A Rose By Any Other Name
"So…are we good?"
This question from Two-Face was directed at Poison Ivy, who sat across the table from him, gripping a glass as if her life depended on it.
"Of course we're good, Harvey," she said, forcing a smile. "I'm a mature, rational adult, and I asked you around here to apologize unequivocally for my behavior. I had no right to attack you or Selina with a pair of gardening shears. It was wrong of me."
"Glad you think so," agreed Two-Face. "But you can understand why Selina was kinda reluctant to come. She thinks this is another trap you've prepared to get revenge on us both. But I trust you, Pam."
He picked up his own glass and sipped from it. "After all, there's really nothing for you to be angry about. We broke up a long time ago, and Selina's a single woman, capable of making her own decisions. Plus I understood you didn't want to be with me."
"I don't, Harvey," she snapped.
"You just don't want anyone else to be either, huh?" he asked, smiling at her.
"I don't really want things to be awkward between one of my best friends and me, is all," continued Ivy. "It has nothing to do with my feelings for you. But I don't like thinking about you two together whenever I see Selina."
"Then don't," he said. "Think about the two of us, I mean. There's no reason why you should. I don't see people I know who are in relationships and think about them having sex together. Mostly so I can still sleep at night, in Joker and Harley's case," he added, dryly.
"I've tried to convince myself that they just don't have sex," agreed Ivy. "Which is difficult, when you can hear them having it. But I pretend they're just having a fight."
"I admit it's hard to tell the difference," said Two-Face. "But why can't you do the same for me and Selina?"
Ivy shrugged. "It's different when…it's someone you've been with. You start wondering if she's better than you were, if he does the same things with her and says the same things he said to you. It kinda just makes you feel…replaceable. And you start thinking that maybe what you had wasn't special, even though it felt that way."
Two-Face studied her. "Well, I don't think about it like a competition," he muttered. "It's different to what we had. Not better or worse necessarily. But what we had was special, Pam. You know that. It wouldn't have gone on as long as it had if it wasn't, even with the breaks."
"I guess…we're over for good now, aren't we?" asked Ivy.
He didn't respond. "I dunno, Pam," he murmured. "But I really wanna try to make things work with Selina. She's a great gal, and she's exactly what I need right now. She's committed, for one. And she makes me happy. And she doesn't mind me being a little indecisive – she's willing to put up with the coin and everything."
"She's obviously a keeper, Harv," said Ivy, forcing a smile. "And she's completely over the Bat, huh?"
He shrugged. "She says she is. I have to trust her. She certainly doesn't act like she misses him. But then I imagine he'd be a pretty difficult guy to get close to. People in masks usually are."
"Selina wears a mask, y'know," reminded Ivy.
Two-Face took another drink. "If you invited me over here to try to talk me out of my relationship with Selina, it was a wasted gesture," he said. "I believed you when you said you just wanted to apologize for the way you acted. Selina didn't really want me coming, though – she thinks you're going to try to seduce me. I told her I don't two-time the women I'm with, and I insisted that you wouldn't two-time your friend either."
He looked up at her. "Would you?"
"I thought you trusted me, Harvey," she muttered, putting her glass down. "I don't go around seducing my friends' boyfriends. Except that one time I tried to seduce J, but that was for Harley's own good. And there are no words for how much I regretted that. I learned my lesson, believe me."
"And that other time you seduced J under the influence of a love potion," said Two-Face. "So really it's not an unheard of thing for you to do."
"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have no designs on you tonight, Harvey," she snapped.
"I'm happy to hear it," he replied. "But I never thought you did. Selina was the one who insisted that I be careful. I think I know you better than she does, though. At least, I know a deeper level of you than she does. I think when you're with her and Harley, you act a lot more tough and heartless than you really are. You're afraid of showing weakness and vulnerability in front of them, because that's Harley's thing, and you don't want them to think you're like her in any way. So you hide it all away under a mask of strength and cruelty."
He sipped his drink again. "I was right, y'see. People in masks are difficult to get close to. You can't blame a guy when he stops trying."
"Or a girl," agreed Ivy, Two-Face thought rather louder than necessary.
"Why are you shouting?" he asked.
"I wasn't," she replied, quickly.
