Chapter Text
Left, right, left, right, pause. Wait. Breathe. Leftrightleftrightleftrightle-
Harley Quinn scurried along through the shadows on velveteen-padded feet, keeping time with the mad tap dance cadence in her head.
Be vewwy, vewwy quiet...I’m hunting -
SMASH.
The teeth of the guard around the corner gave way to the business end of her baseball bat. The heavy thud of his body dropping to the ground covered the giddy laugh that erupted out of her. It wasn’t just that he had dropped like a sack of potatoes, although that was pretty damn funny; her laughter bubbled up from the spring of breathless excitement that had been welling in her chest for days now, finally spilling its banks tonight. She couldn’t help but laugh; she practically vibrated from excitement.
Tonight, she’d see him again.
It had only been a week since Batsy dropped him off at Arkham, but for Harley, it had felt like ages. She had been planning his breakout from the moment she found out he was grabbed. The only other time she had broken out of Arkham had been with him, the first time; she had never broken in. Luckily, she had an army. The night he got busted, she had been running distractions on the other side of town with half of his crew, and every single one of them had a frequent flier card for Arkham. They knew the weak points, they knew which guards to pay off, they might as well have had keys. And she had the drive to lead them, to break him out. Any moment now, they would be making their presence known at three of four exterior walls...
On cue, Arkham Asylum rocked on its foundation.
A vicious smile cracked over her face. The alarms began to blare. Time to move.
Harley ripped the guard’s keycard from his body and leaped over him in a graceful tour jete before dancing down the hallway. Her mind ran the numbers: Sixty-four Arkham guards on duty tonight - up from the usual forty-eight, they respected him at least. Eight in the guard towers, eighteen around the perimeter walls, twenty-six patrolling the interior corridors and wards, six in the main control room...
A bunch of them had probably been blown up in the explosions, and anyone who could still run was running towards the source of the noise, ignoring one pretty little clown with a bloodied baseball bat strutting down the hallway toward the most secure section of the entire place, and the last six guards waiting there.
Fight or flight was a funny thing. In times of perceived danger, like the sound of explosions and alarms in a supermax facility for the criminally insane, one’s sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive, halting all unnecessary body processes, like digestion, so that resources can be diverted to the limbs and brain, in preparation for a battle for survival, or a desperate escape. However, Dr. Harley Quinn had a working theory that, when neither fight or flight was possible, the continued activation of the sympathetic nervous system had a way of acting against the body, inhibiting the very reactions it was designed to enhance.
For example, six guards locked in a room, guns at the ready, dreading the opening of the double steel doors to the mayhem outside, would likely find themselves rooted to the spot when those doors finally did open, so long as enough time passed to allow their sympathetic nervous system to go into overdrive and deaden their limbs. So she had kept her stroll leisurely, taking her sweet time between the alarm and the door.
As she moved, the tapped the bat behind her on the ground, a steady metronome counting down the seconds.
Nine, eight, seven, six...
She readied the two keycards she had collected along the way. The moment her internal clock hit two seconds left, she shoved the keycards into their slots; a new alarm blared, and the steel doors slid open, revealing six terrified guards.
“Goodnight, boys!”
And the lights went out.
Harley flung herself forward in the pitch blackness. By the time the guards realized what was happening and pulled the trigger on their guns, she was on the ground, the bullets were whizzing over her head, and at least two kneecaps had been smashed in. She had memorized where each of them stood, frozen, and took out two more before they had the good sense to move in the darkness.
Three down. More gunshots. She was somewhere new in each flash of blinding light.
“Stop firing, idiot, you’ll hit one of us!”
She grinned and kicked out behind her, where the voice had come from. The guard crumpled to the floor with a yelp and she brought her bat down on his head, with a satisfying crunch.
The two remaining guards gave her a fight, getting in a few hopeful, flailing haymakers in the darkness, but she was lighter and faster and one of their punches opened up for four of hers. Harley finished them off even faster than she had originally planned and she stood in the darkness for several seconds, catching her breath, before the lights clicked back on.
And there it was: the last door. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
Breathless, she used their keycards to open the windowless red door. It swung wide to reveal the cell: concrete walls, a thin mattress on the floor, and a hole in the ground.
“Puddin’?” she asked, stepping inside.
A heavy fist connected with the side of her head and Harley saw stars.
She staggered and dropped to the floor, vision flickering, but the moment she heard his laugh, it no longer mattered. She reached blindly for him.
