This is possibly the first Hatter/Harley ever. Don't get me wrong, I love Alice/Jervis and can't get enough of it, but there is a little Hatter/Harley bug that lives in my room and wouldn't stop biting me until I wrote this.

Disclaimer: Raenef(from Demon Diaries)

I don't know whether she owns this or not, but I was bribed-

Me: Raenef, ixnay on the ribedbay…

R: I was justly and honorably convinced to say that she doesn't own - doesn't own - ummm…

Me: DC Comics, Warner Brothers, or the largest chocolate milk shake in the world. Thanks for the big help, Rae.

R: I tried… (vanishes in a puff of brimstony smoke)

In advance, I'm saying that any weird italics, caps, or bold typefaces are not my fault. I'm new to this and the way it works is kinda freaky.

P. S: If you don't R&R, first I'll cry, then I won't be able to write, then I'll come back and haunt you. So there.

Tea and Sympathy

The Mad Hatter was not asleep when someone knocked on the door of the abandoned bookstore he was using as a temporary hideout - he slept little - but was still slightly irritated at someone deciding to drop by at one thirty-five in the morning. Hastily pulling on his coat and making sure his cards were easily to hand, he decided that it was either Batman or one of the other Arkham escapees; Batman most likely would not have not knocked, though.

His annoyance vanished when he cautiously opened the door to find Harley Quinn standing outside; it was raining, but he could still see that she was crying, the tears making tracks in her heavy makeup. He opened the door wider, gesturing to her to enter.

"My dear child, come in! What has happened?"

She was dripping, her skintight costume soaked through, but she did not seem to notice or care. At Jervis' question her weeping only intensified. He felt slightly helpless; he never knew quite what to do around women, especially when they were emotional. There was one thing that should help that he knew of, though…

"Miss Quinn, you should sit down in front of the fire, I'll get some tea and you can talk when you're ready, all right?"

She managed a shaky smile as he led her into the back room; he was glad it had a real fire, not one of the imitation gas ones that everyone seemed so enamored of these days. "Th-th-anks, Jervis," she stuttered, hiccupping slightly. "You're very k-kind."

"Pish tosh, my dear." He reddened slightly at her compliment; she was one of the only people that was ever nice to him. "You get dried off and I'll be back shortly."

* * * * *

"So, tell me what happened."

Harley had calmed down with the administration of tea, and she told her story in a trembling voice. It was mostly the same as the ones he had heard a few times before; she had made a mistake on a job, made the further mistake of trying to stand up to the Joker about it (this she cited as Poison Ivy's advice, and Jervis decided that he and Ivy really needed to have a talk) and it had ended, as it did always, with the Joker throwing her out on her ear. Except that this time, for her defiance and because he was in a particularly foul temper, he had told her not to come back. Jervis felt white-hot anger kindle in him as he assessed her bruises; what kind of cad would do that to an innocent girl like Harley?

"Red's in Arkham, so I came here," concluded Harley, blowing her nose. "You've always been so nice to me, Jervis."

He found himself blushing again. "Well, my dear, if you are resolved to try going back to him eventually -"

"I know Red says it's stupid, but I love him." Harley sniffed. "And I think that he loves me, really."

Jervis sighed. He could see nothing he could say would change her mind. "Then I suggest you wait for him to make the first move."

"Huh?"

"When he wants to find you, he'll find you. If this time you make him come and get you, instead of crawling back to him, you'll be able to remind him of that next time he gets angry with you."

It took a few minutes for her brain to process the idea; you could practically see the wheels turning. Her face lit up when she figured it out, then fell again. "I don't have anyplace to stay."

"I suppose… you could stay here, if you would like…" He wasn't sure how she would react to the suggestion; he thought it a little improper, but there was nothing between them but friendship. However, he didn't know if she would see it that way.

He needn't have worried. Her face lit up again quicker than it had fallen. "Really? Thanks!"

