Robot521, meerkat's are awesome. That is all.

Violeta27, you know a place that would be great for a vacation? Sweden. Seriously. That place.

Everyone else, this is the second to last chapter. So...you know...enjoy or whatever...

Wednesday, 2004

**Eddie**

If there was one villain he hated most in Gotham it would be the Princess of Plants herself. Poison Ivy.

For some reason, unknown to Eddie, she and he never saw eye to eye.

He always chalked it up to his superior intellect. Jealousy.

It amassed to the reason he was invading her workspace, smugly chomping on a bag of baby carrots while his goons chained the woman up, Query and Echo spraying the plants with chemicals to keep her pet vines at bay.

Ivy, looking absolutely sinfully beautiful despite her distress, looked at him coldly. "You have any reason for intruding, Eddie?"

"Usually I do like to have a reason for visiting an old friend, but between us, Pammie," he placed a well polished oxford on the chair between her legs and leaned in, close enough to make his point, but far enough away to avoid her pheromones. Snapping a carrot in half, he chewed long, allowing her to get annoyed by his dramatic pause, before swallowing. "Between us," he repeated finally. "I just wanted the space."

Her green eyes were the sort that drew a man in, they were like the bright petals of a flower attracting the bees, but Eddie had dealt with Ivy long enough to know not to stare into her eyes too long. He broke their gaze by eyeing his girls hard at work.

"The plants, are the first to go," he explained to Ivy sweeping out his arms. "Because I have no care for plants. Then…well," he turned again and beamed at her. "Then you go, because we all know I have no use for you." Tucking a baby carrot in between her lips, Eddie stepped back as she spat it out at him. "I love your fire, Pammie. But you've outlived your use in this world. What's living, yet dead, needs to breathe to grow to it's full potential, yet has no lungs?"

"You're not a killer, Eddie." She objected calmly, ignoring his riddle.

"Not as a rule, but I am a criminal and I do find you offensive. Rules don't always apply in this line of work, do they?" He inquired. "Mors plantis, my dear. In autumno, et aruit herba arcu est caput."

"There are many things you and I agree on, Eddie." A firm, feminine voice broke in from the night outside the open greenhouse door. Catwoman wandered in, her hips swaying. "And Ivy is one of them, but if you kill her I'm afraid you might look elsewhere for another enemy and it might be me."

Eddie eyed her quietly as the woman in black vinyl approached his position.

"Good evening, Selina." Pam greeted coolly.

"Pam, I came to borrow your good suitcase."

"Going on a trip?" The red head asked.

"Of sorts."

"It's in the house."

"Thanks."

Trailing a hand over Eddie's chest on her way by, Selina added, "by the way, Pam. Eddie's weakness is his ego, try working that for a bit."

As Eddie and his goons watched Selina leave, one of his denser minions spoke up. "Should we - should we kill the cat, boss?"

Tugging and pulling his tie into place, Eddie scowled. "No, she's inconsequential." Turning back to Ivy, he found the red head loose and standing proudly before him.

"Hiya, Eddie." She purred, vines coming out of nowhere to ensconce him and his cronies.

Wednesday, Now

She had cut his hair too short, he was sure of it. It felt short.

They had arranged for her to arrive before him and for Edward to just 'drop in' at the same time. However, when he arrived at Ivy's greenhouse behind Fries' home, he found the gathering larger than just the four of them. There surrounding the proud mother was Fries, Selina, Harley and Crane, all of them listening to Ivy as she told some ridiculous story about the boy.

Edward moved in behind the crowd and waited.

"So I took it out of his mouth just in time." Ivy purred.

While the others laughed at the story, Edward and Crane both scowled as though they were in pain.

On the other side of Edward, Harley gushed, then squealed. "Ain't he just the cutest thing, Mistah E?"

It seemed a mere reflex when Edward replied with a sharp, "he looks like a shaved chimp."

Four pairs of eyes zeroed in on him with venom in their pupils, while at his side Crane puffed his chest out and smirked ever so, his tousled, crest-like hair giving him a bird-like appeal.

Adjusting his tie, Edward forced a smile. "Hello, Pam. I brought you something."

She sneered at the gift he held out.

"It's from Oswald." He added.

Fries took it for the mother.

"I better give you a big tip, you look like you could use the money." Ivy pointed out.

"Pammie, I wish your son all the well being of the Lindbergh baby." He growled.

Selina sidled up beside him and jabbed his thigh with her finger. "Not in her house, Ed." She whispered.

With a wider, plastic grin, Edward held out his hands. "May I hold your little pot roast?"

Looking down her nose at him, Ivy sneered. "No."

"Look, I'm trying to be amiable, Pam." He pointed out.

Giving him a chilling look, the mother hugged her baby in closer to her body. "Run along, messenger boy, you're upsetting my son. I think it's your voice, it's grating to the ears."

