Chapter Text
“Hey, wanna see somethin’ cool?” a girl’s voice called out from across the street. I glanced around idly for whomever she was talking to, but there was no one on the street except us. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign. I pointed at myself incredulously, and the blonde nodded, winking at me and crooking a finger.
“I’m good,” I said, holding my hands up in denial and preparing to walk a little faster away.
The smile dropped from her face with a huff and she shouted, “Babies!”
Growling is not a good sound.
Turning slowly, I was met with two pairs of yellow-brown eyes in the faces of two angry-looking hyenas. Even the stupidest kids knew what that meant. The Joker was back in town – er, out of Arkham - with his crazy lackeys. And it looked like I was going to be part of a joke. Fantastic. Maybe this would be another game-like joke, and I’d have a chance to go free- or at least live.
The hyenas prowled forward and I stumbled back from them, tripping over the curb and landing on my ass in the street, little bits of broken glass and pebbles scraping into my palms. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Get in the truck, pumpkin,” the girl replied cheerily, and I scrambled to obey. Screw the whole don’t go to a second location with villains rule. The Joker’s henchmen didn’t care where they killed you. Sometimes, though, the Joker let people go for “good behavior.” Apparently, the idea of acting as warden tickled his funny bone enough to save a couple lives.
The girl let the hyenas jump in after me, putting them between the door and myself. Cold against my back, I pressed to the metal wall furthest from death and freedom as she got into the cab of the truck and put on a baseball cap.
“You know much about my babies?” She asked, curiously, and, not getting a response, proceeded to fill me in on Bud and Lou’s various idiosyncrasies. And baby stories. And funny moments. And how she’d bonded with them. And how cute they were. An hour of this.
Even Bud and Lou looked a little embarrassed, though no less threatening.
Finally, something distracted her, “-and then Lou… but who is that sexy hitchhiker?” I could hear a smile in her voice as the truck stopped and the door opened, another person settling in the passenger’s seat.
“Nice to see you out and about, Harley.”
My heart stopped. I’d only heard that voice on TV, sometimes the radio, but every native to Gotham had it etched in their memory. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back against the coolness of the wall. This was the Joker and Harley Quinn. Not just nameless thugs taking a hostage for a game. What could they possibly want from me?
“I caught a little birdy where you told me, Mistah J,” Harley chirped in the front seat, and the heart I’d thought stopped already froze to a hard lump in my chest. Did they think I was an informant of some kind? Was I that screwed? I should’ve taken that ride Dick offered me today. Feeling uncomfortable in the rich kid’s limo would’ve been a thousand times better than this. I should’ve swallowed my pride and just done it. We were friends, after a fashion; we usually walked the same direction home together, and he’d told me he was worried about me going alone, but I’d just said I’d see him tomorrow and set off down the street. Now I couldn’t recall what in the world I could have been thinking.
Pride before a fall?
“Good girl, Harley,” the Joker cooed, as if praising a particularly intelligent dog, “We’ll have to give him a suitable cage for his visit.”
Harley hummed in agreement, before something occurred to her, “Oh, Mistah J, did I tell you that joke I heard the other day about the bird and the crocodile?”
Okay, this was starting to sound personal. I really hoped I was misreading the situation. They proceeded to tell macabre, gore-filled jokes about birdy victims and I began to feel that there was no possible way to misread it. A sharp turn had the hyenas growling and laughing threateningly again.
“Hey, boys,” I crooned quietly, hysterically, to the hyenas in front of me. “It’s okay; please don’t kill me; you’re alright.” They didn’t seem swayed, but I kept talking, keeping my voice low and calm, “You’re good hyenas, aren’t you? Bud? Lou?” Ears twitched at their names, but the angry little laughs and hoots didn’t stop. What had Harley called them? “Um, good babies. It’s okay. Don’t kill me. Bud and Lou are good babies. Harley just wants you to keep me company, right? Yeah, and you’re doing that so well. So well. Good Bud. Good Lou.”
If I didn’t think it was impossible, I would’ve said the two hyenas looked actually amused by my efforts to calm them. At least they didn’t look murderous anymore.
“Good Bud; good Lou; don’t kill me,” I repeated quietly, keeping up the mantra for the fifteen-ish minutes until the truck screeched to a halt, sending everything in the back, hyenas and all, sliding forward into a pile of yelps and flailing limbs. Some of each belonged to me.
At last I freed myself from the pile without being caught on sharp teeth more than twice (rips in my sleeves and one long, bleeding set of lines on an arm from where the teeth scraped by), and the doors to the truck’s back opened. Harley grabbed my arm and slapped a hand over my eyes, leading me with a constant stream of chatter up a set of stairs and into some building or another.
“Come on in, little bird,” a low, amused voice invited, before grabbing the front of my shirt and looking at me too closely for comfort. Man, he needed to brush his teeth. The Joker’s eyes met my own and the amusement faded. “Brown eyes,” he muttered, before turning to Harley, and repeating, irritably, “Brown eyes!”
“They... aren’t blue?” Harley giggled nervously, “Whoops. I went right where you told me and snatched the brown-haired boy right when you said.”
“It’s. The wrong. One,” the Joker enunciated clearly, throwing me to the side, “Get rid of it.”
