HELLO!
Joker here, to interrupt this BORRRINNNGGG story ha ha ha! God, was that wedding a drag or what? Could it have taken LONNNGGGERRRR to get to the FUN STUFF? Eh!? I mean honestly, who CARES about all of that. What you were REALLY waiting on was ME! Applause, applause, don't worry, dear reader, I'll wait.
This is the part where I come in and destroy EVERYTHING that you've read, everything that these writers have worked for! Now if you'll excuse me… Harley dear! WAKE UP! It's time to die. HehehehahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
Pain.
Everywhere, nauseating agony beyond control. Her head hurt like hell; blood was caked in her hair and around her temple. She felt like her lungs were on fire. Harley slowly opened her eyes, and only then did she realize that her mouth was sealed shut with a hefty layer of duct tape.
She was shocked into full alert, her eyes flying open, her hands jerking against the ropes double-wrapped around her wrists. Panic flared in her chest, and Harley tried to sit up, lifting her head in an attempt to get a better look at the room she was in. The table she was tied to was cold under the open back of her dress; the harsh fluorescent light above her made it impossible to see beyond its sickly clean white halo. A whimper escaped her bound lips, and Harley tugged against the restraints, feeling her baby kick at the movement. Dick will be here, she thought, breathing deeply through her nose to calm her racing heart. Dick will come.
And then he laughed.
Harley's blood ran cold with the sound, rising from the darkness surrounding her. The Joker grinned hatefully at her panicked cries and increasingly frantic struggling.
"Now Puddin'," his words swam with deadly sarcasm. "You know the more you struggle, the more likely it is you'll hurt Junior."
Harley screamed, and the Joker's laugher joined the muffled sound. He strode gleefully into the light, and Harley closed her eyes. He looked awful, a horrible grin pasted on his face, but in all her years of studying him and working with him, she had never seen him look like this. His eyes were distant, detached, like he was looking straight through her and not really registering anything anymore. His face was twisted and darkened with a smile to rival her worst nightmares about him. Bruises rimmed his lost eyes, purple as the tattered and tearing suit over his shoulders, and his emerald hair was matted with blood. He tugged off his glove and grabbed Harley's face.
"Open your eyes," the Joker purred. Harley whimpered and reluctantly did so. Cocking his head, he smiled wryly at her, taking out a knife. "I should just shoot you," he hissed.
Harley's blue eyes shone with terror. Her heartbeat stuttered.
"But that would be too easy. Easy on you. No, I want you to suffer as much as possible. I was curious about you, you know." Joker straightened, releasing her face. He dragged the knife across her arm and pain shot from the cut, blood seeping over her skin. Harley closed her eyes tight. The Joker wiped the blood off of the knife and grabbed her arm. Watching her heal, he laughed gleefully.
"So that's how Harley-dumpty survived her great fall!" he cackled. "That chlorophyll-juiced bitch gave you the Antitoxin. You regenerate quite quickly my dear, this will be fun. Let's see what's faster. Your healing or my blade," the Joker laughed as he walked away. "What about him? Did she give him the Antitoxin, or just some variation of it? No doubt something helped him recover from our playdate." The Joker rolled a table filled with horrible tools toward her; her teeth clenched together at the sound of it rattling. The Joker smiled down at her. "Did he tell you that I tore into him like paper on Christmas morning? Oh he tried to be tough, just like he'd been trained, but it wasn't long until the pain and the blood loss and the fatigue had him calling for Batman and wailing 'Harley, Harley!'"
Laughing at his own twisted words, the Joker busied himself with his various gruesome tools. Harley cried against the duct tape. Dick where are you!? She mentally screamed the words over and over, pleading with him. This couldn't be happening. He grinned down at her.
"Shhhh. Don't cry." He wiped her tears away from her cheek with the knife, causing her to cry out in pain. He didn't smile this time as the tip of the knife dug into her skin.
"You know, he and I did share a common pain, though." Joker turned away from her, giving a momentary reprieve from the agony. "We'd both lost the same thing. He was the cause of my heartache, so I sought to cut his out." His hand clenched on the hilt of the knife. "But then he interfered. The Batman."
Joker cried out in rage and plunged the knife into her leg. Harley's back arched, and she screamed, sobbing against the tape on her mouth. Her ankles were bound in the same rope, her dress tangled around her knees. He could distinctly hear her muffled cries for Dick, and he twisted the knife in her leg. Harley screamed louder.
