(Thanks for all the reviews I received on my first chapter, and to everyone who added this story to their alerts and favorites. It means a heck of a lot to me to know people are reading - and reviewing! Please let me know what you think about things so far.
I guess I should include one of those disclaimers, so here goes: I own none of these characters. Everything belongs to DC.
Please enjoy! I look forward to hearing from y'all.)
Lately, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham had been feeling more like a prisoner in his asylum than the owner of it.
He was used to the normal problems into which an institution like his was bound to run - malfunctioning alarm systems, fighting among the patients, the occasional security breach. Arkham could deal with those.
But these issues that had begun to crop up within the last week were something else entirely.
Morale among the staff had slipped to an unnerving low. Always a tight-knit bunch, his coworkers had begun to treat him with a sort of guarded skepticism reserved usually for the patients. He was either ignored when he greeted a colleague or else received only a cool reply, followed by a hasty departure in the opposite direction. He had been all but banned from the lounge, having been ostracized to an empty table and forced to endure a half hour's worth of snickers and whispers as he ate his tuna sandwich.
Of course, it wasn't difficult to figure out the reasoning behind their antipathy, and Arkham certainly had enough time to reflect on it during that empty lunch break. The staff felt he had been insensitive and careless in his management of the treatment of the hospital's newest, most dangerous patient, and were reacting out of loyalty to the six doctors who had been subjected to what was, in their opinion, unnecessary emotional distress. But what else could he have done? Whatever the matter was, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't in regards to Patient 7768. Arkham shoved the rest of his lunch back into his bag and had finished his meal alone in his office.
Even more troubling than his plummeting popularity was the fact that he was rapidly running out of doctors who wanted to have anything to do with Patient 7768. To be more exact, he knew the number was somewhere between zero and zero. Still, Arkham tried desperately to change their minds, pleading with them to give it another chance, to try one more time. He used every form of persuasion he knew - he appealed to their professional pride, their personal dignity, even hinting that there would be a raise in it for whoever agreed to try his luck again. But each steadfastly refused. They were angry, they were embarrassed, they were confused, but they were all in agreement: Patient 7768 could not be helped.
There was so little he could do about it. Arkham had watched six of his most gifted, experienced psychiatrists enter that lab on the seventh floor, watched as they cleared their throats and settled in, their faces haughty and bright as they began to assail the patient with questions, tests, examinations. As the minutes passed, he saw them begin to split at the seams, even though they scribbled faster and became even more manic in the speed and intensity of their questions. Arkham was powerless behind that one-way glass, and could only stand by in horrified fascination as Patient 7768 unraveled each one of them, a single silver thread of their psyches at a time. Six doctors had pledged to do what their predecessor had not (Don't worry, Jeremiah, I can take care of it, and You should've come to me first - I'll show the rest of them how it's done, they promised). Instead, each of them fell on the very swords they had tried to wield over their patient. One after the other after the other, they stumbled out of the room with the same electrified expressions, each with the word No hovering on their trembling lips.
Even Dr. Leon Salts, world-renowned for his essays on psychoanalysis and one of the asylum's most successful doctors, had emerged from the room in just forty-five minutes, ruddy-faced and sweating profusely.
"Jeremiah," he had panted, locking the door and leaning his corpulent frame against it, "he can't…I can't…my best tools…and then he…I'm sorry. I've never…seen that sort of mind…"
Or lack thereof, more accurately, Arkham had thought as Dr. Salts mopped the back of his neck with his handkerchief and fled, abandoning his briefcase inside the lab.
When he opened the door, Arkham braced himself for derisive insults and jeering from the man who was swiftly bringing the asylum to its knees, but what he got was worse. The patient had said nothing - there was no need. His expression, that smile, gleeful, smug, taunted Arkham better than any words could: Is that really the best you've got?
Indeed, Patient 7768 had made life seven times worse in just as many days.
Now Dr. Arkham leaned against the doorframe, watching as the guards brusquely dragged the Joker back towards his cell in Maximum Security. He massaged his temple and sighed. The Joker's words were lodged in his ears, and the ring of truth in them churned his stomach. You need me, doc, he'd said. And it was a sickening reality: the asylum needed the funding, the acclaim, the refreshingly positive publicity that curing a man as twisted as the Joker would surely bring.
