"There. That looks pretty perfect to me," said Ivy, smiling proudly at the shelter she had constructed Not wanting to actually hurt any of the plants on the island, she had instead asked them to bend and twine together to form a rudimentary shelter from the leaves of the trees. This allowed streams of sunlight to penetrate the canopy into the house itself, but would no doubt be less magical once the rainy season started. Still, Ivy didn't worry about that right now – she had chosen a location with a nice, soft carpet of grass, and some comfortable shrubs to sit on. There was a fallen log near them which would serve as a table, and since the house itself was built from trees, there were plenty of branches on which to hang whatever rudimentary tools they could find. Ivy wasn't planning on needing many tools though – she was determined that they would only eat whatever fruits had already fallen from the trees, and would only cook with a fire made from the wood of trees that were already dead. If there were any edible animals on the island, she could order her plants to kill those and bring them to her, but she was pretty sure their life would be highly sustainable. Nature always provided.
"Better show it to Harley – this will quell her fears about being stuck on the island," said Ivy, leaving the hut and looking around. "Where is that girl?"
The plants whispered that she had been collecting shells on the beach all day, and had been laying them out in the sand in order to make a mosaic out of them. "That's good – if she's being creative that must mean she's feeling a little more relaxed," said Ivy. "Can't focus on art if you're agitated or depressed. I knew the mood of the island would infect her – nothing could possibly worry you in this peaceful, tranquil paradise free of humanity," she sighed, heading off toward the beach.
"Harley!" she called. "Come see the shelter I made!"
"Come see the picture I made first!" called Harley. "It's just over here!"
Ivy followed her voice to see that Harley had indeed made an expansive mosaic from the seashells, but was disappointed to see that it was in the shape of the Joker's face. Harley sat in the center of the mosaic, where Joker's smile would be, and beamed at Ivy, beckoning her over.
"Harley, this kind of thing isn't helpful…ow!" began Ivy, as she kicked away the shells, only to realize they had been sharpened into razor points, which cut her foot open. She fell forward, landing on more serrated shells. She tried to pick herself up, struggling to find a space free of shells, and failing. And once she managed to struggle to her feet at last despite the pain, Harley suddenly grabbed her arm and bent it back, spinning her around and wrapping her other arm around her throat while holding a sharp shell against her cheek. All the plants of the island instantly reacted, racing forward to help Ivy against her attacker.
"Tell the plants to back off," Harley hissed. "Or I'll cut you."
"You wouldn't dare…" began Ivy, but she shrieked in pain as Harley suddenly sliced the shell down her cheek, cutting it open. The plants hesitated, and Ivy raised her hands to order them to stand down.
"You don't want to know what I'd dare right now," murmured Harley. "I'm way beyond pissed off, and well on the road to uncontrollable fury at this point. I have never in my life been treated as horribly as you've treated me…"
"Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Ivy. "J pushed you out of a twenty storey building once!"
"He didn't do it for my own good!" snapped Harley. "He didn't insanely think he was helping me by doing that! He did it because he was angry at me for trying to kill Batman! And sure, it was horrible, but he apologized and we got over it! You won't ever apologize for this because you can't see that you've done anything wrong! You have run completely roughshod over my feelings and opinions, dismissing everything I think and believe because you think you're protecting me, like I'm too dumb to know what's best for me! You're not my mother, Red, and my own mother loved and respected me enough never to act like this! You've forced my hand, and you've brought this on yourself, just remember that! You had this coming! I'm gonna do something I should have done a long time ago!"
She threw Ivy onto the ground, and then stood over her. And for the first time, Ivy was afraid of the look in Harley's eyes – it was completely enraged, and completely unhinged, as her fist tightened on the shell. Then she knelt down, removing some seaweed she had used for Joker's hair to reveal a long, raised sandbar she had apparently sculpted together, in the shape of a couch. Harley pointed at it. "Sit," she ordered.
Ivy slowly obeyed. "Lie down if it makes you more comfortable – some patients prefer that on the couch," said Harley, clearing off a patch of sand and then sitting down next to her. "Now, I wanna hear about your childhood," she said. "We are going to get to the root of your problem with me and Mr. J, and I believe it starts there."
"It doesn't – it starts with him being an abusive creep…" began Ivy.
