Abortion

She was late. This was unacceptable. They had a pattern to follow. Actually, they had two. It all depended on who had been the offender.

If he'd done something, betrayed their relationship somehow, then Harley sometimes ran off and found some petty revenge to exact upon him (once she'd performed a spree of crimes with the Riddler, of all people. He'd had to track her down to a damn green lair with tacky question marks all over the place and she'd barricaded herself in the bathroom, and he'd spent the next three and a half hours yelling at her through a keyhole while Nigma sat in the next room and pretended that he wasn't listening or laughing). Mostly, she just knocked down his door and ran in, screeching about how she was going to kill him. He preferred that way, because he could always sweet-talk her out of murderous intent and besides, it was freakin' hilarious to have her fawning all over him when just moments ago she'd wanted to tear him to tiny little pieces.

It took, seriously, a hell of a lot of effort from him to piss his baby girl off enough that she'd even think about hurting him. About ninety-five percent of the time, their little spats were over something she'd done, whether it was ruining a job, talking too much, annoying him (more than usual), or simply entering the room when he was in a bad mood. The Joker responded with smacking her around a little, and Harley limped off, usually to go hide with that crazy plant woman. He'd wait a few days, maybe pull a few heists, just to prove that he didn't need her, then he'd go after the damn girl and bring her back, by force if need be.

He couldn't even remember what it was that he had done this time, he just knew that she was likely to be furious. He was anticipating it. He had been planning on being all repentant and cuddly, an act that was guaranteed to turn her spine all melty. She'd try to baby him, but he'd pretend to get offended that she'd wanted to kill him. He had it all planned in his head. It would have only taken five minutes- tops- to turn the tables so completely that she was begging for his forgiveness. He had to admit- he liked the idea.

But she was late, and his mood was rapidly souring. What if she'd gone to Poison Ivy? What if she was running around with Nigma again?

Not that it mattered to him. Only… he really didn't want to spend another three and a half hours arguing with a door. That kind of thing was humiliating and did nothing for his reputation.

Before he could choose whether to go to Ivy's or Riddler's (he was starting to think that Two-Face might be onto something with his decision-making coin), the door burst open and his favorite blond playmate stepped in.

"Welcome back, baby!" he greeted her joyfully, all traces of his former irritation forgotten- for the moment.

"You," she said simply, panting heavily. She looked like a mess- her clothes all torn up and covered with rainwater and mud. The greasepaint on her face was smudged, a detail that was partially covered by her loose hair. She definitely looked better in the cowl or, at least, pigtails.

Joker glanced around the new lair with exaggerated confusion. "I guess so," he said with a shrug.

Harley leaned on the wall, looking exhausted but determined, in a resigned way. "I've been told… I've been told you were flirting with a parole officer… and doing more than that…" Initially, he didn't know what she was talking about. Then a face tugged at the front of his mind, a face of someone with curly red hair and sympathetic blue eyes. Oh yes. He had been working on a bit of impromptu seduction. The Joker was a genius and an actor- he knew how to use sympathy to his advantage. As well as he could recall, he'd left the woman dead in an alley.

"Aren't you just an eensy bit oversensitive about this?" he asked, irritated now.

"Heh. Heh-heh." Harley sounded like she was forcing out the laugh. There was something different about her eyes, her face, her entire posture even. Joker shrugged it off. Whatever her issue was, she'd get over it. "You're- you're right. I should just… just, you know, give up and accept, like, accept that things are the way they are and I can't change reality, you know?" It was beginning to occur to him that his girl might be a little drunk. It also occurred to him that he'd been moving closer to her throughout that entire speech. The mallet she'd been swinging in one hand thudded heavily on the floor. In one swift movement Harley propelled off the wall and flung herself into his arms.

