she would have finally made it. Practical, graceful, respected. That was all twenty-one-year-old Harley had ever wanted.
They spoke about the new teachers who had been granted tenure over the summer and how the latest batch of post-grad students were handling their first year, and as she always did Joan attempted to convince Harley to come back to Gotham University to teach. Now more than ever, Harley was resistant to the idea, but she said she would consider it, just like she always did.
Finally, Joan got around to the real reason she'd asked Harley to come for lunch.
"How are you holding up, Harleen?" She asked over her cup of tea. "It was beastly of the Gazette to publish those lies about you."
Harley sighed, not sure how she was supposed to talk about any of this without getting worked up, something she could never allow Joan to see.
"I'm not doing well," she admitted, thinking back to the previous day when she'd nearly fainted. "I'm trying to focus on work."
"I think that's best," Joan nodded. "This will pass, as everything does. You're always so calm and collected, Harleen. It's very impressive."
Harley smiled thinly and took a sip of her tea to hide her face.
"How is Neville?" Joan continued, entirely skipping the obvious topic of the Joker. Harley knew Joan believed he wasn't worth their mental energy, just as she had believed before seeing him in person that first day nearly two weeks ago when he'd been admitted. Then everything had changed.
"He's fine," Harley replied, her mind now on the Joker. "Stressed from everything that's happened lately. I hope he retires soon."
Joan nodded, understanding. "And how's your personal life?"
Harley raised her eyebrows at this because Joan never asked her about her personal life. Joan's life, like Harley's, was dedicated to her work, though lately, Harley had been thinking a 'personal life' might be something she was missing. But what was she supposed to do, get on a dating app? Force herself to go to clubs with Dana for the sake of saying she had a personal life?
"Fine," Harley answered evasively.
"No young men in your life?" Joan pushed.
"No," Harley said shortly, wondering why she was suddenly being pushed on this by the woman she'd modeled her life on, including her lack of personal life.
"You had a few boyfriends when you were here," Joan said thoughtfully.
Wrong, Harley thought but didn't say out loud. She'd had a few (quite a few) flings while she'd been getting her PhD, but never boyfriends or relationships.
"I know you find it difficult..." Joan continued slowly, meeting Harley's eye. "After what happened when you were in undergrad."
"I suppose," Harley said cooly, trying to hide her irritation that Joan would bring that up. That had been traumatizing. That had been when she stopped going by 'Harley.' That had been when she'd refocused and found her calling. The only reason Joan knew about that was because she had been the therapist the University assigned Harley after that had happened, and they had never spoken about it since.
"That was a long time ago," Harley said calmly. "I work eighty-hour weeks. That doesn't leave much time for a personal life."
"And are you sure you find that kind of work rewarding?" Joan frowned. "We put the same hours in here, but at least we're... doing something important."
Harley should have been annoyed that Joan was suggesting the work she did at Arkham wasn't important, but after the last week, she was inclined to agree. Corruption and incompetence ran amok both at the asylum and among their benefactors at Kane, but that did not make the academic life Joan was dangling in front of her any more appealing. At least at Arkham, she was working with interesting people. Academia was so... dry.
"Tell me about what you're working on at the moment," Harley pivoted before Joan could accidentally convince her she didn't want to live any of the lives she had spent years studying and preparing for.
On the metro home that evening, Harley contemplated buying a bottle (or two) of wine to help her relax. She was back to thinking she should probably make an appointment to see a doctor about prescribing her an anti-depressant. Or maybe muscle relaxers considering every time she saw or thought about Walsh her hands twitched into fists.
She skipped the wine and ordered Thai food, enough to feed a village so she wouldn't have to think about sustenance for a few days. Then she changed into her pajamas and made a cup of tea before flopping on the couch to watch an episode of Made in the Diamond District.
Harley yawned as she clicked on the TV, her eyelids already heavy as she flipped through channels, stopping short when she was abruptly confronted with the image of Walsh.
Walsh on TV.
Walsh sitting across from Mike Engel on the nightly news.
"No fucking way," she muttered. An anxious feeling crept into the pit of her stomach, and she sat up a little straighter, her sleepiness vanishing.
"Tell us, if you can," Engel was saying, his face composed in a frown of professional interest. "Why are people saying that Arkham is corrupt and mismanaged?"
