#instead I just shot myself in both feet bc I have the object permanence of a toddler

[calliopechild]

Me, getting slapped extra hard with the depression hammer for the past 2 months couple weeks: Why does everything suck so much lately? Why don't I have any energy or motivation? I know the seasonal depression is waiting in the wings, but the weather's honestly been pretty mild lately.

My vitamin D supplements, gathering dust because I forget they exist if I don't see them: ...gee, wonder why that is, dumbass.

[sapphyrambles]

AN: Hey guys! First piece I’m posting. Saw a prompt about Harley shooting the Joker in Suicide Squad instead of running off with him, and this came out out it. Basically it’s her shooting him and dealing with her life afterwards.

Word Count: 4,010

(TW for abuse, mentions of abuse, suicidal ideation/attempted suicide, and death).

(Note I’ve seen SS like, twice, and only bc someone else was watching it. Most of my knowledge of these characters is going off comics and wiki info. Enjoy!)

  “Kill him! Now!”

It’s not the first time she’s held a gun in her hand, not by a long shot. Not the first man she’s thought to kill. Not even the first one she doesn’t really want to kill. But this is different. This is wrong.

Everything went according to plan. Except for this. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He deactivated all the kill switches, everything was down. There were no limits. NOW, was the green bubble on her phone. Her signal, her cue. The curtain rose.

It was their time.

Deadshot saw her, hiding behind the rubble together, out of the line of fire. He saw her smile, the look in her eye. She was far too happy to notice he was sad, the slight shake of his head.

She jumped up without a second thought.

“Puddin’! Puddin’!” she saw him in the door of the rescue helicopter, a machine gun in his hands. He’d gone on a killing spree for her. He rained fear and terror down on Gotham just so someone would send her back to him to make him stop. Her Puddin’.

“Ah, my prize has been returned.” She could hear him from where she was, even over the noise of the helicopter. She broke into a run, making a clean leap from the edge of the building into his arms. Her Puddin’ was back, they were together again.

“I knew you’d come for me,” she’d told him.

“My most valuable prize,” he’d said, not even seeming to be speaking to her. He held her like some kind of glass object, like some eight-generation old crystal vase. Precious. Valuable. For a moment, she wished he held her like this more often.

They should have taken off then, away in the helicopter. Away from Suicide Squad. Away from Amanda Waller. Away from the prison she’d been locked in for so long. Back home to Mistah J. But of course it wouldn’t be that simple. Nothing ever was.

Deadshot was standing on the roof of the building, in the spot where she’d started running. She felt a pang of sadness. Between Puddin’ keeping her to himself, and being locked away for so long, she hadn’t had a real friend in ages. She and Deadshot clicked. It wasn’t like what she and Puddin’ had, but it wasn’t bad either. She was gonna miss him.

It was her hesitation that killed all their plans.

Mistah J saw her, she didn’t have to see him to know. She wasn’t a thousand-year-old crystalline vase anymore, he wasn’t afraid of breaking her. His hand tightened into a fist around her arm, and she bit he tongue to keep from crying out. The mood in the helicopter jolted from happiness to anger and fear in that split second. She saw Mistah J glare out at Deadshot, and raise his gun.

“Wait, don’t—” She shouldn’t have tried to stop him, she knew this, but she didn’t think. She just saw a gun pointed at her friend and reacted. He’d done this before, killed people he thought weren’t good for her, but Deadshot was her only friend since prison, helping her out while she was trying to get back to Puddin’.

Time seemed to stop, in that instant. Deadshot on the roof of the building, in some midway point between Amanda Waller’s forces and Mistah J’s henchmen. Mistah J, with his gun aimed right at him and his hand around her arm like a vice. Harley herself, frozen, no idea if he was going to lower the gun and leave or fill him with bullets first. Or even turn it on her.