"Red, I'm a shrink," interrupted Harley. "Trust me, nobody is as fanatically obsessed as you are about me and Mr. J unless there's some personal reason for it. People are inherently selfish – you can claim this is about altruism all you want, but the truth is, it's about you. Horrible injustices and miseries go on every day, and we only take an interest in the ones that affect us. This bee in your bonnet you got about me and Mr. J is about you, not us. Your dad left when you were young, right? You think Mr. J is gonna walk out on me and the baby, just like your dad did to your mom? You wanna save the baby from what you went through, huh? But you gotta realize that Mr. J ain't your dad. He's a completely different man…"
"He's the exact same sort of man," interrupted Ivy, coldly. "The kind who never takes anything seriously, not even his family. The kind who treats everything as a joke and a game, as if real pain doesn't matter, as if it can all just be laughed off. The kind who just uses people and leaves them, as if they don't have feelings. The kind who thinks it's ok to play with people's hearts and bodies, as if a person is just an object to them rather than a living, thinking, feeling creature…"
"Like your plants are," agreed Harley, nodding. "I get it – it's connected to the plant thing. You're obsessed with protecting vulnerable creatures because you couldn't protect yourself when you needed to, is that it? Nobody protected you when they should have, when you were a kid…"
"This has nothing to do with my childhood!" snapped Ivy. "I just…can't stand seeing it all happening again!"
"What's happening again?" pressed Harley. "If not your dad walking out, then what?"
"This maddening cycle you're in!" shouted Ivy. "This horrible, abusive, nightmarish cycle you're trapped in! You should be stronger than you are - you should be able to stand up to him and tell him no! You should be able to tell him that you don't need him in your life, that you're not dependent on any man! You should tell him that no man is going to treat you the way you've been treated, and if he can't accept that, he needs to get out of your life forever! I've dreamed of you doing that, of looking that creep straight in the eye and saying, 'Goodbye, you're not walking over me ever again, Jason...'"
She trailed off, her eyes widening at what she had said. "Jason," repeated Harley. "Woodrue?"
Ivy nodded slowly. "Jason," she muttered at last. "When I see you fawning all over J, and blindly trusting him, I'm…reminded of how I used to act around Jason. It was so stupid, and pathetic of me, and I should have known better. You should know better. You're right – you're not a child, you're a grown woman. And I just can't stand seeing a grown woman…"
"Repeating the same mistake you made as a grown woman," finished Harley, nodding. "You think you should have known better, especially after your father. But you made a mistake in loving Jason, and you've never forgiven yourself for it. So you take it out on me. You see me as you, a long time ago, and you're trying to prevent me, or you, making the mistake you're destined to make. But you can't prevent it, and that infuriates you. It reminds you that you can't change what happened, that the mistake you made will always have power over you. But it doesn't have to. You need to forgive yourself, Red. You were young and naïve and trusting – there's no great evil in that."
"There is," hissed Ivy. "What he did to me was evil. And I will never forgive myself for not seeing how evil he was, for being so stupid as to trust him…"
"You have to forgive yourself," repeated Harley, firmly. "Everyone makes mistakes, Red. And your mistake wasn't all bad – sure, you went through a lotta pain, but you got your plants now. You wouldn't have those if not for your mistake. Think of where your life might be now without that mistake. You wouldn't be on this island, that's for sure. You wouldn't be able to afford an island, because people who aren't criminals generally can't. You wouldn't have saved all the plants you've saved – you probably wouldn't have made any difference to the world at all. You woulda got a job in a lab in some cosmetics company or something, and spent your days trying to sell products to people by lying about 'em. And lemme tell you, even though you're a criminal, at least you're an honest one, not like the criminals who work in advertising. I mean, you're happy now, aren't you, Red?"
Ivy shrugged. "I guess," she muttered. "As happy as anyone can be seeing their best friend tied to an abusive creep for life."
"But that's who I am, Red," said Harley, gently. "Your best friend. Not you. And Mr. J ain't Jason. He loves me, you gotta trust me to know that."
"I trusted myself to know that," murmured Ivy. "I was wrong. And Jason never impregnated me, thank God, but if he had…he would have run away. Just like he did after his experiment was over. He would never have taken responsibility for a child - he was too selfish, and Joker is selfish…"
"He is," agreed Harley, nodding. "We all are. I'm selfish, because I've always wanted a baby, and now I'm finally getting one, even though Mr. J wasn't keen on the idea. But he gave me one because he loves me."
"You said it was an accident," said Ivy.
"It sorta was," said Harley, shrugging. "I told him I was off my birth control pills, so he had to be careful if he didn't want anything to happen. And he wasn't as careful as he should have been."
