Thanks for the reviews!


Ivy locked the front door and fastened the security chain. Before Harley could ask what the next course of action was, Ivy grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her into the kitchen. Harley was barely able to stay on her feet—and avoid getting her arm pulled from its socket—as Ivy dragged her through the house.

"As soon as we get outside, we're going to the greenhouse," Ivy explained.

"So Mel can eat that hyena-nappin' jerk? I like your thinkin', Red, but do you think I could have my arm back maybe?"

Ivy looked down and saw her fingers were so deeply imbedded into Harley's wrist that they would leave bruises. She released her grip and Harley massaged her wrist.

"Sorry."

Harley and Ivy had nearly reached the back door when the front one was kicked open. The security chain held and bought the fleeing pair a few seconds. A second kick snapped the chain and the door flew open, banging against the wall.

All the leeway the security chain had given them evaporated when they hit the back door. The most basic home-defense measure—locking the door—cost Harley and Ivy everything. Ivy fumbled with the lock and by the time she managed to twist it in the right direction and open the door, a hand was there to shove it closed.

Hands were not often the most recognizable part of a person, but Ivy did not need to look at the face of the man holding the door shut to know who he was. The man's shirtsleeve had ridden up a bit and his arm bore an unmistakable series of grouped tally marks. Ivy twisted away from the door to confront the woman-murdering bastard that dared violate the sanctity of her home.

An overwhelming majority of people, upon discovering Zsasz had broken into their domicile and was standing between them and escape, would have dissolved into panicked screaming. Ivy was not part of the ninety-nine percent. She glared at Zsasz unflinchingly. When he returned her glare with a calm and steady gaze, she pulled out the most dangerous weapon she had on hand: her hand.

Though Ivy weighed half as much as Batman, lacked his weapons and armor, and couldn't, despite her most valiant efforts, intimidate like him, she could still throw a mean punch. She aimed a more powerful punch than the one that had knocked Crane out of his chair at Zsasz's face.

If the knuckle-sandwich had made contact, Zsasz's days of having a nose that resembled anything except a blob of Silly Putty would have been over. Unfortunately for Ivy, any future dreams of becoming a championship boxer died when Zsasz nonchalantly caught her fist as easily as he would have caught a ball lobbed underhand by a child. Ivy's eyes widened with disbelief. She had thrown that punch with everything she had, and it hadn't even come close to its intended target. What was worse, Zsasz regarded her trapped hand with faint amusement, as though it had been a mildly interesting trick performed by an amateur magician.

Ivy tried to pull her hand from Zsasz's grip and felt his fingers tighten around hers. She told herself not to panic. Then she considered all the people that hand and its twin had killed in cold blood. Ivy was unable to follow her own advice.

"Let go of her, you dirtbag, before I kick your butt!"

Harley's threat didn't exactly have Zsasz quaking in his boots. He took one look at the blonde, noted that she'd struck some kind of weird karate pose, and decided to defuse the situation before it turned into one of those Japanese martial arts movies where gravity doesn't work so well.

In the blink of an eye, Zsasz had transferred the letter opener from his pocket to his hand, and then to Ivy's throat. Harley squeaked and dropped her Fatal Needles vs. Fatal Fists attitude in favor of a more submissive one. One that would, she hoped, not get her best friend cut to pieces in front of her.

"Come on, Mr. Z, don't kill Red. I know we can all be friends if we really try. I got some movies that might help," Harley said.

Ivy, despite her precarious predicament, couldn't help but roll her eyes. Was Harley serious? How could anyone be that naïve? Did Harley honestly believe she could install a soul in the likes of Victor Zsasz if she forced enough talking toys and positive moral messages into his eyeballs? If so, Ivy was doomed.

In a move that had nothing to do with Harley's offering of heart-melting cartoons, Zsasz dropped the letter opener from Ivy's neck. He had orders—orders he wasn't exactly overjoyed with—not to kill anyone in the house until they were identified and their fates properly determined. He supposed he could always say he hadn't heard Black Mask shout that—his brain had been buzzing with the mad desire to chase and hunt, after all—but he somehow didn't think Black Mask would care. As much fun as it would be to kill Poison Ivy right then and there, it would be at least as painful to be shot by Black Mask later.

