Batman: When He Was Gone
Indiana
Characters: Scarecrow [Scriddler]
Synopsis: There were some things he only noticed after he was gone.
You can blame enygmass for this.
He didn't consider himself a sentimental man. When all was said and done and Edward was cold in the ground, as someone else had so kindly put it, Jonathan was already moving on. Some might have sneered about how disrespectful it was to do such a thing, that if he really cared he would let some time pass before deciding so callously not to be upset about it anymore, but it had been many a decade since he had been concerned by the opinions of the masses. They were just that, a mass of generally uninformed morons fumbling their way blindly through a world they didn't even try to understand. Jonathan hadn't come up with that thought himself; Edward had been fond of setting off several of his grand speeches with some variation on it. But that didn't mean Jonathan didn't agree with him. They'd agreed on a lot of things. Jonathan thought he might find himself missing that. A near equal mind was a rare thing and precious. But not out of sentimentality. No, he would miss it in the same way one missed a favourite shirt they had to rid themselves of. A near equal mind was comfortable, familiar, and one knew of the shape while still not knowing quite everything about it. The average brain was not much more than tapioca pudding in Jonathan's view, and though he never quite understood how it worked, Edward had undoubtedly been brilliant. Once. He'd been brilliant once.
But that had been months ago, and he had not been like that since many beyond, and Jonathan wasn't going to think on that. Jonathan had things to do, and he was going to do them without thinking on someone who was gone, though it was not at all out of disrespect. In a way, it was about respect; Edward had been someone who understood the importance of time and that which was wasted. He would turn up his nose in feigned self-righteousness at the fact that Jonathan wasn't going to mope over him, but it wouldn't be genuine. He wanted to be remembered, Jonathan knew that much, and that he would do. But in a manner akin to that of a best friend who had moved away and he had unfortunately lost contact with.
He began to realise his plan wasn't going to execute as smoothly as he would have liked when he began to think of it like that more often than not. It made him feel better – not that he felt bad, he wasn't going to feel bad over Edward – to imagine that one day he'd be back from Toronto or he would answer his damn phone or check his email more often. Then he would remember that he had the phone, not that anyone had attempted to reach it lately, or that Edward hadn't been able to check his email in so long that he probably had thousands of unread messages sent by everyone from one of his stalkers to the Bat himself. That would kill the illusion and Jonathan would employ one of the many tricks he knew to prevent himself from thinking on it any longer.
That was how it started, anyway.
Jonathan didn't even consider moving someplace else. Why would he leave behind a perfectly good apartment? It was in fact better than perfectly good, because Edward had taken it upon himself to more or less rebuild the entire thing to his own extremely exacting standards. Jonathan himself could have cared less about that, which he'd made clear a time or five when Edward had disturbed his work so he could replace or modify or admire some aspect of the place that he deemed needed such things. And he could have cared less, once, but he inexplicably found himself caring more and more.
It snuck up on him in the most curious ways, and if they hadn't been so outright disturbing he might have been inclined to attempt an analysis. The first instance he remembered was that of one of the cupboard doors in the kitchen breaking, the hinge coming loose from the frame and becoming impossible to close. It wasn't really in the way so he just left it like that. He had the impression it would take care of itself anyway.
It didn't, of course, and when he walked into the door a few days later he ended up on the floor with it, and as he was taking the breath to demand as to why Edward hadn't fixed the damn thing yet, the why came to him and he had to waste the air instead. He picked the door up with perhaps a little too much force and leaned it out of the way, against the refrigerator. He didn't need it and he certainly didn't need it on the floor.
He'd never been a stranger to insomnia; sleep had eluded him more often than not over the course of his life. But it occurred to him that the most peaceful, and certainly best, rest he'd gotten was when Edward had lain sprawled across his chest, even when Edward wouldn't stay put for more than five minutes at a time. It was around then he also realised the bed was always cold. All of it was cold, and that didn't help the insomnia any, and the night he connected that with the fact that there was a person missing from it was the night he stopped using it.
It started happening more and more often, and despite himself he was approaching a loss as to what to do. The apartment was always dark because it had been Edward who opened the curtains in the morning. All there was left in the cupboard was hot chocolate because that had been Edward's. The lingering of his cologne had faded to nothing, since he was no longer there to apply it. The laundry wasn't getting washed, the dishes had piled up in the sink, Edward's computers sat dormant and dusty, and the silence! God, the silence! Why in heaven's name was it so quiet? He found himself getting headaches from the lack of noise, from the lack of Edward's infernally annoying prattle, and it was... it was so incredibly stupid and yet... it was happening. It was happening, and it was getting worse, and he didn't know how to stop it. He'd resolved to move on and now he was doing the complete opposite, now he could do nothing without being reminded of the overwhelming lack of something.
And that was how it happened that, after he had told himself he would never return there again, his knees were buried in the mud in front of Edward's unmarked grave, hunched inside of one of Edward's long coats, short of breath but unsure if he was crying or not because the downpour was so torrential. He wasn't going to do this, he'd said. He was going to move on, he'd said. No tears and no sadness and no regret about it either, because brooding over a dead man was illogical and a waste of time. And he knew that better than anyone, and here he was doing it anyway, because Edward was nowhere but here and it was the only place Jonathan could escape the escalating pressure of his absence.
He hated himself for wanting Edward back so much.
No; that was wrong. He hated himself for only wanting Edward back because he no longer could be. He'd ignored him many a time, pushed him aside in favour of things he'd deemed more important, silenced him, punished him, and now he was gone and all Jonathan had left was the memory of the time he'd so callously wasted. So willingly refused to use.
But he couldn't go back now, so why was he here? Even if he said he was sorry, it wasn't as though Edward would know. Edward was dead. Edward was lying on a hospital bed somewhere, barely alive. Edward was standing in the apartment, insulted at how Jonathan had allowed it to deteriorate.
No, Edward was here below Jonathan's hands and only Jonathan's hands because no one else knew nor cared what had happened to him, and no delusion was going to change that. It didn't even make him feel that much better, because the reality beyond was so harsh. And Jonathan couldn't stay there forever, had to go back to the place he'd once known as home and face again all the things that were missing, and as much as he tried not to he knew he did have a regret, one he was going to have to live with and could do nothing about:
That he had only realised how much Edward had meant when he was gone.