The Joke's On Me

by LilLolaBlue

Meet the Harlequin, Batman’s ward & the Joker’s little girl. She likes booze, blues, cars, guns, & men. She wants to be a hero, but she’s too bad for her own good. Only one hero's villain enough to show her the ropes. Is the joke on the Comedian, at last?

2. Tainted Love

II: Tainted Love

New York City, 1971

I. Eddie

Eddie Blake didn't work well with others.

He'd been on his own since the Minutemen kicked him out in 1940, and he'd laughed off that hokey Crimebusters gig that the Doc and that queer Metropolis and that fuckin' Ozzy kid who thought he was so fuckin' great, and Mr. Mom and Apple Pie Night Owl II had cooked up back in sixty something, and he was glad the Justice League didn't want him, because he wouldn't have joined it even if they paid him in pussy and Cuban cigars.

Not to mention that his track record with women was unspeakably lousy.

Sure, he never had any trouble finding them, in the costume or out of it. After all, women had been tacking his picture to their bedroom walls and drooling over it since about 1942, but even the most slavering groupie had a tendency to come to think he was an incredible prick after a little while.

They came and then they went, sooner or later, and The Comedian didn't really care, as long as he came, too.

Considering that he had fucked things up royally with the only broad he ever really gave a shit about, it didn't matter to him much.

So he had a real good laugh when Bruce Wayne came to him right after he got back from 'Nam and asked him if he'd take some young mask broad who called herself the Harlequin on as a kind of apprentice.

He'd heard of her.

Everybody had heard of her, the kid was fucking crazy.

Her methods were pretty elementary. She owned several fast cars and a whole lotta guns, and she ran around town in a Halloween mask and a jester's hat and a beat-down second-hand boiler suit and jump boots painted up like a jester's uniform knocking the shit out of people, destroying things, occasionally blowing shit up, and generally raising Hell.

He was a bit intrigued when Bruce explained that he had been trying to raise her to be something less of a crazy, fractured psycho, because she was Jack Napier's kid, and spent her formative years with Dear Old Dad.

That made sense to Eddie. He and Jack had grown up in the same neighbourhood. Before he was a big time gangster and then the Joker, he was a small-time hood.

Crazy Jack, they called him.

Not a big surprise that Crazy Jack's kid was fucking nuts.

Bruce gave him the whole sob story, about how when she wasn't raising hell for the sake of the greater good, she was out raising hell for her its own sake. Driving too fast, drinking too much, running around with men, totalling cars and getting stabbed and beaten and broken up and shot full of holes and laughing it all off like it was nothing.

He could see why Wayne thought that he could have taken the kid under his wing and showed her the ropes, but the Comedian wasn't interested in working with anybody as a team, let alone some crazy broad who seemed hell-bent on getting to the cemetery as fast as she could and taking as many scumbags with her as she could.

Eddie didn't give the matter any more thought until he was at Arkham one Friday night, making a special trip in his civvies to taunt Moloch.

Sometimes, it's the little things in life that really make your day.

In the bright, fluorescent waiting room with its green mouldy cheese coloured walls there was a young woman, already sitting there, waiting.

She was the only other person in the room, and Eddie wasn't much for psychology magazines. The Comedian gave her the once-over, and made sure the girl knew he was doing it.

She sure wasn't the glamorous type. The kid had on a pair of dungarees with blood, motor oil, or both on them, and jump boots and a tee shirt, but there was something about her he couldn't put his finger on that made him keep looking.

Maybe it was the plain outline of a gun in the pocket of her coat.

Very interesting broad.

She sat there, chain-smoking, holding her cigarette in a hand with two bashed fingers taped together, jiggling her leg, impatiently. She had long red hair, really long, it hung down the seat behind her all the way to her ass, and green eyes that were kind of yellow in the bright light.

Eddie couldn't figure out if she was a dyke or not, you couldn't tell with some of these young broads, but since he'd always been partial to redheads, and he didn't have any plans for the night, it was worth a shot.

She wasn't too tall, if she stood up she would have been about five-three or four, but she was built like a brick shithouse, and Eddie found himself wondering if the hooters distorting Alfred E. Neuman's face on her "What, me worry?" tee shirt were real.

The other thing about her was that she had very fair skin, and although she wasn't wearing lipstick her lips were very, very red.

She had a book on her knee, which she kept jiggling, and when she dropped it and he saw the cover, Eddie saw it was some cheap fuckbook, as it had a drawing on the back cover of some bareass guy standing next to a bed with some chick wearing next to nothing on it.

He chuckled to himself.

Probably not a dyke.

So far, so good.

A disembodied voice came over the intercom on the wall.

"Ms. Napier. Ms. Napier? This is a no smoking facility."

Well, that made sense.

So, this was Jack's little girl.

Jesus H. Christ.

He could see the resemblance in the red hair like Jack used to have, and the same wide, sly mouth, but her lips were bigger and her mother must have been a decent-looking broad, because you could tell she was pretty, even though she had a shiner around one eye and she was dressed like a 'Nam vet with shell shock.

The voice on the intercom asked her to put out her cigarette, again.

Casually, without looking up from the book, she reached into the dirty-looking pocket of the battered army surplus coat on the back of her chair, and drew a lovingly maintained nickel-plated, pearl-handled .45 automatic, which she casually used to blow the speaker to smithereens.

Eddie laughed.

An orderly soon came into the waiting room and attempted to remove the petite young lady from the premises.

A very big orderly.

She picked him up, by his neck and his nuts, hoisted him over her head, shook him a little for emphasis and then tossed him through what turned out to be a one way mirror.

A bunch of shrinks in white coats cowered on the other side.

"Look, you fucks, I'm not just some dumb cunt who has fuck-all to do all day long! I got shit to do today! Places to go! Scum to kill! Men to fuck! Drinks to have! Now you let me in to see my father, because if you don't, I'm going to quit being fucking cute and funny and ladylike and make some real fucking trouble in this shithole!"

The kid capped off her announcement with a burst of wild laughter.

She went in and when she came out, Eddie just had to introduce himself.

This kid had potential, and she seemed like, if nothing else, she'd be a lot of laughs.

"Hi. I'm Eddie Blake. Me and your old man grew up in the same neighbourhood, and, a while back, I had a little talk with your stepfather, Mr. Wayne. He thinks you should come and work with me, so I can show youse the ins and outs of this business. Now I'm not sayin' I will, and I'm not sayin' I won't, but are ya innarested, kid?" he said.

She took the fuckbook out of her coat pocket.

He saw it clearly for the first time, and there was a great big smiley face on the cover, wuth a moustache and a cigar in its mouth.

The title was "The Comedian's Caper."

"According to this book, Mr. Blake, you're the kind of two-tone son of a bitch who can kill ten unarmed men before breakfast just for looking at you the wrong way, single-handedly overthrow a small South American country by lunchtime and fuck six or seven girls into screaming pools of molten satisfaction in time to be home to eat rusty scrap metal for dinner, and piss a tank of gasoline before you go to bed. Well?"

Eddie laughed, and lit a fresh cigar.

"Which part are you most interested in, kid?"

"The part where I get my rocks off. One way or the other. So, how'd you get here? I didn't see any nice cars in the lot."

"Cab."

"You wanna ride back to the city? I mean, it's Friday night. Might as well have a little fun, right."

Again, Eddie was intrigued.

Just what was Jack Napier's crazy mask kid's idea of fun on a Friday night?

It wasn't like he was afraid of the broad, or anything.

"Why not?"

***

Ten minutes later, the Comedian found himself in a souped-up silver '67 Corvette Stingray, flying down the interstate at about a hundred, with John Lee Hooker singing "I'm Bad Like Jesse James" on the radio as Liv Napier swigged Jack Daniels straight from the bottle.

"Have a drink." She encouraged him, as she lit a cigarette while driving with one hand.

"Don't mind if I do."

The Comedian took a long pull on the bottle, and put it back in the glove compartment.

"You got good taste in music for a kid your age."

"I love the blues, man. That and old time rock and roll. I mean I like some of the new groups, yunno, I like the Who and the Stones, but I can't stand that pop shit and that bubblegum psychedelic lets smoke some dope and get beat up by the cops music. Fuck that shit. I smoked some of that shit in college and it wasn't worth it. The only dope that's worth it is smack. Man, that shit made me feel great. I had some of that shit, and a fifth, and I felt like I was the king of the world. This motherfucker shot me two, three times, and I didn't even feel it. Never did it again, though. Liked it too much. Besides, that shit's for suckers, yunno. I mean, fuck it. I don't wanna be another shell shocked junkie, yunno?"

"Who told you that you was shell shocked?" The Comedian asked.

"This fuckin' doctor. I told him I never been to war, but yunno it's a war out on the street and I guess I've seen a lot and, fuck him, he wanted me to take all this fuckin' medicine and I told him to fuck himself. I'll get over it. Fuck it. Aw shit, yuh see that?"

Eddie looked in the rearview mirror.

He saw cop lights in the distance.

Goddamn cops.

The Comedian knew that he and the cops were supposed to be on the same side, but so many of them were fat, lazy pricks who took payola and looked the other way and had it in for masks that he couldn't muster up a whole lot of goodwill towards them, in general.

Especially not some highway patrol cocksucker trying to break his balls while he was trying to have a good time on a Friday night.

"Fuckin' cops. You gonna stop?"

"The fuck I am! Watch me smoke those pig bastards. Putcher fuckin' seat belt on and hold onto yer ass!" she said.

With a maniacal gleam in her eye, the Harlequin shifted gears and put her foot right in the tank.

The tires squealed and the Stingray roared forward, making a sound like an angry panther. The needle on the speedometer disappeared and so did the policeman's lights.

"Whooooooo-hoooooo! Fuck you, ya fuckin' pig cocksuckers! Listen to that fuckin' engine purr, willya? I worked on this baby, myself. I got it tuned like a fuckin' grand piano. Dual carbs. Racin tyres. Bored out the engine. I can do more'n 200. Fuckin' pig bastards will never catch me. Where's my Chuck Berry tape? There it is."

John Lee Hooker was temporarily replaced by Chuck Berry singing "You Can't Catch Me."

"Pass the bottle, huh?" she said.

Eddie couldn't tell if she was trying him, or if she was always this nuts, or a little of both.

He opened the glove compartment.

"Here you go, kid." He said, and calmly pushed in the cigarette lighter so that he could fire up another cigar.

The kid took two long slugs from the bottle and handed it back to him.

Her eyes were wide and they had a mad light in them as she hooted and laughed.

She was fucking excited, this shit was really turning her on.

Literally.

Eddie got the idea that if he put his hand down the front of her pants she'd be wet.

Soaked.

That was an idea.

She didn't look like she'd mind it.

But this little broad was crazy, she was a stone-cold killer, she killed men with her bare hands, probably with just a little different look of wild-eyed excitement on her face.

She might kill me.

She's Jack's kid, after all.

Two in the head and shove me out onto the side of the road.

No, I never met the guy. Shame about the way he went. National hero. Oh well, how about another drink?

Hell of a broad, though.

He lit his cigar.

"You sure know how to have a good time, kid." He chuckled.

***

Having killed the bottle on the way into the city, the Harlequin and the Comedian decided to hit a bar in Bensonhurst that the Harlequin often went to, and once inside, she proceeded to begin putting away Guinness like she hadn't just drunk a quarter of a bottle of whiskey.

The Comedian was impressed. Sure, she was Irish, but you didn't often meet a woman, even a red-haired Irish girl, who could put it away like that.

"Kid, you drink like my old man." Eddie joked.

He was putting it away right along with her, of course.

"Was he a cop or a hood? I already know he wasn't a priest." Liv asked.

"My old man? Like my Ma always used to say, the old man was a lousy, two-bit, piece of shit shanty Irish hoodlum. Her father was a cop." The Comedian replied.

"And you and me are masks. Might as well be cops. Sittin' here getting' drunk off our asses. It's all true what they say about us, I guess. Still, if anybody calls me a Mick, I'll kill 'em."

"Kid, are you really lookin' for a partner?"

