Chapter Eight: Frail Bird, Strong Cage
At first it had been easy to ignore the offer of a consultation with Dr Thompkins. She had rationalised keeping the note Bruce had given her, as a way of keeping her options open. Yet this option had not seemed particularly rational. There was so much unknown, so many ways it could go wrong. And, anyway, it wasn't obvious that this was a way, let alone the way, to reach her intended destination. She wasn't even sure if becoming some kind of night-time vigilante was a destination to even consider.
But it was easy to find reminders of why her current, slow, tedious progress was unbearable.
The following morning, she set out to buy some groceries. The whole way she walked in a daze, wondering about the offer. It was absurd to even consider it, and for what? Risking everything, including the somewhat shaky new-found trust of her carer, for some crazy rich man's idea of a leg-up?
Yet as she walked she began to tremble, her limbs feeling leaden and heavy. It was only a few blocks, and she wasn't getting too much, but the bags felt like heavy weights. Sweat poured down her brow. Breathing was becoming difficult.
Am I having another panic attack? She thought desperately, reaching for her medicines.
As she unscrewed the cap, hastily downing a few pills in public- burning with shame as she realised everyone could see- she realised it wasn't that at all.
She was simply completely out of shape. She was too weak simply to walk to the grocery store on her own.
The way back was slow. Agonisingly slow. But she didn't dare phone Patricia. Even though she was wheezing and shaking, the prospect of further shame, of someone close to her seeing her weakness…
"No…it's not…that far.." she insisted to herself. She was stronger than this. It was only a few blocks.
She collapsed finally, after an hour, on her own doorstep. It had taken her barely ten minutes to walk there. It had taken nearly six times as long to walk back. There wasn't even a hill.
She lay for a bit, gulping down huge lungfuls of air, amazed that something so simple had been so difficult. She felt simultaneously embarrassed and grateful for her pills. At least she hadn't had to relive her fears and anxieties again.
Later that day, Patricia returned, and she pretended like everything was normal. "Oh, just got some groceries." she said nonchalantly, flushing a little when her carer complimented her. "It can't have been easy in your condition." She said knowingly.
"Eh, I'm just really, really sick of the taste of Oatmeal." she tried.
"Was that an attempt at a Joke?" Patricia asked. "Still, good to see you in high spirits."
Barbara cringed, the mere reference to jokes and humour giving a brief flash of that sick, grinning clown face in her mind.
"Let's have some spaghetti and meatballs. They're in the freezer already." she said instead, weakly, her knuckles whitening. She channelled that brief flash into rage, as she always did. She refused to be constantly made to feel afraid or anxious because of Him.
Instead, she focused inwardly on hating the Joker and what he had done. She sharpened her fear into a blade, stabbing his mental effigy over and over.
The meal passed mostly in silence, each fork-full of spaghetti an effort to eat. It seemed even food was still a chore for her to consume.
"You need to pace yourself, Barbara. You can't go from oatmeal and soup to complex meals all in one go. And you shouldn't gorge on your food like that. Your body doesn't know when its full and you run the risk of over-eating." The nurse advised her sternly.
"Its just meatballs." she protested. "Probably a cheap brand."
But that night, when she awoke again in a cold sweat, rushing to the toilet bowl to be sick -again-, she knew it wasn't food poisoning that brought her there.
Given such experiences, maybe some sort of way of strengthening her constitution wasn't such a bad idea after all.
The next morning, she was picking at some cereal- something sugary she'd bought on a whim, when Patricia had suggested buying her something sweet as a reward.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Oh, it's just something we do sometimes. Like, positive reinforcement. You've been doing well, so you get something nicer, and it motivates you and so on."
Barbara rolled her eyes."I'm not a child, Patricia. I don't need the promise of sweets as an inducement to behave correctly." she said. Besides, it was not like she could keep anything nice down anyway, she thought sourly.
"Ah, I'm sorry. You're right, that was a little…thoughtless of me. You have been making a lot of progress, actually. You hardly need more inducement." She smiled.
"It doesn't feel much like progress."
"Its got to take time." Patricia said. "I know it sucks, but you have to be realistic about such things."
Barbara kept her thoughts to herself. Opening up to her carer seemed like a particularly bad idea. Especially revealing the Dark Knight idea. It had been niggling at the back of her head for a while now.
"Have you given some more thought to college? Or vocational training? I'd be happy to supervise work placement, or you re-sitting some tests you missed out at. I'm sure they'd be very understanding, and I've no doubt you're competent enough for a GED at least." She said sincerely, sitting with Barbara.
"And how long will all that take? I'm a year behind everyone else. More, if I have to wait." She snapped. It was too much. The prospect of struggling for something so modest…
If even her most mundane yearnings were comparatively impossible, what did it matter if she entertained more impossible and ludicrous ideas?
