Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Ivy waited a moment, just to be sure that no one was killing anyone. Just to be sure that everyone was safe. And then she reached up and tapped her comm gently. Let silence filter back in. And leaned back against the rough stone walls of the cave exhaustedly.

Goddamn him. Bruce. Always. Every fucking time. Goddamn him.

She tipped her head back. Let cold stone cradle it. The caves were cold anyway, but they’d dropped the temperature here further still. Necessity. Preservation. It was nice, now. It leeched the pain and the tension from the back of her head. She closed her eyes, and let herself bask a little bit. Let herself sink, and remember something close to calm.

No one dead. No one wounded, or no more than before. No one taken. All was well. Let’s call it all being well. For now, let’s hope.

A shape moved beside her. A form. She blinked, and tilted her head sideways. Looked at the battered, green shape of the Malecandran beside her, the tired amber eyes. He offered awkward, careful sympathy. Slightly hesitant, unsure of his right, but rough and genuine. Ivy felt her mouth twist. Felt grief and rage and hate and reluctant fondness crest through her. She nudged his elbow gently with her own. Two green, splintered survivors, leaning against the walls of a cave.

“… Can I ask?” he asked finally. Softly. Glancing towards the earpiece. “You need not answer. I only …”

He didn’t understand her rage. She knew. The last couple of days, she’d seen. He didn’t understand … oh. A lot of things. Bruce. Bruce and her. Bruce and everyone, really, but especially her. She did … They’d been less than gentle, she knew. Towering, livid. He hadn’t flinched, knowing it wasn’t directed at him, but he had …

He didn’t understand. She knew that. Could understand that. It wasn’t … It wasn’t a thing she could really explain. Not in words, maybe. And he knew that. He gave her the out. He knew it. But.

This was his world, now. This was the mess he found himself thrown into. He’d live. They were fairly sure of it now, enough that Leslie had let him go. Let him up, let him go. Let him come here, with Ivy, and try to help as much as he could. Not because he was better, he was still a splintered and gutted thing, but he’d live, and he couldn’t …

He couldn’t lie with his grief. Not alone. You couldn’t leave someone to just lie alone with something that vast, that all-consuming. Not if you wanted them to live. He had to work, to feel, to help. Or it would eat him, and he’d crawl down into himself, and he’d die.

They knew it, all of them. So well, so personally. You had to move, to work, to act, or the grief alone would gut you. Kill you in your sleep. The vastness of the dead. You had to get up, to move, or you’d lie down and never move again. They knew. All of them. They knew.

He wasn’t supposed to move much. Nothing strenuous. And nothing emotionally strenuous either. Inasmuch as he could avoid it, while coming down here to help with the bodies. But they were his. No one he knew, no one he’d let himself know, but they were his. He felt responsibility. A job he knew, a thing he could help with. So here they were. One of the smaller caves beneath the city, one of Bruce’s auxiliary bases. The one he’d lived out of, during the early days of No Man’s Land. It had held surprisingly well through the quake. And now it was a morgue, and maybe something like a sanctuary.

They’d brought Freeze down. He was out anyway. Half of Arkham was in the wind right now, after the evacuation, and no one was much able to round them up yet. But Victor was easy to find. The whole city had been smashed, threatened. He’d had a single overriding priority. Ivy had known exactly where to find him.

Nora was fine. Well. Still frozen, still in a coma. As fine as she ever was. But the power supply hadn’t been disrupted by any of the fighting. She hadn’t been lost. And with that settled, reassured of that, Victor had been willing enough to come down here and help them preserve …

There were so many. So many pods. Strange coffins, a stark, painful echo immediately after Nora’s cryo-chamber. Victor had been fascinated by the technology, single-minded and ghoulish as ever. J’onn hadn’t been here yet. Ivy was faintly glad of that. Maybe the fluid the Imperium had used to keep its victims alive, for centuries in some cases, would help with Victor’s research, help keep Nora alive that little better, that little longer, while he sought his cures, but J’onn didn’t need to see it. Scientists, even ones as personally motivated as Mr Freeze, could be very, very ghoulish at times.

He'd take it as payment. Samples. Likely he’d have helped anyway, but it had sweetened the deal, and Ivy hadn’t objected. There’d been too much work to do.

She was trying so hard down here not to remember the Boneyard. Not to remember setting up the Boneyard. The endless recovery expeditions. The rows of bodies, many of them by that stage only bones. Too many of them not. They’d only been able to clear the areas where people lived. There were too many. Thousands upon thousands. They’d had to prioritise. And even then, the rows had stretched forever. Too late, in almost every case, to preserve.

Gotham was … so very, very used, to laying out their dead. But these were not quite theirs. They might have to move, later, if Bruce could speak to the League. Return them home. Bring them back to their cities. Their soil. Their boneyards. So they had to be preserved. And not in the pods. Not in those prisons, no matter how much easier it would be to leave them in the fluid. Keep them from rotting. But no. Not one moment more. Not one second longer. Victor, instead. The cold embrace of ice, and sanctuary of the caves. Not the pods. Not anymore.

J’onn had wanted to help. Needed to help. And they’d let him. But he was …

He needed distraction, right now. Distraction from the distraction. She understood. And he didn’t get it. Couldn’t. Not without some explanation. Bruce. The shake in her chest with every word from his mouth and breath from his body right now. The fury. The hate. The desperation. J’onn was a telepath. She could only imagine what he was feeling from her right now. Maybe she did owe it to him to explain.

Assuming she could.

How did you explain Bruce? How did she explain Bruce? She had a flashback, momentarily, to Jason. Lost and confused in the park, trying to understand. Standing over …

They would repair it. The memorial. She would repair it. And. Bruce. Bruce would repair it too. Help. She knew … She knew he would. Utter faith. Total knowledge. And … that. Maybe that. J’onn was a parent. Maybe that could start to explain.

“… I don’t know how much you know about No Man’s Land,” she managed finally. Instinctively distant, protectively remote. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard. Felt.”

She felt him hesitate. Not by aura. Not telepathically. She had none of that. A soulless woman. But she felt the tension of his body. The incremental pause before he answered. Heard the caution in his voice.

“I … I have felt the edges of it,” he said carefully. And she … she could imagine. Oh yes. The memories clustered so close right now. The rows of bodies. The echoes of the Boneyard. She could imagine he’d been feeling … quite a lot.

It wasn’t helping her reactions to Bruce. She was aware of it, distantly. Likely so was he, the fucking bastard. He’d let her knock him out. Let her control him. Some of that was his own wounds, his own memories, the need to let himself be weak for a moment. To let himself lie, let himself drown. But some of it … She fucking knew when he was being gentle with her. She knew it. She’d knocked him out a time or two extra just for that. He’d allowed it. She couldn’t bear him, sometimes. But. Anyway.

“I had …” she started. Pressing herself back into the wall, the cold, freezing herself enough to continue this. “I had children, during No Man’s Land. Not mine. Not … Not of my body, anyway. Orphans. They came to me. I promised to protect them. They were … They were mine. My children. And, ah. And they …”

She couldn’t say it. The others already knew. Even Jason, in so many ways, already knew. He didn’t remember, but he’d grown up here, in the echoes of No Man’s Land. Where it counted, he knew. Saying this to a stranger was …

But J’onn. She’d forgotten. His voice across Bruce’s comm. My wife. My daughter. J’onn knew too. The ways that counted.

He touched her arm. Careful. Conscious of her dignity. He curled strange, spiny fingers carefully around hers. When she glanced at him, dared, there was apology in amber eyes. A careful press of a gentle mind against hers. Knowing. Echoing. Apologising.

“You do not have to,” he said. Started, gently. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to.”

