Before I Wake

Songs: Need You Now ~Lady Antebellum
Just a Dream ~ Carrie Underwood
When You're Gone ~ Avril Lavigne
Fall To Pieces ~ Avril Lavigne
and lots of others...

Picture perfect memories scattered all around the floor
Reachin' for the phone cuz I can't fight it anymore
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind
For me it happens all the time

The thin woman walked into the door of her small, cruddy apartment, drooping from exhaustion and sighing from depression. As she switched on the flickering lamp beside the door, the weak glow illuminated the scratched linoleum hall and two small animals in her path. Two cats, one calico and one dark gray, stared up at her, silently pleading with their large eyes that she please, please fill up their food bowls. The weary woman pulled the rubber band out of her blond hair and sighed again, closing the door with her foot, which was chipping white paint and already covered with scuffmarks.

Her ratty sneakers squeaked as she walked into the kitchen and tossed her coat over a chair. The cats wound themselves around her ankles as she reached into the pantry, behind the canned soup, past the pancake mix to get to the bag of dry cat food. Worry filled her eyes as she shook the depleted bag. There was enough for two days, maybe three. The dry food rattled into the bowls and the cats descended, purring and chomping down on the life-giving source. Twyla was the gray one, and Scarlet was the calico one.

The woman petted her furry friends and thought absently, I'd like another cat. She knew it was a foolish thought. How could a woman who worked 12-16 hours at the local factory in the Narrows, who could barely afford to stay in such a rundown apartment and pay all her bills, afford another cat? She was just feeding herself and the two cats by the grace of God –how would she ever take care of another? Scarlet and Twyla should have had their annual shots this year, but she couldn't afford the cost of the Vet's office. So they went without their rabies and feline leukemia shots, staying indoors because she couldn't bear to let them outside, where they could get lost, or killed, or stolen and resold to someone who could afford pets.
Standing up, she refilled their water bowls at the sink and set them down by the food, and walked into the bathroom to take her shower. I hope the boiler can manage to make the water hot, she thought while she walked through her dark living room. Though it wasn't much of a living room. There was nothing personal about it –no pictures on the walls, no knick-knacks on the end tables, nothing like that. She didn't even have a TV or a landline; she couldn't afford them, and it was just too painful to watch the news now, after…

Well. After all of that. The light flickered to life in the bathroom, illuminating the pile of dirty clothes that she hadn't remembered to take to the Laundromat, as well as the broken bathroom tiles on the floor. She couldn't believe she lived like this. She undressed; dumping her clothes on the pile and making it grow, and stepped into the shower, turning the water on hot.

It didn't come out hot at first, and she gasped when a stream of cold water struck her body, initiating shocked shivers. But it warmed up quickly, probably the only plus about the apartment building, and she ran her fingers through her tangled blond hair which quickly soaked up the water. Applying shampoo and conditioner, rinsing, and scrubbing herself with soap was all routine and could be done without input from her tired brain, so she left it to its own devices and let her hands work autonomously. Once she felt clean, or at least cleaner than she had been, she shut the water off and stepped out, wrapping her white and fluffy towel around herself. It was not cruddy like most of her things; it had come over from her previous house that she had shared with her ...husband. Its fluffy caress wasn't much of a substitute for his embrace.

She walked to her bedroom clad in nothing but a towel and changed into jeans and a gray tank top. Gray was a good color –it summed up her mood, among other things. The whole world seems to be in shades of gray, she thought to herself as it began to rain outside her window, trickling down the pane like the sky was weeping.

Her grandmother had told her a story like that once, to explain away her fear of storms. In the tale, the storm was a weeping woman, crying she hand her husband the sun had had an argument. So she screamed (the thunder) and hit things (the lightning) and cried (the rain). And then they reconciled, and the storm went away.

I can relate, she thought to herself, going to her bedside table and opening up the drawer, pulling it open so she could see the very back. Her slender fingers picked up the tiny velvet bag and overturned it in her palm. A simple gold band with a small diamond dropped out and the woman turned it around in her hands before slipping it onto her left ring finger, letting her wet hair drip down her back. She glanced in the vanity mirror she hardly every used anymore and studied her face.

