Theme: Philip Glass - 'Opening'
The Pantomime
15.
The first time the Joker thought he was going to die, it hadn't been fear he felt at the point of losing consciousness, but curiosity. Down a back alley with his face cut open, not quite sure if he was really dying, but also not sure that he wasn't. A little luck and a strong constitution got him through it. Then the second time, it hadn't been curiosity so much as… irritation. He'd known if he survived that gunshot wound to the chest, he would have to recover from it too, and as he'd learned the first time, there was nothing as annoying as being a prisoner to your own physical weakness. And it had taken much, much longer to recuperate from that bullet than it took his face to heal.
This third time was different. As he'd lost consciousness, possibly for the very last time, there had been irritation again, gut-twisting frustration over the subsequent recovery period that would come if he survived. But this time he hadn't been alone. As the world faded around him, hazy and dark, the threat of death very real as his body shut down piece by piece, Harley had been there, shrieking his name. Her pain, which was visceral and violent, kept that dark haziness at bay until there wasn't enough blood left in his body to go on.
And when he woke up, she was still there.
The Joker fought to open his eyes, the room around him blurry and full of sunlight. So he wasn't in a hospital-ish room like last time, or a veterinarian's like the time before that. He was hot, wrapped up so tight he couldn't move, his arms pinned to his sides. Not with handcuffs, but because he was rolled up in blankets like a sausage. He tried to wiggle his fingers, weakly succeeding. The tendons in his arms moved, and he felt the needles in the crooks of his elbows, and he felt the stitches and bandages around his wrists and forearms, but notably, no pain.
Morphine.
So that was why the room was so blurry and warm.
"Mmm," he muttered unhappily, struggling past the opioid to find reality.
The bed shifted beside him, then Harley filled his entire field of vision. Just a flash of one big blue eye, and the tip of her button nose and a whole bunch of tangled platinum hair. She was pulling on his eyelids and cupping his face and gasping weakly like she was trying not to cry.
"J," she said breathlessly, smoothing sweaty hair back from his face. "J, can you hear me?"
"Mmhmm," he grumbled, trying to twist away from her. But confirming he could hear her only made her worse.
She released a relieved sob and pulled his hair hard enough to make his scalp tingle despite the morphine, and then her face was pressed against his, and she was crying so... hard.
"Stopppid," he slurred gruffly, trying to wiggle free. But she was pinning him down, her body covering his over the blankets, her hands pulling on his face and hair, relentless.
So he sighed and stopped struggling, giving up on fighting her and trying another tact.
"Sh, sh, sh," he hissed through his teeth, rolling his head toward her so their cheeks were pressed flush together. He could see the tip of her ear through his fluttering eyelids. He could smell her—sweet and rotten, and so familiar.
He felt her take a shuddering breath, her chest vibrating against his through the blankets. Then she shifted to the side so she wasn't squashing him, and she stopped crying. Her breathing evened out as she started smoothing his hair off his forehead, her hand luxuriously cold against his hot skin.
Much better.
So, a little reluctantly, the Joker let her comfort him, siphoning off some of his irritation over being weak and stuck in a bed. Letting her distract him with her touch, and her smell, and all the other familiar things that made her Harley.
Lee wasn't entirely sure how this had all happened.
After Harley knocked Ed out with a cast-iron skillet, Lee helped her drag him into the bathroom where she chained him to the bathtub with the handcuffs that had previously been dangling from one of the Joker's wrists. Harley wasn't armed, not with a gun or a knife, but the threat of what would happen if Lee didn't help had been implicit, as it had been throughout the entire course of the evening. Save the Joker, or you die. Keep this quiet, or you die. Help me tie up the Riddler, or you die.
And perhaps the threat wasn't as dangerous as it might have been were Harley not in such a state of distress, but Lee felt more compelled to help her than she did to turn her in. This was something she commonly felt in her day-to-day practice at the clinic, though it seemed unnecessarily pronounced given this was Harley Quinn, not just a junkie or drug dealer.
With Ed secured to the bathtub, Lee and Harley cleaned as much blood off the Joker as possible, then wrapped him in blankets and tucked him into Lee's bed with bags of blood, saline, morphine, and a broad-spectrum antibiotic hanging over the headboard, each of them slowly dripping into his body, pulling him away from death.
Harley looked on the verge of collapsing by then, which would have been about the time Lee should have called the police to inform them she had the Riddler chained up in her bathtub, the Joker mortally wounded in her bed, and Harley Quinn soon-to-be unconscious beside him. Instead, she guided Harley into the back room and opened a box of old clothes that hadn't fit Lee in well over a decade, finding Harley a set of pajamas so she could change out of her bloodied evening gown.
"Dr Thompkins," Harley looked up from the pajamas, her blue eyes alarmingly lifeless. "I'm going to need to tie you up in the bathroom too," she said. "I hope you understand."
Understanding that meant either she allowed herself to be tied up or she would be killed, Lee nodded and dug out an old box of Jim's things, including a pair of handcuffs. Harley hovered as Lee ducked into the kitchen to grab a bottle of Pellegrino from the fridge, and then joined Ed in the bathroom, lowering herself to the floor beside the radiator and handcuffing herself to it.
"Harley," Lee called before she turned away. "You can call me Lee,"
"Thank you," Harley said numbly, trying and failing to force a smile.
Lee was exhausted enough that even chained to the radiator, she managed to doze for a while. But only a few hours into captivity, Ed woke up, and he was livid.
"I can't believe this!" he huffed once he got past the initial disorientation that came with waking up after being knocked unconscious with a blunt object. "I saved her boyfriend's life and this is how she repays me? She's a monster! A monster! What kind of person ties another person up in a bathroom, huh!"
From there, Ed's complaining devolved into a loud, violent tantrum. He screamed bloody murder trying to get Harley's attention. Lee's ears were ringing by the time the sun rose, and she could only thank God the old woman who lived downstairs had recently been moved to a retired living facility in the suburbs.
