Chapter One

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived on his street (although, this was hardly a matter of importance to begin with; his street was a long one and many people lived there). The little girl's name was Lily and when he had turned eleven, she had been five.

Far before he had turned eleven, however, Jonathan Crane had found it hard to fit in with any of the sub-groups situated within his school. He had a knack for attracting unwanted attention and for magnetizing trouble. Jonathan was different; by the time he was nine, he understood Freud's theories of various fixations and was already dreaming of college as an escape from these tormentors of his.

Jonathan Crane was already intoxicatingly interested in fear, and how it could reduce even the strongest person to a feeble, shaking wreck.

The little girl liked to play in the park near his school. Once or twice he had seen her walking past the school gate, holding the hand of a loving mother. How sweet. He had merely dismissed her as another young child, a kid in kindergarten.

Jonathan Crane – the kid with a body that consisted primarily of knees, elbows and right angles, the kid with eyes too large for his face, the kid who had no friends – had found out one day while walking home that the girl lived in his street with her mother, Emma Altridge. He had seen her sitting on her front porch, swinging her feet idly, humming a repetitive childish song, the kind with no words and no structure. He had kept his head down, focusing only on his feet and the pavement in front of them; kids, no matter what age, he certainly didn't like. And this one was lucky enough to live in a big house all by herself (well, herself and her mother).

As he walked by, replaying the blissful scene in his head where he graduated high school and was accepted into the first college of his choice, he noticed that she had a wrapped-up lollipop, probably given to her by her perfect 2.0 parents. Jonathan's grandmother would be caught dead before she gave him any sort of candy. And this kid was, what, five, six?

He resumed his focus on the pavement and walked past her, intent on ignoring her little humming figure, the epitome of happiness…

Then the little girl was next to him, tapping his hand. Jonathan jumped – instinct: if anyone ever touched him, it usually didn't entail good intentions – and, feeling embarrassed that he had done so, turned on her. 'Didn't your mom ever tell you not to sneak up on people?' he snapped.

He waited for her to start crying. Crying was all he could associate with little kids. Instead, she just stared. Jonathan noticed she was probably cute for a little kid; big hazel eyes, dark hair in choppy bunches, freckles. She stuck out her hand – the one with the lollipop in it. 'Here,' she mumbled and he could see a tooth missing.

Jonathan rarely experienced a moment where someone wanted to freely give him something, unless it was a kick to the shins. He stared at it suspiciously. 'What's in it?' he demanded, expecting, at the very least, poison.

The little girl scrunched up her nose, trying to imagine the ingredients that could combine together to create a lollipop. 'Sugar and purple stuff?' she shrugged.

'I don't want it,' Jonathan said flatly. 'It's just something for little kids anyway.'

Of course what he had been saying was childish; he was talking to a child. Just as he expected, the little girl dropped her hand to her side and her eyes glistened with tears. But she didn't wail, like most kids her age did when they were upset. Within seconds her mother was out on the porch.

'Lily? Oh, sweetie! What are you doing out here?' The mother saw her daughter out on the footpath, ran to her and scooped her up. Jonathan took off before the kid could say anything incriminating.

For the next few weeks, he would find things on the mat outside his home after he'd walked back from school. One day it would be a few interestingly shaped rocks, another day it would be a leaf with a Crayola smiley face drawn shakily on it, as though by hands that could not quite yet grasp the crayon firmly enough…

He didn't know for sure that it was the little girl, he would reason with himself. It might just be a trick from one of the other kids that went to his school or some weirdo who thought the outside of his shabby terrace apartment looked like a great place to store items. There was no reason to feel guilty about making her cry. She was just a little kid anyway. Lots of things made little kids cry. And he had enough to deal with, namely other schoolchildren who thought bending his arm behind his back was a good way to pass the time and a grandmother that thought he was the antichrist.

Jonathan Crane rarely received gifts, even those with such a childlike complexity as rocks.

However, he couldn't deny it when he saw the dog.

When he had seen the girl – Lily – walk past his school, sometimes she would be carrying a toy dog – one of those little golden retrievers, a little dirty from playing outside. The little kid would – Lily would clutch it tightly and just like that he had been able to tell this dog meant a little more than whatever other toys she had.

Upon seeing the little stuffed dog lying on his doormat, the little ball of guilt, the one that had been gnawing at his stomach with its little rat-sharp teeth, engulfed him with surprising force.

When it came to other people, Jonathan Crane found that he felt particularly indifferent. Adults had no real time for him and he had never cared much for children his age or any other; their response was mutual.

