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She falls for him. She doesn’t leap in or run. She doesn’t step off of the walkway facing the boiling vat below.
She turns towards him and lets herself tip backward. She gives herself up to gravity. To the inevitable. To him.
There’s suddenly nothing under her feet and she’s falling, hair whipping against her face. She sees him watching and then she blinks and she’s too far below to see anything but the underside of the catwalk.
It’s almost poetic. Falling without seeing where she’s going. It’s how she ended up here, right? With him.
Her body is slowly tipping back more, she’s vertical, going headfirst into the vat. She catches a glimpse of the churning liquid before she is submerged. It is then that she remembers she can’t swim.
It burns.
It is the worst pain she has felt in her life and somehow she is numb but still burning. She wants to die, die, die because this is the worst thing she has ever felt. It feels like her skin is peeling off and her hair is being pulled from the root. She must have inhaled some of the liquid because her lungs and stomach burn. Her insides feel like they’re turned inside out and she wants to die. Everything feels like it’s peeling and dissolving and melting but she can’t die. She can’t breathe and she’s sinking to the bottom and panicking and the pain is too much and she wants to scream because it burns.
Is this what hell feels like? Harleen thinks.
Is this what love feels like?
“Question,” She turns her head to him and he lazily runs his hand down her arm, “Would you die for me?” He asks, cocking his head to the side.
Harleen turns around fully, “Yes.”
“That’s too easy,” he says. “Would you…” He pauses to think.
“Would you live for me?”
The words ring in her head painfully and suddenly she’s conscious again.
Someone is kissing her. She gasps for air and opens her eyes, blinking away the chemical water. She can feel his arms around her and she smiles. He dips down to kiss her again and she places her hand on the back of his neck, but she doesn’t pull him down because he is the one in control.
The burning hasn’t subsided but that’s okay, she thinks because she burns for him. Only him. He is inevitable, like gravity, like death.
She can feel the loose, dead skin peeling from her face and their clothes are being eaten away and she has been reborn. Everything I do is for you, she thinks. Everything I will ever do.
He leans back, still holding her, and laughs. Harley doesn’t know what the joke is but she’s laughing too and maybe it’s from shock but it doesn’t matter. She lived for him.
She lives for him.
Harley is suddenly aware of someone in her space, she pulls her gun out and points, ready to shoot.
“Relax, it’s me,” Deadshot says. He’s in her peripheral vision, his arms are up, non-threatening.
Harley takes in a deep breath, staring down at the vats. She remembers the burning. There’s probably a wild, terrified look in her eyes. She swallows down the emotions and they sit heavy in her stomach like a cold, dead weight. The opposite of burning. She breathes out.
She drops the arm holding the gun and turns her head to look at Floyd.
The question slips past her lips. There’s desperation in her voice. She knows she’s seeking validation.
“You ever been in love?”