Chapter Text
Cattails grow out of the reeds in the field. They sway gently in unison, left and right, watching for prey, waiting to pounce. The sky is bright and black and it watches, one ginormous pupil staring, observing.
Jonathan watches them as they dance, sitting on the jagged front porch built from twisted red wood. He doesn’t turn to look at the dilapidated house behind him. He knows nothing waits for him inside that rotten corpse. Its walls creak and moan with the wind he cannot sense against his skin. It is warm and humid. He feels cold inside.
The breeze whispers, violin strings screeching in his ears, one command:
"FIND HIM."
He stands up, and walks to the shed to the right of the farm. It’s caving in on itself, barely held together with slanted, decaying wood. Bottle flies buzz around the entrance, and only the hinges remain on the door. There are no lights inside, just thick, choking darkness and the silhouette of a shovel. He reaches one arm into the shed’s mouth, and finds the hard wood of a handle.
Going further behind the farm, he trudges through the fields of wheat that seem to grow taller and taller with every step, almost reaching his eyes by the time he finds the pole sticking out of the ground. From here, it’s just a numbers game.
Four paces forward, two left, seven more forward. He counts the steps in his mind, the path he left himself all those years ago, if he ever needed to dig up some old bones. Today is that day.
Soon enough he finds the scattered coins left behind as the sure sign, the silver and copper corroded and rusted from years of rainfall. His shovel plunges into the hard ground, and begins to dig.
What should have taken at least half an hour slips away in seconds, and soon enough the shovel hits solid wood. He throws down the shovel and sweeps the dirt from the coffin’s lid with his hands. The wood feels softer than it should, rotten and withered with time. It emanates a heat that it should not be able to make.
He doesn’t want to open it, to face the carcass inside, but his hands care not for how he feels. They grip the lid, and tug. It doesn’t budge. They tug some more. It still doesn’t budge.
Jonathan sinks his fingers into the small crevice he can manage to create, and with all his strength he gives the coffin one final, stronger pull.
The lid comes off. He opens the coffin.
If there is a body there, it’s nothing but bones, for what flows out of the coffin is a sprawling, crawling tidal wave of insects. Flies, maggots, worms, centipedes and spiders, millions of tiny legs and pincers and eyes scuttling onto his arms and up his shoulders and onto his face and over his eyes and inside his mouth, burying and digging and burrowing, invading his flesh.
There isn’t enough room for him to scream.
Then the darkness consumes him, and now he’s somewhere else, away from the bugs and dirt. It’s bitterly cold, the wind howling through his ears, and he’s looking through two eye-holes. Distant party music echoes from the high school and reverberates in his skull, the only evidence of life among the parking lot he finds himself in. He scans through rows of empty cars, searching for something that needs to meet the cold silver that he holds in his gloved hand.
Dingy flickering lampposts offer the only illumination he needs to find the two shadows interloping in the backseat of the banged up Skylark, oblivious to the nightmare hunting them. He knows those figures well. Knows what they did. What he has to do.
His arm raises, and he fires without a second thought.
The scream of shattered glass mingles with the shrieks of terror that erupt from the young couple. Bo Griggs slams the gears, and the car growls into life, veering onto the main road, swivelling in a zigzag before it spirals out of control, culminating in a piercing crash that cuts through the night air.
The planks of wood from the tree they have crashed into looks as if it has taken a bite through the distorted metal and the broken windshield, blood staining its jagged grin. Then, from the wreckage, a monster of burning heat and terrible fire rises, towering over him, consuming the victims of his vengeance.
As he watches the beast of flame engulf the body of the first woman he ever loved, he smiles, intoxicated by the catharsis. Then the fire grows taller, lurching towards him, sharp teeth emerging to swallow him whole. He embraces the blistering agony.
Another place now, and he’s speaking with such favour and passion, that even though he does not know where he is, he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
In front of him are the transfixed eyes of his students sitting in a classroom, as he lectures them about the only thing that ever mattered to him, his driving force, his purpose. Their smiling, slightly nervous faces make notes and listen with such intent that it makes his heart swell with pride. He adores his class, and he adores his job.
