Two
Hard Knocks

The Joker was an open-minded guy. He'd try just about anything once, including, it turned out, meditation. Sure, it was far from his first resort, but he was in the middle of a sort of inspirational block, a frustrating one, and meditation was supposed to help, make him feel level and calm.

So far, he just felt like an asshole.

Without opening his eyes, he announced, "I'm starting to think this Buddha guy may have been full of shit."

A beat of silence, then Harley said, "Oh, right, I forgot that you're the undisputed authority on spiritual leaders."

He felt one ragged corner of his mouth crook up and quickly pulled his face into a frown instead. "Shhhhh. I'm meditating."

He expected a giggle, or at the very least a snide comment. When he got neither, he cracked a suspicious eye open, only to screw it shut immediately against the unexpectedly bright light. When in the hell did it get to be morning? he thought, and, more prepared this time, he opened both eyes in an annoyed squint. When they adjusted to the light streaming in through the filthy, half-boarded window, choked but still bright enough to hurt a bit, he realized that Harley wasn't in the room.

Hmm. He rolled his tongue slowly along the back of his bottom lip, eyes resting on the window. He'd known this was a bad idea. He must have zoned out a little—which would have been fine if he'd come back to himself with something useful, but, searching his brain, he found it the same way he'd left it: flat, lifeless. Unlike him. Exasperating.

He was sitting upright on the concrete floor of an empty, barren room on the edge of headquarters. Harley was nowhere to be seen, and yet he hadn't heard her leave. Hadn't heard her come in, either, truth be told, but he'd certainly heard her voice clear as day just a moment ago.

He scratched idly at his shoulder, screwing up his face in annoyance for a moment when it responded with a dull little flash of pain—he'd healed about as much as he was going to from the sniper's bullet, but the spot was still tender in the way bad wounds often stayed. After another beat, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and climbed to his feet, lacing his hands behind his back and stretching out cramped muscles with a groan.

This wasn't the first time the specter at the edges had taken on Harley's voice. Sometimes it took her form, too—always just out of his focus, usually when he was distracted. Call it an overactive imagination. He wasn't worried about it. Harley would, if she knew, so he made sure she didn't. Easy. He looked around the room one more time as he shook his hands out to get the blood flowing, triple-checking to make sure there was nowhere she could be hiding, and then, in lieu of anything more important or interesting to do—fucking block—he turned and went to find out where she'd ended up.

It was possible that she wasn't around at all. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't really recall seeing her in the last day or two—at least, he couldn't swear to it. He had the impression of her, but he knew by now that that impressions weren't trustworthy. However, his first guess ended up being the right one, although he still wasn't quite expecting what he found when he pushed open the door to the room he'd sectioned off as his quarters.

She was there, he could see the lump of her little body beneath the blankets covering the stolen mattress that served for a bed, could see the yellow of her hair peeking out above them—hair that was currently streaked with rust. That wasn't all: he could see from his position standing in the doorway that the pillows, too, were smeared with blood, not quite as old as the blood in her hair, a little redder, a little wetter.

There was a lot of it.

I didn't do this, he thought, frowning. He lifted his right hand, a loose fist, looking at the base of his knuckles—the bruising there was more brown than purple by now, close to a week old, the little splits below his fingers hardened over into scabbing. He'd taken a few swings at a mob enforcer that had ended up in the wrong alley with him (a few meaning more like ten, twenty). That was the last time he'd really had the opportunity to use his fists. I didn't do this, he thought again.

"Harley," he barked.

Her head jerked up—she was still alive, then—but her face was turned away from him, and after a moment, she slowly lowered it back down to the bloodied pillow. She was going to pretend he wasn't there and hope he'd just go away, then, a tactic that had never worked out for her in the past.

It wasn't like he didn't have the time to kill. He tilted one shoulder against the door frame, stuck his hands in his pockets, and said, "Did you brain yourself on the wall running from another spider?"

He was mostly kidding around. The reason they'd vacated the last hideout was not actually because Harley had discovered a black widow crawling along the couch and had practically climbed bodily onto his shoulders and threatened the entire household until someone had had the good sense to smash and flush the thing (the Joker himself had been too busy trying to keep his girlfriend from accidentally throttling him to go with his first hilarious instinct, which was to pick it up and put it on her—he'd actually tried to throw her off his back, but since being on the floor would put her closer to the spider, she'd stuck to him like she was nailed on), but so far, the new accommodations showed no signs of rogue arachnids, which was a decent perk, at least as far as she was concerned.

She didn't respond to that, didn't even move. The Joker narrowed his eyes and tried another: "Or were you, ah, ritualistically sacrificing chickens? Because while I love lawlessness and demonic pacts as much as the next guy, I gotta say, I can think of a better place to slit throats than in bed. Usually," he amended after a second's thought.

Another moment of silence, and then, finally, she spoke up, her voice muffled. "Sorry."

The Joker was having a hard time figuring out whether he was more intrigued or annoyed by this whole situation. He tilted his head to the side, and in a quiet, borderline friendly tone, he asked, "What are you sorry for, Harley?"

"Getting blood on the pillows. I thought it was just a runny nose, but I guess…" Her voice trailed off until he couldn't make out the words anymore, and impatiently, he cleared his throat. Interpreting the sound correctly, she spoke a little louder: "I guess it was a nosebleed."

Okay, it turned out he was equal parts intrigued and annoyed. "I have never seen you get a spontaneous nosebleed," he pointed out. "What, have you been dipping into the boys' coke?"

She snorted at that, and then, regretting it, said "Ow." The Joker decided he'd done enough coaxing, and stepped into the room, making sure she could hear his measured footsteps as he went over to her.

"So Harley," he said gamely, squatting down next to the mattress—although she couldn't see him, she could certainly feel his approach, judging by the way her shoulders hunched away from him, like she could ball herself up and escape his notice. "I know I'm going to find out what happened. You know I'm going to find out what happened. That's just the facts. The only thing you're accomplishing by stalling?" He leaned closer, one hand planted on the mattress behind her shoulders, and she flinched away at the pressure. He could smell the copper tang of her blood. "You are irritating me," he said to the back of her head, softly and with menace.

She didn't react to the threat in his tone, but he gave it a moment—sometimes, the gears in her head needed time to turn, to convince her that he was right. (He'd think she'd have had plenty of practice by now, but she stubbornly insisted on thinking things through for herself rather than taking his word for it, every time.)

After a moment, with another wet-sounding sniff, she moved. He leaned back to give her a little space to sit up, and after another second, she turned to face him.

Her nose had certainly bled—the whole lower half of her face was coated in it—and now that she was showing herself, he could see why: it was broken. There was a little jut in the bridge that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen her, a split in the skin, and there were blue bruises forming at the inner corners of her eyes around it. The nose wasn't even the worst of it: below her left eye, over the cheekbone, was a veiny thundercloud of a bruise, severe and fresh enough that it was more of an angry, unhealthy pink than any other color. It was hard to tell what was going on with the rest of her face, given all the blood, but her hair looked like she'd done nothing but sleep on it for days on end, and he was pretty sure her top lip was busted on the left side.

He rested the undersides of his forearms on his jutting knees as he studied her. The circumstances called for a sympathetic (or perhaps admiring) whistle, but ever since his face had been cut up—specifically since the addition of the deep cut in his bottom lip—he'd been a shitty whistler, so he just hummed, low and thoughtful. Suddenly, precisely, he reached out and poked her in the ribs with his index and middle fingers.

Her reaction was every bit as quick and vicious as he could have hoped: she hissed in pain and nearly simultaneously reached out to shove him, hard, hard enough that he wasn't able to maintain the balance of his crouch and he fell backwards onto his ass.

He laughed, a short little cackle, and shifted to a slightly more stable position, stretching one leg out and drawing the knee of the other up. "Who worked you over, huh?" he asked, moving past the little outburst of violence like it had never happened.

The rapid motion had cost her. She pressed one hand to her ribs, gingerly, like even that hurt her, and aside from casting him a quick and hunted look, she didn't respond.

Instead, she struggled upright, getting to her feet on the mattress—it took her about three times as long as it should—and then edging around him, like she was worried if she drew too close he would trip her up and hurt her worse. It wasn't a bad impulse, all things considered. His eyes tracked her, unblinking, and she avoided them, avoided them, and left the room.

So: this was different. Harley accumulated her share of scrapes and bruises, of course, but he was usually around to witness it happening. This time, someone had knocked the shit out of her, and it had nothing to do with the Joker and the machinations that usually played a part in Harley's injuries.

He thoughtfully scratched the spot on his jaw below his ear, hearing the rasp of his fingernail against rough skin, and rose from his crouch to a standing position again. Harley hadn't shown any interest in running her own game, preferring her role in his, so it was unlikely she'd run into some trouble on the side of things. Maybe a henchman had beaten her up—but no, that was impossible, she would eagerly kill any of the boys who stepped out of line and laid a hand on her.

Although…

His forehead furrowed, and in the next instant, he was loping his way out of the room. The light was on in the nearby bathroom and the water was running—Harley, cleaning up—but he didn't approach her just yet. Instead, his feet took him into the common room, where the usual rotating gaggle of henchmen lounged, watching TV and cleaning various weaponry and waiting until they were needed.

They didn't notice him standing in the doorway till he barked "Fargo!", and then—it was funny to watch—they tensed up to a man, all eyes on him, waiting to see what he'd do, whether they were in any danger. He felt the buzz of their attention on the surface of his skin, that heady mix of their fear and their worship. It was better than any drug he'd ever tried.

Fargo—nicknamed moments after the Joker had first heard him speak—snapped to attention. Jumpy with the mingled nerves and pride most of the boys displayed when they were the subject of his focus, he asked, too casually, "Hey, there, boss, what's up?"

