"Explain."

His voice was tight and restrained, and he could almost hear the man's quivering on the other end of the line even if he knew that likely wasn't the case. But Harper did sound terrified, as he should be, and that helped. Marginally.

"It—it's just like I said, sir, we don't know what the fuck happened—"

"Language."

Dr. Hugo Strange was furious. More than that, he was outraged—at his employees' bumbling stupidity, the failure to deal with what should have been a simple problem in a quiet way, and that it had even been a problem in the first place.

Too much had gone wrong in the last two months alone, and Strange's patience had nearly reached its limit.

"S-Sorry," Harper said, caught off guard. The degenerates Strange was forced to employ had their uses, but he did not appreciate their uncouth nature. "Right. Yeah. Uh, the broad went in, Mike and Sam were there, someone else approached and the camera died before we can see what he's doing. And… and now…"

And now the entire warehouse was burned to the ground. Only ash remained; no trace of what had happened and why. Strange was left to guess, and it was not an option he enjoyed entertaining.

"I grasped the basic concept, you buffoon." Just like he had to imagine Harper's quivering, he also envisioned the flinches and wincing Harper would have done if Strange had deigned to see him in person. "Explain how you lost contact with them, how the camera stopped working, and how you managed to fail a simple task with nothing to show for it."

He didn't mean for it to come out in a snarl, his accent serving to enunciate the sneer on his face, but it did and he wished he could wring Harper's neck. Grip tightening around the handset of his office phone as a makeshift surrogate, watching the seconds tick down on his office clock, his teeth ground together. If his men couldn't explain this to him, then he couldn't explain it to—

"Right, sir. Yeah—yeah, you got it, I'll get back to you right away—"

Strange hung up, handset landing home with an audible clang. Removing his glasses, he rubbed at his eyes. A sigh transformed into a growl. Running Arkham Asylum was growing more complicated rather than expedient, simple, as he had hoped. He would be sure to deal with Harper personally. And, if Mike and Sam were still alive, he would make them wish they weren't.

This is what happens when employing amateurs, he thought, lip curling.

Up until this point, it had been too much of a risk to deploy the TYGER guards, but now he was beginning to see that if he wanted something done correctly, more austere measures would be required. Clearance would be necessary, but he believed he could make a convincing case. Depending on what had transpired in the thirty-five minutes from when the camera feed went dead and an anonymous caller informed the GCPD of the blaze in the warehouse district, everything he had been building in the last eighteen months could be for naught.

Swift steps must be taken.

He held the file in his hand tight, lost in thought as he stared at the looping video feed on his screen. Glaring at the entrance of Miriam Kane—an unexpected nuisance he had not anticipated when receiving word that someone had inquired about the SE-37-MEMS—he watched her walk down the hall to the small room at the end. He had to comfort himself with the knowledge that she was not in there long before being followed by Sam and running out. There was no sound, but he could imagine them as he watched the ensuing struggle, particularly when she bit Mike in a paroxysm of rage and nearly beat Sam's head in with an old pipe.

Savage creature, he thought. The look in her eye was wild and, despite the haircut, she was unmistakable. Constant reminders via the media-machine guaranteed that. When she was hitting Sam, there was no sense of restraint—only the blind need to unleash hurt before it could be focused on herself.

Strange had seen that same look on someone else's face just over a year ago, when he theorized how to access the portions of the mind that revealed the individual's baser self, their true self. He had seen it in one patient, and now he was eager to see it in another. All of it would build to his final theory—the ultimate hypothesis that needed testing.

But there were too many troublesome pawns plaguing the board, hindering the game. And one such pawn came in the hidden form of a broad silhouette with a red hood, visible only for a few milliseconds before the video went to a green screen with words jumping around in a spritely dance. His disappointment in being unable to see if Miriam had succeeded in bashing Sam's head to a pulp was replaced with deep annoyance as he stared at the taunting words.

Boohoo.
Riddle me this:
Who stares at an impenetrable wall,
hoping if they push hard enough it will fall,
never realizing their efforts were worth nothing at all?

"Is that meant to mean something?" a voice asked over Strange's shoulder. Turning in his chair, he faced Jonathan Crane. This was a new habit—popping up unexpectedly. He had grown bold in the last year, and he was almost as comfortable in the Asylum as Strange was.

That wasn't the only thing that had grown bold in.

"Idiot. The answer is 'an idiot'," Strange replied, turning back to the screen, face deadpan. "Very clever indeed."

The audacity to break into his warehouse, burn it to the ground, likely steal everything of use—including the computer inside—and then taunting him about it, even inferring that he was the idiot, was enough to drive him close to blind rage.

"Have we been compromised?" Jonathan asked, his voice coming close to Strange's ear, a quiet murmur—as if there was someone present to overhear.

"Not to my knowledge. Or, at the very least, not as of yet." Letting out a long exhale, Strange pinched the bridge of his nose.

"That could change quickly."

"Are you proposing a solution, Jonathan?" Strange asked, throwing his glasses on top of the large stack of papers on his desk.

Jonathan chuckled, voice still quiet and breath fanning across the back of Strange's neck. "No, no. I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything untoward."

Despite his anger, a corner of Strange's mouth almost curled into a grin. "Liar."

Now Jonathan was laughing, coming out from behind Strange's chair and leaning on his desk. His sweater matched the gray clouds that plagued the sky—and his eyes. "Carmine had… simple solutions for these problems," he said, shrugging.

"He also had a vast criminal network and several layers of insulation in the form of expendable lowlifes. We do not have these luxuries." Strange waved away Jonathan's notion. To him, it was unfeasible. He might not be the most ethical of doctors, but he did not have the decades-long reach of connections that seeped into Gotham's very roots. His options were few and quickly growing smaller.

"True enough," Jonathan conceded, looking off in thought. His fingers drummed next to Strange's and pulled back the manilla folder he had just been holding. "That's her file, isn't it?"

"Correct," Strange said after breaking away from rubbing the stress headache forming at his temples.

What is he getting at? Strange thought.

Jonathan grinned, the smile turning into a small smirk as he pursed his lips and pulled the file out from under Strange's hand. Holding it aloft, his posture shifted until it looked like he was ready to give a dramatic reading.

"Work—from the federal government, no less—mandated therapy sessions. That could… present some interesting opportunities."

