The key ring rattled as she flipped through the dense collection of keys with her unburdened hand, squinting at the small patches of masking tape she'd put on some of them to label them apart. She hesitated before picking a bronze one and jimmying it into the lock in the door knob. It went in, but refused to budge when she twisted. Letting out a small hiss of annoyance, she extracted it and went with the other one she'd been considering, and this one worked a treat and turned easily.
The door still refused to open, though. Harley rested her forehead against the wood for a moment, remembering. Keeping the knob turned, she angled her shoulder against the door, as close to the frame as she could, and gave a shove. The ever so slightly oversized bolt finally cleared the wall and the door opened. She sighed, weary, and slipped inside, the door closing much easier than it had opened.
She swatted at the light switch as she walked past. Her two room apartment had a thin layer of dust on the bookshelves and the edges of papers, and the air was really close in here, even with the coolness of fall outside. Nobody besides her ever came here, and she hadn't been by for a little while before her incident at that. She vaguely thought about the motel room Batman had rented for them as she put her brown paper grocery bag down on the kitchenette counter and opened the small window above the stove. The sounds of cars and air conditioners filled the space like a comforting ambiance as she went back to the door to slip her shoes off and hang her light jacket from the single hook on the closet door, absently relocking the door while she was at it.
The coffee table in the living room still had several stacks of papers on it; just notes she'd scribbled down ideas for crimes or jokes, one or two long-term schemes. She had never understood how Joker had been so... incomprehensibly unorganized and yet always managed to get his operations in order with little delegation; he would give the orders, and things would just sorta fall into place, chaotic but within expectations. Her own attempts at planning required much more physical documentation to piece it together, to keep the web unbroken in her mind's eye.
She walked past them to lift up the window. It faced a plain brick wall in the alleyway, so the view wasn't spectacular, but it was fire escape adjacent, so she considered it worth the trade off. Plus, harder for certain nosy people to peep on her.
She'd left the bedroom door open, so it wasn't any different in there – dusty, tickling her sinuses. The light turned on the overhead fan, which started a nice draft that would help get the air flowing. She opened the window, the last in the apartment, before sitting down on the corner of her bed. Plain off-white sheets and a dark blue comforter she'd bought at Wal-Mart while in the suburbs, nothing about it or the apartment at large gave any indication that it was rented out to a notorious and psychotic criminal. She couldn't remember how many clothes she had in the small dresser by the door, but she was at least glad she hadn't left her laundry dirty before leaving last time.
She really wanted to just lay down and go to sleep; to sleep for days on end until this exhaustion went away and her body didn't hurt so much just from walking. But she knew she couldn't rest, not yet. She had left the groceries out.
AN: Not dead, just...exhausted, we'll say. This is only part of the chapter, so the full version will be replacing it later on. La-de-dah, you all know how this works, I'm just yammering.
"The Suicide Squad" was pretty good, glad to see Harley given a decent shake at cinema for a change.
