The objective was simple; he had read it over a million times. All he had to do was go to the epicenter of crime in Gotham City and retrieve the elusive Harley Quinn. It didn’t take the expert deception of Amanda Waller to know that Rick had disabled Harley’s nano-detonator shortly before the fall of Corto Maltese. It also didn’t take an entire army to take down the Clown Queen of Gotham City. That’s why they sent Rick Flag Sr.

A bloodthirsty hound by nature—and dutifully so—Richard Sr. wanted answers from Harley that he intended to rip out of her one way or another. The dead didn’t talk, so interrogation required the target to be alive. A simple extraction: find the girl, bring her in, question her within the hallowed halls of ARGUS headquarters.

But nothing involving Harley Quinn was ever simple; maybe he should have known that.

The older man hesitated outside the hideously graffiti-covered hideout—an old, dilapidated warehouse of some variety or another—very likely a bustling hub of activity once upon a time. He didn’t open the door yet. Not fear—calculation. A soldier’s pause. A long-ingrained instinct to read a room before it existed.

Then, without ceremony, he brought his leg back and kicked the door in.

A bare-bones safe house greeted him—an old couch salvaged from the trash; a fairly new stove; an analog TV complete with rabbit-ear antenna. A dusty mattress was tossed on the floor with a beat-up blanket on top. Empty cups of ramen, crumpled-up sheets of paper, and a small stack of cans someone had used for target practice littered the space. He took it all in with the cold, unimpressed expression of a man who’d seen far worse in warzones.

Gun drawn, Richard swept the small studio with trained precision, sidestepping landmines of moldy food. With a gloved hand, he picked up a crumpled piece of paper and unfolded it. A stick figure drawing of two people holding guns adorned the bottom. “I’m officially a cool kid, Ma! Ain’t that neat? I get ta play hero an’ not be a freak! Mista J ain’t gonna touch me once I get my emancipation!! —Harl”  A tiny doodle of a heart pierced by a baseball bat sat in the corner.

He set it on the messed-up coffee table like a sacred text. More papers were tossed about, but one caught his attention. Sitting at the top of a trash can was an old Polaroid. Harley was in bed with a man, trying to take a selfie, but the man’s hand was blocking the camera. Flipping it over, Richard read the sloppy scrawl: “Ricky don’t like his picture taken. I’ll break ’im in sooner or later. Somethin’ about ‘covert ops protocols’ or whatever. Nerd.”

Richard’s stomach tightened. Personal entanglements complicated missions. He’d drilled that lesson into his son’s head his whole damn life. And yet…

Another note drew him in—stuck to the side of an old microwave, held up by an ARGUS magnet. Harley’s jagged, frantic handwriting sprawled across the page: “He said I can’t fix him, but I told him I’d give it a shot. We didn’t mean ta get so close, but ya throw two busted people together an’ BOOM—chemistry, baby. Real science-y stuff.”  A tiny doodle of a test tube bubbling out hearts sat in the margin.

Under the magnet was a small wallet-sized photo. Harley is on Rick’s shoulders, leaning down to kiss his forehead. Rick smiled like he remembered how, for once.

Richard couldn’t recall seeing his son smile like that since before West Point hardened him. A part of him—not big, but present—hoped the smile had been real. But Richard knew Rick wasn’t the type to settle down, especially not with a career criminal.

Then again, maybe he didn’t know his son anymore.

Richard sat on the broken coffee table, squinting at the photo. Duty and blood—orders and family—It wasn’t a decision he enjoyed contemplating.

Across the room, a dagger pinned a larger photo to the wall. Rick was holding one of Harley’s stuffed hyenas around the collar like a real dog, Harley kneeling next to him in front of a Christmas tree. Both smiling, earnest, warm, and disarming. Richard’s first instinct was to analyze the possibility of his son being coerced. His second was to ignore the warmth in Rick’s eyes.

At the bottom margin, Rick’s blocky handwriting: “If you’re reading this, it means I’m gone. Let her be in peace. She’s out of that life. —R.R. Jr.”

A guarantee Rick had no right to make.

His radio crackled to life with Waller’s hard-edged voice. “Flag. Report. Did you apprehend the girl?”

Richard’s lips twitched, but it wasn’t quite a frown, just irritation. “Stand by.”

He continued scanning the space, nudging clutter with the toe of his steel-toed boot. Then he saw it. Pinned to the back exit: a final photograph. He stared at it, fingers brushing the white outline. The text was written in eyeliner: “Your boy saved my life. Maybe you can save his. —H.Q.”  A lipstick heart smeared beside the initials.

“Flag. Status report.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled the ten-week sonogram from the door and tucked it into his breast pocket with a small, controlled exhale. “Scrubbed clean,” he said. Calm and flat, like the soldier he was trained to be. “Nothing left but bare bones and garbage. No indication of her destination. She’s on the move.”

Waller exhaled sharply through the radio. She had no reason to suspect fraternization. “Scrub the rest of it. Leave nothing behind.”

“Affirmative.”

As he soaked the building with gasoline, placing charges with practiced efficiency, he caught one last message scrawled in lipstick across a cracked mirror: “See ya soon, Gramps. XOXO —Quinn”  Little bats and hearts danced across the glass.

Somewhere on the opposite end of Gotham, Harley watched the place she’d built with Rick, a sanctuary forged in secrecy, erupt into flames. It wasn’t wholly uncommon for Gotham to be singing the song of sirens, but Harley didn’t find it a comfort anymore. Her hand rested gently over her still-flat stomach.