Disclaimer: I do NOT own Batman, Jonathan Crane or any other characters from Batman that will appear in this story. Nor am I making any money off of writing this story. I only own my OC.

Summary: Emmy comes to Gotham to attend school at Gotham University. There she is assigned to work with Jonathan Crane who is also working on his Master's Degree in Psychology. Little do either of them know the journey that is about to take place. Story starts before Batman Begins!

Chapter 1:

Welcome to Gotham University

I could feel the warm breeze as I walked through the campus grounds. The term was just starting here at Gotham University and I was both nervous and excited to be there. I realized I only had a half hour before class started as I looked up at the Big Ben replica that stood in the middle of campus. I glanced down at the schedule in my hand as I started to walk slowly, trying to figure out where I needed to be.

A few minutes later, I walked up to an old red brick building with the words "Department of Behavioral Sciences" plastered on the front. It took a matter of minutes to find the classroom, as I wasn't completely used to my surroundings yet. It was a large, stadium-type styled room that could easily fit 200 students. There were a few students sitting at their desks waiting for the class to start. I walked down the stairs to about the third row. There was a man sitting in the first desk so I took the seat next to him.

I put my book bag on the ground next to me and pulled out my textbook for this class and my laptop. After placing both the book and the laptop on the desk, I opened my laptop to get it started up. I looked over to the man next to me.

He had short, wavy dark brown hair that came to the tip of his ears, a pale complexion and wore black glasses. He was typing quickly on his laptop oblivious to the fact that I was sitting next to him. I turned back to my laptop as an old man appeared at the front of the class, who I assumed to be the Professor.

He set a big stack of books on a wooden table that sat next to the whiteboard. Within a matter of seconds he had written his name and the name of the class on the whiteboard. I could hear the sounds of students, pouring down the stairs into the classroom. The man next to me seemed to realize class was about to start and looked up from his laptop to the Professor.

"Alright class, let's get started. First I'll start out by saying; most of you are Psychology majors. I expect great things from you in this class. You can plan on spending at least 15-20 hours a week on homework and group projects. If you aren't up for a challenge I suggest you leave. Now, look to the person next to you." The professor, a man named Dr. Hughes said.

I looked to the man next to me. His icy blue eyes met my brown ones. He nodded to me before turning back Dr. Hughes. I followed his actions as I looked away from him.

"This is your partner for the rest of the semester. I suggest you get to know their name and phone number. At the end of the quarter you and your partner will present a topic that interests you both, based off of research you have personally done. This assignment is critical to the class and I expect you to take a lot of time and preparation for it. If you fail this, you fail the class. Here are the instructions for the presentation. I suggest you read through it and choose your topic carefully. Now let's get started, please open your books to page 10…" Dr. Hughes continued to talk as I carefully listened, typing notes on my computer.

After 60 minutes Dr. Hughes dismissed class and I quickly started to put my textbook and laptop in my book back. I had another class in 10 minutes and I wanted to be there before the class started to get a good seat. I left that classroom and walked the halls when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the blue–eyed man I sat next to in my previous class.

"Hi." I said to him hoping we could swap info or set up a time to meet quickly.

"Are you working on your Masters?" he asked me in a cool tone.

"Yes." I answered, unsure where he was going with this.

"Good we can talk on the way to our next class. I'm Jonathan, here is my phone number, but only use it after 5. I can meet with you tonight around 7 to start working on our project, if you are available." He told with that same cool voice, handing me a piece of paper with his phone number on it.

"How about we meet at the small cafe just inside the library?" I suggested and he nodded, considering it.

"That would be fine." He agreed after a few moments.

A silence settled over the two of us as we continued walking towards the next classroom. I assumed we were going to the same place, as he hadn't walked away from me yet.

"So, how did you know we had our next class together?" I inquired.

"We're both working on our masters in Psychology. Chances are we'll be in the same classes." The look he gave me, sent a shiver down my spine before he gestured to the paper in my hand. "And you're holding your schedule in your hand."

I smiled looking at the paper in my hand. There was something about him. He definitely wasn't bad looking. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of man he was, what his past was and what I would learn about him.

"We're here." He nodded at one of the doors to the left as we came to stand in front of it. He opened the door and let me walk in first.

"Thank you." I said to him, trying to be polite. He nodded at me and followed me inside the room.

There were already several students inside. Some I recognized from the previous class, some I hadn't seen before. I watched as Jonathan went to the front row taking a spot in the corner. I looked around and realized that there weren't many seats left, so I just walked down to the front and sat next to Jonathan.

"You know you aren't obligated to sit by me." Jonathan commented as I pulled out my laptop.

"I know I don't have to. Its just, I already know you and there aren't many seats left." I replied. He looked around the room, his eyes scanning the seats that were filling up quickly.

"What's your name?" he suddenly asked me. My eyes widened a bit realizing I hadn't introduced myself.

"Oh, Sorry! My name is Emily, but everyone calls me Emmy." I said smiling, outstretching my hand to shake his. His hand briefly touched mine in a pathetic handshake. Jonathan went to say something but was interrupted by the Professor starting the class.

After I finished with my classes I spent the rest of the day in the library working on papers, reading and doing other homework. Before I knew it, it was 6:50. I quickly gathered up my things and walked down the stairs to the first floor. Once at the café, I bought a cup of coffee and a small salad and waited for Jonathan to show up. A couple of minutes had passed when Jonathan sat in the chair across from me.

"Let's get started. I was thinking we could do our presentation on fear; the psychology behind it, how to intensify it and how the mind reacts when it's faced with some of our worse fears." He suggested, taking out his laptop.

