There is muffled noise, and the smell of antiseptic.
When Angelface opens her eyes, she is startled to see blank white, and nothing but. She panics. Sitting up straight, or at least attempting to, she finds that her wrists are bound to the bed railings; her left by handcuffs, her right, which is her dominant hand, by tight cloth bindings to make the entire hand unusable. She can't see this though, can't see anything, and thrashes, jerks, tries to free herself. There is commotion, the noise muffled by whatever is wrapped around her head; the noise of people running in, hurrying, hands gripping her shoulders and pinning her down against what she realizes is a bed, and what she guesses is a hospital bed.
"Hold her down, dammit!" Someone shouts on her left side, and the various hands holding her down tighten their grip. "Get a nurse in here!"
A prick in the inside of her left elbow distracts her for a moment, and after a minute or two of more thrashing, her movements become sluggish, weak. The world goes from stark white to pitch black again.
The next time she wakes up, Angelface can see out of her left eye. She blinks it, sits up in her bed as much as possible, and surveys the room. It's a hospital room, and it reeks of antiseptic. The walls, the sheets, everything is stark white, and the intensity of the color is almost sickening. She glances to each hand, and sees that the left is indeed bound by a handcuff. The right is a cloth binding, what looks like a rag, preventing even more movement than the handcuff. She then, panicking, tries to look for a reflective surface and see what's on her head. It's restricting and smells horrible, and her right eye is still covered in white cloth and she can't see anything out of it. To her dismay, there's nothing reflective to see into, almost as if they've removed it all beforehand. This makes her panic even further.
The door opens now, as a nurse walks in and examines the room to see if it needs cleaning. She then looks at Angelface, her expression tightening in either distaste or through her examinations. "You're awake. Must be getting tolerant to the knockout drugs." She meanders closer, peering at the bedridden woman more closely. The nurse is relatively young, maybe late twenties, early thirties, curly brunette hair and a pretty face. "I'll have to let them know."
Angelface blinks her eye, tries to speak only to realize that her mouth is stuffed with something. She thinks it might be cotton. The nurse smirks. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" She asks, snidely, and Angelface mumbles a muffled insult before thudding back against her hospital bed, defeated.
"Yeah, I thought so," The nurse begins to wipe down various surfaces in the room, while Angelface notices that there's what looks like a feeding tube stuck in her side. What's wrong with her that she can't eat? Do the police think she's too dangerous to feed? No, her hands are bound; what can she do, spit it back at them? No, there's something else going on here, something is wrong. The nurse pumps in a disgusting-looking slop through the tube, and leaves Angelface's room wordlessly, leaving the villain lost in a haze of confusion as well.
Over the next week or so, doctors explain what's happened to her. Well, doctor; the surgeon that took care of her case, a man by the name of Thomas Elliot. She remembers the last thing before passing out, and she remembers it damn well; Joker, with a poor boy flamethrower, trying to kill her. Elliot sits at the end of her bed, explaining what's happened to her.
"Basically," He explains, reading off her chart, "You suffered massive burns to the facial area; the chemical used to light the fire seemed to spray into your face a moment before it hit the match, which ignited and burned while the new flames were being added." He hesitates, seems to be deliberating whether to tell her something else or not, but she watches him with her one good eye, expectantly. He finally does begin again, a sigh in his voice. "The burns were...massive, as I've said. We did what we could, but as you've probably guessed, the damage was extreme and there will be...scarring."
Elliot shows her a mirror, and Angelface sees that her entire head is wrapped in clean white bandages. She knows this, of course, as the nurses have had to wrap and re-wrap her head before, but she sees nothing but her own wide left eye, and it's almost terrifying to see this damage actually cemented.
"On release from the hospital, you'll be transported back to the Arkham facility." He informs her, putting down the mirror. He leaves the room, and Angelface sulks. She's terrified of what she looks like now; it's enveloped her entire world, all her worries. 'What do I look like?' 'How monstrous am I now?'
Over the time she spends in the hospital, she picks up info that the Joker and Harley Quinn were both caught (By Batman) and sent back to Arkham. Crane was sent back in a straightjacket. She's sad that he's not here with her, and she misses him very much, and for the first time, wonders why. It's obvious that he despises her (he's told her as much), and she's just a pawn. So does she even love him, or is it the automatic Stockholm she gets with anybody that'll put up with her? She knows it's probably the second one. And then she wonders if he'll be happy to see her when she gets back to Arkham.
After an indescriminate amount of time recouping from injuries she's terrified of knowing the full extent of, Dr. Elliot decides that it's time for her to see the damage and become accustomed to it. They've taken out the feeding tube by now and she eats normally, though has to be fed (her hands are still tied down). The good doctor walks in, and a nurse unwraps her bandages while Elliot holds her mirror, face-down so she can't see her reflection until he chooses so, talking to her calmly.
"Ms. King, I'm going to show you your reflection now. Be aware that the damage is..." he hesitates, tries to find the right word, "Extensive. But," He adds in, quickly, as Angelface watches the white cotton wrap swirl in and out of her line of vision, again and again and again, feels the cool air against raw skin, "There are always treatments we can take to lessen the damage. Cosmetic surgery is a possibility, and scarring can always be minimized."
