-:-
Staring down
an endless sky
unable to face
injustice
or even I
A tiger's loveless soldier.
-Awaken, Love, Jewel.
Weltschmerz-:-
(Present...Undetermined)
Penance means nothing if it's easy...
The one piece of wisdom Harley's mother ever gave her when she was, what, six? Seven? Before her father and brother ended up dead or in jail and fell in love with the drink.
Penance wasn't supposed to be easy; she got that.
Luckily, the owner of the bar that specifically catered for the gay community wasn't going to bash the understanding in that wisdom over Harley's head at the moment. The young woman on the other side of the counter knew full well who Harley used to be, and that she'd held the bar and its people up at gun point some years ago and that she'd stolen over twelve-thousand dollars in cash from the safe under the flooring, but... the blonde had slowly been paying the owner back after every personal trip to Atlantic City (money was actually so easy to earn just counting cards and playing the ponies, but Joker was an impatient bastard and didn't have the ability to just wait a few days before doing something stupid) and she looked way too fucked up to talk to about paying for her drinks before ordering, so Harley was confident she would be left alone for the duration of her stay.
That and it was Gotham, so the blood oozing from her face, arms, neck, shoulders, tears in her jeans, what was left of her shirt—fuck it, ALL of her, was a pretty good incentive to stay away from the bar stools on either side of her person.
She debated whether it was worth working through the blood in her throat to ask for a straw. It would hurt, but her hands were having a hard time picking up the vodka on the rocks with all her shaking and broken fingers...
(Past...One Quarter of a Day Previous)
It wasn't the best idea in the world to take on two at once, but the anger was so bone deep after looking for a way out of her that she hadn't been thinking rationally when she'd turn over a drug dealing snitch and been told that the two of them were with a small cell of other villains plotting something she considered stupid. Something to do with the League of Assassins, no bother to her since she wouldn't interfere with their plans, just take up a moment of time with an old acquaintance who had overstepped without thinking.
And chat with her ex, of course, of course.
"You shouldn't have done that, payaso," the slightly shrunken heavy fighter hissed from his place under a statue Harley had knocked onto him after ripping into the area his Venom passed through its tubing and into his veins. Her nails had run deep along the slightly scarred hole that had long been the injection point that made him strong; all of her nails still had traces of his blood and skin under them, as well as dirt from clutching at the ground when he'd tossed her about like some crafted third-world ball on a rope.
Lucky for her, the statue she'd gone at with her hammer would keep him stationary until after she got her hands on Joker and left.
"Sorry, chico," chapped lips half-smiled, almost apologetic as she got up from her less than dignified position against one of the courtyard walls (nice place the Demon's Head had picked out for a hiding place, but far too close to Alabama to be truly off anyone's radar—forget local law enforcement, Batsy probably had the placed staked out from half a mile away across the swamp lands) to try and limp up into the house-mansion-over-sized-building that was slightly less full after she'd sent over two-hundred dollars worth of fireworks through four windows with a rocket launcher, "But you really had this coming. I would've thought someone as smart as you wouldn't'ta made a move against someone obviously under my protection. My babies' enhancements might come in handy in the long run, but you had the poor timing to fuck up in the same week stretch as Jackie."
(Present... Undetermined)
Her tongue flattened to the bottom of her mouth and her teeth shifted in tiny increments (Joker did a hell of a job actually going for her face this time when generally that was the last thing he went for—never let it be said that he couldn't appreciate the few assets she had left still clinging to her body after the last decade when most of them had been incinerated over the years or torn off, cut off, poisoned, excised, lost along the way or just barely existed in the first place—both her eyes would like like black holes the next day and he'd cracked her top left molars) as Harley made to ask for that straw when one appeared quietly in the gloved hand of someone sitting next to her and took its rest in her drink after winding in a semi circle.
Had she the energy and her lips weren't stuck together with steadily drying, tacky blood, she would have told her companion to get lost—and maybe a small thank you—but circumstances being what they were, she gave up on her weariness and just bent slowly down to take a sip.
"...I'm kinda wondering how you got back from swamp country so quickly in your current state."
Hm.
"Not that I expect you to answer or anything, a girl's gotta have her secrets—am I right?"
