#opposite. harleen quinzel. crimeloyalty.

[godblooded]

“  i can’t make you trust me. but i’m gonna stick around long enough for you to realize you can.  ”

it’s incredibly ballsy of @crimeloyalty to assume i can even play with the idea of trust again. but she’s ballsy and i have to give her that. i keep seeing it like i’m dead somehow, and whether i believe it or not, it won’t go away. it’s just fucking burned into my memory like the outline of a five alarm fire’s ruins.

the worst part is the longer i look at her, the more i realize she’s not bullshitting me. she means what she says when she says she wants me to trust her. it makes me want to chew all the skin off my lip just to spite my face. the second i might be something significant the only feeling i’m dying for is to disappear. it shoots all the way through me every time i look around these walls. i’m living on the quinzel estate with her and bruce wayne and my kid loves them both. that puts me in a position to shut up. that makes me want to not take a total torch to everything.

as per, holls is the only reason i won’t implode.

“ trust is like love ; it’s for children. ”

it is. it’s childish. it’s adolescent. thinking you can put your faith in someone else is like delivering yourself into your worst enemy’s hands when you know it’s a trap. the only thing trust can manage to do is turn into a knife that you jab between your own ribs. if you want to die, you might as well do it from the front. as a thief, backstabbing is so expected. i’m bored of it.

“ i’m glad outside the suit you’re capable of big girl sentences. ”

i’m so used to the bat’s two word answers and the way he looks at you instead of saying a word.

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty (x)

i have this problem where i keep finding myself back in the same place over and over again. i have this problem where i’m constantly accidentally attached to a giant bat. i have this issue where i don’t know how i find him, don’t know how he finds me, but it never stops happening. and then we find each other, and sometimes we both have this problem where we can’t seem to get away from each other.

( he’s my big mistake. the kind of thing you don’t risk. the kind of thing a cat doesn’t risk. i can’t afford to go soft but i can’t do anything in his hands except fall apart and i let him know that as deep and hard and sharp as i can. )

i want to call him a coward afraid of my claws. i want to leave a million red fucking paintings across his back. i want to maul him into an artpiece i can’t stand until his blood’s drying and sticky in the creases of my palms. i want to do anything but what i know i do, which is go to pieces the second his stupid fucking mouth attaches to my neck. he’s the worst decision i’ve ever made. he’s a bad choice i keep choosing and i’m choosing it again.

i’m selfish. go fuck yourself.

“ sure. i’ll get us tickets to a movie while i’m at it. ”

i have no room to be biting or snarking at him. i’m not in a position as much as i could be, and handing the reins over to the bat feels equal parts relieving and incredibly idiotic. jeans or a dress. yeah. i’ll make sure to get an afternoon res at brasserie. we’ll share dessert brought by waiters overly obsessed about how much we like each other, and there’ll be some bullshit la vie en rose street performer down the block conveniently playing just for us. and i’ll wear a dress or jeans.

( i can only just barely breathe when i straddle his knee and he’s good enough to keep me level, but i’m expert enough to keep myself steady. it’s not a thing i think about when i do it -- learning to lean exactly the right way to accommodate every shift. it’s enough to pang between my legs and kill me for a second, but i love bad decisions, and i’m happily carrying out as many as i want, and this one could be so much worse. i know how to move two ways: the way i do, and the way he gets me to. )

he’s too close. he’s so close. i obsessively think about how close, about his mouth too near all those unpretty little marks, and i think about how he’ll hopefully never ask, never question, never breathe a word about it. i can feel his fingers on the back of my neck where there’s almost a crater of scar tissue under my hair, an indent about the size of a fat, burning cigar. i’m too dizzy to even think about anything once he kisses me and i’m angry with myself for the way my thoughts just scatter. i’m angry with myself for going blind, and his mouth is covered in smudges of bright red. i have to hold on tighter or i think i’ll faint.

he brushes against me and i gasp into his stupid mouth. it’s cold and i don’t care. there are worse things i could be doing than deciding to let batman fuck me on a roof until i undoubtedly puncture suit and have to remind myself how to apply pressure before i accidentally perform surgery on him. it takes semi lucidity to realize how far i get before i almost really hurt. i hate the fact that i stop myself, because the only thing i want other than crying out hard against his neck is to dig into him and keep going until i black out.

i black out, but mostly because i can’t stop gripping so tight, mostly because my fingers ache where they’re bending. my knuckles crack so loudly i hear it in my ears but i think it’s just me. it takes me a second to even realize he’s the only thing i can taste and i’m chasing his movement to loop my arms around his neck and melt into him. my skin looks like i’ve been in a war with a vacuum cleaner. there’s one mark in the hollow of my throat that feels like a bee sting when i swallow. i blink behind the mask, try to remind myself how to breathe. batmobile. i kiss him, this time, something like i mean it and i need it to be clear just how much. i bite down hard enough to taste metal and i’m all the more fucked for it.

“ carry me. i shouldn’t have to walk. ”

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty (x)

you saw it as an opportunity. i want to laugh until there's no air left in the world for either of us to breathe. just like him to say some bullshit like that. stepped up when no one else would. i want to ask him if he thinks anybody even can. if his pointy ears are so far up his own ass they're going to rupture his colon -- or if they have and it's why he's suddenly so stupid. i think about the way his neck would sound if i snapped it in my hands like a toothpick or if that thickfuckingnecked halloween mask would manage to stop me. goalies in ice hockey have neck protectors to prevent having their throats opened -- i'm going to figure the suit has the same mechanisms.

he makes my hands itch. under my gloves, my hands itch. my whole body is too awake. i'm suddenly on a rooftop in the middle of gotham about to dismantle the caped crusader with my own claws.

so i do.

it's a flash out enough to rake across a cheek, to push myself back against a wall enough to swallow blood and fear. i need to regroup for a second. now i can imagine the sound my own neck makes when it snaps and the bat kicks my body off the side and into the white castle dumpster never to be seen again. now i can imagine nothing but those eyes and struggling to breathe until a hand can finally let me go and all my bones drop in a pile on the concrete. i can't breathe, suddenly, all on my own, and i'll passionately hate myself later for brushing the side of my neck with my fingers like i'm bothered, like he's upset me. i think about dying so fast i think my eyes sting.

" don't fucking touch me. "

i don't have a threat to back it up. i don't have a creatively violent statement i can make. it's barely there and i hear my tone drop low enough that the sound of my own voice is there where it doesn't belong. when my back hits the wall, i breathe out, just once, hard, and i click my claws together. click click click.

[godblooded]

❝It can’t all be sorrow, can it?❞ 

“ no. it can’t be. it isn’t. ”

the explanation is simple, as fluid as a silken ribbon tied neatly ‘round the stems of an extravagant bouquet. i don’t need to extrapolate on why -- i like to hope she trusts me enough to believe my reasoning without needing ultimate clarification -- but i respect harleen far too much not to further explain my speech. i try to leave her in the dark as little as i can, even when the evening is too dark and i can barely breathe in this little refuge just outside all the rest of the wreckage eternal. i suppose gotham has adopted me, and i am grateful for it. i think that i am a very small percentage. 

@crimeloyalty​ is looking at me. i know because i can feel it without having to think about it. i could explain precisely where she’s peering, i could tell you most of what she’s thinking ; if you asked me to i wouldn’t. i just try to evade the lingering self-consciousness tightening the hinges of my terrible joints. 

momma always said home isn’t a place, if you’re real lucky, it’s a person. i understood it immediately. my brothers were the awning beneath which i could hide when it was too tempestuous. hannibal danced with me on a tuneless night in a red dress he bought for me at harper’s ferry. i loved him, i loved him, i loved him, and i am glad to have him lost to me. i loved him. it’s wrongful and revolting to see his name beside my brothers’, but the undeniable truth burns an acidic hole in my stomach. if i lie to myself, he succeeds in making me do something i don’t do -- accept a falsitude of my own accord. when one’s delusional, the few realities are invaluable. 

“that’s not how life works. it isn’t all sorrow. life is everything in life at once. you know those people -- the ones who collect clippings... national disasters, anomalous damages... -- of things like church collapses? i sometimes think that’s the most frightfully close to understanding humanity anyone ever is. sorrow is sorrow if sorrow is what you set in your sights, isn’t it? if it walks like a duck -- “

i wave a hand with my fingers rolling, etcetera, etcetera, and nod uselessly, and on, and on. quacks, is, etcetera. 