That sounded… Final.
“Wait-wait-wait!” I exclaimed, grabbing the leg of the Joker’s pants without thinking when he made to walk away. He looked down at the contact with an exaggerated frown and I released him as if he were hot iron on my skin, scrambling to a seated position, “I can be useful!”
“Lots of people can be useful,” the Joker waved a hand at the thugs lounging about the apartment around us, talking in hushed voices and occasionally testing things on each other, “But I don’t have a use for you.”
“I can…” I looked around the messy, pizza-box-laden apartment, filled with masked men and women doing nothing about it and exclaimed, “I can cook and clean! I can- you’ll never even have to let me in on your plans or anything because I won’t be a part of them! I’ll… I’ll…” The Joker was leaning in with an expressionless face and I shrank away from the intimidating figure, “Just please don’t kill me.”
A moment of silence passed as the Joker stared at me. Finally, his eyes flicked to the stacks of pizza boxes and he shrugged, straightening to give me space to breathe, “Fine. You’re our captive now. Cook and clean for your life.” Just as my heart began beating again, the Joker paused at the doorway, Harley hanging off his arm, and grinned at me, “And here, I was going to let you go.” He waved jauntily, “We’ll be back for dinner!”
Shit.
“Would you really have-“ But the Joker had already swung the door shut behind him, and the nearby thugs were snickering. My shoulders slumped and I dragged myself to my feet, addressing the laughers in a pathetically small voice, “…Where’s the cleaning supplies?”
As it turned out, the base was woefully unequipped for any sort of household maintenance, and I cajoled and wheedled a thug in a sad clown mask into going out to get me the things I needed, breathing a sigh of relief and choking back a sob of joy when he didn’t just shoot me in the eye. Thankfully, I’d checked the fridge before making said list, or I’d have to have begged him to go out a second time for groceries. It seemed Sad Clown was somewhere in the middling to high ranks in the thug hierarchy because he got a woman wearing an eyeless clown mask and a man in an angry mask to accompany him with minimal bullying. While they were gone, I gathered pizza boxes and broken bottles and other, unmentionable refuse and piled it in what was rapidly becoming the “garbage corner.” A helpful henchman pointed out that they did have garbage bags (probably for more unsavory purposes) and I was able to bag and tie off a full four bags of grossness before Sad Clown and unwilling victims stumbled back in the door, laden with the fruits of their shopping experiences.
Looking between the food and the cleaning supplies, I quickly prioritized. Just as I’d set crying and losing all sense of sanity at the bottom of my to-do list with the power of denial, I figured cleaning out the mold and other things growing in the fridge was to be first. There was a pot of soil on the lowest shelf that I intended to throw away, but Sad Clown caught my wrist.
“Not best idea,” he rumbled in a Russian accent, “Poison Ivy leaves this for Harley.”
“O-oh,” I stuttered, putting it gingerly on the counter when he released me, “Is there anything else in there I need to worry about?”
“Just make sure not to let mold eat you,” he patted my shoulder and wandered off.
It wasn’t a joke.
Following my epic battle with the carnivorous mold, the fridge was clean enough to pile the perishable groceries into without worrying they’d be inedible in an hour. I hadn’t exactly made a head count of the henchmen, but I didn’t think all of the Joker’s employees would be allowed in, and from what I’d seen while tidying, there were maybe twenty in the large apartment at any given time. So I planned for thirty. As you do.
Before I could do any cooking, however, the kitchen needed to be a little less… Toxic. So the next two and a half hours were spent rediscovering the original colors of the kitchen. While before everything was in shades of grey, black, and brown, but the end of my marathon, frantic scrubbing, the counters were a pale blue and the stove was white. The backsplash was some sort of ruddy orange color and even the cabinets were actually more of a beige than camo-grey.
“This has to be fast,” I whispered to the empty room- the thugs had fled earlier, at the very sight of sponges and soaps. Cleaning only the dusty dishes and utensils I needed, I threw together a casserole and an instant pudding on the stove. Hopefully, the chocolate would hold off the Joker and Harley until the actual food was done. I didn’t think the Joker was one to stand by tradition and demand the meal before dessert, but I prayed, for the first time in years, that the chocolate pudding would distract him. After all, who didn’t like pudding?
Well.
He’d strolled in with Harley bouncing after him and thrown his jacket at me while I’d been wiping the grime off a mirror as the pudding cooled and the casserole cooked. Scrambling, I put it on the coatrack just in time to catch the bazooka he tossed afterwards.
“That’s a joke bazooka,” Harley informed me sweetly, poking my nose, “So don’t get ideas!”
It was as heavy as a real one. Well, I assumed it was, anyway. I nodded mutely and leaned it on the wall by the door.
The Joker was eyeing the place speculatively, “Things look kind of…”
“I had to wait for cleaning supplies,” I blurted fearfully, “So I focused on the kitchen and just tided everywhere else, but I’ll definitely finish by tomorrow.”
He cleared his throat, though I noticed a flicker of misplaced surprise, “Yeah. You get one more chance, kid.” The three of us stood in silence, with only the quiet murmur of socializing thugs in the background, until the Joker grew impatient, “Well? Food?”
