It was the most awkward glass of tequila that Cat had ever had. On her left, the Joker, in all his purple vest, green hair, scarred glory. On her right, Gotham's dark knight, the Batman. A moment ago Joker had tried his luck with a switchblade hidden in his sleeve but Cat caught his wrist mid-air and shoved him back into the bar stool. And now they were both waiting in subdued silence for her to make the first move. But first, she'd finish this fucking tequila. She downed it and coughed at the burning in her throat. "Thanks for coming." She lifted her chin and sighed slowly, eyes sliding over to the great cloaked figure.
He pulled a newspaper from somewhere inside his Shakespearean cape and dropped it in front of her. 'The Poison Ivy: Gotham's newest threat'.
A blaring headline. Yvonne had named herself then, that wasn't good. But Joker had other ideas. He scanned it and whistled under his breath. "Not bad," he uttered. "The Poison Ivy."
"You had something to do with this," Batman said, or growled more like.
Cat lifted her empty glass to scan the world through the amber-tinted window. "I resent that," she replied. "But yes, yes I did."
"How is any of this possible?" Batman was scanning the television through the eye holes in his mask, at the vines ripping through Gotham's downtown.
"Experimental science," Cat said. "Isn't it always? Oh, and Batman, the League of Arkham." She spun on her stool to motion around the bar and the whole four people inside. "League of Arkham, Batman -baddest motherfucker to ever don a cape."
His black-painted eyes narrowed in displeasure. "I know them all," he growled. "I've been surveying these people. A crime-fighting gang of criminals, how quaint."
"Self-appointed vigilantes." Cat pointed at him. "Just like you baby. And, uh, this is our little farewell party. 'cause the band's breaking up." She took the entire bottle of tequila from the bar and swigged it messily.
"Why am I here?"
She lowered the bottle from her lips and threw it over her shoulder without a backwards glance. "Because the three of us have some weeds to kill," she replied airily. "Because I know Yvonne better than anyone except her dead wife, he-" she jabbed her thumb in Joker's direction "-is the one Yvonne wants, revenge-wise. And you have more experience dealing with the Big Bads than anyone else."
Batman didn't blink. "You'd only slow me down."
Joker laughed loudly but Cat pointed at him.
"Shut up," she ordered. "Today you're a fucking mime." She switched her attention back to raise her brows at Batman. "I seem to remember stringing you on a wild goose chase for months. You wanna talk about being slowed down? You wanna talk about a kidnap victim you never found?"
He hesitated, the memory hitting him in his bullet-proof gut.
"You need me," she concluded. "Because we're not gonna punch our way through this one. Yvonne's lost her fucking mind...I know what's that like. We're gonna take her in as quietly as we can."
"That's suicide," he said in a softer rasp.
She curled her fingers into fists. "And if I die," she hissed through gritted teeth. "Feel free to do it your way. Until then, I'm in charge. I'm the fucking monarch. Are there any questions?" She waited for a second or two with absolutely no intention of taking questions. "Fantastic," she declared. "So who wants to hear the plan?"
She found herself back there, in the apartment with the vine-noose still swinging from the ceiling. She sat on the dust-covered carpet with her legs crossed. "If you were here, you'd fight with us." Cat glanced up at the ceiling. "I know you would. You're sweet on this city, on the stench of fear in the streets. And-" she paused. "-and if I asked, you'd fight with me."
She created the League of Arkham to change things for the better, to even the stakes, to turn things in on themselves. But she didn't change a goddamn thing, not a thing at all -she changed him, she knew she did.
"You even called us a family once." she smiled at the memory.
If you made me care about these unintelligible petty criminals, you can do anything.
"I asked you to trust me, and you did. You didn't doubt my resolve, didn't patronise me. You treated me like a fucking human, which is more than anyone has-" she had to clear her throat of something painfully thick. "God damn," she whispered. "Know something crazy, Crane? Think I was sweet on you...but...lost my fucking mind, haven't I? Don't know what's real. Maybe I tricked myself into it. Maybe I needed it. Maybe I just liked your fucking face." She shut her eyes and fell backwards to lie against the carpet. "I thought it was about him," she admitted. "That liking you would make him jealous, make him want me more, y'know? But he's back, and you're not, and I don't...I don't like it as much as I should."
