This was the latest she'd ever been for a session with the Joker.
Harley was a stickler for punctuality. She hated being late, she hated people who were late, she hated the idea of lateness altogether, and she knew that she'd better have a good excuse for it. There was only the odd occasion that she was tardy, and today she was running about ten minutes behind schedule. She imagined the Joker tapping his impatient foot, thick arms crossed over his chest, and the image made her cringe. He would tease her and abrade her, and she'd beg for his forgiveness, and he'd love every minute of her haphazard groveling.
Harley smiled; the more she thought about it, the funnier it became.
The hurried clicking of her heels was becoming a common indicator of her approach these days, and she usually took notice of the commanding sound. But today, she was internally scorning the chatty nurse on the first floor, who'd felt the need to tell her about a patient who'd tried to swallow his tongue over the weekend. Harley had been too polite to shoo her off, and the entire time the woman was talking she marveled at a topic that, in the real world, would not suffice for appropriate conversation.
Just couldn't shut her up... I guess I'm supposed to be approachable, but this is ridiculous! she'd repeated over and over again in her mind, hoping it would convince the Joker of her frustration. But during her zombified mantra, she hadn't noticed the absence of the ever-present guard outside the interrogation room. It was, however, hard to ignore the fact that Jeremiah Arkham was nowhere to be found inside the observation room. Mouth agape, her eyes flicked up to the one way mirror, and found the the interrogation room was empty.
Turning around on a dime, Harley ran back in the direction she'd come from, at twice the speed as she'd spent on getting there. The ascent to the seventh floor in the nearly fifty-year-old elevator was only a passing thought in her mind. She pushed the heavy iron door to the stairwell with such force that it slammed against the cinder block wall. Mounting stairs two at a time, she weaved her way from where they normally met on the third floor and up to the seventh, as quickly as she could without letting her shoes come up from underneath her.
Careening from the stairwell and down the hall, Harley heard something up ahead, straining to listen it over her beating heart. She did not slow herself down to turn the corner, but instead flattened out her feet and drifted on the tips of her toes, her knee length lab coat fluttering and swirling behind her.
The scene at the end of the hall was a catalyst for her growing anger. The Joker sat at by the emergency exit adjacent to his room, bound in a straitjacket, watching her intently as her feet skidded across the floor.
Walking briskly, though as calmly as she could to mask her anxiety, Harley made her way to the end of the hall and glanced at both of the guards before turning to see the disturbance in the Joker's cell. Dr. Arkham was just in the process of lifting the mattress on the twin bed that was pushed up against the left side of the room. "Aha!" he called out triumphantly, and seemed to pick something up that had been carefully hidden out of sight on the box-spring.
"Aha, he says," Harley said mockingly, turning to look back at the Joker who snorted in amusement from his position on the floor.
"Dr. Quinzel! You have impeccable timing," he congratulated her - begrudgingly - and then peered back over to the Joker. Arkham's sudden appearance in front of her made her jump when she turned back around.
"Random room checks, Doctor?" she asked, leaning away from him when she noticed how close he was to her.
Arkham stepped right past her and toward the restrained man, gesturing to him with the a manila file folder in his hands. "Oh, how I wish it was that simple. No, I'm responding to an observation made by an orderly, who said he'd seen your patient with contraband." Arkham handed Harley the file he'd rolled up, and she peered inside at its contents.
Lifting a skeptical brow, she looked up to Arkham and then down to the file once again. "Firstly, Dr. Arkham...as you've pointed out time and time again, you're actually the primary therapist on the Joker's case. Technically he's your patient." She paused and when she looked up to see his reaction, he had his back to her, his posture hunching in defeat. "Secondly, this is hardly contraband... these are newspaper clippings. Prisoners of penitentiaries and private mental facilities have the right to reading material if they want it."
Arkham was swift to correct her, tapping repeatedly on the file she held in her hands. "Wrong, Dr. Quinzel, patients are allowed reading material with their therapist present. Am I to be under the impression that you gave these to him?"
What a raving lunatic. "How could I have possibly given them to him? You've been observing every session I've had with the Joker so far, and in fact you've remarked on my progress."
There was no arguing with her. At the end of nearly every session, Arkham had patted her on the shoulder and told her she'd done a fabulous job. Hell, he'd even invited her to his fundraising gala because of the "breakthroughs" with the Joker. Turning to look over his shoulder, he took a deep breath before exhaling into a heavy sigh.
