Heeeeey a chapter of substance! Thanks everyone for all the comments and everything! I appreciate every one, and I hope i can live up to whatever expectations you may have. Thank you all!
Time passed slowly in Autumn. Jonathan had always thought that—it was as though the planet slowed to bring the cold back, as if the task was too difficult if it didn't, and wore it out too much. That autumn, however, was quite different in that, instead of spending the majority of it down in a freezing cold basement, tinkering with this apparatus or that until his fingertips were raw and hands frozen, he spent most of it in a lukewarm white room, being little more than the perturbed observer to a series of events over which he had no control.
The two clowns apparently thought he was running a half-way house or something of the like, since neither appeared to have any inclination to leave. In the week between now and the time the Joker had regained consciousness, the two had made themselves quite at home, and they had settled into something akin to a routine. Needless to say, this was almost entirely Harley's doing.
Joker hadn't really warmed up to Harley in the last week, but he had clearly grown more tolerant of her. When she wanted to kiss him, he let her, and when she suggested something, he nodded and agreed. Half the time, Harley looked truly drunk on happiness, and it carried over into her interactions with everything: the doctor Scarecrow had wired up in the room, the occasional mouse, the furniture.
It was almost enough to make Scarecrow want to kick her out. He studied fear, for heaven's sake. He wanted people to cower when they were so much as in his general vicinity, not turn to dripping masses of smiling goop. If he'd known his actions a week ago would leave her this perky, he would have refrained from opening his mouth at all. The longer she stayed, the brighter it made things—Mr. Abbey's reaction to the fear toxin was even getting less and less pronounced the more Harley chatted his ear off during her spare time—and such conditions simply weren't conducive to his studies. But really, he reminded himself bitterly, there was nothing he could do. He couldn't even scare them away.
Jonathan blew into his palms, getting a bit of feeling back into them before he continued jotting down little notes on a thin clipboard at Mr. Abbey's side. It was quiet, for once. The Joker was pretending to be asleep, and Harley was reading some sort of romance novel with rapt attention, biting down on her bottom lip and squealing with delight every now and then.
Scarecrow couldn't help but frown a little when he looked at her. Apparently, the woman had no apparel of her own, so she'd been running around in Jonathan's clothes for the last week. Sadly, it wasn't as difficult for her to wear them as one would think—much to Joker's amusement and Scarecrow's consternation, if it weren't for the fact that Crane was a great deal taller than Harley, his clothes would have fit her quite comfortably. It did nothing for his sense of masculinity—and he hadn't even known he'd had such a Freudian thing until then—to find that he was so slight that his figure was actually analogous to a woman's. What was worse, Jonathan only had a few suits—unlike the Riddler or Joker or even Two-Face, he simply had no interest in wearing clothes custom made by some sweatshop in Italy. Whenever some money came his way, he spent it first on toxin ingredients, then on any new equipment he needed, then books, then food, and then, far down at the very bottom of his list, clothes-which was unfortunate, as now that he was sharing his wardrobe with Harley, he was quickly running out of things to wear.
Harley giggled and brought her legs up to her chest, a smile spreading across her lips. She didn't at any point notice she was being observed. Jonathan drummed his nails on his clipboard lightly as he gazed at her, his thoughts irritable, and then he glanced at the Joker. He resented how serene the man could look, lying there quietly with that perpetual smile as though everything beyond his sphere of existence was irrelevant.
One had to wonder how the two clowns could afford to act so carefree. Whether they knew it or not, Batman was still out there, and though it worried Crane to think it, he was more dangerous than ever. The last few days had not boded well for the rogues of Gotham. Most of the city thought the man had gone on some sort of hiatus—even the Batman, they believed, was human—but the likes of Crane were not so naive. Though Batman continued to fight crime, as he always had, there was something quite different about the way he carried it out. He didn't leave his tell-tale marks, didn't drop off his catches at Arkham or the penitentiary as had once been his policy. When he was done with them now, he just left them where he'd found them, and if they weren't lucky enough to have someone come across them, then God's speed. His most recent victim—strange to use that word: 'victim'-had been discovered no later than the day before, beneath some tipped-over garbage cans on the other end of the street. At first, the authorities weren't sure who the man was. His face had been broken with such utter dedication that they'd had to use his fingerprints to identify him, and merely pray he had some sort of criminal record. Lucky for them, he had. He was none other than Julian Gregory Day—the Calendar Man. And it looked like he'd been run over by a truck.
