Chapter Text
It was a perfectly nice night at the beginning. Selina Kyle sat slouched on her plush leather sofa wearing an oversized black cashmere turtleneck sweater and grey tracksuit trousers covered in cat hair. Hecate was curled up on her lap with her paws over her face, purring blissfully. A tub of chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks was carefully nestled between Selina’s hips and against her torso to minimize the risk of getting ice cream on her cat as she shovelled it into her mouth. The sounds of traffic outside couldn’t breach the lofty penthouse. Everything was fine.
For them. Not for other people. On the news, Vicki Vale was making that very clear.
“All the robbers were apprehended, but one hostage was fatally shot and three more were injured, including a teenager who is currently hospitalized with a fractured skull after being pistol-whipped.” Ah, Gotham. Home sweet home. “Meanwhile, the Joker and Harley Quinn are still at large after their fight with Batman a week ago. Police Commissioner Gordon says that no leads on their whereabouts have emerged.” Selina’s grip on her cold spoon tightened. Whatever they were lying in wait to pull off, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Things had come close enough to disaster last week and Harley didn’t need to get in any more trouble. “And they aren’t the only escaped supervillains people are on guard for. Many are bracing for Poison Ivy to lash out in light of real estate mogul Jacob Ashbridge’s project to develop a section of the woodland on the outskirts of the city. Despite ardent campaigning against it, it is now officially underway and has resulted in the loss of ancient trees. Citizens are advised -”
And that was enough of that. She pulled up a documentary on the Panthera cats and dug out a big scoop of ice cream. She’d better get in some escapism now, if her instincts were right.
Her phone, lying next to her, dinged. She grabbed it, but scowled and threw it on the coffee table upon reading the new notification on her lock screen.
“Workaholic,” she muttered.
Stroking Hecate, she exhaled slowly and immersed herself in the documentary. Clouded leopards, elusive master climbers. They could rotate their ankles to hang completely upside-down. Magnificent creatures. Hecate’s fur was silky beneath her fingers. She felt her body relax -
“Selina!”
Her instincts were right. Poison Ivy, leaf leotard and all, stood outside her locked window on an outstretched branch of a towering brand new tree. She could have broken through the reinforced glass. Instead she waited, every muscle taut as a tiger’s just before pouncing.
Selina paused the documentary and let her in. Visitors always had to come when she had a cat on her.
Ivy smelled of flowers (not flower-scented perfume) and wet soil. Not blood. Or hydrogen peroxide. That was a good sign.
“Don’t you want to have your glorious revenge now and regale me with it later?”
“No. I’m going to find that bastard and use him as fertiliser like the piece of shit he is, but first, I need to vent. I want to be composed and strong when I face him, you know? I want the last thing he hears to be good. Right now it’s too raw. I’ll be sloppy, I’ll get caught. I just - I knew those trees.” Ivy’s lip trembled and the fury blazing in her eyes flickered into something softer and sadder. She wouldn't cry. She never cried, not in front of anyone. But moments like this, in the company of one or both the only two humans she’d sworn to spare, were as close as she came. “We weren’t close friends, but we respected each other. I wasn’t prepared for them to suddenly… and now there’s a - it’s like a hole, like a wound. I can feel them missing in the Green.”
Selina nodded. She didn’t understand the Green completely, but it was basically the Force for plants. And plant-people. Ivy described dead and injured plants in terms of aches and stings. Their pain echoed across her human nervous system. She could hear every plant’s voice in an unfathomably rich harmony, including screams of pain and death rattles, and sense metaphysical bonds between all of them in a strange network, which shuddered with each tear and blow. That would drive anyone a little… detached.
She was grieving. Selina definitely understood that.
Plus, every second Ivy was here she wasn’t a threat to innocent people.
“Alright.” She turned off the TV and sat back down. This was gonna be long. “Go ahead.”
Ivy took a deep breath.
