"Good day, Harley dear, you're late for supper." The Joker greets Harleen as she enters the room, "how was work?"
"Work just started" staring at him skeptically
"Oh my, when did I wake up? Maybe I haven't." He looked around perplexed.
"Joker?" Less a question and more a request to join the sane.
"We were just on our honeymoon in Paris. Don't you remember, darling?" His eyes filled with false hurt. "Oh, kiss me, I'm dreaming." He turns his head sideways and makes kissy faces.
"You are very much awake and I'd like to get started. I have put in a request to lengthen our sessions, but until that happens, we only have a half hour together. Do you want to waste that time on your childish fantasies or try to make some sort of progress?"
"My my my, aren't we testy today. Maybe we should kiss just to lose some of that sexual tension between us, no?" His eyebrows raised in a silent continuation of the question.
"There will be no such action taking place here, ever. Do you understand?" Without waiting for a response she continues, "So where were we yesterday, question for question?"
"Tit for tat, I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Seeing the annoyance on her face spurred a fit of laughter.
"I'll start by answering your question from yesterday," she said over his laughter, "Yes, I do have a tattoo"
"Ohh, scandalous little doctor friend. What is it, no, where is it?"
"No, my turn, I answered your question, you answer mine." With a brief pause she continued, "Do you believe you're crazy?"
"Crazy how, toots. Crazy about you, you know I am."
"No, do you believe that you're a madman?"
"Mad? How can I be mad when the world is full of laughter? Fun fact," He leaned in as close as possible, "you can't spell slaughter without laughter." Nothing but seriousness in his eyes.
"You know what I mean, Joker, answer the question or we're through."
"Ah, why you gotta be like that, baby." Calculating the seriousness of her threat. There was a long pause as they sized each other up, "Well, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push."
Harleen writes this down, thinking for a moment before continuing, "And who pushed you?"
"Hmm, straight forward, I like that in a woman, but you forgot, it's my turn now." He ponders for a long time. Weighing each question against each other, knowingly wasting time. "Why me?" He finally asked.
"Why you?" She asked confused.
"Yeah." He said purposefully overlooking her confusion.
"How do you mean?"
"Well you asked for this case, and I'm wondering why."
"How did you…?" She didn't finish, thinking of the very few ways he could have gotten that information.
"Never mind the hows, we're looking for the letter 'why'." He pushed on.
"Because I think I can help you." She answered as she did when anyone else asked.
"Hmm, that's odd, I see no reason to lie to me. Who am I going to tell, the walls? Surely not, I'm not a lunatic." He stated as a matter-o-fact. "If you're going to lie, I see no reason why I shouldn't."
"No, I…" She never thought she was lying until now. It took a moment to think, drawing each sentence out as she figured them out for herself "I want to help you. I want to know what drives you. Where it all started. How did you turn into… this?" She opened her heart and soon regretted it. This was no way to respond to a patient, no less a madman. Where had her professionalism gone, whisked away so effortlessly with simple questions. "What did you do before?" She asked hesitantly.
"Aht, I do believe I've answered more questions than you have, my dear Harley."
"What are you talking about?"
"There's another!" He perked up, eyes glowing with excitement at his little trick gone right.
"Those were question clarifications, not more questions on my end." She stated, annoyed by his accusations.
He leans in, "you said question for question, and I do believe those were questions. Whether for clarification or not, you still owe me answers."
"Fine, new rule, questions have to be of equal depth." She demanded.
"Darling, you can't change the rules once the game is already started, it's in the rules."
"How do I know you didn't just make that up?" Her voice laced with annoyance still.
"Games are my job, sweetheart. If I didn't have the rules down by now, how could I be any good at it? I don't go around telling you how to do your job."
"Well you sure don't make it any easier." Looking him up and down for emphasis.
Before the Joker could get any words out the door slammed open, the guard entered ready to fight.
"The session ended five minutes ago. Is everything alright, Ms. Quinzel?"
"It's doctor." She corrected sharply, standing from her chair. She gathered her things quickly and exited the room without another word from anyone.
"It's Mrs. actually, we just got married." He falsely corrected leaning over, head tilted sideways with a wide smile and beaming eyes.
AUTHORS NOTE: thank you to everyone that has reviewed so far, I appreciate it. I just wanted to say that I'm really excited about where this is going, I have a few things written out for future chapters, I just need to work on getting there. This is not the end! Things are a bit slow to start, but I'm hoping to have longer chapters as time goes on, but that might mean more time between updates. Let me know what you'd prefer; longer chapters or more frequent updates?