You know how it is; just innocently listening to a little music and some lyric strikes you the right way. Next thing you know you just wasted an afternoon drabbling. Oh well, inspired by Of Monster And Men's Your Bones (duh). Enjoy.
I have to keep telling myself it was what you wanted, that it was all part of the plan. You knew from the moment we stepped out from our cell that you only had so many hours left in your clock. I have to keep telling myself that, I have to or else…oh, Jonathan.
Some part of me must have known how it was all going to end. Your plans were less specific, the details a bit unclear. It was a very un-Jonathan plan I thought to myself. Then again, with each round of capture and escape you seemed to be losing a bit of who you were; a little to the Bat, a little to Arkham…more than you were willing admit to the Scarecrow. Maybe, in your mind, you believed this was the only way you could truly be free. Save what little of Dr. Jonathan Crane there still was.
I wish I could have kept that last bit of you. I would have put it in a puzzle box that no one else would ever be able to solve.
But that wasn't what you wanted, was it Jonathan? Even if you did, I don't think you could ever learn how to belong to anyone but the demon in your mind. His selfishness was greater than mine.
When you fell to your knees and I heard the crack of your bones, when a smile curled your lips and your eyes became dim. When the guns stopped firing and all the birds had flown from the yard…I knew you were gone. The guards swarmed in on your body as if frightened it might fly away as well. I was astonished with how little I cared. I cried no tears when they returned me to my cell and informed me that your body would be dissected, that the university was already clamoring for your brain to study.
I had loved your body, Jonathan. The sight, the smell and, most of all, the touch. But it was of no use to me now. Without you, that little of you that was left, well…let the university have your body. At least they finally acknowledged you were a man worthy of interest.
Above all things, I know you did not do this to hurt me. It's a small consolation. You probably did not think about me once when you made the decision to end your life. It was about the pain and you had more of it than any one person could know what to do with. The nights you would let me hold you, when you would wake up screaming and crying and not even certain of where you were…Jonathan, you were the heaviest thing I had ever carried.
I don't know why it's less troubling for me to accept that you were suicidal as opposed to just unlucky. That you had intentionally stepped in front of the bullets you'd be dodging for years. I don't understand why it was you brought me along on that last great escape. I watched you die, Jonathan. You wanted me to see. Maybe sometime down the road, when the hole inside is filled with scar tissue and I'm able to feel some imitation of the love I once had for you I'll understand. Until then…until then…