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It's random, the way it occurs to Harley that it's been three years. Like many of her trains of thought, this one started somewhere she can't quite trace back to, and ran on until she bumped up against information that brought it to a halt.
Three years. It's been three years since Ivy pulled her out of the dark.
She's not normally the best with time. Whole hours can flicker by without her keeping track, and if there weren't some way to measure them, she'd have no idea how long it had been.
But this information falls less under 'time' and more under 'Ivy', and when Ivy's involved, she remembers. Just like she's kept track of their every-single-day anniversaries (today is day thirty-eight.)
Three years ago, Ivy busted her out of Arkham and showed her the truth about Joker by using Riddler, Batman, and a ton of margarita mix. And sure, it's all a little bittersweet, because she was pretty screwed-up back then and caring about all the wrong people. But that was the start. Their second start, their re-start. The thing that began when she posted a flower to a woman behind a wall of glass, then broke a little more every time she ran into the Joker's arms instead, it surfaced again that day and never left.
That might not be the moment she fell in love with Ivy – she never knows what moment that was, because there were so many, a million tiny things that she didn't even know added up to love (not the romantic, all-encompassing, spend-your-lives-together kind) until a badly-timed kiss that ripped her world wide open and finally showed her exactly what That Feeling was.
So yeah, those days, the Arkham breakout, the Joker break-up, might not be when she fell for Ivy, but it was a beginning. The beginning of their lives together, even if she ran back the wrong direction a couple times, even if they hit a million different stumbling blocks and...
Point is, those days are important. To them. To her. And this week marks three years since it all.
Which calls for... something. She's not even sure what.
“Ivy!”
Ivy almost falls off her seat and knocks over the microscope she's using in her scramble to cover her ears. She loves Harley more than anything, but it's always astounded her how one relatively small person can generate this much chaotic noise.
“Harls, you're seriously gonna kill me one of these days.”
“Sorry, but I swear it's actually important!” Harley says, staring at her with barely contained excitement.
“What's happening?” Ivy asks warily, raising an eyebrow.
“Do you know what today is?”
“Our thirty-eight day anniversary?” Ivy asks, then shuts her mouth fast. Shit, she did not mean to say that.
“You've been counting too???” Harley asks, her eyes wide.
“What's today?” Ivy says, deflecting. She's not about to admit that sure, maybe she's been keeping track. Just a little.
“It's three years!” Harley squeals, providing absolutely no context.
“Three years since what?”
“Since you saved me from an abusive relationship and let me move into your apartment and I kicked Joker's ass and got a new look and we became the most iconic duo in Gotham!”
Ivy thinks back for a second and damn, she's right. Time flies, or whatever the fuck people say, and it's easy to lose track, but she remembers those days so well. The desperate hope that she hid as well as she could, that maybe Harley would finally manage to break free of that clown Ivy had hated more than anyone in the world, that maybe they could build something some type of new together. That maybe... well, the other fleeting hopes had been the ones she'd hidden most.
She remembers the hurt when she kept failing, and the way she'd jumped to her last resort and enlisted an unlikely ally, and when she'd pulled Harley free from the 'acid' and held her close, her heart had felt calmer, for the first time in so long, and she'd sort of believed that maybe this time, they would stay together.
Her hope had more or less proved true, actually, if you looked at where they were now.
“You remember all that, right?” Harley asks, her enthusiasm flagging just a tiny bit at Ivy's lack of response.
“Uh, obviously. That stuff isn't exactly easy to forget, babe.”
Harley flings her arms around Ivy and hugs her tightly. “Yeah, no shit. You know what this calls for?” She doesn't give Ivy a chance to answer before shouting, “Date night!”
Ivy glances between Harley's grin and the microscope she's abandoned on the table. “I'm kinda... in the middle of something...” she says half-heartedly, because hey, now that she knows what today is, it means something to her, too.
“C'mon, Ive, science will still be here in a few hours.”
Ivy rolls her eyes and then smiles. “True.”
Darkness has crept over Gotham like a steady shadow, and the trees in the park are dark silhouettes. Harley links her fingers through Ivy's and wishes she'd brought a warmer jacket, because she'd kinda like to stay out here longer, them and the stars and the plants or whatever (plants have to be part of a date when your girlfriend is Poison Ivy, and Harley has to admit that this whole nature thing has started to grow on her. Pun slightly intended.)
It's been a good evening, fancy dresses and stolen kisses and the best pasta in the world (Mama Macaroni's has never disappointed yet), and Ivy's pausing every few minutes to comment on some type of flower they pass, and keeping up a semi-constant stream of observations about ecosystems in urban areas, or something like that. (Harley has to admit that she's zoned out a little, too caught up in the way Ivy looks when she talks about something she cares about. And just the way she looks, period, which is best defined as 'hot as hell' all the time, and especially tonight.)
“You're not listening, are you?” Ivy asks, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
“Of course I am! I love when you talk about... plants and things.”
“'Plants and things'?” Ivy repeats, scepticism heavy in her voice. “Sure, Harls.”
“Okay, fine, maybe my mind wasn't totally on what you were saying.” Harley traces Ivy with her eyes and then looks back into her face with a grin that Ivy returns, scepticism replaced by a hint of mischief that never fails to turn all of Harley's thoughts into thoughts about kissing her.
“Distracted?” Ivy asks, stopping and turning towards Harley, one hand coming up to cup her face.
“Can you really blame me?” Harley asks, acting like Ivy can't still make her breathless with a single touch.
“Not when the feeling's mutual,” Ivy admits, and leans down to kiss her, her hands sliding down Harley's back to hold her close.
For a few moments there is no one else in the entire world, and Harley holds onto Ivy like she never wants to let go (because she doesn't) and wonders how she ever got this lucky.
And when they break apart, just a few inches, arms still wrapped around each other, she whispers it into the space between them, “Happy anniversary of the re-beginning, Ive.”
And Ivy laughs softly but doesn't ask what she means, probably because she already knows. “Happy anniversary, peanut.” She pauses for a second and then says it, a whisper in the dark. “I love you more than anything, you know that, right?”
And Harley's face hurts from smiling so wide. “I know, I love you too.” Then she pauses and adds, “But don't you mean you love me 'in a very odd, hard-to-articulate way'?” And she laughs a little, because that's the way Ivy explained it, the first time she ever said she loved her, on that day three years ago, back when neither of them knew quite what was meant by it.
“I think I figured out what that way was,” Ivy says, smiling like she remembers, too, and then she pulls Harley close again, as if to illustrate the point.
And just before all Harley's thoughts dissolve into their kiss, she thinks that they've come a long way, and she'll never stop being happy that they finally, finally, figured out how to define that thing, that feeling that began again three years ago. The way they love each other.