The Rabbit Hole
10.
Theme: Kim Gordon - "Sketch Artist"
Harley -
Harley's eyes darted from the long knife in the masked woman's hand up to her dark eyes, filled not just with loathing, but excitement too.
Harley knew that feeling of frenzied bloodlust — it was as familiar as breathing — but she couldn't seem to find the right reaction to seeing it reflected back at her now. Laugh, scream, fight, flight. She didn't know. She couldn't decide. And she didn't move as the woman lunged for her.
The Joker shoved Harley out of his way, sending her crashing into the sink. He ripped a pistol from his heavy coat and got one shot off as the woman collided with him, catching his wrist and forcing his arm up so the bullet hit the ceiling. She head-butted him and yanked his arm down faster than he could react, thrusting her knee into his elbow so he lost his grip on the gun, making him snarl in frustration.
The gun went rattling across the floor, jump starting Harley into action. She lifted her revolver and fired once, but before she could get a second shot off the masked woman grabbed the Joker by the lapels and swung him sideways to cover herself.
He freed a blade from his sleeve in the blink of an eye, going for the woman's throat but catching her shoulder instead when she bowed backwards, out of reach. He slashed at her again and she dodged that too, taking a purposeful step back and jumping into a high kick that disarmed him, the blade clattering to the floor.
She kicked him in the chest before he could free another knife from his coat, the blow making him stagger back, giving her enough space to raise the long kebab knife overhead with both hands, and drive it forward with a cry of fury, stabbing the Joker in the shoulder.
The blade slid into his body like warm butter, and Harley's stomach dropped to her feet as she watched it reappear through the back of his coat, skewering him. The woman rushed him back until the knife stuck fast in the wall, pinning him there.
He thrashed and gnashed his teeth, like he was more annoyed than in pain or dying, but Harley couldn't beat back the rise of panic in her throat. Her heart began to race, blood roaring in her ears distracting her as she fired her remaining bullets, missing every shot while the woman snatched up the Joker's discarded blade from the floor.
She rounded on Harley, her eyes shining as she planted her feet and prepared to attack. Harley threw the empty revolver at her head, forcing her to duck, and giving Harley a chance to dive toward a stainless steel prep table covered in food waste.
She snatched up a chef's knife lying there, and swung around to face the woman, trying to latch onto the adrenaline coursing through her— to ride it like a wave instead of letting it trip her up. But her eyes kept darting to the Joker, who was fruitlessly trying to free himself, distracting her while the masked woman spread her feet, her gloved hand flexing on the handle of the Joker's blade as she prepared to attack again.
Self preservation drove Harley to lurch forward. She slashed wildly at the woman, making her play defense. She dodged every attack, moving too fast for Harley's blade to catch her, and when she next launched an attack she swiped at Harley's forearm, cutting her through the sleeve of her coat
Harley hardly felt it; instinct fueled by anger kicked in as she slashed and stabbed wildly. The woman took a chance and threw the Joker's blade at Harley's head, aiming like a dart player. Harley pivoted to the side just in time to miss it. The knife went sailing past her, landing deep in the wall with a sharp THWACK that made her blood leap. Her nostrils flared as she spun back to the woman, raising her leg and kicking her in the chest with a cry that sent her flying across the room.
The woman crashed into a stainless steel shelving unit housing thousands of clear plastic takeaway containers. She lost her footing, landed on her knees, then sprang back up like a fucking jack in the box, undeterred. She dodged the knife Harley threw at her and surged forward to meet her, weaponless, fearless.
She was too fast. Harley couldn't keep up with the fists and elbows and knees flying at her, sending her crashing into the food prep table again. She clung to it, gasping for breath as the woman dove across the floor in a controlled skid, her hand outstretched toward the Joker's discarded gun.
Harley's whole world seemed to slow down as the barrel of the gun turned toward her. She felt the breath move in and out of her lungs, possibly her last breaths as she waited for it to fire.
There was a loud creak behind the shelving unit, and the woman looked up just as it tipped forward over her like a looming wave. She started to react, but she didn't move fast enough as the unit came crashing down on top of her, landing on the concrete floor with a jarring rattle, and burying her in a pile of plastic and metal.
Harley stared at the fallen shelving unit, blood still rushing in her ears. She huffed in disbelief, her hands aching from white-knuckling the table behind her. Her eyes darted to the side, finding the Turk's pale, anxious face, her hands still raised from pushing the shelving unit on top of the woman. They stared at one another for a long moment and then the Turk turned and bolted out through the restaurant. Harley heard the bell jingle as she made her escape, followed by the metallic rattle of the kebab knife landing on the floor as the Joker freed himself from the wall.
He was blinking hard as he raked a bloodied hand through the hair flopping into his eyes. He slapped his palm over the hole in his shoulder and caught Harley's eye, his expression hard to read.
"C'mon," he grunted, jerking his head toward the backdoor.
He took off at a galloping lope and Harley looked back at the collapsed shelving unit, half expecting to see the woman's sneakers sticking out from under it like the wicked witch under Dorothy's house.
"Harl!" The Joker snapped, the urgency in his voice prompting Harley to turn and hurry after him.
Jonathan -
The grounds at Arkham were not large, but there was just enough space for the greenhouse. By the time Crane was invited into Pamela and Strange's cohort, they were already growing a variety of exotic flora widely accepted as impossible to cultivate outside of their natural habitat—including the Blue Poppy. But Pamela truly had a green thumb. She could make anything grow.
