This. Chapter. Was. So. Fun. To. Write. I always envisioned this taking place at some point during Mad Love, and I infused my own ideas of what would've happened during his escape along with some weird fantasies (for lack of better term) and I've also been studying the Joker Blogs on Youtube (excellent series, thoroughly recommend them to any hardcore Joker/Batman/Harley Quinn fan!) Altogether, this chapter was born :)
Chapter Eleven: You've Lost Your Mind
"Hello, doll." The Joker cooed with harsh tone that softened at its edges, his voice strong and assertive as he strolled leisurely into the room, cracking his fingers in preparation for some unknown horror. Despite the situation, I took a moment to appreciate that he didn't look as menacing in a prisoner's outfit as I imagined he would in his usual attire. I'd never seen him with the famous wear in person, only through press photographs, but I knew that he didn't belong in a prisoner's outfit.
The door shut behind him with a painful clang, and I winced before cricking my neck and standing straighter, preparing for his onslaught. I turned as if I had any hope that I could run, but he swooped to where I stood with a delighted giggle and with an iron grip that knocked the wind from my system, clutched my throat and dragged me with him to the nearest wall, smashing my head with force into it. I supressed a groan as my head span and my eyes briefly fogged and blurred with mind-numbing pain. I blinked away the urge to release the mist in my mind through the form of tears, convinced that as bad as it felt for me, he somehow needed my pain, or something.
I was his therapist, after all; it was my job, my goal, to help him however I could. Besides, given how only a few minutes before then, I'd promised myself and him that I would do all I could to make him happy and to protect him from getting hurt. A strange, airy, numbing sensation of happiness washed over me as I realised that if it made him happy and made him hurt less, then it could only be good for me too, good for the promises I had made myself. Even if it meant a little head bruise to wake up to in the morning. I bit my lip to control my trembling fear that threatened to fragment and break up my fragile, demented happiness that lay like a veil over my brain. He came to rest his cool forehead on my own, breathing heavily with deranged exultation.
My happiness fragmented and ice cold fear set in, sending shivers along my veins, as helplessly watched my captor withdraw a slither of silver from his pocket, beginning to bring it to shoulder length, and not stopping there. Who thought it'd be a good idea to give prisoners' outfits pockets? My eyes snapped shut as I felt cold silver press to my delicate neck, right where the heat ran along, where my life flowed through. My entire life was in his hands, beneath his blade; a flightless baby bird cupped in his skeletal hands. I smiled in pure disbelief that this could only happen to me, that I was at the hands of the man who I had once foolishly believed would be inferior to me.
"Are you afraid?" He drawled, words like sugar-coated poison seeping into my ears and pooling into my brain, hot like fire and just as dangerous. I shook my head softly, wincing with each shake as I felt the knife press deeper into my flesh, at the point of nicking the skin. He licked his lips, the excitement and sheer frantic nature of the moment making him more jittery, joints stuttering with each sudden movement. Have none of the guards thought to check here first? Did no one see Joker get in? Panic at last caught up with the rest of my dizzying emotions, causing my fists to clench at my sides and eyes slowly open as I waited for his response to my defiance.A deep and throaty laugh escaped his cracked lips, dripping with pure malice.
"I disagree…" He murmured, and I allowed a breath as I felt the knife leave my neck, but immediately repressed my breath again as he instead placed his hand and the knife over my chest, at the most delicate, feminine and sensitive area that wouldn't count as sexual assault.
A strange flutter of heat echoed through me, the younger and more provocative side of me still vaguely present, a brief rush of reminders of how I'd landed myself here, what I'd done, and who I'd done. Really, Harley, you're too predictable. As if the moment wasn't hectic and terrifying enough as it was, I tried not to pay attention to the fact that my mind was beginning to halve, the voice becoming less my own and more someone else's. It felt like what I assumed going insane felt like, not that I wanted to admit that to myself or anyone. The irony alone was enough to make my stomach turn. Quickly diverting my thoughts and refocusing myself on the serial killer who still had a weapon pressed against my chest, I began to breathe again, hoping it would show him that I wasn't afraid, which slowly, was becoming a truth.