I jumped a little, “Right. This way.” I’d prepared massive amounts of pudding and divvied it up into newly cleaned bowls. Sad Clown had even silently helped out, perhaps wanting his portion a little sooner. “The um, the casserole’s not done yet, but there’s pudding while you wait!” I couldn’t help the way the words butted up against one another and I’d backed up against the wall while the Joker looked over the bowls sitting on the island counter.
“ Pudding,” he said flatly, and his eye twitched.
“Pudding!” Harley exclaimed, “Pudding for my puddin’; oh, you charmer!” She ruffled my hair, “Mistah J loves pudding!”
The continuing tick did not reassure me that Harley’s words were correct.
The Joker brooded quietly while Harley and the others retrieved their portions and left, sitting on the counter once it was clear and fixing me with a baleful eye as I checked on the casserole.
“Don’t make pudding again,” he informed me, “Harley’s delusional.”
“Yes, sir,” I conceded, hoping that was the end of it.
“She’s got this fascination with pudding she’s projected onto me,” he continued, still in that flat, didactic tone.
“Yes, sir,” I repeated, pulling the casserole out of the oven and setting it on the stove top, using my jacket as hot pad.
There was a beat, and then the Joker was leaning over me curiously, with a spoon untainted by pudding, “I’ll test this.”
“It’s hot,” I warned but he’d already scooped up a mouthful, chewing thoughtfully.
“Needs sprinkles,” he decided, mood swinging violently towards cheerful, and he laughed as he searched the still sparse cabinets.
“They’re over here,” I said, pulling out the only box that had been in the cabinets before Sad Clown’s shopping spree. That did answer the question of why they were there.
He took the box and sat cross-legged on the floor like a child. When he saw I was still standing he gestured impatiently for me to join him, patting the space beside him. I sat hastily next to him and he spared me an amused glance before digging into the box, pulling out and tossing away various containers, before he seemed to come to an impasse. “What do you think,” he held the two cylinders next to each other, “poison or non-toxic?” One had a large skull and crossbones emblazoned on the side while the other was an innocent, everyday brand name filled with spider sprinkles. He looked at me seriously, “Your choice.”
“Non-toxic,” I replied weakly, “Aren’t you going to be eating it, too?”
“Ah, good reasoning,” he laughed, and slapped me on the back, “Spiders, it is, then!”
His grin was more terrifying in person than in wanted pictures or on the TV, and I wondered if that was a test- and whether I’d passed or failed. Probably it had just been a whim. Probably.
While I portioned out the casserole into returning pudding bowls, the Joker followed along behind me, humming a tuneless melody, and giving each bowl its due in sprinkles.
When everyone else was fed, he held out a clean, empty bowl and the sprinkles container expectantly. Without speaking, I took the bowl and filled it, before hesitantly receiving the sprinkles and scattering them over the top.
“That’s for you,” he snickered when I made to hand it back, grabbing the casserole dish and making off with what was left, sprinkle-free. His laughter trailed behind him.
The kitchen was finally empty, and my muscles went limp as I slid to the floor, still holding the bowl in my trembling hands. It felt like I’d been circled by a lion and it had decided it wasn’t hungry today. Pulling the bowl toward my chest, the tears finally came. In a clean kitchen in a supervillain’s lair, a tired nobody sobbed into his sprinkles.
The moment of weakness couldn’t last forever though, as I reminded myself when the crying faded to hiccups. I’d promised to get the apartment clean by tomorrow, which meant working through the night. Unless the Joker decided to chain me up somewhere, there was no reason not to start soon.
Even as I gathered my determination, tear tracks drying on my cheeks, my stomach gurgled for my attention. Right.
I looked distastefully at the sprinkle-covered casserole and remembered, again, how the Joker had kept his own portion sprinkle-free by simply grabbing what was left and making a run for it. Not that he’d needed to. There wasn’t anyone here willing to stop him. I doubt even Harley would’ve lifted a finger if she thought it unfair.
Snorting, I realized that I was thinking about unfair sprinkles when I should be fearing for my life.
Just eat, I admonished myself bitterly, and clean. He didn’t have to give me anything, after all. I should take it while I have it.
It was both worrying and reassuring that he’d allow me food.
Reassuring because he rarely fed prisoners he intended to kill.
Worrying because he rarely fed prisoners he intended to let go.
I didn’t know why I was fixating on this, as I numbly shoveled sprinkle-casserole into my mouth and the thugs filed in and out, leaving empty bowls on the counter.
It was barely mentioned in news reports, except as an aside. Police Commissioner Gordon saying, “…I knew he wouldn’t keep me long. No food, no water; either he’d let me go or kill me,” kept echoing in my head.
Maybe I remembered a little too much about this, but in Gotham you paid attention to supervillains. We were all well trained- hear a certain name, a certain hot button word on the news, and everyone sprang to attention. Joker card found near a popular restaurant? Wasn’t popular anymore. Plants growing a little too fast at the arboretum? Clear the place out. Rich people gathering in one spot? Good bye, neighborhood.
It was a fact of life that supervillains existed, and that normal people couldn’t do much but stay out of their way. So we did our very best at just that. I listened to all the most up-to-date stations, took all the safest routes. In fact, I had thought I’d been doing a terrific job. Until now.
