Author's note: This fiction, which is mostly from my own benefit, contains some original characters that I often use to torture poor Jonathan Crane with. This first is my mad doctor Adrian Castle, who in my stories tortures Arkham patients even more horribly than Crane ever did. The second is Bones, . Kyla Boggs, a Batman OC I've used for the last three years in innumerable fictions and realities. In most versions though she is a serial killer who carries around the skull of the father who raped her, who she later murders. I play her as Devil's advocate to all of Jonathan's schemes and quirks. She's his Harley, only can actually think. Don't worry, there's no sexing or anything. They hardly qualify as a pairing. Pictures of Bones and her accompanying characters can be found at my DA account.
Second note: Also, some ideas and qualities of this particular Jonathan Crane were borrowed from the fantabulous Lauralot and her version of Scarecrow. I really admire her skill, her humor, and her creativity.
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The click of the gurney wheels on the tile floor was quiet in comparison to the volume of Jonathan's beating heart; it was thudding so hard in his chest that it hurt, the organ working overtime on the inside of his ribs. The rest of him was cruelly immobile, held in place by crude leather straps that bound him to the gurney. His ankles, knees, thighs, waist, chest, neck and forehead were strapped, as well as individual binds wrapped around his ankles and wrists.
Overhead the lights blinked in and out as he passed by them, entering his vision long enough to leave an imprint on his eye before winking out to be replaced by another a few seconds later. His pupils screamed for relief, but the medication they fed into him made it all but impossible to shut his eyes, even for a second. Oh, but how he wished he could—the hallucinations were back, and crows were fluttering around him, pecking at his face and chest. He wanted so badly to shut his eyes from their beaks but the meds the doctors had given him kept his eyes open; they told him that this was in preparation for an experiment that might forever rid him of his hallucinations. While Jonathan was all for having his head back in order after Batman had ruined it, he wasn't at all ready for the test in store for him at the end of the hall.
The sound of twin doors being struck by the solid metal end of the gurney announced Jonathan's entry into the viewing hall where his treatment was to take place. High up there was a balcony with a plate of glass separating the viewers from the viewed, and as more crows crowded his vision Jonathan caught a glance of the people that had gathered to watch the "performance" about to take place. Most were doctors or psychologists from the Arkham staff, but one face stood out in the crowd—one painted black and white like the visage of death, with long blue hair framing it.
His chapped lips tried to form her name, but the beaks and feathers became too thick and he was already being steered away to a monster of a machine that was the center attraction of the room. A smooth steel slab awaited him by the machine accompanied by a symphony of wires; it didn't take a great leap of imagination to figure out where they were going to go. A nurse took a needle and pressed it into his arm; by now she was just as practiced as he was with administering anti-psychotics. The flush of their introduction into his system was slow and merciless, every inch of their progress pronounced. Jonathan's throat tightened and he gasped for air. This was his natural reaction to the medical cocktail they forced into him daily, and it never got any easier. Two burly guards came and assisted the mess of present nurses with lifting Jonathan onto the table and strapping him back in. This time the restraints were all metal, pinching the skin under his thin asylum uniform.
"Electro therapy," said an omniscient voice from the speakers strung about the ceiling. "A rather medieval practice compared to our . . . more advanced treatments today. Or is it? Despite its history, electroshock can be very effective in dispelling the haunts of the mind. Take for example today's patient, former Arkham Administrator Doctor Jonathan Crane." A spotlight flashed center room to illuminate Jonathan and he squinted, to keep out the crows and the light. He didn't have his glasses on and everything was a washed, dripping blur of colors, like a watercolor painting. Still, even without his vision proper, he could recognize the voice with its patronizing tone and superiority complex. It was soaked through with a narcissistic key, and it disgusted Jonathan how much his voice had sounded like that when he'd been in control.
The owner of the voice was none other than up-and-coming Doctor Adrian Castle, the next-in-line to take up the coveted title (among psychologists, anyway) of Arkham Administrator. It was expected that most every doctor who took over the asylum ended up as crazy as their charges, but it was obvious to anyone competent (namely Jonathan) that Dr. Castle was already very much insane. That was the real purpose of today's demonstration—it had nothing to do with helping Jonathan. It was all about feeding the good doctor's sadistic hunger for torture and experimentation. In the back of his mind Jonathan felt Scarecrow lurking; his other half had respected and admired Adrian at first, but after Jonathan's first trip to the room at the end of the tile hall Scarecrow had felt more homicidal rage than anything. No one hurt his Jonathan, and it took all of Jonathan's good sense and self control to keep his alter ego from losing it just so he could maul some hack doctor with a torture fetish.
"Doctor Crane suffers from schizophrenic hallucinations and delusions, as well and psychological breaks of sanity without constant medication due to the introduction of a toxic nerve gas into his system three years ago." Adrian had made his entrance into the room and a soft chorus welcomed him with applause. He was holding a small vial of clear fluid; he swished it back and forth for everyone to see. "This is a sample of Crane's compound, discovered in the basements of Arkham shortly after his arrest." He uncapped the vial and the nurse closest to Jonathan flinched; he wondered vaguely if he'd ever drugged her before, or if she might have been in the Narrows three years ago when he'd released the toxin.
