"Rant time!" Quinn bounces onto the couch.

Grayson laughs at Quinn and grins broadly. "Can we just begin by saying Oh. My. Gosh. Thank you all so much for reading and responding and enjoying Harleywing: Part One! Sorry we don't have a cool title for it. Quinn and I are so incredibly incredibly grateful for your support and positive feedback."

"Okay. Now she's talking for me. I would say more unbelievably grateful, but that's just me. Hello, Quinn here. I decided to pop in for some little quips."

"I suppose I should introduce myself too. Grayson!" She waves, still smiling."We wanted to do this for you all to answer some questions and give you some background information, because we got a few questions and comments from guest users, and thus we couldn't reply. Side note: if you have a serious question, please log in for us to answer! We hate leaving them unanswered."

"We have no lives, so we will be happy to answer," Quinn adds. "Really. Ecstatic. That's human contact for us. I'm a hermit. I get together every ten years with the other hermits and talk about caves… It's good fun… for a hermit."

Grayson stares at Quinn, eyes narrowed, before snorting and shaking her head. "Also, Quinn thinks she's funny," she smirks at her counterpart, sitting beside her on the couch. "Thank you again for all the incredibly positive and enthusiastic feedback and compliments. Quinn and I love reading them, and we love you guys all so much in a completely non-creepy- as Quinn put it, a 'we are Groot'- kind of way."

"We text each other back and forth about how we can't stop smiling at reviews." Quinn waves her arms for emphasis. "Seriously."

"We wanted to do this 'chapter' of sorts to tell you guys a little bit about how this story came to be, and explain some minor details in a behind-the-scenes way. We hope you enjoy, there's all kinds of information in here so whether you scan or avidly read. I'll try to keep it interesting."

"I will keep it interesting." Quinn smirks.

Grayson stares at Quinn before smacking her on the leg, ignoring her giggling. "We hope you enjoy our Authors' Notes." She smiles, clapping her hands.

"You don't have to read this if you don't want to," Harley adds. "You can just skip on over and wait for Harleywing: Part Two." She shrugged, letting Grayson continue.

"First off, Nightwing and Harley Quinn, our 'harleywing' ship, began with, believe it or not, the Batman: Lego game. We loved playing 2-player, and my favorite character was Nightwing, and Quinn's was Harley-"

"-shocker-"

"-We fought alongside each other-"

"-in the game and verbally… in a sibling kind of fight-"

"-Would you stop interrupting my damn sentences!" Grayson glares at Quinn, but she still smiles. "We fought beside each other through the entire game, but we got to thinking more and more that the two characters were essentially parallel, the sidekicks of the Batman and the Joker, the number twos in the Gotham war between good and evil; they were the next step down should the Batman and the Joker ever kill each other." Pushing floppy ginger bangs back from her face, Grayson glances at Quinn.

"I was thinking how funny it was when Nightwing got in the little box and making fun of Grayson because she couldn't double jump, but sure, we were thinking philosophical things." Quinn pushes her glasses up her nose, shrugging.

Grayson laughs, crisscrossing her legs beneath her on the couch. "Ok, I guess I'm the one who thought that… So like any good fans, we started to ship them, officially dubbing it Harleywing."

"So I didn't actually know this was happening. She told me to type a Harley chapter and she was doing a Nightwing one, and then we would do one together… and then it got out of hand…"

"Very out of hand," Grayson agrees, blue eyes wide as she nods vigorously.

"The actual fanfiction began with the Google Chromebooks-"

"-graciously provided for about two weeks-"

"-I don't want to endorse in any way here-"

"-We hated them at first, but they grew on us-"

"-If you have something to say, at least wait until the end of my sentence," Grayson gives Quinn a warning glance, and then continues. "This entire fanfiction has thus far been written on Google Documents, found in the Drive-"

"-seriously, the Chromebooks start up in like 30 seconds. My laptop takes like a half an hour!"

