"Dress Me Like A Clown"-part 3 of 3 (Batman: The Animated Series)
Title: Dress Me Like A Clown
Fandom: Batman: The Animated Series
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Crime/Romance
Words: 4,600 (in part three)
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 and is quoted throughout, is the property of the band Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.
Summary: It was right to be hard, to be cruel and cold and too sharp to touch, when you were in Arkham or on the lam in Gotham, out there against the Bat and the cops and the loonies. Nobody could blame Ivy for that. It was what you had to do to survive.
But Harley wasn’t like that. She was warm, she was sweet, she wanted to love without the stab in the back at the end. She believed in things Ivy had quit believing in years ago.
And Ivy had been one of those things.
Notes: At last, the end. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to those who left encouraging comments; I spent spent well over a year writing & rewriting this story, and every kind word helped. I truly appreciate it.
part three: nothing I'd say
Baby it’s time
To pay for my crime
Nothing I’d say could make you mine
It shouldn’t have to be like this, poisonous and painful. That much Ivy was sure of, as the car chased the sinking sun westward. Love shouldn’t have to mean dodging punches, running scared. She had to find a way to make it better.
She felt brittle, wasted, a dried-out stem, when she looked at Harley in the seat beside her with the bruise still dark around her eye. She felt like she might break at any moment. And all the time there was Harley, looking languid yet wound up tight as a spring, unpredictable and undeniable. One minute looking into Ivy’s eyes and promising to stay, the next minute shrinking from her touch.
Ivy had to make her see that this time was different. She would never be like the last keeper of Harley’s heart. There had to be a way to tell her-no, not to tell her; there were some things Ivy could never say. But a way to show her, to make Harley understand what Ivy was offering. To show what lay in her heart, what Ivy longed to let out, if only the old venomous habits weren’t in the way.
When Harley touched her shoulder, Ivy almost jumped. “What?” she shouted.
“Don’t yell at me!” Harley squeaked.
“You-just startled me.”
“I was just tryin’ to tell you we’re outta gas, that’s all.” Harley pointed to the gauge. She was right; it was hovering on E.
“Damn. I guess it’s finally time we fill up.” Ivy glanced at Harley, and forced herself to say it. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Harley said coolly. She was staring out the window, her arms folded tight across her chest.
Ivy felt the resurgence of that old familiar ache. “Harl,” she said.
“Hm?” The same chilly indifference.
Ivy’s hand moved almost on its own, like a sunflower leaning toward the light. Her fingers lit softly on Harley’s shoulder, and trailed down her arm in silent entreaty.
Harley’s arms unfolded, and Ivy felt her heart rise in hope. But then Harley pulled away, her shoulders slumping as she leaned her forehead against the window.
“Sweetheart,” said Ivy.
“Just drive the car, please,” Harley said quietly.
She didn’t lift her head as Ivy took the next exit, found the gas station and pulled up beside a pump. Ivy left her in the car.
She stared blankly at the numbers on the pump as she waited for the tank to fill, wondering what she could say to Harley that could make things right again. How was it that every time things started to get better, she did the wrong thing? Whenever Harley got close, some instinct took over, and Ivy frightened her away again.
It was right to be hard, to be cruel and cold and too sharp to touch, when you were in Arkham or on the lam in Gotham, out there against the Bat and the cops and the loonies. Nobody could blame Ivy for that. It was what you had to do to survive.
But Harley wasn’t like that. She was warm, she was sweet, she wanted to love without the stab in the back at the end. She believed in things Ivy had quit believing in years ago.
And Ivy had been one of those things.
It was because of Harley that Ivy was different now. Harley had changed her, picked off her thorns, found a gentleness inside her that Ivy had thought was long gone. Of course there had been a price: Ivy had made a fool of herself more than once for this girl; she had turned her back on the things that used to matter most to her, left behind the city where she was feared and respected for some new place where she would be just another nameless face. But Harley was worth it. It was all worth it, as long as Harley was by her side.
And yet-now everything was going wrong. Now that she had Harley all to herself, with nothing between them but a whispered word, a brush of hands, a few final inches on a hotel bed, she couldn’t get it right. She longed for Harley, ached for her, opened her heart up and reached for her, and then just as Harley reached back she found herself retreating, snapping shut like a trap. Her old Gotham ways came back, mean and cold and deadly. She didn’t know how to let herself be the Ivy that Harley had believed was inside her.
And she could find no words to say that would make things right.
The pump handle gave a jolt in Ivy’s hand, and she hung it back up. She opened the car door to get her purse and the Ziploc bag of cash hidden inside it.
But when she opened the door, Harley was already sitting in the driver’s seat. Clutching Ivy’s open purse, the baggie of cash sticking out of it. Harley’s face so pale it was almost white.
“Two hundred fifty-three dollars,” said Harley, “and ninety-one cents.”
“You,” Ivy began weakly, then had to start over- “You weren’t supposed to find it.”
“I’m not a kid!” Harley snarled, two bright red spots appearing high on her cheekbones as she got out of the car to stand face-to-face with Ivy. “You were gonna hide this from me? For how long? You told me you had money! You said it from the very beginning!”
“I said I had some money,” Ivy heard her own voice say, as she stood there hating herself.
“I believed you when you said we could do this! Two hundred and fifty dollars? That’s not even enough for gas! What were we supposed to do when we ran out of money?”
“I thought we might…pick some more up somewhere…”
“You bitch,” said Harley, and Ivy felt the word-nothing she hadn’t been called a hundred times before-pierce her heart and lodge there like a bullet. She had never heard it Harley say it.
“You told me we were going straight,” Harley said. “I trusted you. And you didn’t mean it for a second!”
