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“Damn it!” Edward Nygma nearly hurled the laptop across the room, but Jonathan quickly saved the device before it could be properly launched.
“I think you need a break,” Jonathan advised, “before you pop a gasket and get taken to solitary.”
Joker snorted from the other side of the couch. “Losing your touch, Eddie boyo? I thought this was your bread and butter!” He looked away innocently. “Alas! It looks like our riddlemaster can’t even get past the parental controls on a fifteen year old laptop!”
Edward nearly launched himself off the couch to have at Joker, but Jervis was quick to ease him back down. “Now now, Dormouse. I know you're angry, but take a few breaths! Have some tea! Crumpets? A few scones, perhaps?”
Riddler crossed his arms and looked away, petulance radiating off of him as though he were a five year old denied his sweets. “We’re not at a tea party, Tetch! And even if we were, I don’t trust any food you would serve me.” He groaned. “It’s not fair!”
Harleen, who took up the third spot on the couch, stretched her arms out towards the laptop and made grabby hands. “Let me see it! I wanna see it!”
Jonathan handed the device over. “You’re not going to find anything useful. The doctors blocked nearly every website that would be remotely interesting to us, and even Edward can’t seem to get past the locks.” Just the mention of Edward’s failure got him a scathing glare.
Poison Ivy leaned on the back of the couch, looking over her girlfriend’s shoulder. “Why give us a computer if they’re not going to let us look at anything?”
It was Harvey who answered this time as he sat across the room and beside Victor Fries. “It’s something we used to do for the prisoners at Blackgate. Some of the only websites available are for practicing filling out job applications in case we ever get out.”
Victor grimaced from behind the frost of his helmet. He had only recently been allowed access to the rec room for his mental health. His cold suit was fairly bare bones, but he never really used it to get around, as he hardly spoke a word to the other inmates. However, he finally found it pertinent to give his two cents at the moment.
“Of course. Because we’re the type of people who will be getting jobs in the future,” he muttered.
Joker looked back at him with a giggle on his lips. “Aww, come on, ice man! You would look great behind one of those ice cream carts at the park! Practically a dream job for you. Would finally get your mind off of that ugly wife of yours!”
If there was anyone who could keep a cool head, it was Mr. Freeze, but just the mention of his wife had him looking ready to encase the clown’s legs in ice and smash them with a sledgehammer.
All the while, Harley was rapidly going from website to website, trying to find one available to them that the doctors forgot to block.
“You know,” Garfield Lynns said from the floor, watching the TV with passing interest, “if you give me a few minutes with that thing, I bet I could set it on fire.”
“Hey!” Lynns snorted and looked over at Scarface and Arnold Wesker, the latter of which looked nervous at the idea of his wooden boss being anywhere near fire. Scarface’s brows were downturned in anger. “The fuck you talkin’ ‘bout fire. Best keep that to yerself ‘fore I fill you fulla holes!”
Firefly smirked. “Thanks for offering yourself up as kindling, short stack.”
Joker had a good laugh at that, all the while Jonathan grew bored and went back to his chess set across the room. Jervis followed suit, getting behind his white pieces as he prepared to resume their game.
“Hare! You don’t want to see what our dear Harley can find on that looking glass?” Mad Hatter asked, already considering his turn. “I’m sure she might find a few fun games!”
Scarecrow scoffed. “That thing is useless; a gimmick to keep us distracted and calm. Remember when they gave us a library?”
Jervis made his move and pouted. “You didn’t like the library?”
“Before Lynns razed it to the ground with the BIC lighter he somehow snuck in? No,” Jonathan answered bluntly after he made his own move. “The books might as well have all been for children. They got rid of everything that might ‘trigger us’. We were left with childish tales and uninteresting history books about trains and celebrities. Honestly an insult.”
Jervis smiled sheepishly. “I would have liked some Lewis Carroll. Or, at the very least, maybe some classics. I’d love to read Frankenstein again.”
“You love those fantasy books,” Jonathan sighed, his disinterest palpable. “A shame about the computer. I’d at least like to learn a bit about the outside world. Ever since they blocked the news channels from the TV, I feel like I’m stuck in a vacuum.”
The Hatter huffed. “How frustrating. I bet that makes you absolutely frumious.”
Before Jonathan could answer, Harley gasped. “Guys! Gotham Gossip isn’t blocked on the computer!”
Ivy frowned. “The tabloid paper? Why would you want to look at such sensationalized garbage?”
