Ok, so far I have two OC's, and now I decided to write an unusual fanfiction and try to put them together. This oneshot is happening during the Batman: The Animated Series episode named Lock-Up. What if my Batman OC Katherine Jones was working in Arkham in that time, and what if she actually had a friend that could change people's dreams, Kaelen Ward? Well, read and find out. :-) Maybe you will like it. There is even a point when I used kind of a Hellraiser kind of line. See if you can find it. xD
Dr. Katherine Jones angrily walked through the gloomy corridors of Arkham Asylum. Well, angry would not be the best word to describe her feelings. She was actually furious. And she had a good reason for it. After all, every good doctor should be furious when his patients are suffering, right? Even if those patients are deranged, heartless killers, right? At least that's what all the people were saying about them, but Katherine never really listened to those words. In fact, she loved her patients, especially the rogue gallery. The Joker, with the never fading smile on his face, always ready to crack some joke. The Riddler, always the smartest, but still a relatively friendly if you were willing to play his games, the strong and powerful Croc, who always, in her probably highly unprofessional opinion, just needed a little more understanding. The cute Mad Hatter, so seemingly harmless if you didn't know what he was capable of.
But there was only one rogue that she loved the most. The one that she wanted to see this evening, for he was the one who was brought here last night. By the Batman. Oh how she despised him. He may be called a hero in this city, but for her he was always just a big brute with some serious complexes.
As she neared the ward dedicaded to the rogue gallery, she could clearly remember how it happened. She was staying late in work in that day and so she could watch from a safe distance as Batman, along with that boy Robin dragged him in the facility and he was literally taken over by that man. She would never forget how frightened he looked, even though she couldn't see his face, it was clear as the day that he was scared to death, never before this she saw him that way.
She entered the ward and slowly, she approached his cell, looking inside to find him sleeping on his cot. She gently put a hand on the glass and watched him, careful not to make any noise that would wake him. He needed the little sleep he could get here. But she could clearly see that his fear didn't leave him even in his dreams.
She was watching the sleeping Scarecrow with great concern. From the first time she laid her eyes on him, the first time they spoke together, she couldn't forget about him. She loved talking to him, his incredible inteligence and the passion of a scientist he always showed when he was talking about fear, the way his eyes would sparkle through his mask. He was the best, her favourite patient, and she never denied that she had weakness for him.
When the asylum accepted Lyle Bolton for the position of the head of security, everything seemed fine in the beginning. Katherine was fine with the thought that the patients will be safely locked, as long as they would be well taken care of, but soon, due to the deeper understanding she had for the rogue gallery and she was always really pround of, she started to notice things the other doctors didn't. It started as just a small things, but she now realised, that it was slowly getting worse. They were acting weird. Throughout the day, when she came into their ward, she could always hear some noices, the constant flipping of Harvey's coin, Jervis's soft humming of his favourite rhimes from Alice in Wonderland, sometimes even Ivy softly singing to the flowers she was allowed to have in her cell. But for the past few weeks, it was almost nothing, the hallway was almost silent. And she didn't like that. She suspected that something terrible was happening, but they would never talk when she asked them. Not even Jonathan, who was always so eager to express what he was thinking. But after a time, they didn't even have to tell anymore. She could see it in their eyes every time the man was around, she knew that it was Bolton who scared them, and she didn't have to be smart as the Riddler to figure out why was that. They tried to hide the wounds from her, they didn't want her to know. After all, Bolton was too good in covering his tracks, no one would ever believe it was him who tormented them.
She was standing in front of the Scarecrow's cell, watching him in his distressed sleep. He didn't take of his mask tonight, he kept it so he would feel safer, but she could see it didn't help him much. So she decided that she will stay here, even the whole night if it would be necessary, and watch over him in his sleep. She sighed as she looked at him. She wanted to help, but she didn't know how. But then, suddenly, she remembered. She remembered a young girl she once met, some time before she ended up in Gotham. It was in small town in Ohio named... Springfield? No, Springwood! She remembered how the girl would tell her that she could change people's dreams. She never really believed her before, even that, sometimes, she wondered how much of the supernatural did she have in her own life without even noticing. She took out her phone and looked through her contacts, wondering if she still... yes! She still had the number she gave her. She smiled slightly, as she pushed the dialing number, thinking how foolish she probably was.
...
Kaelen was walking through a large cornfield, slightly amazed from the phone call she got a few minutes ago. She couldn't believe that the girl she met so long ago still remembered her. She met her in a town library one day, she was doing some psychology research about nightmares and Kaelen was interested, so they started talking, and they found out they had a lot of things in common. Kaelen really didn't want to start about her strange little life, but after a while listening to the older girl talking about dreams and her research, she just wanted to give her something to think about. But Katherine didn't seem to be even giving her much attention that time. However, she felt like they could be friends in the future maybe, so she gave her her phone number. She never really expected a phone call after that.
