A/N: I still feel very guilty about taking so long to upload the last chapter that I'm posting this one now as a peace offering. Since I'm no longer dealing with certain issues in my life that made it difficult to update in a timely manner, I'll be able to make this story the priority it deserves to be.
Please, I would love some feedback on these last two chapters (thank you to those who have already reviewed!). Am I going too fast? Are the characters developing properly? As a writer it's always nice to hear from readers - be it praise or constructive criticism or if you just wanna shoot the breeze with me over PM (lol). I'm friendly, I promise, so don't be afraid to post something here or send me a message! I do respond to them. =)
And fair warning, this is going to be a long one. I was thinking about breaking these up into two separate chapters, but I decided it's much more cohesive and fluid if I present it as one. Let me know if I'm wrong.
Hope you enjoy.
…...
"We've gotta make this quick today," Harley said, sitting down at the table. Doctor and patient were back in 32A, and tumultuous though the events of their last session had been, it felt as if they had never left: the rusty stool beneath her still whined as she crossed her legs, the overhead lights still sputtered and threw weak white light onto the bare cinderblock walls. It comforted Harley in a way to know that some things, as trivial as they seemed, were keeping constant; the stability of the rest of her life, however, was another matter.
Jeremiah was now observing her almost obsessively, but after her behavior had begun to change so rapidly in just a matter of months, she almost couldn't blame him. He always seemed to find an excuse to be in the same general vicinity, and though he looked completely immersed in his own business, Harley knew he was listening and sneaking glances when she wasn't looking. He had even started to sit with her at lunch, usually striking up terse chats about the weather or the impending local elections. He was guarded and careful around her now, and she realized with great unease that he had begun to use the same condescending tone in his interactions with her that he used with patients.
The staff, too, seemed wary of her, as if they had all unanimously decided behind Harley's back that she was now too capricious to risk mingling with anymore. Though they all knew her relatively well and had often shared lunch or post-shift drinks with her in the past, they simply stared at her silently as she passed them in the corridors. Harley was no longer an equal, no longer considered a colleague in their eyes. She wasn't completely deranged, they knew, but there also wasn't something quite right about her anymore.
Harley was in between and belonged nowhere now. Everything had changed.
A low chuckle snapped her attention back into the room. Across from her, the Joker was smiling, leaning his chair back on one leg. Harley noticed how his scars seemed magnified a hundredfold when he grinned.
"I'm sorry, what?" she said, shaking her head and looking away before he caught her staring.
"I said, why? Why do we have to make it quick today?" he asked. "I always look forward to these little dates, Harley." His tongue darted to the corner of his mouth, eyes intently fixed on her.
Her skin erupted in goose bumps, and she had to focus hard to keep the shiver out of her voice.
"Arkham's cutting our session time again," she sighed. "Now we're down to half an hour."
"Son of a bitch," he hissed, lips twisting into a grimace.
"That's what I said."
He stared at her. "You called Arkham a son of a bitch?"
"Are you impressed?" she smirked, folding her arms over her chest.
"Uh…well, yeah. I mean, six months ago you were apologizing for sneezing, Harley," he snorted. "And now you're cussing out your beloved superiors? Good for you. I would applaud, in fact, but…" He glanced down at himself and gave her a lopsided grin. "I'm a little tied up at the moment."
"I know," Harley said. "I'm really sorry, J. There's nothing I can do about the straitjacket."
He looked miserable, like a leopard lying chained and unable to gnaw at its shackles . She had told the orderlies to go easy on him, and they'd clearly ignored her: the straps were so rigid that he was having difficulty breathing. His arms were bound tightly across his body, but they quivered with energy the way the string of an old crossbow might if you strummed it. She wondered if he would try to escape the jacket once she left.
"Guess we're a little too, ah, explosive together for their comfort," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "Took the concussion thing a little too seriously. Hey, you didn't tell them to put me in this, did you? 'Cause of that? I thought we agreed I was looking out for you there."
