JMJ

Chapter Seven

Christmas Present

"I said, beat it, ya slapstick baboon!" Harley screamed.

The kick she suddenly swung was enough to prove her reflexes under such heightened adrenaline. It knocked the Scarecrow stumbling backwards on the roof right back into the pipe he had been hiding behind earlier. Not only did he get a nasty shock in the chest with an "Ooff!" from that well-placed foot, he also got a nice clang in the back shoulders and the back of his head. "Ugh!"

For a moment, the Scarecrow rubbed his aching skull. He blinked his blurred eyes through the steamy pipe exhaust at Harley dropping back into the snow. With fists, she pounded the ground as she trembled and whimpered.

Regardless of her spunk, taking off her mask must have made Harley think that the Joker had done something incredibly gruesome to her face. She felt at it now and stared woozily at the cowl still clutched in Scarecrow's hand as he stumbled unsteadily upright. It was just then that she fainted, as white as a ghost even without her jester makeup. Though, it was hard to tell for certain what she thought she had seen.

Once firmly standing, the Scarecrow leaned over in a stupefied hunch for a moment or two. The wind blew ominously. His breath plumed like the exhaust behind him. His heart continued to thump hard now beneath the pain in his chest from that kick. If the siren had not sounded again he might have stood there longer, but as it neared the chemical lab, he quickly scooped his hat up that had fallen with a mess of straw from his makeshift straw wig. He tucked Lunabat's cowl into his rope-make belt, and then lifted Harley.

She was not completely unconscious, even if still very delirious. For a moment he feared she would kick him again or even bite him, but he could not leave her. He set her wriggling form back down. It was like trying to carry an injured fawn— injured but still healthy otherwise. Then he used just enough of the knockout gas to have her limp enough to carry properly. With the help of a fire escape ladder he reached his getaway car and drove away before he found out whether or not those sirens would ever end up at the chemical lab.

The truck was old, rusted, and made strange noises when it ran. The dry frigid air pronounced those noises into a whine. It was fortunate for the Scarecrow's escape that it had not complained too much to get the stupid thing started in this weather, but despite its appearance it ran well. It simply fit his overall theme— a mockery of a beautiful red old fashioned farm truck with a tree from the nearest Christmas Tree farm in the back. He had some dried wood in the back, bound and under tarp for looks instead. It looked like the type of old truck that would be in some hick-side swamp monster movie, or the type of truck that a man's dead body overtaken by aliens for show might step out of.

He drove quietly and nonchalantly through the winter night with his mask and hat off and Harley sleeping uneasily in the seat beside him. He reached a quiet place in the city where an abandoned warehouse stood looking as bleak and uncared for as his car. Inside in the lower level he kept his private laboratory. It had been a place he had kept secret for over a year. Here, he brought Harley despite everything.

He gave her an antidote that would help the fear toxins to move through her system more quickly— an antidote he had plenty of since he rarely was ever able to use it on himself when he was hit with his own fear toxins. He set her down gently on his own miserable cot. It was the only place in the whole lair that had anything soft on it and even still it was rather lumpy and uncomfortable and not quite warm enough. Knowing this, he took a space-heater to put it under the cot and turned it on full blast.

Then he grabbed a metal fold-up chair and sat with arms across the back of it as he stared at her. Well, not at her so much as simply in that general direction. His eyes were, in reality, on the bleakest shadow in the corner behind the cot. With his own mask tossed carelessly on a rusty worktable he was still covered in straw, the discomfort of which he barely noticed normally anymore. He felt the discomfort now as some poked into his arms as he leaned hard against that chair. Beneath his hair, his head itched with it, but he embraced it.

Still rather in a stupor as he was, pain was at least feeling something.

He felt as though a stone had been thrown into the pool of his focus. In between the rippling rings he could not quite grasp the image anymore. Like so many things, it bothered him, even though he knew he should not let it. It frightened him, but even the fear was a dull fear, a numb fear, a fear that did not move but was frozen like an autumn leaf unable to tremble anymore in a frozen puddle on the street. He did not know how to respond. Why he had brought Harley here instead of leaving her where she was or bringing her somewhere else, he was not certain. He was not certain of anything.

He sat as still as a board; though even the boards of his lair were at least creaking and moaning in the brutal wind outside. The chills of each draft caused shivers up his spine and goose bumps on his arms.

It was feeling something.