So she was greatly surprised, when her phone started ringing this evening, and she saw her nearly forgotten name on the display. She was called for a reason, and being the friendly creature she was she felt obliged to help. So, she was no here, in a dream of a deranged psychopath. Of course she heard about the Gotham psychos, the so called rogue gallery. Gotham wasn't that far from Springwood. But she wasn't scared, not at all, she after all had known her own share of killers for years. And being the friendly creature she was, she was always ready to help one of them when it was needed.
So, she was now walking through this corn field, looking around her surroundings. This place seemed endless, and she soon became lost, but she knew that she could always wake up. She wasn't here because of her.
In a distance, she could hear the distinctive voices of crows and so she walked towards it. That's when she saw the big scarecrow, hanging on a giant wooden stake above the corn. She made her way towards the scarecrow and there he was. She tilted her head to the side in curiosity. There was a little boy kneeling beside the scarecrow, tightly hugging the wooden stake, trying to protect himself from a crow that was poking him with her sharp beak. He was crying as he tried to hit the crow with his hand, but the bird just kept dodging.
"Pathetic." she giggled when she suddenly heard Freddy's voice in her head. It wasn't real, and she was surprised how easily she could imagine what the old dream demon would say. But again, she knew him for a lot of years now. It took a long time, but when they were both tired of the fighting, they reached a certain point of neutrality when they simply stayed out of the other's way. It was this point when Kaelen could finally admit, even to herself, how much she admired him all these years. But she would never allow him to follow her into this dream, even if he would be able to leave Springwood.
Suddenly, a loud noice brought her back from her musing. It was a sound of flapping wings, lot of wings. She turned around to see a huge black cloud quickly nearing her location. And then the cloud darted downwards, towards the boy.
One black bird after another, they all started to attack him with the wolf's ferocity, and that was the moment when she raised her hand, it was all she needed to do to make the birds dissapear. This was a real nightmare after all, there was no demon here. The boy on the ground didn't seem to even notice that the birds were gone, he just grabbed the stake a hugged him tighter than before. She sighed, and bend forward to gently touch his shoulder. Somehow, in that moment, she didn't know what to say. She never really liked children, she wasn't used to comforting little kids when they had nightmares, she was used to be protecting big children from Freddy.
Slowly, the boy loosened his grip on the wood, and after a while, he seemed to collect enough courage to actually show her his face. He wasn't much pretty, she had to say that, he had this deep sadness in his blue eyes, and something else, something wicked. Of course, she remembered what Katherine told her about him. That wicked something will stay there for the rest of his life. He had a longer, very dark hair, and he was wearing glasses. It gave him an intellingent look, and Kaelen decided that it would be a boy she would gladly befriend, but sadly, she couldn't change past. Then, she remembered why she was here.
"Don't worry, boy." she said gently, and kneeled in front of him, lowering herself to his eye level. "They will not hurt you anymore. Nobody will hurt now that I am here." she said and she smiled, until she saw the tears forming in the boy's eyes.
"But... but he will come." the boy answered in a low, soft voice. He had this strange, high pitched tone in his voice, that almost made him sound girly, and she could imagine that as another reason for being constantly mocked at school. She sighed again. She felt bad for this boy, and for the man he became. Katherine told her everything about the Scarecrow, and Kaelen understood why she was so fond of the doctor.
"Who will come, little one?" she asked, but of course, she already knew the answer. "The bad man." Suspicions comfirmed. "I will wake up, and the bad man will be there." Kaelen looked at him sadly and then she reached and slowly, careful not to startle him, she took one of his hands in hers. It was cold, and she could feel him shivering. She sensed a deep fear from him, it almost made her shudder herself. The boy raised his head once again to meet her eyes. "Show me." she told him simply.
And then the world around her vanished and she found herself standing in a gloomy, dark corridor, with little rooms with glass walls in their front along the sides of the hall. She then realised that they were cells, and this probably Arkham Asylum. She didn't have much time to look around. She suddenly heard a muffled scream, coming from one end of the hallway and she ran there as quickly as she could. There was a man in one of the cells, a huge man in a uniform, holding a whip in his hands. A bloodied whip. Her eyes fell to the ground, and there she saw a smaller man wearing a patient's attire, he was lying on his back, the upper part of the clothes on his back torn and bloodied. She saw a lot of things like that before, but still she was staring horrified on that sight. Just then, the scenery suddenly changed. She was in the same hallway, and in front of the same cell, but this time, the victim was chained to the wall with a thick chain, while the uniformed man was repeatedly poking him with a taser. And Kaelen could only look at the torment. There was nothing she could do, for these were memories, and she couldn't change them. Well, she probably could, but only in this dream. And she needed to know...
