Author's Note: First and foremost, I have to thank a lovely lady named TitansGirl1234 for helping me with this story. She had been nothing but supportive and encouraging to me and I dedicate this story to her. Thanks so much!
Secondly, I do have the entirety of the poem "O Me, O Life!" by Walt Whitman in this story.
Thirdly, the title is inspired by the song "My Body" by Benny Benassi (funny story - every time I hear that song, I think of Harley Quinn and I just can't help but smile), and for no other reason than that. I really am terrible at names for my stories, and I just really like the phrase "pulling back my bow".
Lastly, please be sure to review, and enjoy!
-Lady Angelic
"Where are we going?" Harley whined, dragging her feet behind him.
He scowled in response, letting an annoyed little huff escape his gritted teeth. They had been hiking for what seemed like forever. Through the back alleys and grimy streets that Gotham had to offer. He had crashed the car a couple hours back in what he had thought was a pretty impressive fireball through the mayor's office. It did, however, prove to be an ineffective way of escaping. It was fairly difficult to make a quick getaway, in fact, without a pair of wheels.
Ah, but it was so worth the fireball he reminded himself. Just remember it.
"Are we anywhere close to home yet?" She continued on, stomping rather childishly through a puddle. It splashed up in a slow-motion explosion, splattering across the backs of his pant legs.
He stopped abruptly, turning on her, catching her throat between his hands and raced her towards a wall, pinning her there. She let out a shriek of disapproval, mouth turned down at the edges.
"Cram it, Harl! If I have to hear another word of it, I'm going to cut one of your pigtails off of your stupid fucking head and feed it to Batman himself!" He barked, pushing his fist into her throat, causing her to gag, making a hideous noise.
He let her go, stepping away quickly and grumbling loudly about how obnoxious blonds could be.
She skulked behind him, keeping her distance for fear of his retaliation again. Several minutes passed before she said anything, her timid voice peeping up eventually.
"It's just that my feet hurt and I think we –"
"WOMAN!" He snarled, turning around and raising his fist to slam into her head if she were to say another word.
"I THINK WE'RE HOME!" She screamed back, terror peaking in her voice, making it crack around the edges.
He turned, and so be it, they were home. She pushed past him, hurrying inside to hide away from him for the next couple of days. He lowered his fist and followed her in, losing site of her rather quickly once they were inside.
He wandered inside, past broken boxes and fallen beams. He climbed into the "living room", complete with a whole, unbroken couch, several mysterious stains coating its fabric. He flopped onto it, kicking his feet up onto a makeshift coffee table. He sighed, sinking down deep into the cushions.
How he hated that woman sometimes. There were days he could just murder her. Quite literally. He could just lure her in with kisses, lower her guard, wrap his fingers around her neck and just squeeze until she… He smiled bitterly to himself. She would seriously have to crawl under his skin, create a small metropolis, blow it to smithereens, and dominate the crumbled city as a dictator under there to annoy him that bad.
He couldn't hardly be bothered to smother her most days. She wasn't worth the effort.
In fact, most days, his Harley Quinn wasn't worth the trouble she caused. Most days she just got in the way, and very seldom did she tend to lend him a hand. Even today, he thought, she was probably the reason the mission failed. She didn't speak up and tell him not to crash the car in an impressive fireball. Besides the shrieks of terror he was accustomed to hearing from her, she hadn't made a sound..
Now why was that? He pondered. Her half of the stunt went on without a flaw. She hadn't so much as tripped when pulling off her stunts. But it's like she gave up half way through the mission and crapped out on purpose.
He felt his blood begin to boil, and he stirred in his seat, agitated by the thought. He needed a cigarette, a thing he seldom needed. He stood, smearing his greasepaint across the back of his hand, and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. He stalked into the kitchen, rummaging through a couple drawers for a lighter and snatched a carton off of the countertop. He pressed a stick of nicotine between his lips and lit up, taking a drag immediately. Exhaling, he watched the smoke curl up around his face, lost for a moment in the fog of grey.
It was like she was purposefully trying to make him look bad. She'd twirl her hair around her finger, bat her eyelashes and apologize, sure. But deep down she didn't mean it. He just knew. He could tell.
