Ah, I seem to be adding more players to the game and am finding it difficult to keep up with my own mind. But, as it is, that can hardly be a bad thing, if only it forces me to write and up-date more often.
-:-
You are confusing stubbornness for strength, my dear…and the people will not like you for it.
-The Young Victoria.
Deceiving Looks-:-
Walking down the cold stone hallways that both are and are not at all like the first Arkham—the one she really missed because it was not so confined and resentful and the patients may have gotten out occasionally to wreak havoc, but when they came back they actually tended to behave, but in the place she stood in now, looking out of a chicken-wired, bar crossed window it just felt even more maddening and stifling—Joan Leland in her really very shapely figure for a woman of seventy-nine, looked over the file she had of the newest patient that (surprise of surprises) the staff that worked in New Arkham could not handle beyond leaving her in her cell (cage) and feeding her every day. Dr. Peyton Riley had called up the retired therapist when it quickly became apparent that…Dee Dee—that was all the detectives could get out of her when she was confined to the station and questioned for a real name; joy—was simply amused by the staff and would offer up no real session at all.
Dr. Riley figured that since Leland had treated all of the first (possibly most honorable and dangerous) Rogues Gallery, including the Joker and Harley Quinn, Joan would be able to get something out of the teenage—probably teenage, as far as the medical examiner could tell from the X-Rays and Kat scans they had taken of the girl when she entered the system under a still unknown name because as sure as they were standing nobody had actually laid hands on her—Queen of the Rogues. Probable and most likely, if Joan really did get her to actually speak, Dr. Riley and all the rest would make Joan's working with the girl more permanent. Dr. Leland didn't want to deal with another chalk skinned psychopath so late in her life, but…she had a feeling that there was no other choice and the part of her that still cared for all living things couldn't let her walk away.
Coming to the end of the hallway that lead to the staircase used by the staff to walk down to the cold basement that housed the newest Rogues—Blight, Spellbinder, Inque and such—she keyed in the code for the little electronic pad housed in a hutch of a post beside the door and was swiftly buzzed in once her code registered. It took her a try and a pull and a straining of muscles in her arms she rarely used in the last couple years since her great nephew had become a teen and so on, but the door opened and she was walking down the stairs, dust skittering under her dress for each step downward.
'Sort of feels like Silence of the Lambs,' Joan thought in silent amusement, buttoning the top button of her doctor's jacket as the chill of the shadows moved over her and she found the beginning of the cells, lined up and showing the patients across from one other patient each (just like Old Arkham, she recalled, so they wouldn't feel isolated and get even more violent or try and hurt themselves) with special glass doors that technically weren't glass, but she didn't bother to find out the real name of the see-through solid.
There was one more gate she had to pass through, all titanium bars, electric internal wiring and a fingerprint/retinal scanning/voice recognizing software analysis lock to let only authorized personnel through. She set the data-pad down a moment and allowed the locks to recognize her, saying in a slight robotic voice meant to mimic a woman from Brooklyn, "Recognized: Leland, Joan. Please enter."
She picked up the pad quickly and walked through the opening the bars and security allowed.
It was oddly warm once she entered into the lions' housing area, but she soon found why when she trotted along the first cell, housing the acrid green and deceitful black glowing Blight, reading a data-pad of his own with a specialized glove so he wouldn't melt anything. He didn't even look up as the small woman moved swiftly by, but that wasn't so surprising as she recalled that he had once been Derek Powers and probably had a superiority complex the size of a small planet.
She then slid by Mad Stan—odd that he was allowed a small dog in maximum security, but Dr. Riley said it kept him under control, so it made sense—and that J-Man she'd seen on the news. Stan seemed nice enough, probably drugged up with the way he was looking with glassy eyes at the brunette across from him, but the makeup-less sex toy of Joker's Daughter was frowning spectacularly at the bigger man; his arms and legs were crossed and he looked even more like a teenager that she knew he was, smoking a just-lit cigarette. His dark eyes followed her carefully as Joan continued onwards, looking over a couple more people in the cells, but at least he didn't yell at her.
The last two cells before the last one on the right were empty completely, save for the highly offensive smells of bleach and cleaning detergents still clinging to the empty roll-out mattresses that occupied the bolted down bed frames. A chair was sitting innocently in the middle of the floor in front of the last—and farthest away from the security door for a good reason, she supposed—cell.
She came into the light shining out of the glass of the cell and found within the confined space was the young woman she had been reading about. Joan stiffened on the inside, but didn't at all show it on the outside as her dark eyes met the face of a beautiful woman Joan hadn't seen in over forty years with the coloring and obvious mania of a man she hadn't seen in that exact amount of time as well.
"Hello there, Dr. Leland."
If Joan was surprised that the little creature knew her name, she didn't show it at all and just sat down, pad in her lap and a determination she hadn't felt in a good long while coursing through her to channel out the mild fear building in the pit of her gut at the smile directed at her.
