Bab 44: Issue #42: Arkham Asylum
"Well, blow me down. That's impressive" Robin exclaims as he lands on all four into a dirty, dingy, wet, grimy, dark alley. And I don't care if half of those are synonyms because why the hell am I the only one that lands on the puddle?
"Damn it!" Seeing as my misfortune amuses Robin, I turn towards him with a glare. "What the fuck does that mean, Robin?"
"Huh?"
"You do realize that I don't understand half of the shit you say. Like, when were you born? How–" Batman grabs me by the collar of my suit and glowers at me before I can grab Robin and shake the living shit out of him.
"Enough. And I told you, Sparrow, no cursing when under the mask." Batman drops me to the floor and dislodges the gum sticking onto the glass pane of the Batmobile. "Everyone inside. You too, Harley."
"Aww, can't you–"
"If you would rather wait for Black Mask to come over here once we left, then be my guest." Batman gives her a once-over, causing her to seize in fear before he jumps inside of the driver's seat.
"Coming, coming. Geez. So grumpy."
Harley jumps inside, flipping in mid-air and landing on the leather seats, which annoys Batman. Contrary to popular belief, Batman loves this particular Batmobile. He never let us touch it and, if we were to be instructed to clean it, we can only clean the outside with new sponges and distilled water.
She jumps down from her seat, taking up two-thirds of the seat with her lithe body. With no other choice, Robin and I enter the car and squeeze in. This fact annoys an already pissed off Robin, angered by the fact that Black Mask.
"Tight fit, huh?" Harley bends her torso to let Robin fit into the car.
"We should really get you a bike." I suggest to Robin, to which he nods furiously.
"Or maybe we should just put the criminal in the trunk with handcuffs," Robin comments before squeezing himself in the middle of the car, thighs dangerously close to the center modules.
The Batmobile launches with an uproarious boom, probably waking up half of the neighborhood with its jet-engine turbines. Buildings and streets whiz past our vehicle as we traverse the Gotham main road, taking a shortcut to Gotham's Chinatown.
"You could just take me to the docks, Batsy. I don't have any cash on me, so I'll have to pay with some… other things. Wink. Wink." Harley bends her torso over Robin's body, putting her weight on the irritable kid.
Batman looks over at Harley with narrowed eyes and hums in apparent contemplation. "No, Harley. We're heading straight to Arkham. I doubt the Director is happy to see you escape his clutches once more."
"Awww, come on, B-man. I helped you!" Harley pouts cutely, placing a palm under her chin and over Robin's head. "Pretty woman like me shouldn't be in the funhouse, Batsy–"
"Get off me!" Robin suddenly bursts out of her submission causing Harley to lean back and smash me back into the side of the car.
"Will you guys quit it? I have a broken arm!" I shout, irritable because of my injury.
"Bats! Contain your animals!" Harley suddenly begins twisting her body, enjoying the chaos of Robin's annoyance and my pain.
For a moment, I thought about just teleporting out of here because my broken arm is being pressed against the Batmobile's glass dome. Yet I try to persevere by fighting back against the clown woman.
"Harley Quinn!" I use my head to push her towards Robin, who has had enough of her antics and uses his lithe figure to ball up into a smaller target. Our chaotic fight never once distracted Batman from his driving, merely disregarding the shouts and yelps as he passes a familiar street.
"Don't touch my butt!"
"Nobody's touching your filthy butt, criminal."
"Harley, you're touching your own butt."
Harley's raucous laughter fills the car obnoxiously, which makes Robin abandon his turtle shell defense to cover his ears in defeat. The action causes Harley to clap her hands like a satisfied seal, one clap winding far back enough to hit me in the nose.
"Enough!" Batman roars as the Batmobile lurches into a stop. Our bodies fly through the car with Harley hitting the dashboard with an almost comical "Oof!" while Robin and I have enough reaction speed to prevent a painful impact.
"Be quiet, all of you. Harley, sit on the other side of the car. Sparrow, use your thermal scarf as a sling and don't put mud in the leather seat. Robin, behave yourself and calm down. It is a tight fit, yes, then I expect all of you to put up with it within the next five minutes." He berates us with a calm, seemingly too calm, yet stern voice before narrowing his eyes.
"Don't make me turn the car around." He grunts threateningly.
"Sorry, Batman."
"I like it when you're tough, daddy."
"Jesus, Harley. Sorry about the footprints."
Batman hums in warning and we ride further in relative silence. As we pass by a familiar street and recognizing that we're a few minutes away from Arkham Asylum, I tilt my head and surreptitiously look at Harley.
