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gatorbites-imagines · 2 years ago

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Kinktober day 20

Bruce wayne + Hero/Villain

I really didn’t know what to do with this, so hope yall enjoy this. The reader is connected to Scarecrow in some way, no idea how but he does.

Kinktober list

- You had been a villain in Gotham for years now, having worked with Jonathan Crane before he became the Scarecrow. In the beginning you weren’t part of his villainy, but one time fear gas had spread all over your new job, and you hadn’t been affected.

- Apparently, your long past of working with chemicals and alike made you pretty much immune, at least to some of Jonathan’s earlier stuff.

- When it got around that you were immune to fear gas, people started to believe that you were working with Scarecrow or even was the Scarecrow.

- Even if it wasn’t true, people wanted someone they could target so you became their victim. You lost your job and no place wanted to hire you, you lost your apartment and even your friends and family

- That’s when your old friend Jonathan showed up and offered you a place. In the beginning he didn’t even ask for you to join in his plans, but as time passed you got more and more involved and suddenly you were a part of it.

- They called you the boogeyman. Your toxins and gasses had much longer lasting effects than Jonathan’s fear toxin. But where Jonathan’s toxin worked immediately and would wear off, yours was slower working and could lead to months of nightmares and terrors.

- But not only did you deal with fear toxins, you dealt with all kinds of gasses and liquids, affecting everything from insomnia to hunger. One of your favorite toxins made the one it was thrown on feel like they were dying from thirst even if they had just drunk something.

- One of your other favorites made the ones hit unable to sleep no matter what they did, even if they took handfuls of sleeping pills, they would not be able to shut their eyes and fall asleep. This led to many deaths from overdosing or insanity as they would go more than a week without sleep.

- You were just as feared as Scarecrow, but you never targeted the city as a whole like putting toxins in the water supply, you tended to target upper class areas, politicians, corrupt police, or people you saw as stains on society.

- You had many encounters with Batman, and you had hit him with many of your toxins over the years. It became almost a game, you would develop a new toxin, hit Batman or one of his many sidekicks and he would develop a cure.

- He had also thrown you in Arkham many times, but you always got out one way or another. Part of you found the bat endearing because he always offered to help you get out of this life, but you knew you were in too far.

- The other rogues of Gotham always joked about how the Bat seemed to have a soft spot for you, and you would always shrug and say it was because you tried to not harm too many innocent people, so you make the Bats job easier.

- It might also be because you had saved the lives of his sidekicks multiple times over the years, not that you would ever tell the other rogues. Like pulling them to safety when under Jonathan’s toxin or patching them up when unconscious.

- In the beginning you assumed no one noticed you doing these things, but Batman became less violent with you. Not a lot, but enough for you to notice. You wouldn’t be surprised if there were cameras or similar all over his sidekicks and he would have seen that way.

- It was another night in Gotham. You had just robbed another corrupt rich person blind after putting them under some new gas you had worked on.

- It was supposed to distract and stimulate parts of the brain that made you hallucinate, but unlike it being fear it would make you seem like whoever they wanted the most. It had been a pet project of yours and was still in the early stages.

- You had summed up that it didn’t work as you had planned, because the person you robbed just became unbearably horny to the point of tears, and was too busy trying to get off to notice you emptying their safe and leaving.

- The bulbs of pink gas were attached on the back of your belt for easy grabbing in battle, not that you were gonna use them. You were gonna have to work on the formula a bit more before bringing them into the field.

- That’s when the Bat appeared, and a battle began on the rooftop you had landed on. He was skilled like always, his scowl every present on his face as he tried to take you down.

- During one of these takedowns you had been thrown on your back and the bulbs containing your project shattered and the pink gas immediately scattered, smacking Batman right in the face. He immediately jumped back and covered his lower face, like he was expecting fear toxin.

- You pulled yourself into a seated position as you saw the Bat back up until he hit a wall, his legs seeming to grow more and more unsteady as he did, his chest rising and falling much faster than normal. What little skin you could see was becoming flustered, and you couldn’t help but glance down between his legs in hopes of seeing something.

- To your dismay he must have been wearing a cup or some kind of guard, as you couldn’t see any sign of an erection.

- As you got to your feet you scratched your cheek awkwardly as Batman’s knees seemed to grow more and more into jelly as they buckled. You gave a short apology at the gas, and explained it wasn’t meant to work like this, but it was still a work in progress.

