Chapter 8: We Are the Champions
Daily Planet: "New Superhero Coalition Stops Docklands Gang War" by Lois Lane
New York City's docklands were the scene of a clash of as a small army of superheroes and their allies against a well armed, well organised group of henchmen employed by Moloch the Mystic in a plan to take over the docklands from the Joker, and eliminate several of his superhero rivals, including his arch-nemesis the Comedian's partner, Justice League trainee the Harlequin.
She was engaged in what Moloch believed was an operation to rescue three as yet unnamed kidnapped heroes being held by emerging supervillain the Green Jackal.
According to sources close to the Watchmen, the Green Jackal is not now and has never been a supervillain; he is an apprentice to the Nite Owl, and was sent undercover at Arkham Asylum as part of his training.
The docklands event that Moloch was using as the fulcrum to launch his attack was a training exercise for the Watchmen.
Details are not clear at this time, but in a statement released this morning, Ozymandias of the Watchmen has told the press that the Harlequin was working with Iron Man of the Avengers and the second Silk Spectre and had some intelligence as to possible supervillain intervention in the training exercise, and as a result she organised a strike team in case of emergency, and it was this strike team, assisted by the combined forces of the Comedian, Captain America and Wolverine, but planned form briefed, supplied and organised by the Harlequin that stopped Moloch's forces in the docklands last night.
Also, according to Ozymandias's statement, the Green Jackal risked his life at the site of the training exercise to contain Moloch until the Harlequin and the Silk Spectre arrived on the scene.
In a brief interview, Captain America promised that the major superhero organisation were going to plan and launch a major anti-crime initiative.
"The Harlequin has matured into a good soldier, a fine strategist, an expert detective, and a credit to all of us who wear a mask. Since she was 16 years old, she has fought this forgotten war, for the most part, alone for the benefit of the people of this city that it is my shame to admit that other heroes do not protect. Many people say, America, Love it or Leave it, and they look at people the Harlequin's age, as being the enemy. Our children are not our enemies. And just as the superhero community almost lost a brilliant young woman to addiction and despair, we, as a country, are losing a whole generation, one that feels betrayed by its leaders and abandoned by its heroes. Where only one brave young woman stood, we will now all stand with her. I say, if we love America, then we have to change it, or lose it. That spirit of freedom, of progress, and the will to make this country safe, free and united is what America is all about."
As for the Justice League of America, who will be inducting the Harlequin as a full member next Sunday at the Superhero Summit in Washington DC, Superman had only positive things to say about her and the new coalition.
"They say it takes a big man to admit he was wrong, and I admit it, I was wrong. Batman, who co-founded the League with me, and the Harlequin, who he trained from a little girl both came to me and tried to tell me what was happening to my city; but it was too horrible for me to want to believe. But I believe it now, and I think a coalition of superhero teams and a major campaign is the best way for us to deal with the crisis our city has fallen into. As for the Harlequin, we will be inducting her on Monday evening, during the opening ceremonies for the second week of the Superhero Summit. I couldn't be happier to see her overcome her troubles and take her rightful place among her fellow superheroes if she were my own daughter. It will be a great day for all of us, but moreso for Batman, who raised her like his own daughter, for her partner, the Comedian, who led her through some of her darkest hours, and for Wolverine, bound to her by a blood oath, and more importantly, by the bonds of their friendship and comradeship. It's their day, as much as it is hers, and, we're all hoping that our superhero coalition works out as well as the Harlequin's personal one has."
The Harlequin and the Green Jackal were not available for comment this morning, but a source close to both has said that the Harlequin will be speaking to the press at the opening ceremonies for the second week of the Superhero Summit on Monday morning.
Saturday
Wayne Manor, Long Island, New York
I: Liv
I woke up pretty early on Saturday, because I had a lot of things to do.
And that was before I even went to the garage.
The first thing I did after I got out of bed, careful not to wake Eddie, was get dressed and call Pete Parker.
Pete's a good scientist and a great mask, but he hasn't got two pennies to rub together. I'm thinking about hiring him to be my assistant next semester, but if he wants to keep himself in web fluid until then, he has to keep that old tyrant J.J. Jameson at the Daily Bugle up to his cigar in good mask shots.
Now I know Clark works for the Daily Planet and all, but Pete needs the dough, so I let him in on last night's scoop, and woke up wondering if he made it out in one piece.
When I got him on the phone, he thanked me a million times and told me to get a newspaper.
There I was, on the front cover of the Daily Bugle, with the docks in flames behind me, the chopper in my hand, beside the Wildcat, with Moloch pinned to the wall by the car.
Laurie was on the other side of the car, and you could see Paulie holding a gun on Moloch's henchmen.
Pete must have been hanging from the celing inside the warehouse to ge that shot. I don't know how he got in, or out, but hey, he's Spider-Man, that's what he does.
"GOTHAM'S BABY BOOM HEROES SAVE CITY!!!" the headline screamed.
Now that's what I call good ink.
But, before I went to fix my car and then departed with Eddie to DC to bask in my triumph, I had more important things to worry about.
I got on my motorcycle and drove back to the scene of the crime.