Perhaps she shouldn't have been relieved—she should have wished someone could hear Ed's screaming and come to her rescue. There was a lot Lee recognized that she should have been doing or feeling. But at her age, she didn't concern herself with worrying about 'should' anymore.
Eventually, Ed wore himself out and settled for going through silent stretches interspersed with calling out to Harley cajolingly, trying to coax her from the bedroom.
None of it worked, and as the day stretched on, Ed and Lee both got some sleep, the emotional and physical stress taking its toll.
Then that afternoon, Harley appeared, looking wobbly and off-kilter.
"Harley!" Ed immediately squealed. "You have to let me out of here, please! I can't take it. The walls are closing in!"
"He's awake," Harley said to Lee, ignoring Ed completely.
"Is he brain dead?" Ed asked slyly.
"Shut the fuck up, Ed!" Harley snapped, her voice cracking.
"Ooh, what would you do, huh? Would you euthanize him? Pillow over the face? That's what he'd want, right?" Ed smirked. "But then you'd have to live with it. I bet you'd give up the whole femme fatal criminal lifestyle and just settle down somewhere and tend to your Joker-vegetable. Wipe his drool and change his diapers for him..."
"Harley," Lee interrupted, seeing the strain in her face as her arms started to tremble. She was on the verge of doing something impulsive and more than likely, very violent. "Harley, do you want me to take a look at him?" Lee demanded, successfully drawing Harley's attention.
It was like staring into the eyes of a wild animal, like Harley's grasp on her own humanity was dangling. It was both terrifying and hypnotizing.
Eventually, Harley nodded and unlocked Lee from the radiator while Ed whined after them.
The Joker was awake but certainly looking like he'd seen better days. The dark circles around his eyes were faded but still there, and his skin was pale but not as white as it had been. His eyes were open but drooping, conscious but weak. He'd obviously recently been treated to something like a sponge bath, his hair damp and pushed off his face, a small pile of red-stained towels on the floor beside the bed.
Lee didn't know this man at all, not personally, but she suspected something like a sponge bath was worse than nearly bleeding to death in his book, the way he was grinding his jaw and glaring at the wall across from him speaking louder than he was currently able to.
"He doesn't want the morphine," Harley murmured as Lee checked his blood pressure and then his pupils, her pulse leaping when his dark eyes met hers resentfully.
"Your circulation looks good already," she announced once she'd examined his fingers and then his toes. The blood flow didn't immediately return to the capillaries when she pressed on them, but they weren't swollen. "Can you wiggle your fingers?"
The Joker stared at Lee dully for a long moment, then wiggled his fingers.
"Make a fist?"
His hand curled into a loose fist, and then after a moment, he squeezed it closed tighter, probably exerting too much energy.
"Good. It looks like there isn't any tendon damage, but try not to do too much with your hands," Lee instructed. He didn't seem to be listening so she stood from the bed and faced Harley. "For now, I'd say he needs to suck up a few more bags of blood and fluids before we try to get some food in him."
Harley nodded numbly, her face troubled.
"Do you have fresh sheets for the bed?" she asked, almost sweetly, making Lee's eyes widen.
"Yeah, um, yes," Lee nodded and rushed to the back room to grab a spare set of sheets, slightly bewildered by this request. And when she handed the sheets to Harley, Harley forced a strained but grateful smile and suggested Lee use the en suite bathroom to clean herself up.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," she heard the Joker pluck up the energy to grumble just before Lee shut the door.
As she washed her face and brushed her teeth, Lee could hear them arguing—apparently over the sheets—the Joker's voice low and annoyed while Harley was huffy and impatient. Even after she was dressed in fresh clothes, Lee stood behind the door, listening to them go back and forth, feeling bizarrely compelled by such a private moment between two such dangerous, colorful people as they went through something so human. She waited for them to lapse into silence, and when she exited the bathroom, the Joker appeared to be asleep and Harley was sitting up against the headboard, her arms folded on her knees, her expression grim.
She looked up at Lee, and Lee offered her a weak smile before slipping back out to the bathroom and chaining herself to the radiator again.
"Did you get to change your clothes!" Ed looked aghast. "She's only being nice to you so you'll do what she wants," he pointed out spitefully. "That's like her go-to move."
"I thought that might be why," Lee admitted awkwardly, unsure how to approach a conversation with the Riddler, who just seemed to want someone to talk at.
"How long is she going to keep us here?" he demanded imperiously. "What happens when we need to use the bathroom, huh?"
"Hopefully, only until the Joker's better?" Lee guessed. It was obviously something she'd been wondering about too. "Once he's up and walking around I expect they'll want to go home, right?"
"I mean, they'll probably kill you when he's better and they don't need you anymore," Ed shot her a knowing look. "Don't you think?"
"I'm trying to stay positive," Lee shrugged.
"They won't kill me," Ed announced, staring out the bathroom door like he was trying to see through the wall opposite where Harley and the Joker were sleeping. "They definitely won't," he reassured himself.
"What makes you say that?" Lee asked warily. She didn't want to press her luck but she was eager to find out what
happened that led these three terrorists to her doorstep.
"She's had like, three opportunities to kill me, and she hasn't," Ed explained smugly. "Plus, I saved them both. And I'm interesting." He glanced at Lee. "No offense."
"None taken," she replied, watching him sigh dramatically and shift around in the bathtub trying to get comfortable.
"So how long will it take him to get better?" Ed eventually asked, his bottom lip sticking out in a pout.
"Well," Lee glanced out the bathroom door. "Considering he stopped breathing and his heart almost stopped, I would normally say at least two weeks if I were being optimistic. But he's… doing really well already. So, maybe ten days."
"Ten days?" Ed gasped, his head falling back against the tiled bathroom wall with a crack. He whined and rubbed his head where he would probably have a lump the size of a goose's egg from getting hit with the frying pan.
"Optimistically," Lee said again.