"Quinn!" Grayson cries, laughing and hitting her with a sofa pillow. After controlling her laughter, she continues. "What this does is allows us to write together in real time."

"You know, when our internet connections aren't glitching." Quinn hugs the pillow she was smacked with.

"Yeah, but that was mostly you," Grayson looks at her, snorting.

"Sure, Because I'm the one whose laptop exits chat everytime I leave the doc." Quinn glares before adding, "FYI, I am saying this sarcastically because I know how easily I confuse you." She grins at Grayson, who rolls her eyes.

"Anyways, it works as the equivalent of passing one laptop back and forth between two people, except we can do it miles away from each other! The Google Docs, if you're unfamiliar, can be shared between multiple accounts. When the two of us are both on the document, a chat bar will pop up in the bottom corner and you can chat with the person you're interacting with!" Quinn leans against the armrest, laying her legs across Grayson's lap. "Harleywing was quite literally written from two different perspectives, not just Harley and Dick, but from Quinn and my point of view too. Two characters, two personalities, two writing styles… It was really cool."

"If only we had transcripts of those chats because they were ridiculously brilliant or brilliantly ridiculous," Quinn says wistfully. "I highly suggest doing something like this with another writer. Eye opening experience." Quinn plucks at a string trailing from the pillow in her lap. "Unfortunately now, I have a hard time writing anything individually because Grayson isn't there to back me out of the corner."

Grayson giggles, elbowing Quinn. "She's a crazy good writer on her own. I'm just a crazy writer. The real-time editing on Docs allowed me to write Dick's line, add some description, and then pass it on to Quinn, who would then respond with Harley's line-"

"-or I'd take over because someone never bothered with plot and made me figure it out."

Grayson rolls her eyes, but she nods. "Yeah, that's true. She did all the planning, I just threw in stupid shit-"

"-We call them curveballs. Murdering the police force? Curveball." Quinn grins happily to herself, ignoring Grayson's glare.

"The unique way of writing gave the story a much more personal and real feeling, with two different personalities and styles of writing mixing in one piece. I know explaining the technical aspect is a little boring, just bear with me here."

"One little example of this is only one of us uses the Oxford comma, the one before the 'and' in a list, so that is one thing that is not consistent throughout the story."

"Yeah I can't make my fingers do that…" Grayson raises her hands, pretending to type on a keyboard. She shrugs. "Doesn't work for writing style also means that technically, you are all our beta-testers-"

"-or we're each other's beta-testers on a more positive side."

Grayson nods. "Yep. Every chapter is edited- aside from grammar or spelling, Quinn is a terrible speller- as little as possible," Grayson says, and Quinn giggles guiltily. "Yeah, see? And all of the pieces of the story are as original as the day they were first typed."

"Tell that to chapter 36."

Grayson winces. "Ooh, I forgot about that one. It can be hard to type with another person, especially when you can, say; highlight their text just to piss them off or type in all caps and have to backspace everything."

Quinn glares accusingly at Grayson. "Or insert gifs and pictures," Grayson laughs out loud, rolling back a bit. "Or put your cursor to follow them around, move text, change formatting…"

Grayson hits Quinn's shoulder. "We gotta tell them about 'thirt'!" She laughs. "I'll make this quick. 'Thirt' is our codeword in the chat on each chapter. It started on chapter three, when I typed 'pass the torch' in the chat-"

"-HOLD UP HOLD UP!" Quinn cries, half standing. "You liar. You said 'go' and I passed the torch to you. Gosh! But Fine! Tell it how you want to."

Grayson thinks for a moment, and then shrugs. "Okay, I didn't remember exactly how it went, you baby; I said 'pass the torch' to let her know that I was finished with my part, and she could go ahead and start typing. Well, eventually we just said 'torch' to tell the other to go."

"Our sanity and cleverness deteriorates rapidly at 12am. Mistakes like 'spaceshit' instead of spaceship happen around this time. Incidentally, this is when my best Jason comes out."

