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Since Harley and her crew took over the abandoned mall, it's not really... well, abandoned. Harley would be the first to admit that she causes noise and chaos, and with a motley crew of villains and a best friend who grows plants in every available space, it's normally pretty alive in here.
Today, though, the crew are out, and Ivy... Harley's not sure where Ivy is, because when she's not busting down doors with vines or talking furiously about outrages to nature, Ivy is surprisingly quiet, for someone who's Harley's best friend. Maybe that's why they work, balancing each other out. Impulsivity and meticulous planning, noise and quiet, enthusiasm and sarcastic realism.
“Ivy?” she calls into the empty space, and only silence answers her. Or... maybe not quite silence. Distantly, in one of the mall's back rooms, she can hear music.
She follows the sound up to the door, pausing to listen. Indigo Girls. So, definitely Ivy. She's never quite understood the obsession Ivy has with that band, and Ivy won't ever explain it to her.
She opens the door and is about to say something, she's not even sure what, when she spots Ivy and the words she was going to say catch in her throat.
Her best friend is kneeling down by a plant pot, coaxing something to grow with careful movements of her hands, drawing green shoots up out of the soil. Her jacket is tied around her waist, her hair is pushed back roughly into a loose ponytail, and she's sitting barefoot, flecks of earth dotting her white tank top. She's half-facing away from Harley, her attention fully focused on the plant, a green tapestry already surrounding her, like she's brought an entire garden indoors.
Harley doesn't know what it is about the picture that stops her in her tracks, stealing her breath just a little. Maybe it's how Ivy looks so unguarded, free of the sarcastic mask she wears so often, free of the walls that snap up sometimes for reasons Harley can't be sure of. Maybe it's the expression on her face, a kind of laser-focused tenderness. Maybe it's the casual happiness that radiates from her posture, from the small unconscious half-smile on her lips, the fact that she hasn't even noticed the smear of dirt on her cheek.
Maybe it's all of those things and more, or maybe it's just Ivy. Because this has happened more and more lately, the times Harley finds herself struggling to remember what she wanted to say, forgetting how to breathe for just a split second, feeling something strange and unfamiliar breaking down the guard around her heart.
There is something about Ivy, about how Harley feels about her, that has always, always been there, but it was buried and ignored beneath all her other feelings, and now it's so much closer to the light, breaking to the surface like the plant Ivy is tending, and Harley doesn't know what to do about it, because she can't name it, this strange, tender, overwhelming feeling.
She shakes her head and pushes the feeling down, just as the music fades and the plant stretches to its full height, and Ivy looks up like she's coming out of a trance and jumps just a little when she sees Harley standing there.
“Harls! Hi. What's going on?”
“I was just... um, lookin' for you,” Harley says, focusing her eyes on a plant to Ivy's right because fuck, now Ivy's looking at her all soft and surprised, strands of red hair falling loose and sticking to her forehead, and it's like the oxygen levels in the room have gone down again, and why does this keep happening?
“How long have you even been standing there?” Ivy asks, standing up and reaching for her jacket, slipping her arms back into it, and Harley finds herself wishing she wouldn't, because apparently her mind's jumping to all sorts of random places right now.
“Not that long, just, uh... curious. About plants and... things.”
Ivy raises an eyebrow at her like she's seriously wondering if Harley's been replaced by some strange clone of herself, and the familiar toughness has fallen back over her face, the way she's held herself just slightly distant recently, and Harley's not sure why, or if it's even real, but she thinks the last time she saw Ivy fully unguarded was when they watched the investment bankers die in the sunset, her head on Ivy's shoulder, their fingers interlinked.
“You're acting strange, Harls. Is there something going on, or...?”
“What? Me! No. I'm cool. We're cool.”
Ivy shrugs and shakes her head disbelievingly, but lets the matter drop. “Okay, sure, whatever. I'm just gonna finish up here. Give me a couple minutes.”
Harley nods and shuts the door behind her, the handle slipping out of her fingers halfway so it slams to with a bang Ivy probably won't appreciate, but it's not Harley's fault she feels all off-balance for some reason.
She's lived with Ivy a long time now, and she likes it, likes having her around, even likes the routine of their domestic life, as long as she gets to disrupt it with something new and exciting every once in a (not-so-infrequent) while. She likes Ivy being the first person she goes to when her head's too full of thoughts or she wants to do something impetuous or needs advice she probably won't use.
She likes the fact that they can stay up talking till sunrise sometimes, her rambling on and Ivy listening because she's good at that, actually, their roles sometimes switching when Ivy feels the need to explain something nature-related because if it's something that interests her, then she can talk for hours.
She likes it when Ivy curls up next to her on the couch wearing a plant pun t-shirt and drinking some kind of herbal tea and they exchange sarcastic remarks about whatever's on TV, and the times she falls asleep on Ivy's shoulder and wakes up still there because Ivy hasn't moved, letting programs she's not interested in run on and on so as not to disturb Harley, because somehow, sharp as Ivy is sometimes, she's softer when they're together.
She even likes the plants that grow round the house in random places, vines curling up the walls and pots cluttering floor spaces, because she just looks at them and sees the way Ivy loves them, and that's enough.
Even if they annoy the hell out of each other sometimes, she doesn't think anyone's ever got her like Ivy does. Doesn't think she's ever been happier than when they're together.
And that scares the shit out of her because she's not sure what it means, the way she loves Ivy, and despite how often she jumps headfirst into unfamiliars, this time it's a little terrifying, the not-knowing.
She's Harley Quinn, and she's impetuous, and she runs from one thing to the next, but she doesn't want to run from this. From Ivy. She doesn't want it to change, what they have. She never wants to go inside and find the mall empty for good, because she's lost Ivy before and she never, ever wants to go through that again.
And she thinks she won't mind if Ivy makes the whole house a garden, so long as she doesn't lose her in the trees.