A/N Trigger Warnings: This chapter contains references to attempted childhood rape - the incident is described, but not graphically. Standard Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes only. Killing people for any reason is both wrong and illegal. Don't do it.


Chapter 26

After the Batfamily finished lunch, or breakfast in the case of Bruce and Damian, Tim and Steph returned to her bedroom to continue taking advantage of their day off from school by watching Star Trek: IV, one of their favorite old sci-fi movies. Alfred emerged from his hiding place in the conservatory to begin Damian's next cooking lesson while Bruce made his way down to the Batcomputer.

He'd noticed that he felt more interested in crime-fighting again since Bane had joined the team and started shaking him out of his depression, and there were a few cases that Bruce could work on from home before Bane got back to town. It felt good to be doing something again, Bruce realized, and if the knowledge that he was working on something for his Batman-partnership with Bane was also giving him a warm feeling in his stomach, for reasons that had nothing to do with Batman, well, Bruce wasn't going to complain.

Harley went back to bed, since she'd only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before in between patrolling as Batgirl and Operation Anti-Bullying at Tim and Steph's school first thing in the morning.

She awoke around four to the sound of her phone ringing.

"Hello?" she said groggily as she answered. "Jay?"

"Hi, baby," Jason said softly. "Did I wake you up?"

"Yeah," Harley said, yawning a little bit. "It's ok, though. It's worth it to hear from you," she said and Jason's heart on the other side of the country gave a happy leap like it did every time he was reminded again how much Harley loved him. And how damn lucky he was.

"I got your texts," he said to her. "The thing at the kids' school went good, it sounds like?" Harley giggled.

"Yeah, it was the best," she said sleepily. "I wish I could've been inside to see Floyd shooting everything up, though. Especially when he was sliding around on the ice." Jason laughed.

"That part sounded hilarious," he said. "The cops bought it? Babs played it off?"

"She did good," Harley said with admiration. "Very commissioner like but also freaking out over her niece and nephew getting kidnapped."

"That's good," Jason said. "It'll be good to work things out with her when I get back," he said. "I always liked her when we were kids. Way better than Dickhead," he snorted and Harley sighed.

"I bet," she said empathetically.

"So…" Jason said slowly. "It's done. The prick is dead." Harley's breath left her body in a whoosh and when she breathed in, it was on a sob.

"You're ok, you're safe?" she asked him as she sniffed and tried not to completely break down. "You and Bane are ok?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're fine, baby," Jason said reassuringly. "No evidence left at the scene and we're completely safe and sound. Miles away already."

"Good," Harley choked out, starting to cry harder. "I'm not upset he's dead," she gasped, a little confused at the flood of tears drowning her face and not wanting Jay to get the wrong impression.

"I know," Jason said gently. "It's emotional. And brings a lot of memories up, maybe?" he asked her and Harley mumbled, "Yeah," in between sobs. She realized that she had drawn her knees up to her chest and was crying into her arms with the phone still held up to ear as she and Jay were talking.

Fetal position, she thought numbly to herself with one part of her brain while the rest of her broke down.

"I wish I could be there with you right now," Jason said compassionately. "I love you so much, Harley Todd."

"I love you, too," Harley gulped out as she shook. Jason hesitated.

"Could I call Bruce?" he asked her. "And have him come sit with you? I hate for you to be going through this alone," he said. Harley sniffed.

"Can Bane call him? I don't want you to hang up until Bruce gets here," she said, and Jason's heart broke a little bit at the vulnerability in her voice.

"Sure, baby. One sec," Jason said, and Harley heard him relaying her request to Bane. "Ok, he's calling him right now," Jason said soothingly a few seconds later. "And I'm still here."

"Ok," Harley mumbled, giving into the tears with full force now. Jason kept murmuring soothing comments in her ear until there was a knock a few minutes later on her door.

Bruce had been training in the gym with all three kids when his phone had rung with Bane's ID popping up. He grabbed a towel and wiped his neck off as he answered.

"Bane?" he said. "Everything ok?"

"Ah, Bruce," Bane said. "Jason and I are fine, yes. He is on the phone with Harley now. We have completed our mission and Harley is… quite emotional."

