'Hey, Brother'

A/N: Ack. Sorry, folks. I'm back. October was a dirty rotten no-writing-accomplished month; good riddance to it. Since I still have writer's block on the ending of the chapter I intended to post over a month ago, please enjoy a brief slice-of-life. Updates should resume normally. ^^

"…Leila's being a bitch, but at least she's not trying to convince Dairine I'm the devil, like Kayla is with Micah."

Harley tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she navigated her way up a narrow hallway loaded down with a heaping basket of clean laundry, and repressed a sigh. Her baby bro had been gloomier than usual ever since Jaleila had left him and taken their daughter, but today had been a real jeremiad even by his standards. "Barry," she said, "it seems like all your serious girlfriends are like some horrible combination of Mom and Dad's worst traits. It's not your fault they hurt you, but please choose somebody nice next time?"

"It's not like I date bitches on purpose, Harl," he answered sulkily, and now Harley did sigh as she set down the laundry on her bed.

"I know, Bear-Bear." It was an unconscious thing; she knew how this pattern went. "You deserve better, is all."

"Right. Well, duh."

She left it there. Lecturing wouldn't help. "Yeah, duh. You should move, you know." He still lived in the same small city near the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where they'd grown up, within walking distance of their childhood home, and it couldn't be good for him.

Barry snorted. "Where would I move to?"

"I don't know. Somewhere you like. Somewhere not near Mom. New England, maybe." As a kid, her little brother had always loved snow.

"Because that worked out so well for you," he said caustically.

Harley tossed both her hair and a pillowcase as she sorted the load into hers, Ella's, and linens. "Pretty well, yeah."

"You're a nationally wanted fugitive. With huge student loans."

Harley laughed at that; not that it wasn't an actual extra problem in her life but he wouldn't have added it like that if he was really trying to hurt her. "But I'm happily married."

"That's not necessarily a life goal, you know."

Harley chuckled and started wrestling with folding a queen-sized top sheet. J had it easy, with his long arms; he could just tuck the middle under his chin and voila, but she was proudly tiny, and it had its burdens. "Yes, I know, but you're just as much of a romantic as me at heart, as justifiably bitter as you're getting. You just need to believe that you deserve somebody who really cares about you." When Barry didn't argue with that, she folded the sheet into quarters and concluded, "Which is why you should get away from Mom."

"If I leave the state I lose visitation rights, Harl," Barry said flatly, and Harley winced. Of course. Of course his kids were way more important than any possibility of any other kind of happiness.

"I'm sorry, Teddy Bear," she apologized, ignoring the laundry for a second to focus on projecting maximum sincerity. "I forgot."

"Yeah, well," Barry grumbled, but she knew she was forgiven. "Speaking of which, why have I still not met my niece yet?"

"Because we don't want certain people to know she exists? Come up to visit for a weekend and you can have all the time you want with her."

"Come down for a weekend and we can get all three of them together," was Barry's counter-offer.

Harley paused again, the neckline of a sweater tucked under her chin before she creased the sleeves and stacked the folded garment to one side. "It would be nice if Ella could meet her cousins," she admitted. "She's five now, she might actually remember it. Just…"

"Just?" her little brother prompted.

"If J comes. He's going to want to go see Mom."

The line was silent for a second. Sharon Quinzel hadn't been invited to Harley's wedding, because she'd known perfectly well that if she gave her mother a time and place where she could be assured the lunatic her daughter had run off with would be, that place would have been hit with cops like a bolt from above. It was actually one of the more reasonable causes her mother had ever had to make her life difficult, and Harley hadn't really resented the situation. Just hadn't invited her. She had tried to reconnect, mostly because J wanted to meet her mom, but Sharon had refused all contact.

Her slamming the door in their faces if they tried to visit was the good outcome. J wouldn't insist Harley join in the visit, of course, but he would head over on his own if she declined. At least Dad was dead, so they wouldn't come to blows, but…

"He has this thing about families," she tried to explain. He knew plenty of families were only good for escaping, knew more about Harley's parents than she'd willingly told anyone else, but as long as she considered Sharon family—and she did, she couldn't help it—he did, too, and he wanted to meet her. Or maybe it was just because meeting her mother would tell him a little more about her. She didn't think he was planning to give the woman a piece of his mind; he would have said something.

"So don't bring him," said Barry, with an audible shrug. "I mean, there are definitely worse brothers-in-law I could've had, but he's not mandatory for all family time, right? And he's too conspicuous, anyway."

"That works," Harley admitted. "Okay. Tell me your visitation schedule, and I'll see what weekend you've got both of them I can get away."

"Packed calendar?" drawled Barry, who had teased her for years about the workload of a college and then a medical student, and then an intern, and then the heavy caseload she'd taken as a junior staff psychiatrist, and thought it was hilarious that she was now, after all that, 'self-employed.'

"Yeah," Harley agreed. A bang and a shout echoed from the other end of the house, showing that 'practice' with the new no-heat flash-bangs was still underway. She could just make out Pam's victorious laughter; guess she'd gotten Ed back for the explosion at breakfast. At this rate they were either going to give each other all heart attacks or be completely ready to use the things in combat by the end of the month.

Harley folded the last pillowcase and dug into her own stash of chemical pellets, trying to decide if it was too mean to trap the linen cabinet. Knowing her brother would hear the grin in her voice. "Like you would not believe."

A/N: So it's not exactly formal canon anywhere I'm aware of that Harley Quinn had abusive parents, but look at her. She is TEXTBOOK.

I'd say parents hated each other but pretended otherwise, Mom ran the kids' sense of self-worth down at every opportunity, Dad had anger issues, and Harley in the middle taking responsibility for being perfect enough to hold the family together and protect her brother, and blaming herself because kids usually do, even without the kind of mom who forces it on them. This Harley has confronted her issues better, mostly. Also, supportive environment! Yay!

Eh, Happy Guy Fawkes'? :] I feel like I should have had my guys blow up a building today. Something significantly eviler than Parliament, though. With no people inside.