Though he would live, it would take months for a full recovery, and the citizens of Gotham were still wondering who could have possibly perpetrated such a violent crime against a criminal who was in himself little more than a joke. No one even considered Batman to be an answer.
Scarecrow was not so sure.
And whatever had happened the last few days, the only one who had any insight into it was lying down no more than a few feet away from him, and if he was going to find out anything about it, there was really only one thing he could do: he needed to make Harley leave. A trying task, considering her senseless devotion to the Joker made it impossible to pry them apart with anything less than a crowbar, but he was sure he could manage. Even if he could get her out only a few minutes, it would be enough. All he wished was that he'd be able to speak to the Joker in private, no matter how briefly.
He flipped to a new page, jotted down a few more notes, then pulled the paper away from the other sheets, folding up and placing it in his breast pocket. Quietly, he stood up from his stool and put his clipboard down on the chest of his living experiment, causing Mr. Abbey to jolt and let out a thin moan. Quietly—merely because his gait was slow and slinking, and was therefore always quiet—he approached Harley. The woman did not lift her head from her book even as he came to stand right in front of her, so he waved his hand in front of her in order to call up her attention, but to no avail. Jonathan frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, contemplating his options. He could have snatched the book away from her, but that was really more trouble than it was worth. After a few seconds, he decided to forego the whole bells and whistles—after all, simple was always best. His clothes hardly even rustled as he leaned down onto one knee in front of Harley. For a second, he just looked up wryly from beneath his eyelashes, and then said the only thing that he could think of.
"Boo."
The woman let out a cry of surprise and hurled herself backwards out of her chair, her book flying up as she toppled onto the floor before falling and hitting her smack-dab in the center of her brow. In the corner of his eye, Crane saw the Joker start shaking as he tried to withhold his laughter.
"Don't do that, Professuh!" Harley yelled, rubbing her forehead where the book had hit her. "You scared the bajeezus outta me!"
"I'm sure you'll forgive me," he said, and it admittedly wasn't much of an apology. He got back onto his feet, and neglected to offer Harley his hand as he did so, more out of general indifference than outright malice. "Would you mind running an errand for me?"
The woman perked up instantly. "Sure!" she said as she clambered upright, rolling the sleeves of the shirt she was borrowing back up to her elbows. Her face clouded when she caught the Joker in her peripherals. "But…"
"He's sleeping," Scarecrow said. "You'll be back before he even notices you're gone."
"I know, but I've gotta keep 'im company."
"I'll be here." He gave her a small, placating smile. As he'd suspected, she hadn't even noticed the hollowness of it, and returned a smile of her own. "You needn't worry yourself. He won't be alone."
After a few seconds of staring at the Joker in thought, Harley looked back at Jonathan and nodded.
"Alright, Professuh," she chirped. "What can I help ya with?"
Perfect.
"There's a convenience store a few blocks away from here," he said. He took out some money he'd folded into his pants pocket and the paper he'd put into his coat, took Harley's hand gently, and put it all within her palm. "Take this, and buy all the supplies on that list. When you leave the building, turn left and keep walking straight. You'll hit the store eventually. Understand?"
"Sure thing!" the woman exclaimed. She took the list and the cash and shoved them into her pocket, then pulled her red and black jacket out from under the chair that still lay with its back on the floor. She pulled it on hastily, and in a few moments was heading towards the door. "I'll be back in a jiffy. And if puddin' wakes up before I get back, tell 'im I love him, okay?"
"Of course. Farewell, child."
"Buh-bye, Professuh!" Even when the door closed behind her, Crane could hear her humming happily as she went down the stairs. It was only when he couldn't hear anything that he approached the Joker.
