Joker awoke to complete darkness, except for a faint light far above him. He blinked and sat up with a hiss of pain, feeling the bump on the back of his skull.
"See? He's alive. Not that he'll stay that way for long," said a familiar voice above him. Joker blinked again, trying to see who the voice belonged to as he stared up into the beam of a flashlight. He could vaguely see strange markings and symbols on the walls around him, and he suddenly realized that he had been dumped down into the temple of Batman.
"We can't do this – this is wrong," said Harley's voice. "And he'll be found tomorrow anyway when Dr. Crane goes down there…"
"Dr. Crane won't be going down there, Harley," interrupted the voice. "We have what we need from the temple, so the best thing to do is rebury it so it can never be found, and neither will he."
"We can't do that!" cried Harley, desperately. "It's murder! And he'll be missed, and then people will start asking questions! What am I supposed to say to those?"
"Think of something," the voice snapped. "You're a bright girl – just say you haven't seen him. Say he probably wandered off and got lost in the desert. Or say the Nazis probably got him. There's no way they can connect his disappearance to you if you just remain calm and lie convincingly."
"It's wrong," repeated Harley, firmly. "I can't do it, and I won't do it. I won't be a party to murder!"
"I was hoping I could depend on you, Harley," sighed the voice. "But I can see now that I can't. And I can't let you ruin things at this late stage of the game."
Harley screamed, and Joker suddenly saw her falling head first through the hole in the ceiling. He reached his arms out and caught her before she hit the ground. Then he looked up at the man who had pushed her and was now shining the light down on both of them, a smile on his handsome face.
"Harvey?" gasped Joker.
"That's right," said Harvey Dent, lighting a cigarette. "I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with either of you about my intentions, but then I did warn you not to trust anyone. You see, the truth is, I'm collaborating with the Nazis."
"What?" demanded Harley, whose terror had suddenly been replaced by fury. "You told me you were working against them! That you needed my help to foil their plans!"
"Yes, and you gullibly believed me," retorted Dent. "Just because I flashed a US government ID at you. It didn't even enter your pretty blonde head to consider that I might be lying. Which I guess means you're not as smart as you should be, Dr. Quinzel."
"Hey, leave her outta this!" snapped Joker. "She wasn't the only one you took in!"
"No, I fooled Lord Tetch and you too," agreed Dent, nodding. "I suppose it's to my credit that I'm a very good actor, but I did tell you explicitly that you'd be surprised who could be two-faced. If you were smart, you would have read between the lines. But you're not smart, which is why you're down there, and I'm up here," he added, puffing out a cloud of smoke with a smile.
Dent stood up. "Don't worry about Lord Tetch and Dr. Crane – my German friends and I will take good care of them. And we'll think of you in your tomb here when we open up the Batman's tomb. It might console you to know that someone will probably dig you up in a couple thousand years, and you'll be a valuable archaeological find, which is greater than any value you could possibly have in the present time. You should both be honored that you're going to become a part of history. Goodbye."
He held up a stick of dynamite, and put the end of his cigarette to the fuse. "Get down!" shouted Joker, shoving Harley to the ground and shielding her with his body as the ceiling exploded. Stone and sand fell into the pit, burying them in the rubble and sealing them into the ruin.
Joker coughed and spluttered as he emerged from the debris. "Are you ok?" he gasped, helping Harley to her feet. He clicked on his cigarette lighter, (which he had eventually found in his back pocket, although he had decided to re-evaluate its status as his good luck charm in light of recent events) and it provided a tiny flicker of flame by which he could see her tearful face.
"Yes," she murmured. "Not that it matters. I've done a terrible thing. I've helped the Nazis..."
"Hey now, you can't blame yourself," said Joker, gently. "I trusted Harvey too…"
"But he's right – I shouldn't have been so gullible," she muttered. "He came to see me just before Dr. Crane started his expedition, and told me he was a government agent on a top secret mission that he needed my help with, and that I couldn't share with anybody. I couldn't even tell Dr. Crane about it, since Dent told me not to trust anyone. He said he intended to stop the Nazis before they could open the Batman's tomb by discovering it first. I thought I was foiling them, not helping them."
