Like a cloak the Joker tore off his disguise. As if he was parting his ways with the very darkness, a Batman costume fell to the floor below, and there stood the Joker in all his glory. A pure smile, eyes wide open and so very focused on only her, a purple suit and everything. He was there, standing in front her, perfectly fine. He held up his arms and took a bow, and began to clap for himself and laugh for himself.
"You did so wonderful!" He told her. "I didn't think it'd be that good!"
Her knees buckled below her, that one scream took everything else she had out of her. She couldn't even look up at him, she stared at the floor. She looked a fraction of herself. Pathetically wet from her own tears, make up a day old smearing all over her face. Her hair still in patches of green. A torn and used up suit. Now all she could do was look to the ground.
It took him a moment to realize she was so silent.
"Hm?" He bent down to her, and lifted her chin. "Harley?"
Her lip quivered and her eyes shook.
"Was that you screaming?" The Joker asked.
He was so happy, so very happy, but she was too tired to even fake a smile for him.
She had once said to Batman she remembered like it was a far off memory, she had told him once that the Joker seems only able to remember a day perfectly and must put forth an effort to remember more than that, and usually doesn't have the focus to. It wasn't a memory problem but a mental, that he could just not handle more than a day. And so each day he was something different, he was only reacting to what was happening then and there.
But he always loved her, she hoped, that was the constant despite himself, that was it. But if he loved her, if he even somewhat cared about her, how could he have done this?
"Why'd you scream, kiddo?"
She tried to make words come out of her mouth, but merely noises were made. She was fighting screaming and crying and trying to speak all at the same time. She began to heave and shake and Joker sat down beside her and smiled.
"I did what you asked, kid." He said. "You told me remember? I didn't at first, but I did remember! I thought you were joking, right? But you weren't, you really wanted to be like me, you really wanted to so I'm making you, and we're almost done, kid, we're almost done."
It was all a plan. A trap set against her. He had faked his death, he had dressed up like Batman, he had chased her here all so she could become like him. She was overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation and love, but this was drowned out by her sheer exhaustion. It was a plan. It was fake. It was fake.
And now as she stared up at those happy eyes in the dark circles that was his eyelids, as she listened to that joyful laugh that she had so lived to hear, she regretted everything. Everything with him, everything that ever had to do with him, she regretted. She was thrown back to the moment she decided she was going to see him, to attempt to be his psychologist. They told her that day, you don't want him, they said that to her. He's not for rookies, they told her, he drives half the people he meets crazy, they said. They were going to give her Ivy, they wanted her to have someone simpler, but no, she said. She told them no, she was so confident back then. She was so strong back then, she didn't think anything in the world could have stopped her.
And she regretted it. A sudden urge to vomit came when she realized how many people she had killed in his name, but nothing came because she had not eaten in those days.
She wanted to scream again, as she looked up at him, not as a lover, but as a killer. As a psycho, and she truly feared for her life. She wanted to run, get away, run as fast as she could to get away. Those happy eyes, looked so sinister now. That joyful smile, so vile now. That laughter rang and hurt her ears.
"Yeah! So I made all this up for you." He went on, nodding and smiling like boys do.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, and it made her shudder in fear.
"Cause kid, let me tell you, let me tell you." He said.
Stop calling me kid, she thought as she helplessly stared at her new found captor.
"When you're like me, if you want to become like me, you have to lose everything. One bad day is all it takes to make a man like me. But you're special, so I made it a couple days!" he smiled like he had done her a favor. "And see, you even look like me now!"
She thought perhaps he'd done something to her, drugged her to make her love him. She felt almost as if it were a dream, a nightmare that she was going to wake up to. She'd awake in her apartment that she had years ago, with no blood on her hands, waking for another day at work at Arkham.
"So I had to take everything away from you, kiddo. And I know that's hard, but you were fantastic, wonderful, brilliant almost!" He said. "You have it kid, that thing, that it thing, you really do!" He was happy.
He was so happy he'd finally found someone to be like him.
"So now here we are." He waved his arm around the place and her helpless eyes followed them. "The place where I was born."
He went and hugged the floor, and kissed its surface.
"My birthplace." He said. "My mother, my father, my family." He said. "My childhood was spent crawling away before the cops showed up, and hiding in the shadows until my old skin flaked off, and the burning stopped." He said with only joy. "As a teenager I went through my whole rebellious stage as I saw my reflection for the first time and screamed. I didn't understand see, I didn't get it yet, it was still new to me, you know, like any teenager. Then I grew up, yes, a day later, I grew up, and here we are."
He voice filled with nostalgia. Then he rose up and stood on all fours to have an even eye level with her.
"Here you will be born too." He nodded with excitement. "You just have to jump in, kid, hold your breath too or else you'll drown, and crawl your way out. Go and hide until your old skin flakes off, scream when you see yourself, and I'll be here, right here waiting for you."
He crawled closer to her, his gaze becoming deeper and deeper. Until finally his breath went down her neck and his lips scraped against her own. She gasped and pulled her face away, shutting her eyes against him, and despite herself she began to shake.
"Harley…?" Joker asked.
He leaned in closer and moved his head to meet in her new eye level.
"What's wrong?" He asked, his voice almost sounded concerned. "Kid, please, what's wrong?"
He leaned in again to kiss her but she looked away.
"This isn't funny, what's wrong!?" He asked, distressed.
She looked at him, and a growing pain surged through her. It made her toes tingle and her heart pound against her ribs. Until a noise began to gain inside her, and she could no longer keep her lips closed. She screamed. She screamed and tears came. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Fear and terror poured out of her lungs, so afraid, she was so afraid of him.
