Batman no mans land, p.23
Batman: No Man's Land, page 23
When spring came he decided it was time to give the whole asylum a good cleaning, and so, with bucket and mop and hacksaw, he began scrubbing and polishing and cutting, trying to bring some glory and life back to the old place. When he heard the singing, he just paused in his sawing and, being who he was, completely ignored it.
Later that night, though, sleeping comfortably with the opossum beneath Dr. Arkham’s big oak desk, he heard it again. This time, though, he was certain it wasn’t himself who was singing, and after some investigation, tracked the noise to the nearest air duct.
It was a girl’s voice.
Intrigued, Joker searched Arkham for the source. The singing continued off and on as he looked, the tune changing randomly. Sometimes it was a ditty from Sesame Street, other times it was songs he remembered from the radio. His favorite was when the voice sang Bugs Bunny’s part from “The Rabbit of Seville.”
It had taken him three days of looking before he thought he’d located the source—a door he’d never noticed before off the boiler room, with a fallout shelter sign faded and broken above it.
Being the gentleman he was, he knocked.
“Who is it?” the girl’s voice trilled back.
“Land shark,” he said.
“Don’t want any,” the girl answered, and the singing resumed.
Fair enough, Joker thought, and he headed back up the stairs and spent much of the next week contenting himself by moving all of the furniture from the offices into the cells and all the furniture from the cells into the offices, and by the time he’d finished he’d quite forgotten entirely about the girl. His next project was to try to build a Bat—Signal with which he could summon the one person in the world he most wanted to see, but halfway through the construction he got distracted and instead threw together what looked more like a bastardized version of Michelangelo’s David, only this time more anatomically correct.
He’d been sleeping in one of the storage closets when he heard the singing again, and this time it was loud enough to wake him, and it was Billy Ray Cyrus to boot.
Putting his mouth to the duct, he shouted, “Knock it off!”
There was a very brief and merciful silence, and then the girl shouted back, “Make me!”
And then she started singing again.
Joker laughed and laughed and laughed, and decided he was going to rip her throat out and feed it to her. He got himself the fire ax from the wall and marched straight to the boiler room and began whacking away at the door. The singing continued and he whacked away in time with the beat and then, finally, the door had snapped open and he hoisted the ax over his head.
“I’ll achy-breaky your heart!” he screamed into the darkness of the room. “I hate country music! It’s not funny!”
Then he lowered the ax again because the singing had stopped. He peered inside, seeing nothing. Absolutely pitch black in there.
And phew, did it stink. Bad. Like, really bad, like things had died in there and maybe someone had been using the space as a bathroom, too, for a really really really long time.
Then the girl came out, blinking rapidly, squinting against even the faint light of the basement. She was blond and pretty—well, Joker supposed she was pretty, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder, after all—and kind of short and just filthy, head to toe. He recognized her from his therapy sessions, though she looked different now that she wasn’t crying or weeping or wailing about how ol’ Dr. Arkham was going to keep them apart. She had on a doctor’s jacket, and on the jacket was a nametag.
Dr. Harleen Quinzel.
Joker almost bust a gut laughing, because it was just too perfect. His own doctor Harley Quinn, how could he not like a broad with a name like that? And here she was, after oh so long, still in the asylum. His own doctor, and she had stayed behind just to be with him.
She squinted up at him, then looked over her shoulder, back into the fallout shelter where she’d undoubtedly been living for months.
“Saved,” she said suddenly, and then, much to Joker’s surprise and consternation, she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his head, heedless of the ax in his hands. She kissed him, giving Joker a big blast of the stink from her body, the smell of waste that had accumulated in the stale air for so many months. Her tongue pushed past his lips like a quick slug, and she even rubbed herself against him in a manner he wasn’t quite sure he didn’t entirely dislike until finally he had to pry her away and toss her to the ground.
He menaced her with the ax. “Do that again and I’ll split you in two, Harley.”
