Archive of Our Own ^beta

The problem is how many things went wrong at the same time.

Honestly: if it had been any other time it wouldn’t have been this bad. If Harley had been any other place, if the circumstances had been any different, he would've been able to handle it better, clearer, sharper, colder. He knows he would have, but when his body had been so afraid for its well being all it could do was scream, and he hates himself for it. He should have been better. He should have been better.

As it is, the deep pain in his ribs every time he breathes and on his skin every time he brushes against his clothes is a quiet, constant reminder–a murmur of his name in a familiar, nasal voice preventing his muscles to relax, his mind to clear up, his memory to compartmentalise the events of that day.

He remembers the panic: the loud alarm going off like at the start of each reset, only this time accompanied by something else; everything twisting and turning and near-immediate searing pain. The room was not the same as he remembered, and the burning in his chest wasn't allowing him to focus enough to understand what was happening. In a matter of seconds nothing was familiar, nothing felt right, and the cool-headedness he so surely usually relied on abandoned him, leaving only confusion and fear in its place.

And then he’d heard Lancaster. 

Harley’s always been afraid of death, for as long as he remembers. He has tried to tie it back to something specific, but he’s come to the conclusion that an anxious mind will always find something to be in control of, to know down to the smallest detail so that it will always know what to do, when to do it and how to do it to prevent it. 

His is death. He’s spent hours, days, nights staying up with a bottle in his hand thinking about it, ruminating endlessly. On his worst days, he’s checked every statistic about the likelihood of incidents for every single method of travelling before going to school–and later, work. When he was eight he’d check the news obsessively until his mothers came home from their weekly date night, and even though he’d try to be sneaky about it, they’d know, and it would take quite a while for him to fall asleep, their hands running through his unruly hair. As he fell into unconsciousness, all he’d be able to think about was if death would feel anything like the warmth of their fingers. 

Harley doesn’t know why he’s found his way to a workplace so full of suffering, risk, and loss. He doesn’t know what it says about him that he spends his days thinking about the end of his life in the place where it’s most likely not only to come for him, but to do it by showing its teeth and swallowing him whole. What he knows is that he needs to know death, he needs to fear death, and he needs to do it with a clear head if he wants to have any chance against it at all.

He’s never been more afraid than when Lancaster showed him the scalpel.

When he’d heard him through the door, his head was not working right: everything was blurry, confused, painful and intense, and at the sound of a friendly voice, relief washed over him in a more encompassing way than it would have had his brain been working normally, nearly drowning him–and in the same way, the fear had become pure terror at the sight of the small knife and the sound of the weird, unusual tilt to Lancaster’s voice.

A few months ago, he remembers Orion was telling him about the weapon effect. Our mind can’t do anything but look at it and focus on it, literally, we’ll forget everything else, every other detail, he’d said. It’s always been interesting, always– moved me, in a way? At that moment, we’re so afraid we don’t think about what’s smart. All we want to do is survive.

Harley’s making a little list of the clearer memories from that day, and at the top is the vivid, sharp image of the scalpel held in Lancaster’s hand. He’s never been more afraid of death, and he’s never been less prepared for it, not like this: not attacking and devouring him when he least expects, not as a bullet through his shin, alien and poisonous; but as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, aware of what is most intimately close to his heart.

He hates himself for it.

There is, however, a certain comfort in fear for fear’s sake. Pure, unfiltered; the memory itself may be blurred and confused but the emotion–Harley can see it and feel it and connect to it, detailed and strong. It’s what came after that’s the real problem.

Harley had begged and whimpered, and Lancaster had still cut him open. That would have been fine. That would have been fine, because it would have meant his closest friend truly wasn’t in control of himself, he wasn’t choosing to do it. If that had been it, Harley could have dealt with it: he could have gone through what he needed, gotten used to Lancaster being himself again, forgotten about it in a year’s time. No big deal.

Everything had changed the moment Lancaster’s hand had hesitated as he’d been making the first cut. 

