Part IV

I never sang for love, I never had a heart to mend
Because before the start began, I always saw the end
But nothing's ever gonna give, I'll never set you free
Yeah, I'll never set you free
- Starring Role, Marina and the Diamonds

Whatever her plan had been for this, she had not expected to find herself in a corner, crouching behind an overturned table as a group of costumed men with machine guns closed in on her. Harleen pressed herself against the wall, unarmed and horrified. Another explosion went off and she crouched down with her arms thrown over her head, ducking as parts of the ceiling gave in.

This was not a part of the plan.

One of the intruders, dressed in a fancy suit, grabbed her harshly by the arm and yanked her up to her feet. She immediately directed a punch to his face only to receive a hard blow in return. The men held her down by the neck as they dragged out of her hiding place.

Another loud sound made her flinch, a metal door was blown off it's hinges - accompanying the sounds of bullets spraying all over when more masked men stormed the hallways. She was pulled right into the war zone, struggling against their vice grip. Bright flashes all over, broken windows, the inmates released from their cells, the fire alarm blasted.

"Keep her alive," the man in the suit ordered. "Boss' orders."

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.

It had been surprisingly easy to get a machine gun. Maybe had she had gained the guards' trust, or they had simply taken a liking to her, but either way it suited her purpose.

She ordered a nurse to bring her heavy sedatives, claiming the Joker had been acting out again. After his recent behavior, Harleen immediately got what she asked for, no questions asked. Then she told the nurse the true story of how the Joker wouldn't have his medication given to him by anyone else than her, which left her alone with the goods. She loaded a syringe with the biggest dosage and kept it hidden in her coat. She waited around in the hallways until she spotted one of the guards who used to wait outside during her therapy sessions. He was always nice to her, more so than the others.

She asked him to accompany her to the Joker's cell for an unscheduled visit, claiming she was scared to go alone. She played her part of concerned doctor perfectly, and he was more than willing to join her, taking his mission to protect this seemingly innocent woman seriously. His mistake.

Once they were alone, she kept up her game for another few minutes to lull him into a sense of false security. Lying had always come easy to her, especially when it was for Mister J. She was proud to be his trusted accomplice. She was going to show him just how serious she was. She wouldn't let him down.

She fed the guard long sob stories of how threatened she felt, urging him to keep himself extra close to her. All she needed was for him to turn around, and as he was busy unlocking the door for her, she brought the syringe up and stabbed his neck in one swift movement. He gave a surprised gasp and stumbled back, but she had already emptied its contents into his vein. Using his surprise, she pulled him inside of the Joker's cell, closed the door behind her and removed his rifle from him. He was on the floor, losing his consciousness quickly. Impatiently she slammed the end of the gun on his head.

When she was sure he was out, she hurried over to the Joker, who was sitting on the bed. He watched her, his head tilted slightly to the side and a grin playing on his lips.

"That was quick, doll," he purred. "I knew you could do it."

Relishing in his praise, she immediately removed his straitjacket, heart pounding with anticipation. They had created a routine during the past week of always starting his sessions with her removing it, but now that time was over. This was it. The beginning of his final freedom. Yet, she had decided not to think of what would happen afterwards. All she knew was that she was going follow, wherever he went. Their paths were intertwined now, for better or worse.

"Now, you wait here," he told her, grabbing the machine gun, his eyes sparkling with dark anticipation. His eyes were steel gray again and coldly focused. She sensed the blood lust in him and her excitement grew.

Curious but obedient, she waited in his cell as he left. His exit must have been discrete, because there were not a sound heard once he'd left.

Silently, the minutes passed away and she waited. She looked around in the room he'd spent so many months in, his isolated cell, and it hurt to think of how he must have been tortured by his mind, alone down here.

When nothing happened for a good twenty minutes, she decided to move to a safer place, just in case. She left the unconscious guard behind and headed down the hallway, for the last time.

She had reached the third floor when the lights went out, and this time it remained dark. The lights coming from the small windows at the upper part of the walls were enough to see where she went.

The sound of an explosion close by caused her self-confidence to waver and she started running. She burst into her office and threw herself to the floor as automatic rifles started shooting outside in the hallway. Remembering her emergency training, to always get behind a solid object as low as possible, she hid behind her desk as she waited for the air to clear.

The sounds came closer, and she heard screams. By the sound of the gunshots, she realized that the goal was to simply pepper everything in its way and annihilate everything that moved. The lights flickered, people were shouting, the fire alarm went off… too close. She realized she shouldn't have waited before getting to a safety room, and cursed herself for her foolishness.

Too late now.

Another explosion shook the building, causing flakes of paint and small tiles rain down on her in a cloud of dust. A woman was screaming; a loud, shrill sound that was suddenly cut off. Harleen recognized it very well, but all she could feel was her heart hammering away in her chest.

It was impossible to focus with the lights flickering on and off, she knew she needed to get to a safety room immediately but moving right now might be the last decision she ever made. Out of options, she crouched in the corner of the room and prayed no one would look behind the desk.

She looked around for something to use as a makeshift weapon, just as heavy steps filled the room.

"Found her, just where you said she'd be."