Harley ignored her partner’s annoyance. After having little clue about the outside world for months, she would take all she could get. “Oooh. ‘Ten Pictures of Batman That Might Hint at His Identity!’ ‘Can the Boy Wonder Catch Up to His Mentor?’ ‘Superman Visits Gotham Fifth Time This Month! Secret Lover?’”
Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. Jervis looked back at Harley with an amused smile. “Harleen, dear, surely that junk will rot your brain with all its nonsense.”
Joker let out a sharp “ha!” “I’m sure you would know about nonsense, wouldn’t you?”
“Wonderland is only nonsense to the sensical,” Hatter hummed. “If you don’t get that, that’s your fault.”
The conversation went over Harley’s head as she continued looking through the tabloid headlines. “Oooh! ‘Faces Behind the Masks! What These Famous Super Criminals Looked Like Before Their Turn to Villainy!’ I’m gonna look at this one.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes in annoyance. Jervis frowned. “You aren’t interested in what our friends used to look like?”
That earned Jervis a sneer. “These people are not our friends, Tetch. And we already know what we look like. Hell, I know far more about you than I’d like to know. Privacy doesn’t exist to you.”
Jervis wasn’t deterred by Jonathan’s negative attitude. If anything, he was quite used to it. That was just how Jonathan was. The only thing that made him happy was his research and terrorizing the people of Gotham. It was just the way he was, and Jervis was really one of the only people who knew how to navigate him without incurring his wrath.
Harley squealed. “Look, Ivy! It’s me! These are my elementary school pictures. Wow, they must’ve asked my dad for these. I don’t know how else they would have gotten them.”
Ivy’s eyes widened at the photos. “Wow. You were a cute kid. For a meat sack.”
Joker chuckled. “Of course, then she met me! And now her life has changed for the better!” Then, as an aside to Victor, “Nothing like being single again, am I right, Freeze?” When he failed to get a reaction out of Freeze, he just giggled and looked away. “‘Heart of ice’ indeed.”
“Don’t you want to look back at what we were like before?” Jervis asked Jonathan, who shook his head. “Perhaps take a trip down memory lane?”
“There’s no point. The past is the past,” Scarecrow replied. “Dwelling on it is useless. It’s not like I care what anyone used to look like anyhow.”
“I swear, you have all the heart of a scarecrow.”
“That’s the tin man.”
“You know what I meant!”
Edward boredly looked over at the laptop and something caught his eye. “Is that you in college? You look… surprisingly modest.”
Harley laughed softly. “Are you kidding me? I was a total square! Sweaters and slacks only!”
Jervis’ interest was piqued and he soon left the chess board, much to Jonathan’s immense annoyance. After a few seconds, he left, too, hoping to glean some entertainment from shitty tabloids.
When he looked over Harley’s shoulder, he found a young woman that was almost unrecognizable when compared to how the former psychiatrist was now. Her smile was soft, not manic, and her hair was tied up in a neat little bun. Her clothes were modest, even including a turtleneck, and she had a stack of books under her arms.
“You look… nice,” Jonathan admitted.
Harley went to the find tool. “Alright, Ivy. Your turn!”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “Whoa whoa. Absolutely not!”
Firefly got up off the floor and rounded the couch. “Oh, I’ve gotta see this!” Albert Wesker and Scarface also got up, curious to see what was on the screen.
Harley already had Ivy’s name typed into the find tool. Soon, they were met with the sight of a young redhead, her skin yet to turn green and her eyes so full of joy. Harley gasped in shock and awe. “Ivy! Look at you!”
Firefly’s jaw dropped to the floor. “No. Way. You had braces?”
Ivy looked away and buried her face in her hands. “Can we please move on?”
“Wait, wait, let us see,” Two-Face protested, coming to join the crowd behind the couch. His brow shot up as Harley scrolled through the pictures. “You actually look like a respectable member of society.” He noticed two more women in the photos. “Who are those chicks?”
Ivy was clearly embarrassed to see herself before she became the perfect lifeform she was after her accident. Still, she looked over at the photo in question. “Oh. Those were old friends.”
Joker cackled. “You had friends?”
“What did you do to them?” Jonathan asked stolidly, adjusting his glasses. “Turn them into orchids?”
“I’m not actually sure where they are,” Ivy replied honestly. “I never saw them again after I became Poison Ivy. But, we were… close. I met them at the garden center. They loved plants almost as much as I did.”