The Joker didn't bother moving further into the room, just lifted a lazy hand and crooked his finger, c'mere. Fargo obeyed right away, hurrying to his boss's side. He was one of those guys who couldn't put on weight if you paid him, Fargo was, painfully skinny, average height, glasses, hair and skin both so light as to be nearly translucent. He looked like he'd spent his whole high school career being shoved into lockers. Maybe he had—maybe that was the reason he'd gone out and become the best demolitions guy in a five hundred mile radius. The Joker didn't really care.

The Joker bent his head a little to loom closer to Fargo, aware of the tension still heavy in the room, of the henchmen pretending not to be hyper-aware of him as they waited to see what this was about. You'd think after weeks, sometimes months of living under the same roof as him, they'd relax a little, but—just like Harley—they never seemed to be able to quite get comfortable when he was in the room with them. He liked it that way.

"Fargo," he said again, keeping his voice low because he didn't know what this was yet and his employees were terrible gossips; "has Harley been fighting with any of the boys? Hmm?"

Fargo blinked, his eyes magnified slightly behind his glasses. He seemed confused as to why he was being questioned on the matter (it was because he and Harley weren't particularly close and he would be less inclined to keep her secrets, and he was also one of the rare henchmen who'd been hired for brain instead of brawn, which meant he may actually have noticed if she and one of the others had been whaling on each other). "Uh," he said. "No?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes, leaning a little closer, conveying a mixture of the questions excuse me and are you sure without having to give voice to either of them. Fargo swallowed, his Adam's apple jerking along his pale throat. "I—I—I mean, she's always squabbling with Ace about something or other, but I haven't noticed anything, ya know, unusual."

"Hmm," the Joker said, scraping his teeth meditatively along the inside of a scar. Again, Fargo was smart, which meant he wouldn't lie to his boss even to cover for somebody—he knew the Joker was smart, too—so, after a cursory glance around the room to ensure that none of the guys present wore any unusual marks, the Joker crossed henchman brawl off his mental list. "Find some vicodin; send it my way," he instructed, turning away, finished with Fargo for now.

He went back to the bathroom and pushed open the door—it slammed into the wall with a bang, but Harley barely reacted, just shooting him a borderline insubordinate look from the corners of her eyes. He stepped just inside the doorway, not quite crowding her, slipping his hands into his pockets and observing.

She was leaning close to the mirror, examining her nose, prodding the skin around it and hissing in pain when it reacted exactly the way bruised skin tended to react when touched. She'd rinsed the blood from her face—hadn't bothered with her hair—and the cleaner skin let him see that her lip was, indeed, split wide open. Below it, her jaw was an angry mottled pink color that looked like it would purple up nicely in time. These marks were fresh—old enough for the blood to clot, but not enough for the bruises to darken.

The Joker expected Harley to look out for herself, always had, and frequently took no notice when she was marked up or limping or sore from some injury she'd failed to avoid (if he coddled her, then she'd never learn). Today, as it happened, he was on the lookout for a distraction.

"Okay, Ada McGrath," he began gamely, "you gonna keep up the act, or you want to tell me what happened?"

Harley didn't snort this time—she'd learned that lesson—but she did make a scornful little noise against her teeth, tsst. "Oh, yeah, like you care," she said, her voice hoarser than usual, tired. To her credit, her tone wasn't bitter, just sarcastic.

He reacted by folding his arms protectively over his chest and shooting her a betrayed look, as though he was wounded by her tone (even though she wouldn't look at him, she noticed his performance out of the corner of her eye; he could tell by the wicked little smile curling at the edge of her mouth before she ducked to drink from the faucet.)

"Harley," he said, "of course I care."

She made a little gurgling sound beneath the stream, and then re-emerged with a groan, water soaking the neckline of her bloodied undershirt. "Please don't make me laugh," she begged in a low tone, bracing her arms against the sink and still not looking at him. "It really hurts right now."

Oh, but he loved to make her laugh when she didn't want to—but before he could really seize the opportunity, another henchman careened on scene—Ty, always in a hurry to get everywhere, almost smashed into the door frame just behind the Joker before catching himself just in time.

"Ey, boss, Fargo said you wanted—" He cut himself off as he spotted Harley, and his face twisted into a look of shocked disgust. "Good god, Harley, what happened to your face? Jesus Christ!"

"Well, now, don't call his attention," the Joker said idly, eyes flicking from Ty's horrified face down to his hand, where he spotted the expected little orange prescription bottle, though he made no move to take it.

At this, Harley clapped a hand over her mouth and loosed a strangled moan that was half-laugh, half-pained-complaint. Ty turned wide eyes to the Joker, who was quick to shrug in self-defense. "Hey, don't look at me. She won't say a word about it."

Harley removed her hand from her mouth and gingerly dabbed the back of a knuckle to her busted lip—it had started bleeding again—before she said, indignantly, "My face does not look that bad."

"Uh, yeah, it does," Ty said, and the Joker freed a wrist from where his arms were still folded against his waist just so he could point sideways at Ty, a wordless see? He gets it.

Harley glared at the two of them for several seconds, like she was trying to decide who to go after first. She settled on Ty, the easier one, and said, "Excuse me, can I help you?"

"Oh!" Ty lifted the bottle in his hand and gave it a shake—mostly empty, from the sound of it, but there were a few pills still left. "Vicodin. For the boss. Though I guess maybe it's actually for…?" He reached forward, offering it to Harley in lieu of finishing the thought, but the Joker intercepted the bottle before it could reach her.

"Thank you," he said briskly, snapping the lid off and shaking one of the rattling pills into his mouth. He crunched it between his molars, feeling it crumble, the bitter taste getting his salivary glands going.

Ty wrinkled his nose a little at the display, though wisely he didn't comment on it. "Yeah, uh," he said instead, "so, uh…?" He pointed his thumb backwards over his shoulder.

"Go ahead, Ty," Harley said. "Thank you."

"Yup," he said, and bolted. Harley turned back to the mirror, taking a washcloth she'd draped on the rim of the sink and soaking it under cold water, then touching it to her bleeding mouth with a wince. The Joker realized with a sudden wash of amusement that she was trying to ignore him.

Well. He'd never made that easy for anyone to do, least of all her. He swallowed down the last of the vicodin grit, then took a step forward, then two, close enough to her that if she wasn't careful with her elbow it would jab him in the stomach. He set the bottle with its two or three remaining pills on the edge of the sink, watching as her eyes darted down to it before just as quickly returning to her reflection.

Another step, and now he pressed lightly against her—stomach to her side, her shoulder to his chest. She went still. He didn't look to see, but he could see from his peripheral vision that her eyes were seeking his face in the mirror they now shared.

She could easily move away, he wasn't holding her in place, or lift her elbow a little and dig it into him in an effort to make him back up. She did neither—just held still and watched him in the mirror, awaiting his next move.

The Joker reached up with his right hand, fingers curling around the back of her neck at the hairline, thumb gripping her face just below her ear. With his other hand, he grasped a strand of her hair, and pinching it between his forefinger and thumb for a second, he felt the tackiness of blood not-quite-dried. He tucked it considerately behind her ear, then reached around and grabbed the other side of her face, using both hands to turn her head in his direction.

She sighed, barely-there, he only noticed because he was paying extra-careful attention, then lifted her gaze to meet his, suddenly mischievous, ready to play along with his game. "Honestly, you should see the other guy."

"Oh, yeah? What'd he look like?"

"Hard to tell. Face like a geyser by the time I was through with him." She lifted her right fist, punching sideways across her chest and hitting him lightly in the arm. He laughed a little, an amused exhale through the nose. She was trying to charm her way out of this conversation. It was a good effort, but she should know by now it wouldn't work.

Still, no harm in letting the leash out a little, giving her a second's hope. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head a little, and asked, "Did you, uh… already get someone to set your nose?"

"Aleksis. When I first got in."

Oh, he mouthed, nodding encouragingly. Then, abruptly, he said, "Y'know, an attack on you is an attack on me."

She raised her eyebrows, skeptical, and he couldn't blame her for it given their history, though he was mildly surprised to find that for once, he meant it. Maybe it was because he'd had no hand whatsoever in… whatever this was, that her getting the shit kicked out of her was neither punishment for some little piece of stupidity nor a key element of some plan of his or the other, but Harley was the closest thing to a lieutenant he had, and someone going after her necessitated one of two outcomes.

One: he got rid of Harley for not being good enough at her job to avoid an ass-kicking. Now, maybe on a day when he was feeling whimsical, he'd go this route, but the simple fact was you couldn't do the work they did in Gotham without getting beat to shit every now and again, if only because of Gotham's resident rodent problem. He wasn't icing Harley, not anytime soon, at least, and not for this.

Two: he found whoever felt that going after Harley was a safe option and routed them. If they were some rowdy civilians genuinely unaware of her identity (it happened—she didn't make the news as often as he did, and due to her lack of facial scarring was less recognizable without makeup), then they needed to get wiser to it; if they were players in the same game, then they needed to learn that sticking their dirty fingers into the Joker's pot was always a gamble, and one that wasn't going to pay off for them this time around.

"Please," Harley was saying. "Everyone who's come for me in the past? If I wanted them punished, I had to do it myself. That's been the rule of law ever since I came here."

He smiled at her, disarming. "And, uh… what is it that makes you think you didn't just get to 'em first?"

"Oh, so this is the one time you feel like hitting the road dead-set on revenge before I do?"

She didn't believe him. He didn't know whether to feel delighted or insulted. He decided to feed her lack of faith in him—her surprise would taste better, in the end—and raised his eyebrows, leaning back a little, hands dropping to her shoulders and turning her whole body, now. "That depends. What are you planning on doing about this?"