"How are we supposed to stay here for over a week?" Ed hissed, blinking rapidly. "No, no way. We have got to get out of here, Lee, do you hear me? Teamwork. We need teamwork."
"Okay," Lee agreed uncertainly.
They lapsed into silence after that, Lee settling back to watch the sun move across the sky through the small window the bathroom afforded them while Ed got himself worked up and shifted around restlessly. He'd shuffle around in the bathtub as far as he could move, then he'd close his eyes to calm himself down, doze for a little while, then wake up and start getting worked up again, occasionally shouting out for Harley. Eventually, they both accepted they would have to use the bathroom in front of one another, which Ed did with quite a lot of dramatization about the inhumanity of being forced to pee in front of another person.
Meanwhile, in Lee's bedroom, Harley and the Joker were completely silent, possibly sleeping.
"I'm starving," Ed whined once it was dark again.
Lee was too, and a combination of low blood sugar and the fact that she'd twice peed in front of Ed made her feel more comfortable asking the questions she'd been nursing all day.
"What happened last night?" she asked him point-blank, making his eyes widen.
"Oooh, gossipy old lady doctor," he smirked. Then he sighed deeply, rolling his eyes up like he was thinking hard. "Well, it's a pretty long story, but I guess the short version is there's a mob boss called Black Mask who wants to kill the Joker and force Harley to work for him."
Lee's eyes widened, that colorful response more than she could have hoped for, and also so completely fantastical she didn't know how to respond.
"A mob boss named Black Mask?" she asked incredulously.
"Yep, he wears a mask. All the best people do," Ed shrugged. "His real name is Roman Sionis. He's like this big-time business guy and he's pretty much taken over the entire city already."
"Wow," Lee blinked hard, trying to keep up.
"He's kind of a dick," Ed pouted. "I told him Harley and the Joker's plan to kidnap him, and he thanked me by taking his mask off." He scoffed indignantly, his bottom lip sticking out again. "I mean, what kind of thanks is that, huh?"
"You betrayed Harley and the Joker?" Lee asked, to which Ed threw his hands up.
"Of course! As if I was ever not going to do that." He shifted around, trying desperately to get comfortable as he talked. "I mean, how else would I get them to respect me, huh? As if they would ever respect me if I just worked for them like some kind of… henchman. No. They needed to learn that I'm as unpredictable as they are."
"So you turned them over to Black Mask to win their respect?" Lee asked. "And then you saved them from him?"
"It's like they're completely ignoring the second part!" Ed huffed miserably
"That must be really frustrating," Lee observed, offering him a sympathetic smile. "So… why did Black Mask want Harley to work for him but not the Joker?"
"Oh, cause he's stupid," Ed sighed, exasperated. "Everyone knows you don't try to get Harley or the Joker to work for you. They always screw people over, and it almost always ends in the National Guard getting called when people try it."
"Right," Lee agreed, not sure what else she could say to this revelation that 'everyone knows.'
"But BM was convinced he could flip Harley," Ed shrugged helplessly. "And he definitely has a thing for her. Who wouldn't, right? I dunno what would have happened if I hadn't shown up but he was definitely going to try to force her into being his like, bodyguard-girlfriend-slave or whatever once the Joker was dead."
"Wow," Lee's eyes widened as she thought about Harley the night before, inconsolable with her partner dying before her eyes. Apparently, after being rescued from a fate that could have been worse than death. Bodyguard-girlfriend-slave to a mob boss.
It made Lee's skin crawl, and as she thought about Harley sobbing weakly like her world was ending, she felt tears spring to her eyes too.
"Oh my God, cuuuuuuuute," Ed cooed, throwing his unchained hand over his heart. "Are you crying?"
"I guess," Lee shrugged, wiping tears from her eyes, feeling a little foolish. "It sounds like a pretty awful thing to go through."
"Even though she's a terrorist and kills people all the time?" Ed shot Lee a knowing look. "Like that car in your garage downstairs? She killed a guy to get that car. She smashed his head open with a rock."
Lee's eyes widened—she hadn't even thought to ask about that car—but Ed wasn't paying attention. He was frowning thoughtfully.
"Well, I guess I backed over him, so maybe I killed him," he shrugged helplessly like it wasn't important. "Potato-potat-oh. He's still dead."
"Yeah, I suppose he is," Lee said quietly.
They slipped into silence again, but Ed was fidgeting more than usual in the bathtub. Lee was just about to ask if he was okay, hoping she could get him to talk before he fell into another tantrum when he groaned loudly and raked both hands through his strawberry blonde hair.
"It's just so unfair," he panted miserably. "She doesn't appreciate me at all."
"Harley?" Lee asked wearily.
"Well, duh," Ed whined. "I know you don't understand because you're boring, but Harley and I are the same, and it's like she's just refusing to see it."
He looked genuinely upset this time, not the performative crying or complaining Lee had seen thus far, but like his feelings were actually hurt.
"How are you two the same?" Lee asked, narrowing her eyes. "You mean more than… what you do for work?"
"Yes, exactly, Lee," Ed nodded enthusiastically. "I mean, she didn't even know who I was when we first met. She just thought I was silly old Ed the bartender, but she still knew. I could tell when she looked at me she knew we were the same. You know, I used to think she was just some crazy terrorist lady dating the Joker. But then I met her, and she's so much more and I just, I want, I mean," he started whining again, struggling to find the right words while Lee watched wide-eyed.
It had been about twenty-five years since Lee did her psych rotation in med-school, but she remembered enough to guess that Ed was possibly a sociopath and maybe a few other things too, which led her to her next question.
"You just want her to love you?" Lee suggested delicately, and Ed turned to stare at her.
"Yes," he whispered like it was a revelation to him. "Oh my god, yes, Lee! Yes!"
"That must be really hard," Lee offered him a kind smile, hoping she hadn't just unleashed something awful upon Harley by helping Ed realize this.
"I want her to teach me," Ed sighed miserably. "Like a mother, you know? Like a house mother?"
"A house mother?" Lee squinted at him.
