Chapter Text
“I never, ever, ever wanted to see this place again,” Harley whispers, staring down at the tunnel that leads to the old Arkham Asylum buried under the new one.
Ivy wraps her arms around her, planting a kiss on Harley’s cheek. “We’re not staying long, rosebud. Just long enough to get Robin and get out. With luck, you won’t even have to bash anyone’s face in.”
That hope lasts about five minutes. They’re stopped by a guard coming back up, who points his flashlight into their faces and demands to know what they’re doing there. He squints in Harley’s direction. “Quinn? Where have you been?”
“Uh…” Harley stalls, using an insane giggle to play for time. The guard seems familiar, somehow. There’s a scar through his eye, but she struggles to read his name tag. Boles, she finally makes out.
Oh, right. She remembers this one now- a sadistic good-for-nothing deep in Mistah J’s pockets. The Joker had always liked him. Harley never had.
“I brought back company,” she says, gesturing to Ivy. She lays her Brooklyn accent on thick, trying to convince him that she’s still the old Harley Quinn. “You gonna let us in?”
Boles shifts, blocking the entrance. “Why don’t you have your pretty friend there make it worth my while?”
“Mistah J wants me to-“
“He hasn’t even mentioned you since you left.” Boles smiles crookedly. “You ain’t second fiddle around here anymore. Things have changed.”
Harley wraps her fingers tighter around Beatrice’s handle. “You know the one thing that hasn’t changed, Frank?” she asks.
Crunch, goes Boles’ leg as Beatrice slams into it. “You’re still a pig,” Harley finishes.
Ivy steps delicately over the groaning man. She raises one hand and blows him a pink, sparkly, mind-controlling kiss. “Why don’t you take a nice walk into Gotham Harbor?” she suggests sweetly.
Boles’ eyes glaze over, and he staggers up on his very-much-broken leg and starts walking. Harley hefts her hammer over her shoulder and leads the way. “I always hated that guy.”
“He seems hateable,” Ivy agrees as they exit the tunnel. They’re in the abandoned wing of Arkham now, and it’s just like Harley remembers it- falling apart and forgotten, sealed off from the outside world.
“Do you have any idea where Robin is down here?” Ivy asks.
“Deeper in,” Harley replies. “It’ll be either the old examination room or one of the holding cells. If it’s the exam room, we better look out for Mistah J.”
The two of them fall silent as they go further into the abandoned wing. The only sounds are a drip, drip, drip from one of the pipes and the echo of their footsteps. It looks like nobody’s been down here in decades, but Harley knows very well how false that is.
“This way,” she says, and turns left. Ivy follows her, slipping her slender hand into Harley’s, and Harley gives her a grateful glance over her shoulder. Ivy knows- how could she not know? - what being back here means for Harley, how much she hates being anywhere near the Joker’s lair. There’s a very real possibility that they’ll run into him down here, and Harley doesn’t know if she’s ready for that but she’ll do it, she has to do it. She can’t leave Robin alone down here again.
If he’s even still alive.
Harley leads the way into the depths of the abandoned wing. The smell of blood and filth is much worse now, and Ivy plucks one of the roses from her hair and holds it to her nose. “There’s the exam room up ahead,” Harley whispers. “If Mistah J is down here, that’s where he’ll be with the baby bird.” Her heart is thudding with fear and anticipation and the weight of so, so much guilt. How could she leave a kid down here and take off?
“Do you want me to peek around the door?” Ivy whispers back, but Harley shakes her head.
“If he’s got Robin in there, we’ll…we’ll hear it.”
Ivy’s eyes are full of nothing but compassion for Harley. No judgment, no buried hatred. Just compassion. She twines her whole arm in Harley’s like a vine around a trellis, helping to hold her up and see her through this, and Harley has never been more grateful for Pamela Isley.
The exam room is dim and quiet, with no sign of the Joker. It’s a relief- as much as she’d like to beat him to a bloody pulp for what he’s done, she doesn’t know is she’s ready to face him yet. She steels herself and looks into the room, trying very hard not to focus on the reddish-brown stain in the center of the floor or the butcher’s hook suspended from the ceiling.
Thankfully, the hook swings free. Harley’s not really sure she could take it if it wasn’t. “Not here,” she breathes. “The holding cells then.”
“Do you know which one?” Ivy says.
“I think so.”
