Her footsteps clicked against the hard floors, to echo against the stone walls and metal bars. She wore nice heels and a respectable black business suit wrapped around her body, under a long thick coat. Her blonde hair was tied back in a tight bun, covered with a dark scarf, looking somewhat old-fashioned but perfectly sane. Nobody had recognized her when she signed herself in as a visitor to Arkham Asylum. They were suspicious, as they should have been, but they didn’t stop her from entering.
Her footsteps were the only sounds around her. Solitary confinement was a quite a distance from all the other prisoners, and Harley was grateful for that. It meant she didn’t have to face anyone else. It meant she could keep her thoughts focused where they should be, with no one to distract her and scramble them. It was hard enough to fight the butterflies in of her stomach, and hard enough to keep her heart from racing.
There was a piece of paper crumpled in her pocket, clutched in her hand. A summons, and she had responded.
“Well, well…look who’s here.” His voice echoed along with the click of her heels, and for a moment she didn’t know where it was coming from. “You’re late, you know. Nearly a week.”
“I didn’t come ‘cause you told me to.” She swallowed hard, and hoped he didn’t see.
“Of course not.”
“I don’t care what you wanna say. It doesn’t matter, you know.”
“I know.”
“I just came cause…” She swallowed again and cleared out her throat. “...'cause I wasn’t busy. An’ so you’ll stop sending things to me.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the packages, one by one. Flowers wilting, still tied with their bows; chocolates still in their wrappers; boxes and envelopes sealed and unopened, and she tossed them to the floor in front of his cell one by one. “I don’t want them. So stop it.”
“Alright, I will.”
His silence forced her to step closer. He said nothing more than that without prompting, leaving the air unbearably full of unsaid things. “W-well?”
“Yes?”
“Well say it! Whatever you wanted to tell me then tell it so I can go home!” Harley stomped her heeled foot.
He grinned in the shadows, the single light left off behind the bars. “You can go home any time you want to, Harley. It doesn’t matter what I have to say, right?”
Harley felt her teeth clench and she whirled around, putt her back to him and shook with anger. “Fine! Fine then, I’m leaving, I am. Right now!” She made it as far as a few feet back down the hall before his voice followed after her.
“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”
She froze, and bit her lip. Her stomach rolled, her muscles clenched, but she froze in place, and slowly, very slowly, turned back around.
*****
Someone was lost. The woods were all around her, vast and looming, and terrifying. She ran because she didn’t know what to do, or where to go. But she knew how to run.
There were noises all around her that she’d never heard before. The trees thinned out in front of her, the dappled sunlight gave way to brighter, stronger rays. A ribbon of black in the distance, with cars racing from one side to the other, brilliant, colorful, mesmerizing things could be seen ahead. There were buildings taller than any trees, not so very far away, Gotham City rising up into the sky and took her eyes up with it.
She ran forward, her bare feet stomping heavily into the pavement. The cars made noises now: loud, shrill horns, and the people inside began to scream. She towered over them, pausing in the middle of the street when all of the sound reached her ears. In the bright sunlight everyone could see her in all of her strange glory; a woman seven feet tall, emerald green from her wide feet up to the cascade of hair falling from her head. A few scraps of brown fabric clung to her like bark, the only clothing she had. Her bright orange eyes stared all around her, tried to take everything in and make sense of it all. People shouted at her, ran from her, ran toward her, all at once.
Then she felt pain. She pulled up her foot when one bold civilian drove his car over it, crushing her toe. The shout that rang out from her lips was coarse and low, and the crash when her foot came back down over the trunk of the car clanged out over the road. She started to run again, back for the trees, back for the woods, limping as she went, and followed by camera clicks, by shouts and phone calls and all manner of things that she didn’t understand.
She was still lost. She didn’t even know which direction to go to get home, now. All she could do was run.
*****
The local news coverage spent the entire day on the mysterious figure in the woods at the outskirts of Gotham City. When sunset arrived and no progress had been made, Renee knew not to make any plans for the night. The good news was that so far, no one had been hurt. The bad news: that the creature’s forays onto the streets of Gotham had caused quite a bit of property damage; footprints smashed into the pavement, distracted drivers crashing into poles, broken barriers on the sides of the roads. And no one had any clues yet who, or what, the woman was.
