Endless Epitaph

The Players : Harley Quinn (open)
Where : Metropolis, Kansas. Lois's apartment.
When : February 3rd, 2009.
Rating : PG13.
Notes : Harley hears that the Joker has a new playmate.


Harley sat inside Lois’s apartment and watched television. After getting back from her midnight visit to her mother and sister’s graves, Harley had thought long and hard about what she wanted to do with her life now. And… She was no closer to making a decision that she was when she started.
Days passed and life continued with Lois leaving to do her job and Harley was left behind in the apartment to think and regret.

She had committed crimes while with the Joker and even though she had been heavily drugged and programmed by him she couldn’t just so easily dismiss what she had done. She needed to pay for those crimes but how? Going back to Arkham would be a death sentence for her and even if she were to survive she would probably end up more insane than they already thought she was.

“They call themselves doctors in that place? How come not a single damn one ever noticed I had drugs in my system or recognize the signs of brain washing the Joker put me through?” Harley suddenly said out loud.

Getting up Harley started to pace. “I could go to prison for the crimes but then no one gets helped, I’m locked up for what I did but wasn’t really responsible for.”

Letting out a frustrated groan, Harley sunk to a chair in front of the T.V. “What I need is some way to make amends for what was done by me but things done when I was not in control.” Looking up at the ceiling Harley made a half hearted appeal to God. “How about some kind of sign on what I should do?”

Hearing no grand voice from above or seeing any of the plants in Lois’s apartment burst into flames, Harley sighed and turned her attention to the television.

“This just in from our Chicago affiliate. It would seem the clown menace of Gotham has decided to make the windy city his newest plaything along with his criminal sidekick of Harley Quinn. A series of brutal murders this last week was thought to be the work of the Joker as the victims were found with their faces twisted in a gruesome parody of a smile but police officials were not completely convinced.”

Harley winced remembering those people in the alley she had helped to kill before shaking her head violently. “I was under the Joker’s control. It wasn’t my fault… Entirely.”

Then came security footage from a museum showing the Joker not even attempting to hide his face. Eyewitness reports state that at that time his sidekick Harley Quinn had helped a newspaper reporter to escape from the Joker’s grasp.”

Harley smiled remembering that moment as being the beginning of her breaking the Joker’s control over her.

“But whatever change of heart the murderous partisan of the Joker had must have been short lived because we now have footage of a comic book store massacre that Harley Quinn participated in.”

Harley’s face turned white. She didn’t help kill anyone at a comic book store did she? Sure her memories were a little scattered from the drugs Joker had kept her on but Harley loved comic books, surely she would have remembered having been in one.

“Here is the footage from the security camera that was shot just last night. You can see Harley Quinn has modified her costume and makeup, perhaps in a badly conceived notion of throwing off the authorities? In any case you can clearly see the Joker taking from her several packages and thanking her for suggesting ways of killing innocent patrons of the store. The packages later exploded killing several emergency workers and firemen called to the scene…”

Harley feeling the intense need to throw up turned off the T.V. and stared at the now blank screen.

“That was not me!” She yelled at the off set. “Mr. J. replaced me so quickly?” Harley shook her head. “So not the point! The point is, I’ve stopped being his punching bag and crime accessory and I’m still getting blamed for it.” Harley’s face turned pure white as the implications of the newscast fully set in.

“It also means some poor probably innocent girl is being force feed drugs and brainwashing and is being molded into being the Joker’s newest plaything. I… I… Can’t let that happen. Not again, not to someone else.”

But what could she do? She couldn’t go to the police and tell that that. They would lock her up on sight.

Suddenly Harley remembered that the Joker had kept a ‘safe’ house in Metropolis. He kept such safe places to hide in many major cities in case things got too hot in Gotham and Harley just remembered where the one in Metropolis was located. There she could find some of her old costumes to wear when she confronted him and a cache of money she could use to get back to Chicago.

But first she would need to seek out some of Metropolis’s more criminal members and purchase one last thing. A high powered hand gun. Whatever it took Harley vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let another person suffer at the hands of the Joker like she had. It was time that the clown went down.