“It’s so fucking stupid! What’s the point? What’s the fucking point? Like, yeah, our country and specifically, especially our city has severe, ongoing problems of air pollution and excessive greenhouse gases. But why do we need trees? It’s not like old-growth trees are not only vital pillars of their ecosystem, but the best absorbers of carbon dioxide around. It’s not like they make fucking oxygen for free, you fucking idiots. I mean, with the state the poor seagrass and algae in the bay are in…”
“If I destroyed the oldest building in Gotham, there would be outrage about me ‘disrespecting history’! People would go wild! But nobody gives a shit about history that isn’t manmade.”
Ivy wasn’t keeping track of time. However, her pacing had worn a distinctive furrow in the carpet and Selina had finished her ice cream and left the tub on the arm of the sofa.
While she’d remained steadfastly calm, Ivy couldn’t stop fluctuating between rage and vulnerability. She didn’t like it. The ranting was cathartic, but she’d prefer to be more in control. Stupid emotions. She never picked up any signals like them from her perfect companions in the Green. Moments like this just reminded her that she was no less of an anomaly in her favoured biological kingdom, and for all the good her unique status and the power it granted could do, it had a cost. Did she belong in both worlds? Or neither? Humans were messy, self-destructive. Weak. She couldn’t afford to be human. Nature needed a defender able to do whatever it took, and she needed to be at the top of her game to enact justice and compensation for the crime.
With a guttural scream of frustration, she sank into the sofa. She did not hug herself. She simply folded her arms.
“I know. We are the worst,” Selina said empathetically.
A silence fell over the room. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, at least not to Ivy, but wasn’t unhelpful either, like wearing a cast.
Then there was a series of knocks on the door, as if the quiet demanded to be filled. A series of knocks to the merry tune of “Shave and a Haircut”.
Ivy gasped. The women shared a look of surprise and disbelief, before turning to stare at the door. It couldn’t be. Selina slowly approached.
Opening the door revealed a lean woman wearing her tangled blonde hair in pigtails, a long-sleeved pink top, fraying jeans, scuffed trainers and a backpack slung over her shoulders that Ivy bet contained a particular change of clothes. Despite the bags under them, her blue eyes and her smile were bright enough to outshine the moon and stars. Ivy felt the atmosphere shift as keenly as when something happened in the Green.
“Harley?” Ivy rose to her feet unthinkingly.
Harley leapt to pull Selina into a tight embrace.
“Kitty! It’s so good to see you!”
“You too,” Selina said, “but I’m still not a hugger.” She didn’t return the hug out of shock.
Harley hastily stepped away just as Selina was raising her arms.
“Sorry.” She ran toward Ivy, remembering at the last minute that Ivy wasn’t a hugger either. “And Red! You look great.” She said sincerely, her smile briefly dimming a few candelas, “I am so sorry about the tree murders. I would have gone to you, but I wasn’t sure if you’d be in the mood for Harley Quinn antics. But here you are! The Gotham City Sirens, brought together again by fate, kismet, destiny!” She twirled dramatically as she gestured to them and herself in turn, punctuated by the heavy thump of her dropped backpack. “It has been too long since we hung out.”
Ivy couldn’t return her smile. “Yeah, about that. Are you and the Joker -”
“Still together.” Ivy growled and clenched her fists. Selina did little more than purse her lips and narrow her eyes, but her disappointment was equally palpable. Harley sighed. That internal glow faded. She started to shrink in herself, shoulders tensing. “I know you don’t approve. But listen. We can still make things work, but we’re in a tiny bit of a rough patch. We’ve both been under a lot of stress lately. That run-in with the Bat really messed up our plans - it was pretty much all my fault, I led him right to us. You know how Mr J gets when he loses to Batman. He gets…” Her hands waved, reaching for the best word.
They knew. Her tone was casual, but they knew.
“Homicidally wrathful?” Ivy suggested.
