Witness me, old man, I am the wild

The drive to Gotham had been long, but uneventful - at least up until the end. The end had been the sight of a man, or a thing, covered in lamia, slowly walking down alongside the highway.

It took Janet but a few moments to recognize him: he'd been an employee at the chemical plant where they'd met each other for the first time. The one Pam had filled with lamia spores, where she had taken pity on only one, small little human among dozens.

She put him out of his misery.

She was disconcerted, though.

Half an hour later, she met Harley on the edge of Slaughter Swamp. Harls had brought a welcome home sign, and a bouquet of flowers stolen from a funeral home. "Hi there, gorgeous," she said. "Took you long enough."

There was a lot to tell her. Fandom. Janet. The wild lamia. But Pam put it all aside. She was home at last. The world could wait. With Harley in her arms, all she wanted to do was lock it all out, and cover herself in love.

---

And it worked, for a week. Pam woke up every morning to a dream: Harley's apartment, Harley warm in her arms, the sunlight filtering in through the windows. Birds singing outside. Heaven.

Unfortunately, she couldn't stay there. And so on Monday morning she got up, made her way down from Harley's apartment, and stepped back into the filth of Gotham City. A place she'd hoped never to set foot in again. A place where not seeing things was as important a survival skill as not being seen.

( So. You're back. )

[[ nfb due to distance! taken from Poison Ivy #13 by G. Willow Wilson. this has definitely taken five times longer than I wanted but we're almost there. ]]

Harley had come back to her. Harley had come. Back. To her. After everything Pam had told her, every word she'd written, the long dark night of her lamia-infused suicide mission across the country, after everything she'd done to Harley before that...

Harley had come back to her.

( And for the first few hours, they did nothing but get reacquainted. )

And so they got dressed, and made it down to the store. Pam wasn't surprised to find Adrian had closed it up, though she was grateful. He'd been a better friend to her than she deserved - probably better yet because she still hadn't told him why she didn't deserve it.

She wondered how his grove would look to Harley's eyes now.

But that was for later, maybe. For now, Pam took Harley out onto the streets, her own small smile stuck to her face like it was glued that way-- as she watched Harley watch the world through her eyes. For no other reason than that Harley wanted to.

[[ taken and adapted from Poison Ivy #9 by G. Willow Wilson. mentions of some psychotropic fungus use under the cut. continued in the comments, but pam and her harley are At Large on Fandom this evening, so this post is open to anyone who might bump into them along the way ]]