He reached out and gently lifted her chin, tilting her head back.
"Why, Harlene...?"
"Don't call me that!"
Harley suddenly cried out in wounded indignation. "You said so yourself—you call me Harley Quinn!"
At that moment, the timeline shifted, and Harley Quinn was completely born.
But that also meant Harlene Quinzel did not have much time left.
Dane looked at the girl before him with pity. Did she truly understand what she was doing?
The future Harley Quinn might kill many people, because violence was part of her nature.
But she would never know that the first person she killed was actually herself.
Dane did not indulge her. He simply continued speaking.
"No. Not yet, Harlene. You haven't truly earned that name."
Though it was merely a final burst of life, Harlene had not truly "died" yet. For now, she still briefly controlled her own body.
"I will! I definitely will!"
Harley frantically promised Dane, as if she wanted to prove herself.
But she did not know that Dane did not need her promise.
Dane knew very well that if the original Harley had been created by the Joker,
then the Harley before him had been born because of him. The Joker had merely served as a catalyst.
Harley had turned the abuse "he" inflicted upon her within her inner world into a morbid attachment, and that attachment had reached its peak when the real Dane appeared just now.
Like a hatchling that treated the first thing it saw as something to rely on, Harley had also come to regard him as a kind of emotional anchor.
What a strange feeling. He had killed the Joker, so was he going to take the Joker's place?
Hm? That wasn't impossible.
Dane stroked his chin.
He had already intended to interfere in