A/N: Thank you so so much guys! 103 reviews?! You're all absolutely fabulous, you superstars. This is a slower paced chapter, but we're diving straight back into madness in the next. I hope this doesn't disappoint, but I felt like it was needed here. It's been re-written four times. FOUR!

Anyway, please enjoy :)

.
.

Chapter 14 – Little Correction

A few days had passed since the breakout and Joker had worked day and night, he'd called in all sorts of favours from all sorts of people to try and track down exactly where his son had gone. So far there had been leads in Texas, California and Florida. They couldn't all be true, but he didn't have time to figure it out before the baby disappeared again. He didn't know what Waller and Flag were playing at, but he'd figure it out. He had to for Harley's sake. For his own.

She'd slept for an entire day, he had woken her to try and get her to eat and drink but she just fell back to sleep. He knew she hadn't slept since she'd given birth, but she had to eat. He'd let Ivy try, but Harley just rolled over in the bed and closed her eyes again. Two days later and all she'd eaten was half an apple and four glasses of water and Joker was fed up of it. She was going down a dangerous spiral and he had to stop that.

Joker walked from his office to the bedroom and saw Harley shivering in the bed. Ivy had gone with Frost to get some supplies and that gave Joker some space and time to try and end this ridiculous hunger strike. He walked over to his harlequin and he stroked a hand through her hair. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked into his eyes for a moment before she looked at the empty cot beside the bed.

"Harley, get up, wash and eat," Joker told her.

"I don't want to," Harley replied quietly.

"Do not test me," Joker said lowly. "I am the only one doing anything to find the boy."

"You won't let me do anything-"

"Get up right now!" Joker shouted. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her from the bed. "I will not have this pathetic, childish behaviour anymore." He watched as she collapsed to the floor and fought his urge to pull her back to her feet by her strands of bleached white hair that were still tangled around his fingers.

"Puddin', please I can't… I need to-"

"No, you need to look at yourself in the mirror," Joker snarled. "Look at yourself, you're a pitiful excuse for the Queen."

"I just want to sleep," Harley whined.

"You've slept for days," Joker hissed. He scooped her up in his arms and took her to the bathroom. He sat her on the toilet whilst he ran the water in the tub. He stripped off his clothes and then removed hers before he picked her up again and sat in the bath with her. The water brought some much needed warmth to her extremities and he cupped some water in his hands and trickled it over her shoulders and hair. Eventually Harley laid back against his chest and relaxed.

"I just miss him so much," Harley whispered. "I feel so empty, so… lost."

He didn't reply, he didn't really want to hear what she was saying, but he wasn't going to stop her. He didn't want to hurt her but he needed her to snap out of this.

"He was safe before he was born, no one could pull him from me," Harley choked and closed her eyes tightly. "I had… I had everything. He wasn't gonna hurt me, or manipulate me into bein' someone else. He wasn't gonna pit my emotions against my head, or make me choose between people I loved. He was just my baby."

"Harley, we're going to get him back," Joker said quietly as he began to wash her with a very soft sponge and soap.

"But what if we don't? What if that was the only time I was ever going to be a mother? What if that's it?" Harley whimpered. "It's my fault, I shouldn't have-"

"No, you shouldn't have trusted the dear doctor with our child, but you did and here we are," Joker huffed and he took the sponge down her body, cleaning her carefully. "Even if you hadn't have given him to Drake, they would've taken him. You weren't exactly mobile, I should've gone with him to start with. I just… I didn't want to leave you."

"Puddin'?"

"There's something wrong with me, Harls, Princess, Pumpkin Pie," Joker told her. "Something very wrong. I chose you over our child."

Harley understood what he meant, but it still cut like a knife to hear him say it. He didn't make her his priority, he never had. But for a few short minutes, to protect her from more pain and to help her recover, he had chosen Harley over their son and he had paid the worst price. She rubbed her cheek against the "ha ha ha" tattoos on his shoulder and held her breath for a few seconds. She knew he would've wanted to find a sick pleasure in her pain, but he hadn't.

"Puddin', no don't-" Harley started as she felt the sponge go between her legs.

