Reap What You Sow
by Allaine

Chapter 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11 12  13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Chapter 18


     Well, Clayface thought.  That was certainly interesting.

     A little while ago, the murmur of conversation behind him at the Rydbergii had come to a sudden halt.  In his experience, that meant the Batman or one of his flunkies had stormed in.  He had turned away from the bar to see if their target was him or someone else, only to stare as Catwoman sauntered into the Lounge.

     “Selina!” Ivy had said cheerfully as she briskly crossed the floor to greet her.  She had appeared so swiftly, she had to have known Catwoman was coming.  “So glad you could make it.”

     “Well, I wouldn’t mind a martini right about now,” Selina had replied smoothly, “and that Jenna’s place – I don’t know, there’s just something wrong with that place.  It’s a bit tacky, actually.”

     Clayface couldn’t disagree with that statement, but he was focused more on the fact that Selina was here.  It had occurred to him that, once word of her presence hit the Gotham grapevine, the Rydbergii Lounge would probably see an increase in business that would dwarf the boost his visits had lent the club.

     This had led to the realization that Ivy could interpret this as meaning that she no longer needed him any longer.  They’d reached a mutually beneficial arrangement months ago.  She probably had gotten more out of the deal than he had.  And yet Clayface had always known that on some level, Ivy had harbored a grudge against him for failing to help her solely because she wanted him to.  Now that Ivy had a new BFF, she might go back to having him blackballed.  And thanks in part to HIM, Ivy would have more power over his role in the Gotham underworld than ever. 

     And then it had gotten really interesting.

     Ivy and Selina had exchanged a few pleasantries before Raven showed their VIP to the best table in the Lounge.  Selina sat down, and Ivy – walked away, went up the back stairs, entered her office, and closed the door.

     Okay, so maybe they weren’t BFFs yet.  In fact, Ivy’s smile had looked a little forced to him when Selina came in.  Maybe, he thought, because Selina was the white knight here, and Ivy was the damsel in distress.  The Rydbergii Lounge might finally find itself in the black because of Catwoman, not Poison Ivy.  That was a hairball that Ivy’s pride would never be able to cough up. 

     That still left the question of why Selina was doing this for her, though.

     He recalled the report in Variety that Paris Hilton was receiving appearance fees exceeding ten thousand dollars a night to hang out in various Hollywood nightclubs.  He never made that much back in the day.  Fuck, Travolta made more than him, and Hagen had it on good authority years ago that he never made that much either.  If inflation had gotten so bad that a talentless bimbo who made Veronica Vreeland look like Meryl Streep and Marie Curie rolled into one could make five figures for parking her bony ass on a bar stool somewhere, what kind of price had Selina demanded from Ivy?  Her soul?  (Selina would be getting the worst of THAT deal.)

     The curiosity was getting to him, and since there was no telling how Ivy might try to jerk him around after tonight, he might as well ask Selina.

     Clayface stood up from the bar.  Typically he came in, sat down, “drank” alcohol, watched the few attractive women in view, and then left at closing time.  He didn’t interact with the thugs.  They didn’t interest him, and frankly that wasn’t his job anyway.  His job was to be there, like a big brown sign saying, “SAFE TO SWIM HERE”.

     But Catwoman was worth watching from close up.

     “You shouldn’t be here,” he told her as he approached her table.  “People will start to think this place has a little class."

     “Hagen,” Selina said pleasantly.  “I’d heard you were coming here.”

     “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the booth across from her.

     “I’m not expecting anyone tonight.”

     “What?  You don’t think Ivy will be rejoining you any time soon?” he asked dryly.

     “Probably not,” she replied with a small smile.

     “Probably not,” Clayface agreed.  “It’s been a while, Selina.  Not since… ”  He trailed off awkwardly.

     She raised an eyebrow.  “I wasn’t going to mention it, you know,” she said, obviously referring to the Christmas party where he had purchased Ivy potpourri.  “Considering whose nightclub this is now.  Although, now that I think about it, we didn’t talk very much before that night either.”

     “Eh,” he said.  “It took me a while to realize you have a better class of people here than I was used to.”

     “I’m sorry, better?”

     “I don’t know how much you saw when you were on stage, but there are a dozen producers in Hollywood who make the Joker look like Mother Teresa.”  He paused, then grinned self-deprecatingly.  “Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration – but not by much.”

     But then he rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed.  “Plus,” he admitted, “for a while I had a problem being near beautiful women.  I didn’t exactly put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers back in the day, but there’s a reason I never got married.  And then, well, suddenly that wasn’t an option for me any more.  I didn’t like being reminded of it.”

     “How did you get past it?”

     “There are a lot of things I can’t do any more.  What was I going to do, start avoiding food too?  So I got over it.  Besides, just because I can’t do it with them, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy looking at them.  Seeing a woman with nice tits and ass – no offense – is about as close to physical pleasure as I get.”

     Selina chuckled and leaned forward over the table a little. 

     Definitely not offended.

     “Of course,” he added, “Pammy is the exception that proves the rule.  She opens her mouth, I lose my hard-on even if I’m human.”

     “And yet you’ve been coming here almost every night,” Selina pointed out.

     “I’m getting plenty out of it, don’t worry,” Clayface said coolly. 

     “I bet.  You must get a little thrill every time you walk through the door and she can't make you leave.”

     He hesitated.  “At first,” he said.  “After a while… it’s like, you know when a dog falls through a frozen pond, and he can’t climb back out, and so he just keeps treading water until he drowns or somebody pulls him out?”