"Oh, right, you're old, I almost forgot," Ed sighed again. "Well, as you know, I'm the Riddler," he flapped his hand modestly, a cheeky smirk sliding onto his lips. "Which is kind of like my drag persona, you know?" He narrowed his eyes at Lee. "Are you like, too old to know about drag?"
"I know about drag queens," Lee confirmed warily, feeling like she'd just gone down a rabbit hole she wouldn't be coming out of any time soon.
Even though she was exhausted, Harley found very little sleep as she kept watch over the Joker through their second night at Lee's. Instead, she sat beside him, her back against the headboard, her arms folded on her knees, not looking at him, not looking at anything.
She'd seen him sick or hurt before, but never like this. Grazed by a bullet more than once, stab wounds that didn't hit anything important like the one in his side now, broken fingers and sprained everythings. Pneumonia once, she was pretty sure. He was a horrible patient, being trapped in a bed the ultimate sacrifice of freedom as far as he was concerned. He could push through most things—as could Harley—but he was a nightmare on the rare occasion that he needed rest.
He was already being a massive prick about this round of R&R. He'd been conscious for all of ten minutes before he picked a fight with her over changing the sheets. Harley was strung so tight she'd given him the fight he'd been hoping for. It didn't last long, draining the energy out of him so he was soon unconscious again, leaving Harley to sit beside him, fretting that she may have killed him by giving into the argument. He'd woken up a few times since then—when she changed the IV in his arm after he soaked up another bag of blood, or when she checked the circulation in his fingers like Lee had shown her, but he refused to speak to her.
They'd rarely fought for the first six months of their relationship. Harley thought of that as the honeymoon period now, most of it spent getting in trouble in Gotham and then getting into more trouble in Mexico. But then he got hurt bad-ish—a bullet through his side, clean and straight through, a lot of blood but not enough for him to lose consciousness—and Harley had been tasked with making sure he took antibiotics and stayed at least moderately immobile so he could recover. They'd fought like cats and dogs that week, and something shifted between them. There was something about being able to fight and know that wasn't the end that made Harley feel even closer to him.
And once he got better, the makeup sex had been great.
Their fights were usually the product of two things. The Joker would accuse Harley of being moody —which Harley had come to understand meant she was some combination of tired, anxious, frustrated, depressed, or stressed out—which he typically had zero patience for. His way of coping with it was either to avoid her completely or sadistically poke her until she lost it. Similarly, the Joker had a great capacity for being a total asshole for no reason when he felt like it, which Harley could have described as his own brand of moody if she wanted to make a point about what a hypocrite he was. He'd be a dick to her—snarky, impatient, cruel, petulant—and a fight would break out. He'd pretend he couldn't understand why she was annoyed. She genuinely couldn't understand how one man could be so infuriating.
Usually, their more epic fights were followed by one of them disappearing for a few hours or even a full day to get some space and then return for the makeup sex and a stretch of giddy companionship.
They never apologized. They never compromised. And the damn sure never talked about their feelings.
Gradually, Harley's thoughts shifted from wistfully daydreaming about that companionship to who she'd seen at Wayne Manor.
Dinah.
But Harley's tired brain wasn't up to finding a creative explanation for Dinah's presence there, and besides, it didn't particularly matter anyway.
Truth be told, Harley could really have done with having Pam or Dinah or Sofia with her there now.
The sun had been up for a few hours when the Joker woke up after another long stretch of sleep. Harley watched him silently take stock of the room and of himself, then with a great deal of effort, he attempted to sit up on his own.
Harley considered offering to help, but instead, she remained where she was, taking a small amount of pleasure in watching him grind his jaw and growl in frustration as he made two more valiant attempts to pull himself up, the stab wound below his ribs and his general weakness making it an impossible task. He flopped back down, glaring at the ceiling resentfully, which was more than a little threatening just to observe.
"How do you feel?" Harley asked warily.
"Like shit," the Joker rasped, his voice scratchy but not as weak as it had been. "Hungry," he added, shooting her a dirty look like it was her fault.
Feeling like she was about to burst into tears again, Harley slid off the bed and padded out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom where Lee and Ed were both dozing in uncomfortable-looking positions. Harley realized then that neither of them had eaten in over a day, and she hadn't eaten in much longer than that.
"Lee," Harley said, touching the older woman on the shoulder to wake her up.
Ed's eyes flew open as Lee blinked sleepily.
"Harley!" he shrieked desperately, rattling his handcuff and making Harley scowl. "You have to let me out of here! I saved your lives! How can you treat me like this?"
"If you hadn't betrayed us, you wouldn't have had to save us, Ed," Harley snapped roughly, feeling her blood pressure start to rise. "And the only reason I haven't killed you yet is I haven't got time to get rid of your body, and I don't want Lee to have to smell your corpse rotting."
Ed's mouth fell open in melodramatic shock. "You—" he started to say.
"Say another word," Harley snarled. "And I swear to God, I'll cut your tongue out."
Ed pinched his lips together, scowling but ultimately keeping quiet.
Harley turned her attention back to Lee, breathing deeply to calm her racing pulse, and taking some comfort in Lee's small, sympathetic smile.
"He's awake again," Harley explained, woodenly. "He's hungry."
"Do you want me to take a look at him?" Lee asked.
"I don't want to put you through that," Harley muttered. "What can I feed him?"
"He needs iron," Lee said kindly. "Red meat, kale, spinach," she hesitated. "There's a butcher just up the street and a vegan cafe right next to it. They do these green juices. You should get him to drink a few of those."
"Green juice and red meat," Harley nodded numbly, thinking one of those was going to go down better than the other. "Got it."
Harley poked around the back room, picking through the box of clothes Lee had opened the night before. They were about two sizes too big for Harley but she found some workout gear; electric blue leggings, a neon sports bra, and a gray tank top, along with some well-worn sneakers, a good enough disguise to blend in on the streets of the upper west side at noon on a Sunday. Then she grabbed Lee's wallet and keys out of her purse, along with a paring knife from the kitchen just in case, and headed off, relieved to be out of the small apartment.