Subconsciously, I knew from the moment it left my neck that he wouldn't use the knife against me; not yet. The Joker had always talked about his toys, and I assumed that right now he was merely playing a game with me like a toy. He may be a regular cheater and an even more regular liar, but he wasn't one to end a game early, especially a game he enjoyed. And it was painfully evident that he was enjoying this one. I chewed anxiously at my lip, desperate for the echoes of lust that still traced my system to leave before I gave myself away. The Joker raised an eyebrow, his laughter rising in pitch and volume, his hand shaking from the tremors of laughter, reverberating on my chest. Too late, the voice grumbled ruefully.
"So it's that way with you and knives, is it? I didn't know you were into that…" He insinuated, and I felt heat rise to my cheeks. Even though I was being held against a wall, a knife to my bare skin, I still found time to be embarrassed by The Joker insinuating that I had a knife fetish. One day, I'd look back at this moment and laugh, I was sure of it.
The peals of maniacal laughter akin to a hyena's began to echo through the room again, and without any warning he snatched my wrist with a painfully relentless grip. I tried to struggle and pull away, but with the mixture of emotion, the pain and the recent trauma, I was no match for him and we both knew it. Especially when my maniacal patient then pinned his body to mine, his knees against my knees in place and chest pressing mine to the wall.
I clamped my teeth down on my bottom lip to control my voice from slipping out a cry of surprise as he dug the knife into my skin, slashing a J into the pale flesh of the inside of my wrist. The skin began to hurt, burning and searing as it sunk in that I was being cut into with a blade; I supposed the pain could've been worse and held onto the supposition, but it didn't completely block out the pain- it was still there. The sight of the blood beading up out of the new wound made me cock my head in wonder; its contrast against the pure white floor it began to drop onto attracted my attention and held it steady.
"A little something to remember me by," he hissed in pleasure, trailing a finger along the underside of my chin as he pocketed the blade, "Until next time." My heart fluttered at the thinly-veiled sincerity of his words; it was definitely not empty. It was an unsure vow, a cliff-hanger, not an ending. With that, he snatched his finger and body away and began to stalk to the door. My new scar briefly forgotten, I stumbled one step after my elusive patient, before dizziness rooted me to the spot. Well, I've left the wall at least, I thought.
"Where are you going?!" I exclaimed, choosing to ignore the burning sensation of my wrist and the peculiar cool trickle of the blood splashing to the floor. He halted, whipping around to face me. My eyes widened in surprise and I took an unsteady step backwards as he skipped back to me, pressing his forehead to mine, causing me to fall back to the wall again, his body on mine. The rough skin of his made up face brushed against my smooth skin, and I flushed at the strange sensation of granite against marble.
His eyes began to gaze up and down my body, as if examining or assessing something. I narrowed my eyes to rest my head against the wall, content amidst the chaos enough to watch him and wait for him to reach a decision over whatever it was he pondered. His tongue darted out to swipe across his lips, and I was instantly reminded of one session when I'd spent an unhealthy few minutes wondering what it felt like to touch those lips. His green eyes glimmered with something similar to mischief, but with more earnest meanings than before. Like he wanted to experiment, but was unsure of the side-affects.
He hovered over me for a moment, before shifting almost uneasily. Although there was no way he could be, his movements made him look slightly anxious, as if whatever he wanted to was a delicate procedure. He was more than just an advocate of chaos; he was an engineer, and engineers were renowned for being overly-striving of perfection. Also, to add to that, I remembered one of the many personality disorders he'd been branded; narcissism. Anyone who was as narcissistic as he was reported to be would not want any of their plans to go wrong, or to seem anything less than perfect. I brought my attention back to what he was actually going to do, and seemingly at the right moment.
