“We’ve got a problem,” Gina told Raven.

     The Iceberg Lounge hostess looked at the washroom attendant.  “A regular problem, or a Gotham problem?” she asked.  A mess to clean up in the men’s room was a regular problem; Killer Croc passed out face-first in a toilet was a Gotham problem.

     “The first one,” Gina said.  “That was Sly on the phone.  He’s not coming in tonight.”

     “And you’re telling me this because?  Tell Mr. Cobblepot.”

     “I did!” Gina protested.

     “So?”

     “He didn’t say anything.”

     “At all?”

     “I don’t think he even knew I was THERE,” Gina said.  “You know how he’s been today.”

     Raven did know.  They were getting ready to reopen the Iceberg after being closed for three days due to the Joker murder.  Raven had been fortunate that night.  She’d ducked down behind the bar just as the first killing blow landed.  While she was in perfect agreement with the other staff that an Iceberg without the Joker was a safer Iceberg, that didn’t mean she particularly wanted the image of a man being cut to pieces fixed in her memories. 

     At any rate, it was expected that the first night, and several more nights to come, would be packed with people wanting to see the murder scene and hear the stories (Raven suspected her tale of hiding behind the bar with Ted and Jai from FAB! would not be much sought-after), so the pressure of reopening after an extended period was even greater, and everyone was feeling the stress.

     Everyone, that is, except the Penguin.

     “Just kept looking at that pocket watch,” Gina added.  “When the hell did he pick THAT up, anyway?”

     “Sometime in the last three days, I guess,” Raven said absently.  “Do you think he’s still – “

     “I’ve seen enough drunks in this place to recognize one when I see one,” Gina said, confirming Raven’s own impression.  “He’s sober, thank God.  It’s just like he’s in another WORLD.”

     It was common knowledge among the staff that the Penguin’s drinking had become a problem, and that Sly had temporarily taken over running the Iceberg.  If Cobblepot was just distracted and not tipsy, then Sly calling out sick only meant finding another bartender for the night.  But if they were wrong and their boss was drinking again, then the Lounge would be left rudderless at the worst possible time.

     “Come on,” Raven said.  “We’ll tell him again, and this time we make sure he’s listening.  At least then we’ll know what’s going on with him.”

     They found the Penguin not in his office as was customary in the hours before opening, but sitting in one of the booths.  “Mr. Cobblepot?” Raven asked hesitantly.

     No answer.  He appeared to be contemplating a spot above his head.

     “Mr. Cobblepot?” Raven asked once more, daring to shake him by the shoulder a little.

     “Kwakka,” he said, starting a little.  “What what, Raven?”

     “Sly called, Mr. Cobblepot,” Raven said.  She wasn’t sure what to make of his behavior.  He didn’t smell of alcohol and his speech wasn’t slurred, but his eyes were a bit glassy.  For a crazy second she wondered if he was stoned.  “He can’t come in tonight.”

     “Ah,” Penguin replied.  He tapped his fingers on the table for a moment before shrugging as if this was the most inconsequential bit of news in the world.  “Thank you, Raven,” he said.  He pulled out a small golden circle from his pocket and snapped it open, glancing at it briefly before putting it back.

     Raven scratched her head.  “Er, you’re welcome, sir,” she said.

     “I told you,” Gina said after they left.  “What do we do?”

     “Call one of the other bartenders and pretend everything’s normal,” Raven said.  “What do you WANT me to do?  A few days ago he was waving a machine gun shaped like an umbrella at us.”

     “I wish Sly was here,” Gina sighed.

     “The most high-profile criminal in the city was murdered in Penguin’s club on national television on his watch,” Raven pointed out.  “If I was him, I’d take a vacation day too.”

     Behind them, Penguin took another look at the newspaper photo he’d clipped and placed inside the old brass pocket watch he’d found.  It was a color shot of the woman of his dreams, the goddess he’d overlooked all these years – and she’d been a customer, right under his nose the whole time like a thrush or a titmouse! 

     Penguin lapsed back into several minutes of uninterrupted reverie at this point, as the word “titmouse” caused his thoughts to turn to another of Poison Ivy’s limitless fine qualities.  

     “Honey, I’m home,” Dick said just a little too casually as he climbed through the window.  He’d cut his patrol short again in order to get home early, and hoped Barbara wouldn’t notice.  

     Evidently she didn’t, for he arrived just in time to see his wife fling her glasses onto the desk in frustration.

