II

Once I had him locked up and had adjusted his position to make sure he wasn't twisted into some blood-draining uncomfortable contortion, I settled one knee on the edge of the bed, leaning over him. I reached out and pressed my fingers to the base of his neck. There was a strong, steady pulse, and I was comforted by that, at least.

I frowned and settled further into my knee, reaching over and brushing the matted hair spilling over his face to the side and laying the back of my hand on his forehead. His skin was burning, of course, no change there, and I exhaled, blowing a stray strand of hair out of my face. The brain started boiling at a hundred and seven. Hopefully, I'd caught him in time.

Dutifully, I searched him, hands roving over him to identify and empty the many, many pockets he had tailored into the custom clothes. I found numerous loose bills, three closed-blade knives, a much larger knife sheathed at his hip, a plastic Batman action figure in his back pocket (great, they were merchandising now), paper clips, fingernail clippers, and a flask. A quick sniff of the contents of this last revealed that it held whiskey (I guess he was self-medicating), and I removed it and the other items to the desk.

I moved around for a few minutes afterwards, preparing the room for the interment and gathering some things that I would need. This accomplished, I curled up in the desk chair for some sleep that I knew I'd need. Once he was awake, I was in for a hell of a fight, and I knew I'd need some rest to keep up.

It was this very thought (combined, of course, with the discomfort posed by the desk chair) that kept me awake a while. This was the first time I had openly and knowingly defied him since I'd joined him. I had gone behind his back, drugged him, and made him a captive. If I knew anything about the Joker, I knew that he deeply resented a loss of his freedom. He wasn't just going to roll onto his back and let this pass, and the thought put an uncomfortable twisting in my stomach that was likely fear, but also felt a hell of a lot like excitement.

There's something wrong with you, I told myself for the millionth time. I'd long ago stopped being bothered by this fact, but I didn't see the harm in reminding myself of it every so often.

So what if he's pissed? I asked myself sternly. I couldn't live in a world where a paltry fever took the most electrifying man I'd ever known out of the game, and if he didn't stop and rest, that was exactly what would happen.

And if he recovers and tosses you out for staging this little mutiny?

I hesitated, feeling real horror strike me. This had become my life. Without him, without this place I'd carved out for myself, what was there? Pam, I guessed, but without him, what would be the point? The thought was almost enough to make me retrieve the key from where I'd hidden it in a matchbox in the desk and go free him from the cuffs then and there.

Wait, I commanded myself before I could cave. Yes, that would suck. Know what would suck more? If he died because you were too concerned about yourself to make him stop. Yes, I was worried about what would happen to me after this was over, but I was more concerned about him now. I'd deal with the consequences when they came.

This determination proved to be the comfort I was seeking, and I drifted into an uneasy sleep soon after.


I woke to a loud thud several hours later. My eyes flew open, feet hit the ground, and I looked straight in the direction where I knew the noise had come from.

J was on the floor and fully conscious, though his eyes were bleary. He crouched next to the bedframe, sitting on his heels and rattling the cuff fruitlessly against the frame as he tried to twist out. I doubted that the sedatives had fully left his system, doubted that his mind was as sharp as usual and that he entirely grasped what was going on. Weighed by dread but fueled by anticipation, I rose from the chair. "J."

He stopped immediately. He drew a ragged breath and then slowly, y turned his head. His eyes fell on me, his expression quickly jumped from understanding to rage, and his face split into a sickly, predatory grin that was not at all reflected by the cold burn in his eyes. "Harley," he purred.

I kept my voice light, non-confrontational. "Why don't you get back in bed?"

"Sure," he hissed. "But, uh, you see…" He shook his wrist, rattling the cuff. "I'm just a little uncomfortable locked up here. Wanna toss me the key?"

I folded my lips together and shook my head. He released a long sigh and hung his head to his chest. He glanced up again a split second later, eyebrows lifted, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he feigned patience. "Hey. Look. I know you like playing these… uh, these little games. I understand. I do. But Harley. I've got work to do. So. Unlock the cuffs… and let me go."

I crossed my arms and shook my head.

J slowly tilted his head to the side. "Ohhhhh," he sang darkly. "So that's how it's gonna be."

"Yeah," I said steadily. "That's how it's gonna be."

"Hmmmm," he hummed, lifting his arm and rattling the cuffs once more demonstratively. "Oh, look," he said with the facsimile of excitement, rubbing his free fingers over the duct tape protecting his forearm. "You've… you've thought it all through." He broke off into a coughing fit, the speech irritating his throat. At length, he recovered, gave me a dirty look as if I were to blame for his illness, and continued. "Protecting the arm… bed bolted to the ground…"

"You can blame yourself for that last one," I interrupted quickly. "It wouldn't have been possible if you hadn't picked this building for a hideout. What is this place, anyway?"

He pursed his lips and hesitated for a second, the gears in his mind turning more slowly than usual due to the drugs and the bone-weariness, and then pointed a shaking finger at me. "Don't… now, don't change the subject. We're talking about you locking me up." He slammed hard into the 'p' and cocked a brow. He was playing it cool, but I could see the smolder in his blackened eyes, could see the fury hiding behind them. I cleared my throat nervously.