She counts under her breath as they turn down the hallway to the cells. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…ten. “This one, Ives.”
“Positive?”
“No. But we don’t have time to try them all. I think this is it.” Harley bends down to pick the lock. Ivy stands lookout.
Okay. You can do this, Harley. Just get in, get the kid, get out. No Mistah J, no problem. You got this. You got this.
“I got this,” she breathes into the stale air, and turns the pick. Click, goes the lock.
Ivy pulls her close and plants a kiss- an actual kiss, not the pink sparkly hypnotic kind- on her forehead. “You’ve got this. We’ve got this. Ready?”
Harley inhales, deep and slow, and nods.
The cell door protests being opened with a loud creak. Harley steps in first, Ivy on her heels.
And she didn’t get it wrong, this is the right cell, but she wishes it wasn’t because she’s not in any way prepared for what she sees. Judging from Ivy’s soft gasp behind her, neither of them are.
The tiny cell is so dark and so cold that it puts Harley in mind of a medieval dungeon. The tiled walls and floor are filthy, splattered with blood and mold and other things Harley doesn’t want to think about. The little room is completely bare save for hundreds of photographs glued to the walls. Harley doesn’t need to look to know that they’re pictures of Batman and Robin. The third one, not the second.
The second Robin isn’t out patrolling with Batman, because Batman doesn’t even know he’s alive. The second Robin is right here, lying on the floor in a puddle of his own blood with the marks of the Joker’s torture all over him, and this is where he’s been for nine months. Because of me, Harley thinks, and crumples to her knees beside him.
If the kid is conscious, it’s just barely. His eyes are closed, but his breathing is shaky and ragged, so she doesn’t think he’s asleep. It picks up when Harley kneels by his side, although his eyes don’t open.
“I’m sorry,” Harley whispers. “I never shoulda left you with him.” He was in pretty bad shape when she escaped three months ago, and she somehow expected him to look the same.
How he looks now is so much worse . He’s lying mostly on his stomach, his face half-pressed into the floor, like somebody threw him into the room and he couldn’t get up so he just lay where he fell. There’s the tracks of tears trailing from the eye she can see, and another one slips down his cheek as she watches. Blood congeals in his tangled hair from a fresh cut on his temple; a streak just above his forehead has turned grayish, and there’s patches of hair that have either fallen out or been torn out. The rest of it has been roughly cut short, although it’s still long enough to hang into his eyes. What she can see of his battered face is pale from long months with no sunlight, stained with dark bruises from heavy blows. His nose looks like it’s been broken more than once. His lip is split, and a trickle of blood leaks onto his chin. There’s a couple of narrow cuts across his face, long since faded to pale scars.
Those were from the Batarangs, she thinks. Mistah J wanted to see how well they worked. She remembers that, remembers it so horribly well because one of the sharp little weapons was in her hand. One of those slashes on his bruised face is a gift from her.
He’s not wearing his black domino mask anymore. Harley wonders when the Joker took it off. It was still there when she left. It’s funny- or maybe it isn’t- what such a small thing can do. Without it, he doesn’t look like Robin. He just looks like a scared kid.
Then again, that’s exactly what he is. And it’s my fault.
He’s still, after all this time, wearing his Robin suit. What’s left of it, anyway- there’s more holes than there is fabric, and the once-bright red has turned more of a dull, dingy brown. The parts of the suit that once had armor have been either stripped of the protective layer or just torn off entirely, and it makes him look small in a way Harley hates. There’s only one sleeve still attached, and one of the legs has been ripped off at the knee, the other at the thigh. The cape is little more than a few bits of frayed cloth hanging from his shoulders, and the back of the suit looks like it’s been shredded. The front of the costume is the most intact, and even that is tattered and stained- mostly with blood. There’s blood everywhere.
Harley doesn’t want to keep looking, but she makes herself do it anyway. The kid’s hands have been shackled behind his back- twisted up to his shoulder blades and bound there, the cuffs cutting cruelly into his scarred wrists. Several fingernails are gone, and she’s had tears pricking her eyes this whole time but seeing that makes them fall, because she remembers standing in the room while Joker tore them off the first time. Standing in the room, and watching, and laughing.
What have I done?