* * * * *

At five o' clock in the morning, after arranging a small storeroom into temporary housing for Harley, she finally fell asleep. Jervis stood in the doorway looking at her for a moment; the tracks of her tears down her cheeks, the shadowy bruises on her face. For a moment his vision blurred, and he saw her long blonde hair let loose and her slim, petite build with a sense of déjà vu; then he shook off the illusion and turned to go get some rest himself.

He was so exhausted that he fell asleep immediately instead of his usual method of lying with his eyes closed and catching quick, short bouts of sleep to avoid the very thing into which he was now plunged; one of his nightmares.

There was a cat sitting across from him, a purple cat with yellow eyes, but it was not grinning. "Who are you?" it asked.

He couldn't answer, his thoughts in a turmoil. Hadn't his name used to have been Jarvis, or something like that? But he was partially the Hatter too. He opened his hands, palms up, in a gesture of defeat. "I don't know."

"You can't give up now. Who are you? You can't even exist if you don't know the answer."

"I don't KNOW!" Thinking about it was a terrible pressure on his mind, fractioning into shards of agony when the cat persisted with its relentless questioning. The place they were in was changing in eye-searing flashes, each weird, off-kilter landscape appearing for only a moment before shattering into scraps of color.

In a few seconds the cat was gone, but the strange shifting continued, a little slower. He crashed painfully to his knees on a stone floor.

"The Mad Hatter with nightmares? Ain't it funny!" He knew that high, sneering, voice, as well as the shrieking laugh that followed it. Forgetting his fear for a moment with rage, he shoved himself to his feet to find Batgirl sitting on a huge mushroom in front of him, holding a flower. "You really should learn to control yourself," she said reprovingly as he stared at her in shock "You've woken him."

She turned her gaze to the wood that they were suddenly next to just before a horrible noise rang out. He couldn't help but think "That's burbling? What an inadequate word" even as he ran.

"You'll have to go much faster than that," said the Cheshire Cat, sitting beside him and licking its paws, "in here you have to run twice as fast as you possibly can to get anywhere."

* * * * *

Wondering what was taking Jervis so long to get up (she had woken up an hour ago) Harley poked her head into the back room. "Jervis?"

* * * * *

He had tripped and fallen twice before, but this time he lacked the strength to get on his feet. Pulling himself into a sitting position against the trunk of a tree, he let his ragged breathing slow and listened to the Jabberwock drawing closer in defeat.

"You're giving up?" The cat sounded annoyed, as if it had expected more.

"I have to. I can't fight it."

The cat sighed. "You should have brought her along. She has it. But it's too late now, the Jabberwock's already here."

* * * * *

Harley gave a little gasp as she saw Jervis. He was moving his head restlessly on his pillow, muttering something under his breath; his face was drawn and distressed. She shot over to his side. "Wake up!"

* * * * *

The thing was barely visible through the trees when the ground started shaking violently. "What is it? The Jabberwock isn't causing this!" he yelled at the cat, who was clinging to a tree branch.

"You mean WHO is it!"

"Who is it?"

The cat called something back, but at the same time a very odd sensation rushed through him, as if he was a cork rising to the surface of water, and all he was left with as the twisted Wonderland of his dreams released him was a conviction.

"L, I knew it began with L!"

* * * * *

Harley was violently shaking the Hatter when he bolted upright, nearly struck her in the instinct that lies deeply in some people to strike out at the nearest thing when they wake up, and froze just in time, staring at her.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Ahh!" he said eloquently, scooting away from her. "I- I mean, you- you, well- er-"

Surprised, Harley looked down at her miniskirt and low-necked tank top ensemble. "What's wrong with me?"

He clutched the blanket to his chest. "Miss Quinn!"

Light dawned on Harley's face as she looked from her outfit to the red-faced Hatter, who was wearing only pajama bottoms due to the hot weather. "Ohhh. Sorry. Er, I'll let you get dressed… were you having a bad dream?"

A shadow crossed his face. "Yes."

"Oh. Sorry…" She moved out of the room uncertainly, glancing back at him a couple times. He looked weary, his shoulders slumped and bright yellow hair hanging into his blue eyes as he stared at something only he could see.

