A Crossroads Between Realities

"I don't want to be a sad clown, or a scary one," Duela says. Something glints off the door furthest in the back at how she sees a connection between the two, even without seeing the steps to it.

"Being sad doesn't mean all the time, sweetie. Everyone gets sad sometimes... even your dad." Jeannie's been in a unique position to see that more than anyone else over the years, no matter which name she was going by at the time. "And you know I'm not gonna push you on this, but you remember what I said about those doors... you keep botting up all the bad stuff, and it's gonna keep trying to explode out. Sooner or later, you're just going to have to face what's back there and put it in it's proper place in your head. And you know, I'm gonna be right here to help."

Duela's hestitant on that. Her dad had blocked memories out for decades. Ok, granted, even he said that was a bad idea now and a big bit of what made the Joker, well, the Joker instead of how he was now. But things are topsy-turvy for her, and especially... "Not now. I just... What do you call a riddle without an answer?"

"A riddle by itself," Jeannie answers, almost reflexively, before putting it together. There was already a lot of suspicion that quite a few of those doors had to do with Duela's time with the Teen Titans... or rather with the time after she wasn't with them any more, because the writers and the Crisis and all the retcon stuff made them literally forget she existed unless she was right in front of them. "You don't want to think about it until your friends are here," she says. Because locked up with all the horrible stuff was some kind of question only the Titans could answer. Jeannie has a bad feeling about what at least some of that question might be, and fully intends to ask it herself before she ever lets any of them near her daughter again. "And that's what upset you, isn't it? Because Jason Todd's got an answer for at least one of those doors." It wasn't too hard to guess. After all, almost all of the times the Joker had tried to kill her had to do with her accidentally getting too close to what was behind some of the doors in his head at the time. THough sometimes she wonders what would have happened if those had come down - if he'd recognized her, would she have been able to remember too? The end of the world might well have come a bit sooner!

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A riddle without an answer be a mystery, o' course.

I have plenty o' random nonsense in my head that I ignore, say true. Though that's mostly not my nonsense or memories. Probably not so good ta lock them up if they be yours.

Iffen ya want someone to protect thee, I'm more than willin' ta stand by thy side when the day comes.

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And that sends a sharp twitch of fear through Duela's mind, and Mordred might get the hint of the reason for those locked doors... she doesn't want the Titans, or Jason, to be hurt. She just wants her friends to still be her friends. Titans Together, right? But things behind those doors throws all of that into question, and excuses like 'Reality made them forget' and 'the writers did it' only go so far. They keep her mostly stable (though certainly never 'sane', she considers that a nasty four letter word), but they're not real answers. And opening the doors without finding out why the things behind them had to be that way lead to... well, she can't really remember with the doors shut, but it involved Timmy-bird-Robin and a gun. She shakes her head. "They're my friends. I don't want them hurt." I don't want to hurt them.

Jeannie caught that twitch, and fits it into place with the rest. They pushed you away one too many times, didn't they... and found out in a bad way that they shoulda believed you about who your dad was. "You know I'm gonna have a long talk with them first, right? Remember that nice quiet place with all the fog? None of 'em, Jason Todd included, are gettin' out of there until I'm happy with the answers they've got, no matter how long that takes." And since time was a lot more mutable there, it would still only be a 'day' on the outside if she wanted it to be. Something she's pretty sure Duela would remember from how long it had taken to get Jack stable enough to not be a danger to others. "So don't worry about it, baby. It's going to be ok." She was going to make sure of that, one way or another.

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*He nods.* No bitin' thy friends, I promise. No matter how much I say want to, seein' thy pain as I be.

*He looks to Duela's mother and nods slightly.* (Tell me what ta do here, sai? I'm not so good at keepin' folken sane, child o' the Prim that I be, but I'm fond o' thy daughter an' I want ta help. If I could crawl under yon doors or chain them shut or anythin', what would help best? Or would it be better ta leave them be?)

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(Sooner or later she's gotta face what's back there, hopefully on her own terms and in her own time... she won't be able to do that if someone else locks it down, tempting as that thought is.) Jeannie's reminded of something else as well. before their world had fallen apart and had the pieces stolen and remade... the old writers were never going to let her actually help Jack. The Joker was one of their headliners. So she'd gone crazy to match, because the only thing worse than that was letting him go through it alone. (Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone, sometimes the only thing, is just to be there. Even if you can't really understand what they're going through or just how they feel, just be there for them. Even if they just need to cry for an hour at 3 in the morning. Let them know they matter, and they're not alone.)

