III

I didn't know what to say after that. He wasn't exactly telling me anything I didn't know, and the bloom of fear in my stomach was far less sharp than it had been at first when I'd realized exactly what I was risking by doing this, so I just retreated silently to the desk, my fortress for the duration of this little battle.

Honestly, I'd hoped that he would just give up and go to sleep for a while, collect his energy. Certainly he could use it, and he was getting draggier and draggier, but see, the Joker had this habit of being tirelessly persistent when he wanted something—one of his best and worst qualities. At the moment, it was immensely irritating, because he was making no secret about the fact that he wanted the flask I'd stolen from him (his words, as if I planned on keeping it) and that if I didn't give it back, he wouldn't sleep.

"Since when do you need alcohol to sleep?" I'd demanded, glaring at him from over the top of the magazine.

"Don't you judge me," he'd replied. He was in a prizewinning mood now that we'd gotten our ugly little tiff in the open, and I suspected that this teasing demeanor was there to annoy me. Part of it also had to be his state of mind. His eyes were half-open at best, he was slumping and rolling around as if already drunk, and words were falling more freely from his mouth, which helped him manufacture the endless chain of "I want my flask, I want my flask, I want my flask."

I rolled my eyes. "No. I'm not going to let you stress out your liver in addition to your lungs. Not to mention it'll dehydrate you, and fluids are kind of key here."

"Aw, are you telling me your mother never dosed ya with booze when you had a cold?"

I looked at him, eyebrows tilted skeptically. He lifted his in response, reinforcing his question, and reluctantly, thinking what am I getting myself into?, I shook my head. "Of course not." Hesitantly, I added, "Are you telling me yours did?"

I did this from time to time, made not-so-covert attempts to find out about the Joker's life before he'd surfaced in Gotham. It obviously wasn't information he considered important, and I trusted him in that, but human curiosity would have its way and try to get its nose in anyway. However, my attempts were usually heavy-handed and transparent—in part, I suspected, because I didn't truly want to know. Part of what worked in our favor was that I could never with any real certainty predict what he was about to do next. Predictability had become the root of evils for me, and so naturally I loved this trait of his, despite the fact that it often made life uncomfortable.

At any rate, he couldn't be tricked. Usually, he gave me a look that said really, Harley? and refused to answer, but occasionally he'd launch into a story. The stories he told were often widely varied, conflicting, and probably complete bullshit. Still, I wouldn't put it past them to sneak the occasional truth in with the pack of lies, so I always paid attention and stashed the yarns away in case of further affirmation later on.

In this case, though, no such stories were forthcoming. He shook his head harshly, more in dismissal of the question than denial, and said, "Are you gonna give it to me, or do ya want me to explain how it works?"

I was pretty sure I was aware of the theory—I didn't live under a rock, after all; Pam had a habit of putting together hot toddies when one of us had a cold—but I shrugged anyway, wanting to hear his take on it. I was sure it would be memorable.

He sighed, but lifted his hands willingly enough, fingers spread and palms pointed towards me demonstratively. "Germs—" he pronounced the word with distaste and minor contempt, in the same way a student of Darwin might say the word 'Creationism'—"nest in the comfortable li'l… caverns in the body. Hey, think about it—it's warm, dark, well-suited to sustaining life… no wonder the little bastards snuggle in 'n get comfortable. So. Best thing to do is make the immediate environment… uh, as inhospitable as possible. To, y'know, shoo the germs away." He curled and flicked his fingers, accompanying his speech with the appropriate gesture, then dropped his arms, the left halted by the cuffs, which he was now ignoring. "And that is where the whiskey comes in."

I suppressed a laugh with difficulty. "And you're not worried that by effectually turning your body into poison via alcohol, you'll also kill off all your good cells?"

"Ya don't need good ones if you don't have any bad," he confided. "Besides. Good cells come back. With, ah, luck, the bad ones won't."

I pursed my lips. "I don't know."

He let out a soft huff. "Look, ya want me to get better?" he asked rapidly. "Coz I know how I work. Gimme the flask and this'll all be over a lot quicker."

I sighed, tilted my head and stared reluctantly at the flask, then glanced back at him. Instinct said that flooding the body with alcohol was not the answer, and I was predisposed to keep it away from him, but…

Well, he did know his own body better than I did, even if he was forever determined to ignore its limitations, and I was encouraged by the fact that he seemed to be moving on to Plan B: get better as quickly as possible (Plan A being to bully his way out). And giving him what he wanted might shut him up, at least for a while. Don't get me wrong, I loved listening to J, but when he was annoyed with me and therefore in the mood to make my life hell, tuning him out was always the best option, and he was making that difficult.

