Harley Quinn And The Joker

One Or Two Bruises

We entered the old theater through the giant clown's mouth I've fixed up as a door. The lights automatically turned on, revealing the completely different hall my guys helped me to set up.

My wrist was still hurting from the thing with the batarang earlier but I was just glad it wasn't broken, because then I couldn't have done anything about Harley.

Speaking of, there were still some of them in another room and I certainly couldn't use them right now.

"Black, where the hell hav--" One of them peeked out of the room but shut his mouth as he saw Harley.

"Take Ana and the rest of 'em an' get the fuck out." I didn't look at Peter or one of the others, I just put Harley down on a simple operating table I've been using a couple times since I came to Gotham.

Harley was tired, I could see that but seriously, I couldn't pay attention to that. First thing I needed to do was cleaning the cuts on her face and remove all those small splinters that were glistening under the bright light.

And that wasn't the only thing that I could see by the time the lights went on.

"Lay down on yer back, I'm goin' ta get a sponge." She nodded and I quickly jumped over to the closet I kept various medical and first aid items in, grabbed a sponge that was soft enough for open wounds and walked into the nearby bathroom.

'Fuck you, Joker! You fucking, fucking piece of whale shit!' It was the hardest thing to control myself. I almost blacked out as I saw the strangulation marks on Harley's throat, but at least I tried not to let this get to me too much.

I shook my head in an effort to clear my thoughts and turned on the water, waiting for it to get warm.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

A voice behind me let me turn my head and I angrily glared at Ric, one of the guys who helped me with my hideout. 'L.o.l. I have a hideout.'

"Damn it, I told Daniel to get y'all outta here." I growled, taking off one on my gloves to check on the temperature of the water.

Daniel smiled and stepped a little closer to me but without another word, I punched him in the forehead, breaking his skull with my spikes and throwing him to the ground. "Freak."

Finally, the water was warm enough and I put the smonge in it after putting on my right glove. I kicked the dead body aside and walked over to Harley who still had tears in her eyes.

"Now this might hurt a bit, but I have to clean your face and those cuts." I said and carefully wiped the dry as well as the fresh blood off her face, always trying not to miss even one piece of glass in her wounds.

"Do ya have otha big injuries I should take care of?" I quietly asked, hoping she would say no - not because I was annoyed, but because the cuts and strangulation marks seemed painful enough already.

She forced a smile and blinked as a little blood bropped into her eye. "Maybe a bruise or two on my back, nothin' dangerous."

I removed a half an inch splinter that stuck in her lower jaw and focused on the other cuts. "No offense, Harley, but you leave that decision to me."

"Okay." She sounded uncomfortable, maybe because of the pain, maybe because of the shock. But maybe - and that was most likely the reason - because those 'one or two bruises' weren't just 'one or two' of them.

I walked off to get some disinfectant as well as a surgical thread for the cuts after I finished cleaning off all the blood and glass. Already thinking about bigger injury on her back, I also grabbed pain killers, then walked back out.

"There's a pretty deep cut on your lower jaw that needs some stitches. I'm gonna give you local anesthesia." I took my usual gloves off and put disposable gloves on before giving Harley the shot.

Now we had to wait a view minutes until the area around the cut felt numb and I sighed. "What happened?" Not that I liked hearing the story behind these horrible injuries. But I wanted to know how fast I was going to kill Joker for that.

Harley shook her head and looked aside with her hands shaking a bit. "It...it was my fault." She sobbed and I bit my lip.

"What? Gettin' back ta him?" I asked and couldn't take my eyes off the marks on her throat. "Because that's da only reason I would accept. Not that would justify...that." I pointed at her face and throat.

Harley chuckled and looked at me. "I left him alone for a year. He had to do all ta work alone. And I wasn't there to keep Two-Face from killin' Mistah J. So I practically killed him."

"Even better!" I nodded and crossed my arms.

"Stop, it's so wrong what I did, he had every right--" Harley started but I cut her off by throwing my hands in the air.

"Will you stop!" I felt like I was talking to my daughter. "You're his girlfriend, not his punchbag, you don't have ta take his bad mood. He could've killed ya, do ya realize that?"

Harley angrily looked straight into my eyes. "But he didn't!"

Instead of starting a fight, I carefully touched her lower jaw and asked if she felt that.

"No." Her voice became more quiet and I nodded before taking the thread and started stitching up the long, deep cut.

"Ya need ta stop blamin' yourself fo' all of his actions." I calmly said while staring at the point of the surgical suture as I moved it through her skin using a needle holder.

"My puddin's a little rough sometimes, but he loves me. Really." Harley moved her lips as little as possible and spoke through her teeth, knowing I couldn't work if there was too much movement.

How much I disagreed with every word in her sentence. Especially the word love.

"If this is love ta him, what happens when he hates ya?" I asked, receiving no answer and made a surgical knot before cutting off the thread and spraying dark blue disinfectant on the closed wound. "Can ya sit up? I need ta check on yer back."

Harley nodded and I opened the zipper of her harlequin suit. Only to find myself starting to shiver in both, anger and shock. Because I wasn't really surprised to see that.

"One or two bruises, she said." I said more to myself and shook my head. "Nothin' dangerous, she said."

There were dark red and purple spots all over her back, mostly where the ribs were about three inches away from the spine.

"Can you take a deep breath without pain?" I asked Harley and she nodded without a word.

'That bastard will learn what pain means.' Biting my lip, I walked off to get an icebag. I didn't have to pull out an X-ray machine to know from the bruises alone that two of her ribs were broken.

"Eighth and seventh rib on your left side are broken. I'm goin' ta give ya this icebag, ya cool yer bruises and ribs with that. Don't move too much, but don't just lay in bed or sit around, that's bad for the healing process." Moments like this one made me think back to the time my foster dad took me to his doctor office to learn about his work.

"Ya know," Harley took the bag and turned her head after I zipped up her costume. "ya ain't as crazy as everyone says."

"Everyone?" That made me chuckle as I took off my disposal gloves and threw the medical stuff away. "Looks like I have a good reputation already, heh."

I grabbed my black and purple gloves and quickly pulled out my phone. "I will call a friend over ta take care off ya as long as I'm off. But I'll be back soon."

Harley's eyes widened and she tilted her head. "Where are ya going?"

"We're outta painkillers. I'm gonna get some." I said, playing with the crowbar up my sleeve. "Might take a while."