Happy Easter, readers! Not that this fic has a single thing to do with Easter, except for the casual mention of rabbits. Please enjoy it anyway.
Some Hatter/Scarecrow slash lies ahead, just in case you missed that in the summary.
For a mad genius responsible for the kidnapping and brainwashing of dozens of people, Jervis Tetch slept pretty peacefully most nights. His dreams were often lively and colorful to the point of being psychedelic, but they were friendly dreams, full of rabbits, tea, dormice, and, most importantly, Alice. And even when his dreams did take him to the bone-littered lair of the Jabberwocky or the throne room of the Red Queen, more often than not he was rescued by his beloved Alice before anything terrible beset him.
So a dream filled with screaming was something foreign to Jervis.
Especially screaming that was most definitely not his own, not unless he'd lost his Adam's apple while asleep.
Jervis rolled over and opened his eyes. His dreams faded into vapor and blew away. The screaming did not stop. If anything it grew louder, now that it was not being filtered through Jervis' dreamscape.
Jervis sat up and listened to the screams wax, wane as the screamer ran out of breath, and then wax again as the screamer gathered a new lungful. He shivered and pulled his robe tighter. There was no way he'd be able to sleep with that noise.
Since lying in bed and hearing an unknown woman shriek wasn't a particularly appetizing way to spend a night, Jervis decided to get up and investigate. He let his legs dangle over the side of the bed before dropping down. The floor was freezing to the touch—the entire house was all-but-unheated, and Jervis' sleeping quarters were a low priority—and Jervis hastily retrieved his slippers.
His feet clad in rubber-soled comfort, Jervis padded across the floor and opened the door. The volume of the screaming ratcheted up considerably. Jervis winced. Something told him he was not going to like what he would find if he followed the sound waves. That "something" was called common sense.
"I should go back to bed and mind my own business. If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does," Jervis said to himself.
He stepped out into the hall.
"I give myself good advice," he scolded, "but I very seldom follow it!"
It wasn't too late. He could return to his bed, wrap himself up in sheets and quilts, and stuff his fingers into his ears. That would solve his problems, and it was much safer than sticking his nose into places it would likely be bitten off.
Yes, that was exactly what he'd do. He'd turn around and forget all about the screaming. It was none of his business, and even if he wanted to, he was in no position to make it his business. Not that he had any intention of interfering! No sir, none whatsoever. Not Jervis. He had no desire to intervene on any young lady's behalf, not even if that woman was helpless, and blonde, and so very much like his Alice.
But she wasn't any of those things! (Beside helpless, that was.) There was no more reason to believe she was blonde than to believe she was a brunette, or even some unnatural shade. Plenty of girls nowadays had pink hair, and Alice would certainly never do such a thing to her perfect locks.
Jervis shook his head. He was acting foolish. That woman, whoever she was, was most certainly not his Alice. She might have been a teacher, a doctor, an astronomer who discovered black holes, and those were all very fine things, but there was no chance Jonathan would be cruel and heartless enough to seek out Jervis' one solace and…and…and torture her!
Was there?
Jervis raised a hand to his mouth and nibbled on his thumbnail. He knew perfectly Jonathan was exactly that cruel and heartless.
"I'll just take a quick peek. If it's Alice, I will…think of something. Otherwise, I will leave well enough alone."
Nodding in agreement with himself, Jervis pressed himself against the wall and continued to creep down the hall in the manner he imagined Batman would do. Minus the fluffy slippers and robe, of course.
The hall opened into a brightly lit space that had been designed as a kitchen. Not that any cooking equipment, cabinets, or shelves had ever been installed. Construction had been aborted on the whole building months ago, after the Joker had killed two carpenters and a painter, and the room's original purpose had never been realized. Now, instead of a sunny breakfast nook for a middle-class family, the kitchen had been repurposed into a laboratory slash torture chamber.
And, Jervis reminded himself, a place off-limits, verboten, not to be entered under any circumstances unless he wanted to learn what his deepest, darkest fears were.
"Then I won't enter, not technically," Jervis whispered.
Keeping his feet firmly set on the safe side of the threshold, Jervis peeked around the corner of the doorframe. The work station Jonathan had set up covered most of the unfurnished kitchen, with cheap scavenged folding tables supporting everything from racks of test tubes and beakers to piles of scientific journals and lab notes. In the jumble of chemistry, the two humans were easy to miss, and it took Jervis a second sweep of the room to find Jonathan and the bound woman he was hunched over.
