The Last Laugh

Harley was lying on a stained, yellow mattress on the floor inside the Joker’s headquarters, aka an old abandoned warehouse somewhere in the middle of Gotham. Her arms were handcuffed above her head and her legs were tied up with rope, and if it weren’t for these slight complications, she would have left the deplorable divan hours ago.

Next to the mattress was a desk where Crane worked vigorously, creating his infamous hallucinogens for the Clown Prince of Crime himself.

The room was cold and damp, and the concrete walls were filled with graffiti. There were no windows, so the only light that was produced was from the desk lamp.

“Oh, I just HATE seeing you on the floor like that, struggling like a wounded animal,” Joker said in a phony pained voice, looking down at her sympathetically from his green couch.

“Then let me go,” Harley demanded, looking back up at him with a childish glare. “I won’t run away.”

“I know that,” he responded, twirling his knife in his hand and walking over to her. “But, sadly, if I were to do that, then, ah, my doctor would run away and take you with him. I need you to keep him, him OPTIMISTIC. I don’t want anything to go wrong with my fear toxin.”

Crane grumbled something that sounded like, “YOUR fear toxin...”

The Joker slowly kneeled down next to Harley, as she lay there defenseless.

“Harles, I always remembered how cute you looked in your little harlequin costume...” he paused for a moment and seemed to be considering something. Harley grew a little edgy.
“Harlequin...” he mumbled. “HARLEY...quin...Aha! I’ve got it! Since you ARE my own, personal little harlequin-ah, we might as well start calling you by your TRUE name. Harley. Quinn.”

Harley grinned at her new name and said, “I like it.”

“I knew you would,” he said in a low voice and leaned in closer, grabbing her chin in the process, and kissed her.

There was a loud clanging from Harley’s handcuffs as she struggled to release herself and instead lock onto the man in front of her.

“THAT IS ENOUGH, CLOWN!” Crane screamed from above.

He threw everything that was on the desk onto the floor and glass shattered everywhere. He grabbed the Joker by his neck and slammed him onto the cold, concrete walls. Joker laughed as if Crane had just told a hysterical joke.

“I, hehehe, I KNEW I would find you!” he laughed.

This was a side of Jonathon that Harley had never seen before. She was assuming that the ‘you’ the Joker was talking about was the Scarecrow. She liked him.

“Now that doc is gone, I feel we can, can finally get some work done around here,” Joker said, not even attempting to remove Scarecrow’s choking hand.

“He was always holding me back,” Scarecrow began in a deep, lazy tone. “He never liked Raz al Ghul. Always controlling him and telling him what to do. I offered to take care of him, but Crane always refused. And now there’s YOU.”

Joker chuckled in response. “So what’s the doc’s opinion of yours truly? I’m DYING to hear!”
At this moment, to Harley, the Joker truly DID sound insane.

“He thought you were just like him, a psychotic version of him,” Scarecrow answered, removing the glasses from his face and throwing them onto the mattress. “And you had his ‘woman.’ I repeated my offer to him, and as before, he said no...that is, until you kissed her. That’s when he snapped and unleashed me. FINALLY.”

“You know what?” Joker began, wrapping his hands around Scarecrow’s arm. “You sound like my kinda guy. Would you mind doing one teensy, tiny thing?”

Scarecrow’s face remained emotionless. “As long as you don’t mind doing me one.”

“You’re not exactly in the position to be requesting favors,” Joker reminded him, gazing slightly at the woman on the floor, still tied up.

“You forget that I’m not the doctor anymore,” Scarecrow responded smugly. “The girl is none of my concerns. Now that he’s gone, I can do whatever I want. Argh!”

He let go of the Joker and held his head in his hands. His eyes were squinted painfully, and his teeth were clenched.

“Whoopsies!” Joker giggled. “Looks like Crane’s recallin’ ya!”

He laughed his trademark laugh and kicked Scarecrow to the floor, looking at him with a wide grin and vicious eyes.

“Guess you have to do as I say AFTER all!” he laughed some more and dragged Scarecrow over to the table by his hair. “I have an inkling that you’re going to be, more...PRODUCTIVE than four eyes was.”

“And, ugh, why’s that?” Scarecrow groaned from the floor.

“Because-ah, if you DON’T, I can be tempted to do more,” he walked back over to the forgotten Harley on the mattress and traced his index finger down the side of her face, leaving a trail of goose bumps. His voice darkened. “INTRECATE things with my little harlequin. And if that happens and you do nothing, Crane might not let you take control anymore.”

“Alright, alright,” Scarecrow grumbled, gradually getting off the floor. “What do you want?”

“I just need you to finish what doc did not, and I won’t harm a hair on her head,” Joker assured Scarecrow, holding his hand up in the air and his other one over his heart.

Scarecrow nodded his head and sauntered back over to the table to continue his work, stopping just before he sat down.

“Could I at least have my mask back?” he asked, glaring at the clown.

“Sure, and I’ll take care of it personally. I have some of my, ah, own errands to run,” Joker answered with a bow, and then held his finger up. “But I’ll leave someone behind here just in case you think of doing anything deemed inappropriate.”

After laughing at himself, he exited out the door and was replaced by one of the Joker’s big body guards.

“You’re a lot more trouble than you’re worth, in my opinion,” Scarecrow snarled at Harley.

“Apparently not,” she answered smugly. He knew that she was referring to the Clown and Crane fighting over her.

“You DO know that he’s only using you to get Crane motivated, right?”

Harley sighed and said, “I know. But it feels good to be needed.”

There was silence in the room, except for the sound of Scarecrow scrawling away on his notebook.

