Who: Harley Quinn and Helena What: Harley has bad dreams and pretends everything is fine When: recent Where: their house Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for talk of abuse
Harley woke up crying. The worst part of it was who the tears were for. That her abusive “puddin” could still evoke these emotions, even as she woke up, was enough to make her as angry as she was sad.
Careful to not disturb Helena, Harley padded out of the bedroom, remembering almost too late that there was a kid in the house so she should wear a robe, and headed down stairs. She absently patted one of her babies, the hyena nuzzling her hand as she passed, and poured herself some fruit loops.
She couldn’t escape the Joker. No matter how much she tried, or how hard she tried. Even in this world, it wasn’t him, but her ex had been close enough in behavior to her that it hardly mattered.
She was tied to the Joker like a noose around her throat.
Helena’s dreams had seemed to stall out again, but she didn’t entirely mind. While she didn’t like the pit in her stomach of knowing something very terrible was looming in them, she was happy for the reprieve. Especially after the wedding, she preferred to bask in the glow with Harley than to worry about dream crap.
Except she knew that Harley had started dreaming again, about the movie they’d seen, and she knew it wouldn’t be a good set of dreams. She didn’t wake up right away, but when she’d come into a half-awake state and rolled over, she reached out for Harley, but found her side of the bed to be empty. Lifting her head, she listened to see if Harley was in the bathroom, but didn’t hear water running or any movement coming from there. Slipping out of bed, she pulled a robe on and headed downstairs. She gave one of the hyenas a scratch behind the ear as she headed into the kitchen where she found her wife.
And she seemed to be upset, perhaps in more than one meaning of ‘upset.’ “Good morning, love, you’re up early.”
Harley smiled cheerfully, mouth full of cereal. “Heya doll!” If she’d been crying, it wasn’t clear. If she was even upset, it wasn’t clear. There was just cheer, far too much cheer this early in the morning, but then Harley was usually cheerful even when she wasn’t.
Alright, perhaps Helena had misread things, she had just woken up, her brain wasn’t completely into gear yet. But the cheer was noted, though it wasn’t strange. Harley tended to be quite cheerful regardless of the time of day. “Enjoying cereal, I see. Would you like some tea?” She plucked the kettle off the stove, then on her way to fill it with water, she paused to kiss Harley on the cheek, not wanting to interrupt her eating too much.
“Tea and cereal don’t go together, silly. That would be like beer and corn flakes.” She made a face. “Once slept with a guy who did beer and cornflakes. Fantastic in the sack, but odd breakfast choices.”
Somewhere, Logan’s ears were burning.
She resumed her cereal, until the bowl was mostly empty. “How’d ya sleep, baby?”
Helena laughed. “I will not go so far as to have a beer with cornflakes.” She filled the kettle then set it on the stove to boil. She opened a cupboard, sorting through some of the teas there before settling on one and pulling it out. She grabbed herself a cup, then turned back to Harley. “I slept pretty well. Clearly I needed to recover.” She smirked at Harley.
“That’s good. I mean you should have seen his ass.” Harley made the shape with her hands and then squeezed the air. “He was kinda short and hairy, but in like, that good way, you know what I mean?” She dropped her hands to the table and grinned. “He got nothing on you, lovey.”
“I definitely know what you mean. I’ve been with a couple men that would fit that description.” Helena definitely didn’t like guys that were excessively hairy. It turned her off. Looking at Harley, she smirked in that self-appraising kind of way. “I should certainly hope not, otherwise our relationship might be different.”
Harley loved Helena. And their relationship. And the people they sometimes brought into their relationship. “This guy. Very nice. Should invite him over.” She winked, then pushed her bowl aside. For a brief second, her face dropped, and even her pigtails drooped. Then it was gone.
“I am certainly open to it,” Helena responded with a smile. Just as the kettle began to whistle, she caught that little drop in Harley’s face. And...had her pigtails drooped? She couldn’t tell. But she blinked and both were gone. She shook her head a bit and went to tend to the kettle and made herself a cup of tea. “How did you sleep, love?”
“Pretty good! I’m all rested and ready for a busy day!” Not that her day was busy, there were only a couple patients she had to see and that wasn’t until that afternoon. She had time to be herself before putting on her business persona.
“I am glad to hear it.” Helena smiled and sipped her tea, savoring the taste. She was rarely fully human before having her morning tea. It was just like some people needed coffee in the morning. “What do you have going on today?”
“Nothing this morning, I thought about taking the babies for a walk, or maybe having Christine walk them.” That would earn some odd looks but she was okay with that. “Two patients this afternoon, then my evening is free.”
Her business persona was starting to kick in defensively.
It was easy to hear the business persona kicking in. Helena had long become familiar with the inflections of Harley’s voice and demeanor that she knew when she was more lucid and when she wasn’t. It was simply a matter of bringing the topic up without Harley shutting down on it.
“What do you say to going to dinner this evening, just the two of us? Then perhaps we can come home and have a family movie night? Or a family game night?” She watched Harley, wondering if she’d dreamt something, or if this was just a natural mood change.
Sometimes, she could sound lucid when she wasn’t, or vice versa, but Harley knew that Helena knew her well enough. She couldn’t keep it up forever, but she’d try. “Family game night? That sounds really fun! No monopoly though. I hate that little shoe.”
Helena couldn’t blame a girl for trying. God knew Helena tried to hide her pains as well. “Definitely no monopoly. I was thinking something like pictionary or something more interactive? I am open to suggestions.” She sipped her tea, just waiting for a moment to press Harley on what was bothering her, or if it was simply one of her mood shifts.