She’d gazed up at him like a puppy, panting. “Whatever you say, Puddin’.”
And that had been the start of it.
* * * * *
That had also been four months ago now, and Joker still didn’t know what to make of her. Sure, she cleaned up all right, and she’d even gone so far as to make herself an outfit—well, more precisely, she had made herself several outfits, but cheerleaders and nuns didn’t do much for him—but this one was good; this one made her look like, well, a harlequin. At times, he was almost in awe of her; she was so darn peppy and full of energy and sometimes even funny. But she was also sprung, totally bent, and he wasn’t certain he liked that.
When she’d been Dr. Harleen Quinzel, when she’d been trying to cure Joker of his madness, she’d seemed much saner. He’d had to work very hard just to get the edges of her psyche to crack during their sessions, and even when she had sworn her undying love in the weeks after the Cataclysm, Joker still hadn’t been certain she wasn’t trying to play games with him.
Now he knew.
The broad was bonkers.
Joker would have been delighted with his handiwork if she wasn’t so damned annoying.
Worse, the more he abused her, the more she kept coming back. He’d even set fire to her hair at one point during the hottest day of summer and she had shrieked and run around the room until finally remembering to stop, drop, and roll. When the fire had been out she’d sat up and looked at him adoringly.
“Thanks,” she’d said. “Needed a trim, didn’t I?”
The next morning she’d made herself a headpiece for her little costume, complete with dangly bits and bells on the ends.
Joker supposed he could kill her, but each time he considered doing it something made him change his mind. Perhaps the nagging suspicion that she would thank him for doing that too, and what the hell was the point of murder if the victim didn’t get the ultimate joke anyway? No, better to let her be, annoying as she was. Maybe she’d turn out useful.
Of course, she hadn’t yet. She was still just plain old annoying.
He watched her work through another sequence of nips and jumps and kicks, punching at the air and crying, “Aiee!” and “Peanuts!” and sometimes “Oatmeal this!”
“Harl,” he said at length. “What are you doing?”
She stopped, panting for breath, gazing at him beatifically. “Practicing, Mr. J.”
“For?”
“The Ratman, Puddin’! You know he’s out there somewhere. Sooner or later we’re gonna go and get him.”
Joker flew off the steps and grabbed Harley by the throat, driving her into the ground and then pinning her with his body. Harley’s eyes bulged slightly as he tightened his grip.
“WE?” he demanded. “Did I hear you just say WE?”
She shook her head.
Joker let go, sitting back. Harley needed an extra couple of seconds before she could sit up, too, coughing slightly. Then she tried to nuzzle the back of his neck.
“Batman,” Joker said. “You know, he hasn’t been to see us?”
“Uh-huh,” Quinn murmured, nibbling on Joker’s collar.
“That’s just darn rude, really, that’s what that is. Not coming to see us. After all the trouble I’ve gone through to make this place presentable, not even so much as a note, not a card, not even a telegram. Not even a smoke signal.” He squinted at the horizon, feeling Harley moving around behind him, wrapping her arms about his middle. “See, look. No smoke.”
“No smoke,” she murmured in his ear, then licked his jaw.
He frowned, punched her lightly in the face, and went back to staring at the city below them. Then he sprang to his feet and began marching purposefully toward the front gates. Halfway there he stopped, looking back to see Quinn still sitting on the ground, staring after him mournfully.
“Well?” he demanded. “What are you waiting for? You’re the one who keeps saying I never take you anywhere!”
She bounded after him, and together they descended into the No Man’s Land.
THIRTY-ONE
THE BOY WONDERED HOW LONG HE WAS going to sit on this rooftop, waiting for Batman to finally show up, trying to keep the resentment from taking hold. It wasn’t easy. He’d come a long way in response to a single request, an E-mail from Oracle on his computer back in Keystone City, a message saying, simply, “Tim—he wants you to meet him, Labor Day, warehouse at the corner of Moench and Hama, sunset.”