I finished my bowl and wobbled to my feet. After holding it together all afternoon, letting go seemed to sap the strength out of me, but I managed to take a few piles of bowls to the sink and start scrubbing, anyway. A tuneless humming behind me made my hand tighten on a bowl as the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. The casserole dish was set down and I flinched.
“Don’t worry,” the Joker said gamely, poking my cheek, “You did alright. You get life today.”
“Thank you, sir,” I responded tightly, forcibly relaxing my grip on the bowl and continuing to scrub. The Joker eyed the stack of wet bowls on one side of the sink and the dirty ones on the other side.
“Three!” He bellowed, and I fumbled the bowl I was cleaning, catching it with a sharp exhalation. Sad Clown popped his head in.
“Yes, boss?” A towel was flung unceremoniously across his face.
“Dry,” the Joker informed him, and leaned against the counter with the dirty bowls, watching me clean, arms crossed over his chest. He was smiling, but it was a neutral expression, like a default, and I figured I shouldn’t read into it, “Why do ya keep calling me sir?” A snort, “At least Harley calls me Mister J.”
I paused, offering, “Do you want me to-“
“No,” he interceded, eyes wide and a hand out in front of him defensively, “Don’t do that.”
Resuming my cleaning for lack of anything to say, I handed the wet bowl to Sad Clown (Three?) who was making quiet, quick work of the others.
“So,” he drew out the word to an absurd length, “why sir?”
“Because you’re in charge?” I replied, unsure what he meant, “Sir?”
“Humph,” he waved at me like it would push the word away, “I don’t like it.”
“I’ll stop then.” If these silences kept growing, I’d finish the dishes and have nowhere to direct my gaze but the unsettling crime boss himself.
“It’s like you don’t know my name,” the Joker complained, as if there hadn’t been several moments of silence, “Just call me Joker; Jo-ker, it’s not that hard. I don’t like feeling anonymous. Boss, if you’re feeling cheeky.”
“Yes, s-,” that was harder to stop than I’d thought, “Um…” The madman had given me options again. Another freaking test? Well… He was the Joker; did he want cheekiness? “Yes, boss.”
An amused expression flitted over his face and he ruffled my hair, “It’ll do.”
Despite what seemed like an end to the conversation, the Joker decided it was time to monologue, and Sad Clown and I continued our task with the rise and fall of the Joker’s rendition of Harley’s reaction to the Batman today supplying the soundtrack.
“Does he always do this?” I murmured to Sad Clown under the cover of a particularly long bout of loud laughter from the Joker.
“Yes,” Sad Clown set aside the newest dry bowl and grabbed the wet one from me, his accent thick with resignation, “Is normal.”
When the Joker grew bored and stalked away muttering about riverbanks, the dishes were just about done and I waved off Sad Clown to finish them on my own. He shrugged and left without any argument. It wasn’t as if he were my friend, or anything, and I didn’t want to get the idea that he might be friendly and have him stab me in the back should I attempt to escape.
If I tried to escape.
“I think I’m stuck,” I whispered to the dishes as I put them away, “until the Joker gets bored with me.” If I just kept myself away from anything important and- well, if I just kept myself out of the way, I wouldn’t learn anything the Joker didn’t want the police knowing about. This apartment didn’t have windows, and I’d had a hand over my face coming in, so there was a bit of a win-lose situation there. On the one hand, if I got a message out somehow, there’d be no way to tell them where I was. On the other, the Joker might eventually let me go if I still didn’t know anything when he got bored. Besides, when it came down to it, I knew I wouldn’t lift a finger to escape unless the Batman was standing in front of me, promising me asylum.
I didn’t want to die.
The desire to live was much stronger than the desire to live free, and unless the Joker took a stronger, more malicious interest in me, I doubted that would change anytime soon. Living here wasn’t too different than in some of the worse foster homes, except I lived in fear of murder instead of a beating. So far. It had only been an afternoon, so for all I knew it could get scarier. Maybe the Joker had an even more twisted side to him he hadn’t shown yet, just waiting for the right captive.
I hoped the idea of killing me never struck him as funny.
Through the night, I cleaned and thought. It was horrifying in a different way from what the Joker inspired in me, the amount of grime and mysterious stains (I shied away from identification) that sank into the walls and floors. There had been a vacuum here even before the shopping trip and I’d gotten that done with the floors, but now I’d turned my attention towards the furniture. I tried to do it early in the night, so I didn’t wake anyone, but it took longer than I thought.
A pillow struck the side of my head, and one of the masked thugs growled in a feminine voice from an open door, “Shut it off.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I squeaked, and with that, I was done vacuuming for the night. I turned my hand to shining reflective surfaces and polishing side tables. Then organizing the closet (things were in there, crawly, smiley things), and leaving the closet never to return. Then dusting the windowless drapes. Putting all the books upright in the bookcases. Avoiding bedrooms. Scrubbing the bathrooms, with the door open, and gagging on the odor. Sliding empty food and water bowls away from the sleeping hyenas and leaving them sparkling. I eyed the hyenas themselves but decided I was clearly sleep deprived if I thought anyone but Harley was going to bathe them. The list dragged on until what felt like morning, and I lay, motionless, on the floor in a hallway off the main common rooms, reveling in my triumph. It seemed that the entire floor belonged to the Joker – well, probably the whole building, but the entire floor was being used. It was bigger than the house I was being fostered in now. Still, I’d done it. In that moment, the world was mine.
