"You're getting in too deep, and you're about to make the same mistake I did," Dr. Hayes explained, furrowing her brow at the thought of some distant memory dancing in the shadows of her mind. "You're smart, Doctor Birch, I can tell that much already. I don't want to see a smart girl ruin her mind in that hellish excuse for a hospital. No one can recover from mental illness there, and none of those… things want to."

"I'm not sure I understand–"

"Of course you don't. None of the young ones do, I certainly didn't. We dive in and before we know it we can't touch the bottom anymore, soon we have no choice but to keep swimming and when we're finally exhausted, overworked and dismayed we reach out for help... and the only hands we find to help lift us out of the depths belong to them."

Dr. Birch looked at the other psychiatrist in confusion, the rambling water metaphor left her own brain feeling rather soggy. Belladonna stared back at her then she shook her head and dropped her forehead into her cupped hands, heaving a sigh before rising back up to meet Hazel's gaze again. "To put it plainly, Hazel... In Arkham, there are no patients. There are only inmates. They're in there for a reason, and they need to stay there forever."

"I don't believe that, and I don't think you do either! That's not a psychiatrist talking that's the mindset forced on you by what Crane did to you."

"Did to me? Good heavens, is that what you think?" Dr. Hayes asked, unable to hide an amused tone. "Crane didn't do anything to me, Hazel. I asked him to talk with me, to reconsider and go back to his cell or come to my office so that we could talk… He chose the latter. In the middle of a break out he came to my office. By now he had the costume… those tattered old clothes and that battered hat, and the mask... That disgusting heap of burlap that makes him look like some twisted druggies notion of Oz."

Dr. Hayes stared at the grim sight before her. He wore heavy farm boots and heavily patched work pants, a frayed and tattered red cotton shirt covered his thin chest and an oversized straw hat that had more in common with the Witch of the West than a mid-west farmer was perched upon his burlap covered head. Over it all he still wore his own straight jacket, spattered with the blood of asylum guards like a badge of pride. Crane's face was obscured by the grisly burlap mask with its mouth sewn shut and it's wide, baggy eye holes allowing one to peer into the deranged man's own wild eyes, sunk deep in his skull and glittering with the unrestrained excitement of an animal on the hunt.

Looking into those eyes Dr. Hayes saw herself curled up on the floor in a fetal position, babbling insanely to herself and drooling like a rabid animal. The attack she anticipated never came, not in the way she expected at least. The Scarecrow locked her office door and turned to face her, then he removed his hat and mask and provided a surprisingly gentlemanly smile as he gestured to one of the seats in front of her desk.

"May I sit, doctor?" he asked politely, in the quiet unassuming voice that belied a mind that had delved so deep into the shadows of human imagination that it had never been able to crawl back out.

Dr. Hayes stared at him, bewildered for a moment, but then gave him a quick nod. She did not want to give him a chance to change his mind.

"Please, Dr. Crane, go right ahead," she replied, showing him the utmost respect in order to keep him docile.

"Thank you, Belladonna," he said, taking a seat and smiling at her again. "Now, I believe you wished to discuss about my impromptu attempt at early release, but I think I have something more important to discuss. If I am correct your reason for coming into this place day after day is because you believe you have dedicated your life to helping the mentally ill attempt reclaim their grasp upon sanity, correct?"

"Yes, Jonathon. That's why I'm here."

"But what motivates that desire, Doctor?"

"Because you need help, Jonathon, and it's my job to help you."

"Oh my dear doctor, no, you don't understand at all... goodness gracious, if I don't tell you the truth who will?" Crane asked, shaking his head while allowing himself a slow, drawling chuckle.

"And what is the truth, Jonathan?"

"Heh heh hnh… Oh, my dear Doctor Hayes, we aren't here to receive help. We're here to keep the rest of the world safe... Most of us are serving life sentences in this asylum, because the truth is this place isn't a hospital, Doctor, it's a penitentiary. Yes they call it an asylum, a hospital for the criminally insane, but the truth of the matter is that we aren't patients, we're prisoners, and I'm going to tell you why!"

Sporting a thing, bemused smile, he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on her desk.

