Chapter Twelve:

Two Special Girls

Hey, are you up yet? You have a bad habit of sleeping in when you're not supposed to.

My mind awakens before my body does. My eyes blink open to look at the bare white ceiling.

~Good morning beautiful.

Ah, there's my sleeping beauty. It's about time too; you're going to be late.

Huh? I turn my head ninety degrees to look at my clock. It reads 7:50 a.m.

~Shit!

Heeheehee!

I burst out of bed in an instant and start kicking off my pajama pants. Where the hell did I leave my work pants? I can see a black material peeking out from beneath my bed. I pull it out and find that it is one of my work pants but it's the same pair that I wore yesterday. I bring it to my nose and give it a whiff. It smells descent enough; I guess it's still okay to wear again.

I tug my pants on and then comb through one of my drawers to pull out a clean, white button down. Once it's on, I make my way to the kitchen and pour myself a bowl of lucky charms. Cereal never gets old. I could eat the same bowl every morning of my life and I wouldn't complain not once.

As I'm eating, I hear some serious shuffling going on in the bedroom next to mine. I guess I'm not the only one who slept in this morning huh?

I reach the bottom of my bowl and my roomie still hasn't left that room. I guess I could go out and check the mailbox in the meantime. I ditch my empty bowl in the sink and open the front door to greet the morning. I love this time of year. Mid-July morning sunshine is the best. It warms your skin in an instant; I love the heat. I step outside and take a leisurely walk towards the mailbox.

Let's see what we have here… Phone bill, credit card application, and a flyer to the new pizza place around the corner. Nothing interesting here. I close the box and tuck the mail under my arm. In the middle of the lawn, the morning paper lies haphazardly thrown. I walk through the dewy grass to pick it up. I think I'll read this during my lunch break today.

"Oh, good morning dear!"

I turn to see Mrs. Hardler standing outside her home with her morning paper.

"Good morning Mrs. Hardler. How are you today?"

"I'm good honey. What about you? Still working hard?"

I smile. "Of course. But I'm still playing hard too."

She laughs heartily. Mrs. Hardler has a peculiarly young spirit for someone of her age. She's in her early 70's and if you met her, you would completely forget that fact.

"Well, that's good baby 'cuz let me tell you, working hard ain't worth it if we can't play hard too; and you deserve it."

"Thanks, you do too. Retirements been good huh?"

She smiles. "Mmhm, it's been great. Charles and I are going dancing tonight. You want to join us?" she points to my apartment. "You can bring your friend."

Hmmm dancing doesn't sound like a bad idea but…

Dancing? I guess I wouldn't mind but, maybe tonight isn't the best night.

~I think so too.

"Sorry. If it were any other night, I'd say yes."

"Well how about next week? Charles and I are always up for dancing."

"You and Charles put me to shame with how active you two are," I joke. "But next week is perfect."

Mrs. Hardler claps her hands together in jubilation. "Yay! I can't wait to see what moves you got."

I laugh. "Don't get too excited, I don't have much."

She waves away my warning. "Then I'm just going to have to teach you everything I know."

"I look forward to it."

She starts walking back to her house. "Alright then, I'll you around baby."

"See ya."

When I'm back inside I place the mail on the counter and when I turn around I'm greeted by a furious and flustered blonde.

"I hate those new alarm clocks we got. They suck!" She says hurriedly rummaging impatiently through her purse. "I didn't even hear mine ring this morning."

"Come to think of it, I didn't hear mine either."

She pulls out the keys she was looking for and smiles briefly at them before tossing them to me. "Yeah, we need to get rid of them and get new ones tonight. But right now, we need to leave a.s.a.p. I can't be late for my session with my patient."

She worries too much about her patient sometimes. I know he's that Joker and that he's a seriously high profiled case, but being late for one single session isn't going to have terrible consequences or anything. I guess I understand the eagerness to study someone as medically fascinating as the Joker, but, I imagine those sessions being uncomfortable, regardless. So why rush over to something as unpleasant as that?

