A/N: First, a brief apology for my dropping off the face of the planet. I was off henchgirling at a theatre festival in Orlando, where I unfortunately lost a jump drive with every single scrap of my writing on it. I mourned for awhile, bashed my head into a few walls and then got back to work rewriting everything all over again. Needless to say, it’s been a long few weeks. The summer will get longer still when I work two more festivals in Indianapolis and Vancouver, so don't expect much from me for awhile, 'kay?

Second: Writing this would have been easier if I’d had “The Great Escape” lying around. Third, I owe a brief, somewhat harried fist-shaking “Curse-You-Richards!” thanks to that mysterious figure, Michigan J. Bowler, for showing me a coked up, metaphysical tragicomedy set in a military insane asylum. He knows the one I mean. The bastard.

And finally, major points to those of you who can identify the inspiration for the original characters housed herein--or at the very least, their names--and all the references sprinkled throughout. See how many you can spot!

---

Believe it or not, the interior of Arkham Asylum was a great deal more intimidating than the exterior, which was quite a feat considering how forbidding the building was from a distance, much less close up. The gothic architecture was made up of sharp lines and jutting angles that felt unnatural, perhaps even one could go so far as to say unholy. When the girls had first arrived in Gotham and took a good look at the place, the Captain had commented that it was the sort of locale that could easily give even H.P. Lovecraft a case of the heebie-jeebies. It was true. Looking at pictures of the building was nothing like being face-to-face with it. On paper, it just looked interesting; in person, it looked as menacing as any building, real or fictional, ever had.

But stepping foot inside…now that was like walking into the nastier haunted house ever conceived of by man. The air was always chilly, no matter how sweltering it may have been outside and the smell of sickness, slicked over with anesthetic, always made the Captain’s stomach roll mutinously inside her. She may have acted all tough-as-nails, but ‘Hospital Smell’ always got to her a little bit.

After the first few minutes of being dragged into the building, she gave up struggling and just went limp, forcing the two guards on either side of her to haul her along, the toes of her shoes dragging along the sallow, yellowing linoleum and leaving black streaks behind them. Usually, she didn’t put up much of a fight, cooperating with the system just to get things done a little faster; but today, for whatever reason, she was feeling rather petulant. Why should she make their jobs any easier?

The guards towed her to the reception desk--a bulletproof Plexiglass cage with a mild mannered looking guard inside, standing behind a slate gray counter stained with coffee rings--and came to a stop. The Captain took note of his nametag, which read ‘B. West’ and gave him the once over: five foot ten, Glasses, muddy brown hair in a very unfashionable, but still somehow flattering, bowl cut and muddy brown eyes to match. B. West didn’t bother to look up from his copy of Boudoir as the guard on the Captain’s left barked, “Patient nine-two-four-eight. Stevenson comma Laura.”

B. West leisurely picked up his bottle of Soylent Cola from the counter, took a sip and then hit the large red button that opened the inner doors of the asylum with an angry BUZZ. As the doors slid open, the guards tugged the Captain inside the hospital, dragged her down the labyrinthine hallways, past the comatose, past the Joker’s and the Scarecrow’s victims who were beyond all help and finally past the medical ward where critical care patients were kept under surveillance at all times. They didn’t venture into the most secure part of Arkham--the place where big name criminals like Poison Ivy and Two-Face were housed--a henchgirl with borderline personality disorders just wasn’t that high a priority.

A block of cells was set aside in Arkham for those people who were a threat, but not a particularly large threat without outside help. People like Albert Wesker were kept here, people who had no chance of escape without some brawny, muscle-y allies to back them up. It followed, then, that this was where someone like the Captain belonged.

Without ceremony, the guards dragged the Captain to her cell and practically tossed her inside. She staggered, trying to keep her balance, and stumbled toward the mattress. Her shin caught the very edge of the bed frame and she yelped, falling face first onto the bed. The guards laughed at her and slid the bulletproof, shatter-resistant clear plastic door to her cell closed. She rolled onto her side, clutching her shin, and glared at them. They smirked. She stuck out her tongue and made a noise that could only be spelled as ‘Nyah’.

The guards left and the Captain drew her tongue back into her mouth.

