The look that was currently on Harley’s face - something between surprise, disbelief and genuine gratefulness - was one that Tony had seen a thousand times before, though each and every person had a unique glint in their eye when it was happening. He had seen it in the faces of students that he handpicked every year from MIT’s best and brightest, the ones that he gave personal tours of Stark Industries R&D department to, the kids that wanted nothing more than to walk in his shoes one day. He had seen it in the other Avengers, when they were all beginning to trust each other, not quite sure what the catch was until they realised that for once in their lives, there was none. On the flip side, he had seen it in the faces of those that he spent mere hours with before leaving them without ceremony, either in his bed for Pepper to shoo out or in various hotel rooms across the world. He had seen it in the faces of the kids that he had let down, or the employees that he had shunned, the people that had sat across the table from him pitching their ideas and he hadn’t been bothered enough to listen to them, too busy focusing on how his head was pounding with a hangover and how just one more glass of straight vodka would take that all away. Tony wasn’t the man that the people who hated him thought he was - selfish, uncaring, utterly preoccupied with money and wealth and power - but he wasn’t the man that Harley seemed to think he was either. He was trying to be, though, and that started with accepting responsibility for what he had done in the past and trying to ensure that he never repeated it again. It was a hard thing to do, something that he struggled with every single day, but it was worth it in the end. It was worth it to be something other than a footnote in the history of Howard Stark, to make a name for himself, and to have that name be synonymous with ‘hero’ at the end of the day. That was the world he wanted to leave behind, whether it was tomorrow or twenty years from now, and he was damned if he wasn’t fighting for that.
“I wasn’t really the guy that people came to for help, put it that way,” Tony said, thinking of the various business people who had tried going down that avenue, the emails and calls that he had Pepper fend off without even giving them a second look. “I was more the ‘love them and leave them’ kind of guy, but without the love part. No one stuck around for long, so I did the same thing.” It had started with Rumiko and Ty, and it had all gone downhill from there, mostly due to Tony’s own actions. He had Rhodes and Pepper stick around, and that was more than he deserved, more than he had ever anticipated. “Only kind of a badass? I’m offended. Get out of my workshop,” Tony said, but there was a grin coming onto his face. It was easy to talk to Harley, easier than he thought it would be, especially considering how they had first met. Therapy in general had opened his eyes to a lot of things, and more and more he was beginning to realise that there was importance to discussing what was going on in his head. Worst case his doctor turned out to be a super-villain and he would end up punching her in the face, too. Really, the power of positive thought was an amazing thing!
Positivity, though, only counted for so much. Trusting people only went so far, and Tony’s rightful paranoia followed him in every aspect of his life. People had gone to greater lengths to get close to him before and ended up exploiting his kindness, and meeting someone in the therapist’s office was never a particularly good sign, but Harley was proving to be an exception to a lot of that. Tony wasn’t naive. He had looked her up, hadn’t banked on simply the good feeling he had about her. He knew that she had made mistakes, but more than that, he knew that she had made conscious decisions. She was taking responsibility for that now, was telling him that she wasn’t a good person, that she was trying, but that was what mattered to him. If he was to judge someone for their past he would be nothing more than a hypocrite, and that was what his father had been, what Tony had always wanted to be more than. “It was partly about me,” Tony admitted, though he knew that the good doctor herself would have a field day with trying to prove him wrong on that point. “Dad … he really liked being the smartest guy in the room. It was kind of what he based his life on, you know, being able to make everyone else feel stupid. When I was growing up, I started to understand what he was saying just a little bit too well a little bit too soon, and he didn’t like that much.” Kids became their parents, that was what everyone said when they didn’t realise just how much of a knife in the chest that was for people like Tony. Harley being a criminal could’ve been to do with her father, or it could’ve been something that would’ve happened regardless, but either way she was showing a piece of herself to him and he appreciated that. “Must’ve been hard,” Tony said, not knowing exactly what to do to make it easier, knowing that nothing he said ever could. “My dad was a lot of things but … at least we knew what he was, you know? Mom never tried to hide it from me.” She had tried to justify it, but there was no hiding a bruise, or how everyone jumped at the table when Howard’s cutlery dropped down just a little too noisily. “What age were you then?”
Harley was definitely hard to predict. One moment she was quiet, contemplative, talking about their shared traumatic childhoods (similar in some ways, monumentally different in others) and the next she was bursting into laughter, the sound bouncing off the inventions piled up high on his workbenches. Tony couldn’t help but grin, but there was something dangerous in her laugh, something that made him feel as if he should be calling the gauntlet to him. Probably nothing, probably just something that reminded him of what he had read, and at that, he realised his judgement was something she didn’t need, so he pushed it right back down again. God knows she’d never showed him that she was terrified of what he was. “Occupational hazard,” Tony repeated, this time with a more genuine laugh. “I wouldn’t quite call myself a success story yet. More a work in progress. We’re both that, huh?” Neither of them had started from nothing, because they couldn’t. They’d carried over burdens from a past life and they struggled to carry them some days, but they knew that they were still worth all the extra effort. “Buying out mini bars, figuring out the drug of choice that month, going twelve for twelve with Maxim’s 2005 cover models …” Tony laughed, shaking his head, somewhat self-deprecating. “Pick a bad coping mechanism out of a hat and I’ve probably done it.” Hell, he’d even spilled blood in an attempt to steady his own hands. The Ten Rings were monsters, but they were people, something that he was only now beginning to realise.