“ i didn’t understand true empathy for another living creature until i understood true pain as a human being. the two experiences were irreversibly intertwined. and i remember, always, the juxtaposition of the thing. how i could love something that had hurt me at the same time it had hurt me. one, and the other. sometimes sorrow feels bottomless. but the opposite of it is joy, isn’t it? so there has to be some of that either not far behind or always attainable. ”

i laugh, because i hope it will brush off all the things i just said and their blatant vulnerability. 

“ i don’t really know what i’m talking about. if i did, i would probably be better at the living thing. ”

[godblooded]

“ i wasn’t asking if you had a sweater. i was asking if one would be something you could use. ”

she doesn’t understand what i mean, and so i explain myself a bit more clearly. it’s rude of me not to offer, especially because they purposefully keep those stores ten degrees cooler on purpose and i don’t want her to be uncomfortable.

she follows me through tall, big halls that press in around us and stretch outwards into the nothing gotham night. when i open the wide, wide doors, a heavy push of my shoulders, it leads out into lights dimming quietly to life. my preferred car— the classic corvette, my first purchase of my own when i chose what to drive— is sleek and shiny and black and waiting for us both, pointed outward. i make sure to give her a wide berth as i move because i want her to stay safe, but i want her to know i know that. mostly, i want to hold the door open for her.

“ sweatshirt in the backseat. you’re welcome to it. ”

it’s a ‘ gotham wheels and tires ’ crewneck. their graphic design has improved throughout the years. it’s black on a much darker black.

i won’t close the door for her. i’m waiting for it. so that she can understand i’m not something insidious. not something waiting in the wings in the dark, dying to commit the worst atrocities a woman can imagine. i don’t know why she’s entertaining me. i’m not entertaining her.

no. i’m actually having a good time.

godblooded​⸻ 

“ being rich, tolerant, and tolerable is a phenomena i haven’t witnessed. ”

she leaves me and i’m cold where i was warm only a moment ago. the absence of her leaves the presence of sudden discomfort, the comfortably shared blanket losing its tension. it’s not taut, anymore, and i let it sink off my shoulders and bunch into a tremendous pile beneath where i was sat. it’s forgotten into the enshrouded dark of strange, strange spontaneity.

i don’t ordinarily assume my late nights might end up alongside harleen quinzel saying i’d be willing to go to walmart. surely, that’s disturbed. it’s possibly a little absurd even for me.

i walk down the wide, high ceiling’d halls and don’t feel the berth of it towering in on me. i stopped being a boy here long ago, and now there are no words for what i choose to Become. she keeps in my eyeline and i watch her, listening. she has a nice voice— i can map the cadence and pattern of its fluctuations. it’s almost comforting.

dr. harleen quinzel. if i remind myself it means i’m less likely to accidentally say the wrong thing. it’s a neuropathway carved anew into the crevices of a cranial cortex. i was serious when i said i admired her dedication.

“ but your situation got in the way of your graduating. so you finished your residency and went the extra mile, but didn’t get to reap the benefits. ”

‘situation’ is the only way I know how to put it. situation. because between us both i know that we’ve been reborn in ways that break you, but we’ve both broken to jagged weapons. we’ve both Become.

“ it’s downstairs. would you prefer the bike or the car? ”

by downstairs, i mean down a tight spiral staircase my shoulders barely manage to clear. they brush one another, all stuck.

“ you need a sweater. it’s supposed to be windchill-heavy. ”

i break off into the kitchen briefly, entering the yawning expanse to slide open a drawer and take from it a small note, tearing the adhesive free.

will be home soon. will bring breakfast.

-bruce

i know alfred finds my love of frozen waffles ‘disdainful’.

“ i’ll let you know. ”  if he’s tolerant and/or tolerable. i’m not sure yet,  but i think that he might be.  or else he’s just really fucking weird.  or else he’s trying to make me think that so he can lure me down to his basement and reenact any of a dozen horror movies.  i shouldn’t watch those,  by the way – they make me spiral,  every single time,  but i can’t stop. 

he mentions benefits,  and i want to laugh.  i want to tell him about the shortage of physicians in america,  especially in low-income communities.  i want to tell him how inaccessible psychiatrists like me are to the people who live in this city.  i want to tell him about burn-out.  and i really,  really want to tell him about arkham. about how none of the doctors there care anymore.  about how the only benefit to speak of is a state pension.  the salaries are so low there’s no chance of attracting doctors at the height of their careers.  only people who want to spend the rest of their days doing the barest of minimums. 

i’m digging my nails into my palms thinking about it.  it makes me angry.  i don’t understand how someone could become a doctor and then just give up.  it’s so deeply unfair. they took my license,  and i was just trying to help.  i know i fucked up,  but shouldn’t there be a penalty for everybody who stopped trying to help?

he asks me something,  but there’s something that i know i need to say,  i just can’t remember why.  i frown up at him,  wondering what it is about him that’s jarred me to think of arkham. 

“ i don’t have a sweater. ” 

but i’ll be fine.  i dress like this all the time and i haven’t died yet. 

“ so probably the car,  if we can keep the windows down. ”

bad experience with cars and water. always wear your seatbelt,  kids.  

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty​ asked :  i’ll cut you. ( bruce )

“ harleen! ”

my hands are up. she’s wild-eyed and lurching forward and snapping out, surging with whatever venom of the night she’s consumed. i try not to block her swings with my gauntlets alone; i know if she takes a shot too hard she’ll hurt her hand. i know that it can easily take a straightforward connection to shatter knuckles. 

and i know what she looks like when she’s panicking. when all she sees is red, whatever she may or may not be on in the moment. wherever she may be in the moment. 

the slash grazes my arm and i hear the fabric of the suit tear loudly, a trickle of blood compressed around the tight grip of titanium woven fiber. i duck another shot-- and grab her right at the end of the roof before her next swing pitches her over the edge. she winds up to strike again, and i prepare to take a full hit wherever she lands so i can use her momentum to tug her back to safety, to the cold purchase of the concrete beneath us. the wind whips loudly off the river. i prepare to make a fulcrum of us both before her own mania makes her little more than another chalk outline left in an alley. my heart races at the sight in my mind.

“ harleen, calm down! ”

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty (x)

bullshit. selina thinks love is bullshit. she can’t feel it, anyway. she’s fucked up. she’s fucked up in a way no one can touch. she’s fucked up how only the monstrous can be fucked up. she can’t be repaired, only cracked further, only split and saved by the fact that it’s not down the center.

selina’s like a tree that’s been struck by lightning too many times. it’s improbable, but it’s ultimately happened, and now her skin is all veins and the gummy, bloody red blood makes when it coagulates. blood pours in on every single side of her life and she drowns in it, but sometimes that red is the same shade as harls’ lipstick. that red sometimes isn’t bloody, isn’t painful.

“ harls— “ there’s no protest in the cat’s voice and there’s no protest in those brown eyes of hers. brown eyes she can’t stand; brown eyes she wishes didn’t so openly convey how harls turns her into something molten in her hands. how the second fingers tangle in thick, unruly chestnut hair selina is rendered helpless.

there’s a pain that develops in the dark of a soul. it culminates and blooms like a flower the ugliest shade of a bruise. deep, deep purple in shadow. it’s the kind of thing that cannot bloom outside the dark of its own cave, and a single touch to petals can make such a fragile creation quiver. selina knows that pain, the development of such an insidious desperation. she knows that agony and knows, worse, the way it wilts when touched. the way she does.

“ you’re playing with fire. ” says selina, right before she briefly— almost closes that distance again, lingering with just a touch of a nose to harls’. with just what harls has incited, and now what selina aches not to give into. she’s not good for harley. she’s not a good person. but she doesn’t want to admit that to herself right now. that she’s not a good person. “ and you’re— a little shithoused, harls. ”

her eyes drop to those red lips again, and selina grasps the front of harls’ shirt. everything inside her never stops screaming, and right now every torrential thought swings hard toward harley.

