Harley Quinn

As established, Harley now had a great big bland-looking van.

But that was not all: Harley also had an accomplice! No, not the kid this time, because Cass had begged off on the basis of having gotten her little life's worth of dusty antique shops in just scouting all of them over the past couple of weeks, and also because Harley had need of someone who actually knew how to drive and who had a smidge more experience breaking into places.

So... She'd handwavily roped in Remy.

And now the van, Remy, Harley, and the whispersilk cloak currently still shoved into a bag were all nearing their first target, an antique shop in a part of town that was probably relatively quiet even when it wasn't the dead of night - and when it was, well... It really was dead out there. No movement along the street outside of the van itself.

Perfect conditions for the start of a heist!

"Okay, we should be... two blocks out," Harley said from the passenger side, surveying her map - yes, a physical one with squiggles and notes all over it. "Ca-- my associate says there's an alley on the left side of the place? With a side door into the building. That's how we get the goods."

(NFB because off the island again, and for the fellow criminal modded in the post)

After yet another restless night, Harley woke with a start.

And then immediately sank back down with a groan, because Christ, her nightmares really did love to just run reruns on her, didn't they? Mr J and an operating table this, Belle Reve straitjacket bullshit that, it was all just the same shit on a loop for ever and ever, regardless of the specific intricate psychological context of the waking hours that was pulling them back out into rotation in the first place. The lack of imagination was honestly insulting, at this point.

She stretched her arms above her head and blinked the sleepy blur out of her eyes, and looked at the room.

... The living room slash kitchen situation, yes, where she was lying on the couch under a pile of blankets. Despite Pam's best intentions, Harley had still not made any moves towards restoring the bedroom back into a habitable environment. Or the rest of the apartment, either. Takeaway trash kept piling up, and almost every bit of furniture was placed awkwardly in ill-fitting spots, like the way the couch itself continued to halfway block the bathroom door. Cans and candy wrappers and empty bags of nachos kept getting underfoot every time Harley moved around the apartment.

In essence:

( time to clean a real shithole of a dump )

(establishy!)

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, Harley had shown up at the door of Pam's store sobbing uncontrollably, fully inconsolable and incoherent with the melodramatic weight of her grief.

The evening had been much the same, curled up on the sofa in the store, swinging between bouts of sad sulking and intermittent wailing. If Pam had gotten anything intelligible out of her beyond something about breaking up - not that that was hard to decipher into a more fleshed-out story just with educated guesswork alone - and another something about hitting a door (?) it was a small miracle.

And Harley was still there now, waking up on the very same sofa with a start. It took a moment of blinking for her to realize where she was, and another for her to remember why.

It twisted her face into something sad again, but at least she didn't immediately get into another crying jag. So, that counted as progress, right?

(for that gal whose store and person were modded with permission, with an option for that guy already in the store as well)

It had already been feeling like kind of a great day to get the hell off the island. And when Harley happened to run into Marc ("happened to run into", "one of them had had gone looking for the other", po-tay-to, po-tah-to)? That just made it into a great day to get the hell off the island and drag him with her! And since it turned out there was roller derby out on the mainland? That had settled where to drag him to.

Right now, that dragging was literal -- wait, well, no. It was physical? Point was, they'd left the car a few blocks away, and Harley was pulling Marc along by the hand towards what she was pretty sure was the correct building - yanno, even before she saw the people filing in through the main entrance, sporting various unnatural hair colors with a general alternative sense of style about them.

It made her squeal with excitement. "Oooooo you can practically smell the sweat and broken noses already!"

(NFB and for the dragee!)

Soooooo... Harley no longer had a headache? And okay, maybe talking to Atton the day before had helped, a little, something. But come Monday, she was still in something of a blanket goblin mode, huddled in her apartment with comfort snacks and Bruce and bad reality TV reruns.

She'd pick herself up by her bootstraps tomorrow, okay? It was coming, cross her heart! Soon!

Just... maybe not yet.

So far, for Monday, having made it to the couch instead of the bed seemed like enough progress.

(for a guy that knows who he is, and lotsa slow play)

Harley was having a quiet day in.

... What? It happened! It was allowed! Even the most high energy rogues had to take days off sometimes. There was a marathon of some awful reality show on the TV - oh, also, she had a TV now, a vintage one with a great aesthetic and terrible reception! - and she had a comfy onesie on and a takeout order on the way.

What more could a girl need?

(for one!)

