I take my time on the tea because I'm nervous to be anywhere near this woman. It's like her and Cleave have spoken before about the top ways to make Harvey uncomfortable. She seems so much nicer than him, though, and for that I'm relieved. I got a little tired of being yanked around on whatever short leash he decides to keep me on.

By now, my allergies are thoroughly chewing on themselves. Her crimson eyebrow arches, and her lips quirk like something's funny. Of course, I immediately assume she's mocking me.

"Your eyes are gray. That's an interestingly recessive trait."

Your eyes are gray, the amorphous mass of Christmas says, that's an interestingly recessive trait.

I flinch silently at that fact and nod. I don't know what to say, not a single word. I clam up like it's the only thing I can do, in between weakened sniffles and pathetic gasps for breath.

It's not until moments later that my stomach drops to my feet and I realize my teacup is empty. It's an irrational fear, I'm sure, one that would seem stupid to anyone else, but it signifies more of this torturous anxiety. My insides do little back flips. I feel like my vital organs can win an Olympic gold medal for gymnastics.

"Well, Harley, let me—"

I snap up, suddenly. My stomach swims back up to my middle.

"Harvey," I correct, and I notice when I set the saucer down the entire cup is shaking as my fingers struggle to keep a hold. My jaw is doing that thing where it jumps too much, "Not H-Harley."

"Harvey would be your given name, I suppose? What a—"

"Interesting name for a girl, I know." My teeth set and grind together, so hard the sound presses harshly against my ears. I feel it in my head, and my joints bunch up into each other. If I was a dragon, my most prevalent power would be to expel thick amounts of bad-ass fire and impenetrable smoke through my nostrils.

"I was going to say fitting first name for you, since it seems, somehow, to settle quite comfortably on you. Not many can pull off a dominantly masculine name. If you'd still like, though, there is still a bedroom for you."

She burns like acid in my skin.

Unconsciously, I check my cell-phone again and curse the God I've been praying to on and off for the past few months. He'd do well to throw a text message my way, by this point, considering I've endured ice, snow, cold, nausea and head injuries for the cirque du freak reject and am now the vessel housing his demon-spawn. Well, I figure, anyway. I haven't thrown up again just yet, but from the feeling sloshing around, it won't be too long 'til I do.

She leads me by the hand without a hitch. Somehow, I'm paying no attention at all as we wind through corridors laced with wildflowers you'd only find in fields and deadly plant-life you'd only cross in the TV show Land of the Lost.

She's telling me where to go, but I'm not hearing anything. Her proverbial voice bounces off my inner walls, but it's like listening to someone giving a speech through a poor microphone. She mentions something about a bathroom, and shows me into some grandly decorated pad lined in more red velvet and gold trimmings. I'd compliment her taste, but my attention is off.

Next I know, she pulls out a tube of what looks like chap stick and swipes it across her ruby red lips, casually releasing my palm from her own. For a moment, the detachment of contact leaves me bewildered.

That triggers some kind of electrical current to my brain saying you're on your own, now and I blink away the remnants of stupidity and dizziness from my eyes. Slowly, I start to boot back up, like a PC who needs to stop collecting dust and function, just for a minute.

There's the contact again. She leans over a little, bends a bit, and two of her fingers, her pointer and middle finger, touch at that spot just where my jawbone ends. It takes me a second to register, but that second passes swiftly as her lips fall to my own and my eyes widen. Every nerve ending in my body screams FUCK MOTHERFUCKER THERE'S A PRETTY WOMAN KISSING YOU AND YOU'RE PREGNANT.

My hand twitches; goes to rise to stop her, but it falls uselessly to my side and sways like a weak pendulum. My knees give out; my legs turn into putty under me. My back feels the flat, cornered security of the wall, and I shove a little harder against it when I feel her tongue move across my lower lip and my alarms are going off like firecrackers. Firecrackers like her red hair.

When she pulls away, fingers still touched firmly at the corner of my jaw, I do the first thing that comes to mind.

I start to giggle. It's nervous, endless, and it's some painful way I picked up from Cleave on how to deal with traumatic situations in inappropriate ways.

My limbs turn into play-doh, and all at once there's a glint of emerald and sunset-fire, and it all goes black.

Red, I think, and it all slips. I steep into delirium, Red like blood. Red should be her name.

(An unknown amount of time and confusion later)

It's all a bad dream. That's my first thought, when I'm assaulted with the scents of roses and some kind of silky, warm satin. It's an awful dream and when I wake up I'll be back in my old house, just outside Gotham, complete with my less-than-teetotaler parents. I'll run downstairs with my bag and a pen stabbed into my semi-long, reddish hair, grab the toast off the table and jet to my internship at The Gotham Weekly whose headquarters, interestingly enough, aren't even within the city limits.

But mom isn't screaming at the lotto numbers on our fifty year old television set, and dad isn't thumping a fist at the kitchen table wailing about the gas prices.

Instead, I hear a voice.

"A kiss is a wonderful trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."

I blink hard. I swallow. What?

"Have you listened to yourself sometimes? You ramble remarkably. I could hardly get a word in edgewise."

I feel dizzier and sicker than I can possibly explain. As if the past week hasn't been enough, now I'm struggling to sit up on my elbows, alone.

I must have gone on talking and talking and not have noticed it. I recall in a few flashes of nauseated remembrance the sensation of lips that taste of peppermint (see: candy canes on Christmas) and nails that prick my skin. Suddenly, I feel my eyes widen like dinner plates in my head. She kissed me?!

Without warning, my tongue loosens itself. "What the fuck did you do that for?"

"Do you know the principle definition of the word 'vaccination'? You give a person the smallest dosage of an illness, and it immunizes them to a disease. If a person is vaccinated for the flu, they are given a dash of the illness itself, and this allows the person to develop antibodies against it. You should be immune to me, now, and, as an added bonus, you'll be pleased to find those allergies that plague you so fervently won't be back for a good while."

Her speech goes in one ear and out the other. My dumb look is just followed up by "You poisoned me?"

"My, aren't you quick? I'd like you to analyze the nature of my name. Poison Ivy. Therefore, I naturally produce poison. It's all very complicated. It's best you don't wrack your brain to understand it. Just comprehend that I've done you a worthy favor—and I needed to find a way to quiet your nervous jittering. Do you have a mental filter, or is it broken?"

"Want to explain w-why I'm nauseous?"

"Pregnancy and an adverse reaction to my little escapade. Your immune system is the poorest I've ever witnessed." Everything about her, I think, is so eloquent-looking. There are ways her eyebrows arch, ways her lips move, ways her hands accentuate her words subtly. Her hair casts ember-shadows across her inhumanly pale flesh. I'm reminded of Buttercup from The Princess Bride. I used to love that book.

Pregnancy.

I swallow harder than I did the first time.

This makes it definite, doesn't it?

Glancing up from her little cross-word book, she asks me, "Harvey, what's a five-letter synonym for jester?"

"Prick."