Chapter Two

And we're just following the flock,
Around and in-between,
Before we're smashed to smithereens
Like they were, then we scramble from the blame.
-The Last Shadow Puppets, My Mistakes Were Made For You

Chaos. Explosions, gunfire, and chaos. Smoke was everywhere. I could barely see the Joker through the thick haze, but there he stood, his face ghastly white, gripping a double-barreled shotgun with both hands. I tried to run from him but I couldn't get any traction—couldn't seem to move from my spot. I tried to scream but only helpless squeaks made it out of my mouth.

I looked over my shoulder as he pointed the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

BZZ.

He pumped the gun and shot again—BZZ BZZ BZZ BZZ BZZ.

The irritating noise guided me from my unconsciousness, and I suddenly realized that no, I was not in some smoky alleyway with the Joker—I could feel my warm blankets, could see light streaming in from my window. That incredibly obnoxious noise was coming from my alarm clock. My hand shot out from the bundle of blankets and slammed down on it, cutting the noise short.

I was still exhausted, but I was in no danger of going back to sleep—right away, I remembered what was in store for me, and I rolled out of my cocoon of blankets and checked the clock. 8 AM.

"Dammit," I muttered. Three hours of sleep just wasn't enough. I stood and stretched—my muscles were tired, borderline sore from lack of sleep. "Great job, Quinzel!" I scolded myself. "Get just three hours of sleep before one of the most important days of your life. Genius move." I groaned, and then headed for the bathroom.

I went through my morning routine like a zombie. The lack of a good night's sleep showed on me, as it always had—my face was pale, and there were dark purple circles beneath my eyes.

"I'm gonna get slaughtered today," I mumbled as I stood in front of the mirror, but I could say one thing for the sleep deprivation: it made it hard to find the energy to be properly afraid.

I tried to make up for the evidence of my long night by paying a bit of extra attention to my makeup and clothing. I managed to conceal the shadows to a degree, but the bloodlessness was a lost cause—I wasn't one for coating my face in dark powders and creams. I flicked on some mascara, but left my skin alone.

I chose a simple black skirt that came down to my knees, pairing it with a deep red blouse and black pumps, attractive and businesslike but not seductive, because this was going to be difficult enough without me looking like a sexy librarian. I pulled my hair out of my face and twisted it into a tight bun—I was too tired to try to make it do anything it didn't feel like doing, not to mention I didn't want to take too much care with my appearance, lest the Joker call me on it and attach a reason to it that I didn't want attached.

I glared at my reflection. "You're over-thinking this, Quinzel," I told myself. "Get in, do your job, get out. Stop being such a scaredy-cat."

With that in mind, I grabbed my things and left for work.

Unfortunately for my nerves, I would not be facing the Joker first thing in the morning.

Ideally, Arkham Asylum would have been located somewhere outside of the city, somewhere greener, with more fresh air and more room for the inmates to move around. Unfortunately, the out-of-date surveillance equipment was simply evidence of a long history of budgetary restrictions as far as the asylum was concerned. There was simply no money to expand or move away from the deteriorating island that was the Narrows, and so the administrators and doctors at Arkham just gritted their teeth and tried to do good work.

There was no denying that the asylum was a grim place, from the buzzing, flickering fluorescent lighting that cast a sickly yellow-green light on everything within to the peeling linoleum floors in the echoing hallways, but by this point I had gotten used to the bleak interior and the dangerous neighborhood that surrounded it. It helped that I was more focused on my work than on the environment in which I did it.

I arrived to a slightly noisier scene than usual, even for Arkham. A pair of orderlies rushed past me the second I got inside, and before I could do much more than look around in an attempt to find someone to fill me in, someone called my name. "Dr. Quinzel!"

I turned to see Stratford coming towards me. I gave him a wan smile in greeting, feeling a wave of self-consciousness as I remembered how washed-out I looked, but he didn't seem to notice, addressing me in clipped tones. "Where have you been? We've had two major breaches already—some idiot orderly gave Richmond extra blankets and he just tried to hang himself, and then Ortega tried to stab Laberdysk with a shiv he somehow made out of a toothbrush and smuggled into the common room. And Howard just told me that Crane's is in the midst of yet another psychotic break."

I processed this information, and readily, I said, "All right. What do you want me to—?"

