Three weeks. Three weeks will make it a month, a week and a day (I think) since I've left my worse half.

We weave in and out of rooms. We wind eloquently around each other and avoid each other's company and some nights we share beds and talk in soft voices like we'll be caught. We don't understand each other, but we're taking progressive steps to mold into things that are comprehensive.

I throw up more than I thought possible. Every few hours I need a barf-bag. Morning sickness is, apparently, the worst experience known to man. Luckily enough it's erratic, and I don't puke every single day on the damn calendar. She's gentle enough that if I cry she's willing to listen.

My emotions are all-fucking-over the place.

It's been years since I've wailed into a pillow. I try to keep it as quiet as I can. I'm embarrassed to wake her up so I can whine and moan all over her in a mucous-induced parade of pathetic sounds and sniffles. I've been pretty much stripped of my dignity (see: raped by a backwards-ass clown), but I try to collect as many scraps of self-preservation as I can.

She has not asked me to go shopping with her. Instead, I am baby-sat by numerous green vines which I'm convinced are attached to the alarm system. I know nothing of these plants, or why they are here. When I asked her, once, if they were controlled by animatronics, she laughed at me and called me a flake.

I suppose I am one.

I'm making an effort to learn how to calm down, but it's slow and anguished like ninety percent of my life. Her rooms are furnished with bright colors and warm humidity that keeps away the frigid chill outside. A choir of stray cats mews gracelessly outside. The sounds of Goldberg's Variations float through her corridors. I feel like one of those damn animals that sits at her doorstep.

I have a collection of text messages I don't have the heart to delete. They're all from Cleave. The gibberish-pattern makes little to no sense most of the time, but it doesn't dumb down the fear I've developed for him. Ivy insists that I'm perfectly safe. Her babies are always there to protect me, she says. And when she's home, she'll do the protecting. All in all, I'm pretty secure. Ivy says that the plants have all attuned themselves to me. When I ask how she knows this fact, I receive another statement regarding my ability to pay attention.

I've come to the final conclusion that, even with a college degree, it's not worth it trying to utter an intellectual statement.

Our moments are shy and skittish. She touches at the tattoo on my neck, brief, meaningful, and asks me if there's anything I want. She doesn't move her fingers, but I feel them in little, electrified pulses sitting on my skin. When I turn a few shades of hot pink and sputter out "Reeses Puffs" at an unheard of speed, she traces an impossibly manicured nail down to my collarbone. Her eyes follow, like she's intrigued by me. She looks at me like I'm her favorite experiment.

I look at her in a number of inappropriate ways.

I'm slowly sliding back into a comfortable rut. She scares me and ignites me all at once. She's always touching me, though, when she talks, when she moves. Whenever she's paying attention to me she always has to touch me like the urge to bridge some gap.

"Your baby-daddy seems to have lost some of his zest."

When she returns home (after I bound out of the chair in the living room to greet her with the usual—my need for attention, hindered by my stagnant fear of it), she drops the paper on the kitchen counter.

Before she leaves to go grocery shopping (always at four in the morning or earlier), she wakes me to warn me she'll be out. If she doesn't, she fears I'll awaken to a panic attack and the thought that I've been abandoned. She doesn't think I notice when she kisses me on the forehead and one of her eighteen thousand confusing vines hugs me in a brief squeeze around the waist.

"W-What do ya mean?"

"There's been a drastic lacking in the ostentatious front-page headlines involving dear Joker and any action along the lines of kills, maims and slaughters. A thorough lack of explosions as well. It's almost as though he's been punted directly off the face of the earth."

I pale almost instantly.

It's a good twenty minutes when I finish heaving up my intestines and just collapse in a shivering heap on the bathroom tiling.

I think, he killed himself.

I think, it's all your fucking fault, Harvey.

The sob I let out is bubbly, slippery and thick as blood. It sticks in my throat and all I can do is crawl into a sad, small ball and clutch both sides of my head, coughing and crying into the floor.

Hormones: Full swing.

Logic: Out the window.

Ability to cry yourself into dehydration: Priceless.

For everything else, there's unnecessary overreaction to an avoidable situation.

"Harvey," and she falls around me, so sudden and delicate, so genuine and honest. She's raw, unrelenting care without a hitch. If I'd have ever had a real mother I would want her to be exactly like this woman. "Harvey—Harvey, shh…"

I shouldn't be thinking this. He raped me. He took everything from me, not once, but twice. I'm having his child that I wouldn't want in a thousand years. He plucked me from my life and gave me a new one; all tainted and sullied and filthy with clown makeup, bloodied lipstick and cheap, two-toned outfits.

He deliberately stole my humanity.

"He wouldn't kill himself over you, Harvey-flower. Oh no, no he wouldn't. That would be an unselfish action for a highly selfish man. He fancies himself far too much a God, far too little a mortal to even consider the concept of spilling his own blood for you."

Oh, sweet-cakes, you make everything sound like it's all coming up roses.

Thank you. Dr. Isley, for the record, for reminding me that I'm an insignificant smudge on Cleveland's life and will, therefore, not impact a single decision he chooses to make.

"How much of your own would you spill on his behalf?" I tense and tighten at the accusation. It feels almost like she's scolding me for loving him. I feel like I've committed a horrendous sin. "Calm down and hush."

Guilt ushers its way into her voice.

I choke on the force of my own tears.

I can't believe I'm having a nineteenth nervous breakdown.

I'm more ashamed of myself than I can possibly explain. I'm completely unable to put into words how horribly degenerate, how completely degraded I feel to be acting like this. In front of someone else, no less.

Her arms snake around my shoulders and my ear falls just over her heart. I cry harder and harder until I can't breathe and my only capability is to listen to the steady thump thump thump of the drum within her chest. Every exhalation is puffy and hard; the sound is like a steamboat whistle spewing out sound. My whole skeleton trembles with the force, and my hands fist desperately in her hair when I reach it until I just pull lightly and shriek soundlessly into the folds of her black jacket why why why?

You're a failure, little Harley Quinn.

You've pushed aside your Joker-king.