Chapter Text
Rays of light stretched out through slightly parted curtains, finding Pam propped up on an elbow, eyes closed. She had been like this for an hour, not wanting to disturb the sleeping form in front of her. So instead she focused her attention on the light beams falling around her. They warmed her skin, strengthened her muscles, infused her with new energy.
But it wasn’t enough.
Her brows furrowed. This didn’t feel like it used too. Once the sun’s first light gifted her with a sensation akin to a surge of adrenaline. She remembered how her blood would pound and her cells vibrate with the energy. Her thoughts would clear, sharpening her focus. She could singlehandedly regrow the deforested miles of the Amazon. Sponge away each oil spill. Rip apart whole cities by their roots. Everything was awash in the brightness of harsh white light, revealing everything, guiding her single-mindlessly to her purpose. But now it was as if she was peering up at the former heights of her power from the bottom of a deep crevasse. The unattainability of the height was staggering, and her memories merely underscored the gulf that stood before her.
Her daily charge had once been a sacred morning ritual, a time of reflection and meditation. She would feel the power coursing through her, her visceral connection to the natural world, the weight of her responsibility to it. It was a kind of veneration, a communion. In the depths of Batman’s lair, she had craved for this touch of the sun with a naked, feral ferocity. Anything, for a drop of sunlight. Anything, to feel that link again. But now? She still felt a painful emptiness in her chest, an aching severance, with this overwhelming sense of weakness settling in her bones. She was free and flushed with the glory of light at last, but it simply wasn’t the same.
She shook her head, eyes finally opening to look down at the sleeping form in front of her. Dark hair spilling across the shared pillow. A face, carrying more lines worn with the passage of a decade, finally looking peaceful. The muscles relaxed. No longer the pillar of stoicism and planning and that unrivaled stubbornness. Pam reached out to delicately push back a strand of stray hair. This was the other touch she had craved so desperately in the dark.
But no, it wasn’t the same either.
Had the need for the sun, for Renee, had they faded in the dark? Had the connection frayed, forgotten and ill-used? Or had the heavy weight of time broken something inside her, drained her essence, leaving only an empty husk of a person trapped inside that desiccated corpse?
There was a sharp rap at the door, signaling the arrival of her escort. Pam sighed, packing away her swirling thoughts for sifting later. She gently extricated herself from a tangle of limbs and gingerly slipped out of bed. She threw a last wistful look at Pam’s still sleeping form.
Pam hadn’t seen her look this relaxed in years.
//
“Sleep well?” Safiyah greeted Pam from the entrance, her emerald green robes and golden jewelry a stark contrast to the obscure grey of the stone building behind her. As the night before, Pam had the distinct impression that she was being led to a performance, carefully curated and rehearsed for her benefit. Pam supposed she should have been impressed. It was not every day one was wined, dined, and networked by an island autocrat. But she was too tired to focus on these theatrics, and instead they simply washed over her unappreciated.
Pam strode up to the entrance with barely a glance in the other woman’s direction. “Let’s get on with it shall we?”
A spear tipped towards her, and Pam registered a guard masked in the shadows of the overhang, now judiciously blocking the opening with an eye towards Safiyah. Safiyah in turn simply nodded and with a wave of her hand the offending article was removed from beneath Pam’s nose.
This time it was Safiyah’s turn to glide past, merely motioning for Pam to follow as she led her down stone passageways illuminated only by unsteady torchlight. “With your background, you must understand the sensitive nature of the desert rose. These remnants are our most valuable asset on the island and must be carefully guarded. Many have sought their power. Some for good, some for ill… and all for naught. The desert rose is the world’s gift to Coryana, and on Coryana it must remain.”
Safiyah led them down a cramped staircase carved into the stone beneath their feet. The passageways narrowed, and the torches became few and far between. But Pam could feel a clarity between these walls that only grew as the turns became more twisted and cramped. A phantom sensation gripped her chest and seemed to pull her, compel her, forward.
“Outsiders are no longer permitted to be in the presence of the desert rose. We have found that intentions mean little when someone leaves the island. The temptation to bring a cutting of Coryana’s treasure with them upon their return is too great. You are being gifted this rare opportunity to see the desert rose because you are committed to remaining on Coryana. And I’m afraid the desert rose needs you.”
At the bottom was a thick door, bolted and secured with two separate locking mechanisms. Safiyah nodded at another watching guard, who stepped forward to produce a singular key, releasing the topmost padlock. Safiyah produced the second.