“Stupid blond, bimbo,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Harley started laughing when she heard this: laughing so hard that she started crying.

“What is it?” he yelled at her, turning away from his work. His response lead to the sound of a loading gun from the body guard, and he reluctantly returned to his work.

“Joke’s on you!” she giggled. “I’m not even a real blond!”

He rolled his eyes and scratched out a few equations on his notebook.

Harley sat on the floor, gazing at the wall emotionlessly, unbeknownst to the two in the room that she was actually devising a plan in her mind.

“Ugh,” she moaned suddenly. “This hat is SO itchy! Hey, you in the corner there! Would you mind removing it for me? I won’t bite.”

She smiled at him innocently, and the man got up reluctantly, and walked cautiously over to her. He grabbed the top of her hat and pulled it down. Her blond hair streamed down on her face and she shook it away slowly, smiling at the guard as she did so. Scarecrow grinned to himself, knowing exactly what she was doing.

“Thanks!” she giggled girlishly.

The guard’s eyes got that look that Harley almost always got whenever a man saw her: that look of desire. He Lifted the cuffs up and out from around the headboard and began dragging her towards the door.

“Where’re you taking her?” Scarecrow asked nonchalantly, not even looking away from his work. You could see a slight smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Uh, boss told me to, to take her to a shower while he was gone,” the man said, pausing at the door and smiling at how clever he was.

Just as he said that, Harley brought her legs up and around his neck, and broke it. A small crack was heard and he collapsed to the ground.

“What did that accomplish?” Scarecrow asked, putting down his pencil and rubbing his temples.

“We’re alone,” she said, cocking an eyebrow.

“As I told the Joker earlier,” he began, looking over at her lazily and a tad bit disgusted. “I’m not Crane, so I have no interest in you whatsoever.

“I didn’t mean in it that way,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I meant that you could untie me now and no one would stop you.”

“And what would I get out of this arrangement?”

“I could help you, be an assistant,” she suggested, adjusting herself on the floor. “I HAD dated Crane before.”

He mumbled something like a, ‘whatever,’ and walked over to her. He knelt down and began untying her feet.

“What am I supposed to do with your hands?” he asked, pulling it out from behind her.

“Don’t you have chemicals?” she said matter-of-factly. “Melt it off.”

Crane rolled his eyes.

“What?” she asked, glaring at him. “Not like you have a better plan.”

“No, not you,” he said lazily. “Crane. He disapproves of this plan. He doesn’t want you to get hurt. These chemicals can be dangerous. Hm.”

Both of their heads snapped towards the door as it slowly creaked open, revealing another one of the Joker’s thugs. He had a clown mask hanging loosely from his neck.

“Hey, Paul,” he called in, looking around the room until he spotted the three people on the floor; one dead and two alive. “Hey! What happened in here?”

He pulled out his gun and pointed at Harley and Scarecrow, and he put his arms up in surrender. Harley attempted to, but then remembered she was still tied up.

“He started dragging Ms. Quinn out of the room to do obscenely things with her,” Scarecrow began to explain casually, slowly rising up off of the floor. “So she broke his neck. It was clearly self-defense.”

“Then why are her legs untied?” the man asked him sarcastically. Scarecrow gave him a look and the man’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh, uh, ahem. I guess I’m your new guard then. Get back to work, and you, back to the mattress.”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could use her for a second,” Scarecrow asked him, and the man’s eyes got wide again. Scarecrow rolled his eyes. “I mean in my experiment. I could use an assistant.”

“Uh, sure, I s’pose that’d be alright,” he mumbled, looking down at the floor timidly. “But she has to keep the handcuffs on!”

“No complaints here,” Scarecrow said, and helped Harley up off of the floor.

“Why did you do that?” she whispered to him curiously.

“Crane told me to,” he informed her. She could tell he was getting annoyed with the continuous interruptions. “He thinks that thing will give you herpes or something. And I’m not referring to the dead guy.”

She giggled to herself, and then sat on top of the desk, swinging her legs like a little kid on a swing.

The door opened once again, and Harley squealed when she saw it was her man in purple. She got up and did a couple of aerial cartwheels until she landed right in front of him, and then proceeded to jump into his arms.

“Welcome home!” she greeted, and then kissed him on the cheek, leaving red lip marks.

He looked at her annoyed, and then dropped her onto the floor. He continued to laugh hysterical at her.

“I would say that you are barking up the wrong tree, but that is your natural voice!” he said through his hysterics.

Once his fit had subsided, he pretended to wipe a tear away, and then picked the humiliated woman up by her neck and slammed her into the wall.

“How did your legs get untied?” he asked sinisterly, glancing sideways over at Scarecrow. “And why is one of my men dead?”

“She explained it to me, boss,” the guard spoke up nervously. “Paul here was being indecent and was gonna drag her away and well, you know. So she broke his neck. Then the doctor over dare told me he needed her as an assistant or somethin’.”

There was a gunshot heard through the air and the second guard that night was killed. Joker had shot him without even looking. He still had his eyes locked on Harley.

“Harley, Harley, Harley,” he said, shaking his head disappointed. “Aren’t you just the, the little TEASE? All these men seem to be a-ttrac-ted-ah to-ah you. But don’t they, don’t they realize that you’re MINE? You’re MY little harlequin?”

“Well, cough,” Harley tried to begin, but the Joker’s hand was choking her and she could not speak. “You...you sha-sure don’t cough...show it...”

“Aw, toots,” he began, narrowing his eyes and reducing the distance between their faces. “You were marked down as mine as soon as you became my psychiatrist.”