With a sigh, he picked up the dog, looking back down the footpath, the kind stained with blood splatters from Gotham's high crime rate. Was that the little girl, sitting on her porch?

He sighed again, shifting his bag from one shoulder to the other, and trekked back down, holding the dog in his hands as if it were some precious jewel rescued from a forbidden city.

Lily was sitting on her porch, wearing a grey shirt with a cartoon cat face and the ill-fitting jeans of a five-year-old. Her chin was resting in her little hands as he wandered up to where she'd been sitting. He inhaled deeply. What were you supposed to say?

The little girl perked up a little when Jonathan appeared but then, seeming to remember the last time he'd talked to her, scowled and crossed her arms. If anything, the scowl was hilarious. If he'd used words like 'adorable', it would have been at the top of his mental list.

'Um,' he said uncertainly, cradling the little toy dog in his hands, 'is this yours?'

She looked over at him, her little mouth still set in that scowl-line.

Jonathan tried again. 'This is yours. I've seen you holding it.'

There was nothing but silence from the small girl's side of the conversation. He forced himself to be patient. This was the one kid who had bothered to spend time on him. The one person, really. That was rather touching, he supposed. He felt nervous.

'Thank you,' he tried, realizing this wasn't really going to plan. The little girl stopped scowling and her face turned a surprisingly bright red.

'S'okay,' she mumbled.

'You can have it back,' Jonathan added, holding it out to her.

'Him.'

'Oh.' Jonathan resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her and tell her it wasn't really alive. 'Him.'

She looked at the dog, biting her lip and Jonathan knew she really wanted it back. But then she shook her head quickly, resisting temptation. 'It's okay,' she said casually. 'He's yours.'

Jonathan blinked owlishly. 'Okay. If you really want.'

She smiled widely to show him just how much she really wanted him to have it and he suppressed a smile. She was missing two teeth now.

'Did, um, you get a visit from the tooth fairy?' Jonathan attempted. He felt that he should at least make some form of conversation. God this was awkward. And stupid. He could feel his palms sweating.

But the little girl nodded excitedly. 'Yup! I got a quarter.'

'Wow,' Jonathan said, feigning interest. The tooth fairy isn't real. 'You must be getting pretty big.'

Lily nodded. Then she blurted, 'His name's Muffin.'

Jonathan looked down at the little dog in his hands. 'Thank you,' he said again. 'I probably should go. I mean, it's getting pretty late,' he added, looking around at the still rather bright daylight.

However, Lily nodded fervently. 'Okay. It was nice talkin to ya.' She paused before adding, 'I'm Lily.'

Jonathan, who had been turning to leave, clearly stated his name before saying goodbye. Talking to other people wasn't his favorite thing to do. What if she asked something he didn't want to talk about?

Nonetheless, that feeling of guilt was replaced with one of quiet gratitude. Muffin may have been no more than a toy but he did help at night when it got bad and things would creep out of the closet across the shadows. Not that he'd ever admit it.

Fear. The things it reduced you to. When he had been three and his father was still alive, he would hold Jonathan close during thunderstorms and tell him that he had nothing to be afraid of, that it was all in his head. Fear was something that could be beaten.

But everyone was afraid of something. Rats, drowning, clowns… other people. There was always something to be afraid of.

Eventually, the little girl's mother came into some money (or rather, one of her relatives died and she came into a much larger amount of money), and the little girl moved away and grew up. He grew up. He would see her here and there around Gotham City, the most notable time being on the subway once, during his university years. She'd been with a few friends and, although her hair was no longer in bunches, and she'd really only been around fourteen, he couldn't stop looking at her. It really was her. One of her friends had not so quietly noticed and, giggling, had elbowed the little girl he remembered, whispering in her ear.

She'd looked at him and smiled politely – but there was no recognition in her features. Jonathan didn't smile back, merely turning his head away, trying to ignore the small, unforgivable rise of hope that had just crashed down around his ears. In his peripheral vision, he'd noticed her evident confusion.

Then a funny thing happened, one that wasn't really so funny. That same year Emma Altridge remarried and soon after Lily's fifteenth birthday, her mother was found dead on the kitchen floor, stabbed fourteen times. It had been all over the papers. The stepfather, who was quite an important businessman, had called Gotham's police force and said someone must have broken in. However, if Jonathan had read the papers correctly, the second it appeared that the mother's small fortune would go to her daughter, the stepfather suddenly became undoubtedly sure that it was Lily who killed Emma.

And Gotham's police, satisfied with ignoring the truth as long as they were paid enough, decided that was just fine.

And so the little girl who had lived on his street was taken away to a mental hospital – one far from Gotham.

And sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, the dark no longer a threat, Jonathan Crane would wonder what had happened to her.

Two years later, an asylum a state away requested Arkham's head psychiatrist to come take a look at a few of their patients.

And that was how Crane found himself inside Hardwick Asylum, bored out of his skull and bordering on a migraine. Of course. That was just what he needed right now.

A woman in a dark skirt and a navy blouse approached him, holding a chart and a smile claiming authority. 'Doctor Crane, it's an honor to finally meet you. I hear your work in Gotham is rather impressive. I'm Doctor Roselyn Perrish.' Her eyes visibly scanned over his body while he inwardly rolled his. Physical features that had been somewhat awkward in pre-teen years were now completely fine with members of the opposite sex. More than fine, apparently, from the way Roselyn Perrish smiled flirtatiously at him.

'Thank you.' He smiled back at her momentarily. Perhaps she noticed it didn't reach his eyes; however, not so long ago, Jonathan had grasped that most people thought it was simply the frosty color of his eyes rather than his internal behavior that caused them to look constantly disdainful. Naivety, at its finest.

Dr. Perrish seemed to follow that stem of belief, looking a little relieved as she looked down at her charts. 'Well, we may as well get started. Lately, Hardwick has been having a few patients here that are refusing to cooperate with their sessions – we think some of them may be –'

'You think?' he interrupted coolly as they walked down the well-lit corridor.

Her cheeks turned slightly pink but she seemed unruffled. 'Well, yes, that's my job, and yours too, I believe.' He kept his face impassive. He felt like his skull was shrinking around his brain, squeezing it like an orange being juiced, and when that happened it was always that little bit harder to bite back what he wanted to say in situations where he knew he had to keep his composure.

Dr. Perrish soldiered on. 'Some patients aren't giving us many clues as to what they're actually experiencing – some just,' she struggled to find a word to describe it, 'clam up.'

The pain in his temples blossomed now, begging to be noticed, begging to outmatch the throbbing in the back of his skull.

'What I meant,' Dr. Perrish added quickly, noticing his distant expression, 'is that a few seem very introverted whenever sessions commence and, well, one of our psychiatrists, Doctor Mallart, was just fired for –' She turned a little pink again before continuing with, 'sexual harassment on one of the girls and since then, a few of her companions are reluctant to make any progress so we're considering a transferal –'

He refrained from glaring at her ineptitude. God, he could use an aspirin… 'And some of these patients are?'

'Well,' said Dr. Perrish, flipping through her chart hastily, seeming to fathom just what Crane was thinking, 'there's Zoe Cambers – she's –'

He blocked her words. Really, he'd only asked for meaningless information so she could drone on and on about something for a while and he could avoid her asking him out for a while longer.

'– Lily Altridge, who – well, she stabbed her mother a few years back and –' Dr. Perrish seemed to realize that Dr. Crane wasn't walking next to her but had stopped a few feet back, staring at her.

'Doctor Crane?' she asked uneasily.

'Altridge. What does she suffer from?' he queried.

'Oh – well, you might have heard of her. Caused quite a big stir in Gotham. The patient murdered her mother,' Dr. Perrish replied, sounding bemused. 'We're not really sure what's wrong with her –'

'What's keeping her here then?' Crane asked, raising an eyebrow.

'The fact that she can't admit she killed her mother,' said Perrish. 'She's warped it around in her head so she isn't to blame.'

'And what if she's innocent and you made a mistake?'

'No one's innocent, Doctor Crane.'

'Certainly not after Doctor Mallart's activities.'

Dr. Perrish's lips formed a tight line and Crane felt satisfied.

'May I see the patient?' he continued calmly. Perrish's brow furrowed. 'I – sure, I suppose,' she said, sounding rather unprofessional as she turned a corner and hastily clacked her heels past six doors.

'She's… in here,' Dr. Perrish clarified lamely and once again Crane inwardly rolled his eyes before peering into the small glass window at the top of the door.

His stomach rolled a little in excitement, a rather shocking event to be happening in an outer-state mental asylum. Although the girl in the room looked forlorn and lost, he could see the five-year-old shining through clearly.

She was in a red jumpsuit, one that was too baggy for him to get a clear outline of her body, and her hair hung around her face, nearly down to her ribs. Her hazel eyes were focused solely on her crossed feet and her hands lay in-between the diamond of space her legs had created. Her forearms, he noticed, where she had pulled up the sleeves looked delicate and freckled.

Lily.

'Well, I suppose you're right. Definitely insane. Move her to Arkham,' Crane decided and walked swiftly away before Dr. Perrish could question him.