He took another drag from his cigarette, feeling more and more annoyed with each passing second. Who would this bitch be without me? I made her the way she is. I broke her from her humanity and freed her from civility. She can't just fucking double cross me.
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. She was trying to strike out on her own, make her own name. He suddenly understood why she wanted to paint her name, her face across the town instead of just his. After everything he'd done for her! He gave her everything she had and he could fucking take it back whenever he wanted.
He paused mid-drag, turning on his heel as if to find her standing in the doorway, wearing nothing more than a teddy, twirling her hair in apology. He felt the furor rise inside of him, bracing himself to scream at her idiocy. He expected to see her leaning against the door jam, humming some obnoxious tune, trying to seduce him to distract him from her miserable failure.
He looked at the empty doorway and frowned, crumpling the end of the cigarette between his lips. He walked forward slowly, swearing he heard her voice around the corner. He peeked through the doorway, brow furrowed, frown slowly turning the edges of his lips down. She wasn't there.
He left the kitchen and crept towards the bedroom door. The anger was swelling inside of him. She was purposefully trying to ruin his name, smear it across the city in a mockery and serve him on a silver platter to the police commissioner and the Bats. He could swear on it by now. Everything she'd done, all of the mindless, stupid little-girl stunts she pulled with him: luring him away from his work at night, forcing him to go to eat and sleep and not devise a brilliant plan…
Always running out on him when he needed her most, disappearing for days only to come back to him in tears. He had always wondered what she did when he stormed out like that. Never before that moment had he really given it more than a fleeting thought. But now… he thought… she must have been spilling her guts to the police, squawking their secrets to anyone that would hear. She must have been selling him out. That's why everything he did failed. They knew his every move because that dumb blonde couldn't keep her trap shut.
She was trying to ruin him.
Or worse. There was another man, someone she valued greater than him. Him. Of all people, he was surely the greatest in her life. She was his only man, the only thing she should be concerned with. And he couldn't help but think that every time she left him, snuck out at night and disappeared, it was at the whim of another. She didn't have enough free will left in her to fill a thimble. Someone else, some other man, the idiot that he must be, was telling her what to do:
Ruin him. Crush his name, his reputation. Leave him in shambles.
He smashed through the bedroom door, no longer able to contain his anger inside of his veins, the wooden barrier splintering and cracking open. He heard her let out a squeal and leap behind the side of the bed, shielding herself from the oncoming attack. Perhaps she thought it was a SWAT team bursting into their humble abode. He forced the door open, practically tearing it from the hinges that barely held it to the doorjam, and turned his vision onto her small frame peering over the edge of the bed.
She started babbling instantly, worried she had done something to upset him, that her constant whining earlier had put him over the edge. She let out that burst of nervous giggles she did so well whenever he loomed over her, ready to strike.
He climbed through the doorway, ears filled the sound of his blood rushing through his veins, his vision swirling, blurred around the edges. How dare she try to be his downfall. As if she could even try. As if she had enough strength in her whole being to tear him down.
His mouth opened, teeth bared, tongue poised, lungs filled, heart pounding. And he exploded. His whole being erupted, flooding out of him and saturating the room in hatred. His brow pulled down low on his forehead, he stormed forward, tearing furniture from his path, screaming as he overturned the mattress between them and clambered over the mess he made.
He was sure his head would burst from the emotions alone. He hated her. He hated her so much he could kill her. Her arrogance, her stupidity to think she could get away with it. He slammed his fist into her, knocking her sideways and darting after her, a fistful of her hair yanking her back towards him. She was screaming, kicking, her hands around his, begging for him to let her go.
He didn't cease, hardly even blinked at her sobs. He screamed louder over her, unbridled anger, deep seated hatred towards all woman, all everything and anything to do with her. He dragged her down, knees clamping over her limbs, pinning her beneath him, a fist cracking into her cheek, erupting in sickeningly beautiful colors. He felt her breaking, splintering beneath his hands.
He had squelched the life from her body, ripped it viciously from the flesh it so lovingly animated. Her blue eyes faded to gray. She turned cold to him, stony in texture. He had surely stopped all breath from her throat and lungs, no longer heaving for air, drawing in deep the atmosphere around them, screaming for relief.
