"So, doc... whaddaya think?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, running his tongue along his top row of teeth.

"Not... not scary..."

"Knew it. Wayne's a bust, unless you're dating a hot woman," the Joker sighed. He rolled his eyes around the abandoned rec room and sighed. Sure, Ex-doctor Crane had been new and fun and interesting at first, but he was getting tired of talking to what was essentially a living mannequin. Crane was never coherent long enough to mutter anything but a few stilted sentences about fear, and didn't even have the decency to look shocked- and Joker knew he would be shocked, ordinarily- when the psychopathic clown told one of his own special jokes.

So that left them staring at the animated talking box and carrying on long, Kafkaesque conversations on fear, hopelessness, and bestselling cookbooks.

"Fear..." Crane began. "Fear is... everywhere..."

"Yeah, I know. Look, Jonny, not that this conversation isn't, I don't know, fascinating or what-not, but..." Joker sighed and shifted, scowling at the straitjacket. He'd been a good little clown so far- no struggling, no agitation, no stabbing- and they still didn't want to risk letting him out. "Why don't they show Batman? Why don't they? He's got to be out there somewhere... come on, Batsy, show 'em all..." The TV image changed to a close-up of a large, grey-haired man in a brown suit smiling and waving atop a red, white, and blue -draped bandstand. "Come on. Come on!"

Still nothing. Joker puffed out his cheeks, sucked them back in, breathing in deeper, deeper, until...

"BOO!" he shouted, so loudly and so suddenly that Crane almost fell off his chair. "Not so scary now, are ya, doctor?"

Crane was still twitching and shaking and mumbling to himself, and the Joker wanted so badly to get up off the chair and grab the little scarecrow's face and ask him, just ask him...

"Wanna know how I got these scars?" he muttered, half to himself. "Do ya?"

But then there was a quick flash on the screen, and Joker found himself drawn back to the television. Apparently, Bruce Wayne, erstwhile-playboy-turned-humanitarian, had erected some new building or other, and was glad-handing everyone in sight. Mayor Garcia, Police Commissioner Gordon, the fat man in the brown suit, two or three leggy blondes in smart dresses, and a whole platoon of men in black were swarming around the billionaire. But that wasn't what caught the Joker's attention. In the right hand corner of the screen, half hidden behind suits and satin, a man was smiling at the camera and...

He wasn't waving, just opening and shutting his hand in some strange, stuttering rhythm... Joker licked his lips, leaned in closer, and began to count.


"Glad you think so, Wayne, and I appreciate the offer. Yes, I understand. Of course. Talk to you later."

James Gordon flipped his cell phone shut and turned to Harvey Bullock with a sigh.

"It's Wayne. Wants to make a contribution to the Special Crimes Unit."

Harvey Bullock looked up from his half-finished hot dog. A trickle of ketchup dribbled along one side of his mouth; he swiped at it with a wrinkled coat sleeve, leaving a red smear on the khaki.

"'Scuse me. Sorry." He swallowed heavily and removed his feet from the table. "Think he's trying to buy his way in?"

Commissioner Gordon paused for a moment.

"Maybe. It's hard to get a handle on Wayne."

"Don't do it," Bullock advised. "Better safe than sorry. And 's better ta not owe favors to anyone, even-"

"Don't look now," Commissioner Gordon interrupted in a low voice, "but here comes trouble."

Bullock glanced up from his wiener, caught sight of someone large, blonde, and very angry heading towards the break room, and groaned.

"I think I'll go check on the latest update from Nashton," Gordon said, edging towards the door.

"Sure I can't come with you?" Bullock sighed.

Gordon chuckled and shook his head.

"You can't run from trouble, Bullock," he said. "It just finds you again, bigger and madder than ever."

As if to punctuate his words, the break room door slammed open as Lieutenant Flass burst in, his face curved in an ugly scowl. Gordon nodded sympathetically to Bullock and slipped behind Flass as the big lieutenant took an angry step forward and huffed like a bull about to charge.

"Bullock!" he yelled, pointing an accusing finger at the hefty detective. "What d'you think you're doing, barging in on my case? The Dancer bail was supposed to fly by yesterday!"

"Ah, can it, Flass," Bullock retorted. "We both know yer dirtier than a dog's favorite hydrant. I'm just makin' sure justice is done. Justice. You know. Equal treatment and prosecution for all low-lifes and scumsuckers? No dropped charges or misplaced paperwork when certain people show up in the station? Good old-fashioned impartiality? Or have you forgotten how to say the word fair?"

"You sound like Dent," sneered Flass. "Going to run for D.A., Harvey?" He took a confident, rocking step forward, arms akimbo. "Think you're better than the rest of us, want to get your pretty face up on the grandstand and make speeches, two-time all your pals in the force? Yeah, I see it now. You can pose just like him, get a nice mug shot of that two-day shadow... the crowd'll just love you. You're twice the man Dent ever was. And I mean that literally." Flass gestured at the remains of Bullock's hot dog. "But you always did think you were a cut above the average cop. Commissioner's little pet, isn't that right?"

