Things get a little campy in this one. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Chapter 41 – The Greenhouse

In a large, overgrown greenhouse half an hour down the road from Little Delaware Lake, a peculiar event was transpiring behind the walls of foliage. It started with Batman casing the structure for any access points beside the main entrance. When none were found, he had no choice but to knowingly walk into the trap awaiting him. To do otherwise would be to abandon Selina to her captor's evil whims.

The air was oppressively humid inside. Batman coughed as his lungs adjusted to the excess moisture. All too soon, though, he realized it wasn't just water vapor irritating his throat – the air was laced with a sickeningly sweet smell that permeated everything. By the time he realized his limbs were slowing against his will, a pair of gloved hands caught him and dragged him across the floor.

"There," a fiendishly sultry voice said into his ear. "Here's a nice comfortable spot for you."

Propped against several bags of potting soil and fertilizer, Batman didn't have to lift his gaze to know who was speaking to him. "You."

Poison Ivy sauntered in and out of some large palm fronds, an amused smile on her lips. "What , you thought it was someone meaner and scarier, like the Joker?"

"It's just, none of it really seems your style."

"Doesn't it?" she asked coyly. "Remind me, Batman, how vandals broke into that little cottage I found poor Selina in?"

Hearing Selina's name made him flinch. "Where is she?"

"Nearby. And safe for the time being. Now, do answer my question."

Sublimating his fear and anger, he refocused. "They got lucky. The cottage's security system was down."

"Yes, and why was it down?"

Batman blinked. Oh, how blind he'd been…

"The vines," he exhaled. "You did that."

"But of course! I must say, I'm rather disappointed it took you so long to figure it out. The Batman I know would've suspected me the moment he got a call from his groundskeeper."

Had he not already been paralyzed, Bruce would've been unable to move anyway. "What did you say?"

"Please, there's no need to pretend anymore, Bruce," Ivy rolled her eyes. "I'm not even sure why you bothered wearing that costume today. Your lungs are susceptible to my toxins whether you wear a bat suit or a business suit."

He said nothing. Denying it would be futile. How she figured it out… did it even matter?

It definitely did. "How?"

"How did I manage to uncover Gotham's biggest secret? Well, I'm a lot more resourceful than you give me credit for, Bruce," Ivy said his name again with pleasure. "A few years ago, I asked myself, wouldn't it be fun to unravel that mystery? To be the one who peeled back Batman's hood? Just for the fun of it."

She paused to caress a hanging vine that encircled her arm. "So I started thinking about it rationally. If Batman hangs around Gotham all the time, he must live nearby. And he needs a pretty big space to train and keep all his equipment hidden, right? I did some research, and it turns out, there are only three mansions within a ten-mile radius of Gotham. Two of them belong to wrinkled old widows."

Lowering her arm to reach Bruce's left foot, the vine slithered off her arm and started trailing up his leg.

"And Batman is certainly no old, wrinkled widow, is he?" he asked seductively.

Bruce vainly tried to squirm away from the tendril. His knee twitched a little, but his muscles simply wouldn't respond.

"Once I had my suspicions, I devised a plan to confirm them. First, I sold my perfume brand to Wayne Botanicals, which granted me access to their labs for a while. My lab is decent, but I don't have half the chemical agents they do," she explained, obviously quite pleased with herself. "Then it was just a simple process of R & A. Took me over a year, but I finally made the perfect neurotoxin to test on you," she proudly dangled a thin vial of the compound for him to see.

Bruce nodded vaguely. The rest of her story was obvious, but he had no other option but to hear it.

"I followed you to the Wayne Enterprises conference in Metropolis, waited for the right moment, and… well, you know the rest," she grinned. "Then I watched to see if Batman appeared in the news at all. For four months, he was gone. After you woke up, during two months of rehab, he was still nowhere to be seen. And my goodness, what a coincidence that not long after you were released from the hospital, Batman fortuitously reappeared!"

"Hooray, you figured it out all by yourself. Congratulations," Bruce deadpanned.

"But there's more still," exhorted Ivy. "When you attended that police gala, I was there. When I saw the size of Selina's belly, well, I knew I couldn't sit idly by any longer."

Bruce's neck tensed. "Where is she?!" he said through gritted teeth.

Ivy ignored his furious plea. "I was surprised to see her pregnant, Bruce. I didn't take you for a family man. Had I known you were so inclined, I'd have pursued you long ago."

"Really? I thought you had no use for men," scoffed Bruce. "Always expected you'd find a way to conceive with a Venus fly trap or something."

"Oh Bruce, how poorly you understand me," she condescended. "I have no use for any meaningful relationships with men. But make no mistake, I do have a use for them."

He didn't like the sound of that. He'd heard many unsettling things by villains over the years, but few made his skin crawl the way Ivy just did.

"It's a pity I didn't think to solve this Batman mystery sooner," she sighed wistfully. "We could've had at least three or four children by now, but such is fate. One or two will have to suffice."

"Excuse me?!"

"Oops, I've gotten a bit ahead of myself, haven't I? Well, now's as good a time as any, I suppose. You see, Bruce, I didn't just lure you here to confirm once and for all that Batman is Bruce Wayne," Ivy said, nonchalantly holding a needle syringe. "You're here so I can drug you, conceive your baby, and continue drugging you as long as you prove to be a useful accomplice. Now, the first step is this shot, and the second step is turning off the airborne tranquilizer."