Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"What is that."

"A pothos."

"Pam."

"It's very hardy. You will not be able to kill it. Even if you're bad at water. Or bad at sunlight."

"I am bad at both of those."

"I know, Harls. That's why I got it for you."

"Why."

"It'll remind you of me. And maybe one day you'll stop obsessing over Joker. He's dead and you're still talking about him all the time."

"You don't know he's dead."

"Fine. Maybe he's not dead. Maybe he's alive and you just stop caring anyway."

* * *

"You're bad at this. You know that?"

"I know."

"You love me, Pam."

"It's just a plant thing."

"Say it. Say you love me. Say it and I'll say it back and I'm done with Joker."

"Too many years of broken promises for that, hon."

"You could do it, Ives. He's not even alive, so just brainwash me with your chemicals. I won't mind. We're both doctors. This is 'informed consent.'"

"That's sweet. It's also not how the pheromones work."

"Because you can't make it work like that, or because you don't want to?"

"That's just it. Those aren't different things."

/ / /

PAM ISLEY'S DIARY:
April 1, 2025

All it took to figure out that Sionis was at Gasliter, and playing poker in the basement, was thrusting my palm into the bartender's chest. Little known secret about Pam Isley: she used to be a tomboy, and was a red belt in Taekwondo.

I don't think the term 'tomboy' is even used anymore: it's basically what they called pre-pubescent girls in the 1990s who liked playing actual games where there was a winner and a loser. In elementary school I'd trade Magic: The Gathering cards and play first base at kickball.

My second-best friend was a boy named Josh. We'd identify the newest (or at least most inflated) kickballs and have a strategy to outrace the other kids when we got let out for recess. We'd microwave Hot Pockets, play Final Fantasy VII, and argue about whether Tommy was better as the Green Ranger or the White Ranger. We were also both in the same Taekwondo class on Tuesdays.

My mom kept calling it 'karate' no matter how many times I corrected her. My dad called it 'karate' too, but I never corrected him because he was a workaholic with anger issues.

Then junior high and puberty happened and that all stopped. Nothing changed between first and fifth grade; then middle school hit like a fucking tsunami that I've arguably never recovered from. Because boys like Josh were now 'guys,' and tomboys like me were now 'girls.'

There was still recess, but no more kickball; boys no longer played games, they competed. The athletic boys competed at touch football and basketball, the nerdy boys competed at Star Wars lore or Pentium vs Athlon. Which left me to stand around with other girls and their incredibly alienating conversations. It's not like I couldn't talk to a girl. Josh was only my second best friend; my first best friend at the time was a girl named Amanda. We were adorable. But Amanda was a girl, and went to Beaver Lake Middle School while I got assigned to Pine Lake. And at Pine Lake Middle School, I had to talk to girls.

I was a tomboy because I loved games, and these girls played games, but not the kind of games I like. Not the ones with rules and scores, where winning matters precisely because you achieve nothing in doing so. They played games over status, but where the rules were incomprehensible and seemed loosely correlated with wearing Abercrombie and getting male attention? I could never fucking figure it out, so I just stood there and watched the plants.

At first the plants were just somewhere to put my eyes. But get bored enough and you might as well see the things you're looking at, right? There was a rhododendron the size of a small car planted by the benches – and I realized I had no idea what it was. I remember earlier grades being taught botany taxonomy: conifers, evergreens, deciduous, fungi – but what had we actually been taught, if I couldn't identify what this pretty bush was, that existed to produce pretty pink petals? I was more interested in the pink petals than anything the girls ever said.

I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate my parents had gotten broadband internet by then; had this happened later, I would've just tried to look it up in Encarta, gotten a few paragraphs on rhododendron at most. But now there was Google, and a search for rhododendron turned up dozens of links to amazing web sites: family, genus, species, given delicious Latin names that even my parents or teachers couldn't pronounce. And, yeah, didn't take long to go from rhododendron to poisonous plants. The link between pretty and dangerous was right under my nose the whole time. I just had to find the right place for it to click.

* * *

To be clear, I wasn't bullied in the typical school fashion. The girls weren't including me in their group as some sort of cruel prank, nobody was dumping pig's blood on me. But was I really friends with those girls? I'd say as much as the plants were "part" of the school yard. We were both included for being ornamental; because people like having pretty things around that don't talk.

