JMJ
Chapter Eight
Run about the Burg
"…'The Canadian Boxing Day Riddle' is surely going to go down as one of the most infamous in the career of the Riddler as well as it may become one of the most renown-solved mysteries of Gotham City, but most of all it will be considered another victory for Gotham in the hands of her hero the ever-elusive Batman. With no known casualties directly related to the breakout of Arkham Asylum and only one known severe injury, so far optimism is high, especially with the latest in the Bat-family proving her worth in the capture of the 'Scarface Gang'. Though Mayor Hill has advised that the people of Gotham take extra precaution during the hunt for the rest of Gotham's most notorious criminals…"
"Mrrrmph," groaned Harley coiled tighter than a shrimp on ice under her covers.
Had she really fallen asleep in front of the TV watching cheesy old movies?
Well, morning news spoke for itself as the guy droned on, "…Criminals such as Poison Ivy, the Scarecrow, and Killer Crock are still at large with no comment about leads to their whereabouts by Police Commissioner Gordon, though there are more advisories for the citizens of Gotham to be especially cautious as the New Year celebrations draw near…"
Harley stretched and moaned again as she moved to crawl off the couch and make herself some strong coffee.
"District Attorney Janet Van Dorn has commented that until the Joker has been found the war for Gotham will not be over as he is still the main suspect for the release of the inmates from Arkham Asylum. It has been speculated by some that his silence in the last few weeks is a sign that this battle is his main goal and that it will continue until…"
"Oh, blah, blah, blah," muttered Harley with her blanket still wrapped around her.
Pink shaggy bunny slippers with heart-shaped glasses over their button eyes adorned her feet.
She turned up the thermostat while the coffee started. Her eyes were still barely open enough to see what she was doing; though, after a moment she drew open the binds halfway excepting a little sun. The disappointment in another gray morning did nothing to help her already grumpy mood.
"Even if he did let them all out," she muttered to herself, "he wouldn't do it again. There'd be no joke in it. No pizzazz."
Didn't anyone but Batman and a few people among the Arkham staff understand what following someone's MO pattern meant?
"People…" she grumbled. "And if he did do it, he's probably just lettin' everyone else go first before his own big finale."
She went to the bathroom and freshened up with a shower. For some reason showers did not seem to make her feel clean since the Scarecrow's kidnapping, but she did feel a little better. The coffee cleared up her grogginess too. Lathering raspberry jelly on a nicely toasted waffle also helped bring at least a bit of a smile to her face as she licked some jelly from her lip.
They were talking about the weather now, and she was paying little mind. She rather liked the hum of the television in the background as she had her breakfast. A Clementine finished the deal; though the radiator seemed to be having trouble keeping the apartment warm.
As she brushed her teeth and did her face and hair up for work, she could not help but pause as she gazed into the mirror thoughtfully.
"I wonder if Batman was watching the news from wherever he lives when he's not Batman," she muttered to herself.
Muttering, she realized, was a form of being sane when you had no one to talk to but yourself, and she did feel especially lonely since she had parted with Jonathan Crane.
"Poor Batman," she said.
She had a serious crush on him. It made her feel guilty now as she had not donned her Lunabat cowl since Christmas Eve. She just had not been in the mood. Her heart just had not been in it. In fact, she was beginning to second guess her decision to be Lunabat in the first place.
"I know he looks so grumpy and scowly most of the time," she said.
Placing her pointer fingers over her eyes brows, she squishing them downwards so that she had an exaggeratedly, heavy scowl. She pouted her lip for extra measure.
"But it's only cuz he's so tense and when he's not stressed it helps him keep his scariness," she told her scowling reflection. "Y'know putting fear into the hearts of criminals n' all."
She took her fingers off and smiled broadly despite herself.
"But he's so cute when does this…" She put her fingers over her brows again only this time to make the most exaggerated puppy-dog sad look she could muster, which with her tidy work-bun and nice professional pencil skirt and blouse, she looked even sillier.
Her pouty lower lip pouted harder.
"More than anyone else," she told herself, "he needs a good woman in his life. Not a Batgirl. A Batwoman. A real support."
She sighed.
But there ya go girl, wistfully dreamin' your life away like a silly geeky teenager with a crush on the captain of the football team, she thought. Oi, you need to get a puppy or something. Even if Batman does need a Batwoman, it's not gunna be me.
She shrugged as an optimistic part of her mind thought back, Ya never know.