"Do you know what it's like!?" he demanded, his hand dropping away from the knife, still in her leg. "To lose something you didn't know you cared for?! Something that was always there, always constant, that you didn't have to think twice about having it because you knew that it- that she- would never go away? It was like electricity, or steady income, or a roof over your head. You don't give a shit about cussing it out or hating it or needing it- until it's gone. So now-" Joker slammed his hands down on the table she was strapped to- "I'm going to take it back. I know I'll never regain your affection, so of course…" his pale hand, splattered with blood, came to rest on her stomach. "I'll start anew."
Harley could feel the dread settle through her as his words took hold. The world went cold around her. Not that. Anything but that. She strained harder against the ropes, but even with the adrenaline, Antitoxin, and fear coursing through her veins, she couldn't get free. She tried to beg, muttering against the tape even though she knew he wouldn't listen, the knife a dull ache in her leg. He yanked it out, and she screamed. Joker took hold of the duct tape on her face and tore it off, ignoring as she cried out. He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him.
"What was that you said, Harley-Darling, I didn't quite catch it," he laughed madly, roughly releasing her face.
"Please don't," she sobbed. "Please."
"It's too late for begging and pleading now, my dear," he said quietly, grinning down at her. "Honestly, have you missed me? Playing hero?" Joker busied himself cutting her gown away from her stomach. Harley choked out a sob, yanking her arms against the ropes.
"Not my baby. Please, no," she breathed. "I'll do anything. Please stop."
"Anything, Darling?" he purred, leaning down to look at her. His smile graced his gruesome features once again, and he laughed breathlessly. "If I gave you a gun and pointed you at Dick Grayson, would you pull the trigger to save your child?" Joker asked. Harley turned her head, sucking in a ragged breath as tears continued to stream down her face.
"Don't hurt them," she pleaded. "Please. I will go with you," she promised. "If you leave him and the baby alone, I'll be with you. Just like we were before." She looked up at him, her blue eyes pleading.
"That is…" he smiled to himself, straightening up. "Enticing. But not part of the plan," he shook his head, green curls falling in front of his pale forehead.
"Please!" she cried. "It will be like it never happened, I promise. Just leave them alone." Harley shook her head, blinking through the tears. "Please," she begged.
"No, that's not the point!" he screamed, slamming a fist down on the metal table, rattling the instruments on its surface. "That's not the point," he repeated. "The point isn't to regain your love, it's to make him suffer. So you see, I can't leave him alone. Not until I've stripped the flesh from his bones." He took a deep breath and calmed himself.
"No," Harley yanked against the ropes, "don't." She clenched her mouth closed, trying to keep from sobbing aloud.
"It's okay to cry," he assured her. Joker ignored her for a while, preparing her for her impromptu surgery- before he stopped. "No one knows who I am," the Joker said quietly. He looked at Harley, and he didn't seem sad or remorseful in any way, just stating a fact. He put down his scalpel, folding his gloved hands on the table. "I used to be an average Joe. Funny, how that name is so… Average. The expression, anyway. I was normal. Quite handsome, but that could be the narcissistic personality disorder that you diagnosed me with. I had a job, a house, a car… a pregnant wife. She looked a lot like you, actually. Maybe that's why I liked you so much." The Joker thoughtfully traced his scalpel along the soft skin at her jawline. Harley turned her face away from the blade.
"I'm sure she would hate what you've become," she spat.
"The wife and I fell on hard times." Joker continued, ignoring her comment. "I was a comedian in a city that had never heard laughter. Gotham is unforgiving, and in order to thrive in it, you have to be unforgiving, too. Just ask the Batman," he let out a wheezing laugh, grinning for a moment. "So I did. In order to bring in a little extra money, I helped rob a place. Then another, and then another- when I wanted out, they threatened my wife and my unborn child," his voice had dropped to a whisper, his eyes seemingly lost in the past.
"Kind of like you're doing now?" She'd heard this story before. She'd pitied him for it.
He looked down at her. The Joker wasn't smiling anymore. His eyes were pained and furious and lost, uncomprehending; still locked on an event that had changed him, somehow. "They told me that… if I didn't do what they wanted, they'd kill them. I had to keep going." He laughed breathlessly. "At our next job, I found out that, despite my compliance, they'd murdered her anyway. Everything that I lived for. Gone." He waved his fingers, mimicking an explosion. "I tried to turn myself in, tried to tell Batman that I needed help-" he closed his eyes. "And that's when I fell. Right into that toxic waste, like some cartoon." Joker laughed loudly. "When I woke up? I saw the bright side. And the bright side was: there is no order." Harley didn't say anything. She knew there was no point to her answering; he wasn't talking to her really.
