JMJ

Chapter Fourteen

In the Pale Moonlight

It had been some time since Harley had seen Gotham Cemetery up close. Honestly, she had not been there since her great uncle's funeral when she was fourteen. She had not even known him as anything more than a crabby guy who smelled like old cigars and vodka, but the old Bell Tower Mausoleum was certainly something that a young teen never forgot.

Built by some crazy rich guy for his lost foreign wife, it had been constructed over her like a church in honor of her ancestry and how she was like an angel to him. Just another over-the-top story from Gotham. Over-zealousness seemed to be a common trait in Gothamites, and old tragic love stories like this one was more than an Irish ballad could hold.

More drama than Romeo and Juliette, Harley thought. They could make new plays for the high school drama club into the next millennium if they started writing them based on Gotham City.

The façade of the structure indeed looked like a church, but there would be nothing past the narthex as though the rest of it had been cleanly cut away with a flat wall to fill in the gaping hole. The howling wind was a nice touch she had to admit as she used her Lunabat batline to slide over the rail and into the belfry. The bell could have been taken from the bell tower of Notre Dame, and Harley would have believed it. No Big Marie, perhaps, but maybe a Little Mariette.

The belfry was empty at first. For the first time that evening, Lunabat felt a little chilled being in the cemetery all alone.

A double-take.

She gasped.

In the corner was a shadow that had not been there before. Then she breathed a sigh of relief and tittered.

"Oh, Batman, there you are," she breathed with a hand to her chest.

There was no mistaking that square silhouetted head and those cute pointy ears on top of his cowl. Headed towards him, she beamed, but just as she opened her mouth again, the figure stepped forwards, and the cape and cowl were thrown off to the light of the moon.

"Guess again!" grinned the Joker with a happy chirp.

Beside herself, despite her dismay, she could not believe she had been so dense. Completely stupefied and frozen by her mixture of horror and disgust all that came out of her mouth was the tiniest, "Ack…"

After weeks of looking and here he was larger than life like usual, just like she wanted, and he had tricked her to come to him.

"Even if it's more bats in the belfry the merrier, these days! Heh!," said the Joker with a cock of his head.

"Geh…" Lunabat managed to get out.

"I mean," said the Joker then strolling leisurely forwards, "it was all funny at first, but now it's just startin' to bug me. How 'bout with you?"

Despite his grin still present, the dangerous glint was all too evident. His nose wrinkled just a touch above a wry, knowing, and slow, lazy sneer. It was the type that used to give her chills. Well— admittedly it still did, but not the same kind. It used to be more of a thrill, especially when not directed at her. It was the perfect sneer of a hunter ready to pounce upon his prey, but waiting for just the right second as he purred forward completely nonchalantly.

"P—Puh—" Lunabat cracked. "Puddin'!"

She broke into a broad grin, and without knowing exactly what she was doing, a sort of reflexive self-preservation kicked in.

She threw out her arms. Now that she had passed the first part, it was easy now. In a full embrace, the Joker threw out his arms too and took her in passionately into the warmth of his chest against winter's cautioning chill. His arms held her almost gently, and she swooned perfectly for him. Neither one was fooling the other, but it was part of the game. It sent those chills right up Harley's spine. Admittedly, it even gave her that old sense of thrill and a delight that she could not control in the back of her mind as she kissed him and nestled her face into his collar bone.

"Ah, baby!" the Joker said with the flare of an old-time movie as the leaned back from one another to see each other face to face. "I knew you hadn't lost your old pizzazz. Dark knights may come between us, but we both know where our hearts truly lie, eh?"

"The loony old moony, Mistah J?" Harley tried as she gazed shyly and innocently up into the Joker's yellow eyes, his green irises, his black piercing pupils never missing a flicker of a muscle in his sight.

She gave just the perfect little pout as she held a finger as though to touch his lips but instead she pointed upwards at the moon.

The Joker laughed. "I wasn't fooled for a moment by your happy little joke! Bats (if they go with anything, that is) look better in a sort of me-inspired apparel. The color, the—mmm merry way about it. Couldn't've designed a bat better myself."

"Ah, Puddin…," crooned Harley straightening his flourishing bow tie.

Inwardly, she was surprised that she had not noticed how much her outfit matched his. Even the crooked, concealing nose of the mask had a sort of crook to it like that arched bridge she knew too well on that white face.

"And although we could all be bats together in this crazy mixed up world and all its bean gas," the Joker went on cheerfully as he patted her head, "it may be today's fashion, but I'd rather go the old fashioned way."

Lunabat reached back to throw off her cowl to go with the flow, but the Joker tenderly stayed her hand. He pressed it to her head a moment and smiled.

Lunabat smiled back, ignoring the flutter in her heart as he took her other hand too.

