"Ahem..." Nigella tapped the microphone that rested next to a potted flower she thought looked tacky on the podium, which would typically be reserved for mayorial speeches, as she cleared her throat, nervously garnering the attention of the hundreds of guests patiently expecting a speech from Gotham's first son. "Welcome to the first annual Martha Wayne memorial charity auction. I hope you are all enjoying yourselves but I am afraid that Mr Wayne is running late."

From her seat, surrounded by strangers that had spent the last half an hour asking her how she knew Bruce and for her to tell them about herself when they were really just sizing her up, trying to gauge what they could get out of her, Selina rolled her eyes. Of course, he would be running late to his own party but looking over at Alfred a few tables away she could see he didn't seem surprised.

'Off on one of his 'missions'' She'd supposed.

"So we are going to be starting with the..." Nigella coughed. "Excuse me, Ahem... Just a tickle." She smiled softly, trying to hold back another cough, gripping the podium. "We are going to be..." Her knuckles were turning white as the tickle became a burning across her whole body within seconds as she gasped for breath. I didn't feel right like her entire body was being cut underneath her skin all at the same time, it was agonising. Her lungs felt like they were filled with water not allowing her to breathe in and out as a few nervous laughs erupted from the crowd.

Daniel, her fiance. The only word on her mind as she collapsed. The thought of never seeing him again, telling him she loved him. They'd argued before she had left this afternoon, it was petty, over a shirt but that would be the last thing he remembered about her. Hitting the ground didn't hurt, neither did the podium landing on her arm, writhing around she heard muffled gasps from the crowd, her mind had become fuzzy with white spot appearing in her vision she knew she didn't have long but it felt like longer, like everything around her was happening in slow motion.

By the time Alfred reach her side, she was unconscious. He pushed the podium off of her arm while Selina stood in shock like most of the others, looking but not moving.

"Is she dead!" A woman cried.

As Alfred felt for a pulse, Nigella's body tensed up so that her back was completely off of the ground, chest pointing up into the air, he jumped back, falling off the stage while writhed around on the red carpet, letting out a piercing cry as her bones sounded like they were breaking or crumbling all at the same time.

By the time the aids standing either side of the stage processed the shock of what they were seeing. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head giving her a possessed look, the whites standing out even more against her bright red skin before she fell slump. While Alfred recovered on the floor, the aids cautiously approached Nigella and noticed her bloated appearance, she looked like a corpse that had been pulled out of a river. The was no question that she was dead, but the still had to be sure, so they crouched down next to her, one of them taking a wrist, feeling for a pulse.

The guests that had started to crowd were on tenterhooks but Selina hadn't moved, alone at the table she watched from a distance.

"Excuse me..." A voice called over the intercom and though the crackling radio system Selina was convinced she recognised it. "I'm looking for Bruce Wayne."

Confusion broke out in the crowd as a figure slipped out from behind the curtain onto the stage, heels clicking on the floor like she didn't have a care in the world. She was wearing an emerald green dress, that matched her eyes and skin. It was skin-tight showing off plenty of cleavage, but her arms were covered by the sleeves giving it a touch of class. She leaned over the body causing her red hair to fall in front of her face as she picked up the plant that had been on the podium, a pink amaryllis.

Dumbfounded, Selina felt her voice get caught in her throat.

"Oh, what have they done to you?" Pam asked the flower, carefully stroking the leaves.

"Miss, get away from there." One of the aids stood up and tried to get Pam to step back.

"I don't think so." By the time he had raised a hand to gently nudge her away, a vine that had grown from the potted plant in her hand stabbed through his throat.

While he collapsed to his knees, choaking on his own blood, the crowd noticed Pam. Some screamed, some gasped, some stood in horror, just like Selina. So many thoughts crossed her mind as the crowd flocked towards the door, away from the stage. How was she alive? Why was she doing this? Was this even her? She said the plants were telling her to do things when Selina had thought she'd died, was she possessed by them.