"Awwww, shit, Eddie, you an' me both know that you ain't. 'Scuse my language. I should talk better for a quantum physicist, but I don't like to put on airs, yunno? I mean, if you wanted a partner, you've had, what, thirty fuckin' years to get one? Shit, I don't need anybody. I been alone my whole fuckin' life. I mean, I got a friend or two, masks or the guy I was a kid with, and yunno, there's Bruce and I can't forget Dick, my Goody Two-Shoes older brother who would shit his pants if he could see me now, but, shit, I know I'm alone. They like me, but they all look at me like I'm fuckin' nuts. Maybe I am fuckin' nuts. I don't care. I don't need a fuckin' partner. I don't need anybody."

The kid looked morosely into her glass for a minute, then she got up, went over to the jukebox, saying hello to some Italian guys in coveralls on the way over, and put on Albert King singing "The Hunter."

Halfway through the song, this greasy Mafioso wannabe who looked like he was half Irish and half Italian went over and started trying to fuck with the jukebox.

"Hey you! Chief! Leave that the fuck alone. You can put your nickel in when my song's done."

"Fuck you, you fuckin' whore. I'll do what I want!" he said.

Eddie watched three made Gambino wiseguys get up quietly, throw some money on their table, and leave.

The bartender began putting the bottles of booze under the table, and half the bar turned around and looked at the asshole like he was crazy.

"What did you say to me, you little prick? Get your ass over here and say it to my face, you think you're so fuckin' tough."

The guy came over and so did about four of his friends.

Liv gave Eddie that great big Crazy Jack grin.

"Dig this." She said.

She caught the guy's first punch, literally, and twisted his arm around until the bone snapped through the skin.

He went down like the Titanic, and as the second guy tried to flee, the kid kicked him right in the kidneys so hard that he'd probably be pissing blood for a week.

The third asshole, the one who had started it, had a piece of a broken bottle in his hands.

The kid took the bottle, throwing one army-jacketed arm up in front of her face to absorb the blow, and let him have it with her other hand, pulping his nose.

Meanwhile, the second guy had hauled the first guy to his feet and they both got the fuck out, leaving the third guy, who didn't know when he was beaten to take another punch at the kid, and receive the full force of her fury.

He punched her square in the face and she laughed at him, picked him up the way and had picked up the orderly, and tossed him over the pool table into the cue rack.

Then Liv returned to her chair, unscathed but for a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.

"Fuckin' amateurs. Hey, Vito? How about another Guinness down here?"

Then asshole came back, with a pool cue in his hand, getting ready to hit the Harlequin while she wasn't looking.

The Comedian didn't like that kind of shit.

Eddie punched the asshole in the stomach, caught the pool cue as it fell, snapped it in half, and hit the little prick in the face with the thickest part.

Then, he held the pieces of the pool cue on either side of the asshole's neck in an "X" pattern, and squeezed.

"What are you, some kinda fuckin' sore loser? Ya little prick! Guys like you don't deserve to live."

He squeezed harder, increasing the pressure, and the asshole started to gasp, and claw at the halves of the broken pool cue.

"Get your faggot ass the fuck outa here and don't come back. If I hear you had your face in her again, I'll kill you."

The Comedian moved the sticks away, and the asshole dropped to the ground.

He didn't move.

"Hey, didn't the man tell you to get the fuck out? C'mere, you prick!"

The Harlequin picked him up and threw him out the door.

"You shoulda seen that comin' kid."

"I woulda, if I wasn't so drunk."

"Youse shouldn't get that drunk if you ain't at home. Just cos you ain't got the mask on, it doesn't mean you're not a mask."

The kid didn't say anything smart, she nodded like she would remember it.

The Comedian paid for their drinks.

"Let's go, kid. I gotta get home, sometime, tonight, before either of us kills somebody."

***

The shape the kid was in, Eddie could hardly believe that she could drive, but she drove alright, following his directions.

"Hey, I'm sorry I can't come in. Shit, I'm really sorry. You do a hell of a lot for a pair of pants, yunno? But I'm all fucked up. If anybody got on top of me the way I'm hurtin', I'd fuckin' die. I can't take it. And I was thinking, yunno, maybe we could get in the back of the car, my turn, your turn, but now that fuckin' asshole punches me in the face and my fuckin' jaw hurts too. What a weekend. Friday night and I'm too fucked up and drunk to even give a guy a blow job. An' I wouldn't ask you to do somethin' for me if I couldn't do somethin' for you. And lookit this. My hand's all busted up, I can't even jack off. I am depressed."

The kid laughed, wildly as the Comedian got out of the car.

Eddie just looked at her.

Crazy. She was fucking crazy. Even these slavering groupie dames who ripped open their shirts and begged him to sign their tits and crawled all over him, even they didn't have a mouth on them like that.

"You always talk to men like that, kid?" Eddie asked.

The kid smiled a drunken, crooked leer at him, full of malice and lust.

"Not unless I mean it. I just wantcha to know I mean it. Jesus, my jaw hurts. Gonna hafta put some ice on it. Got hit in the same spot last week. See, I had a nice, quiet night tonight, cos I'm so fucked up. Last week, shit, did I get hurt! I had this fuckin' accident in my other car. I gotta do some body work on it, rebuild the engine, I don't think it's totalled, I can save it. Then, a coupla days later I was workin', I got into it with a buncha guys tryin' to rob this old lady, and one of them had brass knuckles on, an' one had a knife, and, look, see?"

The kid lifted up her shirt a little and the Comedian could see a mass of bruises of varying degrees of black, blue, yellow and green on her ribs along her one side.

It was pretty fucking bad, seeing a young kid like that, a woman, fucked up the way the kid was, even to the Comedian.

"Jesus, kid!"

"Awwww, I hurt all over. Fuckin' bullshit, man. I shoulda stayed home and worked on the car, but I gotta go see the Old Man, yunno? They had him in that fuckin' straitjacket again. Motherfuckers. That fuckin' ape bastard orderly is lucky I didn't shoot him right in the fuckin' head. I wanted to. They treat the Old Man like he ain't even human. Them and their fuckin' high moral fiber. My ass. What a fuckin' joke. It's all a fuckin' joke. But what am I tellin' you, for, right? I gotta go home. Eat some Excedrin. Go to bed."

"Yeah kid, you better. And take it easy for awhile. Quiet night, my ass! Whaddya wanna do, kill yourself?" The Comedian asked.

"Me? Kill myself? Shit, if I'm still alive after all the shit I've done since I was sixteen and I started this shit, I'm not sure I can. I hadda good time, tonight, Eddie. I'll be feelin' better soon enough. If you're lookin' for some action, yunno where to find me."

"Yeah. Sure. Go home, kid. Go to bed."

"Look, Eddie, you know where to find me, right? No, ya don't. Look for me at this bar in Bensonhurst, Trivelino Mac's. Come over any time. I'll be upstairs in the first room on the left. If I'm passed out just throw some water on my ass. If that don't work, start without me. You get me hot enough, I'll wake up. What can I say? Ya gotta get it while ya can, right? Right."

The kid peeled out in a blaze of glory, John Lee Hooker playing out the open windows.

The Comedian watched the car disappear and lit up.

Some kind of offer.

Too bad the kid is already fucked.

"Jesus Christ." He said, chuckling sadly to himself.

***

The Comedian was in his living room, watching the tube a few nights later when the phone rang.

"Yeah, hello?"

"Hiya, Eddie."

"Sal? But this morning I was a no-good, stinking, vicious Mick cocksucker who was going straight to hell."

"So? Ya still are tonight. Did Bruce talk to you about Liv Napier, yet?"

"She's our kid's friend, right? I barely survived a nice, quiet night with her. Shell shock my ass, that kid is fuckin' nuts! I'll tellya how fuckin' nuts I think she is. She told me to look her up at this bar and I could fuck her any time I wanted, and I haven't gone near the place. What the fuck is wrong with that kid?"

"You haven't gone near the place? What happened? Didja get the clap?"

"Funny, Sal. No, I wanna live. I gotta lot of broads chasin' me, I don't need to get mixed up with the crazy one who's a stone cold killer. And a fuckin' drunk. With a broad like that, she might just shoot me in the head the minute I come through the fuckin' door because she's too drunk to remember what the fuck she said or know what the fuck she's doin'. One minute I'll be comin', the next minute I'll be goin'."

"It's not funny, Eddie. That girl is going to die. I know you don't give a fuck. Just lemme finish. She wasn't like this when she was younger. She was a sweet little girl. Pretty. Smart. Funny. Really smart. I mean she graduated college at 19 and she works with the Doc and teaches classes at NYU. I mean, she always liked cars, and men, and blues and booze, and guns, but yunno, she's a mask. Cars and guns go with the territory. I mean, she was always a little wild, but not like this. But who can blame the poor kid? I mean, everybody told her all her life that her father's crazy and it's no use because she's crazy like her father, crazy and bad and she'll come to a bad end. Liv's no crazier than you or me, Eddie. But she doesn't know that."

"So? What does that have to do with me?"

"Awww, fuck, do ya have to be a fuckin' prick all the time, every day of your life, Eddie? Nobody said you had to marry the girl. Or make her your goddamn partner. She needs somebody to show her the ropes. Somebody she'd listen to. And have a little respect for. Yunno?"

"Whaddya expect me to do? Read her the riot act and lay some cock to her? You think that'll get the kid to fly on an even keel? Why me? Yeah, I know. The kid, she's a mean, low-down, two-tone drunken Mick motherfucker who thinks that the whole world's a joke and the joke's on everybody else. Kill you as soon as look at you, break your jaw and make you pick up your teeth and laugh at you while you're doing it. Hey, that sounds familiar. Let's get Eddie to train her. They're like two peas in a pod. Thanks a fuckin' lot, Sal."

"Hey, Eddie, you said it, I didn't. Look, Liv's a good kid. She could be a good mask. She needs a little help. She's from your old neighbourhood. An old friend's kid. Your kid's old friend. Would it kill you to do something, oh, I dunno, heroic, for once, without Tricky Dick tellin' ya?"

"Fuck you! I'm my own man! I made that cocksucker, he didn't make me!"

"Oh yeah, Eddie? Prove it, ya fuckin' Mick cocksucker! Why dontcha at least be a man and go over an' fuck her. Unless you're afraid she's too much for ya. You're gettin' old, Eddie. They shoulda asked a younger asshole!"

Sal hung up on him.

Again.

The Comedian slammed down his phone.

What fucking business was it of his?

What the fuck made everybody think he gave a shit?

***

Time rolled past and the Comedian's phone did not ring.

After his time in 'Nam, so much inaction made him antsy.

He started thinking about the kid.

Thinking less and less about the possibility of her murdering him on a whim, and more and more of that lazy look of furious lust in her eyes when she asked him to come around and see her.

He played it like he was going to go along with everybody's plans, like he was checking into the kid, and finding out if everybody was just giving him a sob story.

The Doc confirmed that Liv Napier worked with him, not for him. He agreed that she was a brilliant scientist, and that when she was sober, she was pretty much a good kid, but a little crazy. The problem was that she was rarely sober, and sometimes she got drunk as a bum who lived under a bridge.

Eddie laughed that one off, and the Doc directed him to the same bar in Bensonhurst, Trivelino Mac's.

The Comedian went there in his civvies; a pair of work pants, an A-line military undershirt, and his old bomber jacket.

This place wasn't a joint, it was a pretty nice place, a real neighbourhood kind of bar. The bartender was one of those bull-necked, barrel-chested, carroty-haired county Cork sort of guys who looked like he didn't take any shit, and wouldn't want any loudmouth rummies stinking up the place, and chasing off his customers by beating the shit out of people and getting blood and puke all over the floor.

But, sure enough, at one end of the bar, there was the kid, and she was pathetically fucking drunk.

She looked dirtier and more beaten up than the last time he saw her, like somebody who was at the end of a week-long bender. She was so drunk she was barely sitting on the barstool, and her head was bent over, and resting against a half-killed bottle of Jack Daniels that she had her arms folded around.

If you stood close enough to her, you could hear that she was occasionally tunelessly humming to herself.

For the first time since he didn't know when, Eddie was actually shocked.

He'd seen plenty of pathetic fucking stew bum drunks in his life, man and woman, but they were all old and broken down, or at least middle-aged and broken down.

He never saw one who was just a kid.

What the fuck was going on with this girl?

He decided to ask the bartender.

