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English
Series:
Part 11 of Summer Slalom 2018
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Summer Slalom
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Published:
2018-07-23
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705
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1/1
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10
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The Keeper of My Beaten Heart

Summary:

Harley's life from her point of view, and why she trusts Joker.

Notes:

Fandom: Suicide Squad
Pairing: Harley/Joker
Prompt Word: Keep

Work Text:

My name is Harleen Quinzel. I have my doctorate, mind you, and I was once a psychiatrist. Jeremiah Valeska was one of my more interesting patients at Arkham Asylum. In the matter of mere minutes, I began to grow positively obsessed with him. I had my issues throughout my childhood and even adult life, but there was something about him that called out to me. He was polite in the beginning, asking that I call him by the title of ‘The Joker’. He could sense how smitten I had become, and I could tell in the change of his tone. I never gave up on analyzing his antics, becoming mesmerized by the sudden shift of him sweet talking me. As though he had me under his crooked thumb.

 

I have utilized this shift as well – alternating my voice from a simple farm girl like the people around me as I grew up in a small town, to a professional medical official. Growing up, I was bullied for my outward thinking, gruesome ideas and wild concepts toward fashion. To defend myself, I began taking lessons in gymnastics. With my new talent, my agility and strength escalated. I would exercise more and get faster. Adding graffiti to a stolen baseball bat, I was no longer fearful, but rather the one feared. My personality may initially showcase me as a ditzy young lady, but I can quickly prove how dangerous I am when and if the moment calls for it.

 

Jeremiah perjured himself, countlessly, to me about his past. I had been a therapist for a while when he appeared in my room, so I am and have been perfectly able to tell where lies the switch between truth or falseness. Even so, I could not stop myself. From there, I eventually fell in love with him. With my baby as my Joker, I donned the appropriate Jester costume. I helped break him out of custody to share a crime-filled life alongside my Mistah J. Now, after being forced in by a certain intelligence officer, I run alongside the choice hitman Deadshot, resourceful bandit Captain Boomerang, genetic malformation Killer Croc, expert assassin Slipknot, and pyrokinetic ex-mobster El Diablo.

 

We’re disposable agents, and sometimes I wonder about dying. Just the spectacular mess of it all. Then I wonder what Jeremiah would do. He’s never so serious, and we are a battered couple riddled with secrets and lies that only we can decode. Each of us on the Suicide Squad has a nano-bomb entrenched into our necks. It’s my only reasoning for remaining here, really. It’ll detonate if we rebel or attempt an escape. That doesn’t stop me from pushing the limits. My homicidal concubine has yet to give up on me. He’ll hijack and kill to have me in his arms. That’s what I love about him. Though, I’m beginning to enjoy being with this group of freaks almost as much.

 

The Joker is my beautiful adversity of a psychopathic supervillain. He makes me more irrational than I have ever deemed possible through my years of sociopathic scrutinizing, and at times, it’s almost scary. Both of us are continuously manipulating one another, someway, somehow. We have an amazing, unwholesome, addictive, dysfunctional connection, damn the consequences. People say he ironically imprisoned me in a therapy room and tortured me to the brink of insanity. People say I escaped with him, having lost my wits. People say I came after him for revenge, but he had won me over since I never miss. People can believe what they want to because I know the truth.

 

Life can be described as one long, chaotic joke. Life gave me a torturous childhood, beginning with my own officially declared insane opinions. Life took me away from my own mother. Life brought joy to Jeremiah through mayhem and murder. Life forced me into conformity, rather than rule as Queen of Gotham. It’s like I once told El Diablo, Normal's a setting on the dryer. People like us, we don't get normal! I can hear the sirens from down the hall, and the softened blows of a silencer on a large piece of weaponry. Time to get busy. Sounds like Mistah J’s come to get me.

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