Her shoulders dipped, just a little bit, beneath his palms. She hadn't fully believed that he really took offense to the attack on her, but still, she'd let herself be flattered by it, just a little. "Right now," she sighed, "I just want to take one of these—" her hand landed on the pill bottle, making it click—"and go back to bed for like, a day. After that, I'll think revenge, okay? Make sure that no one gets any fresh ideas about attacking you."

He nodded, yes, those are acceptable terms, but when she started to pull back, he tightened his grip, holding her close. "Oh, out of curiosity," he said, glancing off at some near-distant point past her head before dragging his eyes back to pin her in place, "if you're so sure I'm not about to go off fighting for your honor—" she made another one of those sibilant, skeptical sounds, and he matched it, huffing a little laugh through his grinning teeth—"then why won't you tell me who did it?"

The amusement vanished; her gaze skittered away for just a second, long enough to tell them both that he'd hit a soft spot. "Hmm?" he prodded, and she took a little breath before meeting his gaze again, aware that she'd slipped up. She didn't offer him an answer, but that was okay—he had one ready for her. "Is it because you know I wouldn't like hearing what you were up to? Hmm?" he asked, gripping her shoulders and rocking her back and forth, gently, just playing, for now.

To her credit, she managed an entirely believable smile, and shrugged beneath his hands, keeping her silence. He nodded, considering this, then sucked in an abrupt breath and ran his hands up down the sides of her arms, over the exposed diamond scars, feeling them scrape rough and pleasant beneath his palms. "Well then," he said briskly, "at least tell me you brought backup on this little, uh… secret mission of yours."

She rolled her eyes, swallowing the hook, relaxing. "Despite the shit you say to me sometimes, I know you know I'm not a dumbass."

He gave her an amused little look—is that so—and she leaned forward a little, rising up on tiptoe so she could get more effectively in his face. "Yes, I brought backup. Now can I please go back to bed? This ain't gonna heal itself, you know," she added, gesturing in the general area of her battered face.

"Well, since the sheets are already ruined," he said, and leaned forward before she could do more than scoff a little at him, pressing his mouth to hers and running the tip of his tongue over her ruptured lip, pleasant shivers shooting down his spine at the explosive, salty taste of her blood.

She brought her hand up, gripping at the edge of his open collar, and he leaned back, giving her a theatrically puzzled look, what'd I do?

"You better stop that," she said quietly, looking at the floor rather than him, "before you get me into any more trouble."

His mouth twisted up at the corner, wry, and he said, "I'm not sure you could handle more trouble." At that, she did look at him, her eyes above the bruised skin alight, amused and challenging all at once.

It was hardly the time to take her up on that challenge. He stood aside, tapping her on her hip. "Go," he ordered, and she obeyed, slipping past him like he'd burned her—probably aware that it was a bad time for flirtation. He spotted something in her wake and rolled his eyes before barking "Harley!"

She'd just passed the door frame and stopped dead at the sound of her name. By the time she turned back, he was already tossing the bottle of vicodin towards her, and she fumbled to catch it, just barely managing before it hit the floor. Once it was secured, she gave him a brief look that made his scalp itch, like she was trying to cover up softness with knowing, and he pointed past her, irritated. "Go on, get outta here."

She was obviously feeling too battered to push her luck, judging by the way she was obeying him—she turned and vanished without argument.

Now. Time to dig.

To find the henchmen who helped Harley, he had to find the ones with bruises roughly as fresh as hers, which was easier said than done: brawls broke out regularly amongst the guys (truth be told, the Joker encouraged them—kept the boys on their game, kept their hierarchy in motion). Still, Harley had her favorites, and they seemed like an obvious enough starting place.

He'd already seen Ty, had seen that he was relatively unscathed. The Joker went next to go peer suspiciously at Aleksis, but the big Russian was good at staying out of trouble (the unsanctioned kind, at least), and didn't look like he'd taken an unreasonable amount of damage unreasonably recently, plus Harley had said he'd set her nose when she got back, implying he hadn't been with her to start with.

Spider wasn't around, which the Joker marked as suspicious until his eyes landed on Stacks.

We have a winner, he thought. Stacks was sitting with some of the others in a room that had once been its own shoebox apartment, all of them playing poker and pretending not to notice that the Joker had been pacing around at the edges of the hideout. One of his eyes was freshly swollen shut, a wet red-pink color and about the size of a kiwi—in other words, the bruise was in its early stages—and though fingerless gloves covered his knuckles, hiding any potential injuries to his fists from the Joker's view, he was wincing whenever he laughed, good evidence of a battered trunk.

The Joker gripped the back of a spare chair, one of those wood-and-aluminum numbers usually paired with desks, and dragged it with him across the room towards the table where Stacks sat with his poker buddies. He didn't need to make a production of his approach; they were all carefully watching him out of the corners of their eyes to start with, but he had such a gift for dramatic flair—it would be a shame to waste it.

He placed the back of the chair across the table from Stacks, then straddled the seat, folding his arms along the tabletop and settling in comfortably before starting. "Hi there—uh, Stacks, is it?"

"Uhh." Stacks's expression was a little hard to read, but fortunately, the overall panicked vibe of "I fucked up somehow" was easy to communicate even with only one functional eye. "Yeah?"

"'Yeah?'" the Joker repeated impatiently. "Or 'yeah.'"

"Yeah," Stacks replied quickly.

The Joker nodded along for five seconds, ten, letting the silence stretch out and get nice and tense, and only then said, "You rode shotgun on Harley's little solo mission earlier." He wasn't asking—asking invited denial.

The other guys at the table were on edge, watching the Joker, glancing occasionally at Stacks to see his reactions. Stacks reached up to scratch his head, nervous, inadvertently pushing his beanie up and revealing a freshly-taped cut, more evidence of the little altercation.

"I did," he admitted. "Was I—was I not supposed to? I thought she could… you know, use the help."

The Joker stared at him, working his jaw laboriously from one side to the other as he tried to decide how to proceed with this. At length, he addressed the others without bothering to look around at them: "The rest of you take a smoke break."

They didn't need to be told twice, and for the next ten or twenty seconds there was a small cacophony as they pushed their chairs back and headed in a herd towards the door.

Soon enough, they'd all cleared out. Stacks was looking more dejected by the second, certain that he'd signed his own death warrant, though in a pleasant turn of events, he hadn't yet started stammering and begging for his life.

The Joker used forearm, wrist, and side of his palm to sweep imaginary dust off the tabletop in front of him, talking along with the strokes: "So… Stacks. Harley's back in the bedroom with a broken nose and a… really fucked-up face right about now." A silent beat while Stacks looked guilty, and then the Joker prompted, "I gather getting beat to shit wasn't part of the original plan?"

"No," Stacks said immediately. "No. God, no."

The Joker squinted in a good imitation of sympathy. "Got jumped?"

Stacks let out a little chuckle that might have lightened the atmosphere a bit if it hadn't sounded so scared. His hands were on the table, and he was holding still, like he was afraid to move, like moving might provoke retaliation. "No. The deal just went bad."

The Joker's brows arched high at that, the deal, but Stacks gave another of those sickly little laughs and said, "Shit, went bad, that sounds like there was fault on both sides. These guys were too ready to fight."

The Joker frowned then, rolling his tongue around inside his mouth as he thought, sketching the line of his scars from ear to ear, then he cast about for half a second before spotting a pack of cigarettes one of the guys was doubtless kicking himself for forgetting right about now, open on the tabletop, lighter nearby. He shook one loose and stuck it into the corner of his mouth, then, as he thumbed a flame out of the lighter and sheltered it with a cupped hand, he suggested, "Maybe you should back up a little bit."

He looked up at Stacks as the tip of the cigarette flared to life, the ember's glow doubtless reflecting in his eyes like a pinpoint. Stacks was watching him, face clammy and pale. They both knew this was an interrogation, just like they both knew if the Joker heard something he didn't like (or didn't hear something he wanted to hear), Stacks was done for.

He swallowed with some difficulty, and in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically subdued, he said, "Uh—sure thing, boss. So Harley comes up to us earlier today—"

The Joker had removed the cigarette from his mouth after the first drag, and tapped his thumb on the table to interrupt. "Who's us?" he demanded, smoke gusting lazily from his mouth and nose as he spoke.

"Me and Deni." The Joker was taking another drag, so didn't say anything to that, just raised his eyebrows in a nonverbal question, really? Harley didn't trust Deni one bit; he wouldn't have thought she'd go for him when it came to a semi-secret mission.

"Yeah, I mean—I think she was gonna ask just me and maybe someone else, but Deni was there, I said he should help us, it kind of… happened that way."

Deni. The Joker made a mental note, and nodded for Stacks to go on.

"So anyway, she asked if we could help her out. She was riding along on a drug deal a friend of hers was running—"

"I knew it," the Joker said around the cigarette, "I knew it. I knew the whole 'plant lady' thing was just a cover for a huge grow operation."

Stacks blinked. Normally, he had a pretty good sense of humor, but it appeared to have vanished in the face of the strain he was under—he just said, "No… no, it wasn't the plant lady. It was that creepy doctor friend of hers. That—you know, the Scarecrow guy."

Well. This just keeps getting more and more interesting. The Joker rested an elbow on the table, leaned his weight onto it, and licked his lips, fixing Stacks with an expectant look.

Stacks relaxed—just barely, not enough to feel comfortable moving beyond letting his shoulders droop a tad, but clearly relieved that the Joker not only followed him thus far, but was interested in hearing more. When he spoke, his voice was a little louder, a little more confident: "Yeah, so you know how he does those weird… fuckin' fear drugs? Dose somebody and they can't talk for screaming?"

The Joker nodded, a little irritated. He was working on a different type of aerosol toxin, one that prompted laughter instead of screams—so much less boring—but he'd run into some serious problems during the test run last Halloween. Mostly: it was incredibly volatile, and not only had he lost multiple henchmen to it, he'd also accidentally gassed more citizens than he'd meant to—which, all right, was funny, but it also wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to plan around every time he had something in play. He'd yanked the gas back for some further research and development, and faintly resented Crane for throwing his around so liberally. Inconsiderate, was what it was.

