JMJ

Chapter Six

Stopping Time

"…That was when I decided," said Jervis lightly, "after my escape, of course, that the best way to deal with Batman was not revenge, so much, but simply getting rid of him. Even in that, however, his will proved more than anyone's. I should have taken off the mask instead of being benevolent enough to allow him to keep his identity with his dreams, but perhaps discovering what comes through that door is a garden of misery I may never wish to truly discover however much it taunts one. Perhaps it's better that way, after all."

Jonathan blinked, sipping his tea a little before putting it gently back down.

"My condolences," Jonathan said, though with much reserve and not withholding his suspicion yet. "About your sister."

The tale may or may not have been true. He guessed that it was. Jervis had once or twice let the name "Meryl" slip past his lips before instead of "Alice", and that would explain the mystery of that, but it did not explain anything else. That was at least three years ago now, and Jervis had had plenty of ups and downs since then.

The face Jervis gave as a response reflected mostly bitterness, as though he would rather Jonathan had said nothing at all about her, but he soon closed his eyes, took a long sip of tea and turned away again. With a sniff, he fluttered his eyes back open, and as Jervis said nothing, Jonathan spoke again, calmly.

"Have you ever looked to see if she is alright now, though?" Jonathan paused. "Or don't you wish to know?"

"She survived physically," remarked Jervis with a shrug that was meant to look careless, but his expression did not hide his frustration. "Emotionally, mentally… the damage is no doubt permanent. It's inevitable now."

"The wound could heal in time," Jonathan replied with the utmost tact in tone. "Especially if you—"

Roughly, Jervis held up his hand, and gave another sniff. "It's too late for that. Too late for that."

Jonathan shrugged. "Then, excuse me, Mr. Tetch, but what is the point of this? Batman's identity?"

Jervis fidgeted again uncomfortably. He opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it again after nothing intelligible came out. Only a bit of a mutter. Lifting up his tea again, he hid the awkwardness in another sip.

With a sigh, Jonathan stood up. Jervis gave a start and slammed his teacup down.

"I can't go through with this anymore," Jonathan said. "You're not going to tell me why I'm here."

"No!" cried Jervis leaping to his feet frantically. "No, you can't! Please!"

Jonathan glared back defiantly. His eyes flicked to the guard, but before he could say anything, Jervis threw himself around the table in front of Jonathan.

"You don't understand!" sobbed Jervis.

"That you mind controlled the staff, again?" demanded Jonathan.

Jervis choked. "No! No!"

He grabbed him now. Jonathan stepped back and cringed, afraid of letting those nimble little claws of Jervis' from getting behind his head, but they didn't. He just grabbed his arms and grabbed them tightly as he looked with terror into Jonathan's eyes. His teeth set tighter than Jonathan's and his breath as shallow as his blue eyes fluttered with frazzled panic before the tears began to ooze from the corners.

"Please, don't go! Please!" sobbed Jervis.

Jonathan closed his mouth and glowered under a very hefty scowling brow as he grabbed Jervis' arms to throw him off, but just as he was about to, Jervis threw the top of his head into Jonathan's chest as one might pound one's head into a wall. Though, he let go of his arms himself. Instead he grabbed the edges of Jonathan's coat and sobbed like a small child.

"You're right, your right!" Jervis choked. "I can't go on! I can't go on alone!"

"You still haven't said what your intentions are," said Jonathan holding his arms away from the weeping mass as though not sure how to respond exactly to it; he squinted with distaste.

"—Not without you doing me a favor," Jervis went on as though he had not heard. "Please! Please… for old time's sake. Please."

"What favor?"

Swallowing with difficulty on his swelled snuffles, Jervis lifted his head from Jonathan, who was stepping back another pace to get away from him anyway. He shivered and shook. Then he said, "I need you to respond to Bertie's letter for me."

"What?" Jonathan demanded.

Jervis held it up. Jonathan snatched it away and read the contents. It was a simple enough letter from a brother who had not seen his younger sibling for a long while. Well, not that Jonathan would know anything about what a letter from a brother was like having had no brother of his own except a stepbrother that might as well have been a stranger, but Bertram Tetch obviously knew his brother from the past at any rate. He simply asked, in a very intelligent manner that he wished to help. He wished to talk to him even if over the phone. It was a simple letter, but Bertie was trying to reach out, which was rare for any inmate at Arkham Asylum. It usually ended in disaster anyway or was something talked out of. Everyone knew how Harvey Dent's old fiancée had tried to visit a couple of times before she had been talked into moving on.

"I can't answer this," retorted Jonathan. "It's addressed to you. I believe you're making up another excuse."

