Ryan Woods had been working at Arkham for eleven years and in all his time there had never seen the guards lash out at any of the prisoners the way they did the Joker. Sure, people got beat up, that sort of thing happens in any correctional facility. The crazies just weren't as much sport as the inmates at Blackgate, until the Joker came along.

Ryan stood outside the Joker's cell, with his radio in his hand and an orderly beside him as he looked through the small window.

The Joker lay face down on the floor, seemingly unconscious. Enough people had made the mistake before him to have the door opened only to be attacked by the insane clown. He pressed the button on the intercom.

"Morning, Chuckles." He said keeping an eye on the Joker who still lay on the floor.

"Breakfast is getting cold; you know the drill, get on the bunk or no food." He said feeling like someone trying to reason with a caged tiger. The Joker didn't move and Ryan sighed and shook his head.

"Guess you should take that back to the kitchen." Ryan nodded to the orderly. He escorted the man back to the guard cage and then allowed him to leave the maximum security block. He entered the cage and took a seat beside Chad, who was playing with a DS instead of watching the monitors.

"How long has he been down?" He asked.

"Who?"

"Joker."

"Hmm," Chad paused the game and glanced at the monitor showing the Joker's cell. "Since sometime last night, the night shift tucked him in and the guy's been like a rock."

Ryan shook his head. His doctor would be pissed that he'd been beaten this badly, again. She had some weird attachment with the guy and got her panties in a bunch when the guards got rough with him.

"What did he say?" He asked. The Joker's mouth had always gotten him into trouble at Arkham, and judging by the scars on his face, quite a few times in his past as well.

"He was talking dirty to Briggs and you know how Briggs likes the queer talk." Chad chuckled.

"I'm gonna go wake 'Sleeping Beauty.' Call in Harris to be my second." He said and left the cage, it was a helluva way to start a shift.

A few minutes later the two men were being buzzed into the Joker's cell and he knelt beside the Joker and prodded his side with a baton. The Joker was unresponsive and Ryan was beginning to wonder if the guys had killed him. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

He nodded to Harris and reached out to touch the Joker's neck. He felt a pulse and saw him breathing and then roughly rolled the man onto his back. He shook his shoulder and talked to him.

"Wake up, Chuckles, joke's getting old now." He snapped his fingers in front of his face and shook him again. The night shift had really done a number on the Joker, judging from the bruises on the man's face.

"Come on, you know this is going to be a nightmare with the paperwork for me if you don't get your ass up." The voice broke through the haze and Joker opened his eyes.

He winced at the bright lights and closed his eyes again, groaning. He had a headache that would kill a god.

"That's it," he heard someone standing up, moving away from him.

He rolled onto his side and gingerly touched a rib that was bruised if not broken and his breath caught in his chest. He blinked his eyes open and looked up at the two guards who now stood a few feet away from him.

He looked around, confused. The guards, white cinderblock walls, an orange jumpsuit; he scanned the room, the objects sharpening into clarity around him.

Arkham Asylum.

He carefully stood and backed up from the guards toward his bunk which he sat back down upon. Satisfied, the guards moved to the door, one turning back to address him.

"You missed breakfast, Chuckles." He said with a smirk and then was gone.

Joker propped his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands as a wave of nausea hit him. He swallowed back bile and held back what would certainly be dry heaves. He tangled his fingers in his greasy hair and pulled it enough to feel the tension against his scalp. He slid his hands through his hair over his head and around the back of his neck and dug his fingers into it.

Thinking back, he knew there had to be three, maybe four of them in the room the night before. Wailing away at him and laughing, calling him names. He'd needed it, though. Anything to take his mind off of Harley and what she'd brought him yesterday.

It was bad enough that she'd somehow gleaned enough information about him as the Joker to be supremely annoying during their sessions, but now she'd found out about his life as Jack as well, at least part of it.

She was still living the dream that he had once been a nice, upstanding member of society who'd suffered a horrible tragedy and gone insane because of it. That was the story he liked people to know. That one day, something could happen to them and they would fall into the depths of madness as well. It scared the crap out of them, and he enjoyed that.

But Harley had gone to the next level and somehow discovered his true identity. That was not acceptable in the least. Her personal mission to better understand him had now opened up a can of worms he'd thought he'd thrown away.

So he had to kill her.

It was that simple.

She'd even submitted herself to him, allowed him to go about his work and choke the life out of her while enjoying the moment. He glanced at the crescent shaped wounds on his wrists from her fingernails.

And then she'd given up.

She stopped fighting him and had just stared back at him from behind her glasses with those pale blue eyes. She'd accepted her fate and fallen into complete submission. It was something he'd never experienced before.

And then she'd touched him.

He sighed and felt a twinge of pain from his bruised ribs and stood, feeling unstable at first. He found his footing and walked over to the 'bathroom' and splashed some water on his face before looking up at the plastic mirror bolted to the wall.

"I wanted to know what they felt like."

He shook his head as he studied his reflection. Moments of clarity were rare for him now. Usually he saw his memories as flashes and shouts of sound. He didn't want to remember. Life was more interesting to him when he was an amalgamation of images and bits of speech and feelings. Each day he was a different representation of himself. He wasn't just Jack. Not that anyone really knew who he was when he went by that name.

Different people saw different sides of Jack. It was the same for every other person in this world. People showed you only what they wanted you to see. They changed their selves to meet expectations of those they were around at a given time.

He had at least tried to be consistent. However, Jack the grad student at the prestigious college couldn't very well also be known as Jack the sadistic hit man as well. So there was Jack and there was the Red Hood.