Jonathan looked from the file to Strange, his eyes showing a spark that Strange had grown to recognize. It meant that they were resonating on the same frequency—determining where a weak point lied and exactly how to prod it. It was a process they'd perfected together. At least, they had until they began to encounter substantial roadblocks on their path to enlightenment.

"'Resistant to treatment. Hostile with all assigned therapists. Refuses medication. Consistently misses appointments. Reluctant to speak. Likely experiencing acute stress disorder; suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression; exhibiting self-destructive tendencies and high-risk behaviours'—well, clearly if she's doing this sort of thing," Jonathan said, motioning to the screen that was starting the loop again, "'and displays signs of self-harm. Recommendation for therapy twice a week in tandem with medication, with the possibility of institutionalization if symptoms worsen. Potential suicide risk.'"

Jonathan closed the file, adjusted his glasses and gave Strange a knowing look. But, this time, he didn't understand what Jonathan was getting at.

"Yes, I have read her file quite extensively," Strange eventually replied.

"Who were you going to assign to her case? Before all of this, I mean."

Jonathan gestured to the screen, watching with detached interest as Miriam ripped the pipe out of the wall to bludgeon Sam. But Strange momentarily forgot what happened at the warehouse, attempting instead to determine what Jonathan's point was. This had happened before—Jonathan's mind going down some twisted rabbit trail that Strange needed cajoling to follow. He had rarely been disappointed with where they had taken him before.

"Are you suggesting that I take on her case? What purpose would that serve?"

"Plenty." Jonathan shoved himself away from the desk, walking around to Strange's bookshelf, fingers caressing the spines of the books neatly lining it. "Surely you see an opportunity to… manipulate a fragile mind?"

Now Jonathan was just being coy. Strange wasn't sure if he wanted to indulge Jonathan this time. The last instance he had, they'd lost their first subject. "That does not explain its purpose."

Taking out the old journal—the one they had consulted so many times during their work together—Jonathan's long fingers trailed down one of its pages, eyebrow rising.

"You followed what happened in the aftermath of the Siege, yes? How could you not, with how it contributed to our patient population."

His finger stopped on the entry of June 4, 1923. Strange felt his blood start to hum against his will.

"Killing her after all that would be too high profile—and treated with extreme suspicion—given her role in the affair. It's unlikely she discovered the SE-37-MEMS on her own—she hasn't been back for long, I believe. Government watchdogs have no reason to take interest in Arkham of all places. That means someone gave her an idea of where to look. Her dying would be expedient, but…" Jonathan trailed off and closed the journal, satisfied that it had elucidated the reaction he desired. "Distraction could prove more fruitful. Preying on what she's already afraid of. Taking whatever grasp she thinks she's found on her psyche and… reopen some old wounds."

Squinting, Strange picked up his glasses from the desk and eyed Jonathan carefully as he returned to his original position of leaning against the desk, his body close to Strange's. Their fingers were close to touching, and he didn't draw away.

"That is a great deal of effort for one person," he replied, taking his time to consider every infinitesimal reaction coming from Jonathan. There was a catch, he knew there was. Or, something Jonathan wasn't telling him.

There always is.

Jonathan might have been bolder, his research fruitful, and an indispensable asset to Strange's work, but there was always something else. One small barrier that kept Strange from trusting him completely.

"Yes, it is," Jonathan conceded, inching closer until Strange could feel the heat of him coming through his sweater. "But it's not just her relationship to 0801 that should be of interest. Don't tell me you've forgotten who she had the opportunity to meet on several occasions?"

Oh yes, Strange did remember.

Any thoughts in his head disappeared. His slanted eyes narrowed further, but not in suspicion. The meaning was clear, and the humming accelerated until it was a pulsing thrum that throbbed in his ears. Jonathan's obsession did not wane any less than Strange's, and suddenly the efforts Jonathan had outlined made sense.

One of the persistent lines of questions that had been levelled at the Joker regarded his encounters with Batman. What he knew, what he suspected, what their encounters were like. Strange had wanted every last detail. While Joker had remained tight-lipped, barely speaking a word despite the continued sessions of agony, fear toxin doses, and midazolam, there were bits of information that managed to slip through before they had to try activating the chip as a last recourse.

Much of it had been anecdotal, perhaps details establishing where exactly his mind was oriented, what was important and what he valued. It became clear quickly that no such determination could be made, not one Strange or Jonathan could decipher, and that his thoughts were chaotic. One wrong word in their line of questioning would derail the entire process. But, Strange was beginning to see, they had gleaned enough information to benefit them after all.

They knew that the Joker's sick preoccupation with Miriam Kane went beyond idle fancy and that she was a frequent object of his hallucinations. They also knew what Joker thought of her relationships with others. How he had figured out something important: she knew him.

Miriam Kane knew who Batman was.

And that was all Strange needed to be convinced.


"Don't have all night," Red Hood said, looking at his nails and scraping out the dirt from underneath them with the tip of his kris dagger.

His faceguard had been removed and only his domino mask remained, his hood still pulled over his head. They were in one of his safehouses in Chinatown, far away from the action happening in the warehouse district. The entire evening had not gone as planned, and he found himself angry in a way he couldn't put into words.

"Thought you were supposed to be quick at shit like this."

Eddie's fingers stopped their flurry of movement on the keyboard, turning in his chair to shoot a venomous glare. "I would be if there were less idiotic comments delaying the process," he snapped.

Red Hood didn't look at him, only raising the dagger higher, spinning it around and over his hand in a small dance. "You callin' me an idiot?" He started throwing the knife in the air and catching it before it got too close to the ground. It was difficult not to smile when Eddie audibly swallowed. "I hope you know how unwise that would be."

Catching the blade between two fingers, he flicked his wrist and sent the dagger flying over Eddie's head to sink into the wall, just above his code-filled monitor. Eddie shrieked and dropped down in his chair, covering his head. Now Red Hood was smiling.

"Are you trying to kill me?!" Eddie yelled, popping up like one of those whack-a-moles at a kiddie carnival and glaring.

If he wasn't a pencil-necked, bespectacled, middle-aged man Red Hood might've felt bad. But Eddie was, so Red Hood didn't.

Goddamn nerd could stand to act his age instead of like an angst-ridden preteen.

"If I wanted you dead, I'd be a bit more creative," he said, walking over to Eddie and leaning close before pulling the dagger out of the wall. "You've been at this for two fucking hours. I've met sloths faster than you."