It was only when she got back with a few jugs of green juice and five pounds of ground beef that Harley realized she had no idea what the fuck to do with it and had to unlock Lee from the bathroom to help.
"Not much time for cooking?" Lee asked, trying to be friendly, which made Harley wonder how terrible she really looked if her hostage was being nice to her. "I didn't mean…" Lee backtracked.
But Harley waved her off and took a seat at the counter splitting the small kitchen from the living room, folding her arms and burying her face in them.
"Don't worry about it," she mumbled, sighing into her arms. She stayed there for a moment, then pulled herself up again, knowing she needed to be a better captor to her hostage. "No, I don't cook," she admitted. "I never learned how."
"Well… want to help me?" Lee asked cautiously, holding up an onion.
Harley looked between the onion and Lee's hopeful face and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. This woman was a little bit odd, and she wasn't reacting with quite as much… terror as Harley had come to expect from her victims. But the longer Harley held Lee's eye, watching her smile wobble, she realized Lee was just trying to stay on Harley's good side and stay alive, which was definitely the smart thing to do.
She shrugged helplessly and held out her hand for the onion, grateful to have something to distract herself with.
"So," Harley sighed as she chopped very, very slowly, trying to keep the tiny pieces of onion the same size and perfectly square. "Why do you have a pair of handcuffs stashed in your backroom?"
Lee laughed a little bitterly.
"My ex was a cop," she explained. "There's a box of his stuff back there I just never bothered to get rid of."
"Cop, huh," Harley hummed thoughtfully. "Let me guess. He refused to put you ahead of the job?"
"Something like that," Lee said, her face souring. "It was more like he had a death wish, and I couldn't bring myself to watch it." She shrugged. "I left him a few weeks before the wedding. Best decision I ever made."
"Yikes," Harley pushed the chopping board toward Lee. "What happened to him?"
"Oh, he got married to someone else and had a couple of kids," Lee shot Harley a knowing look. "But he couldn't stay out of trouble, and she ended up leaving him too."
"Sounds like my kind of guy," Harley observed drily, glancing over her shoulder at the closed bedroom door.
"I take it he's not the best patient," Lee made a sympathetic face as she put a pot on the stove and turned the burner on while Harley slumped forward over the kitchen counter.
"No, definitely not," she sighed, and then without meaning to, she continued. "He's got this… unstoppable energy inside him. He's always moving, always thinking, always working. So it's torture for him to be trapped in a bed like this. And it's painful to watch because he's so full of life and—"
Harley stopped abruptly, realizing that in a handful of sentences, she'd just said more about the Joker to another person than she ever had before. She also hadn't eaten or slept in two days.
But Lee just smiled, the picture of empathy, and scraped the onion into the pot.
"I'm sorry you're being subjected to Ed," Harley said after a long pause, bracing her cheek on her fist. "He's the worst."
"I feel kind of bad for him," Lee admitted with a wince. "It seems like his pathology makes it so he's constantly looking for something. He's never satisfied."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Harley agreed flatly.
"Including your approval," Lee added sagely, and when Harley raised a dubious eyebrow, Lee leaned over the counter conspiratorially, keeping her voice low. "I think he's looking for some… guidance from you."
"Guidance?" Harley scoffed. "What, like he wants a teacher?"
"I think it's a little more personal than that," Lee admitted and then bit her lip. "He told me what happened," she said. "With… Black Mask."
"His real name is Roman," Harley sighed, rubbing a hand over her face.
Maybe she should just cut Ed's tongue out anyway.
"Well, Roman seems like an entitled piece of work," Lee observed, dumping the ground beef into the pot and breaking it up with a wooden spoon. "It sounds like he wants to own you." She made a face, disgusted.
"That's exactly what he wants," Harley agreed darkly.
"Men are pigs," Lee said drily.
Harley felt a modicum better after spending a couple of hours in the kitchen with Lee, half-learning to cook spaghetti bolognese, but mostly talking about things unrelated to the situation at hand. But then the spaghetti was finished, and after wolfing down two portions for herself, Harley locked Lee back up in the bathroom with Ed—who, miraculously, was still silent—and braced herself for facing the Joker.
He'd managed to pull himself up into a sitting position, the blankets pooling around his waist as he glared at her across the room.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she snapped, shoving the bowl into his hands.
He rolled his eyes like she was being unreasonable and inhaled the food, finishing the whole thing within thirty seconds. Harley brought him another two bowls, standing with her arms crossed, staring at him as he ate. Then when he finished, he fixed her with a sour look, his jaw working.
"So uh, sweetheart," he sneered, coming right out the gate with a pet name to piss her off. "Why dontcha go grab daddy some cigarettes, huh?"
"Fuck you," Harley countered simply. "I'm not your maid, J."
"Well, what fuckin' good are you," he snapped, his shoulders twitching. It seemed the food had perked him up enough for another argument.
Too tired to deal with him, and frankly, a little relieved he was alive enough to be a dick, Harley turned and marched out of the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her.
"Harley!" the Joker bellowed after her, his voice lowering to that deep, inhuman register he used when he wanted to be really scary. "HARLEY!"
She ignored him, and she ignored the looks she got from Lee and Ed as she stormed past them into the spare room, throwing herself down on the twin bed there in hopes of finding sleep.
It had been almost two full days since Harley and the Joker disappeared from the Wayne Foundation fundraiser, and Vicki couldn't focus on anything else. She was avoiding Bruce and floating between her office and her apartment, lingering at the former to avoid being alone.
She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about Harley being kidnapped and possibly murdered by Black Mask, and she didn't know what she was supposed to do about it.
It didn't help that Lois Lane's voice continued to pop into her head—'these assholes need to go down, but it won't be easy.' Vicki still wanted that. She wanted to expose Sionis and Daggett, and Hill too.