"Oh," said Bruce with concern. Was Bane's voice shaking a little bit, too? That was odd.

"She is crying upstairs in her bedroom," Bane said, "and we would appreciate if you would sit with her. Jason will remain on the phone with her until you arrive."

"Ok," Bruce said. "I'll go right up." He supposed he shouldn't shower first, but he mentally groaned thinking that a sweaty, stinky Bruce was probably not the comforting companion that Harley and Jason had in mind.

"Thank you, my friend," Bane was saying, though, and Bruce heard a definite wobble in his voice this time.

"Are you all right?" Bruce asked him, continuing the call as he left the gym, catching Tim's eye to gesture to the phone and the hallway to let him know he was leaving. Tim nodded back at him and gave him a cheerful thumbs-up as Steph continued with her arm weights and Damian practiced his tumbling routines.

"Me?" Bane asked Bruce in surprise. "Am I all right?"

"You sound upset, too," Bruce said. Bane hesitated.

"It is nothing," he murmured.

"It doesn't sound like nothing," Bruce said gently. "You want to talk about it?"

"Harley needs you right now," Bane mumbled.

"Later, then?" Bruce said. "I'll call you back late tonight after the Batpatrol starts. Shit, I'm gonna have to bench her if she's unstable," he thought out loud as he jogged up the stairs. "I guess the Suicide Squad can handle it alone, though." Bane was quiet on the other end of the phone, but Bruce could hear him breathing.

"Bane?" Bruce said again, with a little more worry in his voice. "I want to talk tonight. I mean it," he said more firmly.

"Very well," Bane said quietly. "After patrol starts."

"Good," Bruce said. "I'm here at Harley's room," he said, pausing outside her closed door. He wanted to offer some word of reassurance to Bane, but truthfully, he didn't know what to say. Bruce still wasn't the best at comfort and without even knowing what was going on? He gave a mental groan of frustration.

"I - um, get Jason to give you a hug," he blurted out. Bane's soft chuckle surprised him from the other end of the line.

"You have begun to learn from Bane the wisdom of hugs, I see," his friend teased him lightly.

"Among other things," Bruce said with a smile. "Talk to you later."

He knocked on the door and heard Harley call back 'come in.' She was still curled up sobbing on the bed with the phone pressed to her ear as he entered.

"Bruce is here," she managed to get out to Jason. "Yeah. I love you, too, Jay," she said before hanging up.

"Hi," Bruce said as he walked over to her. "Should I sit on the bed? I was working out and I'm sweaty."

"Sit," Harley mumbled. "I can sleep in one of the million other spare rooms ya got here tonight if ya stink the bed up." She scooted over on the bed and tried to wipe her face off with her sleeve, but there were too many tears and she ended up just smearing them around.

"Hold on," Bruce said, going to her bathroom to grab the box of tissues. He handed it to her as he sat next to her at the head of the bed and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"Phew, you do stink," Harley said as she mopped her face off, but she was curling into his shoulder anyway.

"Sorry," Bruce muttered. "Alfred can change your bed linens after. You won't need to sleep in a different room," he said.

"I can tell you was raised by a British butler," Harley sniffed as some more tears leaked out and her chest wouldn't stop heaving. Bruce quirked his eyebrow up. "Bed linens," Harley said in a haughty British accent, actually making herself giggle a little bit. Bruce smiled, too.

"Apt observation skills, Mrs. Todd," he said to her. "I didn't have a bathrobe, either," Bruce said. "I had a dressing gown." She smiled a little bit through her watery eyes.

"How can I help?" Bruce asked her as she kept sniffling and hiccupping against his chest.

"I don't know," Harley mumbled. "I wasn't expecting all this."

It was on the tip of Bruce's tongue to lecture her about the unexpected emotional consequences of murder, but even he could see that moralizing wouldn't help her after the fact. The deed was done and Harley was more of a mess than she'd been before her revenge, outwardly, at least, and Bruce was trying really hard this week not to be an ass.

He thought as he continued snuggling her under his arm. A lightbulb went off.

