"We find ourselves in very formidable circumstances." Arkham's voice boomed grimly from the head of the long boardroom table of hand-carved oak that stretched like vertigo across the impressive executive meeting room. The place looked like it belonged in the hallowed halls of one of the Ivy League schools that dotted the East Coast. Though most of these doctors had been educated there, the only thing that separated these men from their other alumni were the glasses of scotch that sat casually in front of them.
Circumstances might not have called for scotch, but even though Bruce had only been here a few times, he knew for a fact that a decanter of it was always under the sliding cover of the antique globe that sat in the corner, next to the winding mahogany bookshelves. It hardly mattered to him; there were other thoughts flooding through his mind that had coaxed him into making a rare appearance at one of these board meetings. Bruce had displayed a discernible interest in all of the Joker's exploits, and today was no different.
"What of the negative implications from the press?" one of the older trustees who sat to the left of Dr. Arkham asked in a particularly slow drawl. He reminded Bruce more of a droopy-faced cartoon hound dog than a man, or a mix of Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill – his cheeks appeared to pop to the sound each time he pronounced the the letter P.
Locking his hands together, Arkham placed the collective fist underneath his nose and drew in a contemplative breath. He was silent for a long moment before he suddenly extended his hands out into an exaggerated shrug, an expression of considerable disappointment lingering on his face. "What are we supposed to do? I have a few PR people on the task, but I should at least have an excuse for the Joker escaping the facility."
"That's exactly right, Dr. Arkham. You have no excuse," Bruce interjected from the end of the table. The police reports that the board had been privy to seemed to suggest that the Joker had simply disappeared through the walls. There had been no disruption in the video surveillance, no alarms sounding, no disturbance - except for Harley's unconscious body, found on the floor of an unguarded interrogation room. "You're lucky that the only person who can offer you any insight on the matter wasn't killed."
"Ah... yes," chimed in another board member, who was amazingly even skinnier than Dr. Arkham. He had a squeaky, high-pitched voice and wore a labcoat which left Bruce under the impression that he was indeed a doctor, "how is Dr. Quinzel faring? We've heard the Joker left her with a rather nasty bump on the head."
Bump on the head? Bruce asked himself. He'd heard that she'd been left with far more than a bump on the head – a mild concussion, a cut above her left eye, and a small fracture in her cheekbone. Reports had said that although she told police she didn't remember much about the injury, she seemed to acknowledge that he had slammed her head viciously into the table.
"She's about as well as can be expected," Arkham started, almost nonchalantly as he gave the group of about fifteen or so men the play-by-play. "We don't know exactly how long she was there – at least an hour and a half, we suspect. She told us she remembered going into the session at around 6:00 in the evening, and we found her at about 8:00. Which means that the Joker probably had more than an hour's lead on us when the police were finally dispatched."
Arkham's face was marred by a very apparent lack of sleep. Though he wasn't exactly aging gracefully, the usually taut skin on his cheekbones sagged with exhaustion, and the devilish glimmer in his beady black eyes had been dimmed significantly by the trials of the day. His face was a steely gray, and clearly short on patience, as it stabbed at Bruce when he spoke.
"But Dr. Quinzel is alright?" Bruce asked finally, the digits of one hand spread as his palm shifted in Arkham's direction.
With a short and unpleasant smile, Arkham drummed his fingers upon the table, glancing over those silver-dollar glasses of his. "Mr. Wayne, I don't think I need to remind you that the people surrounding this table have our patient as their first priority," he remarked in the patronizing tone that Bruce's mind reserved for the snobbery of the super-elite - sadly a tone that he was all too used to. "But, yes..." Arkham went on with a forced pleasant tone, "she is slightly injured, but was coherent when she woke up, and has since been able to aid us in the investigation to find the Joker." Shifting his weight anxiously, Arkham's eyes shifted casually from Bruce to the other doctors that sat, their unenthusiastic mugs barely listening in on such a crucial conversation. "It's a miracle he didn't kill her, really."
Just as the old doctor took a breath to move on to another topic, Bruce swept in with another question. "Well, I'm not a therapist," he began, crossing one leg over the other while glimpsing at the two overstuffed leather chairs on either side of him – the only two empty chairs at the table - "but you'd think that if the Joker really wanted to kill Harley in an attempt to escape, then he probably wouldn't have had a problem doing that."
