Author's Note: People. People I am so sorry. I am a HORRIBLE PERSON to have done this to you–– leaving you with a cliffhangers since January. Thankfully, some of you took the trouble to remind me of how rude I was being, and I apologize here AGAIN. Do forgive me, for this is yet another cliffhanger, but the work will soon be completed.

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You clicked and tossed
Your crypted crossword locks
You then abandoned talks
And now it's off to say
While we would weep
In smoke and mirrored states
Stacked crooked all along
But now I'm on my way

–– "Stacked Crooked," New Pornographers

Jonathon Tambling is terrified.

He can't look straight ahead–– the light is blinding, painful, and he knows that every time he looks up, he'll be staring the Joker straight in the eyes. And he is terrified of those eyes. He cannot crane his neck around to avoid the light, but when he looks down, he's staring at a dark stain. He is terrified of the stain, and the dark corners that cloak monsters more horrible than any ever imagined in a closet.

This room terrifies him––he saw it on the MCU television set. A tiny, fuzzy image of shadow and blood.

It's the room where Harriet was kept.

Hour 4

There is a very embarrassing unnecessary silence. I can see Harvey's half-a-stunned-face and it's doubly unsettling, as everyone is staring at everyone else, and looking like they're going to start talking, but aren't. This silence––it's the kind of silence that hangs around awkwardly, like that guy at the party who was invited by his friend, but whom no one actually wants to talk to.

Y'know? That kind of silence.

"Aaaaaarrraawwwwwrrrggaaaaaaaa!" I scream at the top of my lungs, throwing my arms in the air. Bruce, wild-eyed and swearing, falls off the hospital cot, and poor Harvey nearly faints.

"The fuck?" the poor DA yells. I smile, satisfied.

"Well, that broke the ice, didn't it?" Alfred gives a little gasp of laughter and puts his hand over his face. Behind Bruce cursing, I can him wheezing quietly into his palm.

"Next time," Bruce says, chuckling, "just tell the joke about how much a polar bear weighs. Your icebreaker sounds like an emergency broadcast." I shake my head, giggling.

"Nooo, an emergency broadcast sounds like this––" I say, drawing a deep breath, only to find a hand over my mouth. I look up and find my reflection in the irises of his eyes. I attempt to return the warmth of his smile, but can only grin into his callused hand. "Mfffmmpph!" I try to yell, and feel myself become pink-eared as he pats my head.

"There, there, itty-bitty journalist. How about you just let your teensy-weensy self rest while I give you this condescending pat on the head?"

Instantly, my grin turns to a glare and I pull his hand away, spitting, "There, there, itty-bitty billionaire–– how about you just let your teensy-weensy brain rest while I give you this condescending punch in the stomach?" He chortles again and shakes his head.

"Like you'd be able to! You're tiny, Miss Vince." I straighten up, attempting to appear dignified.

"Perhaps! Maybe I am small, but beneath this wimpy exterior is an alter ego of steel-plated endurance and overwhelming strength! Of agility and–– impressive stature!" Flexing my arms, I try not to wince at the apparent lack of musculature. "You think Batman is a big deal? He's tiny in comparison to––" I draw an enormous breath and practically shout "––CAPTAIN DRAGON!"

You can hear drips from the faucet down the hall.

"No." Bruce says. "Just…no." I pout. "If you call yourself that, it'll just create horrible awkward silences and looks of disappointment when you show up."

