Trial of the Mouse

Chapter 5

TLC


“Jon…”

“Jon…than”

Blurry images greeted Crane’s eyes as he struggled to focus on the shapes in front of him.

“Jonathan…Jonathan…”

As his vision cleared up, he was surprised to find both Tetch and Becky leaning over him, trying to shake him awake.

“Ugh! Tetch? Becky?” he said drowsily, rubbing his eyes. He tried to sit up, only to wince in pain as his neck erupted into a thousand, needle-like pains near his vertebrae. He decided wisely to lie back down. “What happened? Where am I?”

“Oh, thank goodness, Jonathan. W-we thought you would never wake up.” Jervis answered, his hands wringing nervously as he talked, trying to calm himself down.

“Y-Yeah, we were getting worried,” Becky added, a bit reluctant to admit that she had cared enough to worry about his well-being. If she admitted to herself that she cared for him was starting towards territory that, quite honestly, frightened her.

The two nearly jumped out of their skin as a new, gruffer voice spoke up. “Well, it’s about time you woke up.” The man who the voice belonged to stepped out of the shadows, his face wrapped in bandages so that you couldn’t see his face. He had on a grey, tight-fitting sweater and black pants with black combat boots. A surgical mask was wrapped around his neck, coated with blood, which also coated the surgical gloves that he wore as well.

Crane, however, recognized the voice instantly. “My guess I owe you a favor for saving my life and not calling the bat, Thomas,” Jonathan grumbled, annoyed that someone now owed him a favor for some minor concussion he may have had. He had survived far worse at the hands of the bat and could take care of himself. He didn’t need anyone’s help.

Elliot chuckled. “Not quite, Professor. You have Becky to thank for that. If she hadn’t called her friend, then you probably wouldn’t be alive by now.”

Jonathan tried to turn his head to look at her, and hissed through his teeth as the needle-like pain returned.

“I’d suggest that you don’t move your head for awhile, Professor. Your neck was cracked in several places, and so was you skull. I had to do a bit of surgery to get it back in place, as well as plaster the cracks back together. Also, I wouldn’t suggest trying to go back to the lab until tomorrow.”

“And why not?” Crane snapped, irritated at this setback. He hated being away from his lab, where his entire batch of toxin was sitting there, unguarded. He just knew that someone would break in at the exact moment he was down and would steal his entire supply. And a few hours were all some of them needed to pick the lock, get inside, find his lab, and steal everything in sight.

“I’ve seen how you work, Professor. And I’m surprised it’s taken this long for problems to arise,” Hush replied, a smirk on his face as he wandered back to his own lab.

Crane sighed. Hush had already wandered away to go back to his line of work: removing faces from the bodies of different people he had killed. While he wasn’t fond of Hush’s line of work, he did respect how effective it worked. He had taught him well.

Not many people knew that the Scarecrow had coined the name of Thomas Elliot’s moniker, or that he had taught Hush most of what he knew about fear. In a way, he and Becky were on the same level, both being students he had taught and both now being criminals. However, Hush was much messier with his line of work. The one time Becky had killed a man, she had done it quietly and quickly, making detection, unless somewhere nearby, something that most people wouldn’t notice. Hush’s victims could be determined miles away from him, and could immediately be linked back to him if he was at large. And there was also the matter of the people he brought in for the more extensive surgery. Jonathan would rather keep his victims’ bodies, on the off chance he had them, as far away from his lair as possible. He knew from experience that blood didn’t come out of carpets easily.

By this time, Tetch had already fled from the hideout, not willing to stay more than he had to in the newer rogue’s lair, undoubtedly frightened by Hush’s gory handiwork, leaving only Becky brave enough to remain.

“My guess I have you to thank for saving my life, Becky, although I have to wonder why you would. Any other person would have left me for dead,” Jonathan said, resigning himself to not moving for a while. By his estimation, it would take about a day for him to recover enough to attempt to move his head, and that would just be enough to make it back to his hideout. But even then, it would take a bit of disguise to get out of Park Row, where Hush’s hideout was located, and to the Amusement Mile. Park Row didn’t have many places to hide, and it was one of the places that Batman and his robins patrolled most often, so daylight had to be his ally.

Then there was also Becky, who he would have to support as she walked.  He just hoped that he could find something suitable for her to support herself so that she wouldn’t have to always lean on him, as that would look a tab suspicious to the people walking by.

Becky looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes. “Well, I-I don’t know, really. I guess it’s because, well, you saved my life there with the Joker. I mean, I couldn’t just let you die like that, right?”

Crane was silent for some time, mulling over her words.

“Crane?” she asked, uncomfortable with his prolonged silence unless he was concentrating on his experiments, which he wasn’t, at the moment, unless it was an experiment with her patience.

“You…are quite an anomaly, Becky. You don’t act like anyone else I’ve ever met. You’ve never been scared of me, you’ve actually sprayed me in the face with my own toxin--which is quite unexpected, by the way--and not only did you actually go along with me to the heist, but you actually saved me from dying from a cracked skull,” Jonathan said quietly, barely loud enough for Becky to hear.

“Yeah, so what? You saved me from being molested by the Joker. I owed you,” she responded.

“What about the book you gave me? You didn’t have to get me anything, and if you hated me as much as you claimed, then why get me a gift?” he responded, testing her. He had a sneaking suspicion that she was hiding her feelings from him, which only made him try to dig deeper to discover what lay behind her guarded persona.

Becky was speechless. She didn’t know how to counter that. Unwilling to show him what she really felt, she replied angrily, “Well, what about you? You’ve stalked me off and on for the past five years, not to mention during our interactions with each other in the University, you’ve never once sprayed me with fear toxin, even though you had plenty of chances to do so. And not only that, but you were the one to actually gas the Joker to save my life, as well as getting angry that he was touching me.  Explain that to me, Sherlock!”