Ivy laughed. Thick and broken. Didn’t she? Well. Probably not. But she’d started now. And it was necessary, to explain Bruce.

“They shot them,” she said baldly. “When they took the island back. They were aiming for me, for the monster. But they shot them. Because. Because they …”

Mama, Rose had cried. Throwing herself instinctively across Ivy. Blocking the red light of a targeting laser. The sound was etched in Ivy’s memory. They hadn’t … None of them had said it before. Not that word. Not until that moment. Not until Rose …

Ivy had gone down with her. Followed her, all the way to the ground. Rose had looked bewildered. More confused than pained. Incomprehending. She’d pressed both tiny hands to her suddenly bloodied stomach. And then … pressed them to Ivy’s face instead. While Ivy crumpled next to her. Whispered mama, one more time, before …

And then Danny had gone down next to them. Before Ivy had even understood it either. Before she could make sense of it, make sense of anything. Danny had gone down. Caleb had been winged, trying to get in front of them. The bullets kept coming. Those men, those animals, had kept firing. Her children were screaming. Rose’s blood had dripped down her cheek. Her other children. Her plants, her babies. Had risen instinctively to her defence. All of them. All her children. Had tried to defend her.

Her memories of it weren’t sensible, weren’t continuous. Flashes, sensations. Blind grief, blind rage. Nothing she could take, nothing she could explain. But J’onn was telepathic. She felt him. So strange, when it had been decades since last she’d sensed an aura, and never quite like this. But. But at least she didn’t have to explain.

“I wanted to die,” she said. Wrapping herself in the chill silence of the stone. “With them. I wanted to kill, and I wanted to die. I was mad, then. Fully insane. I needed them to die. And then I needed to follow them. Rose. Danny. My children. I needed to follow them. You understand?”

Something feathered over her. An echo. An image. The … The sensation. Aura to aura. Of a precious someone slipping away. Ivy flinched. Hunched. God. At least she hadn’t felt hers. The benefits of being soulless. At least she hadn’t had to feel them go.

“… Yes,” J’onn murmured. Very softly. “I understand.”

Yes. Yes, he did, didn’t he.

“He stopped me,” she whispered. “Bruce. I told you before. He wouldn’t let me die after mine either. He came. I felt … I was shot. Riddled with bullets. I barely felt them. Barely felt anything beyond rage. The gnawing grief. But suddenly there was something there. A shape, a body, stopping the bullets from reaching me. Arms around me. Trying to … to pull me away. Their bodies were still on the floor. He was trying to pull me away. I howled at him. Fought him. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave them. I didn’t want to go.”

She had hated him. The memory was so clear in her mind. The emotion, the sensation. She’d hated him as much as she’d hated the animals who’d shot them. Past all hope of reason, she’d hated him. Fought him. But she’d been shot. She hadn’t noticed. She’d been riddled with bullets. And not even then had she been able to make herself kill him.

Bruce. It was always Bruce. The others talked about his aura. Jim. Leslie. Even Oswald, though it was a different tone. A closer tone, more familiar. Spit, and hatred, and vicious, reluctant love.

Because. Because love was the word. Even from Oswald. Not one he’d say, but love was the word. Not … Not the way mainlanders used it. Not a way they’d understand. Not romantic, not familial, not anything. It wasn’t love of the heart, it was …

Love of the blood. The bone. Love born from the screaming.

Not his aura. Not for her. His body, instead. That shape, keeping the bullets away from her. Those arms, pulling her away from Rose’s body on the floor.

And then. In the hospital. Gutted and bleeding. Empty. Trying to die. They’d let the mainlanders in. The animals. To keep from dying. To keep the children from dying. They hadn’t been able to win, so they’d let them in. And she’d known. She’d understood. Her children had been with her. The survivors, all of them. They’d surrounded her, clung to her, cluttering half the battered collection of beds Leslie called her hospital. They couldn’t win, and nothing mattered except keeping what was left of her family alive. She’d known. Understood. Forgiven.

And, secretly. Maybe not so secretly. Been grateful.

“We couldn’t win,” she whispered. “Not like this time. Gotham wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t able yet. We couldn’t win. We had to surrender. And they wanted … they wanted the monster from the park. And I wanted to die. Does it make sense? I knew they wanted me. And it dovetailed so neatly. It fit so nicely. One monster, to buy my children’s safety. And I got to go to Rose. And we thought … Me and Oswald. The monsters. There was a part of us … We always figured it would go that way. Some bit of us. If the mainland came back. If the old order came home. We’re not designed for it. Me, Oswald. Waylon. Not like them. Jim and Bruce and Leslie. They could fit in. Look pretty. Protect the rest of them, the children, under that pretty mask. They just had to cooperate. Sell the ugly parts. I forgave them. You understand? I forgave them in advance. It would keep the children safe. And I’d get to go to Rose.”

It had fit so neatly. So nicely. One monster, maybe two or three. A betrayal all of them had seen coming. It had to. It had to. Vast auras. Tidal morals. They were only monsters, safe while they were useful, sold when they weren’t any more. Ivy had been sold before, the second she became inhuman, soulless. Waylon the same. And Oswald had died when he was sixteen, and known every second since that it was a second he’d fought for, not been given. It wouldn’t ever be given. It had made sense. It would keep the city safe, and it had made sense. They couldn’t win. Something had to be sold. And she’d wanted to go to Rose.

And then. While armed humans marched into her room. While Jim and his boys had grabbed her kids, pulled them away, made sure they were safe. Oswald, too. Knowing what she’d want. While it all still made sense. Leslie. And Bruce.

Leslie. Fucking fearless. Standing in the face of sixteen guns, standing firm at the end of the bed. Refusing to move. And then Bruce. Then the body. On top of hers.

She couldn’t feel auras. Not for years, not for decades. She’d never been able to feel his aura. But she’d felt that. It was etched, like Rose’s bloodied hands on her face. Like mama. He’d vaulted onto the bed. Straddled her, knelt over her. Facing outwards. Spreading his arms to cover her. Bruce. Bruce Wayne, not Batman. She’d forgotten how fucking young he was. How young he’d looked. Battered and gaunt and determined, and she’d screamed at him. Hissed, breathless, through the battered plastic oxygen mask Leslie’d pushed onto her face. They’d killed Rose. All of seven years old. They’d killed her, for doing exactly this. They’d killed her. They were going to kill him.

But. But. They’d thought it. Known it. Bruce Wayne was the pretty one. The rich one, the noble one, the alpha. Respected. Old money. Humans were animals. They wouldn’t stop for a seven year old child, not when she was a nobody, but they’d stop for that. And Bruce knew it. Maybe. At least hoped for it.

She couldn’t explain the hate. It was nonsensical. Unfair. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t his fault he was important and Rose was not. It wasn’t his fault Ivy’d wanted to die. It wasn’t his fault he was human and souled and pretty, enough to stop gunmen for, and Rose wasn’t. Ivy wasn’t. Her children weren’t. It wasn’t. It wasn’t his fault. But god, god, how she’d hated him. How she’d wanted to claw his heart out through his spine, while he knelt protectively on top of her.

And how she’d …

“He didn’t let me die,” she said. Flat and distant. “He didn’t let them take me. I’d forgiven him in advance, but he didn’t let them. He didn’t … He didn’t betray …”

They’d known it was coming. Her and Oswald. Waylon, too, but Waylon, for a lot of years, believed it had come. That Bruce had sold them in truth. He’d spent nearly a decade very determinedly and very honestly trying to kill Batman. He’d believed it was true. But Ivy. Her and Oswald. They’d.

