Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or any of its characters/settings.

AN: I just realized I'd forgotten to thank my reviewers in Chapter 10, so double thanks to all of you! Sorry if this chapter seems rushed, most of it was hammered out while I was waiting to hear from my mother if my brother had broken his leg or not. Turns out it was just a bad sprain, thankfully.

They'd found out, of course.

The bloodstained shirt was the red flag. He'd meant to change it, once the bleeding stopped, but as it turned out, near death experiences were exhausting. He'd fallen asleep, only to awake after the morning staff had taken note of the cuts.

Now here he was, being interrogated about suicidal impulses. And as luck would have it, Fridays were Harley's day off, so he didn't even have the comfort of talking to her.

"You can tell me whatever you're feeling, Dr. Crane."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. If it were possible, this Leland woman had become an even more incompetent doctor than she'd been when he was administrator. "There's nothing to tell," he said, for what felt like and probably was the thousandth time.

"No one's angry about what's happened. We just want to help you." He tried, unsuccessfully, to block out her and her exaggerated tone of comfort. The cut inside his mouth, the only one that hadn't noticed, itched horribly. He ran his tongue over it, hoping to alleviate the sensation, then realized he was imitating one of the Joker's mannerisms and stopped. "I'd like for you to help me understand why you want to hurt yourself."

"I don't." He was unable to keep the note of surliness out of his voice. "I told you, I did it in my sleep."

"In your sleep," she repeated.

Maybe, if you want your patients to confide in you, you shouldn't sound so dismissive of what they say. "You've seen my file. I believe there's a record of sleep disturbances in it."

"There's a record of night terrors," she said in her gentle, patronizing tone. "It's not same as cutting yourself in your sleep."

"Really? It's been a while since I was treating patients, but last I checked it's not uncommon for those having violent nightmares to scratch themselves while they're thrashing around."

"Your injuries didn't look like scratches," she pointed out. "They were too deep and even to have been inflicted by accidentally scraping yourself with your nails."

"So I found some sort of weapon and did it in a fugue state," he said, annoyed. "I don't know."

"Found a weapon? What in your room could be used as a weapon?"

"I don't know, since I was asleep when it happened. I could go test things though, if you like."

"There's no need to be defensive, Doctor. You must realize your story sounds somewhat suspect."

He sighed. "Look at it logically, all right? My cuts aren't deep enough to be life-threatening, so it wasn't a suicide attempt. Self-mutilators hide their injuries, which I didn't do. Those that show off the cuts like attention, and I am clearly not enjoying this. I do have a record of violent, thrashing fits in my sleep. It may be unlikely to make neat little cuts like that while I'm unconscious, but it's the best explanation I can think of."

She didn't seem convinced, but she was also getting the standard Arkham look of indifference. They had been talking for over ten minutes now, more than doubling the time the average doctor actually cared to discuss something. "What were you dreaming about?"

"Bats."

And ignorant as always, she didn't even make the connection.

"Idiot!"

Isley's hand connected with his face before he could duck, sending him reeling backwards. Nigma caught him before he could fall over, putting him back on his feet. Jonathan stared at Isley, ears ringing. "What was that for?" he asked, stunned.

"For making me worried sick," she snapped, eyes glistening. "Trying to disembowel yourself?! Did you ever think about how that might make us feel? Stupid!" He watched, bewildered, as she stormed to the other side of the room, shoulders shaking.

Before Jonathan could so much as try to comprehend what that was about, there was a tug on his shirt. He turned to find Nigma lifting the fabric, taking in the bandages underneath. "We could sign these too, I guess. It'd seem pretty morbid, though."

"Nigma, what was that?" he asked, totally lost. "Why did she just hit me?"

"God, remind me to devote a day to teaching you about emotions. She was worried, Jonathan."

"Worried?" Now it made even less sense. "Isley wouldn't worry about me, she hates people. If I were a plant maybe—"

Nigma shook his head. "She just pretends to hate people. She cares about all of us, yourself included."

