The world needs fear. At the base of every relationship, from a person to a person, from a government to its people, from a country to another country, it all comes down to fear. Fear of being overtaken, fear of invasion, fear of destruction, fear of being left completely and utterly alone. Even the most base of relationships comes down to it. A child fears their parents' wrath, their parents not loving them. We are civilized through fear, we grow up with fear, and soon we breath it in like air, until we don't even notice it. Society builds around fear, people live off of it. It is the man who can control fear, who can control the world. And right at that moment, fear had been liquidized and was in a little vile in Jonathan Crane's breast pocket.
The entire body changes its chemistry when it is afraid. Muscles tense, breathing fastens, adrenaline and all shorts of chemicals get pumped into the body and the brain. The mind completely clenches and waits for it to be over. He remembers the fear he had of the tormentors in his life. He remembers the school bullies and thinks himself silly he allowed what they did to him to go on as long as it did. But then there were family fears, parental, authorities, all having the power to cut him off at any moment so that he may fall into the abyss he came from. He remembers that fear. He remembers stopping and breathing and overcoming that fear. He remembers how good it felt, when they hung him in that cornfield, to get down, and chase them through the night with that mask on his face.
Now he has guns in his face, mob bosses and gangsters all screaming in his face, but he has no fear. He smiles his little smile, because he knows he is unafraid. Where fear was, there's now but a morbid curiosity. He is liberated from the game all others are playing, he has no boss to be fired from, no wife to appease, no mother to submit to, there is no fear of disappointment. There is but his curiosity to fill. And oh, was Gotham filling it.
Then there was this girl. Romance, like fear, alters the brain, releasing all sorts of nasty chemicals. And when she's there, with her black lips and her curves poking through those costumes and corsets he feels the brain firing up. He hates it.
That girl has tears rolling down her cheeks, but she makes no noise. He stands in the dark, by the window, the room's a mess, an obvious attack, gun holes in the walls, blood on the floor. She's got a bag and she's stuffing it with everything she can find. He looks out the window and sees that Bat symbol glowing on the clouds.
"Harley…I think he's out there tonight."
"He's out there every night." She snaps.
She kicks down a closet door, and there hanging is a purple jacket. She grabs it from its hanger and sniffs the inside. She sighs.
"He never showers." She looks up.
Then she starts putting the jacket on.
"It doesn't match the red." John says, rather disappointed that she was beginning to take his appearance even more.
"That's not what I wanted anyway."
She pulls out a trunk from the closet, opening it up to reveal a gun and a silencer. She looks up at John, the light from the window seeping in onto his face. She puts the silencer on and turns back to the closet.
"Do you know how to shoot a gun?" She asks.
She fires down into the closet.
"Um, sure." He says.
She kicks down the lower bit of the wall, and pulls out an even bigger trunk.
"Come here."
He obeys almost without thinking, getting on his knees beside her.
"Do you know how to shoot a gun?" She asks again.
She opens the trunk, and its filled to the brim with black, shining, guns and bullets. He's taken aback, she grabs his wrists and shoves a heavy gun in his hand. He looks up at her, her eyes could shoot right through him like lasers. He starts to nod.
"Good." She says.
"Wait, we have to slow down."
"No, we don't, you just said he's out tonight."
"Yeah, but how do we even know what happened here? It's the Joker! He's probably fine."
She slams the trunk shut and stares up at him with those awful eyes again.
"Someone knew he was escaping, they were here, waiting for him. And if he had won, their bodies would be hanging in the bathroom over the bath tub, where he would be experimenting with some new drugs he's making." She said all in one breath. "Because they're not, I know he lost. And it's rare he loses, but he was probably still laughing from escaping, didn't notice the obvious signs before he walked in the door. If he was dead, the world would know by now." She shakes her head. "He's not dead."
"So, what? You're going to grab as many guns as you can, and find him?"
"Basically."
"That's…insane!"
She gets up, smoothly, those curves caressing the trunk, making the air around her hot, her blue eyes glowed in the dark. Her black lips curled up into a smile.
"I know!" She was excited. "This is what I have to do, John, I have to do something crazy! In this town, full of crazy people!"