I was surprised at how much he had thought about this already. I hadn't really thought about it too much as I had been busy with other things.

"Alright, what exactly do you have in mind?" I questioned him. He smiled to himself, seeming pleased I was going along with his idea.

"We do our own experiments, mostly on ourselves. We identify our own fears, which should be fairly easy. We face those fears and record our reactions, thought, mental health and such. We should be able to get into more details as we go along, depending on what we find." He looked through the notes on his laptop, pleased to be talking about this. I thought a moment.

"Sounds good to me, where do you think we should start?" I responded, scribbling down notes so I could start brainstorming ideas.

"I've already gone ahead and started the identifying process. We can go ahead and list your fears now and compare the list, seeing what we can 'safely' face. We could also consider doing a survey of what the students on campus are afraid and see what the most common fears are, and take those into consideration of our experiments." He answered quickly.

"Well, it sounds good to me. Let's get started." I pulled out a piece of paper from my notebook. I started writing down some of my fears. It seemed like an interesting topic and Jonathan seemed so passionate about it. I felt like I couldn't really say no.

"I already have my list of fears written down, why don't we just add your fears to my list?" he said clicking into a document on his computer.

"Alright." I replied.

"What are your fears?" he asked without hesitation.

I thought a moment. I wasn't sure if I really wanted him to know what I was most afraid of but I knew I wanted accurate results. Jonathan looked up at me, waiting to for me to tell him my deepest fears.

"Normal things, spiders, snakes, bugs, scarecrows…."

"Scarecrows?" Jonathan asked raising an eyebrow. I looked at him knowing it wasn't a common fear. "Is there a story behind that?" he asked me suddenly interested in what I had to say.

"Yeah well…. I'm a farmer's daughter. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Iowa on my father's farm. When I was about six my family had a reunion in my dad's old barn completed with a bonfire and "scary" stories. One of those stories was about a scarecrow that came to life and murdered everyone on the farm it 'served'. Well later that night, one of my brothers decided it would be funny to dress up as a scarecrow and sneak into my room. Well long story short, he woke me up, I screamed, my dad came in, punched my brother, and I've been afraid of scarecrows ever since. It took years for me to be able to back out into the crop field." I shuddered a bit as I thought back on that memory. It was such a dumb and juvenile fear.

"Interesting, how does it affect you now?" Jonathan asked, fascinated with my tale.

"Well, I still won't go out into the crop field at night." I replied as a matter-of-fact.

"How old are you?" he pried.

"I fail to see what that has to do with this." I informed him.

"We can use this as part of our research. It's interesting how something like this can still affect you so greatly even though it happened so long ago. This should be one of the fears you face for our project." He said with a bit of a twisted smile.

"I knew I shouldn't have told you that." I finally said, taking a sip from my coffee. He smirked.

"Well we want everything to be accurate. Besides you want to conquer this fear don't you? And I'll be there, you won't be completely alone." He urged, trying to convince me to go along with it.

"You don't have to convince me to do this, I'll do it. I'm not going to like it but I'll do it." I commented, taking another sip of my coffee.

"You're an interesting person, Emmy. Normally people don't want to embrace their fears." He informed me.

"This will be an interesting experiment." I said thinking about it a bit more. What had I just gotten myself into?

We spent a few more hours going over fears and how to initiate our experiments. We decided to go ahead and make some surveys to see what people were most afraid of. Before I knew it a voice came over the intercom informing us the library was closing.

Jonathan and I started to pack up our things and headed out the library. I took out my cell phone and looked at the time.

"Wow I can't believe it's one already. Well I think the bus has finished its route. Guess I'm walking home." I commented to myself.

"Where are you headed?" Jonathan asked.

"5th Avenue." I answered.

"I live in that area; I'll walk you home." He said as we started walking again. We were quiet for most of the trip back to my apartment. I was glad my apartment was on his way home. Being a small town girl, I didn't want to walk home alone in the dark in the big city.

About fifteen minutes later we were at my apartment.

"Thanks for walking me home." I said.

"Well you shouldn't be walking the streets alone at one in the morning; especially in Gotham." He bluntly stated. I nodded and turned to unlock my door.

"Thanks again, meet you at the library tomorrow, same place, same time?" I asked him, once my door was open.

"Chances are you'll see me before then, but yes. I'll see you then." He said.

"Sounds good, good night." I yawned out.

"Night." He waved as he started to walk off.

I turned on the light as I closed the door behind me, locking it with a click. I looked around the front/living room. It was still filled with boxes that needed to be unpacked.

"That will wait until tomorrow." I said to myself as I walked over to my bedroom. I set my book bag down next to the bed. I walked over to my dresser pulled out a black tank top and some dark red pajama bottoms. After I changed into my bedtime wear, I did a quick walk through of my apartment to make sure there weren't any weirdoes hiding out. Once I deemed I was indeed alone, I turned off the lights and climbed into my bed.

'I wonder how my new life in Gotham will turn out.' I thought to myself before drifting into a deep sleep.

….

Author's Note: Hello everyone! Welcome to my story. I've had a few people message me, asking me to repost this story. I'm in the process of having it betaed by my awesome friend, X .xMay-Babyeex. X so that should give the story a better quality than it had originally.

There are a few changes so hopefully if you've read this story before you'll enjoy the changes. Nothing major changes its still the same story line I just added a few more scenes to certain chapters of the story. I hope you'll love the extra scenes.

Anyway, I'll update as quickly as I can. Chapter 2 should be out later tonight. Please leave a review if you have a moment. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Thanks again!-Lin