#va-3

The room wasn't still at the stranger's entrance, if anything, she went completely unnoticed by the chortling street scum and miscreants. It seemed Harry was the only one to see her slip through the doorway. The rain had drenched her from head to toe, the fabric of her trousers and hooded cloak heavy with water. 

Unable to quell his curiosity he slid off of the sticky bar counter to weed through the wrestling people who had had one drink too much—that much he could smell. The stranger had seated herself at a table lining the edge of the room. She fiddled with a knife in her hand, small and thin, and if he’d taken time to look closer, streaked with blood.

“What’s a lass like you doin’ out in the rain?”

His voice took on his typical flirtatious purr, perfected with experience. She froze, her finger holding the end of the knife still in the worn wood table. Her head tilted a bit, like she was trying to decide whether she would speak or not. 

“I...”

Her voice was low and husky, though her posh accent bled through her whisper like black ink on paper. 

“I need help.”

Before he could ask what with, she twisted herself in her seat with visible effort and tilted her head down at her stomach. Harry paled. A gash starting at the edge of her ribs and ending on her left hip bled profusely, fresh and watered with rain. What was worse was the knife she had been injured with remained deep in the flesh above her hip. 

Tap, tap, tap.

She had begun nervously tapping her knife on the table, clearly ready to run back into the rain and most likely bleed to death. 

“Give me your hand.”

She did so hesitantly and he was startled by her dropping temperature. He hefted her up from the chair and wrapped his arm around her good side. She winced but showed no other sign that he was hurting her. 

“I’m gonna take you in the back.”

She nodded wordlessly, putting all her effort into staying standing. Hard muscle moved beneath the shirt Harry gripped onto, muscle that had been trained into this girl as a habit of survival. How curious. The duo moved through the drunken customers with a slow stagger, unnoticed by the criminals lost in their drink and merry-making.  

The stranger's head was dropping steadily by the time Harry managed to push open the employee door. 

“Hey, stay with me, we just gotta get down the hall here.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured, a sound that nearly stole all her breath. 

“Uma! UMA!”

Footsteps thundered down the stairwell at the end of the hall, revealing a very tired and very angry daughter of Ursula.

“Would you stop that—who the hell is this?”

The stranger's legs gave out. Harry grunted at the added weight. 

“…orry, sorry…,” she breathed out.

“Shit, Harry.”

Uma rushed forwards, rolling her sleeves up to show she was ready to help. 

“You get her from under her arms and I’ll get her legs. We’ll take her upstairs.” 

And they did so with much effort and hushed cursing. Sweat beaded Harry’s temple under his hat. Uma directed him to the worn blue couch where they placed the slumped guest with a definite oomph. This seemed to jostle the stranger from her unconsciousness. Her hand flew to the knife handle protectively then froze inches from it. Harry silently grabbed her frozen hand and pushed it back down beside her, feeling as though he was assuring a feral beast that he meant it no harm.

“This is going to need some serious stitches,” he confirmed, watching the blood ooze from the marred skin. The wound split a freckle completely in half. 

“No shit. I need to take that knife out.”

“I’ll do it,” this was the clearest the stranger had spoken the entire time. She rested her hand on the handle of the knife with a very calm demeanour. “Just tell me when.”

Uma nodded, disappeared, and reappeared with a bottle of (unfortunately) good liquor.

“Now.”

The stranger slid the knife out with a cacophony of curses, but nothing louder. The knife clattered to the floor right beside the sofa, leaving a delicate splatter of blood on the floor. Harry expected a scream, a yelp at least. He saw soon after why she had saved her voice. Uma poured the liquor over the wound and a broken cry tore from her lips. Both her arms clamped down over her hood, effectively muffling the noise in the fabric. 

Uma put the half empty bottle of alcohol down allowing a few moments of peace for the stranger. 

Then Uma pushed the needle into the edge of her wound and the stranger hissed. Harry sat still, uncertain of what he could do to contribute for the sake of the bloody stranger. Holding hands was comforting, right? He mulled over that intrusive thought for a moment. The stranger had her arms wrapped so tightly over her face she certainly could have rendered someone unconscious. Harry would ignore that thought and instead, he examined her silently. Muscular, but not like Gil or him. More like a sleek predator that was meant to be fast and lethal, stealthy and coordinated. Now who had caught this predator off guard? Or provoked her?