All cleaned up in the morning, the broke-down part of the docks we renovated didn't look much different, and when I came out of the elevator in the old man's bunker, he was reading my good notices aloud to Harley, from a stack of newspapers.
"Mistah J! She's here! She's here!"
"Here she is! My daughter, the Queen of New York! Livvie, that was absolutely brilliant! And Diabolical! And what a show, what a performance! Harley and I stayed up all night watching these old rusted hulks burn baby burn! The smell of smoke and gunpowder! Blood in the streets! Fear! Hellfire! Chaos! You got rid of Daddy's opposition, burnt down their strongholds, wiped out their forces, and managed to come out looking like a hero, saving the city from civil war. What a triple cross! I am so very, very proud of you!"
It was nice to see the Old Man so happy and proud, it seemed like everybody was happy and proud of me, today.
I had breakfast with the Old Man, and then I suggested we take a walk.
As we strolled through the smoking remains of my night's work, I told him that I had finally remembered what happened to my mother.
And I found out about the role him and Eddie and Bruce had in bringing her killers to justice.
You know, it's really hard for him to look heartbroken, but he did.
"I spent half your life hoping you'd never remember and the other half hoping you would." He told me.
"I don't want to talk about it too much, Daddy. I mean, I guess I'll get you and Pop and Eddie to all tell me your sides of the story, when I get a handle on it, but not right now. I just wanted to come by and tell youse that I think you did the right thing, and I'm not mad at you from keepin' it from me. I don't think I woulda dealt with it too well in the past. Now that I know, though, I gotta say, my whole life makes a lot more sense to me. Why I done the things I've done. Why I'm gonna keep doin' them."
The Old Man, he hugged me.
"I love you, Trivelino, And I loved your mother. I have never loved anyone in my life, I have no capacity for it. But there was something about your mother, something that lives in you. That's why I gave you to the Bat. It's why I wanted you to follow in his footsteps, not mine. I really am proud of you, Livvie. I want you to be the best superhero in the world. For your mother. She would have wanted it that way."
For a minute, I thought he was going to cry, and I haven't seen my father cry since the day my mother died.
"Let's go back to the bunker. We'll take a little drive and I'll take you to visit her."
"I might cry, Daddy."
"That's alright, Livvie. I probably will, too."
Washington DC, Monday- First Day of 2nd Week of 1974 Superhero Summit.
Tony
"Jarvis, where's that suit you picked up yesterday from the cleaners? I have to wear that suit. Where did it go?"
"Sir…"
Jarvis had been acquainted with his employer since Mr. Stark was a little boy in short pants, and the years hadn't changed him much.
He had always been wilful, eccentric, intelligent, and relished a challenge.
Perhaps that was the source of this…fascination with the Harlequin.
Tony rushed from one room to another, a drink in his hand, the blue light coming from the ingenious device in his chest growing brighter and brighter as he rushed back and forth.
"…where the hell is it?"
Jarvis intercepted his charge, removed the glass from his hand and handed him the suit in question.
"Right here, sir. And, may I suggest that, since you are representing the Avengers in the weighty matter of welcoming a new member into your community at the Justice League induction ceremony, you should probably be sober."
"You're absolutely right, Jarvis. I can get drunk with Liv and Eddie, later."
"What about your five drinks per day, sir?"
"That's suspended for special occasions. This is a special occasion."
"Considering that you have designs on the Comedian's partner, sir, isn't that a bit…morally suspect?" Jarvis asked.
"Of course not. I have no desire to sever their partnership, or interfere with the course of their charming, but twisted and tainted love. I just want Napalm to come and work for Stark Industries. And join the Avengers. And they do have an open relationship, and what's the harm if I take advantage of that, every once in awahile? I know Liv won't object."
Tony Stark shrugged his suit-jacket on, and straightened his tie.
"After all, what's a little fucking between friends?" he said.
"Much, sir. Much." Jarvis opined.
"Logan has his own day of the week. I want one. That shouldn't be too much to ask. Well, Jarvis? How do I look?"
"Like a trapper, sir, who keeps finding his lures empty and the bait missing, but no sign of his quarry in sight."
"You have a point, Jarvis."
Tony started to undress.
"The blue pinstripe, Jarvis, I think the trousers are tighter."
"Yes, sir."
II: Logan
After careful consideration, Wolverine decided that rather than put on a suit, which he detested, he'd just wear his costume.
He wasn't too fond of it, but at least it was a suit he could deal with.
"Not wearing a suit, Logan?"
"This is a suit, Charlie. You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"
"I am thinking that I can't believe the troubled, violent alcoholic young woman who slouched into my office with two fingers taped together and fresh stitches in her chin, with a broken arm in a sling and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth actually made it."
"You can thank Eddie Blake for that. She's the same Wildcat, though."
"Not really, Logan. Once, Liv was a slave to her unharnessed abilities, her anger, and her vast intelligence. Now she's the master of them. Today, you go and enjoy your friend's triumph. She deserves it, and after the part you played in it, so do you?"
"Me, Charlie? It's only Wednesdays."
"Who was the first man crazy enough to put his hand under the mad dog's foaming muzzle? And there have been many Wednesdays since 1970. You're a good friend to Liv, Logan. You have been for many years. If she is…partially domesticated, then you've had a great deal to do with it. This is your triumph, too."
