The laboratory, if it could be called that, was little more than a corner of the grow-house Ivy had repurposed with the equipment from Batman's safehouse. Beakers and vials sat on shelves of woven vine alongside centrifuges and burners that looked comically out of place among the greenery, yet she felt strangely at home.
Although botany was her real passion, Ivy had, after all, previously been somewhat of a chemist herself, and muscle memory was a stubborn thing. The vinyl in the corner spun while she worked, filling the room with a jazz record she'd found among the abandoned belongings that were just scratchy and warm and loud enough to drown out the groaning of the city beyond her perimeter.
The list had given her a foundation to work with, but a foundation was all it was.
Nevertheless, she had spent the better part of the night cross-referencing the stolen inventory against the Toxin's observable effects, and the composition was starting to take shape in her notes… Slowly, perhaps. But steadily. A few more days and she might have a working model.
Fortunately, of all the reagents still missing from her bench, a handful could be substituted or extracted directly from her own children.
She turned to the Foxglove first.
She'd taken it with her from Robinson Park due to how useful its glycosides were for stress-testing how the chemical agents might interact with cardiac tissue. She didn't think she'd need it this soon, alas, Gotham was full of surprises. Wordlessly, Ivy placed her palm flat against the soil, and the plant, sensing her touch, curled its leaf until the tip brushed her wrist.
She took it gently, severing the stem in a way that caused the least distress, and felt the faintest tremor ripple through their connection before the Foxglove settled.
"Thank you."
The Belladonna didn't need to be asked.
It had been listening through the root network, and by the time Ivy reached its pot, three leaves had already separated from the stem and now lay quietly in the soil.
"Eager, aren't we?"
An Oleander near the window provided the last of what her garden could offer, its branch dipping low as she approached, weighed down with the toxic sap she knew she could use to simulate the Toxin's slight corrosive effect in isolation. She stroked the bark once, and the branch bent further, pressing itself into her palm.
She thanked each one, for she did not see them as mere resources, but her children, and the fact that they gave willingly, without the psychic push she could have used, mattered to Ivy more than the chemistry. Regrettably, what was still missing from the list, certain synthetic precursors and industrial solvents simply could not be grown or substituted.
Those would have to wait for after their next run.
Ivy returned to her bench, crushing the Belladonna leaves in a mortar while the Foxglove extract reduced over a low flame, and let the vinyl carry her through the repetitive motions. The trumpet climbed and fell, climbed and fell, until its rhythm began to match the steady grinding of pestle against stone.
She was filtering the Oleander sap when something tapped against the glass ceiling.
A branch, probably. The wind had been picking up since nightfall, and her vines were restless enough to rattle the panels on their own. Or so Ivy told herself as she adjusted the filter paper and continued her work. And then the tapping came again, and at an interval that felt far too intentional to be anything but.
Ivy suddenly paused, glancing toward the window just as the record stuck between tracks, and in that brief, naked silence, she finally caught the breathy wheeze. "Ivy... Open up." She knew who it was before she reached the window. As Ivy parted the vines, however, she couldn't quite stifle a gasp.
Rowan was on the other side, barely clinging to the ledge.
His suit was torn in places, while the crack in his visor had nearly doubled in size since she last saw him. "... You look terrible."
"You should see the other guy." He boasted, but it was truly hard to take it seriously when every word was accompanied by a flinch. "Can I come in? I think I might fall over."
"What happened?" Ivy asked as she gently helped him inside.
Rowan could only smile weakly in response.
He couldn't tell her about the hallucinations that had hounded him through the sewers, or how they'd twisted his perception of time and distance, trapping him for what felt like weeks on end.
Nor could he mention that the Shade had to drive him the rest of the way to the Cave because the sewers had long since stopped making sense, stretching and folding and looping back on themselves until he could hardly tell left from right.
And he certainly wasn't going to tell her what happened in the Batcave, about how every last one of them had woken up and started taunting him and how Alfred, of all people, had pulled a 'Dick' and dragged his sharp nail across his own throat from one end to the other.
And Rowan had panicked because it was Alfred, and foolishly rushed in, only to find out the hard way that his blood hadn't just made the Batler strong; it'd also given the old man vitality to put him right up there with some of the worst Brutes Gotham had to offer.