Josh, to his credit, it's not like he pretended I didn't exist once we started learning pre-algebra. He'd still say hi, we'd still talk about Taekwondo, music, and videogames, and for ten minutes it'd feel like fifth grade again. But attention from Josh meant attention from girls, but not the good attention.

"So you're friends with Josh, huh?"

"Wow, you do karate with him?"

"Do you think he likes you?"

"Do you want him to ask you out?"

These were not enthusiastic questions of girls eager to support my romantic life, the questions were fucking shade being deployed against a girl who had done nothing to them, except be the one a cute boy chose to talk to. I was pretty enough to get male attention despite being socially incompetent, and this meant I'd never actually be their friend. They'd just make me feel uncomfortable enough that I'd start to dread Josh talking to me, and in turn he drifted away and redirected his interest elsewhere.

And this felt so fucking unfair. At age 11, I couldn't think of a thing I was unhappy about. By age 14, I mostly just wanted a giant fucking pit to erupt on the recess yard, swallow everyone up, and just leave me the fuck alone.

With the rhododendron. Leave me alone with the rhododendron.

* * *

Look, those girls were bitches, but let's be clear: I came out of the ground and the only safe harbor I could think of, was a purple-haired girl at a cell phone repair store. I'm not entirely blameless for my cynical misanthropy. To this day, any collection of more than four women is just incomprehensible for me to interact with. When I started dating women I thought they'd be an exception, but no: it always revolves around travel, restaurants, and recent streaming TV shows. Nobody wants to talk about anything real, so I always feel like I'm on Jeopardy, buzzing in a half second slow every time. By the time I can ask about whether the new season of Bridgerton is any good, somehow the topic is back to Boring Fucking Vacations for $500, Alex. Or Ken. Whoever hosts that show now.

Man, that just reminded me of an Arkham story. This was my second stint, because Harley was an inmate and not an employee. Joker bet Eddie Nashton he's smarter than him at Jeopardy. The show aired as usual in the rec room, but he had Harley fuck with the TV input so it was actually playing an old episode, to which Joker already had all the answers memorized. She didn't really need my help, but insisted I come with her for 'moral support.' We were crammed in some A/V closet when she said she fucked up; the door locked from the outside and we were stuck there. God, I'm so bad at taking hints sometimes.

* * *

So you have to understand the significance of this palm strike that caused the bartender to fly back against the shelves: none of what I wrote mattered for what happened next, except all of it does.

But we also used to break boards at Taekwondo, and I liked the open-palm strikes because they hurt my knuckles less. On the other hand, Josh loved it when his knuckles bled, because boys are stupid, and everything in this story involves a lot of stupid boys.

I heard the bartender's ribs crack when I struck him. More than one crack, at that – and then several more when his body made impact with the back wall. Bottles of vodka and gin crashed around him. I vaulted over the bar and stepped on his hand. Not too hard. Just hard enough to know I could break more bones if I wanted, starting with his metacarpals. He told me about the basement. Then he fled, along with all the employees and patrons in Gasliter.

The basement was just unfinished concrete and harsh fluorescent lighting. Sionis and four of his skuzz, as the Vela Repair girls called them, were dealing cards and tossing chips. I approached the table unhurriedly, my hands in the pockets of the Carhartt jacket. Only made it a few steps before Roman Sionis saw me approaching.

I don't remember the exact dialogue that happened before things got… kinetic, but it went something like this:

SIONIS: "Poison Ivy! Where you been?"

ME: "Roman. It's been a while."

SIONIS: "Didn't answer my questions. Drafted by the army? The Salvation Army, maybe. The fuck are you wearing?"

ME: "Nice suit. Don't see you in green often."

SIONIS: "What can I say? You were an inspiration."

ME: "Inspired enough to pay me the money you owe me?"

SIONIS: "I don't owe you shit. Either ante up, or get the fuck out."

ME: "Or else?"

SIONIS: "Or else I put a bullet in your forehead and send you back to whatever grave you just stepped out of."

ME: "Try it."

He did.

It really was an A+ shot. Dead center of the forehead. Knocked me down, and then out.

* * *

Let's get a few things straight here, and answer some questions on the record.

Was I doing this to stall from seeing Harley? Absolutely. I so badly wanted to see her, but was terrified of how she'd react. Seeking out Black Mask to collect on the $25K he owed me seemed as good a reason as any to stall.