I reached forward and picked the flask up from the desk. Making sure the lid was tightly screwed on, I threw it casually in his direction.

It bounced off the wall behind him and went spinning off to the side, landing on the floor a few feet from where he was sitting. He looked at me, looked at it, and then leaned over to reach for it. He made it within a few inches of his goal before the cuff caught him and his body jerked as it was halted, and he shot me a quick, frustrated look before rotating, bracing himself on his arm and trying to reach it with his foot. He might have had better luck barefooted, but his shoe nudged the container and actually pushed it a bit further away. He kept trying, but I could see his arm shaking as it supported him and felt a sharp pang of guilt.

I couldn't stop myself. I rose swiftly from the chair and went over, staying out of his range as I crouched to pick up the flask for him.

Yeah. It turns out that I'd underestimated his range, as was no doubt his intent. Maybe he'd been pinching the short chain of the cuff to cut off a few inches, maybe he'd twisted it somehow around the frame—hell, maybe it was that special brand of black magic that seemed to accompany him everywhere. I didn't know. All I knew was that one second, he was groping fruitlessly at the flask, but the second I bent over and touched the cool metal with my fingertips, his fingers clasped around my wrist, and I had just half a moment to glance up and realize what was happening before he pulled me off my feet with a powerful jerk.

I collided hard with him and came out of it struggling. I got my hands between us, bracing them against his chest, but he had no interest in holding me close—I felt his fingers like steel cupping my face, and then force and my vision exploded into white stars as my head collided with something.

I reared back, blinking hard, and sluggish realization caught up with me—he'd bashed my head against the iron frame of the bed beside him. I didn't have time to process this and react accordingly before he gripped me and did it again, hard, and this time I felt the pain rather than the numbing shock that had immediately followed the first blow.

He withdrew his hands from my face then. Without him holding me up, I slumped over onto him, realized that this was probably a bad place to be, pushed against him to try to get up and away, and overshot, falling onto my back. The dizziness crashed into me and the pain blacked out the edges of my vision, and I tried to move, but other than some weak hand twitches, I couldn't force myself to stir.

His face appeared over mine. It hovered for a moment, head tilted curiously, then vanished as he ascertained that I wasn't going anywhere. I groaned and tried vainly to turn over on my side. His hand pressed sharply, reprovingly into my shoulder, and then began roving. My brain took a second to catch up, but eventually told me he was looking for a key—the old familiar places, pockets and bra, checking everywhere.

My mouth opened. A sluggish, pained chuckle got loose—ah, you won't find it here. Of course not. I wasn't packing anything he could use to pick the locks, either. No, the only thing he'd gain from this would be the gratification of punishing me—which, admittedly, I deserved, though not for the same reason as he thought. How many times are you going to fall for the same old tricks? I asked myself, blinking hard in an attempt to make the black recede from my vision.

He reached underneath me roughly, fingers delving into my back pockets and failing to find anything. I heard a strangled growl of frustration, then he shoved my limp form a few inches and fell back.

My strength was returning. I managed to flip over onto my stomach, then got my hands under me, rose up on my knees, and crawled painfully away until I reached the edge of the room. Laboriously, I turned again and propped my back against the wall, and checked to confirm that I was indeed out of reach before taking inventory of the fresh injuries.

The left side of my face where I'd collided was on fire, and a quick touch to my brow bone yielded extremely tender, already swollen skin, split open and bleeding in several places. I flinched away, unwilling to irritate it further—certainly I'd get at least the edge of a powerfully black eye as a consequence. My lips felt unusually large as well, and a quick check revealed one or two burning, bleeding splits on the left side. "Ugh, damn it, J," I snarled thickly—the dizziness was increasing now that I was sitting upright, and I, recognizing the telltale signs of a potential minor concussion (what was this? Number three? Four?) held as still as possible, blinking away the watering in my eyes.

"You are not going a long way towards helping your cause here," I growled, rolling my eyes around to rest on him.

As quickly as he'd summoned the strength necessary to overpower me, it left him, and he slumped against the bed, chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled for breath. I could hear the air rattling in his lungs and his eyes were shut tightly against the pain.

