Disclaimer: I do not own Superman, Poison Ivy, Justice League or related characters and am not making a profit from this story. The characters are owned by DC Comics.



Based loosely after “Hush.” I know some rosters are a bit off.





Dark Harvest



Chapter 1: Longing



Written and Edited by R.S.



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The towering trees loomed menacingly over him like solemn sentinels as they reached upward into the endless onyx night. Dark, moist soil squished beneath his red boots as he wandered aimlessly in the large open clearing. The trees, bushes, and weeds seemed to move with the wind, slowly encircling and surrounding him. Moonlight painted the landscape in shades of grey and black, but the moon was the color of rotting flesh. Patches of lush thin grass seemed to clutch at his feet with every step like tiny tendrils.



An elusive murmur seemed to blow in the wind, whispering secrets he couldn’t quite understand. He was completely lost and had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.



For the first time in a long time, he was afraid.



Then the earth began to rumble and quake as if it were growing angrier with each step he took. Things were slowly emerging from the earth. Dirt and soil shifted in spots all around him revealing several lifeless scarecrows strewn up haphazardly on large wooden poles. Only when he looked closer he realized in horror that they weren’t scarecrows at all.



“Bruce! Diana! Kara!” he cried.



Bathed in that terrible moonlight he could see them. They were all there- every member of the Justice League, unmoving and stiff as the wood they were tied to. Vividly colored flowers were growing all over them with some even sprouting from their open mouths.



Wonder Woman’s face was beaten and bloodied, her god forged lasso cinched tightly around her throat in a noose. Her once flowing raven hair had become ratty and sprinkled with dried leaves. Batman’s cape and costume hung loosely to his emaciated frame and his head was facing the wrong direction- twisted disgustingly around by some enormous force. Supergirl resembled a discarded child’s doll that had been left thrown out with the trash. The young heroine had bright yellow daisies where her eyes should have been and her lips were twisted upward forming a macabre smiley face.



As he desperately raced over to them, thick vines sprang from the soil and snaked around his wrists and slithered around his legs. He was trapped. No matter how hard he struggled or tried to fly away he could not. Why were his powers not working? Then he heard it- mocking laughter carrying on the breeze. Faint at first but steadily growing louder and closer.



The impenetrable wall of trees parted like the Red Sea and a curvaceous, lithe figure confidently strolled forward. Poison Ivy smiled brightly at the bound superhero and motioned downward with quick flicks of her index finger.



“Get down on your knees, slave” she commanded firmly.



A shockwave reverberated through every fiber of his being. It was as if she was imposing her will on him with just her words. Her voice was irresistibly compelling and he found his mouth opening before he realized what was happening.



“Yes, my mistress.”



His knees bent, as much from the pull of the vines as his own volition, and planted firmly into the dirt. His once powerful arms, held in check by the aggressive vines, hung uselessly at his sides. His usually strong will to fight had evaporated.



Ivy gently cupped his chin in her hand. Her fingers were warm and soft. It made him feel excruciatingly good to feel her touch.



“What do you think of new garden?” she asked.



Her voice was music to his soul. He felt like listening to it forever.



“I--”



The gorgeous red head soothingly ran her delicate fingers through his thick black hair.



“Don’t be shy, Superman. After all if it wasn’t for you, none of this would have been possible.”



“What…what are you talking about?”



“You know what I’m talking about. Take a good long look around. All of your friends are dead- every last one of them. You slaughtered the entire Justice League and laughed as you killed them. I can still hear that loud satisfying snap when you broke Batman‘s neck. It seemed like the more they pleaded the more bloodthirsty you became.”



His mind raced, trying to register what she was telling him.



“And do you know why you did it? It was because I commanded you to. I had to remind you of a lesson I’ve already taught you once before: No man can resist me. Even Superman.”



His voice wavered slightly with panic.



“No…none of this is true. This isn‘t real.”



Ivy stepped away and lounged back on an enormous red topped mushroom that had magically sprung from the soil. She crossed her long shapely legs and smiled cruelly.



“But it is, darling. I just wanted you to witness your greatest failure before you become a permanent part of my magnificent garden. Now you can take comfort in the fact your body will feed my babies as fertilizer for all eternity.”



