Wasted Breath Chapter One
A/N: (Squee) I Just Got Back From Shopping And I Now Have FOUR New Batman Comics, All Of Which Contain Jonathan Goodness~ Anyway, After Reading On Of The Versions Of Him, I Came Up With This. (I Thought This Up/Wrote Almost Half At Approx. Two-Thirty In The Morning So Please Bear With Me On This One)
Disclaimer: I Don't Own Jonathan, But I Own Just About Everyone Else: D
Jonathan prowled the silent streets of Gotham, searching for a new test subject. He pulled his coat tighter around his lean form. The night air was cold and frigid, not exactly the best weather conditions for people hunting.
He paused, spotting a young woman of only about twenty walking out of a dingy Pub a few buildings down.
"Hey come on, babe…" A random drunkard yelled at her, grabbing her arm. She shrugged him off, scowling.
"Piss off, Frank, you're drunk."
"Come on, Kat, babe, have a heart."
"Piss. Off."
The man growled and slammed the young woman against the brick wall behind her, a sickening thud echoing through the silence. Jonathan walked forward, tapping the man on the shoulder. He spun, blood shot eyes gazing at him quizzically.
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, stale, gin stained breath wafting out of his mouth like sickening waves. Jonathan smiled, but of course, you couldn't see it through his mask. He lifted his hand towards he man's face, curled his index finger towards his palm, and pressed the button attached. There was a dull click and then a quiet hissing sound. Moments later, a greenish cloud of gas surrounded the man's face. He coughed, gasped, and sputtered, falling to his knees. The Scarecrow took a sick pleasure in kicking the man in the face, his lips cracking into a sadistic grin as the man screamed like a wounded infant.
He looked back at the young woman. She had collapsed onto the ground, blood trickling down the side of her face. He sighed, picking her up gently.
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.
Katherine groaned, her eyes fluttering open. She was in a small room, painted a rich red color.
"Ah. You're awake." Her head snapped in the direction of the voice, only to receive a blinding pain shoot up her spine and into her head. When she unclenched her teeth and opened her eyes again, she found herself staring at a man of approximately thirty, tall – very tall, she noted- bright orange hair, and glasses that glared almost painfully under the lights.
"Where the fuck am I?" She yelled, Jonathan simply laughed.
"My, my, such language, child…" He chided gently, standing up. Katherine glared at him with a mixture of hatred and mild curiosity.
"Who are you?" She asked, her voice lowered to a reasonable tone. The man's smile didn't falter.
"Fear incarnate." Katherine rolled her eyes.
"Oh ha, ha, ha, real funny."
In the split second following her remark, Katherine found herself trapped in the chair she was sitting in, Jonathan's thin form pinning her down.
"Dude, relax, it was a joke…"
"I despise jokes."
Katherine sighed.
"Well, you're no fun."
She looked him in the eyes, her blue-green eyes challenging his almost black ones. "What do you want with me?" She asked, no hint of fear in her voice. That in itself angered Jonathan.
"You're here to be my new test subject."
"Fascinating." The sarcasm in her voice didn't go unnoticed and Jonathan tightened his grip on her wrist, a bluish black bruise forming under his spindly fingers.
"Be quiet. The only sounds that should be coming from your mouth are blood curdling screams."
"Really?" She scoffed, "And tell me, what exactly happened to the last sucker in my position?"
"Kyle? He overdosed on my latest concoction and stabbed himself in the neck with a pair of scissors." He smiled, "His screams were so beautiful…" Katherine raised an eyebrow.
"You're a very fucked up person, are you aware of that?"
Jonathan's grip on her wrist tightened even more, breaking the skin and causing a small trickle of blood to surface.
"What did I say about language, child?" he asked, enjoying the expression of pain plastered to Katherine's face.
"Hmph. Whatever." She mumbled. Jonathan growled.
"Why are you so calm?!"
"Honestly? You're really not that scary…"
That pushed Jonathan over the edge. He stormed over to one of his tables, snatching the syringe off of it. He pointed the tip at Katherine's neck, smiling.
