Hugo Strange: From the patient files of Dr. Hugo Strange, director of Arkham Asylum. Patient: Hartley Rathaway, alias Henry Darrow; also known as the Pied Piper. The patient shows signs of depression and general emotional distress, but I have not yet been able to give him a full psychiatric evaluation. Session One. So, young man, your name is Hartley Rathaway?
Hugo Strange: Any connection to Osgood and Rachel Rathaway, the billionaire publishing magnates?
Pied Piper: They’re my parents, sir.
Hugo Strange: (Surprised) You mean to tell me that you’re that Hartley Rathaway? The boy who was set to inherit a fortune as large as the GDP of some small countries?
Pied Piper: I’m the only Hartley Rathaway! Ever! Nobody but my parents would stick a child with a name like that!
Hugo Strange: So if that is who you are, young man, why in the world would you have ever decided to put on a costume, call yourself the Pied Piper, and embark on a life of crime using weaponized musical instruments?
Pied Piper: Because someone had to even the score.
Hugo Strange: What do you mean, even the score? You had life handed to you on a silver platter. You grew up in a palatial mansion, with servants to tend to your every need. You had the best education money could buy, you traveled all around the world, and you were set to inherit one of the largest fortunes in the country. What injustice could a pampered prince like you possibly have faced?
Pied Piper: None, sir. I’m not evening the score for myself. I’m evening it for the poor, the downtrodden, the people who through no fault of their own are denied the opportunity to even know that they’ll have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. My parents and people like them live in scandalous luxury that they didn’t even earn, and they have the nerve to say that the poor are lazy and selfish! It’s unjust and unfair, and yet everyone turns a blind eye! I…I had to do something!
Hugo Strange: (A bit taken aback) I must admit, young man, I was not expecting to hear a manifesto from someone of your background. (Pause) I take it that you don’t simply steal for kicks in the way that your file seems to suggest?
Pied Piper: Not often. Usually, I take the money from people who won’t even notice it’s gone and give it to people who really need it.
Hugo Strange: So you think of yourself as some sort of Robin Hood, then? Stealing from the rich to give to the poor?
Pied Piper: I wouldn’t have thought to put in those specific terms, but…I suppose I do, yes.
Hugo Strange: Why not just give away your own money, Mr. Rathaway? Certainly you have access to more than enough of it.
Pied Piper: (Laughs quietly) I tried that once. When my parents found out, it became part of the argument that got me disowned, disinherited, and thrown off of their estate without a dollar to my name.
Hugo Strange: Your parents disowned you?
Pied Piper: Yes. They even paid the FBI to give me the identity of Henry Darrow just so I could never be traced back to them. If the Flash and that brilliant young reporter hadn’t stumbled onto the connection between me and my parents somehow, Hartley Rathaway probably would have been effectively erased from existence.
Hugo Strange: That does at least explain why your file gives you two entirely separate names and histories. I admit that that had been puzzling me, Mr. Rathaway.
Pied Piper: Well, now you know. (Pause) How did I end up in Arkham Asylum, Doctor? Even if someone had become convinced that I was mentally ill, Breedmore Psychiatric Hospital would seem to be much more conveniently located.
Hugo Strange: It would be. In fact, there are any number of prisons and psychiatric facilities that would be more conveniently located to the area of the Twin Cities than Arkham Asylum…but through a series of judicial and political decisions to which I was not privy, somehow all of you “Rogues” were placed under my watch. (Pause) So, Mr. Rathaway, you went from being one of the wealthiest and most privileged people in the country to being homeless and penniless. I imagine that that was not an easy transition for you.
Pied Piper: No, it wasn’t. Although the panic didn’t kick in right away. It wasn’t until I used my sonic technology to steal forty thousand dollars from my parents’ company, and then gave the money away to people in need, that my anger subsided and it really hit me that I was impoverished. All I had left was my hypnotic flute and the silly costume I had made out of my mother’s nice shower curtains in order to disguise myself while I was stealing money from her company, and I was panicking. Which in hindsight is probably why I made the stupid decision to hypnotize a group of random crooks into becoming a sort of gang, told them that my name was the Pied Piper, and tried to become their leader. One of them probably would have ended up shooting me within a couple of days, but because my sonic abilities were quite unusual, the Flash showed up to arrest us before I got myself killed. They went to prison, but for some reason that was never adequately explained, I was released from the police station without even being booked.
Hugo Strange: How could that have happened, Mr. Rathaway?
Pied Piper: My parents’ money, of course. They hadn’t had the time to create a false identity for me yet, so I suspect that they simply bribed the police station into letting me go so that no one would know that the former heir to the Rathaway empire was now a common crook.
Hugo Strange: And what happened after that?
Pied Piper: I almost starved to death.
Hugo Strange: And what saved you?
Pied Piper: Well, I had sat down on a park bench and was sort of waiting to die when I suddenly came face-to-face with a pair of blue pixie shoes that were floating four feet off the ground. The pixie shoes were attached to a blonde kid in a garish leotard. He asked me if I was the kid with the magic flute, and when I said yes, he told me that he was the Trickster and invited me to stay with him in his apartment for a couple days. I agreed when he told me that he also had food. During the month I stayed with him, he gave me a crash course on how to survive on the streets…although most of the other Rogues insist that I must not have learned very much from it.
