Almost a week after that night in Batman’s cave, Harley got a job and that was a small start. She’d decided to ditch the makeup and suit, ditch the clown, and now she was ditching the outlaw life. Paulie’s Diner which was a quaint 1950s looking joint in the center of Gotham. She’d applied for work there as a waitress under the Napier name and had gotten the job immediately. It wasn’t special, and it wasn’t exactly the career of a lifetime but it would be enough, and she found herself enjoying the work if not being extremely exhausted. Whenever she’d get an angry, disgruntled customer she’d push those thoughts of violence aside. The images in her head of bonking the fat guy screaming for more maple syrup with a mallet would fade out as she thought of Batman and how she didn’t want to let him down. She wanted to make a life worth living that he’d be proud of.
When she’d return home exhausted she’d always expect Joker to be waiting for her but he really had slipped out of Gotham for the time being. Nobody had heard from him. After almost two weeks of silence, she had decided he really was gone, or really had moved on. That was okay. It made this whole process easier.
Sometimes she’d want to find him, she’d think of all the things they did and how they could fix the mistakes. But every night when she’d sit on her balcony, she felt safer in the dark, safer thinking of Batman and how he was a part of everything around her instead of him. She knew she was romanticizing him but it didn’t matter. Better to feel safe around the Bat than feel weak at the knees for a man who’d left her to die over an obsession. She told herself it was just a way of coping, that she didn’t really like the Bat, and that she was doing this for herself. It was a half-truth. She wanted him to see her. She just needed a push was all; and he provided it. But if it was just motivation then why did she keep looking out in the darkness at night? Why did her stomach go weak when she’d think of him out there, protecting her. She used to fear him, now she missed him. She wouldn’t let those feelings grow, she couldn’t; she wouldn’t. What was there in that for either of them but misery? Right?
She was always getting attached to projects, and she couldn’t allow herself to get attached to a man in a batsuit. That would just be crazy. But she was that, wasn’t she? What a fool she was to even think of hoping he’d come to see her, to check up on her. Bud and Lou would sit with her sometimes when she’d smoke outside after her long shifts, when she’d sit and think over how to stay on this path she’d begun and even then she’d tell herself to give up, to stop hoping for somebody to come to her. It was time to be a big girl, even if that meant she was alone. She had to be strong for herself now away from Joker, and away from the Bat. Her heart would flutter when she’d look out at the skyline and for some reason she couldn’t push these dreams away when she slept; of the sound of rushing water, the distant echoing screeches of bats, and a pair of hands around her waist as she kissed a mouth in the dark.
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Batman: The Promise
FanfictionWhat's left for Batman when he's finished all that's needed to be done? During the waning days of Batman's crusade, Bruce shares a tender moment with Harley Quinn, and is thrown into the deep end of uncertainty, lost in the past, and clinging onto t...