A lot more memories flashed before her eyes. She saw the man coming into the cell and tearing his books apart, she saw him knocking his food of the table when no one was watching, she saw the adult form of the boy she was trying to help to lying helplessly on the floor while Lyle Bolton was kicking him in the stomach. The bad man. Lyle Bolton. A low, angry growl came out of her throat when she thought about him. He needed to be punished for what he did. Personally, Kaelen wanted to take the man to Springwood and let Freddy play with him for a while, but she figured that Katherine will want to do this herself.
In that moment, the train of memories stopped and she was once again on the field. With only one difference. There was no longer a boy in front of her, but a man. She gasped when she saw him, but the she realised that she probably should have expected that, and she glared at him, not with fear, but with curiosity.
It was the Scarecrow, undoubtedly. She was looking at him for a while, but when he didn't even look at her, she stood up and took a step back.
"He is not worth your suffering, Jonathan Crane." she said and she giggled on the soud of that. He suddenly jumped on his legs and turned to her. She jumped a little, startled, but she wasn't scared. This was her world, and she haven't met anything that could harm her here. Yet.
He was much taller than he was as a boy, at least much taller than she was. He was wearing the Scarecrow attire, including the mask, which was now what she was looking at. She could see two, dark eyes staring at her from the eye holes.
He didn't speak, not yet, just looking at her and she was wondering what was going on, but her insticts were telling her something was wrong. She looked at the Scarecrow once again, deeply in those dark eyes, and then she realised it.
"You're not Jonathan Crane, are you?" she asked slowly, and she could see a strange light in his eyes that wasn't there before. "You are the Scarecrow."
"In person." the moment she heard his voice, she knew she was right. The doctor's other persona, the Scarecrow. The voice she heard surely belonged to Jonathen Crane, but not entirely. There was a strange distortion in the voice, that made him sound slightly deeper, resonating in her ears, and it was not pleasant. This was the Scarecrow, the mad doctor's second personality. Katherine told her before that she always had her suspicions about his existence, but their personalities were so well fused together that it was almost impossible to actually discern dr. Crane from him. But she was in Crane's head after all. She just never thought this would be even possible. Obviously, it was.
He wasn't scary, not for her. She had seen a lot of things in her life, things that really terrified her, and while a look at this man, no, a creature would certainly scare someone, and it did, often, actually, the things she had seen would drive them mad. Of him, she wasn't scared. But he radiated certain emount of power, a mental power. She could always feel these kinds of things, she was always sensitive to the powers of the other supernatural beings. She shook her head on that. The Scarecrow was just a creation of the mad doctor's mind, but... on the other side, what Katherine told her made sense. After all, Freddy Krueger, the way he was now, was created thanks to immense anger, he was a spirit of vengeance. The Scarecrow was made from Jonathan Crane's fear, so he might be just the same. Which meant that he was as real as Freddy, even that no one can really see him, except for a rare situations like this.
She glared at him, unmoving, unsure what to do. In her own dreams, she was safe, from anything, but when she entered someone else's dreams, she never was entirely sure if really everything was under her control. It probably wasn't, but she didn't want to know.
"A little nervous, are we?" he asked, and a visible smirk appeared under his mask as he advanced towards her. She stood her ground. "Look, this was not my idea, I'm doing a favor for a friend. I didn't come to hurt him... or you."
"Oh, so you know about me? Interesting. Who are you?"
She took a deep breath, as he slowly started circling her. She could feel his eyes burning in the back of her skull, and she wondered, if he could actually read her mind. And her fears. She groaned silently. She should have thought this over more carefully. She willingly stepped into his own little world and now this creature wanted to play. She whirled around to face him once more. "I came to help your little friend. He is a wreck from all that's been happening to him, and I came here on a request from Katherine Jones, the one who cares about him probably more than anyone else, to help him. Now I certainly didn't expect you to take over, but I am here because of him, not you. So back off, Scarecrow, and let me talk to him, than I'm out of here." She suddenly stopped when she saw the look of pure fury in those dark, cold eyes.
"A wreck? How dare you call him a wreck? You cannot help him, he doesn't need anyone except for me! We will have our revenge when the time comes. And I think it's time for you to have a taste of that revenge." he said and the expression of his face suddenly changed back to the amused, terrifying smile.
She looked at him, trying to keep her face from reflecting the fear she was currently starting to feel. He was slowly nearing her, and she was backing through the corn, slightly panicking. But suddenly, she felt as her back hit something hard, and she turned around to see it was a wall. A wall? When she turned back to look at the Scarecrow, the cornfield was gone and she could see that they were on a roof of some building. She glanced around to see huge skyscapers in a distance, a river, crossed by a bridge. "This is Gotham." she guessed.
"What a smart girl." she heard the Scarecrow's voice and she turned her attention back to him quickly. "Really, Scarecrow, there's no need to be hostile towards each other, I am a friend."