She came out of the bathroom once again, all ready for work. She would probably be late by now. Maybe she should just forget the whole thing and call in sick. It was not far from the truth, anyway; though she had already called in sick during Boxing Day. Regardless, she nearly had her hand on the phone to do just that when the phone rang.
Such a jump did she give that she nearly fell back into the kitchen table. Throwing out her arms behind her, she caught herself, and adjusted a loose strand of hair that fell into her face. With a shake of her head she took up the phone.
Who did she think it was going to be?
The Scarecrow? The Joker?
She rolled her eyes when in the back of her mind came a whisper, Batman?
As if!
"Harley? Harley, are you there?" came an excited voice on the other end.
"Ronnie?" asked Harley.
"Oh, thank goodness!" cried Veronica Vreeland; Harley could just picture her throwing her hand dramatically over her chest for a breath of relief. "I was so worried!"
"Yeah, I… uh…"
"Are you alright? Why didn't you…" she paused. They were speaking over the phone, after all.
"I'm sorry about Christmas, honest," sighed Harley, who really wasn't in the mood to talk to her even if she was at first relieved herself to hear her clear, simple voice. "Nothing bad really happened. Well, I mean, nothing that isn't okay now. I just gotta the holiday downs, I guess, after Christmas didn't go as planned, but I'll talk to you more later. Promise."
Did she have to promise?
"Okay, but—"
"Look, I'm really sorry, but I gotta get to work," said Harley looking at her watch as though Ronnie could see the action. "I'm already late."
"Oh! Okay, sorry. Please, whatever happened, take care of yourself, alright? And don't scare me like that! Not with all the crazies still everywhere! I was scared out of my skull about you."
"You and me both, kid, with the Ghost of Christmas Past 'n all," muttered Harley before she could retract it.
"What?!"
"Nothing!" laughed Harley. "I promise. We'll catch up, see ya!"
"But—"
Quickly, Harley hung up the phone.
"Pffft!" breathed Harley through puffed cheeks as she blew that wild strand of hair out of her otherwise neat and tidy face.
With hands on the side of the telephone table, she leaned over for an exaggerated scowling pout of her own making without fingers to push her brows into position, and it was quite the scowl without them.
"Now, I gotta call work and say that I'm gunna be late," she muttered, and that was exactly what she did before marching out the door, almost forgetting her purse.
At work, she was still rather sullen, but she had woken up enough to do her job well. One person noticed enough to ask— a nice older man who noticed such things, but she brushed him aside, perhaps a little more coolly than she had intended. By the time lunch came around, she was seriously thinking of going home sick again.
You gotta get out of this funk, Harl, she told herself, but one more day was all she needed.
She knew that was all she needed. So in the end she did as planned. She went home for lunch with the excuse of being sick still and left without another word. She unlocked the door and stepped inside with a sigh. She still had coffee in her thermal coffee carafe, and she poured herself a cup.
With all the bumps, bruises, scrapes and cuts, and even more serious injuries I got, I never called in sick for work, she thought staring through the blinds over the sink out a small window. And all it takes is for Jonathan Crane to be a loser and you completely fall apart.
She knew it was more than that, of course. It was a realization. It was a culmination. It was a sort of climax of the reality of her decision. If she continued to be Lunabat she would have to face those emotions every day. Batman had to face Two-Face who he had apparently been on a relatively good terms with him as District Attorney Harvey Dent before Miss Van Dorn, but Harley had to face several of her old friends on any given time day or night.
She sighed.
Looking around for the remote, she had a mind to turn on the television, but just as she found it on the kitchen table, she gave a jump stronger than anything the Scarecrow could have given her. Though, jump scares aren't everything, when one lived in Gotham City and one happened to be an ex-criminal with so many high-class underworld connections, jump scares could be a matter of life and death.
There was an envelope just at the foot of her apartment door.
Biting her lip, Harley took a look. She paused to think back. Had it been there when she had stepped inside? It must have just happened. Who could have…? Oh, she had been hanging around Jonathan one day too many. What was she afraid of?
"To Harley Quinzel," it read in romantic cursive.
Despite herself, she put on her winter gloves before she even attempted to touch it. Hesitating at the last second, she took a chopstick from the silverware drawer instead suddenly and pulled it to the edge of where the carpet hit the kitchen tiles and let it slide onto the harder surface. She tapped it gently. Then she tapped it hard. A third round and she banged the chopstick hard enough to put a dent in the cheap tiles beneath.
There seemed to be nothing coming from the envelope, and nothing too alarming about it even if there was a bulge in one corner. It was that bulge that concerned her most, though.
