Harley didn't know how long she'd been hanging here. She was left dangling, shins barely brushing the ground, arms tied with ropes to two metal bars so far apart the strain on her back and shoulders was agonising. She had just returned to consciousness, and instantly regretted it.
'Let me die,' she thought, surprisingly resolute. She was alone. So completely alone. And in pain. The pain was too much for her now. She was defeated.
As soon as her vision had blurred back into focus she wished, with every fibre of her being, that she had slipped deeper into that painless darkness that had overcome her when the last blow to her head had knocked her clean out.
She could feel her face was swollen badly, she could barely see out of her left eye, and the right side of her face throbbed where a punch had landed so forcefully it had knocked out a tooth. Her ribs ached and it hurt to draw her short, ragged breaths, so she assumed at least 3 were broken.
In the distance, down the hall, outside the heavy metal doors, Harley could hear cackling laughter and heavy footsteps pounding ominously towards the room where she was suspended. Her stomach filled with icy snakes and she struggled weakly against her bonds. They were coming.
In came at least 5 men, swaggering, swearing and spitting. They were laughing, and reeked of alcohol. They were Joker's men. Hired thugs – hulking, aggressive beasts of men, without the intelligence to question orders - just the way Joker liked them. They stood around, nudging each other, leering at Harley as she hung in the semi-darkness. They knew better than to touch her, without Joker's go-ahead first, however and a tense atmosphere of anticipation settled over them. They were smiling and snarling like hyenas, the tension in her room was oppressive, and Harley felt as though she would vomit.
Finally, a lighter step could be heard approaching from the connecting corridor, and Joker appeared silhouetted in the doorway for a moment. He surveyed the scene with his gleaming eyes, his constant smile grew wider as he saw his men assembled before his harlequin.
His. The little bitch needed reminded of exactly who she belonged to. Joker was sick and tired of watching his Clown Princess crawling around the alleys and back-streets of Gotham, with the plant-whore. She was next. Joker would get to her later, but first, there was a certain Harley Quinn that needed taught a lesson.
"Harley, Harley, Harley," he tutted, strolling towards the limp form of his once-dedicated lover, "You've disappointed me. I thought you knew better, you stupid girl. Nobody crosses the Joker."
Harley raised her head and looked into Joker's eyes, where the spark of insanity danced.
"Puddin'," she breathed, begging in that single word, pleading with her master to let her be. Joker landed a backhanded slap across her face instead.
"Don't speak to me, bitch. Know your place. I've had enough of your embarrassing escapades with that Poison Oak, or whatever her damn name is. You're a fucking disgrace. And I'm going to let my boys here teach you a lesson, to remind you that your place is here, with me, at my side. In chains if need be but you'll damn well stay when I tell you!" Joker was screaming and cackling by the end of his furious speech, signalling his brutes to let Harley onto the floor.
She dropped with a thud, as though made of lead. All her usual grace and balance had been knocked out of her hours ago. Only tired, desperate resistance remained. Like a fox that had hit a dead end and turned to fight the dogs that hounded it, before it was torn to pieces. Two of the thugs held and twisted her arms as she struggled, until her useless squirming stopped, and the weakened harlequin gasped for breath.
"I want you to humiliate her, ruin her, scar her. But do not kill her, or I'll see to it that whatever you do to her, happens to you, only much worse," Joker threatened the leading goon before turning and striding out the room, singing quietly to himself as he went.
The hired thugs guffawed and groped at Harley, hands gripping her hair tightly, others roughly palming her breasts, pinching her ass to make her squeal. Eventually the leader or the group emerged from the faceless horde of intruding hands and spat on the floor before gesturing to his men to restrain Harley.
"Hold the little slut down. You two, I said hold her!" he barked, and his men shuffled to obey, pulling Harley this way and that. Harley lashed out, but her movements were slow and heavy, and her light feminine slap made no difference to the huge man trying to restrain her.
"You," he pointed to a giant man of at least 7 feet, with no hair and tattoos everywhere, "and you, you're first." The second man was smaller but stockier, with a patchy beard and a pig-like snout for a nose. The other members of Joker's gang slapped backs and made crude comments as the two men tossed a coin over which end they were getting. Harley thought she was going to pass out again and welcomed the dark rest that was just out of reach at her peripherals.
She screamed, when the cold blade of a knife slid slowly up her spine, slicing her suit off in one slick motion. Her mask had been removed hours before, during the first round of beatings, and so she was completely exposed. She gagged, horrified, when the giant brute of a man knelt in front of her face, his enormous erection already evident. 'I'm going to choke to death, on his cock,' a hysterical voice whined desperately inside her hazy thoughts. She decided to jam her jaws shut and not allow his cock into her mouth. However, he rammed it between her teeth as she drew a breath to scream as the second man thrust roughly into her unprepared pussy from behind. She couldn't make a sound through her mouthful of the huge man's hot and hard dick, although small whimpers and groans of pain and humiliation sometimes escaped her throat. She spilled angry tears as the first round of the painful, belittling torture ended, and the next two men took up their places.
