The night was bitterly cold and deadly silent, a sharp contrast to the raging sirens and the rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire she'd escaped just mere minutes ago. In fact, given the close call, perhaps she shouldn't even have been standing there, where the neighbors might potentially recognize her…
But she had no choice. She had to see Ivy.
She'd promised not to drag her green friend into any more of these messes, but as she stood on the porch of Ivy's latest safe house, the harlequin was ready to swallow whatever pride she had left if it meant seeing her once more.
She knocked on the door once again, the sound of her fist against the wooden frame the only sound to cut through the haunting silence.
There was a dull rustling from the other side and then, the door creaked open to reveal the plant goddess herself, her moss green eyes widening at the sight before her. "Harls?"
The shock in Ivy's voice threw Harley for a loop. Is it really that bad?
The doctor in her couldn't help but mentally review the injuries once again.
One broken rib.
A sprained ankle.
Several shallow lacerations from a serrated knife across her abdomen and arms.
And a rapidly blackening eye from a punch she could still feel aching dully in the back of her skull.
Oh, and probably a concussion, but she had driven herself all the way out here, so it wasn't too big a deal.
In retrospect, perhaps this was one of her better days, ranking no higher than being trampled by a crowd of rowdy shoppers on a Black Friday morning at Gotham Mall during a free flatscreen TV giveaway.
Definitely not worth losing sleep over.
"Heya Red!" She replied with a quick wave and a wide grin.
The cheerful greeting did nothing to dissipate the tension, Ivy's brows only furrowing into a deep, dangerous glare. "What happened this time?"
The harlequin hesitated at that, her confidence faltering at the question.
She didn't quite know why the words wouldn't come to her. After all, they'd done this dance thousands of times. She'd show up on her friend's doorstep, bleeding and half-dead. Ivy would patch her up and demand to know what had happened. Harley would reassure her that Puddin' had been utterly justified in punishing her for her shortcomings. Ivy would gripe and grimace at that before proceeding to give her a long diatribe about self-esteem and kicking the clown to the curb. Harley would fight with her about it.
And then they'd ignore all of it completely and move on, only for it to all happen the next time.
And the next.
And the time after that, too.
And yet... this time felt different than the others.
Sensing Harley's reluctance, the redhead simply released a fatigued sigh and stepped back into the house, "You know the drill."
That Harley did. As always, she headed straight to the bathroom to strip off her blood-stained costume, leaving her only in her underwear. As always, she hopped into the tub and quickly rinsed off her injuries as best she could before they could become septic. And as always, once she'd popped out of the bathroom, she found a clean cotton shirt and shorts waiting for her on the guest bed that was practically hers anyway.
She found a strange, almost morbid comfort in this disquieting routine they'd established. With Mistah J, there was nothing but chaos, unpredictability at every turn. Crazy heists in the dead of night, underworld shenanigans that blended into the early morning hours, gone for weeks without so much as an explanation only to show up with an insane plan to kill the Bat. There was no telling what Mistah J was going to do next. He liked it like that.
But Ivy was the complete opposite. She was a person of schedule, of habit. She watered her plants on a schedule, worked in her lab from 10 – 6 every single day and went promptly to bed by 11. And even when it came to this depressing circumstance of caring for her abused friend, she had created a tedium that Harley was rather grateful for on this night unlike any other.
Once she cleaned up, she reached for the first aid kit, which was tucked right underneath the bathroom sink cabinet. Again, she wasn't surprised to find the gauze and bandages had been restocked.
It seemed the box never did empty out.
Kit in hand, Harley headed out to perch on the sofa. A few minutes later, Ivy joined her, like clockwork, her hands holding an herbal ointment that would soothe her injuries and help her heal faster.
This part of the night was always spent in silence, mostly because Ivy would be too furious with her Puddin' to dare say anything to the vulnerable jester. By now, Harley knew to leave her friend well enough alone when she was in such an ill humor and so, as always, she resolved herself to silence while Ivy bound her wounds.