She opened her eyes. Iris was standing in front of her with blood soaking through her shirt, the grey jelly of her brain peeking through cracks in her skull, her eyes so wide, her mouth moving soundlessly.
"FUCK!" Cat shot back like a bullet and grabbed the knife from her pocket. But she looked again and the room was empty. No dead friends in sight. "No." Cat shakily rose to her feet. "No, no, no, no. Not losing it. Tell me I'm not-" She stopped when she saw the thing poking out from a slab of debris. A tiny black cylinder with a metal nozzle like a bike pump. A tiny gas cylinder.
Crane had told her over the phone that he'd armed himself with fear toxin.
Cat chuckled to herself. "Scared the shit outta me, scarecrow." She bent down to retrieve the container. The second her fingers met the cool metal, she snatched her hand away like she'd been burned.
No dead friends in sight.
A dangerous little thought was brewing in her mind, growing stronger by the second. She grabbed the toxin again, properly this time, brought it close to her nose and inhaled deeply. She looked up the vine swinging from the ceiling, still frayed at the edges from where she'd cut Johnathan Crane's body down with her own knife. The group had stacked the bodies in the stairwell before leaving for the bar, and it was to the pile of bodies that Caterina returned, fear gas running cold through her veins. But she wasn't afraid...she was almost buzzing. She rolled the bodies away one after another with the toe of her boot and her smile slowly widened. "Son...of a bitch."
She pulled her phone out and tried his number. Straight to voice mail, of course. "Hey you fucking asshole, you wanna call me back?"
"Not particularly."
She hadn't expected a voice to respond, especially directly behind her ear. She jumped finally in a way that had nothing to do with the toxin. She turned slowly, blade-first.
The left side of his mouth twitched. "Very touching eulogy," he told her. "had me close to tears."
"You….You-" she took a step forwards, blade brandished. "You motherfucking asshole! You- I cut you down."
Crane glanced down at the knife in disapproval. He touched the blade with a single finger and pushed it down out of harms way. "You saw what you feared. And your fear spread through the group like a plague."
She didn't even mind being disarmed by him, which was odd, but not as odd as the smile she was fighting. "And you didn't step outta the curtain? Surprise! I'm not hanging like a fucking painting!"
He smiled properly, and her heart did a funny little skip. "And ruin the fun?" he asked incredulously. "Besides, thought you were fond of a good joke."
"Y'know what?"
"What?"
"Jokes are really starting to lose their appeal."
"Really?" Crane asked, eyebrow barely quirked.
"Big time." Cat nodded. "Dinner?"
"Hm?"
"Let's get dinner sometime."
He laughed in her face. "We're not going to survive this," he said instead. "Dinner is irrelevant."
"Then let's get a little hypothetical, doctor."
He didn't move, just kept studying her face with his pale blue eyes absolutely chilling in their cleverness and Caterina didn't realise how much a person could miss a pair of eyes.
"You are coming with me, aren't you?"
"Yeah," he replied, with just the edge of begrudging. "Because you have no mercy on me, Caterina."
She frowned that she didn't understand.
"Asked me twice now," he explained. "And you keep looking at me like that. If I say no, I'll die."
"I wont kill you," she uttered in confusion. Where the fuck did he get that impression?
He sighed deeply and folded his arms. "No, Cat," he appraised her. "If I say no, I'll kill me."
"Oh."
"No mercy," he repeated under his breath. "I have a doctorate, you know? I've been called brilliant, extraordinary, even groundbreaking. Worked my entire life to get here, and for what? Throw myself on the sword like any other brainless sap." She opened her mouth to interject but he held up a hand to stop her. "You were supposed to be broken, dulled, the boneless husk of a person. The ex-girlfriend of the Joker, used and abused to fucking nothing."
Was that the first time she'd heard him swear? Not gonna lie, it was kinda hot. But she kept that to herself, he was on some sorta mission now. A doctor really could talk your ear off.
"But you evolved somehow. You rebuilt and fortified yourself with a strength I can't possibly imagine. I've seen you in that asylum, at your lowest, and I still find it within myself to fear you."
"I...don't know what to say."
Crane made a displeased humming sound. "And you know what you fear?" he asked her. "You know what you truly fear right now?"
She stuck her chin up and shook her head.
"Yes you do," he disagreed. "What did you see?"
"I saw you."