"When has a bit of blood stopped me, hmm?" he said slowly. Harley screwed her eyes shut as he started to clean her there as well. He was gentle, sensitive, he listened to her breathing and whenever her breath hitched, his fingers became lighter and eventually she relaxed.

"It's sore."

"Of course it's sore, you halfwit," Joker scolded. "You pushed a baby out of there."

They fell into silence as Joker finished washing her and he drained the bath before he refilled it with fresh hot water. She curled against his chest like a kitten and his hand stroked up and down her back. She was so fragile compared to him, her mind and her body. She was so small but capable of creating so much and he couldn't even admit it to himself that he was slightly in awe of that. He was the creator, he was her god, but she could create things too. Only for him, only in his image but she could make things. She'd twisted Samantha Drake and then brought their child into the world. But she was self-destructive, anything went wrong and she pressed that big red button in her mind to destroy everything that she had. It was the thing he thrived on, that never knowing whether she was just unpredictable or whether she was actually trying to get herself killed. He wound her in from the edge and set her up to fall again and again. It was fun toying with someone so devoted to him, he had a worm on a hook and that worm just didn't care whether or not it was eaten.

He'd made the ultimate decoy, scapegoat, distraction and business asset in Harley Quinn. He should never have gotten attached and it had gone badly wrong from that point onwards. He didn't care for anyone but the Bat and himself. But Harley… oh Harley. The mistake, the problem, the thing that got him in trouble more than anything and she hadn't taken no for an answer. She'd wriggled her way into his home, his string of henchmen, into his bed and finally into his brain. Something so resilient about the little girl he was holding as the bath filled with water again, something so fantastic, so chameleon-like and she changed her colours and abilities to fit in with anything he asked of her. So he took advantage, of course he did. What else would he do with someone like her? She put up no fight, she took all he poured on her and, for some insane reason, she thought he did it because he loved her.

He didn't.

But he did.

He didn't want to.

But then the child had arrived and he had changed things in a split second. For the first time in this lifetime, Joker had loved something else. It had been a pure, fiery and protective love, one that's only purpose was to make him defend his child and he had fallen at the very first hurdle. He'd held the baby's head as he'd entered the world, he'd been the one to hold his child first and he had given the baby to Harley. He'd been the one to greet the boy, his tattooed hands the first comfort the boy had ever known and it was those tattooed hands that should have protected him from Waller.

His feelings for his son were more confusing than his feelings for Harley. No, he didn't have feelings for Harley, he had chemical reactions to her presence and that… he denied that to be anything other than a biological involuntary response to someone he'd had so much sex with. So for him to feel an immediate and deep feeling for such a small creature, for something that weighed 7lbs maximum, was ridiculous. In a different life, he had been excited if not terrified what having a child would've brought, he had been waiting for so long and then he'd lost the child and its mother. That night was the night of the Ace Chemicals raid that had ended with his bleached skin, green hair and a laugh that sent Gotham into a state of shock.

The night that the joke had started.

"I lost him too, Harley," Joker finally said and turned off the water as it threatened to over flow.

She couldn't speak.

"I lost our son too," Joker repeated and he stretched the tendons in his neck.

"I'm sorry," Harley whispered and closed her eyes as more tears started to fall. He pressed a kiss into her wet hair and tightened his grip around her body as one single tear slid down his cheek. He washed her hair and rinsed shampoo and conditioner out before they just sat together in the tub. His arm went under her knees, her arms looped around his neck and her face pressed into his neck. His other arm went around her back and kept her pinned against him as they sat in silence.

They were clinging onto all they had left.

Each other.

What a bitter pill. The one person he didn't want to want or need and she was all he had.

After an hour or so, the water was cold and skin pruned, Harley was asleep again but the Joker showed no signs of moving. It was then that Frost and Poison Ivy had returned and were putting away whatever supplies they had decided upon.

"Harley!" Ivy called in the bedroom.

"Boss?" Frost asked.

"In the bathroom," Joker said as loudly as he dared. Ivy and Frost opened the door and looked in. Frost immediately diverted his gaze but Ivy just stared. "She's relaxing, what do you want?"