And he jumped at her scream, and was then too afraid, slowly crawling away from her.
"GET AWAY!" She screamed at him. "GET AWAY FROM ME, DON'T TOUCH ME!" She shook her head and her tears flew from her face. "PLEASE!"
His face was full of confusion. He didn't know what went wrong. He looked at this girl, and he didn't see Harley Quinn anymore, and it scared him.
"Get away!" She continued.
"You…you…you…" He tried to find the words. "You, you, you, wretch!" He screamed. "What have you done to Harley!? What did you do to her!?"
He rose to his knees and made a fist, and it made her scream louder.
"PLEASE! NO! DON'T HURT ME, DON'T HURT ME!" She pleaded.
"Stop it!" He grabbed her. "Stop it right now!"
"PLEASE! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"
He began shaking her violently.
"I said STOP IT!" He told her.
"PLEASE! GET AWAY FROM ME!"
He punched her and she fell over unconscious.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. He didn't understand. It was almost beyond him to understand. It scared him for a moment. It wasn't Harley, she wasn't Harley anymore. She was going to be like him, she was going to laugh like him, but now she couldn't. He had to admit he wanted her to be like him. And he cursed himself for letting this happen, letting him have these feelings that can only end in this sort of pain. His focus should not be on weather Harley was Harley anymore but to Batman.
He was so upset with her and himself he had to go and kill a bunch of people he didn't even know. He actually went looking for the scum of the town and killed. He went and killed a man in his car, and put Harley in the trunk. He went apartment shopping by killing people looking at their lofts, and moving on. Finally he had settled in a place downtown, it was smaller, and he and Harley were forced into the same space. He had not cleaned the blood off his hands, he allowed it to dry and bath him almost in it.
He had noticed a change in himself recently. He knew he didn't really like to remember stuff, so he was sure this change was older than he believed. He'd almost forgotten what it was like, to have someone in your life you actually didn't want to die before it was their time. He didn't like the feeling at all, in fact it made him sick most of the time. But day after each day that he recalled he found himself hoping that Harley didn't die that day. It felt so familiar once he had it, once he grasped it.
You don't ask about love, he told her, but he feels perhaps that maybe he did love someone before all this. He can't quite remember really, but surely he did feel love before his new life, because now he recognizes it. He didn't like it. It was a distraction, a weakness. Though his thoughts had yet to stray to anything sexual and remained purely of an affectionate manner, he feared them growing.
And it was all because he had to worry about her. He had taught her as much as a sane person pretending to be insane could have been taught. Yet it was still not enough to calm him, to truly protect her. So he decided once she asked he'd make her like him. Then he wouldn't have to worry at all about her! The care would diminish, and the two would remain together without fear for one another! Without distraction or anything like that!
He was watching her sleep, wondering what went wrong.
He had made her food for when she woke up.
He had put a blanket over her to keep her warm.
And he sat there watching.
She looked so beautiful, with that green hair, even if the dye work was mediocre at best.
Then she began to stir, and he almost jumped, fearing she would scream again. Instead she kicked away her blankets and shook her head into the waking world. She stretched out her delicate hands and arched her back until it cracked. She made little mumbles and noises that waking lovers make.
"Harley…?" he asked.
She gasped and sprung up. To not scare her he didn't move. Even as she jumped out of her bed and around him. She tripped and began to crawl, hitting his suitcase of what little he owned.
It was dark and he couldn't see exactly what she was doing, but she moved violently, afraid.
"Harley, please…" He turned, and she jumped.
He began walking towards her and she curled up and coward.
"I'll kill you." He began pulling out a gun.
He dragged his feet against his new loft's carpet flooring. Slowly did he make his way towards her. She shivered still, afraid of him. He put his gun to her face and stared at the shines in her eyes for it was all he could see of her. He waited for a moment, just to see if she'd come back.
But she only kept shivering.
He sighed before he pulled the trigger. He thought he was so close, and thought she had done so very well.
Then she through a pie into his face.
She had gotten it from his case while he had taken so long to walk over to her. The pie was cold from its time in the case. It stuck to his face because of this, and he breathed in its toppings. Slowly he felt gravity take it and it finally fell to the floor, while most of it stayed on his face.
He looked down at her, and she laughed. She jumped up and hugged him, and laughed. A laugh that sounded so very familiar to him, a laugh full of utter joy, an innocent laugh, a pure laugh. It was his own, and it filled him with such a warm feeling he could not help but laugh with her.
She had done it in the end. She didn't need to go jump into a vat of chemicals to bleach her skin and dye her hair green. She was better than he in that sense, she didn't need to even do that, she had lost everything she had before hand. She had gone mad before it all, she had only fallen asleep and was replaced with a saner part of herself. But she was only sleeping, his Harley, the Harley he made in his own image, she was awake, and she was there before him, hugging him.
He dropped his gun and wrapped his arms around her. They laughed together, caught in each other's own joy. This was their laugh, a laugh that would never end. They were alike now, they were together truly now. Neither loved the other and neither went on without being loved. This was the method of the madness.
Harley Quinn sincerely laughed for the first time in so many horrible years. And that life she had before seemed so distant and alien now. Yet her future seemed so clear. And Joker himself, so clear. She understood now, unlike she had before. She got it, she got the joke of it all, she got the punch line of the universe.
She laughed.
He kissed her.
"You taste like pie, Mr. J!"
"I'd assume so, kid." He giggled.
"Heeeey, I gots an idea, puddin'! A wonderful, hilarious idea."
"Oh? Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!"
"Let's go kill Batman, just like yous always wanted!"
Laughter filled them.
The end.