From her chair in the security room Dr. Birch watched in terrified fascination as Poison Ivy's plants overgrew her own father's body. She watched a sapling contort and coil to swallow a living form and grow over it like a twisted protective shell, adopting to the final staggering motions as Frank made a last grasp at freedom, staring up into the night sky and providing the garden's corner point security camera a perfect view of his anguished eyes and open mouth as a wooden groan rattled from his throat.

Hazel watched Ivy kiss the new grown tree's bark and then pull away to leave the gardens, exiting through the southern doors and heading for the far side of the Asylum. She watched as the chlorokinetic villainess slipped through the halls, stepping over unconscious orderlies and security officers, rousing them with little touches and gentle whispers, raising more and more distractions to delay the Batman as headed for the Asylum's southern exit. She watched as Ivy reached the exit doors and took a left at the exterior hall to double back through the build.

There was nothing to do but watch as the green woman made her way back through the hospital and reentered the interior security lobby, surrounded by greened guardsmen ready to fight and die for her whim. There was nothing that could be done, no way to stop her, the Batman was on the opposite end of the hospital now and Dr. Birch had no means of contacting him. All she could do was cower in her chair and watch as Ivy acquired Captain Marlow's ID card and used it to open the door to the security center .

"Hazel, here you are! I take it Harley got a little excessive?"

"A little!" the words were blurted out before Hazel could stop herself, "A little! She's insane! You're insane! My god, Pamela, he was your father!"

A hurt expression crossed her patient's face, a reluctant little nod was the most acknowledgment she got out of Pamela, but it was something to work with.

"What happened, Pam? You were so close, you could have finally been free of all this!"

"I know!" Pamela replied in a voice that cracked under sudden anguish. "I know I was, and I wanted that, I did, I just… I couldn't stop myself Hazel! First I thought I just wanted to see him again, then I saw him and… I just couldn't stand it… The thought of him, that he helped bring me into this world, that he helped ensure my existence…"

Dr. Birch's jaw dropped and her whole system seemed to slow down, enveloped by a sense of stunned dismay. It made so much sense, somewhere beneath the illness and madness Pamela Isley hated herself! She hated being the plant obsessed lunatic, murdering people because they dared buy a real Christmas Tree or ignored their 'duty' to plant new trees on earth day.

"It all makes sense… All this time… You don't hate men… You hate your father. You hate him because without him you wouldn't exist, and all the bad things you've done…"

Pamela was pressing her lips together. Her bottom eyelids quivered slightly, fighting to try and keep tears from welling as she looked at her psychiatrist and finally sobbed in frustrated anger.

"Oh Pamela," Dr. Birch said soothingly, rising from her chair and stepping closer, "you couldn't help it! You're a very sick woman, you lashed out irrationally, that's what people with these sorts of illnesses do. It wasn't on purpose."

"Of course it wasn't!" Pamela exclaimed in horror, "What sort of monster would plan to kill her own father! I just wanted to find him, to see him, and then – I never meant to kill him! It's not as if I've spent the past year coordinating every last detail, manipulating, replacing and controlling just so that I could finally get the one who go away!"

The sudden vehemence of Poison Ivy's words caused Hazel to recoil into her chair again, her sympathetic eyes filling with horror once more.

"I'm a sick person," Ivy continued in mournful tones. "After all, no one in their right mind could ever plan something this intricate…"

Hazel felt like a sickle had cut the air, reaping her thoughts before they had time to grow to maturity. Suddenly she was back in Belladonna Hayes home office, listening to the older psychiatrist recount her horrifying encounter with the Scarecrow and his theory on the patients locked up with him in Arkham Asylum. Reason finally began to shine a light into the darkness. A lunatic couldn't spend months plotting out every last detail of a plot this detailed. The cognitive faculties required for this level of planning were beyond the reach of any patient with a true psychotic illness. A growing sense of dreadful clarity over took her as Dr. Birch looked at her patient, watching the rose petal lips curl into a devilish smile of mutual comprehension.

"I'm a sick woman, Doctor," Ivy repeated, still smiling. "I can't contain my urges. He was my father, I would never intentionally plot to destroy him, I couldn't be harboring a deep rooted grudge because the accident he caused took my mother's life, and I certainly don't loathe him for running to witness protection, abandoning his own daughter to life in an asylum without ever even having the decency to send her a holiday card…"

Hazel felt as if she could tunnel through the wall now. Her most desperate desire was to escape that room, to get as far away from this woman as she possibly could, but Poison Ivy stood between her and the only door.

"I'm deranged, that's all! I couldn't help but stand there and enjoy it," the words oozed off her lips like an orgasmic moan, "watching the adoration in his eyes turn to dismay as his body contorted, listening to the last feeble groans turning to splintering creaks upon his lips..."

Ivy shuddered and sighed, arcing her back and fluttering her lashes as a gentle coo dripped off her lips and a dance of her fingertips dipped down across her pelvis in unspoken desire.

Hazel stammered wordlessly for what felt like eons, finally find her voice for only the most pointless observations.

"You're… My god–"

"Ess," the villainess prompted with a smirk.

"You're sick…"

"Hasn't that already be established?" Ivy asked demurely.

"No… No, not like this… You're not ill. You're just sick."

"Oh," Ivy clucked disapprovingly, "now, Hazel, you're going to hurt my feelings!"

"You're a monster…"

"Am I?" she asked quietly, slowly crossing the room, advancing on Hazel with a sumptuous swivel of her hips that distracted the psychiatrist's mind despite of her attempts to maintain focus.

"Do you reeeeeally think I'm a monster, Hazel?" Poison Ivy asked as she dropped into the doctor's lap.

Her melon sized breasts were pressed to Hazel's clavicle, forcing her chin to rest at the peak of the valley of cleavage, guiding her head up and ensuring that she had no choice but to look up into Ivy's unnaturally bright green eyes. The two women stared into each other as Ivy slowly weaved her thin green fingers through Dr. Birch's hair, twisting the strands around her digits like crawling vines upon a fence post.

"Am I sick, Hazel? Am I a monster?" she pulled Hazel's head in against her chest, forcing the other woman to breathe in the aroma of cinnamon and honeysuckle. "Or is that just what you're telling yourself, to try and make yourself feel better, so you can hide from the idea… After all, what if I'm not? What if I'm just another person, just as sane and cognizant as anyone else, with just a smidge less morality to hold me in check? What if…"

She gasped dramatically, letting her bottom lip brush Hazel's forehead.

"What if I'm sane? What if everything I've told you is true…? What if I really do talk to plants? What if I can really hear the grass scream when people mow their lawns?" her voice gained renewed vehemence and anger as she continued. "What if it hurts me every time someone plucks a flower in the Arkham Gardens, what if deforestation is what's left me as a barren as our world is becoming! What if every single action is perfectly justified, if you could just feel what I feel?"

Hazel choked out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a sob, provoking a little laugh from her tormenter.

"Of course, by morning you'll be calling me mad again. You can't accept all this as true, it's just too much to bear, after all if I'm just as sane as you then the world's just too dark a place isn't it?"

Ivy smiled condescendingly as she patted Hazel's head.

"It's all right, I understand, and now so do you. You'll say I'm mad, that I still need help, and maybe you'll even stay on… For a little while at least; but you'll go. Ecentually you'll run and you'll hide. You'll lock yourself up in some quiet little town and try to reclaim the happy world view you had before you knew that we're no different from the rest of you… We just don't hold back when the world does us wrong."

[Author's Note] Readers be aware, I have just published a remastered version of chapter 11 for those of you who wish to remember Dr. Crane's guest lecture.