This Mad World

The Road Less Traveled

Harleen wanted to say that she slowly came back to her consciousness, that the sounds around her and the chill of the bed she was laying on brought her slowly out of her state of stupor. That she was calm and collected, trying to figure out as much information as possible while still pretending to be asleep before she decided to reveal herself to whoever was around.

However, the truth was always much harsher and much more embarrassing. Both sensations seemed to come upon her in an instant: the freezing cold and the crushing feeling of being unable to breathe, as if her body remembered what had happened in the last few seconds before she passed out and decided to play catch up, and she came away at once with an explosive bought of coughing.

She heard a yelp of surprise nearby, along with a bit of a clatter and a strangely high voice yelling: "Batman!" Then a force pressed down on her shoulders, sending her back down without slamming her against the thing she was laying on (definitely not a bed or anything like that, a part of her brain puzzled out) and holding her there effortlessly.

"Doctor Quinzel? I need you to breathe for me," a deep, rasping voice spoke her her and made her stop because oh Lord it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't—

She finally opened her eyes to look up at the white, narrow slits gazing down at her and Lord really help her it most certainly was. Of course finally meeting Batman again after all these months the only thought her stupid brain could conjure up at the moment was: wow he's big.

Seriously, what was that even supposed to mean? Was he tall or was he wide or whatever?

Actually, with more than a second of looking she observed that it had to be a bit of both. Batman was looming over her in the truest sense of the word and she could clearly see from how tight his suit pressed against him and how his cape hung on him that he had to be stacked. With shoulders like that he could probably sling a horse over them and keep on going like usual. Did he do that to her? Oh God she hoped so but she also didn't.

She was being an idiot. She was being such an idiot what part of the brain was in charge of all this fangirling? Dopamine overdose, the adrenaline, all of it? The limbic system, right. And the amygdala that bastard. At least this this time it wasn't reducing her to a crying mess, so that was a good start. The hippocampus too and—

Her lungs were on fire she wasn't even breathing—

Just like that she sucked in a breath of air and noticed right away that it was horribly cold and dusty, and smelled unmistakably like rock and earth. Where in the world was she for a place to smell like that? Some sort of cave? She took another breath and another, feeling the ache subside and she used the moment to glance around with her eyes.

Oh, she was in a cave, actually. Go figure. A cave filled with computers lining the wall and metal tables and really it was an utterly bizzare scene of a medical lab right in the middle of a dimly lit cave.

Batman was still there and still looking at her, his face impassive. Well that was good because honestly if Harleen had been in front of someone who had been as silent as her then she would have started to think they were a little crazy. He must have saved her though, so—

"Um," she started, her voice croaking due her throat being horribly dry and she tried to swallow it down. "Thank you for saving me, again," she said, trying to smile a little at him but it was coming out mangled and sheepish.

After a moment of scrutinizing—Harleen didn't see Batman's expression so much as twitch but she felt the attention raking across her—he let go of her. She felt a brief moment of surprise, for some reason the fact that he could move surprised her, even though she knew that was ridiculous. It was just his posture and how he stood, he could give a mountain pro tips on how to be still.