- You cleared your throat and tried to adjust your stance to hide your own growing erection as Batman sank to his knees, trying your hardest not to stare as he reached between his legs to fondle at his crotch, a deep groan leaving his lips as he stimulated himself through whatever cup he was wearing.

- “Ill… uh ill go” you stiffly said, slowly shuffling around to fling yourself off the roof and get outta there, but before you can run for the hills the line of his grapple gun winds around your waist and immediately pull you back.

- The air was knocked out of your lungs as your chest met the roof and you were dragged backwards, your jacket protecting you from whatever scrapes you would otherwise have gotten from the action.

- When you were pulled back far enough, Batman grabbed your legs and flipped you over onto your back and crawled on top of you and hovered over you like some predatory animal.

- He was panting, his hot breath creating small clouds on the cold Gotham night air. You struggled and tried to roll back over to hide just how hard this whole thing made you, your face growing hot under your mask.

- You wanted to blame it on the toxin that had been spread about earlier, but you were completely immune to Jonathan’s and your own toxins and gases.

- When your mask was torn off you gasped and tried to cover your face with your hands. Sure, everyone in Gotham knew who you were, and Batman and his group had seen your face many times before, but you had grown so comfortable wearing it, that it always shook you to have it taken off.

- Your wrists were grabbed in gloved hands and torn away from your face, and before you could react lips pressed against your own. Batman’s kiss was anything but graceful, it was desperate and sloppy, and his tongue immediately pressed past your lips and wrestled with your own.

- Clenching your eyes shut you could do nothing but kiss him back, fighting not to moan as spit swapped between the both of you. The wet noises of your kissing made your hardness ache, your hips giving a twitch against his own as he sucked on your tongue.

- You were pleasantly surprised at just how good he was at kissing, and you were so taken by his lips you didn’t even notice him releasing your wrists and reaching downwards.

- It was only when you felt cold air brush against your cock that you realized. Trying to disconnect the kiss to look, you were unsuccessful as his lips followed your own and pressed you further into the roof beneath you.

- All you could feel was him moving his hands around somewhere between his legs, soon distracted as his wicked tongue brushed against the top of your mouth.

- You let out a choked noise as you felt the press of his length against your own, his skin hot to the touch and feeling like fire against your own cold body.

- Spit dribbled down the side of your face as he seemed dead set on tasting every nook and cranny of your mouth, your hands falling to the front of his suit and grasping on for dear life.

- It was good you had grabbed onto him as he soon wrapped a gloved hand about both of your lengths, his hips immediately thrusting into the grip and stimulating the both of you. His movements were quick and desperate, tiny pants and moans passing from his mouth into yours.

- Precum spilled from him like a faucet and quickly wetted his hand, making the movement slicker and even faster.

- You could barely believe what was happening as your eyes rolled under your lids and his teeth sunk into your bottom lip, his wrist twisting in skillful ways that had you wondering just how much experience Batman had.

- Moans and groans left the both of you as his hand and hips grew even quicker, his teeth sinking hard enough into you that you could taste blood. You couldn’t control your hips and started thrusting against him, your grip growing iron tight as you felt the familiar buzzing in your abdomen, the noises you made growing louder as you grew closer.

- The noise you made as you came was loud and could probably be heard all the way down on the sidewalk from the roof you were on, Batman’s hand twisting and pulling in ways that made your orgasm feel twice as long and twice as good.

- He grunted as he came, white splashes painting the front of your clothes and your softening cock, his hand rubbing it into your skin as if he was marking you.

- Letting go of the front of his suit you draped your arms over your eyes as you panted, still trying to catch up on what the hell just happened. You still hadn’t fully caught up on everything when you felt him kiss you one last time before he got up.

- Lifting your arm after a moment you saw him grapple off in another direction, his length packed away again and the man looking like he hadn’t even been affected in the first place.

- Now you really wanted to know just what Batman got up to in his civilian life. Maybe you would keep this toxin recipe, just for special occasions.

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ncfan-1 · 7 years ago

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So I’ve been thinking about the fall-out from Lyle Bolton’s actions in Arkham Asylum for a while. From Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, we know that the Asylum was eventually torn down in favor of building a more modern (and more high-security, though I wonder how effective it really was) facility for the inmates’ treatment, and I’ve started to wonder if maybe that was connected to the fall-out from the whole debacle with Bolton. And I do think there was a debacle, and one with massive fall-out, because there really is no way he could have done everything he’s described as having done by himself, with no one else on Arkham’s staff knowing about it.

