Delicate, diamante heels sifted through scattered roses, that kept on falling until she was waltzing through a carpet of florals. The noise, the cameras, the many hundreds of faces, eyes wide and shining, all looked up in idolisation through streams of petals and confetti. She'd done it – she'd made it – and her heart swelled with joy. She was filled with love, and light. It glowed beneath her skin, and she shone like the brightest beacon. Uplifted, she was floating, higher and higher – and she couldn't stop rising. But the higher she rose, up into the heavens of the domed theatre, among the clouds and the cherubs, the harder it was to hear the joyous chorus of the fans beneath. The sound distorted, to laughter, a high and horrible laughter, to distant echoing cries – of grief. She squinted down at the people below, and realised, with a sudden pang of fear, the falling petals had turned to bullets, raining down upon her admiring crowd. And they were too enamoured to notice the holes that opened them up, too drawn by her light to realise the sea of roses at their feet had turned into a churning sea of blood and rising.
No –
The elation, the warm embrace of acceptance, that weightlessness, dissapated in an instant. And she grew heavy, struggling to stay afloat and above the hellish scene below. She flailed, taking ahold of the lip of the balcony, and hung suspended over the crimson maelstrom.
"Somebody help! Anybody!" Her voice crackled, arms trembling with the weight, fingers slipping, "– please!"
Rough hands grabbed for her wrists, so tight that it hurt, and Harleen looked up to be greeted face-to-face with her rescuer. The Joker. "Wakey-wakey," he breathed, hot air against her sore cheeks and her mouth emptied with screams.
"Let– go– of me!" Harleen squealed, frantic and thrashing as his garish, stark features hovered over her, grinning wildly like a Cheshire cat.
"Whatever ya' say Harls," he laughed, and released his grip without argument, eyes glinting as he stepped back and into the shadows.
It was too late to cry back out for him, as Harleen's fingers slipped one by one, arms gave way, and she plummeted down, down into the mass of writhing bodies, and sank deep into the liquid abyss.
Harleen spluttered, chest burning as she choked up a lungful of water. She heaved, but her stomach was empty. With her chin resting limply against her collar bone, Harleen was panting, soaked through.
Before she was able to catch back her breath, another pale of freezing water was thrust at her face. The shock of it bought her senses back to lucidity – and Harleen came to realise, immediately, that she was bound tight. Bound to a chair by reams and reams of flickering fairy lights.
What's happenin' to me?
"J, she's awake."
The announcement came from a clown-masked figure, who lingered by the dim light of the TV, white noise. Watching her patiently, with the bucket he'd used to half drown her swinging at his side. She tried to scream but her throat was raw, and nothing but a mewling squeak escaped.
"Don't do this, please." Harleen struggled weakly against the many plastic binds that blinkered from her shoulders to her shins. "Don't hurt me, please – I'll do anythin'! You don't gotta do anythin' please –"
"You don't gotta do anythin'!" approached Joker, voice high and mocking on the tail end of a chuckle. Whose thin silhouette stepped through the dusty beams of moonlight, his own set and stage inside an old abandoned warehouse. He was followed by his men, who too, laughed, and came to stand before her, eyeing her hungrily – a pack of hyenas drooling for meat.
Harleen was certain her heart had stopped beating, her muscles grew rigid, and nerve endings buzzed and tingled with terror. "Oh – God –"
"Not quite," The Joker grinned, and flicked open, with a flash, a butterfly knife.
Harleen whimpered, staring up through a dirtied, sodden fringe of platinum blonde. "Please–"
He bent forward, lifting her chin with the gentle press of the blade, until their eyes met and he smiled at her, his eyes sharper and more piercing than that of the knife at her throat.
"You don't look much like your photos–" he said, scrutinising each and every feature, as the Joker indicated to the front page of a recent newspaper, pinned up against wall by all manner of sharp and unspeakable objects.
"Why are ya' – why are ya' doin' this to me?" Her body shook violently. Her back arched against the back of the chair, desperately seeking inches of distance between them and the knife. Tears streamed down her face, her skin raw and sticky.
His smile was unwavering, and his head tilted to the side, curious. "Why?" He laughed, and looked back at his men to prompt them to join him in his giggling. "Why am I doin' this? You mean to say you don't know?"
Harleen shook her head, the tiniest and most terrified movement. "No."
There was a flicker of anger in his features, and the corners of his bright red lips dropped, if only for an instant. "Well, Harls, I don't take to thieves too kindly you know – and you sure enough stole from me kid."