Behind the greenhouse was a small, domed shed containing four bee hives. Honeybees were fascinating creatures once you got to know them, especially their means of communication. Upon discovering that Pamela's abilities were rooted in the pheromones she produced—much like a honey bee—Crane found it only natural to study them alongside her. Traditionally, humans don't produce pheromones, or at least not ones strong enough to influence other members of the species. Pamela was the exception.
They'd since moved beyond the honeybees, but Crane continued to maintain the hives as a personal hobby. After a day in the lab, he would trek out to the grounds and step into the protective gear they kept in the greenhouse, then head out to see his bees. In the winter, hive maintenance typically consisted of monitoring them for wind damage, checking ventilation, and making sure the bees had enough honey for sustenance.
It was calming, methodical work.
Satisfied his bees were happy, Crane shuffled through the snow back to the greenhouse, his thoughts on his dinner as he pushed the door shut against the cold.
But instead of the silence he had expected, he was greeted by the high, tremulous sounds of a woman sobbing.
Alarmed, Crane shucked his beekeeping hat and veil, and snatched up a nearby trowel to defend himself. The crying was coming from behind a wall of Hedera pastuchovi, so with the trowel raised in front of him, he gathered his courage and rounded the planter of luscious green flora.
There he found Pamela with her hands buried in the soil, her unmistakable red hair covering her face. Her shoulders shook as she let out a gasping cry, making Jonathan's eyes widen as he lowered the trowel to his side.
"Pamela?" He rushed forward, slowing when her head snapped toward him.
Her face was flushed and tear-streaked, crumpling like she was in horrible pain.
"They won't stop!" She sobbed, her voice cracking as she dug her fingers deeper into the dirt. "I can hear them—all of them! They won't stop!"
Stunned, Jonathan felt an unfamiliar coil of concern twisted around through his chest.
Pamela's legs buckled and Jonathan rushed forward to catch her, then guided her down to the concrete floor, where he kneeled in front of her.
He observed her for a few moments, taking in her distress like data feeding into a computer. When he'd last seen her, a week or so earlier, she'd been tired, jet-lagged. Perhaps it had been something more. The beginning of something. Something he would now need to treat.
She lifted her head to look at him, horror written over her pale face.
"They're screaming," she gasped.
Another unfamiliar feeling tightened in Crane's chest. Pity.
"Do you know the voices?" He asked. "Are they your… subjects?"
Pamela nodded miserably, and her face crumpled again.
"All of them but her," she croaked.
Crane pressed his lips together as uneasiness swept through him. "Who is she?"
Pamela stared at him, her eyebrows pinching together like she didn't understand the question. Like he'd posed a philosophical conundrum instead of a simple question of identity.
He put his hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her. It was a gesture he was unused to, but it felt natural. Right. And she seemed to relax or at least deflate a fraction under the pressure of his palm.
"Let's get you some water," he suggested. "And then we'll get to work."
Harley -
The alley behind the kebab shop ran the length of the block. It was dimly lit by a handful of street lamps and lined with mountains of trash bags sitting on top of filthy snow.
Harley was fuming and trembling as she staggered into the alley after the Joker. He was stomping away in a zig-zag, not quite steady, the right side of his coat dark with blood. How much blood, Harley couldn't say — not an insignificant amount. A dangerous amount? That she didn't know, and as she watched him stumble down the alley, her throat began to get tight. Memories of the night they became well acquainted with Black Mask flashed before her mind's eye — the Joker's white, blood-spattered face, her own voice, screaming hysterically, a sense of loss so great she couldn't stand it...
"J," she said, her voice too-quiet.
"C'mon," he snapped, without looking at her.
He took off at a rolling lope, setting a pace that should have been impossible for him considering he'd just been spitted like a piece of meat. Apparently that wasn't enough to slow him down — or at least it wasn't enough tonight.
Sirens started up in the distance as they ran to the end of the alley and crossed a narrow street into the next block of buildings, where the Joker finally slowed to a brisk, staggering walk. His jaw was set, a muscle pulsing in his neck, and his eyes were sharp and bright.
Harley grabbed his left arm, trying to slow him down, but he shook her off, the yellow light of a blinking street lamp casting shadows off the hollows of his face.
"What are we doing?" Harley demanded. "Why are we running—"
"She tracked us," he spat, agitated. His tongue swiped over his bottom lip twice, and then a third time.
Harley searched his face, bewildered. "What?"
"The Bad Bat Lady," he snapped, flinging his arm out and then growling when the gesture aggravated his injured shoulder. "She tracked you."
Harley stared at him, not following his train of thought, and distracted by the dark blossom of blood on the front of his coat that was steadily growing wider by the second.
She pulled out her phone, her eyes on his shoulder, trying to gauge how much he was bleeding.
When she glanced down at her phone, she saw she had fifteen missed calls from Pam, concerning but something to worry about later.
"We have to get to Lee's," she pulled up Frost's number. "We—"
The Joker slapped the phone out of her hand. It landed on the slushy concrete with a dull thud, cracking the screen.
"What the fuck?" Harley huffed, bemused.
She bent down to pick it up but the Joker stomped on it before she could, crushing the phone with the heel of his brogue and nearly catching her fingers in the process.
Harley looked up at him, incredulous.
"She tracked you through your phone," he explained through gritted teeth.
"What?" Harley straightened back up. "How?"
The Joker's lip curled back in a threatening leer. "Fuckin'... Lonnie."
Harley's eyes widened. She thought about their last few interactions with Lonnie — his computers melting down, asking them to swap out their phones, being antsy and even weaselier than usual…
"Fucking Lonnie!" she raged, spinning in an angry circle for lack of anything better to do. She felt vulnerable and stupid, naive even. "Fuck!"