He’d been so close Harley could smell the cologne he usually made fun of. His chest crushed under the heavy cabinet, his right arm shaking and being held down by Orion’s strong hand: with Harley twisting his head so he could see as much as possible and Lancaster hunched over him, he’d been able to see everything, but most of all Harley knows Lancaster, and devastatingly he knows what to look for, even when he isn’t trying. 

And he’d seen it. He’d seen him hesitate. 

The panic came back tenfold, as intense as a punch in the stomach, the pain unbearable and his mind swimming–was Lancaster still himself, after all? Was his friend trying to hurt him? His brain incapable of complex thought, his eyes filling up with tears of frustration, betrayal and something else, his throat dry and his voice broken and tired from the screaming: Orion, he’d said. Please, look at me, please.

And Lancaster had hesitated again. His eyes watering up. And then–

“Orion,” Harley says. There is almost no fight left in him, and unlike a good ten minutes ago he can barely remember what was prompting him to scream so loud. His throat hurts.  “I’m scared.”

“I know. I know. Let me just work on it.” Another cut. Another cut. The pain is hidden behind an opaque curtain by now, an echo of what it really is, but Harley doesn’t think about it. He can’t think straight, can’t remember anything, can’t think of what he wanted to do, what was happening just a minute ago; all he knows is that there are dozens of red lines into his arm and the dizzy, painful sensation is moving up and up, towards his shoulder. As he pushes up Harley’s sleeve, almost tenderly, Orion shakes; the more Harley speaks, the more he trembles. “You’re h- hurting me. It hurts.”

“I just need to help”, says Lancaster, and his voice trembles with him. His hand on Harley’s arm is big and warm.

“Orion”, he says for what feels like the thousandth time, “I don’t want to die.”

“You won't- I just need to-” and he falters. Harley feels like he’s in a dream, but this pushes through the haze: Lancaster’s hand hesitating once again, stopping for just a second more, Lancaster’s eyes turning teary, wide and afraid instead of steady and unfocused; they travel to his face and finally, finally look straight at him for a second. And it’s him. It’s Lanc. Nothing of this feels real, nothing of this is real, but if it is, Harley must be in hell. 

He lifts his bloody, tired arm, Lancaster letting him just for this moment, and brings his hand to his friend’s face. He says something, or tries to; something that is lost to him the moment it leaves his own lips. He leaves a smudge of blood on his cheek, and then Orion–or something inside him–starts crying. “Hold onto me”, he says, in a tone that’s not quite the one he’s been hearing for twenty minutes, no detached coldness to be found, instead something like a controlled sorrow – but it isn’t his Lanc either. “I’ll fix it, Ed.” He says, “I love you.”

Ed doesn’t know what he’s dreaming and what he’s seeing. His body’s finally shutting down, a part of him traitorously finding a sick comfort in those words. With what little voice he still has, he says Orion’s name and begs and begs–he doesn’t know for what anymore: for him to stop, for him to keep going, to go deeper and make it all go away, for him to mark him once and for all, for him to hold him tighter and to interlace their fingers and hold him through it. He keeps going and going, until he can’t move his mouth anymore, but Orion just takes his hand, slowly pushes it to the floor again, squeezes it, and gets back to work. Harley squeezes back and the smallest, softest part of him weeps; Lanc’s fingers are warm. 

It had taken Klein another three minutes to arrive, and as they burned off the fourteen dash-ones on Harley’s arm he’d been passed out. He remembers close to nothing about what happened immediately after: noise, voices, panic. He remembers containment (even before checking his ribs, someone mentioned containment) and the, quite frankly, pity they’d taken on him letting him out, but considering none of the dash ones had taken–none of the lines were straight, none were made lucid–he deserved a break.

