Incoherence
Chapter One
She lay against the unforgivingly cold, brick wall in a dark alley, rain pelting her costume which was torn in several places. She was soaking wet and her nipples were hard from the cold. Her mouth bled from its corners and her left eye was blackened. Her make-up was streaked from the rain.
One of her legs was bent at an odd angle, and her right arm felt broken.
'Damn,' she thought to herself. 'I'm in a real jamb this time.'
A dark figure moved quietly through the shadows towards her, silently and determined. He was tall and muscular, strong and powerful, and commanded an unnerving presence. Yes, she was here. He knew she would be.
"Quinn," the figure spoke in that dark, deep voice she recognized. She flinched.
She cocked her head slightly upward to see if she could see him. Her eyesight was a little fuzzy. "B-Man," she managed to get out. "What are ya doin' here?"
Batman looked at her. The rain had stopped. He could tell she was hurt. "I got a report of an attempted robbery in this area," he said. "I came to investigate."
Harley Quinn swallowed. Yes, there had been an attempted robbery. She knew all too well. "So ya come ta take me ta jail?" she asked.
He pulled out his biometric scanner from his utility belt. Reaching for her, she tried to move away and whimpered. "Stay still," Batman said with what she thought might be a hint of compassion. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The device whirred and hummed as he scanned her body. Her core temperature was dangerously lower than normal, but that could be due to the rain and exposure. Her eye was swollen from the impact of a large handed man. The scanner picked up a broken leg and a dislocated rotator cuff.
"What happened here?"
Again, she swallowed. "Mistah J and me was'a headin' up a heist on this place around tha corner," Harley said. "Something went wrong, and Mistah J blamed me for it."
Batman knew that Harley and the Joker's relationship was one-sided, and that Joker was abusive to her. But her facial wounds didn't match with a man of Joker's size. That wound was from someone much larger.
He knew the answer, but he needed to ask anyway. "Did he do this to you?"
Harley Quinn knew the answer Bats wanted to hear. She just couldn't bring herself to say it. "No, Mistah J loves me…but he didn't stop it," she continued.
"What do you mean?"
"His…his goons. He told them I needed to be taught a lesson. Puddin' had never said that before." Harley became emotional. "There was three of 'em. Big 'uns. " She swallowed again. "At first, I fought against them, but they ganged up on me, took me down. They humiliated me. They…" Tears began trickling down her face. She could not, or would not finish the sentence.
Batman, a bastion of checked emotions, actually began to feel pity for the woman before him. Her feelings for Joker were misguided and off-kilter, but she didn't deserve this. He looked up; it was just beginning to break light.
"I'm going to take you with me and get you cleaned up," Batman said to her as he gently cradled her body in his arms.
"I…I can't be gone from him, he'll send someone lookin' for me," Harley said, terrified of what might happen if Joker found out she was anywhere near the Bat.
Batman looked into the soulful blue eyes staring at him from behind her mask. His feelings for the woman were creeping in. He had been feeling this way since their first encounter. She intrigued him but had always managed to keep himself in check. But this, this incident was the final straw. "He won't find you, I promise," he told her. "The Batmobile is at the end of the alleyway."
The Batmobile was something that Harley had always wondered about. What it would be like to ride in it, albeit not under these circumstances. How did it work? Was it really the machine every criminal she encountered had said it was?
"Where ya takin' me?" she asked.
"Home."