He did not know what he felt otherwise. He remembered that he had been happy for Harley when she had been released from Arkham— happy that she had escaped the Joker and all that was so unhealthy for her. She had so much more to offer for herself than being the Joker's slave when even the Joker himself cared so very little for her. He remembered laughing at Lunabat for what a joke he had considered her. What did he think now? Well, from the analytical standpoint that he always did automatically (and had even before he had openly become the Scarecrow), it was likely that in the dark corners of her brain she feared that, if she did not fight crime instead of commit it, she might just slip back to her old master through no will of her own. He had seen before his eyes her fear of being the Joker's slave once again. Irrational, but unavoidable— such fears.

Numbness and emptiness was all that filled Jonathan Crane. Perhaps in the end that was all that ever filled him. He was not full of life and purpose like Harley Quinn. He was not full of emotion and passion like Jervis Tetch. He was not even a fierce heedless monster like the Joker who was all action with nothing to hold him back.

For a moment, he paused in thought too. He simply sat there, listening to the dry, empty howling of the winter night tearing with more feeling than he had.

It tugged so purposely and so determined at the meaningless structure of man in which he was huddled as in a tiny boat upon a massive sea of untamable black waves roaring. With the zeal of a stampede of elephants, as focused on its purpose as sharks to blood, and he a stone trampled and washed over still unable to move on its own accord.

It was only to relieve himself of the frozen numbness, that after some moments of this silence of the mind that turned into a deep contemplation of the imagery he had created, he dropped his head into his arms. He sighed miserably to prove he was still alive and not simply a spirit of some dried out husk that had finally drifted away.

#

Toxin-induced hallucinations of terror turned into swirling nightmares of misery. Nightmares turned into uncomfortable dreams, and uncomfortable dreams turned into stupid mind-rambling nearing wakefulness.

"Harley, if Bud and Lou are gunna have presents for their birthday party," asked some nondescript person that might have originally been one of Joker's goons, "are we gunna invite Percival and Isis as guests? We got the ball pit already for you in the back too by the way."

"Oh, sure, but Bud already ate half the balls," Harley found herself whispering in the real world beyond her dreams. "And don't forget to invite Krypto and Ace too… Play nice with Isis… they're getting' kinda row…dy…"

Harley yawned. Then she blinked.

What met her above was not the ceiling of her apartment bedroom. Her eyes went wide with her mouth still open from her yawn. As she looked around her, she clamped her mouth shut again and glowered. The night before quickly returned to her: theft, Scarecrow, fear gas, and all.

"Mph!" she squeaked, half in fear and half simply in indignation.

She was in a tiny room without windows. Well, it was part of a larger room, she quickly saw. What blocked beyond was a makeshift wall of raw boards. A pair of wine-red drapes ripped just perfectly to mimic something from a Dracula movie hung in place of a door. Light came from above and beneath, but they were drawn closed. Cracks and holes of light glowed from the unhappy boards.

The room she was in was crowded with dusty furniture. The radiator beneath her was frying dust, the smell of which mixed with the smell of rusted metal, straw, and musty wood.

Even if she had not encountered fear gas and the Scarecrow the night before, she did not have to be a Batman to guess by the smell of hay alone whose lair she had woken up into. Hey! She thought she felt a piece of straw behind her back right now. She moaned and reached behind her back as she sat up.

"Yep, straw," she murmured staring at it in her fist.

The howling wind outside and the creaking of the old building like some haunted mansion was a nice touch too even if it reminded her more of the old place where Horace and Jasper hung out in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The muffled sound of a television or radio echoing from the lighted space beyond added to the effect, but Jonathan Crane would have been insulted to the core of his being had someone even suggested that he was sitting around watching stupid game shows like those two idiot goons. He was as much of a bookworm as a bookworm could get.

As she glowered at the curtains shifting like weary ghosts in the reverberations of the winter action outside, she could distinctly make out the droning of the news, which was probably the only thing the Scarecrow ever really watched.

It did not help her mood any when the morning newsman reminded everyone this also happened to be Christmas Day.

Harley crossed her arms angrily.

She had even planned to take it easy Christmas Eve but had changed her mind at the last minute. Now she paid the price for it. Ending up in the lair of the Scarecrow on Christmas was about as nice as being Scrooge's maid before the events of A Christmas Carol.

"Hmph!" she growled.

