Author's Note: This is a story I wrote probably six or seven years ago and never posted because I intended it to be part of a larger series of short stories with each one about a Batman villain at age seven (the middle of childhood) and at age 17 (the beginning of adulthood). I've always been fascinated by back stories and wanted to explore Poison Ivy, the Penguin, Harley Quinn, the Riddler, the Joker, Scarecrow, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, and Catwoman but ultimately I just have notes and this one finished story. I don't know why I'm positing it now. It's probably because I was finally reminded of it by all the adverts for "Suicide Squad" coming up now.
Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn): Age 17
Harley leaned her head against her car and let out a long sigh as she fingered her keys in her hand, unlocking the car with a click.
The car wasn't actually hers but it was her most prized possession, a fact that depressed her if she thought too deeply about it. The ancient piece of junk actually belonged to her mother but since she only ever drove at night to the grocery store and the pharmacy, the car essentially had become Harley's once she got her license. The vehicle was at least fifteen years her senior, white with old-fashioned-looking black side stripes and smatterings of rust on the outside with duct-tape fixed seats inside. Nothing about the car had been changed since its creation except that she had one of her past boyfriends install a CD player in it that she had a feeling was stolen but was too afraid to ask.
She often wondered why she loved it so much. Maybe it was because it helped her get away when she needed to. Maybe it was because she felt it reflected her personality. Maybe it was because she had earned it.
Harley slowly raised her head and glanced around the school parking lot to find that while there were still a few parked cars, no one else was around. School had let out fifteen minutes ago and she had waited inside the gym until the lot was vacant so she could change into her sweats.
She opened the driver's door and haphazardly tossed her schoolbag into the backseat since she wouldn't need it anymore. She stuck the key in the ignition and turned, enough to turn on the battery but not start the engine. The dim center light flickered for a second before settling on a steady, weak stream of light and the radio, which still had a dial turner, clicked on. The oldies station she played in the background while she drove was playing "He's a Rebel" by The Crystals.
Harley smiled to herself. She had always liked the song but so far the philosophy of it hadn't worked for her yet. It was the, "He is always good to me" part that left her feeling cold. Her interest in psychology always drew her to the most damaged of guys, wanting to understand them, deconstruct them, only to find that their problems were simple, their reasons for misbehavior were juvenile, and they didn't appreciate her telling them what was wrong, no matter how gentle she went about it.
When I get to college, I'm gonna find a good man, Harley thought to herself as she shut the driver's door and crawled into the backseat, guy who will treat me right and have a good sense 'a humor! Show me how to have fun! Maybe another psych major . . .
As Harley started wondering about this mystery man, she took off her light blue sweater and grey floral skirt, tossing them arbitrarily at her backpack and threw on her new costume: an old t-shirt she had gotten for free at some pre-Olympics gymnastics competition she competed in years ago and a pair of ripped red sweatpants that had seen many a blue mat and balance beam.
Smartly dressed high school student replaced by cheerleader going to practice, Harley thought, climbing over the shift and into the driver's seat. My last practice ever.
After taking gymnastics classes since she was three, Harley was hoping she would be able to compete in high school only to find that her high school didn't have a gymnastics team. Cheerleading was a decent substitute, it allowed her to get in more of a workout and the shouting was a good stress reliever, but it didn't have enough focus on the individual for her and didn't require as much personal strength.
On her way to the front seat, she kicked off her sensible flats and ended up bumping into a protruding CD, causing it to be drawn into the player. The Crystals were abruptly cut off and replaced by a woman's powerful vocals ringing clear over a heavy bass line and crashing drums.
Harley reached for the eject button on impulse but found herself stopping suddenly as the song went on. She had never been really into music (in her spare time she mostly watched old movies and occasionally read romance novels) but her most recent ex-boyfriend had been a particular fan of metal and was always trying to get her to listen to it. She found it overwhelming and obnoxious but he had relentlessly burned her a CD and left it in her car yesterday when she broke up with him.
In spite of the instrumentals, which were not quite as oppressive as other songs she had heard anyway, she found that she was enjoying the song. The singer had a penetrating, strangely ethereal voice and somehow the lyrics made her smile sadly to herself. Something about how society needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ashes.
