- (sonrisa) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-27 16:48:00 |
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Gotham at night had never been Ivy's idea of a good time. When the sun set it was time for all of the toxic, gun-packing slime bubbled up from the gutters in order to wave their bloodhungry claws at the bat signal. Personally, Ivy had better things to do than play catch and release with the Bat's adopted brethren. Although the unfortunate truth was that she did get her more revolutionary ideas while in an Arkham cell. Nothing brought out the inventive side like a need to escape and quell the lust for revenge. The nostalgia was as cold and inhuman as the rest of her, but mostly she felt old. This might not have been her Gotham, but Ivy lived through enough of the city's evolutions to find just about everything tiring and familiar. Maybe it was worse because she knew how bad everything got. The city never bloomed, no matter how much blood she spilled. While it occurred to her fleetingly that she might have taken the wrong approach with changing the world, it seemed more likely that she'd just never been vigilant enough. She'd never been especially fond of murder, but she saw the necessity in violence. Blood was the only thing that people responded to anymore. If there was a time when purpose and words were enough, she couldn't remember it. She remembered all of Harley. The good and the bad stirred into the molotov mix of blonde hair and a butterscotch-sweet voice. Ivy swallowed roughly while rounding through a back alley. Emotion was strange, as foreign and confusing as a vice-inspired migraine must have been to anyone else. A searing blink, the muddled confusion, and the prayer to make it all just go away. She was meeting up with the clown princess despite all of that. There was a glance up at the next street sign as she rounded the corner, aware that she was early. Her suit felt tight and uncomfortable. It had been who knew how long—what with all the wacky door and all—since she’d worn the thing, and though it had been a second skin once upon a time, the sleek black and red spandex seemed to cling too closely and the white makeup smeared over her skin was itchy as it dried. If Harley had been one to see metaphors in things like that, she might have compared it to her own unease and difficulty fitting herself into this bizarro Gotham. As it was, she just tugged frustratedly at the stretchy collar ringing her neck with frills and swore to herself under her breath. She was nervous. Okay, she was very nervous. Though her characteristic bubbliness kept her light on her feet and a smile on her face as she loitered under the yellow halo of a streetlamp, the girl was actually kinda worried about meeting up with Red, however happy it made her. It was hard when you wanted to be liked. And, boy, did Harley want to be liked. To come back to a Gotham then that remembered her as someone different—her, but different—someone who had made decisions she would never make, and then to be judged by those actions was just crap, and she didn’t get it. Especially coming from a friend. Especially Ivy. It hurt her feelings. She tried too to brush it off, but she wasn’t very good at it. She wanted Ivy to like her and that just made everything worse. That and everyone treating her like she was about to run off to get back with Mr. J any second, when, really, she still felt pretty sore about the whole him tryin’ to blow her to bits and strappin’ her to a rocket-thing. So, when Red (begrudgingly) agreed to let her tag along, Harley was ecstatic—and nervous. (So nervous, she had actually not come twenty minutes late for once.) She jittered where she stood, looking up from the ground when someone came around the corner. “Hiiiiiiya!” It was a singsong greeting, accompanied by a grin, big blue eyes behind a black mask, and a small, finger-waggling wave. Harley bounced on the balls of her feet. “Ya ready?” Ivy lacked most of the little human characteristics that made someone easy to read. Her facial expression tended to function on a simple, Gemini Venn diagram of bored or displeased, and that was if she was in a good mood. Right now she wasn't, there was an anxiousness pervading the great foreground of a cool and collected mind and it felt like some much static. Cerise was always there like some Santeria ghost, and it was admittedly infuriating. Ivy knew that Cerise had no conscious awareness of her own presence, and while that was almost certainly wholly attributed to the ratio of narcotics in the blood, it was still a little degrading. Although whether Ivy wanted to admit it or not, there was one thing that her and the junkie shared, and those dead green eyes took in the harlequin's outline of shadow and blood red as she made her way to the lamplit