"Pick a patient, Doctor, and I'll tell you exactly why they are far beyond help!"

Belladonna hesitated, but she had to admit Crane had intrigued her and more importantly he was currently free, in costume, and most of the staff was so utterly terror stricken that help arriving seemed like an absolute impossibility. She had to play his game, or she risked becoming another casualty of his bid for freedom.

"All right," she said thoughtfully, "Tell me about… Edward Nigma."

"Ah, Edward… Interesting choice. Yes, he doesn't seem like a particularly dangerous one, does he? Murder isn't usually in his M.O. he's not a mad man, just a man with something to prove… But, you see, there is an aspect of Edward Nigma that makes him especially dangerous!" Crane pulled his feet off the desk and leaned forward in his chair, lifting a hand and tapping his own temple with his index finger. "The Riddler knows things. He knows things about the people of Gotham, the bankers, the investors, the counselors and judges… He knows things about the companies, the bureaus and the departments… Cryptography, password rotation, triple coded firewalls, they're all just part of his game. Nothing will stop him from finding out what he wants to know and he wants to know everything. He's never satisfied, he always wants more, and that's why they can't afford to have him running around."

"And who are they, Jonathan?"

"Oh, you know that already, Doctor," Crane replied dismissively as he leaned back in his chair again. "Name another patient."

"Arnold Wesker."

The Scarecrow gave a derivative snort and rolled his eyes. "Please! We all know Arnold Wesker is just the cover for a far more dangerous man. Is he schizophrenic? Perhaps, but that doesn't make ScarFace any less real. Arnold Wesker is just using that puppet to hide from himself. It's easier to be a terrible person if he can blame a doll instead of acknowledging his own sadistic greed. Arnold Wesker isn't the one locked up here, its Mister Scarface they've sentenced to life in prison. Arnold Wesker is no threat to anyone... but the pint-sized mob boss sharing his bloated, overweight body? There is a menace to society!"

For a moment the villain and the psychiatrist simply stared at each other, and then Jonathan inclined his head with a pleasant smile, "Well? Next?"

"...Patient J."

"Oh please!" Crane scoffed and rolled his eyes. "That's too easy woman, you're boring me Doctor, give me a challenge!"

Belladonna steepled her fingers and closed her eyes, thinking about her choices before she finally lifted her gaze to meet Crane's dark eyes. "Isley."

"Aaah... Now there's a curiosity, she's not as simple to diagnose as you might think, and far more dangerous than most of you seem to realize."

Belladonna arched a brow in disbelief. "She's a misanthropic schizophrenic with dangerous chlorokinetic powers; that sort of volatile combination is bound to lead to disaster, but she's not got the sadistic streak that others here have."

"Others such as me, you mean," Crane surmised with a smirk. "But you haven't had a bedroom right next to hers for years on end. To hear that woman talk, my dear Doctor, she may well be one of the most disturbed individuals in this Asylum, after all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and in the eyes of Pamela Isley every human on earth has scorned her forevermore."

"Really?" Dr. Hayes asked, still dubious.

Crane gave her a rather nasty grin and leaned back in his seat, once more kicking his feet up. "Allow me to elaborate, my dear doctor, on the nature of our mutual acquaintance Dr. Pamela Isley, botanist, florist, and homicidal incarnation of nature's fury… To begin with, when she was brought in the last time, do you remember what she had done?"

"Of course. She attacked a CEO and his executives during a board meeting. Their company was the parent company to both a paper mill and a lumber yard… She killed three of them and the rest... The rest all had to be taken to intensive care."

"That's right! I'm impressed, Doctor, you really do a marvelous job of keeping up with the exploits of your patients! But, do you know what she actually did in that room, Doctor? Has she told you? Because, she's told Harleen Quinzel and I everydetail! She was boasting about it the night she was brought in. She wasn't just frenzied or enticed, she was proud, she was bragging. 'You'd be proud of me, Crane' she said to me; 'I made them scream, I made them scream so loud as they watched it happen.' Oh how she gloated over her victory… Getting locked back up was a small price to pay for her joy that night!"

"...What did she make them watch?" Hayes asked in horror, too intrigued by this inside look at the life of one of her patients to stop listening.

