Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Dad? What do we do now?”

A faint, terrified question, almost inaudible among the vicious whispers of the crowd. A sea of prying eyes stared back, eager to crack open her secret like the discarded angel egg at her feet. Mel sweated bullets through her painted skin.

“Folks!” Her father wasted no time in grabbing the microphone, his guttural laugh bellowing over the PA system. “Fine citizens of the Gaslight District! Settle down.” As disarming as his mannerisms were, Mel could tell from the way his eyes scanned the crowd for danger that he was panicking as much as she was.

A disgruntled murmur swept through the town square.

“Why should we listen to you?!” A rotling tossed the filthy remains of a fly carcass onto the stage, landing with a splat and bloodying Breadhead’s jacket. “That’s just one a’ them cursed angels!!” 

“What are you trying to pull on us, huh?!” Mel recognized the voice: a lounge singer that her father had occasionally employed on holidays. “Trying to make yourself out to be a hero? PaTHEtic.”

“I say we eat ‘im alive! I say we eat ALL of ‘em!” A third rotling proposed. The crowd cheered in agreement and began to surge forward. 

The newly hatched bird squirmed in Mel’s hands, its claws sharp as razor blades. She prayed whatever blood they drew wouldn’t seep through her gloves. Backing away, she looked to her family. Mud, positively annoyed, was busy trying to slink off the platform before he could be associated with his brother’s stupidity. Breadhead hunched into a protective stance, worried, but not about to question his loyalty. Ken stood with his boots planted firmly on the stage, looming and immovable as ever, temper boiling to an explosion.

“ENOUGH!” the butcher thundered. The speakers rang with a high-pitched whine as the swarm of rotlings paused to cover their aching ears. “Not a human?” He swept an arm over to where his daughter stood, clutching the baby angel. “Not a human?!” He cackled, as if that was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. “People, if this ain’t the most black-blooded human you’ve ever seen, I’ll save you all the trouble and freeze myself in the Inferno!” He chuckled with wicked glee.

The rotling priest, the one who had first made the accusation, sneered. 

“I think we all know what a human is, and THAT thing,” he pointed a bony finger, “Is no more than a heavenly pest.” 

“Yeah? It’s been ten thousand years, and the last one was pulverized before anyone could get a good look. Came from an egg just like this one, sigil n’ all.” The light of a scheme crept back into Ken’s eyes as he towered above the ancient priest. “Why don’t you tell me, Mouthpiece of the Black Hand,” Ken leaned in uncomfortably close, slinging his massive arm around the man’s shoulder, “what exactly a human looks like? Y’know, before you go around slandering my family’s good name while we’re doin’ you all a favor.”

The priest stared at the waiting microphone before him, hesitating, silent. Mel shot her father a terrified what-the-hell-are-you-doing look, but he either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Her grip on the newborn crow tightened. The bird squawked as it wriggled, its cries echoing through the tense emptiness of the crowd’s bated breath. 

“Shut up shut up shut up!” she hissed to it. “You’re not helping our case!”

The priest recoiled from the touch, irritated. “Well,” he began, “I suppose they look like any other rotling, ‘cept for the blood. Uglier, maybe. All the flesh intact, like a newborn.” 

“Mmm,” Ken grunted. “You know this ‘cause you’ve… seen a human?”

The penalty for falsely reporting a human sighting was being promptly relocated to the stomach of a kraken. Not a damned soul in all of Chainport would take those odds.

“Not in my time upon this wasteland,” the prophet admitted reluctantly.

Vice sustained the regenerative power of the Black Hand, but it also attracted the judgment of heaven. The first rotlings to take the mark, along with many successive generations, had long since been imprisoned in the Inferno for their overindulgence, never to return. Only a handful of townsfolk had avoided punishment long enough to see more than one human, and at eight thousand four hundred and three years of age, Ken remembered when the current priest was no more than a smelly infant.

“Yeah, neither had I," the butcher divulged. "Consider me as shocked as you when I learned this little abomination begins its larval state like any angel. Wouldn’t’ve been able to tell the difference if it weren’t for the folks who tipped us off in Paradise Lost.”

Gasps of intrigue sounded through the audience. 

A wet cough sprayed through the microphone as Mud wrenched it from his brother’s hand. “That’s right, I don’t see any of YOU hauling your arse up there, risking your ETERNITY to preserve our own!” He took the opportunity to guilt the spectators now that the coast was looking clearer. “Shame on all a’ ya! We brought you the human, what more proof do ya lousy fuckers want?”

“I can handle this.” Ken yanked the microphone back, teeth gritted. “Now what do you all say we get back to our celebration? The egg hatched, no big deal. Let’s skewer the thing before it can grow up into its hideous human form. I dunno about you, but I’m ready for another ten thousand years of sin and debauchery! Who’s with me?!” 

The crowd erupted in hysterical screams of joy. The priest disappeared into the crowd, still skeptical, his protests drowned out by the wild cheer. 

“Alright, alright. Take it away, kid.” 

Mel stayed frozen to her spot on the stage. The spire loomed in front of her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t budge.

This must be how it feels, she thought in slow motion. All those folks at the bottom of the sea, struggling to move, trapped.

In her arms, the bird squawked, flapping its tiny wings.

“C’mon now, where you left off.” He shoved her forward and she tripped, nearly dropping the sacrificial creature. “Death to the human!”

How it shivered in the glare of the gas lamps.

“Kill the damn bird, Mel.” Growled in her ear, it wasn’t a request. It was a demand. 

The only response was a soft coo.

“BREADHEAD!” 

The golem tilted his massive head in acknowledgement.

“Get over here, your sister’s-”

“WAIT!” Mel gripped the microphone with her free hand, knuckles white under her glove. The cheering and chanting ceased, but she had seconds before it would turn ugly again.

“Uuhmm,” she tried not to notice the palpable fury of her family behind her, “Dad’s right, this is what humans look like as juveniles! But you know what? I’m more interested that somebody here thought it would be a good idea to try to frame my family for prophetic fraud.” She pointed a hostile finger at the old priest. A hole in the crowd formed around him as everyone started to get the idea that being associated with him was not optimal for their health and safety. 

“Young lady, I am a man of faith!” The priest scowled at her. “I am only doing my duty to the Black Hand. You can never be too careful in these uncertain times.”

“Then you retract your accusation?” Mel cracked an uneven smile, cackling a little. 

“I still think the whole lot of you are filthy cheating scumbags, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied, and a few people nearby hissed at his boldness or laughed at his comment. “But I suppose you are correct, if only because I have no proof to the contrary.” 

Mel’s cackle grew into a giggle, which grew into a peal of uncontrollable laughter. “Nope! Not good enough!” she wheezed, lifting the tiny crow above her head, right over the spike, but not touching it. “You picked the wrong people to slander. Hey everybody!” She addressed the crowd. “How about a bet?”

Gambling was as common a pastime in the district as taking an evening stroll, and the denizens liked their stakes high. Excited conversations bubbled up through the masses as Mel continued.

“Humans don’t reach maturity for two years,” she lied. “Since our lovely prophet over here thinks it's a good idea to go around throwing out damning allegations about an innocent family trying to save the world,” Mel emphasized those last few words especially, “I say we wait and see who’s right.” She winked, and a sizable portion of the crowd laughed at the idea of the little creature held high in her hands being anything but human. “At the end of two years, if this angel spawn's not a fully grown human, go ahead! Throw us to the kraken. But if we're right,” she grinned, her eyes gleaming white as they singled out the priest from the throng, “we spike you with it. And leave you here, as a warning to anyone who questions our honesty ever again.” It was a doom even the virtues could never dream up. Mel shrugged. “Odds seem pretty fair to me. Besides, the Hand can always pick another vessel, but you aren’t gonna find a better London broil anywhere on the island.”

“Damn.” Mud watched from the side, impressed. “I taught her that.”

Ken reeled back from having his eternity flash before his eyes to smack his brother on the back. “You sure as hell did not.” He was going to have much more than a word with that little goblin as soon as he could pull her to somewhere private.

“What’ll you do with the human in the meantime?” someone shouted. 

“We’ll keep it in the shop, in one of those bulletproof bug jars.” Mel had it all planned out. Well, only that part, but it was a start. “Won’t hurt a fly. Or maybe it will, that’d be kinda fun to watch! You all can get a look up close if you come to the Whale Belly Butcher Shop tonight for our Human Killing Party!” Crap advertising the restaurant, as promised. “We’ll even take your photo with it, but it’ll cost extra!”

“I definitely taught her that,” Mud claimed. Ken pretended not to hear.

They were back in business, but for how long?

“See you all tonight!” He had no choice but to follow his daughter’s ruse. “Come hungry, and praise the Black Hand!” It was probably smart to appear at least a little bit religious after making enemies of the local clergy.

The crowd dispersed with enthusiastic chatter. Melancholy was safe.

For now.

Chapter Text

“Get up.”

Mel cracked her eyes open a slit. “Mmgrph?”

Her room was dark except for the sliver of light that silhouetted her father’s broad frame in the doorway. She groaned and rolled over.

“Get. Up,” he repeated in a threatening but unusually hushed tone. “ Now.”

Mel reluctantly slunk to the floor, dragging the tattered quilt with her and landing with a soft thump amidst a pile of discarded beer cans from the previous night. It was three in the morning, what the hell was so important that it couldn’t wait until after she’d slept off the consequences of last night's celebration? She was used to her father’s heavy footsteps in the middle of the night, his whispered orders, the rumble of the hearse engine as her uncle, brother, and various employees peeled out of the driveway to do in some poor bastard. Those interruptions of sleep always left her feeling lonely, untrusted, and desperate to prove her worth. 

She blinked herself awake, suddenly full of energy. 

“You’re taking me on a job?!” Mel squealed, grabbing the harpoon she kept under her bed. She gave it a few reckless swipes and a twirl. “What are we doing? Are we kidnapping somebody? Getting revenge? Can I crush somebody’s skull this time?!” A picture frame shattered as she accidentally rammed the harpoon into the wall. 

“We’re cleanin’ up YOUR mess is what we’re doing. Put that down and follow me.” Ken grimaced as Mel yanked the spear out of the wall and let it clatter to the floor. “Keep it down, you’ll wake the whole shop.”

Mel stuck her tongue out at him to make a farting sound before following him down the creaky steps at the end of the hallway. In the flicker of the single gas lantern, she made shadow puppets on the walls, some cruder than others. Ken lifted the hatch to the basement open with a grunt. 

“TWO YEARS?!” he bellowed the moment it was shut and bolted behind them. “Are you outta your goddamn mind?!”

“Dad, relax.” Mel wasn’t fazed by his rage. “That’s plenty of time for us to figure something out.” 

Ken wasn’t having it. “You’re playin’ with fire, kid. How are we gonna-” He pinched the bridge of his nose, fuming. “ALL you had to do was follow orders! It’s a BIRD! A needy, useless, slimy…”

She glared at her father, hurt. 

“Don’t look at me like that. This has nothing to do with me and you.” 

“I’ll get us out of it. I always do.” Mel hopped on top of one of the many wooden crates of bullets and sandbags that filled the basement. An even height difference might not change his mind, but from here she could jab a finger between her father’s eyes. “You should be thanking me! ‘Wow, Mel, you really saved our asses back there,’ ” she deepened her voice in an offensive imitation of him as she grabbed his jaw and moved it up and down. “ ‘I’m sorry I doubted you. You’re a genius and also cool as hell. In fact, I’m retirin’ early on account of my nasty old man bones and leaving you in charge of the Smiling Dead.”

Ken waited until Mel was done mocking him to pick her up by the scruff of her bandages and gently relocate her to the floor. “Never gonna happen. Look, Mel, we’ve had this conversation. I don’t wanna have it again.” He checked the support beams on the walls, avoiding eye contact. 

Mel pouted. The least he could do was look at her while he crushed her hopes and dreams. “I can do anything the rest of you can do. Better, even.” 

“Didn’t say you couldn’t.” One of the beams responded with a whirring sound when kicked. A patch of the muddy floor gave way to a metal hatch door, similar to the one leading down to the basement. 

“Ugh, then WHY-“

“You know why!” he snapped, turning on her. “We both know why! I tried to give you a normal life, I worked hard to make sure no one would ever hurt you. You wanna undo all that?! Blow the cover I spent the past twenty years building at the expense of COUNTLESS LIVES?!” He inhaled deeply to settle the short-circuiting fuse in his brain. “It’s time to accept there’s some things you just can’t do.” 

Mel flinched at those last words, a sight that made Ken sick to his rotten stomach. “You think I’m weak because I’m different.” 

“Don’t matter what I think.” He heaved the second hatch open. An empty black void of a tunnel gaped back at them with only a rickety ladder for the descent. “What matters is the city of bloodthirsty fanatics out there who’ll be fightin’ for your head soon as they realize you ain’t like us.” Mel was zoning out again. Ken had noticed years ago that whenever the reality of her situation was directly voiced, she chose not to hear. “Listen up, ‘cause if you don’t follow directions, that day may be coming sooner than we hoped. I need you to get to Emberwick.”

It took a moment for the words to settle in. “You’re sending me away?” Mel looked up at her father, eyes wide.

Now was not the time for this. They’d talk later, when she was safe. 

“New trawler off the coast,” he explained. “Judging by the size of those fish hooks, they ain’t fishin’ for shrimp. Your little revenge grift was good, but it won’t hold up if people start talking.” He passed her the flickering lantern. 

A few seconds passed as Mel just stared, reality fracturing around her. She’d experienced a fair amount of horrors in her short lifetime, but the one thing she could always count on was her family being by her side. Never in her wildest imagination had she pictured a day when they’d decide she was too much of a liability and leave her to fend for herself. 

“You’re giving up on me,” she stated with no room for dispute. “I’m dead weight, and you’re tossing me out because you could be incriminated.” Her voice cracked as anger filled the space left behind by shock. “What happened to ‘We fix this as a family?’ You said I was finally ready to prove myself!”