A streak of redness began spreading up Harvey Bullock's thick neck, and he stood up, knocking his chair onto the concrete.

"You got a problem with me, Lieutenant?" he asked.

Flass's mouth smiled and his eyes turned ugly. He looked Bullock over, snorted, and crossed his arms over his bulky chest.

"That's about the size of it, Detective."

Harvey Bullock carefully set his inch-long wiener stub on the table. His eyes never left the muscled lieutenant as he rolled the sausage onto one side, adjusted it carefully on the paper napkin. The next moment, Harvey Bullock had leaped across the room and plowed into Flass's stomach. The momentum carried them together into the thick glass window. Flass's head knocked against the glass with an alarmingly loud clunk, followed by a string of profanity. Halfway down the corridor, Commissioner Gordon cringed and pretended not to hear.

Flass was chuckling, writhing, trying to wrestle Bullock into a chokehold. A former Green Beret and no mean fighter, he was an experienced and dangerous combatant; he was also trapped under Harvey Bullock not-inconsiderable weight and wishing he were the one on top. Flass blocked a punch from Bullock, hammered the unkempt detective's hand with the heel of his hand, and shifted his body weight in an attempt to throw his opponent off-balance. Bullock responded by swearing and, eschewing complex fighting techniques, grabbed Flass's head and brought it down on the ground, hard.

Flass's eyes popped open and his expression abruptly switched from "enjoying a good fight" to "pure and unadulterated rage." He let out an animal snarl and let loose with a powerhouse punch straight to Bullock's face.

There was a distant shout of, "Fight! Fight in the break room!" and several figures rushed in as Bullock clutched his face and Flass slowly, methodically got to his feet.


"Nashton?"

Commissioner Gordon knocked twice, softly. They'd moved three filing cabinets and countless reams of storage paper out of a dim, long-forgotten storage closet near Evidence, shoved a dingy metal desk in one corner, and thrown up a few light bulbs. It was dull, dim, and oppressively close, with a broad side of heating duct running up one wall. But Nashton had insisted on an office, a proper office with a closing door, and not a cubicle...

Gordon frowned and knocked again.

"Nashton, it's Gordon. I need to speak with you."

There was no reply. Gordon reached for the door handle. Locked. Reluctantly, and with a twinge of guilt- unreasonable and misplaced, he scolded himself; he was the Commissioner and had every right to open the door- he reached for his key ring.

The heavy scent of musty paper and old building wafted out of the room. Carefully, hesitantly, Gordon stepped into the office and reached for the light chain. The bare bulb clicked in, washing everything with warm, dingy light and throwing dark shadows into the corners. Nashton was gone.

A file lay open on his desk, along with several neatly typed sheets of unintelligible letters and symbols, half a dozen photographs of the Bat-pod, and an expensive-looking pen. Gordon bent over the file. Ramirez, Anna. He frowned. What did the Ramirez case have to do with decrypting the Batman's computer?

Then he saw the newspaper clippings.

A jumbled, meticulously clipped lot, they covered half of one wall, some neatly aligned, some overlapping, none crooked. Gordon stepped over for a better look. Every headline, every article, every column featured the Batman. BATMAN: FRIEND OR FOE? queried one headliner from the Gotham Times. It was dated four months ago. VIGILANTE RUNS AMOK NEAR ARKHAM. THE BATMAN PARADOX. BATMAN IS NO HERO. In the upper right-hand corner, a year-old Times headline jumped out at Gordon: "BAT" VIGILANTE STALKS SUBWAYS. The very first Batman appearance. Several articles had been slashed with large red X's: BATMAN PUMMELS NINE NEAR BLUDHAVEN. SECRET OF THE BATMEN. BATMAN: SUPERNATURAL? Several others had been circled in green ink and had scribbled green question marks near the headlines. BATMAN: A TIMELINE. WHITE KNIGHT TRAGICALLY SLAIN. WHO IS BATMAN?

"And that's the sixty-four-thousand dollar question, isn't it?" came a crisp voice from behind Gordon. "Who is the Batman?"

Gordon turned with a start. Edward Nashton, cryptographer and self-proclaimed genius, leaned casually against the doorframe, arms crossed, eyebrows raised in smug self-satisfaction.

"Nashton," Gordon said. "Where were you?"

"Oh, out and about. Finding answers." The cryptographer ambled across the room and dropped into his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "I know how strange that must sound, in Gotham; most of your men here either spend their days running in circles or, like the invaluable Lt. Flass... never start running at all." Nashton shrugged. "C'est la vie."

"And what have you been doing?"

"Me? Merely doing my job. I am a cryptographer, after all." Nashton's eyes, Gordon noticed, were very bright. "I find patterns. Don't look so surprised. All I have to do is look through random letters. Numbers. Chaos, jumbled together, nothing in common... until you find the pattern. Because there's always a pattern. Pick through the lies to find the truth." He gestured to the wall. "Half of those are lies. Worthless. Fluff stuff, sensationalist journalism barely more than a penny dreadful..." he grimaced and shook his head. "Or so flimsily supported it is, oh most discouraging of reports, self-contradictory."