"Well, they say every dog has it's day, Charlie. This one's Liv's." Logan chuckled.
IV: Bruce
Out of all the people who thought this day would never come, none had suspected so strongly and were so glad to be wrong as Bruce Wayne.
Liv had been a sunny, happy, spunky little girl. Remarkably well-adjusted, considering her wayward upbringing.
Extremely bright, the tomboy type, Levis and overalls and Keds and pigtails.
She began to show interest in following in his footsteps immediately upon coming into his life, a little girl eleven years old, who had learned to call two very different places home, and was taught in both to trust no one.
But Bruce was a mask, like her father, her father who told her to go and stay with The Bat and treat him like she would treat her own Dad, that he was a man she could depend upon and trust.
It took Bruce and Alfred and Dick all of two weeks to fall in love with little Liv, and for her to embrace them, as well.
Bruce trained her in the art of being a mask, and what he didn't know about being a woman and a mask, he sent her to Sally Jupiter to learn, along with Laurie, her daughter.
Liv excelled in all of her training, from the technical aspects to combat, and Bruce was the proudest father in the Justice League.
After she left FDR High in Brooklyn, Bruce insisted Liv go to college and find what she called a day job.
Some day job.
Liv went to NYU at 15, and at 16 she began her career as the Harlequin.
She pursued a double major in quantum physics and history, with a minor in genetics and evolutionary biology She graduated Magna Cum Laude at the age of nineteen, and began teaching history classes as a part-time graduate student, and also worked as an assistant to Dr. Manhattan in his lab. Her illustrious employer, and all of her professors agreed that she was a brilliant historian and a brilliant scientist.
She liked the blues and rock music, and fast cars and rock concerts, and guns and the occasional fight, but she was active in the civil rights movements for blacks, mutants, and women, and began her her mask career as one of the youngest trainees the Justice League ever had.
He seemed to have succeeded.
Bruce thought that he had managed to steer Liv past the dark heritage and violent upheavals of her parentage and her birth.
But then, the Joker in her reared his ugly, cackling head.
Whether it was the mission she had charged herself with, plunging herself, at the tender age of 16 into the darkest parts of New York's concrete jungles that Bruce had tried so hard to wrest her from, or whether it was the slings and arrows of adolescence, or genetics, or whatever reason, at the same time as she began her climb, Liv also began to fall.
With all of her accomplishments, it was easy, at first, for him to say that she was young, and that young college kids often drove their cars too fast and went out drinking here and there and everyone got into the occasional fight.
There was, however, nothing occasional about it.
The old saying goes that when you work hard, you play hard, and when your work is being a one woman cleaning-crew for all the scum in New York City, bar fights, car crashes, alcoholism, promiscuity, and the occasional dalliance with jacks and morphine to dull a thousand pains from a million injuries doesn't seem like playing too hard.
But the same Liv got up in the morning and went to school with a great deal of success and later put on a white coat to go to the lab, or a clean pair of cords to teach a class, and then put on her costume and waded back out into the sewer every night.
She told him she could take it and he tried to believe it.
She would be gone for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Joe Mac tried to be Bruce's eyes and ears out in the street, and Liv was often holed up in one of the rooms over the bar in Bensonhurst that hisd father, John McClatchey owned, and it got so Bruce was glad that they were watching her, that she wasn't somewhere alone and drunk and violent and desperate.
Often times, though, she was.
Alone and drunk and violent and desperate, another madman, rabid and foaming, roaming the mean streets of the sprawling concrete jungle.
The line between work and play began to blur as his spunky, pretty little child began to careen out of control, accumulating scars and tattoos and bad habits, devolving rapidly into a violent drunken brute, hell-bent on nothing less than complete and total chaos.
Too many nights she came home with blood on her hands and on her jacket, dripping from the chains onto the black leather. Too many nights she didn't come home at all. She went to work or to class hung over, with black eyes and split lips, stitches and lumps and bumps and bruises and scrapes cracked ribs and expensive dental work, sprains, a tender jaw, fingers taped together, knuckles permanently bluish from being broken so many times.
At the most she would return to Wayne Manor with a cigarette in her mouth and a bullet somewhere in her body, or holding a bloody bandanna against a wound from the stab or the slash of a knife.
She admitted that some of it came in the course of doing her duty as the Harlequin, but some of it came from wild times and hard living.
She never had much to say about it, she'd only laugh and say to him in her cocky Brooklyn tough guy accent, "The joke's on me."
Worse, the only person she knew, the only person Bruce knew, who could understand her need for violence and chaos was her father.
And even the Joker hadn't wanted her to go down that road.
He communicated with his enemy in code over the Society's secret distress frequency when he found Liv, out in the street, in places where even Batman didn't know where to look, and didn't want to think about.
Go to this location, answer this pay phone.
His arch-enemy on the other line.
She's with me and she's safe, I'll take care of things and send her home, soon.
Batman never asked the Joker what those things were; he didn't want to know.
Terrible things were beginning to happen, terrible things that could have turned Liv to the dark side, terrible things that culminated in her coming home in the middle of the night, badly beaten, repeatedly stabbed and bloody, chunks of her hair missing and pieces of bloody scalp showing through with her clothes in rags and tatters half-dead and confessing to Bruce that one of her one-night pickups had become violent on her.