"It's over!" hissed Jervis. "At least it will be before long. My uncle died in madness. With the lithium giving him his last heart attack, my grandfather died at the age of thirty. My mother died from an overdose, a heart attack. My sister… Well, the golden days of childhood-fancy never lasts forever."

"So now, you're dying of a heart attack?" Jonathan asked. "You don't act like someone with a weak heart."

Jervis shook his head and growled under his breath. "I will before long. It is a family trait, especially once the drugs are involved. It is inevitable."

Then after a brief wistful pause, Jervis went on, though calmer this time, "We played a game that was hers when we were little and Bertie had thought himself too good for childish fancy. She usually was Alice. I usually was the Mad Hatter. We used to play with our mother. She invented the game. Meryl's game this time was one in which the Oysters escaped, and each of the four oysters was a child of my mother's, so she played the part of Alice and herself and Bertie. I played the part of the Hatter agreeing to help in his silly way in exchange for more tea things for the table while being myself and Caleb. The Walrus was my father in my mind, and the world was our escape. That was not how Meryl thought of it, but that is how I did. We played all the time in Wonderland and that was just one of hers. She made up stories all the time for us to play based on Mum—m—my mother's stories. When my mother died, she told her best before I felt myself too old for them…and pushed her away for my worldly pursuits.

"…What a Wide Beautiful Wonderland, I dreamed the world to be, but I never left Wonderland. Not really. Because the world is Wonderland and Wonderland is not the place of Childhood Dreams so much as a child's view of the Real World and how mad it truly is. Once we leave our childhood clarity, then we are all mad, or else we would not be here. It's my fault she lost hers. She dreamt of being a music teacher and a part-time freelance illustrator. She was nearly doing both by the time I left England. Her spirit like that of a robin on the wing…her love for children…her love of life…

"I…I thought Alice— Alice Pleasance— was like her…she was one of the only people I told anything about my life before. Well! In my quiet way with little speech involved. I told her she was a lot like my sister. It made her laugh that laugh like tinkling bell. She may not have been like Meryl exactly. In fact, it may be that she was more innocent still and foolishly-so to think me just a concerned, cheerful little friend out to make her night a happier night when Billy caught a temporary bout of cold feet at her proposal for more serious relations. She was not the careful, candid and clear natured child of Carroll's Alice. Like Meryl was. Though in the end, I did destroy them both the same. Oh, would that Time would forgive me! Oh, would that the world could stop spinning round on its merry race of madness and I watch it from a tea time that never, ever ends…"

Jonathan waited a moment, and when it seemed Jervis had said all that he wished to say or at least had begun thinking instead of speaking, he exhaled for a breath he had not realized he had been holding. His shoulders eased, which he did not know he had not released already.

"Jervis," said Jonathan.

Jervis seemed to have forgotten Jonathan was there, and upon hearing the voice, he jumped and began to choke on his sobs again. He grabbed Jonathan a second time, and Jonathan could not help but roll his eyes as Jervis sobbed like a very tired little boy.

"Perhaps a heart attack would not be so bad!" he wailed. "If only it meant it would not make me a victim of Time at all, if no one else! A watch with too much butter!"

"Get a hold of yourself," Jonathan said firmly as he removed Jervis, promptly from his coat.

"I can't, that's why I'm here!" Jervis retorted.

"You can so! I've seen you control yourself to get what you want before!" Jonathan snapped, bristling. Then he stopped as a thought occurred to him. "That's your…"

"What?" demanded Jervis.

"That's why you're here," said Jonathan. He spoke this almost gently, and Jervis looked at Jonathan through his gobbing tears.

"Because in the end that is why there is a difference between a lunatic asylum and a high security prison for death row," said Jonathan in a tone that he used to use for his lectures as a professor. "Arkham has suffered the fate of Bedlam, which itself was at one time the Priory of the New Order of our Lady of Bethlehem, a hospital in the medieval sense of a place to house the needy with charity before it became the dark place of horror it slowly but surely degraded into. But it was originally a hospital…meaning one day you were meant to come out and not as an escapee as in Arkham now, but as a well person. Bedlam became the Bethlehem Royal Hospital. Arkham is remembering its past now as well after it's time as the Joker's Hotel."

"From which the inmates can check out any time they wish," muttered Jervis, "but can never leave their status as an inmate and a Rogue."

"That's not Carroll, I do believe," remarked Jonathan.

All the dry talk had calmed Jervis somewhat from the emotion he had been feeling as he listened, perhaps only half-heartedly, but listened nonetheless. When Jonathan commented now, Jervis sighed disgruntled and sat back down in his chair to sip his cold tea.

"So…" said Jonathan after a moment.

