TEN

Week Fifteen: Session 29 - The Joker

"Do you have a boyfriend, Doctor?"

She put her pen down on the page, clasped her hands together and looked at him, at his nose. Pretending she was looking into his eyes.

"You know better than to ask me questions about my personal life, Joker."

She didn't.

Over the months she'd been giving off more and more an aura of solitude, the kind of confused loneliness a pretty and popular girl gets the longer she's been single, when she's never been single before.

"A girlfriend then?" He continued playfully and she blinked at him, trying to keep her expression fixed and neutral.

"I know you are aware these questions aren't appropriate, Joker."

But Doctor Quinzel was an ambitious young woman. She wanted her name to be celebrated and remembered. Girls like that didn't have time for boyfriends. Or girlfriends, for that matter.

"You asked me." He pointed out with a slight pout.

"It's part of my job to ask you questions like that." She returned calmly and he gasped and boggled his eyes at her.

"Shame on you, to lead me on so!" He threw his head back onto the couch dramatically and stifled an ostentatiously false sob.

She worked to suppress her smile, a pretty little blush.

How easily he made her smile, and how earnestly she tried to restrain it. What was the world coming to when such a merry little creature felt like she had to swallow her natural inclination to laugh easily and often? He wanted to see her smile more. All this serious gazing and earnest looks were very unbecoming to her. They seemed unnatural.

"I think Doctor Bartholomew might have his eye on you," he continued glibly. "Ethan too."

The smile snapped off her face. "Joker, I must insist we move away from this topic. Otherwise we will have to end the session early."

She seemed more disappointed than anything else. He hadn't been unpleasant to her since his little outburst and he knew she was finding it easier to forget the body count. He wondered if she really would end the session early. Should he push it, or be good?

"I'm sorry, Doc." He said humbly. "I don't mean to pry. But I have an insatiably curious nature."

She relented somewhat. "I understand your desire to know more about the person treating you. But I'm sure you know it would be very unprofessional."

He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. "And can you really blame me? A pretty girl like you. A fella couldn't help but wonder."

Flustered her again. She wasn't sure how to deal with his compliments. To turn them down would seem rude, to accept them too encouraging. He couldn't help but push a little further.

"There's a light in your eyes. It's quite unusual. You strike me as the sort of gal who was once an expert at fun but you've fallen out of practice. But you can't hide that merry little twinkle in your eye. It's in there, waiting to get out again. You should let your hair down more often, Doc. What do you do for fun?"

Her face had grown still at his words, and he knew he was scraping close to home. "Well, I am very occupied with my work here." Tsk! She should know better than to answer a question like that even in part. "But we're not here to talk about me, Joker."

He relented, satisfied at the tremor around her mouth. "Of course, Doctor Quinzel. What would you like to talk about today?"

"Well," She paused to think about it, "What would you like to tell me?"

Oh Doctor, the things I could tell you, the visions I see - you're in a few of them, a carved out mannequin shell in a rotting ball dress with maggots eating a smile into your face.

Out loud he said: "I'd like to tell you a story."

He didn't need to look at her to know her eyes had gleamed.

"Once upon a time, right here in Gotham City, there was a Wolf and his Three Little Pigs. That might seem like an odd union, but as so many things are in Gotham, nothing is quite the way it should be. The lamb devours the lion, a penguin drapes himself in polar bear fur and strange winged demons behave as angels might. Anyway. The Wolf was very good to his little piggies, keeping them fat and fed and sleek, so that they never had to want for anything. Or wouldn't if they were at all reasonable. One day the little piggies got greedy. Piggies so often do. And as Wolfie was leading them home after a merry caper one day, the little piggies ambushed him! They did, Doc, they did."

"What did they do to you?" She asked him, her eyes round, her lower lip slack like a little girl's listening to a bedtime story.

"They tied Wolfie up!" He said dramatically, and she cringed. "They subdued and restrained him and bound him to a bed! No, don't blush. Doctor, it's nothing like that." He chuckled in response to her sharp intake of breath. "Y'see the little piggies had decided that what Wolfie doled out to them wasn't enough. They wanted more. They wanted access to Wolfie's secret hoard. Those greedy piggies! So they beat him, and chained him and stuck him full of a juice to open his snapping jaws, believing they could get the location of his little nest egg from him that way. Do you know what happened, Doctor Quinzel?"

"What?" She asked, almost tentatively.

He laughed. "Wolfie opened his jaws all right. He took in a great big breath and sucked them all in, straight into his enormous mouth. And in there they were taken on a little trip into the deep, dark corners of his head. Yes, they churned and coiled and floated down strange moist passageways of Wolfie's dark and distorted mind. Gold, and what it can do to a man, eh? They should've known they could never delve there and come back unharmed. No one can." He broke off, chuckling to himself and Doctor Quinzel lifted a hand to her throat.

"What happened to them?"

"He vomited them back up." He said simply. "Up they all came, one, two, three. And though discombobulated they weren't very happy with their Uncle Wolfie. But before they could so much as squabble for their gobble, Wolfie threw off their chains and laid them asunder. He nibbled their lips off, leaving them with beautiful, permanent smiles. Three stuck little piggies, bleeding like tears." And he tapped his heels together, three times, and hummed a little tune, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling.

