VIII: in the green

There was a lead. It arrived via one of the private investigators in the biographer's employ, and took him hours away from Gotham. He parked well off the main road, and studied the strange mansion ahead. It looked rotted, like it could, in a single moment, crumble to the ground, but vines stitched it together, held it in place, or perhaps they were dragging it downward. Ivy covered every bit of facade, tree branches grew out of windows, the weeds looked like they had gone mad with delight. He knew he was in the right place.

He limped like a cripple, dragging himself across the yard, bearing his gift. It was a rare plant species, iphigenia metataxia, that appeared to dance in the wind, almost as though its petals made revolutions in the breeze. The biographer almost didn't care if he died out there, if she claimed him some how, like she had many men. It would be a mercy. Wasn't it obvious his family was dead? His only move, he felt, was to stumble toward the one purpose that plagued his days — the Caped Crusader's identity, demanded by his family's captor — in the infinitesimal chance they were still alive. Or so that was how he felt, battered from that same Batman, and bone-tired.

But the woman who appeared by the door accepted his gift graciously. She was small and slender, barefoot, wearing a dress with an earthen color.

"Pamela."

"Vincent," she said, smiling.

He'd defended her once in court, after she tried to seduce and eliminate a greedy Midas-like coal baron who also happened to be abusive to his wife; the biographer had achieved a mistrial. Jury nullification. The prosecutors didn't even retry the case — Batman had thwarted the plan anyway, and saved the man's neck. But that was ages ago, and it had been years since anyone had heard any word of Poison Ivy. She'd disappeared, and was presumed deceased, he'd read.

"Please come in," she said.

Knowing her history with men, he figured his injuries were a strength, not a weakness. She held the power, something she liked, a reversal of past disasters. The biographer let himself stumble on a root and fell embarrassingly to the floor.

"Let me take a look," she said kindly, indicating his leg.

She went into another room and reappeared with an ointment, slathering it on the injured area. He immediately felt his muscles strengthening, blood surging to them. She turned her attention to his broken nose, his smashed face, and offered him a tonic for the pain. He felt buoyed by this small success: he'd already earned her sympathy. He drank deeply.

"I've retired here with my plants, as you can see," she said. "You are my first visitor in quite some time."

He must have looked at her skeptically in spite of himself. He'd coached himself to be extremely understanding, but his face betrayed a different feeling.

"Mm, I suppose you know me better than that," she said. "Well, would you believe me if I told you I now run a nonprofit? Out here in my element, I've grown. I've turned over a new leaf."

She urged him to look it up, said it was perfectly legitimate; they bought back land, turned it into preserves. So trees can be trees, not lumber, she explained.

"The world has tilted more to my perspective than it once did. I am no longer a psychotic eco-nut as my detractors once called me. Global warming has changed the stakes."

"But the parole board hasn't heard so much as a whisper from you," he said, the words escaping him without his meaning to. Perhaps just the old cross-examining instinct.

She waved her hand dismissively.

"Let's move on. I'm eager to hear why on earth you've come all this way to see little old me, Vincent."

The biographer felt himself eager to tell, the words quick off his tongue. It was a welcome, freeing sensation, like his white-knuckled grip could slacken at last. He told her the whole sad story, spilled it all.

"I came here to beg for your help," he finished, finally. "For intel on Batman's identity."

"You say he did that to you?" she said, indicating his face. "In my experience, he was a fool who could never see the big picture. Forget Gotham, the Earth has long been going to the dogs. But a sucker punch is not quite his style. Though we all evolve, don't we? Look at me, a corporate suit now. And some old friends back in the city have told me he's gotten slower, lazier, cutting corners."

She shook the vial that had contained the tonic.

"Sorry to do that to you, but one can never be too careful these days. You see, this country house is not easy to find, and it's strange to see you after so much time. Let me think about what I know of Batman. Perhaps we could strike a bargain. I could use a lawyer. It's another trouble with this world. One always does. You wouldn't betray me, would you?"

The biographer shook his head, dumbly. He felt encased within himself, a glass chamber separating the persona he knew from whatever was swimming above.

"That's what I thought. I can never quite trust men, so I prefer to have a means of seeing straight into the soul. Allow me to give you the grand tour."

They descended down into a basement and there, in what appeared to be a barracks, was a hi-tech system of large tanks. Instead of fish, they were filled with naked men, all floating in green liquid, all strung with dark tubes.

"Don't worry," Poison Ivy said. "They're quite healthy. I'm injecting them with nutrients. And, some of my plant-based agents, of course, to enlist them in the great struggle. I'm sending these titans of industry back out there to do some good."

He was coming back to himself, the toxin wearing off. There was no truth anymore, just fealty to a goal, and even fictions flowed the same way. It was easy for the biographer to conscript himself to Ivy's purpose. He knew she'd been taken advantage of by an older male botanist, used as a lab animal — it was how she got her powers — so he didn't blame her perhaps as much as he once might have. Was the world still spinning the same way or was he now "mad" too, willing to be even a small cog in her brainwashings? He remembered thinking years ago that she was one of the only costumed clowns who seemed to commit crimes for a something greater than self-interest. The biographer tamped down the thought that he was just rationalizing. She was a force for environmental protection — daresay he call "Poison Ivy" progressive? And she may have some key insight into the man he was hunting.

He reiterated that he would do whatever she needed, assisting with contracts and paperwork to funnel wealth to her "nonprofit" and other green initiatives. Poison Ivy smiled.

"I've always known Batman was wealthy, or supported by the wealthy, or the military, perhaps. But once, back in my more active years, I gave a little kiss to a well-known billionaire, and he was, shall we say, way-laid, in my boudoir, his mouth crammed with leaves while I made a few transactions on his behalf. In decades of fighting with Batman, he let so little slip, but on that day, when he saw this particular fat cat, he gasped, and said, "Tom!" like he very much knew him. And so I deduced that perhaps he wasn't a human military torpedo against crime after all, but a member of the jet set, a man who moves in these fetid circles. So there, that is my gift to you. Anyway, he seems to have lost his touch. I've been running this for years now, and he hasn't the slightest idea. We've all gotten older, I suppose."

This new knowledge blossomed within the biographer and he felt a step closer, a small pinprick of hope, the first in a long while, the smallest hint of green after winter. With a clearer head, he might have noted that his glee seemed most closely tied to unmasking the Batman, taking revenge, rather than the prospect of finding his family, but he was not quite himself these days. The biographer strove toward an answer. He could almost feel the broken bones in his face alive with agony as he tried to envision the man behind the mask, the man who'd handled him so callously, who cared so little for his plight — Poison Ivy's truth-serum had done nothing to soothe the pain.

GOTHAM HERALD: Industrialist Does About-Face After Meditation Retreat

Bernie Wicker, an owner of one of the country's most notorious oil pipelines, who famously has a drill tattoo on his bicep, has said he's seen the light after a lengthy world tour. According to a recent press release, Wicker plans to explore ways to shut down his biggest pipelines and put his considerable wealth into preserving and not destroying the environment. His family is at a loss to account for the abrupt shift. "This is not the Bernie I know," his brother said, "or have ever known."