"Hey, what happened to her? She told me to come by and meet her here, but the kid don't look like she's going anywhere. What's the story? She one of those nurses who saw too much in 'Nam?" Eddie asked the bartender.

The kid's head abruptly dropped onto the bar and the bottle tipped over.

The bartender caught the bottle before it spilled and put it behind the bar.

"She ain't. Don't worry about it, buddy. Kid's my problem. I'm her uncle."

"Hey, no offence, pal. It's just that some of the people she works with, they tell me she's s good kid, she's a smart kid, but she's in trouble. Needs somebody to straighten her out, and they think I'm the one to do it."

The bartended looked him over, dubiously.

"Yeah, straighten her out. Look, fella, you and I both know what you came here for, and all youse gotta do is take one look at the kid and you can see she ain't capable of it. She's dead drunk. She's a drunk. And she's young enough to be your daughter. Whatever she told you, just beat it. She doesn't know what she's sayin' or who she's sayin it too half the time. Cantcha see she ain't well, for Chrissakes?"

Anybody could see that. The kid was dead to the world, a bomb wouldn't have shifted her off that barstool, and a look at her face showed Eddie a new shiner on the other eye in place of the old, and now her nose was taped up instead of her fingers.

"I'm not here on a fuckin' date. This is legitimate. Ask the big blue guy. Talk to Mr. Wayne."

"Yeah, fella? I heard about a guy that might come by to talk to my Liv. What's your name?"

"Eddie."

"Oh yeah. I'm John. Don't tell you much, do it?"

"Eddie Blake."

The bartender's face softened a little.

"So they're gonna send one roughneck to straighten another one out, are they? Saw too much. That kid saw too much by the time she was twelve. You sound like you're from around here, I don't have to tellya you don't gotta go to 'Nam to find a jungle. I mean, I know it looks bad on me, lettin' the kid do this in my place, but, what am I gonna do? Have her go someplace else? At least when she's here, I can watch her. I don't know, buddy. I used to think it was just a thing, she's young, she's a little wild, she's too smart for her own good, she works a dangerous job and she likes to blow off a little steam, but this, this shit's not normal. I worry she's gonna end up some dope friend, livin' under a bridge."

"Is the kid a junkie?"

"She says she only did it once, but I don't believe her. She don't do it now, though, and I never seen a mark on her. But the booze can ruin her just the same. If she falls all the way down, we'll take her in again. Look after her. Give her a nice place to die."

The bartender got a hitch in his voice.

"She was the sweetest little girl. Real cute. Real smart. We was so proud of her, doin' all the things she did, so young. I don't know how she came to this. Look, buddy, I don't know who you are, but if you really think you can do somethin' for my Liv, if you gotta ounce of mercy left in ya, please, do it."

Eddie looked down the bar.

Sure, he had an ounce of mercy left in him.

He wasn't a monster, for Christ's sake.

He felt sorry for the kid, and her carroty-haired tough-guy uncle, almost moved to tears by the sight of her.

It wouldn't hurt to give her a chance, see what she could do in action when she wasn't fucking annihilated.

"I'll think about it. Tell the kid that Eddie stopped by. When she comes to, tell her to sober up by Monday night, the Boy Scout's got some work comin' our way. She'll know what I mean."

***

The Boy Scout had been all over him to help break up an ongoing riot in gang territory with him and his nutty buddy, the Inkblot.

Eddie wasn't interested, but there wasn't shit going on, otherwise, and it would give him the opportunity to see what the kid could do sober and on the job.

For somebody who was Bruce Wayne's ward it was a pretty shitty costume, just a mask and a jester's hat and a belt with a holster for a gun and a hunting knife over a mechanic's boiler suit painted up to look like a jester outfit, the legs tucked into those ancient black WWII-issue jump boots.

Just like everything else the kid owned, it was about as feminine as Dick Nixon in drag.

She had her hair tied up in a long red braid that went down the middle of her back.

Bad idea. Somebody could just grab it.

But that wasn't his problem.

At least she was a hell of a lot more sober than she had been the last time he saw her, and her face was all healed up.

"You clean up pretty good, kid. You ready for this shit?" he asked her.

"Fuck yeah! Some motherfucker's gonna get his head kicked in tonight, and it ain't gonna be me!" the kid enthused.

"Well, at least ya do something ya love for a livin'." The Comedian quipped.

"It was either this or bein' a porno queen. But since I don't eat pussy or take it up the ass, this will do." The Harlequin replied.

For a minute, the Comedian just looked at the kid and blinked.

"Yunno, kid, I think that's the filthiest thing I ever heard a woman say." He told her.

"Twenty bucks. You need a towel?"

She grinned at him, and then they both began to laugh in earnest.

***

"Please disperse. The riot police will be here, shortly. Please disperse."

The Comedian gave the Night Owl a look of disbelief as he addressed the crowd of violent gang members rioting in the burning street.

"What the fuck is the matter with you? Do something! Shoot 'em!"

"I can't just kill them all!"

"No? Then I'll do it! Outta my way, Inkblot."

"The sight's a little off on the left, Comedian." Rorschach told him

"Oh yeah? Thanks. You're a lot smarter than your partner is. Okay you sonsabitches! Take this."

The Nite Owl put his ship on auto-plot, got up and stood between The Comedian and the gatling gun.

"Don't touch that gun, goddamnit! Why do you always have to resort to brute force? Why can't you ever listen to anybody's plans for-"

"Plans? Do you think this fuckin' scum is gonna listen to your plans? Whaddya wanna do, have a tea party an' bring in a buncha fuckin social workers? Awww, fuck it. Fuck it! Fuck you, Boy Scout! Why don'tcha just hang up your suit and park this thing and you and that other faggot Boy Scout Hollis Mason can drink beer and suck each other's dicks! Go fuck yourself, I got work to do!"

The Comedian was mad.

He opened the hatch, and got out his guns.

The Nite Owl was not fond of Eddie Blake, and he'd had just about enough of his specious insults and the way he always badmouthed Hollis Mason and most of the other Minutemen.

But that didn't mean he wanted to watch the man die.

"Jesus, Blake, don't go out there! That's not a crowd of kids protesting or some neighbourhood drunks with Molotov cocktails having a riot! Those are mad dog killer gang members with every weapon known to mankind! They'll kill you! You can't go out there!" the Nite Owl told him.

"Oh yeah? Watch me."

Eddie flipped him the bird, and then he was gone.

The Nite Owl looked on in horror as the Comedian jumped into the roiling, violent mob, and it swallowed him up.

"Oh my God." He said.

The Harlequin had jumped to her feet and now she was standing by the open hatch, and looking down.

She flinched, and smiled grimly.

"Well, boys, it's time to drop our socks and grab our cocks! Rorschach, get on that machine gun and give me some coverage. Danny Boy, this is your baby. I know you got some kind of gadget in here to pull us outa this shit. Good thing I got the jump boots. Geronimoooooooo!"

She drew her guns, and before the Nite Owl could tell her not to go, she had jumped out into the street below.

He started flipping switches and manoeuvring, and Rorschach let loose with the machine gun.***

The Comedian realised that he was fucked about two seconds after he landed on the ground, but that didn't stop him from trying to get out of it.

By the time thirty of them were closing in and more than that were on the ground, he had long been out of bullets, going at it with his bare hands and was beginning to think the joke was on him. But then Eddie heard the laugh that he was considering coming from the Owlship as the kid came sailing out and hit the ground running, amid a hail of bullets from the shipboard gun.

She grabbed one of the Knot Tops by his knot top, pulled a Buck clasp knife from her belt, opened the wicked-looking knife with one hand, and cut it off.

The knot, and the top.

Holy shit, the kid just fucking scalped that cocksucker.

She laughed again, and waved the bloody scalp at some of the dead man's pals.

"C'mon! C'mon, motherfuckers, lets get it on!" she screamed.

Look at him run.

Look at all of 'em, running.

She fought her way over to the Comedian, shot a Knot-Top point blank in the face who was in her way of putting her back against Eddie Blake's, and tossed him one of her guns.

"Some fun, huh, Eddie?"

"A real party, kid. We shoulda gone for the dirty movies."

"You got the credentials for that, Eddie?"

"If we get outa this alive, maybe you'll find out, if you go out and buy a fuckin' skirt."

By the time that the Nite Owl used a jet of fire to make a burning boundary between the Comedian, the Harlequin and the mob, and Rorschach had the rioters on the run with the gatling gun, she was out of bullets, too.

But, by now it looked like the good guys were winning.

The Comedian watched the rioting gang members break up and flee, and he realised that he was still alive, and more or less, in one piece.

He turned to the Harlequin, who was standing there with a smoking gun still in her hand, and blood, some of it hers and some of it not, all over her face and her overalls.

She had lit a cigarette, and was pulling a flask out of one of the pockets on her boiler suit.

"Drink?" she asked.

"Sure, kid."

He took a long pull.

"That's the good stuff."

"Best that money can buy."

"So, what the fuck made you do that?" he asked.

"I dunno. I figured if I did something really violent and shocking it might give me enough time to get to you before they killed us both."

"Not that, kid. Although I gotta say it gave those motherfuckers something to think about. What I mean is, what made you jump out of the ship to save me?"

The Harlequin shrugged.

"I dunno, Eddie. I just couldn't sit there and watch ya die. Funny, ain't it?" she replied.

"Hilarious. Hey, Boy Scout? How about landing that fuckin' thing so we can get back in? Ya hurt, kid?"

"My leg hurts. I mean I didn't break it, I can tell, but I landed on it funny. I never jumped out of anything before."

"Lemme help ya."

***

There was a whole lot of silence in the Owlship on the way back to the Nite Owl's lair.

The Harlequin took her right boot off and started examining her knee; it wasn't swelling and she figured it was probably alright.

The Comedian smoked, and shot dirty looks at Nite Owl.

Rorschach, oddly enough, was the only one to say anything on the whole return trip.

"Leg alright, Harlequin?"

"I think so. I can put my weight on it without it collapsing, but it hurts. I think I just wrenched it. I'll have to stay off my feet for a coupla days, that's all." she said, as she put her boot back on.

It was a silence which the Comedian loudly broke when the ship landed and he disembarked, flying into a screaming, spitting, towering rage.

"Please disperse? PLEASE DISPERSE! YOU ASSHOLE! That was your big fuckin' plan? To ask the nice psycho junkie baby-raping criminal fucks to PLEASE DISPERSE? What are you, some kinda moron? Did your mother get drunk and fall down while she was pregnant, or did she drop you on your head after you was fuckin' born! I mean, even that fuckin' faggot Hollis Mason used to go out and fight the bad guys, he didn't sit around all day in a giant flying tin can and tell people to PLEASE DISPERSE! Youse almost got me killed with your PLEASE DISPERSE! You're lucky I don't fuckin' disperse your ass! I'd like to see you try and take me, ya fuckin' poindexter faggot bastard!"

"I had a plan apart from 'please disperse'. I was going to use the capabilities of the ship to encourage everyone to leave with as little danger to us and general bloodshed as possible. That is, after all, the point of having Archie, that a few people can manage a large crowd without putting their lives at risk. I had everything under control until you decided that you were in a John Wayne movie and jumped out of the goddamn ship." the Nite Owl maintained, using a calm, clear and well-modulated tone

The Comedian, still furious, took the low road out of the argument.

He put his fist through the brick wall of the hangar, then ripped a large flashing module out of its housing and tossed it through the nearest available closed window, creating a satisfying shower of debris, sparks, and broken glass.

"Fuck you, Boy Scout! Not only didja almost get me killed, ya almost got the goddamn kid killed, too! An' the kid, who's a fuckin' woman, has more balls than you do! Call me when you grow a pair! C'mon kid, let's get the fuck outa here!"

The Harlequin looked at the Nite Owl, and then at the Comedian, who was stalking toward the exit tunnel.

"Do I go with him?" she asked.

Dan Drieberg heaved a great sigh.

"Liv, I never even heard of anybody doing anything like what you did, tonight. That was the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do. As far as I'm concerned, you don't need to know anything else about being a hero. But the League disagrees with me. They think you need guidance, and structure and they think that Eddie Blake can give it to you. Maybe they're right. But don't lose yourself in him. Just because you're young and troubled and self-destructive, it doesn't make you a horrible excuse for a human being. But the Comedian can make you one. Remember that. But, yes, you go with him. I'll call you if I need you."

