AN: You may now unfasten your seatbelts. The roller-coaster has come to its end. No refunds will be given for broken bones or shattered hearts.

Thank you all for reading, and double that to everyone who has been active with reviews; to those of you who have asked, yes, I still read each and every one and get all bubbly and excited every time I see a new one has been posted. They are truly some of the loveliest things I've ever read and I can hardly believe anyone could ever say such lovely things about my writing. Over one thousand reviews and only one of them has been negative, which is just madness. They have given me so much more belief in my writing; it genuinely brings a tear to my eye, so again, thank you. I wish I could hug you all. It's been a hell of a lot of work and pretty all-consuming, to be honest, and though it isn't perfect I'm proud of the end result. The sequel is available on my profile for anyone who's interested in reading more, and I've included a teaser for it here along with the Q&A!

Forever yours,

PuddinFreakyStyle

Epilogue:

Stripped

I watch as the sunny yellow of her hair is stripped to a stark, shimmering white, the peroxide draining away every splash of colour. The purple corrosive of the dye bleeds across my hands, swimming down my forearms, rupturing like tiny geysers in the welts between my fingers. The hair I hold doesn't look like much at all; it's soup than a solid, saturated with bleach, an intrusive violet shade. The sensation should burn, but the numbness has set in now. I could take a knife to my skin and I wouldn't even flinch. I wonder how long it will last; a couple of days? A week, or more?

I remember the first time, the way the numbness had held on like a lichen, making me immune to all sensation. No pain, no hesitation. I may not have felt the pain, but I still bear the scars. You start to think yourself immortal, indestructible, living like that.

The Bat soon taught me different.

Oh, I know what you're thinking. This isn't his story, what the hell is he doing here?! Boo him off the stage, demand an encore from the main act! Typical, to applaud the puppet over the puppeteer, to ignore the one pulling at the strings. Well, my little Columbine has been hogging the spotlight for far too long. If Harley's story is going to have an ending, how else than with yours truly?

Hmm, I like that. I might use that one if I ever do decide to crack her pretty little neck.

Oh, dry your eyes. I've no intentions of killing her here; this isn't her end. In fact, this isn't even the beginning. If the Bat can get away with a scantily-clad sidekick for years then so can I.

I trail my fingers down her neck where the bleach runs, tracing her pulse. She doesn't feel it either, the burn of the peroxide. She has a beautiful neck, long and pale, a pretty display of her fragility. The throat is weakness, jugular and trachea and larynx. It's where the power is, the place where you can feel life pounding through veins, where brain connects to body, the mind to the vessel. It is the only thing separating a person from being a thing, the living from the dead. Own the throat and you own it all.

It's also the quickest way to shut someone up, should you need to.

I curl my fingers about her neck, only lightly. That's enough, that touch, just a reminder that I could, if I wanted to, a reminder that she could be broken. And she has been, over and over, and finally the stage is set for me to put her back together again, carve her into something better. I still can't quite pin why I'm stuck on this beautiful creature. And oh, she is beautiful; that smile, the soon-to-be-silvery hair, those big, round eyes that promise so much and ask for so little. A clown needs an audience, you see. I enjoy having someone around to laugh at my jokes. I think of how difficult it proved to get her here, how patience and the occasional white lie was a necessity. Others not so white, but she needn't know about those.

She trails her fingers atop mine.

"What are you thinking about, Puddin'?"

"Oh, just remembering an old joke."

"You gonna tell it me?"

"I don't think you'd like the punchline."

She smiles at that, squeezes my hand then examines the violet suds it leaves on her own, counting the bubbles on each of her fingers aloud as they pop.

"How's it lookin'?" she asks, wiping the residue against her front.

"Perfect," I tell her, massaging my fingers through her hair. "Just perfect."

"You sure?"

"Yes," I say, though there's little to see through the violet peroxide. Purple tendrils of the mixture drizzle down her pale shoulders, like paint on a canvas; and what a little masterpiece she's turned out to be. They say that Claude Monet had a habit of destroying his own paintings, puncturing holes in the canvases of anything he deemed not good enough. I can understand that; there are plenty of little projects I've tossed away myself, though as of late my works have been improving. Were I to hold an exhibition, Jeremiah Arkham, Leeland and this ditzy little daydream would surely have a place in my gallery.