"Really? I don't think I know you." he said and grinned menacingly. Kaelen gulped, when she realised what he was doing. The Scarecrow was slowly advancing towards her, forcing her to back from him, right to the edge of the roof. And she realised, that he really must know, somehow. That she was afraid of heights.
"You cannot hurt me here, Scarecrow." she said, but as she was nearing the edge, her voice was slowly loosing it's certainty. "Really?" he asked in a slow, mocking tone. "Let's see if you're right, shall we?" And then, suddenly, he pushed her off the ledge. She screamed, as she lost the ground under her feet, but then she remembered where she was, and she closed her eyes to calm down, while the wind was blowing around her ears. Calm down, she told herself, this is not real. And then, once again, she was standing. She was shaking, when she turned around to look where she was, and she her eyes widened when she realised it. This was the park, the same park where she was captured as a little girl. She heard barking in the distance and she paled. Max. Her dog. He was killed by Freddy when she was a little, while he was protecting her. It was a long time ago, and she forgave Freddy at the end, but still, this was something that still scared her. And this monster knew it.
She knew it will come before she heard the whimper. She ran forward, under the trees and then she saw it. There he was, just as she remembered him, lying dead on the ground. And as she kneeled before his bloodied body, she heard the Scarecrow's nearing footsteps. "You are so pathetic." he mocked, and she growled in anger, before she raised to her feet. Now she was furious. "You..." she started, her voice slightly deepening in her anger. "I came only to help you, or Jonathan Crane, whatever, I have enough of my demons and I do not have to suffer through this. Now, you will stop using my fears against me if you know what is good for you. You saw my worst memory, but I am no longer the little girl I was in that time. I know your fears as well, don't forget about that."
And as she was talking, she didn't even noticed that she was walking towards him. But then she suddenly realised how close she actually was and she backed away. "You know..." she said, "You fascinate me. Really, you are more interesting then anything I ever met in my life. I don't belong to Gotham, but, maybe, in another life, I would like too. Katherine is a very lucky girl."
And then she suddenly felt something. Something that made her smile, and she looked in his eyes. "And if you don't believe me, ask her instead." And she closed her eyes.
It took only a minute, but then she opened her eyes again and she looked behind the Scarecrow. He slowly followed her look and there she was.
...
Katherine Jones had no idea where she just was. The only thing she remembered was that she was leaning against the Scarecrow's cell, waiting for something to change, and then, this. But as she looked around, she saw that she was on a cornfield. And she realised that this had to be a dream. Jonathan's dream. And then she saw them. Kaelen, she still remembered, even after the long time. But it was the man she saw next to her, that made her stop dead in her tracks. She knew this costume very well, it was not the first time she saw it. But the man inside seemed different, was different. She wasn't sure what it was, but deep inside, she knew.
"You." she came closer to him, step by step. "Katherine." he said her name, slowly, and stopped slightly at the sound of his voice. She looked in his dark eyes and suddenly, she smiled. It was a gentle, kind smile she reserved only for Jonathan Crane. "I can't believe it." she said silently. "I was right, all this time, you were real."
"You bet he was." sounded a voice right next to her and she looked on Kaelen, who was looking at them, smiling. She now looked at the young psychiatrist. "I did just as you asked me, or I tried at least. And he just kicked my ass for it."
Katherine gently nodded and she looked back on the Scarecrow. No one would be untouched by the look she was giving him, as she moved slowly closer to him. "I can't believe I can finally meet you." she said. "You must forgive me, and my friend. She has... a talent, to get where no one else can. I was so worried, about Jonathan, and I asked her to help."
He didn't speak. His dark were staring in hers, and suddenly, they didn't look as dark as before. Then, the Scarecrow suddenly sighed, it was a strangely sad sound. "Yes, I know you. He... thinks about you, sometimes. And he trust you that you will help. If you think you can do it, I will not stand in your way."
And then, his eyes slowly lightened, until they had this icy blue colour Katherine knew so well. He slowly reached up, and took off his mask, and Katherine jumped forward and hugged him tightly. And all the time, Kaelen was standing right next to them, and she was smiling, for she could feel the friendship between those two. And as she watched them, she knew that her role here was over. And silently, she vanished, leaving them for themselves.
...
In a few days, it was all over. Lyle Bolton was arrested, and fired out of the asylum. As Katherine was standing there, watching him being led away, she was surrounded those few brave souls that were brave enough to speak against him, trying to calm them down. She was proud of the Scarecrow that he found enough caurage to fight. She didn't know if she had much influence in this, but she was hoping that the little dream therapy they have gone through together helped him, although he didn't remember it. She gently put a hand on his back, and the second one on Harley's shoulder, and watched as they slowly calmed down. Few days after, Lyle Bolton has been brought here again, as a patient, and he no longer had the fear of the others. Even so, she was still ready to make his life a living hell if he would ever try to hurt her friends again.