The Joker sat in the cafeteria with a tray that had now grown cold in front of him. He listlessly had allowed Bobby to take him in to breakfast, as was their usual routine now, but when his orderly had set his food onto the table, The Joker's throat suddenly tightened and he just stared at the mushy eggs in front of him.
Although he had felt confident from his talk with Dr. Quinzel the day before and had seen that she was beginning to comply with him, he woke up with an air that he hadn't felt in quite a long time: melancholy. It wasn't as strong as he used to feel as a child when he would walk home from school knowing that his mother was feeling the same as she prepared dinner, and he would sit at his desk in his bedroom and try to concentrate on his homework as the clock ticked by slowly.
And just as precise as his bedroom clock, so was the front door slamming shut and his father's gruff voice reverberating from downstairs and through the hallway. It was always the same complaint: "Boss's ridin' my ass...no good son-of-a-bitch...can't he see I'm just tryin' to be a provider, God dammit?"
The memory of his father's slurred speech shook The Joker out of his trance and awakened him to the present scene that was happening in front of him. About two tables down, Crane and another patient seemed to be a having a very heated debate. Although he couldn't make out their words, The Joker could see very clearly that Crane was about to lose...not just the argument, but his temper.
He sat up straighter and pushed his cold tray aside, placing his chin in his hand as he leaned onto the tabletop. A smirk pushed its way into one of the scarred corners of his mouth as he saw Crane suddenly raise his tall stature from his seat and bring down what looked like a fork onto the spot in front of him. A shriek echoed throughout the cafeteria and the rest of the chattering had died down as two orderlies wrestled with him as another brought in a straight jacket.
"You fools!!" Crane shouted maniacally as his arms were thrust into his new attire. "Can't you see what they're trying to do?! We're not the crazy ones here!! You'll discover that soon enough, you drooling sacks!!"
The Joker snickered as Crane was finally led out of the doors, but his shouts could still be heard. The atmosphere was silent until everyone turned their heads to see the lonely patient that was sitting in the far corner, his snickers growing louder and then his greenish hair falling away from his temples as he tilted his head back into a scarred cackle.
Bobby's spine got the familiar tingling sense that it had only been getting since The Joker had made a home at Arkham, and he unwillingly obeyed the nudge his fellow warder was giving him. He looked around at the sea of uncomfortable faces staring at his patient and Bobby took a difficult first step over to him. He cleared his throat when he reached The Joker, whose head was now hiding itself in his hands as his laughter slowly died down to slightly audible giggles. "You finished, clown?" he asked quietly.
The clown looked up at his orderly, his laughter suddenly ceasing and a soft grin on his face. He quickly looked at his tray and then back at Bobby as he brought his wrists behind his back. He welcomed the cold sting of the handcuffs as they snapped on, and he allowed Bobby to take him back to his cell, even though his stomach was just realizing that it was still empty.
Harleen was half an hour late getting into work and she casually threw her valise onto her sofa as she grabbed her white coat from her desk chair. She quickly draped it over herself as she sat behind her desk and booted up her computer.
She sighed as she adjusted her glasses. They had another argument that morning. Richard had stayed the night and, when Harleen woke up, he had his hands up her tank top and was kissing her neck. Although she enjoyed the feeling of his lips on her skin, she wasn't in the mood to tolerate his advances. Harleen had trouble sleeping because The Joker's story had gotten to her, and she was still kicking herself at the innocent assumption she had made about his childhood.
She shrugged off Richard, but his grip grew tighter around her breasts. "Richard...come on..." she moaned. "I gotta go to work..."
"So do I..." he growled as he bit her hard.
"Ow! Stop it!" She slapped his arm and he finally let go of her.
He just glared at her as they lay in the light of the rising sunbeams as they threw themselves through her blinds. He finally sniffed and sat up, saying, "What the hell is your problem, Quinzel?"
Harleen rolled her eyes. Whenever he got angry with her, he would always call her by her last name, something that truly annoyed her. "What's your problem?" she asked back at him. "I just told you to stop and you grabbed me like some kind of animal!"
Richard chuckled in exasperation. "If we could only have sex, then I would show you how much of an animal I can be..."
She sneered and huffed as she jumped out of bed and into the bathroom. "You're such a pig, Richard."
"Better than being a frigid broad!" was the last thing Harleen heard as she slammed the bathroom door behind her.