Harley paused as she started to rush out of Lois’s apartment and for a brief moment she thought about writing a letter to Lois explaining where she was going and what she had to do and how much Harley appreciated everything the woman reporter had done for her. But Harley knew the letter would be too much like a suicide note because Harley fully expected she probably wouldn’t survive her confrontation with the Joker, but as long as she stopped him permanently that was all that mattered.

“If I leave a letter Lois is bound to come after me to stop me, and I can’t have that.” Harley finally said out loud to herself. Walking to the door she turned to look back at the room. “So I guess this is goodbye. With luck you’ll think I just took off and won’t know where I went till everything is settled.” With a tear in her eye Harley told the empty room. “Goodbye L.L. You were the closest I ever had to having a best friend.”

Quietly Harley turned the knob that would lock the door behind her and leaving the apartment she shut the door.

The Players : Buffy Summers, Clark Kent, Harley Quinn. (Open for anyone in the area!)
Where : An alley close to ISIS in Metropolis, Kansas.
When : January 31, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R for language maybe.
Notes : Buffy is in Metropolis! Yay?

She shivered as the damp moisture in the winter air attacked her senses. She’d been waiting for over an hour now for her dealer and she hadn’t even gotten a text from the bastard. She hated winter. It was too damn cold and in the Midwest it was too unpredictable. Yet here she was in some alley waiting to get her fix. The things she’d do to make her troubles go away... to not have to think or face life… She told herself it was worth it, but in a saner and calmer state she’d know she was lying. She checked her watch again. It was only eight pm, but the darkness around her was already getting to her. She pulled her coat tighter around her and looked upward as she fidgeted impatiently. Because of the cold rain as of late, everything seemed to be coated with a light frost, even the glowing lights from the ISIS sign on the nearby building. She snorted at that. What kind of place was it anyway? It sounded like some sort of cosmetics company.

With a shaking hand, she managed to pull out a cigarette from her purse. As she searched the junk filled purse for her lighter she missed the sound of heels on the pavement. Just as she pulled the lighter out in triumph a card fell to the ground in front of her. She frowned as looked around to see where it came from. All she could see was a hooded figure in the shadows. She knelt down to pick up the card. “I think you dropped this.”

The figure didn’t move. If the person wanted to be a dick that was their problem. She decided to turn the black card over to see what it was. Blue eyes stared at hers from the card and the last thing she saw as pain filled her senses was that her shadow had fantastic shoes.

*************

Buffy had a headache. Who knew there were a dozen orphanages in Metropolis? She’d gone to four of them today and had found no Sister Margaret or any other new arrivals. She knew the woman was here, she’d managed to trace her to the city through a great many annoyances, such as actually interrogating people in that polite kind of way. But despite her efforts since arriving in Metropolis, the only things of value she had to show for her work was a new hand held custom made crossbow and Oliver Queen’s number. Which most certainly was unexpected but not in the least unwanted.

The slayer was taking a walk down the street from a coffee house she’d just been at and saw the familiar scene of a crowd and flashing police lights. Curious, Buffy worked her way through the gathering crowd of people behind the police blockade that was being set up. There were people standing about trying to get their questions answered and many of them snapping photos, no doubt to post on a blog or similar. Buffy, who was having trouble seeing over some of the taller people around her, finally spotted what the fuss was about. There was body in the alley covered by a sheet as the CSI team took in the crime scene. She snuck past the crowd and managed to find a secluded spot close enough to the alley to overhear what the cops were saying.

“What the hell could have done this?” One of the cops questioned as he stared at the sheet covered body.

His partner shook his head and chewed on a toothpick. “Beats the hell out of me. Her face was gone. Maybe it was one of those meteor freaks.”

“What about that butcher we’ve been trying to catch?”

“Couldn’t be, that guy always leaves a fucking mess. There’s no blood here.”

“So where the hell did it go?”