"Nothin' like kickin' it old school, huh, baby?" said the Joker kicking an old record player hidden in the same shadows from whence he had come.

What should play by an old recording of "Moon River" straight from its original film!

As the guitar opened the piece, Harley felt those flutters grow into a million butterflies in her stomach, but she used it as best as she could for her courage rather than against it. Putting her feet in perfect time with the Joker's, she could not help the annoyance either behind her grin. Even when they had been at their tightest, the Joker and she had never danced like this in what she might have considered at one time the most romantic of psychotic dates. Out in the snow on a moonlit night, high up in a bell tower of a false church that could have easily been a sign of wedding bells as much as it could be a joke on craziness.

As the singer began in her slow waltzing way, the Joker swooped Harley forward with tender grace. He grinned a slow, smooth grin wider than a mile. Then they crossed the floor of the bell tower in style with a flourishing twirl. They met again on the other side and waltzed back into the moonlight.

Then he flew her downwards with a tango-like move where her pompom bat ears nearly touched the floor. Harley let her hand fly over her brow like a true heart breaker. Their hands parted and as she moved he followed her. Then he moved away and she followed him. Then they clasped tightly and pulled themselves so hard together that their cheekbones mashed into each other before they gently drifted apart. This time, their fingers never quite left each other before the two drifters waltzed around the world of snow, moon, and height— their small world in this lonely bell tower.

As they reached the "rainbow's end" however, Harley began to be nervous. The song was coming to an end, and she was not sure what would happen when Audrey stopped singing. She even lost her composure at the word "end" and closed her eyes, but the Joker only played the part of the encouraging lover with a quick light pinch on her chin and a gentlemanly wink.

She waited "round the bend" and unbent her smile as she gazed back at her only "huckleberry" in such a dance as this with this song flowing in the moonlight like a river riding the night. The Joker… and… Harley Quinn…

But instead of some explosive finish, the music went instrumentally on as though it was truly meant to be. The waltz sailed into the perfect dream dance like something from the Nutcracker, and both partners danced for a moment in silence; though Harley felt sure she could hear someone laughing in the distance. The night watchman for the cemetery, probably.

If only Batman was here, thought Harley almost losing her smile again into a cringe.

She should have never been Lunabat. She knew that now.

Never, never, never.

She should have just moved to France and been done with it. The Joker did not care about her. He never had. It hurt her even now somehow to know that he would be happier without her there and resented her. That everything he was doing now was faker than the façade that looked like a church below them. If she just disappeared from his life, he would be pleased to pretend that she had never existed.

Maybe it was the nostalgic sound of the music, but she almost felt a sob in her throat to know how much he did not care and yet was pretending with such zeal now that it almost fooled her senses into wondering if there was not some small part of him that did care. That did love her. That was truly sad deep down inside that she chose Batman over him in the end. A part of him that wished they could be normal together forever without madness, without irony, and without murder and mayhem, but even if this was true, even if there was some part of the man the Joker used to be who truly was crying inside and all that Harley had sympathized about him was true— that there was something still human enough in him to feel pain at the sound of never being able to meet at the "rainbow's end"— that only made him more dangerous.

Any madman with a conflict was more dangerous in his volatility than one steady in his madness. It was like a wounded predator in a corner with a strong healthy-looking human. It made him unpredictable. It made him partly on the defensive. It did not take much psychiatric training to understand that one. Now certainly there may not be any conflict going on him at all and he was as empty inside as the Disney Castle at Disney Land. Hey, at least this tower was holding a respectful grave! But now Harley's head was simply in a whirl.

Just as the instrumentals started to slow, there were the chorus singers. She breathed in relief as she remembered they would have to wait for that to end too, but it was only prolonging some inevitable unhappy end.

As she leaned into the Joker's shoulder again, she sighed. She managed to hide it as a cooing sort of sound.

Then she sniffled.

No, there was no tear, but there was a funny smell. At first she thought it was a sort of cedar cologne, but despite the emotion raging inside, she realized quickly that the smell was smoke.

"Getting sentimental there, pookie?" asked the Joker stroking her cheek.

"Uh huh…" sniffled Harley allowing the tears to fall at the second "dream maker". She dropped her head at "heart breaker".

"There, there, Harley, cry yourself a river…" he said.

Slowly Harley lifted her head. "Oh, Puddin'…"

He swung her again, and Harley almost forgot the smoke as she gazed at his nearly loving eyes once more at "huckleberry friend", but suddenly she frowned even before he spoke again.

He spoke very dangerously during the last elongated "me" of the chorus singers, and his eyes grew dark and menacing despite his continued gentle grin. "Come on, Mommy… I cried a river over you…"

They parted.

