That Mows Like A Harvest @fordarkisthesuede - Tumblr Blog

Nov 8, 2024

Fangs of Ouroboros - Chapter 4 - Looking into the Lion's Mouth

Whelp, the world is fucked. Now, more than ever, we need some nice distraction. And now that I’m back from my always-unscheduled-but-somehow-yearly-and-much-needed break from social media, let’s just see what I missed! …oh. Uh. Lotta ‘yikes’ around here… Lesse, people obsessed with a baby hippo… Some WolvPool… Whole lotta blog notes, though, that’s nice… (Mostly for Journal 3, go figure…) Let’s just check the ol’ mailbox…

WOAH NELLY! I’ll, uh, have to sort through all that later... First thing’s first - I gotta take care of my batjokes girlies. My sweet Telltale cheesies. My good time pals. For all those who stuck around, and for all those who will continue to walk with me through this valley of whatever-the-fuck: I hope this makes things just a tinsy bit better.

Last time, in a way better universe than this one:

Bruce followed the next step in Joker's murder game, discovering more clues to the odd mystery in the form of a man's expensive ring and maps of Gotham cemeteries. With John's strange intentions burning in the back of his mind, he met with Iman and Agent Blake at W.E. only to learn that Victor Fries has escaped and very likely sitting somewhere in Gotham...

Now, let's rejoin Tiffany and John on their way to Blackgate Prison...

[ start ] | [ prev ] | [ Read on Ao3 ] | [ next]

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Tiffany muttered, trying not to look as nervous as she felt walking behind the prison escort.

John seemed too confident. But she had to admit that with the navy blue pinstripe suit, metal framed glasses, and orange bowtie, he did look like a lawyer. One who had no issue with making the visiting request, bullshitting his way through the approval process (which was made easier since Tiffany had already snuck both of their fake names into the system), and striding down the hall like he had business to attend.

Then again, she supposed he was used to this kind of thing, having been in Arkham and St. Dymphna’s. He probably knew all the red flags they would’ve looked for in a visitor, attorney or not.

“It’ll be fine,” he whispered with an encouraging smile, “We’ll give it five, ten minutes tops.”

She was more concerned about what to say. When she interrogated criminals, she was always direct, like Bruce, and sometimes had to use physical intimidation. But now she was out of her element and without her armor.

John tilted his head, and as if sensing her distress, leaned closer. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he added quietly as the door to the visiting room opened for them, “Everybody’s a victim.”

Only two other people were visiting, but for such a large prison the number of cheap, worn-down wool seats were slim. The lighting was bleak, even for the early morning, with no windows and only white LEDs here and there, making everything feel clinical. There was a strange smell, too. It reminded her of when she and Luke had once stumbled upon an old couch sitting alone on a sidewalk by the garbage cans, and they’d been young and dumb enough to pull up the cushions to see what was underneath.

John took a seat, an open seam on the bottom pushing out a wad of stuffing with the force. He patted the one next to him as if Tiffany already hadn’t thought of sitting there.

Tiffany caught sight of her reflection in the plexiglass. The makeup made her face look longer, and the fake half-moon glasses dangling from the faux-gold chain around her neck almost added a flair of sophistication. It was like looking at a sibling she never knew. One with her father’s nose, her mother’s eyes, and a stranger’s flat-ironed hair.

She held her breath as the prison entrance opened on the other side of the center with a metal squeal as Mary Dahl was guided in. Tiffany peeked at the dossiers she’d brought along from the BatCave as if it would help her nerves settle. The female guard who had removed Mary’s handcuffs added what looked like the world’s flattest pillow to the seat in an attempt to give her a boost.

She let herself breathe out as Mary sat across from her, a mere three-foot-eleven. Her blonde twin ponytails were droopy and half-heartedly held up by two different colored rubber bands. The normally baby blue eyes looked gray and dull, with dark circles underneath. Her nails looked stubby and worn as if she’d bitten them, and the orange jumpsuit sagged so much it made her look even smaller.

Mary waited until the guard left to pick up the phone on her side. The phone was heavy and worn with hundreds of hands before Tiffany’s, reminding her of her of the ancient payphone stuck out in the hall of her grandma’s old apartment. “Hello,” Mary greeted, almost making Tiffany jump in her seat. She had a surprisingly normal 30-year-old-woman’s voice. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Uhm, we haven’t,” Tiffany mangled, darting her gaze back at John’s handwriting atop the folder in her lap. “We’re from Moore & Morrison , LLP; I’m Nancy Bolton .” Mary cast a sideways glance at John. “And this is my senior colleague, Joe White .”

Mary gave a little nod, but said nothing.

“We had some questions about your case.” Tiffany flopped open the thick manila folder again, tilting her head to keep the receiver to her shoulder and being mindful not to let Mary see the load of blank paper underneath the important pieces on top. She blinked down and realized she had forgotten she was supposed to use readers. “Certain, um, evidence was recently brought to light.”

Some life came back into Mary’s round face. “Uh-huh.”

Just as Tiffany adjusted the fake glasses on her nose, the prison door squealed open a second time.

Waylon Jones was a behemoth at what was probably seven and a half feet tall and full of muscle, but unlike Bane, he carried a lightbulb-shaped silhouette. Green scale tattoos ran from the top of his head to the backs of his knuckles, barely leaving any skin below the bumpy browline untouched. Small bulbous implants were raised in rows like a mohawk in place of hair.

Tiffany had seen his picture, but to call him ‘intimidating’ in person was seriously undercutting it.

Mary turned to look, too, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Crocy!” she squealed in delight.

Waylon’s shaved eyebrows rose. It kind of looked like he said her name, but Tiffany couldn’t hear.

