Chapter Text
It was Monday morning and Harleen was back at her desk at Arkham doing a bang-up job of pretending nothing had happened. It was weird how she could almost convince herself. Her other life might not be far away in terms of mileage, but it might as well be another dimension. Now she was back in what she thought of as the real world – her hair up in a bun, glasses on, lab coat over a turtleneck sweater that hid the bite marks on her neck, a decent length pencil skirt and Gucci heels. She had tried that morning to put on her old pumps, but honestly, they hurt. It was just too tempting to slip her feet into the butter-soft leather of her new designer shoes.
She scooted her chair back from her desk so she could look at them again. They were elegant black leather stilettos with a wavy edge around which wrapped a red, white and black snake, his tongue licking toward her toes. The Joker had loved them. They really were sexy as fuck, she thought. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn them to work but she didn’t really care if people talked. Her engagement ring had been gone for weeks and no one had the guts to ask her about it. The tennis bracelet remained on her left wrist, where it had sparkled since the day she received it.
Property of the Joker, she thought. And none of them have any idea. She wished she could keep it that way, but she knew it was only a matter of time before everybody here knew what she had become.
I’ve become a lot more productive, actually, she thought, flipping through her stack of perfectly prepared reports on all of her patients. Turned out it was a lot easier to focus at work when she was living out her fantasies, not just obsessing over them. It was vaguely disturbing how she wasn’t upset over the murders she had witnessed. It just seemed…unreal. Like a movie she had been watching. Harleen looked at the clock and realized any further self-analysis would have to wait. She picked up her files and obediently headed off to her staff meeting.
Back at his apartment, the Joker was pacing and fidgeting, annoyed with himself for doing so. He had sent her back to work but he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. Of course he was watching her through the many hacked security cameras at Arkham, just as he had done ever since he escaped, so it wasn’t like there would be anything he didn’t know about, but she was still too far away. He felt like his hands were itching with the need to touch her, and it was only Monday. He hadn’t planned on picking her up again until Friday.
Don’t want her to get the idea she lives here, he thought. I’ve got business to attend to.
He didn’t need her, he needed to get his head straight and think about his agenda for the week.
He continued to pace back and forth, irritated that he still wanted her. He really had thought a few days of having her around and he would be sated, that he was just thirsty and needed a good long drink, but if anything, having her around made him want her around more. She was so different from other women. They all obeyed him in bed; most were a little scared of him. She obeyed him but she obeyed him because she reveled in the obedience, not because she was scared what would happen if she did not. She was a true submissive who loved to be controlled and the rougher he got, the happier she was. How she had stayed with that boring cardboard yuppie as long as she had was beyond him. Must have been faking it the whole time, he thought. But out of bed, she had her own opinions about everything. It should have irritated him more than it did. He was confused by his own lack of desire to smack her across the face when she talked back.
Well that was fucking awesome. It’d be a great idea to pair himself up with someone who had a mind of her own. That was gonna work out great in a gunfight.
Except her instincts in a gunfight had been perfect, he reminded himself. She hadn’t hesitated to save his life, never stopping to think that the gun might be turned on her instead.
She loved him, which was…bizarre. It was not something he had anticipated, this combination of absolute love and absolute loyalty. He almost wished she’d screw up now that she was away from him. Screw up and give him a reason to end her, end this. This thing that was making him anxious. This insatiable craving for her that didn’t go away. As much as he’d banged her in the last three days, it should have been over. People were tools to him, always had been. They shot people for him, they protected him, or they fucked him and it was never hard for him to end their lives when they stopped being useful, or bored him, or talked back. And the more they were around, the more likely that point would come quickly.
But not her. He had always been able to indulge in any drug without becoming addicted; something in his body chemistry, he guessed. Now, he felt like he understood addiction. The more he took, the more he wanted.
Until he could fix that flaw in himself, he would concentrate on ensuring his drug had no power to leave him. Fortunately, he knew exactly how to accomplish that goal.