Disclaimer: I make no money from this enterprise and I own none of these characters, except the ones I have created.
VII: Paint It, Black
Friday
I: Eddie
The last thing the Comedian wanted to hear at eight in the morning was his phone ringing.
He and Wolverine had skipped whatever was on the program for the evening and gone out on the town, incognito.
Just two ex-dogfaces out on a tear.
They started drinking around four, and Eddie didn't have very clear memories of what had happened after about eight; he had vague memories of picking up a couple of broads in some dive or the other and getting into a fight with some punk kid who thought he'd hustle Eddie Blake and Lucky Jim at pool.
The whole place had gone up; it was a pretty good fight and those broads he sort of remembered, they left with the winners.
After that it was all a blur; something to do with a truck, an 18 wheeler; he remembered having one of the broads in his lap and driving the truck, and then a cop who he showed his S.H.I.E.L.D. ID card to, and he and Logan woke up at six in the morning at a Soldier's Mission downtown with blood on their clothes that wasn't theirs and some serious hangovers.
Then the hotel dick didn't recognise them, but Logan did a little renovating in the lobby with his claws, and Eddie had only been asleep about an hour before the phone woke him up.
"What the fuck do you want!" he barked.
"Sounds like somebody's got a bitch of a hangover. Hiya, Eddie."
"Jesus Christ, kid! I ain't heard shit from youse all week, and now ya gotta call me at eight in the fuckin' morning? What the fuck is the matter with you?"
"Hey, I got work to do today, don't I? I been bustin' my ass all week, not lyin' on it drunk havin' some fan of mine give me head while I'm havin' a toke. I just wanted to tell ya, everything's going according to my plan."
"Which is?"
"Geez, Eddie, if I toleja that, I'd hafta killya."
Then she laughed, uproariously.
Not a good sign.
Kid was up to something.
"Then why the fuck did you call me? You're up to something, kid. I know you. You are fuckin' up to somethin'!"
"Yeah, I'm up to somethin'. I'm finishin' up this fuckin' shitheel, dumb-ass assignment you gave me, that's what. Then, I'm gonna go have me a good time. I'm gonna get drunk, pick up a coupla mask-fans at Grossmann's I never met before an' make me a nice sandwich. So, I'll seeya Sunday, alright?"
"Yeah. Sure, kid. I ain't bitin.'"
"Hey, Eddie?"
"What?"
"Ahhh, never mind. I'll tellya Sunday. Bye."
The line wend dead.
Eddie looked into the phone.
"She's up to somethin', alright. Ahhh, fuck it. I fuckin' brought it on myself. Joke's on me. " He said.
The Comedian hung up, rolled over, and went to sleep.
***
That afternoon, he and Logan were back in the dive they had discovered the night before. He knew he could trust the kid. She was just as paranoid and devious as Crazy Jack, and every bit as paranoid and methodical as the Bat. The kid probably had a contingency plan for her contingency plan.
Foolproof.
Everything had been carefully arranged.
The fix was in.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Still, the Comedian didn't like it.
Nor did Wolverine.
Logan had volunteered his claws and his expertise should anything go wrong, and he and the Comedian were on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Dressed in their costumes, they sat at a dimly lit corner table in the back, both of them on the same side of the table with their backs to the wall, a pitcher of beer on its second refill and a half-empty bottle of Jack in front of them, along with a small two-way radio tuned into the Superhero Defence Network.
They were getting deep in their cups and the conversation, having turned to women and love and loss, was getting serious.
"Redheads are like that, Logan. They'll rip out your motherfuckin' heart and stomp all over it."
"At least you got a good one, didn't you, Eddie?"
"Yeah. I mean, until the day I piss her off enough that she literally rips my fuckin' beatin' heart right outta my chest and stomps it as I'm dying. Which may be comin' sooner than I think. You know, Logan, Bruce just gave that kid to me. They all did. Assholes. Not Bruce. He knew she was an okay kid, she just needed somebody to help her in a way he couldn't. But the rest of 'em, they took that kid and they threw her away. She's a drunk, she's a killer, she's a fuckin' crazy little Mick. All she wants to do is drink and fuck and fight, get rid of her. Give her to Eddie. He's an asshole. Fuck her. They threw her away like so much trash. Motherfuckers."
He had a black look on his face as he spoke.
"Yeah, they did. You know how I found her. I try to make it a funny story, for Bruce's sake, but it wasn't too fuckin' funny at the beginning. The Bat, he never gave up on her, though. How'd you do it, Eddie? I thought she was a good kid, a smart kid, and we had a good time, but when she drove out of my life, I almost got down on my knees and kissed the goddamn sidewalk outside the Institute."
Eddie Blake looked into his glass.
He slugged down his beer and wiped off his mouth.
"I love her. Pretty much since the first time I ever saw her pick a man up by his neck and his nuts and throw him. Joke's on me," he said to the glass.
Wolverine almost fell off his chair.
"You what?"
"What the fuck's wrong with that? I'm not allowed? What, you wanna fight over it? I'm not afraid of you, Logan! Claws or no claws. Ya had 'em in me before and I'm still here. Ya wanna go? Let's go. I ain't shot ya for years!"
"Whoa, there, Eddie! I didn't mean it in a bad way. I mean, I knew that. Everybody knows that. I'm just fuckin' surprised you said it."
"It's true. Why not say it? "
"Yeah, well I love Jeannie, too. Did me a lot of good. Her, too. A few women loved me. It killed most of 'em. I worry about Mel, ya know?"
"I still love Sally. Always will. Did her a lot of good, too. With Liv, it was different. She needed me. Me. Lousy, rotten, bad old Eddie Blake, the rottenest son-of-a-bitch motherfucker on God's green Earth. Killed his own father and a million other shitheels just like him. Evervbody's glad the shitheels are gone, but they sure love to hate me for killing 'em. But nobody else could get to her but me. 'Cos nobody could see her for what she is, and still love her. Just me. Joke's on her."
The bartender brought Eddie another Guinness.
"She love you?"
"She jumped out of a fucking airship fifty feet above the ground into a suicide riot with no chute, broke her leg, hit the ground running, scalped a guy and shot five or ten others at point blank range to get my back and throw me a gun. And that was after she met me, once. I think she does, yeah."
Logan chuckled.
"I told her she was gonna meet the man the Devil made in Hell just for her. And I was thinkin' about you when I said it. You tell her?"
"Not in so many words."
"You better tell her in just three. Women you love have the nasty habit of getting killed in this game. And you may be tough, Eddie, but you ain't immortal. She almost bought it after she fell on some amateur's knife and got it shoved into her deeper in a bar fight."
"She came ta me, you know. She thought that was it, she was bleedin' ta death and she came ta me. I thought she was gonna die on me. I woulda found every one of those motherfuckers, I woulda burned that bar to the ground, they woulda died like nobody ever died before."
"I know all about that. It doesn't help."
"She'd do the same for me."
Logan laughed.
"If somebody killed you, and Liv knew the name of the town where you died, she'd go in there like the goddamn Jews in the goddamn Bible. She'd kill every living thing from babies and old ladies to insects, burn the town down and sew the ashes with salt so nothing would live there for a hundred years."
"You gotta call that love, my friend."
"Eddie, I'd be afraid to have Liv love me. It's fuckin' scary enough there's blood between us."
"That's because the Devil didn't forge your ass in the fires of Hell. And when I say the Devil I mean Good Lookin' Mickey Blake, and our hovel in East New York was Hell, alright. At least it was for me."
"How bad was it, Eddie? Ya never really told me."
"I killed the motherfucker, didn't I? Me and my sister Edie. We kept right on killin' the motherfucker, too, even after he was dead. It was payback. He killed us, first. When we were just little kids."
The Comedian's face twisted up, and he stopped talking.
"Not both of you. You own fuckin' father? Jesus H. Christ!"
"Oh yeah. The Old Man, he got some habits in prison that I'd rather he hadn't brought home."
Eddie laughed at his own joke.
Logan didn't say anything for awhile.
"Yeah, when they wanna torture you, that's where they start. I wish I could forget."
"At least it wasn't your father."
"Nope. Just my brother. At least that's who Sabretooth says he is. But I remember my Pa. He looked like me. Nothin' like Victor. So, how the fuck should I know?"
"Someday you'll find a way to kill him. And everybody who knows what he did to ya. Then you'll feel a whole hell of a lot better."
The two old soldiers sat there with the memories they would rather not have had.
"Hey, Eddie?"
"What?"
"You got a bad feeling about this? I got a real bad feeling about this."
"Me too. And I think the kid is up to something. She calls me up this morning at eight, just to fuck with me. Tellin' me how she's gonna fuck every long-haired punk in town with her picture on his wall come Saturday night. She did it just to make me mad. She's gonna pull somethin', somethin' good an' dirty to get me back."
"Get you back for what?"
Eddie filled his beer glass, again.
"All this shit."
"Yeah, well, it's probably just us bein' paranoid. I mean, when Napalm plans something, it goes down the way she's planned it."
"Right. It's foolproof. I know exactly what Paulie's gonna do, and when he's gonna do it and there's gonna be a coupla masks there if the kid gets antsy. But there' somethin' I don't fuckin' like."
"You just gotta bad feeling."
"Yeah."
"When's it goin down?"
"Soon."
"You antsy?"
"Jumpin' outa my skin. You, Jimmy?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna go take a piss, before the whole shithouse goes up in flames."
They had another drink or two, and then, over what sounded like the chattering of heavy gunfire, the radio crackled to life.
"Rorschach to Comedian. Come in, Comedian. Rorschach to Comedian…"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. What?"
"I'm on the roof of the warehouse. Lots of gunfire coming from the street. Sounds like machine guns. Picked a few in range off with rifle, but there's too many. Going to try to get a message to Nite Owl, but will hold my post."
"Aw shit! Where's the Harlequin?"
"Arranging secondary contingency plan."
"And that is?"
"Not sure. Wasn't told. Just told to hold my post."
"What the fuck is going on?"
"Not sure. Moloch broke out of Arkham. Might have something to do with it. Heavily armed goons all over the docks. Like a war zone."
"You stay there. Hold down the fort. I'll be comin' with the cavalry. Over and out."
"Roger. Over and out."
The Comedian swore into the radio as he and Wolverine made tracks for the street.
"That fuck Jacobi, I know what he's up to! The kid had Crazy Jack put the word out ta stay out of this, and Moloch, he's startin' a gang war. Makin' a move on the Joker, ta challenge his authority. And there's goddamn Paulie right in the middle of it. Don't fuckin' tell me youse told me so, Jimmy. Don't fuckin' tell me!"
"I won't." Logan promised.
"Maybe you won't, soldier, but I will. You and Bruce."
The Comedian and Wolverine turned around.
"Steve? Where did you come from?" Wolverine asked.
"I've been shadowing you dogfaces all night. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling this was going to go FUBAR. I've got a chopper on the roof and we're cleared from S.H.I.E.L.D to do whatever we have to in order to contain this situation. Nobody wants a supervillain gang war in New York. Not do we want to lose any of our fellow masks, or any innocent civilians in that warehouse. This is no longer some training exercise. I hope you two can sober up in a hell of a hurry."
IV:Liv
What I wanna know is why nothing is ever easy.
I had it all planned.
It was gonna be so fucking simple.
Like eating chocolate cake in a bag.
I mean we rehearsed everything, each word, each step, each motion, and now this shit.
The first hint of a fly in the ointment was when Rorschach came to my old room over Trivelino Mac's and told me that Moloch had gone over the wall at Arkham.
It made sense, with all the masks being at the Summit.
But that wasn't too upsetting to me, because I made a contingency plan.
I always make a contingency plan.
Now I didn't think Moloch was dumb enough to cross the Comedian and the Joker, both, but just in case, I put the Old Man and Harley on standby, and put my contingency plan into action.
I got the word to Dick that Paulie was going to "kidnap" him too, so I'd have somebody on the inside.
Then I'd have Rorschach on the outside, up on the roof, with a rifle.
Paulie's letter said to be there at six, so I picked up the car from Hollis' garage right after I met with the troops.
We all sat down and went over the plan one more time.
Then I met secretly with Paulie, and we went over our parts one last time.
After that, I made a few phone calls, to make sure things were in place for my secondary contingency plan.
The "just in case the whole shithouse goes up in flames" contingency plan.
I always make two contingency plans.
Then, I loaded up the car with guns and ammo and put on my bulletproof vest and the stealth version of my costume, just in case.
I know the new version of the ol' boiler suit has Kevlar in it, double layers in some places, but I had the feeling I might need the heavy artillery, and that vest I had is supposed to stop up to a .40 caliber bullet.
Then I washed and waxed the car and headed down to the docks.
The minute I saw the truck parked across in the middle of the road, I knew I was fucked.
Sure, it could have been an accident, or a delivery truck, or Mob guys with some swag, but it was all too convenient.
The car there with it looked like a cop car, and the man coming towards my car looked like a cop, sure enough, but I smelled a rat.
I been on patrol on the docks for years, and my father lives down here; I know all the cops on this beat and this guy, he wasn't one of them.
He was motioning for me to get out of the car.
So I'm fucked.
If this guy is a cop and I don't get out of the car, he'll shoot me.
If he's not a cop and I get out of the car, he'll shoot me.
So I pretended to get out like I was a schmuck and didn't know shit, but the minute my ass was out of that car I went into a roll.
I really hit the concrete hard; I knew I'd be feeling that tomorrow, but it was a good thing, because the fake cop pulled out a .357 Magnum and opened fire.
Not to mention there was some heat coming from the roofs around me.
One slug hit the pavement and the other hit me, pretty much at point-blank range, right in the chest.
I played dead, and let him get close to me.
Just in case he was a real cop who was taking payola, I took him out with a couple of shots to the knee. I crawled on my belly back to the car with my chest burning like fire, slammed the door and threw it into reverse.
I drove in reverse all the way down the street, turned around when I could and floored it in the other direction.
Holy shit.
I drove right into a goddamn ambush.
I mean I was expecting some shit, but not this kind of shit.
It was like the goddamn St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
That fucking Moloch, he had goons in cars, goons on the rooftops, goons on the sidewalk, it was like running the fucking gauntlet.
If I had been stupid enough to think, oh well, that was all, nice trick with the cop and the truck, and get out of the car anywhere near that warehouse, I would have been just as dead as Sonny fucking Corleone at the goddamn tollbooth.
It was that kind of fire.
I mean, I bulletproofed the car, but you'd need a tank to stand up to this kind of gunfire, so I ducked my head down and kept one hand on the wheel and floored it away from the docks.
When I got far enough away, I pulled the car over and thought about it.
