Thursday

11:00 am

"Isley, you know the protocol."

I heard the door guard speak, and I sighed, raising from my sitting position. Lately I'd noticed how slender and lanky my arms had become; now I paid attention to the greyish colour I was slowly turning. I needed sun, the human part of me needed Vitamin D, and the plant part of me needed UV rays for photosynthesis. It was cruel and I swore I would make them pay. Hmph, I'd been incarcerated once and I hadn't broken out at all. I'd attempted once, but I'd been too weak without my plants that I was knocked out clean by a security guard. That was when they'd upped the security, provided for by WayneTech.

I placed my hands on the two set areas on the wall, and closed my eyes as the visitor stepped through the security doors. It was Dr Quinzel I could already tell, her tulip perfume flowed at least a few feet before her. God I missed tulips, I used to tend to a patch of them in Robinson Park before I was incarcerated. They'd most likely died by now.

"Red, you can make yourself comfortable." Quinzel told me, and I scoffed.

Gee thanks for the honour, I felt like remarking albeit I kept it to myself. I removed my hands from the glass and sat kneeling on my mattress.

The doctor sat on the designated chair and pulled out her notepad once again, with that cheap black recording device. My past doctor also carried the same design of device and so I was used to the routine. The device was used to record the session so it could be assessed by the doctor later, but also served as a potential piece of evidence so the doctor and the patient could feel safer. Of course Batman had access to the logs as well.

She pressed start. "Dr Quinzel. Session 001 with Patient 1640, otherwise known by Pamela Isley. September 23rd, 11:03am." Quinzel began.

The pen clicked by her hand. "So, Red, how would you like to begin? Is there any topics you've been thinking about recently?" she added, looking up at me.

I stared at the inky nib touching the paper of the notepad. "How about the fact you decided to bring dead organisms to see a partly plant patient?" I replied, coldly.

She followed my stare back to the paper, and her hands gripped slightly tighter. "Ah! How thoughtless of me, I assure you I didn't bring it on purpose to offend you-" she began, worriedly.

My back grew straighter. "Offend?! How would you feel if someone was waving about a slice of human, the texture of meat, flesh and bone still clear on the creamy pulp? You'd be disgusted." I cut in, my brow tightening though not too much as I didn't want the asylum to feel they had to sedate me. I had a high tolerance to almost everything chemical and so when I'd tried to escape they'd given me a dangerously high dose of some kind of benzodiazepine. It had apparently knocked me out for at least ten hours, and it took days before I stopped puking it up. Serves to say I'd learnt my lesson.

Dr Quinzel chewed her lip and looked rather pathetic. "If it helps, it's recyclable, no more trees had to be cut down to make this... I'll definitely not make this mistake after today." she apologised, closing the notepad and clicking the pen before replacing them both in her white doctor's coat. "What did Dr Mooney do in terms of taking notes? I assume you didn't let her jot them down on paper as I just tried?"

I smirked. "No, I didn't approve of her writing on paper so she would bring a tablet to write on instead. Of course we never really discussed matters that she would need to take notes of, we ended up restoring to general banter."

Quinzel's mouth fixed into a thin line. "Yes, I listened to the tapes - you toyed with her over her husband and children."

My eyes rolled. "It was all smoke and mirrors, I can't actually do anything whilst I'm in this cell. Do people really think I have guys or goons on the outside doing my work? No! I'm not like your Riddlers and Jokers - it's just me. I'm more of an ecoterrorist than a 'super criminal' as the city puts it."

She paused. "You organise all of the crimes and riots you've incited?"

My face relaxed and I lay back so I was looking more at the ceiling, so she may feel like she was losing me. "Yes. The plants give their opinions of course, but at the end of the day all of the planning is put forward by me."

"Ah but could one not say that that plants are like the mindless goons I've heard you criticise? They are obedient to you, and yet you can hear them speak?"

I hmphed. So now she had used the topic to poke her way into the plant part of me, something I now fully understood but I predicted she wouldn't. It didn't hurt to tell her, however, I would rather babble on all day about my biology than stay silent and have doctors physically dissect me.