But how? Arkham thought wearily, retreating back into the little room to collect his things. He slung his bag over his shoulder and stooped down to gather the Joker's scattered file from the floor. Just as he was about to click the file shut, a funny little scribble on the side of the profile page caught his eye. Arkham held it up to the light, squinting to read.
The only cure is no cure at all.
Harleen Quinzel.
Arkham found Harleen ten minutes later. Every Tuesday at noon, she had session with a patient named Janine Peters, a thin, mousy-haired woman who insisted on wearing maternity clothes over her jumpsuit. Janine had been a high-profile case when she arrived at the asylum, but instead of assigning her to one of the senior doctors, Arkham gave the job to Harleen. He didn't regret it.
He peered into the tiny window on the door and observed her. Harleen had a very distinct approach to therapy; in the ten minutes he watched, only twice did she open her mouth to say something. Asking too many questions, directing the conversation, that wasn't her style. She listened. And while it was a little too passive for Arkham's taste, he couldn't deny that it was effective. Harleen had been working with Janine Peters for two months, and already had gotten more information out of her than Arkham had in four.
"Janine Peters won't be an easy task, Harleen," he'd told her when he'd assigned her the case. "Gave birth to a set of twins. When she saw that one of them had been born with a severe facial disfigurement - "
"She cut off the face of the other baby and tried to sew it into the skin of the deformed one…and then killed her husband for interfering," Harleen had finished quietly. "I know the case, Jeremiah."
He handed her the patient's files. "Maybe she'll do better with you," he said. "She wouldn't talk to me. Said I wouldn't understand a woman's pain."
Harleen had smiled at him and held the file to her chest. "I can do it," she assured him.
That was how it had always been. Even when she'd first come to the asylum to interview, Harleen Quinzel made it clear that she was capable, willing, more than competent. She showed him a portfolio stuffed with her essays, some from med school and some which had been published in major psychiatry journals. She pushed her transcripts under his nose and described the results of the research she'd conducted throughout her years of schooling. She was charming, came prepared with interesting questions and was clearly more than academically qualified.
But she was twenty-six years old. She may have whizzed through school with flying colors, but Arkham had still had reservations about her emotional maturity. He thought an internship might be more appropriate than a full-fledged associate position.
"I didn't come here to bring you coffee and take down messages, Dr. Arkham," she'd said with a strained smile when he offered her the internship instead.
"No, no, of course not," he agreed. It would've been stupid to contradict her. She was ambitious, fantastically intelligent, a little brash and had a love for psychiatry that was only rivaled by Arkham's own.
"It's not like that. But it will be difficult," he warned.
"I can do it," she'd said.
Now, Arkham would give almost anything to hear her say those words to him again.
He stood there for a few moments longer, staring vaguely ahead, too caught up in his thoughts to be conscious of much around him. He didn't realize Harleen had noticed him until the door had already opened.
"Dr. Arkham," she greeted him coolly, her eyes flashing. She slipped out of the room and closed the door gently behind her. "Did you need me? I was just getting started with Janine. Or," her lips twisted into a derisive smile, "is there another sadistic, manipulative clown in here that you'd rather throw me to instead?"
Arkham gave a tired laugh - anything more exerting than silence was an effort these days - but ignored her jibe.
"Well done in there," he said, nodding towards the lab she had just exited. "You've really made strides with the Peters case."
Harleen gave a quick smile. "Well, I'm not doing much. Just letting her talk," she explained. "Usually I find it's more productive to let the patient run the session, rather than the doctor. The mind can heal itself, if we don't interfere."
Arkham's thoughts flashed to the note he'd seen in the case file. The only cure is no cure at all. He turned the words over and over in his head. The only cure…
"But I don't think you're here to discuss psych theory," she prompted, shifting her weight.
Arkham shook his head, the note vanishing from it. "No," he agreed. "But I've got to speak with you. Listen, about Patient 776 - "
"The Joker, you mean," she cut in, leaning against the doorframe. Her voice jumped off the tile walls in a garish echo, drawing curious stares from a few orderlies down the hall. Arkham gave an exasperated huff.
"Let's take a walk," he said. "We can't talk here."
Harleen bit her lower lip, glancing over her shoulder at Janine. She hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded.
"Fine. But let's make it quick."