Snapping out of her own head as her mind cleared, Selina had only one aim, get out. She had seen what the plants could do to people, the pain their victims must have endured and as glad as she was to see Pam alive, that wasn't her bubbly and cheerful friend up there. Pam raised her arms above her head, more vines sprouted up from potted plants all over the room, growing exponentially quicker than possible before winding through the tables on the floor, wrapping around panicked party-goers ankles as they desperately looked for an exit. One woman getting ripped across the room screaming as she knocked tables and chairs over, clawing at anything to escape the clutches of the plant.

Once the main exited was blocked by the vines, Selina slid behind one of the overturned tables. She fought with the clutch on her bag, desperate to get inside she carefully poured the contents out onto the floor trying to avoid making too much noise, she wasn't sure what this new Pam was going to do if she found her but she didn't want to stick around to find out. Grabbing her phone from the pile, she dialled the first number that came to mind.

The dial tone rang out for a few seconds before she heard his voice but it felt like minutes with the panic surrounding her. "Hello?"

"Bruce..." She breathed out heavily, not realising she was holding it in until it escaped.

"Selina?"

"...You need to get here..." Her voice trembled as she heard a scream from behind her silenced by the sickening thump of a skull cracking.

"Where? Why are you whispering?"

"...City hall it's..." She felt a tickle on her ankle, looking down she found one of the vines wrapped around, gripping tightly. Before she could react it yanked her left, she dropped the phone and it smashed against the floor and she let out a scream of surprise. Trying to grip at anything she could as she was dragged along the ground through the chaos Pam created was fruitless, Pam had her and there was nothing Selina could do.


With no care for caution, Bruce's shoes were clacking on the concrete path around the side of the house as he ran. Confused and scared, he bombarded around the corner and headed for the front gate, he just needed to get to his car and find out what was going on at City Hall.

"Bruce?"

He skidded a good three or four feet against the gravel driveway before stopping as heard his friends voice. "Harvey?"

He was out of breath, panting lightly. "What are you doing here?"

"You're asking me, Bruce, this is my house. What are you doing here?"

"I was... I just..." There was no good answer to give as he slowly approached.

He approached Bruce as he spoke. "You know, you've been acting weird since my father died, asking questions, prying for information like you were investigating me."

"Harvey, I don't have time for this." He wasn't sure what to say, he was right and he had his proof but he had a bigger problem than Harvey's murderous intentions.

"To explain what you are doing here? You know how much I hated him so just ask me, Bruce, if you think I did something."

This was a trick, some kind of game he didn't have time for. "Did you kill your father?"

The edge of Harvey's lip twitched as he scowled. "No."

"Then why did I find acid you'd disposed of the night before his death?"

"Of all people I thought YOU would have given me the benefit of the doubt. Of course, I'd thought about it, you know what he did to me, how miserable I was. I bought the... stuff but in the end, he was right, I didn't have the guts."

"What, so it is a coincidence that he was killed in exactly the same way that you intended?"

"Yes!" He said incredulously. "I thought we were friends, you should believe me but you've always looked at me and seen nothing but weakness, you think I broke but I'm stronger than you realise."

"Strong enough to kill somebody?" There was no shock or desperation to hide a secret in Harvey's face, just disgust.

"No, strong enough to see it wasn't the way to solve all of my problems." Bruce was staring directly into Harvey's eyes now, inches apart, they were not the eyes of a killer. He'd been wrong. " How could you assume I'd do that, to my own father! I was going to take your advice, go to Gordan, tell him what he was like, to try and get him help."

He wasn't sure, taking a set back, his mouth agape at the words that had left his mouth, the knowledge of how much he'd screwed up spinning in his mind. He was screwing up everything he cared about because of the vow that he had made to his dead parents. "Harv..."

"Just go and don't come back, Bruce." A tear escape from Harvey's stern eyes before he turned away back towards the house and for a second Bruce walked backwards, watching Harvey, his oldest friend, walk away. He wanted to find a way to fix it, but there was no time.

Maybe it was for the best, at least he would be safe from the life Bruce was chosen to lead. Turning he broke off into a sprint down the drive and through the now open front gate. Talking his phone out as he ran, he tried calling Alfred, Lucius and Lee but they all went to voicemail. Whatever had happened to Selina, they were all there, everyone he cared about, in danger because he had to chase something that wasn't even true.

