AN: Thanks for the reviews!

It wasn't that Jonathan wasn't grateful to his friends for coming to his rescue. He absolutely was; but the fact that they weren't letting him leave ruined the effect rather a lot. He wasn't opposed to leaving Gotham with his friends—safety in numbers, and all that—but he was getting the distinct impression that they didn't want him to leave at all.

And with three—four, if the Batman got involved—against one, they could very well keep him from getting out.

"Don't you think," he began, as levelly as he could, with a glance toward the Joker, "that this isn't the best time for a discussion?"

Isley sat down to his left, Nigma taking the right side. With the back of the couch behind him and Tetch and Harley sitting standing in front, he was effectively trapped. Great. "It doesn't matter if it's a bad time," Nigma said, taking Jonathan's hand and holding on tight. "We're talking."

He exhaled slowly, trying to keep it from sounding like the sigh he so longed to express. The Joker was less than ten feet away, currently restrained by nothing more than the Batman, which did not make him feel reassured in the least. He doubted he would have felt reassured even had there been three sets of restraints and a wall of bulletproof glass between himself and the clown. "Look, I know that you were worried," he began, "but you didn't need to be. I—"

Isley moved as if to slap him and was only stopped by Harley grabbing onto her arm. "Don't, Pam. It won't help."

"It would make me feel better," she hissed, trying to pull free.

"I know that. But it wouldn't change the situation."

Isley closed her eyes, took a moment to compose herself. Upon reopening them, Jonathan thought she still looked enraged, but Harley let her go. He flinched involuntarily, but the blows didn't come.

"Aw, and I was hoping for a catfight," the Joker muttered. He looked as far back as his current position would allow, to face the Batman. "I was gonna ask if you wanted to bet on the winner." His face was shoved back into the floor again.

"If you don't shut up," Isley said, in a quiet voice that still managed to carry across the room, "I'll cut up more than your face, you bastard."

He licked his lips when he raised his head. "Fine by me, Red."

It occurred to Jonathan that never in his life, even when he'd been affected by fear toxin, had he ever seen anything quite as terrifying as Isley's current expression. She shifted forward slightly, so tensely Jonathan was afraid she would leap up and tear the Joker to shreds at any moment, and Nigma put his free hand on her shoulder to hold her back. Nigma, he reflected, was one of the bravest men he'd ever met.

In another stiff, barely controlled movement, she turned to the Batman. "Could you gag him, please?"

Jonathan expected Isley to be ignored at best, vaguely threatened at worst. After all, they were criminals, though not as bloodthirsty or dangerous as the Joker, and currently all on run from the law. And the Batman didn't appear to be in the best of moods as it was.

So Jonathan was completely floored when his response was to look back at her. "With what?"

The Joker opened his mouth and was promptly pushed down once more. "Oy. This is getting annoying."

"Good," Isley snapped, sounding seconds away from breaking out of Nigma's grasp and throwing something at the clown.

Harley cleared her throat. "Could we not do this now? Please."

"Agreed." Nigma's hand tightened around Jonathan's, though not painfully. "Back to the issue at hand."

"That issue being what?" Jonathan asked, confused as ever but with the growing feeling that he would not like where this conversation was headed. Not that he'd like any conversation that kept him in the same apartment as the Joker, or slowed his progress in leaving Gotham, but this seemed like it was going to be very unpleasant.

"You."

He stared at Tetch. "What?"

"The issue," Harley began, sitting down on the arm of the couch. "Well, not the issue, I guess that's not the best word, but what we need to talk about, is you."

Oh Christ. "I don't follow," he said. It was an absolute lie, but he didn't care. Anything that stalled for time, long enough for the Batman to try something that would bring all the villains against him and give Jonathan time to leave.

From across the room the Joker laughed, face still buried against the rug although his head was no longer being held down. "It's an intervention, idiot. God, you people should have called A&E first, they'd kill for a chance to film this." He collapsed into another giggling fit, halted when the Batman stood, dragging a stunned Joker toward the bedroom doorway.