"And then when he thought your work was progressing too slowly, he sent me and Tetchy to help hurry you along, with the same cock and bull story," finished Joker, nodding. "I'm betting he also gave Craney the idea for this expedition in the first place by claiming the Nazis were after this tomb, and that he should beat them to it. And I guess it kinda worked – you did find this temple. But the Nazis are still no closer to finding the actual tomb."
Harley wiped her eyes. "Actually, they are," she whispered. "You were right – I did remove those artifacts from the tent, and took them to Dent. We studied them together, and found ancient writing hidden on them, writing that revealed the location of the tomb in relation to the temple. That's why I came here tonight – there was one final piece written on the temple roof, the final clue needed to locate the tomb. It was like an ancient map, and I connected the dots on that map for the Nazis. They're going to release the Batman, and it's going to be all my fault."
She started crying again, and drew her legs up to her chest. "At least I'll be dead soon, but I'll never forgive myself," she whispered, burying her face in her arms.
"Well, we won't be dead too soon," commented Joker, looking around. "I mean, there's air, so we won't suffocate. We'll probably starve to death, and that's a pretty long and lingering fate…"
"You're trying to torture me, and I deserve it," murmured Harley, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
"Believe me, you'd know if I was trying to torture you," retorted Joker. He sat down next to her, lifting her chin up gently to reveal her tear-stained blue eyes. "Hey," he said, smiling at her. "Dry those pretty eyes. We're not beat yet. I've been in thousands of temples, and trust me, there's always a way out."
"Really?" asked Harley, hopefully.
"Well, not always," said Joker. "But sometimes. And hopefully this will be one of those times. We just gotta be strong and not give up. If you've unintentionally helped the Nazis, we're gonna intentionally stop 'em, or my name isn't Indiana Joker. Which it is, for the purposes of this movie."
"Movie?" repeated Harley, confused.
"Never mind," said Joker. "Just trust me when I say that giving up without a fight is no way to live, and it's no way to die. We might meet our end here, but I'm gonna go out fighting, whether that's the Nazis or the Batman. That's really all we can do in this joke of a life, is find the will to keep on living. And it's a lot easier with a smile. Even when you're trapped in a temple, a smile lights up the darkness."
He smiled and held out his hand to her, and she took it, getting slowly to her feet. "Just gotta hope there's no booby traps or dangerous creatures lurking here in the dark," commented Joker, as he picked his way carefully into a large room opposite them, trying to see by the dim light of the cigarette lighter. "I mean, in a way it might be good, since if something living got in, it implies there might be a way out. But it might be snakes or…"
He trailed off as he heard an odd squeaking noise from the roof above them. "Bats. Why'd it have to be bats?" he muttered.
"Bats aren't poisonous or anything though, are they?" asked Harley, nervously. "Not like snakes or spiders or scorpions. All bats can really do is be a little annoying…"
"Or a lot annoying!" chuckled Joker. "And I'm glad you're not scared of 'em like Craney. I've just had too many encounters with them to look upon them favorably. Plus they crap everywhere," he added, trying to shine a light on the ground to avoid the messes, and to look out for traps.
"It looks like we're in the main sacrificial chamber," commented Harley. "There's the altar."
"Pretty amazing that it's still stained with blood thousands of years later – that must have been quite a few sacrifices," said Joker, approaching it. He reached out to touch the dried blood, and the altar stone shifted slightly.
"Well, that's weird," he commented.
"What is?" asked Harley.
Joker slowly pushed the stone slab of the altar aside, to reveal a set of stairs heading down. "Some kinda secret passage," he said.
"Where do you suppose it leads to?" asked Harley.
"Only one way to find out," said Joker, taking her hand and heading down the steps into darkness.