Batman sends Nightwing to get Poison Ivy out of Gotham City Park
The No Man's Land edict had been repealed but its effects remained. Gotham would be a long time recovering; its people, even longer. And in some parts of the city, nothing had changed. During the long siege Poison Ivy had taken up residence in Robinson Park, claiming it for her own. No one dared intrude for fear of death, save a number of children who'd found safe shelter there. At one point Batman had entered the park and bargained with her for fresh produce for the people who'd remained in the city. Even after the government relented and Gotham was rebuilt with federal aid and the combined efforts of LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises, she remained.
That was, until the major decided it "looked bad" that a known super-villain and eco-terrorist held twenty blocks of Gotham property. Bad for business. Bad for tourism. She had to go.
The city demanded she leave. She refused. The officials threatened with napalm and then defoliant poisons, which would have the benefit of not killing the children. At least, not immediately.
She asked for the Batman.
Oracle called Nightwing instead.
Batman was off chasing Ra's al-Ghul across the other side of the world. Robin and Batgirl weren't experienced enough to deal with her; Poison Ivy wasn't as homicidal as the Joker, but nearly as unpredictable. And he didn't trust Huntress or Azrael not to shoot first. There were too many lives at stake to risk it.
He went in, gauntlet pockets loaded with antitoxins. He didn't put much faith in them. Ivy was a brilliant botanist, she knew of plant-based poisons and substances that no one else in the world had discovered yet. Never mind the mix of toxins her own body generated.
The trees seemed to watch him as he passed. It might not be paranoia: Ivy's power had grown over the years, her control over plant life continually evolving. For all he knew, she was seeing him pass through the park, her "garden," through the movement of his feet on the grass itself.
He followed the trail left for him to a place near the center of the park. She stood in the depths of the green, dressed only in leaves and her red, red hair.
She eyed him curiously as he entered. "You...do I know you?"
"I'm Nightwing. I'm a friend of the Batman. You can trust me."
"Maybe." She looked wild and fey, like a dryad straight out of myth. He remembered when she had merely been a thief. Now she claimed to be the spirit of Nature herself, and had the power to attest to it.
"Pame--"
She laughed a little. "No. That tack may work on the Harvey Dent who lives inside of Two-Face, or that spineless Crane hiding inside the Scarecrow. Pamela Isley died when Woodrue made me what I am."
Nightwing revised her psychological profile yet again. "Okay, Ivy. I'm here like you requested."
"...I didn't ask for you."
"I know. Batman couldn't be here." He watched her face carefully.
"He," she spit out, "has made it perfectly clear he doesn't care at all for what becomes of me. A part of me withers away every time I'm forced back to Arkham, and he doesn't care." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He leaves me alone, in the dark."
Nightwing kept his tone even. "He cares, Ivy. Remember, he came to save you from Clayface?"
Her expression hardened. "Oh yes. I remember. He came for his precious discs, not for me. The fact that--beast tormented me, raped me, kept me away from sunlight, that was all incidental! I helped him regardless, destroyed the beast, gave him fruits from my garden for his starving city, and now he allows them to threaten my home! They want to burn me with chemicals and fire and he does nothing, Nightwing, I see how much he cares!"
Ivy's voice had risen to a shriek, and just as suddenly as her temper had flared, she was calm again. "But you're here."
"I'm here. Let me help you before it's too late, Ivy."
"Why do you care?" It was almost a plea.
Nightwing choose his words carefully. He already knew she wouldn't allow the children to come to harm. For all her anger, a threat to herself was less important than-- "You've restored the park to what it should be. It's beautiful, Ivy. I don't want to see it damaged."
"It's not all it should be, what it could be if I had time." But she seemed pleased with his answer. "This is my home. Tell me what right they have to take it from me!"
"It's not about right or wrong, it's about what will happen if they feel they have to take it from you."
Her eyes flashed dangerously. "If they want a war--"
"They don't, Ivy, believe me, but you don't want it either! Think of the weapons they'll use." He was trying, he really was. Maybe she really only would listen to Batman, after all. Maybe--
"Fire," she whispered, "poison to kill the Green."
It was hard not to sympathize, hearing how much the prospect both frightened and horrified her. She was as much a hostage to her own twisted nature as the city was to its mandate that she be removed from the park. "Yes. Please, don't let that happen! It's in your hands, Ivy."
She focused on him, seeming to really see him for the first time. "His friend."