All that firepower wasn't just for me.
Moloch was using the Old Man's decree to stay out of the Green Jackal situation to start a supervillain gang war.
He must have figured out that the Old Man had it in for him, and now he was making a big power play, and throwing a big old "fuck you" to his arch-nemesis, getting his partner involved.
Meanwhile, I was in the dark.
Tony had glimpsed the edges of the plot, but I had no idea who, if anybody, was with Moloch or what they had planned, and there was my brother and Hollis and Nelly in the middle of it, and Rorschach up on the roof.
Not to mention Paulie and Rosie and Skinny, my friends, innocent civilians.
The shithouse had definitely gone up in flames.
Good thing I had made a plan for that.
I got on the radio.
"Harlequin to Emergency Strike Team. Shithouse has gone up in flames. Repeat. Shithouse has gone up in flames. Over."
"This is Silk Spectre, Harlequin. We read you loud and clear. We're ready and waiting. Over."
"I'll be there in five minutes. Bulletproof vests on. Already took a .357 at point blank rage. No serious injury. Triage. The enemy has choppers. An' not the flying kind. And there's a whole shitload of them. Over."
"Right. Vests on. Ready and waiting. Over and out."
"Over and out."
III: Laurie
On Wednesday night, Laurie congratulated herself on knocking Jon out so thoroughly that he actually fell asleep.
As for her, she was so fucking angry at that son of a bitch Eddie Blake and at her mother for the endless comedy she played with him that Laurie couldn't sleep at all.
She was just about ready to go and find one or both of them and raise hell when she got an interesting phone call from Liv, describing the most intricate web of heartless double and triple crosses that she'd ever heard.
To have that shit put on you by your stepfather and your partner was even worse.
Worse yet, Crazy Paulie was involved.
Laurie didn't remember ever not knowing Liv or Paulie.
Her mother said they'd been friends since they were a year old, and she knew he was crazy, but crazy enough to put on his sister's tights and go out and try to be a supervillain in a leotard with an iron-on it and a leftover plastic mask and cape from St. Patrick's Day?
Un-fucking-believable.
If his uncle hadn't beat the unholy fuck out of him for his stupidity, Laurie would have done it. Because not only did he get himself in deep shit, ending up in Arkham, getting mixed up with real supervillains, but he got Napalm antsy.
Napalm was just about the only son-of-a-bitch paranoid enough to suspect that Paulie, who she had known since she was in a stroller, was a genuine goddamn supervillain.
Paranoid enough to think that, with him being the Comedian's nephew and her friend, that she might have to take him out, if he went bad.
Laurie had spent a few hours on the phone, earlier in the week, talking an extremely drunk Napalm out of her last misgivings about their old playground buddy Paulie.
On one hand, it was good that Liv told Paulie she was the Harlequin, and that she was helping him with his crazy plan, but, on the other hand, now he was mixed up in some crazy plot with fake kidnapped masks.
It was the kind of plan that could go very wrong in about a million different ways, all of which would involve Paulie, Rosie, and Skinny being in the middle of some truly deep shit that they were not equipped to handle.
The good thing about Liv's paranoia, though, was that it cut both ways, and in case of everything going completely wrong, she devised a Doomsday scenario.
It was vintage Napalm.
Ultraviolent, flashy, brutal, and precise.
It was the kind of plot that Jon would never involve himself in, and that her mother would go mad if she knew Laurie was even thinking about going along with.
Laurie accepted in a minute.
She had known Paulie her whole life; Paulie's mother, Edie, had babysat Laurie when she was a little girl, and it wasn't either of their faults they were related to Eddie Blake. For good or ill, the crazy bastard was her friend, and if he needed her to get out of a jam, she was going to do it.
And if a few badguys ended up in the morgue along the way, well, sometimes being a masked hero wasn't all diplomacy and bullshit.
Sometimes you had to fucking kill somebody.
That was how, on Friday night, Laurie found herself in a decommissioned WWII era Ford combat vehicle, with three heavily armed men, hoping the okay would never come.
They were all in it for the same reason she was.
The truck belonged to Paulie's brother, Patrick Blake, who had done two tours of duty under his Uncle Eddie in Vietnam.
Pat was a real nice guy; he was studying psychology in college on the GI Bill, and he wanted to be a shrink. He was a little bit loopy, but compared to his crazy brother, his crazy mother, and his completely fucking psychotic uncle, he was pretty normal.
Pat was an explosives and weapons expert, with a Purple Heart.
Riding along with them was Big Benny Grossmann, whose mother had packed him off for a year of service in the Israeli army when he was 18.
It was an eventful year and he had seen a lot of action.
Benny was a sharpshooter and an expert marksman, who had several medals for bravery.
It was definitely a family affair, as Paulie and Pat's father, Ivan Stavrogin, a journeyman junkman who occasionally worked as a garbage man and was a decorated WWII veteran of the Red Army motor corps, was behind the wheel.
They weren't doing it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. They were in this to save their friends and their family; and because of that, it took on a greater sense of immediacy.
It was easy to think about values and standards and tread the high moral ground when you were fighting one group of strangers to protect another group of strangers, but when it was your own friends and family who were involved, you wanted to shoot first and talk later.
Fortunately, that was exactly the kind of operation Napalm had in mind.
They all sat in the truck, waiting for six to come and the radio to remain silent.
"Pat, I know this is a helluva time to mention it, but I don't have any formal firearms training. I've fired a pistol, a couple of times, but I don't know anything about machine guns."
"There's not much to know. You don't have to be accurate when you've got that kind of firepower. You just point and shoot." Pat told her.
Unfortunately for all of them, especially Paulie and company, Liv's communication came in at 4:30, and she arrived not long after it.
Loaded for bear with a big bullet hole in her combat vest already.
Shooting Napalm only made her angry.
"Okay, gang, this is some serious shit we got here. Remember all of the worst-case scenarios we discussed? This is worse than all of them. We got a full scale supervillain gang war going on, and Paulie, and some of the Silk Spectre's and my colleagues are sitting ducks in the middle of it. And they already shot me. We got goons all over the waterfront. Goons in cars, goons on rooftops, goons on the street, and they've got some serious fucking weaponry."
"Do you have a plan?" Benny asked.
"Yeah. Total fucking war. We're gonna hit 'em hard, we're gonna hit 'em fast, and we're gonna give no quarter and show no mercy. They didn't strafe my car with machine gins and have a phony cop shoot me in the chest with a .357 Magnum because they're fucking around. The way I see it, Moloch knows that the Joker isn't too fond of him anymore, and that he's trying to find an excuse to punch his ticket. Now, with pretty much all the masks in New York in DC, and the Joker putting the word out that Greenie's his man and stay out of his action, Moloch figures this is a great opportunity for him to make his move. Those goons aren't out there for this bullshit comedy Paulie and I are supposed to play out. Sure, we're gonna be killed to show the Joker what Molly thinks of him; and he might have his goons bump off Hollis and Nelly for spite, but what this is really about is taking the docks. The docks, where the Joker has his HQ and, coincidentally, where the Comedian, his arch-nemesis, had been on patrol since 1938. And who's the Comedian's partner? The Harlequin. It all ties up in a nice package with a bow for Moloch, don't it? And, as the 7th Cavalry ain't comin' to save the day, this is up to us. As the Comedian's partner, I gotta show Moloch that I don't take too kindly to him tryin' to take the docks; that it ain't a case of while the cat's away, the mice will play. You too, Laurie. Half the reason he's pulling this is Molly has us pegged for the weak links, just a couple of chicks. We gotta show him that we're better men than he is. That said, if anybody in this van can't get down with some real and true ruthless ultraviolence, there's the door."
Nobody moved.
Ivan actually laughed.
"My father died in Czar's war, my mother in Revolution, I grew up under piece of shit Stalin, five years in gulag, five years in Red Army fighting Nazis. You think a few shitheels with guns is going to keep me from saving my stupid crazy son?"
"He's my stupid crazy friend, Ivan. I'm with you. I'm nobody's Twinkie. Sometimes you gotta just say, fuck it, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." Laurie said.
"Hey, you fuck with my brother, and my uncle, and my friends, you've fucked with me. And a Blake is nobody in this city you wanna fuck with. I'm with Dad. Let's go." Patrick announced.
"Paulie and Skinny and Rosie are my best friends in the world. Like Paulie says, Live Freaky, Die Freaky, baby." Benny decided.
"That's right, Benny. You got it now. Live Freaky, Die Freaky, baby. When you fuck with the freaks, you are in a world of shit. Now, here's my plan. Pat, I'm gonna need a really big shoe here, where we have a lot of smoke, a lot of fire, but not a lot of real damage. At least not structural damage. I want goons blown to hell and abandoned buildings in flames, but we can't go blowing up warehouses or we'll have the cops, the mob and the Better Business Bureau all over us. Benny, I need you to put the fear of God into 'em. If there's two of 'em up on a roof, pick one off a roof, but let the other live. That kind of shit. And Ivan, you drive. And if you gotta drive over 'em, drive over 'em. Now, by this time, with the streets in flames and shit blowin' up and those goons not knowing who's picking them off, its' gonna create some serious chaos. We'll do a couple passes with the choppers, and then, you guys cover us while me and the Silk Spectre go in there. After we solve the goon problem, we'll come back here and get the car. Okay so far?"
Nods all around.
"Now, we'll creep up on the warehouse, and secure the perimeter. But this time, we go in real quiet. I don't want Moloch to know I'm comin' until I batter the doors down with the car."
"Then what?" Patrick asked.
Liv didn't know what to say.
Moloch was Eddie's arch-nemesis.
"Fuck it. I can take him."
"That's not gonna work with Moloch, kid. Although, I gotta say, I like the rest of your plan. Open up, Pat. C.O's are here."
The familiar voice came from outside, and before Liv and Laurie could tell him not to, Pat opened up the back of the truck.
Benny couldn't believe his eyes.
The Comedian, Wolverine, and Captain America.
"You got a better idea, boss?" Liv asked the Comedian.
"Yeah. I do. Jacobi's a punk and a coward, but he ain't stupid. You get outta that car to fight him man to man, he'll pull a gun out of his ass and give you two in the head. You better pin his ass to the wall, and you better have the chopper. But I think you got it right, what he's up to. He thinks my partner's just some broad, some Twinkie that the papers have been lyin' about, and that he can rough her up and fuck her to spite me. And while he's at it, he figures he can make his stand against Crazy Jack. Sunnuvabitch musta really gone crazy, but, still, we can't have a superhero gang war on the docks. The whole city'll be paralysed. Gotta nip this thing on the bud. Now, kid, what you gotta do is get the drop on the prick, and them beat the cocksucker, mercilessly. Lay down the law for him. I say she gets out, and shows him she ain't no fuckin' Twinkie. You start knocking his ass around, he turns to shit. Then, when you get him on the ropes, I'll come out and finish the job. Moloch's problem is it's been too long since I really beat the shit out of him. You gotta put the fear of God into that cocksucker, or else he'll do just about anything. And we better get there, fast. Paulie can play it off for awhile, but if Moloch gets wise to him, everybody in that joint is dead. You got anybody ridin shotgun, Ivan?"
"No, no, Eddie. You drive. I ride shotgun. Let me use yours, huh?"
"Sure. Just like the old days, huh?"
The three superheroes got in the truck.
"I'm taking over this operation, if you don't mind, Napalm." Cap told her.
"You're the boss, Cap."
"Right. Move out, Comedian. Now, we're pretty much going to go with Harlequin's plan, except for the crazy part where she and Silk Spectre leave this vehicle before the threat is contained. That's why we brought Wolverine. They can shoot him up, and he'll still kill ten of them and be drinking at the victory bash, tonight."
"No way! I'm not sittin' on my hands while you send Logan out to get all cut to pieces!"
"I can take it, darlin'."
"So? That don't make it right." Liv protested.
"Like you said, soldier, this isn't about what's right, this is about winning this battle. And Logan's been drawing fire and taking down the shooters since before you were born. You do your job, and you let him do his." Cap reprimanded her
"Are you gonna say it?' Benny asked Wolverine.
"Okay, Benny."
Snikt!
"I'm the best at what I do. But, what I do isn't very nice."
"Wow! This is the coolest fuckin' thing that ever happened to me!"
"At ease, soldier. Now, when the threat is contained, including any threat to the perimeter, we'll send Harlequin and Silk Spectre in the Wildcat, with the Comedian, as he planned."
"So we miss the good part?" Laurie insisted
"Yeah! Send me in with Logan! I'll kill 'em all!" Liv protested
"Cap, I've seen Napalm in action, and---"
Captain America gave Wolverine his best "Stand down, soldier," look, and Logan, knowing what was going to happen, anyway, stood down.
"Yeah, and I'd like to see her induction next week, not her funeral. Is that clear?"
Liv shrugged.
"We still get to make the passes with the chopper."
"It's better than sitting around all night. And Moloch might have goons in the warehouse." Laurie agreed.
"You got those incendiaries ready, Pat?" The Comedian asked.
"Yessir, Colonel!"
"Just give the order, Cap."
"Move in, Colonel."
"Wait! Wait, goddamn it! Wait for me!" a voice was yelling from outside.
"That sounds like Bear." Pat said to Laurie.
"Who the fuck is that?" Ivan asked.
"It's Boots Marcano's kid. Frankie Bear." The Comedian said.
"Oh, Frankie Bear. Figures." Ivan replied.
"Who's Frankie Bear?" Cap asked Laurie.
"Frank Marcano. He's a real trip. Frank's crazy. Stone cold nuts. And he looks it. He's got one brown eye, one blue eye and he's even hairier than than Crazy Paulie. He looks, well kind of like a bear. One of those Sicilian guys, not too tall but built like a brick wall. He used to be the bully in he park where me an' Liv and Paulie and Pat used to be set loose in, but he's evolved into a real Furry Freak Brother. Everybody in Bensonhurst thinks Frankie must have been driven crazy by his time in Vietnam, but anybody who knew the Bear all his life knows that Frank was crazy before he left, and that his time in 'Nam has actually made him a wiser, mellower man. He was with Pat and the Comedian in the war, and now he makrs pies at his father's pizza shop, but he's the Harlequin's man in the street.. He's got all these crazy weapons he smuggled outta the army, and he's sorta admitted that he'd always wanted to go out just like King Kong. This is definitely right up his street."
The Comedian already let the Bear into the cab of the truck.
"Reportin' for duty, Sarge! I got a bazooka an' a flamethrower, an' I got an M-16, a coupla grenades…"
"Siddown, you crazy fuck! Good ta seeya, Bear. Now, gimme that flamethrower." The Comedian chuckled.