“I did,” Ivy said, but her voice barely came out above a whisper. “I did mean it-I didn’t know how we would do it, but I believed it, because you believed it…”
Harley stared at her, then let out a laugh. An awful, bleak laugh. “And here I was thinkin' we were gonna make honest women of each other.”
“Harl, I-”
“Shut up. I believed in you. And you were just another liar the whole time. Just like everybody else.”
“No,” said Ivy, “no, no, no,” and she actually had to lean against the car for a moment as a wave of faintness came and went. “You-it’s your fault, you’ve been playing me for an idiot-you said you would never go back to him when I knew all along, I knew-”
“Knew what? You don’t know anything, you just think you do. You were so sure I’d go back to him. I told you I wouldn’t, and you still wouldn’t trust me!” Harley flung Ivy’s purse on the ground. “And now we’re stuck in the middle of Ohio with two hundred and fifty dollars, like that’s going to get us anywhere! Two hundred and fifty dollars to get us all the way to California! Are you insane?”
“Yes!” Ivy shouted back. “Yes I am! I must be! And you’re the one who made me that way! Twice I thought you’d stay with me. Twice so far you’ve gone back to him! He’ll kill you, Harley, and you pretend it’s a game! What was I supposed to do? I had to get you away from him, I had to come up with something. To help you!”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Harley spat, and for a second Ivy felt like slapping her.
But she didn’t. “I’m saving your life,” she said instead. “If that makes me crazy, fine.” And yet that wasn’t the real reason, and she still hadn’t said it; she still hadn’t told Harley the simple truth.
“Saving my life? You don’t know anything about me,” Harley said, her bruised face violet in the light of the setting sun. “You don’t even believe in anything. Not me. Not yourself. Nothing.”
Yet even when she tried to close herself up, Harley didn’t know how to be cold. Ivy could see, could almost feel where the warmth was trying to get out.
“But you did,” Ivy said. “You believed in me.”
“Yeah. Because I’m a gullible idiot.”
“No. Because you’re-you’re an angel. You see what people can be, even people like me. Harley, I-I need you.” Not good enough. This one time, she had to say the right thing. “Harley, I love you,” Ivy said.
Harley didn’t smile. She just stared.
“I’m in love with you,” said Ivy. “And I think it’s driving me crazy.”
The words lingered in the air like late summer heat. Two long shadows lay motionless on the faded asphalt.
Finally Harley let out a long sigh. “Oh boy,” she said, and threw Ivy’s purse into the front seat. “What are we gonna do now, Red?”
And that was how Ivy knew that against all odds, she had been forgiven.
“We’re gonna knock this place over,” Ivy said in a low voice, “one last score. And this time, I swear, Harley, this’ll be it. We’ll take this money and make it to California, and we’ll start over. I promise you, you’ll never have to do this again after tonight.”
“Neither of us,” Harley interjected. “I want us both to start over.”
“I-” Ivy hesitated. “I’m not sure if I can promise that. If something goes wrong, I might have to do something I-I don’t want to do. But you, Harley, I swear to God, this is the last time you’ll ever have to do this.” She took Harley’s hand. “Believe me, Harl, one more time. I don’t deserve it, but believe me anyway.”
She held her breath for a second, until she felt Harley squeeze her hand back. “Okay,” Harley said, and Ivy’s heart bloomed like a rose.
“All right,” said Ivy, “let’s get in the car, and I’ll tell you the plan.” And she did have a plan, or at least the start of one. It was easy now, knowing what she had to do. Knowing Harley needed her.
“It’ll be a cinch,” Ivy said. “Tiny place like this in the middle of nowhere, they’ll only have one person on duty. He knows there’s a car here, but he couldn’t have seen our faces from that window. See where the counter is? All right. I’ll go in there first and kiss the cashier after he opens the register. When I say go, you run in and grab the cash. Don’t talk, just run in and get started.”
“I’ll have my mask on, right?”
“Not your domino mask. I don’t want them to know you’re anybody special.” Ivy was rummaging around in the back seat, opening her suitcase. She turned around with a pair of black pantyhose and, in her other hand, a Swiss Army knife. She slashed off one leg of the hose and tossed it to Harley. “There. Put this on.”
As an afterthought she remembered about her hair-Harley's handiwork would attract too much attention. She looked in the rearview mirror and used her Swiss Army scissors to hack off the long patches; now it was a sloppy pixie cut, unattractive but less memorable.
“Does the stocking thing actually work?” Harley’s voice was muffled through the fabric as she readjusted it over her head.
“It’ll be good enough for this job.” Ivy snipped a last troublesome patch out of her hair and slipped three twenties into her pocket. She was just making sure she had her lipstick in her other pocket when Harley, pulling off the stocking, said, “Wait. What about you?”
Ivy glanced up, but couldn’t quite meet Harley’s eye. “What about me?”
“You’ll be caught on the security camera. They’ll track us down, they’ll find you!”
“They won’t find me.” She got out of the car and shut the door.
Harley followed her out. “What if the GCPD hears about it? Or-or Batman? He won’t stop until he finds you!” Harley’s voice was rising in panic. “Red, what are we gonna do?”
“Nothing!” Ivy grabbed Harley’s shoulders. “Stop worrying. So maybe the Ohio cops tell the Gotham cops, or the Bat noses in, and everybody finds out I’m not in Gotham anymore. Big deal. By that time I’ll be long gone.”
Ivy felt Harley’s shoulders stiffen under her hands and realized her mistake a second too late. “I mean we’ll be long gone.”
Harley brushed Ivy’s hands away and looked her straight in the face. Ivy felt her heart beat harder.