Keeping his hand firmly closed around hers, Zsasz pulled Ivy away from the door. He motioned for Harley to move back the way she and Ivy had come. Harley retreated to the living room and discovered, to her dismay and great distress, that a bunch of murderous freaks had taken up residence there. One of them was even rude enough to steal Harley's prime television-viewing spot on the sofa.

"You're nothing but animals! Can't you even keep your feet off the coffee table?" Ivy demanded.

Black Mask looked her in the eye, smirked, and proceeded to grind the heel of his shoe into the tabletop. Ivy saw red.

"Eddie, I thought this was your hideout, not a hotel for crazy plant ladies," Black Mask said after he finished defacing the table's finish.

"His hideout? He told you this house was his? Where is the bastard? I'll kill him!" Ivy shrieked.

"He's behind the couch," the Shark replied, gesturing with his one remaining thumb.

"Let her go, Zsasz. This is going to be hilarious," Black Mask said.

Zsasz released his hold on Ivy's hand and she stormed towards the couch with all the menace of an approaching hurricane. Like a scouting prairie dog, Nigma briefly popped his head out of his hiding spot. It took one look at the swirling cloud of pure fury that was barreling down on him for Nigma to decide conditions were unfavorable, and for him to disappear back behind the couch.

The sofa was not exactly an impenetrable fortress and it didn't take Ivy long to grab the Riddler's ankles and haul him out. Nigma scrabbled for any sort of handhold to avoid being dragged out and savaged by one very steamed woman. Neither the back of the couch nor the short carpeting offered Nigma any purchase and he soon found himself cowering at Ivy's feet.

"How could you do that?" Ivy demanded.

"I couldn't exactly tell them the house was yours or they'd never have agreed to come here and I would have been shot. Shot in the head. And that would have been the end of all my brilliance. I really had no choice in the matter," Nigma replied.

"Forget the house! Forget that you brought these barbarians here! How could you do that to Jonathan?"

"Do what? Oh, the Taser… But how did you know about that?"

"Taser? You electrocuted him and then sold him out?"

"No! I… I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. We're not on the same page; we're not even reading the same book. I didn't sell Crane out. I risked my own life to save him," Nigma protested.

"Then how did they find him?" Ivy asked.

At that point the Shark raised a mutilated hand. "I can answer that one. I have friends in strategic places. One of them found Crane and delivered him in exchange for certain services rendered."

"And Nigma?" Ivy asked.

"Burned my freakin' hideout down," Black Mask said.

"I hardly burned it down. The fire damage—" The Riddler took note of the look on Black Mask's face and wisely decided to stop downplaying the arson. If Black Mask said it was burned to the ground, Nigma was willing to let him have his over-dramatization.

Ivy's head was beginning to pound. "Then what happened to Jonathan? Did that clown kill him?"

"Not unless he did it in the past five minutes. They were in the back of the van, both of them, and alive. At least last time I checked. Of course that might have changed," White offered.

Harley, who up to that point had been trying to appear invisible, burst into the conversation. "You mean my Puddin' is outside?"

Harley didn't bother to wait for an answer. With a squeal of joy she sprang for the door.

"Traitor," Ivy muttered.

The front door was standing open, its locking mechanisms kicked to hell, and Harley saw no reason to waste time closing it. She ran out in the yard and headed straight for the van. She had nearly reached the vehicle when her favorite face in the whole wide world appeared in the passenger side window.

"Harley?" the Joker asked.

"Puddin'!"

Before the Joker could ponder what his girlfriend was doing living with the Riddler, Harley had torn open the van's door and had attached herself to him like a male angler fish to its mate. Harley crushed the Joker in a hug so tight he found it difficult to breath. Oblivious to the pressure she was putting on the Joker's ribcage, Harley continued to squeeze.

"Harley! Harley, you're killing me!" the Joker wheezed.

"Sorry, Mister J. I just missed you so bad and now you're back! And here I thought I was gonna have a bad day!" Harley said, loosening her coils enough for the Joker to avoid asphyxiation.

"It's never a bad day when I'm around, is it, Harls?" the Joker asked, affectionately ruffling Harley's hair.

"No way, Jose! As long as I've got my Puddin', I know everything'll be okay."

"That's my Harley, always the optimist. You could learn something from her, Johnny-boy."

"Is Professor Crane here somewhere? Where'd you find him and Eddie? They were supposed to be out gettin' food." Harley tried to look into the rear of the van, but found the Joker blocking her view.

