Chapter 1: Vines and Confessions
Wren Calloway remembered dying.
It wasn’t dramatic. A red light, the screech of wet tires, the awful crunch of metal and glass. Then nothing. A profound, endless nothing.
So waking up was a shock. The second shock was that she couldn’t move. The third was the blinding, verdant light.
She was lying on her back on a cool, mossy stone slab. Living vines, thick as her wrist and studded with tiny, cruel-looking thorns, bound her ankles and wrists securely to the stone. They didn’t squeeze, but they were unyielding. She tilted her head back, her heart a frantic bird in her throat.
She was in a conservatory. A breathtaking, impossible one. Glass walls soared to a peaked ceiling, framing a sky of such achingly perfect blue it looked painted. Towering palms stretched upwards, their fronds whispering against the glass. Orchids in violent purples and pinks dripped from hanging baskets. Thorned roses coiled around marble pillars in a tangled, beautiful embrace. The air was warm, humid, and thick with the scent of damp earth, jasmine, and something darker, spicier.
“Okay,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Not heaven. Definitely not heaven. A very attentive botanist’s version of hell? Fuck.”
The vines around her wrist tightened a fraction, as if in warning. She shut up, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. Panic, cold and slick, rose in her gut. This wasn’t a hospital. This wasn’t a dream. The thorns pricked her skin, a sharp, precise pain that anchored her in this surreal reality.
Then she heard them.
Laughter. First a woman’s, bright and unhinged, like shattering crystal. A lower, smokier chuckle intertwined with it. And under that, a silent, waiting quality that felt like the pause before a detonation.
Footsteps echoed on the flagstone path between the lush greenery. Wren strained against the vines, her wide hazel eyes darting frantically.
They emerged from behind a curtain of dangling wisteria like actors taking a stage.
Wren’s brain short-circuited.
The woman on the left was all lean muscle and kinetic energy, bleached blonde hair tipped in shocking pink. She wore frayed denim shorts and a cropped red-and-black jacket, her blue eyes sharp and missing nothing. She grinned, and it was all teeth and promise.
The woman in the center moved with a silent, predatory grace. Hair like flames cascaded over her shoulders, contrasting with skin the pale green of a new leaf. Her dress was made of living, shifting petals. Her emerald eyes surveyed Wren with a cool, scientific detachment that was more terrifying than any glare.
The man… the man was a long, lazy slash of purple and green. He leaned on a silver-tipped cane, his sharp face a mask of amused curiosity. His green hair was perfectly chaotic, his smile a wide, red gash. His eyes, though. His eyes were the colour of a chemical spill, and they held absolutely nothing.
Wren knew them. Every pop-culture-saturated cell in her body screamed their names. Harley Quinn. Poison Ivy. The Joker.
This wasn’t a cosplay convention.
The panic reached a crescendo, burning through her common sense, her survival instinct, everything. Her mouth, always her biggest liability, opened before her brain could engage.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she blurted out, her voice too loud in the hushed greenhouse. “I died and got isekai’d into a fucked-up fanfiction. Great. Cool. Just perfect.”
Harley’s grin widened. “A fan of our work, puddin’?”
“No! Yes? I mean—” The words tumbled out, fueled by sheer, undiluted terror. “You’re— you’re all just so… so devastatingly gorgeous. It’s actually really unfair. I’m tied to a rock having a full-blown existential crisis, and my stupid brain is stuck on how the lighting in here is really working for your cheekbones. All of your cheekbones. I’ve had very, very impure thoughts about all of you. Like, a concerning amount. This is not what I should be thinking about right now. Oh God, I’m gonna die again, aren’t I?”
She finally ran out of air, gulping in a breath that smelled of roses and danger. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
A beat of silence hung in the humid air.
Then Harley Quinn threw her head back and laughed, a sound of pure, delighted shock. “Wow! She’s a live one, Red! I like her. Can we keep her?”
Poison Ivy—Pamela—merely arched one perfect brow, her lips curling into a faint, intrigued smirk. Her gaze traveled over Wren’s bound form, lingering on the way her chest rose and fell rapidly. “Her cortisol levels must be fascinating. Adrenaline, pure panic… and yet.” She took a step closer, a tendril of vine slithering from her sleeve to brush against Wren’s cheek. Wren flinched. “Yet she’s cataloging aesthetics. Interesting.”
The Joker hadn’t moved. He tilted his head, the cane tapping a silent rhythm on the stone. His empty eyes were fixed on Wren. “What’s your name, little canary?” he asked, his voice a silken rasp.
“Wren,” she squeaked. “Wren Calloway. I was an administrative assistant. I have no useful skills. I’m allergic to penicillin. Please don’t kill me.”
“Kill you?” The Joker pretended to ponder it. “Such a boring punchline for such a funny little opening.”
Harley skipped forward, crouching down so she was eye-level with Wren. Her smile was still there, but it had softened at the edges. “You’re not gonna die, songbird. Not today. We just found you. Woke up in our garden. Someone dropped a pretty little package on our doorstep. We gotta figure out why.”
The “we” struck Wren. The casual intimacy between the three of them. The way Harley looked to Ivy for confirmation. The way the Joker watched them both, a conductor observing his orchestra.
A desperate, wild idea clawed its way up from the pit of her terror. If they were keeping her alive out of curiosity, she had to make that curiosity last. Her babbling had worked so far, hadn’t it? It had made Harley laugh. It had made Ivy look at her like a specimen. It had made him tilt his head.
So she leaned into it. The truth, ugly and desperate and wrapped in a layer of humiliating sincerity.
“I could be… useful,” Wren whispered, her eyes darting between Harley’s playful blue and Ivy’s cool green. “I’m… I’m very adaptable. And I have… interests. Lots of kink interests. You look like you’d… you’d get it.”
Harley’s eyebrows shot up. Ivy’s smirk deepened.
“Do tell,” Ivy purred, the vine on Wren’s cheek tracing her jawline.
“I mean, if you keep me. And let me live. I’d be… anything you need. I like men and women. I’m… I’m being submissive in bed. You look like you like to be the dominant one. You can be mean to me. I like it. In bed.” The confession poured out, hot and shameful. “I can provide you with a list. Oh God, why am I saying this…”
“Keep going,” Harley urged, her voice a low, encouraging whisper. “What’s on the list, Wren?”
Wren squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could hide her. “Primal play. Fear play. Knife play. All seem up your alley. And that’s only a few.” She listed the others in a breathless, frantic rush, the words from some deeply private part of her soul now laid bare in this sun-drenched prison. Praise and humiliation, being tied up, punishment, being treated like a toy, owned, collared. The greens, the yellows, the hard no’s all spilled out in a jumble of shocking, intimate data.
When she finished, the only sound was the gentle drip of water from a nearby fern. She was trembling, utterly exposed.
Harley was staring at her, all trace of joking gone, replaced by a deep, unnerving intensity. Ivy looked thoughtfully at the vines binding Wren, as if considering new applications.
The Joker pushed himself off his cane and took one slow, measured step forward. He loomed over her, blocking out the sun. He didn’t smile. He simply studied her face—the freckles across her nose, the terrified honesty in her hazel eyes, the parted lips that had just offered up every secret vulnerability she possessed.
He reached out a gloved hand. Wren flinched, expecting pain. Instead, he just brushed a strand of her auburn hair from her forehead, his touch oddly clinical.
“A list,” he echoed, his chemical-spill eyes alight with a new, terrible kind of interest. “How… terribly organised.”
He straightened up, looking at his partners. “She stays,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. It wasn’t a offer. It was a verdict.
Harley whooped softly. Ivy gave a slow, deliberate nod, the vines around Wren’s wrists and ankles loosening, then slithering away entirely, leaving only faint pink marks behind.
Wren didn’t move. She lay on the cold stone, free and utterly trapped, the pulse of her own frightened blood roaring in her ears. She had bargained for her life with the darkest truths of her desires, and the most dangerous people in the world had accepted the down payment.
The game was on. She just had no idea what the rules were. Or if she was a player or a toy.
The vines receded completely, leaving her skin feeling strangely naked and cold where they’d been. Wren pushed herself up on trembling elbows, the mossy stone damp against her palms.
“Up you get, songbird,” Harley chirped, offering a hand. It wasn’t a gentle offer; it was a command with a grin. Wren stared at the black-and-red gloves for a second before taking it. Harley’s grip was strong, yanking her to her feet with enough force to make her stumble. Ivy caught her by the shoulder, her touch cool and firm through the thin material of Wren’s slept-in t-shirt.
“Steady.” Ivy’s voice was like leaves rustling. “Your circulatory system needs a moment to adjust.”
“Right. Thanks.” Wren’s laugh was a brittle, hysterical thing. “I, uh… So. ‘She stays.’ That’s… What’s the protocol here? Do I get a tour? A manual? A safe word?”
The Joker was already walking away, his cane tapping a jaunty rhythm on the flagstones. “You get to breathe, little canary,” he called over his shoulder without looking back. “For now. That’s your prize.”
Harley looped an arm through Wren’s, pulling her along the path. “C’mon! We’ll show you the nest! It’s way better than that rock.”
The conservatory opened into a sprawling, high-ceilinged hallway. It was a chaotic clash of aesthetics. Gleaming, modern art sculptures stood next to crumbling classical busts with gangster graffiti sprayed across their faces. The walls were a deep, moody green, lined with framed botanical illustrations and, jarringly, a few very realistic-looking schematics for complex explosives.
The air changed. The damp, green scent was undercut by gun oil, old paper, and the faint, sweet tang of something chemical.
Wren’s head swam. This was their home. They lived here. Together. The domesticity of it was more world-shattering than any villainous monologue.
“You live here,” she mumbled, unable to keep the disbelief in.
“Duh,” Harley said, steering her around a corner into a vast, open-plan living area. A wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over overgrown topiary gardens and, beyond a high wall, a gloomy, silent forest. The furniture was an expensive, minimalist mix of leather and steel, currently strewn with crime novels, exotic tools, and a half-dismantled high-voltage battery on the coffee table.
Poison Ivy glided past them toward a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a professional laboratory. She began rinsing something in a sink. “We took the estate off a retired arms dealer with questionable taste in landscaping. The soil, however, was exceptional.”
“You… you garden?” Wren asked, the question absurd.
“I cultivate,” Ivy corrected without turning around. “I converse. The previous owner’s remains made for an excellent nitrogen boost for the hydrangeas.”
Wren’s stomach lurched. She focused on the view, on the stark contrast of the ruthless garden and the wild forest beyond the wall. A prison and a moat.
The Joker had settled into a large armchair, steepling his fingers under his chin, watching her process the room. His silence was a vacuum, pulling all the energy toward him.
Harley plopped onto a chaise lounge, kicking her boots up. “So, the list. Gotta say, some creative entries. ‘Sleep play.’ ‘Fucking till I pass out.’ Ambitious.” She winked. “We like ambitious.”
Wren felt her face burn. She’d vomited her deepest secrets as a survival tactic, and now they were being discussed in a casual, evaluative tone over implied corpses and hydrangeas. “It was… a disclosure. Full transparency. For… for bargaining.”
“You already bargained,” the Joker said, his voice slicing through the room. “Your life for your obedience. The list is just… specification. Addendums to the contract.”
He unfolded himself from the chair and walked to the window, his back to them. The afternoon sun threw his long, distorted shadow across the floor, pointing right at Wren. “The question isn’t what you want, canary. The question is what you are. A gift? A trap? A toy?” He turned his head just slightly, the green hair catching the light. “Or a tool.”
“I could be a tool,” Wren said, too quickly. The words tasted like ashes. “I’m good with details. Organization. I noticed… the filter on the eastern conservatory vent is clogged. The humidity’s too high for the Strelitzia reginae in the corner; it’s promoting fungal growth. See? Useful.”
Ivy turned from the sink, drying her hands on a cloth. Her emerald eyes held a spark of genuine, non-lethal interest. “You know bird of paradise.”
“I… I like plants. They’re simpler than people.” She dared a glance at Harley, who was watching her with a tilted head, then back to the looming shadow of the Joker. “Most people.”
A slow smile spread across Harley’s face. It wasn’t her broad, chaotic grin. This was smaller, more intimate, and infinitely more dangerous. “She sees things. I told you. She’s not just babbling. She’s noticing.”
The Joker turned fully now. He approached Wren with a predator’s patience, the cane silent in the plush rug. He stopped so close she could smell the hints of lavender and gunpowder on his clothes, see the fine lines around his impossibly empty eyes.
He lifted his cane, not to strike, but to use the cool, silver tip to gently lift her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“A tool that talks. A toy that thinks. A pet with opinions.” He mused, his voice a whisper that crawled into her ears. “We’ll have to see which is most true. And which is most… fun.”
He lowered the cane. “Harley, get her settled. Somewhere… visible.”
“You got it, Puddin’!” Harley bounced up, grabbing Wren’s hand again. Her touch was exhilarating and terrifying. “C’mon, new roomie! You get the tour after all!”
As Harley pulled her from the room, chattering about bathroom rules and not touching the weird fungi in the west wing, Wren glanced back.
Ivy was watching them go, a curious, almost possessive gleam in her eye. And the Joker remained by the window, now completely still, a statue of coiled potential, staring out not at the garden, but at the darkening forest beyond.
He wasn’t just keeping her. He was waiting. For her to prove something, or for something else to arrive.
The door to a small, surprisingly normal-looking bedroom closed behind her. Harley leaned against it, her playful demeanor softening into something more calculating.
“Here’s the real safe word, songbird,” Harley said, her voice low. “It’s ‘please.’ You say ‘please’ and you mean it, and we’ll listen. You play games, you lie, you try to run…” She shrugged, but the chill in her eyes was absolute. “Then the games get real.”
She pushed off the door, the smirk returning. “Get some rest. The first night is always the weirdest.”
Then she was gone, the lock clicking with a sound that was both a promise and a verdict.
Wren stood in the center of the quiet room, the adrenaline finally crashing, leaving her hollow and shaking. She had traded her life for this. A pretty cage inside a beautiful madhouse. She walked to the window, her reflection ghostly over the darkening glass.
Beyond her own wide, hazel eyes, she saw a single, perfect red rose tap-tap-tapping against the pane, as if knocked by the breeze.
Or as if it was listening.
She was a player now. The problem was, the game was rigged, the rules were written in blood, and she had just bet her soul on a hand she hadn’t even seen.