"I understand what you are saying, Professor Crane, but even if I did leave with a bill of sanity…"

"You think I had any place to go back to anymore than you?"

"Of course not," muttered Jervis. "Not 'back to'. I know you've never spoken of your past to me beyond your time at university, but I know how it makes you feel, and I know it is a dry husk for the Scarecrow."

"Perhaps," said Jonathan.

Jervis closed his eyes as he set down his cup and rubbed his temples. He leaned over the table.

"If you intend on making a decision, make one," said Jonathan, "but if you can't make one now, I believe our time is up. You may not have ever fully believed you were the Mad Hatter from Carroll's comedic classic children's tale, but you are letting your own Hatter run your life, after all, with emotions more than fear in one big knot together. You certainly believe yourself to be your Mad Hatter destroying all you used to care about. And even though, I'm sure a myriad of doctors has already told you plenty of all this already and with more psychobabble than I'd care to repeat—"

"No," said Jervis rather darkly and without looking at him. "You are the first to quite explain it like that."

"Hmph," said Jonathan. "Well, I wish you the best decision, but I can't help you with it. This was only a payment for the friendship that you've always offered. Though, I may have been the March Hare to your Hatter and turned Messenger now or however you please to imagine it, but March has not been so long past that I don't still have my own problems."

Jervis did not answer. He did not look up.

"Good afternoon to you, Sir," said Jonathan.

Jervis' eyes flashed then as Jonathan approached the door, but the guard did not open it. In fact, he blocked his way. Jonathan stepped back, but he was not surprised as he turned around to Jervis.

"I knew you were mind-controlling them!" he snapped. "If you dare put a chip anywhere near me—!"

"Shut up!" snapped Jervis.

"Release me now!" snarled Jonathan.

Jervis made a face and crossed his arms.

"Dr. Leland, come forth!" Jervis called turning from him. "You, Jared, allow her through then guard her. Pete. You also."

Shaking with rage Jonathan turned to watch the guard open the door. Dr. Leland stepped inside guarded by another guard and the door guard. He moved towards the first guard Pete in an attempt to remove at least someone's chip himself, but the guard shoved him down with all the concentrated, unbridled strength at the Mad Hatter's disposal and as blindly as a robot.

"It was a subtle control. I could not have full control without being noticed— not without my full band; though it does have a default mode, which I just activated that makes my slaves completely vegetative and blankly prone to my will. It cannot be undone without shutting the whole system down and thus destroying what I built up with gentle suggestion earlier." Jervis touched his finger beneath his hair. Just above his ear, he revealed to Jonathan his main control chip hooking around the ear and blinking a tiny red light.

"You're not going to drag me into you're madness! I won't be held as an accomplice in this!" cried Jonathan.

"It wasn't originally the plan to go this far with it."

"It never is."

Jervis looked down sadly, "I went too far playing up my misery by pouring a cup of tea on my head. I could have brought you without the control, if I hadn't. But after that, she decided it best to wait until I was ready.

"Ready? Ready for what? It had to be now, I thought. Was I wrong?"

With a raised brow and a continued snarl, Jonathan lifted himself upright as Dr. Leland stepped up to Jervis' chair as a servant to the throne of a king. Jervis was certainly seating himself like a king too as he glanced up at her and stood up from it with grace. His face was grim— almost momentous, but Jonathan was not about to be fooled by Jervis' emotional soup.

"You're right!" said Jervis in a passionate and regal tone of voice; he glanced down at Jonathan looking as if he was about to lunge at him in his rage. "I am afraid. Afraid of what may come, not brave enough to trust anyone but myself, and even myself— I'm not myself! And even if I thought I knew who I was this morning, I've changed so many times since then! But then change is only a part of life as you so eloquently put it. Is it time to change again? After all, it was the March Hare who wished it rather be supper than the ever-tea time punished upon the Hatter for angering Time himself! After all the more, I suppose you'd much rather be having supper in some restaurant in Gotham with your highly sprung wife than teatime on Arkham Hill."

Wife?

That made Jonathan pause a moment with eyes wide in shock.

He knew about that?

Did everyone?

No! No, probably not everyone. Jervis could easily have asked Dr. Leland all about Jonathan Crane's activities after Arkham. He could have even asked for the information about where he was living now, which was not at all a comfortable thought. He had never been afraid of Jervis, but he felt a little tremor prickling his mind now.

"And the time has come!" Jervis went on as theatrical as an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company speech by King Lear.

"For what?!" snapped Jonathan coming back to his rage.

He was really going to lunge at Jervis now. Maybe throw a chair at him

But Jervis was not speaking to Jonathan. He was facing the blank-faced Dr. Leland, and his words were very purposely directed to her.

"…To finish the story yourself!"