"That is fundamentally incorrect," Walsh replied breezily, squinting at Engel through his piggy little eyes. "It's possible that the specter of Jonathan Crane still looms over Arkham. Now, I understand it's a scary old building, and that's fine, but there has been great change in the last year when the board brought me in. We don't get enough credit for that. Remember, no one wanted that job. Crane left a huge mess for me to clean up, but we got there in the end. Now Arkham is a high functioning facility that meets every code of conduct laid out by both the city and the state."
"How is it that Jonathan Crane came to be Director of Arkham?" Engel pressed. "It seems he was given a lot of power very quickly. How did the board not realize who they were hiring?"
"Well, Jonathan Crane is an incredibly intelligent man," Walsh explained. "And he's also a sociopath. You see, the sociopath is an extremely manipulative personality with absolutely no capacity for empathy. You'll often find sociopaths to be very high functioning, successful people, like a high achieving person on Wall Street. Climbing the corporate ladder without concern for how their efforts affect others. This is how Jonathan Crane became so successful so young."
Engel looked troubled. "And how would you characterize the Joker?" He asked slowly. "It seems clear that success in a traditional sense was not of interest to him."
"Yes, yes, of course," Walsh plastered on a sympathetic smile for Engel, who had been one of the Joker's hostages during the 'Reign of Terror.' "We refer to him as Inmate 0801 - we don't like to encourage him in his ah, clown fantasy. It's very destructive to allow a patient to continue living out their delusions."
Harley scoffed at this misrepresentation of the Joker, and Engel didn't look convinced by the analysis either.
Walsh carried on, not noticing.
"Inmate 0801 is a psychopath, a lower functioning, more violent version of Crane's affliction. Inmate 0801 is a nihilist and a sadist. He has no capacity for empathy, he has no conscience, and he does not see the difference between good and evil."
Wrong, Harley thought on the last point.
"You say since you joined Arkham, there's been a reformation," Engel said, looking like he'd had enough discussion about the Joker for one lifetime. "But Neville Blakely worked under Crane for five years, and he was also assigned to the Joker. Doesn't that worry you?"
"Neville Blakely is a man of fine character who has worked at Arkham for over thirty years," Walsh said with a simpering smile that suggested he was full of shit. "He is highly, highly qualified to speak to and treat Inmate 0801. However, as I mentioned, 0801 is a sadistic psychopath, and as Gotham saw first hand, he likes to play games with people. Dr Blakely, well, he's a grandfather. I can certainly understand how 0801 could get under his skin to the point of Neville not being able to do his job."
Harley cringed, hoping Blakely wasn't watching. The anxious feeling in her stomach grew stronger.
"When Dr Blakely was removed from the Joker's case, you could have brought in a specialist or treated him yourself, but you assigned Harleen Quinzel. Some are suggesting she was only given the job because she's a woman."
"Oh God," Harley buried her face in her hands, knowing she was going to loathe what was coming next.
"Well, that's simply not true!" Walsh huffed boorishly. "Harleen Quinzel is an outstanding psychologist, specifically in a research capacity. That's why we brought her into Arkham, for her outstanding clinical work, which she continues to do for us. Now, I know some people are saying she's too inexperienced, too naïve, too idealistic, what have you. But the reality is she's young and eager to prove herself. I, for one, applaud that mindset, and as her mentor, of course, I want to encourage that behavior."
Harley lifted her head to stare at the television. The mug she was holding fell out of her hand and landed with a dull thud on the carpet, tea spilling across the floor.
"And do you regret putting someone as inexperienced as Dr Quinzel in the same room as the Joker?"
Harley stood up swiftly, her jaw clenched, and her eyes stinging from staring so hard at the screen.
"You know, I don't. It's true, perhaps her not being well-versed in working with dangerous inmates may have emboldened Inmate 0801 and led to the maiming of David Burrows. It's possible, but we'll never know for sure. What I do know is Dr Quinzel was able to get 0801 to answer questions about his past, which is very, very impressive. Now, does that information make up for the fact that a man has lost his sight? It's hard for me to justify that statement, but I stand by every one of my employees even though -"
Unable to hear any more about her own alleged incompetence, Harley flew at the television, grabbing the screen and flinging it to the floor where it bounced and cracked.