"Hi, Ivan. I came to help Paulie."
"Good. Now, I fire bazooka, and you aim. Okay?"
"You got it."
Cap turned to Wolverine.
"Are you wishing you stayed in DC yet?"
"Not me, Cap."
"Why doesn't that surprise me, Jimmy? Alright, troops! Prepare to move out! Comedian! Move out!"
The Comedian floored it, and Patrick opened one of the hatches enough to throw out the first incendiary.
Benny went up into the sniper's roost, and Laurie heard the Comedian tell the Bear to start shooting.
"Fire two, Pat!"
Patrick Blake threw out the next device.
The fire from the enemy was incredibly heavy; Laurie could hear the bullets pinging off the armoured truck.
She wasn't used to fear, but the smells of smoke, sweat , blood, and gunpowder, the sight of the night lit by fire, the shouts of her fellow team members in the van; it was like war, and Laurie had never been to war.
She swallowed, hard, and fear began to crawl around in her guts like a virus.
The rest of these men had all been to war; combat was a familiar situation to them, but Laurie had never been in a real combat situation like this before.
She thought Liv hadn't either, but Liv didn't look fazed, and she seemed to know exactly what she was doing.
Has she already been dropped into some hot spots around the globe with her partner, or was the city really that bad?
"Machine gunners, to the windows!" Captain America ordered.
Laurie realised that meant her, too.
"Ports open! Fire!"
"I'll hit 'em high. You hit 'em low." Liv told her.
"How about a little chin music, ya cocksuckers!" she yelled and started firing.
"Napalm?"
"What?"
"I never shot one of these. The last time I fired a pistol I was fifteen, at a shooting range."
"What? What the fuck is the matter with your mother? Sendin' you out in the street with no gun! You see the big bolt?" the Comedian yelled from the front.
"Yes."
"Pull it back. Now, point the barrel out the port and aim for their legs. Put your feet apart, keep both hands on the weapon, and fire. Pat, keep her weapon loaded."
"Right."
"I'm not gonna be very accurate." Laurie said.
"Like I said before, you don't have to be." Pat told her.
Napalm was extremely accurate. She was shooting away like she was born with the chopper in her hand; she could shoot one handed, and pop heads like pumpkins and reload the magazine with the other hand.
Laurie found that the gun kicked like a mule; but it did most of the work for her.
"When we get outta this, kid, you make sure your friend learns how to use a goddamn sidearm! Take the wheel, Ivan. Bear, gimme that flamethrower back! Cover me."
"Yessir, Sarge!"
Laurie saw a jet of fire coming from the passenger side, and she could hear the Comedian laughing.
Liv was laughing, too.
"Slow down, Comedian! We're making the drop. Alright, Wolverine, move out"
Captain America opened one door, and Wolverine jumped out, claws at the ready.
"Cover him!" The Comedian ordered, and Benny and Pat joined Liv at the ports.
Laurie gave up her spot to Benny.
They could provide him with some cover, but Wolverine pretty much ran into a hail of bullets.
Despite that, the bodies began to pile up.
The slugs that tore into him didn't seem to faze him; he was going through the gun-toting goons like a hot knife through butter, until he took a double-barrelled shotgun blast to the midsection at close range.
Wolverine howled in pain, and fell to his knees on the pavement, and then, he crumpled over on his side.
The goons continued to shoot him.
It was horrible; Laurie could see his body jumping from the impact of the bullets.
She was about to ask Cap if anybody was going to help him, but Liv was way ahead of both of them.
"You motherfuckers! I'm comin', Logan!" Liv howled.
She did a roll, kicked the back door open, and jumped out of the truck.
By the time she was on her feet she was firing.
"Harlequin!" Cap yelled, as he pulled the door shut.
"I coulda told you she was gonna do that, Cap." Laurie told him.
There were only five goons left who weren't either dead, a whole pile of them by Wolverine's hand, or fleeing in terror.
The Harlequin had taken up a stance right in front of Wolverine, shielding him with her body and shielding herself with a hail of bullets erupting from her gun.
First she hit them low with the chopper, taking out their knees.
"Stay down, Logan! Alright you fuckers, that was for hurting my friend. And this…"
Liv opened fire again, hitting the goons high, chest and heads popping like pumpkins.
"…is for fucking with me!"
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat…
"Ahahahahahahaha…."
…rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat…
"…hahahahahahaha…"
The street was suddenly quiet, but for the sounds of guns being thrown onto it and running feet.
The hard-bitten henchman didn't fear death, and they didn't fear fire, and they didn't fear a man they couldn't kill, but every man fears Hell, and so they feared Napalm, Hell's emissary, made of hellfire.
Quite literally, Laurie thought, seeing her wreathed in smoke, her face illuminated by fire, standing up to her ankles in blood, Hell's Angel.
The truck stopped and the Comedian got out, too, and he and Liv carried Wolverine back into the truck and laid him on one of the benches.
The Silk Spectre was jolted out of her strange reverie by the reality of Liv and the Comedian carrying a ruined, bloody Wolverine, his body twitching, inadvertently, into the back of the truck.
He was so riddled with bullets that his body looked like it had been passed through an industrial hole puncher. His costume was all in rags and tatters and there was scarcely an inch of his body that wasn't red and torn and bleeding.
The goons had paid particular attention to Wolverine's head and face to a hideous effect; Laurie could see his silvery adamantium skull showing through in places. The poor man was making a hideous gurgling noise that resulted in blood bubbling from his lips that was an approximation of breathing, as he held his hands over his belly.
That was the worst wound; the shotgun blast had blown a huge hole in his torso; Logan had his hands around the ruins of his stomach because he was trying to hold in his guts.
Laurie could see them.
Napalm had her hands over his belly, too; they were red to the wrists with the man's blood.
"Jesus, Eddie, they nearly blew him in half! Don't move, Logan, I'll holdja together."
"I can see that. Look, I got bigger hands, kid. Lemme hold him together. It's awright, Lucky Jim. You an' me both know you'll be awright."
"Don't feel so lucky." Logan burbled, wetly, through bloody lips.
"Oh Jesus, they shot him to pieces! Hang in there, soldier! Corporal Blake, do we have first aid supplies?" Captain America asked Patrick.
Meanwhile, Wolverine was bleeding all down the bench he was lying on; rivulets of blood were rolling along the metal floor of the truck towards the door.
He looked more like a piece of meat than a human being; it seemed almost obscene that he couldn't die; no-one should have to suffer being wounded like that and not die.
"Yessir. We've got got hypodermics, ainti-bacterial ointment, bandages, clamps, gauze, sterile needles, suture…Would morphine help Mr. Logan?" Pat asked.
"It won't hurt him. I'll get the vein ready." Liv said.
Laurie watched as the Comedian held the bits of Wolverine together while Captain America and Liv pulled bullets out of him, and sewed and bandaged him.
Still, Laurie couldn't believe it; he was already healing up; breathing normally, without bleeding or gurgling, and she could see his wounds closing up, some of the suture popping out, already.
"Let me have that blanket, Pat. Keep still, Logan. You'll be alright." Liv was telling him, as she covered him up.
With Wolverine on the mend, Captain America took the Harlequin to task.
"Soldier, you know damn well that whatever those men did to Wolverine, it wasn't going to kill him! You are another story! Do you mind telling me why you disobeyed a direct order and risked your life for no reason?" he barked.
"No reason? No reason! I'm standin' here lookin' like I took a bath in the man's blood, an' you're tellin' me I had no reason! I don't give a shit if he's doin' jumpin' jacks by the time we get to the warehouse! Logan's my friend, it's blood between us, and if somebody blows him away, I ain't sittin' around and listenin' to him scream an' watchin' him bleed out in the street, holdin' his own guts in with his bare hands! That's not how I was taught to be a goddamn hero! I took an oath to Logan to always be his friend, and never betray him, and I took an oath to the Justice League to always come to the aid of a fellow mask in need, even if it costs me my life. There wasn't an out clause that said, unless he's a mutant with an extreme healing factor" Liv protested.
For a minute, Cap looked shocked.
Then, Steve Rogers put his hand on Liv Napier's shoulder.
"You're a good soldier, Harlequin. That's exactly what you are, because it is war out on these streets, isn't it? A war you were drafted into when you could barely walk, a war your mentor, the Bat, is the only one of us who knows just how bad it is. And you have been out here fighting it on your own, all these years, like a crazy guerrilla warrior in some jungle hell. Well, if this is what it's like in the streets of this city, if this is what this country is coming to, then we had better put our own house in order before we go out and try to save the world. I can't look away anymore, and tell myself that somehow it will get better, that all the kids are crazy, that nothing's wrong. You're not going to be alone in this war any longer. Just like we almost lost you to this war, America's almost lost your whole generation to it. Well, we can't let that happen. America, love it or leave it, that's coward's talk. Change it or lose it, I say. And when I say it, there's a helluva lot of important people, masks and otherwise, who are damn well going to listen to me." He said.
Steve didn't feel like a bitter old man, anymore; he felt like Captain America, again.
"That's what I been tryin' to tell youse for years, Steve! I been fightin' this war in the city with the kid., on these docks by myself, all over the whole fuckin' world my whole life since I was the age the kid was when she started! Alla that shit guys our age go on about we killed alla them Nazis for nothin' cos the country's goin downhill, who's fuckin' fault is that? These goddamn kids? They ain't in charge. We are. And we been spendin' so much time pretendin' everything's fine an' puttin' a nice frame around a lousy picture that we've let the whole fuckin' shithouse go up in flames. No wonder all the stupid little bastards are runnin' wild in the streets, gettin' hooked on dope, overdosing, joinin' weird religions, marchin' up and down an' yellin. It ain't nice, it ain't pretty, and it sure as hell ain't Ma and Apple Pie, but it ain't never been that way. An' it never will be. This is fuckin' America, the land of the free, and the home of the fuckin' nuts! That's the way it's been since 1776. We gotta quit sellin' ourselves some bullshit air-conditioned Ozzie and Harriet suburban fantasy an' go in there and take this country back from these fuckin criminal rat bastards an' pushers an' pimps an' drug-runnin' scumbags. Really put these jokers through some changes. We're fuckin' superheroes. It's our fuckin' job. And if some fuckin' scumbags die, shit, goddamn Wyatt Earp and alla those guys didn't settle the fuckin' West askin' cattle rustlers and bank robbers to please disperse." The Comedian agreed.
"His heart's in the right place, Cap." Wolverine said.
Laurie looked over at him; Logan was sitting up; and he was more skin that bullet holes, already.
"Lie down, soldier! And now mine is, too. Alright, troops. We've got three fellow masks and three innocent civilians to save. We can philosophise later. Comedian, get on the radio and alert Commissioner Gordon; the city can take the docks situation from here. Let's move out."
IV: Liv
So, we made it to the factory around quarter of six, and we were all hunkered down in the back while Eddie and Cap checked the perimeter.
Logan wanted to go with them; all his bullet holes were shut, and his head was in one piece, but that hole in his belly wasn't quite closed, so he had to stay in the truck.
He healed up pretty fast, even for Logan; maybe it was the adrenaline from the combat situation, maybe it was that me and Cap took the bullets out of him and sewed him up, some, but I was glad to see he was on the mend.
His X-Men costume was all in shreds and bloody tatters, but good old Bear, he's like Pat, prepared for anything. He brought some extra fatigues with him in case of emergency, and as him and Logan are about the same size; they fit Logan pretty good.
Eddie and Cap came back about fifteen minutes later, by then Logan was healed up enough that he was putting Frank's borrowed fatigues on, and assuring Laurie, who was doing her best not to look horrified, that he was as good as new.
"Well? Anybody out there?" he asked.
"The only gun here is ours. Rorschach's still on the roof. He got a few of them, and the rest cut and run when they heard all hell breaking loose, and saw all the fire and smoke. We'll keep the perimeter secured; it's time for the strike team to move in." Cap told us.
The moment of truth.
To play some comedy with Paulie seemed stupid after what just went down, so I decided once I got in there to just play it straight.
Contain Moloch, get everybody out in one piece.
I wasn't too happy about Eddie going in with me; but I didn't mind Laurie, and I was sure Cap would look after Logan.
We all got in my car, and waited the longest five minutes or so of my life.
"Hey, Eddie?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"If I don't make it through this, I wantcha to know that everything's alright between you an' me. If I do, though, well, we gotta talk."
"Hey, kid, nobody on our side is dyin' on this mission, alright?" Eddie says.
"Yeah. That's what me and Mr. Personality are here for." Laurie says.
"I could do with a little less of that fuckin' smart mouth from you, Laurel Jane! Shut it! Now!"
And I have to laugh, because Eddie's using this "Don't make me get your mother" tone of voice and Laurie's so surprised, she actually belts up.
Then, it's six o'clock, and all was not well.
Time to make it well.
I jammed a tape into the tape deck and hit play, and cranked it.
With Led Zeppelin doing the Immigrant Song, the I hit the high beams, revved the engine, and let out one of my best Daddy's Little Girl laughs.
"Alright everybody, drop your cocks and grab your socks, HERE WE GO!"
I blasted the horn three times, dropped the car into third, and floored it.
"Helluva way to spend a Friday night," Laurie commented, bracing herself for the impact.
"Never a dull moment with the kid around, that's for sure." Eddie agreed.
V: Paul
On Friday morning, Paul Blake woke up in the plush bed in the vast bedroom of the posh apartment above the warehouse he temporarily occupied in a completely understandable state of abject terror and total panic.
Paul had everything planned out perfectly for his big day, but that didn't mean he wasn't any the less nervous.
Three days earlier, he had Rosie deliver the following invitation to the Harlequin.
My Dear Harlequin,
I enjoyed our last meeting immensely, and I have forgiven you for rearranging my face, as I hope you have forgiven me for accidentally stabbing you. What can I say, I thought that we were supposed to be adversaries before you made your charming offer that we become friends.
Good friends.
Very good friends.
I am so sorry to have disappointed you in your hour of need, but don't despair. I have arranged another opportunity for us to meet so that I may fulfil your every desire, in a much more private place.
I invite you to return from the warehouse you were passing when you received this message in three days time so that we may consummate out affair.
I have, however, anticipated that you may no longer be interested, in which I feel I must offer you a little incentive to meet me as scheduled. I have also made the acquaintance of a few old friends of my rival for your affections, the Comedian. If you don't arrive by 6PM for our date, I will be regretfully forced to send two of your fellow masks for a not-so refreshing dip in a rather large tank of sulphuric acid.
I ask no money for their safe return, indeed, no ransom of any kind. All I ask is that you allow me to finish what we started.