Scarecrow righted the chair Harley had been sitting in and moved it closer to the Joker's side before setting it on its feet and sitting down. After about a minute of silent waiting, the Joker opened one eye cautiously, and when he found they were genuinely alone (save for Mr. Abbey, of course) he let out an exaggerated yawn and stretched his arms out above his head.
"What's up, Scary?" he groggily, though Jonathan didn't know why he bothered faking it when he obviously knew the other man was aware of his farce. "Want me to tell you a bedtime story? I know a few good ones. Do you know the one about-"
"I want to talk."
The Joker raised one eyebrow. He looked up and down Scarecrow briskly, and then threw his head back to laugh. The cackle fell a little flat—he still wasn't fully healed. Not that telling him as much was any kind of deterrent.
"Hoo boy, I know that face," he snickered. "It's adult time, isn't it? You don't want a talk, you want the talk. I never pegged you as the kind to express that type of unwarranted concern, but frankly, I'm touched." Before Jonathan could answer, he pulled himself upright on the bed—so quickly that it must have hurt, even if he didn't show it—and from that moment on, all he did was sneer. "You haven't left the hive since I woke up, and that's just not like an Arkhamite. Something's keeping you cooped up in here." His green eyes glittered. "Something's got ya spooked."
"That's quite an astute observation on your part," said Scarecrow evenly, "but nevertheless wrong. I'm being cautious. After what Batman did to you, I'm not sure I want to test him."
"Why? Are you afraid?"
Jonathan held in the urge to sigh. He knew any slip on his part would merely call Joker's attention to any perceived weaknesses, and he'd spend the rest of the day under constant verbal assault without having gotten any closer to finding out what he needed.
"No," Jonathan answered. "But I can't continue my research if I'm dead."
"True, true. So then? What is today's topic of in Crane's Corner?"
The older man folded his hands carefully in his lap. "…I wasn't being completely honest with you."
"So you do want a bedtime story! Well, just come up here and sit in my lap, Jonny-boy. Let me relay to you the wonders I have seen."
"While you were unconscious," Jonathan continued, "I gave you a dose."
There was a pause in which the clown stared at the other man with silent intent. "…of heroine?"
Of course not, Jonathan wanted to say, but thought better of it. The Joker knew precisely what he meant by his phrasing, but even still, for some reason unclear, he was giving the other man a chance to get off the hook unscathed.
Jonathan did not take that chance. "Fear toxin."
The Joker, having his cryptic offer of kindness rebuked, said nothing. And his expression was a strange one—practically serene as he reached for the IV on to his side side. He probably had the intention of using it as a swinging implement, but Scarecrow had moved it just out of his reach the day before because all he ever did was fiddle with it. The clown then looked at the doctor himself, and with a thin simper, and reached out his hands. He stretched his arms as far as they would go, his dark, chipped nails a hair's breadth from Jonathan's neck, and then without saying anything, he pulled them back and set them in his lap. And then he chuckled.
It took all of Jonathan's willpower to hide his relief.
"Well, I'm still in a bit of a state," said the Joker with a wide grin, as though he wasn't at all bothered by the other villain's transgression, "and you're rather far away, so I'll refrain from killing you just to hear you explain."
"Need I really?" Jonathan stood up. "I imagine it's all quite self-explanatory." He moved slowly around the edge of the bed, the Joker eyeing him cautiously the entire time. "It's not in my nature to leave questions unanswered. I was interested. I wanted to see—I wanted to know." He stopped on the opposite side to which he'd started, the same side as Joker's broken arm. "But…in spite of the clear risk involved, I was disappointed in the end. You hardly reacted."
"Hardly?" the Joker said. He kept on grinning, but his voice was filled with bristled questions.
He was curious. That was good.
"You did say something," said Jonathan slowly. "One thing. You mumbled it and I could hardly hear you but…." He leaned down and dropped his voice to a thin whisper. "You said 'stay.' Why do you think that is, Joker? Could you try remembering for me? Who were you telling to stay?"