"Of course I didn't!" she snapped. "I hate seeing you like this! Why would you even say that?"
"I dunno. Thought maybe you had a bondage thing," he said, smirking.
"Nah. S&M's more my style, J," she teased sarcastically. "Try to keep up."
He licked his top lip, black eyes steady on hers. "I'd love to."
Harley didn't know how to respond. The room was suddenly very warm; all she could hear was her heart pounding against her ribs. She gathered the dark hair on her neck and twisted it into a messy bun, hoping he couldn't see how red her face was.
But of course he did. He breathed her unease like fresh ocean air, seemed to draw strength from her embarrassment.
"Why does that make you uncomfortable?" he asked. "You give it as good as you take it in everything else - and that's not an innuendo, so relax," he said quickly, a ghost of a smile on his lips, as Harley opened her mouth to protest. "You can keep up with me, Harl, and I like that about you. But the second I bring up sex, you shut down and the joke isn't funny anymore."
Her face burned, but she stared at him, silent. He stared back, his gaze unwavering and hot, until she looked away.
"I really…don't want to talk about it," she murmured.
He shook his head. "You know, you really are bad at this. You wouldn't have lasted five minutes with Hannibal Lecter. Quid pro quo, remember? The story would've ended a lot quicker if the FBI had sent you to interview him instead of ol' what's-her-face." He giggled. "I can just imagine it: 'You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the laughter of the clown.'" He burst into loud cackles that bounded wildly off the walls, rocking precariously in his chair.
Harley swallowed, tried to even out her breathing. It was dangerously close to the truth.
"Are you done making fun of me?" she said tonelessly, when his crowing had subsided.
"Oh, hush. You just need to get a little more fun out of life, Harley," he said airily. "But if you insist, we'll turn to a lighter topic. Have you ever killed anyone before?"
"Have I ever - excuse me?" she spluttered.
He was unfazed. "I'm not speaking in tongues here. It's a simple question."
"No, of course I haven't," she said. "You're the one in the straitjacket, not me."
He lifted an eyebrow. "All a matter of perspective, I think."
The air seemed to evaporate from her lungs in that second.
"No, I've never killed anyone," she said finally.
"But sometimes you'd like to, wouldn't ya?"
"No."
He tilted his head skeptically. "You've never felt so deliriously angry that you'd wanted to just choke the life out of someone? Never felt such a…a ravenous fury that you thought only a gun could quench it? Or a knife?" He ran his tongue along his lip. "Never felt that way towards old Arkham, who took one look at your pretty face and threw you into the pit with a very hungry wolf, just to see if you'd make it out against all odds?"
She shook her head. Her nails cut into her palms where she held them clenched on her lap. Sweat rolled down her neck.
"No?" he said lightly. "How about your father, Harley? Your daddy. You ever feel angry towards him for leaving you and your mom, for finding another family somewhere, another little girl to love and spin and hold? How did it feel to hear him yell at your mom night after night, and know there was nothing you could do to keep him there with you?"
"It…he was…I don't - " she gasped. His face swam in her vision, his black eyes unblinking and calm, as he reveled in her agony.
"Does he still make you mad, Harley? Even after all these years?" he prompted. "Do you want him to suffer?"
"No, I…it isn't - "
"Answer me, Harley," he said. His voice was serene over her gasps, his body still as she quivered in front of him. "Don't you want to make him suffer as much as he made you suffer?"
"STOP IT!" Harley screamed, kicking her chair over. "Stop! Stop right now!"
"Or what?" he asked innocently.
"Or I'll - "
She froze, the words burning on her tongue. She swallowed them desperately, but their absence rang the air, shimmering in her ears.
The Joker was smiling proudly.
"See? 'Or you'll kill me,'" he finished for her. "There. Simple, wasn't it? Now sit down and we'll speak like the civilized adults that society says we should be." He tossed her a wink as she retrieved the chair, glaring, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
"Now, I've gotta be honest with you, Harley: I have no intention of being carted off to Blackgate," the Joker said. "Like I mentioned down in the basement the other day, I only stuck around because of you. But now it's time to check out. And for me to do that, I'm gonna need your help. Harley, sweetie, hate to break it to you, but I think you've known this for a while: you're going to have to kill someone for me. For both of us to get out of here."