"Nobody's all bad, Danny Boy. You and Rorschach know where to find me."

"You comin', kid?" The Comedian called.

"Yeah, I'm comin!. Keep your dick in your pants, I'm comin. I can't walk too fuckin' fast."

The Comedian stood waiting, and the Harlequin got out of the owlship, and limped over to him, and then they both started on their way down the tunnel.

"I need a drink, Eddie."

"Me too. I know some better places than you do. Undo that fuckin' braid. Somebody could yank on it, pull your head back, and slit your throat."

"I never thought of that."

"There's a lot you never thought of, kid. We're goin' to your Uncle's place and we gotta talk. You gotta get your shit together. Can ya walk?"

"Not so good."

"Lemme help ya, then."

The Nite Owl took off his mask, and put his face in his hands.

"I can't believe I just handed Liv over to that asshole, just like that."

Rorschach's mask moved, imperceptibly.

"She made her choice when she jumped out of the ship, Daniel." He assured his sometime partner.

He heard Liv's sardonic laugh echoing down the tunnel, as if the Comedian had just suggested something to her that she would not have even considered letting anyone say to her on the past unless she could seriously injure them.

"Well, I hope she gives the son-of-a-bitch a run for his money." Nite Owl replied.

***

They were both pretty banged up when they got to John McClatchey's bar, and The Comedian could see that the kid was in a lot of pain she wasn't talking about, so he went to get the drinks.

"You a junkie, kid?"

"Me? Fuck no. I did a little chipping in college, but, no, I ain't no junkie. I'm a fuckin' pathetic shit-faced drunk, but I'm not a junkie."

"It's not funny, kid. You are a pathetic fuckin' drunk. I came in here one night, lookin' for you, and you was over there at the end of the bar, so drunk that you didn't know you were here, let alone me. That shit has to stop, right now. If you gotta go to the bughouse, go."

"Fuck the bughouse. I can cut down. I got a reason to, now."

"What, to impress me?I'm not impressed. You got a lot to learn, kid. Your costume is shit, your methods are sloppy as hell and you got a lot of balls, and I can see you used to have a lotta skill, but you're so far into the bottom of a bottle of Jack that you come off like a fuckin' amateur. If you weren't so fuckin' mean and ferocious, you'd be dead. And don't gimme that look. I'd threaten to wipe it off your face, but I'm not gonna fuck around with this slap and tickle shit. You're gonna work, kid, harder than you ever worked before. And one more thing."

"What's that?"

"Quit lookin' at me like it's Christmas early this year! I'm tryna tell you important shit and you're sittin' there thinkin' about sixteen different ways you could jump on my cock. I'm not one of your fuckin' candy-ass punk hippie college boy buddies, I'm a man, for Christ's sake! How about showin' me some fuckin' respect! And you got to learn how to do something besides drink, fuck and brawl. You got me?"

"Yeah, sure, Eddie. Whatever you say."

The kid smiled, raised her glass, and as she put it down, started eyeballing his codpiece with a jaded eye.

Incredible. She was like one of those broads in the movies from the forties. Looked at every man she saw like he was a helpless chump who thought with his dick, and would do anything she said just because she was a woman.
Kiss you, then kill you.

Except they always looked nice.

"You ain't my type."

"I can fix that."

"What are you gonna do, kid? Put a gun to my head?"

"Yeah, maybe. You like the rough stuff, dontcha Eddie?"

She laughed and finished her drink, but The Comedian wasn't too sure she was kidding.

Crazy broad.

"Can you walk at all? Tell me the truth, kid."

"I'll walk outa here. I don't want nobody here to see me hafta get carried out when I'm sober. After that, I'm fucked."

"No you ain't. I'll carry ya to the car. Brooklyn General ain't far from here, anyway."

***

Around two in the morning, the ER at Brooklyn General got into quite a stir when the Comedian came in through the front doors, blood all over his armor, carrying the Harlequin, who was holding onto the boot he had taken off of her swollen leg.

She was also spattered and splotched with blood.

"I need a doctor here, I gotta woman with a busted leg, or somethin'." The Comedian announced.

Celebrity has its benefits, and a stretcher soon materialised for Eddie to put Liv down on.

"What happened?" asked the doctor.

"She jumped out of an airship. About fifty feet down. We took care of that riot problem, tonight." Eddie told him.

"I see. Actually, I think you might need to be seen, too. That cut on your arm looks like it needs stitches."

"Fine. Take me in with the kid, and sew me up."

The doctor paused.

"Are you responsible for her, sir?" he asked.

"Hey, that kid jumped out of a fuckin' airship to save my life, tonight. She never jumped outa so much as a doorway before. Today I sure as fuck am. Let's go, Doc." The Comedian said.

***

There were times when the Comedian wished he'd never taken the Harlequin under his wing. Times when it was like breastfeeding a pigeon with a very sharp beak.

The joke was definitely on him.

As for good points, Liv Napier was witty and tough, and strong, a fast-learner and a crack marksman and street fighter. She was loyal, but not mindlessly so. And she was smart. Maybe nearly as smart as that prick Ozymandias, but not so sanctimonious about it

She was crafty and she had an innate understanding of villains, and how their twisted minds worked. She could be a lot of fun and she didn't have a lot of bullshit illusions about how shit was supposed to be. It may have been sick, but the kid had a great sense of humour.

She wasn't a drag like most broads were, either. She liked to smoke and drink, she swore like a pirate, and she liked to fight, shoot guns and drive fast. She didn't always need somebody to be there with a giant powder puff to powder her ass every five minutes, and she liked the Stooges, Westerns, and war movies.

On the other hand, she was mean, ruthless, brutal, and cheerfully without conscience, the half-mad devil child of the king of chaos who recognised no limits and had a boundless energy for furthering the amount of disorder in any place at any time. Everything Liv did, she overdid, and her moods swung like a donkey's balls. She was either one way or the other, in the extreme and never anywhere in-between. Liv didn't understand even the concept of consequences and everything and anything, whether in an ironic sense or straight-up, struck her as funny.

And then there were what Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent had dubbed her "Troubles".

Holy shit.

As it turned out, their little Friday night outing was just the tip of the iceberg.

Troubles? Sneezing and having a runny nose is troubles. A woman who cries for a week straight when she isn't tearing your head off right around the time she goes on the rag is troubles. Not being able to eat Mex food without getting the shits is troubles.

Somebody who is half -crocked when they're working and blind, stinking drunk the rest of the time, pretty much morning, noon, and night and relaxes after a long night of breaking up riots and knocking heads together and mixing it up with criminal scumbags by driving through the five boroughs in a '65 Mustang or on a '57 Triumph T- Bird at speeds in excess of 80 miles and hour until she finds the worst dump in the world to get blind stinking drunk in and have a fight with six guys and possibly get cut or shot and dump the bike or ram the car into something on the way home is not troubles.

That would be better described as fucking psycho.

No doubt when Bruce saw Liv in that condition, he looked at her and saw the little kid in pigtails that he first took into his home, without remembering that that same little kid saved the life of the guy that was taking care of her while Jack was in the bughouse again by firing five bullets through the guy's car door at some low-level wiseguy sent to kill him over some gambling debts with a gun her Daddy gave her when she was five and told her to carry at all times.

Liv was a good kid, but she was batshit fuckin' crazy, and as mean as a little wolverine. If you asked her to do something nicely, all you were going to get was laughed at.

To be fair, Eddie gave her a couple of chances when she came around in the morning hung over, or fucked up, or both and just told her to clean up her fucking act or he was going to kick her to the curb.

She didn't listen.

Now, despite the fact that people thought he was a real prick, he wasn't the kind of prick who would punch a girl half his age and half his size right in the face when she had already had the fuck beaten out of her the night before, even if she was stronger than most guys his size and a superhero who had once beaten a vicious sex killer to death with her bare hands.

Smeared the bastard all over the room.

The kid had talent.

No, he waited for a day when she was just hung-over, and only slapped her across the face as hard as he could.

On both sides.

Liv was so surprised that she just stood there for a minute and bled.

That was long enough for Eddie to pin her to the wall.

"Just what the fuck is the matter with you, kid? When are you gonna stop acting like a spoiled fucking brat? And don't gimme that traumatic childhood shit, neither. You spent four years in East New York, scrubbin' floors an eatin' TV dinners, and you only had to kill one guy to get out. The rest of your life, you were in the lap of luxury. First with Crazy Jack, who treated you like a princess an' was nothin' but good to ya, and then with Bruce Wayne, who had even more money and treated ya like a Queen. Sent ya to college, bought ya cars, even trained you himself to be a mask when you said ya wanted to be. You wanna hear about childhood trauma? Try coming out of a family of 12 livin' in East New York for sixteen years, havin' your piece of shit criminal old man walk out when you're 13, and you gotta quit school and go get a job cos you're the oldest boy, and yer mother and yer sisters can't make enough money scrubbin' floors during the fuckin' Depression to make ends meet. Try bein' 16 and responsible for supportin' four kid brothers and three kid sisters after your mother dies from drinkin' too much an' workin' too hard. Me an' my two older sisters, we couldn't work enough hours in the fuckin' day to keep our shit together. I started out in the mask business cos I hated piece of shit petty criminals like my worthless fuckin' old man, I hope he's smokin' and tastin' in Hell, but also cos there was a lot of money in it in those days. And the money you got from the piece of shit criminals. They weren't going to complain to the cops you left 'em for that you robbed 'em. That's how I came up. An' I may have been a little too crazy when I was a kid, an' a little too brutal, but when they let me in the Minutemen, I never pulled the kind of shit you pulled. Cos' I knew if I pissed those guys off thatI was gonna starve and that my family was gonna starve. I'm not your Daddy and I ain't your Uncle Brucie. You pull this shit on me and I ain't gonna take it. You better be able to take it tough, cos if I have to, I'll beat some fuckin' sense into your crazy, ornery hide. And if that doesn't work, your ass is outta here! You get me, kid?"

He thought she was going to come back at him with some kind of smart remark, but all she did was nod.

"Yeah, I got you, Eddie. I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to show youse no disrespect, but, I just don't know what the fuck is the matter with me. I can't just go home and go to bed after a night's work, and when I don't work, I dunno what it is…"

"Lemme cut you off there, kid. It ain't because you're crazy like your old man. I know that's what everybody tells you and they make a big deal about it like it's your destiny and they got a crystal ball and a degree in fuckin' psychology. Bullshit. Jack's crazy, but like they say, he's crazy like a fox, not stupid crazy. You're the same way. Crazy ain't your problem. Your problem is you're fuckin' drunk all the time. I mean I like to have a few drinks, an' sometimes, I like to get fuckin' drunk, but you, Christ, kid, you drink all day long, every fuckin' day. You drink because it's fuckin' sunny, and you drink because it's rainin' and you drink because it's fuckin' Tuesday at 2:30. Sure you cut down, but half the goddamn time you're fuckin' stinkin' drunk like a stew bum in the fuckin' Bowery. So you never know what the fuck you're doing, and you're too drunk to know when to stop fuckin' doin 'it. If I was drunk all the time, I'd be out doing Christ knows what, too. How 'bout makin' a rule not to drink during workin' hours, at least, yunno? You gotta make more of an effort not to be such a fuckin lush, kid."

Eddie let her go, and he went and sat on his couch, and Liv sat next to him.

"Another thing is, you think that cos youse is smart and you got college jobs it makes you a fuckin' pussy, so you gotta go out and prove what a tough motherfucker you are. Which is bullshit. Everybody knows your're a tough motherfucker. If youse wasn't, youse wouldn't be workin' with me, and those two fuckin' slaps woulda knocked you on your ass. Bruce is a smart guy. Clark is a smart guy. The Doc, who you work for, he's an unbelievably fuckin' smart guy. Are they a bunch of pussies? Kid, you don't even have a dick and you can't keep it in your pants. Nobody thinks you're just a dumb girl. Most people don't even realise you are a girl whenya got your coat closed, they just think you're some guy with real long hair. Take a fuckin' break."

Liv looked thoughtful, like Eddie was the first person to tell her something that really made sense.