"Hello, Miss Dee Dee," Joan greeted back, formal but not as unkind as she had hoped she could sound.
The patient-woman-creature-doppelganger lay with her stomach flush against the bed and spread of it, legs out behind her with one ankle hooked across the other, wearing the simple white suit that all the other high priority inmates were to wear, especially when allowed out during group and such. Her arms were tucked under her a little like a pet cat, fingers painted a kind of dizzying blue with angry maroon splotches here and there tapping against the sides of her breasts—perhaps to make Leland uncomfortable?—in a one, two, three form a person could imagine against piano keys. Limp green tendrils that were her hair were bound up into a loose tail and made her look like a teenager, indeed.
"Dr. Riley tells me that you haven't responded to any of the staff's inquiries and have outright refused to properly answer any questions," the elder woman started, pad lighting up and showing off what little Riley could get out of the girl; not a whole lot and this, Joker's Daughter seemed to know as she didn't even bother changing position in her neck, eyes or the rest of her to peek over Joan's hands.
"Oh, so she called up a pro? That's good," the girl answered back, that sickening little smile making Joan's skin want to peel away from her sinew and bones, wad up into one of those links made for sausages and be used to strangle the girl with, "Maybe you can get them to give me some pencils and paper. It's terribly boring in here, and they seem to think I'd actually try and hurt myself or someone else."
"Would you try and do that?"
"Not really," she chuckled, clucking her tongue on the roof of her mouth and brining one hand back to grip onto one of her tendrils and weave it along and between her white-white-white fingers just enough that Joan could make out the pretty blue veins trying to show off with the movement of her tendons and flesh, "At least, not when I'm feeling down. On Sundays I like to paint. Are you going to write that in that pretty little data-pad?"
Joan took out her digital pen but only folded it into the curve of her fingers and palm, not moving it about, "Should I?"
Joker's Daughter smiled, "You might as well. Everyone else is going to find out that I am very much sedate on Sundays, so you might as well write it down before they do and put in instructions on what to do so I don't knock someone's head in just so I can see some colors on these ugly walls."
"I thought you said you weren't violent like that?"
Here the girl tilted her head as far back as she could, hands and arms folding out like the chairs of a fold-out table and Joan could hear the bones in her back pop just before she hoped off the bed and her feet tapped on the floor, hands snapping and making little clips like in the Blues night clubs Dr. Leland used to go to when she was much younger and less jaded a genius of a doctor. It was frightening how similar she was to the man Joan often didn't spend a day not thinking about in some way or another before pushing out of her head to get on with her life.
"I said 'Not really', Dr. Leland," she corrected, her voice showing inflections of a Queens accent and made a bit of acid rise in Joan's throat, "I'm a female with psychopathic tendencies who prefers love…no, not love; more like sex to a slap in the face. But on Sundays, it would be better for me to have something like chalk or a pencil in my hand, rather than nothing but my words and annoyance at anyone that might try to come and see me."
"What is so important about Sundays, miss… Is there something I can call you besides Dee Dee? That seems a bit juvenile, even if you are obviously a little young to be here."
The girl with green hair and a moonlight complexion thought the question over a little before she smirked back at the woman and lay back down on the bed, not looking at Joan, "Tell Miss Doc Riley that if I get my art supplies and get to keep seeing you, maybe I can give you my last name."
Joan frowned and tapped her pen on her pad, not quite annoyed but close, "I'm not even sure that I'll be coming back here, Dee Dee. I'll tell her your request, but if you don't tell me who you are now, I am not so desperate to know as you might think."
Dee Dee—if she wanted to be called that, then fine—raised both hands toward the ceiling of her cell, thumbs hooked so that she could move them in a flapping motion that would be great in the half light with shadows coming in the right direction and distance (it did make the sign of a bat, which didn't surprise the good doctor), a still accent riddled chuckle and answer coming out of her mouth back at the dark skinned lady, "I am someone who has heard about you for a good long time. If you really want to be so formal, how about you call me Miss JD? Easy, yes? If you come back, I'll talk to you; you have history with Arkham in the old days and, though she may have a mob boss for a daddy, Doc Riley doesn't have a clue about anything. She doesn't get the rules, she doesn't get innuendos and she certainly doesn't get any of us."
Joan noticed that a few cells down, the young woman's lover gave a short bark of laughter, obviously eavesdropping, unlike the rest and it put Joan in the mind of fifty years ago when Joker had just shown up and Harley had thrown away so much to be with him, abuser or no. The girl had a point…and Joan didn't really like that.
Joan turned off the data-pad and got off of the chair, picking it up by its back and moving it to settle against the wall. She hadn't come down into the bowels of hell very happy, but she was going to leave with something to tell Riley and that was something. That, and a sudden renewed vigor in her blood.
"Very well. I'll see you again, my fine lady."