“I’m givin’ you that chance!” He shoved a moldy piece of paper in her hands. “Get to this address and lie low for a while. Change your name, dye your hair, whatever you have to do to stay in one piece.” They had practiced for an emergency before; Mel knew how to change her identity. That wasn’t the part he was worried about. “The locksmith there is an old friend of mine. He’ll give you a job IF you can keep your mouth shut. You don’t know me, you’ve never lived in Chainport, and you’re rotted as your uncle’s breath. Got it?”

Mel had always thought her initiation would involve more “stab your best friend in the back to prove your loyalty” and less “move to a distant city and get a boring job.” Leave it to Ken to turn the most exciting day of her life into a monotonous chore. Still, a chance was a chance, and she’d take it.

“If I do, you’ll let me join the Smiling Dead?” She tried not to grin too wide, knowing she’d backed him into a corner.

Ken frowned. “Fine, yeah. Stay outta the way while we wait for things to cool down and you’re in.” Since when had he raised such a manipulative little vulture? “We’ll come find you once this all blows over.” 

She still wasn’t satisfied, so he knelt down to her level and raised a pinky finger, which she wrapped her much smaller pinky around. “I promise.”

“YESSS!” she shrieked, jumping up and down. “Eek, this is really happening!” 

“You gotta get there first.” He masked the smallest hint of a proud smirk with a wary grumble. His daughter’s joy would mean nothing if she kept stalling and was killed under his roof, because of his mistakes and his oversight. Mel would never understand what it was like to live with that fear, and that was a good thing. “The tunnel lets out around Blackout Burg. From there, it’s due north ‘til you reach the old oil rig. Don’t do anything stupid.” 

Mel grabbed the flimsy wood of the ladder and started her descent. “Pfft, I won’t.” A particularly decayed rung gave out under her boots and she yelped, only to be caught by a strong arm of exposed muscle and bone. She smiled up at Ken sheepishly. “I promise.” She found her footing again. “What’ll you tell Mud and Breadhead?”

“You’re on an errand. Ain’t a lie, right?”

Mel nodded and zipped her lips shut with her free hand, lantern between her teeth. 

“Good.” He turned one more time to make sure no one was following them while Mel shimmied down the ladder. Nothing was out of place. Aside from a mouse scampering across the dirt floor, nothing moved. “Mel, I-”

When he looked back, she was already gone, swallowed by the endless black. Ken sighed and locked the hatch with a clunk. Fathers didn’t give their kids jobs that they thought they couldn’t handle. Surely Mel already knew he was proud of her. It went without saying.

Chapter Text

Measuring eternity is tricky business. 

At first, no one even tried. People were too busy reveling in their newfound lack of mortal consequences to notice that hours, days, and weeks no longer held any meaning. As far as anyone cared, time was just another vestige of the humanity they had surpassed, better left forgotten.

That was until the first few rotlings refused to pay back their debts. Why should they, if there was no collection day? Why honor any commitments?

It didn’t take long for chaos to reign. Heaven couldn’t have that, not in their tenuously subjugated purgatory, so they created a solution: a Virtue with a mechanical heart that beat the seconds away, attuned to the motions of the heavenly bodies with magic that only the angels knew. Ceaseless in their duty, Patience presided over time itself. Their most sacred of tasks, of course, was keeping the creation of the human on schedule. Stationed by the Seam that sealed the island from the apocalyptic wasteland outside, they hurried along the workers who took samples from the filament to inject into the ever-growing egg. The rotlings reviled them for this, yet were at their mercy to obtain the only two things more valuable than eternal life; money and power over their own kind. And so, time marched on.

It was marching too fast, in Mel’s opinion. In the span of one day, she and her family had gone from tolerated to pariahs to celebrities, soon to be Chainport’s most wanted criminals if Ken didn’t get his act together and come up with a good excuse. The further she trudged into the tunnel, the deeper her scowl grew in the greenish light of the lantern.

This plan was just plain stupid. It was going to look suspicious as hell for her to vanish indefinitely on a nondescript errand right as the rumors of her humanity were starting to circulate. People going missing was common enough, but if the town had reason to suspect that Ken had discovered her secret and offed her, they’d want to know why it was done privately and without spectacle. They’d want to know why they’d been lied to the day before. Most importantly, they’d want to see a body to put their fears at ease. If he was trying to get out of this without implicating himself as an accomplice who had known from the start, he was failing spectacularly. 

He’d rather shoot himself in the foot than let me scheme us out of trouble , Mel fumed to herself. She was the better liar, and Ken would rather endanger the entire family than admit it. With an exasperated yell, she tore the piece of paper with the address on it in two, crumpled it up, and hurled it at the wall. 

There had to be a better way to convince her father that she was capable of more. She’d rather risk being exposed than decay in the back of a shop her whole life, waiting on customers with dung for brains.

A pinprick of light appeared in the distance as an idea slowly wove its roots through Mel’s mind. By the time she emerged from the tunnel, it had fully bloomed, along with an impish smile on her face.

If time wouldn’t stop for them, she’d have to force its hand. Sure, threatening an agent of heaven such as Patience was punishable by everlasting torture, but if today didn’t exist, no one would know it happened. She knew exactly where she’d screwed up; if she could relive the events of the past few days, she’d be able to fix their mistakes and make everything right. 

She headed west, towards Paradise Lost.

Mud could count on his bony fingers the amount of times he’d seen his brother drink. It had nothing to do with their short-lived pact to not end up like their father (Mud had inherited his ability to make money mysteriously disappear before it got to the bank, and Ken… well, his temper didn’t come from nowhere). No, the reason Ken kept a sober head was pure responsibility. At any moment, the authorities could come knocking on their front door asking nosy questions. He owed it to everyone in his circle to be able to craft a passable alibi on the spot. 

So when Mud walked in on Ken sprawled out on the old sofa, halfway through a bottle of their cheapest bottom-shelf antifreeze, he knew something was wrong. 

“Well you look a mess.” Not that he actually cared. The only remotely comfortable piece of furniture in the entire whale was this dilapidated couch, and he wanted his lounging spot back. 

Ken grunted but didn’t move. “Don’t have kids.” He stared into space and took another swig.

Mud snorted. “Weren’t plannin’ on it.” He turned the dial on the cracked TV, wading through two separate channels of static before choosing the static he thought looked better and leaving it to play that. Occasionally they could get a picture; if they were lucky, they’d get two in a row.

“Where are those little snots, anyway?” he asked after a minute. “Been unusually quiet ‘round here the past few days.”

“Yeah, ‘til you showed up.” Ken shifted his legs over the side of the couch and rubbed his face with his hands. “I sent Mel on an errand.”

“Alone?”

A muffled grumble of regret. “Yeah.” He stared up at the ceiling, elbows resting on his knees. “Kid keeps trying to prove herself. Told her if she can pull this off, she’s in.”

Mud cackled, punching his brother in the shoulder. “Finally taking my advice, eh? Waste of raw talent, keeping her cooped up in ‘ere. That little lady’s a firecracker.”

Ken didn’t need reminding. “Yeah. That’s the problem.” 

Mud perched on the back of the couch, dirty boots sinking into the cushions. “Eh, she‘ll be fine. She can talk circles around ya before you even realize you’re bein’ swindled. Not to mention she’s able to slink her way around in a crowd on account of bein’ pint-sized.” 

“You’re talkin’ to me like I don’t know my own daughter.” 

“Them’s your words, mate.” He dodged the accusation. “But maybe if ya let ‘er get up to some mischief for the good a’ the business every now an’ then, she’d impress ya. She’s gonna do it anyway.”

“Get your filthy feet off my couch.” Too buzzed for peripheral vision, Ken finally noticed the puddle of grime dripping from his brother’s shoes. He didn’t know why he even bothered to try to keep this pigsty clean. “You got what you wanted, yeah?! Mel’s got her chance. If I catch you teachin’ her to make fireworks one more time, I’ll stuff ya in a blender and marinate the steak with your mucus.” 

“Grenades,” Mud corrected with a shit-eating grin. He ducked to avoid the angry fist that followed. 

“Get out!” the younger barked between gritted teeth. “Comin’ in here tellin' me how to raise my own damn kid. Lotta nerve you got.”

“Well, fuck me for thinkin’ of our future.” Mud sloshed his way off the back of the couch and out of range of any short-range projectiles. 

Ken stood to face him, unsteady on his feet. “Future?” he roared. “What future?! It’s just-” he swept his arms wide, gesturing at their surroundings, “ this!”  

The damp wooden walls warped around soggy photographs of folks long gone. Hundreds of years’ worth of moldy delivery files crowded the corners where the polluted orange rays of the sunrise couldn’t reach. The only hint of color in the room was the neon scribble of a crayon drawing Mel had made as a child, clumsily glued to the wall with a wad of chewing tobacco.

“Forever n’ ever,” Ken mumbled to himself, rage subsiding into defeat.

Mud cringed. God, since when was his brother such a pitiful drunk? “Yeah, well, those of us who ain’t allergic to fun are havin’ a grand ol’ depraved time, an’ I’d like to keep it that way.” He slipped into the vacant spot on the couch. As far as he cared, the shady little life they’d carved out for themselves was more than enough. “Don’t drag me into none a’ yer heresy bullshit.”

Ken reached for his cleaver, but a bright flash of red from the television behind them stopped him from making Mud into mincemeat. Static obscured the message on the screen, though the wail of sirens outside conveyed its urgency.

“This is an emergency lockdown,” the PA system in the town square squawked. “An unknown threat has breached the Citadel. All citizens remain indoors until the situation has been resolved.”

The room darkened, then brightened again, then plunged into shadow. Hundreds of curious bodies, inconvenienced by the sudden lack of light, poured into the street outside the window as the early morning sun was swallowed in the sky, blotted out by inky purple clouds creeping in from the west. Swarms of birds and insects flocked westward toward the fortress as if pulled by a magnet. The road buckled and yawned as a chasm formed, foul-smelling fungi erupting from the nauseating green light inside. All sure signs to those who knew their scripture.

“The End is upon us once more!” a shrill voice cried. “The human has come into its power!”

“Arm yourselves!” another rotling screamed. “Find the human and kill it, or we all die!”

As far as the town knew, there was only one human, and it was currently preening itself behind the deli counter in a little glass jar. 

“Start the car,” Ken ordered his son, who had stumbled his way out of his breadbox and into the room, woken by the sirens. When Breadhead didn’t move fast enough, he pushed him through the back window and into the alley as the crowd ran, some back to their homes and some towards the butcher shop, all in a mad frenzy. 

“GET IN, NOW! BOTH OF YA!” he bellowed. Doors splintered and windowpanes shattered, hacked apart by the throng of rotlings forcing entry to the restaurant, each intent on being the first to slay the human inside. Ken slammed the back door behind him and dashed to the driver's seat, stuffing a crinkled takeout bag into the glove box as the engine groaned to a start.

“You’re drivin’ us INTA the death storm?!” Mud shouted while he and his sniper rifle were shoved into the passenger seat by two large, doughy hands. The whole car shook as the youngest member of the family tried to find a comfortable position in the backseat, folding his knees up to his chest to fit. 

“Mel’s out there.” Ken’s voice was hollow as he slammed the gas pedal with the full force of his being. The hearse lurched and spun out before careening down the highway towards the heart of the cataclysm.

She could be anywhere, but he knew that the most terrible possibility was also the most likely: Heaven had seized their vessel, whether she was willing or not.

He never should have sent her out alone.

Debris, birds, and beaks shredded through the metal of the car as the tempest overtook them, breaking the glass of the windows and lodging in their skin like shrapnel. 

“Yer crazy! It ain’t worth drivin’ through the bloody apocal-mmph!”

A mouthful of sourdough kept Mud from finishing his sentence. 

“We always help Mel,” Breadhead said calmly, smothering his uncle.

The tangled knot of highways shuddered, steel beams swaying as the earth beneath caved to the glowing green canyon that cracked its way toward the looming gates of Paradise Lost. Ken mowed over fleeing rotlings, dodging swarms of flies and mounds of what looked and smelled like rotting flesh creeping up from the ground. The blood-colored sky made it almost impossible to see, but for a second, the headlights flashed on something small and white, suspended in the atmosphere. 

The car sped closer, pulling onto a vacant access road. The small white something moved, flailing its arms and legs as if struggling to break free from an invisible hold. Its tangled red hair whipped in the wind, then fell flat as it stopped thrashing. An unmistakable pair of wide, round eyes glowed at the three rotlings below as Mel hovered helplessly, paralyzed by a force that grinned down at them through an uncanny smile. 

“MEL!” Ken deliberately rammed the car into a pile of flesh to stop it and jumped out onto the side of the road before anyone could ask questions. He paid no mind to his brother and son gawking at the human in the clouds, whose nose and mouth wept black blood. He didn't notice Mud’s sniper rifle trained on the back of his head. He only saw Mel mumble something to herself, then turn at an odd angle to look down at him, a confused expression on her sunken face. 

“L E A V E… A L O N E… “ Mel gasped, and so did whatever possessed her. The veins on her cheeks and forehead filled with black ichor and marbled her blue-painted skin. She raised a trembling hand towards the distant citadel. “ F I X… E V E R Y T H I N G.”

With a deafening suction of wind, the storm, the swarm, and the rift imploded on itself. In an instant, it all disappeared as if nothing had ever happened, Mel along with it. 

The sun’s first rays cast long shadows over the pavement, which was firm and in one piece once more. Breadhead squinted in the sudden brightness, unsure what to make of what he had just witnessed. Overhead, a single crow cawed, flitting from telephone wire to telephone wire. Not a mound of rotten flesh could be seen besides the usual kind, clinging to the two older rotlings' bones.

Mel was gone. Not dead or dying; she had simply vanished.

Ken took a single step toward the fortress before a familiar click of gunmetal warned him not to take another.

"Gimme one good reason," Mud threatened, his voice a hoarse gravel, "why I shouldn't blast your brain to kingdom come."

He wouldn't have to shoot far, after all. Armageddon was looking a lot closer than anyone guessed.

Chapter Text

Mel plummeted into the pavement, dropped from the sky as the churning storm surrounding her vanished. Head pounding, she rolled onto her side to spit up gravel and test her shaky limbs. Thankfully, the setting sun cast the road in shadow, and no one was nearby to witness her wipe a trickle of blood from her chin.

