Chapter Text
She went back to him. She always did.
Ivy sat by the window of her current hideaway. The winter winds howled outside, where she stayed somewhere just outside of Gotham. It was a cottage that was pretty once upon a time, she was sure. The yellow exterior was bleached into an awful shade of a sort of bandaid beige, the front door locks were busted, an easy fix, but something Ivy wasn’t worried about. She could more than easily protect herself from any invader, and woe to the person who would even try. The acre of land the house sat on was meager and dead beneath the sparse snow that crusted the grass and weeds.
Everything was dying, everything. Plants, the Earth, the sun, people. People. She knew the old woman who used to live in this house. She was a blind woman named Thala, whose skin was like the leather of a worn sofa and eyes were milky with age. Ivy had answered an ad in the paper that required a caregiver, and Ivy answered. It was an easy way to stay out of Batman's sights and gave Ivy a place to lay low at the time. It was an easy job, too. Cooking and laundering was about the extent of it.
Thala could take care of herself with ease, having been blind most of her life. It was strictly age that necessitated some new accommodations. Ivy expected to hate her, as she hated nearly all humans, but Thala was a cultivator. She had a small, modest garden that laid barren just out back. She used to keep bees, but left her hives to a friend of hers that owned several.
To Ivy, she left the house. She didn’t have many friends, that Thala. In some ways she would never care to admit, she reminded Ivy of herself. Reclusive. Pining. Left behind in ways she never imagined she would ever be, kept on a backburner like some tawdry second place ribbon placed behind the first place trophy from a previous year.
She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to get out of there. So many memories, ghosts of her own and Thala’s story, too, choked her with hollowness. If she was going to be miserable, at least she could be sexy with a drink in her hand.
X
The Iceberg Lounge always had a line out the door. The main club was open to the public, but for people like Ivy there was a VIP area that was calling her name. Dressed in a woolen suit jacket (stolen from some pathetic rich man she’d deleted from existence) and her favorite blue velvet cocktail dress, she strode past the line and approached the bouncer directly. With her green skin transfigured into her old pale complexion, she fit right in, but stood out entirely. Harley called it her Bombshell Factor. Her gut twinged.
The bouncer took one look at the slit, which ran scintillatingly high up her right thigh, and opened the red rope for her to enter. The crowd booing and whining behind her filled her heart with warmth, reflected in her broad smile. Oh, being irresistible was her favorite attribute. She didn’t even have to use her pheromones to get what she wanted, and Ivy always got what she wanted .
Except for the only things that mattered.
“Ivy!” Oswald recognized her straightaway upon her entering the VIP lounge and waddled toward her from doing his rounds. “Oh, oh, so good to see you. You know you’re a favorite here.”
“I’m your walking advertisement.” She rolled her eyes, bored of his usual placation. “Someone sees me here and it boosts your numbers. Lesser people always follow the lovely.”
“Especially with the underground,” he beamed, voice quiet as though afraid to be rude. He put his malformed hand on the small of Ivy’s back and urged her inside to the bar. “You know that Gary Falcone has been asking about you.”
One of Carmine Falcone’s many nephews. “He can keep asking. Flattering as it is to be pursued, I’m not interested.”
“Think of the money, the prestige.” He gestured for the bartender to pour her a drink – vermouth, straight, served in a small rocks glass over a large sphere of ice – her usual. Penguin always kept track of what his top priority guests preferred, always keen on hospitality to suit his own purposes. “Women find him quite handsome, too.”
He can find himself in a ditch , Ivy kept to herself, sipping at her drink. “I haven’t been here in quite some time. Things look different, aside from the New Years decorations.”
“Yes, I had new aquarium walls installed so there is more real estate to see the penguins in their spacious habitat. I treat them better than any zoo, y’see.”
“Mm,” she nodded and sat down, trying to give him the signal to leave her alone. He didn’t get it. He never did.
“The lights are new, too. Warmer, y’see. They were too cold before, I read that it encourages people to leave an establishment sooner. Always something to learn –”
“I said no, puddin’!”