"Poor guy," Harley muttered to herself as she tried to locate the kitchen. True, it was a halfway-revamped bookstore, but there had to be somewhere he prepared food.

By the time Jervis was dressed, Harley was to the point of thinking 'hadn't there?'

"Jervis, don't you have food?"

"Hm?" He glanced up at her; he had gotten straight back to work on a new form of microchip that he was designing. "Oh. Well… I think there are some cans of things in the back… somewhere…"

"No wonder you don't look very healthy! That stuff's no better than the icky stuff they give us in Arkham!"

"Well, I can't cook; believe me, I would prefer to eat differently when I do eat, but-"

"When you do eat?'"

"Sometimes I forget."

Harley shuddered. "It's a good thing I came along. I'm going to go get some real food."

He watched her peek out the peephole, then slip into the street. She had exchanged her scandalous clothing of before for a pink dress with a skirt down to her knees and had pulled her hair back in a ponytail; she skipped down the road in such a carefree manner that she could have been an eight-year-old in her grandmother's garden. After a minute he returned to the microchip, which was being stubborn.

"Now look here," he addressed it sensibly "there is really nothing in it for you if you don't cooperate."

* * * * *

He wasn't sure quite how long it was before Harley appeared next to him, staring at the little object in his hands with interest. "Watcha makin'?"

"Hello, Miss Quinn. It's a chip specifically for getting across language barriers - not just human ones, but the ones between human and animal too."

"If ya made it plant, human and animal Red would have a ball," Harley giggled. "Or animal, vegetable, mineral. How close are you to getting it to work?"

"Alas, technology has a sense of humor. I might be working on this for the next year or so."

"Bummer. Oh yeah! I came to tell you I made some breakfast, do you want me to bring you some? I made scones!"

"Thank you, Miss Quinn."

"Call me Harley, everyone does."

After she brought him some food she located an extra chair and sat to watch him work. Although she tried to remain silent her hyperactive nature had her bursting out with a question every few seconds, but he didn't mind; it flattered him that she was interested. It was a couple hours later that she yawned, covering her mouth politely; he would not have noticed anything had the shawl draped around her shoulders not slipped and he glimpsed some strange markings on her arm. Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand, pushing the cloth back from her arm. "What is this?"

Several long scars slanted across her skin. They were from shallow cuts, and the Hatter knew who had given her them. His blue eyes narrowed.

"Harley, after that- that- bandersnatch of a clown did this to you, you would still return to him?" He couldn't understand it. Why did women always seem to attach themselves to someone who would never treat them well or respect and love them for what they were?

She pulled her hand away, and he realized that he had been gripping it. "It was my fault. I messed up and we nearly got captured."

"The Joker did this to you, did he not?"

"Yes…"

"Then it was not your fault."

There was a minute of silence; Harley was staring down at her hands in her lap, and the Hatter was looking at her, seeing past her cheerful, bubbly exterior for perhaps the first time; to a woman who would put up with any kind of lies or pain to avoid facing the truth. He frowned. She reminded him of someone…

"I… I just don't know what I would do without Mistah J," said Harley finally, nervously twisting her hands together. "When I first met him… I thought I'd found where I belonged."

"And when he decided he had enough of your loyalty to start treating you badly?" asked Jervis gently. "Why didn't you leave then?"

"Nobody would let me!" she almost sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Everywhere I went, people said 'Oh, that's the Joker's girl, she'll do anything for him,' and when I tried to get away sometimes, nobody would give me a second chance!"

Jervis hesitated awkwardly, then moved his chair over enough that he could pat Harley on the back. Sniffling, she turned in her seat and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. Shocked, he held himself stiff as a board for a second, then relaxed; she obviously needed comfort.

Harley's gasping sobs slowed but she stayed with her head on Jervis' chest. Admitting something for the first time in years was hard and left her feeling weak and tired, but also with a sense of release and a weight lifted.

After a minute she lifted her head. "Jervis… I think I'm gonna need some time. Could I stay here?"

He smiled gently. "Of course, my dear."

So, love it? Hate it? Reviews make me very, very happy and no reviews make me very, very sad, so pretty please take the time to leave a few words.