She shrieked in frustration and looked wildly around the room, her eyes settling on the lamp beside the couch. Her breath left her in a ragged pant as she grabbed the lamp and fell to her knees beside the TV, slamming it down on the screen. It shattered in her fist, a long piece of glass embedding in the side of her hand, making her hiss in pain and frustration.
"Oh, fuck," she gasped, sitting back on her heels and cradling her hand to her chest. "Fuck," she said again, more quietly, and let her head fall forward.
She sat there for a while, breathing deeply as she tried to control her emotions. They were spinning wildly, hate and anger and resentment, and she was clinging to her rational understanding that none of those feelings were helpful. None of those were okay to feel. She could not act on them. She could not.
Still feeling like she would snap if anything new caught her off guard, Harley forced herself to her feet and stumbled to the bathroom. Rivulets of blood were dripping down her forearm, landing in fat drops on the carpet, but she hardly felt pain from the wound. She pulled out the shard of glass with tweezers then disinfected the cut before applying a bandage. She estimated she wouldn't need stitches but wrapped her hand in medical tape, trying to make it look like an injury from gymnastics.
When she'd finished, she sat down slowly on the toilet seat and covered her face with her un-bandaged hand, feeling lost.
Then she took two of those old sleeping pills and went to bed.
It was morning again. Friday. Harley woke up to birds singing sweetly. Her eyes opened, and she inhaled sharply as she remembered the night before.
She wasn't angry, and she wasn't depressed, but she was scared in a way she hadn't been in years. Not since that happened.
But there was nothing to do about it except move on and make a doctor's appointment to look into medication options. She kept meaning to do that.
Harley numbly went about her morning routine before she cleaned up what she could of the broken television and lamp. She rode the elevator down to the lobby with her drone-like neighbors and parted from them to get on the train to the Narrows. She walked up the street to Arkham, telling herself everything would be okay if she held it together for one more day. And then the day after that. And then the day after that.
And so on.
A few hours into her day, Walsh's secretary Lynette came down to Harley's office. She looked nervous, probably because she'd also seen her boss's interview on GCN the night before.
"Dr Quinzel?" She said, poking her head through the partially opened door. "Marie Kane wants to invite you to lunch with her this afternoon. Will that be a problem?"
Harley wanted to groan and pound on her desk with her fists. Lunch with Marie Kane was the last thing she wanted. But she nodded dutifully and told Lynette to send her the details.
A few hours later on her way into Midtown, Harley was mulling over why Marie Kane wanted to take her for lunch, but all she could come up with was that she was being fired in person.
Marie seemed to think it was appropriate to take Harley to lunch at the Ritz, and as Harley waited with the maître d' she looked around the Neptune's Palace-themed restaurant feeling woefully out of place. There were just so many mermaid murals and golden tridents... Even in her current mood, with her bandaged hand still throbbing, she almost wanted to laugh, or cry, or maybe throw herself on the floor and pitch a massive tantrum.
"I'm so sorry I'm late!" Marie gushed when she arrived, a silk Hermes scarf around her neck and a designer bag swinging from her wrist.
Once they were seated at Marie's favorite table (beneath a bronze sculpture of Neptune) and given their menus, Marie leaned in conspiratorially, and Harley leaned in too, intrigued.
"Dr Quinzel, I want you to know how impressed I was with how you handled the board meeting," she said, trying for sincere even though her paralyzed eyebrows made it difficult for her to convey anything.
"Thank you," Harley said cautiously, bewildered because she most certainly had not handled it well at all.
"I don't know why Murphy insisted on throwing you under the bus to explain this bad press, but you know Magda and Elias, they're just... old fashioned, and the rest tend to go along with them." She sighed, trying to make her face sympathetic. "You know we believe you do excellent work at Arkham, and I couldn't possibly imagine what speaking to that... monster must have been like."
"Thank you, Mrs Kane," Harley said politely, unsure where she was going with this.
"So I just wanted to make sure," Marie gave her a supportive little smile. "That we're all still on the same page about the new Elliot products. I wouldn't want this... pressure from the media to make you unwilling to work with us."
Harley hadn't even considered not continuing her work for them, and Marie suggesting she might made Harley all the more suspicious that there was something nefarious going on at Elliot Pharmaceutical.
"I'm not going anywhere, Mrs Kane," Harley smiled her most genuine smile, and she could see Marie physically relax.