That had been the plan. Only, Joker wasn't keen on holding a wet, muddy woman and he hadn't enjoyed it when she'd collided with his chest and left streaks of mud all over his clothes. One hand rose automatically and smashed into the side of her face. He followed the first blow with a knee to her abdomen that sent her flying back against the wall. Harley slid to the floor, shoulders shaking with violent sobs. This only infuriated the Joker more, so he ended the fit with a few hard kicks to her stomach. She curled into a ball, still weeping, and he stared at her, a little thrown by her extreme reaction. His girl had endured worse- much, much worse- hits from him before, and had bounced right back, sometimes even laughing for him, if he hadn't hit her in the face too often.

Not willing to admit that he was feeling distinctly uneasy about the whole situation, Joker coldly turned his back on his most devoted follower. He flung himself back into his chair, fully intending to continue planning for his next heist, but the sound of her wails was too distracting.

"Will you cut that out?" he snapped angrily. Almost immediately, the crying stopped. He didn't turn around to see if she'd really stopped crying or if she'd just crawled into another room. It didn't matter. Not really. She cried all the time, anyway. Well, a lot, okay, and it was normally over more than a few bruises. So obviously this wasn't anything important. So he didn't need to worry, not that he ever did.

So… why couldn't he concentrate on his work? His stomach felt rather empty, so that meant he was hungry. There. He'd be able to focus on the job after Harley… fixed him something… to eat…

Joker cursed under his breath and slammed his pencil down, his elbow knocking over a vial of acid onto a childish scribble of Batman being slowly disemboweled by a giant hamster. Eh. That plan hadn't been so good to begin with, since even the largest breed of hamster wasn't exactly the size of a taxi.

He stormed into the kitchen area, stomping his feet as hard as possible, not caring how childish it looked. He could find something himself. After a full five minutes of rattling through empty cupboards and cussing out the refrigerator, he remembered that the kitchen hadn't yet been supplied. Harley normally handled all the domestic matters, allowing him to focus on important matters, like killing the Bat, slaughtering hundreds- no, thousands, killing the Bat, and terrorizing Gotham.

Damn. Now he'd have to leave the lair if he wanted to eat. That, or make Harley go out, and he still didn't feel like dealing with tears. Joker saw a partially shredded Batsuit hanging on the wall, a prized souvenir from a previous heist. He scowled at it and pounded his fist on the empty cowl. That punch was followed by another and another as the clown found momentary catharsis in bruising his fists on the wall. The tantrum culminated in snatching the impassive suit down and flinging it agains the stubbornaly bare refrigerator. Joker looked down at his bloody and rapidly swelling hands. He'd probably broken a few knuckles. He threw his head back and howled with laughter. It had been a while since he'd busted up his hands that badly. He thought… he thought that maybe he'd been fighting Bane for some reason, but he couldn't tell for sure. Harley had tried to baby him afterward, something he'd tolerated for all of two minutes. Heh… he remembered her reaction to the incident better than he remembered the incident itself. That was… odd. His laughter died out, leaving only the dull pain in his hands. He grumbled to himself.

At least he'd taken care to bring medical supplies to the new liar. A Rogue who expected to deal with Batman frequently could go without food for a while, but heaven forbid he or she ever ran out of bandages. He'd find something to put on his hands and, although he prided himself on his tolerance for pain, a few pills as well. The way that girl had looked at him deprived him of the ability to laugh at his own pain. If he couldn't smile at his bloody, bruised knuckles then he sure as hell wouldn't wince at them either. He made his way to the box he knew was supposed to contain what he needed, only to find that it was open. From the scattered droplets of blood, he could guess that Harley had been here.

Also, she'd taken all the pain meds.

"HAAAAAARRLLEEEEEYYY!" he bellowed, feeling that heavy constricting anger that always found him at his worst moments. This was the anger that made his mouth feel sticky and warm, tensed his shoulders so much his arms might snap off at the slightest movement, and filled his spine with a burning hot, liquid-fire intensity. This was the anger that had inspired him to do really stupid stuff, he'd admit to that. He wasn't near his best when he was feeling this anger.