"Doll, don't say I ever treat you wrong." He muttered. Suddenly, without warning, he leaned forward and pressed his lips hard and without mercy against mine. My hands splayed out to caress the walls in surprise before my lips moved in response to his, exultation and adrenaline invading my senses and controlling my movements. I tried vainly to convince myself that I kissed him back as a sign of gratitude for setting me free of my "bird cage", that the only reason I'd returned the gesture was to avoid his disappointment, but when the familiar feeling that was nameless and unrecognisable to me returned and clogged my senses, I began to realise just what the feeling was, and it began with L.
His rigid, stone cold hands roughly gripped my neck, thumbs deep in the skin, causing me to cram more energy into the kiss, as a positive response to the feeling of literally being under his thumb and under his control. I could feel my skin blemishing with bruises like blooming flowers, but I didn't care. All I could feel was unadulterated happiness from the kiss; he kissed me. He, who deemed everyone to be below him, gave me the sole satisfaction of kissing me, presumably because he wanted to, and to show me that he was pleased that I cared about him escaping. It was the attention I had always wanted, and never known that I'd needed it.
His teeth grazed my plump bottom lip, capturing it between his lips and feeling them collide and slip over each other, his breath swirling into my mouth and into my mind, fogging my senses. Everything I could see or feel or know was him.
Before I could melt further into his embrace, he pulled away sharply and slapped me softly on the cheek; not a reprimand, but a strange, twisted promise that only made sense to me and him- that made me feel special. My cheek didn't even sting, as if to prove that it really wasn't meant to hurt; if he'd wanted me to feel pain, he would've hit me harder. It was the conclusion to his gift for me.
With that, he darted out of the door, laughing with enthusiasm and pure maniacal intent. The sound of guards yelling profanities and curses soon followed the direction that his laughter took. Knowing I was safe, everything that had just taken place impacted me, crushing me with full force. My knees shook, and I was finally thankful that he had pressed me to the wall. I ungraciously sunk down, slumping to the floor. My head swam, and the emotions swirled over my brain along with flashbacks of the past five minutes. I hit my head slightly harder than I realised, I noted as my head throbbed and pounded, nothing left to stop me from succumbing to the approaching darkness I could see in my peripheral.
"Fuck." I croaked as my vision began to blur and the stinging became stronger in my wrist; he'd cut me deeper than I realised, too. I twitched in surprise as I noticed blurred, undefined figures swarming around me, tall, imposing, more threatening than The Joker could ever have been. I only caught snatches of what they were saying through the ringing in my ears, and all I could do was meekly shrink away when they loomed nearer to me, sound intolerable to my throbbing brain.
"Joker's missing from his cell…"
"… This one's slipping unconscious! Laura, Laura can you-"
"- Dr. Quinzel, Harleen? Can you hear me?" I tried to groan in response, but I couldn't tell if I'd made the sound aloud or just imagined it in my contorted brain, fractured physically and mentally. Fatigue hit me like a sack of bricks to my chest, and my vision faded to black, my body limp.
The last thing I heard before passing out completely was of my own flashback, of The Joker laughing his pure laugh. Not the laugh he used to intimidate people, but his genuine, maniacal laugh, which I wanted to make the soundtrack of my life. The sound I wanted to worship, to strive to hear, to achieve. His laugh.
I don't remember my office floor being this soft, I thought in confusion. If I could have seen myself in the mirror or felt my face, I knew I'd have been frowning. I don't think I'm on the floor anymore. With that, I was aware that my eyes were clamped shut, and knew that in order to make sense of something, anything, I needed to open them. Okay, operation wake up then, Harls. 3, 2, 1… On cue, my eyes fluttered open, and quickly fluttered shut again as the piercing white light of what looked like a hospital blinded me and made my skull ache. Contempt thumped me in the stomach; I hated hospitals, ever since I was old enough to remember hating anything. If I'm in a hospital, I swear to God… Before I could think further ahead in my empty vow, a dull gnawing in my wrist suddenly brought a tidal-wave of memories flooding back to me.
