"Dress Me Like A Clown"-part 1 of 3 (Batman: The Animated Series)
Title: Dress Me Like A Clown
Fandom: Batman: The Animated Series
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Words: 4,211 (in part one)
Pairing: Ivy & Harley
Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or any related properties; they belong to DC Comics. The song "Dress Me Like A Clown," which inspired this story, is the property of the band Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.
Summary: Ivy's on the run and Harley's in the kind of trouble that isn't very funny. Turns out love and honesty are both harder than they sound.
Notes: I'll admit it: I'm not a big fan of Poison Ivy's characterization in the mainstream DCU, or its influence on the way Ivy is sometimes written in fic. I just find Ivy more interesting when she talks and acts less like a goddess and more like a person. That said, I hope you find this interpretation of Ivy believable, valid, and above all, human-in the best way possible. That's my goal.
(part one: all our lovers)
Tonight we’ll leave all our lovers behind
and try to live a quiet life
My love has dressed me like a clown
Ivy hadn’t been expecting the phone to ring. She wouldn’t have bet against the probability of a siren outside the window, or a voice yelling outside the door a second before a cop kicked it down (it would have been easy, too-the lock was broken). But waking up to the phone ringing at two in the morning was a possibility she hadn’t considered.
She sat up in the creaky, probably bug-infested bed and stared at the telephone by the neon glow coming in through the gap in the threadbare curtains. The phone was an ancient rotary model, an apt match for this fleabag motel that seemed to have sprung up like a weed around 1975 and then been immediately abandoned. The phone’s shrill clamor continued unabated for eight rings, then stopped. Ivy lay back down onto the pillow and closed her eyes.
Five minutes later, the ringing started again. This time Ivy ignored it for eleven rings before it stopped.
Ten minutes later, by the time the phone had sounded the thirteenth ring of its latest effort, Ivy was ready to give in. Her main worry was the cops, and it made no sense for them to phone when they could just as easily break the door down. Whoever was calling, they couldn’t be anything but trouble, but that didn’t bother Ivy much these days. She might as well find out what kind of trouble it was.
She picked up the bulky receiver. “Hello?”
“Red?” came a small, plaintive voice from the other end. “Is that you?”
Ivy almost dropped the phone. “Harley? Where are you?”
“What are you doin’ all the way out here?” Harley demanded, ignoring the question. “I tried to find you at your old place, and there was nobody there. And one of your plants almost ate my leg.”
“Sorry.”
“I had to get Catwoman to tell me where you were, otherwise I never woulda found you. How come she knew where you were and I didn’t?”
“Because I asked her to take care of some of my plants just before I left. Harley, where are you?”
“Here. Your hotel. Come down and let me up, the guy at the desk keeps sayin’-”
“You’re in the lobby?” Ivy almost shouted into the phone. “Where anyone could hear you?”
“You must think I’m pretty stupid,” Harley’s voice came sullenly over the crackling connection. “I’m on the pay phone in the parking lot. I got the desk guy to give me the number for your room before he started gettin’ suspicious and kicked me out. Willya come and let me up? He says if I don’t leave he’s gonna call the cops.”
“Oh good grief.” Just what Ivy needed. She hadn’t expected any trouble around here. She’d never stayed at this particular flophouse before, but she’d spent her fair share of time on the lam, and these places were all the same. A wreck of a place for wrecks of people, just off a lonely stretch of highway on the outside edge of the city. It was obvious that nobody here was up to any good, but that was fine, since nobody here cared what anybody else was up to. That was the way it worked.
At least, usually it was. But apparently Harley had done something to rouse this night clerk’s inner Batman. Everybody had one, it seemed lately. Citizen justice. It was making Ivy’s life a whole lot harder. Citizen injustice had always been more her style.
“All right, Harl, hold on. I’ll be right down.” Ivy hung up the phone, put on a quick layer of lipstick, and ran a hand through her hair as she threw on her coat. She walked down the hall and the narrow, bare staircase to the lobby.
The clerk at the desk gave her a strange look when she got there. It wasn’t the glare she had expected, but he didn’t look happy either. “Some girl was here who was lookin’ like trouble,” he said. “Asked what room her friend with the long red hair and cute figure was stayin’ in. I guess that’s you?”
“So I’ve been told,” Ivy replied with a well-practiced smile. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work this out momentarily…if you’ll just excuse me.”
As soon as she stepped out into the parking lot, she dropped the mask. “Harley! What the hell is going-”
“Red!” Harley squealed, catapulting herself into Ivy’s arms like a blonde, pigtailed heat-seeking missile. “I haven’t seen you in ages! Didja miss me? How come ya never came to visit me in Arkham?”
“Because I didn’t think it made sense to go back to a place I’d only broken out of three weeks earlier. How did you end up back in there, Harl? I seem to remember going out of my way to make sure we both got out. Are you sure you’re clear on what an ‘escape’ actually is?”
Harley let go of Ivy and took a step backwards, looking uncomfortable. “Aw, Ivy, don’t be mad at me. You know when I got out I had to go see Mister J, and then…”
“Oh, ‘and then.’ This is going to be the good part, I can tell.”
“And then I ended up stayin’ with him, ‘cause he really needed me, I just knew it. And he had this plan, and it was a good plan, too; it woulda worked if it hadn’t been for just a couple of little details-”
“And someone had to take the fall, and it could never be him, of course. So you’re the one stuck holding the bag while he’s making a clean getaway, and before you know it Renee Montoya’s dragging you back to the padded cell while her fat-ass partner kicks you in the shins. Is that how it went?”