"I want…I wanted to be a Lawyer. A Detective. Heck, maybe even a Judge someday. Even with everyone being understanding and oh so helpful, how the heck can I do all of that?" she imagined laughter.
Every time a wall, the same damn, maniacal, all too familiar laughter. She imagined that effigy again, though forcing her anger was so difficult. Sometimes all she really wanted to do was cry and shout at the world to leave her alone.
"Barbara…" she said sympathetically. "We've talked about this. You can do those things, I promise. It'll just…"
"It'll just take time, yeah, I know." she said sourly, stabbing her milky cereal with her spoon, imagining a quite different result.
"Another therapy session's been scheduled for Friday. Whistler seems confident that despite some…unfortunate feedback, you're progressing nicely, and that your presence serves as a good example, on the whole, for the other patients."
Barbara closed her eyes, remembering those faces. Strangely, remembering them helped. It certainly helped more than trying to suppress his face, or channel her feelings about it into rage or hatred.
It did feel kinda good to be a…positive influence. She smirked. Well, if she was going to have to wait, why not make use of that time?
"I'm Barbara Gordon, positive influence." she chuckled to herself, remembering her more rebellious years as a regular teen.
"Oh, that reminds me. Will we be seeing Ray about?"
Patricia quirked an eyebrow. "Detective Wills is on leave, but I don't know if its such a good idea to be disturbing him. Poor man looks like he hardly gets any rest."
"Oh come on,Nurse Corman." Barbara emphasised her carer's title and surname mockingly.
"He's more than a friend. And I think I might be a positive influence on him too." The germ of an idea began to spread in her mind. If she couldn't solve this problem, maybe she could solve another?
"Alright, I'll phone him. But I want you to go easy with your diet, and go through some more treatments after therapy first."
She agreed. As impatient as she felt, she still took the time to finish her cereal properly.
That night, she had very different dreams. Although still feverish and sweat-laden, she no longer broke her routine with a need to vomit or expel everything she'd eaten. She was getting stronger. And now her dreams weren't quite so bleak and terrifying.
The Clown couldn't occupy her mind forever.
Waking up happy felt like a victory of its own. She smiled, and let herself enjoy the moment. She no longer cared so much about that. At least her smile now was genuine.
Friday came, and with it, another day at the Asylum. She sat down and braced herself for another hour of irritation in the company of Harley Quinn and Emily Barret. She was surprised to see that another new-comer had joined them.
"All right everyone, I'd like you to welcome miss Selena Kyle to our group." Dr Whistler said with her usual condescending tone.
"Hello Selena, welcome to the group. May you get better every day in every way." They had all droned together, those of them that could speak. Barbara analysed the new-comer with curious eyes. A pale woman in a patient scrubs and a wheel-chair, with long auburn hair and blank, staring eyes. Drool slipped from her lips as she gazed into space.
Another catatonic? Barbara thought at first, but she noted that the woman did not appear to have received the same type of…injuries that the others of them who had been subject to the Joker's special brand of "treatment" had.
As far as Barbara could tell, this woman seemed relatively normal, as far as catatonics went. No bleached hair, no mercury-tainted skin, no rictus grin, no scars at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes, whilst vacant, did not have black rings, and whilst she certainly appeared to be fairly thin, it seemed more due to standard inactivity then any real chemically induced metabolism problems.
Barbara quietly wondered who this woman was, and why she had joined a group for Joker survivors, especially when it seemed obvious that, like many of the others, talking was far beyond her at present.
"Selena, why don't you introduce yourself to everyone?" Dr Whistler had said, with a bored sigh. It seemed she shared Barbara's thoughts on the futility of these exercises, but was compelled by bureaucracy to preform them.
The woman had not seemed to respond to her name at first, but then her eyes rolled toward the psychiatrist, and she had quietly begun to make a mewling noise. Was she crying? No, she was…purring, Barbara realised.
"Cat's got her tongue." Harley said, with a sudden burst of giggles.
Emily pouted. "That's not very nice, Harley. You shouldn't be mean to strangers. Unless they're bad…"
"Thank you, Miss Barret. Miss Quinnzel, your sense of humour needs work. It is not nice to laugh at other's distress." Dr Whistler responded automatically.
"Aww, but that's when its the most fun!"
Barbara simply stared, fascinated, ignoring the childish back and forth between Emily and Harley. Had this new woman been…broken by the Joker, too? Where had she been all this time? Barbara thought she had met all the survivors, or at least knew roughly about them via the news or her visits to Arkham Asylum.
The idea that there might be…new victims, yet more who might suffer, made her stomach churn. How could the demon haunting her nightmares still be ruining more lives?
The mere thought that this might be possible gave her rage real meaning. Stabbing mental effigies no longer seemed enough.