venue selected for this timely reunion. It would have easy to have blown the doll off or ignored her entirely, but Ivy was a scientist. She never could pass up a good experiment. This one had the suit right at least, and while Ivy typically detested the clown princess get-up, it was a welcome sight. One that brought back all kinds of memories worth going soft over, if she'd been just a fraction more human. Ivy's own outfit was of the new age, she'd ditched the plastic fuckboots and long gloves for a bodysuit of black and green. A pattern of leaves rose from one hip and extended in a swooping photosynthesis toward the opposite shoulder. She nodded once to confirm that yes, she was ready. Her eyes moved up to the tip top of the dark building near them. "We're going to need to work fast.. unless you brought along with you any dandy memories on how to disengage alarms." Harley took a moment to give Poison Ivy a good up and down, tilting her head to the side as she surveyed the new outfit with wide eyes. It suited the woman, a splash of green that grew upward toward the red of her hair and entwined with the roses. Harley liked it. It was different, but she liked it. Wholly unaware of any subtext—of any experiment, of anything beyond the woman that bloomed in front of her, wrapped with vines and greenery, the harlequin continued to smile. Ivy’s eyes were on her, as green as the back of a broadleaf, but with little of the life one usually found in such. The smile faltered and Harley followed her friend’s moving gaze to the building, so high up. “Gee, I guess it depends on the type of alarms they got,” the girl answered with a finger tapping the black of her bottom lip. She considered the building that loomed before them, quickly putting together a puzzle of the ways she’d need to move to scale its walls, where the handholds offered themselves, and what might prove to be a good point of entry. She looked back to Ivy with an apologetic smile. “Say, uh, what are we gettin’ again?” Security guards wouldn't be a problem, and Ivy knew from decades of trial and error at this particular museum that they supplied those kinds of dumb men with sparkling badges and out of date guns. Guns were never a problem when she was up to her right tricks. A distant thought left her running fingers over the outside of her left arm, where a bullet had grazed her many months before. The Hood's. Of course, that had been when she'd first returned and was still trying to better Gotham without abusing it. Now she knew that wasn't a possibility, it never had been. There was a certain naivete that came with divinity. The distinct knowledge of the way that things were supposed to be, and knowing that they would eventually turn out that way. But Ivy was impatient. She'd yet to age in a long time, but she was far from immortal, and Ivy did so very badly want to see the end game. So these museum guards with their guns and their pride and their paycheck purposefulness could take a kiss and die smiling. There was no reason to spare anyone anymore. Nobody had spared her anything. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, Harley." Stalking past the clown of bubblegum pop, her black and green shoulder brushed against that of her old friend's. "I'll be sure to let you grab something nice and sparkly..." Hemlock eyes dropped a friendly—if not a little patronizing—wink over her shoulder when she made for a closer examination of the building. "Forget about the alarms, we'll go through the front door." It wouldn't do to have confidence in this new clown who might not know what she was doing around an alarm code. The element of surprise was everything, after all. A root the size of an ancient tree truck tore loose from the ground, splitting asphalt and driving a deep fracture up the side of the museum before it gnarled girth punched through the museum's door like a battering ram. Immediately the lights came up when the alarm sounded, and Ivy smiled while advancing, "Come on, honey." However candied her exterior, and however oblivious she could be when it came to certain relationships with certain people, Harley was not stupid. She was not perhaps as street-wise nor as cunning as the Cat, neither was she as scientifically-minded as Red, but she wasn’t the dummy everyone seemed to think her. There was more than cotton candy between her ears, she was pretty sure. Yeah, so, occasionally the point of a conversation would fly over her head as it would a child’s, but certainly not always. Smile a little, chat and giggle, wear pigtails and exude unbridled enthusiasm, and suddenly no one took you seriously. It sure was a funny world. “Okay, if ya promise,” replied the girl quietly, smoothing the ruffles that ringed her throat with one hand, obviously annoyed by them. Her eyes flicked up and sideways to