And as always, she found herself focusing on the strong, gentle, sure hands that seemed to know just what they were doing. Fingers brushed against each and every cut to apply the salve with a healing touch she had never experienced with anyone else.
But then something different happened.
They stopped.
Harley opened her eyes to find that Ivy's hands had dropped to her side, leaving the laceration she'd been treating open to the cool air.
"Ive?"
The redhead turned away, her hands coming up shakily to wipe at her eyes before Harley could catch the glint of tears. But the gesture was too little too late.
"You're crying?" The question was genuinely laced with worry. Pammy didn't cry, and especially not for no reason.
"Don't worry about it," came the low reply.
But the psychiatrist in her just couldn't let up, not when her friend was hurting.
"Come on, Ive. You can tell me. Whatever it is, I can help, you know. If you need me to smash something – Oooh! Or someone! – just say the word, Ive! I'm real good at it too!"
Ivy said nothing, her gaze fixed squarely on the carpet. Another tear plopped into her lap.
It was a rather unnerving sight.
"Pammy…" An increasingly concerned Harley reached to reassuringly clasp Ivy's thigh. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong." Her eyes darted around the room, searching for an answer to her friend's plight, but the barely furnished living room had no answers.
Another tear.
"Come on, Ive," Her brows crinkled into increasing concern for her best friend. "I hate seeing you like this. Can't you tell me why you're upset?"
The question snapped something in Ivy as she cast reddened eyes up at Harley, a swirl of anger, despair, love and confusion clear in their green orbs. "You want to know why I'm upset?"
She gestured to the door. "You come in here, bleeding all over my fucking apartment and beaten half to death about twice a month, and expect me to patch you up so that you can just go back and nearly get yourself killed all over again and you?! You're asking me why I'm upset?!"
Ivy clenched her fists, her green eyes fixated on confused blue ones. "Fine, I'll tell you why. I'm crying because it's the only thing I can do after watching the woman I love risk her life over and over again for some fucking psychopathic demon because she's under some insane delusion that he still gives a fuck about her!"
Harley sucked in a soft breath.
Oh. It's going to be that kind of night, isn't it?
Years ago, Ivy had - in a rare state of disorientation and emotional vulnerability - told Harley she was in love with her. The jester couldn't say she was proud of her response, because hours after hearing the admission from Ivy's mouth, she'd left her friend sleeping on the couch and returned to her Puddin', too unnerved by the feelings and the reality she didn't want to face.
The blonde wasn't naïve. She knew she'd broken Ivy's heart that night, that she'd damaged their friendship with one whack of her wooden mallet. But Harley hadn't had the courage to bring it up again. And to her relief, neither did Ivy, it seemed.
Until today.
"Ives-" She began with uncharacteristic gentleness, but it seemed her innocuous question had unleashed a tsunami of repressed emotion from the depths of Ivy's heart, because words kept tumbling out.
"I'm crying because I have to go out every week and restock my first aid kit with the knowledge that I'll need to use each and every bandage I buy because I'm the one that has to patch you up or else you're going to die in my arms! But I'm not even THAT kind of doctor, so I just have to hope and pray that your injuries are treatable and that you don't show up one day with an injury that I can't fix with my fucking Kid Doctor kit because if that happens, I will lose YOU, and I can't let THAT happen, can I?!"
Ivy's harsh characterization of it all made her heart sink. "Pammy…"
"No! I can't just sit back and pretend I don't care about you because you've wormed your way into my cold unfeeling heart and if anything ever happened to you, I know I'd just die with you!" Ivy paused to take a shuddery breath, and then -
"I'm crying for all of those reasons, Harley…but the real reason I'm crying because I've asked you to stay with me so many goddamn times that I might as well just record my voice and play it on a loop, because it'd have the same effect on you anyway. It's not like you've ever once stopped to wonder what it might be like to live a life away from him…and at this point, I can't even hope that you'll consider the option, because we've done this fucking charade a thousand times, Harley and I'm-"
Her head dropped into her still trembling hands, her shoulders shaking with repressed sobs. The sight sent a batarang through Harley's bleeding heart. "I'm-I'm just…" Green fingers raked through cascading red locks as Ivy managed to push the words out.
