EDIT: fixed a few errors... -_-'

Sorry for the wait. Last big semester final tonight! This chapter has been written out for a while, and the rest of this installment has already been outlined, but I haven't had computer time to transcribe. Hopefully the next chapters will not be far behind this one. :) Love to all my followers, favouriters, and reviewers! Also, kudos to anyone who gets the literature reference in this one.

Previously:"It is true," his quavering voice continued, "that this Island has been the legacy of the Arkham family for decades. But I fear that the asylum has finally run its course." He paused yet again, and seemed to swallow thickly, taking deep breaths like one in serious danger of vomiting. His audience held its breath tensely, awaiting the vital clarification of a fact they had already assumed but did not want to accept.

"As of tomorrow," Quincy finally spoke, "Arkham Island will be put up for sale."


Chapter Eight: Enigmatically Pondering


It was time to schedule a check-in.

Most of the asylum had been granted leave for the day, excepting those, of course, whose services were vital to the security of Intensive Treatment and the Penitentiary. Meaning, I was essentially off the clock.

But that was really only a suggestion to vacate the premises, not an order.

Ten minutes later I was standing at the security clearance zone of Intensive's cell block.

"I thought all of you kids were released today," the guard commented as he scanned my new badge. "Assistant guy to the Warden, right? They said he had a heart attack."

A heart attack. Right. Still trying to believe it. I was glad my face remained a mask, despite how shaken I was.

"Just because we were released," I summoned words without emotion, "does not mean there isn't work to be done."

The guard just chuckled, in the way of a man who fails to grasp the logic of something but allows it to pass unobstructed.

"Okay, doc. You're good. Head on in."

I pressed forward with a wide stride, the tap of my shoes bouncing all over the hallway. The walk was eerie. The shadows seemed to crawl and writhe through the corners, even more so than usual. The overhead lights were weak and yellow. It hit me, then - it looked abandoned. Derelict. Arkham is dying.

When the hall finally opened up into the cell block, I caught sight of him immediately.

He was sitting with his back against the cell wall, long legs stretched out along the length of his cot, ankles crossed, hands fiddling with something in his lap. The cells around him were mostly empty. The few presiding occupants of the ward appeared to be asleep. Or perhaps more accurately, drugged into unconsciousness.

The way he didn't react to my arrival suggested that he'd expected my company.

It was so unnerving, his foresight.

Several moments of silence passed, broken only by the soft rustling of whatever Nygma was handling. I suddenly realised that I had no idea what I intended to say to him. Instead I simply stared, and took in the odd assortment of green footprints, handprints, and question marks smeared all over his cell.
Before I could check myself, I wondered, Where could he have gotten a hold of paint? Then I thought, He's the Riddler.

My mouth abruptly spoke. "Quincy is selling Arkham... The Assistant Warden is dead."

"Yes," Nygma agreed musingly, and held up whatever he was fiddling with to examine it in better light. My eyes finally focussed on it.

"...Is that my Rubix Cube?" The world around me had already grown too surreal for the words to emerge as anything but an honest question. He didn't answer me outright.

"Here's a riddle," Nygma screwed the toy into disarray, having just worked it to its solution, and then he caught my eye from beneath his lashes while his fingers moved independently to restore the puzzle to completion. "Why does a doctor of the body keep a toy of the mind in the bottom drawer of her desk, where it lies so pitifully underused - when she could easily leave it in her home to collect dust among the rest of her equallyuseless furniture?"

My face cycled through a number of complex expressions. I was confused, unable to actually comprehend what he was implying, but it still felt as if he'd carelessly thrown open a door to my mind and strolled inside. It was violating and exposing. Like he suddenly knew something about me that I didn't.

I said nothing.

Nygma let the question hang in the air, unanswered - which served to confuse me further - and then suddenly changed the subject as if the conversation had never occurred. He discarded the again-complete Rubix in his lap, laced his fingers behind his head, and closed his eyes.

"Psychopharmacologists," he started again, "tend to administer their palliatives with sharply-tipped instruments, wouldn't you agree?"

