This story has some dark stuff already, but I felt the need to say that this chapter will have domestic violence in it (like hardcore stuff between Joker and Harley because their relationship has always been abusive af and I refuse to show it in a positive light *cough*Suicide Squad*cough* So please proceed with caution.)

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Have you heard the one about the Italian chef? He pasta way!

'Krank Co. Toys' was every kid's dream. The shop was practically flooded with action figures and playthings - all of them pristine in their original packaging. Well, almost all of them. Behind the counter sat a large crate full of defected and damaged toys. These were the ones that either arrived with some oddity that the factory hadn't noticed, or had been mishandled during delivery.

Harley Quinn had been captivated by broken things ever since she was a child. The obsession was subtle at first, dolls with their eyes painted a little too high up and porcelain fairies with missing arms, then in her teenage years it had spiralled into bad boys with motorcycles and a rebellious streak. This strange pattern struck most people as a little odd because Harley, then known as Harleen Francis Quinzel, was widely known as a 'goody two-shoes'. She wore her strawberry blonde hair in a tight bun, wore glasses a few sizes too big for her face, and had never uttered one single swear word in the entirety of her life. 'Foul language is the mark of a small mind', her mama used to say, and Harleen certainly did not have a small mind.

The truth was even Harley didn't know what compelled her towards damaged goods. Maybe she thought that she could fix them...or maybe she was a firm believer that even the most broken things deserved love. So, that's one of the many reasons why Harley found herself sifting through that giant crate of rejects.

Muffled cries filled the air as Harley pulled out an old, scantily clad Barbie. She had a bald patch on the right side of her skull and two right feet. The smile that lit across Harley's face was akin to that of a kid's on Christmas morning. She yanked it out from the innards of that rusty old container and waved it in the air excitedly. "Mistah J! Look what I found!"

So, did you hear about the guy who lost his left arm and leg in a car crash? He's all right now...

There was no answer. Joker was too busy analysing a small tub of playdough to pay any attention to Harley's new doll. She could see him inspecting the instructions, a malicious grin stretching impossibly wide over his face. He sauntered behind the counter, kicking his heels thrice with clear excitement. "Non-toxic playdough? Now, where's the fun in that?"

He was leaning over a flimsy, wooden seat - tied to which was the only employee that had been working when the clown posse arrived. He had messy black hair and couldn't have been any older than nineteen. The boy choked back a few terrified sobs as Joker stared at him unblinkingly.

"And are you certain it isn't toxic?" Joker's bleached teeth gleamed under the fluorescent lights, thick with saliva and unnaturally aligned. "Have you tried it?"

"Please..." The boy begged, but every effort to speak fell on deaf ears. "Take whatever you want...j-just let me go..."

"No need to worry, we're paying customers. Nothing will leave this room without being paid for, isn't that right Harley?"

A blur of red and black popped out of the darkness like a Meerkat, head nodding vigorously. "Oh, yah! Mistah J ain't no thief, he has a very strict moral code!"

The Joker's green eyes, like moss growing on the bottom of a lake, glinted proudly but his gaze never left that crying teenager. "A pity I can't say the same for you, slapping 'non-toxic' on any old thing before testing it."

"I-I..." The boy was red-faced now, snot running from his nostrils and forming a pitiful line towards his mouth. Harley never liked the taste of snot. It was too salty. "I don't make it...or package it...p-please, I just work here."

The clown-faced villain started picking at the plastic wrapping that encased the jar of playdough, his fingernails were long and blackened at the ends as if they'd been jammed in a car door several times each. "Gary, is it?"

"G-Greg, actually..." The boy muttered. Harley liked that he had the bravery to correct Mistah J. If he was going to die, at least it would be with the right name.

"Greg, right." Joker stepped towards him and sat on the arm rest (where the boy's hand was already tied, and now being squished between the splintered wood and Joker's tailbone). "You see, Greg, I think of myself as a tolerant man. I can deal with things that could make a lesser man lose his mind! But one thing I can't abide...is excuses."

He cracked open the tub and grabbed the playdough (which was coloured a peculiar shade of periwinkle), then used his free hand to grab Greg's jaw. He forced it open, then with enough force to send half of it down his throat, Joker shoved the clump into his mouth.

The sound of choking filled the air and grasped Harley's attention once more. She gripped her newly-found doll in her right hand and skipped closer to the scene. Her blue eyes flickered to the coughing captive, his face had turned slightly purple and there was a thick string of spit dripping down his chin. "Gosh, didn't ya mothah evah teach ya ta chew ya food before swallowin'?"

"Now, Harley, we shouldn't speak ill of our host, this is his workplace, and we are just guests." Joker's pale skin looked almost sickly in the moonlight streaming through the window, so that when he reached for a box of lego's on the shelf, it looked like it was floating in mid-air. "Though I'm afraid we won't be staying too much longer. We wouldn't want to be blamed for the death of an employee."

A deafening tearing sound screeched off the walls, and temporarily drowned out Greg's cries. It wasn't long before Joker turned back around - lego's taped securely to his knuckles.