Mary practically bounced in her seat as the guard led him next to hers. Instead of taking his handcuffs off, the guard went to the opposite corner to cross his arms and keep his eyes trained on Waylon’s back.

“How are they treating you on the other side?” Waylon asked, his voice rough and raspy. Tiffany could see that his teeth had all been filed down into points.

“I’m alright,” she answered, still talking in a higher register than before, “My cell-pal Mariam looks after me pretty good. What about you?”

Waylon shrugged and picked up the receiver for John’s side. “I’ve been better. What’s this about?”

“I was wondering the same thing! Pulling us out together after five years…” Mary shot Tiffany a look. “The old crowd stopped visiting after the first six months. Our lawyers after the first year.”

John positioned himself to still lean towards her somewhat while talking into his own phone. “As my junior was trying to explain earlier, there’s new evidence in your case,” he explained into the receiver, adjusting his fake glasses as he crossed his legs. “And we’re here on behalf of a…third party who brought it to our attention.”

Mary didn’t seem to have heard that as well.

Tiffany thought back to all the detective shows her mom would watch on summer afternoons during her childhood. Unlike in books, they usually went through the crime step by step before solving it in the climax. It felt like a good way to jog her memory.

“Yeah, as I had said earlier, your case has new evidence.” Tiffany pretended to skim over the paper in her lap. “According to your statement, you hit Mr. Uslan with a whisky decanter?”

“That’s right,” Mary answered in her normal voice.

“You claimed self-defense, but they still charged you with murder-two.” She took off the glasses. “Can you walk me through what happened?”

Mary stared at her. “Isn’t it all in there?”

It was. Attempted sexual assault, self-defense blow to the head, running for help and solace, covered up the murder the best way they knew how to preserve what they could of their lives…

She could hear John next to her: “Such a strange thing, not pleading temporary insanity for you… It’s not like there aren’t other cannibalism cases in Arkham. I’d have thought your line about ‘not wanting to waste meat’ would’ve been a cincher. I guess the media’s shock-and-awe story really pulled one over on you, huh?”

(Ah. Treating him like a victim.)

“I know what the police wrote happened,” Tiffany said, “I know what the journalists scraped together. And I know what you told the court, Mary,” she added softly, “But you also tried to take the blame for everything at first, even after Mr. Jones tried to do the same for you. I need to know exactly what happened so this new evidence makes more sense.”

Those blue doll-like eyes welled with something like hope. “Do you think,” she mumbled into the receiver, “I might…be innocent? I could get out?”

She felt bad getting her hopes up like this when there was an ultra-slim chance she could even do anything. Maybe if she got a confession out of the real perpetrator, it would mean something, but… “It’s…possible,” she answered, “Our, er, client has, uh… What you’d call a ‘reputable stance’ with the justice system.”

Mary’s eyebrows rose, and she darted her eyes over to Waylon and the guard in the corner, then at the inmates on the other side of the room. “Are you talking about The Batman?” she whispered, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

She sure as hell wasn’t going to answer that. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Mary searched her face, but couldn’t seem to get anything from Tiffany’s expression. “Okay,” she pouted, her ponytails almost seeming to droop, “I get it. Client confidentiality and all that. I mean, I’d be surprised if it was; he probably would’ve busted us up too, back then… Even worse than the cops. I hear all kinds of stuff about him around here.”

She didn’t really want to let Batman’s name be dragged like that. He could be rough, but she’d never seen him do anything unnecessary. “I don’t think he’s so bad. From what I hear, anyway,” she interjected as casually as possible. “At least with his track record, I think he would’ve solved your case much faster. You might not have even been here for this long. Gotten assault and battery, maybe conspiracy.”

Mary looked much more interested. “This evidence of yours… Why would my little case have something new after all these years, anyway?”

In this case, honesty is the best policy, as her mother always said. “A print that came up in your case’s evidence log showed up elsewhere recently.”

Her little blonde eyebrows rose curiously, then settled into a furrow as she stared at the table between them. Her gaze shifted to Waylon. “Will it help Croc, too?” she asked hopefully.

She doubted that. But John had evidently heard that, or else could read her lips - he nudged her calf, and when she glanced over at him, he was spelling out ‘say yes’ with his fingers under the tabletop as Waylon said something about police brutality.

“It could reduce Mr. Jones’ sentence.”

Mary smiled a fraction and jiggled like she kicked her legs in her seat. “That was his name in the circus, y’know - ‘Killer Croc’. Some southern guy called me ‘Babydoll’ once and everyone found it so funny they wouldn’t stop imitating him for weeks until it just stuck. Though,” she leaned back, smiling over at her companion, “you’re the only one who can call me that now, huh, Crocy?”

Waylon looked over at her mid-sentence, sighing with the type of mild annoyance that didn’t seem very heartfelt. “...you can’t just say ‘Croc’, can ya?”

Mary gave something of a giggle. “Cause I know you won’t stop me.”

“Only ‘cause if you were anyone else, I’d crush ya,” he rasped, making a squishing motion with his hands like he was crushing an oversized cola can, “like this, and throw ya into the bin where you belong.”

Mary beamed and giggled. It must have been some inside joke. (Though John was hiding a smile behind his hand, too.)

Tiffany really wanted to get to the point. “Um, Mary…”

“Oh, sorry - where was I? The circus! So you know I was hired on to be ‘the’ audience member. Any dangerous act - fire, electric eels, knife throwing - I was the pick a lot of the time. Crocy started before me,” she explained, her voice only going higher on the silly nickname. “Part freak show, part strong-man. He used to wrestle crocodiles in a pit.”

“Until those animal welfare assholes got involved,” Waylon grumbled distantly.

“Right. But we had our own trailers. Not much, but homey.”

“Waylon,” John interjected politely, “could you move the receiver between you two? I’d like to hear her side.”