There was also the matter of Roman's obsession with Bruce, and Vicki could only think of one possible option to make life difficult for Sionis and his cronies on that front.
She finally worked up the nerve to call Detective Montoya, and they agreed to meet at the same Midtown coffee shop they'd spoken at before. Montoya looked drained, like she'd been up all night and was running on fumes. She took a long drag off her Juul as she settled into the booth across from Vicki, who offered her pinched smile.
"I sure hope you got good news for me, Vicki." Montoya sighed out a cloud of water vapor and pulled out a notepad.
"I take it you haven't had any leads on Harley or the Joker?" Vicki probed gently.
"Nah," Montoya sniffed and fell back in her seat. "They've gone totally quiet, which means it's only a matter of time before their next attack." She shot Vicki an expectant look. "So like I said, I sure hope you got good news for me."
"Maybe," Vicki cleared her throat. "I heard from a source at City Hall."
"Is that so?" Montoya thumbed the cap off a ballpoint pen and leaned forward, intrigued.
"Last time we met, I told you I was looking into Daggett," Vicki started cautiously. "It turns out Janice Porter and Commissioner Akins were both looking into Daggett Shipping." Vicki caught Montoya's eye. "Judge Chiecco was issuing warrants to get a closer look at Daggett's books."
Montoya's eyes narrowed, and she spent a few long seconds considering Vicki curiously.
Vicki's heart started leaping nervously though she tried to remain impassive, then pivoted to 'concerned,' which was surely the more appropriate reaction.
"Daggett Shipping," Montoya mused at length. "What were they doing? Shipping in something illegal?"
"I don't know," Vicki lied. "But during the Thanksgiving Riots a couple of years back, the Joker exposed the Kane Company's corruption and Bertrum Crowne's money laundering."
"Yeah, I remember that," Montoya made a face. "So, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying… Gotham isn't black and white, including the wealthy people," Vicki explained hesitantly. "Maybe Daggett's crooked and the Joker and Harley Quinn are covering it up for him."
"That sounds backward to me," Montoya frowned. "Surely they'd want everyone to know about it? Get people riled up and mad?"
"Look, I just thought you should know all three of their victims were looking into Daggett Shipping," Vicki shrugged. "Maybe you should look into Daggett too. That's all I've got."
"Alright," Montoya agreed warily, making a few notes on her pad without looking away from Vicki. "So, what do you make of it?"
"It's the Joker and Harley Quinn so," Vicki forced a smile and bounced her shoulders in a stiff shrug. "Nothing is what it seems."
After another ten minutes of playing dumb and fighting back the urge to blurt out the entire Roman Sionis story, Vicki managed to escape. She pretended to take a call from her editor, promising Montoya she would be in touch if she learned anything new, and desperately hoping Montoya would do something productive with that information about Daggett.
"Hey, Vale!"
Vicki yelped and dropped her phone, sending it skittering across the sidewalk. She swung around to find her photographer, Alexander Knox leaning against the wall beside the cafe's front door.
"What the fuck, Alex!" Vicki snapped, scooping her phone up off the ground and checking the screen.
"Woah, sorry, Vale," Knox's eyes widened, concerned. "I saw you talkin' to that cop again and—"
"What did I say about following me?" Vicki spat. "It's fucking creepy."
"Hey, I'm sorry, I was worried," Knox insisted, his face sinking into a heavy frown.
He started to edge closer, but Vicki held her hand up, stopping him.
"Do not follow me again," she instructed crisply, her expression grim, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
After her fight with the Joker, Harley managed to sleep for most of the afternoon, getting at least a few REM cycles under her belt. It was dark again when she woke up to Ed wailing like a toddler because he was hungry, and though she considered just letting him starve —that way he would die, it would be slow and painful, and it would give Harley time to figure out what to do with his body—she ended up throwing a bowl of spaghetti at his head. The bowl smashed against the tiled wall behind him, and he was forced to pick shards of porcelain out of the noodles spilling over his shoulder into his lap, making Harley smirk happily.
Then she checked on the Joker, bringing green juice and already knowing it would go badly.
But she hadn't expected to open the door to find him growling in frustration as he tried to paw one of the IVs out of his arm, the big one in his chest already on the floor, a dribble of blood rolling down his torso.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" she demanded, storming up to him and shoving his shoulder, making him sway back as he scowled up at her.
"I am gettin' outta here, doll face," he countered gruffly, batting her hands away as she flitted around him.
"You can't even get out of that bed," Harley snapped, to which he growled at her outright. "Go on, try it," Harley taunted him, stepping back. "Give it your best shot," she sneered.
"I'm gonna get out of this bed one day, honey bear," he snarled. "And you're not gonna be happy when I do."
"I don't know if you noticed, J, but you're running low on blood at the minute," Harley huffed, her voice pitching higher, more emotional. "You're never getting out of that bed if you don't let yourself heal!"
He devolved into incoherent muttering as he occasionally did when he was frustrated, and Harley felt bad for him even though he didn't deserve it. Bad enough that she went to the bodega down the street, feeling paranoid and keeping her head down as she passed beneath the glow of the old-fashioned street lamps running the length of Robinson Park.
She bought an airplane-sized bottle of vodka, a carton of cigarettes and a lighter, and one of Hill's red MGGA hats, which the bodega owner was selling enthusiastically.
"Don't forget to vote!" he grinned as Harley pulled the hat down over her eyes and stomped back to Lee's townhouse.
She sat on the front steps, pulling herself together as she drank the small bottle of vodka, trying to make a plan, so she didn't rip her hair out. She reminded herself that for the moment, they were just frustrated, bored, and stuck in a small space. They were alive and relatively safe with a place to recover without the Batman or Black Canary kicking down their front door. And even though Roman was out there, winning for the moment, they had slipped through his fingers.
He was probably pissed off about that, a thought that cheered Harley up somewhat.
With this in mind, she jogged back up to Lee's apartment and grabbed the green juice out of the fridge, deciding to try the carrot approach to get the Joker to drink it instead of the stick.