Did I know I had enhanced strength? Yeah, the moment I picked up the water cooler jug at Vela Repair. The five gallon jug felt like a tiny Poland Spring bottle in my hand. It made a twelve-year-old's red-belt Taekwondo suddenly, surprisingly effective.

Did I know I was bulletproof? No. I knew there was some chance I'd confront Sionis and end up dead.

Was I suicidal? No. I didn't want to die. But no one asked me if I wanted to live again. So maybe I didn't.

* * *

So Sionis shoots me in the head, I literally get blown backwards by the bullet's momentum, and I black out. And while blacked out, I thought about Caiden.

Caiden. Of course I'd think about Caiden. If I was thinking about Josh earlier, it made perfect sense I'd think about Caiden. Spend two years in the ground, bounce a bullet off your skull, your brain is going to go for the files in the nicest drawers. Harley, Josh, Caiden.

Caiden was my AP Chem lab partner at seventeen – the only boy in that building who'd argue Rilke with me, and who also, improbably, happened to be a captain of the football team, good enough to get a scholarship at Northwestern. He wasn't just an old soul, but an ancient one. He should've existed 2300 years earlier, studying at Aristotle's Lyceum and then competing in discus or javelin or whatever proto-Olympic sports they had.

AP Chem was our little bubble, forty minutes a day where we somehow turned exercises in titration and calorimetry into exhilarating and flirtatious banter. But it was structurally impossible to expand that bubble; he probably dated half of my "friends," and I was forced to disavow any interest in him to the point where he likely heard about it and assumed it was true. We graduated, and I cherished the long and sweet note he left in my yearbook, but I assumed that our last day in AP Chem would also be the last day I spoke to him.

But the summer we were twenty-two, both of us freshly spat out of undergrad, we found each other again on Facebook, which soon led to a coffee date and a stack of books neither of us needed to be reading. At forty minutes I felt the conditioned dismay that our conversation was over, then was suddenly struck by the realization: there was no more AP Chem bubble. We could talk about root systems forever. Or at least until the café stacked the chairs. Then we could get dinner, or see a movie, or meet up with a friend, or return to my apartment and fuck. All the obstacles and limitations of high school were gone. We could do any of those things, and we did.

If you want to know why I still fill out "bisexual" on whatever relevant questionnaires, it's basically him. I'd date another Caiden tomorrow, but unfortunately his species is almost never found in its more evolved and domesticated form.

We had four months. May to August, not one wasted day in it. At the end he had a choice – Los Angeles, where his friends swore the film money and the pretty people were waiting, or a Classical Studies PhD at Washington, which happened to sit a ten-minute walk from my own program. I could see the entire rest of it if he picked Washington. The same library until close. Two stipends, one bad apartment, a good life. Tenured by thirty, probably – the insufferable dual-faculty couple who bore everyone at dinner and don't notice. All he needed was a reason to stay. All he needed was for me to ask him.

I didn't ask. And the reason – which I have never once said out loud – was small and airless and humiliating: it felt like going backwards. Building a life with a boy I'd known since I was seventeen. Returning to someone from before. It offended some idea of myself that was half private vanity, half borrowed theory. Four years of undergrad had handed me the vocabulary to dress the vanity up as principle: this was marrying your "high school sweetheart." I'd be regressing to a fate that intelligent, educated, liberal young women were supposed to have evolved past. I'd be "settling," like my mother, trapped in a provincial fate that was too oppressive for joy, but never quite abusive enough for escape.

The fact that Caiden was an individual, with his own set of facts, didn't enter into it. He wasn't a "high school sweetheart," he wasn't even an "old flame." It was clear he saw me as a new flame, one compelling enough that he'd gladly let it torch any other futures he was considering. Again, all I had to do was ask.

But my vanity was narrating a script, and the script had one rule, and the rule was that the only permitted direction for a life was forward, away from everyone who had ever actually known me.

I had decided reunion was a subset of failure, and I was too vain to fail. So vain, in fact, that I refused to call it vanity, and instead funneled my rationalization through principles and politics.

It was, and I can say this now with the clarity of a bullet bouncing off one's forehead, egregiously fucking stupid. Change is not the opposite of return. Sometimes the person from before is the only one alive who can see all of you at once – the one they knew and the one you built – and can recognize those aren't two different people, even if they love them both.