"I'm just done, Harley."
The silence that followed was so thick with suppressed tension that a steak knife couldn't have cut through it. Harley struggled to process the words.
"Ive, w-what are you saying?"
Pam didn't look up, "I'm saying I can't do this anymore…." There was a slow, mechanical shake of her head. "I can't keep helping you when you've made it so damn clear that you don't want it. So I'm not." Her hands fell limp in her lap, but her gaze remained fixed on the carpet. "I'm going to let you walk out that door, but I'm not going to let you back in, Harley. Not again."
Harley was, for the first time in her life, speechless. For all the words she had shot out of her mouth like automatic gunfire in Ivy's presence, the jester struggled to find even one word now.
Hey, dumbass, your best friend just said she's dropping you like a hot potato. Aren't you gonna say something?
"No!" Her words drew a startled expression from the plant queen, who finally looked up at her. With Ivy's attention now at her disposal, Harley found herself stammering to make her case.
"I – I do want your help, Pammy…. Everything you've done for me…you're the only one that's ever taken care of me…" Ignoring the sharp sting of her cuts, she clasped Ivy's hands and covered them with her own, clarity sinking in more ways than one. "You're my best friend, Ive. I'd be nothing without you."
Ivy looked down at their clasped hands. The moss green eyes crinkled as Ivy offered a small smile at the reminder of their relationship. The sight was a relief for the blonde, but the words that followed were not nearly so reassuring.
"You say that, and yet, you still choose him over me." She barely heard Pam whisper. Before she could reply, Ivy took a deep breath and glanced up, locking her intense green eyes with Harley's cautiously hopeful blue ones before her tepid smile fell away into a disappointed frown.
"Harley, I want to believe that you understand what's going on and are just in denial about it, and sometimes, when I look at you, I think you do get it…but then you go and defend him after he's abused you and I just lose faith in your ability to ever understand your situation."
The more Ivy thought about it, the angrier she grew. She yanked her hands out of their comfortable cocoon and wrapped them around her torso, hugging herself tightly.
"You say I'm the only one who's cared about you…but if you can understand that, then why do you keep running back to that psychopathic devil, Harley? After everything he's done to you, after every god awful situation he's put you in…after he's tried to KILL you multiple times. why do you go running back to him like he's the only recourse you have on this entire fucking planet? Huh? WHY?!"
She dropped off suddenly, almost shrinking into herself as her anger melted into sorrowful apprehension. It was a look Harley had never seen on her best friend.
One of shame, regret, resignation and acceptance of a cycle that they'd been a part of for far too long with no end in sight. And of fear…?
"Am I really that horrible an alternative?"
It was perhaps the first time Harley realized what kind of torture she'd put Ivy through, mentally, emotionally.
A thousand thoughts flitted through the harlequin's bewildered brain as she struggled to form a reply. But for all of the words she wished she had the courage to say, Harley just wanted to clasp Pammy's incredibly soft and silky green skin and shut her up with a good and proper kiss and assure her that no, in fact, Pamela Isley was the closest thing a clown girl like her could ever have that resembled good love and that she was nothing like Mistah J.
But Harley couldn't bring herself to admit anything to Ivy, not at that moment. Instead, she let her hands lay limp at her side as she struggled to form a coherent response.
Unfortunately, the silence was response enough for Ivy, who simply bowed her head in acceptance. "Fine. If you can't answer that, then at least tell me why you pick him."
Harley blinked, "Huh?"
"Every time you tried to defend him, I would cut you off because I couldn't bear to hear you justifying the abuse you suffer at his hands…but maybe I went about this all wrong. So tell me, Harls. What am I missing?"
