Ivy barely moved the next day, despite all of Harley's best efforts to comfort her friend. It was as if Ivy wanted to stop living, and it frightened Harley. Ivy was dressed in a simple green nightshirt and white socks, while Harley was in full costume, albeit without makeup and mask and with her tasseled hood slung back down around her neck. Harley had hoped that Ivy seeing her dressed this way would bring back happier memories, but so far no success.
"Please, Red, you've gotta get up, you gotta eat something."
Ivy sat there as if she hadn't heard a single word, but Harley didn't give up easily.
"Please, Pammie, I hate seeing ya like this. Please let me know what I can do - anything, just name it!"
She knelt down next to Ivy, who sat there in front of the couch where she had spent the night, with Harley having rested below her in a sleeping bag. Reaching out hesitantly, Harley brushed her gloved fingertips underneath Ivy's chin and turned her friend's face towards her.
It was a face Harley had never seen before, a Pamela Isley she had never encountered. Her eyes were red, her skin pale and her lips dry, but it was the face as a whole that did Harley in. It wasn't that Ivy looked exhausted, which she was after getting only a few hours sleep. It was that she just looked so beaten.
And Poison Ivy had never looked beaten, not in all the time Harley Quinn had known her. Ivy was the strongest, most self-assured, most independent woman Harley had ever met, but after last night's telecast, Harley could find no trace of that strength or assurance or independence. She wondered if Ivy would try to starve herself to death, and she shuddered at the thought.
"There's nothing you can do, Harley," sighed Ivy wearily, as if it was taking everything out of her just to speak. "There's nothing anyone can do now."
Her face contorted with grief, and her tears began to fall again.
Harley was out of tears herself, though seeing Ivy crying made Harley feel as if someone had stabbed her through the heart. I've got to help her, Harley thought, but how?
"Maybe - maybe I just goofed, Pammie," she iterated. "You know me and my big mouth. Maybe Alec wasn't there. Maybe it was all just an accident."
Ivy looked back at Harley, still sniffling, still shedding tears, wiping her face with tissues from a box Harley had thoughtfully laid out the night before.
"No, Harley, he was there. He had to have been. Alec was a very careful man, and he wouldn't have had such an accident. I've tried calling his cell phone, over and over, but he hasn't ... hasn't called me back ..."
She began to sob quietly, wishing she had been in the Bayou when everything happened, just so it would have all been over and she wouldn't have had to suffer so much. How could she go on after this?
Harley extended her arms and held Ivy close for a few minutes, rocking her friend back and forth like a tiring infant, until Ivy finally calmed down and Harley gently let her go. Harley then shuffled wearily to her feet, not having gotten much sleep or food herself, so distressed was she about Ivy. An idea then hit her, as if a cartoon light bulb had ignited above her blonde head. Not a fun kind of idea, though, more like a recognition of the brutality that mankind was capable of.
"If it wasn't an accident, Pammie, then it means somebody did something, something bad," began Harley. "From what you said, Red, a lot of people would have liked to have gotten their hands on that formula."
Ivy had told Harley last night that certain people had kept calling the lab the last few weeks, wanting to know more about Holland's bio-restorative solution. He had always hung up on them, usually angrily, but told Ivy there was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
Harley stopped, staring down at her alternating black and red elf shoes, and then looked over at Ivy once more.
"I'm really sorry for your loss, baby. I wish I could make it all right, but I can't. You can't change what happened, Pammie, we know that, but I'll tell ya this."
She looked up and searched for the words, hoping this would all come out the way she intended.
"I know you don't care for Mistah J, Ivy, but if he turned up dead and I thought somebody did my Puddin' in, then nothing - nothing - would stop me from going after the one who was responsible and putting them down like a mad dog. Not the Bat, not Gordon, not Two-Face, not nobody. They'd never have a moment's peace the rest of their life. I'd hunt 'em down and I'd make 'em dead."
She knelt down by Ivy again, and lifted Ivy's face up by her chin.
"You couldn't save Alec, Pammie," declared Harley. "He's gone and you couldn't save him – but you're alive, baby. You're alive, and you can avenge him."
She knelt there a few moments more, and then collapsed back on the couch. Ivy had always watched out for her, thought Harley, and now that the roles were reversed, she found that being the one in charge was positively exhausting, just before she drifted off to sleep.
To Be Concluded ...