Jonathan’s grin flipped into a frown. He had no idea what to say to that. Everything she said was true. He hadn’t used the toxin on her like almost all his other victims, even though he had plenty of chances when she came for help on homework or during her time as his assistant, which often left only himself and her in the classroom, ripe for the picking to gas her and find out her latest fears. Not to mention he had gotten her a kitten and saved her life from the Joker, as the aching pain in his head and neck wouldn’t be there if not for him stopping to pick her up when the Joker had fallen.

He finally replied after a few minutes of thinking things over. “I wanted to observe you, Becky. I wanted to see how you had such resolve to not be afraid of me, and I wanted to see what it would take to break you, as my past attempt had failed miserably. I left everything I could to find out more, even disguising myself as a professor to find out. It was lucky for me that you came to my place, and not me to yours, as that would have probably caught Batman’s attention.”

Becky nodded. “Okay, I get that. But what about the other things, like the kitten, saving my life, and not spraying me when you had the chance? Which I still don’t understand, by the way. Wouldn’t breaking me be easier if you had gassed me than if you had not?”

The Scarecrow chuckled. “Maybe, but where’s the fun in that?” He winced as he shifted his head to the side to look at her from her perch on the seat she had pulled up. “ I enjoy a good challenge when it comes around. Heck, most of the rogues do. Why do you think they challenge Batman all the time? Masochism?”

She shrugged. “I guess you’ve got a point.” Inside, she was slightly flattered by him referring to her as a challenge. She thought she was fairly simple to figure out. She was a woman with cerebral palsy that happened to get picked on quite often. She thought her fears were quite reasonable and predictable. But for the Master of Fear to have trouble reading what she feared was quite a compliment, coming from him. “Okay, but what saving me from the Joker?”

He looked at her like she was slightly crazy, which was ironic since he was listed as insane and evil. “Do you have such little faith in me that I wouldn’t try to get you away from the Joker? Please. I’ve worked at Arkham for a few years while I was a professor, and I had gotten a chance to interrogate him. He’s killed thousands of people over the years he’s been around, not to mention that he has a very perverted personality that often borders bisexuality. And believe me, you do not want to end up like Harley. The poor girl’s brains have been scrambled by him to the point of no return.”

Becky winced as she remembered the file she had found on the Joker. She suddenly felt sorry for the girl. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have to deal with him day in and day out, and yet still love him in return. At least Jonathan never treated her like that. She didn’t know what she would do if she was put into that situation. Not to mention the Joker would most likely kill her because of her disease, as she had a hard time keeping up. “Alright, I get your point. But what about the kitten?”

Scarecrow shrugged. “I have no idea. It was more of whim than anything. I was trying to get you a puppy. But it was Christmas Eve and they were all sold out. So, I got you a kitten instead.”

“Aha! So you do care!” Becky crowed, finally catching him. She had a hunch that there was more to his choosing her than just because she was his equal. Everything he had done for her testified against him doing this just for the fear of someone else getting her.

“Perhaps.” He mused. “But then again, so do you, when you get right down to it.”

“Maybe,” she sighed, turning away, trying to hide her blush, not noticing that Crane was blushing as well. Trying to get her mind off of him and his words, she looked out one of the partially boarded up window. Outside, she could see a few people hurrying towards their destination.

He decided to go to a different subject. “So, how did you get a hold of my fear toxin before we met again? I recall having seen it around the crime scene near the lair,” he replied, watching with delight as she stiffened.

“H-How did you know?” she asked, uncertainty in her voice. Although she did care a little bit for him, she still knew that he couldn’t be trusted, and after everything that had happened to her, her fears were well founded. The only thing she could trust him with was not to harm her. Everything else she guarded, and would believe his words with a grain of salt.

He chuckled. “I have my ways, Miss Albright.”

She winced. She really didn’t want to answer that question. But she knew she had to if he was ever going to drop the questions about that particular day. “I…I found it in your bag with the Mistress of Fear costume.”

He smirked. He had a feeling that she had taken it that particular day, especially when he had retrieved the bag only to find the costume and no fear toxin. “So you decided to take it?” He laughed. “I’m not surprised. It seems you were drawn to the power even when we did meet, even if you hid it quite well. But then again, it’s a hard temptation to resist, isn’t it?”

Becky nodded. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She returned to her chair beside the bed, grabbing onto the walls to keep her balance, as she didn’t have her cane to steady herself. “By the way, you owe me a cane once we get back to the hideout.”

He nodded, wincing as he did so. “I have one ordered from the Penguin. It should be here in a day or two.”

“I was wondering what you were doing over there,” she said. “Thanks.”

He chuckled, closing his eyes as he started to drift to sleep. While normally he would not let himself fall asleep, he knew, by common sense and his knowledge of Psychology, that the body needed rest to get better. And he did want to sit up and walk, thank you very much.

Becky couldn’t help the rueful smile as she watched him sleep. When he was asleep, he didn’t seem to feel like the Scarecrow anymore, but just Jonathan Crane, the man who rarely appeared except to her.

It was strange. Before she had known him, she thought the Scarecrow was all he was. But now, after their confessions to each other, she really didn’t know anymore.

She sighed, before slowly nodding off in the chair, her head resting across the desk as her feet curled up into the cushion.

Hush, seeing the two asleep, gently lifted Becky up and placed her on the right side of the bed, on top of the covers.

Normally, he could care less about the girl, but the Professor seemed to trust her, so he decided he would do her a favor or two, for the sake of his old friend. Besides, he thought, it’s quite an uncomfortable position to lie on the chair.

Turning out the lights in the room, he quietly retreated back into his lab, where his ghastly project awaited his return.