Ivy and Eve kept on falling in love.
It was as if they both took on a new lease of life when they were together; gone were Eve's concerns about work, pleasing Mortimer, maintaining the new life that she'd worked so hard to build but then had left behind. She hadn't been back to her apartment in over a month, nor had she shown her face at work. In a phone call to Mortimer's office, she'd cited a family emergency –he wasn't to know that she had next to no family left. Feigning upset and regret that she didn't know when she'd be back, as well as a promising to do as much work as possible while she was away, had come naturally. Mortimer had swallowed the lie and been only too willing to let Eve take all the time she needed – luckily, he'd mistaken the tremor in Eve's voice as suppressed emotion, rather than a struggle not to cry out in pleasure while Ivy played with her nipples. As soon as the phone call was over, Eve had switched it off and fallen onto the grass in Ivy's arms, determined to pay her back for the teasing. Since then, she'd barely thought about work.
Their days together were a blur of waking up entwined; having a long, slow, languorous breakfast, more often than not involving sweet fruit juice and bare skin; taking the time to learn each other's bodies, discover what made them tick, find those particularly pleasurable spots; and when the sun went down, Robinson Park became theirs and theirs alone. Eve adored their moonlit excursions, wandering through the trees, bathing in the very same pool where she had seen Ivy that fateful day, lying down together and listening to the sounds of the night – the owls calling to each other, cicadas chirruping, leaves rustling, creatures snuffling and burrowing in the undergrowth. Even though there was barely half a mile in any direction between them and the city itself, the park felt so far away from that. The noises of Gotham, the cars, the people, the trains…it was another world. Eve and Ivy had their own world, and their own life together, and that was enough.
They talked, too, about so many things. They shared their histories, bared their souls, in the way that you do when you're finally getting down to figuring out the meat and bones of the one you love. All the mistrust and fear that had overshadowed the start of their relationship had fallen away, leaving only the joy of discovering each other in its wake.
Eve described how alienated she had felt growing up, her interest in plants and the botanical world marking her out as someone to be ridiculed. When she'd gone on to study at college, she had thrived in an environment of like-minded peers, but even then, surrounded by people who shared her love of plants, she had been marked out for a different reason – her sexual preference. One night, lying together under the canopy, cloaked in leaves (Eve had forsaken her own clothes in favour of those that nature – and Ivy – could provide), with Ivy's fingers playing with her hair, she described her first love.
"Her name was Jude," she murmured, the feel of Ivy's delicate touch weaving her hair into brains relaxing her, soothing her nerves. "I only found out when we'd broken up that it was actually Judith, but she'd tried to reinvent herself when she arrived at college. A lot of us did, I suppose."
"Did you?" Ivy asked curiously.
"I didn't really feel the need," Eve confessed, "and when I met Jude, she seemed to like me for who I was. She was studying law, but…she was the least likely person to be a lawyer ever. It was like she never did any work, never wore the right clothes for the job, but everybody loved her and she never failed a single class." Leaning back against Ivy's chest, Eve thought about the first woman she'd dared to fall to love with. Back then, Jude had been a wild one, a free spirit, something entirely new; now, in comparison to Ivy, she seemed almost tame. The woman she loved now was an incredibly powerful killer, talented thief and passionate lover; nothing and nobody could compare anymore.
Amongst their sexual explorations of each other, there were still times when Eve conducted experiments, except now they stemmed from the combined desire of Ivy and herself, to understand her better. While Eve took swabs and samples and subjected them to various tests to investigate hypothesis, Ivy would always stay to watch instead of leaving her like she used to. To her, Eve seemed to become a different person while she was working, engrossed in an experiment or writing notes at a feverish pace, her handwriting becoming less and less legible the more excited she got. She stopped caring about what she looked like, which was a novelty in itself – despite her more relaxed attitude towards the way she dressed, and her easy acceptance of bathing in a pool instead of showering, Eve still retreated into self-consciousness more often than not – and yet when she was deep into her own unique reverie, her mind working to make connections and form ideas as quick as lightning, she seemed to come to life. Ivy thought Eve looked her best when she was full of the glow of anticipation and excitement, her eyes alight with inquisitive fire.