"Take Crane, and don't sedate him unless you have to—benzo makes him violently ill, Thorazine makes him snap back even worse once he comes off it. You're one of his favorites; maybe you can talk him down." Stratford gave a short sigh, his first real concession to the stress of the morning. "This day is shaping up beautifully already," he added dryly, and reached out, turning me towards the elevators. "Go."

I went.

We kept Crane on the third floor. I could hear the commotion even as I moved fast down the hallway to his cell. The other inmates on his floor were riled up by his antics and were yelling and banging on the walls, but I ignored them in favor of the task at hand. A nurse and an orderly stood outside of Crane's cell, watching and shaking their heads grimly. "I'm here," I said as I strode up, trying to project an authority I didn't exactly feel. "Is it the usual?"

The orderly's name was Ryan Howard. He was dependable and obedient, though he was known for he had a reputation for harshly putting down inmates who were misbehaving—a necessity, really, but his easy willingness to get violent at the slightest provocation didn't sit well with me. He nodded in response to my question. "I'm getting the straitjacket if he starts scratching himself again."

"Well, let's hope that won't be necessary." I looked into the cell. Crane was hiding underneath his cot. I winced— I hated seeing him like this; the old Crane would have died rather than suffer the humiliation of madness. I stepped up to the plexiglass and rapped on it. "Dr. Crane," I called out, hoping the respectful use of his title would call him back to lucidity.

He turned his head towards me in one sharp, eerie movement.

"Dr. Crane, please, come out from under there." I knew he could hear me through the slits in the glass, but aside from that initial movement, he didn't respond. "Dr. Crane, please," I said again. "It's Harley. You remember me, don't you? I want to talk to you."

There was a moment of silence, and then his voice floated out from under the bed. "They're beside you. Make them leave."

"Who's beside me?" I asked, pressing closer to the glass—his voice was faint.

I barely picked up on his hoarse whisper of a response: "You can't see them?"

I turned to regard the two workers. Naturally he would see the two as his enemies: the nurse only came in to sedate him with medications that made him sick and the orderly only came in to put him in a straitjacket or hold him down while he was being sedated. "Can you give us a minute? I'll call if I need you."

"You sure?" asked the nurse, a relatively new employee whose name I didn't know. (In my defense, work at Arkham was not for the faint of heart, and the turnover rate was so high that it wasn't even worth trying to learn people's names until they'd stuck out the first month.)

"I'm sure. See if you can manage to calm down the other patients on this hall, okay? I'm going to go in and talk to him."

"I don't know, Doctor," Howard said, frowning doubtfully. "Little lady like you shouldn't go in there with him alone."

I gave him a tight smile and kept my voice calm and quiet. "Jonathan was only dangerous because of his toxin. He doesn't have it anymore. I'm stronger than I look, and considering the fact that he barely eats and weighs ninety pounds dripping wet, I also outweigh him, so thank you for the concern, but I think I'll be all right."

Howard held up his hands in a gesture that communicated all right, no offense meant and backed away, going as instructed to calm down the other inmates. I sighed and went to the keypad next to the heavy door, typing in the code for Crane's cell—the codes consisted of four to eight digits and differed for each inmate. I knew his by heart, even though I wasn't often given the opportunity to work with him (he was a higher-profile patient than my experience merited, though judging by the pattern of the past twenty-four hours, that was going to change quickly). The door buzzed and then made a loud chunk noise as it unlocked, and I opened it and went inside.

Crane was still under the cot. I went in and stood up straight in front of him, putting my hands on my hips. "Dr. Crane," I said, trying to keep my voice gentle but firm. "It's Harley. You need to get out from under there."

"He's here," he whispered. That was his only response. I sighed and worried my lip. Seeing him like this bothered me, doubtless another reason why I was rarely allowed to work with him—in other patients, it was easy to accept, but with someone I had known personally before…

The dose of fear gas Batman had given him was concentrated, and the medics had gotten the antidote to him far too late to restore his mind to the way it was, concerned with tending to Gotham's "good" citizens first and foremost. I guessed that he would remain out of touch with sanity for the rest of his life, though he had his lucid days. Sometimes he had his lucid months, which had several times resulted in his escape from Arkham. This always ended with attack and abduction by his worst fear, the Batman, and those incidents always triggered bad breaks that landed him right back in the asylum.

"Dr. Crane, please," I said softly. "Just come out."

To my surprise, he suddenly did as I requested. He wiggled out from beneath the cot and got to his feet, then stood there with his hands at his sides, as if waiting for further instruction.