Bolton is known to have A) electrified the cell doors at Arkham, B) chained the inmates in their cells at night, and C) took away ‘privileges’ even when the inmates are well-behaved. Electrifying the doors and installing the same sort of wall-mounted shackles we see Bolton using on Summer Gleeson, Mayor Hill, Dr. Bartholomew and Commissioner Gordon (if they are the same sort of shackles Bolton used to restrain the inmates) would have required a lot of work, and even if Bolton does have the expertise to do it himself, it strains credulity that he could have done so without anyone else on the staff noticing. As for the third point, whatever it was Bolton was doing to the inmates that involved taking away ‘privileges’, we don’t know (And the fact that it’s kept so vague tends to worry me). We know that Bolton tormented Arnold Wesker by dangling Mr. Scarface over a can full of termites to torment him, but otherwise, we get no details. My guess is, we get no details because it’s the kind of stuff a kid’s show can’t talk about without getting in trouble with the network. Given that Bolton feels that the treatment the inmates deserve is to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, it probably wasn’t pretty. And was probably the sort of thing that would have been difficult to pull off without some level of collusion from at least some of the staff, either from them actively aiding him, or at least turning a blind eye.

And of course Batman would get involved, because DCAU Batman (at least as of BTAS) is not amused by Bolton’s antics, genuinely wants his rogues to get better, and knows full well that inhumane treatment is not going to make them better. And if I can make the connections I’ve made, he certainly can. So have this mess of speculation and not-fic.

[TW: Abuse]

He doesn’t jump on it right away. After the hearing ends with Lyle Bolton’s dismissal, Bruce thinks that maybe, maybe he can put his worries to bed. Thinks that maybe the abuses were committed by Bolton alone, and that everything will be put to rights in Arkham Asylum with him gone. He likes to believe, sometimes, that problems like these have clean, simple solutions, and that the solution will make everything better.

Beyond that, there’s that cynical little voice in the back of Bruce’s mind, the one he tries not to listen to too much but can’t help but hear anyways, pointing out there’s a chance the three rogues at the hearing were lying, or exaggerating. Oh, Bruce has no doubt that Bolton should have been dismissed. His outburst at hearing was grounds enough for dismissal, and the fact that he considers violence against the inmates acceptable as anything other than a last resort makes him unsuitable to watch over them; the way he manhandled Crane (who, for God’s sake, typically only weighs about ninety pounds by the time he gets hauled back to Arkham after a breakout that’s lasted any real length of time, because when he goes off his meds he almost completely forgets to eat; once he’s beaten, he rarely actually needs to be manhandled, let alone picked up into the air like a ragdoll) when Bruce and Dick brought him back to the Asylum was definitely not appropriate behavior. But still, Bruce can’t help but wonder if maybe Quinn and Crane and Wesker were exaggerating the way Bolton treated them, or outright lying, because they were afraid the truth wouldn’t be enough to get Bolton fired and they needed to make him blow his top, do—or say—something that couldn’t just be laughed off. (Or maybe, the very cynical voice suggests, they were just trying to get rid of him because he was the only head of security Arkham had ever had who could actually keep the inmates in their cells. But that answer is just a little too simple, a little too easy. Bruce doesn’t think it’s quite right.)

Bolton spends the next six months being very quiet, and Batman has his hands full, not least because Arkham Asylum has gone right back to being about as secure as a soggy cardboard box, and a lot of his rogues are being much more aggressive than usual. Lyle Bolton is a little nagging sensation in the back of his mind, but not a primary concern.

That changes after the Lock-Up incident. After the Lock-Up incident, Batman has incontrovertible proof of what Crane, Quinn and Wesker claimed during the hearing, and his eyes are firmly fixed upon Arkham Asylum, and what went on there during Bolton’s tenure.

Batman wants the inmates of Arkham Asylum to get better. He wants there to be a day when he doesn’t have to worry that someone’s going to try to blow up the city, or poison the water supply, or commit clown, riddle, Lewis Carroll or otherwise-themed crimes. Torture never made a convict want to be a law-abiding citizen again. Torture never made the insane sane.