An exasperated sigh escaped Arkham as he turned to address this remedial thought that the young man had so rudely interrupted him with. With another of his dramatic shrugs, he admitted, "You're exactly right, Mr. Wayne. Certainly he wouldn't have a problem doing that."
"But he didn't."
To Arkham it was a painfully obvious thing to say, but there were other doctors around the table who shifted back and forth, uneasy about the sudden point. "Alright, I'll bite..." Arkham told him, extending his hand down toward the other end of the table, where Bruce sat off to the right, "what are you getting at, Mr. Wayne?"
"It doesn't make any sense to me that a murderer would have any sort of moral obligation to keep Dr. Quinzel alive. He had to have known it was a poor decision on his part." And Bruce was sure it had been. The thing that kept the Joker alive was very much the same thing that kept Batman alive – the mystery. The Joker was a complete enigma, and therefore it was easier for him to maintain the ruse. With or without the makeup, he was still the Joker. But six months was a long time, and it was difficult for Bruce to believe that he had managed to keep himself a complete and total secret from anyone over that length . Especially from a girl like Harley, who seemed to have a surreal gift for hitting all the right buttons.
"A poor decision?" Arkham asked him, obviously confused.
For a doctor, it amused Bruce how Arkham couldn't seem to grip the lack of moral constructs the Joker was exhibiting. To Arkham, it must have seemed a bad decision to take anyone's life, but to the Joker taking a life was all part of the job. But sparing Harley had confused even him. "If the Joker was going to make a clean break, then killing Harley would have been the next step for him."
"Mr. Wayne!" Arkham started, and Bruce noticed his feigned disgust sent a wave of clucking tongues around the the table.
"Think about it, Arkham. The man has spent more time with her than he's likely to have spent with anyone else in years. Why would he have spared her, knowing that if anyone could lead us right back to him, it would have been Harleen?" It didn't make any sense. The only person who would be able to aid the police to his capture, and he had let her live. Although assuming the Joker would ever act logically was probably a mistake, it was a massive loophole in his escape plan, though Harley probably had no idea as to where he had gone.
By now a few of the members of the board were looking down the long boardroom table to where Jeremiah Arkham sat, peering furiously over at the young man who had cornered him in this small debate. After a moment, though, he simply shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure..."
A deafening silence consumed the room, and within it a staring contest developed between Bruce and Dr. Arkham. The two men stared back at one another with disdain that moved like lightning strikes from one side of the room to the other. Before long, Arkham's demeanor changed once again, adopting the light-hearted and casual tone he used to mask the way he felt about being questioned.
"Perhaps," he began again, those bushy gray brows of his lifted high upon his head, "if you're so focused on the plight of Dr. Quinzel, you two should develop a board of directors that deals primarily with her inadequacies as a therapist, and stop wasting my time playing the bleeding heart on this board. Unless, that is, like the rest of us, you would rather stay focused on the real motivator here, which should be protecting your investment in this facility."
The thing that struck Bruce as most odd afterward was the fact that no one else at the table so much as blinked at Arkham's presumption of Harley's failures, which Bruce then realized only existed to cover up his own. When he'd spent time with Harley all those months ago, he had admitted to his frustration over Arkham's decision. How he could have let such an ambitious yet inexperienced therapist take such a big case for the sake of publicity was beyond him. And these jaded, withered old fools were blind to what Bruce was able to see so clearly now. Arkham had to have expected, even back then, that the Joker would attempt to escape.
And whenever he did, there would be only one person to turn around and blame.
Harley had been Arkham's perfect little scapegoat from the beginning.
"Well..." Bruce placed both palms down on the polished oak table, pushing himself away from the edge and rising to his feet. Reaching over and taking hold of his briefcase, he inspected the lock for a moment before placing a coy smile on his face. "I'll tell you what, Arkham. I'd rather sit on a board where we sort out Harley's inadequacies than sit on one where we sort out yours."
