Note from the Author: Hey guys! Long time so see. I know I've been posting a little infrequently recently, but as of right now I'm going back to posting once a week. So, next Monday you can expect another chapter. I've made all the schedule changes in my profile. There might be another little tidbit of information there if you were so inclined to take a look... Enjoy Chapter 50, guys!
The ringing. Oh, the ringing.
It raged on like a forest fire. It began in her ears and moved on through her head in waves, flames lapping at the inner walls of her cranium. Her lungs seemed to fill with acid, and her breath came out in noxious fumes. Her whole body ached and wrenched, and her normally gentle voice scratched her throat like the scream of some dying jungle cat.
Harley had never been in so much pain in her entire life, and it wouldn't relent. Pain kept grinding at her, wearing her down into the flimsy, overused mattress in which she lay. She didn't recognize her surroundings – whenever she had the consciousness to acknowledge them at all. Once in every so often, her gaze would settle on a woman, who she was sure had become her guardian angel: a large, dark-skinned woman who would speak to her in soothing tones, unrecognizable words. Then the pain would cease, and her eyelids would collapse, and sleep would take her once more.
Beautiful, dreamless, painless sleep, lost in oblivion. Harley was sure that this was as close to heaven as she would ever get. Then, some time later – she was never quite sure how much time – her eyes would splinter open, and she would be transported to the depths of hell once again to be gripped in Satan's cold jaws, gnawed at until the end of time.
Or... until someone came to administer another dose of whatever kind of powerful pain med they'd kept her on.
It felt like this went on forever. There was no perception of time, there was no care for it. All Harley knew was that each time she opened her eyes, she could breath a little easier, and the pain in her head became duller and duller until finally, it was gone altogether. Her bruised and swollen eyes opened, and focused sharply on the foreign, stuccoed ceiling over her head. Consciousness poured over her in a waterfall, and she captured a chestful of air. It gave her just the surge of energy she needed to sit up, and survey the room around her.
Harley had never been here before. Light filtered in the room from cheap taffeta curtains which had been hastily pulled over a bar covered window. The room was drab, and the copper-colored carpet was dotted with children's toys and tufts of dog fur. Filled with cheap IKEA furniture, too. Harley discovered that she was laying in a narrow twin bed, not nearly as comfortable as the larger bed she curled up in at the Joker's warehouse.
Why was she here? Why wasn't she there?
"Hello?" she called out in a raspy voice, nowhere near as loud as she had hoped. Raising her brows to clear her throat, she tried again. "Hello?"
From outside she heard someone dragging their slippered feet across the floor. A few seconds later, the door opened. In walked the woman that Harley had recognized from her state of semi-consciousness. She was not nearly as angelic as she had remembered.
The woman was rubbing her eyes; the light coming through the room behind her told Harley it was likely from a mid-afternoon nap. At first she appeared to be rubbing the sleep from her face, but this quickly turned to disbelief. When she it was with spoke with a light West-Indies accent, and had a soft, kind smile. "Praise Jesus! I thought I was going to have to call a priest!" she exclaimed frantically before coming to sit on the edge of Harley's bed.
Harley could only laugh skeptically. "Oh, I assure you he wouldn't have done me much good."
The woman chuckled and patted the back of Harley's hand. Maybe she was an angel after all. After rubbing her own sore eyes, she took a deep breath. "Where am I?"
"My place. My name's LaShonda... but everyone just calls me Shauna," she explained, but it didn't make things much clearer, until she said, "I'm Bosco's girlfriend. Have been for about six years now."
The revelation put a gentle smile on her face and she gazed out over the toy-dotted carpet once more. Nodding to it, Harley watched as Shauna turned her head to look. "You have children?"
With that large white-toothed smile, it was easy to see why the obviously softhearted Bosco would come back to a woman like this. "Yeah, three of them," she said and then jokingly heaved a large sigh of relief. They shared a laugh. "An eight year-old and a six year-old. The youngest is just eighteen months. That's Bos' pride and joy – Creasy. He's her daddy."
For a moment Harley wondered if maybe Shauna lived a life oblivious to what Bosco did for a living until she said, "I better call Bosco and let him know that you're awake. He's out with Mr. J right now, but told me not to hesitate if you came to. It's been almost four days now, so I guess he was thinking..."
"The Joker?" Harley asked suddenly, as her soft-faced caregiver rose from the edge of the bed.
Shauna'd turned to face her with a twisted lip and nodded. "I try not to call him that around here. Me and the kids just call him 'Mr. J' so that that they don't hear anything on the news."