"And that's most abhorrent part. After all you've been through, the literal torture, and you fear losing me?"
"I...didn't think of it that way."
"Didn't consider it?" he repeated in disbelief. "That doesn't repulse you? Cat, this is the worst thing I can imagine."
She was starting to get it. She was no psychiatrist, but she was learning to read him specifically. "Aw, John," she cooed. "Are you...are you being-" she lowered her voice like she was masking a curse word "-sentimental right now." and to people like the two of them, sentiment was a curse. A terrible, terrible curse.
Crane frowned at her. "I'm bleeding out in front of you and you're mocking me?"
"Bleed out already." She rolled her eyes. "I wanna get to the good bit. You say something stupid-smart, I lose my patience and kiss you to shut you up."
Apparently, a kiss wasn't even necessary. He blanched and fell entirely silent for a good three seconds. "Uh…"
"Uh? That's what you're giving me to work with?"
And he bled out entirely until his face was white as a sheet and she watched it happen with a self-satisfied smirk.
"Crane, I've been bleeding since we met," she said slowly, purposefully. "You've been patching me up lately."
"How's that fair?"
"It's not," she agreed. "But can we agree that I've bled enough for both of us?"
Finally, she broke through the icy frigidness of his expression, softening it into a half-smile. "On that, we can."
"Then give me a chance," she reasoned, reaching for his hand blindly, curling her pinkie around his in the lightest ghost of a touch. His hand was colder than hers, but not uncomfortably so. Still, warmer than a damn corpse. She was aware that she was asking a lot of him, there was only so much blood in the human body. But if he let her in, even for a moment, allowed himself to care, she'd be so gentle with him.
She only had to wait for him to say something stupid-smart. He didn't. But he didn't wait, either. He lowered his head and kissed her lightly. She furrowed her brows and tightened their interlocked fingers.
It was a barely kiss. A hypothetical. But it was all they had right now -hypotheticals.
No one was surprised, which pissed her off to no end. She strolled back to the group with Crane behind her, to nonchalant nods of greeting from Douglass and Cherry, to a brooding glower from Batman, and a little finger-wiggle wave from Joker. Cat stopped and stared at them all. "I walk in here with a dead guy and no one bats an eye?"
"Fear toxin," Cherry piped up. Douglass widened his eyes in agreement.
"I assumed so as well," Joker said.
She reared on him in particular. "And no one thought to let me in on it?"
"Hey, when a guy wants an out- Joker paused and rolled his wrists in a flamboyant gesture to finish the sentiment.
Crane caught his eye and chuckled knowingly. "Is this something of a truce?"
"Ah, let's call it a stalemate." And he nodded his head back at the empty bar stool beside him. "Drink?"
And Cat watched, entirely dumbfounded, as the Joker shared a drink with the scarecrow and the goddamn Batman of all people. It all had to be some kind of fever dream. Sentient killer plants she could handle, but this? She made her way over to the booth and sank into it beside Cherry. "Y'know," she uttered. "If I ever date someone who isn't a freak, a serial-killer, or a mad scientist, I am not bringing up the ex-boyfriend situation."
Cherry laughed. "But they all got something in common, don't they?" she quipped. Cat glanced at her in question and she made a show of rolling her eyes, hard. "You, bitch. You've managed to scrounged up three freaks ready to die for you."
"You date someone once," Cat muttered, which suddenly brought something to her mind. She looked at the shiny silver makeshift ring on Cherry's finger. "So, engaged, huh?"
"If this doesn't fall to shit," Cherry agreed, quieter now. She glanced at Douglass, who was sitting at the other end of the booth deep in a glass of whisky and his own private musings. "We wanna leave Gotham. Go somewhere exotic."
"Sounds perfect."
"And you?"
"Me?"
Cherry nodded. "What are you doing after all this?"
Cat laughed at the audacity. "You're not suggesting a quiet life for me, are you?" But her friend widened her eyes like why the hell not. "You two deserve that." Cat nodded at the couple. "I don't. Besides, think nothing would kill me faster."
"Hm." Cherry lifted her glass to her lips. "Now, if only there was someone as crazy as you." She made a point of tilting her drink in the general direction of the bar.
It was Cat's turn to chuckle. "And, uh, Crane?" she inquired. "What do you think?" More than ready to drop it all at Cherry's word.
