A/N: This story was written for the Free For All Fic For All-or FFAFFA for short-over on the Ask the Squishykins tumblr, wherein Twinings and I offer ourselves up to fill as many fic prompts as humanly possible with stories ranging in length from 100 to 16,000 words. The current round runs until May 7th, 2014, so if you'd like a fic written to your custom specifications, please don't hesitate to drop by and ask for it! :)
Prompt: Rework and develop Becky Albright's character and origin until you feel she is an interesting character. In other words, make Becky the character she should have been.
Extremely long, rambly author's notes that you can totally skip: This prompt is brilliantly cruel. Given how little development Becky was officially given, it's a bit like asking me to give a teapot internally consistent personality and motivations. Her canon traits are very limited: "plucky", "brave", "bullied", "in law school" and "walks with a cane." The first two were descriptions placed on her by an unreliable narrator—Jonathan Crane—and weren't shown in a meaningful way. After all, there's nothing brave about not being afraid if you never have to overcome your fear. The last two traits were represented visually by the artist and mattered little to her characterization/actions. The trait in the middle—bullied—mirrors Crane's backstory so fully it had no unique features to differentiate her experience from his.
Reworking her was hard. Especially since I'm pretty devoted to continuity. I love headcanons, but when I write them they've got to grow directly from the source material, and I prefer to pack in as much from as many different stories as possible since that gives me more to work with. Unfortunately, Becky only has one story, her canon traits are few, and there isn't much in fandom either, though it does sweep her disability under the rug often enough that it makes me uncomfortable.
All that said: contrary to what the prompt suggests, the events of New Year's Evil: Scarecrow are not Becky's origin. The story is her first and last appearance, but its events are told from Jonathan Crane's perspective. In the narrative, she begins and ends with him because, ultimately, it's his story. She's a prop, something to be acted upon and then used to bludgeon Crane with the moral, in much the same way Barbara Gordon was in The Killing Joke. So, my highest priority in writing this was make it Becky's story in which she's the focus, not set dressing. I do not know if I succeeded, but I gave it my best damn shot.
Finally, on a more technical note, while it's more of a between-the-panels sort of prequel thing, this story remains mostly compliant with the events of the one-shot. There are a handful of things I've changed for the sake of establishing believable motivation for the characters involved, Jonathan included, but you can read this, then immediately go read New Year's Evil: Scarecrow without straining yourself to make it fit. I hope.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.—Mark Twain
The first bad storm of October threatened Gotham City, the promised rain heralding the beginning of a dismal, chilly autumn. Becky Albright didn't have to check the weather reports or a farmer's almanac to know what lay around the corner. The telltale ache in her bones that woke her up screamed from the inside out of her that it promised to be a nasty, blustery day: cold, penetrating and the sort she hated most. It meant dragging her winter coat out of the back of the closet, layering scratchy tights under her jeans and her perfume getting drowned out by the overpowering stench of the menthol analgesic cream she'd have to slather on her skin to ease the inevitable stiffness in all the parts of her that had to move around in the cold.
Clutching her itchy, moth eaten afghan to her chest, Becky sat up. If her knees had been hinges, they would have creaked out a desperate plea to be oiled, warning jolts of pain all the way to her ankles the evidence of their protest. In the dim morning light, she fumbled for her wristwatch, draped over the broken alarm clock on her nightstand that she hadn't bothered to throw out. With a squint, she made out the outline of the hands on the watch dial. Not even six yet?
