Robin staggered backwards, choking on the thick, sour smell as the world began to spiral around him. There was blood on the wall and blood on the ground; a few feet away lay a corpse still dressed in a long black cape. The cowl had been pulled back, and Bruce Wayne stared unseeingly up at the sky, blood running from the gaping bullet hole in his forehead.
Batman was dead. And it was all Robin's fault. He wanted to lie down, just fall down on the ground and never get up, hug his knees to his chest and shake and-
The antidote.
The thought came from some faraway, disconnected, still-rational part of his brain, and Robin forced himself to turn away from the remains of Batman and grope, hands shaking, for the small vial which contained the antidote to Crane's fear toxin.
Luckily, the gangly villain hadn't switched recipes. A few seconds after injection, the pool of blood on the sidewalk began to waver and shimmer and dissipate. The thick mantle of dread lifted with it; the unmasked corpse of Batman became the unconscious form of an unlucky gangster, and the splattered blood on the brick turned into Krazy Klown graffiti. Robin breathed a long sigh of relief.
"You'll pay for this one, Scarecrow," he muttered, still trying to collect his shattered nerves. Normally, he would make some light comment or tease Batman- but his mentor was absent. It made it all much worse.
I let him down. I let him die. Oh, god, what if it really happens? I don't think I could go on.
Robin shook his head, trying to shake off the thoughts. No, no, it was just an aftereffect of the toxin. He had to focus, to get moving, to start hunting down Scarecrow and Poison Ivy... this was no time for personal weakness or doubts. The effect would wear off, he would find and arrest the villains, and there absolutely no reason to go to Bruce. He had this all under control. He could do it, all by himself, easy, no doubt about it...
"...and I just don't know what to do," Dick Grayson sighed. "The... family business... is getting out of hand. I actually found two of our, um, investors but they slipped off... I couldn't find them again, and I just... had to see you."
A few feet of space and three inches of bulletproof glass away, Bruce Wayne nodded and held the prison interview phone closer to his ear.
"I understand," he said. "But this is no time for weakness... Dick. Wayne Industries needs you. Gotham needs you."
"I know, I know! I just... don't know where to go from here." Dick kept his eyes carefully focused on the aging, dented Formica of the interview countertop. He was asking for help, something he'd learned his mentor never took lightly. C'mon, Bruce. I really could use a clue here. Yeah, I know it's my test run, but I'm really truly at a dead end. Have mercy and give a fellow crimefighter a break.
"So why are you here?"
Ouch. There would be no mercy today.
"I... I'm asking you for help," Robin said.
Bruce leaned back and narrowed his eyes menacingly.
"Seriously, Bruce! I can't do this!" Dick protested. "I wouldn't be asking for help unless I was really stuck!"
Bruce appeared to consider this for a moment, stroking his chin thoughtfully. Then,
"The computer. All of Wayne Industries' records are on the computer. So are LexCorp's. You can use it to cross-search Aster's involvement over the past two quarters."
"The computer, got it. Thanks a million, Bruce," Dick nodded.
Bruce merely nodded.
"Oh, and next time... call me when it's important."
Jonathan Crane was not a happy man. It had been forty minutes since the run-in with little Robin Red-breast, and there was still no sign of the missing Hatter, though Ivy insisted she could feel her "babies" somewhere near. The pimp's information had led the villainous twosome into an even seedier part of town, where only a few limp leaves remained as evidence that one of Poison Ivy's plants had ever been present. There was no sign of the missing Mad Hatter. Additionally, Crane had the sneaking suspicion that Robin had the fear gas antidote, and it would only be a matter of time before he, or the Batman, was on Scarecrow's trail again.
He would have complained about the situation... but, on reflection, the search for Jervis Tetch was largely his own endeavour. Tetch, after all, was his... associate. Ivy was just along for the bulbs.
Oh Jonny... notice anything interesting?
Crane scanned the street once more, frowning. Not particularly. There's nothing on this street even remotely connected to Wonderland... or even Alice. He could almost feel Scarecrow's exasperated sigh. "Marty Slack's Computer Repair Shack?" You know, there's more that goes on in Hattie's nut than how doth the little crocodile improve his shining scales...