He had beaten her, viciously, and stabbed her, repeatedly, and attempted to forcibly sodomize her, an action which resulted in him meeting a violent end.
"I didn't let the motherfucker make a punk outa me, Pop. He didn't get in. I woulda let him live, but he had a knife, an' he stabbed me, you can see he stabbed me a coupla times. Beat the hell out me, too. What was I supposed to do, Bruce? Bend over and grab my ankles? Fuck him. Nobody makes a punk outa the Harlequin. The joke's on him."
The victim was a rapist-murderer who had three victims under his belt before he lost his life in what the Times called "a shockingly brutal end to a shockingly brutal man. The Brooklyn Slasher was foiled by Justice League trainee, the Harlequin. She must be a very strong and determined woman; she beat him to death with her bare hands."
Beat him to death was a bit of a misnomer. After he saw to it Liv got medical attention and left her in Alfred's capable hands, Batman went to the crime scene and found that Superman was already there, overseeing his trainee's handiwork.
Clark looked grim, almost green-faced, and with good reason.
Liv spent three days in the hospital, but she had destroyed the man.
The Brooklyn Slasher looked like he, himself, had fallen victim to a crazed multiple murderer.
His teeth were scattered all over the room like Chiclets. One-fourth of the bones in his body were broken; his face was an unrecognizable bloody pulp and he had to be identified by the dental records of the few remaining teeth in his shattered jaws. One of the body's arms had been torn right out of its socket, and one of the eyes gouged out, among other horrific injuries. The ruined body looked like someone had set a pack of wild dogs on it; it was clear he had been torn apart by the brute strength of some mad animal, crazed with pain, motral terror and rage.
He could have died from aspirating his own blood from his punctured lungs that had been destroyed by his shattered ribs. He could have bled to death from the massive trauma associated with impromptu amputation. Even shock from the horrible pain he died in might have killed him.
The autopsy, however showed that he choked to death on his own genitalia, which had been physically torn off his body and rammed so far down his throat that they were not discovered until the autopsy.
That kind of anger, that kind of brutality had shocked even the Batman, who had stood before the League and been chastised for his own draconian methods many times.
That kind of rage and viciousness was beyond the pale.
After the killing of the sex murderer, Liv was heralded as a hero by the press for the first time, but Bruce knew that this act of extreme ultraviolence had set her walking a fine line between being the superhero she had always dreamed of being, and the supervillian she and Bruce both secretly feared she was going to be.
He realised couldn't control her anymore, and he couldn't teach her anything else.
He expected Clark to want to expel her from the Justice League, but Superman looked upon the brutal event as proof that Liv was descending into madness; he suggested that Bruce get her some help.
Superman was right, Liv degenerated completely after the slaughter of the Brooklyn Slasher. She spiralled into madness and drunkenness, going on a binge of ultraviolence, booze and pharmaceutical heroin that eventually led her to go cold turkey and flee north in her beloved Wildcat, where her odyssey ended in a pool of blood and broken glass, shot and left to die by the side of a lonely road in the Yukon Territory.
Her long road to this day began then, first with her fortuitous meeting with Wolverine, and her realisation that she had to turn her life around, and then, when she returned to New York…
The Comedian.
A Devil's deal that Bruce brokered, himself.
He could only think of one man who consistently walked that tightrope between heroism and villainy, between rough justice and ultraviolence, between might harnessed in the service of right and the strong terrorising the weak.
Eddie Blake had been a good influence on Liv. She got a proper costume, and finished her training. She reined in the drinking and the fighting and the running around with strangers stopped after she met New York's unluckiest sex killer. Her work improved, she completed two Masters' Degrees, her whole life improved.
She'd had only one incident of her Troubles in the whole two and a half year period that she worked with the Comedian, and she now seemed to realise that she had to put them behind her, forever.
She was an accepted member of the hero community as his partner, and her life and her career, both with the mask on and off were back on track.
Was it love that had saved her?
"So, Bruce, are we going to try to get Liv away from him, now?"
Batman was startled out of his reverie.
"Dick, can you please leave that alone for just one day?"
"I'm sorry Bruce. But I still think the price you made Liv pay for today's victory was too damn steep. With all due respect, you've never been able to see that Liv Napier is not Jack Napier. Liv was always a good person. Even when she was getting drunk and getting into trouble, she was still going to school and to work and doing her job. She was never a murderer, she never killed anyone unless she had to and she never so much as harmed an innocent person. You know yourself that troubled childhoods breed tortured adolescences. You didn't have to give her away to that brute Blake to save her from growing up to be Daddy's Little Girl. But, even if I'm wrong, and you're right, what's done is done. The Comedian and the Harlequin are partners. When you're convinced that the red button has popped out on my sister, you can't just go and shake the Comedian's hand and say thanks and take Liv back like a turkey you hired out for a baker to cook. Blake's not letting his partner go until he wants to, and Liv isn't leaving her partner until she wants to, either. And…I don't like to talk about these kinds of things, but, whatever's going on between them, it's not love, and I don't think either one of them is going to give it up. You introduced fire to gasoline, and they split the atom. What's done is done, Bruce."
