The Laughing Spider #33.
The factory floor was a Jackson Pollock of violence rendered in blood and chemicals.
Harley Quinn knelt in the center of it, Jake's broken body cradled against her chest. Her sequined jacket -- the one she'd worn when they met, during their bank robbery, the one that had made her feel invincible -- was torn and bloodied now, but still sparkled faintly in the factory's dying light.
"Okay," she whispered, voice cracking. "Okay-okay-okay. You're fine. You're gonna be fine. Harley's gonna fix you."
His chest wasn't moving. She pressed her ear against it, listening. Found a heartbeat -- faint, irregular, barely there. But present.
"See?" Her laugh was broken glass. "Still kickin'. Still my Good Night."
She needed supplies. Bandages. Medicine. Something.
Her eyes scanned the factory. Penguin's unconscious body. The dead men scattered like broken toys. Chemical puddles eating through metal.
No medical supplies. Just death and decay.
Harley's hands moved to Jake's face. His skin was cold. Gray. Chemical scarring had spread, covering almost everything. His eyes were closed now, but she remembered those black voids. Remembered how they'd looked at her with such devotion.
"You came back for me," she said, fingers tracing his cheek. "Twice. Jumped in the soup twice and came back stronger. So you'll do it again. You have to."
His breathing stuttered. Stopped. Started again.
Panic clawed up her throat.
She'd seen people die. Had killed people. But watching him -- watching her perfect weapon, her Good Night, her mallet made flesh -- slip away was different.
It felt like the end of the world.
"No." Her voice hardened. "No-no-NO. You don't get to leave me. Not after everything. Not after I made you perfect."
She looked around desperately. What did she know about keeping people alive? About medicine?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But she'd been hurt. Dozens of times. Broken bones. Stab wounds. Bullet holes. And she'd survived.
Tape. She'd used tape once. Duct tape holding her ribs together until they healed.
Her eyes found Penguin's unconscious form. His expensive suit. His backup blade.
She grabbed the knife, moved back to Jake. Cut away what remained of his suit -- the tattered red and blue hanging off his chemical-scarred frame.
The wounds beneath made her stomach lurch.
Everywhere. His torso was a map of trauma -- chemical burns, deep lacerations, places where bone was visible through dissolved flesh. His arms bent wrong even lying still. His spine curved at angles that weren't natural.
"Oh baby," she breathed. "What did you do to yourself?"
But if she couldn't see the wounds...
The thought came desperate and manic. If she covered them. Wrapped them. Made them disappear.
Then they weren't there. Then he was fine.
Harley stood, scanning for material. Her eyes found the bodies. Their clothes. Some of Penguin's men had worn nice shirts. Clean. Before the dying part.
She moved between corpses with mechanical efficiency, cutting away fabric, gathering pieces. A sleeve here. A pant leg there. The chemicals had eaten through most of it, but some sections remained intact.
Not enough.
Her eyes went to her jacket. The sequined one. Her favorite.
Her hands hesitated on the zipper.
This jacket had been through everything with her. Robberies. Breakouts. That beautiful chaos at Gotham National. It was Harley Quinn made manifest -- bright, chaotic, perfect.
But Good Night needed it more.
She stripped it off, used the knife to tear it into strips. The sequins scattered across the factory floor like fallen stars. Each cut felt like losing a piece of herself.
But he was worth it. Her mallet was worth everything.
Back to Jake's body. She started wrapping. Legs first -- binding the broken bones, covering the chemical burns. The fabric stuck to dissolved flesh. He didn't react. Didn't even twitch.
His torso next. Layer after layer, using every scrap she'd gathered. Penguin's men's shirts. Her jacket strips. Anything that could cover, could hide, could make the wounds disappear.
His arms. She tried to straighten them first, but the bones were set wrong. Bent backward. She wrapped them anyway, telling herself that under enough layers, they'd look normal.
She paused mid-wrap, one hand still holding fabric against his bicep. Her head tilted.
"Good Night?" she whispered.
Had he moved? She could have sworn-- his fingers. They twitched. Didn't they?
Harley leaned closer, ear hovering over the wrapped chest. Listening. Hoping.
"Baby? You trying to tell me something? You awake in there?"
Silence. Just the factory's ambient drip-drip-drip and the distant hiss of chemicals eating metal.
No movement. No sound. Nothing.
"Yeah," she said, voice bright and cracking. "Save your strength. Don't talk yet. Harley's got you."
She resumed wrapping. Faster now. Like speed could make reality cooperate.
The blood soaked through immediately. Dark red spreading across mismatched fabric, turning the makeshift bandages into abstract art.
More layers. More wrapping. She worked faster, desperate, not caring about technique or cleanliness. Just covering. Making it go away.
Behind her, a groan.
Harley's head snapped around. Penguin was stirring, one hand reaching for his head where her bat had connected. His eyes cracked open, unfocused, struggling to orient.
They found her. Found Jake's wrapped form. Found the mismatched fabric soaked through with blood.
His face went white. Then green. "What are you--" His voice was hoarse, broken. "That's not-- you can't just wrap--"
"Shhh." Harley stood, bat in hand. "Adults are working."
She crossed to him in three steps. Penguin tried to raise his hands. Too slow. Too concussed.
The bat came down. Not hard enough to kill. Just hard enough to make the world go away again.
He crumpled.
Harley returned to Jake, humming softly. Where was she? Right. His face.