But then it all goes wrong, and he gets too bold, too confident, taking that one extra step that summons the nightmare that lives in his shadow, who steals all that is good and twists it until it is unrecognisable.
It was just a demonstration, he tells himself, he had no intention of hurting anyone. He didn’t mean to.
But that doesn’t stop the gun from going off, the bullet hitting the plant pot placed on the table directly in front of the first row. It doesn’t stop the shards that fly straight into the eyes of his favourite student. Fragments of her shattered glasses reflect his horror. His delight. Even this cannot stop the sickening satisfaction he feels from the cacophony of screams as chaos erupts all around him.
But then he sees the blood trailing down her butchered eyes, and he can’t take it anymore, he can’t bear to face his own ugliness.
“Make it stop, for God’s sake, make it stop!” He begs to whoever or whatever is forcing him through this twisted trip down memory lane. “What do you want? What do I need to do to make this end? Tell me!”
Then it all goes quiet, and the lecture hall fades away, replaced with dull cream walls and blinded windows. His office back at Arkham.
Only, he’s not sitting in his chair. He’s in the other seat. His leather office chair is spun away from him, the back hiding whoever - or whatever - has been dragging him through each ghastly memory.
“Enough fucking around,” he hoarsely growls, “What’s going on? What is all this?”
Rumbling laughter emerges from the chair, as its occupant finally spins around to reveal themselves.
Shape without form, shade without colour. Paralysed force, gesture without motion.
His double grins, stretching the burlap in ways it should not stretch, tugging at the cords wrapped around its neck. “Why, your apotheosis, of course.” It answers, a blurred line between a whisper and a deafening rumble.
Jonathan knows this spectre that has haunted him his whole life, the face he wears to scare his own nightmares away, his cloth armour. But never had it spoken to him before. Not like this.
“What are you?” He asks, and the Scarecrow grows more amused.
“Do you not recognise your own reflection?”
In appearance, they look very different, for the Scarecrow wears more than just the signature mask, but a black brimmed hat that stretches towards each wall. A brown coat, more like a cloak, envelopes him, hiding straw and rope and something darker for a frame. Sharp, long fingers, trembling and still at the same time, a controlled illusion. It seems to morph with the darkness surrounding them, slowly consuming the light that is growing dimmer and dimmer by the second.
Between the idea and the reality.
“…You’re a part of me.” Jonathan concludes, though he doesn’t entirely believe it himself.
A soft chuckle escapes the strawman. “Call me the shadow stitched to the soles of your feet, the id to your ego, the one who walks when you are asleep. It makes no difference. I am just as much you as you believe yourself to be.”
He cannot argue with whatever this is, for he knows it to be true. It is an irrefutable truth, something he knows within the very core of himself.
“What do you want from me?” Jonathan asks, and he cannot tell if he is afraid because it feels as if that is the only emotion he can ever know.
The Scarecrow corks its head in confusion. “You seem upset. Are you not pleased?”
A brief moment of clarity, a recognition at the absurdity of his situation, and he remembers what rage feels like. He yells, “Pleased?! You expect me to be pleased about being given a psychological mindfuck??”
“You are missing the point.” The Scarecrow rises from the chair, ever calm, its full stature towering over Jonathan. “Come with me,” it commands, “I have such terrible sights to show you.”
It moves towards the door, opening it and gesturing for Jonathan to follow. He does, and they move through the faded halls of Arkham Asylum.
There are noises coming from every direction, screams and wails, cries of desperation and pain, shrieks that tear at the vocal cords. Yet none of them reach a volume too unbearable, sounding distant, yet close, echoing and reverberating against the concrete walls. It sends a pleasing chill down his spine.
As they travel down the corridor, Jonathan glances at the open window inside each tiny cell. He does a double-take when a large, hairy black appendage passes briefly by one of the doors.
Scarecrow sees his reaction, and explains, “Ah, Harold Scabe, one of the first patients who you tested your treatment on. Arachnophobia, wasn’t it?”
At the mention of this, Jonathan peers inside, and is met with the monstrous visage of a gargantuan tarantula, its engorged torso taking up most of the cell. Its black, beady eyes do not look his way, for it is too preoccupied with the meal frantically thrashing between its fangs, pleading for mercy, for someone to save him.