"Yeah. Yeah, we are. So let me explain the situation."

"Oh, please."

"You're sick—really, really sick. You're running a fever, you're coughing up blood, and you're perfectly primed to collapse." I shrugged. "I figured it would just be easier to lock you up than to bust you out of Arkham after you collapse on a job and get caught again. That's where I'm coming from, just so you know."

He stared at me, expressionless. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and he settled from the crouch he'd been maintaining onto his haunches, stretching long legs in front of him and leaning back against the bed without any of his usual careless grace. He closed his eyes, tilted his head against the bedframe and softly said, "You're steppin' over a line here, sweetheart."

"I know," I said, feeling the pulse in my neck pick up as adrenaline heightened my heart rate.

"Oh-ho, oh, you know," he murmured quietly. "Well. Then why don't you GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE?" The wrathful shout emerged suddenly, ripping dark and deep from his chest, and I winced and flinched back. J almost never shouted, and even now, I didn't delude myself into thinking he'd really lost his temper. He raised his voice to terrify, to cow people into submission, but also to sort of ruffle up his feathers and show how dangerous he could be.

This was a feather moment, and it was halfway working. I bit my lip until it bled before I could talk myself into opening my eyes. His stare was fixed on me and his chest was rising and falling, shoulders heaving with the effort of pumping air into his congested lungs. The outburst, brief as it was, had cost him, and the sound of his labored breathing strengthened my resolve. I shook my head.

"I can't do that."

He stared for a second, and then gave a shake of the head as though he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "Run that by me again," he said, turning his head and cupping his hand around his ear.

Now I was getting mad. I put my hands on my hips and shook my hair out of my face. Would it kill him to just accept this without a fight? I thought, fixing him with an annoyed look. "You heard me. You are deathly ill. I'm keeping you here till the fever breaks. That's all there is to it."

His eyes widened—just for a split second, but it was there, a response to what he presumed to be a challenge. His lips parted, he smacked them thoughtfully and then looked up at me. "Wanna bet?"


An hour went by. I had beaten a silent retreat to my desk, where I took refuge, peeking over the top of my Cosmo at him every couple of minutes. He'd spent a while coaxing, cajoling, threatening, and straight-up ordering me to release him, but once it became apparent that I was completely unwilling to engage in further argument, he sat there and muttered to himself.

He did this at times when he was tired and discontent, would just talk out his thoughts. I'd been tuning him out, but when I heard the pronunciation of my abandoned title, I glanced back up and paid attention.

"Doctor's got claws, claws, claws," he was hissing. "Protector? Babysitter. Let me ask you, do I look like I need a babysitter? Apparently. Apparently, I can't tell if I'm too sick to work anymore. Oh, oh, oh," he sang, sighing loudly. "This world, I tell ya. Goin' to the dogs when a girl can, uh, cuff a guy to a bed and not even reward him for the inconvenience."

"Hey, if you want a reward, I'm down," I said, glancing up from my magazine.

His eyes lit up, fiendish inspiration prowling around inside of them. "Sure," he drawled. "Just come on over. Let's play."

I grinned humorlessly as he struggled to fight off another coughing attack. "Not that kind of reward. I'm not sure, but I think that sort of exertion right now might just tip you over into a coma, and no, I'm not willing to test that theory. Here." I got up, pulled a bottle from one of the many drawers, and walked around the desk, tossing it to him.

He caught it one-handed and examined it, then looked up at me, eyes hooded in mistrust. I couldn't really blame him, considering his recent unknowing encounter with the meds that were probably still in his system. "Pills."

"Ibuprofen," I elucidated. I'd all but emptied the bottle, leaving only one dose—I wouldn't put it past him to down the whole thing in a bid for liberation. I didn't intend to let that happen.

He sucked on the insides of his cheeks, then released them with a wet squelching sound. "This is my reward?" He sounded woefully disappointed.

"Look at it this way," I said optimistically. "It's a fever reducer. If your fever goes away, you're free."

"Always lookin' out for me, aren'tchya, Harley?" he asked. It wasn't a compliment. Still, he twisted the cap off and shook the two pills into his mouth.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I hadn't thought he would actually take them, and his docility with only a token complaint was encouraging. Lulled into a sense of security, I stepped forward as he waved the empty bottle impatiently at me, squatting and reaching forward to take it from him.

I saw the change in his face a split second before he wound back and spat the medicine directly in my face. I jerked back, falling on my bottom as he lost himself in a paroxysm of laughter that turned quickly into wet, hacking coughs, and I steadily wiped the saliva and pills from my face.

"Funny," I remarked caustically, feeling like an idiot. I should have known something was up. He wasn't going to make this easier for me than he had to, and the sooner I accepted that… "Look," I said, propping myself up on my heels, "you might not want to believe this, but you are not three years old, and this sort of behavior is not going a long way toward convincing me that you don't need a babysitter."

