02 / COGNITIVE CLOSURE.

BRUCE—BATMAN—NEVER TOLD TINA HOW JASON HAD DIED. She knew the bare bones of it: Batman—not Bruce—and Jason had stumbled upon each other in Israel, Batman hunting the Joker and Jason hunting his mother, Jason finding his mother, Jason finding his mother with the Joker, the Joker finding Jason, and then.

And then.

She had asked him, once. Appearing out of thin air like a ghost on the manor doorstep, drenched head to toe from the rain, shaking from the cold and from her debilitating grief. She hadn't even stopped to greet him, the question forcing itself from her mouth like bile the second he had opened the door. How?

How?

Bruce—not Batman—hadn't answered the question. Instead, he had taken her inside, sat her down and given her a cup of tea Alfred had made, and told her that he didn't want her to know, and that she didn't even want to know wither. There were better ways of grieving and getting closure than knowing.

Tina had taken that personally.

She knew, even then, that knowing what had happened in Ethiopia would change her. It would ruin her, it would destroy her, it could very well kill her. Still, the very thought of not knowing was like a knife to the heart. She wanted to know—no, she needed to know.

The Arkham Asylum psychologists, later, would call it cognitive closure. The neurological desperation to find answers, to dispel the cruel question of what had happened to Jason, to make sense of the Unknown. The need for cognitive closure had made her irrational and impulsive, tearing through everything she knew and ripping her life to shreds in her hunt for the answer. She spent the first month without Jason as a shadow of the girl she used to be, a ghost haunting Bristol County as she searched desperately for her answers. For her closure.

She hadn't even cared when her parents died just four weeks after Jason had. She needed closure.

And if Bruce refused to give her that closure, well. She could find out in other ways.

It came down to the rule of three. Her first attempt, naturally, failed. No plan ever survived first contact with the enemy—or with Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred wanted to keep her from the answers—from her closure—just as much as Bruce had, if not more. He told her, over a cup of tea she let go cold, that she was only hurting herself. He told her that he wouldn't let her use these answers as another way to make herself bleed, as another way just to feel something.

Her second attempt also failed. Tina decided that, if Bruce and Alfred refused to tell her what had happened, she would go straight to the source. There were caves stretching out all over Bristol County, the tunnels as thin and spindly as a spiderweb—and nestled at its heart was the cave, under Wayne Manor. It was far from the first time Tina had ventured down into the caves, leaving behind a crumb trail of blood as she scraped her skin against sharp rock, but it was the first time she had been daring enough to try to get into the Batcomputer. Of course, she was denied access.

Her third attempt, however, was a success.

Her third attempt had nothing to do with Bruce or Alfred. Even though they would never admit it, even to themselves, they still saw her as the little girl that hid under tables at Wayne galas and climbed trees to read books she palmed from their library. Bruce and Alfred had held Tina as an infant, after all; they could never reconcile that little girl with the grieving, desperate almost–woman Tina had become. She didn't even try contacting Dick, either. She knew he would understand, but he was still off–world, somewhere in the cosmos with a dead brother waiting at home for him.

Instead, Tina asked Barbara.

Well, first, Tina had tried to ambush Barbara at the Gotham City Public Library, but in her all–consuming search for closure she had forgotten that it was her day off. She then showed up unannounced on Barbara's doorstep with no warning but a thunderstorm, all shaking hands and frayed nerves and an obsession with the truth. Barbara let her in, made her a cup of hot chocolate, offered her something to eat.

(Tina wouldn't realise it until much later, but this was the first time anyone besides Bruce and Alfred had seen her since her parents' funeral.)

"How did it happen?" Tina asked as soon as she had the courage to speak, her breath blowing the steam from the hot chocolate in Barbara's direction. "How did Joker—how did Jason—how?"

Barbara paused to push up her glasses. "Bruce didn't tell you."

A statement, not a question.

Tina shook her head, movements awkward and uncertain like a child playing at being an adult. Barbara sighed, looking as if she had aged ten years in just ten weeks. "Is it that important for you to know? Is it worth it for you to know?"