Stacks hurried, obviously worried he was losing his boss. "The deal was to sell some of that shit to a buyer, so the four of us loaded up—"

The Joker blinked in cartoonishly exaggerated confusion. "Crane was there?"

"Yeah." At the Joker's skeptical expression—Crane hadn't shown his face in a couple of months—Stacks doubled down, got a little louder. "We weren't gonna run his errand for him. Not even Harley's that friendly."

The Joker snorted and then shrugged as he took another drag. Sure she isn't. "So we went to the meeting spot, some… parking garage in Columbia Point. This was at like three AM, it was pretty dead, and there were six guys to our four, so we already knew we were at a disadvantage. Deni and I tried to tell her, too, I swear, but she said to let it play out. It played out, all right."

"Mm. How'd it kick off?"

"Crane was talking to the head honcho guy, and the guy… didn't like something. I don't know, he and Crane and Harley were talking kinda quiet. He went to draw, then Harley went to draw, then one of the guys punched her across the face, then Deni clocked him, then it was on. We were outnumbered, so we all took kind of a beating, but…"

The Joker, in a display of remarkable patience, waited for two or three seconds before pushing for more: "But?" he prodded sharply.

Stacks twisted his head sideways, rubbing an ear on his shoulder like it was irritating him. "I don't know. It kind of felt like they were trying to hit her more? Two guys were definitely targeting her, and whenever I tried to help, another guy would come hit me, keep me busy for a minute longer. We worked our way through most of them—by that point, the two on Harley had her on the ground, were kicking the shit out of her—and then we pulled 'em off."

"They were just hitting her?"

"Yeah. Yeah," said Stacks right away, hearing the question the Joker wasn't asking and shaking his head dismissively. "Like… they just wanted to kick her ass, man."

"Where was Crane in all this?"

"He sprayed one or two and then bailed in the car we came in," Stacks said, obviously disgusted.

The Joker giggled through his nose. "He spray the boss?"

"Not that I saw."

"Uh… why not?"

"He didn't come fully armed and ready to go, I guess. Show of faith, or something." Stacks's face showed exactly what he thought about that; the Joker was inclined to agree with him.

"So," the Joker says, taking another quick pull from the cigarette and exhaling fast, "you and Deni yank the guys off Harley, then…?"

"We could have kept fighting, the guys that hadn't been gassed were starting to get up, but… Harley looked like shit, boss. Kinda scared us. Deni made a break for one of their cars. I grabbed Harley and followed. Peeled outta there fast, drove around long enough to make sure we didn't have any tails. Deni wanted to take Harley to Anfisa, but she said no, she was fine, she just wanted to go home and go to sleep, so we brought her back here."

Stacks looked guilty, and the Joker, grumpily, thought he was right to feel ashamed: Harley was always so eager to force other people to go to their grizzled old medic, but of course, the second she took with a quasi-serious beating she was ''fine.'' It was the height of hypocrisy.

Stacks was giving him a funny look. The Joker might have been saying some of that out loud. He moved on.

"What happened to the boss?"

"Got in a car and got out of there pretty quick, I think? It was hard to tell with everything going on," Stacks said, apologetic.

"And you didn't recognize him."

Stacks screwed up his face in concentration, scratching the back of his head through his beanie, but the Joker recognized a performance when he saw one—Stacks already knew the answer; he was just pretending to think about it so his boss would be more inclined to take his word for it. "No," he said finally. "He was just some guy."

The Joker moved his hand in quick, encouraging circles, ash drifting from the tip of his cigarette. "What was he wearing? What did he look like?"

"Wea—he was wearing clothes."

"Are you being funny?"

"No!" Stacks said hastily. "No, I, uh—khaki pants, black jacket. Nothin' remarkable. He looked… maybe forty? Clean-shaven. Short hair, like a buzzcut. Taller than me, shorter'n you."

None of this rang any bells, but it didn't matter—enough people had been involved in the ordeal that there was no keeping it a secret for long. The Joker nodded, dropped the mostly-burned cigarette onto the tabletop, and ground his thumb into the cherry, relishing the little burn as he put it out. He stood, the chair legs scraping against the ground again as he knocked it back. He looked down at Stacks, who had gone tense again, palms flat on the table, awaiting punishment for his role in all this.

Maybe later. (Maybe not at all. The Joker hadn't parsed how he fell about Harley doing outside jobs, and until he decided he didn't want her venturing out without him, he didn't necessarily want to institute a ban on anyone helping her. By Stacks' account, if he and Deni hadn't been there, things could have gone really badly, and that would've just been wasteful.) For now, he just said "Hmm," then, without another word, left the room.

He didn't know where to find Crane, not at the moment. However, he did know where Harley's hippie friend lived. It was a start.

He went back to the bedroom to grab a few things. Harley was back in bed, though she'd stripped the bloodied sheets and had spread a towel over the pillows in case she started to bleed again. He shook his head at the thought. Blood on the sheets was the least of their worries.

She was either asleep already or she was pretending to ignore him again. He didn't really care either way, but he stopped on his way through the room, leaning over her, bracing himself with a hand splayed across the back of her head so he could bend down and give her a smooch on the temple. She made a weak little sound—he couldn't quite tell if it was approval or protest—and he scrunched at her hair with his fingers once, twice, before straightening up and resuming his task. There, he thought as he headed towards the crates currently housing their assorted clothing and weaponry. If she wasn't sleeping, she'd be too busy wondering whether the little gesture of affection meant she was in trouble or whether it was just that—affection—to catch on to what he was up to.

He dressed down—black jacket buttoned over a plain tee, gray pants, lots of pockets for odds and ends. He traded out his more stylish shoes for a well-worn pair of steel-toed boots. He stuffed his hair into a black knit cap until every trace of green was hidden, then he yanked a black scarf from the pile: not his, almost definitely Harley's, but it would serve for his purposes. It was cold enough out that no one would glance twice at someone wearing a scarf high over their face.

He didn't suppose he needed much for this errand—a phone, a few blades, a little snub-nosed revolver, a generous handful of bullets, all of which he tucked into various pockets, neatly hiding them from view. He'd removed the paint to shave a day or two ago (probably needed to do it again; black stubble was coming in on the relatively healthy patches of skin around the scarring—it didn't matter for now) and hadn't been out since, so he didn't need to do anything with his face other than cover it up.

He took the keys to a clunker in the lot and hit the road without a word to anyone.

Harley's friend lived in Upper Chelsea Hill, unless she'd moved, and the Joker was pretty sure she hadn't—during his brief visit to her place a few months back, he'd observed the trappings of comfort, evidence that she wasn't in the habit of picking up and leaving every few weeks the way he and his crew were. He might be wrong. (He didn't think he was.)

It was broad daylight, unusually sunny for late October, and the streets of the neighborhood were busyish. The Joker parked the car down the street from Pam's house and joined the foot traffic after ensuring that his scarf suitably covered his face. Blending in in a city like Gotham wasn't hard: it was a place full of glaring, suspicious-looking figures; as long as you acted like you belonged and didn't do anything to justify suspicion, people tended to mind their own business, at least south of uptown.

He didn't bother with the front door (it had been locked last time, and with his face covered it was best not to run up and check), just headed around the back of the place and dragged himself up and over the tall wood fence that bordered her little yard.

This place gave him the heebie-jeebies. He wasn't much of a gardener—black thumb more than green—but even he could tell you so much fresh greenery at this time of year wasn't natural. He still hadn't ruled out a grow operation, though this shit was too colorful to be ganja. He picked his way through the yard, instinct telling him to avoid the flora as much as he could, and at the backdoor, after a quick look around to ensure that the fence obscured him from the neighbors' view (it did), he pulled off his cap, covered his fist, and used it to punch through the glass pane. He scraped his wrist on the shards around the edges as he reached through to turn the deadbolt, but to his disappointment, he barely felt it through the light Vicodin haze he'd worked up at this point.

It was dark indoors, curtains drawn to block out the rare sunlight, which seemed an odd choice for a crazy plant lady. Belatedly, he considered the possibility that she wasn't even home. He wasn't too torn up at the prospect: he had time on his hands, and while he was waiting, he could snoop around a little, see what Harley found so special about this person. He liked being in people's homes, their personal spaces while they weren't there. It always proved to be so revealing.

He was picking his way through the living room past the kitchen where he'd entered, figuring he might as well search the place before getting comfortable, when the lights flipped on. He shielded his eyes immediately from the glare, squinting and scowling until he spotted the culprit, a few yards away between him and the door, her hand still on the light switch, her other hand pointing a gun at him.

In truth, he was really surprised she didn't pull the trigger right away.

He raised his hands above his head, slowly, the movement a little exaggerated. "I, uh… I come in peace."

That got a laugh, albeit an ugly, humorless one. He held still except for his eyes, which crept over the room and then her, looking for anything he could use. There was a couch between them that could serve for cover, if it came to that, and as for her, she looked… tired, sallow-skinned, dressed in sweats and a big green t-shirt riddled with holes, and he spotted the shadow of a bruise around her eye. She looked like she'd been through something, didn't look all that much better than Harley, come to think of it.

He narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. He wouldn't think Stacks would have the guts to omit a detail as pertinent as a whole person's involvement in Harley's scheme, but men could be truly stupid, sometimes, when it came to pretty women.

"Say," he said slowly, not too abrupt or sudden—if she was going to pull that trigger, it would be because he'd given her a good reason—"you weren't riding along for Harley's thing earlier, were you?"

Her eyes were like flint. Oh, she really hates me, he thought, feeling a little rush of glee. It was nothing new, someone despising him like this, but then, it never got old. "Thing—what thing?" she demanded.