Jonathan moves onto the next cell. This one houses a patient strapped to a dental chair, blood staining the bib tied to his collar. She twists her head violently to dodge the advances of the dentist before her, but she cannot move her arms to stop the gloved hand that grabs her jaw and jabs a drill into her mouth. Her screams of agony are drowned by the shrill whirring of the apparatus.
Within each cell, a new scene plays out deliciously, everything from clowns to dolls, heights to being buried alive, serial killers and children, a whole visual glossary of every possible fear was on display, just for him. Another door shows a familiar foul-mouthed inmate cowering in the corner as a gorgon with snakes for hair advances towards him, scolding him for not cleaning his room.
As he continues to observe the many manifestations of phobia, he slowly realises that not once has he felt any kind of fear or fright from what he is witnessing. Instead, a giddy delight grows and grows, swelling into delirious, depraved enjoyment. The more stretched and worn their faces, the louder they yell, the more afraid they become, the more it feeds the sick pleasure inside him, intoxicating, addictive. He wants more. He needs more.
He is transfixed by another splashing in a room slowly filling up with water, her head almost touching the ceiling, facing her imminent demise and the painful struggle of drowning that will inevitably follow, when his guide calls for him.
“So…” it begins, before outstretching its arms. “What do you think?”
“It’s…” Beautiful, haunting, marvellous, stomach-churning, incomprehensible. “…It’s something, alright. But why are you showing me this?”
“Don’t you understand? This is your handiwork. You have given fear a new meaning. You have taken what could only exist in the mind, and given it form. A true architect of terror.”
“I… did this?” He questions, although now it all comes together in his mind, the faces of those who have already tasted his fear toxin, forced to face their darkest, most powerful fears.
Between the emotion and the response.
The Scarecrow continues, his voice far more clearer now, growling passionately, “See how they unravel when faced with their annihilation! The facade of civility and propriety torn from their faces, forced to accept the most innate machinations of their humanity! No longer are they caged by their fear. They have no choice but to succumb and conquer. To evolve, or to perish.” He steps closer to Jonathan, black, empty sockets illuminated by burning orange embers that stare directly into his own. “How does it feel, to know that you are the creator of this new world?”
Something new stirs within him. Something small at first, but that soon slithers through his veins and coils around his bones, a euphoria that infuses with his blood and swims straight into his mind, his heart, his soul. For now he finally sees the beauty of his work, and feels the pride of his creation given life. This was more than sadistic wish fulfilment. This was self-actualisation.
He knows now what he has to do. This perfect, horrific reality has to be shared with the rest of the world. They all have to see the true terror that lurks inside each and every one of them. He would show them fear in a handful of dust, and then humanity would be born anew.
Between the essence… and the descent.
Jonathan Crane smiles.
“It’s ecstasy.”
-
Reality first made itself known through the gentle beeping of a heart monitor. Next came the blindingly white fluorescent lights that hurt to look directly at. Then, once he had stopped wincing in pain, Crane’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, and he soon recognised the medical setting of Gotham General Hospital.
His head felt heavy, filled with a thick darkness that swam in dizzying motions, and his throat was painfully dry. As he tried to prop himself up from the bed, throbbing pains seized his muscles, reminding him of his previous encounter, and the reason for his current condition. Angry purple bruises were splotched over his scarred arms, and all he was wearing was a white hospital gown.
“Our face!” a voice hissed inside his head, “They’ve seized it!”
Indeed, as he glanced around the room he found himself in, there was no sign of the mask, or the rest of his clothes, for that matter. If they were lucky, the hospital had them. If they weren’t, the GCPD had confiscated them. After he figured out where Jervis was, getting that mask back was second on his to-do list.
And what of Jervis? It was impossible to tell from his position if he was nearby, and there were far too many possibilities to consider. All this uncertainty should have been pumping his heart with panic and throwing him back into that familiar state of fear, and yet… nothing. He felt nothing. Nothing, except the pain of potentially condemning his dear friend to a terrible fate. Guilt, it seemed, was keen on sticking around.
Thankfully, his attention was then promptly stolen as he spotted a slumped figure sleeping in a nearby plastic chair, a beige coat folded over her lap.