The sensation of being entered twice at the same time caused a sensory overload in Harley. She went from noticing every pore of skin on the stomach in front of her, every sharp burst of pain as she was thrust into sharply from behind, to feeling absolutely nothing. She became numb, blind, deaf and mute. The only sign she was still aware of her punishment was the constant trickle of hopeless, shameful tears that coursed down her face.
The man defiling her from behind finished quickly and pulled out of her, leaving her shivering and exposed back there. Eventually, another load of semen shot down her throat as she was made to swallow as the man in front of her face reached his climax. They left her quickly, refastening their trousers and slapping each other on the back, smirking knowingly at one another, joking about 'how tight it was' or 'how wet it was' or 'how the whore had it coming' and suddenly her ears were working again. Harley could hear every name they called her, every dirty mouthed comment they made about her body, her insecurities joked about vulgarly by men who had taken her against her will repeatedly. She shook, trembling on all fours like a cowardly dog, when she realised she could no longer see the head of the group.
That was when she felt his shovel-like hands grab her hips and pull her backwards. There was a sickening jolt of fear as she felt the tip of his hardening cock pressed against her asshole. She knew what was coming next and couldn't face this final, ultimate humiliation. The pain and shame of being raped in the ass was somehow too much for young Harley to bear, and she began to scream in terror. Begging, pleading with her tormentors, with Joker to set her free, swearing she'd learned her lesson, crying out in the darkness for anyone to come and save her. Just as she felt him prepare to push into her there was a huge crash.
Harley's head whipped around, as half of the exterior wall came crashing down. Out of the rubble and dust she could see a bright yellow bulldozer, driven by the Vined Vixen, Poison Ivy herself. Ivy leapt out of the cockpit and sprinted towards the cluster of men, before halting dead in her tracks.
She looked at Harley, naked, beaten, broken and defeated on the floor, with a large man poised between her legs. Ivy then slowly, unbelievingly, turned her gaze to the four other men in the room. They were so dim-witted they had not yet fully comprehended half the building falling down around them. Ivy opened her mouth to speak then snapped it shut. Her jaw was pulled tight with pure hatred as what had happened to her lover and best friend became apparent to Ivy. She pulled out two canisters of her favourite, most lethal spore gas and threw them into the group of thugs.
They came to their senses and ran towards her, but they were already slowed and sluggish from the initial effect of the gas. Poison Ivy had no real difficulty side-stepping blows, but decided to satisfy her blood-lust by breaking a few faces with some vengeful punches and kicks to the head. Once the attackers lay choking and writhing on the ground in a delirious haze of madness, which was followed by seizures that eventually stopped the heart, Ivy turned to her broken harlequin.
On the shelves nearby in the dingy warehouse prison Pamela found some rough blankets, which she quickly wrapped Harley up in and ran with her out to the fresh night air. Pamela quickly broke into one of the goons cars, they would no longer be needing it, and placed Harley in the back seat. Her girlfriend was already phasing in an out of consciousness. Thankfully Harley's immunity to poisons allowed Ivy to use her most effective weapon on the thugs without harming her lover.
Ivy raced her home and immediately tended to her wounds with pastes and salves she had prepared and stored for emergencies. Wrapped almost head to toe in bandages and plasters, covered in sticky plant-based creams, Harley's unconscious form was laid to rest in a clean, warm bed by Pamela, who sat by her bedside all night and all the next day, keeping her temperature monitored and her body hydrated. Ivy changed her bandages and held her hand to pass the time.
When she came to, three days after her rescue, Harley was a different person. She managed to smile weakly when Ivy was around and fussing over her, but her usual wit and sass, bubbly chatter and excitable manner were gone. Pamela was terrified the adventurous spark in her Harley's eyes was gone forever.
Weeks and weeks passed, with Harley in her almost zombified state. She barely ate, only spoke when asked a direct question, and never smiled. Pamela was concerned, she could only begin to imagine the horrors of what might have happened to Harley at the hands of those brutes, and she honestly didn't want to know all the details. Still, she was frustrated and broken that Harley was shutting her out. She supposed all she could do was wait. She waited for Harley to heal.
Pamela's patience paid off one Tuesday morning. As she put the plate of breakfast she had prepared for the two of them down in front of Harley, she reached out and took Ivy's hand. This was the first time Harley had attempted to make physical contact in almost 5 weeks. As soon as she no longer needed her bandages changed, Harley had avoided all physical contact unless absolutely necessary. Ivy had even had to sleep out on the couch because Harley was so terrorised. Pamela looked down at the pale, slender hand holding her own and was so relieved by this small gesture she began to cry.
"Thank you, Pammy, for everything," Harley whispered, choking up herself. Pamela just shook her head to dismiss the thanks, she would have given her life, if it meant saving Harley.
"I love you, Red," Harley continued after a pause, and stood up to embrace Pamela. They wept on each other's shoulders for several minutes, both just beginning to realise that Harley Quinn was back.