"You must not be so flighty. Do you see me? Am I afraid?"

Her voice made him feel ashamed. Like he was being a silly child. After all, it was only a small test. There were no needles. You just had to close your eyes. And she looked so confident. She was lying down next to him. She had the same patches attached to her arms.

"Whatever you are going through, Simon, I will as well. We are here, together."

She flashed him a brilliant smile. Simon tried to smile back.

"Come on. Let me see your teeth. All of them."

Simon's smile widened reluctantly. He felt as if someone were pinching his cheeks. His muscles hurt.

The young woman nodded her head in approval. "Good, Simon. Good. Now lie back down and count back from twenty."

He stared up at the white ceiling. Although, it wasn't completely white. It was speckled with black dots. If you focused hard enough, you could make them disappear.

Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen...

He thought he would soon fall asleep, but the sensation was different; like being underwater, but close, very close to the surface. His body jerked up suddenly. His eyes widened. His breath came out ragged. He was not underwater. He was being buried alive. The black dots rained down on him, covering his skin, sticking to him like glue. He felt the chair dip forwards then downwards, until his legs were higher than his head. He was swallowing his tongue. Then his chin, then his shoulders. He was choking on his arms. His skin, dotted black, tasted like bitter sugar.

He screamed and gagged, then swallowed his legs.

Simon turned his head. He felt his neck breaking from the effort of swallowing.

The young woman was still lying next to him, smiling serenely. Only now, she was shaking slightly, her eyes were watery and a bit yellow. She was gripping the armrests. But, for all purposes, she was in control.

"I – I – sssorryyy but I -"

"Don't try to talk, Simon."

"But – breatheee – breatheee!" he sputtered and mumbled, spitting saliva on his lips as he tried to swallow faster and faster.

"You can breathe, Simon. You only think you can't. It's all coming to an end soon."

She was right. He could see almost nothing of his body anymore. He felt light and sated, although his neck was sore and his mouth wouldn't close. His face seemed to hit the ceiling. He smiled, showing all his teeth. He was a gaping hole. Nothing more. Now, now he could fall asleep.

One last jerk. Up and down.

Then, down. Down for good.

The young woman stood up and smoothed down her white coat. She took off her patches and went over to him to check his pulse. She looked at the stats and wrote something down in her clipboard. Then, she put on a pair surgical gloves. She stuck her fingers inside Simon's nostrils. Her forefinger was coated in a green, sticky substance. She took a test tube and deposited the substance inside. She held it up to the surgical lamp. It looked hopeful. She opened his mouth. Blood. He had bitten his tongue severely. Good. A gag would have decreased the likelihood of heightened trauma. Instead of swallowing, he would have choked. Swallowing was better.

The door behind her parted soundlessly and a young doctor with clear blue eyes stood with a hand on the knob, watching her.

"Well?" he asked, after a prolonged pause.

The woman tossed her head towards him. "I hate to be smug, but I told you mine would do the trick."

He frowned in obvious skepticism. "Just because he lost consciousness doesn't mean the potency of the drug is higher. The parameters -"

"He's dead. See for yourself."

Jonathan Crane's mouth twitched. He swallowed thickly the remains of his hasty lunch.

The woman shrugged and stepped back from Simon's still warm body. "You might be able to resuscitate him but I wouldn't advise it."

Jonathan walked up behind her. He stared into Simon's glassy eyes. He looked at his bruised tongue. The shadows on his cheekbones.

"Time of death?"

"Three forty-six."

"This wasn't supposed to be the trick, exactly."

"My mistake. I phrased it badly," she acquiesced.

"I didn't want it like this. I wanted something cleaner."

"I know, but we have been awake for over forty-eight hours and we finally have a result," she replied wearily.

"A result that could be...arbitrary."

"Hardly. Even if the drug was not the direct cause of death, it is an adjuvant. And anyway, you will choose my recipe over yours."

Jonathan cocked an eyebrow. "How so?"

"You want complete biological shutdown without traces of external intervention. You want fear in its purest form; bile. This bile," she replied, holding up the test tube, "is pure."

The tap tap tap of a water faucet was the only sound in the room now.

Jonathan took off his glasses. He started cleaning the lens with his lapel.

"I want us to agree on something, Cynthia. When we walk out that door, Simon becomes a number in an evidence. Nothing more. We don't speak about it. All right?"