“You know,” Tony said, leaning back against the workbench, taking a sip of his coffee, “I realise that the only time I’ve seen you in action is on the TV. Whacking bad guys sounds all good in theory, but I’ve never been one for those. If you want something built, you do it by hand, no point plotting it all out on paper and then never getting anywhere with it.” He set the coffee cup down, a wicked grin coming onto his face as he looked over at her. “Want to go bash some demon heads? I don’t offer that to just anyone who comes into my sanctum, Harley.”
Harley didn’t think herself to be the only one Tony acted this way towards. Actually, she already had him filed under saints, because she firmly believed he tossed out second chances left and right, the way he already trusted her without hesitating or waiting for her to prove herself. Still, he wasn’t naive, Harley knew that. He’d been through enough not to trust blindly. And that made her feel cherished - it made her feel special in a way. Getting better wasn’t easy - Harley had never expected anyone to even think about consdering that she genuinely wanted to be better. She was no realist per sé, but there was enough sense in her to know that she couldn’t just begin again. There was no going back. If she wanted to lead a more conventional life, she would have to accept her deeds and live with them as a part of her.
“That sounds lonely.” Harley said quietly. She felt lonely a lot these days. It was unnatural to her that she didn’t have anyone to curl up against at night but her vast collection of stuffed animals. She’d gotten used to being so dependent on affection that she’d forgotten that before the Joker, she’d been just like Tony. She’d rarely had anybody, which surely was because she rarely even saw her apartment and spent most of her time at work, so her patients seemed to be her only friends, since the other doctors didn’t really get her. Of course, she was a part of the board and got along with Crane and Arkham, but at night, if she went home, she’d be lonely. And she’d been okay with that - unlike now. She was craving the loving company of a significant other, just to feel like she belonged somewhere, and that made her vulnerable. It was probably visible in Harleys face - her gaze had met the floor yet again. But then, suddenly she looked up and grinned, wide. “Oh, I’ve come across a lott’a badasses in ma’ lifetime, how are ya’ better than them, huh?” She laughed, hapopy she could not only share these deep thoughts with someone, but also found someone to joke around with from time to time. He didn’t need to know that even before they’d first spoken to each other, Harley had seen him on the news and instantly he was her favorite avenger.
A supervillain doesn’t keep their bodycount, usually. And Harley’s went through the roof long ago without her even noticing. She had shot people right between the eyes or broken the bones in their neck without even thinking twice about it, a joyful laughter on her lips. In all honesty, she still had trouble understanding that she’d done things that had had serious consequences on people. It was a dream-like state, and she remembered her time with the Joker as just that. A dream. It was all jokes, one after the other, and she’d found it so, so amusing, so funny, they’d had so much fun - how could harmless jokes make her such a bad person in people’s eyes? And that was where her psychiatrist-brain kicked in and told her that it was a delusion, that what she’d done was horrible and wrong and that people hated her for it. That people would never understand what she’d felt in those moments. There were things Harley would probably never speak out loud, not to anyone who wanted to incorporate her into this world, because she knew how these things worked. She would be sent right back to the Asylum, and this time, for good. And that meant she was trying, right? There was no point in trying to forget, but she could at least move on from it.
The blonde nodded, slowly. She had been the first one in her family to go to university, so she’d been the clever kid. But trying to keep your child’s intelligence hidden away so you could shine fully, that was something permanently damaging. What would have happened if Howard Stark influenced his son so much that he wouldn’t have become the genius he was now? She could only imagine who and where he would be now, and it would likely not be in this massive tower, surrounded by the world’s most advanced technology. “Good thing you didn’t let him discourage you in the end, huh?” Finally, Harley shrugged. “Yeah, but it also made me go to university for criminology, ya’ know? I wanted ta’ understand where he came from. And, um” She cracked a laugh. “I guess I did ... a bit too well.” Her smile faded slowly. “He ain’t no bad dude. He got addicted to the lifestyle, ya’ know? At first it was a good opportunity to put food on the table. Then it was the excitement of the thrill.” She shrugged, thinking. “Like, fifteen? He did three years and then went back for ten later.” She said this casually - after all, she’d been to all those places herself, multiple times.
It wasn’t everyday that Harley could surround herself with people who weren’t constantly on edge because of her. She was fucking crazy and she knew that - she took pride in that. Ever since she’d helped J escape fromt he Asylum all those years ago, she’d never wished she wasn’t. It had felt great. She wished she could only once, only for a few minutes shut off the meds she was on nowadays and see the pretty lights again, feel the warm fuzzy feeling of insanity creep up on her and sweep her up in its arms, and ... “I don’t think anyone’s ever there. Ya’ know? People are always changin’, always aspirin’ ta’ be something else, something better. Adapt to a new surrounding, a new situation. We’re always a work in progress.” She tried to suppress another laugh. “Maybe we should’a met a few years prior, huh? Sounds like a party.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, would he knew how she intended for that to sound?
Harley shrugged again and smiled, innocently. “That’s probably a good thing. Back in the day I would’a probably dented ya’ suit.” She nodded along, still smiling. She wasn’t the type to plan things. When she got an idea popping into her head, she went out and did it, even though oftentimes it proved to be a good idea to think about it, even for just a moment, before. Suddenly, her face lit up. She stared at him with her mouth opening just a little and she couldn’t stop herself from jumping excitedly, just a little. “Ya’ really mean that? I mean...” She laughed, in disbelief. “Really?”