Harley hung her head like a child being scolded. “Well…yeah. That’s about right.”
Ivy sighed. “Well, that must have been a little more than a year ago. What’d they do, let you out for good behavior? A year’s a pretty quick turnaround for getting rehabilitated, but I guess Arkham isn’t too picky.”
“You makin’ fun of me?”
“Do I look like I’m having fun? Tell me what happened, Harley.”
“Mister J busted me out.” Harley hesitated. “Then he busted some other stuff.”
“What?” Ivy took a good look at Harley’s face for the first time. At the same moment, a semi rumbled by on the highway behind them, and the glare of its headlights briefly illuminated Harley’s features. Her left eye and cheekbone were swallowed by one massive bruise.
“Oh my God!” Ivy laid her fingertips on the purple swelling next to Harley’s eye, making Harley wince. So this was why the clerk was going to call the police-when he said Harley looked like trouble, he meant that she was in it. “The Joker did this to you?”
“He’s done worse,” Harley said bravely. Then suddenly her face crumpled, and she looked like a little girl on the verge of tears. “Yes, Mister J did it, an’, an’ I didn’t wanna stay with him anymore if he was g-gonna treat me that way, but I didn’t know w-w-where else to go…”
“Oh, Harl…”
“So I went to your old place, the old hazard site where I stayed with you the last time, but you w-weren’t there anymore,” Harley said through sniffles, “s-so I had to go to every hideout in town until finally Catwoman told me where you were, an’, an’ how come you’re here anyway, huh?”
“Word got around that I had gone back to my old place. The cops were going to come; I had to make a run for it.” Ivy pushed back a lock of blonde hair from her friend’s forehead and felt a surge of fierce protectiveness. She wrapped an arm around Harley’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Harley, I’m not letting you go back to that son of a bitch.”
“I don’t wanna go back,” Harvey mumbled into Ivy’s shoulder.
“Oh really? That would be a change, if it were true.” Ivy let go of Harley. “Come on, let’s go inside. You’re staying with me.”
Ivy led the way back into the motel lobby, where before the clerk could object, she said, “Don’t worry, darling, it’s all taken care of.” She kissed him gently, an almost motherly peck on the lips. His eyes unfocused. He nodded dumbly.
“Gosh, Red,” Harley said from behind her, impressed. “Haven’t seen anyone do that in a while.”
“Yeah, well, welcome back.” They walked up the creaking staircase and into room 237. “Here we are.”
Harley blinked as she walked inside. “Gee, it’s kind of a dump, don’t you think?”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “I didn’t pick it based on its rating in Frommer’s guide.”
“I know, but I think I’d get depressed in here after a while.” Harley sat down on the sagging bed and stared around the room. “How long you been livin’ here?”
“Almost two weeks. I probably can’t stay here much longer without somebody finding out, though. Especially if Catwoman has been running her mouth.” Ivy was rummaging around in her suitcase, which she had never bothered to unpack. “I wish I hadn’t told her anything. I don’t trust her to keep her trap shut if there’s something in it for her.”
Harley looked hurt. “You didn’t want her to tell me?”
“Oh Harley, don’t look at me like that. Of course I meant the cops, not you.” Ivy sat on the edge of the bed facing Harley, a jar of green ointment in her hand. “Now hold still. This should start healing the bruises and keep the swelling down.” She started dabbing the goo around Harley’s eye with her fingers.
“Ow! It stings!”
“Knock it off. Big baby.” She rubbed some of the homemade balm gently over Harley’s swollen eyelid. “So how did you get here, anyway?”
“Stole a car.”
“Oh, Harley. Really?”
“Hey! Where do you get off actin’ like Miss Morality all of a sudden? Like you’ve never stolen anything before!”
“It’s just not the smartest move first thing out of Arkham, that’s all. Cars can be tracked, you know.”
“I’m not worried,” said Harley, although her expression said otherwise. “Anyway, how’d you get out here? You didn’t bring your car?”
“I kissed a taxi driver.”
“You got it so easy.”
“Yeah, lucky me.” Ivy put a last dab around Harley’s black eye. “There. All done. It should start feeling better already.”
“Thanks.” Harley looked around the room. “Hey, where’d all your plants go?”
“Well, obviously, I could hardly take them all in the taxi with me. I have a couple of the smaller rare ones growing in the bathtub right now. The rest I left back in Gotham. Most of them can take care of themselves by now, and the others I paid Catwoman to look after.” Ivy realized that Harley was staring at her. “What?”
“It’s not like you to leave your plants behind,” Harley said, almost accusingly.
“Come on, Harley, you know how we live. When you’re on the run, you have to make hard choices sometimes.”
“I guess.” Harley was quiet for a second. “Do you miss them?”
“Sure. Sort of.”
Ivy was looking away, but somehow Harley caught her gaze and held it. Slowly and deliberately she asked, “Did you miss me?”
For a second, nothing moved. There was a strange sort of humming in the air. Ivy could hear it deep in her ears, a thrumming like an electric current. The sound of potentiality. She took a deep breath.
Then a truck barreled loudly down the road outside, and the moment was broken. “Just kidding!” Harley said cheerfully. “Gee, I’m exhausted. Can it be bedtime?”
“Of course,” said Ivy quickly. “You can turn out the light; I’m just going to wash my face, and I’ll be right there. Try not to kick me too much this time.”