He remembers the visits and pain and then he was in his room being ordered to stay still, move very slowly, and keep an eye on his arm as if he would have been able to do anything that wasn’t looking at it. For the remaining 30 days until the end of the cycle, and up until now–the physical evidence of that day gone and all that remains is on his body and in his nightmares–all Harley has done has been looking at his cuts. He’s tried to rely on his steadfastness, and when that didn’t work he’s tried with detachment, and when that didn’t work he’s tried with hate. 

None worked. There isn’t a right way for dealing with what he feels, with the relentlessly alternating thoughts and images going through his mind: when he thinks he’s just about to fall into apathy he sees his own blood spilling out in a shaky line, and when he thinks hot hatred has just about claimed him he sees a tear rolling down Orion’s cheek and a warm hand in his. 

He knows they should talk.

Lancaster’s been out of containment for a few days. Harley's mind hasn’t had time to stop and cope, the added grief of Love’s situation a muted pain of a different kind which makes his numbness worse than it already is: he knows now when his brain is trying to disconnect him from the pain, to find something, anything to distract him; though he’s aware it isn’t healthy, it’s always a comfort he’s really tempted to give in to. 

What happened with Lancaster is, literally, still an open wound, but despite the fact that he isn't ready to face it, he misses him. God, he misses him. When the soft place inside him dares to speak up, when the wedge drawn between his brain and his heart is briefly sewn back together, he thinks about how courageous and wonderful and brave his friend is, and how compared to him Harley’s nothing more than a coward.

Case in point, it’s Lancaster who seeks him out, knocks on his office door–he never used to do it–and lets himself in. And that’s when Harley remembers why he didn’t feel ready: the moment he sees him his stomach churns in a confused and nauseating amalgamation of affection and terror. A force pulling him closer, another screaming at him to run out of the room. 

He can’t suppress the expression he makes and he knows Lancaster has seen it.

“That bad, huh?” He says. “I’m- I’m going to sit down, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

Orion sits across from Harley, not as close as he usually would. He does so slowly and a little awkwardly, and Harley doesn’t know if it’s for his sake or because the burns hurt all over. He really doesn’t care for either option.

“You look like shit”, Lancaster says. His voice sounds different–it sounds like it’s his again. “Understandably.”

“It’s been,” Harley mutters, “a very, very long couple of cycles.”

A pause. “Listen, Ed.”

Ed. Harley can’t help but inhale sharply at the memory. His brain is running very, very fast, and at the same time everything is in slow motion. 

“...okay. Okay. I know you- God, how do I even do this,” Harley isn’t looking at Orion, he can’t. But he knows he’s leaning forward like he always does at his desk, when he needs to get into a delicate topic, and pushing his hand through his hair like he does when he’s frustrated. “I- listen. I know, I know- it’s so, so fucked up. It’s dozens of levels of fucked up. But I’m, I’m so tired and I miss you. I know. I know what you’re feeling but I want to- I want to make it up to you and I want you to- talk to me.”

Harley needs twice the usual time to process everything. He’s got his hands over his eyes. He takes two deep breaths, like Orion taught him once. “Okay.” Oh, yes, he is tired. “I am so, so mad, Lancaster.”

“I know. I-”

“I’m so mad that you didn’t talk to me. I’m furious you did this to yourself and let yourself hurt me. You need to know. But for some fucking reason,” he takes the hands off. “I don't care that you hurt me.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Can you- you don’t like looking at me now, huh?”

There is no judgement–and no lie. Harley’s trying, but he only gets waves of nausea at the thought. “Not really.”

The truth is–he has looked at Lancaster. A lot. He’s watched him through the cameras, nearly everyday, at least twice or thrice; first out of apprehension, anxiety, then out of something resembling spite, anger, ready to catch him in the act, then out of something else he can’t quite put his finger on: something that makes him watch as Lancaster spills a little bit of his coffee, makes this aborted movement with his hand that he knows so well, so intimately; he can hear the accompanying groan come out of his mouth perfectly, and that, for a second, makes his chest ache worse than his ribs and itch worse than his skin.

