It always seemed to rain in Gotham.
She ached to be away from the perpetual, washed out scales of grey and the concrete that hemmed her dominion inside straight, orderly lines.
Man-made, she thought with a grimace and not for the first time she mourned the loss of her remote paradise. She told herself that she should leave and make herself another one - after all she had the power to - but no matter how many arguments of persuasion she used upon herself, her heart refused.
For one thing, there was the matter of the orphans in her care, the handful of children she had taken under her wing when disaster had struck the City. She glanced up, over the treetops of Robinson Park and through the curtain of rain, gaze coming to rest on the massive cranes that moved relentlessly, day and night, in the rebuilding effort.
She was too far to see the men, crawling ant-like, about the skeletons of the skyscrapers, removing rubble and dragging new material in its place, but she knew they were there. Her disgusted grimace turned into a fond smile as her children’s laughter drifted up to her perch on top of the oldest oak tree in the park.
A flurry of motion, several feet below, caught her attention and she watched some of the orphans run wildly by, caught up in a game of chase, uncaring that the rain was plastering their shirts to their backs.
She felt like laughing along with them, and the oak shook around her in sympathy until she remembered the other thing keeping her in Gotham, the one her mind had purposefully skirted around, until her heart had shattered the illusion, uncovering the lies she told herself for the excuses they were.
As she thought of this thing, or rather, this person, her laughter stuttered and died and the ancient wood cracked and fissured around her, sharing her pain.
Ivy hopped off her perch, letting herself fall gracefully to the ground below, the vines that coiled around her body extending to ease her descent. Wind whistled madly in her ears as air rushed around her and her hair was a crimson banner, trailing her fall.
She landed without noise and moved deeper into the park, until the half rebuilt city was hidden from view and everywhere she looked was green and lush and thriving with life. Flowers grew wherever she stepped, but the usually pleasing sight failed to soothe her troubled heart.
She thought about Harley and the more she did, the more she grew desperate to the point she was positive the dampness on her cheek was no longer that of rain.
The vase sailed across the room and shattered against the wall next to her head with a sound like gunshot, in perfect synchronicity with the thunder growling outside. It exploded in a whirlwind of shards that cut her cheek, spraying her with water in an obscene parody of baptism.
Harley laughed bitterly, licking blood off her lips.
There was nothing holy about the proceedings.
Limp, broken chrysanthemums fluttered around her and were ground to a pitiful paste at her feet when he stalked close, cornering her against the wall. Fitting all things considered, if this was to be her funeral.
Finally.
A manic smile tugged her lips into a rictus and he roared into her face, showering her anew with spittle, eyes balefully piercing and bright and mad with unbridled anger at the thought she was laughing at him.
For one that so loved tasteless jokes, he sure as hell hated being the butt of one.
The backhanded slap made her reel with nausea, the stone mounted on the ring he wore catching into the edge of a cut and ripping it wide open. She cried out, hating herself for it, knowing it was what he wanted and black flowers blossomed across her vision as her head was snapped to the side so hard her temple struck the wall and bounced back off it.
As she slid downward and onto her rump, she briefly wondered when exactly she’d begun to fear one day he would go too far and kill her.
It wasn’t death Harley was afraid of, she’d always been able to laugh at her inevitable demise, but the thought the man she had once loved would be the one to snuff life out of her desiccated laughter inside her chest. He laid into her with savage kicks before her mind could comprehend the implication inherent in that past tense.
“All. Your. Fault.” her ribs cracked like firework with each thump of his steel toed boots against her torso, as he grunted with exertion right above her, a confused shadow of nothing but distilled anger, the kind of monster the mothers of Gotham scared their children into behaving with.
And the thing was that he had a point. It was her fault if his attempts at killing Batman had gone increasingly more wrong as time went by, but not for the reasons he believed.
She wasn’t an incompetent fool like he loved to remind her, rather she feared what would happen if the Joker finally reached his life’s ultimate goal.
He lived to kill the Bats, and if he did then what would he have to live for? Her younger self would have enthusiastically answered he would have her, but the prospect had been leaving a foul taste inside her mouth as of late.
She pushed herself on hands and knees, muscles aching, lungs burning with every gulp of air she could manage between the blows and started to crawl away, but she hadn’t gone a meter that his hand closed around the nape of her neck and she was lifted like a helpless kitten and dragged towards the bed.
He flung her on it belly down and she landed in a heap, sinking into the soft mattress, but didn’t find reassurance in the way it gave under her weight.
Rather, it felt like she was mired in quicksand and slowly going under and when she felt the bed shift and dip around her, she could not help but scream, spine twisting at the knowledge of what would come next.
