totalwildcard | Pick Your Poison; Wednesday Morning

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)

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"He threw it away," Pam said softly. "That doesn't mean you're not good."

Surprising, coming from the misanthrope who for a long time had cared about only one (1) human, that being a version of the girl currently weeping against her side, but still, it was the thought that counted.

Edited 2025-07-31 02:30 (UTC)

"But it means I wasn't good enough for him," Harley replied - yes, with her voice going all high-pitched and tight and just generally hard to get out, again.

"It means he was faced with a decision," Pam said. "Put in a modicum of effort to find out your perspective and talk about it, or crawl five miles up Toxic Masculinity hill to go moulder in stoic martyrdom."

Rubbing Harley's shoulder a little more firmly.

"I think his choice says more about him than about you, sweet pea."

"But what if he thinks he did?" Harley asked, with zero clarifying context, but maybe it wasn't all that hard to figure out.

"Talk to you and get your perspective?" Pam guessed. "I'd like to refer you back to how this guy sounds like he needs at least an army battalion's worth of therapy."

"He doesn't ask if he thinks he knows."

Somehow that was supposed to be a counter argument.

"Yeah," Pam said. "That sounds like part of his problem."

And she'd had such a good streak of liking people lately.

Harley just made another pitiful noise, and slumped a little further.

She'd be doing that a lot for a while.

Really, Pam's narrative had to emphasize, she had been through this so many times, and this Harley didn't seem noticeably better or worse than her Harley had been. Back in the day.

So she remained as she was, in as gentle a-- was it a cuddle? A comforting posture? --position as she could manage without doing anything that felt like crossing boundaries.

Edited 2025-07-31 06:47 (UTC)

Harley gave into another soft sobbing jag for a while.

When it subsided again, she mumbled, showing where her thoughts had gone back to just now, "I guess he doesn't respect a good pinkie swear."

Pam huffed softly. "What did you pinkie-swear?"

Harley's voice went about the smallest and quietest it had been at any point.

"To be a team."

It hurt to say. Of course it did.

And a sigh. "That's one of those promises that always sounds nice in theory."

Though at least she and Harley had always been that, more or less. Long before they ever got together.

Always?

Must've been nice.

"It did," Harley admitted. One of her hands was fidgeting with the edge of one of the blankets. "And I think it was even true?" Her voice caught, right there, just a little. "For a while."

It had gotten them both through some very dark times. There was that.

Pam was going to regret asking, but-- "When did it stop?"

"I don't know."

Harley's hand curled into a fist, bunching up a bit of the blanket within it.

"Everything went to shit so fast. But maybe I just hadn't -- noticed it happening."

Well. Pam didn't necessarily have a reassuring answer to that, so she just hummed sympathetically.

"Yanno we fought some assholes together, one time?" Harley murmured, going quieter. "Beat the shit outta these guys for hassling the kid, they never even knew what hit 'em."

She shuddered, faintly.

"I miss that."

"It's always fun," Pam said. "Having back-up like that."

"Dunno if I ever had it quite like that before," Harley muttered, softly.

But she sounded like she was losing steam, again.

"Getting to fight for something good without a threat hanging over your head?" Pam guessed.

"Mmh?" Harley inquired, in a mumbly way, then shook her head. As much as she could, anyway, with her heavy lean against Pam's shoulder. "No. A partner."

"I meant together with someone else."

It wasn't, after all, exactly what fighting alongside the Joker had been, was it.

"Oh," Harley said, small again. "I guess."

She had an obscure Harley way of thinking about it, no surprise there.

Pam rubbed her shoulder with a firmer hand.

Her thoughts were drifting elsewhere, though, to a crappy old apartment somewhere in Gotham, Harley-her-Harley in her undies shoving ice cream into her mouth while Pam got ready for a shower, somewhere in that strange span of time before--

Well. Probably better not to wander too far down that sentimental path.

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totalwildcard - 2025-08-01 14:42 (UTC) - Expand