2014.04.14 - Let Me Sleep Already!

Machines, the smell of disinfectant, beep beep beep. This was a hospital, and it was pretty much full of things hospitals are full of.

Except for the purple cat. That one is unique to this location. His condition had been in some doubt for a while, but now it had finally stabilized. Keith O'Neil was resting on the hospital bed, replete with the mandatory IV, monitors, etcetera, and trying very hard to forget the last twenty four hours. Forty eight hours. However long he had been out of it and in peril.

At least Patrick hadn't found out. Yet. It was a small comfort.

Nurses have come a very long way in the last decade. They nolonger have to wear those long white skirts and stupid white hats, for starters and, maybe most importantly, they're treated with a higher level of respect than any period before it. So when one comes walking down the hallway with her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head wearing black scrub tops and red scrub bottoms and a surgical mask over her face, nobody bats an eyelash.

Because she's pushing a medcart.

Clibboard in hand, the nurse heads directly towards Keith's room and steps inside. "Mister O'Neil, it's time for your nine o'clock meds." In a sing songy voice, "Do you mind if I turn on the light?"

Keith's voice is tired, and to be truthful he looks worse than he's ever looked in his life. A brush with death will do that to you. "... is it nine already?" He asks quietly, his eyes closed. He can see perfectly in the dark, because of what he is. He simply chooses not to see anything right now and try to rest. "Go ahead."

The nurse reaches over and turns on the light and pushes her COW (Cart on wheels) into the room so the door can close behind her. "How are you feeling?" She asks in that same voice, smiling behind the surgical mask she's wearing over the bottom portion of her face.

Her eyes are so blue, so very very blue, as she looks over Keith checking his various bandages and monitors. A small pile of medicine packets sitting on her carts top.

"Like someone ran me over. Several times. And then stopped to ask for directions. Then ran me over again." Keith says, with a weak attempt at a smirk.

"I could be worse. I could be dead, I guess."

"Well, you're certainly not dead." She's clearly not much of a comedian. She reaches out and takes his wrist to turn the armband over so she can scan it with her little handheld and starts tearing open packets which are spilled into a little plastic cup.

Then a black gloved hand wraps around the front of her mouth and pulls her back away from the cart, hyperdermic needle jabbing easily through her flesh in the jugular vein. "I'm pretty sure this is toilet water..." Harley whispers over the nurses shoulder to Keith. Shhhhhhing him with a red gloved finger to her own smiling lips.

The contents of the syringe are injected into the nurses neck and her big blue eyes immediately roll back into her skull. Harley slips her down into a chair and walks, skips really, to the cart to inspect Keith's medicines.

"Dude, they're givin' you klonapin!" Pushing pills around with her finger, "AND diazepam?!" Whistling, she slams the pills back and hops up on the edge of the bed beside the kitty. Expression kind of taking a turn for the sad, "Look't..."

The cat's eyes open up wide and he tries to move-- but he really can't, he's way too injured. "You killed her!" He hisses, fists clenching. It's about the only range of motion of which he is capable without pain.

Harley opens her mouth to say something, but is cut off by Keith's hissing, "I did?" Said as she slips off the bed and kneels down with two fingers jabbing up into the nurses jaw. Her eyes roll up into the corners of their socket and her tongue juts out one corner of her mouth, "Nope. She's alive. Sleepin', yeah.. I mean I just gave her some versed and fentanyl. I call it 'party pooper'."

She ruffles the nurses hair and hops back up on the bed with Keith, ankles crossed and hands tucked down between her leather clad legs. Her expression goes RIGHT BACK to sad, "I jus' wanted to say, like.. sorry. For shootin' you in the chest with an uzi an' then draggin' you down the street with a bleedin' gut wound."

He's a Cheshire cat. Supposedly a creature of chaos. A nature he has fought and kept in check for a long time because he is afraid to end up... well, like Harley, really.

She was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. She was also in control.

"For what is worth..." he says quietly, "I'm sorry about the snow globe illution. It was probably too mean on my part."

