Title: Rappacini's Last Laugh (1?)
Author: Allaine
Disclaimers: All characters are property of DC Comics. No profit intended, etc., etc.
Feedback: As always, greatly desired and usually responded to.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None.
Distribution: If you want it, just ask.
Summary: Poison Ivy is mad in love, and Harley Quinn is sorely vexed by it. A DC Elseworlds fic.
Chapter 1
Patient was rendered permanently barren due to the experiments she was subjected to when she was younger. Due to her obsession with the man who performed the experiments, patient is unable to blame him for this, and consequently claims that her infertility does not bother her. This is also the probable cause of her obsession with the well-being of ordinary plant life - her unfulfilled maternal instincts finding a new target.
That was an actual quote from Ivy's file. I wrote it, you see. The typical psycho-babble that fills her file for pages and pages. From that perspective, I was no different than any other doctor who treated her before or since.
You're probably wondering why I have access to Ivy's file at the push of a button. It's not like I'm obsessed with her or anything. Even if some of my doctors think so. I have other people's files, see?
Patient also exhibits a tendency to develop short-term fixations on other people. Occasionally these fixations become permanent obsessions. One example is Patient's relationship with Isley, Pamela - which has been the subject of ranting for the entirety of our session today.
That passage was from . . . okay, so it's my file. Don't pay attention to what they say about me. Like I said, I'm not obsessed with Ivy. Besides, the doctors at Arkham just repeat the things written in last month's file. Believe me - once upon a time I was one of them.
Obviously I'm going to give away the story whether I want to or not, so I'd better just spit it out now. Dr. Harleen Quinzell, the girl you met at the beginning of my tale? Blonde, petite, cute-as-a-button staff psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum? Gone. Well, except for the first three parts. Although Arkham's still a part of my life. I'm a frequent guest there. Except "guest" implies I'm allowed to leave any time I want. Which I'm not. Not allowed, anyway. At Arkham, most anybody can leave any time they want anyway. It's one reason I'm legally insane, actually.
Even now I'm jumping three steps ahead! Look, I'll just lay it out for you. I'm a criminal. I operate out of Gotham mostly. I put on a costume, I take my bag of theme tricks, and I do things that are technically considered "crimes". I have my own reasons, you know, but nobody listens to me. They just talk to the "victims".
My doctors think it's because I used to work at Arkham. They think it's another one of those "short-term fixations" turned "permanent obsessions". They think I was the wrong kind of doctor.
The nurses and orderlies at Arkham, not to mention the patients, tend to divide the doctors into three categories. They're either too incompetent to get a job somewhere else, too naive to understand what they're getting themselves into, or too ambitious to remain long - just long enough to write that book. Four or five doctors made a nice paycheck writing about Arkham. Others got more for writing about specific patients - although lately they seem to turn up dead. Don't ask me why. I can't see why Harvey would have been bothered when that one doctor-turned-author wrote about how Two-Face got into a fistfight with himself because the scarred half started having erotic fantasies about the girl he was gonna marry before that vial of acid turned half his face into the surface of Mars.
Anyway, I was pegged as the third kind. Only I tried to go too deep into my subjects' minds, and I got sucked in.
They're half-right (no offense, Harv). I was ambitious. I wasn't there to heal my patients. I became one of them. But I didn't want to write a book.
Becoming one of them was the idea from the start.
I figured out pretty quickly that the minute you start running around Gotham with a wacky theme and a pair of tights, the authorities think you're nuts. Personally, I think wearing a jacket and tie every day is nuts, but as we've established, they don't pay attention to me.
And why Batman is allowed to run free, I don't know. My guess, the police decided they wouldn't have any more luck stopping him than us loonies do.
Anyway, speaking of the Bat, because of him it's not too bright being a criminal in Gotham. You're going to get caught. I'm good, but I wasn't always good. I figured an amateur like me was bound to be arrested before long.
Why then, you ask, would I become a criminal in the first place?
It's not about getting caught. It's about getting out. You need a lawyer and a greedy judge to get out of prison, generally. But they break out of Arkham all the time.
When you think about it like that, which criminals do YOU think are the crazy ones?
So, the first time I was taken into custody, the cops took one look at my red-and-black spandex and my tassels - probably a good long look at my body too, knowing John Law - and dropped me off at Arkham. The rest was easy. I was around lunatics long enough to fake it, and the docs had a nice explanation for my insanity gift-wrapped for them. Arkham Syndrome.
I spent a week making sure everyone knew I was nuts, and then I escaped. It was easy.
After all, I had a year to prepare.
I know every way INTO and OUT OF Arkham. I know where every camera is, and every locked door. I know about all the hiding places - including a few dozen I added. I had keys made. When the locks are changed, the next time I'm inside I make sure I get the new keys before I sneak out. Getting the new passwords are trickier, but I know a girl who's good with computers, likes money, and loves breaking the rules.
Oh, Commissioner Gordon, if you only knew what your daughter really did at the library.
Sometimes I even let myself get captured so I can restock all my hiding places.
Just don't tell anyone I'm not crazy. After all, I'm talking to you, and you're me. So I must be crazy, right?