He smothered it from her. Every ounce of life she had once possessed, he had stolen, selfishly keeping what little control over her that he could.
He climbed from her lifeless form, wiping his face with the back of his hand, his sleeve, trembling, and stumbled backwards. His chest was bursting at the seams, rocking with air that stung. He sunk down against the wall opposite of her. She lay, crumpled in a heap of limbs and blond hair and clothes, bent and broken.
And he felt empty.
Empty to the point it ached. His ribs felt like they had shattered. Something deep inside of his chest stirred, reared up and gasped for breath. He hurt so profoundly it numbed his mind. His anger seeped from him, as if rolling from his mouth with his breath and settling on the floor around him. He felt relieved of all emotions and felt himself fading into the wall behind him… And it hurt more than anything he had ever known. More than his mother's death. More than his scars, or his failures…
His vision blurred, unfocused. He sat staring at her for hours, and she didn't even twitch. Her chest never trembled with life. Her eyes never fluttered back open. She didn't stir. His Harley Quinn…
He forced it from his thoughts and pushed through it.
He raised himself to his feet, shuffled out of their room, hands catching the doorway, the hallway wall, a chair for support. Why weren't his legs working? Wandering, he made it into the living room again, the dawn breaking through the window in little rays, pouring through the dust-filled air. He sat with full weight into the couch, the dust swirling into the light's rays…
The pain didn't cease. It spread from his chest to his limbs and his whole body was pained, overwhelming his nerves. He breathed in, wincing as his chest filled with air. It felt unnatural to breathe.
Days past, he thought. Possibly weeks. His henchmen never bothered to stop by, see if he was alive, what needed to be done. They were useless bags of flesh and organs, better off sent to the meat grinder than living.
He didn't move, mocking the corpse that was rotting 50 feet away, behind several walls. He sat perfectly still, slumped onto the armrest of the couch, pained to the point he wished for death to come to him, eyes fixed and unblinking at the dust that danced in the light of the day.
…It all blurred together. Their movement, the shapes they made… the careless way they flitted about, wildly moving with the breath he pulled in and out…
O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
He could have sworn he heard her footsteps, the light pattering of her bare feet darting through the hallway, dancing into the kitchen. He could hear her burst of giggles, like she had fooled him and he was unaware of her hiding spot. He could smell her sweat scent, of gunpowder and gasoline and nail polish, as she rushed past him. The dust swirled in front of him, and he closed his eyes.
Her blue ones met him in there. Worried, sad, turned up eyebrows, her cooing voice soothing him from his worries. He could feel her hand on his skin, smoothing away the wrinkles and mistakes he swore read like Braille on his skin.
She would take his face between her small hands, plant kisses across his cheeks, press her forehead to his, and smile, giggling quietly whenever she paused.
He felt the hurt in his chest heave, threatening to pull the skin apart as it swelled.
He opened his eyes, annoyed with the images playing on repeat on the insides of his eyelids. He stirred, rolling forward and pulling himself to his feet, one hand placed around his ribs, feeling to see if he had broken one. Her shirt was laying on the floor in the corner, where she must had left it weeks ago. He walked forward, plucked it from the dirty floor, and held it between his hands, letting the material run through his hands like liquid.
He closed his eyes for a moment longer, savoring the texture of the material on his fingers.
"What're you doing?"
He turned, blinking hard, and saw her standing in the hallway. She looked confused, and was pointing to her shirt between his hands.
"That's my shirt." She stated, walking towards him and taking it from him. He let her take it, stilled again in silence. His face flushed and his throat seemed to dry out. He smacked his lips, coughing lightly and reached out to her.
He expected his hand to go right through her, dissipating the smoke she was surely made of. He expected her colors to run, twirl into the dust and drift away with his breath.
His hand met her chest, hard sternum covered in soft skin. Warm. Her heat beating beneath it, full of life and blood and movement. She turned her head, concerned for a moment what he was doing. He was never so gentle with her. He, never before, had touched her like she might break with the slightest prodding.
He closed his eyes, breathed in deep, smelt the gasoline and gunpowder and nail polish, saw her dancing their on his eyelids, and opened them again. She hadn't moved. She was real. As real as the rest of the world around him.
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
And he laughed, overwhelmed to the point of bursting again.