follow her friend as she sashayed by, petals of her roses bobbing as she went. Harley couldn’t help the saccharine smile that opened on her face as their shoulders touched and she got a wink (which, yes, she did realize was condescending, but she was too happy to care) and she bounced along behind Ivy to the front of the building. Everything was shuttered against the Gotham night, tight and unyielding, and Harley placed her hands on her hips. “Front door, huh?” The words, vowels strapped together as tightly as Brooklyn would allow, had barely left her mouth when the root, far wider around than Harley was herself, reached out of the ground in a rain of tarry asphalt. Harley squeaked and covered her head as best she could with her arms. The next thing she knew, when she finally managed to open her eyes, the front doors were... open.—Well, close enough. Ivy’s plant, the hard root, had caved in the actual doors, leaving only twisted metal and the opaque blue of broken glass. But through the rubble, there was enough room to squeeze inside. The alarms screamed and suddenly the little black alley and the street behind the two women were sun-bright. Harley didn’t need telling twice. Her surprise fading quickly, she raced inside with her usual agility. Up the smashed facade and down into the yellow-lit interior. Cases studded the floor, filled with various treasures and curiosities from the world over. She didn’t know why they were here, no, nor where they needed to go, but she could still stop and press her face to an exhibit of dusty old jewelry, brass, gold, and silver, wrought curiously with winking gemstones with names Harley couldn’t say. “Oh, wow! This is some fancy stuff!” "Positively priceless, I hear," Ivy murmured with more attention spent on the clown princess than the baubles in the case. Elements, compounds, and alloy. Minerals; amethyst and diamond. Rocks; lapis lazuli and fossilized strata. Carved organic materials; amber and jet. She didn't mind the jewelry because it was natural although bent by heat and torn from the Earth. It was preferable over the deforestation that currently supplied the world's imagined wealth with stacks of chemically treated green. From further up the museum's primary corridor, a pair of security guards rounded at a full sprint with their guns drawn but notably shaking in soft fists. Security guards tended to be on a heavy rotation in Gotham, they just never stuck around for very long. Shortened life expectancies and insufficient pension. So the chances of mixing company with an armed man of experience was relatively minimal. The Bats were another story entirely, and functioned as a reminder for Ivy to get a move on. "Take care of them," she instructed to Harl before darting down a hallway on the right, toward the anthropological exhibits. Ivy hadn't been bluffing when she'd told the riddling man that she intended to find out just which kind of Harley had wandered back into Gotham this time. If the security detail was dispatched from the burden of their lives, or if Harley ended up getting taken under arrest... either would be telling. Both would actually function as a decent distraction while Ivy acquired the specimens that had inspired this raid in the first place. There was a moment of pause when she started through the corridor cast in shadows, the curiously instinctual need to listen and assure that everything was going alright for the partner in crime that she'd left behind. Of course, it was utterly counter-productive to the reasoning responsible for creating a diversion in the first place, and an algorithm for success dictated that she continue on. The specimens in question were primarily some final dreg, pressed and preserved samples of tropical wildlife that became extinct at the tail end of the nineteenth century when islands suffered heavy deforestation to make way for the vacationing aristocracy of the world. Some glass was broken for the acquiring, and after a few minutes, everything was settled in a small box found in the broken door of a utility closet. Ivy turned back in the direction of where she'd left Harley, moving at a quicker pace as the alarm above them continued to sound in an unending wail with pulsing white lights all along the ceiling. “Sure thing, gal-pal.” Ever obedient, Harley paused in her gaping and bedazzlement when Ivy disappeared down the brick arch of a well-lit hallway. Harley twisted to watch her go in a swish of green on green. She sighed, reluctant to leave the jewelry, but knew she had no choice. She’d just make sure to get her hand in the candy jar, so to speak, before they left. There was something in there that would go really well with the new skirt she’d bought. The girl bopped her head, the red and black tails of her hat swinging as she did so, singing the words to a