Waylon gave a grunt that sounded a bit like an alligator’s, mouthing something like ‘fine’, his lip curling to show off the teeth filed down into points. But he moved the phone between the booths anyway.

Mary continued. “So I finish my volunteer act with the magician’s drowning trick, and I have to slink out with the audience members in case someone gets wise - and this guy follows me. At first I think it’s just some townie who’s trying to see if I’m my ‘real’ age, so I throw him off by visiting the stalls, going into the funhouse, stuff like that. But…” Her face fell. “He bumped into me on purpose. Picked up my popcorn and asked if my parents worked here. Said he liked my act and wanted to use it. I didn’t really know what to say.”

Tiffany supposed she wouldn’t, either. “Did you invite him to your trailer?”

“No,” Mary said sternly, “I ran away. I thought I lost him, but he followed me to my trailer and just strolled in like he owned the place, talking up some show he was making and how he could use a child actress who could ‘turn off the waterworks’. Said I could have a ‘great future in television’ if I played my cards right…”

Her face scrunched up into a dark, world-weary expression, and her voice had gotten quieter. “I told him what I was. Then I told him to fuck off. And then he tried to…you know.”

She understood completely. “I know. It’s okay.”

John made some gesture, and Waylon’s phone was pressed to Mary’s ear. “Had he been drinking?” he asked, seeming somewhat sympathetic.

“He’d helped himself to my whiskey.” Her voice was growing frail. “It was on my dressing table. He wasn’t the first to try it on with me… Just the first to…”

Waylon yanked the phone away from her. “You don’t have the right to ask that,” he growled, just audible over Tiffany’s line.

“Sure I do,” John said not very smoothly, “Any court-jockey fresh from the bar is going to ask her that. It doesn’t mean I think she lead him on or something,” he added with a barely disguised frown.

Mary tugged on the retractable cord, and Waylon reluctantly put it back in the middle. “He tried to pin me to the table. I wasn’t thinking about it,” she said softly, “I just grabbed what was closest and swung.”

She was silent for a moment. Tiffany felt it best not to press onto the next point.

“When I realized… I dropped the bottle and ran. I only got six trailers down when Waylon saw me.”

“I checked it out,” Waylon grunted. “He was dead alright. Bleeding right into the floor.”

“Did you see anyone else around the trailer park?” Tiffany asked as gently as possible.

Mary sighed. “I don’t think so…”

John bounced his crossed leg. “How about you, Waylon? Anybody you didn’t recognize? Or even anyone you did?”

Waylon grunted in annoyance, lip curling to show teeth, and leaned back to look at the ceiling. “It was five years ago, how am I supposed to remember?”

“Because you lived in a tight-knit community, and you know everyone – at least enough to recognize the crew and the regulars – and your friend’s just come to you in a panic,” John suggested, having leaned back and now tapping his fingers in a rhythm on the phone. “They killed a guy, and now all you can think about is making sure no one else saw it. So you race across the trailer park, panic thumping in your chest, eyes darting around each and every corner…”

Tiffany redirected her attention to Mary as Waylon screwed up his face in genuine thought. “What about before you entered your trailer that evening?” she tried. “You must’ve been looking out for that creep following you, right?”

Mary tucked her fist into her cheek. “I don’t know… I saw Stu, he runs the shooting gallery…”

Waylon sighed. “I can’t remember.”

John motioned for Tiffany to come closer. “Quick side-bar with my junior, won’t be a moment!”

Tiffany stood and followed his example of turning his back to the glass. “What? You heard them, neither of them remember.”

“Of course they don’t, we haven’t shown them the suspects yet,” John whispered, “Did you print those? I don’t have them in my little case.”

“No, I thought you said you would!”

John looked away with a low hiss as if he’d hurt himself somehow. “Oh boy. Failed on that bit of communication… But that’s okay! We can use my phone.” Tiffany bit her tongue to stop herself from asking just who had failed here. It would be dumb to argue in front of their ‘clients’. “They might get desperate and try to corroborate on the last one, so mix up the order when I pass it to you, okay?”

“Desperate?”

“They’re in prison,” he stressed with a raised eyebrow, “Around the clock monitoring, crappy living conditions, violent tension constantly boiling under everyone’s skin – and unlike Arkham, they don’t get to talk it all out with a licensed therapist. If you stayed here for several years and someone said there was a tiiiiiny chance you could leave, would you want to just let it go?”

…probably not. She didn’t want to imagine having to stay here in the visiting room much longer, let alone live there. “It certainly doesn’t seem to be doing them any good.”

“Exactly! Ok, round two,” he hushed with a smile and a little thumb’s up. “Alright, Waylon,” he said normally, pushing up the fake glasses as he resumed his seat. “I’m going to show you some pictures, and you tell me if anyone looks familiar.”

“Nope.” Swipe. “Hah, what a mug. He could be in my pit.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’...”

Swipe. “Hm… Dunno.”

Tiffany took the phone from him, careful not to touch anything to trigger it returning to home. (She didn’t care to see an almost naked Bruce like last time.) She decided to try the last picture first.

Mary’s eyes widened gradually until Tiffany was sure they would pop out of her face. “I’ve seen him before!”

But where? “In the trailer park?”

“He was in the audience,” she said with a growing excitement. She reached over and gently shook Waylon’s arm. “He sat right behind me!”

In a flash, the all-but-forgotten guard in the corner sprung into action and pushed them apart. His call of “No touching!” fell on deaf ears.

“The spotlights hit back there!” she said excitedly, her pitch rising. “I remember because he looked so bored!”

Tiffany looked back at the picture of Garfield Lynns. “Mary,” Tiffany thought aloud, “when you left the trailer, you didn’t check for a pulse, right? How did you know Ben Uslan was dead?”