     Selina looked at him.  “I’m not a big fan of dog metaphors, woof, but it sounds like you’re saying you pity her.”

     “Well, I don’t show it.  She’d probably put my name on her list.”

     “Her list?”

     “Every guy who started coming in here so they could see Ivy forced to serve me drinks?  Then kept coming back so Ivy could serve them too?  Their name went on a list,” he explained.  “If this place hits its stride and she doesn’t need them any more, then that list is going to be a bad thing to be on.”

     Selina sighed.  “Gee, when you put it like that, how can you not root for her?” she asked sarcastically.

     “You may say that, but you’re here now.  So clearly you’re on her side to some degree.  And I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but ever since the stage show and you shacking up with Wayne, you’ve become pretty influential.  During my ‘sabbatical’, I had twenty-plus different villains in other cities asking if I knew you.  I hope Ivy is paying you for this kind of publicity.”    

     “She’s not giving me anything, actually,” Selina said smugly.

     “So what is it?” Clayface asked, bursting to know.  “How in the name of Spielberg did Ivy get you to come in?  Fuck’s sake, I can’t believe she even swallowed her pride and asked you!  No offense, Selina, but there could not possibly be another person living in Gotham who she resents more than you.  And now she wants you to save her?”  He shook his head.  “And here I always thought she was predictable.”

     Selina gave him a naughty smile as he casually checked out her left leg.  Damn, there were about nine different reasons he didn’t get erections any more, and they almost didn’t seem to matter.  “I think it’s good that Pammy receives a little humiliation now and then.  It’s a reminder that she’s not actually a goddess.”

     “True,” he agreed, “but like I was saying, you have to be getting something out of this.  I mean, I can see wanting to help her if it means rubbing her nose in the fact that she needs it.  But her sense of entitlement is only going to get worse if she uses you to increase business without giving up something in exchange.”

     “Hagen, believe me – her sense of entitlement has already taken enough of a beating this week.  Besides, maybe I don’t like Jenna’s.”

     “Oh God,” he said.  “Jenna’s.  When everyone hears that you were here and not there, that overpriced glamor trap is going to empty out like it’s last call.”  Clayface chuckled.  “She had to open her own club to get what she wanted.”

     “Who?” Selina asked.

     “Jenna – oh right, you wouldn’t know.  Ivy probably hasn’t had an opportunity to let it hit the grapevine.  Jenna used to be a groupie.”

     Selina stared at him.  “No.”

     “Yeah!  That’s probably why she opened the club in the first place, to turn the tables on all the Rogues who never paid attention to her so that they have to come to HER for a drink.  Plus Pammy says she tried out to be a sidekick named Honeysuckle years ago.  Apparently she didn’t appreciate it when Ivy said no.”  Clayface smiled at her.  “As revenge schemes go, it’s not all that bad.”

     “Jenna was a Poison Ivy groupie,” Selina said flatly.

     He nodded, his grin growing even wider.

     “Christ.  That takes a special kind of delusional nutjob.”

     “Actually, that’s probably why Pammy never tried to use that information against her.  From her point of view, women should be beating down her door to become her followers,” he reasoned.  “She knows Jenna is nuts, but she’s the only person who doesn’t realize she’s really nuts.”

     Selina tapped a claw on the table in front of her.  The look she gave him suggested she was weighing whether or not to say something to him.  He could understand.  He’d been out of town for years, and even before that, they didn’t spend much time together.  But he also had the inside track on Ivy and the Rydbergii, and lips tended to loosen among Rogues when they had or needed information.  (Which probably explained a lot about Jervis.)  “Harvey’s mentioned her a time or two,” she finally said.

     “Really?” he asked casually.  “How is Two-Face these days?”

     “Not bad,” she said.  “But apparently Jenna has been flirting with him.”

     Clayface blinked.  Then he chuckled.  “Nothing against Harv, but I’m guessing that has less to do with his looks or personality, and more to do with—”

     “His being Ivy’s ex,” Selina finished.

     “Wow,” he said.  “I knew she was a seriously fucked-in-the-head former groupie, but I didn’t know she was hitting on Dent just on the off chance that Ivy might hear about it.”

     Selina raised her martini to her lips but didn’t drink.  “Don’t tell Pammy this,” she said grimly, “but at this point, I’d shut Jenna’s down for nothing.”

     Clayface didn’t shiver, but he could fake one, and he did it then.  And Pammy thought she was the woman no man could resist?

     Raven stood at her podium nervously as she waited for Catwoman to leave.  Yes, it was great that she came, but it might not matter in the end if she didn’t come back.  In fact, that might even be worse than if Selina had never shown up at all.  That would pulverize any morale left in the joint.

     And there was no telling how Selina would react to Ivy practically fleeing the room after she was seated. Most people would have been insulted, but then again, most people who knew Ivy might have been relieved. 

     Clayface had brought in just enough customers that the waitstaff stopped grumbling out loud about their tips.  Selina, though, could have an effect well beyond that.

     As long as she came back, though.

     “Did you have a nice evening, Ms. Kyle?” Raven asked brightly as Catwoman approached the doors.  She hoped she hadn’t sounded too eager.

     “Um.  It was a very enlightening night, at least,” Selina said.

     “Can we expect you back sometime soon?” Okay, that had sounded way too eager.

     Selina spared her a smile.  “I’d say you can count on it,” she said with an almost savage tone.

     Raven sagged with relief.  For the first time, she could believe that the Rydbergii might last for years.  “Well then,” she said without thinking, “assuming we’re still open, we’ll see you soon.” 