He knows Bolton couldn’t have been acting alone in the Asylum. The sort of machinery that would have had to have been installed to electrify the cell doors, shackle the inmates to the wall at night, even if he installed all of it by himself, there’s no way the other guards wouldn’t have noticed. There’s no way the guards performing bed checks at lights-out wouldn’t have noticed that the inmates were shackled to the back wall instead of lying on their beds. He had help.

There isn’t much of an outcry regarding what Bolton did at Arkham; there never was. Though most are much quieter about it than Lyle Bolton, most of the residents of Gotham share his opinion of the Asylum’s inhabitants: they are the scum of the earth, and so long as they’re off the street, what becomes of them is of little concern. Most people only have so much patience for supervillains, after all, and are wary even of those who have been rehabilitated.

Though there isn’t much outcry, Bruce Wayne still pushes for an investigation regarding practices at Arkham Asylum. The primary aim is to determine, exactly, the extent of the abuses Lyle Bolton inflicted upon the inmates under his watch. The secondary aim is to determine what the rest of the staff knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it. District Attorney Janet Van Dorn supports his calls for an investigation. Though, after being kidnapped and nearly killed by them, Van Dorn has precious little love for the rogues of Gotham, she agrees with Batman that the best way to ensure that she never has to deal with them again is for them to be successfully rehabilitated, and that torture is unlikely to help in that regard.

A warrant is issued to seize all Arkham Asylum security tapes from the two and a half months that Bolton was head of security, but when police arrive at the Asylum to retrieve them, they find nothing. All of the tapes from the time Bolton worked at Arkham Asylum are missing. Some very uncomfortable questions are asked of the security staff, but all anyone can figure is that they went missing sometime between Bolton’s being fired and re-emerging as Lock-Up. The police question Bolton, and get nothing. Batman questions Bolton, and gets nothing but a disappointed, muttered “We could have worked together,” and sullen silence.

Lyle Bolton is transferred to another facility not long afterwards. He does legitimately belong in a mental institution, but not the one where he victimized so many people. His presence has been… disruptive, in more ways than one. The staff aren’t sure what they’re more afraid will happen—that one of the other inmates will kill Bolton, or that Bolton will kill them.

The police have recovered the shackles from the back walls of the cells, and upon dusting them for fingerprints, find nothing. No tapes, and no fingerprints, and with that, the investigation promptly stalls.

The staff of Arkham Asylum has formed a neat little stone wall. Apparently, no one knows exactly what Bolton did to the inmates; when confronted with the documentation of electrified doors and shackles on the back walls, every single guard, janitor, medical doctor, kitchen worker and psychiatrist claims to have no idea they were there. Beyond that, no one has any idea what else Bolton may or may not have done to the inmates. Batman is stonewalled just as much as the police are, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out who genuinely doesn’t know anything, and who’s lying to conceal their own involvement.

Surprisingly, the inmates are stonewalling the police (and Batman) just as much as the staff are. Batman doesn’t try too hard to get anything out of them; honestly, he doesn’t trust them a lot more than they trust him, and that cynical voice in the back of his head is still pointing out that he can’t be sure that anything they tell him is the truth. Regardless of worries about lying, he knows that if Bolton had active accomplices and they’re still working in the Asylum, having been known to have given information either to the police or to Batman could put them at risk. Batman doesn’t want that. If any of them are hurt, it shouldn’t be because they tried to do the right thing.

But he does pay unscheduled visits to the Asylum on a frequent basis. Over the staff, he looms, making sure they know exactly how he’d feel about any ‘funny business’ starting up again. The inmates, he watches from a distance, listening. They might not be willing to talk to him, or to the police, but they do talk amongst themselves, and there’s always the chance that someone will let slip something that Batman can use as a starting point.

Nothing. No one ever speaks of Lyle Bolton. No one ever references the two and a half months he reigned over Arkham Asylum. The rogues, they seem less… energetic than Batman would have imagined. He’d heard tales of food fights in the cafeteria and the inmates constantly baiting the guards. Constant minor squabbles and reconciliations, little games the bored play to pass the time. Book-swapping, gossip-passing, stealthily sharing the latest contraband food to be smuggled into the Asylum. But instead, they all seem very subdued. They sit huddled together in groups, holding their conversations in hushed tones, and on the occasion when a fight does break out, there is an edge to it that screams desperation rather than the bored and restless simply blowing off steam.