Victor finally joined them. “You don’t ever wonder what happened to them after your accident?”
There was a beat of silence. “Not really.”
Edward nudged Harley. “Hey, do Bane.”
Harley gasped at the brilliant idea and quickly typed Bane’s name into the find tool.” There was a collective look of shock over everyone’s faces as old photos of Eduardo appeared on the screen. Some were from his time on Santa Prisca, while others were from Gotham. Either way, he was not the hulking mass of muscle he was today. He was still big and well-built and looked ready and able to snap Batman over his knee and call him fat, but his size was reasonable, like that of the typical strongman.
“That must have been before his addiction to venom,” Edward observed. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen his face before. He doesn’t look half bad… for a meathead.”
They scrolled until they came across Deadshot, and they were all pleasantly surprised to see a proud father bouncing a little girl on his knee. He actually looked happy, an expression so rare on the faces of the rogues that it was hard to believe it was real.
“They actually look kinda cute,” Scarface mentioned. “Fer a goon and his brat!”
Jervis pat Harley’s shoulder. “Let’s see Oswald!”
Pictures of the Penguin showed up from his days back in England. He was a young man with ambition in his eyes and, in one photo taken in front of the Statue of Liberty, he even had the American flag wrapped over his shoulders proudly.
Two-Face scoffed. “If you would have told me that pipsqueak would one day be my rival, I would have shot you in the head. Twice.”
Harley shook her head with a sigh. “The things late stage capitalism does to a man.”
“Do me!” Firefly requested. “Do me!”
The harlequin pulled up old photos of Garfield Lynns, and even Jonathan’s lips parted in shock. “That’s you?” he nearly exclaimed.
On the screen was a muscular young man untouched by the burning flames of the accident that changed his life forever. His skin was clear and he had a wrench in his mouth as he looked snarkily at the camera behind a pyrotechnics machine.
“I remember that one!” Garfield shouted. “My brother took it! We handled pyrotechnics for large scale events. I loved that job, too. My boss was a tool, though.”
Joker finally joined the group and reached across an annoyed Edward to snatch the laptop out of Harley’s hands. “Let me see!” His eyes widened. “Holy shit you were ugly!”
Garfield brushed a hand over his scarred head as if he still had locks of hair to run his fingers through. “I know! Now look at me! Have you ever seen a more handsome man? Gorgeous!”
Ivy sneered. “At least leave the room before you jack yourself off, asshat.” She rolled her eyes as Lynns stuck his tongue out at her. “Absolute child.”
Arnold looked at Garfield. “Where’s your brother now?”
Garfield’s smile dimmed. “Oh. Uh, before I became Firefly, there was an accident with one of the machines and… y’know.”
Then, Joker started typing Edward’s name into the find tool. Edward’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “Whoa whoa whoa! Don’t you dare!” He lunged at Joker, but Joker slipped past just in the nick of time. He proceeded to chase Joker around the rec room, stumbling as Joker leapt over chairs and bounded over the couch. The room was filled with manic laughter and Edward’s shouting to keep everyone from seeing his old photos.
Before Edward could tackle Joker, Jonathan snatched the laptop out of his hands and finished typing Nygma’s name into the search bar. Everyone gathered around to see, and when the pictures loaded, Harley slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from shouting out with laughter.
The old Edward Nashton sat behind a computer, waving at the camera. He had on a green sweater vest with a dorky little tie on the dress shirt underneath. Perched on his nose were the roundest pair of glasses Jonathan had ever seen (ones that he’d soon traded in for contacts), and his barber deserved to be flayed alive for the job he did to Edward’s hair.
“Oh my gosh, Eddie!” Harley exclaimed. “You look like such a dork! Was this you in college?”
Edward’s cheeks were dusted with red. “That was when I was developing my first coding project: a text-based puzzle game filled to the brim with riddles.”
Jervis looked back at Edward in surprise. “I didn’t know you made games.”
Nygma scowled. “It was a hobby. Now move on to someone else, you neanderthals! It’s not even interesting!”
Ivy reached over to scroll on the computer. “Are there any baby photos?”
“There’s a couple of elementary photos,” Jonathan replied, watching the photos move past. Finally, they landed on one from when he had to be around seven. The black eye on the boy’s face had the mood of the room dimming, save for Joker, who laughed like it was the funniest joke on the planet.
Jervis looked over to see Edward looking away in barely disguised humiliation. He looked up at his taller companion. “Let’s move on, Jonathan.”