"You tell me, Doctor Crane." The muscles in the Joker's shoulders tightened, but not because he was tense or nervous or even upset—it was an animal instinct, a nonverbal but exceedingly real threat. Jonathan knew that this would quickly get out of hand, that he'd gone far over the Joker's limited threshold of mercy, but he was compelled to go on. The Joker smiled still, but the way his many straight teeth glinted with inviting white made it seem more like he was baring his teeth. "Illuminate my unenlightened mind."
Crane leaned further down, bringing himself easily within the Joker's striking distance, and yet only in the back of his mind did he care. "That night…the night I found you…I was not wrong in assuming your wounds were more than just what the physical body can comprehend." His glasses glinted along their rims, half in shadow, half in light. "Did Batman tell you that he was tired of your little 'game?' Did he tell you he was done with it? Did he tell you he was done with you?" One of the Scarecrow's thin, uncanny smiles began to creep over his lips. "Could it be that that's the one thing that the Joker truly fears? Could it be…you're afraid of being alone?"
The Joker snatched Crane from behind the ears and yanked him as close as physically possible, his nails pulling up skin and bringing up blood. Jonathan could feel the clown's breath falling on his face, hot and wet, smell the sharp sourness of it, as though the Joker's caustic nature had polluted his innards to reflect it.
"You are a clever boy, Doctor Crane, I'll give you that," the clown snickered and his words fell into a curling whisper. "But you're not half as smart as you think you are. Keep your pointy little nose out of things you don't understand, because you can't possibly understand. You can't understand Batman, and you can't understand me." He shoved Jonathan away and sneered. "But I do love to watch you try."
Scarecrow stumbled back and had to catch himself on the second bed in the room to keep from toppling over. He'd hit a nerve—hit a nerve in the Joker. Which meant he'd been right. The Batman had probably done just as he'd deduced. For a moment, as pulled himself back onto his feet, he felt quite smug about it—a very short moment, mind, because he quickly realized that this was something he didn't want to be right about.
"It's true, isn't it?" he rasped. "He's sick. Sick of this city, sick of us, and sick of you."
"You really are one of them aren't, you? A psych, through and through. You think you can get all the answers because you ask all the questions—but you always forget about people like me, who don't have an answer. Kind of pathetic that you're still even looking."
"You're right about me having questions. But do you think I can't tell the difference between one who doesn't have an answer, and one who refuses to give it up? You're not enigmatic—you're evasive."
"Is that supposed to provoke me?" the Joker said contemptuously. "Even a charlatan like you should know better than that."
"I know enough to tell you that if something doesn't change immediately, very bad things will happen." Scarecrows eyes narrowed into thin slits. "It would be absurd to say that someone like the Batman was ever anything close to a picture of mental health, but whether he was or was not is largely irrelevant, as what he is now is far, far worse. I imagine you don't stay current with news that doesn't involve yourself, but I shall give a brief overview of the last two weeks, for both our sakes. The media is under the impression that Batman has gone on some sort of break because his usual modus operandi has changed, but he's been treating criminals much the same way as he treated you that night. It's gotten bad enough that people think there's some new crime boss on the loose, disposing of wayward consorts in shady deals."
"If that's so, then what makes you think it's Batman at all?"
"I've been on the receiving end of his 'justice' often enough to tell," said Jonathan. "And you would be a fool to tell me I was wrong. I may not know the full details surrounding what happened between you two, but whatever it is, I know you're the cause. And you might even be the cure as well."
"Me?" Joker guffawed. "The cure? For Batman?" He threw his head back, and even as he clutched his ribs in pain, he howled with laughter. Jonathan tried to cut him off, but his laughter only increased, and when he tried to speak over him, the Joker was all but screeching.
"You're afraid of him disappearing!" Scarecrow all but yelled, refusing to be ignored, refusing to be beaten by a laugh. "But at this rate, he'll be miles out of your reach in no time, Joker. He's leaving you behind."
