#disclaimer: i haven't read a harley comic in forever shes probably ooc

[zickmonkey]

Sympathy is Different from Pity - Black Canary & Harley Quinn (platonic)

Dinah takes a pregnancy test in secret and Harley finds out. Opening a conversation about Dinah's tendency to hide her pain from others. Mentions of Infertility, Miscarriages, and Stillbirth.

Fic itself below cut:

Dinah was home alone, she knew that. She'd been careful to make sure, checking every room, looking at the calendar to ensure everyone was accounted for. Even Sin wasn't set to be home again until that night.

So she took her time, she took up space. She let herself feel every feeling no matter how long it took, and she set up shop in the main kitchen.

Some small part of her always felt guilty for doing this without Ollie, but she also knew it was so much better for him that she did.

She'd been on the stairs when she heard the front door open, making her pause, and go over every arrangement she'd read on the calendar- Ollie was in Queen Industries meetings all day, Roy had taken Lian to Gotham to see Jason, Connor and Mia were on a road trip across America to protest how tight of a leash she and Ollie kept on them (Something they'd announced and heard no arguments about, proving that the leash was, in fact, quite loose).

Dinah had proved to herself again that she had prepared, she had planned, and no one else should be home.

If she had been doing anything else her first thought probably would've been to be on alert, to check for someone dumb enough to attempt a break in and robbery in broad day light. But instead it was what she'd left on the kitchen Island. What she'd looked at and then immediately walked away from.

She continued down the stairs, trying to stay quiet. Not to sneak up on them, but to put the cards into her hand, so she could start the conversation she'd be forced to have.

She was, in all honesty, expecting her husband. Moreso, her husband in one of his moods, ranting about how awful everyone on the board is, about how boring the meetings were. Carefully taking off his thousand dollar suit jacket before he just threw it on the floor for hired help or her to pick up later. Slipping off loafers that cost more than her monthly rent on her apartment in Gotham.

She was not expecting the two toned hair and white skin of Harley Quinn, looking in her fridge and checking expiration dates on the pudding Dinah didn't even remember buying but was probably for Sin or Lian.

"Harley, what're you doing here?"

She didn't even move her head from the fridge to look back. "You're pregnant?"

"No. Harley, what're you doing here?"

"Then what's the test on the counter?"

"Harley what're you doing here?"

"I was lonely. I thought you mighta missed me. I missed you. Should I have knocked?"

"Ideally."

Harley had finally stepped away from the fridge, though not without a pudding cup in her hand. "If it's not yours what's with the test? Aren't you the only girl who lives here?"

"No."

"So it's someone elses?"

"No."

"Oh? OH- did I interrupt something big with you and the mister- did you have something big planned? Is that why it was so quiet?!"

"No. Harley-"

"You can talk to me," Harley sat herself down onto the nearest stool, quickly crossing her legs and clasping her hands on top, tilting her head. "I am a psychiatrist you know."

"I'm fairly confident your license has been revoked."

"Come on, D.D. tell Dr. Quinzel what's up."

"I don't like to talk about it," Dinah had come all the way into the kitchen, carefully reaching for the test she'd so carelessly left in the open when she was sure it would be safe.

She'd seen the two lines when she'd first checked, they were strong ones, too. The strongest she'd ever gotten.

But still, it was the answer she didn't want. That she never wanted but had gotten so many times.

"Then it sounds like you should." Harley had put her pudding cup on the counter beside her, her attention completely and wholly on Dinah, enough that it made her want to be honest.

It helped that somehow Harley was both a friend she could confide in, and someone she barely spoke to. It was like talking to no one but also talking to her bestfriend all at once.

"Are you worried about telling Oliver?"

"No. I don't plan on telling him at all."

"Do you not want to keep it?"

"I do."

"Then why wouldn't you tell him? Won't he find out?"

"No." Dinah sighed, Harley was, somehow, good at this. She walked around her to take the stool beside her, placing the test back on the counter- too close to the pudding for her liking, but she was sure Harley didn't care.