“We keep the seeds in a secured vault. Temperature and moisture controlled for maximum preservation.”
She unlocked the door and stepped aside, revealing an interior that looked remarkably like a line of safety deposit boxes. Clinical. Orderly. Not the place Pam would have chosen as the home of the island’s most precious botanical species. She shivered in the chilled air, a reminder of the lack of sunlight in the room.
Safiyah unlocked a central box and pulled open a drawer, gesturing for Pam to step forward. As she approached the steel container the energy of the room seemed to buzz around her, emanating from the open drawer. The hair on the back of her arms stood up, while her heart pounded away in her chest. She shuddered as she drew near, the sensation of being pulled growing stronger with each step. By the time she halted in front of the drawer she had entirely lost confidence in whether her steps were her own. Finally she lowered her eyes to gaze upon seven nondescript seeds, scattered at the bottom of the steel box. They seemed to rest on a bed of fine grey snow, which from the smoky aroma Pam identified as ash flakes. There was charring on the edges of the seed coats, and two seeds sported hairline cracks carving forked paths across each surface.
Despite the plain and damaged appearance, Pam almost felt… intimidated. It was a rare sensation. Pam had stared down SWAT teams, corporate hit men, and Batman without batting an eye, but something about the waves of energy buffeting her was more dangerous. It was deceptive, and Pam could sense that it would be easy to drown in its hidden depths. Yet she couldn’t help but feel like she was on the precipice of discovery. The scientist within her was stirring. This was something unexplored, untested, and unknown. Renee had brought her somewhere interesting after all
She stretched out a hand.
“May I?”
Safiyah nodded, watching with a critical eye as Pam picked each seed up individually, turning them over, weighing, inspecting. Safiyah crossed her arms.
“Well?”
Pam glanced up. “The damage is mostly cosmetic. But I’m not sure you have enough genetic material here to revive the population. It will require some very careful crosses.”
“Can you accelerate their growth?”
Pam paused at her bluntness, before silently taking stock of her own energy levels, depleted as they were. Did she have enough to put on her own theatrical display for Safiyah? The slight throbbing at the back of her head suggested otherwise. She chose her next words carefully.
“That may not be wise at this stage. We need to prepare a nursery to maximize their natural growth potential. Accelerating growth without establishing the plant’s permanent environment would be premature.”
Safiyah nodded along. “Of course. But I require… proof of concept.” Safiyah plucked a seed from the bottom of the drawer, pinching it between index finger and thumb as she held it up to Pam’s eye level. She tilted her head expectantly.
Pam blinked. “Proof of concept?”
“Show me,” her voice was soft but edged with hardness, “that you can deliver.”
The room constricted with a new tension in the silence that followed. Pam didn’t like veiled threats on the best of days, and today was certainly not one of them.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m Poison Ivy. I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.”
Safiyah waved her hand dismissively. “Titles are meaningless without action.
You may have earned your title in Gotham, but you’re on Coryana. We require something… more concrete.”
Pam’s jaw clenched. Who was this woman to demand she parade around her powers at will? She took a slow breath, trying to release her tension. Maybe the weariness that had settled in her body had made her more obliging. And truth be told she was curious. The power within these seeds was tantalizing, and she was intrigued at the possibilities of what that force might look like outside the confines of a protective shell.
Pam extended her hand to Safiyah who released the seed into her upturned palm with a tight-lipped smile.
She took another breath and closed her eyes, mentally reaching out to the small bundle of growth potential. Guiding a seed for Pam was in many ways like guiding a child, and Pam was metaphorically reaching out her hand.
Suddenly it was as if she had been violently shoved from behind. She could feel herself tip, suspended for a single weightless moment before she plummeted towards the bottom of the familiar crevasse. Her legs were heavy and useless, as if a great weight had been lashed to her legs. Her skin was being ripped raw by the rush of wind around her and the sound of her rapid descent whipped around her ears. This energy that had enveloped her in this mad race to destruction was raw, feral, and determined to grip her until it dashed her against the impending rocks. Her own power could not hold and she could sense the cliffs around her begin to collapse. About to be pummeled from both above and below, Pam could only watch helplessly as she descended into darkness.