He had nearly freed every single prisoner before Rowan and Ichor and the Wisp could wear him down enough to wrestle him back into the cell.
All the cuts and tears on his suit had actually been the old man's handiwork.
"It's nothing."
'It's definitely something.' Ivy thought, but didn't pursue the matter.
Whatever was eating at him wasn't her business, and frankly, the less she knew about the inner workings of the Bat's little protege, the better for the both of them when this truce inevitably expired and they went back to being what Gotham expected of them.
But even setting sentiment aside, she could see the boy was running on fumes, spite and not much else. Sending him out like this would be as foolish as it was heartless, and Ivy, for all her faults, was neither.
"Take a few hours of rest first," She sighed, accidentally breathing in through her mouth and tasting a taste so foul it brought tears to her eyes. "And a bath while you're at it… You smell like you rolled through a sewer."
He stumbled, caught himself, and shook his head before she could get another word in. "No. We don't have the time." What happened in the Batcave had lit a fire in him that wouldn't settle.
The restlessness had made standing still feel like a sin, so naturally, Rowan wasn't going to agree to simply rest. Not easily. Not willingly. Probably not at all unless she physically barred the exit, or—"Rest, sweetheart, or you can find yourself another botanist."
She watched him reach for his chin the way he always did when he was mulling things over, and followed with a, "I can't," that was all bark and little bite.
He wanted to hit the bed, Ivy could tell, but the guilt wouldn't let him be the one to say it.
He needed somebody to pull rank on him, to make the decision so he could tell himself he'd fought it, that he would have kept going if she hadn't twisted his arm.
'Being a hero sounds exhausting.'
"There's a bath inside," For all her devotion to the Green, Ivy wasn't so far gone that she enjoyed waking up with vine patterns etched into her skin every morning. The thorns bit, the bark chafed, and no amount of love for her children changed the fact that a body, even one that was half-plant, still craved something softer to lie on every once in a while, hence, "There's a mattress further inside, if you need it."
He certainly looked like he did.
When he still wouldn't move, Ivy jabbed a finger at the boiling flasks on the counter. "You see those? They're not done yet, which means neither am I, which means we are not going anywhere for a while. So quit hovering and go rest while you still can."
His shoulders sagged as he turned toward the bath with a quiet, "... Thank you," That he likely hoped she hadn't heard.
Ivy waited until his footsteps had faded completely before allowing herself a small, nigh unnoticeable smile. "You're welcome, sweetheart."
The bath wasn't too fancy.
It was a hollowed-out basin carved from root and stone, fed by a pipe Ivy had rerouted from somewhere above and filtered through three layers of dense moss that did more for water quality than anything the city had managed in decades.
There was no shower, because of course there wasn't.
And the water was cold, because of course it was.
"Fantastic."
He first undid the helmet, setting it down carefully beside the basin because cracked or not, it was still money and could perhaps be repaired.
Then he slowly worked his way down the Impsuit, one limb at a time, wincing at every seam that caught on bruised skin or dried blood, until the whole thing lay in a heap at his feet like a shed skin.
Finally, the deep wine-red of his skin was on full display, six eyes blinking out of sync as they adjusted to the dim orange light, though the three on his left sat cloudy and unresponsive in their sockets, blinded since Ichor took that hit to the face and the damage was reflected back through their link.
Rowan flexed his fingers and looked down at himself, but not at the wounds or the bruises.
He'd stopped caring about those ages ago.
What concerned him was the frame beneath… How his arms hung longer than they should have; how his hands rested lower at his sides than they had a week ago and his knees sat higher when he crouched. Or how the newly-forned muscle clung to his frame, rapidly filling in across both his shoulders and forearms.
They didn't belong on someone his age, not unless said someone was cycling on and off a whole lot of roids… Then again, what was the Super Soldier Serum if not government-grade super roids with a grander name and an even grander body count?
He'd grown, what, two inches at the safehouse? It was closer to three now, and it was showing no signs of stopping.
The Serum was still reshaping him from the inside out, still pulling and stretching and rebuilding without so much as asking, and part of him was thrilled because of it. How could he not be? There'd be no more awkward teenage limbs tripping over themselves. No reason to crane his neck to meet people at eye level… If the Serum was offering him a shortcut past the indignity of puberty, far be it from him to complain.