She kicked a soggy trash bag beside a dumpster and started to pace while the Joker fumbled with his phone, his right arm tight to his side making it difficult. He dropped the phone to the ground and drove his heel into the screen, destroying it as best he could, then scooped both devices up with a weak grunt and flung them in the dumpster.
He stepped back into the light, blinking hard, his hand again clamped over his wounded shoulder. He was pale and sweaty, his warpaint running down his face like a rorschach test.
The blood stain was getting wider.
"We have to get to Lee's," Harley said again, more firmly this time.
She grabbed his left arm and marched him down the alley. He tried to shake her off but she ignored him, her jaw set as she urged him across the street and into Robinson Park, ignoring his menacing growling as she snapped at him to hurry.
He was terrible when he was unwell, his impatience with being physically weak frequently outpacing his traditionally great capacity for reason. Over the years, Harley had learned how to negotiate with the Joker about it — when to ignore him and let him snarl at her, and when to take a stand to let him know she wasn't fucking around. They'd both been seriously injured multiple times, broken bones, a gunshot wound here, a stab wound or two or three, or even four there… but neither of them had come as close to death as the Joker had the night Roman revealed his master plan to them. And Harley did not intend to relive that night just because he wanted to be a pain in the ass about seeking medical attention.
They staggered through the park, staying off the main path and sticking to dark corners. It was hardly the most perilous situation they'd been in, but Harley felt unduly anxious, the dreadful feeling coming back.
They burst out of the other side of the park and down one more block to Lee's place. Harley helped the Joker up the front stoop, ignoring his attempts to shake her off until he eventually gave in and leaned on her. She thumbed the buzzer for Lee's apartment until the intercom fuzzed and the front door popped open, and she nudged the Joker inside. He handled the stairs to the top floor well-enough, snapping at Harley to get off his heels as she hovered behind him, ready to catch him if he fell, and by the time they reached Lee's door, which was standing ajar, they were bickering fiercely,
Lee was waiting for them, wearing her pajamas and a concerned look, but prepared as they trooped into her kitchen.
"Hi, guys," she said, her brow creasing with worry when her eyes landed on Harley. "Are you okay?"
Harley looked down at herself, registering that the sleeve of her coat was slashed open, all the little white houndstooth checks rusty-red and blood soaked. It was only from a few shallow cuts on her forearm, an irritation instead of an injury, but it was a bloody reminder of her fight with the woman who was hunting her all the same.
That's what it felt like, she realized.
Like she was being tracked down and hunted.
"Um," Harley blinked hard. She looked at Lee and saw her eyebrows raise in surprise, and then at the Joker who was staring at her stonily. "J has a hole in his shoulder and we need you to fix it. I'll be— I'll be right back. "
She turned away from them both and headed straight for the bathroom in the hallway, which was just as messy as the last time she was there. Harley spared half a thought for Ed and his henchgirls, who seemed a remote and far less immediate problem as she examined herself in the mirror, sighing at how visibly shaken she looked.
She ran the cold tap and splashed water on her face, which was more sore and tender than she'd realized.
Shit.
She carefully dried her face on a lemon-coloured bathtowl, leaving blood stains and make up behind. She wet her fingers, and raked her hair back off her face and looked at her reflection again. Her eyebrows seemed permanently fused together, the two wrinkles between them deeper than ever.
She swore and sat on the closed toilet seat, and put her head on her hands, trying to organize her thoughts and find a path forward past the dread holding her up like a blockade.
No matter how she tried to fight it, she could feel the nothingness creeping in.
It must have been at least twenty minutes before Harley pulled herself together enough to decide three things.
One, the masked woman needed to be dealt with immediately. She was their new priority.
Two, whoever she was, she had a hacker of her own.
Three, Lonnie was a dead man walking.
Harley called Frost from a burner with 3% battery, letting him know to ditch his iPhone and pick them up from Lee's. Then she quietly returned to the kitchen, finding the Joker sitting in a chair beside the kitchen table, bare-chested and glowering as Lee tended to him, his bloodied clothes in a pile on the table beside him.
"Is he alright?" Harley asked Lee
"Once again, he was very lucky," Lee offered the Joker affectionate smile, which he didn't seem to notice, his eyes on Harley.
She met his gaze evenly, resolved to be productive.
"We need to take care of the Bad Bat Lady," she said. "Tonight. I don't want to be surprised again."
"Mm," J growled in agreement.
"She isn't working alone," Harley continued. "She's working with someone. Someone smart. Smarter than Lonnie."
"Mm hmm," he agreed, watching her check the burner when it beeped with a text.
"Frost is outside," she announced, just as Lee finished laying flesh-coloured bandages over the Joker's freshly-sutured wounds—on both sides of his body.
Harley shot Lee a sidelong look as J started re-dressing in his bloodied clothes, and an idea came to her that she would have laughed off twenty-four hours earlier. But now seemed like the smartest move she could make. A move she hadn't even entertained in over five years since they were up against Black Mask, which just spoke to how seriously she knew she needed to take the masked woman.
"Have you heard from Ed yet?" she asked Lee.
"It's been over three weeks," Lee sighed, forlorn. "He's avoiding me."
Harley reached for Lee's hand and squeezed it meaningfully, trying to convey more than what she knew the words she was about to speak could.
"If you hear from him, tell him I need to speak to him," she looked Lee in the eye, her expression grim. "Squad style."