"No. Those plants are simply an extension of me, like a bionic arm would be to an amputee, like an extension of my neural interface. So when they give opinions or give their thoughts, they are my thoughts from some part of my brain - conscious or unconscious. Goons are useless and we would not be on the same wavelength, the plants always are. And so I love them and want to protect them as a mother loves the foetus growing inside of her, as it knows it is too weak to survive on its own."

The doctor looked like she really needed to write this down, and I grinned to myself. She shook it off. "Like a mother and her children huh? Err... why then, Red, have you allowed your plants to be killed to allow you a getaway in the past? I don't know any mother that would leave their child for their own gain, it's usually the other way around."

I grimaced. She was referring to an incident before I was incarcerated where I'd created a wall of thorns and vines to trap Batman when he'd been close to catching me. He'd cut them down with one of those Batarangs, though by that time I'd escaped to a safe place. I felt every stab of that metal through those vines as I'd hurried away, no matter how far I'd gotten, my brain was linked that deep.

"I never feel positive when one of my plants die, that's the first thing. Secondly, the mother and child analogy falls apart in this scenario as a mother doesn't feel all the pain the child does; the mother isn't protecting the child because they're afraid to feel the child's pain as theirs, but because of a bonding instinct present in the majority of mammals. I am the plants, the plants are me, I feel everything they feel, they feel everything I feel. We are extensions of each other.

"Tell me this, doctor: if you were faced with a high stakes situation and you needed to escape, yet you found yourself handcuffed, what would you do? Would you let yourself be enveloped by the outside force, or would you bite off your thumb?"

She paused to think, naturally looking down at her own thumbs. "If it came to it, I'd bite off my thumb... what does this have to with it?"

The corner of my mouth lifted at my expected answer. "The human brain will not let the host bite its own thumb off, or at least ninety nine percent of the time. However if you face a situation where it is the rational decision, you can bring yourself to bite it clean off, easy, albeit you will be in a lot of pain, and could scar yourself mentally as well as physically. I am very difficultly parted with my family of plants, but if the time calls for it I can remove myself from them like a thumb. It pains me to do it but also to remember it."

Dr Quinzel's mouth fell agape and she had to catch herself and shut it. "I- wow that's- I hope you don't find it insulting but I think I'm beginning to understand."

I raised an eyebrow and brought my head back down to finally look at her. "Why would I be offended?" My words were surprised, and not many things surprised me anymore.

"You have a very impressive set of credentials before your accident, I was afraid you might perceive me as dumb."

Now that was interesting. Of course I knew my past deserved some applause: I'd graduated high school early and accumulated both a PhD in Phytochemistry and Molecular Biology.

"I've encountered stupider." I commented in reply, pushing my hair back. Usually my hair would respond and wriggle in its own way but nowadays - in this godforsaken asylum - it lay dead and lifeless. Oak sap would do it good.

Quinzel gave a smile and this and I regretted not telling her she was the dumbest human I'd ever met. She wasn't, but you never could say good stuff about these white coats, even if I used to be one.

She cleared her throat. "So, you mentioned before that it's only you and the plants, who are basically you, that do the planning and committing of crimes." she reinstated.

I raised an eyebrow. "Yes, why are you having memory trouble, Doctor? I know a branch of the Salvia genus that could fix that, if you'd be inclined." I retorted sarcastically.

Her face twitched but she continued on. "Do you ever get lonely, Red?"

My lip fell loose but I snapped it back up, hoping she hadn't noticed my reaction. Oh but she had.

"You might be a large majority plant, however you're still part human, and humans are social creatures. These months in Arkham along with you living on your own for what I assume has been a while, must have lead to you feeling very lonely. And being lonely would have a detrimental effect on your rehabilitation."

I exhaled loudly and sat up straighter. "I would like to finish the session here."

Her eyes opened slightly. "You uh-?"

I dipped my head so I was looking through my hair. "I am finished giving responses, it is my knowledge that a patient can stop a session anytime they want."

She moved forwards. "It's usually only when the patient is feeling threatened. Red, why are you threatened by me asking you whether you're lonely?"

Because I am, a part of my mind yelled and so I bit my lip hard in response. "I would like to be left in peace. Now please leave."

Dr Quinzel's face fell to neutral, and she stood up slowly. "Have a good day, Red. I'll see you next Tuesday hopefully."

I gave her a nod, though I didn't look up at her as she left.