He gestured faintly towards his own eye, a move that prompted her to pull back the hammer on her pistol. He pulled a frowny face, playing confused. "She didn't tell you?"

She smiled at that, a slow, coiling thing that might have given him the creeps if he'd been anyone else. Then she laughed, a little chuckle that was half contempt and half real amusement, and gestured with the gun. "Get out of my house," she said in the same tone she might use to shoo away some neighbor's brat.

(The Joker wasn't sure what his face was doing in response to that. Incredulous grin was the closest he could approximate. Even Harley was afraid of him still—who did this woman think she was, talking to him like that?)

"Now… now, listen, Pamantha," he said, his tone as conciliatory as he could make it without veering sharply into overt sarcasm. "I know you and I haven't always seen, uh, eye-to-eye—" she scoffed; the amusement didn't go anywhere near her eyes—"but I'm here on Harley's behalf."

Pam's eyes grew wide and she nodded, suddenly serious, encouraging. The Joker realized with another sudden, vicious little thrill that she was mocking him. That was new. "Oh," she said, and laughed a little. "My mistake. I saw that you'd broken into my house, and now you're bleeding all over my floor, so I assumed it was some idiot scheme of yours—but I see now: you're just looking out for Harley. As usual. Silly me."

Bleeding? The Joker stole a sideways glance at his elevated hand and saw that his wrist was, in fact, dripping blood, slow but sizeable drops splattering to the hardwood floor. "…huh," he said. He still barely felt it. That vicodin was good stuff.

He turned away and went back into the kitchen.

Despite the loose set of his shoulders, his skin was electric, ready to pick up on the slightest change of the air, anything that would tell him to dive for cover, and dive for cover now. Still, he had a hunch, and like most of his hunches, it proved correct: she didn't shoot him.

She did call after him though, and he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was moving to keep him in sight. "I know I shouldn't be surprised—but are you really so arrogant that you think I'm incapable of shooting you?"

The Joker risked a brief look over his shoulder, eyebrows raised like he was confused. True to his suspicions, she was on the move, sticking close to the wall so she didn't have to get closer to him, but edging along it so she could keep him in her sights as he entered the adjoining kitchen, carefully navigating the plethora of plant life stationed by the curtained windows. "Incapable?" he repeated, turning his head away and smacking the light switch for the kitchen with his good hand. "No, no, no. I can tell by the look of you that you'd shoot me for a nickel."

"I'll shoot you for free," she corrected him, unwilling to let his assumption pass without comment. He turned back to her again, putting his bleeding hand to his heart—he was wearing black, it was fine—to indicate how badly she'd wounded him. Her upper lip hitched slightly in a sneer.

"However," he said, turning away in single-minded pursuit of his quarry, "as much as you might want to, I don't think you will." He spotted what he was looking for—or something close enough, anyway, and snatched up a spotless white kitchen towel hanging from the oven handle. He used it to prod at his cut hand (now that he was looking, he saw that the source of the blood was the fleshy part at the base of his palm; he must've caught it on a shard of glass still sticking out of the door), ensuring that there was nothing still wedged in the wound. Once the prodding failed to yield any sharp pains from shifting shards of glass, to catch any red glints that looked more solid and less blood-like than anything else, he nodded and began to wrap the hand up tightly.

"Be nice to know what you think is stopping me," she prompted, and her tone was as cold as ice. His back was to her, so he didn't really see the harm in smirking a little as he bound his hand. The stone-cold-tough act was bravado, meant to distract him from the fact that she wasn't shooting, which… you could talk all you wanted; talk was useful, talk could impress people, intimidate them, dazzle them, but the Joker wasn't people, and he knew the truth—without action backing it up? Talk was nothing.

"It's been, what, two? Two months since the last time I visited this house," he said, taking the roundabout path to an answer and nodding decisively as he finished wrapping the cloth. It had done well to curb the bleeding, but a makeshift kitchen towel bandage was the kind of thing people noticed. He'd have to remember to keep that hand in his pocket.

(People were always, unconsciously or not, noting who among them bore marks of illness or injury, remembering those marks. Herds cast out their sick if they deemed them a threat, and while humans had trappings of civility to keep them from turning on the weak or ugly ones outright, the second things got a little chaotic, that all went out the window.)

He used his teeth to pull the knot tight, but not so tight that his fingers turned purple. Then he wheeled around and headed back towards the living room, where Pam made a show of steadying her gun, as if she'd let it drift even a centimeter while his back was turned. He pointed at her with his bandaged hand and said, "You are cozy here. You don't wanna move."

He narrowed his eyes and hummed in a questioning way as looked almost sideways at her, telegraphing that he was waiting for her reaction, waiting to see if he was right. He knew he was—he didn't know much about this woman, but Harley had indicated that she was living about as far outside the law as they were. He didn't see a suppressor on the gun, and this was a pretty nice neighborhood. If a gun went off, someone would call the cops, and she'd either have to deal with some intense scrutiny or bail on her cozy little greenhouse here.

She didn't take long to answer, though her tone was as cold as ever: "It's a rent-controlled brownstone in midtown. Of course I don't want to move."

The Joker spread his hands, palms out. Et voilà.

She wasn't charmed in the slightest. If anything, she seemed more irritated, going by the way she bared her teeth at him. "So why don't you get the hell out of here before I decide I don't have much of a choice?"

The Joker let the little smile he wore grow a little wider as he watched her, and after a minute, he agreed: "Sure. Just—a couple'a questions… and I'll be out of your hair."

"I'm not answer—" she started.

"Harley's beat to shit," he interrupted, dropping the smile and looking as serious as he could manage. "You should see her. Broken nose, busted lip, maybe an orbital fracture—I'm not sure. Whoever did it was someone she ran into on this…" he grimaced—"job she was pulling. Now, all I want to do… is find this person… and show them that she's nobody's punching bag."

He'd figured that appealing to her weird and transparent devotion to Harley was the easiest way to get what he wanted, but apparently, he'd figured wrong—at least, she burst into laughter, laughter with an almost hysterical edge to it.

"Nobody's punching bag?" she repeated, sucking in air and struggling to recover. "Oh, that's so rich, coming from you. Jesus. The first time I saw her after she hooked up with you and she had bruises everywhere. Haven't seen her without at least one since."

"Look, we're both consenting adults, and what we do in the bedroom is—"

"Stop. I might vomit." He peered a little more closely at her, curious, because she did sound a little barfy, but after a moment she recovered herself enough to go on. "Maybe you do want to beat the shit out of whoever beat the shit out of her… but I think it's more likely that you're offended that someone else laid a hand on her. Like a child throwing a tantrum because some other kid broke a toy he doesn't even like." She paused, waiting to see how this sank in, and when he didn't give her anything, she added, "Anyway, I can't help you. I wasn't there, and I don't know anything about it."

"That may be true," said the Joker, holding up one index finger. "But you know someone who was."

She looked a little taken aback, a little confused for the first time since she'd discovered him in her home. The Joker scrunched up his nose and helpfully, he mouthed: Crane.

He saw it click in her eyes, though she immediately looked incredulous, a little angry. "Jonathan? I don't even think he's in Gotham."

"No?" the Joker asked, eyes wide and innocent, questioning. "So he… didn't approach you recently, asking for backup on a job he was pulling?"

"Nope," Pam said, so deliberately and with so much eye contact the Joker immediately didn't believe her.

He stared for a second, then a few seconds more, giving her the chance to take it back, to be a person who hadn't lied to him. When she didn't take it, he went seamlessly to the next thing. "Okay, well, that's fine, so, why don't you just… give me his number—" he reached into his pocket for his burner phone, ignoring her short, snappish "Hands!", and flipped it open, pulling up his contacts—"and I'll be on my way."

"I'm not giving you his number, and I've had enough of you," Pam said, almost growling now. If he'd been anyone else, he might have found it intimidating. "Leave. Now."

He gnawed at the corner of his mouth and stared at her for another moment, then his gaze swept deliberately downward to the coffee table in the center of the room between them. A sleek smartphone lay on the surface. He looked back up at Pam.

She removed the magazine from the gun and ejected the bullet from the chamber, almost all in the same motion.

He was vaulting the couch when the gun—now empty—clipped him in the temple. (He had to give her perks for ingenuity—throwing a gun sure was a lot quieter than shooting a gun.) It wasn't a bad blow, really, especially with the vicodin still in his system, but it knocked him off balance, and he went into a half-sprawl across the couch, only one foot making it to the floor. By the time he struggled up from the too-soft mass of cushions, she'd darted to the coffee table and snatched up her cell phone.

He didn't take long to recover his feet. He lunged at her, still a little off-balance, his shoulder catching her at around thigh-level and knocking her forward. She landed hard on hands and knees, him not too far behind her. He grabbed at her leg, getting a grip on one calf and yanking her knee out from under her so she landed hard on her hip. She jerked, trying to pull her leg away from him, and twisted half onto her back, using her other leg to kick him in the face. He snapped at her bare foot, more to intimidate than because he thought he'd actually get a good shot in, and his instincts proved right: she recoiled, just for a second, but long enough for him to grab her other leg and flip her onto her belly.

She was taller than Harley, but less densely-built. To his surprise, however, she was about as strong—it took some more struggling as he hiked his way up her prone form before he felt secure enough straddling her back to go for a knife. With an expert motion of his wrist, he flipped the blade in place, and, carelessly enough that he doubtless scored the skin, he slid it beneath her long hair to rest against the back of her neck.

Her struggling slowed, but didn't stop. He rolled his eyes and said, "One good plunge, sweetheart, and this blade does irreparable damage to your medulla. Know what happens if I do that?"

"Go fuck yourself," she spat against the wood floor.

"Mm, that's right," he sang. "Nothing good."

