Harleen sat on her sofa later that night, the television glowing an old black and white movie into her dimly lit living room as her papers lay scattered at her feet. She would every now and then lift her eyes to the screen and become entranced by the performance of the actors that she had seen so many times, and then set her eyes on the file in her lap. She must have read the police notes on The Joker several times before she once again studied Dr. Arkham's initial notes from her patient's first night in the asylum.
She couldn't quite understand what Dr. Arkham had meant when he told her that their investigation reached further back than when he was first locked in County. It seemed that Commissioner Gordon didn't have a clue as to where to begin or even where to end, as if the final revelation of The Joker's true identity could help explain why he is the way he is, but Harleen really couldn't see what it would matter if they figured it out.
All in all, it would be a waste. Did they actually think that finding his true identity would help find a better way to cure him?
Harleen's mind suddenly clicked. Maybe their notion, if that was indeed their intended approach, was a plausible one. Perhaps if one delved deep enough into his past, then they might be able to learn exactly how a man could be so far gone mentally...
...or was he?
She sighed as she brought her mug of hot, peppermint tea to her lips. The liquid had grown cooler, but she took small gulps as she lazily placed The Joker's file onto the sofa. Richard hadn't called; she didn't expect him to because of their fight that morning. They had fought before, but she felt that she made it clear that him calling her "frigid" had earned him a night off from her apartment.
She didn't quite know what was keeping her from having sex with him. She was very attracted to him, but she had already analyzed that it wasn't her own insecurities that kept them from making love. It also wasn't the fact they were co-workers, although she was a doctor and he was a security guard that worked totally different hours from hers. They were only able to get together on his nights off and he worked on the weekends. Now that she thought about it, Harleen realized that they never actually went on a date.
He had driven her home one night from work when her car wouldn't start and he just happened to stay over to take her to pick up her car at the shop the next morning. Nothing had happened between them except some small talk which later led to kissing and heavy petting. She invited him to stay over since it was very late at night when they both realized that she had to be at work in five hours.
Harleen smirked and shook her head. Why does she call Richard a boyfriend? He was hardly there for her after a long day at work, and when he was over, he was always pawing at her.
She was beginning to wonder how he would be if they finally had sex, and she wasn't sure of him anymore.
She put down her tea and turned off the television as she sat up to stretch her tired body. After she picked up the pieces of The Joker's file and carefully placed them back into his folder, she went over to her valise that was sitting in an armchair and stuffed the file inside, bumping the chair in the process.
She shuffled backward to avoid the valise from dropping onto her bare toes and cursed under her breath. Harleen sighed as she knelt down to pick up her papers, but paused when she spied The Joker's black journal that had fallen from her case.
Her jaw went slack. She had completely forgotten about it and had made a mental note on the drive home that she was going to read it in the morning.
However, when the ominous words of Dr. Arkham once again reeled in her brain and the thought of Gordon digging into every possibility at unmasking The Joker once and for all, Harleen decided that taking the book to bed wouldn't hinder her chances at helping both the authorities as well as her patient.
She quickly packed away the file papers back into her valise and grabbed the journal, making sure that her door was locked before she turned off the living room light and trotted off into her bedroom.
The Joker was dozing into a light sleep when he was suddenly startled by the clang of the door at the end of the ward. He lifted and propped himself up with his arms as he gazed past his glass and into the dark hallway. He could hear muffled voices coming closer to his cell and quickly lay on his cot again and pretended to be asleep.
The voices stopped in front of his cell and he could feel their eyes on him. He couldn't make out how many there were because he tried to open his eyes into a very discreet squint. He saw one big silhouette, but he knew that he heard three voices. He was beginning to grow impatient as they lingered in front of him, but it ceased when he once again heard his doctor's name.
"You going to Harleen's tonight, Richard?" Andrew asked his fellow guard.
Richard huffed. "Nah, Drew. We had a fight this morning. I tell ya, we've only been dating a few months and she still won't let me have it."