“If we do this, Red,” Harley said, “I’m in this for good. You get that, right?”
“Sure.” Ivy’s face felt as hot as the car’s hood. Harley had never looked at her like this before, holding her gaze and refusing to let go.
“I know I’ve run out on you before,” Harley said, and her voice sounded different, stronger than usual. “But it’s not gonna be like that this time. It’s not you anymore, now it’s we.”
Ivy’s heart was an animal inside her chest, pounding against its cage.
“I know you’ve been tryin’ to protect me, but I’m not a kid. What I need is for you to trust me.” Harley reached out and took Ivy’s hand. “Do ya trust me, Ivy?”
Ivy moistened her lips. Her hand was sweaty in Harley’s grasp.
“Ivy?” Harley’s eyes were bluer than a summer sky, than the Atlantic from the boardwalk, than the halo over the Gotham City skyline at night.
“Yes,” Ivy managed, almost dizzy with desire. “Yes, I trust you.”
“Good,” Harley said, and Ivy thought there was something strange in her voice, but it was hard to pay attention when Harley was grabbing her arms and turning her around to face the gas station doors. “Then go,” Harley said, and pushed Ivy forward.
She shook off the nerves as she walked toward the glass doors. It wasn’t hard to do. She had robbed banks and museums and galleries, after all. A gas station was nothing. She put on her lipstick as she pushed open the door and sauntered in as if she had something else on her mind. It was easy, because she did. She was thinking of Harley. She could spend the rest of her life doing nothing but thinking of Harley.
Just one cashier at the counter, nobody else in the store. Ivy had been right. She’d always had a feel for this.
“Can I help you?”
“Gas on tank six.” She leaned against the counter and feigned interest in her fingernails. Easy. Take it easy. She slid a glance toward the glass doors. Harley was outside, standing against the wall.
“Thirty-nine eighty-four.” The cashier looked only a year or two past thirty, already balding a little on top, but not so bad-looking besides that. Probably a nice guy, maybe married. Ivy almost felt a little sorry for what she had to do.
She reached into her pocket for the three twenties and handed them all to the cashier. He rang up the sale and the register drawer shot open. Then he turned to her with the bills still in his hand and said, “Looks like you gave me too many-”
Ivy grabbed the money back, yanked him forward, and kissed him hard before he knew what was happening. She only broke it off for an instant to yell over her shoulder, “Har- Honey, now!” before crushing her lips into his again.
Harley sprinted into the store with the black stocking over her head and a white paper bag in her hand. She raked a hand through Ivy’s hair as she vaulted over the counter and started transferring money into the bag from the open register.
But Ivy barely noticed Harley’s fingers on her skin. And that, she realized later, was the most obvious sign possible that something was very wrong.
Ivy worked primarily by instinct. Experiments and calculations weren’t as important as getting the feel for when the trick was working. And she sensed right away that something wasn’t going right this time.
At first she wasn’t worried. There were people who didn’t give in immediately. Some struggled. Some who had particularly strong willpower might require a great deal of effort. Ivy had learned how to deal with them.
But this man wasn’t like them. He wasn’t pushing back; he was pushing forward. He was too into it. Too far, too fast.
He had one hand slithering up the front of her blouse, another sliding around her back, his tongue jammed down her throat. His mouth tasted like nicotine and stale beer, tar and sweat and dirt and small-town hopelessness, and something else. Something worse.
It was the naiveté, the ease with which he had fallen into the trap. She felt the mindlessness of his kiss, and she tasted her own dishonesty. She thought of Harley, of hands and lips and bruises. The lies she had told, the promises she had broken-and even now-
All at once it was too much. She pulled away from the kiss and twisted out of his grip. “Hey! This is a stickup, not a sex act, moron. Open the other register and the safe.”
Suddenly unsure, he stared at her. Ivy stared back, as steadily as she could. She had taken a risk, she knew. She might have jolted him out of the trance; she might have destroyed whatever chance they had. But she couldn’t do anything else. She couldn’t have taken another second.
It was a sort of hypnosis. Just a combination of toxins and pheromones and practice and luck. It wasn’t about sex, not really. It wasn’t like being a whore. It wasn’t like telling a lie.
It made her feel dirty anyway.
It was time to leave all that. She was in love with a girl who made her heart feel like spring, who had trusted and forgiven her even when she had least deserved it. She was in love with a girl who was the only one she’d ever want again.
“Listen to me,” she said, confident and clear, her eyes fixed on the cashier’s. “Nothing is wrong. Everything will be fine. Just open the register and the safe, and it’ll all be okay.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harley standing motionless beside the empty register, tense with uncertainty, holding tightly to the paper bag. Ivy wanted to smile at her, reassure her, but they couldn’t afford that. She kept her eyes on the cashier. Focused all her willpower on him.
And then, almost too suddenly, she had won-she felt him give in, and he walked toward the second register and entered the code to open it. Ivy nodded at Harley, and Harley started raiding the register as the cashier came back to Ivy like a sleepwalker.
“Good job,” Ivy said sweetly. “But wasn’t there something else? Didn’t I tell you to open the safe next?”
But something wasn’t right. She could see him struggling, could see realization beginning to flicker in his vacant stare. His eyes strayed from Ivy’s and fell onto Harley, just as she finished raking the last of the bills out of the register.
“No,” Ivy said sharply, “look at me, look at me-don’t you dare-”
It was all coming apart. She had no hold over him anymore. Harley barely managed to dart out of the way as the cashier made a grab for her.
And Ivy felt rage consume her like a forest fire. “Hey!” She sprang onto the counter and over the other side, and took the cashier by the front of his shirt. “You son of a bitch,” she snarled at him, “don’t ever touch my girl.”