He simply chuckled weakly through his nose in response, having recovered somewhat. I got up and went into the adjoining bathroom to wash off my face and hands. When I returned, he was resting back against the bed again, heels together and toes pointed in opposite directions. I could read the lines of exhaustion in his face and so I wasn't surprised that he was taking it easy, but I'd had the opportunity to observe him in captivity before, and I saw the same expression on his restful face now as I had before.

He had a habit of appearing to surrender when he knew he was stuck, but I knew better. He was only waiting, waiting for an opportunity to get loose, and I would do well to be careful from this point onward.

I took my seat again carefully and picked up my magazine. I looked again, saw that he was sitting as far from the imprisoning headframe as he could, his long arm stretched out in the air, the cuff pressed against the heel of his loosely curled hand, and I felt another little pang of guilt. I hated myself for being the one to cage him.

"Can I get you anything?"

"If you… tossed me… the key… that'd be super," he drawled haltingly, head rolling on his neck from one side to the other and eyes flashing as he opened them for an instant.

"Sorry," I said, feeling smaller in the face of his weariness than in his wrath.

He drew a breath through his nose and chuckled, quietly and musingly. He opened his eyes again and focused them with an effort on me. I hoped he was getting close to sleep again. "No, you're not," he said simply. "You've talked yourself into thinking you're doing the right thing."

"Can you blame me?" I asked. It came out a bit defensive, and his eyes lit up in anticipation of the quarrel I had denied him earlier.

He was moving slower than usual, speaking slower and probably thinking slower, and he took his time replying, but at length the rebuttal came. "Let me… ah… clarify for you. Let's take a nice look at what's goin' on here up against what's gone on in the past. Now, see… our—uh, relationship…" He paused, eyes drifting back and forth as he reviewed the word, and with a decisive nod, he deemed it acceptable and continued. "It's basically a big ol' game of follow the leader." He put a hand to his chest as he spoke, indicating himself as the leader in question, and I didn't dispute the assessment, accurate as it was.

"So," he continued calmly, "what happens to that relationship—" the word was spoken sibilantly through tightly grit teeth this time—"when the leader says stop… and you go instead?"

I felt a tremble in my knees and set my feet more firmly on the ground. This was going exactly where I hadn't wanted it to go. He watched me, waiting for an answer, and I stammered over my response. "I… that's not… how it works."

"Oh?" A simple question, polite and genteel and completely loaded.

"Our relationship is not based on some sort of predetermined system," I said, voice strengthening as I started to find my feet in the argument. "If I've followed you in the past, it's because I felt like you knew where we were going. And you still do, and I'm not trying to wrest the steering wheel away, but I am pulling the emergency brake." J raised his eyebrows, possibly impressed at the transformation of the metaphor. I ignored the mocking expression and made to continue, but he cut me off.

"You're trying to take my freedom away. You're going straight back to your indoctrination, Harls—the second you don't like somethin', you lock it up. It's a little discouraging. I thought we'd moved past that."

"That is absolutely not what this is about!"

"Really?" He pulled an expression of comic mock surprise.

"Yeah, really! It's not a power struggle! I'm not, I dunno, getting gratification from this or thinking of staging a coup just because I managed to drug you and lock you to a bed. This is all about the fact that I'm worried about you, worried that you're going to whip this fever up into a wildfire that'll burn you down, and since you're not listening to reason, I decided to make my stance known in a way you'll understand."

"You don't worry about me going out every night, playing with fire and bullets," he was quick to point out.

"Of course I do!" I insisted fiercely. "And to make it worse, you take me with you less than half the time, so if you do get shot, I'm going to hear about it hours later when the boys make it home."

"Oh, whine, whine, whine," he said acerbically, but I could see from the watchful look in his eyes that he wasn't particularly annoyed at my concern; it was more likely that he was channeling his irritation at his imprisonment in an effort to rile me. I took a deep breath.

"I can't do a damn thing about your job, and if I could, I wouldn't, cause I'd be destroying part of what makes you you."

He mockingly touched his chest where his heart was. I ignored the scorn and pressed on. "This isn't about that. This is actually an attempt to help with what you do. Look at you, J, you can hardly stand."

"That's 'cause I'm cuffed to a bed," he rasped grouchily, but broke immediately into a coughing fit, proving my point.

"No. Uh-uh. What happens when you start coughing uncontrollably in the middle of a knife fight? Eyes shut, fingers go loose, and then you get stabbed. No. This is a problem I can fix, and I intend to." Still incapacitated by the attack, he hacked away into his fist and glared at me. I shrugged high and spread my arms. "Hey. Trust me, I don't like it any more than you do. Less, I should imagine, since I know as soon as you're free my life's going to be hell, because you're not gonna let this one go. Don't you think I know that? And I'm sorry. I just can't give you what you want this time."

He recovered finally. Drawing a few deep, shaky breaths, he steadied himself and then met my gaze. "No, Harley," he drawled as if he hadn't just coughed out half a lung. "No, you're not sorry. But you will be."


A/N - J is awake and I do not envy Harley her situation right now. Don't worry, folks; it all builds up and gets worse from here. It won't take quite as long to get the next chapter up- I'm on the downhill slope of the finals Everest. Tell me what you think, please? You don't have to be nice. I won't bite. Unless you want me to.