“That was mature,” the patient across the hall from the Captain’s cell commented. He was middle aged, slender and generally nondescript. The plaque next to his cell read ‘R. Paulson’--a name that was completely unfamiliar to the henchgirl, which meant he was probably just a run-of-the-mill nutbar. She just shrugged.

“Say,” he continued, as though her shrug were an invitation to start a conversation, shifting on his cot so that he was leaning toward her as conspiratorially as he possibly could with ten feet of space and two glass walls between them, “you ever wonder what would happen if a zombie apocalypse happened while we were all locked in here?”

The Captain snapped her fingers--or at least, tried to. “Of course I have. Who hasn’t?”

He looked pleased and shifted even closer. “Promising. So tell me, do you think there’s a difference between the undead and zombies?”

“Duh,” the Captain replied, flopping back on her cot to stare at the ceiling of her cell. “The undead have free will, higher brain functions, complex thought processes. Zombies are the dead, reanimated and have only one driving objective: feeding.”

“Ha! You got it right,” he said with obvious pleasure. “I think I like you. I’m Bob.”

“That’s nice.” The Captain rolled over to face the wall.

“And you are?” he prompted hopefully, clearly thrilled at the prospect of making a new friend inside the asylum.

“Going to sleep.”

---

The Captain had no idea how much time had passed between rolling over to go to sleep and when the guards woke her, but it couldn’t have been all that long. It felt as though she had just slipped into slumber long enough to take a breath before there were hands hoisting her out of bed.

“Hey, wassabigidea?” she squeaked from around a huge yawn, even as she was hauled out of her cell.

“Intake,” one of the Cro-Magnon guards grunted shortly. “Gotta meet with yer counselor.”

The Captain frowned, then yawned again, sleepily staggering as the guards dragged her down one hallway, then another and another still after that. By the time they came to a halt outside the office of Doctor LaMarche, she qualified as semi-conscious at the very least. She was ushered into the office a bit roughly, dropped into one of the squeaky leather chairs and the door slammed, all in the space of a few minutes.

She let out a startled noise when the wingback swivel chair behind the doctor’s desk turned abruptly, revealing a portly fellow with a shock of wavy white hair. His elbows rested on the chair arms and his fingers were tented, their tips brushing the very end of his far too large nose. Huge blue eyes beneath bushy silver brows surveyed her from behind massive round spectacles. All in all, he looked a bit sinister. Cuddly, but sinister.

“Miss Stevenson,” he rumbled in a deep baritone, one corner of his mouth turning up in a mildly unsettling smile.

The Captain blinked slowly--once, twice, three times--and then proceeded to burst into hysterical laughter. The doctor lifted one eyebrow, nonplussed, as she held her sides and gasped out, “Oh, tell me about the peas in July over the snow.”

The doctor’s eyebrow lowered and he tipped his head ever so slightly to one side with confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

She shook her head, still giggling. “Never mind.”

“Miss Stevenson,” he repeated, turning his attention to the clipboard on his desk. She cut him off before he could continue.

“That’s not my name.”

He looked back up at her. “Then what is your name?”

“They call me the Captain.”

Doctor LaMarche picked up a pen and began taking notes. “And what are you the Captain of?”

“The Enterprise, naturally.”

To his credit, the doctor didn’t look at her like she was around the bend. “Really. Are you Captain Kirk?”

”Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed at him like he was being absurd. “I’m Captain of the Enterprise-B.”

He made a ‘hm‘ noise and continued scribbling. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Sure,” she responded, bringing her finger up to circle it next to her temple, “I’m loco as the do-do.”

“Tell me about yourself. Who are you?”

The Captain leaned in towards the doctor and stared at him from eyes narrowed to mere slits. “Who is I? I’s Bosco, that’s who I is, ain’t nobody else except but.”

LaMarche smiled in spite of himself but didn‘t look away from his paperwork. “Cute.“

“Thanks, I thought so.”

“Let’s start small. Do you know what day it is?”

“Today.”

“And what day is that?”

“Yesterday’s tomorrow.”

“And who’s the president?”

“Zaphod Beeblebrox.”

At this, he looked up. “Miss…Captain, who is the president of the United States of America?”

“Frankenstein.”