But the other part, the part that had read too many comics and lived through enough to know that nothing this convenient came free, was already running scenarios.
What if it didn't stop at a respectable six feet?
What if it kept going until he was some hulking, gross mass of muscle that couldn't scratch his own back or fit through doorways?
What if the accelerated growth extended beyond his frame and into his cells, his organs, his lifespan, burning through decades in months until his body aged itself into dust? Kirkland had warned him about the risks, sure, but warnings were just words on paper, and standing here in a villain's bathroom watching his own body outgrow itself in real time was a very different animal.
He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose.
'What does it matter?'
He couldn't control the growth any more than he could control the Toxin or the city or the lunatics tearing it apart. But he could control how he reacted, and right now, reacting meant not spiraling in a bathtub. He lowered himself into the basin and sighed as the cold bit into every inch of exposed skin, washing away the fatigue and the ache in equal measure.
"Cold water, stone tub…" He sank lower until the water lapped at his collarbones. "Living the dream."
A small clay pot sat on the rim that, when uncapped, hit him with a rush of crushed mint and flora he couldn't quite name but didn't mind at all. Ivy's own recipe, no doubt, and knowing her, it was probably worth more per ounce than anything a pharmacy could stock. 'Surely she wouldn't mind?' Rowan wondered. "She did tell me to bathe..."
He worked it through his hair with trembling fingers, careful not to waste more than he needed, and for a few treacherous seconds, with his eyes shut and the pleasant scent filling his lungs, the world beyond ceased to exist.
His head started to dip, and he caught himself, only to feel it sleepily dip again a moment later.
Rowan told himself five minutes, and when those passed he told himself just five more, and when those passed too he attempted to summon the urgency that should have been there with the reminder that Ivy could walk in at any moment, see his face and that would be the end of whatever anonymity he had left. But the thought felt far away, muffled by the water, the silence and that treacherous little whisper at the back of his skull that kept asking, 'Who'd even recognize us like this?'
And for once in his life, Rowan was inclined to listen.
.
.
.
Ivy held the last vial to the light, watching the pale compound swirl against the glass before inserting it in the rack. It, of course, wasn't the cure; it wasn't even the Toxin, but mixed with the right compound at the right concentration, she might get close. Satisfied, she set it down, wiped her hands, then glanced at her occupied bedroom.
"Rowan?"
She called softly, parting the vines into the smaller room where her bed sat in its hammock of woven green, untouched. She scratched her head, then rounded toward the bathroom and, sure enough, there he was, sprawled across the tub like one of the many bodies Finger River had swallowed, then spat back out. One of his arm dangled over the rim, knuckle grazing the floor while his head lolled at an angle that would cost him dearly when he woke.
His legs, meanwhile, were folded at odd angles with his feet flat against the bottom of the basin, lowered as if ready to bolt at a moment's notice, not that 'Rowan' could have given how thoroughly out cold he was. But strange as the posture was, it utterly paled next to what really caught Ivy's attention, which was his skin, or more precisely the deep, wine-dark red that ran all the way from the white of his scalp to waterline.
It didn't seem to be paint or dye or any surface affliction she could rationalize.
It went all the way through, and looked natural to him as her own green was to her.
Then there were the eyes, six in total, three on each side of a face too sharp and angular to belong to a boy his age, all closed but plainly visible beneath thin lids, though a jagged scar cut from his left eyebrow through all three lids and down to his jaw.
'So the rumors were true…'
Like all the other villains, Pamela hadn't believed the rumors about how the Imp was, as his namesake suggested, an actual Demon, even if his reported weaknesses made the claim hard to dismiss outright. She was a still woman of science, after all, and had chalked it up to specific chemical reactions or allergies triggered by his Metapower.
Looking at him now, she was fairly certain she'd been wrong.
She stepped back to take in the full picture, a breath of laughter escaping her lips before she could catch herself. For all the terror the sight of him should have inspired, he looked less like a creature of Hell and more like a cat that had dozed off in a strange position and couldn't be bothered to fix it.
"Some Demon you are."
—————
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