The watch clattered on the bedside table, the noise accompanied by Becky's sigh. The blankets fell on the floor next to the bed in a heap as she stretched and worked her fingers through her hair to untangle some of the more pronounced knots. It felt like a leg brace sort of day, the first of many unless she missed her guess. Just what she needed. A friendly, achy wake-up call from her body always trumpeted the first real chilly weather of the year, and with the last warm days went all hope of being able to function with just a cane—at least, not as well as she had been. There were other, even more bothersome things to be considered with winter looming. Numbers tallied themselves on a blackboard in her head as she put her feet in her fuzzy gray bunny slippers: how much was in her bank account, how many work hours she'd been pulling in lately, how many more pain pills she had left…
The bottom line didn't look good. While she'd done her best to put some money away over the spring and summer months, hoarding nickles and dimes and jealously guarding them like an animal storing up for the winter, pesky things like food and rent kept eating away at her meager savings no matter how many coupons she clipped or pennies she pinched until they squealed. If it weren't for that stupid human need for shelter and sustenance, she would have been doing fine. As it was, if her math was right, she had enough medication left to get her through the next ten days—fifteen if she worked to stretch it and skipped a day or two—and enough in the bank to cover one more refill if she ate nothing but canned soup for the last few days of the month. With the weather turning cold, there would be no more muscling her way through with one prescription every two months; she'd have to cut back on every unnecessary expense to scrape together enough cash to keep herself in refills until March if she wanted to have any hope of staying in school and keeping her job.
There was a big mess of irony for you. She needed a job to keep her meds, her meds to keep her job, and both to stay in school so she could get a job that was good enough to come with insurance to cover her meds. Whoever made the rules for getting into any income bracket higher than "poor" sure had a lousy sense of humor. She half hoped someone shot them for it.
Becky shrugged into her ratty bathrobe and shuffled across the apartment to the kitchen portion of the kitchenette. The fridge hummed its staccato hum when she opened it, the bulb flickering a few times before the light stabilized. Nothing but a ketchup bottle and a jar of pickles sat on the top shelf, and the pickles looked yellow and sad. The fridge door shut, the rubber lining the inside making a squishy sound. With a brief glance at the Mr. Coffee on the counter, Becky debated whether or not she wanted to brew a pot. Being awake and alert today was important, she thought with a frown, but would it be better to expend the precious energy necessary to make the coffee to be awake now, or save that energy for later?
Skipping the hassle of making coffee seemed the wisest course if she wanted to make it through the day without winding up in a bathroom stall somewhere crying from exhaustion before it was over. Becky turned on the tap and filled a glass with water instead. It tasted rusty, and the flavor made her jaw hurt right behind her back teeth, but she choked it down with a grimace. Whose pipes in the building needed replacing this week? And would it finally alert the building manager to the meth lab four doors down? She smiled wanly and swallowed her pills. Probably not.
The cupboards were almost as bare as the fridge, she discovered upon opening them and taking a peek at their contents. Breakfast was destined to be a sad affair; plain oatmeal. At least it was instant and saved time and effort, that was something. It wasn't even so bad with a pinch of cinnamon sprinkled in. It would have been better with milk and sugar, but thinking like that was the road to feeling sorry for herself and she couldn't afford that today.
Right. Today. She poked at her oatmeal with her spoon, smushing some of the lumps, and glanced across the room to her easy chair where the outfit she'd put out the night before lay. The dark thought of how sinister they looked there occurred to her, all neatly laid out like someone had taken a seat and disappeared into the ether, leaving nothing but their clothes behind. It was an absurd idea, that empty fabric could look threatening and suggest a phantom visitor in the night who had settled in her chair to watch her sleep, but in the months since her encounter with the Scarecrow she'd found lots of things had the potential to be frightening if you tilted your head just right and thought about it hard enough—or sometimes if you didn't think about it at all. The intrusive thoughts weren't her least favorite souvenir of that day when he'd filled the University Library with fear toxin, but they were close to the top of the list.
When she scraped the last of her oatmeal from her bowl, Becky put it in the sink and rinsed it out. On her way to the bathroom, she stopped to smooth the front of the wool blazer her mother had helped her pick out from her own wardrobe. It would hang on Becky's frame loosely, a size too big, but it was the best she could do on short notice. She hoped it'd be good enough. More than that, she hoped it made her look trustworthy. Credible. Believable. That was the important one.