favorite song as she whipped to face the men as they skidded on patent, uniform shoes into the large, domed entry. They had museum-issued pistols raised in warning. This would be easy. She too noticed the shivering fear that crawled over the guards’ soft skin. “I’m restless. Can’t you see I try my bestest to be a good girl because it’s just us—so take me now and do me justice.” Her knees bent. Harley smiled in a mischievous, distinctly girlish curl of black lipstick. The world held. There was a moment of preparation, then in one released coil of conditioned muscle, she pulled one of her favorite moves—a roundoff back handspring double pike, bim, bam, boom— to cut through some of the cold space between the slack-jawed men land land behind them on a display. “I’m waiting patiently, anticipating your arrival. And I’m hating—it takes so long to get to my house, to take me out.” Vaguely, through pink, fluffy layers of cotton candy that filled Harley’s head, the girl wondered what it was Red was after, why she wanted it, and why she wanted Harley to come along, and the clown wondered if she was supposed to kill the men or just hold them. The girl tipped her head to the side as she thought about it. “HALT. Or I’ll shoot!” One of the men—the larger one, with thin brown hair and pasty skin, wet like a seal’s, ordered the girl at the case, spinning on his heel to face her. He seemed to be struggling to find the trigger and Harley felt a little bad. She didn’t like hurting helpless things. Not that much, anyway. And as this was her first foray back into the seedy underbelly of crime in the cradle of Gotham, and as she was mostly just happy her body hadn’t forgotten how to move like a gymnast’s -- she decided to be merciful. Harley withdrew her own clown-proportioned, snub-nosed gun and her tongue poked pink between her lips, one eye squinted shut as she aimed at the guards. “Bubble.” She fired. The cork flew. “Pop.” She put a hand over her mouth and turned away as a white thunderclap of gas issued from the barrel of the apparent toy. Harley jumped off the back of the display case. “Electric.” She giggled. Forgetting about the pretty necklaces, Harley peeped around the corner of the case of Iron Age pottery to watch as the men folded in on each other and landed together on the cracked tiles in a heap. Laughing gas. It worked every time. She smiled, the rush of victory, of (almost) getting away with a crime zinging through her body like touch of a lover that ran down the spine. This was why she did this. Now she remembered. More guards were coming, she could tell, the clatter of hard heels rounding corners a small vibration under the ringing alarms. Harley didn’t stick around. “Thanks for listenin’, boys, but this girl’s gotta go.” She blew a playful kiss at the unconscious men and rushed down the hallway Ivy had left through, on the lookout for the room that her friend had disappeared into and with a hand over her nose and mouth. Absconding was a priority. The police would be here soon considering all of the unending wailing that the alarm system had brought down upon their criminally determined heads. If the girls were lucky, the bat and his misfit litter wouldn't get here first. There were surely more pressing matters in Gotham, but one never could tell what would strike the flint in a little bird's crime-fighting nest. Surely there was a bank robbery to intercede on the behalf of. This was not an act of avarice, but of necessity. Not that she truly held favor with the belief that anyone save for herself could tell the difference. Then again, she really couldn't expect a cluster of damaged children to experience the same god awful sense of rising ennui that Ivy did. This Harley was spirited and not quite the damaged goods of bloodlust and warpaint that Ivy recalled most vividly, but she would inevitably develop into that thing. Nothing changed that much, not around here. Still, she had to have some faith in her ability to make a difference. Even if it just meant pushing bodies into coroner bags, progress was progress. These days a girl had to take what she could get... at least until civilization ate itself alive and she was free to rule the Earth alone. That day just couldn't get here fast enough, but the box in her arms could help it along. The scuttle of approaching footsteps signaled an onslaught of museum guards, and Ivy kept the box in one arm while capturing Harley's winsome fingers with her own gloved set. Brand new pretty ghost girl, meet your monster friend. Then she ran for the gaping maw of a broken window where one of her trustworthy cohort vines conducted a quick somersault against the glass panes. The result was so much glitter. The asthmatic quiver of overhead lights cast a pretty sparkle when Ivy pushed her clownish siamese sister ahead to vault