Bruce and Alfred had never asked Tina that; they had made their own answers to that question. Was closure worth it?

"I—" Tina started, hands shaking so violently she had to put her cup down on the coffee table. "Yes. I need to know, I need to. I can't sleep, I can't eat, all I can think about is how painful his final moments must have been. I have all of these horrible ideas of how it happened, and—and not knowing is just making these ideas get worse and worse and I don't know if I can take it for much longer."

Barbara nodded and took a sip of her own hot chocolate. "It was more than just painful, Tina. Are you prepared for that?"

When had Tina's heart stopped beating? When did her throat start closing up? "Please, Barbie."

It might have been cruel, even manipulative, to use a nickname for Barbara that she hadn't used since they were both in pigtails. Whether or not Barbara noticed, whether or not she cared, she sighed and wheeled over to her computer. She clicked some buttons, tapped out her password for access to the files—Tina was curious, but she averted her eyes—and after a few more deafening clicks the printer started to whir.

"You know, we're always here for you, Tina." Barbara said, low like a warning, as she wheeled herself back and handed the printed file to Tina. "We've all lost people, too. We lost him too. We know what you're going through, and you don't have to go through it all alone."

Tina almost broke in half and snapped back at her that she had no idea what she was going through, but caught herself and bit her tongue. Barbara was holding out an olive branch, an offer to be there for her when it felt like she had no–one, and she was right. After all, Joker had killed Batgirl, even if he hadn't killed Barbara.

"Thank you." Tina whispered, her lungs too tight to speak. And then she turned and left, her hot chocolate still steaming on the coffee table.

Tina didn't open the file until she returned to an empty house, filled with nothing but ghosts. There, she cracked open a bottle of her mother's best vintage red—мама is rolling in her grave, but she can't do anything from six feet in the ground—and cracked open the file. For two days, Tina did nothing but read and drink and smash expensive vases and read.

Closure, as it turned out, felt just like grief.

She read everything. The crowbar, the explosion, the smoke.

His listed cause of death was asphyxiation.

If Batman had been quicker—No. This was not Batman's fault. There was only one man to blame.

Grief sharpened like a knife to anger.

Batman couldn't have saved Jason. Tina couldn't have saved Jason.

But she could make Joker pay.

INSTEAD OF A PEN, Tina was handed a crayon at the start of her mandated one–on–one session. It was two days earlier than usual, a requirement following her outburst in the cafeteria. The last dregs of the sedatives they had used to pacify her were still clinging at her veins, nestled somewhere in the groove of her elbow.

The crayon was pink.

"You remembered my favourite colour." Tina murmured, staring down at the crayon as she rolled it between her fingers.

"Well, it's hard to forget." Doctor Townes gave her a smile, small but genuine. "You tend to use the colour pink for everything. I've seen your locker in the confiscation office. I didn't even know they made guns with hot pink streaks."

"Got it custom made." Tina told her without missing a beat. "What, you want to spend this session dissecting my love for the colour pink? It all started when I was four years old, and my parents decided that pink wasn't sophisticated enough to be my favourite colour. They gave me a list of more elegant colours to choose from. Took me three days to decide between robin's egg blue and carnelian."

A beat, poised for dramatic effect. "I chose carnelian, ironically enough."

"My favourite is sage green. It was the colour my sister chose for me and her bridesmaids to wear at her wedding last year, and that was one of the happiest days of my life." Doctor Townes smiled. "But we aren't here to talk about our favourite colours, Tina. We're here to talk about why you attacked a guard and tried to steal his keycard."

Tina liked Doctor Townes. She had had two other psychiatrists before Doctor Elodie Townes—one had been killed in a riot started by Zsasz, while the other simply hadn't been a good fit. Doctor Townes had been born and raised in Gotham by a nurse mother and police detective father. She had gone to college in New York, but returned to Gotham to follow in her parents' footsteps to try and help the people of Gotham City. She was the youngest of two girls, and her older sister was an artist, who had gotten married last spring to a teacher.