Harley was at a loss for words, again.
Thrice in one night has gotta be some kind of record for me.
"I…" She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I don't get your question, Ive."
Harley could tell that the bitter anger simmering behind her friend's green eyes was meant for someone else, but it was hard to maintain eye contact all the same.
"I said, tell me what is so fucking IRRESISTABLE about your Puddin' that makes you go back to him again and again and again!" She smacked the couch with an open palm in a fit of outrage, but when Harley flinched, an apologetic Ivy drew back to her corner of the couch, her voice dropping to a reasonable volume as she let out a defeated sigh from amid grit teeth.
"Tell me why he means so much to you, Harley… and maybe it'll finally end this fucking insane self-defeating cycle Fate has trapped us in." Her head disappeared into her palms once more, but it was clear that the ball had fallen in Harley's court.
Under different circumstances, the jester would have gladly taken up the challenge. After all, she'd spent years trying to prove to Ivy that her relationship with Mistah J was the epitome of true love in the hopes that her best friend would finally pipe down about that whole fucking abusive codependency nonsense.
I really am dense for a (former) psychiatrist.
But for all of the hurried reassurances and platitudes she'd thrown at her best friend for years, Harley wasn't entirely sure just how to answer her now that Ivy actually wanted to listen.
Cause you know your relationship with Joker is a sham. Always was, always will be.
But if anyone deserved to understand her complicated relationship, it was Ivy. After running out on her again and again and again, after subjecting her to mental and emotional torment, after taking advantage of her generous friendship for years…wasn't this the least she could do? Couldn't she at least offer Ivy an explanation as to why she left, every single time?
Suddenly, Harley realized she was entirely too sober for this conversation.
Ignoring the protests of her aching muscles, she stood up from the couch and went into the kitchen. Ivy wasn't much of a drinker – something about not wanting to pollute her body with harmful, cancerous toxins just for a brief buzz - but she always had a few bottles lying around for Harley whenever she came to visit.
Yet another thing I just took for granted. No wonder Ivy is done taking care of me.
She reached for a bottle.
"Merlot?!" Harley grimaced as she read the label. She wasn't in the mood for a summer barbeque in the park. "Where's the damn vodka?"
She began rifling through the other cabinets, but each door only revealed more snacks, foods, and drinks, all of them comfort food for Harley's soul. Ivy had probably never even heard of them before – what with her raw vegan diet - but she still kept her shelves stocked with all the junk food Harley could ever want.
She's always paid attention to me, whether I deserved it or not.
"Fucking hell, where's that vodka?!"
In her frustration, she shoved aside several bottles just a tad too forcefully. They tumbled out of the open cabinet and crashed to the floor, shattering against the tiles and expelling their messy contents across the immaculate white floors.
"SHIT!" Harley grabbed for a towel and began mopping it up as best she could.
Always making messes, aren't you, you walking disaster?
"Leave it."
Harley glanced up. To her surprise, Ivy was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the frame with an inscrutable look on her gorgeous green face. "Leave it, I'll get it later."
"But-"
At Ivy's little exasperated sigh, Harley left the mess alone and pulled the vodka bottle from the back of the cabinet, which had thankfully been spared from the fate of its companions.
Small mercies and all that.
She began to pour one out for herself.
"Pour me one too."
Harley nearly dropped the bottle as she looked over to Ivy. "You?!"
The redhead had settled at the dining table, her arms folded before her, as though she were a parent demanding to see their truant child's school report card. "Yes."
Your fault, you know. You're the reason she's drinking tonight. You've broken her, just like you've broken everything you've ever touched.
Something snapped inside Harley. She grabbed the lone glass and the bottle and plopped down into a chair opposite Ivy. The glass slid across the table into waiting hands, and the bottle…
The bottle was half empty before Ivy wrestled it out of her bleached white hands, shock clear on the plant queen's features. "What's wrong with you?!"
