Archive of Our Own ^beta

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When Margo knocked Mallory's porcelain pony to the floor, the one that Jessi had saved up almost a year for in order to get it in time for her birthday, a part of Mal's heart shattered with it.

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If the last hours of Stephanie's life are going to be spent tied up listening to Gotham's latest costumed criminal livestream his megalomaniacal musings to the entire internet, then he might as well just hurry up and turn on his death ray.

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The box of Ring Dings was stuffed behind a pile of old sketchbooks and resting atop a battered copy of The Witch Tree Signal. There were only two left inside, one squished to half its original size. Though it leaked cream and stained her fingers brown, the taste was as strong as ever. The second was in her mouth before Claudia had even finished the first.

She found the bag of mini Kit Kats beneath a pile of old threadbare sweaters. Claudia doubted any still fit her, but woven together they'd make for one eye-catching scarf. But what color would she make the outer layer? She had faded purple, bright orange, and wine red to choose from. Snapping a candy between her teeth, the sharp crunch breaking the uncharacteristic silence that had settled over her room, she pondered possible designs.

By the time she'd settled on a pattern (red and orange evenly mixed together with purple tones at the edges), the bag was empty and her floor was littered with candy wrappers. She hurriedly stuffed them in an empty shoe box, giving the room one last look over before shoving it back under her bed. Claudia may not have been an honors student, but she wasn't stupid. If her mom poked her head in, there wouldn't be any evidence — not even the teensient clue — of what had just occurred.

Picking herself up off the floor, she made her way to her dresser. Stuffed under a stack of folded shirts was a box of coconut truffles and a pile of assorted Starburst. She reached for a cherry chew, but pulled her hand away before she could wrap her fingers around it. If she kept going on like this, her room might be spotless by the time that afternoon's meeting rolled around. What kind of a hostess left her friends empty handed?

All the same, she grabbed a handful of chocolate before slipping the drawer shut.

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To most of the world, Victor was little more than a robot. Only the skin of his arms and face betrayed the shimmering steel that encased him. They were the only hints of whom he had been before, and so sparse that the silver circuitry threatened to swallow what little was left of him.

Though it was easy for her mind to wander, Sarah dared not imagine what might have happened if the accident had taken more. As greedy as chance was, she could only hope that it had sated its fill of his flesh. More times than she could count, Sarah had traced the tip of his lips with her finger, cupped his cheek in her hand as she leaned her own face closer to his. She could still remember the first time she'd tentatively touched his arm, her whole body seeming to come alive from the heat emanating off his skin.

Yet she'd trade it all away to the rapacious forces of fate if Victor could at least keep his eye. It was, despite all the wires and widgets that caged him, so very human. No force on earth could extinguish the warm spark of life that flickered in it. Sarah was but a moth drawn to its flame, eager to burn in its beauty.

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Harley groaned, staring down into the watery brown mush that passed for food here. With her sleeves rolled up, it was easier to ignore the crime to fashion plastered against her skin. What else could she call it? Orange never had been her color.

Harley gritted her teeth. Maybe if she didn't eat, she wouldn't have to go to her appointment. They wouldn't let her starve, right? Dr. Leland would just have to find something else to occupy her afternoon. Joan could use the time to finally get her office organized.

Her grip tightened on her fork. Every time Harley looked up, the chipped grey walls seemed closer to her than they had before.

She wasn't supposed to be here!

Sure, Harley wasn't Arkham's first patient to say that. But when she'd finally gotten out a few weeks prior, a clean bill of health in hand, she'd promised herself that it would be the last she ever saw of it.

And it would have been, if Maggie had kept her sticky fingers to herself for once. If rumor from the infirmary was true, she could barely hold a pencil now. A nurse had to feed her! Though Harley had only meant to give her a few bruises, it served her right. If that bird had half a brain then she wouldn't so much as look at Harley's favorite hairdryer again.

And if she did... Then, at least in Harley's professional opinion, she deserved to be here.

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Kate sighed. "Do you really have to go?"

"At least if I want to be able to keep paying my bills."

Her eyes lit up. "If cash is the issue..."

Renee placed a finger to her lips. Kate didn't know a thing about money, probably because she had so damn much of it. And she didn't know a thing about Renee herself if Kate thought she could make a kept woman out of her. What a boring life that would be!

"Besides," she continued, "someone has to keep Gotham safe - without wearing a mask."

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Natasha was much too old to believe in such silly notions, but part of her had always hoped that the first time they held hands in public wouldn't just be because Pepper was trying to get her to move faster.

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Abby was no by no means a connoisseur of fine food, but a single sniff told her that the watery brown paste sitting before her wasn't meat. That didn't, she surmised, mean that it was tofu, either. Lunch period was almost halfway over and so far all she'd tasted was bile.

Looking up from the tray she'd spent the last five minutes halfheartedly poking at, she scanned the surrounding table. The only thing that she saw was her expression mirrored in many of her friends' eyes.