That was strange. She had been surrounded by dozens of frantic guards a few seconds ago when she scraped the chop saw against Patience’s head, demanding they reset the past three days or else she’d tear their holy hull to shreds. Their screams joined her own when a spectral hand clawed its way up from the Seam, pulling Mel into its grasp, the eye in its center boring into her soul. A murder of crows shrieked as the unintelligible whispering in her head grew louder and louder, then everything went dark, and then…

A car screeched through a puddle, dousing Mel in filthy rainwater and forcing her back to the present. Above her loomed not the ramparts of Paradise Lost, but a canopy of steel skyscrapers, bright lights winking through the early spring fog. Neon signs of every color of the rainbow reflected from puddles in alleys, cutting the gloom with the full spectrum of light. Under her feet, the vibration of a bass beat pulsed as distant laughter wafted through the evening air.

Folks in Chainport told stories about the opulence of Glow Haven. Rumor had it the electricity in the city never shut off and the faucets always ran clean. The darkness must have spat her out there, or in one of the other, wealthier cities on the western side of the island, high and dry and safe from the ever-rising sea.

Which meant her plan had failed. She didn’t remember exactly what she’d been doing three days ago, but she knew for certain it hadn’t involved sitting bruised and battered in the middle of the road in a city on the other side of the map. 

Mel groaned, fighting off pins and needles in her legs as she stood and aimlessly wandered through the dimly lit streets. She couldn’t go home now, not after that botched attempt at setting everything right. What excuse could she make that wouldn’t lead to her being caught by the whole town, or worse, grounded for life? Hey, Dad, sorry I fucked everything up and broke into the fortress where we’re already wanted dead-and-alive. To be fair, your plan was kinda shitty, so whose fault is this mess anyway? No matter what she said, he’d explode and she’d never get another chance to show what she was made of. 

She’d have to stay here until she figured out a way to clear their names for good.

“Excuse me? Miss?”

“Huh?” Mel’s focus returned as a young man in black pants and a shirt that read staff waved a piece of paper in her face. Behind him, a majestic domed building towered, the words Vauxhall Concert Center illuminated on the outside wall with spotlights.

“Oh, thank god. You kinda zoned out, I was worried it was the fear toxin again. That’d be what, three times this month?” he laughed, expecting her to do the same. “Gotta get a new gas mask, mine is falling apart and the venue doesn’t let us count mass hallucinations as sick time anymore, you know how it is.” 

Mel cocked her head to the side, confused. This man, and all the people going up the steps into the building, for that matter, had bodies without a hint of rot on them. Their skin was as pristine as her own, no muscle or bone exposed. Instead of the usual greenish-grey, the color of their flesh ranged from deep brown to pale beige and a million hues in between. Maybe the rotlings here could afford better replacement body parts along with the fancy lights and buildings?

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. Uh, this is for the benefit concert coming up, if you’re interested.” The employee handed her the piece of paper he’d waved at her a moment ago, a little unsettled by her stare. “Twenty artists for fifty bucks. It all goes to the Martha Wayne Foundation.” 

Mel narrowed her eyes and snatched the paper like it was a bomb that would detonate if she didn’t grab it fast enough. Gotham City’s Biggest Charity Event Is Back! it read under a picture of a rock band hyping up a crowd. No one had ever mentioned a Gotham City on the island, but she didn’t travel out of town that often. The Smiling Dead’s influence only stretched so far; even as a troublemaking child she knew better than to step outside the border of their territory and risk getting kidnapped. She’d have to find a map later. 

“Hmph. Tell your Martha,” she hissed, “that my loyalty can’t be bought. Even if that guitar is SICK.” She eyed the double-necked strat in the picture with envy.

The man chuckled nervously. “Okay. Uh, have a good night, ma’am.” The music drifting from the concert hall rose to a swell and he sighed, exasperated, as a hypnotized crowd of concert goers started to pour through the doors and onto the streets, smashing cars and fighting each other as they swarmed the nearby park. A masked man in orchestra conductor’s garb watched on with glee, laughing maniacally, directing their movements with his baton. 

“I don’t know why they keep letting him play here,” Mel heard the employee mumble defeatedly before running off to avoid the mayhem. She thought the chaos was rather refreshing, actually. The shattering of glass, the slice of knives, and the wail of sirens were a familiar symphony of sounds in an unfamiliar city. In the shadows of a nearby alley, a reptilian creature with the jaws of a crocodile and the limbs of a human punched a screaming man until he blacked out. On another corner, a clay golem of some kind morphed his gooey arms into blades and began skewering hapless citizens. 

It was just like home.

Better than home, because here, nobody knew she was a nuisance and a failure. 

She meandered with the brainwashed mob until she found a pen in a pocket and swiped it. Twisting down a few more narrow streets, she found an empty alley and squatted against the brick wall to scrawl a note on the back of the flyer, making sure to tear off the part of the ad that mentioned Gotham City. 

Made it to Emberwick. Everything is fine and going exactly to plan. Ken’s promise to come find her when everything cooled down replayed in her brain like an alarm as she wrote. If he tracked her down before she could come up with a scheme to absolve the whole family from blame, it would be all over for her. She could handle his temper. She wasn’t so sure about his disappointment. 

Don’t worry about me, she added. I’ve got this. She doodled a silly face with its tongue sticking out in the corner, along with a few stars and a cat with angry eyebrows. 

Now to find– or make– a willing courier. She folded the paper in half and sealed it shut with some discarded chewing gum she found stuck to the ground, scanning the area for a potential victim. A series of cluttered loading docks sprawled into the harbor one block over, void of workers except for a lone figure taking inventory with a clipboard.

Perfect. 

She crouched until his back was turned, then pounced. 

“If you don’t wanna spend the rest of your eternity drowning, stay quiet and do exactly as I say.” She pulled a carving knife from her wraps and shoved it under the startled man’s chin, pinning him in a headlock from behind with her other arm. Having to stand on tiptoe made keeping a good grip impossible, but hopefully he’d be too focused on the blade a millimeter from his neck to notice the height difference. “Take this to the butcher in Chainport.” She tilted her head toward the piece of paper crumpled in her fist. “Don’t open it or tell anyone or I will find out and I will put you somewhere you’ll never be able to talk ever again. Got it?!”

The only response Mel got was a pocket knife jammed into her thigh. She cried out in shock and pain, losing her hold on the very angry, much taller than her dock worker, who pulled the blade from her leg and turned to face her. Unmistakably black blood gushed from the wound, too much for Mel to hide, even doubled over. Her heartbeat spiked as the dockhand noticed the inky puddle beneath her, then started to run toward the city. 

No. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not while she was miles from home and so terribly alone. She picked up the knife she’d dropped and hurled it at him, exhaling in relief when it struck him in the back of the head and he crumpled to the ground in a heap. 

A few torn bandages wrapped tight around her leg slowed her bleeding as she limped over to the corpse. There were plenty of cinderblocks amidst the shipping crates and it only took her a few minutes to gather some rope from the docks. Please don’t wake up please don’t wake up, she begged as she bundled him in cement. The knife, still lodged in his brainstem, must have kept him from reviving; his mark was taking quite some time to activate. Mel would take every second she could get. 

Now to get him in the water. She grabbed his feet and pulled with all her might. The body didn’t budge. She tried rolling him over onto his side; again, no success. 

Dumping a body looked a lot easier when Breadhead did it, she thought. She couldn’t sling the full weight of a corpse across her back like her brother could, but she managed to lift his shoulders enough that she could lock her elbows under his armpits and pull. One inch at a time, she dragged him closer and closer to the edge of the dock, dizzy from the strain and blood loss, until at last she slid him into the greasy sludge of Gotham Harbor. 

Mel watched the water ripple, humming softly to herself. The ritual felt odd with her own voice echoing back to her, small and shrill without Mud’s tenor and Breadhead’s bass. It was the closest thing to a hymn they had for the souls they’d silenced. Please never let them find out. Please, let me belong, she added to the litany under a leering grin and a warning about holding your breath and fates worse than death. 

“Hey!” Someone shouted from across the harbor, interrupting Mel’s tune. “You! What the hell are you doing?!”

Mel scrambled to her feet, wincing as pain shot through her wounded leg. There was no time to stop and treat it now. Flashlights swept the dock and the sound of boots running on concrete drifted across the water, getting closer every second. By the time security got to the dock, Mel vanished into the shadows of the city that would, for now, be her new home. 

She’d have to get more bandages to hide her skin where pieces had torn off in the struggle. If she was going to do that, she might as well put together a disguise to hide her identity, just in case someone recognized her and word got back to Chainport. A mask like the one the crazed conductor had worn might be helpful, and a hood, so no one could see her face.

Anonymity had other perks, she realized with a giggle. Without having to worry about being recognized, she’d be able to cause as much mischief as her heart desired. She’d carve out a city block for herself, make her debut as Gotham City’s newest criminal mastermind, and no one would be able to stop her. By the time the rest of the Smiling Dead caught up to her, she’d have a reputation fearsome enough to impress even the most stubborn of fathers. She tossed her bloodstained note in the trash. It wouldn’t matter that she’d screwed up the plan; once she’d established herself as an untouchable queen of Gotham’s underworld, Ken would be begging her to join them. 

She would be an invaluable part of the family, secrets and prophecies be damned.

Chapter Text

Working alone is hard, Harley mused with a frown. When she and Ivy were professional partners in crime, she always had her girlfriend to fall back on if things got out of control. If Ivy were here right now, for instance, Harley could have gotten to the aquarium a lot faster using her vines to transport her instead of taking the subway. As it was, she was already running late.

One more stop to go. The train lurched to a halt, which spilled the groceries of the middle-aged commuter staring absently out the dark window beside her. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it for ya!” Harley jumped at the opportunity to do a simple good deed, picking up stray potatoes and peaches from where they had rolled under the seats. With a big smile, she put them back in the bag and handed them to the man, who finally noticed her.

“Oh my god.” He stared at her, eyes wide.

“Seriously, it’s no big deal, you’re welcome!”

“It’s you.” The realization was not one of gratitude. “My boyfriend is dead because of you.” He started to back away, white-knuckling the flimsy grocery bag handles. 

That couldn’t be right. Harley racked her brain for any recent boyfriend killings and couldn’t think of a single time that would have happened. “I promise it must have been an accident, I would never-”

“Ten years ago, at Amusement Mile. You hit him in the face with an explosive pie in the funhouse.”

That one must have gone in the Lost Memory Pile, because it took Harley a few seconds to recall. Now that he mentioned it, she could vaguely remember an occasion where she had been promised she’d never ever be abandoned and left for dead again if she could just hide this TNT under lemon meringue pie filling and toss it at a few unsuspecting park goers. 

“Oh. Yeah. That.” Harley started to come up with an apology, but he was already fleeing out the barely open door as the train paused once more.

Next stop, Robinson Park. 

She’d have to process that later. 

Harley raced up the stairs and dodged traffic, crossing the street to the stately glass building shaped like a sea turtle on the other side. She sprinted past the front desk and into the main concourse as the admission staff yelled in protest behind her. There was no time to buy a ticket, not if the information Barbara had given her was correct. 

She checked the timer on her phone. Fifty seconds.

One more flight of stairs and she was in a large hallway. dimly lit porthole windows displayed several different species of jellyfish, their tentacles flowing gracefully through the water. By the porthole on the far left side, a crowd had formed, peering through the glass in horror.

“EVERYONE OUTTA THE JELLYFISH HABITAT!” she shouted with as much authority as she could muster. She cursed when only a handful of people looked up and started moving toward the exit. “Do you WANT to get blown up?! MOVE IT!” 

The Batfamily could criticize her crisis management skills all they wanted, but at least that was effective. The remaining few tourists scattered with a scream, leaving the porthole wide open. Inside, a woman was slumped on the resin seabed, tied to a chair rigged with explosives. A banner on the back of the chair read: “Jellyfish (noun). A spineless invertebrate that feeds off its own kind.”

Harley rolled her eyes. This was the level of political commentary she’d come to expect from Eddie.

The glass shattered with one good swing of her hammer. Water flooded the room up to her knees as Harley climbed inside the draining tank and hoisted the chair into the hallway as gingerly as possible. She had complained about uneven bar practice as a teen; now, she was grateful for the extra upper body strength. 

Eighteen seconds.

Thankfully, the cables holding the bomb in place came off with little resistance. Say what you will about Eddie, Harley thought, at least he gives anyone who plays his game a fair chance.

With seven seconds left, Harley panicked. At the end of the hallway, windows from the evacuated stairwell let in natural light. She sped across the room and hurled the bomb through the glass with a second smash of her hammer, ducking as it exploded, raining glass and chunks of concrete onto the street below. 

At least no one was hurt this time!

Sirens and cries of anguish reached Harley’s ringing ears after a few seconds.

At least probably only a few people were hurt this time!

A muffled cough echoed through the aquarium behind her. 

Oh, right! The senator.

“I’m so, so sorry, ma’am.” Harley peeled the duct tape off of the woman’s mouth and gave her a good whack on the back so she could properly spit up the water she’d inhaled. The woman doubled over and wheezed as Harley cut the zip ties on her hands and feet.

“Every… hrrk,” the senator gagged, struggling to speak, “everyone else… was busy…?” 

Harley frowned. “What?”

The senator straightened up enough for Harley to see the annoyed expression on her soaking wet face. “They sent Harley Quinn to rescue me? Is every single bat out of town or what?”

Maybe the woman was just misinformed. “I work for them now,” Harley offered in explanation. “Been workin’ for ‘em for the past few months, actually! I’m goin’ straight. Well,” she winked, “as straight as possible for me.” She snorted at her own joke, taking a rosy-filtered selfie with the now-safe victim in the background. 

♢♡♢ At the GCA with my new best friend, Senator Daley! Try using a thesaurus next time, Eddie! This one was easy. XOXO ♢♡♢

“Don’t post that,” the senator snapped, her slicked back hair frizzing from the moisture. “I’m aware of your change of profession. You’ve made it quite public, as much as I’d like to ignore it. Well.” She helped herself to her feet since Harley was standing idly, stunned. “I suppose I’m not important enough for a real hero to show their face.” 