The Joker stepped on me.
“Ow,” I wheezed, and he took his foot off my stomach.
“Whoops,” he giggled, dressed in a ridiculously orange set of pajamas and matching night cap. He’d already put on his makeup for the day, and he reached down to drag me upright. When he pulled his hands away, I swayed, but remained standing.
“Breakfast time,” he sang, ushering my shambling corpse in front of him to the kitchen. In a daze, I made up oatmeal and eggs for twenty-odd criminals and poured orange juice for the Joker, who insisted that his drink match his outfit. There was a dining room I’d cleaned the night before that resembled nothing so much as a decrepit ballroom (no amount of cleaning could change that) and the entire horde fit comfortably at the table. Sad Clown directed me to a chair and put an unclaimed portion in front of me, while the Joker looked pensively at his eating thugs. During this time, Harley wandered in, rubbing her eyes and yawning, before falling on the food like her own hyenas.
“Hand me a newspaper,” he informed me, holding out a hand and making grabby gestures, “and my pipe.”
The pipe, I could do well enough, since I knew where pretty much every knick knack was after all the horrid organizing and cleaning I’d done that night, and I retrieved it, hoping he’d forget the newspaper in the time I was gone.
He puffed on my offering of what turned out to be a bubble pipe and repeated, “Newspaper?”
“We don’t… have one, boss,” I cringed, expecting some sort of pain, but the Joker’s eyes rolled and he poked a nearby thug.
“Go get a newspaper so he can hand it to me,” he demanded, “Honestly, all I want is a perfect scene; does no one understand good entertainment these days?” I murmured something vaguely sympathetic and, encouraged, he ranted on until the thug returned. The poor guy tried to pass the paper to the Joker and the Joker actually scoffed in disgust, gesturing at me. The paper made its way into my hands, and the Joker gave me back the pipe as well, before repeating, “Paper and pipe.”
Dutifully, I pressed them back into his hands, and he blew a few bubbles contentedly as he unfolded the paper.
“This is what breakfast is supposed to look like,” he told us, and Harley sighed happily at his resulting grin. “Ah, we’re in the paper, Harley,” he mused, and they were quickly absorbed in their own little world. Breakfast continued fairly peacefully after that. For a while.
A masked henchman I hadn’t seen before burst into the dining room, “The fish! Boss, the Batman found an antidote for what we did to the fish!”
There wasn’t even time to register movement before I heard the gunshot and saw the man fall. “Don’t interrupt my scenes,” the Joker told his body coolly, secreting the gun away who-knows-where in his ridiculous orange pajamas with a humorless laugh.
My entire body was cold, and I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d let my guard down until it was back up again and I could feel muscles I didn’t know I had tensed just to the point of pain. Incredibly, I couldn’t stop the thought that I’d just cleaned those floors from circling around and around in my brain.
Even more incredibly, it seemed the Joker and I were on the same wavelength, “Sorry to muss the floors up again, uh, you know I don’t think I ever got your name.” He was clearly addressing me, but I found myself unable to respond.
A thug elbowed me and I replied, dumbly, “Abner. My name is Abner.”
He nodded and sipped his orange juice, “Yeah, I’ll have the idiots that let it in take care of this mess, then, Abner . ” His voice filled the syllables of my name with too much familiarity to be comfortable, when a man lay dead at the end of the breakfast table. Amusement radiated from him at my blatant fear, “Eat up. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Apparently, the news that Batman had ruined whatever fish-plan the Joker had put into motion left the Joker entirely free to follow me about after breakfast while I cleared dishes and shambled about the apartment (avoiding the dining room) and picked up whatever new things the thugs had left strewn about.
“Having a captive is sort of like having a child, isn’t it?” The Joker mused, sitting on the arm of a couch while I was sweeping up the newest crud the thugs had tracked in over the course of the morning. I quietly choked on my spit. “Free labor,” the Joker began counting points on his fingers, “completely dependent on you, and forced to be friendly with you no matter what you do.” He was more than a little off on his idea of children, but I wasn’t going to correct him.
“I guess so, boss,” I replied, trying to turn my attention back to the task at hand.
“Harley can never hear of this, though,” he told me seriously, “Or she’ll demand to be your mother and coddle you and teach you about psychology and guns.”
“Psychology and guns?” I echoed, and with no more prompting than that the Joker was telling me the story of how Dr. Harleen Quinzel became the infamous Harley Quinn we all know and fear. A part of me wanted desperately to stop him. Was this common knowledge in the police force? Did they already know who Harley Quinn had been and how she had changed? Was this something the Joker would eventually kill me for knowing? But another part of me was just listening, as the Joker spun his tale.
