It had been years.
Her blue eyes, now weary, capped with bi-focals that got stronger every year were dazed, unfocused.
She garnered attention not because of her beauty and her physique (which at her age was still more than acceptable, stemming from years of floor and beam workouts), but because of her shrugged shoulders, her wild brown curls – streaked through with grey. She looked to others like she was going to fold in on herself at any moment.
If only they knew. It had taken time before she could even stand, before she could go out in public. She had cut all of her hair off the week he died, and every time it looked a little longer she realized she had healed a little more.
The entire city had celebrated while she was grieving. They talked about karma and about how he met his end without that goddamn masked vigilante even having to pursue. She walked around as if in a fog, only eating and drinking out of sheer necessity.
She couldn't laugh. Well, it was physically possible, but laughter eventually turned into pained, choked sobs as she remembered his mad cackle of delight.
She had healed enough that the thought of his hands ticking her brought the ghost of a smile to her face.
Harlene had no reason to be her former psychopathic self anymore. Though her mind was twisted, yes, she had no drive, no energy to do what she used to. She had taken up as a high school gymnastics coach – the one thing she was truly good at. Though the school had been wary to hire her, some high-up had taken pity on her. For the first year her after-school hours were watched carefully, by coaches supposedly doing pre-school workshops but really carefully observing her every move. When it became clear she wasn't going to kill a student, or blow up the gym, they gave her free reign. Her charges knew her as a hardened but talented woman, and through her guidance they had become one of the best high school gymnastics teams in the country. Several of her students went olympic.
There had only ever been one confrontation as to her former identity – when a student saw the framed photo of him in her office. The nervous girl had asked why there was a photo of a dead psychopath, looked at Harlene's nametag (Coach Quinzel) and put two and two together. There was a dead silence, and the girl asked if she was the woman formerly known as Harley Quinn. She had known it was going to come eventually. Harlene slumped into her desk chair, met the students eyes, nodded, and very stoically ushered the girl out as she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood to prevent the sobs from echoing out of her throat.
There was a note canceling classes on the board that night.
For the last twenty years, she had had the same routine on the anniversary of his death. She woke up, showered, and carefully put on white greasepaint and red lipstick before shimmying into the red-and-black catsuit that got thinner and weaker as it deteriorated with age. She spent that one day as Harley, allowing herself to laugh maniacally, cook, dance, as if nothing had ever gone wrong. She felt that it was a tribute to his memory, that on one day every year, she could be his Harley.
Someone always questioned her the next day, telling her she had white paint in her hairline and around her jaw – she was always too tired to wash it all off.
But what mattered to her was that she celebrated the man she loved so strongly, so deeply.
And every night, she cried herself to sleep, as the soft lullaby he used to hum to her played in her mind.
I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck, a hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap, a barrel and a heap and I'm talking in my sleep, about you.