Duela, meanwhile, is thinking of that quiet foggy place her mom mentioned. She'd had plenty of time to look all around it while mom was trying to get dad a little less on the Joker side of the chaotic good to chaotic evil scale. It wasn't a bad place. Speaking of places, the erratic time near the sign means she's in two places at once... and feeling safer here is helping her be a little 'saner' over there. And she thinks of Robin... the first one, not her Jaybird. They'd had a long-running gag of her showing up in various costumes and him unmasking her. Like at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon. She'd even stolen his mask once way back at the start, and figured out who he was. It was part of how she'd gotten him to let her join the Titans. He was like an unofficial big brother, like Donna was an unofficial big sister. And then there'd been Donna's wedding... Her thoughts brush the edge of one of the doors.

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*Mordred nods helplessly. He’s still better at telepathy than ordinary reassurance, after all. But he’ll try.*

I be here, my friend. I don’t want to leave. If they aren’t kind ta thee, just ask and I’ll make them be kind. And don’t forget that you’re loved, for you be much loved and much lovely.

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Jeannie gives Mordred a bit of a smile to reassure him. She's had her worries about things ever since Duela let something slip once about electroshock. Arkham's 'off label' uses aside, more legitimate places in modern times only used ECT for severe clinical depression that didn't respond to other treatment... If the Titans did do something to put her daughter in that kind of state, Mordred's not likely to get a chance at them. They'll never get past a short and very angry 'Harley Quinn' with realty-bending powers, a very large mallet, and pretty much carte blanche to leave anyone dead that she thinks would be too disruptive in the new timeline.

Duela manages a chuckle through sniffles. "Yeah, I guess the writers we had couldn't make you forget too... we didn't have the same ones, and they don't matter any more anyway." She'd shown up at Donna's wedding in a fatsuit and with about a quarter-inch of rubber latex on her face. And Dick Grayson had forgotten the gag. Hadn't even been able to see past the lies of 'reality' to put together that since they'd been Titans at the same time back when Teen was still part of the team name, she couldn't have been more than twice his age.

My Harlequin days were fifty pounds ago, to say the least. Ahh, those were good times with the Titans, weren't they, hon? Silently begging him to notice, to remember, but watching as he just looked at her with a glaze of numb idiocy as if he'd been drugged.

Yeah, they were fun. By the way, speaking of Harlequin - I realized something a while back... You're too old to be Two-Face's daughter.

It took you this long to figure that out? Tsk, tsk, the Batman would not be happy. She'd pinched his cheeks, like he was a little kid. She'd wanted to slap him.

So what's the truth?

Maybe, Dickie... just maybe I'll tell you... One of these days, that is. Ta ta. Had to leave, had to get away...

But, Duela...

That's just the shape of the surface of a door, the memory that makes up both the lock and the key... Duela hesitates, but she doesn't open it. Grayson isn't likely to be out for a while. But Jason will...

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*He may not get to eat any betrayers alive, but their bodies will never be found. Mordred's had few enough moments of acceptance, and half of them came from this broken girl. Anyone who breaks her further is not to be tolerated.*

Nothing's going to harm you while I'm around, sai, and anything as tries will have me ta deal with. Mordred protects you an' yours, an' that be a powerful protection indeed.

Would ya have me stay a while yet? I can weave for thee, or speak with thee, or simply stay at thy side.

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Duela sniffles and rubs at her face, unintentionally proving that her family buys good-quality water-resistant makeup but it is makeup that makes her that pale. "I... I'll be ok. But... I'd like it if you stayed, at least a little longer."

Numb shock and running, so much running, the Bat... no, Owl, need to keep it straight now, need to remember where/when she is at the moment... hot on their trail. Can hear him catching up, no matter how sneaky he is... footfalls and swish of cape fabric. Next to her as well. Move your ass, bird-boy... dead end... only one option. "Close your eyes." She'd never done this with anyone watching, and now wasn't the time to experiment. Hah, there's a joke... she'd never taken anyone with her, either.

"What?"

"Do it. Trust me."

And he had. She heard the Owl drop down to ground level, thinking he'd cornered his prey... and then the footfalls and sounds of his costume vanished before he rounded the corner, as she grabbed Talon's arm and rounded another sort of corner and reality bent and changed. She looked up to see the Bat-Signal in the patch of Gotham's cloudy sky that could be seen from the dead-end alley and knew they were safe for now. "Ok, you can look."

Talon was practically squirming wanting to before she'd given the all-clear. Of course he'd noticed the missing sounds of pursuit too. And then he looked up. "What the hell is that?"