“…Leslie?” he muttered, and she stirred awake, confused as to who had made the sound. After rubbing the sleep from her eyes, they widened in recognition, and a relieved smile made its way to her lips.
“Jon! Thank God, I thought you were going to be out for much longer.”
“Out?”
“You inhaled a dangerous amount of gas. You’ve been in a coma for three days.”
Ah, so that was the spark that lit the fuse that exploded his psyche and gave him the worst trip of his life. Everything he had experienced suddenly made perfect sense. He wondered if his other test subjects had experienced such marvellous nightmares.
“Why am I at the hospital?” he asked, “Apart from my overdose.”
“You’re being treated here for now until you’re stabilised, and then they’ll be sending you to Arkham.”
It wasn’t entirely surprising to hear his next destination would be no other than his previous profession, but he was hoping for at least some amount of time before he was thrown right back into the hands of Dr. Strange. “Arkham? Don’t I get a trial first?”
Though it was a completely innocuous question, it seemed to be the straw to break the camel’s back, for Leslie replied harshly, “Not when you pull off a stunt like kidnapping the chief psychiatrist! They’ve declared you unfit for trial, and you’re to be held in Arkham until you meet their standards. And we both know how long that can take.”
Of course, because why wouldn’t Dr. Strange seize the chance to examine his ex-employee under a microscope and see where all the wires crossed? Crane was starting to think this whole journey was just one elaborate joke being played on him.
“So… why are you here?” He asked, genuinely surprised by her presence.
“Because I’m worried about you, Jon,” she replied, “I don’t know what happened for you to end up this way, but I want to understand. I just want the truth.”
“You’re not gonna like what you hear,” he warned her, but she wasn’t one to back down.
“I don’t like everything I’ve already heard. But I need to hear it from you.”
He debated with himself on whether or not to come clean, for part of him still felt that strange protectiveness, as if to shield her from his true nature. But the growing familiarity of his other self argued that the truth was inevitable, desired even. If only to see her face.
“...There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Things I kept buried because I didn’t want to worry you. You’re one of the few people who treated me like a human being, instead of a punching bag or a mistake. I’m forever indebted to you for that. But you entered my life far too late to change anything. All that cruelty, all that hatred… It's been eating at me all my life. Tearing me apart and stitching me back together all wrong.”
He never liked spilling his emotional guts, yet somehow this time it came easily to him, as if the words themselves meant nothing. Then he realised just how little he could feel of their impact, where anger and guilt and pain and sorrow should have been swallowing him, instead they were little more than memories of sensations that should have been there. Almost as if something was missing inside him, something that had been stolen.
It became more obvious when Leslie responded, and her soft, defeated tone communicated her despair. “When you first came to Arkham, I knew you would struggle here. I could see it in your eyes. I thought that if I could be a friend to you, I would help steer you in the right direction. Was it not enough? Did I fail you?”
Crane frowned and shook his head, “You didn’t fail me, Lee… I’m the one who’s failed you. Every day I was trying to fight the deepest, darkest parts of me, but every night it grew stronger and stronger. And the more I fed it, the more it took over, until eventually I couldn’t live without it. It’s protected me all my life, at the cost of my humanity. But I can’t go back now. It’s more of me than I ever was.”
“But the things you’re doing… how can you justify that? How can you justify ruining the lives of so many people?”
Like a switch that had been flicked, all of a sudden Crane felt the overbearing presence of him from within, twisting his face into a disapproving scowl, moving his lips, taking his voice and using it to speak for itself.
“Ruin? I don’t ‘ruin’ lives. I transform them. I make them far stronger than they ever could have imagined. That is, if they’re willing to accept it. I’m not to blame for the stubbornness of the human condition, though humility is just as worth the lesson.”
Dr. Thompkins couldn’t understand what she was hearing, shrinking back into her chair. “Do you hear yourself? You sound just like Strange!”
“I am NOTHING like Strange!” He roared, his fist slamming against the metal bedframe. “That madman wouldn’t know humility if it hit him in the face. And trust me, I tried. No, what Strange wants is something much worse than anything I could offer.” He calmed down, returning to a hushed volume, “My gift is simply a catalyst for change. Strange wants to rig the results to his liking. That, I can’t advocate.”