"I seem to recall someone telling my daughter that ice cream was an excellent means of support," he said, looking down at Harley with a small twinkle in his eye. "Especially for hapless middle aged men who are confronted with emotionally troubled females."

"Hey," Harley said with a small chuckle. "Ice cream is a gender neutral means of support. I never said nothin' about males and females and all that nonsense."

"All right, all right," Bruce laughed. "I'm going to pull rank as Batman and say that you need some," he said. "Come on," he said, getting off the bed and tugging her to her feet. "I'll fix you a sundae." Harley stared at him.

"You can fix sundaes?" she said in disbelief.

"Harley, it's just scooping things into a bowl," Bruce said with mock offense. "Even billionaires can manage that."

"If you say so, Brucie," Harley said. "But if your first one is inadequate, which I can only determine by eating it, of course, then I'm gonna need to have Alfred fix me a second one."

"Pssh," Bruce said as they started walking down the stairs. "I should at the very least get one do-over before you call in Alfred."

"Well, it might be a three-sundae kind of day," Harley agreed.

Despite her big talk, Harley only managed to eat one sundae while she and Bruce kicked their feet up on the leather recliners in his movie-theatre styled tv room - complete with enormous, movie theatre sized television - as they watched Animal Planet together.

"I haven't seen this one," Damian said when he and Steph and Tim found them after finishing their training. The trio came in to join them and Damian crawled up onto Bruce's lap with Osito.

"Alfred said dinner will be ready in half an hour," Tim said as he and Steph made their way to a sofa on the raised platform behind Harley and Bruce. Harley craned her neck around to smile at them and her grin got even bigger when she saw that the teens had wasted no time in snuggling up together.

"Are you ok, Harley?" Steph asked her. "You look like you've been crying." Damian, who hadn't noticed this fact, leaned over Bruce's arms to gravely inspect Harley's face.

"Red watery eyes," Bruce started murmuring in his ear. "Red nose where she's been blowing it."

"Bruce!" Harley squawked. "Are you teaching your son how to tell when someone's been crying?"

"Obviously," Bruce said with a touch of his trademark Bat snark. "Batman is first and foremost a detective, Harley," he said. She laughed merrily like he'd made a ridiculous joke. Bruce raised his eyebrow while Damian stared at her in puzzlement. She caught herself mid-laugh.

"You're serious?" she asked him.

"Of course I'm serious," he said in disbelief. "World's greatest detective…?" he said to her, good and affronted now. Harley slowly opened and closed her mouth.

"Um, not ringin' any bells," she said. "I thought you were first and foremost the terror who flaps in the night."

"That's Darkwing Duck," Steph said. Damian turned himself around to peer at her over Bruce's shoulder, although Bruce had also turned his head to give her a look. "Disney Cartoon channel," she said. "Number 457." Damian nodded with a little smile and turned back around.

"I shall research this duck," he said.

"They based Darkwing Duck off of Batman, though," Tim said philosophically. "The show didn't air until years after Batman had been active. One of the creators is from Gotham, too. That's how you really know."

"Wait," Harley said with glee. "Are you tellin' me that Batman has an animated fanshow? With a duck? Instead of a bat?" She fell over laughing. Bruce frowned hard.

"I've never heard of this show," he said. "It's been on for how long?" Steph sighed melodramatically.

"Dick and Jason weren't cool enough to watch cartoons, I bet," she said over the sounds of Harley, who had begun quacking.

"Or else they were too old," Tim said diplomatically as Harley got louder. "And you're not up on social media fads, Bruce. There's memes about it going around these days."

"I'm Quackman!" Harley giggled, jumping off of the couch and flapping her arms as she waddled around the room. Bruce huffed in real annoyance this time.

"Harley!" he snapped.

"You have to say it in duck or I can't understand you," Harley said in a sing-song voice as she continued to quack and waddle around the room.

Bruce frowned with deeper lines evident between his brows. He stood up with Damian in his arms and walked around to Tim and Steph.

"Tim, you take Damian and help Alfred get dinner out," he said as he held his hand out to help Steph up from the couch on her good foot.