She took a long, deliberate sip before replying. "I think he's sorta beautiful...in a creepyish way."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know, I know, just...pretending that matters," Cherry sighed deeply. "Thought we'd act our age for a second. But...I don't know Cat."
"Don't know? Or don't want to say?"
"The two of you together?" She opened her mouth in a wince. "Not gonna lie, kinda terrifying. But good for you, I think. He scares the shit outta me, but hey if that floats your particular boat, no arguments here. I like the idea of you being with someone you can take in a fight."
"So...because I could kill him if I wanted to?" Cat repeated slowly, trying to understand.
"Exactly." Cherry clicked her fingers. "That's a good sign. Call it insurance. And make sure he knows it."
Caterina turned to glance at him, from here she could only see the side of his face as he listened to something Joker was driveling on about with his hands clasped politely on the bar. She hadn't dated a listener in fucking forever. Then, as if he could feel the presence of her gaze, he glanced back at her, looked her up and down, and scowled.
"The fuck was that?" Cherry growled. But Cat was smiling.
"Think he remembered how he feels for me," she said, and she knew she was right. "He's cute, isn't he?"
Cherry stared at her like she was delusional. Suddenly her dark eyes widened like something suddenly occurred to her. "Ohh," she realised in a whisper. "This is gonna get weird."
Cat laughed and slowly got to her feet. "Think I've stalled enough," she said and her smile slowly fell. "I'll, uh, see you on the other side of this."
"You keep them in line." Cherry stood up too like she was rearing to salute her. "Don't forget that you're running the show."
"And what a grand show it'll be." Cat put one foot behind the other and curtsied gracefully.
"You crazy bitch," Cherry uttered through a smile. "I'm gonna fucking miss you."
"Save a seat for me?"
Cherry frowned slightly.
"At your wedding," Cat explained. "Seat at the back. I heard the front row is in all the pictures, and I'm, uh, not very photogenic."
"But how will you know when and where-" Cherry cut herself off when Caterina gave her a knowing look. She lowered her face and breathed a chuckle. "You'll know," she understood quietly. "You better be there."
"I will," she lied.
"I believe you."
They were both just lying through their teeth.
"You really have nothing non-lethal?" Cat asked incredulously.
Joker put a hand on his jaw and surveyed the impressive spread inside the van. Knives and guns and enough explosives to tear a hole all the way from Gotham to Tokyo. "I'm not...non-lethal," he struggled with the concept.
Cat looked at him, then let out a sigh and pointed to the friendliest-looking knife of the bunch. The blade was a little shorter than the others, and a fun turquoise blue. "You are today," she advised him. He pocketed her knife of choice. She nodded and pulled the van doors closed before walking over to the second car and Crane leaning against the passenger-side door. "How're we looking?"
He tilted his head backwards. "Every last drop I had in my reserves."
"Good."
"And if she's immune?"
Cat looked up at the sky, at the vines and roots sprouting from the city like some apocalyptic alien invasion, crawling uptown, getting thicker and stronger as they led to what Cat could only assume was Poison Ivy's hideout. She let out a sigh. "Pray to your god of choice," she said dryly.
Crane folded his arms. "I'm not a religious man."
"Then...come find me," she said instead. She glanced at him, fighting to keep her face blank. "We don't have to die alone."
"Everyone dies alone."
"Goddamn you're a pessimist," she cursed. "Lucky you're crazy, otherwise we really wouldn't get along." And she struck him silent, yet again. She should start keeping score, every time she did she felt like she'd won some grand prize. "Am I really that astonishing?" she felt the need to ask.
"Astonishing?"
"Yeah, I seem to shut you up a lot."
At that, the scarecrow smiled. "Unrelated," he assured her. "Observing is easier when silent and I...I enjoy observing you. It's very amusing."
Cat clicked her tongue. "So close...that was almost a compliment until that last part. Condescension's, like, your first language, isn't it?"
"It doesn't please you that I find you so amusing?"
"Crane," she sighed disparagingly. "We're sickos, we find the Gotham Daily amusing. I could slit a throat or two and we'd have a light giggle."
He gallantly held his hands behind his back. "You think that little of us?"
"On the contrary, I think the world of us."