Her body almost vibrated as she tensed, waiting for cruel fingers to shred clothes and dig into flesh, waiting for him to use her and then discard her like a broken doll, cocky in the assumption she would always come back for more.
She felt his fingers card through her hair almost gently, then close around her tresses and tug so hard she felt her scalp burn and bruise as a quite a few hair were ripped away.
Then his urgent breath was a scalding hiss next to her ear and when she managed to turn her head away, injuring more of her scalp in the process he laughed and pinched her cheek.
She felt a rush of displaced air and then silence descended, but Harley dared not lift her face from the bed, nor open her eyes, fearing he would still be there and watching her as still as if he had turned to stone if she looked.
He’d done that other times, masterfully weaving abject terror around her when she thought herself safe.
The silence stretched, thin like the most delicate glass and she stretched herself to breaking point alongside it as the minutes trickled by, slow like molasses, until they transcended into a timeless space.
She didn’t exactly know when she went from being awake to a feverish half-sleep, accompanied by the rhythmic thumping of bruised ribs, but sleep she did and silence draped itself over her like a blanket and Harley drifted down inside herself until only the tapping of the rain on the slated roof remained.
“My name's Harleen. Harleen Quinzel.”
She had said it almost breathlessly, feeling an unfamiliar but pleasant flutter inside her chest. He had been lounging back in his chair, treating the orange prison fatigues like the tailored suit she remembered seeing on him when he’d first been brought to Blackgate. She had pestered and pleaded and cajoled her way into being assigned as his psychologist and now, as she watched the still sleeping city of Gotham, a jewel of a million lights that glinted across the water, she felt the familiar height that seized her after a session.
Except this time she wasn’t coming down.
Her giggle echoed down the empty corridor and she had to clamp a hand over her mouth, or risk a guard coming to investigate the unusual noise.
She did not want to share this moment with anyone. It was hers. He was hers to save.
She glanced down at the sheaf of papers she was clutching to her chest, the creamy paper covered in her neat hand. Her eyes roamed the lines of text and she could not wait to be back inside the tiny cubicle that passed for a office - she was starved already, aching to immerse herself in the Joker’s mind, and dreading the weeklong wait before she could be with him again.
His voice filled her mind as her gaze skimmed the recorded conversation.
“What a pretty name,” he had said, “do your friends call you Harley?”
She mouthed the pet name silently and had to swallow down another delighted giggle. Harley sounded so much better than the name her mother had chosen for her, and his voice had wound around each syllable, like a caress. Her mother rarely addressed her with something other than disappointment.
“Oh, I don't have a lot of friends.” She wanted to slam her head against the wall. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! Why couldn’t she have thought about something smarter to say? She didn’t stop to think why all of a sudden she cared so much about what one of her patients
“Well, Harley,” he’d replied and in the flickering light of a buzzing neon strip his smile had taken a savage look, turning into a beast-like grin, “you got one now.”
And in that moment she had known how Red Riding Hood must have felt, right before the wolf ate her alive, with the only difference that Harley couldn’t wait to be devoured.
Harley did not know how she had gotten there, but she came to in the middle of a deserted street as the first flakes of snow laid a frosty kiss across her cheek. She was hobbling aimlessly along a sidewalk, and had to blink a few times before the world around her came completely into focus.
There was a sour taste in her mouth, like something had died there and when she licked her lips they hurt and tasted like copper. Around her the roads were mostly deserted, except for a few late shoppers, braving the worsening weather to hunt for a last minute Christmas present, faces shadowed by pulled up hoods or hidden behind scarves.
She looked across the street where festive lights seemed to wink mockingly at her and, caught by a shiver, wrapped her arms around her aching ribs to try and retain some warmth.
A wave of nausea washed over her and she wobbled to the side, almost falling and managing to press her shoulder against the window of a closing store. There was still a clerk inside and he glanced at her curiously, before shrugging and going back to his ledger. He obviously had not recognized her, as battered and bloodied as she was or the reaction would have been quite different. Around him unsold toys lined the shelves silently, and her gaze lingered on a Harlequin doll slumped in a darker corner. It looked dusty and morose and Harley wondered how many Christmases had gone by without it getting sold and bringing a smile on someone’s face.
She whirled away with a muted cry and tears stinging her eyes and immediately crashed into someone walking by.
“Hey! Watch where-” There was a woman facing her who blanched visibly as their eyes met and the bag she had been brandishing menacingly dropped from nerveless fingers to the ground with a wet splash. She was holding a kid with her other hand and pulled him back abruptly as her mouth opened in the beginning of a scream. Finally someone that knew who, what Harley was.
Harley snarled viciously, a cornered animal on the run, and when the woman practically flew back across the road dragging the child along as if he weighed nothing she felt petty satisfaction.