The woman attempted speech, but it seemed difficult for her. Selena Kyle, Barbara thought. A name she didn't recognise. She would have to look her up online. All the victims, including herself she realised, had received a fair degree of attention from the press. The darkly original nature of their pain had been fuel for the gutter press. She suppressed disdain at such thoughts.
Despite continual efforts by Dr Whistler, the woman seemed to have trouble responding in a meaningful manner. When Whistler turned her attention to someone else, Barbara observed quietly as the woman rocked back and forth, her eyes staring fixedly ahead.
Is she just broken, or reliving everything in there? Barbara wondered. She could certainly empathise with such a reaction, especially if the woman really was another victim of the Joker.
Later on, the woman had seemed to regain some degree of mobility and even awareness of her surroundings, but she had continued to behave in a strangely catlike manner, in so far as one could when they are wheelchair-bound.
As the session ended, she resolved to do some research on who this woman was. Though being reminded of or having to remember any of the Joker's actions made her instinctively recoil, she remembered both Patricia's echoed words about being a positive influence, and also what Detective Wills had said.
She wanted to be a Detective? To help people? She'd start now, she thought. Maybe she wouldn't even need those damn drugs of Wayne and his doctor.
As she walked, she bumped into a passing doctor, lost in her deep thoughts.
"Watch where you're going, you mindless simpleton!" he dusted himself off, looking at her with cold fury.
"Hey, sorry about that." she apologised, though surprised at his venom.
"Bah, I don't have time for the likes of you." The doctor hurried past, and she caught a glance at his name-tag. Doctor Ned Eigward.
She made a mental note to make a complaint about him next time she saw Dr Whistler.
Bruce Wayne sighed, adjusting his tie in the restroom mirror. Looking at his face always brought back dark memories. The scarring and disfigurement were ever so slight now, the world's best surgeons having long ago removed the bullet and erased the physical damage.
But the wounds were still there, he knew. He could still see them, small traces becoming hideous, glaring imperfections, a mockery of humanity, branding him a monster.
He washed his thick, muscular hands obsessively in the sink, using plenty of sanitiser gel. He had been tormented constantly as a child, before the surgeries could be completed, before the damage a slug half fragmented in his brain and face could be fully dealt with. He'd developed a thick hide, and had spent years honing himself to be strong, to deal with people.
But his own fear…the enemy within…he had neglected that battle. Whenever he had been frightened, he had always run as a young child to his mother, to seek comfort from the storms or fears of the everyday.
With his mother dead, and his father turned cold and distant- at least for an all too crucial time- he had simply buried his fears, talking about them to no one, refusing to deal with them.
And so a thin crack had run through him, all this time. He dried every digit of both of his hands, making sure they were spotless, free of all germs. To outside eyes, he was a powerful, imposing man, muscular, strong, brooding.
But inside there was a fatal flaw, a fault-line that made all his strength worthless. An overpowering, crippling fear that could paralyse him in an instant.
He left the rest-room, nodding to the orderly waiting outside. He placed his hands on top of the wheel-chair and its waiting patient.
"I'll take her from here. Thank you for watching. I'll bring her back same time next week?" He asked the orderly.
The orderly nodded. "Of course, sir. Arkham is always happy to help its most generous patron."
Selena Kyle sat, barely registering Bruce's arrival, her eyes once again vacant and staring.
"Thank you. I'm sure she'll make a lot more progress with your help." Bruce said, automatically.
"And I'm confident Arkham will continue to receive plenty of support from the Board of Trustees for your discretion."
Bruce wheeled her away, taciturn as always, his strength reflected outwards.
Inside, he was screaming. His greatest fear. To lose someone dear to him again. He had failed twice in his life. He had failed his mother, and he had failed Selena.
He would not fail again.
The Riddler brushed himself off irritably. That clumsy girl had nearly knocked him over. Still, his earlier meeting had been most productive. For all Query and Echo's many talents, sometimes you needed a real brute, raw, stupid, and completely biddable. His new recruit would make the perfect tool in his coming plans. He smirked to himself. They were even going to pump him full of drugs to make him even more ferocious and brute-like, some idiotic medical trial.
Sometimes, Edward sighed, it really was almost too easy. The sheep of Gotham were fattening themselves for the slaughter.
This was no longer merely about drawing out a Dark Knight, in Nygma's eyes. Just because a story needed a Hero, didn't mean it wasn't the Villain's story as well. He would draw the hero out, and then show once and for all to everyone that he was the true master, the true overlord. He would be feared and worshipped, and the Joker and the Dark Knight he had fought would become but a faded memory next to his magnificence.
He couldn't help it. He had to laugh, at least a little. Some passing orderlies simply looked at the maniacally laughing scientist, and shrugged. This was Arkham, after all.