And if he were anyone else, he would've shut her up there with a kiss, an arm around the waist...something. But he was Doctor Johnathan Crane, and Cat was starting to understand that this kinda verbal tennis was his way of being intimate, of whisking them both of into their own little world together, where they were the smartest, funniest, psychotic fuckers alive. Still, Crane was a heck of a lot saner than her last one. She stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and chewed nervously, she hadn't allowed herself to look as terrified as she really felt all day, but this clever man with pretty eyes was getting to her, opening her up like a human person with human person feelings. How abhorrently romantic?
"Do you think -do you think we can trust him?"
"Who? The clown?"
She nodded.
And Crane exhaled a laugh and opened his mouth to dismiss it halfheartedly, but hesitated when he noticed the sincere worry in her face. "He wont betray us," he assured her instead.
She waited for more.
"He won't betray you," he spelled it out for her.
Cat had to laugh. "If you even think there's a chance of a reprise-"
"Well, he's not stupid," Crane said, although he did so with a twinge of disappointment. "If he were he'd still be in the fight."
"So...he's out out?"
"Dead man walking," he agreed. "Told me himself he meant to blow himself to pieces months ago. The only reason he's still here is because underneath all that crazy is something that almost resembles a human man, and that something loved a girl once."
She couldn't help but stare at the back of Joker's coat. "Why...why are you telling me this?"
Crane's gaze didn't stray from her face. "Because," he said softly. "I can no sooner fight the laws of nature than I can block out the sun."
She snapped back to him rather violently, a harsh juxtaposition to the almost tranquil calmness in his face. He was patiently waiting for her to say the words he's said in his own mind so many times before. "You think I'll go running back," she uttered, and she didn't bother phrasing it like a question; she wasn't stupid either. Laws of nature, huh? "Y'know, Crane, you're a pretentious prick."
"Ah, your defensive anger says it all."
"I'm not defensive, I'm pissed off!" She drew her hands into fists and, to his credit, he visibly swallowed like he hadn't been full of shit when he'd admitted to being afraid of her. But he was damn well full of shit now. "Don't psychoanalyses me, and don't you fucking dare diagnose me. I've come too far now to be another nut case in your office. Now, I'm gonna be a real sweetheart and offer you two choices going forwards. First, we stay nice. You can accept that I'm making the conscious choice to be with you. Or second, you can't."
Astonishment for sure, he sure as shit wasn't amused now.
"It can piss you off too," she shrugged. "Hey, liking someone else is rotten as hell, I get that. Hate me if you want, but make it sexy."
She broke him a little, and then a lot, he hung his head with a soft self-despising smile. "You're good at that, aren't you?"
"I can hate so fucking good."
Crane looked up at her.
She smiled alluringly. "I can tear you apart."
And something flashed in his eye, like the good doctor might kinda sorta be into that.
But there was still one person Caterina hadn't had a personal conversation with, and she couldn't live in blissful paradise forever. When she came down, she came down hard, like Batman's dark broodiness was sucking the life outta her too. She made sure they were out of earshot, standing at the back of the empty parking lot, before she uttered a single word. "Bruce."
"Morgan."
"No first name anymore, huh?"
Eventually, he found it within himself, but it didn't sound like it came easy to him. "...Caterina."
"Y'know what," she decided. "Stick to Morgan." She didn't particularly like hearing her name spoken in his grating 'Batman' voice. The shit may have well and truly hit the fan a few hundred times in between, but they did share a bed once upon a time...a lifetime ago. "I didn't know if you'd come," she said quieter. "Working with me, working with the joker and scarecrow."
"We can do this alone," he uttered.
"We?" She tried not to be flattered at that, tried and failed dismally and she smiled. "You need me."
"I trust you-" he hesitated. "-more than the others," he added. "At least I know your motives."
"I trust Crane."
"Do you?"
"Yes. For the same reason you trust me."
"And Joker?"
"You can trust that neither of us really trust him," she riddled in a circle. "And that he trusts in my distrust." She was hoping to talk him dizzy, she didn't really wanna spend the rest of her life and the next trying to get the Batman to trust the Joker, like coaxing a firemen to make peace with a raging forest fire. "I think he's curious," she admitted. "Wants to see how this all ends, be on the front lines of it. And, uh, he wouldn't be enjoying this as much as he is if he betted on us walkin' outta this."
"No one's going to die."
He said it with such finality, like he had any say in the matter. Batman was a freak, a badass crime-fighting freak with one hell of a dropkick, but nothing more than a freak. He was so far from a god, or any kind of being that could control chaos.
