A man's home is his castle. When one thinks of castles, a lot springs to mind - people in elaborate outfits, tables loaded with delicious feasts, and lots and lots of very specialized tools used to injure, maim, or brutally kill invaders and other undesirables. But, of course, no 'castles' in modern times are quite that well-equipped...
Er.
That is, there are a very few homes in modern times that are precisely that well-equipped, with the added bonus of their 'kings' and 'queens' being absolutely stark raving mad. Fortunately, these homes are also so well-hidden that there are hardly any fatalities anymore from unexpected visitors. (After all, cleaning up corpses is such a bother.)
Harley carefully parked the car at the end of a long, nearly submerged pier. She slid gently out of her seat and padded to the very last board on the walkway, where she did a furious tap-dance on a seemingly random assortment of discarded boxes and abandoned boating equipment. The entire pier detached itself from the pilings and sailed quietly off into the night.
In the backseat of the car, Troy Grey fidgeted nervously under the warm woolen weight of his dark blue greatcoat. This whole night was turning out to be a lot more complicated than he'd expected. Here he was, sitting in a car with two of Gotham's most unwelcome citizens, being sailed across a deserted stretch of water by the sidekick of possibly the most dangerous man on the planet. He'd only wanted to talk to Sorrow!
Carefully, without moving his head more than he had to, he peered into the front seat. Ivy was curled in a limp ball, fast asleep, gently rocking with the motion of the waves beneath them as they sailed onward. The car shifted slightly as Harley ducked back inside and slammed her door, nestling in a cozy cross-legged position behind the wheel. She pulled a tattered comic book from under her seat and settled in. Troy took a deep breath to steady himself and turned to face Sorrow.
She was studying him thoughtfully. "Nice outfit," she remarked lightly.
"Um...thanks," he muttered, shifting uneasily.
"I think you might want something a little sturdier than those, though." She gestured at his slightly scuffed black dress shoes. Fighting the urge to hide his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy, he looked past Sorrow out of the window. "And you've got makeup in your hair...Troy? What are you looking at?" She twisted in her seat and peered out of the window, where a froth of bubbles was percolating to the surface.
Water suddenly cannoned out of the bay, drenching the car in a wave that was roughly the size of the crowd in front of Gotham Square Mall on Black Friday. There was something hidden in the water. Troy peered at the window, trying to make out exactly what it was as water streamed down the thin glass.
"SHARK!" Sorrow squealed, throwing herself away from the window. An enormous great white shark grinned at them through the window, exposing three rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its mouth was dripping with red, as if it had recently fed on a nice plump tourist. Sorrow scuttled backward and pressed herself hard against Troy, trying to get as far away from the thing as she could.
"Calm down. It's just Meg," Harley explained impishly as Sorrow's shoulders tried to fuse with Troy's ribcage. "We got her from Florida."
Troy squinted at the shark. Now that it had stopped moving, he noticed that sections of the shark's skin had peeled away, exposing the foam rubber beneath it. As for the mouth - well, what real shark would go around with a bright red grin on its face? What shark could even survive in Gotham's toxic stew of a bay?
"It's fake," he gasped in reassurance as Sorrow's elbows dug into his stomach.
"I know," she said tightly. "Make it go away!"
"She'll be gone in a minute," Harley said, giggling slightly as she returned to her comic book. "Scared ya, didn't she?"
"I hate sharks," Sorrow muttered. As quickly as it had popped up, the fake shark vanished into the depths of the bay. "Are there any more friends of yours out there?"
"Maybe," Harley said innocently.
"Right." Sorrow eased away from Troy and resolutely buried her face in her gloved hands. "Tell me when we're there."
One hour and six creature attacks later, they arrived at a small, overgrown island. Troy was in awe of the amount of work that had gone into some of the creatures. Sorrow had refused to look, even when he'd tried to point out the detail on the fake squid tentacles that wrapped around the car or the little green tuft of hair on the giant lobster that had clacked massive claws at them as they passed.
Harley drove the car up onto the island. As they left the pier, it began sailing along its underwater track back toward home. "And how are we supposed to get home?" Ivy asked irritably.
