Getting out of Arkham without permission was relatively easy. You merely had to drop a few bribes, memorize the layout of the hallways, and time your elopement to the perfect moment when all the guards were on their coffee breaks.
Getting out of Arkham with permission was exponentially harder. There were papers to sign, and papers to have signed, and meetings to attend, and papers to sign, and boards to look suitably chastened and sane in front of, and more papers to sign, and endless rounds of sideways looks from the members of the rogues' gallery as Jervis Tetch did his best to leave them all behind.
But he'd done it. He'd fought the twin demons of paperwork and bureaucracy, battled the seemingly endless rounds of therapy (occupational, talk, art, dance, group, cognitive behavioural and all the rest) and shoved his way politely toward Arkham's big iron doors without a vorpal sword or a sharp umbrella in sight. He was minutes, no, seconds away from the final round of forms. Freedom was in his grasp!
He shifted impatiently from foot to foot as his soon-to-be-former therapist and a clearly bored secretary piled clipboards packed with forms in front of him. He didn't even bother reading any of them before he signed them. It was common knowledge that you should always read what you were signing, but common knowledge could take a hike until he no longer had writer's cramp and a headache from squinting at reams of tiny print.
"And who will be picking you up?" his therapist asked.
He looked up at her, brows knit with confusion. "Picking me up? I was under the impression that I was being housed by the city."
"You are," the therapist quickly assured him, "in Wayne Gardens Halfway House. Once you get there, you'll be able to ride the bus and the subway to wherever you need to go." The possibility that he'd one day be able to own and operate a vehicle was fairly remote, given that his license had been suspended indefinitely for driving like...well, for driving like a lunatic, which he had been at the time.
"But buses don't run to Arkham," Jervis said flatly.
"Exactly."
"And I suppose the administration isn't going to offer me a cab?" he pressed on.
"Budget cuts," the secretary shrugged. "We could wait 'til the cops do their daily dropoff and you could ride back with them, I guess."
Return to civilization in a cop car? No thank you. "I'm sure I can find a ride," he smiled as charmingly as possible. "May I borrow your telephone book?"
"You don't know the number?" The therapist raised one bushy eyebrow in a demand for explanations.
"Alas, my memory is not what it used to be," he sighed. "I had all of my acquaintances listed on my cellular phone, but regretfully it was...misplaced," he said with an air of mild inconvenience. It had been a little more than inconvenient when that last kick from Batman had snapped the phone in two, but it could have been worse - it could have been his leg.
The secretary unearthed a phone book from beneath a stack of clipboards and shoved it across her desk. With a nod of thanks, he paged through it. McConnell...McConnell...there it was.
He reached for the phone. The therapist intercepted his hand by placing her own meaty appendage on the telephone receiver. "Who are you calling?" she asked, with only a hint of suspicion in her voice.
"Jeff McConnell," he answered lightly.
"You can't call him," she said, reminding him of something he'd never been told. "You signed that paper, remember?"
"But I have to call someone to pick me up," he protested.
The secretary snapped her gum. "Yeah, but you can't call anyone who used to work for you. Y'know. Your theme guys. You're not allowed to talk to 'em anymore."
"But the Dormo...Jeff is the only one I know with a car," he said reasonably.
"Not my problem," she said dismissively. "Call a cab or something."
"And pay for it how?" he demanded. "I don't exactly have a supply of cash on me at the moment." It was true. He'd never made a habit of keeping cash on him - what would be the point? - and he didn't exactly have a bank card or a checkbook. Those things were for people who wanted to put money in banks, not take it out.
"Not my problem," she repeated. "Doncha have any family around here?"
He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with pinched fingers. As a matter of fact, he did have family in the area...but considering that the last time he'd seen any of them had been at his first trial, he wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of trying to contact them.
"Not really," he lied. "How am I supposed to get there? Walk?"