Several costumed men with assault rifles entered the room. Her desk, along with all its content, was flipped over. They got her in a death grip and roughly dragged her away, ignoring her shouting and kicking as if she was nothing more than a sack of meat. She tried to bite one of them but got a numbing blow to the head in response. They dragged her away through the hallway and in a familiar direction.

The ECT room looked like a morgue.

In front of her, the bodies of her former colleagues were bleeding out on the ground.

Harleen was violently pushed back onto a table by one of the men. "Get off of me! GET OFF!" she screamed, adrenaline fueling her movements. The suited man ignored her as he held her down. With heavy dread, she soon felt the straps being roughly fastened around her body and effectively pinning her down to the table.

The gunshots rung out right outside the room, she heard the sound of something hitting flesh, over and over, then it stopped.

The Joker let go of a bloody bat and stretched out his arms as far as they could reach, closing in on her. Everything about the way he moved was decidedly predatory, and now it only fueled her terror.

Once he showed up, she calmed down enough to think rationally. She was trembling slightly, but another part of her told her it was alright. This was Mister J, after all. She stopped struggling against the straps.

"Let me go. I helped you!" She looked straight up ahead to see his face above her. He rested his forearms on the table on either side of her head.

"Helped me?" he echoed, lips twisting into a feral grin. "Did you really help me, Doctor?"

Heavy dread filled her stomach. Her heart skipped a beat at the suddenly formal, mocking title - alarming her more than any violence he was about to impose on her.

"All your... methods. You let them happen, you always watched. You left me in a black hole of rage and confusion. Now tell me, did that help me?"

"I did what you asked - everything was for the best - " His fist suddenly slammed down inches from her head, silencing her. He was moving like a possessed spirit, a laughing demon above her head, too close, too far away.

Still, a part of her remained calm - the two conflicting parts of her made her stop trying to get away. Eyes wide open, her hair torn out of its bun, she looked up at him, realizing she was completely at his mercy.

Yet, the way he looked at her, his pupils dilated and all traces of humor or glee gone from his face, a feeling of remorse took over. She had done this to him, or watched as Valdez or someone else did it. Resigning to her fate, her heart slowed down.

"Are you gonna kill me, Mr. J?" This was more merciful - she could at least give herself the reassurance that he had taken his time, he had chosen to do it especially with her, as a way of thanking her. A privilege.

"Oh no," he said, breathing deeply. "I'm not going to kill ya."

Her heart sped up, fluttering, sensing what it meant.

"Consider it an eye for an eye," he grinned down at her, briefly, before giving way for a concentrated and mockingly surprised expression. His gloved hands, stained with fresh blood, stroked the sides of her face gently. "I'm just going to hurt you. Really, really... bad."

The part of her that had stopped fearing him whispered to her, stop fighting. She looked up at him, a trusting look in her eyes.

"You think so? Well, I can take it."

He gave her an incredulous look and pushed a thick leather strap in between her lips, drawing out the action enough for her to really feel it. She knew it was for her own sake, to keep her jaws from crushing each other, but in the face of what she knew she was about to experience, it was a weak comfort. He had not bothered to give her any muscle relaxants, and she was sure he could see the way her heart skipped a beat.

He watched her intently as he placed the cold electrodes on her temples.

"Goodnight, Doctor Quinzel."

She closed her eyes.

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.

Everything that she was, everything that had been, was rearranged and scattered. It was impossible to hold onto all the pieces and she watched them slip away, one after another, losing all the pieces of the puzzle that used to be her mind. The pain made her neck arch to the point of breaking, her nerves under such hard assault she started to lose feeling of them, as if they were being ripped from her flesh, thread by thread.

She was shaking, her muscles contracting hard as her entire body seized. Everything in her mind that she had ever known slipped away, as the electricity hammered on her consciousness. She was sure this was just a dream, a hallucination of the most cruel nature.

She struggled to open her eyes, but they were glued together, violent shivers and tremors racking her body. She could not feel herself breathing, only taking forced gulps for oxygen in between. It was hot and cold at once, burning and scorching her while ice laced her spine.

The voices were back, surfacing in mumbles and screams,breaking through the barrier she had used to keep them at bay. Nothing could hold them back, the constant chatter made her scream out loud to get them to stop. Her mind was being stretched in ten thousands of directions with every convulsive shock, tearing apart from the pressure. She was falling, deeper, deeper, and deeper still and a part of her vaguely realized this was where he had been, she had finally seen it.

It made her feel closer to him, knowing he had been there. He was guiding her through the darkness, and she blindly followed. A whole new universe opening beneath her eyelids, an endless black hole that sucked her in. There was nothing there, but him, her sole anchor.

Her physical body felt close to tearing apart from the sheer force of her seizures, but it was nothing compared to her mind. Yet, it took no effort to tear down the crumbling walls she had built up around it; she saw them turn to dust, blown away like sand castles.

Harleen was dying, fading away. Someone else was taking her place, she saw it for her inner eye, a beautiful girl with a manic light in her eyes, a bat on her shoulder and the brightest smile on her lips.

Harleen closed her eyes and another girl opened them.