"Yes."
"But you're here, and he's not," she mused. "And you want me to trust you."
"I want to help you."
"What will you give me in pledge?"
Careful, now. "Let the children go, and we'll discuss it."
She waved her hand negligently. "They've been free to leave at any time. I've never kept them here against their will!"
"But they've refused to leave without you."
She smiled. "I fed them, kept them safe when they were abandoned by everyone else. " She frowned suddenly. "But if they come with fire--"
"Dawn," he said softly. "We have until dawn."
He could see the conflict in her, and again felt that wash of sympathy. She wanted to fight. She wanted the children safe.
"If I make them go," she said, quietly desperate, "will that be enough."
He looked at her. She looked back, already knowing the truth.
"No. I suppose not." Ivy smiled without humor. "But where will we go? This is our home."
Nightwing allowed himself a breath of hope. "The children will be safe with Protective Services. They're already prepared to take them. I'll make sure they're cared for, Ivy, I swear."
She nodded. "And then they can come with whatever they please. All right."
"...what about you?"
She smiled at him. "I'm not leaving."
He could see the determined gleam of fanaticism in her eyes. "You'll die."
"Some things are worth dying for."
She believed that. So did he, for that matter, but not when it could be avoided. "If you stay," he said, knowing just how dangerous this was, "it's your decision that kills the park. Not theirs."
"How DARE--"
He'd been saving the Bat-voice for a moment like this. "Ivy."
She went silent.
"If you leave, the park lives. If you stay, it dies. It's only worth dying for if what you're fighting for survives. This won't."
Ivy turned her back on him. He waited.
Her face, when she turned back, was unexpectedly calm. "Yes. All right. But if I'm to leave, I want something in return."
The problem with Batman's rogue's gallery, Nightwing thought, was that they were all too damned quick. "What's that."
"The use of your body, until sunrise."
"...you can't be serious!"
She smirked. "Oh yes. No harm will come to you. All I ask is that you see this-- this place, the way I do. My price. And I'll go."
Impossible. Suicidal, even. Maybe he could-- no, knockout gas wouldn't work on her. But if he pretended to consider it he might get close enough to take her out the old fashioned way, and depend on his gloves to protect him from her poisons. "What do you mean, 'see'?"
"Batman never gave me the chance to show him. But you will--won't you, 'Robin.'" Ivy smiled. "I remember now. You always were a precocious child. But you've grown up."
There was a speculative look in her eye he didn't like one bit. "Ivy--"
This time she interrupted him. "And why is it," she said, still smiling, "that you think you have a choice?"
The air was abruptly heavy with her perfume, thick and sweet. He tried to move and felt as though he were swimming through molasses. Laced with pheromones, slowing his responses? Probably.
"Now: see." She raised a hand and blew a kiss at him.
Airborne toxin?! he thought for a panicked moment. But of course if she wanted him dead, she could easily have poisoned him already.
The world took on a different hue. Everything looked...more alive. More in-focus, and more out of focus too, his vision fuzzing around the edges. On the edge of his senses he could almost hear the grass under his feet chafing under his weight, see the trees around him growing at a steady imperceptible pace. Everything around him was living, of course it was, but now he was connected to it, could feel the heartbeat of the earth like his own.
Then he started to feel...warm.
Flushed, even. Heart pumping. Skin tingling. And suddenly, incredibly aroused. Desperately, even. He took a blind step toward her, and laughing, she danced away.
"My...God." He tried to control his body, calling on all the disciplines he'd learned from Bruce and other masters. He might as well have been a teenager again, realizing that girls weren't icky for the first time. "If you could bottle that, you'd make a fortune!"
...stupid, stupid thing to say to Poison Ivy, but she just laughed again.
"What need do I have for riches, when I have this!" She spun in the moonlight, arms outstretched. "See it, do you see it?"
"...yes." He did. Beautiful and terrible. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" -- except that here it was green, shining green, deadly beyond measure. And just as irresistible.
She stopped twirling to regard him. "Ohh. That looks...painful. Let me help you with it."
Without warning leaf-covered branches enveloped him, stripping away his costume. Half-dazed as he was, there was no reacting before they bound him, tightly but not painfully. He was barely cognizant enough so that when a twig reached for his face, he jerked his head away.
Ivy smiled, amused. "Of course, keep your mask. We are only our masks, after all."
He was naked but for that. Her plants were sliding over his skin, caressing. He very much hoped none of them were her namesake.
