Five weeks. Five long weeks had passed since Ivy had last made the news. The city had moved on, and Eve had settled into her new position at the GCSI, getting on with her colleagues and making great progress with her work; she'd been out a few times with friends she'd made, to dinner or the theatre; she was well-liked in the workplace and on actual speaking terms with the waitresses in the café where she bought her breakfast pastry every morning. But, despite all that, she couldn't help feeling like something was missing.
She was pondering this as she finished up work for the day. The list of objectives she'd made for herself that morning had all been completed early, leaving her with at least an hour before she'd had to leave. She'd had to invent stuff for herself to do in order to pass the time, never being one to clock out early if it meant securing an extra hour's pay. She'd tidied her desk, sorted out all the post in her pigeon hole, answered or deleted her emails accordingly…and then she'd run out of things to do. Feeling oddly drained, she headed to the women's locker rooms to change. Humming to herself, she took off her regulation lab clothes and pulled on a pair of jeans and a thick jumper. She splashed her face with some tap water and dried it on the towel hanging next to the sink, then gathered her files together and tucked them into her bag.
Some of her colleagues, particularly the male ones, joked about her literally taking her work home with her, but she'd rather that than take one of them. Her work with the plants was a blessing – they didn't answer back. They were co-operative, and beautiful, and highly unlikely to ditch her for someone else. From her experience of men, and women, in the past, humans were much more unreliable.
She was the only one left in the building by that time – the foyer echoed with her footsteps as she headed out into the cold night. The sky was dark and cloudy and the streets were illuminated a pale orange. She shrugged her jacket on and freed her hair from the ponytail she wore before setting off down the road.
The first hint that something wasn't quite right was when she tripped over a lump in the sidewalk. It hadn't been there when she'd walked to work that morning – the ground was broken. As she moved on, Eve saw small green tendrils protruding from underneath the tarmac, forcing themselves up through cracks that grew bigger and more frequent the further she walked. Treading carefully, she continued on her way, until it seemed like everywhere she looked there were new bright green shoots invading the city streets. She couldn't help thinking that she was heading towards the epicentre of something huge. Against her better judgement, she kept walking.
What had once been quiet streets only seconds before suddenly became loud and chaotic – people were shouting and screaming, someone was bellowing through a megaphone, car horns honked incessantly, and above it all a thunderous helicopter dominated the sky. Apprehensive yet intrigued, Eve hurried on. She turned a final corner and stopped in her tracks, spellbound.
Supported high above the ground amid a clutch of enormous vines stood Poison Ivy. She was laughing as if she were having the time of her life, shooting vicious tendrils in all directions. A huge dark shape flitted around her, and as Eve's eyes adjusted to the glare of the spotlight she recognised that dark shape as the Batman.
Immediately she started to run. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she pushed through the throng of people all standing open-mouthed, eyes fixed on the fight overhead. She reached the police barrier and lent forward over it, straining her eyes. She had heard so much about the various exploits of Ivy, but this was the first time she had ever seen her in reality – and she was spectacular. She and the Batman moved around and between each other with an easy grace, neither of them touching the other, each one just fast enough to avoid being caught out. All the while they were locked in this deadly choreography, Ivy was smiling and laughing flirtatiously, relishing the adrenaline and the tension between the two of them. The crowd below oohed and aahed and gasped and screamed as the two fighters lashed out to within a hair's breadth of one another. Eve held her breath as Ivy pinwheeled and cavorted amongst the gargantuan vines, never quite letting the Batman touch her. At one point she blew him a kiss, and it was obvious even from Eve's limited viewpoint that she was teasing him, leading him on, encouraging him to follow her on a wild goose chase.
Evidently, the Batman realised this soon after. Something bright and black flew from his hand and Ivy was suddenly floating in midair – she hung as if from an invisible wire for what seemed like an age before falling suddenly.
"No!"
Almost before she even knew what she was doing, Eve screamed. Her arms outstretched, desperate to get past the officers that held her back, she watched in horror as Ivy fell. Her terrified eyes were glued to the graceful green figure swan-diving towards the tarmac – and then the figure turned. Ivy's bright gaze caught Eve's and time seemed to slow down as she winked and her glossy green lips slid into a smirk.
An enormous vine erupted from under the tarmac right in front of the police barriers; thrown by the sudden force, Eve and several other bystanders were flung into the air and landed hard on the ground. The vine rocketed up towards the sky and Ivy met it, leaping easily onto the trunk and staying crouched as the vine changed its course and headed off down the street, spreading rapidly across the ground and around the buildings. The Batman swung into hot pursuit, and the crowd watched in awe as the two combatants disappeared into the distance among the flashing lights and sirens.
From her position sprawled on the ground, breathless and awestruck, Eve could only see a fragment of the action before Ivy and the Batman were out of sight. She stood up shakily, her arm being supported by a burly stranger standing to her right. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, hear her breathing coming in shallow gasps. All the lights and colours around her seemed too bright, the contrast between them too distinct. Her brain couldn't quite come to terms with what she had just witnessed.
"Ma'am? Are you alright?"
"Is she in shock?"
"What happened? Is she hurt?"
"Ma'am? Hello?"
Voices whirled around Eve's head. The strong hand on her arm was replaced with a gentler touch that guided her through the throng of fascinated onlookers. Somebody coaxed her to sit down, then knelt down in front of her. After blinking a few times her vision returned to normal, and she recognised the crouched figure as Commissioner James Gordon. His mouth slid up into a reassuring smile.
"What's your name?" He spoke in a tone that was somehow comforting, fatherly and authoritative all in one. As he spoke to her, a paramedic started cleaning and dressing several cuts on her hands and legs.
"Eve…Evelyn Carter." Her own voice sounded incredibly small and far away. She shivered and as if from nowhere the paramedic placed a blanket over her shoulders.
The Commissioner was looking at her with blatant curiousity. The look he gave her was meaningful, and she knew why. Everyone in Gotham knew about how closely the Commissioner and the GCPD worked with Batman, despite the obvious rancour from the mayor's office. Gordon only had to say a word to the vigilante about what she had done, how she had screamed when Ivy had been in danger…
"I'm not going to go into what I just saw," he said eventually, "but if I were you, Miss Carter, I'd be more careful around certain inhabitants of this city."
Eve nodded slowly. Her head was buzzing with thoughts and possible replies, but the Commissioner had already stood up and was walking away to personally check on all the other injured people – he was nice like that. Eve hugged her blanket around herself and tried to slow her breathing and her heart, which was still pumping wildly inside her chest. She hadn't done anything wrong, not really, she told herself. It had been instinctual, to reach out and try to help the one she…loved? No…she couldn't be in love with Ivy… The thought made her sit up straighter and frown. It couldn't be true, surely. Ivy, Poison Ivy, was a wanted criminal, a…supervillainess, for want of a better word. It would be stupid to get involved with her in anything more than a scientific relationship, if that in itself was even possible.
Maybe she was just being an idiot. She should forget this foolish mission and get on with a new life of friends, dinner parties and scientific progress. She was the new girl in Gotham City – in spite of its criminal underground, thanks to a certain Mr Wayne the city was improving all the time, and anyone else in her position would have jumped at the chance to savour every opportunity that came her way. Her work was groundbreaking; she knew that, Mortimer knew that, and he was always reassuring her that she would go far. She just needed to set her head on straight and forget about trying to forge any kind of link to Ivy.
But Eve could not deny how her heart had leapt when Ivy had looked her way.