There was something deeply dissatisfying about catching her. He had to fight his way through the security squads a second time. They were no less vicious than before and he was still holding back to avoid hurting any of them too severely. She hid behind them, standing with her back to the wall, waiting in the security center with the very woman he was trying to keep her away from. She was hiding as if she was afraid of him, as if he was the threat in all of this, as if he was the one who made a habit of using people like puppets and destroying their lives.
Nothing would have been more satisfying than having an excuse to give her at least one good strike, but she didn't move an inch. The moment he entered the security center she pressed herself into the corner, giving him a pouty school girl expression as if she had been caught in the halls during class. His fists clenched so tightly he could feel his own pulse through his palm, despite the gloves. Ivy's mockery of innocence was so infuriating that he had to make a concentrated effort to relax his grip before damaging his own fingers.
Swiveling his head he regarded the doctor, still curled up in her chair in front of the security monitors, darting her eyes from Ivy to the Bat and back again.
"Are you all right?"
Hazel flinched at the sound of his voice then looked up at him with a meek nod. The dark knight's attention returned to Poison Ivy and his white eyes narrowed to twin edges within the depths of his cowl.
"Why, Isley?"
The question made her smile. She seemed genuinely surprised, lifting a quizzical brow and leaning towards him like a debate partner who's finally begun to understand her opponent's side of the argument.
"Oh Batman… Is that really all you're interested in? Shall I dive into the villainous monologue now, telling you the intricacies of my plan and the depths of my genius?" she asked, chuckling softly in perverse amusement. "I hate to disappoint your ego, but it's only the Clown, the Hatter, and Nigma bother to prep a script before they face you."
"This isn't a game Isley, he was your father!"
"Was?" she gasped in mock horror, "Did something happen?"
The snarl became more intense and Ivy responded by lifting a finger, shaking it back and forth while clucking her tongue.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk! Now, Batman, before you lose your head you had best consider the situation. Do you really think I'd kill my father? He isn't dead… In fact, he'll be here forever… Unless another bipedal swine decides to make some fresh firewood and holiday cards…"
The final statement threw him, in the middle of April her mind turned to Christmas? Why? For a moment he reeled back, trying to figure out what had provoked the statement but she was still talking and he knew better than to let his guard down for long.
"He gave me life, Batman. That deserves some acknowledgment. It's an honor, really. I took a wretched, drunken, neglectful human and made him into something noble and innocent! This wasn't murder, Batman… although it certainly could have been! Luring him out of hiding was so easy! All that took was a few tears and some reporters eager for a polarizing story…"
"You turned him int–"
"I transmogrified him from a mobile, bipedal life form to a rooted, plant-based life form. Still organic, still alive," she smiled slyly and her emerald eyes sparkled triumphantly. "Yes, I did break the law, but murder won't be one of the charges."
The gloating smile, and the sickening knowledge that she was right, was too much for him. He advanced with the ferocity of junkyard dog a sight was enough to send most criminals running in terror and typically caused even the rogues to shrink back in alarm…but not this time. Ivy remained as steadfastly rooted as her transformed father, her composure never broke and as he drew close she fixed him with the condescending glare of a respectable woman affronted by the poor behavior of a lonely barfly.
"Step. Back."
It was the way she said it that got him, that wasn't a demand or a plea, it was a threat. Beneath her words was an unspoken "or else" that told him she had planned for this moment. Her eyes cut to the security monitors and he suddenly realized that they weren't here by coincidence. She had planned for them to have their confrontation in this room… Why?
He backed off, only a half step, but enough to give her a little breathing room while he tried to figure out her end game. The smile on Ivy's lips had changed; it was the sort of smile a master of the game displayed when she realized her opponent wasn't familiarized with all of the rules.
"You don't want to play this game, Dark Knight, I've already won…"
He gave her a cold stare but she was unfazed by it. Isley had too much conviction to be moved by one of his glares. She didn't just think of herself as a Goddess, she believed it. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that she was a living embodiment of nature itself. When nature was defiled she was defiled and when it was disrespected so was she. In Ivy's mind she was the one fighting against evil, in a world where everyone else was against her. That was the sort of righteous fury that wouldn't be broken by any level of bat-malice, still the glare served a purpose beyond intimidation.