She had been a beauty, the girl that became the prom queen on looks alone; not that she didn't have brains to go with it, she did. She had wanted to go to medical school, and had been saving for it after her marriage. She had wanted to become a doctor to help people. She had read books about psychiatry and psychology, hoping to learn the basics before she began. But then her little habits and hobbies had escalated, and eventually …lead to her downfall. She touched her lips, running her fingers over the flesh of her cheeks and forehead. Long scars lined her cheekbones, and thin, white scars ran from her temples to her jaw line. Her forehead contained small slashed scars that ran through each other and into her eyebrows. It had been her own fault –her own greed had led her to this, her own obsession and addiction to risk.

It's a quarter after One, I'm all alone and I need you now.
Said wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now.

She felt so guilty that she had pulled him down with her. She kept telling herself that she had not forced him to…do what he did. She did not send him over the brink into insanity. But I did reject him. He may have been wrong and he may have been even a little crazy before that, but it was still the wrong thing to do.

Beauty really only is skin deep.

It had been everything to her. People found their identity in what they looked like. She had locked herself in their room for days while her face healed. If they couldn't pay off the debts, they certainly couldn't pay for plastic surgery to fix her face. He had wanted to tell her that it didn't matter to him. That he still loved her. And he had done the unthinkable. But she had pushed him away again. They were like reflections now –broken and scarred beyond repair.

But he had left in anger and madness. Left her with a passel of debts and no income, and disappeared into thin air. She had sold almost everything she had. Now she was the one who worried all the time, the one who never smiled. She wanted to be happy again. She wanted to smile. But it seemed that all she could do was cry.

Like she was crying now.

Walking in a daze from her room to the kitchen as tears slipped past her eyelids to slide down her scarred cheeks, she managed to collapse onto the old couch in the dark living room before she started her crying jag. Why did you leave me? She screamed silently. I need you now. I don't care what you look like anymore. I don't even care about what you've done. I just need you to be here. She grabbed a handful of tissues from the Kleenex box and went through about six before the river of salty moisture was stemmed. But her agony was not. Her cats came and curled up around her, warming her, purring to try to heal her heart. But it wasn't just broken –it was busted, shattered, in a million tiny pieces so small they were just powdery dust. Sometimes she wondered how such a heart could still feel at all. She had no idea, just knew that it did –mind-bending, gut-wrenching, contorting agony because he wasn't there. She pulled a black and red blanket from the back of the couch over her and curled into a ball, hugging herself. She whispered to the empty room. " I can't breathe without you."

It should have been forever. This can't be happening. But it's been happening for seven months.

She fell asleep sometime before midnight.

It's a quarter after One, I'm all alone and I need you now.
Said wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now.

Another shot of whiskey, can't stop lookin' at the door
Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind
For me it happens all the time

Men were passed out from drink all around the dim room, and others weren't far behind. Under the flickering overhead lamp, he sat at the kitchen table staring at the doorway and fingering the whiskey bottle between his gloved hands. Contrary to all popular belief and the shrinks that the media brought in every so often to speak about the dangerous insane criminal that was somewhere in the city of Gotham, he didn't smile often. His face did that for him, and when he was alone, there wasn't really a reason to punch up his scars, accordion style, and show his teeth to the world in a grin. Unless he wanted to feel the painful pull of the scars; then he'd do it. Pain was good. It told you that you were still alive. He sometimes wondered why people were afraid of pain. It wasn't like it would never come to you; you only delayed the inevitable by trying to prevent pain. He should know. He brought it to the populace on a regular basis.

It was good for them, he figured. A little pain a day keeps the scary monster of apathy at bay.

Physical pain he could deal with. Sometimes he even liked it. But emotional pain? What did you do with it? There wasn't medicine you could take to make it go away or heal. Emotional pain was a joke in and of itself; it never went away. The ultimate joke.

His purple-gloved hands twirled the shot glass in his hands. He didn't feel the affects at all. Well…not much. He missed the spin and it fell of the table, breaking. What little liquid a shot glass could hold spread over the dirty cement floor. His dark eyes stared at it for a minute and then glanced over at the ¾ empty bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey.