And only a crazy girl would be obsessed with Poison Ivy. Which I'm not. Honest.
Well, maybe a little.
My first session with Poison Ivy was the day after she was brought in. I'd already seen the Floronic Man that morning. He was obviously nuts. He thought he was from another world where plants could talk and humans were second-class citizens. He'd been sent here for attempting to start a revolt.
He was probably sent away for being revolting. Jason Woodrue is a pompous egomaniac with an overinflated sense of self and a God complex. If I can come up with any other ways to say he's an arrogant fuck, I'll let you know.
He's also completely ruthless, a cold-blooded killer, and he has a rotten sense of humor. Which makes him a prime target for my "treatment", but I'll get to that later.
And for a guy whose sidekick has a body most men would kill for, in cold blood no less, Woodrue isn't very fond of her. Don't get me wrong, he likes having her at his side, and he certainly likes having her in his bed. But he puts her down constantly.
Patient's belittling of patient Isley, Pamela, is a product of his buried feelings of insecurity. Patient needs to remind both himself and her that he is the more powerful one, and that she is his inferior, when at heart he knows the opposite is true.
I wrote that one. Most doctors don't agree with my opinion. They see Batman's legendary archnemesis, they see the henchwench, and they automatically conclude which is the dangerous one.
But Woodrue isn't the one with a seething mix of chemicals and toxins running through his bloodstream. He does have a knack for making me want to puke, but it's not because he breathes mustard gas.
All Woodrue has are big, crazy ideas, the botanical expertise to set them in motion, and the heartlessness that allows him not to care that a lot of people will be killed. Poison Ivy is his personal laboratory for making the world's deadliest concoctions. And like I said, Ivy gave herself to him a long time ago. It's a duty and an honor for her to be used by him for the "brilliant plans" created by his "unmatched intellect".
Those quotes are in her file too, but I don't need to retrieve it. I've heard her say it enough times.
While we're on the subject, let's talk about Pamela. I'd rather talk about her anyway. She strolled into our first session wearing the generic Arkham uniform that all inmates, male and female both, wear. It wasn't the same as the impossibly skimpy leaves she had on the night before, but she had a body that wasn't going to be denied by cheap cotton.
As an aside, that costume she had on before? Woodrue designed it. He likes others to see just how beautiful his sidekick is. It strokes his ego. Ivy, well, sucker for him that she is, she doesn't mind being dressed like a tramp. Although God save the man who ogles her a little TOO much.
Now that I had the time and leisure to really look at her, I couldn't be unimpressed. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in person, and as I'm a girl who swings both ways, I felt something other than bitter envy.
I trust me being bi isn't a problem? Since, you know, you are too.
For a moment that day, I wondered if my sexuality was going to interfere with my objectivity. But the other men didn't seem to have a problem.
Then she opened her mouth, and I knew why.
"So you're the little hussy who wanted to be alone with my rosebud this morning," Ivy said, looking down her nose at me.
Me and the Floronic Man? Ewwww, gross!
That was my first real introduction to Poison Ivy, bitch goddess. Our first encounter was too short for her to unveil her disdain for all things beneath her - which turned out to be almost everything. Very little earns her respect. Woodrue, plants, and that was about it.
Later, she deigned to add me to the list. Later still, she started treating me like a friend instead of a trusted servant.
But like I said, that's for later.
That day, she was one part activist, stridently listing all the ways in which we humans have oppressed and brutalized plants, and two parts diva, expecting me to nod my head, agree, and see to all of her demands. Her delusionary state included treating nearly everyone as if they were her personal assistant.
Except Jason, of course. Jason was Gaia's gift to the planet. Never mind that according to his lunatic fantasy, he was banished from his home dimension for being anti-plant. Ivy just chalked that up to being a tireless defender of the downtrodden. Back home, it was the humans. Here it was the plants.
I was introduced to several different people that hour, you see. Pamela Isley, mental patient. Poison Ivy, ecoterrorist. Poison Ivy, bitch.
And then there was the Poison Ivy who defied logic. This was a woman who, I quickly learned, had absolutely no respect for men. Men were the worst of a bad species, allowing their penises to think for them, always wanting, always taking. She had the chemicals that could make men do her bidding, and she gloried in using them, reducing any man she disliked to being her groveling servant.
Yet she was obsessed, head-over-heels in love with one! And she allowed him to treat her like a piece of meat!
If I am obsessed with anything about Poison Ivy, it's trying to reconcile the proud man-hater, confident in her beauty and intellect, with the pathetic, needy, clingy woman who appears as if by magic whenever Jason Woodrue enters the room. Her self-confidence vanishes. He can crush her with a word, and then lift her back up again in the next breath. She is nothing, he is everything. And when he blames his failures on her and throws her out, she's inconsolable.
I should know. I'm the one she expects to console her. The fourth time, she finally thanked me.
That was probably when I started to fall for her.
Damn it, damn it! Jumping ahead to the punchline again!
Aw hell, who am I kidding? I didn't like it at the time, but the newspapers were right when they called me the "Clown Princess of Crime". Because the clown is the one being laughed at, and this time the joke's on me.
I am obsessed.
But I'm not crazy.
I'm just in love.
To be continued . . .