I wanted to go to him, but my aching head was plenty of evidence of what happened when I got within his range. Besides, he wasn't the sort to appreciate coddling, and there wasn't much I could do for him anyway. Trick him into swallowing expectorant? Unlikely.

Still, I winced, watching as the fight for breath resulted in an overtaxed and irritated throat and he began to cough again, doubling the difficulty he was currently finding in breathing. I couldn't find any pleasure in this, despite my own injuries suffered mere moments ago at his hand.

Stretching out my foot, I found the flask with my toes and kicked it over to him. It skidded easily across the floor, hitting his leg and halting, and he scooped it up immediately, ripping off the lid and taking a deep draught.

It helped. His coughing subsided (I'd always thought straight alcohol was supposed to make you cough, but this man always had defied standard rules) and air started coming easier to him.

I watched him, ascertaining that he wasn't about to suffocate on his own phlegm right here in this room, and as soon as I felt reasonably confident that he was safe, I stood, using the wall for balance. I looked down at his hunched shoulders and coldly said, "Don't do that again."

He didn't reply, nursing the flask and not bothering to look at me. Using the wall to maintain my shaky balance, I slowly made my way into the bathroom.

I washed my face down with cold water, which helped the nausea recede a little but restarted the bleeding. I wadded up a cloth and dabbed it as gently as possible against the side of my head, lifting it periodically to examine the damage.

It looked pretty gross. The expansive bruise was puffy and pink with blue at the edges, red lining the parts of my head that had actually split open from the collision. The lips weren't so bad, they were just going to be a bitch to heal—no, it was the black eye that was gonna make me look like a domestic case.

I leaned forward and looked carefully into the reflection of my eyes, first one, then the other, then back, then forth. No… no mismatched pupil dilation. The nausea was disappearing quickly, too. I judged that this was either an extremely mild concussion or no concussion at all. Well, that's lucky for a change, I thought crankily, pulling back and probing wincingly again at the bruise. I considered going out to get some ice in an attempt to reduce the damage as much as possible, but quickly decided against it. That would leave the room open to anyone who might want to thwart my plans, and I was in this already—I wasn't just going to let it go now.

I shut off the light and took the wet wash cloth with me back out into the bedroom.

The Joker, it appeared, had finally succumbed to his weariness, but of course he'd had to do it in his own stubborn way—rather than climbing comfortably back on the bed, he was stretched out on the floor beside it, his right arm flung over his eyes, the left suspended perpendicular to the rest of his body as the handcuffs dictated, fingers curled loosely and knuckles arching towards the ceiling.

"Hey," I said in annoyance, pain making me cranky. "Get on the bed! You're gonna give yourself circulatory issues!"

He didn't respond. I saw the steady motion of his chest, up and down as he breathed, noted the slackness of his muscles, and decided to cut my losses. He was finally sleeping, which was more than I had hoped for—I'd be happier if he was comfortably resting on the bed, but I'd be damned if I was going to go over their and haul his heavy ass up on it, especially after what happened moments ago.


The silence must have worried the guys, because after about an hour, there was a knock on the door. I was ignoring my headache and had my feet up on the desk, was crouched over and painting my toenails purple, and I didn't feel particularly compelled to answer unless they got rowdy.

After a moment, footsteps receded down the hallway, and a quick glance at the Joker revealed that he hadn't so much as moved, completely knocked out. Approvingly, I nodded and then returned to the business at hand.

After another few minutes, though, I heard some telltale scratching at the door—almost inaudible, but in the relative silence of the room, I caught it and identified from what it was. Carefully, I pulled open one of the desk drawers and quietly removed my very own revolver, setting it on the desk.

When the door swung silently open, the lock neatly picked I wasn't particularly surprised at what I saw.

Ace was standing there. He was a relatively new henchman, had only been working for us for a month or two, but I'd already found him to be a remarkably inconvenient person. He worshipped the dirty floorboards upon which J paced—worshipped them, and that adoration proved problematic for me. While most of the men readily accepted my relationship with the Joker and tolerated my presence, even appreciating me in some cases, Ace regarded me with the sort of surly dislike with which an ex-girlfriend might treat a current one. He ignored me as much as possible, especially after J put his head through a window after getting fed up by his thousandth passive-aggressive complaint about me (I wasn't around, but that's how Javier told the story).

Now he had a nasty healing wound stretched across his forehead and a grudge. I couldn't imagine that his purpose for being here was a good one.

