Previously: the Joker has been working on something behind Harley's back with a recently escaped Jonathan Crane.
Theme: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - 'Loverman'
The Pantomime.
5.
Three weeks earlier.
One year, eleven months, and three-hundred sixty-four days. That was how long Dr Jonathan Crane had been locked up in his own asylum. He would always consider Arkham his, even if that incompetent witch Joan Leland was currently running it. He'd worked with Leland when she was head of the Clinical Psychology department at Gotham University, and mentor to a promising young PhD candidate named Harleen Quinzel.
Crane first met Harleen when he was forced to lecture a class of undergrad psych majors in the final year of his PhD. She'd stood out to him then, always sitting in the front row, listening intently like she was hanging on his every word. Then, some years later, when he was appointed director of Arkham, she'd reached out to him for notes on her thesis. They met a handful of times, and Crane always came away reluctantly impressed by the depth of her understanding of the human mind. Leland, on the other hand, she just wanted to help catch and rehabilitate bad guys.
Now Harleen was a wanted terrorist and Leland was Crane's therapist.
Though he had once been considered brilliant and celebrated, he now spent his days lying on a cot staring at the ceiling, and avoiding the social interaction Leland prescribed to patients. For a criminology expert, she utterly lacked understanding of the nature of criminals. After only a month of these socializing sessions, Oswald Cobblepot persuaded half of the inmates to make him their leader. There had been three breakout attempts by Cobblepot and his gang. One a near miss. The man was both a manic narcissist and a fool.
Insufferable.
Being subjected to socialization was almost worse than the talk therapy Leland forced upon him. In their sessions, she asked about his childhood, about the Scarecrow archetype, about his desires and impulses. Unimaginative and mundane questions Crane either refused to answer or turned back on her, stubbornly talking her in circles until the clock ran out.
Leland never asked about his fear toxin or R'as al Ghul. She never engaged him or showed any real interest in him. Not like Harleen when she worked at Arkham. He didn't like many people, but at one time, he'd liked Harleen's naked ambition and clever mind, and how she reminded him of himself.
For those first few months, when she came to see him two or three times a week, Arkham was almost bearable. Then the Joker was admitted, and she forgot about Crane completely, too distracted by the clown to visit, let alone engage in a robust discussion of the human psyche. She was an expert on psychopaths, and in the end, she ran off with one, leaving Crane to rot behind bars. Forgetting about him.
It was the eve of his two year anniversary at Arkham when he was given an offer he couldn't refuse. He was glowering resentfully at the stone ceiling above him when an orderly unlocked his cell and gestured for him to come out into the hallway. Cautiously, Crane rose from his cot and padded over to the orderly, who was eyeing him warily—like he wasn't entirely convinced about something.
He grabbed Crane's arm and hurried him down the hallway, taking a route that was obviously planned and strategic.
Miraculously, due to someone's outrageously bold foresight, Crane was rushed out of the asylum through the front door and into the staff parking lot, right into an old Toyota waiting there. It was that fast and with that little fanfare. The car took off with Crane, flat on his back in the dark trunk, trying to remain calm and collected as the concept of freedom became a reality.
Twenty or thirty minutes later, the car slowly rolled to a stop and a series of doors opened and shut. Crane closed his eyes, preparing himself as he listened to muffled voices outside. Then someone popped the trunk, and the bright glare of a street light hit Crane full in the face. He blinked hard, realizing the orderly was smirking down at him. He'd pulled a leather jacket on over his white Arkham scrubs, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and a cigarette in hand.
"C'mon out, moneybags," he grinned.
Narrowing his pale eyes, Crane slowly sat up and awkwardly clambered out of the trunk, his bare feet landing on the cold asphalt. He looked around quickly, his nostrils flaring when he realized they were in the middle of the well-lit parking lot of the Mega Mart in the University District. There were only a handful of cars dotted around the massive lot and no customers, but Crane still felt absurd standing there barefoot in his bright orange jumpsuit.
It was unabashedly brazen, going to such a public place after escaping an insane asylum.
Then he saw who had arranged his escape, and his teeth ground together noisily, a lump of outrage forming in his throat.
An old, wood-paneled station wagon was parked alongside the Toyota, and leaning casually against it was the Joker, smoking a cigarette as he watched the orderly and the driver count their money. His face wasn't painted, and his hair wasn't green, and he wore a cheap black suit and tie instead of his usual outlandish purple. But his scars were obvious under the yellow glow of a streetlamp, and though Crane had never met him in person before, there was something about the queer tilt of his head and the odd hunch of his shoulders that made him unmistakable.
The Joker swung around to face Crane as if he'd only just realized he was standing there. He arched one eyebrow as he looked Crane over, from his floppy black hair to his bare feet, and hummed dubiously like he wasn't convinced of something, making Crane's mouth curl into an ugly scowl.
Then the Joker reached into his jacket and withdrew a pistol already fitted with a suppressor, and fired two shots into the driver. The driver fell back against the Toyota and slid to the ground while the orderly froze, but before he could act, there were two more suppressed zips! and he was dead on his back too. Crane watched it all through narrowed eyes, his breath coming fast through his nose as he tried to anticipate what would happen next. But it was impossible. This was the Joker.
Sniffing resolutely, the Joker tucked the gun back inside his suit jacket and reached into the station wagon's open back window, grabbing a pair of dirty Reebocks off the backseat. In only a few swaying steps, he was looming over Crane, a good six or seven inches taller at least.
Crane glared up at him, infuriated that he was in debt to the Joker of all people. The clown seemed to realize it, shooting him a nasty smile as he shoved the Reeboks into Crane's arms, hard enough to make him flinch and rock back on his heels.
"What do you want?" Crane spat.
"I'm workin' on a little uh... project," the Joker drawled, backing up to grab the duffel bag of money off the orderly. "I'm thinking you'd be good to consult on it."
"Consult?" Crane demanded, holding the Reeboks close to his chest, despising the Joker for being the one to offer him shoes. "Why would I agree to help you?"
The Joker grabbed the second bag of money off the driver's body and circled to the back of the station wagon, opening the trunk and throwing it in before he turned to face Crane.
"Well, to start with, if you say no I may as well kill ya," he shrugged helplessly. "Or, worse... I could leave you here and give the pigs a heads up." He pulled the gun out from under his jacket and shot out one of Toyota's tires, removing a potential escape vehicle from the equation. He turned back to Crane, his eyebrows raised. "Or... you could get in the car and see what all this fuss is about."
He shrugged again as if he wasn't bothered about any of these outcomes.
Crane ground his teeth, knowing he had no choice in the matter. He dropped the Reeboks on the ground, then bent down to struggle into them, his balance wavering.
"Swell," the Joker sneered. He ducked down beside the driver and yanked him away from the car, then looked up at Crane expectedly. "Uh...a little help?"
Crane's eyes darted around the parking lot, his jaw aching from clenching it. He shook his head to clear it, telling himself he was not conceding defeat as he joined the Joker beside the body and helped swing the dead men into the back of the station wagon.
Then, silently, both of them radiating contempt for one another, they climbed into the station wagon. Crane pulled on his seatbelt while the Joker simply turned the key in the ignition and took off, his expression unreadable. After a few minutes, Crane realized they were heading south again, and when they pulled back onto the Narrows bridge, he turned to the Joker, seething.