I looked warily at him. Snapping him out of a break had never been this easy, and I didn't trust him. "Dr. Crane, it's me," I said again, gently. "I need you to focus, okay? I need you to try to remember—what you're seeing right now, the things that are scaring you… they're not real." He rested his gaze on me—his eyes had always been so incredibly blue, framed by that shock of untidy black hair… I didn't like seeing them now, fogged with uncertainty.

"Of course they aren't real," he said shortly, his eyes brightening momentarily. My heart rose. The old Dr. Crane was back—for how long, I didn't know.

"But," he continued, "have you tried living with it?" His eyes glazed over again. "All around you… see them? They're… they're everywhere."

"Dr. Crane," I began, forcing calm into my voice for his sake.

"He's here!" His voice rose, shrill, piercing—so lacking in composure that I had to force myself not to wince. His eyes fixed on me, wide and crazed again. "And you!" he hissed, drawing a sharp breath through clenched teeth. "You're helping him!"

"Dr. Crane, listen to me," I said urgently—if the delusion hadn't gripped him too firmly, he might still listen to reason. "This is a paranoid delusion, and I know you know it. You're stronger than this. Fight it. It's not real."

"Of course you'd say that," he snarled. "You treacherous little bitch!" He lunged at me. I dodged instinctively, but he wheeled around and came at me again.

"Jonathan!" I snapped, jumping out of his way, keeping some distance between us. He tried circling me, but I moved with him, keeping him fully in my sight. "Please! I don't want to have to sedate you."

All of a sudden, he stood straighter. The crazed gleam left his eyes. His head tilted up. "Then don't, Dr. Quinzel."

I relaxed, just a little, and that was my undoing.

He came at me again, too fast, and this time, I was unprepared. He caught me by the neck, shoving me back against the glass. He'd been a scholar back when I knew him, seldom using those hands for anything more strenuous than scribbling in his research notebooks or clicking through a slideshow, but that had changed in the interim years, the darker times, and his fingers closed around my throat now with bruising force, aiming to crush, to kill.

The edges of my vision blurred, distorted, and blackened, and the dark quickly began to overtake the rest of my sight. I felt myself sliding down the wall, losing consciousness.

Then the pressure was gone. My sight came back slowly, and I saw Howard, wrestling Crane down onto his bed as the nurse prepared a syringe. The first breath was sharp, painful, and I coughed to try and rid myself of the ache.

"You all right, Doc?" Howard demanded. I nodded—it was the only response I could give him at the moment. Crane shrieked, a shrill and painful sound.

"Get it away! Get it away!" he screamed. "It's biting me!"

Howard waited until the screams had subsided and Crane was lying limp on the bed before coming over to me and extending a hand. He was barely out of breath. "You all right, Doc?" he repeated.

"I'm fine," I said as I accepted his assistance, although I was willing to bet that the forming bruises on my neck would say otherwise in an hour or so. "Is he—?"

"Sedated," Howard assured me. "He'll be all right. We should just let him rest for now."

I nodded in agreement. "I'm going to go to my office," I said quietly. Speaking was painful, almost as painful as the embarrassment I felt at being caught so thoroughly off-guard. It had happened right after I'd assured Howard that I would be fine, too… "If anyone needs me—"

"I'll let 'em know."

"Thank you."

"Just doing my job," he said, sounding incredibly cheerful for a man who'd just forcibly subdued a violent madman. I nodded again, not smiling, and retreated downstairs to my office.

Okay, so it was more of a closet than an office, and I was sure that if there had been more new doctors at Arkham then Stratford wouldn't have given it to me, but the asylum was hardly a draw for young people. The work was difficult; the inmates were hardly quick fixes and breakouts were increasingly common, what with the frequent staff changes making it difficult to establish good security habits and steady routines.

No one intercepted me, and once there, I dug around in my desk for an elusive compact mirror that I was sure I had somewhere. After a minute, I found it, hidden under a stack of notebooks and pens. I opened it up and angled it so that I could see my throat.

Ouch.

I winced at the sight. When I bruised, it usually took a day or so to turn the purplish-brown that would be the norm for the next week. These… there was already a tint of blue around the angry red, finger-shaped smudges. There were four on either side of my neck, but they were closer to the back where he'd been digging his fingers in to stabilize his grip, not easily visible—no, it was the two stark marks right at the front and center of my throat where he'd pressed his thumbs into my windpipe that would end up being a problem. Somehow, the sight of them made them hurt even more.