“Don’t worry, I sleep like a rock!” Harley sang, snuggling down under the bed covers as Ivy went into the bathroom.
“Uh-huh.”
As she washed up at the old chipped sink, Ivy stared at her reflection in the grimy mirror. Somehow it didn’t look like her. The longer she looked, the less she recognized her own features. She blinked and shook her head to clear it. She went back into the bedroom and lay down under the covers next to Harley.
She felt like all she had done was shut her eyes and open them a second later, but when Ivy woke up the alarm clock’s glowing digits told her it was 4:48 AM. She wondered blurrily what had woken her; then she wondered if she was still dreaming. The ceiling was illuminated by bars of light, and everything felt strange and unreal.
Then she remembered Harley. She rolled over in bed, but the space beside her was empty. “Harl?” she said muzzily. She sat up.
Harley was sitting perched on the wide inner sill of the room’s only window, her feet drawn up in front of her. She had opened the curtains and was looking out toward the streetlights and occasional passing cars, as headlights briefly illuminated the room and then faded away. She still wore the same blouse and jeans she had shown up in, but she had taken her hair out of its pigtails, and now it hung loose around her shoulders. The neon glow of the vacancy sign made a faint pink halo at the top of her head.
Ivy got out of bed and went to stand next to Harley. She combed through her friend’s hair with her fingers. “Hey,” she said, voice husky from slumber. “Can’t you sleep?”
Harley still faced the window. Up close, Ivy could see the bruise on Harley’s face reflected in the glass.
When Harley finally spoke, her voice was so tiny it was barely audible.
“Oh Ivy,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt so blue in my entire life.”
Suddenly Ivy’s chest was full of an aching tightness, and there was something like a rock in her throat. She wrapped her arms around Harley’s shoulders from behind. “Shh,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything better. “Shhh. Baby. Don’t.”
“Ivy, are you crying?”
Ivy buried her face in Harley’s shoulder. “No.”
They were still for a long while. Outside, the trucks drove past on their before-dawn errands. The eastern horizon was almost beginning to brighten.
Finally Harley said, “How come you were so nice to the guy at the desk before?”
“Hmm?”
“The desk guy. When you kissed him, you didn’t make him do anything bad. You just made him forget. And you kissed him nicely. How come?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess because…” Ivy realized that she did know, but she didn’t know whether she could say it. The words seemed to stick in her throat as she forced them out.
“Because he had been worried about you. I didn’t want to hurt someone who had been nice to you.”
“He wasn’t nice! He was gonna call the cops!”
“Only because he cared about you.”
Harley shifted a little in Ivy’s arms. Then she said, “You never used to care about anybody.”
Ivy didn’t have an answer. Her reflection in the windowpane looked ghostly and foreign. She held Harley a little tighter.
“I think you’ve changed, Red,” Harley said softly. Pulling out of Ivy’s arms, she turned around on the sill at last. She took Ivy’s hands and held them as she faced her. Her eyes were big and blue and full of shadows, and her face was lit strangely by the glow of the vacancy sign. “I wish I could change, too.”
Ivy pulled Harley down from the windowsill to her feet. She put an arm around Harley’s waist and kissed her on the cheek, which she had done plenty of times before.
“Red,” Harley said.
“Shh.” Ivy kissed her on the corner of her mouth next to her lips, just inside her dimple, as Harley’s eyelashes fluttered like a moth’s wings against her skin. She had done that before, too.
Ivy heard Harley let out a sigh, and she drew Harley nearer, to do what she had never done before. Her heart was pounding as she felt Harley’s breath on her face. Every cell in her body felt alive and bright, as if she had been suddenly filled with sunlight. There had never been so little space between them as Ivy closed her eyes and leaned in-
Harley turned away, so that Ivy’s lips met her cheek. She took a step backwards. “So where are you gonna go now?” she asked, as if nothing had happened.
Ivy felt as though something soft and green and growing within her chest had been uprooted. Anything, she found herself thinking desperately, she would have given up anything-money, power, reputation, it could all go to hell-if only Harley had said not you, but we.
And it must have been that desperation that made Ivy say, in the voice of the strange, unknown self she had seen in the mirror and the windowpane reflection, in the voice of someone she hadn’t realized, until now, that she had become: “You know, we don’t have to stay in Gotham.”
For a long, precarious second, Harley stared at Ivy with her eyes wide and her mouth half-open; and in panic Ivy thought: I went too far, I said too much, it was my only chance and there’s no hope now-
And then Harley said, “We don’t?”, and Ivy felt the entire world open up.
“Listen, Harl,” she said, the words coming out quick and low now, “I’ve been thinking, what if we left? What if we just left all of this, forever? Gotham, and the Bat, and the Joker, and everything? What if we just put our backs to it all and got the hell out of here?”
“But Ivy, where are we gonna go where they don’t know us? The whole state’s looking for you. And me.” There was a suggestion of pride in Harley’s voice on that point.
“I’m not talking about going upstate. I’m talking about a whole lot farther. Somewhere out west. Somewhere people won’t know to look for us. Where nobody will know our faces.”
Harley looked unsure. “Gee, I dunno, Red. I’ve never been much farther west than Newark.”
Ivy grabbed Harley’s shoulders; she felt like shaking her. “Harley, don’t you get it? We could be free-we are free! There’s a whole world that’s not Gotham. Forget Newark, what about California?”
“California?”