"Now, I cannot be held accountable for isolated incidents," Harley went on, holding up the file as the incident in question.
"It's not the articles I'm concerned about," Arkham said. "It's the content."
Furrowing her brows, Harley flipped the file open again and considered them for a moment. Indeed, the content was concerning. The clippings were from a copy of last week's Gotham Times about the very fundraiser that Arkham had invited her to. In the photographs were the tuxedo-clad members of the board, all of them standing (without walkers, amazingly) and smiling into the camera.
But just off to the right, and only slightly in the background was Harley herself, her back to the lens, peering over her shoulder. She remembered being surprised by the flash and looking over, only to feel like a fool upon realizing what had just happened.
The second article was a little more disturbing. Harley hadn't seen it, since she didn't usually read 'Page Six' material, but it seemed as though a wily photographer managed to catch a snap shot of Bruce Wayne - holding the door of his Aston Martin open for her as they left the party together.
Harley couldn't help but smile to herself, while in the meantime Arkham turned back to the Joker to lecture him about the meaning of the term "contraband", when suddenly he asked, "What exactly were you doing with these articles? Collecting information on this facility?"
The Joker rolled his eyes. "Actually, I'm taking a scrapbooking class at the Arkham Learning Annex for Wayward Crazies."
Harley pressed her fingers to her lips to stifle a laugh. When Dr. Arkham turned to shoot her a venomous glare, she moved her fingers down to her chin and gave the Joker a contemplative glance, nodding thoughtfully as if she didn't find him the last bit amusing. Her little act seemed to please the Joker, because he smiled at her before he glanced up to the old doctor.
Just before he burst into another tirade, Harley reached out and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Dr. Arkham, please...let me deal with him. We've been gaining leaps and bounds so far. I wouldn't want this little episode to cause a lack of trust to develop here." She then tapped him on the shoulder with the confiscated file. "Besides! These articles have nothing but good things in them. Nothing but wonderful things written about your fund. I'm sure if the Joker was trying to find something to manipulate you with, he wouldn't be able to find it in here."
Drawing in another deep breath, Arkham straightened his suit jacket under his stark white lab coat and nodded curtly. "Yes, my dear." Harley could feel the bile rise in her throat at those words. "I suppose you're right. I have nothing to hide," he said, looking down his nose as the Joker, whose twisted lips and hanging head seemed to admit his defeat to the doctor. "So long as he promises not to do it again."
Harley's blue eyes snapped over to the Joker, who was plainly a little shocked at the suggestion. The old man clearly had a lot of balls if he was going to request an apology from the Joker. Taking a half a step behind Dr. Arkham, Harley clasped her hands together and immediately painted a pleading expression on her face.
He scoffed heavily, rolled his eyes, and muttered in the quietest voice, "Yeah...sure. No more scrapbooking."
Arkham's old wrinkled face seemed to morph in an instant, into a pleased, almost beaming version of itself. He turned and immediately took Harley's hand, shaking it vigorously. "I must say, Dr. Quinzel. Only a few weeks and you've managed to free him of his pride! Simply remarkable!"
Harley's smile was very forced, and a quick gaze at the Joker's displeased and twisted face told her that the happiness was short lived...that is, until Arkham said: "You know, Kleinburg told me last week that I should just leave you be with the Joker, and I think he might be right."
How Harley had managed to turn this situation on its head and end up appeasing the old man was beyond her. Arkham's constant presence had led to conversations more tame than what she knew the Joker was capable of. He'd been holding back, and now...now he wouldn't have to anymore. Another quick glance at him verified that the tension was now all but gone. She allowed herself a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank you, Dr Arkham!" she exclaimed, shaking his hand just as ardently.
He released her, but jabbed a finger at her just as suddenly. "But I must be kept in the loop. I want weekly reports, and I'll be sitting in randomly to see how things are going."
She didn't care. Arkham could have filled the observation room with the entire Wringling Brothers' circus and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to her. "Of course, sir. Whatever you'd like."
Arkham nodded to both the guards, who relaxed their stances and stepped away from the Joker. "I trust that you'll be able to take care of him, then," he said, motioning for the guards to follow him. Smiling devilishly, he quipped one last time, "Good Luck, Dr. Quinzel," before his brutish posse walked down the hall.