“Goodness, Harley!” he cackled, and her hands found his as he lifted her from the ground. “I assumed you were one of the guards - you understand how tense I’ve been in here? After an entire week, I was preparing to fight my own way out!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. J, I really am,” she said, folding into his arms. She breathed against him, leaning in as the world wobbled dangerously; he kept her steady. She was home.“I understand, I tried my best, we needed a plan -”
She looked up at him as her vision cleared:
“Well of course you did, Harley, the whole of you and my gang together maybe totals an IQ near triple digits. Allow me to handle things from here and perhaps we’ll extricate ourselves from the situation.”
“Of course,” she cooed up at him. He put an arm around her shoulders and together, they strode out into Arkham.
The crashes and gunfire grew louder, beneath the scream of the alarms the fighting getting closer. Harley peered anxiously down the east corridor as they passed it, going north towards the central command center.
“Uh, Puddin’, we got an escape route all set up-”
“Harley, what did I tell you ? Allow me to handle things from here.” With a baton appropriated from the belt of a dead guard, Joker bashed open a control box. She saw the label inside: AUTOMATIC LOCK. Only as he reached for it did she realize what exactly he was handling.
“Mr. J, we got a car waiting outside, and it’s a clown car but I don’t think it’ll fit everyone.”
He stopped with his hand on the lever. From behind him, Harley watched as Joker looked down and his shoulders raised in a deep breath. She froze; it had been a joke, a terrible joke, just a little something to make him smile, to make him see that they should leave, that the escape was all planned out; she wanted him to smile, like he always did, and tell her how good she did. When his body tensed, every fleeting hope turned to fear, rooting her to the spot.
Fight or flight is a funny thing.
She was already apologizing when he turned on her, but to her relief, it was the smile she so craved.
“Harley, my sweet. You’re new to this, so listen and learn. You can’t have a prison break...” he reached behind him and shoved the lever down, “...without a few things breaking! Now, stay close to me if you don’t want to be counted among that number.”
The cacophony of chaos was right on top of them: guards shouting, explosions, gunfire, fighting, screaming, all seemingly right on the other side of the closest wall. The escape route would be blowing open any second. And then, amid the din, the heavy thunks as the doors began to open, two by two, down the length of the hallway.
The inmates stepped out into the open, all in matching orange prisoner garb, all wildly different in size and fury, and all turning to look at their king as he strutted down the aisle between them, with his princess clutched tightly to his side. Harley looked up at him adoringly, feeling the stares, loving them. Their first escape from Arkham, their first together, was the end of Harley’s first stint here - the last three months together may have been a trial run, small time jobs and secret nights together and a low profile, but tonight marked their debut to the criminal world and all of Gotham City. Let them bow.
“My friends!” Joker cried, and Harley’s hope welled up in her chest again, breath catching. “Any moment now, my loyal bruisers will burst through the nearest wall, and our path to freedom guaranteed. Run if you feel like it. But for those of you seeking post-incarceration employment, a little game: the last ten standing, including my own men, will find jobs with me. And fifty grand, each.”
The prisoners looked around. Harley remembered their files: the rivalries, enmities, alliances, betrayals. They were all entangled in one huge web; blood was imminent. She giggled.
He paused and cocked his head, listening to the sound outside the walls. Then he smiled.
“Let’s see who truly rules this jungle, shall we?”
He snapped his fingers - and two tons of brick and cement and steel blew apart in a fiery blast. The prisoners roared their approval as a hole large enough to drive a truck through appeared in the wall, ringed by fire, darkness beyond. A portal to hell - or, a portal unleashing hell on the world.
Perspective.
Whether hell was in the Asylum or outside of it, either way, it all broke loose. The guards streamed in, grappling with Joker’s men, smoke bombs arcing over their heads and landing among the inmates. The inmates launched themselves into the fray, threw themselves at each other like lions. Bodies dropped. Others flew. Harley watched Bane pull the arms off of two of Joker’s men, and shook her head. The men were useless to Joker if they were going to be so weak; they called to their boss for help, caught off guard by the hell that awaited them once they broke in, but Joker paid them no mind. He was culling the herd.
Clayface smashed a guard into an open doorway; it took four guards to take him down, but they only brought him to his knees before Zsasz hacked his way through the guards and barreled into Clayface, bodying him into the cell and trying to slam the door shut. Bones broke, blood spattered on the walls, only to be covered by the rising clouds of smoke. The alarm screamed, and Joker laughed.
The chaos was intoxicating.
Harley had never felt closer to him. Laying a hand on his chest, she looked up at his face, reaching for a kiss. He moved his hand from around her shoulders to the back of her neck, using his free hand to point out a pair of his goons battered by a pair of Arkham guards.
“An embarrassing showing, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“They’re not worth you, Mr. J.”
“You’re right. This is an affront to my reputation.”
