Title: Erase/Rewind
Author: Jen Kollic

Disclaimers: All characters are trademarks of DC Comics. I make no money from this. Wah. Feedback: Absolutely, but if you're just going to go "OMFG! HARLEY/JOKER OTP!11one1" then don't bother. I'll just make fun of you.
Notes: It was about this point that I noticed that FFN had royally arsed up my formatting and taken all my asterisks away. I was very emo about it at the time, but I got better.

Spoilers: Vague references to events in the animated series, Gotham Adventures, Batman Adventures and Harley and Ivy. Will most likely not make sense if you've not read Batman Adventures #16.


Chapter 7

An hour later they were sitting at opposite ends of the kitchen table, and both had their eyes fixed on their coffee. Neither wanted to break the silence, and Ivy reflected that it was every bit as awkward and uncomfortable as it had been with Alec. Then again, it was going to be rather difficult to explain herself. At the time Ivy had never really thought too much about what she'd tell Harley once she found out about the clone. Maybe that had been an oversight…

Harley on the other hand was wondering exactly why Ivy looked so… normal. And even she knew that it was probably a delicate subject; 'Hey Red, how come you look like a human again?' wasn't really the best question to kick off with. And neither was 'So what the hell is the deal with the Holland guy!' even if Harley wanted to know that even more. Thankfully Ivy broke the silence first.

"Why did you find me?" Ivy had decided that she might as well start with a question, since she knew she'd no doubt be answering them for the rest of the night.

"Well, firstly because Batman said you'd become a plant." Harley replied, glancing up at Ivy briefly, then looking away. "And I knew it couldn't be true. Hoped it wasn't anyway."

"And secondly?" Ivy showed no outward reaction to the pain she'd seen in Harley's eyes, despite the reproachful stab she'd felt inside.

There was a slight pause. Harley wondered whether Ivy was trying to trick her into confessing that she'd sworn to hunt her down and kill her. Well, if she was, Harley wasn't going to fall for it.

"You know why Red." she replied quietly. And Harley wasn't referring to her vow of vengeance.

"No." Ivy lied, taking a sip of her coffee. "I don't. Enlighten me." She was starting to wonder whether she could get away with pretending that she'd been in Gotham all along, which would neatly avoid explaining about the clone.

Harley glanced up at her again, this time with a mix of indignation and guilt. "Yes you do! I know you're mad about me and Mistah J's wedding and all, but don't be like this…" She tailed off as Ivy choked on her coffee with a wide-eyed look of utter horror. "Uhhhhh… Red?"

So much for pretending she'd been in Gotham the whole time. After a few moments of violent coughing, Ivy finally got her breath back. "Wedding?" she croaked, still trying to clear her throat. "What the HELL?"

"Uhm… you were there Red… you hijacked it!" Harley's voice was as bemused as her expression. She wondered briefly if maybe Ivy had thought she'd meant another (successful) wedding, but Ivy still looked shocked.

"So you're not married to… him then?" Ivy pressed, dimly acknowledging to herself that she felt more intimidated by the Joker right now than she had when he'd had a gun in her face.

"Nooooo…" Harley replied hesitantly, now getting really confused. "But you were THERE Red! You know that! Or have you got selective amnesia?"

Ivy sighed deeply. She might as well get this over with. "No Harl, I wasn't there. My clone was."

"Your CLONE!" It took a few moments for that to sink in. "But… but we… you… she… the hell?" Harley was having trouble getting her head around the concept. (that must have been one damn good copy…) "You were a CLONE? Like… like those things you made to pretend to be Steven Carlyle and his kids?"

"An advanced version of those, yes. You might have noticed the lack of mutating into a giant monster."

"Uhhhhh… kinda…" Harley replied, thinking of what had happened in Blackgate. Well, it was something of a relief to think that maybe Ivy could not in fact maul her when she was pissed with her. "But… why?"

Ivy shrugged. "I needed a break. I was tired of Gotham." And that was close enough to the truth for now. "I replaced myself with the clone so Batman wouldn't come looking for me."

"…you never told me…" Harley said quietly, her voice catching slightly in her throat. Great, just when she'd been thinking 'hey, this means Ivy wasn't keeping secrets from me 'cause she was a clone!' too. "You left me." And this time as Harley looked at her, it was Ivy who looked away first.

"You know you can't keep a secret Harl." The forced nonchalance in her voice was so artificial that it made Ivy cringe. "Besides," she continued, now with an edge to her voice. "…it's not like you noticed, is it?"

"How the hell was I meant to know?" Harley shot back, her voice sharp with anger and hurt. "She looked just like you! Acted just like you! Like she thought she was you!"

"She did." Ivy replied calmly. Harley's anger always burned itself out if it wasn't encouraged. "As far as she knew, she'd always been me; I never gave her any reason to think otherwise."

Harley stared at her with a combination of horror and shock. "So you made her think she was you, even though she was all plant and not you at all? That's HORRIBLE!"

"It was necessary! She had to act like that to fool Batman. Besides, it's not like it matters to her now anyway." Ivy couldn't help feeling a slight twinge of jealousy at Harley's apparent concern for her doppelganger, even though she knew it was ridiculous.