"Why, the CEO's death of course," he replied with a chuckle, "would you like to know how she did it doctor?"

Dr. Hayes didn't want to know, yet she did, it was a twisted, cloying, and demandingly sick curiosity. The Scarecrow smiled with sadistic amusement as he carried on with his description.

"She forced a strawberry into his mouth and told him to swallow it. He did of course, what choice did he have? He swallowed it and then… Then it started to grow. Halfway down his throat a piece of food began expanding, growing, swelling while it was still inside his throat! The other board members could do nothing but watch in horror as his throat bloated like a frog's! They watched him turn blue and listened to him choke and gurgle, they watched his eyes bug out and his fingers spasm helplessly while vines held him in his chair. They watched until that little fruit was full and plump that the front of his throat ripped open, and his head fell backwards like a rag doll's!"

Hayes shuttered with disgust, provoking a laugh from her malicious conversation partner.

"Do pull yourself together, Doctor, we've only just begun! You see once the man was dead Ivy moved on to his sales director; that would be the woman who helped make all the sales from the trees they'd destroyed. You know I've heard people mention misandry in regards to Ivy, but I would say she's far from misandrous, indeed she's particularly brutal with female victims… Men can't help it, as far as she is concerned we're just dumb brutes, but women? No... No, women are traitors, they're deceivers, and they get special deaths!"

"I must say," he said ponderously, ignoring Dr. Hayes grimace of disgust at his last description, "I have a certain admiration for Miss Isley. She really is brilliant... Her knowledge of toxicology is greater than any other person on our planet, and of course, she's the only one of our number—other than him—who can instill a permanent phobia in someone. You know at least one victim of every crime she's ever committed has ended up with acute anthophobia? That takes class; you have to have a certain appreciation for fear to leave some screaming in terror at the sight of a bouquet! Heh... Heh hah hah… Ahhh, but, I do digress. Where was I...?"

"The... the sales director" Hayes replied, squirming subconsciously in her seat as she felt her flesh crawling.

"Ah yes! Well, Ivy called her up to the front of the room and put her on display. She made her state her name, her age, her general information... Alice Walsh, Mother of three, one with her first husband and two with her second, still happily married to her second husband... She was supposed to have dinner with her family that night. I'm sure you've already guessed that didn't happen, right?" Crane surmised with a cruel smile as he brought his feet down and pushed out of his chair, pacing the room as he continued his story.

"You see, Doctor, Ivy has a fixation on motherhood... You know she's infertile don't you? A side effect of Dr. Woodrue's experiment upon her body, she's completely barren, and learning that dear Alice was a mother sickened her to her very core; the idea that a mother of three would willingly work for a company which is slowly destroying the natural habitat of our world...? Oh that didn't sit right with Pammy at all."

Here the Scarecrow paused, canting his head and blinking disjointedly at Dr. Hayes, first his right eye and then his left. Belladonna could feel the bile on her tongue at this point, she was so disturbed by this entire situation that she feared she might actually have a panic attack. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her nerves were so badly shot that she couldn't stop her hands from trembling, and her stomach was aching so badly that it felt as if someone had poured an entire liter of soda into it.

"Why, Doctor Hayes... I'm not frightening you, am I?" Dr. Crane asked with a sly grin before he returned to his chair and sat down calmly. "Here... Let me speed up this story telling process with a little blunt truth. She brought Alice to the front of the room and she called forth one of her beloved rose vines, a cruel, barbed thing far thicker and stronger than what would naturally grow from a seed. She brought it up, cooing to it like it was one of Harley's beloved Hyenas, and then she had it rip the clothes from Alice Walsh's body, displaying her naked form to the rest of her captive audience, then... Lash by lash, she had that cruel, beautiful flower flay Mrs. Walsh. A rather nasty little trick that Pamela said she was inspired to use after watching Catwoman in a fight; did you know a master of the bullwhip can use the weapon to rend flash from muscle, and rip muscle from bone, all in a single vicious lash? That's exactly what Pamela Isley has her cruel little pet do to Alice Walsh. Oooooh... I wish I could have heard the screams," Crane lamented ruefully.