Oh yeah. Whatever it was, it was really bad.
Marie's eyes suddenly lit up when she spotted something behind Harley, giving a delighted little laugh as she pushed her chair back and got to her feet.
Harley looked over her shoulder and was surprised to see two men she recognized and a tall woman she didn't. One of the men she knew from the brochure she'd been given when she bought her apartment. Weak-chinned with a full head of gray hair, it was Bertrum Crowne, the CEO of the Crowne Group. The second man she recognized from the files Gordon had given her. His mug shot had been there. Salvatore Maroni.
"Bertie, what a lovely surprise!" Marie cooed as the trio made their way over to their table, all smiles and happy sounds as they kissed Marie on both cheeks.
"And Sal! You never make it up this way around lunchtime."
"Bertie convinced me the Ritz do a good steak. How could I say no?" Maroni smirked, allowing Marie to kiss him.
"Sofia, it's so lovely to see you," Marie continued, giving the statuesque, rail-thin woman a hug. "We have so missed you in Gotham. It's a delight to have you back. Though I can't imagine growing weary of Italy!"
"Five years was long enough," Sofia, purred, her heavy-lidded eyes drifting to Harley when Marie released her.
Harley couldn't help but think there was something intentionally grotesque about this woman. From her talon-like nails and gaunt cheeks to her Christmas ornament-sized wedding ring and painfully high heels. She looked Harley over, her red lips curling ironically.
"And who is your friend, Marie," she asked in that same sultry purr.
"How rude of me!" Marie tittered. "This is Dr Harleen Quinzel, from Arkham Asylum."
Harley stood and offered her hand to each of them, her attention lingering on Maroni.
"Nice to meet ya, Dr Quinzel," Maroni's eyes jumped from Harley's tight bun to her sensible leather shoes, and his smirk seemed to grow as if there was something deeply amusing about how she looked. He radiated entitlement and power, and as Harley met his eye, she tried to remember what she could from Dent's investigation into him. Dangerous. Corrupt. Slippery. So why was he having lunch at the Ritz with trust fund brigade types? And how did Marie know him so well?
"Nice to meet you all," Harley said politely.
"Oh, Bertie, you should invite Dr Quinzel to the gala next month!" Marie clapped her hands together. "Lulu would adore her."
"Absolutely!" Crowne beamed at Harley, but she could tell it was for Marie's sake. "We'll get your invite in the mail."
"You'll have to excuse us," Sofia purred. "We have a reservation at the cigar lounge Downtown."
"Oh, Sofia," Marie gushed. "You're so brave going to those boys' clubs!"
Sofia's upper lip curled into something between a smirk and a grimace as she agreed that yes, she was very brave.
When Harley and Marie were alone again, the conversation turned frivolous. Marie told Harley about her daughter Faffy Kane-Hill's wedding plans ("Of course once she marries Kenneth she'll just be Faffy Kane - don't tell anyone, but Kenneth is actually her second cousin twice removed!") and how her cousin Jacob was running the publishing arm of Kane into the ground, ("He's like a miniature Bruce Wayne, I can't tell you how stressful it's been on his wife") and other high society gossip that Harley had zero interest in.
On the journey back to Arkham, Harley's thoughts lingered on Sal Maroni, who was the head of the mob according to Harvey Dent's investigation, yet seemed comfortable operating in plain sight. Weren't mobsters supposed to lurk in the shadows instead of swan around in public? Her curiosity over why he'd been with Bertrum Crowne and that Sofia woman was growing, no doubt in part to distract herself.
Her brain refused to be productive once she got back to her office, so Harley decided to go to B Wing and speak to Crane, hoping maybe he could shed some more light on all this mob business.
Crane was standing beside the small window his cell afforded him, staring out at the rapidly setting sun when Harley entered. She took her seat in the chair bolted to the floor, waiting for him to acknowledge her, which he finally did with a withering look as he lowered himself onto the cot to face her.
"Harleen," he said sourly. "This is becoming a very common occurrence."
"I was wondering," Harley replied, deciding she didn't have anything to lose by jumping straight in. "What you know about Salvatore Maroni."
"Maroni," Crane's pale eyes narrowed. "Why are you interested in Maroni?"
Okay, Harley thought, perhaps she should have played this less directly.
