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It's a week after the earthquake, a week after they finally got rid of Joker, a week after Ivy rose from the grave, and Gotham City is in chaos.
It's all kind of loud and dramatic for Ivy, screams and crashing and fires and constant struggles for turf. Plus, Joker's earthquake and all the subsequent destruction is really fucking with the local ecosystems and the few green spaces the city has left.
Harley, on the other hand, is in her element. Driving hyenas through the streets, eating sushi, basking in the chaos she helped unleash.
It's quintessential Harley, but something about it makes Ivy nervous (beyond just the fact that Harley isn't making any plans and Ivy can't keep living in this sort of uncertainty.) They've both been through a hell of a lot, and Ivy's happy to keep repressing all her shit, but she doesn't like the fact that Harley seems to be doing the same. Hypocritical, maybe, but it's been the state of things forever, that she cares about Harley ten times more than she does about herself.
She finally brings it up one evening, when the rest of the crew have all gone to bed or gone who knows where. It's a rare quiet(er) moment, Harley picking through a random collection of things she's looted, Ivy sitting on the couch and pretending to read, but mostly just watching Harley, trying to figure out how to say what she needs to say.
Harley holds up a pair of gold hoop earrings that look somewhat bloodstained (god knows where she got them from), and glares at them with an aggression that feels unwarranted, before throwing them violently to the floor.
“Harls?” Ivy says.
“I'm FINE!” Harley replies, fixing a giant grin on her face. “See?”
“I didn't even ask you yet.”
“Yeah, but you have your 'concerned about Harley' face on. You don't need it. Everything's great! The city's in chaos. It's everything I've always wanted.”
Ivy sighs. Soon, she's gonna have to talk to Harley about what the plan is, where she's actually going with this whole thing, if she's even thought about it at all. But not right now.
Right now, she just wants to know Harley's okay.
“Sure, but... you know.” Ivy wishes she was better at this. Emotions have never been her strong suit. “The way we got here wasn't... great.”
“Killing Joker? That was pretty awesome,” Harley says, and then looks straight at Ivy. “Seriously. If I wasn't over that piece of shit before, after he... after you...” She stops, swallows. “After he did what he did to you, killing him was the thing I wanted second most in all the world.”
“After what?” Ivy asks, curious despite herself.
“You back,” Harley says, like it's obvious. “Duh.”
Ivy smiles. Feels it spread over her face all soft and warm and wanting, and swallows everything down, for the millionth time. She's with Kiteman. Harley's her best friend. There's nothing else.
“You know that, right? I don't miss him. Not after what he did. All the shit he did. But especially that. Guess I learned the one thing I could never forgive anyone for was hurting you.”
If she keeps saying stuff like that, Ivy might combust. She's spent so long telling herself she'll never come first for Harley, trying to pretend to herself that Harley won't always come first for her. Harley can't say shit like this, not now, not when Ivy's made peace with it. Which she has. She absolutely has.
“Harls, that's... that's sweet. But, I mean... still. Are you okay?”
“I am so great!” Harley says, too loud. “I mean, sure, everything was kind of shitty, even before what the LOD did. Joker pushing me out of the helicopter, you leaving, my parents–”
Ivy does a double take. “Your parents?”
“Oh. Right. I never told ya about that.” Harley looks at the ground, lifts a hand to her side like she's remembering some old pain. (Come to think of it, she did look kind of beat up when she rescued Ivy. There was just some really intense stuff going on, and it wasn't the first thing on Ivy's mind. Now, she wonders if it should've been.)
“About what?”
Harley fiddles with a baseball bat from the loot pile – as if she doesn't have enough bats already – and looks at the ground. “After we... after the fight we had. At the hospital. Which I know was totally my fault, and I'm still really sorry–”
“Harls. It's okay. Not the point.”
“Right, right. So. After that, I kinda... went home. To Bensonhurst.”
Ivy feels her hand clench at her side, almost involuntarily. The pieces click into place too easily, her own childhood calling out in recognition. Harley going home, hurting from their fight. Harley saving her, hiding fresh injuries. Harley, talking about her parents like they're some shit that happened to her. Harley, struggling to get the words out when so often she can't stop talking.
“Harls, you don't have to–”
Harley shoots her a small smile. “'S fine. I went to see my mom. You know how I see the sane me sometimes? Well, she told me Sharon was the only other person who loved me unconditionally, who'd always be there for me.”
Other person? Ivy wonders, but doesn't interrupt.