She opened the door to the bedroom and poked the carton of cigarettes in, waving it like a white flag before she slipped in herself. The Joker looked annoyed; his dark eyes gleaming like he already knew what was coming. Of course he did.
Harley tossed the cigarettes on the bed beside his hip. He ignored them as she edged closer, clicking the lighter to life as she eyed him appraisingly.
"This," she said, holding up the juice. "Will help you get out of that bed."
"Do not… patronize me," he growled, not quite reaching that scary register but close to it.
"It's up to you," Harley countered breezily, looking between the green juice and the lighter, then shrugging helplessly. "You want to smoke? You drink this shit."
She threw the bottle on the bed and waved the lighter at him, but he just glared at her, making Harley deflate that he wouldn't accept her olive branch.
In the end, she tossed the lighter on the bed too, shooting him a disappointed look before she shuffled out of the bedroom, determined to get more sleep since there was obviously nothing she could do for him.
The vodka helped, and she slept straight through the night, finally feeling something close to human when she woke up the next morning.
She checked on the Joker and was delighted to see he'd sucked up another couple bags of blood of his own accord, drank all the kale juice, found time to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes, and was sleeping again.
Harley went for a run around the park, trying to burn off some of the restless energy that came with not being physically exhausted anymore. It helped a little bit but also served to remind her that she needed to eat again. When she returned to the apartment, she unchained Lee to cook for them, and they had another casual, friendly conversation over the few hours it took Lee to make chili con carne.
Harley was starting to wonder if there wasn't more to Lee Tompkins than what she projected. She wasn't just trying to stay on Harley's good side… she seemed comfortable. Like she enjoyed Harley's company, which was a unique experience.
Maybe it was loneliness or a desire for more excitement in her life, both of which Harley was happy to take advantage of. Lee seemed to be getting along with Ed, too, somehow managing to position herself as a calming influence to keep him quiet-ish.
But of course, the relative calm couldn't last forever. Harley chained Lee back up in the bathroom, magnanimously leaving her and Ed with some throw pillows and Lee's laptop—after unplugging the WiFi router, obviously— to keep them entertained. Then she confronted the Joker again and was bewildered to find him hobbling out of the bathroom with a cigarette pinched between his lips, wearing the blood-soaked tuxedo trousers from the fundraiser.
"What the fuck are you doing!" Harley demanded, unsure how to respond as she watched him lower himself creakily onto the bed, smoke billowing out of his nose as he worked through what must have been an excruciating effort considering the stab wound in his side. "You almost bled to death less than three days ago!" Harley groaned.
"Uh huh," he grunted, shooting her a dirty look as he collapsed back against the pillow. "Time to think about gettin' out of here, baby doll."
"J, you look like shit," Harley sighed, running a hand over her sweaty ponytail.
"So fuckin' what," he snapped roughly. "I know you're playin' house with the doctor and Ed—"
"Playing house?" Harley scoffed. "Have you lost your mind?"
"Depends on who ya ask," he sneered at her, stabbing the butt of his cigarette out on the wall and flicking it across the room.
Harley noticed how many cigarette butts were on the floor and realized just how much he was smoking to stave off boredom. She felt her blood boil as she grabbed the carton of cigarettes off the bed.
"You know these constrict your blood vessels, right?" she spat. "Your blood pressure is already obscenely low!"
"Harley…" he snarled, his eyes flashing dangerously as he glared up at her. It was a warning. Nagging was not appreciated.
"Spare me!" she barked, throwing the carton of cigarettes at his head. "Kill yourself if you want!" she nearly screamed, then turned and stormed into the en suite bathroom, letting him shout and growl after her, his voice growing more volatile since he couldn't follow her.
Harley turned on the shower to block him out and scrubbed her hands over her face, again trying to make a plan. The fact that he was walking around, even if he shouldn't have been, was something to be happy about. But that meant figuring out the next step, and at the moment, strategizing their way around Black Mask felt like more than what she was capable of.
The Joker wasn't completely wrong that she wanted to stay at the apartment playing house. It felt safe there with Lee and a more docile Ed—giving him access to TV had proved incredibly effective. At the same time, Harley was aching to get the fuck out of there, the tiny space making her feel like the walls were closing in. It wasn't time to leave yet, but that time was coming, and what horrified Harley was that instead of looking forward to getting out there and killing Roman Sionis, she was scared she couldn't do it.
Harley pulled off her clothes and climbed into the shower, sitting in the tub and covering her face with her hands. Second to the Joker nearly dying, this self-doubt was by far the worst thing to come of their dealings with Black Mask. Roman. It was like having the rug ripped out from under her, everything she thought she knew about herself torn apart, leaving her questioning who she was and what she was supposed to do.
She stayed in the shower until the boiler ran out of hot water, and then she stayed there a little bit longer, shivering under the freezing spray. Eventually, she turned it off and just continued to sit in the bathtub, wet and naked and miserable.
She numbly dragged herself out of the tub and pulled her dirty clothes back on, her wet hair dripping down the back of the gray lycra top.
Predictably, the Joker was sitting up in bed, smoking and looking paler than he had before Harley went into the bathroom, but she'd lost the will to nag him any further.
"We gotta talk," he said gruffly, his voice sounding stronger than it had yet, possibly due to the sheer force of his will to be stronger than he currently was.
Harley nodded weakly and sat on the end of the bed, waiting for him to speak, knowing he was shooting her one of his withering looks because she was being moody.
"Harley," he snapped impatiently, and when she looked up at him sulkily, he ran his tongue over his teeth, his patience wearing thin.
She stared at him blankly for a moment, then wrapped an arm around herself and raised her eyebrows expectantly, silently.
"Here's what yer gonna do," the Joker announced, his tone dripping in condescension. "Go find a payphone and call Lonnie's burner. Get him and Frost over here for a powwow so we can figure out what the fuck we're gonna do."
