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“Please! You’re as blind as a bat!”
“Exactly.”
With that, Batman shot his weapon directly into the large green light that enveloped “the box”, shattering the glass. Both Sugar and Spice immediately ran for cover, and Harvey, extremely fed up with all of Ed’s, well…everything, and realizing that this operation was likely a lost cause, bailed on the situation.
Seeing that their boss was in danger, both Sugar and Spice grabbed ahold of him and all three rushed out of the Riddler’s lair in the chaos. Let Batman deal with this nonsense, they figured.
Spice, the older and (slightly) more rational of the two, ordered Sugar to drive back to Harvey’s lair as fast as possible, telling her to focus on the road and not stop for anything; Sugar didn’t need telling twice.
As they drove, Harvey kept his eyes closed and was rocking himself in the back seat, mumbling incoherently with his hands over his ears. It was clear he was just barely holding himself together; the sensory overload from everything the Riddler had put him through was just getting to be too much.
The minute they reached “home”, Spice carefully eased Harvey out of the car, trying to touch him as little as possible so as not to make things worse. Harvey already seemed a little calmer looking at the building, but was shaking as the three ushered themselves into the lair. Sugar, attempting to be helpful, tried to stroke his shoulder to calm him, but Harvey slapped her hand away, mumbling “Back…back…stay back!”
He stumbled to one of the “faces” wall sculptures in his lair, before pressing a few buttons on a hidden keypad, revealing a small door in the side of the sculpture, which he immediately pushed through before shutting the door.
Inside was a small panic room of sorts; the walls and floor were padded with thick carpet, and there was little else in the room aside from a small bed and a dim light, along with some comfort objects. Harvey used this room whenever he had a particularly bad sensory day, but he’d never felt as bad as this; it was almost like he was about to explode, and finally he felt safe enough to let it all out.
Both Sugar and Spice listened from outside, hearing banging and incoherent crying, ranting and screaming coming from inside the room, reminiscent of an overtired toddler having a tantrum because they needed a nap.
Sugar looked extremely worried, fidgeting and tugging at her curls. She started to go to Harvey, but Spice stopped her, telling her to stay where she was.
“What’s going on with him? He’s never acted like this before.” Sugar asked, concerned for her boss’s well-being.
Spice sighed, looking at her partner in crime and in life; she’d been with Harvey a little longer than Sugar had, so she was a little more experienced with his “quirks”, so to speak. “He’s melting down, it’s happened before. Though granted, I don’t ever remember seeing him this frazzled.”
“Melting down? What are you talking about?”
Spice shook her head, mumbling “Oh God, how do I explain this…Remember that night when I asked you to make his favorites with me? Right before that weird bastard in green tights showed up?”
Sugar nodded. “Sure, why?”
“Well, I did it because I found that’s the best way to make sure he doesn’t get to this point. He has something called autism. The best way I can explain it is…it’s sort of like he has superhuman senses. He feels things far more intensely than someone like you or I would. Something that wouldn’t be as loud to us, it’s as loud as a rock concert to him. And that really wears on him.
Like, imagine if you were forced to sit next to a loudspeaker all day; I bet you’d be pretty upset afterwards, huh? And if he gets too worn out or frazzled, he melts down like this. So, I try and give him good sensory things to try and offset the bad so he doesn’t explode like this.”
Sugar nodded again. “That makes sense, I guess. But shouldn’t we go to him? What if he hurts himself?”
“He won’t. I know him. When the lair was being built, I personally made sure there was nothing sharp in that room that he could injure himself on. And besides, going to him right now would just make things worse.
When he’s like this, it’s like everything hurts. A simple touch can feel like burning; that’s why he slapped your hand away. It’s best if we just let him be. The meltdown will eventually stop on its own. Trust me, if he needs something, he’ll come find us. Right now, I think we need to change the locks, so we don’t run into any more weird green bastards in the future.” With that, the two women set about changing the locks to the lair; neither of them wanted to run into anyone as loud and irritating as Edward Nygma ever again.
As it turned out, Spice was right. In the panic room, Harvey’s meltdown gradually died down to soft sobbing; at least he no longer felt like he was about to explode. The dark and the soft bed in the room gave him great comfort as he began to rest; now that he knew the Bat was his ex, he would be able to torment him in much pettier ways, once his senses got back to normal. For now, he would rest and regroup.
For the first time in ages, Harvey Dent finally felt safe.