"We're going back to the Narrows?" he scowled, to which the Joker just rolled his eyes.
"What kinda idiot hangs out around the corner from the place he just escaped, huh?"
"You really are insane," Crane muttered, settling back in his seat and glowering out the window.
They passed right by Arkham, the red and blue lights of multiple police cruisers flashing out front.
The Joker just snorted, looking amused.
They drove to the southernmost part of the island where there used to be a vibrant fishing community a century earlier. Now only the remnants remained; creaky old docks made of rotting wood and ghostly fishing boats long-abandoned, and dilapidated warehouses that hadn't been used in decades.
Operating in silence, Crane helped the Joker dump the bodies, then reluctantly followed him into one of the warehouses. Inside, a red floodlight illuminated a short hallway well enough for them to find the stairwell. At the top of the stairs was a sliding steel door, a keypad beside it. The Joker typed in a code which was unbelievably - 1, 2, 3, 4 - then slid the steel door aside to reveal a barren loft. The only furniture was an old chesterfield sofa in dark green leather with a matching armchair, and between them a plank of wood balanced on four cinder blocks acting as a coffee table. On top of that makeshift table was a bag of violet-colored powder and a mirror.
The Joker collapsed into the armchair and bent forward to shake some of the powder on the mirror while Crane watched uneasily. Then behind the armchair, he spotted a barrel drum with MCU PROPERTY spray-painted in stencil on the side, and his pulse leaped.
The last of the fear toxin. The only fear toxin Crane would ever be able to make without a contact to send him the blue poppies.
He turned to the Joker, not caring that his voice came out strained. "Is that..."
"Yuuup," the Joker drawled, using a hotel room key to rack up a line of the purple powder.
Feeling bolder but knowing he would have to play along, Crane lowered himself onto the couch, watching the Joker closely.
"What is that?" he asked warily, pointing to the powder.
"That is Blue Orchard or BO as the kids are callin' it," the Joker explained, shooting Crane a knowing look. "Since the Bat-man got rid of all the fun stuff, people had to uh… improvise."
"And what does this have to do with me?" Crane demanded impatiently.
"Why dontcha try it and find out," the Joker suggested, a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth as he reached into his pocket and threw a dollar bill on the table beside the mirror.
Crane almost laughed.
"You must be joking," he shot back flatly.
"Ohhh, trust me, Jonny," the Joker hitched forward, his elbows landing on his knees as he stared at Crane intently. "You're gonna wanna know what this shit is first hand," he advised, his voice low.
For once, he sounded serious, forcing Crane to consider the unspoken implications if he refused. One of which was if he didn't take the drugs, he wouldn't get his fear toxin back. Equally plausible, the Joker would kill him or follow through on his threat to send him back to Arkham.
The Joker lit a cigarette with a silver-plated zippo while Crane wrestled with his very limited options, feeling sick over the notion of being bullied into taking drugs. But eventually, he had to concede to himself that this was the only option available to him. He picked up the dollar bill beside the mirror and rolled it into a tube, then bent forward to sniff up the line of purple powder.
An intense wave of euphoria crashed over him, making his breath catch and his body tense. Crane fell back against the stiff couch cushions, blind and mute and stupid, his brain struggling to understand what was happening to him as he fought for breath. Then the wave abruptly stopped, leaving his fingertips tingling and his heart pounding in his neck, and for the first time in his life, Jonathan Crane wasn't afraid. Not of the Joker, not of the police, not of the Batman, not of anything.
He blinked hard as something in the depths of his mind purred happily, something primal and hidden blossoming to life, making him feel everything.
Then he saw it. The dark corners of the room started to shift and mutate, morphing into bats that split into multiple creatures. They fluttered like butterflies around the room, whirling and dancing gracefully. Crane knew they weren't real, but he didn't care. They were beautiful and comforting, the polar opposite to stinging, endless fear he was so acutely familiar with.
"There it is," the Joker growled.
Crane's head lolled to the side, his heart pounding against his breastbone as he watched the Joker exhale a vertical plume of smoke. The wisps of smoke braided together into a long rope that slithered down like a deflated balloon, landing on the Joker's shoulder and wrapping around his neck in a noose. Crane watched, mesmerized as the rope grew longer, knitting together until it transformed into a burlap sack that slowly closed around the Joker's face, hiding all but his eyes.
When he turned to look at Crane, the eyes seemed to glow like a tiger's beneath the mask's rough canvas, gleaming orange instead of the black.
"Scarecrow," Crane whispered, feeling overcome.
When Crane woke up, the sun was shining outside. He was curled up on the couch, the cracked leather pressed against his cheek. His eyes snapped open as he remembered what he'd experienced the night before, his mind racing to find an explanation.
The purple powder—Blue Orchid— it was his fear toxin.
But at the same time, it wasn't. Its effect on the brain was diametrically opposed to his original compound. Instead of anxiety, there was comfort; instead of nightmarish hallucinations, there were beautiful dreams; instead of feeling trapped by fear, he felt free from it.
He sat up quickly, pushing a sweaty flop of hair off his forehead and breathing deeply to calm himself.
"Remind you of something... Jonny?" the Joker drawled.
Crane spun around to find the Joker draped across the armchair like a big lazy cat.
"How..." Crane faltered, struggling to articulate himself.
"I was hopin' you could tell me," the Joker swung his legs off the arm of the chair, his hand fluttering through the air. "This whole city is on that shit."
Crane ran his hands up his legs, the rough canvas of the Arkham jumpsuit scraping his palms.
"The blue poppy," he said. "It's what causes the hallucinations and activates the brain's fear receptors."
"Mmmhmm," the Joker agreed mildly, raking a hand through his greasy hair. "I hear the only guy who could get his hands on it was called uh... Ra's."
"Ra's al Ghul is dead," Crane said bitterly, annoyed that Harleen would tell the Joker his secrets.
"Which begs the question," the Joker drawled, his gaze intense and unwavering. "Who got their sticky fingers on those poppies, and how're they gettin' them into the city."
"How did you know it was similar to my compound?" Crane narrowed his eyes.
"Oh, your fear gas?" the Joker smirked lazily. "Tried it out when I stole it from the pigs," he shrugged dismissively. "It's uh… cute."
"Why do you care who's making this drug?" Crane fumed, feeling patronized. "What does any of this have to do with you?"
The Joker sniffed and looked out the window, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
"There's a new boss in town, and they're making a mint off this," he eventually said, rolling his eyes back to Crane. "But a certain caped friend of ours hasn't caught wind of them yet. I'd like to be thoroughly informed when he does."
Crane ran a hand over his mouth. "You want my help finding out who's making this before the Batman does?"
"I figure it's a uh, win-win for both of us," the Joker pulled a pack of cigarettes from his suit jacket and popped one between his lips.
"And how do you propose we go about doing that," Crane demanded.
"You figure out what's in this shit," the Joker waved at the bag of purple powder, smoke spiraling from the glowing end of his cigarette. "And I'll do some more sniffing around to see who's been running things." He cocked one eyebrow at Crane. "So... whaddya say?"
Crane already knew he would say yes. He needed the Joker's help as much as it pained him to admit it. He ground his teeth, consoling himself with the knowledge that he only needed the Joker's help for now. Once he was back on his feet, this temporary alliance would be over.