He honestly didn't know what he felt in regards to Quinn. She was a lost case, and extremely dangerous. But he sometimes wondered what happened to her, what was it that the Joker got a hold of and pulled down around her, for her entire self to collapse into this ruin.

And he had to be careful of those sympathies. Rumor has it that that is exactly how Harley went down this road.

Harley picks at her nails looking more like a twelve year old in a twenty three year olds body every second. Her lips quirk to one side and she gets an almost hopeful smile on her white made up face when he apologies too.

"Does this mean we're besties?" Toothy grin, crawling up in the bed with him with only the slightest regard for his injuries, tubes, and IV accessories.

"So, what are they feedin' you in here?" She cannot possibly be comfortable all twisted around like that in a leather costume, but she still drops down off one side of the bed and comes up with a small bag from walmart. "Cus I brought ice cream." Pause, "I borrowed your wallet to pay for it, cus you owed me, but I put it back." She holds out a pint to Vorpal, "Chunky monkey for you."

"Er, thanks... why don't you put in the little fridge over there?" The cat says, ears twitching a little. "I should be able to eat in a few days..." he winces, but tries not to make a fuss. Because, really, he -could- teleport out of there, but then there'd be the isue of the stuff he was plugged into. He didn't want to find out what happened when he teleported under those conditions. "I do like ... chunky monkey. Right now I'm just getting the Ivs and stuff... can't hold anything solid down just yet. Gag reflex. Apparently it's because I'm a cat or something."

He does watch the nurse occasionally just to make sure she is, indeed, alive.

"Fridge?" Harley, who is laying in the bed with Keith twisted all up into his iv tubing and partially under neath his covers, is holding one pint of chunky monkey ice cream and a bag that contains not one, but TWO, other pints.

"oh, yeah I can do that. You sure you don't want't?" Uncurling herself from amidst the blankets to slip off the bed and past the nurse sleeping off the effects of whatever the hell Harley injected into her jugular vein.

"Well." She puts Vorpal's ice cream in the fridge and set the bag ontop so she can tear off the top of her own, 'Carnival of nuts' ice cream, which she eats with her fingers. Scooping them right into the container and sucking them off the leather as she walks back over to sit with Keith. "You were doped up pretty good.. I mean, you've got a chest tube in.." Which she wiggles, in case he didn't know, "That means versed... I mean where do you think I got it?! That stuff is serious business. Only traguh frumestunugs" Her words turn into a jumbled mess as she mouth fulls of ice cream. "ughr brr.." Milky discharge from one corner of her mouth.

Keith looks down at the chest tube, which seems so surreal. As surreal as the harlequin eating on the bed with him.

This night couldn't get any more surreal than it already was.

"I'm sure. I'll want it in a few but not right now..." A thought crawls into his head. And stares at him.

"Does... does anybody know you're here?"

Harley spittles up ice cream and bobs her head, "Yeah. I left a note for Puddin' on the fridge."

"I didn't want him to worry." She adds, cus pose orders are sissy pants.

Suddenly, the door to the small room creaks open. A light switch is flicked within arm's reach, causing a red 'Do Not Disturb' to appear above the door outside. A tall, slender man in a white doctor's jacket and black gloves strides in, face completely covered by a large clipboard. Only stopping when a foot bumps into the nurse. She's kicked aside with an annoyed grunt.

"What have we here..." comes a voice, fakely deep. "Multiple ballistic trauma into the chest, tended to by a Level 1 Trauma Center well within the Golden Hour. No injury to the brachialchepalic vein, although the intercostal artery was damaged in multiple places. Damage to the lung and thoracic diaphragm. My, you are lucky young man."

The clipboard is tossed upon the end of the bed. On it are just random drawings of dinosaurs in crayon. How he knew that particular information is unknown. He's got a stethoscope, and even one of those old-fashioned forehead mirrors around his head.

"My prescription...? LAUGHTER." Twisted lips grin, both fingers coming up to point to each end as he slowly approaches the bed, opposite where Harley is sprawled. "Don't do something silly like teleport away. You'll end up dying very quickly. And if we wanted you dead..." His tongue traces his lips. "We wouldn't have even made that an opportunity."

