Shadows of the Past

Chapter 7

Harley looked uncomfortable. "Well, yeah...he's...my boyfriend, Red. So it's fine..."

"How could she have resisted, with such an unpleasant brute of a man?" asked Crane, dryly.

"Oooh, somebody's jealous!" chuckled Joker. "A few people, by the sounds of it. Y'know, sweetheart, you play your cards right, and if things don't work out with Harley and me, I'll give you a call," he said, winking at Ivy.

"I would rather cut off both my legs, and then eat them," retorted Ivy.

"I'm sure that can be arranged if you hang around me long enough!" laughed Joker. "So these are your friends, huh, dollface?" he asked, looking around the group. "Weird looking bunch, but who am I to judge?" he asked, gesturing to his face. "Harley tells me this clown look's pretty permanent, but apparently that doesn't eliminate my attractiveness, so who cares, right?"

"Honestly, Harley, he's very close to the real Joker," said Tetch. "Are you sure you couldn't settle for him?"

Harley glared at him. "I'm Harley Quinn!" she snapped. "I don't settle for anyone but my Mr. J!"

"You slept with him," pointed out Ivy.

"I was desperate!" cried Harley. "I mean, I had slept with the other one, and he was so unsatisfying that I just couldn't resist...you just don't know what it's like to make love with a tender, gentle man – it's hideous! Especially when you just want someone to punish you hard for being a real, bad girl..."

"I'll explain to you my dilemma, my dear, and you can tell me your decision," interrupted Tetch. "You see, while it's entirely conceivable that we might be able to find some way to switch between the Joker's personalities, we have no idea how many personalities he might have in total. The possibilities are literally endless. In which case the real Joker might be lost forever in a sea of differing personas, as different from him as night and day. That's assuming we can even find the Joker personality in there among the mess. The far safer, less riskier option is to just leave him like this – he's not obsessed with his wife as the last one was, and seems to be a criminal like you're used to, as well as being particularly keen on your physical charms," he added, as Joker's hand reached for Harley's bottom again.

"Seriously, have you all seen this ass?" he asked the assembled group as he fondled it. "I am a lucky guy!"

"Puddin', please, not in public!" hissed Harley, pushing him away.

"Yeah, if you like being sexually harassed all the time, he's the ideal man," sighed Ivy.

"I do like being sexually harassed by Mr. J," admitted Harley. "But it's weird that he's hot for me so much. I don't like that. I mean, who has the energy to be that attractive all the time?"

"Well, some of us manage," sniffed Ivy, tossing her hair.

"Could you try to get used to him?" pressed Tetch. "Because the alternative will require a lot of work on my part – trying to isolate the area of his brain that shifts between personalities, and repeatedly overloading it with stimuli as has happened the past two times he's been switched."

"Whaddya mean overloading with stimuli?" asked Harley. "I bashed him on the head, and then he bashed his head in the shower. You'd think it wouldn't have any effect on him at this point, with the way he gets beat up pretty constantly fighting Bats."

"Yes, my dear, which is why it's going to take a lot of work to determine the exact part of his brain and amount of force it takes to trigger these personality shifts," said Tetch. "We shall have to experiment. Or you could just accept this version of the Joker permanently."

Harley looked at Joker. "Could you accept an inferior version of Alice?" she asked Tetch at last.

"I could not," sighed Tetch. "Well, if that's your decision, we must get him to Arkham."

"Arkham?" repeated Two-Face. "Why?"

"Because I don't have that sort of mind-prying equipment on me," retorted Tetch. "It's dreadfully expensive, you know."

"It's a lotta work to bust a guy into a mental hospital," commented Two-Face. "A lot more work than busting him out."

"I did say it would be, didn't I?" retorted Tetch. "It would also be preferable not to be caught by the guards and locked away again."

"So...you want us to sneak Mr. J back into Arkham without anyone noticing, then have you play around in his brain for as long as it takes until you cycle through all of his possibly infinite personalities to find the real Joker and bring him back?" asked Harley, slowly.

"Precisely," said Tetch, nodding.

Harley nodded. "Ok, just checking that's the plan. What are we waiting for?"