Eddie tried his best not to squeak when the dagger was ripped out and passed three inches from his face only for Red Hood to start spinning it again.

"I don't see you lining up to blackmail them," Eddie said under his breath, sighing in relief when Red Hood backed away, returning to his position against the wall. But he flinched at seeing Red Hood's frown. "It's a tight deadline, alright? If you'd been less liberal with the C4, I would've had more time." The problem of working with him was that he didn't know when to shut up; it was a point he liked proving repeatedly. "Don't be all pissy, it's not my fault your girlfriend got herself into trouble—"

Red Hood spun Eddie's chair around so fast the smaller man almost slipped right out of it. Getting close to his face and glaring, he didn't need the full mask to look terrifying. Eddie started to shake.

"You might wanna keep your thoughts to yourself, pal."

He moved closer, making Eddie press himself as far as he could into the chair until there were only a few inches between them. Red Hood wanted to make sure this got through loud and clear—the last thing he needed was Eddie spreading his delusions around to anyone else. Didn't matter how near or far from the truth they were.

"If you really don't wanna make me angry, you'll shut your fucking mouth. Especially when it comes to shit you don't know anything about, Edward."

Something Jason Todd had learned how to pride himself early on, during the days he had wandered Gotham's streets alone—fighting and stealing to stay alive, sometimes doing more than that—was how to make anything sound like a threat. Could be a name, one word emphasized a particular way, a pregnant pause, the right body language and how he positioned himself. But all of that knowledge was useless unless he knew how to follow through.

And Jason Todd had picked that up quicker than anything else in his life.

"This… arrangement works well when both parties hold up their end of the bargain." He almost wished he had the faceguard on with the modifier. Eddie really would've been pissing himself then. "You do yours and I'll do mine. And you'll keep both femurs intact and your jaw from being permanently dislocated."

Shoving the chair back until it hit the wooden desk that sprawled out across the small room, Red Hood glared Eddie down, fists clenched at his side. Holding his hands out, Eddie looked afraid, but anger was still there, too. For once, he bottled it, stuttering out facetious apologies as he went back to the keyboard, typing faster than before. Rubbing his forehead, he resisted the urge to groan.

Why did shit have to get complicated?

He didn't know who he was kidding. Things got complicated the minute he talked to Miriam—Adina—in the store. That hadn't been what he meant to do. The whole stealth approach hadn't worked out well when he broke his own anonymity. Getting clocked in the face and walking her home hadn't been on the agenda either, but he thought he could still make it work.

She serves a purpose, just like everything else.

He had to keep repeating that to himself, even if it didn't feel true. Stay objective, get some intel, find out where her head was at, if she was someone he had to worry about, if she could help him—that was what he had intended.

And you didn't come this far to shoot yourself in the foot.

But maybe he already had.

Red Hood gave his head a shake. There could only be room in his head for common sense and the reminders that everything had to serve a purpose. Miriam could help him to help them both—help everyone that psychotic clown ever fucked over and left to bleed out in the gutter. He knew she would understand the most. She'd want the Joker dead just as much as he did. Maybe even Batman, too.

Miriam in person was so different from the videos he saw online. The first time he saw them play was in Kabul, in a hospital that was overcrowded and filled to the brim with children missing limbs—kids that his team could've put there just as much as the enemy. Next to friends who'd lost half their faces or their minds, Jason had to lie in helpless horror as his family's death warrants were announced on live TV, when he had looked into the shell-shocked face of a girl whose pain mirrored his. Waiting for his skin, struggling to heal, to stitch itself back together after the doctors removed most of the shrapnel that sank deep on his left side, he could do nothing but lie in that bed and watch.

Special Forces might've been done with him after what happened in the desert, but Jason never thought about dying, only about doing what was necessary, zeroing in on the problems the world wouldn't solve because they were weak.

But that could change. He could make it change.

He'd left what remained of his family in one hellhole only to trade it for another, but Jason wasn't dumb enough to think he could fix the world. What he could do was make one small chunk filled with less human garbage—make it safe for the people who needed it.

And then he made the mistake letting his ego get in the way and laid himself open up like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey by acting before thinking it through. But he saw a familiar hollow in her—something carved out with a knife. It was the same kind Jason struggled with—the nightmares and ghosts that never left and ate a hole in his chest.

Jason—and, to a large extent, Red Hood—didn't want anyone to feel like that; he didn't want to be the one to make it worse. Everything he said that first night standing in the rain was sincere—he cared. He cared so damn much about everything that it turned into its own form of agony. Jason wished that he had the guile to lie, to entice her to meet and stick with the mission.

It had been all mapped out in his head—how he'd recruit her for the cause.

You sure are a stupid motherfucker, aren't you?

But then he met her.

So fucking stupid.

And then she kissed him.

Goddamn dumbass.

And he let her.

Starting to run out of synonyms for 'fucking imbecilic'.

Kissing her back and then standing there like an asshole when he made her cry was the crowning achievement of his idiocy. He still wasn't sure how it was his fault that it ended so badly, but he knew it was.

Fucking hell.

The urge to punch a wall—or Eddie's face—was strong. All his planning could amount to nothing, and that wasn't an outcome he was willing to accept. He wouldn't.

"Cracked the encryption," Eddie called over his shoulder, still sounding sour. Red Hood barely heard him, only giving a low grunt in acknowledgement.

He had planned a very different evening for himself. Most of it involved blowing shit up in other parts of town. It was mostly luck that he was just heading out to start his patrols—he had greasy pin kings to babysit—when he drove by her place just to see her whipping by in a car. The rest was the work of his gut, shoving aside the cold detachment drilled into him over his five years in the military. Trailing a good distance behind, he had been surprised to find her poking around that old warehouse. As far as he knew, it was a defunct storage building for Sears or some shit. Abandoned for at least a year, having anyone who wasn't homeless wandering around was fishy on its own.

The urge to leave it be had entered his mind; he'd be a liar if he didn't admit the shitty parts of his brain had gone there. Miriam was a big girl after all, the pragmatic voice in his head reasoned. He had even almost started driving past until his gut and his conscience, once again, took over. No rational thought could be found in his fucking head either when he shot that one fucker in the knee—and it wasn't until he looked in her eyes that he kept himself from blowing out the bastard's brains all over the cement floor. Reason had become an afterthought, and that was a problem in his line of work.