“… Do you know what it feels like,” she asked. A little plaintively, a little brokenly. “Do you know what it feels like when betrayal is inevitable, when betrayal is the only thing that makes sense, and then … then it doesn’t come? When you’re supposed to die, you’re going to die, you’ve always known you were going to die, and then some fucking asshole goes and throws his fucking body on top of yours? I’d wanted to. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know anger doesn’t make sense. But I wanted to die. And he didn’t let me. And betrayal is what happens, but he didn’t … he didn’t do it. He should have. For them. My children. He should have. I would have forgiven him. But he didn’t. And I can’t.”

She couldn’t. Forgive him. She couldn’t. Never. Not once. She would hate him until the day he died. The rage hadn’t faded a single jot, not in sixteen years, and it wasn’t going to, not in sixteen more. He should have let them take her. Should have made the sacrifice. And he hadn’t.

But god. God. What it felt like, to not be betrayed. Just once. Just every day since. What it felt like, for the first time in her life, not to know … not to know what it was like to be sold.

Oswald knew. Felt. The same as her. Slightly different, he had the aura to deal with as well, but he knew. They’d talked about it. Raged about it. Wept about it. Not just Bruce. Leslie. Fucking Jim. Jim got her out. For Harbour Day. When they’d caged her, put her in Arkham, those first few years. He got her out. Let her … Let her mourn, remember, with all the rest of them. Escorted her himself, and fuck Mayers and all his ilk, all the animals he’d rode in with. They hadn’t … Betrayal was the only thing that made sense. And they hadn’t.

Bruce found their bodies. Rose. Danny. All her children. He’d found them. Fought for them. Retrieved them, brought them home. Given … When she got out. Of Arkham. He’d shown her the memorial. She’d wanted to kill him on the spot.

It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t explain. Oswald, yes. He got it. He felt the same. Waylon, a little bit, now. It had taken Waylon so long to get there, but somewhat, slightly, now. But the rest. Bruce himself. Leslie and Jim. They didn’t get it, and Ivy for one was not going to explain. Not least because she couldn’t.

How could she explain him? Not even to Harley, and Harley … Harley knew a lot. From her own end, her own experiences. Joker, may he rot from the inside out and not die, had sold her to him. Thrown her, drugged and helpless, into Batman’s path, drugged Batman too, just to make sure, because that was the point, and just … sold Harley. Body and soul. For a momentary convenience. To better hurt Bruce. Not even Harley. Just Bruce.

And then Bruce … Harley knew. From the same place, for the same reasons. Ivy had been worried. Harley was … It was important. That she know. Understand. The Council were different. It wasn’t that Harley was less, but the Council were different. They. They had to be. ‘Pack’ was a human word, a human idea, Ivy was soulless, she didn’t have an aura, would never feel them, would never bond with them. Would never bond with Harley. Pack didn’t mean anything to her. Couldn’t. But the Council were still different. And she’d needed Harley to know.

But. Of course. Of course she would. She’d seen. Harley. She’d seen too.

Why he couldn’t he be simple? Bruce. Why couldn’t he just follow the rules and be done? Any of them, fucking Jim and Leslie too, but they at least tended to be less extreme about it. Less … titanic. Elemental. Aggravating.

Bruce had come to her. Ivy. When Joker poisoned him. Raped him. Taken control of him from the inside out and tried to make him betray himself. Take Harley. Hurt her. To prove that all alphas are the same, that Bruce wasn’t better, that Batman was just lying to himself and deep down he was just as bad, as rotten, as alpha, as the Joker himself. Bruce. Bruce had come to her. He’d trusted her. He brought Harley with him, and begged her to help keep them both safe.

He was. Batman was so big. Ivy couldn’t feel the aura, but the whole city reacted to it. This vast invisible force that she could never feel, never understand. He was huge. The city swayed in tandem with him. But he hadn’t been huge then. This vast alpha. He hadn’t been huge. He’d been tiny. Weak and broken and begging. Begging her.

She hated him. She’d hated him for years. She trusted him absolutely, and hated that she trusted him. She’d loved him. Not like Harley, not like anybody. The Council was a different thing. But she’d loved him. Trusted him.

That moment, that night, was the first time she’d realised that he trusted her back. As fully. As completely.

She’d held him. He didn’t remember. Harley did, bits and pieces, she was so used to the Joker drugging her, but Bruce didn’t. He didn’t know that he’d begged her. That he’d begged Ra’s, Talia, a dozen other names. That he’d writhed and pleaded in her arms. And that he’d begged her. Ivy. Whenever he was semi-lucid. He’d begged her to help him, to help Harley. And … trusted her. Relaxed. When he’d realised all over again that she was the one who held him.

Trust. Not debt. Not command. The mainlanders who’d come in here, fucking Mayers and his lot, had all expected them to be grateful. To be cowed and grateful for their help, for their magnanimity, to thank them all for coming back and feeding them, with only a few murdered children to have to pay for it. Why won’t you all just cooperate and be grateful? Don’t you owe it to us to just do as we say?

But Bruce. No. It wasn’t that. He trusted her.

You don’t need my blessing, he’d said in the ship. A week ago. You don’t need my blessing. You don’t need my permission or my command. But I think. I trust. That if I asked, if I gave you a reason, that you would hold back. And that makes it my responsibility when I don’t ask.

She’d killed everyone who killed her children. All of them. She’d spent years killing them, and she did not, would not, regret it. And he … He must know? But she wasn’t sure. She had tried to keep it from him. Had tried not to let him know. Not because she thought he’d stop her, although he might have, if the risk to her or to the city as a result was too great. But. So he wouldn’t feel he had to. So he wouldn’t have to know. Decide. And then …

To trust enough to be betrayed. To have trust enough to betray. Until her children, not once. And her children had died. And he’d done the same. As Rose. His body between her and the bullet. He’d done exactly the same. He kept doing exactly the same. And she let him. Because he trusted, and he asked. He asked her to hold, to let him be hurt, to let him die, if need be, and she did. She did. Because he asked. She did.

But he would not be taken. That he couldn’t ask. Rose’s blood still stained her cheek, invisibly, sixteen years later, and his blood still stained her arms, but he would not die where she couldn’t reach him. Where she couldn’t bury him.

The Boneyard. The rows and rows of bodies. Her children, that he’d found and fought for and brought to her. His child. Jason. That she’d failed. Her human children were woven with her plant children in their graves, kept safe, but she hadn’t thought to bind Jason, and then he’d been stolen. Not Bruce. That would never happen to Bruce. Never any of them. She had no aura. She wasn’t pack, couldn’t be pack. But they were still different. And they would not die where she couldn’t bury them.

“… Are you getting any of this?” she asked. Helplessly, out loud. J’onn. She hadn’t forgotten. He was telepathic, and she couldn’t explain. “Can you feel any of this? Does any of it make sense?”

Would it help? Any of it? All he’d wanted was the source of her rage. To know if he should flinch, maybe. How much would any of this help? But he’d asked. Like Bruce, he’d asked. And the echoes were too close today. This last week. This last year. The rows of bodies in the Boneyard and the pods. Invasion. The deaths of children. It was all so close.

And J’onn …

He was a lean figure. Skeletally gaunt. The fluid of those pods might not help Victor overmuch, Ivy thought. Not if he wanted his wife to emerge intact. J’onn was a battered, broken, splintered thing. He leaned against the wall beside her. Seeking distraction from his distractions. Possibly, likely, not succeeding. Given the tone of her thoughts. Of what he’d asked.

But maybe that was why he had. Maybe he’d wanted answers. And presumed, perhaps too far, that she was able to give them.

He paused carefully. That hesitance. That care. Alone among strangers, more than half dead. Unsure how much he was allowed. She wanted to shout at him, to set him straight. It wouldn’t help. And the fact that he could likely hear the thought probably explained half the hesitance in itself.

But … Not all. Apparently.