Batgirl didn’t mind the stake-out as much as she once had. In Downtown Gotham there was a suitable vantage point to watch the treeline, and she had tracked the woman’s progress from one side of the woods to the other. She waited now, as the sun dipped under the horizon, at the scene of the last sighting. The night was crisp but bearable, combining with the unknown threat to keep most civilians inside their homes. She was on the alert, and ready to spring into action at any minute, but she enjoyed her solitude.
Which helped to explain the irritated silence that she gave off when Poison Ivy joined her on the rooftops. Renee felt the air thicken as the other woman drew closer, and tried to put all her energy into focusing on the deserted woods on the horizon.
“Hello, stranger,” Ivy said quietly, once she got close enough. “Long time, no see.”
A hundred possible responses went by in Renee’s swallow, before she spoke up with a simple “Hello.”
“Someone’s busy tonight?” Ivy stepped closer still, leaning against the short rail on the edge of the roof next to Batgirl. “That thing in the woods?”
Batgirl nodded. “You do your homework.”
“It’s hard not to know,” Ivy said. “Just have to turn the news on. Because if there’s one news team that knows to check up on everything that looks tiny, it’s Gotham’s Finest.”
“Not bad,” Batgirl cracked a wry smile, and turned back to her binoculars to hide it. “You should be a spokesgirl.”
“Ha, ha.” Ivy laughed dryly, and put her hand next to Batgirl’s on the rail. “You find anything?”
Renee tried to keep her gaze steadily on the woods, quickly jerking her head back into position when it turned toward Ivy. “Any minute now. And, if you don’t mind, I’m going to need to concentrate when the time comes.”
“Why would I mind?” Ivy kept a smile on her face as she casually stood close. Even in cold weather, she sheathed herself in a canopy of vines and leaves, and tonight they fell all around her in tight loops, hugging every curve. They shifted when she walked, kept her covered while offering glimpses of the skin below, and made Batgirl swallow hard.
“Aren’t you cold?” Batgirl asked, still keeping her focused gaze. Her spirits leaped when she caught a bit of movement in the brush, but a stray cat streaked out into the city and left her stranded without any clues.
Ivy shrugged. “I don’t really feel it anymore. If anything, you should be worried. Or does the bat-tech make skin-tight warmer?”
“You’d be surprised.” It had been Renee’s own request that led to the microfiber insulation in her bodysuit, keeping her warm in the winter without bulking up the costume. “But listen, I need to –“
“Concentrate, yeah,” Ivy finished for her. “And you couldn’t use a hand? This is kinda my territory, you know. I can help.”
“No thanks,” Batgirl answered too quickly. “I’ve got it. You can go home.”
Ivy tilted her head just slightly, and reached out to lay her hand on top of Batgirl’s. When she finally turned to look at her, Ivy studied the other woman’s face with a wry smile. “Maybe I don’t want to go home. You can shoo me away, if that’s what you
really want, but there’s someone or something in my woods. I’ll just go to that other rooftop right over there,” she pointed, “and keep looking. So what do you say we make this easier for us both, and make the time go faster?”
“Ivy…” Renee swallowed, and took back her hand. “Fine. Do what you want.”
“But what do
you want?”
Batgirl stayed silent a moment, then brought her binoculars back to her eyes. “I want to do my job. I want to protect my city. I just can’t be distracted right now.”
Ivy chuckled. “Am I that distracting, helping you out?”
She didn’t have to say “yes”. Batgirl just let out a long breath. “Stay if you want to. Help if you want. Long as you’re actually helping.”
“Don’t you remember, Batgirl?” Ivy moved just a little bit closer. “I’ve grown. That’s why I’m here.”
*****
“You got an awful lot to be sorry for so start talking before I change my mind again,” Harley said with all the determination she could muster.
“Can’t I just tell you how ravishing you look when you’re mad?” The Joker’s lilting voice bounced off the concrete walls, and he looked for all the world like the doting, adoring man Harley had wanted him to be.
She swallowed, then shook her head fiercely. “No, no you can’t, not good enough.”
“Well, alright.” The Joker crossed the floor of his cell, bouncing as he sat on the edge of the bed and putting his chin in his hands to look out at her. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She demanded, clenching her fist and taking an unconscious step closer.