Lee's eyebrows arched in surprise, but she took it in stride, and nodded quickly.
Helena —
The shelving unit was heavier than it looked, and as it crashed down on top of Helena one of the aluminum bars struck her in the back of the head, knocking her into a state of fuzzy half-consciousness. She heard voices, and her own ragged breathing, and then the voices were gone and it was just her, huddled on the concrete floor in a protective brace with the shelf pinning her down.
She blinked away the fog, her pulse picking up and breath shortening as a rush of claustrophobia swept over her. It took three frantic attempts to push the shelving unit up before she could scramble out from beneath it, her chest burning as she sucked down great lungfuls of oxygen and looked around.
She was alone, and the back door leading out to the alley was standing open wide.
Helena struggled to her feet, realizing belatedly that the Joker's gun was still in her hand. She stared down at it, dazed from her head injury, and when she touched the back of her head she felt an aching, goose-egg sized lump starting to swell beneath her hair.
A police siren wailed in the distance, and her head snapped up, a flash of panic making her pulse leap before she bolted out the back door into the alley.
Helena staggered in a circle, getting her bearings and searching for Harley Quinn, who couldn't have gotten far. She looked right and left, frustration and disgust making her swear viciously as she tried to decide which way they went.
Where would they go? What would they do? Would they hide or would they try to find her?
The siren was getting closer, and lingering was futile, so Helena did the only thing she could think of, and tucked the Joker's gun inside her gilet before taking off at a sprint down the alley, away from Robinson Park, toward home.
Her chest burned where she'd been kicked, but she powered through it, ripping off the face mask as she turned onto the main drag and settling into a less suspicious jog. Each painful breath made her more angry, and more determined to stop them. Harley Quinn had delivered an almost perfect Tornado kick, and it had thrown Helena clear across the room.
Someone had taught her how to kick like that, she decided, rounding the block to her street. Someone had trained her.
It was one more thing to watch out for next time.
As she let herself into her building and bolted up the stairs, she spared a fleeting thought for Dinah, who would still be out dealing with the MCU's captain. For how long? She didn't know. But the night wasn't over as far as she was concerned. Now she had the Joker's gun. He and Harley Quinn were both injured. They would be easy targets.
She scrambled to get her key in the lock and burst into the loft. All the lights were still on, and she immediately dodged into the kitchen to snatch her phone up off the counter. She opened the encrypted app, disappointment racing through her when she saw there were no new messages from Oracle.
She pressed her lips together and shifted onto a bar stool, wincing as she felt a new bruise at her tail bone.
Her thumbs hovered over the screen as she tried to decide what to write. She wished she could call Oracle, speak to them face to face or hear their voice at least.
They got away, she wrote.
No response.
Where are they? Can you find them again?
No response.
Oracle?
No response.
"Shit," Helena hissed. She ran a hand over her messy French braid, wincing hard when she grazed the lump at the back of her head.
Her phone beeped, making her heart leap hopefully until she saw what Oracle had to say.
They ditched their phones. Lost the trail.
Helena slumped forward over the counter, burying her head in her arms, crushing disappointment making her deflate like a balloon. She felt lost, drained like she was coming down from a euphoric high, and her body began to ache fiercely where she was injured. Her head, chest, tail bone, arms, shoulders, knuckles, ears, face.
Her phone beeped again, and she lifted her head to look at it, feeling more hopeless than she was sure she'd ever felt.
Hold tight, Oracle wrote.
Helena did her best to hold tight. She sat at the kitchen island, staring blindly at the quartz counter as she thought about Iliya, who'd been speaking to Harley and the Joker before she arrived. In fairness to Illya, Harley had been pointing a gun at her head, but that didn't change the fact that even the local kebab shop owner was tied up with them. They were a pervasive cancer that had to be cut out. And so far, no one but Helena seemed interested in taking the steps to make that happen. Not the cops. Not the politicians. Not even the Batman.
Midnight passed, and the inevitability of Dinah coming home to find Helena in such a ragged state became more pressing. Helena forced herself into the bathroom where she shrugged out of her gilet and gingerly set the Joker's gun on the sink beside a collection of skincare products. She unzipped her hoodie and peeled off her thermal undershirt, stripping down to her sports bra to examine the dark pink bruising blooming on her ribs below her right breast, and a darker, more mottled purple bruise climbing up her left hip. She turned to look at her back, moving her braid aside to see a green-purple bruise on her shoulder blade.
They would be easy to hide so long as Dinah didn't see her naked for a week or two.
Helena washed her face and re-braided her hair, then took ibuprofen for her aches, and smeared some vicks on her chest to help her breathe easier. She planted her hands on the bathroom sink and leaned forward, looking herself in the eye in the mirror, and taking a deep breath at what she saw there.
Determination.
A purpose.
And Oracle, god bless them, had better timing than Helena could have hoped for.
Her phone beeped with a new message, longer than anything she'd received from Oracle yet, and she leaned against the bathroom sink as she read it with her brow furrowed, drinking in every word.
Phones have been destroyed, so we've got to get creative. I've been tracking a criminal called 'the Calculator' for months. He provides information to everyone in Gotham— the mob, crooked cops & politicians, and rogues, including "Ann Smiley", "George Smiley" and "Arthur Smiley"—aliases of HQ, the Joker & the Riddler. This guy is well-connected and knows everything, plays every side. J & HQ will make a move tonight, and if anyone has intel on where, it's the Calculator.
An address for a cafe in the Meatpacking district followed.