     “Not quite the reaction I was looking for,” he added.

     “Sorry,” Barbara said.  “I just spent a fruitless hour looking for something.”

     “The remote?” Dick joked lightly, removing his mask and gloves.

     “Ha ha.  No, actually the original FAB! footage from the Joker homicide,” she told him.

     Dick frowned.  This was largely the reason he’d been coming home early.  Joker’s murder was a big event in terms of Gotham crimefighting, it was understandable and necessary that Oracle be working with it …but he couldn’t help being uneasy. 

“Why do you need it?” he asked her.  “We already have the video feeds you captured.  Besides, aren’t we all in agreement on what happened?”

     “Knowing what happened, and giving the police something they can use in court, are two very different things,” she pointed out.  “Yes, I have the feeds, but we don’t have audio thanks to Penguin and his damn anti-bugging precautions all over the Iceberg.  Maybe if we could HEAR as well as see what’s going on, we could have some hard evidence instead of theory and conjecture.”

     “In other words, Bruce has been bugging you for this.”

     “No, it’s not Bruce,” Barbara sighed.  “It was my idea to start digging.  I couldn’t understand why the producers hadn’t turned their footage over to the police yet.  Heck, the Ivy/Roxy catfight alone should have been leaked to the Internet by now, but so far there’s been nothing.  I had to know why.”

     “Do you?”

     She nodded.  “According to internal emails I was reading, every camera in the Iceberg became infested with some kind of black, downy mold.  All their footage was destroyed.”

     “Mold,” Dick said.  “So Ivy covered her tracks.”

     “And her friend’s tracks.”

     Dick looked skeptical.  “Somehow I’m thinking protecting Harley Quinn was a side benefit to covering her own leafy ass.”

     Barbara chuckled.  Then she sighed and put her glasses back on.  “Still, I hate to waste a whole hour, with still no resolution on the case in sight.  Fortunately Batman and the others didn’t need much OraCom support tonight.  Seems like the city’s pretty quiet.  You’re home early again too. Must be a reaction.”

     “Yeah, must be,” Dick said cautiously.

     Every man who had plunged his sword into the Joker’s body was going away to Blackgate for a very long time.  And one of these days Poison Ivy would be going back to Arkham.  If not for this, then for something else.  So from Dick’s perspective, the case was going to be resolved.  It didn’t really need the kind of time and energy Barbara was giving it.

     Dick was all too aware of another factor, though – Bruce’s interest was seeing justice done.  Of that Dick had no doubt. It was the death of an enemy, just like it was for Dick.  It was the death of the fiend who killed Jason, just like it was for Dick.  But for Barbara …He looked at her, still in her wheelchair like she’d be for the rest of her life, and thought about how the connection she had to the Joker was personal, personal in a way Dick or Bruce could never really understand.

     He wasn’t accusing Barbara of taking some vindictive satisfaction in the Joker’s death, or having a bloodthirsty need to relive the Joker’s death in her ears as well as her eyes.  She’d dealt with her shooting a long time ago.  Still, the fact remained that the monster who put her in that wheelchair had died, ironically, as a crime victim.  And Barbara had to reconcile whatever pleasure she took in his death with …

     That’s what Dick had been doing, after all.

     Certainly he had more than his own fair share of emotional baggage when it came to the Joker.  The psychopath was responsible for Barbara’s paralysis, and even if he didn’t feel that the same way she did, he still felt it.  The psychopath was also responsible for the death of Jason Todd, and the pain both events had caused Bruce.  For that reason, the first thing Dick had done the morning after Joker’s murder was drive to Wayne Manor, then go straight to Jason’s costume in the Batcave - and he’d found Alfred already there, dusting the case as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a year and not just the day before. 

     “I was so angry at Bruce, Alfred,” Dick had said that morning. “He benched me, plain and simple, when I got shot by the Joker.  He decided a trained, capable, mature partner is too much of a liability, and then turned right around and took on that green, reckless kid.  I was so fucking angry, I turned my back on the both of them.  And I will never ‘til my dying day know what that did to Jason.  If I hadn’t… If I had been there…”

     “If I had been there,” he repeated quietly in the present.

     “If you’d been there you would have been greened like every other man in the room,” Barbara pointed out, misinterpreting his words.

     “Yeah,” Dick said, not bothering to explain.  “Babs, I was thinking, the city is quiet now.  Maybe, take some time, go someplace new.”