“Why dwell on the past? Harley, dear Harley Quinn, don’t you see? Here I’ve come, crawling back, a desperate man on his knees,” he dropped down from the edge of the bed in such a quick, fluid movement that Harley barely saw it. “We’ve come back around to the beginning, Harley, haven’t we? Don’t you remember how it was then?”
“Yeah…yeah, I remember,” Harley answered, a moment’s hesitation before biting her lip and setting her face back in cold anger. “An’ I remember how you treated me then, too. You, you never liked me, you just used me, let me hung around makin’ an idiot out of myself over you!”
The Joker sighed and shook his head, the perpetual smile on his face. “Sweet, silly girl, you’ve got it all wrong! You used to know everything about me, didn’t you? You studied the news, you only told me so a thousand times. Did I ever make a habit of keeping dead weight around?”
“I wasn’t dead weight!” Harley protested, “I did everything for you! I went out gettin’ your supplies and I brought things in and I helped with the plans even!”
“Yes, yes, of course, but that’s beside the point,” he brushed her words aside. “Tell me, Harley. When have I been known to keep the company of people I didn’t like?”
She thought back to all the time she’d spent in school, poring over the news reports, and remembered how she fell a little more in love with him with each paper she read. “Well…you weren’t known for keepin’ company at all.”
“Exactly!” he grinned at her. “Harley, can’t you see? You were special, you were different! You were someone worth keeping around, when all the minions in the world would never be.”
“Uh-huh,” Harley said dryly, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I used to think that, too.”
“You don’t believe me?” He asked, leaning closer against the barrier and gazing up at her.
“Why should I?”
“Because I love you, Harley.”
She threw her purse at the glass in front of his cell, just wishing she could actually hit him. “You liar! You tried to kill me!”
“Because I loved you,” he said again, standing now. “Listen to me, you have to know. I loved you so much that I was useless,” the Joker insisted. His gaze never left Harley’s face, and each one of his words tried to pull her eyes back to his. “Blowing up my own wealth, what was I thinking? How could I think, when you were there? How could I make my brilliant plans, how could I be the Joker you loved? It was for your sake, Harley,” he finished, with more sincerity than she had ever heard out of his mouth before.
“So…you tried to kill me for my sake,” she repeated, staring at him and tried to make sense of the statement.
“Because I loved you so much, I couldn’t stand it,” he professed again. “But, believe it or not, I think this therapy thing is worth something after all! It’ll be different this time. I understand now,” he grinned at her, pressing his hands against the glass. “Come on, punkin…what do you say?”
Harley thought for a very long minute, and tried not to gulp too loudly. His eyes were looking into hers, bright and full of the cheerful, whimsical, brilliant madness that she still couldn’t get out of her heart. He sounded so sure, so genuine, but he had sounded that way in the past. “Fool me once…” she finally said, turning her head away and picking up her bag.
“Harley, come back!” The Joker pounded at the glass, even as she turned around again and started to walk away. “What do you want from me, huh? I can be rich, I can be funny. I’ll get a job! I’ll do the housework! Just name it, and it’s yours.”
“I want…” Harley whispered to herself, “I want it how it was before…but it’s not. It’s not!” she repeated, loud enough for him now. “I got friends now! I don’t need you, I got Ivy and Bonnie and Clyde and I got so much to do, I don’t need you anymore. I don’t want you!”
I don’t want to need you, the final thought stayed in her mind, never passing her lips. With that she walked faster, finally taking herself out of the hall, back out of Arkham for real.
“Don’t you worry, Punkin!” the Joker called after her, following her all the way to the door. “I’ll see you again. We can make it work, I promise!”
*****
“Damn, doesn’t anything ever happen out here?” Ivy threw her head back, leaning against the railing and letting her long hair flow down toward the ground.
“You get used to it.” Batgirl’s voice was clipped, her words short. Every minute that Ivy had stayed on the roof with her ratcheted the tension up higher. The other woman stood so relaxed, as if she had no cares in the world, while Batgirl crouched ready to spring. She had the creature to worry about, the city to protect. But that was only half of her concerns.
“Leaves plenty of time to think, though,” Ivy commented, looking over at Batgirl again.
The other woman just nodded, standing up to stretch out her back after the long watch. “I can’t keep this up forever. I’m going to have to try something else.”
“Like taking a hint, maybe?” Ivy drawled, her hand on her hip. “You think maybe I had some kind of ulterior motive for showing up tonight?”