     “Why wouldn’t you be open?”

     Raven froze.  She shouldn’t have said that.  Ever since Jenna had sent those black roses, Raven had worried and fretted constantly about what their competitor would try next.  Whatever Jenna’s goal had been, she was sure to turn the heat up sooner or later.  And Raven might not be able to keep Ivy from finding out the next time.

     “No reason,” Raven said quickly.  “You know how unpredictable Ivy can be.”

     “You say that like she could launch a new crime spree at any moment.”

     Raven laughed weakly.  “I wouldn’t say a spree.”

     Selina just looked at her, waiting for her to say more.  Raven suddenly felt like her namesake, unable to look away from the hungry cat in front of her.

     She suddenly felt a compulsion to tell Selina everything.  At least then someone else would know.  And damn it, she was just a hostess!  She wasn’t supposed to deal with information like this!

     Looking up at Ivy’s closed door, Raven leaned forward.  “The day after Harley – you know, hurt herself?”

     Selina gestured impatiently.

     “Right, um, that day we got a special delivery while Ivy was out.  Jenna sent her a bouquet of black roses with a condolence card,” Raven said.  There.  Finally.  Someone knew.  (Gina certainly didn’t count.)

     The thief looked startled by this confession.  “Jenna sent Poison Ivy – the Poison Ivy – dead flowers suitable for a funeral?  The day Harley almost died?  What the hell did Ivy do when she found out?”

     “She didn’t,” Raven said.  “I had them destroyed before she got back.  Jenna’s lucky I did.  Ivy would have killed her in an instant if she had seen them.”

     “No, Ivy’s lucky you did,” Selina said quietly.  “Jenna was trying to push all her buttons at once.  Ivy would have headed straight for the club, where she would have assaulted Jenna in front of plenty of witnesses.  She’d be back in Arkham within the day.”

     “And the Lounge would have shut down!” Raven realized.  She could never figure out how Jenna could be so stupid.  Finally it made sense.  All right, Jenna was still stupid for flipping Ivy’s homicidal switch and pointing her in her own direction, but at least it made some sense.  Sort of.  If you were out of your fricking mind.

     Selina sighed.  “Well, tonight just keeps getting better and better.”

     “Why?”

     “It’s one thing to find new reasons to dislike Jenna.  But now I’m starting to feel sorry for Ivy again.  And that is usually your first mistake.”

     Ivy had spent six months looking more pathetic than anything else.  Boy, could Raven see where Selina was coming from. 

     Jenna rooted around fruitlessly in her purse for her car keys.  Damn it, she must have left them in her office.  She’d have to go back inside.  She’d be what her club was running out of – a repeat visitor.

     Damn Selina Kyle!  The snarl on her face would have turned milk.  The cat burglar had visited the Rydbergii Lounge little more than twenty-four hours ago, and already it seemed like everyone in Gotham had heard about it.  Catwoman had studiously avoided both nightclubs for months, so for her to make an appearance now?  It suggested that she had weighed her two options – and chosen the fucking stupid one!

     The original pitch to her investors had been partly predicated on the comparison between Catwoman and Poison Ivy.  One was a pin-up goddess, a Broadway actress, Bruce Wayne’s steady eye candy, and generally speaking a symbol of glamour and desirability across the city.  The other dressed like a whore, killed people, irritated people even more, and generally speaking was a symbol of every woman on PMS.  It was like comparing Grace Kelly to Pamela Anderson.  Jenna’s was to be the kind of club a Catwoman would frequent.  Ivy would turn the Iceberg Lounge into a dive with a stripper pole before it crashed and burned. 

     Therefore, when Selina Kyle was seen at the Rydbergii Lounge for over an hour, naturally Jenna had fielded calls from each and every one of her investors.  Some were nervous.  Some were angry.  And all were blaming it on her.

     Jenna had been relying on the idea that all of the club’s current problems would go way once the Rydbergii closed and left the field to her.  She just needed to ride it out long enough.  Kyle, however, couldn’t have destroyed her timetable more effectively if the thief shredded it between her claws herself.    

     Her time was running out.  As far as she could see, Jenna only had two options.  One was to sever this new alliance between the burglar – who, she could see now, was clearly whoring herself to the nimrod playboy – and the psychopath.  She would need to lure Kyle back over to her side sooner or later, but first Jenna would have to create some kind of incident that would have the two women lunging for each other’s throats.

     Unfortunately, she didn’t know how yet.  She had a vague idea of visiting the local animal shelter – a dead cat would antagonize the one woman almost as much as a dead rose would the other.  And a half-dozen dead cats, maybe poisoned dead cats – eh, it was still just something on the drawing board.

     The other option, however, was closer to becoming reality.  Jenna had already tried once to have Ivy recommitted to Arkham.  For some reason, however, her sympathy bouquet had failed to turn Ivy into a straitjacketed lunatic in the back of a police van.  So Jenna would just have to escalate things.

     And she already knew who would help her.  She’d been leading Harvey Two-Face on almost from the first minute he walked into Jenna’s.  He had a face like the surface of the planet Mercury, true, but he was also the only man Ivy ever had a serious relationship with.  The idea of seducing that man, and the thought of seeing Ivy’s face when she found out about it, was a turn-on that overcame all else.  She knew that Harvey was at least halfway (ha) into her because of the red hair and the body, but Jenna didn’t care.  This wasn’t romance, this was war.

     She was sure she could maneuver Ivy into a situation where the harpy would catch Jenna and Harvey in a compromising position.  And when Ivy realized Jenna had taken everything that ever mattered to her – well, all that would remain was the pressing of the charges. 

