I read a few similar stories and this awoke my muse, if you will. I had to write this short one down. It's no where near as dark as most – I'm afraid I wanted to help Jonathan Crane back onto the right tracks again, although he needed some help from a childhood friend to do so. I should warn you there might be some fluff.
I do not own the Batman franchise or any of its characters. Neither do I own the song lyrics with which I start my chapters.
Prologue
Old haunts are for forgotten ghosts – Old Haunts by The Gaslight Anthem
The kids jeered and laughed as the boy turned and tried to block them out.
"Leave me alone!" he shouted, crying with his hands over his ears. I ran over, doing my best to chase off the kids. "Go away! Leave him alone," they only laughed harder, but they did back off, with cries of "scarecrow!"
"Are you ok? Don't listen to them…" I said to the boy, and it became clear why he had earned the nickname. He was scraggly, stick thin and his clothes were old and torn.
He nodded, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He nodded unsurely.
"My name is Fiona, what's yours?" I asked kindly.
"Jonathan Crane," he said automatically, like he was trained. I helped Jon pick up some books he had dropped.
"Would you like to come over for tea?" I asked politely, hardly expecting him to say yes, which he did rather shyly. I hoped my mum wouldn't mind.
We soon became quite good friends. Being the outcasts we were, we had few other friends, and so grew very close. In the few years I knew him, I never once was invited round his house, but some things I could guess. I figured out that he lived with his father and grandmother. His father was violent and controlling, possibly why his mother was no longer around, but his grandmother couldn't offer any comfort to Jon. Which was why he was round our house so much. I could even swear he was starting to look healthier – less scarecrow like.
It all soon changed. Thomas and Martha Wayne had been shot dead in the streets in front of their son Wayne. Things went down hill from there, until about a year after, my father declared he had got another, apparently better, job in another city.
And so we moved, and Jon became just a ghost from my past.