Being a huge Batman fan, it never fails to enjoy writing Jonathan Crane as I love him as much as Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Two-Face best out of all of the Bat's foes. I've done fics of Scarecrow before, such as "Elizabeth and the Scarecrow", "The Doctor's Damsel", "The Hellbound Heart", and got a few more chapters left of "Shadows Nevermore". He's such a delight, and I never thought I'd do him in the Arkham Asylum universe. The idea dawned on me this morning out of the blue as much as imagining the exact event of his face and maybe his body being damaged by Killer Croc's attack. Before Arkham Knight came out, I always knew he'd be alive - I can still remember screaming "Oh, my BABY!" when the reptile burst and dragged him down. Now that the fourth and finale in the game series is out, I haven't been able to find any fics that showed what REALLY happened, because what happened to him involves graphic medical imagery - and him returning to the one person he had left in his world.
The story is named after a line in the song "Remember When it Rained" by the marvelous Josh Groban. :) And thanks to Dino Andrade for his wonderful voice of the Master of Fear.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but a main OC.
Chapter One
Memories More Precious
To have the fun while it lasted with the Rogues of Arkham free in their walls - only for it to be stopped by both the Bat and the reptile. How could he have been such a fool to let this happen to himself?
The Joker had struck a single deal with everyone in Arkham to have their fun with the Batman as soon as he gave himself up - then the fun would truly begin for them all. This would have been something beyond Batman's control...and Scarecrow would have been satisfied with breaking his mind once and for all, but the Joker would have murdered him for "spoiling the fun". The clown was so full of it and fond of swishing out the knife and gun; why on earth would Harley put up with that monster?
Monsters were believed to live in your closet, even under the bed - anywhere in your ordinary every day life, but most notably in the recesses of your mind's subconscious. Jonathan Crane knew that all his life even before he went off to college and became professor of psychology. He faced his own monsters from his past before he became a man and took care of his abusive, religious fanatic of a grandmother, took his revenge on the parents who abandoned him, and then onward to anyone else in his path until the Batman exposed him. He lost everything he had, his life's work, but that was corrected as he was admitted to Arkham. He found more enlightenment amongst the criminally insane.
They knew nothing about him, labeled him and pumped him full of meds that did nothing to him; HE was the genius, not them. He knew it better than those fools.
And she knew it.
Once, he shared a bed instead of having one all to himself in his straw-littered cell in the asylum. A warm, comfortable bed with a soft body to sleep beside and hold close to his own. Soft skin smelling sweeter than anything else that he could never forget, even dream of at night when they were restless. She had been there when he was arrested, his verdict being insanity and sent here to Arkham. She was there from beginning to end. He had known her since he was a student at Gotham State, going for psychology while she studied surgery. After graduation, he did not see her again until he became a professor at his alma mater and as a psychiatrist at Arkham for a second, part-time job. She had been called in regarding the case of a patient, and that had begun something more than friendship on their parts. She knew him better than anyone else ever did.
Crane sighed to himself as he laid in his uncomfortable bed, looking up at the ceiling, holding his beloved burlap sack close to his heart, fingers clenching the rough fabric until his knuckles turned white as the one name slipped from his lips in his solitary.
Aurora.
His Aurora - his wife, first and only equal in his thirty-five years of life.
His only reason for living, for making his lonely existence meaningful.
She could have left him, but she didn't. She remained married to him despite his status becoming criminal, and for that, she was called crazy as he was. Everyone around her said she was insane to remain tied to him. "He's a monster," they said. "He poisons innocents, scares them at night for his own sick pleasure."
Damn them for condemning her as he was.
He rolled onto his side, turning his back to the world and to the guards passing by, from Dr. Young and Dr. Kellerman, and thought about her only. Aurora was the one important thing in his life besides his fear toxin. She did not cooperate with him, but she was aware of it and didn't try to stop him. She could might as well be labeled an accomplice just by being aware of his activities, but she lied and said she was innocent to this, which he was blessed for. He did not want her on the level he was now. He took the fall just for her.
But once Joker's plan was completed and he had his army with the help of the poor Penelope Young, then Scarecrow had all the subjects in the world; he would walk free from this place once again and go back to his wife who had promised to wait for him.
"His research appears to be the only motivating factor in his life."
BAH! Kellerman thinks so, but he has a wife, does he not? Children, too. He ought to know that I am not evil, that I am not insane. I can love like he - but he just married Margaret because he fears dying alone. That was the solution he was not a fool to. Stephen knew nothing of Jonathan's heart. His heart was no one else's business to know; it was not theirs to know as his weakness.
Between him and her alone.
He remembered the first day they met. At the time, he was nearing graduation and she had just arrived as a new fresh face, assigned to him as her new lab partner.