Hugo Strange: Why is that, Mr. Rathaway?
Pied Piper: Because I still give away basically all the money that I steal. Most of it goes to the poor, and the rest of it goes to my parents, to pay them back for the money they spent on trying to mold me into someone I could never be. That way, they can stop complaining about all the money they wasted on me. (Pause) Captain Cold insists that if I had any sense, I would keep some of the money for myself, but why would I do that? I spent my early life in unimaginable luxury. It’s only fair that I go without to help the poor now.
Hugo Strange: So you’re martyring yourself for the sins of your parents?
Pied Piper: I’m not martyring myself. I’m just doing what needs to be done.
Hugo Strange: Sacrificing your own financial well-being for the sake of others is not healthy, Mr. Rathaway. With a philosophy like yours, I’m surprised that you’re even still alive. (Pause) Incidentally, how have you managed to survive multiple stints in prison? A skinny, sheltered ex-aristocrat like you would seem to be an obvious target.
Pied Piper: Which is why I don’t call attention to myself whilst incarcerated. You’d be surprised how effective keeping your head down and your mouth shut can be. (Pause) Well, that, and Captain Cold has made it pretty clear that if anyone messes with me, they’re also messing with him. And almost no one is willing to get on Captain Cold’s bad side.
Hugo Strange: So your status as one of the Rogues protects you?
Pied Piper: Yes, sir. (Pause) But if I really had to, I think I could survive without them. I may be a sheltered ex-aristocrat, but I’m also a master hypnotist. I didn’t take up the name Pied Piper for nothing, Dr. Strange.
Hugo Strange: Yes, your file does go into great detail about the effectiveness of your hypnotic instruments. When you first arrived on the scene, there were even some people who thought that you might be the Pied Piper of the folktales, due not only to your powers but also the fact you seemed to appear and disappear almost at will, without ever really getting caught (Pause) Of course, from what you’ve told me, I can guess that the explanation for your remarkably infrequent imprisonments was due to your parents’ wealth, rather than to any magical powers.
Pied Piper: Those rumors were actually quite helpful. When people thought I might be magical, they put considerably less effort into tracking me, and that gave me a lot more freedom to do things like volunteering at homeless shelters and food pantries.
Hugo Strange: But you are not magical, Mr. Rathaway. You are only a man.
Pied Piper: I know that, Dr. Strange. If I had magical powers, I’d be a lot farther along in my goal of helping uplift the downtrodden than I am.
Hugo Strange: Mr. Rathaway, that was not what I was trying to tell you. Wanting to help others is an admirable goal, but the methods which you are taking to pursue it are decidedly unhealthy. You are a human being with human needs, and you are discounting them all in your desperation to prove that you are worth loving. While I believe that you honestly want to help others, I also believe that there is a part of you that is still trying to earn the love which it sounds like you were denied as a child. You’re hoping that if you sacrifice enough, you will finally be accepted as worthy…but you are giving too much.
Hugo Strange: Yes, Mr. Rathaway. Too much. (Pause) Think of it this way. If you starve to death because you have no money to pay for food, you will no longer be around to feed anyone else…and by giving away all of the money you bring in, illicitly or otherwise, that is effectively what you are risking. And it’s certainly what you’re doing to yourself on an emotional level.
Pied Piper: (Quietly) It’s what I was taught to do, Dr. Strange. What I wanted wasn’t important. What I needed wasn’t even important. The only thing that was important was upholding the family name. My parents have always made it quite clear that their love for me was conditional on whether I would sacrifice what I was to be their idea of the perfect heir, and I tried. For eighteen years, I tried, but it was never enough. Not after I’d been born deaf.
Hugo Strange: Yes, your files mention that. Your files also mention that your deafness was cured thanks to a pair of highly advanced hearing aids, which were created by Dr. William Magnus. The operation cost millions of dollars, and it granted you far more than the normal range of hearing.
Pied Piper: 14 hertz to 55,000 hertz. I hear more sounds than a dog. (Pause) And all the nasty things that people whisper behind my back when they think I can’t hear.
Hugo Strange: Are you glad that you were given these hearing aids, Mr. Rathaway?
Pied Piper: Very much so. Without them, I’d never have known what music sounded like. (Pause) But to be honest? If I had to choose between being deaf and knowing that my parents loved me, and being able to hear and knowing that it was entirely because my parents didn’t want the social embarrassment of having a disabled son, I’d choose the world of silence. And I hate silence.
Hugo Strange: Mr. Rathaway, you have spent your entire life sacrificing your own needs, either for the needs of others or for your parent’s desire for a so-called ‘perfect’ heir. That is why the request I am going to make of you will be so difficult. (Pause) Between now and our next session, I want you to write down something that you really want to do. Not something you think you should want to do; something that you actually want to do.
Hugo Strange: Mr. Rathaway, you will never be able to achieve healing until you recognize that your wants and needs are just as valid as anyone else’s. You will not be able to care for others in a healthy way until you learn to care for yourself.
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