The words struck me with surprising force, triggering a rush of mental images that nearly overwhelmed me. Needles, the blubbering form of Jervis Tetch - "Alice, I need my Alice... Oh, Chessur, we're all mad here... no needles... Where is my Alice?"- I thought of Strange, of seizures, of Smith's sudden death, of my assignment to the emergency evaluation, of the Riddler wandering the Asylum unattended, of blank-faced nurses and Arkham for sale and my Rubix cube and my house collecting dust-

-Of Quincy's sickly condition and Smith's observation of it-

-Of Sharply-tipped instruments and Hugo Strange, the psycho pharmacologist.

"You should go home, doctor," Nygma's voice broke through my stupor with the violence of shattering glass, and I felt myself startle. He was calm, too calm, and his voice had a strange lilt to it that unnerved me. My heart was racing again. "Your supervisor is dead and your job hangs in the balance of financial crisis... I imagine you could use some time to... process?"

I was rooted to the spot. My mouth was dry, my chest ached, and I didn't know why.

"Are you... in danger?" The words cracked in my throat, sounding strangled. Very suddenly he threw back his head and laughed - loudly and unabashedly. Then with a calculated flick of his wrist, he tossed the Rubix cube straight through a gap in the cell bars. The toy skittered to a stop in the middle of the walkway. It was a shocking feat, because his eyes were still closed. He hadn't opened them once.

"Now, now, Rogue-Doctor," Nygma chided mockingly, "careful where you place your concerns. People might start to talk - you know how monkeys love to chatter."

It was like a sucker punch, what he was insinuating, and it literally winded me.

Intensely mortified, I scooped up my Rubix cube in a rush of movement and, without so much as a glance back, I fled the cell block.

I am not another Harley Quinn!

It had the sharp ring of a lie, even in my head.


The pocket watch he kept hidden under his mattress read eight thirty-seven and twenty-four seconds.

He sat with his back against the wall, much as the good doctor had left him several hours before, and counted the remaining seconds as they passed. One-thirty... one-fifty... one-fifty two... one-fifty-six... one-fifty-eight...Eight-forty.

The deadly electric arcs coursing between the bars of his cell fizzled to nothing. With a jerk he stepped through the open portal, trotting out onto the tiled walkway. With the precision of clockwork, the electric barrier crackled back to life, but with its prisoner on the opposite side.

Three second short circuit, on a timer. Remarkably easy to rig, for a man of his intellectual genius. And the security watching the camera feeds? There was a two-minute changing of the guard and the cameras could not see fully into his cell. With the circuit set to cut out twice a night, every night, he could do whatever he pleased within the asylum under a set time frame.

It was actually quite disgusting, how easy they made it for him.

Eddie trotted down the causeway at a fair clip, eager to maximize his time. His footsteps were silent from years of practise. He slipped from blindspot to blindspot in the cameras' fields of vision until he reached a particular empty office, where a wall tile was loose. It served as a thin skin between the open air and the rotted, termite-eaten foundation of the wall itself.

The cavity behind the tile was currently his storage locker. Eddie pried the tile away, hummed chords of Dies Irae under his breath as he rifled through his collection of ID badges and spare keys. Stashing what he required in his prison jumper, he replaced the tile and set off about his business.

It took approximately thirteen minutes to make his way to the heavy-lockdown wing of Intensive. The object of tonight's asylum-lurking was a character he had been procrastinating on visiting, as this was an interview he only wished to conduct when in good health. It was unprofessional, after all, to attend such important meetings as a cripple.

The warm glow emanating from the hydroponic dome bathed the lobby orange. The eerie swirling of misty chemicals in the chamber cloaked its inhabitant from view, but Eddie calculated that seeing out would be easier than seeing in. The rogue sidled up to the thick glass with a practised leisure, purposely displaying his flamboyant, rather peacockish intellectual confidence.

As anticipated, a languid form emerged from the gloom like Beatrice from the poison perfume of her father's garden. Poison Ivy looked unsurprised as she came to rest against the glass, forearm braced above her head, hip cocked in an exaggerated contrapposto that afforded Eddie a more generous view of her cleavage that was strictly necessary. It was amusing, Eddie thought, this display of sensuality. Ivy was largely classified as an innately sexual creature - but anyone who actually paid a sliver of attention could deduce that her preference was in her plants. Humans and animals she despised, and sex was for humans. The sensuality was merely an act.

An act that, for all its blatant absurdity, is bought and sold en masse in this city.

People were so stupid.

"Hello, Eddie," Ivy drawled languorously, flashing him an exaggerated imitation of bedroom eyes. "You're looking well."