The three from the hearing sit together whenever they end up in the cafeteria at the same time. That strikes Batman as a little… odd. Crane and Quinn are friendly with one another, yes, and so are Quinn and Wesker, but by all accounts Wesker used to avoid Crane like the plague. Batman supposes there’s nothing quite like being threatened with a beating in front of a bunch of doctors and public officials to bring unlikely friends together.

When listening in on the rogues’ conversations proves fruitless, Batman pays more discreet visits and listens in on the psychiatric staff instead. Maybe someone’s confided something in their therapist.

He gets no more about Lyle Bolton than he already knew, but what else he gets can’t help but grab his attention. Apparently, Bolton didn’t allow any of the psychiatric staff into the cell blocks during his stay, for security reasons; if a psychiatrist saw one of the inmates, it was when the inmate was brought to them, rather than the other way around. But they still have stories to tell, if you listen carefully.

There has been a marked change in the behavior of many of the inmates at Arkham Asylum. Oh, for those who were to start with belligerent and uncooperative, it’s not much of a change, but many patients who had been making real progress have not simply stalled out, they’ve actually regressed.

Harvey was never really inclined to think of the psychiatrists of Arkham Asylum as his friends, but in the time before Lyle Bolton came to Arkham, he had become fairly respectful of—and Two-Face docile around—his therapist. Cooperative, even. But now, the spirit of cooperation has been quite obviously burned away. In place of respect and docility, there is now naked hostility, manifesting itself in insults and, occasionally, physical violence. Harvey recently spent the night in solitary after decking a doctor when the hapless man had put his hand on Harvey’s shoulder.

Waylon Jones has turned silent during both one-on-one and group therapy sessions. Before, he’d always been happy to talk his therapist’s ear off, and even if what he revealed was rarely anything of substance, his demeanor towards his doctors—those who treated him like a human being, rather than a sapient crocodile—was nothing but amiable. The bitter, defensive silence the staff gets these days is anything but amiable, and when concerned doctors turn to those inmates Jones might be inclined to listen to, they refuse outright to even try to make him talk. He’s also been doing poorly in his literacy classes—Bolton refused to allow him to attend them, and now that he is able to again, he’s been showing significantly less interest than he used to, though the doctors think (hope) he might be starting to regain interest.

Harley Quinn (it’s hard for Batman to think of her as Harleen Quinzel, for more reasons than one, but the fact that her alias is just a shortened form of her real name certainly doesn’t help) was, just before Bolton arrived, deemed sufficiently rehabilitated to be released. She wound up right back in Arkham not long afterwards, but still, the fact that she was let out at all suggests that she had been making a great deal of progress.

Batman can find no trace of that progress now. Harley is apparently almost uniformly refusing to confide anything in the doctors, not even Dr. Leland, whom she was close to, once. She’s grown aggressive, sometimes outright defiant to the guards. She’s become increasingly clingy towards and emotionally dependent on any of the rogues she considers a friend. And the Joker…

Well. Once upon a time, Dr. Leland (with the unofficial help of fully half the rogues’ gallery; the unanimous opinion is that Harley and the Joker’s relationship is a flaming train wreck, and the half that actually cares about Harley’s wellbeing has been trying to get her to dump him for ages) had actually been making decent strides towards getting Harley to not just acknowledge that her relationship with the Joker is an abusive mess, but to go the extra mile of breaking things off with him, too. Once upon a time, it had looked like Harley might leave the Joker for good. Nowadays, she clings to him even more than before, will do anything he asks her to do, even the sort of thing she would have balked at not so long ago. Her entire world hinges on the Joker’s approval, and if she can’t get it, the whole world might as well be gone, she’s so abjectly miserable.

Batman hears other things, too. Like how patients who had already been prone to panic attacks—Arnold Wesker, Jervis Tetch, and Jonathan Crane, among others—are having them with increased frequency now. Like how patients who’d had panic attacks less frequently, or not at all—Edward Nygma, Maxie Zeus, Mary Dahl and, most noticeably, Pamela Isley—have started having them, too.

Eventually, a warrant will be issued for Arkham’s medical records during Bolton’s tenure. Before that day comes, Batman pays a more discreet visit to the filing room where such records are kept. The medical records, at least, haven’t gone missing the way the surveillance tapes did—an oversight on Bolton’s part, or simple arrogance. Batman starts reading.

