The fight with the henchmen had been intense and to the Batman's frustration the Joker slipped away with Harley Quinn in tow while he was occupied. The Joker had won this round, Batman knew, but the war was far from over.

The Clown Prince of Crime's day would come.

He untied the mayor, Hamilton Hill, who had been the latest victim in the Joker's nefarious plot to destroy Gotham City. Batman waited with the mayor to make sure that the politician had proper police escort. Hill, looking exhausted from his several hours of terror-filled captivity, collapsed in the police cruiser to be taken home.

Exhausted himself and feeling a little peeved, Batman screeched the Batmobile to a halt on it's platform in the Batcave and lurched tiredly toward the steps that led upstairs to Wayne Manor. Wordlessly, he pulled the cowl off his head, revealing the blue eyes, squared handsome face and blue-black hair of playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne. He tossed the cowl in the general direction of the uniform vault, quickly followed by the cape, before stumbling up the stairs.

Alfred Pennyworth, devoted Bat-butler and gentleman's gentleman, was busy polishing the chandelier in the main hall when the secret clock-door in the study swung open and Bruce came into view.

He looked hideous. Alfred said nothing but watched as Bruce slowly climbed the stairs to his bedroom and disappeared from view. Pursing his lips, Alfred remained silent, continuing his chore.

Harley Quinn watched as her puddin' paced the room at a dizzying pace. After expounding for two hours solid on the injustices of the universe in general and the dogged determination of his cowled nemesis in particular, the Joker was winding down to silence.

Finally he jerked to a stop, growled at the air around him and whipped his head in her direction. "I'm going to bed," he announced pompously. "See that I am not disturbed."

Excited, Harley bounced to him and leaned suggestively against him. "Need some cuddlin' to make you feel better, Puddin'?" she asked sweetly.

"No!" he snapped, pushing her away, sending her spinning toward the chair she had just been perched in. He stomped to his private bedroom and slammed the door.

Sighing Harley shrugged and began to clean the already spotless hideout. She fed the hyenas, the pirana and checked the refrigerator to make sure there was something to fix for breakfast. Then she too curled up on her customary faded couch with the springs sticking out the back and went to sleep.

The sun rose high in the sky, glistening off melting icicles and snow drifts. Alfred peered out the window with a satisfied smile and hummed a merry tune as he fixed the late breakfast for his employer. It had not been a late night for the Batman, but it had obviously been an exhausting one, for Bruce had not even stirred that Alfred was aware of.

Alfred climbed the stairs in his normal dignified pace and knocked softly on the door. "Master Bruce?" he inquired politely. "You have a meeting with Lucius Fox and the other WayneCorps Board of Directors in two hours. I have breakfast, sir." There was a mumbling from within but Alfred couldn't make out any words. "Sir?" he asked, opening the door a crack while still balancing the tray. "I did not hear you."

Alfred poked his head in and stared.

Harley twirled and pirohuetted as she scrambled the eggs, cooking the bacon and slapped butter on the toast. She poured a large glass of orange juice and placed a small sprig of parsley on the plate next to the eggs. She set a small vase with a single red carnation in it on the corner of the bright purple lap tray and smiled brightly.

"This'll cheer him up!" she crowed and picked up the tray, balancing carefully despite her happy, light step.

She knocked loudly on his bedroom door and crooned, "Oh Puddin', your Harley made you breakfast!" There was an indistinct mutter with a vague rude tone to it but she couldn't make out any words. She cracked the door open and peered in. "What was that, Mistah J? I couldn't hear what ya said."

She stepped the rest of the way in and stared in shock.

He looked horrible. The eyes, normally bright and clear, were red-rimmed and teary-looking. The cheeks were abnormally flushed and the blankets were pulled up to his chin. Shaky hands held the edge of the blanket and the attitude radiating from him clearly screamed, "I'm sick."

"Oh, Master Bruce," sighed Alfred, setting the tray on the bedside table.

"Oh, Puddin'," sighed Harley, dropping the tray after grabbing the orange juice and ignoring the horrible clatter the tray made. "You're going to need this." She held out the orange juice, only to have it snatched from her hand and tossed back at her. She dodged but the juice still splattered onto her.

"Watch it, Mistah J.!" she exclaimed. "It's the only costume I have left in one peice!"

"Da bad did dis do me," snuffled the Joker, glaring at her. "Dere mus' be dum new drick in his udilidee beld."

Harley stared at him a moment, trying to translate. Then the lightbulb turned on. "Oh! The bat did this to you and there must be some new trick in his utility belt!"

"I said dat," glared the Joker. "Go away. I don' feel good."

"Oh, my poor puddin'," cooed Harley, slipping onto the bed. "Let your Harley make you feel all better."