"I have one condition," Crane announced, his pale eyes narrowing. "Harleen is not involved in this. At all."
The Joker snorted, looking amused. "Uh... what?"
"Harleen will have no part in this," Crane said again, well aware that he wasn't in a position to negotiate, and the sour look on the Joker's face told him that he was treading on thin ice.
He rolled his eyes out to the side, prodding the scars inside his cheek with his tongue as he thought it over. Then he sighed melodramatically and nodded, rolling his eyes like he thought it was a ridiculous request.
Finally. A win. Crane's mouth curled into a small, humorless smirk.
"You know what this means, don't you?" he said smugly. "If she learns anything about this, she won't be able to stop herself from getting involved. She is relentless once she gets an idea in her head."
The Joker hummed dubiously, his tongue making a full circuit of his lips as he weighed up his girlfriend's stubborn nature with the fact that he would have to lie to her to make this partnership work. Then he stretched his arms over his head, a lascivious grin growing on his butchered face.
"That ain't the only thing she's relentless about, Jonny," he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Healthy appetite, if ya know what I mean."
"Oh, for God's sake," Crane sneered.
The Joker didn't seem in the mood for more discussion once they'd hammered out the basics of their arrangement. Instead, he handed over an old Nokia phone, instructing Crane to make a list of what he needed to get started, then turned to leave.
"Where are you going?" Crane demanded.
"Oh uh... I got a relentless psychologist to satisfy," the Joker smirked. He started to turn away again but hung back at the last moment, shaking a finger at Crane. "Oh uh, ya might not wanna leave this place," he advised slyly. "The pigs are trynna hunt you down, Jonny. You better believe the Bat's looking for you too. And he's not gonna stop till he finds ya."
Then he flashed a sickly grin and whirled around, loping out of the loft like a fleeing tornado.
Crane lowered himself onto the couch, his guts twisting and bile rising in his throat, an old affliction that hadn't bothered him in years.
There was a bathroom across from the sofa, or something like a bathroom, with a toilet missing its seat and a shower head on the wall, but no door. Crane bolted off the couch, reaching the toilet in time to vomit up the lentil slop he'd been fed at Arkham the night before, followed by sticky green bile. After five minutes of dry heaving, it finally stopped, and he collapsed on the cracked tiled floor, panting and wiping sweat from his clammy forehead.
Work. He needed to focus on work.
Crane dragged himself back to the couch, breathing deeply to calm his racing pulse, and started typing out a list of materials on the phone.
There were only two numbers stored. 'J' and 'K'. Crane rolled his eyes at the childish joke and sent the list to 'J'.
He slept restlessly for a while after that, exhausted and dehydrated and starving. Eventually, the sun set and he plucked up the courage to have a shower, first finding a dusty tarp to hang where the bathroom door should have been. Then he shed the Arkham jumpsuit and dirty Reeboks and stood beneath a weak stream of freezing water, his bones aching.
The sliding steel door slammed open, and a chorus of feet and voices entered, forcing Crane to struggle back into the orange jumpsuit, miserable and wet, which was still better than being naked.
He pushed the tarp aside, discovering the Joker had returned with two henchmen. One was big and muscular like a bodybuilder, his bleached blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, his skin spray-tanned orange. The other was skinny and fair-haired, with anarchist tattoos on the backs of his hands and his neck. The orange one was setting up a lab table, a box of glassware on the floor beside his feet. The skinny one was sitting on the couch with a pair of laptops and a jumble of ethernet cables covering the makeshift table.
The Joker stood between them, his hands on his hips as he observed his minions working. He whirled around with a showman-like flourish of his arm when he felt Crane standing behind him.
"Oh, there you are!" the Joker smirked, probably enjoying the miserable sneer on Crane's face. He hitched a thumb at each of his minions in turn. "That's Lonnie, and that's Frost," he announced, flopping into the armchair.
"What up, doc," Lonnie said drily, not looking away from the laptop in front of him.
Frost placed the box of glassware on the table he'd set up, then nodded silently at Crane as he slipped through the sliding door, his footsteps echoing down the stairwell.
Unsure what to do with himself, Crane hung back until Lonnie crowed triumphantly and turned the laptop around to show Crane the screen.
"Look familiar?" he asked smugly.
Crane's eyes widened as he examined the scanned document displayed on the screen. It was a page of his handwritten notes. Notes which had been confiscated by the GCPD and, he had assumed, destroyed. But they were right there in front of his eyes, part of his original formula.
Lonnie pulled the laptop away, smirking complacently as he started typing again.
"You have my notes?" Crane demanded, his nostrils flaring. "How?"
"The MCU has your notes, dude. I'm just stealing them," Lonnie narrowed his eyes as he typed.
Crane turned to the Joker, who was smoking lazily and thumbing around on a smartphone, apparently having lost interest for the moment.
Resentment began to prickle at the base of Crane's skull—resentment that the Joker found all of all this so easy. Breaking him out of Arkham, retrieving his notes, getting his hands on the last of the original fear toxin. The only thing Crane had to hold over him was his expertise on the blue poppy.
Scowling, he strode over to the lab table, rifling through the box of glassware and setting up what he needed to begin reverse-engineering the Blue Orchid compound to find out what else was in it.
Crane spent the next three next three days getting to work, mostly on his own in blessed silence, but occasionally the Joker and Frost would drop by, usually with food, and ostensibly to check on him. On one occasion, Frost dropped off pizza on his own, and Crane worked up the courage to ask him for clothes and a razor. Frost nodded warily and returned later that day with what he'd requested, though the multi-pack of button-down shirts were two sizes too big, reminding Crane of the oversized hand-me-downs he'd worn as a child.
Clean-shaven, busy, and no longer wearing the disgusting Arkham jumpsuit, Crane began to understand how this new compound, Blue Orchid, had been created. It was something that could have only been developed by a highly skilled chemist or perhaps a psychologist with a broad knowledge of chemistry, just like Crane. But the lingering question wasn't so much who made it as how they got access to the rare blue poppy.
The Joker returned on the fourth night, looking tired and wearing a tee-shirt and black jeans with one knee ripped open, his greasy hair tied back with an elastic band. He flopped down on the sofa, yawning like he was about to settle in for a nap when Crane cleared his throat meaningfully, getting his attention.
"I need a test subject," Crane informed him hostilely.
The Joker's bottom lip jutted out as he hummed thoughtfully, intrigued. Then he jumped to his feet and inclined his head to the sliding steel door.
"Well c'mon, then," he drawled, feigning impatience as he pushed the door open.
Crane hesitated, remembering the Joker's warning that the police and the Batman were hunting him.
"Aw, don't worry, Jonny," the Joker shot him a lazy smirk. "I'll keep ya safe."
Crane scowled, resentment pulsing through him again as the Joker breezed out of the loft, leaving Crane with little choice but to follow him.
They took the station wagon they'd used the night of the breakout, the Joker hunching over the wheel as he squinted down dark alleys.
"Where are we going?" Crane asked sourly.
"What kinda people do the cops not give a shit about?" the Joker narrowed his eyes as they passed another alley, this one with a fire glowing at the end. "Junkies," he answered himself, yanking the wheel to the side and parking with a screech.
"Subtle," Crane observed drily, leaning back as the Joker reached across him to pop the glove box and retrieve a canister of chloroform. "Do you always carry chloroform around in your glove box?"