"PUDDIN'!"

Harley bounds off the bed, from laying flat to airborne in exactly zero seconds. The ice cream is all but forgotten, tossed up into the air so that it can tumble back upon the bed with so much mess being made in the process!

Unless averted to some distant land of 'thrown into a corner' the Harlequin is going to be wrapped around a Joker, planting kisses all over his chalky white face. interjecting words between each exagerated smooch, "I. brought. you. ice. cream."

It's on the fridge.

There was only one person in the world to whom Harley would apply the nickname of Puddin'-- The Joker.

Or, well, Bill Cosby.

The meds Keith was on put him in a somewhat drugged, zen-like state. Which is probably the best state to be in when tossed into a circumstance such as this one. The icecream mess on his sheets... well, there are other things that take precedent.

"I'm aware of that..." he says quietly when the Joker enters his room. There is some fear, but the meds are keeping that down now. It is a quiet place of muddled clarity where his thoughts have time to form. He wonders if this is what being a Vulcan was like.

"... why do you bother with me?" He asks, asking a question that had to be asked. "I'm not anyone important. I'm not a Bat, I'm just some C-lister. You're one of the most famous out there." It's not brown-nosing, it's simple curiosity.

"It's simple." Joker states, embracing Harley and whirling her around in a peculiarly smooth manner, hard enough she cracks her feet into a chair and sends it tumbling over. Once such affectations are done, a firm *SMACK* to the rump follows once she's upright. "To understand something. This was all an accident." He's heading to the fridge, plucking up the icecream and beginning to spoon it into his mouth. "If my pumpkin' pie wants shoes, she can get OVERZEALOUS. Like any girl. It's normal."

Slowly he walks up to stare down at Vorpal, tapping the spoon on the edge of the carton. "Really. No ballistic armor? And you even got SHOT? In Gotham, my dear boy, bullets are like foreplay. They never *hit* people. And if they do, it's just 'UGH!'" A fake mild recoil, sending the icecream into the air and thumping on the bed to stain Vorpal further. "Because PEOPLE." A fist slams on the adjacent counter. Machines jar. "WEAR." Slam! "ARMOR." Slam!!

After a slow exhale, he adjusts his tie. "So this is YOUR fault. You come into my town. And you try to touch /MY/ girl..."

He'd move to grasp Vorpal by the chin, and turn him painfully to look fully at those manic green eyes. "There's two rules in Gotham. Don't cross the Batman. And don't cross the Joker. You have done the latter TWICE now, if I remember?"

"Three times, puddin'." Harley, ever helpful, reminds the Joker after she's deposited in the chair feet first and slapped upon the rump. She jogs in place, hopping around in circles.

Her hair bobs around her face as she jumps and wiggles her head from side to side. "You should SEE the flats I got!" Forgetting, or rather not considering, that she just corrected the Joker.

Maybe he wont notice.

And even if he does, Vorpal is right there anyways! Harley jumps down off the chair and barely misses crushing the unconscious nurses skull with her heeled boots. She's on a mission towards a duffle bag near the bathroom, from which, she pulls the aforemention flats. They are held up between two fingers for everyone to inspect. "Are these not the gosh darn'd cutest things ever?!"

Keith unghs, being manhandled by the Clown Prince.

"One... I was on my day off. Two... I didn't hurt her, in fact I went above and beyond to not hurt her or hit her. I never even -touched- her. And sure. It's my fault for walking in without armor." Keith winces as his head is turned.

When Harley interjects, he says "Arkham doesn't really count, I wasn't there to stop you exactly." Stupid SHIELD and their stupid undercover agent and their stupid stupid stupid. "...they're very cute." Keith says, wondering what the Joker is going to do.

"You chose a bad, bad neighborhood to prowl on your day off... but it does mean a lot to me you still understood the rules. Harley was just being playful shooting at you. If a mighty Avenger can be dropped by my better half in the midst of a shoe heist, then maybe you are in the wrong team."