“I really hoped not,” Batgirl said bluntly and looked in the other direction. “I told you I’m trying to work tonight.”
“Y’know, you surprised me,” Ivy continued, despite Batgirl’s protests. “Used to be I’d be the one leaving in the middle of the night. Not the one waking up alone. I didn’t think you’d be so cold.”
Batgirl stopped her pacing, staring out into the distance without turning around. “I didn’t think you’d be so sentimental.”
“I’m still a woman,” Ivy countered, walking up behind her and slipping a hand onto Batgirl’s shoulder. “And don’t you pretend you don’t know what that means. Like it wasn’t important to you…like I couldn’t feel how much you needed me.”
“Ivy this is not the time,” Batgirl shrugged her hand away, still not able to look at the other woman. “And it’s complicated, okay? I can’t just, do you really think I can go back and start celebrating what we did? Do you think I can go back to Ba- Batwoman, and she’ll just understand?” Renee’s words were coming faster, and she turned around finally, her eyes meeting Ivy’s with the mask in between. “I…I believe you, I believe you’ve changed. But I don’t know how much. I don’t
know you.”
“Know me? You know me better than just about anyone,” Ivy said, her voice dropping to a quieter level, keeping herself close to Batgirl. “You trusted me before. We’ve fought together. And you know the things that matter to me,” she continued. “You and Harley, that’s the grand total of people I’ve been able to like since I became Poison Ivy. You think I didn’t have a life before? There were people. They just left me high and dry instead of giving me any kind of support. Thought I went crazy. Turned out, I just figured out what was important.” Ivy paused again, wanted to touch her again, to make that connection, but the tension was too thick, and the touch too risky. “You though. You know what my fight is.”
Batgirl nodded slowly. “It’s not a bad one. For all your…missteps…you got Dagget to clean up his act. You haven’t always gone about things the right way but I believe your intentions are good.”
“And that’s why you know me,” Ivy insisted. “Because you know it matters, and you’re still here. At least, I thought you were,” she finished, taking a step back and let the distance grow between them again.
Batgirl’s mouth opened and closed a few times, searching for something to say. “Ivy…I’m just…I’m here,” she said finally, closing the gap with her hand reaching for Ivy’s.
The smile slinked onto Ivy’s face, but before she could say anymore her head jolted up toward the forest. “Something’s near. Come on.” She kept Batgirl’s hand as she started to run, calling to a nearby tree to bend its branches and bear them to the ground.
“What, you can sense it?” Batgirl asked as the tension broke almost into laughter as they made their way into the woods. “If you mentioned that in the first place I would’ve had to let you stay.”
“You did anyway,” Ivy winked. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I know where it is. Not far, and it’s…hurting.”
*****
The day had long since passed into night and she had learned to stay in the woods. She didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. But here she wouldn’t get hurt, as she stumbled through the trees. Her feet stung from the pavement and gravel, and the various sharp things stuck in the city ground. She wasn’t so very much bigger than the size a typical person could become, but her strength and her confusion kept her off-balance, clumsy like a child.
When she heard the noise from the other side of the brush, the creature stopped cold. In the darkness, she blended into the environment, her green skin and hair helping her hide. But the two women kept coming closer. One hid her face, hid her whole body under a film of dark violet, almost black in the dim light. The other sparked something in the creature’s memory. They looked so similar, though with such dramatic differences. Poison Ivy’s red hair stood out where the moonlight hit it, and her pale skin made the creature examine her own green hands again. She was taller by over a foot, but used to that difference. Leaving all that aside, they could have been twins.
“Hello?” Ivy called out to the wilderness, stopped in her tracks with Batgirl close behind. “I know you’re here. Come out, it’s okay.”
“What is it?” Batgirl whispered, looking all around her. She couldn’t see the creature, but Ivy looked straight ahead.
“Beats me,” Ivy hissed back, and stepped closer. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Come out, maybe I can help.”
The creature huddled in the shadows, but soon started to move, standing straight and tall, then stepped into the small clearing.
“What’s going on?” Batgirl asked, her hand drifting to her belt when she saw what she was up against. “Who are you?”
“Me?” The strange woman’s voice was low and deep, trembling. “Called Ferak…you?”