I look back to the monitors hung along the wall facing me, a dozen LED screens all lit up at once showing a different news station. The floor is covered in an array of laptop computers, each accessing a different police database or live footage of the Arkham catastrophe, and a row of small radios play snippets from different talk stations. One of them is interviewing Lyle Bolton, that fat swine of an orderly who somehow escaped back at the asylum. He is angry, stupid as usual, his fat lips flapping to the interviewer.

"This city is an open wound," the gluttonous pig squeals through the speaker, "it's about time all these freaks were locked up, for good."

I keep the most important radio by my side on the desk where a packet of electric green dye waits to be administered once I have my canvas is looking just the way I'd imagined her. It's tapped into the police comms, and I keep an ear out for any mention of the Batman.

I smile to myself as his portrait appears on the various news screens, footage of a down-town chase in Gotham coming in live as he searches the city for yours truly. My dear, deluded Dark Knight; he'd have a better chance of finding me nude in a subway doing the can-can than finding me here, hidden away as best a person can be. Still, it's awfully fun to watch him scramble around the city in the hopes of seeing me again- whoever said romance is dead?

The last of the yellow tones are fading now, and my little harlequin is almost complete.

"Look at you," I say, washing away the mixture with a pint of water, with no mind for the electrics which line the room; a couple of the computer monitors begin to glitch, their screens spasming with an array of acidic colours, emitting groans and alarmed wails. We ignore them as the last of the residue is washed from her hair, the texture of which is now fragile, sticky, almost, its structure derailed by the exposure to the bleach; but the colour is a ghostly blonde, a sheer, moonlit white, the colour of the stars.

"Perfect," I tell her, bringing her up to the shattered mirror so that she might see for herself. She smiles at her reflection, those blue eyes sparkling bright, porcelain-perfect teeth glinting. She's embracing it all, every step of the way, like I knew she would.

"Perfect," she repeats, and this time she believes it. She smiles at herself and she laughs. She always laughs.

I bring my hands about her drenched, icy shoulders, holding her there and smiling along with her. There's still more to do, still a long way to go; an artist is never truly satisfied with his own work.

But the stage is set. The audience wait in the wings, the curtain rises...

And she is going to be spectacular.

Sequel Teaser: 'Resurgence'

RESURGENCE

Sequel to 'Therapy'

AN: WARNING! IF YOU'VE CLICKED ON THIS STORY HAVING NO IDEA WHAT 'THERAPY' IS, YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF A LITTLE LOST AS TO WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON AT TIMES IF YOU CHOOSE TO START READING FROM HERE. IF YOU'D LIKE TO READ THE PREQUEL TO THIS TALE, WHICH DEALS WITH HARLEY'S TRANSITION FROM QUACK TO QUACKERS, YOU'LL FIND IT ON MY PAGE.

For the rest of you, welcome back, and prepare for a POV change- in 'Therapy', I felt that he first/past-first/present tense was necessary in telling Harleen's tale and for the joys of the unreliable narrator and us seeing her reasoning on things. For this story we open up to a much larger world outside of the asylum, and I wanted the workings of Harley's mind to be somewhat of an enigma, so a semi-omnipotent third-person perspective feels much more natural here.

If you are jumping in without reading therapy, you need to know this tid-bit of backstory; in this iteration, the murder of Jason Todd (Robin #2) at Joker's hands almost a decade ago was what ended Joker's reign of madness and got him thrown into Arkham. This, as in the DCEU, is what triggered Batman's descent into the darkness; he almost killed Joker for what he'd done. Before all of this, Dick Grayson had already abandoned the handle of Robin and moved to Bludhaven, taking up the role of Nightwing after Jason's murder.

Anyway, enough of the babble. Forgive the exposition in the beginning. Read on, and enjoy!

Chapter One:

Mad City

Gotham was a city at war. Almost a year had passed since the Joker had escaped Arkham Asylum with his therapist in tow, and only now was the city coming to terms with returning to a state of being where the antics of the self-styled Clown Prince of Crime determined how they went about their daily lives. The tabloids lapped it up; first it was Smylex released at a charity event attended by Gotham's finest, where the clown had narrowly escaped the Batman. Then followed the sabotage of a newly-opened theme park, which had resulted in fifteen deaths and a dozen major injuries. It was classic Joker madness, the sort of erratic violence the people had expected from day one of his escape. Housing sales soared as those who could afford to made desperate moves out of the city, many of them remembering the clown's reign of terror a decade ago. It was only a matter of time until the city went to hell again, those citizens had reasoned; they had not been wrong.