I dropped the compact on the desk and leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes, already trying to think of a way to hide them. Stratford would not be happy if he saw them. He might try to send me home for the day to recover, and I didn't want that. Sure, I was about to walk into the most nerve-racking case I'd ever had, but I wanted to do it. The Joker intrigued me, and from an opportunistic point of view, I'd have to be crazy to back out before I had even begun. If I succeeded in cracking him…

But that was a very big if. I was getting way ahead of myself.

I sighed and looked over the bruises again. Makeup was out of the question— I would just look like a high school kid, trying fruitlessly to cover up hickeys with concealer. The only other option that I could think of was a scarf, but it was late summer, and all my scarves were boxed up in a closet at home.

Before I could decide what to do, there was a tap at my doorframe. I looked up. Stratford was there, holding an ice pack.

I sighed. "Word travels fast, huh?" I questioned, a little bitter about it, leaning forward to rest my chin on my hands and watching him forlornly.

"It's Arkham," Stratford replied dryly, walking over behind my desk and stooping down. "Small place. Everybody knows everything about anything."

He moved my wrist so that he could see the bruising and whistled. "Wow. He really got you."

"Yeah," I agreed, hissing when the ice pack touched my neck.

"Keep it there for twenty minutes," he said, bringing my hand to the pack and then standing up.

"I know, I know," I said before he could start. "I made a stupid mistake."

"Yeah, you did. That's why I'm postponing your session with the Joker." He was so matter-of-fact about it that at first, it didn't register. When it did, I shot up out of my chair, dropping the ice pack on the desk.

"What? Why?" I demanded.

"Look at you," Stratford said, unruffled by my reaction. "You're marked up, you look exhausted—you're a wreck. Probably stayed up all night worrying about it."

"If we wait any longer, the bruises are just going to get worse—" I tried.

"Then we'll wait even longer, until they're gone completely, if that means preventing him from getting ideas. Quinzel, I honestly don't think you're any match for him at this point. He'll tear you to pieces."

His lack of faith should have hurt my feelings, but I'd developed a relatively thick skin over the past nine years. "Look, I slipped up with Dr. Crane," I argued. "He was a mentor of sorts to me, someone I used to trust. I made the mistake of forgetting that he isn't that person anymore, and I paid for it. It's not going to happen again, and certainly not with the Joker."

"You made an amateur mistake, one that I doubt you would have made had you been in a more settled state of mind," Stratford said, emphasizing each word. "I don't want to see you getting hurt further."

I pressed the side of my fist against my forehead, hoping that my cold hands would have a soothing effect as I tried to keep my temper. "The Joker will be restrained, right?"

"Of course—"

"Then I don't see the problem!"

"—but he's surprised us before!" Stratford said, the slight lift in his voice the only evidence of his growing exasperation.

"Doctor, you decided to send me in yesterday," I said, equally frustrated. "You must have thought things through before you told me what you wanted me to do, and by now you know me well enough to know that I'd probably be a ball of nerves before the first session, but you still asked me to do this. Why the sudden one-eighty?"

"Because of what happened with Crane," Stratford snapped. "It was foolish and naïve, and I fear I may have misplaced my faith in you."

I looked down at the ground, willing myself to stay calm, to hold on to my temper. Search him. Search him and find the holes in his argument. "Naïve," I repeated.

"Yes."

"Weren't you concerned that the Joker might sniff out an agenda?"

"Yes…?"

"If he reads me as naïve, then don't you think he'll be more likely to let his guard down?"

"Quinzel—" he started, sounding weary.

"You'll be watching us on cameras the entire time!" I interrupted. "If he tears into me, then pay close attention, find something about his attack that you can use. Sure, intervene if you have to, pull me out the second you get scared but do not take me off of this case before I've even had a chance!"

Stratford was quiet for a very long time. I knew this meant he was thinking, and with a sigh I sat back down, picking up the ice pack and replacing it on my neck, switching sides this time.

"All right," Stratford said finally, after another moment had gone by. "All right. I'll give you one chance. If I think for even a second that you're in danger of getting hurt the way Crane hurt you, then I'm pulling you out. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," I said, relief flooding through me. "Yes. Just tell me when I start."

"You meet him in an hour," said Stratford. "And I don't want you around Crane anymore."