* * *

I just want to name this, because I think it's the actual revelation and the rest is packaging. If I'd asked Caiden to stay, Woodrue doesn't happen. I know that isn't how causation works -- I'm a scientist, there's no control group for a life, you don't get to run it twice. But I also know it's true. Caiden was the version of my life with another person in it – someone who was willing to be received if I was willing to take.

Even Josh in the recess yard, also wanting to be received while I let some stupid mean girls in training bras intimidate me out of taking him.

For all my supposedly enlightened thinking, I had overlooked this entirely. I was waiting for people to take me, then getting wounded when they didn't, then getting blindsided when I did meet someone who had no problem not just taking me, but taking everything from me.

And here's the part it took a bullet to see. Woodrue did not actually take everything from me. He didn't take the files in the nicest drawers – Harley, Josh, Caiden – the files were never connected to the body. I literally know this because I have a new body now, and they're just there. I can just… read them.

Took two years in the dirt and a bullet bouncing off my head to realize I could. I don't know if I deserve "better late than never." But I do think I deserve better than "never."

* * *

So. Lying down, face-up on a filthy basement floor, my brain finally had the clarity to access those files in the nicest drawer, because it was trying to tell me something, and it wasn't subtle:

Harley is not going backwards.

Wanting her is not a failure of forward motion. We are both unrecognizable and we are both exactly who we always were, and every obstacle that once stood between us is gone now.

The only thing standing in my way was the same, small, stupid pride that put Caiden on that flight. She had openly told me she'd be willing to be received.

That's when I realized: I did want to live again, because I wanted to know if that offer still stood. And if it did, I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. I would take her.

I also realized: if I was going to see Harley, I didn't want to do it wearing basketball shorts.

* * *

My eyes shot open. I don't know how long I was out, but it couldn't have been that long because Sionis and his Black Mask skuzz were still standing by the poker table. Now all of them had their guns drawn. They saw I went down, but hadn't bled.

So I just sat up, and then stood up. This received a range of predictable reactions.

"Shoot her AGAIN."

"Since when is she bulletproof?"

"What the fuck—"

"You fucking FREAK—"

They all fired their guns this time, not just Sionis, but I was ready for it. I crouched and turned my body so my back was facing them. The bullets were painful, I'm not going to lie – they just didn't feel like bullets. My back absorbed the impact, and in some cases caused the bullets to ricochet off and embed themselves in the basement concrete.

It was less than a minute before the gunshots stopped and I could only hear the impotent chik-chik-chik of a gun firing an empty clip. Then I stood back up and viewed the scene. Sionis was desperately trying to grab a second gun he kept holstered at his belt. I closed the distance between us and gave him a similar strike to his chest to the one I gave the bartender upstairs. His ribs shattered on impact, then something in his shoulders cracked when he hit the edge of the poker table.

Then Roman Sionis crumpled to the ground, but I wasn't done with him yet. In fact, I was just getting started. Four years' interest, as Steph had put it.

* * *

So I'm holding Sionis by the collar, literally lifting him off the ground, like we're in a high school movie, like I'm the antagonist bully and I'm about to shove the protagonist nerd into a locker. That's when I hit him in the mask, with a closed fist. Pure reflex; I expected it to sting like hell. But it didn't hurt, and in fact felt good, so I hit him again, and his skull mask actually started cracking around his eyes. So I hit him again.

And again.

The chunks of his skull mask over his eye socket started to break off, and exposed the terrified eye underneath. It kept feeling good. Almost good enough to make me stop being depressed about the Green.

"Give me your pants, Rome."

Was I doing this as some emasculating gesture? No. Because he was wearing an olive green suit, and I wanted those pants. Swap those ridiculous blue and orange basketball shorts with those pants, and I actually had a decently presentable outfit to see Harley. No underwear or socks, but the only scenarios where those were relevant to Harley were likely good ones.

* * *

Look, I've never done this before. I've never beaten someone up.

Taekwondo is not about beating people up. It's about striking your opponents enough times that they end up in a state of beated-up-ness. Not the same thing.

This was physical, kinetic violence, with my own hands. Old Ivy would've just called on the Green to level Gasliter without even setting foot in it. But Old Ivy also could die from a bullet.

Now – was I aware that beating the tar out of Roman Sionis with my own hands, and stripping him of his pants in front of his crew was going to be an emasculating gesture? Well, yes. Did I somehow enjoy that this was going to be an ancillary outcome? Also yes. But again – the catalyst for all this was the olive suit. If he's wearing his usual attire, I don't think it would've occurred to me to get his pants, and I think I would've cared more about the money sitting on his poker table.