"Is that what you tell yourself?" she asked him instead. "Before every fight with the homeless and the mentally ill? No one's going to die. Like there's nothing worse than death." She stopped and straightened. "We both know that's not true."
He studied her closely, his dark eyes infinitely darker by the smearing of black paint around them; what Cat might look like if she took a shower and rubbed her face without wiping off her eyeliner. Still, somehow, he made it work.
"You blame yourself, don't you?"
"You don't?" she asked in voice high in disbelief. "All of this is my fault."
"The Joker-"
She cut him off before anything like an excuse could escape his lips. "This stopped being about the Joker a long time ago. I used to be his little pet project, I know that. But now...now I'm my own villain. Maybe...maybe I should've died on that rooftop. Maybe you should've let me die." She sighed deeply, wishful thinking.
"I gotta chill runnin' down my spine-"
The familiar wicked slur cut in behind them. Neither Batman nor Cat turned to acknowledge him, instead she readied herself for a last minute revolt of Joker throwing everything out the window at a chance to kill the Bat. He moved up to her left, forcing her between the two men, and when he spoke again he had a knife in each hand. "You wouldn't be talking about me now, would you?"
She held her own blades securely. "We do this," she uttered in a voice barely above a whisper. "Then you can tear each other apart. Not before."
Joker laughed suddenly and loudly. He threw his arm, knife and all, around Batman's neck like they were the best of friends. "Don't worry, not here to wrestle."
Batman eyed him resentfully. "Don't touch me."
Which only made him laugh and slap his chest. "Batsy and I signed a truce, a peace treaty. It's, uh, not his head I'm here to talk about..." He made a show of slicing his neck with the backside of his blade and miming 'Poison Ivy'.
"Non-lethal," Cat reminded him. "She's a friend."
"She's destroying my city-" he paused when Batman looked at him, and then grinned somewhat sheepishly. "Our city," he corrected himself. "Where can one play when the playground is torn apart by giant plants?"
"Pretty difficult to play anywhere without a head," she hissed back. "You kill her, you can answer to me."
"I've never been decapitated before," Joker mused, then fell back on his usual wicked grin. "Sounds hot."
Finally, he was starting to sound like his old self again, and it made Cat feel a hell of a lot more at ease than whatever brown-nosing bullshit he had going before when she had him tied up. Somewhere out in the city, a clock chimed midnight, and the rolling bells sounded like a funeral song.
Joker hid his knives up his sleeves and slicked his hair back, ready for the big event. "The city freaks take the stage."
"Freaks?" Batman echoed, looking down at both of them.
Joker swiftly cupped his mouth to hide his words from Cat's view. "She's got a type," he hissed none-too-quietly.
"Y'know what else I got? I got blades and a realllly good dry cleaner."
He looked at her and blew her a kiss like nothing had ever changed. But it had, she was with another freak now.
The old Gotham Museum, a great marble monstrosity of a building much like the rest of Gotham, but with grand bubbling fountains and sun-bleached banners reading 'Life in the rain forest' as its newest exhibit hung above the double door entrance. Vines and roots trailed beneath the building from all sides, like the building itself was growing out of the upturned asphalt.
Cat hugged her motorcycle jacket tighter around her middle, a sudden chill struck her that had nothing to do with the cold night air. They had knives, guns, and whatever bat-toys Batman kept hidden beneath his belt, and all of this against giant apocalyptic carnivorous plants. She put a hand against the ornate wooden door. "You guys ever, uh, question all of your life choices?"
They replied in unison.
"No."
She laughed, although there was no humor in the desperate sound. "Must be nice." And she pushed open the door. The ceilings were high and arched, dripping crystal chandeliers over a floor of checkered gold and black tiles. And there wasn't a vine or leaf to be seen, the museum hall was pristine, dark and empty. The only thing out of place was a strange sweet and sour smell in the air, like citrus but stranger. Nothing Cat had ever smelt before.
Probably a new species of monster-plant.
The tranquility of the place didn't unsettle her alone, Joker was clenching his knives with whitened knuckles. "Think she knows we're here?"
She opened her mouth to reply but was cut off immediately by a deep unsettling in the wall, a groaning and crunching of pipes and plaster as if something alive and unseen was writhing about all around them. When the noise finally died down, she swallowed and tried again. "Yes, I think she knows we're here."
