All was quiet, apart from the soft swaying of the vines. They nuzzled against each other, entwining and separating, making the soft sound of bonding. The very earth was pulsating with heat and life below the soft pad of the woman's feet.
Ivy knew there was someone in her garden. Someone who was not wholly under her influence, in among the plant pods that could hold a fully-grown male in stasis for as long as she needed: as long as they were connected to her. There was someone close by, and they weren't being very careful to hide themselves.
She shut her eyes and listened. Their heartbeat was seeping into the fertile ground through their unsteady feet and legs. She could feel the grass twisting under their weak ankles. She could smell the woman's scent signature in the air. Instinctively she parted her lips and her greying tongue darted out.
"Hello, sweetheart…" she soothed.
The silence was interrupted by a gasp. The vines stopped their writhing and hung still in the air.
"Shh-hh-hh…" Ivy soothed as the woman began to sob.
Ivy opened her eyes, and surveyed the desperate figure in front of her. "Darling," she soothed, as she dropped gracefully to her knees in the grass next to the traumatized young woman, greeting her with a slender hand on her shaking shoulder.
With her every nerve on edge, Harley felt Ivy draw closer, take her head in her cool hands and press it against her chest like a beloved possession. Ivy's heartbeat was unnaturally fast; more like a fast hum than the laboured ticks and tocks of a normal human's. Harley's weeping eyes stung as if the lids were fixing themselves together.
Despite her outwardly calm demeanour, Ivy was unsure how to convey her sentiments to her friend. On one hand, she knew how much Harley had loved the same man that had scorned her over and over again. On the other, she had longed to free the naïve woman from her often deadly obsession with The Joker. Perhaps, with him well and truly out of the way, this was her chance.
Harley groaned and squirmed. It was becoming painful for her to crouch down. One leg slipped from underneath her, and she lowered herself onto the grass.
Ivy hesitated. Something in the atmosphere was different; a brand new pattern in the pheromone signature just waiting to be figured out. As Harley raised her head and slipped onto her side, Ivy used her thumb to flick away a beady tear. Harley's bloodshot blue eyes gazed up at her with a mixture of adoration and fear. Without breaking the eye contact, Ivy raised the thumb to her lips and took in the salty liquid.
Harley was panting, uncomfortable. She stretched both legs out in front of her to alleviate the pain in her back. Her chest ached from the heavy breathing and sobbing and there was an un-ignorable weight pressing on her ribcage. Ivy pushed a clump of tangled blonde hair out of Harley's face, matted with tears and grease. Her hand travelled down the slender neck, and her eyes took in the stained shirt that Harley had dressed herself in. It had once been a man's shirt. She noticed the tattered, harlequin-striped leggings as her hand travelled down along the woman's stomach.
Harley began to cry as Ivy's hand passed over the shirt. She began to sob at the spark of recognition in Ivy's eyes. In the passing of a moment, Ivy coursed through denial to despair, empathy and anger. Her black, bark-like fingernails bit angrily into the fabric, framing the protruding skin. Both women's limbs were trembling with equal parts fear and anger.
Ivy couldn't spit out the words. She half expected bile to ooze out from between her lips. Her clawed hand was pressing down harder still; she couldn't help herself in her blind fury. The vines behind them were slapping violently against the wall as if swayed by a fierce breeze.
Harley suddenly yelped as Ivy's force became too much to bear, her sharp nails causing grooves on the skin under the fabric and the pressure against her growing child too much to take. She felt the urge to urinate, and instinctively she picked herself up and darted backwards. She covered her stomach with a possessive hand.
Ivy glanced down at her own hand. She knew she aught to apologise, but spite twisted coldly through her heart. A part of her wanted to push Harley into an explanation, to beat her into submission. The girl was so suggestible. Was that why the Joker found it so irresistible to toy with her? Ivy's fine eyebrows furrowed and dug into her brow bone as Harley's legs collapsed weakly beneath her. Her upper body trembled with the effort of sitting upright, until eventually her muscles gave in and she lay on her back, panting. The ill-fitting shirt now lay against the tell-tale curve.
"Oh Red, please-"
The words were spoken from a pit of desperation. Seeing the state Harley had let herself get into: the matted hair, losing half of her own clothes, cuts and grazes half-healed on her face, it was suddenly clear to Ivy that she was Harley's last resort. Ivy tried hard to swallow her resentment. To constantly find herself coming second to a man: to a dead man at that!
She turned away, padding slowly across the grass, feeling each blade tickle the soles of her feet. It calmed her. The anger faded, mingling in with her other emotions as if it was diluting.
Beneath the veneer of inhumanity, Ivy was a smart woman, with a brain fuelled by logic. Her lover's current status disturbed her, and a question floated to the surface of it all: why hadn't Harley come sooner?
"What took you so long?" Ivy vocalised her thoughts with her back to Harley. She watched the vines on the wall; the fruits and flowers of late May with their petals opening like so many eyes watching her, judging her reactions. She swore to have shed her humanity long ago, and yet here was the last fragment of it, back to taunt her.
"I tried," panted Harley, flat on her back with both hands massaging her rounded stomach. "So hard."
"Who knows about this?"
Harley gave out a cry, almost like the bleat of a frightened animal. "I-"
Suddenly overcome, Ivy spun on her heels and dove to the ground. She scuttled over to Harley and cradled the woman's head, laying it in her lap. From here she could survey the damage. Her hands cupped Harley's face. She saw the eyelids rimmed red raw; a gash above her left eyebrow that looked deep and half-healed. As Harley threw her head back in relief and exhaustion Ivy noticed two dark purple ovals beneath each ear: throttling bruises. Fury made Ivy clench her thigh muscles. She saw Harley's head move with the tension.
She wiped the brow, taking care not to touch the wound, feeling oil and caked make-up on the dry skin. It had been a while since she had seen Harley without her 'face' on, as she liked to call it. She reached down to the collar and with a deft thumb and finger she snapped the button out of its buttonhole. Harley whimpered.
Ivy shushed her. "Hush now, love. I need to check you over. Ivy knows best."
Harley's head lolled back again in submission. As Ivy reached down to the other buttons, her red hair fell into Harley's face, tickling her nose with the scent of something brackish, like henna. It enticed something she could barely remember out into the open; something she had been storing.
Thanks all for your patience. Normal service will be resumed soon. :D