“Terrifyingly obsessive?” offered Selina.
“Huffy! He’s been all huffy all week. And I’m a good girlfriend, okay, but every once in a while I need to blow off some steam with my gal pals.”
“If he thinks you’re a bad girlfriend, he’s even crazier than he acts,” Ivy snapped. Then she swallowed down her anger for once, came closer and rested her hand on Harley’s shoulder so gently that Harley didn’t even twitch. “And for the record, I’m always happy to spend time with you.”
Harley blinked. She stiffened in surprise, and maybe confusion, face deer-in-the-headlights blank, and said flatly, “Oh. Cool.” She held Ivy’s gaze for a moment. “Anyway, enough about me. Selina, what’s wrong?”
Selina was even more taken aback by that change of subject than Ivy. Guard lowered, she spluttered, “What? Nothing.”
“Really? ‘Cause you’re wearing your comfort sweater and you ate a whole tub of ice cream on your own.”
“It’s not a comfort sweater. It’s just comfortable.”
“Ivy, what was Selina doing when you got here?”
“Watching a nature documentary with Hecate on her lap.” Ivy had cat-sat enough that the cats’ names had been embedded into her mind.
Harley raised an eyebrow at Selina. “You weren’t planning to leave?”
She was using her psychologist stare. The one that cut you to the core, that told you that she knew you far better than you had given her permission to. It was actually more intimidating than her in costume.
“No,” said Selina, suddenly a defendant on trial in her own home.
“Huh. I thought I was lucky that Ivy caught you.” Harley marched over to the wastepaper basket in the corner, through the mesh of which the weekly Gotham Gazette was visible. She picked up the newspaper and flipped to find a column near the front. “The natural history museum has a new precious gem on display: the largest natural crystal of red beryl, a mineral a thousand times rarer than gold, ever found.” She showed them the picture. “Didn’t you hear?”
“Yes! I’m obviously getting to that. I just wanted a night in, nothing wrong with that. My life can be hectic.” Harley’s glare intensified. With interrogative sharpness, her eyes scanned Selina and the room up and down for more clues, settling on her phone. She grabbed it. “Hey, don’t look at my phone!”
“It’s just the lock screen.” She triumphantly brandished it. “A message from ‘B’ with a black heart emoji, ooh!”
“Shut up.”
Apparently resigned to the proverbial cat being released from its bag at this point, Selina grumpily sat back down.
“It says, ‘I can’t, sorry. Too busy’. You directly asked Batman for companionship. Via text. That’s a thing normal people do in normal relationships, not you in your weird cat-and-mouse courtship. And you have a better-than-golden opportunity to get his attention. If Catwoman doesn’t feel up to going out and taking at least one of an ultra-rare shiny rock and a Byronic Bat-hunk, something is wrong.” Her seriousness seamlessly giving way to comfort, Harley joined her on the sofa to be on her level. “It’s okay to not be a hundred percent. We’re your friends. Talk to us.”
And just like that, Selina’s walls fell.
“Got me there.” Fondness was blatant in her tone. She sighed and tipped her head back. “The other night, I got caught.”
“Oh. Batman didn’t go easy on you?” Ivy couldn’t comprehend the appeal of that relationship, but it was important to Selina. Why did both her friends have to be attracted to such untrustworthy guys? Well, at least Batman was hot. And very strong… and it was time to end this train of thought.
“No.”
Harley’s eyes widened. “One of the kids got you? Nightwing isn’t so bad. Was it Huntress, ‘cause she’s brutal, but I thought you were getting along?”
“No!” Selina snatched the paper and slammed it open to an article about Catwoman, which itself was nothing new. At the top was a large photo of her being handcuffed at gunpoint. That was new. “The cops. I don’t know how they got the jump on me! Everything was normal, and then suddenly the GCPD was being competent. I escaped before they could try to unmask me, but for a moment I was just like a common criminal.” Ivy cringed. Harley began to rub Selina’s back sympathetically. The experience would be humiliating with any police force, but Gotham’s? The master thief might as well have been struck by lightning. “What if I’m losing it? What if I’ve peaked and it’s all downhill from here?”
