Poison Ivy had an adorable little cottage in the middle of the woods where she loved to go to be alone. Now that Spring was in full force, she was spending quite a bit of time to herself in her hideout-away-from-home. She walked easily through the thick forest with a little smile on her lips, feeling the breeze in her hair and enjoying the silence.
There were no visitors, out here. No pesky herbivores either. Not even the smallest and shrillest of birds. Very, very few creatures dared to come this close to Arkham Asylum.
Nearly two years before, Ivy had escaped her first and only stint in the sprawling Victorian building, and she had taken every chance to mock it ever since. Soon after she got out Ivy had discovered the vacant wood and set up shop, even if ‘shop’ was little more than four walls and a thatched roof over a single camping chair. It was quiet, it was close enough for her to stick her tongue out at Arkham, and it was all hers.
There was a bounce in Ivy’s step as she got close to her hideaway, the sunlight dappling through the trees and shining in her flaming hair. But a few yards away from the cottage, she stopped short.
“Oh no…” she muttered, ducking behind a tree and studying the situation with a deep furrow in her white brow. “No way.”
Two men were standing guard outside her door, both sweltering in heavy black uniforms, both armed with impressive guns, and both looking around nervously into the silent trees. Obviously somebody’s goons, but whose? Ivy glared as she watched them, grinding her teeth to see one casually shredding the grass by dragging his foot up and back along the ground. They’d be easy enough to deal with, Ivy knew, but someone else had to be involved in invading her sanctuary.
Then Ivy caught sight of the face in her window, and her anger doubled. “Oh no.”
0-0-0-0-0
Once, not very long ago, he had been handsome, respected, looked up to. An admirable public figure. A crusader for justice.
Now he sat on a canvas chair in a shack in the woods, a ruined hand over the ruined right side of his face, brooding on his ruined life.
“Hey boss, Mister, uh, Mister Two-Face.” He turned his good face toward the goon with a glare. “There’s a…well, Buzz thought he heard somethin’ outside, like a person maybe. Want us to check around?”
Two-Face flipped the coin in his fingers a few times before launching it into the air. He caught it in his bad hand and laid it on the back of his good. The face of George Washington was crossed out angrily, covered in scratches. “No,” he answered. “Just leave it. Can’t be that important.”
“If you say so, boss.” The goon stepped back out the door, leaving him alone again.
He was alone, he told himself. There had been doubts, these last two years since the accident. He scoffed. Some people thought that it was so much gentler, so much less distressing to call it an accident. But he preferred to face the brutal truth. It had been his death—and his birth. Duality in action.
The man’s right side was that of any other normal, relatively handsome man. Clear, lightly-weathered skin, smooth lips that used to show an easy smile, hair neat and combed, a deep, honest brown eye. The fingers on his right hand were long and nimble, looking as though he had never seen a day’s hard work in his life. But his left side was that of a monster. This hand was corded and bony, this skin the same pale, mottled, greenish color as the left side of his face. This eye was red, these lips distorted, this hair burned away.
His two selves were as unalike as his two hands.
Two-Face frowned with both sides of his mouth. He couldn’t say when he’d first noticed the Split in his mind; it had been far too long ago, and far too subtle. But he could remember very clearly the day that the Split became uncontrollable. Some nights, his head still ached with phantom pain—his skin on fire, eye burning, hand blistering where it had shot up to protect him...but worse, far worse was the feeling that his mind had been split in two, the blinding, sickening, white pain all along his skull…
He shook himself back into the present. That had been nearly two years ago now, and no amount of medicine since had been able to help him. He had been to all corners of the globe looking for a cure—for his face or for the Split—but nowhere was there anything to be done. All he could do was accept it and move on.
Now he sat in a hut, planning revenge—on Gotham, in part; on people, in general. But most importantly, on her.
0-0-0-0-0
Ivy had retreated home to plan her attack. She paced around the floor of the house she had built over the toxic land, where she could at least be assured her privacy.
There was no mistaking that face, not after what had happened the last time Ivy had seen him. Harvey Dent. She grimaced.
She’d been there when it happened. In fact, it had been her fault that it happened at all. Ivy preferred to think of it as a triumph.
Ivy still fumed as she paced. “If it had been anyone but him,” she muttered, finally slumping into her chair.
Ivy would have been content just to get rid of anyone but Harvey Dent. If it were anyone else, she’d have just knocked out the goons and kicked the whole little group out of Gotham. But Harvey Dent was a special case. Harvey Dent had tried to send her to Arkham.
She took a deep breath and steepled her fingers. It had to be the right plan. Ivy laughed softly at her own thoughts, allowing herself a moment to feel silly and really play the villain. But if she had to indulge herself, there was no better victim. She might as well have fun with a grudge.
There needed to be a really good scheme involved in this. Ivy let her head fall back over the head of the chair and exhaled slowly. As much as she enjoyed a good plot, the really brilliant ones had never been her territory. The Joker was really the one who had that niche.