Here's a good one. Why didn't the skeleton go to the disco? 'Cause he had no BODY to go with!

Harley chuckled quietly to herself as her puddin' sent a lego-clad fist flying against the employees face. There was a distinctive 'crack' that guaranteed a broken jaw. The boy was screaming. This may have bothered Harley in a past life, back when she went by her full name and had her own aspirations, but now she couldn't hear anything over Joker's maniacal laughter. She loved seeing him so fulfilled.

Greg's face was swelling up quite nicely now, and starting to bruise in pretty shades of purple and yellow. With each punch Greg's cries became fainter, until they were nothing more than pained whimpers. That's when Joker started to lose interest. It was no fun if the victim started to grow numb to his torture. He tore the lego's from his fists, blood trickling down his knuckles and leaving thick crimson drops on the carpet. His smile wavered...and Harley's heart sunk. It was never a good sign if he wasn't smiling.

Harley's eyes frantically scanned the shelves to her right, picking up the first thing she saw and thrusting it in front of Joker. It was a fake sword that bent with even the slightest of movements. "Look what I found, Puddin'!"

The Joker wasted no time in snatching the toy out of Harley's grasp. "This pathetic excuse for a toy? How is any kid supposed to poke out their eye with something so flimsy?"

As if to prove his point, he pushed the styrofoam tip against his own pupil. It made a slight squelching sound, pushing the eyeball further into its socket, but the Joker cackled at such a strange sensation. The sword almost bent in half, and Greg started to gag.

"Aww, he ain't laughin'!" Harley whined, arms crossed and lips in a temporary pout, "We should do somethin' 'bout that, Mistah J."

"Let's not get too hasty, Harley, there might be a perfectly good reason why he's not laughing."

"Like what?" Harley huffed.

"Well, maybe his eyes aren't working properly." The Joker gleamed hideously, "He can't be expected to laugh if he can't see the joke!"

"Ohhhh! That makes sense, you're so smart, puddin'!"

"I know," He reached into his pocket, and from within he pulled the sharpest knife that the worker had ever seen. "Luckily, I know the perfect replacement for faulty eyes."

Screams filled the night like the swell of an orchestra - the tempo quickening with each passing second. Harley could see it all in her head, clear as day. The conductor waiving his arms about wildly as if controlling a pitch and rhythm of each painful cry. It was such a beautiful melody that Harley found herself humming along absent-mindedly, then singing aloud with the employee, "Fuck! Please...just kill me!"

The song stopped all too soon, however, and right before the chorus as well. Greg was now sitting limply in the chair, his skull lolling back against the wooden headrest. Blood ran down his face like small rivers, pooling on the creases of his nose and mouth. From his wide-open lids stared two golf balls; solid white and dented.

"They're beautiful, puddin'!" Harley exclaimed with delight, leaning closer to the motionless victim. "Ya think maybe I can get some like that?"

But The Joker didn't reply. He was staring off into the distance - watching something that Harley couldn't see, then, with a start, he doubled over and laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed some more. He laughed until his sides hurt and the room started to echo with a chorus of his own laughter. Harley, at first, merely gave a confused chuckle...but the more he laughed, the funnier this unknown joke became. She didn't know what he was thinking, or what he had seen, but his laugh was heaven and she wanted to join him there.

Soon they were both in hysterics, tears streaming down their joyous eyes and cheeks so taut that they started to ache. Then, very suddenly, Joker stopped. His laughs died like wind in the desert, and then he was staring again - at nothing and no one. "Is something funny, Harley?"

Harley gulped down the last remnants of her joy and lost whatever little breathe she had managed to store in her lungs, "W-Well...y-yeah...I think so. I mean, I love seeing you so happy, Mistah J."

"Happy?" He hissed. "What is there to be happy about? This man is clearly dead. Who am I supposed to play with now, huh? Oh... I had so many more plans but he's died right at the beginning. So tell me, Harley...what's so funny about that?"

His green eyes gleamed like two vials of toxic waste waiting to be drunk - they poisoned Harley's smile and gave her convulsive tremors. "I-I... I just thought-"

"No, you didn't." Joker said, turning his back on the trembling girl and picking something up that was out of her view. "You never think."

The next few moments happened in a blur, so fast that Harley could barely comprehend it. The Joker had turned back around with a grin returning to his face and whacked her across the head with a baseball bat. There was an almighty 'crack' as Harley toppled to the ground. Her skull pounded and her eyesight doubled. She could see two...three...four Joker's until they all vibrated into one again.

His hair had been jostled out of place and hung over his eyes like moss over a rock, and the bat was sputtered with fresh drops of blood that somehow made the wood look lighter in comparison. Now that she saw it, Harley could finally taste the blood staining her teeth - it burned on her tongue like a hot iron and tasted like one too. The pain didn't come immediately, but when it did it Harley didn't even flinch. Pain had become like an old friend to her.

"I-I'm sorry, Puddin'... I didn't mean to upset ya." Harley's voice slurred with every word, forced out through a clouded mind and cracked teeth.

"Turn around, Harley," was his only reply, and she knew better than to disobey.