"Is everything ok?" Tim asked more somberly, glancing from Bruce to the still circling Harley.

"We'll figure it out," Bruce said, putting Damian on Tim's back for a piggyback ride. Damian giggled as he and Osito hung onto Tim, who carried them out of the room. Steph looked up at Bruce questioningly.

"Jason and Bane killed Harley's stepdad today," he said to her. "She hasn't been doing so good since. She was crying up a storm earlier and they had to call me. We ate ice cream together and watched Animal Planet and she seemed to calm down some, but…" he looked with concern over at Harley, who was quacking to herself without an active audience.

"What do we do?" Steph whispered. "Should we call Jason and Bane back?"

"I'll step out and do that," Bruce said quietly. "Stay here with her. See if you can get her to talk to you," he said, handing Steph her crutches. She slowly swung her way to the front couch as Bruce left the room, closing the door behind him with a worried look in his eyes.

"Harley?" Steph said to her as she maneuvered herself back down on the closer couch. "Can we talk?" Harley glanced at her like she was just noticing the girl. Her silly smile held for a second before slowly slipping away into something more normal looking.

"Oh, Steph," Harley said. "Sure. What's up?" she asked her, coming over to sit next to Steph, who was a little taken aback at Harley's quick return to level-headedness.

"Um, it's about something kind of serious," Steph said, thinking quickly to the one thing from her past that might give Harley an anchor. Although whether it would tether her or drag her further under, Steph wasn't sure.

"Are you good to talk about something heavy? Bruce said you've been having a rough day yourself."

"You can tell me," Harley said, sobering even more as she focused intently on Steph, who could see the calming wisdom of Dr. Quinzel almost starting to glow out of Harley's eyes. "What's going on, honey?" Harley said.

"Well, I never told anybody this before," Steph said honestly. "Not even Tim." Harley nodded patiently, quietly waiting for Steph to continue.

"My dad, um, he had one of his friends babysit me once when I was little," Steph said. "Not super little. Maybe ten," she said. "My mom, she was a nurse, you know, and she was working and my dad needed to go meet up with somebody about something, probably criminal…" Steph swallowed as the memories came up more strongly.

"But he wasn't gonna leave me home alone at night so he had his friend come over. And, uh, he tried to rape me, Harley. My dad's friend, I mean."

"Oh, Steph," Harley said softly. "I'm so sorry that happened to you." She looked completely in control and so empathetic and Steph felt a pressure that she had been keeping wound up tight inside of her chest for years start to unfurl.

"He wasn't able to do it," Steph said, blinking away some tears. "I bit him and got away. And then I ran outside and hid. And waited until my dad came home."

"That must have been so scary," Harley said. "What that asshole did to you and waiting outside both. You grew up in Crime Alley, right?" she said.

"Yeah," Steph said. "And I told my dad what happened when he got home, but he didn't believe me. At least, he said he didn't," Steph said, wiping her eyes. "Which was devastating. But then a week later? The guy was dead from a drug overdose. And he didn't do drugs, Harley."

"You think your dad killed him," Harley said. Steph nodded.

"I don't know for sure. I never asked him. But I've felt so guilty about it ever since," Steph sniffed, her voice beginning to shake.

"Guilty?" Harley said. "Why, honey? You were the victim. And it wasn't like you asked your dad to kill him."

"I don't know," Steph said. "I feel bad that somebody died because of me. Which doesn't make sense, I know," she said, rubbing her head in frustration. "I know what he did. I hated what he did. And I'm sure I wasn't the first girl he'd done that to."

"That's right," Harley said soothingly. "And imagine who else that man might have hurt in his lifetime if he'd lived longer. Plus, it wasn't like your dad, being Cluemaster, was gonna call the police up and report him."

"We're worried about you, Harley," Steph said quietly, reaching out to hold the older woman's hand. Harley frowned.

"Me? Why - oh," she said, blinking a little. She bit her lip and looked off into the distance for a minute.

"Are you ok?" Steph asked her. "Bruce said you fell apart earlier. And the duck thing, um, it was funny but then it got a little scary, too. Like you couldn't stop."