Helena stared at the message, struggling to process this swarm of new information, and how she was supposed to act on it. She kept getting stuck on the fact that the Joker and Harley Quinn shared a surname with the Riddler in their aliases of choice—what did that mean? Weren't they each others' arch nemesis?
And this criminal informant, the Calculator, Helena struggled to understand how she was meant to relate to this new villain who hadn't wronged her or made front page news with a horrifying death toll. He sounded nefarious, opportunistic, but going after him felt like overstepping. The fight just wasn't there.
But Oracle seemed to think he was the key to finding Harley.
Helena looked at the Joker's gun, sitting beside the sink. It was a Sig Saur P266, one of the most common firearms used at the gun range. Helena was extremely familiar with the make and model.
She didn't have to kill the Calculator. She just needed to get him to talk.
And if he refused to talk, she would have to get creative.
Helena redressed in her purple Lycra leggings and thermals, and zipped up her gilet with the Joker's gun tucked inside it, and with her face mask clutched in her hand she stared at her reflection in the mirror again.
She could do this.
She had to, because she was the only one willing to.
Harley —
Harley did not intend to wait for the masked woman to make another unexpected appearance — she wanted her dealt with, before dawn, if possible. That meant it was time to start talking to people who might know who the Bad Bat Lady was and what she wanted.
The first person on Harley's list was Lucy Falcone, but first, there were some internal affairs to deal with.
Within about thirty seconds of walking into the honeymoon suite, Frost had dragged Lonnie out of his desk chair and slammed him up against the wall, holding him there by the throat. Lonnie gagged and clawed at Frost's hand, his eyes wide with surprise.
"What— the— fuck— " he managed to choke, glaring at Harley, who stood at Frost's shoiulder.
"Who is Oracle?" she demanded coldly. "The other day, you said Oracle was trying to hack us."
"Huh?" Lonnie gagged, taken aback.
"Someone tracked us through our phones tonight," Harley snapped. "So I'm taking a wild guess that Oracle succeeded."
Frost's large hand flexed on Lonnie's throat, and Lonnie made a weird, raspy whining sound, his face crumpling as he gasped for air.
"Why the fuck didn't you tell us someone could track us through the phones?" Harley hissed, her face darkening.
"I — didn't — think—"
"You didn't think?" Harley spat. She pulled Frost's gun from the holster at his hip and pointed it at Lonnie's head. "Then what the fuck do we pay you for!"
"You— don't— pay— me— " Lonnie managed to scoff, but his voice was strangled and squeaky.
The Joker chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, the toilet flushing behind him. He'd exchanged his bloodied lilac shirt and violet blazer for a wrinkled white shirt, a flesh-coloured bandage poking out below the second button. He had a black jacket thrown over his shoulder, casual but sinister too.
Lonnie apparently agreed. He whined pitifully, his knuckles turning white as he tried to pry Frost's hand off his neck.
"Oh, Lonnie, Lonnie, Lonnie," the Joker drawled, strolling across the living room, remarkably perky considering how his night had gone thus far. "Ya really screwed the pooch on this one, didn't ya, pal."
The Joker sidled up to Harley, clicking his tongue with disappointment as he threw his jacket over Frost's shoulder, like he was a coat stand. He started buttoning his shirt with one hand and cleared his throat meaningfully, prompting Frost to release Lonnie, letting him crash to the floor. He landed on his hands and knees, coughing as he palmed his throat and shot Harley a dirty look like it was her fault they were in this situation.
"Don't fucking look at me," she snapped. "How could you let this happen? You had one job."
"J," Lonnie looked up at the Joker, eyes pleading. "Man, you know I'm loyal. I thought I had it covered, okay I—"
Harley scoffed incredulously. "If you were loyal you would have told us the phones were compromised, and J wouldn't have a fucking hole in his shoulder!"
Lonnie sat on his heels and scowled up at her.
"Do you have any idea how fucking impossible it is to track your phones? Huh? It's fucking impossible, Harley!"
"Obviously, it's not!" Harley shouted back at him.
"Now, now. Let's not be uh… unproductive," the Joker had managed to get his bad arm in the sleeve of the black jacket while they argued. He shrugged the jacket on fully and fixed Lonnie with a penetrating stare that made Lonnie shrink back against the wall, the blood draining from his face.
"You fucked up, Lonnie," the Joker purred, raising his eyebrows expectantly. "Hmm?"
Lonnie's bottom lip started to tremble as he stared at the Joker, not blinking.
"Mm-hmm," the Joker nodded as if Lonnie had verbally agreed with him. "So… tell us about… Oracle."
Lonnie swallowed and nodded.
"She's a hacker. She's based in Cleveland, I think, and she's young. Maybe a teenager, maybe early-twenties. Definitely Gen Z." He cleared his throat, looking sheepish. "She was the one behind the big data breach at Daggett Industries this summer. She leaked a list of their dirty secrets to the web, but Daggett moved faster and had it taken down."
The Joker tongued the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on Lonnie.
"So this... Oracle," he said slowly. "She probably thinks she's a hero… hmm?"
He looked to Harley, and she frowned back at him, not entirely convinced the hero-villante-killer debate was pertinent, and then Lonnie made her point for her.
"I mean, maybe?" he made a face, apparently feeling less like his life was in imminent danger. "But J, you and I hacked Crowne and Dumas and spilled their dirty secrets during the Thanksgiving riots… we're hardly the fucking good guys, are we?"
A slow grin spread across the Joker's face, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, chuckling throatily.
Harley's face soured as she finally realized why he was in such a good mood.
Lee must have given him the good painkillers.
