ḶḀṳḠḧḭṆḠ McKirk Drabble (Joker/Harley Quinn AU - Star Trek)

Jim is found on Tarsus at 16, gaunt and starved, broken and bloody. The planet is burning, and he’s ḶḀṳḠḧḭṆḠ, ƃuıɥƃuɐן, laughing. Officers are forced to sedate him to get him out of the remains of Kodos’ mansion. The last sight Jim takes with him is the smiling gash slicing open Sam’s neck. He goes down into the darkness with screaming that sounds like more laughter.

Two years later, Jim sits at a silver table. It’s so polished and clean that if Jim leaned forward, he thinks he could see his reflection. If he leans forward. If he could. His back is kept straight against the chair back. He can feel the metal rod connecting the steel plate at the top of his spine to the top of the chair. The chain rattles as his shoulders shake with silent laughter.

The doctor is coming.

Jim’s normal restlessness is gone. The shivers in his limbs to move to and fight and dance have shaken out and stilled, letting his ankles rest where they’re bolted to the chair legs, which are bolted to the floor. His toes are cold against the concrete.

The doctor is coming.

His head is lolling forward as much as it can, and even his shoulders go still, relax. Out beyond Jim’s room, a door creaks open, steel on steel, grating in the silence of the asylum. It only lasts a moment before the door closes and two sets of footsteps come down the hall. Click. Clack. Clip. Clop. His door opens, and the men shadowed in the doorway pause, muttering to each other.

“Hick. Hock. Tick. Tock. Time’s a wastin’, Doc,” Jim muses, tone throaty and edged. There’s always a curl in the smooth bass of his voice, a hint of the madness that lurks within. “I’ve got a tight schedule to keep here; I wouldn’t want my audience to grow bored without me.”

Jim is still staring at the fold of his arms, wrapped around his chest, tight and constricted with straps and harmless ties that would frankly be insulting to Jim’s intelligence if he actually wanted to escape.

As it so happens, he’s exactly where he wants to be at the moment.

A shiver of restless anticipation prickles at Jim’s skin. A laugh bubbles up in his throat, and he almost stops it. Almost.

There’s a sigh as the doctor sits in the chair across from Jim. A recorder is set in the far corner of the table, furthest from Jim. Not that Jim is moving anytime soon.

“James,” the doctor says in greeting, and Jim’s head comes up. It bypasses facing the doctor to drop back to face the ceiling.

“No, no, no, Doc,” Jim croons. “You’re mistaken. There’s no James here. He’s gone. Poof.” His fingers twitch in the jacket with a gesture. “Disappeared in the ashes, remember?”

Silence, then: “Jim.” The name is little more than a breath, and most would hear it as disgruntled, but Jim knows better. He knows better. He rolls his head to the side, left cheek touching his shoulder, and peers at the doctor through his lashes.

Leonard hasn’t quite worked up the nerve to look at him yet, and that’s just not going to cut it.

“That’s better,” Jim says and puts a thick promise in the sentence. Leonard’s gaze snaps to his, and Jim’s smirk twists up the side of his face more.

Leonard stares at him for a long moment. The silence reins, but it’s telling. It’s so telling. Jim brings his head up proper and, as always, Leonard’s eyes trace the thick, corded scar pulling the left side of Jim’s face into a permanent smirk.

There’s no ticking, no near-silent hum of the recorder. Dangling from Leonard’s hand is a set of keys. They flash in the shitty lighting of the cell.

Jim grin and his laughter rings out with the maelstrom of gunfire.

Leonard doesn’t get the chance to free Jim. As Leonard rises from his seat, the door bursts open to a few of Jim’s friends.

All Jim can see of the first figure is a long black ponytail swinging free from a geisha’s mask. A gloved hand snatches at the keys from Leonard’s grip as three other figures drag the protesting doctor from the room.

Jim is full of so much energy that he’s yanking at his bindings even as he’s freed. “Ny. Ny, get ‘em off,” he chants. The locks fall to the floor, and he struggles out of the jacket with only one to witness. “I like the mask. I like it. It’s cute. Not you, though. You’d never be so…so subservient.”

Uhura pushes the geisha mask up into her hair to rest as she scowls at Jim. “They weren’t my idea, Captain.”

“It was only logical to conceal our features from the monitors before they were disabled.” Spock is now standing in the doorway. There’s a mask on his head too, but Jim can’t tell what it is from this angle. He’s rolling his shoulders and still grinning.

“Logical, logical. Lo…gic. Where is he?” Jim asks, slinking up against Spock. He grabs Spock’s chin, fingers smoothing over his jaw. Spock merely arches a stoic brow back at Jim. Uhura makes a short noise, sucking at her teeth. “Where is he? What did you do with him? I want-I need to see him. I need.”

“We put him with the guards,” Spock responds.

“Oh no.” Jim curls away. “No, no, no. That won’t do at all. He’s my doctor. He deserves the best. After all.” Jim dissolves into laughter, bending over slightly as he’s overcome with it. “After all, an eye for an eye!”

Would you die for me?

“Why are you doing this?” Leonard growls, though he’s worried. He doesn’t understand. He’d done as Jim asked. He’d orchestrated the rescue. He’s freed him.

“No, Doc,” Jim says, smirking. Always smirking. He leans in the light from the overhead lamp attached to the infirmary bed. His features are obscured, shadowed on one side. He looks all the more menacing, and Leonard sweats, squirms on the table. “I freed you.”

“What are you gonna to do to me?” Leonard is caught by the fierce gleam of blue in the darkness, sucked into Jim’s orbit as he always is. He’s inexorably lost to this kid. “Are you gonna kill me, Jim?”

“No, I’m not gonna kill you. I’m just gonna hurt you really, really bad,” Jim promises, so firm, so sincere. He brushes the back of his knuckles against Leonard’s cheek. Then, he’s laughing, and Leonard is screaming.

Leonard coughs himself into consciousness. He jerks and cries out in pain as he rolls off the table and onto the floor. Hes coughing again, but the smoke is thinner this low.

He blinks the blood out of his eyes and looks around. The room is on fire, so is much of the asylum by the looks of the glow beyond the windows.

Debris and destruction surround him, but Leonard knows he has to move. He also knows he has at least two broken legs, a shatter ulna, and a dislocated shoulder.

He has to move. He can’t stay here. He has to get out to… He has to get out… He has to… He laughs against the floor, temple resting in a puddle of his own blood.

He has to get out.

He drags himself out of the infirmary over shattered glass and burning metal. He drags himself out by splintered fingernails and melting skin.

“I’m a doctor. I’m a doctor.” No, he’s nothing. He’s broken and empty. He’s a clean slate. He’s a shell, waiting to be filled.

He absently wonders how thick the red path of blood is that he leaves behind. He wonders, but the exit is there, just beyond the door, and he’s laughing. Desperate and fearful, he laughs because it’s all he can do, because it’s madness and wonder and life filling him, goading him, driving him to survive.

No, no, no. That’s too easy.

At the base of the asylum steps, Jim is waiting, waiting, waiting. Leonard can see him through the flames as he finally, finally drags himself through. Bloody and charred and laughing through the pain.

Would you… Would you live for me?

Leonard collapses at the top of the stairs. He thinks his eyes shut, but maybe he’s gone blind.

“Alright, let’s wrap this party up!” Jim orders loudly over the wreckage. He brushes his fingers through Leonard’s filthy hair. “C'mon, Bonesy. Let’s get you home.”

Leonard’s murmurs, “Thanks, Mr. J,” and let’s Jim take care of him, a grin on his lips.

~~