Chapter 12: The Process:
The sickly and weakened Ivy as before, drifted in and out of consciousness. During most of her stay in the GCPD, she practically heard only GCPD Officers walking around the Isolation Cell. But overall, the environment currently was peaceful and quiet.
Unfortunately for her, The Eco-Mistress heard the voices of several officers outside of the cell debate amongst themselves regarding Ivy.
This Officer sounded very enraged. "Ivy brainwashed my husband during that thankfully dead clown's takeover of Arkham two years ago! He eventually became a casualty of The Clown's psychotic nonsense! It'll be a goddamn miracle if her walks again, let alone becomes a cop again!"
Luckily for Ivy, Officer Joana was one of those officers in the debate regarding her, surprisingly, he began to vouch for her. "Reyes, cut her some slack, it was The Joker's doing with the TITAN that deteriorated Miss Ivy during that fateful day. You're all forgetting that Ivy's physiology is meant to be toxin RESISTANT! Not Toxin PROOF! The affects of The Titan on Ivy briefly drove her insane."
The female officer refused to budge despite Joana's strong claims. "Pfft, of course you'd say something like that Joana, you're always soft on the some of these freaks. I don't get what Gordon and Cash see in you. Ivy's hatred for us humans alone is enough to say she deserves to die. She should've been dead after Batman took her down and she was sent back to her cell. The Toxins should've sent her into the sky, but that deceased idiot Sharp allowed her to see a priest and give her her last rites. Then she manipulated the flower substances the poor bastard had on him and pretty much burned herself back to shape. The way me and some of the guys and gals see it, Ivy cheated her ass out of the hangman's noose."
Before Officer Joana could counter this, a 3rd officer spoke up and actually supported his colleague's defense of Poison Ivy. "According to the records we've got, Ivy actually gave Batman the mold needed to counter the effects of that disgusting TITAN stuff."
Even after the solid claims from both Officer Joana and the other GCPD Officer she still refused to budge and give in. "I'm calling bull crap on this one 'ladies'. Ivy only did that because she likely thought that Croc would tear her apart if they had came across each other."
Officer Joana and his five colleagues were beginning to grow irritated due to everyone's mixed feelings on the matter revolving around Ivy. Joana continued to proudly vouch for the semi-reformed villainess with more claims. "I'm not saying what she did was okay, and believe me, Miss Ivy has a long way to go before she's earned her forgiveness, but what I'm saying is, had she not sucked up all of Crane's bastardly toxins, lord knows the entire city would've gone insane...Gotham could've possibly collapsed permanently...she deserves the benefit of the doubt."
The Female Officer retorted this claim like the others. "Whatever Joana, I'm starting to think she used her sex power on your soft ass. I'm sure she knew that she couldn't save only her plants, had she been able to do that, she'd have let the rest of us die while her plants get spared."
After this, the convo was wrapped up and the officers went about their separate ways in the building.
This also left Ivy with some more things to think about...
After listening in on that conversation, Ivy obviously knew one thing. This one act of saving the entire city wouldn't be enough to sway the some officers in The GCPD.
For the first time, she actually began regretting the actions she's committed against humanity. There was definitely more work to be done if she were to earn their trust again. She knew Batman was right about one thing, Ivy still had her humanity retained in her all along, it just took extreme measures to bring it out.
She was now destined to change for the better and prove to Batman, The GCPD and Gotham that she could be a force of good and not the evil monster they had saw her as for years. No matter how hard it may turn out to be, she was definitely going to do it and prove it to the world.
But she had one major block in the road. She had to get healed first and make sure she didn't end up dying from her injuries. And Batman had partially helped her with the staying alive part as she was almost positive that without his help, she surely would've died after taking in all of that Fear Toxin.
Ivy had a lot of things that needed correction after everything she had been through. The first two things on her list were to obviously heal from her injuries, the other being to prove to everyone that she truly does deserve forgiveness...
After about fifteen minutes or so, the GCPD Officer Ivy had unintentionally befriended, Officer Joana, came into the private area she was temporarily staying at. He had walked in to check on her and see if there were any updates on her health.
"Miss Ivy, how are you feeling?"
"Like a dying flower." She replied weakly.
The Officer began moving some other things around the room. "Dry humor at a time like this?"
"Didn't Batman give you boys my MO."
Officer Joana gave the ill-ex-villainous a smile. "Ma'am, there's too many crazies in Gotham, it's hard to remember." Soon he went back to moving items around the room.
A few more minutes passed and In that time nothing spectacular had happened. Two more joyriders had been brought in and placed in custody. But other than that, nothing. Ivy would try and listen in on the conversations of the major supervillains/criminals, but she was far to weak and ill to do it. Plus, she was really drained out when she had spied on them last time.
Ivy even thought about Harley. Harley was one of the few things that had kept her happy, so Ivy figured thinking about her friend would help ease the pain. She was very curious as to where Batman might've had her placed after being brought down. Soon she had another flashback in her mind to another time where she and Harley had went on a holiday shopping spree with a certain billionaire playboy under their control...
Flashback, Harley and Ivy's shopping spree with Bruce Wayne:
Harley had just finished hitting another store with her best gal friend Ivy and the mind controlled Bruce Wayne. They pair had spent thousands of dollars thus far.
"Come on Pammy, we're gonna hit the girls section now!" Harley had pulled Ivy and the controlled Bruce Wayne to the next area of one of the countless stores they had been forcefully spending Bruce Wayne's money at. While Harley was focused on most of the shopping, Ivy had the dust ice honor of making sure 'Brucey' didn't break free from their control.
"I would be quicker, but SOMEONE here has to keep an eye on Bruce."