"Not my-"
"Not your problem, I know," he snapped. "What is your problem? What do you get paid to do, other than enforce idiotic rules!"
"Jervis," a voice said warningly from behind him. He twitched backward to see his therapist shooting a disapproving look at him. He had almost forgotten that she was still there, lurking behind him like a dank little mushroom.
"I, uh..." he muttered. Keep your temper, keep your temper... "I suppose I could call...my cousin," he mumbled.
"What's his name?"
"Alexandra," Jervis replied after a moment's hesitation. He was fairly certain that he remembered little Lexie as being five, maybe six...and since he hadn't seen her since well before his criminal career had begun, surely she could drive by now.
The therapist examined him for a moment, then withdrew her hand from the phone. He paged through the phone book and found what was presumably his cousin's number.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. He was just about to give up when a woman answered the phone, out of breath. "Hello?" she gasped.
"Alexandra?" Jervis inquired.
"Yes. Yes, this is she. Who am I speaking to?"
"This is your cousin Jervis," he said, trying to sound casually friendly. The earpiece quietly hissed staticy nothingness at him. "Hello?"
"...Jervis?" she squeaked quietly.
"Yes," he said, wincing at the unadulterated nervousness in her voice. "Can I be a terrible imposition and bother you to do me a favor?"
"A...favor?" she asked tremulously.
"Just a small one," he said charmingly, trying to ignore the two pairs of official eyes taking note of his every action. "I need transportation across town. I'm..."
He paused. He didn't want to say that he was being released. Being released meant that someone else thought it was their right to keep him - and even if it was, there was an element of servile humiliation in those words that made him cringe. But what other words could he possibly use to explain?
"I'm being released today," he said, forcing the uncomfortable words past his teeth, "and I don't have a car." Another long, trembling silence yawned into his ear. "Please," he added, trying very hard not to notice his therapist's look of satisfaction at his humility.
"I'll...I'll do it," she agreed haltingly, after a pause long enough to contain a game of chess. "How do I get there?"
Jervis waited uncomfortably on the asylum stairs, flanked by his therapist and the head administrator of the asylum. Uncomfortable silence surrounded them like a London fog, thick and concealing potential danger.
He didn't have a thing to say to either of them. Rather, he had too much to say, most of it along themes that would promptly get him into trouble again. Instead, he watched a tiny bird flitting merrily over the distant treetops.
A dark red minivan crested the hill and pulled into Arkham's spacious gravel drive, stones crunching briskly as the driver parked on the far side of the road. A young woman, curly black hair bouncing in the breeze, carefully got out of the van and crept toward the stairs.
"Hi...Jervis," she greeted, shifting uneasily from side to side.
"Hello, Alexandra." He turned to his companions, who were in no way watching him like a pair of hawks eyeing a baby rabbit nest. "Thank you," he said, because it was expected of him. And then, pointedly not tipping his hat, he trotted down the stairs toward his ride.
"Jervis!" The administrator dipped a hand into the pocket of his lab coat. "Don't forget these. The halfway house will have more," he added, gently tossing the small bottle of pills at Jervis' head.
Jervis reflexively caught them and stuffed them into his coat pocket. Then, without any further wastes of time, he clambered into the high passenger seat of the van and slammed the door hard between himself and Arkham Asylum.
Alexandra settled gingerly into the driver's seat. "Off we go," she said with brittle cheerfulness, stomping a heavy foot down onto the accelerator. Gravel shot up wildly around the tires as they barreled down the narrow road back to civilization.
Jervis unobtrusively felt for the handle molded into the door and held on tightly. He'd been down this road at these speeds before, but never in a vehicle that wasn't driven by a bat-faced vigilante.
Alexandra didn't look at him as they shot down the road. He'd obviously rather have her keep her eyes on where she was going, of course, but she'd barely even made eye contact with him before they'd got into the van. They jounced over a set of railroad tracks. Something small and pointy in the depths of the seat was jostled free just in time to stab Jervis in the lower back. He bit his lip and quietly extracted the whatever-it-was from behind himself.