Crane abruptly switched directions and headed across the street for the computer repair shop. It was a small, dingy building with a large, obnoxious sign in the window reading "GOT A HACKER? CALL THE SLACKER! WILL WORK FOR U NO QUESTIONS ASKED." A digitalized sign over the door flashed OPEN, OPEN, COME ON IN over and over again, and the glass door was decorated with childishly cartoonish penguin stickers. Crane was in no mood to trifle with computer geeks, slackers or otherwise. He threw the door open with a bang.
The employee at the counter didn't seem to notice. He had his back to the door, and the tinny sounds of explosions and electronic music blasted out from his computer console. Crane crossed the room in three broad strides and seized the man by the collar.
The man's eyes were shut, the lower half of his face covered by a pale purple-pink flower that had reached out with choking petals to cover his mouth and nose. Crane instinctively recoiled and dropped the man's body.
"Crane? What is it?"
Poison Ivy came in the door, sized up the situation, and...
"Ooooooh! He didn't!"
Swiftly kneeling beside the felled computer repairman, Poison Ivy reached for the slender stem of the flower. It twined away, green and vibrant, for about eighteen inches before vanishing into a plastic clamp box. A plastic-coated wire ran out the other side of the box and into the computer. Ivy drew in a long breath.
"My poor baby..."
"You can't think how glad I am to see you again!" a low, clear, British voice interrupted. The Mad Hatter strolled out of the back room, beaming proudly and brandishing a screwdriver and a dentist's hook. Turning to Poison Ivy, he bowed slightly and added, "A fine day, Your Majesty. -But Jonathan, look! It's my own invention." He pointed proudly to the flower covering the employee's face.
"Your invention?" Poison Ivy snapped, rising from the floor.
"Er... keep your temper," the Mad Hatter said quickly. "I'm a poor man, Your Majesty." Then, suddenly lucid, "These flowers- they're really quite wonderful. Jonathan, you must come see this. The spores release a type of psychoactive pleasure drug, do they not? A pleasurable neurotoxin... but look at this. The genius of it all! They're a sort of imaging receptor- a tiny little information transmitter. All it takes is a little electronic tweaking and..." the Hatter reached over and pressed a button on the computer. "They're off to Wonderland!"
The computer screen flickered, turned blue, and suddenly cut to a scene straight from Lewis Carroll's beloved book. Grass blades, magnified to the size of tree trunks, filled the screen. A toothy, spectral grin flickered against the green and disappeared again. An enormous mushroom, spotted with leprous white and green, filled one-half of the screen, and atop it perched a long, fat thing like an overstuffed sausage with insectile legs. As Crane and Ivy watched, the grass blades parted, and the bewildered computer repairman stepped out.
"This is weird, man," he muttered.
Jervis Tetch smiled modestly and bowed.
"Isn't it beautiful?" he sighed. "So much easier than the dream machine! And just watch this-" Tetch took control of the mouse, minimized Wonderland, and brought up an empty black screen quickly filling with glowing green numbers. "I control his mind in the meantime! Currently, this boorish fellow is using his neglected intellect to hack the Gotham Bank accounts! I must say, Miss Ivy, the blooms were a burst of-"
"They're better than you think, Tetch," Ivy interrupted. "When attached to the mother plant, they can spawn a vegetative biomimetic plant slave. Or they would have been able to if you hadn't murdered them!"
"Murder? Me? Oh, good heaven, no!" Jervis shook his head emphatically. "They're quite alive- a bit of technological wizardry- merely interfacing with the computer and feeding off a water siphon. But you say... biomimetic plant slaves? Brilliant! The garden of live flowers..."
Poison Ivy smiled.
"Well, yes, that is the idea..."
"While I hate to burst in on this touching scene of mutual admiration," Crane interrupted sarcastically, "the Batman will be on our tracks by now, not to mention Bat Junior and possibly the- er- female as well. It's high time we were on our way."
"I don't know what you mean by your way," Tetch replied mildly. "All the ways about here belong to- her." And he nodded at Poison Ivy.
"Oh?" Poison Ivy said, arching an eyebrow.
"It's quite true," the Hatter continued on, blissfully unaware. "'All ways are the queen's ways'- it's the general rule."
To Crane's great surprise, Poison Ivy threw back her head and laughed.
I forgot to credit in the last chapter, but Poison Ivy's flowers are quite shamelessly taken from "The Batman" episode "Fleurs du Mal."
The Carroll quotes in this chapter are from "Through the Looking-glass"... specifically, from the chapter "The Garden of Live Flowers."