Harley's heart dropped. The Joker was a man of many annoyances. Sometimes just the sound of clattering dishes or a car passing by playing obnoxious music was enough to send him grumbling or worse. The idea of him willfully coming around children left her grappling her breath, so much so that she hadn't noticed her mouth had hung open in disbelief.
"You... the Joker... he comes here?" she asked, pointing her finger downward to the floor of the apartment.
Shauna just shrugged. "Yeah, sometimes. He started comin' around a couple years ago. When he did, I told him that I ain't havin' no guns and no face paint up in here..." Harley closed her mouth as the woman changed her tone from kindly-nurse to hardened inner city mother. "I'm tryin' to raise three kids right in the bad part of a hard city, and I don't need him showin' them the way to make a quick buck when they should be workin' hard and goin' to college!"
Regardless of her current living situation, Harley found herself coveting Shauna's life. "I wish I could lay down laws with the Joker that way," she laughed.
Shauna herself smiled back to her and leaned against the doorframe. "Well, you can do bad things but still have a good heart, you know?" she asked, and Harley froze when she said it. "The kids don't know what Bosco and Mr. J do... but I tell them don't bring the drama here, and they don't. I don't think anybody chooses this life because they want to... I think they get caught up in it because there are no other options."
There was a moment of darkness that passed over her, and suddenly she felt very ashamed of herself. "Well, except for maybe me..." she cooed softly and looked at her hands where they were folded together in her lap.
A moment's pause passed between them, where Shauna stared at her chubby hand where it rested on the doorframe. "Naw, I don't think you could help yourself either. I know I followed Bosco into this life... Things are tough but I wouldn't have it any other way."
The two of them shared a knowing grin and Shauna tapped the doorframe with her index finger. "I'mma go call Bosco. You hungry?" she asked Harley, who flopped backwards on the bed, glancing happily out the window to the skyscrapers in her distant view.
"Famished."
Harley's eyes flashed open when she heard the dog barking. She hadn't known exactly how long she'd been napping, but she awoke this time feeling more revitalized. Glancing to the bedside table, she noticed a plate of sandwiches. As the haze of sleep lifted from her, she sat up again, taking a hold of the plate and placing it gingerly in her lap.
As she was eating, the door opened, and Bosco's eager face greeted her with a large smile. He appeared to be holding back a very large Golden Retriever. "Hey Chicken..." he said to her softly, and she placed the plate back on the opposite bedside table before she waved him in.
"Don't worry Bos', I love dogs." She felt instantly alive as the dog snaked past his legs and to the bedside, where it placed it's long snout on the edge of the bed, seating itself on the floor. She began to scratch it behind the ear as Bosco came in to sit on the edge of the bed, much the way Shauna had not long before.
He gave the dog a friendly pat on it's head before laughing at it's eagerly wagging tail. "Her name's Rosie. Shauna's got a kid, eight years old...he wanted a dog, thought it might be nice considering the neighborhood... turns out she's too much of a wimp to actually guard the place." He laughed and gave Harley a large smile. "I guess I don't have much to worry about."
Rosie hurriedly fled from the room when a whistle came from outside, her long body snaking out through the door from whence she came. "I didn't know you had kids," she said to him, and Harley's heart nearly melted when he beamed with pride.
"Well, only the youngest is mine, but they're all mine, you know?"
Harley nodded understanding. She wondered for a second if the Joker was aware of how close he'd brought this small family to the brink, but she thought it best not to bring it up. "I suppose I've been under your care for the last few days?" she asked, and the Joker's bubble-eyed henchman heaved a large exaggerated sigh.
"Well, your left lung collapsed, so we had to bring in a doctor first to drain the blood and inflate it. Luckily we know a couple professionals who'll do some work on the side, no questions asked. You have a couple broken ribs, but we have you on pain-killers, and those should heal in around a month." Harley was shocked at the extent of her injuries, but as it went, Bosco was not quite done. "On top of that, you have a pretty bad concussion. The Aspirin should bring keep the swelling down. Other than that, you're in good shape."
"Oh..." Harley said with a weak smile and nodded, "Great."
"Just be happy you didn't stick around..." Bosco told her, moving to stand up from the bed.
Such a simple sentence and it struck such fear into her heart. So much so that she stood mystified at how he could even think to stand up and walk off after saying something like that. Reaching out, she snatched Bosco by the wrist, a terrified look painted on her bruised face. "What the hell are you talking about? What happened after I left?"