She was not in a charitable mood.
Some people had stopped to watch and a small crowd had gathered pointing fingers and smartphones in her direction. A flash flared and the snow that swirled around her blazed white and fluffy like cotton for a moment. Harley bared her teeth at all of them then forced herself to run. Away from their inquisitive stares and blatant judgement.
Away.
Christmas lights flashed by as she barreled down the road, the pain of her battered body forgotten in her haste to get away. She turned a corner, then the next, but no matter where she went there were colors and sounds and people. She skidded on a slab of ice and almost fell over and windmilled her arms to keep her balance. The motion turned her around and she saw a patch of darkness beckoning her. Harley staggered forward and plunged into the blackness and the city’s noise faded gradually away as she went, substituted by the sound of shaking leaves and sighing trees.
Snow fell harder now, blanketing everything around her and her breath puffed in little clouds in front of her face. An otherwordly light suffused the air from the ground up, and despite the lack of moon or streetlamps she could perfectly see where she was going. Trees seemed to close tighter around her the further she went and when her injures flared up and she faltered and stopped, looking for something to lean against, a branch seemed to appear out of thin air. She instinctively grabbed onto it, wrapping her arms around the steadiness of the wood and pressed her cheek to it, weariness descending around her shoulders.
The bark was rough and reassuring against her cheek, sticky with sap, and it smelled of ever growing things. Her legs gave out and she collapsed, silently like snow and completely unaware of the carpet of moss that suddenly covered the ground at her feet to cushion her fall.
Ivy used her vines to hoist herself higher and higher above the newly rebuilt idols to hubris and finance, ropes of greenery roping around steel and concrete, carrying her upward until she stood several hundred feet above the ground.
Tilting her head skyward she closed her eyes and let her conscience drift, tendrils of her power snaking outwards in broader and broader circles. The effort made her lightheaded, a nimbus of pheromones coating her skin, but Ivy pushed her powers further, distilling her very essence into her call.
The effort left her lightheaded and swaying, but she whispered to every green thing in Gotham. from the newest stalk of grass to the oldest, most gnarled tree, and the plants answered back
They searched for her and their reply coursed through her veins and she moved towards her prey, jumping from roof to roof and where the space between buildings was too much to leap across plants grew, forming bridges she could run on.
Anger had her bare her teeth and curl her hands into fists. She remembered her mother, black and blue with bruises, spine bent under her husband’s fists for years, always yielding and trying to please until one day she broke and no longer could. She remembered watching her father from the solitude of the room her health confined her to for the most part, and wondering why her mother was so still and wouldn’t climb out of the hole he’d dug for in their garden.
Then, when he had flung dirt inside the hole and covered her staring eyes, Ivy had understood.
The hate Ivy had harbored inside her chest had flared the moment Harley had found her way to her dominion. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained and Ivy had been able to see the bruises underneath, that turned her skin an ugly shade of purple.
Then Harley had fallen and Ivy had rushed to her side, a bed of moss already cradling the unconscious woman. She had lingered long enough to make sure Harley was safe and then begun her hunt in earnest.
She darted between buildings like Artemis herself, green eyes scanning the streets below and the plants’ murmur grew to the roar of leaves scraping in gale force winds as she found him, sauntering along as if he owned the entire town.
He probably thought he did.
She dropped into a silent crouch behind him, and prowled in his shadow for a few steps. He did not notice the creepers that quietly inched towards him, until a thick one lashed out and wound around his throat, jerking him backwards into a green embrace.
Black thorns pierced his skin and embedded in his flesh as he trashed, trying to reach one of the knives he always carried and the more he moved, the more the vines squeezed, until rivulets of blood ran down his front.
He managed to wheeze a nasty laugh.
“Merry Christmas to you as well, Ivy.”
“Spare me your pleasantries.” Her words were barbed and cutting like a rose bush.
“Ah, but I take such pride in my manners!” He grunted when the creeper around his neck dug deeper, his pallid flesh starting to turn livid with newly formed bruises.
“So well mannered you beat women.” The vines rippled with her fury and when he smirked bemused, she almost wrung the life out of him on the spot. Only the knowledge that was what he wanted stayed her hand.
“She came to you then?” His gaze flicked downwards as his fingertips brushed a spot on his jacket, then he screamed as his arm was violently tugged away and his wrist enclosed, then loudly snapped by a sprig of ivy.
“Ahhh,” his scream turned into something different and lewd, and he grinned at her madly, voice raspy but bubbly with mirth when he next spoke.
“So you want her for yourself,” Ivy had thought her face hid everything, but he must have glimpsed something in her eyes because his smile broadened so much that his face looked about to split in two. “ You want her to belong to you. You are exactly like me.”