Harley nodded slowly and rose from the bed, but she didn't get very far before the Joker leaned forward with a grunt of effort and grabbed her forearm, his fingers like five sharp points digging into her skin. Harley met his eye, knowing it must have taken a massive amount of effort to sit up that quickly with a stab wound. But apparently, touching her was essential.
His chin tipped down so he was looking up at her, his expression grim.
"Harl," he said, his voice low and gravelly. "Are you crackin' up on me?"
Harley swallowed thickly, thinking that of the times he'd asked her this, this was the closest she'd come to saying yes. She licked her lips uncertainly, looking at the white bandages covering his ribs and his arms. She met his eye, the dark, predatory gleam she saw there reminding her that he was alive and not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. And so long as he was alive, Harley would do her best to stay sane and with him too.
"No," she promised him solemnly, trying to pull her arm away. He held on for a second longer, then let her go, apparently appeased with their arrangement.
Harley focused on the mission at hand instead of the many awful things that could have happened while they'd been hiding out. She pulled on Lee's sneakers and the MGGA hat, slipping a small paring knife in the waistband of her leggings just in case, and jogged about five blocks until she found an old payphone on the corner of Robinson Park.
It smelled of piss inside, but Harley hardly noticed as she picked up the phone, deposited some coins in the slot, and dialed Lonnie's burner from memory, dreading what was sure to be a very stressful conversation.
The phone rang, and rang, and rang, for longer than it should have considering Lonnie's sole purpose in life was to wait for the phone to ring with whatever the Joker needed from him.
And then it stopped. Someone answered, but they didn't speak.
Then there was a sigh that sent ice-cold terror flooding Harley's veins.
"Harley," Roman greeted her softly. "Is that you?"
Harley immediately hung up the phone, her eyes wide, shocked. Not just because Roman's voice was still reverberating in her ears, but because if Roman had Lonnie's phone, that meant he had Lonnie.
She started to get dizzy as a series of scenarios played out across her mind's eye, her ability to control the situation spinning completely out of her hands as Roman removed every opportunity she'd had to take charge. He was making them submit one way or the other. They had no resources, no backup, no weapons, no money, and the entire city was currently focused on hunting them down.
Harley started breathing hard until she was nearly hyperventilating, something like a panic attack setting in, and in a vain attempt to make it stop, she pulled back her fist and punched the glass wall of the phone booth. The glass cracked, and her knuckles split open, but the pain didn't register. She flung the phone booth door open, looked up and down the darkening street, then took off at a sprint into the park, desperate to do something to push away this unfamiliar, piercing fear.
This was not who she was.
The street lamps were coming on in the park as the sun set. They were electrical lights inside old fashioned gas lamps. Harley ran through the park, trying to focus on the blood pumping through her heart and her burning lungs, trying to wrestle back control until she couldn't go on any longer and staggered to a stop on rubbery legs.
She doubled over, heaving loud, wheezing breaths when she heard laughter.
"Hey, lady!" A young voice called out to her. "You wanna buy some BO!"
Harley turned to see two kids who couldn't have been older than fourteen lounging on a park bench and drinking beer. They were dressed like the youths on the Eastside, but their clothes were covered in expensive brands, and if they lived Uptown, they were no doubt from upper-middle-class families. The bad kids at the rich kid school. The kind of kids who never appreciated how good they had it and thought they deserved everything.
Harley squared her shoulders, her breathing still ragged as she walked up to them. They jumped to their feet, their youthful faces shining as they realized they might have found a customer.
"You're selling Blue Orchid?" Harley asked, looking between them.
"Yeah, lady," one of them smirked. "You interested?"
"Yeah," Harley said softly, pulling the small knife from the waistband of her leggings.
She kicked the kid on her right in the chest, hard enough to throw him onto his back, then launched herself at the one on the left before he had a chance to react. She stabbed him in the eye with the short blade, making him scream bloody murder as he fell backward, clutching his face.
The one she kicked sat up, his eyes wide and terrified as he started to scrabble to his feet but Harley was on top of him before he could get up. She grabbed the front of his shirt and punched him once to subdue him, then shoved him down and sat on his chest, punching him a second time for good measure. She grabbed the half-empty bottle of beer he'd dropped and smashed it open on his forehead, ignoring his screams as she got a handful of his hair and yanked his head back so his neck was exposed, then she stabbed him in the throat with the broken bottle.
It took more effort than a knife, and he got a few more screams out as she twisted the broken glass, finally slicing open his jugular beneath, a red spurt of blood telling her he was done for.
She jumped to her feet, turning around to find the screaming, panicking friend staggering away in a zig-zag, pleading for help. Harley sprinted after him and tackled him from behind, wrestling him onto his back, ignoring his wiggling and squealing and pleas for mercy. She ripped the knife out of his eye and started stabbing blindly at him. He got an arm between them, the knife piercing his hand and his face as Harley panted through her nose and gritted her teeth, finding a momentary sense of clarity as she gave in to her rage and her frustration, as she took control of the situation by taking these boys' lives from them.
But with that clarity came the knowledge that she couldn't be caught in the park, murdering one child while another died a few yards away.
Harley grabbed the boy's hair and pulled his head back just as she'd done to his friend, and she slit his throat in one long, jagged line, the dull knife making her arm strain as she forced the blade through his flesh.
Then she jumped to her feet and ran.
A/N: Oh…. Harley.
Harley, Harley, Harley.
So take a moment to absorb that.
Then rewind to the slightly nicer moment when Harley tells you about her and the Joker's relationship, which is one of my favorite scenes. We'll hear from him next week.
I wrote two fluffy one-shots for Tumblr prompts this week, 'Inflight,' which is just silly, and 'Drunk Tank,' which I actually quite like. Harley sees the Joker drunk for the first time. I'm Knit-Wear-It on Tumblr, and my Asks are always open.
Next: On Day 4 of hiding out at Lee's, the Joker decides it's time to do something productive. Meanwhile Frost does some sniffing around of his own.
Please comment & review - it means the world to me.
xo