The Joker responded by shoving her off the bed and burrowing under the covers even further. All that was poking out was a pair of green eyes and a bush of green hair.

Harley peered up at him over the edge of the bed. "Why would the Bat's stuff only affect you?" she asked him reasonably. "Maybe you have a cold?"

"I never feld dis bad before and I know what a cold is, Harley!" shouted the Joker, his voice muffled by the faded comforter. "Dis ain'd id," he grumbled more sedately.

Harley thought a moment. "I'll go get you some cough syrup." She bounded up from her spot on the floor and dashed out the door of his bedroom.

"Nice kid," the Joker muttered to himself, "bud missing a few bads in the belfry."

Alfred shook the thermometer and shoved it in Bruce Wayne's mouth. Bruce grimaced at being treated like a child but made no move to protest his treatment. He'd learned a long time ago that when you were sick and Alfred was in the vicinity, you shut up, followed orders and ate and drank what was put in front of you.

"One hundred and one, Master Bruce," Alfred tut-tutted. He shook his head. "Too many late, cold nights, I'd imagine." Bruce made no comment but watched trepidatiously as a spoonful of nasty-tasting home remedy cough medicine came toward his mouth. He opened, allowed the spoon into his mouth, and swallowed the medicine.

"Ack!" he coughed. "Id's worse than I rememeber!"

Alfred glared at him. "If you would stay indoors during inclement weather like anyone else, you wouldn't be in this position."

"Yeah, yeah," grumbled Bruce, burrowing back under his heavy blankets and quilt. "Can I sleep now?"

"You may," Alfred said, correcting Bruce's language. Bruce grimaced under the refuge of the blankets. "I shall call Mr. Fox and inform him that you will be unable to attend the meeting due having caught a cold." Alfred set the cough syrup down on the bedside table and checked his watch. "I shall also call Dr. Leslie to inform her that you are ill. She may wish to stop by and see how you are feeling."

Bruce made another face. If there was anything worse than Alfred when he was sick, it was Dr. Leslie Thompkins. A fellow doctor like his father had been, Leslie had helped Alfred raise the orphaned Bruce after his parents had been killed. She ran a health clinic for the low-incomed in Crime Alley, a very bad neighborhood of Gotham City. She had taken Bruce's welfare to heart and considered his health as much her responsibility as it would have been Dr. Thomas Wayne's, had he lived.

The thought of the medications he'd be sucking down with Leslie turned loose on him made Bruce shudder. Maybe he should have let the Joker finish him off last night after all....

The thought faded away as Bruce jolted straight up in the bed.

The Joker!

Harley had returned with an armful of medicines and groceries two hours later. The Joker had heard her enter and had fallen back asleep. He was a great part of his dream, where the Batman was begging for his life with a high-pitched whine, when the lights were rudely turned on and Harley slammed a tray full of stuff next to his head on the bedside table.

"Haaarrrllleeeyyy," he snarled, jerking to an upright position.

"I found some stuff to make you aaaallll better!" Harley crooned sympathetically. She took advantage of the Joker's open mouth to shove a digital thermometer in his mouth. He automatically shut his mouth and a few moments later, the thermometer beeped. She jerked it out of his mouth and peered at it with a serious expression.

"Hmmm. One hundred and one, Mistah J, not good." She shook her head matronly at him and began picking up the different bottles on the tray until she found the one she wanted. She shook two small white pills onto her glove and handed him a glass of orange juice. "Here, take these." He reluctantly did so, eyeing her warily as she poured out a spoonful of purple gunk that he supposed passed as cough syrup. "Open for the choo-choo!"

He opened his mouth resignedly as the "choo-choo" spoon chugged it's way to his mouth. She shoved it in, tipped it so the syrup ran into his mouth and then pulled the spoon out, chipping a tooth in the process. He started to howl with pain but choked on the syrup instead. He started coughing, trying to suck in air.

Harley, not knowing what the problem was, tut-tutted and poured another spoonful, shoving it into his open mouth just when he'd managed to suck in some air. The Joker hacked and choked some more and then pulled the covers over his head.

"No more," he snapped.

She shrugged. "They last four to six hours apeice. I'll be back. I need to divert the cops."

The Joker bolted upright in his bed again. "The cops," he shrieked.

Harley smiled and patted his cheek in a motherly gesture. "You have all the money hidden, Puddin'," she cooed at him with a pitiful tone, "so I had to," she giggled, "convince the pharmacists to let me have what I need to make my Puddin' all better!"

She bounced out of the room with a distracting hip wiggle, leaving the Joker to mull over the whims of Fate.