"And you as well, Pamela," Edward observed. "For someone dying of Titan only a few weeks ago, you look to be in remarkably good shape... Meanwhile the mad clown is still rotting away in solitary, coughing up his liver. Intriguing, isn't it?" It wasn't a statement of wonder. It was an accusation.

"I don't imagine you're here to discuss my health, Eddie." Ivy pouted. "You wouldn't have bothered to come if you thought I was still dying, would you?"

"Of course not." Eddie waved away the ridiculous idea. "Word travels. I heard of your miraculous recovery weeks ago, I was merely waiting for the right time."

"Oh, yes, I heard about your darling little doctor. Fixed you up and saved you from the evil professor like you were a poor little homeless puppy..." She shifted, eyes narrowing suggestively. "Has Edward the prude finally snatched himself a ladyfriend?"

Eddie did not feel the need to dignify that with a response, and did not so much as blink. "Quincy Sharp is selling the asylum."

Ivy tipped her head in acknowledgement. "So the rumours are true. My babies have been whispering since this morning... And the Assistant Warden, dead?"

"Naturally. Strange had him deposed as soon as Smith began to draw connections between the Hatter's condition and Sharp's illness."

Another nod, followed by a disinterested flick of her head that rustled her hair. "Strange's business is no concern of mine. Let him do as he pleases with his ridiculous experiments, I could care less. Good riddance, actually. Less humans to worry about."

There was no offense taken, here. The two Rogues hardly shared a bond, but they were indifferent enough to each other's existence to be spared the animosity of being enemies. "As expected," Eddie conceded swiftly. "You have a vendetta of your own, correct? In that, we are alike. As we speak, the mechanics of our escape are fitting into place. I've already been in contact with the Broker - he's promised you a choice block of real estate near the bay, easy to defend and out of Strange's way. I presume it will prove to your liking."

Ivy chuckled mirthlessly as his words pulled together a conclusion in her mind. "Of course you would already have a plan in place. You expected me to agree."

"I alone hold the key to your escape," he boasted shamelessly. "And freedom is the first step to vengeance, after all. With the exception of deliberate obstinance executed out of an exceedingly feminine sense of spite, you have no valid reason to refuse my offer." Edward produced his pocket watch and checked the time. He was on schedule.

"I will return the night before we are due to leave," he carried on directly. "If everything proceeds as I expect it to - which, naturally, it will - you should be reunited with your precious flora within the next week."

"Hmmm." Ivy leaned more heavily against the chamber's barrier, stirring the heavy mist. Her breasts and hipbones flattened against the glass and she pursed her lips in a caricature of human thoughtfulness. "You dohave a point," she admitted, drawing out the syllables. Then she smiled, but the effect was of venom instead of honey. "Very well. I shall be waiting, Eddie."

"As expected." Edward exhaled idly. Her performance was starting to bore him with its predictability. "Adieu, then, my dear Beatrice. Try not to cause any trouble before I return. It would draw... unwanted attention. You know how Strange dislikes you so."

"Of course," Ivy pushed away from the glass and crossed her arms, suddenly irritated. "And we wouldn't want your whore getting hurt, now, would we?" Her expression was suddenly an honest one - it was cruel. Hateful. "Men," she spat. "I thought perhaps you of all people would scorn such degradation, but it appears even the proud Edward Nygma is weak to the cries of his loins. Disgusting." She sniffed, primly. "I had hope for you."

Edward absorbed this tirade in detached silence, studying the woman's face as his mind raced with calculations. This rant had not been entirely anticipated. He couldn't quite discern if his lack of reply was a physical inability to form a satisfactory argument, or if it was simply an apathetic disinclination to respond. Or perhaps it was because her rant clung to something in the back of his mind, something he could not yet identify. Never minding the cause, her anger had given him pause. Some variables of this equation hung suspended without application, others were shuffled in their positions, some finally fit into their proper place.

But ultimately the conclusion he reached was, in functionally appropriate terms of abstract minimalism, a question mark.

Edward drew out his watch again to read the time. It was time to leave, lest he miss the last short-circuit of the night. So he tipped his head in farewell, turned on his bare heel, and slipped back into the shadows. As he dodged cameras towards the exit, he called over his shoulder,

"One week, Pamela. Be prepared."