Grayson laughs raucously. "Ohhhh… 'spaceshit' was a good one. And if you guys are wondering, by her 'best Jason' she means all of the disastrous dick-Dick jokes that she made."

"They have only just begun," Quinn says darkly.

"So we've gotta get back on track before this afterword becomes ten pages long. We said 'torch' until I began saying 'tirch'. Say it out loud it sounds amusing. That got misspelled to 'tirt' and then 'thirt'. To this day, we still type 'thirt', and it basically means green for go." Grayson shrugs, looking at Quinn.

"Talking to each other in person and saying 'by the way I thirted you last night' has been quite amusing." Quinn giggles. "People look at us weird."

"Now that we have the technical stuff down," Grayson says, getting down to business, "we can begin."

"It took you longer to begin than Batman in Batman Begins," Quinn mutters.

Grayson rolls her eyes and sighs in exasperation, ignoring her. "We wanted to write a fanfiction about Dick and Harley, but there is so much more in the DC Universe- the Batman Universe- that we wanted to use."

"I am going to stop her right here and just point something out." Quinn raises a hand. "We started this off willy nilly. We didn't really research the characters besides what we already knew. We kinda just started going like 'this is how I want this person', and then we'd kinda look them up and be freaked out with how accurate it was."

"That's true too," Grayson nods, pointing at Quinn. "Upon beginning this, we knew very little about the characters. Now, we're probably Batman experts- at least OUR version of Batman, anyway. Dick Grayson is incredible on his own, but the Batbrothers? Bruce Wayne and the Batman? You can't have Harley without the Joker. My favorite DC villain- aside from Joker and Harley, sorry Quinn- is the Scarecrow."

"I like him too." Quinn shrugs.

"What about the 'Cat and the Bat'?" Grayson continues. "We shipped that too."

"I have the shirt," Quinn whispers as Grayson keeps talking.

"If you haven't already caught on, we ship Jason Todd and Poison Ivy." Quinn holds up her fingers for the symbol of 'a little'. "We wanted to have the Teen Titans, and we wanted to have the Justice League because like a good little Batkid, I love Superman. I somewhat ship Dick&Babs." She ignores Quinn's fake gagging noises. "There was so much that we wanted to use, and we knew it would be dangerous and complicated to use it all-"

"-We did?" Quinn laughs. "Tell that to me deciding to make massive plans that would span multiple parts. If you thought it was getting complicated, I'm glad I didn't okay all of my plans with you…"

"But I think we've pulled it off quite nicely! That being said, this isn't just a Harleywing fic. You will get Jokerquinn. You will get Dick&Babs, you get Cat and the Bat, you get Batfamily; you even get some Tim and Cassie-"

"-Wonder Girl. For you few fans of it out there. SHOUT OUT!-"

"-if you're into that. There is plenty going on here. We tried to get it all. You'll even meet-spoilers-the Bat ladies, Cassandra and Steph along with Babs. Point is, this is in no way one specified fanfiction." Grayson beams, shoving her hair back from her face again.

"It's kind of ridiculous." Quinn wrinkles her nose. "Seriously. If you continue on from here, you may hate us at some points. Like a lot. This will be long. It will be trying. But it will be fantastic… I hope."

"Side note I wanted to add here," Grayson tries to stay on topic, "you probably already noticed, this is incredibly toned down from a lot of fanfictions, sexually." Quinn buries her face in her pillow and giggles. Grayson stares at her for a moment. "You're a five year old. First: I in no way think that in depth sexual descriptions cheapen the writing or make it bad. We just wanted to really focus on the emotional side of things, rather than the physical. Second: We wanted everyone to be comfortable reading it. Again, we don't think that it's bad writing at all! It can just get a bit weird. Third and finally: weird really doesn't even begin to describe writing that kind of stuff with an audience, even when it's your best friend."