The Man of Steel was utterly helpless as hundreds of vines sprouted and began flowing over his body. The more he struggled the quicker the vines seemed to grow and spread. Soon he was completely cocooned in them, his entire body lost beneath layer upon layer of writhing green tendrils. They were everywhere- probing into his ears, nose, covering his eyes, and then finally slithering into his mouth. He let out a choked scream, hoping that someone would hear and help him, but he knew no one would come. Total darkness engulfed everything as he felt the vines carrying him deep into the bowels of the earth.



Superman screamed again…





**************************************************



…and awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed. His breathing was heavy and beads of cold sweat dotted his forehead and brow. The white sheet was vaguely damp with perspiration and he gently tossed it aside. The faint lingering memory of the dream slowly died away but not everything about it had faded into the night.



“No man can resist me. Even Superman.”



Poison Ivy. Her words still echoed in his mind. Her voice- so sultry yet soothing as if she had whispered them next to his ear as he slept. For the past couple months she had plagued his every waking thought. She was always in the periphery of his mind, dancing through his consciousness and inserting herself into his mental dialogue. It had been this way ever since she had uttered those same words that hellish night in downtown Metropolis.



Ivy had managed to trick him and gotten close enough place a kiss on his lips. Her extremely potent powers of persuasion, strengthened by the synthetic kryptonite in her lipstick, had proven powerful enough to bypass even his natural invulnerability. While under her control she had made him nearly kill Batman and Catwoman in the sewers and then on the streets of the city. Only Lois being put in harms way had been able to snap him out of her powerful spell.



But now Poison Ivy had even invaded his dreams and troubled his slumber. He slowly laid back down though he knew he would not find sleep again this night.



“You okay?” asked Lois, sleep still heavy in her voice.



“I’m fine,” he answered evenly. “Go back to sleep.”



“Hmm…’kay…night…”



Lois. He gazed lovingly at her sleeping form and smiled. She looked so beautiful and peaceful lying there in her royal blue satin pajamas. A few strands of long raven hair rested wistfully across her cheek. God, he loved her so much.



They had always had a very healthy sex life but lately things had been different. Lois had noticed immediately and noted, with reluctance and concern, that he seemed distant. He was always quick to brush her concerns aside, chalking it up the usual stress and rigors from his alter ego, but he knew he had been simply going through the motions. None of the usual love and tenderness was there.



It had begun to affect his work as well. Perry had been giving him hell lately for late or completely blown assignments. He knew if the trend continued that the already thin ice he was skating on would completely shatter beneath him.



He carefully got out of bed, hovering just a bit above the mattress so as not to disturb his wife, and walked out into the living room of the darkened apartment. A two week old copy of the Daily Planet seemed to call to him from the coffee table in front of the couch. For some reason he hadn’t brought himself to throw it away. Without thinking, he picked it up and examined it for what seemed like the dozenth time. The front page headline screamed at him with large, bold black print.



“JOKER CAUSES RIOT AT ARKHAM: DOZENS OF INMATES ESCAPE- AGAIN”



Bruce was going to have his hands full for a while tracking all the escapees down. He was about to toss the paper back onto the table when something caught his eye. Under the main headline was a row of tiny picture squares showing some of the more notorious inmates to escape. The third one over was a beautiful woman dressed in the same orange jumpsuit as the others. It was her. Clark stared at the image for a long while, not even fully realizing what he was doing.



Her unwavering green eyes seemed to gaze straight through him from the picture. Finally he blinked a couple of times as if waking from a daze, crumpled the paper, and threw it in the trash. Good riddance, he thought. Let Bruce do what he does best and take care of her and the rest of the psychos. He probably would’ve refused help anyway.



Clark filled a glass with cool tap water and took a long drink. Then he crossed back to the living room and sat down on the couch. As he reached for the TV remote he heard it. The tiny Justice League transponder in his ear was giving off a distress signal. It was set at a frequency that only his enhanced hearing could detect. In between beeps he had already fully dressed in his costume and then he placed a finger against his ear to open up the COM link. He recognized the slightly panicked voice on the other end immediately and was already high above Metropolis before he answered.



“Hang on. I’m on my way.”