Not wanting to withhold the suspense any longer, she stooped down and picked it up in a single harsh motion and ripped off the top. She pulled her head back and closed her eyes as if afraid she had set off a bomb.
Nothing happened.
She opened one eye with care and then another before turning her head towards the envelope again. She snatched the card from within it leaving the envelope to fall to the floor. It was a New Year's card. Simple, yet artistically pleasing, it was set with a pair of drinking glasses and a bottle of champagne on a shiny black table. Bubbling baubles of sparkles in the background blurred nostalgically against a warm blue. Classy font read "New Years' Greetings". She thought she had even seen this card for sale at a department store in passing. So it was not homemade.
Gulping hard on her dry throat, Harley opened it.
Inside, the warm blue continued only fainter and un-glossed, but she jumped a second time when she discovered a white music chip hand-glued inside that rang tinny and whiny (and rather sickly from her banging) as it began. She almost dropped it, but it was only playing "Auld Lang Syne". With hair still on end and a tongue that just barely missed being bitten, she swallowed again, gathered her courage and looked again.
Maybe this was just a silly prank. Maybe, again, it was a sincere gesture from one of the guys at the office she worked with who seemed to kind of like her.
The card's own text read something like, "Here's to a New Year filled with the good things of last year and the promises of the next" but what she was far more interested in was the text below it, written in that same romantic cursive as the front of the envelope.
"We twa ha' run about the burgh
An' pudd'n ware goin' fine.
But seas between us, batty roar'd
'Sin's days of auld lang syne'!"
Will ee tak a cop pet's meanness yet
For days of old long sin?"
Harley gasped and dropped the card like she had suddenly found it a scorpion. It was not signed, but it did not need to be. She knew what it meant. She knew who it was from. The clever jest and parody of the song was only too well signed already. Maybe it was on the verge of being what he might have considered "too Riddler" but there was absolutely no mystery in the parody considering who this card was for. To have signed it for real would have been a redundancy that would have ruined the joke too.
Without thinking about what she was doing or where she was going, she threw her polka-dotted trench coat on and grabbed a duffle bag to fill with assorted food, clothes, and other random objects. Her boots she had never taken off, and with gloves still on and a winter hat forgotten, she ran out the door and slammed it shut after habitually locking the door behind her. Then she raced down the steps and out the main entrance.
Looking around her she saw no one unusual. Nothing was out of place. No half-hidden yet rather conspicuous cart, car, or loiter that may be expecting her. She ran on. Her ears burned from the chill without a hat. She slipped on slush as she turned sharp corners, but she did not stop. She ran across the street with a crowd, pushing her way through them, her eyes blazing wide with fear.
Where she was going she had not the slightest idea. What she planned to do, she had even less of a notion. She just had to get away.
Why?
Why now?
He had not cared this whole time. What had he been waiting for? How long had he been watching? Was he truly the one who had let the Arkham inmates all escape? Just because of her? He had not cared when he knew she was leaving Arkham with a bill of sanity the first or final time.
It was the "bat" thing, wasn't it?
It was even in his card. She had gotten in between the Joker and his Batman like the waves of a roaring sea. That had to be it! There was no other explanation, except for maybe that he had been waiting until after Christmas to give her the joke on "Auld Lang Syne." Probably both!
Her head was swimming. Screaming. She hardly saw anything in front of her except enough not to run into a wall. She found herself slipping into any city crevice where there were not too many cars or people to get in her way, but that only led her into the alleys and byways. When she realized this, she slowed down and looked over her shoulder.
This was exactly where he wanted her to go, wasn't it?
Honk!
Harley barely squeaked a scream as she looked ahead at the oncoming truck. She would have been run over in a second had not something softer and swifter suddenly shoved her into the filthy snow bank across the road.
Shivering and spitting out gross, wet chilled grime, she threw up her head and sprang to her feet hoping to see Batman, fearing to see the Joker, but not expected at all who she did see. She blinked stupidly like a cat just shaking itself after climbing out of a pool of water that it had suddenly fallen in. She squinted with mouth ajar at the confidently held face of Poison Ivy.
"Red?" Harley finally choked out.
She was wearing a long concealing trench coat and broad-brimmed lady's fedora, but there would have been no mistaking her from yards away. She was only three feet from her now.
"Come on," Poison Ivy hissed as she pulled Harley by the arm.
Harley half-tumbled as she witlessly allowed herself to be pulled along into the darkened alley beyond.