"Harley!"The damn girl had shown up later. The damn girl had gotten upset over nothing. The damn girl had infuriated him. The damn girl had looked at him, just looked at him, like there was something seriously wrong, like she was hurting, bad, worse than she ever had before. The damn…girl… had left him with something. Something he couldn't define or describe and it was this, more than loosing inspiration or being hungry to hurting his hands that was giving him this anger.

Oh.

Was it guilt? He couldn't handle guilt. He didn't know how to deal with guilt, so he usually didn't touch the stuff. He couldn't remember ever feeling guilty, truly guilty before. He didn't like it, and it was definitely guilt he had.

Most people would not have guessed that the Joker would notice anyone else's feelings. The truth was that he did, he just didn't care unless he could use it to help himself in some way. He was extraordinarily sensitive to all the nuances of Harley's moods in particular. That was how he'd always been able to play her so skillfully.

Joker trudged up the stairs, stuck between unfamiliar guilt and inexplicable anger. His feet were dragging so much the toes of his shoes bumped into the edge of every individual step. He chided himself and forced his legs to walk properly, ruefully reflecting that he had a dramatic streak a mile wide. Some of it must have rubbed off on Harley, because the girl had obviously left him. Again. And took all the little bottles of medicine with her, which wasn't fair. She would've run straight to the green bitch, right? Didn't Poison fucking Ivy have meds? He didn't bother to consider that Pamela's immunity to toxins might have a few negative side effects, and that medicine was useless to someone whose body simply rejected foreign and invasive substances.

He'd go to his room, to the bathroom that was connected, and he'd wash the blood off his hands and maybe wrap them in a towel. Then… then he'd go to bed. He really didn't feel like doing anything else. The bed was empty, and until that moment he hadn't realized he'd been harboring half a hope that she hadn't left yet. Next time he saw her he'd definitely have to slap the girl.

The bathroom door was half closed. He kicked it fully open, sending a few pill bottles clattering over the floor. He looked down with some surprise, wondering why the meds were in the bathroom. His gaze first landed on Harley's foot, extended limply across the tiles. It then trailed up her leg to the rest of her body, hunched over and tucked between the toilet seat and the edge of the bathtub. Her face was too pale to be normal.

The Joker noticed everything around him, all the time, but he never acknowledged anything unless it was directly related to him. He certainly noticed the horribly empty pill bottles (and God, wasn't there a lot of them?) and he noticed the faucet that was still drip-drop-dripping into an overflowing sink. He acknowledged these things by immediately lifting Harley up and out of her corner and dropping her into the tub, face-up.

Nonono, not face-up, face-down, face-down. He climbed in after her as he turned her over. He could hear, faintly, the ragged, hesitant, uneven, in and out wheezing of her breath. One hand turned every handle as far as they would go, resulting in a sudden and steady stream of water that fell from the showerhead and drenched both of them. The other hand was already thrusting itself into her mouth, pushing back, until it brushed the back of her throat. Her body gagged reflexively and he only just snatched his hand out before she threw up. The water washed the bile away and he stuck his hand in her mouth again, forcing her throw up again and again until the only thing she was doing was gagging, until nothing else could come up.

The Joker sat her up and rested her head on his chest. He reached over her limp body and turned the hot water off. The completely cold water shocked Harley into consciousness. He watched as various expressions- pain, shock, numbness, reluctance, fear, despair- flickered rapidly across her face. He waited until her eyes fluttered open and a tiny spark of recognition glittered in their depths.

Then he started yelling. "What the hell did you think you were doing? Did I tell you to do that? What's wrong with you?" She was so weak she couldn't do much more than lie in his arms and stare at him with wide blue eyes. Her impressive lack of a reaction knocked most of the thunder from him. "What were you thinking?" he finished quietly, realizing the futility of yelling when she was barely conscious enough to hear him.