He stared at her, his lens blocking his eyes. His mask was tucked beside the vile of fear in his breast pocket. He wanted to put it on then. He didn't want to disappoint her with his apprehension. Because she was like him. She was the only one there was like him. And she would never be his. She looked like him, in that moment, like the Joker. With her black lips like scars, her black eyes, and that purple coat draped over her. She looked like him.
"I have to find him." She told him again. "You don't have to help me."
"You and I are the only sane people in Gotham." He said. "We have to help each other."
Her insane smile went away, replaced by a sane one, fully comprehending the idea of friendship, the value of another person's life. She kicked the trunk then, started filling her bag with all the guns.
"You and me, Jono." She laughed through her teeth. "I thought I was done with friends."
"Me too."
She was loading every gun she put in her bag. He began watching her, and mimicking her, filling the guns at a much slower rate. He stood back for a moment and thought how silly this whole thing was. Here they were, two perfectly sane people, though she had clown make up on, and he wore a burlap sack every once and a while, and they were off to go save one of the cruelest criminals there were in the world. He wondered for a moment if he should help her, Joker after all had so much blood on his hands. But then he remembered how cruel people are, and how their kindness only comes in the face of greater cruelty. How the sacrifice of a few lives brings out the best in the remaining survivors. And how fear increases incredibly.
He valued human life very little, and felt every person in some way deserved to die. Even him, even her, even the Batman. In some little way they had done some damnable evil, and death was only inevitable. The tormentors he had through his life only supported his theories. Human suffering, human fear is the source of all good.
"We'll go through the crooks first, you can help with that, that's who you deal to. We'll go through them, because one of them is bound to know something from a friend of a friend, then we'll move up from there."
"Any theories right now?"
"Who knows? Every criminal in Gotham hates the Joker."
"And they fear him too."
"Fear should've protected him from this."
"There two reactions to fear. Cowering in the corner, and fighting back. Maybe someone finally decided to fight back."
She started emptying gas onto every surface of the room when they were done. He watched her in the dark, the bag heavy with lead. She wiped her hands on that purple coat and lit a match. They walked out back to an abandoned junk yard where they found a car she had the keys to. She took off her hat as she stepped into the driver's seat. The building was bright with fire, he watched it with some horrible enjoyment, and then she sped off.
He watched the city lights go by. He didn't ask where she was going, she seemed to know what to do and he didn't want to question her. She was already a more capable criminal than he, though she was learning from the best. He didn't want to become a criminal, at least, he didn't set out intending this to happen. He wanted money, he wanted experiment subjects, he wanted to know what fear was. Fame was not very important, perhaps that's why he wasn't very afraid when the police found him and dragged him off his horse and paramedics mended his face. He wasn't saddened by the loss of his career, merely frustrated that now it would all the more difficult to get subjects and his chemicals. Now he had a bag full of guns in his lap. He still wasn't afraid, that was the strange thing. He felt safe with Harley holding up the guns, all he had to do was support her.
His eyes wandered away from the lights back to her, with her beautiful eyes showing off what a mind her skull encased. She was like him, and that brought so much comfort. He suddenly became aware that once the Joker was found, she would leave him. He frowned at the thought, and suddenly became disgusted with her. He scoffed and turned away, unable to look at the thing that had convinced him to help her leave him.
She must've noticed because she began to speak.
"I read all your papers in college." She told him. "They were…enlightening. I was very sad to hear what had happened to you."
"Sad?"
"I thought you'd gone crazy. That was…before I understood madness. And I was sad."
"Why?"
"Because you seemed brilliant, and kind. To have that go to waste in a cell, I couldn't stand it. And then I wondered why you'd gone crazy, and I was very afraid it was your work in Gotham, since I was transferring there."
"My experiments pre-date Gotham by many years."
"I don't doubt it. It's just…good to be working with you, Dr. Crane."
She smiled with those black lips.
"Does Joker allow you friends?"
He saw through her attempt to distract him, change the subject. She stared out of the windshield for a long while before laughing.
"What do you want me to say, John?" She said.
"If he doesn't love you, then he should at least allow you the comfort of friends."
Her smile vanished, and she stared out to what was in front of them.
"John, shut up."
He looked away.
"I'm sorry." He said.
