Author's Note – I don't know where this idea came from. My muse ran away with this story! And this is the result. I've got a couple of ideas where its headed but nothing's set yet. It's likely to be a few chapters long, not as long as my other story. I hope you like it.
Summary – Rainbows, sunsets, and happy endings were never in their future. Joker's dead, Harley Quinn's incarcerated, and pregnant. She won't give up her baby. It's all she has left of him.
Big Girls Cry
Chapter 1
Harley Quinn had never expected an untroubled relationship with Joker. To do so would have been foolish. Untroubled wasn't who he was, or what he did. It wasn't who she was either. Rainbows, sunsets, and happy endings were never in their future. Happy and uncomplicated just wasn't in their nature. Passionate and crazy, that was them. They were wildly unpredictable and fiercely in love. They were like
She'd always taken that as a constant, unnegotiable fact.
That was three months ago. Before the heist that went so terribly wrong. Before one of their stupid, pointless fights, that she'd gotten so tired of having. Before she'd stomped off and left. Before he'd left her, forever.
Harley lay on a lumpy bed in blank space. Her little cell. Thin, white blankets covered her legs, her wrists and ankles encased in black, leather restraints. The walls were gray and bare. The tiny window impossibly high, with its minuscule view obscured by iron bars.
It was early spring, and the birds were singing outside. The sun shone through the dirty, smudged glass, and Harley longed to walk out in the gardens. To feel the sunlight on her skin. The last memory she had of being free and out in the open was in the midst of wind and snow. She'd always loved the spring time, the promise of longer days, new, growing buds on tree branches, and pretty, yellow daffodils.
The funny trumpet flower, Mr. J called it.
Thinking of him, and his jokes, still stung.
Since last December she'd resided at Arkham Asylum. The former doctor was now one of the asylum's most talked about patients. She was a hot topic. Back when she'd started her internship two years ago, she'd been a hot topic too. Mr. J would have had a chuckle over that also.
Tears burned and threatened at the corners of Harley's eyes. She squeezed her eyelids shut and willed away the tears.
Three months, and still so raw.
Red and orange flames blossomed beneath her tightly clamped lids. They danced their way higher and higher towards the sky. Black smoke wafted its way into her sensory memory. She swallowed down a whimper as the fire swallowed the chopper whole.
Harley uttered a piercing scream, forcing her eyes open. She forced the poisonous memory away.
He never stood a chance. Her puddin' was taken so cruelly.
Wanting nothing more than to escape from the memory, and from reality, she pulled hard against the restraints. She wanted to tear free from the leather straps, rip off the standardized-crazy-person garb, and run for the hills.
Yet, the tough, unforgiving leather held her firmly in place. After a couple of exhausting, feverish minutes she flopped back against the thin, uncomfortable mattress. It was futile.
"Let me out of here!" Harley screamed. "Let me out! Or I'll kill you all!"
"Keep it down, Quinn," a guard shouted back. "Don't make me come in there and shut you up."
The threat was lost among the chorus of neighboring inmates. They chanted and yelled through the cardboard, off-white, walls. It never took much to spark discontent given no one wanted to be at Arkham, and most firmly believing they didn't need to be at Arkham.
With the occupants of the surrounding rooms making more than enough commotion to drown out her sorrows, Harley fell silent. She relaxed on her bumpy bed. She was most at peace in the throes of disturbance these days; funny as back when she lived the life of Dr. Harleen Quinzel she'd craved and relished the quiet.
Her eyes wandered down to her stomach. To the modest bump that was just beginning to peak through her loose-fitting clothing. The flutters of life stirring within her made her smile a little. At twenty weeks pregnant she'd just started to feel the baby move.
The ripples of activity made her feel almost peaceful.
Joker's baby. Her and Joker's.
Harleen Quinzel had always been a romantic, and Harley had inherited that. She'd always wanted a family. She'd grown up wanting children; at least two, a boy and a girl.
But Mr. J? She didn't know how he felt about marriage and children. They rarely discussed such things. Too normal and mundane. They'd never talked about starting a family. Their minds, his especially, were focused on playing games; on Batman, revenge, and chaos.
Sometimes, especially now as she'd entered the second trimester, and the risk of miscarriage had lowered significantly, she wondered how he would have reacted to the news. Would he have been happy? Horrified? Would he have left?
The day she'd found out, the day of his death, she hadn't thought much beyond breaking the news to him. She'd been too caught up in her own excitement over the news. So mad that he'd been too caught up in Bats, and his thirst for revenge, to want to spend time with her and listen to her news.
He never got to learn he was going to be a daddy.
He'd died in a collision. She hadn't been on the helicopter. They'd gotten into one of their stupid fights, so many stupid fights, and she'd stomped off. Even as the helicopter's blades spun, quickened their speed, readying for takeoff, she'd yelled that she hated him. She'd assumed she'd be seeing him that night, at their liar; to kiss and make up.
He'd never come back.
Tears flowed.
She'd stood on the sidewalk and watching in horror as the chopper burst into flames.
Sometimes she struggled to believe it had really happened. Sometimes she let her mind believe that it was a mistake. A huge, stupid misunderstanding. A ploy and a game for him. That he was alive somewhere, biding his time. Waiting for the ideal time to come get her. To draw her into the thick of another diabolic plan.
Harley entertained those thoughts whenever her heart would allow it.
She dreamed of him. Whenever she dreamed, he was there, happy, and alive. They were together in her dreams. With the baby, a little boy called Tom. They were a family, with a house in the suburbs, all wrapped up with smiles, simplicity, and a white picket fence. They were happy in a fairytale ending. They didn't fight so much either.
To be continued….