But then Harley says three. Rage builds. "Three?! It's been THREE?!" In a split second there's the gleam of a blade, lifting up that held chin to expose Vorpal's throat. A powerful thrust down, shifted at the last moment to graze purple fur and sink into the cushion. "...Oh. Right. He's *RIGHT*, Harley. I almost killed him for the third strike!!" Yanking out the knife, he turns towards Harley with a murderous glint...

That vanishes when he sees the shoes, dropping the weapon with a clatter. "Oh my GOSH!" A gloved hand slaps his cheek, jaw agape. Two fingers take the laces of the shoes, dangling them up to look at. "I'd kill a /dozen/ innocents to get you these. There's just no waiting in such circumstances." Dropping them back into Harley's arms, once more he turns to Vorpal.

"And those Avengers are the issue. You are a nobody. That's right. But you have friends. Stupid, boring, vengeful friends. I do not want them coming into my city. Trying to play the hero. Mmm? Do you know what happens to stupid heroes who come into my city? Does the name Captain America ring a bell?"

Fingers brush against his doctor's coat. "I came here to give you a warning. This was an accident. This was your fault. If anyone comes stomping around Gotham as a result... I won't consider them a toy." The last sentence has a seething nature to it, like the hiss of the viper that goaded Eve to bite the forbidden apple. "You understand, right? You *know* I could do it, right? Passions run wild for you. Passions run DEADLY for me."

Harley's expression goes all 'ruh roh' when Joker turns on her with murderous intent, but then he's admiring the shoes... and why wouldn't he? These are fabulous! She beams with outward pride and, probably even more alarming, love for the insane clown danging danger all over Vorpal like fig leaves over private parts.

The bible was a happenin' book.

She gleefully flops down onto the floor and tugs at her boots with her tongue jutting out one corner of her mouth. At one point she even rocks back onto her back and nearly tumbles over, clattering againt medical equipment until one of the armor plated boots is finally off and she can replace it with a flat.

She stands up and sticks her foot straight out, turning it hither and fro inspecting.

"Keith." She says the heroes name, since it's all over his chart and stuff, "Do you think these look nice? Be honest. I mean Like'em, but do they 'match'?" She turns to get a better angle and is, at this very moment, mooning everyone. In all that struggle to remove her boot, her already loose pants have dropped way down below her buttocks.

At least she's wearing a thong, amirite?

You voted for The Joker too recently. You may only vote for a character

once per day.

Getting mooned by Harley was probably the cherry on top of the last few days of insanity. Or at least, that's what he thinks at this moment. In a few hours, the Batman would crawl through the window and up the ante by a million.

"Joker... with all due respect, I am a grown man. I can own up my own mistakes, ain't nobody coming to avenge me like an irate soccer mom..." He trails off, because Harley had asked him a question.

"They don't look cute on you, Harley." He says simply. "They're adorable."

He as being Gay Best Friends with Harley. In a Hospital room where the Joker was dressed as a doctor. Yeah, this was close to the apex of crazy.

A clapping arrives, looking towards Harley's shoes. "Oh, I MUST try them on when we get home." Joker nearly titters. A slow sigh leaves, petting Vorpal like a cat atop the head. "Good. I'm glad. You're alright, kitty. You can come play in Gotham all you want. I'll put you on my 'do not break' list." He reaches out to pinch a fuzzy cheek overly hard. "People are going to WANT to avenge you. The moment I hear word that someone's causing noise with that in mind..."

He reaches down to pluck up the knife and pocket it. "You're off the list. And I'll make them wish they were dead. I don't care how far up the chain of revenge goes, until even SUPERMAN is at my feet. Do you understand?! I'll always have the last laugh. ALWAYS."

He moves to grasp the nurse, and with Harley's likely help put her in one of the chairs. "She'll wake up with about five minutes of memory loss. I'm sure you can make up a nice story about how we were never here. C'mon, darling. Let's go home and *model* those..."

Oh lord. The insinuation in that tone is probably worse to Vorpal than if he had just upped and stabbed him in the throat. Moving to catch Quinn by the hip, he'd make his way back towards the door.

