AN: Thanks for the reviews!

"The will is everything! The will to act."

—Ra's Al Ghul, Batman Begins

The murder had made the news.

No one was sure how; the Gotham Times refused to reveal their source for the story. Maybe it was one of Lotter's family members, determined that, even if Jonathan Crane was legally insane and therefore not responsible for his actions, someone would suffer in his place. Maybe it was a fellow orderly, also seeking justice. Or maybe it was just an employee or relative of a patient seeking a reward for a sensationalistic story. Either way, the media was eating it up, and Teresa couldn't so much as glance at a television or newspaper without seeing the story again and again and again.

She'd tried to make it through the news last night and ended up turning it off five minutes in, afraid that she'd vomit or develop ulcers or both.

Teresa knew that she had no right to complain. She wasn't one of the receptionists who had to deal with call after call from the patients' families, shouting about how this institution was supposed to keep their loved ones safe, not expose them to abuse and murder. She didn't have to reassure everyone of the patients' safety while going through both a police investigation and an inquiry from the funders, like Jeremiah Arkham. All she had to do was conduct physicals and carry bedpans, just like always. But knowing that she wasn't the one suffering the backlash didn't make her guilt any less powerful.

It didn't help that Jonathan was still in the infirmary. He set her hair on end—how could he not, after he'd killed an orderly?—but worse than that, he was a constant reminder of how far the orderlies had gone, and how much damage they'd inflicted on an already broken mind, damage that would have slipped by unpunished if Jonathan hadn't taken matters into his own hands. That couldn't happen now. Every orderly was being questioned for information pertaining to the murder, and the leash around them had become much shorter and tighter. Teresa had been naïve enough to hope that would fix things. To be fair, no one had come in with bruising the day after Lotter's body was found. She'd thought—hoped—that the others had been scared into behaving, and that the worst of her career at Arkham was behind her.

Then they'd brought in the Joker yesterday morning, whose abdomen looked as though it had been used as a punching bag, and whose arms looked as though he'd been in a fight with a bramble bush.

The orderlies hadn't stopped, only rested for a night or so. Out of respect for the dead, maybe. Whatever the reason, they were back at it and the Joker was suffering. He deserved it. But no matter how many times she told herself that, Teresa still couldn't stand to remember the injuries.

Things were changing. They'd have to, if the asylum wanted to keep running after such a fiasco. And if she reported it now, something might be done. It was a gamble, but the odds were better than they'd ever been before. Still, the Joker's continued abuse proved that the orderlies were persistent. Merciless. If Dr. Arkham didn't want to hear it, she could lose her job. But if they lost her jobs because of her, she could become a target. She was at a crossroads, and while one road had the moral high ground, both looked as though they could lead to misfortunate, and Teresa couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't be better just to stay between.

But she could only stand at a crossroads for so long before she was crushed under the traffic.

"Are your friends coming back, or have they already asked all their tedious questions?"

Joan didn't tell him that the detectives were hardly friends of hers. She wasn't sure how suggestible he was between the brain damage and the emotional trauma—very, if how easily the Joker had been able to fluster him when they spoke was any indication—and she didn't need to put the idea in his head that law enforcement meant "bad." It wasn't an association she needed in her own mind. The GPD did what they could in a city this rotten, and even if their attempts led to less than desirable decisions, such as allowing a vigilante in bat ears to practice his own idea of "justice," their efforts should be appreciated.

Unless those efforts led to Jonathan being incarcerated at Blackgate. Then, they were evil through and through. "I think they got what they needed to know."

"I suppose their standards were low," he muttered, trying to smooth out a crease in the smock. It was impossible without an iron, given the thickness of the fabric, but he kept at it as though lives hung in the balance.

"How are you, Jonathan?" Today was the most—well, not lucid, but grounded—she'd seen him ever since he'd woken up from the sedatives after the murder. He was still repeating a few words under his breath, and occasionally his eyes followed things she couldn't see, but he'd followed the conversation without going off on tangents or whispering to himself or any of his other troubling methods. She tried not to get her hopes up.

"I didn't sleep." As Linda had reported in the night log. Joan was loathe to add another medication to the chemical cocktail already swimming through his veins, but if the mania didn't subside, he'd need either tranquilizers or sleeping pills. "Doesn't animal control come through here? I don't mean the patients—though many of them would qualify as feral—but the wildlife on the grounds is completely unchecked. Someone with ligyrophobia would have gone into cardiac arrest if they were in here last night, Joan, between that dog and all the birds flying into the windows." Windows. "They didn't even leave when Linda tapped on the glass."

Because there hadn't been any birds. Linda had also mentioned that in the night log. Joan had thought that the hallucinations ended when Jonathan stopped shrieking about imaginary beings. Had he been suffering torments from his own mind this entire time, on top of everything else? She tried not to become emotionally involved in her patients' illnesses, no matter how close they'd become in their sessions—or how well they'd known each other before the commitment—but her eyes still stung with tears she refused to let fully form. "At least they didn't get inside." She paused. Maybe they had. "Right?"

