It was dark out by the time they arrived at the Bialowieża forest. Diana was growing tired already, but they were already there. Even with how quickly they had been finding the hints, she was sure this would be their last stop for the day. Hopefully, they'd be able to continue this pace for the next few days and be done with this mess as soon as possible.
"Sal and his wife must have been nature lovers," Diana said as she landed her jet in another one of Ivy's specifically grown trees at the edge of the woods. "A garden, and then a protected forest… We might be able to skip a few steps if you remember all the places they went."
"If only we could." Ivy stood once the Jet was settled in the large branches and took off her shoes. "Sal never went to the English Gardens or the Bialowieża. They're all places I wanted to visit. The Maypole was the start of Sal's vacation, but the rest has just been random places I've had on my bucket list."
"That happen to coincide with the countries from Sal's vacation." Diana followed Ivy out of the Jet and into the woods below. "Where do you think the next clue will be? Is there some special landmark in these woods you wanted to see?"
She watched the redhead kneel and place her hand flat on the ground. The entire forest seemed to hum around them, and she remembered what Ivy had said about her powers the other day.
"Someone passed through just an hour or so ago and tied a letter to one of the old oak trees at the center of the woods." Ivy stood after a few moments. "There's other people in the forest as well. Armed people."
Diana glanced around the woods surrounding them. "Are any of them near us?"
"No. They're collected around the note."
"This feels like a trap."
"I'm sure it is, but it's nothing I can't handle, especially here." The woman flexed her fingers and Diana could hear the crackle of growing bark around them.
"I've never felt safer." Diana tried to joke, but it came off a little flat. The redhead raised an eyebrow at her but shrugged it off quickly enough.
She followed Ivy's lead into the woods and watched in wonder as the natural world responded to the woman's presence.
Diana felt as if she was watching a dryad return to her woodland home. Unlike the garden, the forest was unkept and untamed. It moved under her feet with every step, clearing the path before them but still reaching out to touch her like a revered goddess.
And Ivy returned each caress in kind, delicately running her fingers against the vines and branches like they were wheat in a field. Diana couldn't resist also holding an arm out to touch a few of the retreating vines. They didn't cower from her like she had expected, but they didn't return the affection in the way they did to Ivy.
"It must be wonderful," Diana murmured, watching the redhead's pure bliss before her. "to be so connected to nature."
"It is," Ivy replied, her voice soft and pleasant. "I wish everyone could feel what I feel. Maybe then people would start respecting our world and its resources."
Sometimes Diana forgot that Poison Ivy was an Eco-terrorist, and not simply a villain. She was one of the few criminals that the league faced that had a higher call, a cause that went far beyond her own needs and desires. In many ways, Diana respected her for her devotions, but could never agree to her course of action.
Still, that didn't make the woman's abilities any less incredible.
Using her powers, Ivy made the forest trails easily traversable even in the darkness. Diana kept on her guard regardless, being careful to watch her feet and not let Ivy get out of sight. She tried to keep her ears open for the sounds of anything suspicious, but all she could hear was the rustling of the plants before them. She felt blind in the darkness and unsafe in the underbrush, so she said a little prayer in her head and put her faith in Ivy's senses.
It was strange having to rely upon Poison Ivy. She probably never would have trusted her before this mess with Harley. She had heard of the woman's conniving and manipulative nature from Batman and his fellow Gotham heroes many times before… though none of them had complained of the villainess for a couple years now.
Poison Ivy had vanished off the face of the earth for a short time only to return as Pamela Isley. She would be seen in botanical and environmental conferences, working in laboratories again, and bouncing between Gotham and Coney Island on the regular to visit her girlfriend. Diana was surprised Batman hadn't gotten whiplash at the change. The league kept an eye on her though.
Just in case.
"Diana," Ivy's voice is firm when she pulls the Amazon from her thoughts. "There are drones about."