“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter, we can go anywhere. You’ve got a car, right? I’ve got a little money. We’ll cut our hair-change our names, get new jobs-nobody will find us-”
“California,” Harley repeated, like it was a magic word.
Ivy felt euphoric; part of her knew this was insane, impossible, but she couldn’t have stopped talking if she’d wanted to. “Where it’s always sunny, and there’s no snow and no Gotham winters, just palm trees and beaches, Harley, just think about it-”
“If we left everything…” Harley was biting her lip like she was thinking something over. She looked at Ivy. “Do you mean we’d go straight?”
Ivy barely hesitated. “If you want to, Harl, we can do it.”
“We can do it!” Harley repeated, looking dazzled, and Ivy knew they were both feeling it now, the sensation that the world had blossomed for them like a flower. They stared at each other in the growing light of dawn. The sun was rising over the highway outside Gotham.
Harley put her arms around Ivy and moved her lips to Ivy’s ear.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
--
Forty minutes later they were tearing down the interstate in Harley’s stolen car, suitcases in the trunk, Ivy at the wheel and feeling electric. Harley, in the passenger seat, was trying to cut Ivy’s hair as Ivy drove. It wasn’t going particularly well. Ivy didn’t mind.
“…and since it’s so warm there all your plants will grow right outside,” Harley said as she lopped off another four inches and brushed them off Ivy’s back onto the floor, “all new ones so you won’t have to miss your old ones, and they’ll keep you company while I’m at work if you get lonely.”
“I won’t get lonely.”
“Well, just in case.” Another giant snip. “Oops.”
“‘Oops’?”
“Well, you keep moving your head!”
Ivy laughed. It still felt strange to laugh, after a year without seeing Harley, a year without any laughter at all. “Forget about it. When do I get to cut your hair?”
“Not yet.”
“Come on.”
“When we get to California, do it then. Hey, can I turn on the radio?” Without waiting for an answer, Harley turned the dial and started scanning through stations. Static, more static, faint orchestral sounds, then:
“…Thank you, Mike. That was Mike Rodriguez with the weather for WNGC, Gotham’s radio news network. And now, breaking news: the criminal psychopath known as the Joker is reportedly at the center of a hostage situation developing at the Gotham City harbor. Details are still unclear, but at least four hostages appear to be in the Joker’s custody, according to eyewitnesses-”
“Turn it off, Harl,” Ivy said softly.
She had been watching Harley out of the corner of her eye. Harley’s bruised face was nearly as white as she painted it for heists, but her expression was strangely composed. She reached out and switched off the radio almost before Ivy spoke.
“Hostages,” she said with disgust. “Talk about going downhill.”
But she didn’t speak again for the next twenty miles.
When they passed a sign for a rest area, Harley finally said, “Can we stop here for a minute? I wanna use the bathroom.”
Ivy took the exit as Harley asked, but after pulling into the parking lot, she grabbed her friend’s arm with one hand before Harley could open the door.
“Hey! What gives?”
Ivy wasn’t looking at Harley; she felt like she couldn’t. She parted her lips but didn’t know how to say what she needed to say, not without sounding desperate. “You’re going to call the Joker, aren’t you?” she finally muttered.
“What?”
Ivy looked Harley in the face, gripping her wrist. “You’re going to call him, aren’t you? You’re going to tell that creep where we are. Don’t do it, Harl.” She choked on an unfamiliar word: “Please.”
Harley’s big blue eyes were wide with surprise, but feigned or genuine, Ivy couldn’t tell. “Oh come on! Don’tcha trust me, Red?”
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. But she had had so little practice.
“Pammy,” Harley said in her sweetest tones. “Come on. Lemme go.”
She wanted to.
“I’m never calling him again,” said Harley. “And even if I wanted to-which I don’t-but even if I did, I don’t have any money for the phone. Look.” With her free hand, she pulled her jeans pockets inside out. Not even lint fell out. “See? Plenty of nothin’.” She smiled at Ivy. “Now will you let me go?”
“I-sure.” Ivy released Harley’s wrist, ashamed in the glow of Harley’s smile. “Go ahead.”
As Harley skipped away, Ivy stared after her, then lowered her head onto her arms on the steering wheel. What had she turned into? Who was this person, angry and scared of the stupidest things, acting like a prison guard with the one girl who meant anything to her? What was she doing, driving cross-country on an insane whim in a stolen car, leaving behind her plants-her causes-everything she had ever cared about?
Everything but one.
She sat up and stared blankly out the window, wishing she could disappear. Harley was making a fool of her, or she was making a fool of herself, she didn’t know and it made no difference. She was a clown, as surely as Harley was, as maybe all lovers were. You didn’t need the costume or the paint. As easily as the Joker had done it to Harley, now Harley had made a clown out of her.
But at least Harley was in her passenger seat now, not the Joker’s. And Ivy would be damned if she would let her go again.
The passenger side door opened, and Harley hopped in. “I’m back! And with just as little money as I left with. For once,” she added as an afterthought.
Suddenly Ivy leaned over and wrapped an arm tight around Harley’s shoulders. “Hey! What’s that for?” Harley said, but she sounded pleased as Ivy pulled her close and kissed her on the cheek. At the same time, Ivy quietly slid home the lock on Harley’s door.
“Nothing,” said Ivy, letting go of Harley and starting the ignition. “Let’s hit the road.”
The stolen car pulled back onto the interstate and headed west, as behind it the newly risen sun began turning the New Jersey highway gold.