Harley squees at Keith and bounds over the far end of the bed to crawl up and kiss him right on his big purple forehead. "New, gay, bestie. I've always wanted one of those!" Pinchy cheeks! "Seeya later!" She slithers off the side and grabs the nurses right arm to help Joker hoist the woman up into the seat, then rights her little white hat and grins.

All the threats, inuendos, and overt promises of misery seem to fly right over the top of her head. When Joker's arm wraps around her waist she melts against his side and makes butterfly kissy eyes at him as they stroll towards the door. Her boot is retrieved, no reason to leave no evidences, and she wiggles her fingers over her shoulder at Keith mouthing 'Call me, we'll do girls night'.

Then, just cus the image wasn't bad enough, she mouths, 'momma's gonna get her some clown'. Winking, cus their girlfriends she can share intimate details with Keith now.

Welcome to the funhouse.

Harley hangs off the Joker, which will probably make a scene as they depart, but whatever right? When 'dont' they.

Keith stares for a long time before the nurse wakes up. He's going to come up with something to tell her.

But right now, all he wishes is a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream.

"At least things can't get any worse than this..." he mutters, slowly going back to sleep.

He hoped that dreams that may come would help him forget the mental image Harley had just placed in his mind. Because otherwise it was going to be a life of celibacy for him from now on...

HOURS LATER

Machines, the smell of disinfectant, beep beep beep. The room is exactly the same. Hours later.

"At least things can't get any worse," Keith mutters to himself with a dry throat and closes his eyes, exhaling softly.

Another victim of the Joker, albeit by way of the Clown's deranged adherent. It's easy to forget that while his agents understand the rule of never engaging the Joker or his goons, the other heroes who operate in Gotham don't necessarily stand by that code. It's been a rough couple of weeks and this latest casualty has only exacerbated it.

The window goes from being closed one minute to open the next, the Bat crouched on the window ledge as the curtains - caught in the breeze - cast a pall over him. He moves like fluid shadow, looming over the end of the bed and glaring down at the critically injured Vorpal.

"Goddamned clowns." He mutters, shifting a little in his bed, and then wincing. Right, not supposed to move -too- much for now. The discomfort causes him to open his eyes. It'll be a second or so before his night vision decyphers what's there. And when it does, the cat tenses like a whip, eyes flashing wide open and claws extending...

And then his brain processes who it is, and he relaxes a little, panting.

"Gods in heaven..."

"Quiet," Batman growls, his tone commanding and not at all the impassive one he usually effects, "What are you thinking?"

He leans forward, clasping the end of the bed so tightly that the wood seems to creak and groan. It's times like these where people begin to doubt that he is human. Exhibiting the kind of strength that even an Olympic weightlifter would envy.

"Speak. Now."

"...I'm thinking that there's a pissed off Batman in my room... and ... that this probably has to do with Harley." Keith's voice drops off in volume, just as it picks up an octave or so, his eyes remain wide.

"The Joker is an invalid target as far as you're concerned. This goes for his flunkies. They seem harmless but they are dangerous. You won't engage with her again."

Batman growls, letting go of the bed and folding his cape around himself, "Though you're already planning on quitting. Turning tail and running away to Metropolis. It won't be an issue anymore, will it?"

Pang. Wounded pride. The cat bristles, "That--- that is f---" No. Don't swear at the Batman "Frickin' unfair of you!" he manages to bark.

Weakly. But at least it's a bark. "On both counts. You want me to stand by while Quinn murdered innocents? She was about to shoot out that store. And you don't think I know the risks? It's part of the uniform, isn't it?"

He leans back, exhaling. "... I didn't know you cared about where I lived or not. For the longest time I've had the impresion that you'd prefer I'd be sent packing elsewhere. It's what your new Robin keept shouting at me ever since he was Darkwing Duck. Or whatever his codename was, I'm bad with them."

"This uniform," Batman growls, moving his cape just so as to reveal the bat-symbol upon his chest, "Not yours. You're not trained. Any victory you've had against the Joker has been a happy accident."