More than a problem: It's goddamn catastrophic.

It wasn't until she was out cold that he had surveyed her handiwork, and he realized that she might've been fine on her own. Sure, she'd have a nasty bruise on her cheek and a cut that needed stitches, but he wondered if she would've beaten the one man to death if the other hadn't pulled her off. Just like when she clocked Jason in the store, he saw something he recognized: A switch being flipped—one she couldn't control. Or simply chose not to.

Then why insist on being so fucking stubborn? For all she knew, I would've shot her in the face. Or worse.

Of course, he wouldn't have shot her—but she didn't know that. She didn't even respond to intimidation like anyone with their head screwed on straight would. That was another thing he wouldn't have followed up on, but any other sonofabitch would've. He knew at one time he hadn't been so different; he had hurt people for less in the past, when he wasn't the master of his rage.

Don't know if that makes her admirable or a dumbass.

Both—he decided it made her both.

The damn woman has a death wish.

Not like he could say anything; he had one, too—his was just more productive, targeted at a specific goal. She was aiming wild. But self-annihilation ran deep in his blood, vitriol that fused with vengeance. It would burn him up one day, but he would be damned if it was before he was finished. He had to make sure nothing got in the way of that. Nothing.

'How would it have been any different than what I've lived through already—what's left to surprise me, that I haven't seen?'

He rubbed his forehead, trying to make the thoughts go away, to focus.

It didn't work very well.

And just how do you think she'd react to finding out you were playing dumb the entire time?

It was official: Jason Todd—not Red Hood—had completely screwed himself. 'The King of Fools' should've been his name. He wouldn't instigate anything—he'd done enough. The likelihood that she'd ever speak to Jason ever again were slim, too. If she was wise, she'd wake up and go back to Chicago. Gotham was no place for her, because she was right—she had seen enough.

At least she didn't recognize you. That's something.

But he also realized that he had made a mistake—he'd started something that he didn't know how to name. He just knew it rolled downhill that first time she looked at him, so wary and her black curls dripping with rain, with green eyes that seemed to glow.

Yep. You're a fucking idiot alright—

"Are you even listening to me?"

Red Hood looked up to meet the eyes of a very annoyed Eddie. His sardonic smirk was Eddie's first answer, but he felt like driving the point home. "No. You were taking so damn long I was falling asleep."

Now Eddie really looked like he wanted to kill him. He resisted the urge to laugh—that would be counter-productive. Even if Eddie wanted to, in a physical match he had no chance in hell against Red Hood. He'd trained long and hard enough to make that a fucking guarantee. If he was going to go toe-to-toe with the Bat, there could be no room for weakness. As if on cue, the large scars stretching across his left side contracted.

"What'd you find?" he asked, coming up behind Eddie to stare at the monitor, ignoring the twinges of pain his side made.

If there was one good thing that came out of this, it was that he recovered something he didn't even know he should be looking for. One asset was still in the game, probably still passed out in her car—he'd have to check later to make sure she actually got back to her place—and a treasure trove full of information in the form of the computer and server tower. Having a nerd like Eddie under his thumb certainly had its benefits.

Shifting in his seat, Eddie sighed in exasperation. "Like I was trying to tell you, it's medical logs. Shipping manifests for your typical garden variety antipsychotics and tranquillizers—some pain meds, too. Another for lab and medical equipment. But that's not the most interesting thing." Despite his anger and indignation toward Red Hood, Eddie couldn't help himself—he was getting excited. That big brain of his was working double-time. "See this here?" he asked.

"Yeah, I have eyes. What about it?"

Eddie sighed and Red Hood was pretty sure he heard 'simpleton' being uttered, but he decided to save slamming his head on the desk until after he finished telling him what was on the computer. "It's a patient list of some kind. But they aren't using names, just cataloguing them with numbers. You see what's next to them?"

Narrowing his eyes, Red Hood began to read.

0937. LITHIUM, QUETIAPINE, LURASIDONE. PHASE 3 ACHIEVED. PROTOCOL OGRE. ADVANCE.
0801. ZOLPIDEM, QUETIAPINE, HALOPERIDOL. PHASE 2 ACHIEVED. PROTOCOL JEST. WITHDRAWN.
0342. ASENAPINE, EFFEXOR. PHASE 1 FAILURE. TERMINATED.

The list continued on that way, listing drug names with alternating results of "ACHIEVED" and "FAILURE" until it went past the first fifteen entries—then the 'terminated' and subsequent 'failures' made up the rest, adding up to almost thirty.

Red Hood didn't know why, but the list disturbed him. The data entry points indicated that the list had been updated periodically for over a year. A sinking feeling gripped his gut.

What the shit was Miriam looking into?

"Fuck me sideways," he murmured. "Who the fuck does this belong to? STAGG or—"

"No, no, no—STAGG would have been more difficult to infiltrate. Their cybersecurity tripled after what happened to Titan Industries." Eddie wasn't wrong about that. The paramilitary company was broken up, piecemeal style, after CEO Richard Ainsley was sent to federal prison. Wayne Enterprises, STAGG Enterprises, and the government ate up what was left and scrambled to make sure they wouldn't be next. "This belongs to someone a little more… local."

Why's this fucker beating around the bush?

"Spit it out," Red Hood growled. He didn't know what shit pile he just stepped in, but it couldn't be good.

Eddie rolled his eyes and he resisted the urge to slap the look off his face. "The things I tolerate," he muttered. When Red Hood cracked his knuckles, he flinched back and started sputtering, "OK, OK—I get it, you're big and scary. Jeez."

Clicking on the web browser, Eddie brought up an article. One about new expansions funded by Mayor Arianna Hill for the new 'Safe Streets' initiative—where they were locking up anyone with even the slightest hint of crazy. Differentiating between the mentally ill and the criminal wasn't a priority anymore, and Hill gave the funding to make it happen. She was smiling wide and waving in the photo with Commissioner Jim Gordon frowning next to her. The building behind them was unmistakable—its large, gothic structure acting as a dead giveaway.

Arkham Asylum.


Flick flick flicker went the lights above his head, phasing in and out so quickly that he could barely notice the change at all. But he did. There wasn't much else he could do.

Flicker flick flicker they went again.