"Blasted girl!" he muttered, punching the pillow in agitation and ejecting several feathers in the process. "She probably led the Bat straight here and now he's going to make sure I go back to Arkham and take even more nasty medications...." His voice trailed off and the green eyes widened.

"I KNEW IT!" he screamed and stumbled to his door, wrapped from head to toe in his ragged comforter.

Alfred went to check on his patient and found his patient missing from his bed. With a heavy frown, Alfred made his way down to the Batcave, prepared to blister his employer's ears for a week.

There, wrapped in thermal long johns and shirt, his feet encased in two pairs of wool socks and wrapped head to toe in two quilts was Bruce Wayne, tapping away on the keyboard with hands encased in gloves.

"I need a heeder in here, Alfred," Bruce said distractedly and in a nasally tone, still typing. Alfred merely tapped his foot in irritation.

"You need your head checked, Master Bruce."

Bruce tore his gaze from the computer screen to glance guiltily at Alfred's peeved expression. "I dink the Joker managed to infecd me with someding," he murmured, feeling like a disobedient eight year old.

"Or you have the common cold, bordering on the flu bug currently making the rounds," Alfred informed him. "Dr. Leslie called about an hour ago. She said she'd come see you but she's swamped with people who have the same symptoms as you do. Therefore, I have instructions to make sure you stay warm and in bed." The last words were emphasized and Bruce suppressed a wince. If he'd been twenty years younger he'd have been in a lot of trouble.

"Id's doo much of a coincidence, Alfred," Bruce stated, clutching the quilts closer and trying not to shiver. "The Joker had some sord of new gas in dat warehouse. I'm wondering if maybe I didn' get doo close."

Alfred watched the trickle of sweat run down the side of Bruce's face with lips pursed like he'd just eaten a lemon. "I'm sure you are just imagining things, young man." The tone turned sharp. "You will march yourself straight upstairs and climb back into that bed or you'll be doing your own laundry for a month."

It took more badgering and bullying but Alfred finally managed to get Bruce back upstairs and into his bed. Not for the first time in his years as Bruce Wayne's friend and guardian did he wish the room had a lock on it that Bruce couldn't pick.

Harley was having even more trouble with the Joker. After luring the cops to another part of town, Harley scurried back to the old Laugh Factory improvisation comedy club, defunct now for two years, since the Joker gassed the place and killed everyone in it. It had been condemned by the city and the Joker had immediately taken up residence with his crew once the Joker venom gas cleared.

She had found the Joker leaning over the laptop computer that she had gotten him for their anniversary, muttering about the evils of vigilantes and how "there should be a law against dem in dis burg".

Harley had begged, pleaded, conjoled, seduced and whined to get him back in his bed, to no avail. He seemed determined to prove that the Batman had made him sick on purpose.

"If he can'd kill me wid his own hands and not feel guildy," he had crowed hoarsely, "he'll do id using a deadly flu bug dat way his conscious can remain clear!" The Joker had tossed Harley aside and feverishly began searching the internet for information on deadly flues.

After three hours of being shoved, smacked, hollered at and ignored, Harley gave up. "Fine," she snapped through a swollen lip where the Joker had casually backhanded her when she had tried tugging him from his seat. "If you die, I'll let Bud and Lou eat you for dinner!" With a dejected wail of self-pity, Harley flounced over to her couch and lay down, weeping as quietly as she could.

If she'd been sobbing loudly the Joker could have ignored her. Her quiet sobs of despair and her murmurs about how her caring enough to make him a well man again were starting to make the Joker actually feel guilty.

At first he tried blocking them out. He couldn't. Then he tried muttering to himself to block it. Didn't work either. Finally he couldn't help but glance at the red and black dejected form huddled on the couch, back to him, whimpering. He kept shooting furtive glances her way and then with a resigned sigh, he stood up and walked back to his bedroom, dragging his comforter behind him.

"Okay, you can coddle me undil I'm well," the Joker said with a resigned sigh. He could almost hear Harley perk up and she was at his side within a second. She ushered him back to his bed, rearranged his covers and tucked him in like a child. She poured more syrup down his throat and gave him a lemon drop for his throat. She tutted and cooed at him in what she obviously thought were soothing tones until he finally went to sleep out of self-defense.

Alfred drug the unconscious form of Bruce Wayne up the stairs, no easy task for the elderly gentleman, but he managed it fairly well. He'd had to badger Bruce into taking a cough syrup that Alfred had liberally and secretively laced with a sedative. Within five minutes Bruce was out cold.

Satisfied with his work, Alfred tucked the covers under Bruce's chin, made sure the belts were tight around the bed and Bruce's body and shut the lights off. 'That should hold him,' thought Alfred.