That did it. 

“Excuse me?!” Harley seethed, water dripping from her soggy ponytails. “I saved you from at least THREE different kindsa death and you’re gonna stand here and call me a fake?!” She kicked a limp jellyfish at the woman’s face, missing by a few inches. 

Daley didn’t react. “I don’t think you’re fake. You’re clearly trying,” she explained calmly and coldly. “I do, however, know your record. Next time, I’d like to be assisted by someone with more than a fifty percent success rate. That is all.” She stumbled off as Harley let out a strangled scream.

“Yeah, well next time, I’ll tell Eddie to put ya in the shark tank instead! I’ll leave ya there ‘til your dead brain meat explodes all over the block like confetti and you make the first headline of your career that ain’t about gerrymandering!” She waved her hammer recklessly as the senator continued to walk away, ignoring her. “Maybe more people woulda showed up to help if you weren’t such a whiny, rude, flat-assed little fish-faced bitch!” 

Several bystanders snickered, phone cameras pointed in Harley’s direction. Paramedics rushed in to attend to the injured senator as their radios crackled with reports of a casualty from the explosion outside. 

Tomorrow would be a PR nightmare, but Harley didn’t care. The only sensation she was aware of was the numbness in her stomach as she left the scene. No one had treated her like this when she and Ivy were a team.

Taking a clown seriously was a lot to ask. She couldn’t really blame them.

Ivy was making great progress with the day’s chores. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning and she had already gathered groceries for the week, taken Bud and Lou for their walk, and stopped for a sustainably-grown coffee. The laundromat was her last stop before heading home for a relaxing afternoon of plotting the worldwide eradication of fossil fuels. 

It was nice to have the day to herself.

Harley had gotten up early for work, dragging the sheets around the floor as she complained about being on call all hours of the night for her new job. Ivy knew that for all her whining, Harley enjoyed being a vigilante. She was able to be in control of her own life in a way she hadn’t been able to before, even if she was still technically employed by someone else. More importantly, the job gave Harley the opportunity to do what she had always wanted to do with her life: help people. Ivy didn’t understand the appeal (people tended to destroy everything they touched, especially nature), but she would happily cheer from the sidelines as her partner kept the streets of Gotham safe. 

Ivy shut the washing machine door and took a seat in the waiting area. The laundromat was busy for a Monday morning— mostly retired folks and a few mothers trying to wrangle their toddlers. Kids always stressed her out; they were unpredictable, like weeds that appeared out of nowhere overnight and choked your garden with their colorful but unruly flowers. 

In her back pocket, her phone buzzed. A picture of Harley in the dress she loved, low-cut with the butterflies on the pink puffed sleeves, flashed across the screen.

“Hey babe, what’s up?”

“I RUIN EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE HATES ME!” 

Ivy had to hold the phone away from her face a few inches so her eardrums didn’t rupture with the sound of Harley’s ugly crying.

“Deep breaths, babe.” The hyperventilating on the other end was not exactly what Ivy was going for. “Slow deep breaths.”

“I… can’t… do… this!” Harley whimpered.

“Okay, first of all, not true.” Always counter negative self-beliefs before tackling a problem with a client, Harley had explained to her girlfriend one day. Though Ivy had never been to any therapy besides the mandated group sessions at Arkham (and would never go again willingly), she kept Harley’s psychology fun facts on file for times like these. “Tell me what’s going on. I know this didn’t come out of nowhere.”

Harley sniffed. “I messed up another job,” she admitted. 

Ivy frowned. “Senator Daley, is she…?”

“Nah, she’s alive.” Harley sounded disappointed about that. “Unfortunately. Shit. I’m not supposed to say stuff like that anymore.”

“In that case, it sounds like you completed the job just fine.” Ivy didn’t see what the problem was. “You don’t have to like her, you just have to save her, right? Or am I missing some kind of extra code of bat-ethics here?”

“No, you’re right, I just- UGH!” She groaned. “Everything was so much easier when I was a villain.”

“Peanut, you hated yourself.”

“I hate myself MORE now!” Incoherent noises of discontent garbled the other line. “That’s it. I’m gonna be evil again.”

Ivy knew that was a bad idea. “Isn’t that a little impulsive?”

“It’s the only thing I’m good at. Plus, people actually respect me when I’m with you.”

“Oh, no, babe, we talked about this.” A shadow shifted in the corner by the washing machines. Ivy stiffened, alert, but after a few seconds of stillness, she dismissed it as her own anxiety. “We have separate jobs while we are in a relationship. I’m not comfortable with keeping you in a line of work that isn’t good for you just because it’s fulfilling for me.”

“Now you know what’s good for me and I don’t?” Harley retorted, the heat in her voice rising.

“I didn’t mean-”

“No, y’know what? Tell me what you meant,” she demanded. “‘Cuz I’m starting to think you just don’t wanna work with me anymore.”

This conversation was going off the rails. “Yeah, I don’t want to work with you professionally. I literally just said that. But it’s not because I don’t love you, Harls, I just-”

“No, it’s okay, I know I slow you down and screw everything up. I know you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.” Harley started to cry again. 

Ivy sighed in frustration. “I was going to say I need boundaries. The Green allowed me to stay here, with you, but I have to uphold my end of the deal. Between that and the Legion of Doom, it's just… a lot, and I don't want to stress you out." If Harley knew how overwhelmed she was, she'd try to fix the problem herself. No matter how well-intentioned, that would only complicate things. "Besides, YOU need to know who you are.”

“I know who I am, I’m your girlfriend!” Harley wailed.

“I can't define you, Harley!” If she was going to be unreasonable, Ivy didn’t need to humor her. “I want you to be happy in your own skin. Look, this isn’t the time for this.” Several other laundromat patrons were doing their best to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping. “Can we talk later?”

“You never wanna talk to me! You’d rather talk to your stupid plants all day!” 

A dryer door slammed shut and somebody screamed as a girl wearing a black domino mask, some ratty bandages, and a red, yellow, and green hoodie jumped on top of the machine, a bloody boning knife in her hand. 

“...Ives?”

Someone dialed an ambulance while another person helped an old man press a freshly dried shirt to the wound on his upper arm. The girl cackled, pleased with herself.

“Laundry’s mine, sucker!” she shouted over her shoulder, middle finger in the air. Her sloppy red ponytail bounced as she ran for the door.

“I…” Ivy tried to process what she was seeing. “I think one of the Robins just stabbed an elderly person in the laundromat.”

The maybe-Robin was already halfway down the block. Several witnesses chased after her, but the girl was slipperier than detergent and no one wanted to chance another knife wound.

“Weird.” Harley wasn’t surprised, especially if it was the youngest. Damian was slowly but surely learning that murder wasn’t always the answer to every problem. “Anyway, I was sayin’-”

A loud beep cut Harley off. Ivy cursed when she saw the caller ID.

“Sorry, it’s from the top. I have to take this.” The timing couldn’t have been worse. “I’ll call you back later.”

“Dontcha dare hang up on-!.” Harley’s end started beeping as well. “Ugh, seriously?! I JUST finished a job and they’re already calling me for another one.”

“Guess we both have work tonight. I’ll pick up a pizza or something for later. You got this, babe.” Ivy blew a kiss and hung up before Harley could protest.

The screen continued to flash red as Ivy’s finger hesitated over the accept button. Her plans for a calming day of ecological revenge would have to wait. 

“Lex. Hi.” The ambulance finally arrived, sirens blaring, while Ivy strained to hear her boss’s orders. “You want me to eliminate who?”

Chapter Text

“Hey. Hey, calm down, Peanut. That could have gone a lot worse.”

Harley stared into the distance, face paler than usual, even as her girlfriend held both her hands to ground her.

Ivy rubbed her thumbs over her girlfriend’s trembling fingers. “Harls, listen to me. It’ll be okay. It’s fine, we’ll be fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Harley snapped out of her daze to glance around the apartment for any danger, anyone who might have followed them home. “I wasn’t tryin' to kill him! I said I had everything under control, I almost had him, and I know you were trying to help, but-”

“I was trying to make sure you didn’t die.” Ivy squeezed Harley’s hands, breathing deep to keep her frustration in check. “I know you said you had it all under control, but you didn’t, and if I hadn’t been there-”

“If you hadn’t been there, he’d still be alive!” Harley paced back and forth, circling the kitchen, tugging at the ends of her pigtails.

The new job with the Batfamily had changed Harley, some for the better, some for… whatever this was, Ivy thought. The old Harley would never hesitate to bash in the head of a malevolent crime boss. “He was a violent monster who tortured and killed a ton of people,” she reminded her from a distance, giving her space. “If anything, you’ve saved countless lives.”

Harley paused her pacing to scoff. “You think I’m freakin' out ‘cuz we killed some shitbag?” she laughed until she cried, a breakdown starting to crack its way through. “Sure, Bats is gonna fire me, but that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m freakin’ out ‘cuz we’re in DEEP FUCKIN’ SHIT with the Maronis, Ives!” 

Ivy pulled the brita filter from the refrigerator and poured a glass of water for her girlfriend, making sure to use the plastic cup with the ducks on it and the silly straw that Harley loved. “I wouldn’t worry about it.” She placed a few ice cubes in the water; the cold temperature would help to bring Harley’s limbic system back to equanimity. A very smart woman had taught her that. “They won’t come after us. I mean, they might try,” she waved her hand dismissively, “but we’re Poison Fucking Ivy and Harley Fucking Quinn. They’re not going to get far.”

Harley accepted the drink from her girlfriend, gripping the cup tightly with both hands. “You think they’ll give up that easy?”

“Drink your water, babe,” Ivy instructed. “Of course not. What they will do is pin it on somebody else once the inevitable internal fight for power dies down. They won’t want to be seen as weak, so they’ll frame someone who’s gotten in their way before, maybe even try to start something with the Falcones if they’re ballsy enough. There might be a little gang war, but Batman will shut it down, or they’ll kill each other in the process. Either way, we won’t be involved at all.”

The prediction pacified Harley, or maybe it was the water. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m gettin’ all worked up for nothing.” She flopped onto the sofa, squeezing a pillow in her arms and staring at the TV. 

“Not nothing, babe.” Ivy slid onto the couch cushion next to her. “Just nothing you and I can’t work through together.” She smirked that tiny smile of hers, full of love and protection, that always made Harley’s heart somersault. The dimly glowing bioluminescent plants around the perimeter of the room sparkled just a bit brighter when Harley smiled back up at Ivy, resting her head on her lap.

“Jeopardy?” Harley asked.

“Jeopardy," Ivy replied. 

She felt for the remote, careful not to disturb Harley, and turned on the screen.

“...Search for the killer of Salvatore Maroni continues,” a news anchor reported. Ivy decided against changing the channel for at least a few seconds. “Sources have confirmed that the prime suspect is a masked menace terrorizing the streets of Gotham known only as the Butcher Bird.” 

A blurry image of a young woman perched on a fire escape dressed in bandages and a red, yellow, and green oversized hoodie filled the screen. Her face was mostly hidden by a black mask, revealing only a mischievous grin and a large tuft of messy red hair that stuck straight up in a ponytail. She was small and thin and rather frail looking, the only threatening thing about her being the bloodied boning knife clutched in her fist. 

Ivy sat up straighter. 

“That’s the kid who stabbed that guy at the laundromat! The one I was telling you about!” She abandoned her duties as Harley’s personal pillow so she could move closer to the screen. “I thought she was a new Robin!”

Harley grumbled at her loss of a comfy headrest. “There’s no new Robin. At least, not since yesterday when I was still allowed on the team. Besides, Robins don’t kill people.”

Ivy gave her a skeptical look.

“Okay, Robins aren't supposed to kill people,” Harley clarified, now fully sitting up, eyes fixed on the TV. “Never seen that kid before in my life.”

“Law enforcement has released surveillance footage of the suspect disposing of a body at Gotham Harbor the night of the attack,” the reporter continued. A grainy five seconds of black and white camera film showed the same girl struggling to heave the weight of a body much bigger than her own over the side of the dock, though it was far too fuzzy to make out any identifying features on the corpse. 

Ivy glanced at Harley, who looked back at her with the same unease.

“So she’s not a Robin.”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody knows who she is?”

“Nope.”

A few seconds passed.

“Harley, I think…”

“...We accidentally implicated a random kid in a murder case that will almost certainly result in her dying a horrible and grueling death?”

The news report switched to a story about a recall on toxic yogurt. Ivy looked at her shoes, at the wall, at the ceiling. She coughed, sat back, then leaned forward again. A few more painfully silent seconds passed before Harley verbalized what they both were thinking.

“Well, shit.”

Mel hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. Not that she needed it; her two-day crime spree had been fueled by copious amounts of caffeine "borrowed" from unattended park benches and preoccupied commuters. Nevermind the dark circles under her eyes, hidden by her homemade mask. They were probably just a side effect of the thrill of striking fear into the hearts of Gothamites everywhere— or at least a few at the laundromat. She was just as tired as she was lonely; that was to say, not at all.

Freedom was wicked fun. For the first time in her life, there was no one to boss Mel around or tell her she'd never make it on her own. Aside from a brawl with a rabid raccoon, she'd had no trouble claiming this block between an abandoned apartment building and the sewage treatment plant for a hideout. Probably because nobody wanted a street in the shadow of a creepy asylum, but still. She was managing just fine.

The only thing she regretted was not running away sooner. Crunching on a dry brick of pilfered ramen, she rehearsed for the day her family finally found her.

"Coming to me for help? Ha! I thought you'd never ask!"

The sewer rat she'd been using as a stand-in for Ken squirmed in her fist.

"Let's see… I can fit you in at two… aw, bummer, I've got a waterboarding during that slot and a knifeball match to fix right after. Take a number, Dad!" she cackled, waving the poor creature in the air. "You're in MY town, now!"

The rat squeaked pitifully.

