Bad Jokes (JokerxHarley Quinn)

epilogue

One week after the Joker's most recent breakout from Arkham Asylum and subsequent vanishing act, Lieutenant Adam Carter, relatively new head of Gotham's MCU in the wake of Jim Gordon's promotion to commissioner, paced quickly through the halls of Gotham General Hospital, searching for one room in particular.

It didn't take him long. The guards posted out of Dr. David Wilson's room, present in case Wilson's attacker decided to come back and finish the job, made his location obvious to anyone who was looking. Carter went to them, showing his badge impatiently. He'd been waiting to talk to the patient for a week—a week Wilson had needed to recover from the considerable injuries he'd suffered, sure, but a week that slowed Carter down nonetheless.

The guards stepped aside and Carter breezed past them into the room. He was pleased to see that Wilson was conscious and alert, pulling himself upright in his hospital bed at the sight of the newcomer. Carter, having suffered several gunshot wounds himself, recognized the coiled energy—Wilson was probably impatient to get out of that bed, betrayed by the sluggishness of his own body, and Carter immediately sympathized.

"Officer?" he asked, not exactly suspicious but wary, and Carter held up his badge, waiting until Wilson was satisfied and nodded at him before putting it away again.

"Dr. Wilson, I'm Lieutenant Adam Carter," he introduced himself then, pulling a chair up to the hospital bed. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you more recovery time before conducting this interview."

"No, no," Wilson said abruptly. "I'd have done it sooner if the tyrants that run this place had let me."

Carter's mouth twitched a bit as he produced a recorder, balancing it on his knee, the microphone angled towards Wilson. "This will be recorded," he informed Wilson dutifully. "You're not a suspect, you're not under oath, and I don't expect you to be able to answer all the questions I ask. Just do the best you can. You understand?"

"I do."

"All right. Maybe you can start by telling me exactly what happened that night, beginning with the moment you were taken hostage."

"I was leaving the Asylum for the first time since the Joker was captured on Halloween night," Wilson said after taking a moment to clear his throat. "I was walking through the halls, going to my car in the parking garage. I turned a corner and... there she was."

"I'm sorry—there who was?"

"It's... it was Harleen Quinzel, a former resident at Arkham Asylum. She was wearing clown makeup and had a gun." Wilson paused, but when Carter didn't immediately ask more questions, he continued, sounding almost reluctant. "She... forced me up to the top story, where the Joker was being kept. She ordered me to put in the security code that would open his cell. When I refused, when I tried to escape, she shot me and put a knife through my wrist." Again Wilson paused, eyes wandering, apparently lost in thought as he touched the bandage covering the mangled arm.

Carter gave him a few seconds, and then, not unkindly, he prodded: "What happened then?"

Wilson looked back at him, glanced away again, and said, "I yielded. I typed the code in to save myself."

Carter thought Wilson struggled a bit to get this out, but he didn't blame him. If some woman had bullied him into freeing Gotham's public enemy number one, he'd feel pretty ashamed, too. "Then?"

"Then she pistol-whipped me and I lost consciousness. When I recovered, they were both gone."

Carter took a second to absorb this, nodding slowly, and then he asked, "Why would a former resident of the Asylum want to help the Joker?"