Hello, wonderful readers! Here's the next. I have two more chapters planned after this, and then we'll reach the end. Happy Wednesday, people! Hope the day treats you well. :)

(x)

Harvey told her to steer clear of him. Madeline knew why. When she tried to make it look like nothing was going on, she only ever made it look like something was absolutely going on.

Harvey wasn't much better. He was one of those guys who regularly got pulled out of line for random checks at concerts and airports. Something about him just invited suspicion. It only got worse when he'd actually done something to deserve it.

The whole day and night, Madeline kept herself glued to the news. The pit of her stomach dropped every time an update flashed across the screen. It was too much, waiting for Gordon, and possibly Harvey, to get pinched. She tried not to think about what would inevitably happen if they were caught and sent to Blackgate. This time for good.

She didn't sleep much that night. Then the following day, Barnes called her into the office. He told her before the news circuit got a hold of it. It only took Jim Gordon a little more than twenty-four hours outside a jail cell to hunt down Pinkney's murderer and clear his name.

Their killer was Ed Nygma. Or as Madeline had always designated him in her mind, 'creepy smart guy' from forensics. The man who had access to all the evidence from the crime scene and every opportunity to, say, frame someone for murder.

According to reports, Nygma killed three people. Carl Pinkney, Kristen Kringle, and an unlucky hunter who happened upon him burying Kristen's body. Once Jim put it together, Ed retaliated by electrocuting him, dragging him down the street, and shooting him in the leg. (... The man just could not catch a break.) It all ended at Kristen's grave site, where Jim, Harvey, Barnes, and a small army of police officers took Ed down.

Now Madeline sat in an interrogation room across from the man of the hour. Handcuffs cinched tightly around Ed Nygma's wrists. His normally slicked back dark hair fell in wild, sweaty curls into his face. His glasses were smudged. He had a deep purple bruise on his neck, no doubt a lovely parting gift from the GCPD's bottomless well of unchecked anger issues. Not that he hadn't earned it and then some.

Madeline absentmindedly tapped the eraser of her pencil on the table as they sat there. Ed looked at the pencil like he wished she would stop. Or more, like he wanted to make her stop. Maybe rip it out of her hand and … Okay. She put the pencil down, far out of his reach.

He looked … disappointed.

She brushed her red hair over her shoulder. "Mr. Nygma, do you know why I'm meeting here with you in this room?"

He spoke in a bored voice, but just as precisely as he always did. "This is a psychiatric evaluation, done in cases where a decision needs to be made regarding impending incarceration." He tilted his head in from side to side. "Arkham or Blackgate."

"That's correct." She asked him, "Could you tell me a little bit about what life is like for you?"

He narrowed his eyes, almost looking at her over top of his glasses. He enunciated each word. "...Like for me?"

"Could you take me through a typical day?"

His voice tightened with barely contained anger. "Up until recently, on a typical day, I would spend my time in the M.E. lab, attempting to connect with my …" He said the word as if it tasted vinegary, "colleagues. I was a subject of ridicule."

"That must have been …" She chose, "frustrating."

"Yes. I'm sure you can imagine how that might leave someone … agitated."

So it went. Ed answered her questions begrudgingly and with more than a modicum of irritation, boredom, and yes, arrogance.

Interestingly enough, Ed Nygma was his own enigma. On one hand, he was a dangerous criminal who'd masterminded a multi-faceted scheme that involving intense deception, espionage, and the killing of multiple people. On the other hand, he was a small time grifter who seemed baffled as to why his murder spree had caused such an uproar.

Madeline kept asking him benign, tedious questions about his childhood, his parents, questions about his work history and worldview. He answered each quickly, impatiently. She watched them grate on his nerves one at a time.

Finally, the growing irritation reached its peak. He spurted out, "Dr. Scott, it's my understanding that the purpose of this interview is for you to ask questions specifically about the murders of Kristen Kringle and Carl Pinkney."

She blinked, feigning only mild interest. "Oh." Then she adjusted herself in her seat. "Is that something you want to talk about?"

Ed looked mildly exasperated. He zoned in on her, speaking in that crisp, exact way of his. "I've spent a lot time trying to be someone other people would … like… trust … tolerate. Then, I found out the joke was on me. I've been trying to be someone I'm not."

She took pause and then asked. "Who are you really, Mr. Nygma?"

"This." He said it mischievously, excitedly, like a person who'd spent their life afraid of the dark and just realized the darkness couldn't bite back. His voice held both menace and barely contained glee, "I finally understand. This is who I am."

Madeline sat back in her seat.