That left her to take control of the situation, so she pivoted back to Lonnie.
"Grab him," she snapped at Frost, who obediently took Lonnie by the neck and hauled him back up against the wall.
"Fuck you," Lonnie rasped, squirming.
"Fuck you," Harley countered venemously. "Here's what you're going to do. You find Oracle, and I mean find out exactly where she fucking lives and what her real name is, or I cut your hands and feet off and lock you in that fucking bathroom, where you will die, slowly, and the last thing you will know is the smell of your own flesh rotting."
Lonnie paled, his face going slack as Harley raised her eyebrows meaningfully. He nodded quickly and Frost dropped him again, the Joker's slow chuckle turning syrupy.
They left Lonnie to solve the problem of the teenage hacker and trooped down to the parking garage to pile back into Frost's Cadillac, all three of them squashed onto the long front seat, the Joker humming or muttering intermittently to himself, not sounding particularly sober.
"Where to, doc?" Frost glanced at Harley
"The Iceberg Lounge," she said, her voice thick with stress.
Lucy wasn't at the Iceberg Lounge, but after some light intimidation—made easier thanks to Harley's obvious impatience and blood-spattered coat— one of Lucy's handsome bouncers admitted she'd already gone home for the night. The idea of going to the Falcone Penthouse made Harley feel like she had a ten pound rock sitting on her liver, but she did her best to shake it off as they climbed back into the Caddy and turned back to Midtown.
She left the Joker in the car with Frost, instructing him to circle the block, and ditched her bloodied coat, looking moderately respectable in her black dress and red boots. The Flatiron Building's residential entrance, with its pink marble columns and gold water features, was just as gaudy as ever, and Harley was immediately stopped by two large private security guards who stepped into her path.
"I need to speak to Mrs Falcone," she announced coldly, hoping she wouldn't have to kill anyone. She was only armed with a small blade tucked in the back of her thigh high boot, but more importantly she needed Lucy to be amenable. Starting a bloodbath in her lobby wasn't conducive to that.
"It's after midnight, miss," one of the guards narrowed his eyes. "And Mrs Falcone hasn't said she was expecting anyone."
"Call her," Harley pressed, her patience wearing thin. "Tell her Peaches Kane is here to see her."
"It's after midnight, miss, and—"
"Call her!" Harley snapped, her voice echoing around the marble lobby.
The security guards exchanged a look, and one of them disappeared behind a desk while the other kept an eye on Harley, who was struggling to keep her composure. She was getting deja vu from visiting Lucy just a few nights earlier, when Lucy killed the Bertinelli kid and played that milky-eyed mob boss Mandragora like a violin. Now Mandragora was dead, killed by the same woman who was hunting Harley. If anyone would know why someone would want Mandragora dead, it was Lucy.
"You can go up, Ms Kane," one of the security guards told her, reluctantly.
Harley didn't look at them as she stormed into the penthouse elevator
When the doors opened at the top, Lucy was waiting for her in the foyer, still outrageously pregnant and wearing a nightgown of emerald green satin, her dark hair flowing down her back. She looked tense, her face pinched and bloodless.
"You look like shit," Harley greeted her.
"You got blood in your hair," Lucy countered venomously.
Harley followed her into the penthouse, which Lucy had redecorated after replacing Roman, apparently using Versailles as inspiration if the gold crown molding, rococo murals of angels, and weighty crystal chandeliers straight out of a Vegas hotel were any indication.
She led Harley through the kitchen and living room, and into her office. Harley had spent plenty of time there when it was Sofia Falcone's modernist ice Queen workspace. Now it was a gaudy celebration of pink velvet and gold furniture, including a writing desk covered in papers with a laptop sitting open on it, and two delicate chairs upholstered in chartreuse-coloured silk facing it.
Victor Zsasz was sitting in one of those chairs, his legs crossed high at the knee, his long white hands folded in his lap. He was wearing his usual black on black suiting and armed to the teeth.
"Hey, Harley," he greeted her cheerfully.
Harley ignored him.
"This place is blinding," she sneered, taking note of a golden mural depicting the story of King Midas hanging on the wall. It had been on display in Hamilton Hill's office when Harley last saw it, but now that Hill was mayor and firmly entrenched in Lucy's pocket, it seemed she was the gold-maker these days.
"What do you want?" Lucy demanded, planting her hands on her desk and leaning against it. She looked exhausted.
Harley glanced at Victor, not really wanting to talk in front of him, but also knowing it didn't matter if she did or not. He was no longer the sadistic deviant who'd strung her up by her wrists and threatened to cut her nipples off, or the dopey-eyed blank slate Roman had tortured him into to. Victor had become someone wholly different since Pam got her hands on him. His loyalty to Lucy was unquestionable, his priorities and demeanor whatever Lucy required of him — because Pam made him that way.
Something about this thought, combined with Victor smiling so openly at her, so completely removed from the man who'd tortured her, made a ripple of unease pass through Harlry, a niggling worry without a defined shape as she remembered Pam's fifteen missed calls on the now destroyed iPhone.
She shook it off and turned to Lucy. "Someone is trying to kill me."
Lucy looked unimpressed. "So fucking what?"
"It was the same woman who killed your buddy Mandragora," Harley explained, making Lucy's eyebrows raise. "She tracked my phone and she kicked the shit out of me."
"Huh," Lucy frowned.
Harley shot her an exasperated look. "So? Who is she?"
"How the fuck should I know?" Lucy sighed. She sank into the chair behind her desk, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. "All I know is the cops are calling her the Hunter."