     Jenna smiled, having forgotten about the keys.  When Ivy was forced to admit Jenna was better than her…

     “Jenna Leibowitz.”

     Jenna shrieked, dropped her purse and spun around.  Over six feet of solid menace, crowned by two narrowed eyes, loomed over her.  “Jesus Christ!” she snapped.  “Don’t do that to people!”

     Batman didn’t respond to that.

     “Anyway, why are you here?” Jenna asked sullenly.  “Shouldn’t you be bothering criminals?  Isn’t that your job?  Your hobby?  Whatever?  Just leave the law-abiding citizens alone.”

     “Law-abiding citizen?” Batman asked.  “That wasn’t always your goal in life.”

     “Excuse me?”

     Batman leaned down toward her.  Instinctively she stepped back.

     “Honeysuckle.”

     Jenna gasped.  “How did you—” She stopped.  Then she sneered at him – well, maybe not at Batman, but in his general direction.  “Oh, of course,” she said.  “Only Ivy knew that.  She went crying to you like a baby because my club is doing better than hers, and you fell for it!”

     “Poison Ivy is an egomaniac,” Batman said.  “She wouldn’t come to me for help if wolves were gnawing at her leg.  I have my own sources.  Sources that tell me you’re a failed Rogue sidekick—”

     “That was years ago.”

     “A Poison Ivy groupie—”

     “Former groupie!  That stupid bitch ruined my life!”

     “And someone who sends dead flowers in a funeral arrangement to a known homicidal ecoterrorist on the day her best friend almost died.” 

     “And Ivy didn’t tell you any of this,” Jenna said sarcastically.  “You just know.  Because you’re Batman.  What did Selina Kyle call you?  ‘World’s Greatest Detective?’  I should have known at the time what a fool Catwoman is, but I didn’t have it figured out until she joined forces with Ivy last night.” 

     The day’s venom was starting to practically spew out of her.  “Maybe if you were a real detective, you’d be more worried about two of the three most deviant women in Gotham forming an alliance, and less about poor little me.  I’m the victim here, and those two – well, it doesn’t take a detective to know Ivy prefers women.  I think Wayne’s fantasies are coming true as… we…”

     It was at that point that Jenna’s throat closed up on her.  How had it gotten so cold?  Where had all the light pollution gone?  How could an ordinary man completely fill her vision the way Batman was, like some eternally hungry void come to swallow her up?

     “It doesn’t take a detective,” Batman said harshly, sending ice through her spinal column, “to see that you’re a bitter, vindictive woman.  You’ve shaped your whole life around getting revenge on Poison Ivy, while all the people who were Ivy’s real victims have moved on with their lives.  You’ll do whatever it takes to bring Ivy down, even if it means replacing her, even if it means provoking a confrontation with her that could get innocent people hurt.”

     “Real victims?”

     Batman raised a finger, and she cringed back again.  “If Poison Ivy commits any kind of rash act in the near future that gets people hurt or killed, I’ll know you’re responsible.  I’ll see to it that you’re charged with reckless endangerment, that your liquor license is revoked, and that you end up in the same place as the Rogues you’re trying so desperately to emulate.”

     “I won’t be blamed for the acts of a sociopathic lowlife!” she whined.

     “Even if they’re yours?”

     Jenna bent over, grabbed her purse, opened it to retrieve her cell phone, and then straightened.  “If you continue to threaten me, I’ll call my attorney, and—”

     Oh, of course.  She took her eyes off of him for a second.  And now he was gone.

     First Ivy, then Catwoman, and now Batman?  They were all against her!

     When she got home, she was going to start a list. 

     “It’s the first sign of improvement we’ve seen in months,” Leland said to Ivy outside of Harley’s cell.  “She was responsive to questions, she didn’t try to harm herself when the straitjacket came off, and best of all, she admitted that she felt guilty about her perceived role in the Joker’s murder.  Once she can move past her guilt, then she can truly begin the grieving process.”

     “And you think it’s because of the suicide attempt?” Ivy asked, trying to sound inquiring and courteous, as if she didn’t know why Harley was acting this way.  As if she didn’t know why much better than he did.

     “The cry for help, as I suggested earlier,” he corrected her.  “We stopped diagnosing it as a real suicide attempt some time ago.  In truth it was a breakthrough.  She wants to be saved, but she also wants to punish herself, and asking us for help would have defeated that.  She had to deceive herself into getting help.” 

     “Of course you’re right,” Ivy said, sounding reluctant but convinced.  He wasn’t completely off-base, but Harley wasn’t the one deceiving Harley.  “Can I see her now?”

     “For a few minutes,” Leland told her.  “We don’t want to push her too much.”

     “I totally agree,” she said sincerely.  She just wanted to push him

     Once she was alone with Harley, Ivy took a moment to enjoy the scene in front of her.  For weeks Ivy would visit Harley, only to find her in a padded cell and a straitjacket.  Anything else was considered a danger to her.  Now, however, Harley was in her usual cell, and the jacket was gone.  Ivy suspected it would be back when she was gone, but for now Harley was being safely monitored.

     Harley was not getting better, but Harley was now in a position to get better.  Ivy just had to keep her there.

     She’d just have to endure a little gloating to do it.

     “Sorry, Pammy,” Harley said in that mockery of a voice.  “But Harley can’t come out and play right now.  She’s preparing for her next scene.  The critics were quite impressed with Act One.  ‘Why, Rhett, ah do declare, ah’ll nevah slash mah wrists open again!’  Ha-ha.”