Bruce Wayne sighed, resignedly.
"That's where you're wrong, Dick. Love is exactly what there is between them. And if you can't accept that, so be it. I don't like it. But I can live with it."
Dick Grayson shrugged.
"If that's what my sister wants, then I'm behind her. Let's not be sad, Bruce. This is a happy day for all of us. Let's go."
IV: Liv
"Are you sure you don't want to change, kid?"
"Hell, no, Eddie."
I opened the big double doors of the Hall of Justice, and, I almost died.
There they were.
Everybody in the League, and all of the Avengers , and all of the Watchmen and most of the X-Men and pretty much every goddamn mask in New York had showed up to see little Liv Napier make good.
Not to mention the so-called Gentlemen of the Press.
I calmly walked down the aisle and up to the podium where Clark was waiting for me, in the combat costume I had worn on Friday night, right down to the bulletproof vest with the hole in it.
I hadn't washed it, or my boots, and my clothes were pretty fairly encrusted with blood, gunpowder, soot and gun oil.
I could hear a murmur, and Dick had a funny look on his face when I met his eyes, but Bruce's eyes were completely cool inside his cowl.
I expected Clark to be upset, too, but he didn't seem to be.
He covered the mike with his hand.
"I suppose there's an explanation for this, other than your dry cleaner went on strike?" he quipped.
"There is, Clark."
"That's good enough for me."
Clark took his hand off the microphone, asked me to raise my right hand, and administered the Justice League Oath.
After I took it, before I was formally accepted, I had the opportunity to make a speech, and this is what I said.
And if you don't believe me, you can get the transcript, just like I did to put it down, here.
"First, if I use any bad language, I want to apologise in advance. You guys all know me, and you know I've got a dirty mouth on me, but for some of what I have to say, darn it and golly-gee aren't going to cut it. I started training, formally, to be a mask when I was 11, but between growing up the way I did and spending some of my formative years in East New York and some other neighbourhoods in good old Brooklyn, you might say I was getting ready for it all my life. Because, there are parts of New York, you know, Broadway and Central Park and the Upper East Side and all that Park Avenue jazz and the groovy parts of town and the Village and all, they really are the way they seem the movies. But that's not the city most New Yorkers live in, and they're the ones I made it my job to worry about."
I stopped and looked around.
Everybody was paying rapt attention; even the press had stopped taking pictures for a second.
"It's a dirty job, the job I do, and I'm swimming in the deep end of the pool with the sharks. But, hey, somebody's gotta do it. Because everybody deserves justice. Not just rich people and smart people and nice middle-class people who can afford to rent to pay a mortgage on a house in the boroughs and go to work every day and keep their noses clean. The cops and every mask in New York take care of those people. The Harlequin takes care of everybody else."
I decided to open the next part with a little joke.
"Don't let your travel agent shit you, my friends, the city's a fucking jungle. Even for the people who can go to the courts downtown for their justice. If you're not a predator, you're prey. Especially when you're in the end of the pool where the shit floats and the sharks swim. All the kids who come to hang out and be hippies or make it in showbiz or go to college, they're all prey. And the forgotten people, bums and junkies and hookers and poor people who live crowded into the same tenements their grandparents and great grandparents lived in, cowering under the yoke of the mob and every other slob and two-bit criminal motherfucker who runs the slums, nobody gives a fuck for them. Except me. I do. They all know, everybody in New York knows, you got trouble where the cops can't or won't help, you call the Harlequin. I started trying to protect them and everybody else when I was 16 years old. Sometimes I work with the cops, sometimes I work in spite of them, and sometimes they turn the other way and let me do what they know they can't. It all depends on the situation, and what constitutes justice in it."
So far, so good.
"Now you all know that some places in this city the only law they got is the law of the jungle. Somebody's always got a knife or a gun or a piece of chain, or they wanna kick you and punch you and beat you with brass knuckles and trash can lids. They beat ya, they shoot ya, they stab ya. And you do the same. Somebody walks away. Sometimes the one who doesn't walk away, dies. I learned that from Batman, and I learned it long before, and I've known it since I was eleven years old. Maybe that's not the way the world is for other people. I hope for your sakes that's not the way the world is for all of you. But that's the way it is for me, and for a lot of the people I've made it my mission as a mask to protect. You don't need to go to 'Nam to find the Heart of Darkness in the deepest part of the jungle. We got all that shit right here in New York."
"That's right, baby! You tell it like it is!" Luke Cage yelled.
He knows exactly what the fuck I'm talking about.
I went on.
"Since I got apprenticed to the Comedian and sober enough to start to implement some of the finer points of my training, I've managed to raise my mission to a higher and more efficient level than just going out every night and kicking ass all over town. I may do more for people now than I used to, in a sense of really helping them with their problems rather than just being a jumped-up enforcer in a boiler suit. But I never changed what my mission is, and I won't, and I'm still not afraid to get blood on my hands. A lot of the time, I do. It's the nature of my work. Dirty work."
I stopped and had a drink of water.