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty asked :  let me take care of you. just once, need me. ( alana )   ​

how misery sneaks up on her and whispers into her ears until the world fades to a greyscale, how simple it is for it all to just... break. how one day, everything will shatter, and nothing will ever make sense again. alana wishes she could open pandora’s box and it would be so careful harleen need only understand the feeling, blind to the trauma it would inflict. but she can’t ever share that. 

the good doctor stared into the abyss and it did not stare back, but it reached into her body and pulled her into its cavern and now she’s in the in-between for the rest of her life. everything reeks of death. 

the stale stench of cheap beer hangs in the air and the baltimore night is muggy, a thick soup of humidity. every inhale calcifies in her lungs, and her vision rolls hard like she’s in a dryer and it’s been turned on high. she’s going to be sick, she knows. she can’t drink anymore. when she’s unfortunately forced to guzzle the lowest alcohol content there is, it takes much more than she would like. cans of pabst blue ribbon rattle in her head, tin clanging. 

there’s some kind of shameful disgust she feels at herself, running back to old habits with her tail tucked between her legs. and when the old desire to instigate had burnt out, the embers left were just the ashes of total shame. embarrassment. and from there, it became easier to take an alternate route.

abigail’s body stares at her from around every corner. she wants to go to the cemetery. she needs to go to the cemetery. but she can’t bring herself to do it. now she’s at a roadside truck-stop bar, completely flattened off horrible alcohol. if it can be called that. 

making it halfway there was as far as she could manage. the gps 4.6 miles taunted her when she swore, kicked the door open, and wrenched the keys from the ignition. she’d been angry at herself, and she’s still angry with herself, except now she’s angrier. 

in the passenger’s seat is a bouquet of rosemary flowers. they’re vivacious purple. they mean remembrance, and petals scatter uselessly into the footwell. she hadn’t meant to half hurl the thing in her frustration. she feels guilty seeing it. harleen tosses it into the back as she helps alana in, like contorting a scarecrow in a finely tailored black suit that hangs like the ghost of who she once was. her head leans back, inclines, bright blue eyes opening and closing tiredly as the desire to succumb to drifting overtakes. her cheek meets the leather of her own seat and it feels achingly hot. 

“ always need you. ”

she would say it sober, too. but in this moment it’s in beer veritas. her hand darts out to grasp harleen’s, like in this moment it is urgent that she touch. it’s urgent that she keep harleen from moving before she makes it clear. 

“ harls. always. ”

[godblooded]

@crimeloyalty (x)

selina’ll never deny harls that request. she won’t because she knows for harls that one gesture is the world, and for selina it can be natural. for selina, it’s become something that no longer feels weird. it feels commonplace. everything else sends her alarms absolutely screaming, but she recognizes the earnest gesture harls makes. — harls doesn’t ask to hold hands when she’s being a prick. a cynical fh of a puff comes out of her nose. the cat hates laughter. it’s terrible. she hears it come out of her mouth in the way she does when she thinks something just— hurts and she can’t explain it any other way. laughter has only ever meant hurt.

“ you know what i think about, harls? ”

she’s controlling her voice. harls can tell that she’s absolutely restraining the urge to just fly to the idea of hissing predator, trash this, and get the fuck out. and even that’s something that’s about to add to the disgusting things she’s about to admit.

( bruce’s precious little doctor with those sinatra blue eyes says her shit isn’t her fault. so she tells her to go fuck herself and worry about her own problems. free advice, the therapist shrugged. selina had told her to go shrink someone else’s head because hers had already been used for an occult ritual and turned on a heel. your hair is too big for that!! alana shouted. and over her shoulder the cat lobbed and your eyeliner makes you look like a fucking raccoon! )

she sneaks her grip into harls’ the same way she has a thousand times before. few people are allowed to get close to the cat. harls is on a very short list— and what she’s saying means that she wants to stay on it. she’s honestly straight up fucking admitting to shit she’s done wrong. and so selina will respond in the same way.

“ how if i bent my fingers just right i could break your wrist. how this close i could snap your neck— with my legs or with my hands. if you’d tried to shut my ass up that while back in my flat, i would’ve bit your finger clean off. if my bagel is cream cheese instead of butter, i imagine how hard i’d have to hurl it at the guy to give him a fatal concussion. and it’s — i mean it’s more lucid than anything fucking should be, let me put it that way. but it’s always been this way. always. ever since i was a kid. ”

when she shrugs, the both of them do, being the loose handhold.

“ harls, hate to break, but you’re discovering your own fucking flaws. and that’s what’s going on. you’re finding all the bad parts of you now that you’re not crushed under some stupid prick’s size fifty shoe. but you’re just giving the fuck in to them instead of blowing a whistle. yeah. you wanna fuck me. it’s not a secret. but instead of the way you would’ve done it— like this— you did— that. but the difference is still you. i don’t know how to help you get that. but i don’t even have a ged so keep in mind everything i’m saying is just talking out of my own ass. or watching a lot of dr. phil. — which wouldn’t teach me anything, really. but i listen when you talk, too. ”

her knife-heeled boot is jiggling at the knee a couple miles a minute and she’s looking up at the big, glowing screen. hellcat had told her about movie guy and she’d been delighted when a dude with a projector started playing rear window on the side of a peeling toys r us billboard way up on 182nd. it’s a good night for a calm time with harls where they can both be themselves with each other. even if selina is never not herself. harls could use the break from her own stress, and they’re both climbers.

if she shattered her leg she’d be so fucked, oh my god. sorry, movie.

“ we’re fucked up. we’re gonna do fucked up things to each other. do we know how to be any other way? ”

she flicks her hair out of her face. wiggles a little closer as the black and white plays across her face, and selina’s lips are ruby red. her eyes are the least soothing brown there’s ever been. no teddy bear here, no doe eyes. a kind of brown like flint. she won’t look, either. she’s too afraid to witness harls’ disgust with her firsthand. too frightened to see her disappointment or honest to god fear. her grip is loose— allows easy escape on purpose.

“ i don’t give a flying rat’s dying shit if you hurt me. you almost hurt holls. I draw a line there. she’s my kid. if i don’t think about her first who the fuck is going to? ”

that’s my kid.

[godblooded]

“ why the fuck do you think i care about your so— “

my voice falls away. shit.

“ —rry. ”

harleen fucking quinzel. my throat’s closing. it’s getting hard to breathe. and i immediately feel my hand hitch at the whip attached to my hip, groping blindly to unfurl it. it snaps like thunder and i’m half bent, poised to take him out. if i can’t open his throat i’ll close it.

i can’t breathe.

i don’t remember when i drop the whip. i don’t even feel it. it takes seconds for me to realize i’ve made that mistake. it takes me only brief minutes to know that i could be dead and holls could be alone and it’ll all be because my dumb ass wanted to fuck harleen quinzel. i can’t understand what i’m looking at. when your brain can’t make something make sense, it puts in there, desperately, the thing that’s closest to what you can grab. but what i’m seeing doesn’t change, and there haven’t been any poisoned darts, and i didn’t eat anything, drink anything recently enough to fuck me up. i’m honestly just staring at blonde harleen quinzel in layers of titanium woven kevlar and a cape. her blood’s so red on her mouth. my head hurts. her blood’s so red on her mouth. there’s a black mist that just seeps into all my thoughts. her blood’s so red on her mouth. i don’t know what i’m feeling but if i gave it a name i would be lying to anyone looking at this ; i don’t have any fucking idea what kind of backflip-emotion this is.

my claws itch. click click click. that’s the same noise as the plink plink plink ping steel heels make on the floor, a little quicker. rapid. if i keep looking something will sort of focus itself in my vision and i’ll be able to know what i’m looking at. it’ll stop the way my heart feels like it’s going to explode and leave my insides mangled.

i forget where the whip is completely. I can say now that it was stupid, reckless, and extremely dangerous. if it had been dangerous, that’s a pocket of three seconds too long it would take to re-arm myself. she could’ve pulled me apart, made one blow solid enough to cave my skull. my claws itch my own palms, barely brushing but only enough i can feel it.

i decide if i can’t breathe that god can fuck itself and i’ll do with that what i want. she tastes like rolling a coin around in your mouth just to stay conscious. yeah, if i put my hands on her, i would’ve just reached under her breastbone and jabbed hard, but I don’t do that. I want to, but i don’t. if my claws are somewhere, i don’t know where.

she’s fucking horrible. ( i don’t know what love is. ) this is the thing i never imagined but the only thing that’s ironic enough to be true. ( i only know how to hurt things. ) trying to comprehend it stops making sense, so i give in to giving up. ( i wish i didn’t want to hurt her. ) i hate the way she tastes. ( i love her gorgeous goddamn mouth. )

fuck words.

kick my body over the side into the dumpster behind the white castle.

