TEN

Doctor Leland was perturbed.

Something was wrong when Harley Quinn refused to leave her cell.

Harley was usually up fifteen minutes before the alarm, eager and waiting on her neatly made cot. She would spend shower time thoroughly scrubbing every inch of her body and singing cheerfully at the top of her lungs before getting dressed for breakfast, which she spent cramming her mouth full and talking at the top of her lungs to whoever was closest by that she particularly favoured, spraying crumbs everywhere. In the instances the Joker was there, this ritual was adapted to feeding him and stroking his hair while he talked at the top of his lungs before hastily gobbling a few mouthfuls when the finishing bell rang. The rest of her day was spent as much out of her cell as possible; whether in the recreation room, in the gym, in some sort of 'constructive activity' like gardening, or in therapy. By the time the nine o'clock pm lights out bell had rung, Harley was already in bed, snoring loudly, worn out from the day's exertion.

That day, she'd been told in piecemeal reports, had begun as normal. Harley had been awaiting the warden for shower time as she always was. The warden had greeted her with a curiously strained expression, her eyes faintly boggling. Earlier that morning, the warden had learned why Harley had seemed particularly cheerful the last couple of days. Given the girl's usual state of hyperactive merriment she had ultimately dismissed it as her imagination. But now all had been revealed – literally.

The warden could barely suppress the twitching of her mouth when she slid her card in the security lock to let the irrepressible Miss Quinn out for her shower. Harley had noticed, and given her a bemused smile and the warden had glanced away, unable to look at her inmate without a vivid image of the girl's wide mouth sliding down the length of the Joker's erect member flooding her mind. Doctor Leland had glowered in response to the warden's smothered giggles as she related this observation, but the warden had remained unabashed. Female guards as tough as her were thin on the ground so the female security at Arkham were decidedly more liberal in their conduct with their superiors.

News travelled fast in Arkham. Guards had turned away with poorly concealed smiles, smothered giggles and exchanged little glances with each other as Harley passed them by, growing more confused with each step. When she stepped naked into the shower, a room full of crazed female heads turned as one to travel up and down the nude body they saw every day, bearing heretofore mysterious bruises they all now knew the cause of.

Depending on how cognizant, how medicated, how focused and how bold, they either snickered, stared, gaped, gawked or giggled.

A particularly deranged woman who'd killed and eaten three husbands before being caught was the first to point directly at Harley, throw back her head and roar with laughter.

She had set everyone else off.

Harley Quinn had stood naked in the steam-filled tiled recess, blinking confusedly as a dozen-odd female lunatics pointed and laughed at her. The guards, meanwhile, had peeked around the door to watch the show, not quite joining in the humiliation, but not moving to stop it either.

Harley had waited a few seconds under the deluge of laughter, before self-consciously crossing her arms over her breasts then blushing and dropping one hand over her groin, wiggling to ensure all her unmentionables were concealed.

Then she had scampered off to a corner where Ivy leant up against the tiles, her head tipped back under a hot spray of water.

"Red!" She had squeaked, her arms still covering her body, "have I got somethin' in my teeth?"

Poison Ivy had not shifted her head or even opened her eyes, but her lips lifted in a little curving smile.

"I don't remember spinach being on the menu last night, Harl," she had said in a slyly sardonic

voice. "You must've been midnight snacking."

Harley's eyes had boggled and she had glanced back nervously at the room of women who continued to snicker and ogle her. Abruptly she had remembered her bottom was now exposed to them and whipped one hand around to her back, covering the crevice.

"What?" She had squealed. "I don't get it!"

Ivy had pushed herself off the wall and turned around to face it, lifting her arms up through her drenched red locks of hair, still smiling.

"Those gears of yours running smoothly now, Harls?"

Harley went white. "What?"

Ivy had sighed and finally opened her eyes, having almost immediately lost interest in the tease.
"There was a video camera in the electroshock therapy room. One of the staff distributed it on the Internet. As of right now, almost one million people worldwide have seen you beg the Joker to 'grind your gears so hard you shoot sparks' -" Ivy had paused and flicked a distasteful look over her friend, " - er 'Daddy'."

Harley had stood, modesty forgotten, with her arms hanging limply by her sides, her pigtails steadily plastering down over her head under the water, and stared at Ivy with wide eyes and a tiny, scrunched up mouth.

Then she had turned and, followed by the hoots and hollers of Arkham's female contingency, went straight to the warden and quietly requested to be taken back to her cell.

And there she had stayed, tucked into the far corner of her cot, pressed up against the wall, her arms wrapped around her knees. She had refused to come out for meals - which she usually loved - or for recreation time - which she usually eagerly anticipated with barely restrained excitement. She even refused to go to the gym, where she usually spent two hours every day circuit training while exclaiming to herself "oh yeah!", "work it" and "feel the burn!"