His last word fell on absolute silence, making him recoil from the sound of his own voice. The clown regarded him with a dark distance, his breaths shuddering as though he was holding in thin giggles.
"Say what you like, Doc. But you don't know him like I know him. Trust me." The Joker looked away from Crane and tilted his head towards his lap, his eyes focused on air, his smile a smile that had nothing inside it but teeth. "He won't get far."
Wondering and waiting did nothing. Hoping and praying did nothing. Staring out the window and wishing and thinking that maybe he was wrong was not enough: the answer was always the same.
The Joker had disappeared.
There was nothing strange about that. The Joker always disappeared after a good enough beating. Maybe for a week, maybe a month. Sometimes longer, but he always came back, better than ever, simply because he was impossible, both in the petulant child sense and the cosmic determinator sense. But the circumstances were different now, and for the last two weeks Bruce had slept with both the radio and the tv on, always snatching up the nearest newspaper and tabloid whenever he went outside, waiting with something caught between hope and despair for someone to write somewhere-anywhere, he couldn't care less about credibility or proof—that the Joker was dead. That they'd found his body in an alley, or washed up on a river bank, or crushed against the asphalt of some street. Because even if it meant he'd killed a man, if it meant he was a murderer, a monster, at least then it would be a certainty. And at least the monster that made him would be gone too. But this horrible place of 'not-knowing' was more than he could stand. And he didn't want to be responsible for whatever it was the Joker would do now that he thought he'd been betrayed. Betrayed-that sort of twisted logic could only have made sense to someone as disturbed as the Joker. And, as Bruce was beginning to realize, himself, as every single day he woke up with a stomach filled with guilt, praying for that split second of absolution.
It didn't look as though it would ever come.
But he was desperate. Every night, it was all he thought about when he donned the cape and cowl—all he was capable of. For the last fourteen days, he had not taken to the streets with the intent of fighting crime. This was a search mission. A rescue. Whether it was the Joker he intended to rescue, or himself, he couldn't say. For all he knew, they might well have been one and the same.
Yet, there was always someone in his way. Someone to interrupt his search, someone to obfuscate the matter at hand, someone to—to—he stopped and glanced down at his fingers. Beneath his gauntlets, he could feel the deep lesions in the skin over his knuckles burning, flesh cut through nearly to bone, broken from hitting too often and too hard.
A part of him thought, something's wrong with you, and another answered back, isn't that obvious? And another part had to wonder when he'd started thinking in chunks like this. Like he was—
There was a police siren, a long and listless lonely sound, and Batman looked up. He had been crouching on the ledge of a building, hiding between the thin stone sages built on either side when he'd started to daydream, and by now he didn't know how much time exactly had passed since the moment he'd begun. It had started to snow at some point in the night, and the white flakes had begun to settle on his shoulders and his cowl, covering him up turning his fibers into frost. They fell softly, slowly, and while Gotham was always dark and miserable, the snow almost made it look right—almost made it look pure. But by the time it alighted on the buildings and touched the ground, it was black as tar and just as dirty as the rest of them.
Batman stood up straight, the snow sliding off his back and a wind whipping about his cloak. He'd come to this place for a reason. He'd managed to scrounge up a few modicums of information on the Joker, and while he was working on just this side of nothing, what info he did have had pointed him here. Though the chances of this being the right place were slim to none, he couldn't not look. Before he gave up, he would need to exhaust every option—and he'd already long exhausted himself.
Maybe it was because of that that when his eyes fell upon a pigtailed blonde skipping along the sidewalk with a red and black jacket on, his heart leapt. He knew this was impossible, that it was too good to be true—because all good things were too good to be true—but logic had no effect. He didn't care about chances or statistics—how they were slim to none, how he was imagining things, kidding himself. Unimportant. This was his chance, this was luck, this was—
Fate? Do you believe in that?
Maybe he did. And if he didn't, maybe he would start.