Though intimidation seemed pointless there was a benefit to his silence; people, when face to face with others, feel an innate need to fill a silence. He was quiet, so she talked, buying him time to try and piece together the final steps of her plan.
"It really is that important to you isn't it? You need to know why I went to all this trouble!" she said, letting her smile turn into a regal smirk. "It has to mean something. If I don't have a motivation then I'm just a monster, and when your enemy is a monster you have so much more trouble reminding yourself of why you never cross that line…"
"I'm not here to argue ideology, Ivy."
"Aren't you," she asked coyly, "aren't we all, really? That's why I'm here, that's why Dr. Birch is here… Aren't you Hazel?"
Dr. Birch looked up with the expression of a student called upon to answer a question she hadn't heard the teacher ask.
"Wh-what..?" she asked meekly, looking up at Ivy uncertainly.
"Tell me, Doctor," she said, addressing the psychiatrist while maintaining her gaze on the Bat, "Do you believe I hear the voice of Gaea?"
"I… I believe that you believe it, Pamela."
"But you don't believe… You don't believe I can hear my babies scream. You don't believe there's a reason for me to flinch when I hear a lawnmower, or cringe when someone plucks a flower in the park… You think all this talk about my plants is all a psychological contrivance, a way for me to deal with personal issues I'm too weak to face."
The Doctor's eyes flitted towards the Batman. The crusader nodded slightly, giving her enough reassurance to continue the conversation.
"That's not exactly how I would put it, but yes, I think most of your issues stem from psychological turmoil… the voices of the 'plants' are more likely signs of schizophrenia, which would also explain the volatility of your mood swings and behavior."
Ivy opened a palm towards Hazel, like a game show hostess showing the Batman the grand prize for winning the game.
"Ideological opinion! What I claim can't be real, it's too improbable for her to conceive of, so there has to be a more rational, more reasonable explanation! I suppose you'd call everything I've done some sort of 'desperate cry for help' wouldn't you, Hazel?"
"Yee-e-e-sss," Dr. Birch said, drawing out the word uncertainly as though she expected Ivy to flip at any moment, "it does seem that way, Pamela."
"You see, Batman? That's the problem with humans. They can't see beyond their own little ideological sphere. No one wants to look at things from the other side; no one is willing to hear what others have to say… Human are disgusting, bigoted, weeds," she breathed the last word with a contemptuous sneer and a tone of malice so venomous that it seemed like it would eat through the flesh and burn at the heart.
"Take my father for instance," she continued with the same venom in her voice, "even after I was locked up he would send me cards! Cards, Batman! Entire tree lines decimated so that some sentimental ape can open up an envelope with his hands instead of the click of a mouse! I told him to stop, the Asylum told him to stop, and when he finally did…? I started missing the damned cards!"
The Bat grunted, the doctor stared, and Poison Ivy snarled. This wasn't a revelation Hazel had expected, it proved that her initial suspicions weren't unfounded after all! Ivy did still have some connection with her humanity; the problem was that Hazel believed she wanted to reconnect with that humanity when in reality she sought distance from it.
"Root rot, Batman," Poison Ivy hissed. "That's what he was to me, a degenerative disease that was corrupting my foundations, hindering my growth and devotion to the Green. I gave him a greater honor than he deserves! He was a wretched, neglectful, abusive excuse for a father, and when he finally hit rock bottom he didn't try to pick himself up, he chose to run away, change his name and hide from everything he had done wrong! Still… He is my father, and if nothing else I am grateful that he brought me into this world. If he hadn't, I wouldn't be who I am today, and Gaea would be without her guardian; for that alone he earned this chance at redemption, to be reborn as something innocent, noble, and selfless."
"Wait…" Dr. Bitch stammered, looking up at Ivy in dismay. "That's what this was! All of this, the reformation, the pleas for help, the therapy, all of it just one big con so you could…Prune your family tree!"