'I'm really curious if something's different from the real one to the one I grew up with. I've been spoiled with Bruce, Dick, and J'onn, knowing that their good guys deep inside and whatever changes they make are always for the better. Maybe… maybe that will also happen with Harley. Batman seems to think that the Joker is gone for good or, at the very least, gone for a while.'
"Do I look that pretty, honeybadger?" With my mind churning thought butter, I never notice Harley leaning towards me and whispering in my ear.
I lean to the side, letting my head fall to her shoulders and, much to my surprise and expectation, she doesn't budge. "Can I ask you a question, Harley?"
"It's Miss Harley to you, badger." Harley bops me in the nose and I am alright with that.
"Alright. What's–"
"Uh-uh!" She wags her finger and, out of fucking nowhere, wears thin-framed glasses. "Repeat your first question, you scallywag."
"Oh, alright. Can I ask you a question, Miss Harley?" I hide the groan behind my subservient tone.
"Go on." She says with a low voice as tilts her head upwards with a giggle, acknowledging that we're having a private conversation within the confines of the tight car.
"What's the deal with the clown?"
"You mean Puddin'?" Harley swoons as she says her nickname for the Joker, twirling her jiggling headpiece in apparent delight. "Well, truthfully, Ant-eater, Mistah J was the man of my dreams. These normal people, the men, always have to have their needs first. Yap, yap, yap. All about them and they forget all about lil' ol' me. But, you know what, honey badger–"
"You gotta stop with the nickname." I remark.
She frowns at me, "You want me to stop talking, sugah'?"
"Carry on." I nod along.
"Where was I? Oh, right. So, I was working in Arkham and, at that point, I had already been with four men who never treated me right. Sexist, stubborn, redheaded, doesn't use the bidet, and that was just one man." She sighs forlornly. "I was… people pass by me and I don't matter to them. Even if they do, they only see the plump lips, waist, the outward beauty of it all, but Mistah J? He…"
"He sees you for who you are." I finish her words and she nods in agreement, her normally crazed smile morphing into a radiant one. "You're not just some blonde bimbo with a specialization in treating psychiatric disorders. He made you special and not just a girl looking at a boy, asking her to love him."
A tear rolls down her eyes, washing a trail of fair skin amidst an ocean of white. She nods at my words, oblivious to the movie quote. "You get, Baby Sparrow. You get me." Without so much as a warning she wraps her hands around my shoulders and embraces me with much gusto.
"Oh, you're a hugger."
The Batmobile lurches to a stop once more, halting our private conversation once more. I look around the glass dome and see Arkham Asylum standing tall as a monolith overlooking the thunderous bluffs and the titanic waves coming from the Atlantic ocean.
"Wha–? Why are we back here?" Harley gazes at Batman with palpable betrayal in her eyes. "You're so mean."
"Suck to be you, I guess." I hear Robin remark, basking in schadenfreude.
A bridge of stone and wood oscillates in the distance, allowing vehicles passage towards the asylum. I heard a few days ago that the board of directors is going to be moving the main building for Arkham into somewhere safer and newer. They've been thinking that the inherent ancientness of the building and its environment, however modified by state-of-the-art security systems, are an emerging factor in the recent break-in and, more importantly, break-outs.
Jeremiah Arkham, director of the operations and nepo-baby, whose grandfather literally built Arkham Asylum, is the one who suggested and actually hashed out all the plans for the relocation. Of course, Bruce knew of the plan and had already made his move in donating a large sum through his father's foundation.
'Now that I think about it, Bruce is part of the board of directors, right? God, I really need to freshen on up on inter-city politics. I'm still pissed off about that B- I got last week. Piss of shit, why do I care about who built the sewer system of Gotham? I'm not living in it.'
The car rumbles as the Batmobile proceeds towards the bridge, with the asylum coming into better view. An impressive edifice of gothic architecture, the Arkham Asylum houses Gotham's greatest and most infamous criminally insane. The time-worn blocks are paired with electrified fences, balconies were entrenched with spotlights, and the sole gate that leads in and out of the compound.
Two turrets, licensed to fire rubber bullets, stand atop a watchtower as it overlooks the front half of the Asylum, as well as guard the bridge and the narrow water passageway underneath it.
The guard already knows that we are coming and lets us in, but still points their weapons at us. Inside the compound, many more security features pop up in my vision and it still boggles my mind how any one of them can actually break out of here.
"Are they just stupid or some sort of hidden exit that only criminals know?"
"Not telling." Harley jumps out of the Batmobile, relieving Robin and I of her presence and weight.
She tries to get away, hurtling past the guards with heavy weaponry out in the open. Before she can reach the slowly closing gates, however, Batman throws a Bolo Batarang that catches her around her ankles.
She stumbles into the ground and gets piled on by two guards wearing kevlar suits.