With his knife hand secure around her neck, he used the other to grab at the fist she kept closed around her phone, and when her knuckles just whitened as she tightened her grip, he dug slightly-jagged fingernails into the back of her hand, pinching and bruising, pairing this with some pressure from the knife at her neck until she finally let go with a hiss.

He grabbed her phone and turned on the screen.

"Password?" he asked politely.

"It's f-u-c-k-y-o-u."

That wasn't even a good joke. He sighed, an irritated little burst of pressure from his nostrils, and he dug the knife blade into her neck. "I asked nicely."

Maybe she felt the air on the deepening open wound, or maybe he'd managed to knock some sense into her with that tackle and she was just now starting to feel the effects of it. She dropped her cheek to the floor, and, surly, said, "Seven-one-nine-seven."

"Mmm-hmm," he said, typing the code in. The phone unlocked, and he pulled up her contacts, scrolling until he found it: Crane, J.

He dropped the phone screen-up on her shoulder and rummaged in his pocket for his burner, flipping it open. "You know," he said as he punched the number in, "your contact pic for him is really stupid."

"I know," she said, her voice a little muffled by the floor. "He hates it."

Okay, that's a bit funnier. He chuckled, then, the number saved, he tucked his phone safely away and tossed hers off to the side.

Her eyes tracked the motion, then, sounding irritated and long-suffering and very tired, she said, "I guess it's too much to hope you'll just… leave now, huh?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes and screwed up his mouth thoughtfully, although she couldn't see the face he was pulling for her benefit. "Too much?" he repeated, holding the knife still as he went for his revolver with the other hand. "I wouldn't say so."

Grasping at his gun, he eyed the back of her head, and felt that familiar rush of temptation. If he killed Harley's best friend, Harley would be devastated. Devastated. It would likely unlock a side of her he'd never seen—a side he really wanted to see. He had an opportunity here.

But no. The same thing he'd told Pam the last time he saw her held true today. He was leaving her alive, because—and this much was obvious, more so with this latest visit—having to live in a world where he was also alive was something that would piss her off till the end of her days, and that was hilarious. Knowing that Harley loved him? That was just the grief icing on the whole cake.

He grasped his revolver, lifted his knife from her neck, and as she started to move, ready to fight again right away, he slammed the hilt of the gun into the side of her head.

She went boneless under him. He rose to his feet and climbed off of her, wiping the bloodied blade on the inside hem of his jacket. He glanced at the number for Crane one more time, debated sending the contact picture to the phone he was using just for kicks, but decided against it—best not to give Pam a link to his phone; he didn't want to ditch it just yet.

She was already fighting for consciousness after just five or ten seconds out of it, twitching slightly and making sad little pain noises. He was almost impressed—he hadn't felt the need to hold back. She'd be pretty out of it for a minute longer, probably would have pretty negligible control over her limbs for longer still, but he thought he should make himself scarce, regardless. He didn't want to get a flowerpot smashed over his head while he was trying to have a peaceful conversation with the mad scientist.

And if the number was wrong? Well. He'd just have to come back.

Ever mindful of his manners, he turned a little and said, "Thanks a mil, Pammy" to her faintly-stirring form. He waited for a second, but got no response. He clicked his tongue in disapproval—some people have no sense of hospitality—and, wrapping his scarf around his face again, he left the way he'd come.

He got clear of Pam's house before making the call, returning to the car and reclining his seat, aware that this could take a few tries before it worked so he might as well get comfortable. Somewhat to his surprise, however, Crane answered the first time he tried calling, on the fourth ring. "Harley, I told you not to call me from strange numbers."

"Not Harley, unfortunately," the Joker purred in answer.

He'd say this for Crane: the guy wasn't slow. He was releasing an exasperated sigh before the Joker was even done speaking. "Well, then. Looks like I probably need to talk to her about leaving my contact information lying around in a den of psychopaths."

Like Pam, and Harley before him, he sounded tired, and the Joker felt a stab of envy. All of these second-rate "criminals" were roaming around and having more fun than they could handle, while he was stuck home, aimless, fighting off cabin fever? He clamped the edge of his teeth down on the inside seam of a scar, tasted metal, and said, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Listen, Jonny, Harley's been beat straight to hell, and, uh, I'm on the prowl for someone to blame. You want it to be you? Or would you rather point me towards the guy that did it? Hmm?"

"Well, aren't you the chivalrous one," Crane said dryly.

"You're the one who rushed to answer an unknown number under the assumption that it was Harley, pal," the Joker pointed out. "Feeling a little guilty?"

"Why on earth would I feel guilty?" asked Crane, and oh, he was good, he had the smugness down pat, you almost couldn't hear anything else past it. The Joker was better, though, heard the way he swallowed just before posing the question. He might not want to feel one way or another about Harley's condition, but somewhere, maybe in some tiny little chamber of his heart, he did.

"Well, it was your job, right? She was doing you a favor, coming along as backup. Then, when the goons went after her, you just… ditched her. She's down on the ground getting her ribs kicked to pieces, and you just decide to leave." The Joker made sure his disdain practically seeped through the receiver.

Crane was talking again the second the Joker took a breath. "That's rich talk coming from a man who left her with a broken wrist for the police this summer; abandoned her to Arkham for months."

The Joker laughed gamely, hoo-hoo, "Who've you been talkin' to, huh? Not Harley."

"No, not Harley—I assume you already know how tight-lipped she is when it comes to you. There are plenty of grapevines out there. The point is: you don't have a leg to stand on."

The Joker thought this over for a second, then two, tapping his fingertips along the back of the phone. God, even Crane's silence was smug. Finally deciding that a mea culpa, however insincere, was possibly the quickest way to invite Crane's cooperation, he admitted, "So I haven't been the most reliable guy. I'm making up for it now, trying to, anyway, and you can, too. With friends like us, when's Harley ever gonna need enemies, huh?"

(There was another option, which was to hunt Crane down like a dog and torture the information out of him, and that sounded like a whole bunch of fun, and time was seldom as much of a consideration in the Joker's decision as his enjoyment was, but he was already starting to feel his patience with the whole ordeal waning. He wanted his real target, and he wanted him now.)

Crane was thinking it over; he could tell by how long it was taking him to respond. Finally, slowly, thinking out loud, he said, "I suppose… pointing you in his direction would kill two birds with one stone…"

"Got a problem with birds, huh?" the Joker asked sympathetically. "Can't say I blame ya, not with a name like that. Probably tired of all the fowl puns at this point—"

"The deal was with a man named Tony Cardelli," Crane said, rather than listen any more.

The Joker mouthed the name, face scrunching up in distaste. "Sounds like a two-bit mob enforcer."

"Close enough. He's a dirty cop."

The Joker sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Ooh, my favorite kind."

"He's well-established in the GCPD. Pretty high up. About forty years old. He's been part of the force for twenty years, so you can imagine, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies."

"Mm, including the fear gas pie, I gather."

Crane chuckled. The sound was tragically joyless, like he was out of practice laughing. "Afraid you'd end up on the wrong side of a toxin canister? Don't be. No one gets the really good stuff."

"Is that why the deal went sideways?"

Crane hesitated, then, with his usual bravado, the tone of a man who was never caught not knowing anything, he said, "Actually, Cardelli seemed to take issue with Harley's presence."

"Did he know you'd be bringing her?"

Crane made a negative noise. "I don't know how he could. Didn't matter. Whether it was because of her—" he cleared his throat pointedly—"unfortunate association with you, or simply because Cardelli doesn't think women belong in this game, he took badly to her."

"So you left her in the rearview. Got it, got it, got-it," the Joker chanted. The vicodin was settling into his skin now, not quite as easy to feel as it had been for the past hour. He wanted to move. "Thanks for the info. Next time I see you, Jon, I'm gonna take a few of your fingers. You know, to keep."

"Aw, I'm quaking in my boots," Crane said, bone-dry, and disconnected. The Joker brought the phone away from his ear and pulled up his contacts again, tongue flicking at the corners of his mouth beneath the scarf as he shook his head. Harley's friends seemed to be under the impression that they had some sort of immunity from him, presumably due to their association with her. He was going to have to take pains to correct that impression, and soon. The little twerps.

He made a few more calls to his associates and sundry across the city, and after another half hour of talking and waiting and talking some more, he had information. Lieutenant Anthony T. Cardelli, forty-two, worked out of a station in Colgate Heights. The Joker had a decent picture of him and a few tidbits of info about the guy's routine to start with. He was definitely dirty—if his age hadn't given him away (not many so-called "good" cops made it to forty; if they weren't killed on the job then they burned out fast in Gotham and were retired by thirty-five, with very few exceptions), the articles written about him over the years did. Many journalists in pursuit of justice over the years had pointed their fingers at him, highlighted the complaints of police brutality from his suspects, of sexual assault, of aspects of his lifestyle he would never be able to afford on a cop's meager salary.

The Joker loved a good dirty cop. His mouth was watering just thinking about it.

It seemed likely that the others involved in the brawl were Cardelli's subordinates—he had a little crew of hangers-on that seemed to do his dirty work with and for him—but Cardelli was the one who'd drawn first, and presumably the one who'd directed his men to target Harley. He was the head of the snake, and oh, the Joker was going to get him.

He had too much pent-up energy to spend sitting quietly in a car driving across the city. He left the car in Upper Chelsea Hill and took the train instead.

He liked to do this when the weather and setting permitted, take the rail through the city, sit among innocent and unsuspecting citizens of Gotham. The train wasn't busy in this part of town, and he sat to avoid drawing attention, a little Chinese grandma at his right elbow, a pair of chattering students in hijab to his left. Nobody looked twice at his scarf, the way it was hiked up over his nose and just under his ears. Hell, the grandma was wearing a little surgical mask over her face; nobody looked twice at her, either. The Joker loved flu season.