"Plus I'm really immature," Quinn adds, still giggling.

"Writing in real time like that is hard," Grayson ignores her, "especially when we're the ones writing the characters back and forth."

"I will add that I have a separate document where I type things if I can't have her watching me think on paper." Quinn is suddenly serious again. "It could be emotional, funny-she has had to force me to tell her some of the jokes that popped into my head because I wouldn't type them… they're in the story now, so I hope they aren't terrible-, or- as Grayson calls it: 'fangirling'. Her term for fluff. It's hard to pour your soul onto a paper if someones is watching you type the wrong to/two/too." Grayson laughs.

"So the only thing that may be explicit in this writing is some of the violence, and that is mostly me as the Joker and I'm sorry-not sorry-so there! SPOILER: the violence gets a lot cooler and weirder." Grayson grins wickedly; Quinn high fives her. "Now I want to get into a little bit of history. We decided to make this an entirely new, entirely our own Alternate Universe. I'll do my best to explain some things, starting with the Batfamily-" She is cut off as Quinn groans, flopping onto the couch.

"I'm going to be honest, I don't even want to listen to this part." She covers her face with the pillow.

"The DC comics timeline is all screwed up, so I went back to basics and actually did some math-"

"-ew." Quinn peeks her head out.

Grayson silently agrees but keeps going, "-on the Batfamily. In our story, I chose one to have a fixed age, and that was Damian, aged 10. I actually typed out a very long timeline that I won't explain-"

"-Thank goodness-"

"-but logic dictated that if Bruce Wayne adopted Dick Grayson at the very youngest age he could be, 21, That left the ages boys in this story to fall into place. Dick Grayson is 24, Jason Todd and Tim Drake are both 19, Damian is 10, Stephanie Brown- in our story, Spoiler- is 17, Cassandra Cain, Blackbat, is 18, and Barbara Gordon- Batgirl, in this story, she has been Oracle and overcome her paralysis, much like the new 52- is 28. The ages lined up and left our Bruce Wayne at age 34, still quite a young man. We had a question about Harley's age as well. the Joker is 37, and Harley Quinn is 26."

"Oh wait what?" Quinn sits up. "Hold up! Okay never mind; we haven't submitted that chapter. Never mind. We're good." Quinn lies back down.

"I had to figure it out, stupid, you can fix something later." Grayson poked her. "At this kinda early stage of the Batman storyline, the persona of Harley Quinn has only existed for two years. You'll notice in the early chapters we talk about the two year anniversary. Harleen Quinzel skipped two grades in high school and got to college on a gymnastics scholarship, but she never technically finished college."

"She's a genius, even if she doesn't act like it, and that isn't something we added to her character. That is a fact." Quinn sits up and leaned against Grayson. "So we did the logical thing to get the ages how we wanted them. It wouldn't be hard to get further at a young age… then throw it all away."

"Her high-clearance job at Arkham came when the previous psychologist studying the Joker quit," Quinn starts doing charades to Grayson's words as she talks, "and her thesis on the Joker's behavior drew the attention of the institution, and thus she was hired as the specialized criminal psychologist of the Joker, in this story, what would have been three years ago when she was 23. Due to her sudden invitation to Arkham, Harleen never completed her degree. The Harley Quinn persona came about after a year of studying the Joker, so the character has really only been with the Joker for two years." Grayson elbows Quinn away from her as her flailing arms almost smack her in the face. "I'm going to punch you in the nose," she snaps, staring at Quinn for a moment, and then ignoring her. "Ace, I hope that answered your question!"

"Also, note that Dick has a perpetual thing for older women." Quinn laughs.

"And women with glasses, Babs and Harles both had glasses," Grayson agrees. "Well now that I got that out of the way, I'd like to explain a little bit about Gotham."