"You know how it is," the Joker shot back. "It coulda went either way with you."
Crane's eyes widened indignantly as the Joker smirked and unfolded his lanky body from the car.
They snuck down an alley toward the fire, where a group of about twelve were hovering. The Joker picked one off quickly, for no particular reason by Crane's calculations. By the time they got their victim back upstairs to the loft, Crane was panting and sweating from carrying the man, while the Joker just looked moody, flopping down on the couch and lighting a cigarette.
"I need more supplies, medical equipment," Crane announced, making the Joker grumble incoherently under his breath.
"Text Frost," he grunted dismissively. Then he tossed the remains of his cigarette away, folded his arms over his chest, closed his eyes, and promptly passed out.
Crane considered killing him. It wouldn't be hard when he was unconscious and vulnerable. He preferred to hire others for any necessary killing, though he wasn't averse to doing it himself if the time called for it. All it would take was a broken beaker through the jugular, and the clown would be no more. But Crane soon gave up on that idea, knowing he still needed the Joker if he was going to continue his work. It was too dangerous to leave the warehouse with the media no doubt plastering his face across the front of newspapers in the wake of his escape. Someone might recognize him. Someone might call the police and have him sent back to Arkham, and Crane wasn't sure he could survive it again.
The rest of the week and much of the next played out in the same fashion, with Frost and the Joker bringing test subjects for Crane to work with, then dumping them at the docks once they died. Frost came and went as he pleased, dropping off food—normally pizza—or any supplies Crane requested, including an air mattress so he didn't have to sleep in the armchair.
The Joker was around with increasing frequency, often just to sleep on the couch as if he'd done nothing but be active between visits. He was supposed to be sniffing around his moronic henchmen for information, but thus far, that strategy had yielded very little information.
Crane noticed his smoking habit increased exponentially during this time, which would suggest some kind of external stress was weighing on the clown. It occurred to him this stress had something to do with Harleen, as did the possibility that the Joker was actively avoiding her. Perhaps so he didn't have to lie to her about where he'd been, a fascinating notion.
Then they hit a snag. Crane and Frost went down to the dock to dump a body when they discovered all twelve of their previous victims floating at the surface, their bloated white faces bobbing in the seawater.
"Ah, crap," Frost sighed, one of his rare exclamations.
Luckily, the Joker had a solution.
"Acid bath," he shrugged carelessly. He'd brought a bottle of bourbon with him this time, pouring it into a pair of plastic cups and shoving one into Crane's hands, despite his insisting he didn't drink.
"Acid bath?" Crane sneered. "Falcone used to pay people to do that. It isn't easy."
"Sure it is," the Joker waved him off.
It didn't go so well the first time. A man named Texas Joe arranged for the hydrofluoric acid to be delivered to the warehouse, and Frost picked up a plastic container the acid wouldn't eat through. The problem was the body only half-fit in the container, the arms and legs dangling over the sides.
"This isn't going to work," Crane predicted drily.
"Sure it is," the Joker replied around a cigarette he was trying to light with a silver-plated zippo.
It didn't work, as it turned out. Instead of the body slowly dissolving and the limbs succumbing to the acid, the acid dripped over the side, gnawing through the floorboards until the bucket of body parts shot through the floor, straight through the one below it as they squinted after it.
"Huh," the Joker said while Crane shot him a withering look.
Eventually, they figured out the best way to dissolve the bodies, but Crane could tell the Joker was getting antsy waiting for the science to play out and not learning anything worthwhile from his 'sniffing around'.
Then one night, the clown returned with a duffle bag full of money and announced they were going out, throwing a ski mask in Crane's face.
"Going out where?" he demanded, his heart leaping pitifully at the idea of leaving the warehouse.
"The docks," the Joker grunted impatiently, stuffing a cigarette between his lips. "You're the one who knows where Falcone brought that shit in last time," he grumbled.
"That shit is a powerful psychotropic flora essential to my work," Crane snapped, prompting the Joker to growl something inaudible as he loped back out of the loft.
With the Joker behind the wheel and Crane sitting with his shoulders hunched up around his ears in the passenger seat, they crossed the Narrows bridge to the main island of Gotham, passing by the ferry terminals and the old shipyard until they reached Gotham Harbor. The docks were populated by cargo ships carrying thousands of shipping containers, most of them dropping off cheaply made products from China. One had DAGGETT INDUSTRIES printed across the side, another WAYNE ENTERPRISES, the two biggest shipping empires based out of Gotham.
"The Batman stopped all of the Russians' boats coming in this way," Crane complained as the station wagon screeched to a stop. "If the poppies are being smuggled in the same route, he would have stopped those too."
The Joker turned to glare at Crane, his teeth grinding together noisily. He was agitated about something, it was obvious from the dangerous gleam in his eye, like a wild animal about to lash out.
Since the night of Crane's escape, they'd reached a tentative alliance that mostly consisted of alternating between operating in silence and being openly hostile to one another in a benign kind of way, both of them accepting the situation at hand. But Crane had yet to see this twitchy, barely contained malice in the Joker, who always appeared in control of his emotions until that night.
And it struck Crane that perhaps... this was about Harleen.
A thought that brought him great satisfaction even if it did make the Joker more volatile and unpredictable.
A tense silence settled between them as Crane led the way through the twisting paths of shipping containers to where Falcone's boats used to come in with drugs, illegal imports, Ra's al Ghul's poppies; whatever you wanted. At each point, they found nothing; the places where Falcone's boats used to be moored empty, their absence eerie, like a piece of Gotham's underworld had been amputated completely.
"I suppose we can cross this one off our list," Crane observed drily, peeling off the ski mask and raking a hand through his hair, which was starting to get long and unruly. "They're getting the poppies in another way."
But the Joker wasn't listening. He'd gone completely still, his eyes sweeping the tops of the shipping containers, and Crane realized he could be looking for the Batman. A spasm of fear pulsed through him, and he tugged the ski mask back down to cover his face just as the Joker pulled a handgun from the back of his pants and shoved it at Crane without looking at him.
Then he heard what the Joker was hearing. Not the Batman, but men talking.
Russians.
The Joker grabbed the back of Crane's shirt and yanked him into the shadow of a shipping container, making him stumble and scowl indignantly. Crane knew he was useless in a fight, especially without the fear toxin or a group of thugs to protect him. He was a scientist, not a street-fighter; he relied on his intellect, not his physical prowess to defeat his enemies.
The Russians who appeared were typical-looking goons; beefy, stupid, and cocky. The Joker caught Crane's eye in the shadows, but Crane could only shrug incredulously, with no idea what the plan was or what was about to happen next.
The Joker rolled his eyes behind the ski mask, then loped out of the shadows after the Russians, not hesitating or caring that he was outnumbered. He grabbed one of the beefy thugs from behind, a wet gargle telling Crane he'd cut the man's throat. Then the other two Russians started shooting.
"CRANE!" the Joker bellowed, his voice lowering to an inhuman register that startled Crane into shooting at the remaining Russians. He clipped one of them, making them drop their gun, but every other bullet in the chamber missed, shooting off into the night.