His arms are scattered with bruises and cuts and on his left shoulder there’s something that looks like a patch of skin was shaved off and on his right there’s something that looks like an acid burn. His legs are sticky with dried blood and dirt and who-knows-what-else, and she can tell immediately that his right ankle is broken. That happened before, too, the first night Joker had him, so he must have broken it a second time. Or maybe this isn’t just the second time. Maybe it’s the third, or the tenth, or the twentieth. Harley wouldn’t know because she wasn’t there. Because she left. She got out and left Robin to the mercy of a madman who didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Ivy is crouching by his feet- which are bare, Harley remembers the Joker taking his boots away- her face stricken and her eyes wide with horror and revulsion. Harley doesn’t want to look, but she makes herself, and the tears flow even faster now. The soles of Robin’s feet have been burned, and the left foot has a series of blood-smeared cuts across the ball. There’s a rough circle punched through both his feet, all the way through, and it takes Harley a few moments to recognize the wounds a power drill makes on flesh and bone.
Robin is a lot thinner than he was when she left. His suit was perfectly fitted when he was captured, and only slightly loose when she escaped. Now, it hangs off his emaciated frame, his arms and legs sticking out like twigs, his ribs showing through the front of his suit. He’s been starved almost to death. All the muscle he once had is gone, and his face is drawn and hollow. Harley thinks about the pictures she’s seen in history books of people who have survived being prisoners of war. Robin looks like that.
But this isn’t war. This is just Mistah J, getting a laugh out of making a kid suffer. And she had a hand in it.
Isn’t that funny? His voice plays like a recording in Harley’s head, cackling madly in her ear.
“Not funny,” she says through her tears. “Not funny at all.”
Maybe it’s her voice, maybe it’s the phrase she uses, maybe it’s something else entirely, but whatever it is, Robin comes awake. Harley sees his eye open, and it’s sunken and bloodshot and the white part is more pink than actually white. He looks around, half-dazed, and his bleary gaze settles on her.
The sudden terror that flashes into his expression makes her want to scream. He cringes against the floor, tears cutting trails through the dirt on his face, his thin shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He’s crying. The defiant little Robin who spat blood and vitriol at the Joker is crying out of sheer fear, and he’s not even trying to hide it. Harley feels like she’s had somebody grab Beatrice from her and slam the hammer into her ribs. It’s hard to breathe past the ache of guilt in her chest. Her lungs hurt.
“It’s okay,” Harley says softly, and she has to swallow a couple times before the words come out audibly. “It’s okay, kiddo. I ain’t here ta hurt ya.”
If he understands her, he doesn’t believe her. He shifts as she reaches out, trying to get away from her. He’s too weak or injured or both to do much, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. He makes an attempt to push himself away, but his right ankle gives way the moment he tries to use it, and the ragged cry of pain that rips from his mouth breaks Harley’s heart. She exchanges a helpless glance with Ivy and then looks back down.
Harley chokes, bile and acid rising in her throat. Her heart slams against her chest like a bird trying to break out of her rib cage, and she doesn’t know if she’s sobbing out loud or screaming in her mind or both. All she knows is that she can’t believe what she’s seeing.
Somewhere in the struggle to get away from her, Robin turned his head. She can see his whole face now, the bruises, the cuts, the scars-
And the letter J, branded on his left cheek just beneath his eye. She can’t take her own eyes off it. It’s half-healed, still red and angry. The Joker burned his symbol into Robin’s skin. Into his face. It’s a sickening act of cruelty, one she didn’t think even Mistah J- she shakes the words away, she can’t call him that, not here, not with that letter seared into Robin’s cheek- one she didn’t even think the Joker was capable of. If I was here, could I have stopped him?
Ivy curses, lifting her head to the door. “Harley, we need to get him out of here fast before someone comes.”
Harley nods, shoving down the wild, horrified swirl of how could Joker do this how could anyone do this why wasn’t I here to stop this . She leans close to the kid again, and this time he doesn’t try to get away. Only his heaving breaths betray how terrified he is. “Hey, baby bird,” she says thickly. “It’s gonna be okay. I know you probably think I’m gonna hurt you, but that ain’t what I’m here for.”
The boy closes his eyes, his bruised face painted with the kind of numb, resigned fear that happens when you know what’s coming next and you also know that you can’t stop it. “Please, not yet,” he whispers in a tiny, terrified, broken voice. “Please, I can’t- please, sir-”
Harley staggers to her feet and stumbles to the other end of the cell, just in time to fall to her knees and be sick. Ivy is at her side in an instant, holding her as she throws up all over the stained concrete. From the discolored splatters on the floor it isn’t the first time something like this has happened in here, and realizing that makes her heave again.
