“ᴊᴜsᴛ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇ… ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ᴏᴋᴀʏ, ɪ ᴘʀᴏᴍɪsᴇ, ᴊᴜsᴛ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ.”
The solitary confinement cells in Arkham Asylum are six feet by nine feet, just like anywhere else. The walls are concrete. The ceiling is concrete. The floor is concrete. The door is at least twelve inches thick. Harley can make it from one wall to another in four steps, walking normally. She can make it in one and a half if she jumps. She can make it in nine or more if she tries really hard.
You can hear a riot happening from solitary confinement, if it gets close enough. You can hear it but you can’t see it. If you can’t hear the riot itself, then you’ll be able to hear the alarms that go off all over the island. If somebody shuts the power down, the backup generators won’t light up a solitary confinement cell. You’ll only just be able to make out shapes if your eyes are good and there’s enough light filtering in over the top of the door.
Harley does not do well in solitary confinement. Her doctor recommended that she spend a little while there every day, in increasing increments of time. She started out at twenty minutes. Now she’s at three hours. The idea was that he’d put her on antipsychotics and leave her in there for a bit to meditate on a given subject, and the antipsychotics would make being alone easier for her, and the given subject would help to keep her from falling down a hole like she usually does when she’s alone; as far as Harley can tell, the hope was that spending time alone and lucid and somewhat focused would remove many of the outside forces affecting her and this would help her get better. It’s not a bad idea. It’s just not really a good idea, either.
Her doctor should have listened to her when she told him Zyprexa was a terrible idea. Her doctor should have listened to her when she told him she’s not crazy. She’s not crazy. But he didn’t, so here she is now, wondering how far into three hours she is, lying on her side in a little ball on the floor and keeping her face to the back wall so they can’t see the tears.
(Who’s they?)
(Who knows.)
She hears some distant yelling, and it doesn’t quite sink in until she hears a distant BOOM-- senses it, really, more than anything. It’s not close enough to hurt her ears and it’s not close enough to rattle the door, but she can feel it, with one of those basic human instincts that tunes into something not quite right and puts you on alert. There has been an explosion. There is a riot. The yelling is getting louder. She can’t tell time in here. Maybe it lasts for hours. Maybe it’s just a few seconds, a minute at most. She can’t tell time. She can’t tell anything. The meds don’t help at all. Her doctor should have listened to her when she told him Zyprexa was a terrible idea.
(Did she say that already?)
Some time later, at any rate, she hears something that really gets her attention: she hears something happening right outside her cell. It sounds a lot like HEY YOU CAN’T BE IN HERE, and then sort of like STOP OR I’LL SHOOT, and then somebody saying something she can’t make out because it’s much quieter, and then a vague kind of shout that’s half a word and half not. She wants to stand up and bang on the door and yell for them to get her out. She wants to, but she’s suddenly aware that she’s backed herself up into the far wall with her palms on the floor and her knees against her chest, and that same sense that told her something blew up forever ago is telling her now to stay put.
She can smell something. What is that? She knows that smell. What is that? What is that? She can feel her heart beating hard inside her chest. Every time she inhales the chemical smell gets stronger. What is that? Cleaning supplies? Something gaseous to put Clayface down? There’s a sound like thunder right above her head and then the cell fills up with sickly emergency lighting from the corridor outside-- whoever’s out there shot the door open. Several things half-register at once: the outline of the man in the doorway, the smell of the chemicals, the yellow-orange tint to the air in the corridor that sluggishly files into the newly-opened cell-- and with those half-realizations comes the whole realization of the situation altogether.
There has been a riot. There is fear toxin all over the place. She’s assuming it was the ventilation system. Jonathan Crane is standing on the threshold of this solitary confinement cell, looking far too tall in the doorway, and also looking a 25% / 75% mix of worried and determined.
Under normal circumstances, she does not suffer the worst effects of fear toxin: no hallucinations, no crippling aimless terror, no creeping anxiety that slowly gets worse and worse until she’s ready to cut her own throat just to get away from it. She gets jittery and feels a little sick and that’s about it. It’s the serum Ivy gave her. Under these circumstances-- alone and improperly medicated-- she’s still not hallucinating, but the actual emotional feeling of fear is bubbling right on up with the physical.
Not fear of him, though. Fear that he’ll go away and leave her there alone.
Her hands go up like a toddler wanting to be held, he gets to her in two steps, her head is pressed against his chest and he smells like cigarettes and she is not alone she is not alone she is not alone.
“Just breathe.” She can feel his fingers running down the back of her head. “You’re okay, I promise.” He’s holding on to her almost as tight as she’s holding on to him. “Just breathe, child.”
She trusts him. She breathes. She trembles. The combination of fear toxin and antipsychotics is, fortunately, not much worse than fear toxin on its own for her. She trusts him. Even if she was hallucinating she’d still do as he said.
His hands are cold on her face when he tilts her up to look at him. She doesn’t mind. His hands are always cold. Feeling it is a welcome reminder that this is all real and he’s come to take her away and everything will be alright.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?”
All she can do is nod. There are still tears coming at a steady pace. He nods back and holds her hand like a vice to tow her out of the cell and down the corridor. The riot’s still going on. She’s certain someone must see them leaving at one point or another, but nobody has the freedom to stop them when there are more pressing matters like fires and violent patients on the loose. Whoever started this riot meant to get a lot of patients off the island, because Frank Boles is waiting with an unmarked boat. Mad Hatter and Magpie are already in it. Boles doesn’t leave until every one of the six seats is filled.
Harley manages to stop crying once they’re halfway across the water to the mainland, but she won’t let go of Jonathan until about four hours later, when they’ve checked into a motel. She lets him out of her sight just long enough for a shower and a change of clothes and then she makes him share a bed. He’s used to it by now.
The mattress they’re on is about the same size as the floor of a solitary confinement cell in Arkham. It doesn’t bother her as long as he lets her curl up with her back pressed into his ribs and her head on his shoulder.
