Chapter Seven: Mirror

Harleen sat at the bar, her legs crossed, an untouched glass of wine sitting in front of her. She was alone, as always, just enjoying the ambiance of the crowd. It wasn't that she incapable of making friends, she just preferred solitude. And on nights when she felt the urge, she'd hit the local bar and soak up the atmosphere, the laughter in the air.

She never stayed long and never ordered more than the one drink. She tipped well and was always pleasant to the staff. She was just another ghost haunting the patrons but never affecting their lives for more than a second. All so she could feel the electricity in the air, the sense of passion, of love, of anger.

It made her feel more human.

The wine was there for show, to discourage others from buying her drinks. Her outside appearance was attractive enough to get looks, and the filled glass removed one option to talk to her. The few lonely, horny, or desperate men who approached her would be sent away with nothing more than a "I'm not interested" and a stern look. The one, and there was always one, who persisted would simply be ignored.

Ignoring didn't always work though. "Come on baby, let me buy you a drink." Some drunk who didn't know how to take "no" for an answer. Khaki's and a polo shirt. He looked to be in his thirties but still dressed like a college frat boy.

"No. Please leave me alone," she stated, not looking at him. Eye contact indicated interest.

Harleen never fooled herself into thinking she could let herself relax enough to be with another person. Man, woman, it didn't matter. In that one moment, she could lose everything and once she lost, she would forever be gone. Mr. J might know it, he might not. It didn't matter. She had to be strong enough to win and that meant never giving into temptation, no matter how good it felt.

"You don't look like you want to be alone," He slurred, grabbing her wrist. Her eyes narrowed.

"Please don't touch me," she said, catching the eye of the bartender, and taking off her glasses. She, then, turned to the drunk who wasn't smart enough to let her go. "I will not be taking any drinks from you. I will not be having sex with you. The only thing that we will be doing together is saying goodbye. Now let go of my wrist and find some other woman to hit on."

Nights like this, any kind of relationship seemed overrated. The drunk just didn't get the hint and put an arm around her, smiling. "You're a cold one, that's it. You just need someone to warm you up."

It was like a scene out of a bad movie. She nodded to the bartender who had been watching them, and in turn waved a hand towards the door. In moments, the bouncer was right there, saying "The lady doesn't want your company. It's time to go back to your friends."

The drunk looked like he was about to put up a fight, but basic human instinct mixed with common sense kicked in as he looked up at the large burly man in front of him, with fifteen visible piercings and arm tattoos. And he walked away, muttering under his breath. Harleen nodded her thanks to the bouncer and made sure to tip the bartender extra when she was ready to leave ten minutes later.

Harleen smiled at the bouncer as she left, heading east, back towards her apartment. As she rounded the corner outside the bar, she noticed the drunk smoking with one of his friends, dressed in the same frat boy uniform. Just her luck. But she just ignored them both and kept walking past them.

"Hey," he said as she breezed past.

"Dude, give it up," his friend said.

Yeah, it was going to be one of those nights. It seemed like she was having a lot of those kinds of nights these days. She walked quickly enough to be brisk, but not enough to seem like she was doing it on purpose. Turning around another corner, she heard the footsteps behind her and she stopped, turning around when "I said, hey!" came.

"What do you want?" She sighed. Really, she didn't want to deal with this. "Seriously, just stop bothering me and go back to the bar."

"You made me look bad in front of my friends." Oh great, he was even more drunk than he was ten minutes ago.

She looked him up and down. "You didn't need my help to do that. You're doing fine on your own." Harleen usually didn't provoke these kinds of delicate situations but she had passed the threshold of her annoyance meter.

A blow struck her face, knocking her to the ground, making her wish she had kept her mouth shut. Turned out he was also an aggressive drunk. A very aggressive drunk who had women issues. Seriously, who hit a woman for being a smartass? She felt, just for a moment, a twinge inside her at the pain in her cheek from his backhand. Anger filled her but not the rage of her darker self. Some drunken moron wasn't going to make her lose control. Not when Mr. J couldn't.

"You fucking bitch!" he shouted at her, irrationally angered, grabbing at her arm on the ground. "I'll teach you not to be such a bitch."