"There's something in the wall."
"Wow, the world's greatest detective strikes again," she rolled her eyes at Batman. "How'd you figure that?"
"No, look." And he pointed at a section of the chestnut brown Georgian paneling that seemed to be swelling against the rest, creaking and groaning with the effort. A hand punched through the wood like it was drywall, an arm, then a torso, then an entire human man in blue security uniform burst through the gaping hole and turned towards them. Almost a human man, but with a giant orange and green flower pulsing against his chest, its roots tearing through clothing and skin and growing like a parasite. His eyes were bloodshot, unfocused, and a dribble of green ooze ran from his mouth.
Joker shot him in the head three times without blinking and his skull exploded. He toppled over, a jawbone the only thing remaining of his entire head. For some reason, they stared at the abomination and waited. One leg twitched...and then it rose again with its legs shuffling and its arms waving clumsily like some horrid ventriloquist dummy. The flowering plant had torn through its legs and arms, twisting black vines around bones and muscles to puppet his movements. Batman unhooked a tool from his belt and fired a claw and cord into the thing's chest, grappling the flower and ripping it clean like pulling weeds from the garden. Finally, the thing fell down, properly dead.
"Guard died a long time ago." Cat crouched over the messy remains. "Looked like poison."
But he wasn't the only one. A second zombie lurched through the whole and threw itself against Cat. She struggled against it for a few seconds, and somewhere in between had her face a few inches from that grotesque beating flower. It spewed a green glass in her face and she spluttered on the funny taste. She held her breath and slashed her knife up through the things torso, cutting it clean and releasing her. The zombie plant men started pouring out of the wall like rats, grasping and clawing at them, some with missing limbs and exposed vines, some with batons which they swung entirely uncoordinated. It was one hell of a fight. Batman held the front lines, taking on three at once with brute strength. Joker and Cat took the stragglers, the schemers moving wider to attack them from behind. The bodies piled up around them, and fortunately they were all already dead so Batman wasn't breaking any rules, not that it would make any difference; there had been enough causalities in inaction.
"This...place..." Cat panted between knife strikes and ripped a plant out of a guy's chest with her bare hands. She stopped with the plant writhing in her hand and dropped it, stomping it into jelly with the heel of her boot. She looked up again at the sudden quietness that had fallen over them. "This place is gonna need a new security team."
Joker dropped his head and shook chunks of plant and security guard out of his green curls. Batman wasn't even winded. "Come on," he ordered, stepping through the hole in the wall. "Ivy will be at the heart of all this."
Cat took a step and winced suddenly, the air in her lungs was...burning somehow. Joker glanced at her and tilted his head in unspoken question. "I'm fine," she dismissed. "Little out of practice, that's all."
"Like old times, huh?"
"Somehow, this is weirder."
And he followed Batman into the next room, chuckling to himself. The strange lemony smell was stronger in there, a room full of taxidermy animals enclosed in red velvet rope from all over the world, even a few extinct sabre-toothed tigers manufactured by meshing a number of dead existing animals together. And everywhere, dull lifeless eyes followed them, painted glass beads with so much menace glinting from within -even the beaver looked bloodthirsty.
Cat decided immediately that she hated this room. "I've been here before," she remembered, turning slowly on the spot. "Middle school field trip. Fucking hated this place." She turned and met the frozen snarl of an Iberian lynx. Joker grinned at her from behind it.
"Cat?" he offered.
She knocked it out of his hands. "You're not funny," she told him. "No matter what anyone tells you."
Batman held up a single gloved hand like a parent calling for their children's silence. "You smell that?"
"Mhm, lemons," she agreed.
"Uh, I smell caramel corn," Joker said.
Batman held up a strange winged device with a blinking screen, a type of scanner. He circled the room once, scanning the air around them. "Chemical traces," he muttered. "But a biological source."
"Biological chemicals."
He snapped the scanner closed and hid it within his cloak. "Precisely."
"Uh, learnt about that in school, there was a name for it..." she blew her cheeks out in frustration as the word evaded her.
A hand fell on her shoulder from behind and a faceless voice said a single honeyed word.
"Pheromones."
replaying the arkham games has me wanting to write more and lo and behold...another chapter to a story I haven't touched in four years. How y'all been? :)