Then she sighed as she rubbed her aching head from all the drugs that the Scarecrow had administered the night before both harmful and helpful. She was not in any shape for a confrontation, she knew that much. Her weary mind was still completely exhausted from images now only partly remembered of the Joker bursting forth from his mortal form as a vengeful god of evil hilarity with all the spectacle of a fairytale and the reality of cold cement. No matter how warmly the radiator blew, she found her hands still trembling.

With a shake of her head, she tried to shake out the images, grosser than they were scary, now in full consciousness.

Footsteps distracted her. They were tiptoes like that of a timid little boy peaking on his parents on Christmas morning to see if he could wake them without them knowing he was waking them.

Her face exaggerated into full annoyance, but by the time the Scarecrow lifted the curtain, Harley was already lying back down pretending she was just waking.

"Oh," she moaned rather grumpily behind her grogginess.

Jonathan gulped and clutched the curtains like the guilty puppy he was, his huge eyes so wide and swollen with it.

"Professor?" Harley cracked with a voice weaker than she supposed it would be, and it startled her a little before clearing her throat.

The rogue professor slunk in like that same guilt-stricken puppy with tail between his legs as he wrung his hands together and swallowed hard on his lanky neck. He was not wearing gloves or mask but the rest of his costume was still on and in full. So was hers, she noticed, except for her cowl.

"Dear child!" began Jonathan so miserably that she had no choice but to soften towards him a little; her eyes faltered with pity despite herself. "Are you feeling alright? The side-effects of the antidote should wear off soon, and the knockout gas. I deeply apologize for last night."

Harley wrinkled her nose.

Jonathan continued, "I had no idea that you were… I mean, I hope you can forgive me. I feel wholly terrible about what's happened."

"And you should," muttered Harley, but not quite intelligible enough for Jonathan to understand; before he could ask, she said clearly, "Okay. You mean, you don't hate me now that you know I'm Lunabat?"

"I mean it from the depths of my being that the last thing I want on this earth is to bring harm to you," Jonathan insisted with the sort of overly dramatic passion such as only emotional bookworms could utter. "If there's anything at all I can…" His eyes darted uncomfortably. "Please, at least allow me to get you something to eat and drink."

Harley rolled her eyes, but she could not bring herself to protest before he slipped away like some vampire's toady through the curtains again.

"I'll admit that I'm stocked inadequately at the moment, but I do have a box of tea from Jervis Tetch. It's a mixed assortment. Darjeeling, earl grey, oolong, and ceremonial grade matcha. You have your choice. I can also offer you some toast." His voice echoed from beyond. "I only have butter, but even that's minimal, and may be old. I will investigate that for you, if you'd like."

She distinctly heard the television turn off.

I'm surprised you have butter at all, thought Harley who distinctly remembered that Jonathan ate his toast dry at Arkham with his black tea or a glass of orange juice.

Without invitation, she slipped off the lumpy cot and lifted the curtain to follow. It was more like the curtain in the Grinch's cave, she decided, than something from a vampire movie. Although, it might have been just because it was a Christmas that she thought that. All Jonathan had to do was to cut out a lanky outline of a coat and a hat to go with it to fit the part.

She paused as she saw Crane's back in a very scant, cut-off corner that served as a crowded kitchen. There was a camp stove with a kettle already on it, a small fridge, and a counter with an industrial sink that obviously was not originally made for a homey living space so much as a basement warehouse, which despite how it smelled very much like a barn and even somewhat looked like one now with the extra straw in crates and scattered on the floor, a warehouse was certainly what it had originally been.

Though, it was also pretty obvious that it was now used as neither a barn nor a warehouse. To the Scarecrow this was not even a lair. It was a laboratory. There was another curtained-off area that probably kept most of his vital work, but test tubes and vials lurked on shelves in the main area between Harley and the kitchen as well even if mostly empty. The smell of strange chemicals was faint but undeniable. Books, magazines, and other papers were stuffed in every corner available where shelf-space was insufficient along with pens, pencils, notes and scribbles. The television was very small and out of date and stood on a TV dinner stand that looked like it could barely hold it up in its remote corner, proving how much Jonathan really cared about the tube. There were many little knickknacks and doodads mingled with things that were actually valuable like some sort of magpie's nest. The whole place was rather like some disheveled nest of some frazzled old bird or maybe even a rat. Again, she found herself feeling sorrier for Jonathan than anything else, despite how she still felt pretty ticked at him.

