AN: PRAISE THE LORD, MY ACCOUNT WORKS AGAIN.

Actually, as it turns out, stupid confession time: I'd somehow blocked the fanfiction sender thing from my email by accident. I am an idiot. But it's fixed now, and you can send me PMs and review replies again.

Thanks for the reviews!

Jonathan pulled himself from the Joker's arms. There was almost no resistance, and the Batman had already let go, likely to shield himself from any oncoming fear toxin. Not that he needed to. Jonathan had rigged the system so the toxin would be sprayed out of the doors and windows, not inward. After all, he didn't want to be affected by something meant to stop attackers.

He heard coughing, spun to face what remained of his front door. It had been ripped off the hinges, splintered around the lock, and through the doorway came a stumbling, choking Pamela Isley, hands rubbing at her eyes as she tripped, falling to the floor.

"Isley!"

He crossed the space between them so quickly he wasn't quite sure if he'd moved, heart racing as he knelt down beside her, far faster than it had been when the razor was against his throat. He had no fear of being affected by the toxin; the trap had also been rigged to only fire for six seconds or so, so that he wouldn't be affected if he had to leave by the same exit. Besides, he'd felt the toxin's effects before. Isley hadn't. And there was no telling how strongly a person would react until they'd been affected.

Some of his experiments had died.

"Isley!" She was still coughing, unable to answer as she stared up at him. Concern for her safety had shattered all his prior knowledge of the chemical's effects, it seemed, he was unable to remember how long she'd been coughing, or if coughing this long and heavily was a normal reaction. What if she had a reaction and she's suffocating? He hadn't been here in over a year; he couldn't recall if there was any antidote stashed somewhere.

"Pam!" Nigma dropped down beside Jonathan, taking her in his arms, and he was too panicked to be shocked by the man's sudden appearance. He saw behind Nigma two other figures, not focusing on them long enough to realize they were Tetch and Harley until they knelt down as well. "Pam, are you okay?"

She gave one last, quiet cough, as though she'd run out of air to give more, and fell silent, shaking stopped.

"Pam?"

And then bolted up, eyes glittering with the anger Jonathan was so used to as she slapped him across the face. "You little idiot. What the hell were you thinking, rigging up the door that way?"

The pain was nothing, especially with the knowledge that she was okay. "Isley…I…" And he found that he had no words to express his relief, nothing to do but hug her. "You're okay!" His arms were tight around her, tightest they'd ever been since the first time he'd hugged Harley after she'd turned to crime. She didn't hug back, he noticed, and was pushing against him, nails on his back, but she was safe and nothing mattered but that fact right now.

"Jonathan…Jonathan, I can't breathe."

"Oh. Sorry." He leaned back, still grinning from ear to ear. "But you're all right." Then paused, thinking it over. "Why are you all right?" Was that two villains the toxin didn't work on? Maybe this stuff wasn't as effective as he'd thought. Or maybe it became less potent with time.

"The toxin comes from flowers, genius. Did you think I hadn't made myself immune to every plant-based poison there is?"

"Oh." Well, that had been stupid of him. Almost as stupid as thinking he could win the whole guessing game of death thing. Still, he couldn't bring himself to be offended, and leaned in again, hugging her more gently this time. "How did you find me?"

"Eddie." She tilted her head back toward Nigma, whose lap she was still resting in. "And don't ask me how he did it; he's the damn Riddler. I've got no idea what's going on in his head half of the time, and frankly, I don't think I want to."

"Thanks, honey." Nigma leaned down, kissed her on the cheek.

"What? I'm serious, no normal person can figure out where someone's at from a milkshake, of all things."

"Since when are we normal?"

"Touché."

"But how did you get out?" Jonathan asked, as Nigma slowly shifted Isley out of the way and took her place, hugging Jonathan as tightly as he was able. Joints still stiff from burn damage, and all. It made no sense, the four of them out at once. True, all it took was one inmate out of his cell to release all the others, but security should have been greatly tightened after his breakout was discovered. Bad as Arkham was at preventing singular breakouts, they were generally able to keep more than one from occurring in a twenty-four hour period.

"You can thank Jervis for that," Harley said, sitting down cross-legged beside him, and hugging him when Nigma let go. "He played sick to get a guard into his cell, knocked the guy out, took the pass key, and sprung us all out to find you."

Her arms left and Tetch's took their place, Jonathan turning to face him. "I'm impressed."

"And she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished her sister kissed her, and said, "It was a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run to your tea: it's getting late.""

Isley arched a brow. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning 'it's good to see you again,'" Jonathan said, hugging back. "And that I was being foolish."

"You were," Nigma said, though not unkindly.

"Talk about understatements." The anger was back in Isley's eyes; not as fiercely as it had been when she first sat up, but still strong. "Calling your actions stupid is like calling a mountain tall. It's accurate, yes, but it complete underwhelms the comparison."

