Chapter Text
Just after the New Year and already six months into the last year of her residency, Harley goes to Grin and Bare It as a customer rather than for work. As just another nobody in the crowd, another scantily clad woman dancing amidst the throng of humanity. She goes by herself, unwilling to rope anyone from Arkham or her old classmates into the excursion and unable to get in touch with Selina.
She’s happy to see Bob, her favorite (and only) eccentric mute, manning the door when she gets there, and he puts his hands up to his face, making an exaggerated O with his mouth at her outfit. She does a little twirl for him as she walks up and smiles when he hops up and down a few times excitedly. Patting him on the shoulder, she passes him by without paying the entrance fee, much to the outrage of the people behind her.
Several hours and three cocktails later, she’s in the middle of the dance floor, her body slick with sweat as she dances her life away. Some schmuck’s hands are on her hips, and she ignores him, swaying to the beat of the house music. As his hands begin to descend, she deftly steps away, no interest in a companion for the night.
She’s walking back to the bar for much-needed water when she sees him. Him. The man she’s been dreading and longing to find since she was sixteen. For ten long years, a part of her had felt empty, bereft, a hole desperate to be filled. Her body suddenly feels tight, and she feels like swaying. She watches as Jack stalks through the club, the huge bear of a man who had interviewed her once upon a time at his back. The strobe lights streak across the room, making him look paler than she remembers, but she’d know that jawline anywhere. She’d know him anywhere. He walks with that same catlike grace that says he owns the room, that there is no need to rush and every need to obey. She wants to run to him, but she can’t seem to move. He walks past, not even seeing her, and she wants to howl.
When she’s finally able to move again, she makes her way to the bar and watches Jack from across the room. He sits there quietly, his arms stretched across the back of the booth to either side, letting the person sitting opposite him talk. He was clearly in charge in some way. The other man’s posture told her that as he leaned toward Jack, while Jack simply sat back against the booth. Jack’s hair seems almost green in the strobing lights, and even from this distance, she can see that he still had a similar hairstyle as he’d had ten years ago. Harley is just getting ready to stand and go to him, to throw all caution to the wind, when a group of gorgeous brunette women slides into the booth around both men, giggling and clearly there for entertainment. She wants to scream and weep and throw something at the glass wall behind the bar at the sight. But he was here. He was alive. That had to count for something…right?
~
Joker watches as the leggy blonde passes by his booth on the way to the front of the club, a lion’s mane of hair flowing to her mid-back. Everything seems to fade out for a moment when he sees her. The women giggling around him are ignored as he wills the blonde to look at him. When she looks over her shoulder, catching his eye, something in his gut twists. Harley was dead, but this woman could easily be a close relative with that mess of white-blonde curls and eyes so light they looked like they were glowing in the strobe lights. She turns away and continues to sway through the crowd, and there’s something in him that wants to follow in her wake. That wants to say fuck the business deal he was in the middle of brokering and go after the mystery woman. But then the man in front of him says something, bringing Joker’s focus back to him, and the moment is gone. The feeling is gone. When he looks up next, she’s well and truly out of sight, has likely left for the night, and he sighs in relief. The last thing he needed was romantic complications of any sort, and that creature had looked like Complications with a capital fucking C.
Joker can feel a tension in the air…as if something has changed. A change that his mind is unwilling to accept, but a part of him that he hasn’t heard in quite some time is ready for. That part of himself that’s been dormant since his dip in the acid bath knows that something has happened, and he can feel that creature rearing its head, sniffing the air.
A slow smile spreads across his face, stretching his scars out grotesquely at the prospect of violence and change in the air. At whatever that woman’s presence has heralded. Lifting his drink, he lets those around him think the salute is to a deal well-negotiated rather than to the unknown future. To the woman that has just walked out the door.