Buffy inwardly groaned. This was definitely her nun, already in the kill zone again. Any doubt that she’d had about not being in the right locale was nullified when it appeared that the victim matched the M.O from those in Des Moines. She slipped back into the shadows and onto the street again, allowing herself to get lost in the growing crowd of bystanders and gawkers. She looked around and started to make notes about the street she was on. What businesses, etc. Maybe there was a link to her killer around here. She’d have to look into it in the morning.

In the meantime, she was off to do slayer patrol. She’d discovered that there were vampires stupid enough to be in a city with superheroes. After her cruise through the cemeteries she planned on checking out one of the demon bars rumored to be in a place called Suicide Slums. That certainly sounded like a cheery kind of place to go…

The Players : Harley Quinn and Harley Quinn (open)
Where : Metropolis, Kansas.
When : January 30, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R for language.
Notes : Lois leaves Harley alone in her apartment as she goes into work.



Harley relaxed as much as she could being alone in Lois's apartment. I mean she knew Lois had a life and had to get back to it sooner or later, she couldn't babysit her forever and she appreciated the fact that Lois was showing so much trust in her by leaving her unsupervised in her personal space. The only thing Lois had made her promise was that she wouldn't leave the apartment or call anyone. Lois assured her that she would have taken Harley with her but she was too well known and someone at the paper might recognize her.
Reasonable precautions and Harley fully understood them.

It was just.... Harley was still having strange mental lapses where she would see herself in her mind, in her old costume, extolling the virtues of being the Joker's punching bag. She kept that fact from Lois. Especially after Lois expressed worry about it. The drugs and conditioning that the Joker had put her through was Harley's problem and she didn't want to worry Lois about any more than she already was.


"Gee though, I really hate having no one to talk to." Harley muttered to herself.

Hearing a noise Harley watched with wide eyes as Lois bedroom door opened and Harley saw herself dressed in her old costume come out of there.

"Well you can always talk to me sweety." The costume Harley purred at her. "I can tell you more reasons on why you should go back to Mr. J."

The Harley wearing casual clothing slammed her eyes shut and started repeating over and over as a mantra. "Its just a hallucination caused by that crap the Joker gave me!"

"Oh come on." Costumed Harley said sitting down next to her on the couch. "You know the only real friend you'll ever have was Mr. J. He understands us."

"Me." casual Harley growled. "There is no us. There is just me. A mixed up, mind screwed me but just me."

"Whatever." Costume Harley laughed at her. "You aren't going to escape from me, us. I will always be here. In the back of your mind pointing out why we belong to Mr. J."

Casual Harley pulled into a fetal position on the couch and whimpered.

The Players : Lois Lane, Harley Quinn, Clark Kent...
Where : Metropolis, Kansas.
When : January 29, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R for language.
Notes : Lois has been on a train with Harley Quinn for ten hours... and those hours may remain a mystery. HA.

It was wet and rainy morning in Metropolis. The heavy rain was only matched by the bitter cold that came with it and the mood of one Lois Lane. Lois sat on a bench as she tried to wake herself up with a second cup of coffee. She was extremely cranky and unhappy… Though it was surprisingly not caused by a ten hour train ride with one Harley Quinn. No, her mood was caused by the absentee known as Clark Kent. Before they’d boarded the train, she’d texted him and gotten his confirmation that he’d pick them up. Of course, they’d been waiting for a half hour now.

Lois grunted from behind her drink. It figured she couldn’t rely on Clark to follow through. It was as if everything just started to fall apart around the time of Chloe’s wedding. Before then, everyone had been fine. But what should have been a happy time just seemed to be the final warning signal that it was time to take that ride to hell in a hand basket.

She cast a look at Harley who was exploring their little niche in the station with wide eyes, much like a tourist. She’d woken Lois up from her nap when they’d almost hit Metropolis. She’d pointed out some of the landmarks and asked questions about some of the newer buildings she didn’t recognize, all while commenting that the city was still brighter than Gotham. Lois sighed and grabbed her bag and stood up from her seat. “Smallville is obviously going to be a no show.” She tried not to sound as disappointed as she suddenly felt. “We’d better go fetch a cab.”