~o~
"Oh, hello. Are you...Jonathan Crane?"
He looked up from his book in Professor Geers' classroom; he was always the first one here, and even though he was almost out of here after six painful years, old habits died hard. The voice was soft and feminine, but also confident. However, upon looking at the face, he felt himself recoil a little, shifting back in his seat and sitting straighter as he looked at the young woman sitting beside him. For the last several years, no one ever looked at him or even sat beside him. No one shoved him around anymore, but people still talked about him.
No one ever smiled at him, but she was.
Her face was oval-shaped, set with bow-shaped lips and ivory skin flushed at the cheeks. Her hair was long and dark blonde with lighter streaks, the left side tucked behind that ear and exposing an earring of three golden coins jingling - looking at that closely, it looked like it could have come from the Ottoman Empire period, both glamorous and intriguing. She was dressed in a soft pink and silver plaid shirt slightly opened to show her necklace over her heart - a heart of gold surrounded with diamonds. He tore his eyes from her chest and saw her lean legs hugged with pearl-gray denims. Her left wrist which rested on that thigh was wrapped with a bracelet of beaded gold and a large crystal.
But it was not her appearance that captivated him. It was her eyes - they were green, vivid and crystalline, like his own. It was true they were windows to the soul, and Jonathan did not see any form of faux politeness, pretense and manipulation as all the other women in his life did. She was very sincere and honest.
Her right hand, wrist with another bracelet - this being a stretching cuff of tiger's eye and wood in a pattern - and on her third finger a ring of blush in both the band and its middle stone, extended out, but he stared at it for a second before realizing that she just wanted to shake his hand. Her nails were French-tipped and painted a soft pink, bordering on cotton candy. She was no different from the appearances of other blonde girls, but from the depths of her eyes, he could already see she was different. He had purposefully avoided all contact with women for obvious reasons, but when was the last time someone looked at him the way she was now?
"Who's asking?" he asked at last, finishing his analyzing. She grinned, showing a mouthful of pearly whites.
"I'm Aurora. Aurora Mathews. It's my first year."
"You must be asking for trouble coming to a challenging class like psychology." He looked down at her still-outstretched hand and gave it a sniff. "Is that why you came here?"
Her smile faded, and her hand withdrew back to her lap. "Not exactly. I intend to be a surgeon; I have good hands - but mentality interests me, too."
Jonathan found himself impressed, but also found it hard to believe. A surgeon - a lovely lady like you with the likes of digging into the muscles, bones and innards when you got the delicacy of a dove? He blinked. Where did that come from?
This was why he paid no attention to women: distractions. Her perfume filled his nose, too; it smelled of Moroccan argan oils along with vanilla, and soft flowers. But somehow, it was naturally sweet, nothing unpleasant; he never let anything soften him. "Miss Mathews, fascinating. But I have to say I favor the mind above the body."
She nodded, lips pursing. "You think it's better than the body. Huh!" She shook her head, her long curls swishing. "The body is the reason to live; our minds will always be the last to go, but death is not what I look forward to," she said fiercely. "You know, I only intended to introduce myself, not get into an early argument with a graduate like yourself."
"Almost graduate," he corrected her, waving a finger in her face while the fingers of his other hand drummed absently on the cover of his book. "I wonder why Dr. Geers assigned a freshman to a Masters anyways."
"He must have thought one of his top students would help guide me in the subject. Simple as that."
Oh, wonderful, he thought. A graduating student assigned with a new fish in the sea. I look forward to a great last year, indeed.
~o~
He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. They got off to a rocky start, but as the months went by, Aurora Mathews became the first thing in his life to lighten his days and nights. She also helped him out with the development - theory wise as well as formula, but never actual chemical - on the early version of his very own hallucinogen.
They were just friends for that year until he graduated with his PhD, and her first year was over. She was on her own, too. But when Jonathan left, he felt the hollow in his being return. He might not see her anymore, anyway. Moving on was moving on.
Or so he thought at the time.
He was twenty-five by the time he met Aurora Mathews again - now Dr. Aurora Mathews. To think that he had once thought she'd waste her potential, but oh, how wrong he had been. He never admitted he was wrong to anyone but to himself, and to her. He had been working at Arkham on a Saturday when she came, regarding the situation of one of the mid-level patients who needed a bone marrow transplant and had the coverage despite being locked away in the institution. She had not changed at all, but she had begun wearing her hair clipped behind her head. Dr. Crane could still recall her fierce smile and charm, her snark when someone questioned her - not at all different from him. When they first made eye contact, it was like old times already caught up. She was a surgeon intern and two more years short of graduation herself, excelling faster than him somehow, not that he envied her.
