Chapter Two: Canary

While Babs' day was just beginning, for others, the previous day was just coming to an end. Across town, at about the same time that she'd awoken from her nightmare, another broken soul was dealing with her own trauma.

She stood on a stage amid a sea of people who lived for luxury and exuberance. All money and no class, as her father would have said. The Black Mask Club attracted a very particular clientele – those with nothing much going for them besides the balance of their bank accounts. Most of them were harmless, but some of them were deranged. None more so than the club's owner, Roman Sionis: the Black Mask himself.

Dinah Lance stood upon the stage, singing her heart out, looking out at the club's denizens. She knew that she couldn't say anything – Sionis had lifted her to her feet when she'd had no place to go. But working for him, being his little song-bird…sometimes it made her skin crawl.

"This is a maaan's world," she cooed in her silky voice. "This is a maaan's wooorld. But it would be nothing. Nooothiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. Without a woman…"

She stood centre stage, bathed in spotlight, clad in an elegant, slightly risqué black dress. Her hand was adorned with gold jewels, which matched the golden microphone she was clutching and the stray blonde braids spread throughout her otherwise dark hair – her own small tribute to her mother.

She knew that it was pointless her being up there. Although Roman liked to keep her around, his clientele didn't particularly care for her music. She didn't care though, she still put her heart and soul into every note. She'd been given a voice and she was going to use it.

Speaking of Roman, she could see him down there, clad in a turquoise velvet smoking jacket, wearing tinted glasses. Because Roman Sionis was the kind of man who wore tinted glasses in a dark club at night.

He was having a meeting and didn't look all too pleased, which could prove fatal to somebody. So, she thought she'd lighten his mood a bit, reaching out for him and singing a few bars right at him as his meeting came to an unsatisfactory conclusion.

It must have worked, because he took a deep breath and put on a grin, turning around to put on his host face.

"Whoo! Who's having a good time?" he squealed.

"Looost in the wilderness!" she bellowed as Roman began moving about, schmoozing his patrons.

"Lost in the bitterness! Lost in the loooonliness!"

Now his attention turned back to her, he was gazing upon her with a look that some might mistake for adoration. But she knew better. It was possession. As far as he was concerned, she was his. Another one of his pretty little toys he liked to take out and play with, putting on display for all to see and be impressed by.

"This is a man's world, but it would be nothiiiiiiii," she finished off with a high note that would probably set dogs barking on the next block, holding it with all her might. She heard a glass break on a nearby table.

"-iiiing! Without a woman…" With that she lowered her head, bringing an end to her set. Not that it mattered to the crowd, who were too caught up with their conversations to even notice. The sole exception was Roman, who was standing right in front of the stage and immediately belted out a round of energised applause the second she finished the final note.

"Come on!" he yelled back at his patrons, eliciting a round of false, sycophantic applause and cheers from them.

She smiled awkwardly as she placed her mic back in its stand. If only Mom could see me now, she mused.

After changing backstage, she headed over to the bar. She found that working for a creep like Sionis was much more tolerable with a drink or two in her system.

The music playing now was much more to the liking of the club's patrons – some generically DJ'd piece of club garbage. No accounting for taste.

By the time she reached the bar, the bartender had already placed her usual drink on the counter.

"Here you go, Canary," he said politely. Steve was one of the few decent people working in the club. He was also probably the only person other than Roman who liked her music.

"Thank you," she said as she fished a cigarette out of her purse. There was a time when she'd have cringed at the thought of being called by her mother's old alter ego, but these days she'd learned to make it her own. After all, as far as stage names went, it wasn't bad.

Suddenly she heard a slurred sentence coming from her left. "How do you spell mercenary? Mershanary… mersherin?

It was then that she noticed the woman to the left of her in her peripheral vision. She was the trashiest, craziest thing she'd ever seen. And that was saying something for Gotham. Her hair was blonde in essence, but with garish blue and pink dye splashed on the tips. The only thing trashier than her hair was her make-up. The only thing trashier than her make-up were her tattoos. And the only thing trashier than those were her clothes – all decked out in sequins like she was Elton John or something.

She was Harley Quinn. The Joker's little ho and a bona fide psycho in her own right. Everyone in Gotham knew her and everyone in the club was particularly wary of her tonight, thanks in no small part to the fact that she'd broken the legs of Sionis' driver right there in the club just a few hours earlier. The only reason she was still breathing was because she was dating the only psycho in Gotham scarier than Sionis.

Given the state of her at the bar, she was on some kind of bender and was in the middle of scrawling something unintelligible on the back of a business card.

Dinah did her best to ignore her and instead focused on trying to light her cigarette, but she could tell the drunken clown was looking at her, wavering back and forth on her unsteady feet.

"Singer lady woman!" she slurred.

Dinah turned with her cigarette held aloft in her mouth, to see Harley's pale face beaming back her.

"You're really, really good," she said. Though how she was able to stand, let alone speak was beyond Dinah.

"Yeah," she murmured in acknowledgement, before giving up on her smoke and instead turning back to her drink.

"Do you know what a harlequin is?"

Great, it looked like she'd made a new BFF. Lucky her.

"Janky-ass clown in bad eye make-up?" she offered drily to her new friend.

"Oof, ouch," said Harley with an expression of false pain that turned into a smile. "A harlequin's role…is to serve. An audience… a master… A harlequin is nothing without a master," she said with sadness clipping at her smile.

She picked up her drink. "And nobody gives two hoots who we are beyond that." She grinned despite the pain in her heart – the curse of all clowns. Then she threw back her drink and slammed the empty glass down, before turning around to lean her back against the bar.

Dinah looked over her shoulder at the trashy clown. She may have been a psycho supervillain, but really she was no different to any other bar fly the world over. Lonely. Heartbroken. Desperately looking for someone to listen to their tale of woe.

The sound of laughter caught her attention and she glanced over at Roman, who was… entertaining a group of woman in various stages of intoxication.

"I don't know who you think I am lady, but I'm not her," she said as she turned back to her own drink.

"Puddin' and I broke up," Harley blurted out of nowhere.

Dinah looked back at here, unsure what she was supposed to do with this new information.

Harley was shaking, but not just because of the booze. She looked like she was barely maintaining her composure as she chanced a look back at Dinah.

"I haven't told that to anyone. Yeah, for good this time." Dinah looked away, unsure what to say.

"And for the first time, in a long time, I'm all on my lonesome." Her face crumpled, as if she were close to tears. "It's great."

It was clear that she needed someone but had no one.

Dinah didn't have time for other people's problems though.

"Welcome to the club," she said before leaving the crying clown to wallow in her misery alone.