I remain utterly smitten with you, and I look forward to making you a very happy woman.
Yours eternally,
The Green Jackal
He consoled himself with the knowledge that it would all be over soon, and put on a bravura performance of his usual cocky bravado to Rosie and Skinny.
As the day wore on, Paul's panic lessened.
Things were going according to Napalm's and his careful plans, after all.
At four he and Rosie and Skinny got into their costumes, having stayed in the penthouse the night before.
At four-thirty, Captain Metropolis and the first Nite Owl arrived, with a special surprise guest, Robin, the Boy Wonder, all in their costumes, and ready to look imperilled.
At five, Skinny filled up the tank and the "prisoners" got up on the lift chair above the full tank. Rosie tied their hands behind their backs and their feet in easily escapable but realistic-looking knots.
At five-thirty, Skinny and he and Rosie added the dry ice.
Everything was going perfectly.
To the Harlequin, when she arrived, it would appear that the two former Minutemen and Robin, whom she was known to have worked closely with along with Batman, fellow JLA members, were suspended in lift chairs over a bubbling vat of deadly sulphuric acid, and that a switch which he would dramatically threaten to throw would cause them to be dumped into a horrible death.
Then, at quarter to six, Paulie stopped telling himself that he was worrying for no reason, and quite without his permission, his nervous system went into full tilt boogie in panic mode.
The warehouse door opened and in walked Moloch, in full costume, instead of the Harlequin, with two goons armed with machine guns.
He sent them up on the catwalk to secure the bonds of the heroes on the chair lift; now they were tied up for good and all.
Reality has a way, Paulie thought, of dick-slapping you right in the face when bad shit goes down, and it occurred to him that Moloch had come to make them all dead.
Him, Rosie, Skinny, the two nice retired superheroes, and the Boy Wonder.
With extreme prejudice, like Pat always said.
Pat.
Him and Dad and Napalm and the 7th Cavalry ought to be on their way; I just gotta keep this shit together long enough for them to get here.
Paulie's mind started going a mile a minute, and then he remembered that he was supposed to be the Green Jackal, up and coming young supervillain, hand-picked by the Joker as his new project, prospective member of the Society of Supervillains.
To
whit, he had a .45 automatic that he borrowed from Pat secreted about
his person.
And he had a good idea that if he played this as the
Green Jackal, loved by men, feared by women, ruthless, brutal and
just a little crazy, he could get them all out of this alive.
Fuck this turkey.
Time to finish what I started in the joint.
Ace of Spades, again.
Live Freaky, Die Freaky, baby.
The evil magician looked over the setup, and Paul's henchmen, especially Rosie.
"Nice job, kid. Nice choice of victims. I like your setup, too. It's hokey and it's theatrical, but it's simple, and it works. Classic stuff. I think I saw this on an episode of the old Flash Gordon serial. Nice touch. "
Paul played it cool.
"Don't look at my girl like that! I'll burn your goddamn eyeballs out! Edgar, what the fuck are you doing here? What are these goons for? I've got fifteen minutes until the Harlequin arrives, and I've been planning this for weeks! What are you trying to do, muscle in on my action?"
Paul had never shot another living creature before, but if you were Eddie Blake's nephew, you were familiar with guns and you knew how to use them.
He pulled the gun, took aim, and shot one of the goons in the kneecap.
The man he shot fell onto the catwalk, and Moloch stopped the other from firing and motioned for him to come down.
Paulie continued his Psychotic Charismatic Supervillain Rant.
"What the fuck do you think I am, some kind of chump? All I hear out there, all night, is shit blowing up and gunfire and meanwhile I'm trying to get a little action and some cash here. Do you know how much that much goddamn corrosive acid costs? Do you have any idea the kind of careful planning I put into this? Something simple. Tasteful. Classic. Something to impress the Society and make my bones, something to prove to Jack I'm worth my membership, and to Erik that I can handle bein' the Freak King of New York, an' you have to pick tonight to blow up the docks! Then, then, ya cocksucker, ya come in here and try to fuck my shit up? Not on this planet, fucko! You want me to give you that beating I owe you from the joint, motherfucker?" Paul asked.
He shot the goon on the catwalk in his other kneecap.
"Stay the fuck down, asshole, or I'll have my man come up and dump your ass in the soup! I'm tellin' youse, Edgar, you are really pissin' me off!" he yelled.
Moloch threw his arms up in the air.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, not me, kid! Take it easy. Watch the muscle, huh? These are my personal guards. I never go anywhere without guards; it's no offence to you."
"That's why I only took his knees out. But I'm runnin' pretty short on professional courtesy, here."
"Look, kid I'm not looking for a piece of your action. I'm looking to have a little piece of the city for my own. Just the docks? Who wants the docks? And to sock it to that cocksucker, Eddie Blake. He won't give a shit about those two fossils, or the Bat's butt boy, but he won't be too happy with you after you toss his little girl into that vat of boiling acid." Moloch chuckled.
"What? I'm not going to…" Paul began
"No, you're right. I'm going to do it. And don't worry. I'll wait for you to get your ransom money, and your piece of ass. Like I said I'm not trying to muscle in on your action. I'll sit back there behind the tank until you've played out your whole scene. Just leave a little bit for me, huh? I hear she's hot stuff, and she'll spread 'em for just about anybody. That goddamn broad, she goes around acting like she's so tough. No broad is that tough. It's all smoke and mirrors. Some con job Eddie and the League is trying to pull for publicity, if you ask me. See, this is where my plan comes in. I may be the one who's going to toss the twinkie into the dip, but I'm not here. Right?"
"Whaddya mean you're not here?" Paul demanded.
"This is your plan, your setup, and you wrote the ransom demand. That must mean that you're the one who defiled Eddie's little girl and dumped her in the deadly brew. That's why I'm letting you have the ransom money, kiddo. You're going to need it to try and run from that motherfucker. The joke's on him, this time."
"That's it! First he calls me and Bruce a couple of queers, and then he threatens to rape and murder my sister? This game's over!" Dick Grayson seethed.
Hollis Mason stopped him.
"Not so fast, son. None of us are armed. And we are well and truly tied up now. But Paulie's got a gun, and you can see from those shots that his Uncle has taught him how to use it. Besides, it's only dry ice and bathwater. We know that and Moloch doesn't. And your sister can take care of herself." Hollis Mason replied.
"But what about Paulie?" Robin asked.
"He's the Comedian's nephew. He went toe to toe with his Uncle and walked away from it. I'm sure he knows how to take care of himself. He's doing a pretty good supervillain. I've got my hands almost untied. You two do the same. I'll give the signal if we need to get in there." The Captain announced.
"I think we may. To help Moloch. It looks like the Big Bad Blake in our Paul is coming out." Hollis interjected.
Paulie's heart was hammering in his chest, he had never shot anybody before.
But he was a supervillain, at least tonight, and this was serious shit; their lives were at stake.
Before the eyes of his friends, the three masks, Crazy Paulie, the cocky, strutting king of the freaks, who would do just about goddamn anything, met up halfway with the Green Jackal, ruthless masked avenger, loved by woman, feared by men, and alchemy occurred.
Paul Blake went through an abrupt transformation.
He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height, his hands balled up into fists. His body seemed almost to inflate with his fury, and the broad, cold smile that his mother and his uncle had worn when they killed his grandfather, the grin that Mick the Merciless had sported as he dispatched any number of victims, spread across Paul's face.
"Now he really looks like Eddie." Hollis whispered.
"Bullshit! Fucking bullshit!" Paul yelled.
He shot the other goon, the one standing next to Moloch, through the hand he was holding his gun in, disarming him, then he stalked over to Moloch and shot the goon again, in both knees, at point-blank range.
Moloch, obviously afraid, jumped back.
Paulie felt a little sick when the felt the man's blood splat onto him, it was surprisingly warm, but he knew he couldn't think about that right now.
That man was probably there to kill him.
Kill all the men, and after they were dead, who knew what they were planning to do with Rosie?
"You fuckin' coward! I don't need no gun for what I'm gonna do to you, Molly! Skinny, go get those fuckin' guns! Bring that prick down from my catwalk! And you, punk, you and your girlfriend can sit there and tie what's left of your pants around your knees and shut the fuck up or I'll toss you in the soup instead of blowing your brains out! Stop 'em bleedin', Skinny, I don't want blood all over my floor. Tie 'em up and gag' em."
"Look, Greenie…" Moloch began.
Paulie put his gun away, pulled his massive fist back across the East River the way an archer pulled back his bow, and launched his arrow at Moloch, slamming him right between the eyes.
The villain was airborne for a few seconds before he landed in a heap against the far wall.
Paulie was right on top of him.
He grabbed Moloch by his arms, pinning them to his sides so he couldn't go for any gun he might have had, and lifted him up so that his toes were brushing against the ground.
"Goddamn you, Magic Man, I fuckin' told you when we was in the joint that if you fucked with me you were a dead man! And this is fuckin' with me! I'm the Green Jackal, pal. Nobody fucks with me! Nobody!" Paulie snarled.
"Hey, kid, we can talk about this. I'll take the blame for icing the Twinkie. Let's…"
"Shut the fuck up! Rosie, come over here and frisk this waste."
"How am I gonna do that while you've got him like that?" Rosie asked.
Paul thought about it, and then turned the smaller man upside down, and shook him, violently, causing several weapons to fall out of his robes.
Captain Metropolis turned his face towards his cape and laughed.
"Check him now." Paul suggested to Rosie.
"What do I know about frisking a guy?" Rosie asked
"I'll do it! I know!" Skinny said.
He came down off the catwalk.
It was a good thing he'd spent a little time working with wiseguys, or else this shit would really be freaking him out.
Skinny frisked the upside-down supervillain, and found an additional knife and gun on him.
"He's clean, now."
"Okay, kid, you made your point. I get it. You're the real deal and you're not fucking around. And I'm clean. Now how about putting me down?"
Paulie lifted him high in the air, by the throat, with one arm.
"I'll put your ass down when you're dead, motherfucker." He snarled.
All of the sudden Paulie really felt capable of killing Moloch, and as much as that frightened him, he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to stop squeezing.
Or even if he should.
Just then, the sound of three loud blasts of a car horn rang out.
That was the signal.
Napalm to the rescue, and Paulie hoped she had brought Uncle Eddie with her.
Paul dropped Moloch like a hot potato and dove for safety at the side of the vat, giving Moloch only enough time to stand up, coughing and inquire as to the "What the" part of his intended "What the fuck?" before the warehouse doors blew open under the onslaught of a shiny black and chrome Buick Wildcat with some super-modifications that screamed through the door and ground to a halt just short of bisecting him, pinning him against the wall, instead.
"That'll be my little sister. This is where the real fun begins." Robin observed, drily.
"Did you see that stop, Nelly? And the brakes didn't even squeal. What a brake job! She's one of the best mechanics in the five boroughs. Good driver, too." Hollis Mason enthused.
"What is that?" Nelson asked.
`"Basically, it's a '65 Buick Super Wildcat. With some modifications." Hollis replied.
That wasn't really what Captain Metropolis was asking, but when the door opened up and the Harlequin stepped out, in a black mask and Jester's cowl with bullets on the ends instead of bells, wearing camouflage paratrooper pants tucked into a pair of jump-boots with an OD combat vest and undershirt over a bulletproof vest, the two .45's in their double shoulder holsters over the tank top, and carrying a Tommy gun in her hands, he got his answer.
Both she and her clothes were besmirched with soot, blood, black powder, and gun oil, and she didn't seem to notice or mind.
"So that's why they call her Napalm. She looks like the centrefold for Soldier of Fortune." He commented
Hollis Mason laughed.
Liv slammed the car door.
"You see this, Hollis? Not a scratch! Goddamn battering ram works perfect! Looks good, too. We're gonna hafta do some body work over the week-end, though. You and me and Joe Mac. Everything alright with you over there, Greenie? He didn't damage my merchandise, did he?"
"No."
"Good. Stay there by the tank or I'll cut you in half."
Napalm threw back the bolt on the Tommy gun; it made a loud, metallic clang that reverberated through the metal-walled warehouse.
"You know what, Moloch? You have really put me in a helluva bad mood. For one thing, you are one rude motherfucker. You and your goons. I should say your ex-goons. Now I know you didn't get an invitation to this little party, but here you are, crashin' it anyway. For another thing, you really interrupted the flow of my day. I just had my car all finished and now I'm gonna have to spend the whole weekend doing body work. And I'm gonna have to pay a helluva surcharge for overnight delivery of bulletproof glass. That, and I need a new bullet-proof vest, and that .357 Magnum slug is gonna leave a helluva painful fuckin' bruise on my chest. It had better heal by my photo shoot with Rolling Stone on Tuesday, or I will personally rip your balls off with my bare hands, and serve them to you for your last meal. Worst of all, pal, I came here to fuck this Green Jackal guy, and then maybe kill him, which is my all time favourite thing to do to good lookin' supervillains. I mean it's Friday night, and I wanted to enjoy myself. But what do I gotta do, instead? I gotta get a team together, stop a fuckin' gang war and all kinds of shit I didn't wanna go through, today. Ya know what I'm sayin? Well, as long as you're here, come out from around that car with your hands up, lift up that cape and turn around for me. Slowly."
"What? How?"
"Back it up in there. Just a little."
The engoine came on and the car backed up just a hair, enough for Moloch to get around it.
"C'mon, chief. Do it. Or I'll shoot your cock off." Liv encouraged him.
Moloch lifted his cape and turned around.
In the car, the Comedian was laughing and pounding on the steering wheel.
"Oh no. No, that won't do at all. Buddy, don't quit your day job. Whaddya you think?"
Laurie got out of the car.
"Ugly as sin. Too bad. I thought there might be one for me."
"Well, you can take a shot at Greenie before I rub his ass out."
"That might work. So, I'll go take care of those other goons. Skinny, get the fuck away from there, don't pretend like you know what you're doing."
One of the goons was trying to get out of his bonds, and Laurie knocked his head against the other goon's head, knocking them both out.
Then she tied them up securely
"I'm gonna go untie the hostages, Harlequin."
"Good idea, Silk Spectre. You want a shot at this guy? You can have the first punch. Be my guest. Give him a good kick in the nuts."
"I've had plenty of shots at his goons, tonight. Besides, I'm not the one he was going to rape and toss into a tank of acid. You go right ahead."
"Oh well. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go."
With an air of casual annoyance Liv punched Moloch quite forcefully in the solar plexus and when his mouth opened to issue a grunt, she thrust the hot barrel of the chopper into it until he gagged.
