Innocence is in the Details
-MAS
"Always nice to start off the night by seeing a familiar face..." He quietly stared down at her from where she laid upon the hospital bed. Nothing more than studying her pale complexion, looking for any sign of change in those glassy green eyes from the last time he had visited, completely without a worry about any interruptions of their little reunion for now. It was a godsend that her guard had always had a disliking towards hospitals; he wouldn't be guarding much of anything for a while, not while fending off those needles that haunted his deep slumber.
Poor little Jessie, off into her own world now, she couldn't take her fears and went into complete conversion hysteria – a shame to see her shut down so soon when they would have had so much more. She had seemed so sure of herself – that nothing would betray her by leaving her scared – but it was betrayal itself that left her this way, completely alone inside her head. It was her own fault for acting like nothing would scare her – that there was not a single thing that would cause her harm. For teaching her young students back at the elementary that there was nothing to fear in the world. Her own fault for thinking he was a person to fall for.
Part of him wished there was a way to get inside of there once more, to drag her kicking and screaming back out into this world for another go, just for old times sake. Just to watch those eyes widen with terror and fill with tears, a shake pass over her body he knew so well thanks to her – that warm friendly voice becoming thin and stressed as she tried her reasoning, her fighting back all over again. Pure beauty, that kind of fear. A grin broke out from behind the stitched sackcloth mask; still he had to admit she was still a pretty thing, even when broken beyond repair. Leaning in close enough that the coarse material would scratch against her face he gently spoke to her, developing the stutter she had heard ever since making his acquaintance a month or so before. "Jessie, are you all r-right – it's Mr. Mather, your neighbor. Y-you know; Issiac, from f-forty-four. Are you in there Jessie? Please t-talk to me, I miss you so..."
But there was nothing, he noted with a disappointed sigh, not even so much as a misplaced breath, a movement of the eyes; nothing at all. She already knew with one or the other it was all the same to her mind now – her neighbor was the Scarecrow, and he had betrayed her by attacking her, leaving her to the point of this. That card was played out, perhaps in a few days it would be time to try another hand... one with a small dosage of the same gas he used to terrorize the rest of his test subjects that lived in the apartment complex. Certainly there was a chance that it would snap her out of her revelries – if not outright kill her considering how fragile she seemed now – still one way or another the results would prove fruitful. "Sweet d-dreams my dear..." he murmured, touching the top of her head with his sewn smile, a mocking parody of a caring gesture. "I wish I could stay longer of course, but you know how it is in this city – always have to keep busy!"