Title: Pavement Cracks
Rating: PG-13
Characters are not mine . I am just borrowing.

Arkham Asylum was not a place the criminally insane in Gotham went to to recover from their illnesses. It was a joke that merely kept the flood of lunacy at bay. There were always escapes, and the escapees would always find themselves back in the comfort of their old home with, perhaps, a new flock of doctors who would try and help them.

Poison Ivy was currently in residence thanks to the impassioned plea of a doctor that wanted to help her, or so he said. He more likely wanted a chance to make her a science experiment, and with the Bat so carefully in everyone's business Arkham was probably going to the closest this doctor was going to get to finding out how Ivy worked. She would not allow herself to believe otherwise.

The conditions of her residency at Arkham were strict. She would not be allowed access to any living plants, and her vegetarian meals would be closely monitored. For a time the court order to keep her out of the sunlight was held, but was summarily retracted when the lack of light nearly killed her. She almost wanted to thank whatever shiny civil rights attorney fought that battle for her, almost. So, she was granted a maximum two hours a day out in the light on a caged track of concrete that was far from the green she longed for.

Ivy took what she could get. Like most things that grew on the earth Poison Ivy had a great deal of patience. Every bud had its time. Every seed broke through the ground eventually. Every slab of pavement would eventually give way to the movement and growth of the earth below and crack.

Spring was on its way. She could feel it in the air. She convinced her doctor to let her spend ten minutes out in the rain. She felt renewed, and smiled at the first mistake her captors had made. The second mistake was the small crack in the concrete of her tiny sunlit path. It made her try and impress a real desire to change to her doctor. She even asked about treatments for her condition, after all, how could she ever feel a connection to humanity again if she was stuck in the half world between plant and human. It was harder than she could ever imagine to swallow the contempt that such a vile statement caused to rise in her throat.

She sat day after day in her mandatory orange jumper, in her tiny cell, and pulled on every loose string those doctors left behind them. They tried to encourage a sense of humanity in her. It was not that she was no longer human they had said, she had just disconnected herself because of her condition. There must be something human left in her they insisted, and pointed to times in her life when she helped people, the orphans from No Man's Land for example. Ivy remained calm until some unfortunate mentioned Harley whereupon it took every ounce of willpower in her body not to snap the man's neck with her bare hands. She snapped a mechanical pencil instead.

The doctors were wrong of course. There could be no changing what Ivy was even if she really wanted it. There was no cure for her power. There was no way she would ever see humanity as anything but a blight upon the green. Even animals knew their place among the green. Humanity thought of itself as above Mother Nature, and one day she'd show them how far beneath nature they truly were. She wished she could make humanity hear the cries of the earth, the vengeance that only needed one little push to erupt, and Ivy knew that she was that push. She could restore the balance, though her idea of balance was tipping the scales in the opposite direction.

Ivy walked her concrete path. The crack had grown and she could feel something trying to push up from the earth below. She did not yet possess the strength to fully command it, or to nurture its growth to aid her escape, but she still had time. She tore at a cuticle on her nail causing it to bleed, letting the drops of blood fall along the crack in the walkway, and knowing that whatever weed killer they might start pouring around would only give her little friend extra strength.

Soon. Soon she would be free.

One of the doctors tried to get her to talk about Harley again. His speech was quite grandiose and was unfortunately worded to include the word love. She blew him a kiss and watched as he passed out onto his desk. Then she sat patiently and waited for the guards to come rushing in, offering no resistance, and chuckling when she was told her privileges were going to be revoked. She did not have many, and they could only limit her time outside to thirty minutes. It would be more than enough. It was Spring after all.

Another doctor, female this time, tried the line of questioning from a slightly different angle. She used far more tact, managed to avoid any use of the word love, but still ended up asleep on her desk. Ivy took the opportunity to read her file and inserted corrective notes where she felt they were appropriate. She got three days in solitary for that, and decided that it was time to escape.

The small patch of green could barely be seen poking through the crack of the concrete. Ivy could feel it though, the strength she had given it that would soon return to her. It was going to rain. She stopped by the crack and looked out across the drab landscape provided especially for her. No green, just slabs of rock, pavement, and brick. But humans forgot what lay beneath rock, there was always something left behind, a root, a weed, or a seed. There was always something, and all they needed to grow was a little push.

Ivy shut her eyes and the ground shook. Guards raced towards her, stopped short by the sudden appearance of moss that grabbed and secured them. Trees pushed away slabs of concrete with ease, breaking open the metal fencing that had kept her prisoner. She strolled out and waited at the edge of the facility. No other inmate of the asylum would be allowed to break loose. No other inmate except one. She turned slightly as she heard the noise. The musical laughter as a young blonde in pigtails tumbled down a tree like a child and cartwheeled to her side.

"I thought you'd leave me for sure this time, Red," the young woman said.

Ivy arched an eyebrow. She slipped out of her orange jumper and walked forward, naked only briefly as ivy grew up around her torso to clothe her, but only so much as she thought necessary. She turned and sighed as Harley stood mouth agape behind her.

"If you don't keep up," Ivy said wryly, "I won't come and rescue you if the Bat catches you."

Her powers were close to that of a gods. Ivy could feel the gift of it, and one day she'd be able to lay waste to every city mankind created it. She would see it restored to the green. Until then she would make herself strong, and she would be strong when at last she could leave this happy, hyper-active clown of a girl to rot. As it was, she was weak, and stretched out a hand to help Harley scale the remains of a fortified wall.