Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own Batman or any of its characters/settings and the like. I'm only a poor college student.

AN: I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed again. You people rock!

"So tell me, scaredy cat, do ya ever sleep like a normal person?"

Crane groaned inwardly, hardly bothering to open his eyes. It had been six days since his last session with Harley, six ordinary, Joker-free days. He was beginning to think the clown had stopped darkening his doorstep, but clearly he'd thought wrong. "What do you want?"

"No, seriously. Every time I come in here, you're moaning, and from what I read in Quinzel's files, ya pitched a screaming fit that night in the infirmary. What's up with that?"

He sighed and sat up, glaring at the figure on the foot of the bed. Or, at least, glared as best he could at something he couldn't really focus on, without the glasses. It got the message across, anyway. Probably. "Does it matter?"

Joker shrugged. "Just tryin' to make conversation. So sue me."

"If you're reading Quinzel's files," Jonathan said, sliding his glasses on. "Why do you still bother to come in here? Is your comprehension that poor, or do you enjoy waking me up in the middle of the night?"

"The second one, but there's no need to get defensive. For all I know, there's more going on when you're in her office than she writes. So, uh, what's up, doc?"

"She knows you can get out of your cell."

"Ah? Ya told her?"

"Oh, definitely." Crane rolled his eyes. "I tattled on the psychopath who broke my arm for kicks, full well knowing he'd just get out again even if they kept a closer watch and pay me back for telling, because that makes perfect sense. She certainly didn't find out because you left your signature on me, that's just silly. Anyway, she already knew."

The Joker lay down on the bed beside him, brown eyes scanning his face. "She said that?"

"Not in so many words. But she didn't seem all that shocked, and she didn't report it, at least not to my knowledge. You've broken out and made contact with her before, haven't you? Not face to face, I'm sure she would have told someone that, but you have contacted her."

"Think so?" The Joker reached a hand out, brushing Crane's bangs from out of his eyes. He let his fingers slide down to the tazer scars on Jonathan's cheek, red and highly visible due to the nail scratches from a few weeks ago, and pressed, ever so slightly.

"All right, I get it. I won't ask."

The hand retracted. "Anything else I oughta know?"

"She wants to know why you attacked me. Can I tell her, or would that get me maimed again?"

Joker shrugged. "Do whatever. I don't care."

"Really?"

"Hell, what's the worst that can come of it? She'll know I'm interested in her? Girls are usually flattered to hear that, ya know?"

Crane stared. "Usually, the man in question isn't a homicidal maniac."

"Ah, details." The Joker gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

"You're insane."

"And that makes life much more interesting, don't ya think?"

"Last week you talked about control," Harley said, flipping through his file. "Can you remember when you first realized you need to have it?"

"I…I've always needed it." Jonathan tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair absently, thinking. "I can't remember a time when I haven't felt like I had to have it."

"What do you think you feel that way?"

"Well…" Psychiatrist or not, he couldn't hate Harley completely. At least she asked interesting questions, ones that required some effort to answer, which was more than he could say for the rest of the staff. With them, the questions were more along the lines of "How could you poison your own patients," or "what's wrong with you," or "you're a despicable waste of human life." That last one wasn't even a question, come to think of it.

"I've never had a situation where I wasn't in control turn out well. This," he gestured to the cast. "Batman, The League of Shadows, my great-grandmother, anything. I've always wound up with the short end of the stick."

"Your great-grandmother?"

"My mother and I lived with her when I was a child. She…didn't care for me much. I'm illegitimate, and she disapproved of that. My mother let her raise me for the most part, so she had total control over me as a kid."

"Didn't care for you? Was she distant?"

He thought of the scars on his back. If only. "No, we spent a lot of time together. It's just that most of that time consisted of her telling me how sinful I was and all the different things I'd burn in hell for. She was extremely religious, you see."

Harley nodded, slowly. "And where was your mother when this was going on?"

"Usually somewhere else in the house. Sometimes in the same room. I don't think it mattered to her, really. I was unplanned, and I believe she resented having me. So she let my great-grandmother take care of me."

"And your father? You never stayed with him?"

"Never met him. He didn't want a child, according to my mother. She'd get angry if I asked about him, so I didn't. And if my grandmother knew, she never told me."

"Did that upset you, never meeting your father?"

"No. When my mother would talk about him, she made it clear he had no interest in me. I don't think I ever expected him to show up and take me to live with him. Not that I recall, anyway. I always wanted out of that house, it didn't matter where I ended up."

Harley brushed back a strand of hair from her face. "So, your great-grandmother made you feel unsafe?"