And then she kissed him, because it was the only weapon she had. She kissed him, and into that kiss she put every bitter burning ember of hatred she had for him, for him and his dead-end job in a dead-end town where there wasn’t any hope left for anyone. She kissed him with all the hatred she had for herself, too, for the lies she had told Harley, for the ugliness of her anger, for the glib ease of her broken promises, for how hard it had been to say I love you and how much harder it had been to say I trust you. She kissed him because she loved a girl she didn’t deserve.
And when she pulled away from him and spat “Motherfucker,” she realized she was crying.
She was still crying as she ran out of the store to the car where Harley was already waiting in the driver’s seat. Slamming the door as Harley hit the gas, she sobbed like a child.
And she knew she could never do this again. She might, as she had told Harley, have to go back to crime when they reached California. Maybe sooner, depending on how much money they’d gotten tonight. But not like this. Never again like this.
Harley tore down the interstate toward Indiana faster than Ivy had ever seen her drive. She put mile after mile between them and the gas station, shushing Ivy all the while, driving with one hand and stroking Ivy’s hair with the other. Even after Ivy stopped crying, Harley kept petting her hair, just as Ivy had run her hands through Harley’s hair as they stared out the hotel window on the outskirts of Gotham City twelve hours ago, twelve years ago, a lifetime ago.
“Long gone, just like you said, Red,” Harley told her over and over as they crossed the state line. “Remember how you told me? We’re long gone. Forget about Ohio. That’s far behind us now.”
But Ivy didn’t think it could ever be far enough.
--
They didn’t stop for food or gas or coffee. When it got dark Harley turned on the headlights and kept driving. They didn’t speak much to each other. There didn’t seem to be much left to say. It had been a very long day.
At one point Ivy counted up the money in the paper bag. They had stolen four hundred and seventeen dollars.
Later Ivy lay back half-asleep and through the vague haze of a dream she heard Harley singing in her reedy little voice:
Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I’ll stay…
They finally stopped at a run-down motel somewhere in the great expanse of nothingness between Chicago and the Iowa border. At the front desk Ivy shoved a wad of cash at the clerk without looking in his eyes. The man handed Harley the key.
Their room was shabby and overlooked the parking lot. As soon as they walked in Harley sat down on the bed and said, “This is the farthest west I’ve ever been.”
Ivy set the white paper bag on the nightstand. She sat on the bed next to Harley and tried to take her hand. She was clumsy and awkward doing it, like a thirteen-year-old boy.
Harley stood up and let go of Ivy’s hand, but she did it gently. “I gotta take a shower,” she said.
Ivy lay on her back on top of the thin comforter and stared blankly at the ceiling as she listened to the endless drum of running water from the bathroom. When her eyes fell closed and she slept for the first time since five o'clock that morning, she dreamed uneasily of money and sweat and too-honest cops and the bruise around Harley’s eye.
When she opened her eyes, the room was dark and she had no idea where she was. She lay very still and gazed at the ceiling and waited for the sleep-amnesia to pass. Another motel room.
She would die someday in a motel room. For a minute she could see it all quite clearly, like a movie. She would die on the run, in some dump on the edge of the city, staring at a ceiling like this one. Nobody would really notice, except for the Bat, who noticed everything, and maybe Jim Gordon, who would be glad. They would cremate her out of fear of poison, and they would throw the ashes in a ditch somewhere, and then forget about her. The ashes would help the plants grow stronger and taller, and the plants would remember her for a while. And then there would be nothing left of her at all.
And then she rolled over and saw Harley lying beside her, and all at once she remembered everything.
“Hey, Red,” Harley said softly. She was curled up under the covers, gazing at Ivy, and somehow even in the dark her eyes seemed to shine. “There’s room under the blanket.”
Ivy slid beneath the covers. She thought Harley must be able to hear how loudly her heart was beating.
“I didn’t wanna wake you up,” Harley whispered. “Were you having a nice dream?”
Ivy put a hand on either side of Harley’s face. There was nothing she could say to express her relief, her happiness; no words she could find to tell Harley how it felt to have her lying there beside her.
So she pulled Harley’s face close, and she kissed her. She kissed her long and slow, her hands twining in Harley’s hair. And when Ivy began to draw away, Harley pulled her back and kissed her again, slow and sweet and somehow sad, Harley’s lips moving as if mouthing the words to a song she only half remembered. Harley ran her hands slowly down Ivy’s body, and the strange fierce intensity of her touch made Ivy wonder if Harley was trying to learn her, to memorize the way Ivy felt, every bend and curve and hollow.
Ivy lifted her head back. “I wish,” she murmured thickly, “I just-I wish I could tell you-”
And Harley whispered against Ivy’s throat, “So show me.”
So Ivy showed her. She took everything she had no words for, everything she could never say, and she put it into every kiss, every touch, saying it with every part of herself. And when she was finished, when she had done all she could to make Harley understand, they lay together and Ivy imagined the highway like a long dark ribbon, and at the end there was the sun setting red and orange and violet over the California hills, and there was a little house overlooking the ocean with orchids growing in the garden; and her thoughts turned into dreams until at last she was asleep with her hand still tangled in Harley’s hair.
--
When she awoke the bed was empty and Harley’s clothes were gone. There was no paper bag on the nightstand. Ivy walked over to the window, but she didn’t have to look to know that the car wasn’t there.
As she turned away she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror across the room. It was an unfamiliar face that looked back at her. She looked at the stranger’s face for a long time.
She looked back out the window again, at the place where the car had been, but there was nothing there. Out on the road the early-morning semis were already trundling down the highway, their drivers sipping coffee and switching on the radio. They were people who knew where they needed to go. Ivy wondered what it was like to be one of them.