     Ivy didn’t need to fake the grimace of distaste.  The Joker had taught Harley to put herself down too well.  “It’s bad enough that you think you’re funny,” she said icily, “but you think you’re smart too.  You’ll never get away with this.  They’ll find out you’re not dead, and then Harley will be free but you won’t be able to join her.”

     “Now Ivy, I’ve already gotten away with it.  It’s just not time to spring the punchline yet.  That will be after we walk out of here together.  They’ll push her out the door!  I once went through fast-track rehabilitation three times, remember?  They were practically begging me to leave.  Me!  The Joker!  Everyone said I was crazy – except them!”  Her smile was unholy.

     Ivy was gripping the straps of her purse so tightly that she felt the leather burning her skin.  But she didn’t have an option.  “He” had to see her impotent fury, her inability to be anything more than a spectator as the “Joker” put one over the doctors and tricked them into releasing Harley back into his “care”.  “He” would be all the more determined to do it, seeing how it made her suffer helplessly.

     “Even so,” she said, “when she gets out of Arkham, she won’t be with you.  She’ll be with me!  I’ll make sure of it!”

     Harley just shook her head pityingly.  “You can have her when I’m done with her, Pammy, and not a moment sooner.  You know that.  That’s how it’s always been, remember?  I don’t share my toys.  I just drop them when I’m bored.”  The grin was really starting to make Ivy boil.  “You’re a scavenger, Ivy.  You hover around the edges of my existence, waiting for my scraps.  You’re just as much of a hyena as Bud and Lou are!”

     Damien and Slobberpuss, Ivy thought automatically.  Those were Harley’s names for the hyenas.  But Harley’s psyche was starting to fracture so badly that her Joker persona was even calling the pets by the names HE had given them.

     She was still running out of time.  She had to speed up Harley’s “grieving process” so that the asylum and the courts would agree it was safe to release her.  She had to crush Jenna’s and get the Rydbergii back in the black so that they’d consider Harley safe with her.

     And she had to do it yesterday.

     “I’m finished waiting,” Ivy said coldly.  “I’m taking her now.  In a week I’ll be ready to get her out my way – by force.  You’ll never be able to have her released that fast.”

     “Hm, I’d almost enjoy seeing that,” Harley said.  “Then you’d be a fugitive, and we wouldn’t have to hear you pissing and moaning about that Jenna anymore.  Harley suggested just the other day that you and Jenna should just have a hair-pulling fight and get it over with.” 

     Ivy flinched.  It was those moments that felt like a slap in the face – when “he” suggested that Harley was no more interested in listening to her talk than anyone else.  Maybe Harley didn’t want to be her friend so much any more.  Maybe it was all so useless.

     “Delightful girl, that Jenna!” Harley went on.  “I might just buy her a drink – with real money!”

     “I’ll get what I want, when I want it, all of it!” Ivy burst out shrilly.  “And not you or Jenna or the Bat can stop me!”

     “Joker” just smiled at her.  “Well, we’ll see what Harley has to say about that when you come crashing through her door.”

     “Thanks for coming over at this hour, Harvey,” Jenna said.  She poured a glass of double-malt Scotch and set it in front of her as she leaned over the bar.  We couldn’t help but notice the view down her blouse.  We could have flipped our coin between her breasts.  We could have bounced it. 

     We shrugged as we took the liquor.  “The coin came up heads.  How did you get our number?”

     “The waitstaff here has made plenty of friends among everyone’s henchmen,” Jenna said.  “One of my servers got the number from one of yours – Dildo, I think?”

     Either she’s being dense on purpose, which we don’t find very attractive, or she’s making a double entendre, which we do.  “Ditto,” we said curtly before knocking the Scotch back.

     “Right,” Jenna said.  “I hope you weren’t busy.”

     “Did we say we were busy?”

     “Maybe you were being polite.”

     “That’s Harvey’s thing.  You’re not talking to Harv right now.”  You might wish you were, though.

     “Well then,” Jenna went on, “we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately.  Getting to know each other?  Actually, when you think about it, we’ve been getting to know each other ever since that day in Starbucks, haven’t we?”

     We nodded.  The tight strapless blouse she had on was a nice shade of what we would call “midnight green”.  Pam always preferred a brighter hue.  So, close enough to green to be reminiscent of Ivy, but not enough to be obvious about it.  We’re not stupid.  We’re not dead below the waist either.  A leer was definitely called for.

     “So,” she said, “I think it’s only natural that we continue getting to know each other outside of the club.  What do you think of that?”

     “Well, that depends,” we pointed out.  “Would we be getting to know each other in public, or in private?”

     “Both, of course,” Jenna said in a way that could be called “coquettish”.  If she was younger.

     “Hm,” we said.  We fished out our coin and laid it on the bar.  “Heads, you’re willing to be seen in public with us because you don’t want us to think you’d be ashamed to be seen together.”

     “I wouldn’t be ashamed, Harvey.”

     “Tails,” we continued, “you want to be absolutely sure that Pam hears about it.”

     We wondered if she realized how brittle that flirtatious smile has gotten.

     “Harvey, Ivy doesn’t mean—”

     “Wait for it,” we said, holding up our hand as we snatched the coin with the other and flipped it in the air with one smooth motion.  It landed in our palm and we looked at it.

     “Why Jenna,” we said, showing her the unscarred side, “it’s nice to meet someone who likes us for us.  Although why anyone would like Harv is beyond us.”