"You know I'm running drug trials for Elliot Pharmaceutical," she said haltingly, hoping she could bluff Crane. "They're embroiled in some kind of corruption scandal. Today I met with Marie Kane, and Maroni turned up and... they seemed pretty friendly."
Crane pushed a flop of dark hair off his forehead, nodding. "So you want to know if you're inadvertently involved in some form of mob-based corruption." When Harley nodded, he continued in his driest voice, "I can almost certainly tell you yes, you probably are."
"Really?" Harley's eyes widened.
"Of course," Crane said bitterly. "This is Gotham. Everyone is corrupt."
Harley deflated somewhat, feeling this was pretty weak reasoning or at least not very compelling. She found herself in the rare position of not possessing a follow-up question, too in the dark about the subject matter to find the path that would get her answers.
But then Crane filled in the blanks for her.
"At least Maroni is a step in a more civilized direction," he said blithely. "Carmine Falcone was a nihilist who thought of himself as a king. Maroni is more... egalitarian... easier to work with."
"You... worked with Maroni?" Harley tried not to sound surprised. She supposed if Crane worked with one mobster, why not work with one or two more?
"After I... recovered..." He shot Harley a look suggesting she should comment on his 'recovery' at her peril. "I learned the Batman had shut down most of the traditional routes the mob used to get drugs into the city. They were desperate for a product. So I provided them with one."
"You sold the fear toxin to the mob?" Harley's mouth nearly fell open at this revelation, which only served to show her how far Crane had indeed fallen.
"Yes. Maroni brought all of the gangs and families together, organized their finances, stopped their petty drug wars. So when he pitched me a dollar figure, I agreed, and they brought me into the fold." His lip curled into a nasty little smile. "Of course, my toxin isn't quite what they had in mind. But before Maroni could do anything about it, the Batman locked me up in here."
Harley stared at Crane, feeling both pity and intrigue. "So you ripped off the mob," she summarized. "What do you mean he brought you into the fold?"
"Administratively," he explained with an evasive shrug. "They are currently having money laundering problems, so they set me up with a remarkably disturbing individual who runs a club uptown called the Iceberg Lounge."
"So Maroni is a drug dealer?" Harley asked, and Crane laughed bitterly.
"The mob control anything illegal that can make them money, and then they launder the money," he said bitterly. "Maroni made it especially efficient under his... modernized version of Falcone's crime family. I never dealt with him directly, just his desperate Russian lackeys."
"Wow," Harley folded her arms and sat back in her chair. "You were busy before you got locked up."
Crane scowled at her. "Have there been any further reports about my fear toxin or the Batman?"
"No," Harley pursed her lips, trying to think what she could give Crane in return for his information. It helped paint a broader picture of Gotham, one which she was aware of but didn't know. "I'll call Gordon," she offered. "To find out what they're planning to do with it. Maybe... maybe I can convince him to give it to us for testing."
"You'd do that?" Crane asked her quietly, his mouth puckering.
"Of course," Harley nodded. There was zero chance the MCU would hand it over to Arkham, but she could still call Gordon and ask. What did she have to lose? "You can trust me, Jonathan," she added as she stood up. "And if you think of how Elliot and the Maroni may be connected... well, let me know."
Harley bought herself a decent bottle of wine and spent the rest of the night on her couch reading through Harvey Dent's investigation into the Falcone Crime Family and Salvatore Maroni. She didn't understand all of the legal parlances and frequently had to google phrases to understand what the lawyers were getting at, but the results were a laundry list of crimes by Maroni and his "Lieutenants." Homicide, drugs, racketeering, bribery, coercion, money laundering, embezzlement, identity theft, fraud, illegal gambling, smuggling, counterfeiting, fencing, prostitution, kidnapping, arms trafficking, assassination.
But there were just enough holes in the investigation - and Dent's filings blatantly indicated this was due to corruption at the GCPD and City Hall itself - that made it hard to prosecute anyone named in the investigation without getting new legislation passed.
Hence, the Dent Act.
The legal jargon painted a picture of a ruthless Italian mafia but didn't go so far as to explain how it fits into Gotham society, for that Harley turned to Dent's campaign speeches. He was passionate, riveting, and watching him speak about cleaning up Gotham, Harley believed in Harvey Dent. No wonder people were so horrified the Batman killed him.