"You're right. It would work so much better with one of those big spinny chairs." She set the rodent down with a wistful sigh. It froze, ears perked toward the end of the alley, before skittering down into a storm drain.

Mel peered into the semi-darkness. The street was unnaturally quiet, which was never a good sign.

Before she could run, a tunnel of flame swallowed the entire alley. Mel ducked behind a dumpster as its contents ignited with a whoosh.

"Burn the whole block if you have to, Pike. Smoke her out," a gruff voice commanded. A second wave of flame engulfed the boarded up windows of the buildings on either side.

The arsonist hovered above the gray haze, the jetpack on her back buzzing with a wasplike whine. Her face was concealed by a reflective helmet and her head-to-toe leather suit was complimented by a pair of flamethrower gauntlets, crackling with heat. Mel curled into a tight ball, the bright red hood of her sweatshirt offering little in the way of camouflage.

"You sure she went this way?!" the woman in the helmet shouted, her visor glowing with yellow light as she flew higher, scanning the ground below. "I can't see-"

Mel coughed, gasping for air as soot choked her lungs.

"Got her!"

Mel yelped and dodged the stream of fire that razed her hiding spot. Forced out into the open, she darted down the alley to the other end of the street, only to find the exit blocked by several men in respirator masks who surrounded her with crowbars and tire irons they looked all too eager to use. Before she could take her chances running back through the blaze, a cocoon of sticky fluid encased her legs and arms, toppling her to the ground.

"Careful getting her in the van." the same gruff voice commanded as a figure emerged from the smoke, his face concealed by a helmet with two bulbous, insectoid lenses. A pair of furry moth wings sprouted from his back, unscathed by the inferno behind him. "We need her alive. At least," he chuckled as his accomplice landed beside him, jetpack whirring to a stop, "alive enough to confess."

"Fine! Ugh! I raided the laundromat!" Mel croaked, trying to wiggle a crack in the cocoon's hardened shell. Was that what this was about? A stolen hoodie hardly warranted a full-on ambush. "Not that there's much left of your stupid sweatshirt after you freaks tried to bake me alive in it!"

More sticky silk shot from the canister on the moth-man's arm, sealing her eyes and mouth shut. "You're in a whole lot more trouble than that, little bird."

The harbor. The witness. Whoever that dockhand was, he must have had much more powerful connections than Mel had bargained for.

She let out a muffled scream as she was dragged backwards by her ankles, then suddenly dropped. A comical thwonk! cut through the crackling and popping of flames, followed by the sound of a body collapsing.

"Harley Quinn," The moth-man growled like a curse, gritting his teeth by the sound of it. If Mel heard right, there was also a twinge of fear in his voice. "I'm kind of in the middle of a job at the moment."

"Wow, what're the chances! Me too!" A cheery feminine voice Mel didn't recognize cracked with every inflection. There was thwack! this time, followed by a guttural scream of agony. "And that's Doctor Harley Quinn to you, you bargain-bin bedbug."

The moth-man panted, seething under her insult. "Why are you standing there?!" he shouted at his hired muscle. "Kill her!"

Mel felt the heat of another blast of the flamethrower. More bwonks! and the intermittent cracking of bones as a volley of bullets whizzed through the alley. A hot pain ripped through her as one of them grazed her paralyzed shoulder, blood seeping from the wound with no way for her to hide it.

"I gotcha!"

A pair of chalky white hands ripped the hardened webbing off her face. Mel adjusted to the blinding firelight as woman in a mismatched red and black suit cut the rest of her body free, her curly blonde pigtails defying physics.

"Ooh, we're gonna have to fix that later." Dr. Quinn winced, noticing the trickle of black. "Can ya stand?"

Panicked, Mel wrenched her boning knife from her bandages, but Dr. Quinn had already cartwheeled halfway down the street and was busy bashing her attackers with a massive carnival hammer. Enemy of my enemy. Mel would deal with her last.

She plunged the blade into the nearest witness's chest, leaving it there to stop him from reviving as he crumpled to the pavement. The nerve endings in her shoulder screamed for attention, but the childhood memory of Mud's secret lessons kept her hand steady as she looted a pistol from the corpse's limp fingers.

Lower than ya think. Attagirl. Yer really catchin' on.

She whirled on the remaining lackeys, aiming for the exposed part of their temple between the respirator and their ear. Her first shot met its mark, then the second.

Not bad, kiddo. Keep it up an' you'll be makin' the shot blindfolded, like me.

A sickly red puddle pooled under the bodies where they dropped, dull and distinctly non-purple, like the blood of the dockhand. Mel had no time to question it. Three of the moth's henchmen still lurked around the corner, herding her toward a wall.

Black billows swelled from an exploding window, clouding the street. Mel wheezed, her lungs aching and her line of sight obscured. Lightheaded, she fired wildly at the looming shadows in the haze, felling only one before her back scraped against the solid brick building behind her and she stumbled. Bludgeons raised, the last two smoke-shrouded figures closed in for the final blow.

"Hiya, boys!" Dr. Quinn singsonged through the chaos, before her voice took on a much more sinister snarl. "Over here."

With a boing! and a horrible crunch, she spun her hammer and whacked both men into the ground. Mel waited, trigger finger trembling, for a telltale green glow of resurrection that never came. Even after several seconds, all of the bodies lay dormant.

Only the monstrous moth, the fire starter, and Dr. Quinn remained, silhouetted against the blaze.

"Ives!" Dr. Quinn shouted as a thorny vine stretched across the road, wrapping around the moth-man's neck before flicking him backwards into the fire and out of sight. The vine coiled back into the hand of the most beautiful woman Mel had ever seen. Leaves and blossoms trailed down her smooth green skin to form a dress of pure flora, her cherry red hair cascaded in tangles of perfect curls, and on her face was a soft, confident smile.

Mel gawked, her cheeks as gray as the ash around her. She didn't notice the arsonist's escape, nor the smell of leather and flame repellent behind her until something hot and metal struck her across the face.

Muted shouts filled the air as Mel slumped to her knees. Sparks danced in her vision, white-hot and wild, before everything went black.

Chapter Text

“BUD! Knock it off, that’s gross!”

Color melted back into Mel’s vision as a wet tongue drooled all over her face. A creature that looked like a cursed combination of a feral cat and a large stray dog hulked over her semi-conscious body, hot breath reeking of meat.

“I said get off!” 

At the repeated command, the beast retreated back to the side of its owner. With her brightly dyed hair and ghost-white skin, Mel recognized her as the woman who had introduced herself as Doctor Harley Quinn during the fight in the alley.

The fight. There was so much smoke, and she couldn't breathe, and she'd almost gotten hauled into a truck…

“I’m so sorry about him, he’s always getting up to no good, aren’t ya, baby boy?” The dog-cat creature cackled and chirped in reply as the doctor scratched his chin. “Really, he’s not usually this excitable, but y’know, new person and everything. It’s a lot for the little guy!”

Mel slowly sat up, every muscle in her body tender and sore. Where the hell was she? Everything in this room was so bright, doused with glitter and bathed in the most vivid splashes of pink and blue, from the curtains to the fancy plush bed she had been placed on while she was out. Just looking at it gave her a headache, or maybe that was the blunt trauma she’d taken to the face after getting distracted by that plant lady.

“You okay, hun?” Dr. Quinn stopped petting Bud and walked closer to the bed. “You were out for a while and we were getting a liiiittle worried.”

Mel squinted, eyes still adjusting to the light. “We?”

Dr. Quinn gasped. “Oh! Yeah, we didn’t really have time for a proper introduction back there, did we? HEY IVES!” she yelled into the adjoining room. “The kid’s awake!”

“Good. See, I told you she'd be fine.” 

Mel stared as the beautiful redhead who had come to her rescue earlier entered the room.

“Name's Harley, and this is my girlfriend, Ivy,” Dr. Quinn explained. “Ivy, this is…?”

“Oh, uh,” Mel cleared her throat and slouched back, trying to seem nonchalant. “Melan- I mean, ha, you can just call me Mel. Also I’m twenty, actually. Wait,” she stared at Harley, still half-lucid, “SHE’S your girlfriend?!”

Ivy chuckled, leaning against the wall. “Hard to believe, right? I’m the luckiest girl in the world. Still don’t know how she manages to put up with me.” She planted a kiss on Dr. Quinn’s lips.

“Awww, Ives.” Harley returned the gesture.

Whoever these two weirdos were, they had no shame about making out in front of their kidnapped guest. Mel kind of had to respect that. 

“Heh… girlfriends,” Mel snorted groggily. “I used to have one of those, but she saw me bleed. Hey, wait a minute.” She glanced down at the tears in her wraps, bandaged over with gauze stained black. She hadn’t put those fresh bandages there. “YOU saw me bleed!” 

“Yeah, you really took a hit in that alley.” Ivy winced. “You’ll be okay, just take it easy for a few days. I treated the wounds with aloe, so we don’t have to worry about an infection.”

“No,” Mel repeated, panic rising in her voice, “you saw me bleed!” Where were her knives? She checked under the blanket and in her discarded gloves and boots. Nothing. Scanning the room for a weapon, her gaze landed on a red-and-black baseball bat in the corner. 

No witnesses.

Mel tumbled off the bed to get the bat, but Harley was faster. With a quick front handspring, she grabbed the handle just as Mel's fingers wrapped around the base. Harley jerked the bat towards herself, sending Mel tumbling forward as the girl lost her footing, her senses, and everything but her grip on the bat. Mel locked frenzied eyes with Harley for a fraction of a second, then sunk her teeth deep into her arm, latching on like a parasite. Harley howled in pain between her own clenched teeth and kicked Mel in the stomach, finally knocking her to the ground.

“Woah, hey, if ya say we never saw you bleed, we never saw ya bleed, okay?!” Harley finally wrenched the bat from her hands, but not before Mel picked herself up and delivered a reciprocal kick to her knee. “OW!”

Mel panted, wiping her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes. “You… you promise?” 

Harley’s pained expression turned skeptical. The girl was trembling like a hunted rabbit. Clearly, something bigger than wounded pride was going on here.

“We didn’t see nothin’. Cross my heart.” Harley drew an X with her finger over her chest, checking to make sure Ivy did the same. Mel wasn’t sure what the little ritual meant, but exchanged between the two girlfriends, it seemed as honest as any pinky promise.

“Okay, what about those guys we took out?” Mel tried to remember the face of every person she’d shot before passing out, but everything was blurry. “Shit. They’ve probably told everyone by now.” Her voice cracked as a sob turned into hysterical giggles. “This is fine! This is totally fine, everything is fine. Haha! We just have to track down… half a dozen…” She was as good as dead. There was no use trying to stop the flood of rumors that would flow directly to their doorstep. The least she could do was leave so as not incriminate the only two people who had helped her. 

“You do know that shooting people in the head kills them,” Ivy asked incredulously, “right?”

The last thing Mel needed on her last day alive was to be patronized. “Well, yeah,” she put her hands on her hips, “but what about when they revive?! I know the Black Hand is weaker here, but-“

“What’re you talking about?” Harley seemed even less concerned about that possibility than her girlfriend. “They’re not revivin’, ya blew their brains out.” She made a little explosion noise and gestured with the business end of the bat. “Last time I checked, that’s pretty permanent.” 

Mel scoffed. “What, like humans?” The idea was absurd. 

“Probably.” Ivy didn’t even blink at the suggestion. “Most people are.” 

There were stories back in the District about a time before people exchanged their humanity for eternal rot, when people lived in fear of death instead of worshiping it. Those stories were always spoken with a chill, as if whispering the words alone would risk returning the island to its former state. 

With mounting nausea, Mel realized that she hadn’t failed in her attempt to buy her family time. She had failed in the opposite direction. 

Was this… the world before the End?!

If it was, did her family even exist? She was still here, flesh and bone. She had explicitly demanded more time for all of them, so there was a good chance they were also still material. She’d have to hold onto that. They were out there somewhere, in some other city, and they’d find each other, and all of this would be okay. 

“It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” Dr. Quinn’s hand on her shoulder pulled Mel from her spiral. “As long as ya stick with us, you won’t get in trouble.” She smiled cheerfully as if the knowledge that Mel had killed a few people meant nothing to her. 

“Everyone has a body count here,” Ivy offered in an attempt to soothe her, though she couldn’t help but wonder why this girl had such a shaky grasp of basic biology. “Nothing to be ashamed of, especially if you want to be a full-time villain.” Her critical eye assessed Mel’s stolen rogue getup. 

These people really thought she was worried about a few dead guys? Mel had stopped caring about the blood on her hands since before she could spell the words “guilty conscience.” 

“It’s not that.” She waved off their attempts to console her and pulled her boots and gloves back on. “Seriously, thanks for patching me up,” she cracked her knuckles and stretched her neck, “but I’ve got some people to track down, so if you could just give me my knives back, that’d be sweet. Gotta get back to my hideout.” And figure out where the others are, and if they’re okay, and how the fuck to fix this. And hope Ken doesn’t kill me, she thought.

A vine wrapped around her waist and pulled her backwards into a chair. Mel screeched as another wrapped around her ankles and wrists to hold her in place.

“That’s the thing. I’m- really, I’m genuinely so sorry, but you… can’t,” Ivy apologized. “Yet.”

“What?!” Mel’s eyes flashed white hot with violent intent as she struggled in vain to free herself.

Ivy sighed and Harley avoided her glance on purpose. Both of them hesitated.

“We haven’t been completely honest with you,” Ivy admitted.

“We fucked up,” Harley clarified. “We should probably explain what all that stuff in the alley was about.” 

A timer beeped in the kitchen, and the scent of something sugary baking was almost enough to distract Mel from her leafy prison. Whatever it was, it smelled sinfully good.

“Chat over some cupcakes?” Harley smiled nervously, hoping a nice dessert would make up for the current hostage situation. “We miiiight be here a while.”

“…So basically, we don’t want you to get tortured beyond recognition for a hit we did,” Ivy summed up. They had moved to the dining room table. A teapot hand-painted with delicate green and red buds sat in the middle of the table with matching teacups at each place setting. Ivy dispersed the vines so that Mel could have her fill of tea and cupcakes, which judging by the girl’s loud chewing and insatiable appetite, was a good call. God, this kid was malnourished. Bones stuck out of her scrawny frame at odd angles and her face had the pallor of a corpse. 