"Don't worry, Chicken... don't worry. No one got hurt," he explained, attempting to put her at ease as he sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Afterward everyone thought that you must have been a psychic or something... the way you got rid of the Batman when you did. Not thirty seconds after you were gone, they showed up."
"They?"
Bosco's thin eyebrows pressed together as he nodded. "Yeah... the crazy killer SWAT team... the ones who killed Brutus Carpozo on television a few months back."
Harley remembered. She had been in one of their therapy common rooms at Arkham. Both the Joker and Jeremiah Arkham had been there when a cartoon broadcast in the middle of the day had cut to a scene involving many disguised men, all of whom appeared to be dressed in SWAT gear. It was the first time Harley had ever seen someone die in such a way, but it certainly wouldn't be the last. "What happened, Bos'?"
Using his thumb to scratch an itch on his cheek, he exhaled a heavy sigh. "Shit... I don't even know where to begin."
"What the hell is this?" the Bear had said, as he readied the bazooka to take out a row of squad cars that followed behind the truck. This alarm had immediately garnered the Joker's attention to turned to take a few steps from the side of the truck toward the back.
From behind the group of police cars sped a darkened van. The Joker glared at it with narrow eyes, careful to make a comparison between it and the other SWAT van that followed behind them closely. There were no white markings; there was nothing that expressed to the men who stood observing it in the back of the truck that they were at all associated with the police, and yet a man in heavily armored gear could be seen sitting in the drivers seat, another as his passenger.
The Joker's tongue licked at his scar in curiosity.
Carefully, Bosco had made his way from the cab of the truck, using the emergency handrails mounted on the side before slipping into the still open side panel. "What the fuck is going on?"
No sooner had he asked than the three men in the trailer dove for the ground, covering their heads. Out of the corner of his eye, Bosco spied the unmarked black van, and from out of the top, he could make out a man in SWAT gear armed with what looked like the same model of rocket launcher that the Joker's own group had used nearly a year ago. Save that this time... they were the ones being fired at.
Bosco backed himself up against the wall of explosives behind him, watching as a rocket exploded from the barrel and hurtled toward the truck. Imagine his relief when a misaim caused the rocket to skid under the truck, slide off the edge of the highway and into the river where it exploded into a massive crash of white water.
"Close the doors!" Bosco barked an order. "Fuck the cops! We need to get the explosives to the back of the trailer now and hope to God we can beat them to the wharf."
Everyone, even the Joker, appeared to be in accord, and within just a few moments the back doors of the trailer were closed up and locked tight. The group took a massive risk closing the side sliding door. It left them completely oblivious to what was going on around them. Before they had finally closed it, they were pleased to see that a few squad cars had kept these SWAT guys busy enough to provide some distraction for the Joker's truck.
In the meantime, Bosco kept in tight communication with him on the walkie talkie. "Did you see that, Jeffy?" he'd asked, and received a crackled answer that the rest of the team had not been able to make out. "Get keep a close eye on 'em. The cops probably won't shoot at us, but those guys don't give a shit if they blow the trucks and the cops sky high."
Before Jeffy had the time to even 'Roger' out, the four men had started a conveyer of moving the boxes of explosives from being pressed the front of the trailer to being pressed against the back doors.
"Why the hell are we doing this anyway?" Bear asked while tossing a box to the Joker, who then looked to Bosco as he tossed the box to him.
"You pass your high-school physics class?" Bosco asked him as he braced the boxes against the doors. Bear had just sucked his teeth and grimaced at Bosco who smiled critically at his oafish partner. "Then don't worry your head about it. Just call it 'angular momentum', alright?"
The Joker cracked a large, almost demonic smile to his prized henchmen. "Ah...'truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence'," he quoted rather theatrically, as he tossed Bosco the last box.
Arranging it with the others, he used several bungee cables to secure the payload in place. Bosco heaved a large sigh, knowing that until they got to the wharf, they had put themselves in a massive vulnerability. With any luck, they were considerably closer to South Gotham than they had been just moments ago.
Chaos still ensued outside, and the Joker couldn't help but pull open the sliding side door to take a look.
The police, knowing the danger from the van firing at the Joker's newly acquired explosives, had surrounded the renegade SWAT vehicle in an attempt to slow it down, another heavily armored police vehicle giving chase behind to attempt to disarm their new assailants. He couldn't help cooing in a low laughter. Seemed all too convenient to have the police fending off the team just as they were coming up on their destination. Turning his head, the cold, rainy air wiping the greasy green strands from his dark eyes, he could spy the exit for Gotham's south wharf quickly approaching.