through the broken pane. The Bats—the collective Bats, the man and his wee batlets—none of them were on Harley’s mind as they most assuredly should have been mid-break in, alarms blaring, lights up. No. Her body and blood were singing both, and far too loudly at that, flooding her with an energy that not even the black shadow cast on yellow that haunted the skies of Gotham could dampen. The girl in the black and red motley was all white teeth when Ivy took her hand. She didn’t see the box, at least not yet. There was hardly time to, because by the time the window loomed before them, the glass was raining down, punched through, in miniature prisms. It was only too bad there were no swinging rainbows to make it prettier. Another window down. Harley was on the other side before she even opened her eyes again, her hand stretched out behind her by equal parts instinct and desire, anticipating a reconnection with Ivy. The museum was gone, replaced by the night and the high hanging of stars washed out by city lights. No more necklaces, no more guards, just the screaming of the bells, the beckoning for help. A little breathless, once she was rejoined by her friend, the girl went scampering off, back toward the shadows on quick feet. She wasn’t scared. She didn’t think they were going to be caught, because that was just silly. She just wanted a little time to relish the moment. Was that so much to ask? Once there was some distance between the thieves and the museum, Harley slowed. “Didya get the goods, Red?” It was only then, swiveling around to face the woman, that the girl noticed the box. She smiled. Darkness was not to be equated with safety, not in this town. Although with her ear pressed against the gracious Earth, Ivy knew that the rumours were true; the Bat wasn't always around. He hadn't died, nothing nearly so finite and dramatic. He just wasn't here today, and with that awareness came a kind of immortal plunge into the realm of a villainess' todo-list. Because while the bat orphans would walk off an ill-advised plank in the name of adventure, they were easy to maintain and typically turned up dead or kidnapped every time she blinked. There was no worry to be had there. Although honestly there wasn't worry to be had for the Bat either, they had a kind of mutual understanding these days. "I rescued the goods, yes." In the illusionary safety of a shadowed alley, while the police sirens wailed distantly, Ivy peeled open the cardboard lid to show Harley their haul beneath the silver-soft glow of romantic moonlight. Inside was nothing of value, one of the preserved elements of museums that had no real price tag but was rare and easily destroyed, so kept prisoner under panes of glass. It might get a paleobotanist all wet and cocaine excited, but that was about it. The antediluvian remnants looked ugly and brown, and nothing like the diamonds so willingly left behind. As a sign of amity, Ivy pinched the box into the lattice hook of her left arm while reaching for Harley with the right. There was no offered hand, but rather the theft of her (only)friend's arm. Gloved fingers on a harlequin's red sleeve. "This way." To where the the asphalt glowed with the slick, prism shine of gasoline and the gutters were rife with broken glass. Beneath a bricked archway, the dark storefront of a toy store slept soundly. The door was held ajar by a broken barbie doll, and upon passing through, the door clicked shut in order to lock behind them. The lights were out, so when the police went speeding by a few moments later, the store became aglow with flashing blue and red as car after car raced by, undoubtedly in search of the women who had just taken their criminal field trip. With that grip still still curled like spindled vines, she dug her fingers into the flesh of Harley's arm with warning insistence just before dragging the clowness behind a shelf of coloring books. A police car with a mounted searchlight cruised by at a minimum speed, scouting the storefronts for signs of life beneath the neon glow of a spotlight's artificial moon. "Shh," she whispered with a gloved finger finding the outline of Harley's painted lips in the darkness. Fascination remained pinned over the woman's shoulder, watching the street beyond the glass windows until the cars vanished and the search continued elsewhere. Her grin was visible and triumphant in the dark. Led into the (oooh) toy store, Harley kept quiet for once, not minding the poor decapitated Barbie. She wondered at the strange withered things in Ivy’s box that didn’t shine, what they were and why they were wanted, but she didn’t ask. They didn’t go with any dress, that much she knew. But Red knew her stuff, she was smarter than Harley, and so the girl had just smiled as the box was closed and her arm was gripped, fingers vine-fine