Another fic
Title: One Way Track
Author: Cold Nostalgia
Disclaimer: Don’t own them. Don’t sue
Claim: Harley & Ivy
Prompt: 48. Wander
Rating: PG
Word Count: 922
Characters: Harley, mentions of others
Universe: General DCU
Genre: Drama
Summary: You remembered that you could breathe without him.
Author’s notes: Companion piece to A Beginning and Middle, might do a sequel for this. I’ll see how it goes.
You were five minutes away from her house when you realised that you couldn’t do it anymore. You couldn’t smile through bloodied lips, bruised and tear stained eyes, shamelessly ask your dear ol’ pal for a place to stay until you got back on your feet.
You couldn’t do it anymore; pretend that you didn’t notice her disproval, her annoyance, her growing resentment each time she opened that damned door and saw you on her doorstep. And you sure as hell didn’t think you could handle the looks she shot you when you went back to him.
So it was on that grey, overcast day where you, filled with so much shame, humiliation and guilt, decided to take the left turn instead.
You shuffled around the city for a few hours, racking your brain trying to think of a place to stay, trying not think of what you did wrong or how you could make it up to him - how you would never do it again.
Eventually, you remembered the old hideout on Jefferson Lane. You didn’t expect to discover the money stashed in the old mattress. When you did, you remember thinking how wonderful it would be to get out of Gotham for a while, a place where you didn’t have to think about Batman, about costumes, about henchmen, guns; or anything else to do with your life as a rogue.
You have not been back to Gotham since.
You didn’t intend for it to be that way, but as those two weeks in Hawaii came to a close, it slowly dawned on you, that you didn’t miss him as much and that you didn’t think of him as much. Those sage words of advice and wisdom given to you from countless psychiatrists, acquaintances and friends that had once fallen upon deaf ears suddenly started to have some weight attached to them.
For reasons unknown to yourself at the time, you extended your vacation and you booked a flight to Nepal.
It was during your second week there, and you were half way up Kangchenjunga when you remembered that you could breathe without him, that you wouldn’t blink out of existance without him. It was a greater thrill than reaching the peak of any mountain on earth, the greatest rush you have known, probably will ever know.
You can’t pinpoint the exact moment where the extended vacation became your life and not a break from your costumed identity. It wasn’t when you hung upside down on Kangchenjunga, or as you raced across the plains of Botswana, screaming at the top of your lungs, your heart hammering in your chest as the pride of lions gained ground on you; you were so alive that day despite your fear.
Perhaps there was no moment at all, no split second realization that you were no longer living your life for emotionally distant parents, disinterested gymnastics coaches, or more importantly - him.
You’re living your life for you, getting up when you want, doing whatever you want, however you want, with whoever you want. It is the most glorious thing you have ever known, you never expected life could be this way.
You have long since accepted that you were ill. The hows or whys of your illness are no longer important to you. There are many versions of how you fell nestled away in your head, intertwining, contradicting one another, changing from moment to moment; each one is as real to you as the next.
It does not matter how you became Harley Quinn. All that matters is that you are no longer Harley Quinn; you are you, and that is the greatest thing in the world. Not the sights you have seen, the people you’ve met, and the things you have done since.
You’re not stupid though. You can’t really claim that you are no longer insane. You haven’t seen him since that fateful day and you don’t want to. You are frightened that a switch will flip in your brain and you’ll turn into a pillar of salt; everything you’ve become in these last three years, snuffed out in seconds.
Sometimes when you are alone and there is nothing left to think about, your mind goes down this path and you are filled with fear and almost paralysed with anxiety, the worst of it fades within an hour but traces of it still linger, like a phantom limb; and you spend the next few days constantly looking over your shoulder, fully expecting to see crimson red lips and yellowed crooked teeth in the shape of a smile.
It is for that reason you have not returned to Gotham, or been in touch with anyone from Gotham since you left. Sometimes you can’t go back.
You’re well aware that if it hadn’t been for people like Ivy, Batman, and others you wouldn’t be alive today and you’d like to write them a letter, thanking them for everything they did for you, how you will always be grateful for what they tried to do for you - what they did for you.
Especially Ivy. There are many things you’d like to tell her and say to her. But you can’t and you won’t, lest those letters fall into the wrong hands.
Besides, given the cold, hard nature of Gotham City and its inhabitants, you’re not sure that they’d want to read your inept words of gratitude, or even care to know how you were doing. You’re not sure that you wouldn’t be wasting ink.
So you don’t.