Batman narrowed his eyes and stood quickly as the woman began to get further away from him. In moments he was following, a black shadow moving between rooftops, silent and invisible. His eyes stayed trained on the woman, trying to make out anything that would identify her. If he could just see her face—her eyes-then he'd know for sure. Then he'd—the woman slipped on the thin layer of ice building on the sidewalk, and though she threw out her arms so she could catch herself, and fell flat on her backside. He would had disregarded her then as just another woman, just a regular person who was thoughtless and a little bit clumsy, but then she threw her head back and she laughed—after that, there was no question in his mind.
It was Harley Quinn-and if anyone was to know where the Joker was, then it was her.
Even before he landed on the ground behind her, she must have sensed his presence, because she went dead still half way into lifting herself off the ground. Maybe she'd known he was following her all along.
If that was so, he had about one second before she bolted. He tried to leap forward and grab her, but all those restless, uncertain nights had begun to catch up with him, and his foot crunched loudly on the snow before he even got close. That little noise was all it took.
Harley took off down the street as though she'd heard a starting pistol, her feet completely steady on the frost that had downed her just a second ago. But there was no way Batman was going to let her get away.
"Where is Harley?"
It was Jonathan who was the first to ask, even though both he and the clown had been thinking it—they just hadn't wanted to talk to one another until that moment. The man flipped his wrist and pulled up his sleeve to look at his watch. "She left almost an hour ago."
The Joker had taken to ripping pages out of Harley's novel and folding them into origami animals to entertain himself, though it seemed Scarecrow's little chat had put a bit of a damper on his spirits. He shrugged lazily. "Maybe she got lost."
"How could she possibly? It's a straight line from here, for heaven's sake."
"She might have gotten distracted. She'll do that, you know." The Joker snickered. "Not much of an attention span on that one."
"Unbelievable…"
The Joker glanced at the Scarecrow, his red lips pulled in what was in theory a smile, but looked far more like a snarl in practice. "Listen, Scary, if you're so worried about it why don't you go out and find her?"
The former psychiatrist frowned and looked down at his watch again. There was no possible way that Harley had gotten lost, and she certainly hadn't gotten distracted by anything between the lair and that store, so his bet was that she'd either gone somewhere else, or something had happened. Whatever it was, he knew he was now compelled to find out. "Perhaps I will."
As he shrugged off his doctor's coat and pulled on something with a little more substance, the Joker gave him a skeptical smile.
"I gave her a fifty dollar bill to buy those supplies with," he explained. He wrapped a scarf around his neck and put on his hat. "The total sum of the cost of all two dozen items on that list would be equivalent to roughly nine dollars and thirty two cents. I refuse to be made short forty dollars because of that child."
"You know, I really thought you were brighter than that, Scary." The clown shook his head, disappointedly while Crane headed towards the door. "You're kind of not, though, huh?"
"Indeed. Well, I'm off." Jonathan paused for a moment as he stood by the door, and then turned around briefly to glower. "Please don't destroy anything in my absence."
The Joker, in reply, threw a paper plane he'd made in the other man's direction. He chuckled when it hit him in the face. "Jonny, I would not even dream of it."
Scarecrow didn't try to get any more assurance than that. He opened the door and went down the dark, musty staircase to the first floor. He frowned when he saw the glitter of snow falling through the yellow streetlights flickering down and down the way. That made the whole ordeal that much worse, but if he was going to find Harley he'd just have to brave it. The Joker had seen him leave—and that simply meant that there was no going back. He steeled himself and stepped out of the safety of the building, the door creaking thinly on its shivering hinges as he opened it, and then jarring shut when he pulled it closed behind him.
Harley was faster than Bruce had expected. The clothes she was wearing were noticeably long and he was sure she would trip, wearing those raggedy shoes of hers, but whenever she skid on the ice it just seemed to make her even faster. Thoughts streamed through his head as he pursued her, each one far too quick to pick out, but the one that kept coming back again and again and again was that he couldn't lose her. He had to know what she knew. Anything less than that wasn't an option, wasn't even worth consideration. And he wouldn't have someone like Harley get in the way of that.
