Sometimes, she wonders: what's next?
They're the three biggest psychos in the ward; those three that you just know about. Well, two; the third is just regular old Schwarzwald, the lackey that hangs around Crane and Joker, the little woman in over her head. Way. Way over her head. She's happy at the bottom, though.
Happy as she can get, anyway. She's sick and skinny and still hallucinating. But then again, who isn't nowadays?
Joker still has that pretty doctor Quinzel that hangs around him, and he gets special treatment because of her. Crane doesn't like it at all, and Schwarzwald doesn't like Quinzel; the good doctor is wont to give 'Schwarzy' dirty looks when she sees her hanging around Joker. She's almost reminding Schwarzwald of who's the bigger dog around when she takes Joker away from her. Crane just doesn't like her because she's condescending.
The days float by like the breeze. Months, maybe? Schwarzwald has no idea how long, because she stops counting. She finds that the room Arkham staff have put her in is the high risk wing, otherwise known as the "Really Fucking Crazy" wing. After she showed such a drastic personality change, from slightly ditzy and loyal to the Joker to detached, calm and snarky once she started hanging around Crane, they don't trust her not to swing around and become psychotic again.
They put her in a room in the same hallway as Crane and Joker. They're being very, very careful with her now.
Joker doesn't like this new Schwarzwald. He's been away too long; let her get cozy with Crane. She's used the crazy doctor as a substitute for him; he's been replaced and she's now imitating Crane the way she once imitated Joker himself.
It bothers him. Not because he wants her, but because he doesn't like other people taking what belongs to him.
Crane doesn't like the way she acts around him. Schwarzwald imitates him, whether she consciously realizes she's doing it or not; she's cool, impassionate, no longer her ditzy self. This is displeasing. He almost feels like he has competition for the title of snarky intelligent one in the House of Bedlam that is Arkham Asylum.
Scarecrow just doesn't like her. He says that they should smother her with a pillow when the orderlies aren't looking.
It feels like an eternity passes. Days of getting up, waiting around, eating, talking about the same old things in therapy, going back to sleep. Days are easy. Relaxing, once Schwarzwald comes to lower her standards sufficiently.
And then one day, she hears the door clang open in the middle of what she guesses is the night, while she's sleeping.
"Up and at 'em, Schwarzy." She hears a familiar voice state, and rolls over quickly to see the Joker clad in an Arkham doctor's coat and outfit, flesh-tone concealer makeup smeared across his scars to make them less visible. He's in the doorway, and the towheaded doctor Quinzel waits at the doorway behind him, tapping her foot almost nervously.
"Huh?" Is the most intelligent thing Schwarzwald, sleepy as she is, can come up with. He sighs a bit and walks in, grabbing her by the upper arm, and throwing a doctor's coat into her arms.
"Change into that, and get ready to leave. We're, ah, taking a leave from the dear asylum. Gotham needs its celebrities again; getting too sleepy, too cozy a city." Joker tells her, as Quinzel peeks around the corners. Schwarzwald changes into the coat quickly, and with the shoes that Joker hands her, she looks just like a doctor when she pulls her hair back into a rubber band ponytail. Appears that Joker anticipated everything.
"Clean up nice. Let's go," He says, turning towards the door, and the three walk down the hallway quietly. Schwarzwald's heart is pounding; are they really going to just walk out of Arkham Asylum? It's impossible. They're going to get caught. Schwarzwald looks sideways and then stops, looking back to the Joker and Dr. Quinzel as they continue on, before she walks up to one of the cell doors. Joker notices her absence from his left side, and glances back to her.
"Schwarzy? We're sort of in the middle of an escape?" He reminds her, in a brusque manner, and she looks back to him with plaintive, puppy-dog eyes.
"We can't leave Crane! We have to take him with us." She whines, and the noise grates on his nerves.
"No, no we don't. Doctor Burlap is just dead weight; let's go." He states, smiling through his annoyance, and she shakes her head and looks back inside the small glass window at the single occupant. Harleen is looking at them both by now, before looking ahead, alarmed.
"Doctor Kaseff is coming; act natural." She says, as Joker looks aside and walks ahead with Quinzel, leaving Schwarzwald behind. If she's going to be difficult and put their escape effort into danger of failure, then fuck the bitch. Let her rot in Arkham for being stupid.
Kaseff, a rather coarse, serious doctor with sharp gray eyes and short blond hair walks by them, his doctor's coat billowing with his good clip, the patrol down the high risk hallway, and looks to Quinzel and the new doctor as he walks by. He gives them a curt nod and continues walking, before seeing another new doctor hovering near a cell door. That psychopath, Crane.
"You," He barks at her, and sees her look over at him with alarmed eyes. Oh, exactly what they need; another skittish new doctor for the nuts around here to push around. "What are you doing near his door? He's a dangerous one."
"I was, ah," She starts, before he walks up to her and looks at the tag on her coat. J. Proctor.
