Eve turned up the collar of her coat and strode forward against the wind. Her hair had freed itself from its ponytail and was flying around her head like Medusa's snakes on a caffeine high. She was heading to Robinson Park – it didn't take a genius to work out that if Ivy wasn't in Arkham, where she should have been, then there was only really one place in Gotham with a sufficient amount of plant life to make her feel at home. And Eve was something of a genius when it came to plants. Like her partial namesake, she had been too tempted by the potential discovery of knowledge to ignore the signal of the ivy leaf. Deep down, she knew she was doing something incredibly stupid – going against the advice of the Batman in any situation was a bad idea – but her feet kept walking, taking her down familiar streets on a route she had trodden many times already. In her pockets, clutched tightly in her hands to offer her some comfort, were a torch, a tazer and a small utility knife, just in case.
Only when she reached the gates of Robinson Park did she hesitate. They were still open, even at that time of night, but as she looked past them the park was black and uninviting. She swallowed. What was she doing? She had no idea how to handle a situation like this; her field of expertise was plants, true, but the type of plant that stayed in its pot and wasn't likely to attack you any time soon. If she continued on this mad quest, there was a significant chance that she wouldn't make it into work the next day…
But, then…Ivy had left her a message. What it meant, Eve did not know, but there must have been some kind of reasoning behind tracking her down, breaking into her apartment and leaving only a tantalising clue. A message had been left, and she needed to find the messenger.
Eve pulled the torch from her cavernous pocket and switched it on, sending a penetrating beam of light into the blanket of darkness before her. The moon was out, and a small sprinkling of stars, but they barely helped. She took a deep breath and stepped into the park, walking purposefully in an attempt to convince herself that she knew what she was doing. Each tree looked the same as the next one, and every junction of path led into unappealing darkness. An owl swooped out of a tree, screeching at the intruder, and Eve jumped and screamed – even in loud panic, her voice sounded unnaturally small in the vast expanse of the park.
She didn't see another human being as she walked. It was eerily quiet, as if the general noises of Gotham on a Friday night had been left at the gate and weren't allowed to enter. In a strange way, she was starting to enjoy the peace and quiet, and would have enjoyed it more if there hadn't been a niggling feeling in her stomach that she was walking into danger. She kept to a straight line, directly into the heart of the park; despite having been there several times before during daylight hours, she didn't want to deviate too much. Her sense of direction was not one of her strong points.
She kept going, shivering slightly in the wind, and as she walked she began to hear noises. Splashes, the trickle of a stream… Then a voice, a woman's voice, in the soft croon of a lover. Eve paused, wondering if she was suddenly going to intrude on a couple's private skinny-dipping session. The voice kept on talking in soft, sensual tones, but there was no spoken reply, only a rustling sound. Intrigued, she switched off her torch and crept slowly forwards, anticipation rising inside her. She felt her way forwards, her vision gradually adjusting in the dim light of the moon, and then she suddenly had to stop herself from gasping.
There was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen – Poison Ivy, naked but for water droplets and her wet hair splayed across her breasts, bathing in the pale moonlight. She looked like a stunning marble statue, her eyes closed, her lips turned up in a languid smile. A vine had draped itself over her shoulders and was in the process of entwining itself into her hair, crowning her brow with green. As Eve watched, the vine slid down and caressed Ivy's cheek, and she in turn stroked it with her long, elegant fingers. It looked for all the world as if the vine was telling her a secret. Maybe it was, Eve thought, from her position crouched in a damp bush. It was well known that Ivy could speak to the plants, as it were; something that Eve had been fascinated by since she had learnt of this amazing woman's existence. This was an incredible opportunity, if she could only go about it in the right way – she felt like Actaeon, spying on the goddess Artemis as she bathed, and knowing full well that if she was spotted she would get much more than an indignant shout and an angry expression.
Suddenly, without any warning, Ivy turned her head and looked straight at her. Eve ducked, her heart in her mouth, and hoped that she had not been noticed. Even if Ivy had invited her here, she highly doubted that she would have wanted to be seen in this way.
The seconds ticked by silently, and there seemed to be no sign of anything happening. No shout, no rage, no movement, nothing. Perhaps Eve had gotten away with it. When she let herself breathe again, she sank onto all fours and crawled across the damp grass, peeking surreptitiously around the edge of the bush, chewing her lip nervously. She was physically shaking; whether to do with cold, fear or adrenaline, she didn't know. Something in Ivy's eyes, unguarded and raw, had reminded her that she wasn't dealing with a normal woman – Ivy wasn't human. She may have been once, but now she was a goddess, practically Mother Nature incarnate, and while it would have been a dream come true to be able to get close to such a being, sneaking up on her in the middle of the night not the right way to go about it.
Mercifully, Ivy had now turned around and it certainly seemed as though she hadn't spotted Eve's little peeping Tom act. Eve swallowed and tried to calm down.
Something tightened around her ankle.
Oh. Oh…no. Ivy could control plants. The entire park was full of them! What had she been thinking?! Why hadn't she even considered this before? Eve swung around, pulling her knife out of her coat pocket and stabbed at the encroaching vine that had sneakily wrapped itself around her leg. It reeled away, wriggling like a dying fish on the grass, and she took the opportunity to scramble to her feet.
Suddenly, the plants were everywhere; roots bursting up through the soil, leafy branches reaching down from treetops, incongruous vines seemingly appearing from every direction, all of them heading towards her. Eve tried to fight them off, stabbing and shocking and slapping them away over and over again, but they just kept coming.
One latched onto her arm, sticking sharp thorns into her skin so she yelled in pain and dropped her knife, which disappeared into the long grass. She struggled to attack the thorny creeper, clawing at it with her nails, but all she succeeded in doing was making her fingers bleed until her free hand was caught and held fast. Earth-stained roots erupted from underground, curled themselves around her ankles and began to pull. She cried out again as her feet sank into the earth, thrashing about fruitlessly. A sneaky tendril caught itself up in her hair and started to wrap itself around her face, covering her mouth and nose and muffling her shouts of fear. She had severely underestimated the power she would be facing. Blinded by admiration and intrigue, she had walked into danger like an insect into a flytrap, and now all Eve could do was watch helplessly as she was pulled underground and the earth closed over her head.