Given the fear in his eye, I thought maybe this would be easy. Just a shock-and-awe assault from Poison Ivy 2.0 that caused immediate capitulation. But he was the Black Mask for a reason. He liked to play games to win, just like I do, and he didn't want to accept losing this game.

I could see Sionis recover enough composure so that his eye was no longer terrified. It was angry now. The anger was fueling a desperation to stave off the humiliation that I was dangling as his future. "FUCK you, Ivy," he said, spitting at me.

It landed on my cheek. Just fucking typical. Men would rather mark you with their fluids than apologize.

I slammed him face-down on the poker table, grabbed the back of his head, and slammed his head against the green felt a few more times for good measure. Stacks of chips and cash flew all over the place. These were not Taekwondo moves.

Then I looked at the four other goons, all of whom were now trying to figure out a certain kind of math. If they came at me, they didn't like their odds. If they stood back, Roman would probably not look at that charitably. They could run, but they'd have to get past me. Good luck with that.

"You made your point, you fucking green-faced freak. Take the money and go."

We had moved from anger to Stage Three, bargaining. We were making progress here. Dr. Quinzel would be proud.

I still had Sionis' head and chest pinned down against the poker table felt. Then I leaned down to put my mouth right up against Sionis' ear, and whispered, "I wasn't kidding about the pants. Take them off."

The mouth of Sionis' mask curled into a sneer. "You gonna kiss me, Ivy? You remember how that went last time."

Ugh. Fucking walked into that one.

* * *

I hate telling this story because I hate how naïve and desperate I was, but I already told the Vela Repair girls so I might as well dump it here, while I still have lingering immunity to shame.

Years ago, there was a container being shipped out of Gotham that contained confiscated orchids and a few cycads some collector had bought off a poacher – half of them endangered, all of them about to die in a steel box. I wanted in: liberate the plants, sell the rare ones, keep Baudelaire alive another season. I asked for a meeting with Sionis because everyone knew he had the dockworker unions under his thumb, and he had access to anything coming in or out of the shipping yards.

He wanted twenty-five grand – the last of my aunt's money, what the shop hadn't already eaten – so instead of handing it over, I tried to seduce the access out of him, the way I'd gotten plenty of things from men before. He played along. Then I went for the close with a pheromone-laced kiss. The mask stopped it cold – nothing absorbed. He gloated in my face, said the price was now fifty, "or back down to twenty-five if you kiss me again."

Then he said he was fucking with me. Like some kiss from a whore like you is worth that much. But the $25K offer was still on the table. So I took him up on it, like a moron. I was desperate.

So I paid the twenty-five. He took every dollar and unlocked nothing – the container shipped out on schedule, sealed, and I felt every plant inside it go quiet, one deck at a time. So I called them up through the steel myself. They came – they always come – and they tore themselves apart breaking out of that box. Warped, ruined, nothing left to sell. All the Green could do was grieve them.

Then more fallout: Baudelaire was bankrupt by the end of the month, and the wreck on the pier was unmistakably me, which is how I ended up detained and thrown into Arkham City. So when I say Roman Sionis owes me twenty-five thousand dollars: understand the number is the smallest part of it.

* * *

Here's what a lot of people don't understand: I'm not some anti-villain that hates Batman but also hates most of the rogues he fights. Old Ivy just couldn't play their fucking game. Because before, I could not singularly hurt Roman Sionis. I could summon some prehistoric roots to thrust through the floorboards to hurt him, but it would likely just kill him. And his goons – sure, plenty would say killing them too would be doing Gotham a favor – but that's not my judgment to render.

And even if you're not sympathetic to that, what about the civilians around? And even if there aren't civilians around, Gasliter is a real bar with real bartenders and employees, and destroying the building means I just put them out of work. And again, Old Ivy's not bulletproof, remember? So it often would've come down to whether the Green responded fast and strong enough before they could draw guns. Didn't like to run repeat controlled experiments on that one.

Batman always acted like I'm some unpredictable variable, which was wrong, and he'd do it in the most condescending way possible, which was annoying. He loved doing that thing where I'd be walking from fucking Whole Foods late in the evening, and he'd make a sound behind me, so I'd look behind, and then look forward and run right into his chest plate, and nearly drop my stupidly expensive groceries.