Ah. A midlife-of-crime crisis. Harley, proud earner of a psychiatric licence, revoked though it had been, shook her head with authority.
“That’s ridiculous. Whether it was any degree of failure or just bad luck, one moment doesn’t invalidate everything you’ve accomplished and become. You’ll always be badass. You made yourself Catwoman. No one else can take that away. I’d suggest you do what makes you happy and reassert your autonomy in your own life.”
Selina looked forward and cracked a smile. “Thanks. I know it’s silly.”
“Not at all. We don’t have that much of a say in what gets to us.”
Ivy always loved watching Harley in psychologist mode. In her true element. The insightfulness, the compassion. If only the world was full of people like her, instead of Ashbridge and Luthor and the sycophantic apologists and spineless sheep who let them win. If only every moment could be like this, instead of cutting and burning and crushing and poison and dying and -
Stop. Tune it out. Be here.
She got an idea. A beautiful idea that made her heart sing like the Green, that nearly drowned out the throbbing, discordant echoes of loss where such strong voices had rung out. Harley was right that the three of them hadn't properly enjoyed each other’s company in far too long. They really ought to mark the occasion. A grin spread across her face.
“So we could all use a win tonight. And I already have to be somewhere for my rewilding project. What do you say we paint the town red?” Ivy asked, lowering her voice to give it a menacing edge.
She may not have been evil, but it could be a fun role to play. Classic Disney villain-style. It reliably drew attention to her cause. No such thing as bad publicity, right?
Harley clapped in excitement and jumped up. “Hell yes!” She extended her right hand. “Gotham.”
Ivy placed her hand on top of it. “City.”
Selina glanced between them with a scoff. “Seriously? You’re doing that?” One. Two. Three. Light creeping into her eyes, she smirked and emphatically ripped the offending newspaper page in half. Her hand completed the stack as she stood tall. “Sirens.”
A perk of her powers: Ivy didn’t have to suit up. Nothing had ever belonged against her body as much as her living costume, and she tended to wear it under her other clothes. She couldn’t feel the cold, even on Gotham’s harshest, windiest winter nights, to the point of unpleasantness; some sensations were dulled or altered by the influence of plant DNA on her biology. No need for pockets either, the vines able to weave them and shoot out to catch objects at her whim. While her friends privately donned their criminal attire, she chatted with Selina’s pets - cats and succulents alike.
Selina had a utility belt. It was sleek, understated and blended into her black jumpsuit and the shadows. Harley also had a utility belt. It was none of those things. Alternating black and red to stand out from the fabric behind it, bulky, irregular compartments that loudly threatened you with their potential contents, its red diamond buckle polished to a mirror shine. She patted it adoringly.
“This is gonna be so good. I never leave the lair without a fuckton of explosives.”
Ivy couldn’t suppress a frown.
“Actually, Harley, could you please hold off on the explosions tonight? I know you love them. But I’m really sensitive about CO2 levels right now.”
Harley’s face fell, and for a second, even through the black domino mask and coat of white powder, her features twisted with a feeling of self-reprimand Ivy knew all too well (why wouldn’t she have thought of that?). Then it was gone and she nodded breezily.
“Okey-dokey! No blowing stuff up, Siren’s honour.” She tipped her backpack upside down. Out tumbled the dense steel head of one of her battle hammers, which had a telescopic shaft. Having extended it, she gave it a couple of practice swings. Her powerful muscles rippled. “I can do plenty of damage with this!”
“Can’t wait to see it.”
Selina coughed, already crouched on the windowsill, her gold-tinted goggles glittering in the lights of her LED chandelier.
“Whenever you’re ready. First stop: the Museum of Natural History!”