Lois tried to ignore that sinking sensation she felt when she gave up on Clark as she waited for Harley to join her in the trek to the station exit. She hated that even despite her common sense to the situation, she wanted to trust him and give him the benefit of the doubt. And when her doubt was proven, she somehow still felt bad about it, as if it was something she had done. How the hell did he manage to do that to her?

She shook those thoughts off as best she could. They had to get to her apartment and then she’d deal with Clark and whatever he may have found. At least she could count on him for anything that didn’t concern her specifically. Maybe it was just a sign of how things should work…

The Players : Harley Quinn
Where : Lois's hotel room, Chicago, Illinois.
When : January 28, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R for possible language.
Notes : Harley may seem a little confused, she is dealing with her issues.

Harley stood in the doorway of Lois's hotel room and peeked in. She was a little reluctant to walk into someone else's room when they weren't around. Finally blowing a huge bubble with her bubble gum she crossed the threshold of the room and shut and locked the door behind her.
She did as Lois had told her to do and quickly found Lois's bags and prepared everything so they could make a fast getaway if they had to. After all, the Joker was still out there somewhere and was now gunning for the both of them.

Having gotten Lois's stuff ready, and resisting the urge to prowl in Lois's private stuff. Harley found herself...Bored.

"Okay, what can I do now?" Harley asked herself before spying the room's phone.
"I could call....Um, who can I call? I could call Puddin and try to explain everything so he won't be so upset?"
Harley quickly realized that idea was stupid. Not only did the Joker not carry a cell phone but the idea was to get away from him. Not call him.

"I could call Arkham and see if they'll let me talk to Ivy?"

Once again Harley realized that was a stupid idea. Having been a shrink working there herself she knew that Arkham wasn't in the habit of letting their patients take calls and even if they did, they would recognize her voice and trace the phone call back to the room and Harley would find herself talking to Ivy in person as in being confined to Arkham again. Not something she wanted at the moment. Also there was the very real probability that Ivy had escaped from Arkham by now and wouldn't be to take her call, if Arkham was in the habit of letting patients take calls, which they didn't.

"Okay that's out. Maybe I could call my family."

The temptation to do so was incredibly strong but after a moment Harley realized it also was a bad idea. For one, the Joker told her if she tried to contact her family he would punish them for it, and some how the Joker always seemed to know what Harley did. And two, The police might have her family's phone monitored, since Arkham and the police knew her real name and history, and that once again would lead them to Lois's hotel room and Harley going back to Arkham not to mention possibly getting Lois in trouble too.

"Argh!" Harley cried as she flopped down on Lois's bed. "A phone and all the time in the world to talk and I can't use it."

Lying on the bed on her back with her head hanging over the edge, Harley watched the hotel's tv upside down for a bit before getting bored again. She was always a action kind of gal and hanging around was grating on her nerves.

Harley frowned, as lying on her back on the bed she spotted a envelope lying in front of the room's door. Somehow she had missed that when she came in. Getting up off the bed she walked over and picked it up and noticed it was addressed to Lois. And more importantly, it was in Harley's own handwriting. Ripping the envelope open she quickly scanned the page inside confirming it was indeed her own letter she had sent to warn Lois about the Joker hunting her.

Harley was an intelligent woman, really she was, but finding a letter she had lost clear across town in the room she had meant for it to go to startled her so bad she dropped the letter and spent the next ten minutes checking the closets, under the bed and even in the shower to make sure she was alone in the hotel room.

"Okay, that is just creepy. How did a letter I lose in the night get here?"

Having no answers to her mystery, Harley eventually became bored again and finally decided to take a nice long hot shower. Something else she didn't get a chance to do very often.

As the hot water cascaded down her body, Harley began to wonder how her life might have turned out if she had never met the Joker.

"I lost so much." Harley muttered to herself. "Contact with my family, friends, going on dates. I really don't make good decisions when I am left on my own."