"There's a buncha motorboats over there," Harley said, gesturing vaguely at the east end of the island.
"We could have come here by boat and avoided all of that?" Sorrow snapped.
"Yep," Harley said happily. "C'mon. This way." She hopped out of the car and skipped toward a somewhat overgrown track. Troy and Sorrow hurried after her, darting mistrusting looks at the foliage of the forest. Ivy followed, dragging her large Rubbermaid tub and the box of slates on the ground behind her.
The trail wound up a hill to a small clearing in front of a cave. Harley stood by the entrance, waiting impatiently for all three of her guests to join her. When they finally arrived, she waved a grand arm at the cave. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the newest addition to our list of lairs: the Joker Ca-"
"Mew," a soft voice interrupted. Harley turned her attention to the shrubbery near the cave mouth, where a tiny kitten stumbled along. It staggered toward them, eyes barely open, squeaking pitifully. A thorny weed was tangled in its soft white kitten fur.
In one quick motion, Harley whipped her foot around and punted the helpless kitten straight over the treetops. Troy watched in horror as it disappeared from sight. How could she have -
His thoughts were interrupted as the kitten exploded, sending a fireball the size of Wayne Tower blooming briefly into the sky.
"Anyway," Harley continued, ignoring the bits of robot kitten falling from the sky, "we're here. Come on in." She trotted into the darkness. Her tasseled head re-emerged briefly. "And don't ring the doorbell."
Ivy immediately made her way toward the entrance, dragging her equipment behind her with the last of her strength. Troy and Sorrow exchanged an uncertain look. Should they go in? Maybe they could make it to the motorboats...
The robot kitten's head landed on the nicely manicured lawn. A set of two-foot-long spikes immediately sprang out of the grass, spearing it neatly through the eyes. Without a further thought, they turned and bolted to the dubious safety of the cave.
The inside of the cave was really rather nice - that is, for a place that had been designed by a homicidal lunatic clown and his homicidal lunatic girlfriend. The main area would be a masterpiece of purple velvet and green accessories when it was finished. At the moment, piles of fabric were draped carelessly over half-reupholstered couches and lightly bloodstained furniture.
At the end of the room, Ivy was shoving her boxes along with one foot. She leaned heavily on the wall for support, trembling with exhaustion as she gently propelled her vital whatever-it-was in the box along.
Troy tentatively cleared his throat. "Um...would you like any help with that, uh, box..."
The leaves on her outfit, which he'd assumed were decorative, stood up like hissing cobras. If they had had fangs, they would have definitely been swiss-cheesing his eyeballs. "I'm fine," Ivy snarled.
"Sorry! Sorry!" he yelped, scrambling backward directly into a table. Ivy shoved the box as well as she could into a nearby room and flounced in after it, slamming the door as if Troy's head was being used as an impromptu doorstop.
Harley scampered into the main room with something white in one hand. "Found it! Want the grand tour?" she asked happily.
"Sure," Sorrow shrugged. "Is it likely to kill us?"
"Nah. Most of the traps aren't in yet. Where's Red?"
There was a loud shattering noise from behind the recently slammed door, followed by a wave of cursing so intense that it probably could have burned a hole in the wall. "I think she's...busy," Sorrow said diplomatically.
"Huh. Well, c'mon then!" Harley grabbed Sorrow by the arm and tugged her along. Troy trailed in their wake, taking mental notes on the only villain lair he'd probably ever be in.
There really wasn't much to it. He had been expecting a warren of rooms that could house an army of henchmen, or at the very least a security room full of televisions and little blinking buttons. Instead, the handful of rooms that were proudly displayed looked very much like a rather tasteless hotel suite. There was a kitchen that looked fairly typical, even if every surface had been covered over with red-and-black checkerboards. The bathroom, still unfinished, looked perfectly normal until you took into account the surgeon's gurney lurking in the corner with a stack of crates labeled "Medical Supplies". (Upon seeing that, Sorrow quickly suggested that they go see something else.)