"Which brings me to why I'm standing here in front of you in a ripped costume with blood all over it. You all know what went down on the docks on Friday night. For one thing, I almost went down. This hole here, in my vest, it came from a bullet from a .357 Magnum, at close range. I got a helluva bruise under it. It was bleedin' pretty good for awhile there, but hey, nothing serious and here I am, right? Right. No flashbulbs, please, fellas, I'll give youse a nice close up later. This is what I was wearing that night. It's sooty, because there was a lot of smoke, and fire, and it's greasy and pockmarked because I did a lot of shooting with a Thompson submachine gun, but I guess the thing hat most of you are noticing is all the blood. Some of this blood is badguy blood, the blood of the thugs who tried to take over the docks and start a supervillain gang war that really woulda turned the whole city into Hell with the lid off. Not to mention they really tried hard to kill at least six of us. One of them the Green Jackal, a guy I've known, with his mask off, as long as I can remember. A lot of it is Wolverine's blood; they shot him to pieces, nearly shot him in two, and I could care less if it wouldn't kill him, I went out with my chopper to cut down the bastards who were shooting him up. Then I helped put him back together again. Anyway, I was pretty close to the sons of bitchse who shot Wolverine all to bits when I blew them to Hell, and I got little bits of them all over me. I'm not sorry about it. Like I was telling Cap, I took an oath when I became a trainee to put my life on the line if I had to in order to preserve the life of another mask, and there wasn't an addendum that said unless the man was a mutant with advanced healing ability. Besides, Wolverine's my friend, and it's blood between us. I'm funny about my friends, like that. You can ask my partner. I jumped out of an airship fifty feet above the ground and shot, sliced, beat and scalped my way through a gang of murderous Knot-Tops to put my back against his, toss him a loaded gun and do what I could to save his life. You see, I think justice should be like the sun in the sky. The sun shines on everybody, equally, gives them heat, and light, and sustenance no matter who they are or what they've done, every single day of their lives. You know when I figured that out? On all the mornings I woke up face down in the gutter, or in a filthy bed at some flophouse with my teeth feeling loose and my jaw swollen up, or staggering to the subway on a grey winter morning after being up all night, holding my hand over a stab wound or a bullet hole, trying to get home before I passed out. The sun found me, every day, no matter how low I'd sunk the night before. So, my mission is to see to it, to the best of my ability that I can bring justice to people who have lost hope, with the same equanimity as the sun brought light to me, when I had nothing else but sunlight."
I pointed to one of the stains on my chest.
"Ya see, if it's not innocent blood, blood doesn't bother me. But, some of this blood on me is mine that I don't mind shedding for the sake of my mission. My blood sure as hell ain't innocent. You see this stain right here? On the combat vest, around the bullet hole? This is my blood. I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've been beaten and bludgeoned and broken my bones and I've done the same to my foes, and I'll keep doing it until I'm too old or I've died with my boots on. I'm not like the rest of you, and I know it. My hands will never be clean. I been a drunk, and I'm a killer. I do the dirty jobs that no other mask will touch for the forgotten people that no other mask will help. I ain't good, I ain't decent, and I sure as hell ain't innocent. The only way I can show ya my honour, my loyalty, my honesty, and my dedication to my duty is with my blood. And my word. Well, this is my blood, and by my blood, this is my word. An' you can take that shit to the fuckin' bank. Thank youse."
Eddie was the first one out of his seat, clapping and whistling, followed by pretty much every other mask in the room.
I got a goddamn standing ovation.
And I meant it. I know it's a piece of shit world and that civilisation, in theory and in practise is nothing but a big fucking joke, but somebody has to mind the goddamn store for the people who suffer from the Big Lie, and somebody who believes in all the bullshit isn't about to do it.
But here I was, 25 years old. A quarter of a century. Seems pretty young, and I know it is, but I never expected to live this long. You see, before I met Eddie, I never got out of the shark-infested cesspool. And I sank into it right to the bottom. I can't tell you much about what I did, between the time I graduated college at 19 and I was apprenticed to the Comedian at 22.
And its' not just because I was a fucking pathetic drunk.
It's because when you live in the sewer the gutter looks like a trough and that's where you eat and when you drink.
It's poison, of course, and it poisons you.
You know who the first man I ever slept with was? Me neither. It wasn't Joe Mac.
I don't know who he was. He was a lot older than me, and I was thirteen and drunk already, driving around illegally with blocks tied to my feet because I was only four-foot-nine.
You don't know how it feels to be a sin-eater, to take on everything that's black and evil and bad, take it right into your black, evil, bad heart and pay it out in blood and bruised flesh and broken bones. I told you already the itch separated me from myself and from the world; it was the itch that drove me, the itch, that rage for blood and I drove myself the way a bastard drives a dying horse into the mud, whipping it all the way down.
When you spend all of your time seeing nothing but pain, and blood, and human suffering and misery, nothing but filth and death and backstabbing and corruption, you begin to forget that there is any other law than the law of the jungle. Especially when you're travelling not only to the black recesses of the heart of darkness of the city that never sleeps, but also to the foul, stinking depths of the merciless heart of darkness that beats in your own chest.
Before you know it, you become a beast, yourself, a dumb animal who kills to prevent being killed.
I went out every night expecting it to be my last and I never cared if it was.