"Stop it! Enough, Crane!"

"Oh but doctor we're almost done with our little tale. You see the next one was yet another man... Oh and the poor fellow. Human Resources," he chuckled and rolled his eyes, "can you imagine her reaction? Oh she seethed even once she was back in her cell; you should have heard her spit the words out, like the foulest curse on the planet: 'Human Resources!' She found it to be an amusingly cruel oxymoron. A company that helps to destroy acres of natural resources with every passing minute, and the head of their human resources department is unlucky enough to meet Pamela Isley on a bad day... Care to guess what happened to this fellow, Dr. Hayes?"

"N-no," Belladonna replied shakily.

"Pity... Well I'll tell you anyway! You see, a sad truth is that you cannot make someone do something that is entirely against their moral character. If someone isn't a killer, you can't make him kill. If someone is not a natural sadist you can't make them torture someone. People simply won't go against their own moral fiber… Unless, of course, you can find a way to justify it to them! Ivy has made an art form of that, and she wanted to see Clyde Perkins, head of Human Resources, kill all his fell executives. By Pamela's description Clyde was a strapping lad, 6 foot even, athletic, the typical modern yuppie, completely absorbed in his outer appearance! Image is everything in the modern business world, and Poison Ivy knows all about image; if she didn't hold such utter contempt for modern industry she could probably be the CEO of her own cosmetics company. Oh, I do prattle on don't I?" Crane asked with a chuckle before pressing on. "She knew she couldn't turn a simple yes-man into her personal trained murder-monkey, so she put Atropa Belladonna to use. Oh, I say, rather ironic name coincidence isn't it Dr. Hayes? Deadly Nightshade is a favorite of Isley's, she uses it only for special cases—you know you might want to write this down!"

In spite of herself, Hayes reached for one of her writing pads and a pen as the Scarecrow continued to talk. Frantically she began scribbling notes on him, what he was revealing about Poison Ivy, and the insights into the odd community of respectful hatred for one another that the Gotham Rogues had created for themselves.

"In the proper dosage nightshade causes bouts of memory loss, spacial disorientation, hallucination, and the inability to tell reality from fantasy... She gave a good strong dose of the stuff to dear old Perkins and sealed it all with one of those cruelly wonderful kisses of hers. The perfect combination of control devices to deceive Clyde Perkins into being her personal puppet! The next thing the boy knows he's giving the Heimlich maneuver to a co-worker who is choking to death during the lunch break at their business meeting. Of course, that was all an illusion, there was no real choking, no food lodged in a windpipe, just Clyde, squeezing and yanking on another man's chest until he shattered his ribs...

"Next Pam let one of her other captives go, the stupid oaf made a dash for the door to save himself and Pam twisted Clyde's mind to see a disgruntled employee running for a gun; next thing dear old Clyde knows he's tackled this other man to the ground and is beating him within an inch of his life! One by one, with each and every person in the room, she used Clyde Perkins to do all her dirty work and finally the exertion of it all pushed the toxins fully through Clyde's system and..." Crane paused here and made the whistling sound affect of a falling bomb. "Good bye, Mr. Perkins."

Dr. Hayes gazed at him, her pen resting against her right pad, forming a slow dripping ink blot at the bottom of the page as she and Crane held each other's eyes. Crane blinked, hard, and she flinched. The pen fell out of her hand and hit the floor, all because he had blinked his eyes. She'd never been so ashamed of herself in all her career and Jonathan Crane laughed at her for it.

"Tell me, Doctor... Do you think Pamela Isley is truly a psychopath?"

She stared at him in silence and pressed her lips together in reluctant defeat before finally spitting the words out angrily, "No. I don't."

"And the truth shall set you free," he replied, giving a slow, monotonous clap. "I quite agree doctor... She's nothing like a psychopath. That's what sets some of us apart from the others, doesn't it? It's why you dislike therapy sessions with me... It's why you don't like having to sit down for an hour and a half with her each Wednesday morning. It's why you can't wrap your pretty Italian brain around what in God's name is wrong with Harleen Quinzel? Oh, don't look so surprised, Doctor Hayes, I was a psychiatrist once too, remember?"