The final stitch in the strangers side was a breath of relief for all three occupants of the room. Uma tossed the needle into a waste bin and rolled back onto her bottom, sighing deeply. The stranger’s arms loosened up, but stayed over her face. 

She sucked in a shuddering breath. 

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Uma sounded annoyed but Harry recognized the look of intrigue on his captain’s face. An uncomfortable silence filled the room, one that Harry decided to interrupt. 

“How’d you end up like this,” he gestured at her wound, not that she could see him doing so through her arms. “Y’know, bleeding out.”

Uma looked at him with a raised brow, then cast her eyes over to the stranger on her couch. 

The stranger took a moment to craft her explanation, perhaps to shine light on herself as the victim of an attack although she was quite obviously the attacker. Her arms remained over her face, though her head shifted under her hood making it seem as though she was looking at him.

“Something of mine was stolen. I tried to take it back. I didn’t expect her to have a knife.”

“But you had a knife,” it was more a statement than a question that came from Harry. 

“I’m from the under-city.”

Another uncomfortable silence filled the room. The under-city was full of villains worse than the VK’s themselves. Miscreants with more blood lust than thoughts, people without morals and many without sanity. 

The stranger broke the silence this time.

“I’ll replace that. I owe it to you.” 

The stranger was pointing at the half-empty bottle of alcohol. 

“Yeah you do. Get some rest stranger, you need it.”

Uma’s tone was lighthearted, very uncharacteristic of her from Harry’s point of view. Maybe it was the politeness and vulnerability the stranger had shown to the two of them despite being, well, a stranger.

“I’m going to bed. I don’t care if you stay,” she waved her hand in Harry’s general direction before vanishing into her bedroom. Harry pulled off his hat and set it on the table next to the sofa, a way of announcing to the universe that he was going to stay the night. 

He looked about the living room and spotted a satisfactory sofa and a mismatched foot rest. Harry hummed to himself as he dragged both closer to the sofa the stranger lay still on. Still? 

Panic fluttered from his stomach into his throat. The stranger was motionless, causing him to conclude she was most likely dead. He opened his mouth to call for Uma, and was interrupted by a sound equally relieving and amusing. 

Light snoring was coming from under the strangers arms. She’d appeared as a bleeding shadow, a predator who had chosen the wrong prey, and here she was asleep on Uma’s sofa and snoring. 

“Jesus Christ.”

Harry slumped into the sofa and ran his hands over his face. The last half an hour, which was unbelievably a half an hour and not more, was very taxing on him despite having only watched Uma stitch a wound on a complete stranger. 

“You better not die in your sleep,” were the last words Harry muttered under his breath before he drifted into sleep.

Harry most certainly wouldn’t have woken up had his feet not fallen off the footrest and startled him awake. His sleepy stupor lingered around him as he found his feet and surveyed the dark living room, cast in shadows by the early morning hour. 

It took him several long seconds to realise the sofa across from him was vacant. The only assurance that the stranger wasn’t a dream was the dip she had left on the couch, the dampness left on the cushion, and the blood on the floor beside it. The knife that had been lodged in her side was no longer on the floor, taken, along with what was left in the liquor bottle Uma had used. 

Harry scooped his hat from the floor and fiddled with the rim of it. An odd revelation came across him as he thought about the night before and the strangers dilemma and all the events that had followed her ghostly arrival. 

He had never seen her face. 

The water had lost its comforting warmth many minutes ago, yet she couldn’t find the motivation to get out of the bathtub. Nylaa’s hair stuck to her lower back in wild curls that mimicked the twisting of octopus tentacles. 

The knife that had recently been very well acquainted with her insides was now held before her as she twisted it in the dim light of her washroom. It was long and slender, a hunting knife maybe. Maybe something from Gaston’s personal store. The handle was a worn blue colour, maybe navy, and scratched from the scuffle with Nylaa. 

She thought of that moment bitterly. It was rare that she slipped up or was even surprised by the fighting back of her victim. She had grown too cocky, too sure of her own intimidation factor. 

Deadshot:

Another day, another mission to kill the infamous ass-hat that was y/n. Floyd sighed when his scope rested against his eye and he watched y/n slide her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and take a sip out of her drink, delivering a devious wink to him. Deciding against killing y/n for the thousandth time, he dropped his gun and shot a grapple above him to swing onto her porch. He landed without grace, but barely disturbed y/n's tanning. Greeting him quietly, y/n patted the second chair beside him. A recently made mojito sat on the table, like she'd been waiting for him(not that he doubted it). Floyd took a seat, and only a moment later y/n spoke up.