She sighed deeply as she printed her schedule for that day. It was Friday and she wouldn't have another session with The Joker until the following Monday. She was hoping that she could see him and try to encourage him to become more involved in the rec room. The head nurse had told her that he never wanted to participate in the group therapy, even though his new friend, Croc, would join in, and he would just stare out of the window or lie on the sofa.
Harleen grinned as she tried to imagine her patient trying to abide with having to listen to everyone else's dilemmas. She knew that he would probably just laugh at them or make snide comments; however, she knew that he would have to be involved if he was going to survive the weekend without a session.
Not that he would notice, she thought to herself, and then prepared for her first session with a young woman who felt compelled to cut her legs when she had lustful thoughts.
"Be lucky you even have those thoughts, honey," Harleen bitterly said to her computer screen.
The Joker paced in front of his glass partition as he watched the commotion of a Friday work-day commence. It amused him how these people around him continuously threw around the exclamation at how fast the week had gone by and how they couldn't wait for the weekend.
He snorted at this notion; this was only his first week in Arkham and it felt as if time slowed down and his usual weekends used to consist of small night jobs in The Narrows and then stopping off at a strip club of a Family friend's with his men and having a few drinks.
He didn't care much for the women that danced for him. Sure, they were beauties...well, some of them. However, he knew that if he were to comply with an invitation to their room in the back of the club that it would mean he would have to fix their excitement with a blade and have trouble with the owner. Besides, he couldn't break the ties he had with some of these Families. They had been too monetarily advantageous for him.
The Joker saw Dr. Arkham coming his way with Dr. Leland. He could only hear their muffled voices over the chatting of the other nurses and employees. However, he forced himself to listen when he heard his doctor's name mentioned.
"Dr. Arkham," Dr. Leland began as they stopped in front of The Joker's cell. "I'm concerned about your placing The Joker in Harleen's care. I think she's too young to handle such a violent case."
"I don't recall asking your opinion of that, Joan, " Dr. Arkham said. "Remember, she was responsible for the rehabilitation of Waylon Jones and I reassigned him when I found that she had...tamed him...so to speak..."
"I agree that her methods have helped her patients," she said. "But...this is The Joker. I really don't think that her young mind can -- "
Dr. Arkham held up his hand. "Please, Joan. I don't want to hear another word about this. Dr. Quinzel has been doing just fine as of late."
"She knows that I've been watching her, Doctor, " Leland admitted. "I told her it was because of her own safety."
Dr. Arkham sighed. "Well, you need to keep watching her, Joan. I think she may be key in the case against her patient." He paused to chuckle. "I didn't just hire her for her looks, you know."
Dr. Leland smiled. "I know...can you believe the shoes that she wears? Sometimes I think I'm walking into a club than a hospital..."
Her voice trailed off as they walked away, leaving The Joker glaring at their backs as he breathed against the glass.
He could usually tell when he was being made a fool of, but he hadn't felt that way around his doctor, and that led him to believe that her boss wasn't telling his youngest employee all that Arkham Asylum was doing with his case. The Joker sneered as he wondered how much they had on him, seeing as how when he was temporarily locked away at County that they couldn't even trace the shirt off his back.
And what was even stranger was the very thought of Dr. Quinzel being played by her boss; it made The Joker's pulse race.
His stomach suddenly growled and he sighed as he sat on his cot, lazily scratching his knees through his orange jumpsuit. He lifted the corner of his mattress and took out his black journal and purple crayon, and after settling himself onto his stomach, he turned to the second page past his scribbled artwork and stared at it.
He had never kept a journal before, but he knew that he had to conform to his doctor's methods in order to get just a bit closer to her office and to a couch. He concluded that it wasn't so much the couch than just being in a place that wasn't guarded by mammoths in white ready to pounce on him if he so much as raised his voice.
"Dammit," he sighed as he rubbed his left scar. He lightly tapped the crayon onto the paper and closed his eyes. He hadn't slept well the previous night as he kept thinking of his doctor's reaction to his story about his mother's fear. It irritated him that she didn't say anything about what he had revealed to her, but he also knew that she wasn't expecting it.
How could she not expect it? He was practically a shrink's dream! A fucked-up child with an abusive father and who grew up to be the ultimate anarchist...he was everything her textbooks quizzed her about, and yet she was still shocked that his youth consisted of disappointments and cruelty.