Ivy stepped forward again. “This is Batgirl. My name is Ivy.” She spoke calmly, like a trainer with a lost animal, despite the questions that bloomed like daises in her mind.
“Ivy, good name,” Ferak said, venturing forward just a few more steps. Her speech was stunted, slow and simple. “Ivy friend?”
“Sure,” Ivy nodded. “Yeah, friends.”
“Where did you come from?” Batgirl asked, stepping up more boldly, her hand close to her weapons. “Why are you here?”
Ivy muttered, “Back off, you’re scaring her.”
“Where here?” Ferak asked, in her trembly tone. “Home went away.”
“We’re gonna help you find it,” Batgirl promised, and reached into her belt now. She drew out a small GPS, just to try to figure out what might be in the area. But she startled and hissed with pain when Ferak reached down, wrenching the machine out of Batgirl’s hand and leaving a long scratch on her arm, dripping beads of blood.
“This, home like this!” Ferak practically beamed as she held up the GPS, making the screen sputter in confusion as her palm pressed all the buttons at once.
“Okay that’s enough,” Batgirl said darkly, and pulled out her grappling line. She had to use her left hand now, the right arm still stinging, and the shot went wild, making Ferak rear up like a scared animal instead of safely containing her.
“No! No, Ferak hates tied!” the woman shouted, backing away from the strong rope.
“What are you doing?” Ivy turned to face Batgirl angrily. “You’re going to hurt something!”
Batgirl held up her arm with the same agitated anger, “She already hurt me!”
Both women turned back toward Ferak, though, when she gave another shout, and ran farther off into the woods.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Ivy raced off behind her, with Batgirl close at her heels. They lost sight of Ferak fairly quickly, but somehow Ivy knew which way to turn, where to go to catch up.
“How are you doing that?” Batgirl asked, between fast breaths as they ran.
Ivy shrugged, and sprinted just a little farther, until they could see Ferak headed toward them now; they had passed her and looped back around. “I just, I know. It’s the same thing I get with…plants…” she trailed off.
“Ferak!” Batgirl called, “We don’t want to hurt you. Just want to get you home. And have a nice long chat with the family,” she added in a softer voice.
“Home!” Ferak looked all the way around her, turning in a circle, and then her face brightened, the near-injury almost forgotten. “Home,” She said again, and took off. The chase had brought them back to the outskirts of Gotham, far out of the sight of the city buildings. Nestled among the trees, not far from here now, was home: she recognized the area where she had been able to play as a girl, where her handlers had brought her for sunlight. Now that she knew where she was going, Ferak ran straight and fast, and soon even Ivy couldn’t sense her movements anymore.
“Okay…” Batgirl swallowed to help her dry throat, and leaned against a tree trunk when they finally gave up the chase. “What the hell just happened?”
Ivy climbed onto a low-hanging branch and urged it to grow upward, trying to get a better view of the area, but found nothing unusual. “I don’t know. But I know I don’t like it. Ferak…I don’t get it. She’s animal, but I could sense her. I could feel her. She’s a plant.”
Batgirl nodded slowly, and winced. The cut on her arm had stopped bothering her while she had something else to focus on, but it needed to be dressed before much longer. There was an unsettling greenish tinge to the skin, and Batgirl hoped it was just residue from Ferak’s green nails. She dragged a roll of bandages from a pouch, and started to unwind them.
“Here.” Ivy leapt back down from the tree, and offered a third hand. Together they got the wound bound up, and Batgirl shook her arm out to test it.
“Thanks.” Batgirl let herself smile, subdued but still there. “We’ll figure this out. I’ve got people who know just about everything, we can figure out where Ferak came from.”
Ivy chuckled, and only explained herself after Batgirl’s look. “Sure it’s not an excuse to give me some more time? Since you need an excuse.”
Batgirl was quiet for a few seconds, before she stepped up closer to Ivy. The forest closed in around them, dark in the night, leaving the two of them as hidden and secluded as they could be. Before saying anymore, Batgirl reached her head in for a kiss, long and lingering. “Yeah…maybe it is. Maybe I just have to make excuses for a while.”
“So long as I’ve got you coming back to me,” Ivy murmured with her sly smile. She kept the other woman in the woods for as long as they both could excuse it, stealing their moments under the trees. It wasn’t enough, not for either of them. But it would do for now.
