Chapter Text
Ivy thought she had no expectations of decency from humans. She had already learned they were greedy and deceitful and not to be trusted.(Except for her Harley.) Pamela thought the human race could never let her down again.
Until the day she learned of the seven year old admitted into Arkham Asylum.
She found out from a few henchmen first, ones who had disguised themselves as guards to deliver the news of a new inmate. She had been curious, curious enough not to stage a break out right away, wanting to see the newest addition to the hell hole.
Then, she went to lunch and saw Waylon sitting next to a child who had the same uniform as the other prisoners. The girl was asking Waylon some questions, she could tell by the body language, but she otherwise seemed content.
Pamela would’ve thought it was some sort of hallucination if she hadn’t seen Waylon, looking at the girls as well, or any inmates did double whenever they saw her.
She approached Waylon. While the two of them were not close, Ivy knew Waylon and Harley were good friends, and had had him over at her lair a few times. She could at least trust him to be truthful about something like this.
The girl turned towards Pamela after Waylon nudged her, giving Pamela a better look at her. She was skinny, but not in a healthy way, but a malnourished way. The girl had dark hair that had recently been cut into a pageboy style. Her face was gaunt, but the thing that stood out to Pamela was the girl’s eyes. The child had a case of heterochromia, with one green eye and one blue grey eye. There was an odd look in the child’s eyes, remind Pamela of broken glass and cracks in the ice just before someone fell through. The fragility in those eyes almost made Pamela want to look away(and if she hadn’t become so used to her girlfriend’s eyes after a nightmare, the shattered borderline madness in them, she might have reacted physically.)
“This is Poison Ivy.” Waylon introduced, and Pamela would have scoffed at the introduction(no one forgot who she was) if the girl’s eyes hadn’t gained a cautious hope to them. Ivy sat down across from the girl, giving her a small smile.
“Hi, Miss Ivy.” The girl said quietly. Her voice was soft, hesitant, but strangely free of childhood lisps and stumbling over words. Pamela ignored the nickname the girl gave her, focusing instead on how the girl looked over at Waylon for a split second before introducing herself, as if searching for some kind of signal. “My name is Jessie.”
And if Pamela was soft with the girl, coaxing her to talk and telling Jessie stories of Harley’s antics (and noting how her girlfriend’s name made Jessie smile), well, no one was going to say anything. No one was gonna say anything about the small girl in a too big prison jumper who flinched away from the more human looking inmates and followed Killer Croc around like a duckling.
And if by the end of lunch, Pamela was debating whether to contact the bats to get Jessie, contact Harley so they could adopt Jessie, or ask Harvey to draw up adoption papers for Waylon? That was her business