The Imperfect Art of Madness (Jerome/Harleen)

Chapter Six - Candy Story

It felt good to laugh again.

God, how sick did that sound?

But it did. She spent so much time frightened and off balance and repressing, but something had changed, like someone had thrown a switch inside her that made it okay to laugh. To let it out.

Her new scar flashing up at her every time she felt like hiding again.

NO!

She'd always been so focused, so controlled, every aspect of her future planned. Every word and outfit and action orchestrated to best effect.

Be pretty. Be popular. Get good grades. Get into the right school. It was never enough.

Maybe it never would be.

It ate her up sometimes, what she was doing, what she was going through. Late in the night when she couldn't deal and the laughter wasn't enough, that's when she turned to other methods of forgetting.

Xanax. Crying.

Hell she'd even pried a piece of glass loose from the shattered mirror, she should have thought about using it as a weapon, that would have been the logical thing to do. Instead she just used it to carve the word 'YES' into her other hand. It was shaky and shallow but it did the trick, it kept her balanced.

Yes and No.

It gave her options.

Especially when she saw the other side of him. Jerome, Mister J, whoever he was when he wasn't pressing a weapon into her hand and pointing her like a rifle at whoever or whatever he wanted maimed. The guy who bounded in to her space at random like an over excited puppy dog and told her all about his day. Not the details of course, at least nothing she understood, but the generals. Things had gone well. He'd heard a song she'd justlove. She wouldn't believe what Jimmy had done when they met the arms dealer...

It was almost... almost normal.

Yesterday he'd appeared late at night when she was falling asleep on the couch in front of some old comedy movie. It was stupid of her really, suicidal to let her guard down in a house full of psychos. But she had, eyelids fluttering as he dropped down onto the sofa next to her with a gleeful laugh.

"What're we watching, Harls?"

She'd snapped awake in a second, struggling to pull her legs out of the way in time but instead he'd just grabbed them, slinging them into his lap like the two of them were old friends. Settling in beside her with absolutely no trace of discomfort.

"Duck Soup," she'd replied quietly, off-kilter as he drummed a solo on her calf muscles, but she didn't need to. His eyes were already fixed on the screen, head tilting back as he laughed and laughed at all the right bits. It made something between her ribs twang, made her want to ask a thousand questions that always got caught in her throat. It made her want to know him.

Above all else though it frightened her, even more than the other side of him did.

Jerome Valeska, murderer, maniac, and escaped mental patient she understood.

Jerome Valeska, distracted conversationalist and enthusiastic movie buddy... that was a whole other case entirely.

He wasn't laughing now though, an uncharacteristic seriousness written across his face as he led her down into the room again, it had always been grim, too much blood in it for anything else. She'd taken to thinking about it in abstract, as a set. Like something out of one of those Scandinavian noir shows people went nuts over for some unknown reason.