She tried to push the worries about not being convincing aside. Panicking now was pointless; that could come later, if it had to. Becky slipped into the bathroom and hit the light switch. The shower knob squeaked when she gave it a twist, water dribbling in a weak stream from the shower head. She leaned her hand on the wall above the toilet and stepped over the edge of the bathtub, careful not to lose her balance. One of these days she was going to slip and fall if her landlord never bothered to install the support bar he'd been promising her since she moved in; and then, she thought dryly, she could sue him for all that money he didn't have.
The water that trickled down her back was lukewarm as always, not the scalding, relaxing heat she hoped for and never got every morning. The muscles of her jaw tightened as it ran down her legs, teasing with the possibility of pain relief without delivering much of anything at all. If she'd had more time, she would have boiled a few pots of water and taken a bath, but her stove took forever to heat anything to a decent temperature and there never seemed to be that much time.
What little warm water had been in the pipes to begin with ran out much faster than she wanted. She turned off the shower and waited, shivering, for the water around her feet to drain enough that she wouldn't slip on stepping out of the tub. Her footing was sure when her toes touched the tile floor and she reached for a towel. After wringing out her hair and sweeping away most of the water on her skin, she wrapped the ragged terrycloth around herself. Becky opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and pushed pill bottles this way and that, looking for her bottle of concealer hidden somewhere amidst the clutter. It hadn't been used in so long that the cap had crusted shut but she opened it and gave it an inquisitive sniff. It seemed okay.
With her pinkie, she dabbed some on the bridge of her nose and started to blend away the scatter of freckles that everyone said made her look thirteen. A face graced with eternal youth wasn't a bad thing, per se, but today of all days she needed to be taken seriously. Her unskilled fingers did a clumsy job of clearing her complexion, but it wasn't too bad. She brushed her teeth and styled her hair, then gave her reflection a once over. She'd overshot the goal of looking her age by about five years, but twenty-six was a better alternative to looking like she was still into Lip Smackers and lollipops.
As satisfied with her appearance as she was likely to get, Becky flipped off the bathroom light and closed the door behind her, mindful to make sure the latch bolt caught so it wouldn't pop open later. The only thought in her head was how she liked the rough texture of the carpet piling against the bare soles of her feet as she turned to face her bed. It was a silly, inconsequential thing; one of those ordinary little sensations secretly tucked in every moment of the day, just part of the backdrop of an average human life, and it came to a disorienting screeching halt when her eyes lit on her mattress.
Reality slowed to a crawl. Becky's throat contracted, her mouth producing a scream that she felt on her tongue more than heard. Her heart hammered in her chest, pulse like thunder in her ears and her lungs emptied of air. The distant, hysterical thought of how normal everything had been just seconds earlier and how unfair it was that it wasn't so anymore floated across her brain. Her mind only processed fragments of what she was seeing at a time, refusing to make sense of any more than that. Black suit. Crossed legs. Hands clasped over his knees. Gun. Gun. He had a gun.
"Good morning, Miss Albright."
He isn't Crane, he isn't, these echoes of words that should have made her feel better but didn't ricocheted in her head. Becky collapsed against the door, unaware that her knuckles were turning white around the doorknob she still hadn't released. She knew his pinched face, the curls of his obvious toupee, the deep creases of his jowls. Jonathan Crane's lawyer and, given the flash of metal and leather under his jacket that revealed a shoulder holster, enforcer sat on her bed. He perched there, in his sleek black suit, with his back to her teddy bears and the afghan her own grandmother had crocheted crumpled under his immaculate, shiny black shoes: the very picture of Something That Did Not Belong There.
"Were you planning on giving a formal statement to the police this morning?"
She couldn't make her lips move. She couldn't even blink. Her mind raced in pointless circles, groping for some thought to hold onto that wasn't an unanswerable question. How did he get in? The door was locked. The fire escape? No, the window was closed. Did anybody hear her scream? If they did, did it even matter? Nobody would call the police in this neighborhood. Why was he here? What was he going to do to her? Was he going to hurt her? Torture her? Kill her? What would dying feel like?