This is Robin. This is the second Robin, the scrappy one that hits hard and fights dirty and fires insults at criminals in the accent of Gotham. The one nobody likes because he knows the streets as well as they do and they can’t slip away. The one who took a beating with a crowbar and still spat blood in the Joker’s face. The one who always had some fight left in him, even after hours of torture. The one who always managed to say something snappy even through a mouthful of his own blood.
This is that Robin, broken and beaten and branded on the face with the Joker’s initial, calling him “sir” like they’ve stepped back in time, pleading for mercy the Joker doesn’t give.
Harley retches, but there’s nothing left to come up. She’s thinking about history books again. She remembers reading about the Romans, that they branded their slaves’ faces if they tried to escape and got caught. Is that what happened to Robin? He tried to run, to follow in Harley’s footsteps, and this was his punishment?
How much of this is my fault?
“Harley. Harley!” Ivy is jostling her, gently. “We need to go, sweet pea. We can’t stay here.”
“Ivy, I did this,” Harley whimpers.
“Hey. Look at me.” Ivy takes her face in hand and gently steers her to look into Ivy’s green eyes. “You did not do this, okay? The Joker did. And we will deal with him later. But that man is not worth you torturing yourself for him, understand?”
Harley nods, trying with only partial success to dam the flow of tears.
“Okay.” Ivy takes her arm and guides her to her feet. “If you need to break down later, I’ll buy ice cream and we’ll sit on the couch and you can cry for as long as you want. But right now, we gotta focus, all right?” She glances down at Robin. “Pretty obvious that he can’t walk. Do you want me to take him while you deal with anyone who might get in our way, or do you want me to be the bodyguard while you carry him?”
Harley shakes her head. “I don’t wanna hurt him again.”
Ivy nods. “Okay. Help me get him up?”
Harley bends down again. Robin is trembling, and she grits her teeth and fights back the waves of guilt. “Hey, kid. We’re gonna get you outta here, ‘kay? Ivy’s gonna pick you up.”
Ivy gently slips her hands underneath the boy’s battered body. “On three. One, two-“
“Three,” Harley says.
The sound Robin makes when Ivy picks him up is horrible. It sounds like an animal caught in a trap. It sounds like he tried to scream and someone stepped on his throat. It sounds inhuman.
Harley feels nauseous again, but this time she forces herself to choke it down. She holds the door open for Ivy and follows her outside, leading the way back out of Arkham.
Ivy glances down at the boy in her arms. “I think he passed out,” she says quietly. “We need to get him home and try to fix him up.”
Back the clown bus up. “We’re not taking him to a hospital?”
Ivy sighs. “Harley, if the two of us walk into a hospital with a kid who’s just about been beaten to death, what do you think they’re going to do to us? We’ll be back at Arkham before you can say “petunia” and this time it’ll be with a fellow inmate who’s incredibly angry that his favorite toy is gone.” Harley flinches at the phrase, and Ivy softens her voice. “We’ll do what we can for him ourselves, and if we need to do anything else I have people I trust who will help.”
“What about Batman?”
“Batman doesn’t even know this kid’s alive. I think we’ll wait until Robin tells us to contact the Bat before we do it.”
That’s fine by Harley.
This time, nobody stops them as they make their way through the exit tunnel. Boles is gone, somewhere in the Gotham Harbor trying to figure out how to swim with a broken leg. Harley can’t find it in her to care very much if he doesn’t make it. I hope a big, nasty shark eats him.
They have a boat stowed away on the rocks, hidden from sight by Ivy’s vines- since they did still break into Arkham, even if the part they broke into was abandoned. Ivy gently sets the kid in the back and tucks her green trench coat over him both to shelter him from the spray and hide him from anyone who might catch a glimpse. He looks smaller still out here in the light, and it shows in terrible clarity the hundreds of wounds scattered over his frail body.
Ivy unwraps the vines and starts the boat, and Harley sits in the bow with Robin. He’s still unconscious, and he’s going to need some serious medical attention. But he’s out, he’s away from the Joker, he’s safe. Harley lets herself breathe, not bothering to look over her shoulder as they leave Arkham behind. She curls her hand over Robin’s under the coat.
Hang in there, Robin Redbreast. It’s going to be okay.