"Maybe. But she was scared Red. She knew she wasn't human, and she didn't know why, and…" Harley paused mid-sentence as a sudden thought hit her. The clone hadn't been human. Ivy looked human right now. Like she had for the first couple of years after they'd met. Then she'd started looking less and less human, and her skin had gone green and… had she been a clone that whole time?

"And what?" Ivy prompted after several moments of silence. Harley looked like she'd just been spiked by one of Ivy's special cacti and paralysed. "I'm waiting."

"How long have you been a clone?" The words tumbled out in a sudden rush as Harley jerked back to reality. "Well, I know you're NOT a clone, but how long WERE you a clone… you know what I mean!"

She sounded terrified. Then Ivy realised what Harley must be thinking, that she'd been a clone ever since her skin colour had started changing, which would mean she hadn't really been there for most of the time they'd been…

"About a year and a half." Ivy said, truthfully for once. She watched Harley's face carefully, wondering if she'd remember…

"Oh." Harley almost sighed with relief, that was a huge weight off her mind. (hey, the clone was even more like Ivy than she'd thought!) Then, as she tried to figure out exactly when the real Ivy would have left, the realisation hit her. "…oh…"

The look on Harley's face was enough to tell Ivy that the blonde did indeed remember, no doubt as clearly as Ivy did herself.

----------

"…and one of these days that bastard's going to kill you!" Ivy pulled the bandages around Harley's arm extra-tight for emphasis, making the blonde woman yelp.

"OW! Red!" Pulling her arm away (with another wince) Harley turned her face to the wall, refusing to look at the other woman. "It's just a flesh wound. He didn't mean it."

"Harley, he was trying to shoot you!" Ivy snapped as she packed the first-aid kit away. "And if you'd been half a second slower, it would be a hell of a lot more than a flesh wound."

"Well Mistah J knew I'd dodge!" Harley replied defensively, still gazing fixedly at the wall. "He was just having a bad day, and I wasn't helping any, he just needed to let off some steam."

"Oh really. How about I take shots at you with my crossbow next time I have a bad day, hmmm?"

"You could do with the practice Red, you're a lousy shot." Harley muttered, but didn't move away as Ivy sat on the bench beside her.

"Harley." Ivy's voice had lost its anger, and was adopting the usual half-persuasive, half-pleading tone she used every time the blonde turned up on her doorstep with fresh injuries, the tone that always managed to strike a painful chord in Harley's heart. "You need to stop this. You know you do."

"I don't know what you're talking about Red." she replied sulkily, feeling Ivy's hand slide over hers.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about Harl." Ivy sighed, trying not to sound frustrated. "That bastard will kill you one day. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't love you…"

With a snarl, Harley pulled her hand away from Ivy's. "What the hell would you know about it! It's not like you've ever been his therapist or anything!"

"I know that I love you Harley." Ivy replied quietly. "And I know that you feel the same."

And it was the truth of those words that pushed Harley over the edge, knowing that yes, Ivy did love her, and that she loved her too. But she loved Mistah J as well, which caused a whole plethora of conflicting loyalties and confusion, and Harley hated those feelings, because they just made her life so much more difficult than it had to be, and it hadn't been like this before she'd met Ivy, so in a way it was her fault. But it was still true, and it still hurt, and Harley couldn't stop herself from lashing out.

"No! You're just jealous Red!" Harley spat, jumping to her feet and whirling round to face the other woman. "That's why you're doing this! You're jealous because you just can't manage to have a proper relationship, so you're messing up mine!"

Ivy just stared at her in blank shock, which quickly became rage as Harley's words sank in. "What the hell do you mean by that?" she hissed as she stood to face the blonde woman.

"I mean you just can't have a normal relationship with a guy unless they're drugged like Harvey was, or a plant like the Carlyle guy!" Harley snarled, knowing she was going too far, knowing she didn't mean what she was saying, but right now she was too wound up to care. "And I've got a relationship, and you don't, so you want to wreck it for me! Because you're jealous!"

If looks could kill, Harley would have been dead, in a planter, and literally pushing up daisies. It took several moments before Ivy could trust herself to speak without shrieking at full volume. "So that's how you feel, is it?"

The deadly calm of Ivy's voice was actually worse than the screaming Harley had been expecting. She couldn't bring herself to reply, partly because she already wanted to apologise and partly because she knew she'd probably start crying. She held Ivy's basilisk stare though, inwardly quailing at the cold fury glittering in her eyes. It was the same exact look Mistah J had when he'd pushed her out the window the time she was going to kill Batman.

"Well." Ivy continued as if she'd gotten an affirmative response. "In that case I think you'd better go back to your fucking clown, and the two of you can burn in hell for all I…"

Neither of them had heard the telltale whistle of the bolas, and Ivy was cut off mid-sentence as they hit both her and Harley, binding them together and knocking them to the floor as Batman's shadow fell across them.

"The clown's already back in Arkham." he said dryly as he approached them. "And I think the pair of you should join him."

They didn't really have much choice.

----------

"…oh…" Harley said again, mainly because she couldn't think of anything else.

"As you can see, you were wrong about me and relationships." Ivy remarked, with more than a hint of bitterness. But somehow this wasn't nearly as satisfying as she'd imagined it would be. (much like the relationship itself… oh lord, had she really just thought that?)

"…I didn't mean it Red…" Harley whispered dejectedly. "You believe me, right?"

There were a few moments of silence, then Ivy sighed in resignation.

"You know Harl, I actually do."