Doctors came like the men to the labyrinth, searching and hearts beating. It would be his duty to save them from evil, or perhaps it was his duty to show them the vile nature of man, because that was what he was wasn't it? He was nothing but a monster, a minotaur chained and unfree, but within his mind a larger labyrinth existed and he was not alone. He had a friend, a replica, and he told him secrets and they would laugh together.
Yet even they knew this was an illusion; a mind can soar but it can only imagine. It cannot conjure or create the pleasure of actual freedom, actual touches and scents. Only real life could give that to him, but he, Jonathan Crane, a human Asterion had constructed his own Cretan maze to imprison himself and only he could prophesize that a redeemer would come and set him free. The second Asterion, the being known as Scarecrow lingered in his mind and sometimes he would break the binds that kept him within the labyrinth and he would walk into the florescent sun of Arkham and grin widely at the people he met, watching their faces cloud in panic when he spoke because it was obvious when Jonathan was speaking and when it was Scarecrow.
It was those times that Jonathan's medicine was re-evaluated and the doctors would blanch at the amount of drugs he was taking to keep Scarecrow under wraps. Jonathan would just laugh at their diagnoses and scribbles because he held a clandestine knowledge. Intelligence and insanity, although not often thought in conjunction of one another, never was juxtaposed. Madness was an inherent sign of genius, but often times it was overlooked because the signs were so minor.
Clinical depression, it marred the psyche of most writers and speaking of which, what about all those nasty little characters—can one say Multiple Personality Disorder? People, creative artisans, they just knew how to control, vent and harness their madness to their purposes. The ones most vulnerable to the blackness of insanity were those that tried to understand it, control it—doctors like Jonathan Crane who had started out trying to help people, to understand the mind.
In the end he wanted to understand himself. Southern grown and raised like a pumpkin in the straw, he had been born to an unwed mother in Georgia and he had suffered his whole life for the mere fact he existed. His great grandmother was a Baptist whose bible served both for worship and his own personal damnation. He had never heard of God's love, only wrath and hell and fire. Perhaps those just occluded the small hints of eternal salvation. He groaned to remember his past, hated his present, and weeped for the mid-time when he had been free and happy—at least happier.
He had had the world in his grasp, had the chance to find love, but now who would love a minotaur such as him? No, now he was nothing more than an experiment, just like he had viewed his patients those few years ago. Speak about wake up calls, he'd had one. All he could do was take the mask of indifference and arrogance and don it. He was lofty and anal-retentive, but honestly he wondered how one could be so superior in attitude when they were locked away, labeled with a psychosis and never allowed freedom beyond the occasional recreation time in the courtyard. He acted like a mighty being, like he was better than everyone, but only because that was the only way he could live with himself. He knew how far he had fallen and shame colored the walls of his labyrinth both fictional and literal like blood.
His was a mind of jumbled memories, thoughts, and feelings. Scarecrow was there, although he hadn't always been and he often times he did not wish to think upon the reason the alter was there in the first place. It had all begun with his childhood. His nickname of Scarecrow for his skinny frame and ragged clothes. Then it had grown: his favorite bird had been crows. They were intelligent and even the scarecrows in the field didn't always deter them—he use to think they knew just how real those imposing figures weren't.
Yet he thought he'd left that all behind when he came to Gotham, got rid of his atrocious accent, at least that's what he told himself although hearing Scarecrow speak in it made him miss it. Perhaps it only loaned more strength of the squall building in him as he graduated college, entered medical school, and graduated earlier and at the highest seat in his class.
Jonathan Crane, the prude, the workaholic, the scarecrow, the creep. He had shut himself off from society only coming out like a creature of the night to eat and take care of necessary human functions. He knew not the pleasures of human affections, only the sway of the human mind. He remembered a time when he had thought emotions were weaknesses, nothing more than chemical reactions. Had he been so starved for the touch of another that he had not known the need and just squashed the feeling and pressed it to the back of his subconscious, giving Scarecrow more fuel to grow and differentiate? Now he was at the mercy of those very chemical reactions he had so scoffed at.