Slowly, he lowered the gun. She thought that would be that—she hoped that would be that—he’d leave Deadshot alive, and they’d go home. They’d go home and things would be like the used to. Before prison, before the police were on their tail and setting him off and making him angry. Back when she would listen to him go on about his shitty dad and how awful his life was until she came into it. About what a treasure she was to him. Before he was too busy with his work to pay attention to her. Back to when they were happy.

He spoke slowly, threateningly. Harley Quinn wasn’t afraid of anything, but goddamn if Mistah J didn’t have some kind of effect on people. “Do you care about him? Does that man mean anything to you?”

She couldn’t lie to him. If she told him Deadshot was nothing, he’d fill him with lead. But she was afraid of what yes would cause, what he’d do to both of them. “He’s a friend,” she told him. “He helped me get back to ya.” Let him live please let him live.

It almost seemed to work. Almost. He lowered his gun, he took a step closer to her, she felt the blood flow return to her hand. But then his face changed—pure rage. Harley thought her heart stopped for a moment.

He yelled and shoved her hard, and she dropped down to the roof of the building, all the air leaving her body on impact. He jumped down behind her, shoving a hand in her hair and yanking her to her feet while she was still trying to get a lungful of air. Mistah J threw her forward again, and she stumbled into Deadshot. He held her up until she caught her breath, and when she turned back to her Puddin’ she was met with the barrel of his gun.

      “Kill him, now.”

      She couldn’t speak for a moment. “I—wha? Puddin’—”

      “Kill him now, Harley. You are mine and mine alone and if you know that you will shoot him dead right now.”

      “I know I know, Puddin’ please—” she tried to take a step towards him, but he didn’t waver. The barrel stayed where it was, against her forehead, a twitch of a finger from ending her permanently.

      “Kill him, now.”

      “Puddin’ I love you please he didn’t do anything he doesn’t need t’ die—”

      “Harley if you really do love me you will shoot him dead right now.”

      She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand Puddin’ being upset, she didn’t want to think of what he’d do if she refused, but she couldn’t shoot Deadshot either. She couldn’t do it. “Puddin’ please, he helped me get back t’ ya. He kept me from going off and dyin’ before you could come ‘n get me. Ya don’t have to kill him please—” On some level, she knew bargaining was futile. Mistah J never changed his mind on something like this. But shoot Deadshot? Her friend? He couldn’t make her do that, she couldn’t do it.

      “Either kill him now or I will do it myself, then I will put a bullet in your brain too and throw you off the top of this building,” he shouted, pressing the barrel of the gun further forward, forcing her back a step.

      Threats. It was always threats with him. But only because he cared, right? She wouldn’t make the choice so he was trying to make it for her. Push her to make the right choice. She took a breath, turned, and pulled out her gun. The cold metal familiar in her hand, as familiar as Mistah J’s hand on her arm was. She felt the barrel of his gun at the back of her head, but couldn’t seem to make herself raise her own.

      “Harley,” Deadshot got her attention. “Listen, I’m not too keen on going back to prison when this is over. But what else are a bunch of cops gonna do with a hitman, you know? It’s okay but just...” he pauses and swallows, mustering up some part of himself to say whatever it is he has to say. “Just take care of her for me, okay? Get out of here and take care of her.”

      Take care of her for me. He talked about her so often, Harley felt like she knew her. Deadshot’s daughter, who was living with her not-so-great mother, since her dad was in jail. When this was over, he wanted to walk free and raise her himself. He wanted to get her free rides to the best schools’ in the country, so she could have the best education and achieve anything she wanted to. He wanted to take care of her like he had before he’d been locked away. And now that he couldn’t, he trusted Harley with her.

      “Okay?” He asked again. Her first friend in years. Her partner in crime while Puddin’ was gone. The friend who, in the end, just wanted the same thing she did—a happily ever after, with a family and kids.

      “Kill him! Now!” Mistah J roared behind her.

      And now here she is. Stuck with a man she can’t kill and a man she can’t betray. She felt her curtain fall, their time was over. This isn’t how this is supposed to go. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.