“I want her to be free.”
“Then she will come back to me, “ he chortled, “she likes it, don’t you see? She always come back for more!”
Ivy stalked forward, until she was almost nose to nose with him, then the vines holding him lifted him up so he was dangling like a puppet, feet barely scraping the pavement.
“I will tend her wounds for as many times as I have to. But she will be always free to choose.”
“Kill me then and let’s be done with it. I got places to be, people to see.”
“No,” she shook her head and slowly retreated, her denial as venomous as the poison coating her lips, letting the night swallow her whole, “live with the knowledge she will always have a safe place to come to.”
The creepers dropped him abruptly and he landed on hands and knees with a meaty thud, coughing and cursing and screaming at her to come back and finish the job, laughing to the edge of tears, but Ivy walked away, letting his words fall on deaf ears.
Harley woke to softness.
She frowned as the world came into focus, but it took her a few moments to register the worried face hovering over hers. Lines were smoothed into a quivering smile as she blinked and she felt the ghost of a touch on her cheek. She wanted to lean into it, but didn’t, afraid the dream would shatter - it certainly must be a dream because she could not remember so peaceful an awakening - and the gentle face above hers would turn into Mr. J’s leering and ready start again.
But the face stayed the same and ever so slowly she pushed up on her elbows and as she looked down she saw she was laying on moss, of a green so deep it was almost black.
“You’re awake,” the smile broadened and hands tenderly helped her to a sitting position. She raised her gaze and met Ivy’s eyes and when the other woman’s hands left her, she felt a sudden ache in her chest.
She could only stare as Ivy sat back on her haunches and simply looked back. The woman looked like a nymph, or a spirit of the forest, vines and leaves seemingly growing from her very skin. A mantle of leaves adorned her shoulders, in all the colors of the fall and hair like fire cascaded over it. Harley had the distinct impression that the leaves were shifting and growing as she gazed at it and, before she could stop herself she had reached out to touch it. The leaves quivered against her hand and curled around her fingers and Harley snatched them back as if burned.
“It’s alright,” Ivy laughed, but it was warm and sweet, and Harley felt she was not laughing at her, “they don’t mind.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say so she busied herself with looking around, even though all she wanted was to stare at the woman a few inches from her. A myriad of plants and trees grew around them, of all shapes and sizes, some of them adorned by delicate flowers. At first Harley wondered how they could blossom in the dead of winter, but then realized she was no longer feeling cold. They must be in a greenhouse then.
Her body ached dully but not as bad as it had done before and when she looked at the bruises on her arms she found them already paling, well on the way to healing
Ivy noticed her wondering look, and with a hand gesture drew her attention to some of the flowers around them.
“I used balms made from the flowers on your injuries. They are remedies as old as time itself,” a veil of sadness clouded her eyes briefly, “but humans forget.”
“Won’t it hurt them?” It was probably a stupid question, but she could not help but ask.
“No,” Ivy lifted a hand, fingers beckoning, and one of the plants surged forward and she stroked its leaves and flowers carefully. The plant preened under her attentions and Harley laughed heartily and at the same time felt something she could only call jealously kindle briefly. Ivy joined her and the plant swayed between the two of them, nuzzling briefly against them both before scuttling backwards among its kin.
As their laughter ebbed away, silence returned, the comfortable kind that friends can share without filling it with empty words. Harley felt herself relax in a way she’d rarely known, except perhaps in the half-forgotten corners of her youth and Ivy seemed content to let her be and simply exist in her same space.
Just when she thought she could be safe, or at least as safe as a villain in Gotham could be, they heard a shout coming from somewhere outside.
“My sweet. Come out, I know you are here!”
Harley jumped to her feet, or tried to, but her abused body would not cooperate and she managed only a half crouch.
“He’s here! He’ll hurt you!”
“I won’t let him.” There was an assurance lining Ivy’s words that Harley wanted to desperately cling to.
She bit her lips furiously and wrung her hands and then she held Ivy’s green eyes with hers and scraped together all her courage. “I don’t think I want to go back.”
“Then you shan’t.”
At her words a thick hedge began to grow around the edges of the park where Joker was prowling, barring his way and pushing him back, and all he managed to do while yelling his blind rage was tear his hands to shreds on its thorns.
They heard him spit his fury into empty air for a while and then his shouts faded away and quiet returned.
Harley looked at Ivy timidly.
“Does this mean I can stay?”
“As long as you wish.” She wondered what else she could add to keep that smile on Ivy’s face. On impulse she flung her arms around the woman and wrapped them around her neck, plastering a big kiss on Ivy’s cheek.
Neither of them noticed the mistletoe that sprouted around the branches high above their heads.