The tour ended in the bedroom. This room was completely finished. Most of the room was painted either Kool-Aid purple or acid green with just enough touches of red and black to make anyone with a sense of color theory cringe. Pictures of the Joker beamed down from every surface. There were newspaper clippings framed on the wall, mugshots taped onto the mirror, and a very large poster of the Joker with Harley curled up by his feet.
"That one we stole from an art show," Harley said proudly. "Isn't it pretty?"
Sorrow took in the poster, paying careful attention to the shadowy host of corpses in the background and the pile of broken toy dolls that the pair were posed on. "Yeah," she said, attempting to be polite. "It's great."
Harley beamed at the pair of them. "Well, I'm gonna go make dinner," she said. "I'll leave you two lovebirds here so you can...talk." She gave Sorrow an enormous wink and skipped out of the room, closing the door tightly behind her.
The concept of talking in the Joker's bedroom was enough to give both of them the heebie-jeebies. Sorrow moved firmly away from the bed, being careful not to touch anything, and crossed her arms. "Well?"
"Well..." he trailed off, twisting two gloved hands together behind his back.
"You had something you wanted to tell me?" she hinted when his silence continued.
"You're in danger," he said nervously.
"I'm in the Joker's bedroom. That's kind of a given," she shrugged.
"No! Um. Uh...don't go back to Arkham," he mumbled.
She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, that is the plan..." she said, clearly wondering why he had bothered to tell her this incredibly obvious thing. Why wouldn't she avoid Arkham?
"No! No, I mean, the doctors," he flailed, raking a hand through his hair. "The doctors are going to do something...something horrible to you. Worse than last time."
"Well, that's what they do," she shrugged. "Doctors are bastards." She examined him as he stood there, nearly rigid with nervousness. He had braved the Iceberg, Harley's driving, and the Joker's bedroom just to talk to her. "Well, maybe not all doctors are bastards. Aren't they going to be mad at you for spoiling their fun? Not to mention the new wardrobe."
"Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, they're going to be mad, but it doesn't matter if they are. I kind of...I quit," he mumbled, staring at his toes.
"You WHAT?" Sorrow shrieked.
"I quit," he repeated miserably. "You're right - they are a bunch of bastards."
She stared at him, almost immobile with shock. "Let me get this straight," she said, slowly and carefully. "You decided that the doctors at Arkham weren't worth working for."
"Yeah."
"And you quit your job."
"Yeah."
"And you put on a costume..." She looked pointedly at his blue coat and coating of grey makeup.
"NO!" he yelped. "No, I mean, I did, but it was just to find you! I didn't want to...I mean, I couldn't, I can't, I just wanted to warn you and -"
"Good," she smiled, interrupting his hysteria.
"...Good?" He blinked at her like a puppy being told that he really was allowed to sleep on the sofa.
"Good," she nodded. "You're too cute to have your face rearranged by Batman."
"Uh...good," he said uncertainly.
"Any other words of wisdom?" she asked lightly.
"Um...well, I think you should, uh, leave Gotham," he stammered.
Sorrow's amusement disappeared. "Leave Gotham," she repeated flatly.
"Yeah! I mean, why stay?" he said desperately. "You've got money, you've got...well...you could steal a car and start over somewhere! You wouldn't have to worry about Arkham, or..." he trailed off.
"No, I don't have money," Sorrow corrected. "Sure, I've got a little, but nowhere near what I would need to start over. Besides, do you have any idea how long it takes to build up a reputation with henchmen? It would take months to get a foothold in a new city. I'm staying right here in Gotham."
"But they're going to hurt you!" he burst out, desperate to get her to understand.
A small remnant of her feelings for him uncurled itself and perked up hopeful ears. He had quit his job like an idiot and run to her side like an inventive idiot and was standing there, in the Joker's bedroom, warning her about the plans of people that she wouldn't turn her back on for a moment. It was idiocy, but at least it was loving idiocy.
That thought stopped her in her mental tracks. Loving? Maybe that was a step too far. Sure, he had a crush on her, for some reason that she had yet to figure out, but love? By now she'd given up all thoughts of him being a double agent for the doctors. A double agent wouldn't be nearly this close to having a nervous breakdown.