Ivy was just going to have to make do with her own techniques. She smiled as the idea started to form in her head, the grin spreading slowly across her poison-red lips.
“Oh yeah, that’ll do,” she said to herself, mentally running through lists of what she would need. “That’ll do very nicely.”
0-0-0-0-0
It had been a sweltering day. The old fans whirred from the courtroom ceiling, doing more to distribute the heat than to banish it. District Attorney Harvey Dent paced the limited room he had, his eyes never leaving Poison Ivy’s face except to examine the evidence he had in his hand. It was too easy. It would be too enjoyable. It was more than about time Ivy went behind bars.
She sat calmly on the other side of the courtroom, almost looking bored. She wasn’t sweating, or fidgeting, not even looking around the room. Just examining her nails.
This was going to be Harvey’s day. His greatest triumph yet. There wasn’t any question at all about Poison Ivy’s case. She was guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt—at least in the eyes of Harvey, and the media—and he smiled grimly to himself at the prospect of being the one to put her away for good. As DA, he’d had his share of criminals to get rid of, but never a name as big as Ivy, and never with the help of the Batman. This time, the trial was news, with reporters and press everywhere. All of the evidence was right there in his hand. Harvey Dent was the best lawyer that Gotham had seen in decades; there was no way that he could lose.
But then it had happened. Harvey no longer remembered what irrefutable point he was going to make. He only remembered picking up the sample of the acid that Ivy had used to destroy the façade of an environmentally unfriendly factory, and the faces of a good number of workers as well. One moment, he was walking up to the stand to question her about it. The next thing he knew, he had tripped—a small plant left carelessly in the corner had exploded with growth at Ivy’s orders, rushing across the courtroom floor and winding around Harvey’s ankles. Amid the shouting and the gasps, Harvey Dent’s life had ended.
The vial of acid had flown out of his hand, turning over in the air to spill its frothing contents onto Harvey’ face. He threw up his hand to try and block it, but not soon enough. The acid was already burning away at his hand, his hair, his cheek, his eye. He was screaming so loudly that he couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything but the faint sizzle of his burning skin. His hand was turning green, boils and blisters sprouting on the back; his eye had sealed itself shut in agony; his legs had buckled under him, his whole body giving into the pain.
But worst was what was going on inside his head: the Split was getting stronger by the moment, pulling apart from him, finally breaking away. All Harvey could see was a blinding whiteness, his mouth stretched into a chilling scream, until the pain became too much, and he had passed out…
0-0-0-0-0
Two-Face sat sprawled in Ivy’s tiny camping chair, idly flipping his two-faced coin into the air. That day had been his birth, as far as he was concerned. Born in pain and blood and screaming like everyone else, but able to remember it.
The coin came up and down, over and over, heads, heads, heads. Always a head, a face.
When he’d worked as a public defense lawyer what seemed like so long ago, Harvey had used a tailed coin to make his decisions. Back then he had to defend the guilty and the innocent alike, and Harvey Dent never lost a case. He had despised winning for the guilty. Whenever they had tried to make him take a client who he knew was in the wrong, Harvey would insist that they pick someone else. When they didn’t, he would make them flip a coin. Heads, Harvey, tails, some other soul. It became a joke in the office, Harvey’s coin. It was an arbitrary way to decide, but at least this way there was a chance that real justice would be served.
The two-faced quarter was still arbitrary, still such a random way to decide. But it had a more important job, now, even more important than handing out justice. These days, the coin decided which side of the Split was going to be in control.
Two-Face was beginning to form a question to ask the coin when he heard the commotion starting outside. The two lackeys he had hired were shouting obscenities, and he distinctly heard the sound of a gun going off. He didn’t have to flip to know that he had to go out there to see what was going on.
0-0-0-0-0
Ivy stood hidden in her bushes and trees and watched her carnage, hardly able to keep her laughter to herself. Coming back with a veritable army of her favorite forms of plant life had been a good idea; bringing the flower specially designed to spit its nectar into a man’s eye had been a stroke of genius.
She grinned as she looked on at her handiwork. The goons howled as strands of various vicious vines attacked them, some drawing painful sores over the skin they touched, some constricting their arms and legs to keep them from moving.
And then her cottage door burst open, and out stepped Two-Face. Ivy’s grin went even wider, and one of her more aggressive flowers sprang magpie-like for the glittering coin in Harvey’s hand.
Two-Face stifled a gasp as the coin flew into the air, reaching out to catch it before it hit the ground. Despite the vines creeping around his legs and the screams of his hired help, Harvey sighed in relief.
By now, Ivy had seen enough. With the confidence brought of the power she wielded, Ivy stepped out of hiding with her hands on her hips. The flowers and vines receded before her feet to give her room to walk, a couple slithering up her arm to nuzzle at her hand like pets.
It was worth every minute of rage and planning for Ivy to see the look on Harvey Dent’s face.