"Not my fault if they don't remember that dragons are mythological." Silence descends upon us again as I smile up at Bruce. It is as if the danger that so recently invaded our lives has evaporated like a thick fog before daybreak. In the quiet between us, I can feel a deep and heart-felt affection grow, a susurrus in my mind that whispers of warm and beautiful futures. As he clasps my hand in his, however, I see, in the corner of my working eye, Harvey slowly reaching down for his flowers and turning to leave. Regret and growing anxiety sickening my stomach, I turn back towards the door and quietly ask him to stop. "Harvey–– I'm sorry––"

"It's alright." I can hear his voice crack, and want to hold his burned hand in mine. "It was not my right to hope for anything–– and now that you can see what I really am––"

"Harvey, stop." My voice is measured, but I feel my heart is breaking. Slowly, he turns to look at me, and I smile as I realize that my dead eye faces the burnt half of his face. Slowly, I place my hand over my blind eyeball, allowing my smile to widen somewhat tremulously. "I really cannot see a difference, Mr. Dent." He twists away from me, but I force myself to hope that he will know I am being sincere. "These scars aren't who you are–– they're just shadows of wounds, gained in combat against a true monster." I twist around to look up at Bruce. "As for my own demons–– if that giggly bastard does anything to Johnny, I swear to God I won't be able to contain my maternal instincts." Letting go of Bruce's hand, I clench my own, my setting my teeth in a rather vampiristic grin. "I'm seriously considering sticks pins into his eyes and crucifying him upside down." The reactions range from unsettled to seriously disturbed. "What? Just planning ahead!" Harvey laughs a little, but I see Bruce and Alfred exchange worried looks.

"Ah, Harry, I don't think maternal instincts are supposed to get you arrested," Bruce remarks anxiously. I giggle, squeezing his hand.

"Aren't they?"

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Johnny can feel his mouth being pulled sideways by the force of the brutally applied lipstick and twists his face up and away from the rough fingers, closing his eyes.

Ants, there are thousands of ants in a glass "home." His eyes are open, wide, trying to capture every movement of their miniscule figures as they tunnel their way through the wood-shavings. The most efficient creatures on Earth, his cousin murmurs into his ear. They have the largest brains in the insect kingdom, can lift objects twenty times their weight, and if human beings could move at their speed, we'd be running as fast as racehorses. They're miracle bugs, Johnny, superheroes.

Johnny remembers wanting to be an ant at that moment, shouting gleefully that he wishes to become a miracle bug. An ant-man! But Johnny, his cousin says, they don't think for themselves. They don't have any freedom.

He didn't care then. He wanted antennae and super-speed, six terrifically strong arms and razor-sharp pinchers. He wanted to be the most efficient creature on Earth–– wanted Gotham, with its stinky, littered streets and crazy old men whom you could not speak to or smile at, to become the tunnels in the wood-shavings. He wants this to be true now, more than ever, with his heroes and with Batman. But he wants them to be able to decide, to have the freedom to run. The Lieutenant didn't have that choice–– Harriet, Harriet has to.

Jonathon cries.

Hour 12

I drank way too much mango iced tea and watched way too many cartoons, and both my abdomen and my brain feel like they're about to explode. Groaning, I try to carefully roll onto my side without ripping my stitches. To sleep or not to sleep. That is the question, isn't it? I decide against it and force the image of Admiral Ackbar to appear in my head yelling "IT'S A TRAP!" 'Cause by now, I know the port to the "tranquil seas of slumber" is actually a gateway to Hell, which has dressed up as a circus for my benefit. Fucking clowns.

It's the middle of the night, but I can't sleep–– somewhere in the city, Joker has Johnny. He hasn't done anything to the boy yet, but his men have been causing havoc. With Harvey in the hospital and Gordon in the ground, Gotham needs Batman. Well, actually, it's more of the opinion that it needs Batman to turn himself in, but Dent has taken care of both by removing us to a "safe house" or a "Defcon One"–– in less dignified tones, a boarded-up and apparently disused wing of Gotham Hospital. I look at Bruce, who has fallen asleep in his wheelchair facing me. We were laughing and talking until about half an hour ago, when he started snoring. Is this guy really the Dark Knight? The nocturnal caped crusader? I'm loath to wake him up, but this lapse is going to be terrible for his sleeping patterns. And I really can't get to the bathroom without help. Grimacing at that undignified thought, I reach out to nudge his arm.