"Alright, who do you think the Hunter is?" Harley pressed. "Who would want to kill Mandragora?"
"Oof, lots of people," Victor jumped in. "In the old days, he tried to make like, two or three power grabs and killed so many people. It was crazy. Don Falcone loved him, but eventually Mandragora became such a liability that Carmine had to push him out."
"Who did he kill?" Harley demanded and Victor pulled a face like he was thinking hard.
"Basically everyone," he shrugged, making Harley scowl in frustration.
"This isn't about the old days," Lucy snapped, her green eyes steely. "This is about the Commission. Mandragora was taking over the Lucky Hand's old stomping grounds, and without him and his boys I'm bleeding cash on the Eastside."
"If this is about the Commission, why is the Hunter coming after me?" Harley demanded. "Why isn't she coming after you?"
"How the fuck should I know?" Lucy snapped. "But I'd bet anything she's getting paid by that fucker Maxie Zeus. That motherfucker has been squeezing us for months."
Harley wrinkled her nose. "Maxie-who?"
"Maxie Zeus," Lucy spat. "He thinks he's the new Black Mask with his New Olympian Society." She rolled her eyes. "He's got the cash. More than enough to send someone to whack Mandragora and his boys."
"You think the Hunter is an assassin?" Harley asked warily, settling into the name. It felt more accurate than the Bad Bat Lady.
"What else would she be?" Lucy scoffed. "And I got plenty of reasons to think Maxie Zeus is bankrolling her."
The idea that the masked woman was just part of another good old fashioned Gotham gang war was tempting to believe — that was safer, easier to understand. But in her gut, Harley couldn't help feeling that wasn't it.
Still, it was the only lead she had.
"Alright," she sighed. "How do I find Maxie Zeus?"
"You don't," Lucy smirked, looking tired. "I got someone takin' care of him tonight. He won't be our problem by morning."
Harley narrowed her eyes. "I need to talk to him first. Call them off."
"Fuck no," Lucy scoffed.
"Lucy," Harley planted her hands on Lucy's desk and leaned forward. Her jaw was starting to ache from how tense it was. "I need to talk to Maxie Zeus before you kill him."
"I ain't calling anyone off," Lucy snapped. "The Olympians took over Alexandra Kosov's hideout at the old Bowery Station—you can try to get there first, or you don't talk to anyone."
Harley's scowled and bowed down so her face was mere inches from Lucy's, but Lucy didn't recoil from her. She stared back at Harley coldly.
"Don't push me," Harley hissed. "I like you, but I don't like you that much."
Lucy's lip curled back in a sneer. "Get the fuck outta my house."
"Alright, ladies," Victor interrupted, standing and planting his hands on his hips, his smile placid. "Let's not say anything in anger that we don't mean, okay?"
Harley pushed away from the desk, shooting Victor a look so loaded with scorn she half expected him to explode on the spot.
"Thanks for stopping by," he beamed as she shoved past him and stormed back to the elevator, unable to shove aside the feeling that she was wasting her time.
Pam —
Pam tapped her phone against her thigh as she paced up and down the small hallway connecting Exam Room 3 to the observation room in Arkham's underground lab. Her nerves were frayed and eyes aching from the bout of crying she'd succumbed to.
It had been a horrible day, worse than the night before when Harley was nearly killed.
Instead of the voice, there was only… the buzzing.
She'd experienced something like it before, when her powers first manifested, before she'd met Harley. Still not sure of what was happening to her, she'd started connecting to people… more and more people, maybe even every person she shook hands with or grazed up against. It was impossible to say because she's been so naive of what she was capable of.
Then the Thanksgiving Riots started when the Joker leaked documents about Dumas Corps' environmental transgressions. Outraged, Pam had joined an environmental group in protest outside Dumas Corps' Midtown headquarters. The group was angry too, and that anger had boiled over into rage, which grew and grew, and eventually devolved into the chaotic violence Pam felt Dumas deserved.
And then the buzzing began
Voices muttering in her head.
It was the voices of the angry, raging people around her. They were in her head. Or she was in their heads. Either way, Pam had realized they were all following her lead, doing as she commanded, what she wanted them to do.
Once the riots were over, Pam turned herself into the police and told them what she'd done.
In hindsight, she should have expected they would think she was insane after the story she told. The GCPD handed her over to Arkham, where she spent four months in a padded cell.
And then Harley showed up, broke Pam out, and changed her life forever.
Now Harley wasn't answering her phone, and neither was Ed, and the only place Pam could think to turn was to her colleagues at Arkham. By the time Jonathan found her in the greenhouse, the voices were deafening.
He gave her an injection to calm her, and she'd slept a few hours on the couch in his office. She tried calling Harley and Ed again, but neither of them answered.
Jonathan had a plan. He wanted to help. Pam wasn't sure he could, aside from drugging her, but he insisted they were scientists, and it was their job to find the answers, and that rang true with her.
It wasn't just pheromones — pheromones hadn't made Talia run errands on the voice's behalf—and though Pam hadn't told Jonathan the whole story, he agreed.
She needed to understand the connection itself.
Pam tightened the elastic, holding her hair up in a messy ponytail, taking a deep breath before she stepped into exam room No. 3.
It had been almost 4 years since she'd been there, but it remained unchanged. The walls were covered in dark green palm-print wallpaper, which Pam had picked out herself, and softly lit by a bronzed floor lamp. It was an environment she used to find relaxing, and it was the location of many early breakthroughs with Strange and Crane as their understanding of her power grew.
Eventually, they'd decided they could go no further.
That was why she was there now.