Tina knew these things because Doctor Townes never talked down to Tina, but rather with her. She shared things about her own life to make Tina more comfortable sharing things herself. She didn't mind if Tina wasn't up to speaking and instead just wanted to draw during their sessions, or if Tina started speaking to people that weren't in the room. Doctor Townes actually, really, genuinely wanted to help her. To help people. That kind of thing was rare in Gotham.

"You already know why." Tina replied, taking the pad of paper she had been given and starting to draw.

Doctor Townes hummed. "Yes, I do. But I'd like you to tell me why, so I can understand how you're feeling."

"Sure. We were having breakfast in the cafeteria, and I saw the Joker." Tina answered simply. "I saw him, and I needed to kill him, and that was that."

Doctor Townes nodded and wrote something down on her clipboard. "From what I read in the incident report, everything happened pretty fast. Can you remember what you were thinking?"

Tina was quiet for a few moments, idly drawing. "I remember thinking that I needed to see him bleed."

"Why do you think you need to hurt the Joker?" Doctor Townes asked, crossing one leg over the other. "We've talked a lot about why you want to hurt the Joker, but what makes you think you need to?"

"I—" Tina started, before going dead quiet. There were no words to describe the desperate, almost feral urge hidden in the cavity of her ribcage to see the Joker bleeding at her feet. She couldn't describe the animalistic instinct to attack whenever she saw him. How could she tell anyone else that she wanted to sink her teeth into him and rip him apart until there was nothing left but the blood dripping down her chin and the flesh caught in the grooves between her molars?

"I think that—that he has to die. I mean," Tina smiled, almost nervous, "look at what he's done to us all. You can't spit in the street in Gotham without hitting someone who has lost someone or something to Joker. After what he's done, after what he did to R—after what he did to this city, he needs to die. I don't think I can rest until he's dead."

"Do you think you can rest then?" Doctor Townes asked. "Do you think that if you killed him, or if he died, then you would have the peace and closure you're always looking for?"

Tina went quiet again, tears collecting in her lash line. "I don't—I don't know." She admitted quietly. "I hope so."

"I know that this hurts to hear, but killing the Joker won't bring Robin back. It won't undo any of the horrible things he's done." Doctor Townes told her. It wasn't spiteful, or meant to hurt Tina. It was just a fact.

"I know." Tina echoed.

Doctor Townes let the conversation lie there, watching Tina as she continued to scribble on the paper idly. She had started giving Tina paper a few weeks after she had been assigned her case, letting Tina draw throughout the session to keep her from picking at her skin or biting her nails. Some days, Tina didn't draw anything. Some days, she drew graphic cartoonish illustrations of the various ways she thought of killing the Joker. "That's a pretty bird you've drawn."

Tina looked down at her paper and went still. Her eyes flickered with emotion, before she blinked and it was gone.

(Doctor Townes wrote it down as grief. Later, too late, she would realise it was resolve.)

"It's a robin." Tina said, quietly.

LATER, THE GUARDS ESCORTED TINA TO DINNER with a tighter grip than usual, her penance for attacking a guard without a second thought the moment she caught a glimpse of the Joker. It was unusual, but not unexpected. Tina might have felt guilt for the outburst if she could feel anything but muted rage under the hostile chemical mix of her medication and the lingering sedatives.

The gate buzzed and swung open, and Tina was led through the dinner line with vice–like grips on her arms. Lunch lady Netty gave her a pitying but not unkind look as she silently slid the tray through the partition in the glass. The guards let her pick up the tray with her limited movement, before leading her over to the usual table and unlocking her handcuffs. "Be good, Novikova." One guard told her with a pointed look as they stepped back to give her and the others some space. "And next time, avoid the jewels. You're lucky Martin and the missus don't want more kids."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be good. Cross my heart and die and all that." Tina cut him a quick, brutal grin. The guards sighed, but picked their battles and walked away from the table. Tina turned to face her little group of misfits: Lonnie and Sienna had been watching the interaction with their usual amusement, as was the new, fourth addition to their table. "So, give me the updates. Fill me in on everything I missed."