His own story had given him a disturbing dream last night. The Joker wasn't one to have nightmares, but he noticed that small excerpts of violence and sadness began to creep into his mind as he dozed off in the night. He blamed it on his new meds as well as the fact that he didn't have such an active lifestyle in Arkham as he had on the streets.
He sniffed as he finally felt the need to write and although his purple crayon was already smudging onto his hand and the words poured from a bulky tip, he continued to describe what was in his mind after his session with his doctor.
Meanwhile, Harleen was finishing up her first session of the day, escorting her patient out of her office and to the elevator. "Rita," she began. "Please try to remember that these thoughts are perfectly natural, especially after the life you led."
Rita wiped away what was left on her tear-stained cheeks and nodded. "Thanks, Dr. Quinzel. I really...haha...I really don't know where I'd be without you here. I'm just glad that there's another woman here who truly understands me."
Harleen smiled. "I told you: I'm here to help, I'm glad to help. Now, please try to get some sleep. I'm afraid that the searches in your bedroom will still have to be conducted after your episode last week." Rita sighed and Harleen put her hand on her shoulder. "You can do this, honey..." she comforted her.
Her patient smirked and was led by a nurse back downstairs to the rec room. Harleen quietly shut her office door and slowly walked to the elevator to go down to the employee lounge for lunch. On the way down, the car stopped on the third floor and two muscular orderlies, each putting on a smirk when they saw Harleen standing alone, came through the doors with a restrained Jonathan Crane in tow.
Harleen knew they were going down to the secure wing so she pressed the button for the very bottom floor as one of the orderlies stared at her. She folded her arms uncomfortably, knowing well enough that he was looking down her blouse.
"Stop leering at her, you filthy peon..." muttered a subdued Crane, making the other orderly give him a blow to the back of the head.
Harleen's jaw dropped. "Excuse me, sir, but he is a patient here...not a punching bag!"
The large man snickered. "Relax, Doc. He likes it." He hit him again, knocking Crane's glasses and making them shift on his long nose.
"What's your name, mister?" Harleen queried, turning to face them.
The other orderly was a bit surprised at her bold stance and he tapped his partner on the arm. "Come on, dude," he said. "Stop acting like a jack-ass..."
"Like this chick is gonna do anything..." his friend told him, as if Harleen were no longer standing there.
Crane tried to adjust his glasses by cautiously shaking his head, but to no avail. Instead, he was pushed through the now open elevator doors and was fuming at how these men had treated Dr. Quinzel. However, his anger began to subside and he smirked as he heard the young doctor's high heels click after them.
"I asked you what your name was, sir," Harleen simply stated. "You deserve to be written up for this kind of behavior. Maybe you should be the one in the straight jacket!"
The nurses at the station as well as a few interns stopped their work and stared at the rising commotion. The other patients stood close to their glass partitions, and The Joker suddenly found an excuse to ease the cramp that his writing was giving his arm. He placed his hands gingerly on the glass of his cell as he gave the scene in front of him a concentrated glare.
The orderly had turned and faced the petite figure in front of him. "Are you actually comparing me to these crazies, lady?"
Harleen took a deep breath. "Doctor Quinzel to you, sir. And I don't care what kinds of things any of these patients have done. They are here to get well and rehabilitate and it certainly doesn't help when bullies like you slap them around like that!"
The Joker grinned as he noticed how slightly shrill she was becoming as well as how tenacious she was about defending the poor residents of Arkham Asylum.
This girl has some fire in her, he thought.
The orderly bent down to her and poked her hard in the shoulder, saying, "Leave the rehab to real doctors, Cutie Pie."
The only answer he received was a sharp slap in the face and it echoed in the hallway of the secure ward. The Joker belted an instant guffaw, leaning against the glass as he tried to stifle his chuckling.
One of the nurses giggled while another gasped, but Harleen stood her ground and finally spied his nametag. "Doctor Quinzel...Larry..."
The struck orderly looked dumbfounded, but Harleen stepped past him and helped Crane with his glasses. "Sorry about that, Dr. Crane," she cooed as she straightened his frames. "You know how these orderlies can be sometimes..."
Crane smirked at her and sighed. She was the only employee in the asylum who still called him by his former title. "Thank you...Dr. Quinzel."
Harleen grinned back as he was led away by his flustered orderlies. She looked at the people staring and just straightened her white coat as she headed to the elevators to travel to the employee lounge.