“She couldn’t resist me, of course,” he was saying, trotting behind me as I carried the dust pan to the trash, “After getting comfy inside my head, I’d been getting into hers, too, you know? Ah, we had such a dance of wits, but I won in the end; I usually do. Except with Batsy,” the words were like three drops of venom in the folds of a shortcake, “So she cracked open her misconceptions about the world and made up some for me, instead.” His laughter was as manic as usual, “It didn’t take long before my gal bailed me outta there in a way frowned upon by most law-abiding citizens. Oh, we took the town by storm .” Sounds like a love story to me, I wanted to say, but I held the sarcasm in, biting my lip. Unfortunately, the mad jester was more observant than he seemed. “Hmmm?” He took my chin in hand, squishing my cheeks, “Were you going to say something? No?”
“It just,” I tried to think of something complimentary, “seems nice to have someone care for you that much.” There we go. It was even true.
“Care for me?” He scoffed and dropped his hand from my face, “She’s obsessed. It’s not exactly healthy, what she does.” A sly grin took over his face, “You’d think she’d know that, being a psychologist, herself, but I guess that’s just my effect on people. Everyone loses their head around me.” He winked, “Maybe you’re next.”
“That would be Stockholm syndrome,” I deadpanned before I could stop myself.
A laugh ripped out of him, almost surprised, “Oh, very good. So you’ll know what it is when it happens to you!” A pat to my cheek, “Gold star, Abner.” He walked away laughing, and a cold shiver went up my spine. Despite the jovial nature of the exchange, in terms of the Joker’s behavior he’d seemed sort of… serious.
No , I laughed a little under my breath as I moved wearily onto the next chore, I’m just reading into it. The Joker’s too whim-driven to actually plan to- what?- to gain the loyalty of a nobody he’s got doing chores?
Although, maybe… Right now, creating a loyal servant could be the Joker’s next whim. When had he ever done something for a good reason? If anything, it seemed like he wanted to spread chaos, maybe make money- though that was debated on the different networks- and make jokes. His jokes weren’t exactly harmless or even very funny; really, I don’t think anyone got them but himself. Still, if the man pointing a gun to your face tells you he’s busy making a joke, most people don’t argue. Since that was essentially the Joker’s relationship with Gotham, we all just lived with his definition.
It just…
Shit. My whole life was shit. Everything that led to this point was steaming, Joker-venom-laced shit.
Why did my family die in Gotham? Couldn’t we have moved to, say, Metropolis, before my parents decided to drop dead of a mysterious disease? It’s not as if we’d been meaning to stay here more than a year, and yet from the age of seven on, I’d been bounced from foster home to foster home in our fair city of crime and grime. I’d lived more of my life here than I had anywhere else. Somehow, I’d even managed to avoid any supervillain confrontations until now. Maybe this was the accumulation of every incident I’d missed or bank robbery I hadn’t been held up in, coming back to haunt me all at once.
“Why me, though?” I whined to myself, shuffling back to put the broom away. I could already hear the Joker shouting, “Lunch!” from the kitchen.
Time passed. I counted days by whatever the Joker called the meals he demanded when he returned. When he was out, the thugs would just shuffle into the kitchen looking pathetic around mealtimes and I would feed them. If he was in, though, each meal was something of a production. A scene from the Joker’s repertoire of ideals. He began placing me at his left, with Harley on his right, and some days it felt like he was having me fill the role of child, other times, that of housewife. Usually, this was when he was annoyed with Harley.
This was one of those days.
“Pass me the butter, dear,” he intoned, and his fingers were wiggling in my face before the sentence was complete. Harley pouted on his other side and gave me the butter dish to pass to him. Quite a lot of redundancy came about due to the Joker’s idiosyncrasies, but it did lend credence to Harley’s frequent accusation of control freak. He always added something to each meal he was present for, usually something that ruined it for the rest of us. It was actually one of the few quirks I found amusing rather than terrifying, how he had to have a hand in anything happening in front of him. He really couldn’t leave well enough alone. He patted my cheek in condescending thanks before giving in with a sigh and patting Harley on the head as well. She brightened immediately.
“I really didn’t mean ta let Robin get away,” Harley’s eyes were wide and shining as she leaned into the Joker’s arm, taking the head pat as permission to plead her case, “You know how slippery they are when ya turn your back on ‘em.”
“Yes, well,” he shrugged her off his arm and began to butter his roll, “this isn’t the first time you’ve failed me with the little bird.”
Little bird. The words stopped me dead, fork falling from my fingers. That’s what they called me when they brought me in. Then the Joker had realized my eyes were brown and not- not whatever color they were supposed to be and told Harley to get rid of me and- and- they’d thought I was Robin? Robin was my age? I’d always thought the ‘boy wonder’ just looked young. Surely, he was older than eighteen. Little did I know.
“Something on your mind?” The Joker’s voice was smooth and dangerous, and strangely loud in the sudden quiet. Oh, no one was speaking anymore. Evidently, dropping your silverware at a table full of criminals when a superhero was mentioned was now extremely suspicious.
“I just-“ Stammering was my strong suit, “I just realized that you- that you thought I was Robin, b-be-before, which m-means he’s my age.”
“He was even younger when the Batman first started his crusade of reckless endangerment,” the Joker pointed out, resuming the buttering of his roll as the quiet chatter of the thugs trickled back into existence.