Hayes did remember, and she knew what he was doing. He was trying to get inside her head, to mess with her, screw with her, to twist her in upon herself. She recognized this, realized this, and yet she felt powerless to stop it.

"Ivy... Joker... Quinn... Me... We're the ones that keep you up at night, Doctor," he whispered, his voice dropping to a predatory gravel, his eyes dancing with a malicious gleeful excitement as he spoke. "The Joker is completely insane, and yet... He shows moments of clarity, moments of true genius that simply aren't possible for a mind as twisted as his seems to be. Next we have Harley, dear little Harleen Quinzel. She was a brilliant psychiatry student, one of the best of her class, I believe. She graduated with top honors, immediately got hired on here and within mere months she's succumbed to the madness of Arkham Asylum... Seduced by that clown, turned into his bouncing, flouncing air headed, pig-tailed circus slut; deplorable isn't it?"

Hayes squirmed again. She wished he wasn't blocking the door. She wished she could run out, or someone else would run in. Guards, police, even the Batman, anyone that could make this all stop.

"It sends a chill down your spine, doesn't it doctor? And it makes you wonder… If Harley adores the Joker despite all that he does to her, and others, then what sort of twisted things has she witnessed Pamela Isley doing? As you said, Poison Ivy is no psychopath; she's too quick, too smart, too devilishly wicked. The think about Pamela is how crazy she acts, just to make you forget how sane she is. I dare say she's as stable as you or I. Yes, yes, you all say she's insane but we all know it's a lie to help you sleep at night. A true psychopath can't concoct the schemes or execute them with such precision… She reminds me of me in a way! She and I? We're like Anthony Hopkins."

For the first time in their conversation Belladonna did a double take. They're like Anthony Hopkins? What in the devil's name did that mean? Perhaps this all really was nonsense, just the blathering, rambling words of a madman. For a brief moment Dr. Hayes was beginning to feel in control of herself again, and then he explained himself.

"Hannibal Lecter seems like a sociopath. Hopkins played the part flawlessly, brilliantly. The Silence of the Lambs is my absolute favorite movie you know. Nothing is more terrifying than the inside of the human mind," Crane crooned in a way that seem almost paternal, rubbing his hands together and chuckling once more as he explained his thought process. "Yes, he seemed truly mad, and yet, sometimes he's so kind, so polite and chivalrous, and then you have to ask yourself: Is he truly insane? Is he mad, or is he just that far out? Is he a lunatic, or a brilliant doctor, so fascinated and engrossed in the nature of his work that he willingly dives headlong into the traits and aspects of insanity just so that he can better understand the nature of the human mind?"

Belladonna cringed. She had always appreciated the film too, and for the very reason that Crane had just described, the fact that he had observed the same things she had made their mutual admiration of the movie become a stomach turning realization for her. She became aware of her quaking hands and her quivering feet, she realized she was sweating, her heart was pounding again and her mouth had run dry.

"That's why you're shivering in your chair like a terrified school girl, Doctor. It's because, deep down, you know the truth. You know it, I know it, and Jeremiah Arkham knows it. That's why he's so adamant that this facility keep running. It's why he always makes sure the security stays up to date and the building keeps up to code; because no one else must ever know the truth, that we're as sane as the rest of you! We don't do it out of madness, or psychosis, we do it because it fascinates us! It satisfies us, amuses us, or just solves the problem of boredom. That's what it's all about, Doctor, self-gratification. It's not about good or evil, sanity or madness, it's just a basic human instinct; the only difference between you and us is that we've let go of inhibitions."

As Belladonna Hayes finished explaining the events of that fateful night to Hazel the younger psychiatrist felt as if someone had stuffed her mouth with cotton. She couldn't remember the last time she'd swallowed. Her feet had fallen asleep and her shoulders ached from hunching forward in disturbed fascination at Dr. Hayes's tale.

"But... How did you get away?"

"I didn't... After that he pulled the hood back on he put his hat on—and he tipped it to me—then he walked out. Two guards were just reaching the employee corridor. They saw him leaving my office... I don't know what he did to them but the screams... I remember their screams."