“A hit we could’ve avoided if someone actually let me do my job,” Harley smugly reminded her.

Ivy stood upright, the chair she’d been sitting in skidding backwards and falling over. “I was on the same job! The LOD also wanted Maroni out of the picture! We can hardly get anything done with all of these local crime family politics getting in the way of our villainy. I mean, we’re the ones committing to the costume and the brand, we shouldn’t have to ask permission before blowing up a warehouse.”

“You killed him ‘cuz he wasn’t on brand?” Harley jabbed. 

Ivy tsked. “Words in my mouth, Harley. For the last time, it was an accident.” 

“Guys.” Mel scarfed down her fifth cupcake as they spoke, pink icing covering her nose and mouth. “It’s fine. Stuff like this happens all the time.” She tried to clean the frosting off with a napkin, which only smeared it into her facepaint, so she gave up. “Once I find my family, they’ll fix all of this and you’ll forget it ever happened.” 

The casual offer of an easy solution to their botched mission concerned Ivy even further. “Fix this how?” 

“We’ve got our ways.” Mel finished the last cupcake and began poking around the apartment while they spoke. She’d never seen so much green in her life. Plants covered every surface, some with leaves the size of a litterbug and some almost too small to see. “We sorta run the port back home. Fun fact: if enough people mysteriously disappear, problems go away on their own! Poof, like magic.” She gasped as a purple fern coiled up at her touch. 

“Hands off the plants.” Ivy coaxed the fern back out with a flick of her finger. “Mel,” she turned to their increasingly enigmatic ward, “where is ‘home?’”

“We live in this giant whale, which is fun except when it makes weird noises all night. OH,” she realized that wasn’t the question being asked. “I’m from Chainport.” 

Both Ivy and Harley were lost, which only confirmed Mel’s theory. 

“In the Gaslight District?” she tried again. 

Harley shook her head, the mismatched bows in her pigtails fluttering with the movement. “I think you’re a long way from home. But don’t worry!” she assured her, though she seemed unsure herself. “We’ll do everything we can to get you back.” 

Ivy crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Harls, can I have a word? In private?” She gestured to the adjoining room. 

“Uhh, sure. Feel free to make yourself at home, kid. There’s a TV in the living room, we’ve got Netflix, Hulu, Poob…” 

Mel didn’t know what any of those were, but she wasted no time in settling onto the couch. Finally, a sofa she didn’t have to fight Breadhead over. Less stains, too. 

As she burrowed in the soft cushions, Mel closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the city through the open window. Car engines hummed, neighbors greeted each other, and in the distance, music blared from a speaker. There were significantly less gunshots than she was used to hearing at home, though not zero. Life here seemed almost peaceful.

It was a direct contradiction to everything she’d been taught about the world before the End. The rotlings, as the prophets told it, had damned themselves because of their gluttony and their mindless cruelty toward each other. The story was repeated with great pride on every holiday and at every town hall. Not even the forces of heaven could keep them from reaching true enlightenment in utter darkness, for what was joy compared to lust, greed, and envy? Humanity had always been corrupt; eternal rot was the natural evolution they all deserved.

Outside the window, a woman cried out in surprise. Mel’s eyes flew open. Nosy as ever, she peered over the windowsill to see a man drop to one knee on the sidewalk in front of the woman and hold out a tiny box. A cart brimming with flowers created a waterfall of color behind the couple as the woman squealed with happiness and wrapped her arms around the man’s neck in a loving embrace. A second man approached from behind the cart while they kissed, and Mel waited for him to snatch the woman’s discarded purse and run away, but he… didn’t. He simply held up the smallest camera Mel had ever seen and snapped some pictures. She waited a few more seconds for there to be some catch; blackmail, maybe, or a jealous quarrel between the two men, but the conversation that ensued about mothers and weddings bored her half to death.

Was this the great evil that doomed humanity? Mel scrunched up her face in disgust and played with the remote Harley had given her instead, thoroughly disappointed. Humans were mushy and gross, maybe, but nothing they’d done was really worthy of perpetual decay. 

Maybe Ken was right. 

When she was eight years old, Mel asked her father why they didn’t pray to the Black Hand like everyone else.

“Far as they know, we pray night and day, yeah?” was his reply. “We got a big old shrine about it.” 

The little girl huffed defiantly. “Mud says it’s because you said the prophecy is a load of steaming bullshit.”

“Your uncle’s off his gourd.” Ken had given up trying to keep Mel from swearing by the time she was two. With a fragile little monster like her, he had to pick his battles. “But,” he added, scrubbing the wood countertop clean of a long day’s guts and gore, “Even the most asinine of us has a point every now and then.” He tossed the wet towel over his shoulder and squatted down to her level. “Prophecy’s a funny thing. People will do anything to convince themselves it’s true, even if it don’t make sense. Gets in peoples’ heads and makes ‘em all desperate.”

Mel’s big round eyes clouded with fear. She tried her best to be tough and brave like her father, but whenever they talked prophecy, all her tenacity vanished like a man who had seen too much. “How do you know it’s not real?” 

“C’mere.” Ken got down on the kitchen floor, busted knees be damned, and held out his arms as Mel squirmed into his lap. “Sometimes, when life gets real bad and people don’t wanna talk about it, they look for someone to blame. Y’know how when you break a dish, you say Breadhead did it?”

Mel grumbled, her face buried in his apron. “No…?”

Ken chuckled, ruffling her hair. “You ain’t slick, kid. Point is, grown-ups do it too. Only their problems are bigger, and so are their lies. They’re so big, they’d rather make up some fake doomsday nonsense than admit the world’s already gone to shit.”

“But they still believe it?” That didn’t make sense. Mel hooked her little arms around Ken’s neck and climbed up onto his shoulders, boots digging into his skull. 

“Yeah, some of ‘em.” He moved her foot so he could breathe, but continued to let her use him as a ladder. “A lot of ‘em, I’d bet.”

“Enough to hurt me?”

Ken didn’t reply for a second. When he did, his voice was scary, like it was when she was in trouble or when he told Breadhead to snap someone’s neck. 

“Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Nobody’s gonna lay a finger on you. Understand?” He craned his neck to look her in the eye. 

Mel nodded gravely. 

“Good. Now go get a mop, the place is a mess.”

Mel slid off his back with a sad thump. “But Daaaad!” 

“You know the rules.” He leaned against the counter and stood up, watching her drag her feet to the broom closet. “You’re big enough to terrorize the customers, you’re big enough to clean up after ‘em. Shoulda stayed little.”

Ivy and Harley had been talking privately for a while. Mel thought maybe they’d forgotten about her long enough to give her time to slink down the fire escape and out of their lives forever, but the muffled argument behind the closed bedroom door proved otherwise.

“...Obviously lost. You wanna leave her to die?!”

Mel tiptoed over to the wall and pressed her ear against it.

“No! Ugh, I didn’t-” the frustration in Ivy’s voice increased. “It’s just— taking on a protege is a big deal. It’s not something you suddenly do one day because you feel like it. Besides, do you really want to get in the middle of whatever family feud she’s cooking up?”

“If we don’t help her find 'em, they could find us first, and who knows what she’ll tell ‘em? For all they know, we kinda kidnapped their kid.”

“She’s a grown adult.”

“Who doesn’t know how death works and is possibly whole planets away from home,” Harley countered. 

“If they’re off-world, how the hell are they going to get here to find her?” Ivy argued, using pedantry to stall. 

“That’s not the point. She wants to be a rogue, Ives. You saw her back there, kickin’ ass! I think with a little training and fashion advice from THE four-time Miss Gotham City: Villains Chapter, she could really make it. Besides, seein’ you all maternal makes my heart melt,” she added with a squeak in her voice.

Mel rolled her eyes, and wondered if Ivy did the same. 

“Oh, no. This is not a parenting thing.” Ivy sounded horrified at the suggestion.

“Fine! A mentor thing, then,” Harley corrected her course before she could get completely shut down. “Supervillain and sidekick. Like, our own shitty off-brand Robin.”

“Only Batman has Robins,” Ivy deadpanned.

“Emphasis on shitty off-brand. Pleeeeeeeeee-”

“Oh my god, Harley.”

“-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaa-”

“Okay! Okay, fine, but only if we do this as a team. You get her half the time with your… heroic? stuff, and I take her with me on heists the other half of the time.”

“Geez, you drive a hard custody arrangement.” Harley laughed at Ivy’s noise of displeasure. “I’m kiddin.’ It’s a deal.” The door opened, and Mel tried to scramble back to the couch, but it was too late.

“Hey kid, how’d you like to-”

Mel froze, caught mid-sneak.

“You heard that entire conversation, didn’t you?” Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Well, I know what our first lesson is going to be.” She smiled the tiniest smile. “Stealth and reconnaissance.”

Harley beamed, seeing no need to hide her own excitement. “Whaddya say, Butcher Bird? Will ya join us?”

If she played her cards right, Mel could use Harley and Ivy's connections to find a way home and prove herself to her family all in one shot. This wasn’t some operation she’d have to hide behind a front; this was the spotlight. Mel, a real supervillain, just like in the stories she and her brother read growing up. This was the easiest decision of her life.

“Hell yeah!” Mel pumped her fist in the air.

Ivy snorted.

“What?” Mel asked, watching her and Harley poorly suppress their laughter.

“You might wanna pick another catchphrase,” Harley advised, sharing a knowing look with her girlfriend. “I think that one’s already taken.”

Chapter Text

Breadhead had always been good at following directions.

Risen to his full height at birth, he loomed over the other children, though he seldom had time to play. There were crates to smuggle and leaky ceilings to repair, there were customers to entertain and traitors to pummel. By the time he was two, Breadhead knew that someone ordering a hornet with the stinger out meant he wouldn't be getting any sleep that night, and by the time he was three, "cement 'em" were his favorite words, if only because of the praise and stomach full of food that followed. Ken didn't care how things got done as long as Breadhead followed the instructions baked into him as a boy: Do whatever it takes to protect the family.

For the first time in his life, Breadhead hesitated to act on that command.

To his left, Mud hunched on top of the car, his rifle pointed directly at Ken's skull. To his right, Ken glared right back at Mud down the barrel, daring him to make the first move. Mel— if that thing in the sky really was Mel— was nowhere to be seen.

"You tryin' to kill us all?!" Mud demanded. Breadhead had never seen him this rattled. It frightened him: cool-in-a-fight Mud, who'd wormed his way out of so many scrapes, shaking like a leaf, all trigger discipline gone out the window. "Well I ain't gonna let ya. Breadhead," he barked, startling the boy. "Throw 'im off the motorway."

"Don't listen to him, son," Ken ordered just as fast. "He makes one move, rip out his intestines and strangle 'im in his own filth, you hear me?!"

Breadhead didn't throw or strangle. Instead, he froze, tears welling in his eyes, as the people he was born to keep safe tried to sic him on each other.

"Goddammit, Mud, you made the big idiot cry," Ken snapped.

Mud didn't budge. "Yeah, and what is he?! A fuckin' nuke!?" He swiveled his rifle toward his nephew; not that it would do much against a two-ton tower of dough. "A backup plan to blow us all to bits if yer other kid skimps on the fire n' brimstone?!"

The crumbs on either side of Breadhead's face grew soggy as the trickle of tears turned to a stream. If Mel was capable of that much power and no one knew, what else was in his recipe? He didn't want to destroy the world, and he was pretty sure Mel didn't, either.

"Get that thing outta my son's face!" Ken exploded, his whole head purple with fury. "There's only one human! Only one being on this whole floatin' trash heap with that sorta power. You know that."

"You've got five seconds to tell me why the hell we've been livin' with it for the past two decades, or me n' the loaf walk." Mud turned the gun back on his brother, satisfied that the family tank was no spiritual threat. Even if he was capable of it, the boy would never end the world unless directly asked. Mel, on the other hand…

Ken stared into the middle distance, jaw clenched, a deep bitterness creeping across features that were only used to fits of rage and sadistic laughter. "Wasn't s'posed to happen like this," he muttered under his breath.

"Gonna hafta talk faster." Mud flicked his cigarette between his fingers, impatient. "Been itchin' to kill a human, but you'll do in a pinch."

All three of them knew that was probably a bluff. There were exactly fifty-six thousand, five hundred twenty-two reasons why Mud had come crawling back to his brother after his stint in Antenora. He'd blown them all in single weekend. That number had gone up since then, but so long as Mud pulled his weight to keep the Smiling Dead on top by cooking their books and serving as their resident marksman, Ken made sure he'd never have to pay up.

Then again, a mountain of debt had nothing on judgment day.

Breadhead settled things by blocking the car doors with the full heft of his body, unable to look his father in the eye. He didn't want to hurt him, but he needed the truth, and more than the truth, he needed his sister back.

"Whaddya want me to do, huh? Leave 'er in the hands a' them bootlickers upstairs?" It was an honest question, at least, as honest as possible for a man who built his livelihood on lies. "Let 'em force feed her shit about the 'might of heaven' 'til she's so gorged on flattery she gets to thinkin' she's a god? THAT-" Ken drew his cleaver and tilted the blade defiantly at the stairway in the distance, "is how you get doomsday! Our best shot at eternal life never was killin' the human." He shoved the knife back into his head with stubborn finality. "Soon as we do, the cycle restarts and we gotta do it all over again."

"And you're just gonna-"

"I AIN'T FINISHED!" A pulse of violent anger fried Ken's nervous system and shut Mud up. "Kids are gullible. Nothin' up there but dead meat." He gestured to his exposed brain. "Steal 'er while she's still a runt, make her think she's one of us, never let 'er find out what she is…" the wicked grin returned to his face, "now we're talkin' immortality."

For possibly the first time ever, Mud was at a loss for words. The bulging socket of his eye twitched as all five stages of grief dogpiled each other in his brain. "Of all the- and you call ME a lousy gambler," he griped, since petty sibling arguments were more familiar turf than secret angelic nieces. "That only works if it WORKS! Perdition to Ken," he tossed the used cigarette butt at his head, "she ripped a fuckin' HOLE in the island!"