***********************************************************

Gotham City- Wayne Tech Laboratories



Green Arrow grinned to himself as he watched her gracefully dodge, flip, and effortlessly dance around her opponents. He admired the way Black Canary’s beautiful, shapely ass and legs flexed beneath the black fishnets while another of her expertly performed kicks landed home.



“What’s wrong with these guys?” she asked as yet another tan uniformed man fell unconscious to the floor. “I thought security guards would be more interested in stopping, well, intruders.”



“Don’t know,” he answered, still leaning on his bow. “They seem kind of out of it or something- like they’re in some sort of trance.”



He ducked a wild punch as one of the laboratory guards came at him and then sent him flying to the floor with a hard uppercut beneath the chin.



“You sure you don’t need any help?” he asked, already knowing the answer.



She looked back and smiled, her long blonde hair whipping behind her.



“Nope, I’ve got this. Though I do feel a bit guilty beating these guys up because they clearly aren‘t in their right minds.”



“Yep, I’m sure these guys are all friendly and charming as can be when they aren’t trying to kill you,” Green Arrow grinned.



The beautiful blonde let loose a vicious spinning heel kick that sent the last of the dozen or so guards crashing to the white tile floor in a heap. She had tried her best to minimize their injuries, though they had seemed unusually resistant to pain.



“I would hate to be the one to explain to Bruce that we just beat up a bunch of his employees,” Ollie commented wryly.



“I’m sure he’ll understand. Besides, we didn‘t have a choice. We just responded to the alarm and got jumped by these guys posing as security guards.”



Green Arrow knelt down next to one of the unconscious men and plucked something that was curled around the outside of his ear. He held the green wiry object to the light to examine it.



“Hmm, maybe they weren’t posing.”



She knelt down beside him.



“What do you mean? What is that?”



“It’s a vine or something,” he answered. “All of theses guys seem to have a piece of it on them.”



The plant looked similar to a grape vine and was about four inches long. Lush green leaves sprouted out along its length, looking as if it were still planted firmly in rich soil instead of slowly dying out of the ground as they should have.



A thunderous banging on the outer wall behind them put a stop to their pondering. Large fist shaped indentions pounded inward at an alarming rate. They spun around just as the reinforced wall exploded, sending a shower of concrete toward them. An enormous figure slowly and methodically stepped through the gaping hole, his footsteps causing the ground to tremble. The gray skinned man was wearing a tattered black suit with no shoes, and he had a dull witted, but no less threatening, glint in his dead gray eyes.



“It’s Grundy!” Canary shouted in alarm.



Ollie had already knocked three explosive tipped arrows in the longbow and let them fly. Solomon Grundy stood unmoving as the projectiles slammed into their mark with a brilliant, rumbling explosion.



As the smoke began to clear they noticed his silhouette had not even budged an inch. Then he started toward them at a dead run. For such a huge man he moved surprisingly quick. The arrows had done little more than annoy his super tough skin.



“Grundy, smash!!” he growled, quickly closing the gap between them.



Black Canary stepped in front of Ollie and spoke without turning back.



“My turn. Cover your ears.”



As he did so she unleashed an earsplitting sonic scream that shattered microscopes, glass shelves, and sent electronic equipment flying across the room. The sheer force of the attack seemed to shake the entire building to its core. At such a close range, Grundy caught the full impact of her power. The initial force shoved him several feet back though his tree trunk legs kept him fully upright. His tattered gray suit began shredding away even more as pieces of the fabric were forcibly ripped away.



“Grundy not let you hurt pretty lady!” he bellowed.



He raised his beefy, granite arms to shield his face, and through sheer will and strength he began pushing toward them again. The undead behemoth leaned forward as if fighting a strong wind and seemed to gain steam with each step.



“Grundy crush your bones first!”



Black Canary redoubled her efforts and increased the force of the scream but it was not without cost to herself. Fatigue was rapidly catching up to her as a result of such a raw, sustained attack. Grundy inched closer and closer and at last the deafening noise ceased.

The exhausted heroine sank to her knees just as his wall like shadow fell over her. Green Arrow grabbed her by the shoulders and dove with her just as a jack hammer punch grazed their bodies and crushed a crater into the floor.



Ollie rolled to a kneeling position, knocked another arrow in the longbow, and let it fly. It exploded in the monster’s face, blinding him with a vibrant white flash.



“Graahhhhh!”



