Chapter 35: Bilingual Revelation
The shatter of ceramic was unnaturally loud in the warm kitchen. Brown liquid pooled across the worn floorboards, creeping toward the legs of the table. Harley didn’t even glance at the broken mug. Her blue eyes were wide, fixed on Harmony, her mouth slightly agape.
Across the room, Ivy stood frozen by the counter, a vine that had been reaching for a coffee cup hovering motionlessly in the air. The gentle hum of the radio, playing some old surf rock, seemed to stretch and distort in the sudden silence.
Harmony, perched on a stool by the window, simply held the phone to her ear, completely unaware of the seismic shift she had just caused. The ocean breeze ruffled her curly brown hair.
“Sí, sí, estoy bien. No te preocupes,” she said into the phone, her voice softening into a melodic, effortless Spanish that was entirely new to them. She laughed, a light, musical sound that was somehow different from the shy giggles they were used to. “¿En serio? ¡Qué cabrona! No, no le digas nada a mamá.”
Harley finally found her voice, a low, disbelieving whisper. “What the fuck.”
Ivy’s vine retracted slowly, coiling back around her wrist like a startled serpent. Her green eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in pure, unadulterated shock. They had seen her naked, tasted her, felt her come apart in their hands. They knew the tiny scar on her knee from a childhood fall, the way she hummed in her sleep, the specific sound she made when Harley’s fingers found just the right spot. They knew the scared, overwhelmed girl who had clung to them in the labyrinthine halls of Arkham. They did not know this.
Harmony’s conversation continued, a rapid-fire exchange of affectionate sisterly insults and updates. “Claro que me acuerdo de eso. Fue el verano más aburrido de mi vida.” She listened for a moment, a genuine, easy smile playing on her lips. “Okay, okay. Te quiero también. Adiós.”
She ended the call and placed the phone gently on the table, the screen darkening. Only then did she seem to notice the atmosphere. Her smile faltered as she took in Harley’s shattered mug, the spilled coffee, the utterly stunned expressions on both their faces.
“What?” she asked, her voice small again, reverting to the Harmony they knew. “What’s wrong?”
“You…” Harley began, pointing a trembling finger at the phone. “You just… what was that?”
“That was my sister, Lola,” Harmony said, confusion knitting her brows together. “She just called to—“
“In Spanish,” Ivy interrupted, her voice low and measured. She took a step forward, the floorboards creaking under her weight. “You were speaking Spanish.”
Harmony blinked. “Yeah? So?”
“So?” Harley echoed, a bark of disbelieving laughter bursting from her. “So? Rabbit, you never once… not a single ‘hola’ or ‘gracias’ or ‘donde está la biblioteca’ in the six months we’ve known you! You acted like you barely understood English half the time!”
“I never acted like that,” Harmony protested, a faint blush rising on her cheeks. “You just… never asked.”
The simplicity of the statement hung in the air, more devastating than any complex lie. The scent of coffee was suddenly cloying. Ivy crossed her arms, the leaves on her shoulders rustling softly.
“We’ve shared a bed,” Ivy said, her tone dangerously calm. “We’ve shared our bodies. Our pasts. You let me believe you were monolingual.”
“I’m not!” Harmony’s defensiveness was rising, matching their shock. “My abuela raised me and my sister until I was ten. She didn’t speak a word of English. What was I supposed to do, not talk to her?”
Harley stared, the pieces clicking into a place that felt entirely wrong. The quiet, introverted girl they’d pulled into their orbit had a whole other person living inside her. A person who laughed and cursed and shared secrets in a language they couldn’t understand.
“You have a whole family,” Harley said, the words tasting strange. “A sister. A grandma. You never mentioned them.”
“You never asked about my life before,” Harmony shot back, her hazel eyes glistening. “You asked about Arkham. You asked what I saw in the shadows. You never asked about… about my quinceañera, or the stupid fights I had with Lola over who got the last concha, or… or anything normal.”
The truth of it was a physical blow. They had consumed her present, her madness, her body, with a voracious hunger, assuming her past was as blank and traumatized as their own. They had made her in their image—a creature of Arkham, of the night, of their shared, twisted love. They never considered she had a sun-drenched childhood tucked away.
Ivy moved then, stepping over the spilled coffee until she was standing directly in front of Harmony. She didn’t touch her. She just looked down, her gaze intense, searching.
“What else don’t we know?” Ivy asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Harmony held her gaze, a new, unfamiliar strength squaring her shoulders. The girl who had whispered about nectar under a desk was gone, replaced by someone older, more complex.
“Lots of things,” Harmony said, her voice steady. “You want to know what my favorite subject was in school? It was biology. I wanted to be a botanist. Like you.”
Ivy’s breath hitched. The admission was a perfectly aimed dart.
“I was top of my class,” Harmony continued, her eyes flicking to Harley. “And I can swear in five languages. The things I could call you, Harl, you wouldn’t even know you were being insulted.”
A slow, wicked grin spread across Harley’s face, the shock giving way to a thrilling, dark curiosity. This was better. This was so much more interesting.
“Yeah?” Harley purred, stepping closer, ignoring the sticky puddle on the floor. “Teach me.”
Harmony looked between them, the vulnerable girl and the hidden polyglot warring in her expression. The mystery of her was no longer a simple, sad story; it was a deep, uncharted ocean.
“Maybe I will,” she said softly. “But you have to ask.”