Tonight we’ll leave all our stupid songs
We’ll try and reach the hills by dawn
Someone has dressed us all like clowns
(continue to part two)
Fandom: Batman: The Animated Series
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Words: 4,211 (in part one)
Pairing: Ivy & Harley
Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or any related properties; they belong to DC Comics. The song "Dress Me Like A Clown," which inspired this story, is the property of the band Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.
Summary: Ivy's on the run and Harley's in the kind of trouble that isn't very funny. Turns out love and honesty are both harder than they sound.
Notes: I'll admit it: I'm not a big fan of Poison Ivy's characterization in the mainstream DCU, or its influence on the way Ivy is sometimes written in fic. I just find Ivy more interesting when she talks and acts less like a goddess and more like a person. That said, I hope you find this interpretation of Ivy believable, valid, and above all, human-in the best way possible. That's my goal.
(part one: all our lovers)
Tonight we’ll leave all our lovers behind
and try to live a quiet life
My love has dressed me like a clown
Ivy hadn’t been expecting the phone to ring. She wouldn’t have bet against the probability of a siren outside the window, or a voice yelling outside the door a second before a cop kicked it down (it would have been easy, too-the lock was broken). But waking up to the phone ringing at two in the morning was a possibility she hadn’t considered.
She sat up in the creaky, probably bug-infested bed and stared at the telephone by the neon glow coming in through the gap in the threadbare curtains. The phone was an ancient rotary model, an apt match for this fleabag motel that seemed to have sprung up like a weed around 1975 and then been immediately abandoned. The phone’s shrill clamor continued unabated for eight rings, then stopped. Ivy lay back down onto the pillow and closed her eyes.
Five minutes later, the ringing started again. This time Ivy ignored it for eleven rings before it stopped.
Ten minutes later, by the time the phone had sounded the thirteenth ring of its latest effort, Ivy was ready to give in. Her main worry was the cops, and it made no sense for them to phone when they could just as easily break the door down. Whoever was calling, they couldn’t be anything but trouble, but that didn’t bother Ivy much these days. She might as well find out what kind of trouble it was.
She picked up the bulky receiver. “Hello?”
“Red?” came a small, plaintive voice from the other end. “Is that you?”
Ivy almost dropped the phone. “Harley? Where are you?”
“What are you doin’ all the way out here?” Harley demanded, ignoring the question. “I tried to find you at your old place, and there was nobody there. And one of your plants almost ate my leg.”
“Sorry.”
“I had to get Catwoman to tell me where you were, otherwise I never woulda found you. How come she knew where you were and I didn’t?”
“Because I asked her to take care of some of my plants just before I left. Harley, where are you?”
“Here. Your hotel. Come down and let me up, the guy at the desk keeps sayin’-”
“You’re in the lobby?” Ivy almost shouted into the phone. “Where anyone could hear you?”
“You must think I’m pretty stupid,” Harley’s voice came sullenly over the crackling connection. “I’m on the pay phone in the parking lot. I got the desk guy to give me the number for your room before he started gettin’ suspicious and kicked me out. Willya come and let me up? He says if I don’t leave he’s gonna call the cops.”
“Oh good grief.” Just what Ivy needed. She hadn’t expected any trouble around here. She’d never stayed at this particular flophouse before, but she’d spent her fair share of time on the lam, and these places were all the same. A wreck of a place for wrecks of people, just off a lonely stretch of highway on the outside edge of the city. It was obvious that nobody here was up to any good, but that was fine, since nobody here cared what anybody else was up to. That was the way it worked.
At least, usually it was. But apparently Harley had done something to rouse this night clerk’s inner Batman. Everybody had one, it seemed lately. Citizen justice. It was making Ivy’s life a whole lot harder. Citizen injustice had always been more her style.
“All right, Harl, hold on. I’ll be right down.” Ivy hung up the phone, put on a quick layer of lipstick, and ran a hand through her hair as she threw on her coat. She walked down the hall and the narrow, bare staircase to the lobby.
The clerk at the desk gave her a strange look when she got there. It wasn’t the glare she had expected, but he didn’t look happy either. “Some girl was here who was lookin’ like trouble,” he said. “Asked what room her friend with the long red hair and cute figure was stayin’ in. I guess that’s you?”
“So I’ve been told,” Ivy replied with a well-practiced smile. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work this out momentarily…if you’ll just excuse me.”
As soon as she stepped out into the parking lot, she dropped the mask. “Harley! What the hell is going-”
“Red!” Harley squealed, catapulting herself into Ivy’s arms like a blonde, pigtailed heat-seeking missile. “I haven’t seen you in ages! Didja miss me? How come ya never came to visit me in Arkham?”
“Because I didn’t think it made sense to go back to a place I’d only broken out of three weeks earlier. How did you end up back in there, Harl? I seem to remember going out of my way to make sure we both got out. Are you sure you’re clear on what an ‘escape’ actually is?”
Harley let go of Ivy and took a step backwards, looking uncomfortable. “Aw, Ivy, don’t be mad at me. You know when I got out I had to go see Mister J, and then…”
“Oh, ‘and then.’ This is going to be the good part, I can tell.”
“And then I ended up stayin’ with him, ‘cause he really needed me, I just knew it. And he had this plan, and it was a good plan, too; it woulda worked if it hadn’t been for just a couple of little details-”
“And someone had to take the fall, and it could never be him, of course. So you’re the one stuck holding the bag while he’s making a clean getaway, and before you know it Renee Montoya’s dragging you back to the padded cell while her fat-ass partner kicks you in the shins. Is that how it went?”