     “You mean like a vacation?”

     Dick’s mind rolodexed through possibilities other than ‘vacation’: moving back to Bludhaven, relocating to Metropolis, taking her to a remote cave somewhere on the coast of Greece with no phones or satellite or Internet, cut off from the world of killer clowns killed in turn by crazed assassins …

     Then he realized he was reacting irrationally, as much as Bruce, as much as Barbara …maybe more. 

     “Yeah, vacation,” Dick said at last. “I think we all need one, don’t you?”

     Barbara looked at him, concerned.  “Want to talk about it, sweetie?”

     “He’s done so much …to all of us,” he managed, struggling for the thought.  “This …brings it all back.  Don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”         

     “You mean the shooting,” she said frankly.  “Of course.  I spent so many nights dreaming of his getting hacked up, shot, burned at the stake, lowered into a vat of acid, castrated, hanged, electrocuted and gassed with his own grin gas.  Every time I see that tape, I remember those nights.”

     “Here I thought maybe you …enjoyed it.  Seeing it happen that way.” 

     She shook her head silently.

     “I think it’s a better world without him in it,” she said simply.  “But if I never have to see that tape or hear that name again, that’d be just fine with me.”

     Dick nodded.  “That just leaves one question,” he said, managing a lighter tone.  “Venice or Naples?”

     “Victor.  Jervis,” Harvey said as he took a seat.

     “Dent,” Victor Fries replied.

     “Hmph,” Jervis muttered.

     “Look, for the last time, we’re not looking for a sidekick,” Harvey said, exasperated.  “And even if we were, we wouldn’t be looking for HER.”

     “As if you’d admit it!” Jervis said hotly.

     Mr. Freeze looked from the one man to the other.  For some reason, the Mad Hatter had gotten it into his head that Two-Face wanted Harley Quinn to be his new sidekick.  Something about jam tomorrow – one could never be sure when Jervis began spouting Lewis Carroll. 

     One thing that WAS fact and not paranoid delusion was that Jervis himself wanted Harley for a sidekick.  This was the cause for Hatter’s unrelenting antagonism toward Dent ever since he’d been admitted.

     “Haven’t even spoken to Quinn in days.  She isn’t exactly the chatterbox these days,” Dent added.

     “I concur,” Victor said.  “I have not witnessed Harvey speaking to Ms. Quinn in days.  And even if he DID wish to obtain her services, I should think you would have an advantage in that you checked yourself in voluntarily in order to see her.  Harvey just happened to be here when she was brought in.”

     “Yeah, it was Fate,” Harvey said, grinning at Jervis.

     “Did you hear that, Victor?  Do you see now?  Everyone knows his actions are governed by fate.  The subtle bandersnatch, he’s admitting to the scheme!”

     Victor sighed.

     Harvey hadn’t stopped grinning, however.  “You know, now that you mention it,” he said, “maybe we will have a little chat with Harley.  The girl looks like she could use it.”

     “I hardly think she wishes companionship at this time,” Victor protested to Harvey.  “Regardless of how the Joker treated her, she DID love him in her own way, and she has been grieving ever since.  I know that when my beloved Nora died, it was some time before I wished to speak to anyone.”

     Victor turned his head to look at Jervis and say something more, but he realized that the Mad Hatter had already begun making his way over to where Harley sat quietly.  “And you weren’t listening to a word I said,” Victor muttered.  “Was it quite necessary for you to provoke him like that?”

     “Didn’t need to flip a coin, if that’s what you mean.  Maybe Tetch’ll have himself a new henchwench today.  Or maybe we’ll just have a good laugh.  Fifty-fifty.”

     Victor groaned.  “This can’t end well,” he said.

     Harley Quinn, meanwhile, was completely ignorant of her surroundings, much less the three men’s interest in her.  She sat in a stupor that was partly due to the sedatives they’d placed her on, and partly due to her belief that thinking about nothing in particular was better than thinking about …

     Whoops.  She’d thought about it.  And a tear spilled out of her eye.

     “Harley?  Is everything all right, child?”

     Harley looked up dully.  “Oh, hi, Jervis,” she said.  “No, everything isn’t all right.  I’d settle for something being right, actually.”