If someone had told the Joker that the adage "dying of boredom" would stop being a cliché and instead become the actual cause of his death, he would've laughed at them.

Or skinned them alive.

Pain was still something he was intimately familiar with in his daily routine—Brenda was good but not that good, he wasn't immune to everything in the Asylum—but he wasn't trapped in the dark anymore. Not completely, anyway. There was a small bit of natural light he could see in his tissue-box-sized excuse for a window for the first hour of dawn, and, if he was feeling perky, he could stand on the railing of his bed and see just over yonder and catch a glimpse of the outside.

Make me sound like a moping polar bear in a zoo.

The Joker had lived in far worse places, but he always had the benefit of being able to breathe in Gotham's dirty air, feel the brisk breeze after a long day of rain, look at the pristine world above be reflected down in a muddy pool of gutter water, watch as it twisted and mired with the residual oil rising from the asphalt to create a poisonous sheen, taste the grime and metal that hung in the atmosphere, coating his tongue. He couldn't feel anything here. Nothing at all.

Roaming the grounds of the asylum, even escorted, wasn't something he was allowed to do, either. Not after what he did the last time he had been able to walk around without a shock collar.

There were no distractions—no stimuli. He couldn't watch TV, read a newspaper, a book—crime right there if I ever saw one—and remained in the Personal Safety Rooms despite being removed from the aggressive treatment plan Strange had enacted so thoroughly.

No, Joker spent eighteen hours a day in the same room, saw the same people, had the same meals, and was shackled to the same goddamn routine every goddamn day of every goddamn week without fail. Determining what day it was, even after the poison they'd been pumping him full of left his system, was still something he was unable to do.

Just as they had been so diligent in their execution of the plan to drive him catatonic, they'd been equal to the task of driving him to give up and die in a new way: with boredom.

Captain Ahab will have to try harder than that to crack this nut.

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Nut. Nutty. Drivin' me nutty."

The Joker started to laugh, going low and working into a crescendo, eyes tearing up as he stared into the fluorescence above his head.

Unhinged was a kind term for what had happened to him. The control he coveted above all else eroded, whittled down as he watched from above while parts of him fell to the ground and were subsumed by a pool of black ichor that rose ever higher the more of himself he lost, creeping up until it reached his knees, sticky and thick.

Flick flicker flick.

Where he'd been trapped in darkness for so long, now he was awash in light.

And he hated it.

His fingers probed his cheeks, feeling the scars that split them—the thick, corded tissue, smooth and bumpy. He'd grip them, pull at the tight skin, memorize their dips and grooves, their jagged edges and rounded valleys with the pads of his fingers. He couldn't remember the last time he saw his face in a reflection, was able to have that reaffirming moment where he could see who he was. Grasp that firm anchor that gave his unravelling a direction.

But what did he have now?

I have enough.

No, no he didn't.

Joker had lost his makeup—had it forcibly peeled from his skin—had his regalia stripped from him and reduced down to the uniform of society's rejects, had no trace of green hair to be found. They had stripped away all that made what the Joker did—what he was—an art form. Left naked and weightless, he floated in a void that condensed his thoughts, trapped them in his head and gave no recourse—no outlet to give shape to the universe. He had lost his sun, and now the black was waiting to swallow him whole.

There were only three faces he saw with any regularity: Strange's, a charlatan in the guise of his new doctor—Spooner, which is exactly what I'm gonna use to scoop her goddamn eyes out of her head—and Eugene Klein. He barely remembered the last two on a good day. They weren't enough. Their faces meant nothing—serving to be part of the total erasure of his mind rather than providing the means of its preservation.

But Strange.

His face would be carved into the Joker's mind until he erased him from the earth—the only mark of his existence would be his blood as it drained into the Gotham River, when he would feel it glide across his skin, wet and slick, as it permeated every crease, every fissure, until he was full again. Given back the lifeblood that had been stolen from him.

Even thinking about that on a bad day wasn't enough, either.

He had told Batman once that the Mob was a group of fools for clinging to the past, grasping at the illusion of stability and stasis that didn't exist. He had said that Batman had changed the name of the game—had irrevocably altered the course of history, of life. He had wanted Batman to embrace chaos and the unpredictable, he wanted to leave the old world behind and create a new one in his image.

The Joker wanted to reclaim his aspirations, bring in new meaning and redefine everything.

But he was in Arkham, unable to do any of those things. And, for the first time in years, he found himself understanding that urge—to go back to what was natural, familiar.

And where would I be if I didn't embrace the unknown? If I still clung to reason and logic in a world that has none?

He realized that Arkham was draining that away from him, too. Every point of identity that mattered. Effacing him until there would be nothing left.

The world wasn't the same and neither was he. That's what he needed to focus his energy on.

The burning core at his centre was almost gone, just pumping enough life to keep his body shackled to his bed. He couldn't feel the currents under him anymore, the thrum of the earth, how it sang when its thirst for blood and death was sated, when it was craving more. This new false, bright world was still and shapeless. No room for wandering even in his mind, and no chance to glimpse at the things that gave him meaning.

The Joker felt empty. Hollow. An open, bottomless cavern through which he kept falling.

Vulnerability isn't an asset in this line of work. Weakness is not an option.

In the bleaching light of his small world, a bare snowglobe without the trinkets, snow, and little village people to terrorize, Miriam was disappearing, relegated to whispers on the periphery.

He couldn't tell anymore if that was what he wanted.

No matter how much he tried, she didn't appear in front of him when he was awake, didn't murmur in his ear, didn't share jokes just for him to understand, didn't stay the one constant that had existed when all the others disappeared. He couldn't feel her touch against his skin, that cool sensation that soothed his burning blood.

Even the quiet whispers, all that he had left of her, were leaving, too. He'd felt this loss before, he knew—he just couldn't remember when.

He didn't think about killing her anymore. Well, not all the time. Just when the day went on too long and he could spark the smouldering embers in his chest back to life thinking of his hands around her neck. What it would feel like to stop the blood in her veins from flowing to her head, trapping the air in her pretty mouth and never letting it reach her lungs. Delighting as the light left her eyes.

But then he would dream, unable to escape when the poison took over or his days-long stints of never-ending wakefulness ended and they snatched his mind in a vise. Dreams—fleeting as they are—were the only place he saw her, and he hated dreaming.

