Out of the Belfry, into the Fire

Christmas Present

"I said, beat it, ya slapstick baboon!" Harley screamed.

The kick she suddenly swung was enough to prove her reflexes under such heightened adrenaline. It knocked the Scarecrow stumbling backwards on the roof right back into the pipe he had been hiding behind earlier. Not only did he get a nasty shock in the chest with an "Ooff!" from that well-placed foot, he also got a nice clang in the back shoulders and the back of his head. "Ugh!"

For a moment, the Scarecrow rubbed his aching skull. He blinked his blurred eyes through the steamy pipe exhaust at Harley dropping back into the snow. With fists, she pounded the ground as she trembled and whimpered.

Regardless of her spunk, taking off her mask must have made Harley think that the Joker had done something incredibly gruesome to her face. She felt at it now and stared woozily at the cowl still clutched in Scarecrow's hand as he stumbled unsteadily upright. It was just then that she fainted, as white as a ghost even without her jester makeup. Though, it was hard to tell for certain what she thought she had seen.

Once firmly standing, the Scarecrow leaned over in a stupefied hunch for a moment or two. The wind blew ominously. His breath plumed like the exhaust behind him. His heart continued to thump hard now beneath the pain in his chest from that kick. If the siren had not sounded again he might have stood there longer, but as it neared the chemical lab, he quickly scooped his hat up that had fallen with a mess of straw from his makeshift straw wig. He tucked Lunabat's cowl into his rope-make belt, and then lifted Harley.

She was not completely unconscious, even if still very delirious. For a moment he feared she would kick him again or even bite him, but he could not leave her. He set her wriggling form back down. It was like trying to carry an injured fawn— injured but still healthy otherwise. Then he used just enough of the knockout gas to have her limp enough to carry properly. With the help of a fire escape ladder he reached his getaway car and drove away before he found out whether or not those sirens would ever end up at the chemical lab.

The truck was old, rusted, and made strange noises when it ran. The dry frigid air pronounced those noises into a whine. It was fortunate for the Scarecrow's escape that it had not complained too much to get the stupid thing started in this weather, but despite its appearance it ran well. It simply fit his overall theme— a mockery of a beautiful red old fashioned farm truck with a tree from the nearest Christmas Tree farm in the back. He had some dried wood in the back, bound and under tarp for looks instead. It looked like the type of old truck that would be in some hick-side swamp monster movie, or the type of truck that a man's dead body overtaken by aliens for show might step out of.

He drove quietly and nonchalantly through the winter night with his mask and hat off and Harley sleeping uneasily in the seat beside him. He reached a quiet place in the city where an abandoned warehouse stood looking as bleak and uncared for as his car. Inside in the lower level he kept his private laboratory. It had been a place he had kept secret for over a year. Here, he brought Harley despite everything.

He gave her an antidote that would help the fear toxins to move through her system more quickly— an antidote he had plenty of since he rarely was ever able to use it on himself when he was hit with his own fear toxins. He set her down gently on his own miserable cot. It was the only place in the whole lair that had anything soft on it and even still it was rather lumpy and uncomfortable and not quite warm enough. Knowing this, he took a space-heater to put it under the cot and turned it on full blast.

Then he grabbed a metal fold-up chair and sat with arms across the back of it as he stared at her. Well, not at her so much as simply in that general direction. His eyes were, in reality, on the bleakest shadow in the corner behind the cot. With his own mask tossed carelessly on a rusty worktable he was still covered in straw, the discomfort of which he barely noticed normally anymore. He felt the discomfort now as some poked into his arms as he leaned hard against that chair. Beneath his hair, his head itched with it, but he embraced it.