Dr. Elliot pulls the mirror up as the last strip of bandage is pulled away from her face, and Angelface stares into her reflection in a blank, almost dreamlike state. This goes on for about three seconds, in which Elliot almost thinks that she's fine with it.
And then she starts screaming.
For one, her hair is gone; all except for a few wispy blond strands hanging from her flaking, blackened scalp. Her left eye is wide, as wide as it will go, and brilliant green as always; her right eye is white and cloudy, milky, like a dead fish's, and the eyelid is gone. The skin of her face is the exact visible composition and color of cooked hamburger, with the ends of her mouth twisted up in the scarred smile, now even more grotesque than before, as it displays the flame-blackened teeth and half-gone lips. Her head has been cooked, her beauty is completely gone.
She screams and screams, until they have to pin her down and pump her full of sedatives. She goes out like a light, and Dr. Elliot sighs, waves the staff out the door, and leaves.
The next morning, Dr. Elliot opens the door to Angelface's room, looks in at her bed, and then shouts for security. The bed is empty; the cloth tie on the right bed railing is limp, loosened to the point of being able to be pulled out of. The handcuffs are still shut as tight as they go, and there's blood dripping from them. Three rolls of bandages are gone, and the window is open, the morning breeze blowing through lazily.
Gotham has one more supervillain stalking the streets. A thin form walks through the shadows, wiping its gloved hands off on a rag before tossing the bloody rag into the nearby trashcan. A body lies crumpled in the dumpster at the alley's back, a hand hanging limply out of the dumpster's edge, blood dripping in a steady pattern from the body's fingertips. The thin figure sees a cop car stop at the mouth of the alley, a cop already getting out and aiming a flashlight her way, and she jumps on a trashcan and over to a fire escape hanging around five or six feet off the ground. She clambers up it, onto a Narrows rooftop, and is quick to dash from one rooftop and leap over to another, continuing on this pattern until she's far enough away to relax. Her head, wrapped tightly in bandages to hide her grotesque appearance, turns to look over at Gotham's expanse, one lurid green eye glittering in the low light of the city. Her mouth opens, and the polluted breeze blows onto her tongue, bitter and thick and icy cold. She looks out at the expanse and sighs, hot breath trailing away from her open mouth in a white smoky cloud, disappearing high above her.
"This city is sick," She murmurs, pulling her coat tighter around her. "Breeds lunatics like bluebloods breed racehorses." A moment passes in thick, complete silence, and she laughs under her breath. It's been a month since she slipped out of the hospital, disappeared into thin air. She had to break her thumb to get out of the handcuffs, and the hand is still weak enough to prove that she did. They say that there's someone else running around Gotham with his head wrapped in bandages, some lunatic by the name Hush. She's almost wishing that she meets him sometime; they might have coffee, have a chat. She looks at her wrist, mind you that it has no watch, and curses under her breath.
"Late." She jumps down off of the roof and turns, extending her good hand and catching a window ledge. Pulling herself up into the window, she brushes her coat off (which does no good, seeing as the brown coat is stained, soaked in nameless liquids leaving huge dark blotches all over the fabric), and turns her head to get a look at the figure leaned, very casually, in a dirty recliner.
"You're late," The man states in a crisp tone, standing. His suit is a dingy, dark green. He has a cane, and leans on it as he watches her huff under her breath and walk forward. She's sure that he's only using it for show.
"Things to take care of," She tells him, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him closely with her one good eye. The man closes his eyes, smiles in a simpering sort of way, waves his hand in an arc from his left side to his right, as if dispelling her worries.
"A madman and a madwoman get together to chat. What do they talk about?" He asks her, enigmatically, as she stands there with her arms crossed, staring holes through him. The bulkiness of her coat makes her frame manly instead of feminine. After a moment, she gives up on his riddle.
"I give. What do they talk about?" She asks him, tersely. The man laughs, derisively, mocking her intelligence. He waves his cane at her and says the next line pointedly, a wry smile on his face.
"Business." The word comes in a puff of air, warm smoke that drifts upwards and disappears at the ceiling. She rolls her eyes and he laughs under his breath, just as mockingly, before pushing up the brim of his hat and staring at her. "So, I assume you've come to finalize our deal?" He queries, and she gives a terse nod.
"Of course. I wouldn't have come if I didn't want to."
"Good!" He chirps, making his way up to her, and offers her his hand. She hesitates a moment, looks between him and his hand, before grasping it firmly and shaking. "Pleasure, Schwarzwald. We'll be discussing our plans soon."
"Yourself," Schwarzwald answers, and though her voice is coarse and her mannerisms have lost their gentle edge, her lurid green eye glitters with a certain joy that she won't let on, that hearkens to a more innocent age. "Riddler."
Gotham City breeds two more lunatics. Just two more, in millions. And those two lunatics sit down at the filthy kitchen table, and they plot to bring the city to its knees.