She glanced down by chance upon a certain pile of books in particular on a table near at hand. One was a collection of tales by Poe. One was Irving's most famous, and was scribbled on in Jonathan's spidery cursive. The last was something that still had a book jacket, if the other two had ever had them looking as ancient as they did. Not only that, but this colorful book looked almost brand new except for a pen splotch from an obviously leaky pen.

Harley raised a brow. A book by Dr. Long?

Despite herself, she picked it up while Jonathan boiled water and toasted toast in a continued frazzled state. The fact that he had accidently fear-gassed her had apparently really shaken him up.

I guess, he really does have a soft spot for me, she thought with a sentimental sigh, but as she examined the book she wrinkled her nose again.

The Living Daylights: How a Living Nightmare saved my Waking Life.

"Ooff!" muttered Harley with a painful wince. "Ouch."

It was exactly what it looked like it was about. Dr. Long had written a whole 350-paged book explaining that the Scarecrow's attempt at revenge on that person who fired him from his cushy university position had not only failed miserably but had strengthened Dr. Long at a personal level. It had made him rethink his whole life and had made him a better, happier, more relaxed person from facing anxieties beyond what already stressed him and fears he had not even known he had. By his picture on the inside cover, Long looked like he was rejuvenated and had regained back a few years of his life from that crabby old dink stereotype he had looked a few years ago. He actually looked kind of scary to Harley, but it was more than freakiness that disturbed Jonathan Crane about it.

If this was what was on the top of Crane's reading list, it was a wonder that he was not more frazzled and completely off his nut.

"Miss Quinn."

Harley sucked in a gasp between her teeth as she slammed the book back down on the table with a start.

Jonathan was not completely unobservant of this action, but he pretended to be. The only thing that revealed he had seen was a temporary knit that flickered like a warning flame through his brow, but he was not changed in his attitude otherwise and the knit quickly passed.

Harley grinned. "Yes, Professor?"

"You haven't said which tea you'd like? I looked, but I don't have sugar."

"Oh, uh, Darjeeling, I guess, and don't worry about the sugar, I think I need the straight caffeine this morning anyway. Besides, if it's Jervis' special blend of Darjeeling, I'm sure it's…" She was almost gunna say "stolen" she realized, but she suddenly went back to what she originally intended to say after a sort of choke. "…enough to wake groggy Mr. Dormouse into crossing a whole Wonderland table for seconds, heh!"

Jonathan made a face but nodded with a strange sort of care.

"There's no need to feel uncomfortable," Jonathan insisted sprinkling the loose Darjeeling leaves into a tea-ball infuser and placing it into a plain mug.

He himself placed another tea-ball into a matching mug also with Darjeeling leaves. He was not looking at her as he spoke but looking straight down at his work. After another pause to check a clock for steeping time, he took out a plate and buttered Harley's toast with the smidge that was left in a butter wrapper.

As he was bringing this meager breakfast, he said quietly, "I want you to know that I cannot think badly of you in any form seeing as you have truly escaped the abuse of the Joker."

Harley only took the plate and toast reluctantly. Admittedly, she did not feel very hungry. It might have been the drugs, but she doubted it. She did not feel overly talkative at the moment either, and she only reluctantly again allowed Jonathan to seat her upon a folding chair that he unfolded for her. A seat carved from ice for the Winter Carnival could not have been colder.

Jonathan paused uncomfortably as he looked at her like some sad but kindly brother, and he shook his head and said with more clarity and strength than he had said anything thus far, "We all must do what we need to do."

It was just at the moment that Harley realized how her mouth was open ajar and it had nothing to do with taking a bite of toast. How she must have been staring with gaping eyes, besides. She blinked and clamped her mouth shut.

"We are always made to adapt to the ever-changing world around us," Jonathan went on, "the ever-changing unknown of the future. Only we as sentient individuals can decide how to change with it."

"I… guess," muttered Harley.

She tried to hide the fact that she did not know what to say further by taking a great big bite of her toast, but it was not fooling a professor of psychology, whose brows puckered between frustration, anger, pity, even a little sympathy and what might be called affection along with the usual emotion of fear that dominated even his most severe or gleeful Scarecrow expressions. The struggle behind his large expressive hazel eyes revealed more to the viewer than what he may have even felt himself.