Smartly, she did what any other woman would do. She screamed bloody murder, as loud and long as she possibly could, before a second backhand to the same cheek made her bite her tongue. More pain. Delicious. Good, now it would definitely both look and sound like self defense when she took him down a peg. She was sick of being everyone's doormat.

Harleen wasn't a student of any fighting discipline but she had picked up a couple of dirty tricks from her past. Her angle wouldn't allow many of the sensitive areas to be reached. Really only one solution. From her position on the ground, she kicked his shins as hard as she could, forcing him to the ground. He screamed out in pain, falling backwards just as the bouncer from the bar and the guy's friend came into view.

Within ten minutes, the drunk was cooling off in the back of some police car and a nasty bruise was starting to form on her right cheek. The officer was the same one who took her down to the station the previous night. He looked at her sympathetically. "You're not having a good week, are you, Dr. Quinzel?"

"Tell me about it," she replied. "Is this going to take long?"

"Oh, but we really enjoyed your visit last night," the cop joked. She smiled in returned, wincing as it made her cheek ache and he squinted, peering at her bruise. "Oh sorry about that. You should get some ice on that as soon as you get home. And no, it won't. Since you're not pressing charges, we'll let him cool off for the night in holding and send him home in the morning."

"Thank you," she said. "I would highly recommend he sees a therapist for his anger issues. Preferably a male since he seems to have an issue with women. He needs serious help and possibly AA if this is a recurring problem."

"I'll see what I can do for you, Doctor." Behind the police officer, the drunk's friend was on his cell phone, looking extremely embarrassed. His posture also indicated this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Hopefully the man would get the treatment he needed, and hopefully the shape of her heels in his shins would remind him that women were not helpless punching bags.

The officer was true to his word and thirty minutes later, she was back at home, staring in the mirror at her new mark, wondering how long it would take to heal. Touching it lightly, feeling the momentary flash of pain, she forced her hand away, reluctantly. Wanting to press in, to feel everything again, she resisted.

The temptation was not worth the sacrifice.

The sickly purple mark marred her right cheek in a diagonal oval, almost perfect in its design. As if it was painted on by a master. He found himself staring at it from the moment he walked in, studying how it ebbed across her skin, where the purple met the yellow, the slight fading of healing. No baseline for how quickly her injuries would disappear. Happened sometime during the weekend. She made no move to hide it. Smart girl. It called to him to examine.

As soon as the door closed, he motioned with his head. "Let me see," Mr. J said.

Harleen shook her head. "No, it's fine."

"Stop being a child and come over here, Harleen." No fear from her. She'd wanted him to notice, subconsciously. To want to touch it. She was figuring out his buttons as surely as he was figuring out hers. If his hands were free, he would have applauded her.

After a moment of quiet reflection, she moved beside him on the couch, her bruised cheek facing him. She removed her glasses. Up close, it wasn't quite the perfect oval, but rather a series of gradient purples to yellows in smaller circles. Knuckles. Likely a backhand motion. Not perfect knuckles. She was stuck more than once. His eyes narrowed. "What happened?" His question.

"A small altercation," she replied. "Nothing important."

A partial lie. With practiced motions, he jerked the straight jacket over his head and put it to the side of him. She didn't react at all except to raise an eyebrow at him as if to say "again?" But she didn't say anything, allowing him to reach out and touch her discolored skin. Harleen may not have wanted his touch but she didn't stop him from doing so or call the guards. Progress.

His initial light touches became harsher as he desired to see the imprint of his fingers in the purple as he pressed in and released, the white impressions fading quickly back to the bruised color. Amazing how flesh could change so much with so little force. She made no indication of pain but then, she wouldn't, would she? Part of the good doctor's charm.

"You're lying to me," he commented.

"Does that matter?"

"Today it does. Who hit you?"

Harleen sighed, pulling her head away from his hand gently. "Just some drunk who thought I wasn't being friendly enough. No big deal."

"Trivializing your injuries. You are definitely a doctor. Always healing thyself," he laughed, a lighthearted sound, pulling a tiny smile from the doctor. "Did you also stitch up that neck wound?"

Purpose behind every question. The seriousness of the question diminished by the jovial tone in his voice. Would she fall for such an easy trap? Good cop, bad cop, funny cop. No, she paused. She wasn't that foolish to be led down the wrong path. The real question became: would she tell a lie or be honest about it?