     She smiled uncertainly at us.

     “Still,” we went on, “we don’t need to make it official right away.  We can keep it private.”  We looked her in the eyes, then dropped our gaze pointedly to her cleavage.  “Better yet, we can fuck you right now on this bar.”

     Jenna evidently needed a moment to process our last remark, but she handled it well.  “Two-Face, you really are the bad boy, aren’t you?” she asked suggestive.

     “Is that a yes?”

     “The staff will be in soon.  We could get caught.  Mmm.  Thrilling.  Still, we shouldn’t take too long.”

     We sighed.  Of course we believed Selina anyway, but Jenna isn’t looking at us.  She’s looking over our shoulder.  The lust in her eyes is real, but it’s not for us.  We think Selina was even right about that.  We don’t think she’s thinking about her employees catching us on the bar.  She’s picturing Pammy instead.

     And we think that takes “fucked up” to a whole new level.  We scorn groupies because they aren’t good for anything but sex.  That doesn’t mean we won’t still fuck them.  But rough sex with an attractive woman isn’t worth it if you’re dealing with the seriously messed up.  Believe us, if we hadn’t learned that lesson from Pammy yet, we’d probably still be calling her “Petal”.

     For that reason, we don’t even look down while she begins tugging her shirttails out of her tight jeans.  We just turn away.

     “Locking the doors?” she asked.  “I thought we wanted to be adventurous.”

     “There is no we,” we corrected her.  “We is three, and we don’t like three.  And we definitely don’t like you.”

     “What?!

     We look at her when we’re halfway across the bar.  Her cheeks are flushed, but we doubt it’s from desire, judging by the offended look on her face – or the slight edge of desperation in her voice.  “Selina called us earlier.”

     “Selina Kyle is partnered up with Ivy.”  Jenna should know Selina is a good friend of ours.  Which means she’s more stupid than we thought, or more out of control than we suspected, because she doesn’t hide how she feels about Selina from us.

     “Selina is one of us,” we reply.  “Us meaning the Rogues.  She’d never side with a groupie over one of us, even Ivy."

     Jenna flinches, and we like it.  She should be scared.  Setting the two most dangerous women in the city against her?  Ivy will make her miserable.  Selina will make her scream.

     “I’m not a groupie any more, Harvey!” she burst out, recovering.  “I run this club!  People like you come to me so they can relax!”

     “Frankly, Scarlett, we don’t give a damn,” we said.  Not that you’d ever confuse Jenna with Vivien Leigh.  You couldn’t even confuse her with Traci Lords.  “And we wouldn’t worry about opening tonight,” we add as we turn our back on her.  For all intents and purposes, it’s forever.  “Because people like us won’t give a damn about you either.”

     The irony is, we’re horny now.  Fate truly is a bitch.

     Ivy’s lip twitched.  “What have you—”

     Clayface coughed into a fist at the other end of the bar.

     She clutched the rag in her hand a little tighter as she mechanically shined the bar.  “I mean, yes, you practically had a right to escape from Arkham if they still haven’t fixed the coolant intake valves.”

     “Exactly!” Victor said, pounding the bar with one fist.  “It was nigh on self-defense.”

     She smiled in what she hoped was an ingratiating manner and continued to refrain from turning the conversation to Harley.

     Victor Fries was the first high-profile Rogue to visit the Rydbergii since Selina’s visit.  Granted, it might not necessarily have been Selina’s doing.  Victor had been noncommittal the last time Ivy had seen him at Arkham and invited him to the Lounge.  Maybe he would have come regardless.  Yes, probably he would have.

     What mattered, however, was that Victor had to come a second time.  And Clayface had told her time and again that if she wanted that to happen, she would need to try a little “customer service”.  That included allowing her guests to dictate the direction of the conversation.

     Ivy really wanted to know whether or not Harley was still being segregated from the general population, but unless Victor brought it up, she wasn’t going to find out.  Every time she tried to change the subject, Clayface cleared his throat, damn him.

     He was also fixated on her shining the bartop.  She didn’t know why, but it gave her something to do when she really, really wanted to interrupt.  (Especially Victor, that crushing bore!)

     Victor looked at his drink.  “This could use more ice,” he said. 

     “It looks—”

     Clayface belched loudly.

     She ground her teeth.  “Let me fix that.”

     As she faced away from Victor and pelted his drink with fresh ice cubes, she heard Raven murmuring to her left, something about “seeing this on Cheers”.

     “I don’t do television,” Clayface muttered, managing to sound insulted.

     Ivy sighed.  The night might possibly be a successful one.  It would also be very, very long.  Maybe failure was an option after all.

     She turned around.  “Here’s your…”

     Ever since that first day in her parents’ greenhouse, when a plant had hit her with a feeling she tentatively identified as “satisfaction,” Poison Ivy had discovered that she could sense these feelings from a distance equivalent to the distance others could hear people shouting.  She had also learned how to identify the emotion in an instant.

     Therefore, at that moment, Ivy knew immediately that there were plants shrieking in pain, and that it was coming from the Virginia creeper that had covered most of the exterior masonry of the south wall since renovations had been completed.  From the sensations that were assaulting her mind, it was happening to a wide swath of the wall.

     It was also very probable that the climbing plants had been set on fire.

     That was why she dropped Victor’s drink, and his fresh ice cubes, on the floor.

     “Excuse me,” she said distantly.  “I have a problem to take care of.”

     She didn’t notice Victor and Hagen exchange looks.  She just went to the nearest fire extinguisher mounted on the wall, took it, and headed for the back entrance.