Cynthia tilted her head. "What is this, a play? I know the protocol."

"Just making sure."

"Be more sensible. Why would I ever tell?"

When Arkham Asylum's doors were pried open by Bane, she was not inside its walls. Neither as inmate, nor as doctor. She was watching everything unfold from her flat television screen, in her spacious living room. She had a private practice now, but she felt a pang of nostalgia to see the old facility anyway. Her fingers changed the channels quickly though. She had no patience for unfolding events. Whatever was coming, was coming fast. She didn't want to bear witness or take part. She just wanted to walk on, invisibly. Bombs, explosions, terrorism, mass murder – these things wore on her mind like an old record. They had to be ignored, even when you couldn't.

The skin at the base of her neck prickled with a strange energy. Crane was now loose, by all accounts. Unlikely, but he might pay her visit. Ask her to join him in some madcap revenge against Gotham. Or against her. He had not been careful enough to remain a doctor. He had decayed into an inmate. She didn't feel any sympathy for the foolish.

All things considered, she never thought about that first man, Simon. Except maybe when she was contemplating her childhood, or being sentimental. Death was not sentimental; it was just that it was hard to think about a dead body and not degenerate into unnecessary pathos.

She never knew Simon, beyond the fact that he was a volunteer inmate. She never knew the rest either. It wasn't her business to know them. She was a little embarrassed she didn't remember all the names. But these things passed. You watched people from their first day to their last and then you forgot everything about them.

Jonathan had not forgotten about her, apparently. She was seized from her home some days later and dragged to court. A mock-court. Crane was the judge and executioner. All the Asylum escapees were gathered round gleefully, like children at a fair attraction. Few recognized her when she was pushed down the slab stones. They couldn't have, since those who had memorized her face well enough were not living anymore. Jonathan peered at her from underneath his glasses.

"Cynthia Norman. You are hereby accused of crimes against humanity. Specifically, crimes against the inmates of Arkham Asylum. Unlawful experimenting, biological warfare, criminal intent, first-degree murder. Do you have anything to say to the court?"

She looked around at the uncaring absent faces. Blinking hypnotically as if they were all asleep.

"Hello, Jonathan."

Her voice was nothing short of normal, but she was nervous. Somehow, she had always thought he would rot in a cell. She had been certain she would never see him again.

"I'm sorry you're still upset about the past," she continued, without much hope of making her words heard. "I'm sad to hear about those accusations, too. I thought my job and yours was to improve the lives of the inmates. I'm – I'm a bit startled."

"Ms. Norman," he replied with a cold smile. "There's no need for pleasantries."

"For old friendship's sake," she said awkwardly, "you might be more allowing."

"Friendship, is it?" he laughed. "I have waited for this moment, I must confess. I didn't think it would come. I thought you would escape retribution. But fate does repay those who wait. I waited for five years while you walked free."

Cynthia pulled at the loose threads of her sweater.

"It wasn't my fault you were caught."

"No? Then whose was it?" he asked stridently, leaning forward.

Cynthia looked sideways, chewing the inside of her cheek. "Not mine. What did you want me to do, Jonathan? Go down with you?"

A long pause followed, during which men dressed up like soldiers and mercenaries faded into the background.

Then, quite suddenly, Jonathan lurched forward again and slammed his palms on his pedestal.

"You ratted me out, you fucking bitch!"

The sleepy inmates stumbled from their chairs, frightened.

Cynthia stepped back.

"I didn't -"

"Not only that, but I was your scapegoat. I did time for your filth."

Cynthia blew air out of her mouth impatiently, fidgeting. "Please, Jonathan. You're being absurd."

"Absurd!? I ought to wring your neck as you stand there!"

She shook her head and kept repeating "absurd" under her breath.

"But I will give you the same justice as everyone else. I don't discriminate, you see. So, death or exile?"

Cynthia grunted and coughed, as if she were expelling a bad taste.

"Exile."

He grinned. "Very well. I will escort you myself. It will be a personal satisfaction."

He held onto her arm with claw fingers. The rifle jabbed her back painfully. She was surrounded by men in masks. Jonathan's grip was sickening. The tunnel was shrinking as they went on. She had an inkling the exile was going to be a violent affair.