But that... that didn't make much sense either. All of the evidence available suggested that the Batman was a benevolent vigilante just trying to help. And he did help. Dent was on the record saying he trusted the Batman to save his ass, and the Batman saved Harvey Dent from the Joker.
So why the hell did the Batman kill Dent?
Harley went to bed mulling it over and continued to think about it when she woke up to the stupid birds the next morning. By the time she was out of the shower, she'd come up with a handful of wild theories about Dent working for Maroni, the Batman working for rebellious factions of the mob, or one of them having a full mental breakdown. All of it was fantastical speculation, but at least it distracted Harley from being pissed off, depressed and afraid.
She wondered if there was any cover she could give herself to ask Gordon about Dent and the Batman. He was the man to ask.
Harley stopped to look at herself in the mirror on the way out the door, pursing her lips as she considered her pale reflection. On an impulse, she dug out Dana's tube of lipstick, which had ended up in her bag after their night out, and applied a thin coat. She pressed her lips together, blotting the color, then smiled at herself.
When she arrived at Arkham there were no media waiting for her - and no stories about her or Arkham in that day's paper - but when she sat down at her desk, the concept of work felt... daunting. She sighed, knowing there was no other choice, and began to make her way through the hundreds of emails that had accumulated over the past few days.
Then sometime around mid-morning Walsh knocked on her door, striding in before she could invite him.
"Quinzel," Walsh nodded at her, looking very pleased with himself. "I have news."
Harley's lips pursed unhappily as she sat back in her chair to fix Walsh with look loaded with disdain. "What might that be?"
Walsh peered down his nose at her, his disdain matching hers. "You look nice today," he told her stiffly, perhaps in an effort at reconciliation. "New lipstick?"
"What do you want, Murphy?" Harley rolled her eyes.
"Oh, stop pouting," Walsh scoffed. "I've been dealing with the board too. Anyway, I've fixed everything for us."
"What?" Harley frowned, sitting up straighter
"Jacob Kane runs the publishing arm of the Kane Company, and they're dying for a best seller," Walsh explained, smugly gripping the lapels of his lab coat as he failed to smother a grin. "I showed him how badly Gotham wants to know more about the Joker and of course they've gone for it. The first book about the Joker? It's going to be a bestseller! No question about it! So, now that he's out of solitary you can begin interviewing him again."
Harley could only stare at Walsh, stunned by how brazen he was capable of being. Not just that, but she had already accepted she wouldn't get a chance to see the Joker again - which she'd told herself was just fine by her - and now he was being dangled in front of her again, like forbidden fruit
Why the hell did he feel like forbidden fruit?
"Why don't you interview him for your book," she snapped, more defensively than was necessary.
"Don't pretend you haven't, you know," Walsh wiggled his fingers at her and wrinkled his nose. "Made some kind of a connection with him. You understand him, Quinzel! You're the one who can get the information out of him, I'm sure of it. It'll be both our names on the book. Just think of it!"
She tried to think of it, but her imagination was fundamentally repelled by the concept of writing a pop psychology book about the Joker. Psychopath porn for the masses who wanted to hear just how evil and crazy he was.
"Oh please, Quinzel," Walsh sneered. "Stop looking at me like that. You test drugs for depressed housewives on the criminally insane all day. You're not exactly a bastion of morality."
"You blamed me for him maiming Burrows," Harley seethed, trying to keep her voice low so she wouldn't scream at Walsh. "To the board and all of Gotham. They think I'm too incompetent to be in the same room with him!"
Walsh waved her off like she was overreacting. "They'll forget once we show them he's nothing more than a psychopath and that they're safe." He grinned and mimed chucking her under the chin. "Come on, Quinzel! I know you love the game!"
Conflicted and a little overwhelmed, Harley could only shake her head and deflate back into her chair. She knew she should say no or at least I'll think about it, but...
"When do we start?" She asked shortly.
"Today. He'll be back in D Wing by this afternoon." Walsh headed for the door but stopped short before leaving, raising a finger in the air. "Think what else you can find out about Batman. Now that he's back, that's where the real money is!"
Harley watched Walsh leave, unsure how to feel. The week had been a rollercoaster, and she was only just starting to feel like she'd gotten off it safely.
But now she would be speaking to the Joker.
And she had so many questions for him.