She had been about to ask for help in getting the Joker back into his cell, but bit it back after his remark. Indeed, she would take care of him...no thanks to Dr. Arkham and his parade of wannabe watchdogs.
They both watched as the three men turned the corner toward the elevator, and once they were gone, Harley turned to kneel down in front of him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much that meant!"
The Joker rolled his eyes again and bobbed his head from side to side. "No where near as embarrassing as being tied up in this thing," he said, squirming ever so slightly.
"I don't know..." she mentioned coyly, grinning as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Kind of a good look for you. Besides, you have nowhere to run when I start asking you questions about why you have pictures of me hiding in your cell."
"Oh, I can still run," he said, looking toward his ankles.
Although they were shackled, Harley didn't doubt him at all. "I was going to get those guards to help me pull you up off the floor, but my pride got the better of me when Arkham wished me good luck."
"Pride! That's the word of the day!" he teased her with an acidic tone.
"Sure does seem that way." Harley sighed, looking over him "You sure are pitiful in that thing though." Straitjackets were never very becoming on anyone, and something about cutting off the Joker's means of theatrical communication seemed cruel and unusual to Harley. "Come on..." she said, wrapping both her arms around one of his. "Lean up against the wall and I'll help you slide up to your feet."
He did as she asked. Harley could hear the metal fasteners grind and scratch against the wall, and once he was up on his feet she dusted off his shoulders and his back. "Was the straitjacket really necessary?" she wondered. It wasn't too far outside of reality to assume that the Joker was being aggressive, and it was usually common practice to restrain violent offenders in such a way, but the question was just non-intrusive enough to get some response out of him.
"I was sleeping, they woke me up, turned me over before I knew what was happening and put me in this thing." He shrugged. Whether or not it was true didn't really matter to her, but it didn't exactly sound like something the Joker would lie about. Besides, if there had been any kind of violent behavior from him, Arkham would have had guards, orderlies, and medication up here in seconds.
Once inside his cell, Harley turned and closed the door, which locked automatically with a loud click that echoed through the small room. It looked just like all the others: taupe walls, a twin bed, bolted down aluminum table and chair. Everything standard issue, the same in every single room. By the door was a small, card-activated keypad mounted on the wall. It came with a locked plastic covering that Harley had a small key for. With a fluid swipe of her card, she dimmed the lights in the room to just a few shades lower then the blaring neon they usually were.
"A little bit of mood lighting, Doc?" the Joker asked over his shoulder.
She snorted in amusement and grinned, unfastening the buckles of his jacket. "Are you kidding, Joker? You wouldn't know what to do with me." Her tone was a little lighter than it usually was. It was such a relief to know that the old man didn't have his ear pressed up against the door. She was sure that acting herself around the Joker would cause him to open up further still. The thought thrilled her more than she'd expected it to.
"Now..." she began again, her hand on the final buckle - a crotch strap that prodded dangerous territory. She placed her hand on the buckle and tugged it just enough to get his attention. "You're not gonna give me a hard time for the whole 'apologizing-to-Arkham' thing, are you?"
"Is it Dr. Quinzel, or Dom. Quinzel? I think I might have misread your business card," he quipped, as she unfastened the last strap and helped him pull the jacket up over his head.
"It's Harley." she said. He nodded his understanding and collapsed width-wise on his bed, his head and shoulders pressed against the concrete wall.
"So, what was that all about, eh?" she asked, watching him fiddle with a hangnail. She sat sideways in the aluminum chair and draped her forearm over the top of the backrest. He gave her an unenthusiastic glance before peering back down at his fingernails. "Joker?" she asked again, and he moved to sit up a little higher.
"What?" Though clearly short on patience, he was watching her. His head moved down to regard her hand as she pressed her own fingertips into the confiscated file that Arkham had offered her.
The two of them just looked at one another for a few moments, before Harley aggressively flipped the file open. She lifted the photograph of Arkham's board of directors with Harley's image gracing the background. "Now, you and I both know that Jeremiah Arkham has his head so far up his own ass that there's no possible way that he could tell the true reason why you'd clipped these articles. Isn't that right?"
"Just a little light reading," he quipped, but Harley pressed him further.