      “Harley, promise me.” Deadshot meets her gaze. There is no fear in his eyes, just a sad acceptance.

      “Harley!”

      She raises her gun, shakily, until it’s aimed right between Deadshot’s eyes. A shot he’d be proud of. Pull the trigger Harley. Before Mistah J does.

      “Now!”

      And she makes her decision.

      She is fast, she always had been. She’d gotten faster living with Mistah J, dodging blows at any split second out of nowhere. Sometimes avoiding possibly lethal hits by inches. She moves, and she fires.

And a bullet hole appears in the center of The Joker’s forehead.

      Time seems to slow. Puddin’s face frozen in shock, as his body shoots back and falls to the ground. Deadshot, in shock behind her. All of Suicide Squad and Amanda Waller’s forces, who just a second ago had been planning to snipe Harley and replace her and Deadshot, frozen. Harley herself, barely comprehending what she just did. The gun falling from her hand, landing on The Joker’s body below her. His limp body hit the roof, and time sped up again.

      “No!” She cries out, and drops down beside him. “no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” She shot him. She shot him. The Joker, her Puddin’, the man who had destroyed an entire city to get her back. Who wanted her so entirely that he killed anyone who wanted even a piece of her. He made her chose and she can’t believe she chose wrong.

      She starts sobbing, oh god she hasn’t cried in so long. Of course she’d cry over Puddin’. Why did I do that how could I have done this. He came for me and I killed him I killed him it’s all my fault.

      Her impulse killed him and she decides it’ll kill her too. Her gun is still loaded. She grabs it and turns it on herself, fully ready to join Puddin’ wherever they went afterwards. Would you die for me? He asked her once, a long time ago. And he pushed her into a vat of acid to make her prove it. She was ready to drown in the vat then and she is ready to follow him now. But as she raises the gun, someone grabs it and wrestles it away from her.

      “No, no give it back! Let me go to Puddin’! Give it back!” She’s shrieking, her voice cracking, barely escaping through sobs. But Deadshot has the gun now, and he clicks the safety on and crouches down to face her.

      “He gave you a choice and you made one, Harley,” he says softly.

      “I—” she swallows a sob. “I shot my Puddin, I shot my Puddin’ I made the wrong choice I messed up I shot him.”

      “He had a gun pointed at your head. He was going to kill you.”

      She wants to tell him he doesn’t understand, that’s just how he is, how he makes a point, but she’s sobbing too badly to talk anymore. She goes for the gun once more, but Deadshot keeps it away and holds her while she cries, neither of them quite able to do anything else.

And that’s how the world exists for a moment. Harley Quinn, criminal queen of Gotham City, sobbing in Deadshot’s arms, while The Joker’s former henchmen and Amanda Waller’s forces watch in a state of pure, unadulterated, shock.

      Waller’s forces shatter the moment first. They’re coming in. The Joker’s dead, mission accomplished. Time to ship all their used criminals back to their cages. Deadshot and Harley slowly stand up, while men in riot gear with guns close in on them—wild criminals with no more kill switch to stop them. “Hey Deadshot,” Harley says, wiping away the last of her tears.

      “Yeah Harley?”

      “You’re not going back to prison after all.” Fast as ever, she grabs him by the hand and makes a break for the helicopter again. She pushes him up first, and she hesitates again for a second. Waller’s forces are closing in, she doesn’t have much time. But Puddin’s body is lying there not feet from where she’s standing. His head in a red halo of blood, eyes still wide open in shock. Tears start to fall again, and she makes a move for his gun—but Deadshot calls her back. And again, she chooses him.

She jumps up to the helicopter and he’s there to pull her up. They stand there, two criminals, two friends, his hand on her shoulder. Soft, but firm. Not like Puddin’, not like The Joker. Not like she’s some fragile ornament or an old beat-up toy. It’s comforting, grounding. Helps her keep her head on straight. Keeps her from thinking about what she would do with a lethal weapon right now. Keeps her from thinking if she made the right choice or not. Keeps her thinking about how she saved him, instead.