He stared. "Why?"

"Because that's what friends do, Jonathan. And yes, we're friends. You're clueless, you know that? It'd be endearing if it weren't so sad."

I have friends? Besides Harley? It was comforting to know, in a way, though it reinforced his belief that friendship was more trouble than it was worth. Like Isley, getting herself worked up over him. And for what? Had everyone else been worried too?

"Uh, Nigma?"

"Yes?"

"About…about this." He gestured to his shirt, where the bandages lay underneath. "I…it's not what you think, I—"

"You don't have to explain it, Jonathan. We all do things. Though I think you should apologize to Pamela if you ever want to speak to her again."

"Right."

He made his way over to her cautiously, face still stinging from her slap. "Isley? I'm sorry."

"Damn right you are. What the hell were you thinking?"

"Er…" He tried to think of a reply that wouldn't get him hit again, and couldn't. "I wasn't?"

"Obviously." She patted the chair beside her. "Sit down."

"What?"

"I'm not letting you out of my sight again. Who knows what you'll try? Sit."

"Uh…okay." He sat slowly, Nigma taking the chair to his other side. Super villains babysitting each other. What is this world coming to?

"I heard you had an accident?" Harley asked that Thursday, uncapping her pen.

He blushed, glancing down at the carpet. He'd been doing that a lot during these sessions. One of these days he might try memorizing the pattern. "Yeah, I—wait, you don't think it was a suicide attempt?"

"No. The doctors said it happened during a night terror. Was it a suicide attempt?"

"No," he said quickly. "But you're the first person who hasn't insinuated it was. We had an entire group therapy session dedicated to how it was all right to tell others you felt depressed."

She smiled. "Bet that was fun."

"Nigma and Isley wouldn't leave my side all day. I think they thought I was going to sneak into a bathroom and slit my wrists on the paper towel dispenser or something."

"At least you know your friends care." She sombered, suddenly. "But if you were feeling suicidal, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I've been worried sick about you all week. I don't even want to think about how I'd be if you tried to kill yourself. The Joker sends his regards, by the way."

"What?" Jonathan tried to keep himself from gaping, unsuccessfully. Would the audacity never cease?

"He heard about the whole thing. He was the first one who told me, actually." She frowned. "I'm going to have to have a talk with my superiors about keeping me up to date. Anyway, he was worried about you, I think. He wanted to know how you were doing."

"Oh," Jonathan managed, head spinning with disbelief. "That was nice of him, I guess."

"See? Everyone has good qualities."

For the love of God. He shrugged. "Maybe."

"So, can I ask what you were dreaming about? Do you remember it?"

About your "good qualities" patient shoving a knife in my mouth, he did not say. "Batman." It was close enough to the truth, anyway. When he did have nightmares, they were about the Bat. Not that he minded lying to her. Mostly.

"Ah." She made a note. "Funny you should bring him up."

"Why is that?" He hadn't been keeping up with the news lately. Had the Batman gone on another killing spree?

"He's what the Joker and I talked about the other day."

"Oh."

"Hey, I've got a question. Before he starting killing people, do you think Batman helped Gotham?"

He arched a brow. "Why would you ask me that?"

"I got into a debate, you could say, about it. And since you're so good at finding a way to counter any argument I made, I thought it'd be interesting to see if you could come up with any defenses for him."

Defend the Batman? Jonathan considered it for a second, then shuddered. "I don't think I'm the right one to ask, Harley. It's a little difficult, you see, to be objective about the man who force fed me my own toxin."

"Wasn't that in an attempt to rescue the assistant DA?"

"Even so." He was still shuddering at the memory, nails digging into his palms. "It was revenge for the time I'd used the toxin on him, I think. Isn't revenge something heroes are supposed to be above? That's what I always thought.

"He'd already got hold of me. I wasn't any match for him, not physically. He had my arm pinned so I couldn't use the fear gas, and then he ripped the mask off and sprayed me in the face. He wanted information…I wished he'd tried to get it some other way. God."