"No," she confessed. "Someone else stitched it up."

"They did a poor job."

She nodded in agreement. "Better than nothing, though. Have you ever wanted to kill yourself?"

Not the trap he hoped for but one none the less. Making her think about her injury. She answered one of his many questions before he asked it just by her question. She had cut her own throat. It would explain the shallowness of the wound, not deep enough to nick the arteries to kill her. It led to another series of thoughts. Why? How? Where? So much to think about.

Mr. J leaned back against the arm of the couch, putting an elbow up. She hadn't moved yet, able to create the distant aloof effect even inches away from him. "That seems like a waste of time and energy to me when my efforts are better served elsewhere. How did it feel, slicing a blade against your own throat?"

Her lips pursed, only a small motion but one he was watching for. A sign that the question made her feel uncomfortable. She had only made that motion once before when he asked about her sex life. He was slowly learning the edges of her psyche. Limitations were weakness. Comfort was relative. And he liked putting her on the defensive.

Harleen took a long pause before finally answering him. "It hurt like hell." She crossed her legs towards him, leaning against the back, putting her elbow up on the top of the couch. A mirror of his own position. Either the doctor was flirting or she was trying to establish similarities between them. Never did anything without a reason.

"How did it feel, slicing a blade against your own mouth?" Similarities. Admiration for her examination of evidence, lines of questioning. She had been thinking about him as often as he thought about her. Obsession was a two way street, she should have known better. Harleen saw too much of herself in him, thinking he saw too much of himself in her. Foolish assumption mixed with confusion.

He looked her dead in the eye, giving her what she wanted. "It hurt like hell," he repeated.

It might have even been true.

For the next couple months, their sessions became a chance to grow trust between them. Harleen would allow him to remove his straight jacket and he, in turn, never made a move to threaten or harm her. Occasionally he would say something that would spark her interest, a fact that made her wonder if he really remembered much about his childhood, or for that matter, the time before he had his scars. It was becoming more likely that his current persona was born in the trauma that either led to or as a result of his scarring and the rest was lost in his own form of disassociate amnesia, a severe form of memory repression.

Mr. J had indirectly confessed his scars were self-inflicted but she wasn't entirely convinced that was true. If his current self was a result of the scars, then the odds that they were self-inflicted dropped significantly. Outside trauma was a far more likely cause. Not that she based everything on statistics. She had done some research, consulting with a former Gotham General physician who specialized in scarring, just to gain some insight. His opinion was that the scars could not have been self-inflicted.

It was also becoming increasingly clear that Mr. J wouldn't benefit from repression therapy, her primary form of therapy, which forced the negative impulses down inside, allowing the original personality to have control. If he had no original personality to draw on, if it was lost in time and trauma, he wouldn't be able to revert as was required. The only way to use her techniques was to make him remember, which could be even more dangerous. She had some decisions to make.

In the meantime, she found herself becoming increasingly consumed by his case, his words, and his reactions. Her second bedroom had become a mini-shrine to his case, a place where she could sit down at night and think about what line of questioning to pursue during their next encounter. But even Harleen saw the obsession in her actions, and irony was not lost on her. Mr. J and her mirrored each other in so many ways now. It just took her longer to get there. And yet, they couldn't be more different.

After all, she was just trying to help him whereas he was trying to permanently ruin her.

In his own way, Mr. J was only proving to her how solid repression therapy was. The reason she was such a strong proponent of it was simply because it was how she, herself, existed. An epiphany of her psyche, truly seeing herself for what she was, she forced everything as far down as she could. Repressed the impulses that had caused too much harm to herself. Repressed her monster.

Harleen had changed, faced her problems and fought them back. Surely, Mr. J could too. If she could just reach an earlier version of himself, someone with morals who understood what he was doing was wrong, maybe she could make a real difference. Problem was, she had no evidence of his past, who he was. Nothing to use to gain a foothold in his mind. Normal methods included discussing events that happened in the patient's past. The police couldn't even track him down to an original identity. So there was simply nothing to go on. Since she didn't really believe in hypnotherapy, she was at a crossroads with how to proceed and taking a step in the wrong direction could be detrimental to the both of them.