His eyes fell on J, and, apparently not seeing me right away, he took a step or two into the room. I clicked my tongue loudly, halting him, and he turned and gave me a mulish look.

"Hey, Harley," he said cautiously, not bothering to conceal the undertones of contempt in his voice. "Whatchya doing?"

"Painting my toenails, Ace," I said, responding to his tone with a saccharine version of the same. "What are you doing? Last I heard, this wasn't quite… your space."

He bristled slightly and took another cautious glance at the Joker. "Why is he locked to the bed?" he asked.

"We like to play," I said simply and shamelessly, and arched my eyebrows at him. "Something I can do for you?"

"You can let him go. We need him," he said, turning again.

"Ah, ah, ah," I said sharply, one hand straying to the gun on the desk. "The boss is sleeping. In case you didn't notice, he's been dealing with the flu or something. If he's resting, you don't disturb him. Understand?"

He reluctantly tore his eyes away from the sleeping figure, looking mutinously at me. "Nice shiner."

"Thanks, I'm kind of proud of it myself."

"We heard a commotion in here earlier."

I mock-gasped and then tsked at him. "Ace. Listening in now? You're one really baby step away from voyeurism, sweetie. Might want to keep a handle on that."

He glared. "Yeah, right. I don't think the Joker wants to be cuffed to that bed, Harley. I think he'd really appreciate it if I let him go, so if you don't mind, I'm just gonna…"

He moved towards the bed, halfway there now. I decided it was time for drastic measures. I brought the gun up, rested the butt on the desk, and thumbed the hammer back with an audible and instantly recognizable click. He froze and turned slowly back to me. I put on a patient smile.

"Actually, Ace, I do mind. You see, he's sleeping, and right now, he happens to need it. Now, you've got a choice to make. If you think he is locked to that bed against his will, then it'd probably be very advisable for you to free him. He's not likely to be thrilled that none of his beloved henchmen—" I emphasized the word, driving the kid's role home—"intervened in his captivity.

"However," I continued, rocking the gun from side to side, "if he's not, if he really is just taking a much-needed catnap, then I don't think that same intervention would be half as welcome. This is his room, Ace. You ever been in here before?"

His hesitance was the only answer I needed. Generally speaking, I was the only one allowed in the bedroom, and even I didn't share it full-time—I'd been tossed out onto my butt every now and again when the Joker was completely absorbed in his work, and had come to regard it as a matter of course. This was his sanctum, a tiny physical representation of his considerable mind, and the Joker was a very private person.

I grinned at him. "Even if he is stuck, I don't see him reacting very well to your presence here. Now, aside from that little dilemma, you need to consider the fact that I have a very loaded Colt .45 trained directly on your face." He took an edging step back towards the door at the reminder, and I sighed regretfully and shook my head. "If you keep moving towards him, I'm going to have to empty the gun on you. Now, I'm not known for spectacular marksmanship, but at this range…"

I sucked in a breath through my teeth, squinting demonstratively at him. "So," I continued deliberately, lifting my free hand to my face and resting my chin on the heel, keeping the gun trained on him, "I guess… you've got to ask yourself one question."

He actually quit breathing, and his eyes narrowed at me, as if he knew what was coming but couldn't quite believe it. I smiled. "'Do I feel lucky?'" I intoned softly. He blinked, and I lifted the gun, closing one eye and pursing my lips. "Well? Do ya? Punk?"

Nothing. Absolutely flint-faced as he edged closer to the door. I brought the gun down again, scowling disappointedly at him. "Oh, come on, not even a smile?"

"Crazy bitch," he snarled the second he was close enough to the door to risk it, and bolted out as I rose from my chair.

"That was comedy gold!" I yelled after him. "You'd think the Joker's henchmen would have more of a sense of humor!"

No response. I rolled my eyes and went over the door, kicking it shut and locking it again. I turned and looked grumpily at the sleeping Joker. "You'd have laughed," I said moodily, and returned to the chair to finish my nails.


A/N - Ahhh, henchmen. I abuse them so badly in my writing, poor things, but it's so much fun. Ah, so what do you think about Harley venturing close enough to get caught- stupid or just incapable of learning? Or gullible? Or all three?

J won't sleep for long. I've got the next update tentatively scheduled for Friday evening/early Saturday morning, since I'm leaving for a week and have no clue whether I'll have internet or not and would feel guilty for continuing to neglect you all. In the meantime, drop me a line, tell me what you think- I'm always thrilled to hear from you. Till next time!