"I… didn't want to go on… alone," she said feebly. There was a bit of life in her now, although it was unfortunately showing only in the trembles that spread through her body.

His jaw went slack. He was genuinely confused. "What do you mean alone?" Great. She was crying again. This time seemed worse than before, because she really didn't have the strength to carry out a good cry. Harley sat on his lap and trembled with tears leaking out of her eyes and trickling down her cheeks and blending with the icy cold shower.

Joker was acutely and uncomfortably aware of their situation. They were both soaked to the core, the water that lapped an swirled around his knees was stained with blood, mud, and bile, his hands ached something awful and sweet Zeus his Harley had just tried to kill herself. He didn't know why she'd do that, and he didn't know why he was here, now, after having just saved her life. There was blood between her thighs.

"Stop crying."The command may have been a harsh one, but he used a fairly gentle tone of voice. Amazingly, she found enough strength- or enough bravado- to slow her tears down, even if she couldn't stop entirely. "Good." He struggled to keep his words even and calm. She'd used up a great deal of his time and energy today- he was determined to know why. "Now, tell me what's wrong."

"I… I went to see a doctor," she began, falteringly.

"You went to a doctor?" Joker interrupted disbelievingly. "Why?"

"Be-because… something was wrong…"

"You mean before you decided to pop a few hundred pills?" he asked sarcastically. "Idiot."

"I had to know," she said faintly, turning her face away from him. He didn't even notice, as absorbed as he was in berated her. "I was… I was pregnant."

"Now, I like to watch a good suicide as much as the next guy, but couldn't you have at least waited until we'd finished the next job?" the Joker wasn't concentrating on her words. "Also, it was completely without my permission." He was feeling an odd buzzing in his ears, the kind which usually told him that no, the little clink in the shadows wasn't an alleycat scurrying after a meal, and he'd better watch out unless he wanted a mouthful of Batfist. He hadn't committed any major crimes lately, and his escape from Arkham had occurred several weeks ago, so if the Bat had been tracking him down he'd have found the lair by now. Joker didn't think that Batsy was around, and he hadn't heard any clinks, so that meant something else was wrong. "And it was terribly selfish to swallow all the pain meds."

Then it hit him, so suddenly and so hard that he might as well have been literally hit. "Pregnant?" He was ready to smack her for lying to him, but one look at her tired, defeated face, he knew it wouldn't serve any point. She was already far too broken, nothing he did now would reach her. Besides… he actually believed her. "You are, aren't you? You're pregnant."

Harley bit her lip, drawing blood. Her eyes, normally shining with manic glee and cheerful malice, filled with misery. Oh.

Oh.

His eyes slid back down the blood between her legs. He was no doctor. His knowledge of such matters went only far enough to patch his own wounds. He was fairly certain that a pregnant woman shouldn't bleed that much.

It was almost funny, in the cruel way that he'd always loved. "How long?" he asked, purely out of morbid curiosity.

She took a shuddering breath. "Two months."

Two months. Just days before their latest escape from Arkham. He'd slipped out of his cell to arrange matters so he could soon slip out of the asylum completely, and he'd taken her out of her cell… well, he'd been bored, and restless, and they didn't put cameras in the closets.

"Do you… need a doctor, again?" He'd steal her one, if she wanted. There were so many of the damn things running around in this city, one less doctor wouldn't be missed. Maybe, between the beating he'd given her and the pills she'd swallowed, the baby (he could hardly think the word, the idea of him having a baby was so unreal)… well, it might, just might, have survived. Awfully optimistic thinking, though.

"No," she said in a small voice. She shifted weakly in his lap, as though she wanted to crawl away but didn't even have the stamina for that.

Her feeble movements irritated him. He was trying to be kind, dammit. "Why did you…" he gestured wildly at the bottles. Her answer was so quiet he couldn't hear it over the shower, and he couldn't read her lips, because she still wasn't looking at him. He seized her jaw firmly- but not, he thought, roughly- and turned her face to his. "Speak up," the Joker chided, feeling quite proud of his icy calm control in the face of her ludicrous obstinacy.