Okay. Here we go.

(x)

It took her forever.

She was probably doing it just to aggravate him. Just like the rest of them, she wanted to see how far she could push him until he … snapped.

Ed didn't care for psychologists. It was a thought he wouldn't have let himself have before. Before he would have done anything, said anything, been anything just to have a fleeting moment of camaraderie, of passing approval. From any of the officers milling about the precinct. Even from this doctor in front of him.

She was dull, boring. She had a lot to say, but that didn't make her interesting. Now she had it within her power to decide whether he would be sent to Blackgate or Arkham.

Who could have seen that coming?

At the same time, he relished the idea of getting to finally tell someone everything he'd been thinking, everything he'd been holding back. The good thing about psychologists was that they couldn't retaliate. They had to accept whatever the person on the other side of the table said, no matter how gruesome or chilling or dark.

He wondered if she'd be aghast or horrified. Like the rest of them. When he was led through the precinct, the officers openly wore faces of shock.

Ed? Ed NYGMA? The little spazoid lab geek? Harmless little Ed?!

That's right, boys and girls. Not so little or harmless now … am I? There's a riddle no one had gotten. Not even Jim Gordon. It still gave him a thrill, how Jimbo had walked right into his apartment, right into his hand. Of course … he hadn't stayed in hand.

He didn't normally experience failure. He'd been conducting a symphony. A funeral dirge for James Gordon. Unfortunately, not all the instruments played in tune. That was a correction for the future. Any mistakes on his part would require attention. They wouldn't be made again.

But for now, back to the present. Dr. Scott wanted him to tell her his thoughts.

"I killed them." Just like that. No preamble. "Just like I planned." He sucked in a breath, "Except for Miss Kringle. Now that was a surprise."

She stared back. "You were surprised that you killed her?"

"It wasn't my intention. She was being loud, irrational. I just wanted her to … be quiet."

"Why was she being loud and irrational?"

"Because I told her that I killed …" He paused. Then he blinked, smiled, and decided to continue, "Officer Tom Dougherty."

Her eyes widened. Ed found himself smiling smugly. That's right, doctor. You didn't know that one. Now did you?

Then her eyebrows went down. "How did you kill him?"

"With a knife. It was … messy. But." He smiled. "First kills typically are."

"Why did you decide to tell her that you killed him?"

Ed's face dropped. Her bland response wasn't what he'd been expecting.

She gave a small shrug. "It just sounds like something that most people would try to keep secret."

"Office Dougherty became… a problem. I killed him to ensure he wouldn't bother her anymore, or anyone anymore." He added an afterthought, "I thought she would find the gesture romantic."

Dr. Scott asked, "So you were trying to elicit a particular response from her but you got the exact opposite reaction."

He found himself saying shortly, carefully, "Yes. You might say that."

"Do you typically have a difficult time getting the reaction you want from those around you?"

Ed smirked. "I had a difficult time getting Detective Gordon to stop poking around into Miss Kringle's disappearance. Until I framed him for Carl Pinkney's murder." He spoke easily, unbothered. This doctor liked Jimbo, anyone (even him) could tell, and she spent a lot of time with Detective Bullock. The two men who dismissed him at every pain-staking, embarrassing turn.

He got an image of the old Ed, grinning away cluelessly, following the detectives around like a lost stray. He inwardly cringed. He hated that little cowardly pity case he used to be. Wished he would die a quick death. … He hoped that was another murder he'd pulled off. The murder of his former self.

Again, Dr. Scott met his stare, looking confused. "Was Jim Gordon looking into Miss Kringle's disappearance? According to his statements, he said it wasn't a priority for him."

Ed stuck to his point. "No, he was relentless."

"Is it possible that isn't true? Maybe you perceived him as being far more obsessed with finding her than he actually was. Once again, misreading the cues of others."

…. Why was she bringing that up again? This was ridiculous. He was supposed to be telling her how he masterminded the murders. He rose up. "Carl Pinkney was much easier to kill than the others. By then I'd gotten over those first murder jitters-"

"I think the difficulty you have reading people around you might have ultimately been what set this entire situation into motion," she said, speaking over top of him. "It caused you to involve Gordon unnecessarily. Which if you think about it, ultimately led to your arrest."

Ed looked to the side and then back at her. Now she was trying to help him learn what he could have done differently as so not to be … caught. Except that didn't make sense. "Why are you talking about that?"

"That isn't a goal of yours? Not to be arrested again in the future?"