Fandom: Batman: The Animated Series
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Crime/Romance
Words: 4,600 (in part three)
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 and is quoted throughout, is the property of the band Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.
Summary: It was right to be hard, to be cruel and cold and too sharp to touch, when you were in Arkham or on the lam in Gotham, out there against the Bat and the cops and the loonies. Nobody could blame Ivy for that. It was what you had to do to survive.
But Harley wasn’t like that. She was warm, she was sweet, she wanted to love without the stab in the back at the end. She believed in things Ivy had quit believing in years ago.
And Ivy had been one of those things.
Notes: At last, the end. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to those who left encouraging comments; I spent spent well over a year writing & rewriting this story, and every kind word helped. I truly appreciate it.
part three: nothing I'd say
Baby it’s time
To pay for my crime
Nothing I’d say could make you mine
It shouldn’t have to be like this, poisonous and painful. That much Ivy was sure of, as the car chased the sinking sun westward. Love shouldn’t have to mean dodging punches, running scared. She had to find a way to make it better.
She felt brittle, wasted, a dried-out stem, when she looked at Harley in the seat beside her with the bruise still dark around her eye. She felt like she might break at any moment. And all the time there was Harley, looking languid yet wound up tight as a spring, unpredictable and undeniable. One minute looking into Ivy’s eyes and promising to stay, the next minute shrinking from her touch.
Ivy had to make her see that this time was different. She would never be like the last keeper of Harley’s heart. There had to be a way to tell her-no, not to tell her; there were some things Ivy could never say. But a way to show her, to make Harley understand what Ivy was offering. To show what lay in her heart, what Ivy longed to let out, if only the old venomous habits weren’t in the way.
When Harley touched her shoulder, Ivy almost jumped. “What?” she shouted.
“Don’t yell at me!” Harley squeaked.
“You-just startled me.”
“I was just tryin’ to tell you we’re outta gas, that’s all.” Harley pointed to the gauge. She was right; it was hovering on E.
“Damn. I guess it’s finally time we fill up.” Ivy glanced at Harley, and forced herself to say it. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Harley said coolly. She was staring out the window, her arms folded tight across her chest.
Ivy felt the resurgence of that old familiar ache. “Harl,” she said.
“Hm?” The same chilly indifference.
Ivy’s hand moved almost on its own, like a sunflower leaning toward the light. Her fingers lit softly on Harley’s shoulder, and trailed down her arm in silent entreaty.
Harley’s arms unfolded, and Ivy felt her heart rise in hope. But then Harley pulled away, her shoulders slumping as she leaned her forehead against the window.
“Sweetheart,” said Ivy.
“Just drive the car, please,” Harley said quietly.
She didn’t lift her head as Ivy took the next exit, found the gas station and pulled up beside a pump. Ivy left her in the car.
She stared blankly at the numbers on the pump as she waited for the tank to fill, wondering what she could say to Harley that could make things right again. How was it that every time things started to get better, she did the wrong thing? Whenever Harley got close, some instinct took over, and Ivy frightened her away again.
It was right to be hard, to be cruel and cold and too sharp to touch, when you were in Arkham or on the lam in Gotham, out there against the Bat and the cops and the loonies. Nobody could blame Ivy for that. It was what you had to do to survive.
But Harley wasn’t like that. She was warm, she was sweet, she wanted to love without the stab in the back at the end. She believed in things Ivy had quit believing in years ago.
And Ivy had been one of those things.
It was because of Harley that Ivy was different now. Harley had changed her, picked off her thorns, found a gentleness inside her that Ivy had thought was long gone. Of course there had been a price: Ivy had made a fool of herself more than once for this girl; she had turned her back on the things that used to matter most to her, left behind the city where she was feared and respected for some new place where she would be just another nameless face. But Harley was worth it. It was all worth it, as long as Harley was by her side.
And yet-now everything was going wrong. Now that she had Harley all to herself, with nothing between them but a whispered word, a brush of hands, a few final inches on a hotel bed, she couldn’t get it right. She longed for Harley, ached for her, opened her heart up and reached for her, and then just as Harley reached back she found herself retreating, snapping shut like a trap. Her old Gotham ways came back, mean and cold and deadly. She didn’t know how to let herself be the Ivy that Harley had believed was inside her.
And she could find no words to say that would make things right.
The pump handle gave a jolt in Ivy’s hand, and she hung it back up. She opened the car door to get her purse and the Ziploc bag of cash hidden inside it.
But when she opened the door, Harley was already sitting in the driver’s seat. Clutching Ivy’s open purse, the baggie of cash sticking out of it. Harley’s face so pale it was almost white.
“Two hundred fifty-three dollars,” said Harley, “and ninety-one cents.”
“You,” Ivy began weakly, then had to start over- “You weren’t supposed to find it.”
“I’m not a kid!” Harley snarled, two bright red spots appearing high on her cheekbones as she got out of the car to stand face-to-face with Ivy. “You were gonna hide this from me? For how long? You told me you had money! You said it from the very beginning!”
“I said I had some money,” Ivy heard her own voice say, as she stood there hating herself.
“I believed you when you said we could do this! Two hundred and fifty dollars? That’s not even enough for gas! What were we supposed to do when we ran out of money?”
“I thought we might…pick some more up somewhere…”
“You bitch,” said Harley, and Ivy felt the word-nothing she hadn’t been called a hundred times before-pierce her heart and lodge there like a bullet. She had never heard it Harley say it.
“You told me we were going straight,” Harley said. “I trusted you. And you didn’t mean it for a second!”