The forest stills around them, and sure enough, Diana can hear the small buzz of the small devices. Ivy looks opposite to where the sound is, and then snaps her arm up and clenches her fist. there's a sound of crunching plastic. A vine lowers itself from a nearby tree, offering the crushed machine to her.
"I've never seen a drone like this before." Diana took the drone and flipped it around. The camera on it was completely crushed. "Let's assume that whoever's guarding the next hint knows we're coming now. How far away are we?"
"Couple hundred feet. The people are close, but not advancing on us." Ivy looked through the woods before them. "Shall I take care of them now?"
It was tempting, but maybe they were misunderstanding their presence. "Did these people appear with the person that tied the note to the tree?"
"Yes."
Damn it. "Can you simply have a vine retrieve the note for us? We might be able to sneak out without confrontation."
"Never knew Wonder Woman was so afraid of a little spat." Ivy scoffed. "If I get close enough to see it… probably. It takes a lot of focus to convince a vine to be sneaky."
They proceed cautiously from there, keeping low and moving carefully across the forest floor. Ivy managed to convince the plants to not grow too excited by her presence, and when they came across the first small group of armed men waiting for their arrival, she managed to distract them easily by getting some bushes across the small clearing to rustle.
"Up here!" Ivy hissed before quickly climbing a giant tree.
Diana blinked, a little surprised at how fast she scaled the side of the tree and disappeared into its canopy. She followed, making sure no one else could see and joined Ivy in the branches. Looking down into another, larger clearing Diana could just barely see a stark white note tied to a string on a branch of an old, gnarly looking tree.
"Incredible, isn't he?" Ivy's voice is dreamy again. "He's one of the oldest trees in this entire forest. The things he's seen, the stories he must know…"
Diana does take a moment to wonder with Ivy. The note said something about five hundred years. Maybe this tree was even older than that. Was this place even a forest when its seed sprouted?
She shakes off the thought. "Ivy, we have to focus, remember? For Harley."
Ivy blinks, and her lips turn down to a serious frown. "Right, for Harley."
She reaches out with a single hand, and Diana sees one of the vines hanging off the old tree tremble. A leaf from the vine extends and forms a new, tiny branch that snakes down to the letter. Ivy is tense next to her, so Diana chooses to keep her praises to herself for now.
She sees the thin vine tug at the string, and it struggles to untie the knot binding the letter to the tree. Ivy curls her fingers slightly, her brow knitting together in concentration. Diana feels strangely stressed as the knot slips slightly with each tug the vine gives it, but before long it is pulled apart and the letter begins to fall.
Ivy quickly snatches it up, using her other hand to grow some of the grass at the base of the tree to catch it and slowly begin ferrying it towards them. Diana smiles despite herself, turning to encourage the woman, but as she does the glint of a scope stills her heart.
"Get down!" Diana wraps her arm around Ivy's neck and pulls her down just as a shot goes off and ricochets off her bracelets.
Ivy bends the tree around them as more shots ring out, but Diana is more baffled than scared. She knew what bullets hitting her bracelets felt like, and these didn't feel like that at all.
"They're rubber bullets." Diana warns.
"So, they don't want to kill us?" Ivy raises an eyebrow at that. "They do know who they're up against, right?"
"Maybe their boss forgot to mention us." Diana rolled her shoulders and prepared for a fight. "I'll grab the letter; you keep them off me."
Ivy nods and makes a small opening above them. Diana launches out of it just as Ivy takes obvious control over the forest surrounding them. Roots burst from the ground, vines coil up like striking snakes, and bushes rustle threateningly.
Bullets rain down upon them as Diana lunges for the letter, still entangled in grass right where Ivy had left it. She snatches it up as a great vine surrounds her, defending her from the hailstorm of rubber bullets. Diana smiled at the sentiment as one bullet manages to sneak by the vine and hit her bare shoulder. It felt no worse than a bee sting.
Shouting broke out through the forest as Ivy's plants finally found their targets. Diana retreated back to the redhead's side as vines snatched away their guns and tangled them up. She did pause when they began to let out screams.