Harleen,

Harlee,

Harley.

.

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Intrigued, the Joker watched as the electricity worked her body, erasing almost every trace of the little doctor and leaving something completely new in its wake. Her rippling screams as she crushed the leather in between her teeth, her body almost bending in half, oh, she was magnificent.

There was nothing he loved as much as breaking a soul down and reshaping it. She was coming alive in front of him, stripped of the mask and pretense, and it brought him vicious glee. He was itching to mark her, to claim her, to leave his own personal imprints on her body and mind. She was something different, and that he had always known. She had potential, tempting him to see just how far he could take it. Tempting him to see how much he needed to push her before her true, beautiful self emerged.

He did have to show her, though, just what it was like to be shoved down into the dark hole. She needed that.

Still, as her hands violently clenched and unclenched and her eyes rolled back violently into her head beneath her fluttering eyelids, before her arched back fell onto the table and left her completely unmoving, he knew it wasn't enough.

She needed more, more pushes to rid herself of the good girl and Doctor persona she had stuffed herself so neatly into. But this would do for now. She would never be Harleen Quinzel again.

.

.

The roaring in her ears slowly died down, and was replaced by a low buzzing.

It was over.

"Let's go." It was his voice, impatient, reaching her through the thick fog. She slowly cracked her eyes open. It felt like something was pressing her eyelids together; opening them took all her will-power. She was still lying on the medical table, the straps around her body unfastened. Her body twitched, she couldn't feel her legs and arms and her head was throbbing as if someone had just hit her with a brick.

Harleen heard the clicking of a gun somewhere in the back of her hazy mind. The suited henchman was holding something to her head, she couldn't even comprehend was it was, only his voice, low and threatening.

"Ah, ah, ah, Jonny." Something the Joker did must have scared the henchman, because he immediately withdrew the object.

She turned her stiff neck the slightest bit to the right, and there he was, in the other end of the room. A purple coat hanging on his shoulders, his back turned against her. The henchman standing above her holstered his gun and turned away.

She forced herself up and stood on shaky legs, ignoring her muscles screaming in pain and her vision going blurry at the edges.

The Joker looked away in the distance, preoccupied with something else. Two of his costumed men were still guarding the room.

She looked around despite the numbing pain in her head, splitting and grinding her bones. There was broken glass all over the floor, big stains of blood, splintered wood and overturned chairs. An inmate that somehow had managed to end up in the room crouched in a corner with a hysterical smile. Two bodies were thrown on the floor, she recognized one of them as Valdez.

"Mister J," she said, forcing her lips to form the words. He gave her a look over his shoulder, then turned to leave.

It had taken a while for her hazy mind to understand, but now it dawned on her.

This was it. She had sacrificed everything for this moment. Their sessions, his words, everything they shared. It was just a game to him. He had taken advantage of her just as much as Valdez or any other woman. What did it matter that she was just a corpse by now, and Harleen wasn't?

Then, another part of her argued that it wasn't true - they shared more than that. Why else would he show you what he just showed you? Why are you still breathing? Because he decided that he wants you to. That part of her was holding onto it so firmly, it washed away the doubt.

Blinding, hot rage welled up in Harleen. She was still shaking, her vision going black and white, but she gritted her aching teeth and stalked over to the Joker. The suited man turned to interfere but stopped abruptly as the Joker made a movement with his hand. He gestured for the three henchmen to leave.

She stood in front of him, saw his expression switching between amusement and frustration.

You are so stupid, another voice whispered, unnervingly clear in her head. What did you think? What did you expect from a sociopathic mass murderer?

In his face she saw the confirmation of her worst nightmare. He was not planning to bring her along. Maybe he wanted her to be humiliated when the SWAT team finally stormed the building. Maybe he had expected the electroshock to wipe her out and simply couldn't be bothered to finish her off now.

Maybe he thought it was funny.

She heard footsteps rushing past outside the medical room, more gunshots. Someone shouted: "Come on, hurry up! The cops are here any minute!"

The Joker adjusted the purple coat over his shoulders, ready to go. He was done with Arkham. Done with her.

The fury almost brought tears to her eyes. She had trusted him. Nothing he had done to her, nothing he could do to her, was worse than the realization that he was going to leave her.

"What now?" Harleen demanded, legs shaking violently like a newborn foal. "You're just gonna leave?" She wasn't sure if her voice was actually audible anymore, her teeth slamming together.

The amusement in the Joker's eyes was gone, she couldn't read him anymore. His gaze was different than she had ever seen it before. Now it was painfully like indifference.

Harleen felt like a zombie as she moved, struggling to keep herself on her feet. She was dead set on following him, he wouldn't get rid of her that easily. No, a voice in her mind said darkly, you won't be getting away.

She took another step towards him and he watched her silently. His expression changed again, but before she could see what it was, the buzzing in her head exploded into white light.

Her knees hit the floor, then her face followed.

The footsteps faded.

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A/N: This is getting dark, but I promise you this story is still pro Joker/Harley, which means that our favorite clowns will have much more coming to shape their relationship in the Suicide Squad version.

Please review!

Love, Crystallinee