"Shut the fuck up, Molly. Skinny, get your ass over here and frisk this mook like the wiseguys taught you. C'mon, c'mon, let's go, my trigger finger's getting itchy."
"I already have. I think you should whack him. Just shoot the cocksucker."
"Where's the fun in that? If he dies, he's goin' the hard way. So, where's his fuckin' guns? And his goons' guns?"
"On the floor."
"On the floor! Fuck me, you guys are a buncha amateurs! It is hard to find good help in the supervillain business. Get the goddamn hardware, and throw it in the juice. Now get your ass over by the vat. Take Rosie with you. How you guys doin' up there on the chair lift? Ya alright?" the Harlequin called.
"We're fine. Almost untied. You're not going to shoot everyone, are you?" Dick called, a little nervously.
"Of course not. That wouldn't be very super heroic, would it?"
She turned the gun around, and hit Moloch in the ribs with the butt of it.
He went down.
"Stay there, fucko. If you so much as twitch, I will pick your ass up by your neck and your nuts and toss you into that vat."
Whistling as she went, the Harlequin popped the trunk, put her chopper in it and closed the trunk.
Moloch was in a bad way.
He had swallowed one of his teeth, he had a broken rib, and he felt like his guts were on fire.
"Ok, Molly. So, ya think I'm some kinda made-up media sensation and that in real-life I'm just some cupcake that the Comedian fills up with cream, huh? Well, let's find out. If you can get past me, Molly, you can leave."
"I can just go? Free and clear?" Moloch asked.
"Absolutely. I never saw you. You'll have to hire some new goons, but I'll even take care of cleanup. Show me what you got. This is what you call a one time offer. Hell, the first punch is free." The Harlequin replied, cheerily.
Moloch wasn't exactly a fighter, but he figured he could beat the shit out of Eddie Blake's mattress back.
He hit her as hard as he could, right in the face.
She didn't budge.
She didn't even flinch.
"That didn't even hurt. I ain't even bleedin'. Is that all you got? Try someplace else. I got faith in you." Liv taunted him.
Moloch raised his fist again, and Liv caught it, and twisted his arm until she felt and heard a few of the bones in his wrist snapping and popping.
Moloch screamed.
"I said the first punch was free, not the second."
She drove her elbow into his nose, flattening it with a bloody crunch.
"This is too easy. I can see why you gotta hire all those goons with guns. Here, Eddie showed me this one. I'm sure it's not your first time."
Liv slammed Moloch with an uppercut almost as deverstating as Eddie Blake's, and he flew back, landing on the hood of the car.
She got genuinely angry.
"Did you dent my hood, you fuck? If you dented my hood, I'll rip your arms off an' beat you to death with 'em!"
Liv pulled Moloch off the car.
He was screaming in abject terror.
The Comedian got out of the car.
"Kid?"
"Jesus, Eddie, you fuckin' blind? I'm workin', heah! Don't bother me."
"Yeah, yeah. Why dontcha take a fuckin' coffee break? Put him down, he's had enough from you."
The Harlequin put Moloch down, and he actually crawled across the floor and threw his arms around his arch-nemesis' feet.
"Eddie! Eddie, don't let her kill me, Eddie! I didn't mean it! I swear! I just wanted the ransom money and I was trying to scare the green kid!" he begged.
The Comedian flicked his ash on Moloch's back, put his cigar back in his mouth, then reached down, grabbed Moloch by the throat and lifted him high in the air with one arm.
"What was that again, Jacobi?"
"Can't talk…choking…"
"Oh, I'm sorry."
The Comedian tossed Moloch across the room, then walked over, picked him up by his lapels and slammed him against the metal wall.
"You know what? I don't believe you. I'm sorry, pal. You and me are through. I'm gonna have to get a new nemesis."
He was planning on knocking him around a little harder, but the kid had already worked him over pretty good.
Besides, he had a much, much better idea.
Smirking, the Comedian picked Moloch up over his head and started carrying him over to the tank.
"No! No, not that! Please, not that! NO! NO! OH GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
When the Comedian dropped Moloch into the tank, Liv started to laugh, and so did her partner.
Moloch bobbed to the surface.
The look on his face was absolutely priceless.
The Harlequin and the Comedian laughed so hard, they had to lean on each other for support.
"Bathwater and dry ice? Bathwater and dry ice! What the fuck is this? Some kind of put up job?"
"Yup. It sure is some kind of put up job." Liv replied.
The Comedian was laughing so hard, he could hardly speak.
"You wanna hear the punchline? There's no fuckin' ransom money! All Greenie wants is a piece of ass from my partner!"
Now Moloch started to laugh, in spite of himself.
"No money? He kidnaps three masks, suspends them over a nice warm sitz bath in a heated tank and he asks for no money? And he thinks this one's gonna fuck him? Yeah, sure. With that tire iron. In his ass, maybe."
Even the superheroes on the chair lift laughed.
"Are you guys in on this, too?"
"You bet, Moloch." Hollis Mason yelled.
"So you're telling me I took the biggest gamble of my life, burned my bridges with the Joker, and dropped myself deeper into the shit than I'll ever get out of over some put-up job?"
"Yeah. You lose, pal." Liv said, cheerfully.
"I am fucked. I'm gettin' out. I think I'll just drive myself back to fuckin' Arkham. Maybe I can figure somethin' to tell Jack, some way to play this off. I surrender. Jesus Christ."
Liv taped Moloch's hands together with duct tape.
"You want me to take him out to Cap?" Laurie asked.
"Boy, does your costume make you look like you're an even bigger whore than your mother was." Moloch taunted Laurie.
Before the Comedian could do or say anything by way of reprisal, the Silk Spectre picked up a piece of the pipe that had been used to hook up the tank, and calmly smashed one of his kneecaps, then the other.
"YOOOOOOOWWWWWW!"
"Boy, does your scream make you sound like even more of a pussy than I thought you were." She retorted.
The Comedian had a good laugh on that one
"Now you match your two girlfriends. Let me tell you the best part. The Green Jackal is not a supervillain." Laurie continued
"What?"
"This was all a training exercise. Greenie is a trainee for the Watchmen. We sent him in to Arkham to gather information, and this was his training exercise. You crossed the Joker for less than nothing." Liv explained.
Moloch looked desolate.
"Move. Now. Asshole." Laurie ordered.
"On these knees?" Moloch insisted.
"Skinny! I've got Moloch, you get those other two and we'll drag them outside."
Laurie and Skinny departed with Moloch and his bodyguards, definitely the worse for wear.
As soon as they were gone, Paulie pulled his cowl back.
"Fuck, I can't hardly breathe in that thing! It needs some work. Napalm, we ain't goin' through with the other thing, are we?"
"Naw. I think we already proved our point. Lemme help you with the apparatus."
Liv took her cowl off, and Paulie pulled his down and unzipped his costume.
Paulie reached under her hair and took a complicated prosthetic off the back of her head, and then she unstrapped an elaborate contraption from his chest.
They tossed them aside.
"What the fuck is this?" Eddie asked
"This? This is the old triple cross, Eddie. Ya see, me and Paulie were in this together, all along. I told him I was the Harlequin and we cooked up this whole scenario. Ran it like a play, rehearsed all week. Had a plan to get Bruce and you here, an' everything. We even had a big ending. We were gonna stage a shooting where I shoot him because he betrayed you and he shoots me because he doesn't know I'm Napalm. Just to show you and Bruce how your plan might have gone wrong. But as your plan went wrong all on its own, and me an' Paulie just hadda face a real test, I ain't got the stomach for it."
Captain America came in with Wolverine, who was cleaning his bloody claws with a piece of rag.
He had completely recovered.
"That one came outa nowhere, didn't he, Cap?" he was commenting
They looked at Paulie and Liv standing there with their cowls off, and Eddie, for once in his life, looking completely shocked.
"What the devil?" Cap asked.
"That's the triple cross." Logan replied.
"Yeah. Makes your head hurt, don't it? I gotta go to the can and change an' wash up." Liv announced.
She walked right by Eddie, and he just looked at her like she had ten tits.
Paulie suddenly realised it was all over.
His legs started to feel rubbery, so he just plopped himself down on the floor.
He could hear the sirens outside, car doors slamming, tromping boots, voices shouting, trucks beeping, water shooting out of fire hoses, and the words coming out of the mouths of the masks who were talking to him began to sound like muddle and goo.
Paulie shook his head a little.
"…don't look so good, Paulie."
Paulie looked up and there was his father and his brother.
"I don't feel so good, either, Dad." Paulie said.
"It's okay, Paulie. Ya just had a little too much excitement, tonight. Why dontcha go home, an' get some sleep." Uncle Eddie suggested.
Right now, being at his own home, in his own bed, sounded like a little slice of heaven to Paulie.
"That's a good idea. Uhhh, Jesus, I'm sorry I went against youse, Uncle Eddie. But when somethin' ain't right, it ain't right, and what you set me an' Liv up for, it wasn't right." Paulie said.
"You gotta point there, Paulie. Go on, go home. Don't worry about it. We're still square."
Paulie let his father and his brother help him out the door.
On his way home, Paulie fell asleep in the back of Pat's truck, feeling like a wounded soldier being driven away from the battlefield.
The war wasn't over, but for him, for now, it was.
V: Liv
I had clothes planted up in the apartment, of course, and I took my uniform off, had a quick shower and put everything in the bag I had my change of clothes in after I got dressed.
I guess I could have gone downstairs in a huff and given Eddie the whole speech about him and Bruce betraying me, and the terrible lost feeling I had, worse than the feeling when the itch was on me, and how I didn't know where to live, who to trust, or what to do, but after the night I had, I wasn't sure how I felt, anymore, and I was too tired to explain.
I just wanted to get away, that was all.
So, after I went to the can, I ducked out a window and went down the fire escape.
With that in mind, getting out on the street was a bad idea, because all hell was breaking loose.
There were ambulances and fire trucks and cops and firemen and EMT's and dead goons and shell casings and big puddles of water and blood and gasoline everywhere, and the streets were still on fire.
I was already pretty far out of it, and walking out into Hell with the lid off didn't help my state of mind, any.
And in the middle of all of it, there was Commissioner Gordon.
Now, Jim Gordon likes to let on he doesn't know who I am and who Dick is and who Bruce is, and that's usually fine with me, but, tonight, I wasn't in the mood to play anybody's silly little game.
I walked right up to him and handed him the bag with my costume in it.
"Give this to him when you see him. Tell him I'm alright, I'll be back for it in a couple of days."
Before he could say anything to me, or do anything, I walked away.
I heard him telling some of his men to stop me, bring me back, but I know the docks better than any cop, and I made a nice, clean getaway.
I went to the closest subway station, and headed for Grossmann's.
It was good to get away from all that craziness, back to the regular, normal New York City at eight on a Friday night craziness.
When I walked into Grossmann's, Sophie was behind the counter; I guess Benny was taking the night off.
Do you know about Sophie?
Sophie's quite a character. She's had quite a life. Her whole family that didn't live in New York got wiped out in the Holocaust, and she spent the war years hiding in basements and fighting her way out of Europe with anti-Nazi partisans.
She met Eddie in the course of the war, and from what I gather from the stories he tells, they killed a whole lotta buncha Nazis together before she showed up back in New York in '44.
When Eddie came home in '45, he and Sophie resumed their association, and decided that if Rome was burning, they might as well dance to the fiddler's tune. If you want to know more about their adventures in the late forties, I suggest you get some back issue of the New York Post. In those days, they had a lot of headlines like "Comedian and Lady Nazi-Killer in Tea Room Jazz Band Reefer Raid" and shit like that.
Sophie married Max Grossman in '47, and left him and Eddie flat when she went to go fight in the Israeli army in '48, and came home a year later, and that's when Grossmann's opened, I think.
Anyway, I have Wednesdays with Logan, and Eddie still has Wednesdays with Sophie.
He calls her "crazy Jew bitch" with the same fond look on his face that Sophie gets when she calls him a "shanty Mick bastard."
In addition to running the family business, Sophie's been teaching a self-defence class for women at the local Jewish Community Centre and another at the YWCA since 1950.
I see her a lot at the firing range, too.
She marched for civil rights and against Vietnam and she still marches for women's rights and she's a member of NOW.
Sophie is fifty-one and she could pass for 35, and last year she casually called me to come down and take care of a mugger for her and when I got there I discovered she had drilled him right between the eyes,
Twice.
In the same spot.
That is some kinda shooting.
I like talking to Sophie.
I wanna be just like her when I grow up.
So, when I came in, I must have looked like I had just been through a battle, because Sophie came from around the counter and sat me in a chair.
Before I knew what was going on, she had a cup of coffee and a bowl of hot chicken soup in front of me, and put a blanket around my shoulders.
"What are you doing here, Liv? Benny's upstairs, sleeping. You should be home. In bed. Where the hell is Eddie? He should be taking care of you."
"I'm hungry, Sophie. And I don't have a home to go to no more."
Sophie walked over to the door and put the "Back in 10 minutes" sign up, locked the door, and came and sat with me.
"Oh? And why is that?"
So I told her how I felt.
"I'm tired, Sophie. An' I feel lost. Like nothin' in the world makes sense, anymore. The only good thing that came outta this is that Cap realised just what kinda war I been fightin' in these streets, an' that now, maybe, I'll get some fuckin' help. Because you know what? I need it. I do. I'm tired. I'm real fuckin' tired of bein' the goat's understudy. At least Eddie gets fuckin' respect. You know what I get? More bullet holes in my ass. An' then, I get stabbed in the back by my partner, and my stepfather. I got no place to go, yunno? My home ain't my home, anymore. And I can't go to Eddie's place. How the fuck am I supposed to sleep under the roof of one man who betrayed me and in the bed of another? And now all this shit's over, I'm just tired. But I'm mad, too. This was supposed to be my moment in the sun. Even a dirty dog gets a warm spot on the sidewalk, and this was supposed to be mine. When I got to go to the Superhero Summit and stand up in front of every mask in America and show them what I'm made of. What I accomplished. How I came back from bein' nothin but a two bit shanty Irish thug from Brooklyn, a drunk and a whore. Instead, I get this shit. An' after I'm done here, I'm gonna drag my achin' busted ass out into the street, just like I done a million times, except this time, I ain't sure where the fuck I'm takin it to. Prob'ly back to my flop at Trivelino Mac's. It ain't much, but it's mine."
Sophie let out a big sigh, and went and got herself some coffee.
"You know something, Liv? Since you first put the mask on, I've worried over you, almost like you were related. After all, your mother was such a lovely woman, wouldn't hurt a fly, and she was taken from you so young. You've had two fathers but no mother, and I suppose I worried about you because Merrie wasn't alive to do it. So I'm going to talk to you like a mother would, and all I have to say is, honey, I understand how you feel, but you should be ashamed of the words coming out of your mouth!"