Just to get an idea of what the situation in the infirmary is usually like, Batman first reads the medical records from the month leading up to Bolton’s hiring (He spends many a night hiding out in the filing room; maybe it would be easier to make copies of the records, or to take them back to the Batcave while he needed them, but this time, he can’t risk any potential evidence being seen as ‘contaminated’). Most of the files’ contents refer to illness rather than injury—head colds, rashes, the occasional bout of food poisoning or flu. Injuries are mostly minor, and less common than Batman would have expected. Serious fights are more likely to be verbal than physical, and the guards can usually pull fighting inmates off of each other before they can do each other any real harm. Inmates who are suspected to be contemplating suicide are put on suicide watch and handled like something made of glass until its deemed safe to take them off of suicide watch. Rarely does one of the inmates manage to make an attempt beforehand; even the most apathetic of the doctors on the staff take notice when someone makes such an insinuation.

During Bolton’s time as head of security, there’s an uptick in, well, everything. Injuries consistent with the effects of touching an electrified door, with having your arms restrained in an unnatural position for hours at a time, every night. That much, Batman expected, though it still makes him grind his teeth, just a little bit. He reads on, and on, and what he reads makes him want to punch a sizable dent in the nearest filing cabinet.

Many of the inmates were admitted to the infirmary with injuries that, officially, were inflicted after they initiated altercations with the guards. Not just the ones who were known for being belligerent, the ones who were known for picking fights. When Arnold Wesker, who was typically completely non-violent, was admitted for such a reason, the observant mind had to take notice.

Still more were admitted with symptoms of malnourishment, allegedly because the inmates involved had gone on hunger strikes. One of the names that came up for that is Waylon Jones, of all people, which, as far as Batman is concerned, strains credulity far beyond the breaking point. Yes, Waylon Jones, aka Killer Croc, has been known to eat people. However, he is hardly enthusiastic about cannibalism, at least not when he is completely rational. One of the symptoms of his disease is that, after a few days with no food, everything flesh and blood starts looking like a viable food source; back when Jones still talked to any of the doctors, one thing that they had been able to pin down quite definitively is that the single overwhelming feeling Jones associates with his forays into cannibalism is disgust. For Jones to have willingly turned down food for as long as the files say he did beggars belief.

(The medical records also note that Jones spent most of Bolton’s tenure in a muzzle. The urge to punch a filing cabinet rises.)

The rate of suicide attempts sees an increase, with the inmates in question more likely to be placed in solitary confinement than on suicide watch.

The night Batman and Robin brought Crane back to Arkham, he was admitted to the infirmary with a sprained wrist and bruising that, officially, he picked up when he was apprehended. Truth be told, it wouldn’t be the first time Batman had delivered a rogue to Arkham a bit bruised—hell, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d delivered Crane to Arkham a bit bruised, and there were some rogues and some nights where if the only injuries anyone had were bruises and sprains, Batman counted himself fortunate. But he didn’t punch or kick someone who wasn’t fighting, and Crane… hadn’t even tried to fight. He’d tried to run, but when Batman and Robin had caught him, he’d immediately turned to pleading. He hadn’t gotten those injuries from either Batman or Robin.

Isley had spent the entirety of Bolton’s tenure in and out of the infirmary, usually camped out under a UV lamp. Security claimed that she refused to go outside when it was her turn to go out into the yard, which honestly sounded about as likely as Waylon Jones willingly refusing food. A quirk of Pamela Isley’s physiology means that, much like most species of plants, she is dependent on sunlight for her health. A few days without sunlight, and her health begins to deteriorate. Quickly. Luckily, the infirmary already had a UV lamp on hand, for times when Isley isn’t allowed to go outside, and for the winter months, when sunlight is scarce. If not, well, no one knows for certain if it’s possible for Isley to die from lack of sunlight, but that isn’t the sort of thing that should ever be tested.

Other similar incidents can be found without even having to dig for them, and Batman’s question of the hour becomes: how many times can a person plausibly put two and two together and come up with any number but four?

If… If those who had the power to dismiss Bolton saw what was happening and yet did not dismiss him, Batman has a good idea of why. He knows, or thinks he does, why Bolton would have been allowed to stay on even if abuse was suspected.

Very few of the people working at Arkham Asylum truly wanted to work there. Sure, some of the rogues have fans, but anyone who’s obvious about it gets screened out during the hiring process (Especially after what happened with Harley). But most people do not want to spend their days in close proximity with some of Gotham’s most dangerous, most volatile criminals—and the Joker, who’s in a class all by himself as far as danger and volatility goes. Enough of the staff have been killed over the years that Arkham is everyone’s least desirable workplace.