And then, led forward by this new train of thought, he managed to regain control of himself and ask, “Speaking of, did you manage to find anything about him?”
Leslie did not reply at first, still shaken by his previous outburst. But she soon got back on topic, “I managed to sneak into his office while he was on lunch, and I couldn’t find anything out of sorts. Except… He had a couple of sticky notes, reminders of meetings, things like that. One of them mentioned an R&D meeting.”
“That’s it?”
“Think about it, Jon. Have you ever actually seen the Research and Development department?”
He went to respond, but the more he thought about it, the less confident he felt in his answer. Surely he would have found some signage or walked past a door during his employment, but the mental map in his memory left no space for the existence of such a department.
“Are you saying it doesn’t exist?”
“Oh, it definitely exists. It’s just not easily accessible. In other words…”
He knew exactly where she was going with this. “They’ve hidden it. But why?”
“Exactly! What doesn’t he want us to see down there?”
Illegal experiments. Inhumane conditions. Illicit colleague relations. Any answer could have been right. But more specifically…
“My guess? Whatever he wants my toxin for. When we interrogated him, he mentioned something about… identity and alter egos. I figured he just wanted to invent some better ways of lobotomising patients without the lobotomy. But now? I think he’s got bigger plans than just that. Do you think you could find a way in?”
“It’s not a question of if I could,” she explained, adjusting her glasses, “It’s whether I even should. I’ve seen the effects of your toxin, Jon, the way it tortures its victims. To think I would help someone who wants to release that into the world? Maybe you’re right about Strange, but you’re not the only one with friends in high places. I could stop this without your help.”
“And what will you do if he gets his hands on my toxin?” He argued, feeling more like he was assessing a sub-par report from one of his students then debating his own potential danger to the world. “You can study it all you like, but there’s no better source of knowledge than the one who made it. And trust me, Hugo will try to take it from me, no matter the cost.”
He noticed her eyes glancing away in discomfort, and he sighed. “Look, I’m not expecting you to agree with me. I have my own plans, and I intend to see them through. But trust me when I say you do not want my toxin in the wrong hands. Besides, which one of us is he more likely to trust with the truth? Because it sure as hell ain’t you.”
It took her a while to contemplate his reply, but a knowing grimace appeared on her face, and she relented. “Alright. I’ll trust you on this one. I’ll be on the lookout for any possible entrance to the R&D department. If I can, when they transfer you to Arkham, I’ll plant a mic on you. Try to get Dr. Strange to say anything incriminating.”
Crane scoffed in amusement, “Oh, I’m sure he’ll slip up within the first five minutes of me being back. He can’t resist a good gloating.”
Lee’s watch beeped, and she gathered her belongings. “I have to get back to work. I’ll come visit you just before transfer.”
Crane nodded, and she began to walk away. She stopped after a couple steps, before turning around.
“And Jon? Once we’re through with this whole ‘Strange’ situation, if you can’t stop yourself from walking down the wrong path…” With her head held high, her eyes narrowed in poised confidence. “Then I will come after you. I promise you that.”
It was a surreal feeling, to be threatened by his old colleague, and yet… he felt the tug of a proud smirk at the corner of his lips.
“See, that’s what I’ve always liked about you, Lee. You’re never afraid to stare fear right in the eyes.”
She soon shared in this brief moment of mutual respect, sporting a small, tired smile of her own. “That’s right. And don’t you forget it.”
After that, she turned around and walked out of the door, closing it gently behind her, her heels clicking against the tile floor, the sound growing fainter and fainter.
Oddly enough, the thought that despite this downward spiral into someone who she no longer knew, Dr. Thompkins was still looking out for him, was enough to resurrect whatever was left of that unfamiliar tenderness in his chest. Though he sensed it could no longer burn so brightly, it nevertheless stubbornly flickered with life, a candlelight in his hollow frame.
His brief contemplations were then cut short, for the tiny television hoisted in the top corner of his space had switched over to the news, broadcasting live updates of their top story:
“...On Wednesday night, the GCPD apprehended the masked criminal known as the “Scarecrow” who was responsible for helping three Arkham inmates escape two weeks ago, as well as attacking and endangering many of the staff and other inmates with chemical weapons, and kidnapping the chief Psychiatrist, Dr. Hugo Strange.