Moving with an erratic grace that reminded Crane of a tropical storm, the Joker swooped down to snatch up the Russian's gun and put two bullets in its owner's chest. Then he swiveled around with a showman-like flourish to shoot the last Russian in the knee, making him wail as he collapsed to the dock. The Joker threw himself on top of the wailing Russian, straddling his chest and grabbing a handful of his hair.
Crane watched warily as the Joker threw the gun aside and pulled a knife from his back pocket, holding it up to the man's face. When he didn't stop wailing, the Joker snarled like a rabid dog and ripped the ski mask off, revealing his scars.
"Alright comrade, I'm only gonna ask once," he sneered. "Who's your boss, huh?"
"Alexandra Kosov!" the Russian stammered.
"What's she got you doin' here?" the Joker pressed him, and when the man just blubbered helplessly, he stabbed him in the shoulder, twisting the knife. "C'mon buddy, I ain't got all night."
"Patrolling!"
"Patrolling for what?"
"I don't know, I don't know!" he begged. "Please, please!"
The Joker cut the man's throat with an irritated scowl, then twisted around to glare up at Crane, his eyes blazing.
"What is it with you fuckin' shrinks, huh?" he barked, leaping to his feet and stalking up to Crane, who held his ground and scowled resentfully. "Oooh, you're looking mad, Jonny-boy," the Joker hissed.
He ducked down so they were nose-to-nose, his lip curling as he searched Crane's face quickly.
"Get the fucking car," he snarled quietly, baring his teeth before he swung away, muttering to himself aggressively.
Crane stood frozen where he was, his heart hammering in his chest as he tried to formulate a retort. But the Joker was too unpredictable, and Crane valued his life more than his dignity. Still trembling, he turned away from the clown and speed-walked back to the parking lot, indulging in fantasies of how he would deal with the Joker once he was in a position to do so.
When he returned with the car, they loaded the bodies into the trunk and headed back to the warehouse. The ride was silent and unbearably tense with the Joker twitching and muttering to himself, and generally acting insane by Crane's calculations.
Frost was waiting there to help drag the bodies up to the top floor where two plastic tubs full of hydrofluoric acid were waiting. He and Crane watched mutely as the Joker grabbed the bottle of bourbon off the makeshift table and stormed out, slamming the sliding door behind him.
"He's psychotic," Crane sneered, feeling bolder now that the threat of a rampaging Joker was no longer imminent.
Frost shrugged, looking conflicted, which immediately piqued Crane's curiosity.
"Where did that money come from?" he asked slyly, inclining his head to the duffle bag of money spilling out across the floor, the one the Joker brought with him when he first arrived.
Frost shot him a dubious look. "Who do you think?"
Crane smothered a smile. The Joker had been to see Harleen, and it didn't appear to have gone well.
The next afternoon the Joker returned with Lonnie in tow, looking sick and subdued with a pair of dark sunglasses covering red-rimmed eyes. Lonnie had a massive joint pinched between his lips and a cardboard box full of supplies under his arm.
Crane was sleeping fitfully on the sofa when they arrived, but he quickly pulled himself up, watching warily as the Joker rocked back on his heels and tried to type on a burner phone, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. Someone still wasn't in a good mood.
"What up, doc," Lonnie greeted Crane. "Let's make some fuckin' toys," he added, strolling over to one of the lab tables and dropping his box on it carelessly.
Crane tisked unhappily at Lonnie while the Joker collapsed on the sofa, his shoes still on, sunglasses still covering his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest like a corpse, apparently unconscious.
Lonnie picked up a soldering iron from his box and let a few sparks fly before he turned to grin at Crane.
"What is this?" Crane asked, watching Lonnie pull out sheets of layered tracing paper for a design.
"You don't recognize this?" Lonnie waved the papers in Crane's face. "It's your spiderman canister, dude."
Crane's eyes widened, shocked that his original design was being handed to him by the Joker's idiotic minion.
"Why weren't these included with the rest of my notes?" he seethed.
"Cause J didn't trust you not to be an asshole," Lonnie shot back breezily, taking a drag off his joint. "I guess you've proved you're not that bad after all," he added, his voice strained as he held the smoke in his lungs then blew it right in Crane's face.
"My life is now complete," Crane sneered through gritted teeth.
"J wants em' done before tonight," Lonnie flicked his joint roach away carelessly. "Sounds like you two have shit to do."
Crane pursed his lips and glanced back at the Joker where he was lying immobile on the couch, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked.
"Ugh," Lonnie rolled his eyes. "Something to do with Harley, probably. Fucking bitch."
"You don't like Harleen?" Crane asked slyly.
"Fuck no," Lonnie made a face as he got to work, his tattoed hands assembling what he needed. Apparently, in addition to being a hacker, he was a mechanical engineer too. "She's always up on her high horse, thinking she's better than everyone."
Crane raised an eyebrow, intrigued by this level of vitriol.
"You've known her a while, right?" Lonnie glanced sideways at Crane. "Has she always been such a cunt?"
"I've known Harleen for years," Crane replied drolly. "She only became insufferable when she met the Joker."
"Tell me about it," Lonnie scoffed. "Before she came along, J was like a lone wolf, you know? Just fuckin' rocking shit. Then they get together and it's like nonstop. They're never apart." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "I have a theory though. I think it's like, he sees her as the female version of himself, so when he's fucking her, it's like he's fucking himself, ya know?"
Crane blinked hard twice, unwillingly picturing what Lonnie had described.
Still, it made a remarkable amount of sense.
"He is a narcissist," he agreed, guessing Lonnie's aversion to Harleen had more to do with jealousy over her stealing away the Joker's attention than anything about her personally. "And Harleen is a bitch," he added for solidarity's sake.
"She totally is!" Lonnie agreed, spreading his arms like it was obvious.
The Joker slept all day while Crane and Lonnie assembled the canisters, and Crane found himself reluctantly impressed by Lonnie's skill set. He could even keep up with the chemistry, nodding along and commenting knowledgeably, his words intelligent even if the way he spoke them wasn't.
They finished around sunset, filling the cartridges with fear toxin from the barrel drum and securing them to Crane's wrists for testing. Frost arrived with pizza, and the Joker woke up to inhale a few slices before he shuffled out of the loft and down the hallway.
"Why does he want me to have these?" Crane asked Lonnie, narrowing his eyes.
Lonnie shrugged. "It's not my job to ask questions. I just do what I'm told."
"You can't think for yourself?" Crane raised a wary eyebrow, wondering what it was about the Joker that inspired such devotion. Frost displayed it too. How many other people were out there blindly devoted to the Joker and his cause? He couldn't imagine Harleen—at least not the Harleen he knew—falling for this messiah schtick.
Before Lonnie could answer, the loft's sliding door slammed open with a CLANG!, revealing the Joker straightening his tie. He'd painted his face for the first time since Crane met him, the black greasepaint already spider-webbing down his white cheeks in the humid warehouse. His hair was sprayed green, and he'd straightened his shirt and suit, looking a fraction more put together.
He ran his tongue over his tobacco-stained teeth, meeting Crane's eye before he threw a burlap sack in his face. Crane flinched but caught it, his nostrils flaring when he realized the burlap sack was his mask. His mask.
"C'mon, Scarecrow," the Joker sneered. "We've got business to attend to."
Crane slowly rose from his position on the couch, the canisters of fear toxin at his wrists suddenly feeling heavy, the weight of the Joker asking him to be the Scarecrow exhilarating and loathsome all at once.