"Joker, the only constant in these two articles is me. You know that." She offered him a closer look, thrusting the photograph toward him.
Reaching out, he snatched it from her and held it a fair distance away from his face, as if he couldn't make it out without glasses. "Oh, is that you?" His eyes shot back up at her. When they did, they were met with a displeased look and a pair of folded arms. "Hmph... doesn't seem very fair. Everyone else gets the woman in the red dress, and I'm stuck with Ethel the Librarian."
She groaned in frustration. "Okay, first," she said, rising from her chair, "I will have you know that librarians are actually one of the most fantasized figures in male sexuality examinations." This was a tidbit of information that either surprised the Joker, or informed him. Either way his eyebrows shot up as he watched her pace about the room. "Furthermore, I don't know what kind of a wild and crazy sex-kitten you might fantasize me to be when I leave this place, but it definitely does not include me wearing a ridiculous, backless, $23,000 designer gown, alright?"
'Twenty-three-thousand,' the Joker mouthed to her, sardonically impressed, before she waved him off and sat with a huff down in the chair again. His eyes moved over her for a moment, but he broke his stare and waved his hand about, squinting. "Wait, listen," he said abruptly, leaning over to snatch up the picture of her with Bruce Wayne. "This, is not ridiculous. Sex kitten, no... God no!" Harley didn't know whether to be relieved or depressed at that. "But confident enough to wear red..." he suggested, biting his bottom lip to make his point. "It's not impossible to see that you managed to pull it off. Gotham's most eligible bachelor seems to want to take you for a ride..."
She snatched the picture back and gave him a cynical gaze. "Jealous?"
"No..." he fired back immediately.
Harley smiled broadly and looked down at the photograph with a sheepish grin. "I'd like to say that you don't know enough about me to assume such things. I'm sure in most cases, you'd be right... But in this case you couldn't be more wrong." Inhaling deeply, her next words were softer, her tone apologetic, "The only reason I wore that dress was because Arkham asked me to look like investors had something to throw their money at... and Bruce Wayne?" Gingerly, she placed the photographs back in the file and closed it. "Bruce is an old friend from college. It'd been eight years since I'd seen him last. Trust me, he wants nothing to do with me...after all, it's hard for anyone to be attracted to 'Ethel the Librarian' right?"
Shaking his head ever so slightly, the Joker rolled his eyes and loudly slapped his large palms down onto his thighs. "Okay... I'm done having this pity party for you." His tone made her sit up straight. "Every time I turn around, you always employ these subtle...little strikes against your confidence. Don't paint yourself like a wallflower, because you're not."
He was right. She wasn't very quiet, not very standoffish, she could put her foot down when she needed to. But there was just something about herself that... didn't want to call any attention to herself. "Maybe that's why my life is so boring."
The Joker gestured back and forth between them. "Should we change places? Seems like you're the one getting the therapy today."
"We all have problems, Joker." She rested her elbow on the table, leaning her temple on her fingertips. "Are you really surprised that I'm a little more transparent than you?"
His eyes moved up and down her again with a more contemplative consideration. Then he sat up, crossed his legs tailor-style on his bed, facing the small, plywood footboard. "C'mon. C'mere and talk to daddy..." He patted the space on the mattress in front of him. "C'mon... I'm not going to bite you."
"I'd really rather not..."
"Sit," he said, a little more commandingly, and seemed pleased when Harley seemed to materialize in place in front of him. "Alright... now what is this? Daddy issues, or something? Your mother not hug you enough?"
She looked away from him and scoffed, shaking her head. "Where'd you get that diagnosis? A box of crackerjacks?" The thought of receiving therapy for the Joker was a joke in itself, but it was one she could laugh at.
"No, Harley, I'm serious." Sad thing was, he really did seem serious. His face was a little harder than it usually was, but not in any sort of angry, villainous way.
The first thing they taught you in "Active Patient Therapy" class was to remain objective with a patient - never get too involved with them, and don't let them get too involved with you. A good psychiatrist wasn't a lecturer, they were a guide. So that when the patient later asks you how you did it, you can explain that, really, they came to their healing on their own. Allowing the patient to know too much about their therapist created familiarity, and familiarity breeds contempt.