His eyes narrowed in satisfaction. How was it that everything seemed to go just his way? Now all he had to do was pray that the driver could do everything he said he could.
From behind him, Bosco surveyed the surroundings of the truck. "Looks like we're getting close."
The Joker nodded as they emerged from the highway, continuing to head due south. Now the police and the enemy assault team had to follow them single-file, as the truck hustled at top speed through the tightly packed shipping district. Warehouses corresponding with specific pier numbers whizzed past. The rain-soaked pavement clicked and popped underneath their racing tires, and from behind him, the Joker listened to Bosco huff. "I guess that's my cue?" he asked, "Weren't you supposed to talk Harley into doing this?"
The Joker snorted and then motioned behind the speeding truck, "Yeah, I was... but she flew the coop. Literally!"
Bosco shook out his hands to prepare himself. "Listen, once I disconnect this trailer, things are going to get really bumpy back here. Make sure the explosives stay in place. The safest place to land is in the water."
"You giving me pointers now? I'm the one who came up with this idea in the first place," the Joker scoffed, then moved to shove him hastily out of the side panel. "The same goes for you."
Holding his breath, and glancing casually at the long line of cars that followed after them, Bosco carefully took hold of the handrails that carried him from the cab of the truck to trailer. Instead of returning to the passenger seat, he slid in behind the rig to where it connected to the trailer. On the control panel there, he disconnected the main hitch. Already he could hear the alarms blaring inside the truck. Cutting off a number of the electrical cables from the trailer, the alarm promptly stopped.
All that remained was the emergency hitch – two iron rods that held the trailer in place on the rig. Two might have been able to sustain the weight of the trailer... but one would not. Using all the strength he could muster, Bosco was careful to remove the right emergency hitch, knowing that the left one would serve as the axis for their dangerous little stroll through the world of physics, and crossed his fingers.
The truck had now made its way on to the pier, a wide length of reinforced concrete that stretched out over the Gotham Harbor and out into the ocean. The left side of which was lined by a large cargo ship headed for God-knows-where. Bosco really had no time to pay it any mind, since he was focused exclusively on grabbling on to small metal handlebars welded to the trailer. The Joker, along with Marky and the Bear, had lined up along the side entrance of the trailer, each holding onto a leather strap in order to hold themselves in place. The long line of cars behind them slowed, though nowhere near as quickly as the unmarked van, which made a screaming U-turn. The Joker smiled, though the other two men were not entirely sure why.
Just beyond the cargo ship was another, smaller, aerodynamically shaped boat, with a wide, steel reinforced deck, its hull sitting nearly completely level with the pier. From where the police were waiting for what would be the truck's eventual stop, they couldn't see it behind the massive cargo ship sitting idle in Gotham Harbor.
And then, the maneuver they'd all been waiting for.
The truck lurched into a sudden right turn, jack-knifing the truck into a tailspin. All four men in the trailer held on direly as the trailer, breaking loose from its last remaining emergency hitch, tore free of the rig and landed with a clangor on the deck of the hidden boat. The momentum flung the Joker along with his three henchman into the salty waters of the harbor.
Bosco remembered very little short of the absolute darkness of the water, the sound of sirens, and above it all, the Joker's maniacal laughter.
"The boat with the shipping container took off like lightning, and was half way up the harbor before the cops even got to the end of the pier. They must have thought we were all onboard - we could hear Gordon cursin' a blue-streak a couple minutes after everything had quieted down," Bosco explained, and Harley couldn't help but chuckle.
"But what about the men in the unmarked van?" she asked, from where she had curled up along the headboard to listen to the tale.
"Dunno... we heard on the scanners later that the cops had chased them for several blocks but they disappeared into thin air." He seemed to give the idea a moment's thought. "But we saw a similar car following the Tahoe while we were looking for you. I don't know if they lost interest or if we lost them, but we didn't see them past midtown."
"We?" The curiosity in Harley's face confused Bosco, her hands wrapped around a cool cup of tea that Shauna had brought her. "Who ended up finding me?"
"We did! The Joker and me..." he exclaimed, clearly surprised by the fact that she had no recollection of it.
She didn't. "I didn't want to become this massive liability... you know?" Harley asked, disappointed that she'd ended up in this condition. "I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth keeping around."
"Oh, you did more than that Chicken..." he said, reaching out to pat her a couple times on the knee to recapture her attention as she glanced sadly into her teacup. When she looked up at him again he was wearing a bright smile. "You got everyone thinking you're psychic or something. If you hadn't gotten the Bat out of there, we all would have been pinched for sure. I don't think the Joker's gonna care how you did it, just that you did."