Jonathan nodded and quickly typed in Albert’s name. That’s when they got to see Albert before he found Scarface. He looked happy on various stages, entertaining young kids with his silly puppets.
Albert frowned at the sight, his brow stitched. “I… don’t remember any of that.”
“Ya look like a square, dummy,” Scarface sneered.
Harley smiled at Albert and nudged him. “I think you look nice, Al.” It earned her a soft, appreciative smile.
Victor spoke up. “Look me up.”
Jonathan did as asked, and they were met with a pre-sub zero Fries. He looked great behind his work desk, and when they came across pictures of him with his wife, Victor said nothing.
Jonathan considered the photos, and it made him feel an odd sense of melancholy. It was strange to see his peers so happy before the events that changed their lives forever. For whatever reason, he looked at Freeze and just said, “You two look good.”
Victor looked surprised to hear such a remark from Jonathan, and when he looked back at the laptop, he saw his wedding photo with Nora. Victor never smiled, but for just a moment, his lips ticked upwards. “She’s as beautiful as the day we met.”
Dent was next, though no one was really surprised by the pictures they saw. After all, Two-Face had been a DA for the state. Still, he seemed to soften when he saw pictures of his young self fresh out of law school. “I took the bar exam three times before I finally passed, did you know that? My local cafe made bank on how much coffee I drank.” Then, Bad Harvey sneered. “Not that it matters anymore. We make more money robbing banks than we ever did as DA. Glad that shit’s behind us.”
Joker noticed something advertised on the side of the screen. “Ooh! ‘Ten missing people who police think might be the Joker’s hidden identity!’” He grinned slyly at the other rogues. “Go on, click it! Oh, I just know you’re all dying to put the pieces together, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Nah.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Apologies, but not really.”
“That’s the one thing I’d don’t care to know.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“We don’t care.”
“Go away.”
“Sorry, but no thank you.”
“Can it, ya clown.”
Jervis gently took the laptop out of Jonathan’s hands and searched up his own name. Some photos of him from his time in England appeared, but he seemed to grow most sentimental when he saw a photo of himself in a lab with a WE badge around his neck.
“I’d just come to America after Wayne Enterprises offered me a job. I was so, so proud of myself,” he said.
Edward looked at the screen. “You look so… medicated.”
Jervis laughed softly. “That was back before I became a part of Wonderland!”
“Before you stopped taking your meds,” Ivy corrected, recontextualizing Jervis’ words.
To that, she got a titter. “I wouldn’t trade Alice and my Wonderland for the world, Tiger Lilly. Though… sometimes I do miss the stability.”
Joker snored. “Boring! Next! Do Jonathan. I want to see if he was just as pathetic as a kiddo as he is now!”
Jonathan winced at seeing his name entered into the search bar. The thought of all of them seeing his weakness and frailty as a child made him sick. Thankfully, they would be hard pressed to find even a baby photo of him. His granny wasn’t the sentimental type.
“Good luck,” he said. “I was homeschooled and isolated until high school.”
The photos that came up didn’t bring Jonathan any joy. The first was of him having coffee with friends. He remembered the day that was taken. Another professor had whipped out his flip phone to commemorate the end of the semester. Jonathan’s smile was so genuine, it was almost painful to look at for his older self.
The next was a picture of him standing before a chalkboard in the middle of a passionate lecture, clearly taken by surprise.
“Aw, look at you in your waistcoat and tie!” said Harley. “You look good! Look at that lil smile.” Jonathan looked away with a grimace. The blonde smiled softly. “You must’ve really loved teaching, huh?”
The Scarecrow huffed, but he did not deny it. “One does not enter education without having some passion for the future generations.”
Ivy sighed. “We all had things that made us happy, didn’t we?”
A beat of silence passed. Suddenly, it seemed like no one really had any interest in the computer, save for Joker, who took it to poke some more fun at the other photos.
Jonathan returned back to the chess set, where Jervis joined him. “Well, Tetch, you got your trip down memory lane. Do you feel better now?”
Tetch gave the question genuine thought. “You know, Hare, I’m not quite sure. I don’t know if I liked it, but I believe I learned a moral! The Duchess would be proud of me.” He paused. Then, “Do you ever miss the days before… this?”
Jonathan sighed, thought for a moment, then discarded any attempts to be genuine. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Tetch. It’s all in the past, and we can never go back.” He moved his pawn. “Your turn.”