"Can you imagine? All that happening, in one horrible night?" The Joker leaned down closer to her and pursed his lips, cutting jagged lines in her arm with the scalpel like doodles on a page to distract a troubled mind. Harley whimpered as the pain of the cuts burned white hot, her raw wrists pulling once more at the ropes. "It was the worst punishment I could imagine. So naturally, I thought I'd apply it. Test it, if you will. Was I really crazy?!" he chuckled as he spoke. "Or was I driven mad?" Joker looked down at her, his face growing grim. "So his punishment won't be to die. His punishment will be the loss of his wife and child- and the insanity that comes with the guilt. The absolute certainty that it was your fault that the only thing you'd give everything for was the only thing you couldn't possibly save, and worse than that- you put in harm's way. It eats away at your soul and your mind-" Joker twisted a hand in her hair, yanking it to the side and forcing her to look at him- "until you're gone. And all that is left is a legally insane facade of who you once were. And then nobody knows who you were. That, my dear, that… is how you truly forget yourself. And he will. The only memory he will have of his past life will be of your lifeless body on this table, too late to save you and too late to stop me," he hissed, a laugh rising from the back of his throat.
He picked up his knife again. He cackled wildly, pulling her dress away from her belly and tracing the scar on her hip, before plunging his knife into it, tearing it open again. Harley wailed in agony, her body arching off the table. She instinctually wanted to wrap her arms around her stomach, to protect her baby from the pain. She felt like her entire body was painfully tense and her stomach a sharp tangle of knots.
"Don't," she sobbed, her voice cracking with pain. "Leave him alone." Harley knew it would kill him, knew the Joker's plan would destroy Dick. She couldn't decide now if she still wanted him to miraculously show up. She desperately wanted him to find her, save Haly, but she couldn't stand the thought of what he would do or what he would think if he came. He would blame himself. And you started that stupid fight, she thought to herself. What if that's the last thing you say to him?
"He said it himself," Joker purred, dragging the knife from her hip slowly. "This won't end until he wins, or I do."
"And you won't," Harley gasped through the pain, her teeth clenched. "All you're going to do is send him and Batman after you. Is that what this is about? You think Batman will finally kill you over this?"
"It would accomplish what I've tried for so long to prove, now, wouldn't it?" He grinned horribly. "And either way, one way or another; I win. If he comes, you know he will kill me. And if he doesn't? Then he'll have failed. Either way, Nightwing dies inside. And Batman loses his favorite son."
"No, either way you lose," Harley snapped, her chest heaving as she gasped for air. "You poked and prodded them, maimed and killed, attacked the ones they loved and them countless times, and they always come back; they always survive. This time won't be any different." She glared at him. "I've hurt Dick countless times before, he'll have hardened his heart against this," she lied. "Hell, you didn't even miss me, so no, you're not going to win. You're just going to have more blood on your hands. I won't let you win."
"You never did understand, did you, Darling?" he asked, smiling. She could feel the blood dripping from the wound in her side as it healed. "I know I'm going to hell. The point was to drag him with me," he hissed, tracing her cheekbone with the knife; the blade left a streak of blood across her skin. "They may come back, they may survive; but I'll have corrupted the white gloves that he wears. Your 'Batman family' will no longer be the ideal of good. Of order. And I've been watching him. Not like you have, no. I saw him wake up in the night time and time again, gasping. He's still broken, you know that you ruined him, and he's just been put back together like a little porcelain doll. All he needs is something to drop him again. He just needs to fall one more time," Joker cackled madly, putting a hand on her cheek. "And you won't catch him."
"You bastard!" Harley screamed, tears running dirty streaks down her face with her mascara.
'"Everyone expects me to be happy but the truth is- I am just as fucked up as you all are! But I have to be happy, and I'm not allowed to be broken! This is the real me, Harley, whether you like it or not. I worry and I'm terrified and I hate being that way, so I pretend I'm not."'
'"She's too much like her father. "You two ruin every chance you're given," Shannon countered.'
Harley was trembling. "Why couldn't you just leave us alone?!"
He exchanged the knife for the scalpel. "Because," He pressed the scalpel against her belly, and her eyes widened at the touch of the blade, "you belong to me."
"You killed me!" She cried. "Twice! You left me for dead. You never wanted me. All you ever wanted was to hurt me!"
"Well. People do crazy things when they're in love," he laughed.