The identity behind the burlap costume turned out to be one of Arkham’s own doctors, Jonathan Crane, who had been previously fired from Gotham City University for wielding a firearm in a classroom and endangering his students. The three escaped inmates are also still on the loose, one of which being the notorious criminal Jervis Tetch.
“When questioned about the safety of Arkham Asylum and its future, Dr. Strange had this to say:
“Dr. Crane was hired almost two years ago, and for those two years he was one of our finest doctors. Arkham Asylum has long been a place of rehabilitation and change, but for those who run such facilities, it can be a difficult and often challenging career. If the mind cannot handle the pressure, that’s when… problems arise. While I cannot deny that we may have failed to properly safeguard both our staff and patients, rest assured it will not happen again. We are reviewing our hiring process and developing stricter policies on both the safety and security of Arkham Asylum, as well as offering the appropriate support services to our staff.”
A reporter out of view prompted him further. “Are you worried at all about the possibility of Jonathan Crane being transferred to Arkham Asylum?”
“Not at all. Despite my… exhilarating experience, I’m more determined than ever to prove to Gotham City that those just like Dr. Crane can become perfectly healthy citizens once more.”
“Do you believe this is yet another case of alleged “supervillainous” activity?”
“The recent wave of eccentric crime is merely a case of herd mentality. These people, for whatever reason, would have turned to crime regardless of the costume they wore. This new fascination with masked personas is simply giving them a way to express what has been inside them the whole time. I’m sure if you were offered a persona to play around with, you too would do things you would never consider doing as yourself. That doesn’t make us all bad, not by any means. There are those who wear masks and still choose to do good, after all… Isn’t there?”
That was about as much as Crane could stomach before the television remote was sent flying straight into the monitor with a loud smack.
-
Leslie Thompkins returned to her humble abode later than she had anticipated. Arkham had, once again, decided to test her resolve when one of the inmates escaped their cell and started causing a fuss in the medical wing. The guards had managed to apprehend and sedate her in time, but Thompkins was left with a lot of tidying and reorganisation to do.
Her watch read just past half-eleven, which meant tonight’s meal would, again, be microwavable.
The period of time between coming home from work and her return in the morning was reserved for relaxation, some semblance of sleep, and many hours of contemplation. Often she had debated on whether to outright quit her job and find a less stressful career, like working at the hospital or becoming a teacher. But then she’d remember those worn out, lost faces at Arkham, each one with the potential to find their footing and heal from the past, and she’d swallow her pride. To give up on them would be to give up on believing she could make a difference.
Her colleagues sometimes glanced at her with pity, muttering underneath their breaths about how unfortunate she was, that “poor woman” who had taken an unstable doctor under her wing, who was now just another criminal of Gotham’s ever-growing rogues gallery.
She scoffed at them as she walked past. Ignorant as ever. They always were.
That was the problem with Arkham. It wasn’t the patients that brought the place down, it was those running the whole operation. Very few had ever walked in the shoes of a criminal, forgotten by the majority and deemed a lost cause. They didn’t know what it was like to fight to survive each day, uncertain of where you would be sleeping, afraid to trust for fear of being used and tossed aside. The world could be ruthless if you weren’t a part of it.
But she knew. She had been there, bandaging up broken bones and sewing shut open wounds for free in the roughest parts of Gotham City. Daily her patients would visit her medical tent in the Narrows, thieves and hoodlums, prostitutes and addicts, no matter who they were, she would treat them.
Being right in the center of all that chaos and suffering, to see these jaded individuals crack a genuine smile or tell an anecdote about their life, to hear them express gratitude and offer protection from potential trouble-makers, was such a rewarding experience. She knew that in those moments she had given them the hope they were desperately searching for.
But rarely would she feel the same pride at Arkham. For a place that proudly claimed to care about its patients, its director seemed more than happy to hire those with concerning beliefs on how to treat them. The irony that Dr. Crane was now one of those people was not lost on her.
After a mildly disappointing bolognese, Leslie attended to the dishes in the kitchen sink, when she felt a draft blow against her cheek. Looking around the room, she noticed that the window next to her workdesk was open.