"Ahhh, lovely... for a mammal." She sounded coquettish, teasing. She circled him where he hung, helpless and terribly exposed. He had a terrifying moment imagining the kind of headlines he'd make if he were found here, never mind Bruce's response-- or Barbara's--
It was hard to think. The green moved over him. Ivy stood before him, looking almost wistful. "I remember-- I wish I-- " Her hand stretched out to him, pulled back. Her touch was poison. He was glad she remembered it, because if he hadn't been restrained, he might have forgotten. "But I have other hands to touch for me."
Vines with leaves like velvet wrapping around his cock. Something prodding at his anus!
"Uh, Ivy...!"
"Shhhh." She was smiling, eyes half-closed, swaying a little. "Relax. Didn't I promise? No harm."
He wondered just how closely she was linked to her plants. Empathically? Did she feel what they did?
...the question boiled away as the prodding started again, something somehow slick (dew? sap? he really didn't want to know) starting to press its way in. Maddeningly slow, filling him carefully.
Despite himself, he moaned.
"Oh yes," Ivy whispered, arms wrapped around herself now. Her own "clothing" had dropped away, fallen to the ground and indistinguishable from the rest of the flora.
Too much. Her pheromones and stimulants, coursing through his blood. The caress of leaves over his skin, green over him, inside him, touching intimately. He let his head fall back and gave himself up to it.
His body was on fire. Flower petals trailed over his cheeks, his lips, drifting down to stroke over his nipples. The slow slide of feather-soft vines everywhere, leaving no part of him untouched. He heard Ivy laugh, softly, and opened his eyes to see her lounging on the leaf-covered ground, watching him.
"And Batman refused this. You'll tell him what he's missed, won't you." She stretched, catlike, running her hands over the grass like a lover. "Only I could give you this...."
The smooth vine, branch, whatever inside him moved, thrusting a little, and the leaves around his cock stroked in rhythm. He took a deep, shuddering breath and groaned, moving with it. Really unable not to, his whole body completely out of his control. Some part of his mind was horrified by what was happening. The rest welcomed it.
"Again," Ivy whispered, and her flora obeyed. He obeyed. Really fucking him now, being taken by-- by her, the green surrounding him only her avatar, so that every touch might as well have been hers. And somehow he could feel her, Ivy's pleasure rising in conjunction with what she was doing to him and her own connection to the plant life around them. Growing and flourishing and blooming, all around and inside him--
He cried out and dimly heard her echo him.
He hung boneless in the embrace of her plants, helpless. Visions of black-widow spiders danced through his brain. Man-eating plants, more likely, he thought with a degree of black humor. His life was in her hands. But then, it had been from the moment he'd entered the park.
Nightwing raised his head to see her approach.
"I lied, just a little," Ivy whispered. "The children are on their way out. I'll leave as I promised. But not into their hands, away from the sun--I'd die, don't you see that?" She leaned forward, her scent overwhelming. "Thank you."
Her mouth brushed against his, barely a touch, and the world exploded into sensation around him. He was tasting colors, hearing the night air on his skin, seeing the sounds of the dark that covered them; and all around was the texture of her power, wild and green.
The darkness came up to meet him, and he fell down deep.
He woke near the gates of Robinson Park, which now stood open. His costume was back on, intact. Outside he saw Bullock and Montoya hurrying the children into a waiting van. Jim Gordon glanced into the park, saw him, and nodded. He nodded back, giving the "all-clear" sign, and faded back into the trees. Just trees now; bereft of Ivy's power, they merely stood as they always had.
It wasn't until Nightwing returned to his apartment in the 'Haven, tired and sore, that he discovered what she'd left for him. In the shower, he glanced down to see the shape of lips on his inner thigh, as green as grass. It was, as far as he could determine, a permanent mark.
He wondered uneasily if some day, having marked him, she might return to claim him for good.
{end}
So...Id been wanting to write a Poison Ivy fic for awhile. I adore her, I just didnt have a plot. And then I realized well, when in doubt, have [character X] sleep with Nightwing. Presto, insta-fic.
Now, thats just shameful. But true. ;)
Ahem. Anyway. Basic setup based on the recent Detective issues, in which Ivy was fully prepared to martyr herself to save the park. ("Some things are worth dying for" is a direct quote from those issues.)
Inspired by the absolutely beautiful Dick/Ivy pic by Leono, over at WingSlash.