Quinn sat up with a grin. "So this is where I come in with some healthy reminders and hints or heads up… not spoilers… kinda but not really. Remember this is an AU. So this is different from the other universe… es... by a decision or a choice or a birth or anything. This isn't off of the movies or comics… okay it is but you know what I mean." She waved it off. "But that doesn't mean you won't see similar things. We pulled the Harley window bit-tweaked it a little-and even borrowed a little bit from some of the Joker's plans, then I demented it a bunch. So some things will be similar, but don't tell us we got our facts wrong because we're writing a different world here." She snapped her fingers. "Major hint for the end of this part: remember any character that doesn't die, and some that do. If you meet someone in any of the parts really, there is a very good chance you will hear about them again so try not to get confused. There are several almost quotes in this story too that you can try to spot. I know there is a Sherlock one coming up… and possibly a Star Wars."

"Seriously, though, I did get carried away," Grayson admits with a sheepish grin. "There are a lot of subtle references to other fandoms, I think Dick references Harry Potter at least three times. Easter Eggs."

"Also, small formatting thing, we decided to split it into parts. All the other parts are continuations of this, we just made them into more digestible-I am so hungry-chunks, so you wouldn't have to skim a hundred chapters or something to get to the one you want. That is not even exaggerating. That's an understatement. So it's basically one long book with volumes or parts- you guys have had to have seen a book like that… right? Speaking of the length, and my great segues, this fanfic will get pretty long. So if you don't want to commit, just accept the ending of part 1 and continue on with your life missing this great piece of literature. I would compare us to the greats. Good ole JK Rowling and the likes." She giggled. "Jk... ROWLING!"

"Stop it. Stop it right now," Grayson drops her head in her hands. "And you can't just put a ton of dots, an ellipses is three sometimes four periods-"

"-Oh, and trackstar777 if you thought that chapter 33 was a bad cliffhanger," she talks right over Grayson, "and that was kinda not supposed to be, I am sorry. I am so sorry." Quinn smiles, not at all sorry. "We will hang you guys from the cliffs at the end of parts and in the middle of parts and that was a terrible analogy wasn't it? Moving on. We won't make you guys suffer with cliffhangers for more than a couple of days though, so hold on." Grayson nods thoughtfully, smiling a bit. "I would very much like to repeat that we love your reviews and support. If you want to know which one of us wrote something particular, please ask. There are parts of this both of us are immensely proud of, and we would love to talk about them. We really just love to talk. If someone asks something in review or in messaging or on one of our other sites that we feel we need to answer for everyone to read, we may put it here or on our author page or other websites. So if you see a major ponderance brought up that you don't think we'd wait till the end of part 2 to do this for again, check around. We may answer it. Oh, and no promises that we'll make another one of these note thingys, but we didn't want to do disclaimers. Grayson is very particular about the chapter neatness."

"Very. Very. Particular," Grayson stresses. "Consistent formatting is a tic. No one wants to read a fic that leaps around too much with the formatting to the point where it gets hard to read."

"So that's why you're getting this long bit here. We had things to say to y'all, but we didn't want it interfering with the story."

"We have some thank-yous and credits to deliver," Grayson says. Quinn puts the pillow on Grayson's lap and rests her head on it, ready for the spiel. "All characters belong to the DC Universe and comic company and artists and writers, etc. Thank you, to all those owners, for letting us borrow our favorites and play around with them in a different setting! We used countless websites, including Wikipedia, Batman, Nightwing, Harley Quinn, and Robin Wikis for each of those characters, the DC official website; the website I used for the maps. We also used variations on some of the Arkham games characters. We took inspiration from the Batman: The Animated Series and Young Justice TV series, as well as countless other bits and pieces from various shows, comics, and stories. Even though the New 52 is a crazy crazy mess right now, we used some pieces from there too. Including Batgirl and- more spoilers- their version of Carrie Kelley. We also want to thank Quinn's crazy awesome and poisonously beautiful sister Ivy for guest-writing a chapter, guess which one."

"I guess she's technically our part one beta," Quinn reasons. Grayson nods.

