A Rose's Thorns

Prologue

"Love" was something Jonny Frost never understood.

Yeah, sure, he witnessed it from time and time again but it was an emotion that always felt out-of-reach.

With his ex-wife, it was always close enough for him to decipher but too far enough for him to comprehend. It was a stranger, an unfamiliar ghost that followed him around, hanging on the edge of his thoughts but never daring to travel beyond that.

So, once the divorce papers went through, Jonny knew "love" and everything else that came along with it wasn't for him. And left it at that.

Who knew that the crime world of Gotham's underbelly would slap him hard in the face several years later, with a reality that threatened to swallow him up and drown him.

Jonny was never the type to go back on his word or cave in to his most simple and natural desires.

If you had asked him about a year and a half ago if he would ever go behind his boss' back, he would have pulled his gun on you in a flash, threatening you to never question his loyalty to the man who saved him from himself.

But now...

Now, he would have avoided looking you in the eye the same way he did with the Joker, when the man himself came storming in through the double doors of the warehouse, eyes blazing with a fire that threatened to combust. He would have kept his mouth set in a grim line, daring not to speak a word, for fear of giving himself or the anxiety bubbling inside him away.

Because everyone knew what would happen if you crossed the Joker or betrayed his trust.

But as they say: curiosity killed the cat.

And the curiosity that started so small, when Harley Quinn was first introduced to their empire, it gradually grew, until becoming huge in mass. A mass that threatened to consume his very being. And, of course, curiosity killed him: in more ways than one.

Which is the only explanation to why Jonny laid sprawled on the cold pavement, in the middle of the street, in a pool of his own blood. His usually clean-cut suit torn and ripped; the blood seeping through the expensive material where the deep cut in his abdomen resides. His jaw, and along with many others parts of his sore body, felt stiff. He can barely see the street-lights past the swelling that was quickly forming in his left eye.

He doesn't know how long he laid there, floating in and out of consciousness, but he assumes it must have been for hours. And it doesn't seem like help is on its way, either.

So, you see, "love" was something Jonny never understood. But, as he lays unmoving on the freezing asphalt road, remnants of a tinkling laughter echoing in his mind, he would like to reconsider.

But, he can't start here.

No, he needs to go back.

All the way back to the beginning. Before everything went to hell.