@crimeloyalty (x)

you saw it as an opportunity. i want to laugh until there's no air left in the world for either of us to breathe. just like him to say some bullshit like that. stepped up when no one else would. i want to ask him if he thinks anybody even can. if his pointy ears are so far up his own ass they're going to rupture his colon -- or if they have and it's why he's suddenly so stupid. i think about the way his neck would sound if i snapped it in my hands like a toothpick or if that thickfuckingnecked halloween mask would manage to stop me. goalies in ice hockey have neck protectors to prevent having their throats opened -- i'm going to figure the suit has the same mechanisms.

he makes my hands itch. under my gloves, my hands itch. my whole body is too awake. i'm suddenly on a rooftop in the middle of gotham about to dismantle the caped crusader with my own claws.

so i do.

it's a flash out enough to rake across a cheek, to push myself back against a wall enough to swallow blood and fear. i need to regroup for a second. now i can imagine the sound my own neck makes when it snaps and the bat kicks my body off the side and into the white castle dumpster never to be seen again. now i can imagine nothing but those eyes and struggling to breathe until a hand can finally let me go and all my bones drop in a pile on the concrete. i can't breathe, suddenly, all on my own, and i'll passionately hate myself later for brushing the side of my neck with my fingers like i'm bothered, like he's upset me. i think about dying so fast i think my eyes sting.

" don't fucking touch me. "

i don't have a threat to back it up. i don't have a creatively violent statement i can make. it's barely there and i hear my tone drop low enough that the sound of my own voice is there where it doesn't belong. when my back hits the wall, i breathe out, just once, hard, and i click my claws together. click click click.

[godblooded]

does she know what a therapist she still is?

she elbows me so slightly and i wince just a little— closeness and closeness and closeness furthering itself, the gap closing. at this range i’m too visible, but i keep the closeness because she keeps it, too, and we mutually agree on it without words. it doesn’t have to be brought up. some things aren’t needed. i keep that little skitter of a breath to a minimum.

the one thing i can’t hide from my nocturnal outings are injuries. they carry over whether i want them to or not, but no one is around me consistently. no one notices if i disappear for a few weeks or days. there isn’t anyone to notice. the unforgiving purples and jaundiced yellows of bruising carry over night after night. they beat sometimes from my skin like something demanding to be heard.

most say the identity is for the sake of others, but i feel it’s for the sake of myself. because it’s a heavy curtain between myself and the bat, and as long as that’s true, no one has to know me. the bat can exist and i can exist. i can avoid every sensitivity someone has to say about whether i’m alright or not. i answer to no one but myself.

“ i took a handful of online courses. business. ”

a few of them. i hated all of them. it felt pointless in its rigidity and useless in its messages. there’s an element to being bruce wayne that consistently reminds me i’ll receive favorable treatment. that leaves an acidic taste in my throat at the thought. special treatment is frustrating to me.

i don’t tell her my stint in school as a child ended in bloody noses and black eyes. sometimes mine, but mostly others. i don’t mention the jeering children who giggled orphan at me. i don’t bring up a thing about the little boy who called my mother crazy and ended up pinned beneath my knees, my fists a flurry until i was dragged away from a little boy whose features i almost rendered unrecognizable. i was ten years old.

“ no. i have heard they don’t sell walls. ”

it’s another joke. or whatever is the first thought that hits me. i say it because it seems like the right thing to say in the moment. i haven’t been inside. wal-mart. i don’t like such tremendous, open spaces, packed to the brim with people. sardines in a can threatening to burst.

i realize this makes me feel comfortable. i realize this is the most comfortable i’ve felt in a very long time. so i only adjust a little so she can be more comfortable, still careful. she’s right.

my furniture is horrible.

“ i could lend you a car. ”

i can’t understand what possesses me to joke.

godblooded​⸻ 

“ i didn’t go to college.”

the statement will surprise her, because it surprises most people when i say it. i don’t say it often, because it’s either something exhaustingly judgmental or awkward. as though no one can imagine that i haven’t funneled money into the void of institutionalized education willfully just for a doctorate or a graduate degree. i respect those with the patience for doctorates; i respect harley just for having that kind of focus.

there has never been enough reading i can do; there has never been enough writing i can do; i think there won’t ever be enough learning i can do. my desire to understand anything i can is a thing that’s both voracious and insatiable.

i remember one thing very clearly: my father operating on carmine falcone on our long, heavy mahogany table. i remember looking down and peering quietly so no one could see me. i remember my hands grasping the banister, my knuckles white, my eyes tremendous. i remember seeing all the ways human organs and parts come together to make a person and being amazed at the possibility. it was almost incredible to learn that inside of anyone— of me— were all those writhing snakes of intestine. the way a human heart could still beat in a wide open chest.

when my parents asked me if i was scared, i asked them why.

“ there is. ”

i agree, and ridiculously let her drag me toward my own outdoor furniture. she’s completely right: to anyone, it must seem like i’m a hapless, weak man. it must look to the outside world like if the wind blew too strongly i would be on the concrete with my head split open. shiny and slick and the proper end to bruce wayne, too fragile to live.

i sit next to her, anyway, having to awkwardly settle back against the cushion. my knees come up too high, and i still have a few tender bruises leftover from nights before. i try not to wince when i sit back against flimsy plush and wrought iron. i’m never outside. all of this is decorative; just another way to for everyone to turn their heads from my direction. it’s too dark for fading bruises to be visible, and it matters less when i can wrap myself in the other portion of this blanket, huge handfuls of it just pooling and spilling in my lap. it’s much too big for just two people.

she doesn’t know. i keep telling it to myself. she doesn’t know. she doesn’t know.

“ — most would ask why you haven’t robbed me yet. so, there’s something wrong with both of us. ”

it’s a quiet, joking statement i tug back a small smile to make clear at the corner of my mouth. i don’t know if i can joke, and it doesn’t tend to go over well when i do. but for once i feel compelled to talk.

“ oh. why? ”  as soon as i ask it,  i realize i know why.  no parents.  he probably thinks it’s more complicated than that,  but i’d bet that’s at the heart of it.  not that my dad encouraged me to go to school – but i did go to get away from him.  i knew it would be the only way i could get away.  

he sits,  and i tip my head back,  looking up at the stars.  it’s a little easier to see them from here – it’s impossible when you’re down on the streets.  i’m trying to remember the last time j just sat with me,  but i can’t.  it’s like he doesn’t want to be near me at all anymore.  i don’t understand what i’ve done wrong.  why he doesn’t love me anymore.  it must be me that’s the problem. 

“ your furniture sucks, ”  i point out.  i can tell he doesn’t sit out here much – i can’t imagine being comfortable here for more than a few minutes,  and i end up kind of leaning against him to stop the hard back of the chair from pressing into the bruises j left on me.  i hope he doesn’t mind,  figure if he did,  he wouldn’t be sitting here to begin with.  there were other chairs.  i’m sure he has other blankets. “ you need a hammock.  way more comfy. they sell them in the outdoor section at walmart.  have you ever been inside a walmart? ”

he probably hasn’t.  i haven’t been a lot,  either,  but that’s mostly because i’ve never had a car,  so gotham’s suburbs are pretty off limits to me.  i bought pretty much everything from the dollar store on crime alley when i was growing up,  and now i just order shit on amazon. 

“ hey. ”  i elbow him ever so gently in the ribs,  regretting it immediately.  we’re still not familiar enough for me to act like this,  and now i’m petrified ( frozen ) that he’s going to take it as a threat.  “ well,  for one,  i don’t have a car,  so most of your shit’s off limits.  for two,  what would i do with any of this shit?  i’m not a dragon.  i don’t have a lair full of treasure. ”  that is a good idea,  though.  gonna have to pitch that one to mr. j.  i’m sure he’ll oblige. 