The helicopter flies away on Harley’s order, and the two watch as Gotham, and its damn prison, and Amanda Waller and Suicide Squad and The Joker’s body grow smaller and smaller until they’re all just another dark spot on the horizon.

-

They hide out for a while, in an old warehouse on the edge of Gotham. Harley cycling between hysteria, and intense states of self-loathing, and occasionally thinking maybe she didn’t make the wrong choice, only for it to crash down again when she remembers it was her who shot The Joker. She took him out of her life, out of the world, forever. Deadshot keeps her gun hidden from her, and does his best to talk her down. After a while, she goes a little comatose, and sleeps for a while. A long while, getting up only when Deadshot coaxes her into eating something.

Sometime after—neither one is quite sure how long they hid—Harley becomes somewhat functional again, and once she can be trusted not to shoot herself, the two move back into the city. They stay quiet for a while, not exactly eager to have the cops and Batman on their tail again. And, likely, The Joker’s men, who are probably out to murder the woman who killed their boss. No matter how much they may have respected or feared her before.

Deadshot starts ducking out to visit his daughter, who’s more than glad to see him again. Harley, with nothing else to do, starts her life of crime up again. It’s different without The Joker around, and sometimes she’s hit with memories vivid enough to shut her down. Most of the time, she evades capture, relying on pure instinct. It’s how she survived so long with Him anyway. But one day she completely shuts down, and Batman doesn’t fight her. He knows she needs help. And Harley, back in the place where it all started, knows that too.

Arkham isn’t the best place to be. No institution is, really. But some of the doctors seem to know what they’re doing and, in time, Harley begins to heal. I made the right choice, savin’ Deadshot, she thinks sometimes. But she still thinks maybe The Joker didn’t have to die. Maybe she could have helped him. That was her original job, wasn’t it? To help The Joker? She tries not to dwell on it. She doesn’t want to, not yet.

Harley slowly heals. Puts her identity back together from the pieces The Joker left her in. Separates the parts of herself that he took, from him. She’s Doctor Harleen Quinzel. She was a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. She wanted to have a nice job and settle down with a spouse and a couple of kids. She likes flowers, her favorite color is red, she likes Christmas lights even though she doesn’t celebrate Christmas. She’s Doctor Harleen Quinzel, psychiatrist and former doctor to The Joker. She’s Harley Quinn, currently the most confusing criminal in Gotham City. Not a hero, or a villain. Something in the middle. Something good and something illegal. And that’s okay with her.

Deadshot visits her a lot, and he brings his daughter with him sometimes. He talks about getting custody once he has his own place, once he has some kind of stable living. Harley says he should just take her. He probably will. Even his living situation would be better than where she is now. It’s not horrible, but it could be better. It should be better. “Just make sure you stay outta prison,” Harley tells him. “I never liked my dad much, but maybe things woulda been better if he’d been around, ya know?” By the time Harley is released, Deadshot has a place in Gotham and is living with his daughter. Harley’s happy for them.

She makes friends easily in Arkham. She’s charming, to say the least, the kind of person you naturally gravitate too. Not many people dislike her, but those who do still respect her. She’s the woman who killed The Joker. She was completely under his control, and she still turned around and shot him. No one can quite fathom the strength that took.

Her most prominent friend seems like an unlikely one. Most seem to avoid her—you’ll probably wind up eaten by some plant who’s name you can’t pronounce if you don’t. But Harley Quinn isn’t afraid of anything, and goddamn if she isn’t a sucker for a cute girl. And, in her experience, cute girls tend to be a sucker for her too. Pamela Isley, and her horde of murderous plants, are no exception. It doesn’t take long for Harley to melt Ivy’s icy exterior, and before long she’s once again falling for a patient at Arkham Asylum. But this time it’s different. This time, the one she’s fallen for cares about her in return. She’s not a prize, or a possession—she’s Harley Quinn. A person. Harley Quinn—whoever, exactly, Harley Quinn is.