“… I sent him a warning,” he said softly. “Clark. I wanted to warn somebody. Nothing more than that. It has been centuries. I had long forgotten how to hope. But someone heard me. Someone listened. And I thought … maybe I have done something right. Maybe I have given this world a chance. Maybe I have hurt them. The Imperium. Inconvenienced them. At least that. All I dared imagine in years. And then … then they didn’t protect their world. They came to me, instead. If they’d died, or been overcome, my warning would have been wasted. They came to me, to rescue me, and a part of me was livid. There will only be one chance! I have saved all I have for this chance. Don’t waste it. But. But they came. And part of me was … It was the wrong choice. They risked everything. But I breathed free air for the first time in aeons, and, selfishly, I was glad.”

… That feeling when betrayal is all that makes sense, when it is right and what you want, and … and then it doesn’t happen. Yes. Okay.

She leaned, carefully. Shifted slightly against the wall, so that her tired green arm pressed along the length of his.

“… I was angry at them,” he whispered. Much more quietly. More brokenly. “Not. Not the League. Not them. Worse. My wife. M’yri’ah. My daughter, K’hym. While I wasted in that pod. It has been … There were moments when I … when I hated … Why couldn’t they have held on? Why couldn’t they have stayed with me? She died. My child. My joy. She was slowly eaten alive. And I hated her. For … Moments here or there. Just moments. Because of the pod. It doesn’t matter. How could I … At all. How could I? But. But I did. Briefly. But I did.”

God. Ivy squeezed her eyes shut. God. And she … It was Bruce she hated. Bruce. Sixteen years, she’d clung to it desperately. He was stupid, and broken, and followed no rules, and she hated him. Him. Not …

They’d done the same thing. Bruce and Rose. Danny. The exact same thing. Sixteen years, she’d been trying not to think it. They’d done the same thing. But Bruce was the one she hated. Because he was alive. Because he wasn’t a child. He wasn’t her child. Because she couldn’t ever let herself realise …

What sort of monster. Beyond any question of soulless, inhuman. What sort of monster would hate a child, their child, for even a moment, for dying?

“… I have wondered,” he said quietly. “Did I live so long because I thought I might help someone? Because I thought I might have a chance to avenge them? Or did I live so long because I could not face them. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t help them. And then …”

She could have fought Bruce. She could have killed him. Wounded or not wounded. He was only human. Only a man. She could have killed him. Torn herself away. Died with her children, as she should. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t. He didn’t let her die, she’d said. For years. But she could have killed him, and she hadn’t, and that …

That made it her responsibility. That made it her decision.

Because she trusted him. And she knew, if she’d really wanted it, he would have let her. What sort of mother, adoptive or otherwise, wants to live when her children are …

She hadn’t gone near him after Jason. She couldn’t. She hadn’t gone near Jason either. He’d come back. Bruce had gotten him back. She’d been so terrified she would hate him. Hurt him. The way she sometimes, secretly, monstrously, hated Rose in the long watches of the night. For saying it, mama, for the first time. Right as she died. For dying. For not coming back. She’d been so afraid she would hate Jason. Bruce. In all his rage and his extravagant grief, his howling that all the city could feel, except her. As if that wasn’t a lie too.

Oh, not the aura. She was a soulless creature. But she had lied to him on the ship. She had felt him die. She’d marked him, all of them, years since. Pheromones. Markers. Her children, her plant children, stretched the length and breadth of the city. The Council had helped put them there. And they didn’t know. That she’d marked them. All the Council. All her pack. She could locate them the length and breadth of the city. Her children told her their every move. Their every wound. The salt taste of grief, of pain, and how it soured their ‘smell’ across the city.

They trusted her. And she was made of nothing but lies, and cowardice, and grief. She had no soul and no aura, and all her bonds were watered in blood.

“… We are not monsters,” J’onn said. Leaning into her. Onto her. Freshly shattered, directly from hell. “I think. I think we are not monsters. I hope.”

Ivy laughed blackly. “Aren’t we?”

Weren’t they? But. But no. Not him. All that he’d … It wasn’t like she could judge. And …

Bruce forgave her. She knew he did. She hated him more because of it. But he did. He was gentle with her. That was worse, maybe. But he did forgive her. He trusted her, and he forgave her. She could only return half of that. Not for his sake, for hers. If she forgave him, she’d have to forgive herself, and that …

Not yet. Her children had died, and she hadn’t. Ask her in another sixteen years. Not yet. But.

“… You’re safe here,” she said softly. “You know that, right? Monstrous or otherwise. It. It doesn’t matter. The monstrosity. We’ll die tomorrow, sure. But not because we’re monsters. We won’t be sold. And no one will hate us for it.”

Again, a promise she could only half return. It wasn’t him she hated, not really, but she could still only make half that promise.

Still. It was important. Even the half promise. Not to sell anyone. It was important.

“… We’ll fix what we can,” she said. Leaning her head exhaustedly back into the gentle, cold stone of the wall. “We’ll talk to your Clark again. The League. We’ll find out how many of the dead we can send home. And … And we’ll take care of the rest. We can’t bring them back. The dead. But we can at least take care of them.”

Except for Jason. They couldn’t bring them back, except for him, and that had been … He’d had to be stolen to manage it. Hurt. No. Not again. Gotham’s dead were Gotham’s dead, and none of them would be taken again.

J’onn was silent, for a long moment. And then. Very carefully. More carefully than anything else so far:

“They love you too, you know,” he said softly. “I don’t know … My people did not have auras. I don’t know what they mean. I’ve only caught the edges of all your beliefs. I don’t know what ‘soulless’ means, or monstrous, beyond the parts we share. But. Everything you feel, even parts of your anger. It is … returned. Believe me. This city is … I’m half breathless with it every moment. This. All that you feel. It is returned. Even by the goddess.”

I know, she’d been going to say. I know. Trust, both ways. Love, born in blood. Do you think it doesn’t make it worse? But. Then that last line. It caught the words before they could leave. Bruce, she knew. Jim. Leslie. Oswald. The children, all their children. Their city. But.

The goddess?

She couldn’t feel her. Ivy. Gotham was, apparently, all aura. Ivy had heard Oswald mutter about her for years. Bruce, sometimes, without always realising. And then, these last few years, she’d felt … the city swayed for Bruce, and for Gotham too. It had been impossible to ignore, deny, even before she’d burst so vividly, finally, to their defence. But Ivy couldn’t feel her. Even still, even now, when even the dumbest mainlanders, Mayers, could sense her presence. Ivy still couldn’t. Soulless to the end. She couldn’t.

Gotham, of all creatures. This thing Ivy could not sense or see or feel. Gotham loved her?

J’onn straightened, as she turned to look at him. This gaunt thing, this salvaged monster so similar to herself. This so familiar stranger. He straightened at the sense of her confusion, amazement, disbelief, and the look on his face was not any of Ivy’s, nothing she had ever worn. It was one of Bruce’s. The very picture of Bruce. Right before he did something stupid.

“This,” J’onn said, suddenly, terrifyingly determined. “This I can do. This debt I can repay.”

Don’t, she thought. Entirely instinctive, without any knowledge of what he meant to do. It was irrelevant. She knew that look. Bruce. As Bruce as you could get, no matter the alien features. And he was still mostly dead. Leslie hadn’t let him out because he was better, she’d let him out because it was that or watch his soul die slowly in his bed. He was eaten. They couldn’t help that part of it, the way his … telepathy, whatever, had been eaten as auras could be eaten. There’d been no treatment for that. He wasn’t better.

But it was too late. It always was. She could avenge them, would avenge them, every time, but she could never keep any of them from doing something stupid.

And then. Then. While his face scrunched with effort. With pain. She felt … She felt something …

Vast. Abruptly. Through the pained sensation of his mind against hers.

