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It's always at night, in the dark-softened quiet moments, when the silver moonlight and the glare of streetlight compete to cast shadows on the walls, when movement fades to stillness and voices to whispers. It's always those moments when Ivy remembers.
Remembers hurting and being hurt, remembers bleeding and crying and giving up and fighting on. Remembers dying, too, after that happens and un-happens, after she rises again in grave-darkened defiance.
It has always been these moments, ever since she was young, a child in a cruel house with another name. Ever since she learned to carve a hard mask in the daytime, to cry under cover of darkness.
It was that way after her father would hit her, memories she tries to forget.
It was that way locked in Arkham, with straitjackets and judgment and bitter, burning flames.
It was that way, alone in her apartment, letting herself think about Harley in a way she crushed during the daytime.
And it is that way now, lying beside Harley every night, sheets tangling round bare limbs, touches that can burn like urgent fire or trace her skin in gentle whispers of startling tenderness.
Now, in these dark-softened moments, she remembers all the ways that Harley has been hurt too, traces ridged scars on bleached-white skin and wishes she could have stood in the way of everything that put them there.
Sometimes, when she's not deflecting, Harley tells her the stories of those scars, whispers soft around harsh sharp words, stories of hurt spilling jagged into the spaces between them.
Sometimes, when she's not suppressing, Ivy tells her stories back, wondering at how small the words sound to contain such a world of hurt.
It's there, in soft fragments of nighttime darkness, that Harley traces the scars on Ivy's chest and back from where Joker's harpoon struck clean through her body, and whispers her fears into Ivy's shoulder under dim traces of half-moon light, because they've never talked about that time enough.
“I've never been more scared than I was right then, you know. I've always been the one gettin' hurt, almost dying, and I can do that, I'm used to that, but having to watch you die...” her arms tighten around Ivy like she can hold her close enough to stop it ever happening again. “That was the worst thing I ever felt. And I've felt some pretty fucked-up things, ya know, but never anything I couldn't get up again after, even if it took a while. Losing you, I couldn't get up. The only thing that made me do it was the thought of gettin' back at Joker for what he did. I don't even know what I would've done after, if you hadn't...”
“But I did,” Ivy whispers, and it's like a reassurance to them both. She's here and real and now, scarred but alive and surviving, and so is Harley, and they're together, safe in the dark. “You really thought dying was enough to keep me away from you, Harls?”
And Harley laughs softly, her voice catching in the middle, tripping over a sob. “Gotta admit, you have a way of defying the odds.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn't about to let your shitty ex-boyfriend tear us apart again.”
Harley laughs and then pauses, leaning up on her elbow and staring into Ivy's face with an intensity visible even under the dim orange glow of the outside streetlights. “Promise me I'll never have to watch you die again, Ives.”
Normally, Ivy would joke about that. Swear without a doubt never to do any such thing. But this is the dark-softened moments, where she lets herself feel, and she can't promise Harley that they won't ever get torn apart, because she can't know that for sure. Not ever. “I promise to do everything I can to make sure that never happens.”
Harley nods like she understands, and brushes away a tear, and Ivy wonders when and how this conversation turned quite so serious and heavy, and wonders why for once, that feels okay. It hurts, but she doesn't want to run away and put on another mask.
“I'm not going anywhere,” she says, and she pulls Harley in closer until they're tangled up in each other, blonde hair and red, green skin and white, linked hands and mirrored scars and hurt and survival and love.
“Same here,” Harley whispers, her breath warm against Ivy's neck. “Guess you're stuck with me.”
A few years ago, being stuck with any human being would have been Ivy's worst nightmare. Right now, she's pretty sure it's the thing she wants most in the world, to share her life with Harley for as long as they get.
“There's no-one else I'd want to be stuck with.”
“So I'm your exception?”
Ivy thinks that's true. Harley has been Ivy's exception, to so many rules, for so long. And if Ivy defies the odds, she'd say Harley pretty much punches them in the face. Things are more unsure, now, but maybe that's not such a bad thing, that she doesn't know as much as she thought she did.
What she does know is that remembering hurts less, when Harley's with her in the dark.