This is the sequel to "And to All a Good Night" and "Queen of Hearts". It has The Dark Knight Joker, but he acts a little more like the animated series Joker. :D Hope you like, read and review!
4 Hearts on the mend
He was a strange man, with strange habits. He kept hyenas, for one. Bud and Lou, they had a very funny laugh. He had a fascination with knives, for another. You could find them just about anywhere, from the refrigerator to under a pillow to in his sock drawer.
He also read the papers backwards.
Well, not really backwards, but…opposite most people. He read the obituary section first.
It might have had something to do with the fact that he wanted to see who he'd killed that week. It might have been just morbid fascination. But whatever it was, it made him laugh. And today, it was very fortunate.
Robert Brown died of natural causes. Marylyn Connors drowned. Steven Winters, shot –oops, that was me, the Joker thought, recognizing the name of his ex-employee –Teresa Harrison died in a car crash…
Waitaminit, holdonasecond, the Joker thought, his gaze snapping back to that obit. I know that name.
'Teresa Harrison, 26, went to be with the Lord on Monday, June 30th. She died in a car crash. A single mother, she is survived by her two year old daughter…"
His mind flashed back to last Christmas, past the tree Harley had wanted and the presents…back to the rug rat Harley had found in the mall and taken her home. The blond toddler girl, whatserface.
Harley had given her back to her mother (indirectly through the Bat-freak, of course), out of guilt, shame, whatever.
And now the kid was gonna get lost in the foster system of darkness.
He flipped the newspaper to the front page to see what other poor sucker the B-man had thrown into Arkham lately, but he couldn't get the freaking image of the kid out of his head. She wasn't scared of him, or the hyenas, or anything. He smirked as he thought of her names for them: "Bah-bie" for Harley and " 'Day" for him.
But she was gone; it was over, kaput, terminated. No reason to bring up the past. Right?
Right…
She was moping again.
He hated it when she moped.
She was the one who was supposed to keep him from moping! That was her primary function and goal in life; it sometimes seemed like. When she moped, he got edgy. And the edginess usually told him to do something about her moping.
He hated when that happened.
He didn't plan, didn't think too far ahead. He just did stuff. And it was so crazy it usually worked. This didn't seem like one of those times. Sheesh, it was almost July already. He had a few days to snap her out of this funk before she really got depressed on her birthday.
His teeth ground together. Birthdays were overrated in his book.
But they weren't in his harlequin's.
He always said he didn't plan anything. And it was true.
He just connected the dots.
Sometimes there were lots of dots, sometimes there were few. Sometimes, there were tiny, barely discernable dots.
Sometimes you were lucky enough to trip over the largest hulking dot there ever was.
He swerved through three lanes of traffic, possibly causing a wreck or two, and pulled over by a building that proclaimed "Foster Home." That's where they tossed parentless rug rats, right? How many of those could there be in Gotham?
As it turned out, four. And of course the rug rat he was looking for had to be in the fourth one.
It was a good thing all he had to do was point his gun at the social workers to get some answers, or else he might have gotten more annoyed than he already was.
So, in the fourth (count 'em, fourth) Foster Home, he walked in and pointed his gun. Everyone froze.
"Hiya," he said, smacking his scarred lips. "Do ya mind answerin'…a question?" he asked the woman in a business suit who seemed to run things.
Her mouth gaped, like a fish. He had an urge to shove something into her mouth, but then she wouldn't be able to talk.
"Okay, lemmeaskyasomethin'doll," he said really fast. "Do you have a rug rat here…bout two or so, blond hair, last name Harrison?"
She stuttered, "Wha-wha-wha-"
"Never mind," he said, shoving her out of his way. He should have shoved something in her mouth before they started babbling. "I'll find her myself." He stalked along the hallway in his purple coat, glancing in at roomfuls of children who shrieked and cried.
" 'Day!" a happy, cheerful voice said in baby talk. He turned around.
Well, that saved him a lot of trouble. He strode up to the smiling blond toddler wobbling toward him. "C'mon, kid," he said, hoisting her up. "Harley's mopey. You're gonna make her better, 'kay?"
" 'Day," the little girl said contentedly, snuggling against his neck and smudging greasepaint on her face. What had Harley finally decided to call the little ankle-biter? Oh, yeah. Gamine. Thought that it fit in really well with the whole 'clown' thing. His harlequin had a thing for themes. He just had a thing for chaos. "C'mon then," he said, walking past all the people who were staring so hard their eyes were bugging out.
"Consider the kid, uh, adopted," he said before leaving the building.
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