The doctor noted the reactions of his audience and laughed lightly, capping the vial again with all the appropriate air of a talented showman. An experienced showman. "No need to fear," he said calmly, and though Jonathan was unaware Adrian smiled in his direction at the last word of his sentence. "This compound is only effective when in its aerosol form in the air. As a liquid it's useless." Again he smiled at Jonathan as if mocking him, and handed the vial off to an assistant before walking to stand at Jonathan's side.
Scarecrow rose up from within him violently, and on impulse Jonathan struggled against the metal even though it was pointless. He'd fought harder than that the first time they'd strapped him into the electroshock and to no avail; now it was purely a formality he and Adrian exchanged. Scarecrow's eyes blazed from Jonathan's face, and a hollow grin graced his cheeks.
"I'm going to enjoy returning all these favors," Scarecrow said, so quietly only Adrian heard. The guards and nurse had moved away to hook in wires; they were alone. "Just wait until the day when our roles are reversed. I'll fill you so full of fear toxin your eyes will burst from your sockets with the force of your screaming."
Adrian was used to these threats and coldly shrugged them off; still, a flicker of hesitation passed across his face. The good doctor wasn't an idiot—he knew what had become of the people who fell victim to Scarecrow and he didn't want to join them.
"Begin the procedure," he said casually, and Jonathan finally managed the phenomenal task of closing his eyes. It did nothing for him except to stave off the nightmarish hallucinations, but that was enough comfort, for now. Soon nothing would be able to alleviate his suffering.
"Power levels at eighty percent, Doctor," the nurse called from across the room. Up in the viewing balcony the assembled crowd tittered with excitement, whispering eagerly amongst themselves, eyes wide and mouths wider. Jonathan's eyes snapped open with a sudden burst of lucidity, and he searched the crowd for that one certain face again, praying for her to be there—
—and she was, right up front, pressing on the glass with both hands. Two orbs that burned with the passions of Hell met his own. It was her, really her, the only woman he'd ever found to have any value in this world besides Harley. Her hands scratched at the offending glass that separated her from Jonathan, and he watched her black lips form his name. He wretched one hand up, to imitate her gesture, and whispered her name as loud as he dared in Adrian's presence.
"Bones," he said, and then 400,000 volts of electricity tore his psyche apart.
--
Alone, sealed back into his tomb, Jonathan stared at the ceiling. The scent of his own singed flesh clogged his nostrils, and he twitched almost unperceptively inside his Arkham housecoat. Adrian had announced the treatment a complete success to his audience heady with delirious amusement—the former Dr. Crane would not be seeing any more delusions any time soon.
Shows what he knows, Jonathan thought, because there was a person in his cell with him who couldn't possibly be there, sitting on the opposite end of his bed, smiling at him. She had blue hair to the small of her back that her finger twirled girlishly, and was dressed in a white one-piece styled corset and blue heels. Her nails were painted red, a red much brighter than the red of her blood, which leaked without end from the ragged cut in her throat that halved her neck, and the gaping tear in her torso.
"Hello, Jonathan," she said sweetly, inspecting him with orange irises that dilated in reverse. There was a skull on her lap, grey with age and a jagged hole at the crown. She was tapping him (he knew the skull was a him, but he couldn't remember how) with her filed nails, and all the while she smiled, her black and white painted face patiently waiting for him to say something.
"You're not real," he decided, pulling his knees to his chest. "You're dead."
"Of course I am." He wasn't sure which she had answered.
"I saw the reports. I watched the news from the rec room television when they found your body. You've been dead for two years."
"There are powers outside the realm of money," she said mysteriously, tracing the cracks in the skull that grew from its hole.
"You're dead," Jonathan said again, more softly but with no less certainty.
"I know," she said airily, with bored, feminine inflection. "You've said that three times now. But saying something doesn't make it any truer." But she had to be dead. No one survived what she'd gone through. He'd sat and watched the entire program about her that came on weeks after her death had been announced, all about her childhood and alias when she'd worked at Wayne Enterprises. With shaking hands and wide, blank eyes he'd listened to the bland t.v. host explain the depth of her madness, and then the coroner explain her final moments.
The Bat's bat-a-rang caught her side, that the first cut. Then she dug it out and used it to execute herself before the Bat could stop her, Jonathan recited while Bones peered at him with cool, feline intrigue. She made her death his to carry. It was her final act. She'd have rather died than ended up . . . ended up here.
"This is a hallucination," he said, flush with fear and freezing cold, even as he sweat.
Bones' black lipstick curled into a slow, content smile.
"If this is a hallucination," she said, "then it is a good one."
Terrified, tortured, and trembling, his nerves wracked and punished, the smell of her dead blood invading him and her hands perverse decor cradling his face, her black lips on his cheek, he agreed that yes, it was.
--
End notes: Through a long complicated process I won't go into here, Bones is in fact there. He isn't hallucinating her. The easiest explanation I can give is that Bones has necromantic powers—she's sort of like Hugo Strange, only she's using her powers for mind-fucking Jonathan. Wait, no, according to Lauralot Strange already did that. Way to be, Hugo, way to be.