Somebody who’s working in Arkham as a janitor or a cook is probably doing it because they got laid off and they still need to pay the bills as they frantically send their résumé out in every direction. Much the same goes for the non-police security staff—and if the GCPD loans out an officer to work at Arkham for a while, it’s usually as punishment for some infraction.

If you are any kind of doctor working in that place, general practitioner, surgeon or psychiatrist, that is almost invariably a sure sign that your career is just over. Arkham is where a doctor goes when there’s just no one else who’ll take them anymore, especially the psychiatrists. Dr. Leland wound up in Arkham after she blew the whistle on a corrupt superior, and was blacklisted for her troubles. Dr. Bartholomew once worked in an office that was later discovered to be running drugs for the mob; Bartholomew himself was clean, but guilt by association is a powerful thing, and out of everywhere he sent his résumé, Arkham was the only place that ever answered.

Arkham is permanently understaffed and empty positions are incredibly difficult to fill, so when someone comes along looking for a job, unless they’re so unsubtle that they can’t help but send up red flags during the interview, they’re usually hired, with minimal questions asked. Heck, in the intervening months between his being fired from Gotham University and his putting on a costume and joining the ranks of Gotham’s rogues’ gallery, Jonathan Crane had worked at Arkham as a psychiatrist, which should really tell you something about the quality of the background checks the Asylum runs on potential employees. (Batman’s opinion is simply that the Asylum staff should just count themselves lucky that, when he was still rational enough to care, Crane kept the professional and personal parts of his life firmly separate.)

The Asylum’s staff is desperate to retain anyone even slightly competent at their work. The bare-bones definition of Lyle Bolton’s job is ‘keep the inmates from escaping,’ and by that bare-bones, far-too-basic definition, Lyle Bolton was the most successful head of security Arkham’s ever had. But he abused the inmates under his watch. The staff is desperate, and desperation can make people do things they never thought they’d do, but here’s the thing…

…Okay, look. Batman has this thing that he does under certain circumstances, regarding the Arkham rogues. He’s read up on them, researched their histories, and he will think to himself one thing he learned about them from their lives before they turned to crime.

For instance, the Riddler once blew out all the circuits in his first apartment trying to operate several homemade appliances. Much to the horror of his landlord, he kept going until he finally got it right.

When she was a little girl, Poison Ivy loved Snow White. She loved Snow White so much that she would have dressed up as the eponymous princess every year at Halloween if her parents had let her.

Baby Doll got into Shakespeare almost immediately after quitting her sitcom. Her favorite role was Lady Macbeth, and while everyone else thinks her performance was awful, Batman kind of likes it.

The only real consensus his former students can come to regarding the Scarecrow is that he was very easily distracted. Mention ‘fear’ to him, or any other concept in psychology that he felt even a little strongly about, and unless someone stopped him he would completely forget what he was supposed to be talking about, and just talk about that for the rest of the lecture.

Mr. Freeze used to sing karaoke at a bar on the East End. Badly.

Somewhere, there is a home video of an underage Harley Quinn doing beer pong with her sorority sisters until she fell out of her chair and literally could not get up again. She just lied there, giggling, while one of the other girls tried and failed to get her on her feet again.

It would help with the Joker if Batman actually knew anything about his past. But there was that one time he slipped on a fallen pie during a chase and face-planted right onto the sidewalk.

Harvey… Harvey.

When the Arkham rogues are on the loose, causing chaos, Batman tells himself these things to remind himself that they aren’t forces of nature. They are not unstoppable. They are simply human, and they can be beaten.

Afterwards, he tells himself these things to remind himself that they are human. That they’re people. That not a single one of them was always one of Gotham’s fearsome rogues’ gallery. Everyone here was someone else before. Oh, sure, there are plenty who were never perfectly pleasant people, but not a single one of them came into the world cackling and wreaking havoc, any more than he came into the world already a vigilante. Something happened, just like something happened to him, and if they used to be something other than what they are now, then maybe…

Bruce Wayne talks to Harvey. He’d hoped to avoid having to go to his friend for information, knows he could be putting Harvey at risk doing this, but the staff is still sticking to their chorus of “saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing.” The police need something new to go on.

“Harvey, please.”

“No, Bruce. It’s not going to change anything; we both know that.”