Tim Drake hadn’t hesitated, dashing off a response saying that he was on his way, and then he’d lied to his father about taking a road trip to New York with two of his friends, Tony and Mike. Tim’s father, delighted to hear that his son had actually succeeded in making friends in their new hometown, had agreed without reservation. It had taken slightly more manipulations to get Tony and Mike to cover for him—a story about the girlfriend he’d left behind when he moved out of Gotham, the girl who now lived in New York, that he just had to see, but the boys understood that. He was covered.
Getting through the blockade, that had been harder. Dodging the National Guard patrols on the far shore, then scaling the underside of the Brown Bridge, avoiding the mines until he’d reached the broken center. He wore his work clothes by then, in full Robin mode, and had used the grapnel to swing across. At the lowest point of the swing, he’d felt his cape brushing the water, could swear he’d seen the mines floating in the Gotham River below him. He’d nearly fallen from the wet spars upon landing, pulling the muscle along his shoulder trying to keep from taking the tumble. But he had done it, he had done what Batman asked, and he had been on the warehouse roof even before the sun had begun to set.
Now it was dark, and there was no sign of the man.
“He could at least be prompt,” he muttered to himself.
“Why change a pattern?” Nightwing said from behind him. Robin turned to see Nightwing’s patented smirk, breaking into a grin. “Dude! How long you been listening to me mutter?”
“Dude. About twenty seconds, tops, I swear. How you been, Tim?”
“Can’t complain, or more fairly, I shouldn’t complain. But I’ve been waiting for this, man. Been hoping he’d call.”
Nightwing nodded, the smirk now gone. “Me too.”
“What took him so long?”
“Who knows? You know how he is. Tells us to stay out of Gotham, out of his way, vanishes for months. Then he has Oracle call and he expects us to come running.”
“And we do.”
“And we do,” Nightwing agreed. “He’ll tell us what he wants when he’s ready.”
“If he shows up.”
“He’ll show.”
“I already have,” Batman said from behind them.
Robin saw Nightwing frown.
“Glad you both made it,” Batman said. “Robin?”
“Yes, sir?” Robin said, straightening. He wanted to say he was glad to see him, too, that he was glad to be there. He wanted to say a lot of things, actually, but Batman’s look was dark and focused, and Robin thought it might be better to wait.
“Head to the Clock Tower, wait with Oracle. Nightwing and I will join you shortly.”
“So that’s how we’re going to do this,” Nightwing muttered.
“Yes, sir,” Robin said.
“Nightwing, you’re with me,” Batman said, and then he turned and was off the roof in one swift move.
“Catch you later, Tim,” Nightwing said, following.
Robin sighed, watching them disappear into the rubble. Then he turned and made for the Clock Tower, as ordered.
* * * * *
The Black Maskers had left St. Vincent’s intact, and as she had every night since Two-Face had stolen their territory, Batgirl lit candles for the dead at the front of the ruined church. She went to her knees and prayed quickly, silently, for each of the men she had failed. Then she rose again and left, leaving the flickering lights burning behind her. The candles would be gone when she returned the next night, either burnt down to nothing or blown out and taken, but it was too much effort to sit and guard them, and it didn’t matter. God, she was certain, understood the sentiment, knew the gesture for what it was.
Batgirl worked her way south, through the darkness and silence, climbing rubble until she was back on the rooftops. She took her time, looking carefully and telling herself she was watching for trouble as much as for Batman. She saw no signs of either. It had been quiet in her sector for over a month now, most of the gangs long since having withdrawn. Billy Pettit and his Blue Boy defectors, now calling themselves the Strong Men, had taken over ten square blocks farther west and south from her position, and their brand of law had leaked into the surrounding neighborhoods, creating a buffer.
Pettit, she thought for a moment.