Harley glanced at him in confusion. "Both of us? You want me to…"
"Well, yeah," he scoffed. "I mean, it's not like Arkham's gonna be okay with his most high-profile inmate escaping and give you an A for effort. Heads are gonna roll, Harley, even after we're gone."
"But…I can't go with you," she said. "I - I have a life, y'know, outside of this asylum. I don't exist just for your - your enjoyment."
He raised his eyebrows. "Really. Then tell me, give me three things that are keeping you here."
Harley swallowed, picking absently at her fingernails. "Um…my cat…"
A tense silence.
"Your cat," he finally repeated. "Well, let me tell you something, sweetheart: there's nothing keeping you here except a debilitating naivety known as idealism. You wanted to fix me. Newsflash, Harl - you failed. Not 'cause you're bad at your job or 'cause you're a crappy doctor, but because I don't want to be fixed. Do you hear me? I don't want to be fixed, because I don't think there's anything the matter with me. Tell me, Harley, are you out to help me because you truly, genuinely think I need it? Or because it's what society says I need, what Arkham says I need?"
"I just…" she began.
"Do you think I need these chains?" he continued, the steel rattling against the thick fabric of the jacket. "Answer me, Harley!"
"No!" she said. "You don't need them…or the jacket…"
"Then why am I in them?" he asked. "Same reason you refuse to go with me: it's what they're telling you to do. For once in your life, make up your own goddamned mind. You can kill a man's body and help another one escape, or you can let him live and in turn kill the other's soul."
"J…you have to understand, I can't - "
"Just get out of here," he said.
Harley shut her eyes, aghast at what she was about to say. "But what if I…what if I agree to do it? Help you?"
"Go home, Harley," the Joker repeated flatly.
They stared at each other for a moment. Abruptly she rose to leave, not meeting his eyes as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
"And Harl, if you have any questions…it wouldn't hurt to consult your notes."
He smiled.
She shut the door on him. All of a sudden she could breath again.
…...
After finally managing to lose Jeremiah, who'd been waiting in her office to go over another set of session cuts and insisted on walking her to the break room, Harley found Dr. Crane alone in the patient library on the second floor. It was a tiny closet of a room, with only a few shelves of shabby paperbacks left after decades of theft and vandalism, but she'd always found it oddly soothing. She hoped its occupant would be able to calm her too.
Jonathan Crane had always had that effect on her, though she knew plenty of her associates - or whoever they were to her now - would beg to differ. But through the shadowing program Gotham University's psychology department used to coordinate with the asylum, Harley had come to know a very different Crane. He had always been civil to her, sometimes even friendly, speaking freely about psych technique and theory. She remembered how thrilled she'd been when he let her run some of his sessions at the end of the twelve-week course. Harley remembered him as gentle and considerate, even talking her through a nasty breakup with her fiancé at the time. Perhaps it was just her debilitating naivety, as the Joker had bluntly told her earlier, but she trusted Crane - trusted him to tell her if what she was feeling wasn't completely crazy. As she twisted the gritty knob, she prayed she was right.
The door squealed on its hinges and Crane looked up from his book. "Ah, Harleen," he said. "Hello, child."
Harley smiled. "Hi, Doctor. Call me Harley," she said lightly. "May I come in? I hope I'm not interrupting."
"No, not at all," Crane said, marking his place in the book and setting it on his lap. "Just going over some Marcus Aurelius. But I'm sure whatever occasion brings you here is far more interesting."
Harley settled into the seat opposite him. The room was so tiny that their knees were nearly touching. She sat up a little straighter and swept a piece of hair out of her eyes.
"More interesting, less pleasant, Doctor," she said. "I'm glad to see they're giving you a little more freedom. Finally out of max security?"