"You must be one lonely sicko, you know that? Latching onto a girl like me. You didn't have a mother, did you, Dr. Crane? Your father didn't give you any love, and you lacked any serious relationships all through out your life, didn't you?"
She was diagnosing him, showing him how easy it was for her. But then he knew what she feared.
"There's so many awful things I could conclude about you based off of your love for a complete and utter destructive psychopath who wears clown face and hobbies himself in killing people all for the attention of another psychopath who dresses up like a bat."
She grows quiet, like he knew she would. But then he looks back at her.
"But I don't. I refrain from judgment. Because I want you to be my friend."
"Don't you think this friend idea, is childish?"
"Are you calling me childish?"
He looks out the window.
"Sometimes I forget there's a world outside Gotham. The buildings block the view of the outside world. It is its own microcosm, where good and evil meet and match up, and we're all left in the middle. To figure it out on our own. There's a man out there, something awful happened to him, now he thinks he can destroy fear from this world by becoming it." He shakes his head. "And then there's your man, he uses it well, but I don't think he cares to understand it."
"You should write a book." She grins.
"Heh."
"Have you ever been in love, Dr. Crane?"
He looks at her.
"I thought so, once or twice."
"What happened?"
"If I was normal, a woman would have found me, and settled with me by now. I'd have a house, a job, a family with her. But I'm not normal, and it is rare to find someone to love in this unfortunate business."
She laughs.
"When did you stop trying?"
"The day I became unafraid."
"I love him, you know, I don't care what you make of it, just…know it. And I'm scared. I'm so scared for him."
"Stop the car."
"What?"
"Stop the car!"
She stops and he runs outside. She starts after him, fearing someone would see him. He runs into a park where he feels the bark of random trees, finding one he's looking for. He goes to his knees and begins digging.
"When it became apparent that I may be caught, when he started coming around, I began to plan for the day I'd leave a jail cell with nothing. I planted my plants around the city, I put extra formula and --"
He pulls out a nice little hand-held scythe from the ground. He hands it to her as he unearths a little box.
Back in the car he revealed it was a box full of his fear toxin. He unbuttoned his shirt, which made her look at him once or twice oddly. But he was refilling his canister which hid beneath his clothes.
"A scythe?" She finally asked.
"I grew up in farm country." He explained.
She laughed, thinking he was making a joke, but he looked at her oddly, which told her it was the truth.
"You. On a farm."
"Not on a farm, by a farm."
"That almost explains the scarecrow motif."
"Scarecrows scared me, and then someone made me one."
They drove into the slums of the city, the darkest of the dark corners, where Batman surely hid, where someone had taken her Joker. They had collected their weapons, they were ready. They parked in front of a bar first, where he knew that poker and hookers and drug dealers lived in its basement. She stopped the car and before he was able to put on his mask she grabbed his arm, and showed him a Clown mask typical of the Joker's crew.
"Put this on." She said.
"What? No." He was offended.
"Do it, so they won't know it's you."
"I want them to know it's me."
And so they made their grand entrance. She still wore his purple suit jacket, and he wearing his sack. She kicked the bouncer into the bar, where he fell to the floor. The bar grew silent as she walked in, her corset tight on her chest, her hat falling down to her fine shoulders. She held an oozy and a smaller gun with a silencer on it. She lifted both to her chest and smiled at everyone. He walked in behind her, silent, his footsteps not making a sound.
"What the fu--!?" Someone came at her.
He moved her out the way and shot fear into the man's eyes and lungs. He fell over and started screaming and spasm. John grabbed him and dragged him away from her, and went to the center of the room, so all of them could see the scared man and what John did to him. The man screamed and finally silenced himself, opting to grab John's leg and cry.
Harley started laughing.
"You're in trouble now, boys." She said. "You know you are when two super villains walk into your bar."
Super villains, he had never thought of it that way.
The bar was dimly lit, too dim for his tastes. A red glow shined in from the neon sign outside. It shined on Harley's skin, and made her look that much more frightening. Her heels made a clank with each of her steps.
"A few nights ago, my Puddin' escaped from Arkham. I know someone had a hit on him, and I know someone attacked him. I'm looking for that person, and I'm looking for Mister J." She said.