"Dr. Proctor, hm? What were you doing?" Kaseff thinks a moment, as the skittish new doctor stands intimidated by his commanding presence, before speaking again. "Ah…wait, it's coming back to me. You must be doing the medication route for this one. It's almost criminal that someone needs to give this one his medication every four hours; takes good time away from us. What pills do they give him this time?"
Schwarzwald, thinking on her feet, pulls out the two white horse pills that they had given her to take earlier. She hid them because they give her a numb, pins-and-needles feeling in her arms and legs, and she does fine without them. Fine enough in her own opinion, anyway. Kaseff nods at seeing them, satisfied, and produces the keyring to the cells.
"You must have been annoyed to find that I had taken these with me; pure habit, you know. Didn't realize you didn't have them until you got here? I used to do it all the time, when I was new kid on the block." He unlocks the cell with the nameplate J. Crane on it, and slides open the door. "Those pills aren't the number they said they were going to give him this week. You'll probably have to go back grab the other two. Take the keys back to the ring, will you?" He puts the keys in her open palm, and she nods, dumbly.
"J. Proctor? Jillian, right?" Kaseff asks, and she nods, still a bit taken aback. "Good; it's been a long time since we've gotten any new doctors willing to work in Arkham's high risk wing, of all places. Gutsy kid, you are." He isn't really all that interested in her anymore and walks past, leaving the inmate alone with the keys to the asylum.
"And how did you manage this? I don't assume it was your charm," Crane says, walking into the open doorway as Schwarzwald stares after Kaseff, dumbly. She looks back at him, and he takes the keys from her hand and snaps his fingers at her. "The coat," He tells her, tersely, and Schwarzwald obeys Crane, pulling off the doctor's coat and handing it to him. Crane puts on the coat, adjusting his glasses, and as soon as the coat lands on his shoulders, his entire posture changes. He stands up straight, becomes very professional, and pulls the rubber band from her hair roughly, taking slight pleasure in seeing her wince at having a few strands of hair pulled out. He roughly takes her hands and pins them behind her back, holding her wrists together tightly, and beginning to walk down the hallway briskly.
Crane leads Schwarzwald like a prisoner, the asylum's keys jingling in the coat pocket, and walks straight out the front doors. The guards don't even recognize that Jonathan Crane is leaving the asylum; they see the white coat and open the door, letting Crane walk out scot-free. Schwarzwald wonders if anybody really gives a fuck at all anymore, but doesn't think on it long as Crane's grip on her wrists remains bruising. When they walk out and down the path for a little, they see Quinzel and Joker ahead of them, and walk.
"Schwarzy, I was sure you'd get caught. How wonderful that you didn't." Joker says, easily, as he sees Crane. "Feel good to be back in the coat, Crow?"
"Immensely." Crane responds coolly, letting go of Schwarzwald's wrists and shoving her towards Joker and Quinzel, and she trips and falls into the mud. He cracks a smirk for a moment at seeing her fall, before pulling the coat off and tossing it aside. Schwarzwald picks herself up, white outfit dirtied, and stares at the three criminals around her. Joker grabs her by the hair and pulls her to her feet, impatiently.
"We don't have time to waste, Schwarzy," He tells her, as Dr. Quinzel removes her doctor's coat and smiles at Joker, adoringly. Schwarzwald knows that she can smell something on Joker right now, and the man smells of sex. She thinks that Quinzel might, too.
"Harley," Joker calls the good doctor the cute name and she brightens, and Schwarzwald instantly knows why he stopped calling her Harley after he escaped from Arkham the first time. He stopped calling her Harley because he had a new Harley. "Let's go."
Schwarzwald notices that Joker has ignored her almost completely in lieu of 'Harley', and Crane just ignores her. She's used to Crane ignoring her, though; being an insufferable asshole is kind of his thing. She used to be the Joker's golden girl, though; she got all the attention, even if she was his punching bag. It's kind of dispiriting to be ignored so completely.
"See you, Doctor Burlap," Joker says to Crane, and the other man narrows his cold blue eyes but says nothing. Schwarzwald expected that they wouldn't all go together; Joker and Scarecrow's modus operandi were completely different, and they would most assuredly kill one another if they tried to stay in close contact.
Joker whistles at Schwarzwald like a dog, snapping his fingers in her face to get her attention. "Schwarzy, come on girl; we need to go." He turns and walks towards Gotham City in the background, Harley hanging off of his right arm with her blond head on his shoulder, as Crane turns and walks at an angle away from them, though in the same direction: both of the criminals walk in the same direction though separately, and they both leave Schwarzwald behind.
She has to pick now: will she follow the Joker, like she probably should, or will she stick with Crane, who she's not quite as afraid of as Joker? She then realizes that if she runs away from Joker now, he's going to snap her neck and be done with her. Crane probably doesn't even want her around anyway.
And so she runs after Joker and Harley, walking behind them and giving glances to Crane as he leaves as well, though it's not long before Crane weaves in between the trees and disappears from sight.