Frost was waiting out front with the station wagon, its headlights on and engine running.
"Where are we going?" Crane demanded as they pulled onto the freeway, praying this wouldn't be a repeat of the night at the docks.
The Joker sighed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He was laying across the backseat so his painted face wouldn't be seen.
"As you know, a lotta my boys are big fans of BO," the Joker drawled, his hooded eyes focused on the window opposite him. "I keep hearing the place to get it on the Eastside is Grin and Bare It, which, uh, funnily enough, is run by Alexandra Kosov these days."
"Would that be the same Alexandra Kosov who has her thugs patrolling Gotham Harbor?" Crane asked, catching on.
"Oh you better believe it, Jonny," the Joker growled. "She's in charge of most of the muscle in this town nowadays too."
"Falcone used to take pride in his owning Gotham's thugs," Crane pointed out, his eyes narrowing. "Could this Kosov woman be the boss?"
The Joker wrinkled his nose and bounced his head from side to side a few times like he was thinking it over.
"Nah," he settled on eventually. "She may run the Eastside and sell this shit, but she ain't interested in taking over the city."
"So we're looking for her boss," Crane inferred.
"Mm," the Joker seemed to agree. "The big boss."
"And how are we supposed to take on the 'big boss'?" Crane scoffed with barely concealed disdain. "If your men are all on drugs, that leaves the three of us and Lonnie."
The Joker snorted incredulously.
"I'm guessing that'll be right about when you regret leaving Harley out of this," he snapped, his eyes on the window.
Crane sat back in his seat, an uncomfortable wave of doubt rolling over him. When he thought of Harleen, he thought of her as she used to be, an academic. He didn't think of her as Harley Quinn the bank robber, kidnapper, and murderer the newspapers wrote about. He had never seen that side of her before, and he certainly didn't consider her someone worthwhile to have on his side in a fight. But the way the Joker spoke about her, it was as if he had absolute confidence in her ability to save both their lives.
They pulled off the freeway in the Cauldron neighborhood on the Eastside, the Joker staying quiet in the backseat, sulking maybe, as Crane wrestled with the anxiety flowing through him over being out in the open with the Batman hunting him, probably determined to drag him back to Arkham.
There was a bar at the corner of a narrow side street with 'Grin and Bare It' flashing in neon, though the image of a woman swinging around a pole remained unlit, suggesting it was no longer an establishment of ill repute. As they drove past the bar, Crane caught sight of a collection of men on the corner, most of them thuggish looking, some of them scrawny and clearly unwell. Drug dealers.
Frost pulled the station wagon into a small gravel parking lot beside the club.
"So, what's our plan?" Crane demanded, glancing back at the Joker, who had acquired a tire iron from somewhere, flexing his fingers around it. He was excited, Crane realized.
"So much talking," the Joker grumbled to himself.
He did that a lot, muttering or grumbling under his breath. Crane wondered if it was a side effect of his narcissism, wherein he judged himself a better person to speak to than the people around him. Alternatively, it could be flat out psychosis.
"I'd like to know what we're doing," Crane snapped, earning himself an annoyed sigh.
"How about this," the Joker sat up and leaned into the front seat, making Crane wrinkled his nose and recoil. "I'll take some of em' out, you hit the other ones with your uh, gas or whatever."
"We're just going to run out on the street and attack those men? That's your plan?" Crane scoffed.
"Improvise," the Joker suggested with a nasty grin.
Then he rolled away, kicking his door open and hopping out to lope across the gravel parking lot.
Crane remained where he was, frozen with indecision. He closed his eyes to collect himself, then pushed his door open and rushed after the Joker, his shirt sticking to his back with nervous sweat.
He caught up with the clown at the corner of the building where he was eyeballing the group of dealers.
"Remember," the Joker said gruffly, as Crane pulled his mask on, instantly feeling safer behind it. "We only gotta talk to one of them."
The Joker howled with laughter as Frost sped back to the warehouse, their small victory apparently snapping him out of the foul mood he'd been in for days. Crane barked at him to shut up but his heart wasn't in it. They'd killed or seriously impaired all but one of the thugs outside Grin and Bare It, a massive man with a tattoo of a dragon on his scalp. The Joker had pushed him up against the wall, holding him down for Crane to hit him with the toxin. Watching it work—really work on a live subject in the real world, not just on a test subject in a lab—watching them react to the Scarecrow was... exhilarating.
After two years trapped in Arkham and two and a half weeks trapped in the warehouse with only one miserable outing in which he'd proved himself useless, Crane finally started to feel... strong.
They got a name out of the thug too. He claimed his supplier was the Cheetah Bar, something the Joker seemed to find entertaining.
Back at the warehouse, they drank with Frost and Lonnie, with Lonnie doing most of the talking while the Joker smoked and struggled to sit still. He seemed satisfied with how the night had panned out, something Crane reluctantly agreed with. He could almost... almost understand what these men found so inspiring about him. If you were looking for something to believe in and had nothing to offer the world yourself, the Joker and the mystical confidence he projected could fill in the gaps.
When Crane woke up on the air mattress the next day the Joker was gone, but he returned late that afternoon, bringing an old man wearing a monocle who he simply introduced as his tailor. The tailor came bearing two garment bags, ostensibly for the sake of blending in at the Cheetah Bar. One was a skinny black suit for the Joker, which he changed into in the middle of the loft without a hint of shame over his nakedness. It fit him like a glove, the tailor apparently already having his measurements. Crane suspected he would wear it until there were holes in the knees or a sleeve got ripped off.
The other was a suit for Crane, which was close enough to his size, the tailor pinning it in places where it needed tailoring.
Crane didn't consider himself to be vain, but with a good suit, a fresh shave, and his hair combed back off his face, he felt human again.
But he wasn't about to let the Joker know that.
"This feels excessive," Crane sneered as they jogged down the stairwell. "Going... undercover."
"Undercover," the Joker scoffed, shooting Crane a withering look over his shoulder. He'd applied some sort of spray-on stubble that looked absurd under the bright lights of the loft, but in the more dimly lit stairwell, it almost seemed natural and covered his scars. In a dark gentlemen's club, he would fit right in. "Ya know street brawls aren't the only way to get information outta people."
"Who exactly are we trying to get information out of?" Crane demanded, feeling out of his depth.
"You think too much, Jonny," the Joker drawled as they burst out of the warehouse's side door and onto the street where Frost was waiting with a shiny black town car. "Just relax, mingle, see what happens."
"Mingle," Crane muttered moodily, sliding into the backseat.
The Cheetah Bar was off the main drag Uptown, just south of Robinson Park, which used to be Falcone territory but had developed into a 'hip' neighborhood. Still, it would seem the Cheetah Bar held a veneer of that old mob-world if Eastside thugs were claiming that was where they bought their drugs.
There was a small collection of well-heeled men smoking outside the club when Frost dropped them off, a small sign with a cheetah's paw glowing yellow claiming the bar's name. Crane felt his entire body tense up as he staggered after the Joker, not sure how they were going to get away with being accepted through the front door like normal people when they were both known criminals.
But the Joker just flashed the bouncers a smirk and gave a fake name—Will Thatcher—affecting a west-coast drawl instead of his usual nasal, hard to place accent. The bouncers checked the name off a list and lifted a velvet rope for them to pass, the Joker shooting Crane a smug smirk over his shoulder.