Crane rolled his eyes. "Finally. They let me out a couple days ago because I've apparently been 'good' for the past couple of weeks. Since then I've been spending most of my time here." He scanned her face, lingering on her eyes, reading her. Like clockwork, he said, "So how's that patient of yours? The clown? Nice work on those placebos you gave him, by the way. You had him vomiting up half his lunch every day, thinking you were drugging him."
"The Joker is…complicated," Harley said as casually as she could.
"And so are you, now," Crane remarked, tilting his head pensively. "You didn't used to be. You were very simple, very easy to read during that shadow course. Cheerful, loquacious - sometimes overly so," he said with a smirk. "But now you're coming apart at the seams. Look at how tense your shoulders are, your hands are shaking. I don't think you've been eating. That clown isn't good for you."
Harley gave a shaky smile. "Well, hopefully I'm good for him," she said.
"And now you're skirting the issue," Crane said. "Another change. But I'll humor you. Good for him in what way, child?"
"Well…I think I'm changing him…at least a little. I'm trying to show him that there's more to himself than gunpowder and knives." She grinned a little in spite of herself.
"Do you feel affection for him?" he asked.
"I…no," she said quickly. "Why?"
Crane shrugged. "I can see your pulse has risen - you have a very prominent jugular vein. Many times, a person's heart rate will speed up when they - "
"I'm not in love with him!" Harley interrupted hotly.
The doctor merely gazed at her. "I never implied love," he said, adjusting his glasses. "But it's interesting that you interpreted it that way. Has he told you about that escape plan of his?"
"How do you know about that?" she gasped. "I would've never guessed he'd confide in you - no offense, Doctor."
Crane chuckled. "No, you're quite right - we loathe one another passionately. But he had a bad habit of talking in his sleep when he thought you were medicating him. I learned more about that man's dreams than I'd ever wanted to know. He said your name frequently - 'Harley Quinn,' like the jester. Clever." He scanned her face. "I assumed that's why you want me to call you 'Harley' now instead of Harleen."
Harley swallowed hard, and before she could reply, Crane continued.
"I expect you understand the part you play in his scheme," he said.
"He wants me to kill for him." The words burned in her throat and sounded flat to her ears as she spoke.
Crane nodded. "Would you?"
There was a very long silence.
"I think so," she whispered finally. "I don't understand it…but I think I would."
Crane peered at her over his glasses. "Really?"
She couldn't tell if he was more impressed or skeptical.
"I don't suppose I have to tell you that they consider murder as grounds for termination at this hospital, Miss Quinzel," he said with a wry smile.
"I don't care."
He furrowed his brow. "Then what do you care about?"
"Living."
"Oh, what great irony."
She glared at him. "You know what I mean."
"I'm afraid I don't. Go on."
Harley wondered absently for a second which one of them was the doctor and which was the patient in this situation. But she sighed, and, drawing peace from his steady gaze, continued. "I used to think I was happy," she began, playing with a loose button on her cuff. "I had my degree, I had a good job, nice apartment, decent salary. Everything you're supposed to want. My patients here were making good progress, Jeremiah was proud of me. It seemed like I had everything I could've hoped for."
Her voice suddenly turned dark and coarse. "And then they brought the Joker in. He wasn't even my patient, Doctor. I got thrown to him after everyone else bailed. Did you know that? I didn't ask for him. I figured I wasn't ready. And now I guess I'd been right."
"But it was never in your nature to back down, child. You did what you thought you should," Crane interjected.
Harley shook her head. "No. I walked out of our first session about fifteen minutes in. I couldn't help it. I was sitting in front of him and it was like he could see right through me. I was completely naked. My thoughts, my desires, my mind…everything was bare in that room. I think he understood me better than I understand myself, actually. And it scared me. I left."
He raised his eyebrows. "But you went back."