Arkham sat a long moment, taken aback by the comment. As Bruce walked behind the chairs of the other trustees, the old man stood up to address his abrupt departure. "Bruce, a Wayne has sat on this board since this facility opened."
"Well, I apologize for not being a stickler for tradition," Bruce quipped rather casually, and watched as Arkham's distress deepened. The Wayne Enterprises representation lent very deep pockets to Arkham's foundations, and to have one of his largest investors walk out over insulting a girl must have been enough to knock the old doctor right off his rocker - which as far as Bruce was concerned was where he belonged, instead of sitting at the head of a board table.
"Do have fun cleaning up Arkham's mess, gentlemen," Bruce called out calmly, before running his hand down the three buttons of his suit jacket, turning the large brass handle of the massive oak door, and making a swift exit.
# # # # # # # #
The hollow ticking of the plastic-covered wall clock did more to amplify the silence than break it. Over the months, silence had become a four-letter-word to Harley, who had spent her time wading in the holy waters of unconscionable noise. She loved it, and now, sitting alone in her office without so much as a radio to soothe her, she missed the chaos more than ever. Admittedly, Harley was the kind of girl who would fall asleep to the television every night if she had one in her bedroom. Maybe that was why she constantly found herself sleeping on the couch in the family room.
But over the last couple days, as the silence had continued, she'd begun to ask herself what it was she truly missed. Was it the commotion, or the creator of that commotion?
It was getting harder and harder to tell.
Before she knew it, the question had caused her to zone out, looking off through the distance of the blank beige wall that stood in front of her. The bit of comfort that she found in her meditative state was short-lived - she was abruptly awakened by the sound of a knock at the door. It was sudden, and sharp, and it caused her to jump slightly in her seat.
Shaking off the heavy blanket of relaxation that had shrouded her for those few minutes, her expression stiffened and she turned her attention back down to the paperwork in front of her, in an effort to look busy to whoever would shortly be entering. "Come in," she said casually, half-expecting yet another investigator to be standing on the other side of the door with yet another slew of questions.
Instead, when she looked up from her work, her eyes found a stunning pair of polished leather shoes, followed by a well-tailored gray suit, topped with the handsome and yet dreadfully concerned face of Bruce Wayne. Without a doubt he had come to meet with the board of directors for Arkham Asylum. He stood in his usual dignified way, which still possessed a kind of softness to it. He was the only man she knew who could maintain his elite roots without a pretentious bone in his body.
He was the last person she wanted to see her now.
Her eyes made contact with his only for a moment before she turned her face to look back down to the paperwork before her, doing her best to conceal her injuries from his view. What had started off as a small cut had turned into a very distinguishable black eye, which threatened to get worse before it got better. It wouldn't have looked so bad if she'd been able to get home and apply a thick layer of makeup to conceal it. In between paper work and interrogations, though, she simply hadn't had the time to sleep, let alone indulge her recently developed vanity.
"Good evening, Mr. Wayne..." she said with unenthusiastic formality.
The hesitation in his voice before he spoke told her he hadn't been expecting that kind of tone. Thumbing over his shoulder at the door of her office as he took a few steps in, he asked, "Is this not a good time? I was here for a board meeting, and I wanted to drop by, see if you were alright."
In response to the drama of the last couple days, Harley had pulled up her shields, treating everyone as a potential enemy. It was hard to do that with Bruce, since - much like herself in a way - when he asked a question, you genuinely got the sense that he cared enough to actually hear the answer.
Suddenly bashful, she glanced up at him, the left side of her face still turned away. "My father used to say that the worst of times are often the best of times to hear from a friend," she said flatly, then gestured to one of the metal folding chairs in front of the desk of her cluttered office. "Have a seat," she instructed him, still trying to focus on the paper work before her.
Slowly, he made his way over to the chair, placing his briefcase down beside it. He appeared to want to ignore her condition, though it was an impossibility for him. After all, it was what he had come to see...but instead of reacting in disgust like she expected him to, those well-manicured eyebrows of his furrowed toward the center of his face in concern. Harley watched as he took in a deep breath and exhaled into a large sigh, shaking his head. "Oh Harley, I'm so sorry..."
