Gotham City, Arkham Hospital

Richard felt his heart jump in his chest. The dreams came more frequently after his seventeenth birthday, and they were always, nearly the same with him ending up crying between his dead parents. Sometimes if he's lucky, he would be holding a bloody rod in his hand. Of course, he couldn't remember if that were true or not – that's all they have told him before he moved into Arkham.

"How are you today, Richard?"

A frosty response followed.

"I feel sick. I feel weak. My heart's on fire and there's a hammer in my chest."

A sigh responded, "My boy, you're only imagining these things because you're letting them get to you. Delusion of the mind is not a wanted trait in a young man like yourself. Now... are you aware of what day it is?"

"October 14th."

"Good, good. And do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning?"

"Uh ...toast?"

The other scoffed at his mild hesitation.

"You question your own answer? ...Feel fortunate you get them at all, Richard. You're not living in your once rich and privileged life, you know."

"..."

Richard tightened his left fist nervously as he sat across a large desk from his doctor. Dr. Slade Wilson was the psychiatric doctor to the teens and young adults placed in the Arkham Hospital for the Criminally Insane. For all the bitter and hateful stories that were told about him, he never became a better man. He was a cold, sarcastic figure with a deep, eerily calm voice and a stiff, bulk figure. He was only scheduled to work the day-shift, but he always stayed for overnights. Every time Richard was scheduled to see him, he would either be dressed in smart business attire or a starch white lab coat. Richard never once asked him about the dark bandage that was always wrapped around his head and over his right eye. The man seemed cruel – it wouldn't be wise to provoke him. He acted like everyone was beneath his status.

"Let's go over your files from the past week? Nurse Karen(1) has passed onto me that you said something... 'distasteful' to her as she was cleaning up around your bedroom last Thursday."

Richard muttered under his breath as he looked away glaring.

"...Because she's freaking nosy."

Dr. Slade wasn't above acute hearing and pointed it out sternly.

"What was that?"

"I said she had no right to snoop through my things but she did anyway!" Richard repeated hotly.

Dr. Slade kept his frame unmoved by the rise in emotion, his hands still clasped together nonchalantly in front of him on his desk.

"But, you should remember that privacy here is a privilege, no longer a right. You lost that entitlement the day you arrived here..."

"It wasn't even that part that really bothered me, doctor. It was that she went looking through my sketches while I watched her and then she commented bitterly on them and threw them in the bin. I had to retrieve them. ...I wasn't even aware she had a spine."

"You know you are forbidden from keeping anything in your room. Don't you?"

Richard looked down shamefully, but didn't say anything to apologize for it.

"Did you get them?"

"Yes, I did, sir."

"Bring them by again at our next meeting. I will see if her opinion actually stands."

Richard didn't answer. He knew the next time Dr. Slade saw him, his sketches would disappear. There was no sarcasm with this doctor, no smile either. Just an ego being fed too much. The statement was enough to offend him even more. A brief stifling silence followed before Dr. Slade lifted his one-eyed viper gaze intensely on a point of Richard's face.

"Hm... I see that bruise is no longer giving you difficulty."

Almost instantly, Richard reached up to gently finger the triangular mark above his left eyelid. He glared again, feeling spiteful. His jet, black hair was grown out a little and it was shaggy, with a few strands fell into his blue eyes and framed his strong jawline. Richard was good-looking, but the dull grey, oversized patient pajamas and the dark mark above his eye made him feel less confident. There was a time when he wasn't. He hated feeling defeated.

"It has been almost a month, doctor."

"But no doubt will you be stuck with it for life."

"..."

"Do not distress, Richard. The origins of its existence will soon be fleeting images of your mind. Remember, you are here to ultimately forget that ordeal, accept your faults, and move on. The past is behind you now..."

Richard looked away and set a hard gaze on the faded carpet that sat on the old floorboards beneath the office. He despised Dr. Slade and everything he represented here at the hospital. It was all basically an asylum in disguise.

"Alright, your time is up. Be sure to bring by your... 'artwork' at our next meeting later tomorrow morning. For now, I'd like you just to stay within your quarters and rest. Relax..."

"But I don't r-!"

"I'm not asking you to, Richard. I'm telling you. You know the rules: only a selected few of the patients are permitted to walk freely, and you are still new. You haven't proven yourself of that yet. Now go... and remember to take your medication tonight before bed."

With a small sigh, Richard excused himself as politely as he could and got up to leave. When he opened the door that led from the doctor's office into the hallway, a tall, skinny woman most likely in her late twenties was standing there, wringing her wrists nervously. Her wide brown eyes went from him to Dr. Slade's in a heartbeat.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, come in now, Selina. Richard is not going to hurt you. He's leaving."

Dr. Slade did nothing welcoming as he went to reach for a file from the drawer of his desk. Richard watched over his shoulder as Selina hurriedly walked past him, as if in fear, and went to sit in his chair. He'd never formally met the woman before. He never met any of the other patients yet since his arrival one month past. They always flew by him in the halls, lost in themselves or nothing at all; like empty shells and images of ghosts.

"Now where were we from our last meeting? ...Ah, yes. We were talking about cats and why it is wrong for you to idolise them. Look at where you ended up as a result of that foolishness, but don't worry. Nothing of the outside world can harm or influence you anymore..."

As Richard closed the door behind him, the smell of the open hallway drifted into his nose. Arkham was a terrible place. It was never treated carefully, always smelling of bodily fluids and death. It was filthy in nearly all areas, especially the washrooms – if he couldn't help it, he avoided it nearly all day. And the other patients were pitiful souls in need of salvation, clawing and mumbling, talking and yelling amongst themselves. They were all crazy, loony – and he was one of them, as much as he wanted to deny it. As he walked, he clenched his mouth shut and kept his sharp blue eyes from wandering anywhere for too long. He hated it in the hospital.

But where could he go?

The court jumped at the thought of placing a murderous teenager, without any evidence but a bloody rod in his hand, into Arkham. Never mind the Gotham State Penitentiary for petty criminals. Apparently, disturbed youth were a lost cause. Another interest for the morning paper, finally to get some attention. His defence lawyer had said nothing supportive and all but swept him out of his own home and scrapping up the family wealth and entitlements. He was a bastard.

But Arkham Hospital was an establishment founded several miles away from Gotham – he couldn't sneak out and just walk back. They would be on him like flies on fruit. And god knows what other disturbed people were running around out there, when so many had already been collected to where he was...

For a seventeen-year-old young man who should be having the world at his feet, he had anything but.

( Welcome. )

A/N: Will update this weekend. Thanks for reading! So riddle me this: Can you spy with your little eye, who is Miss Selina? And...

(1) Karen (because I wanted to include a villain from the HIVE), was supposed to be Jinx! So imagine her as the bitch that screwed with Richard's artwork! Because I'm that mean lol.