"Look," she said, trying to relax him before he jittered right through the floorboards. "If it means that much to you, I'll lay low for a little while. Okay?"
"You will?" he asked hopefully.
"I will." She smiled as he started to calm down. "For tonight, though, I'm still planning heists and you're my new sidekick."
"Couldn't I just go home?" he said, obviously uneasy at the thought of having a sleepover at the Joker's house with three professional criminals.
"I think Harley might notice if you disappeared," she said. He started bouncing one leg nervously again, making his entire body quiver with nervousness. "You'll be fine," she soothed. "As long as you don't make anyone angry, you'll get home tomorrow safe and sound. Well, probably."
With that, she turned toward the door. "Um..." She turned back to see Troy, biting his lip. "If we're, uh...if we're supposed to be together, shouldn't we, uh..."
"Are you asking to hold my hand?" she joked.
"Yes. I mean, uh, if you don't mind, I think it would be...good," he stammered.
"You're serious?" she said, shocked. "No one's ever...I mean...you are aware that my hands kill people, right?"
"Only when you want them to," Troy answered.
"Well...if you're sure..." She held out a gloved hand. Without hesitation, his own gloved hand wrapped around it as if it might disappear if he waited too long.
Sorrow led her brand-new pretend sidekick out into the main room. They stood hand-in-hand in front of a harlequin-patterned fireplace, in theory admiring the craftsmanship but really inwardly panicking about being that close to each other.
Harley Quinn, clad in a slightly splattered Kill the Cook apron, skipped into the room while banging loudly on a pan with a large metal spoon. "Soup's on!" she chirped. She scampered to Ivy's door, banging repeatedly on her makeshift glockenspiel. "C'mon, Red, it's gonna get cold!"
There was no answer.
"Reee-eeeed," Harley singsonged, rapping on the door with her spoon. "Oh Reeeeee-eeeeeeed..."
The lack of answer continued.
Harley shrugged and opened the door with her spoon hand. "Red, you've gotta be hungry by...Red!" She pounded into the room, abandoning the pot and spoon to clatter noisily to the plywood floor.
Sorrow hurried after her, yanking Troy by the hand. They skidded into the room to find Harley crouching on the floor by Ivy. Ivy was facedown, limbs twisted uncomfortably into limp tendrils. Harley scooped her friend up and dragged her toward a pile of curtains on the floor. Without thinking, Troy bent down to help.
Sorrow yanked him away by the back of his coat. "She's poisonous, and you've only got cotton gloves on," she hissed in his ear. They stood back as Harley gently arranged Ivy on the heap of fabric.
"Red?" Harley said, close to tears. "Red, what's wrong? Wake up!" She patted her on the face. When that didn't seem to do anything, she began patting harder and harder.
"Does she look…greener to you?" Sorrow asked suddenly. "I haven't really seen her in a while…was she always that green?"
They studied Ivy's emerald skin. "I don't think so," Harley said slowly. "Red?" She pinched Ivy's arm, hard enough to leave a bruise.
Ivy's eyes slowly rolled open. "Harley?" she said blearily.
"Red, what happened?"
"I'm…fine…"
"No you aren't! What's goin' on, Red?"
"The bottle…the…blue…" One trembling green hand pointed at the Rubbermaid box.
Troy obediently popped the lid off and dug inside, coming out with a large bottle, half-full of liquid. "This?"
"Yes. Give it…" she stretched out a trembling hand. Troy handed it to her and ducked back to Sorrow's side. Ivy eased the cork from the bottle and took a deep swig.
Her green skin seemed to glow even brighter, pulsing with new life and energy. She stretched, luxuriating in the movement, before she remembered the three other people in the room. "What?" she snapped.
Harley, lip trembling, stuck her hands on her hips. "Red, I tell you everything. Everything. How come you're hiding stuff from me?" She ripped the apron off, throwing it on the floor and crossing her arms as she huffed, "I thought you were my friend, Red."
"You don't need to know everything about me, Harley," Ivy grumbled. "Trust me."