"And one more thing. I know women. I've had a lot of 'em. Some women can take fucking or leave it, and some women can't take it if they have to leave it. You, you got the itch, kid, and you got it so bad you can't find nothing and no one to scratch it. Tryin' almost got ya killed. Then after you met that sick fuck, you quit runnin' around, which was good, but you still got that itch, which is bad, cos you been tryin' to get off any way you can an' it ain't workin'. Drinkin' ain't fuckin', fightin' ain't fuckin', and drivin' your car too fast ain't fuckin'. And they ain't scratchin' your itch for ya, anyway. You need to do two things to get that fucking itch off you. Forget about what that sick fuck tried to do to you and find yourself a man to take care of you. A real man. If you don't, Christ, you're gonna kill yourself. You're gonna lose your whole head cos you can't get yerself a little piece of tail. The other part ain't so easy. They all tellya about right and wrong and all that shit and how you was born bad and you'll stay that way, and come to a bad end. They tellya about the way things are supposed to be, but that itch you got, it ain't gonna get scratched pregnant in the kitchen makin' cookies, or workin quietly in some laboratory and comin' home at five. That shit's the joke that everybody tries to push on you, and it's shit. You do what you gotta do to survive, and, when you're a mask, you do what you gotta do to make sure they lose and you win. And the bad guys and the good guys ain't always the same guys every time. It all depends on the situation. All that other shit, it's a fuckin' joke, it ain't real, it's shit they tell rich kids in school so they never have to figure out how shitty the world really is. Don't let 'em get to you, kid. Don't let 'em convince you that you're shit and that you deserve to be shit just because you're not as fuckin' stupid as they are. Don't worry about what you're supposed to do, just do what you know you gotta do. Scratch that itch. Fuck 'em. Joke's on them. "

That was the first time she gave him that look.

Jesus Christ, that fuckin' look.

It started out with a long, slow leer on her red lips that tugged at the corners of her eyes, making them slit into two glittery cat's eyes, filled with the kind of laughter they lock people up that leer turned into a grin, and she nodded slowly, with complete understanding, like he'd put the key in the lock and found the prize.

All his life, Eddie Blake had been waiting to see a look like that on a woman's face, to finally meet a girl who got the joke.

Who else would she be?

"Jesus, Eddie, you're the only person I ever met in my life who tried to teach me anything about what people like us do in the fuckin' world that's ever made any sense." She said.

"Sure I am. That's why Wayne sent you to me. Now, are you gonna get your shit together, or am I gonna have to make the beatings those guys you meet in bars look like kisses?"

"You try that and I'll knock you on your ass, old man."

Eddie was about to hit her, when he realised she was just fucking around.

Liv was always fucking around like that, she loved to tease him and goad him and get him all bent out of shape, and she wasn't even a little bit afraid of him, at all.

"Well, if you wanna knock me on my ass, you're gonna have to get your shit together." He told her.

"Eddie, d'you really think I'm not crazy?"

"Kid, you're just as sane as me or any of the rest of us. It's just you figure, fuck it, it's good enough, I'm a superhero, I'm tough, I'm bad like Jesse James. You're bored and you're drunk and you're horny and you don't care. You figure lots of kids your age are bored and drink and horny. And fuckin' high, too. And they are. Most kids your age ain't worth a fuck, though. But most of them are college students, or they live in a fuckin' commune, or with their boyfriend, or their girlfriend, or their mother, or they work in some store. But you're a mask. And that kinda thinkin' will get you killed. I know you was trained better than that, and you're gonna have to cut this shit out and get up to speed. You ain't crazy and you ain't gonna use that as a fuckin' excuse, anymore. Now, next time you come here in the morning hung over, I'm sendin' your ass home. Next time you show up late and drunk, I'm sendin' your ass home. And if I have to send your ass home too many times, don't bother comin back. An' if I have to kick your ass to the curb, I'm gonna kick it there. I'm gonna beat your ass like you've never been beat before. So you get your shit together, kid. Or else? Okay?"

"I'll try."

Eddie slapped her in the face, again, and she punched him in the stomach.

That didn't go as planned.

He really felt like doubling over in pain, but he played it off like it didn't hurt.

"Don't gimme that try shit! You ain't gonna try! You're gonna do it."

"Fine! But quit fuckin' slappin' me around! I'm not gonna stand here and let you slap me around!"

She was really mad.

Jesus, one of these days, him and the kid, they were really going to get into it, and then the shit was going to hit the fan.

"Kid, you ain't. You just pushed my fuckin' guts into my chest."

"Well, don't you hit me, and I won't hit you. Shit, if we keep hittin' each other, somebody's gonna end up dead."

"Yeah, and it might be me. That's what I get for tryin' to straighten your ass out."

"The joke's on you, Eddie."

"Not if I hit you first."

II: Liv

So, I guess Eddie takes me down to the docks to work because he don't trust me anyplace else.

Not that I blame him a whole helluva lot.

This shit about getting my shit together and not having my Troubles and having Eddie finish my training, it fucking sucks a lot worse than I thought it would.

For one thing, I didn't realise what a pathetic fucking drunk I was until I decided to slow down. Holy Christ, was I sick there, for awahile. Now I don't feel so bad, but I'm pissed off all the time. All I can think about is how much I need a fucking drink, and how much I'd like to kill somebody, yunno, anybody, when I can't have one.

For another, the man has no fucking interest in me, as a woman.

I mean, I can see that.

I'm not a real feminine kind of chick. I never figured out all that smile and be alluring shit. Honestly, I never met a man who was a better man than I was before I met Eddie, if I wanted to ball a guy I let him know and if he was too scared I laughed at him, if he didn't want me I didn't care and if he wanted to fuck, we fucked.

Eddie, now, he's a different story. I mean, I gotta work with the man. And if he turns me down, yunno, the way I feel, I might go fuckin' crazy, and he could really hurt me.

That's the other thing.

I never met anybody before who could kick my ass.

I'm pretty sure I could fuck him up pretty good, too, and if I could get him on the ground, I know I could take him, but, yeah, Eddie could kick my ass.

I don't know. I never met a man like him. The day he sat me there on his couch and just told it to me like it was, man, that was some heavy shit. I still don't know how he could tell just what I was feeling, just what I was thinking inside my head.

Especially the part about the itch.

That fuckin' itch. It started itchin' me just a little when I was about 12 years old, and the goddamn thing got worse and worse and worse every day until it's like a goddamn third degree burn, blazing and burning and itching.

It keeps me up at night, that fuckin' itch, and it leads me out at night to go and do the crazy shit I do, and all that shit, it scratches it a little, kind of feels good and eases that raw, burning itch, but not much, not much at all and before long the itch is back, ten times, tem million fuckin' times worse than it ever was before.

You can't get too close to people, when you got an itch like this. It keeps you away from them. The itch gets bigger and the world gets smaller and most of the time you're all alone with it, just you and the itch.

I'm not just talking about fucking. Fucking is part of it, a goddamn big part of it, but it's not just an itch for fucking. It's and itch for everything and it can't be scratched, and now that I'm not drinking as much, sometimes I feel like I'm gonna go out of my mind.

It's worse at night, cos I like the night, it's when I'm really on the ball. When I'm out there workin', walkin' up and down the docks with Eddie.

Jesus, you don't know how I feel, I'm telling you.

Sometimes I just stumble along behind him and I don't know where I'm going, I can't see. I can't see the moon, even when it's there, and I can't smell the river and the garbage, and I can't feel the cracked pavement under my feet.

It's just me and Eddie and the goddamn itch, and I'm following after him like a bitch in heat.

Sometimes I get a good look at him in a certain way when the reflection of the dingy streetlight catches the thick cigar smoke curling around his mask and his black leather armour as the light splashes off the pool of dog piss and gasoline he'd just tromped through and I see him grinning at nothing in particular and I feel like somebody opened up my guts with a rusty sharpened screwdriver and that their busting out of my belly onto the pavement, even though I'm desperately trying to hold them in.

I want that man so bad I can taste the way he smells in my mouth.

I remember when he opened that fucking hatch and jumped out of Archie and I saw the crowd close over him and I thought, shit, Liv, there he goes, wave goodbye, he ain't coming back. I couldn't stand it, I couldn't take it, I had to save him or I had to go out there and die with him and fuck me if I knew why then, and fuck me, sideways if I know why, now.

But I gotta take it, that gut-busting pain, and I keep on walking along and the goddamn itch is fucking burning me and I feel light-headed from lust and violence and that need a drink need a drink feeling, and I swear I just want to lie down on the concrete and smack my head against it until my brains squirt out.

Either that or I want to jack Eddie up against the nearest wall and I don't care if I have to get down on my bare knees on broken glass or lie down in the street in the same, sometimes I feel like if I can't have him I'll kill one of us, or maybe both of us, and like Mick Jagger said, I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.

The man doesn't even notice I'm a goddamn woman.

Not that I can blame him. The only thing I do that women do is fuck. I may look like a woman, but I don't talk like one, or think like one, or act like one, or even dress like one. All Eddie ever sees me do is run around covered in blood or motor oil cursing and beating the shit out of people and playing pool and having a goddamn drink, and he's not like the other cats I've met , he's not too scared to not fuck me to just fuck me and get it over with.

And short of putting a gun to his head and telling him to take off his clothes, I don't know how the fuck to make him come across.

I guess I gotta act like a girl.

I'm not sure how to act like a girl, but I got that sleazy costume, so, maybe if I put it on and bend over to pick up my car keys, I'll get lucky.

I'd better.

Cos it ain't gonna be pretty when I get to the end of my fucking rope, not for either of us.

III: Eddie

Then, there was her costume trouble.

Holy Christ.

He had already told her that a painted up second-hand boiler suit that didn't fit her and a Halloween mask was no kind of fucking costume.

But, that formal costume she'd spent her own money on was even worse.

She had a full face mask, with the top like a jester's hat, bells and all. The rest of it consisted of a leotard that was so low cut in the front it answered his question as to whether her tits were real, a pair of black high heel calf-high boots, thigh high stockings in three different colours and garters.

All of the sudden, she had herself all packaged up to look like a woman, and the kid was a real knockout.

Sure, he liked the costume. He liked the costume so much he wished he hadn't been wearing his costume, as he immediately had a painful accident with his dick and his body armour.

Still, as a costume for working in, it wasn't good for shit.

"Jesus Christ, kid, where are you goin'? To a sex show?"

"Don'cha like it?"

"Yeah. I like it. Lemme see it a little closer."

She was fast, but she wasn't fast enough, caught off guard to stop him wrenching her arm around her back and bending her over.

She started trembling, trembling all over, shaking like a leaf, and she threw him off, violently.

The Comedian almost fell over.

There she goes, blowing hot and cold again. If Eddie didn't already know better, he swore he'd just hold the crazy bitch down and fuck her.

But he wasn't so stupid as to make the same mistake twice, especially not with a woman who wouldn't hesitate to kill him, and shoot him if she couldn't do it with her bare hands.

"What the fuck are you doing? You know I once killed a guy, trying that shit on me!" she roared.

"Relax, kid. I'm not gonna do anything to ya! The question is, what the fuck are you doing? Are you wearing anything under that thing?"

"Who wants to know?"

The kid was still pissed off.

She had this funny, crazy look on her face like she might do anything, and Eddie wanted to take a step away from her, but instead he got in her face and screamed at her.

"Reader's fuckin' Digest. Just answer the goddamn question!" Eddie barked.

"No. So what?"

"So what? So that means any fuckin' piece of trash in the world can do whatever he wants with you. You can't kill 'em all, kid. What f there's ten or fifteen of 'em? What have you got to protect yourself? A little strip of cloth, here?"

Eddie put his hand between her legs, not touching her, and snapped his fingers.

The kid thought otherwise.

"Hey, leave my snaps alone, Eddie. You scared the shit outa me and I ain't in the mood, now. Jesus."

Snaps?

"Snaps? The fuckin' thing opens with snaps?" the Comedian managed to say.

"Yeah. I mean, what if I have to piss?"

Snaps. That was it.

The Comedian had an extremely vivid metal picture of hauling the kid back over to him, tearing those three snaps open, unfastening his codpiece and solving her problem of not having a man to keep her happy.

Then, he remembered the sex freak, the murderer who tried something on her that she didn't like, and how they couldn't find his cock and his balls at the crime scene, and didn't locate them until the autopsy, when they found them jammed all the way down his throat.

