There is no possible way to wake up in an institution and mistake it for home. At home, the lights do not come on and off without your control. At home, the mattresses aren't dimpled in the middle from years of use, or if they are, they're your dimples. At home, there isn't a constant buzz of conversation between the hundreds of other people who are your new neighbors. And most homes do not have that distinct tang of every imaginable body odor inefficiently masked behind antiseptic.

Sorrow hadn't slept much. The combination of meeting the Batman, being captured and packed off to wherever she was had provided her with enough nervous energy to power Gotham for a week. Instead, she'd spent the night catnapping and trying to figure out her new surroundings.

This was certainly an odd jail. Sorrow had been in a handful of the local prisons, and she knew very well that most jail cells featured bars, not plexiglass. Most jails were overcrowded, and yet here everyone had their own cell. She'd spent a large portion of the night trying to remember which jails in the Gotham area had upgraded their facilities recently. None came to mind.

The other thing that stood in the way of her sleep was the pretty female voice from down the way, singing the same love song over and over through the long, dark night. She sounded incredibly familiar, but Sorrow couldn't remember any other lovesick felons that knew this particular tune. After a while, a rough female voice ordered her to shut her crazy mouth or she'd shut it for her.

Ah, now that explained more than it didn't. Most jails did have sick people - you only went to Arkham if you were criminally insane, after all, and normal non-crime-related psychosis merely meant that you might spend a little more time in protective custody than the average inmate - so Sorrow wasn't really surprised to hear that there was a lunatic living down the way. She could handle one lunatic.

The main thought that kept her eyelids propped open long after the singer had gone quiet was that she didn't know where she was. When she'd arrived in the back of the windowless cop van, she hadn't seen much of the outside other than a steel door surrounded by bricks. She'd been hustled inside, asked a series of strange and inane questions, dressed in their uniform as if she was an oversized Barbie doll and shoved halfheartedly into an empty cell. They'd barely said anything to her, other than the questions. Normally, prison officials were very eager to press home the point that you were in their house, with their rules, blah, blah, blah, we're in charge and you are not. No one had even hinted at such a thing to her. Well, maybe that was because they were the night shift...

But that brought up a whole new series of questions. Prison transfers weren't done during the night. And, come to think of it, they hadn't actually bothered to book her, either. Well, maybe the fact that they couldn't exactly take her fingerprints had something to do with it...but it was odd, nonetheless.

The sun had begun to rise, sending little squares of light through the heavily barred windows in the empty cell across the hall. Sorrow kicked her blanket off and stood up, pacing the little six-by-six room that would be her home for the near future. The cell was pretty nice, as cells went. The bed was fairly soft and there wasn't much graffiti etched into the beige paint covering the hard cement walls. When she stood up, she was able to brush the ceiling with her fingertips.

Not that she'd seen her fingertips recently. They'd taken away her gloves and given her a pair of cheap latex ones instead, the kind that fifties housewives wore while doing dishes to avoid getting wrinkly fingers. They were a glaring neon shade of pink with wrists that extended halfway to her elbow. She felt ridiculous with them on and had done her best to camouflage them by stuffing them up the sleeves of her gray institutional garb.

A guard, idly toying with the gun on his hip, opened her door. "Come on. Breakfast."

"I'm not hungry."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't care. You're going."

Well, with a charming argument like that, how could she refuse? She slid off the bed and walked uncertainly out into the hallway. He slammed her door closed and, with one hand wrapped around her upper arm as if he was dragging an overloaded luggage cart, directed her silently down a series of twisting hallways. When they reached the open cafeteria doors, which were flanked by a pair of burly guards, he shoved her inside and disappeared.

The room was half-full of inmates staring blearily at the unappetizing mush in front of them. Clearly last night's tranquilizers hadn't quite worn off yet. Sorrow strolled through the room, trying to act casual as she got in line. Yeah. She ate breakfast with murderers and other felons every day. (Well, actually, she did, but they were her felons and were unlikely to attack her if they valued their ability to breathe.) Right. Nothing to worry about...

She got her tray, with its bowl of pasty white oatmeal and half of a rapidly browning apple, and headed for the only empty table in the room. She only looked at the other tables long enough to see if they were occupied, not to notice details about their occupants. Taking in the human scenery like that could, in theory, be interpreted as 'staring', and it could probably get her killed. Then again, maybe not - but it's always wisest to err on the side that won't leave you bleeding out in a shadowy corner somewhere.

She settled herself at the empty table and promptly found out why it was empty. A leaky pipe just next to her dripped something noxious on the floorboards, sending little gusts of putrid air up at regular intervals. It was certainly not conducive to a good meal. But then again, neither was the food, or the company, or the building, so that was fine.

Sorrow picked up her spoon, for the look of the thing, and started tracing patterns in the gelatinous, gluey mess in her bowl.

If Sorrow had taken a moment to look around, the question of where she was would have resolved itself quite neatly in a few seconds, particularly if she'd happened to glance at the two tables occupying the center of the room.