"So you think him not being careful during sex was an unselfish act of giving you the baby you've always wanted?" asked Ivy.
"Well, he usually plans stuff meticulously so accidents don't happen," said Harley. "I mean with the Bat and all. He's always got contingency plans and alternate schemes in case something goes wrong."
"Is...having sex with you similar to fighting Batman for him?" asked Ivy, concerned but not all that shocked.
"The point is, if Mr. J wanted to be careful, he would have been," retorted Harley. "But he wasn't. He would also never admit he did it on purpose, but I know he did. I think he wants to see how this joke turns out, the Joker being a father and all."
"And what if he doesn't appreciate the joke?" asked Ivy.
"I believe he will," said Harley. "But if he doesn't, I'm prepared to go it alone. It won't be easy, but I got a great group of friends, and a wonderful support network. But Mr. J is already stepping up, as you saw in how careful he was in hiding us away. He would never do anything like that if he didn't care – he would never have stopped the games between him and Bats if he didn't care. The fact that he put something in front of Batman speaks volumes about what's important to him right now, and that's me and the baby. I know you don't like Mr. J, Red, and I know you probably never will. I know you'll never approve of him whatever he does, and I'm not asking that. I'm just asking that you treat me as an intelligent human being who knows what she's doing, not some younger version of yourself doomed to make your same mistakes. I'm a shrink, after all – thinking about stuff and analyzing stuff is kinda what I do. Do you really think I'd be so un-self-aware as to stay with a guy like Mr. J if I didn't know he loved me?"
"People do," muttered Ivy. "I was self-aware…"
"You ain't been self-aware for a long time, or you never woulda done any of this," interrupted Harley. "You talk about Mr. J dominating and abusing me, and then you kidnap me. You're acting worse than he ever did, and worse than that, you're betraying your own feminist cause by implying that I'm too stupid to know what I'm doing. That ain't a very feminist thing to think about another woman, Red. The sisterhood is meant to be empowering each other, not bullying and criticizing and overriding each other."
"You haven't been around a lot of feminists, have you?" asked Ivy dryly, with a slight smile.
Harley smiled back. "I get it, Red, I do," she said, taking her hand. "When you really care about someone, sometimes your heart overrules your head. You don't always think things through as much as you should. But you can't try to control people, especially not people you care about. We all gotta be free to make our own mistakes. I know you wish you hadn't been, but would you really have wanted someone to kidnap you to have kept you away from Jason?"
"In hindsight, definitely," said Ivy, nodding. "But then I guess even if someone had, I would have acted the way you are, trying anything to get back to him. Why can't people just accept that some things are for their own good?" she sighed.
"Well, where would be the fun in that?" asked Harley, shrugging. "You gotta have some fun, Red. And a lotta mistakes are a lotta fun. I know even if Mr. J is a mistake, he's definitely a fun one. I know Jason must have been too, at least at first, huh?"
Ivy shrugged. "Yeah, he was ok in bed, I guess."
Harley shook her head. "You don't volunteer to be a science experiment for a guy who was ok in bed. You gotta be honest with yourself even if you hate everything else about him. And frankly, doing something really dumb for someone who's really good in bed is basically the story of humanity. You can forgive yourself for being human, can't you, Red?"
Ivy shrugged again. "I guess so. Being human is the worst thing about me, but I guess it's a weakness I'm stuck with. And all the crap that goes along with it."
"Well, if you were a plant I couldn't hug ya," said Harley, embracing her friend tightly. "So it's not all bad being human, huh?"
Ivy smiled, despite the pain at Harley hugging her wounds, and returned the hug fiercely. "I guess not," she agreed.
They held each other for a long time before Ivy drew away, smiling at her. "Come on, let's get you back to Gotham and that useless man of yours. He doesn't deserve you, not by a long shot, but honestly, I'm not sure a man who deserves you actually exists. And if you ever found a man who deserved you, all my fun in complaining about him would be over. And then what would Selina and I have to talk about on girl's night? I guess we can put up with Joker, for the sake of our bitching sessions if nothing else."
Harley smiled, a smile which instantly fell when she saw a shadow appear over the island, and a plane hovering above them. "Aw, crap," she muttered. "If that's Mr. J, he won't like that we've settled things peacefully. Why can't situations ever just resolve themselves without a lotta violence?" she sighed.
"It's like you said, Harley," said Ivy, raising her arms so her plants reared up again. "Where's the fun in that?"