     Jervis sat next to her.  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied.  “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

     “Talk?” she screeched.  “All the doctors want me to do is talk.”  She chuckled strangely.  “Talkaboutit talkaboutit talkaboutit talkaboutit.  Talk talk talk talk talkie talktalktalktalktalk.”

     Jervis bit his lip thoughtfully. He had a healthy appreciation for nonsense, naturally. Harley’s ability to understand nonsense and spout it back in return was part of what made her so suitable. Still, there was something not quite… right in the way she was sitting there, twirling her hair chanting “Crazy Glue, Mistah J said not to ever run out of Crazy Glue.  And get some Fruit Loops and HoHos while you’re out.  Couple sack of White Castles too.  Not Krystal, Krystal cleans the grill …”

     “Harleen,” he began again more formally.  

     “Harleen,” she parroted back. “’Harleen, Talk about it.’  You sound just like the doctors, Jervis.”

     He managed not to be offended by this.  “I apologize,” he told her.  “I just—”

     “Yesterday some doc started asking me all these questions about Mistah J,” Harley went on.  “Thought he was tryin’ to get into my head, and it turned out he wanted to get into Puddin’s.  Something about a case study.  Not even gone a week, and already all the bloodsuckers are coming out to make money off his memory!  Next thing ya know, they’ll be auctioning all the stuff I gave away for a fortune!”  She looked down at her hands.  “I wish I still had something of his,” she added softly.

     Jervis hesitated.  He’d been goaded into this.  He really should just pat her on the hand and…

     He looked across the room at Harvey.  Not only was Dent not paying attention to them, but he’d even turned his back.

     The Hatter felt his blood boil.  So he was so confident of victory that he didn’t even need to watch?  Well, it wouldn’t be HARVEY picking Harley up when she was at her lowest!  No, it would be HE who would lift her up like a tea-tray in the sky.

     “Harley,” he said confidently, "perhaps you’d rather I handle talking?”

     “Sure,” Harley mumbled.  Jervis did like to ramble on.  Calloo callay, and he’d be off again.

     “It’s about a matter that, frankly, I would have raised weeks ago, but there were certain obstacles which - well, let’s just say they are no longer present.  On the mortal coil, that is.”  He paused.  That had sounded almost like he was taking pleasure in the Joker’s death.  Which was true, of course, but Harley didn’t need to know that!  “That is to say …life, as you know all too well, my dear, is short.  Uncertain.  Frightening.  Perhaps we are doing nothing more than living the Red King’s nightmare.  But isn’t it easier to bear when you are two, not one?”

     Harley’s face didn’t betray much emotion in her current medicated state, but Jervis could detect a hint of something he saw frequently in others when he spoke, a kind of resigned bewilderment.  Obviously a direct approach was necessary.  “Harley, I’m sure you don’t like to think about it, but you have been on your own ever since the Joker ended your relationship, and now that he is gone forever, you simply must move on and find a new place for yourself.  And I think you’ll agree with me when I say that the two of us would make an excellent pair.  You are truly a female Knave …of …Hearts?”

     As he spoke, he was gratified to note that the look of befuddlement vanished from her eyes.  He slowly realized, however, that it had been replaced by a look of horror.

     Which could hardly be considered an improvement.

     “I’m going to be alone,” she said.  “He’ll be dead, I’ll be alive, and that’s how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.”

     “But you don’t HAVE to be alone!” Jervis remonstrated as he took her hand.  “We all knew you were afraid you’d be alone after the breakup, but believe me, nobody would prefer the Joker over you unless they had a gun to their head!  Which, admittedly, they often did.”

     “I’m going to FEEL like this forever,” Harley said, and she yanked her hand from his grip.  “And you just had to point that out, didn’t you?”

     Jervis swallowed.  Had he called her Knave?  Oh no, this was a Queen of Hearts.  Someone who looked ready to cry “Off with his head!.”  “Maybe another time when you’re ready,” he said nervously.  “The time has come to talk of other things!”

     “You really are mad, aren’t you?” she growled.  She actually _growled_ at him.

     “We’re all mad here,” Jervis replied, unable to help himself.

     “Yeah, and there’s only one way to stop a mad watch.”

     He would have explained that this line wasn’t actually in the book - damn that Walt Disney and his bastardization - but it was here that she tackled him and began methodically pounding his head into the floor.

     Victor glared at Harvey as orderlies rushed into the common room to separate them.

     “Okay, so maybe the odds were a little better than 50/50,” Dent said between chortles.

     To be continued …