Eddie let her go.

"Un-fucking believable. What you mean is that you know you'll have to piss because you're drunk all the time, and what if you're beating the shit out of some punk and you decide he's not bad looking and you'd like to fuck him before you finish beating him up. And what about those boots? Start running."

"In these? I'll kill myself. And my tits will fall out of this get-up. Not to mention they'll hurt like a motherfucker. No support in this thing."

"Great costume, kid. What's to stop six guys from gang banging you and leaving you in a puddle to die?"

She looked at him real cocky-like, the old, fuck you I'm from East New York cocky.

"I'd like to see them try it."

"Oh yeah?"

Eddie pulled her gun out of the holster on her belt and put it to her head.

"Okay, Bruce Lee. So you can kill a guy with your bare hands. Try it now. Keeping in mind if you move, I pull the trigger and your brains are all over the wall. You get me?"

"Fuck. Okay, so you made an asshole out of me. Fuck you."

He put a gun to her head and the kid didn't even flinch.

She was one stone cold motherfucker.

"Hey, kid, better me than somebody else. You want your costume to say, "Don't fuck with me, I'll kill you, not, "One of you at a time or all of you together." Nobody's gonna take you seriously in that shit. Look at Sally Jupiter. She didn't want to be an underwear model, she wanted to be a superhero. In that costume of hers, everybody took one look at her and thought she was easy. Take it from me, I'm the bad guy, right? You need combat boots, a good pair you haven't painted up, you need a top that'll keep your tits from flopping around, and you need serious body armour. You need two guns, and holsters that are tied down, so nobody can grab your guns. Get a smaller mask, not one that one covers your whole head so you cant see around you. And lose the bells. Whaddya gonna do, announce to the bad guys that you're comin? This superhero shit is serious, kid. You don't see Bruce runnin' around in just tights and a cape. Clark does, but he's fuckin' invincible. Bruce wears more armour that Fort Knox. And look at me? Do I have my balls hangin' out? Fuck no, I got more armor in this costume than two Fort Knoxes. This ain't the Lookit My Tits and Fuck Me, Daddy show, okay? Get something in two pieces so you can take your pants of and take a piss and look like you mean it."

For a minute there, Eddie thought she was going to break his nose, but she reached inside a pocket on her belt and took out a little notebook and a pencil.

"Lemme write that down. Couldja repeat that? Especially the part about the lookit my tits and fuck me, daddy show. I gotta tell the guy who makes my costume that specification. " She said.

"Go change your clothes, wiseass."

Eddie watched every swig of her hips and twitch of her ass as she left the room.

He could feel his balls turning blue, but he had already been to the "I'm gonna go change my clothes" party, and he wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

Not with a stone cold killer, at any rate.

After the kid left the room, the Comedian went over to his bar and had a few slugs of whiskey right out of the bottle.

She was getting to him. He wasn't used to having anybody around who could kick his ass, let alone somebody who might kill him on the spin of a dime, and a broad at that.

And if she was so goddamn mean and dangerous and bad, why the hell was he so goddamn hot to fuck her? What made her different from every other broad he ever met, that he could take or leave and never give a second thought to?

Probably because she was mean, and dangerous, and bad, and she was a little redhead built like a brick shithouse.

The kind of broad who was made to be fucked, and fucked often.

Eddie realised he still had the bottle in his hand, and he took another drink.

"I gotta be nuts. Getta hold of yourself, Eddie, this is serious shit. Quit thinkin' with your dick instead of your brain. You wanna lose your whole head just to get a little piece of tail? We're talking about Jack's kid, here. She could turn on a dime and fucking shoot me while my back is turned. Or when I'm sleeping. And I never see her with a man, except that grease monkey. She don't own a fucking skirt. She probably is a dyke and she's teasing me because she thinks it's funny. She thinks everything's funny."

He took yet another drink.

"This ain't gonna end up well." He muttered.

It turned out that he was absolutely right.

***

After about three or four months of him training her, Liv was showing a great improvement.

She'd cleaned up her act and quit doing all her crazy shit; it was the longest the Harlequin had gone without having her Troubles since 1968.

The kid even had her boozing down to a low roar, she was pretty much under control.

Liv was, however, poised to get into a different kind of trouble, altogether.

After that shit with the costume, the Comedian started to get pissed off.

He wasn't used to worrying about whether or not somebody was going to kill him, let alone somebody he was supposed to be showing the ropes to, and a broad, to boot.

He finally had it figured out.

That fucker she killed, he turned the kid completely against fucking.

Whenever she got horny for a man, now, it made her want to kill him.

So, it was just fine and dandy with the kid, she'd let him in, but later, well, he ran the risk that later they'd find him smeared all over the room, after having made a last meal of his balls.

Well if that was what floated her boat, that was a shame but it was fine for her, so long as she didn't try to drag Edward Morgan Blake into it.

No fucking way, he wasn't that kind of stupid.

Now the Comedian was never sure if he could trust the kid enough to being her in on any of his government shit, and he had discovered she didn't have a specific area of the city where she's done her rounds, so he just took her down to his old haunts on the waterfront.

That shit was pretty rough, but the kid could take it.

She was an odd fish, the kid.

It wasn't like he'd never been around a broad who was a mask. Sal was, and their kid was, and it wasn't as if either Sally Jupiter or her kid were cream puffs who were better off in underwear ads than out on the street.

Neither of them had what the kid did, though. She was tough like a man was tough, like fuckin' Superman was tough. You could beat her, shoot her, stab her, it only made her mad. You could put a bullet in the kid and break her fuckin' jaw and she's still put her bare fist right through your belly and rip your guts out.

Literally.

Eddie kept thinking about her jumping out of the Owlship and fucking scalping the first Top Knot she could grab. The motherfucker was twice her size, she punched him in the stomach and when he bent over she produced a wicked-looking Buck knife and scalped him. That was what she did on the job.

For fun, she drove her souped-up muscle car, drunk, at insanely high speeds, and got into bar fights with assholes who were dumb enough to fuck with her.

No doubt about it, the kid was wild, violent, and when everybody threw their hands up in the air and shoved her at the biggest son-of-a-bitch they could think of, out of control.

Sure, he had her behaving, but she was like a mad dog on a big chain that he was holding her back with and beating her up with at the same time.

All you gotta do with an animal like that is let the chain slip for a minute and it rips out your fucking throat.

How he was supposed to tame this beast, he didn't know, but he decided he had to find out just what the kid had.

He had to try her, and he had to show her who was boss, and that she wasn't going to play her little game with him.

Not unless she wanted him to make a woman out of her, again.

That was what he wanted, and he wanted it, bad.

Almost bad enough to take a chance on his life.

After all, he was bigger than her, and stronger than her, and he knew how to make a broad light up like a Christmas tree.

Maybe all she needed was somebody to show her that every man wasn't some sick sex freak. That was it. Maybe if I can get her to quit being so nervy and jumpy long enough to throw a good fuck into her, she'll remember how much she used to like it.

The Comedian scowled at his own logic.

Yeah, good idea, Eddie. Show her you're a good guy and that she can still have a good time with a man by holding her down and giving it to her whether she wants it or not.

Yeah, that'll work.

The Comedian tossed the butt of his cigar onto the pavement and stamped it out.

It was time to see if the kid was as tough as she thought she was, and time to tell it to her like it was.

Eddie Blake was 47 years old, and he had spent 31 of those years as a masked hero. He was a brutal, violent man by nature, and fought in two of the most brutal wars in world history, and almost single-handedly brought one to a close. He cut his teeth fighting in the streets of East New York before he was even ten, and cleaned up the waterfront at 16. His reputation was fearsome; the mere sight of the Comedian, armed with nothing but his fists was enough to make some crowds disperse. He was six foot two and weighted 220 pounds of muscle, and was in better shape than most men half his age.
The way he saw it, before he could fight the kid to a standstill, she'd probably break his nose, and maybe crack a rib or two, and give him a black eye, at the most.

That is, if she couldn't get him on the ground.

If she got him on the ground he was going to have to shoot her and wing her, unless he wanted his brains all over the pavement.

He had a good idea how he was going to make her mad enough to try him, too.

Not to mention it was something that somebody had to tell her, and every other man she ever met was probably too fucking scared to say anything.

Besides, he wanted to know where he stood.

The Comedian waited until they had made it to the darkest, seediest part of their route. Places where no honest business had ever been done, at least not in the last century. They passed abandoned factories and rowhouses, crumbling old warehouses, and the East River smelled rotten, like garbage and carrion and bodies as it rolled past them.

A place where nobody would ever come to bother them, no matter what they did.

"So, tell me, kid, how's your sex life? You gettin' any?" he asked.

She gave him a funny look, but she answered the question.

"Sure I am. What, you think I can't get laid?"

"By a man? Fuck no!"

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, you fuckin' old bastard!" she demanded.

They stopped walking.

Eddie turned to her, and as he spoke, he repeatedly poked his finger at her chest.

"Look, kid, lemme tell you something. When you bothered to quit getting smashed to pieces and put that fuck me daddy costume on, I noticed that you were a real nice-lookin' broad. I mean, just for a minute there, you actually seemed like a woman to me. I was gonna try it out with you, but you got so fuckin' jumpy, I figured, fuck this. This broad, she don't know what she wants. But, listen, and I don't care if he is a fuckin' hippie, broads who walk around dressed like grease monkeys with blood and crankcase oil on their fuckin' Rolling Stones tee shirts, always wearin' dungarees and combat boots, don't exactly get a man goin. I mean, unless you're a fag, and you want some other fag to fuck you in your ass, or somethin', tattoos and motor oil don't make your dick hard. Not to mention that I guess even a fag wouldn't want some guy who always looks like his face has just been through a machine and stinks like a fuckin' distillery. I mean, if you ever wanna get laid by somebody who wants to see you again the next day and ain't some kind of junkie derelict biker scumbag, you better go buy a fuckin' dress, and try not to take so many hits in the face. But considering you're all fucked up since that sex freak tried to screw you, it don't matter. And it's not my problem. Just quit teasin' me, alright? I know all about your silly little game and I'm not playin' it. I wouldn't fuck you with a stolen dick if you had the last pussy on Earth."

Well, the last part was an out and out boldfaced lie, but it did the trick.

Liv's eyes narrowed into angry, catlike slits, and she balled her hands into fists and her nostrils flared in fury.

That evil Joker smile crawled across her face until it was as wide and broad as her Old Man's, and it really didn't make Eddie feel too good.

It made him think he might have gone a little too far.

Oh shit Eddie, the fucking joke's on you.

Then, Liv Napier, who was five foot three or four and 145 pounds to Eddie Blake's six two and two-twenty did two things that nobody else had ever been crazy enough to do to the Comedian.

She spit in his face.

Then, she called him a cunt.

"You're not gonna fuckin' talk to me like that, you fuckin' cunt! I'm gonna make you take your fuckin' medicine!"

Eddie was so surprised that she'd spit in his face and called him a cunt that he wasn't ready for the first punch.

Kid had a hell of a right.

He staggered back a few steps as the heel of her hand smashed into his nose and smeared it all over his face in a gaudy spray of bright red blood.

He got out of the way at the second shot, which was perfectly aimed at his kidneys from the side, in the unprotected spot where the two parts of his armour joined up that nobody else had ever noticed.

The sight of his own blood and the mere idea that she actually called him a cunt made rage flare up inside the Comedian like gasoline on an open flame. He came around from the blind spot that nobody knew she had in her left eye, which was just a little lazy and gave her the full force right in the face.

Her head turned violently to one side and blood just sprayed out of her mouth, and he really expected her to fall down in a heap.

She didn't.

Liv staggered back a few steps, shook her head a little, and smiled.

Smiled.

Oh shit.

"Is that all you got for me, old man?" she said.

She rushed him again, and he thought she was going to go for the eyes and anticipated that, but at the last possible minute, she ducked down and head-butted him like an angry little bull.

Before Eddie knew it, he was on the ground, and before he could get his gun out she was sitting on him in such a way that her legs were around his hips and he couldn't get to them.

Her gun, on the other hand, was pointed right between his eyes.

They were both bleeding, and they were both breathing hard from exertion.

She was, incidentally, also sitting directly on his cock, and as soon as she realised it, a strange look began to come over her face.