It’s Ivy who helps her realize how truly awful Harley’s relationship with The Joker was. Ivy’s been there, it’s how she became who she is now. “He took away who I was,” Ivy tells her. “I’m not human anymore. Not completely. But I’m not a plant. I feel closer to them—humans are vile creatures—but I’m still human, I guess. On some level.”

“Sometimes I don’t even feel completely human,” Harley replies. “He shaped me like clay, made me into what he wanted. And I let him, because I thought we were in love. But all he did was hit me and throw me in a vat of acid and try to kill me. Over and over and over.”

There was a pause, then Harley speaks again. “Is it wrong that I still love him? As much as I hate him and I know he was a vile human being and I did the right thing shootin’ him, there’s still some part of me that wishes everything had stayed how it was at the beginning.”

“It’s not wrong. I felt like that at the beginning, wishing things had stayed how they were before he tried to poison me. It passes. It just takes time.”

So, Harley takes some time. She still has flashbacks, she still has moments of wishing she could take everything back and go back to the day The Joker asked her to smuggle him a gun. But she copes. And she moves on, in her own way. She reaches a day where she can confidently say she made the right decision. No hesitation. I was one hundred percent right in shooting The Joker. Her only regret is not doing it sooner.

Eventually, she and Ivy both leave Arkham Asylum. And the first day they’re both out, Harley asks Ivy to stay with her, to be with her. And she does.

Harley moves in with Deadshot, who she considers a cool older brother at this point. She’s a great help in raising his daughter. And, after a while, Harley’s girlfriend moves in with them too. And some years later, after an outdoor ceremony covered in red flowers and Christmas lights, Harley lives with her wife and Deadshot. And the three of them and Zoe are a weird little family, but a good one. And they all have problems, they’re all still criminals and aren’t afraid to turn to crime when they have to. They’re not good guys, but they’re better than they were. They’re healing. They’ll never be who they used to be, whether they want to be or not. They can’t turn back the clock, but that’s okay. They still have now. This moment.

If you could, you would go back and change anything? Deadshot doesn’t have any regrets. Ivy isn’t really sure. She loves her powers, her plants, but the negatives that caused it and came with it? If only she could get rid of that.

Harley’s answer is usually a long one. Yeah, there’s a million and one things she’d change if she got the chance. She wouldn’t go to Arkham. She wouldn’t take The Joker as a patient. She would have left him sooner, seen the signs she’d been taught to see. She would have killed him sooner. She would have pushed him into the acid. She would have helped Batman capture him during the car chase that got her arrested. She wouldn’t have hesitated when she shot him on that rooftop, so long ago now. But if she did any of that, she wouldn’t be where she is now. She wouldn’t know Deadshot, The Joker would still be alive, maybe some other girl would have become Harley Quinn instead. Maybe there would have been many Harley’s, dying and being replaced on a whim. She wouldn’t have met the love of her life. Things would be different, so, so different. But would they be better? “I really don’t know.”

But in the end, The Joker is dead. A bullet stuck right between the eyes, fired by Harley Quinn. The girl he shaped to be his perfect doll. The woman who was tired of being controlled. And Harley is alive. She’s Harley Quinn, and she endured The Joker for years and came out alive. She shot The Joker in the face and if there’s any moment in her life she’d never change, it would be that one.

Years and years later, she's put herself back together. One some level, because of trauma, part of her will always change. her identity will never be quite stable . But she's managed to carve out bits of pieces. She's Doctor Harleen Quinzel, psychiatrist. Her favorite color is red, her favorite flowers are sunflowers, she loves soft things and indie music. She's Harley Quinn, good guy criminal of Gotham City. The woman who saved Deadshot on a rooftop so many years ago, and killed Jack Napier, Gotham City’s most vile and notorious villian. And she will die before she defines herself by him ever again.

She's Harley Quinn, and all these years later, she's free.