Now that he'd found the source of the dreadful screaming, Jervis stared at her. She was only visible from the bosom up, as a table set in front of her blocked everything lower. Even with such a limited view, Jervis still saw enough to twist his stomach like a clown's balloon animal and to turn his blood cold. Despite his earlier consternation with himself for jumping to conclusions, it seemed like everything he'd imagined about the woman was correct. She was young, and blonde, and her fear-drawn face was just like the one he expected to find in Wonderland.
"My dear Alice!" Jervis exclaimed, forgetting himself and his intention to remain hidden.
Jonathan Crane, who had been leaning over the woman, taking notes, did not move when he heard Jervis' cry. Instead, he finished scribbling the sentence he'd been working on and then tucked the pencil behind his ear. Once the pencil was secure, Crane flipped his notepad closed. It was not until he had placed the notepad on the table that he slowly turned to look at the intruder standing in the doorway.
"What are you doing out of bed, Tetch?" Crane asked languidly. "I don't interrupt you when you're working, and I expect the same courtesy."
"I couldn't sleep," Jervis explained. "She woke me up."
Crane looked down his nose at the duct-taped, sobbing woman. "Would you like me to gag her?"
"I'd prefer," Jervis took a steadying breath, "I'd prefer you let her go."
"Would you now? Isn't that a little selfish, considering all the work it took to bring her here, and all the data I can gather from her? I was kicked numerous times in the shins, and she managed to bite me. You wouldn't have me suffer harm for naught, would you?" Crane said.
"Of course not, Jonathan. It's just, she reminds me of someone."
Crane smirked. "Let me guess. Alice."
Tetch nodded his head a single time.
"She isn't, you know. Her name is Jennifer Jessel. She was on the evening news for attacking her neighbor's dog, not for falling into a rabbit hole or for eating magical cake."
"I understand that she isn't Alice, of course she's not, that would be impossible, her name isn't even Alice. She just looks like Alice," Jervis replied.
Crane bent closer and studied the woman's face. "I don't see the resemblance. That woman of yours, Alice Pleasance, has got an entirely different nose. And, do correct me if I'm wrong, her blonde didn't come courtesy of color treatments. Cheap color treatments, if those roots are anything to go by."
Jervis shifted from foot to foot. "Yes, yes, Jonathan, she doesn't look exactly like Alice. Just enough to make me uncomfortable."
Crane straightened and again faced Jervis. "I see. Since she means so much to you, I'll let her go."
Jervis nearly sunk to the floor in relief. He'd been expecting Jonathan to argue, maybe threaten him with fear toxin, or, worst case scenario, actually poison him for having the gall to interrupt.
"If you'll take her place."
Jervis' tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he had to wrestle it free before he could speak. "I don't believe I heard you correctly."
"I think you did." Crane swept a grandiose arm across the room. "This woman is an excellent subject; she wears her cynophobia on her sleeve. Just look what a simple picture of Lassie does to her."
Crane reached over to the table upon which he'd rested his notepad, and picked up a sheet of paper. He showed the paper first to Jervis—it was the image of a collie, though Jervis didn't know if it was the original Lassie—and then held the paper up in front of the woman. She could not have screamed louder if Crane had shown her an autopsy photo of dismembered children.
"You don't find screams like that every day," Crane said.
Jervis clamped his hands over his ears. "And I don't understand why you'd want to!"
"You have your fairytales, I have my research. I don't understand your obsession, and I can't expect you to understand mine. Now it's time for you to make your decision. Whose screams do you prefer: hers, or your own?"
Jervis was a man of many talents—tea-brewing, millinery, instigating massive manhunts—but making sane and rational decisions wasn't one of them. The longer he stalled, and the longer he watched the shuddering woman, the less he saw Jennifer Jessel, dog abuser with a rather beaky nose, and the more he saw sweet, innocent Alice. And the more he saw sweet, innocent Alice, the harder it became to go back to bed and let Jonathan have his fun.
"Can't we reach some other agreement?" Jervis ventured.
"Such as? Maybe I should let her kick and bite you, and then we'll see how much you feel like sacrificing for her."
"Or I could find you someone else. Someone most definitely not Alice."
Crane snorted. "I would lose my prize, and then spend all of next week waiting for you to find the most repulsive male in Gotham, so even in the most tangled corner of your sad little mind, you could not mistake him for Alice. No, I do not accept those conditions. Either you hop into the chair like a good little March hare, or escort yourself out."