Without warning, he lifted Harley by the back of her neck and leaned in close to her ear. “Make me proud, Harley.”
Panic rose - she wasn’t ready -
“Wait, Puddin’, please -”
He kissed her on the cheek, and threw her into the middle of it.
Harley hit her head as she landed, sliding into the wall. The world spun. She tried to blink it straight - only to dive out of the way as a guard’s body smashed against the wall where she had been just seconds before. She struggled to her feet. It was like being caught in a storm: the riot swirled around her, the sound rattling inside her skull. Six months ago, she would have bolted for safety...but fight or flight was a funny thing.
She looked back at his shadow, standing tall above the smoke.
Then she hoisted her bat over her shoulder, took aim at one of the goons she had planned this heist with, and swung for the fucking fences. He never even knew what hit him.
The sound of Puddin’s laughter behind her was all the motivation she needed to keep going. Harley was smaller than the rest of them, but she was faster, and she had something to prove, a cause more important than survival. She whipped through the riot, staying within his field of vision and swinging with abandon, the breaking of bones reverberating up her bat and through her arms. Her senses were in overdrive, like she’d been drugged: she saw everything, heard everything, smelled and tasted blood, but felt nothing. He cheered her on, shouting warnings and laughing when she ducked at the last minute.
When she didn’t duck out of the way, he laughed harder. She saw a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye and the next minute she felt her entire body rock to the side, dropping her. Something whistled overhead and he howled. “Got to be quicker, Harley dear! You can do this! Make me proud!”
She struggled to her feet and whirled for her attacker, but before she could find them, the bat was wrenched out of her hand. She turned, expecting to be hit, but instead heard a rough voice:
“Nah, wait! That’s Joker’s girl!”
The bat clattered to the floor, the attackers gone before she could find them. She bent down for the bat, only to be hit again by someone rushing past her.
Her reflexes were slowing. It was where her size let her down: she was faster, but rattled by so few hits that much larger people would have shaken off. Her eyes burned - she turned back to where she remembered Mistah J had been, looking for salvation and protection, but she couldn’t see him now, the smoke was too thick. Another body slammed into her. She dropped to her knees.
She’d let him down, she’d let him down, he wouldn’t look at her again after this...no longer the Joker’s girl, they’d kill her here...
“It’s the Bat!”
And all at once, the battle royale became a stampede.
She saw only a black shadow, more a blur than anything, coming in from above before the stun grenades went off. The inmates bolted for the breach in the wall, trying madly to escape, to evade him. Harley got to her feet but, momentarily blinded, didn’t make it far before she hit the ground again. Hulking shapes swirled around her - she was floating. Falling. She felt boots, knees, falling bodies over her. All she could do was curl tightly -
Then she saw him through the haze, standing over her. The flash of green, those eyes she loved so much. He was like a ghost, hardly even real. She reached out. A strong hand took hers.
Harley blacked out.
*
Later afternoon sunlight filtered through the window, warming her face through the threadbare curtains. For a moment, the sensation was so pleasurable that she didn’t realize her face was in pain; as soon as she smiled, the pain cracked over her face.
She groaned, and then whimpered as it pulsed again, from eye socket to jaw. She usually liked the pleasurable, hot flashes of pain that came with her new life, but this was a dull, deep throb that made it hard to move.
Her groan choked off in her throat when she heard movement outside the room. A mingling of fear and excitement coursed through her, a potent, intoxicating combination she had become accustomed to. She should not have been so loud; if she had woken him, she would feel terrible. But on the other hand, if he were coming to check on her after last night...
Harley rolled over, clocked the layout of the small bedroom. Beyond the ratty bed she was laying in, there was only a door to a bathroom, an armchair, and a single nightstand, with a rose in a slim vase. She smiled. He was so thoughtful.
At the sound of footsteps outside the door, she quickly rolled back over, with her back to the door, feigning peaceful rest. Her heart beat against her ribcage as she heard the door click open.
“She lives.”
She jolted out of bed. That wasn’t his voice.
His voice was piercing, full of emotion, dripping with cold amusement; this voice was a warm purr - and it was a woman.
Poison Ivy leaned against the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.
Harley had only ever seen Ivy in Arkham, where she was drawn, raw, something wild and ready to kill. She still had the same danger in her dark eyes now, but freshly showered, her red hair blown out and falling around the shoulders of her simple black t-shirt and almost down to her dark leggings, there was a softness and warmth about her. Not unlike late afternoon sunlight filtering through thin curtains.
But that didn’t matter, and she didn’t dwell on it, because she wasn’t him.
Ivy spoke first, dipping her head ever so slightly. “Doctor.”
Harley scowled. “Isley.”