[godblooded]

“ i didn’t go to college.”

the statement will surprise her, because it surprises most people when i say it. i don’t say it often, because it’s either something exhaustingly judgmental or awkward. as though no one can imagine that i haven’t funneled money into the void of institutionalized education willfully just for a doctorate or a graduate degree. i respect those with the patience for doctorates; i respect harley just for having that kind of focus.

there has never been enough reading i can do; there has never been enough writing i can do; i think there won’t ever be enough learning i can do. my desire to understand anything i can is a thing that’s both voracious and insatiable.

i remember one thing very clearly: my father operating on carmine falcone on our long, heavy mahogany table. i remember looking down and peering quietly so no one could see me. i remember my hands grasping the banister, my knuckles white, my eyes tremendous. i remember seeing all the ways human organs and parts come together to make a person and being amazed at the possibility. it was almost incredible to learn that inside of anyone— of me— were all those writhing snakes of intestine. the way a human heart could still beat in a wide open chest.

when my parents asked me if i was scared, i asked them why.

“ there is. ”

i agree, and ridiculously let her drag me toward my own outdoor furniture. she’s completely right: to anyone, it must seem like i’m a hapless, weak man. it must look to the outside world like if the wind blew too strongly i would be on the concrete with my head split open. shiny and slick and the proper end to bruce wayne, too fragile to live.

i sit next to her, anyway, having to awkwardly settle back against the cushion. my knees come up too high, and i still have a few tender bruises leftover from nights before. i try not to wince when i sit back against flimsy plush and wrought iron. i’m never outside. all of this is decorative; just another way to for everyone to turn their heads from my direction. it’s too dark for fading bruises to be visible, and it matters less when i can wrap myself in the other portion of this blanket, huge handfuls of it just pooling and spilling in my lap. it’s much too big for just two people.

she doesn’t know. i keep telling it to myself. she doesn’t know. she doesn’t know.

“ — most would ask why you haven’t robbed me yet. so, there’s something wrong with both of us. ”

it’s a quiet, joking statement i tug back a small smile to make clear at the corner of my mouth. i don’t know if i can joke, and it doesn’t tend to go over well when i do. but for once i feel compelled to talk.

godblooded​⸻ 

“ –then there’s no need for police. ” 

she doesn’t even want to hurt me. i don’t know the definition of the word ‘hurt’ anymore. there’s a numb emptiness where once was pain. a shotgun bullet exploding to the chest is more like nothing but a buzz of sensation. my head bouncing off the ground only ends in black and begins again in white. but she doesn’t know that. 

i think she doesn’t know that. she seems like i’m nothing but bruce wayne; someone she thinks of as a helpless billionaire too waifish and tender to take a shotgun bullet or a raging concussion. she thinks i’m weak because my hands keep shaking and i don’t know how to stop them. she thinks i’m weak because the dark circles under my eyes are a hole the rest of me falls into. 

the french doors are wide open. they look like tall, tall windows, shiny brass handles that wink from the firelight inside. 

when she says she won’t hurt me i believe her. the bat and i are one in the same, even if some nights it feels like we’re completely separate. even if some mornings when i wake the night before is a whirl that’s dictated only by the shape of black bruises and red blood. where i have to trace the highways of wounds to discover the events of the night before. my words slashed down on a page, ink-blotted and clumsy and yet legible at once. my words are more reliable than my thoughts. 

“ no. ”

i don’t mean to sound so dismissive. but there’s something in me that’s an involuntary habit. i feel more here, now, the word easier for my mind to wrap around. if i can feel my vocal cords move, rub together to make that speech, i can stand a little more firmly in reality.

“ it would be rude of me. ”

she can snicker at the statement, but this is my home and she’s technically the guest here. familiar manners driven into me always surface, and i start moving before she can protest my actions. it says INDESTRUCTIBLE in a white strip down the back of my t-shirt, still visible despite the logo on the front. it looks like it hangs around me like a spectral shroud in some tiny way, baggy and loose around the collar, fraying. there’s a fat leather ottoman i kneel. there’s a blanket large enough for a california king-sized bed, royal blue, brushed to softness that’s feather-light. i hoist it awkwardly out of the space and bunch it up in my hands, tossing one end over a shoulder. 

(i almost trip on it stepping back outside, half paying attention, half drifting in the gossamer strangeness of insomnia.)

i hold out the other end of the blanket to her, offering it to share in its enormous expanse. the ottoman inside is still upturned, the cushion beside it. i know it’s ridiculous that i’m offering to share a blanket with harley quinn after finding her broken into my home. but i’ve been under much more severe (and much stranger) duress.

it feels like an olive branch.

something big and red and angry swells inside of me,  and i find myself digging my nails into the palms of my hands just so i don’t do anything else that might scare him.  and then i think about it for a second,  and i realize.  oh.  i’m not scared.  i feel protective for the first time since i took joker on as a patient.  bruce wayne has made himself wholly vulnerable to me.  i know i won’t hurt him,  but i can’t say the same for anyone else that’d break in here.  i want to take him by the shoulders and fucking shake him,  because he can’t trust me like this.  he can’t.  his survival instinct can’t be that lacking. 

i don’t shake him.  i just stand there on the balcony,  shivering,  waiting.  i can’t feel the cold,  but my body responds to it,  nonetheless.  i never used to dress like this – in college,  you could always find me in a t-shirt and leggings,  maybe bootcut jeans and a baggy sweater i got for $2 at the goodwill near campus.  in arkham – well.  nobody wants to show any skin in arkham. j’s changed a lot of things for me,  most of them bad,  but i don’t think i mind this one.  i’ve always been pretty,  but i’ve never known how to use it.  it always used to make me uncomfortable,  the way it was so easy for me to get what i wanted.  i’d never use my smile or my ass against anyone.  but j’s taught me that if they’re looking anyways,  i might as well take advantage of that – so i do. it’s probably stupid to not have on a jacket ( or pants ),  but what’s the worst thing that can happen?  frostbite,  organ failure?  it’s not that cold,  and there are worse ways to go. 

bruce comes back outside before i can continue down that morbid train of thought.  the blanket catches on his shoe ( or his shoe catches on the blanket ) and i step forward immediately,  as if i’m large enough to break his fall.  thankfully,  it doesn’t come to that,  and he offers me one side of the blanket.  i wrap myself up in it,  end up standing shoulder to shoulder with him.  after a moment,  i tug him towards the chairs on the other side of the balcony.  i balance on the arm of a chair,  pulling my knees up to my chest,  and wait for him to join me.  

“ there is something wrong with you, ”  i say,  even as i long to rest my head on his shoulder.  there’s something wrong with me,  too,  so it’s not a judgement,  just an observation.  i’m doing it again – the same thing i do when any man isn’t awful to me,  where i just want to get closer and closer until things eventually implode. i’m trying to stop doing that.  trying to see people as more than a way out. it’s weird,  though.  even i’m not normally this quick to cling.  maybe it’s our heightened emotions,  maybe it’s the fact that he just talked me down from a panic attack.  

“ i feel like i know you. did we go to college together? i feel like i’d remember that,  but … ”

[godblooded]

“ being rich, tolerant, and tolerable is a phenomena i haven’t witnessed. ”

she leaves me and i’m cold where i was warm only a moment ago. the absence of her leaves the presence of sudden discomfort, the comfortably shared blanket losing its tension. it’s not taut, anymore, and i let it sink off my shoulders and bunch into a tremendous pile beneath where i was sat. it’s forgotten into the enshrouded dark of strange, strange spontaneity.

i don’t ordinarily assume my late nights might end up alongside harleen quinzel saying i’d be willing to go to walmart. surely, that’s disturbed. it’s possibly a little absurd even for me.

i walk down the wide, high ceiling’d halls and don’t feel the berth of it towering in on me. i stopped being a boy here long ago, and now there are no words for what i choose to Become. she keeps in my eyeline and i watch her, listening. she has a nice voice— i can map the cadence and pattern of its fluctuations. it’s almost comforting.

dr. harleen quinzel. if i remind myself it means i’m less likely to accidentally say the wrong thing. it’s a neuropathway carved anew into the crevices of a cranial cortex. i was serious when i said i admired her dedication.

“ but your situation got in the way of your graduating. so you finished your residency and went the extra mile, but didn’t get to reap the benefits. ”

‘situation’ is the only way I know how to put it. situation. because between us both i know that we’ve been reborn in ways that break you, but we’ve both broken to jagged weapons. we’ve both Become.

“ it’s downstairs. would you prefer the bike or the car? ”

by downstairs, i mean down a tight spiral staircase my shoulders barely manage to clear. they brush one another, all stuck.