"You take your work too seriously. You know that don't you Harleen?" I say heading towards the door. She smacks my arm and pushes past me to get outside.

"Shut up. You don't take your work seriously enough. You're running late too you know."

I make a hurt face and purposefully start walking ten times slower towards the car. When she reaches the car, I can see the question on her face as to why I haven't reached the driver's side yet. She turns to me and rolls her eyes impatiently while trying to hide her amusement.

"Come on Guy! I don't want to be late."

I continue my slow pace before relenting. "Alright, alright let's go."

She sighs and smiles, "finally."

I don't want to be here; I want to go home!

"I think that with patient 3870, you should double his meds," says Dr. Arkham in the middle of my review evaluation. "I think he'd progress more with his treatment if he had more help controlling the cerebral problems. So, let's focus on reducing that pain."

"Okay; that sound like a plan."

I love my job but this work load is killing me. Do they honestly expect me to do all this on my own?

"Other than that Dr. Kopski, I'd say you're doing a fantastic job with these patients." He closes the beige file containing my progress reports for this month. "They're well on their way with this treatment."

"Thank you Dr. Arkham, I'll go fill out the forms for these meds right away." I get up and leave his office. Right now, I have seven different patients that I'm treating; which is a lot for any doctor at this facility. Around here each patient is their own handful. So, I have to meet with Dr. Arkham often to make sure that I'm on top of everything and not forgetting to give each patient the necessary attention and treatment that they require.

~Well, I don't know about you, but I am killing it at work.

That's great Guy. Work is killing me right now.

~You got this. You're a tough girl.

Damn right I am.

On my way back to my office I stop at the pharmacy office to take care of the new med situation. Once I finally reach my office and sit in my chair to relax, Harleen strolls in jollily and practically dances towards the seat opposite my desk.

"Hey Guy. Have you finished yet?"

"Yeah I'm just getting my stuff in order. You?"

Harleen smiles to herself as if she's enjoying her own private joke. "Yeah. I just finished my session."

"How is your patient? Word on the street is that he's improving."

Harleen rolls her eyes playfully. "Barely! Dr. Arkham is nuts. He shouldn't be going around telling everyone that he's improving when he really isn't."

I smile at her. I love that she's so honest with me. She would never speak this way about her progress or Dr. Arkham if I were anyone else. "What was the supposed progress that he credited you with?"

Harleen rest her arms on the handles of the chair and leans back. "That he's eating more and hurting himself less."

"But that is real progress, isn't it?"

Harleen sighs and rests her head in her left palm. "I guess…" She's solemn for a moment but then she perks up immediately. "So, can we go now? I want to go out to eat tonight. What do you say?" Well how can I say no when she asks me that eagerly? Whenever she's excited or happy about something, her eyes get all big and her dimples appear. It'd break my heart to disappoint that face.

"Sure, whatever you want I guess."

She beams and claps her hands together once. "Cool! Let me just run to my office and grab my purse." She starts heading out of the room and says more to herself than to me. "I wish our offices were right next door to each other."

"Lord help me if that were true," I call after.

"Shut up," She calls back and leaves. I grin to myself. I love messing with her. Harleen is the little sister I always wanted. I'm an only child, so living with someone who's my age and that I can play around with is really awesome. It's like I have a sibling of my own, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

I'm so glad that you have Harleen too. I love that she can keep you company when I can't.

After dinner, Harleen and I went into a food coma on the living room couch. We went to an all you can eat buffet, and believe me; we ate all we can eat. We just recently started watching The Office, so we just decided to chill and watch a couple of episodes. We're on season three now. Out of nowhere, Harleen says, "wow it's been awhile, huh?"

I look at her questionably. "Awhile since what?"

"Since we've hung out; just the two of us."

I look at her like she's gone crazy. What is she talking about? We hang out together all the time. …Don't we?

Wait.

Now that I think about it… I guess we haven't been doing much chilling together; besides going and coming from work. Wow, I had no idea. Since Sarah's been in my life, I guess I've been dedicating all of my free time to her. I can't help it. She's my soulmate. My entire world revolves around her. She's all I think about. It's incredible how the moment I met her, everything about who I was completely changed. Suddenly I wasn't just some dorky guy, I became a man with a real purpose in life. To keep my girl happy and safe. That's all I want. As long as I do that, I can say that my life has been well spent.