Carefully, she reached for the sharpest kitchen knife, before surveying the room for whoever - or whatever, had decided to drop by without her knowledge.
Slowly approaching the window, she caught a glance of a large shadow behind her in the hallway mirror, and upon closer inspection, she recognised the shape of two pointed ears.
Sighing with relief, she turned around to address her guest, “You do know I have a door, right? Honestly, if you keep coming through the windows, one of these days you’re going to give me a heart attack!”
“A door is too obvious,” her friend argued, stepping out of the shadows to reveal himself, donned in that now-familiar bat-shaped armour. He looked down towards the knife in her hand, and Leslie promptly placed it on the table.
“Sorry. Old habits.”
“At least I know you can take care of yourself,” a brief smirk graced the visible lower half of his face, before he returned to stoicism. “How is he?”
“He’s awake, but… it’s as I feared. He’s been completely consumed by his obsession.”
“Can he be treated?”
She began to pace around the room as she spoke, arms crossed. “He’s recovering from the toxin, though his amygdala’s been severely damaged. Psychologically, it’s hard to say. I want to believe so, I really do. He says he wants to stop whatever Strange is planning.”
“Then perhaps it’s not too late for him. What about the toxin?”
“From what the drug tests were able to identify, it seems to be a mix of adrenaline, cortisol and a type of hallucinogen, possibly DMT. So if you’re thinking of making a counteractive, your best bet is a combination of a benzodiazepine and an antipsychotic. That’s what they’ve been using at Gotham General.”
“And you’re certain that formula accounts for all his victims?”
“Right now, yes, but it’s possible he may make alterations to it in the future.”
He nodded in response, but said nothing more. While even before he had always been the quiet, reserved type, she had always believed that she was a close confidant for him, someone he could always turn to when in need. She supposed that was still true, since he trusted her enough to reveal the man behind the black cowl, but nowadays it felt as if she barely knew him at all, much less what he was thinking currently.
She could say the same for another person who had recently donned a costume of his own, prompting her to ask idly, “Do you think he’s telling the truth? About all of this?”
“I’ve crossed paths with Dr. Strange enough times to know he can’t be trusted. If Crane is right, this could be the key to finally stopping Hugo for good. As for Crane himself… “ The vigilante hesitated, and she could see that subtle desire for hope breaking through his facade. But it was always short-lived, and he concluded, “It’s possible he may just be acting out of his own self-interest.”
She tried to hide her disappointment, but her reaction must have been obvious, for when he next spoke, it sounded more like reassurance than instruction. “Leave the R&D department to me. You just keep an eye on Dr. Crane, and for his friends. If he’s working with them now, they’ll come looking for him eventually.”
Leslie knew, though she wished it weren’t, that his judgement was a fair assessment. Regardless of if she could accept it herself, the snarky, contemplative newbie she had grown fond of was no longer there. In his place was someone who had been consumed by his pain, and now sought to inflict it on everyone else, perhaps without even realising it.
She wanted to be angry at him. What gave him the right to just put on a mask and act however he wanted? How careless did you have to be to force the people who care about you to clean up your messes?
But then she remembered the person standing in her living room, and her anger subsided. Selfishness was never the motivation. It was an escape for those who were convinced there was no other exit.
Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.
“You know, it seems like everyone’s got a secret identity these days. Sometimes I wish I could be someone else too, just to know what it’s like-”
But as she looked in the direction of her guest, she realised that he was no longer standing there, nor was he in any other corner of the room. The wind from the window blew weakly, messing with the strands of her tied-up hair. Her words had fallen on deaf ears.
“…To disappear without a trace.”
She didn’t think she’d ever get used to Gotham’s new protector. It was like finding a part of someone you thought you already knew perfectly well. But then again, wasn’t that becoming the case for everyone these days? Besides, it wasn’t as if she didn’t know how they felt. She too had walked in someone else’s shoes, a long time ago.
Leslie slumped into the reading chair by the television, watching the city lights gleam like electronic stars. The very faint outline of her own reflection stared back at her, as if to ask the same question that had been following her incessantly.
Why not?
Maybe it was time to open up that clinic.