“If it makes you feel any better, I can’t stop seeing it either. Getting in this room today was a- definitely a challenge.”

“Mmh.”

A beat. “Did I sound different?”

Harley has to close his eyes. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Colder. Driven, but- unfocused. Except, um.”

“...later?”

“Later.”

“Hm.”

“Do you remember it?”

He hears Lancaster shift in his chair and let out a breath. “It’s weird. I do remember most of it, but it’s like someone else’s memories- or, or maybe like someone was kind of- controlling me? No. I was- I was in control, but it’s like I was just… someone else.” 

Harley fights off the nausea and looks at Lanc’s hands. He shrugs. “Mine feels like a dream.”

“Yeah, makes sense. You must have been pretty out of it.”

“You can say ‘depersonalised’, I know what that means.”

Lancaster smirks, he sees it in the corner of his eye, and that in and of itself is devastating. Harley hasn’t seen him smirk like that in what feels like years, but are actually around two months, and it makes something warm up in his chest. “Someone remembered his lessons.”

“I told you, they’re not ‘lessons’ if you’re just talking psychology at me for two hours.”

Lancaster would usually quip back, but he doesn’t. Instead he sobers up. “What do you remember?”

A pause. “I don’t know if it feels…” he looks for the right words. “...normal to tell you.”

“Would it help if I went first?”

“That’s- not a bad idea, actually.”

Lanc sighs. “I remember this- thought, right? I remember being- being so sure that was the answer. That doing it would actually help and save us. I don’t remember what I would write down, or work on, or- or anything, I’d just do it, and this certainty was so persistent that-” he huffs, frustrated. “Listen, I know how this is going to sound, but I promise I’m being genuine. That wasn’t- me, in the sense that my reasoning wasn’t my own. My decisions were influenced by an idea that wasn’t… right, that wasn’t mine, like an intrusive thought or a parasite, and I never would have had it, so- so in that sense, that wasn’t me. But everything else was. And- and when I was so sure I had a solution, something to help us all with, the first person I wanted to help– the first person I wanted to share it with was you.”

Harley smiles, despite himself. “Lancaster, that’s really fucked up.” 

Lancaster chuckles. It’s breathy. “I know.”

“You know what I felt when I heard you come into the room? This huge, overwhelming relief. I know, you could say it would have happened with anyone, fuck, my ribs were bruised, I was concussed, but- hearing your voice…”

“Harley, god, I’m-”

“I know”, he says, firm.

They’re getting close to what they both really, really don’t want to talk about. Harley realises he’s scared–he’s terrified of it, but Lancaster speaks up again, breaks the spell, and it’s so, so much softer than he thought it'd be. “I remember the blood,” he says. “Sorry.”

“I know.”

“Like, I remember the physical- the things I felt on my body best. And I g- I guess that’s been the worst, the worst part of it so far. The first time I had a nightmare about it I could... feel it all again, and I just woke up and threw up.”

“You have nightmares about it?”

“Oh, no worries. They recently went from every single night to every other night. I’m so winning against insomnia.” He smiles. Harley can hear it. He remembers how Lancaster smiles–it’s not the most handsome, it’s a little crooked, but he has a dimple in his right cheek and it’s always earnest. It used to make him weak in the knees. “I have them too.”

“Hmm. I figured.”

“I don’t look that bad.”

“You never look that bad, Harley.” It’s so soft that Harley can almost be entirely convinced it’s his friend sitting in front of him. 

He feels like he’s pulling out his own teeth with no anesthesia. “Do you remember anything of what we-”, his voice fails him. “What we- we said.”

A long pause. “I don’t really remember you screaming. I was so convinced that it was good for you, so- so sure, I didn’t- it didn’t, um, register?”, and then, after a moment, “up until– well.”

Harley sighs, shakily. “Yeah. I figured.”

“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse, but- but I tried. I did try to-” 

“I know. I could tell.”