That was not what I expected to hear.
"Why?" I asked
"Why? Trivelino, the only people who had any obligation to you in this world were your father and mother. Your mother died and your father did the best he could for as long as he could, but he was no man to raise a child. Neither the Comedian nor Batman had any obligation to you. Batman could have left you to the state to shove your ass in some foster home or orphanage when you were a kid. And Eddie could have told him he had enough trouble without having an apprentice he had to worry was gonna murder him in his bed if she got drunk enough. All those men did was worry about you. I sat here many days, and Benny many nights, watching Batman sit with Superman, or Captain America, or your brother, Robin, and talk about you. About how worried he was about you. And then, when Eddie started working with you, I'd hear it from him. That was his pillow talk, worrying about you. These men didn't have to help you. You're Batman's worst enemy's daughter. When he looks at you when you smile, he sees that enemy's face. But he takes you in, adopts you, trains you, feeds you, clothes you, gives you a place to live, treats you were his own daughter. Even in your darkest times, when your ways made him look bad in front of every mask in New York for taking a chance on you, he stood beside you. And believed in you. And Eddie, what he did to straighten you out was nothing short of a miracle, and he did it with something that there's no greater force of in nature. The love of a bad man."
"I thought ya were supposed to look for the love of a good man." I said
"That's what they tell you, honey. I hear it all the time. Oh, how wonderful it must be, Sophie, to be loved by a good man like Max. And this is true. It's easy to be loved by a good man. And love is always wonderful. What you never hear about is the love of a bad man. Not so easy to be loved by a bad man. But, if you've been loved by both, you always carry the suspicion that maybe, just maybe the bad man loved you more. Because he needed you more. My Max, I love him, I have loved him since I met him in 1937, but such a man as Eddie, well, he's a habit I never quite managed to quit. Did Eddie ever love me? Truly? Who knows? I'll tell you what I do know. Why I went all the way to Israel and into the army. Because whatever Eddie had for me, it was too heavy on me. Too much for me to bear. Look at Sally Jupiter. Everybody knows Eddie loves her, and it nearly killed both of them. She takes him in small doses. His love's too heavy on her. It's been too heavy on all the women in his life. Except you. You love him, with every drop of blood in your black heart, as black as his. You'd bear him if he was the weight of the world. Eddie needs a woman like you, Liv. His whole life he's been looking for one. He bares his soul to you, he tears out his heart and lays it at your feet, and what do you do? Tell him he's betrayed you? This thing with Paulie, he was convinced you made a pass at his nephew and that broke his heart. Maybe he was wrong. And your stepfather. Sure, they made a mistake. But don't go telling Eddie that he betrayed you, that you can't sleep in his bed anymore because he stabbed you in the back! Liv, a good man knows he can find another woman to love him. A bad man knows he can't. You might as well kill him, if you're going to treat him like that, after everything he's done for you." Sophie told me.
You know I never really looked at it that way?
So, Sally forgave Eddie for trying to rape her. Possibly even kill her. And Eddie forgave Sally for taking his daughter away from him, because she was afraid of him.
I realised I was acting like a stupid, spoiled cunt, again, just like I had when I had my Troubles, or when I went out and got sloshed and got into a fight instead of facing the music and telling Eddie I thought the Green Jackal might be Paulie.
Even if I was mad at him and Bruce, right now, Eddie was my partner and Bruce was my stepfather.
I had to try and find it in my heart as black as midnight in a coal mine to forgive them.
I remembered something Logan had told me, a long time ago, about me holding onto my anger, and cherishing it the way an oyster does a piece of sand to make it into a pearl.
"Darlin', an' oyster uses a piece of sand to make a pearl, not a piece of shit. You're never gonna make a turd into anything but a turd. If you can't let your anger over somethin' outa you, then you just gotta let it go. Or you'll poison yourself."
That's what had been happening to me all week.
I was holding onto my anger, gloating over it, cherishing it and nurturing it and saving it like it was made of gold, instead of shit.
And it was poisoning me.
I thought about how I had poisoned Paulie with it, too, and how he and I had actually made a plan to make Eddie and Bruce and whatever other masks were present think that we killed each other, right in front of them.
Now, I can't remember how, and I know the how is what my bad nightmare that used to bring on my Troubles is about, but I know that when I was a little girl, I saw my mother die, right in front of me, and you don't need to be Dr. Freud to figure out what that did to my life.
The idea that I could be so poisoned with rage that I almost inflicted that pain, wilfully and with, as they say, malice aforethought, on Eddie and Bruce and Dick and Hollis and Nelly and Logan and Cap, it took my fucking breath away.
"I'm no good, Sophie. No good at all." I told her.
"Sure you are, honey. You're just young, and you've had a troubled life, and there's a lot you don't know yet. Let me warm that soup up for you."
I sat there, while Sophie warmed up the soup, thinking about how Eddie and Bruce would have felt, seeing me die before their very eyes, the way my mother had died before mine, and then, something happened.
I don't know if it was the sight of the docks on fire, or the nature of my plan, or the fact that I was about to be inducted, or any of the other realisations I had lately, but that feeling came over me; that terrible feeling that's the only thing I really fear.
Terror.
Hopeless, helpless terror, the terror that comes out of being innocent and helpless and unable to stop something horrible from happening.
That feeling is the whole goddamn reason I became the no good sunnuvabitch I am; I don't care who I have to maim, murder or mutilate, I'll never have that feeling again.
Never.
It's the feeling I get in my worst nightmare that used to bring on the Troubles; the one I wake up from with that feeling, but only vague memories of the dream.
Except now the memories were clear as day, as clear as the day they happened.
"Sophie!" I yelled.
I was crying, you bet I was crying, there were tears in my voice as Sophie ran back to the table.
"I remember. I remember what happened to my Ma."
I tried hard to keep it together, but then the whole world just fell in on me, and I completely lost it.
It was the end of all things.
IV: Bruce
Worst case scenario.
He had always hated that phrase, because it trivialised what it was meant to convey.
Complete and unimaginable horrific disaster that no one could have expected or adequately planned for.
That was why he was glad that Clark didn't say anything about Selena being in his room with him; he came in with a grave look on his face, and he didn't say that a worst case scenario was in progress.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Bruce, but something terrible is happening in New York, and both your stepchildren are in the thick of it. I'm not even sure exactly what is going on, but what I'm hearing over the radio are a bunch of crazy messages about Moloch escaping from prison and using your training exercise as a platform to launch some kind of supervillain gang war against the Joker. Liv's been under heavy fire and she and a team are trying to get to the warehouse where the exercise is taking place to rescue Dick, who has, at this point, been actually kidnapped by Moloch and his men. Captain America, Wolverine and the Comedian have gone to the rescue, and, I think you should leave for New York. I'm leaving right now."
By the time they got to the scene, it was under control.
Firemen were extinguishing the last of a series of fires in alleys and dumpsters and abandoned warehouses; police cars and ambulances were everywhere, and Jim Gordon was standing in the middle of it, talking to Captain America.
The show was over, and Cap was explaining to the Commissioner the story that was going to be the official S.H.I.E.L.D cover story, and Jim was willing to go along, but he wanted to know what really happened.
"I made a terrible mistake, that's what. I'll explain it to you later, Jim. Are any of these our dead, Cap?" Batman asked, trying to be casual.
Businesslike.
"We didn't suffer any casualties. The Harlequin was shot in the chest at point-blank range with a .357 Magnum, but she was wearing a military grade bullet-proof vest. It didn't slow her down at all. Listen, Batman, I'm sorry, I have to apologise to you, and to your son and especially your daughter. I had no idea this city, my city, had devolved this way. We're going to have to do something about this - The Avengers and the JLA, together. It's not just going away."
Superman frowned.
He wasn't quite ready to accept the evidence that had unfolded before his eyes.
"I don't know if I agree with you on that, Cap, but right now, we would like to talk to our trainee." Clark told him.
"That's just it. We don't know where she got to."
"I know where she got to. She came walking through this mess like she was shuffling over the surface of the moon, and handed me this knapsack. Told me I was supposed to give it to Batman. She was out of costume, so I didn't recognise her, of course. But that was how far out of it she was. I tried to get her to stay until I could get Cap or the Comedian to come out and get her, but she wandered off. She looked like she was just exhausted, confused and disorientated. I can't say I blame her."
Jim Gordon handed Bruce the Harlequin's knapsack.
"The Comedian's already gone looking for her. He figures she's at Grossmann's."
"Then I'll go there, too. By myself. You understand, don't you?" Bruce asked.
"Sure we do. Cap and I have a lot to talk about tonight, anyway. And it looks like there's still a lot of work to do here. Well, Cap, are you ready to get to work?"
The two heads of America's greatest superhero teams looked at each other, grimly, and then smiled, resolutely.
"You bet, Supes."
***
Batman and the Comedian both arrived at Grossmann's around the same time, one jumping out of a taxi, the other on foot.
They could both see Liv, through the window, sitting at a table with a blanket over her shoulders.
She was eating a cup of soup with timid, faltering movements, staring into it like someone who had just completely lost their composure and was only just getting it back.
The door was locked, Bruce knocked and Sophie Grossmann opened it for them.
"Finally! You boys better get in here. I don't know if it was the fire, or that cockamamie plan she had to make you two think she and Paulie had killed each other, but Liv just remembered about her mother's death. Everything about her mother's death."
Bruce was surprised; he didn't know that Mrs. Grossmann knew the horrible circumstances of Liv's mother's death.
The Comedian and Batman were both heavily involved.
In the early fifties, a religiously based almost neo-Nazi hate group calling itself the Holy Church of Humanity began a reign of terror in New York. It began with people in strange faux medieval robes vandalising stores belonging to Jewish businessmen and black churches, beating up homeless junkies and accosting suspected mutants in the streets.
Their activities escalated to terrible acts of violence. Whole families were slain in their homes because one or two of them were mutants. Businesses, homes and churches patronised by Jews, blacks, mutants and suspected leftists were burned to the ground.
And for those people the Church of Humanity decided were the most evil, they reserved a special fate.
Several arsons in abandoned buildings on the docklands revealed charred human corpses at the center.
They were burning people at the stake.
Liv's mother, Meriwether Napier, the former Meriwether Damiano's father was a shoe salesman from a little village just outside Palermo. But, she and her Irish mother were what the more enlightened 1970's would have called traditional practitioners of herbal and folk medicine, and the superhero community referred to as people with greater than normal psi-abilities.
In East New York in the thirties and forties, they were just called witches.
Meriwether was 15 years old in 1940 when she married crazy, red-haired Irish crime boss Jack Napier, who was 24 at the time. Although she and her mother never ran low on customers and the Damiano family were regular attendees at the local Catholic Church, they were socially ostracised because, after all, the women were witches.
Jack Napier was arguably the richest man in the neighbourhood and he had no shortage of his neighbours coming to him, looking for help of one kind or the other or making use of the businesses he ran, but in that he was both a hood and crazy, he didn't get invited to the best parties, either.
It was not, however, a marriage of convenience; the two outcasts were in love.
It was a love that survived Jack's being dumped into a vat of chemicals and changing much, at least physically.
Jack had never been sane and he had always been violent, but he had a soft spot for his gentle, pretty, generous wife, who devoted most of her time to using her gifts and knowledge to help the people around her; the very people who shunned her for all her life because she was a witch and a half-breed.
A soft spot which extended to his beautiful little daughter; she had his smile, and his green eyes and red hair, but other than that, she was the image of her mother.
The Joker lived in a bunker beneath an abandoned warehouse building at the docks that was just about as secure as the one Hitler had lived in. He knew what was going on in his city, and he thought that his wife, who was a witch and married to a freak of nature, and his daughter, worse, the child of a witch and a freak of nature, would be natural and quite high-profile targets for the killer cult.
He never wanted Merrie leave the bunker without him or at least three bodyguards; but Merrie wasn't the kind of woman who could be dictated to, and she often slipped away to take Trivelino to a park in Bensonhurst where her old school friends Aggie and Edie Blake took their children to play.
She called him from a pay phone to tell him she'd shook the guards again and that she'd be home with Liv by five.
At five-fifteen, the Joker went up into the street, and saw the flames rising from a deserted warehouse.
He wasted no time loading himself and his chopper into the fastest car he owned and practically flew down the two blocks or so to the scene of the fire.
Jack Napier had seen many horrors in his life. Some of them had been visited on him, some of them he visited on others, and some had nothing to do with him, at all.
But the worst horror of them all was bursting into the abandoned warehouse and seeing the stake in the middle of it, piled high with wood, and tongues of red and orange fire licking at a charred and blackened corpse bound to it; little more now that charred bones.
Charred bones and a blackened skull, jaws agape in a silenced scream.
There were five people in strange robes gathered around it, four chanting some weird verse, and the fifth attempting to throw a screaming, kicking, punching, biting, thrashing, scratching child into the flames.
Poor gentle Merrie had no fight in her, but Livvie was his little red devil, and she wasn't going down without a fight.
She saw him.
"Daddy! Daddy help me!" his little girl screamed in terror.
The Joker disabled the four with bursts of machine gun fire to their knees.
The fifth, terrified, simply dropped Livvie and began begging for his life.
She ran to her father and hid behind his long legs.
The Joker shot his legs out from under him, as well.
He picked Trivelino up.
"Close your eyes, Livvie. Don't look." He told her.
Diabolical tortures filled his mind, but what could be a more diabolical torture and a more fitting end to these fools than to be hoist by their own petard?
He put out the flames with the buckets of water the disabled cult members set aside for the task, and took Trivelino home, promising the wounded fiends that he would return.
He left her, momentarily, in the care of some of his men, and returned to the warehouse.
Carefully, he removed what was left of his Merrie from the metal pole she was tired to, and wrapped her in a blanket.
The four who had been chanting, he tied to the pole and burned alive.
They made a lovely fire.
The fifth, the executioner, he only burned partly, removing all of his extremities with a flaming torch; he would suffer a special kind of Hell in the room the Joker kept in his bunker for just such an occasion.
It took the man several days to die, but it was not revenge enough for him.
Trivelino didn't seem to remember what happened when she woke up in the morning, and Jack considered that a blessing for the child.
She remembered that Mommy had died, and accepted the memory of a sudden sickness that her father put in her mind.
But Trivelino was a different child.
It wasn't just the nightmares she had, at first, every night, no, something had changed in her.
Turned.
As young as he was, she had begun to look quite like him when she smiled.