"And finally, all of you guys! Our current Harleywing Part One fans: Nicnak24, Randomselena, BATMANMELTSI, mcrgdth89, Lady Zendra, thebestoftherest, dontstopmarchon, Shannyrox101, MizzJoker, atomicage334, Violentfrost, Cian'Perrel, trackstar777, PuppyProngs, doggy bye, OneHappyChappy, Mashot Tito, GarLogan676, RobinsDontLikeCrowbars, MATT29man, BinaryVortex18, lensman37, ma petite lili, .944, HammondCheese, raebell, Bladedge, Myantek, Charm, Jackmonkey, and M.A. ."

"Also battleduck and dsanders221 along with our guest reviewers aj, A batman fan, Guest, Ace, Fan, and anyone else who reads it," Quinn chimes in.

"Our tumblr followers: harlequinadeknights, zakiyascrolls, corazon-de-manzana,xdamianxwaynex, agentshanks,whenpolarbearsfly, side-kick-hero-support, badgirlwithabluebox, horrorpunk323,harleyquinn-ology, iwishihadabatfam, and the-dark-knightwing.

"Also anyone who reads anonymously," Quinn threw in again.

"Our deviantART watchers: GlimmeringAngel26, CANDYKINGlovesROBIN, AtomicBlackRabbit, corpsegirl01, MeowTownPolice."

"And now MizzJoker. You people keep following and making it hard to keep this up to date before posting gag flob it!" Quinn laughs to herself, her head shaking on the pillow. "But it the best form of difficult."

"Yes! And everyanonymous commenter, thanks! As well as all the other readers who haven't commented and our followers on Twitter."

"I have tweeted- twitted? -like once so party!"

"Tweeted, you moron." Grayson giggles, taking Quinn's glasses off of her nose and putting them on upside down. "You guys, like us, are fans of the ship and the characters, and we write this for the fans. It's all for people to read and enjoy and share and gush over; it's all for you guys. And I'm not lying when I say: your comments absolutely make our day. You guys are the reason we do this, and obviously Harley and Nightwing belong to each other." Quinn laughs at her. "You guys are terrific. Thank you all so much."

"Thanks!" Quinn cries, lifting her head a little off the pillow.

"If you want visual stuff, you can follow our tumblr blogs! We post our Harleywing casting, as well as artwork that I, sometimes we, do."

"I make weird picture sets... that rhyme, so go for her artwork." Quinn smacks Grayson on the arm. "Anyway, those are only on our main blog."

"All of this, except Quinn's picture sets, can be found on deviantART as well, just look up Harleywing or GraysonandQuinn. Now! A totally crazy thing I wanted to do is a Q&A! We would love love LOVE for you all to comment on this afterword, with any questions you may still have, or that arose while you were reading this."

"You know in movie when in the middle of the action," Quinn starts off on a tangent, "you're just like 'well that's dumb they could have just...'? I strive so very hard to think of all of those 'well you could do this instead' contingencies." She sits up, abandoning the pillow. "So if you find something where you think something else should have happened that would have made things easier, shoot me a comment thingy. There is a high possibility I thought of it- I'll add an explanation in if it isn't clear-and adjusted for it, but, if you do find something, I wanna know. It will really upset me, but I wanna know. Mostly to counteract it and prove you wrong, but I'm competitive like that."

"Anyway, head on over to Harleywing Part Two if you want, and I started a Harleywing Q&A forum where we could talk live(ish). If you'd be interested in that, just shoot us a comment there? Awesome! Until next time!" Grayson waves.

"Oh, and in case you didn't figure it out, this is not part of the story." Quinn laughs to herself. She jumps up, yells, "WATER TRIBE," and runs from the room. Grayson rolls her eyes, still wearing Quinn's glasses.

"See you all later in the part two afterword!"

Grayson (ERO) and Quinn (MEW)

Part Two is here on fanfiction and on tumblr!