It was very much a gentleman's club in the 1960s mold. Small, dark, and smokey, with only enough space for fifty or sixty people. It was dotted with miniature stages outfitted with gold poles for slender, barefoot girls in bikinis to swing around, their bodies decorated with swirls of pale blue and gold paint. The walls were draped with dark curtains and the upholstery was red velvet, and the music was... slinky was the best word for it.
The Joker snatched two tumblers of liquor from the bar, again using that bland, west-coast accent, and ignored Crane's withering look as he shoved one into his hands. They grabbed a table against the wall where they could people watch, the Joker being uncharacteristically still for the sake of the role he was playing. Crane wondered if later when he didn't have to pretend anymore, the nervous energy he'd stored up all night would explode out of him in some dramatic fashion or another.
"Ohhh, look who it is," the Joker growled, squinting across the room at an overweight black man in a pinstriped suit. "If it isn't Fats Gambol."
"Who?" Crane made a face as they watched the man move around the room shaking hands.
"Ah, Harley stabbed him a few times last Christmas," the Joker said off-handedly, draining the rest of his drink. "Him and his mob princess snuggle bunny run the place."
Crane turned to stare at the Joker, his nostrils flaring. "You aren't worried he'll recognize you?"
The Joker shrugged carelessly like it wasn't his problem if someone recognized him.
"You're only human, you know," Crane pointed out, pulling a rattly chuckle out of the Joker.
He picked up Crane's discarded drink and continued to people watch while Crane sulked, wondering if they were waiting for something specific and feeling out of his element.
Then two girls in bikinis and body paint approached them, a blonde and a brunette, both stunningly beautiful and smiling coquettishly. Not actually interested, just wanting a big tip, Crane thought cynically.
"Hi," the blonde said, fluttering her heavily painted eyelashes at the Joker.
He ignored her, his head tipping to the side as he eyed up the brunette, smirking caddishly at her. The girls exchanged a look then switched places so the blonde was standing in front of Crane, now fluttering her eyelashes at him.
"Hi," she tried again, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Can I sit here?"
Crane's lip started curling into a sneer but he fought it back.
"Sure," he agreed stiffly, tensing when she lowered herself into his lap and laid one slim arm across his shoulders, smiling prettily.
"What's your name?" she asked, batting her eyelashes.
Crane balled his hands into fists and pushed them into the velvet seat, despising everything about the situation.
"Steve," he said, sounding miserable.
"Steve," the girl tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder, her pretty smile still firmly in place. "I'm Mirabelle."
Crane didn't believe that for a second.
"What do you do, Steve?"
"I'm a... psychologist," he admitted tersely. Steve the psychologist. He looked at the Joker and almost scoffed outright.
The brunette had an arm around his neck, and one hand braced on his chest, biting her lip and giggling as the Joker whispered in her ear, a rakish smirk on his lips. His hand was on her waist, his thumb swiping over one of her ribs, smearing the body paint there. He pulled away from her and held his thumb up, feigning an apology that made her giggle and blush before she ducked down to talk in his ear.
Without her looking, the smirk dropped off the Joker's face and he shot Crane an expectant look, one eyebrow raised meaningfully.
Crane scowled back at him just as the brunette lifted her head, smiling as the Joker tucked her hair behind her ear for her. Her smile was different from the pretty one Mirabelle was giving Crane. Hers was a real smile, laced with genuine desire, and Crane could see it grow when the Joker started whispering in her ear again. They exchanged a few more smirks and whispered words, and Crane saw her mouth 'Wanna get out of here'?, to which the Joker gestured to Crane and rolled his eyes. Instead, he offered the brunette a smartphone to type her number in before she handed it back and climbed off of him, miming 'Call me.'
Mirabelle, who had been staring off into space, realized her friend was gone and glanced at Crane. He glared back at her sourly, and she promptly slid off his lap, eager to get away.
"Alright," the Joker announced after draining the last of Crane's drink. "Let's get outta here."
Confused but grateful to be done with the farce, Crane followed the Joker back through the crowd and out onto the street where Frost pulled up with the town car in a remarkably timely fashion.
"Well, that was interesting," Crane sneered once they were in the backseat. "I hope you had fun."
"Uh huh," the Joker muttered dismissively, already lighting a cigarette. He took a drag and exhaled a stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. "Vanessa, aka Sarah, had some very interesting information."
"What kind of information?" Crane narrowed his eyes.
"The she's a big fan of Blue Orchid and knows the best place to get it is the Iceberg Lounge kind," the Joker replied, his head rolling toward Crane, so he could shoot him a knowing look. "She says Fats buys his stuff from the Iceberg Lounge, cuts it and sells it. She seems to think they're the main suppliers, the uh, next step up the pyramid."
"The Iceberg Lounge?" Crane looked out the window, his mouth puckering. "Oswald Cobblepot's club," he sneered.
"Apparently it belongs to Miss Lucy now," the Joker drawled, exhaling a long stream of smoke through his nose.
There was a stretch of silence, each of them considering what the Iceberg Lounge being in charge of the city's BO meant in a wider sense. It didn't answer any of Crane's questions about how the poppies were getting into the city, but he would reluctantly concede that the Joker's strategy of moving up the food chain appeared to be working.
"You seemed to be enjoying yourself with Vanessa-slash-Sarah," Crane observed pettily.
The Joker grunted something incoherent and stared out the window, smoking in silence and clearly deep in thought.
Crane hoped the next step wouldn't be to get dressed up and go to the Iceberg Lounge, not if it would be as agonizingly awkward as their night out at the Cheetah Bar. Instead, the Joker disappeared for long stretches of time over the days that followed, returning to the warehouse to sleep, smelling of whiskey and tobacco, but always appearing sober and exasperated.
While the clown worked on gathering information out of the thugs at "Marty's Place", Crane worked toward developing a new compound derived from Blue Orchid. So far, it wasn't working, the subjects would just smile happily as he questioned them, even when he wore the Scarecrow mask.
Those feelers the Joker put out seemed to work because just a few nights later, he returned to announce he and Harleen had been summoned to the Iceberg Lounge.
"You agreed Harleen would have nothing to do with this," Crane complained, watching the Joker light a cigarette.
"She doesn't," he snapped, glowering at Crane resentfully, much to Crane's delight. "But me and her are kinda a package deal," he added irritably.
"Won't she be wondering where you've been all this time?" Crane pressed, smothering a smirk.
"She's workin'," the Joker shot back. "And my girl ain't exactly the needy type."
"Your girl?" Crane raised a scornful eyebrow. "Are you in high school?"
The Joker chuckled throatily, apparently finding this amusing, but said nothing else.
He left later that night with Frost, his face painted, hair green, and suit neat, and didn't return the next morning when Frost swung by to drop off food and check in. Crane immediately suspected the Joker was still with Harleen. Why wouldn't he be? He was well aware that Harleen was the Joker's preferred partner, an idea that made him strangely jealous as he imagined the Joker simply never coming back to the warehouse, leaving Crane behind just as Harleen had left him at Arkham.
But the Joker did return around dawn a day later, pale with dark circles under his eyes, looking even worse than he usually did. Frost was with him, hauling a new test subject for Crane over his massive shoulder and dragging a fluoride-blue container to replace the one they'd nearly destroyed with hydrofluoric acid.
