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Ivy would rather die than admit it, but she lives for the days she sees Dr. Quinzel.
You can call me Harleen.
Ivy doesn't. She says Doc instead, reminding her own heart of the distance between them. (Lately, when Ivy's half-asleep, she's been Harls in her head. Another thing she'd never admit out loud.)
Whichever she is, the days Ivy sees her are like the only spots of green in a city of grey. Harleen is a dandelion growing through concrete.
(And Ivy's a shitty poet around her; she should hate it more than she does).
The guards have stopped bothering much about overseeing their sessions. Just locked her in the room and left them to it. Maybe they've realised Harleen might be the one person Ivy wouldn't try to murder. Or maybe they just don't give a fuck about the doctor's safety; from what happened on her first day, Ivy's willing to bet they don't.
Whatever it is, it means she gets to breathe just a little free, from the moment they shove her through the door to Harleen's office, right up until they come to drag her out again. (Harleen yells at them every time she sees them handle Ivy roughly. Ivy's shocked her job here's lasted as long as it has, this tiny fucking person with her blonde bun and her clipboard, and a look in her eyes that makes guards twice her size think twice.)
Today, though, the doctor doesn't yell when the door opens and they shove Ivy in, even when she stumbles and has to catch herself, hard, spitting a curse. She doesn't say anything at all, and Ivy swallows her stream of swear words and looks up.
Harleen is at her desk, but she's not sitting there making notes, or jumping up from her chair to grin at Ivy in that way that feels like she actually wants to see her. She's slumped over the table top, head pillowed on a file, fast asleep.
Ivy takes a tentative step closer, soft and quiet.
Harleen's mouth is open, her glasses askew. Her hair is falling out of her bun. Strands are stuck to her cheek with drool. Her coat is falling off her shoulders, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She's snoring lightly, and a pen is digging into her cheek, and she looks... she looks vulnerable. Not like she did the first day, nervous and jittery and shying back from Ivy's glare. Not like her fear in the woods, wide blue eyes making Ivy give herself up, go back to Arkham rather than watch them kill Harleen too. This is different. She's soft, open. Exhausted.
Fragile. Ivy's never really thought it. Harleen's got steel in her bones. But god, isn't everyone fragile? Isn't her own heart just a ball of paper in the rain, guarded and gilded to make it look strong?
Maybe people are all just paper behind their walls, but that doesn't mean you show it. Even with no plants, Ivy could take Harleen out in a second like this. Or hold her hostage, try and bargain for some freedom.
It'd be the smart thing to do. Not even the bad thing, not really, not trapped in this place, not that Ivy cares about being bad.
Only Ivy looks at her and the fierceness she feels isn't hate, isn't even the will to escape, to survive. It's fierce like something clawing through her chest, right out of her walled-up paper heart. Fierce like the way she feels when she sees a new sapling, struggling to grow. Fierce like her body in the shadow of a giant oak, time and weather and endless strength still not enough, not against the force of the world.
It's fierce like I'd kill before I let anything happen to this.
To you.
Ivy swallows hard, and feels thorns grow in her throat. Humanity's meant to be dead to her. No person is ever supposed to be able to make her feel this way.
God, she should run so hard from this. She should do everything she can to break it apart, before it breaks her instead. She should run and run and never, ever stop, because letting anyone in will only ever hurt her.
But she's frozen. And before she can do anything at all, even begin to think about how to escape this, Harleen mumbles and stirs, blinking her eyes slowly open.
“Wh...” She picks her head slowly off her desk. Blood fades back into the dent the pen left on her cheek, and Ivy watches the flush, like life in a dead place.
Harleen takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes, and it tugs at Ivy's heart in a way that hurts, and she really has to stop this, she has to find some way to fucking run before she feels anything else she shouldn't, but–
“Ivy?”
Ivy tries to find words that are biting, thorns like the ones clawing their way into her. But Harleen's voice is blurry, confused, and she's blinking like a startled creature, and Ivy's too soft, after all.
“Hey, Doc,” she says, and it comes out tender. “Sleeping on the job?”
Harleen rubs her eyes again, pushes her glasses back onto her nose, tucks some hair back from her face, and grins. “Didn't mean to.”
“I could've killed you,” Ivy says, and she wants it to bite, she really does, but it's too light. It's sarcasm not like a weapon, but like banter, like love.
Harleen's grin widens. “Yeah, you said that before. Never did it. Startin' to think Poison Ivy's not as scary as she says she is.”
Ivy scoffs. “Think you need to double-check your analysis, Doc. Even Batman's fucking scared of me.”
Harleen looks at her, dead serious, her hair still a mess, eyes still heavy with sleep. “Ivy, the guy fucks bats. You think I care what he thinks?”
Ivy laughs. She can't help it. It chokes its way out of her, like she's forgotten how, and she tries to stop it, but it's out before she can, and Harleen catches it. Catches it, and laughs too, her grin brighter than the sun, as she gestures for Ivy to sit down.
Ivy does, and tries to get her smile under control, but it's too late, she's smiling like she hasn't in a long time, smiling and trying to hide it, and Harleen looks at her like she might see where Ivy's vulnerable, too.
“I mean it. You don't scare me,” she says, and Ivy should hate it. Will hate herself for this later. But she's here, Harleen's office, laughter, dandelions through concrete, smudged mascara under the doctor's eyes, and god. For a second, it feels like peace.