"Hey, Mary Anne," she said, unable to keep her gaze, "if you don't want the other half of that sandwich..."

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Would she, Lindsey wondered, ever be as happy as Mr. Tiny was lying in a sunbeam? Today was as good of a day as any to find out. Wiping dust away with her foot, and careful not to pull him from his nap, she joined him on the living room floor.

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"I'll take one medium hot chocolate made with soy milk, no whipped cream please, and a sesame seed bagel with lox." Abby fished her wallet from her coat pocket. Turning to Claudia, she gestured to the barista with her one free hand.

"And I'll have," Claudia added, her eyes darting from the chalkboard menu hanging overhead to the eye level display of baked goods, "a vanilla cupcake." She leaned her hand forward, tapping the glass with a perfectly manicured purple nail. Her mouth watered.

This wasn't just any old cupcake. Its swirling mountaintop of creamy ivory frosting was so artfully sculpted that it almost - almost - looked too good to eat. If she'd had her disposable Kodak with her, then she would have used a whole roll of film preserving its perfection. Instead, all she could do was hope that her memory could preserve even a tenth of its wonder.

"So will this all be on the same order?"

Abby nodded. "Are you sure that's all you want?"

For all the cookies and scones that the cafe offered, nothing else called out to her grumbling stomach. Claudia knew if she walked out the door now, she'd never see a cupcake so splendid again.

"Yep," Claudia replied. Taking over that last minute job at the Braddock's on Wednesday night for Abby had really been no trouble. They always paid well. That Abby had promised her breakfast was just the cherry on top. After getting all that, why be greedy?

Abby nibbled on her bagel while the two waited for her hot chocolate. It seemed that Claudia wasn't the only one who couldn't pull her eyes away from the fluffy white pastry.

"Breakfast of champions, eh?" Abby asked.

Claudia tentatively licked the frosting's pointed white tip. Its creamy sugar melted on the edge of her tongue before easily sliding down her throat. "It was definitely worth getting out of bed for!"

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Her dad had always said that, whether they admit to it or not, criminals want to be caught; as far as Barbara was concerned, a string of purchases on a stolen credit card was as good of a confession as any.

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Erin made sure to always wear a seatbelt and hold the handrails as she went up and down flights of stairs; why risk finding herself on the other end of a plasma blaster?

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Wanda was always the luckiest of the two. Though the Avengers had opened their arms to them both, she had been the first to feel their embrace. For her, trouble was only a natural side effect of the outlandish game that was their careers. Whatever his destination, Pietro always ran into it.

Only a fool would say his sister's life had been easy. Yet there was no question as to which of the twins fortune favored. At the very least, Wanda could look in a mirror and not see a copy of that bastard's face staring back.

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"As my sister, you should feel no obligation to appease me. Do you believe that I look..." She scrunched her nose. "Strange?"

Janine was the only person Claudia knew who would consider it weird to get her nails painted.

"No," she responded, "but if you'd asked me for help, I could have made your layers a lot more even."

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Good old Elizabeth — whether it was fronting her a few (and just a few, much as her sister might insist otherwise) dollars while Jessica was between allowance or loaning her a spare sweater (really, what right did Liz have to owning a closet so full of purple?), she would always lend a hand.

"Got any chapstick?" Jessica asked, leaning against a locker. The cold steel sent hairs rising up her arm. She ran her tongue across her dry lips. If they looked even half as miserable as they felt, then the rest of her face must have seemed ready to slip between their cracks.

It wasn't that Jessica didn't have any of her own. She had a few tubes of it sitting atop her dresser, maybe even one or two all to herself in the twins' shared bathroom. If there wasn't an emergency meeting of the Unicorn Club that afternoon, then Jessica could have just run home and grabbed one of them.

"You're in luck," Elizabeth responded. Turning away from her locker, she pulled a tube from the front pocket of her backpack.

Jessica had to hold back a squeal as she tore it from her twin's outstretched hand. "Oh, Lizzie, I don't know what I'd do without you!"

Elizabeth looked ready to say something but stopped herself. Jessica couldn't help but notice the hard press of her lips.

"Lizzie," Jessica said, looking back up to those bright blue-green that she knew all too well, "I think you might need a touch up yourself."

She snorted. "Duly noted."

Jessica pouted. "Oh, don't give me that look!"

It wasn't as if Liz was the only one who could be helpful!

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"I didn't know that I could bleed so much." Kristy hugged her chest. For all the fights she'd had with the boys at school and trips she'd taken at soccer practice, nothing compared to the rivers of blood streaming down the side of her jeans. Her sides and the centers of her chest ached, but the pulsing pain was nothing compared to the tightness in her throat. The corner of her eyes stung with salt.