"It never lasts." She said. "There's no use in telling him."

"What if this one does?"

"It won't. Look- we wanted kids, he did. The first couple times I did tell him, and we were excited, but it's ended the same way every time. I haven't told him the last few times."

"How many times?" Harley's eyes were wide, looking at every detail on Dinah's face that remained impressively passive.

"Three, that he knew about. This will make eight, all together."

"And you just go through it alone?"

"He'd get excited, and then he'd get hurt. So yes, I do. I know that no matter what the test says there won't be a baby, it doesn't hurt, anymore."

Harley was quiet, just looking at her.

"Yes it does." She finally said. "You want this baby?"

"But I won't have it. There are other options- I mean we have Roy, Connor-"

"But they're not yours. You didn't get to raise them, you just love them."

"I have Sin." Dinah said.

"You're allowed to be hurt," Harley, to her surprise, was remaining completely professional. She'd left the pudding on the counter, instead of shovelling it into her mouth mid surprise-therapy session. "Women are usually told to just get over it. But that's not really realistic."

"I lost my ability to have kids years ago." She shrugged, trying to stand her ground that this was nothing to her, now.

"If you're sure you can't have a kid, that you can't have a viable pregnancy, why take a test at all?"

"Because I was late."

"Yeah," Even not holding the pudding itself Harley still held the spoon, waving it around like it was just an extension of her hand. Pointing with it. "But if you were completely confident that you would miscarry, why would you need to know that there was a baby at all? One day you'd wake up, and you'd be bleeding, and you could keep going."

"Not necessarily-" Dinah wasn't complete sure why she was arguing, why she was having this conversation at all. Harley with her blue eyes so big in her head and waving around a spoon as she spoke.

"Because you could successfully carry a pregnancy to term? Because this could be the one?"

"No. Because I could miscarry later and need medical assistance to pass the fetus."

"Don't revert to medical terms to make you feel better." Harley clicked her tongue, wagged her finger, "you're hiding behind professional language."

She ignored what the clown said, at most rolling her eyes just slightly- she wondered if that would make her correct her too. Now she was hiding behind childish behaviours, acting like a teenager who hadn't learned how to deal with the hard feelings yet.

"Or I could have a late term miscarriage- a stillbirth, technically."

"Has that happened?" Harley cocked her head, somehow completely focused on her throughout all of their conversation.

"The longest I've carried a pregnancy was 26 weeks and then there was no heart beat. It was my fifth."

"So Ollie knew?"

"Oliver knew. After the first two I decided to stop telling him, but with that one it was two weeks. And then three. I told him when I was 14 weeks. I pretended like it was a shock to me and I had just found out, but really I was only telling him because I was worried I'd start to show."

"Dinah, tell him about this one."

"No." She shook her head. "I've already told one more person than I wanted to."

"You really tell no one? Not your own husband, what about Barbara?"

"I don't want to be pitied."

"It's not pity." Harley answered. "it's sympathy. Because this sucks ass and you don't deserve to do it alone."

"I'd rather no one know. I'd rather just lose the baby and move on."

"The one you lost at 26 weeks, was it a boy or a girl?"

"Girl." Dinah answered immediately and wished she hadn't.

She'd been arguing so hard that the losses didn't matter, that she just moved on. But that answer was too readily available to her to not matter.

"What did you name her?"

"I didn't-"

"I know you did, Dinah. What did you name her?"

"Dinah. After my mother. To be- to be honest I don't know. I knew Dinah would be in there, but we thought we had more time. We were discussing other options- Drake, maybe. Or- or Dinah as a middle name. But we ran out of time. So her name never got farther than Dinah."

"Do you and Ollie talk about her?"

"No."

"Maybe you should."

"No." Dinah shook her head. "He doesn't like to. It's hard."

"That's the point, D.D."

"Can our appointment be over? Can you just eat your pudding?"