"Oh yeah?" Harley pointed at her. "You're in my house and those are my curtains you just leaked that...what is that stuff, anyway?"
They examined the small puddle that had pooled in a fold of the curtains. Ivy raised her arm, displaying a pin that had stuck her deeply and stayed under her skin. A rusty orange liquid pulsed from out of the wound. Ivy hurriedly tucked her arm back down to her side, ignoring the pin.
"And now you're bleeding sap!" Harley went on. "We wanna know what's goin' on, don't we?"
Sorrow and Troy shrugged, caught between wanting to please their hostess and not wanting to piss off the psychotic plant-woman.
"All right, all right," Ivy snarled. With a lot of effort, she dragged herself up to a sitting position and plucked the pin from her arm. "If you're going to make such a fuss about it...It's an experiment."
Obviously, thought Sorrow, thinking of that precious box that no one was allowed to touch.
"There's a company in Gotham - well, a few companies really - that have started using clarium in their processes." Her tone of righteous indignance faded a touch as her audience looked back at her with bewilderment in their eyes. "Clarium poisons plants," she simplified.
"Oh," they chorused like schoolchildren getting a particularly tricky math problem explained.
"It doesn't do anything to humans, so the corporations just go on their merry way, destroying my babies," she spat. "But if the CEOs were part plant, like I am, maybe they'd think twice before they used that revolting chemical. I came up with a little something to slip into their morning coffee. Everything went well, and I had the finished formula in my hands in just a few weeks! Once it was finished, though, I had to make sure it worked, and no one else was around..."
"You drank it yourself?" Harley sucked in an apprehensive breath.
"But if you were already part plant, that would..." Troy trailed off, contemplating the range of possible bad things that might have happened.
"It was...stronger than I thought it would be," Ivy admitted. "It was fine, at first. I felt so...alive..." She looked peacefully happy, an emotion that she hadn't expressed to anyone in years. "But it didn't stop. Every day I'm a little more plant, and soon..."
"We've got to stop it," Harley stated firmly.
"How? If you've got suggestions, I'd love to hear them," Ivy snapped bitterly.
"Well, what's in that bottle?"
"Plant food," Ivy said glumly. "It only keeps me going for a short while."
"Can you reverse it at all?" Sorrow asked.
"Maybe." Ivy looked away, absently rubbing her fingers over the sticky sap trickling down her arm.
"Maybe? So do it!" Harley urged.
"It's not as easy as that!" Ivy dug her toes into a fold of the curtains. The leaves, not part of a costume but part of her body, twitched like an angry cat's tail.
"Why not? What do you need?" Harley asked, every inch the eager helper. "We've got all sorts of chemicals in the basement and Mr. J said that - "
"I can barely sit up," Ivy snarled, humiliated. "How am I supposed to do anything?"
Sorrow pinned Troy with a glance. "Fix her. You're a doctor," she commanded.
"So is she!" he protested, pointing at Harley.
"Right! So am I!...except I kinda slept through chemistry," she admitted, with a spin on the word 'slept' that probably didn't refer to napping on her textbooks. "Sorry, Red."
"Did you sleep through chemistry?" Ivy demanded of Sorrow.
"Can't sleep through something you never took," Sorrow shrugged.
Ivy sighed deeply and turned to her final hope. "And you don't know anything either, I take it?"
"Um. I actually did pretty well," he mumbled.
"Good. Get over here and help me. You two - out."
Troy turned a wild-eyed look of terror back on Sorrow. "But..."
"You heard the lady," Sorrow smiled. He was cute when he was petrified. "Play nice. I'll be right outside."
"But..."
Ivy pointed a trembling, imperious hand at the doorway. "Out!" she commanded.
Sorrow strode out of the room, with Harley at her heels.
The night passed slowly, as only a night in a lair filled with unfamiliar deathtraps could. Harley and Sorrow spent their time playing cards and listening to various shouts and crashes coming from behind the door.
Sorrow was mildly concerned about Troy's welfare. After all, it was her fault that he was back there...well, mostly. It wasn't like she had asked him to trail her around like a lost puppy. It hadn't been her who had convinced him to get into costume and hang out at the Iceberg...