The music had ended. The smell of smoke was getting stronger, and it was not Ella next on the album as suddenly music began to pulse up into beats a lot more modern and not nearly as attractive as old-fashioned jazz. Harley already was so emotional, and the Joker began to chuckle alongside the music as she began to see the moonlight be distorted by a red-orange light coming from below.

"What's the matter, Harley?" he asked.

"I thought we were dancing…" Harley said with a very sickly grin.

"Well, we are!" laughed the Joker suddenly pulling her in very hard and with all his psychotic strength— hey, he could fight Batman hand to hand, after all. Then he began to waltz again with her, and Harley blinked stupidly.

"I know you've always wanted to dance with devil in the pale moonlight," said the Joker, "and what better way to dance with bridges burning all around us. To death do us part! Right?! Waltzing in shadow, waltzing with death."

He pulled out a gun, and before Harley could respond, he fired it right at her face.

Harley swallowed a shriek and almost rolled her eyes when all that shot out was a layer of cards tapping against each other on their chain with the words, "rat, tat, tat, tat!"

"Oi!" Harley moaned.

But the Joker went on in his jolly way as though nothing had happened after tossing the gun aside.

"I almost caught you dancing with Fear just the other day…" he shook his finger and clicked the roof of his mouth. "Guess you're not a one-manner so much anymore, are you? So unfaithful. So unfaithful." He chirped and he giggled.

Unable to stand it anymore, she made to kick him in the sweets, but just before she did, he shoved her back into the bell— lower than usual and perhaps by the Joker just for this purpose. Although the collision was not quite hard enough to make the bell sound at its full strength, the sound of its echo reverberated with the shaking pain in her spine and head.

"Mistah J," Harley squeaked in one last effort to stall, in one last effort to keep more pain from coming— she had acted too quickly in trying to kick him like she had. "I thought you and me…"

He made a loud sound then reminiscent of a flunking button in a game show.

"Sorry!" he nearly sang, "You must have me confused with some other guy!"

And he kissed her good and hard and fast before throwing her nearly right over the balcony.

Harley screamed, and as she pulled herself back under the ceiling, she coiled tightly and growled at her own stupidity just under the parapet.

"Sweetie, sugar, pumpkin eater!" the Joker said throwing out his arms as though for a tender apology, but instead he kicked her in the side like a drunken master kicking his dog.

Again Harley cried out and moaned bitterly.

"There's nothing between me 'n Batman, you know that!" choked Harley desperately.

"Ah, ah, ah!" said the Joker. "You know the rules about flirting on the rooftop."

"I'm sorry!" Harley screamed lifting herself to her knees— her body wracked with pain already even before he kicked her in the chest too.

"Sorry, too late for that, my heart's already been broken beyond repair," the Joker said in so light a manner that it was beyond doubting his sincerity and almost sounded like a line stated in boredom from too many takes at the studio.

Then rage built up to its height. Harley could feel it beyond pain, beyond sorrow. She wanted to rip his grinning face off.

"LIAR!" she shrieked, and that shout went above any sound of music or laughter far into the night out over the cemetery and beyond.

In the silence that followed, the music still playing was more like an afterthought than anything else. The Joker blinked in feigned shock. Then he shrugged.

"You never loved me!" snapped Harley. "You never cared about me! You're the stinking, crazy, bat-loving freak!"

Through her rage, tears were falling uncontrollably as she shook so hot with emotion that she could have melted the snow for miles around without the help of the fire below them.

"Well, we can't all be perfect, can we?" the Joker said lightly in false embarrassment.

"If you care that much," croaked Harley, "Why did you break everyone out of Arkham just to get at me and have everyone else go after Batman?"

"Me?" That really got the Joker laughing. "Break everyone out of Arkham for you?"

He almost literally fell over with laughter at that one, and he really slapped his knee hard.

"Then who?" Harley demanded.

"Oh, our lover boy probably already knows," said the Joker. "Everyone knows, except you apparently. Some irony there, heh, heh. There's hardly a Riddler's riddle in old Pam missing seedlings suddenly and then a whole Jumanji Garden ends up in the Arkham wiring. They're so cheap they actually taped portions of it. Hardly a challenge getting through not even for your girl."

"You're not even that funny!" shouted Harley so violently that she choked afterwards.

"Ooooh," said the Joker still smiling carelessly. "Now you've really gone and huwt my feewings. But it's more than love and war and politics and the hilarity of woe that has us both standing here. Do you know what it is?"

"You can't stand to share your spotlight," heaved Harley; she attempted to get to her feet but fell again.

She knew that part of it was because she had compromised her usefulness, but that was only the caboose to the train the Joker had been waiting to pass since the moment he had grown tired of her. She was a running gag that had long outlasted its humor. She had played his game too well and had saved herself with blind obliviousness in her crazed puppy love, but he had never intended his show to be a romantic comedy only a one time episode.