It was rare these days that Harley had plans, let alone ones that were less immediate than later in the same day at most. Funny what power a "could be free Tuesday" spoken on a Thursday could have! Because now it was Tuesday, and the "could be" had turned into an "am" - and Harley had plans she'd actually put a little bit of effort into!

Or bribed Cass to do something for her ahead of time on the mainland. Potayto, tomahto.

They'd taken the car off the island. It was parked a few blocks away now, to draw less attention to where they were actually going - which was a warehouse, but an old-timey one, all nice red brick, one whose actual warehouse days were long gone. If Marc had paid attention to any of the signage before they'd rounded the corner to the back of the building, he may have caught something about "circus arts".

Harley consulted Cass's messages on her phone to find the right door, then stepped up to it, and rapped a rhythmic knock against it. It wasn't Shave and a Haircut; it was something much more convoluted than that.

"Us circus folk like an elaborate knock," she told Marc with a smirk.

She was not actually circus folk except by a very long stretch, and the knock she'd just performed would not be familiar to anyone.

(NFB and for the one gently modded)

Boy, had that gone poorly! Harley hadn't slept much, and some of the reasons why could maybe be inferred by how, come morning, her makeup looked like perhaps she'd been caught in a heavy bout of rain. Rain that also made your eyes look kinda red and puffy? It was Fandom, okay, genuinely much stranger things happened all the time! Leave her alone!

Also, thanks to the aforementioned lack of sleep, Harley wasn't actually feeling all that much better, come morning. She actually kind of felt like she needed to bite something.

Or maybe go egg the Wayne Foundation building in town.

Set something on fire?

... Or kick a dryer, apparently. Sorry about the occasional clanging noises (and the accompanying swearing), Midnightites! Midnighters? Midnightees...? People of Midnight. Sometimes you just had to laundry aggressively.

It was so much better than actually dealing with your feelings.

(open!)

The Dream House was gone by morning, replaced again with the antique store and the apartment above it, both with all four walls intact, and the color scheme decidedly less pink.

And in said apartment, late in the morning, Harley woke up with a start. Like fully bolting upright and everything, with a gasp.

"... Barbie looks like me."

She couldn't believe it. She brought her hands up to her face, smooshing her cheeks.

"Like me."

This jaw! These cheekbones under her skin!

Something about it was making her eyes well up.

At least, until something else about the weekend came back to her. "Bruce!" Oh, God, he'd been eating something obviously plastic, all weekend long! Harley scrambled out of bed to find him - only to, yes, find him curled up in one of his usual spots, seemingly right as rain.

She still ended up taking him on a long walk around town. It took a while for her to be convinced that just as magically as he'd turned into a toy dog for the weekend, whatever the plastic stuff he'd been eating (and, to be fair, pooping out at what seemed like an alarming rate for a fully functioning gastric system) had just as magically turned into actually edible stuff in his guts when he'd turned back. He seemed fine! He was leaving behind dog shit that was the usual level of disgusting!

Still, between the long walk and then breakfast for both him and herself, the morning had already turned into the afternoon by the time something occurred to Harley, and sent her bolting down the stairs into the store.

There, she found the display of dolls of varying ages and kinds.

And there, tucked near the back, was a Barbie. Harley carefully pulled her out from between a Victorian-ish porcelain doll and a fairly creepy 1950s baby, and smiled down at her.

It was a little watery, but there was no one here to see it, was there?

"Oh, there you are."

Something in her chest ached a little.

(expecting one!)

You asked Harley, it was a pretty good Sunday, so far.

She'd started out her day with no plan, and yet by happy accident (and it was definitely an accident, and not someone somewhere making room in a shared schedule to facilitate things, or anything deliberate on the part of anyone directly involved!) she'd run into Marc, and that had sparked a simple and easy plan after all: to drive him to the mainland for dinner, at a restaurant she'd overheard someone talking about on one of her off-island jaunts earlier in the week. It was supposed to be a family-run, no-nonsense little Italian place, and exactly the sort of thing Harley was in the mood for, especially right now with the company she had.

So life was indeed pretty good!

And Harley's mood wasn't soured even by finding out there was actually no parking available right by the restaurant. After some searching, she'd managed to find a spot some blocks away - which was to say, she'd sniped it from right under someone's nose with a truly reckless move. Which had led to some blaring horns from other cars. Which was all good in Harley's book! She had more important things to be thinking about, anyway!

"And the tiramisu's supposed to be amazing," she was saying, as they got out of the car. "Like, 'someone's 97-year-old tiny little Italian grandma made it' kind of amazing. D'you think they'd let me order that for an app and not just dessert?"

(NFB for distance, for the one modded with permission + some NPCs)