“I did,” Ivy said, but her voice barely came out above a whisper. “I did mean it-I didn’t know how we would do it, but I believed it, because you believed it…”
Harley stared at her, then let out a laugh. An awful, bleak laugh. “And here I was thinkin' we were gonna make honest women of each other.”
“Harl, I-”
“Shut up. I believed in you. And you were just another liar the whole time. Just like everybody else.”
“No,” said Ivy, “no, no, no,” and she actually had to lean against the car for a moment as a wave of faintness came and went. “You-it’s your fault, you’ve been playing me for an idiot-you said you would never go back to him when I knew all along, I knew-”
“Knew what? You don’t know anything, you just think you do. You were so sure I’d go back to him. I told you I wouldn’t, and you still wouldn’t trust me!” Harley flung Ivy’s purse on the ground. “And now we’re stuck in the middle of Ohio with two hundred and fifty dollars, like that’s going to get us anywhere! Two hundred and fifty dollars to get us all the way to California! Are you insane?”
“Yes!” Ivy shouted back. “Yes I am! I must be! And you’re the one who made me that way! Twice I thought you’d stay with me. Twice so far you’ve gone back to him! He’ll kill you, Harley, and you pretend it’s a game! What was I supposed to do? I had to get you away from him, I had to come up with something. To help you!”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Harley spat, and for a second Ivy felt like slapping her.
But she didn’t. “I’m saving your life,” she said instead. “If that makes me crazy, fine.” And yet that wasn’t the real reason, and she still hadn’t said it; she still hadn’t told Harley the simple truth.
“Saving my life? You don’t know anything about me,” Harley said, her bruised face violet in the light of the setting sun. “You don’t even believe in anything. Not me. Not yourself. Nothing.”
Yet even when she tried to close herself up, Harley didn’t know how to be cold. Ivy could see, could almost feel where the warmth was trying to get out.
“But you did,” Ivy said. “You believed in me.”
“Yeah. Because I’m a gullible idiot.”
“No. Because you’re-you’re an angel. You see what people can be, even people like me. Harley, I-I need you.” Not good enough. This one time, she had to say the right thing. “Harley, I love you,” Ivy said.
Harley didn’t smile. She just stared.
“I’m in love with you,” said Ivy. “And I think it’s driving me crazy.”
The words lingered in the air like late summer heat. Two long shadows lay motionless on the faded asphalt.
Finally Harley let out a long sigh. “Oh boy,” she said, and threw Ivy’s purse into the front seat. “What are we gonna do now, Red?”
And that was how Ivy knew that against all odds, she had been forgiven.
“We’re gonna knock this place over,” Ivy said in a low voice, “one last score. And this time, I swear, Harley, this’ll be it. We’ll take this money and make it to California, and we’ll start over. I promise you, you’ll never have to do this again after tonight.”
“Neither of us,” Harley interjected. “I want us both to start over.”
“I-” Ivy hesitated. “I’m not sure if I can promise that. If something goes wrong, I might have to do something I-I don’t want to do. But you, Harley, I swear to God, this is the last time you’ll ever have to do this.” She took Harley’s hand. “Believe me, Harl, one more time. I don’t deserve it, but believe me anyway.”
She held her breath for a second, until she felt Harley squeeze her hand back. “Okay,” Harley said, and Ivy’s heart bloomed like a rose.
“All right,” said Ivy, “let’s get in the car, and I’ll tell you the plan.” And she did have a plan, or at least the start of one. It was easy now, knowing what she had to do. Knowing Harley needed her.
“It’ll be a cinch,” Ivy said. “Tiny place like this in the middle of nowhere, they’ll only have one person on duty. He knows there’s a car here, but he couldn’t have seen our faces from that window. See where the counter is? All right. I’ll go in there first and kiss the cashier after he opens the register. When I say go, you run in and grab the cash. Don’t talk, just run in and get started.”
“I’ll have my mask on, right?”
“Not your domino mask. I don’t want them to know you’re anybody special.” Ivy was rummaging around in the back seat, opening her suitcase. She turned around with a pair of black pantyhose and, in her other hand, a Swiss Army knife. She slashed off one leg of the hose and tossed it to Harley. “There. Put this on.”
As an afterthought she remembered about her hair-Harley's handiwork would attract too much attention. She looked in the rearview mirror and used her Swiss Army scissors to hack off the long patches; now it was a sloppy pixie cut, unattractive but less memorable.
“Does the stocking thing actually work?” Harley’s voice was muffled through the fabric as she readjusted it over her head.
“It’ll be good enough for this job.” Ivy snipped a last troublesome patch out of her hair and slipped three twenties into her pocket. She was just making sure she had her lipstick in her other pocket when Harley, pulling off the stocking, said, “Wait. What about you?”
Ivy glanced up, but couldn’t quite meet Harley’s eye. “What about me?”
“You’ll be caught on the security camera. They’ll track us down, they’ll find you!”
“They won’t find me.” She got out of the car and shut the door.
Harley followed her out. “What if the GCPD hears about it? Or-or Batman? He won’t stop until he finds you!” Harley’s voice was rising in panic. “Red, what are we gonna do?”
“Nothing!” Ivy grabbed Harley’s shoulders. “Stop worrying. So maybe the Ohio cops tell the Gotham cops, or the Bat noses in, and everybody finds out I’m not in Gotham anymore. Big deal. By that time I’ll be long gone.”
Ivy felt Harley’s shoulders stiffen under her hands and realized her mistake a second too late. “I mean we’ll be long gone.”
Harley brushed Ivy’s hands away and looked her straight in the face. Ivy felt her heart beat harder.
“If we do this, Red,” Harley said, “I’m in this for good. You get that, right?”