Harley hung her head like a child being scolded. “Well…yeah. That’s about right.”
Ivy sighed. “Well, that must have been a little more than a year ago. What’d they do, let you out for good behavior? A year’s a pretty quick turnaround for getting rehabilitated, but I guess Arkham isn’t too picky.”
“You makin’ fun of me?”
“Do I look like I’m having fun? Tell me what happened, Harley.”
“Mister J busted me out.” Harley hesitated. “Then he busted some other stuff.”
“What?” Ivy took a good look at Harley’s face for the first time. At the same moment, a semi rumbled by on the highway behind them, and the glare of its headlights briefly illuminated Harley’s features. Her left eye and cheekbone were swallowed by one massive bruise.
“Oh my God!” Ivy laid her fingertips on the purple swelling next to Harley’s eye, making Harley wince. So this was why the clerk was going to call the police-when he said Harley looked like trouble, he meant that she was in it. “The Joker did this to you?”
“He’s done worse,” Harley said bravely. Then suddenly her face crumpled, and she looked like a little girl on the verge of tears. “Yes, Mister J did it, an’, an’ I didn’t wanna stay with him anymore if he was g-gonna treat me that way, but I didn’t know w-w-where else to go…”
“Oh, Harl…”
“So I went to your old place, the old hazard site where I stayed with you the last time, but you w-weren’t there anymore,” Harley said through sniffles, “s-so I had to go to every hideout in town until finally Catwoman told me where you were, an’, an’ how come you’re here anyway, huh?”
“Word got around that I had gone back to my old place. The cops were going to come; I had to make a run for it.” Ivy pushed back a lock of blonde hair from her friend’s forehead and felt a surge of fierce protectiveness. She wrapped an arm around Harley’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Harley, I’m not letting you go back to that son of a bitch.”
“I don’t wanna go back,” Harvey mumbled into Ivy’s shoulder.
“Oh really? That would be a change, if it were true.” Ivy let go of Harley. “Come on, let’s go inside. You’re staying with me.”
Ivy led the way back into the motel lobby, where before the clerk could object, she said, “Don’t worry, darling, it’s all taken care of.” She kissed him gently, an almost motherly peck on the lips. His eyes unfocused. He nodded dumbly.
“Gosh, Red,” Harley said from behind her, impressed. “Haven’t seen anyone do that in a while.”
“Yeah, well, welcome back.” They walked up the creaking staircase and into room 237. “Here we are.”
Harley blinked as she walked inside. “Gee, it’s kind of a dump, don’t you think?”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “I didn’t pick it based on its rating in Frommer’s guide.”
“I know, but I think I’d get depressed in here after a while.” Harley sat down on the sagging bed and stared around the room. “How long you been livin’ here?”
“Almost two weeks. I probably can’t stay here much longer without somebody finding out, though. Especially if Catwoman has been running her mouth.” Ivy was rummaging around in her suitcase, which she had never bothered to unpack. “I wish I hadn’t told her anything. I don’t trust her to keep her trap shut if there’s something in it for her.”
Harley looked hurt. “You didn’t want her to tell me?”
“Oh Harley, don’t look at me like that. Of course I meant the cops, not you.” Ivy sat on the edge of the bed facing Harley, a jar of green ointment in her hand. “Now hold still. This should start healing the bruises and keep the swelling down.” She started dabbing the goo around Harley’s eye with her fingers.
“Ow! It stings!”
“Knock it off. Big baby.” She rubbed some of the homemade balm gently over Harley’s swollen eyelid. “So how did you get here, anyway?”
“Stole a car.”
“Oh, Harley. Really?”
“Hey! Where do you get off actin’ like Miss Morality all of a sudden? Like you’ve never stolen anything before!”
“It’s just not the smartest move first thing out of Arkham, that’s all. Cars can be tracked, you know.”
“I’m not worried,” said Harley, although her expression said otherwise. “Anyway, how’d you get out here? You didn’t bring your car?”
“I kissed a taxi driver.”
“You got it so easy.”
“Yeah, lucky me.” Ivy put a last dab around Harley’s black eye. “There. All done. It should start feeling better already.”
“Thanks.” Harley looked around the room. “Hey, where’d all your plants go?”
“Well, obviously, I could hardly take them all in the taxi with me. I have a couple of the smaller rare ones growing in the bathtub right now. The rest I left back in Gotham. Most of them can take care of themselves by now, and the others I paid Catwoman to look after.” Ivy realized that Harley was staring at her. “What?”
“It’s not like you to leave your plants behind,” Harley said, almost accusingly.
“Come on, Harley, you know how we live. When you’re on the run, you have to make hard choices sometimes.”
“I guess.” Harley was quiet for a second. “Do you miss them?”
“Sure. Sort of.”
Ivy was looking away, but somehow Harley caught her gaze and held it. Slowly and deliberately she asked, “Did you miss me?”
For a second, nothing moved. There was a strange sort of humming in the air. Ivy could hear it deep in her ears, a thrumming like an electric current. The sound of potentiality. She took a deep breath.
Then a truck barreled loudly down the road outside, and the moment was broken. “Just kidding!” Harley said cheerfully. “Gee, I’m exhausted. Can it be bedtime?”
“Of course,” said Ivy quickly. “You can turn out the light; I’m just going to wash my face, and I’ll be right there. Try not to kick me too much this time.”
“Don’t worry, I sleep like a rock!” Harley sang, snuggling down under the bed covers as Ivy went into the bathroom.
