Rehabilitation
A low buzzing sound filtered out from the array of computers and hand radios scattered across the darkened living room. Exposed wires were thrown carelessly across a filthy concrete floor, their copper fringed exposed and giving out sparks. A TV, set on static, buzzed in the corner, illuminating the form of a man hunched over in a chair in front of the screen.
His slender hand gripped a mask between them, his fingers brushing across the familiar stitching, re-introducing themselves to the feeling of burlap once more. Blue eyes, bright before but now dulled, stared down at the brown texture, and thin lips were set in a tensed line. Occasionally, they flickered towards a glove like contraption set on a table in front of him, with long needles coming out that held an orange fluid within them. It had been 43 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes and 27 seconds since he had been deemed legally sane. It had been 1 day, 4 hours, 26 minutes and 13 seconds since he killed his psychologist, and exactly 9 hours since he had gotten a hold of his mask once more.
Congrats, you're sane, now go get a job. That's what the psychologist he had been assigned drilled into him in the last meeting they held. Jonathan had been forced to take several deep breaths to prevent him from completely tearing off the man's haughty face.
It had been determined already by Arkham that he would never be given a teaching position again, especially with his history at Gotham University. He would likely never be employed in any field of psychology, and he could kiss any hopes of being a chemist goodbye. This left either fast food work, or retail work, and Jonathan had a firm distaste for either of those options.
So, with minimal choices left in his newfound freedom, he had decided to become a recluse. He drowned himself in his personal work once more. He weaseled the supplies needed off of merchants and beggars, and gained money by selling the vials of toxin he produced to fellow rogues and needy lowlifes, who had begun to alter the formula in order to get a 'high' off of his work. This, apparently, was very effective; enough so that Jonathan had been tempted to try it out himself, for scientific reasons of course. He had decided not to after seeing the side-effects on the news. Those foaming mouths and delusional eyes had put him off of his appetite for a few days. So far no one had caught on that it was his toxin though, seeing how altered from the original the new drug was, but Jonathan still felt a sense of unease in his gut.
The last thing he wanted was the bat to come crashing through another one of his windows.
He began to adapt to normalcy after his release. He rented a small apartment in the Narrows, which was an extremely unsafe location, but the only place he could actually afford with what he had left. He went out to cafés and restaurants, but often found himself leaving just a soon as he arrived when the stares from other patrons became too much to handle. A few times now he had even been assaulted, and had returned to his apartment more than once to crude graffiti spray-painted on the windows and doors. It seemed like Gotham really did never forgive, something he had learned the hard way throughout his criminal career.
He even attended his meetings with the assigned psychologist for a while, up until the last meeting of course. Hell, he even visited the other Rogues in Arkham. The other Rouges being Edward and Jervis, who were the only two he ever really got along with.
In reality, this life he was now living seemed to have become an endless, monochromatic blur, set between the cycle of waking up to nothing and falling asleep to nothing. He felt trapped in the motion, like he had lost the meaning he once possessed when he adorned the Scarecrow costume. The night the psychologist was killed, Jonathan had used a dosage of fear toxin he had concealed on his person. The look of pure terror that had embedded itself onto the man's face was ingrained within Jonathan's mind, and whenever he closed his eyes, it was the first thing he saw.
He had taken the body back to his apartment.
Not because he had some necrophilia obsession with it, no, and not because it was a form of comfort. He merely wanted to refresh himself of what real terror looks like, and found that the psychologists face was the best way to do so. Recently, though, the smell had become too much to bear, and Jonathan had stopped opening the trash bag the man's corpse had been stuffed into.
It was also shortly after he killed the psychologist that he heard Scarecrows voice again. The familiar whispery tone, which had been silenced ever since his release, had returned in force with its hymns of revenge and terror. Scarecrow scolded him for his weakness, and urged Jonathan to allow him to take over once more, to punish those that had abused him during this fragile time.
Jonathan had almost let him.
But for them to be together once more renewed the motivation that had been absent in Jonathan's life. Enough so, that he had broken into the Arkham storage center, with the help of a few of Edwards goons, and retrieved the costume he had long been forcing himself to avoid.
This brought him here, to this very moment. To Jonathan, The monochromatic life he had been forced to endure, which was much like the static television in front of him now, was beginning to fade.
To Scarecrow, this was the Pentecost he had long since awaited for.
Jonathan leaned forward, and with a swift motion he pulled the familiar burlap sack over his head, concealing his bright blue eyes behind hollowed black pits. He stood to his full towering height, and grabbed the glove from the table before securing it onto his hand. His other hand brushed against the remote set on the chairs armrest, and with a single click, he shut the static off.
Tonight, Gotham would taste true fear once more.