She gave him a doubtful look, but he did whatever he could to quell her fears. "Listen to me... you took one for the team. Because of you, everyone else got out without a scratch. God only knows what would have happened if Batman had stuck around." When she blushed, Bosco scoffed and offered her a large shrug, "Who knows! Maybe he would have go-go-gadget'ed that big fuckin' tank of his into a speed boat. Then we really would have been up Shit Creek."
The two of them shared a laugh, but Harley stopped promptly when her fractured ribs caused her to catch her breath. Bosco leaned over, grabbing a bottle of pills from her bedside table, shaking a couple out into his hand and offering them to her. "Take these..."
While Harley was taking a large swig of tea to wash them down with, she heard the dog barking at the front door, whining with excitement as the screen door opened behind it.
Bosco turned and thumbed toward the door. "There he is!" he exclaimed and stood up from the bed. "Oh! And if you were looking for some sympathy from him, now's the time to get it. Whether you want to believe it or not, he's been worried about you, I can tell," he whispered to Harley, who could hear the sound of the Rosie's feet dancing on the linoleum floor.
Bosco stepped out the door of Harley's makeshift bedroom, and disappeared into the apartment's narrow hallway. She heard whispering, and recognized the whisper that followed immediately after Bosco's. Already she could feel the tips of her fingers quivering in anticipation. It was remarkable to her how that blur of unconsciousness could still make it feel like an eternity since she'd last seen him.
Still curled up against the wooden headboard of the flimsy twin bed, Harley's hands could have crushed the ceramic mug in her hands as he came down the hall. His footsteps came closer and closer before they stopped altogether, just beyond her view. There, he hesitated for a moment, the light from the open door just deepening the darkness of the windowless hallway.
"How ya doin' kiddo?" the Joker's airy trickster voice uttered from the hallway.
Harley's voice caught in her throat, tied in knot, after knot, after knot that she swallowed painfully. Placing the cup on her bedside table, her mind screamed out to her that she had never wanted to see someone so badly in her entire life. Gingerly, and for the first time in days, she stood from the bed, thankful that she'd spent the last four days sleeping in some unfamiliar, black, chiffon, baby-doll pajamas, and not in the constricting catsuit. She stood on the other side of the door, basked in the soft white light of the window, just out of his view.
"Did I make the cut, boss?" she asked, and he must have been surprised to hear her voice so close by, since her craned his neck around the door frame to spy her.
There she was, standing, ankles crossed, delicate curious fingers gripping her bottom lip, watching for his approval, though she knew she already had it.
She smiled.
He smiled back. One of those genuine smiles that she began living for. The rest of him wrapped around the door frame and snaked into the room.
This was perhaps the first time that Harley realized the kind of physical shield he held over himself at all times. How impenetrable and how untouchable he'd become in her mind. So much so that, when he took a step closer to her, she took a step back. She took another one, and another one, when the only thing she wanted to do was reach out for him.
"Are you alright?" she asked finally, as she sat on the edge of the bed once again, glancing at her feet as he slid out of his ratty blazer, setting it on a wooden chair by the door.
Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, and smoothed out the wrinkly striped dress shirt he had been wearing underneath. "No...not really," he said, looking down over himself before he offered her a sharp glance. "I came here looking for my girl, you know... the one who jumps on to speeding batmobiles? Have you seen her?"
"Your girl?" Harley asked with the faintest grin spreading over her lips.
He didn't say anything, but came to her bedside and knelt down next to the bed, his face housing a kind of sincerity that she almost never saw from him, particularly from just a strange vantage point. "Heh, well... I don't know anyone else tough enough to roll with me," he teased. "You should have seen her a year ago... she was a top-notch wuss! But I kept on her, and now she's a freight-train. Now she's a lion."
She inhaled deeply as the Joker's ungloved hand made her way up the back of her bare calf. "How kind of you. But what has she done to you?"
He took a moment to think, his fingertips dancing along the underside of her thigh "Oh, she does what she can, but she doesn't have a lot to work with," he explained, the tips of his fingers just making their way to the hem of her pajama shorts.
Without hesitation, she flattened her palm and moved to swing it at his face, but his free hand easily, and almost eagerly captured it, a smile spreading over both of their twisted mouths. "Ah! There she is..." he cooed, standing as both his hands moved to gently cup her chin. "That's my girl..."
