The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. Ivy was damnwell sure that she had in fact bloomed, in keeping with the proverb. And this cage at Arkham was no place for a beautiful plant, particularly not one whose veins coursed with venom. She wasn't just a pretty face, she knew, not just a hansom bachelor button to be observed behind a glass case, but a pitcher plant, a cape sundew, and a Venus flytrap. Unlike the other Rogues, she didn't need to develop her poisons in a labratory, she produced them as surely and easily as the grazing masses all about her exhaled CO2. She supposed that she did as well, breathe in and out like a person, but after the little incident with Professor Woodrue, everything from the way she thought to the way she drew air had changed. She recognized that most people weren't given such obvious opportunities to transform like that, and she did not take it for granted.
She wasn't akin to other human beings. Simply looking down at her olivey, celadon skin could tell you that much. If you split her open, you would find blood that was thicker, closer to sap than sanguine fluid really. Ivy turned her hands thoughtfully, examining their palms and backs and all their perennial intricacies. But this was no time for contemplation, no time to repeat the mantra of inhumanity that she held so dear and knew so well. Now was the time to escape from this cold, concrete Hell for what could be no less than the hundredth time. Her babies needed their guardian angel.
No matter how much she wished she was, Pamela Isley was not a plant. In time, she had accepted this, because she recognized that they needed a protector more than she needed salvation. Gotham's flora needed an able-bodied mother, one who could kick and punch and kill for them. She could coil up around what scraps of green life remained here. Coil up like a vine and spit killing plant toxins at anyone who dared to threaten them. To threaten her.
She had dedicated herself to this cause, to fight the arrogance of human men, and she would make certain that the other plants had their chance. The flowers that grew in such terrible adversity would also be granted their rightful opportunities to bloom, and she would make sure of this.