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Ivy thinks about it the whole way home.
The worst thing is, you can't kiss your best friend and run away when you're in the middle of a desert with barely a clue how to get back out. You have to walk next to her and feel the silence stab into you, over and over, because she's never this quiet. You have to wonder if she hates you for kissing her or hates you for pulling away, if that moment meant to her what it did to you. You have to pray it didn't, because if it did, then you are going to break her heart, because you're not brave enough to do anything else.
Ivy doesn't want to break Harley's heart. Even if it's happened before, both ways, a double cut, the two of them too close for too long not to snag on each other's thorns by accident.
She was always the one loving too much, Harley always smashing her heart without even knowing, because Ivy never said. Since Joker's been gone, that's shifted, she thinks. Like maybe Harley's holding on just as hard as Ivy always has, right when Ivy decides it's going to kill her if she doesn't pull away.
(Kill her, or just dig into her and drag out the truth. And showing her truth has always felt like dying.)
This is killing her, too, this silence. But talking about it would hurt worse, so she doesn't say anything, and she tries not to look at Harley's face, so quiet, and she tries not to think about it. The trying is like patching a stab wound with a Band-Aid, all the thoughts like blood, leaking through with every beat of her heart.
Harley's arms around her waist, holding on. The look on her face right before she let go. You know I love you – and Ivy knew it then like she'd never really known before.
Harley, falling, as the recoil pulled Ivy away from her too fast, as the distance grew, as her mind snapped out of freeze and into fight, fight, she needs you.
Harley, safe in her arms, safe in the thorns of the desert plant that saved them both, smiling, relief and shock and so much goddamn joy, dizzy with the high of surviving.
Harley's face in the moonlight, stars spread overhead like a canopy, like light pollution never existed. Her smile, that goddamn smile that's killed Ivy a million times, and the heartbeat where none of her logic or fear or reason mattered anymore, and she leaned in and found Harley meeting her.
That moment, heartbeat, of fierce bruising closeness, clutching like she'd been underwater, like she'd finally learned how to breathe, like maybe Harley had too. Like they could tattoo themselves on each other's skin, leave a map of their mouths on each other's lips. Like finally, finally, god.
Like Pandora's fucking box, and now Ivy's wrestling with the lid, trying to get it back on before anything else comes rushing out.
She pulled away the same time Harley did, saw her own shock twinned. Took advantage of it, of Harley's open-mouthed wordlessness, of the heartbeat before Harley could say anything to make this impossible to contain, impossible to lock away and try to forget.
She pulled away from Harley's touch like it burned her, got to her feet so fast she stumbled, and looked at the ground, the dark, the sand and rock.
“We need to get out of here,” she said, like she hadn't just done the thing she'd wanted for as long as she'd sworn never to do it. Like Harley hadn't done it too. Like anything could ever be normal again.
“I–” Harley faltered, still on the ground, and Ivy couldn't look at her, her wide eyes, parted lips, their echo on her mouth. Couldn't listen to anything she'd say, because whatever she said, it'd break Ivy apart.
“Do you have any fucking idea which way to go?” she asked, sharp and direct, and Harley got the hint.
So now they're here. Not talking. Not looking at each other. The same stars over their heads, like the world hasn't shifted. Like Ivy can take it in her hands and push it back on axis, close the box, staunch the blood.
She can't. So she tells herself lie after lie. Tells herself this night is barely real. The whole thing, the pit in the earth, almost dying, the dizzying ridiculous scope of the stars, it's like a fucking fantasy, that's all. Some enchantment woven to break down her walls and make her do the thing she'd never do.
And if she was enchanted, bewitched, high-drunk-dizzy on adrenaline and closeness and stars, then it doesn't have to be real once they leave.
She tells herself lies because it's the only way she knows how to survive, lying to herself and everyone else about what she really feels.
Tells herself if she leaves the desert, she can leave it all behind. The kiss, the box, the blood, the stars, the awful, beautiful, enchanted night.