The silence in the kitchen was thick, broken only by the hum of the old radio and the distant crash of waves. Ivy was the first to move, her vines retreating fully as she stepped closer to Harmony, her green eyes filled with a dawning, fierce curiosity that eclipsed her initial shock.
“Ask?” Ivy repeated, her voice low. “Alright. I’m asking.”
A slow, genuine smile touched Harmony’s lips, erasing the last traces of her defensive posture. She looked from Ivy’s intense gaze to Harley’s wide, anticipatory one.
“Okay,” Harmony said softly. She patted the wooden tabletop beside her. “Sit.”
Harley scrambled onto the table, sending a saltshaker skittering, her legs swinging like an excited child’s. Ivy leaned against the counter, arms still crossed, but her posture was no longer hostile—it was raptly attentive.
“Start with something good,” Harley demanded, leaning forward. “Teach me the bad words first. The really good ones.”
Harmony let out a real laugh, the same musical one they’d heard on the phone. “Of course that’s where you’d want to start.” She thought for a second, her head tilted. “Okay. If you’re really, really annoyed with someone, you could call them a ‘pendejo’.”
“Pen-dey-ho,” Harley sounded out, slowly at first, then faster. “Pendejo. Heh. I like the way that feels in my mouth. It’s spicy.”
“It is spicy,” Harmony agreed, her eyes twinkling. She then turned her gaze to Ivy. “But maybe we should start with something else. Something… nicer.”
Ivy didn’t smile, but the intensity in her eyes softened a fraction. “What would you suggest?”
Harmony held her gaze. “My abuela used to call me ‘mi corazón’. It means ‘my heart’.”
The room seemed to grow still. The simple phrase hung in the air, imbued with a tenderness that felt entirely new. It was a piece of her childhood, offered up to them like a gift.
“Mi corazón,” Ivy repeated, the foreign syllables clumsy but deliberate on her tongue. She uncrossed her arms, her hand resting on the countertop. A small, seeking tendril of ivy unfurled from her wrist and stretched across the space to gently brush against Harmony’s fingers.
Harley watched the exchange, her usual chaotic energy momentarily subdued by the raw intimacy of it. “That’s… real pretty, Harm,” she murmured, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
“Now you,” Harmony said, turning to Harley with a playful glint returning to her eyes. “A good one for you is ‘preciosa’. It means ‘precious’.” She smirked. “Ironic, right?”
“Hey!” Harley laughed, swatting at her lightly. “I can be precious! I’m a fucking treasure.” She tried the word. “Pre-see-oh-sa. Yeah, that’s me. Your preciosa pendeja.”
They all laughed then, a real, shared sound that cut through the remaining tension. The spilled coffee on the floor was forgotten. For a moment, they were just three people in a sunlit kitchen, learning the shape of each other’s secrets.
Harmony reached out, taking one of Harley’s hands and placing her other over Ivy’s vine-wrapped wrist. “See? It’s not so scary.”
Ivy looked down at their connected hands, then back up at Harmony’s face. The botanist’s expression was unreadable for a long moment, her thumb stroking the back of Harmony’s hand.
“What else did your abuela call you?” Ivy asked quietly, her question a key turning in a lock.
Harmony’s smile softened, becoming something more private and fragile. She looked down at their joined hands, her thumb tracing the delicate leaves coiled around Ivy’s wrist.
“She had a name for everything,” Harmony began, her voice taking on a distant, remembering quality. “The old stray cat that came around was ‘el diablito’. My sister, when she was being dramatic, was ‘mi tormenta’.”
She lifted her gaze, finding Ivy’s intense green eyes and then Harley’s wide, blue ones. The words felt like pulling a deeply buried treasure from the sand.
“But for me,” she whispered, the air in the kitchen growing still. “When I was sad, or scared, or when she tucked me in at night… she always called me ‘mi vida’.”
The Spanish syllables landed in the quiet room, lush and heavy with meaning. It was more than a nickname; it was a claim, a breath of soul.
Harley’s swinging legs stilled. “What’s it mean?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically hushed.
Harmony held Ivy’s gaze, letting the translation pass directly between them, a raw and stunning truth. “It means ‘my life’.”
The confession hung there, utterly disarming. The girl they thought they’d consumed had just handed them the name her grandmother used for her, the one that meant she was someone’s entire world long before Arkham.
Ivy’s vines, which had been loosely curled, went completely slack. Her sharp, analytical mind, always categorizing and dissecting, seemed to short-circuit. There was no science for this.
A single, perfect red rosebud pushed itself from the woody stem near her collarbone, its petals unfurling in the silent, sun-drenched air.
Harley didn’t joke. She didn’t try to pronounce it. She just slid off the table and wrapped her arms around Harmony from behind, burying her face in her curly hair. Her hold was tight, almost desperate.
“Jesus, Harm,” she mumbled into the brown curls, her voice thick.
Ivy finally moved. She stepped forward, into the space their bodies created, and cupped Harmony’s face in both hands. Her touch was reverent.
She didn’t try to say the words back. She just leaned her forehead against Harmony’s, her eyes closed, and breathed her in. The rose on her shoulder brushed Harmony’s cheek, soft as a secret.
The three of them stood fused together in the patch of morning light, the broken cup and spilled coffee forgotten on the floor. The old radio crackled, the song dying into static.
In the new quiet, the only sound was the ocean, a constant, breathing presence just beyond the window. It felt like a beginning, or an ending, or both at once.
Ivy pulled back just enough to look at Harmony. Her green eyes were deep, bottomless pools.
“Mi vida,” she said. The words were rough, unpracticed, but devastatingly sure.