Still though... she gave him a pained expression and took a deep breath. "I don't know why, Joker. So I can't wear red? So I don't strut around like I own the place? So I don't wear a ton of makeup and spend hundreds of dollars on my hair? That means I'm low on myself? Just because I'm not arrogant doesn't mean I don't have confidence."
Yeah, she suddenly thought to herself. Yeah, that's right!
"Why do you cringe when I look at you? Why do you cover up your figure in men's clothing? Why do you drain every drop of personality out of your voice when you ask a question?" He asked her a barrage or questions, every one of which seemed to sit and stew in her mind. He wagged a finger at her. "Admit it...there's something you don't like about yourself. You don't know what it is, but it's there, and you don't like it."
"So? There's plenty of bits about myself that I hate... one of them is how ridiculous I look in that dress," she shot back at him, and could feel herself closing up. God, how can he tell?
He leaned in just a smidge closer to look her in the eye. "There's nothing not to like."
His tone was so gentle, so honest, that it frightened her...so much so, that she'd leaned away from him without noticing. Silence was her only reply. He stretched his legs back and pressed his back against the wall by his pillow, punctuating his thought with a half smile and a gentle tilt of his head.
Something inside her chest snapped, and her face softened. Although he might have been proud of himself, Harley wouldn't have gone so far as to call him smug; he simply sat, both hands folded in his lap, his legs slightly outstretched. He appeared relaxed, but the worst part was the honesty. Why... why did he have to sound so honest?
Logic kicked in. Immediately the gears in the left of her brain churned, tightened the muscles in her face, brought the cynicism back into her heart. It called out, screamed out, that she should stand and let him rot there alone. "You're trying to manipulate me," she told him, standing as suddenly as the thought had come to her.
The Joker seemed almost insulted by the insinuation. The corners of his eyes twitched when she moved, the springs in the mattress jostling to her missing weight. "No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are!" She stepped away from his bedside and leaned heavily on the backrest of the chair. "I'm not new at this Joker..."
"Shut up!" He got up on his knees and pointed at her, and it froze her still. Was it fear? Or was it exhilaration? She didn't know... but regardless, the volume of his voice clammed her mouth shut in the same way a cold wind might take your breath away when you've forgotten your jacket. With bare feet he stepped up off the bed and moved across the room. Harley turned and backpedaled away from him, suddenly panicked that there was no guard outside the door.
"Listen to me..." he growled, grabbing ahold of both her wrists and watching as she shuffled backward, finally coming to a halt against the adjacent wall. "Listen to me..." He crossed her arms over one another so that she couldn't struggle. "Don't panic." Though it was very difficult not to with the Joker's face hovering only a few inches in front of hers.
She drew in a shivering breath, trying very hard to maintain her composure even as her eyes became large, her bottom lids desperately hanging on to tears that threatened to topple down her cheeks should she blink. They were Harley's very best puppy dog eyes, as if he might strike her with a rolled up newspaper. Slowly, she nodded.
The Joker took a breath, and darkly whispered a command. "There will be no more," he began, pointing up to her face with a thickly callused index finger while the remaining four held on to her tightly. "Not another joke at your expense, not another cheap shot, no more fear of the woman in the red dress." When his eyes beamed down at her this tongue flicked out across the corner of his mouth and it was all she could do but look away.
"That's what you want?" Harley asked him in a nervous whisper, though for all the shock she could hardly feel the words roll off her tongue.
He nodded. "Yeah, that's what I want..." And here he inhaled deeply, peering down the bridge of his nose at her. "And I think you're going to find that's what you want, too, isn't it?"
There was this overwhelming sense of relief, a flood of calm that spread throughout her body. It didn't come when he slowly released her, it came just before that. Something in her mind seemed to snap in place. The Joker had set the rules for her, and for some reason even the thought of that dauntless color seemed to shake all of her doubts away.
With him standing before her, his black eyes scanning her face, she felt blank, as if there was no expression to assess. Finally, the Joker asked: "How do you feel?"
She said nothing for a long moment. Then she closed her mouth, swallowing hard. "I...I don't know..."
He grinned, looking at the clock on the wall with its thick plastic safety cover, and heaved a sigh. "Time's up, but...I think we made real progress today, Miss Quinzel."
There was no doubt in her mind that indeed they had, and Harley felt that if, indeed, her subconscious was a librarian named Ethel, she was surely dead.