     This, at least, she could do by herself.

     Jenna grinned savagely as she set the makeshift wick alight.  The ivy was already burning quite well, and she had two more walls to see to, but she’d brought plenty of bottles.  After all, Two-Face had told her no one would be drinking liquor at her club tonight.

     She hurled it at the wall, and it shattered, spreading flaming alcohol across the green blanketing the wall’s surface.  The ivy was burning quite well now.  The ivy was burning.  Ivy was burning.

     She liked the sound of that.  She liked it very much.  She would chase that feeling.

     Jenna had her chance a moment later when Poison Ivy herself burst out of the back door.  The two women looked at each other for a moment before Jenna yanked another homemade Molotov cocktail out of her satchel.

     Unfortunately for her, there was no time for her to do anything else.

     Ivy immediately turned the full brunt of the fire extinguisher on her, aiming directly for her face.  Jenna screamed and dropped the glass bottle.  Then Ivy reversed the firefighting tool and rammed the base into Jenna’s stomach.  She folded in on herself and hit the concrete almost as fast as the cocktail had. 

     Clayface and Mr. Freeze appeared a moment later.  Freeze took one look at the approaching conflagration and drew his freeze ray.  In a few seconds the burning ivy was a billion crystal fragments raining down.

     “Thank you, Victor,” Ivy said calmly as she set the fire extinguisher down.  She grabbed Jenna by the hair and pulled her to her knees.  Then Ivy peered into her bag.  “Well, well,” she said.  “I hope if you were going to burn me alive, Jenna, that you brought the premium brands.”

     “F-fuck you,” Jenna gasped, clutching ineffectually at the nails wrapped cruelly in her hair.  “You might as well let me go.  Everyone knows the police never gets called here, you fucking whore.”

     “Or I could kill you,” Ivy said.

     “They’ll shut you down for that,” Jenna sneered.

     “Jesus Christ, this twat never knows when to shut up,” Clayface mumbled.

     Ivy looked at her for a few moments.  “I know how to shut her up,” she finally said.

     Jenna’s nostrils were suddenly plugged with a heavy, cloying odor of fruit and decaying plant matter.  She stared uncomprehendingly at Ivy for a second before her heart melted.  “Greeeeeeen,” she crooned.

     “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you for this,” Jenna said earnestly.

     You could start by finally shutting up, Ivy thought.  She didn’t say anything, though.  She just drove.  It was her own fault, really.  What else could she have expected?  She’d been dosing Jenna with pheromones for almost twelve hours.

     “I mean, you’re even letting me wear one of your old outfits!  You really think I look all right in this?”

     If you ignore the fact that you’re only a B-cup.  “You look fine,” Ivy said.  “Besides, they won’t really pay attention to your body anyway.  They’ll just see the red hair and the green tights, and then they’ll start panicking.”  Ivy hadn’t experienced that feeling in a while.  She wouldn’t be feeling it any time soon either.  Oh, well.

     Jenna beamed at her.  “I just can’t believe you’re doing this for me.  I tried to set the Lounge on fire last night!”

     I’m doing this for the lives you murdered last night.  Ivy’s fingers whitened as she held onto the steering wheel so that she wouldn’t throttle Jenna.

     And for those black roses I never received.  Ivy coughed as she swallowed the new urge to tear the wheel off the steering column and beat Jenna to death with it. 

     Like every other woman Ivy had used her pheromones on since she’d begun using those special herbal supplements, Jenna had instantly adored her.  It didn’t matter that a minute before, Jenna had been closer to an uncontrollable homicidal fury.  It didn’t matter that Jenna had increasingly resented her for years.  It didn’t even matter that she’d embarked on an escalating campaign to ruin Ivy earlier that year.  Jenna’s mindset had immediately reverted to that of the wannabe sidekick from years before.

     At least Jenna was straight.  She had not become sexually attracted to her as well.  There would have been no way Ivy could have kept the ruse going so long if that had been the case.  Ivy would have just killed her and been done with it.

     Still, that didn’t mean it had been easy.

     “Make yourself at – have a seat,” Ivy said, having almost choked on the word “home”.  Her first guest should have been Harley, and not this worthless pest.

     Jenna looked around, obviously in awe.  “It’s like your inner sanctum,” she said breathlessly.

     Ugh.  Maybe Ivy could dial the adoration back a little.  “Ozzie should be in bed by now, so we’ll have the place to ourselves until morning.”

     “I always suspected you had him under your control, but I was never sure,” Jenna said.  “Wow, the Penguin!  And you have him under your thumb like that.”

     “Mm, thank you,” Ivy said.  It was the reverence Poison Ivy was due, but at this point in her life, empty praise from a greened moron was just tiresome.  “Tell me, what are your future plans?” she asked from the kitchen as she poured herself a glass of wine.  Then she poured another for Jenna – the cheap stuff, of course.

     “Well, the club isn’t doing very well at this point,” Jenna called out, sounding a trifle subdued, “but it was always about getting your attention, so I really don’t need it any longer.”

     “Yes, I completely agree,” Ivy said as she came back in and handed Jenna her swill.  She accepted it like it was the water of life.  “You don’t need Jenna’s any more.  And now that you have my attention, what do you plan on doing with it?”

     Jenna looked away.  “First of all, apologize.  I’m sure you’re still a little upset with me.”

     Ivy hid her grimace behind her wineglass.  “Yes, well, there are better ways of getting me to notice you than setting fire to the babies.”

     “No, I mean, well yes, that too!  But also for the flowers.”