"It wasn't that—"

Harley's hand was over his mouth. "Yes, it was, Jonny. We were worried sick about you, don't you understand that?"

He let go of Tetch, moved to free himself. "Yes, but I told you not to be. And now you've broken out and ruined your chances of being released. It wasn't worth it, I could have taken care of myself—"

"Yeah right." Isley rolled her eyes. If he wasn't so ecstatic to see them all, it would have annoyed him. As if he couldn't be trusted not to get hurt. Fine, so there'd been that whole 're-captured by the Batman' thing, and the 'almost killed by the Joker' bit, but that was beside the point.

"What do you call these, then?" Harley asked, gently brushing her fingers over the cuts on Jonathan's throat.

"I haven't pricked it yet," Tetch added. "But I soon shall."

Isley brushed her hair behind her shoulders. "What?"

"He hasn't seriously hurt himself, but he will," Nigma translated, taking her hand.

"Oh. Look, one of you start translating this before I ask, okay?"

"I'm not going to get hurt," Jonathan protested, moving Harley's hand. "I'm fine."

"You are absolutely not fine."

Damn it. He could feel his resolve weakening, the way it had when he was writing the goodbye notes, before he'd left the asylum. He couldn't sit here and listen to this; the more he did, the more likely he was to let himself be talked into thinking that he had a problem, or guilted into going back to Arkham. It really wasn't fair. Of all the villains, he was the only one without some form of psychosis, but the others had decided that they didn't have issues and projected their own onto him.

Nice as it was to see them, in a way it was a detriment. If the Joker hadn't been interrupted, things would have been all right. He'd have died, yes, but it wouldn't have been slow or painful, or in a madhouse. Bizarre as it was, the Joker had actually been willing to go through with his request for painlessness, and of all the times for an interference to come, he wished it hadn't been there. He was sick of the chase, the capture, the pain, lather, rinse, repeat. Sick of running, sick of Arkham, sick of life in general.

That didn't make him suicidal, just sensible. That didn't make him sick. But of course they wouldn't see it that way, when they found out what had happened. Just as the Batman surely hadn't seen things when the game began.

"You didn't have to come after me—"

"Idiot," Nigma said, though once again, his tone was gentle. "We didn't come after you because we had to. We came because we care about you."

"And yeah, we really did," Isley added, eying the cuts the way she'd stared at his scars last week in the hospital. She reached out, touched the left hand above the bloody bandages. "What do you call that, Jonathan?"

"An accident."

"Ah. I call it 'the reason we're not leaving you alone ever again.'"

He held in a sigh, which took a ridiculous amount of effort. "Look, I—"

"Guys." Harley's hand was over his mouth again. "Please, don't fight. Look, we're all together, and Jonathan's not hurt, okay? We'll have time to sort things out later. Can we just have a minute where we're all happy to see each other?"

"Agreed." Nigma said at once, giving Isley a sterner look than Jonathan would have thought him capable of. Nigma wasn't a coward, he knew that; no one who faced the Batman on a regular basis could be called a coward. Still, he'd always gotten the impression that Isley was the dominant member of the relationship.

She sighed. "Agreed."

"Why not?" Tetch said, with a compliant shrug.

"Fine by me," Jonathan said, once Harley released him. Not that he had any interest in sorting things out later, but as they were on relatively good terms at the moment, he didn't feel it was the time to start questioning things. "And I am happy to see you." Annoyed, yes, but happy. It was touching to know that they cared so much, even if they went about caring in entirely the wrong way.

"The feeling's mutual," Nigma said. "What did you come here for, anyway?"

"Like I'm going to leave Gotham without my books."

Isley giggled, her anger finally seeming to fade. "And your DVDs, right?"

"I…have no idea what you're talking about," he said, flushing.

She rolled her eyes. "Last year. When you were brought in, before you met Harley and they had you drugged beyond reason, you complained that all the TV shows were bad and you wanted your copy of The Sound of Music."

Damn sedatives. "I have no memory of that. I think you made it up."

"Er…no, Jonathan. I was there too," Nigma said apologetically, averting his eyes.

"Well, even if I said that, I was drugged, so you can't—"

A hand grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him to his feet. He barely had time to register that he was moving before he felt metal against his throat and knew the razor was back again.

"I hate to interrupt," the Joker said, quickly moving in a way that put the other rogues between the Batman and themselves. "But Jonny and I have some unfinished business. So say what you gotta say now, kids, because you're not gonna another chance."

The four responded by standing, all but Harley looking ready for a fight. Jonathan could see this ending in two ways; the Joker slitting his throat, or the Joker accidentally stabbing him through the esophagus as they lunged. Damn it.

Shorter chapter this time. Sorry, the next one will be longer.

Tetch's lines are from Lewis Carroll, again.