He questioned science, poetry, emotions, nightmares, and dreams.
Infinite, it was all infinite. His thoughts numbered fourteen, his guilts and successes numbered fourteen. Blue eyes were blind and he was lost, so lost in a labyrinth of his own creation.
He clawed the walls with his fingers and screamed silently. He wanted out and despite his tries could find no blame in anyone that was living. It was him, all him. He had constructed his prison of brick and mortar, painted it in thoughts, fantasies, and words he denied.
Asterion, that was him, half man, half bull. A creation of a mother who ran away, denying him mercy and kindness. She had left him like a cornstalk to rot in the fields to be pecked by the stealthy crows until he was dead, gone, and a husk. He had never asked for any of it, and though he realized that as a babe this was not his fault, he had grown up, been educated far more than his ancestors. He should have known better.
He should have...there was a lot thoughts that began with those words for him. He should have known Henri Ducard was not to be trusted, that he was only deceiving him, but there it was, his thirst for any sort of love that once the man started praising his project with the sapphire flower, now known as Ghoul's Dread, he craved more. By the time the man revealed his true nature, there was no turning away without pain and consequences. Jonathan didn't want pain, so he reveled in the pain of others imagining that once this was all over he could put it behind him.
How was he to know that Ra's al Ghul was planning on releasing it upon the whole of Gotham? He had no knowledge of such a plan when he first got involved. He should have known that it was all a crafted lie by the man; he had lied so much already...Jonathan actually wasn't surprised to find himself conned again. He wasn't angry, but Scarecrow was furious...and he had taken it out on the undeserving people of the Narrows.
The alter ego of his, who was as aware of how natural his existence was as anyone else, had began as a voice that had crooned to him that he was doing the right thing, then he became the person that could take destruction and Jonathan pretended to be him just to separate himself from the lives he was destroying, calling the inmates he practiced on nothing more than test subjects. It made his moral heart sick, but that had been Scarecrow not him...and then he had been the subject of his own toxin and before him lied all his fears. One breath and his world tilted and Scarecrow, the sum total of his Id stepped through the scorched door, and Jonathan gave him power.
If you give something power, it can destroy you, but as long as you act skeptical it cannot harm you. Scarecrow had power; physically he could harm Jonathan, not he had ever tried. Even his Id had restraint, knew what means would accomplish his ends. Scarecrow was his denied desires: he felt lust for the flesh, knew revenge, and even began to teach Jonathan these things.
As scary as the thought was—Jonathan dared to never tell anyone—he needed Scarecrow. He had never been complete in the first place he had come to realize. Humanity was known for impulses and whether as a result of his abuse by his great grandmother, the lack of kindness by his fellow students, or some other variable, he had never dabbled much in his impulses for fear of reprimand and even with his freedom from that dank and dark house he only gave into the obsession to study and better himself. Life would wait for him. He would have enough to time dredge up his impulses and follow his desires once he accomplished his dreams.
Life doesn't wait, though, and now it was all just flowing on without him. He would reach one accomplishment and aim for another, forcing more and more stuff back, constructing Scarecrow. Now the man whispered to him the forbidden pleasures of fantasy, spoke of appreciation of the feminine figure, spoke of beauty and its connotations and denotations. Dark seduction, innocence, art; he had Jonathan's intelligence but the urges of a red-blooded man.
Sometimes Jonathan thought Scarecrow was better cut out for the world Gotham, but the man would laugh and appear either behind his closed eyelids or before him and shake his head. Jonathan was the one created for the world; eventually Scarecrow hoped to be a part of Jonathan once again, but he enjoyed his freedom for now. Jonathan had discretion and Scarecrow only had the impulses and taught the once doctor that boldness was sometimes rewarded and chances were meant to be taken.