Later that afternoon, Harley was in the D Wing session room, waiting for the Joker and preparing to interview him for Walsh's book. There was a sense of urgency because any day now, the city council could pass the Dent Act, and that could be the end of the Joker's residence at Arkham. Harley felt nothing but contempt for Walsh and his book but saying 'no' hadn't felt possible. In part because she knew Walsh would bully her into it eventually, but more so because she didn't want to say 'no.'
The way the Joker moved, the way he talked, the way he thought, the way he looked at her... he was just so fascinating.
Harley smoothed her hand over the blank page in her notebook. She'd written the date at the top but otherwise hadn't made a single note to direct her line of questioning. Her shoulders had been tense all day, hunched up around her ears to resist the nerves skating up and down her spine. It wasn't because of fear or reluctance or anxiety or anything to indicate she didn't want to be in that session room waiting for him. It was anticipation that had her tied up in knots. But anticipation wasn't always bad; it could be seductive too. This felt alarmingly like the latter.
The session room door buzzed loudly as the steel poles slammed back, and the door swung open. Harley sat up straight and tried to keep her expression passive as three orderlies frogmarched the Joker into the room, one on each arm and one behind him, pointing a rifle at his back.
The signs of retribution she'd anticipated were not as bad as expected. One eye was still blackened, faded to a yellow-green beneath the lid, and there was a mostly healed cut on his cheekbone. His bottom lip was freshly busted and bleeding; a reminder to behave himself, she guessed. His hair was clean and tucked behind his ears like he'd recently been treated to a shower, but most notable was the stubble that had grown over his week in solitary. It made his cheekbones stand out, and his jaw look sharper, and despite the orange jumpsuit and the scars, Harley thought he could have passed for any normal man suffering a bad hangover after a bar fight.
He offered her a charming little smile that made her stomach twist, but she returned it stiffly, watching as the orderlies shoved him into the chair and chained his hands to the table, then his feet to the floor.
Apparently, they'd decided straitjackets were a waste of time.
He waited for the orderlies to back out of the room before turning his gaze on Harley fully, his tongue poking out to prod his busted lip as he looked her over. She felt like he was cataloging her, and the anticipation she'd been feeling all day morphed into an impossible-to-ignore tension that nearly vibrated between them.
"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," he drawled, waggling his eyebrows. "I didn't think I'd get to see you again."
"Why not?" Harley set the recorder on the table between them but didn't turn it on.
"Oh, ya know," his hands flapped outwards, his wrists trapped together by the handcuffs. "The whole..."
"The whole blinding and biting an orderly thing?" Harley filled in, raising one dubious eyebrow and earning herself a grin. "Why did you do that?"
He glanced down at the recorder, which she still had not turned on, and then back up at her. Harley shrugged, her face the picture of innocence, and he grinned again.
"Oh, I did miss you," he told her enthusiastically, and Harley felt a dangerous little shiver of pleasure at his words.
"Why did you attack him?" She pushed back.
He probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue, feeling the ridges of scar tissue as he thought over her question.
"Would you believe me if I said it was a uh... impulse?" He said at length.
"No," Harley replied bluntly.
"I guess I'll have to get back to you then," he smirked, his chin dipping down, so he was looking up at her, and then his eyes drifted towards her bandaged hand. "Ooh... what happened there..."
"Maybe I'll tell you about it," she tapped on the tape recorder and shot him a wry smile. "Some other time."
He licked his lips as his attention swept down to her mouth. "That lipstick's nice," he said, keeping his voice low.
Harley pretended not to hear him even though her heart suddenly decided to start thudding frantically against her breastbone.
"Judge Surillo, Commissioner Loeb, and Harvey Dent," she said, folding her arms and focusing on keeping her voice steady. "All public servants. All inclined toward stamping out corruption and prosecuting Salvatore Maroni. Coincidence?"
He hummed, hunkering forward onto his elbows, an intrigued glint in his dark eyes. "Someone's been doin' their homework."
"It's interesting that you targeted the same people the Mob might want dead," she pointed out, feeling emboldened.
"Well, sure," he agreed keenly. "If someone were paying you over half a billion dollars to kill the Batman you'd probably use their enemies to get the job done."
"Over half a billion dollars?" Harley's eyes widened, trying to comprehend the figure.
"Gordon and Dent had their balls in a vice thanks to a little help from the Batman," the Joker explained crisply. "They had no choice... but to turn to me."