She had watched him and his crew working the streets earlier in the week, and she still wasn’t certain what she thought of them. The populace in their territory seemed to be doing very well indeed, safe and fed and protected. From what she’d heard, there were no troubles at all in his territory. The worst that she’d seen for herself was Pettit threatening to cut a boy’s hand off for stealing, a threat that had gotten the kid to return his ill-gotten goods without further protest.
At the old brownstone on Moldoff Avenue, above where Huntress had placed her tag on the side of the alley, Batgirl stopped and dropped off the roof, landing on the fire escape, then slipping through the window into her apartment. The building had endured the quake with little damage, and no one had dared to approach it since the No Man’s Land for fear of feeling the bite of one of Huntress’s crossbow bolts.
She stopped to light another candle inside, the sole source of illumination, then stepped back and pulled the cowl from her face, breathing in the air, heavy with the sudden burst of smoke and burning wax. Cowl in her hands, she stared into its empty eyes for a moment, feeling the thickness of the material that covered the lower part of the mask.
“Heavier than you thought it would be,” Batman said.
She whirled and there he was, standing in the corner as if he owned the whole apartment. Beside him, draped over the back of the couch, was her Huntress costume, laid out carefully and not where she herself had put it before heading out. It was a statement, and one that she thought was unnecessary, and she felt heat rising in her cheeks at the implicit humiliation.
Not only did he know, the exposed costume seemed to shout, he had always known.
From the doorway to the kitchen she heard the other voice, the one she’d spent too much time and energy dreaming of hearing again. “Helena,” Nightwing said.
She felt the heat in her ears now, and for a moment she was grateful for the light of the candle and the protection it offered. At least they couldn’t see her clearly, she thought.
And then she remembered Batman’s cowl and how her own masks never worked quite right. They had NVG that worked, and she knew they both were seeing every thing, every detail, and that there was nowhere to hide.
And no point.
Helena Bertinelli felt her heart racing in her chest and she tried to keep her voice soft as she said, “What now?”
“Six people are dead,” Batman said, coming forward slowly. “My fault a much as yours, Huntress.”
She swallowed, trying to find her voice. She wished the heat would stop. She wished she didn’t feel like hiding.
“You want to keep that cowl?” Batman asked. “I have to be able to trust you. I have to know that you’ll follow orders, that you’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
“I tried—” she began.
“Trying isn’t enough. You were to stop Black Mask and his cult out of sight of the Clock Tower. Barring that, you were not to be seen. You failed. I told you to protect our territory, our people, but Two-Face now holds that land. And six more bodies are in the ground.”
The heat snapped suddenly hotter, and she realized the cowl was still in her hands, that she was twisting it tighter and tighter. With sudden rage she hurled it at him, and of course he caught it as if he’d known she would do that all along. It only made her angrier.
“And you blame me!” she spat.
“No. I hold you responsible. As I hold myself.”
“You think I don’t know what happened? You think I can just forget they’re dead?” She was moving forward, getting in his face, her voice rising. “You think I can sleep at night? For three months before you got here I fought for this city, I fought as the Bat because somebody had to! And for three months since Two-Face played us all as fools you’ve ignored me, avoided me, punished me! You think I don’t know it’s my fault, Batman? Do you really think I don’t know? There were sixty, seventy of Two-Face’s men there, dammit! What was I supposed to do?”
She felt the movement behind her, Nightwing coming closer, and she shut her eyes, hearing Batman’s response.
“More,” the Dark Knight said simply.
She almost laughed.
“You lack discipline. You lack control. You’re too emotional. If you want to remain with me—with us—you’ll have to fall into line, otherwise you’re out. That’s the way it has to be from now on. With us, or alone.”
Helena glared at him, feeling a new humiliation. With us with me and Nightwing and Oracle and the rest, and of course he knew, he knew what had happened in this same apartment over a year ago, and that was why Nightwing was there. So he could see, too, so Batman could show his prodigal son the mistake that had been made, how unworthy she was of him.