Jack could try to live the life of an ordinary guy, while Red Hood could go around killing people for the money Jack needed to support that lie. It had worked out for a little while. Then they had crossed paths.

Joker touched the scars on his face, tracing them with his index finger the way Harley had. On the inside he ran his tongue over the folds of scar tissue. She could touch them, but she would never know how they felt.

He felt the anger building inside him and chewed the inside of his cheek. One bad day was all it took for his old life to completely fall apart. Now there was just the Joker. He snorted and grinned maliciously at himself before returning to his bunk.

Joker was a better person than Jack had been. He didn't have anything to hide because he didn't have a past. He wasn't even a real person. He was more than that. Joker was free from the obligations that people thought they have or the rules they had to obey. He didn't worry about anything because he had no attachments, nothing to answer for; no one to answer to.

He just had to show everyone else what that meant, then they could all be free.

And she was beginning to. Her complete surrender was only the beginning. Now all he had to do was reinforce it, keep her under his thumb. Change her into something better than Harleen Quinzel, doctor of psychiatry. The fact that she already had Jonathan Crane as an example of how simple it was to lose yourself could only help his agenda.

For her to find Jack Napier had been bad on the surface, but it had opened up a new world of possibilities for him. As quickly as Pandora had closed the box, it still wasn't fast enough and she had unleashed what it held. Harley would see that.

It was only a matter of time.

Joker lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, deciphering the Rorschach images in the stained ceiling tiles when the lock buzzed and his door opened. He sat up, wincing as he moved. That headache wasn't getting any better.

A woman in a lab jacket with long, flowing blonde hair approached him holding a tray. She glanced back at the guard behind her.

"It's alright, you can leave us." She said.

"Doctor," the guard began to protest. She stopped walking at fixed a hard glare on the man.

"Okay, I'll be just outside." He said and then looked at Joker. "Behave yourself, Chuckles."

Doctor Harley snorted and approached Joker, coming to a stop before him; he smiled up at her in amusement. Her hair was down and she wasn't wearing her glasses. Her cheek was bruised and she wore a red mock-turtleneck to hide the ones on her neck.

"I've heard the phrase, knocked into next Tuesday, but it's never happened to me before." He chuckled, staring up at her. She eyed him warily.

"What happened to you?" She said, scanning his face.

"What, I always look like this." He said holding up his hands in mock surrender. She sighed heavily and took a seat beside him, setting the tray on her lap. He scooted back from her a little before realizing what he was doing.

"Why are you here?" He regarded her suspiciously. She held up a small plastic cup which held some pills.

"You haven't had your meds yet, and I hear you skipped breakfast as well." She replied. He looked at the tray; it held water, orange juice and toast.

"They have nurses for that, you know." He said mockingly and then swallowed his morning medication. He drank some water and picked up a piece of toast, tearing pieces from it and popping them into his mouth. He took in her questioning gaze with a sideward glance.

"The scars," he said with his mouth full. Her face became sympathetic and he wanted to slap her. Instead he ate knowing how the medication would affect him if he didn't.

Up close he could see that her eyes were red, like she'd been up all night crying. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have the Arkham 'turn-down' service at her disposal at home. He bet that he made her cry all the time. He snorted and smiled a little at the thought. He never realized just how much control he had over her. The past day had been a real 'breakthrough' for them.

He was always on her mind. Whether she was at work, home, or wherever else she spent her time, she thought of him. She'd even traveled halfway across the country because she couldn't get him off of her mind.

Joker's little stalker. He started laughing and she grasped his forearm and he turned to find a furious look on her face.

"What?" He balked and broke into another chuckle. She took a deep breath. She was really worked up, and he knew that something that had her this upset had to be good.

"The D.A.'s office called this morning. They're coming down this afternoon." She said.

"All of them?" He said, widening his eyes with amazement and chuckled. That did it. She broke into a reluctant smile and looked away slightly and suppressed a laugh.

"Come on, if you can't laugh at an army of lawyers descending upon the nuthouse, then what can you laugh at?" He prodded. She shook her head and smiled brightly and laughed, wiping her eyes.

Making her smile was just as rewarding as making her cry. She was beautiful, he wanted to kiss her.

No, slap her. Slap her. She needed some sense knocked into her, and he was the guy to do it. He nodded to himself, satisfied.

"…are having a meeting with Doctor Arkham, Leland and myself this afternoon." She said. Had she been talking?

"Why?" He asked. She frowned at him.

"Your case," she replied as if talking to a child. "They scheduled another competency hearing and they wanted to talk to us beforehand."

Why hadn't his fucking lawyer told him about this?

"Your fucking lawyer is incompetent." She said with disdain.

Had he said that out loud? How hard had they hit him in the head last night? He tilted his head and shrugged.

"Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs." He smirked.

"And you're telling me all of this why?" He asked regarding her with suspicion again. She sighed again as if all the weight in the world was on her shoulders. He wanted to shake the shit out of her.

"I felt you had the right to know. After all, you are the guy they are trying to execute." She looked at him and slipped a hand over his. He flinched but let her close her fingers around his.

"You haven't been helping yourself." She said. "I've tried time and again to get through to you but you won't let me and it frustrates me to no end."

They sat in silence for a while, her holding his hand, gently sliding her fingers across his skin.

"I was one of your schemers. You, of course, already knew that. You have no idea what I did to get your case. I wanted you, I thought I could learn all your dirty secrets and write a book and become someone important in my field. I was going to use you." She looked at him, tears slipping from her eyes.

"But now…" she wiped at her face with her free hand, "I care about you. Funny that."

He smiled at her. Like shooting fish in a barrel.