Ivy felt something vast.

Chapter Text

Ivy didn’t remember what auras felt like. You’d think that wouldn’t be a thing you’d forget. A foundational part of the human experience, and all that. But auras were ephemeral. As soon as you stopped feeling them, the sensation, the memory of the sensation, faded. And it had been years, decades, since she’d first become inhuman.

She had clung to it for a while. In the beginning, while the loss still carved at her insides, the vast emptiness around her, when the auras used to be. The silence. Beyond silence. Just. Emptiness. As a child, a young woman, she’d spent every day of her life in a world alive with sensation. And then, abruptly, all of it vanished. She’d clung to the memories. For a while. A while. She’d clung to them.

And then repudiated them. Rejected them. She was soulless. Inhuman. And, she had thought, better than human. After years of silence, and the slowly burgeoning sensation of something else. Something no human had touched. A great green well in the earth. The strange, tangled sensations of her green children, the wicks of life, the smells and sensations of their communications around her. Not auras. She had no memory for comparison, but she didn’t think these were the same as auras. Pheromones, instead. Scents. And … that other thing. The green well.

Inhuman. Better than human. She had believed that. Cast aside memory. And then.

Then No Man’s Land. Then her human children. And no. No, she was no better than humans either. No wiser or better or more powerful. She was not better than her children. But by then it was too late. She couldn’t remember what … Not enough to even guess what her children might have felt like. They were still wicks, in her head. Green sparks of life. She couldn’t feel them, and she couldn’t remember what they would have felt like. So they were to her as her plant children. In her memory, they were green.

She had placed her marks on them. Her children, those who had lived and those who had not. On the others, the Council. Bruce and Jim and Leslie and Oswald. Harley. But they were still just … green by proxy, in her imagination. She couldn’t remember enough to make them otherwise.

But now. In this moment. Now.

She could feel J’onn. He was letting her. Offering her … his window. His sensations. Auras, as he felt them. She could feel … the effort of translation. Telepathy was no more transferable than auras. He couldn’t share it. So, instead, he was doing his best to act as the point of translation. Taking what she felt, and what he felt, and filtering them together for her so that she could, for one brief moment, feel both.

Feel … an aura. Around them. A vast … A vast aura.

Nothing she remembered. She didn’t know if that was because Gotham was different, or if all semblance of memory and humanity in her truly was gone. But this thing …

So strange. So huge. So savage. It felt like her more creeping, carnivorous children, the ones that spread and moved and ate. Not mindlessly. They were not animals, not beasts. They were as the world had made them, and she had encouraged it, for she was as the world had made her. They would need protection, and they would need to protect. So. Many of them were seeded beneath the park. Several of them were now above the park. Woken to full bloom, an alien ship crushed within them. This … This felt like that. Gotham. She felt like that.

And then … She could feel J’onn reaching. Specifically. Entreating. Trying to show …

It wouldn’t translate. Not quite. She could feel him trying. Could feel him tearing. Feel the sensation tear around the edges as he struggled, as his mind fractured gently around hers. She was moving instinctively. Reaching to stop him. But he tried. He tried to show her.

Gotham, the thing that was Gotham, knew her. Saw her. And …

Turned, for a moment, towards her. As her green children turned towards the sun.

J’onn made a faint noise. As much frustration as pain, a tiny grunt. Ivy felt the glass bead of his vicious self-hatred pop and shatter inside her mind. He was eaten to the core, and he knew it. Felt it. Inside the pod, it had not mattered much, there was nothing he could do anyway. But here. With people to help. With things to do. The vast gulf between what he should be capable of and the tiny pittance of what he was capable of yawned wide, and he hated it. He snarled faintly, a half-despairing whimper of agony and frustration, and then …

All sensation slipped away again. As it had all those years ago. The aura, all memory of the aura, vanished once more. As J’onn slumped abruptly into the wall, and brought one gaunt, shaking hand to press against his face. To hide his face.

Ivy moved into him. Pressed against him, not so much a hug as simply … a presence. A shield. A body to hide his, to block all bullets from his form. Instinctive. Her own memory yawned, her own gulf. Humanity to emptiness. But it was secondary. First, stop the bleeding. He laughed, thin and brittle, against her chest. And curled faintly down. Into her. Her strange, instinctive half-embrace.

Ivy felt vaguely like laughing herself. Or crying. Whichever.

And then. Because that was all these last few weeks, months, years had been. An endless sequence of and then. Never a moment in between. And then.

J’onn made another noise. A strange noise. A half hitch of … confusion. Worry. Maybe fear? Something, some startled, questioning noise. He stiffened in her arms. And looked …

She didn’t know why she looked too. She wouldn’t see anything. Auras. It was always auras. Always human. There was never anything for her to see. But she looked, because in the midst of all his despair it had startled him, and she saw …

Darkness? A pool of darkness. They were in the caves, Bruce had his damned aesthetic, it was dark down here anyway, but there was … a tangible darkness. Pooled a little way beyond them, on the floor. A growing pool. A growing darkness.

No. Ivy stiffened too, just as abruptly. Not darkness. There was a glisten, where the lights of the cave caught it. A texture. A faint colour. Not darkness. It gleamed reddish-black in the shadows of the cave. Not darkness.

Blood.

Ivy turned, pulling J’onn fully behind her, as a shape rose from the darkness. Gathered itself, shaped itself, from the blood. She turned, pushing J’onn behind her into the stone of the wall. He was fragile, wounded, bleeding. She shoved him behind her. Felt the green stirring around her, as her children, her symbiotic green children, wicked to awareness around her. The stir of her emotions. Her pheromones. Vines, creeping and clinging and woven into her bark, her body, her skin. It had felt wrong, when first she had invited the relationship. To armour herself in the bodies of her children. But their seeds were buried at her core, they would not die until she herself did, and she had …

She’d needed the reach. The means to expand her form, to shield. A way to stop the bullets. Her children flared at her fear, her rage, and curled to protect the fragile form at her back.

And Gotham … Gotham, in front of her, paused to smile brokenly.

It was Gotham. It must be? A goddess. Oswald’s goddess. Bruce’s. The shape of a woman, formed sloppily and laboriously from a puddle of blood. She was … She had firmed herself, now. Solidified herself. Straightened herself up. Not blood, now, or not fully. Something that looked like silver, instead. Blackened, tarnished silver, the surface of it cracked and split like old asphalt, and in the gaps … still the blood. Ivy suspected that was a theme. Like Bruce and his damned bats. Blood. Blood was Gotham’s theme.

But the face. The face was what caught Ivy the hardest. The face, the form. Because the face was hers. Her own. Gotham stood in front of her, and for whatever reason, mimicry or taunt or blind cruelty, the sight of her was like looking into a battered, tarnished, bloodied mirror.

Ivy’s breath hitched. Froze in her chest. J’onn made a soft noise behind her, and Ivy pressed him further back. Stood as tall as she could, and spread her green arms, her green children, to stand against a goddess if need be.

Gotham smiled. Blackly. Brokenly. And gestured gently in negation.

“…I,” she started. Strangely. A rough, rasping, oddly wet sound. Or not so oddly, maybe. “I will not harm him. You. I will not harm my own.”

Ivy stared at her. Just stared. J’onn, behind her, rested gaunt, careful hands at her hips. An attempted reassurance. And looked past her, at the goddess, an odd note in his voice. Faintly incredulous, and … something between awed and amused.

“Did you …?” he asked. Bewildered, leaning shakily on Ivy’s back. “Just now? Did you learn …?”

Gotham’s figure rippled. Stuttered through the echoes of motions. A shrug. Her expressions were better realised. This one was sheepish. And proud.