“ you need a sweater. it’s supposed to be windchill-heavy. ”

i break off into the kitchen briefly, entering the yawning expanse to slide open a drawer and take from it a small note, tearing the adhesive free.

will be home soon. will bring breakfast.

-bruce

i know alfred finds my love of frozen waffles ‘disdainful’.

godblooded​⸻ 

“ — are a lot more tolerable and tolerant than the rich are. ”

i can say that with confidence to it. no one knows it, not when i’m the element on the ground. the bat isn’t in the suit and it’s just a shadow, slinking in and out of alleys and bars, thrumming inside the heartbeat of the city. i’m impossible to find if i don’t want to be found, and if i want to be found, you’ll never get rid of me. i’ve spent weeks living on the streets and becoming a self i could never be. the version of me before that couldn’t survive, but i forced it to.

“ it’s all nepotism. no one is actually intelligent. if they are, they’re cunning. ”

intelligence and cunning are very different things. intelligence is the ability to put forth into the world a benefit from your mind. it’s meant to be used to help. i believe it should be. cunning is the slimy way the sludge of this city manages to squelch through the deepest depths and come up to the surface through the grates in every putrid sewer. cunning is the way that reporter was capable of slandering my mother without an ounce of thought about the person they were harming. the wealthy are cunning.

“ i admire your patience. doctorate. i considered it. i don’t have a bedside manner. ”

is that a joke or an honesty? it’s partial. it’s a joke and an honesty. ever since that night when i was young i felt the turnings of something inside me that longed to comprehend. surgery, maybe. but i lift my hand a little, slow and careful so she can see, and the tremor is too obvious to be anything but clear. my hands weren’t fit for that kind of delicacy. it’s another thing my parents’ killer took from me.

but it doesn’t matter who killed them, anymore. i looked into falcone’s eyes as he died, and with that everything i knew once died with him. if he had pulled the trigger, if he’d hired someone to pull the trigger. no difference, is what i learned in the end.

he was somehow responsible. and he’s dead now. i still find it hard not to chase ghosts.

i lower my hand back into my lap, lightly grip my pants to try to keep the tremble at bay. i know why i’m telling her all these things, and it’s because this is a sealed, encapsulated moment. this is a snow-globe where for once the snow she mentioned earlier doesn’t filthy to a decomposing brown.

“ — yes. i’ll drive. as long as it’s empty. ”

this, too, is an extension of trust. if she says it…. she doesn’t know who i am. this isn’t a trap. there’s no reason for her to try to lead me into one. if she wanted to extort money from me, i’ve made it more than clear she could ask and i’d cut a check. right now i’m only bruce wayne.

so i’ll agree.

“ i’d rather be rich than tolerable. ” i could’ve done a lot more good if i’d just had the money to fully fund my research.  if i hadn’t had to do my work on my own.  no point crying over it now,  but i do anyways. i lick my lips – they’re dry and i’m nervous – then look away. i don’t like talking about this. it’s the worst thing that j took from me. second worst.  he took my medical license,  too. “ i didn’t – finish my phd. that’s what i was working on when – that’s how i met – gotham u has this program where you get your phd while you’re doing your residency.  that’s what i was doing.  i finished my residency,  but not my phd.  i’m only half doctor quinzel.  i was only half. ”

i’m talking too much,  so i stand abruptly,  almost losing my balance because i’m so tangled in the blanket.  i get the weird feeling that bruce wayne would catch me if i did,  shaking hands and all.  i right myself just before i tumble into his lap,  clear my throat and twirl away until i’m free from the blanket.  then i jerk my head towards the door,  taking a few steps towards it before he’s even gotten up.  i don’t want him to change his mind,  because i don’t want this to end.  i don’t want to go back to feeling alone. 

“ it’ll be empty.  it’s late. ” i’ve got to reassure him so he takes me.  no other reason.  i certainly don’t look into his eyes and feel sorry for whatever i find there.  i tap my foot against the ground,  then,  because i’m incapable of shutting up,  admit that i was completely unprepared for tonight’s escapade. “ i don’t know where your garage is.  i gave up trying to find a floor plan for your house after i couldn’t find it on the first page of google. i could’ve pulled the plans from city hall,  but i didn’t want to go there,  so.  i don’t know where your garage is. ”

i wait for him to start walking,  then step to the side so he can get past me,  so i can follow him.  after a second,  i close the gap between us,  walk closer to his side so at least he can see me.  i don’t want to spook him now.

[godblooded]

“ — are a lot more tolerable and tolerant than the rich are. ”

i can say that with confidence to it. no one knows it, not when i’m the element on the ground. the bat isn’t in the suit and it’s just a shadow, slinking in and out of alleys and bars, thrumming inside the heartbeat of the city. i’m impossible to find if i don’t want to be found, and if i want to be found, you’ll never get rid of me. i’ve spent weeks living on the streets and becoming a self i could never be. the version of me before that couldn’t survive, but i forced it to.

“ it’s all nepotism. no one is actually intelligent. if they are, they’re cunning. ”

intelligence and cunning are very different things. intelligence is the ability to put forth into the world a benefit from your mind. it’s meant to be used to help. i believe it should be. cunning is the slimy way the sludge of this city manages to squelch through the deepest depths and come up to the surface through the grates in every putrid sewer. cunning is the way that reporter was capable of slandering my mother without an ounce of thought about the person they were harming. the wealthy are cunning.

“ i admire your patience. doctorate. i considered it. i don’t have a bedside manner. ”

is that a joke or an honesty? it’s partial. it’s a joke and an honesty. ever since that night when i was young i felt the turnings of something inside me that longed to comprehend. surgery, maybe. but i lift my hand a little, slow and careful so she can see, and the tremor is too obvious to be anything but clear. my hands weren’t fit for that kind of delicacy. it’s another thing my parents’ killer took from me.

but it doesn’t matter who killed them, anymore. i looked into falcone’s eyes as he died, and with that everything i knew once died with him. if he had pulled the trigger, if he’d hired someone to pull the trigger. no difference, is what i learned in the end.

he was somehow responsible. and he’s dead now. i still find it hard not to chase ghosts.

i lower my hand back into my lap, lightly grip my pants to try to keep the tremble at bay. i know why i’m telling her all these things, and it’s because this is a sealed, encapsulated moment. this is a snow-globe where for once the snow she mentioned earlier doesn’t filthy to a decomposing brown.

“ — yes. i’ll drive. as long as it’s empty. ”

this, too, is an extension of trust. if she says it…. she doesn’t know who i am. this isn’t a trap. there’s no reason for her to try to lead me into one. if she wanted to extort money from me, i’ve made it more than clear she could ask and i’d cut a check. right now i’m only bruce wayne.

so i’ll agree.

godblooded​⸻ 

does she know what a therapist she still is?

she elbows me so slightly and i wince just a little— closeness and closeness and closeness furthering itself, the gap closing. at this range i’m too visible, but i keep the closeness because she keeps it, too, and we mutually agree on it without words. it doesn’t have to be brought up. some things aren’t needed. i keep that little skitter of a breath to a minimum.

the one thing i can’t hide from my nocturnal outings are injuries. they carry over whether i want them to or not, but no one is around me consistently. no one notices if i disappear for a few weeks or days. there isn’t anyone to notice. the unforgiving purples and jaundiced yellows of bruising carry over night after night. they beat sometimes from my skin like something demanding to be heard.

most say the identity is for the sake of others, but i feel it’s for the sake of myself. because it’s a heavy curtain between myself and the bat, and as long as that’s true, no one has to know me. the bat can exist and i can exist. i can avoid every sensitivity someone has to say about whether i’m alright or not. i answer to no one but myself.

“ i took a handful of online courses. business. ”

a few of them. i hated all of them. it felt pointless in its rigidity and useless in its messages. there’s an element to being bruce wayne that consistently reminds me i’ll receive favorable treatment. that leaves an acidic taste in my throat at the thought. special treatment is frustrating to me.

i don’t tell her my stint in school as a child ended in bloody noses and black eyes. sometimes mine, but mostly others. i don’t mention the jeering children who giggled orphan at me. i don’t bring up a thing about the little boy who called my mother crazy and ended up pinned beneath my knees, my fists a flurry until i was dragged away from a little boy whose features i almost rendered unrecognizable. i was ten years old.