Ed squinted at her suspiciously. This was the woman who was fit to be tied when police officers committed even the smallest of infractions. She didn't want him to escape punishment. So why was she burning through their time with these pointless questions?

She commented, "The more crime you're involved in, the more mistakes you're prone to make. It's not just bad for the people you kill. It's bad for you."

He studied her, frowning.

She said, "In fact, you may very well be incarcerated for decades for what you've done. It's ruined your life."

Realization swept across him fully and birthed a resulting grin. Laughter came next, starting out soft and building in intensity.

She was actually trying to convince him to abandon his life of crime. Now? At this point?!

"No," he said. "It didn't ruin me. It's freed me."

"What did it free you from?"

A lifetime of dejection, of absolute obscurity. Her kind would never know the release. The euphoria. The thrill of absolute wrongness. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Because I'm not going back."

She frowned. "Do you feel you've crossed a line?"

He kept his grin in place. "No. There is no line."

Dr. Scott blinked, once, twice. Are you finally getting the picture, doc? Is it sinking in, what you're sitting across from?

He sent her the most demonic look he could put together and leaned in. "There's a monster in all of us, doctor."

She agreed easily. "Yes, there is."

His face dropped into a frown. "... There is?"

"Yes." She didn't sound remotely shocked or bothered by what he said. "Everyone has a dark side. That's just part of the human experience."

Okay, she was back to boring him. She went into a diatribe about stress and choices and other subjects he had zero interest in discussing. Ed started thinking back to how easily Jimbo had bested him, lured him into his trap. He needed to find a better way to dispose of bodies.

Her voice seeped in as she continued, "...When you're having paranoid moments where you think someone's plotting against you…"

Acid worked efficiently. There was a swell idea. But he'd still need a backup. He heard pigs ate through a pound of human flesh in five minutes. But that was from a movie. He'd have to do some research to see if that held water. Speaking of water, Gotham Bay was a pretty big place.

"Mr. Nygma?" The doctor looked at him searchingly. Once she had his attention, she said, "I said, do you remember when you first had the thought that you wanted to kill someone?"

Ed answered automatically, "It's a voice. It's always been there." Just beneath the surface. The voice could be very loud and it made convincing arguments. Even since it broke through, it was the only voice he ever heard any more.

"Do you feel you have no choice but to obey this other persona?"

She wasn't listening, and here Ed thought that was the bulk of her job description. "Do you know why people kill, doctor?"

Dr. Scott held her tongue and waited for him to speak. Ed thought of Penguin, how he'd gotten him out of his "funk" by bringing him a victim, neatly gift-wrapped. It now provided Ed with the answer to his own question. "We don't do it because a voice tells us or because it's an annoying job that has to be done." A smile rose to his face. "We kill because we like it."

Something came across her face then, something different. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, "Do you have anything else you'd like to tell me before I make my recommendation?"

He said simply, "Say my name and I disappear. What am I?"

Dr. Scott blinked, thought for a moment, and guessed, "Someone who owes you money?"

Ed stared at her, remaining completely silent.

After almost a full minute, he watched the answer dawn on her. "Oh," she said. "Right."

Dr. Scott gathered her paper and her pencil up, but she turned around before she left. "Mr. Nygma, what is it about riddles that's so compelling for you?" She asked, "Is it because there's a clear, certain answer?"

Think again, doc. He said, "No, it's because there's a challenge."

Dr. Scott regarded him once more, and then she left, shutting the door behind her.

(x)

Narcissistic, withdrawn, adept at manipulating others. Socially inept, but has a brilliant mind for science. Lacks approval he craves, failed attempts at courtship. Relationships are short-lived, superficial, bereft of trust.

Subject kills with his bare hands, which is not a smart thing to do. Since he is obviously a genius, that means killing for him is a compulsion. Determination to win without scruple or hesitation. Moral compass is absent or undeveloped, feeling little or no empathy for the lives he destroys. Vicious crimes are repeated with no concern for his victims.

Outside the interrogation room, Barnes stood with his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, reading over the notes she jotted down. She just barely stopped herself from writing, Keep an eye out, folks. This one's gonna come back around.

He growled through his teeth. "We've got ourselves quite the charmer in there."

She knew Barnes was deviating from discussing how one of his own took the lives of two of his officers and one office worker and framed Gordon. His own forensic scientist orchestrated this murderous rampage, all right underneath their noses. It went beyond embarrassment.

Madeline did her best to keep them from focusing on it. After all, through all this, Barnes had been suffering, too. "A jury of his peers is gonna love him."

"That's a fourth murder victim," he said with a sigh. "Officer Thomas Dougherty. We'll have to go back. There may still be another body out there."