Thief? Harleen's mind was a mess. Terrified, confused, she wracked her brain trying to understand. "I've never –" she shook her head again, pleading, "I ain't ever taken anythin' from ya' I swear it! You've got the wrong gal–"
"No. No. No. No. No. No. I've got the RIGHT GAL and I know it 'cause I watched you do it from right under my nose–"
She felt the prick of the knife at her jaw, and squeaked as he broke the skin, the beads of blood as it trickled, with sweat, down her neck. She shook with heavy cries. "I swear to ya' Jo– Mr – Mista' J, I ain't–"
"You did it with style kid, I'll at least give you that." And the Joker straddled her lap, knife between his teeth, to don a pair of thin blue medical gloves he pulled from his sleeve like a morbid magician. He flashed her a brilliant smile, and gave her sore face a few gentle taps before resting the knife against her mouth instead. "An' now you got me all riled up," he tutted.
"Please, don't –"
"Wait!"
The Joker's head snapped from her to the fat man she'd faced at the theatre, who came huffing over. "Before ya' do ya' thing boss –"
"The fuck do you think you're doin'?!" Joker hissed, withdrawing the blade from the girl's lips and pointing it at Eric.
And Eric stalled his advance, hands up to reveal a pen in one hand, and a screwed sheet of paper in the other. Joker's eyes narrowed, what the fuck, and he barked again, "I said, what the fuck are you doin'?!"
"You better have a good reason to be disturbing us or I'll be killing you right here–" Joker snapped, and felt Harleen Quinzel trembling beneath him at the threat. He was already regretting hugely his decision to have had Eric's unconscious lump retrieved and dragged from the building, when he and Claus could of handled Miss Quinzel's fainting self on their own.
"I figured boss – before ya' do this, I was wonderin' if perhaps… I could get an autograph?" Two beady, hopeful, beetle-black eyes flitted to Harleen Quinzel, and Joker seethed.
"You gotta be jokin'" Joker growled, though threateningly calm at the query.
"I just thought that–"
"Yeah, I'll do it! Anything!" The blonde mess that he sat upon piped up, shrilly. "Hell, I'll give ya' all the autographs ya' want – signed photos, you name it I can get 'em – just let me speak with my agent 'n I can get ya' whatever ya' want!"
Joker took hold of her throat and squeezed with force, shutting off her noise with one white-knuckled fist. And he squeezed until her legs twitched beneath him, watched her gaping for air he'd shut out of her lungs. "You wanna steal my men from me too, huh?" he whispered harshly against her ear, before letting her go and leaving her gasping.
He turned his attention to Eric, now white as a sheet.
"I take that as a no then–"
"You do that."
"I'll do anythin' ya' want–" Harleen Quinzel muttered, amidst rattling breaths. "But please, don't kill me– I don't wanna– I've never taken anythin' from you."
"That's where you're wrong, kid." He shifted in his little seat on her lap, inching ever closer. "You thought you could steal the people of Gotham from me? Their prince? You thought you could just spring up and take it?"
She looked up at him through watery, wide eyes as she listened. Her small, delicate lips trembling, the pale, soft skin of her neck, already reddened by the tight grip of his hand. "I never thought–"
"You think they needed you do you? A little thing like you, flavour of the month?" He laughed, coldly, poking gently the needle point of his knife up into her gums. "I'm gonna show you princess, just how wrong you are."
He could hear her heart thudding violently, and her hands clenched-unclenched again and again, as she shuddered with fear beneath him.
"Whattabout a selfie instead?"
That was it. Joker leapt up from Harleen's lap without warning. "I swear to fuckin' Christ, Eric if you don't shut your damn mouth I will cut out your fuckin' tongue!"
Both men and his captive shifted in fear of his outburst.
"You hearin' this kid –" he laughed, loud, exaggerated. "You all tied up and bleeding and this fucking dunce here wants to know if you wanna take a selfie." He howled, with laughter, but not for any second did he find this funny. "These are the people you want to love you?!"
She winced at his shouting, crying silently. "Not everybody–"
"Oh no, Harls, EVERYBODY." He waggled his knife at her, "everybody is just like this. Don't you see? These people would just as much cheer you on stage, as they would you being strung up and shanked by me. 'cause Gotham's people are MY people, and I'm gonna show you just that – you wait –"
And Joker slammed the knife into the wood of the chair beside her head, so that it splintered and stuck. "Keep watch," he ordered, "gag her if you gotta." And then stood abruptly. "Don't you go anywhere," he told Harleen, before storming off into the darkness, big boots dragging and scuffed against dirty concrete.