“ no. i have heard they don’t sell walls. ”

it’s another joke. or whatever is the first thought that hits me. i say it because it seems like the right thing to say in the moment. i haven’t been inside. wal-mart. i don’t like such tremendous, open spaces, packed to the brim with people. sardines in a can threatening to burst.

i realize this makes me feel comfortable. i realize this is the most comfortable i’ve felt in a very long time. so i only adjust a little so she can be more comfortable, still careful. she’s right.

my furniture is horrible.

“ i could lend you a car. ”

i can’t understand what possesses me to joke.

i’m watching him closely enough to see that he winces – but that’s all he does,  so i relax.  let myself smile back at him – not the crazy clown smile that i give people to make them nervous.  a harleen smile – that’s hard to get out of me. 

“ i’d have dropped out,  too,  if i’d have had to study business. those kind of numbers have never made sense to me.  guess that’s why the rich get richer and the rest of us – ” 

i don’t finish the thought,  because he’s definitely in the category that i’m generalizing about.  it’s strange,  though ; he doesn’t remind me of all the other trust fund babies that i went to school with.  maybe it’s the trauma that comes with watching your parents get murdered that brings him down to a level i can relate to.  

he makes a joke.  i’m so fucking sick of jokes,  sick of men who think they’re funny, but this one makes me giggle. i laugh and laugh,  maybe too hard,  but it’s so nice to be around someone who doesn’t expect me to laugh.  it’s nice to be around somebody who doesn’t expect anything of me,  period.  

he’s actively making space for me,  and that’s strange,  too.  i’m used to making myself smaller,  to fitting into the background.  my only good days are the ones where joker doesn’t notice me – and yet i want so badly for him to notice me.  i feel my smile fall off my face,  feel my features freeze over.  i wish i could stop thinking about him. 

i turn back to bruce,  look at him,  take comfort in that his face is not the face that haunts both my dreams and my nightmares.  

“ i can’t drive. ”  i’d never been able to afford a car before i started working at arkham.  even then,  i didn’t have time to get my license – and i didn’t want to be the only twenty-seven year old taking driver’s ed.  joker’s been trying to teach me,  but there’s always a lot of yelling and a lot of crying.  pretty much what it would’ve been like if nick had taught me – talk about daddy issues. “ so you’d have to drive me,  and then you’d know where i live,  so that doesn’t seem like a very good idea.  we could go to walmart,  though.  it’s late.  nobody’ll be there. ”

i have no idea why,  but i’m very serious.  

[godblooded]

" thank you. "

i'm hollow in my ears. i'm hollow in my eyes. i'm hollow in the pit of my stomach. every inch of me is hollow. i can hear within my own torso the sound of a heart rattling in loud thuds. it's the shell of something without a metamorphosis, something that long ago changed and left me empty. lives outside me now that i can't bring back.

where did i leave it? what part of myself did i exorcise? or am i the thing exorcised?

sometimes i don't know anymore. the me out there bleeds into the me in here, but not in a way anyone can see. it becomes a brick by brick build of who i'm not and i end up being the person built in behind the wall, surrounded by the bricks.

when i say 'thank you ' it just feels compulsory. mostly because it is. it's a statement that's made because i want her to understand that i appreciate and feel the gesture. she takes my other hand and holds me in place. she keeps me in the ground without allowing me to move. and i don't know if i should feel afraid of her or of me. i have every reason to assume she could be volatile.

harley is unpredictable in a way she might not be fully aware of, or a way usually underestimated. but my paranoid mind doesn't allow for that. i don't allow for that. leaving my mentality and myself unguarded so blatantly would be stupid.

but dr. harleen quinzel in clown makeup is holding my hands.

she could snap my wrists. dislocate all the small bones in my shaking hands. she could break my fingers, bend them back in a hard, quick motion. she could twist my thumb. break my joints. she could exacerbate nerve damage i've done to myself. she could choose to do any of these things, and i've put myself in the position for her to be able to.

i tell myself it's okay because i'm the one who put out the modicum of trust and so i want to keep it continuing. i'm not feigning helplessness or weakness; i'm just exhausted and caught in a corner i don't usually find myself in. and even though she's touching me, it doesn't feel intended to crush, harm, or hurt. but i can't ever know that.

" life. "

it's simple, even if she won't believe me. even if she has every reason to look at me like a spoiled wealthy child (broooooooooose. waaaaaaaayne. again.), she can't assume i don't have to live through gotham's cruelty, too. but this is my city. my home. the place my father and my mother and their fathers and mothers have called their place to settle since before it had a name. my bones are in its concrete, my blood is in its soil. i shake my head and my mouth opens and closes. i can hear my words past my windpipe but it's an imagined thing. i'm not speaking at all. i'm just forming my mouth around them, but nothing comes out.

it's habitual, unconscious (the result of concussive damage, i know). the slow attempt to speak when nothing comes out. the way my thoughts convince me i'm talking sometimes when i haven't so much as breathed. i look aside to the open, open doors and the hearth inside; a fire that never seems to penetrate how cold i feel.

my hands are shaking, just contained inside the grasp of hers. the constant sound of riddler's voice intrudes in all the corners of my home. the idea of the letter that almost cost alfred his life slipping inside the walls is an invasion, a perversion of an inner sanctum. harming alfred is too close. it means there is no such thing as off-limits, even if in the end he couldn't crack the last code he so desperately needed.

my jaw works and tenses and i finally utter something less choking.

" it feels better out here. --i feel better out here. "

that sounds absurd to her. it must.

" do you? "

i don't know if i mean feel better out here or want to go inside, and it's rare that i don't know, but i don't know.

godblooded​⸻ 

i frown. i fix my face into one, a strong downturn of my lips so she can clearly see my disapproval. because no, platitudes— they’re nonsense. like every time i’m told someone is sorry for the loss of my mother and my father. it’s a useless statement that has no shape to it. it’s spoken and then thrown into the dark with all the other times i’ve been told nonsense. and nothing anyone ever says is going to feel like more than just a platitude.

but it’s hard to explain the honesty with which i mean it when i say it. it’s hard to squeeze out the way i’m not lying when i say it. it’s hard to squeeze out the way i can tell her things without saying them: for example, i don’t want her to think i’ve let the authorities know she’s her, but i don’t want her to not think it, either. i want it to be left up to the unspoken trust between these beats that i don’t understand. if i can hold onto the trust with both hands, she should be able to grip it just as hard. it’s a moment; encapsulated in on itself, but moments are precious things pinned like butterflies. every second matters. (i think constantly: what if i’d been just a little quicker—)

“ someone i respect very much said that to me. it helped, even if only for a few minutes. i didn’t realize how often i don’t think about how i feel. it’s a reminder to gauge. ”

how to tell her i’m always cold. this incredulously faded gotham motors tshirt isn’t adequate in the chill. i hadn’t expected to be hurled outside into the unforgiving reminder of the world i try to hide from. i’m usually away until i can be away, poring over notes and trying to disentangle my nocturnal existence with my daylight self. the bat and i come apart in slow pieces that i have to dismantle— truly a suit.

“ yes. and nervous.”

i remind myself to follow up because otherwise, it’s likely not helpful. even if she can read me with a pointed gaze that i would rather be focused anywhere but on me.

“ for obvious reasons. ”

i clumsily motion to my hurled-open doors. it looks like a poltergeist burst through the room. it had been a little sudden, and the rush had only fed into the adrenaline further and further.