“So. I went home. But uh... turns out Dad... Nick. He's no father. He was there too.”
Ivy doesn't know much about Harley's dad, but she knows a little from that time she spent in Harley's brain, from a few dropped words over the years. Knows enough.
“I didn't wanna trust him, but she was so convinced he'd changed. And he seemed like he was really trying to. You'd think I'd know better by now, right, than to believe that shit from anyone?” She shrugs, her hands clenching tighter over the baseball bat. “Guess not. These... these hitmen kept targeting us. Killed Grandma. Nick said it was the mafia, after him for somethin'. We went to confront them. I took 'em down, and he acted like... like he was proud of me, and I fell for it.
“We went home. Grandpa showed up, and then someone killed him, too, trying to get us. I killed her for it, and I guess that's when my... when Nick got tired of pretending. Turns out he was the one who had the hit out on me. Guess I had a bounty on me or somethin'.” She shrugs, trying to blow it off.
Ivy stays very still. She thinks if she moves then she won't stop until she finds the fastest way to Bensonhurst and kills Nick Quinzel herself. Assuming he survived Harley.
“My mom was in on it too. I beat 'em both. They're not dead, though. Didn't think they were worth it. And I guess some part of me still couldn't really do it.”
“Harley...”
Harley looks at her again, still trying to smile, and it fucking kills her that Harley can say all of that like it's not really anything. Like it shouldn't even matter all that much.
“I got out of there, and then Frank showed up. Said you were in danger. So we drove back as fast as we could, and... I guess everything that happened after was just more important. Saving you, losing you, taking Joker down... I kinda forgot I never even told you what happened.”
“Shit, Harls,” Ivy says, like that can even begin to express it.
“It's fine.”
“It's not fine!” Ivy stands and crosses over to her, taking the bat gently from her grip and setting it down. “Harls. Look at me. Sure, a lot of shit happened after, but that doesn't make this fine. It doesn't make it not important. You could've told me.”
Harley shrugs. “We've all got daddy issues.”
“Not that kind. Not everyone. Even if we did, that doesn't make it okay.”
Harley looks at her, and something in her expression breaks. She half-falls into her, burying her head in Ivy's chest. If Ivy had to guess, it's as much to hide her face as for comfort. She puts her arms around Harley anyway, holds her up.
“I just– I really thought my mom, at least–” Harley chokes off, still trying so hard not to cry. They're silent for a moment, and then Harley says, her voice small in a way that breaks Ivy's heart, “Am I really that hard to love?”
“No.” Ivy doesn't mean to say it as fiercely as she does, but it's the truth. Harley's not easy, and why the fuck should she be, with everything that's happened to her? But not easy isn't the same as not easy to love. Ivy loved her from almost the very start. Half the problem has always been that Harley is entirely too easy to love. “Don't ever think that.”
“'S kinda a pattern,” Harley mutters. “My parents, Joker... Ive, I'm your greatest fear.”
“You were my greatest fear because I love you,” Ivy says. She's tried not to say those words as much, but right now, saying them matters. “Because I love you and I was scared it would hurt me. And yeah, that's partly because you're not perfect. No one's fucking perfect, especially not when they've been through the kind of stuff we have. But that doesn't mean for one second that you deserve the way they treated you. And it doesn't mean you're hard to love.”
“You, either,” Harley says softly, her voice muffled in Ivy's jacket, and Ivy holds her a little tighter and doesn't argue, even if she still finds it hard to believe. “I saw your dad... in your head.”
“Families suck,” Ivy says, because that's easier than really talking about it. “It's why people make their own, I guess. Like you have. With the crew.”
“With you,” Harley says. “Mostly with you.”
Ivy smiles into Harley's hair, because it's true. They're not family like bloodlines or structures or sisterhood. But if family is supposed to be the people who love you unconditionally, then that's as true a word as any for what they are. “Me too.” (It doesn't quite make sense, but she knows that Harley gets it.)
“You know how I said I went home?” Harley says, after a minute or so where they just stand there, and hold each other, and let the truth of how shit things are hang in the air between them.
“Yeah?”
“I didn't. This is home.”
She tightens her hold on Ivy as she says it, like she's talking about more than just the mall. Like she's talking about Ivy. About Harley and Ivy, together, and all that they are.
“Yeah,” Ivy says, not letting herself get too tangled up in the complexity, for once. She can ignore her feelings later. Right now, them, like this, is all that matters. “This is home.”