"Nothing stays buried forever." Just ask a psychologist.

He looked up from the notes. "So what's the official diagnosis on this little prick?"

Madeline ignored his casual vernacular, though she was glad he got some new material. 'Psycho' and 'freakshow' were getting kind of tired. "At first blush, social pragmatic communication disorder. Emotions for him is like asking a colorblind man to identify what's red and what's green. He knows the emotions are there. He just can't see them." She said, "But his more pressing diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder. And possibly dissociative identity disorder, given this 'voice' he talks about."

Barnes spoke with open skepticism. "You actually think he has more than one personality?"

"Most experts won't tell you that you don't have multiple personalities. They'll tell you they don't exist. But it does happen."

He said dryly, "And unofficially?"

"He's a human time bomb. He'll kill the very next chance he gets."

He held out her papers to her. "Wherever he goes next, the world'll be better off without him in it."

She accepted the papers, but made no further comment.

Barnes stared off and then glanced back at her. "You didn't let him have it." When she met his eye, he added, "I don't think I've ever seen you rein yourself in like that."

Madeline found herself smiling slightly. Jim Gordon thought she put everything out there and didn't hide things. Barnes thought she held back. It was always interesting how people see us. "Just because Mr. Nygma's a killer doesn't mean he shouldn't be given the opportunity to … understand why he is who he is, to make a different choice."

He squinted at her. "You're not the least bit infuriated that he put Gordon in the slammer, destroyed his life, nearly gunned him down?"

Just like that, she thought back to Jim's last 'session' in Blackgate. How she could feel the intensity radiating off of him. How primed he'd so obviously been to give his life to save hers. How close they'd both come to repeating their past patterns exactly.

Madeline shook it off and made herself focus back on the situation at hand. "Of course, I am," she said. "But how I feel about that has nothing to do with Nygma's evaluation or his diagnosis." The next thought struck her like a punch to the gut, but she still spoke it aloud. "If you let things become personal, it... clouds your judgment."

Barnes kept his eye on her. He looked like somehow he was seeing something more. He said with some certainty, "You knew, didn't you?"

She tried not to let her cheeks flush. "Knew what?"

"About the jailbreak. Before it happened."

She gritted her teeth, took in a breath, and … made it look like absolutely something was going on.

He gave a short nod as he looked her over. "That's what I thought."

Working with cops. They were Sherlock incarnate. It never got old. "What gave it away?"

"You've got a tell."

"Just one?"

"You tense up, and you get that deer-in-the-headlights look." He said in a stern tone, "That would have made you an accomplice, you know. If things hadn't turned out the way they did. That's a felony, punishable by jail time."

He said it like that was the worst decision she'd made in the last few days. Good thing he hadn't had a front row seat to her bad choice awards. She nearly took home the gold.

Madeline said, "It's your job to be concerned with legal justice. But you know as well as I do that doesn't always coincide with moral justice."

Barnes' eyebrows went up. "So now prison-breaks are an example of taking the moral high road."

She spoke resolutely. "He did what needed to be done."

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Sticking up for him." He watched her, trying to read her. "I don't understand it. Bullock's just as compromised as all the cops out there you can't stand."

Madeline's chest swelled up and she stood taller. Barnes was right about one thing. She was reining herself in and holding back, or else she would have ripped into him right then and there. Once she got control of herself, she said plainly, "You can't have it both ways, Captain."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You can't ask Harvey to break the rules when it suits you and then get mad when he does it on his own."

He said in a hard tone. "I didn't ask him to do anything."

Okay, well, there was a slip-up on her part if she ever heard one. She kept on point. "Were you going to help Jim Gordon escape from prison?"

"No," he answered.

"And would Gordon have ever cleared his name from inside Blackgate?"

Barnes watched her but didn't answer the rhetorical question.

"You might not have asked Harvey to do it, but that killer in there wouldn't have been caught if he didn't." She said, "He did the wrong thing. And now, because he did, the rest of us can keep doing what's right."

Barnes looked at her with some concern. "You'll want to be careful, thinking like that. When you take the law into your own hands, there's a fine line between reckless and stupid," he said. "It's a little too easy to end up on the wrong side."

She raised her eyebrows and looked away. "Trust me, when I say I'll keep that in mind."

Madeline wrote up Edward Nygma's evaluation before she left the office. She recommended that he be incarcerated in Arkham Asylum due to his pervasive mental illness and the fact that he'd killed again and again. She slipped the report in Barnes' inbox, signed and stamped.