‘ harley quinn ’ has broken into my home. has violated the most important boundary; the singular boundary between me and the swarming masses below. she’s made herself comfortable in the confines of my inner sanctum.

and i only hope she doesn’t know.

from behind me croaks brooooooooossseeeeee. waaaasayneeeeeee—

i shut my eyes and practically sway on my feet for a minute. the way the world blacks out, whites in. the way i’m… suddenly awake. and i’m here, not dissociated, not split into several parts. i’m suddenly standing here with dr. harleen quinzel and my head feels like it’s telling me to just collapse. like it’s saying i can fold in on me and it would be okay. i blink my eyes slowly, use that minute click of my eyelashes touching my cheek to bring me back to the present.

okay ⸻ i may have been a little harsh there,  and i wrinkle my nose back at him,  twist my lips into something that resembles an apology,  though i won’t actually say those words.  there is still a power play here,  and if i’m not careful,  i’m going to lose.  i’m use to losing to joker and to batman,  but i don’t want to lose to bruce wayne.  joker has my unconditional love,  bats has the suit, and they both have about a foot on me,  give or take a few inches.  what’s bruce got on me?  also about a foot,  but none of the other stuff.

i bite back a comment about how he should tell the people he respects to get better lines.  there’s something genuine in the way he talks,  like he actually thinks he might be able to help me.  it’s rich kid delusion if i’ve ever seen it ⸻ bruce wayne might have enough money to actually make the world a better place,  and that makes him think he can actually fix things with his hands and his words.  i’d laugh,  if it wasn’t so damn sad. 

the way he talks reminds me of the way i feel ⸻ i’m always running,  always trying not to be still long enough for my feelings to catch up with me.  half the time,  i don’t know what i’m feeling,  can’t name the emotion taking over my life.  is it rage?  love?  sorrow?  i almost never know,  don’t have that clarity that everyone else seems to.  maybe it’s everything,  all of once.  i shouldn’t ask. it’s not okay for me to ask.  i do,  anyways. 

“ what are you trying to survive? ”

nervous.  i frown.  there’s no way i’m going to hurt him ⸻ not now,  but not even when i came here in the first place.  i’m not a sadist,  never have been.  i don’t get off on hurting like joker does,  not even like the bat seems to.  ( i don’t know why you’d put on a suit like that if you don’t enjoy hurting people,  at least a little bit. )  i’m just bored.  i’m just looking for anything to give me that next rush.  but i am harley quinn ⸻ he has no way of knowing that i’m not about to pull a gun on him.  except that i don’t have a gun.  does he know that? maybe i should tell him,  but then i’m giving him all the power.  he probably doesn’t know how to fight,  so i have an advantage,  but he’s bigger than me,  and,  also,  i don’t want to fight.  i just want to talk.  i miss talking.

bruce stops answering me ( when did i stop thinking about him as wayne? ),  and i frown up at him. i know this look ⸻ have seen it a thousand times on arkham patients.  have seen it a thousand times in the mirror.  he’s gone,  and i have to bring him back. i reach for his other hand,  hold both of his in my own.  i don’t know if this will help him – touch makes things worse for some people,  but he reached for me when i freaked,  so i think it’s a safe bet. 

“ hey, ”  i say,  keeping my voice soft,  even.  it’s my psychiatrist voice.  i didn’t know i could still do that. “ i’m right here.  i’ve got you. ”  isn’t that a scary thought? “ do you want to go back inside? ” 

i offer now,  because i can’t do it for me,  would freeze out here before i’d feel trapped again,  but i think i can do it for him. 

[godblooded]

i frown. i fix my face into one, a strong downturn of my lips so she can clearly see my disapproval. because no, platitudes— they’re nonsense. like every time i’m told someone is sorry for the loss of my mother and my father. it’s a useless statement that has no shape to it. it’s spoken and then thrown into the dark with all the other times i’ve been told nonsense. and nothing anyone ever says is going to feel like more than just a platitude.

but it’s hard to explain the honesty with which i mean it when i say it. it’s hard to squeeze out the way i’m not lying when i say it. it’s hard to squeeze out the way i can tell her things without saying them: for example, i don’t want her to think i’ve let the authorities know she’s her, but i don’t want her to not think it, either. i want it to be left up to the unspoken trust between these beats that i don’t understand. if i can hold onto the trust with both hands, she should be able to grip it just as hard. it’s a moment; encapsulated in on itself, but moments are precious things pinned like butterflies. every second matters. (i think constantly: what if i’d been just a little quicker—)

“ someone i respect very much said that to me. it helped, even if only for a few minutes. i didn’t realize how often i don’t think about how i feel. it’s a reminder to gauge. ”

how to tell her i’m always cold. this incredulously faded gotham motors tshirt isn’t adequate in the chill. i hadn’t expected to be hurled outside into the unforgiving reminder of the world i try to hide from. i’m usually away until i can be away, poring over notes and trying to disentangle my nocturnal existence with my daylight self. the bat and i come apart in slow pieces that i have to dismantle— truly a suit.

“ yes. and nervous.”

i remind myself to follow up because otherwise, it’s likely not helpful. even if she can read me with a pointed gaze that i would rather be focused anywhere but on me.

“ for obvious reasons. ”

i clumsily motion to my hurled-open doors. it looks like a poltergeist burst through the room. it had been a little sudden, and the rush had only fed into the adrenaline further and further.

‘ harley quinn ’ has broken into my home. has violated the most important boundary; the singular boundary between me and the swarming masses below. she’s made herself comfortable in the confines of my inner sanctum.

and i only hope she doesn’t know.

from behind me croaks brooooooooossseeeeee. waaaasayneeeeeee—

i shut my eyes and practically sway on my feet for a minute. the way the world blacks out, whites in. the way i’m… suddenly awake. and i’m here, not dissociated, not split into several parts. i’m suddenly standing here with dr. harleen quinzel and my head feels like it’s telling me to just collapse. like it’s saying i can fold in on me and it would be okay. i blink my eyes slowly, use that minute click of my eyelashes touching my cheek to bring me back to the present.

godblooded​⸻ 

“ you can’t hate everything that becomes ugly. babies. ”

i say the word dismissively with a deadpan to my tone, and i crinkle my brow purposefully to make her see firsthand that it’s meant to be joking. i’m meant to be joking with her. my tone doesn’t reflect it just so, but she seems like she’ll understand. and it feels somehow strange to be talking to ‘harley quinn’, but it doesn’t feel like that’s who i’m speaking to, either. she’s painted into my world in a way that doesn’t fit, shades of red and black and blue embossed against the heavy brass and deep iron i’ve built around me. 

gotham is beautiful after the snow first falls. before everyone is awake. where i can perch from on high and i can become a part of it, too, dusted and frigid in ice. it feels solid and still. it gleams vibrantly. the entire world is dressed briefly in ivory that gotham’s chill exceeds by far. on those nights i always come home later. 

“ you’re not. ”

i won’t give her room to lie to me. i know it shouldn’t seem like i care, and i know i shouldn’t sound like i care, but within me i care. i can hardly restrain it and its accidental desire to help, but it grows bigger. is this what matters? is it more important than what the batman does? i don’t know the answer to that, and i don’t think there is one. but it makes me want to press harder, to find something outside the dizzying moment. 

“ it’s okay to not be okay. ”

words that i’ve heard from dr. bloom and they seem to apply in this moment. my hand is shaking and her grip is tight, but i lower it the way she keeps beckoning me to. my fingers tremble when they do and my hand itself is a mechanism i’m working one digit at a time. my hands never stop shaking. 

“ you’re welcome. ”

it’s practically compulsory. 

“ babies are ugly. ”  babies have to be ugly,  because i can’t afford to hesitate,  even in a crowded bank or subway station.  if i do,  it’ll be my life on the line,  purple-gloved hands wrapped around my neck.  babies have to be ugly,  because that’s one more thing on the never ending list of what j’s taken from me.  i have this period tracking app on my phone – i’ve had it since college.  i’ve got data for the last ten years on there – red circles,  month after month after month.  and then they just stop – the same month he pushed me into the acid.

( i jumped.  oh my god,  i jumped. )

it’s the kind of thing i should probably see a doctor about,  but what am i supposed to do?  if harley quinn shows up at the nearest ivf clinic,  they’re gonna think i’m robbing the fucking place.  and it’s not like i could have a baby right now,  even if i could have a baby.  so i’m just going to wait – it’s better to not know, right?  to be able to hope? 

“ please don’t feed me that suicide hotline bullshit.  it’s offensive. ” 

i used to do this for a living,  so he’s going to have to do better than that,  if he wants to help.  oh – he probably doesn’t want to help.  i’ve let my guard down,  forgotten that i broke into his home.  he’s probably biding his time until the cops get here.  i should leave.  i should really leave,  but his hands are shaking,  and i’m beginning to wonder if there’s something broken in his brain,  too.  this isn’t what people who are afraid of me normally look like. 

“ are you cold? ”  it’s a careful question,  the kind they taught us to ask in school.  i don’t want to put him on the defensive.  i don’t ask him if he wants to go back inside,  because i don’t.