What's wrong with me? She knows I'm a insane clown with codependency issues that beats up shit with a fucking mallet and she's asking what's wrong with me?
She dropped the bottle onto the table with a grim laugh. "You wanted me to talk, right? I'm just warming up, that's all."
Ivy let out a soft sigh. One of disappointment. Disapproval. "Harley..."
But Harley simply put the bottle to her lips once more, willing the alcohol to seep through the cracks in her heart and find any remaining semblance of courage, so that she could face Ivy with the answers she deserved.
The bottle was gently pried from her fingers once more, eyes narrowed in exasperation at her sorry state. "If you think you drinking yourself into oblivion is going to put this conversation on hold, then you're kidding yourself."
"But-" She grasped vainly for her salvation but was denied relief.
"You'll get it back if you promise to talk."
That was the problem, wasn't it? Where was she supposed to begin?
Looking up into concerned, anxious, worried green eyes only confirmed her suspicions that the conversation would be just as hard for Ivy as it would be for her. If baring her soul would harm one more, did she dare to speak?
"Tell me, Harley. Please?"
The plea broke her resolve. Harley leaned heavily against the table, dropping her head into trembling hands as she dug into the depths of her psychotic relationship. Memories she'd long since repressed came tumbling into her mind's eye. A cacophonous cackle, a bubbling vat of acid.
"You know how it started." She began rather lamely.
To her surprise, Ivy snorted an almost laugh, sparking a flicker of a smile on Harley's painted lips in response. "Everyone does, Harls. Heck, people write fanfic about it. Tell me something I don't know."
But her small smile faded at the reply. "But that's the thing, Ive. Everyone knows how it started, but no one understands why it didn't stop. Why I couldn't quit it."
She didn't even realize she was shivering until Ivy placed a reassuring hand on her shoulders. "Then help me understand."
Harley took comfort from the close contact as she dug further into the abyss of her nightmares.
"He felt like a challenge."
She looked to her hands, unable to summon the courage to look at Ivy as she admitted her deepest secrets. "To a psychiatrist like me, he was an enigma…a basket case of various psychological disorders that were each rare in their own right."
"You thought you could understand him." Ivy surmised. "You thought you could fix him."
"Maybe not fix," Harley admitted to herself. She wasn't so insane as to deny that some part of her craved his dangerous psychopathic adrenaline-inducing energy. She'd never been much of a rule-follower anyway. And what was it they said about bad boys?
"He was a raging fire, but I couldn't keep away." That wasn't the truth. "I didn't want to."
"You don't play with fire, Harls." Ivy whispered. And she was right. Ivy knew what it looked like when someone played with fire. She'd seen the damage firsthand.
But had the lesson really ever sunk in for Harley?
"I know, but I had to go back, every time." Harley whispered absently, "Sometimes, I used to feel physically ill at the thought of leaving him alone."
"What?" Ivy levelled a surprised frown at her, her voice low but harsh with disapproval. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"
Somewhere inside her, the words sparked an innate stubborn sense of indignant pride. "What would I have said?" Harley challenged her back. "'Oh, I'm sorry Ive, but I'm hurling into your potted plants because I can't stop thinking about how Mistah J probably needs me to find him his socks and the fact that I'm not there for him is making me RETCH!?'"
She heaved a big, defeated sigh and looked back at the table. "Besides, you wouldn't have believed me anyway."
Ivy looked timid, apprehensive, almost wounded. "You-you really think that? That I wouldnt have...?"
Shame crossed Harley's features at her unfair insinuation, but it wasn't so much an indictment of Ivy as it was of society writ large. "I didn't mean to single you out, Ive. It's just that no one really understands the cycle of abuse. But honestly, no." She looked up at Pam. "I guess it just didnt occur to me that I could tell you."
Pam nodded slowly, her expression softer. "So, it physically hurt you to stay away?"