Once, when Eve was attempting to extract Ivy's DNA from a cheek swab, Ivy watched her and talked, telling her all kinds of things, anything. She knew that despite the intense concentration involved, Eve hated working in complete silence, and with a lack of available electrical outlets had resorted to keeping up a steady stream of conversation, which served as both background noise and a change of pace if she wanted a break. On that particular day, having already told Eve how she had got her powers – her treatment at the hands of Jason Woodroe was still a sore spot, but she'd thought it was important for Eve to know – she went on to describe the months that followed. "I hated the plants, at first," she said, watching inquisitively as Eve poured distilled water into two beakers, adding salt to one and liquid soap to the other. "Their voices in my head, talking to me, telling me what they wanted, it was like…like a television with the volume down so it's only just out of hearing range. This constant hum in the back of my head, and even though I didn't understand any words I still knew what they were saying. I thought I was going mad, at first."
Eve looked up, her hands paused in the act of mixing Ivy's DNA sample with some sodium chloride solution in a small test tube. "How did you learn to control it?" she asked, her eyebrows knitted in a combination of interest and concentration. Still watching Ivy, she added more liquid soap to the test tube, sealed it up and gave it a shake.
"It took a while," Ivy admitted. "I was fighting them, at first, trying to control them through aggression; it didn't get me anywhere. There were a few…disasters." Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the memory, not red or pink, but dark green. It was beautiful. "Eventually I learnt to work with the plants, rather than us working against each other." She ran her hands through her hair, causing it to cascade down over her shoulders, and Eve swallowed as she fought back the desire to grab hold and pull Ivy towards her for a kiss. Clearing her throat, she quickly finished the DNA extraction and put the long, stringy substance into a second test tube with a small amount of alcohol; keeping her hands busy always helped to distract her from the intense attraction she felt towards Ivy. She sat back on the grass and packed her equipment away.
Ivy was still watching her. "The plants are a part of me, now, as much as anything else. I can't imagine being without them." The way she said it, in a soft, low tone, seemed to imply that she was talking about something else.
The synergy between Ivy and her plants was never more apparent than when she and Eve made love. It happened a lot, honestly more than Eve had thought it would, but she would always be the last person to complain. There had never been anybody who'd loved her like Ivy did – even without the plants, with just her talented hands and explorative mouth, she made Eve feel things she'd only read about in books. It was strange, the first time that Ivy had used vines for a purpose other than to restrain her during sex; with the vines involved, delicate thin ones with a gentle touch that caressed her bare skin, it felt like the touch of Ivy's fingers was multiplied threefold, setting nerve endings on fire that she hadn't even know existed.
The sex, their love, their relationship, the experiments – it was a blur of discovery, of learning about each other in so many different ways. Time passed for them differently, the days and nights blending together so minutes became hours, hours became days, sleep patterns were scattered and the world outside the trees ceased to have any significance.
And then it was Christmas, sprung out of nowhere. Without the constant reminders of decorations and tinny festive music, department store Santas and overexcited children, it had almost entirely slipped Eve's mind. Neither she nor Ivy were planning to make a big fuss of it, which was a welcome change from previous years. As a nod to the occasion, in the run-up to midnight on the threshold of Christmas Day, they sat in their favourite tree together and waited for the distant chime of the cathedral bells.
Ivy couldn't help but smile when she looked at Eve. Like herself, she was wrapped in a thick, warm cloak of leaves and moss, which fell in soft folds around her body. Her brown hair was loose and woven through with bright red holly and creamy white mistletoe berries, and her skin was tinged a delicate pink from the night air. There was a fine dusting of snow falling from the sky, and flecks of it were scattered on her shoulders and chest, like she had been powdered with sugar. She was beautiful, completely at ease with herself, and when she looked up and her eyes met Ivy's, they were so full of happiness that it almost brought a lump to her throat. In the distance, the clock started striking twelve.