"Carry on," he said, before closing the door.

The hell? Unexpected didn't begin to cover it. He stared at the doorway for a moment, stunned, until he realized that the chance of Batman putting an end to this madness had disappeared. Damn it. He looked back to the others, still gathered around him, effectively pinning him to the couch. "Look, I know you're concerned, but—"

"Concerned is an understatement."

"Yes, and I realize that, but you didn't need to be. I'm fine—"

"You are not fine," Nigma said. Not argumentatively, or like he was trying to prove something, but flat, as if stating a fact. "You almost had your throat slit—"

"It wasn't."

"You almost had your throat slit," Nigma repeated, as if he hadn't spoken, "and what's more, you were willing to let the Joker kill you. In no sense of the word is that fine."

"You don't understand. It wasn't like that." And it wasn't. It hadn't been a suicide attempt, it had been taking a chance at freedom that had failed, and failing in such a way that he would have avoided suffering. But it ended with death, so everyone said 'suicide' without so much as a second glance.

"What was it like, then?" Isley asked. She was trying to keep her tone level, but he could hear undercurrents of anger and something else—anxiety, maybe?—in her words.

Oh, there was no point. They were never going to understand. "I was trying to get away. It was a bet; if he lost, I got away. It didn't turn out."

"Indeed," Tetch said, sitting down on the carpet in front of the couch.

"You bet against the Joker." Isley looked as if she was trying very hard to hold back a shout. "The very fact that you tried that shows that there's a problem."

"There isn't." He said it quickly, too quickly. He could tell by the faint glances they exchanged each other that they didn't believe him. Well, this night was just getting better and better.

"Jonathan." Harley looked pained, though whether it was from concern for him or upset at having to speak against the Joker, he wasn't sure. "You let him hold a razor to your throat without struggling at all."

"If I struggled, I would have been stabbed." Honestly. This was passing out of concern and into straight idiocy.

"And you already let him cut you," she added, pointing slowly at the cuts on his neck, keeping her hand a good foot away as if afraid of startling him. "Can't you understand that when we see things like that, it makes us worried for your well-being?"

Unbelievable. Just because she'd used to be a psychiatrist, she thought it was acceptable to sit here and analyze him. Harley had been declared every bit as insane as he was, and even if she hadn't, he wasn't about to trust the opinion of someone who'd fallen in love with a psychotic murderer. The fact that he'd done the same was irrelevant. He wasn't going to dignify that with an answer.

"It's not just that," Isley said, when it became clear they weren't getting a response. She took his left hand, above the bandages. "We've been worried about you for a long time, Jonathan. The cuts, and the starving, and—"

"I was off the drugs then. I've got them back now. It's not going to happen again."

"Maybe," she said, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping back. "But that doesn't change the fact that your emotions are completely screwed up and you haven't worked through…" she faltered on saying it. Jonathan was mildly surprised; of all the inmates, Isley was the most forward. He'd have thought she'd have no problem with saying 'worked through the time you were stupid enough to fall for the Joker and got the shit beat out of you,' or something similar. "Through…what happened in October. What's to keep you from deciding that you like hurting yourself and causing another serious injury?"

"Common sense." He wanted nothing more than to be out of this situation. He'd stopped caring about getting out of the apartment by this point; he only wanted this talk to be over. He was sick beyond reason of the 'you have a problem' speeches by this point, and coming from people he usually respected, this one was even more painful than normal. "I didn't have it then. I do now."

"That's debatable." Isley had muttered it under her breath, without meaning to, judging by the way she winced afterward.

His eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"

"You're mad."