Harley shrugged, "Not always, but if it wasn't that, it was the guilt. I usually screwed things up for him, messing up on heists, failing to understand his mood swings."
Ivy bristled, the edge in her voice returning once more. "I've told you before. You never deserved that kind of treatment, no matter what you did wrong."
Harley managed a morbid smirk. "But that's the thing, isn't it, Ives?" She gestured to the broken glass. "I always do something wrong, and sometimes, you just gotta teach someone the hard way, right?"
Ivy's hand became a death grip on her shoulder as the plant queen spun her around so they could make eye contact. "No!" She shook Harley like a ragdoll. "I'm saying this once and I want you to listen. You don't deserve any of that crap he gave you, not for anything. No one does, Harley, but especially not you." She paused in her tirade to brush a soft hand over acid-washed cheeks. "You do make mistakes, Harley. I'm not going to deny that…but you also do your best to fix them, and that's all that should matter." Pam shrugged softly, "That's all that matters to me."
And Harley knew she meant every word.
Ivy had always been different that way. She was the only one who'd ever seen her as a separate individual, with feelings that deserved attention and understanding.
For all of her hopes and dreams, Joker never had.
"Maybe I stayed because I convinced myself that things would change someday." Harley admitted. "Maybe some part of me thought I had the strength to walk away if they didn't."
Ivy accepted the words with bated breath, Harley's admission treading on territory too delicate for her to handle. Was Harley admitting she didn't have the strength to leave? Were they both forever doomed to play unwilling obedience to this cycle of abuse and grief?
"….Do you?"
For Harley, it was a much anticipated – and dreaded – segue in their conversation. But she had come all this way, had braved his wrath just to make this moment count. She couldn't back out now.
And yet, terrified as she was of this new direction, Harley couldn't help but offer a soft smile to her friend as she reached for Ivy's hand and held it close. "You remember when you told me you were in love with me?"
The plant goddess returned a confused look but couldn't hide the subtle blush that colored her olive green cheeks. "What does that have to with this?"
Harley ran a thumb over the back of Pam's hand, "You never brought it up again after that night, but it's all I've been able to think about for months, Ive. I needed time to process everything you said…" She shrugged casually, a mischievous smile on her red lips. "After all, it's not every day the hottest supervillain in Gotham says she wants to do the horizontal tango with me."
Ivy let out a loud groan and tugged her hand out of Harley's grasp to smack her forehead, "Harls! If you can't be mature about this-"
"Oh, I can be mature," came the saucy reply, complete with infuriatingly wiggly eyebrows. Teasing Ivy was almost too easy.
"Serious." She remedied with a straight face, "If you can't be serious about this, Harley, then I'd rather not talk about it."
Even as she said it, Ivy contemplated finishing the vodka bottle she'd confiscated earlier. I'm way too sober for this conversation, can't we go back to the angsty psychoanalysis of her twisted relationship?
To her relief, Harley let out a little chuckle and a sheepish sigh. Humor was her go-to strategy for avoiding complicated emotions, but Ivy was right. This really wasn't the time for witty remarks.
"Sorry Ives..." She grasped her friend's hand once more, "What I meant to say is after you told me that, I needed time to think about…about us."
Ivy's green eyes glistened with renewed hope, her embarrassment now long forgotten. "Us?"
"Yeah," Harley nodded slowly, her gaze drifting up to connect with Ivy's. "I know I hurt you by not answering right away, but I didn't want to say something I didn't mean. In the end, I guess that was kinda stupid of me because I…I think I've always had feelings for you, Ive….and honestly, can you blame me? I mean you're brilliant and caring and so damn-"
"Harls."
"Right, and I think when you admitted you had feelings for me too, I was overwhelmed by the possibility that you actually liked me." Harley sighed. "I've given you a lot of reasons for why I kept going back to him, but the truth is… after you told me you were in love with me, I still went back because…" She faltered, her courage fading for just a moment before she steeled herself, "Because I didn't really think I deserved to be with you."