Her excitement settled somewhat, but she still had the shining hope in her eyes. “He was still. Real still.”

“And he was bleeding? Was it pooling underneath him?”

“Um. I…” she trailed off, cradling her chin in the space between her thumb and index finger. “I don’t remember.”

Waylon snorted. “It’s like I said, lady, you could’ve gone swimming in it.”

“And Mary - you only struck once?”

Mary nodded.

So a calculated second strike from Garfield. Talk about tough glass… Or a lucky hit.

“Well, Nancy,” John smiled knowingly over at her, “looks like we’re going to have to make a call.”

Mary sat up and leaned towards the glass like they were friends having a private conversation at a restaurant. “Can you tell me - what’ll happen now?”

“Well, uh…” Tiffany fumbled for something. She couldn’t leave her with nothing - not when she looked like such a wreck, and she was innocent of murder - but giving her false hope felt wrong. “We’ll have to talk to our client…”

“But,” John added on his end, “we should be able to pass everything along through the system. The wheels of justice spin slow, as the saying goes! But you’ll probably get a hearing.”

He was making promises he couldn’t keep. She almost wanted to kick him. No board or judge would look at them and their rap sheet and just send them on their way!

“They do look at all records,” Tiffany stressed, closing the prop file. “They’re not exactly lenient, in our experience.”

John chuckled a little too loudly. “Ain’t that the truth! But I’m sure you kids will behave.” He glanced at his cell phone in mock-surprise. “Ooh, would you look at the time! Gotta run - people to see, cases to settle!”

Waylon didn’t bother with formalities, but Mary seemed to want to say something, so Tiffany waited.

“Thanks for seeing me about all this,” Mary said in her normal voice. “Things have never been easy for me. Especially here… But this…well, makes me think that something might turn around for once.”

Tiffany swallowed the guilt that came with Mary’s grateful smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Come on, Nance, we don’t want to be late,” John excused for her, trying to guide her away by the shoulder. The little click that came with hanging up the two-way handset felt strangely heavy. The feeling sat with her as she glanced behind her to see Mary being re-cuffed to be lead back to her cell.

John was practically vibrating with excitement, shaking her still-held shoulder the moment the visiting room door was closed. “We did it!” he squealed, pumping his fist, “We’re gonna nail this guy!”

How was he so excited? How did he deal with just lying to Mary’s face about their chances? Was it really all those years in Arkham…? Was it just experience?

John’s wide grin was not quite a face-splitter. “And you! You did great!” He slowed their stride a half step back from the guard in charge of walking them back and ducked his head down to her ear. “Bats is gonna be so proud of us,” he whispered.

Mary’s hopeful smile gnawed at her. It didn’t seem like anything to be proud of.

His arm slipped off of her. “Come on, kiddo, you just solved a five-year-old murder! Aren’t you excited?”

There wasn’t any point in lying about it, and she seriously doubted he would let the subject go. “Not really.”

“Hey, uh, is there someplace my partner and I can talk alone?” John asked the guard escorting them to the elevator.

“Yeeeah,” the guard grunted, “Outside.”

“Well, can you just give us a minute alone?”

The guard held up his card for the RFID reader by the elevator doors. “You got thirty seconds after the ‘ding’. That’s enough for you.”

John waited until the doors were closing to bite back: “I bet your wife says the same thing!” The elevator gave a tinny ding as it began to descend. “Jerk. Okay, what’s wrong?”

“I just spent ten minutes telling a prisoner they could get out of there,” she answered, hearing the bite in her own voice, “when they don’t even have a chance.”

“Sure they do,” John puzzled.

“It doesn’t matter how much evidence we have, John, we can’t submit anything and magically get them off the hook! We’re not real lawyers!”

John hit the emergency stop button with a ballpoint pen, causing the elevator to jolt and stop with a hefty clunk. “You’ve been at this longer than I have,” he said coolly, staring down at her, “Do you actually want Mary to get free?”

She knew he wasn’t going to start the elevator back up until she answered. If it even could start back up. Either way, Tiffany was stuck.

Mary was technically innocent. And incredibly pitiable. A woman in a perpetually-seven-year-old body would have an extremely limited choice of career even without the criminal record. It was unlikely that anyone even vaguely familiar with those news broadcasts covering her case would forget them, rescinded charges or not.

Unlike her. Tiffany’s very real charges had been swept under the rug, all because Batman thought her worthy of a second chance. No one knew she’d killed the Riddler outside of their little group. No one at all knew how long she’d planned it for. No one knew how she’d gotten Barbara to give a tour of her ambulance for the sole purpose of taking some of the powerful drugs they stored for the occasional Arkham escapee, how much she’d researched them to find the most lethal combination, how she’d looked at the tranquilizer gun the dark web dealer had brought to her no-questions-asked and told herself that what she was doing was right.

She could’ve so easily been put into Mary’s situation, and she would’ve gone to as much effort to cover it up.

“Yeah,” Tiffany lamented, “I guess I do. But that’s not the point.”

John finally loosened back up and put away the pen he’d been clicking away at. “Then what is? Come on, Tiffy, you’re one of the four most intelligent people in the city,” he said as if he were scolding a kitten, “Life dealt her a bad hand, just like it did me. And you would’ve had it, too, if Batman weren’t around… But since he is, and we’re here for him now, I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Besides, since when has Batman ever slept on a weird murder case?”

Hah. “Never since I’ve known him.”

Tiffany’s balance shook with the elevator as the floor rattled under her feet with a dull thudding sort of boom. She steadied herself against the metal railing, bracing for a snapping sound or sudden drop, but nothing more happened than the lights blinking.

“I hope that wasn’t what it sounded like,” John grumbled from the corner he’d half-fallen into.

The elevator hadn’t moved, but the service light had turned red. They were stuck. “There’s only one way to find out.”