Younger? I tried to think of when I’d first heard of Robin, and realized with a shock that I might have still been in middle school. “Holy crap,” I said, and the Joker began to laugh.
“Don’t worry your little head.” His hand landed between my shoulders and slid to my lower back, the thumb moving up and down in a gesture that, while comforting from anyone else, made my every nerve tingle with fear. The Joker’s grin was way too close for comfort, “I won’t follow in Batsy’s footsteps. Probably.”
A few more days of constant exposure to the Joker made the incident recede in my mind. However, it seemed the Joker had been musing on the idea of my role in his scenes a little longer than I’d anticipated.
It came to a head while the Joker was watching me clean a mirror after some excursion that had brought him home battered and bloody. He frowned abruptly, creasing the dried blood, and asked, “Where have you been sleeping?”
“The… couch, boss,” I replied, pointing at the offending article as if to move his attention away from me, though the subconscious ploy failed to achieve result.
“Hmm,” he grabbed my arm and half-led, half-dragged me down the hall. For a few, fearful seconds, it seemed like he was leading to me to his room- likely for something unsavory with the way he creepily watched everything I did. He’s not into teenagers, the rational bit of my mind unaffected by fear reminded me, as the rest was still cringing away from the entire situation, just a control freak who has to know how everything’s being done. Instead, he pulled me just past his own door and shoved me in the open door beyond it. “This is yours, now. For some reason, my clowns have left it empty,” he informed me, waving an arm grandly at the bunk bed that was missing a lower mattress and the dresser beside it. Probably it had been left empty because it was right next to the Joker's room. Glancing thoughtfully down the clothes I’d been wearing for the weeks I’d been there he continued, “Harley will go grab you some other clothes.” He paused, “She can actually go grab your clothes. What was your old address?”
My old address? This was starting to sound more and more permanent. Still, I gave it to him and he nodded to himself.
For a moment, he looked almost uncomfortable at whatever he was thinking, but he asked, leaning awkwardly on the threshold, “Do you want us to leave your family a message?” Abruptly, the Joker pointed a finger at me, “No hidden codes or nonesuch, or I’ll take your nose off.”
“They’re not my family,” I said, instead of addressing the insanity of hidden codes, “I doubt they care, anyway.” Belatedly, I added, “Boss.”
“Oh,” he was visibly processing this information, before trying at a grin, “So Harley could knock on the door, polite as you please…?”
“Probably, boss,” I agreed, and the Joker shrugged uneasily.
“You should hear what my old man thought of me,” he said, doing that pseudo-comfort-thing with the hand on my back that just made my hackles rise, “Of course, you can’t ask him. Dead men tell no tales and all that.” He seemed to sense the discomfort without enjoying it this time since the hand returned to the back of his own neck as he looked skyward, that oddly exaggerated voice continuing, “Family is just like captivity, anyway.”
That was just a little sad, but I gave him a smile, anyway, “Sure, boss. I should get back to cleaning. Thanks for the room and um, sending Ms. Harley out.”
The spoken gratitude bounced off his shields of denial. “Call her Harley; everyone does,” the Joker corrected absently before leaving the room.
“Okay, boss,” I called after him, glancing around the room one more time before getting back to work.
When I’d finished my daily maintenance, Harley came bursting in that night with a thug in tow and two cardboard boxes, “They said this is all your stuff, Abby-boy!”
I gave the size of the boxes a onceover and nodded, “Looks about right. Thanks, Harley. Sorry the boss had you do it.”
“No problem,” she was smiling that megawatt grin; I knew I was in danger, “It’s like you’re finally coming home, right?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, because disagreeing was not an option. Harley was just as much a murdering supervillain as the Joker.
“So, I was thinking,” she sat on the bed beside me with a thump, “I’ll help you unpack and then we can make plans to spruce the place up!”
“I wouldn’t have time,” I tried to protest, gently, but she stuck her tongue out at me and blew a raspberry.
“Listen to your loving husband,” she scolded, and I fell silent, actually struck dumb by the statement. The thug who’d followed her in was snickering softly and snapped me out of it.
“What?” Trying to inch away was futile when she’d thrown a steel-whip of an arm around my shoulder. My voice climbed an octave, as I repeated, “What?”
“You’re me and Mistah J’s housewife, sort of,” she chirped and I took a moment to remind myself that this woman had a PhD in her field. Then, I could clearly see the mischief in what had seemed to be innocent blue eyes, “Ya do all the cookin’, and cleanin’ and make sure we’re both taken care of…” She trailed off and now that I was in a mind to remember her level of intelligence, I could see she was trying not to laugh from the cheery crinkles that remained at the corner of her eyes. “So’s the least we can do is make sure your room is prettified to your specifications.”
“You do remember I’m being held captive, right?” I reminded her, because this was not what I’d been expecting from life today. I’d been given a room and the material possessions I’d left behind, and I wasn’t in the mindset for any more shocks.
“Yeah,” she shrugged, uncaring, “but so are my babies, technically; even Mistah J, ya know? I mean, pets are captive, kids are captive, even in marriages, the spouses hold each other captive. People just hold on so tight and never let go!” Her eyes grew soft and she began to pet my hair, “Mistah J doesn’t talk about it on accounta’ his issues , but I think he knows, too.” Well, he kind of had said it, actually. Which was all levels of weird.