Getting to the car, he climbed in and before he had shut the door he switched the radio on. "GCPD Officers are on the scene," They were talking about the Auction. "An eyewitness had this to say, 'It was like she could control them, the plants, she was communicating with them.'"

Bruce turned his attention from the road to the radio as the man spoke but it was impossible, Pam was dead, she couldn't have survived. Selina had watched her die, but the plant. They never found her body, the pod was hers. But that meant she'd been there all along, the path of flowers was her. But why was she attacking the Auction? It didn't matter, he had seen what she could do first hand and he needed to stop her if they weren't already dead, those that were left in the building would need him but first, he needed to make a stop.


Pam had been rubbing a circle onto her palm since her vines had hung Selina upside down by her legs so that they were face to face but she never looked up or acknowledged her. The screams had stopped, anyone left in the building was either dead or hiding. Even suspended in the air Selina wasn't going to let her dead friend see her fear, as far as she was concerned with or without the ability to control plants, Pam was still the same little girl that she had always seen her as. This couldn't be her doing, she wouldn't do anything like this willingly.

"I don't want to hurt you, Selina! They want to hurt you!" Pam had said at the university.

"Who wants to hurt me?" Selina had been confused then.

"The plants! They're screaming!"

"What do you mean? What happened?" She'd asked naively, crouching down to Pam's level, where she noticed her bright green eyes, almost glowing in the lowly lit room. It wouldn't have been something she'd typically pick up on but earlier this evening they were blue.

"I tried to destroy all of it and then I woke up." Her head had twitched like she was trying to shake a thought away or confused. "He tried to help me and touched my arm then they just grew and got louder in my head."

She understood now, seeing the way Pam killed indiscriminately but left her alive. She was still in there, the plants hadn't taken complete control of her or Selina would be like the rest, she just had to get to her to break the spell, push her the same way she always had.

"Pam. So, you're alive?" She said with a frown, as she crossed her arms across her chest.

"It's Ivy now." Ivy informed her without looking up from the circling finger on her palm. Her voice was different, gone was the pitch shifting brat, replaced by a low tone with calm confidence and seductive edge.

"A nickname? Very grown-up, I don't like it."

"Don't berate me, Cat, you only do it to make yourself feel better." Ivy snapped, venom in her voice as the cracks in Selina's vision of her cheery child-like self began to crack. Since when did the Pam she knew use words like 'berate' and act so intuitively.

"Pam..." A bitter glare and a tug from above persuaded her to re-think her name choice. "Ivy, why'd you do this?"

"I was expecting your boyfriend to be here."

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"It doesn't matter, I'm glad he wasn't the one to make the speech, you're here now and for what he's done, I want to make him suffer."

Selina swallowed as she began to feel light-headed from being upsidedown, she was wrong about Pam, she had only kept her alive to punish Bruce.

'Of course, it would be about him.' She scolded herself as the thought crossed her mind.

She needed to find a way to escape and soon or both her and Bruce would be dead. If what the host had been through hadn't been enough to punish Bruce for whatever he had done to her, Selina didn't want to find out what would be enough.

"What the hell are you doing that for?" She finally stopped rubbing the palm of her hand.

"Oh, I forget that you are still so close-minded, I was simply cultivating my babies..." She lifted her hand carefully to show Selina the small orange circle that had appeared where she'd been rubbing. "...To open you up a little, after all, I know you and a kiss just won't do."

She blew softly on the hand she had brought up to her mouth. As Selina breathed, it started as a tickle, in the back of her throat before it grew. The spores had begun binding to her blood, in mere seconds it reached her brain.

Slowly, her breathing became more laboured as no matter how quickly or deeply she took in air, her body just wasn't absorbing the oxygen. Her lungs burned as she panicked, bloodshot eyes now tearing up as if she was being choked by an invisible force. Within a minute, black spots appeared in her vision before finally, it was consumed by dark clouds and she fell slump in the vines holding her in the air.