She just could not bring herself to forgive him entirely, though. If she had not been Harley Quinn, or if Jonathan Crane had never known her either way, the Scarecrow would have been perfectly happy scaring the crap out of Lunabat, giggling and rubbing his hands together with glee instead of sighing and wringing his hands with grief as now. But at the same time, she could not hate him. She had been no different once, and she felt she had less of an excuse than Jonathan Crane— that broken and truly insane creature that he was. Then again, she could not let herself fall for that old trick again. Even though Jonathan Crane meant exactly what he said and there was no planned guile against her, he was lying. He was lying to himself, and she could not get emotionally involved with that. It was different but the same. She could not hate him, but she could not allow the pity she felt in her heart to overcome her.

The broken creature behind the beast. She could not do it. Not again. She was completely beside herself as she stared at one of the dozen most infamous creatures of Gotham back and then down at a stolen piece of toast.

She swallowed hard on her bite of it too, feeling a little ill.

"If it's all the same to you, Professor," she said uncharacteristically timid in tone. "I think I better go. I know that you didn't mean to hurt me, and I appreciate that but…"

Jonathan closed his eyes solemnly. "Of course, I understand. We are in the midst of a paradox that cannot last. I only hope for your sake that you never run into the Joker again."

Harley pouted. "But even if I run into you again…"

"It is an irony spoken of eloquently in Lovecraft's 'The Outsider'," said Jonathan with a stiff shrug and a tone of complete acceptance. "There are only two worlds and the lines cannot be crossed. You were never meant for the shadows of endless trees."

And you are? Harley burned to say indignantly, but she didn't. It would not have done any good, and she had no strength to argue with someone who had already made his choice.

"Should we meet again, it will never be in the spirit of camaraderie," Jonathan added.

Harley shook her head.

"If you don't want anything more from me," said Jonathan with complete understanding about the loss of appetite as it was a wonder he had any meat on him at all with how often he lost his, "I will drop you off wherever you desire to go."

"Thanks," said Harley with a rather cool shrug.

She would rather have hugged him instead or at least smack him in the face.

Only in a daze, did Harley find herself in that rusted old truck that she had been unconscious in the night before. They did not speak to each other as Jonathan drove; though after a time Harley did suddenly remember that Jonathan had no doubt stolen something from the chemical lab the night before. She had glanced with a glare or two over at him, but he did not look back. It was already too late for her to see where his hideout had been for later, and she sighed.

Oh, he'll probably move it somewhere else right after this anyway, Harley thought slumping in her seat and crossing her arms.

He may feel sentimental about the whole situation, but his wits were not completely gone about his work and his secrecy. He had intentionally worded everything to avoid what he was doing, to avoid what he had stolen, and to avoid confrontation period. It woke Harley up from the emotional tangle she had found herself in, but by this time, Jonathan had stopped the vehicle.

"I wish only the best for you," Jonathan insisted with a weak and terrible smile. "Good bye, Harleen Quinzel."

"Bye," said Harley again more coolly than she had intended.

She was thankful that he had not even extended his hand for a goodbye handshake. She was not sure if she could have handled taking it, but then this was no-touch Jonathan Crane not physical contact needy Jervis Tetch.

Yet, almost contrarily, she could not leave it just like that even if it would have suited Jonathan's moody irony perfectly enough. Truly, that was just it, wasn't it? She would only feed his own melancholy and justify his viewing himself as some Lovecraftian forlorn creature that was neither man nor beast that could not join the race of men. She could not help but roll her eyes.

As she was opening the door, she said before she could withhold it, "I wish the best for you too, and I actually do hope we can see each other again soon."

She said it firmly, almost harshly, but she knew that Jonathan was cut more by the hopefulness that had wreathed it like bright red holly amidst dark green needles and dark brown pinecones. His hazel eyes were wide and hollow as they lifted into hers. He looked so very vulnerable almost as though he was about to cry with the frankness of a toddler, but he did not. He quickly cleared his throat and stiffened all the more like some flagpole in the howling wind or some wooden stake holding up his alias' namesake— that stuffed potato sack.

Harley leapt out into the snow and added with one of her famous Harley smiles, "Merry Christmas, Jonathan!"

Jonathan blinked stupidly. Harley closed the door for him and waved as he drove away to think about it. She could not tell for sure, but she thought she could see through the back window his shoulders arching in just the right way for steamed annoyance rather than a further bout of self pity.

Good, thought Harley still smiling until the truck was out of sight.

It was not much, but it was the best gift she thought she could offer him. He may forget it the day after, but at least she could say she had done something. She would have regretted it forever, if she hadn't suggested his joining her instead of drowning himself in his own misery.