“Sure.” Ivy’s face felt as hot as the car’s hood. Harley had never looked at her like this before, holding her gaze and refusing to let go.
“I know I’ve run out on you before,” Harley said, and her voice sounded different, stronger than usual. “But it’s not gonna be like that this time. It’s not you anymore, now it’s we.”
Ivy’s heart was an animal inside her chest, pounding against its cage.
“I know you’ve been tryin’ to protect me, but I’m not a kid. What I need is for you to trust me.” Harley reached out and took Ivy’s hand. “Do ya trust me, Ivy?”
Ivy moistened her lips. Her hand was sweaty in Harley’s grasp.
“Ivy?” Harley’s eyes were bluer than a summer sky, than the Atlantic from the boardwalk, than the halo over the Gotham City skyline at night.
“Yes,” Ivy managed, almost dizzy with desire. “Yes, I trust you.”
“Good,” Harley said, and Ivy thought there was something strange in her voice, but it was hard to pay attention when Harley was grabbing her arms and turning her around to face the gas station doors. “Then go,” Harley said, and pushed Ivy forward.
She shook off the nerves as she walked toward the glass doors. It wasn’t hard to do. She had robbed banks and museums and galleries, after all. A gas station was nothing. She put on her lipstick as she pushed open the door and sauntered in as if she had something else on her mind. It was easy, because she did. She was thinking of Harley. She could spend the rest of her life doing nothing but thinking of Harley.
Just one cashier at the counter, nobody else in the store. Ivy had been right. She’d always had a feel for this.
“Can I help you?”
“Gas on tank six.” She leaned against the counter and feigned interest in her fingernails. Easy. Take it easy. She slid a glance toward the glass doors. Harley was outside, standing against the wall.
“Thirty-nine eighty-four.” The cashier looked only a year or two past thirty, already balding a little on top, but not so bad-looking besides that. Probably a nice guy, maybe married. Ivy almost felt a little sorry for what she had to do.
She reached into her pocket for the three twenties and handed them all to the cashier. He rang up the sale and the register drawer shot open. Then he turned to her with the bills still in his hand and said, “Looks like you gave me too many-”
Ivy grabbed the money back, yanked him forward, and kissed him hard before he knew what was happening. She only broke it off for an instant to yell over her shoulder, “Har- Honey, now!” before crushing her lips into his again.
Harley sprinted into the store with the black stocking over her head and a white paper bag in her hand. She raked a hand through Ivy’s hair as she vaulted over the counter and started transferring money into the bag from the open register.
But Ivy barely noticed Harley’s fingers on her skin. And that, she realized later, was the most obvious sign possible that something was very wrong.
Ivy worked primarily by instinct. Experiments and calculations weren’t as important as getting the feel for when the trick was working. And she sensed right away that something wasn’t going right this time.
At first she wasn’t worried. There were people who didn’t give in immediately. Some struggled. Some who had particularly strong willpower might require a great deal of effort. Ivy had learned how to deal with them.
But this man wasn’t like them. He wasn’t pushing back; he was pushing forward. He was too into it. Too far, too fast.
He had one hand slithering up the front of her blouse, another sliding around her back, his tongue jammed down her throat. His mouth tasted like nicotine and stale beer, tar and sweat and dirt and small-town hopelessness, and something else. Something worse.
It was the naiveté, the ease with which he had fallen into the trap. She felt the mindlessness of his kiss, and she tasted her own dishonesty. She thought of Harley, of hands and lips and bruises. The lies she had told, the promises she had broken-and even now-
All at once it was too much. She pulled away from the kiss and twisted out of his grip. “Hey! This is a stickup, not a sex act, moron. Open the other register and the safe.”
Suddenly unsure, he stared at her. Ivy stared back, as steadily as she could. She had taken a risk, she knew. She might have jolted him out of the trance; she might have destroyed whatever chance they had. But she couldn’t do anything else. She couldn’t have taken another second.
It was a sort of hypnosis. Just a combination of toxins and pheromones and practice and luck. It wasn’t about sex, not really. It wasn’t like being a whore. It wasn’t like telling a lie.
It made her feel dirty anyway.
It was time to leave all that. She was in love with a girl who made her heart feel like spring, who had trusted and forgiven her even when she had least deserved it. She was in love with a girl who was the only one she’d ever want again.
“Listen to me,” she said, confident and clear, her eyes fixed on the cashier’s. “Nothing is wrong. Everything will be fine. Just open the register and the safe, and it’ll all be okay.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harley standing motionless beside the empty register, tense with uncertainty, holding tightly to the paper bag. Ivy wanted to smile at her, reassure her, but they couldn’t afford that. She kept her eyes on the cashier. Focused all her willpower on him.
And then, almost too suddenly, she had won-she felt him give in, and he walked toward the second register and entered the code to open it. Ivy nodded at Harley, and Harley started raiding the register as the cashier came back to Ivy like a sleepwalker.
“Good job,” Ivy said sweetly. “But wasn’t there something else? Didn’t I tell you to open the safe next?”
But something wasn’t right. She could see him struggling, could see realization beginning to flicker in his vacant stare. His eyes strayed from Ivy’s and fell onto Harley, just as she finished raking the last of the bills out of the register.
“No,” Ivy said sharply, “look at me, look at me-don’t you dare-”
It was all coming apart. She had no hold over him anymore. Harley barely managed to dart out of the way as the cashier made a grab for her.
And Ivy felt rage consume her like a forest fire. “Hey!” She sprang onto the counter and over the other side, and took the cashier by the front of his shirt. “You son of a bitch,” she snarled at him, “don’t ever touch my girl.”