"We got enough food to last us a year," Frost grunted. "I'm gonna go make sure the boys ain't doin' nothin' stupid."

"Is she okay?" Ivy asked.

"We're both fine," Joker answered sharply. "Just go."

.

.
.

Samantha Drake stared into her coffee blankly and she tried to process everything that had happened over the past few days. She had been knocked unconscious in Arkham after Harley had given birth and taken by Waller to some kind of safe house. She didn't know where she was, just that she wasn't in Gotham any longer. She was sat opposite Amanda, but she didn't feel intimidated by the woman, she felt pity for her. She was a victim of the world Harley had described.

"I want to go back to Arkham," Sam said.

"Miss Drake, you're not going back to Arkham asylum until Quinn and Joker are arrested or on death row," Amanda replied flatly. "It's not safe for you. We can only assume that they will return in the next week and destroy the hospital in search for you."

"But why are you protecting me?" Sam asked, for what felt like the hundredth time.

"You helped dig out Harleen a few times, you got some really interesting information out of her," Waller answered. "You are a target due to how close you became to Harley."

"I was her doctor," Sam lied. "And only her doctor. You have to build a professional relationship with your patients, it was only that, nothing else."

"That's debateable, Miss Drake," Amanda smiled. "But, you have given us a lot of information about the clowns and as a thank you, I'd like to keep you here until they've been recaptured and sentenced for their latest crimes."

"What's going to happen with the baby?"

"He'll be placed with a family," Waller said. "They'll raise him as a normal child and we will monitor for any strange behaviour. We hope we'll never have to step in. Do you have any more questions?"

"Why didn't you get the GCPD involved at all?" Sam asked. "They didn't have anything in their files about Harley's pregnancy?"

"The GCPD would only have made it more difficult for us to control this situation," Amanda shrugged. "They would've blundered around trying to put her in Blackgate prison and it's much more difficult for me to get involved in a prison like that. Arkham Asylum is… a special place. Jim Gordon and the GCPD would have stood in the room and told Joker and Harley what was going to happen. As you know, instead they handed over the child willingly and lost him."

"You abducted her baby," Sam told Amanda.

"And you think the child would've been safe with either of them?"

"Harley was making good progress," Sam replied.

"No, she was manipulating you, that's what she does," Amanda said slowly. "She takes a mind and she twists it, she uses people's goodness to her own agenda and she did a number on you. You see, I knew what was going on when I saw you and Harleen before she gave birth. You were far too quick to be kind that you couldn't see the venomous snake under those blue eyes."

"Harleen is a good person, I met her a lot," Sam admitted. "She's intelligent, eloquent, kind and a very capable doctor. Harley… Harley is what she is."

"And that's a criminal who likes causing pain and misery to please her abusive boyfriend," Waller smirked. "She wouldn't think anything of killing you. You're just a pawn."

"No, that's not true," Sam said carefully. "I helped her."

"Your key card? Do you think I'm as stupid as Quincy Sharpe and Jeremiah Arkham?" Waller chuckled. "That went magically missing after one of your last sessions, a session you would've had to us your key card to access. You set off the metal detector three times in the last week and somehow managed to pass it off as a belt buckle, but you and I both know it was a knife or a weapon. You were going to help her, but only to escape, Miss Drake. That on its own is a crime with a heavy prison sentence."

"No, I lost my card-"

"One of the Joker's associates used your key card to let the Joker out of his maximum security cell two days after the birth of the baby," Amanda continued. "They then used it to get into the solitary confinement-"

"They put her in solitary?" Sam barked.

"There was an explosive charge which destroyed the wrought iron gates, a few dead orderlies and one Batman called upon to track them down," Amanda finished. "You have the blood of the people they killed on your hands, Samantha."

"You took her baby, what did you think was going to happen?" Sam challenged angrily. She looked at Amanda incredulously. How could anyone think that Harley would take that sitting down and remain calmly in her cell? No one would just watch their child being removed and do as their told.

"Wake up, Samantha," Amanda said seriously. "She had you pegged for a fool from the moment she laid eyes on you. How many rules did you bend for her? Hell, you gave her free roaming time with Poison Ivy. She didn't have to look far for her get out pass. We just had to get there first."