Scarecrow was the road less taken, and Jonathan wondered many a time if perhaps the personification of his Id wasn't his redeemer, but once again that was only met with sympathetic laughter. Scarecrow only claimed to be the guy in the grocery who knew all the town gossip and told him the right path, but Jonathan still needed a person who would look upon him with no prior knowledge or all biased information and yet despite that reach out a hand, listen to him, and make their own judgments.
The person who would help him for something beyond personal gain had not appeared yet, he said, and then Jonathan asked what gain Scarecrow was getting from him and Scarecrow patted his shoulder. Honestly, he gained nothing, his goal was to sit in his rightful place, be a part of a whole mind—it was an answer Jonathan knew. He and Scarecrow often had philosophical and psychological debates. Two minds and one body, each with the same resources and yet they were different. One would think that neither of them ever won, and that was true, but they never set out to conquer the other, just talk.
In the house of the labyrinth only the two Asterions existed and they had to talk to one another or the psyche would further break. Medications only anchored him to the mind, it never rid Jonathan of the man. How would he function once they were truly whole? They would be, and both of them knew that because Jonathan's psyche could be fixed though they knew not by whom and how.
Scarecrow told him that he would still talk to himself only now it would be his voice answering and he would be Scarecrow and Jonathan. Both knew that in the end that was the best course. It would benefit the both of them. So Jonathan tread his labyrinth meeting people, but their memories were the bodies that differentiated chambers, and none of them offered to be his redeemer. He never gave up, albeit. He was optimistic. Drowning in guilt as he was, he at least never lost hope and his hand was always held up ready to be grabbed.
He wondered what his redeemer would be like. Would it be a male or a female; Scarecrow purred that the chance it could be a female, and it was Jonathan's turn to laugh. Love, he mused, was a powerful force and Scarecrow ruffled his hair paternally adoring that the man still believed in Love, but agreeing. It was a magic unexplainable even in chemicals.
Scarecrow was not overbearing, though his doctors must have thought so. He was not out to control the boy. No, Scarecrow went beyond what most thought a person with the disorder of multiple personalities suffered. Scarecrow was not the horror stories he'd heard about where the personality strove to destroy the original and take over. No, he wanted to share with Jonathan. He genuinely wanted a choice that would assure happiness for the both of them and his natural place was a faucet of Jonathan's mind, so the logical decision was to return there.
So, this redeemer, what would they be like? Would they be sane or be under the influence of a disease like him? What color hair did he/she have? What hue of eyes? What would Jonathan and him/her talk about?
Would he know his redeemer when he saw them? He had a feeling he would, but sometimes he doubted and Scarecrow would assure him that he would know at least eventually and to let the cards be dealt. It was time for fate to take the reigns—sometimes humans were too controlling and letting go was the best thing to do.
Jonathan would curl up at night and once, he wondered if Scarecrow was also an embodiment of the father he had always wished he had and he opened his eyes to see Scarecrow leaning over him, a twin man with the same appearance and he leaned down and brushed his hair back and laid a kiss at his forehead.
Would their redeemer be as lost as them? Would they serve as their redeemer as well?
The morning sun reverberated from the bronze sword. There was no longer even a vestige of blood. "Would you believe it, Ariadne," said Theseus, "the Minotaur scarcely defended himself."
Death would not be his salvation, though, and somehow he knew whoever his Theseus was, there would be no sword to drip blood. No the sword would be a weapon of another sort and though perhaps callous would be needed at times, gentleness would be his salvation. He only longed for understanding and if called upon, he would their Theseus too.
Asterion would live and escape these walls, and Crete would be behind him.
Inspired by prompt five, "Redeemer" from the 50scenes Livejournal community and the story "The House of Asterion" by Jorge Luis Borges. Found here:
http:// www(DOT) waggish (DOT) org/ 2007/ 08/19/ borges-the-house-of-asterion
Just take out the spaces and replace (DOT) with an acutal period.