I push him gently, but instead of waking him up, the force just moves the wheelchair farther away. I frown. Shuffling my torso out a little ways, I try to shake his knee, but this movement simply shifts him, and ends up widening the gap between bed and chair. "Ffffff––!" I hiss, and swing my other arm around, now practically leaning all the way off the bed to touch his shin. "Bruce! Bruce!" I use my last bit of strength to rap, hard, on his shinbone, and fall off the bed with a loud thud. My stitches groan.

He starts awake, and the face and voice I love is darkened with a barely-suppressed, sinister something. A shadow of the bat. "Harriet! Are you alright?"

From my location facedown somewhere near or under the bed, I manage to choke out, "No. Unless it's by allergens."

Stifling a soft laugh, he reaches down and literally lifts me up by the waist, setting me back down, sitting, on the edge of the bed. I glare at his barely-contained amusement. Sometimes, being the one thing that can make the Bat-man laugh is a real pain. "Something funny?" He shakes his head, attempting to untwist his mouth into a properly serious line. "I'm actually very strong you know." He nods vigorously. "I could take you out with one blow–– with my dragon powers." He simply continues to nod, looking akin to a bobble-head doll. "Not to mention that I'm absolutely bonkers, and capable of flying off the handle at any moment." He finds that less amusing, and glares at me in turn. Bruce doesn't like it when I call myself crazy, no matter how true it might be–– and it's becoming more true with every day.

"Is that why you ended up on the floor?" I blush a deep crimson, and shake my head. "Because I can't really think of any other reason for you to be lying facedown at my feet after whacking my legs." My blush deepens.

"It's just that–– you're Batman! You're not supposed to sleep. At night. You should be staying up all night with me–– okay, that didn't sound quite right–– ah. And! Aaaahm I need some help…I had way too much mango iced––" Bruce's mouth is twisting around again, and I quickly change the subject. "They should really sweep, you know that? That floor is covered in very unsanitary dust. I bet it's a violation of the Hippocratic Oath!"

My face is burning, but it seems to spontaneously combust when he leans over and plants a soft kiss upon my lips. "Want some help?" he murmurs, grinning, and I smile dazedly, nodding. So this is love. It's very cuddly, I decide, as I climb into Bruce's lap and nuzzle into his chest. He begins to push us forward, using martially-trained-to-perfection muscles to move us at break-neck speed down the long hall, making my smile widen and my eyes water in the wind.

"Is this what it's like to fly?" He considers it, twisting the left wheel sharply to bring us directly in front of the restrooms.

"Not exactly–– there's a lot more room between you and the ground."

"Ohhhh you think you're soooo clever. 'Oh, I'm Mr. Bruce Wayne the Sleepless Avengerrrrrrrr and I'm a superhero genius man blahdiblahdiblah––'" Bruce opens the door and shoves me into the bathroom. It's times like these make the nightmares seem far way, even when they're right outside my door.

Every night, I wake up screaming my head off and thrashing about. They've had to stitch me up so many times now––I once had to be embroidered three times in one hour, when they were being very insistent upon my need to take naps. They aren't so insistent anymore; I've begun to resemble a patchwork doll. The only thing that stops me from ripping myself to shreds every waking moment is Bruce–– usually in a very forceful way: he holds my arms away from my body until I calm, or until a doctor can arrive from the actual hospital. His shadow overshadows the shadows in my mind, which slink around in the shadowy corners of my consciousness–– the shadow of a bat sending shadows scattering.

I guess we're made for each other.