Before the Clown had been locked away in Arkham, he and his men had gained full control over Gotham's thriving underworld; when he was finally been caught by the Batman during an agonizing chase which had ended with the brutal murder of the vigilante's colourful sidekick, it became a race to the top between the dozens of gangs and crime syndicates, and the Falcone's and the Maroni's had come out on top, establishing a fragile partnership. Their war had left many of Gotham's criminals dead, and for the duration of Joker's abscence the city had enjoyed relative peace under the watchful eye of the two families. Still, in recent years there had been relative peace between Gotham's underworld in the Joker's absence.

It was not to last. Unfortunatley for Gotham, the Joker had not forgotten his place at the top of the pecking order. The Iceberg Lounge, establishment of mob-boss-turned-club-owner Oswald Cobblepot, had come to serve as a meeting place for all of Gotham's horribles. There was a parle in place which every criminal respected, on pain of death. No weapons allowed, in order to keep the peace. Joker was not one for keeping the peace; he had marched his way into the club after two weeks hiding out from the Batman, brandishing an AK47 with twelve goons at his side, and had taken to his old booth in the club as though the past ten years were only a dream. Knowing that the Clown was not to be easily dismissed, the heads of the families had come to pay their respects to him, and had made an effort to keep him appeased.

The most unexpected thing surrounding the Joker's return was, of course, the effervescent woman who had arrived on his arm that night when he had first returned to the lounge. The girl had come as a shock to all, as no one who remembered the old days could ever have imagined Joker with a woman at his side, especially not a woman such as Harleen Quinzel had once been. The story of the Joker's therapist-turned-sidekick was a delicious one, and the media had lapped it up; everyone wanted to know the story behind this woman, this mysterious, colourful Harley Quinn.

The media used that name for her, rather than her birth name; there was a tendency to glamourize the Joker's moll, the way a magician's assistant might be coveted. Each media outlet had a different angle on this woman, threaded together from the little that was known of the truth of Joker's escape; she was a maniac, the signs should have been picked up by her superiors at the asylum long ago. Others claimed that she was just another victim, drawn in by Stockholm Syndrome. There were appeals from her parents on the news in the beginning, but that all died down eventually as she became just another piece of Gotham's mismatched furniture. All outlets agreed that she was insane, and that there had never been something like her in Joker's history before; perhaps she managed to get through to the clown in some way after all, one article mused.

Harley and the Joker were often found gracing the rooms of the Iceberg Lounge now, though their appearances would be without routine and unannounced. After the initial whirlwind of mad-cap schemes and colourful escapades which Joker orchestrated as an outlet for a decade's worth of isolation, sparring with the Batman and causing havoc, it seemed that her Puddin' had worn himself out, and was now focused on getting back to the business side of things. There were lots of meetings about hit jobs and weapon imports and money, money, money. This didn't sit quite right with Harley, who had only just discovered her love for the manic lifestyle Joker had promised; why her clown, who she had always considered the freest spirit of all, cared so much about controlling the underworld she couldn't understand. It was the megalomaniac in him, she supposed. Her inner therapist still cried out to her from time to time. She'd become quite adept at batting her away.

Bored or not, Harley had little choice but to follow where her Puddin' lead. Most nights in the club she could be found dancing in the golden heart of the club, her movements free-flowing and erratic; there was something captivating in the unashamed way she threw herself around to the music, and most nights eyes would be on her rather than the professional dancers hired by Cobblepot. If not on the dance floor, she could be found at the bar talking with the baristas and sipping cocktails whilst the clown was preoccupied or sat at his feet with her arms folded onto his lap and her high heels discarded by her side, pretending to be listening as he talked business with some mob boss or other.

Tonight she was dancing. She wore a red-and-black dress, studded with diamantes in their corresponding colours and cut to mid-thigh. The dress swung freely as she moved in time with the music, her silvery-blonde hair with its red-and-black tips dancing about her head in loose, shimmering curls. She was singing along and smiling, a diamond shape inked below her right eye. She was a vision, a mad-man's day-dream, not someone to be ignored.

All eyes followed the girl as she breezed away from the dance floor, grabbing a drink from the bar before sliding through the crowds and over to Joker's booth; through the gold chain curtains she saw a familiar face and almost burst with excitement, drawing away the gold panel and announcing her presence with a squeal.