“...you want to go look?”

“Well we can’t just wait around here,” Tiffany stressed, putting her hands on her hips the same way her mom did when she wanted to take charge. “Even if it wasn’t an explosion, they’re bound to find out who we really are if we stay in here.”

“Good point,” John muttered. “I’d hate to think of what sentence I’d get…”

The access panel was sitting pretty in the leftmost corner, but Tiffany was too short to reach it and there was no bar to climb on. “You think you can get me up there?”

John eyed the panel. “Yeah. You want to be lifted up, or sit on my shoulders?”

Either way sounded embarrassing. “Shoulders.”

“Aha hee hee! What, you think I’ll drop you?” he teased, squatting down and pointing uselessly to his back, “I’ve carried Batman one-handed! Dislocated my shoulder, sure,” he continued as she took her position and tried to focus on the latch, “but even if I hadn’t done it so many times before, it was worth it!”

Tiffany’s head scraped the ceiling as she pushed and jiggled the stubborn latch. It didn’t appear to be used often. If ever. She wished she had some of that spray-on oil from her bike’s trunk.

“You know, we could tower over Bruce like this. Give him a good smack-down... Or just dunk on him, ha ha!”

Now there’s a thought. She slammed her palms into the corners of the door, finally popping it open with a metal squeal. “We smacked down a door, in any case.”

She climbed up onto the dusty metal roof, John holding her legs steady and only giving an oof when her kitten heel dug into his shoulder. It was dark up there, but she could see the door for the second floor and the maintenance button panel by the door. All they had to do was climb some. And pray a trigger-happy guard wasn’t on the other side.

“So, are you going to help me up, or…?”

“Naaah. I think I’ll leave you down there, get some quiet time,” she joked, squatting on the super-dusty roof. At least these aren’t my clothes, she thought.

“Veeery funny, missy.” John propped one foot up on the slick metal wall as he grabbed her outstretched forearms, only looking mildly annoyed. “Leave the jokes to the professionals.”

She pulled, muscle straining as her shoulders and torso tried to bear the weight. She could lift quite a bit of weight for someone who was merely a computer-geek-who-occasionally-went-to-a-gym sixteen months ago, but holy shit, for such a thin guy, he sure felt heavy.

Tiffany barely managed to get him up, partially helped by John scrambling to get one of his legs through the hole. John’s landing immediately stirred up a swirl of dust.

It was easy to climb up the pole towards the door; the bolts holding them in place acted as decent footholds.

“Ugh, surrounded by dust, rat droppings, and archaic walls,” he said between coughs as he followed her up on the opposing side, “Just like the old homestead.”

“Yeah, but at least the electronics aren’t as old,” Tiffany offered, patting the access panel door. “As long as the RFID scanner is hardwired in, I can connect to it and trick it into opening the door for us.” She pulled out her spool-keychain of cable connectors, gripping the old pole on the wall with one hand. “It’s why I never leave without my master key.”

John gave an appreciative ‘ooh’. “Neat! But, uh, wouldn’t it be easier to just try and pry the door open?”

Tiffany sadly pocketed her key cable. “...yeah, I guess.”

Thankfully she could reach her half without too much of a strain on her shoulder. John seemed to have no trouble.

“On three,” she said. “One, two…pull!”

The elevator doors squealed in protest for the first two inches, then slid open with a little thunk so fast that Tiffany almost slipped.

They were back on the third floor. The rude guard was nowhere to be seen.

“Everyone must have started running towards the noise,” Tiffany noted aloud amongst the eerie quiet, checking the walls for security cameras.

“At least we know they can’t take the elevator.”

Tiffany ducked her head as they left the empty shaft, trying to keep as much of her face away from the camera positioned above the elevator. “This prison has what, five stories?”

John turned his face towards the inner wall like he knew just what he was looking for. “Yeah, and according to Bats’ notes from this morning, it’s got a weird layout - the cell blocks are five stories high! And it’s split so the women’s block was put on the opposite side. Thankfully.”

“Wait, so the cells start downstairs?” Tiffany stopped. “That’s probably where the explosion came from!”

John gave a short laugh. “I don’t know about you, bird-girl, but I heard it from above. I’d bet a cell wall got blown out. And while everyone’s trying to patch up the hole and chase whoever left,” he explained, “it leaves the front door a bit more accessible.”

“That’s stupid, they’d still have to go through the guards!”

“Unless…” John paused, stopping in the middle of the hall to look up like he could see through the ceiling. “I think the medical center is on the fourth floor.”

“What does that have to…”

It hit Tiffany, suddenly, that the majority of focus would shift to wherever the explosion took place. It wasn’t about blasting open a wall to escape.

“It’s a distraction.”

“Bingo! Nothing gets attention like a medical emergency!”

Tiffany whipped out her phone and launched the network scanner. As she had guessed, the network the nearby camera was on was under heavy security. It would take more time to chip at it directly than to crack into one of the on-network cell phones and piggy back on it. She turned on her sniffer application. “Security was on the second floor, right?” she asked, dashing towards the corner. Peeking around and seeing no one, she made a bee-line for the stairs and just turned the handle to open it a crack.

Heavy footsteps and shouts echoed down with a blaring fire alarm. No one was rushing up towards them, but it sounded like people were running downstairs as well.

“Come on,” she whispered, slipping through. They wouldn’t guard the stairs, she thought, No one would be trying to go up instead of out. It should be safe.

She peeked over the railing - one last guard, struggling to tug on a riot gear vest, was following a line of people down. They were smart enough to try and cover their bases with the cell door now, at least.

John, who had the uncanny ability to walk as quietly as Bruce, looked oddly nervous as they made their way down.

Tiffany stopped at the second-floor door. It was way too risky to go in, considering the likelihood of more guards, but the thick metal was stopping her signal.