"OW! Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!" She keeps her hands on the metal grates to keep the guards from pulling her back.
The guards are quick to pull out a modified wheelchair and capture her in it, allowing us mobility at the expense of Harley's incessant cursing.
A three-story tall mezzanine greets us out in the open as we enter the Asylum proper with dozens of nurses, doctor, guards, and other staff milling about. The walls are sleek white, clinical almost, with a refreshing citrus smell that settles my nervous heart. Everything about the hall tells me that this is a safe environment and that it does not hold two dozen criminals underneath its facilities that could, at any given moment, breakout and kill thousands of civilians in the matter of days.
"I hate this, B-man! I'm gonna cut you when I get out of these handcuffs." Harley thrashes on the wheelchair, the thick cloth binding her arms into her torso, straining against her angular joints. "I'll blow up everything you love."
Batman kneels down to look her in the eye as Robin walks forward to talk with the receptionist. "Do you remember the time I caught you putting Joker venom in Gotham Harbor?"
Harley halts her thrashing as she regards Batman with curiosity. "Yeah. That big lug of a detective almost threw me over the shore."
"During the ride over GCPD, you told me that you've always wanted to go to the Florida Keys. Drive around in a cherry red Cadillac, eating whatever you want, listening to music you like. Freedom."
Harley chews on her lips. "Well, that's just me try'na win you over. Mistah J told me you were a big softie and I don't wanna go to jail."
"I don't think so, Harley." Batman does not let up as he shakes his head. "You were freed by the Joker from your old self. He allowed you to become who you truly are without society telling you what to be, but at the same time, he put another collar on you. An emotional bond that you carry around like a ball and chain."
Harley stutters in an attempt to push off Batman's words, "Shut up, dork. I don' want to hear you say bad things to my Puddin'."
Batman narrows his eyes and restructures his strategy. "This world is about giving and taking. Frankly, you have given so much that it broke you. It's about time you take something for yourself, Harleen. Make something of yourself, live a life you want without worry. Your world does not revolve around him. You are not a moon. Understand that you are your own sun."
Batman's words finally break through Harley's facade. "What are you saying, B-man?"
"I will always be here to help you whenever you need it. There is no more need to call for the Joker." Batman stands up as Harley hyperventilates, fighting through the tears running down her face.
"How about it, Harley? I'm sure the doctors are more than willing to have the freaking Batman around the place when there's people breaking in and out." I try to help as I gently grab the small Tranquilizer gun in my back belt pocket.
A small twitch in his left eye tells me that he wants me to stop from moving.
Harley breaks into a radiant smile, letting her arms fall unassisted into the straight jacket. This smile is different, caused not by the Joker venom coursing through her veins, but from the special dream that she and Batman shared for a while.
Unfortunately, that dream remained only that–a dream. "I'm sorry, B-Man… I'm sorry."
"Then you leave me no choice…" Batman's voice grows weary as he gazes at Harley for one last time. "Sparrow."
I inject the syringe into her neck, which surprises her. Anger fills her eyes as it rolls back, the sedation liquid working its way through her body. While she had been given an unnatural resistance to poison and other chemicals, Batman has no mundane sedation liquid. Within seconds, Harley is done for the count, nevertheless, Robin checks Harley's vitals.
"She's done." He says.
"Welcome to Arkham, Batman."
Standing behind two hulking men in nursing outfits, a bony man in his late 30s wearing a lab coat over his oversized beige suit and gilded thin-framed glasses meets us near the center of the grand hall.
Jeremiah Arkham smiles at the sight of Harley, relief flooding his eyes. "It is good to see you once more, Ms. Quinzell, albeit in a sedated and unconscious form. Was that really necessary, Batman?"
I'm not one to judge a book by its cover–'Who am I kidding? of course, I am'–but this guy definitely looks like he'll be lobotomizing half of his inmates. I find it hard to believe he's been the one advocating prison reform and proper psychiatric care.
"It was. I trust that she'll be well taken care of, Director." Batman gives Harley to a muscular ward, who carries Harley gently in a princess style.
"Of course. Thanks to the board of directors and the Thomas Wayne Foundation, we have hired a contractor for the new Arkham Asylum at a discounted price." Director Arkham laughs lightly. "It's almost as if the city is trying to tell us to move faster."
Seeing Harley's head bob up and down in the ward's embrace, I can't help but give a pitiable smile. I know all too well that she's a victim of abuse and extreme manipulation, her psyche had blown up due to Joker's nefarious combination of drugs and gaslighting.
A sigh escapes my lips as I ask, "Batman… Is she going to be ok?"
Batman gazes at Harley with an indescribable emotion. "Only she will know that, Sparrow. Only she will know."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone