Pick Your Poison, Monday

[joan_of_bark]

It was a much rejuvenated Pam who opened up Pick Your Poison on that Monday morning, having spent much of Sunday back in Slaughter Swamp. Harley-her-Harley had shown up with gardening supplies, and they'd made good work that day.

It wasn't like she expected Harley to commit to gardening for long. It was Harley. But the day had made her happy.

And now she was back here, setting the shop to rights. Looking at everything on the shelves with new eyes. Around noon, she stole into the garden at last and took her shoes off, putting her feet in the dirt.

There'd been a lot of damage done here, too. She was going to enjoy spending the rest of her day coaxing it all back to life.

[[ open ]]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

Rey didn't really know Pam, though she really should probably fix that. Regardless, she did care, so sometime before class she made her way into the store.

"Hello?"

[joan_of_bark]

Pam was - presently, outside of her garden - in her normal civilian clothes, though a string of small white flowers had wound its way through her ponytail as she picked through a shelf.

She didn't turn around to face the door just yet, but-- "I'm here. Can I help you?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Hi," she said, stepping further inside. "I don't know if you reminder me. I'm Rey?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Adrian's girlfriend," Pam said, glancing over her shoulder. "Hi. He's not in right now...?"

[thatwaslucky]

"I know. I came to see you," she said.

[joan_of_bark]

"Ah." And there she was, turning around in full. "Adrian told you what happened."

[thatwaslucky]

"Yeah. He came over after everything," she said. "I kind of just wanted to see how you're doing."

Which she realized as she said it might be weird when they'd talked like, once. Oh well.

[joan_of_bark]

It was okay. Pam just had resting Amazonian nature goddess face.

"Better than I have in a long time," she said. "But it's complicated. I don't know how much of it he explained to you."

[thatwaslucky]

"I think I got a very basic rundown of the backstory, and I'm pretty sure he told me everything that happened." He could be forgiven for forgetting something, but if anything had been left out, wow.

She added just a touch wryly because she knew how much she was understating this, "Seemed like a lot."

[joan_of_bark]

"My universe is a lot," Pam said dryly. "I think poor Adrian is struggling with it."

[thatwaslucky]

"Maybe a little," she agreed. "Though it was a lot to get hit with at once. He also asked me if I'd ever live in his closet."

[joan_of_bark]

Pam sighed. "Janet's having a hard time finding a place."

[thatwaslucky]

"Sounds like." Like Rey hadn't essentially lived in a tank. "I think it might've been the one easy thing for him to focus on."

[joan_of_bark]

"Probably," Pam agreed. She crossed her arms. "And I can only explain so much. My city--" Strange as it felt calling it that way, but it was an easy shorthand, "--Gotham is its own beast entirely. I didn't exactly count on him having to deal with some of our worst."

Not what most people would call the Bats, but you know.

[thatwaslucky]

"And zombies."

That apparently ate the person she was talking to.

[joan_of_bark]

"That's a simplified way to put it, but yes," Pam said. "Zombies, animated by the lamia fungus."

[thatwaslucky]

"That you found an antidote for?" Rey asked.

[joan_of_bark]

"I was the antidote," Pam said. She took a few steps, then leaned against the counter, infinitely more comfortable in her skin than she had been a few days ago. "I'd been infected by different strains of the lamia twice in the space of two years. I have a healing factor; my body figured out how to keep it contained."

[thatwaslucky]

"And you were able to give it to others?"

She assumed that was what the antidote in the water supply was.

[joan_of_bark]

"Yes, but there wasn't enough of it," Pam said. "An... acquaintance figured out how to synthesize more of it, and fast. If he hadn't, we would've had a much bigger problem on our hands."

[thatwaslucky]

"Which, given what I've heard, sounds horrifying," Rey admitted.

[joan_of_bark]

"It's a zombie fungus genetically engineered as a surveillance tool," Pam said dryly. "Horrifying covers it."

[thatwaslucky]

"A surveillance tool?" sge repeated, and said, "Sorry, I don't mean to make you rehash everything."

[joan_of_bark]

"It's a very long, very complicated story," Pam said, shaking her head. "My mentor, Woodrue, took an existing fungus and re-engineered it to... keep tabs, so to speak. He was very much obsessed with control."

And then she'd eaten him and eventually they'd gotten here, but she was definitely not rehashing that part of the whole story.

[thatwaslucky]

"Woodrue. That was the, uh."

The chestburster, though she hadn't seen that movie and that was probably not the best thing to say anyway.