He looked at her curiously, calmly taking her nonsense in stride “Do you know who the president is right this moment?”

She thought for a few seconds and then innocently asked, “He’s usually Harrison Ford, isn’t he? Or Bill Paxton?”

He tried to approach the question from another angle. “Who did you vote for in the last election?”

“Richard Nixon.” She smiled fondly. “I love Nixon.”

Realizing he wasn’t going to get anywhere, Doctor LaMarche let that line of questioning drop and moved on to another. “What year is it?”

“The year of the tiger…” There was a pause and then she burst into song: “it’s the thrill of the fight, rising up to meet the challenge of our rivals. Um, something, something, something, eye of the tiger!”

“Let’s try something a little easier,” he suggested. “What’s your favorite color?”

The Captain made a thoughtful sound and rested her chin in her hand, staring off into space as she considered the question for a moment. “Cabbage.”

Unaffected, LaMarche followed the conversation to its inevitable ludicrous conclusion. “And your favorite vegetable?”

“Chartreuse.”

“Miss Stevenson,” the doctor said with a long suffering sigh, “I’m only trying to help you. This will go much more smoothly if you’d just cooperate.”

“Cooperation is for Care Bears,” she said cryptically.

“How about we try something else? Word association?”

At this, the Captain perked up, cheerful disposition replacing her mildly surly one. “Okay. I like that game.”

“Good,” LaMarche replied with obvious relief, picking up his clipboard and flipping a few pages. “Alright, now just tell me the first word that pops into your head. Enemy.”

“Lasagna.”

“Robust.”

“Below wax.”

LaMarche frowned. “Semiautomatic?”

“Aqua.”

“Accompany.”

“Slacks!”

“Lemon?”

“Demon.”

“Miss Stevenson!”

“Sister Christian!”

LaMarche set his clipboard down and gave the Captain a disapproving look. “Miss Stevenson, if you aren’t going to be serious--”

“Oh the time has cooooome and you know you’re the only one to say, ‘okay’--”

“Miss Stevenson!”

The Captain abandoned her makeshift sing-a-long and opted to smile at the doctor without an ounce of apology in her expression. “Oh, come on, doc. If you were in my position, you’d be antagonizing you too.”

A little vein in LaMarche‘s forehead popped up and throbbed threateningly, but he miraculously kept his temper in check. “Miss Stevenson, you are in Arkham for care so that you may one day be released. It’s my job to provide the treatment that will make you a functional, productive member of society again.”

“Again!” She laughed outright, then remembered herself and turned somber. “I mean…ahem. Serious face.”

“Now, I understand that you have a problem with authority--”

She snickered and muttered, “Wait ‘til you meet Ops.”

“But you must adjust your attitude if you ever intend to leave this place. I only want to help.” Doctor LaMarche pressed the call button on his desk and stood, looking at the Captain the way a disappointed parent might. “I have faith that once you get used to the idea, you’ll respond to treatment.”

The office door opened and the Captain’s two hefty escorts entered, pulling her from her chair.

“In the meantime, though, perhaps a little discipline would be in order.” LaMarche straightened his papers. “Put her in solitary for the next three days.”

At this, the Captain straightened up and dropped the dippy, smart-ass inmate act. “What?”

“Solitary confinement. Three days.” He jotted absently on his clipboard without looking up. “Perhaps a regimen of shock therapy for good measure. ”

“But I haven’t done anything!” she exclaimed, visions of electrodes dancing in her head.

“That is a matter of opinion,” he responded, waving his hand at the guards. They started dragging her out into the hallway, struggling every step of the way.

“Hey, now, wait a minute! You can‘t do this!”

The door slammed, the sounds of the Captain being hauled away echoing around LaMarche’s office. With the din of her protests drowning out everything else, he shifted and picked up the telephone from its place on his desk. He dialed nine to get an outside line and then punched several numbers from memory as the Captain screamed at the top of her lungs out in the corridor.

“You can’t! Shock treatment is illegal! Illegal!” There was a brief pause, followed immediately by: “It was also an inferior sequel!”

The Captain’s voice grew further and further away as the line buzzed in his ear and he finally got an answer. Doctor LaMarche cleared his throat and spoke into the receiver, “Christine? Maury. About that interview you wanted…?”