Another Way | Adopted by Gerard Way (Book Three)

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Harley went back to bed and stayed there for hours, not even asleep, just staring at the ceiling. This was another one of those moments where her thoughts were running away from her, but this time instead of whisking her away into some delightful memory about the things she and Holden used to get up to, they were drawing a blank, leaving her trapped in a void of confusion she couldn't seem to pull herself out of; much like she couldn't seem to pull herself out of bed.

She suddenly wanted nothing more than to remember. She wanted to be able to close her eyes and picture her mom's and dad's smiling faces, the way her little hand looked held in their's, to know what is was like to be hugged by them, and a million other things she'd never get to know. Pictures in the album on the shelf in the living room back at home didn't do it justice, and neither were the home videos she hadn't watched in a long time. She usually avoided watching those, especially if Emerald was in the room, because the sight of her sister's face on screen made her cry without fail, then the sight of her wife crying usually made Evelyn cry too.

Harley never cried though, not when her parents had gone through so much by the time they were her age. She couldn't let herself be weakened by anything life threw at her while others suffered so much more. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd cried and sometimes wondered if she'd lost the ability altogether, or if she was just that good at switching off her emotions to render herself numb after years of doing so.

If nothing else, never crying had awarded her the reputation of always being happy, and that made her parents happy, so she wasn't about to ruin it.

There was one home video in particular she loved to watch over and over again. It was only a clip about six seconds long, but it put a smile on her face and left a warm feeling inside. It was of her, sitting at a table with a cake in front of her, swirling yellow letters on the cake wrote, Happy Birthday Harley, and a candle in the shape of the number four was stuck in the middle of it. Her father, who was holding the camera, had started the recording too late and had missed her actually blowing out the candle, so all that was shot was the thin line of smoke smoldering from the tip of it and everyone at the party clapping in the background. Little Harley followed suit as she raised her hands and clapped, giggling. A couple bruises could be seen on her arms; it showed Harley that from a very young age she was getting bumps and scrapes from playing and that she hadn't changed since then. In the last second of the video, her mom stepped into frame to cut the cake.

Her mom was beautiful. She resembled Emerald, especially in the eyes; brown with bits of gold in them. But unlike her sister, she never grew out of dyeing her hair whenever she got bored of it. In that particular video it was red, staying true to her name: Ruby.

It was about noon when Harley was broken out of her trance and her eyes finally moved away from the ceiling and to the door. Gerard knocked before entering cautiously, first poking his head in, then slipping inside. Light from the hallway flooded the room until he closed the door behind himself, then they were submerged in darkness, the only light coming from the glow of daylight behind the curtain. He stood in front of the door for a few seconds, not knowing whether he should sit down with her or not, finally deciding on taking a seat in the chair in a corner of the room.

Harley sat up and propped herself against the backboard of the bed. "Hi," she said, running her fingers through her knotted hair, pushing it off her forehead.

"Hi," Gerard said back, though he looked like he wanted to say more.

"What's up?"

"I told Frank you weren't up for that hike."

"I forgot about that."

"That's okay, no one blames you. You had quite the eventful night."

"Yeah," Harley said flatly, leaning her head back. She didn't feel like making eye contact, but spoke to the ceiling as she said, "Is that all you came to tell me?"