She seemed eerily comfortable talking to all these men, rapists, murderers, drug-addicts, pimps, everything. But she commanded that room. All the eyes were on her until the frightened man on John's leg started to grip too tight. He tried to kick the man off, stumbling as he did, looking rather silly. This broke the tension and the fear she had so eloquently been inducing. For John stumbled over, and fell as the crying man wouldn't let go of him.
Someone turned over a table over John, grabbed him and pulled him up by his jacket.
"Isn't this the drug-dealer who's been screwing us over?" The man asked with a grin.
"Hey!" Harley screamed.
"He's just a freak in a mask."
Someone took a swing at Harley, she dropped a gun. John kicked away and fell back to the ground, he rose to his feet and someone punched him in the face. He looked back and saw another punch coming his way, but then a bullet went through that man's head and he fell over dead.
"I'm going to ask you only ONE MORE TIME!" Harley screamed.
He was in the car, a bag of ice from the barman on his eye. She was driving to the next bar. She looked over and started laughing.
"Don't laugh at me." He said.
But she couldn't help it.
"Don't laugh at me!" He yelled.
She stopped and touched his arm.
"Hey, it's all right. No harm done. You know, except for that guy I shot."
She giggled but he didn't even look at her. His mask was at his feet in the car. He wasn't a super villain, he was a psychologist. He didn't fight, he drugged and observed. She pushed him into something he wasn't prepared for.
"Jono." She said. "You should know how to defend yourself. At least know how to throw a good punch. I can teach you. You know, if you want."
He didn't answer.
He just remembered all the other times he'd been punched in the face and all the times he'd put cold meat from the freezer on the wounds. He didn't look at her, he was embarrassed, ashamed. She had assumed he was something he wasn't. He had somehow failed her expectations.
"I'm sorry." He said.
"What? No need to be sorry!" She rubbed his back. "You live, you learn, right?"
He remembers the last girl he disappointed. Back in the classroom when everyone was telling her want an awful waste of skin he was. Then she left him in a cornfield, hung to a stick like a scarecrow.
The next bar he just stood by her as she maimed and destroyed with ease, and he enjoyed watching the fear in people's eyes. She brought down a man twice as big as her, and planted him on the ground. She broke a finger.
"I have just broken this man's finger. Where is the Joker?"
Then she broke the rest of the fingers, one by one.
They continued the process for several hours. They followed lead after lead, finally getting rumors that began to grow into common knowledge. There was rumors of a heated dispute between a few friends on what to do with the Joker, how to punish him for making fools of everyone else. She went on, breaking bones, becoming the seductive monster that men feared. He couldn't take his eyes off of her sometimes, when she had a man by his hair, pushed him to his knees and put a gun to his head. She was a warrior fighting for her lover that wasn't even really her lover. A man she loved so dearly and he didn't care about her one bit.
"Does he ever tell you how pretty you are?"
And finally she had a big mob boss on his back, a gun to his throat, and one of his bodyguards was running around, screaming about spiders that were coming out of his mouth. John stood and watched as she pressed it deeper in his throat and he finally coughed out a name.
"Nigma."
Edward Nigma, The Riddler, a deranged man with a huge ego, a need for attention and a sick pleasure in riddles. Harley scoffed.
"Oh, that trash." Is all she said.
She walked out of the bar and he followed closely. The dawn was breaking. Batman was gone, and so were they. He bought a cheap motel room for them because Harley said "he had a friendlier face," and it seemed she was right. It was a cheap overnight place, it cost only seventy dollars which was actually most of what they had stolen. He was apologizing because the only room they had available was a one bedroom, with on queen size bed. This didn't seem to bother her, for she looked back over her shoulder and told him they'd just have to share the bed then.
For some reason this startled him briefly. She didn't mind sleeping beside him because she knew if he tried anything she'd break something of his. He wished she was more bashful and almost hoped she'd change her mind and make him sleep on the floor. But she didn't, and the bed was comfy. They would sleep for the day, and continue that evening. They'd wake and order room service then leave like nothing ever happened.
She took a shower before him, and he watched the news as it began to talk about their recent escape and escapades. Later around eight am they were both sound asleep to each side of the bed. Though he didn't sleep well, as he never did in beds that were not his own. He flipped over and woke up and saw her beautiful blonde hair covering the pillows and comforter. Then she turned over and slept some more, and so did he.