He kept his hands in his jacket pockets and sat half slumped and lazy as he glanced around, observing the people in the process of living their lives, though he was careful not to make eye contact. Harley'd told him once that his eyes gave him away—at the time, they'd just been made by a passing police cruiser even though he'd had his collar hiked way up and was hunching down into his coat, had to run and duck for cover and eventually shoot the cop and his partner before they could make their escape. Malevolent was the word she'd used, tracing the hollow beneath one eye with a soft fingertip before he'd slapped her hand away. He'd experimented with the idea once or twice since then and now believed, albeit grudgingly, that she'd had a point, though he would never say so to her.

He resisted the urge to flash his face at someone on his way off the car—it was more fun at night, anyway—and headed towards the station. There was a public library across the street. He found a seat next to a window facing the road, cracked open a copy of Infinite Jest, and waited.

Now that he had his sights on someone, his patience had returned to him. The Joker was good at waiting. It was key to most good plans, as well as the majority of stakeout and stalking scenarios. Most people got impatient, tried to rush things, and that was why their plans failed. An improperly cared-for gun jammed; a target got suspicious enough to realize they were being followed…

…or a clown gets tired of waiting for the boats to blow up and takes his eyes off his enemy to look for the detonator, he thought with an amused little exhale through his nose, turning a page. He was man enough to laugh at himself and his mistakes. He'd certainly told Harley often enough, usually when he had a knee sunk into her lower back and her arm in a hammerlock hold: if you don't acknowledge what you did wrong, you'll never learn.

His phone buzzed. Speak of the devil—when he looked at the screen, Harley's name glowed there in bright blue, next to a little envelope icon. He flipped the phone open and opened the message.

WHAT are you DOING?

His mouth twitched against the rough material of the scarf. He checked the street, making sure the station was still clear, then glanced back down at his phone. He typed an answer: nothing. She thought it was funny when he blatantly lied to her (though she hated that she thought it was funny).

His phone went off, Starship singing the chorus to We Built this City. Harley had been playing a joke, which he twisted around on her by not bothering to change it. She should've known better than to pick a ringtone she hated more than he ever would.

There were a couple of hissing shushes, and he didn't need to look to know he was getting the stink-eye from a librarian or two. He silenced the call with the push of a button, then went into his settings and put the phone on vibrate—he didn't want to get kicked out of this spot just yet.

A minute after the call went to voicemail, another message came through: pam said u were at her place nosing around for jonathan's info. wth, j? i told you i would HANDLE it.

Pam's a big tattletale, he texted back.

NOT THE POINT, was her response.

He tapped at his phone for a moment, starting distantly out the window, then he fired off one last text: go back to sleep, nosy nancy.

His phone lit up again with another call from her. He switched it off and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

The day crept on, the orange autumn sun sinking towards the horizon, and the Joker waited. Several hours went by, and he pretended to read, flipping page after page of Wallace's doorstop of a novel, and watched the street, and finally, around twilight, Cardelli showed.

He was leaving the station with a few other guys, most of whom—Cardelli included—wore a few fresh bruises on their faces. Bingo. He tossed his book onto the floor and rose to his feet, heading quick for the library exit.

The group headed west. The Joker followed them, hands back in his jacket pockets, giving them a head start of at least a block. They were loud and cocky, the way cops were these days, their job giving them blanket immunity to any consequences for jackassery, and a few overheard snippets of their conversation told him what he already knew: they were headed for a nearby pub.

There were too many of them for him to take on his own right now, at least if he wanted to get out of this with his nose clean. He trailed them to the pub, then split off to go find a car to steal, trusting the warmly-glowing bar to keep Cardelli inside for several drinks, at least.

He found an adequate car in a parking lot several lots over: sand-colored Toyota Corolla, 2005, no alarm, four-door, decent amount of trunk space. It was parked near the back of the lot, paid out for the next few hours, and aside from the usual city traffic, there weren't many prying eyes—it wasn't a busy part of town, and there were no events going on nearby. He hunched down by the passenger door, jimmied the lock, slipped into the car, tore into the steering column and found the thatch of wire there, and cut and pressed and the car came to life.

He moved it as close to the bar as he could, parking it next to the service entrance of a restaurant that appeared to have recently closed, then joined a small group of hobos around an oil drum fire at the mouth of an alley looking towards the bar entrance. The hobos were friendly, asking his name, offering him cigarettes and slugs from bottles contained in brown paper bags, but he kept his eyes heavy-lidded and said nothing, and eventually, they seemed to take him for one of the many mental cases wandering the city and left him to his own devices.

He passed a couple more hours this way, warming his hands over the flames as the night grew colder—hobos never cared about injuries; couldn't afford to be picky with their friends. Finally, Cardelli left the pub.

He wasn't alone, but many of his men had shucked off and stayed inside, leaving him with just two. The Joker jammed his hands back into his pockets and followed.

He followed more closely this time, awaiting his opportunity. The three men were drunk, or close enough, he could tell by the way they staggered and the volume of their voices, their laughter. It wasn't like he needed the advantage, but he'd take it all the same.

They were headed towards the train station, he overheard one of them mention it—conveniently, in the direction where he'd left the car, though not heading directly towards it. He had just a couple of blocks in which to act, and when he spotted the busted streetlight lined up with a dark little residential alleyway, he felt his blood begin to buzz. There.

He picked up his pace. The men glanced back at him as his footsteps grew nearer, but he made as if to pass them, and they looked away, unbothered until he got right beside them, clotheslined the first two to throw them off-balance, and grabbed the third—Cardelli—by his collar, hauling him forcefully into the alley they'd just passed.

"Quick, quick, quick" he found himself muttering as Cardelli bellowed curses and the others recovered enough to come after him. Cardelli was getting his feet under him now, trying to brace against the Joker's pull; the Joker shoved him hard enough to knock him over and then turned immediately to meet the coming attack from his lackeys.

He saw the silhouette of the first one swinging at him and hunched, ducking out of the way. Something struck the brick wall above his head with cracking force, and the Joker drilled a punch right up into the guy's family jewels, left unprotected by his wide-legged stance. The guy howled and crumpled slightly, and the Joker turned his attention to the other in time to see the glint of a pistol.

He bull-rushed the gun's holder, one hand bracing against his wrist even as the guy pulled the trigger, throwing the shot wide, and the other hand at his throat, shoving him with such force back into the wall that the guy gasped and wheezed like his trachea had just been crushed. Maybe it had; the Joker didn't have the time nor the inclination to baby these guys. He yanked the gun from his hand and flung it into a dumpster a few feet away.

His blood was a roar in his ears. He turned just in time to take a punch from Cardelli—softened by the scarf, but not enough, and Cardelli hit him again, dislodging the scarf completely. It was too dark to make out the scars, the Joker gathered when he didn't hear angrier or more fearful swearing that he already was.

He straightened up, opening up his torso to another blow—Cardelli took it, nailing him right in the gut—but using the move to grab Cardelli by his shoulders and forcing him down into the Joker's knee. The Joker kept it up, ramming his knee against Cardelli's sternum, then his soft belly, over and over until Cardelli stopped resisting so much, then he pushed him away, hard. Cardelli landed on his back.

The Joker went back to ol' Family Jewels, who was just starting to recover from the ball shot. The Joker grabbed his hand, searching for whatever it was he'd hit the wall with earlier and found—ah, yes—a steel police baton, which he had little trouble ripping from the guy's grasp, turning on him then, whacking him around the head with the baton until he collapsed onto the filthy alley floor like a bag of dirty laundry.

Trachea was still gasping for air, had fallen to his knees and one hand, the other hand clutching his throat. The Joker took the baton to his head next, whacking once, twice, three times, feeling a hot spray hit his face as something ruptured, and Trachea lay still.

The Joker turned to find that Cardelli was on all fours, trying to scurry further into the alley, away from him. He shifted into a run after him, channeling the velocity into a solid ribcage kick once he reached him, getting the steel-toed boots really in there and actually flipping Cardelli over.

Cardelli landed on his back. "Please," he gasped, obviously still unaware of who he was dealing with. The Joker struck him once across the face with the baton, and that did it: Cardelli was out.

The Joker was breathing hard, though he'd barely noticed until now. The scarf was somewhere on the alley floor, and he could feel a sheen of sweat covering his face, the October air cool against it. He licked his lips, almost convulsively, and tasted blood.

He wanted to laugh, to whoop and holler with the sheer joy of the fight and the win, he felt it bubbling up in his chest like something nearly uncontrollable, but, with difficulty, he restrained himself. He'd probably already drawn some attention with this commotion, though it was unlikely to get him in trouble yet—muggings and brawls happened every single night, all over the city—but pairing the sounds of a struggle with his distinctive cackle? He might as well just turn himself in.

He choked back the laughter—bits of it escaped here and there, through his nose—and turned. His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to make out the three forms of the men he'd attacked, as well as a little lump on the ground. He went to it and picked up his scarf, shaking out any debris it may have collected, then wiped his face with it. He didn't exactly have a mirror on hand, but he did his best to get all the blood, then he wrapped it around his neck and face again.

He could smell the blood and sweat on the fabric. His eyes fluttered closed, just for a second, and he drew a deep breath, then turned to get Cardelli.

The adrenaline was still flowing strong, so he didn't have as much trouble hauling Cardelli up and folding him over his shoulder as he'd anticipated. Casual as anything, relying on Gotham's indifference to let him pass, he walked out of the alleyway, carrying Cardelli with him.

The lot was just another block south, and it was late enough at night that the traffic on the sidewalks had thinned. He got a few looks from passersby—he presumed, anyway, he was still avoiding eye contact—but no one said anything. He reached the car, popped the trunk, slung Cardelli into it, and sparked the engine back to life, fleeing the neighborhood as quickly as he could without acquiring any more negative attention.