“It was like- like fighting with someone stronger than me. Trying and still knowing they’re way bigger and that feeling of- helplessness. I’m so, so sorry.”

Orion’s hand hesitating. The tear running down his cheek, down his nose. “That’s my worst one. That part. Because if you’d only been-” His panicked eyes. Not something else, but not his Lanc’s either. “if you’d only been a dash three, then-”

Orion, once, had told Ed about the alien hand syndrome. He’d explained the medical causes of it, a mess of neuropsychiatric jargon Harley couldn’t make heads or tails of, but he’d gotten the gist of it; enough to come to the conclusion that he was terrified of it. The idea of looking at your body and seeing it move without you willing it. The concept of it choosing to do something you would never do, and, most importantly: the silent terror in the realisation your hand does not, in fact, have a mind of its own. It is you.

It is just you.

“Ed, can you look at me?”

And Ed is tired. He does. 

It’s his Lanc, alright. A little worse for wear, and god, what is he wearing? And he’s the best thing he’s seen in an entire fucking month. A little knot inside his chest loosens.

“There we go,” Lanc says. He looks him in the eyes, clear and his. “Just me this time.”

Harley doesn’t speak for a minute- the moment he opens his mouth he’s going to cry. But he does look at him, and Lanc’s eyes never unfocus from his.

When it’s safe to do so, “do you know what else I remember?”

“What?”

“You need to moisturize.”

Lancaster bursts out laughing. “Fuck off.”

“That was the driest hand I’ve ever held in my life. Thank god for the blood.”

“Oh, jesus-”

Harley smiles. “How have I never noticed? I would have literally forced hand cream on you.”

“Ugh, you and your skincare. And, well, it’s not like we really hold- hold hands often, do we?”

A moment passes. 

“Not the best first time, was it.”

“I’d- no, I’d say it isn’t.”

“And we’re stuck with that, huh.”

“Alas.”

“Tragic.” Harley’s head is in his hand. He’s so tired. But for the first time in a good while, he feels really close to being happy. He smiles at Lancaster, who’s already smiling back.

Orion offers a hand on the table–palm up. And when Harley slides his own hand closer, slowly reaching out, brushing his fingers, feeling his pulse, it isn’t lost on him how his friend stays perfectly still.

“...I’m getting you some of my hand cream.”

“”Oh, god, you’re so-”

“But you’re back to your normal sweatiness. At least.”

A pause. “Yeah?”

Harley nods. He finally locks his hand and Lanc’s, clumsy and weird, a couple of their fingers interlacing; he squeezes, and only then does Lancaster squeeze back. “You’re really not sleeping much, huh?”

Lancaster’s smile turns a little bitter, and he shrugs. His thumb is brushing soothing circles into Harley’s hand. “Yeah. And you’re drinking.”

“Hey.”

“I’m not judging. Really. It would have been very, very weird for anyone not to do that after what happened.”

“...well.”

“Shut up, I’m making excuses for you.”

Harley chuckles. “I don’t want to. Drink, I mean.”

“Then don’t. And when you’re too- too into your head, you can come find me.”

“It’s… Lanc, it’s not that I don’t want to-”

“Or Klein, or Raddagher. I know it’s still- it’s fucked, I know. But when you want to, I- I’d like that.”

“...will you come talk to me when you can’t sleep?”

Harley absolutely hates how vulnerable he sounds–but he also doesn’t think Lancaster will care, and he stops caring too, a little bit. 

“And have a slumber party?”

“We can watch Disney movies.”

“But we have the bad, straight-to-dvd sequels! For some reason!”

“You say that like it won’t be funnier. Ever watched Cinderella 3?”

Lancaster lets out his nice, relaxed, happy laugh. Harley drinks it in.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Ed. Okay.”

Harley focuses on the circles being drawn into his skin–the softness, the care. How the hand isn’t pushing down and holding him still, it’s not hot and trembling: now it’s just warm and a little sweaty.