The loose double line of inmates breakfasting quietly were actually Gotham's most infamous rogues. If the conversation amongst the double line of inmates wouldn't have tipped her off to their identity - particularly the Nightwing-vs.-Batgirl debate amongst most of the men - the fact that the occupants of the table included a half-faced man, a man clutching a wooden dummy and a green-skinned redhead definitely would have hinted as to her current location.

The Joker was in solitary confinement for trying to kill his psychiatrist. Again. And so, as was always the case when her beloved Puddin' was unavailable, Harley had firmly attached herself to Poison Ivy like a lonely kitten. During their conversation, Harley kept craning her neck all the way around like an owl spotting prey. "Harley," Ivy finally hissed, "what are you doing?"

"Tryin' ta look at the new girl, Red," Harley answered, still turned halfway around in her seat. "She looks like that girl we saw on the news last night."

Ivy looked closer at the girl, who she'd simply dismissed earlier. Add the costume, the face paint…actually, she could be the same one. "She does look similar."

"I'm gonna go see if she's her!" Harley swung herself off the bench and bounced over to the new girl, staying low so that the guards didn't see her. She seated herself next to the new girl and chirped "Hiya!"

The girl looked up, startled by the perky blonde that had suddenly materialized in her personal space. Her plastic spoon hit the tray with a soft tick noise as she hid her hands under the table. "Um…hi…"

Harley was nothing if not direct. "So…was that you we saw on the news last night?"

"Me? Maybe…"

"Was it you makin' the Bat cry?"

The girl looked down at her plate suddenly, gulped nervously, and looked back up.

"Yeah."

Harley beamed triumphantly. "Yer gonna have to share that little secret with me! I've always wanted to make the Bat cry! What's yer name?"

A little smile tugged at the corners of the girl's mouth for a moment. "Sorrow."

"Sorrow? Well, whatcha in for, Sorrow?"

Sorrow looked down at the congealing oatmeal. "I'm a menace to society, I guess."

Harley giggled. "Aren't we all? Oh, sorry, forgot the introduction. The name's Quinn, Harley Quinn, pleased ta meetcha." She stuck out her hand, inviting a handshake.

Sorrow looked at it as if it was an unexpected snake. "I can't touch you."

Harley drew back, offended. "Well, I'm not that bad! It's not like I'm asking you to shake with Clayface or nothin!"

Sorrow shook her head violently. "No, no, it's not that. They took away my gloves, and I'm not sure if these are good enough." She pulled her hands back out from under the table, showing off her alarmingly pink fingers. "I'm poisonous. I don't want to hurt you," she spelled out as Harley blinked with confusion.

"Oh, okay. You're like Red, then. I gotcha." Harley grinned.

"Red?"

"Ivy. Poison Ivy. Over there, see?" She waved at Ivy, who waved back, amused.

Sorrow, however, was thoroughly unamused. "Wait a minute. If that's Poison Ivy, and you're Harley Quinn…they sent me to Arkham?" Her face slackened into the despair generally only seen on the faces of children finding out that there is no Santa Claus.

Harley said "It's not as bad as that. Well, maybe it is, but it's not like you have to stay here for long, if you don't wanna. An' if you don't want to bother with escapin', they try to letcha out if you're good for a couple months at a time, cuz they think you're better, even if you're still wacked out," Harley finished. Sorrow was still staring off into the distance. "You still with me here, Sorrow?"

"I don't think they'd let me out like they do for you, Harley," Sorrow said, examining her hands. "I'm a special case."

"We're all special cases here! That's why this place is so famous."

"Yeah, but the only ones I've ever seen them let go are like you, or the Ventriloquist. Not anyone with...powers," she spat, like she didn't want to use that word but couldn't think of anything to replace it.

Harley studied her for a second. Well, yes, it was true that they'd never let Ivy out before...but then again, Red had that habit of trying to off her doctors when they said that plants weren't important. "I think you'd better talk to Red…er, Ivy, Sorrow. She'll help ya out." Harley patted her on the shoulder and bounced back to her own table, brimming with news for Ivy.

After breakfast, the inmates adjourned to their cells. Some had sessions with their psychiatrists. Sorrow and a handful of other rogues - Mr. Freeze and Clayface among them - didn't. She assumed that like them, she had no psychiatrist because she wasn't crazy. Arkham was the only place for prisoners too "unique" to be allowed in a general prison population, after all. Maybe she should have expected to be put there.

This was not to say that Sorrow wasn't still upset about being put there. At least in prison there were rules. The important ones were all unwritten, of course (Do Not Rat On Thy Fellow Inmates. Do Not Trust Thy Fellow Inmates. In Fact, Do Not Interact With Thy Fellow Inmates Any More Than Thou Hast To, To Prevent Thy Untimely Death) but at least she knew what to do to keep from being attacked. What were the rules here, where everyone was expected to attack everyone else?