And then she kissed him, because it was the only weapon she had. She kissed him, and into that kiss she put every bitter burning ember of hatred she had for him, for him and his dead-end job in a dead-end town where there wasn’t any hope left for anyone. She kissed him with all the hatred she had for herself, too, for the lies she had told Harley, for the ugliness of her anger, for the glib ease of her broken promises, for how hard it had been to say I love you and how much harder it had been to say I trust you. She kissed him because she loved a girl she didn’t deserve.
And when she pulled away from him and spat “Motherfucker,” she realized she was crying.
She was still crying as she ran out of the store to the car where Harley was already waiting in the driver’s seat. Slamming the door as Harley hit the gas, she sobbed like a child.
And she knew she could never do this again. She might, as she had told Harley, have to go back to crime when they reached California. Maybe sooner, depending on how much money they’d gotten tonight. But not like this. Never again like this.
Harley tore down the interstate toward Indiana faster than Ivy had ever seen her drive. She put mile after mile between them and the gas station, shushing Ivy all the while, driving with one hand and stroking Ivy’s hair with the other. Even after Ivy stopped crying, Harley kept petting her hair, just as Ivy had run her hands through Harley’s hair as they stared out the hotel window on the outskirts of Gotham City twelve hours ago, twelve years ago, a lifetime ago.
“Long gone, just like you said, Red,” Harley told her over and over as they crossed the state line. “Remember how you told me? We’re long gone. Forget about Ohio. That’s far behind us now.”
But Ivy didn’t think it could ever be far enough.
--
They didn’t stop for food or gas or coffee. When it got dark Harley turned on the headlights and kept driving. They didn’t speak much to each other. There didn’t seem to be much left to say. It had been a very long day.
At one point Ivy counted up the money in the paper bag. They had stolen four hundred and seventeen dollars.
Later Ivy lay back half-asleep and through the vague haze of a dream she heard Harley singing in her reedy little voice:
Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I’ll stay…
They finally stopped at a run-down motel somewhere in the great expanse of nothingness between Chicago and the Iowa border. At the front desk Ivy shoved a wad of cash at the clerk without looking in his eyes. The man handed Harley the key.
Their room was shabby and overlooked the parking lot. As soon as they walked in Harley sat down on the bed and said, “This is the farthest west I’ve ever been.”
Ivy set the white paper bag on the nightstand. She sat on the bed next to Harley and tried to take her hand. She was clumsy and awkward doing it, like a thirteen-year-old boy.
Harley stood up and let go of Ivy’s hand, but she did it gently. “I gotta take a shower,” she said.
Ivy lay on her back on top of the thin comforter and stared blankly at the ceiling as she listened to the endless drum of running water from the bathroom. When her eyes fell closed and she slept for the first time since five o'clock that morning, she dreamed uneasily of money and sweat and too-honest cops and the bruise around Harley’s eye.
When she opened her eyes, the room was dark and she had no idea where she was. She lay very still and gazed at the ceiling and waited for the sleep-amnesia to pass. Another motel room.
She would die someday in a motel room. For a minute she could see it all quite clearly, like a movie. She would die on the run, in some dump on the edge of the city, staring at a ceiling like this one. Nobody would really notice, except for the Bat, who noticed everything, and maybe Jim Gordon, who would be glad. They would cremate her out of fear of poison, and they would throw the ashes in a ditch somewhere, and then forget about her. The ashes would help the plants grow stronger and taller, and the plants would remember her for a while. And then there would be nothing left of her at all.
And then she rolled over and saw Harley lying beside her, and all at once she remembered everything.
“Hey, Red,” Harley said softly. She was curled up under the covers, gazing at Ivy, and somehow even in the dark her eyes seemed to shine. “There’s room under the blanket.”
Ivy slid beneath the covers. She thought Harley must be able to hear how loudly her heart was beating.
“I didn’t wanna wake you up,” Harley whispered. “Were you having a nice dream?”
Ivy put a hand on either side of Harley’s face. There was nothing she could say to express her relief, her happiness; no words she could find to tell Harley how it felt to have her lying there beside her.
So she pulled Harley’s face close, and she kissed her. She kissed her long and slow, her hands twining in Harley’s hair. And when Ivy began to draw away, Harley pulled her back and kissed her again, slow and sweet and somehow sad, Harley’s lips moving as if mouthing the words to a song she only half remembered. Harley ran her hands slowly down Ivy’s body, and the strange fierce intensity of her touch made Ivy wonder if Harley was trying to learn her, to memorize the way Ivy felt, every bend and curve and hollow.
Ivy lifted her head back. “I wish,” she murmured thickly, “I just-I wish I could tell you-”
And Harley whispered against Ivy’s throat, “So show me.”
So Ivy showed her. She took everything she had no words for, everything she could never say, and she put it into every kiss, every touch, saying it with every part of herself. And when she was finished, when she had done all she could to make Harley understand, they lay together and Ivy imagined the highway like a long dark ribbon, and at the end there was the sun setting red and orange and violet over the California hills, and there was a little house overlooking the ocean with orchids growing in the garden; and her thoughts turned into dreams until at last she was asleep with her hand still tangled in Harley’s hair.
--
When she awoke the bed was empty and Harley’s clothes were gone. There was no paper bag on the nightstand. Ivy walked over to the window, but she didn’t have to look to know that the car wasn’t there.
As she turned away she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror across the room. It was an unfamiliar face that looked back at her. She looked at the stranger’s face for a long time.
She looked back out the window again, at the place where the car had been, but there was nothing there. Out on the road the early-morning semis were already trundling down the highway, their drivers sipping coffee and switching on the radio. They were people who knew where they needed to go. Ivy wondered what it was like to be one of them.