He wanted them all dead, every woman-burning, baby-slaughtering madman among them.
But even with the Joker's criminal resources, he couldn't find out who every New York member of the Church of Humanity was, where they lived, under what guise as an ordinary citizen they operated.
That was a job for someone else.
An old friend of his and an old enemy; two men he knew he could trust.
The Comedian and the Batman.
The Joker hadn't been surprised that either of them were willing to take on the task. One of Eddie's sisters was a mutant and his longtime girlfriend a Jewess, and he had known gentle, beautiful Merrie all his life; she was a friend of his two oldest sisters.
As for the Bat, the Joker knew who he really was; a boy who had seen both his parents murdered before his eyes.
He would not let the same kind of murderers go unpunished.
It had been a messy affair; the two masks were the detectives, judge, jury and executioners of the members of the killer cult.
In an abandoned warehouse on the docks, with the survivors of the murdered present, the whole cabal, thirty members, were burnt alive at the stake.
The Church of Humanity, later called the Friends of Humanity, were rampant all over America by the 1970's, but, for the most part, they stayed out of the Tri-State area.
Their act of justice tinged with vengeance bound the three of them together and to the little girl, Trivelino.
She had been just a little girl; the villain and the two heroes hoped she would not remember.
The Joker never spoke of his wife's death to his daughter, and he always cautioned her not to tell people that her mother or her grandmother had been witches.
The world didn't know he was married; they assumed his daughter's mother was some gang moll whore he had used for the purpose of begetting a child and did away with, and he didn't let on otherwise; it was better for Trivelino that no one knew the truth.
When he found her again after being released from Arkham and sent her to live with Bruce Wayne, the Joker gave his 11 year old daughter the book of her mother's family's collected knowledge that had been in the family for generations. Liv learned things from her mother, her grandmother and her grandmothers before them through their words in her absence, but, for the most part, as her father suggested, kept them under her hat.
If she remembered it was only in her nightmares, and Trivelino's father and her stepfather waited down the long years with bated breath for the combination of bad blood and unspeakable trauma to rule out, and at first it seemed to them that they wouldn't.
Trivelino was a fairly normal little girl. She was an outcast, but she had friends among her kind, and even though she sneaked cigarettes, swore like a pirate and got into a lot of fights, such things were part of childhood.
And she was such a bright little girl, sunny and happy outside of her occasional spasms of temper, loyal to her friends, kind and generous and sweet, just like her mother had been.
She even wanted to be a superhero; she trained diligently and learned fast; even Jack was proud of her.
But then, as she hit her teens with a vengeance, a whole new Trivelino began to emerge, one whose childhood indiscretions gave rise to their sunny little superhero-in-training developing a frightening alter ego that was more than a hard-drinking, brawling, promiscuous Brooklyn Irish thug.
There was a rage in Trivelino, a malevolent rage that could not be denied or satiated, despite her attempts to sublimate it into her superhero work, a rage like fire, destructive, violent and all consuming.
She drove herself before it like a man who beats a dying horse before a rusty plow on parched fields, drove herself through a punishing, brutal mission that dragged her into the dark heart of the concrete jungle, where she used the rage like a sword against the most evil and degenerate people the city had to offer.
But the nightmares had returned and they gave birth to her Troubles, and the Troubles unleashed the full brunt of Liv's fury.
She had her Sicilian grandfather's bull-like constitution, and her father's genius intellect, dark and sardonic wit and his streetwise cyncism, and her mother's sixth sense that all combined with her training, and her implacable will to keep her going through many years of rage, lust, blood, and excess, but, in the end it left her close to death and madness, bravely soldiering on in an alcoholic twilight towards the dying of the light.
Neither of her fathers could redeem her; all of their attempts to do so had failed. All that they could do was offer her a safe place to come in from the cold to, and, eventually, a safe place to die.
But, there were three men bound to Liv Napier by a bloody justice; when the Joker and Batman turned to the Comedian to play his part, he turned them down, but she pulled him in, herself.
Now it had all come to a head. The plan the three men had hatched together had backfired, badly, with the Joker pulling out of it and Batman and the Comedian wishing they had, and now, Liv remembered.
Everything.
When they walked up to her table, Liv looked at both of them with a strange expression in her red-rimmed eyes.
Bruce didn't know what to say or what to do, but Eddie sat down across from his partner.
"Tough night, huh, kid?"
Liv laughed, harshly.
"Not my worst, partner. Not by a long shot. That would have to be the night they burned my Ma at the stake. She never done nothin' bad to nobody in her life. Not like me. And they burnt her at the stake." Liv said, quietly.
"Yeah kid, I know. But alla those bastards are dead now. Long dead. Me an' your stepfather, here, we hunted 'em down like dogs. Rounded 'em all up, got the families together of the people they killed and burnt them at the stake. And they're all still smokin an' toastin' in Hell, but it's a sure bet Merrie went straight to Heaven." Eddie told her.
"You did? The two of you?"
Bruce Wayne sat down.
"Yes. I'll explain it to you better, later, but yes, we did. After that, I always felt…responsible for you. I was investigating the case with the Comedian at the time. That was why…your father came to us for help. We would never have broken the case without Joker's information, but, had we been able to, your mother would still be alive. I always felt I had to make that up to you."
"Jesus, Pop, that wasn't your fault."
"It still happened."
"No wonder I went so nuts that time I broke up a meeting of the Friends of Humanity. I've always hated those cocksuckers. Now I know why. And lemme tell you both this. I know it won't bother you, Eddie, but I don't care if you throw me right out of the JLA and your house and your life, Pop, those people are vermin, and by God, I'm gonna treat 'em like vermin. Every time I find one of those sons of bitches, I'll kill him. Or her. Old or young, man or woman, if they're with those maggots, I'll kill 'em all, goddamnit, an' let God sort 'em out!" she cried.
"Sounds good to me. Dirty mask-killin', baby-murderin' sons of bitches." Eddie agreed.
"You'll get no argument from me, either, Trivelino. Those people are scum. Bigots, arsonists, murderers, plunderers, rapists, lunatics, all of them. I can't say I've even given one I've found the chance to explain his evil. Just don't let Clark know about it. Some things about this life are just too much for him to take." Bruce added.
Liv went back to eating, quietly.
There was more banging on the glass, and Sophie let somebody else in.
"What the fuck is going on?" Wolverine demanded.
"The kid remembers everything. About her Ma. And the Church of Humanity."
"Oh shit."
Logan sat down at the table with her, too.
He didn't hesitate to sit down right beside her, and he put his arm around her, and she hugged him.
"Shouldn't one of you guys be doing this? It's alright, Liv. Go ahead 'n cry. You'll feel better. Now, you listen to the ol' Canucklehead. I've had too many people I love murdered, quite a few of 'em right in front of me. Makes ya want revenge. And I ain't gonna tell ya that you should spare even one member of that cult of kill-crazy evil bastards when you meet em, but whatever you do, don't go lookin' for 'em. Because you can spend the rest of your life huntin' them down, and their children, and their old people, and killin' every one you find, and it ain't gonna help. Not even a little bit. You can't fill that hole up with blood, darlin'. You can't fill it at all. You just gotta learn to live with it, like you have. An' be glad for the people you still got, and do what you can to keep 'em. You understand?"
Liv nodded into his arm.
"Listen, kid, I know ya feel like you wish you was dead, now, but this memory has been festerin' in youse your whole life, and ya never could get it out. Now that ya shook it loose, ya might start ta feel better. How about we have Sophie put that soup in somethin', for ya, and you can go home?"
Liv sniffed, broke away from Logan, and nodded.
"Okay, Eddie."
Bruce Wayne stood up.
"I'll take her home."
"Yeah? I'm comin with you." Eddie volunteered.
"I'll call Alfred. I don't think Liv wants anyone to see her this way, not even a cab driver."
Logan stayed with them until Alfred came, and then he went to a pay phone and called the X-Mansion.
"Hello? Hello? Is that you, Logan? What the hell's going on in down there?"
"A whole lotta shit, Cyke, and not much of it's good. It's all over now, though, an' everything's under control. Listen, I got all shot to pieces tonight, and I feel like hell. You think you could drive down and get me, an' I'll tellya all about in on the way home?"
"Jesus, that's why I think that Summit is a bad idea. Everybody gets drunk, and high, and screws everything with an autograph book, and meanwhile, nobody's minding the store. I'm not driving you back down there."
"I don't wanna go back. Not until Napalm's induction, anyway."
"Well, I'll come get you as soon as I hang up. Where are you?"
"Grossmann's."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
V: Liv
As nights go, I've had better.
I was pretty goddamn exhausted, that was for sure.
It was a helluva way to end one of the lousiest weeks of your life.
And all that crazy shit, about betrayal, and backstabbing, and double-crossing and the plan that Paulie and I laid out, and everything that had been on my mind seemed crazy and remote and stupid after the night I'd had, and the really funny thing was, it wasn't the craziest, bloodiest, most violent night of my life.
I laughed over that one almost all the way home, when I wasn't crying.
Pop kept looking at me like I was nuts, but I couldn't help it.
Alfred drew me a bath and made me some nice hot tea, and looked at my lumps and bruises, especially the one that .357 left, and the good news was it was nothing serious, but the bad new was I was going to be in pain, but like Logan says, me and pain are old friends.
It took me awhile to convince Eddie and Pop, all of whom kept fussing over me like I was a little kid, that all I needed to do was take a bath and go to bed.
After I took my bath, I sat around in my robe and Alfred made me chicken soup, and after I ate it, I got in bed and shut out the light.
It was good to be home in my own bed and I was gone pretty goddamn fast.
I couldn't stay awake anymore; I just couldn't take it.
I don't know how much later it was I woke up because I heard voices in my living room.
Now, Eddie's costume smells like leather, gun oil, metal, sweat, and blood, and when the door to my bedroom opened, I smelled that Eddie's costume smell.
I was only half- awake; my eyes were still shut, and I was exhausted and naked in my bed without my glasses on, and for a minute I had this weird feeling of being completely helpless.
But I had been feeling that way a long time, that weird, lost feeling.
You wouldn't think the smell of leather, gun oil, metal, sweat and blood could make you feel better, but it was funny, in that weird state I was in the way that Eddie's costume smell just sucked all the anxiety out of me.
It made me feel kind of the way I felt when I went to sleep in my old bedroom at the Old Man's bunker.
And I don't often feel that way.
"Hey, kid?"
"Hiya, Eddie."
"I figured you might need some company, an' the hell with Jimmy, it ain't Wednesday."
You know, even the way I felt, Eddie made me laugh.
My voice sounds real distant and tired.
He leaves the light off, but I can hear him moving around the room and I can see shadows.
Then he gets in the bed with me.
I don't want to be awake, anymore, and I don't want to go back to feeling the way I felt all week, enraged and lost and betrayed.
I just want to get as close to my partner as I can and go to sleep.
But I can't.
"Eddie, you think I mighta had a real chance at a decent life if they didn't burn my Ma to death right in front of me? You know what my nightmare's about?"
"No. But I'm listenin'."
"First off, I feel the way I did when it happened. It's like livin' it all over again. These people got my Ma, and they're tyin' her to this pole and they set her on fire. And they got hold of me, and she's screamin' for help an' I'm too little an' helpless to save her. I can't even save myself. The Old Man has to save me. An' I keep seein' it, her screaming, blackened skull all ringed in flames. An' there was nothin', nothin' I could do."
"Yeah, well, lemme tell you somethin', kid. Ya come to the right place with that. If anybody knows what it's like to be little an' scared and helpless ta do anythin' to save yourself, let alone your Ma, it's me."
I got quiet, then.
"I dunno what was wrong with Pop. He was a mutant, but not in an obvious way. He could pass for an ordinary person real good. But he grew up bad because of it, an' I guess that was it. He wasn't too bad when he was sober. Not much worse than anybody else's Old Man in the neighbourhood. A little louder, a little quicker to smack you one, but not much worse. Thing was, Pop wasn't sober a lot. An', unlike me, he liked to bring his work home with him."
Eddie stopped for a minute, then he went on talking.
"The littlest thing would set him off. He'd tell you to pass the salt, an' if you didn't pass it fast enough, he'd knock you off your chair. Or grab your arm and put his cigarette out on it. Sometimes ya hadda be quiet as a church mouse, or he'd holler at you that you was makin' too much noise and beat ya with his fuckin' belt. The end with the buckle on it. Ya never got slapped in the face, ya got punched in the face. Wham! An' if ya did somethin' wrong, God help youse! The fuckin' guy tortured and murdered people innocent fuckin' people who just liked to bet for a livin', an I got caught stealin' some penny candy, once, and he held my hand over the gas ring until it started to fuckin' melt. And the sunnuvabitch could never get enough money for booze and women. There was somethin' wrong with the guy. Ma was always pregnant, so he was after her, and still he hadda screw everything in a skirt. But that wasn't good enough for him, either. Ma would try to keep money for us to eat on and when she wouldn't give it to him, he'd beat her. Beat her and hold her arm behind her back, push her on the floor with her face in the carpet and pull up her skirt. Right in front of alla us. And when she was knocked up real big, he was at Edie. An' I was too little to stop him, too little ta stand up to him, and if I tried, it was the same for me. Beatings…and otherwise. I know just how you felt, kid. I felt that way every day of my life, till I got big enough an' old enough an' strong enough to kill the motherfucker. But even then, Jesus, he was my Pop. He wasn't always bad to me, to us, an' he was my father, yunno? I look in the fuckin' mirror, an' there he is. Hiya Pop. See youse in Hell. I know how ya feel, kid. I really fuckin' do."
That was as much as Eddie every told me about Hell up in East New York, and it's as much as I ever wanted to know.
"Eddie, d'you think if we never hadda go through that kinda shit, we woulda had a chance?"
"Who knows, kid? Maybe I wouldn't be the black-hearted sunnuvabitch I am if I didn't grow up with Mick the Merciless for a father. Then again, maybe I would. Ya can torture yourself, thinkin' like that. But, you an' me, we got what we got, and we ain't so bad. We came down on the right side, didn't we?"
"Yeah. I dunno, Eddie. One way, knowin' what it is that's been eatin' at me all these years, I feel better. On the other hand, I feel worse. I dunno how I feel."
"Well, me an the Bat, we put youse through some changes, and now it's all out in the open. I ain't surprised ya feel so bad. But at least ya know where ya stand. When ya wake up in the morning, it'll all look better, I know ya, kid. You can take it."
"I wish you an' Bruce hadn't killed 'em all. I'd like to get my hands on some of those cocksuckers."