She hesitated there. Wanted to see him. Wanted to see those devoted eyes when they opened again.
But the chemical scarring was worst there. His features barely recognizable.
She wrapped it. Gently. Carefully. Leaving only small openings for breathing.
When she finished, Jake looked like a mummy designed by someone colorblind and manic. Strips of expensive suit fabric mixed with sequined jacket pieces mixed with bloodied remnants of factory workers' clothes. The colors clashed: reds and blacks and purples and that signature Harley pink-and-blue, all soaked through with blood that kept spreading.
But the wounds were covered.
And if she couldn't see them...
"There," Harley said, voice bright and brittle. "All better. Good as new. My Good Night's gonna be fine."
She stood back, admiring her work. Trying to ignore how the chest wasn't rising properly. How the blood kept spreading. How the wrapped form looked more corpse than person.
"You're strong," she told him. Told herself. "Strongest mallet I ever had. You survived the soup twice. You'll survive this."
But she couldn't keep him here. The factory was compromised. People knew about this place now. Deathstroke. The Riddler. Scary boogeymen. They'd be back. They'd try to take him.
She needed to hide him. Protect him. Keep all the bad men away while he healed.
Where? Where could she go that nobody else knew?
The Iceberg Lounge? No. Penguin's territory.
Abandoned buildings in Crime Alley? Too exposed.
Robinson Park? Too open.
Her mind raced through Gotham's geography, through every hideout she'd ever used. Most were known to the GCPD. To Batman. To someone.
Then: the tunnels.
Not the main routes. Not the ones her clowns used. The deeper ones. The places even she rarely ventured. The sections that predated Gotham itself -- natural caves turned into storm drains turned into forgotten passages.
There was a place. She'd found it once. Years ago. When running from Batman after a particularly fun evening.
A chamber. Deep underground. Where tunnels converged but none led anywhere useful. Dead end after dead end. Perfect for hiding. Perfect for keeping what was precious safe from the world.
"That's it," she breathed. "That's where we'll go. Nobody will find you there. Nobody will take you away."
She gathered Jake's wrapped form in her arms. He was lighter than before -- the chemicals had eaten away muscle mass, leaving only the enhanced skeleton and stubborn cells that refused to stop trying to heal.
Harley dragged him toward the tunnel entrance. His head lolled, cracked against the metal lip of the opening.
She didn't notice.
Couldn't notice.
Because if she couldn't see the damage, it wasn't happening.
She pulled him into darkness. Into Gotham's arterial system. Deeper. Away from the light. Away from the bad men who wanted to hurt him.
Each drag scraped his wrapped form against rough concrete. Each pull wrenched his broken bones into new configurations. Each step Harley took was another small violence added to catastrophic trauma.
But she couldn't see it through the wrappings.
So it wasn't happening.
Her Good Night was fine.
He just needed rest. Needed to heal in peace. Needed his Harley to protect him from everyone trying to take him away.
"Almost there, baby," she whispered into the darkness. "Almost to our special place. Then you can sleep. Then you can get strong again."
The darkness swallowed them both.
And Jake's wrapped form didn't stir. Didn't breathe properly. Didn't show any sign that the calculations mattered anymore.
But deep in his cells -- where enhanced biology fought toxins, where healing factors raged against impossible damage, where some small part of Jake Cross remained trapped behind chemical corruption -- the mathematics continued.
Continued calculating.
Continued trying to survive against odds that shifted with every moment.
Twelve percent.
Eleven percent.
Ten.
Dropping with each drag across rough concrete. Each hour without proper medical intervention. Each second the pheromones and toxins fought over what remained of his system.
The numbers didn't care about intentions. Didn't care about love twisted into possession. Didn't care about Harley's desperate faith that wrapping wounds made them disappear.
Math was pure. Math was honest. Math was cruel.
Nine percent.
Eight.
If everything went perfectly.
If anyone tried.
If--
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
The chamber opened before her -- a confluence of dead-end tunnels that created a pocket in Gotham's underground. Water trickled down one wall, pooling in the corner. The air tasted like rust and old earth.
Harley lowered Jake's wrapped form to the driest spot she could find. The concrete here was almost smooth, worn down by decades of water flow.
"There," she whispered, arranging his arms at his sides. The broken bones shifted under the wrappings. She pretended not to notice. "Comfy, right? Better than that nasty factory floor."
She pulled off her boot -- just one, the right one -- and placed it under his wrapped head like a pillow. His neck bent at an angle that wasn't natural. She adjusted it. Made it worse. Adjusted again.
"Perfect," she said, voice bright. "Now you can rest. Now you can--"
A sound. Behind her.
Not the ambient drip-drip-drip she'd grown used to. Not the distant rush of water through pipes. Something else. Something breathing with mechanical assistance.
Harley froze.
Someone was blocking the passage she'd come through.
The emergency lights were dying down here, flickering on and off, but she could make out the silhouette. Massive. At least a foot taller than her, shoulders spanning the tunnel width.
A figure stepped forward into a patch of struggling light.
The mask came first. Leather. Studded. Pipes running to a device on his back that hissed with each breath. Then the body -- not just muscular but architectural. Like someone had taken the concept of human strength and rebuilt it from first principles with no concern for what biology claimed was possible.
Harley's hand went to her bat. Her other arm stayed wrapped around Jake's wrapped form, protective.
"Harley Quinn," his voice was thick with an accent she couldn't place. Spanish? "You hold someone I've been dying to break."
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