The hand she had been using to scrawl notes onto the page stopped writing, and she turned up to meet his gaze, and watched as he sucked air in through his teeth at the extent of her injuries. They really weren't that severe...had no one known exactly what had happened, Harley might have been able to pass it off as some sort of accident... which was sadly not the case.
Trying her best to smile at him, she nodded her agreement. "Yeah... I'm sorry too." Though for what, she didn't quite know.
He let a few gentle seconds pass, bringing his gaze away from her injury and to the rest of her face. Painting on a smile of his own, he attempted to change the topic. "Hey, but look on the bright side. You don't have to spend time in this dump anymore. Why bother dealing with Arkham's mess when you can resign now, and come work for me at Wayne Enterprises? You know, the medical division is focusing more and more on psychiatric treatments...we could use someone like you," he told her, his brows lifted in persuasive optimism. Though she would not consider Bruce Wayne an optimist, it was nice to see that he was trying so hard to make the best out of a bad situation.
"That's certainly very kind of you Bruce, but..." she started, but he cut her off.
"No, Harley, come on. You and I both know what kind of man runs this place. C'mon! I could pay you twice as much as that clown does," he said, trying his best to persuade her, but the way he looked at her now told her he had already guessed. Anyone who knew her well enough knew that she didn't just hold onto things out of stubbornness. Harley wasn't stubborn. She was tied to things on a deeper level than just pride.
She smiled at him, reaching over to the edge of her desk to pat the back of his hand as he tried so hard to coax her toward a better life. "Bruce... why do you think I'm here?" she asked him finally. Bruce looked back at her as if expecting that no matter what he said, the answer would probably be wrong. Her smile stretched a little wider. "Recognition? Appreciation? Fame? It can't be fortune... I pay my bills on credit cards."
"You wouldn't have to if you worked for me," he interjected, and Harley closed her eyes as he spoke, as if to block out what he said before continuing.
"No... I don't care about all of that." Shaking her head, she lifted her hand up to him and decided to turn the conversation onto him, in order to offer a bit of perspective. "When you were young... what did you want to be when you grew up, Bruce? What was the one thing you saw yourself doing with your life?" she asked him, with that quiet passion in her voice that had the unique ability to gain someone's undivided attention.
Bruce took a moment to contemplate his answer. There was a soft, calm expression that washed over his face, and he smiled. "When I was a kid? I wanted to be a doctor, like..."
"Like your father... I remember," she finished for him, with a soft smile of her own. It had been nearly a decade, but Harley had had this conversation with him before. Never one to divulge much information about herself, back then, she would begin conversations with questions to turn the conversation around to the other person. Once, when Bruce had asked about her family, she'd given him a vague description of her home life before asking him about his. They sat in the parking lot of an A&W for an hour and a half as Bruce went on and on about his parents, who they were, how they had died...every detail, as if he had been dying to tell someone, anyone who would listen - and really listen - to him.
He'd apologized after he was finished, but Harley had only remarked that it was one of the best nights of her life. Though... they'd hardly spoken to each other after that. Maybe that's why they got on so well...there were no strange reintroductions, no awkward pauses. She knew all the important things, and that would never change. The only thing Bruce had really known about her up to this point was that she was a good listener, but in order to make herself clear to him, she was going to have to admit to a bit more than that.
He shook his head at her in disbelief after she spoke. "How do you remember that?" he asked, dumbfounded. "We must have had that conversation ten years ago."
Harley coy smile didn't fade in the slightest. "If someone cared enough to sit down and share their life story with you, you'd listen to it. People should consider themselves lucky to have the chance to sit down and listen to people. You'd be surprised at what you pick up..."
The surprise melted off his face once she had explained herself, and he nodded his understanding. "That's why you're here..."
Nodding back, she glanced down at the paperwork again, but only enough to push it to the side. "I'm fucked up, Bruce... and not like this..." She paused and pointed at her eye. "I mean like... fucked up. No one knows anything about me. I should probably be the one in therapy, but instead, I became the therapist. I come in here, and I talk to these people, and some of them..." Scoffing, she waved her hand to dismiss the very thought of them. "They're so far gone they don't know who they are, let alone the fact that there's something wrong with them, or that they've done terrible things. They lack intelligence, they lack awareness... they're just gone."
