Content Warning: n/a
Ships: Hatter/Crow if you squint and cock your head to the side
xxxxxxxxxx
Gotham was widely considered to be one of the most dangerous places in America. This was little wonder, due to its startling prevalence of criminal activity. It put New York and Chicago to shame with ease and had even been unkindly dubbed "The Psycho Killer Capitol" by outsiders. If you were from Gotham, the common joke went, you were probably rich and criminally insane. It was a bustling economic hub, but a vernal breeding ground for gang activity. And supercriminals. That group, known to locals as the "Rogues Gallery," was a very serious little infestation idiosyncratic to Gotham and its sister burghal Metropolis. To a cynic, they were little more than a pack of loons committing high crimes in their pajamas. To a reporter, they were journalistic gold, and to the law they were the most baffling development since prison break-ins. Perhaps most disturbingly, the city itself essentially rested in the hands of a vigilante, a mysterious "consulting detective" type who called himself Batman. Though a widely beloved public figure, the sentiment that he too was not only a supercriminal, but in fact the very worst one, was not scarce. People were afraid of him. And why shouldn't they be? He had the power to make or break anyone in the city—both literally and figuratively. How he got that power was a proper mystery, but by all rights, he seemed to have given it to himself, to use or abuse as he saw fit.
What made him think his morals were empirical? What gave him the right to judge who was a threat and who got to be left alone? His physical prowess? His apparent profusion of liquid assets?
Unjust.
Jonathan Crane, for one, grew sick of being pushed around. He grew up at the mercy of those bigger and stronger than himself, learning painfully to work around them, to do for himself with or without his peers' respect. Usually without.
The day he was fired from Gotham University was the day he snapped.
What gave them the right? What gave any of his tormentors the right? Back in his tidy little apartment, the ex-professor tore a book from the shelf and flung it across the room. He overturned his coffee table with a swift jab from his foot. He was sick of being terrorized. He was sick of maltreatment. He was sick of being afraid. Jonathan found himself glaring out the window, regaining he bearings somewhat. The deep September sun had sunk behind the city's skyline, leaving a dirty wash of oranges, purples, and yellows behind it. The atmosphere was riddled with metropolitan smog. It looked like a bruise.
Sick to death.
Something had to be done.
Of course, the irony of his decision was not lost on him. Fighting fire with fire was a dangerous method, but in desperate cases such as this, there was little else to do.
But he would be different. He would be even-handed. He would be the blindfolded, fair judge that Batman never was. His means were ultimately non-violent, but a far cry from ineffective. The chemical he'd invented would be a deterrent more so than a weapon, not to mention an excellent window into the criminal mind. Crane believed in fear. He believed in its significance. Pinpoint a person's fears, weed out their doubts and anxieties, and their mind's landscape is bare before you. The toxin was a little unorthodox, but it would revolutionize psychological rehabilitation, for sure. It was certainly less brutal than the spray of bolas and "batarangs" from the city's pet Chiroptera, but to the faint of heart, it could potentially be… fatal…ish. When exposing his creation to lab rats and stray cats, he found that roughly four out of ten test animals perished due to the sudden onset of heart dysfunction. Hm.
There were some bugs to work out, clearly. It was an untested strain, at least as far as humans went, but still unsuitable for use if it could potentially result in manslaughter. Crane's hands had to stay clean of blood, if only for the sake avenging himself through pacifism. He would have to work harder, throw himself into his studies with a great new level of exuberance! But in all actuality, that would be quite impossible. He was unemployed now. He needed to find work immediately, or else he'd be on the streets by Thanksgiving. There would be no time for personal projects. And who would hire a man who was discharged from his place of business for firing a handgun in the middle of a classroom anyway? He felt all of the energy drain from his body as if one of his arteries had been split.
Who was he kidding? Only the likes of those born fortunate had a real shot at influencing their environments to such a notable degree. He was powerless.
xxxx
It had been weeks since he was discharged from Gotham University, and Jonathan still felt that he was perpetually on the brink of yet another conniption. He wasted his days away on wild job hunts that lead nowhere, failing to eat, failing to sleep, and unhappily watching the news. As much as the entire business riled him—the pundits' exhibitionism, the lightweight pulpy stories, and even the unadulterated current events themselves—he believed that he had to stay informed in some capacity, even if all of his sources were muddy and caked with biased sensationalism. When he could bring himself to set aside the classified section of his daily paper, the failed professor kept his nimble hands busy with sewing. His clothes were old and full of holes. Now that he had ample time to waste and new anxieties to tranquilize, he could finally set about patching the offending tears. Sometimes he'd even make new rips, just to give himself some reason not to sit perfectly still.
He wasn't a bad seamster. Perhaps he could try tailoring on the side while he searched for a full-time job, just something to keep him decently fed and off the street. He'd already cracked into his retirement fund to maintain as much, but that wouldn't last him much longer. Even now, he was on the brink of losing his electricity, but for now, at least, the TV blared, and Jonathan listened in.
It was one of a million mindless stories, spotlights for local "heroes" who scavenged stranded cats out of trees or derived avant-garde sculptures from used soda cans. A scrap of recognition for Gotham's "little people."
Jonathan scoffed and propped his face against a closed hand. He never did have the stomach for these feel-good segments, though this one was different, admittedly. It was detailing a scientific achievement, something futuristic and revolutionary. He found himself perking up, watching the researcher on screen explain his device, wagging a screwdriver gesticulatively as he spoke, looking bashful and inspired. Despite his excitement, Jonathan struggled to focus for the full five minutes, his nimble mind already punching out a plan. There was no doubt that someone—the military, probably, and others—would want this technology, but Crane was determined to get to it first. It was exactly what he needed to get started. Suddenly gripped by his sense practicality, the academic took up a pen and scribbled the inventor's name and organization onto his palm. With any luck, this Jervis Tetch would see something worthwhile in Jonathan's cause, and with a little more, he might agree to help.