"Sally!" she chimed, stepping over Joker's feet and throwing her arms around the man who sat opposite him in the booth. The head of the Maroni family was by far Harley's favourite of the people Joker would have grace his private corner. Salvatore was in his fifties, devilishly handsome, a waxy Italian with a razor-sharp jawline and kind, fatherly eyes. He seemed to always be smiling, and loved to laugh, which given the company he was keeping, was a favoured trait. Sally knew her father- it was from him she had finally got the full story of why Mr. Quinzel had spent so many years of her childhood behind bars. He had been working for Salvatore on a job, tasked with busting up some judge just enough that his bribeable replacement could take his place overseeing the trial of one of Salvatore's sons. The job had gone wrong, and the judge had been hurt much worse than expected; Mr. Quinzel had been caught, and woe betide, a twelve-year sentence for GBH had ensued. Harley imagined that she ought hate the Maroni's for this, but it was her father who was really to blame, wasn't it? Besides, Sally brought her chocolates; strawberry ganache, her favourite. How could she ever hate someone who brought her strawberry ganache?

Salvatore in turn adored Harley. He called her his pet and would bring her fine Italian chocolates whenever he visited, or sometimes cookies baked by his wife. She would sit at his feet eating her gifts as he and Joker discussed business, and he would stroke his fingers over her hair like she was a kitten. Most nights with Salvatore around Joker would be in a merry mood, but as Harley dove into her box of ganache with edible gold leaf detailing, she found that he seemed somewhat deflated, his expression consistently stoic.

"Cheer up, Puddin'!" Harley cooed, popping another chocolate into her rosebud mouth. She had almost eaten the whole box, but she couldn't help it. "Why you lookin' so glum?"

Joker frowned at her. The accent was beginning to grate on him; he knew that she had begun to over-play it as he had once or twice remarked that he thought her natural twang alluring. After nearly a year of that incessant screeching, it was beginning to lose its charm.

"Don't call me 'Puddin'."

Harley pouted back at him. She knew that what he meant by that was, 'don't call me Puddin' when there's anyone else around to hear,' though he would never admit to such a thing.

Harley's nickname for Joker had moved like a whisper throughout Gotham's underground over the months, and now everyone had a reason to chuckle at the clown, something laughable which made him feel less threatening than the psychotic megalomaniac they knew him to be. No one ever passed mention of it to his face, of course. Still, Joker heard the accursed word hidden behind hands and whispered into ears with hushed giggles. He was all for a good laugh, but never at his own expense.

That was why, when he and Harley were leaving the club and he heard the dreaded word- or perhaps he only thought he heard the word- muttered somewhere in the crowd, Joker finally snapped. He kicked over the nearest chair with an angered yell and scrambled his way atop its table, pulling his handgun and firing three shots up into the ceiling. What would usually have been met with screaming was met with only silence, as every face in the club turned to look at the man, who stood hunched over and breathing heavily, weapon still in hand. The music blared on, so Joker pointed the gun at the DJ and blasted a hole through his chest, taking out the sound system with another shot and silencing the commencing screaming with a roar of,

"SHUT UP!"

As though it shared a hive mind, the room obeyed. Harley stared in shock, trying to pinpoint the cause of this outburst, knowing better than to interfere. She watched as Joker cricked his neck and brushed his fingers back through his hair and stuffed the last piece of ganache into her mouth. The room looked on in shock.

"The next person," Joker began, rolling back on his heels with an animated expression, "to say the word 'Puddin...'"

Joker sprang upwards and fired the last of his bullets up into the main chandelier, sending shards of glass reigning down upon the club and taking out half of the bulbs. The screaming started again as Joker finished with a manic roar,

"-Is going to become it!"

With that it seemed that his outburst was finished. He hopped down from the table and adjusted his collar, taking a firm hold of Harley's hand and leading the way out of the back entrance to the underground car park, where Frost unlocked the Lamborghini and opened up the doors for the pair of them. Joker instructed Frost to drive, and held his head in his hand the whole drive back to their secret apartment. Harley didn't say a word for the whole journey. All Joker said on the drive home was,

"It sounded better in my head."

He said it with a groan, still not removing his head from his hand.

"I think they got the point," Frost consoled him, his voice monotonous as ever. "Do you want me to transfer any money over to Penguin? For damages?"

Joker sucked his teeth. "That wrinkled old scrote can get his own damned chandelier repaired, lord knows he has the money. And there are plenty of snotty undergraduates with sound-systems in this town who'd kill to DJ at Gotham's most notorious night-spot."

When they finally arrived home, Joker immediately pulled off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, lying back on the bed with a groan. Harley took off her shoes then removed her accessories one by one, lining them up on the dresser before kneeling beside her lover on the bed, taking his head in her hands and stroking his electric green hair. He sighed aloud and reached up to touch her wrist.