“Yes,” she rasped. “I am not … It did not occur to me. And I think I would not have had the power. But I watched you. And I learned. And …” She sobered. Darkened, gentled. “And it is not for you to repair my mistakes. You have done enough. Showed enough. It is not for you to fix what I have failed to do. I did not know how. But I can learn.”

J’onn flinched faintly, and Ivy shifted to block him from Gotham’s sight. Or. The figure’s sight. The physical threat. She couldn’t shield anyone from an aura.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. Harshly. Something in her was very brittle right now. One thing after another. Too many echoes gathered close. She was cold. Angry. Bitter in the face of a goddess, which was likely some sort of blasphemy. But Gotham’s expression didn’t harden. And J’onn, behind her, leaned his weight into her shoulder.

“… My people,” he said finally. Soft and still faintly awed. “We can … our minds and bodies are intertwined. I can use one to change the other. Change shape. And … solidify. Become more or less tangible. I have not had the power, not in aeons. But I was dead either way, and I hoped to do damage, so I did it anyway. On the ship, before you came. To infiltrate the ship, to hurt the Imperium. It was … I don’t think I can do it now. Not again, not yet. I broke something. Several things. But I was dead anyway. So I did it. And she … she saw me. And … learned.”

Ivy blinked. Straightened, glaring at Gotham suspiciously. Gotham, for her part, stood chin raised, imperturbable. And J’onn was still half dazed. Bemused. Awed.

“It’s not the same,” he murmured, that half-distracted tone Bruce had when he was talking to himself more than anyone else, figuring the thing out as he went along. “I have … My body is real. It exists. My mind was created inside it. She has … created … But the idea is similar. Become tangible by strength of will. Coalesce … Coalesce the mind, the aura, into the physical. She …”

Gotham moved. Towards them. Not stepped, not drifted, but some motion in between the two. Something almost stuttered, as if she wasn’t moving her form so much as … relocating it, a step at a time. But she moved, and all Ivy’s children flared instinctively. Hid J’onn behind them completely. Ivy, herself, took a step forward by the same instinct. Set her jaw, curled her hands. Gotham respected it. Stopped in front of her, before the boundary she raised. But she reached an arm past Ivy’s shoulder, tarnished silver, and touched J’onn gently on his.

“No more,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do more. It is more than I have ever thought possible. My sins are my own, and you have already helped. You don’t have to tear any more.”

Which was … an entirely useless sentiment. Ivy could have told her, instantly and immediately. The look on J’onn’s face, the echo of Bruce. You’ve done enough. You don’t have to tear, break, any more. A useless sentiment. Entirely. Nothing they couldn’t, wouldn’t, ignore. Either of them.

But other things distracted her. Other words. This strange thing, this silver, unreal body, rested less than a foot from Ivy’s own. This creature she had never felt before today. Something splintered and savage rose in Ivy’s chest.

“What sins?” she growled. Close enough to smell the blood, and the silver. “What mistakes are not his to fix?”

Gotham looked at her, only inches away, and god, it was like facing Bruce. Her own face, but exactly like facing Bruce. That expression. That sorrow and careful gentility.

Gotham moved. Physically, this time. Taking care to shape the motions. To lean, carefully. To lean in and rest her forehead, carefully, against Ivy’s. The silver was warm, and faintly sticky.

“… I could not reach you,” the goddess whispered softly. That rasped, ruined, liquid voice. “None of you. Not for years. Decades. Time without meaning. I couldn’t reach any of you. Only recently. Some reached back. Closed the gap. But not all. Not all of you could. I am not bound any longer. I should have found a way. I am sorry.”

Rage fountained upwards. Stopped Ivy’s heart in her chest. Hatred. Utter hatred. Mostly for the echo. Again, again, the echo. Was there nothing in this city that Bruce had not corrupted?

“Don’t,” she snapped. Hissed. Only barely resisting the urge to shove Gotham away. “For once in your life, listen to Oswald, not Bruce. I know what I am. I hardly need pity.”

Stop being gentle. Stop. Just stop. For once, obey the rules. Bite. Claw. Tear. Give her hatred, disdain, not pity. No more pity. Damn them all. Damn the lot of them.

Gotham curled. Closed her eyes, flinched against the blow, and curled into Ivy. Brought both hands, the strange, tacky warmth, to Ivy’s hips. Next to J’onn’s. Holding her close, but gently. A careful tether, trying to hold her near. Ivy’s children writhed, but did not stop her. They seemed … confused. Ivy would have thought that her rage spoke for itself, but her children seemed unsure.

“I was bound,” the goddess repeated, into the hollow of Ivy’s throat. To the space at the top of Ivy’s ribs where her heart pounded against their cage. “I cannot explain. I was bound. But I saw. I have seen, for years. Centuries. I have watched. Felt. Every crime. Every sin. Every scream. I could not stop them. I was bound. I could not help. I could not stop. I could not eat those who tore … I could only feed strength. Spite. Keep them moving. Crawling, through the gutters and the blood. My … My children. I was bound. I could not help.”

Ivy forced a breath. Shoved it out through the icy strangle in her throat, tipping her head back to stare blindly at the roof of the cave. At her hips, J’onn’s hands spasmed too. Clenched gaunt and tight next to Gotham’s. Ivy’s heart clawed at her throat. Tried to strangle her, tear her, claw free. Gotham curled in. This silver thing stained in blood.

“… I could not feel you,” she whispered. To Ivy’s throat. The heart writhing beneath it. “Not like the others. I could not feel you. But I could see you. And feel … those you touched. Those you defended. In one stroke, one quake, all my children died. All of them. I drowned in their blood. Bloated on it. Was fed on it. Forcefully. The bonds poured their blood down my throat. I tore upwards. Tore free. Killed the ones who bound me. But I could not touch you. Could not help you. You were all dead. I would have eaten the world that moment. Torn everything to the bone. But you …”

She stopped. Breathed. Did goddesses breathe? She had only made this body this moment. Did it breathe? But Gotham stopped regardless. Wrestled her own heart, maybe, out of the strangle in her throat.

“You lived. You fought, and you clawed, and you lived. Not many of you. So few. But I felt you scrabbling. Clawing. I felt it. Bruce. I felt his aura. Oswald. But more than them. All of you. My body, my city, was a graveyard, but there was yet life within it. And it was fighting. Tearing could come later. Eating. I wasn’t able yet. But it didn’t matter. If there was any chance …”

Ivy reached up. Grabbed Gotham’s arm at the elbow, clenched it hard enough to bruise. Well. Were it not made of blood and silver and impossibility, anyway. Her eyes were screwed shut, the wetness trapped behind the lids. She suspected neither Gotham nor J’onn were fooled.

The goddess smiled blackly. Ivy could hear it. In her voice. She could hear it.

“I love you,” she whispered. Rich and vicious and thick with blood. “All of you. I love you, I love you, I love you. For hundreds of years, it has all been blood and screaming. I tore free only to stand, splintered and weak, in the charnel house of all I had ever held within me. But there you were. Tiny amid the wreckage. And you fought, and you lived, and you kept fighting. Salvaged all that you could. More than I ever could. Every life that sparks within my keeping now, does so because of you. Because you stayed. Because you fought. Because you fed them. Because you tore those who would eat them. Pamela. Ivy. I cannot feel you, not as I feel the others. But I love you. I cannot show you, cannot give it to you. But I love you. I do. I do. And I should have found a way to tell you before now.”

Ivy panted helplessly. Her children fluttered around her, confused and helpless in their turn. J’onn wasn’t leaning against her any longer, she was leaning on him. Held up only by the gaunt line of him at her back. And the …

The hands. Bloodied and silver and warm. At her hips.