Feeling his diplomatic envoy shot down out of the sky, Edward's smile died. "Could be the poor little bastard just found out that he's going to spend most of his life seeing his mother through the plexiglass at Arkham."

"Things just got a lot more interesting." Crane muttered.

Ignoring the constant jabbing at his thigh, Edward went on. "In fact, I'm fairly certain there'll be a separate cell for junior himself. After all, I heard evil begets evil."

Clearing his throat politely, Fries stepped in. "Edward, that's my son as well."

Holding up his hand in Fries face without breaking eye contact with Ivy, Edward snarled. "Keep it down, sperm donor. This doesn't involve you."

"I feel a little turned on." Harley stated.

"It's the tension in the air, my dear." Crane replied. "Mind the vines."

As a thick vine wound it's way around Edward's ankle, Selina stepped in. "Okay, everyone calm down, you're all upsetting the baby." Her sharp warning glare was directed at him.

He swallowed his pride and decided to be the bigger man and back down. "Well, good evening then." He tapped the vine to be released and found it only tightened around his leg. Touching a hand to his hat, he pushed it back and glowered at Ivy. "If you would?"

She tilted her head and another vine shot out of the foliage to grab hold of his left wrist.

He scowled. "Really, Pam."

"I'm not commanding them." She purred.

All eyes turned on the boy in her arms, who watched Edward with sharp eyes, a gooey hand shoved in his little mouth. He had a normal flesh tone, so Edward assumed the boy had none of his mother's abilities. Suddenly he was a little nervous.

"He must die, Mr. Thorne," he muttered.

Harley threw her hands in the air. "The Omen, 1976! I love this game!"

Dangling from the vines that were now wrapping all around him, Edward sighed. "I'm not really comfortable up here."

"Well, now I'm stumped." Harley growled.

Crane quirked a brow. "It puts the lotion-"

"Knock it off you two." Selina purred, moving towards Ivy to stroke her son's head. With his attention preoccupied by the woman before him, the baby's concentration broke and the vines released their prey.

Grunting as he hit the ground hard, he jumped up in the same breath and tried to return some dignity to his person by swiping away the dust.

"I'd run." Fries pointed out.

"Smarter words have never been spoken." He replied, turning on his heel sharply, he did just that, waving over his shoulder at the others.

"You can't insult someone's baby to their face, Ed." She pointed out as they walked from the Buick into his apartment building.

With his hands in his pockets and his head bent, he frowned. "Who cares, the woman's a pestilence on society and so is her offspring."

"You really have no social skills, do you?"

"You know I don't, dear." He muttered.

She was silent for a moment as they took the stairs, before speaking again at their floor. "Why do you hate Ivy so much, anyways? Even before Robinson Park, you two had a weird rivalry." Touching a hand to her chin, she went on. "I always thought it was a sexual thing…"

"A sexual thing?" He inquired, hand on his key in the lock of his door, clear blue-green eyes on her. He studied her thoroughly, before coming to the decision that she was utterly clueless, something Selina Kyle had never been. "You don't know…do you?"

"What? Did you two…actually have sex?"

Edward chuckled. "Selina," he began smugly, "I'm afraid my sexual organs are a little too external for her liking."

She frowned in mild confusion.

"Ivy's a lesbian."

"What?" She demanded. Violet eyes narrowed critically at him. "Are you lying?"

"I never lie about lesbians…well, I've never had the chance, but…how could you not see it, Lina? Her obsession with Harley, her indifference towards men and why would she choose Victor Fries? Any man could have done the job. Question: why go through the trouble of getting his sperm the right temperature just to have a child by him? Answer: because he loves his wife and wouldn't read too much into it."

Touching the back of her hand to her jaw, she fell silent.

"And for your information, I don't get along with her because she's a cold, bitch-goddess, not because of her sexual orientation or any sexual history between us." He opened his apartment door with a sharp push and motioned her in first. "Although the incident at Robinson Park certainly didn't do our relationship any good…"

She went quietly.

"I should have figured your gaydar was out of whack," he teased. "After all, you thought I was gay and I proved otherwise…"

"I'm still not entirely convinced you aren't." She replied.

Hanging up his hat and keys, he eyed her in the dim light of the apartment. "I'd say that thing we did last night would disprove any theories you had."

"Allowing me to cut your hair hardly makes you straight." She said, resting her hand on his chest.

"The other thing, dear." He replied, idly chasing a cat off his workbench.

"Oh, you mean when you stayed up 'til one doing crosswords in bed, before conking out with your reading glasses perched on the end of your nose?"

"I would have been reading Hobbes, had you not stolen the book from me and promptly fell asleep on top of it." He replied. "But what I meant was the thing we did on the bathroom counter. As I recall you enjoyed every minute of that trist."

"Yes," she agreed, "all three of them."

Glowering at her, he sniffed. "I liked you better when you weren't this comfortable around me."