He could tell she wasn't thinking about hitting him, anymore.

Then, just like that, she did the fucking craziest thing.

"Fuck it! Eddie, you motherfucker, get this through your head! I sure as hell don't wanna kill you, and I do not want to fight with you, anymore!"

The kid put her gun in its holster, leaned over him, put her hands on either side of his face and laid the most ferocious, desperate, hungry kiss on him that any woman ever had.

That was some kind of fucking kiss and he thought she might have cut her lip on his tooth but neither of them cared.

"That's what I want, ya numb-skulled son-of-a-bitch!" she finished.

Then, just as abruptly, the kid got up off him, with this weird look of confusion on her face and she just turned around and ran away.

Had Eddie not been on the ground, you could have knocked him over with a feather.

So that was it.

She had probably never wanted to hit him to begin with, and she hadn't meant to be a tease, it was just that, like somebody else he used to know, the mean, rotten little bastard didn't know how to ask nice.

And there Eddie was, lying in the street on his back with a raging hard-on and blood dripping out of his nose.

Jesus H. Christ, what a fucking night.

He got up and ran after her, and it took some running to catch her, the kid could run like a fucking deer.

When he caught up to her, he didn't give her a chance to say shit, or, more importantly, to do shit, like hit him again, or take out her guns, he grabbed her and held her hard so she couldn't move and he kissed her back.

"Okay kid? Okay?" he finally panted.

"Yeah, Eddie. Okay."

"Good. Did I break your jaw?"

"Naaah. Did I break your nose?"

"Naaah. Let's get the fuck out of here and go get cleaned up and have a fucking drink. C'mon."

***

He wanted to get her home, but the Comedian had to set the kid straight on something, so that he would never find himself looking down the barrel of the kid's gun again because nobody had ever taught her any manners.

They went to Trivelino Mac's, and after cleaning themselves up in the johns, Eddie was buying.

"We got a bigger problem here than I thought we did. Look, kid, you might not have liked what I told you just now, and yeah, I said it in the shittiest way possible just to get you mad, but it was true. Alright? I mean, I'm tellin' you this as a man, the only man you ever met who isn't too scared of you to tell you anything. And you know what else? Fuckin' ain't like most things. You, you're like me when I was a kid. All your life, you see somethin' you need, you take it. You never wait for anybody to say you can have it, if you need it, you take it. And if somebody says that you can't have it and you need it, you figure, fuck you, and you beat the shit out of them, and then take it. That's how it works in the street. That's how you survive. Well, fucking doesn't work that way."

"I know that! I'm not stupid!"

"The fuck you do! Look, kid. Think about it, in your whole life, didja ever ask anybody nice? The minute you had me on my back, the first thing you thought was, fuck this motherfucker, if he won't give it to me, I'll take it from him. He'll like me well enough when he can either get it up for me or I turn his head into a canoe. Like I said, I tried that approach with Sally Jupiter, and I didn't get what I wanted. She was older than me and I guess she was playing some little game with me I didn't understand. Comin' onto me, teasin' me, givin' me the old bedroom eyes an' tellin' me she was gonna go change her clothes. I guess if I woulda just let well enough alone, I woulda got what I wanted, anyway, eventually. But what the fuck did I know? I was young, dumb, and full of come, and I wanted her so bad that just lookin' at her made my balls hurt for a week. I wasn't even thinkin' how I was hurtin' her when I was slappin' the shit outa her, even though she was callin' me by name and screamin' for me to stop. I wasn't thinkin'. My dick was doin' all the thinkin' an' I was followin' it right off the Brooklyn Bridge. An' I got kicked outa the fuckin' Minutemen, Sal didn't talk to me for another ten years and that fuck Hollis Mason wrote a book about me being the biggest prick in the world. And, yunno, I really liked Sal. Maybe if I hadn't been such a fuckin' asshole we coulda had somethin'. Her life didn't turn out too great either, yunno. But I blew it. Ya gotta ask nice, kid. And ya can't make somebody come across. Ya never get what ya want that way, unless you're some sick fuck, and what ya want is to hurt somebody. Jesus, kid, didn't nobody ever tell you nothing about fucking?"

"Nothing like that. I never really thought of it…Jesus, Eddie, I'm sorry. I dunno what came over me. But when you started sayin all that shit about me, I got so mad, I wanted to fuckin' kill you! Then, I was thinkin' about keepin' you from gettin' to your guns and that's why I jumped on top of you, but then, all the sudden, I didn't feel like killin' you anymore, an'…an' I don't know what I was thinkin, then. Like you said, I wasn't thinkin'. Jesus, what the fuck is the matter with me? Look, Eddie, I don't wantcha to think I'm some kinds fuckin' freak show. I mean, I'm not into the rough stuff, I don't need to be slapped around and I don't need to start wavin' guns around to get off. Yunno?"

"Don't worry about it kid. I unnnerstan' ya. You're young, you're horny, you got an itch so bad you can't stand it and all you want is a good fuck, and you couldn't figure out what the fuck I wanted and what was keepin' me from givin' it to you, and then I went and called you a dyke. You got mad. If somebody called me a faggot, I woulda called them a cunt and hit 'em, too. It's alright."

"Yeah, but, Jesus, Eddie, did you really think I was a dyke?"

Women.

Jesus Christ.

Well, at least the kid was finally acting like a girl.

"Kinda. I mean, you don't look much like a dame, and you don't act like one. But I understand you ain't a dyke, or fucked up, now, I do. I get it, kid."

Eddie grinned at her. He could care less about a bloody nose, a couple of bruises and some mud on his armor. He didn't give a shit about the thing with the gun, either. Nobody's perfect. All he cared about was that he was finally gonna collect on that raincheck the kid have him the night he met her, and he was going to make her goddamn glad that she wasn't a dyke; in his mind the Comedian was already sitting there and thinking about all the ways he was going to give it to her once he got her back to his apartment.

Well, all the ways except the one that would get his balls torn off.

The kid, however, didn't get it that she was getting a green light.

"You don't have to look so fuckin' happy about it! Jesus, I'm so fuckin' embarrassed! You prob'ly think I only decided to come an' work with you cos I like the way ya look in guns an' black leather." Liv muttered.

Eddie laughed, switching his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

So, she wanted it with the costume on, too.

Come to think of it, he'd never had it with a mask broad in her costume.

There was a kick he hadn't tried.

Might be fun.

It would liven up those long nights on the docks, that was for sure.

"So, ya really got it bad for me, huh, kid?" he crowed.

Liv gave him a hateful look.

"Yeah. I do. You wanna hear me say it? Fine. You're a real goddamn man, Eddie. First one I ever met outside the movies. I never met a meaner, more low-down dirty rotten son-of-a-bitch than you are and you bet your ass I got it real bad for you. I'd fuckin' get down on my bare knees on broken glass just so I could suck your dick. There, I said it. I hope it made you fuckin' happy."

Liv downed the rest of her Scotch and Coke, emphatically.

This time, the Comedian laughed so hard that he almost fell out of the booth.

"Now that's what I call askin' nice! C'mon, let's get the fuck outa here. I got plans for you."

"Ya do, Eddie?"

"Kid, I had plans for you the night I met you. Finish your drink."

***

As soon as they got in the door of his apartment, the Comedian slammed it behind them, threw the butt of his stogie into the nearest ashtray, grabbed the Harlequin around her waist and kissed her, violently, pressing her shoulders against the wall.

"You want me to break a glass for you, kid? I mean, I don't go for all that shit, but, if you insist, what the fuck?"

"Shut the fuck up, Eddie." Liv suggested, laughing.

They rolled each other down the wall, each taking a turn with their shoulders smacked against it, growling and gasping for air, knocking pictures down in small explosions of splintered wood and shattering glass, furiously fumbling with each other's body armor.

Armour that was designed to keep intruders out, not invite them in for a good time.

The Comedian was so frustrated that he slammed his fist right through the wall.

"Fuck! Is your fuckin' costume completely fuckproof, kid?"

"Mine? Jesus, Eddie, whaddya do when youse gotta take a piss?" Liv demanded.

"Let me do it." He snarled.

He couldn't get the one of the straps undone.

"Goddamn motherfucker, what the fuck is this! Fuck!"

"Lemme try it again. It's fucking stuck, the cocksucker! Lemme get a good grip on it…there it goes!"

The strap was in her hand, she ripped it off.

Eddie just looked at her.

"Kid, that strap was supposed to be bombproof."

The Comedian grinned.

The parts of Liv's costume that weren't armoured were made out of a super stretchy fabric that was guaranteed to be rip-proof.

Eddie grabbed hold of two handfuls of it, and pulled, tearing the whole top in half along the seams, ripping right through the space-age Kevlar chest plate.

"Goddamn Eddie, you're one romantic son of a bitch." Liv marvelled.

She and Eddie both laughed, and then they launched themselves at each other again, with a far greater ferocity than when they had fought.

Their hearts had just not been in killing each other.

Swearing horribly, the two masked avengers went through the process of taking off their masks and costumes and weapons as they moved towards the bedroom and the bed, leaving a mask here and a gun or a boot or a belt there along the way.

Liv had managed to pull off all of her clothes by the time she got the door shut, and while Eddie was taking the A-line undershirt he wore under his armour off as she pulled him over to the bed, she was taking off his shorts.

All of her long red hair was falling over her, and over the bed, and over him, and she was panting, and had this fucking crazy look in her eye.

The Comedian stepped out of his shorts and the Harlequin slid backwards towards the headboard.

She smiled that slow, lazy, sloe-eyed leer at him and stretched out all over the king-sized bed, reaching for him with her arms and her legs as he climbed into bed.

How, exactly had he missed how hot for him, shit, how hot for cock in general, she was?

The kid wasn't just pretty, she was a real fucking knockout.

"I take it all back. Kid, you're on fire."

"C'mon, scratch my itch, Eddie. C'mon….c'mon, scratch it real good…"

***

About a half of an hour later, Liv Napier was stretched out across more than half of Eddie Blake's kind sized bed, her eyes closed with a happy little smile on her face, a half-conscious pool of slow, sleepy satisfaction.

She was pretty foggy on where she was, fairly foggy on when it was and even a biz hazy on who she was, again, but she felt good, damn good, from the tips of her hair to the blunt ends of her fingernails to the tops of her toes.

What itch?

Where?

Somebody in the room was singing, or humming and somebody got up and the bed was lighter, and when it was heavier again she rolled over one way and almost fell out of bed, so then she rolled over the other way and met up with something solid that was larger and hairier than she was.

Eddie put his arm around her.

"Goddamn, kid, I'm glad you didn't fight me the way you just fucked me, I'd be dead." He chuckled.

"I can't make a fist. I don't even know what my name is. Eddie, you're the best, man. You're the fuckin' best." Liv mumbled.

She sort of wished she had a cigarette and she looked up at Eddie and he wasn't smoking, just lying there and staring at the ceiling.

"Aren't you supposed to have a smoke and fall asleep?"

"Not till I'm done, kid."

"You're not done?"

"I ain't hardly got started yet."

He did fall asleep, though, and so did she, and when they woke up Saturday morning was coming through the windows, and they both had a smoke and then they caught their second wind.

***

On that Saturday morning, the Comedian missed three personal phone calls from President Nixon, who, paranoid as usual, sent a Secret Service agent with a pair of binoculars and a to pose as a window washer on the skyscraper across the way.

The blinds only opened for a half-hour, then closed again.

He reported back on Saturday afternoon that the Comedian and his apprentice, the Harlequin, were having a busy weekend, and the phone was probably unplugged.

"Well, then, I think I'll call back on Monday." Nixon decided.

When Liv did not return to Wayne Manor by Sunday morning, Bruce Wayne began to worry that she was having her Troubles, again, and he also went to the Comedian's apartment.

He knocked on the door for a long time, and was finally met by Eddie Blake looking pissed off and tying his bathrobe.

"Is Liv here?" Bruce asked, casually.

"Yeah. She's fine. You want her to come to the door?"

"No, this is embarrassing enough. I thought she was having her Troubles again, that's all."

They muttered a few more things to each other, and then, with a sense of mingled relief and dread, Bruce Wayne departed.

On Monday morning, Liv was three hours late to Dr. Manhattan's lab.