Okay, so he was a little impaired. He wasn't about to start dancing or make him bust into chaotic laughter or start singing off-key. He did those things when he wasn't drinking. If anything, drinking somehow made him serious and sober. If that was possible.

Well. He wasn't married anymore. He guessed anything was possible.

He cursed and stood up. His coat was thrown in a corner somewhere, so he was only wearing the green shirt and the purple pants and vest, along with purple leather shoes. He could still see her face, right in front of his eyes. He cursed again for good measure and rubbed the part of his head between his eyes. His glove came away coated with white greasepaint.

His wife. His beautiful, sweet, innocent, lovely wife. Who, after the sharks carved her up, had turned venomous, biting, caustic.

Well, look at him. He should talk.

Ha.

Abruptly, swiftly, he moved to the doorway that marked the boundary between the gang's territory and his territory. Crossing the faded shag carpet, he threw open all of the battered armoire's doors and drawers, digging around for something he knew he had thrown in there months ago.

He found the object of his search in one of his castoff purple gloves. It was a gold ring with no markings on it, and he wanted to sneer at it. It represented loss, and he didn't lose easily. But he couldn't. He wanted his wife, d*** it. Shucking off the gloves on his hands, he twisted the ring onto his left hand and walked out of the room. He grabbed his coat up before walking out the door and saying to anyone who was still conscious, "Don't wait up for me."

It's a quarter one, I'm a little drunk and I need you now
Said wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without, I just need you now.

He knew where she lived. He still kept tabs on her. He wouldn't let anyone else get interested in her, but she didn't seem to want anything like that. She'd gotten harder. Her sweet nature had become sour; living in the Narrows did that to anyone. She did love her cats; he would give her that. Pesky beasts.

He picked the lock on her door, slipping into the darkness of her cruddy apartment. The room was shadows, twisting as the moon dipped in and out of rainclouds. The rain had washed some of his frightening "war paint" off, so it was debatable whether he looked better with it coming off, or just scarier because it had made a mess. Rubbing his sleeve over his face to get the water droplets and smeared face paint more, he shook his wet hair like a dog. He let his rain-soaked coat drop to the floor as he ghosted through the dwelling, looking for her.

He found her curled on her beat-up couch with familiar blanket over her, strands of pale blond hair covering her flawed, marred face. She looked so sharp and breakable, all at the same time. But…on her hand was her ring. Both her cats got up and fled when they saw him; strangers were not their forte. The absence of their warmth was probably what made her eyes flutter open.

Her eyes met his. I'm dreaming, she thought to herself. This isn't Jack. It's the Joker. The news footage finally got to me. I'm going crazy. She just blinked, unmoving.

"Aren't ya a little sur-prised to see me, darlin'?"

"Aren't I dreaming?" she whispered, surprised now. Her dreams didn't usually talk to her.

"No-pe." He popped his 'p'.

She began to wake up now, moving into a sitting position and uncurling stiff muscles. Her eyes fell on the small mountain of used Kleenex the same time his did. She sniffed reflexively.

"Looks like ya missed me," he whispered.

"I miss Jack," she replied, equally softly. "You're not Jack."

"And I want Harleen, but you're not her either." He grabbed her left hand painfully with his. "But you're still wearing the ring."

She looked at both their wedding rings, glowing faintly in the moonlight coming through the window. "I am Harleen," she protested.

"No. You're Harley Quinn. Started going by a version of your maiden name, didja?"

She pulled her hand away, wondering how he knew that. It was what she had called herself when she applied for her job application at the factory.

"We're both different people, doll. The Joker and the Harlequin."

It didn't make the hurt go away. "I'm sorry," she whispered. For everything...

"What do you want?" he whispered, pulling her to her feet. Harley looked into his eyes, and thought she saw, for a glimmer of an instant, the old Jack.

"I want my husband," she whispered, letting the tears come.

"I can help with that." And before she knew it, she was being urgently, passionately, breathtakingly, kissed.

She knew it wouldn't last. She knew he'd leave again. But it didn't matter now. Because she was whole. They were like broken reflections. They always had to match together.

And now they did.

So she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

Guess I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all.