And, oh, how he did think about hate. Hate so fucking hot and scorching that it ate away at him from the inside like a piece of paper with a lit match beneath it. Wearing through the thin, inutile skin until it singed its way to the edges, consuming everything until only a smudge of ash remained. It coiled in his stomach, wriggling and alive. His insides were already blackened and dead, and the heat would fan life back into what remained.

The dreams would always come for him eventually, engulf his body in gentle, lulling swells, drowning him as it smothered the fire.

"Do you remember?" she'd ask him, her voice soft and just out of reach.

He would try his best to ignore her, he really did.

It never worked.

"Stay," she'd whisper, breathing life into his chest. "Stay with me."

Only then could he feel her fingers on his face, how they traced down his brows to touch his cheeks, feather and skate around his scars.

He hated that, too. Hated how it made him feel. Hated how it made him want more.

Sometimes, when the lights were out and the familiar darkness returned, he couldn't tell when reality would end and the dreams began. He slept then, bare chest erupting in goosebumps as he shivered and fingers rested on a small but thick line of scar tissue on his side, along a break between the bones of his ribs where the knife made of glass slipped in, his blanket laying discarded on the floor.

The dream was especially vivid. And he did remember.

He remembered what it was like to hold a blade in his hand, how it felt to cut into soft skin and watch as the lines of red, thick like newly formed dew, dripped down and pooled together, forming their own little deltas of dolour.

"I… I want you to do it."

He remembered her black hair, thick and velvet, running through his fingers, gripping it tight when he reached the scalp.

"I don't want to be alone anymore."

He remembered what it felt like to have the waves of energy pulsing against his back as the world lit up in flame, the shards of debris and rubble peppering his hair, singeing his skin.

"I want you to do it."

He remembered the feeling of vitality that surged in him, gave him purpose and meaning, when those fists drove into his face—cracked his head against the wall, shattered mirrors—how the blood ran down in a baptism of eternal union.

"Don't… don't leave me."

He remembered what it was like on the ship when she was sleeping, how he'd lay down beside her, felt her breathing, felt her heat even as she shivered, how her body moulded to his, how he watched as her chest cracked open and her secrets spilled out.

"I want you."

He remembered that drive, that all-encompassing desire—to consume, to own, to control, to possess—and, with her, he always would.

"I need—"

The alarm in his room sounded, blaring and ravaging his eardrums. He bolted upright, unsure of where he was, when he had slipped under. Once the initial jarring left, he shook his head, dispelling the remnants of the unwanted sleep and banishing the lingering tendrils of the dream that still clung to his subconscious. He knew that the dreams did not matter, not really. They were phases of his own moon, transitioning and sliding in and out of notice as he kept searching out his sun.

With a groan and muffled shriek, Joker's heavy cell door opened. A vaguely familiar face stood in the entryway, holding a tray and managing to look nervous, hopeful, and terrified all at once. Despite his vision being bleary, the exhaustion of remaining inactive for so long dragging him back down, he managed to recognize the small man in front of him.

"Mor—morning," he said, eyes landing on Joker's still bare chest and quickly darting away. The scars on the Joker's face weren't the only ones that were hard to look at. Peering past the man, with his large glasses obscuring a babyface with dark slanted eyes, he saw the TYGER guards standing just outside, waiting for the Joker to give them an excuse. "It—it's waffle day this morning, so—so I… brought you some."

The man trailed off when the Joker responded with an empty stare, making no move to put his shirt back on or shift in place. It didn't take much to set the guards off anymore, not after the Joker had managed to get one of them in the eye with a plastic spoon—see? It can be done—two weeks prior.

To be fair, he started it. I think.

By recognizing the face the Joker could drag up the man's name. He was one of the Big Three—Eugene Klein.

Eugene's shoes shifted against the linoleum tile, still nervous after a month of intermittent check-ups on the Joker. He hadn't even been remotely rude to the kid—a feat unto itself—as far as he could remember. He thought, and was fairly certain, that he had kept up friendly conversation with him, even re-remembering the name of some broad named Janis in a moment of clarity. Joker attributed it to the smell of waffles—one of the few meals served in the Asylum that didn't make his stomach turn and actually had real fruit served with it.

"What, you on lunch lady duty now?" Joker asked, still sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet hanging over the side, his toes cold and going pale.

"No, no—erm, I'm—I'm not really supposed to do this—this sort of thing, but…" Eugene trailed off, and the Joker rediscovered some energy. His knees bounced and he resisted the urge to buzz around the man like a honeybee. Those were some of his favourite words. It meant getting a surprise. In a half-whisper, he said, "They said you—you shouldn't get any after what happened… happened last week." He cut himself off, took a moment to clear his throat and glance nervously over his shoulder. "But you—you're still not eating enough, so..."

It was like Eugene suddenly ran out of words, his face going red and eyes still adamantly glued to the floor. Joker smirked—the feeling unfamiliar and pulling at his scars in a way he liked. Scratching at his head, the curls now only going past his ears after being shorn once he'd been taken out of Arkham's basement two months ago, he tried to find friendly in his bag of tricks that he used to have at his immediate disposal not so long ago.

"Now, we're talkin'," he said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. The Joker never said 'thank you'. Not to anyone. Ever. Not with sincerity, anyhow. But he showed Eugene his gratitude by continuing to leave him untouched, allowing him to pass in and out of his space without the fear that the Joker would enforce Rule Number Two.

Eugene smiled a little, lopsided and quivering. The boy—that's what he was, really, a boy—shouldn't work in a place like Arkham. He wasn't built for it. But Joker distantly noted his continued resilience despite his looking like he was about to faint becoming a constant and defining characteristic.

Waiting—like a good boy—until Eugene backed up a good distance away, Joker grabbed the tray holding the waffles and started scarfing them down, willingly forgetting about the guards and Eugene as he focused on filling the fuel tank. Because Eugene was right, the Joker hardly ate much of anything—like his body was overriding his will. Most of the time it was out of spite. He had no reason to not do it, but going hungry wasn't an unfamiliar pang, either.

"You may leave, Eugene."

Joker stopped mid-bite, a large forkful of waffle, strawberries and kiwi half-shoved into his mouth, at the sound of Strange's voice. He forced himself to finish it, chew slow and deliberate, and make eye contact with the man he despised more than anything. His cold skin grew hot as wrath and hate billowed the flames curling in him, crawling up his throat and licking at the roof of his mouth.