"Don't worry about him. Johnny's just fine," the Joker said.

The clown's assurances came under fire when Crane, seeing Harley's presence as an opportunity to escape the back of the van and the humiliation the Joker was trying to force on him, told his less-pleasant version of events.

"I am not 'just fine'! That psychotic bastard had me kidnapped and tortured for his own amusement!"

The Joker's grin drooped a little at the corners. There was a reason most scarecrows didn't talk: their mouths were nothing more than lines stitched with black thread. Maybe it would be better for everyone if Mop Man looked the same way as the rest of his crow-hating kin.

"What's he talkin' about?" Harley asked.

"I have no idea," the Joker replied.

"Liar!"

"Okay, Puddin', I know somethin' weird's happening here. Let me see the Professor," Harley said.

"But he hasn't even got his hat on yet," the Joker protested.

"I'd like nothing more than to make you eat this hat! I wish there was a God so I could ask him to damn you!"

Before the Joker could stop her, Harley peered over the clown's shoulder and into the recesses of the van. It was impossible to miss the lanky, miserable form of Jonathan Crane. He was standing, his hands drawn into fists and held close to his sides. His pose told Harley he was ready to fight. The blood that stained an alarming portion of his shirt told her he'd already been in at least one previous fight, and had in all likelihood lost.

"The sadistic miscreant you call a lover let Zsasz butcher me with a letter opener."

"But I had to!" the Joker said.

"Why? Oh, that's right. Because he, and I quote, 'won rock, paper, scissors' and was entitled to first blood."

At Crane's revelation, Harley broke all contact with the Joker and stepped away from him. Unfortunately, she had forgotten she was standing in the van, and ended up falling out the door and onto her keister. The Joker pointed and laughed at her.

"First day on the new legs?" the Joker asked.

"Shut up, Mister J! It's not funny and what you did to Professor Crane is horrible!"

"Come on, it isn't like I killed him." Then, lower, he added, "not yet, anyway."

"I'm done talkin' to you. Now let Professor Crane out of the van and don't talk to him, neither."

The Joker's smile turned a 180. Since when did Harley have the guts to talk to him like that? Just because she was more of a man than the Riddler and could rule the roost when she was with that loser didn't mean she had the right to tell the Joker his business, especially not when it came to what he did with his playthings.

Harley didn't need to see the Joker's frown to realize she'd dug herself a hole, climbed in, and buried herself up to her neck. She knew from painful experience that the Joker did not take kindly to any kind of backtalk or sass. She also knew he was more than capable of making her see the error of her ways.

"Uh, please?" Harley amended.

"Harley, Harley, Harley. You can't get so attached to people like Johnny. If scarecrows even count as people. They're just so fragile that it's only a matter of time before they—"

At the same moment the Joker abruptly stopped talking, there was a heavy thud followed by the tinkle of falling glass shards. The clown made an attempt to turn toward the back of the van but couldn't coordinate his feet. He ended up falling backwards and out of the door. He landed in the grass next to Harley.

"Greenhouse. Move."

Harley looked from the semi-conscious Joker to the van just in time to see Crane hop down from the vehicle. He clasped a jaggedly broken beer bottle in one hand. His other hand was firmly affixed to his shoulder, and Harley could see blood seeping out between his fingers. Whacking the Joker upside the head had required so much force that Crane had aggravated his injuries and gotten a particularly nasty stab wound bleeding again.

"But Mister J—"

"Can burn in hell. Stay here if you'd like, but don't expect Ivy or I to ever have anything to do with you. If we survive, which is unlikely."

Harley was torn by indecision. She bit her lip and her eyes traveled from Crane to the Joker and back again. How was she supposed to choose between her best friends and her Puddin'? She couldn't stand to lose either of them, but she could see no way to keep them both.

Crane didn't have all day for Harley to weigh and measure him and Ivy against the Joker. Already the clown was straining to sit up. It wouldn't be long before he regained his feet, summoned his deranged posse, and had Crane hunted down like a rabbit. Crane figured if he was going to die, he was going to make one last valiant attempt to defend himself, and see if he couldn't take at least one of his would-be killers down with him.

To defend himself he needed guns, and while he didn't have to fight his way through zombie-haunted Atlanta to get them, the greenhouse still seemed a long way off. Any distance, Crane realized, more than a footstep away felt nigh untenable when your blood was running through your fingers and pain from rekindled injuries flowed in like a relentless tide.