Batman heard himself snarl when she turned abruptly into an alley, causing him to twist around and skid on his claws—nails—before he went in after her. He heard the iron groan of metal being pulled, the scrape of steel against brick, and it was enough to make him skitter to a halt. Less than a second later there was a thin hiss, then just ahead of him, steam burst out of a broken pipe in thick, white plumes. With an angry growl he stepped slightly back and observed his surroundings as best he could. It didn't do him any good. Between the whistling of the pipe and the way the steam billowed upwards and upwards before dispersing, he couldn't tell where the clown had disappeared to. It was like she'd pulled some sort of magic trick.
But he knew her. There was no way she would just—
He ducked out of the way when a lead pipe came out of the darkness and nearly ploughed straight into the top of his skill. Harley burst through the steam as though she didn't even feel it and took another wild swing at Bruce, but his reflexes got the better of them both and he sent her tumbling backwards with a swift kick to the stomach. He was sure he heard a bone give way beneath his heel, but Harley seemed largely unfazed.
She coughed and touched her side lightly, but was on her feet again in a second. No surprises there. It wasn't like she wasn't used to being kicked.
The woman glared at Batman for a moment, her hands gripping the pipe until they shook, her eyes flicking over him while she tried to figure out what to do next.
"Don't come any closer," she warned. Her voice was soft, trembling, giving away the emotions that swirled behind her angry eyes. "Go home, you stupid bat."
"Harley…" Bruce took an experimental step forward and Harley poised herself at the ready. Her stance went rigid, her every muscle readied for retaliation.
"I'm serious. One more step and I'll…I'll kill ya! I'll really do it!"
Batman almost smirked at how she seemed to second-guess herself as she said it. He could almost figure what she was worried about. "You wouldn't, Harley. What would the Joker say if you killed me?" He slid closer to her, knowing that if nothing else, that would get a rise out of her. It might get her to slip up, to give away information she hadn't intended. "Don't you think he would-"
"Shut up!" It ended up being worse than he thought. The woman brought down the pipe with enough force to send a crack rippling up the wall of the building beside her, and it was like the whole foundation shook. If it weren't for her horrible aim, she might have really killed him.
"You…!" she howled as she attacked. "Do you know what you did to my puddin'?" Tears started to well up in her blue eyes, mixing with the snow that melted on her cheeks. All that did, though, was serve to blind her, and all her swings fell on thin air. "Do you know what you did to me? You always act like you're the good guy, but you're just a bully! Stay away from us! Go away. Go someplace someone wants you, you stupid…! Just-just…!"
Batman grabbed her by the wrists and forced her roughly to the wall, his hands trembling. Why was she being so difficult? She had to tell him. She had to. Or else he might really—he would really- "Where is he, Harley?"
"I'd rather die than tell you!"
"I said, where is-"
He stumbled back when she brought the top of her head up into his chin, nearly making him bite his tongue off. Blood poured out from between his lips and down his throat, made thick streaks on his chin and fell upon his suit, and in the darkness it looked pitch black. A silence separated the hero and the villain in the alley, setting each of them worlds apart. Harley stared at Batman, her chest heaving, drops of red mixing with her hair and sliding down her forehead. So much blood, and yet he didn't feel any pain—his mouth was numb. But his insides—they were burning. Because he knew she wouldn't tell him. She wouldn't give the Joker up. She wouldn't let Bruce be free of this endless torture he'd been suffering all this time. His hands curled into fists, and in spite of white snow and black blood and blue eyes, his world went red.
How dare she—
Blindly, he grabbed her by her head, his claws digging into her scalp.
-did she think she could keep him from knowing?
Harley cried out and lifted the pipe into the air, ready to drop it down on his skull.
Did she think she had the right to keep him from knowing? As though she could stop him from finding out—
He pulled her forward and her pale eyes went wide. For a moment, they were so bright.
-as if anyone could stop him.
He saw a shadow shift across her irises, something black and horrible. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks—
Batman pushed all his weight down onto her neck.
-like she'd seen a monster.
She opened her mouth, looking like she was going to scream.
And then there was a snap.