"Are you—are you sure, sir?" Eugene stuttered. Joker wondered absently what Strange had done to make him so afraid, or if Eugene's senses were perceptive enough to understand the threat subconsciously. Strange was at least an inch shorter than Eugene, but he seemed to loom over him. "I—I don't mind—"

"Leave us," Strange said. His face was neutral, but his voice was not. Eugene's face went bright red, looking from the waffles to the Joker and hanging his head before leaving the room, legs shaking.

Eugene might not have an issue with showing his fear, but the Joker never would.

Never.

"What's this, Ahab? Come back for a, uh—another tango? I'm touched, really," he drawled, putting a hand over his heart, touching the mess of scars that carved his skin. This was the first time Strange had come to see him that didn't involve Johnny-boy's scare-juice. He was already imagining taking the tray his food rested on and using the edge to bludgeon Strange to death.

"Do not be so glib." Voice short and clipped, Strange entered the Joker's animal pen to gloat. He felt his fingers twitch, electrified and humming with unleashed brutality. Violence was embedded in his DNA—a blessing imparted on my soul—and he wanted to give Strange a taste of it. "Are you enjoying your current situation?" he asked.

The Joker spat out a guffaw, cackling, high and then deep. Even as Strange's frown deepened the lines in his cheeks, the Joker didn't stop until small tears formed in the corners of his eyes. Wiping them away, the giggles still rocked him.

"Ah, is that a joke?" he asked, incredulous. How that was even a serious question, and delivered in such a serious manner, was laughable. That's what the Joker was doing as Strange stood there with his guards at his back. "Just in case no one bothered to, ah, tell ya—you should leave those to the professionals."

Strange's face stayed serious. "No, it is not," he said, barely audible over the Joker's howls.

Tongue swiping out to lick his lips and the manic giggling making his chest spasm, Joker raised an eyebrow. Leaning toward Strange, his tone stayed low and conspiratorial. "Well, I mean—I could really go for a tiki bar, maybe some those, ah… little coconuts with the tiny umbrellas," he giggled again, unable and unwilling to hold it back, his body tightening like a spring, "but I'd settle for gouging your eyes."

That was all the warning he was willing to give.

The Joker pounced—overtaken by bloodlust and the impulses of a starving wolf. He'd kill Strange—kill him, even if it was the last thing he did.

There was no thought—no reason. Only the desire, the compulsion, to watch Strange bleed out at his feet—to tear into the man, to feel his skin give beneath his fingers, to dig through muscle until he hit bone.

It was like before, back when he thought escape was within his grasp, but now things were so… simple.

It was only blood and pain and screams and pleasure and knivesknivesknivesknivesknives—

At least, that's all it was until every muscle in the Joker's body seized, forming into twisted vines under his skin. He dropped to the floor, struggling against his body's writhing as 1200 volts of electricity shot down from the base of his neck to the bottom of his spinal cord. They'd done something like this to him before—when he was strapped to one of those chairs in the basement, when they pumped him full of juice to see what his reaction would be. And, just like then, the Joker couldn't make it stop.

High pitched ringing blocked out all other sounds, his vision blurred and out of focus, but he could tell the light in the room was lessening. Blinking hard, he looked up into the face of Hugo Strange. Anger so scorching it caused him to nearly bite through his own tongue, the sweet tang of iron coating his tastebuds and bringing him back to that state of ferocity—demented animalism that gave him the need, the drive to sink his teeth into Strange's throat. But, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't move from his position on the cold floor.

"Pity we could not work to tame that beast in you," Strange said, cocking his head to the side and taking in the Joker like he was a failed science experiment, still so cool and smug and in control. Just like he always had since that first night in the Asylum. The Joker wanted to watch him choke and drown in his own blood. "You have become rather predictable, haven't you? Truly hopeless. Barely a man and driven by such base impulses. How does it feel to have lost control of even that?"

The only way Joker could answer him was with growls that boiled in his chest, churning and burning and guttural. He knew, distantly, that he looked wild. Feral. Rabid. Untameable and unreachable.

He really had become a wolf.

Strange just kept staring down, finger resting over some kind of button in his hand. He sighed and dropped into a crouch, getting close to the Joker's face, but stayed just out of reach of his teeth.

"Tell me, 0801, how would you like a new treatment plan?"

The Joker managed to grab Strange's tie and nearly rose high enough to take a bite out of his neck only to feel that electricity rip through his body again, making him snarl and groan as it ripped the air out from his chest. Strange's look of calm never went away.

"Oh, no, no—it will not be as the previous one was. Do not fret about that."

And I thought I was the deceitful one.

The Joker bared his teeth in a poor guise of a smile. Now Strange was grinning and, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why.

"You have not heard much about the happenings beyond these walls, have you?"

Oh, of course I have. What, with the total abundance of hours on end of blank nothing, my super-sonic hearing's just improved marvellously.

He really wished his jaw would unclench so he could say the words aloud. But he couldn't, and so he had to keep his rejoinders to himself.

Strange's smile grew until it was his own demonstration of baring his teeth.

"What if I told you that… a certain individual had returned to Gotham, that she might very well be coming by soon?"

Jaw going slack, the Joker could finally talk, and he was mollified that nothing he wanted to say came out.

"Wh-What?"

Strange rose to his feet, towering over the Joker's position on the floor, his hands together in the picture of a good, helpful doctor.

"It is true. She will be coming to Arkham for treatment—strictly as an outpatient," Strange was quick to add at the look of panicked ebullition on the Joker's face. "Do you not think it is the time for healing, 0801?"

His brain had become a mass of white noise. What was Strange trying to do? Was he talking about who Joker thought he was? Did he even want that? Why would—

No no no no no NO NO NO NO.

No, this was another trick. A ploy to get something else out of him. Something he couldn't give. And they were gonna use her to do it. She'd ruin everything—ruin him—again—and he wasn't sure anymore if he could make it stop. If he could stay resolute.

Can't happen. Can't can't can't CAN'T.

"Shut. Your. Mouth," the Joker snarled.

He wished he had given no reaction at all for how Strange's face took on that maddening expression of blithe condescension.

The Joker would pull out his teeth. He would. And then he'd shove them down Strange's throat and feed them to him like they were fucking Tic Tacs.