"Deadshot, I believe I've done something bad, but I'm not sure I care." He raised a questioning brow and turned his attention towards her and away from his mojito. "And what might that be?"

"I fell in love with you."

Diablo:

The gunfire in the air was getting thicker: hiding from the fight stopped being an option for the silent y/n. Chato watched as she stood and exhaled, her shoulders dropping. Darkness swirled around her feet slowly, becoming a shapeless creature behind her. Chato's panic began to rise the longer she stood in the open, in the middle of the gunfire drowning out his yells. Unable to sit any longer, he hopped up and yanked her back by her shoulder. She turned with a shocked expression that softened when she saw the concern in his eyes. 

"Chato, I love you, but you have to let me be a monster for a second."

Killer Croc:

y/n had been thrown across the plaza multiple times by Enchantress's larger brother, but every time she seemed to stand up with more energy than before. But when Waylon saw her go down, something in him broke a little. Why isn't she getting up? Barely avoiding being hit by the larger god, he slid through his legs and scooped y/n into his arms and ducked into the shadows. She was clearly unconscious, the large slash across her forehead ensuring that. Frantically he patted her face, trying but failing at waking her. Instead he cradled her face and put his forehead to her damaged one.

"Come on girl, don't go now..." Almost like she was listening, her eyes moved under her eyelids, and then opened, glistening with tears. She smiled happily and put her hand to his cheek, "Do you really care?"

"You're damn right I do." 

Harley Quinn:

Harleen had stopped coming in for sessions with y/n two weeks ago, and now she was giving up hope. Several other psychiatrists had been sent in to treat her, and every single one had left with their tail between their legs. y/n, for the first time in a long time, was genuinely upset. She missed Harleen's smile, and her ability to listen to her rambling. Now, she lie awake, sitting on the edge of the bed and staring across her room at the wall. Everything felt empty. You wanted to leave, and one way or another, you were going to. Ballpoint pen in hand, you raised it above your wrist...but the door opened. Your head snapped around and you beamed. In the doorway was Harleen—sure she looked more beat down and was clearly off her rocker, but your Harleen was back. 

"You're back!"

"Of course, I could never leave my girl behind."

June Moone:

Days with June never stopped being fun, but sometimes she just wanted out of the hotel room(as did you, but that is besides the point). The previous night you had suggested a classic movie to watch, but failed to mention that staying awake for the entire duration was almost impossible. Not even halfway through, June found you had slumped over the arm of the couch in a deep sleep. Not wanting to watch the movie without you, she took to sleeping as well, leaning against you. 

You were the first to awake, but it was not of natural cause. June was whimpering in her sleep, tears seeping through the fabric of your shirt where her face was rested. You instantly shook her awake, and cupped her face in your hands. Her eyes opened and gazed into yours, the room silent aside from sniffles. 

"What was it about?"

June didn't answer, she only pressed her lips against yours like you were going somewhere, anywhere, at any second. When she pulled away she rested her forehead against your shoulder.

"Never leave me, y/n..."

"It'll never be an option, I promise."

Enchantress:

From the start, Enchantress had been unable to stop staring at y/n's ethereality. And Enchantress's brother could see it. The way she stared when y/n took out human troops with the most beautiful display of power; it simply took her breath away. It wasn't until you were the one that needed help that she acted upon her crush. 

Helicopters, idiotically, had been consistently appearing in the sky, only to be struck down like gnats by y/n. But this time there were too many arriving to keep an eye on all at once. y/n was frantically casting beams of destruction at ships, but dodging their firing was getting far to difficult. Enchantress could see y/n's obvious exhaustion, and began to silently panic. Would her y/n be struck down? She shook the thought from her head and darted from the bottom of the building to the roof where y/n was attacking from. She arrived just in time to see y/n get hit in the side and cast to the ground. Screaming in fury and worry, Enchantress frantically shot down the remaining helicopters and scooped y/n up in her arms. 

"You're okay, you're okay," she whimpered, tracing you lips with her fingers. Golden blood seeped through her fingers, but in the opposite direction. y/n eyes opened and she smiled that dreamy smile of hers. 

"Yes, yes I am." 

Enchantress could do nothing but kiss her in that moment, because for once, she was speechless with gratitude.