And he'd say something ominous like, "I don't know where you stand, but I hope you decide it's staying on the sidelines." And I cannot emphasize, how many fucking times, I did not know what the fuck he was talking about. Like I fucking gave a shit about whatever schemes the boys like Harvey Dent or Oz Cobblepot were up to.

I didn't tell him that, of course. I should've. I should've just said, "I would stay on the sideline with these $19 jars of Manuka honey if you could get the fuck out of my way."

But I was too filled with ego as coping for trauma in those days. So I'd always taunt him, say something like, "I'll make whatever choices I want to, Batman," in this sexpot seductive voice. Because he'd always raise his gauntlet when I did that, looking at some digital readout. He had developed some prophylactic against my pheromones years ago, but I liked to make him check. Maybe take a second dose. You can never be too sure, Bats.

But this was all a stupid reaction on my part, because it clearly made him think I gave a shit about any of it. He never needed to do that because the pattern was pretty clear: I reserved options involving death and destruction for the shit I actually cared about.

Like when I realized leveling Gotham, and the downstream environmental and population effects, could mean the IPCC projections for climate change would revise a whole quarter of a degree downward. Do you know how many ecological systems will be spared if the earth only warms to +2.25 degrees by the year 2100 rather than +2.50 degrees? Do you know how many humans will be spared in that scenario? Enough so that destroying Gotham was worth the tradeoff!

Can't believe they called that motive "insane" and sent me to Arkham. It's literally the most fucking rational logic ever, really. Literally just a trolley problem decision – you know, flip the train switch to kill one guy on the tracks instead of five. Intentionally choosing to destroy life to save more is sociopathic in some ethical frameworks, granted. But why did that mean me getting sentenced to Arkham? It's psychotic, sure. But it's not insane.

* * *

So Sionis is gloating about me kissing him four years ago. He still thinks my only option to get what I want requires some sort of input from him. That he might concede I could inflict pain – but that me taking his pants is ultimately a mutual decision, one he has to consent to.

At least his goons knew how dead wrong he was. They chose to remain paralyzed, or, more likely, to continue brainstorming ways they could be seen trying to help him, without actually risking anything that the options for helping him would entail.

So that's where we are so far. I'm holding him bent over the poker table, face down.

And I knee him in the crotch.

He made that sound men make when you've knocked their balls into their larynx. Just the low squeal of agony as their body reconsiders the pros and cons of descended testicles in fetal development. Personally, I'd vote for ascended. Seems like an evolutionary zig when prehistoric primates should've zagged.

Eventually Sionis' breaths transitioned from squealing agony to grunting in residual pain. He tried to wriggle off the table, but there was no way he was getting out of my grip. "You can't fucking talk to ME that way. You can't just take shit like this."

I could've bounced his head off the poker table again, but that would admit I couldn't think of anything more threatening. Then I saw it – his second gun was still holstered at his belt. I'm not an expert with guns, but I could tell it fired the large bullets, the .45 caliber ones, the ones that always sounded like a cannon. I kept him pinned down with my left hand, then unholstered and took his gun with my right.

He tried wriggling out again with only one hand pinning him down, but he wasn't going anywhere. His level of attempted resistance literally felt like holding down a toddler. It was obvious that my strength significantly exceeded what was suggested by my additional musculature.

I could break a man's spine one-handed now, but I don't know if I'll ever feel a seed wake up again. The Poison Ivy of the past would've mourned such a trade, and found it an unspeakable tragedy. But I was beginning to reconsider that. Maybe it was actually a pretty fair trade.

* * *

I was holding him down with one arm and had the muzzle of his own gun against his spine. It was just clear I was going to have to pressure him with every fucking tool of masculine dominance possible. It was the only language these fuckers were wired to speak, anyway.

"Oh, Rome," I said, bringing the muzzle to the small of his back. I traced a line with the muzzle across his spine, and stopped at the base of his skull, the titular black mask worn by the Black Mask that made up his face. We both knew the mask wasn't bulletproof. It wasn't even proof against my fists. Although maybe those were stronger than bullets at this point. Empirical research would be necessary later.

"Do you really want me to play the game the way you do?" I asked him.

Sionis was breathing fast and heavy now through his nose, as if he could snarl his way into turning the indignity he was feeling into some sort of strength to counter mine. Good luck with that. All he could really muster was another: "Fuck. You."