"What does that have to do with decrypting the computer?" Gordon wanted to know.

Nashton shook his head and let out a long, condescending sigh.

"Oh ye of little brain. The case is so much more than decryption. The pattern..." Nashton shook his head, eyes on the clippings. "It doesn't make sense. On more than one level. Timing, most obviously. These five murders the Batman supposedly committed..." he clicked his tongue. "No. We have multiple eyewitness testimony that he was across town beating the city's most infamous citizen to a pulp in front of the clock tower. Question, Commissioner: How can a man be in more than one place? Answer: he cannot."

"Maybe there's more than one Batman," Gordon offered. He could feel Nashton's sharp, probing eyes on him and swallowed instinctively.

"An interesting but ultimately flawed theory, Commissioner," Nashton replied. "His custom vehicles were built to accommodate one. His modus operandi is solo. And, of course, the Batman imposters became a special target of the Joker's, remember? After the televised demise of... Bryan, was it not?... the Batman sightings once again fell to one-man level. I've been tracking his movements, you see," he added proudly. "Mapping out his steps. Tracing his pattern."

"Nashton..." Gordon shook his head, trying to disguise his growing sense of panic. "You're not a homicide detective..."

"No, I'm a cryptographer. And until you get a homicide detective who isn't too corrupt or too stupid to stop overlooking facts and ignoring the evidence..." Nashton smiled and shrugged disarmingly. "Maybe I should apply for the badge. Not a bad idea, really. You could do with a detective with a brain, for a change. When is the next test? I'm certain I'll pass."

Gordon heaved a long sigh.

"Just finish the decryption, Nashton."

"Of course, Commissioner. I should have it finished by tomorrow."


Dr. Harleen Quinzelle, a bright, perky intern fresh from GCU, popped her head around the corner and beamed at the director. Despite her hornrimmed glasses and tightly bunned, Dr. Quinzelle always seemed to carry an air of lightness with her. She had a gamin's face, with a sharply upturned nose and wide, innocent blue eyes that sparkled with mischief. Some would have found themselves smiling back; Dr. Arkham merely sighed and removed his glasses.

"Please sit down," he said.

"Right away, Dr. A," Dr. Quinzelle chirped. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is..." Dr. Arkham shook his head. "You have been providing therapy to Jonathan Crane for, what..."

"Almost two months," Dr. Quinzelle supplied helpfully.

"Almost two months," repeated Dr. Arkham. "And, in your opinion, the patient could benefit from interaction with the other..." he swallowed dryly, eyes firmly fixed on the desk. "Patients."

"You got it! Not with..." Dr. Quinzelle frowned slightly. "Well, you know. His former patients. But I've reviewed a list of possible-"

"Thank you, Dr. Quinzelle, but that will not be necessary," Dr. Arkham said firmly. "I've already found a patient with whom I think interaction will be mutually beneficial. I just need you, as ex-Dr. Crane's primary caregiver, to sign off on the request." He passed the clipboard across the table to Dr. Quinzelle, eyes still fixed on the desk. "I thought it would be expedient to match two prisoners of similar security classification and-"

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute!"

Dr. Quinzelle looked up from the clipboard, her cupid's-bow-mouth turning upside down.

"The Joker? You want to put him in regular interaction sessions with the Joker?" She shook her head incredulously. "Have you even looked at the man's case record?"

"Need I remind you," Dr. Arkham lashed out, "I am the Joker's primary therapist at this time?"

Dr. Quinzelle merely wagged her head, eyes going from Dr. Arkham's face to the clipboard.

"I don't believe this. I just cannot believe this," she said. "He is so- so-" she paused, shook her head again- "evil and destructive and manipulative. Wait a minute. He put you up to this didn't you?"

"That's preposterous!" sputtered Dr. Arkham. "I would- I- never- what- completely outrageous and how dare you make that accusation, young lady!"

"Whoa," she said, in soft wonder. "That's... that's actually pretty impressive." Then, sitting up a little straighter, "Maybe I would be willing to sign off, Dr. Arkham. Maybe it would be a good idea for Dr. Crane to start socializing again, even with someone with the Joker. But... there is one thing."

Dr. Arkham groaned.

"I was wondering when you'd get around to that," he commented acidly. "Yes, Dr. Quinzelle, you're due for a promotion. What is it, full-status staff member? Full-time employment and full control over your patients' schedules and regiments? I can have Kathy draw up the paperwork right away."

"Thank you," Dr. Quinzelle nodded, and held out her hand for the pen.


Aaah! I apologize for taking so long... major case of writer's block and then I couldn't get Nashton's voice down perfectly.

pansymoomalfoy32: Edward Nashton is Edward Nigma's "real" name in the DCU. (Technically, he was introduced as Edward Nygma and retroactively renamed Edward Nashton because it sounded more realistic.)

Many, many thanks to the reviewers!