"You're doing excellently, Miss Smith," Harley's nurse said to her with an approving smile.

"Thank you, Victor," she replied with as much forced cheer as she could manage as she let her left leg drop back down to the mattress.

Starting physical therapy after being sedentary for so long was incredibly difficult and Harley winced when she was instructed to lift her other leg as high as she possibly could. A few inches off the hospital bed was rather discouraging for someone with her history of gymnastic ability.

"Vincent," he corrected before nodding that she could let her right leg drop.

Harley made a cranky noise. "This is impossible. I'm never going to get better at this rate!"

Vincent looked at her severely, the no-nonsense demeanor written all over his face. "There'll be none of that talk. You're going to get better, you're going to be doing cartwheels all over this hospital by the time I'm through with you."

There was something familiar in the way he ordered her so sternly, so much so that a partially dormant part of her awakened abruptly.

He sounds so much like Puddin'…

Harley laughed carelessly, giving the male nurse a measured look that she hid rather well. "Cartwheels? I doubt it, Vinny."

Does he suspect? Could he know?

"Oh, you'll do back flips and all kinds of things when you're healed up properly," Vincent smiled his most charming smile at Harley, the one that must have won him a dozen girlfriends and their mothers too. "I promise you that, Harley girl."

Instantly, her laughter died. Her smile screwed into a frown and she stared at Vincent with cold, obvious calculation in her gaze. "How long have you known?"

His expression didn't change from the easy, carefree grin. "Since you got here."

"But you haven't told anybody." The suspicious side of Harley roared in protest of this turn of events. "Whaddya want, then? I haven't got any dough…you can't blackmail me…"

"I don't want money." The delicate stress he laid on the word wasn't lost on Harley and her eyes widened a fraction of an inch before they narrowed to slits. She knew that tone--the tone her professors used when she asked if there was anything she could do for extra credit. "Oh no, Harley…I don't want money…I've got plenty of my own, you see."

"So whaddya want from me? Don't beat around the bush, Vinny."

"I don't want anything from you," he said, surprising her with his earnestness. "I want to help you, Harley."

Her surprise gave way to outright laughter.

"Sure you do, kid, sure you do. The Bat wants to help me too…but you can see where that's gotten me." Harley gestured around at the hospital room. "Four walls and a bed, big deal! Ain't I a regular queen of Sheba, sovereign of all I survey! Yeah, right. You probably want to help me right into a house with a white picket fence, two kids and a mutt."

Vincent's smile got a little wider and his eyes grew a little brighter, shining with undisguised mischief. "No. I know this isn't the kind of life you want to lead. You're not cut out for life in the real world as a legitimate citizen. You don't belong there…you belong in the underworld…same as me. Look at you in this place, languishing like a water lily in the desert."

Vincent knelt down next to Harley's bedside so that he could look her directly in the eye, "The Joker was somewhat of a hero to me. He has been ever since he first appeared on the Gotham scene when I was a kid…I feel obligated to help you out if I can."

Vincent stood up. "Unless you want the life that the Bat is forcing on you--no, I'm sorry, the life that the Bat is offering you."

Harley looked at him skeptically. "And you want to help me go back to bein' a criminal?"

"Think of it, Harley," Vincent gestured widely with his hands, "you, ruling Gotham's underground in the Joker's stead…you carrying on his legacy in more ways than just having his child. You could lead all the Joker's children…"

"The ones on the news," Harley whispered in understanding.

"The followers who've been carrying on with his tradition are genuine, you've seen them, but they're disorganized." He spoke with passion, a charisma that drew Harley in just as surely as the Joker once had through his own enthusiasm for mayhem. "They stand for everything that the Joker did…they just need someone to guide them. Someone like…"

"Me." It wasn't even phrased as a question as the wheels in her head turned at breakneck speed, urged by that little Joker voice in the back of her head.

And a little harlequin shall lead them…Pharoh, let my jesters go!

She could be Queen of Gotham's antiestablishment. Dedicate her life to guiding the next generation of men and women who loved her Puddin' as much as she did. She would be keeping her lover alive through an entire movement that could conceivably overthrow the whole city…

Harley shut her eyes and licked her bottom lip, thinking of the look on Mister J's face if he heard about this…if he heard about his very own set of loyal disciples wreaking havoc in his name. An entire army of Jokers, dedicated to him and him alone, a cult that could become more powerful than the most devout religious sects and more creatively destructive than the Spanish Inquisition.

Her eyes shot open and she stared at Vincent with hunger evident in her gaze. "When can we start?"