It was on Harleen's last day working at Arkham that Ivy was alerted the fetus had completed its maturation process.

Selina volunteered to pick Harleen up from the asylum because she was still pretending to be disabled and couldn't get her driver in time. Harley found it impossible to sit still for the trip from Arkham to the Batcave, which was likely driving Selina up the wall, but she couldn't help it! Her baby was coming!

"Is Pam already there?" Harley asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

Selina nodded calmly. "She's giving him a last minute check-up before she shuts down the incubation tank."

The blonde grinned giddily and jumped into her wife's arms once they'd finally arrived. She could feel Pam's heart beating fast against her chest, and it occurred to Harleen for the first time that maybe she was excited too.

Selina grabbed the swaddling clothes from where Pam had stashed them and stood at the ready as the redhead lowered Harley back to her feet.

"He's ready," she whispered.

"I am too," Harleen whispered, her voice catching.

The "birth" wasn't quite how Harleen imagined herself having a baby. There wasn't anything "natural" about it, really. It was more like something out of a sci-fi movie. Which, like, really…was exactly what this was. The more Harleen thought about it, the more it made her head spin. But to Pam—to Ivy—it was magical. Harleen could see it in her eyes, this was…moving. Deeply moving. Pamela was bringing innocence into this world by the same process that had robbed her of hers so many years ago. It was, in some ways, the ultimate redemption. And all of Harleen's worries about how Pam would interact with a boy (given her complicated feelings towards men) melted away when she pulled him out of the liquid.

Harleen's heart skipped a beat when he didn't cry right away, but Pamela calmly wiped the excess fluid away from his mouth and eyes, using a small tube to extract a mucous-like substance from his lungs...and then Harleen heard it.

Her baby boy, bright blue eyes wide open, sputtering through his first breathes.

Selina handed Pam a blanket and she wiped his head, drying the patches of fiery red hair he already had growing there. Harleen wasn't sure it was totally normal for a baby to be born with hair like that, but then again, their baby wasn't exactly normal. And his skin wasn't green like Pam's, just pale with a slight tint. Like…like Ivy on the day they'd first met in Arkham. Definitely different, but easily played off as a trick of the light.

Harleen didn't even realize she was moving until she felt his soft skin below her fingertips. Pam turned to her with a dazzling smile, equal parts "Look what I did! Aren't you proud?" and "Can you believe it? He's ours."

"What are you going to name him?" Selina asked. "Barbara Jr.?"

The new parents looked at their baby then…he did sort of look like Barbara…

"Anthony," Harleen answered, as if 'Barbara Jr.' was actually on the table. "I want to name him Anthony."

"Why?" Pam asked, examining their son closer, searching out the name in his features.

"Because Anthony means flower," Harleen smiled, reverently brushing her fingers over his forehead and down his soft cheek. "And he's my little flower."

/

Pamela was granted 6 weeks of maternity leave from Wayne Enterprises, and although she was still required to report to The Watchtower when necessary, Pam and Harleen were, for the most part, able to keep that time just between Anthony and them. It was sort of…perfect.

So maybe it wasn't exactly how Harleen imagined having her first kid. Maybe she wasn't raising it in the environment she'd expected to. And maybe that was fine. Actually, yes. It was fine.

Motherhood came naturally to Pam. Harley had watched her relate to her plants as their mother for years, but always with a sort of endearing snicker. In the back of her mind, Harley regarded Pam's obsession with her "plant babies" to be part of her mental illness...but now…seeing her relate to an actual baby, Harley realized that it was all the same. Yes, a human demanded a bit more from her, but she was just as warm and loving towards Anthony as she was towards any of the occupants of her greenhouse.

Harleen didn't have as much experience under her belt, but she got the gist of the whole thing: be at Anthony's beck and call, change his diaper, and don't eat him. That last part should have been obvious, but good God, he was so fucking cute and his cheeks were so round and his hands were so little…

Anthony didn't sleep as much as a normal baby would. Pam said he didn't need to, which was just as well for Harleen. She liked to watch how he took in the world. How his eyes widened as he attempted to understand what was going on…again, and not to be understated, Anthony was far and away the cutest baby Harley had ever seen. And yeah, yeah, she knew all moms said that, but…the kid did have some pretty solid genes working for him, after all.