"It's okay," Mary Anne said. She'd been saying some variation of it for the past twenty minutes, since Kristy had first noticed the growing stain on her chair. With a speed neither had realized she possessed, she'd followed Kristy into the bathroom. Now, Kristy could only guess at what was happening in class. Was Mr. Liebowitz still going over the basics of the Vietnam War? Would he give her detention?

"Do you think everyone knows?" Kristy could hardly breathe. It would be just like Alan Gray to text the entire school about this.

"I have some spare clothes in my locker if you-"

"Do you?" With the stall door between them, Kristy could only imagine her friend's expression. "What if the whole school finds out?" It didn't seem likely that it would leave her classmates' collective memory any time soon. "Maybe it'll reach SHS. What will Sam and Charlie think?" Kristy groaned. "Oh my lord, what if a client finds out?"

Now wouldn't that be great for business? Who'd want to leave someone like her in charge of their kids?

"Kristy!"

Everything seemed off. Mary Anne was the putting her foot down while Kristy sobbed.

"It's going to be okay. Yes, it's difficult and embarrassing, but it's not the end of the world either." She gave a weak chuckle. "Even if it feels like it."

"Yeah," Kristy said. "You're right."

Maybe she'd get lucky and Mary Anne would believe her.

"Now, do you want me to go check my locker? I promise to come back."

Kristy's chest tightened. "Just don't take too long, okay?"

She supposed she could do this if she wasn't alone.

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Max pulls the joint away from Chloe's face before she can get more than a sniff. It's just enough to send the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

"Are you sure that we should be doing this?" Her forehead wrinkles.

Chloe grunts. "What are you gonna do — call the cops on yourself?" The words are barely out of her mouth before she is hit with a stream of coughs, one hard punch against her chest and the back of her throat after another. Sometimes she has to wonder if air is truly invisible; maybe her sagging lungs really are fighting for something that isn't there at all.

Okay, so if anyone ever found about this, she would claim it was for medical purposes. Sure, a doctor might not sign off for it in her specific case, but as hungry as it made her, it sure beat morphine.

Chloe narrows her eyebrows. "Quit hogging the damn thing."

Max pulls it from her own lips and holds it back out. If nothing else, the girl knows how to make herself useful.

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If Abby had known that her sitting job would, at the last minute, make her get up at five in the morning on a Saturday, then she would have just let Stacey take the job. Her eyelids felt as though they had been dipped in cement. The Kormans had offered her their couch, but wanting to sleep and actually nodding off were two entirely different things. She'd spent over twenty minutes tossing and turning.

Maybe, she realized, it would be for the best that the kids would find her up when they awoke.

Abby absently chewed on a torn piece of challah French toast. Outside, the first purple rays of dawn pushed out against the inky darkness.

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By the time Pamela finished pulling out the last of her heartiest weeds, planting a fresh row of zinnias, and watering her snapdragons, she couldn't even remember what had been eating away at her thoughts that morning. Assuming Harley stayed out of trouble, maybe she never would.

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"Your understanding of the futility of consumerism is unrivaled."

"Uh, thanks, Janine." That was a compliment, right?

"What inspired your pieces?"

That was Claudia's only problem with art: everything had to have some deeper meaning. A pipe could never just be a pipe. "I was hungry."

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Abby's first sitting job had been a blur that ended with her in a hospital bed. All she really remembered was waking up feeling like an elephant was sitting atop her chest. If the screaming gaggle of Pike kids had their way, she just might find herself back in Stonybrook General.

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"Mornin', pretty bird."

Dinah pulled her head up from her pillow. The potent smell of cinnamon hung thick in the air. She sat up, blinking until her vision cleared.

"Ollie?"

"I didn't know you were still asleep."

She swallowed a yawn. "And I didn't know you were up."

He grinned, adjusting his grip on a tray in his hands. He was holding it too high for her to make out anything on it beyond a glass of orange juice and the edge of a cracked white plate. "I wasn't exactly playing quiet mouse. You sure you aren't getting soft, Di?"

She grimaced. "What's the occasion?" Ollie wasn't exactly an early bird himself.

"I made you breakfast. Do you really need a reason for that?"

Dinah bit her tongue before slowly giving him a smile that was all teeth. Like the flu, the cooking bug infected Ollie every few seasons, leaving burnt brownies and overcooked chicken in his wake. As long as this didn't turn out like his chili...

"But if you really want to know," he said, shooting her a weak smile of his own, "I felt like I kind of owed it to you after what you did last night."

"Heh." Dinah held her hands out, taking the tray from him. "I'd bash a hundred ninjas' knees in for some pancakes."

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Grandmary had long held close to her heart the sacred idea that the pen was mightier than the sword. Only words could mend what guns, bombs, and planes burnt and scarred. Though Samantha had long mulled the statement over, it was only as she glanced through her ballot one last time and placed her pen down that the meaning fully hit her. A great beast had been felled, a long battle finally won. For just one moment, she held every bit of power in the world, all of it packed into a tiny slip of paper.