AN: Warning for blood and bitchiness.

Christineoftheopera-Shut your judgmental mouth! Jonny won't let me do it anyway. I wonder why that would be... Because you're no fun.

Just-Me-and-My-Brain-Until she nearly took my head off again. That put an end to the lessons soon enough. Thank god. I can shoot, that's enough.

Johanna Crane-Somebody's got to, and since Jonny is apparently a saint... Somehow I don't think they agree. Compared to me, you are.

For a minute, Jim didn't really process what he was seeing. Then the smell of blood, sickly sweet, hit him hard and sent him reeling back, gagging.

The woman was tied to a pole, unconscious or dead. Her arms were stretched above her head, keeping her taut. The telephone pole and the sidewalk below were sticky with blood, but when someone shone a light on her he could see the large, coarse stitches on her abdomen. They were spread apart, more for fashion than for function. Jesus Christ…

She stirred, lifted her head and tried to move. A stitch popped and she screamed, a high keening that sounded more like an animal than a human woman.

She was still screaming when the ambulance arrived fifteen minutes later.

It was four hours before the surgeon came back, and he looked exhausted.

"You can't see her."

But she was alive.

"What happened?"

"Well, firstly I don't know that she'll ever be Norma again. She was out of her mind…hallucinating." The unspoken Scarecrow toxin hung in the air. "But I wouldn't pity her if that's the case."

This wasn't going anywhere nice.

"Why?"

The surgeon sighed and rubbed his face.

"Someone went in there with what looked like a steak knife and…well…they took out her uterus."

"They what?" That was not the Scarecrow's MO. Sure, they sometimes found mutilated victims, but they were usually dead. Or at least roaming, not tied up somewhere.

"Yeah. I don't know if she was awake. I hope not." The man paused. "What the hell is going on here, Jim?"

"I don't know, Steve. I don't know."

Norma Brown-thirty-six, a doctor, happily married, no children.

And had treated Kitty Richardson when she was still Arkham's head nurse.

His first thought was that she'd had a cold for too long. Crane usually deemed a simple paper cut grounds for annihilation-if she'd developed pneumonia or something…no, just the flu, and that had been taken care of in short order. There was nothing here that should have brought this on. Not that anything should have brought this on, but Crane was crazy.

Nothing…well, maybe.

At some point, Richardson had apparently brought up sterilization and been told no. He had to wonder on what grounds.

They'd been brought back two nights ago-well, they'd checked in. It was early November, about the time they went on vacation. He'd have to pay them a visit.*

"Hullo, Jim." She looked tired. Uninjured, apart from a nasty bruise on her face, but very tired. "To what do I owe this visit?"

"Norma Brown."

"Who…oh! How's she doing?"

"You know how she's doing." He eyed the cuffs attaching her to the table. "Why."

"Why what? Gas her? For science."

"No." he growled. "Why go in there with a knife and-"

"Oh." She grinned and leaned back, the cuffs clinking against the table. "I didn't want kids. Bitch told me I'd change my mind when I was older. Still don't want them. And now she can't have them."

Good god, she was insane.

"I…"

"Don't give me that look. You're a man, you have no idea what it's like. You don't want kids, that's normal. I don't want kids, I need a lobotomy." She cracked her neck. "I'll send her an apology, if it makes you feel any better."

He had nothing, nothing at all, to say to that.

THE END

*They don't ask us about every single crime, you know. That would take six months. Usually they just chalk it up to The Usual and hope we stay in Arkham for a while.