Grundy howled like a wounded animal. He cupped his hand over his eyes and thrashed wildly about the room with his other arm, completely splintering tables, cabinets, columns and anything else unfortunate enough to get in his way.



Green Arrow pulled his partner to her feet and let her lean against him for support.



“Alright, fun‘s over, pretty bird. Time to call in the cavalry- well a one man cavalry anyway.”



He placed a finger to his ear to open up the Justice League COM link.



“Superman we need some muscle in here now!”



A huge sigh of relief swept over him when he heard the calm, confident voice on the other end.



“Hang on. I’m on my way.”



The lumbering dead man was cutting a swath toward them in his rage, backing both of them to the corner. Wood and metal was being shredded like confetti. Broken furniture and concrete blocked them in on either side.



“There’s no way around him,” Black Canary remarked grimly.



Green Arrow’s eyes widened as he noticed something dangling around Grundy’s thick bull neck.



“Look, he’s got that same type of vine on him as the guards.”



“You’re right, Ollie. And what was that he said earlier? Something about a ‘pretty lady.’”



“Poison Ivy!” they said in unison.



Solomon Grundy’s enormous shadow fell over them as he raised both fists above his head. Great, one sledgehammer for each of us, Ollie thought. A quick glance at Dinah revealed that she was in no shape to fire up another canary cry.



With the effects of the flash bang arrow wearing off the monster let out a cruel, gravelly laugh.



“Grundy has you now!” he bellowed triumphantly.



He swung downward with all his might, happily anticipating the wet, squishy sound that came with pulping weak humans when he felt a gust of wind at his side. The screams never came. His cinder block sized fists abruptly stopped mid strike.



“Sorry, Grundy, there’ll be no more smashing tonight.”



Grundy let out a confused grunt just as Superman released both of his wrists and hammered a thunderous right hook to his jaw. The large, gray ogre reeled backward, a spray of spittle following close behind. Not giving his opponent a chance to recover, the Man of Steel pounded his gut with punishing jackhammer blows. As he doubled over and struggled to find his breath, Superman interlocked his fingers and clobbered Grundy with a double ax handle blow that left the behemoth unconscious in a sizable crater in the floor.



“You guys okay?” Superman asked.



“Yeah, thanks a lot. We owe you one,” Green Arrow replied with genuine relief.



Superman plucked a steel girder from the wreckage and pretzeled it around Grundy’s arms before fusing the ends together with heat vision.



“What are you two doing here? Where’s Batman?”



Black Canary took a seat in one of the few remaining intact chairs to catch her breath.



“He’s out of the country tracking down Deathstroke. He left Robin in charge of Gotham while he was away, and the kid was doing a tremendous job or rounding up most those Arkham escapees, but then he got called away on urgent Teen Titan business. He asked us to help keep an eye on things for a while.”



“Wait a minute,” said Green Arrow. “Before you came Grundy said something about Poison Ivy. She was the reason Grundy and those guards attacked us and probably the reason the security alarm went off in the first place. She could still be here.”



Superman quickly scanned through the ceiling with x-ray vision. The upper floors were empty save one.



“She’s up on the sixth floor. You two wait here. I’ll take care of Ivy.”



**************************************



Before either of them could reply, the Man of Steel flew up the five flights of stairs at blazing speed and stepped into the doorway of one of the larger laboratories. His heart nearly skipped a beat as Poison Ivy’s stunning, feminine figure came into view. If he moved now he could have her subdued in the blink of an eye. Yet he hesitated without knowing why and merely watched her from behind as she carefully selected several glass vials and mini computer discs before carefully placing them in a black metal foam lined briefcase.



He moved in closer and the sound of his footsteps seemed to alert the villainess, but he was fairly certain she had known he was there all along. As she slowly turned to face him, a tidal wave of pheromones plowed into him like a runaway train, nearly staggering him. Even his superhuman metabolism struggled to process and rid him of their powerful effects. He wondered how Bruce was able to resist them more often then not.



Ivy’s pretty emerald green eyes narrowed ever so slightly and seemed to dance with tempered excitement. A wry smirk formed at the corners of her full sensual lips.



“Well hello, lover. It’s been a while.” she purred. “How about a kiss?”



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End of Chapter 1



Comments welcome.