A week later both the Batman and the Joker could be seen prowling the streets, looking for one another. It seemed to everyone that the two adversaries were nursing one heck of a grudge against the other.

The Joker, feeling that Mayor Hill needed to again be the unwitting victim in another scheme, hijacked the mayor's limosuine on the way back from some charity banquet. Within hours, the Batsignal lit the sky.

Harley showed up at a local biker bar and left a note with the bartender "to give to the Batman should he arrive". The Batman smashed his way into the bar two hours later and was given his missive by the bleeding bartender.

"Make me sick, will he?" bellowed the Joker. "The most horrible few days of my life!"

Harley winced at the shout and studiously avoided the Joker's glare. "Did you have to empty all the bottles into my system?" he roared.

"But, Puddin'," Harley defended herself, scurrying behind the tank of Enhanced Joker Venom that the Joker was getting ready to release into the Gotham Sewage and Water System. "You got better and are feeling quite fit."

The Joker paused in his tirade and thought a moment. Beaming a smile, he held his arms out to Harley, who scurried into them joyfully. He picked her up and she gave a blissful squeak.

"Have I mentioned," he asked pleasantly, "how much I hate lemon drops?" He lifted her above the huge tank of venom and she screamed in horror.

"Put her down, Joker."

The purple-clad clown turned in pleased surprise and tossed Harley aside like a ragdoll. "So my tricky bat-fiend comes to call!" The Joker seemed delighted.

The Batman and the Joker faced each other squarely and the fight began.

Mayor Hill swore that it was like watching a grudge match. The Joker had a gleam of vengeance in his eyes and the Batman seemed to actually enjoy each hit that solidly connected with the Joker's nose. Harley squeaked and squealed, booed and hissed at the appropriate moments, but made no move to interfere with the fight.

The inevitable outcome happened and the Joker collapsed into a heap on the floor. Harley immediately spun around and sprinted for the back door. Batman, for once, let her go.

He disarmed the triggering mechanism that would pour the whole tank into the sewer/water system and untied the mayor from his perch above the boiling tank of green chemical.

"How are you?" asked the Batman in concern as the mayor rubbed his arms where the ropes had dug in.

"Oh, I'm fine. Better than I was last time. That flu bug I had really had me out of it." Hill rubbed his temples a moment to ease the tension. "I was so doped up on medications that I missed most of what the Joker was doing last time." He stopped when he noticed the Batman staring at him. "Did I say something wrong?"

"You had the flu?" Batman asked.

"Yes, nasty little strain too. Highly contagious, I understand. Everyone's had it, I should think." Mayor Hill peered closely at the Batman. "Why?"

"The Joker mentioned something in his tirade about me making him sick."

"Er, yes, he did," said Hill, not sure where this was going.

"I've been sick the past few days myself."

It dawned on Hill where this was going. "Oh dear."

"I thought the Joker had some new venom."

"Oh dear," Hill repeated, smothering a laugh quite well.

"You gave us the flu."

"Yes," coughed the mayor around his laughter, "I suppose I may have."

Batman merely sighed. "Let's get you home."

"Excellent idea," snickered Hill, unable to contain his amusement any longer. Batman studiously ignored him.

The sun came out again a week later and spring began to warm up the atmosphere. Having dropped off Bruce Wayne at a board meeting, Alfred Pennyworth had grabbed a cup of latte and settled on a park bench close to the small lake where three geese were currently swimming.

A petite blonde with horn-rimmed glasses perched on her nose was reading a sheaf of papers. Her clothing was conservatinve and straight-laced. She was very pretty and when she glanced up at Alfred, he smiled at her.

"Hello," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to stare."

"That's all right," she replied, putting the papers down beside her. A quick glance told Alfred they were medical records. "I was just trying to enjoy the sunshine while it was here."

"You surely don't think winter's got one more bite, do you?" asked Alfred casually.

She shrugged delicately. "It's possible. Maybe not in weather."

"Ah," said Alfred, nodding wisely, "you mean this horrible flu strain that's been making the rounds."

"I had a friend with it," she said with a wry smile. "He was not a very good patient."

Alfred nodded in commiseration. "My employer too had the flu and he was the world's worst patient."

She gave a soft laugh. "It was nice talking to you, Mister -?" She tipped her head to one side in inquiry.

"Pennyworth, madam, Alfred Pennyworth." Alfred stood up respectfully when she rose to her feet.

"Dr. Quinzel," the blonde smiled at his gallant manner. "Have a nice day, Mr. Pennyworth."

Alfred watched in stupefication as the blonde known in a red and black harlequin costume as Harley Quinn sauntered away with her medical papers tucked under her arm.

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