"Miss Albright…" He cracked his knuckles, the joints giving a series of snaps like bubble paper, and tented his fingers. She noticed his nails were as well manicured as the rest of him. It was insane to do so, but she did. "I hate having to repeat myself."
Becky swallowed hard. She dug deep to find the will to overcome her frozen muscles. Getting her head to shake even a little felt like pulling taffy.
"Good." He stood up, brushed some lint off his shoulder and buttoned his jacket. Of course it had only been open for the sake of the implied threat. Of course it had.
If she had intentionally invited him in for tea, he couldn't have left the apartment more casually. Becky slid down to the floor, her fingers still tight around the doorknob, and focused on slowing down her breathing. The DA said she'd be safe. She said Crane couldn't get to her. She said she had nothing to worry about. She lied.
There was no way to know how long she sat there, slumped against the door and struggling to remember the few coping skills she'd been taught to use in the case of a panic attack. Breathing. Counting. Something like that. Happy place. It was all jumbled. There was the weight of an elephant on her chest, squashing her lungs and squeezing her heart; she couldn't think of anything but that. Her vision got blurry, the edges starting to go dark. Pullittogetherpullittogetherstoppanickingthisisn'thelpingstoppanickingstopstopstop! She felt stupid and helpless to combat the torrents of panic that washed over her. Do something!
Her body shook hard as she crawled to her easy chair and pulled herself up off the floor. She had to get dressed. She had to…she had to…what? Go. She had to go. She'd figure out where on the way. The skirt zipper caught her fingers, the buttons of her blouse refused to push through their holes in her quivering hands. Screw it! She left her shirt half open and pulled on her coat. There wasn't time to put on the braces; the cane would have to do.
Becky staggered down the hallway and to the elevator. Before she realized what she was doing, the fingers of her free hand were searching her pockets for loose change. Her plan of action came on so fast she didn't register it taking hold and putting reins on her panic. The payphone in the lobby. God, she hoped it had been repaired. She hoped her mouth could make words by the time she made it there. She hoped someone was at the DA's office to take a message this early in the morning.
Her stomach dropped out when the elevator rattled its way toward the ground floor. She held tight to the feeling; something unpleasant to focus on that wasn't her terror was still something to focus on. The doors lurched open and she burst into the quiet lobby. A few blue collar workers were heading out to work. She barely noticed them, all she saw was the payphone, gleaming blue and silver near the double doors that led out to the street. It wasn't in use and it didn't have an "OUT OF ORDER" note taped to it anymore. She had just enough change to make two calls. Someone, somewhere, had to be watching out for her. Whoever that higher power was didn't seem to have a problem with letting some thug scare her half to death, but they were at least going to let her do something to keep it from happening again.
"Information, what city please?" The operator's voice was so calm it made her head spin. With her world rocking in front of her eyes, it was hard to remember that, in other parts of the city, there were people who weren't in the middle of an anxiety attack.
Her voice came out in a croak, forcing its way past a lump that was trying to close off her throat. "Gotham City. I need the office of the District Attorney."
"Yes, ma'am."
She listened hard as a prerecorded message railed off the numbers to her twice. Her hands quaked around the telephone and it took all her concentration to retain any information at all. Becky repeated the digits over and over in a strained whisper to keep from forgetting them after she hung up. She dialed them and waited for a dial tone. It couldn't have taken more than ten seconds; it felt like an hour.
Unsurprisingly, no one human answered, but she navigated the automatic telephone system with a few punches of the keypad. Finally, she got to an answering machine for the DA's office.
"Miss Van Dorn, this is Becky Albright," she breathed into the receiver, "I'm sorry. I've changed my mind. I can't help you."
Trembling, she put the phone back on the hook and lurched away. The receiver didn't seat correctly. It slipped from where she'd put it and swung from its cord, an ominous pendulum that clicked and crackled as a voice filtered weakly from the earpiece. "Hello? Becky, are you there? I just got into the office. Becky?"
Becky didn't hear.