The inmates and guards who had passed her cell could rarely resist peeking in with curious and amused stares and every time they did, Harley buried her head in her lap and cringed.

Personally, Leland was furious and not at Harley. She considered the non-consensual release of such materials to be tantamount to rape on a global scale and deeply resented the blow to her patient's already fragile ego and psyche with this humiliation. She was determined to personally discover who had released the tape and see to it that they were fired in as much disgrace as she could heap on them. If Harley was up to it, she also planned to encourage the girl to consider litigation. It could ultimately work as a boost to her self-respect.

In the meantime, Leland had decided that it wasn't going to get any better any time soon and it was therefore all the more compelling a reason for Harley's usual three o'clock therapy session to carry on. She would be in need of an open ear.

Having been confined to her cell the whole day, Harley was unaware of the Joker's escape or the subsequent murder of the young man supposedly involved in the whole affair and Leland wanted to keep it that way. She knew her patient well enough to know that there was a storm brewing within Harley Quinn in the wake of this sordid event and Leland feared that hearing about what would be interpreted as an act of 'defending her honour' could cause it to break.

And she really thought she'd been making some progress with Harley.

But then again, if that were true, the little incident would never have happened to begin with.

As she left her office to move downstairs to the therapy room where she usually counselled Quinzel, Doctor Joan Leland had to reluctantly concede that so long as the Joker was anywhere within the vicinity, Harley's ability to commit to therapy was seriously compromised. The clown would never permit his slavishly loyal "pet" to rebuild a life of her own.

The elevator hummed and the ancient doors slid open with a groan and as she stepped from them, at the opposite end of the corridor, she saw Harley being led, her arms in cuffs and a female guard on either side.

Despite herself, Leland's heart twinged for the girl. Harley usually bounced and skipped her way down the corridor, smiling at everyone she passed. Now she dragged her feet, her head bowed over far enough her chin was practically on her chest, and her mouth was pulled down at the corners. Her shoulders were hunched up and she cringed at every person who passed her by, all too aware of the little looks and smirks that were directed her way.

Leland glared at a couple of nurses who were elbowing each other as she drew up to the therapy room, retrieving her security key from her pocket. Harley was clearly distraught, unable to lift her head even to acknowledge her Doctor, making herself as small and unnoticeable as she possibly could.

Unfortunately for her, she was now the number one focal point of any room she entered.

In a moment of spectacularly bad timing, two male guards exited one of the therapy rooms, having just secured Jonathon Crane within for his afternoon appointment. Leland frowned anxiously as they turned and saw Harley approaching from the opposite direction, seeming to shrink even more as she heard the timbre of their deeper voices.

As Harley and her security walked past them, Leland saw one sharply elbow the other and caught a snatch of the cruel whisper: "… cuffs match her collar…"

Oh no.

Harley came to a dead halt, her head snapping up and her eyes widening to circles of red-tinged fury. Her lips bared in a snarl, revealing a mouthful of white teeth and in the next instant, Harley had silently and swiftly pounced on the guard, her manacled hands grabbing him tight by the collar of his shirt and slamming his head hard into the reinforced concrete walls.

Pandemonium broke out. The guard's buddy shrieked and panicked, Harley's guards screamed code red into their walkie-talkies, and Doctor Leland swift retreated, pressing herself up against the far wall, hand rising up to claw at her head in dismay, watching as Harley yanked back on the hapless guard's neck and slammed him forehead first into the concrete again, blood spattering red on the dull grey like a splash of acrylic paint.

The guard's head lolled sickeningly as Harley's guards pounced on her, tearing her off and taking to her with their billy clubs. She calmly sat down on the ground and lifted her arms up over her head and they abruptly stopped, confused. Then they began to shout at her in an effort to intimidate, heedless of the fact she was again as passive as when they had been leading her through. The guard's buddy shook his friend by the shoulders while the nurses screamed at him to move away, while all around them doors slammed open and people dashed about, drawn by the sudden explosion of noise.

In amidst all that cacophony, neither Harley nor the guard she had just murdered with her bare hands had made a single sound.

But Doctor Leland noticed, as she sank to the floor with trembling knees, that Harley's head was no longer bowed as she sat, cross-legged, surrounded by the dead guard, frantic nurses, frightened guards and horrified doctors. Instead her chin was lifted high and she stared calmly ahead of her with a tiny smile on her mouth.

--

My thanks again to my awesome consultant zhinxy, who continues to provide great advice and insight.

Additionally, if you are Joker & Harley fans, I run an archive here called "Crazy for You". It is not categorised in the comics section as I wanted the ability to add fics from other Batman categories too, therefore you can't see it in the Comics Batman Communities list. Please go to my profile and scroll down to my Communities to see it, it's got a vast amount of awesome fic by many different authors!