It was really important for Pam that Anthony knew she loved him. She said it a lot. Whispering it into his ear when she thought they were alone or nervously reaffirming it in front of Harleen when she knew they weren't. But even still, Harleen could tell her wife was afraid. Afraid of the baby she loved so much, probably for that very reason. There hadn't been many things in this life that Pamela had allowed herself to love. And Harleen hadn't forgotten what Pamela said at the restaurant that night, either, how hard it would be on her to not only lose Harley to old age, but Anthony as well. And yes, Harley understood that argument, it was valid…but isn't it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Or maybe Harleen could only say that because it wasn't her reality to face.

In any case, at this rate, she was on track to fill up the photo album Selina had gifted her before Pam even went back to work.

/

Anthony reached his hand out and grabbed aimlessly at Harleen's lips, but when he was unable to keep a strong hold, he grabbed a fist-full of her hair instead.

Harley giggled, turning her head and gently gnawing on the fingers wrapped up in her blonde hair. "Num num num," she smiled against his hand and watched as his mouth opened into a smile of his own, his blue eyes squinting slightly. "You're really cute, you know that?" she asked, rhetorically.

Anthony gurgled and gave a sort of hiccup in response as his mother unwrapped his fist from her hair and held his hand in her own.

"Hey," Pam sat down on the bed behind her.

"Hey," Harleen said, not breaking her eye contact with Anthony lying beside her. "I think he's gonna be smart."

Pam chuckled, cozying up behind Harley and wrapping her arm around her stomach. "Of course he will be," she breathed against her wife's skin as she nuzzled her face into the crook of her neck. "I need to give him another shot today."

"Nooooo…" Harley whined. "He hates them, Pam."

The redhead sighed. "It's to counteract the chlorophyll…until he can do it himself. It's necessary if we want to be able to leave the house with him, or open the curtains, for that matter."

Harleen sighed too as he remembered how his skin had reacted the same way Ivy's did in the sun- photosynthesizing in some capacity, leaving him noticeably green but still less so than his mother.

"Yeah, alright," she turned onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. "I just hate it when he cries like that."

"It would seem crying unnecessarily is hereditary," Pam smiled, adjusting her head to lay on Harleen's chest so she could look at Anthony.

"Hey!" Harley protested, pinching the other woman lightly. "That's not true. My crying is always justified."

Pam raised her eyebrows and looked up at the blonde. "You cried when I sent you that picture of him with the pumpkin."

"Pam, it was Anthony posed next to a Poison Ivy jack-o-lantern. How could I not cry at that? You know I've always had the hots for her," Harley reasoned.

The redhead laughed. "It looked absolutely nothing like me."

"You know what, Babe? Next time you carve the human form into a pumpkin, I'll let you know how realistic is looks," Anthony laughed as Harleen wrapped up her sentence, causing both women to jump a bit, until they realized he was just preoccupied with the sock on his foot.

"Oh, yeah. That boy will have quite the wit, I can tell," Pam's tone was facetious, earning her another pinch from the blonde.

"You're gonna give him a complex," Harleen said as she reached over to help him pull the sock off. "And to be fair, these socks are pretty funny." She held it up for Ivy to observe. "See? They've got little eyeballs on them."

"Mmm," Pam narrowed her eyes at the garment as she took it from Harley to examine it closer. She turned the sock over between her fingers, using her other hand to pinch the bulging eyeballs at the toe.

And Harleen couldn't help but smile. "You know what's funny?" she asked.

"According to our son? These socks." Pam answered.

"I really like you," Harley told her.

Pam scooted off of her chest, incensed, propping herself up on her elbow. "Well, I certainly hope you do."

Harley laughed, reaching over to tuck a strand of stray hair behind her wife's ear. "No, I mean…still. I really like you still. Like I just…enjoy being around you, ya know?"

"Not all the time," Pam reminded her with a smile.

"No," Harleen laughed in agreement. "Sometimes you can be a raging bitch."

"Takes one to know one."