“What are you doing?!” John hissed as she cracked open the door.

“I need to get access to the feed,” she answered in the quietest voice she could muster. “Otherwise we could walk right into them down there. And we can see who’s trying to break out.”

“We can find that part out on the news,” John muttered, unnecessarily holding onto a fistful of her jacket like she was going to try and make a break for it.

The sniffer program found a headway - someone’s cell phone was broadcasting bluetooth. Tiffany connected to it, running her script to bypass authorization and keep her own identifying addresses scrambled. Her packet sniffer hit gold: pre-saved network ID and key in the settings, ready and waiting for her to take.

Now all she had to do was login to the network and fish around for a camera’s connection. Easy enough to do in her sandbox. She closed the door and started it up; John still looked like he was listening for the slightest reason to run.

“Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” John said in a hush.

“I doubt they’ll try and come up,” she whispered back, “And look, I got it!”

Once she had one camera’s IP, it was easy to guess the rest. They were all in sequential order, and easy to flick through the visual feeds when you knew how - and Tiffany had long since perfected this.

The fourth floor cameras showed a troupe of security personnel, guns at the ready, flowing through the floor in an effort to stop anyone from escaping. A frightened doctor and a couple of nurses could be seen planted against a wall like prisoners. Smoke was ebbing into view from the blast, which seemed to have taken out nothing more than one of the doors. A man pried open one of the elevators, flocked by more armed guards.

The first floor showed nothing at first. A quiet corner. An empty stair entry. A smeared streak of black. Nothing but three guards around B-block. Another smear of black, this time actively being sprayed on the screen.

And then chaos. Around the corner from what she presumed was another cell block was an all-out fight between several guards and prisoners, with guards’ riot shields being battered by what could’ve been a group of line-backers on a football field. Prisoners were snatching at what she could only hope were rubber-bullet guns.

Tiffany got a glimpse of the letter ‘C’ by the numbers on one of the jumpsuits. She didn’t recognize any of the faces.

Still. Two cameras being manually blacked out. That wasn’t good.

“Time to go,” John pressed, tugging her arm along.

“John!” She nearly tripped down the steps with him. “Let go! I can run!”

“Well then hurry the hell up!”

Noise hit them like a ton of bricks as soon as they entered the first floor hallway. Shouts. Gunfire. Thuds like people hitting the wall or floor.

John took the lead, uncharacteristically serious looking like he was channeling Bruce. (Or, knowing him, he was deliberately trying for Batman.) He flattened himself against a wall as Tiffany swiped between cameras trying to find themselves. “See anything?”

A guard with a completely vacant looking face was spraying something up at the camera lens to block it off. Tiffany very quickly swiped to the next one, showing the back of him just out of screen. A thin orange pant leg could be seen next to him. “These must be on the other side,” she noted aloud. “Someone is breaking out of the women’s prison!”

“Oh, great - but I meant near us!”

“I’m getting there!” She swiped again and again. “Whoever they are, they’re being helped by a guard.”

Finally, she saw the back of her own wig in view. One more swipe.

She tugged him back just as a guard smacked down on the floor, a gunshot ricocheting off the walls and ringing in her ears. It had hit them in the body armor vest, stunning them - and the very real hole left behind told Tiffany everything she needed to know about the situation.

It was her turn to pull John along, the after-burn image of the prisoner aiming the rifle sticking in her mind’s eye. She ran as fast as she could while several more shots and a smarmy ‘How do you like me NOW?’ bellowed behind them.

John let out a laugh, which he very quickly stifled. “Bad time for theatrics!” he said among what she really hoped were nervous giggles.

Tiffany stopped to peek around the corner - the A-Block door was shut tight, with the red light above the lock remaining steady and no guard placed outside.

We should be circling back around to the ‘bridge’ separating the two halves of the prison, she thought as she tugged John along into the empty hall.

The squeal of old metal hinges pierced the air, causing them both to halt in their tracks. Someone had taken the other set of stairs down.

Before she could blink John had grabbed her by the back of her collar and yanked her through the nearby bathroom door. The automatic light flickered on before John could slap his hand over the automatic sensor.

Tiffany could hear her heart pounding like a drum as the light buzzed and went dark. It felt too much like a movie where the only candle on set was blown out. Only the setting was more like one of the lockdown drills she’d gone through in school: lights out, take cover, keep quiet.

But her mind drifted to the roster of criminals in Batman’s rogue gallery. Bruce had always drilled it into her head to be prepared for anything. So she sank to the floor, pressed her ear to the wall, and very slowly opened the door a crack.

“Are you fucking kidding? We came all this way! This is our chance to really leave this piss-hole!”

Waylon. Tiffany froze. The glimpse she had showed he had broken the handcuffs’ chains from earlier and had stolen a rifle. Blood was lightly spattered on his rolled up sleeves.

“I can’t,” Mary’s voice answered slowly, not at all in her girlish pitch from when she talked to him before. “Then they’ll never let me out.”

Tiffany dared to widen the gap a little more, spotting Mary standing without so much as a bruise.

“Waylon,” she emphasized almost softly, “we finally have a real chance. One where we don’t have to think about looking over our shoulders or walking on eggshells every day. Don’t you want that?”

There was a moment of silence, peppered among distant ricocheting gunfire. Then a great sigh. “Maybe.” A short pause. “I really fucked things up, huh?”

“Just a bit. But it’s okay. I’ll just go back and pretend I was hiding.” Her voice rose into that childish pitch that matched her face: “I was soooo scared! I almost got trampled on! Waaaah!”

He laughed, deep and guttural like his nickname’s sake. “I almost forgot how good you were at that.”

Mary giggled. Tiffany wished she could see better.

“You should go,” he added. “I’ll go back up before someone sees.”