Ivy froze cold, the glass slipping from her hand and clattering onto the wood of the bar. The bartender rushed in to clean up the spill but it was too late; Ivy’s favorite velvet dress was forever ruined.
Why now? Why here? Why is it always her?
On instinct, Ivy turned, of course she would turn. She would know that voice, follow it, anywhere, like a fool.
Joker had Harley in his lap, laughing and cackling as Harley squirmed in her strapless red mini dress. Her hair was up in her tightest pigtails and her face was a mask of smeared mascara and red eyeshadow – from crying or lack of care, Ivy couldn’t tell.
“C’mon, Harl!” Their conversation was easy to pick up now that she had locked into their voices. “Just a peck!”
“No!” She insisted, trying to get free from his grasp, which was unusual. “I won’t do it! I only kiss you, Mr. J!”
Ivy felt a knife twist in her gut, and in that moment she wished it was a real one. Dejection and anger intermingled in her belly and it felt like the urge to vomit or let out a guttural yell. Only him. Of course. All those embraces, the kisses, the…lovemaking. None of it mattered, of course it didn’t. Just like always, Ivy was a fun fuck, a gorgeous woman to rail and conquer and capture for a moment. She’d thought Harley, at least, saw her as something a little more than that.
Yet she stood anyway. She wiped her dress as best she could and put her bag on the bar counter. No one would be fool enough to steal from an S Class criminal like herself.
“Let her go.”
The words were dark and tinged with savagery. She loomed over where Joker and Harley sat, outrageously tall at nearly seven feet, her shadow cast over them with the assistance of Penguin’s new lighting arrangement.
Joker blinked hard, but smiled like he just caught a bird in his claws. “Pammy! Well, if it isn’t my favorite brussels sprout, don’t see you here often. Come out of hibernation just to see lil ol’ me?” He batted his eyelashes like some bizarre imitation of a southern belle.
“Can it, clown.” She raised her hand with tensed fingers, just at his eye level. “I could strangle you without needing to waste a breath, and we both know it.”
“Yet here you are, wasting a lot of breath.” He was suddenly bored, his moods easily swayed as paper on wind. “What’s it to you, shrub? If you want her, you’ll have to make me a trade. Wouldn’t want poor Harls here to get hurt in the kerfuffle.”
He pouted and squished Harley’s cheeks within his fingers. Harley couldn’t meet Ivy’s eyes, face red with some emotion, embarrassment or something like.
“No trades, Mr. J, Ivy won’t make one anyway. You’ll just get hurt. I’ll do it, I’ll give the fellas a kiss. You said it would be funny, right?”
Ivy couldn’t stand it anymore. She grabbed Joker by the throat and used his surprise to pull Harley from his grasp. She could kill him, easily as that, but Harley held her back in more ways than one.
“Leave him alone, Red. Leave him alone,” Harley sounded defeated.
“The trade I’ll make,” Ivy levied with him, knowing Joker liked his childish playground games, “is a deal. You leave Harley to me and I’ll provide you with one of my most lethal toxin recipes. Your Joker Gas couldn’t even compare. You’ll stand every chance against the Batman. You could bring all of Gotham to its knees. In exchange you…” she hated the words about to leave her mouth, “...give Harley to me.”
Harley was silent, struck utterly dumb.
“Tempting, tumbleweed.” Joker considered it. “But let’s make it a bit more challenging , hm?”
“Puddin’...” Harley started to protest.
“What did you have in mind?” Ivy’s bitterness spilled from her lips like oil.
“How about a game?”
Ivy internally winced. Of course it would be a card game. She knew how to play, but ultimately it came out to luck.
“Ivy, can we use the ladies room for a minute?” Harley’s voice was deep and deadpan, accent muted in a way that reminded Ivy of the clinical voice she used to use when she was still a doctor in Arkham. Cold. Neutral. “Won’t take long.”
“Dames,” he shrugged to the thugs around him. “Go on, but if you two try to leave it won’t be very fun, and I won’t be very happy.”
Joker didn’t stand a chance. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t hurt Harley in that way.
