A/N: I'm sick of Arkham fics where there's an OC who's a psychiatrist or patient, and they get scared/manipulated by Gotham's worst. So this is a story of the little people who get affected by Arkham. (there might be more chapters, but don't count on it)

In Years and Seconds

Arkham Asylum had been desperate for workers; that was the only reason Naomi had gotten the job. She was far too shy and nervous to go looking for jobs herself, so when a desperate plea for janitorial help appeared in the paper, her husband forced her to take it. He ruled her with a heavy hand, and wanted her out of the house because his mistress was getting suspicious about why they never went to his place.

She knew that he was having an affair, and had been for the majority of their ten year marriage, but didn't do anything about it. Naomi was a mousy thing, in both nature and appearance. Her parents had tried to build her confidence by making her take kickboxing when she was younger. And while it didn't work, it was the reason why she had gotten the job. They liked the Arkham staff to know some form of self-defence. Just in case.

On her first day she had spent more time cleaning up her own vomit than anything. She quickly learnt to bring noseplugs to work, as the insane rarely bothered finding a toilet when one was needed. After a week of nightmares filled with the screaming and pleading of patient, she included earplugs to her arsenal.

It took a mere two months before the sight of a room with blood splatter from floor to ceiling, and brain-matter dangling from bared windows, to stop bothering her.

It took some heavy duty cleaner to get the blood off the padded cell walls; though Naomi always thought it left a faint pink mark. When she asked someone, a guard, if he thought it was clean enough for the patient to move back in, he had frowned, and explained to her that she'd cleaned it all, and that nothing was left. It seemed to be the general census that the walls were the same light blue-grey that they had always been, but Naomi was sure she could see a pink stain.

A little after two years of working at the Asylum, Naomi had to quit. With noseplugs in she had been forced to breathe through her mouth, and a sea of budget, industrial strength cleaner had taken its toll.

On an early morning she had been, once again, thrown into fits of harsh, wheezing coughs; The kind which shouldn't be coming from a woman in her thirties. Her husband had slammed the coffee cup down on the table, demanding it be filled, and as the dark liquid sloshed into the mug he had made a comment;

"Would you shut up already!? You got out of work, there's no need to fake it now. Don't beat the thing to death."

In the ten seconds of terse silence he regretted his choice of words, and two after that for Naomi to realize just how much she'd learnt in kickboxing class. It took a further fifteen minutes for the neighbours to realize that the screams from next door meant they should call the cops; and three minutes for the Gotham-trained cops to show up at the door. Immediately they saw just how comfortable Naomi had gotten with blood and gore.

It took only two days for Naomi to convince her fellow inmates that the walls of their cells weren't, in fact, grey.