Bud And Lou

Once upon a time, on a wild and unusual night at the Gotham City Zoo, something went a little bit wrong at the hyena enclosure. The gate, for reasons nobody could quite explain afterward, had been left hanging wide open.

Most people, finding two spotted hyenas loose and wandering, would have called animal control right away. But Harley Quinn was not most people. She crouched down, looked at the two hyenas blinking back at her in the moonlight, and felt something warm and certain settle in her chest.

She scooped them both up, one under each arm, giggling the whole ride home, and she never once seriously considered giving them back.

She named them Bud and Lou, right there on the sidewalk outside the zoo, and the names stuck immediately, as if the hyenas had been waiting their whole lives to hear them.

Bud was the bigger of the two, with a booming cackle that echoed off buildings whole city blocks away, and a habit of leaning his entire weight against Harley's legs whenever he wanted a bit of attention, which was often. Lou was smaller, but a good deal cleverer — the kind of hyena who figured out how to open kitchen cabinets and untie shoelaces, usually at the worst possible moment, like right in the middle of Harley getting ready to leave the hideout.

Together, Bud and Lou followed Harley absolutely everywhere her hideout allowed. They tumbled over each other down the hallway most mornings. They howled right along whenever she turned her favorite music up far too loud for the neighbors. And the very moment she sat down on the couch, both hyenas would pile on top of her at once, leaving barely any room for Harley herself, who never once seemed to mind.

They weren't exactly trained, of course. Harley never bothered teaching them to sit or stay or fetch, and if you asked her why, she'd tell you it was because she genuinely loved their wild, untamed energy. It matched her own so perfectly that training them into something calmer felt almost like a waste. Besides, a perfectly obedient hyena didn't sound nearly as fun as the two chaotic ones already sleeping at the foot of her bed.

What Bud and Lou lacked in manners, though, they made up for tenfold in loyalty. More than once, they'd chased off an unwelcome visitor who wandered too close to Harley's hideout, growling and snapping until the stranger turned and ran. And somehow — nobody, not even Harley, could quite explain how — the two hyenas always seemed to know when she'd had a difficult day. On nights like that, instead of causing their usual chaos, Bud and Lou would curl up quietly on either side of her, resting their big, heavy heads gently on her lap until she felt steadier again, breathing slower, the noise of the day fading away.

Not everyone in Harley's life appreciated them quite as much as she did.

Poison Ivy tolerated Bud and Lou, mostly, though she had officially and permanently banned them from her greenhouse near Robinson Park, ever since Lou dug up an entire flower bed chasing a rabbit that, as far as anyone could tell, had never actually been there in the first place. Batman, too, had crossed paths with the pair more than once during a caper, and he generally preferred to keep his distance. Bud's cackle alone was loud enough to give away Harley's exact location three blocks away, bouncing off the tall buildings of downtown Gotham like an alarm bell nobody had asked for.

But none of that really mattered to Harley, not one bit.

Bud and Lou were the very first thing in her whole life that belonged truly, completely to her — not the Joker's, not anyone else's, not borrowed or shared or half-hers. They were hers, fully and completely, from the moment that zoo gate swung open.

And in a life as loud and chaotic and unpredictable as Harley's, having something — someone — that was simply, unquestionably hers made all the difference in the world.

So wherever Harley Quinn goes next across the rooftops and alleyways of Gotham City, you can be sure of one thing: Bud and Lou are trotting right along beside her, cackling their loudest, happiest approval the whole way.