Upon entering the restroom, Harley checked to make sure the room was empty before locking the door. She pinned Ivy to the outside of a bathroom stall and looked up at her with anger, but eyes rimmed with unshed tears. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m tired, Harley.” Ivy’s voice was anything but tired, she hadn’t spoken with Harley like this in a long time, with any kind of anger. “I’m tired of him constantly trying to humiliate you!”
“And you ain’t?! “ Harley’s tears finally rolled over her cheeks, bringing more makeup down with it. Ivy instinctually tried to wipe them away with her wrist, but Harley batted it away. “Using me as a prize for a game? For what? Like I’m some stuffed animal you’re trying to win at a fucking carnival?”
“That’s not –”
“That’s what it is , though! I’m not collateral to just throw around like I’m just some thing . I’m some one. Like we said that night we…” She flushed hotly in a shade that rivaled the red of her dress, a beautiful color that overtook her from cheeks and ears to shoulders and the cleavage of her breasts. “The night we made love.”
Made love. “So it did matter to you.”
“Did? It does , Ivy, how could it not?” Her grip on Ivy’s shoulders tightened, keeping her pinned there with nothing but Ivy’s consent, she could easily break away if she wanted to. “I can’t say all that to puddin’.”
“Why not?” Ivy asked intensely.
“Because I don’t want to,” she said point blank. “It’s none of his business. He wouldn’t care anyway. You saw how he wanted to pass me around to those jugheads out there.”
“Why do you put up with that?” Ivy pounded her fist backward into the hard surface of the stall. “Why don’t you care what he does to you?”
“Because I want to,” she said again. “How do you explain why we wanted to do what we did that night? Because we wanted to.”
Because I’m in love with you! Ivy’s thoughts roared inside her head with such desperation it made her knees weak. “You can’t compare that to…please don’t compare that to this. To him. To whatever you two have.”
“Fine,” Harley moved her hands from Ivy’s shoulders to gripping the lapels of her jacket. “It’s different anyway, I know that. What we did…was different.”
Ivy’s belly clenched. “Different how?”
“You know,” Harley shrugged.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Red.”
“Please.”
“It was… we were …soft. I’d never experienced something like that. I’ve always had it rough when I did it with men, any relationship I ever had with women never really went all the way. I didn’t expect it to be so easy. Simple. Two people wanting something at the same level. We’re on the same level. I can’t explain it.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job,” Ivy breathed. “So then, that night, you… enjoyed it ?” Her hands rested on Harley’s hips, making the blonde’s upper teeth graze her pink lip. “Really?”
“Pam,” Harley looked up at her with a furrowed brow, face utterly earnest. “How could I not? It was…I don’t think I’ve ever felt that held before. It’s like I said, it was like being loved.”
Like . “Then, would you like to feel like you’re being loved again?”
Harley’s eyes widened, and Ivy could see her face reflected in them. Lust masking over the pain inside. It was so easy, putting back on the air of seductress, her siren self that drew men and women alike to crash on her shores with all the agony of wanting something they could never have. But Harley could have it. She could have the whole of her. She would give the whole of herself, make herself believe that Harley’s desire was something more than just whatever that night was. That confused, messy, perfect night.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes kept hold of Ivy’s. “I don’t know if I can handle it. As good – as great as it was, it was…I can’t explain it. So much. I felt like I was going to explode. It was the most uncomfortably comfortable I’d ever felt.”
“Like seeing color for the first time,” Ivy echoed the sentiment they’d both shared the night they finally let themselves collide.
It then clicked for Ivy – Harley wasn’t ready, and she doubted she ever would be. Honestly, Ivy wasn’t ready either. She realized it as she kept swallowing back her feelings, her real thoughts, over and over. If they weren’t ready, was there even something to be ready for?
Ivy reached out and cupped Harley’s face, fingers brushing some loose strands of golden hair from her flushed cheek. Maybe one day they would be ready, Ivy wished as her face scrunched in response to the sweet sort of misery that bloomed and entangled like vines through the lattice of her rib bones.
“Just don’t shut me out.” Ivy’s voice strained, throat tight. She didn’t quite understand the words coming from her mouth. “Leave room for me, as much as you can. I’ll always be here, whether we like it or not.”
