BATMAN: Fall Of The Dark Knight #Wattys2016

5: HARLEEN QUINZEL, R.I.P. (& HUGO STRANGE'S BODY FARM)

Bruce attended Billy's funeral with Alfred by his side. His mother came rushing towards him the moment he saw him with tears streaming down her face. He stood silently as the grieving mother slapped at his chest screaming at him why her boy was dead.

"You were supposed to protect him!" she yelled at him in between sobs. "Instead, you let him go off with that awful Batman! Now he's dead! He was just a boy!"

Just then, Miss Piper's brother stepped up and wrapped his arms around his grieving sister. He shot Bruce a hard look and said, "I think you'd better go."

Bruce, without saying a word, turned and said to Alfred who was dutifully standing behind him, "Let's go, Alfred."

They went to the car where Alfred opened the backdoor for him as he'd done countless times before.Bruce got in the back as Alfred closed the door behind him. As they drove away, Alfred glanced at Bruce in the rearview mirror as he was driving.

"You mustn't blame yourself, Master Bruce," Alfred said, attempting to comfort him as he'd done so many times before. "Billy's death wasn't your fault. It was The Joker's."

"The Joker may have fired the gun that killed Billy," said Bruce, "but Batman loaded the gun."

Alfred and Bruce said nothing to each other for a while. Then Bruce abruptly said, "Alfred, I want you to take me to the morgue."

Alfred gazed back at Bruce in the rearview mirror with a surprised look on his face.

"The morgue? Why, whatever for, sir?"

"There's something I need to do."

Alfred sighed and said, "Very well, sir. As you wish."

Alfred turned the car around and drove to the morgue as Bruce requested. The morgue attendant, a young man named Milo, seemed genuinely surprised to see Gotham's richest man Bruce Wayne and his butler standing there.

"May I help you?" Milo asked Bruce.

"Yes, I would like to see the body of Harleen Quinzel."

Milo squinted his eyes at him. "Who?"

"Harley Quinn."

"Oh, you mean Joker's girl." He smiled. Bruce didn't smile back. "Follow me."

Bruce followed him. He pulled out the steel slab where the body of Harleen Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn was lying. He pulled back the white sheet covering her body to uncover her face. It was strange to see her face without all the crazy makeup. Her blond hair was slicked back and her skin was a ghostly pale. She almost looked . . . normal. It was easy to forget that she was once Harleen Quinzel, a psychologist who devoted herself to helping. But then, gazing down at her face, Bruce remembered all those innocent people she helped her psycho lover torture and kill without a second thought.

Innocent people like Billy Piper.

Bruce never understood why she had changed. Maybe she was surrounded by darkness so much that she finally wanted to embrace it for herself. Maybe she had a penchant for bad boys. And one didn't get much "badder" than The Joker.Maybe, in the end, she was just as deranged as the patients she was treating. Who knows? Whatever the reason for her deadly transformation, Harleen as Harley had caused a lot of people a lot of undue pain and suffering. He also knew she had suffered abuse at the hands of that psychotic clown, that one of the reasons she wore all that makeup was to not only play a part but to also hide all the bruises and scars. As Batman, he himself had witnessed The Joker pushing and smacking Harley around. He could only imagine the terror she endured when they were alone. Batman tried a number of times to convince Harley to leave Joker but to no avail. He always held out hope that one day she would come to her senses and leave Joker for good and become Harleen Quinzel once again. The irony wasn't lost onhim that he and not The Joker was the reason why that would never happen.

"What's going to happen to the body?"Bruce asked Milo.

"Well," Milo began to say, giving Bruce a strange look, "we contacted the next of kin but her family didn't want the body. They said they didn't want to have anything to do with her because, well, you know."

Bruce nodded. He could certainly understand why no one in her family would want to claim the body given all the evil she had done in her life.

Milo continued: "If no family claims the body, we used to donate the body to the body farm, but then wehad to stop after that whole thing with that weirdo doctor Hugo Strange."

Bruce remembered. How could he or anyone else in Gotham ever forget? Hugo Strange was conducting these harrowing experiments with the cadavers he received from the morgue as he tried to reanimate them in order to create his very own criminal army in some bizarre attempt to take over Gotham and turn it into a criminal's paradise. That is, until Batman stopped him.

Milo went on: "Now what we do with unclaimed bodies is just cremate them."

Bruce stood silent for a moment, still gazing down at Harley Quinn's body. Although she had become a deadly criminal, she had been a decent person once. And, in spite of what she helped The Joker do to Billy Piper and all the others, he felt she still deserved at least some dignity in death, at least for the good person she once was.

"I'll pay for the funeral," Bruce announced.

Both Milo and Alfred looked surprised when Bruce said this.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Milo stammered."I think you can do that. I don't know why not."

"Good," Bruce said. "You can get whatever information you need from Mr. Pennyworth."

With that, Bruce walked brusquely pasta clearly shocked Alfred. He went back to the car and got into the backseat where he waited for Alfred who stepped out of the morgue a few minutes later. As they were driving back to the manor, Alfred said to Bruce, "That was a very kind thing you did for Miss Quinn,especially given everything she and that Joker put Batman and Gothamites in general through."

"I didn't do it for Harley Quinn," Bruce replied gruffly. "I did it for Harleen Quinzel."

Alfred nodded. "Very good, sir."

As he promised, Bruce paid for Harley's funeral, and he spared no expense. When it came to the inscription on her headstone, Bruce was concerned that, if even her real name was placed on the headstone, it might get vandalized. So, instead, he had her initials H.Q. Inscribed onto the headstone with R.I.P. inscribed underneath. There was no date of birth of date or her death placed anywhere on the marker. Besides, Bruce would always remember the day of her death since he was the one who killed her.

At her funeral, Bruce and Alfred were the only ones who showed up. Not even The Joker—who had virtually disappeared since the night he killed Billy Piper—had attempted to make an appearance, although something told Bruce his old nemesis was somehow keeping tabs on what was going on with everything regarding the investigation surrounding Harley's death and his killing of Billy Piper. There was no pastor. Bruce attempted to get a pastor to speak at Harleen's funeral, but even they weren't so forgiving of her numerous sins. The cemetery caretaker was standing next to the casket above the hole the gravedigger had made earlier. The caretaker looked at Bruce and asked him rather impatiently, "Are there any words you'd like to say before I lower the casket into the ground?"

Bruce gazed at the casket for a moment, then he looked back at the caretaker and said, "There are no words that need to be said."

Bruce turned around and walked up to  Alfred who was dutifully standing behind him.

"Let's go home, Alfred."

Alfred nodded. "Yes, sir."

Bruce and Alfred went back to the car as the caretaker lowered Harleen Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn to her final resting place.

The next day the cemetery caretaker saw that a crude picture of The Joker had been spray-painted on Harleen's headstone.