And then. Then. She felt … something more. Something new. Beneath her feet. Not an aura. Not anything familiar, remembered or forgotten. In the soil. In the earth below her. Not the green well, but something … similar. Darker. Bloodier. But similar.

“… Bear with me,” Gotham rasped. Soft and a little desperate. “I’m making this up as I go. I’m learning, and inventing, and shaping from thin air. I cannot reach you as I reach the others. But I am watered in your blood. As much as anyone’s. They … I am fed on blood. They made me that way. I was meant to eat, to feed. That I cannot change. But I can shape it. I am watered in your blood, where you fought for your children at my heart. It is part of me. You’re mine, if you want to be. You stayed. You fought. I … I think I can share that. If. If you want it.”

That thing yawned beneath her. Vast. Not as vast as the well, not as infinite as the green. A smaller, darker well. But still … still so much bigger than one women. One inhuman thing. Open, gaping, in offering.

Ivy. Ivy laughed. A distant, hysterical thing. Her heart was hooked to the top of her ribs. Pressing up into her throat. Her chest was knotted in its claws. Like Bruce’s. Holed full through. Her eyes were still closed, but she felt the weight of Gotham’s gaze anyway. Felt the vast, bloodied weight of a goddess’ desperation.

“… You’ll have a soulless thing, will you?” she managed finally. Cracked and emptied and weak. “A goddess. You’ll take a soulless thing?”

The well of blood surged. Clawed upwards beneath the earth. Fury. Not an aura, not anything Ivy had ever felt, but she knew fury. Knew the shape of it in her own breast. The sound and the taste and the echo of it.

The hands left her hips. Gotham’s, at least, J’onn still held her, still supported her. Gotham let go of her hips, to cup her face instead. Wrap warm, wet palms softly at her cheeks. Ivy didn’t open her eyes. Defiantly. The face beside hers was her own. She wouldn’t look. It didn’t matter. Gotham didn’t need her to.

“… I do not know what souls are,” the goddess whispered. Dark and throaty and savage. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. I don’t know what gods are. And I don’t care. I am watered in your blood. I have held you while you fought and did not die. Your children are buried in my heart. You are mine. If you want it. If you choose to be. Souls can sort themselves out, gods too. None of it matters. What matters is, you’re mine. And I think I know how to share it now. If. If you’ll stay. If it’s something you can accept.”

If you’ll stay. And Ivy … Ivy laughed again. Opened her eyes.

Her own face stared back at her. Changed. Warped. Cracked and bloodied, made of blackened silver. An echo. Forever an echo. Maybe Gotham had intended it as a taunt. Or an homage, an attempt to honour. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the echo.

Gotham. Bruce. J’onn. Ivy. Because she hadn’t killed him. Because it was his responsibility when he chose not to ask. Because they chose to live. Because they chose to stay.

She could have left. Ivy. The green well beckoned beneath the earth. She could have left Gotham. When she first became something else. When she became less than, or more than, human. She could have left. Could have sought out the green. Could have made a space herself somewhere else, somewhere greener, less full of animals. Somewhere safe.

She could have ignored the children, when they first came to the park. Her children. They didn’t have to be hers. They were human, and she had been something better. At the time. She could have ignored them. Could have forced them out. Could have refused … refused the phantom blood on her cheek. The whisper of mama.

She could have refused Bruce. The alliance. The Council. She could have killed him. So many times. She could have killed him. When they first gathered for alliance. When he pulled her from the bodies of her children. When he came to her, weakened and violated and begging. She could have killed him, at any time. Any of them. All of them. She could have.

Could have left. Could have refused. Could have killed. She could have done any of that. But she hadn’t. Hadn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Pack was a meaningless word. She had no aura. But she had … she had bled for them. Her family. Her pack. Her city. Gotham. She had bled for them. And they had bled, died, for her.

She would die here. On this ground, on this soil. In this city. She would die here, and she would lie with her children, and she would do all in her power to make sure that everyone else survived her. Everyone. Even Bruce fucking Wayne.

The well beneath her was dark and bloody. If she tasted of it, it might eclipse the green. Taint it. Taint her. She might lose her other children, lose auras and green both. Live forever in silence, lost and alone. But honestly … what would that do that she had not survived already? What would it change? There was nothing so tainted as her from a standing start. And her roots had long since been watered in blood.

She didn’t answer. Not in words. But she reached down. As she reached for the green, for the vibrant well that gave her strength to defend what she loved. She reached, with phantom roots, and drank. From that darker well.

Gotham shuddered. Broke, slightly. Splintered and hung in badly gathered pieces before them. Only the hands stayed firm, the bloodied warmth at Ivy’s cheeks. Over the phantom memory of a child’s bloody palm. Gotham shuddered, torn between too many things. And Ivy …

It flooded upwards. That dark well beneath her feet. That well of strength. Pain. Bloodied devotion. It flooded up into her roots. Her feet. Her veins. Plants fed from soil. From water. From sunlight. And Ivy … Ivy fed. Abruptly. Not light. No sun, not here. That was Bruce. Her children. Harley. Those were the sun. But this … this was soil. This was water. This was flood.

And it didn’t … it didn’t push out the green. It didn’t cut her off. Didn’t remake her. Didn’t cast her out to drift unmoored once again, ripped open as she’d first been all those years before, made new. No more human. In a different image. This … This was not that. It did not usurp. Didn’t unmake. Didn’t remake.

It didn’t … didn’t want her changed. Didn’t want her human. Didn’t want to force an aura that would make her easier to reach. It flooded up. Not a toxin. Just blood. Blood and water and tears.

Her blood. Her ... Her children’s. Bruce’s. Others. So many. So many others. It wasn’t something Ivy would normally know, wasn’t something her roots would normally feel, but this was not the green. It wasn’t pure, wasn’t simple. It carried …

Memory. Taint. Emotion.

Blood. So much blood. Endless blood. Endless screaming.

Ivy gasped. Sagged. J’onn’s arm came around her chest, holding her up. Gotham. Gotham’s arms came around her too. Warm and shaking and bloodied around her shoulders. Ivy could feel her. Not an aura. Not immediately. But in echo. Memories in the blood.

“… What. What are you?” she rasped. Rudely. Brokenly. Scrambling at Gotham’s silver arm with her hands. It hurt. The question. She felt it hurt. But she had to know. It sang through her veins. Pulsed alongside the green. She had to know.

“… I don’t know,” Gotham answered. Soft and tired and broken. “I don’t know. I was bound here. There were … chains. Magic, maybe. I was bound. And I … I woke to the screaming. The blood. I felt it. Every death. No. Every violent death. Every murder, every sacrifice. I’ve been here so long. I am … the city, I think. And the blood. Mostly … Mostly the blood. The echoes of it. For so long I thought … I didn’t know there was more than that. I thought it was all there was. Blood and eating. I am. I reached. The ones who felt like me. The ones I could reach. But I didn’t know … You gave me so much. All of you. I didn’t know there could be more than that.”

She hugged Ivy. Wrapped her arms around her shoulders, her head, and rocked her absently. Curled around her. Splintered and desperate.

And Ivy … She reached. A notion, tickling at the back of her head. She reached. Into the earth. Into the blood. And found …

“God,” she whispered. Stunned. Horrified. “God. Are you the dead? Were they … Were they bound to you? Are you the dead?”

