Chapter Text
Six pedestrians were briefly hospitalized today after contact with toxic flowering plants spreading along the western approach to Miagani Botanical Gardens, Parks Department officials said. All six reported touching the foliage by accident or while trying to clear what they called "overgrowth."
Parks Department officials identified the plants as Brugmansia arborea, Nerium oleander, Datura inoxia, and Epipremnum aureum. The first three were alarming to the officials, given they are classified as poisonous and would not be expected to flower outdoors in Gotham in April.
The cluster has formed along the approach to a memorial bench commemorating the death of Dr. Pamela Isley, who died at this site during the 2022 Arkham Knight Cloudburst incident.
"We've cleared the area and it's secure," said Denise Nintaro, Deputy Commissioner of Gotham Parks and Recreation. "The gardens are for looking, not landscaping. If you spot overgrowth, report it to staff and keep walking — they're trained, they're gloved, and they're paid to handle precisely this. We'd rather take a phone call than send an ambulance."
— T.R. Delaney, "Six Hospitalized After Miagani Gardens Toxic Flower Cluster," Gotham Gazette (April 1, 2025).
/ / /
PAM ISLEY'S DIARY:
April 1, 2025
I didn't think I was going to come back.
I'm going to start this diary by telling a story about another one: the diary I kept at Arkham. It started off documenting the various prisoner abuses, back when I was naïve enough to assume there could be some sort of lawsuit, or maybe I'd just get some personal revenge. Then I had that argument with Joker over lunch – I was actually hungry for once, he made a shitty joke about chlorophyll, and I nearly strangled him to death later that day with the Boston fern Dr. Young kept trying to keep alive in her office. And he's Joker, so of course he hit me exactly where I was most vulnerable: stealing my fucking diary from my cell.
He gave it to Harley – she was still working as Dr. Quinzel at the time. I'd have to have my sessions with her, and I literally just wouldn't say anything to her. Sit there, arms folded, glaring, hoping to make her uncomfortable enough to end the session early. And also because I liked looking at her. And she liked looking at me. The sessions never ended early.
Then the next session, she shows me my diary. And the thing was, the vine fibers were still wrapped around it. It was a thing I did, just grow a little plant tissue into the shape of a thread, and wrap my diary in it. Almost microscopic. If the thread snapped, someone had opened it before I did. And the thread was there. Which proves that:
A) Joker never read the thing, probably because he's fucking illiterate.
B) Harley didn't either, even though she had every reason to.
So she says, "I believe this belongs to you." That's it. Handed it back to me. And then says "But if there's anything in there that you want to talk about, and process, that could be how we spend these sessions." And I… agreed. I felt she earned my trust at that point. Doesn't happen often. From then on, whenever I wrote in the diary, I'd mark sections "DR. QUINZEL" and read it to her, and talk about it. You know me, I'm not really a "talk about my feelings with other people" person. But writing it down myself, and reading it to Dr. Quinzel – for some reason, that was easy.
Doesn't make any sense, I was well aware I was essentially journaling for Dr. Quinzel. Like instead of "Dear Diary," I may as well just have written "Dear Dr. Quinzel." I know it's hard to understand the connection between us – I don't really understand it myself. But if you think about converting a book of your most personal thoughts that no one should ever read, into a book sharing those thoughts with one person – it's like that. I can't explain it beyond that. The only person who makes me want to take something I've kept for myself, and share with someone else, is Harley.
So you could say I'm writing this diary to try and recall what happened earlier today, or at least put down on paper the few things I can remember. Or you could say I'm writing this diary because I want something for Harley to snoop around, discover, and read for herself. I wouldn't mind if she did that. There's not much Harley could do to me that I'd mind.
* * *
I never remember what it's like to be dead, but I always remember the dying. First you get cold, then you get lightheaded, then you start breathing faster to try and oxygenate the blood that's left in you. When that doesn't work, you get sleepy, then breathe slow, then you finish bleeding out and stop breathing at all. I guess it might feel different if I died falling from a building, or getting electrocuted; I've only died being shot, and that's what it feels like every time. Cold, lightheaded, breathing fast, sleepy, dead.
But what happened to me during and after the Cloudburst was different. I felt warm, not cold. Something like a fever, I guess, where my insides were microwaving and my heart rate just kept increasing, and I kept feeling warmer, and… I do remember flaking apart, as gross as that sounds. It was surprisingly painless. The effort to save the Green was exhausting, but the actual dying – it was less painful than getting shot.
Then I had joined the Green. The times I had gotten shot were something like anesthesia – things went dark, days or weeks would pass, but I would regain consciousness feeling like only a moment passed. Joining the Green after the Cloudburst was not that. I was conscious because my consciousness had transcended. I can't actually describe what it was like, how it felt, how much time passed, because I had dissolved my mortal corporeal form to join the Earth as one of its children. There is no vocabulary for perceiving being one with the Green, let alone describing it. Have you ever woken up and told a friend, "I just had the best dream," and yet were totally at a loss when describing what it was about? That's as close as I can come to explaining it.
I don't know why the dream ended. I just know that I had done everything I could protecting Gotham's plants as if they were my children, and the Green welcomed me as one of Her own. And then two and a half years later, that ended, I "came back from the dead," as everyone will inevitably describe it, and I don't know why.