She had to admit, the idea sounded kind of nice in an idealistic sort of way.
Harley flipped down her overhead mirror, curious to see if her concealer had rubbed off and revealed the sleep-deprived bags under her eyes. She still looked fresh as spring. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a conservative ponytail and the red lipstick she had put on that morning had yet to come off. She smiled to make sure there was nothing in her teeth and then smiled to try to look alluring. She squinted her eyes a bit and started making faces at herself, trying to look unique, edgy, something other than how she usually looked but alas, she was all classic beauty. She was big, blue eyes. She was a soft, pale face and perfect, full lips. She was so utterly nonthreatening and sometimes she hated it.
She couldn't remember who pointed this out to her first (she had a feeling it was her mother) but she remembered that it had been said with nothing but good intentions. Of course, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. She had said something like, "Oh Harley, you're so beautiful, like a black and white movie actress! Your face is nothing but sunshine and rainbows!"
Nothing but.
She was nothing but.
She wondered if this had spawned her interest in old movies and really hoped it hadn't.
But she knew it wasn't just the way she looked that kept people from seeing who she really was.
She had never had difficulty making friends because she was always friendly and seemingly optimistic, but she was terrible at keeping them. Around the time teachers started giving out letter grades in elementary school, Harley became devote with her schoolwork. The lessons were getting harder and she was starting to realize that she didn't learn as quickly as everyone else seemed to. She needed to be told things three or more times before they clicked with her. This revelation made her want to do well and the fact that she stayed awake late into the night in fear of her stepfather, gave her ample time to learn at her own pace. In high school, it occurred to her that what she really wanted to do was get her doctorate from Gotham State, get away from suburbia and everyone she knows, and go on to work at Arkham Asylum after graduation. That had become her new reason to work hard.
The few people she considered friends were more like acquaintances. They were friends in a loose sense that they ate lunch together and had been out shopping together on some occasion. No one knew her. They all saw a pretty face with layers of nothing but good intentions and empty thoughts behind it. The only reason anyone ever seemed to dislike Harley was because she got good grades but was always the student in class who would ask the teacher a question after he had already answered it twice. She had heard a few people call her a bimbo once, so she tried to stop asking so many questions for fear of sounding stupid and her grades were slipping a bit from their usual high as a result.
Her emotional detachment from her peers had made it easy not to invite friends into either her psyche or her dilapidated home. What would they see but her mother passed out in a valium-induced coma and her stepfather's lecherous advances? It had been easy to only date boys who didn't attend the same school (or didn't attend school) so no one would see her true romantic tendencies towards troublemakers. Her one infraction in middle school was kept so under-the-radar that no one ever suspected. Even when she was young, if she had to cry she learned to do it where no one would ever look.
For so long she had been able to hide herself, to show only a serious student and a genuinely nice person, but something had happened. Harley kept the boyfriends she had had a secret, which wasn't hard when there was no one close enough to ask about them. She detested high school drama and preferred to stay out of it (one of the major infringements on having a social life). Somehow though, one of them must have passed on messages detailing her sexual exploits and many of them had made their way to her school. When she started hearing the whispers, she realized what was going on, only to find that the so-called rumors were completely true.
She denied them anyway but couldn't get it off her mind all day.
Everyone thinks I'm a bimbo and a ditz, Harley thought to herself. Do I need to add slut to the list? Is havin' desires so wrong?
The heavy metal singer shouted out the line, "The world is full of injustice!" and Harley looked down at the CD player.
"I hear ya!" she said outloud to her stereo and fell back against her seat.
I just wanna be taken seriously, she thought.
"Harley!"
Harley glanced up at Grace who had her head poked through the open window on the passenger side. Grace was the closest thing Harley had to a best friend but Harley knew that she would eventually lose touch with her in a few years. They had met each other in kindergarten when they were put in gymnastics together and have been silently competing ever since. Harley knew she was prettier than Grace and had always been better at gymnastics but Grace was popular and got better grades than Harley without working nearly as hard. However, Harley felt a strange sort of success over the fact that she was going to be a criminal psychiatrist while Grace was going to be a physical therapist.