I pressed the gun harder against his skull mask. Found the seam where the flesh of his neck ended and the mask began. "Do you want a bullet in your fucking head, Rome?"

More snarling sounds, but no words this time. His poker buddy lieutenants were completely paralyzed at this point. Given how cruel Sionis was known to treat them, I wouldn't say they were enjoying this, but… maybe they didn't mind so much. They had definitely decided against intervening.

I fired the gun. At the floor. Stone basement foundation, so I was risking a bullet ricochet, but Sionis and his goons had more to worry about than me. Sionis tensed up and bucked his legs in response. He really thought he was going to get a bullet in the head. Maybe he would, if he didn't give me his pants.

"I'll repeat the question. Do you want a bullet in your fucking head, Rome?"

"No," he said, quietly. Finally, some compliance. But I wasn't going to let him off the hook that easily.

"Interesting. And what do you do when someone tells you no?"

No response.

I fired again, holding the gun by his head and firing at the opposite wall. I could see his exposed eye squeeze tight. The eye looked terrified again. Which meant Sionis was terrified again. I looked around. His goons were terrified. The men were terrified.

Men have two expressions around me. Desire, which is fairly obvious. And fear, but they weren't scared of me. In the past, if I had terrified men in my presence, it was always terror of the plants. This was different. This was a Poison Ivy entirely capable of delivering fear on her own.

They felt like how so many women are victimized every day. Trapped in a small room, by someone who can assault them physically, demanding they take off clothing.

I'm not saying I stuck it to the patriarchy here. Like, I cannot believe I came out of the fucking ground only to find out that shithead is in the White House again. Breaking Roman Sionis' ribs and taking his pants wasn't going to change that.

But my goal wasn't destroying the patriarchy. My goal was the pants.

* * *

Sionis was broken, and he was practically whimpering now.

"Don't do this. I don't want this. Please don't do this."

I shoved the gun back at the base of his skull mask.

"And when someone says that to you," I asked him, "do you stop?"

"I'll stop. I swear. I'll stop." Damn. Roman Sionis had gotten so pathetic, so quickly, I felt my righteous anger start draining into a depressing contempt. Time to wrap it up.

"PANTS. OFF. NOW."

Finally. He kicked off his shoes. His hands reached for his belt. He unbuckled and unzipped some things. The pants started to slide down. Unfortunately his boxer briefs started to come off with them.

I didn't need to see any of that, so I yanked on the boxers hard enough to keep them tight around his waist. Thought about wedging them even further, but Biff Tannen's spirit had drained out of me several minutes ago. "Keep your boxers on, you fucking freak."

Once the pants got past his knees, I withdrew my hand that was pinning him down, and yanked the pants off him. Sionis immediately rolled off the table and scampered to take a position by his men. Behind his men. Shirt, vest, jacket, and boxer briefs. And busted mask.

"You," I said, addressing the nearest goon. Then I tossed him Sionis' gun, and turned towards the stairs, olive green pants in hand.

Then I said: "You should probably kill your boss."

* * *

The goon was so surprised by this, he fumbled and nearly dropped the gun. "What?"

Sionis gestured towards me. "Fucking shoot her, you moronic piece of shit!"

I ditched the Carhartt jacket – my back may have absorbed the bullets easily, but I couldn't say the same for the jacket. The earlier gunfire had ripped it to shreds. Then I turned my head to give the goon a last warning. "He's not going to let any of you live and talk about what happened here. So you should probably kill him first."

Sionis was furiously moving over to the goon now. "If you don't fucking shoot her—"

I was already up the stairs when I heard gunshots. First some arguing, then some scuffling, then five gunshots. One or two would've meant the goon grew the balls to kill Sionis. Five meant Sionis had wrestled the gun from him and had shot everyone in the crew that had witnessed it.

I felt bad, but not that bad. I had warned them.

The bar area upstairs had already completely vacated; anyone who hadn't fled when I threw the bartender into the wall was surely scared off by what they could hear happening in the basement. So that's where I slipped off the shorts and put on the pants. For men's trousers, they fit great. Convenient perk of being 5'11", I guess. I still hung on to the shorts. Seemed like a memento I might want to keep.

Did a single pair of olive green pants mean the ledger for Roman Sionis – twenty-five thousand dollars, plus four years' interest, now paid in full?

I'd do that math later. It was time to go see about a girl.