“Hello, Mr. Dent,” she said, beaming at him as he gaped at her. “Or can I call you Harvey? Or what about just ‘Trespassing’?”
The memories rushed to the front of his mind when he saw her face, the face that had laughed when his eye began to burn. “You.”
“Me,” Ivy agreed. “You know, somehow I thought that you’d made an effort to try and steal my little home here, but you do look so surprised to see me. Must have just stumbled blindly across it, hm?” She added with a wicked smile.
Two-face growled. The sound chased some of Ivy’s grin away; it was as if the acid that scalded his face had affected his voice as well. “Is this when you waste your time mocking me?”
“Oh please. Like you’re that important.” But Ivy was unnerved by the way that his reddened eye was watching her. “Get off my lawn, losers.”
While one of the goons had fallen, pinned and tangled in vines on the ground, the other had managed to keep some of his dignity, and remain upright. He fought his hand away from a snapping flower to pull out his gun. “Where do you want her, boss?”
Ivy laughed. “Sure, you have fun with that.”
Another green tendril twisted around the guard’s hand to jam the weapon, and a fragrant white flower blossomed in the barrel.
“Look Harv,” Ivy started, pacing around the clearing and focusing on his good eye, “I’m going to make this easy for you. Don’t know how bad that little accident scarred your brain.“ She didn’t pause at the snarl that Harvey let out. “I want you to pack up whatever little plot you’ve got going and get out.”
“And why do I do what you say?” he asked, his swollen lip curling up.
A creeper slid around Harvey’s neck to answer for her. “Let’s just say I got nothing against burning that other eye,” said Ivy, as a poisonously pink flower bloomed in front of his face, spitting nectar.
Harvey loosened a tightly-clenched fist to free his two-faced quarter, tearing his arm away from the vines with a mad strength.
“Oh what are you doing?” Ivy asked, laying a white hand on her hip out of annoyance.
“Gonna regret screwing with me you little…gonna wish you’d just killed me,” Two-face snarled, flipping the coin into the air. But at the first glint of sunlight on the silver, two leaves from yet another vine snapped together to catch the coin before it could fall.
“What are you gonna do, shatter me with probability?” Ivy smirked. “This is the brilliant lawyer who so very nearly put me away?”
Harvey grabbed for his quarter, and the plant grew out of his reach. “My coin!”
“This is just pathetic!” Ivy crossed the small clearing, stepping over her flowers and vines and the goon on the ground to get to her door. “Whatever, take it then.” The leaves parted, and Harvey’s coin fell to the ground. “I’m done with this.”
Two-Face stood silent, both eyes locked on the quarter as it fell. Ivy opened the door, preparing to slam it behind her.
With a barely-audible clink, the coin landed, good-face up.
Harvey stared down at it, bent to pick it up, and turned his back on Ivy and the house as he stood again. “Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me. I can’t wait to see you back in Arkham where you belong.”
“Yeah, have fun.” Ivy rolled her eyes, but stood in her doorway looking out as Harvey walked away.
When the mass of vines receded from the goon on the ground to let him crawl away, his partner reached for the working gun he’d left on the ground, tossing his blooming one away. “C’mere, sweetcakes, I gotta present to give ya!”
Before Ivy could make a move, Two-Face grabbed the front of his hireling’s shirt. “Shut up,” he said, and tossed the man roughly away. “We’re leaving.”
“But Boss—“
“I said we’re gone!” The snarl was back in his voice, and the goon’s protest quickly died away.
Within minutes, the three had all left. Ivy was alone in her cottage in the woods, with her plants, thoughts and memories for company.
0-0-0-0-0
In the thickest part of the chokingly humid night, Renee found herself finally starting to enjoy the feeling of swinging through the air. She wished that her cowl had a hole in back like Barbara’s to let her hair out to stream in the breeze, instead of keeping it tucked tight and hot next to her neck.
She swung past a man walking on the street below and stopped herself at the next fire escape to watch him. Something seemed very, very familiar about him…something else seemed very strange. Something about his skin…but the next time she looked he was a normal man. Too far away to recognize.
Renee didn’t have time to stay and observe. She swung back off into the night, and later made a brief, vague reference to the man in her morning report.
Far below, Two-Face never knew that he had been watched.
0-0-0-0-0
epilogue
It took the tall man a rather long time to crawl out of the taxi. He had to stoop back to the ground to pick up his bags before the car raced off into the Gotham night.
He stood in front of the run-down building, looking it up and down with clear, scrutinizing eyes.
He checked again to be sure that his equipment was all in the bag. It was, just as it had been when he left, and at the airport, and on the plane, and in the cab. It was silly to be worried, but he never liked to feel even a pang of fear.
A cat yowled somewhere in an alley, and a pair of pigeons strutted down the street in front of him. The man narrowed his eyes at the sight. He bent to the ground again and picked up a stone. His long gangly arms sent it flying, and the birds scattered.
A thin smile passed his thin lips. It was good to be back in Gotham. It was good to be home.