Laurie had been worried all morning, but in that Liv had never been three hours late, even the doctor himself began to look at the buzzer on the wall by her name and wait for it to light up.

They had both expected her to be mangled and beaten beyond recognition as the green buzzer lit up and the doctor teleported her to the lab, but she wasn't.

There was not a scratch on her, she was dressed as usual, and had her lunchbox in one hand and a half-drunk bottle of orange juice in another, and a donut sticking out of her mouth.

She juggled orange juice and donut in one hand.

"Sorry I'm so late, Doc. I had a real heavy weekend, and I was out like a fuckin' light this morning. Lemme go put my shit in my office, an' I'll get to work."

"Go ahead and finish your breakfast, Liv. I don't mind."

You did not have to be Dr. Manhattan to play connect the dots, and he did not wish to pursue the matter any further.

Laurie, on the other hand was terribly curious, and she got to Liv after work, while Liv was locking up her desk drawers.

"Liv, you've never been more than ten minutes late to work even when you got stabbed the night before. Who is he, Godzilla?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Lar."

That wasn't like Liv.

Liv always wanted to talk about it. If she had a good time with a man, she'd sit there and tell Laurie every single detail that she could possibly remember, right down to the guy's measurements and whether or not he gave good head.

There could be only one reason Liv didn't want to talk about who it was who lit her up like a Christmas tree to the extent that she was still glowing.

"Oh Liv! You didn't!"

Liv shrugged, and a slwo smile spread over her face.

"Yeah, I did." She said.

"With him? That is so fucking disgusting! I remember when I caught you reading that sleazy fuckbook you tried to play it off like it was just one of your usual sleazy fuckbooks, but you always liked him! Just like some dumb groupie, slobbering all over a poster of a big, bad man with big, bad guns, wearing lots of big, bad, black leather. You just couldn't wait to get your legs around that piece of shit asshole, could you? What the fuck is the matter with you?"

Liv laughed.

"I'm sorry, Lar. I'm a mean, mean woman, and I'm bad like Jesse James. I'm badder and meaner than most cats who I ever met, than most cats who ever breathed. I like a man who's as bad as me. A big, mean, lowdown bad motherfucker. And they don't come bigger, meaner, badder or more lowdown than Eddie Blake. I can't help myself. It was a match made in Hell." She said, laughing

"Liv, I'm serious! You could get hurt!"

"Whaddya mean, hurt? Look, Eddie's a violent guy, but not in the sack, okay? He's not some kinda sicko. Look, I'm serious too, Lar. I had a fuckin' itch since I was 13 years old that nobody and nothing could give me a minute's relief from, the kinda goddamn itch that makes you fucking raw. And I got that goddamn itch scratched so good that I don't hardly know it's there, anymore. I don't know how, and I don't know why, and I don't care, either. Just let me enjoy it, okay?" Liv asked.

Laurie tried to think about what Jon would say.

That Liv was a tortured soul, and that wherever and however she could find some peace it was good for her, and that Laurie shouldn't judge her.

"Okay, Liv. But I don't want to know about it."

"Fine with me. I'd like to keep it to myself, anyhow."

***

The Comedian was in Washington on Monday as well, meeting with President Nixon.

The business part of the meeting concluded, Nixon figured he'd pull the old boy's chain a little, get him going.

"Well, I was thinking about giving you the week off, Eddie. To recover. I mean, you're not Superman, after all." he joked.

"Christ, Dick, do you know everything that everybody does?"

"No. Not everyone. I just set someone to check on you after you didn't answer your phone. I thought you might have been in danger. I didn't realise how much. I should have sent in the Marines."

"Hey, I can handle it. Trust me, I don't need no reinforcements. I'm a better man at 47 than most of these tea-smokin' hophead pussies are at 27. But…"

"But?"

"But I'm glad the kid had to go to work today. Holy shit! Lemme sit down before I fall down!"

"That bad, huh?"

"If the kid don't kill me one way, she'll do it the other."

"But what a way to go, huh? It must be something to be a superhero. Fast cars. Excitement. Young women falling all over you. You can stop me anytime you want, Eddie, and tell me it's not all it's cracked up to be."

The Comedian helped himself to one of Tricky Dick's cigars.

The poor, sad, old bastard wanted to hear some big story, but this one Eddie was keeping to himself.

"Yeah, but I'd hate to lie to you like that."

Watching Richard Nixon laugh was an unsettling experience that made Eddie Blake glad that he was a lifelong Democrat.

***

He was driving back to New York and he stopped at the lab for the kid.

The Doc didn't seem too surprised to see him, and he had this sort of faintly amused look on his face.

"What? Do I look tired?"

"I can teleport Liv back to New York. You didn't have to stop."

"I'm drivin' back. So I came to get her. What? Do I look tired?"

"You don't have to make an excuse to me. If you want to spend some time with your apprentice, go ahead. And no, you don't look tired."

"I ain't. I'm tellin' ya, Doc, I feel like I could rip a man's spine out with my bare hands."

Dr. Manhattan knew the Comedian well enough to know that meant that he was in a good mood.

Liv came out of her office, acted casual when she saw Eddie, and he acted just as casual.

"Hiya, Kid. You're goin home the long way, today?"

"Can I drive?"

"As long as I get my turn."

"Sure ya do, Eddie. After all, they say it's better to give than to receive, but, I'm easy, I like both."

They had a laugh over some private joke, and left.

Laurie came out of Liv's office after the Comedian and the Harlequin were gone.

"Jon, just what the hell do you call that?"

"Proof that neither one of them are as completely psychopathic and alone in the universe as they thought they were."

Laurie thought about a world in which the Harlequin and the Comedian were a team and involuntarily shuddered.

"No, I'm not sure it's such a good idea, either." Dr. Manhattan concluded.

***

Shortly after that, the shit hit the fan, as it became common knowledge in the superhero community that Eddie Blake and Liv Napier had decided to take their budding partnership a bit more personally than before.

At the next Justice League meeting, Liv was nearly slack-jawed with shock, sitting in her usual seat and witnessing the commonly mild-mannered Clark Kent go on a thunderous tirade reminiscent of a crazed South American dictator.

She reported it back to Eddie with bemused shock, saying that her only comment was that she was a grown woman and what she did with The Comedian or any other man was beyond the scope of what the League's charter allowed them to regulate.

But seriously, the way people acted, you would have thought that they caught him fucking a sheep at the petting zoo at the Bronx Zoo in front of all the little kids and a busful of nuns.

It had caused a real shitstorm, back then. Everybody was up in fucking arms about it; he was getting angry phone calls from half the Justice League about violating ethics and codes of honor and a lot of other laughable shit.

She's half your age, you're supposed to be her mentor, she's disturbed, you're a pig, you're immoral, you're an asshole.

Morons.

With the exception of Muck and Fuck, that is Kent and Grayson, Eddie didn't believe for a minute that if any of them found themselves in the position of having a good-looking young girl with big tits who liked fucking the way most broads liked chocolate and diamonds lying around in their beds, ripping their clothes to shreds and panting after their cocks that they would have done anything different.

They all knew what her problem was, the fucking bunch of faggots. They just didn't want to say it. They knew they were the ones who drove her to drink and despair, with all their fancy bullshit talk about ethics and honour and morals in a crazy piece of shit fucked up world where none of that existed when all the kid needed was a man, a real fucking man to scratch her bone deep itch that was driving her out of her mind, and if she ever wanted the itch to go away somebody had to tell her it was okay not to be a chump and a sucker and a fucking Pollyanna asshole and see the world the way it really was.

Goddamn bunch of pussies. Where the fuck were they with their ten dollar words and their fucking shrink doubletalk when the kid was going down the toilet and all they did was shake their heads?

Eddie was in the worst of all possible mood when none other than that shining bright boy of the killjoy of killjoys, Hollis Mason's four-eyed poindexter understudy, had to get into the act.

It wasn't like Eddie never made an effort to talk to the guy, and try to get along with him, but when he and the Inkblot were on their way back to Nite Owl's hangar and Eddie told them the story of how he and Liv ended up together, at least the Inkblot saw the humour in it and managed a chuckle or two, but Hollis' Boy Scout just looked disapprovingly at his controls.

"Dontcha get it, Danny Boy? I mean, here I am, walkin' around all day long with blue balls, thinking about how if I touch the kid, she'll try to kill me, and what does she do? She loses her shit and smacks me in the nose and puts a gun to my head because I ain't touched her. Women, yunno? I'll never figure 'em out."

The Boy Scout still wasn't laughing.

"Jesus, Eddie, that sounds pretty rough. I mean, maybe Liv's a little…unstable?"

"Unstable? Of course she's fuckin' unstable! Her father's the Joker and she hadda kill a guy when she was eleven years old! What, you ain't unstable? You're get dressed up in an owl suit and go beat up bad guys at three in the morning! Relax, Boy Scout. Nobody got hurt, and now we got everything all figured out."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, maybe she needs some, uh, help. You know, like to go see a doctor. I mean, it's not normal for somebody to be so self-destructive. And violent. I know you're trying to help her out, and I'm not saying that I think you and Liv shouldn't be…involved, but people don't usually do things like that to people they care about. At all. In any way. Maybe Liv needs a professional, too."

"That's not a good route for masks to take, Daniel." Rorschach interrupted.

"You know, Boy Scout, you oughtta pay more attention to your friend, here. He's a lot fuckin' smarter than you are. Whaddya mean, she needs a professional? You mean like her father needs a fuckin' professional?"

"No. No, Eddie, not, ah…"

"You mean like up at Arkham, with her crazy father, where she belongs?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't fuckin' have to! Jesus, it's always the same shit with you! Mom, Dad and Apple Pie! Easy for you to think so, you was born with a silver spoon in your mouth. And you fly around in this fuckin' hunka junk as far as you can get from the street and everybody in it. Well, me and Liv, we're soakin' in it. We're from the street, Dreiberg. There's no fucking excuse for you, chief. Bruce comes from a rich family, and he has his cars and his planes and shit, but he don't hide behind them the way you do. He's in this game because some criminal piece of shit killed his parents right in front of him when he was a little kid. What are you in it for? The kicks? Pussy? I'll bet a poindexter like you didn't get much of either before you became the Night Owl. Liv's a good kid. She doesn't need help from the likes of you. She's smarter than you are, she's got more balls than you have, and she could kick your ass any day of the week! She's my fuckin' partner, and if you ever say anything like that about the Harlequin ever again, I'll kick your ass all over this joint."

Eddie reached over to the control panel, and hit the button that activated the fire jets, then he got out and started walking down the passage that led to the street.

"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Dan insisted, as he jumped out and ran for the fire extinguisher.

"I dunno. I'm unstable. I need help from a professional. See you tomorrow, Boy Scout. Give a hoot, don't pollute."

Sarcastic laughter echoed through the hangar, as Rorschach got out and helped the Nite Owl put out the flames.

"How did I know that a guy like Eddie Blake could fall in love with somebody? I feel bad for Liv. Jesus, what if she loves him, too? What an asshole! No, I shouldn't say that. Maybe his parents beat him when he was a little kid, or something. I guess everyone deserves to be happy. Takes all sorts to make a world, right?" Dan muttered.

"His father died in the chair. Violent man. Abusive. Beat the wife and the kids. Shot a cop in the face. Career criminal. Walked out on a family of twelve. The Comedian was the oldest son." Rorschach replied.

"Really? Oh my God! No wonder the man is such an animal! How did you know that?
Rorschach shrugged.

"You hear things. I wouldn't drag love into it, Daniel. Got to stand behind you partner, that's all." Rorschach opined.

"I don't know. I mean, is it really a good idea to have a violent man from a broken family looking after a violent woman from a broken family, both of them telling each other how it's okay to be crazy and violent?" Nite Owl replied.

"Don't look at it that way. Comedian's father was worthless criminal scum. Abused his family. Abandoned them. Harlequin's father is worthless criminal scum. Murdered her mother, went to jail, abandoned her. They didn't follow in their fathers' footsteps. They're on the side of what's right. That's all that matters." Rorschach concluded.

The Nite Owl sometimes envied Rorschach his ability to see everything without those annoying shades of grey that kept you up at night when you didn't have your costume on.

"I wish I could see the world the way you do. It would make it a hell of a lot easier to do this job."