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He hated this... need he had.
He had tried leaving her behind too many times to count but always came back in the end - just for one more taste, he told himself. He couldn't help it, couldn't control the fascination; very much aware that it made him weak and human and all the other things he hated. It was because of this he made sure she understood the price of his return each and every time, mainly to make himself feel better about it all.
But the revulsion he felt at her pitiful, desperate devotion was not enough to drive him away forever. Nor for him to slit her throat like he would with any other. She was different, he was loathed to admit, warped and passionate and loyal for no other reason than he had made her to be so. Yet unlike those who came before her he couldn't rid himself of her warm body and glassy eyes when he got bored.
Even Batman didn't make him forget her for long.
They'd had some good times, he knew. Shared jokes no one else got, done fun things that Harley herself had inspired. But then she'd go and ruin it with sentiments he didn't care for, with words and actions that did little more than annoy him. Those were for other people, not him. Harley never seemed to entirely grasp that knowledge.
She was a Rubik's Cube that he could never quite complete. Perhaps because there were a few squares missing and he didn't have the patience to find them. It irritated him sometimes. Had made him lash out more than once. But she didn't seem to mind, smiling in his direction despite the blood and bruises, the broken bones. Making him feel something akin to pride at her strength, and something else, something more like disgust. She was always so predictable.
It meant that he could never make his mind up when it came to his harlequin. In truth he kind of like it that way.
Not that he was going to tell her that, of course. He'd never hear the end of it.