Edited Date: 2017-12-12 03:57 am (UTC)

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*He nods, then carefully embraces her.* Try not ta think about ka-shume just yet, sai. We've enough khef for today; when tomorrow comes we will hunt for tomorrow. So said Kipling, who was surely kas-ka-Gan. *And then he sighs, knowing he'll probably have to translate at least two quite difficult terms.

*The rest he makes no mention of, in case it isn't something she can stand.*

Edited Date: 2017-12-12 04:55 am (UTC)

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Duela almost pieces it together from context, but still looks puzzled enough, that, yes, he probably will have to explain two of those terms. And it'd be hard to miss the brief flare of anger at the third. She remembers that word for writers, and it's the writers of the multiverse they'd come from before all this that she tries to really blame for things. After all, with someone yanking their strings, how much of it could really be anyone else's fault. That oddly blank look on Dick's face at Donna's wedding when he hadn't remembered their old gag, that practically screamed of some kind of mind control looking back at things.

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Khef be water, an' in a desert water be everything. Ta share khef is ta be bonded, ta be hospitable, ta be true, As for ka-shume . . . *A sigh.* Ka-shume be the feelin' that a friendship be endin', a partin' be destined, a fellowship be breakin'.

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She still doesn't quite get it, but part of the explanation gets a laugh out of her. "Heh, wrong verb tense then, maybe. Things have been broken for a really really long time. I was just the only one that noticed." And when no one else notices, it's hard not to wonder if no one else cared.

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But you're not sure that your friend is gone from ya yet, aye? That's what makes it hurt. *He hugs her a bit more.* Don't worry, I'm here.

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Duela shakes her head, seeming almost weirdly lucid for the moment, like a swinging pendulum or as if the earlier breakdown has her too tired to be too crazy. "Still wrong way around. They haven't returned my phone calls for about a quarter-century worth of Christmases. They didn't remember me, unless I was right there... and even then it made their minds all fuzzy. Because the writers didn't want me there, didn't want us to be friends or me to be a Titan. And because they're sane, and sane people believe what Reality says is real... but I knew it was lying. So, what happens when they find out it was, too? The doors... that's all the places where Reality's lies hurt so much I had to lock it up to make it stop. Because people can't even say they're sorry if they don't remember what they did. And... I think those doors got open on me before and something pretty bad happened, but I don't want to think about that now. But what's going to happen, what's happening for everyone is like having all those doors yanked open when they arrive. It's easy to hate the truth when it hurts. And we all have parts of the past we just want to leave there. I might be something they don't want to deal with, like what's behind the doors, because having to remember something messing with your head like that... your mind and your life messed around with like that hurts."

Jeannie can't help but notice that Duela takes after her a bit as well. When they care about someone, they don't do it by half-measures. And a big part of what's tearing her little girl up isn't that the Titans had rejected her... but what might happen to them when they realized what happened. It still seems like a piece of the puzzle is missing, and she has suspicions about that 'something bad happened' that Duela mentioned. She thinks she was right... at some point the 'doors' broke down and Duela went full-blown Joker's Daughter on the Titans. And hero types aren't going to take learning they drove one of their own to that well, even if it was under some kind of authorial mind-control. What a mess. "Sweetie... I'm not going to lie... if they cared about you, it is going to hurt them to figure out they hurt you. But that doesn't mean anything really bad has to happen. We're all having to pick up a lot of broken pieces when it comes to the past, and even your father hasn't killed or hospitalized anyone in over a month..." He's really doing well, but they do take things one day at a time.

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*Mordred can't help being a bit amused by the seeming lowness of that bar, despite knowing just how high it must be for the Joker.*

It's understandable that you're so worried, but worrying will only make you even more upset. *With that he says to hell with it and gives her a bigger hug.*

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Duela hugs back. "I just.. I need to find something, and bumped into the wrong things up there looking 'cause it's hard to find what you're looking for if you don't know what it is until you find it."

But find it she had...

The sunset had painted the whole sky red. It reminded her of the Crisis, and she couldn't help finding that twisted irony funny. Except for stolen moments, she'd been practically a ghost since then... so it was only fitting that the sky be red now, too. Small feet crunched the occasional dead leaf, but she knew as long as she stayed away from the places being 'watched', no one would see her. Even if she was standing in plain sight. (She could never explain to the psychiatrists just who was watching or how she knew. They just gave her more pills if she mentioned it at all.) Eight-year old Lucy Quinzel was still careful to mostly hide behind one of the tombstones. She wasn't sure that rule applied to that guy with the red skin and weird facial hair... and it'd be embarrassing to die again while sneaking to attend her own funeral.