The bartender continued to wash out a pint glass, but she gave the moderately attractive man in the dark coat with his sopping wet hair (rain still patted and made a din on the rooftops with the metal patches still attached to keep the wet outside of the buildings; a small storm finally let loose after building for seven hours in clouds of smog) a nod, very used to Gotham night life and quietly contemplating the pros and cons of calling an ambulance. Harley seemed to be very alert and conscious but there was blood seeping from her rather obvious and more than apparently agonizing injuries and onto everything. So hard to decide between being one of the bar's basely decent human beings and possibly getting a visit when the blonde got out of the hospital—the next day—like she always did.
The washcloth inside a pint glass spun in counter-clockwise motions, dark amber bean eyes glancing between the two people who were once (might still yet have been with the way Gotham and Arkham operated, but whatever) perpetrators of highly dangerous lifestyles and many-many-many-many countless felonies...
Let the man take her home before she had to call a doctor—an ambulance was expensive and no matter that she was only trying to help, the injured party had yelled at her for it the last time. Let that happen, that would be good if there was someone looking after the woman that wasn't just trying to fill her other customers with mind numbing intoxicants (perfectly legal ones).
(Present... Elsewhere)
Pacified contentment buzzed beneath their fur as the two infant hyenas sat before the door in the building they had been brought to when first introduced to their new owner and paternal figures. The woman rarely let them roam further than the territory she and the elder hyenas had staked out, and always with someone else with them, so being brought to somewhere new was a real treat. They would have liked to move further along the halls, sniff at the hard earth walls, the floors with the many human footprints laid in lining of dirt and debris from different places, take a look at the other humans in the rooms...
But when James or Johnny made the move to take little steps forward and do just that, the elders made a low noise (their blood parent with raised fur and tail flicking hard against the floor like deeper anger trying to work out of him) or pulled them back to either side of them. Dark sun colors highlighting the snowy down fur in the low light made them look both adorable and almost despicable considering their location.
The little ones didn't know exactly why they were left alone with the elders—not by their woman, she was elsewhere and had Bud and Lou both terribly on edge when they had woken up after she had left that morning and hadn't been back yet, Jason having to feed them some of the cow meat from the fridge and curious at no evidence of Harley having gone to work with her shift clothes still laid out on her bed, untouched—but both didn't much care for being left at the door for much longer.
Clicking shoes sounded off down the hallway, coming closer.
Bud lifted his head from off his paws, almost coming to settle at the same height as the window in the door behind them that was above the waist for humans, tail stilling.
The fur on end settled back against him when he saw it was just Dr. Leland, two of the Ducklings behind her directly and the other one probably missing for the sake of finding hot coffee from the waiting room two floors down outside of the security ward.
Nervousness ran off of the three humans like salt off the coast; the black woman's finely manicured nails tapping in rapid succession against her right side in a manner that must have caused pain to the skin underneath her clothing. Better than the emotional turmoil set in the hours that had led them to this venture in the night, guarding their post, their charge, under the sedation of a fist impacting his head enough to count in clock tower chimes, the back of his skull smacking the ground he'd been brought down on in the same number.
Bud and Lou allowed the cubs to launch forward, try and make the woman and the other two feel better with licks to their ankles and pressed fur and paws to their feet and knees. The adult hyenas did not partake, because they knew that no amount of cuddling would make the fine doctors feel better at Harley still missing and the monster beyond the door still a hindrance on their lives.
(Past... Mere in the Amount of Tea Time)
"Authorities believe that the explosions that laid waste to the complex just outside of the protected swampland was set off and originally planted by the infamous Clown Prince of Crime early this morning in an attempt to murder his associates in the League of Shadows and possibly an unknown female that was captured on camera, but has yet been found. The Justice League chose not to leave comments on the exact chain of events, but Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter and a small group of the League's proteges were first on scene mere minutes after the explosion-"
The giant wide screen TV that sat against the wall in the Metrotower's cafeteria (in case the world started ending and members needed to be informed STAT, Steel and Cyborg had justified, not to watch national sports championships) quickly went to black and one red streak and a red-on-white streak materialized in front of the black box just before the remote made contact to break the screen to pieces.