"Do not be so hostile, 0801," Strange tutted, wagging a finger at him. "She will be coming here regardless. Whether you see her is another matter—"

The Joker managed to rise to a sitting position, trying not to pant and failing. He felt so close to inhuman in that moment—no. He was inhuman, beyond the animal.

"If you don't, ah… Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth, I will kill you. Slowly," he interrupted, his tone measured but no less menacing. Something in his face changed, enough to make Strange take half a step back. "You won't like what I'll do. Ah, you've seen my work before, haven't you, Doctor?" The Joker managed to rise to his feet, but he kept the distance between them. He wouldn't attack Strange again.

Not yet, anyway.

Strange's Adam's apple gave a minute bob, and the Joker smiled benignly.

"Yeah. You have. Consider tha-t as an… appetizer. A warm-up for the main event."

Slowly, his tongue lapped along his bottom lip, touching the corners of his mouth and his eyes wandered up. He started laughing again, the force of them battering his ribcage.

He imagined taking Strange's hands and shoving them into the heart of a burning fire, holding them there until they were nothing but molten stumps, the muscles and tendons withering as he watched his bones fall and crack.

He imagined prying out Strange's eyes, careful to be sure to keep the optic nerves intact, and shoving them down his throat.

It was agony for his body to feel so much after getting zapped twice in a row, but the Joker revelled in it. Ironically, Miriam's prodding had helped.

He was remembering.

He remembered how to enjoy pain. How to thrive in the dark. How to push past every limit his body lied about having.

The Joker wasn't human—not in the ways that mattered.

Had he not been called a devil before—a demon? Equated with some otherworldly, nefarious spirit come down to undo the work of good men? Had he not embraced that role before?

He might be stuck in a carnal cage, but he was more.

"Take your, uh, lies somewhere else. I ain't interested," he said eventually, stifling the mania down to a few remaining giggles. He'd found his joy again. Joy in suffering.

Strange wasn't smiling anymore, and his glasses caught the light in a way that the Joker couldn't see his eyes. "I am not lying."

Pulling out a file the Joker hadn't noticed before, Strange threw it on his bed. Files spilled out, filled with small black cursive and red stamps. But a photo was among them. Carefully, like it was an apparition that might disappear if he moved too quickly, he picked it up—his mirth forgotten.

It was Miriam. The real Miriam. Not the one in his head. She looked so different. Cheeks fuller, her hips rounded out—the illusion of frail gauntness gone. Her hair was short, too. If it wasn't for her eyes, he wouldn't have recognized her. But, even in just the picture, he could see something else he knew intimately.

"You will not be leaving this institution in your lifetime, but there are ways we can make your time here… easier."

So that's why Strange was doing this. He wanted something.

Don't we all?

The Joker met his eye, managing to keep his face neutral, his eyes empty to take in everything.

"What, ah, exactly do you want?" he asked.

Strange still didn't smile, and Joker's head was a mess of manic thought.

"To strike an accord—visitation in exchange for your cooperation."

There was more to it. There was always more. But what would Strange want the Joker to do with his little sweet peach?

"How does that sound, 0801?"

Looking down at the photo in front of him, the scar on his side hurt in a way that felt euphoric. For once, the Joker had the illusion of choice in front of him. Except, he wasn't sure how he felt about either of them. Usually, in the before, if the Joker wasn't presented with an option that left things in his favour, he didn't play at all.

But he wanted to play.

He could have the chance to kill her to prove to himself that he could. That she didn't control him—that all those fucking feelings running in his head and ripping his chest open weren't real, that they didn't have a hold on him. Ignoring the revelations that he came to not so long ago about the nature of contradition, he focused solely on the sacrilegious.

He wanted to break Miriam. He failed the first time and he wouldn't the second. He'd watch her crumble and then—then—he could feel whole again. The remnants of humanity—the infernal roots of his downfall—would be dead and he would be free.

But.

Here, he knew, he didn't have the luxury of thinking there was any way he could sit out of the game Strange had devised. That it would lead to the outcome that he actually wanted. He'd have to work for it. Work around the rules that were being laid out in front of him.

That just meant he had to beat Strange at his own game.

The Joker found a smile somewhere in the vast emptiness, felt the coming anticipation of completing a long revolution, of finally coming back around to his sun. And he felt grand.

"Lay it on me, Ahab."


AN: Hey everyone! Thank you to everyone who's following the story and leaving comments, you're the best and I couldn't do this without you!

Hopefully you've read There's No Hell Like Arkham, but if you haven't, there might be some things in here that you miss. The Joker, during his stay in Arkham, has been subjected to some very, very inhumane and awful procedures under the direction of Doctor Hugo Strange and his newfound partner, Jonathan Crane. They've had a partnership going for the last year and a half, and have been getting up to... things that are definitely not good. To elaborate too much else is to risk spoiling things for everyone, so I recommend going back to read that if you're feeling overly confused (or, leave me a comment or send me a message, I'd be glad to talk about it more!).

One of the things I've elaborated on in TNHLA is that the Joker went through an arc of change where he didn't get one of those in The Dark Knight. He's been through a lot and feels like he's lost almost every facet of control he used to have. Things are lining up to get ugly (potentially) and you'll see how it starts to shape up in the coming chapters... (Sorry, I'm so cruel!)

Now... some bad news. The next update, in keeping with my schedule, would come out on December 6th. I've been having some... rather substantial health problems, and it's left me in a place where I can only focus on that and getting through the last two weeks of my semester. As much as I'd like to get the next chapter out on time, I think it's going to be a week (maybe even a little longer) late. I hope the wait isn't too tortuous and I'm sorry, guys :(.

But, good news now! I want to do another Christmas one-shot this year, and I want to hear your suggestions! Tell me what you'd like to see in one - who would you like to see pop up or a small event that takes place? Should it focus on the main canon, my AU, or an AU of my AU? Even if it's just a small moment or dynamic that you'd like to see around the theme of Christmas, I'd love to hear it! You can leave a comment here, send me a message or send me an anonymous ask or message on Tumblr - you can find me under "ladyoftheseastuff"!

Also, I had someone ask me this a little while ago: I get most of my chapter titles from different songs that I think speak to what the chapters are about or come straight from the OST titles from The Dark Knight and the Arkham games series.

As always, a big thank you to Khaosprinz for all her help beta-ing this and Boag's advice! And thanks to all of you and I'll be back in a few weeks. ❤