A growing sense of this isn't right was twisting my stomach into knots, “Isn’t this a little fast?”
“Oh, maybe for you men,” she smiled, fisting her hand in my hair and shaking a little, “Ya got skulls so thick you can block a rock with ‘em. But I knew the minute ya let Mistah J put sprinkles on everyone’s casseroles without a fuss that you were okay.”
I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, but no use upsetting the one currently gripping a handful of my hair, “Thanks, Harley.”
“No problem, babycheeks,” she released me and stood, dancing backward to the door, “Don’t fight the Stockholm!”
“Wait-“ Back to my initial conspiracy theory, then. Agh. I couldn’t wrap my head around exactly what was happening, so I lay back on the bed and gave up. Good night insanity, I’ll see you tomorrow.
And so I did.
“-so we should take him on a heist,” Harley was saying excitedly at breakfast, while I held tight to my serving platter of pancakes to avoid chucking it at her head, “And he can pick out colors and stuff while you guys tell jokes in the rest of the mall.”
“Not a bad plan, Harley,” the Joker began, and my heart dropped. “But you’ve forgotten one minor detail.”
“What?” she asked eagerly, leaning in, which, of course, was what the Joker was waiting for to shout at close quarters.
“Abner’s a hostage; he’ll run for the hills if he gets out of here!” Yes, I’m a flight risk, definitely. Don’t send me out where there are guns.
“Pshaw,” she waved this off, “puddin’, you know we’ve all agreed we’re practically family, now.”
“It’s been five weeks,” the Joker tried to intercede. My hero.
“Exactly!” She exclaimed, “Five whole weeks, and has he once tried to signal the Batman? Given out a secret code to a spy in our organization?” Harley’s voice lowered to a purr, “He didn’t even take you up on your offer to send a message to his old family.” Clearly, she had not been filled in on the Joker’s and my conversation completely or she’d have known they were not my family. The Joker was quiet and Harley moved in for the kill, “Come on, puddin’, our little housewife needs to have a proper room.” Despite a glare from both of us at our respective continued titles, I could feel the Joker caving.
“But what if I was just… just waiting for the right moment?” I put in, adding belatedly, “Boss?”
Harley gave the Joker a look that said, very clearly, See?
“Whatever!” He threw up his hands, “It’s your responsibility to make sure he doesn’t run off to the Batman.”
“What about the police?” I asked, forgetting the precarious nature of my continued survival.
“What about the police?” He stood up, stalking away from the table, “Like they do anything.”
For the next few days, the Joker and Harley vanished, likely preparing for said mischief, and ruining any chance of changing their minds. By this point, I’d realized that the thugs were not going to hurt me unless I tried to sprint out the front door, and I bemoaned the outing to any of them that hung around the kitchen.
“I mean, there will be people waving guns around,” I told Angry Clown, and Sad Clown laughed.
“Boss is always wave gun around,” he put in, a smile in his voice. Angry Clown pointed at him, silently agreeing.
“Yeah, but…” I set down the potato I was peeling, “there will be more than the boss. And I just know I’m gonna end up someone’s human shield.”
“What do ya think happens in a heist?” Angry Clown snorted in his Gothamite accent, waving his own peeler at me, “We go in, we have some fun, the police show up and do nothing, then the Batman shows up and we all go home. Ya just gotta get Harley to cut down her shopping to fit in the time limit.”
Sad Clown nodded, and handed Angry Clown another potato. Angry Clown found peeling soothing, which I had learned rather quickly he needed. Unlike most of the others, his mask was very close to his personality.
“Besides,” Sad Clown added, “We will be in front; you, back. Entrance, then us, then you. Police and the Batman could not get to you. Gunfire from us goes other way.”
“Yeah, Harley’s takin’ you to the home design store toward the back she likes,” Angry Clown remarked, “They got some great drills. Go through anything.” I didn’t want to know what he needed them for. “You should pick out some colors and stuff.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, putting a finished potato to the side and reaching for the next.
“Like, paint, ya know?” Angry Clown waved vaguely, “If ya got some stuff in mind then it’ll get ya in and out faster so’s you don’t wet your pants if we start shootin’ the place up.”
“Thanks,” I said, dryly, “I’ll live and die by your gentle guidance.”
“See that ya do,” he replied, and I could hear the grin.
Rolling my eyes, I continued the preparations. I had never realized how much food twenty six people (I finally had a head count of the thugs allowed in, plus Harley, the Joker, and myself) actually ate until I needed to make it everyday, and set a grocery list as well. Part of me still harbored the delusion that the food was all being bought at stores, and it did amuse that side of me to think of our thugs wandering a grocery store in search of the cheapest parsnips, but realistically, I knew it wasn’t true. Even if money changed hands, the money was bound to be stolen or due to stolen goods anyway. The food, then, was as good as. That might have been another reason I wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming trip. Breaking all those pretty delusions into so much sparkly dust.
“At least they don’t want me to hold a gun,” I muttered, and the clowns burst out into laughter at the very thought.