I went from day to day and car to car and fight to fight and man to man and drink to drink, not in a haze, but in a fury, a single-minded, relentless fury, driving myself on to oblivion, to absolute zero, to the deepest, darkest part of the forest, like they say in the fairy tales.
I met him in a bar in the Bowery, and followed him drunk to a flophouse nearby. The old nursery rhyme says that journeys end in lovers meeting, and he was the end of the line for me.
My supervillain, my arch-nemesis, a no-good murdering, torturing raping son of a bitch that if I killed him I'd get a fucking medal.
He was my masterpiece, just like Mary Kelly was Jack the Ripper's. When they found him, he looked a lot like she did, as if he'd been torn to pieces by a wild animal, pretty much because he was.
I had found the most evil man the city could throw at me, and I had killed him in the most brutal way I could, and even as I stood there in the room with the body, blood and gore drying all over me, I didn't feel any better.
I was tired, and sick, and a little terrified of myself, and the itch was still there.
The rage had not abated.
I went mad after that.
You know what I'm gonna say, don't you?
The joke was on me.
The doctor called it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but whatever the fuck he wanted to call it, I went stark, raving mad.
I had been blind drunk for about a month, doing jacks and morphine like mad and telling myself it was for the pain, never sleeping unless I passed out, barely even working anymore between the bad dreams and the bad memories and the fits of tears and the mad rages when Slim MacLeod invited me to come see him in Toronto, and I just got some money together and split, cold turkey, wagering it all on getting the hell out of New York.
And you all know I ended up bleeding, half-on and half-out of the driver's seat of the Wildcat, shot and left to die by the side of the road in the Yukon Territory.
But none of those things were the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life.
The worst thing that ever happened to me in my life happened at the Stop n' Stay motel in British Columbia. It was my first night in a bed in almost two months, and the second night I spent in Logan's company.
He went to buy some smokes from the front desk in the middle of the night, and I found an old Christopher Lee horror movie from the fifties on late-night TV, and when he came back he took off his pants and got a beer and got into bed beside me and put his arm around me.
You know I must have had a thousand men if I had one, and none of them ever did that?
And they say Logan's an animal.
He was the first man besides Joe Mac, who knew me since I was seven and was my best friend in the whole world who ever treated me like I was a woman, no, like I was a human being, and not an animal.
It made me realise what a mess I had made of my life, and my training, and my own hopes and dreams and those that everybody who loved me had for me.
And I was ashamed.
My fellow masks, especially Bruce, they wanted to dive into the dead, dirty ocean of blood and puke and piss after me, where I was drowning, but if the sewer didn't kill them, the sharks would have.
That's why they sent Eddie down after me, because he was born and bred down there in the murky, poisonous depths, and he crawled in and out at will.
You might say that night in the motel room was when I realised I had a heart, but the first time I felt it breaking when I saw Eddie leap out of Archie and get swallowed up by a crowd of rioting murderers, because I knew he was my last, best hope for salvation.
Or maybe it was because I fell right in love with him before I even knew what it was, when I was a little kid and he was Paulie's uncle, and he coaxed me out from under the basement steps after some older kid stuck a knife in me and I was scared to come out.
So, maybe it's not that kind of love conquers all like you see in the fairy tales, coming out of those rose red and white lace Valentine's Day hearts, but, just like the sun shines on everyone, even a black heart can know love, but there's nothing sweet, nothing romantic and sentimental about it.
Nothing any normal person would even begin to understand.
That may be why Eddie had to drag me out, kicking and screaming, and it took me three years to learn the trick of living in both worlds, but I learned it, and all of the sudden I could see something I never had before in my life.
The possibility of a future.
And, with pretty near every mask in America clapping and cheering for me, and a whole bunch of hardened reporters, even though I was the Joker's daughter and the Comedian's partner and I had blood all over my costume, I knew the future was now.
That is some heavy shit, I gotta tell you.
Anyway, after the ruckus died down and everybody was back in their chairs, Clark shook my hand and formally accepted me as a member of the Justice League.
Then, he ushered all the members of the press out and the sealed the doors of the soundproofed room.
And it was time for me to make one last little speech.
"Okay, now that we're alone, I have to thank everybody. Obviously, I'd like to thank Bruce, for being the best stepfather and mentor the daughter of a psychotic supervillain ever had. And speaking of the Joker, I'm sorry about this, but I gotta thank my father, because ever since I was a little girl he told me and showed me that the last thing I wanted to be was a supervillian, and there were times when I was beyond what any of you could do for me, and there, in the darkest part of the murky depths, the Old Man dove in to save me. And I'd like to thank Logan for being my first real, true friend of the male persuasion that I didn't meet in grade school, and for being the first mask who I wasn't related to crazy enough to ever work with me. And how could I forget to thank Tony, for being so goddamn charming and good-looking. No, really, the Invincible Iron Man has always been in my corner, and I can't say that for a lot of people. But, and you're all going to hate me for this, even more than for mentioning Jack Napier, but most of all, I gotta thank my partner, Eddie Blake. You know, when I was 11 years old a 16 year old dope pusher who was trying to take over my playground stabbed me with a switchblade. Hurt me pretty bad, too . I smashed him in the face a couple times with a piece of a brick, to get him offa me, and then I got scared and I went and hid at Paulie's house, in his basement, under the stairs, crying and bleeding. And I wouldn't come out, I was afraid the cops were gonna come and get me."