He turned his phone on as he drove. He had eight missed calls, all from Harley, and ten texts, all from Harley. He didn't bother checking them, knowing he'd hear from her again soon enough, and, true to his expectations, his phone lit up again merely five minutes into the drive. HARLEY, the screen read.

He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear. "J-j-j-joe's Mortuary, you kill 'em, we chill 'em."

"High school called, they wanted their lame opening back."

He giggled. "You sound like you feel better."

"Try again," she said. "I've been pacing around for hours, worried sick." He pulled an unconvinced face she couldn't see, bobbing his head. She could say what she wanted, but her voice was much less hoarse, much more lively than it had been that morning. Worried or not, she was doing better.

"Well, what are you worried about?" he said with an admirable attempt at earnest.

"Well, that's just the point, J," she said, her tone so biting with fake brightness that it made him smile. "I don't know what to worry about. I just know that you're out there, up to something, and so I know without a doubt that there is something I should be—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up," he said, cutting her off. "The drugs worn off enough for you to drive without dying in a six-car pileup on the way? I want you to meet me at the murder dock."

There was a second of staticky silence, then she said, "The murder dock? I thought we weren't using that anymore, you know, since so many other people were using it and the cops were catching on."

"Not that murder dock," he said, his tone adding an unspoken, scornful obviously. "The new murder dock."

He could hear her frown in her next words: "The one near Cavalry?" He clicked his tongue in an affirmative, and after another brief pause, she said, "All right, yeah. I think I can be there in about thirty."

"Can't wait," he said, breezily sarcastic, and hung up on her.

He reached the dock in about twenty minutes, pulling the car right up to the edge. The area was a new stomping grounds for them, but, like many other places in poorer Gotham, it was ideal for conducting the sort of business they needed to run—once busy at the height of the city's industry, the depression had rendered it practically abandoned, and especially at this time of night. Any work lights or street lamps had long since burned out or been broken, and he killed the engine and the lights, sitting in the dark and waiting in silence. He kept an ear out for any noises from the trunk, but Cardelli appeared to be sleeping like a baby.

Eventually, he spotted headlights, and climbed out of the car to greet them. (Could be some nosy cops checking out the area, but he wasn't worried—he'd already beaten the shit out of some of their number tonight and certainly had a few more left in him. Anyway, the odds were better that it was Harley.)

Sure enough, the car pulled to a stop about ten yards away from his, and Harley popped out, leaving the headlights on to illuminate the scene.

He pulled his scarf away from his face as she stormed up to him, in a temper. "So guess what, Pam thinks you gave her a concussion," she said, stopping a couple of feet away and propping her hands on her hips, clearly working herself up for a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing.

The Joker rolled his eyes, thoroughly unimpressed, and took a moment to look her over and admire the mess of her face. The marks on her jaw had darkened to a purple shadow, the scab on her lip was bigger and blacker and uglier than it had looked this morning, and the big bruise on her cheekbone looked almost the same (which was to say: nasty). She'd taped a little strip of white over the little split in her nose, but otherwise hadn't bothered much to try to make the damage to her face look any less brutal.

"I've got a present for you," he said, not even bothering to acknowledge the Pam thing, because god knew once that door was open he'd never get it shut again.

Harley narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, I don't care. We need to talk about this."

He rolled his eyes again—for someone he willingly spent so much time around, Harley could be so boring sometimes—and reached into the car again to pop the trunk.

"You can't do stuff like this, J," she said, and then, catching the half-sly, half-menacing look he shot her out of the corners of his eyes, she amended the statement: "Well, obviously you can, but I want you to stop. I need space of my own, y'know."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he groused, rounding the car, and, sensing that she wasn't getting through to him, she approached, her voice taking on a bit of a whine.

"A lot of shit goes on at the hideout, and, you know, I don't mind, I like it, but sometimes I have to get away, and I'm not gonna have to have a place to do that if you turn my best friend against me. Which, newsflash, tends to happen when you go and physically—"

He opened the trunk with a flourish, and Harley trailed off as her eyes darted to the form inside, partially-illuminated by the headlights. He watched her face, witnessing the moment recognition dawned for her, and she turned her face abruptly to look up at him, eyes growing wide.

"The means aren't always pretty," he said, rolling up onto the balls of his toes and pointing his chin down to give her a look, "but they're justified in the end, don't you think?"

Harley's lips parted like she was about to say something, then she thought better of it, turning again to stare at Cardelli in silence.

She was obviously stricken dumb by the grand gesture. The Joker took his cue and reached into the trunk, jabbing Cardelli hard in his already-battered ribs. "Hey. Hey. Wake up!"

Cardelli didn't stir. The Joker frowned and eyed him closely, confirming that he was breathing—he was, but awfully shallowly, and even in the yellow bath of the headlights, his face looked a little gray. Annoyed, the Joker twisted his head to the side, hearing the satisfying pop pop pop of his neck cracking before he looked back at Harley. "Well. I was gonna have him apologize to you, but, uh…" He grimaced. "He's obviously in-dis-posed."

Harley still wasn't saying anything. He gave her a second, thinking maybe she was just coming up with the perfect words to express her gratitude, but she kept silent, and eventually his patience wore out. He slammed the trunk closed and brushed past her, heading to the front of the car again, where he switched the gear to neutral. Back around to the back of the car, he braced his shoulder against the trunk and pushed as Harley stood clear.

It only took a few steps, a moment or two of effort before the front tires rolled off the dock's edge and dragged the rest of the car into the water with them. The Joker straightened up, vaguely aware that Harley had come to stand beside him, and watched a sight that never failed to enthrall him, the car disappearing into the dark water, sloshing and bubbling and eventually dipping below the surface for good.

He felt… better. He was frustratingly aware that his mind still felt stagnant, that this little errand hadn't given him the rush of inspiration he'd been half-hoping for, but his muscles felt loose the way they always did after getting a thorough workout, the pseudo-Harley was long gone, and he felt calmer altogether. Maybe the day hadn't been a complete waste of time.

When nothing was left but ripples, he dusted his hands off. "Well," he said, turning towards her, "not quite what I—oof—" The rest of his sentence was knocked out of him by two armfuls of girlfriend; she twisted her arms tight around his neck and kissed him hard.

Eh, flowery grateful speeches were overrated. He put his arms around the waist and lifted her off her feet so she was a less ridiculous height and kissed her back till she leaned away from him with a pained, half-giggly "Ow, ow, ow"—the cut on her lip kicking up a fuss over the pressure—and he couldn't resist chasing a little, pressing his mouth to that sore spot for just an extra second or two and making her whimper a bit before smacking his lips against hers and setting her back down on the ground.

She kept her arms around his neck and beamed at him, so bright it was a wonder she wasn't scorching his retinas. "How did you—I mean—I didn't think—"

"Well," he said, tilting his head close to hers, "You weren't in a state to do anything. I mean, look at you. How does it feel, joining the rest of us all the way down here in uglytown?"

"Shut up," she said, hissing a little laugh through her teeth. "You've never been ugly a day in your life and you know it." He pulled a skeptical face, eye squinting and mouth turned up at the corner, and she shook her head before standing on tiptoe again and kissing the tip of his nose.

He snapped his teeth at her, but she'd learned enough by now to have gotten out of range before he could make contact, and she slipped out of his arms, hopping a safe foot or two away. "I thought you'd be mad that was I was doing, you know… an outside job?"

Oh. Right. Was he mad?

"No," he said at length, breezily. "Good for you to have a hobby. Y'know, get in some extra practice. Just don't let it get in the way of your real work," he added, narrowing his eyes warningly.

She grinned at him, blindingly bright again, and then suddenly pointed at him, aggressive. "No more going to Pam's house!"

He tried to pull an innocent face, who, me, butter wouldn't melt, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the self-satisfied smirk he felt growing across his face. Harley actually stomped her foot and pointed again, as if pointing harder would ensure that she got her way. "I'm serious!"

"I am painfully aware," he said drolly, and headed towards the car she'd brought.

"J," she said, whining a little again as she followed him, and he drew up short, wheeling around to glare at her and making her jump back with a little squeak as she nearly ran into him.

"Harley, don't, ah… ruin the moment. Hmm?"

She looked torn, her loyalty towards her battered friend warring with her love for the batterer, but he didn't have time to take her hand and walk her through the useless conflict. He turned around again, going for the car, and when after a second he heard her trailing along behind him, he smiled to himself, just a little.

He climbed into the passenger seat, and a moment later, Harley slid into the driver's side. He busied himself adjusting the seat to allow his legs some more room, and after getting comfortable, he realized the light was on and Harley was using the rearview mirror to dab on copious amounts of concealer.

"Uh," he said as she tapped away at her bruised jaw, wincing at even the light pressure. "Polishin' brass on the Titanic, there, don't you think, Harleykins?"

"Maybe so," she said, her speech a little stiff given that she was holding her jaw just so in order to apply the makeup, "but I haven't eaten anything all day and I am going to hit a drive-thru on the way home. I don't want the girl at Jack in the Box to call the cops immediately, just after we leave."

The Joker studied her for a moment as she moved her fingertips from her jaw to her disaster of a cheekbone, then grinned abruptly, bringing his scarf back up over his face. "E coli burgers? Mmm, count me in."

A/N - Here's an early Happy October (best month best month). Thank you to marirable + one or two anons on tumblr who wanted to know how the Joker would react to Harley getting hurt for sparking this fic!

The bit where the Joker claims to be a shit whistler is a reference to the Gotham TV show (Jerome says something similar in season 4), as is the murder dock (Oswald hangs out there, like, every season to either kill someone or be "killed", you'd think someone would have noticed by now). There's a teeeeeny tiny reference to Beetlejuice buried in here.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Have a spectacular fall!