A little toy car. Alexandra had children, then - well, at least one child. A child who liked cars, so probably a boy. He darted a glance into the second row of seats. The fabric of each seat was deeply stained with dirt, food, and other unnameable detritus, except for a pair of untouched squares which presumably supported car seats in normal times.
He cleared his throat. It was still another half-hour's ride to the halfway house. Maybe he could, just this once, have a normal conversation with someone.
Er.
How did normal conversations go again...
Commenting on the weather was out. All weather was lovely weather to an ex-inmate, be it blizzard or dust storm. He couldn't exactly bring up a good movie or a good book - rather, he could, but it would be anything but enjoyable for her, he supposed.
Oh! Of course!
"So how old is the little one?" he inquired.
Skreeeee! The van fishtailed to a halt on the shoulder of the on-ramp. "Who told you I had kids?" Alexandra demanded, eyes wide with panic.
He held up the little toy car. "I found this in my seat. It's all right," he tried to reassure her as she visibly paled. "You don't have to answer. I...I understand." Misery washed over him like an unexpected ocean wave. How was he going to make this work if he couldn't even talk to his cousin?
"They're fine," Alexandra answered stiffly. The van rumbled as she maneuvered it onto the expressway. "We're all...fine."
We? Was she married? He darted a glance at her. A tiny emerald-studded ring graced her right pinky. No other rings were present. No husband, which explained why she was still listed under Tetch in the phone book.
So much for that conversation. Maybe he'd just stay silent until they reached the halfway house.
No. This was little Alexandra, who he'd read poems to when she was small! Admittedly, they had been Lewis Carroll's, but that hadn't meant anything at the time. She was family. There had to be something they could discuss.
Endless minutes ticked away. He had to say something.
"I'm not a criminal," he blurted as they turned the corner onto a busy downtown street.
"What do you mean?" Alexandra asked, carefully neutral.
"I know I made mistakes. I know I...got carried away," he tried to explain as they slowed for a red light. "Can't we go back to the way it was? When you were younger, you always used to love the games we'd-"
"I remember you from when I was little," she interrupted. "You were fun. You're probably still that same old Jervis, somewhere in there. But I can't afford to wait around and find out." Her face hardened. "I know who you were. I know what you've been. No one lets me forget," she spat. "Do you know what it's like to grow up having the Mad Hatter in your family?"
It hadn't exactly been sunshine and roses on his side of the razor-wire fence, either, but he wasn't about to mention that.
She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went a peculiar yellowy-red. "You're out now," she said in a more level tone of voice, "and you might be reformed. But for all I know, you're only free because you convinced someone to let you go. Just remember this." She turned to him, ignoring the light that had just turned green. "If you ever, ever lay a hand on one of my children, I will gut you like a fish." With that, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and floored it through the intersection, eyes firmly on the road ahead.
Well. Any hope of cheerful family reunions was obviously futile. Rather than protest his future innocence, even if such a thing were possible to prove, he sat back in his seat and watched the novel sight of daytime Gotham passing by his window.
The van stopped abruptly in front of Wayne Gardens Halfway House. Alexandra, trembling with emotion and visibly regretting her earlier outburst, met his gaze and bit her lip. "If you really are reformed, I'm glad," she offered.
He nodded stiffly. Oh, of course she would be glad...glad that she wouldn't have to worry about her black sheep of a cousin Jervis showing up in her life again. "Thank you for the ride," he said flatly, sliding to the ground and shutting the door.
He brushed his coat off, ignoring the squeal of tires behind him as Alexandra made her grateful escape, and walked purposefully toward his new home.
(to be continued)
Author's Note: By the way, I'm updating on Wednesday nights now. I apologize for missing last week - my best friend had her first baby, and I spent my time alternately helping her give birth and sleeping in the hospital bathtub. See you next week!