Blowing a bubble again she climbed out of the shower and wrapped herself in a hotel robe before going back to sitting on the bed watching soap operas on tv.

Deftly moving the gum around with her tongue, she blew her hair out of her eyes and then blew another bubble. "Damn I hate being alone." She finally declared out loud.

The Players : Lois Lane, the Joker, Harley Quinn.
Where : The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois.
When : January 27, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R.
Notes : Oh Lois, she just can’t stay out of trouble these days.

Lois stood in the Field Museum of Natural History’s Egyptian exhibit with a frown. She had an appointment with a curator, and yet he was at least fifteen minutes late. Her patience was wearing thin as she pulled out her cell phone. If she was going to be forced to wait she could at least kill some time. She dialed Chloe’s number but when she received her voice mail, she hung up. What was going on with her cousin? She tried the number to the Talon apartment, hoping that maybe she could catch her there. She was pretty sure Jimmy was on the mend enough to be moved back to Metropolis but now, so maybe they were in the process of doing that. Unfortunately, Lois got the answering machine. She sighed and almost hung up, but decided against it. “Chloe? Hey, it’s Lois. Just called to check in and find out how you were doing.” She frowned at how it sounded too simple. She was starting to worry about Chloe. Was she having some PTS from the wedding incident? Had Jimmy gotten worse? "Is there something wrong? ..Just call me back when you can, alright?"

She hung up with a concerned frowned. When she got back to Metropolis she going to try and sit Chloe down for a talk. Whatever was going on, she wanted to help. After all, Chloe was her family.

“Miss Lane.” Lois looked up at the cultured sounding voice and slid her phone back into her pocket as an older man in his forties walked over to her. He adjusted her blazer and then offered her a hand to shake, which she did. He gave her a sheepish smile as if embarrassed by his own tardiness. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not a problem, Dr. Jameson.” She replied, forcing herself to play nice and to ignore her own irritability. “So why don’t you get started and tell me about this new addition to your exhibit.”

“It’s a fascinating discovery actually...” He led her toward another spot in the exhibit as she tried not to roll her eyes. Somehow she highly doubted it was as fascinating as he thought.

It was moments like this when she would hope for something more exciting to happen. The sooner she got this over with the sooner she could be doing something useful, like helping Xander and stopping a supernatural psycho. She still wanted to make it to Curious Goods before it got late.

The Players : Joker, (open)
Where : Chicago, Illinois.
When : January 27, 2009.
Rating : PG13 – R for violence.
Notes : A sharp and C minor

The Joker hugged the shadows of an alleyway as he avoided as much as possible the light of day. He usually had Harley to do these things for him but she was all tied up at the moment... And hanging from a meat hook in the abandoned meat warehouse like a giant pinata.

The Joker was searching for information. Information on the people who thwarted him last night.
A loud mouth, obnoxious blue haired woman, a guy with a patch over his eye like some pirate wannabe and most importantly the reporter Lois Lane.
Not because he had any reason to hold a vendetta against these people, only because they had crossed the Joker's path and had the nerve to survive the encounter.

As the Joker pulled a hood up over his distinctive features he crossed from the alley over to a hotel entrance. Nodding his hooded head at the doorman at the entrance to the hotel, he showed the man a copy of the Daily Planet.
The Joker had gone back to the home of the person who had a subscription to the Daily Planet in Chicago that Joker had found this morning and persuaded the man to find a copy that had a picture of Lois Lane in it. Then to thank the man for his time and effort he sprayed him with SimleX and then shoved him into his own refrigerator.
After all, didn't everyone want a 'cool smile'?

"Is this woman staying at your fine establishment?" He asked the Doorman.

The man glanced at the paper but shook his head. "We are not allowed to give out information on who stays here buddy." He said figuring the Joker was a rival reporter or something.

The Joker held up a hundred dollar bill, that was carefully folded so the man couldn't see that the figure on the bill was not good ol' Ben Franklin but was actually that of the Joker himself.

The Doorman snatched the bill and replied. "Nope. She's not at this hotel. She's probably at one of the fancier ones downtown being a reporter and all."

