Harlequin

A/N: I know, I know, all this update madness and then nothing. I\'m moving to California in four days and I\'m simultaneously freaked out and excited and it gives me a certain hyperactive energy. I took a break and let it all sink in (in my tiny brain) and write the next chapter a day or two later.



=)



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She woke up strapped to a gurney, an IV stuck directly into the vein in her arm. The lights above were on, a refreshing, steady stream of light that burned into her retinas. Back in the infirmary. Unlike the rest of the building that she had seen, the Harlequin clearly cared for the room; the whitewashed walls were pure and unstained, the floors clean, the sheets sweet-smelling and soft. "I feel a little weird," she murmured, blinking furiously.



"Morphine is a wonderful drug." He hadn\'t bothered with a mask this time; clad in a lab coat and the same dress slacks he\'d worn in the supermarket, the Harlequin stood over her bed, arms crossed, staring down at her with the same intensity as the ceiling lights. "Here\'s how this is going to work. You\'re going to die on this gurney, slowly. Every now and then, I\'m going to allow you some morphine. Eventually, you\'ll have to ask for it. And when I put you out of your misery, I\'ll let it be a morphine overdose, with a side of Halidol. Consider it a reward for being determined enough to kill your competitor, Jeff. Do you understand?"



"No! You said I could go."



"I lied." He sat down on a stool next to the bed and shrugged. "I kill people. You\'re shocked I won\'t stick to my word?"



"But you stitched me up, gave me Vicodin--"



"--which you didn\'t take--"



"--who cares, I\'m fucking back here, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you--"



"Okay. You hate me. I get it." Harlequin patted her shoulder; she squirmed away from his touch.



"Fuck you!"



"Okay. Fine. No morphine." He moved to disconnect the IV. "This is going to really hurt in a minute, though."



"No! Stop! Please, please!"



He held his hands above his head. "Your plea has moved me. For now." Stepping back to the foot of her bed, he added, "Do you want to see what I did to you?"



Meagan froze. "What you did to me? You son of a bitch--"



Harlequin took a deep breath and shut his eyes. "If you don\'t stop swearing and shouting at me, I am going to stop the morphine right now."



"Okay, I\'m sorry."



"Okay. Morphine. You\'re welcome. And don\'t be scared. All I did was rip out your stitches. A little crudely. It might leave a scar."



Meagan twisted in her bonds to check the arm. The cut was deep and gaped slightly, surrounded by the smaller marks where Harlequin had stitched it closed, but instead of tiny holes, they were just smaller cuts; he\'d stretched them so a forest of tiny, bleeding cuts adorned the area around the more serious cuts.



"You\'re a horrible doctor, Alexander," Meagan whimpered.



"Not so. I\'m an excellent doctor. I was an excellent doctor until I was fired."



"You were fired? Yeah. You must have been great."



"I was. I just happened to solve a patient\'s problem in a manner not consistent with the wishes of law enforcement."



Fascinated against her will, Meagan demanded: "What did you do?"



"I broke into a man\'s house. I thought the problems might be caused by a toxin, namely, something he was ingesting. It turned out there were parasites in the pork he\'d been eating every day. So, I had proof that I was right. I treated him. I cured him." Spreading his arms in a benevolent gesture, Harlequin intoned: "I saved his life." Then, he stuck his hands back in his pockets. "And then, I was fired for professional misconduct."



"And you wound up here? Killing people?"



"Not instantly." He shrugged. "I lost my temper and killed the hospital administrator. That was when I discovered a certain taste for it. I abandoned my life as Doctor Alexander Knight and dedicated myself to this. Not an awful way to live. In fact, I find it very--gratifying." He picked up a scalpel lying on a tray that she hadn\'t noticed next to the sink, and slit her shirt from the neck down, ignoring her ratty bra and tugging the shirt aside rather unceremoniously.



"What are you doing?"



"Think of it as preoperative work." With a pair of scissors drawn freshly from an autoclave, he sliced off her pants, careful to maneuver around the restraints.



"Don\'t you touch me, you--"



"That is the least of your problems, don\'t you think?" muttered the Harlequin, picking up the scalpel again. "Morphine off."



"No. No! Stop it! Stop it, please--"



The first incision was a long, deep slit from her breastbone to her pelvis. As the blade bit into her skin, the Harlequin let out a soft sigh, closing his eyes after a long look at her face. "I love the way people look when they realize it\'s going to hurt."



There was a sickeningly self-satisfied smirk on his face as the Harlequin listened to her scream.



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It could have been hours later that he set down his tools on the tray once more. His shirt was soaked through with blood, his ears ringing with the sound of Meagan\'s final screams. His heart throbbing, his throat raw from the panting his exertion had brought on, he sat down on the gurney next to Meagan\'s. The morphine was still off. He\'d lost himself again. A great feeling of peace enveloped him as the blood, still hot, dripped from his face and hands onto the floor and puddled with the liquid there. He smiled, but the expression melted from his face and bled off as he looked back over to her. A guilty flush suffused his neck and ears; Harlequin felt a sudden surge of anger at this sensation, ruining what he savored most.



Adulterated. The only quiet that would satisfy his mind came from this life. Without it, he would doubtless go mad. Madder. Unless he could find another way to silence his unquiet mind.



I forgot to give her the Halidol. Harlequin smiled and stripped off the sopping lab coat, tearing loose the collar and tying it in a knot around his arm. The vein bulged out on his arm, and he tugged the cover off the morphine-Halidol cocktail with his teeth.



Shame to let it go to waste.



With a grimace, he pushed the injection into his bloodstream and lay back on the gurney.