According to poets, patriots, and prisoners, freedom is the most important thing in the world. Without freedom, what does anyone really have? Freedom opens all the doors and leads you into bright shiny meadows where opportunities frolic alongside wonderment and the world is yours for the taking.

Jervis Tetch, newly freed, slouched in front of the television and stared dismally at the foursome of characters arguing in a damp meadow. He'd been a free man for two entire weeks and life had pointedly not become a bundle of rainbows.

The halfway house, which was halfway to being a roach-infested flophouse, was normally abuzz with the wavering buzz of men trying at once to be the tough ex-cons that their fellows expected and the meek little lambs that the staff expected. At this point in the day, however, all of them had vanished to work their various jobs. Jervis, of course, was unemployed.

He shrunk a little lower in his chair at the thought of it. It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to get a job. He had applied at places all over town - labs, science departments, research facilities - and had heard exactly zero responses. There was always the bevy of jobs offered by Wayne Enterprises that were free for his taking thanks to his status as an ex-Arkhamite, but he had wanted to go somewhere new. Somewhere different. Somewhere where his fellow employees wouldn't have been told that his last known address was the big nuthouse on the hill.

But he'd burned all of his bridges with everyone else. Applying to all of the other jobs under a fake name had seemed like a good idea. He'd even managed to schedule several interviews, something that few scientists had the people skills to pull off. He'd arrived each time in a new suit, with a new hat perched on his neatly combed hair and a new briefcase clutched in one slightly sweaty palm. The receptionists would bypass his couture and direct their attention solely on his all-too-recognizable beaky face, trying their best to suppress their terror at seeing one of Gotham's most infamous sitting meekly in the waiting room. Needless to say, the interviews had all been abruptly canceled before he could even set foot into a prospective employer's office.

He stared glumly at the screen, where the foursome was being pursued by a pack of four-legged beasts through a gridded forest. Maybe he'd have to take that Wayne Enterprises job after all. At least it would get the house manager off of his back. And with his paycheck, he could buy some food that wasn't old meat masked with overpowering spices and clothes that weren't too long in the sleeves. He'd also love a cup of tea, although he wouldn't love the six-hour scolding that would invariably accompany it. Tea, as he'd been forcibly reminded, was too much a part of his old life to ever enter his new one.

"Turn it off." He jerked out of his thoughts to see the house manager standing between himself and the television, a clipboard held loosely in the crook of her arm.

"Might I ask why?" he asked politely as he obediently reached for the remote.

"You know," she snapped. "You're not supposed to be watching that. No Wonderland, remember?"

"My dear woman," he said, affronted, "this is an adaptation of the Wizard of Oz!"

"Same thing. Off!"

Same thing? Same thing? He gritted his teeth as a storm of rage howled inside his head, blurring his vision and sending sweat beads to pop out on the back of his neck as inventive murder flashed through his mind. "You're right," he agreed, forcing the words from rebellious lips. "I'll just go to my room."

"And fill out job applications," the woman added imperiously.

"I have already applied to every laboratory and research center in the city," he informed her coldly.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, while you're waiting for them to call you back, here." She tossed the clipboard at him. It flapped through the air, pages riffling in the breeze, and thwacked solidly into his lap. "Get to work," she ordered as she stomped away.

He flipped through the neatly clipped stack of applications. Temps Unlimited. Office Depot. McDonalds.

It had been suggested to him that, in times of stress, taking a deep calming breath could make the situation seem easier. Jervis inhaled until his lungs felt like two small dirigibles and slowly breathed out.

McDonalds.

Fury propelled him off of the couch and into his poky little room, where he slammed the door shut and kicked his bed as hard as he could. The nerve of that woman! He was brilliant at microcircuitry and his knowledge of the human mind (or at least, how to hotwire it) was unmatched. How dare she reduce him to the level of...of...

...of normal people!

There was a light triple tap on the door. Letting another dirigible sigh escape from his lungs, he steadied himself and opened the door.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tetch!" The medication nurse, round and happy, wheeled her tiny cart into his room and shut the door behind her. He felt the muscles in his shoulders relaxing as she fussed with her cart. Her visits were rapidly becoming the only bright spot in his day, marred only by the cart full of those damnable little pills. "I've got something for you," she sing-songed.

He obediently held out his hand, waiting for the usual tiny paper cup. Instead, from under a folded cloth napkin, she withdrew a mug of...

TEA!

"Mrs. Dodgson, you are a queen among women," he said in a worshipful groan, taking the mug and drawing a deep sip into his mouth.

"Oh, anything I can do," she dismissed, blushing slightly. "Are you having any luck with your job search?"

"No. It's not..." He paused. He had been about to say that he wasn't being treated fairly, which he wasn't, but no one else seemed to see it that way. Okay, so he had killed a handful of people over the years, but that didn't mean he was about to go on a merry murdering spree at any moment. He had never done that, and he wasn't about to start.

"It's not going well," he sighed, glancing sidelong at the clipboard of applications laying facedown on his bed.

"I'm glad to hear it. Not that you're having trouble," she corrected herself when he looked at her with confusion in his eyes, "but that you haven't found anything yet. I may have found you something."

Any residual rage left over from the house manager left him in a burning explosion of hope. "You have?"

"My cousin breeds lab rats. I know it's not much, but it's something..." she said, twisting the hem of her sweater nervously in one hand. Her long nails plucked at the fabric as it twined around them.

Hope vanished quickly as a flower in the frost. "He doesn't know who I am," he guessed flatly.

"He knows," she reassured quickly. "But he knows you reformed, too, and he's willing to give you a chance. I...may have persuaded him," she dimpled.

"I'll take it," he agreed instantly. "Mrs. Dodgson, you are truly a wonderful woman."

"Thank you," she said, somehow opening the door and easing her cart through in one smooth motion. She was barely in the hallway a moment before she popped back in. "I'm...not really a Mrs., you know," she said furtively.

He blinked, uncertain. Was she flirting with him? No, that was ridiculous, women did not flirt with Jervis Tetch. He examined her as she fiddled with the top of her cart, noting the blush staining her cheeks.

She was flirting with him!

"That's lovely to hear," he smiled. She grinned back at him and disappeared into the hallway, only to reappear again before he could contemplate this unexpected development.

"In all the fuss, I forgot your medication! Here you are," she said, handing over the little paper cup.

"Thank you," he said, regarding her second gift with anything but thankfulness in his heart. Here in front of him was the only woman in recent history to treat him as anything but dirt under her spike heels. "You wouldn't care to..." Oh, what the hell. "Would you like to have dinner some night?"

"Oh! I work nights at a different job," she said apologetically.

"Ah." Well, it had been worth a shot. "In that case, I-"

"But breakfast would be good!" she interrupted in a rush. "Thursday at, say, six o'clock?"

"Six o'clock would be wonderful," he agreed.

"I'll see you then!" She bustled out of the room, grinning at him over her shoulder as she left.

In one fell swoop, he had a job and a date for Thursday. Well! Perhaps sanity wasn't all bad.

(to be continued)