"Ivy!" She barks, and the woman gives her a look she hasn't seen before.
It's anger, but it's disproportional anger. An anger far deeper than what was justified for getting shot at with rubber bullets. A wild, wide eyed anger that pulls on even Diana's fear response.
Ivy turns away from her and commands one of the vines to pull its victim close. "Who do you work for?"
Her voice is demanding, venomous. The man doesn't respond. At all. He doesn't even flinch. Diana moves to stop Ivy, but suddenly all rage is gone from her face. The air around her changes to annoyance as she flexes her fist.
"No!" Diana barely gets the word out before the man is crushed under the vines. She waits for screams, but only hears the awful grind of metal against metal. One by one, the vines crush the people they have ensnared, and each one made the exact same awful sound. "Great Hera…"
"Whoever's taken Harley has a lot of money behind them." Ivy comments, now completely complacent and calm as she jumps down to the forest floor. "An inch of skin like rubber over a metal body. It even has an electronic pulse running through it to mimic a heartbeat."
"You were going to kill them regardless." Diana takes no time in letting her displeasure be known.
Ivy whirls on her, but then hesitates. "Whoever they work for has Harley. I… lost myself for a moment."
Diana wants to chide her further, but she does understand. There had been many times where she saw her fellow league members forget their morals in order to save a loved one. Diana wasn't above killing in battle if her life depended on it, but she did understand that unnecessary killing could throw one's life into turmoil.
And Ivy didn't need anything to push her back to the dark side.
She shook her head. "Let's just read the note and get back to the jet. It's late, but we can at least try to figure out where to go next."
Diana handed the note over and Ivy opened it for them both to read.
Spelunking in Slovakia. A dreary place for pretty pansies, but what an adventure for an Amazon!
"The game's shifted." Ivy commented.
"Yes, it has." Diana watches the redhead refold the note and put it in her pocket. "There's a cave system in Slovakia I've been meaning to visit. The Karst Caves."
"Slovakia's the third country Sal and his wife went to."
"We'll head to the most popular cave since there are no other hints."
Diana allowed Ivy to lead her back to the Jet, both completely quiet and contemplating the change in the game. Now that the focus had moved to Diana, any theories they both had were out the window. After sharing some small rations Diana kept in her Jet, they slept on the floor of the cockpit with a few emergency blankets she had stowed away. Far too early, they were both woken up by Ivy's phone.
"What the fuck do you want, Mason?" Ivy growled into the receiver, her voice gravely from sleep.
Diana rolls over with a small groan.
"No, we haven't found her yet… Three days? No, it's been two at most- well, we had to go to Europe… quiet down your call woke me up. YES IM SLEEPING ITS BEEN DAYS SINCE WE BEGAN THIS BULLSHIT." Ivy gave a long, exasperated sigh. "Look, I'll do better about keeping you all posted. I promise. Now, let me fucking sleep or I'll tell Harley you were being a whiny little bitch through this mess… Mark my words, you'll never hear the end of it."
And with that, Ivy hung up. "One of Harley's crew?"
"Mason, her boyfriend."
Diana let those words roll through her mind for a moment, then she propped herself up on one arm. "Boyfriend?"
"Guess you wouldn't know." Ivy settled down on her blanket again, pulling it tight against her. "Harley and I don't believe in monogamy. Sorry about the call. I've turned my ringer off."
Diana blinks for a moment, and then brushes her apology off. She hadn't known anyone outside of Themyscira and some very restrictive countries to have multiple partners. It… was almost reassuring to know that there were those in the outside world that wouldn't judge her for her past experiences. Maybe even understand her homeland's ways.
No, they wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand the years of loneliness. Of knowing the women you were raised around so well that sex was for release and not love. They'd never know the hope she had found in Steve Trevor, and the pain of knowing she'd outlive him if she didn't die in battle first.
But still, she fell asleep thinking about the two women a little differently.