"I am not." Tetch had likely only said it because Lewis Carroll didn't write out long, passive-aggressive accusations such as, 'I think you're not taking care of yourself as well as you could and would be relieved if you changed your behavior,' or some such nonsense, but he was past caring. As of late, it seemed everyone in the world over seemed dying to try and convince him that he was out of touch with reality, and he wasn't going to take it anymore. Especially not from four certifiably insane people. "I am not."

Nigma sighed, removing his hand from Isley's shoulder to massage his temples. "Jervis, why don't you…" he paused, casting for an idea. "Jonathan, do you have tea?"

As if he was going to remember the exact contents of his cupboards over a year later. "I suppose."

He nodded. "Jervis, could you make us some tea?"

Tetch nodded, seeming to decide it was best not to speak, and left for the kitchen.

"Jonathan, no one is calling you insane—"

"He just did."

"That doesn't count and you know it," Harley said, placing her hand on his shoulder. He pulled away and she didn't try replacing it. "What we are saying is that we're worried about you."

"I know that. And as I've said repeatedly now, don't be. I can take care of myself."

"Well, you haven't done a very good job of it so far."

"So I had a rough start." He tried standing, only to have Nigma and Isley pull him back down. For the love of God. "The point is, I'm fine now, and there's no use in carrying on this discussion. We're only wasting time. In case you hadn't noticed, the Batman is right over there." He tilted his head toward the bedroom, door still closed. "And any minute now, he's going to come back out and bring us all to Arkham. So if you insist on having a discussion about my stupid decisions as of late, I'd prefer to do it elsewhere."

The trio looked at each other, then back to him, expressions making him more uneasy than ever. "What?"

"Jonathan," Harley began, in the calm, quiet tone she'd always used as a psychiatrist. "We're not trying to get away."

"What?" For the first time since the conversation began, he was truly lost. Unless she meant…but she couldn't. No. Even for them, that was insane.

"We're going back to Arkham," Nigma said, voice echoing Harley's in that meant-to-be-soothing quality. In reality, it was anything but. "We didn't break out to run away."

It didn't follow. It simply didn't follow. He understood the words Nigma had used and the order they were in, but his mind was incapable of wrapping itself around that sentence. "Then what did you break out for, attention?"

"We broke out to get you." Isley tightened her grip, loosened it as he winced. "Because we care about your well-being."

Fucking hell. "You cannot be serious."

"Yes, we can."

He was going to be sick again. He could feel it. "I'm not going back to Arkham."

"Jonathan, you don't have to be afraid of the Joker. We'll all be there, and we'll be watching out for you. You're not going to get hurt—"

"I'm not going back to Arkham."

"You're going to be fine." Isley's hand was on him, stroking his hair, and he was too—disgusted? Angry? Frightened?—conflicted to push her away. "You don't need to be scared, we'll all be there to—"

"I'm not. I can't go back."

"Why not?"

How was he supposed to explain? There weren't words to explain it. Everything was falling apart around him, everything he'd ever known about the world. The hatred he'd thought he held for the Joker turned out to be not so simple after all, the way the Batman acted towards him and all the other criminals save for the Joker had been completely turned upside down, as had the way his friends were supposed to act toward him. Everything was going to pieces, and the only thing he was sure of anymore was himself.

And going back to Arkham, whether of his own free will or by force, would be admitting that there was something wrong with him. It would be saying he was uncertain of himself. And he couldn't do that. He could not. Because if he lost himself, he'd lose everything. He really would go insane. He couldn't. He'd rather die before he went back again.

"Jonathan?"

"I'm going to be sick," he muttered, leaning forward, pulling against the hands trying to hold him back.

"What?"

"I'm going to be sick. Let me up."

The hands were off him at once, though there were footprints behind him, concerned voices speaking words that he could hear but did not care to listen to, and then he was in the bathroom, vomiting up acid because there was nothing else left inside. He felt himself sink to the floor, felt tears come to his eyes that he couldn't hold back. If they take me back, it's going to kill me.

AN: A&E is a television station with a show entitled Intervention, in which experts meet with families to stage interventions.