But I guess my change of mind set hasn't been too kind to Harleen. I feel bad. Before Sarah, we were all we had. All of our friends moved away after college, and neither of us has family in Gotham, so we only had each other as company. Harleen is more than my best friend; she's become family. So, I can't believe that I haven't made the time to hang out with her alone.

Aw… Guy you better apologize and start spending more time with her! I don't want to come in between you two.

"I guess it has been awhile… I'm sorry."

Harleen looks at me with great concern. "No. Don't say that. I get it you know. You found your soulmate. Of course things are going to change after that; I'm not complaining Guy. I'm really happy for you and I don't want you to change a thing, okay? I'm more than fine."

I smile warmly at her and squeeze her hand gently. She is such an amazing person; I couldn't have asked for a better person to be my best friend. "You're the best, you know that?"

She smiles triumphantly. "I know."

"And I know you'll find your soulmate soon too." Harleen looks at me cautiously. "I really hope that you do because that way, I'll feel less guilty," I joke and she only smiles sheepishly at me.

"Thanks Guy."

We stay in a comfortable silence after that and go back to watching TV. It's really hard for us to ever be uncomfortable around each other. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a single time when we have ever had an awkward, uncomfortable moment. I guess we're just cool like that.

Yes! I finally finished everything I needed to do!

I automatically smile. I want to see her so bad. We haven't met up today at all.

~Awesome! I'll go pick you up.

Yay! Thank you! I can't wait to see you.

Oh wait…. I look to Harleen who's really enjoying the show. I can't leave after everything we've just talked about.

You don't have to Guy. I can easily come to you.

I don't want Sarah riding the bus though… Shit, what do I do? Harleen starts laughing at something that happened in the show and when I don't laugh with her, she looks at me and notices my conflicted brewing.

"What's up Guy?"

"Nothing," I assure her.

"No, no, no. You don't make that face because of 'nothing,'" she mimics my voice terribly.

I sigh. "Sarah's done with work."

Harleen rolls her eyes playfully and shakes her head at me like I missed something obvious. "Well what are you still doing here stupid? Go get her."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, dummy. Go, I told you I'm fine."

She really does seem fine and unbothered but I still can't shake this guilty feeling. "Alright, I'll hurry back okay?"

She waves me away. "Don't worry about it. Take your time."

"You really are the best." I grin and she smiles back at me before I leave. I'm really grateful to have her in my life, but I'm also incredibly grateful to have Sarah with me now too. She's everything I never thought I'd have. The whole soulmate concept has always puzzled me growing up and to be honest, I really didn't have much faith in the fact that I would someday meet mine. I'm over the moon happy that I was wrong and that I met Sarah. I can't even begin to describe how meeting your soulmate just changes you completely. All of these strange, incredible feelings just take over and I don't mind them at all. I love all of these unfamiliar emotions that Sarah's introduced me to. I wouldn't change a damn thing about us or our history together. If I had too, though, I would make it so that we'd meet sooner; because everything about her makes me eager and impatient to be with her. Like I am right now.

~Hold on baby. I'm coming to get you.

AN: Okay, that was a total filler. But a somewhat important one. I wanted to do a small take of Guy's point of view so that you guys could see how a typically relationship in this universe is supposed to function and how out of sync the Joker and Harleen are. I didn't get too much into the exact feelings and stuff of Guy and Sarah because I want to save all of that gushy stuff for Harleen when her time comes.

And by the way guys, I posted chapter eleven last week, but an error occurred while I was posting it. So, the chapter technically did post but no one was notified of it. ...Or at least I think so because in the description of the story, it said that I hadn't updated since February even though I had just updated earlier that day...

Oh well, I guess for people who didn't notice the last update, these two chapters will be a pleasant surprise.

Thank you all for reading the story this far. I'll see ya in the next chapter!