Jonathan scoffed, and despite how much he'd changed since losing his license, that sound still held all the condescension it had when he was dispensing orders or advice. "Does the glass look broken to you, Joan?" There was another pause in which his smirk faded and he glanced at the windows, as if to reaffirm that they were still intact.

"No." She hoped that he could see that for himself. "They don't. How was your morning?"

"Teresa's sick, but she won't admit it." He said it while facing the nurse, and his voice carried. Teresa's face went red—it had been unusually pale before that—but she didn't look up from the paperwork she was organizing at the desk. "I told her that she ought to go home and rest before it developed into something worse." Something worse. Jonathan nodded faintly—was he reaffirming that he'd spoken?—and looked away from Teresa, pulling at his bandages with his head lowered. "She didn't take my advice. No one takes my advice anymore."

Joan had been raising her hand to guide his arm away from his injuries. She froze mid-movement, his words stinging every bit as badly as the tears she'd refused to let out. He'd reacted to the loss of his position—and his respect—before, but the reactions had always been hostile. Jonathan had shown disgust with the hospital staff for failing to recognize the genius of his experiments, and outrage over their gall in imprisoning him here and treating him as though he were sick in the head. But he'd never outwardly expressed the fear or sadness the loss of power must have caused, though she could see it sometimes in his eyes and the way he carried himself. To see that sorrow, so poignant though expressed so simply, was the final straw. Her own reservations were forgotten, overcome by the rush of sympathy that motivated her to act as she'd wanted to since Jonathan was first returned to the hospital, though the remnants of their professional relationship and her years of psychiatric training warned her not to do it.

She half-stood, leaning toward the cot in the process, and hugged him.

"Joan?" He went rigid, hands latched to her arms, though he didn't struggle to get away. Not yet. Hapnophobia was the fear of being touched. She didn't know why she remembered that, only hoped that he didn't have it. "What are you doing?"

"I'm giving you a hug." His hair smelled faintly of disinfectant, as did everything else in the infirmary.

"Oh." He shifted in a way that was just this side of squirming. "Could you…not do that?"

"All right." She relaxed her grip, and he removed his hands from her arms as she sat back down. Unprofessional, entirely the wrong way to handle an assault victim, and possibly damaging to their relationship beyond repair, but Joan had no regrets and she knew that, given the chance, she'd hug him again.

"He can't go to jail." How Karen thought carrying on this conversation was helpful, Lucy had no idea, but it was all she could do to keep from slamming her hands over her ears and screaming at the both of them to shut up. "I mean, they decided he wouldn't go to jail for poisoning his patients, didn't he?"

"Right." Victoria was trying to be reassuring. They both were. They must have noticed the dark circles under Lucy's eyes, and the way she couldn't sit still every time she arrived in the rec room to find that Dr. Crane was missing. But talking about it didn't help. It only highlighted his absence, and made the churning in her stomach even rougher. "I mean, if the papers are right, he planned this, but that doesn't mean he's sane. The poison was premeditated too, and they decided he wasn't responsible for that."

Lucy hadn't seen any police cars today, and she'd been staring out every available window since she got up. Her friends were probably right. If Dr. Crane counted as insane during his first arrest, that would carry over into the second. It had to. But that wasn't the problem. At least, not all of it.

In jail or in the infirmary, Dr. Crane still wasn't here. The last time he'd disappeared for days at a time, he'd been horribly injured. Lucy didn't know what had happened this time. Lotter was—had been—huge. Even drugged, if the stories about the cigarettes were true—Lucy supposed they were, if greatly exaggerated for the press, but she didn't want to think about it—he could have fought back. Was Dr. Crane injured again? Stuck there in terrible pain without anyone to talk to?

And if the injuries weren't physical…she didn't know what had happened in that broom closet. Nobody did, beyond that it was bloody and it had led to a heart attack. What had been said, or done—she tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry and it was all she could do not to gag. Dr. Crane was only human. She didn't want to think about what this could have done to his mind.

"—argue that it's a separate case, they could still claim post traumatic stress disorder," Victoria went on. "I mean, it's not like—"

Lucy opted to look around the room for a distraction instead of throwing her hands over her ears like a child. Orderlies in the corner. Elizabeth working in the nurses' station. The rest of the room was full of patients wandering aimlessly, glued to the television, or having their own conversation, whether with each other or with themselves. She couldn't talk to any of them. The thought of interrupting a conversation—particularly between people she didn't know—made her feel even sicker.

Thomas Schiff was sitting in front of a jigsaw puzzle, though he made no effort to assemble it. He hadn't talked to anyone since Dr. Crane had stopped coming in.

Lucy took a deep breath and turned back to her friends.

"Well, I know they weren't married," Karen said, wrinkling her nose. She'd started taking prenatal vitamins; not because she was pregnant, but because they were supposed to increase the thickness of her hair. It hadn't taken effect so far. "But isn't there something like battered wife syndrome, but not for couples? I thought there was a case where—"

She turned back to Thomas Schiff. He was still sitting alone, staring at the pieces as if he was trying to translate the Rosetta Stone. He had competed with her for Dr. Crane's attention and often monopolized it. He'd had conversations and even physical contact with her doctor while she'd had a few awkward words and stilted movements when she touched his shoulder. She didn't like the schizophrenic. But she couldn't help but pity him.

