#quinnflagg

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.

Intrusive thoughts ruined normal moments. Subtle nuances were welcomed when thought processes ran wild. He couldn't stand the person he became when left alone inside his own head for too long. Gideon inquired subtly – or not so much – if Rick was anything like their father; and while he argued all day and night that he wasn’t, there were some intriguing concurrences. Both suffered at the hands of someone they trusted with their lives, and both fought long and hard to survive only to fail. The difference was that his father wasn’t as strong or resilient, which led to his ultimate demise at 50.

These intrusive thoughts were always there, lurking below the surface. They could be triggered by small things; the mention of specific locations, the smell of rain on asphalt, or the sound of explosions. He found himself with a strange aversion to animal feed and avoided any kind of white porcelain tiles that he could. Even though the porcelain wasn’t as extreme as the others, the reminder of being stabbed was just too overpowering. He’d often find himself staring at the tiles, counting them to try and distract his mind. He was forever grateful that Harley’s favorite color was black.

Nightfall was a bitch. When the moon was hung high in the sky and stars twinkled like glitter on black canvas, Rick was often left to his own devices. Harley often slept at semi-reasonable hours, and he’d be left alone. Times like these called for woodworking in the garage, but then there were nights when the buzzing and whirring of the blades weren’t enough to quell that demon that raged under the surface.

Ada warned him this would happen.

Sure, the experimentation was successful; who didn’t like a nice victory lap at the end of the race? But this wasn’t what he’d call success by any means. Each death brought about mental deterioration, sometimes physical. Eventually, it would get so grievous that he wouldn’t be able to function anymore. Today he was dealing with the fallout of that moment his life changed forever, and today, it was in the form of a monster attacking his very psyche. 

He stood in the dimmed lights of the garage, the sound of the tool whirring behind him. He was working on something special, something that kept him occupied and reminded him to stay human at all costs, even if his body felt inhuman. He tinkered with thoughts like he toyed with objects, picking them up and observing them, letting them linger for far too long, then tossing them elsewhere to be found later. This is what got him in trouble.

Eventually, he found himself sleeping on the couch. It was a calm night, the stars were glistening and the owls were singing their seductive song beckoning sleep. But Rick was restless. His body was curled in the fetal position on the couch, his hands digging into his ankles. Fingertips curled into his flesh, causing it to bleed. He whimpered, stopped, tossed onto his side, then whimpered some more.

He remembered. Even if his cognizant memory couldn’t recall the subtle details of his death, his subconscious memory did, and boy did it fucking hate him. The sound of fists against flesh rang out in his mind; the feeling of a fist to the gut, a kick to the teeth, the sound of shattering glass and grinding of metal against metal. The shaking of the building collapsing, or the feeling of grit under his hands…these were all very real things at the moment, and all of them were so indistinct that the thought of them in everyday life never crossed his mind.

But in his mind, at that moment, they were all attacking him. He could smell the blood as it gushed from his open wounds; he could hear the sound of moaning behind him, the children begging to be released. He could sense it all and the overload sent him into a frenzy. In this dream, he wouldn’t survive. In this dream, there was no news of a child or meet grandchildren. This dream was surely the one he wouldn't wake up from; the depressing reality of it all. The one he tried so hard to hide from.

He took a sharp breath, startled from his sleep, rolling onto the floor to try and get away from the assailant. The feeling of flesh against his was enough to keep him grounded in the moment he tried so desperately to escape from. He was practically clawing his way across the floor, the blankets still tangled against his sweaty frame. If his father had seen him like this, he'd call him weak.

He took another deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, still curled up under the coffee table beside where he’d fallen. He didn’t want to face her just yet. She had woken him from his nightmare for the third time that week, and all he wanted to do was ignore the fact that she was standing over him hoping for answers. “Sorry.”

She knew him well enough to know that he meant it. Kneeling beside him, she brushed a hand over his cheek gently, then pressed a kiss into his temple. “You were screaming again. Was it the bad place?” She learned not to say that name anymore; Johutenheim was banned in the household. It was only a small blessing they were the only two to talk about it. She pressed a palm gently into his bicep, biting her lip. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. He couldn’t find the words just yet. Swallowing hard, he looked at his wife with a soft smile. “I’ll be okay.”

“Rick, you can’t even sleep in the bed with me anymore.” She finally retorted, finding the words equally difficult to say. Her heart ached for him, the fact that he couldn’t talk to her. “I miss you. I miss you.” He had really been through it; after being involved with a literal fuckin witch, watching her die, then breaking up with her…followed by this? She could understand why he was so messed up. Life-or-death situations came naturally to him, but this time he’d actually shaken death’s hand. The two were practically poker buddies now. “It’s like I left you behind in South America and some other man took your place.”

He lowered his gaze to his hands, staring at the simple silver band that was on his left hand. Whenever he was at work, he didn’t wear it, but at home was a different story. He’d always worn it with pride around the house and in safe spaces. “It sure feels that way.” A soft breeze blew through the room and caused him to involuntarily shiver. “You’re a therapist. What’s wrong with me?”

“You have PTSD. Rick, it’s no secret you went through life-altering trauma. I can help you with that,” She whispered softly, kissing the nape of his neck. “But you have to let me in, you know? I can’t keep begging for you to come home if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” he whispered against her kisses. Turning his face towards her, he planted a gossamer kiss on her lips. So soft, that he almost didn’t feel it. Was he still dreaming? “I just–” Paused thought, deep breath, quiet contemplation. “I love you, I don’t want to hurt you. So for now, let me do what I have to do…even if it means sleeping alone for a while.”

“Fine, but when this kid is born, I want you back in the bed. So that gives you a timeline to work with.” She grinned, kissing his lips again. “Got it, Colonel?”