Jason didn’t sleep at Arkham. Not really. He closed his eyes sometimes, listened to the flickering buzz of fluorescent lights, the wet drag of slippers on linoleum, the humming static in the vents that might have been in his head. The mattress was thin and plastic-slick, the blanket smelled like antiseptic and panic sweat, and the pillow was just thick enough to remind him of the Joker’s laugh when it muffled screams. His room—cell, let’s be honest—was whitewashed and buzzing and always cold, even when his skin burned with fever dreams. He would lie there, still as a corpse, watching the crack in the ceiling widen in his mind. Sometimes it looked like a bat. Sometimes it looked like a mouth. He wondered if the Lazarus Pit ever really closed. Maybe it just sloshed around in his bones, waiting.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor when it started again—the low echo of the screaming, four doors down. Someone new, or maybe someone old on a worse day. He didn’t react. He’d learned early on that the more you responded, the more they came. The orderlies. The doctors. The needles. His fingernails scraped idly at a scab on his knuckle, already broken open from the night before. His hands didn’t shake today, which meant the meds had worn off. That was good. He liked himself better when he was sharp, even if it hurt more. He reached under the cot and retrieved the torn corner of a book cover someone had smuggled in—a bit of Les Misérables, just the title page. He liked the irony. He was halfway through mouthing the quote again when something on the other side of the door changed. Shifted. Not footsteps. Not breathing. Just different. His spine straightened, and his eyes went dead quiet.