The words sent a small but unexpected pang through me. "Why?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"You don't need to make any more mistakes," Stratford said. "In the meantime, find something useful to do." And with that, he turned around and left my office.

I burned time by helping clean up the aftermath of the Ortega/Laberdysk confrontation. I spoke to the latter briefly and was able to calm his agitation, guiding him into a relatively passive state for the time being. He was safely restrained in the infirmary and Ortega was heavily sedated and in solitary confinement, so I didn't anticipate any trouble from their end for a while.

Once that was finished, I had ten minutes before I was scheduled to meet the Joker, and my heart was racing. I ducked into a bathroom to check my reflection. The bruises were perhaps a bit bluer, and I thought once more about covering them up— I could call Pam, get her to bring a scarf… but no. Either way I went with it, I was fairly sure that my new patient would notice.

My face was pale, the shadows beneath my eyes standing out. Stratford was right, I looked like a mess. After a moment of deliberation, I took my hair down and let it fall around my shoulders, willing to accept the possibility that my patient might misinterpret the fact that I wasn't wearing my hair in a more business-appropriate style, because at least this way it would cover the bruises along the side of my neck. I splashed some water onto my face, hoping the cold might flush some color into my skin. Beyond that, I couldn't do much.

Stratford found me in my office five minutes after that, and stood in the doorway. I couldn't read his expression. "It's time," he said.

I couldn't shake the feeling that I was walking to my own execution as I followed him through the hallways to the elevator. I was faintly surprised when Stratford hit the button for the second floor instead of the top—I had been expecting to confront the Joker in his own cell.

Then again, I thought to myself, it's best not to approach him on his home turf, at least not the first time I'm meeting him. The more comfortable he is with his surroundings, the more dangerous he'll be. It wasn't a very comforting thought. Arkham as a whole was designed to be the furthest thing possible from home turf for our patients, yet this one seemed perfectly at ease ripping people to psychological shreds within its walls.

Stratford led me to the third door on the right, which was guarded by two orderlies, and then he stopped, turning to me. Though all of these rooms were monitored by at least one surveillance camera apiece, there were no windows looking in on it from the hall, a common measure meant to make the patient feel less exposed and therefore more willing to open up. "Don't touch him," my boss instructed. "Don't go over your half of the table. He's handcuffed, his feet are shackled, but that doesn't mean for a second that he's not still extremely dangerous. If he gets physically aggressive, then there's an orderly in the room to restrain him, two more outside in case they're needed. If you feel endangered, then terminate the session immediately. Is everything clear?"

"Perfectly," I said, holding tightly to my patience. I felt condescended to, coddled. I wouldn't deny that I felt safer knowing that there would be an orderly inside, but his presence would render those measures taken to make the patient feel less watched practically useless, limiting me. For a first examination, though, I could bear it, at least until I knew what I was up against.

Stratford studied me for another long moment, and then gestured to the door. "All right. Go on in." It was an examination room, which meant the door could be opened from the outside but not from within. I took a deep breath, pulled open the door, and stepped through.

The first thing I saw was the orderly standing in the back left corner. He was a very big, imposing man, even bigger than was usual for our orderlies. His presence in the room was pointed, almost to the extent that one might call it a threat.

My eyes then fell on my new patient, sitting calmly at the table in the center of the room, his cuffed wrists resting on the edge. As with the start of most of his previous sessions, his head was down.

I gathered my courage and walked to the center of the room, pulled out the chair opposite him, and sat down.

He looked up then.

I was glad he hadn't made eye contact before; I might just have lost my courage and bolted. The footage of his previous sessions had given me a taste, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality. They were black at first glance, blacker than any eyes I had ever seen, and even without the makeup that we had denied him upon his admittance to the asylum, they appeared deeply hooded. There was a predatory, animalistic gleam in them that chilled me deep.

I steeled my spine and tore my eyes away from his for a moment in order to look at the rest of him. The absence of the greasepaint he favored meant that I got a very good look at his face, but I didn't stare, flicking my eyes up after half a second to meet his again. I wanted to examine his scars more openly, of course, wanted a good long look at the raw details of the puckered, ridged flesh, but not as much as I wanted to avoid setting him off.

He tilted his head sharply to the side, taking my measure just like I was taking his. That's an animal, I thought, unable to hold back the intrusive thought; a predator, go, run.

And then, slowly, deliberately, he spoke.

"Hello, there… Doc-torrr."