"Oh!" I managed to cry, attempting to sit up as if an upright position would help me see sense or otherwise convince me that my flashbacks were a false fabrication of my splintered mind. A strong resistance on my shoulders took me aback, and I opened my eyes again, forcing them to stay open. It took a moment, but when my eyes adjusted I realised I was in the first aid ward of Arkham, and Joan was currently pushing down on my shoulders. I shot her a look of both questioning and warning, but Joan shot me back a glare of defiance, as if to say, "Comply and I will explain."
I laid myself back down half-obediently, propping myself up so I could still glare at Joan with burning eyes, hoping to accurately convey my contempt at being told what to do. There was only one person who was allowed to do that, and judging by my flashbacks, he wasn't around to order me about.
"Harley, you blacked out after The Joker escaped and paid you a visit. I am sorry that you had to go through that; it must have been terrible! If you weren't his doctor, then none of this would have happened. I convinced them to let you do this." She sighed, rubbing her forehead slowly as the defiance I'd seen beforehand dissolved. I noticed the dark circles under my eyes, and slowly I began to consider that I wasn't the only one suffering at the hands of my escaped patient.
"Where did he go? Did they find him?" I pressed urgently. My breath accelerated at the very thought of what they would do to him if they caught him without my presence to aid his defence and possibly spare his wellbeing.
"No one's found him yet. He escaped out of a lower level window after setting loose some of the first band patients," She said mournfully, eyes dim as they briefly flittered to meet mine before dropping to her fumbling fingers. "Luckily they were all returned to their cells, relatively peacefully." I nodded slowly, processing everything all at once, fighting the nausea I felt from being so overwhelmed. As we both sat in silence, my eyes began to drift, mind still replaying the events from a few hours previously. From my peripheral, I noticed that my scar wasn't bandaged, but rather exposed for anyone to glance down and see; it didn't look like anyone had noticed it, although how it could have been ignored I had no clue. I turned my wrist over just in case, and shifted on the temporary bed.
"Joan, I need to get out of here. I need to go and breathe and think. Am I free to go?" Joan blinked slowly and peered at me carefully, wearing a mask as she adopted nothing but pure professionalism, before checking the clipboard attached to the clunky metal frame of the bed I began to feel uncomfortable being laid on.
"Well, you don't have a concussion; you passed out from a mix of pain- I suspect not all from a blow to the head- fatigue and emotional stress. You're free to go. But take it easy, okay? You need to sleep." She advised. I nodded and leapt up, ignoring the blinding orthostatic hypotension that fuzzed my eyes, like the white noise of a television set.
"Thanks, Joan! I promise, I'll get lots of rest, don't you worry." I called as I walked away, waving my hand shakily in dismissal. The moment I was from her sight, my own mask faded, and I returned to worrying.
On impulse, my thumb traced the scar on my wrist, feeling the hardened skin of the natural stitches it built for itself to protect me from infection. Anxiety's butterflies fluttered around in my stomach, making me chew my lip as I set about on my way.
"Mr J, please don't do anything stupid. Be okay, please… I need you." I quietly willed as I clocked out and exited Arkham Asylum. I did need him, that much was true; I needed him to help me make sense of my own mind, a mixture of emotions. Seeing him again would truly confirm my suspicions over just what I felt for him, that I had felt when he kissed me. But it was more than my selfish need; it was worry for him, too. He was all alone and frightened, and so was I. I never thought I'd have said it, given all that had taken place recently, but I was lost without The Joker.
I was very nervous about uploading this chapter, I'm not sure why. Please let me know what you thought of it, I would love to know. I won't elaborate on the kiss from The Joker's POV because I want you to make your own decisions as a shipper/curious bystander on what it meant. Was he just trying to persuade her? Was he curious? You decide. My intentions will remain anonymous. ;) See you on Tuesday!