curling around her forearm. Still the mere fact that she was included outweighed any curiosity she might have had. Inside was dark, the small store lit only by the twinkling eyes of eerie, blank-faced dolls. It was a place hidden, as police sirens wailed and a beam of white light shone through the plate glass of the store’s window. It found nothing, however. It skimmed pink molded plastic, a tub of bouncy balls as pretty as the jewels in the museum, everything—and yet it still swung by the two women crouched together by a rack of coloring books, shelves filled with crayons so bright and in so many shades, Harley almost couldn’t resist grabbing a handful for her own haul. But she was distracted. The thin stem of a finger pressed to her lips and Harley wanted to giggle—nervously, blushingly. She didn’t. She smiled around the green, eyes careful on her friend’s face as Ivy stood sentinel. The sweeping light left the toy shop in complete, universal blackness, and finally, without knowing she’d been holding her breath at all, Harley sighed. Her skin tingled under the sheer nylon of her suit where she’d been held, led, and shushed. There was a heat there, the buzzing euphoria spreading like a rash of poison ivy, poison sumac, something earthy, slow, and painful. But in a good way. “Ives—” Harley’s lips moved against the finger. Her usually high-pitched voice was hushed, a schoolgirl’s whisper in the room surrounded by lifeless eyes, playthings. She plucked a hand-sized doll from the metal shelf across from the coloring books and Crayola boxes. It was a pink-faced little thing, delicately painted, dressed in a spring dress, eyes blue and full of stars, with a pair of rose lips and plaited yellow tails of yarn for hair. Harley brought the thing up and let it peck Ivy on the cheek, then she did giggle, and she stood. The doll was clutched in her black-gloved hand. Her own prize. “We should go, huh?” The toy store was their bivouac, and therefore not meant to sustain their thieving and creeping selves for any longer than what was determined to be crucially necessary in the name of a good getaway chase. Ivy had always loved a good chase, although she definitely enjoyed the successful ones(broken bodies, Earth-wielded weapons, and such glory) more than the ones that ended with her in an Arkham lockdown. And while such was life when one sauntered and slept amongst the rogue gallery, capture wasn't on the menu tonight. Ivy had work to do in the lab, and that was the utmost priority. Trailing somewhere in second place was an interest in keeping Harley out of handcuffs. This was not an ideal constructed out of sentiment, but rather responsibility. Responsibility was human attribute that Ivy did believe in and avidly pursue.. and after all, she'd been the one to invite Harley along for the ride. Mostly, she'd wanted to see what was different, although the idea of Harley being just the same was also worrying. Ivy didn't know what to hope for, and she actually preferred not to hope at all. The harlequin had disappointed her too many times in the past, although only with the clown and thankfully never with the cat, but still. The clown, the thought was a grim chalk outline in her mind.. and even if this one had proven not to be a problem thus far, she could not resist hating him. Hate always came easy with men, and certainly the easiest with him. The dirty dog of chuckles and bloody party favors. Ivy wanted to believe that this time was going to be different for Harleen, but ultimately she knew that it wasn't. Nothing changed around here, not for long. "Yes, we should," and her voice went to the deep end of gentle rather than its typical octave of admonishing when the doll swept in to steal a kiss from toxicity's own cheek. The paragon of poison actually smiled, although there was a note of resistance just before the fringe of inked lashes befell her cheeks in acceptance that bordered on warm, as far as bloodless things went. It was time to decamp, although the search party seemed to be long gone. Nothing was worth staying for, not bouncy balls or kisses from (plastic)dolls, and Ivy turned without a word to lead the way for both of them out through the back. Stepping over boxes in the ill-kept stockroom before hoisting herself up through a broken window with blinds drawn down. The window gave way to a small parking lot in the back of the shopping strip, and there was a hybrid SUV purring with wait in the space nearest them. A hypnotized man chauffeuring the wheel, he turned the headlights on as the ladies emerged. "Get in," she was authoritative while opening the door to the back seat. Harley got in. She had stepped nimbly around boxes, bobbing in the plant shadows, floating in Ivy’s berth, agog with a kind of happiness that was a little scary, but was happiness all