This chapter is going to be a very strange one, I will warn. I'm going from third-person in chronicling Cleveland's misery/odd feelings toward the Harvey break-up, back to Ivy and Harv's little chats. Bear with me—to be honest, I have to do this because I'm starting to miss Cleave, myself. XD Thank you, Harlequin Sequins, for being my totally awesome cohort in the Batman-verse. We'll continue that collaboration eventually, once academic work stops killing us both. In honor of my dear friend Brie and all my other readers, here's some Cleave :D! And go check out her story Scream Sanctuary and anything else that happens to pop up on her profile. I triple-promise you won't be disappointed!

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He'd never thought things would turn out this way. Cleveland Roger Punsworth only figured he could play her into his hands. He didn't plan on hurting her. He hadn't wanted to; it hadn't been his intention at all.

When the radio crooned I know who I want to take me home… and he tossed it across the kitchen in a rage (I know who I want to take me home… Harvey's ringtone sang, and Harvey's eyebrow just went up as she spat subtly, "As if" and Cleave giggled), he found himself thinking only one thing. Oh, Harv-cakes, I woulda given you the woooorrrrld.

The world and more. The world and everything. She very well could've been his clown-princess, and he her clown-prince. She could've easily slid into his good favor, been the last person on earth he didn't think hideously of. You coulda been a contenduh, Harvey Tinkle. You could've had it all.

It'd over-excited his senses. The smell of her skin (it was always unrecognizable, he thought, she'd always smell like fear to him) and her sudden nerve. The flick of her knife, the cold steel wanting for his warm skin, the way her voice quavered there in the deep dark.

He'd stuffed his pillow with the Harlequin dress she'd dropped in the snow. It reeked of embarrassment and aloneness when he buried himself in it, face-first, nestling into the crook of her imagined body.

He was slowly coming down from a hefty alcohol buzz and coming up to the feel of a horrendous hangover. He'd drank because hallucinations brought her back. He, himself, would not. Pride was his withstanding quality. He'd not stoop to find some woman.

Harvey was no woman. No unfeeling wretch could possibly be a woman. It was impossible to associate femininity, sweetness, the act of cookie-baking or even ovaries with Harvey Tinkle. He'd had a hard time coping with how genuinely he wanted her, and it was even more difficult to come to grips with the fact that he needed her. She was the worst kind of antidote to the worst kind of virus. She'd been the cure to his loneliness.

And in an instant where they'd clashed, he'd let it all rot away.

Cleveland Roger Punsworth. How easily he'd let her slip him into that name, like a second skin he didn't want to shed. He'd become it, and in that he'd found more of himself than he even thought was there.

He could hardly forgive himself for allowing it to bleed through. He'd let himself slip into second gear, his mind had blanked and his hands had spoken. Her body was his, and a piece of him knew, with that careless passion, he'd pushed her from him forever. Even he felt like a monster when his whiskey-laden breath hit the pillow and he shut his eyes, laughing in quiet, anguished sounds.

He'd wait an hour or so before digging out the Jack Daniels.

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(Harvey point of view, back at the obscure Isley residence)

"Was there a reason you'd gotten 'fighter' there?"

Her voice caresses my ears but my eyes don't open. I breathe, and wheeze when I realize how cold the air is. The sky hovers in a shade just darker than my eyes, the promise of snow a thick reminiscence enveloping Gotham. Snow, I think, bitterly, is the last thing pure left in Gotham.

I dangle out the side-door of the car, too sore to walk, as she drags in the last plastic bag from the back-seat. I'm a spoiled, pregnant woman waiting for her to help me inside. I feel too shaky to just walk on my own. I feel like a baby bird that needs to learn to fly.

"How do you know that's what it m-means?" I fiddle with my glasses, straighten them out. I feel like I need to hack up a hairball.

"I always thought Japanese was an intriguing language, and katanas and the like are beautifully crafted objects that normally interest me. I've become familiar with a number of kanjis and, in my experience; a kanji is a highly representative character. It's not simply an idle swipe of lettering; it's very significant to a person." She makes me feel a good two feet tall, like a foolish idiot. I could never spout something that smart. I once had a problem figuring out the re-sealable packages for string cheese.

I touch at the tattoo, almost in thought. Did I get it for a reason? Did I ever figure myself feisty, loud? Did I ever fancy myself a firecracker, like her?

"You've got a spirit, it only needs cultivating. Everything needs nourishment before it can truly thrive. A dying flower needs to be coaxed back into health; slowly, and with infinite tenderness."

I think, the Christmas cookie ice cream stained your floor-carpets.

I think, I hate living in my own head.

I think, I was dead long before I met you.

She reads my mind (see: links easily with my simplistic thoughts).

"You should speak your mind more often. It's making me a little impatient to try and guess your feelings by staring at your facial expressions all the time. I always know you almost say something, because your eyebrows furrow like you're about to divulge your inner dialogue."

Eyes open. Eyebrows shoot straight up. That was…gifted. Gifted is the only way I can explain that.

She should have been a psychiatrist. I fill my head with guilty thoughts of Poison Ivy in a low-cut, white coat and a pair of perched half-spectacles, her lips a deep ruby and her fingers gliding skillfully over a pad with a pencil tightly in hand. She crosses her legs primly, but not without a brief flash of purely pale thigh. I, of course, put a cork in my urge to salivate like a frat boy.

"Can I interest you in the decision to hobble or limp toward the front door?" I jump nervously and finally wrap my fingers around her warm hand. I don't deny that I hold on longer than I have to before I heave myself up from the seat. It's a few breathless seconds that fill me with the stinging cold and an altogether different warm. "Harvey?"

I stumble to my feet and hold on tight. I'm swaying as I go. My thighs feel numb. My vision jerks from side to side for a second, but refocuses when I take a solid step forward. I just murmur, "H-Hm?"

"On a completely seriously level, do you—is it possible, you think, that you'll be alright?"

If I pretend it never happened, then I'll be completely fine.

Denial is more than a river in Egypt, after all. It's also an intoxicating idea and a secure state of mind.

"Maybe."