"You know what, Liv? If I could, I'd dig the sons of bitches up and you an me could kill 'em all over again. Together. But, it ain't like we stomped 'em out for good. There's plenty more of those Friends of Humanity fuckin' Nazis sprung up ta take their place. An' when we happen ta get hold of any of 'em, they're gonna wish their fathers had never met their mothers."
You might think that's a helluva thing to comfort a person, but you're not me and you're not Eddie, and I hope you didn't see a cult murder your mother in front of you in one of the most horrible ways possible, or grow up with a sadistic drunken psychopath.
"Hey, for what it's worth, ya done good tonight. An' as for that plan me an' Bruce an' Crazy Jack cooked up, the Bat and me shoulda pulled out of it when Crazy Jack did. It was a lousy fuckin' idea. I'm sorry I ever made youse and Paulie go through with it."
"That's awright, Eddie. I aint gonna hold a grudge over it. Not after all this. I'm lettin' it go."
"Good. Look, try and go to sleep, kid. You know what the best thing about all that shit is? It's over. An ya lived through it, an ya grew up to be the kinda person who ain't about to ever let anythin' like it happen to ya, again. An that's on your own, without me. Anybody tries to come at you, kid, killin's too good for 'em. It's okay. I gotcha."
It's like what Sophie says about a bad man. Well, I know I'm a bad, mean woman, and I ain't never done no man no good, like Janis said.
You see, a good woman knows she can find another man, but a bad woman knows she can't.
"Ya know somethin', kid? Now you remember what happened, you won't ever have that nightmare, again." Eddie told me.
Lying there in my bed with Eddie, with everything said and done, I felt just a little bit of peace.
Eddie said I could go to sleep; he said he was lookin' out for me.
So here I am, home, in my own bed for the first time in a week, but it seemed like a helluva lot longer, and I knew that by this time Dick was probably in his bedroom, sawing logs, and Bruce was either in his room, reading, or in the Batcave, and Alfred was making sure all the lights were out before he went to bed.
And I was in my bed with Eddie, curled up close, falling off to sleep.
But.
But I wasn't wearing anything and he had his boxers on, and I guess he was just going to pretend nothing was happening because he figured there was a time and a place for everything, but this wasn't the time or the place?
But, ya know somethin' funny, I sorta felt like I needed him, and not just in that usual hubba hubba hump-a-thon horny horny kind of way; it was like some other kind of thing, too, that I just don't have the words for.
So what I did was, I hooked one of my thumbs under the waistband of his shorts and started tugging it down his hip.
It was real dark in the room, and I couldn't see his face, but I heard him laugh.
"Don't laugh at me, Eddie. I fuckin' hurt all over, I feel like I got stuffed into a sack and beat with hammers, but, I need you. I need you, bad."
"Yeah, kid. Me too."
We just stayed like we were, on our sides, facing each other, and the funny thing was it all started off pretty slow and easy, but we ended up really locking horns, it was crazy and desperate, I gotta tell you, but it wasn't like that last time, where we both had something to prove and we sort of came together and I was surprised at just how good it was.
Like there was something else going on, something I just don't have the words for.
And then, we were all quiet and sleepy again, and I know I fell asleep first, feeling quiet and sleepy and good.
Somewhere that night I had a dream about my Ma, but it wasn't a nightmare.
I always have the same dream about Ma.
We're in the bunker, in the kitchen, and I'm at the table, and she's cooking something on the stove and she tells me as soon as she's done we're going to the park to see Paulie and Laurie.
It's a real good dream. In my dream, I feel different; I feel the way most people feel who aren't a drunk and a whore and a killer, yunno?
Anyway, though, it always ends with me going into my parents' bedroom and Ma's sitting on the bed and she looks sad, real sad.
She tells me we can't go, because it's raining.
And it is raining, and there's thunder and lightening, and then I wake up.
This time, it ended differently, though; the way it ended was when I came in the bedroom Ma was all dressed and smiling and happy and she said we were going to the park.
And she picked me up and carried me into the elevator, and when we got off the elevator we were in the park, and it was sunny, real sunny and she puts me down and she's smiling and she tells me to go run and play, and I'm running, and the sun's in my face and I'm laughing and there's Ma, smiling and waving at me.
And then I woke up, an' I was cryin', again, but this time I was cryin' because I was happy.
I think Eddie was right.
I'll never have that nightmare about Ma, again.
I'll never have that feeling again, either.
Ever.
***
I could tell it was early in the morning when I woke up, by the way the light was coming into the room, but, on that I must have fallen asleep around nine, that's why I woke up so early.
Eddie had his arm around me, and he was dead asleep, it was like having a weight around the middle of me, and we were so close together I was sweating, and usually that shit bothers me, but I didn't care.
I rolled over a couple of times to see if my body would still move, then I pulled the blankets down and looked at my chest.
The bruise wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
I been hurt a lot worse.
But the pain from the day before meeting up with the usual pain I'm in from all the days before meeting up, it didn't feel too great, and I grabbed the big bottle of Tylenol from my nightstand and swallowed four of them with this glass of water warm as piss and moaned into my pillow.
"That don't sound too good, kid. What are you gonna do when you're my age?"
So, Eddie's awake.
"Hurt more." I said.
I rolled over, again.
I was in this weird mood.
It was like while things were still up in the air, before I packed all my shit back into my brains, I wanted to get everything squared away, so I figured there was no time like the present to talk to Eddie.
"Ya know somethin', Eddie? I was really fuckin' mad at you. Really fuckin' mad. Double cross. Triple cross. I had that whole plan. I got Tony to get me and Paulie some stage prosthetics, and it woulda worked. You really woulda thought we was both dead. We were gonna get Bruce there, too. It woulda looked real, and you woulda ended up with little bits of what you thought was me and Paulie all over yourselves. Sure, it would just be raw pork chops and latex and Karo syrup with red food coloring, but, what the fuck was I thinkin' about?"
Eddie got up and walked over to the can to take a piss.
"Gettin' me back for breakin' your fuckin' heart. Same thing I was thinkin' about when I went ahead with that stupid fuckin' plan." He tells me.
"Yeah, Eddie, but I don't hold grudges and hatch revenge plots. When somebody stabs me in the back, I don't care who they are, I just…"
Then, I stopped.
He gets back into bed.
"Kill 'em?" he says.
Now, I kinda knew Eddie alla my life, he was Paulie's uncle, after all.
Sometimes he was around, you know, this big guy with a cigar who did a lot of swearing, and if Paulie and me got into some kind of real serious jam for a little kid, we knew he could get us out of it.
I found out he was the Comedian when I was 11, but I was used to masks, it was no big deal, he was still Paulie's uncle to me.
Then, I got a little older, and the first time I ever saw Eddie, in person and in costume was 1966.
I got up from my bed on Long Island, where I'd been lying for two days since I'd been shot in the guts by some half-assed wiseguy I sent straight to hell, to attend Captain Metropolis' Crimebusters meeting.
Since I had trained with Silk Spectre II under Silk Spectre I, and I'd worked with Rorschach and Nite Owl, I was hoping for an invite to join the Watchmen.
In those days, I was pretty sure the Justice League only made me a trainee in deference to Bruce.
I washed down three Percodan with whiskey and got in my car and drove to the city and got to the meeting in time to stand by Sally Jupiter and watch Laurie go in.
Then this car just parked any old way by the curb and there was Eddie.
I got this feeling, looking at him, and catching his act during the meeting only made it worse.
Logan wasn't the first or the last person to tell me I had a little too much rage and a little too much lust in my heart, and never to let the two mix, but just then, they did.
My guts were burning, my head was melting, and I knew that what I saw had to be mine. I'd die for it, I'd kill for it; if any woman had touched Eddie that night I would have shot her in the face. I may not have sat on his cock and put a gun to his head until 1971, but I decided right then and there that I could care less if he wanted me, I'd hold and gun to his head and tell him if he didn't fuck me I'd blow his brains out, and if the only way I could have him was to climb onto his dick while I had a gun to his head, fine by me.
I shouldn't have been out of bed, I shouldn't have taken so many pills, and certainly not with whiskey, and I wasn't used to having such strong, shocking feelings.
I tried to sit in the empty room until my head stopped swimming but my head wouldn't stop swimming and when I staggered out into the street I fell down.
I woke up in the back seat of Bruce's limo, with my stepfather propping me up in his lap.
I had taken two or three steps out the door and collapsed.
Eddie and Adrian found me lying unconscious, feverish, and bleeding in the street, did what they could to stop me bleeding, and called Bruce.
I still think to this day I didn't pass out from the pain or the wound opening a little, I passed out because that crazy feeling I had about a man I knew all my life that I was really seeing for the first time socked me in the guts harder than the bullet that had just been taken out of them.
That was how strong I felt about Eddie before I ever really knew him well.
And we had come within a hair's breadth of killing each other a few nights before, and I wasn't too sure if I was all done dancing that dance with the devil by the pale moonlight with him just yet.
You probably think there's something dark and evil in my attraction to my partner, but he's no worse or better than a lot of real tough guys and neither am I.
I'll bet you got somebody in your life that just does it for you, maybe it's somebody you trust, somebody you love, somebody that really gets you hot, or all of those things.
You sit there and think about that person, about the way they look lying in bed naked when you're naked and you turn your head and look at them and you think, man, that's it, that right there, and you get all hot and bothered and you figure, shit, I'm going over there right now and get me some of that whether or not they answer the phone.
Okay, now if you're not a triple-horny sex-mad bad motherfucker, imagine you are.
I had this picture in my mind of Eddie, naked, lying on his back with his hands behind his head, smoking a cigar and smiling at the ceiling, laughing to himself before turning to me to ask me if I was gonna stay all the way the hell over on the other side of the bed and stare at the TV all night or what?
I also remembered the look on his face when he had his hand around my throat just a few nights ago, and how mad I was, and how much I wanted to break his arm.
"Hey, Eddie? When you had your hand around my throat the other night, how bad did you wanna strangle me?"
"Pretty bad, kid."
"Yeah, well, I really wanted to break your arm. I could see the bone coming through your skin, I could hear it pop. You're a pretty mean sunnuvabitch, a violent guy, but you wanna know about not normal? I really wanted to hurt you, Eddie. But then, when you grabbed me an' kissed me, I forgot all about it. Immediately. I get so goddamn mad at you, sometimes, madder than I've ever been at anybody. And it makes me want to kill you. Because, I dunno, love ain't a big enough word for it. There's too much bullshit attached to that word that I don't want nothin' to do with. I could take just about anything. I have. But, you, you're in my goddamn blood, Eddie. It's blood between us. You know what I mean? How come you didn't just squeeze, Eddie? You said I broke your heart. You killed a woman for fucking up your face. Sally decked you for kissing her neck and you beat her half to death and tried to rape her. Breaking your heart, that's a helluva lot worse shit from a woman than a bottle in the face or a punch. Why'd you stop?"
So here we are, lyin' in bed, and I was turned over on my side talkin' to Eddie and then he turned over to look at me.
And he had this look on his face, this real un-Eddie look.
I'll bet he had that look on his face when he came in the night before, that was why he left the light off, and it was why he hadn't looked at me this morning.
Until now.
I got drunk with Sally once, and she told me about the un-Eddie look.
She said all the time she knew him, all the times she was with him, she only saw that look, once, and when she told me about it, she almost cried.
It was the reason, she said, that she never could completely let go of him.
A glimmer of gentleness, she called it.
I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about until right that moment.
Eddie put his hand on the side of my face.
"Kid, you are just about the meanest goddamn woman I ever knew. I've seen you kill a man and laugh at him while he's dying. Last night, Laurie was lookin' at you like she couldn't believe what you were doin' but it wasn't no surprise to me. You're still the only broad, hell, the only person I ever met who ripped a guy's living heart out of his chest with their bare hands. I know if Paulie really had gone bad, you would have killed him and made it look like an accident to spare his Ma and his sisters before you even blinked. Maybe you would have lost a few nights of sleep over Paulie. But if he was bad, he was bad. And over all the lowlives you've snuffed. Not a wink. And you think that makes you as bad as me. It don't. I know I'm batting for the good guys, but that don't make me any the less of a real bad man. And don't tell me how I got good in me, I know I gotta good side, but when some unlucky sunnuvabitch gets on my bad side, it doesn't matter who it is, they're gonna die. I killed my own father. And I have killed everything that walks, crawls or flies on this Earth, and I never knew anybody, anybody I could never kill. Except you." He told me.
Now you have to understand how important this shit was.
Eddie loved Sally. He still loved her, right then and there, and I knew he always would. But he was capable of beating the shit out of her and raping her, because he would have done it, as sure as shit if Rolf Mueller hadn't headed him off at the pass.
And if it had killed her, well, he wasn't thinking about it at the time, and, at the time, he didn't care.
That's why Sally, even though she loves him too, she takes Eddie in small doses.
As for everybody else in the world, Eddie has killed just about everything, male and female, young and old, human and animal, everything that does walk, crawl or fly across the face of this planet when he felt like he had to, and I've never seen him lose any sleep over it.
And me, shit, I'm Napalm, and I burn everything down.
I like to tell myself that there are people I could never kill, but everyone I meet I figure a way to kill them if I have to as soon as I can do it, and I hate to say it, but anybody I know, anybody, they push me the wrong way, I could kill them.
Except one person.
So here we are, two violent people, with two violent hearts of darkness as black as midnight in a coal mine, realising that we could no more kill each other than we could burn the stars out of the sky.
Like Janis said, you got to call that love.
"Yunno, Eddie, I think that's it. When I planned that shit, the fake death shit, it's not like I didn't know how bad it would hurt youse. I wanted to hurt youse, because ya broke my heart, and ya stabbed me in the back; I wanted to cut you down to the bone. Now, Logan's my blood brother, but in the oath we swore to each other, we said that if one of us betrayed the other, then that one dies by the other's hand. I got an adamantium machete, and if he did to me what you did, I would have cut his head off and thrown it so far away from his body he would have died chasing it, if he didn't kill me, first. And I wouldn't lose sleep over it, because that was part of the deal. But I could never kill you, Eddie. Never."
It was a real funny moment, because I probably had a real un-Napalm look on my face, too.
And I know, in the past, I tellya all about the dirty bits, but, this time, it's something I got to keep to myself.
If Eddie dies before I do, it'll be what I have left of him.
And if he dies violently, it'll be what keeps me going long enough to destroy whoever caused it.
Sure, I had the press to meet, and my car to fix, and a week in DC to pack for, and all this mental anguish and turmoil to pack neatly away into my mind, but just then, I wasn't thinking about it, because, it was a sunny afternoon, and I was with Eddie, and just then, I didn't want nothing else from life.
Nothing at all.