He finished his drink in silence. "Anyway, I'd…better get home. Selina wanted an early night so I don't wanna wake her…"
"Oh…yeah, sure," she said. "You sure you don't wanna stay for just one more drink?"
"Nah, I should get going," he said, standing up.
"You sure?" she asked.
He looked at her. "Are you ok, Pammie?" he asked. "You seem a little agitated."
She laughed. "Agitated? No, I'm fine, Harvey."
"You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn't you?" he asked. "I don't want Selina to come between our friendship, Pam. Even if we ain't…lovers anymore, I think we still got a pretty great relationship. I wouldn't wanna see it jeopardized by anything."
"Me neither, Harvey," she agreed. "And don't you worry. We're still friends," she said, smiling at him.
He smiled back. "Well, good," he said, bending down to kiss her cheek. "Thank you for dinner, Pam. Goodnight."
She watched him leave with a look of longing, and then her expression changed to annoyance as she shut the door and turned around. "You can come out," she snapped. "I know you're here."
"How?" demanded Batman, stepping out from the shadows of the room.
"My plants told me we had an intruder," she retorted, folding her arms across her chest. "They're silent, and nobody ever notices them, which makes them more effective than guard dogs. Were you here to spy on Harvey and me?"
"I just wanted to hear what he had to say about Selina," snapped Batman.
She sighed, sitting back down at the table. "We're both unhappy about them, aren't we?"
"Of course we are," retorted Batman. "Selina shouldn't be dating a criminal. She's all wrong for him."
"Well, there's not much we can do about it," retorted Ivy glumly, head in her hands as she poured herself another drink. "They're both stubborn people who aren't afraid of being threatened, or even violently attacked. So I'm all outta ways to persuade them to break up. Even if it would be for their own good."
"I have bigger things to worry about, and better things to do with my time than engage in romantic intrigues," muttered Batman. "There's a whole city out there full of crime that I should be concentrating on."
"Fine, give up like that," snapped Ivy. "I don't need you or Harvey anyway. There are a million men in this city, and I can have any of them I want. No man can resist me."
Batman studied her. "I should really be taking you back to Arkham, but you don't seem to be in the mood for one of your eco-terrorist crusades."
"Wow, you really are the World's Greatest Detective, aren't you, Bats?" asked Ivy, sarcastically.
"So I'm going to give you your freedom for now," continued Batman, ignoring her. "Stay out of trouble."
"I think you're just hoping I'll get into the kind of trouble that breaks up Catwoman and Two-Face," she snapped. "And you really want that to happen, but you refuse to actively do anything about it. So instead you're gonna let me handle it, so you don't have to feel guilty. Well guess what, Bats? I'm not gonna be your stooge. I don't care what Harvey does, and I don't care what Selina does, and I don't care what you do. Just go back to doing it and get the hell outta my house."
Batman obeyed her, but despite her harsh words, Ivy almost called him back. "What the hell's the matter with me?" she muttered to herself.
But she knew what the matter with her was. She was lonely. It was a very basic human emotion, one of the many she had been born with and tried futilely to be rid of during her plant hybridization. And while her bond with plants helped her loneliness, they helped in the same way a cat might help a regular human. And even an army of cats couldn't entirely replace the need for another human being to share her life with. And while it was true that she could probably have any man she wanted, she had had lots of men, and they had all proved to be the same: unreliable, uncommitted, and ultimately unhelpful in relieving her loneliness.
She needed a change, she knew that. And if men couldn't fill up the void in her life, she knew the change would have to be more drastic than that. And then an idea came to her.
She stood up, heading out of her dining room and into the greenhouse attached to the house. Ivy used this room as a laboratory, creating new plant toxins to terrorize the people of Gotham with, and breeding new species of plants together to create new and beautiful varieties of flora.
She was going to breed something now – she was going to plant it and watch it grow into a beautiful, new flower. She began mixing some materials, and then beckoned a plant pod over to her. It opened itself obediently for her, and she placed the newly created seed inside it. "Keep it warm," she whispered, petting the pod as it closed itself around the seed. "Keep it safe. It's going to grow into the most beautiful flower in existence. My precious little baby. My precious little Rose."