She sighed. "Yes. Jeremiah took me to the max security wing, gave me a spiel about how the asylum had no one else who could help this man, how they'd probably have to send him to…send him away. I stood in front of his cell for an hour, just watching him. I saw him as he saw himself. He was real in that room. There was no face paint or chains. He was on his cot staring at the wall the entire time, thinking. I could see it on his face. I wanted so desperately to know those thoughts, know that mind. In that hour of watching him, he persuaded me that he could be helped."
"And then…?" Crane prompted.
"And then I agreed to take him again. We started seeing each other weekly. I thought at first that he was improving, really making an effort. He talked to me for hours. In our sessions, he'd describe the exhilaration he got running from the cops, how powerful he felt bending an entire city under his will. He said he felt free out there with his gunpowder and knives, knowing that there was no one to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. He liked the feeling of running with the wind, the sensation of just living breath by breath. He was alive. Happy." She gathered a shallow breath. "And I realized for the first time in my life that I had no idea what he meant."
Her voice broke on the last word, and she tried unsuccessfully to stifle her tears.
Crane did not seem unnerved by her reaction; he simply removed his glasses and did not speak until she had recovered.
"Do you love him?" he asked.
She didn't answer.
"Or do you love the idea of him? Romanticizing him as some misunderstood revolutionary, out to change the world?"
"I don't know," she whispered.
Crane was unconvinced. "But you'd kill for him. You have no problem taking a life for this man."
Harley shook her head. "You don't understand," she said. "When I look at him, Doctor, it's like looking into myself. I know who I am around him. I have a purpose." She paused. "I love myself when I'm with him. I don't know what that means yet, but…I have to find out." She looked down at her lap.
Sighing, Crane leaned back in his chair and gazed at her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft.
"Harleen, I know you both as a student and as a colleague," he said. "You're a brilliant young woman, and you've earned my respect. But you also know me, child: fear is my life - my past and future. Thus, I know it well. There are a thousand different manifestations of it in any given individual, and I've made it my life's work to test them, to study them - ideally even harness them." He caught her eyes. "So I feel compelled to tell you that what you're experiencing isn't any kind of desire to spread your wings, so to speak, or to go and take your shot at the world. You do not feel love for this man. Not even misguided affection. You're scared, Harleen. This is fear."
Her head snapped up, ready to protest.
"Yes, it often tastes bitter to the unanointed," he continued before she could speak. "But you came here for my counsel, child, and here it is: do not help this man escape. Do not kill for him. Do not run away with him. As a psychologist, you know his type - you know the second you stop being useful to him, he'll kill you."
"You don't - "
"I understand more than you think!" he snapped. "Listen. I advise you against this scheme, as your ex-mentor and friend, but if you are bent on it, then allow me to provide you with some measure of protection." He removed his shoe and set it on the table.
Harley stared at it. "Well, thanks, but I think I'm trying to kill a man, not a spider, Jonathan," she said with a small smile.
Crane smirked and pulled out the padding, poking around in its depths. After a few seconds he extracted a tiny plastic vial and set it before her.
"If you're going to place yourself in this kind of jeopardy, pointless though it is, I'd prefer if you had some means of defense," he said. "Please take it. It's a custom brew, guaranteed to render an opponent unconscious for hours. It can even be fatal, if you wield it correctly. Just dab a bit onto a handkerchief and hold it to the victim's face. Instant knockout," he said with a smug grin. "I was saving it for a rainy day, but I'd rather you have it."
Harley slipped the vial into her pocket. "Thank you, Doctor," she said. "And…this stays between us, right?"
He raised his eyebrows. "I take doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously, Miss Quinzel," he said wryly.
She sighed, relieved. She knew he wouldn't have told, but it was reassuring to hear him say so.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked as she stood and gathered her things.
"No, no," he said, shaking his head. "Just promise me one thing."
"Anything."
"Never forget how it feels to be afraid, child. Fear, and its effects, will always be your greatest weapon."
Harley nodded. The vial burned deliciously in her pocket.
…...
A/N: You know, Crane is really fun to write for. I've never used him much before, but he interests me…Anyway, PLEASE let me know what you think, good or bad!
Love,
SN