"'Is going to become it'," he repeated loudly, despair in his voice, playing his address to the club over and over. "Messy delivery. I mean, what was I going for? What is it even supposed to mean?!"

"I think they got it," Harley comforted, secretly smiling at the way he could get so caught up over something like this. "Don't worry about it, sweetie."

"Messy delivery, and a terrible punchline," He insisted. He looked around the room and frowned anew. "And this place is a mess."

"I'll tidy it up a little in the morning," Harley reassured him, pressing a glittery kiss against his alabaster cheek. He wiped it away on the back of his hand, staring at the shimmering red smear. He pulled her face down to his own and pressed a kiss to her smiling lips, tasting the cherry of her mouth. When she broke away he said the words, watched the way her face lit up as it always did. Then he got to his feet, pulled off his shoes and fell into bed still half-dressed. Harley snaked out of her dress and fell in beside him, burying her face into her pillow and wrapping her arm across his front, content in the sensation of having him there. Even now it didn't feel quite real, that he was hers and she was his.

"Sleep tight, Puddin'."

He smiled into the pillow, reaching back and brushing a hand over her own. He did like the nickname.

"Don't let the Batman bite."

Q&A:

What gave you the inspiration to write 'Therapy'? Joker and Harley have held a special place in my heart since I was a kid, and I've never really understood what it was about them that I loved so dearly. After all, underneath the gags and smiles and confetti, they are a pair of highly disturbed criminals. But I've always completely adored them and really related to Harley. I wanted to explore what it was that I was able to relate to (I think I've figured it out- it's the idea of normal life being too boring, and the escapism of just going wild and leaving it all behind- psychiatrist's field day) really, so I wrote myself a Harleen who made sense to me. That combined with the upcoming release of Suicide Squad, an assignment on mental asylums and a lifetime of dissatisfaction with elements of the 'Mad Love' story gave birth to Therapy.

What do you think about 'Mad Love?' Though it's great, the speed with which Harley loses her fruit-loops and the way she was interpreted as never being very bright in the first place and sleeping with her teachers for good grades always irked me beyond words. Those factors really did a disservice to her relatability, and my capacity to empathise with Harleen, which always broke my heart as, once she became Harley, I felt so connected. Having her be a manipulative bimbo who fell instantly for all the tricks and jumped into the Joker's arms at the first chance really took the tragedy out of her transformation for me. To me, Harley's transformation should be liberating, but devastating, because we know what she's walking in to. A life of fun and frollicks with the man she is infatuated with, but with all the downsides and horrors that come with it.

Are you basing your Joker and Harley off of the Leto and Margaret version? I adore both of them in the roles; for both, the answer is partly, though much more so with Jared than Margot, whose Harleen we didn't see much of before she got her brains frazzled and took the plunge. With Joker, I definitely wanted to take the narcissism and megalomania of Leto and put that into this rendition; stylish, calculating, good-looking. Visually I see him quite Jared-ish, though older, more reserved; no tattoos and grills in my mind, but you're more than welcome to picture these characters in whichever way you choose, it's your brain, after all. I've left some of the descriptions purposely vague. Dialogue-wise, though, I am not writing for Leto's Joker- there are a lot of things this Joker says which would never work for Leto's rendition, I think. There's a bit of every Joker in there, though. This Joker thinks himself a gentleman, very flowery and selective in the words he chooses. I wanted a Joker who cracks jokes, but has distanced himself a little from the gimmicks and madcap schemes, and slightly embarrassed of the antics of his younger self. Charm and manipulation are this Joker's main traits. I love writing him because he writes himself. That's something you notice about writing Joker; he's always a little too close for comfort, and once you wake him up he doesn't ever really go away.