A loud knocking sounded close by and she turned her head to see The Joker standing by his door. She couldn't stop the smile from budding onto her face as she walked to his cell and he returned it with a smirk of his own as he opened the slat in the door.
"You okay there, Slugger?" he asked, playfully.
Harleen giggled as she crossed her arms. "I'm fine...not my fault if an orderly wets his pants."
The Joker snickered and shook his head. "Well...at least smugness looks cute on you...then it would just be annoying."
Harleen held her breath. This was the second time he had mentioned anything positive about her looks and, although she had heard it many times over her young years, the compliments coming from her new patient gave her a different sensation. She cleared her throat and said, "I actually hoped that we could talk a little. You know, we won't be having another session until Monday..."
"Mm hm," he mumbled as he also crossed his arms and put his back to the wall.
"Well, I wondered if you could do me a favor, Mr. Joker..."
He raised an eyebrow suspiciously and licked the corners of his mouth. "I promise I'll be a good boy until Mama gets home," he said childishly.
Harleen giggled. "Not just that, young man," she replied, not seeing the grin on his face as she played along with him. "I would like for you to give the group therapy a try this weekend." He rolled his eyes as he groaned, but his doctor was adamant. "Please, Mr. Joker. Just sit through one session tomorrow. If you don't like it, then you don't have to go anymore. I think it would help with your progress."
He sighed as he licked his bottom lip. "Those guys are so dull...all they ever wanna talk about is how they feel when they did this, or why they feel they need to do that...honestly, I think I'd give those people nightmares if I ever went into detail about how I feel when I do anything."
His doctor nodded in agreement, saying, "Maybe, but...just do this for me...okay?"
The Joker turned his head and looked into her blue eyes, which shined with hope through her square frames. He suddenly lifted himself off the wall and walked over to his cot and picked up his journal. He kept his eyes on her as he walked back to the door and dropped the journal into the drawer, clumsily pushing it out to the other side of the glass with his foot.
Harleen didn't pick it up, but just looked back at her patient. "Mr. Joker...I told you that you didn't have to turn it in to me. It's for you to keep..."
He merely shrugged. "I'm not much of a writer, Doc. I doubt any kind of epiphany will hit while you're outta the building. I've written my first entry...I want you to read it..." When he noticed the confused expression on her face, he grinned and said, "It'll give us something to talk about on Monday."
Harleen carefully picked up the journal and shut the drawer inside the glass. "But...Mr. Joker..."
"I'm doing you a favor," he reminded her. "Now do me one...take it. Just give it back at our next session."
"If I do," she told him. "You have to promise me that you'll go to one group therapy session."
"I told you I would..."
They stared at one another, each trying to read the other's countenance. "Okay," Harleen sighed. "I'll see you Monday."
He nodded and was about to close the slat on his door when his doctor intervened, "Oh! And please...just because I won't be here doesn't mean you can skimp on your medication."
He cocked his head, asking, "Are you requesting another favor...Doc?"
Harleen shrugged. "Sure. Do me that favor, too, please."
"Then you need to do me another..."
"What?" Harleen stared blankly at him. "Mr. Joker, we can't just be bartering all day."
"Who said we had to barter?" her patient asked.
She sighed and rubbed her neck as she hugged the journal to her chest in her other arm. "Okay...what other favor do I need to do for you?"
He stepped closer to the slat in the door and lowered his eyes to it, making her bend down in a slight crouch. "I want...for the rest of our sessions...to be in your office..."
Harleen suddenly straightened and shook her head. "I don't think that's wise, Mr. Joker."
"Why not?" he asked, straightening himself likewise. "I've been well-behaved, haven't I? Come on; if Killer Croc got to be on your couch, then what's wrong with me?"
She bit her lip. He did have a point. Waylon was far bigger than The Joker, but Dr. Arkham allowed for her to be alone with him after a few sessions with an orderly standing outside her door. She really couldn't see the harm in it, but she still felt anxious about being alone with The Joker.
It wasn't the fear, she decided, but the audacity of her tolerance of being alone with him. It would certainly show Dr. Arkham that she was willing to take a big risk like that.
"Okay, Mr. Joker," she finally agreed. "On Monday, I'll have Bobby bring you to my office...and there our sessions will remain."
He watched her shuffle away with his journal still grasped closely to her chest, and the sound of her high heels and the grating sound of the slat in the door were what accompanied the satisfied smile that crept onto his scarred face.