The Joker nodded his head and started to walk away but stopped. Turning he faced the Doorman. "It must be boring standing here all day, just to let people in and out. Do you ever take time to stop and smell the flowers?" The Joker then lifted the lapel of his jacket holding out the flower that was there.

As a fine mist sprayed out into the Doorman's face and he started to giggle, he noticed a smile gleaming from under the Joker's hood.

"I can see though that your job keeps you tickled!" The Joker laughed as he walked away as the Doorman fell to the ground outside the hotel and started convulsing with laughter as he died.

The Players : The Joker, Harley Quinn, and happy happy people. (Open to anyone who wishes to play with the Joker)
Where : Chicago, IL
When : January 26th, nighttime
Rating : R (violence)
Notes : The Joker and Harley in this borrows from all their predecessors but bows to none of them. (In other words, they are my take on the characters so don’t be surprised if they are a little different.)

A cold crisp clean wind blew through the night, so one could be understandably confused how such a clean breeze found itself lost in a back alley of the large sprawling city. The alley was as dank, decrepit and despair filled as could be found in any large metropolis. Winos lay sprawled unconscious on crushed down cardboard boxes as drug dealers a few feet away plied their trade on the desperate to escape reality. Near the edges of the alley, hookers tried their luck with the lonely and the desperate, while their pimps watched on from the shadows.

Into this perfect picture of urban decay and despair came the strains of music. Music that sounded suspiciously like it came from some broken music box. The individual notes would speed up, slow down, stop and start in a drunken fashion, so much so that was nearly impossible to determine what the tune had originally been but now had a Frankensteinian existence all its own and the tune wasn’t a pleasant one. Several hookers near the entrance to the alley moved further into its dim recesses, risking glares from their pimps as they attempted to escape the ominous sounds.

As the entrance to the alley cleared of its inhabitants, a man appeared in the middle of the street. At first, the denizens’ of the alley mistook the man for another pimp looking for his hooker. After all, he was dressed in the flamboyant style some pimps favored. The man was wearing a large coat that seemed to be made up of multicolored scraps of cloth sewed together. From the glow of the distant street lights and the full moon in the sky it appeared to the onlookers that his hair was colored in a punk style of green with a few braids of different colored hair mixed in to accent the strange style. A large smile in a too pale face sized them up before the man began to move into the alley towards them.
As the man began to stroll casually down the center of the alley, the other hookers, pimps and drug dealers gave way before him and moved further into the alley to stay ahead of him. He wasn’t a particularly dangerous looking individual but the denizens of the alley gave way to him as animals will when they recognize an ‘Alpha’ individual had entered their territory.

Some of the hookers frowned as they noticed the music they had been hearing didn’t increase as the stranger drew near. It was just naturally assumed that the stranger was the source of the music but it appeared they had been wrong.
The man reached about one quarter of the way into the alley before he stopped and frowning glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the alley.

“Harley.” The man spoke only the one word but while his voice was commanding it still conveyed an not unpleasant tone.

A woman appeared at the entrance of the alley and just as the male had before, took the center of the alley and began to slowly enter the alley. While the man’s pace and demeanor showed no hesitation or lack of resolve, the woman’s showed timidity, nervousness and a desire to be anywhere but there. As she neared the first interloper into the alley, everyone noticed the music they had been hearing increase in volume showing she was indeed the source of the tune. The woman was wearing a long jacket that covered some kind of black and red one piece suit causing more than one pimp to consider trying to woe her way from her current assumed pimp. Short blond hair framed an almost childlike face but was more than offset by the brief flashes of voluptuous curves that were revealed as her hips swayed as she walked and the edges of the jacket flared open and shut.

The man dressed in the multicolored jacket continued to frown at her over his shoulder and once barked only one word. “Sing.”

The woman pulled the sleeve of her jacket back revealing some kind of gauntlet on her arm and pressed a few spots on it. Instantly the drunken music box tune was replaced by a steady drumming beat and something that sounded like horns playing.