Wally caught the remote and Bart held up his hands and arms in what was supposed to be a placating gesture. From the very back of the room, both pissed as hell but one slightly more than the other, Dick stood next to Tim chewing aggressively on a glazed cinnamon doughnut and Tim typed at his palm pilot at the speed of light, looking over the surveillance images and videos on the disaster that had happened before the League had participated.
"Okay," Wally started, setting the remote next to the TV and walking back over to the Gotham heroes, like a handler of lions at the zoo, "Cat Grant could really stand to talk a little less, but no need to take it out on the expensive things that are technically League property."
Nightwing shrugged, swallowing and licking some sugar and glaze off of his gloved thumb, "Batman paid for it."
"But he still makes you pay for stuff when you break it," Wally insisted, sitting at a table across from the other two and started in on some twenty-seven cheeseburgers with onions as Bart continued for him.
"And that's, like, what, seven-hundred dollars on a rookie cop's salary. You'd be eating nothing but cereal and ramen for months, dude."
"I didn't throw the thing!"
"Oh, right. Seven-hundred dollars on a high school student's allowance."
Tim tuned out the sounds of impertinence in all the voices surrounding him, continuing on with looking at the time stamps and trying to pinpoint at exactly what time before the bomb went off that Harley had gotten out of the blast radius. Batman had been too busy to find it, but since Red Robin couldn't lay out his frustrations on the psychopath that had-according to the video pixels and witness accounts from Icicle, Icicle Junior, Count Vertigo, Cheshire, fourteen henchmen that weren't unconscious or being rushed to the nearest burn units and Bane (once the swelling in his jaw and tongue went down and anyone could understand what he was saying)-stabbed the woman at least five times, smashed her head into a wall twice and might have broken the ribs that Bane hadn't.
She wasn't as much a lover of trapdoors as her ex, so Tim just wanted to know WHY Batman didn't seem too worried about her making it out alive more than anything. He at least owed her enough to care about that.
(Past...Dawn Approaching)
"'Scuse me!"
Harley paused in swinging her mallet through the air towards Joker to allow Cameron-"Oh my fucking god, Joar, could you feed your kid a little extra—he looks like he'd fit into a woman's size 0!"-to get out of the hall he'd been exiting, too close for comfort to the clown that was bleeding from his broken nose and could hardly see through the swollen eye that was compliment of the blonde's elbow pounding into the side of his head when she hadn't been knocking the air out of him through kicks to the groin.
The walking ice-pop tried not to take offense at the crazy woman on a kamikaze mission critiquing his father on his parenting skills as she let him get out of the way, but the obvious shock stayed put on his face even as his father managed to turn pretty close to the kind of raging fury that meant the possibility of a stroke.
"Nice etiquette there, Harls, learn that from Joney on your days off?"
Aaaand, they were back.
Cameron didn't like to show weakness in doing something so childish as, oh, hiding behind his father, but the Joker was in a fight with his Ex-Wife (break that down, think about that—the worst psychopath ever having a living spouse that left them and took some of their stuff and was still walking around and had the stones a Nazi officer would envy to come back to YELL at the psychopath for forgetting to do something nearly a decade ago—fuck, they were all gonna die) over his inability to follow simple instructions. It was gonna get worse before it got better, and really, it did well to put something between himself and flying debris.
The mallet missed Joker's head, but before he could gloat, Harley was using the stick as a brace and swung herself, full-body, into a twirl that landed her foot a direct foot into his face.
"You had one job, Jackie! One job, in our entire marriage and somehow, you fucked it up!"
"You'll have to be more specific, Harley; there's a lot of stuff I've never cared about in our 'relationship'," oh, fuck, he used the fingers for quote marks, they were gonna die in that hideout, soon, "That you would consider a job that I've never done."
"Perhaps I should illustrate your multitude of failings in a light bulb joke, then. Would you be able to care about that, you worthless fucking loser?"
Dead quiet.
Joar suddenly, politely as someone of his standing ever could, pointed towards one of the exits and carefully pressed Cameron and some of the other villains that were highly interested in living in that direction, "You know, I think we'll leave you two alone now."
That executive decision, in hindsight, was probably the reason they all lived to be arrested.