Andrew laughed. "You kiddin' me, man? You haven't hit home base yet?"
"I don't get it...she's being cold. She said she isn't sure she wants to now..."
"Drop her flat, Richie," another voice chimed in.
Richard shook his head. "I dunno, Larry. She's a great girl. Smart, funny, sexy as hell...I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. Harleen just doesn't seem all that interested anymore..."
Andrew looked around. "Well, maybe you should stoke the fires, Rich. Go get her a big-ass bouquet, or something. Girls love that kinda stuff..."
"Maybe..." Richard sighed. "Well, come on, guys. We gotta go to the med ward and make sure everything's Kosher."
Their chatting traveled down the hallway until the sound of the other door slammed shut and there was once again a still silence.
The Joker opened his eyes and realized that he had been holding his breath at the sound of his doctor's name. He slowly let it out as the tops of his ears began to burn.
Andrew he remembered very well from his first night at Arkham, and Larry was the flabbergasted orderly that had been reprimanded by Dr. Quinzel after his mistreatment of Crane. This Richard guy, however, was new and he was trying to remember if he had ever seen his face. He thought for a moment and then decided that he was too tired to try to jog his memory.
He was sure of one thing about this new security guard: he didn't like him one bit.
Harleen settled herself under the thin sheet of her queen-sized bed and turned on her clock radio. The student-run public radio station from Gotham University was playing late night classical music, something she had always listened to when she would study in her dorm room. She kept her bedside table lamp on as she pulled the covers over her knees and propped her back against the headboard, biting her lip as she turned her head and stared reluctantly at The Joker's journal that sat beside her on the bed.
It wasn't that she was just nervous about what she might find in its contents but that she wasn't sure if reading his innermost thoughts was something for which she was prepared. He seemed to be a very complex and tortured human being and Harleen began to doubt her wits as she reached for the book and turned to the front page to find his purple, scribbled artwork. She snickered as she read the title "Chaos" underneath it, remembering his story about his student essay.
She turned the page to find that, on the other side of his masterpiece, was a quick sketch of a pair of glasses. Harleen creased her brow in confusion. Why would he draw this? She shrugged when she remembered him telling her that he was prone to idle doodling, and glanced to a page that was scrawled with asymmetrical purple handwriting. Harleen had to hold the journal closer to her face to make out The Joker's busy text, but she was accustomed to slack writing when she had been a teaching assistant while she was getting her Master's. Back then, she felt as if she were grading papers of first graders. If she could read those sloppy letters, she should be able to make out The Joker's.
"This is my first attempt at trying to describe anything in my subconscious into words, so bear with me, Doc," the scribbles began. Harleen smirked as she brought her knees to her chest.
"After our talk about my mom and everything, I couldn't rest. For some reason, my mind kept reeling and all night I kept waking up wondering where I was and upon remembering I got angry. Don't ask why. I've been known to get mad at the drop of a hat, but this was a different kind of anger. I wanted to smash in my head, but I didn't want to make a mess of my mirror. Seven years bad luck, you know, Doc? Anyway, I wasn't really sure of what to write in this thing, so I guess I'll start with a dream I had before I woke up for the fourth and final time..."
Harleen sat up a bit straighter against the headboard as she gripped the book.
"I'm outside my old house. I think I'm in my back yard, I really can't remember, but I do know that I was playing in the mud. I looked to be about 5 or 6, doing what every little boy does: getting filthy making mud pies and torturing earthworms. Ah, the apple of Mom's eye, Doc..." Harleen grinned. "I suddenly decide to go into the house and my mom isn't too happy that I'm leaving muddy footprints on her just mopped floor (she mopped a lot). Ha ha! But she's happy to clean me up and I run upstairs to my room to wash up for dinner. That's when I hear it...stomping. It isn't the sound of my tiny feet in my soaked socks, but it follows me up the stairs and it keeps following me as I'm changing into my pajamas.