Eve chuckled as she listened to the steady chimes. "If you make a joke about 'Merry Christmas, Eve', I'm keeping your present for myself," she grinned.
"Merry Christmas, Evelyn," Ivy replied, smiling.
"Merry Christmas, Pamela," Eve whispered as she leaned in for a kiss.
When they broke apart, Ivy produced a small bundle of petals wrapped in long blades of grass and pressed into Eve's palm. "I got you something," she said. "It's only small, but I wanted you to have it."
Fascinated, Eve eased the parcel open, carefully peeling back the layers of soft petals to reveal the gift inside. Picking it up, she let a thin chain flow through her fingers until it stopped at a pendant shaped like an ivy leaf. It was silver and shining, about the size of her thumbnail and perfectly formed. When she turned the leaf this way and that in her hands, its polished surface shimmered with an iridescent green tint. Eagerly, Eve lifted her hair up and fastened the clasp behind her neck, letting the leaf's cool metal nestle between the tops of her breasts. She kissed Ivy again. "Thank you, it's beautiful."
"I'm glad you like it," Ivy said with a smile. "I didn't know what to get you, but like I said, I wanted you have something from me."
"But you've given me so much already," Eve argued, gesturing around at the trees. "You've given me your trust and your confidence, you've let me study you, you invited me in to your home…"
"And this is something else." Ivy took Eve's hands in hers and held them tight. "I know it's only been…months, that we've known each other, but I've never felt this way about anyone. In fact, I'd almost forgotten that I could. You make me happy, and you're a beautiful, fascinating, passionate woman, and I love you. There is nothing I could possibly give you that would be enough, because I would always want you to have everything."
Eve didn't know what to say. Silently, she stroked Ivy's hands with her thumbs, not daring to open her mouth in case she started blubbing. It would be just like her to start crying at such an intimate, romantic moment. Finally, when it felt like her tear ducts were successfully reined in, she whispered, "I love you, too," and pulled Ivy towards her, a little too roughly, so they ended up tangled together against the tree trunk, but it didn't matter. It was Christmas Day, but instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, they were celebrating their love for each other, in the branches of a tree surrounded by gently falling snow and the quiet peace of the city.
But then, the perfect silence of Gotham in the snow was broken by a faraway cry. Somewhere, out in the park, carrying across the cold night air, a shrill voice was calling.
"Pammy? Paaaaaaaammy? Are you out there?"
Ivy stiffened, listening. Eve watched her, not daring to say anything but bursting with curiosity. She had seen the change flash across Ivy's face – when only seconds before she had been relaxed and happy, now she was frowning, her green eyes grown cold. Instinctively, she had moved her body in front of Eve to cover as much of her as possible, like an animal protecting its mate. Her hands were splayed out, reaching around her to gather vines which crawled and curled up her arms, ready to be used defensively or offensively at a moment's notice.
The voice called out again, closer this time but from a different direction, as if the source of it was wandering aimlessly through the snow. "Pammy? Where are you?"
Eve didn't recognise the voice, but Ivy clearly did. Her eyes widened and she turned to Eve with an imploring look on her face, which clashed strangely with the territorial fire in her eyes. "Evelyn, forgive me. You need to stay here. She can't see you."
She? Eve wondered, and was about to ask when Ivy suddenly blew a kiss at her and a familiar pollen-scented darkness began to engulf her senses.
Once Ivy was satisfied that Eve would be safe, she moved her into a more comfortable position and descended from the tree, walking across the snow-dusted grass with a purposeful stride. With a wave of her hand, the trees in front of her parted and she stood there, framed by greenery, watching the small figure in the near distance stop when it saw her.
When she spoke, her voice, full of suppressed anger, carried easily over the silent park.
"Harley. What's he done to you now?"