Harley scoffed, looking away. “I think you’re a masochist, Red.”
“How do you mean?”
“Being around me, wanting to be near me, it’s all pain. One of us gets hurt one way or another. I can’t help it. I think before, y’know, before , when I still wore glasses and wanted so many things for myself, I think before I wasn’t this way. It’s hard to remember. Maybe I’ve always been like this. A jinx.”
“You aren’t a jinx.” Ivy insisted softly. “Does he hit you?”
“Not usually. It isn’t just me, I’m not special like that to be singled out. He treats me the same as he treats the guys. I’m worth being by his side.”
Ivy gripped her free hand into another tight fist, feeling cuts forming beneath her nails. “Worth?”
“Because he doesn’t ignore me. Puddin’ doesn’t waste time on people who aren’t worth his time. He…I like being seen .”
“I see you, Harley.” You engross me .
“Always have, Red.” Harley agreed as though it were as obvious as pointing out the weather. “I don’t have to earn it with you, though. I have to pull my weight with Mr. J. He pushes me like no one else does, to better myself. When we’re alone, he calls me his guard dog. Once I bite, I don’t let go, even if it kills me. No one can protect him like me. It’s how I earn my bruises, my scars, they’re marks of my worth –”
Ivy hugged Harley so tight that their heads grazed each other like bullets. She sobbed, utterly still. “You sweet, sweet girl. There’s no one alive that deserves you. No one at all.”
The woman she loved was so lost she doubted she could guide her home at all.
Someone pounded on the door. Harley let go of Ivy like dropping a weight at the gym, as though something in her shut off as reality came crashing back in.
“You ready, ladies?”
“That’s Hugo. Guess Puddin’s ready for us. Please, Pammy, don’t do this. Just walk away. You have no idea the kinds of games he plays. No one’s scarier than a guy who ain’t afraid to die.”
There were plenty things scarier, like losing the woman in her arms further into that man’s darkness. If she couldn’t hold her back, then by God she would push him away.
“No, no, no. You take this barbaric game nonsense and bring it out back. I won’t allow it in my establishment.” Oswald held the door open for Joker and his thugs to exit to the back alley, away from the people waiting inside.
“Relax, Pengy.” Joker patted the shorter man’s head. “Wouldn’t dream of mucking up your floors, we’d be terrible guests if we did. And I like this place. You do want me to like it, right? You wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t like it, Ozzy.”
Penguin cleared his throat, his gesture more of a grand, courteous sweep of his arm toward the door. “Of course. Til we meet again, good man.”
Ivy was so fucking done with people giving that toddler in green hair his way just because he had tantrums.
Joker stood flanked on both sides with his goons, all of them fashioned to look like some bizarro version of him. Even if she didn’t hate him most violently, she would still not see the appeal. If she had henchwomen, she would balk at the concept of them giving up their individuality.
“There’s our pretty little four leaf clover!” Joker greeted her with his arms outstretched.
Harley immediately ran to fill them. Her leaving Ivy’s side was like the pain of having a limb torn from her. She closed her eyes against the pain, keeping herself from wincing.
“Be a gem and wait over there with Rocco until Daddy’s finished with business, all right, butterscotch?”
Harley nodded eagerly with a delighted little squeal and Ivy couldn’t fight off her gag.
“Oh, lighten up, buttercup. It’s just a few terms of endearment.” Joker gestured to one of the men behind him and was handed a revolver. He rolled the barrel for show, his ever present grin widening the way a gash would with added pressure. His red lips smeared his yellowed teeth like blood. “But you know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t’cha?”
Ivy bristled. “Not at all.”
“Please!” He let out his signature laugh. “Your whole schtick is foolin’ people into creaming their pants for you. Why, I’m sure not even my dear Harley is immune.”
Both Harley and Ivy stiffened at the insinuation. Did he know? Had he put it together? His eyes like dissecting scalpels, they weren’t unlike Harley’s, always seeing through the flesh and sinew of someone’s deepest thoughts and motivations.