Rose. Danny. How cruel a thing to think. It wasn’t her fault, this silver thing in her arms. But the thought was a horror. If they were bound. If they were taken and tainted and bound. Some part of Ivy surged. Railed. She would tear Gotham apart, if they were bound. This thing in her arms. She would tear it, her, open, and tear her children free from it. They were torn from her. She could not protect them. But they were at least at rest. And if they were not …

“No,” Gotham answered, but … sadly. Tiredly. Brokenly. “I don’t … I don’t think so. Not … Not like that. I don’t feel them, not as I feel you, as I feel the living. And … Jason. He wasn’t … He wasn’t part of me. I did not feel him taken. I did not feel him restored. Only when he came back could I feel him. He wasn’t … I am the echoes, I think. The deaths. The blood and the screaming. I was … made from their sacrifice. But not from them. I cannot help them. I cannot bring them back. I cannot shield them … shield them beneath my form. You, yes. The ones who survive. At least now. But not. Not them.”

Not them. And …

There was grief, again, briefly. Because, Ivy realised, there had been hope. Again. Briefly. That … That there was something, even someone, that her children could be retrieved from. But … no. No. Gotham was not those who had taken Jason. And her children were still sixteen years dead.

“… I am not them,” Gotham murmured again. “But I … I am watered by their blood. I am made of their deaths. And … Harbour Day. The Boneyard. Even … Even now. This.” The cave, the bodies. “You … I am not them. But I feel … Will you thank them for me? You, and the others. I don’t know if I’ve ever successfully made them feel … To have it honoured. Not thrown away. Not discarded. So many of my blood were thrown away. But there is more. Better. I don’t know if you all know how much it matters. Will you thank them for me?”

Oh god. Goddess, whatever. The words didn’t matter. Gods, as Gotham said, could sort themselves out. But that …

Born from the blood. From the murdered and the sacrificed. And Gotham had never had any shortage of those. But the quake. All at once. The quake …

Wait. No. The murdered and the sacrificed. The quake wasn’t a murder. It was, had been, natural. Hadn’t it? But she’d been fed their blood, she said. Forcibly. Bound and fed the blood of the quake. Ivy clung, suddenly. Swayed, scrabbling at the arms around her once more. No Man’s Land, they’d known. Someone had wanted them dead. But …

All of it? Even before? All of it? Every death since she’d been bound? Created? Was that … Was that all they were? To someone, some, some pack of animals out there? Every living, breathing soul within this city. Was that all they were? Fuel for the fire. Animal feed? Every … Every single …

She felt J’onn, abruptly. Felt him curl carefully around her mind. Not censure. Not an attempt to muffle, stifle, the panic. Just. Sympathy. Thin, careful, bitter sympathy. A whole people, man, woman and child, and everything else too. Nothing but a larder. A power source. To be eaten and then discarded.

And they … they hadn’t. Discarded anyone. Let themselves be discarded. They hadn’t. They’d fought. To the last breath. Sacrificed for each other, not anyone else. Not any damned mainland monster. Each other. Ever and only, each other. And never useless. Never abandoned. Forty seven paper boats. The memorial Bruce had built in her park. The Boneyard, Leslie’s endless, thankless, heartbreaking work. Thank them, Gotham said. Will you thank them for me.

God. God, if she loved Ivy, and Ivy could feel, now, how much Gotham loved her, how much must she love Leslie, just for that? How. How much? Bruce and Oswald, yes, she’d bonded with them. Ivy could … feel that, sort of, now. Not the bonds themselves, but an awareness, through the blood, that they existed. Bruce was the sun, the hope, the light they all fed from. Oswald was kindred spirit and soul. The goddess had bonded with them. But Leslie. If she loved Ivy. Likely all of them. How much must she love Leslie?

Did Leslie know? They weren’t Bruce or Oswald, none of the rest of them. Ivy had had a double handicap, unable even to sense Gotham’s presence, but neither Leslie nor Jim had known her either, until recently. Did. Did they know? Did Leslie know?

Well. No, or Gotham would not have asked her to thank them. To be her mouthpiece, her messenger, and let them know. But.

“… Why not tell them yourself?” she asked softly, and felt … felt the goddess jolt around her. Felt her start, at the realisation. “You learned. You learned for me. But I’m not the only one you can talk to now. Directly. No bonds or auras needed. They … They can feel you more than I can. But you can speak now too. You can … say things directly.”

A gift. Born of blood and stubbornness, yes, an unintentional demonstration and a chance, a realisation, and a desperate determination. But still. Still a gift. Still such a gift.

And Gotham … Gotham realised it too. In the same moment. Ivy felt it. The goddess raised her head, uncurled from Ivy’s shoulder, and looked at J’onn.

Who faltered. Clung to Ivy’s midriff. Awed and dismayed.

“It was not …” he sent awkwardly. “It was to hurt the Imperium. And help, yes. Save one thing. But it was not intentional. Do not … There is no debt …”

There is no debt. God. She felt him feel her reaction. The thought of, did he hear himself? There is no debt. And yet earlier, to pay back actions spurred only by their own survival, and Bruce’s idiot morals, he’d tried to break his brain yet again to pay theirs. This debt he could pay, huh? For goddess’ sake. Hypocrisy, thy name is Malecandran.

And Gothamite. To be fair. She could acknowledge that. Do as they said, not as they did.

For a start, it made your chances of survival a little bit better.

She reached down to catch one of his hands. Thread her fingers through his where they rested against her stomach. Gotham reached past her once more. More than her arm, now. She pulled him close, and rested her head against his. Just briefly. Ivy felt the edges of what she did. Not aura, she thought. J’onn didn’t have one either. Something like the roots. Strength, filtered upwards. Bloodied gratitude.

“No debt,” Gotham murmured. “Yes. Owing or owed. But my strength is your strength. And you will be safe where I can defend you.”

He flinched. Fully flinched against them. And Ivy knew. She knew. Bruce Wayne, kneeling above you. Rose, jumping in front of the bullet. When everything was death. When all you knew was betrayal and despair. It hurt to be defended. To be gentled. It made no sense. Broke every rule. It was terrifying. She knew. Ivy knew.

But. Do as she said, not as she did. God, somebody had to. One of these days. Somebody had to.

“Thank you,” Gotham whispered. That rasping, bloodied voice, as she let her new form, her new body, slip away. Just the body. The arms. Ivy felt … Her roots were watered now. The wells beneath her fed her from multiple sources. Gotham wasn’t gone. Maybe … Maybe would never be gone again. But she let the body fade. Slipped, another accidental lesson, back into intangibility. And Ivy sagged back into J’onn. And J’onn sagged down into her.

And then they stood there, for a moment. Instinctively tangled together. Not … Not the Council. Not that deep. Not Harley, or Jason, or her children. Not like those. But something, nonetheless. A kindred spirit. A salvaged soul.

Much, perhaps … like her own.

“… Has anyone ever told you,” J’onn murmured, finally. Pressing his head exhaustedly into the back of her shoulder. “Has anyone ever told you that you are … rather intense, in this city? A little bit.”

Ivy laughed. Barked it out, thick and rasping. A little intense, he said. Well. She supposed she could see it.

“We are as the world has made us,” she answered softly. “Exactly as bloody and intense as it has demanded of us. But. It can be a little much. I see your point. Don’t worry. Take your time, and we’ll sort ourselves out around you.”

He probably did need to. He was still mostly dead, and none of them, not Bruce nor Ivy nor Leslie, no matter what she said about it, were good examples to follow. He probably should take his time. Rest. Not get drawn into … ravaged conversations between a monster and her god. Probably. This … distraction from his distractions had gotten a little bit out of hand.

But he smiled faintly, tiredly, against her shoulder. She could feel it. And dropped his head heavily, exhaustedly, a moment later. Slumped against her back. With not so much as a hint of surrender.

“I don’t think I can make any promises,” he said softly. The spit of all of them. Every last one.

And yeah, Ivy thought. Patting his hand in resignation. He fit right in, didn’t he? That probably figured.

Oh well. At least there was strength to endure it. The world was an endless series of and then. But they had strength to endure it. Their roots were well watered.

Even if it happened to be in blood.