I was dropped off on the corner with instructions to be back outside at 2pm before the Joker sped off down the street. Wearily climbing the stairs, I pushed into reception, greeting the woman at the desk before going back to see Gran. She wasn't doing as well, in the past week she had taken a turn for the worst and I sat at her bedside, holding her hand and silently weeping while Mrs. Harner hovered around my shoulders in an effort to be comforting. Apparently she had been fading further and further away since our afternoon at the Wayne Estate, and now she seemed to be at the end.
I held her hand, singing softly to her in Faroese when her eyes flickered open and she looked at me in confusion.
"Elspeth, I know you don't like me meddling, but name your daughter Enna, she will need the strength of that name. Her life is going to be so hard. Know that I will always love you my daughter, and my granddaughter, I love you," she murmured, and then faded. I sat with her for hours until the nurses ushered me from her room to collect the body and clean the room, and I found myself sitting outside on the steps holding Mrs. Harner's hand while I waited for my ride.
When I saw the familiar black town car I kissed Mrs. Harner on the cheek and thanked her before running off down the steps. The minute I was in the car I broke down crying, long horrible wracking sobs.
The next few days were a blur, I spent much of my time sleeping, although more than once found me hunched over a toilet bowl, expelling anything that dared tried to stay in my stomach. And whatever the Joker did during those days, he did without me. But when he finally did come for me, I was ready.
"Brita, Brita, it's-ah-time to wake up, tonight's the night," he murmured, gently teasing me awake. "Put on the clothes on the end of the bed."
Yawning I sat up and rubbed my eyes before looking from him to the thick denim bootcut jeans and dark purple tank top with little black spades embroidered in one corner. Swinging my legs off the edge of the bed, I dressed with quiet efficiency before going into the bathroom to fix my hair and don the little black eye mask. When I was finished, I slid my feet into the black socks and boots that waited for me before stepping back out into the bedroom.
"Shall we?" I asked, wriggling my eyebrows expressively while he howled with laughter.
The drive into Gotham seemed more light hearted than before, the Joker was manic and alive, whatever he was planning he was clearly enjoying himself.
"I have to pick up Gran. Before we do whatever we're doing, I have to pick up Gran from her hospice care," I said stubbornly.
"Alright dollface, but after that here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go and break my cronies out of Arkham, and you're going to help. See in the basement is an antique generator that keeps all the cells and doors locked. If you destroy the generator, all the locks release, it's a safety mechanism. So you're going to go into that basement, and find and destroy that generator while I go pay my old friend Dr. Arkham a visit. Now here, study this map, it'll show you how to get into the basement," he said, shoving a folded map and a flashlight at me. Holding the light in my mouth I studied the map, wondering more and more how I was suppose to pull this off with so little notice. But I guessed that that was all apart of his great chaotic plan.
Of course, to get into the basement, I would have to go through the women's violent ward. To say I was underwhelmed at the prospect was the understatement of the century. From there it would take me into the older unused part of the hospital laid. The antiquated therapy techniques of electrocuting patients, surgical suites where the patients were cut open while still conscious. Where they were submerged in frigid water, even drowned in some cases. And the crematoriums, where the empty shells of the mad went once their souls had fled the bowels of hell. Once I passed through the crematoriums, I would be in the boiler room where all of Arkham's equipment was held for operating the asylum. There were no short cuts. No alternatives. Just a swan dive into the depths of the harshest realities of the human psyche.
Pulling into Gotham, we swung by the hospice center and I went inside, requesting Gran's ashes and her belongings. The nurse gave me an odd look at the way I was dressed. And after I'd signed the papers I was out the door and heading for the van.
"Let's roll," I said, as he took off. As we drove he rummaged around in a massive canvas bag at the back of the car before pulling out a gun followed by several magazines.
"You ever fire a gun before?" He asked, dumping the heavy metal objects into my lap.
"No, never loaded one either," I said flatly.
"Fine,-ah- here's what you do," he said, and then began to explain to me how to load and fire a gun, where the safety was and how to set the mechanism. "You'll take the first shot when we get inside so I can make sure you're doing it right, then you're on your own. Now take this, it's the code to the door in the unused part of Arkham."
He shoved a slip of paper in my hands and I stared at the numbers before shoving it into my bra.
When we pulled up in front of the asylum and climbed out we stood there staring up at the gothic monument to psychiatry.
"Ready sweets?" He asked, and I nodded nervously as he dipped me into a passionate kiss. Then he set off purposefully up the drive, towards the first guard house.
"Shoot the guard," he murmured hotly into my ear.
"What? No," I whispered back heatedly.
"Shoot the guard, or I shoot you," he hissed, and then we were standing in front of the guard house.