Jennifer had the fear of dog in her, but at that moment she wasn't being haunted by Cujo, Beethoven, Rin Tin Tin, or Scooby-Doo. Her mind thus free of images of vicious talking sleuth-hounds, she was able to relay some simple but very important information to her toxin-clouded brain. She was not, at that moment at least, being tortured, and the short man shaking, sweating, and about to throw up in the doorway was to thank. And, if she had processed correctly what the Scarecrow had said—not that she would place money on the odds—the same welcome intruder might be willing to offer himself up as tribute to the god of fear in exchange for her release.
What a guy.
All he needed was a little encouragement.
"Help! You gotta help me! I just want to go home and go to sleep and forget all about this! Please!" Jennifer screamed.
Jervis shrank back as the woman's pleas stabbed him. She sounded just like his Alice had when she'd discovered him lurking in her apartment. Most of the words were even the same. The "please" and "help" were certainly familiar enough.
"Jonathan…" Jervis moaned, clutching bunched fistfuls of his robe.
Crane responded by humming the theme for Final Jeopardy. Jervis howled like a wounded, lonesome coyote.
"Your hourglass has run empty, Tetch. Take her place, get out, or be forcibly removed by my foot," Crane said.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" Jervis asked.
"Lewis Carroll quotes now, really? Fine, I'll play along. That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Or some such rubbish."
"I don't much care where—"
"All of us, her included, know that is a lie. You do care, or the decision wouldn't be giving you seizures. So do you want to spend the night curled up warm in your bed, or do you want to spend it doing this—" Crane jammed an image of a snarling police German shepherd into Jennifer's face, and she forgot all about begging for rescue.
"One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others," Jervis whispered.
Thanks to Jennifer's magnificent set of pipes, Crane couldn't hear whatever it was Jervis had said. Reluctantly, he took away the dog photo and let Jennifer wind herself down. Once she was sobbing quieter, Crane requested a repeat from Jervis.
"I'll take her place. Let Alice go, and take the Hatter instead," Jervis said. He hung his head.
Crane scrutinized Jervis for a moment and then said, "I'm surprised at you. Nobility never was one of your strong suits."
"How puzzling all these changes are. I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another," Jervis replied miserably.
"Maybe your newfound selflessness will sustain you through the night," Crane said. He untied the ropes and stripped off the duct tape that kept Jennifer bound. The moment he undid the last rope, she leapt up from the chair and then, like an animal in a cage, bolted for the farthest corner.
"I'll see her out," Crane said. "While I'm gone, make yourself comfortable."
It took Crane several minutes, three feints, and a surprise grab at Jennifer's long, blonde nest to finally get a hold on her. She began screaming and thrashing again, and unencumbered by ropes or tape, she proved to be a wildcat. Crane had to apply a chokehold before he could drag the woman from the room.
Once Crane was gone, Jervis was left to his own devices. His mind immediately turned to escape. The door was right there—Crane, tempter that he was, had left it ajar—and even the window, with its potentially leg-breaking drop, looked like a viable way out.
Only Jervis knew better than to try. There were reasons he hid out with Crane if the opportunity presented itself: Crane had a reputation, and he knew how to defend himself both from the forces of good and evil. People, with few exceptions, did not mess with the Scarecrow. And those that did it once often never got the chance to do it again. Crane was a ruthless genius with an arsenal of chemical weapons, a man who had bottled and weaponized fear, and not someone Jervis wanted after him. It was better to obey Crane and get it over with than to be hunted by him.
Resigned, Jervis plodded over to the chair that had held Jennifer and took a seat. The chair was still warm from her body heat. Jervis shuddered.
A few minutes later Crane returned. He saw Jervis sitting in the chair with his head down, like a child in a well-earned timeout, and nodded in agreement with the situation. Perfect.
"Ready, Tetch?" Crane asked as he approached.
"As I'll ever be, I suppose," Jervis replied.
Crane crouched down in front of Jervis and lifted the man's head with a finger beneath his chin. Jervis looked away. Crane continued to stare, unblinking, and Jervis eventually became so uncomfortable he met Crane's eyes.
"You asked me before if there wasn't some other agreement we might come to. I've thought about it, and I've decided on an acceptable one," Crane said.
"Have you?" Jervis peeped.
"Indeed. Though this new arrangement retains an important element of the old one."
"What piece might that be?"
Crane leaned forward until he and Jervis were nearly touching noses.
"You screaming in this chair."
Before the seated man could reply, Crane pressed his lips against Jervis'. It was not a bruising, possessing kiss, just a very long one. By the time Crane pulled back, Jervis felt hypoxic.
"When I'm finished with you, I hardly think little blonde girls will be very interesting anymore."
The End
Thanks for reading.
As with my other fics that feature dear Jervis, some of his lines are borrowed from Lewis Carroll and his works. The title likewise is inspired by a Carroll quote.