When a card slipped from Sorrow's gloved fingers for the fifth time that hand, she sighed and slapped the rest down on the table. "You win, Harls."
"You could go to bed, if you want," Harley offered, gathering the cards up. She laid the joker face-up on the top of the pile.
"Nah. Can't sleep, not with them..." She nodded toward the closed door of the makeshift lab as a faint hissing marked the death of one or more floorboards due to something nasty spilling on it.
"So do ya just wanna talk?" Harley asked.
"Sure," Sorrow said, flicking the pile of cards with one gloved finger.
"Great!" Harley sat bolt upright. "So let's talk about Arkham. You were down in the basement, right?"
"Good night, Harley," Sorrow said, shoving herself up from the table.
"But you said..."
"I'm not talking about the basement," Sorrow said flatly.
"Is it really that bad?" Harley said. Apprehensive fear washed over her face. "'Cuz Mr. J's down there, y'know."
"I know," Sorrow said, somehow managing not to sound joyful.
"So how can I get him out?"
"You what?" Sorrow said. "No. What? No. You can't."
"Why not?" Harley pouted. "You got out."
"I got lucky," Sorrow said. "Besides, I've got...well. My hands."
"But maybe -"
"He's not getting out until they let him out," Sorrow said flatly. "He's all the way down the hall by the security station. I could hear him laughing."
"He was laughing?" Harley perked up. "So he must be okay, then!"
The laughter had sounded a bit forced, and perhaps a little desperate, but she wasn't about to tell Harley that. Besides, maybe she was wrong - she was referring to a man that had been known to laugh with genuine joy while plummeting headfirst off of a building, after all. "I'm sure he's just fine," Sorrow lied.
"It can't be very nice down there, though. I think maybe I should still try an' break him out."
"What?" Sorrow grabbed her by the shoulders. "If you try to break him out, you're only going to end up down there with him!" Shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have said that. "I mean -"
But Harley was already lost to a daydream of her and her beloved Puddin' in a subterranean cell together. She interrupted Sorrow with a happy grin on her face. "I'll get him out, just you wait an' see. We've got all sorts of nifty stuff around here!" With that, she bounced away from the table and disappeared into the bedroom. There was a loud grinding noise, as if a large bed had just been shoved across a brand-new hardwood floor, followed by the clatter of something that was probably a trapdoor opening up.
Sorrow closed her eyes. Couldn't anything go right tonight? At the sound of a door latch, she opened her eyes again. Instead of Harley, bristling with theme weaponry, the figure that sat itself at the table was a worn-looking Troy.
"We did it," he said, exhausted. "She drank it, she's sleeping. We'll know if it worked in the morning."
"Will it work?" Sorrow asked curiously.
Troy blew out a very large sigh. "I hope so," he moaned. "It took long enough to make."
"Thank you."
Troy looked up at her, astonishment all over his face. "Huh?"
"Thank you for putting up with her. I know she's...well, you know."
"Yeah." He smiled a small, shy little smile. "You're welcome."
Sorrow smiled back. It was almost going to be sad to see him go...but that was what was best for him. He'd go home and start over, and she'd go back to her warehouse. That was what had to happen, no matter how much she might miss him.
Tomorrow was for goodbyes. Tonight was for fun. "Come on," she said, pulling him to his feet. "Last one to the kitchen has to eat leftovers!"
"You're on!" he yelped, sprinting toward the door as fast as he could in his slippery dress shoes.
"Cheater!" she laughed, racing after him. "You were supposed to wait until someone said 'Go!'"
"Go!" he sang out, skidding into the kitchen. "I win!"
"You wish. Rematch!" she cried, turning on one heel and racing for the front door.
"No fair!"
"Leftovers for you!"
"I didn't lose!"
"Neither did I!"
The meal ended up being the best leftovers that either of them had ever had. True, they had been cooked by Harley, whose culinary skills would probably have made Gordon Ramsay bite a spatula in half with pure apoplectic fury, but the food didn't seem to taste at all bad as they chatted and laughed through the night.
(to be continued)