The more she had let their past together fester in her mind, the more she had had to face that fact. He had been trying to get rid of her since the joke of tricking a psychiatrist into helping him out of Arkham. That was one of the main motivations for her own rehabilitation.

"Mmm," said the Joker rubbing his chin thoughtfully as though oblivious to her struggles. "Close!"

He smiled again as he threw a hand behind his back—always a dangerous sign. "I was thinking something more along the lines of the fact that as the athletic type that I am I could never let myself go long enough to have the paunch of a convincing Punch!"

And whether or not he had something hiding in that first, it came at her cleanly enough and quick enough that in her already wounded state, Harley could not get fully away from that punch no matter how she saw it coming. It got the side of her face instead of the full front of it. The fact that she got away from it at all was only because he had to stoop a bit to deliver it.

She managed a kick him in the chest back, but it was not enough to do much damage to the Joker physically. It only seemed a sign that the fight was on again, and he was a charging, sniggering hyena at its best.

But just as he lunged, something broke his flight just at its pinnacle— something large and strong and blacker than the night.

The Joker snarled before that black shape had him rammed into the bell, and it was forceful enough to have it bong loudly into the frosty cemetery.

"Look!" cried the Joker as though he was going to faint the way his head was swirling. "Stawths!"

But he quickly kicked Batman off of him. If Batman was any less skillful he would have landed right on Harley. His ninja-like roll had him just beside her, but he rammed into the balcony rampart just the same to do it. He was still in pretty good form, though.

Justin stopped singing on the record just then, and a new composition began to play and very loudly: "Duel of the Fates". Apparently, the Joker had been expecting some action, but whether a final blow to Harley or this fight with Batman it was hard to say. Somehow, Harley guessed that Batman had arrived early.

The Joker likely was not lying about Poison Ivy. She had been the one to care enough about her relationship with Harley to try to do something about the detriment to it with Harley's rehabilitation. More than that, she had cared enough to worry about Harley's life in the hands of her X-boyfriend when he grew tired of her joke playing as a bat side-kick. The total inmate breakout had been a distraction to hide herself in to keep both the Joker and Batman busy. She would use it all to shield herself and give herself more time to catch up with Harley before a bat or a clown did first.

Poor, poor, Red.

Yet, though Joker may not have been the one to let the Arkham inmates escape, he certainly had taken full advantage of it. She wondered if the Penguin had been the last dupe. He was the one who had been even claimed to have something to do with the breakout, but Harley truly doubted that he had. Batman and his gang probably had already defeated him either way.

That was why Batman needed the team. That was why he needed help. He never could have done this alone: fight all of Arkham, but he had with Robin and Batgirl and the police too. Maybe Catwoman had even put her cat-burglaring aside to assist for a while, and Harley was left feeling relatively useless. She had never been a particularly good help to Batman, and now she was too hurt to help Batman with the Joker as she had originally planned.

The fight was a hard one too as the music slid. The Joker was really intent upon not losing this one, and even made certain comedic moments going perfectly with the music and a few Star Wars jokes until the music slid into Alfred Newman's Hunchback of Notre Dame with "The Gypsies" and the "Dance of Death". He started with a whole skit-load of medieval jibe. Maybe he could not even help himself. In fact, Harley knew he couldn't, especially with how strongly emotions had been peaked, including his own even if his had nothing to do with love.

A short bout of pity went through her, but it did not last. It was just then that the music change once more. Both Batman and Joker were pretty tussled by now. Despite fighting on the rooftop for a while, the Joker had determined not to leave the tower for good yet as they leapt back in by the end.

The new musical composition started out slowly but as the singing started, she began to remember where the song was from. "Goodbye so Soon".

Harley slapped her head.

The tower was gunna blow.

Duh.

She sure hoped Batman knew his Disney trivia, but maybe the song was obvious anyway.

Despite the pain, despite everything, she thought of an idea. It was a slim one, but as hero and villain danced, they were not paying her much attention, especially the Joker. If she knew the Joker, stopping the record ahead of time would either do nothing or start the explosion early. Or maybe it was even rigged with laughing gas, and he had planned on Harley dying with a smile for old time's sake. Whatever it was, she guessed that by this point in the three-odd date, Batman was supposed to have arrived. By this point, Harley was probably supposed to have been dead.

Her plan was simple. As she lay there, pretending to be too hurt to move, she suddenly simply stuck out her leg just as the Joker was in a position that would have him flinging over the rail. She stuck out her leg with all her might.

"Yahhhhh!" cried the Joker, and it almost surprised Harley how quickly he simply fell right over the edge of the parapet.