Ivy's gaze shifted to Hazel. She turned her back on him. She gave all her attention to an Arkham doctor while he was still in the room. None of his enemies were so foolish, they knew how he worked and they knew turning their backs was tantamount to surrender. . . She had something, some sense of security, some knowledge that stopped him from being a threat to her, what was it!
"Pruning?" she said with a smirk, "I believe I did more growing than pruning! What's the matter, Doctor? You sound surprised that an asylum inmate would go to such lengths for such simple reasons!"
"Surprised! I'm outraged! I believed in you, I believed in your message, I thought you could be–"
"What? Saved?" Ivy sneered. "You really think you can save me from this? You think I'd want to be saved from this! I have tried for so long now to make people understand, but no one wants to listen. Even you refuse to believe anything I say! Trying to talk sensibly gets me nothing but ridicule and accusations of insanity… And then someone like you comes along, thinking a little logical thought, some kind words and whole lot prescription medication will make it all go away! How sane would you feel, doctor, if you could feel every pricked finger, every laceration, every bruise and break, of every human near you? How would you handle it if you were the only member of the species intelligent enough to be able to actually speak for your kind? The only one who could say: 'Stop it, you're hurting me' . . . and then you realize that the ones hurting you don't care. Don't come to me with ethics and morality, while your sickening species does nothing but wound, scar, and abuse every inch of Gaea's body! You're monsters, raping the very world she gave you without so much as an apology for the damage you've done… Don't look at me and call me monster, unless you're ready to look at yourselves."
In the silence that followed the Bat almost felt sympathy for her. He understood his enemies better than any psychiatrist in the Asylum could. Some were truly mad and some were sociopaths with no sense of right and wrong, but a few were just people who had been pushed farther than a human was meant to go.
The ferocity and anger waned, but he didn't let that show in his demeanor. He maintained his ivy stare, but Dr. Birch couldn't keep so calm. Poison Ivy's snarling response had struck her harder than a back hand slap, Ivy's very words seemed to carry a razor sharp enough to deliver a surgical cut that plunged straight to her heart, making her feel as if she was directly responsible for every injury to the world around her.
"I'm… Sorry, Pamela," Hazel said quietly, "I really am. I tried to understand, to help you, I just… I didn't really understand you after all... I'm so sorry."
"As you should be," Poison Ivy replied coolly, "as you all should be… Will be…"
"You're not leaving, Ivy," the Dark Knight said definitively, still staring fixedly at her.
"Hmm?" she turned her gaze back toward him as if he were an afterthought. "Oh, yes… I suppose I've done the villainous monologue and now it's time for me to make a feeble attempt at combat before you slap me around and drag me back to my cell, like an abusive husband chasing his wife back to the kitchen."
She glared reproachfully into his unfeeling white eyes, and then gave him a half smile and an apologetic shrug. "I'm afraid I'm not interested in playing that game tonight… some other time?"
He shifted his weight to spring but something in her demeanor made him change. His mind rolled back over the past few minutes, her smiles, her glance to the security screen, the way she'd so willingly turned her attention to Dr. Birch as if he weren't even in the room, and that cunning smile that had edged back onto her face as they spoke.
"What is your game, Ivy?"
"Oh… Now you want to know!" she chuckled, "I've been playing a very long game Batman, you already know that… You don't think I'd play this long without figuring out how to win, do you?"
She extended a hand towards him and her smile faded as her fingers clenched into a slow closing fist. Alarms began droning from the security console. Dr. Birch spun towards it.
"The cells!" she exclaimed, "No wait… the foundations?"
Dr. Birch looked up at the Batman in confusion as he looked at the screen then whirled on Ivy. She had moved when he had, now she was closer to the door, facing them both and still holding a have closed fist aloft.
"I can hear every plant on this island… but… they can hear me, too…" Poison Ivy said, now smiling so wide that it seemed rather demented. "The trees surrounding Arkham peninsula are some of the oldest and deepest rooted in the entirety of Gotham County? The roots wind through every acre of this area…"
"And when you want out, they know," Batman concluded through grit teeth.