the same. She’d seen Red’s smile and it made her feel a little woozy. Harley clutched the doll close to her breast after wriggling through another broken window, another toothless gap in the face of the store, and she hardly paid a single bit of attention to the waiting car and the silver leaf emblem growing upon it. Harley got in. She slid over in the backseat, still ignorant to any machinations that went deeper than the surface. As far as she knew, they’d been successful and Ivy had gotten what she wanted and that was that. The girl tipped her head to look at the glazed eyes of their driver. “Got you a recruit, huh?” She offered a smile and leaned her painted cheek against the synthetic fabric of the driver’s seat, waving a hand of splayed fingers in front of the chauffeur’s face. He didn’t so much as blink. “Helloooo! Ya there, bud?” Blue eyes moved to Poison Ivy and Harley held the doll still, settled now in her lap. “One day I’m gonna hafta learn how to do that.” The attention that she paid to her dead-eyed frontmen was on the same shelf as ignorance and haute disinterest. Always mindful of weeds, she would never step on dandelion heads or admonish a bit of green for peeking through the cracks in city asphalt. Man was not a weed, man was more parallel with flaking rust. A slow, unsightly erosion, chemically induced cannibalism. They had surely served their purpose once, but now everything they touched with fucking unsightly. The barely living, mouth breathing maggots in the world's otherwise functioning apple.. that's what they were to her. Humanity had long ago ceased in being an equal, they were now only tools to be manipulated on her widow's walk toward the greater good. This wasn't to say that she thought the entire planet needed to be wiped clean, but it would have surely been the most efficient method. She could no longer remember if there were people worth saving, and that had never been her job anyway. That was the Bat and his misguided, blind eye to justice. Ivy understood, like she always had, that there were people who were innocent in the grand scheme, most of them children. But children did not stay children, and in time they became nothing more than another rudimentary linchpin in every failure she'd ever had. The people she'd saved were rarely worth saving, and that kind of softness had brought her nothing but loss in the past. Which brought her to an unsettling ultimatum as she fingered a syringe drawn from an inside pocket of their chariot; perhaps she shouldn't even bother with giving Harley Crane's antidote. The night made everything dark like a cave inside, but the lights from the dashboard glowed with an unsettling tint of viporous green. It was the color of life, that vicious and verdant shine, but it seemed a whole lot like death with the way that it bounced off of the driver's vacant eyes while he mindlessly navigated them through the city's sprawl. Despite her company, Ivy chose to watch out the window rather than engage the bobblehead beside her. The philosophical question of the witching hour was whether she should bestow Harley with the gift that she'd gone through such efforts to secure for her. Was it nurture over nature? If Harley was intended to be unaffected and uncompromised in the coming days, then Ivy had to believe that it would happen in exactly that manner. She rolled the vaccination through her garden grove fingers, deciding with some finality that no, she would not play goddess. She would not interfere on the behalf of humanity. If the so-called civilized world was intended to fall, it would fall. She had no intention lifting a well-meaning finger, and certainly no desire to. After all, who had ever interceded for her? It was decided, then. The conclusion was a weight off of her mind, although Ivy chose not to overly analyze why the dilemma had plagued her in the first place. It should not have even been a dilemma. The decision was an obvious one, based wholly on a cool, factual theorem necessary for scientific observation, and what was she if not a scientist? One simply did not alter their data. If she started picking and choosing who lived and who died, the control group was lost. It might not have been Ivy's experiment, but she would not intervene for some lacking bit of shade that barely resembled fondness. The remainder of their journey was pitchforked with silence, and Ivy gave no interaction to the harlequin before the vehicle pulled up to the greenhouse. "You can stay in Selina's old room, she doesn't come around much anymore." Not that Ivy seemed overly sentimental over that fact. It wasn't until hours later that she slipped into the bedroom to deposit a quiet stick of a certain vaccination into the thick of a sleeping hip. The woman under her did not stir, and Ivy mouthed a silent goodnight. |