What was it Dr. Crane used to say about stepping out of her comfort zone?

Victoria said something to her, but Lucy ignored it as she stood, trying to keep her legs from shaking. There was a chair on the other side of Thomas Schiff's table and she started for it, even though it seemed miles away. Crossing a room to talk with a madman. It wasn't an impressive feat by any means, but she told herself Dr. Crane would approve.

She sat down as Thomas Schiff looked up. Lucy forced a smile onto her face and hoped it looked genuine. "Hi. Can I help?"

He stared and, after a pause so long that she nearly fainted, nodded, pushing half of the stack of unassembled pieces toward her. "Here." Her stomach ached a little less.

The Joker had decided that Ruth would have to suffer.

Not majorly. She was, after all, one of the only decent conversationalists in Arkham, with the others being Jonathan, Linda, and Teresa. But he rarely got to see the nurses, and his access to the Scarecrow was surely revoked after this whole "killing Lotter" thing. He still needed to get Jonny cake in return for that. Could scarecrows digest cake? Leaving it sit in their insides might cause them to rot. Well, he'd get him some sort of gift. No, if he killed Ruthie, things would become hopelessly boring. But a broken arm or two wouldn't kill her.

Though it might just might make her quit as his psychiatrist. Ruth could be touchy that way. Maybe just a bruised rib. He had to do something, or it would send the message that Drugs Are Good, and that was unacceptable.

He couldn't do anything at the moment—the orderlies' hold on him had grown tighter than a clingy girlfriend's ever since they'd stopped with the straitjacket—but he'd have his chance outside. Ruthie let her guard down while he was around Gilda, apparently assuming that, like a prepubescent girl, he was incapable of doing anything but giggling and melting when he was faced with puppies. She sat beside him, and it wouldn't be hard to move from petting to jamming her fingers. That should teach her about getting too close to wild dogs, and it wasn't extreme enough to make her storm off forever. It would be a good lesson. Ruth ought to appreciate it.

"Are you still tired?"

"Not as much." The signs by the doctor's doors were still wavering and illegible unless he stopped and squinted, but he'd stopped nodding off whenever he sat still too long. Which would have been a good sign, except that it meant he was adjusting to the drugs, which was the exact opposite of what was good.

"Have you noticed any changes to your temperament?" Usually, by this time in their walk, Ruthie already had a cigarette in hand. She was more relaxed now. That was no fun at all. "Feeling any less tense?"

The Joker tried to shrug, only to have a sudden and sharp reminder that his arms were tightly held to his sides. At least the pain added variety. He had slept soundly through the night again, but that was indicative of anything, beyond that Zachary was still shirking in his "wake the clown" duties. And also that Hadley had most likely not made another visit. He didn't have any new bruises, anyway. It's all fun and games until somebody pisses themselves.

Ruth opened the door. The Joker narrowed his eyes as he was hauled outside, scanning the yard for signs of movement. Gilda wasn't there yet. The orderlies released his arms as the door clicked shut behind him. The Joker cracked his neck, shoving his shoulders back to work out the kinks the restraint had caused, then took a few steps into the yard and let himself fall down, rolling around in the grass.

"Joker." She was smoking now. "We've talked about this."

"It's fine, Ruthie. I'm, uh, immune to Lyme disease."

"Sit up."

"The eye traces movement better than stuff standing still, ya know." Speaking of eyes, his hair had fallen in his. Split ends. It was to be expected. "Dogs have enough vision issues what with the lack of ability to see colors and all. This is for Gilda's benefit."

She knelt beside him. No, kicking her leg would be too obvious. "You're getting your uniform stained."

"Oh. What a tragedy."

"Come on, Joker." He stopped long enough to register that she was holding a hand out in front of him. Wow. He bit his lip to restrain his giggles. Talk about walking into the dragon's mouth. "Sit up."

Struggling to conceal a smirk, he scanned the yard in an attempt to look nonchalant as he raised his arm to take hers, slowly sitting up. It wouldn't take more than a jerk of his wrist to dislocate hers, or jam her fingers. The second was probably the better option, but the first would make such an interesting sound when—

The Joker stopped dead, ice forming in the pit of his stomach and spreading through the rest of his body in less than a second.

The eye did track movement better than objects at rest, which was why he hadn't noticed at first. He'd assumed Gilda was out of the yard, but she wasn't. She was lying toward the bushes by the parking lot, completely still. No twitch of the ears or tail. No rise or fall of the chest.

"Joker? What's wrong?"

So Hadley had made him pay for it after all.

AN: Ligyrophobia is the fear of loud sounds.

I don't actually believe that I have any reviewers who'd flame me for this, but given the emotional blow I just dealt at the end of this chapter, I'd like to paraphrase Stephen King in regards to the time he killed off a dog in The Dead Zone for anyone whom I've just really upset:

a) Hadley isn't real.

b) The dog isn't real.

c) I have never in my life harmed my own pets, or anyone else's, and

d) (This is the point where I stop paraphrasing Stephen King) I feel terrible enough about it as it is.