Harley like the person she was dismissed her friend's current predicament. While Harley had been doing most of their holiday shopping, Ivy was stuck with the irritating part of keeping the man at bay. But if it meant Harley would be happy, then Ivy would do anything to keep her that way. And to keep her mind off of The Joker as well...
"Harley, isn't this nice?"
"What's nice?"
"You, being your own person without that madman barking into your ear."
At first, Harley was confused and didn't know what she was talking about, but then she realized Red was referring to The Joker. She then dismissed this quickly.
"Yeah Red, it's nice and all, but Mr J is the love of this gal's life," Harley began daydreaming, much to Ivy's chagrin. "Maybe I'll have old Brucie here get him something nice."
"Forget about him Harley, this holiday shopping spree was supposed to be for us, about us getting nice things for ourselves, not him."
As the two villainesses continued to shop and share differing opinions about Harley's "relationship" with The Joker, neither of them had noticed Bruce was slowly beginning to break free of Ivy's mind controlling abilities. While he wasn't all the way free of the control, he was now at least aware of what was going on and what he was doing.
After a while, the two girls had stopped keeping track of how much of Bruce Wayne's money they were spending. In fact, Ivy didn't think Harley was paying attention to it in the first place. Harley had purchased so many items that Ivy had to use her abilities to use any nearby plants to transport their things to Bruce's private limousine. It was annoying, but Ivy remembered the main thing was that Harley was happy and her mind was free of the Joker, at least for the moments being.
"Now ladies..."
The two villainesses looked over to finally see Bruce Wayne was clearly beginning to break freer of Ivy's control.
"I've had just about enough of this nonsense."
Harley and Ivy barely looked worried. Ivy then pulled out a lipgloss thing mixed up with some sort of chemical and gave it to Harley to keep the billionaire at bay.
"Give him another dose of the stuff."
"Right on, come here Brucie, Mama's ready for some smooching." As Harley approached, Bruce cautiously backed away from the pair. What no one noticed was that an open elevator shaft was there, most likely opened for repairs. Bruce took another step and trip backwards over the sign that cordoned off the area. His screams could be heard by the two ladies.
There was an awkward silence momentarily before Harley broke the silence. "Meh, who cares, we probably were gonna kill him anyways."
"True," Ivy added dismissively. "Let's get out here before someone suspects we had something to do with Bruce Wayne's 'death'.
But what they did not know was that Bruce indeed survived and had managed to hold on to something in the shaft.
Suddenly the sickly Ivy heard "Clear the way!" And was brought back into reality. She saw Officer Joana beginning to leave the room to assist in whatever was going on.
"What's going on?"
Officer Joana began to explain the situation. "It's Batman Miss Ivy, we just got word that he's arrived with another one of the freaks, the one they call Ra's Al Ghul."
Now she was curious. Ra's was one of Batman's oldest foes, and she had heard stories of this man and his mysterious encounters with Batman. She had even heard rumors of this man being a few centuries old and being revived from the dead with some sort of magical chemical. Before she could dive into it more...
"Ivy..."
The Semi-Redeemed girl looked up to see Batman towering over her. Soon Officer Joana appeared before them as well.
"Officer..." He greeted, albeit serious and as stoic as ever. He then looked over to the injured flora-like woman. "How are you feeling?"
Almost as if it were on cue, Ivy coughed loudly and repeatedly. The Dark Knight could sense that even the simple cough was hurting her. She nearly fell off of where she was sitting until The Detective caught her and carefully placed her back where she was at.
Once the Semi-Reformed villainess regained some composure, "Does that answer your question?"
"Partially."
"It'll take a while for me to fully heel from my awful state."
Batman wasn't surprised by the answer as he had already concluded that would be the case. "I know, I figured your unique immunity to toxins would fight off most of Crane's chemicals. Luckily it did, had you sucked up even a little more of the fear toxin you'd likely be in a full body paraplegic like Ra's Al Ghul...or worse, dead."
Ivy wondered if Batman was like this with everyone he interacted with, whether it be friend or foe, he was always straight up with his responses. "If you don't mind me asking, what brings you back to the GCPD?"
"I brought Ra's here moments ago, and destroyed his final source of living...in a estimated few days to a week, he'll die, for the last time."
Ivy noticed Batman sounded slightly uncomfortable saying this. Did he kill this man? Had he broken the one code he swore to abide by? She wondered if it was a good idea to ask him about it or to respect his privacy. But ultimately, she decided to go for it. "You sound almost regretful, did you...kill him?"
"..." Batman said nothing and stared blankly at the ground.
Ivy knew The Dark Knight was beginning to doubt himself, and before that could happen, the sick and wounded meta-human quickly realized she had to keep Gotham's Guardian sure of himself.
"Batman, do not feel bad about your decision, based upon what I know, this man has cheated death and Mother Nature far too many times? Is the prevention of some horrid chemical induced resurrection truly killing someone? I'd say it's the other way around."
Suddenly another voice was heard. It was Officer Joana. "If you don't mind me saying Batman, I say you did the right thing, at some point in time, we're all subject to pass on in the Circle Of Life. Don't feel guilty about the choice you've made."
Batman now stood there with two very good points sprung across him. He was now reassured, or at least somewhat less regretful of his decision. "Your right, both of you, at some point, she'll see us all..."
Ivy then spoke up "See? You did the right thing as Gotham's protector, there's nothing to be ashamed of." Secretly inside, Ivy was joyful that she was giving Batman, of all people, encouragement and reassurance.
Another minute of silence passed by before Batman surprisingly said, "Thanks." The Stoic detective walked out of the room leaving behind an awed Officer Joana and Ivy...