Ha Ha Harlequin

Slowly, Harleen’s eyes flitted open, but she couldn’t see anything; everything was blurry. All she could see around her were blobs that were supposed to be people. There were four blobs in the room. A few strands of light could be seen, but they were filtering down at an angle, as if the windows were high up. She knew she had to be in some sort of warehouse. It was cold and very dusty. In the corner she could see some different sort of light source. Judging by the smell of burning wood, it was a fireplace or fire pit. She moved her head to get a better look, but regretted it as a wave of pain shot through her head. It was like waking up to the world’s worst hangover. She moaned and closed her eyes, trying to relax as she felt bile rising to her throat. And to make matters worse, her hands and feet had been tied to a chair.

“Hey man, the bitch is waking up,” she heard a man say, but his voice was a little distorted.

“About fucking time,” she heard a second man mumble. “Get her up faster. The boss said he wanted a word with her as soon as she was awake.”

“What do you want me to do? Dump water on her? Bang pots and pans?”

Harleen inwardly prayed that he wouldn’t do either of those. She moaned again, and her eyes watering from all of the pain. She needed them to be quiet.

“No, I’ve got a better idea,” a third voice said.

She didn’t like the sound of that; he sounded devious, and she forced her eyes open one more time. The blurriness had gotten better, but not by much. She saw one of the men walking over to the fire and then walk over to her. There was something in his hands this time, some sort of stick that had an orange tip, and Harleen’s eyes became wide out of fear. What did he have in his hands? A fire poker? She whimpered and dropped her head in hopelessness. There was no way for her to fight back; she was tied to her chair and too weak to struggle. And suddenly, there was a blinding pain on her left arm. Her head shot up and she screamed as loud as she possibly could. It was the worst burning sensation she had ever felt. It shocked her out of her weakness, and she could see again. She looked down at her arm, ignoring the headache. The man had a branding stick pressed up against her arm. She looked away as she became nauseous once more. He pulled the stick away, but the pain was still there. Her throat hurt from screaming so loud.

“Fuckers!” she screamed, the fire back in her eyes. “Who the hell are you?! What do you want?!”

She could see the men clearly now, but this time there were five in the room. Four looked like your average thugs; skuzzy, dressed in all black, guns in their jacket pockets; but the fourth was obviously the boss. He was wearing a nice suite, expensive watch, and he was the one holding the stick. His eyes were looking down at her, and a smirk was playing on his lips as he twirled the stick in his hand.

“Language, doctor,” he told her in a silky smooth voice. “I was told that you were a fiery one.”

“Then you should’ve known that kidnapping me would have been a bad idea,” she growled at him, blowing her hair out of her face. This only made him smile more. He had an almost frightening smile; it was very wide, and you could see every tooth in his mouth. She struggled at her bondages, but they were too tight. There was no way she was getting out of them.

“Struggle all you want doctor,” he continued, pulling up a folding chair in front of her and sitting in it, backwards, stick remaining in his hand, just threatening her to do something else. She looked down at her arm again and saw that he had branded a diamond onto her arm. She instantly knew who this guy was.

“So you’re Vegas, huh?” she asked, baring her teeth at him. “So what have I done to earn your attention? What do you want with me?”

She had only seen the mob boss a few times on the news, but she knew he was small time compared to some of the others. But now that all of his competition was gone, he must have been in charge of everything.

“Straight to the point I see,” he said, nodding his head. He twirled the branding stick again. “Shame, really. What if I wanted to play with you a little bit more?”

He slowly brought the tip of the stick close to her arms, but not quite touching. It had cooled down some, but she could still feel the heat radiating off of it. She watched it out of the corner of her eyes wearily.

“But if that’s what the lady desires,” he began, returning the stick to his side as he grinned in triumph. His thugs were watching them as if they were some sort of performance just for them. “So, Dr. Quinzel, you’re a psychologist at-”

“Psychiatrist,” she spat at him. She hated when people got them mixed up. He held his arms up in apology.

“I apologize. Psychiatrist, then,” he apologized. “At Arkham. Now I believe it’s safe to assume that you know what I do for a living, and you know that business has been…poor, ever since Batman’s…interference.”

Harleen snorted. He narrowed his eyes at the interruption, but continued his little speech.

“And to make matters worse, a certain…clown, reared its ugly head in our town.”

Her heart stopped. That’s why they wanted her. They wanted the Joker. And these idiots probably believed that she could get him to them. Her blue eyes widened at him.

“No,” she stated flatly. “Whatever you’re planning to do with him, there’s no way I’m helping you.”

He frowned at her, and she saw him grip the stick tighter.

“But you haven’t even listened to my little proposition yet,” he told her in fake disappointment. “And I’m sure you want him dead just as much as we do. It would be so easy for you to do, since you’re his doctor.”

She grinned at him. “Was his doctor, Vegas. I understand that you want your revenge on him, but there is nothing I can do. I’ve been reassigned.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Boys.”

The thug closest to her walked over to them and smacked her hard in the face. She cried out in pain as her cheek began to throb.

“I didn’t peg you as a storyteller, Dr. Quinzel,” he said pleasantly, as if all his thug did was shake her hand. “We know you’ve been treating him. Why even bother lying?”

“Then your information is outdated,” she told him, sending him an icy cold glare. “I was reassigned to a different patient yesterday. They wanted a better suited doctor to treat him. He was too much for me.”