It was time to go further.
Her eyes swept the small room quickly, from the cardiogram monitor against the wall to the brown leather armchair in the corner, to the large mirror that was really a viewing window for those in the observation room. The mirror was there by Pam's design, a control for her experiments on the inmates, but it made her feel uneasy now —like she was the experiment instead of the scientist.
"Good evening, Pamela," Strange's voice warbled over the intercom. "Is the temperature to your liking?"
"Fine," Pam said shortly.
"Very good," Strange drawled. "Just let us know when you're ready."
With her back to the viewing window, Pam shrugged out of her Barbour jacket and draped it over the back of the armchair. She lowered herself into the chair and folded her hands in her lap, then closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to clear her anxiety so she could focus.
"I'm ready," she announced. "Bring him in."
Pam didn't open her eyes, but she listened to the inmate grunt anxiously as he was wheeled in and parked in front of her. An orderly hooked him up to the cardiogram, instigating a rapid beep-beep-beep indicating his distress, and left in silence, the door closing with a quiet click. Pam counted to five before she opened her eyes to look at her patient.
She recognized him immediately — his face had been on the news for days.
He was heavy-set and bald, his head potato-shaped with pointed ears that folded over at the top like a wolf. His skin was so translucent it was almost blue, and his eyes were deep set and hooded.
Julian Day, known to the media as the Calendar Killer.
Day had killed fifteen boys and men between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, and done horrific things to their bodies. But that was just where he got his start. Once he was notorious enough to get the Batman on his tail, he'd branched out into more performative but no less deadly forms of crime.
At the moment, he was bound to a wheelchair, a leather strap around his forehead holding his head in place, a wooden bar between his teeth, the kind given to patients to bite down on during electroshock therapy. Both his arms were strapped to the wheelchair, palms up, his orange jumpsuit cut open at the wrists so his forearms were bare to Pam.
She looked Day in the eye. His eyes were blue. She could see he was scared and angry, confused. Mostly scared as the frantic chirping of the heartbeat monitor spoke to. Day searched her face in turn, trying to understand what was going to happen to him. Maybe remembering what he knew about the experiments Jonathan Crane performed on the inmates in the basement, and trying to understand where she fit into it.
That makes two of us, sugar, Pam thought wryly, lifting her right hand to prepare.
She watched the tendons in Day's wrist jump and twitch as her hand hovered over his. She could feel his fear, any empathetic person would be able to sense it, but as Pam sat staring at the empty space between their open palms, she was sure she could feel it more clearly than that. She could feel his fear, visceral, rolling and mutating like a storm cloud. She could feel it.
She could reach out and touch it.
Focas, sugar.
Pam took a sharp breath at the voice's sudden return, but this time she didn't fight it. She closed her eyes, her hand still hovering over Day's as she searched for him without touching him. She reached out with every instinct she possessed, the darkness behind her eyelids absolute as she searched for what she knew to be there. She could feel it, buzzing like an electric current. Smell it like rain after a thunderstorm. Taste it.
Then suddenly, Pam was overcome with the sensation of grazing up against something, making her breath quicken. Her cheeks got hot, her whole body warming as she broke out in a heavy sweat, like she was in a hot house full of orchids.
There was a flicker in the darkness behind her eyelids, a tiny crackle of lightning. It sputtered like a flame struggling to survive a breeze, then all at once it blossomed into the storm she'd been searching for, a swirling celestial cloud in shades of pink and orange and purple, filled with sparkling lights, and steadily growing wider and brighter, pushing away the darkness.
Pam took a sharp breath, enthralled, terrified. She felt like she was seeing something as profound as creation itself. Humanity itself. This cosmic storm was despair, hatred, grief, pain, desire, terror, and she realized with a start that this celestial cloud was a living thing—it was Julian Day.
She felt her chest start to heave, she heard the cardiogram monitor start to beep wildly.
Focus, sugar, the voice purred, drawing her back in. Back into this middle space that wasn't Exam Room 3.
Pam looked down at her outstretched hand, a trembling white streak as she reached toward the hazy cloud of light and color. It was knowledge. It was power. It was life. It was everything she needed to learn. She had to touch it or she would never be whole. She would lose herself if she didn't take it.
With a cry, Pam thrust her hand into the sparking cloud, and far away, she heard Day's screams in exam room 3, growing louder and louder until they rang in her ears like church bells. Then suddenly all the voices were back — all the people she'd taken free will from—and they all joined Day, screaming.
The armchair disappeared out from under Pam abruptly, and she was falling, impossibly fast through time and space. Her hair whipped around her face and the darkness warped around her, her senses blurring as reality folded in on itself, multiplying and then shattering like a thousand shards of glass. The darkness pressed in on her, along with the voices of the ones she'd taken. They were screaming for her. Screaming and digging their fingers into her, tearing out her hair and ripping skin and muscle from her bones, scooping out her soft innards and taking pieces of her for themselves.
Pam screamed as she landed in the dirt, writhing and fighting for freedom. She plunged her hands into the earth, her fingers clawing through the soil to find roots to tether her. She clung to them, holding on for dear life as the voices tore through her mind and body, ripping her apart.
Vines and saplings sprang from the earth, their green tentacles winding around her wrists and crawling up her arms like the deadly spread of poison Ivy.
Pam gasped as the Ivy wrapped around her neck and then her head, cutting off her scream as it snaked into her mouth and threaded down her throat, filling her chest and belly as it coiled tightly around her trembling body, cocooning her in its deadly grip.
A/N: That's some hallucination, Pam.