He knew. At least the secret burning in Ivy’s heart. Hindsight being master, Ivy hadn’t exactly hidden it as well as she could have. Harley always did away with her defenses, and her ability to hide her yearning was one of them. Even now, she couldn’t prevent herself from looking to the frightened blonde, shivering in the cold as wet flurries began to dust the air. Ivy wanted so desperately to burst forth and wrap her in her jacket, to envelope her in warmth and softness.
“What’s your game, asshole?” Ivy asked finally, hands in her pockets.
Joker leveled the pistol at his head and pulled the trigger.
Click .
“Why, Russian Roulette of course! It’s my favorite. Everything up to chance, no need for silly rules. Just good, ol’ fashioned fun for the whole family. Want in on this, Harl?”
The woman was a portrait of mortification. She stood frozen, eyes flitting back and forth between the woman with green eyes and the man with green hair. She couldn’t choose, and Ivy hated that it warmed her heart. If anything, she meant something to the jester.
Ivy strode across the divide between them and accepted the gun.
“You know I could just shoot until I find the bullet for your skull, right?” Ivy murmured menacingly.
“Oh, of course!” Joker guffawed, but his expression immediately turned into a glowering frown. “But you won’t. For Harley, of course. You know how devastated she would be if she lost her ol’ Mr. J.”
Ivy took a step back.
Click .
She stopped pointing to her head and handed the gun back to the madman. “Your turn, clown.”
“Everyone always uses the word clown like it will offend me!”
Click .
“The only offensive thing is you.” Ivy gritted her teeth.
Click .
Joker clenched his hands, making a sound like a schoolgirl getting asked out by her first crush, when he took the gun.
“Two more to go, always the exciting part!”
He pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Ivy stumbled back, pain blinding her, clutching the left half of her chest.
“See, I counted where the chambers were that didn’t have the bullet inside!” Joker tossed the gun aside like a piece of rubbish to the ground. “You surely didn’t think I’d play by the rules, houseplant.”
“IVY!” Harley ran to her and knelt by her side where Ivy was knocked to her knees, green blood pouring from her body. “How could you do this, P –”
“ Tut, tut. Missed her heart. Oh well. Harl, go ahead and stay behind, will ya? Damn thing wanted you so bad she convinced herself I wouldn’t shoot her . Might as well leave her a consolation prize.”
“...Consolation prize…?” Ivy echoed, coughing against the pain as she stood on feeble legs. “Consolation prize?!”
“Uh, yeah, I said that, didn’t I?” Joker stroked his elongated chin. “Maybe petty donation is a better word for it.”
“Puddin’.” Harley got to her feet, lacing her arm under Ivy’s to help hold her up, bracing behind her shoulders. “You don’t mean –”
“Oh, my dear, sweet pup.” Joker got uncomfortably close and kissed Harley’s forehead. “You disobeyed me earlier, remember? I know you do. I don’t have room for wastrel insubordination.”
He left. They all did. Harley’s awareness seemed to go with them. She was utterly numb. Despite the agony of being shot clean through the shoulder, Ivy shucked off her coat and wrapped Harley in its warmth at last.
“Wish it wasn’t bloody,” she murmured and helped the blonde to where her car was parked. Cherry red, white stripe down the center, all chrome accents and hardware; it was one of her most favorite things she had ever stolen. She helped Harley into the passenger seat and leaned over her, cranking up the heat to warm the car as quickly as she could. “I got you, angel.”
Ivy all but fell into the driver’s seat, hand clutching the wound in her shoulder and cursing at the notion that her creamy white upholstery was going to be stained with her green blood, most likely forever. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the girl in her front seat.
“He didn’t even fight for me.” The words fell numbly from Harley’s lips. “I’ve put all of myself into fighting for him, but he didn’t even try fighting for me.”
Ivy wiped the blood from her hand on her ruined blue velvet dress and placed it over Harley’s knee. She looked so small as she clutched the woolen coat around herself like a protective shell.
“Baby,” Ivy made sure her voice was as soft and tender as possible to cushion the blow. “He was never going to in the first place.”
Harley curled her knees to her chin and cried all the way home.