“Uh-huh.”
As she washed up at the old chipped sink, Ivy stared at her reflection in the grimy mirror. Somehow it didn’t look like her. The longer she looked, the less she recognized her own features. She blinked and shook her head to clear it. She went back into the bedroom and lay down under the covers next to Harley.
She felt like all she had done was shut her eyes and open them a second later, but when Ivy woke up the alarm clock’s glowing digits told her it was 4:48 AM. She wondered blurrily what had woken her; then she wondered if she was still dreaming. The ceiling was illuminated by bars of light, and everything felt strange and unreal.
Then she remembered Harley. She rolled over in bed, but the space beside her was empty. “Harl?” she said muzzily. She sat up.
Harley was sitting perched on the wide inner sill of the room’s only window, her feet drawn up in front of her. She had opened the curtains and was looking out toward the streetlights and occasional passing cars, as headlights briefly illuminated the room and then faded away. She still wore the same blouse and jeans she had shown up in, but she had taken her hair out of its pigtails, and now it hung loose around her shoulders. The neon glow of the vacancy sign made a faint pink halo at the top of her head.
Ivy got out of bed and went to stand next to Harley. She combed through her friend’s hair with her fingers. “Hey,” she said, voice husky from slumber. “Can’t you sleep?”
Harley still faced the window. Up close, Ivy could see the bruise on Harley’s face reflected in the glass.
When Harley finally spoke, her voice was so tiny it was barely audible.
“Oh Ivy,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt so blue in my entire life.”
Suddenly Ivy’s chest was full of an aching tightness, and there was something like a rock in her throat. She wrapped her arms around Harley’s shoulders from behind. “Shh,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything better. “Shhh. Baby. Don’t.”
“Ivy, are you crying?”
Ivy buried her face in Harley’s shoulder. “No.”
They were still for a long while. Outside, the trucks drove past on their before-dawn errands. The eastern horizon was almost beginning to brighten.
Finally Harley said, “How come you were so nice to the guy at the desk before?”
“Hmm?”
“The desk guy. When you kissed him, you didn’t make him do anything bad. You just made him forget. And you kissed him nicely. How come?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess because…” Ivy realized that she did know, but she didn’t know whether she could say it. The words seemed to stick in her throat as she forced them out.
“Because he had been worried about you. I didn’t want to hurt someone who had been nice to you.”
“He wasn’t nice! He was gonna call the cops!”
“Only because he cared about you.”
Harley shifted a little in Ivy’s arms. Then she said, “You never used to care about anybody.”
Ivy didn’t have an answer. Her reflection in the windowpane looked ghostly and foreign. She held Harley a little tighter.
“I think you’ve changed, Red,” Harley said softly. Pulling out of Ivy’s arms, she turned around on the sill at last. She took Ivy’s hands and held them as she faced her. Her eyes were big and blue and full of shadows, and her face was lit strangely by the glow of the vacancy sign. “I wish I could change, too.”
Ivy pulled Harley down from the windowsill to her feet. She put an arm around Harley’s waist and kissed her on the cheek, which she had done plenty of times before.
“Red,” Harley said.
“Shh.” Ivy kissed her on the corner of her mouth next to her lips, just inside her dimple, as Harley’s eyelashes fluttered like a moth’s wings against her skin. She had done that before, too.
Ivy heard Harley let out a sigh, and she drew Harley nearer, to do what she had never done before. Her heart was pounding as she felt Harley’s breath on her face. Every cell in her body felt alive and bright, as if she had been suddenly filled with sunlight. There had never been so little space between them as Ivy closed her eyes and leaned in-
Harley turned away, so that Ivy’s lips met her cheek. She took a step backwards. “So where are you gonna go now?” she asked, as if nothing had happened.
Ivy felt as though something soft and green and growing within her chest had been uprooted. Anything, she found herself thinking desperately, she would have given up anything-money, power, reputation, it could all go to hell-if only Harley had said not you, but we.
And it must have been that desperation that made Ivy say, in the voice of the strange, unknown self she had seen in the mirror and the windowpane reflection, in the voice of someone she hadn’t realized, until now, that she had become: “You know, we don’t have to stay in Gotham.”
For a long, precarious second, Harley stared at Ivy with her eyes wide and her mouth half-open; and in panic Ivy thought: I went too far, I said too much, it was my only chance and there’s no hope now-
And then Harley said, “We don’t?”, and Ivy felt the entire world open up.
“Listen, Harl,” she said, the words coming out quick and low now, “I’ve been thinking, what if we left? What if we just left all of this, forever? Gotham, and the Bat, and the Joker, and everything? What if we just put our backs to it all and got the hell out of here?”
“But Ivy, where are we gonna go where they don’t know us? The whole state’s looking for you. And me.” There was a suggestion of pride in Harley’s voice on that point.
“I’m not talking about going upstate. I’m talking about a whole lot farther. Somewhere out west. Somewhere people won’t know to look for us. Where nobody will know our faces.”
Harley looked unsure. “Gee, I dunno, Red. I’ve never been much farther west than Newark.”
Ivy grabbed Harley’s shoulders; she felt like shaking her. “Harley, don’t you get it? We could be free-we are free! There’s a whole world that’s not Gotham. Forget Newark, what about California?”
“California?”
“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter, we can go anywhere. You’ve got a car, right? I’ve got a little money. We’ll cut our hair-change our names, get new jobs-nobody will find us-”
“California,” Harley repeated, like it was a magic word.
