Nyctophobia: a paralyzing fear of darkness, its name derived from the ancient Greek goddess of night.
Nyx was a primordial goddess, one of the first to exist in accordance with Greek mythology, and the dark was surely among the first things that primordial man came to fear… after all, one can never be entirely certain just what's lurking in the blackness of an unlit corner…
Just three days prior, Jonathan Crane had determined that two of the guards patrolling his sector of Arkham suffered from this fear, and persuaded them to quit their jobs merely by reminding them just how dark the Asylum could get if a single fuse shorted.
They didn't need to be told twice of the horrors potentially awaiting them in a lightless corridor of Arkham Asylum, and while their timidity amused him, the loss of two guards was not at all amusing to Asylum staff, meaning that he was now the one spending the most time in the dark.
Crane's cell—roughly ten by ten and fitted only with the barest necessities of living—was indeed very dark at night, leaving only the sounds of footsteps to separate the experience from complete sensory deprivation… and now there were two less pairs of boots hitting the floors to assure him that he was not in some endless black void.
His dark world was utterly silent.
However quiet it got, though, he simply couldn't shake the feeling that the happenings on Asylum grounds were less than placid—that this period of noiseless inactivity was the proverbial calm before the storm. As such, Crane felt it would be unwise to resign himself to sleep so soon after lights-out.
He simply sat on his cot in the all-encompassing blackness, skinny legs crossed at the ankles, hands in his lap, waiting for sound to resume.
His patience was soon rewarded as a small click sounded from above him, signifying that the PA system was active—far too late for any official announcements.
"Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane," a voice issued from the speakers. It was deep and full of power, without being too gruff or masculine. The inflections were flat, but combined with the intonations, Crane knew, this suggested instability. This voice did not belong to any of the Asylum staff.
"That word gets tossed around a lot," the voice continued, "Insane. What does it even mean? Certainly from an etymological standpoint it means 'not sane,' but what exactly is sanity?"
At this point, Crane began to hear footsteps resounding through the hallway outside. Not the deliberate, pounding footsteps of a guard's boots, however—rather, the distinctive clopping of a woman's pointed heals… at a time when all the female psychiatrists fond of such footwear had retired to the safety of their homes.
As the heels became louder, the unofficial announcement extrapolated further:
"Is it a willingness to forego questioning the commonly held moral standards of where you live, a code which probably formed based on ideas once as radical and ultimately just as arbitrary as those now deemed insane? Why then is the notion of criminality distinct from insanity?"
An interesting point for the speaker to be making—especially given the context, but Crane couldn't help but wonder just where this was going as the heels grew steadily closer to his cell.
"How is Gotham, this city so rampant with 'sane' people committing crime, and whose only longstanding 'champion of justice' is a vigilante, operating sub-legally dressed as a giant bat… a city where the first legal defender insusceptible to corruption proved just as volatile—just as insane as any inmate here… how is Gotham, this magnet for the most unsightly flotsam and jetsam, which spawned some of the world's most deranged and infamous individuals… fit to judge what is sane and what isn't?"
Crane noticed the voice starting to become more excited when it referenced Harvey Dent and the Batman. Additionally, he imagined that a lot of his fellow inmates must like what they were hearing, and he was personally rather fond of where the speech was inevitably leading.
"If differentiation from societal norms is what constitutes insanity, and our beloved city is so infested with such aberrations that the norm in Gotham is insanity, yet the people here still have the audacity to label you insane… well, that's just insane!"
By this point, the voice had adapted some semblance of passion, however maniacal.
The heels had stopped right outside his cell; the voice proceeded:
"The craziest city on Earth still not only believes there's such a thing as sanity, but it wants to say that the fine folks here at Arkham don't fit the bill. It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous that in a madhouse, with patients outnumbering staff and the 'sane' being in the minority, that insanity is not the new sanity."
There was a pause, possibly for dramatic effect. The histrionics in this town.
"Let the inmates run the asylum!"
The voice finished triumphantly as the PA system clicked off and the hall was filled with the mechanical whirring of every door on the cell block opening simultaneously, followed by the solid clink of them locking in place, and the cacophony of a hundred or so lunatics running free.
Light rushed into Crane's cell, threatening to blind him for a brief moment before his eyes adjusted and he saw the figure in his doorway: a woman, nearly silhouetted against the brightness of the hallway—the sterile, clinical white light reflecting off the sterile, clinical white walls.
Her sense of style was decidedly French, dressed in an impeccably fashionable ensemble with a color scheme that consisted solely of solid blacks on solid whites, save for the shear violet sash around her neck.
An oversized, though otherwise nondescript handbag was slung diagonally over her shoulders, and in her left hand she held what looked to be an aerosol canister.
The woman glanced at him briefly, assessing his no doubt puzzled expression, before she turned her gaze to her handbag, sliding the spray can in and fumbling around for something else. She found whatever it was and ceased rummaging, grasping the object with both hands as she looked back at him.
"Professor Jonathan Crane," the woman spoke, offering up what she held. Her voice did not match her appearance. In fact, it wasn't a woman's voice at all: it was the voice from the announcement. Crane stood up from his cot, but made no further effort to move. Not until he figured out the game.
"Scarecrow?" the person said, inquisitively but not hesitantly. He stepped forward to observe what s/he was holding out to him.
It was his mask… well, something of a facsimile of his mask, though much more frightening than any previous design. The burlap was sewn together better, but with larger stitches. It had been coated in some sort of compound which gave it a joyously disturbing flesh-like quality.
Additionally, the eyes were now tears stretched over lenses which presented themselves as sunken black eyes, and the mouth was mechanized to drop open impossibly wide, revealing large, flat teeth almost caged by the stitched-together lips. A combination dispersal/filtration system for gas was integrated into the overall workings.
"Brilliant," he uttered, taking the mask from the person's hands. Pulling it over his head, he found that it fit well, if not perfectly. He adjusted the noose-like accessory on the neck and looked his benefactor in the eye no longer as Crane, but as the Scarecrow.
The person smirked wickedly.
"Would you like to participate in a little psychology experiment?"