I use the term "dying" when I describe what I did to stop Scarecrow's fear toxin, but that's mostly because I knew that's how everyone else would refer to it anyway: Ivy died stopping the Cloudburst. But I just want to say, I don't consider what I did dying. That was loving. Dying would've been hearing the Green shrieking in pain as the toxic gas choked them off and doing nothing. That would've killed me. You can use the word "dying," and I'm going to use it too, but let's be clear: what I did on Halloween 2022 to stop Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight was an act of love, not death.
I did it because I loved the Green.
And I did it because I loved Harley Quinn.
And it was literally easier to flake off into nonexistence than to tell her how I felt.
* * *
If we're going to use life/death metaphors, then I'd put it this way: what happened to me today was something more than a resurrection, but not quite a reincarnation. I was still Pam Isley. I remember what Pam Isley remembered. I felt like Pam Isley, or a version of her. I mean, that's kind of the whole problem. It's not an exaggeration to say every fucking problem in my life stems from being unable to answer two questions. Who is Pamela Isley, and what does she want?
If Pamela Isley knew who she was to begin with, she wouldn't have become Poison Ivy.
So a resurrection in that sense. But not a clean one. I was Pam Isley, but I was not identical to the one I had remembered.
The first things I remember were these: I was in the ground and I was wet. I only have vague recollections of the first hour or so. Clawing my way out of the ground, like some freak nature zombie. I was wet because I was covered in viscous translucent reddish liquid, which wasn't technically amniotic fluid but may as well have been.
Then I was wet because it was raining, which is when I can remember my first spark of insight that this was happening. I was alive, in Gotham, near a park bench in the Miagani Botanical Gardens. Literally the spot where I had died; guess they had christened my grave with a park bench. And my park bench was covered in flowers – species that had no place in Gotham this time of year, or any others. Guess I wasn't the only interesting thing being ejected from the soil.
The rain washed the reddish liquid off me, which was nice. It also mixed in with the dirt and soil on my skin and in my hair, which was not nice.
The whole thing made me want to just curl into a ball and crawl into the ground and die. Except I had specifically just emerged from that position. There was no going back in the ground. I was just a fucking seed, sitting in the dark doing nothing until some chemical or enzyme tells it that it's time, and then coming up whether the season was ready for it or not.
* * *
I was also nude.
That was a problem.
It was arguably the problem, because it was upstream of every other problem.
In the past I'd call on the Green and coax a few yards of leaf and vine into something that would keep me decent, but now it was silent. The Green had been a constant dull hum in my mind, five bars of 5G connection to call on the power of any flora in the area. But now? Nothing. Pure Airplane Mode. It wasn't until I stumbled around and touched one of the trees in the area that I could hear the Green again. The dull hum returned, the child would respond to my touch. But as soon as I withdrew my hand – silence.
Another problem: my physical body had changed. Taller, more strongly built, musculature I never earned; it was like the Green pulled the rootstock from Serena Williams and grafted Pamela Isley onto it. Normally most people, most women, would not consider this body a problem. But the nudity made it a problem, because I needed some fucking clothes, and it was going to be more annoying at 5'11" than my previous height.
And lastly, the nudity reminded me of the last person who saw me naked. And how the one silver lining to this awful situation was that I'd get to see her again. And that was a problem because… I had no idea if she'd want to see me again. And if she didn't, that would hurt. That would hurt a lot. It'd be hard to think of another thing that could hurt me more. It'd hurt more than being shot. It'd hurt more than dying.
* * *
The Miagani Botanical Gardens put me just outside the Narrows. Not far from my old flower shop, Baudelaire. At a certain point I decided to just say fuck it, and start walking in that direction.
At some point I passed a building with a marquee sign. APRIL 1, 2025.
I had died on Halloween 2022. So two and half years with the Green, and then getting ejected on, of all days, April Fools'. Poetic, really.
I didn't really know why I thought walking to Baudelaire was a good idea, or what it would accomplish if I got there. Was I trying to get harassed by pedestrians? Arrested by GCPD?
I just knew wanted to see Harley and that wasn't going to happen sitting on a park bench supposedly named after me.
It wasn't even a "fancy" park bench either. Steel frame, wooden slats that were already warping. And normally I wouldn't give a shit – except the bench represented how little Gotham gave a shit, so I did kind of give a shit about that.
* * *
It was raining, so the streets were sparse. Got a few honks from cars driving by seeing six feet of green-tinted stranger, but that's about it.
Then I saw the store in bright blue neon lettering: VELA REPAIR. Vela, Vela… Violet Vela? The purple-haired girl that was Harley's friend? Sure enough, a woman with purple hair was behind the counter. The store wasn't new, just the name on the sign. Violet Vela had apparently taken over from the previous owner.
Violet had been one of the few customers at Baudelaire that did repeat business – I can't count how many Yelp reviews that amounted to "beautiful flowers, but owner is terrible to deal with, never coming here again." But Violet did. She was Harley's friend, not mine; Harley always went to her when she wanted to do something sketchy with someone else's cell phone. Was she still friends with Harley? Would she remember me? Would she help me, or would she just freak the fuck out and call the police?
I didn't have a lot of options. It was Vela Repair, or keep wandering down Bleake Street until I got attacked or arrested. I opened the door and entered the store. I hoped she was nicer to customers than I was at my flower shop.