     Slim fingers tightened instinctively on the stem of her glass.  Ivy stood up again and went back into the kitchen.  Something was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.  “Well, then apologize away,” she said.

     “I know I must have hurt you,” Jenna told her.  “I mean, everyone knows how you feel about flower arrangements—”

     Ivy grabbed the countertop with both hands.

     “And I shouldn’t have included that note about Quinn so soon after her suicide attempt—”

     If she moved her right hand just a little bit, she could open the drawer and get the cleaver out.

     “But I was just so jealous of her!  Okay, yes, she’s your friend, but it’s obvious she’s never getting out of Arkham again, and I think I could help you so much more now.”    

      If Jenna could have seen her face at that moment, the sheer terror would have sliced through her green adulation like a surgical laser.  Poison Ivy could barely comprehend the enormity, the monstrosity of what Jenna was describing.  She had sent Ivy a bouquet of rotting corpses after Harley had cut herself?  Because she was so much better than Harley?

     There was a way to kill someone in such a way that it took them a week to bleed out.  Ivy knew how to do it.  She could see how much Jenna liked cutting.  She could cut Jenna until her stunted soul broke.  

     “But anyway, that was wrong of me, and I’m really sorry.”

     Ivy took a series of deep breaths.  It was incredibly tempting, but she wouldn’t do it.  She wouldn’t give Jenna the mercy of a week’s suffering, not when she could torture her for the remainder of Jenna’s days.  And she knew how to do THAT too.  She knew from personal experience.  Ivy had suffered terribly from almost the first day she had taken over the Iceberg Lounge.  That kind of exhausting, bone-deep isolation and rejection had almost driven a goddess around the bend.  Let’s see how a mere mortal could handle it.

     And so, instead of relieving the itch in her hands by getting out that nice, big, sharp meat cleaver, Ivy just went back out.  “I think we should both just move on from that, don’t you?” she asked.  She would not say that she accepted Jenna’s apology.

     “Oh yes, yes,” Jenna agreed fervently.

     Ivy hit her with yet another dose of pheromones.  Jenna almost fell over.

     “With that out of the way,” Ivy went on, sitting across from Jenna, “I’m a respectable woman of business, Jenna.  I have an image to maintain.  I can’t go around punishing the greedy and the bigoted for their genocidal actions like I used to.  But I can’t just let them get away with it either.”  Hm, she’d been letting them do just that lately.  Something for another day.

     “How can I help?” Jenna asked.

     “Well, I’m in need of a… protégé.”

     Of course the little bitch had fallen for it.  She had been salivating before Ivy had finished speaking.  She’d wanted some kind of validation from Ivy for years, and at last she was going to get it.  It was pathetic.  Ivy hadn’t believed her estimation of Jenna Leibowitz could fall further.  She’d been wrong.

     Just a groupie.  Ivy never had any use for them.  They were just there to be fucked.  And despite the rumors that had surrounded her and Harley almost from the very beginning, Ivy was not interested in fucking any of them. 

     Ivy loathed men, and she would never be much of a heterosexual when she couldn’t stomach the thought of having sex with men (Harvey being the sole exception).  But the chances of Ivy taking a woman into her bed wasn’t much higher.  Because of her striking beauty, fame, and alabaster skin, there was no way Ivy could ever hope to hide her identity from someone if she wanted to date a civilian.  Consequently, Ivy could only sleep with women who weren’t afraid of who she was.  And those very few women were always the said useless, disgusting groupies.

     Well, and Harley.  But that ship had sailed years before.  And Selina, but it was hard to say which of them would be more horrified by the idea, and…

     Ivy’s chain of thought was suddenly derailed, not by Selina (UGH!) but by Harley.  Yes, that ship had sailed, but the S.S. Joker had run aground and become a derelict hulk that would see the open water no more.  Harley was very single now.  And they would be spending an awful lot of time together if Ivy’s plan succeeded.  They would be spending an awful lot of time together, for an awfully long time.

     Her heart spasmed.  Harley had become the most important person, the only important person in her life, because even Poison Ivy couldn’t fail to respond to the fact that she had always been important to Harley.  And Harley had responded to her.  She had!  That night, the getaway, the kissing… Joker had taken that from her, but could she take it back?

     Ivy blinked.  She wanted to.  Badly.

     But to do that, she needed to eliminate her competition.  And said competition was blissfully blathering on next to her.  Fatally unaware of what Ivy really thought of her.  

     Jenna had mocked Harley, sneered at her massive grief and self-loathing, used her suffering as a stick to poke Ivy where it would hurt the most.  Gaia, for that Jenna would hurt where it hurt her the most.  Every day.  For the rest of her long, miserable life.

     Starting today.

     Ivy had been forced to suffer the constant presence of Jenna because for some reason, her pheromones couldn’t keep women greened anywhere near as long as men.  She estimated that even now, after hours of exposure to Ivy’s powers, Jenna would regain her senses once they were apart for little more than five minutes.  Enough time to access the paper mill’s headquarters.  Enough time to use at least one of the homemade Molotov cocktails with only Jenna’s fingerprints, stolen from Jenna’s inventory.  Enough time to be seen by plenty of witnesses. 

     Enough time to come to her senses by the time she would be taken into custody.

     Ivy smiled sweetly at Jenna, who blushed in response, as she pulled up in front of their destination.  “Trust me, Jenna.  I will treasure what you’re about to do for the rest of my life.”

     To be continued…

Prev

Chapter 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11 12  13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Next

 

Copyright | Privacy Policy | Cat-Tales