If this was supposed to end, she had few regrets that she could remember. Perhaps she had not lived well, had not done well, but she had finished well.

She was afraid, but she had studied fear for too long, knew its components too well and could examine herself as the snow crunched under her feet. She was her own victim, so to speak.

Self-destructive, no. Just destructive.

Then, all at the same time, smell and sound and sight. Night lights, faded and washed away, close to dawn. Sweeping white and darkness. The smell of mongrels, sewers and ice. The whoosh and swish of metal on metal, jacket buttons popping open, bullets gliding brutally down barrels.

The sea of frost was endless. Gotham stood in contrast finite and limited.

Cynthia understood. She was going to be pushed over.

She turned to look at Jonathan.

"You know, I never did it out of malice. I had to save my own skin. I was hoping you would understand," she said, forcing her voice to sound soft and familiar.

Jonathan's face was an ugly grimace of self-complacency. "You hoped wrong."

The rifles on her back pushed her further on the ice.

"Do you remember the names?"

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. "Names?"

"I only remember Simon. A shame, isn't it?"

His smile froze on his face, as if the ice had reached his jaws.

"I'll always remember our first, if that counts for anything, Jon."

He slapped her face hard. The sting of it was expected. A man will answer carnally. If he is threatened, he will be a primate.

"Although," she continued, massaging her cheek, "you did nothing that time. I did all the work."

He grabbed one of the rifles from the faceless men and aimed it at her head.

"Walk. And keep your mouth shut. I want to hear you scream as you slowly drown and freeze."

Cynthia had had fantasies as a young girl of sleeping in ice, of hugging ice with her naked body, of slipping an icicle between her thighs. But there was nothing erotic about this, nothing pleasurable.

She took one more step towards the bleakness that surrounded her.

"Go on," Crane beckoned happily.

She turned towards him one last time.

"This is goodbye then."

It happened in half the time it took a snowflake to land on her shoulder. One of the faceless men shot Jonathan in the head. His body fell to the frozen ground with a soft thud.

Then, he grabbed him by the legs and dragged him off on the ice, a road of blood in his wake.

The faceless man removed a pickax from his holster and started breaking the ice around Jonathan's body. As the pieces started disintegrating from the whole, Cynthia could see a red star in the midst of all the white.

She stood there, watching with calmed shock as his legs sank into the water.

It was the same calmed shock as the first time, when Simon died. The shock of success, the shock of victory and loss.

Happening too fast, too slow, all at once, yet delayed.

One of the faceless men walked towards her, holding an arm out.

"Come. You would not want to fall in too."

She stood still, wondering if they were going to shoot her too.

"I will not harm you."

"How do I know?"

"Because I killed your executioner."

"Why are you sparing me?"

"You will find out soon enough. Follow me. We have some way to go."

"And Jonathan -"

"Was becoming too much trouble. You seem more discreet, Doctor."

Cynthia took his arm and let him lead her back into the tunnel. She did not look back to see if Jonathan had sunk in. She did not wish that to be the lasting image of him. The blood was enough.

"You know me?"

"I know that you will be more useful."

"For what?"

Her breath came out in shadowed steam. She watched it glide back towards the ice, like the ghost of the woman who had been about to die. But hadn't.

"For what I have in mind."

He took off his mask. But she saw another mask instead. It did not cover his eyes. His eyes she could see all too well. She recognized him from her flat TV screen.

"You were the brains of the operation, Ms. Norman, weren't you?"

Cynthia was going to go into hypothermia very soon. She kept wriggling her toes and tapping her feet. She rubbed her fists.

"Brains? Depends."

"All right. You were the will, then. The will to act."

Cynthia shook her head. "Jonathan Crane lied. I am innocent of any crimes." She realized her teeth were chattering.

Bane measured her carefully.

"You'll find no judgment here, Ms. Norman. I only require your skills, not your conscience."

Cynthia felt her throat getting raw with the cold.

"You can have my skills and whatever else. I don't have much of a choice."

"But you do. Death or exile?" he asked, a trace of humor in his voice.

His eyes, she noticed, were a rodent's eyes. Quick, harried, sharp, unfocused, the texture of pearls and sand. She had studied these small animals, had watched them burst open and lie still and peaceful.

Cynthia nodded her head. "Get me out of this cold, please."

Self-destructive, no. Just destructive.