"I see," Harley nodded slowly, understanding for the first time how the mob and Maroni fit into the Joker equation. But her interest in Maroni was yesterday's news. Now she was much more interested in something else. "Why do you think the Batman killed Harvey Dent?"
His mouth twitched from a self-satisfied smirk into a wide grin that made his eyes crinkle up at the corners, then just as quickly it disappeared back into smugness again. The briefest glimpse of a genuine smile. He licked his lips as he stared at her across the table.
"You know what, doc, I really don't know why he would... Do you? Doesn't it seem a little... out of character?"
"Yes," Harley nodded in agreement, glad she'd spent an excessive amount of time reading up the night before. "It doesn't make sense. The Batman saves people, that's his job. He helped the cops shut down the mob."
"Ah, ta, ta. No... almost shut down the mob," he corrected. "Maroni's still out there raking in the dough even if things are a little... dicey for him right now. There's always room for the mafia in a town as corrupt as Gotham. They'll be out there right now, fighting each other like rats... fighting to survive. Fighting to be king."
Harley fingered the collar of her blouse, thinking this over, then lifted her eyes to his and was unsurprised to find him staring openly at her, his expression intent.
"What was your... endgame," she said slowly, thinking about both R'as al Ghul. "What do you want to see happen to Gotham? Did you want to see it destroyed?"
"Look, I'm just here to ah... spice things up," he said, gesturing performatively with his limited mobility. "Stir the pot, ya know? I don't know what the 'endgame' is. But dontcha think Gotham has been a too... mmmm... acquiescent of the status quo? Letting these people run ramshod over them and their families?"
Harley pursed her lips, thinking that quote would be perfectly framed in Walsh's book by analysis that the Joker's worldview was an excuse to justify his desire for violence.
The problem was, he was also right. About Gotham. About people. She had noticed it more this past week than ever before, maybe because being in his orbit meant people like Walsh and Vicki Vale and Kane were more likely to show just how ruthless and cruel they could be. And now she was sympathizing with a psychopath's world view.
"Then why would you want to kill Harvey Dent," she tried to formulate another book question, even if it wasn't what she wanted to ask. "He was... stirring the pot; he was just doing it legally without hurting anyone."
"Cause the world isn't a nice place where people don't get hurt," the Joker replied quickly, his lip curling. "That kinda happy bunny change doesn't last. "
Harley turned off the tape recorder and met his eye evenly, her mouth grim.
"Were you stirring the pot when you attacked Burrows?" She asked him quietly, realizing everything that had happened over of the past week could be traced back to that singular event. "Stirring the pot for me?"
He stared at her across the table, not a smirk in sight, and then he licked his lips. "There are all kinds of consequences to one little action, Harl," he said evasively.
"Are you trying to manipulate me into doing something for you?" Harley demanded.
He was silent again, looking almost hesitant like he was holding back from saying something, which seemed incredibly out of character.
But his character was only proving to be more and more complexly layered.
"I'm gonna enlighten you on something, Harley," he said, narrowing his eyes at her across the table. "Ya see... the Batman didn't murder Harvey Dent. That's a flat out lie."
Harley stared at him, unable to tell if he was speaking rhetorically.
"Before he died, Harvey went a little... crazy," he quirked his eyebrows at her meaningfully. "He killed some people who might have deserved it. In the end, he wasn't this White Knight everyone thought. And the Batman in his misguided... heroic way, he took the blame so Gotham would continue to believe this lie about Harvey being good and noble when the truth is, even the best of us can be brought down to the gutter. That's who we are."
Harley sat quietly, listening intently as he spoke, trying to absorb what he was saying with what she knew and feeling a little daunted that she was now involved in something much, much bigger than herself.
"How could you possibly know that?" She asked quietly.
"Daww, well," the Joker shrugged modestly. "Dent was ruthless in his own fair-minded way. He believed in justice and fairness... so I just pointed out that chaos is fair, in a world where fairness does not otherwise exist. He was already there on the precipice; he just needed that little... push to see the truth."
A push.
A/N: Poor Harley. She had such a rough week.
Next: Harley and the Joker get to know each other, and Harley makes some interesting choices.
Note: I see a kinda Brie Larson type as Harley, in case anyone's interested.
Please review!
