She sometimes dreams of him – he is after all the poison in her blood – and in doing so she finds herself back in the small black box in the back of her mind where she keeps the memories of the time everything went so wrong. There in that confine place she relives the tears, the begging and her pleas falling on deaf ears. She feels the restrains cut and bite as her body buckles under the rolling spasms of pain; sharp, white and intense like sunlight reflecting off a landscape of ice and snow.

Harleen Quinzell holds her until the screaming stops, kisses away the tears and holds her tighter until the crying too stops and she is still. All Harleen knows is that something really bad happened to Pamela Isley once.

No one really knows what he did to her in the name of his twisted science or how long it went on; he was conducting macabre experiments in hybridization, tormenting mature animals with genetic restructuring and killing the lucky few. They said she was dangerously enigmatic, a smart woman drawn to abusive men. They say he convinced her to become a test subject and she couldn't say no. They say he almost killed her. But what do they know of her love - that was all she wanted, his love, his approval - or her death for that matter. She died for him and was in turn reborn and made new. She came back to show him the truth as it had been revealed to her only to find that he had fled. He was always so cruel, so cold and condescending, she sees that now. Men are such an ugly mixture of conceit and deceit.

Harleen runs her hands over the other woman's body crouched up hard against her belly, a ball of smooth slick muscle. She lightly kisses the back of her companion's neck and playfully tries to rub the tension out of the hunched shoulders. Slowly she feels the muscles under her fingers relax as Ivy uncurls herself from the tangle of their limbs and pushes Harley Quinn away. She is not Pamela anymore.

Ivy walks away alone into the dark without a backward glance. Harley calls out to her but knows better than to follow. Doesn't matter. She knows Ivy is always looking out for her. Most of the time anyway. In the morning, Harley will find her stretched out on the floor of the greenhouse; she loves the daylight when the sun shines and the green grows. Pamela will look up and smile and they will rub noses, maybe share a kiss............maybe perhaps when she is not Ivy anymore.

Encode; the stem cells of spider's silk and an ivy vine.........

Do you remember Jason Woodrue? The men in the white coats whose names come and go asked their words slow and measured as though she was an imbecile. She considers their bedside manner and shakes her head. She doesn't want to go there today.

She thinks about other things; today they might let her sit outside for a while away from her terrarium cell, it would be so nice to feel the cool breeze on her face; today they might let her see Harley Quinn in the common room, Harley would tell her what was happening; she always seemed to know what was going on; they could talk and hold hands for a while in the corner before they came for her; today they might give her cabbage for lunch instead of instant mash, she doesn't like the instant stuff and they promised they would try to improve her rations. She likes the way they used the word "rations" like they were combatants on opposite sides of a war and she was a prisoner of conscious. After all isn't empathy the enemy.

She sees their mouths flapping shaping out more words to more questions "Are you afraid to remember Pamela?" She stifles a giggle. Afraid? Aren't you always responsible for the things you create? "We are here to help you" Help? They put her in a cage, they steal her life and they cut off her sun. Everyone is accountable and everyone will pay.

She's poison so what does that make them? Do they not understand that she hears the other them; the flowers, the plants, the trees. She bears witness to their suffering and pain inflicted thoughtless as one mows downs an unruly tuff of grass or uproots a bed of flowers no longer fashionable, all for the sake of some arbitrary sense of order. She wants to be left alone. Why can't they just leave her alone? Why can't they understand that she didn't set out to punish those who taint the landscape with their atrocities? She hates him because of what he did; he and all the others before and after, trying to run her life; clipping, pruning, making her remake herself into what they want - saint, sinner, partner, foe. They have made her do things of which she is not proud.

In the end she hates that she cannot stop crying, cannot stop needing. She hates that she doesn't know how to stop the wanton destruction; the mindless slaughter. All killers leave a signature. She has spent years righting the wrongs yet it won't be enough, it will never be enough.

Decode; into a phosphorescent fungus, a hybrid created from mushrooms, molds....................

The Batman tells her "Your research is sick......." She tells him her research is the future like dog roses made from real dogs. It's a joke he doesn't understand and doesn't appreciate. It's so easy for them to forget how brilliant she is. She dreams of fungus dust with spore based natural insecticide that could provide a safe alternative to crop dusting. Hemp plants with interlocking fires that could be used to produce paper pulp saving entire forests from being destroyed or avocado crops with cell bonding oil that could revolutionize the treatment of severe burns.

She has continued and in time surpassed his work. She has become his scientific if not his spiritual heir; not his boys Holland or Sylvian but Isley, his wall flower; his shrinking violet. It will be her formulas for the mutation of plant growth regulators, her plant hybridization theories that will bring about the new Eden and she will be its Eve. She will put them all to shame, her madness a doorway into a veritable botanical utopia.

The Batman tells her "Think what your work could do in countries suffering through famine and drought" She shakes her head and smiles. She is easily amused by him. She is not interested in saving mankind. He is such a tease. What she wants is retribution. She wants to remake the world just as they make her remake herself into what they want; the world in her image and her image alone. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

He came back for her eventually; what was left of him of course. They all do. There is something irresistible about her. She thought that time had been very unkind to him. He wanted a child. A baby made from sticks and stones and puppy dog's tails; a symbiome, a symbiotic union of her blood and his flesh. He took 3 sample vials of blood and paid with his head when the Batman came looking for him. She smiles at the thought of how similar they are. Batman is the Oberon to her Titania. Sometimes it is almost a fair fight, he has more martial arts training that she knew exist and she has poisonous skin that he cannot touch, but for his toys – his wonderful toys. He hates to hit her but he will if he has to – He is a man – but He will never let her fall.

Encode; synthesized by the terpenoid pathway in plastids and then ……………….

Everything she touches is poison. She remembers the first time she let a man touch her. How he screamed as she watched the poison seeping from her skin eat through his shirt and dissolve his skin, melting his arm off. Anything she touched could die. Suicidal men adore her.

They say her kiss is lethal and all men crave for it. She has organs in her body that no one has ever had before, an entire new system to deal with toxins, filtering it out through her body via a series of glands. She is a freak with poison instead of blood.

In Arkham she had a vision; Gotham's heart was no longer animal, it had become vibrant green, sweet and cool - those that survive the cycle of nature moving through her will witness the glorious transformation. She is their master. She will draw them up through the earth; some thought to be extinct, others yet to be discovered. She controls them like she does the men that flock to her drawn by her cloud of pheromones; yet is any of us really in control? Nature is herself one moment sweet, the next destructive. Do not fuck with Mother Nature.

Pamela looks up and sees Harley Quinn standing by herself in the doorway. She smiles and Harley takes it as an invitation to come up closer. They rub noses; she can feel Harleen's breath on her face as she snuggles closer to her - "Penny for your thoughts". Harleen knows Ivy can't hurt her. Pamela once gave her a special shot so they could play and she won't get sick at all. There is always some madness in love and always some reason to the madness.

She is no monster. Man is the cruelest animal.

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Dedicated to all the writers who dream of poison ivy for DC