"You say that now, child, but in a few minutes, you'll be screaming your little lungs out." His little smile twisted into a grin of sadistic madness. "And won't it just sound musical?" Katherine's eyes widened, the true reality of the situation settling onto her brain.
"My god…" She whispered, "You're not joking…"
"Did I not tell you, child, that I despise jokes?" As he said that, he pushed the tip of the syringe into her neck. Pushing the plunger down, he smiled gently.
"Sweet dreams."
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.
Katherine looked around her, she appeared to be in her old childhood house, back before the…
Fire…
Her eyes widened in panic as she saw the smoke pouring in through the bottom of her door. She jumped out of her bed, noticing her loss of stature. …I look seven again… she thought, but…why?
She threw the door to her room open, falling backwards as a large burst of flame shot out at her like disgusting, groping hands. Realizing that leaving through the door wasn't going to work, she opened her window, gazing at the ground below. She was on the bottom floor, so her window was close enough to the ground that she could climb out and just drop. When she was safely out of the house, she ran straight to the place her parents always told her to go to in an emergency: the enormous tree in their front lawn. As she sat under the shade of the trees twisted branches, she waited silently.
…Where are Mommy and Daddy? She thought, staring at the smoke billowing out of the doors and windows.
Slowly but surely, the notion dawned on her small mind that maybe Mommy and Daddy didn't make it out like she had. Their room was on the top floor, where the fire had started in the first place. So she sat under the shade of the tree, her mouth slightly opened, trying to figure out why her parents hadn't run out, why they weren't there holding her, asking her if she was okay, showering her in kisses and crooning that everything was alright, that they were fine, and that's all that mattered.
It slowly came to her that maybe that may never happen again, that she may never be embraced by her father's strong arms, basking in the smell of his grown up cologne, or that she may never walk into the kitchen in the morning to see her mother making breakfast, her face lit up beautifully by the warm light of the sunrise through the open window.
The window that now had black smoke pouring out of it like a faucet.
That's when it hit her. And when it hit her, it hit hard. She cried, and cried, but she didn't scream, she didn't waste her breath on something so useless. Screaming didn't help, but crying did.
So she cried, sobbing her parent's names as if she did it enough, they would suddenly come back to life.
She sat under that tree for almost three hours. When the police finally arrived, she had cried herself into unconscious, her tears staining her young face.
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.
Katherine's eyes shot open, she first spotted Jonathan, who was sitting in the chair opposite hers, a perplexed look on his face.
"What the hell did you do to me?" She asked, to weak to really raise her voice. Jonathan, who normally would have taken great pride in explaining his genius work, simply frowned.
"You…Didn't scream…" He murmured, furrowing his eyebrows. "Why? Why didn't you scream?!"
Katherine, who was slowly calming down by taking deep breaths, looked back at Jonathan quizzically.
"Why should I? Screaming is a waste of breath. It doesn't do anything to relieve the pain…so what's the point?"
"But…" He mumbled, not quite knowing what to say to that. "But everybody screams…everybody…"
"Hmph. Well, sorry to disappoint you so much." Katherine scowled, "Next time you fucking inject someone with that shit why don't you just tell them to scream? I mean, fuck, it would save you a whole lot of time." Jonathan just stared blankly at her, her words not really registering in his head. Her lips were moving, and that was about it.
"You…didn't…"
"Yes! I know! Jesus Christ! I didn't scream, alert the mother fucking press! Would you let me go now?"
Jonathan shook his head, his blank expression being slowly taken over by a more sinister smile.
"Oh, you'll scream child, one way or another…"
A/N: Well, Did I Do Alright For Two In The Morning? This'll Be A Two-shot I Think… The Next Chapter Might Be A Little… Mature…So... Be Aware Younger Readers. Anyway, In One Of The One Version I Read Of Him, Jonathan Reeeeaaaaallllyyy, Loves When People Scream, So I Took That And Twisted It Into Something A Little More…Adult… Anyway, Reviews Are Needed.