Jonathan nodded. That's putting it lightly.

"And you lived with her as a child. Do you think that's where the need for control comes from?"

"I suppose. She gave me the idea of scaring people, so it's possible the control thing came from her too."

"She turned you on to frightening people?" She looked up from her notepad. "How, exactly?"

God, why did I start this conversation in the first place? he wondered. It was getting uncomfortable, not to mention far more personal than he'd ever gotten with a doctor. "She used to scare me. If she wasn't in the mood for a lecture on fire and brimstone, then she'd try to terrify me into behaving."

"And how would she do that?" Harley's tone was deceptively casual, but hear the undertone of worry, as if she was afraid of pushing him too far. He wondered why someone so sensitive had gone into psychiatry to begin with. Abuse was the norm in many cases, and he hadn't even gotten into the gruesome details.

Jonathan sighed. "Various ways. When I was very young, I was afraid of the dark, so she used to lock me in a closet with the lights off. If I outgrew a fear, like I eventually did with that one, she'd just move onto something else. About everything she tried left me horrified at least a few times. Well, except once she locked me in an abandoned church, trying to put the fear of God in me, I think. Only the place was full of birds, and I like birds, so it didn't take."

"Wait, you like birds?" she asked. Harley hid it well, but he thought she sounded relieved at the change of subject.

"Yes. What's wrong with that?"

"But you go by Scarecrow. I wouldn't have guessed you were fond of them."

"I didn't choose it because they scare birds. That's what the mask I wore to keep from inhaling the toxin reminded my experiments of. They called me that, so I went with it."

"Oh." She wrote that down. "Well, back to your great-grandmother-I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I? By asking about this?"

Yes, actually, but he wasn't about to tell her that. Letting her know what affected him would be showing her a crack in the armor, and he wasn't about to do that. "No, it's fine. I don't mind talking about it."

"All right. Let me know if you ever want to change the subject. Your mother knew this was going on, you said, and didn't care. Did you ever tell anyone else? Teachers, friends, something like that?"

He shook his head. "I didn't talk to teachers when I was young. I was shy. It was hard enough answering questions in class, I never worked up the nerve to say anything else. And my friends and I weren't all that close. Really, we were just the unpopular ones no one else wanted to talk to, so we'd hang around each other, even though we didn't have anything in common."

"You didn't have many friends, then?"

"Not really. Most of them saw me as this strange, poor, tall kid-I was actually tall when I was younger-who didn't talk, I think. Those that didn't avoided me because they didn't want everyone else to think they were a freak too." Jonathan shrugged. "I've always been more of a loner. For the most part, I left them alone, and they left me alone. Except for a few idiots."

"And what did they do?"

"Just your standard schoolyard bully routine. Knock me over, make me eat dirt, that sort of thing. They used a staple gun on my hand once."

"What?" Harley's eyes widened.

He raised his right hand, palm towards her. The scar was faint, but still visible. "I had the misfortune to walk past them on the way home from school. They'd been building something, a treehouse, I think, and happened to have a staple gun with them. It wasn't a horrible injury, or anything. I just pulled it out after I got away, and when I got home my grandmother went on a diatribe about how boys who get bloodstains on their sleeves burn in the lake of fire for all time, or something."

"Uh-huh." She was writing, head down, but from what he could see of her face she still looked horrified. "Well," Harley paused to check the wall clock. "That's all the time we have for today, but I'll see you next Thursday, all right?"

Jonathan nodded, standing as she came around the desk to escort him to the door. He was in the process of stepping through the door, to follow the guard back to his cell, when he felt her hand touch his shoulder, twice in quick succession. He stiffed for a second before turning back in surprise, but she'd already shut the door.

Did…did she just pat me on the shoulder? he wondered, bewildered. Why would she do that? It made no sense. Who would want to touch him? I'm a criminal maniac who tried to poison the whole city, and she just showed me affection? Is she insane?

No, it couldn't have been affection. The idea was ludicrous. She had to have an ulterior motive. He believed that humanity was inherently selfish, so it made no sense for her to be kind to a criminal if she was getting nothing out of it. What is she planning? Why is she trying to gain my trust?

"Hey, watch where you're walking!" The guard pulled him back from walking face first into a wall. "Do you want to break your face or something?"

"Yeah, sure," he muttered absently, lost in thought. The Joker had contacted her somehow…were they scheming something together? Where did he fit into that? And how did patting him on the shoulder help to accomplish anything? This would probably be a lot easier to figure out if I'd ever learned the nuances of human contact. Where was Nigma when he needed him?