He felt the tightening in his throat that always showed up when he remembered that night, the demon Bat flashing in his mind as if the image had been burned into his brain. He felt, as he had so often lately, as if he were drowning again.

"But you had the antidote eventually, right?"

"Antidote?" He stared. What was she going on about?

"The antidote to the toxin. You got it, didn't you? Or did the effects just wear off on their own?"

"Harley," he said, incredulous, "didn't anyone explain to you what happened that night? Or how the toxin works?"

"I know the police arrived, and that later on you escaped when the League released all the patients." Her brows furrowed a bit. "Other than that, no one ever went into specifics. Why?"

"The police found me when they showed up, and threw me in a cell. Lieutenant—well, the commissioner now, questioned me on the League's plans, but I wasn't exactly in a state to give them coherent answers. They left, and that was the end of things until I was let loose."

"Right. So the toxin wore off. Or did you give yourself the antidote somehow?"

"Neither," he muttered, hands clenched so tightly he was beginning to lose feeling in his fingers.

"I'm sorry?"

"Here's the thing about the toxin: There is an antidote, but it's only effective within a certain time frame after you've been poisoned. I didn't get it within that window. I don't know if I ran out of time while I was straitjacketed in the cell, or while I was riding through the Narrows, or even after that. But I ran out of time."

"Wait, are you saying the effects are permanent?" She looked pale. "Then how can you be this coherent now?"

"After that time, there is irreversible brain damage, yes. You don't see it now because I'm taking pills to counteract it. If I were ever to go off of them, I'd be hallucinating and panicking all over again."

"Forever?" she asked, stricken.

"Not quite." He relaxed his grip, feeling slowly and painfully ebbing back into his hands. "As I found out before they'd worked out the chemical cocktail that makes me normal, it comes in waves. First, there's the delusional, terrified, curl-up-under-the-bed-and-sob-at-anything-that-moves phase."

"And the second?"

Jonathan wasn't sure how to explain it. "Ever since I can remember…there's been this…darkness in my head. It's not like a split personality, more like another part of my own personality that the rest of me keeps in check."

"Uh-huh?"

"It…it's not my bad side, exactly…I mean, I like frightening people no matter what state I'm in, but the dark part…I guess you could say that it's my wild side. That's all it wants, all the time. To make other people scream. Indiscriminately. Anyone I've ever met. That's all it wants. My intellect, my curiosity…all of it, disappears when this side comes out. And it never fully came out before I was poisoned. Close, but never all the way. Now it's the second stage, so it's around for half the time always, if I'm ever off the pills."

Jonathan didn't dare to look at Harley's face. It would be bad enough to see fear there, but there could also be pity, and he didn't think he could handle that. Talking about the darkness seemed to empower it, somehow, and the darkness didn't want sympathy. He wasn't sure he could hold it back in that case, and that horrified him as much as the Joker's knife visit had.

"Now, maybe I had it coming. And maybe the Batman had no way of knowing the effects were permanent, though he or someone close to him must have studied it, since he recovered. And maybe it doesn't matter since they've found a way to counteract it. Lots of people end up taking pills for the rest of their lives, right? But it's my mind. The one thing I should have absolute control over, and the Batman took that from me. You could say, I guess, that it was my own fault, and it probably was, but I can never forgive him for that. Never."

He sighed, pushing his glasses up and turning to regard Harley. She looked white as a sheet. "Sorry. I guess I wasn't very helpful to your debate."

"Actually, you were," she said slowly. "I was the one arguing that vigilantism shouldn't be tolerated. No matter how corrupt, as city is, I don't think people should be able to take the law in their own hands. Look how it turned out here."

"Wait…wouldn't that put the Joker—"

"On Batman's side, yes. He was saying that Gotham needed Batman. Or at least, he did."

Jonathan couldn't think of anything to say, as his brain had shut down.