Bad Jokes (JokerxHarley Quinn)

a handshake of carbon monoxide

I'll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises
-Radiohead, No Surprises

When I was first told what I was expected to do, I thought that it was a joke—which would have been more than a little inappropriate (or perfectly appropriate, depending on how you looked at it), given the situation at hand. So, I asked.

"Are you joking?"

I was sitting in the office that belonged to Dr. Michael Stratford, current director of Arkham Asylum, and seconds ago, he had informed me that I was being sent in to analyze the anonymous madman known only as the Joker, if I was willing. If this was a joke, it would be a really bad one.

Allow me to explain.

My name is Harleen Quinzel—Harley to my friends and family. Doctor Harleen Quinzel—I keep forgetting. After a full nine years spent racing through school, school, more school, and a host of internships, you would think it'd be easier to remember my new title. Not so. The fact that I was freshly working through a residency here at Arkham Asylum didn't help—not only was I just a newbie, but I was a newbie who didn't have a lot of practical experience to look back on. I figured this would keep my superiors from assigning me anything too heavy too soon.

Apparently not.

Stratford leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. "Of course not. We really would like you to try."

I fell into silence once more, unable to fully comprehend this assignment. Finally, I managed a single question: "Why?"

Stratford sighed. "He's been in custody for months now, but we've made absolutely no progress with him," he said, the barest hint of frustration audible in his voice. "We've developed theories, practiced cures, but nothing is getting through to him. One of the doctors said that he might respond if someone a little closer to his own age—presumably—was brought in, and I thought of you." He looked at me over steel-rimmed glasses. "Was I wrong?"

I hesitated. From the start, I'd freely admitted to myself that I was attracted to Stratford. He was a full decade my senior, possibly more, but in addition to being fit and attractive, with rumpled dark hair and salt-and-pepper stubble which put him definitively into the category of "my type," he projected an aura of calm control that I found very appealing. As with most crushes, the thought of disappointing him or letting him down in any way was horrific to me. However, the prospect of analyzing the Joker was, quite frankly, terrifying.

I hadn't lived in Gotham City my whole life, but I'd lived in a neighboring county for most of it, and nothing that had happened in the city could compare to the madman's sudden emergence and the months of horror that followed. For the longest time, no one had the slightest hope that the city would emerge from his reign of terror intact. Batman didn't seem capable of doing anything, the police were definitely not equipped to deal with the man... hell, everyone in the city (criminal and civilian alike) was on the verge of packing up and getting out until he had been captured.

The Joker was now being held at the fortress-like Arkham, his trial postponed until his therapists were able to come up with a credible analysis of the man. I don't think the police felt safe with him locked up in a jail, considering what he'd done to the Major Crimes Unit in the space of one night and all.

This was a man that Gotham City police officers were terrified of. On the flipside, I was twenty-six, still felt eighteen years old more often than not, five-foot-five, and blonde-haired and blue-eyed to boot—which was great when I was trying to sweet-talk my way into clubs and concerts, but didn't exactly have the effect of making me come across as formidable in the least. Who said I was equipped to study this man who had been giving the other headshrinks trouble from day one?