"How was it?" Crane asked warily while the Joker did his usual routine of falling on the couch and lighting a cigarette.
"Mmph," was all he said, hunching forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Then he looked up at Crane, his expression impossible to read as he ran his tongue over the scar splitting his bottom lip. "They want Janice Porter brought in... alive."
"The District Attorney?" Crane lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"
"The why ain't usually part of the hitman business, Jonny," the Joker drawled.
"And what about the big boss?" Crane demanded. "Did you make it any further up the food chain?"
The Joker growled under his breath, his dark eyes rolling up to Crane, nearly making Crane take a step back beneath his unnervingly malicious stare.
"Miss Lucy's done well for herself," the Joker replied, still glowering. "But she's not the big boss."
"And Harleen?" Crane pressed. "Does she suspect anything?"
"Ya know, you're really makin' me think you've got a thing for her," the Joker snapped, suddenly leaping off the couch. He was in Crane's face in less than a second, towering over him. "What is it, huh? She say no to some uh... student-teacher time or what?"
Crane scowled up at the Joker resentfully. "I find her... disappointing."
"Pshh," the Joker huffed and swung away, falling back on the couch and letting his head dangle over the arm limply. "On that, we can agree."
The following night the Joker and Frost went to deal with the District Attorney while Crane remained at the warehouse, trialing his new but vastly inferior compound. Frustrated and impatient to find the blue poppy supplier so the partnership with the Joker could finally end, he used the original fear toxin on his current subject and questioned them about where the drugs came from.
It was only then that he made a breakthrough, his original compound proving its superior effectiveness for obtaining information.
The junkie gave Crane a location in Chinatown, claiming he'd been paid to take drugs and let himself be tested.
Crane immediately texted the Joker, and a few hours later, feeling anxious and paranoid over leaving the warehouse alone, he drove the station wagon Uptown, parking in a dark alley where he waited for the Joker and Frost.
Crane looked over his shoulder as their town car pulled into the alley behind him, watching warily through the back windscreen as it rolled to a stop. Car doors opened and shut, then a trunk slammed before the Joker circled the front of the station wagon and threw himself into the passenger seat.
"Floor it," he snapped roughly, indicating a sense of urgency that made Crane shoot him a curious look as he sped backward out of the alley.
When they passed the town car, he saw Harleen standing beside the trunk, and even in the dark alley, he could see the sadness in her big blues eyes.
Like her heart was breaking.
Crane smothered a smirk as he spun the wheel, making the old car fishtail before they sped east toward Chinatown.
The Joker was quiet during the drive, sloppily applying his face paint without a mirror and grunting when Crane filled him in on what the junkie told him—about a tea shop with a secret entrance to its basement where the drugs were made. It seemed to Crane that this was their big break, that this should have been something to get excited about, but the Joker just sulked silently. Harleen's influence, no doubt.
Crane parked on the street and grabbed his mask out of the glove compartment, then looked at the Joker expectantly.
"Are you done sulking over her yet?" he sneered before pulling on his mask.
What they found in the basement of the tea shop was the remains of a lab, including parts of an MRI machine. It was far more advanced than what Crane had set up at the warehouse, and he could almost feel the presence of the chemist who invented Blue Orchid lingering there like a specter.
Duct tape was still visible on the concrete floor, walls, and ceiling where plastic tarps would have been laid, indicating the chemist wanted a sterile environment to work in, which meant he was a professional. The area cornered off was small, with only enough room for two or three people at a time in the sterile space, suggesting the Chemist preferred to work alone. The MRI machine had its computer and memory removed, only the shell of it remaining, but its presence told Crane this chemist was a medical doctor, not a psychologist, his interest in the biological effects of his compound rather than the behavioral. Additionally, the MRI machine's very existence in that basement told him this operation had plenty of funding.
Funding from the big boss.
As they looked around and Crane talked, the Joker gradually shook off his foul, Harleen-induced mood, shifting into a more thoughtful, twitchy silence that carried over on the drive back to the warehouse.
He alternated between staring at the glovebox, deep in thought, and thumbing around on the smartphone. When they got back to the loft, the Joker promptly rid himself of his suit jacket, tie, and shirt, as if Crane wasn't even there, then fell on the couch, shirtless and barefoot, and grabbed the last pack of cigarettes from a carton lying discarded on the makeshift coffee table.
Crane realized then that he had inadvertently become roommates with the Joker. But after close to twenty-four hours without sleep, his brain was starting to shut down. He collapsed onto the air mattress and pulled the sleeping bag over his head as sleep claimed him.
They were finally making headway on the big boss, with the Iceberg Lounge at the top of the food chain, possibly with the big boss directly above them. Crane, despite himself, had come around to the Joker's original premise— that learning the boss's identity for the sake of getting ahead of the Batman was a wise move. And of course, the big boss had access to the poppies, which Crane would need to get back on his feet.
Frost left to get pizza despite the thunderstorm outside, leaving the Joker and Crane to discuss the possibility of a R'as al Ghul 2.0 as they drank bourbon and the Joker chain-smoked. Crane was not much of a drinker, but he accepted the quasi-social drink, letting it settle his nerves. It made it harder to think clearly, which the Joker didn't seem to have a problem with.
"Are you going to look into why Miss Lucy wants Janice Porter?" Crane asked slyly.
"Who cares," the Joker waved a dismissive hand. "Probably the same reason they always want the DA dead."
"Investigating something they shouldn't be," Crane stated drily, and when the Joker lifted an intrigued eyebrow at him he explained. "I had my own dealings with Rachel Dawes."
The Joker's eyes widened with interest, and he hummed curiously as he leaned forward. "Well don't leave me hangin', Jonny."
Crane ground his teeth together, preparing to tell an edited version of his story when the steel door suddenly crashed open with a CLANG! making him jump as he whirled around.
Harleen stood there in the doorway, her hands braced against the frame. She was soaking wet, her hair dripping and mascara running down her face, her shirt see-through and clinging to her skin. She looked wild, the threat of violence radiating from her just as it did the Joker when he was agitated.
Her eyes widened incredulously as she looked between them, and then quickly took stock of the rest of the room, barely concealed fury lighting up her eyes.
Crane felt a shameful flicker of fear as it struck him that this was the Harley Quinn people spoke about with such terror. This was not the sly, ambitious Harleen he had known, though perhaps there had been hints of this lingering beneath the surface. A narrowed glare here, a scowl there, a ruthlessness that had yet to be fully unleashed like it was now.
"What the fuck is going on!" she demanded with a snarl.
A/N: Welp, now you all know what's been going on!
In my dream world, this whole chapter would be a 4-minute montage set to Boney M - 'Sunny'
There's a couple of writing exercises for Crane on my Tumblr (knit-wear-it) if you're interested in a little background on his & Harley's past called Abnormal Psychology I and Abnormal Psychology II. My anonymous Asks are always open there too! :)
I am very interested to find out what folks think about Crane... I'm not 100% on the characterization, but hopefully it's passable, lol. I feel like if he wasn't part of such a big picture or at least being contrasted with the Joker, you could do some really interesting/scary things with the character.
Next: Harley starts hunting for the big boss, and Vicki does some digging of her own.
Please review and comment, I have an ego the size of the sun and it needs to be fed!
xo