"I hate you," Harley hissed, glaring at him. "Let me go," she demanded. Joker laughed again, harder this time, and drove the scalpel into her shoulder. He leaned down on it, looking at her.
"...It was worth a shot, right?" he cackled, grinning as she screamed. Stepping back, he left the scalpel in her shoulder, cocking his head as he watched her skin healing around it. "Now one can't help but think, is this how he felt? When no one came to his aid?" He folded his hands, beaming darkly.
"Please," Harley was sobbing again, "please stop hurting him." She cringed at the strain the scalpel put on her joint. Joker narrowed his eyes, leaning down closer to her.
"So selfless, Doctor. You continually say 'him'. Stop hurting 'him' when the blade is in your shoulder," he mused, twisting the blade. She heard a snap as her collarbone broke under the pressure. Harley screamed, her body convulsing in pain. She felt Haly kick.
"Please stop hurting me," she whimpered, trying to breathe through the pain.
"He's not coming," Joker whispered. He yanked the scalpel out of her freshly healed shoulder, tearing it open again. He laughed as blood spattered over her deep violet dress, torn and already stained.
Harley wailed in agony, throwing her head back as she sobbed. For a second, she wanted to beg him to stop, but she bit her lip. Better me than Haly, she thought to herself. If he was hurting her, he was leaving her baby alone. Dick where are you? she thought again, her nails digging into the palms of her hand. She sucked in a breath as the pain in her shoulder dulled as it healed. The Joker watched her, and then shook his head.
"Will you be completely honest with me?" he asked, not bothering to wipe her blood off of the scalpel before pressing it into the skin at her stomach.
"No!" Harley screamed, trying to pull away from him in a panic. He paused.
"Do you really think he's coming for you?" Harley closed her eyes, unable to move any farther. "Maybe we were a mistake."
"Yes," she said. I don't know, she thought.
"Hmm. Such misguided faith. Just like him, I suppose. Following Batman like a blind dog." Joker busied himself again, pulling the scalpel slowly along her belly, grinning down at her. Harley howled in distress, her nails drawing blood from her palms.
"Please! Stop!"
Joker again paused. "Beg him. Not me. I'm not the one letting this happen." He laughed darkly. Harley whimpered, pulling weakly at the ropes. The Joker was yanked backwards suddenly, outside of the harsh light beating down on her. She blinked in the glare, trying to peer outside it into the dark, but she couldn't see anything. He hadn't made a sound, just dragged back by some unknown force. Dick?!
She heard him laugh, wheezing breathlessly; she heard the blows landing, again and again. The Joker continued to howl with laughter, the sound making her blood run cold as it grew weaker. It sounded cruel. The sounds of the struggle outside the circle of light faded with his laughter, and she was left in silence. Her breathing was loud and ragged, and she was trembling slightly. She lifted her head up, looking around. Her head felt like it was spinning; she didn't know how much blood she'd lost. The pain of the Joker's knife at her stomach was still there. She groaned.
"Harley?! God, are you-" Nightwing grabbed her face desperately and made her look at him. She blinked up at him, trying to process if he was really there. Where he'd come from. He was pale and blood was splattered over the crimson streak on his chest. He pulled out a wingding and slashed it skillfully through the ropes, one quick thrust slicing clean through the thick binds. Harley cried out as the pressure released, and he dragged her off of the table, holding her close to his chest as he turned and rushed for the door.
"Dick?" she mumbled. He came.
She suddenly screamed in agony.
Harley clutched at his chest, bawling into his shoulder. For a petrifying second, she thought the Joker was cutting her stomach open again. Her blood ran cold when she realized the pain was coming from inside. Haly.
"Dick," she sobbed, her stomach seizing. "Something's wrong," she choked, before crying out again. He watched her in alarm, breaking into a run with her in his arms.
"It'll be okay, Harley, whatever- It's going to be fine," he assured her, his voice wavering. He burst out into the night, the cold air biting her exposed skin. He didn't know what to do. His panic was overwhelming as he looked around the dark street. Harley whimpered into his chest as the pain receded before gasping as it rolled over her again.
"Dick," she panted. "Haly… please." She held as tight as she could to him, her blood smearing onto his suit.
"Oh God," he breathed. "Okay, Harley. Okay," Nightwing slid to a stop beside his motorcycle and climbed on, still holding her in his arms. He situated her on his lap, pulling her legs around his waist as he tucked her head in to his neck. "Hold on to me," he instructed, the engine already roaring to life as he tore down the street. "Hold on, just please hold on…"