Arkham and Harleen walked quietly for a while, only the clicking of her heels on the tile and distant slams of doors, the occasional scream, piercing the silence. As they migrated farther away from the main hall, the air grew colder, heavy with the smell of disinfectant and bleach. The lamps seemed to slowly lose the will to maintain their glow; as the two doctors progressed, the harsh light over their heads withered into hesitant sputters, sometimes snuffing out altogether. Arkham glanced at Harleen out of the corner of his eye; if she had never been to Maximum Security before, or even anywhere near it, she was hiding it well.
"I owe you an apology," he said finally into the silence. Harleen whipped her head up.
"Why?" she asked.
He shook his head. "It was a mistake to send you in there this morning. With the Joker," he said. "I don't know what I expected. I suppose I thought you could handle it."
"I - it wasn't that - "
"He's been a real nightmare," Arkham continued, ignoring her. "I was just desperate to try anything, I guess. And that included trying you. I only figured you'd be eager to take your shot at him, knowing how ambitious and intelligent you are." He cast her a wistful gaze. "But I've been wrong before."
She winced, recoiling from the remark. "It wasn't that I didn't want to try, Jeremiah," she said. "But you'd already given me Janine Peters a couple months ago, and that was a huge deal for me. I knew you had several other doctors who could've handled the Joker, so I kept out of it and worked twice as hard with my own patient." Then she added, in a soft, sharp voice: "I'm not weak." Arkham wasn't sure whether she'd said it to convince him or herself.
They rounded a corner. "Well, whatever the case is," Arkham said briskly, "I know you tried your hardest." In his peripheral vision he saw her body tense. He almost felt guilty for manipulating her like this. Almost.
At last, in front of a massive, windowless steel door, they stopped. The Gerald and Joanne Rosenguild Maximum Security Center was embossed in cold brass letters on the wall.
"Morning, Jerry," Arkham said cheerfully to one of the guards, scanning his ID card and tapped a code into the pad. After a loud succession of locks lurching back into the wall, the door beeped. Arkham pulled it open and motioned Harleen inside.
The maximum security corridor was even tighter and colder than the others in the asylum. Illuminated by ovals of yellow light from the ceiling lamps, the concrete floor was smooth, icy. Massive doors, colorless and blank except for a single square window, jutted out of the walls at five feet intervals.
Arkham looked at Harleen. He expected some sort of apprehension, perhaps at the very least some involuntary shivering, but there was none. She looked thrilled: her eyes were wide, bright, her face flushed with quiet excitement. They reached the end of the hall and stopped in front of the last cell.
"So what are we doing here?" Harleen said, peering into the thin rectangular window on the door.
"I just want to thank you for making an effort with him," Arkham said quietly. He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder into the cell. Sitting against the wall, fidgeting absently with a paperclip, was the Joker. Harleen gently raised her fingers to the glass - instantly his eyes shot up. It was as if he could see her - as if he was looking straight at her.
"He can't see us, can he?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
"No," Arkham said. "Impossible."
Harleen ran her fingers down the glass. Impossible.
Arkham saw his chance.
"Six doctors have tried their luck with him since he got here," he said softly. "Six of them failed. He cracked all of them. No one lasted more than an hour with him." Arkham sighed melodramatically. "He wants to improve, Harleen." A lie. Arkham's conscience did guilty backflips. "He needs help. He needs someone who will listen to him, someone with exceptional patience - exceptional intelligence." He eyed Harleen and sighed. "A pity, though, that we have no such doctor on staff. What with the six doctors he's already gone through, and then you, of course, with no interest in the case after what happened today, which I understand completely…well, we'll just have to tell the court we can't help him. I daresay they'll send him to Blackgate, but maybe they can do something for him there. We just can't handle a mind like his, I suppose."
Arkham paused and surveyed Harleen's face. It was unreadable - she just stared through the glass at the Joker, her eyes still and dark. Impossible, she mouthed.
He watched her for a few seconds more and cleared his throat. It was time for him to go.
"Well," Arkham said, "I must be getting along now - I've got a busy schedule today. But don't let me rush you. I'll just leave you to your thoughts." He turned on his heel, barely able to suppress the smile that tugged at his lips. "Oh, and if you need me, I'll be in my office," he called back to her. She appeared not to have heard him.
Arkham strode away, looking once more over his shoulder. She was still frozen in that little oval of light, her arms folded across her chest, her lips tight. She stared into the Joker's cell, the word Impossible hovering on her lips again.
He smiled. Harleen Quinzel was back on the case.