She laughed softly.

In bed that night, he looked over at her from his book of crosswords, tapping his pen against his chin.

Beside him she wore his reading glasses, reading some kind of murder-mystery, three cats curled around her.

"I've been thinking," he began carefully.

She looked over and up at him. "Oh?"

"Tonight's your sixth night in a row sleeping here."

"Is it?" She turned back to the book.

"I love a good riddle. But something's not gelling."

She flipped a page. "Hn?"

"Who are you hiding from?" He inquired, tipping her book down.

Selina pinned him with a stern look. "I'm not hiding from anyone, Ed. Is it so hard to believe that I just want to spend my nights here?"

He quirked a doubtful brow at her.

Sighing, she thrust her hand through her raven hair. "I've been thinking a lot about Doctor Aesop...how he died." Her mouth moved, but nothing came out, until she finally forced it into action. "I don't want to be eighty and still dressing like a dominatrix, stealing gems from museums and living life in the shadows."

"I have a good theory about where this is going, my dear, but for the sake of clarification, please go on." He twisted in the bed to give her his undivided attention.

"You're not going to like where this conversation leads, Ed."

"There are very few things I do like, Selina. But I accept them, now you have to go on."

"What's keeping you sane, Ed?"

He smirked. "You're changing the subject."

Her eyes landed on him sharply. "I'm not. Answer the question."

"Well, there's therapy on Fridays and two strong doses of Serolithadril a day."

"Do you think you'd ever want to go back to being the Riddler?"

Edward beamed crookedly and waved his hand out over the clan of cats lying at the foot of the bed. "And leave all this? It may not be a vast empire, my dear, but it is mine."

"I'm serious, Eddie."

His smile faded. "The best thing about this medication, is the fact that it allows me to think rationally. And rationally speaking, I see no merit in returning to a life of crime. Does this make me boring? Perhaps. Does it discredit my reputation in Gotham's underworld? Certainly. Has it made me happier? So far, so good."

"Do you ever wonder about the future?"

"Hardly."

"But you do think about it?"

"From time to time."

"It's not a game anymore." She stated suddenly.

He was slow to respond, shocked by the statement. "Which is why you're making yourself comfortable in my apartment?"

When she didn't respond right away, he inhaled deeply and went on.

"You know, I have thought recently, that if I weren't in my right frame of mind, I wouldn't have even kept you around past last Christmas."

"Wouldn't have kept me around?"

"Thankfully for strong medications, I was able to enjoy unwraveling a part of your mystique."

"So you'd be able to just throw me out if you weren't sane?"

Sensing her tone was quite irritated, he quirked a brow. "I'm merely saying, Selina, that if I wasn't in my right frame of mind then, I would have lost some intrigue in pursuing you and all interest would have faded."

"So you're saying that on the meds or off, you could just...care less about whether I'm in your life or not?"

"Selina, you're," he struggled for a way to put it, "you're acting like this is some kind of serious relation-"

At her venomous look, his words suffered a quick aneurysm and died there and then in mid air.

"Oh...we're in a serious relationship." He muttered.

Her eyes widened and she flailed her hands as if to say 'well, yeah'. "What did you expect would happen after you stalked me for a year, Eddie?" She demanded.

"Of course I expected a natural progression of - wait, stalked you?"

"Yeah, you heard me."

"Stalking would imply unwanted attention, Selina." He pointed out.

She cocked her head.

"I doubt that if you found my attention unwanted, you'd be here right now."

When she continued to say nothing, he reached out, mindful of how vicious an angry cat could be, and tucked her hair behind her ear.

"Let's ignore hypotheticals and look at the facts." He said. "Fact: if you hadn't dropped into that alley on the Christmas before last, I would have possibly gone through with my plans to go off the meds and go back to being the Riddler. Fact: I find in you, a rival and a companion. Fact: though nothing in my life - so far - has gone my way, the happiest moment of my life was on Mother's Day of last year."

"Mother's Day?"

"Or as I call it, V Day. The day you voluntarily spent some time alone with me. Which happened to be a small victory on my part. And a vicarious romp in your childhood with various activities that ended with a very voracious kiss from a very voluptuous vixen."

Seeing the smile just wavering on the edge of her mouth, he decided to push one last time for a result.

"Verily."

She gave an airy little laugh.

As they settled back into a comfortable silence, she whispered. "I'm not going to be able to sleep now."

He continued scratching answers in his crossword book.

Running a hand through her hair, she got out of bed. "I'm going to go out for a while tonight. See what I can see."

Smirking, he looked over his book at her. "Mind the nighttime creeps and killers, dear."

Changing into her costume, she stretched a little.

"Or perhaps it's they who should be wary." He added.

Wandering over, she leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple. "I'll be back sometime between now and then."

"Vague as always, my dear."

"Knock it off with the vee's, Ed."