"Yeah. Plan didn't last long." Ken scratched the peeling skin on the back of his neck. Mel hadn't even made it to six years old before she cut herself with a steak knife and asked why the gash in her thumb looked like that. "YOU try gettin' rid of a crotchgoblin once she's stuck to ya like a leech. Figured the next best thing was teachin' her to sin and scheme n' hate those feathered feds like every other rotling."

Mud's shoulders slouched as he lowered the rifle. "But the prophecy-"

"Prophecy's bullshit," Ken repeated for the hundredth time. "But, if you wanna thump bibles," he made pointed eye contact with his older brother, "it says the human has the power to determine our fate. Nothin' in there 'bout extinction. Mel don't hafta be anything but ours."

Mud gave an incredulous snort. "You bribed the judge and thought nobody'd notice."

"More like skippin' court. No kid should hafta grow up like that, bein' raised by mindless robots who don't care what happens to her, long as they can use 'er to justify a war. Don't matter now, though, does it?" Ken's voice hitched before he could stop it. "She's gone."

Breadhead sniffed. "Gone where?"

"Hell if I know." The butcher, the bread, and the sniper all looked to the sky where Mel had been just a moment before. The sun was climbing higher now, a faded yellow instead of a dull orange. "All I know is nobody's sleeping 'til she's safe back home."

"Over my empty grave," Mud scoffed. "Mighta been a time when you could train it outta her, but that's long past. One bad mood and she'll flood the whole island. Is that what you want, you suicidal lunatic? You're gonna tell me the prophecy ain't real while the sky goes dark and she rips the ground a new one?"

Ken grabbed his brother by the bare bones of his spinal column and yanked him so close he could smell every ulcer in his festering gums. "You think you got the balls to kill Mel?!"

Mud choked in hot, embarrassed silence. Of course he didn't, even if he tried. Mel, for all her unbridled chaos, was a small girl with small dreams. A girl who couldn't even kill an angel to save herself. She was all alone, and probably acting in self-defense, and once she was safe, she'd go back to being the harmless little rotling everyone thought she was and they could forget about all of this.

He wasn't sure he'd ever hand her a weapon again, though.

"That's what I thought." Ken dropped him in a heap, swung open the door to the driver's seat, and climbed inside the skeletal remains of the hearse.

"You coulda picked any other turn of phrase." Mud croaked, sulking his way into the passenger seat.

"You could quit doin' dumb shit. Ain't my fault you pissed off that exotic shark breeder." Ken fished in the glove box for something.

"Says the guy who stole a tickin' time bomb from heaven." Mud wished he had something stronger than a cigarette. "Couldn'ta told us sooner, eh?"

"Oh yeah, 'cuz THAT woulda gone over well, as you so kindly demonstrated." Ken retorted, shoving the drawer shut with a frustrated grunt and rooting around under the seat instead. "Where the- Breadhead!"

In the backseat, the youngest Hill grinned with all two hundred of his teeth. A takeout bag on his lap rustled, its friendly red-lettered "fuck you! have a rotten day" crumpling as something jostled around inside. Breadhead reached in and pulled out the jar with the hatchling, delicately turning it over in his massive palms. The bird pecked furiously at the glass, chirping through the air holes in the lid.

"Give it here," Ken commanded.

The dark cavern of Breadhead's mouth peeked through the gaps in his smile as he unscrewed the lid, rolled down the broken window, and watched the baby angel flit down the road and out of sight. Chuckling, he waved before rolling the window back up, entirely unaware of the looks of horror on his father's and uncle's faces.

"The hell did you do?!" Ken smacked the dashboard so hard the entire car shook, every neuron in his mind erupting. "That was our ticket to clearin' our names! Go get that thing and wring its neck, or I'll-"

Ken caught himself when the boy flinched. He threatened Mud all the time, yelled at Mel, but never had anything but pats on the shoulder and extra helpings of bacon for his youngest child. Breadhead, in return, never disobeyed. Until now.

"The human got out," Breadhead explained steadily. "That's why the earth cracked. Somebody stole it to pawn it to heaven. Didn't close the lid all the way, now nobody knows where it went." He screwed the lid back on, which took him a few tries, his big, crumbly fingers fumbling with an object so small. With an apologetic smile, teeth poking out of his mouth at all angles, he passed the closed jar to Mud.

Mud took it from him gingerly, as if it might shatter at any moment despite the bulletproof glass. "But we do know who took it." Four and a half black-polished nails drummed the jar as he stared at Ken in disbelief. "You never told me the bread had brains," he whispered.

Ken was equally bewildered. By all accounts, Mud was right. Breadhead didn't have a brain, or a liver or a spleen or any other piece of meat a rotling might still have. He was just bread, designed to carry out orders without a second thought. If he had his own ideas, he kept them to himself. Never complained, never hesitated, the perfect golden child.

The hurt look in Breadhead's eyes after his outburst haunted Ken more than he cared to admit. Being on the wrong side of two tons of yeast was never a good idea.

Breadhead leaned back against the leather seat, chest puffed with the warm satisfaction of protecting his family. "You proud of me, Dad?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you did good." Breadhead's plan would buy them time, enough time to find Mel and stop heaven from using her as a glorified chess piece. Then they could go back to being a family, a well-oiled machine where everyone did their part.

"Shop opens in an hour." Mud pointed a shriveled finger at the road. "You better step on it, or we'll get a whole lot more questions than one jar can answer."

Grumbling, Ken shifted the gear and sent the old hearse speeding down the freeway, crossing five lanes of traffic in the wrong direction. The last thing he wanted to do while Mel was still on the loose was spend sixteen hours with people who wouldn't hesitate to kill her if they had the chance, but appearances were everything if they wanted to keep their own heads. "Who's got first shift?"

There was no time to frame someone already on their hit list; they'd have to work with what they had.

"Think it's Trina, Hank, and Jeff," Breadhead cheerfully counted on his fingers, pinned against the back windshield as the car veered a stomach-churning one hundred and seventy degrees down an exit ramp.

"Jeff," Ken spat like a curse, weaving a deadly pattern of three-car pileups behind them. "Motherfucker comes in and chews with his mouth open. I don't care if he ain't got lips. Shit's disgusting."

"Never remembers to close the back door on his break," Mud added with disdain. He didn't mind the guy; he was easy to cheat out of a few bucks here and there, but he'd take the loss for Mel.

"Only listens to synthpunk." Breadhead cracked his knuckles.

The rest of the ride home was silent, save for some sinister snickering.

Chapter Text

Pamela.

Ivy stirred, the smell of fresh flowers and new-fallen rain filling her nostrils.

Pamela Isely, Champion of the Green. You must listen.

Sunlight speckled the forest floor through the palm fronds as Ivy took in her surroundings. She recognized this bed of moss, the yawning mouths of the giant carnivorous plants, the hum of pollinating insects flitting through the air. This was a familiar place; she had been here many times since the day she accepted the mantle of avatar from the Green’s previous steward. 

“I’m listening,” Ivy inclined her head slightly in respect. “What is it you need?” 

A small host of faces carved their way out of the nearby trees, disembodied and ancient. 

You stoke the flame of a terrible imbalance, Pamela. The cracked wood of their lips moved as one. Why do you see fit to destroy the peace? Have you forgotten the vow you took the day we gave you new life?

Ivy approached the tallest tree, confusion flooding the fern-green of her eyes. “I don’t understand. I don’t wish to destroy the peace. At least, not yours.” A handful of selfish humans on earth, however, could stand to be destroyed. Such thoughts were best hidden from the Green when conversing, so she tried her best to wipe her mind of all emotion. “I have done nothing to upset the balance. This time.” Her attempt at re-terraforming the earth and wiping out all humanity was quite in the past.

You cannot hide the truth from the Parliament of Trees. The day we feared has come to pass. 

“What are you talking about?!” Ivy was getting pissed. She was proud of her responsibility as the avatar, but sometimes, the Green’s cryptic nature made her wish it had chosen someone else. “You’re being intentionally vague, at this point. Tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”

The tallest tree stretched its roots towards her, enveloping her legs and arms in a creaking embrace. For a moment, it inspected her closely, then snaked a branch straight through the flesh of her chest. There was no pain or blood, only a deep purple lunaria flower that blossomed out of the cavity it left behind.

Her heart is honest. She does not know what she has done. 

“What? What did I do?!” Ivy demanded. Her mouth filled with brambles, cutting off her speech, though she found she could still breathe. She looked between the looming forest giants, their branches swaying in the growing breeze.

 We cannot speak of it here. The crows have ears, the fungus remembers. Our connection is too weak. For a brief moment, a shadow blotted out the patches of sunlight that danced through the leaves. The trees shuddered, dropping Ivy from their grasp.

You must attune. 

The roots receded into their trunks as the scent of vegetation began to fade. The lunaria in Ivy’s chest wilted and the world started to blur.

Ivy woke in her own bed, hair tangled in her mouth. The only limbs wrapped around her were Harley’s, sprawled across her girlfriend's chest as she snored.

She’d tell her about the dream tomorrow. For now, Ivy listened to the gentle rise and fall of Harley’s breathing, attuned to the only thing in the world that really mattered.

Harley rummaged through the pile of clothes on the floor of the closet for something clean enough to wear. "Yeah, I know it's a mess," she half-apologized over her shoulder. "I told 'er she could have whatever she wanted." She'd sewn together her fair share of franken-outfits through the years; she didn't really care if Mel borrowed some of her old costumes to make her own. It wasn't like she needed them anymore, anyway. Her phone lay facedown on the floor, Batchat notifications silenced.

"She took a lot of purple," Ivy noticed the large chunk cut out of a orchid-colored jumpsuit and another out of a plum skirt.

"Said somethin' about the 'blood of her enemies,'" Harley snorted. "She's a riot, goin' on about sutures and how skin's easier to sew than fabric. I don't think you got anything to worry about. She's a tough cookie." She popped her bubblegum, tossing on an old Block 'Em Dead team shirt from her intense but short-lived roller derby phase years ago.

Ivy scoffed as Harley tied her hair up into ponytails, hogging the mirror. "Who said I'm worried? I'm not worried."

"Mmyeah youh arhe," Harley argued, popping another bubble. "Don't lie to your therapist!" She wagged a finger at her girlfriend, her blue and pink nail polish chipped where she'd bit the corners.

"It's been over a decade since-" Ivy caught herself. Bringing up past careers was in poor taste while Harley was still coping with the loss of her most recent gig. Especially since she was partially to blame. "Nevermind. Point is, I went over the plan with Mel last night. As long as she can stick to the script and follow a few simple directions, everything will be fine." She leaned over and kissed Harley on the forehead. "Need I remind you that taking her on was your idea." She tapped her index finger on her girlfriend's nose, perching on the vanity table in front of her.

"Yeah, and I've only got good ones," Harley grinned mischievously up at her partner. "None of 'em have eeeever gone wrong."

Ivy suppressed a chuckle at her blatant lie which Harley interrupted with a kiss, one hand gently cupping the side of her face.

"You think that stuff last night was all the Green?" Harley asked when they had both separated, laughter subsiding. "Or didja eat too many of those morning glory seeds?"

"No," Ivy replied with complete confidence, "that was real. The Green can't speak directly like you and I are talking to each other right now, so everything reaches me through the Parliament of Trees." Harley looked a little lost, so she explained. "Souls of former avatars absorbed into the Green's consciousness to interpret its intentions and advise the current vessel. Communication is theoretically easier in a semi-lucid state, but if you ask me, they put much more effort into their trippy dream sequences than actually getting their point across."

Harley bounced back onto the bed, ruffling Lou's fur while he growled, his nap disrupted by the shifting mattress. "So thaaaat's why ya gotta do the matchy-vibes-thing."

"Attuning," Ivy agreed. "Direct contact should help me get a stronger message. I won't be able to get to Eden for a while, though," she grumbled, checking on a few planters on the windowsill filled with tiny seedlings. "More Legion crap. You know, when I first took the position, I thought we were going to be doing some real good. Well, not- not good, I guess, some real evil. Doing evil well." She raked her hands through her scalp. "But no, it's just a bunch of self-absorbed idiots jerking each other off or whatever the hell they do in that energy-guzzling eyesore of a headquarters while I run around doing errands like a trained rat." She delicately moved a few plants into bigger pots, her care and precision while she adjusted the fragile root systems contrasting with her heated rant.

Harley glanced at the floor. "At least you gotta job."

Ivy paused her sprout transfer. "Have you even spoken to anyone? Since the… incident?" She put the last two seedlings in her tote bag instead of back on the windowsill. "All of the evidence points to our little stowaway," she pointed her thumb towards the main room where Mel was crashing for the time being, "as the primary suspect. You're probably in the clear."

All she got from Harley was a deadpan stare. "This is the Batfamily we're talkin' about, Ives. There's no way they don't know. Besides," she stopped petting Lou to cross her arms with a defiant pout, "I'm not gonna throw an innocent kid under the bus."

Ivy blinked. "You saw the tape. She dumped a whole man in the harbor and sang a little song about it."

"Ehh. We all cope differently." She shrugged, emotions shifting at lightning speed. "No, y'know what? This'll be fun! Unemployment is, like," she searched for words that would convince herself as much as Ivy, "super turbo vacation! No rules, no deadlines, no drowning politicians with a stick up their ass. Just me and whatever I wanna do, whenever I wanna do it. Ohmygod, Red," she gasped, "this is the PERFECT time to get into competitive baking! Y'know, like I'm always talkin' about!"

'Always' was really only the past two weeks, since she had developed an all-consuming obsession with British reality TV, but Ivy knew better than to mention that. Or to share her fear of Harley getting snubbed in the finals and finding inventive ways of using a stand mixer as a weapon against her rival contestants.

"You do make a killer cinnamon bun. Just save some for me, okay?" Ivy winked, happy to see her girlfriend back to her her usual, bubbly self. She checked her bag: sprouts, paperwork, sunglasses, everything she needed for their new ward's first day of on-the-job training. "Alright, Peanut, I gotta run. Don't forget to water my babies while we're out."