"Won't take long, only three things happened." Sienna replied around a mouthful of the limp lettuce that the Arkham staff called a salad. "First, an orderly wore a tie with rubber ducks on it and got heckled so hard he had to leave the cafeteria and have his husband deliver another tie. Second, since you weren't here for breakfast yesterday, Cobblepot snatched the paper and didn't give Nygma the crosswords. He snapped, threw a lot of stuff, knocked out three guards and got himself tased and dragged off to solitary."

"I thought I could hear him screaming in there. Is that why we're missing a table?" Tina asked, waving a fork in the direction of the empty space in the corner.

"Yep." Lonnie answered with a grin to match hers. "What he has lost, we have gained. More space for the rest of us."

Bennett gave them a look equal parts confused and entertained. "What, so we need to give Riddler the crosswords every morning or he goes berserk and puts a guard's face through a table?"

"Nygma." Tina corrected before anyone else could get a word in. "We're not supposed to use those names in the nuthouse, not anymore. Even the staff have to use our actual names. It's part of a new policy to make sure we don't feel 'dehumanised'."

"But everyone knows the policy is just designed to make Warden Sharp feel good about himself and look even better for his mayoral campaign." Sienna rolled her eyes. "If they actually cared about not dehumanising us, maybe they would do something about this so–called food. I mean, just look at this salad; it looks like it's about two days from going rotten."

"Let me guess, we can't have fresh vegetables because Ivy will use them to break out?" Bennett asked, poking her salad tentatively with a plastic fork.

"Nope, they just want us to starve." Tina grinned, kicking Bennett under the table. "Anyway, you said three things. That's only two. What else happened?"

Her answer was silence, followed by conflicted glances being shared between the other three, followed by even more silence. Tina slanted her friends a suspicious look. "If you didn't want to tell me, you should've stuck to two things. That's on you. Tell me."

Three more conflicted glances, a silent conversation. "Well, it's—" Lonnie swallowed. "It's, uh. You know, it's actually nothing. Only two things happened."

"Lonnie Machin, you have never sounded more suspicious in your life." Tina kicked him in the shin, hard enough to feel his bone. "Tell me."

Sienna and Lonnie exchanged even more concerned glances, held captive in a silent debate, before Bennett slammed her plastic fork down—which did nothing, really—and shot them a glare. "Oh, for the love of—Joker's out."

Joker's out.

Joker's out.

JOKER'S. OUT.

Tina went still, letting the words sink in like teeth into her jugular. The Joker had gotten out. The Joker was loose, free to wreak whatever havoc he fancied on Gotham. The table was silent, her friends watching with bated breaths to see how she would react. All Tina felt was the pounding of her heart echoing through her whole body. All she could bring herself to say was "How?"

"Sionis broke him out this morning." Lonnie answered, tentative, like a diver swimming among sharks.

Tina blinked, tried to summon rage from under the murky waters of her medication, but all she could come up with was spite. "That two–timing bitch."

"Yeah, that's what we said." Sienna nudged Tina's foot with hers under the table, as if poking the bear to check if it would bite. "Word on the street is, he's so desperate to get the Red Hood off his back that he decided to throw common sense to the wind and get Joker to fight his battles. We've got money on it taking exactly seven hours to bite him in the ass."

"Good. He deserves it." Tina snarled. "He should have broken us out, instead of the clown."

"Honestly, he probably would've broken us out if you weren't in solitary." Lonnie pointed out with a wave of his plastic fork. "But whatever. Either Batman will drag both Joker and Red Hood to Arkham, or Hood will kill Joker."

"He'd better not." Tina muttered mutinously. "Joker is mine. I'm not letting some new asshole who probably has no connection to him show up all of a sudden and take my kill."

The table went quiet, reeling in her rage, before Bennett cleared both her throat and the tension. "Why do you even want to kill the Joker anyway?"

There were a hundred different ways that Tina could have answered that question. "For closure."

FOOTNOTES / tina separating bruce and batman into two people is very important to me. also i don't think anyone finds tina hating the red hood but basing everything she is and does around jason as funny as i do, but it'll be a recurring theme.