Ivy felt euphoric; part of her knew this was insane, impossible, but she couldn’t have stopped talking if she’d wanted to. “Where it’s always sunny, and there’s no snow and no Gotham winters, just palm trees and beaches, Harley, just think about it-”
“If we left everything…” Harley was biting her lip like she was thinking something over. She looked at Ivy. “Do you mean we’d go straight?”
Ivy barely hesitated. “If you want to, Harl, we can do it.”
“We can do it!” Harley repeated, looking dazzled, and Ivy knew they were both feeling it now, the sensation that the world had blossomed for them like a flower. They stared at each other in the growing light of dawn. The sun was rising over the highway outside Gotham.
Harley put her arms around Ivy and moved her lips to Ivy’s ear.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
--
Forty minutes later they were tearing down the interstate in Harley’s stolen car, suitcases in the trunk, Ivy at the wheel and feeling electric. Harley, in the passenger seat, was trying to cut Ivy’s hair as Ivy drove. It wasn’t going particularly well. Ivy didn’t mind.
“…and since it’s so warm there all your plants will grow right outside,” Harley said as she lopped off another four inches and brushed them off Ivy’s back onto the floor, “all new ones so you won’t have to miss your old ones, and they’ll keep you company while I’m at work if you get lonely.”
“I won’t get lonely.”
“Well, just in case.” Another giant snip. “Oops.”
“‘Oops’?”
“Well, you keep moving your head!”
Ivy laughed. It still felt strange to laugh, after a year without seeing Harley, a year without any laughter at all. “Forget about it. When do I get to cut your hair?”
“Not yet.”
“Come on.”
“When we get to California, do it then. Hey, can I turn on the radio?” Without waiting for an answer, Harley turned the dial and started scanning through stations. Static, more static, faint orchestral sounds, then:
“…Thank you, Mike. That was Mike Rodriguez with the weather for WNGC, Gotham’s radio news network. And now, breaking news: the criminal psychopath known as the Joker is reportedly at the center of a hostage situation developing at the Gotham City harbor. Details are still unclear, but at least four hostages appear to be in the Joker’s custody, according to eyewitnesses-”
“Turn it off, Harl,” Ivy said softly.
She had been watching Harley out of the corner of her eye. Harley’s bruised face was nearly as white as she painted it for heists, but her expression was strangely composed. She reached out and switched off the radio almost before Ivy spoke.
“Hostages,” she said with disgust. “Talk about going downhill.”
But she didn’t speak again for the next twenty miles.
When they passed a sign for a rest area, Harley finally said, “Can we stop here for a minute? I wanna use the bathroom.”
Ivy took the exit as Harley asked, but after pulling into the parking lot, she grabbed her friend’s arm with one hand before Harley could open the door.
“Hey! What gives?”
Ivy wasn’t looking at Harley; she felt like she couldn’t. She parted her lips but didn’t know how to say what she needed to say, not without sounding desperate. “You’re going to call the Joker, aren’t you?” she finally muttered.
“What?”
Ivy looked Harley in the face, gripping her wrist. “You’re going to call him, aren’t you? You’re going to tell that creep where we are. Don’t do it, Harl.” She choked on an unfamiliar word: “Please.”
Harley’s big blue eyes were wide with surprise, but feigned or genuine, Ivy couldn’t tell. “Oh come on! Don’tcha trust me, Red?”
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. But she had had so little practice.
“Pammy,” Harley said in her sweetest tones. “Come on. Lemme go.”
She wanted to.
“I’m never calling him again,” said Harley. “And even if I wanted to-which I don’t-but even if I did, I don’t have any money for the phone. Look.” With her free hand, she pulled her jeans pockets inside out. Not even lint fell out. “See? Plenty of nothin’.” She smiled at Ivy. “Now will you let me go?”
“I-sure.” Ivy released Harley’s wrist, ashamed in the glow of Harley’s smile. “Go ahead.”
As Harley skipped away, Ivy stared after her, then lowered her head onto her arms on the steering wheel. What had she turned into? Who was this person, angry and scared of the stupidest things, acting like a prison guard with the one girl who meant anything to her? What was she doing, driving cross-country on an insane whim in a stolen car, leaving behind her plants-her causes-everything she had ever cared about?
Everything but one.
She sat up and stared blankly out the window, wishing she could disappear. Harley was making a fool of her, or she was making a fool of herself, she didn’t know and it made no difference. She was a clown, as surely as Harley was, as maybe all lovers were. You didn’t need the costume or the paint. As easily as the Joker had done it to Harley, now Harley had made a clown out of her.
But at least Harley was in her passenger seat now, not the Joker’s. And Ivy would be damned if she would let her go again.
The passenger side door opened, and Harley hopped in. “I’m back! And with just as little money as I left with. For once,” she added as an afterthought.
Suddenly Ivy leaned over and wrapped an arm tight around Harley’s shoulders. “Hey! What’s that for?” Harley said, but she sounded pleased as Ivy pulled her close and kissed her on the cheek. At the same time, Ivy quietly slid home the lock on Harley’s door.
“Nothing,” said Ivy, letting go of Harley and starting the ignition. “Let’s hit the road.”
The stolen car pulled back onto the interstate and headed west, as behind it the newly risen sun began turning the New Jersey highway gold.
Tonight we’ll leave all our stupid songs
We’ll try and reach the hills by dawn
Someone has dressed us all like clowns
(continue to part two)