"Uh-huh." Harley was already halfway to the kitchen where Mel sat, hunched over one of the barstools in a homemade bodysuit cut off at the thighs and shoulders, bandages peaking out from underneath to cover her arms and legs. The faint bass of a fan edit thrummed from the device cradled in her hands.

Ivy cleared her throat. "Ready to go?"

Her new apprentice didn't respond, bag-rimmed eyes glued to the screen.

"Mel?"

Giving the girl a phone had been a mistake.

"Stop staring at Nightwing's ass and get up off yours. We're going to be late for our gig."

“I, uhh,” Mel’s face turned a few shades of gray as she shoved the phone into a gap in her bandages. “I wasn’t-”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you and every other person in Gotham. Did you eat any real food?" She glanced at the open spicy doritos bag on the counter next to Mel, crumbs and dust littered on the floor underneath. "We have a long day ahead of us and I'm not going to have you passing out on me. Here." She waved her hand over a nearby potted sapling, drawing on all of its energy to produce a mature cluster of apples.

Mel took one from her hand, regarding the fruit like an alien artifact. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You bite into it." Did she really not know? "With your teeth."

The girl just stared at her with wide, blank eyes before sniffing it and taking a hesitant taste.

"Ho-o-oly shit." She took another, much larger bite and moaned in delight, kicking her legs. It took her less than twenty seconds to finish the whole thing, and Ivy had to swipe the core to keep her from devouring that, too. Mel wiped the juice from her chin with the back of her glove, giggling. "What'd you say those are called?!"

"Apples." Ivy's eye twitched. How the fuck had this kid lived this long? "Please tell me you've eaten fruit before."

"I've eaten fruit flies," she offered, reaching for another. "Always wondered why they were called that. They mostly just eat shit. Taste great beer-battered."

The perplexed and slightly repulsed expression on Ivy's face was the best response she could muster.

"What? Dad says everything is edible if you deep-fry it enough."

"Ha! I like this kid." Harley declared from across the kitchen, deep in a flurry of sugar and baking soda. The light from the window caught on some flour as she poured it into a bowl, illuminating the particles like a cloud of smoke, only much more sweet-smelling.

Harley liked her, Mel repeated in her mind. She and Ivy wanted her around. They had seen her humanity and kept her secret, despite it not mattering in a world where everyone was already human. After a brief, nonviolent negotiation and a single day of planning, Ivy was taking her on a job.

It was all too good to be true. She'd just have to use them to build her reputation as quickly as possible, find out what they wanted in return, and ditch them before they tried to cash in any favors. And, a voice in the back of her head warned, doubt worming its way through the holes in her plan, hope your family takes you back before they come after you. What will they say when they realize you've abandoned them?

"Mel!"

The bid for her attention forced her back to the present. Ivy stood in the doorway, shoes on, waiting.

"Come on, this investors’ meeting isn’t going to crash itself.” 

“Okay! Okay, I’m coming.” Mel grabbed what was left of her chips and followed her out the door. As they walked to the bus stop, she stuffed the rest of the contents of the bag in her mouth, crumpled it up, and tossed it behind her.

Ivy stopped in her tracks. “Pick that up.”

It took Mel a second to realize that Ivy was talking about the bag. “I ate it all,” she explained, confused.

Ivy stood firm, blocking her path. “So you think it’s okay to throw your trash in the street?”

Mel wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What are you, a cop?”

Before she could take another step, Ivy scruffed her by the hood of her suit and hoisted her off her feet. Mel slumped and glared at her, inconvenienced but not at all surprised.

“Don’t you ever let anyone trick you into thinking that properly disposing of your garbage is anything but the most basic act of rebellion against the laziness that corporate polluters have come to expect from us.” Ivy scolded, ignoring the startled glances of a few passers-by. “I never want to see you do that again. Do you hear me?”

Mel was entirely unfazed by the yelling. In fact, she looked bored. “Yeah, fine, whatever, I’ll throw it out. God.” She smoothed out her hood as Ivy dropped her back on the pavement.

Ivy waited until Mel groaned and tossed the bag in the correct bin before they continued their journey to the heart of the financial district. This whole sidekick thing was starting to irk her. She never would have agreed to it if it weren’t for that irresistible thing Harley did with her big blue eyes.

“Alright, you useless parasites.” Ivy beckoned Mel forward with the manilla folder she’d prepared the day before. “I’m going to show you what you’re really investing in, though I suspect most of you are already aware. Can’t hurt to have it shoved down your throats again. It’s the only way you people ever learn.” She gestured to the captive audience in the boardroom before her, tied to their big leather chairs with vines. Gigantic thorns kept them from squirming as Ivy flipped through the chart on the easel at the front of the room until she reached a blank page. “Butcher Bird, the pie chart, please.”

Mel rustled through several packets of paper before finding the aforementioned chart and pinning it to board with far more staples than necessary. The staple gun had been her idea, after all; she was going to get all the use out of it that she could.

“That’s enough, thank you.” Ivy turned back to her hostages. “As you can see, the diagram on the right is from a meeting ten years ago where you promised to reduce both plastic use and carbon emissions by ninety percent over the course of the next decade. Now, I know people love the convenience of their disposable water bottles and their questionably sweet instant powdered chocolate milk, but public favor wasn’t too promising after that documentary came out, was it?” she grimaced. “Surely that had nothing to do with the timing of said promise, or the fact that you apparently forgot about it two years later when the film mysteriously vanished from streaming platforms and the producer went missing. Next chart.”

Mel flipped the page again. More staples.

“Ten years later and– oh dear– carbon emissions are up forty percent from where they were before the exposé. Plastic use has tripled. A whole rainforest has been chopped down, and while I can’t prove that it was your fault directly, I can prove that you hired a whole public relations department specifically devoted to making sure that no one knew it was happening.” Ivy gestured to the board with a pencil. “Not a good look, is it? Since I know that’s all you care about.”

No one said a word, too scared to move.

“That wasn’t rhetorical.” Ivy’s thorns grew bigger, slicing through slacks and blazers.

The room echoed with terrified “no, yeah, no’s.”

“Which is exactly why I’m going to give you a few pointers to help with your image. Stop lying to people,” she hit the easel with her pencil, “stop stealing resources,” she hit it again, “and stop,” the pencil snapped in two, “killing every living thing in sight!”

She paused to catch her breath. The more calm and collected she was, the more sway she’d have over the Green.

“Also maybe stop having board meetings in rooms with glass walls.” A leafy tendril snaked its way around the board president’s middle. “Makes it way too easy to do this.” With a flick of her hand, Ivy’s vine smashed through the floor-to-ceiling window and dropped the man to a sixty-story demise. She smiled coldly at the ensuing gasps and whimpers.

“I’ve given the feral young lady behind me your trademark thirty-two ounce Mango Energy Blast and a dozen knives. You get a three second headstart; after that, what happens is between you and her.” Ivy released the vines that bound them. “Starting now.”

Screams filled the halls as the investors sprinted out the boardroom door, a grinning Mel in hot pursuit. Ivy set to work sifting through the briefcases left behind in the escape. On her third briefcase, she found the red USB drive she was looking for and put it in her pocket.

Better to call than text with such sensitive information. 

“Minerva?” She held the phone under her chin, packing the charts she’d brought with her neatly back in her tote bag. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got it. How fast can you get to the Wawa on 31st? I can pass it off there.” Ivy rolled her eyes as the other line chattered on. “Okay, see you then.” She paused again, cut off for a second time. “Yeah, she is a bitch. Okay. Bye.”

Ivy hit the end call button with more force than necessary.

“Who was that?”

Mel skidded into the room, her new outfit splotched all over with blood. 

“Just a coworker.” Ivy sighed, remembering she’d forgotten to look for one more piece of information. The laundry list of extra Legion assignments always easily slipped her mind once the fun part of a job was over. 

“You have coworkers?” Mel wrinkled her nose.

Seven more briefcases to go. “Sort of. I’m more of a contractor.” Nothing in this one. Ivy narrowed her eyes at Mel. “Why is that so shocking?”

“It’s not, I guess I just thought you had sorta… self employed vibes.” 

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“Pick your favorite.” Mel peeked over her shoulder into the next briefcase, forcing Ivy to gently push her out of the way to get an inch of personal space. 

“Listen, I’ll have you know I was asked by the founder himself to take this position.” Ivy didn’t like her authority being doubted. This was precisely why she didn’t have a sidekick. 

“The founder is going around giving out positions to people who didn’t ask for them?” Mel’s forehead scrunched in skepticism. “Is that something founders do?” 

“He was a fan of my work.” Ivy just wanted Mel to stop asking questions. It wasn’t like she hadn’t asked them herself thousands of times already. “See if you can find a blue flash drive in that bag over there.”

“A what?”

“Nevermind.” Ivy procured it before she had time to explain to Mel what a flash drive was. “I found it. Let’s head out.” 

A wet, garbled noise gurgled through the hallway near the exit.

“Mel,” Ivy asked as a stiff arm in the doorway jerked upwards, “are you sure you got all of them?”

“All nine of 'em, yeah!” Mel announced proudly. “Why?” 

Ivy pointed towards the exit, now blocked by two upright, stumbling corpses in business casual wear. 

“Damn, they revived fast.” Mel wasn’t sure why that was a problem. Then, the pallid look on Ivy’s face reminded her: This was the world before the end, before people lost their humanity. Death happened once.

They weren't supposed to reanimate.

As the mostly-deceased bodies groaned and staggered closer, Mel noticed the lack of a mark on their backs where the average rotling’s would be. These creatures also didn’t seem to be particularly sentient.

All nine of the board members– or at least what was left of them– shuffled back into the room, crowding around the table where Ivy and Mel were frozen in shock. A woman in a pantsuit with a knife wedged into her spine leaned forward and grabbed Mel’s arm, teeth bared, ready to bite. Mel yanked her arm out of her grip and climbed on top of the glass table, pulling Ivy up with her.

“Shit shit shit, what do we do?!” she asked Ivy.

“My sprouts!” Ivy shouted as one of the undead tripped over her bag, sending it flying out of the open window. All of the plants in this minimalist boardroom were plastic and therefore completely useless. The table shattered as one of the faster corpses slammed into it, the full force of his body knocking it to the floor and taking a screaming Ivy and Mel along with it. 

Black blood flowed from Mel’s ankles as she and Ivy backed into the center of the pile of broken glass, picking up shards to defend themselves with. A few found their mark, sending the corpses back to their rightful lifeless state, but there were not enough to cover all of the bodies. The remaining zombies crunched through the debris, forcing Ivy and Mel to the back of the room with nothing between them and the 600-foot drop below but a cracked window. Ivy shrieked as a man with a blade in his chest latched onto her shoulders with his cold, stiff hands. Jaws snapping inches away from her face, the body shambled toward the window's edge, bringing her with it as she tried to wrestle herself free from its supernaturally strong grip. 

Mel reached out to pry him off, but her feet locked in place. She swayed, a violent nausea taking over her body. A darkness deeper than midnight filled her vision until all she could see was black.

Melancholy. 

Mel recognized the voice from her nightmares, serene yet chilled with dread. Singular, but echoed by a chorus of whispers.

Melancholy, come home. 

“I’m working on that!” Mel didn’t know why she replied to it. She couldn’t see anything, or move her body except for her mouth. Yelling at it was her only recourse.

That whaleflesh hovel is not your home, child. 

Mel thought she could hear the croon of the angel mother’s voice through the layers of hushed murmurs, just as she had at the Seam. Invisible feathers brushed the back of her neck, raising every hair on the back of her spine. 

You belong to heaven. Your inheritance awaits you.

Mel cried out as a vision flashed through her mind at rapid speed. Her island lay desolate, devoid of any life, littered with corpses that would never rise again. Not a fly or a beetle crawled across the barren city, their carcasses bathed in shadows cast by an ominous green light. 

Join us! The voice became more desperate as the vision became more bleak. Against her will, she walked along the water's edge, the bleached bones of neighbors, friends, and enemies alike rattling as the tide washed them ashore. Take your place in the Kingdom of-

“STOP!” Mel screamed, and the voice and the vision immediately disappeared. She was back in the boardroom, where the remaining undead bodies collectively seized, then dropped to the floor, rigid and lifeless once more.

Ivy waited a few seconds to make sure the death was permanent this time before pulling herself to her feet. Beside her, Mel trembled, hands over her ears and a hollow look in her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Ivy asked, though she was also bleeding profusely. 

Mel nodded, staring at nothing. “Yeah.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m good.” Mel stepped over the broken glass and bodies, stumbling to the exit. “I just need a nap.”

Ivy checked her pocket for the two drives. Miraculously, both were still in one piece.

Great. That meant she’d still have to go into work.

“You did really well back there.” The least she could do was give Mel a compliment after whatever that was. She glanced back at the fallen bodies, then at Mel again, deep in thought. “I think-” she slowly pieced together what had happened, “-you saved us both.”

“What?” Mel asked, still dazed, as if she hadn’t really been present for most of it. “How?”

“Those zombies; when you screamed, I think it killed them.” Perhaps there was more to Mel than she initially let on. She wasn’t the only person on earth who could kill with a scream, but it did put her in a different category than the just-plain-human Ivy had originally taken her for. It explained the black blood, too. 

“It did?” Mel looked back at the carnage as they boarded the elevator. She had been responsible for many deaths in her short time here, none of which she dwelt on, but something about the idea of being able to kill without trying, without knowing, made her stomach turn.

“It must have been something else,” Mel waved it off, trying to be casual. She leaned against the side of the elevator, one leg bent, her other foot propped against the wall. “Whatever was causing them to act like that wore off. It was just weird timing,” she rambled quickly. “That’s not something I can do. I’m just a normal girl, doing normal girl things.” She smiled a bit wider than necessary, crooked teeth stained with blood.

Ivy pressed her tongue against her cheek, contemplating. She took a good long look at Mel before shaking her head in a resigned nod.

“If you say so.”