Harley scrambled to her knees and turned, head down and eyes staring at a collection of dirt on the ground that had been tracked in by a customer's shoes.

She felt Joker's skeletal fingers pull down the zipper of her costume and push it open to reveal her bare back. Despite how much she longed for it, his hands barely scraped against her as he did this. His eyes scanned the contents of her ghostly-white skin - scars covering it like tattoos. It gave him a swell of pride to see how visible these markings were on such a pale woman...but he was equally angered by the fact that there was barely any space left for new scars.

He took his knife out and traced across a particularly long slab of scar tissue that rode the length of her spine - from the base of her neck to the tailbone. Of all the old stab wounds and carvings that Joker had made in her skin, this was by far his favourite. It had been made almost two years ago now. As punishment for allowing herself to get arrested (and just for a little bit of fun) Joker had sliced right through the fine layer of muscle there and clamped it open using comically large staples. Harley had been so doped up that she hadn't felt anything for the first four hours. She had danced to some muted song and Joker had watched the vertebrae of her spine click and twist with each movement.

He had hoped to keep her like that, perhaps cut her costume apart so the whole world could see the hilarity of it, but after a few days she had passed out. Joker had left her, of course, but that damned Bat had found her before she died of shock and taken her to the emergency room. They'd sewn her back together - nice and neat like a torn-up plushie...but Joker preferred her with the stuffing hanging out.

Finally, he found one little spot where the skin was clear and untouched. He stabbed the knife into the flesh and started carving. Harley didn't make a sound...not until she heard a slight creaking on the rooftop. "D-Did you hear that, Puddin'?"

The Joker halted his etching. Blood had already begun to stream down Harley's back like rain on a glass window, and Joker's hand that gripped the knife was sticky with it. "You're hearing things again, Harley, now be quiet...or do I have to sew your mouth shut again?"

"No, Mistah J, I really heard somethin'! What if it's Batman!"

"Don't worry, Harley." Joker said with a snicker as Harley glanced over her scarred shoulder at him. He dropped the knife, dug into his pockets and pulled out two gore-riddled orbs. Optic nerves jostled at the back of them, and Harley realised that they were Greg's eyes. Joker turned them around and held them on either side of his head with a malicious grin. "I have eyes at the back of my head."

Despite the tension, despite the blood streaming down her back, Harley let out a giggle. "Good one, Puddin'!"

"Is it a common mutation among your species to have four ocular organs?" An unfamiliar voice interrupted, it was low but definitely female, and had an accent that was almost impossible to place. They turned, and floating behind them was a faceless humanoid.

Harley jumped to her feet and, in reasonable panic, she hid behind The Joker. "W-What the hell is that?!"

The Joker wasn't as unnerved as his associate, in fact, he looked rather amused by this completely foreign being.

"I have yet to encounter a human born with four eyes...conjoined twins excepted. You do not appear to be conjoined, nor twins."

"What is she talkin' 'bout, Mistah J?" Harley said with unyielding confusion.

The woman scanned the area, only now seeming to notice the nearby corpse. She hummed with suspicion. "Ah, I see, they're his eyes. An uninspired jest. In that case, you are under arrest for suspicion of murder."

Both villains exchanged a glance then, without hesitation, fell into hysterics. They laughed for so long, and so hard, that the alien woman was starting to wonder whether she was missing the punchline to their joke.

"Wait, suspicion? Isn't it kinda obvious?" Harley cackled.

"I did not witness the crime, yet you two were the only individuals present. Thus the regional law decrees that you are the logical prime suspects and must be apprehended for questioning."

"Oh for crying out loud, what are you, Wikipedia? Come on Harley, we're getting outta here!"

From his sleeve, The Joker procured a grenade. He pulled the pin with his yellowing teeth and threw it on the ground. It erupted, but filled the room with smoke instead of flames. The perfect cover for an escape.

Harley's arm was almost yanked from its socket as Joker pulled her out of the building. The air of Gotham was frigid and unforgiving on her still exposed back. Joker lead her to the cliff across the road from the toy store - it was a long fall down into the tumbling ocean and sharp rocks darted out from every direction. Harley pouted, "Ya ain't thinkin' what I think you're thinkin', right puddin'?"

"What are you worrying about, Harley? It'll be fine. They always catch you on the way down, don't they?"

"Y-Yeah...but this one's new, darlin'. They haven't got a face, and my mama always told me ta never trust a woman without a face."

The Joker's face darkened, "Do you want me to get caught again? Do you want me to put all of my plans on hold for another few months?"

"No...but what if they don't get ta me in time?"

Panic was starting to cloud the clear skies of her irises, but then The Joker cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up towards his, "I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you, Harley. You know that."

Entranced, Harley licked her lips and muttered "Yes...of course, Mistah J."

He smiled; softly enough at first, but as soon as he sensed the presence of their pursuer it quickly turned devilish. He threw Harley over the rails and into the rocky depths below - chuckling to himself maniacally as she screamed.

As Harley fell, adrenaline pumping through her like blood, she couldn't help but remember another joke that she had heard when she was little.

What do you do if you're ever attacked by a clown?

Go for the Juggler.

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