What is your opinion on the Joker's and Harley's relationship? Do you believe that he loves her? I think this question is near impossible to answer, in all honesty, with all the different takes we've seen on the characters over the years. Take the contrast between the Suicide Squad and New 52 versions of their relationship, for example; they couldn't be more different. It really varies from interpretation to interpretation, I think. In general, though, in my belief The Joker is a chameleon. He reinvents himself constantly, so I think his feelings toward Harley fluctuate just as much. I believe there is some form of love at the core, though, because he hasn't killed her yet, though I doubt he'd ever admit it or even knows it himself. I remember reading a theory on The Killing Joke interpretation which suggested he reminds her of Jeanie, his giggly blonde wife, which is a nice thought. To keep her around all those years, even while being abusive to her, there must be something there. I do believe that possession and obsession comes before love on Jokers side of things, though. I wanted to explore that power dynamic here pre-Harley; to me, Joker doesn't want to get rid of Harleen so that he can have his Harley. He wants to turn Harleen, something he already likes, into Harley, something which he loves- and 's a manipulator, after all. He flips between apathetic to enraged and then back to the lovesick puppy/ clown that keeps her besotted. Does Harley love him? Yes, but there's also that element of idolisation, too. She considers him to be more than a man because of how fantastical he seems. I wanted to go for the acid thing in a new sort of way, and stewed over how I could approach it for ages; I feel like having it be a sort of mutual, sensual experience with religious tones through the baptism element works quite well, at least for me; baptism is symbolic of devotion, and here I've tried to lean on the ceremony of it all and what it symbolises rather than the effects of the acid. Rather than dedicating her life to God, Harley is dedicating hers to Joker- same thing in her eyes, one might argue. Hope you guys enjoyed this interpretation too!

The question of Nightwing: Here's something I've been meaning to clear up for a while; I thought I'd written it into a previous chapter, but apparently not. Jason Todd's Robin is already dead is this story, and a couple of people have questioned why Nightwing has only made an appearance after his death. I'm basing my Dick *immature laugh* on the one we see in the Arkham games, where he stops being Robin due to disagreements with the Batman, and moves back to Bludhaven to take up the mantle of Nightwing independently. For the purposes of this story, this happened before Joker was on the scene, which I why he doesn't know of the multiple Robins. Jason becomes Robin after Dick and is eventually killed by Joker; our story picks up after this, and that's how Joker has ended up in the asylum. Since he's been away, things have smoothed over between Dick and Bruce, and Nightwing has started helping him out with missions again, which is why Joker assumes he's the new kid on the block.

Could the story be upgraded to an M rating? I play with some pretty dark themes in all of my stories on here, but I try to deliver it in a way that's visceral, but not graphic, if that makes any sense. Like with Joan's murder; we see brains splattered about and hear the crowbar crunching through her skull, and though it's happening to this terrible woman, I still tried to write it as 'this terrible thing is happening, look how awful it is' as opposed to 'whip out the popcorn folks, lets watch this witch get her comeuppance!' Did I succeed? I don't know. Hopefully. The point I'm trying to make is that though the content is mature, I don't see it as belonging in the 'M' section as it does not glorify the violence or have anything overtly sexual, which is what people tend to search 'M' for. There is sex, as you know, but it's not written to tantalise.

What are your favourite Joker & Harley moments in Suicide Squad, and in the comics? Oh god, where to start. In Suicide Squad, I absolutely adore the interaction in the club where the two of them are playing with that mobster like a cat plays with a dead bird (sorry Robin). I think Jared completely nails the "don't touch my stuff" element of their relationship, his facial expressions and temperament in that scene are fantastic. I also love the moment where they see each other again for the first time, Margot's face, as she's heading for the helicopter, is completely enchanted, and the "come on, baby" stuff kills me in the best way. My favourite comic moments would have to be their portrayal in Harley Quinn #1; there's a scene in there where Harley breaks Joker out and he pretends to be badly hurt and lets Harley baby him, but the moment she leaves he drops the act and starts ordering his men about again.

Why the hell is Johnny Frost South African? In all honesty, I don't know. I've always had a soft spot for Afrikkans, though. I love the accent and the language. Although both iterations of Frost are clearly American, I can't help but hear a South African accent whenever I write him. My brain has convinced itself of it. Brains are weird things.

Why u no spell? I do spell, but I am English, hence I use the English spellings of words. The document editor on here hates me for it and tries to correct me constantly. We have many fallings out over it. And before anyone asks, yes, I do love tea. It's mandatory.

What about Harley's parents? I currenlt yconsider them estranged from her, though that may hange with the sequel or we;ll get some closure there. I wanted the Quinzel's marriage to be a reflection of what was happening in Harley's life. If you isolate yourself from the people that love you it's a recipee for disaster. The conversation with mama Quinzel is something I've had written for a long time, but I completely turned it on its head after a conversation I had with my own mum a week or so ago; we were talking about what we consider husband material, and I said that one of the most important things to me is that he would be able to really make me laugh. Her response? 'Do you really want to marry a clown? Someone who makes you smile then beats you up if you don't laugh at his jokes?' …And I was like, damn, mum. You have no idea how apt this is.

Tremendous thanks to every single one of you for reading. As always, love to you all, and thank you.

Here's me signing off,

PuddinFreakyStyle