A loud shot and a thump came from further down the hall, accompanied by footsteps. “Ah, and there he is - just the man I was looking for! On your way out, eh, Waylon? Good thing I caught ya.”

Tiffany didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but Waylon said it clearly enough: “What do you want, Oz?”

“It’s not about what I want,” Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot said smoothly in his weird British accent, “it’s about what we all want. Liberation. And we can’t get there without a little help from the community, can we?”

Tiffany heard more muffled gunshots from somewhere.

“And I’m thinkin’ - if you’re already on the way out, why don’t we all continue this little break out together? I could use a guy like you!”

“...no thanks,” Waylon answered gruffly, “I’m not really serious about breakin’ out.”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Oswald said in annoyance. “You’re literally armed to the teeth. Are you really just havin’ a… Oh,” he suddenly punctuated a know-it-all way, “I get it. You got that visitor earlier. You ‘n’ your little partner in crime think you can walk. Who’d you get, Matlock?”

Tiffany could see that Mary moved to stand in front of Waylon.

“Just get out of here, Oz,” the tiny woman said casually, “We’re not about to squeal on you or the goon squad, so what difference does it make?”

“All the difference, sweet-’eart, when you’re fightin’ an overgrown rodent. Though, come to think of it… You could be quite an asset, yourself,” Oswald said contemplatively. “Yeah. Yeah, we could use you.”

“I’m flattered,” Mary said coolly, “but no thanks.”

Oswald had moved; Tiffany could just see his legs in view. “Oh, that’s cute. You think I’m askin’.”

Tiffany could only see a flurry of movement as several people scrambled into a close-quarter fight. Despite the fact that Waylon easily threw two of whom she assumed were the ‘goon squad’ to the floor, he still wound up freezing in place at Mary’s shriek.

“Oh-kay, here’s the deal, Croc, ol’ boy!” Oswald said, completely out of view, “You come along nicely and I won’t give the wall a new coat of paint with her brains. Sound good?”

Tiffany acted without another thought. The door pulled open several inches.

“Don’t be stupid!” John hissed, slamming it shut with his foot. He kept it planted there.

“What am I supposed to do, let her get killed?”

“We’re not prepared for this, Tiffany!” he stressed furiously, “We’re outnumbered, out-armed, and not even supposed to be here! You’re a lawyer right now, remember?”

The truth wasn’t drowning out the instinct thrumming in her legs. “Bruce would go!”

“Just because he’s got a hero complex a mile wide- ugh, do you have any idea what he’d do if I let you get hurt?! He’d never forgive me!”

As her eyes readjusted, she could tell he was no longer looking at her. Despite his fury a moment ago, it didn’t really match the crushed tone of his voice: “And I’d never forgive myself.”

Tiffany never felt more trapped. “What…are we supposed to do, then?”

John moved, the heels of his shoes clicking past her on the tile. “Wait.”

She didn’t want to. She was practically shaking with the urge to move.

She felt like a child. She hated this whole shebang, from the pointless violence outside the bathroom door to her stupid trembling limbs in her ugly-ass suit. It didn’t help that John was running the faucet for some reason. Rush, rush, rush, like the adrenaline and guilt pumping through her veins.

It hit Tiffany that surely someone may hear the water, but there was no burst through the door. Outside of her pounding heart it was fairly quiet.

The door handle felt gross as she slowly pulled it open to peek out.

She saw drops of blood on the floor, likely from where Waylon had hit Penguin’s men. One body, not moving, but the lack of utter stillness that came with death said he was just unconscious. And bleeding a little.

The unmistakable bang of a gunshot reverberated from down the hall.

No more waiting - she darted up and out, not caring if John followed, and practically skidded to a halt on sight of the front hallway.

A guard lay over the metal detector. The bullet had penetrated through the neck where the swat armor wasn’t quite high enough to cover. Blood had pooled under him. Tiffany now knew what Waylon had meant when he said she could’ve gone swimming in it.

What was worse was that another was lying in the doorway, slumped body wedged between the metal baseboard and frame, blood actively leaking from the glaring hole in his temple. The whole place stank of copper and black powder.

There came the strange sound of splashing water from behind her - John had followed and dumped a large bucket of something all over the hallway floor, carelessly dropping the bucket before darting back up to her.

“Don’t just run off like that!” John chastised, tucking his handkerchief back in his pocket like it mattered, “You really - oof, talk about a pain in the neck.”

Tiffany was about to tell him to shut up when rapid footsteps echoed up from the opposite side. She dragged him down to the floor by his sleeve as she ducked behind the guard’s stall, trying not to breathe in.

It was a big woman with brown, straggly hair. She didn’t recognize her, but it was hard to miss the sock-and-buskin tattoo on her neck. Or the blood on her front.

The guard’s bloodstained belt was still loaded with gear.

Almost on reflex, Tiffany whipped out the nightstick and flung it at the escapee’s head.

Time seemed to slow down before it made contact with a whap. The nameless False Face fell to the ground and made no move to get up.

“Woah! That’s some throwing arm you got there, Tiff’!” John praised with an unnervingly innocent smile for a man kneeling in a pool of blood. “And here I was, thinking you were reaching for the holster.”

“What?! I wasn’t about to shoot her! She wasn’t even armed!”

John’s head tilted like a curious dog. “You mean you didn’t see the piece she was carrying? Left hip pocket, couldn’t miss it.”

Tiffany decided to ignore that. “Ok, whatever! There’s been enough death already!”

She made for the door, looking over the body stuck there. Sure enough, the guard was the same one who had been blacking out the camera lenses. The handgun, pulled from his service belt, was clutched in his fingers. As if he killed himself.

Another shot echoed from somewhere far down the hall. It wasn’t the time or place to theorize.

“John?”