"Professor!"

Crane couldn't begin to fathom why Harley felt the need to shriek like that. He'd hardly managed to cover twenty feet; if she decided she wanted to help him, she could recoup the distance between them in seconds. And if she'd decided to stay with the Joker, crying at Crane wasn't going to make him forgive her.

"Please, Puddin', don't do it!"

Now, that made Crane freeze in his tracks. He turned around to face the Joker and, before he could complete his half-circle, felt an immense line of heat drawn along the side of his head. A cracking boom accompanied the burst of fire. It took Crane a moment to causally link the noise and the burning pain that chewed at him, though once he did make the connection, his nerves froze. The Joker had just shot him, and the only reason he did not have a gaping hole where his temple used to be was because the clown hadn't quite recovered from having a beer bottle broken over his skull. If the Joker's aim had been a fraction steadier, Crane would have either been lying dead on the ground or facing life as a vegetable.

By sheer luck, he had suffered no more disfiguring an injury than Vincent van Gogh or Evander Holyfield had suffered in their lifetimes. Crane didn't dare hope his luck would hold a second time. If the Joker fired again, Crane would have more than a grazed ear to complain about.

Escape was the only wise choice, but escape was also an impossibly long distance away. Crane, injured as he was, didn't have much speed left in him. The greenhouse and the weapons he needed were on the other side of the house. Even the house itself had a sizeable span of lawn separating it from him. Maybe he could reach the front door—which was still ajar—but he didn't need C-3PO to tell him his odds weren't favorable.

Standing around doing calculations wasn't going to get Crane out of the line of fire. With no other options, he decided to try for the door. He made the decision just in the nick of time for no sooner had he moved than a bullet tore through the space that had been formerly occupied by his guts.

The gunfire couldn't go unnoticed. The house's residents poked their heads out and watched the spectacle. Ivy wasn't content to stand in the doorway and observe. She shoved past Zsasz and the pair of hyenas that meandered around his legs and ran out into the middle of the battlefield.

"Jonathan, you've got to move!" Ivy propelled Crane toward the relative safety of the house.

Harley, seeing both her friends turned into exposed targets, stopped begging and pleading and decided to take action. As the Joker aimed at Crane's back, Harley threw herself on top of him. Like a living straitjacket she secured the Joker's arms and kept him from blowing any holes in anybody. By the time the Joker fought, kicked, and bit his way out of Harley's octopus grip, Crane and Ivy had ducked inside the doorway and out of sight.

Though she couldn't have run more than forty feet in total, Ivy felt breathless and her heart galloped in her chest. She placed a hand on her chest and tried to calm her breathing. It was only after she had taken a deep breath in through her nose that she realized she wasn't the one who was breathing the hardest. Crane was panting and slumped, as though his body was so overworked it no longer had the energy required to keep his head up.

"Jonathan?" Ivy asked. She reached a hand for his shoulder and then froze. Her hand was already smudged with red, and she knew exactly where the smeared color had come from.

"When you shoved me," Crane explained.

Ivy stared at Crane with a look on her face that suggested he'd just peeled off his skin and revealed an alien exoskeleton. It wasn't him, per se, that horrified her. It was the incredible amount of harm that had been done to him. He must have been cut and stabbed dozens of times. Somehow in the heat of the moment, when she'd been pushing Crane to safety, she hadn't noticed all the blood and the holes in his clothes. Now that she was in such close proximity, Ivy couldn't look away.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Ivy whispered.

"If you hadn't done something, I would have been shot," Crane replied.

"And it sure looks like that's going to happen anyway, Johnny." The Joker, with Harley nowhere in sight to restrain him, strolled into the house.

He leveled his gun at Crane's head and smiled.


Author's Notes:

Fatal Needles vs. Fatal Fists is a real kung-fu movie in which a man is stabbed with acupuncture needles that will kill him if removed.

A male angler fish, just a fraction of the size of the female, permanently attaches itself to its mate.

In the first season of The Walking Dead, sheriff Rick drops a bag of guns in Atlanta—which is overrun by the undead—and eventually goes back to retrieve it.

Vincent van Gogh and Evander Holyfield both suffered ear damage, one from cutting off a part of his ear, and the other from being bitten by Mike Tyson.

C-3PO: The odds of surviving this fic are 3,720 to one.

Crane: Never tell me the odds!