“Gary, could you go warm this up for me?” he asked the thug who had slapped her. He took it and placed it in the fire pit. “You better start telling the truth, darling, before my little party stick gets too hot for you to handle. All we want you to do is make him OD on his meds. It’d be easy, and nobody would miss him. We can easily pay off any lawyer and judge to ensure you don’t go to prison. That sounds like a decent deal to me. So what do you say?”

“Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to,” she yelled at him in annoyance. “I’m not his doctor, and I don’t handle his medication. Why won’t you idiots believe me?”

Vegas sighed in disappointment, and snapped his fingers. His stick was brought to him and he brought it close to her skin. She swallowed, staring in fear at the stick. She tried rocking to the side, to knock the chair over or something, but Gary, as his boss called him, held her chair in place.

“I didn’t want to do this, darling,” he told her, and then pressed it against her skin.

Harleen howled out in pain as her skin bubbled and burned. He pulled it away again, and revealed two diamonds instead of just one as his thugs chuckled. She was in so much pain. Even when the stick was gone, the heat and boiling skin still remained. Closing her eyes and trying to block it out did nothing. Roughly, Vegas grabbed her by the jaw and brought her face closer to his. A mixture of cigars and bad breath radiated off of him. She tried her best not to vomit.

“We have sources that tell us you are the clown’s doctor,” he told her calmly, stroking her chin gently. “Why would they lie to us?”

“Sources?” she asked, ignoring his question and raising an eyebrow. “Who?”

He sneered down at her and through her face away. It took every ounce of her might not to throw up. “Someone within the asylum itself, of course.”

Taking deep breaths, she held herself up and stared directly into his two eyes. He returned the stare. “Who?” Who would be in contact with these men?

“You need not worry yourself about that,” he answered, standing up and pacing the room, twirling his stick in his hands. “And stay on topic, please. I am going to state this one more time: you are going to have the Joker overdose on his medication. Is that clear enough for you?”

She rolled her eyes, exasperated. “How many times do I have to tell you this? I. Am not. The Joker’s. Doctor,” she repeated, trying to remain calm. The rope was beginning to chafe on her wrists and ankles. “I can’t help you!”

Her last phrase was almost shrill as she stared at the mob boss desperately. He had to believe her, he just had to.

Vegas looked down at her, disgusted, and turned to Gary. “Get her out of my sight.”

The thug nodded as he grabbed the back of her chair and dragged her towards some unknown room that she could not see. She watched helplessly as Vegas turned his back to her and began watching the fire. She had no doubt that he was turning his branding stick into the burning charcoal, watching as the flames turn the once black stick into a glowing orange. There was not a doubt in Harleen that he was done with her.

Suddenly she was in a different room and she felt a whoosh of air as the door closed in front of her. Her bondages loosened around her hands and wrists and she instantly jumped out of the chair, rubbing her now raw wrists with her hands. The room was small and cold. It was mostly empty, except for a small and very filthy bed in the corner and the chair that Gary had unceremoniously dragged into it. She glared at the other man in the room.

“Ya know, this would be a lot easier if you would just do what the boss says,” he told her, sticking his hands into his pant pockets. Her eyes narrowed even further.

“This would be a lot easier if your boss just listened to me,” she retorted, making her way over to the bed, but then deciding that the chair would be a better resting place for her. Heck even the floor would be better than the bed.

He merely shrugged at her and left the room. She heard the ‘click’ of the door being locked. Seeing that the man had left, she let out the scream she had been holding in during her entire encounter with the mob boss. It was a scream of pain, frustration, exasperation, hopelessness, and worst of all, anger. She brushed a hand through her hair and paced around the room. There were so many things that she had to take in.

1. She had been kidnapped by Vegas, one of Gotham’s few remaining mob bosses. And a pathetic one at that.
2. They believed that she was still the Joker’s doctor. Understandable, considering they had just switched her patients the other day.
3. They wanted her to kill the Joker and make it look like an accident.
4. Someone at the Asylum had informed them that she was still the Joker’s psychiatrist.

Many questions followed number four. Who was it? Had the doctor been approached by the thugs, or were the thugs approached by the doctor? Why would said doctor give away such information? Did they want the Joker dead, too? Silly question; of course they wanted him dead. The whole city wanted him dead. The one thing that Batman couldn’t do for the city. Scratch that, wouldn’t do for the city. Harleen had no doubts that he had the ability to kill; it was his ability to not kill that made him special, different.

But something that had always bothered her about this was…the evil men that he didn’t kill always came back. They always broke out of prison (or asylum, in this case) and they always came back, more often than not causing more destruction than they did the first time around. Returning always meant returning with a bang.

Harleen shook the thoughts away. How could she be thinking about that at a time like this? She was locked away God knows where, and possibilities of escape or of being saved were slim. She took another deep breath and sat back down in her chair, holding her head between her legs. The room was slowly getting darker as the sun was setting. There was only a single window in the room, and it was too high for her to reach even with the chair. She couldn’t hear what was going on in the room next door, she assumed they all had left, save someone keeping watch to make sure she didn’t escape. As the room disappeared into complete darkness, she angrily blamed the Joker for her getting kidnapped. If she had never had been his doctor…

“You wanted excitement, Harles,” she said aloud to herself quietly. “And you got it.”