A/N: Who doesn't love Scarecrow? ;) You rock if you got it!

( Too bad, honey. )

x

Wednesday

Three days went by like a blur until Richard spent his day shut in his room. After everything with Kory, the other patients and the sickness he'd felt by the lack of support from the nurses, all he wanted to do was draw.

He wasn't scheduled to meet with Dr. Slade this Wednesday. So he spent the morning from up into the late afternoon alone because his scheduled nurse never came back to check on him and take him down for lunch. He wouldn't have minded since the food was crude and would have understood if she was busy, but he knew better. He'd seen the nurses just lounging in their staff foyer when they were off-duty, complaining amongst themselves and wasting time. They didn't genuinely care about any of the patients, and he wouldn't be an exception. He decided going hungry this night wouldn't be so detrimental, especially if it meant he could spend a day away from everyone.

Harsh, swift strokes from his pencil kept hitting the paper like clockwork. His dark blue eyes were narrowed in concentration and his mouth was a tight line. He had to commit to memory of how a robin's wing was shaped as it sat in a puddle taking a bath. He'd only seen one do it once when he was about eight. It had just finished raining that day and he was stuck in the house because his parents' plan to take him to the circus that was passing through Gotham that weekend had been rained out. So he sat bored looking out the window and that was all he watched.

When he got the shadowing under the beak right and added a few more smudge effects to the robin's reflection in the puddle, he put down the pencil and drew up his knees close to his chest. As he wiped his fingers together, he put the paper on his legs stared into the picture, lost in his thoughts and numb emotions. He sat that way for the remainder of the afternoon into sunset hour.

x

6:30 p.m.

Richard excused himself with the request to a passing male nurse that he wanted to use the lavatories. He held his breath the entire trip up until he had to wash his hands and face in the water basin.

Richard wiped his face with a clean wash cloth nearby and examined himself in the dirty mirror for a few moments. He looked like hell and he wasn't too proud to admit it. His eyes held a tiredness and sorrow he knew he wasn't fighting and his broadening shoulders were slouching a little. His neck hurt all the time from stiffness, and he was growing skinny. He was lanky from missing meals and battling hormonal testosterone. He was the image of a weak, young man. He hated it. As he glared at himself and his pathetic reflection, the nurse still waiting for him coughed anxiously and gave him a fleeting glance.

"Alright, son. Hurry up."

Richard sighed and rubbed his eyes before walking back out. As he walked back to his room with the nurse behind him, grudgingly silent, he looked onto all the rooms he was beginning to pass. Many of them were bedrooms belonging to other patients and the rest were linen closets. When he passed by Dr. Slade's office, Richard couldn't ignore that he'd left his door slightly ajar, for once. As they approached it, Richard made sure to slow his steps two intervals so as to see if he could hear who was inside.

"...I don't... you still... way. She... ake a goo... now...You're slipping."

"Shut up. I know what I'm dealing with."

Richard strained his ears. That didn't sound like patient Dr. Slade would normally talk to.

"What about the new one? He seems dece-!"

"No, not yet. ...think h...eeds...ime...see..."

Soon he became out of earshot and Richard went back to normal walking speed. He didn't understand or like what all of that meant, and he grew hard-faced again. When they reached his room, the nurse grumbled a small reply and Richard shut the door in his face. He didn't get around to doing much in his room, except for placing his sketches back into his pillowcase, when someone knocked on his door and opened it without waiting. He didn't have a barred window on it like Jack's door. A nurse came in with new bed sheets. Richard knew her.

It was the blonde one from yesterday in the cafeteria who had been muttering to herself after Kory's tantrum scene. She looked at him with cold eyes and a deep frown as she neared his bed.

"You know what day it is," she said stonily.

Richard regarded her with a frown of his own and stepped aside.

"Wednesday's wash day," he finally answered.

Without a word, she dropped the sheets onto his bed and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Go on," she said icily. "You know how to do it. Just because your disease prevents you from being like one of us, doesn't mean you can't be capable of fixing your own bed. I would be more disgusted if it did."