"Nobody could find me, but Paulie's Uncle Eddie, he knew exactly where I was. He came downstairs and squatted down on the basement floor and told me that he was the Comedian, he was a mask like my stepfather and that and he'd make sure nobody was gonna come and get me, and that kid was never gonna come back and bother me and Paulie and Laurie again."
"So I crawled out and Eddie picked me up, way up in the air and and he carried me up the stairs to where my stepfather was waiting to take me to the hospital. From there on out, Paulie's uncle, he was kinda my hero. And, when I got older, just like he found me when nobody else could and pulled me out from under the stairs, Eddie pulled my ass out of the gutter and did for me what nobody else in this world could have done. I still don't know how he did it, but finally, I know why. Thanks, Eddie. You saved me. You're the best partner a girl called Napalm could ever have. Aw, the hell with it, I guess I do love you for it, don't I? Maybe ever since I was eleven years old." I finished.
Logan and Cap stood up, turned towards Eddie and started clapping for him.
"Take a bow, Eddie!" Logan suggested.
I don't know that everybody gave him a round of applause, but even Supes and Dick applauded, conservatively, and Eddie just stood there smoking, with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Come up here, Eddie. Say somethin'." I encouraged him.
So Eddie comes swaggering up to the podium, and everybody's looking at him.
You could cut the tension in the room with a knife.
Eddie pushed the box I was standing on aside, and raised the microphone.
"Jesus, somebody really did put a box here for the kid to stand on! Hey, Logan, were you gonna come up and say anything? Because I can put the box back."
"Fuck you, Eddie!" Logan yells.
Everybody laughs.
"Yeah, I pulled the kid out of a crack in my basement and she's been nothin' but trouble ever since. Thanks kid. I been a lotta things to a lotta people, but I'm pretty sure I ain't never been anybody's knight on a white horse hero, before. And the kid, she ain't much of a damsel in distress, but I never did like a dizzy broad like that. Jesus, I don't know what the fuck to say, so I'll just say what I'm thinkin'. This kid, she's my girl, an' I love her, an' if anybody don't like it, well, they gotta lotta doors in this place I can fuckin' kick your ass outa. I'm real proud of her that she proved alla youse wrong when you gave her to me as a lost cause. And here she is, the big hero, the toast of New York. It's like the kid to want me to take credit for it, but lemme tell you, she had her shit together before I started workin' with her. All I did was give her a few ideas, and some backup on the job, get her to be more choosy about the jobs she took on, an' convinced her to go to rehab. As for savin' her, I didn't save her. I showed her how to save herself. And she did it. As for alla youse that supported the kid, an thought she deserved a chance, thanks. And, for alla youse who just threw her at me because ya thought that she was no good an' like goes with like…"
Eddie hauls me over with one hand, and bends me back and kisses me, like in the old movies in the forties, and he flips everybody off with the other.
Good old Eddie, leave it to him to say thank you and fuck you in the same breath.
He got a pretty big laugh, and some people were still clapping, so it was okay.
"How's that for a big Hollywood ending, kid?" he says.
"Suits me, Eddie. When do we eat?"
"As soon as you change your fuckin' costume. You'll put everybody off their feed. And take a fuckin' shower. Ya smell like the beach at Normandy after we landed, for Chrissake. I'm havin' a fuckin' flashback."
So, there was this big dinner in my honor, and I didn't even drink more than my four drinks.
Now that's what I call progress.
Well, I did get into it with Adrian, and, yeah, I hit him, but not in the face.
In my defence, he did make a point of telling me that he thought my methods on the docks were "tantamount to war crimes" and that he was "still in opposition" to me being fully accepted as a mask.
I didn't hit him first.
Really.
I put my knife and my fork down, and convinced Eddie to put his knife down, and Logan to put his claws away, and Tony to send the suit back into stasis, and I made Bruce put him down without hurting him anymore.
You just can't hold a guy off the ground by his throat for an extended period of time, yunno?
Then, I told him, real calmly and rationally, that his gibes didn't bother me because I was smarter than he was, because Jon worked with me on a regular basis, not him, because Wayne Enterprises could crush Veidt International anytime we wanted, and that I felt bad for him because everybody in the Watchmen, even Dan, and retired masks like Hollis and Sally thought he was pompous, self-important, and officious.
At that point in time, he blew his cool, and called me a fucking dumb drunken Mick thug, and while he was asking me how I dared speak to him like that, yeah, I hit him.
Hard.
And I really did mean to punch him in the stomach, but I wasn't wearing my glasses and I left my contacts on the sink in Eddie's and my suite, so, I aimed a little too low.
What can I say?
Nobody's fuckin' perfect, right?
Right.
(Author's Note: Well, gentle readers, we are almost at the end of our tale. Only one more chapter to go. But fear not! The prequel "Suicide Kings" is up under Comics-Watchmen-Comedian, and there will be not one [gasp!] but two, yes two sequels! It's a trilogy! And I promise, if I make the prequels a trilogy, there will be no characters tantamount to Jar-Jar Binks. ;) ]