IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE story: endless, nameless status: unpublished characters: Harlow & Hal & Bruce & others as mentioned
a/n: so I had this terrible idea and went to awfulmoons and was like "would this hurt people" and she went: I want to die. and here we are, making this an entire fucking one shot. I continued to make this worse & added more angst where I felt it was necessary. so, anyways, please enjoy this mess of angst.
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SOMETIMES IT IS NOT DEATH THAT WE FEAR, BUT RATHER, THE WAY THAT WE FEEL AFTER SOMEONE AROUND US ENCOUNTERS DEATH. We fear not the end but the grief that comes with losing someone you love. Harlow Finley-Jordan wasn't afraid of dying — no she had resigned herself to a fate of death long ago. The minute she joined the league, she knew there was a target on her head. Being in battle, fighting the good fight, trying to save the world. That seemed an appropriate way to go. A warrior's death. Something her daughter could be proud of — a story she could pass on to her children. How their grandmother was a hero until the minute she took her last breath. Harlow didn't fear what came after her dying breath, she wasn't sure what it would be. If she would open her eyes to see pearly gates or if she were to be brought back into the universe in some other way, she didn't fear where the afterlife took her.
She was okay with dying.
Even now, as she laid out on the field, the pain in her side tingling (almost daring to turn numb, laughing at her in some odd way) (her body getting one last laugh out at the fact that she was dying and as a byproduct, so was it). Even as the blood pooled around her, she knew what was happening. How could she not? She was trained in this field of medicine, in trauma. This was a fatal wound. She knew that much from the start. She forced the others to leave her, to keep fighting, and forget about her injury. It was too late anyway. Harlow Finley-Jordan was content with dying.
The life she lived brushed paths with death thousands of times. When thinking about it, she had just narrowly escaped the hands of death countless times. Still, she found herself being afraid of death as she got closer to it. It was only natural, at least she thought it was. Like how young children can have no fear about school right up until they're about to go through the glass doors and leave their parents for the first time — they just don't want to go. And Harlow doesn't want to either. There was still plenty she had yet to see in life. Plenty she knew she would miss out on just for the simple fact that she died. She was grateful for her memories — watching her daughter get married, or watching her graduate from both undergrad and medical school, to seeing herself in a wedding dress as she got married to Hal. These were all things she had wished for. Events she waited to see. To watch. To cherish. And, she thought, that was all she had wanted anyways.
Her daughter was here, fighting, saving the lives of others. Harlow knew that her daughter was being kept in the dark as to her situation, otherwise, Augustine would be breaking everything she was taught to go to her. To help her. To use every ounce of her abilities to save her, Augustine had always been the one to throw her all into the people she loved. It was one of the traits Harlow was proud to say her daughter had (and that it did not come from herself, but rather her father) (though, Augustine argues she's nothing like Bruce Wayne). From the corner of her eye, Harlow could see her daughter and son-in-law, fighting side-to-side. The sight brought a pained smile onto her cheeks, this was what she had imagined for her daughter. The very daughter who danced around the living room in her gala dresses, tales spewing from her lips about how she wanted a prince charming to come and sweep her off of her feet. While Harlow was adamant she never needed a prince charming (her daughter was raised to be independent and strong without the help of another person), Dick Grayson was exactly that prince charming that swept her off of her feet. Harlow couldn't argue that he was everything she wanted her daughter to have, cut from the same stone that Harlow wanted and never could have.