"We assumed you'd give her a day or two with the child," Sam mumbled.

"She's clever, but she's not always smart," Amanda replied.

"That's where you're wrong."

"Really? She thought we'd give her an escape route? No chance," Amanda sneered. "You walked straight into her poisonous little trap. You know the Joker did exactly the same to her, right? You know he pulled her strings like a puppet."

"You're lying."

"No? How do you think he got her to bring him a machine gun?" Amanda said and she stood up. She picked up her briefcase and took the last chocolate muffin from the table.

"They'll come for him," Samantha told her.

"I'm relying on it Sam," Amanda grinned.

"All she's ever wanted was to be loved," Sam said quietly. "All she wanted was to be a mother to that baby, he was her second chance, her redemption and you've taken that from her. From Joker."

"What do you know?" Amanda demanded.

"Nothing," Samantha lied.

"I'll give you a few days to think about that, Drake," Amanda snorted. "You're going to have a psychiatrist visit every day until we undo what Harley's done to you."

"I love her."

"And then we'll see what you really have to say, good day, Doctor," Amanda said and walked out of the house. She would get Sam to betray the Joker and Harley, she would get something from the doctor to use against the clowns.

.

.

The Joker stood over the empty crib in the room Frost had prepared for his son. The room had been painted a very pale mint green so it was almost just off-white, light blue, lilac and pink accessories dotted around the room. A tall changing table with a clown-covered changing mat in one corner, a dresser and a comfortable looking chair in the other. The view from the window was stunning, one of the best from any aspect of the club, except his master bedroom. The lights of Gotham twinkled in the night, shining like stars and from this high up, the sounds of sirens wouldn't be loud enough to disturb anyone.

Joker wrapped his fingers around the edge of the crib and looked down at the purple and green baby grow at the bottom, resting on the mattress pad like the baby should be doing. He'd never felt this angry or let down and it was all he could do to not destroy everything in this room. Their boy would be coming home, their boy would be here, but right now it was just a taunt.

"Puddin'?" A quiet voice asked from the doorway. His fingers gripped onto the rail of the crib tighter and he closed his eyes.

"Go away, Harley."

"No."

"Excuse me?" Joker said angrily.

"Come back to bed," Harley replied gently. "You need to sleep."

"I don't-"

"You do," Harley sighed. "Please, puddin'. How are we going to get him home if the one with the brains and the ability is half dead because he didn't rest? I clearly can't be trusted to do anything right."

That cut deeper than it should. He usually like her self-esteem low, it made her easy to control and manipulate. It made her easy to mould into whatever he needed and she would throw herself in front of the GCPD for him. But for some reason, that really hurt. He put his arm out and Harley walked slowly into his side. She looped her arms around his waist and pressed into him. His hand came to her waist and he rested his chin on top of her head.

"He should be here."

"I know," Harley whispered gently. He finally looked at her and saw she'd been crying again, her eyes red and sore and her make up smudged down her face. He growled in his throat and jerked his head to the side and clenched his jaw. No one upset Harley this much, apart from him, and Amanda Waller and Samantha Drake would find that out.

"Come on," Harley prompted. "You've been here for hours." She felt him move and he walked away from her into their bedroom. She looked at the baby-grow and touched the material for a few seconds before her heart and soul clenched painfully and she went after her green haired maniac. She watched him pull his shirt and black pants off, leaving him in just his boxers. She let her eyes travel over his body and she wondered just what he would look like with their child on his decorated arm.

He'd be beautiful.

Harley followed him and took off her black and red silk dressing gown. She'd put on a long silk nightdress and she let her hair down before she climbed into the bed. He normally didn't like being too close to her during the night, but she hadn't even gotten comfortable when his long arms pulled her back against him. He whispered words that she longed to hear much more than he would ever say them, but he whispered them so quietly that she almost thought she'd mistaken them.

"I love you, Harley."

"I love you too, J."

.
.

A/N: It's gotta be said in this story somewhere, right?

Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, it's called Toxic Love for a reason. Mad Love, Bad Love.

Please review! :D