Bruce was watching her intently, something that might have been appreciation overtaking his expression. Surely, for someone who doesn't talk about themselves to finally speak, one should consider themselves graced by the presence of mere conversation.
"But..." she continued, "when I started talking to the Joker, I lost track of who was actually in therapy - him or me."
The thought must have upset him because his eyes furrowed. "Harley, you can't..." he began to say, but was interrupted once again by her soft-spoken attempt to get her point across.
"Now, I you know you hate him. I know you do, because of his complete disregard for life - which to him is worth far less then you're father's gold watch, or your mother's pearl necklace," she explained to him, placing both her hands over his, which now hung limply on the edge of her desk. "And... I know you hate him because of Rachel..."
"Harley..." he whispered her name breathlessly, trying to stop her from continuing.
"But in your life Bruce, you were surrounded by men who were clearly and plainly good. For some, you must realize, it's not so easy. For me... you can't understand how confusing it is to watch the world condemn someone you love, when you only know them as this kind, protective force. To watch as everyone hates them, when you can't help but love them."
An appalled expression flashed on Bruce's face, and he ripped his hand out from under both of hers, recoiling in horror and disgust over what she had just said. "Harley, what are you talking about?" he asked sharply. "The Joker?"
"The Joker?" she asked, eyes widening before she began laughing at his little gaffe. "No... Bruce, no." Pausing, her smile faded into its minimal, coy impression as she shook her head to dismiss his thought. "No, my father."
Bruce wouldn't be able to recall her father, because Bruce had never heard about him. Truthfully, he'd been in prison for nearly four years before Harley had gone off to university, and she hadn't really told anybody besides the Joker about his existence. Come to think of it, the only other person who might have been familiar with her father's circumstances was James Gordon.
Bruce's disgusted look transformed into curiosity as she continued. "You see... your father gave life, and mine took it away...but I can't stop loving him. Eventually, my father will die for the crimes he's committed, but some men, good or bad, die for their actions. The good ones die heroes, like your father did, like Harvey Dent did... and I can't tell you how sorry I am about that. But I refuse to lump those 'bad' men in with the results of their circumstances. I know that no matter how evil a man might seem... there is some good underneath."
There was nothing left for Bruce to express, other than shock. If anyone ever wanted to shut him up, they'd usually only need to mention his father...but instead, Harley had tried hard to use him to provide Bruce some perspective, and when his gentle smile finally found its way back across his face, she knew she had done just that.
"I think I understand..." he whispered as he rose from the chair, in a tone that was more hoarse - gruffer than his regular speaking voice. Enough that Harley thought he must have been holding back a flood of emotion, although when he looked over to her again he appeared calm and composed.
Her mind flipped through its Rolodex, asking herself why his tone just then had seemed so familiar, but she fluffed it off. "I'm glad, and I appreciate your offer. But I'm going to see this thing through to the very end," she said, and then rolled her eyes before pointing to the slightly darker injured one. "The bitter end, so to speak."
Holding his briefcase in one hand, the other resting upon the handle of her office door, Bruce smiled and looked back to her. "The bitter end..." he repeated, and nodded back his adieu.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: And here we go! Its that time again, and I know all of you are super excited. I have been writing like a mad man over the last month in order to get everything ready for next week. If you're new to the game, and you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm of course talking about...
!BLITZ WEEK! 2.0
The second Blitz Week will begin on Monday, September 27th, and will conclude with the dramatic finale of Tragedy Deferred - Part One on Friday, October 1st. Which means you can expect a new chapter every single day next week.
I'm so excited, and I know some of you are too, so if you're reading this, save the date. Chapter 30 will be posted Monday morning at 7:30AM and it's a DOOZY! Mentally prepare yourself, because next week is an intense line-up of five chapters, starting with an 8000 word mega-chapter that I think a couple of my reviewers saw coming ^_~!
In the last few weeks, My readership has exploded, and I'm even nearing the 200 review milestone. Thank you so much for reading, you guys. I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate it. I try to get back to everyone who reviews, so please leave me one. I love getting them.
Thanks again and we'll see you next week!