As we wheel back, I hold closer to Bruce's torso, suddenly seized with an irrational terror of losing him. It's penetrating, chilling; it feels like an omen, and I'm petrified by this. There's a sharp intake of breath above me–– Bruce's wounds aren't fully healed, and the fierceness of his awakening has returned to his face. Nothing has happened, yet his entire body is aching, straining for a fight beneath my hands. I crane my head to look up at him and see nothing but a silhouette, tensed with feverish idealism, and my stomach becomes a lead weight. Perhaps my fear is not as irrational as I'd like to believe. The more I see of the Batman in Bruce, the less of Bruce I seem to know. Bruce loves me––perhaps–– but in the corner of my eye, I can see the Batman glaring out at me, calculating his losses against his duty. And more than that–– I see a rage and an uncertainty, even a hatred. In those moments, I understand why he hates it when I call myself mad. Madmen cause chaos––there's no room for chaos in Batman's cosmos.

"Are you okay, Harry?" he growls softly, and I start out of my reverie.

"Yeah–– just––" I pause. "Will you not turn on GCN tonight? The Joker's message won't change, Bruce." I bite my lip, watching his brooding countenance closely. "I can't stand to hear his voice." Bruce nods slowly, and begins to wheel us back, less swiftly than before. There's a long silence, broken only by the squeak of rubber on linoleum, until I finally think it's safe to speak again. "Why are we being kept here? I'd feel safer knowing that we were in the hospital–– in unmarked rooms, the basement even–– rather than being stranded out here. Hospital staff can't visit during the day, in case someone notices them. We can't call anyone, in case someone traces us–– Harvey didn't even tell the MCU––!"

"We can't trust the MCU, Harry."

"Gordon trusted the MCU! I trust his judgment." He stops the chair and looks down at me, a mix of pity and anger suffusing his naturally Byronic features.

"Yes, Gordon trusted them. And now Gordon's dead."

The silence returns, deeper and more sinister now. Bruce speaks again, his quiet growls creating a susurrus of smaller echoes. "Harvey and MCU have an enmity that's gone back a ways–– but of course you know that. I think your reporting career began with the shooting and killing of Karl Breticup––"

"At the pie café, right," I interrupt, unnerved by how much he knows about me. Has he been reading up on me? The chill that penetrated me earlier has now sunk into my bones. "He was tracking corrupt cops in the GPD, with the great support of the rest of the city. Is that where he got that nickname?" Bruce nods, and we wheel on. Two-Face. It was behind-doors conversation, dropped slyly behind Harvey's back, but the police clearly saw his virtue as a thin façade for his more psychotic tendencies. I suddenly understand what he said about my being able to see what he really was. I cannot believe I didn't realize––Maybe, I suddenly think, horror breaking over my mind in waves, we left the hospital not simply as a protection against the Joker, but to keep the world protected against Two-Face.

After all, Rachel's not doing so well.

When we get back to the room, Bruce takes a few minutes to tuck me back in, joking about my tiny-ness to diffuse the tenseness, comparing me to a little child, and then glaring at me when I whisper "Pedophiiiiiliaaaa…."

"Right, just for that slanderous remark," he declares, "I am revoking my promise to leave the news off." My eyes go very, very wide, but he simply smiles. "I'll keep the volume low; I need to know what Batman should do before I decide what Bruce can do."

"What about me?" I ask plaintively. He waves over his shoulder.

"Just put your head under a pillow or something." I sigh, picking one up.

"I meant," I whisper, as he turns on the television, "did you know what Batman needed to do before Bruce chose to kiss me?" But I'm safe, apparently–– there's nothing on the news but the usual crisis: shootings, bombings, and Joker threats. I'm starting to relax, I realize, and hope fervently that it will help my body to recover.

And then they go on to the lesser news, and my heart stops.

"In other news, a small mental facility on the outskirts of Metropolis caught fire, blowing up part of the ward. The fire appears to have begun in the kitchen, as the remains of a large, half-cooked breakfast have been found amongst the rubble. The gas from the stove burners, the MPD believes, reacted with heat waves given off by the other appliances and created the small explosion which obliterated a section of the T through Z wards. Bodies have yet to be identified, but relations of the deceased will be notified as soon as the investigation has been completed––"

He found Alex.