"We have practice in five minutes!" Grace said happily, hopping up at down. She was a petite, enthusiastic girl, the one they always threw into the air.
It was Grace's ability to make things fun that drew Harley to her in the first place.
Suddenly, Grace made a confused face. "What are you listening to?" she asked with distaste.
Harley shrugged.
"My ex-boyfriend made it for me. I actually kinda like it," she admitted with a smile.
Grace has been my friends for years, Harley thought. What would happen if I told her any of the things I've been hiding? Would she not talk to me anymore?
Let's do a social experiment.
Grace scrunched up her face, confused by Harley's music.
"Um, I heard about what happened in the science wing today . . ." she started tentatively. Clearly she had wanted to bring it up. It was probably part of the reason she went to go find her instead of asking someone else to do it.
Grace made an attempt at lifting the car door handle only to find that the door was locked. Harley made no attempt to unlock it.
"Yeah?" Harley asked, avidly. She thought it was going to be an isolated incident but somehow her name was prevalent in the rumor mill today.
"Did you get in trouble?" Grace asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
Harley giggled, unable to stop herself. "Nope! I guess you can get away with a lot at the end of high school, huh? Billy got away with callin' me a slut and I got away with punchin' him in the face! He should be thankin' me. I think my fist got rid of that bump in his nose!"
Grace looked mildly shocked by Harley's statement but laughed nervously and continued on. "Well, at least you didn't get suspended. They will still send a letter to Gotham State if you do."
Harley shrugged. "I got into college with a big, red S on my record anyway so what difference could it have made?"
Grace's eyes grew wide as she leaned forward, pressing against the car. "You've been suspended before?" she asked in a hushed voice as if she was afraid someone would overhear even though there was no one around.
Harley tried not to smile at the fact that Grace unmistakably wanted to ask what she did to get suspended.
I'm servin' up that info anyway, she decided.
"Yeah, in eighth grade I hit my history teacher . . . with his laptop," Harley said, trying to sound ashamed when inside, she just wanted to laugh about it. Sometimes when Harley was alone, she found that she could only handle the worst of things with loud, terrifying laughter.
And he deserved it.
"Why?!" Grace blurted out, trying to lift the car handle again. "Unlock the door!"
Harley ignored her request and sighed. "He . . . touched me," she said slowly, feigning the childish whisper of an emotionally broken victim.
Grace gasped and looked like she was on the verge of sympathetic tears.
Well, may as well not tell her the whole story, Harley thought, praying Grace wouldn't cry. If I had told her that I instigated him to improve my grade that would just make the whole 'rumor' thing way worse. Besides, I hit him because he went too far and that is wrong. What I was doing was harmless talkin'. What he did was borderin' on child molestation.
Before she could speak Harley went on. "He got fired. I got suspended. It was a fair trade," she said with a smile, far too nonchalantly.
Grace lowered her hands and looked at Harley in nigh horror for the longest five seconds in history.
"I'm so sor . . ." she started not sure if she should care now that Harley had dismissed the matter so blithely.
"I know," Harley said quickly. "Isn't practice starting soon?"
"Yeah, let's go," Grace said, her voice uncharacteristically low and solemn.
"I'll be there in a minute," Harley said, her voice now holding a light, carefree tone. "I just gotta find my sneakers."
Grace nodded slowly and walked away with her head down.
Harley rolled her eyes. False sympathy wasn't what she wanted. She was hoping for something else . . . What? She wasn't sure.
The metal song ended with a wailing guitar and the mournful sound of a violin took over. Harley sat up in shock. Her ex hadn't seemed like the ballad type at all. Why would he put something like this on the CD?
The slow, sensual tune got Harley's attention as she listened intently. The song was a heartbreaking duet about a man and a woman who quickly fall in love but their romance ends in tragedy when he kills her.
On the third day he took me to the river.
He showed me the roses and we kissed.
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he stood above me with a rock in his fist.
On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief.
As I kissed her goodbye, I said, 'All beauty must die'
And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth.
Harley held her face in her hands and started to cry.