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Every so often she’d come knocking at your door sporting a couple of black eyes, a busted lip and a bloody nose. You never turned her away. Even long after you’d given up hope that she might see sense, you still let her into your home.
You bathed her eyes, cleaned her cuts, all the while muttering words of comfort that had lost their meaning long ago. You don’t know why you continued to allow her into your home long after your concern turned into sheer annoyance.
Perhaps it just became part of a never-ending ritual, just another plant that needed replanting; a rose bush that needed pruning. You don’t know if you actually saw her as a plant. You can’t really say; self-analysis was never your strongest suit.
And then one day that knock on your door didn’t come when it should have.
You responded, as you always knew you would, all that frustration and exasperation transformed into a ball of rage and grief in the pit of your stomach.
You tore up Gotham looking for him, and when you found him, the parasite denied killing her. Denied killing Harley. Batman believed him though, just as you always dimly suspected he would.
He even produced evidence that proved Joker’s innocence. He even had the audacity to help you look for her.
You didn’t find her. He didn’t find her.
As time passed and your investigation came to a dead end, you, like everyone else around you, could only conclude that somewhere between Joker’s lair and yours, Harley Quinn simply vanished into thin air. She just fell off the face of the earth.
And somehow that was worse than coming across a bloodied corpse.
There was no finality. No closure. The last pages of Harley’s biography had been ripped out – and that was grated the most. From that moment on, there would only be wondering and idle speculation
It’s only on birthdays and holidays that you allow yourself to think of her, allow yourself to wonder what happened to her.
Sometimes you imagine her as a corpse, rotting in some cranny in Gotham you neglected to check. You don’t like that idea, though, it makes you ill to think of it, and so the image never lingers long.
You prefer to see her walking along some road in another county – Australia, maybe. Completely oblivious to all the pain and suffering she’s caused. Your pain and suffering. The backpack she’s carrying is comically large and she’s wearing a silly cork hat to go along with her dopey grin.
And it’s that idea that’s allowed you to change the sheets in the spare bedroom every week for the past three years. The small hope that one day there will be a knock on your door and it’ll be her back from her wanderings. You’ll scream and shout at her; claw and kick at her; maybe tell her she hurt you more than Woodrue ever did.
She’ll look at you like a kicked puppy. And you’ll forgive her on the spot.
You’ll tell her you missed her. And that you love her.
And it won’t be an ending. It’ll be a new beginning.