Harley took a deep breath and released Steph's hand so she could massage her sinuses and temples before answering. She sighed and met Steph's eyes.

"I've been out of the therapist game for too long," she said. She shook her head a little bit. "Didn't even occur to me that I'd have a reaction to Jay - um, you know." Steph nodded.

"I don't know," Harley muttered to herself, as if answering a silent question. "What's done is done. Would I have been better off without letting Jay do it? I don't know, kid," she said. "The fucker being alive ate me up every day, too. Especially worrying if he was attacking other people and if that was on me or not."

"Oh, Harley," Steph said. "It was on him. All on him."

"Maybe," Harley said. "Maybe not. I don't know. I've done a lot of bad shit in my life," she said to Steph. "Killed a lot of people. Even after getting my mind back. But I only kill people who oughtta be killed. Rapists, child molesters, murderers. You know," she said.

"Me and your brother are the same that way. So I ain't gonna say I shouldn't have killed the bastard. But…" she paused. "I guess it was more complicated than I was expecting when it was my revenge and not me avengin' somebody else."

"That makes sense," Steph said soothingly. "Are you - do you think you'll be ok, now?" Harley thought for a minute, then nodded.

"Now that I'm payin' more attention, I think so," she said. "We'll meditate after dinner and then I'll go on patrol and then I'll call Jay afterwards."

"No patrol tonight," Bruce said gently from behind them. Steph and Harley turned in surprise.

"How much did you hear?" Steph asked him suspiciously.

"Just the last little bit," Bruce said. Steph narrowed her eyes at him but he held her gaze. "I came back in when Harley said her rapist being alive bothered her, too. I didn't want to interrupt."

"Ok," Steph said finally.

"Why no patrol?" Harley said, frowning.

"You're not in a good headspace tonight," Bruce said. "And considering one Mrs. Harley Todd wouldn't let me patrol this week as Batman because of my head being a mess…" he trailed off but he was smiling at her. "Your team can handle it," he said. She sighed.

"Ok, fine," she grumbled.

"Will you call your husband back and let him know you're ok again?" Bruce asked her. "We have a few minutes before dinner and I'll make Alfred wait for you." Harley snorted.

"More like Alfred will make you wait for me," she said. "He's Mr. Manners around here, Batsy. In case you hadn't noticed. With that super detectivey bullshit that you say you've got goin' on."

"I am a detective," Bruce insisted with a little laugh. "Why is that so hard to believe?"

"Hm, maybe cuz you run around Gotham in a pointy-eared mask with big old flappy wings scaring the shit out of people," Harley said. "If you'd said you were an out of work Haunted House actor, that I could have believed." Steph giggled. Bruce gave her a look.

"Get started to the kitchen, slowpoke," he teased her. "It takes you twice as long."

"Whatever, old man," Steph said, picking her crutches up so she could start swinging along. Bruce snorted.

"I know I'm old because that doesn't even bother me," he said, reaching out to ruffle her hair as she passed him.

"You good?" he asked Harley once Steph had left the room. "Or, well, better?" She nodded.

"I think so," she said. "Thanks, Bruce. I'm sorry," she said regretfully.

"You don't really have anything to apologize for," Bruce said. "Although," he said dryly, "I suppose technically one could say that you did crash at my house while your husband went on a murderous rampage that left me with a sobbing mess to clean up, but… really, no apologies necessary."

"Bruce!" Harley said severely as her eyes started to twinkle.

"Was that me being too much of an asshole again?" he asked her playfully.

"No," said Harley. "Well, yes. But that's not the point. I wasn't apologizing for any of that shit anyway. You fucked Jay up when he was a kid and then got him killed so my minor incident from this afternoon hasn't even begun to even out the debt you owe us."

"Oh, it hasn't?" said Bruce innocently.

"Nope," said Harley.

"Then what were you apologizing for, may I ask?" he said.

"For telling you earlier that you had to quack at me before I'd answer," Harley said sweetly. Bruce raised his eyebrow.

"So long as you don't call me Quackman again, we're good," he grunted.