"Because… you wouldn't want it," she said, in a marginally louder pitch. "You wouldn't want it, you wouldn't keep it, and you wouldn't love it." And then, again so quietly he couldn't hear, she spoke and he watched her lips form the words: "Like you don't love me." She cleared her throat, although clearly the action pained her, and continued, louder now. "I didn't know how to tell you, but I guess… you ended that problem."

Ended that problem. Meaning he'd killed his baby. He chose not to examine that line of though too carefully, in case it led him somewhere he really didn't want to go. For now… "You haven't answered my question yet," he prompted. She closed her eyes, and he realized that she'd been hoping he would deny that whole 'he doesn't love her' thing. More on that later, he thought.

"I don't want to live with someone who doesn't love me," Harley told him, somehow finding the strength to finally push away from him. Her next words almost broke that strength, but she swayed with the pain and stood up. "My little baby would have loved me."

Her logic process completely escaped the Joker, but he could see the end result. His girl was leaving him. She'd been stopped from doing it one way, so now she was doing it in another. She stepped over the edge of the bathtub, still sore and trembling and bleeding. However, the slick, wet floor proved to be her undoing. Joker didn't try to catch her when she slipped and fell. He let her lie there for a while, until it became obvious that she simply could not get back up on her own. He waited until she realized this, until she knew how dependent she was on him.

Then he picked her up. Forgetting about all the running water (a little water damage wouldn't hurt), he carried her into the main bedroom, dropped her onto the mattress, and, after only a brief hesitation, climbed up with her.

It was time to clarify a few misunderstandings. The Joker couldn't deny that there were several phrases he rarely, if ever, spoke with sincerity. How the hell was he supposed to go about apologizing for killing his baby? He'd never even thought of having a child before. A few times he had toyed with the idea of taking on an apprentice, but for some reason it never worked out. Come to think of it, Harley was the only one who'd ever been able to keep up with him.

He decided to set aside the unintentional abortion. For now. "Don't ever let me catch you doing that again," he murmured in her ear, his voice as hard and unforgiving as steel. "And don't ever say I don't love you. I brought you into my world, into my life, and I let you stay there. I wouldn't do that with someone I didn't…" She started crying again. He couldn't hear it, but he could feel her shoulders shaking against his chest. Joker turned her around, tired of looking at her back. He moved his girl as gently as he could, and was surprised that she actually clung to him this time. From her reaction, he judged that these tears were… well, if not good, then at least better. She wasn't so miserable, or so lonely. She was more assured of his opinion of her, of his feelings for her, of her place in the world. "Harley, honey, tru—" he stopped. He'd almost said 'trust Daddy', but considering the situation, that probably wasn't a good idea. "Trust me. I do love you. We have our ups and downs, but… You're a part of me. Right. Like an arm or a leg." He tried to lean back far enough to see her face, but it was buried in his shirt. "Harley, when did you stop trusting me?"

"I'm s-s-s-sorry, Mr. J!" she moaned.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.

"Y-yesss."

"Then why did you scare me like that?"

"I'm s-sorry! I-I'm sorry, s-so sorry…"

"Hush. Hush, Harl." He rubbed her back and stroked her hair, making a lot of meaningless noises that would calm her down while he thought about what to do next. "Harley, honey, listen. We're going to forget all about this."

"But we almost had—" He couldn't let her say 'baby'. She'd go off the deep end- deeper than normal.

"Can't miss what we never had," he said roughly. "We obviously weren't ready." She stared at him, hopelessly, helplessly, stricken and stunned. She needed more. Joker thought he could give her that. Just two more words, it wasn't like a promise or anything. Then, maybe this whole mess could be forgotten and left behind. Maybe the issue would never come up again and he'd never be reminded of this event.

"Some day."

NOTE!

All Credit Goes To jokquinn On A Different Website.