Richard rolled his eyes at her and went ahead to quickly change his sheets. For a girl to be so young working in a place like this he could understand why she was bitter – but she was taking this whole situation to a new level of snob. Petty rich kid. He, like her, grew up learning the ethics of giving back and helping those less fortunate. Most kids better off had to learn about giving back to charity – he used to spend Sundays in the Gotham state-funded hostels playing games with homeless kids before he turned sixteen. As he went around fixing the bed close to his pillowcase, he tried to talk over the sound of the rustling papers inside it.

"Heh, what happened then? Daddy got tired of paying rental on your car, so he made you work?" he teased.

"Shut up, you're just dirt under my shoe," she replied hotly. You don't know anything about me."

"You should learn to respect people better," Richard said bitterly. "You're privileged."

"Then why am in this hellhole surrounded by you folk? You're nothing to me. Had my father run for city council this year, I would've made him pass a mandate that would've gotten Arkham shut down months ago."

Richard had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Was she stupid? Then all the men and women in here like Jack would've been running around in the streets. The police were nothing without Arkham Hospital.

"You, miss, are a very idi-!"

"There. You're done. Now give me those."

With a quick step forward, she yanked the old bed sheets from Richard's hands just as he was finishing up and lifting away the pile. Without another word or look, she left his room, her blonde hair swaying violently as she stomped into the hallway.

"Tara(1), it's okay," a nurse in the hall he couldn't see say to the girl. "Give me those blankets, I'm heading over to the laundries now."

In another second, Richard saw her figure pass his room and go the opposite way. The hall was silent after that. He sighed and went to go close his door, before another nurse arrived at his doorframe and gave him a careful look.

"Richard, come with me," she said calmly. "You have a visitor downstairs."

When she brought him across the foyer and into the east wing of the building where the public was permitted to go, all his confusion washed away and he ran up to his surprise guest. With a quick hug and hello, Richard let go of Bruce Wayne and they both sat down in two armchairs near a window.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you, Mr. Wayne," Richard said gratefully. All his anger in the past weeks seemed to be forgotten and he felt like he was back inside the Wayne Manor for a moment.

"Ah? So I take it you are not being treated well here?" Mr. Wayne's voice said deeply as he crossed his arms over his chest. "And remember, Dick. I keep telling you to just address me as Bruce."

Richard laughed lightly.

"Alright."

"So, how are you fairing?" Bruce asked calmly. He didn't treat Richard like a kid.

"Just hoping, Bruce. Just hoping, and surviving. Strange ordeals keep happening as of late but Dr. Slade is trying to assure me that it all comes with the process of being...cured."

Bruce lifted an eyebrow.

"Trying?"

"I mean, ah..." Richard replied hesitantly. Bruce Wayne, though a close friend to the Grayson family, was a Gotham socialite, a millionaire, and a beneficiary to the Arkham Hospital. He and his parents before him contributed much of their fortune to the development and progress of the hospital's facilities and success, so it was natural for Bruce to stop by once in a while (out of his busy bachelor life) and see what work his money was going towards. Now that Richard was admitted to it, he came more often than usual, and the media had noticed as well.

Richard looked over Bruce's chair and watched as a reporter took a photograph of the two of them. He was momentarily blinded and glared back at the man as he spoke.

"I see the shepard can't stray far from the flock."

"Hm?" Bruce didn't have to turn his head around to see the reporter walk nearby through his peripheral vision. He narrowed his eyes, annoyed.

"Forget them, Dick. Let me tell you something," he said before he started leaning forward a little in his seat. Richard gave him his full attention.

"What is it?"

"This whole exchange between you and Mr. Wilson, I'm not going to lie. I don't like it," he said sternly. Richard watched as his face grew darker.

"Something about him, in fact most of the general staff here, has never sit right with me. I wouldn't forgive myself if something were to happen to you due to a fault in their favour."

Richard smiled a little as he raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah but, aren't you the one who hired most of them?" he teased.