“Yes, it will. I know Bolton couldn’t have pulled off everything by himself. If the police could figure out who helped him, if they had some idea of who to look at and put pressure on—“

“Bruce, they all helped him.” From across the glass, Harvey sounds very tired, and Bruce feels his heart sink. Of course, Harvey doesn’t sound like he used to—the explosion damaged his vocal cords, just as it damaged his face. But every time Bruce goes to see him, Harvey sounds more tired, more worn-out, more hopeless, and less like the man Bruce knew, what feels like an eternity ago. “Whether by actively abetting him or by pretending they weren’t seeing what was going on right in front of them, they all helped him.”

Bruce feels his heart sink even further, but the distinction is an important one—it means the search can be narrowed down a bit for now. “Well, what about the ones who actively aided him. The police can start with them.”

There comes silence, and Bruce wonders if Harvey will refuse again. But then, there comes a shift. Harvey’s jaw clenches, his shoulders hunching, and his eyes grow colder, his gaze more intent.

Bruce stiffens. “I was talking to Harvey,” he says, with an edge to his voice that isn’t really Bruce at all.

“You get me,” comes the growled response. “You want those scum’s names, don’t you?”

It isn’t quite how Bruce would have liked it, but in the end, he gets enough information for Batman to give a few names to Commissioner Gordon, and really get the investigation rolling again.

Once Gordon has those names to go on, the whole thing starts unraveling quickly. Bolton’s most active accomplices aren’t exactly hardened criminals; most of them spill the beans after a few hours in a GCPD interrogation room. It’s more a matter of connecting Bolton to the incidents detailed in the Asylum medical records, confirming that he did indeed have active accomplices (and who those accomplices are), and establishing that really, the rest of the staff should have been able to figure out what was going on, rather than unearthing any other deep, dark secrets. Without the surveillance tapes, there’s no way to precisely determine the true extent of the abuses committed under Bolton’s watch, but the information the GCPD (and Batman) have is enough.

It is at this point that certain of the inmates are interviewed; the risk to them has been deemed low enough now that they might be willing to share a bit more. Truth be told, no one really gets any new information out of them—Harley and Nygma in particular spend their interview time apparently trying to figure out how fast they can turn sober cops to drink—but those willing to talk corroborate, in bits and pieces, the information the GCPD already possesses.

Once replacements can be found, most of the Asylum staff any higher in the hierarchy than the janitors are either invited to resign or outright fired. Every member of the psychiatric staff besides Dr. Leland is forced out, including Dr. Bartholomew. Oh, certainly, he wasn’t allowed in the cell blocks any more than the other psychiatrists, but most agree that it seems impossible that all of this could have been happening under Dr. Bartholomew, the head of psychiatry’s nose, and him completely oblivious.

Officially, Dr. Leland is kept on because it’s felt that there’s a chance that she could have been genuinely oblivious—she was barred from the infirmary as well as the cell blocks—and because she has a record as being a genuinely diligent doctor. Unofficially, there is speculation that she is kept on because having the psychiatric staff be full of personnel new to the Asylum, with no one more experienced available to guide them, is a recipe for disaster. Either way, she goes on being just as dedicated as she ever was.

Bruce can’t help but feel as though the rot in Arkham is something that isn’t going to go away simply because of a change in the faces that work there. This isn’t just a metaphorical thing, either. The building dates back to the nineteenth century, and has been rather poorly maintained over the years; among other things, the roof has a tendency to leak, and mold infestations are a common source of illness among staff and inmates alike. So Bruce does something Batman can’t do; he funds the building of a more modern (and hopefully more secure) facility.

It takes a few years, but the new facility is eventually ready for habitation, and Arkham Asylum is left abandoned and partially demolished. Some of the inmates, surprisingly, express dismay (regardless of what a pain in the ass he is when he’s out and about, Crane referring to Arkham as ‘home’ is just kinda sad; he doesn’t even like it there, for crying out loud), but most seem relieved to leave Arkham behind them, even if they aren’t any more enamored of imprisonment at the new facility.

Slowly, very slowly, things start to get a little better again. But even so, Batman likes to pay unscheduled visits to the new facility sometimes. And loom.

(The rogues still don’t trust him any more than he trusts them. But regardless of whether or not they can be rehabilitated, there must be someone willing to protect them from abuse in the place where they ought to be receiving treatment. If not him, then who?)

#Batman: The Animated Series #Meta #TW Abuse #Written because there HAD to be fallout from all of this

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