The guard took a moment to notice us, the Joker grinning broadly behind me, gun pressed merrily to my right temple as my shaking hands trained the gun on the guard.
"Shoot the guard Brit," the Joker said.
"I'm so sorry," I said hotly, and then pulled the trigger. The impact of the shot knocked me back against the Joker who wrapped his other arm around me waist and held me tightly as I stared at the guard who now sat slumped on the floor, bleeding onto the linoleum.
"There's my girl," he whispered before kissing my neck. "Don't you just love the rush of adrenaline? Don't you feel so much better?"
"No," I whispered. "I don't."
"Well it'll get easier, now come on, we mustn't dawdle, there's work to be done," the Joker cackled, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me onward towards bedlam.
When we burst in the front doors, several nurses and orderlies looked up in alarm, and surprisingly the Joker had been right, it did get easier to kill.
"Ma, stop this, I can't take anymore," Enna begs as a cool breeze blows through the cave, causing the fire to cast eery shadows on the walls.
"The story does get better. But like all things, it has to get worse before it gets better Enna. Life is a cycle, stories are cyclical too. There's no way around the bad," I say.
"Please Ma, I just-I need time to absorb all of this," Enna says, pushing herself to her feet and walking away, deeper into the caves.
I wander too, through the crystalline caverns, reliving my life of crime as I walked until I come to a halt in a beautiful cavern whose walls gleam with bright blue quartz. Settling myself on the stone, I go on telling the story to myself, reliving my darkest hours.
"Well-um-alright baby you've got one hour to get to the boiler room, it's your time to shine," the Joker said and then turned and ran off, leaving me alone in the reception hall. Knowing that standing here wasn't going to win me any favors I started off in the opposite direction from where the Joker had gone. The halls and rooms I passed through were strangely empty. Where was everyone?
I broke into a jog, moving from the clean modern facilities into the increasingly rotting hospital until I stopped. A ventilation shaft could be seen at the end of the hall, the blades of the fan turning lazily, and in the flickering half-light stood a woman in a pair of coveralls that were much too big for her. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up and my hands tightened on the gun.
The sound of my gun being cocked rose interest from the woman at the end of the hall who gazed at me out of silvery eyes.
"Lady, I don't mean you any harm," I called out. "But I swear on all that's holy and green if you so much as take a step towards me I will lay you out."
Of course, this only excited her and she ran screaming down the hall at me, her fingertips ablaze with jagged bits of metal. I fired my gun. Bang Bang Bang. And she was down. I stepped daintily over her, studying the angry knives that she wore as gauntlets on her hands. How had she gotten those? Dropping my empty magazine cartridge on the floor I reloaded the gun and took off at a jog, running through the map in my head as my boots clanked on the metal.
This couldn't be right, I had to go through the women's violent ward before I got to the oldest part of the hospital. Where was I? I wondered as I came to an enormous chasm of a room with stone steps lining the outside wall, disappearing down in oblivion. Chain link fence walled in the stairwell, and I jogged down the stairs until I came to an empty door with light spilling out. Orderlies laid on the floor drenched in blood. What had happened? What laid inside those halls?
I studied the surveillance monitors but everyone seemed to be settled amiably in their cells. Apparently I had killed the only threat. Pressing through the heavy security door using a keycard I stole off one of the orderlies bodies, I started walking down the long halls as I oriented myself. Some of the women called out to me as I passed by, demanding to know what was going on.
"Hey you! You're one of Mistah J's aren't you?" Called out a pretty blonde girl, startling me out of my stoic march along.
"Mistah J?" I asked, stopping to stare at the girl.
"The Joker's, oh no, I've been replaced, haven't I?" She asked, staring at me hungrily.
"I don't know what you're talking about, the Joker and I grew up together, we go way back," I explained despite my instincts telling me to get the hell out of dodge before the shit really hit the fan.
Her hurt feelings evaporated when I told her that.
"Oh, then you've got priors, no worries, you come to get us out of here?" She asked brightly while I processed that I was apparently somewhere on the high end of a proverbial food chain.
"Er," I said, not really sure what was happening.
"Oh, sorry, my name's Harley, Harley Quinn," she said with a dazzling smile. "You go do what you gotta do, I'll wait for ya!"
"I won't be coming back out this way, you go take care of yourself," I explained, and then pressed onwards until I found a heavy security door with a greasy lock on it and I knew this was it. This lock was not powered by electricity, which meant that even when the generator went off this lock would still open and close independently of anything going on around it. Fishing the combination out of my bra I punched in the code and then leaned heavily on the door until it finally gave under my slight weight and then I closed the door, locking it tight.
I was alone with Arkham's soul
