*J* (the continuation)

Part Thirty-Five: Chapter 268: Ohm

So another year has passed. It's my birthday again. So I guess I'll make it a tradition of giving you guys my obligatory birthday smut. Enjoy!

Joker's POV

I can feel my sanity deteriorating more and more with every day spent here in New Orleans. It's almost been a month now. None of my plans to free Harley have worked out. Mostly because each of them compromised Harley's safety, and I wasn't about to do that. Then there was the possibility of getting Ivy, Frost, or myself caught. That was far too counterproductive. I love Harley, but I'm not going to do time for her. I wouldn't do that for anyone. So I keep having to get back to the drawing board.

One of my failed plans was sending Ivy in to work her bewitching magic. It took a week for her to finally set up a meeting with the warden. When she gets there a secretary leads her to the wardens office. The secretary tells her that the warden would be there in just a moment. So Ivy walks in and sits down, waiting patiently. She was fully prepared to drug him with her weird pheramone shit the moment he sat at his desk. A few minutes later the warden entered the office and ireached out to shake Ivy's hand. But, as luck would have it, the damn warden was a woman. There were also several female guards. So Ivy's powers were useless.

Also, I tried to have Ivy put the head of security, Alpha One Griggs, under her spell. That way he could give out orders to the rest of the guards. He could put them in other locations or tell them to stand down. But I kinda shot him. Once he had gotten a phone to Harley, she told me everything he had done to her since she'd been locked up. Restraints. Beatings. Tazers. Feeding Tubes. Degredation. Sexual remarks. His conduct had been completely inappropriate and unacceptable. The bastard deserved to die. In hindsight, perhaps I should have waited to kill him. But I just couldn't stop myself.

Another plan I had contemplated was making out an impressive resume to try to get Frost a job at the prison as one the guards. It would have given him the keys and codes for the entire prison. The resume I drew up was flawless. It had painted Frost as a decorated officer with eleven years of experience and a military background. He went to an interview, but they haven't called him back. Best I can figure, getting a job there depends on who you know. I listed references, but apparently none of them jumped out at the warden.

However, this difficult time has made me realize just how much I love Harley. It was certainly never my intention to fall in love with her. I used her as a way out of Arkham. I fried her brain and left her laying unconscious. It was merely a payback for having her do it to me. After that she started stalking me and stripping in my clubs. Being a psychiatrist meant that she could get in people's heads. I always prided myself on my resilience to the psychiatrists techniques, but somehow she found a way inside my head. I truly hated how much she made me want her. She turned my world upside down and I never could refuse touching her when our paths crossed.
But she's the only person on this Earth that has ever fought to be with me. She completely changed herself for me, who she was, her career, and everything else that tied her to Harleen Quinzel. She sacrificed everything for me. And no matter how hard I tried to push her away, she still wouldn't give up. She made herself into whatever she thought I would want or need. Her world began and ended with me. I was the only purpose she had. But it wasn't just an obsession. She truly did live for me, and nobody else has ever done that.

Isn't it funny how every time we fall in love it feels like it's more than the previous time? But love makes us do impractical things, and when it finds us we become it's slave. We abandon every bit of common sense, and guy intuition. My first wife was my entire world at that time in my life. I didn't think it was possible to ever love someone so much. I learned the hard way that she didn't love me as much as I loved her. Her betrayal made it hard for me to ever trust someone again. It made me guarded, and I gave up the idea of ever loving again. If that's what love was, then I wanted no part of it.