"What can I say? Plants like me…"
"And you made sure Harley knew to be long gone when it was time for this part of the plan…"
"The only person in this place worth saving, still innocent enough to be taught to respect Mother Nature, still worthy of redemption," Ivy admitted with a nod. "The rest, however, are a lost cause."
"You would kill yourself too," he snarled.
"Oh no," she said with a chuckle, "No, the roots go deep, and stretch far… I could stay safe and sound right here, while they collapse each wing and ward… I'm sure you know how many are imprisoned here, Batman."
He did, too many and unlike the Rogues most of them were truly insane, incapable of understanding their own actions—innocent by way of insanity, undeserving a grisly burial amidst vicious roots with the ferocity of wild dogs.
"You won't get far, Ivy."
"You're probably right," she said, nodding at him and giving another triumphant smile. "But I'll get far enough. Enough to enjoy a little time before I'm brought back, and besides, you and your companions will need time to figure out a way to hold me… After all, now you know, all I have to do is think."
She blinked her eyes and the entire building rumbled ominously. Dr. Birch yelped and scrambled to her feet, the Bat throughout a hand to stabilize her and clenched the other hand into a fist. Ivy was already backpedalling towards the door and her laughter replaced the rumbling as the building steadied.
"Remember Batman, a single thought… You wouldn't want to catch up with me too soon and realize just how far my influence over them reaches… Oh, and Doctor," she said, looking at Hazel, "I do hope you don't give up as easily as Dr. Hayes, I think our sessions have shown marked improvement!"
She chuckled softly, blew them both a kiss, and ducked through the door.
A hybrid car was parked on Maple lane on the Gotham end of the Arkham Bridge. Under normally circumstances a leggy blonde in pigtails wouldn't be sitting alone in the car in the dark of a Gotham night. Several unscrupulous men had approached the car while she waited but all they had to do was take one look at the pale make up and ruby lips before they started running as fast as they could in the other direction.
The passenger door opened and Poison Ivy dropped into the seat, tucking her legs together primly as Harley started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
"So how'd it go?"
"Splendidly," Ivy said as she settled into her seat. "Do you have the tickets?"
"Vroom a zoom zoom!" Harley replied, holding up the envelope with one of the tickets just barely peeking out of the top.
"Good girl! Let's go, before the Bat or one of his little menaces shows up to spoil our vacation."
Harley nodded in eager agreement and the car zoomed off. Under normal circumstances it was hard to navigate Gotham's streets but at this hour traffic was a fever dream of daylight. They reached the highway and were on their way toward the airport before Harley finally broke the silence and pulled Ivy from her meditative quiet.
"Hey, Red?"
"Yes, Harl?" Ivy replied without opening her eyes.
"About the doc," Harley said slowly, hesitating to elaborate further.
Ivy opened her eyes and looked over at Harley with a raised brow.
"S'just… You an her… Uhm…" Harley mumbled, squirming under Ivy's stare.
"Harley," Ivy cooed, opening her eyes to look at the blonde. "Are you worried I'm going to replace you?"
Harley blushed, grateful for the concealing nature of her makeup, and looked back to the road. Poison Ivy chuckled huskily then leaned over and kissed Harley's cheek.
"Why would I ever replace a beautiful rose like you with a simple daffodil like her? She was a means to an end… and I suppose she was right, in a way."
"Yeah?"
"Mhmm... I don't hate humanity, Harley; I wouldn't go to all the trouble of trying to teach them if I did… I spared Dr. Birch because, beside you, she's the first person to make an effort to understand me. Her mind is full of psychiatric dogma, but I think she has potential… Maybe one day there really will be a way for me to get my message to people without having to treat them the way they treat my babies, and she might help me spread it."
"Soooo, happy ending?" Harley guessed cheerfully.
Poison Ivy chuckled huskily and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes again. "I suppose that depends entirely upon your ideology, Harl."