"No, I just pay the finances here," Bruce said sternly. "Dr. Amadeus and his assistant, Harleen, are the ones who deal in human resource... I never cared for that girl, either. Bit of a scatterbrain – and I suspect she may behind the strings that have kept that patient Jack in and out of here for so long... You know he was released once two years back?"

Richard widened his eyes. Another patient let out just like Kory. "Really?"

Bruce nodded his head. "On Wilson's order. Then a week later, he's found with four women and six men dead in his new adult foster care home in Bludhaven. I had to send for him back here, personally, and with the help of a few litigants."

Richard watched as a dark scowl raised over Bruce's features and his eyes went somewhere. Then, as quickly as he had gone, Bruce looked down on Richard's face with a small, tired smile.

"I wish I could send for you to have "private homecare treatment" in the manor, Dick," Bruce said. He said the last part with an almost mischievous smirk. "You shouldn't have to stay here." Then leaning forward a little more, Bruce dropped his voice barely above a mutter as he continued speaking. "This isn't right."

Richard looked away and glared bitterly as Crane seemed to coming into the foyer accompanied by four nurses. He looked like was about to be meeting with someone too.

"None of this is right," he muttered back.

"State law says you can't be eligible for homecare until you've stayed in institutional care for up to a year or if you're deemed 'cured' early by your prescribed psychiatrist and court," Bruce replied before making a light chuckle. "You think you can show them?"

Richard nodded meekly. That was why Richard loved Bruce like his own family. The man, though dark and sometimes distant, was caring and genuine. He was doubtful about what went on at Arkham, but even men with money and status couldn't best the law. So they would have to wait and gain their time until he could released to Bruce as a foster father. He already had an adopted son and even though Tim Drake was away for studies in Charleston, they were already like brothers.

"So how's your bat collection coming along?" Richard asked curiously.

"Please, Dick. You make it sound like a fetish," Bruce said as he laughed lightly. "But the sanctuary is coming along great. I've got four new species coming in next Tuesday from Colorado and after I set up a region of the bat cave for their preferable habitat, I'm sure they w-! "

Suddenly someone made a gasp and both Richard and Bruce whipped their heads to Jonathan Crane. He sat in a far chair with the nurses trying to quiet him down, but his eyes and mouth remained wide on Bruce's features.

"It's you!" Crane shouted across the foyer. Bruce lifted an eyebrow but said nothing.

"I've been in here... TEN MONTHS because you, Bruce Wayne," Crane hissed as he tried to get up from his seat but the nurses wouldn't let him. His lips were quivering and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. His eyes were wide.

"Miss me, Crane?" Bruce said with a smirk.

"You shouldn't come here! You're to blame! W-with all those bats!" he spat the word like it was acid. "I'm going to tell everyone you were here and... ohhhh, the screams tonight. You won't be able to sleep in Gotham tonight...!"

As Crane started to mumble to himself, Richard turned to Bruce with a confused and concerned look. Crane had been such an egotistical bully and an almost frightening manic man yesterday. How could the mere look of Bruce Wayne, of all people, make him shake with fear?

"Everyone?" Richard asked. "But I thought all the staff keep tabs on whose visiting."

"He doesn't mean 'them'," Bruce said sternly, his gaze still stuck on Crane. Then with a shake of his head, Bruce sighed heavily and began to rise from his seat. Crane jumped back but Richard didn't see as he watched Bruce getting ready to leave.

"You're... leaving already?"

"Sorry, Dick. I think it's time that I did," he said. And before he left, he turned to Richard one more last with a small smile. "I'll see you hopefully soon. But until then, don't mention the word ''bat" in front of any of the patients."

Richard raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

Bruce as finished speaking, he turned and headed for the front doors.

"Because I don't just fund the facilities here... I overlook some of the interrogation and therapy treatments too. And sometimes, the bats come in handy." And he left it at that as he walked away.

That night, Richard heard moans and cries from some of the older patients – with the exception of Jack who was cackling till dawn.

Apparently Crane was a gossip girl.

( I'm already inside your head. )

A/N: Gotta love The Batman. I hope you enjoyed reading, and also...

(1) Tara... Tara... remember her!