"Then the stomping is suddenly joined by shouting. Shouting so loud that it echoes in my bedroom and hurts my ears. I try to cover them but it's like the screaming is trapped inside the palms of my hands and my eardrums are pounding. I try to run but it's like my feet are in iron shoes. That's when I feel a cold hand on the back of my neck and it picks me up off my feet..."
Harleen leaned forward as she clutched the journal, her legs now as stiff as a board on her mattress and her breath sitting still in her throat. "I'm kicking at the person who picked me up, but I'm not touching anything. Then I feel a sharp sting across my backside, like someone's hitting me with a strap, and it keeps coming, faster and faster until I'm crying. I can feel the welts begin to grow into my skin until my squirming makes him drop me. I'm crying into the shag carpet of my bedroom and when I look to see who picked me up, all I see is a pair of steel toed boots. Before I can take a breath, the tip of one of the boots rears back and heads toward my chest...but as soon as the force of the foot knocks the breath out of me, I wake up and I'm alone in my cell.
"I still can't decide if it was a dream...or just some repressed memory. Ha! I'm not gonna start on that textbook stuff, though. You're the one with all the degrees. When I woke up, I felt--"
Harleen's breath finally escaped past her lips and she blinked her eyes rapidly, as though that would convince her that there was more to the entry, but The Joker had apparently stopped writing and she decided that's when he gave the journal to her after her altercation with the orderly.
"Felt?" she asked the journal. "Felt what? Why did he...?" She finally gave up and plopped onto her back, her head bouncing on the pillow. She sighed and chuckled lightly to herself at the suspense of his entry, suddenly accusing him of stopping on purpose. "That's something he'd do, I bet," she told herself out loud.
She skimmed through the entry and once again read the instant of abuse that he described. She closed her eyes and could only deduce that it was indeed an old memory that all of a sudden budded in his mind after talking about his mother and father the day before in his cell. Something awoke it and now it was haunting him. Harleen could only imagine the pain of welts across the thin skin of a five-year-old and the horror of a boot ramming itself into his small chest. She could see him kicking his legs wildly in a desperate attempt at escape, knowing full well of the punishment he was going to be receiving by the strong, unsympathetic hand that dangled him by the neck as the strap bore into his backside.
Harleen's cell phone startled her and when she opened her eyes, she quickly wiped away the moisture that was building in them as she went to pick up the call. She read the Caller ID; it was Richard. She sighed in annoyance and ignored the call, sending it to Voicemail. "Fuck off," she muttered as she set both the phone and The Joker's journal on her bedside table.
She found, however, that sleep was reluctant in coming over her as she continued to replay her patient's dream in her own mind.
The Joker was awakened the next day by Sly forcing his door open and stepping inside. "Rise and shine, clown," he bellowed. He steadied a breakfast tray in his hands as The Joker raised himself off his cot and stretched his lanky body.
"Talk about a wake-up call," he quipped.
Sly smirked. "Yeah, yeah. Come on, man. You gotta eat up so we can go." He set the tray on the chair close to the cot and The Joker raised an eyebrow at his orderly. "I'll be back in thirty."
"Where the hell am I going, Sly-boy?" the patient called after him. "Nobody's here that I can talk to..."
Sly turned and smirked at him as he began to close the door. "Your doc set you up with group therapy today, clown. So, put on your best face...oh, wait a minute..." Sly laughed loudly at his tasteless, yet terrible, joke and slammed the door behind him.
The Joker groaned as he grabbed a piece of rigid bacon and bit down hard, making him moan in pain as the sharp bits of food reminded him of his two missing teeth by cutting into his gums. He jumped up and went over to his sink and spit out the fragments of bacon and blood, and after rinsing his mouth, he sighed as he lifted his eyes to the mirror, mentally kicking himself for forgetting his promise of group participation to Dr. Quinzel.
Sometimes he really hated being a man of his word...