"How?" She asked him, a trifle breathless. "How did you overpower them? There were three of them, and one of you. You were tied down. How did you get the better of them?"

He grinned at her wickedly, enjoying the sight of her enthralled gaze. "That's for you to puzzle over, Doc. Do you know why fairytales were told back in the olden days?"

She shook her head a little, no.

He snickered. "To warn children off doing naughty things with bad man."

She sat up straight. She was alarmed. "Are you threatening me?"

He pulled his expression into one of exaggerated innocence. "Why would I be doing that, Doc? Red is definitely your colour." He finished enigmatically.

She glanced down at the red blouse she wore, looked back up at him. Politeness told her to say thank you, but she wasn't sure if she should accept a compliment from him.

"Am I ever allowed to read what it is you write in that notebook of yours?" What do you carry in your basket, little Red Hood?

"No," She said firmly. "I'm afraid that has to be entirely confidential."

He quirked a brow at her. "You're afraid it does?"

"I mean that it does."

"No matter what?"

"Yes."

"That's all right." He said breezily. "I already know what it says."

She started. Wiggled in her chair. Doctor Arkham would never fall for that. "How can you know that?" She asked him curiously, slightly challenging.

He swivelled his head to the side, grinned at her smugly.

"It's been written a hundred times before, Doc. It all has. Ever visited Gotham Public Library? I have my own shelf."

Very sweetly, she got defensive. "Well, maybe what I have to say isn't something you've read before. Maybe I have a different perspective."

He let his eyes traverse her body, down her red blouse and black skirt, over her nylon-clad legs to her scuffed black shoes. There was a little run in her stockings, covered over in clear nail-polish. She'd arranged it so it was on the inner leg, over one ankle, but because she'd crossed that ankle over the other, it was visible. He licked his lips.

"You've got a run in your stocking." He pointed out.

Hastily, she tucked that ankle behind the other. "It happened this morning." She hurriedly explained. She was so green - didn't she know she should never try to justify herself? It was almost too easy.

"You should just not wear any." He said flippantly and she had the gall to look scandalised, as though they were back in the nineteen-fifties.

"That reminds me of another story. My mother, back in the Depression, well stockings were expensive back then, you know, Doc. They were a luxury item. Not like today, where they're a dime a dozen." Her cheeks burned and ah-ha, he thought, that run didn't happen this morning. "Well, my mom and her sister, they were just a poor working class family and couldn't afford stockings, not when the only meal they had a day was bread and dripping. So what they'd do instead, with a couple of their pals, is pool in together for a bottle of tanning lotion, rub that all over their legs from just above the knee down, and then draw a black line up the back of their calves with eyeliner. Ha! Can you imagine it, Doc?"

She was gazing at him sceptically. "The Depression happened in the thirties. Your mother would have to have been very old when she gave birth to you."

He blinked at her. "You don't know how old I am, Doc."

"You're not that old." She said incredulously, and rather cutely.

"All right, Doc. I give." He conceded graciously. "I made the whole thing up. But what cares - it makes a good story, doesn't it? And isn't that all that matters?" He gave her a little more. She'd note he'd admitted to his fabrication - to her it would seem significant, an indication of trust. He was so good at this.

She tipped her head to the side and gazed at him thoughtfully.

"Could you describe to me what your understanding of truth is, please?" She tried so hard to be superior, to be distant and aloof. Did she know how miserably she failed? Could she conceive of it?

He chuckled again, rubbed his cheek on the couch. "Truth? The dictionary would define truth as being something that is absolute, that is incontrovertible. But we use it in a far more fluid fashion than that. We all have truths, Doc. But truth shifts. Truth changes, depending on who you're talking to and what their motive is. There is no truth, Doctor Quinzel. There is nothing on this earth that is absolute. Except perhaps one thing."

"And what is that?" She asked him.

"Ha." And he shifted so that he was lying flat on the couch, his head turned to the ceiling. "That's for me to know, and you to find out."

Doctor Quinzel was really very sweet, in her own way. He watched her scribble notes and knew his definition of truth had put motion in her pen. It was sweet because she simply didn't see the assessment she was making of him assumed that there were absolute truths he, in his insanity, couldn't see.

And so, he was crazy and detached from reality. It didn't even occur to her that, in actuality, this reality she participated in didn't even really exist.

He wondered if Doctor Quinzel could handle being shaken out of the head trip that was life and if it would make her laugh again.

--

The events referenced in this chapter are from Showcase '94 1 & 2. A very fun story.

Joker's description of his mother's "fake stockings" is what my own grandmother and her sister used to do during the Depression.

I should probably take this moment to say that if you're wanting a lot of action and blood, this story won't provide it. What really interests me is the psychological play between Joker and Harley, how over time he drew her into his thrall. It would've been a slow and intricate process. And it would've been subtle. That's what I'm trying for, anyway. Only you guys can tell me how well I'm succeeding.

But look forward to some fun in future chapters! ;)