Ivy blinked. Then again. "What?"
Harley, for her part, just shrugged, like she hadn't just bared her soul and revealed her biggest fear before the woman she loved. "But then I got to thinking about everything you've done for me and how you make me feel. And I realized, whether I deserve you or not, I…I want to be with you."
In spite of herself, she blushed and ducked her head. "Because I'm in love with you."
Somewhere in the gloriously intricate brain of one plant-hybrid and genius scientist Dr. Pamela Isley, nerve cells short-circuited.
Harley didn't mean it, she couldn't. She doesn't know what she was saying. She'll change her mind soon enough.
"I-I….you…" She swallowed thickly, doing her best to avoid the pre-emptive conclusion-jumping she was often prone to. "You…are?"
"Yeah," Harley now smiled with a hint of confidence, "So I told him that."
Ivy couldn't say Harley was capable of surprising her, not after being witness to her crazy personality and insane antics for years now. But those simple words rendered her absolutely speechless.
This wasn't real. It couldn't be. Not after all these years of waiting and hoping and crying her eyes out everytime the door closed behind her.
As if aware that Ivy was questioning her words, Harley drew a little closer. "I really did it, Ive. No lying or nothin'! I told him I was breaking up with him and that I was never coming back because I love you, and even though he got his kicks in, I didn't even care. I just walked outta there with the stupidest smile on my face, cause I knew I wouldn't be going back. Not anymore."
Moss green eyes seemed startled by this turn of events. But rather than express shock or incredulity or even kiss her (for Harley, that was the most preferable option), Ivy turned away, clearly lost in her own world.
"Ive?"
There was no response, not even an acknowledgement she was paying attention.
The silence began to seep into her bones, rendering her paralyzed. I screwed things up, didn't I? I waited too long to tell her how I felt and now she hates me!
Ivy reached for her untouched vodka and downed the clear liquid in one gulp. Then, she held the empty glass in her hands, studying the shimmering object with an absent-minded aloofness that didn't look promising.
I did it again. I broke her…I really fucked up this time. She's probably trying to find a way to let me down gently, but I don't deserve –
Her self-loathing thoughts fizzled into nothingness as soft, yielding lips crashed into hers. The plant goddess' overwhelming scent of fragrant jasmine enveloped her every sense, so that all she could smell, all she could taste, all she could feel was Ivy.
Ivy. Kissing. Her.
Holy Mother of God! Ivy is KISSING me!
A soft moan escaped her open mouth, but she had barely a moment to revel in the sensation before Ivy drew back.
"IVE!" She began with indignation, but it quickly faded as she caught the curiously intense expression that emerged on Ivy's gorgeous features.
"Before I get back to kissing you senseless – and trust me, I hated ending it as much as you did – I need you to understand something."
A slender hand came up to cup her cheek, its fingers brushing against her soft skin. "You deserve me, Harley. You always have and you always will…"
Brows crinkled into confusion. "I-I do?" Ivy simply nodded, eyes still intently holding her own. But it didn't make sense to Harley. None of it did. "But why?"
Ivy leaned closer, her brilliantly colorful green eyes close enough that Harley could count every eyelash, but the blonde could only focus on the lips that hovered just centimeters from her own. "Because you complete me."
And then Ivy pressed her lips to soft red ones once more.
Slender green fingers curled under Harley's chin, tilting her head up ever so slightly as to grant her more access to her pleasant surprise. Gentle lips coaxed her mouth open to allow a curious tongue to explore this new territory.
Her territory.
As Harley felt Ivy's arms tugging her closer still and Ivy's tongue working wonders with her own, she knew she was ruined for anyone else. She was Ivy's now, forever and always.
I was a fool to think I could belong to anyone else.
And yet, the thought brought her nothing but elation. She was free and safe and finally with Ivy, where she belonged.
She may have danced with the devil once, but it mattered not when she was in the arms of an angel.