Maybe there weren't any. Maybe she should do what so many of the others did and skip out at the first opportunity. She flopped bonelessly down onto her bunk and let her gaze wander out the window, where through the close-set bars she could see a rolling expanse of green. From this distance, it looked quite peaceful and bucolic...that is, until you got close enough to the window to notice the ten-foot-tall electrified razor-wire fences that wrapped around the edges of the property.

Escape would be tricky, particularly since she hadn't even been there a full day yet. Where were the doors? What would happen to her if she tried to escape and failed? She'd never been in a mental institution before, so her vague knowledge about the place was about the same as the average person on the street: temporary home for rogues, electroshock therapy, rampant abuse (though the last two were more from the movies than from actual reports from Arkham)...Maybe shewouldn't skip out right away. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to hang around and get the lay of the land. Yeah. Act nice and stay out of trouble, and run like hell when the opportunity presented itself.

She'd been lost in thought longer than she'd expected. An orderly was rapping on her window and barking "Lunchtime!" at her. She rolled to her feet and let him lead her down the hallway.

Lunchtime in institutions is always more dangerous than breakfast. The inmates have had time to wake up and remember the fights from yesterday, or last month, or that time that that guy across the room made a face at them while they were watching tv, that bastard, and then would come the bloodshed and the violence...

That's why Sorrow avoided sitting with the other rogues and returned to her table in the far corner, the one that smelled suspiciously like rotten garbage. It was dangerous enough to even be in the same room with these people, let alone provoke them by taking what they might think was their seat or their table. No one would willingly claim this table as their territory, at least no one she would worry about.

Oh, god. Through lowered eyelashes, she spotted a nondescript young man seating himself at the rogues' table. He'd at least been smart enough to pick the end seat, the one near the Riddler, the Ventriloquist, and the Scarecrow. Five whole minutes went by without a word or a look exchanged between him and the others. Well, maybe he'd make it through the meal alive...

"AAIIEEE!" She sighed. Maybe not. She couldn't tell what had happened, since she didn't want to be caught openly staring, but she saw the Ventriloquist snatch something out of the young man's hand before stalking away. The guards didn't bother to intervene. Stopping a squabble between little Arnold Wesker and the new fish wasn't their concern.

It should have been. Not two seconds after Wesker went on his way, the Scarecrow leaned in to ask the new guy something. He shook his head - "No" - and turned back to his food. Sorrow forgot about keeping a low profile and openly gaped as she saw the thin, bookish rogue swing a fork into the classic stabbing position above his head. In one smooth motion, he brought the fork down.

"AARRRH!" the man shrieked, clutching his wrist and staring disbelievingly at the fork handle wobbling cheerfully in the back of his hand. Blood trickled from his palm down the tines of the fork and splashed quietly on the table. Yes, it was clearly a mistake to sit with the rogues, a thought that was emphatically reinforced when she saw the Scarecrow peering through his pince-nez and observing the reaction of the man as if he was nothing but a lab rat. Which, she supposed, he probably was, to the Scarecrow, anyway...

And then the man at the other side of the Scarecrow punched the professor in the head, setting off a riot. Trays thwacked down hard on heads and necks. Food sprayed across the walls, spattering the tan paint with sick yellowish sludge. The man with the fork in his hand crawled desperately across the room, heading right toward Sorrow.

Sorrow was ignoring the riot, choosing instead to shovel the rest of her lunch into her mouth. She knew full well what would probably happen next: everyone involved would be sequestered in their cells until further notice. They'd be sentenced to sandwiches, and even though this yellowish casserole slop was nasty, at least it was hot.

A thump on her calf made her leap from her seat and back up against the wall. The sad little fork-handed man was under her table, watching the other inmates with round, scared eyes as they beat hell out of one another and the guards. A gap-toothed guard rushed in, leading the charge of other guards and screaming "LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN!" as he tore into the inmates.

Sorrow wanted no part of the beatings the guards were dishing out. When the guards had gotten the major players in the riot taken care of, they turned their attention to the little table in the corner. Sorrow stood there, calmly finishing her bread roll as the fork-handed man quivered on the floor. "Hands up!" they barked, advancing with tasers at the ready.

Sorrow tucked the last bite of bread into her mouth and obligingly raised her hands. The fork man screeched as a guard yanked him out of his hiding place by his injured arm. "Rough day?" she said sweetly to one bleeding guard as he grabbed her arm and dragged her back toward her cell.

"No rougher than most," he grunted at her. It wasn't long before she was back in her cell, watching the parade of inmates returning from the infirmary in a variety of bandages and restraints.

Clearly, she mused, this was a place to walk carefully.

(to be continued)

Author's Note: If you're schizophrenic and you rob a bank, you're only criminally insane if the schizophrenia made you do it. That's why modern jails in the US have a startling amount of mentally unwell people dwelling within them. Sad, but true.

The riot scene was taken from Arkham Asylum: Living Hell - with, of course, a minor addition or two.