"Have you been messing with my head?"
Ivy's left eyebrow rose into a perfect green arch, but she didn't say anything.
Eve tried again. "It's just…I've been thinking thoughts that I never thought I would. Like, my boss is a stupid piece of meat. My colleagues are inferior. And I keep missing things, I can't focus on stuff. I mean, when you did your whole face-in-the-cactus thing earlier, I didn't hear it happening at all! You broke the damn pot, and I didn't hear anything." She sighed and her shoulders slumped. "I feel like I'm losing my mind."
"If you think I'm causing this, why do you keep coming here?"
"Because…" Eve paused, not quite sure how to answer. If she said the other reason, the one that had nothing to do with science, Ivy might send her away. "You fascinate me," she said at last. "I want to find out more about you, so I keep coming back. And that's another thing," she added, as she slowly removed a syringe from Ivy's arm, making her wince a tiny bit. The blood inside was a dark mixture of red and green. "How did you do that? How did you speak to me through my cactus?"
Rubbing her arm, Ivy looked at her contemplatively. "It's to do with my connection to the underlying lifeforce that holds together the entire planet." She said it like was the most natural thing in the world – which, Eve supposed, it was.
"Seriously? You're in touch with every living thing on Earth?"
"Every plant on Earth, and not unless I concentrate. The force is called the Green. It's an intrinsic part of nature." Ivy's eyes were alight, the way they always seemed to be when she was talking about a positive element of her powers. She nodded towards the syringe, which Eve was still holding in mid-air. "What are you going to do with that?"
Still trying to process this latest piece of information, Eve picked up a glass vial and a stopper. "I'll study it under a microscope, to see what makes it different to…regular blood. Obviously the colour's different, but I want to see if there's anything else that sets it apart." She emptied the syringe into the vial and secured it tightly – the fact that Ivy had even allowed her to take a sample of her blood was amazing enough, and she really didn't want to waste it.
"Toxins will be common." Ivy reached out and easily took the vial from Eve's hand, studying it closely. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever actually seen my blood before."
"You have toxins in your blood?" Eve asked, amazed. "Doesn't that…harm you?"
"Evidently not." Ivy looked at Eve with something like contempt, and Eve felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. "The poisons in my bloodstream are a part of my body, just like everything else. I'm immune to them. They travel through my veins, and I can make them congregate on the top layer of my skin, my lips, my fingers…" she trailed off, suggestively, not in a sexual way, but as if she were reminding Eve that she could kill her with a handshake if she wanted to.
Eve chose to fall silent and busy herself with packing the vial of Ivy's blood and her other equipment away, working quickly to distract herself. A small part of her wanted to just leave it at that, go home and stew over the expression of derision that had been on Ivy's face over moments before. She felt so silly. In one moment of scorn, with two simple words, Ivy had managed to make her feel about two inches tall.
"I've been thinking about something. Something…I want to ask you." Ivy broke the silence conversationally, her tone gentle.
Eve looked up at her, slowly, tentatively. There was a distinct change in Ivy's manner, as if for once she was the one who was nervous. "What is it?"
Their eyes met, and something passed between them. Ivy looked away, then cleared her throat. "I was wondering…if it would make more sense, to you, and for our experiments…if you stayed here. With me," she added, as if Eve needed any kind of clarification. "Rather than me summoning you whenever I feel like it, what if you were just…here?"
"Are you…are you sure?" Eve couldn't seem to wrap her head around what Ivy was saying. "I mean, do you trust me enough to not, um, reveal your secrets to anybody?"
"You seem to have proven yourself in that respect so far," Ivy explained, "and surely if you were staying here then there wouldn't really be any opportunity to tell anyone else about what we're doing." Since she'd posed the question, the potentially life-altering question that she seemed to be treating like the most everyday thing possible, Ivy hadn't blinked once, and Eve was finding it hard to concentrate under the steady gaze of her deep green eyes. "I would, effectively, be trusting you completely, and you know what will happen if you ever break that trust."
"I…do." Eve paused for a moment, thinking. "What about my work?"
"As far as I can tell, from what I heard this morning, I have become your work," Ivy said slowly.
Eve blushed again. "How much of that did you hear? I didn't think you were in the room for that."
"I was around," was all she said.
It was getting more and more difficult for Eve to think up reasons not to take up residence in Poison Ivy's home. She would have to abandon her work, her laboratory, her own apartment, the few friends she had made…her old life would be cut off. And yet, she didn't feel like that was as huge a loss as it should have been; not with the prospect of growing even closer to Ivy, learning more of her secrets, more about her incredible abilities, maybe even managing to find the real woman behind the cold, beautiful exterior. She swallowed. "I…Are you sure this is…okay?"
Ivy reached forward and laid her hand gently on Eve's arm, the coolness of her fingers causing a scattering of goosebumps to appear on her skin. "I think I could learn to live with you," she said. "You're not like other scientists I've met before. You…respect me."
Eve swallowed, thinking, and ran a hand through her hair. Even though she was inwardly jumping up and down with glee at Ivy's request, there was a part of her that knew that something like couldn't be a snap decision. "Can I think about it? I mean," she added quickly, seeing Ivy's incredulous expression, "thank you, for offering me this – I know, or, well, I think I know how much it means to you to be undisturbed and everything…but it's a big step, you know? I've never lived with anyone besides my parents before, I don't know what to do, or how to behave, and I can't answer right now. I can't say yes, because I don't know if I'm ready to do something like this even though I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, which is crazy, because you could kill me without a second thought, and if I say no I don't know what you'll do, so I just need to…" Eve trailed off when she realised exactly what she'd just said.
"I understand." Ivy was looking amused. "Take your time, think it through. The offer still stands."
Neither of them chose to acknowledge exactly what Eve had said about her feelings for Ivy – that could wait for another time, perhaps when they knew each other a bit better. Once again, Eve packed her things away, Ivy knocked her out and she awoke bleary-eyed in the soft grass close to the park gates, hidden behind a large bush. She stood up, brushed herself off, gathered up her bags and set off back towards her apartment building. The sky was still a deep inky blue-black and there was a slight chill wind in the air, but Eve knew her way home from the park like the back of her hand by now, and she walked quickly, eager to get back and have a hot shower, followed by a big steaming mug of tea.
She turned a corner and the wind picked up, lifting her hair and making it fly around her head. Irritated, she stopped, put her bags down and pulled an elastic band off her arm to tie her hair back and keep it out of her eyes.
A rustle of fabric. A thump of large feet landing on the ground behind her. A huge, black-gloved hand closing over her mouth. A coarse, deep voice in her ear.
"Don't struggle, Evelyn. I'm going to ask you some questions. And you're going to answer them. Do you understand me?"