“Pictionary. Or some card games. Oh oh we could knock over a wal-mart, steal the game section!” Armed robbery might make her feel better. She could feel herself starting to unravel and the day had barely started.
And there was the moment. “Harley, are you certain you are alright?” She asked it carefully and pointedly. Helena didn’t want to let this go any further before she felt satisfied in getting an answer she could believe.
“I’m..” she looked up at her wife, then frowned. She drooped again. Face and shoulders and hair and everything. “I’m not fine. I’m...it’s the dreams, they take me back to that mental place. I dreamed he pushed me out of the chopper and died.”
Helena frowned, moving over to stand beside Harley, she reached out and set a hand over hers, squeezing it comfortingly. “I’m sorry, love. I cannot begin to imagine the toll it must take when you dream of these various versions of yourself.”
“It gets easier when I get away from Mistah J,” she admitted. “It’s just...I hate going back to that mental place and I have to fight, sometimes, when I wake up, to remember that it’s all in the past.” It was like having flashbacks and triggers back to her abuse all over again. She could joke about it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect her.
She listened, knowing what it was to fight through crap like that. It was exhausting, to say the least. “It can be exhausting trying to fight it, and I hate that your dreams make you relive that trauma. But I also know that you’re a fighter, and every time you overcome it, you become stronger. And you don’t have to fight alone anymore. You have me here with you to help and support you when you need it.”
“It just happens again and again.” She got to her feet, hating that she kept getting stuck on that. “How many times do I gotta relive it? How many times do I gotta go through hell before I get a happy ending? We deserve a happy ending without all that crap!”
It made Helena angry on Harley’s behalf that she had to keep dreaming of all these different versions of herself going through the same thing time and time again. It wasn’t fair at all. “You definitely deserve better than that, and you deserve a happy ending without having to go through all of that. If I knew what made us dream, I would put a stop to it so you wouldn’t have to deal with dreams like that any longer.”
“It ain’t half as bad as what you went through.” That was a classic deflection technique and the psychiatrist in Harley knew it. But she couldn’t help herself, which made this much more annoying to herself. She started to pace. If she didn’t get ahold of herself she’d have to cancel her appointments today.
Even Helena recognized the deflection technique. She used it a lot herself. She didn’t like talking about Christina’s murder, and she never talked about what it was like to be a conscious statue for over a century. At least not to anyone other than her psychologist, but even then it had been very, very difficult to get her to talk about it. “That does not diminish what you went through. But let us not debate that.” She stood and moved after Harley, attempting to grab her shoulders and stop her from pacing. “I know it’s difficult, but I need to try to calm down a little, breathe deeply if you can. Slow breaths. Getting worked up is not going to do anyone any good.”
“Fine. I’m fine. It’s all fine.” While everything burned down around her. But Harley took a breath, and then another, closing her eyes and centering herself. She went to her happy place, the one with green things and Pamela and Helena, and sometimes Selina too. “It’s...fine.”
As Harley went into her happy place, Helena pulled her into a hug, hoping to give her some better grounding. It wasn’t easy for Harley to face what the Joker had done to her, especially when it was repeatedly thrown at her in her various dreams, but Helena was going to stand by her through it all.
“I love you,” Harley sagged against Helena. “I’m sorry about this. I’m sorry I get like this. I try to be all happy and be normal but my kinda normal.”
The more she talked the more she sounded Jersey.
“I love you, too,” she responded, tightening her hold on Harley. “You do not need to apologize. I am here for you through good and bad. I’m not going to be scared away by this.” Besides, if Helena was going to be scared away by it, she would’ve been gone a year ago.
That was true, and it was a reassuring truth. Neither of them were all that good with the monogamy thing, or the commitment thing. Yet here they were, committed to each other, if not the other thing. “I don’t know how I deserve you. How I got you. But I ain’t gonna complain.”
She put her hands on Helena’s cheeks. “Other mes would be so jealous.”
She looked at Harley and smiled. “I should hope you won’t complain.” She gave her wife a little squeeze in her arms. “Perhaps I am the happy ending for you, this world’s gift so you may have something better.” Helena didn’t precisely believe in higher powers, but even she couldn’t deny the oddities of Orange County. Sometimes it reminded her of the Warehouse with the sentient state of knowing who was here. After all, how else would they get objects and pets that only existed in their dreams?
“I like the sound of that. But you gotta know it’s the same for you, right? That shit hole of a dream of yours. After all of that ya deserve the very best.” She pinched Helena’s cheeks and leaned up to kiss her.
“I know,” she said before she kissed Harley back. Sometimes it was almost frightening how much Helena loved Harley, how different she was in this life. And once again it was made clear to Helena that she was at her best and her strongest when she loved and was loved in return. It made her burn brighter than any star could ever hope to. And she wanted to give that light to Harley.
Christine didn’t have to go to school for quite some time, which means she could walk in on them. That didn’t stop Harley from pushing Helena against the counter, deepening the kiss and letting her hands roam around with increasing enthusiasm. She never had to fear Helena’s hands.
Helena groaned, matching Harley’s enthusiasm in the kiss as she pressed into her hands. She pulled her wife closer against her, a hand sliding up her back and to the back of her neck. She hooked one leg around Harley’s, wanting her closer to her.
Lifting Helena up with what was always surprising strength, she planted her on the counter so that she could caress at her more. “I love ya…” She pulled her head back, gazing into Helena’s eyes. “Ain’t enough words for how much.”
She loved the way Harley touched her. She wrapped her legs around Harley’s waist, holding her there. “I love you, too. Though where words fail to describe, it is best to let actions speak.” She brought a hand to Harley’s cheek, caressing it as her other hand roamed over what she could reach of her wife.