//
Pam’s was nudged towards consciousness with a ringing in her ears and a pounding at her temple. Yet there was also a soothing sensation from someone gently cradling her head. The radiating white heat faded away into a gentle warmth under calloused and practiced hands that she recognized as Renee’s. The familiar touch was the only distinct sensation that wasn’t blurred as if she was underwater. She focused on that sensation, of gentle fingers pressed against her temples, of the back of her head using Renee’s sturdy legs as a cushion. The feeling dimly reminded her of that other recent awakening over the skies of this island, those seconds of calm upon that familiar trusted body before the plane’s unfamiliar jolts had brought panic crashing down.
A voice suddenly cut through the murky waters of her clearing thoughts, which she dimly recognized as Safiyah’s. She could feel the annoyance dripping from her words, each drop disturbing the still murky waters of her thoughts.
“What the hell was that? A panic attack? Some sort of power overload?”
A second voice emerged through the haze. She immediately recognized the hint of a Philadelphia accent centered directly above her.
“There’s no precedent for the kind of power’s Pam has, and there’s certainly no precedent for when things go wrong.”
“Precedent? How about prediction? How long can we expect this condition to last?”
“Oh I’m sorry, did this episode inconvenience you? Delay your 12-step Coryana revitalization plan? Seems to me that pushing Pam to grow a super plant from burnt-out popcorn seeds five minutes after landing on your island was a bad plan.”
“No one expects the great Poison Ivy to collapse from a bit of accelerated growth.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to try it?”
Pam smiled, eyes still closed. Renee was getting sassy again. She always did when she got angry. The surface beneath her shifted and she could feel the voice turn towards her.
“She’s back.” There were fingers tangled in her hair and thumbs caressing her temples, echoing Pam’s attempts to rub away Renee’s worries last night. Pam’s eyes opened to reveal Renee, face creased with concern again. Maybe she had been right to worry.
“Are you alright?” Renee asked, voice suddenly soft.
“I’m on the floor,” she deadpanned.
“That’s really not an answer.”
Pam gingerly sat up, stretching her limbs, trying to ignore Safiyah’s face, outwardly stoic but barely containing a simmering… Fury? Annoyance? The options cycled through until the correct one slotted into place. Fear. A fear colored with anger, the most dangerous kind.
Pam prided herself in her ability to read motivations, a useful skill in her line of work. She may hate the drive of an oil tycoon to force shareholder profits to ever more dizzying heights. But she could understand it, anticipate it, account for it. And now she registered signs of desperation on Safiyah’s face, written in each line, the way her jaw was set, and the eyes that flickered with desperation . Like the eyes of a wild animal about to gnaw off its own leg to escape a trap. Reviving the Desert Rose was more than a pet project in ecological preservation. Whatever this was, it ran deeper, more primal. Safiyah had been relying on Pam, and now that she had failed Safiyah seemed… unnerved. With someone of Safiyah’s calculating and practical nature, any presentation of weakness would be dangerous. To disappoint Safiyah was to pose risk to herself, and by extension Renee.
A flash of anger spread across her chest. What a stupid risk. She had allowed herself to be goaded into this failed power display. She could no longer barter off the weight of the name Poison Ivy She would need to reestablish her worth to Safiyah. She would need to pique her interest.
She stood up, somewhat shakily, turning slowly to Safiyah, using her height to her advantage as she looked down at her.
“There’s power there that’s…unmatched. Guiding those seeds felt… like trying to wrestle the power of the redwoods. It will take more than a simple nudge from me to direct this kind of lifeforce.”
Safiyah’s face barely moved, but Pam could detect the subtle notes of interest in her face. Safiyah, was intrigued.
“If the seeds cannot be nudged, what then?”
“It is difficult… After the trauma of the fire you say they’ve experienced, they are essentially in a state of protective dormancy. I suspect that’s why they reacted so violently to an attempt to reach them. These seeds are… lashing out at any possible threats while they heal. I am certain I can reach them but I will need to regain the strength I’ve lost while being… indisposed for so long.” She glanced at Renee. “It will take preparation. I cannot attempt to wrest control of this species’ trajectory casually. It has a will of its own, and the will cannot be easily influenced. But,” she stared at Safiyah. “The will to live is also quite strong. I am confident that in time, these seeds can be coaxed to grow.”
Safiyah nodded slowly, face easing with the promise that her goals, however amorphous and mysterious, remained achievable.
“I will direct my people to give you whatever resources you need. Coryana, within reason, is at your disposal.”