"What I don't want here is this," Batman jerks his head up and down a fraction, as though to indicate Vorpal in general, "This attitude. Life is unfair. The world is unfair. Complaining about it will get you nothing."

"I know that, Batman." Keith says, getting his voice under control. "And I want to be trained. I've looked for mentors. I've been trying to train myself as well."

"Right. The attitude." He says, growing somber. "... I'm not one of you Bats, that's very clear. Does this mean I can't protect my own home? I can't do it in good conscience."

"You are being trained," the Bat practically roars, his teeth bared and his voice full of rough menace, "What do you think the Desmodus Foundation were? The meeting? The fact that I'm here at all and not letting you run away to Metropolis."

He turns his face away, shaking his head slightly. He's frustrated. Angry. These events have all snowballed together to wear him down. Where once he laid a careful trail of breadcrumbs for Keith to follow, now he sweeps it aside to grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him to the conclusion. His hands move to his cowl, drawing it up and away from his face. He turns back around, his features no longer concealed. Bruce Wayne.

"They're hard lessons, Keith. You need to learn them. This is one of your first. The Joker and his lackeys are mine. Now you have a secret. The one I hold closer than any other. You are obligated now. You will do what I tell you. You belong to Gotham and you belong to me!"

A shiver runs through his spine as his eyes become wider, almost impossibly wide. One hand goes up to his mouth to suppress something between a gasp and a cry, but it doesn't go past a murmur. He stands there, transfixed in some sort of terror.

"... You. You..."

His mind races back to the wedding. To the expo, when that terrorist had gotten onstage with Bruce Wayne and he had jumped in between them to protect whom he thought was a civilian.

"Mister W-Wayne... w-w-why?" he asks quietly.

No 'Bruce', nothing of that sort. At the end of the day, despite his attitude, Keith's mother raised a polite boy.

Who went aound and beat people up.

"I lost my parents," he answers flatly. It's a story that all of Gotham knows. There's no need to go into detail. If Keith doesn't know it he assumes he'll learn it soon enough, "Because the world is unfair."

He draws the cowl back into place, once more staring at the wounded hero through the white eye lenses, "Have I made myself clear?"

Keith frown and looks down. "Yes... you have." It wasn't hard not to know the Wayne story. The media often appended it here or there whenever they ran a profile, or as a sidebar whenever WayneTech unveiled a new product.

"I lost mine too." He says very quietly. "I'm going to be better."

And then, because he feels he must, he says "I was following up on the lead. I was on my way to crash a party when this---" he drops off. No, better something else.

"I'm not as stupid as I seem. Sometimes. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it."

"You'll work out what to do," Batman answers, the fury gone from his voice and replaced with his usual flat menace, "I'm not here to hold your hand. This is part of your training."

He steps towards the window, glancing back over his shoulder, "This is a secret that you never share. With anyone. Not even those you think might already know. You never speak a word."

"Like I said, I'm not stupid." Keith says quietly. "I'm not saying anything to anyone, ever. I know how to keep secrets..." he looks at Batman at the window.

"Before you go... there's something you might want to know."

Batman doesn't ask exactly what it is. Instead he simply stares at Vorpal and waits.

"They were here."

It's not hard to understand who 'they' were in context.

"I had Iron Spider sweep the room. No bugs or devices of any sort were left behind." Keith says wearily. "I also had him check the adjacent buildings in his stealth mode as well."

"Hnh."

Batman offers nothing more than the slight grunt of confirmation. A moment later, in the blink of an eye, the window is empty. Batman no longer stands there. Gone to do whatever it is Batman - or Bruce Wayne - does.

Keith leans back against his bed, one hand up to his eyes and groaning a little.

"F-- my life. Really. Just F--- it so hard..."

Three days ago, he had had to deal with a gigantic Tigra unleashed by the Joker. Yesterday he had gotten shot by Harley.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Batman is Bruce Wayne.

He wished he weren't injured, because somewhere there was a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream that was calling out to him, desperately.