They'd come. She wasn't sure they would. And she knew part of the reason was because this was being watched... that the death of her teenage other-self was a setup by Reality to get rid of her, since she'd refused to leave. All the hers shared the same mind and memories, unlike everyone else she knew, but Lucy was the next oldest, and too young to even try to join the Titans.

But they'd come anyway. They were allowed to remember her for this, even if it was to say goodbye. And when the others - including current team members she'd never even really met - had wandered away except for Donna... he'd shown up too.

"Jason! I didn't expect to see you at anyone's funeral, let alone Duela's... ... I mean, you barely even knew her."

Haha! Oh, sister, if only you knew how funny that was!

"I knew her well enough to try to save her, and feel like crap when I couldn't."

Sorry 'bout that, Jaybird. Love ya bunches anyway, no matter what.

"Besides, checking out funerals is kind of a hobby for me... I even had one once, remember?"

Hahahaha! I know! I brought flowers! And I'd've brought you a shovel, too...

Donna hadn't been as amused. "Go on."

"All right... after she died, it got me thinking about what that alien said... About how Duela wasn't even supposed to be in this reality in the first place, you know? And neither am I... I mean, if not for that whole mess with Bizarro Lex Luthor, or whatever, I'd still be dead. And then there's you, Donna... No one's ever been sure about your past... not even you. Maybe you're not supposed to be here, either. I guess I just wanted to be around someone else who might know how it feels... to be living on borrowed time."

Duela smiles at Mordred. "I know how hard it is for you to be close to people, what with about half what you are making you register humans as tasty snacks... so I just want to let you know how much I appreciate you being here. I.. I think I'll be ok now. And when Jason gets out, he's going to need me. Even if it's just 'he's gonna need me to hold him down so he doesn't shoot Daddy...'" She laughs at this and shakes her head, making sure to let her mom know, "Last I heard he's still kinda sore about that whole crowbar thing."

"Oh, well, your dad's still making up for that time he shot me off in a rocket, too," Jeannie says with a fit of giggles. "So we'll just have to think of something."

Edited Date: 2017-12-17 05:12 am (UTC)

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I’m doin’ my best not ta bite anyone who doesn’t deserve it, sai. No matter how good I’m thinkin’ that you’d be.

*He lets go of her carefully, trying to stop thinking about what she’s reminded him of.* Have ya summat ta eat by any chance?

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Duela chuckles. "You shouldn't eat clowns, anyway... I've heard we taste funny." But since she only has the candy she brought, she looks to her mom.

"I oughtta ask if you've got requests, but I'm pretty sure I can guess what's gonna make the top of the list," Jeannie says. Still, she has a sort of understanding with the chaotic nature of this place, and could likely make something randomly appear.

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*He chuckles slightly, but nods about the guess.* I cry thy pardon, but I have got demon blood.

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"Ya can't help genetics," Jeannie says with a Harley-ish grin and a chuckle. "All you can help is what you do with the hand you've been dealt... and some of us get more wild cards than others. I know in at least one of those timelines, baby girl here was born with green hair." She giggles and nudges Duela, who makes a bit of a show of looking more embarrassed than she actually is.

Duela's Aunt Evie had had to dye her hair in that timeline, what with a turned-evil Superman who might well have killed her if he'd found out the Joker had a daughter.

Jeannie seems to look off at nothing for a bit, poking at the air as if there's something there. Then she gives the nothing-something a little tug... and a slightly mangled corpse in a police uniform drops out of thin air onto a nearby couch.

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*He blinks at it a moment--and then a great spider is crouched upon the offering, fangs in its throat.* (Thankee-sai for the meal. Did ya make it out of nothin'? There's no thought ta be found in it, just food.)

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"Honestly, I don't know if I make things here or just... pull them out of all the leftover bits from stories or something." Jeannie says, wriggling her fingers and looking at them before she shrugs. "It's kinda a chaos thing, so it works better the less I understand how it works."

Duela, for her part, doesn't seem phased by any of this, from the suddenly appearing corpse to the giant spider dining on it. She thinks it's great that her mom can make food appear for her friend without all those tricky moral issues.

Edited Date: 2018-05-17 08:09 pm (UTC)

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(Whichever's the case, I be thankful ta thee.)

*He does his best to eat quickly, for all that she's unfazed. It just seems the polite thing to do.*

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