John stepped away from the unconscious woman he was kneeling over, dropping the riot baton and shoving the now-bloody pocket square back into the front of his jacket. “Right, sorry!” With the officer’s blood soaked into the knees of his pants he looked like he’d committed murder. She was very glad he wasn’t his usual pale self; she’d like not to think about Ace Chemicals right now.

Tiffany had only leaned down to drag the body away from the door when he grabbed her elbow. “Tiffany,” he hissed, “fingerprints!”

Oh. She hadn’t realized until she looked, but her hands had gotten some of the other guard’s blood on them. He was right; if she touched the body, she’d leave a trace of herself.

“Keep the door open, then,” she instructed. “I don’t want the automatic locks to suddenly kick in.”

Tiffany didn’t have a pocket square. Instead the ugly yellow plaid jacket finally came in handy - she palmed the lining between the shoulders and armpits, hoping one of Jackie’s hairs had not somehow stuck in the weaves to transfer to the dead man’s legs as she gently pulled him out of the doorframe.

“Sorry,” she whispered to the poor man as she dropped his legs. She tried not to look at the bloody lump on the glass or the blood spattered on the cheap rubber mat as stepped around the crime scene.

The door shut behind them with a screech of hinges and the heavy thunk of a lock sliding into place.

The sounds of traffic in the distance was so normal. No screeching tires, no gunshots, no breaking glass - and the parking lot was quiet. Horribly, horribly quiet.

“You did good, kiddo,” John told her with a rough clap on the shoulder. “Seriously, you should’ve signed up for the Knights.”

Tiffany didn’t know how much more she could take. “Can you be serious for one goddamn minute?!”

John gave a wild kind of laugh. The kind that didn’t exactly settle her nerves. “Of course! What do you think I was doing back there, girl-wonder?” he grinned. “If it was just me, I wouldn’t have cared!”

She wanted to push him. And hug him. She did neither. “We should be running now!” she half-shouted instead, bolting for her bike as John laughed behind her.

Her legs couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Not when her feet pounded the pavement, not when the blue letters of Mad Machine shined in the sun from the motorcycle’s rear panel, not when she slammed her helmet over the wig, and not when she felt the motor rev to life between her legs.

John’s weight settled behind her. If it wasn’t for him, she knew she wouldn’t have gotten out of there.

She also wouldn’t have been in there in the first place, but they would’ve had even less evidence to go on. At least now there was something.

It was gonna be one hell of a long day.

Author Notes:

This took…so much…outta me… I had the first half done for ages and kept stumbling over the second like the world’s biggest klutz. I originally planned on having J+T’s talk in the parking lot, interrupted with the explosion, with John wearing his Reponsible Adult™ shoes trying to talk Tiffany out of rushing in. And she had the gall to listen to him, too. I tell ya, I would’ve had this baby done AGES ago if I didn’t go “but :( the audience will miss the dramaaa :(“. I love y’all too much to deprive you.

But it turned out for the better! One of the things I really wanted to do here was show the potential for Agent!Tiffany to make her return. You can only see John if both he and Tiff’ are on your side, but you can get Joker regardless of Tiffany’s allegiance. Naturally, you don’t see anything if Tiffany is imprisoned. But yes, this DOES mean you can see Tiffany interact with the villainous Joker! I tell ya, this is the only story where half of me is ITCHING to see the flipside. After all, John is always a great manipulator, isn’t he? (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Those familiar with BtAS know of Babydoll and her whopping 2 episodes. Poor gal came in with one of the best and most critically praised episodes of the series and left with a boring redesign and a lucky bare mention or two in comics since. Croc, on the other hand, has been around for a real long time and is still used today, though his design and exact origins vary a lot. I decided to give both a good ol’ Telltale refresh, with Croc’s look very heavily influenced by a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not TV segment that has stuck in my head since childhood, and Babydoll’s stepping away from the Shirley Temple thing. I have little backstories for both of them, but that isn’t relevant to the story so it’d be mere bonus character bio material in the Batcomputer. Which, willpower pending, I might put at the very end of the story. But I’ll happily just tell anyone who asks.

Y’know the prison break plotpoint has been in the works for literal years? When S2 wrapped up in ‘18 and I sat in the den with my laptop that night, thinking over where the game could go next, I pictured an opening with black helicopters flying through the city as Jack Rider’s voice-over told us about multiple escapees from the latest breakout… But I knew that the story would lead us back to Arkham, which could involve fun new villains like Dr. Crane. My thoughts of all the previous games’ baddies running amok were put on the shelf after a while, as I felt the story would be difficult to steer there without making it the size of a coffee-table and I didn’t believe that I could pull it off. Not anymore, ‘cause here we are.

And man, I can’t write without making a joke. Comic fans undoubtedly did the looking-significantly-at-the-camera thing at John’s legal group since it’s a reference to Alan Moore and Grant Morrison (who have both created iconic Batman comics like The Killing Joke, A Serious House on Serious Earth, and Batman RIP). But John chose it because it sounds funny. And for my fellow mystery-readers, Tiffany’s fake name is a mishmash of 2 fictional teen sleuths, Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton. She def read ‘em growing up. I’m partial to the Nancy Drew PC games, myself; the puzzle solving has inspired bits in this series!

And…I know I say it a lot, but I really, REALLY love each and every one of you. The kudos and comments I received during my absence spammed my brain with enough heart emoticons that it would make a twelve year old fangirl tell me I need to chill out. And finding out I had some nice messages on here in my absence...gives me warm fuzzies. 🥺 I am giving you readers the warmest, softest, most loving hug through the monitor as I possibly can. Which I was going to do regardless of this week's...upset, but y'know. It's super, super tender now.

Thank you for enjoying my work, even after all this time. We’ll persevere together. ❤️