Aurora had been the first to ask him out, if you could count coffee as a first date, and a year went by before Jonathan realized with her how short life was; he'd been nearing thirty and realized he was missing something. His fear toxin and understanding what fears drove each individual made him happy but only did so much.
They were married in the botanical gardens of the city, in a Japanese zen garden - the happiest day of their lives. Aurora Mathews became Aurora Crane, and Jonathan Crane felt complete. Five years of peace and love gone by - until he was fired from the university and eventually losing his license. Everything revoked, and it was down to the last straw.
She had been asked to divorce him despite refusing to. She could have left, but she didn't. Jonathan felt he did not deserve her anymore after he was exposed by the Batman, the past five years of their lives together coming to an end; if that was true, then he would have found means to bide time until he found a way to continue his experiments in secret until he resurfaced again.
~o~
"Aurora."
"Hello, Jonathan."
He stood before her, standing to the side of the glass blocking close connection from the woman he loved, who had paid him an unexpected visit. He had not seen her in days, not since the insanity verdict, and no telling how long he would be here. They would not break him; he would show them in return what fear was truly like: sweet it would taste, and susceptible they would be to it. "You shouldn't be here."
She frowned at him. "Is that a way to treat your wife?" She was in a long, pleated white blouse and tight trousers, her hair wild and free, just for him. He had been spared from removing that clip she wore to work every day every time they met - or should he say, robbed?
She had it in her to accuse him of treating her like a stranger! "I'm sorry, but how can we resume what we have while I am here and everything is taken from me?" Jonathan asked coolly.
She huffed. "Jonathan, you talk as though I don't matter anymore."
He took a small step back. "Of course you matter to me!"
"Keep your voice down," she hissed. "Jonathan, I don't care what you did. I love you, but what you did got you in this place, took you from me. Who knows how long you will be in here, maybe for the rest of your life as I have known people who get committed to asylums and have their lives taken from them." Jonathan closed his eyes at her words; of course, he was well aware of that, too. But he knew what he had been doing, and he regretted not covering his tracks so well - but that was also the Batman's fault. He was as good as he could get. That was why Crane now intended to see more of him again in the future, see if he could get a glimpse of what scared the almighty Caped Crusader at night...
"I want you out of here instead of breaking out, prolonging things and making them harder."
He almost gasped before he held it in. It sounded like she was asking him to give up his life so he could get out of here. What would he do then, hm? Find some mediocre job that did so much at a time? His green eyes locked with hers. "Aurora, what then, eh?" he seethed. "My formula was my life, and the damned rodent is no different than the fools who didn't understand me. He threw me in here, and I'll never see you again unless whenever you are called for surgery if anyone else could even be covered for it. My chances of that are very slim."
Her hands were on her hips. "What about me, then, besides work? Jonathan, I still love you so much, but your work is all you seem to care about now. From the looks of it, you'll never leave, after all." The streaks of shining tears rolled down her cheeks now. "Was all we had for the last five years worth nothing? Was I just a...substitute for this toxin of yours? You never loved me, did you?"
Now Jonathan could gasp. His Aurora doubted his love for her, and it was NOT true! "No!" He quickly moved forward, placing both hands on the glass pleadingly. "Aurora Crane, that is NOT true! You're the world to me, the only good thing that ever happened to me. I never took you for granted, ever," he swore, then lowered his voice. "My angel, I'll do whatever you want me to do, but you must know that I will do everything I can to get out of here. I'm just like you; I have a job to do - fear is my life, as you care about the dying and injured who come to you every day. I have a job to do, and if I can't go back to the normal life I once had, then this will be my career now."
Her lips quivered, and he could now see the mixture of anger and sorrow in her eyes - as well as understanding in his decision. "You're a criminal now, Jonathan. You're choosing to go against the law, to continue your research." She nodded numbly and brusquely. "You're never going to give up your fascination with fear."
Jonathan sighed heavily. "Afraid not."
Her tear-streaked face was before the glass now, the bridge of her nose gently pressing against it. She brought her left hand, the hand which still held the fairytale symbol of a wedding ring he gave her years ago in front of their colleagues and patients. "If that's the way it is, then I'll never leave you, Jonathan. Everyone is expecting me to file for divorce, but I won't do it. They don't understand you like me. I'll gladly wait for you to come back to me for however long it takes."
~o~
"Too late now, Batman!" he called over to the Dark Knight, who turned around and saw him standing there with his bag of the poison, ready to go into the sewer to spread all over Gotham and reach the poor souls' minds upon contact. Chuckling, Scarecrow advanced backwards with the bag over the underground river. "One step closer, and this goes into the water," he warned. "The cave will fill with your deepest, darkest nightmares - and you will never reach your precious Venom roots!" He had to cackle over this; how exhilarating it would be, given this amount of toxin was enough to drive one hundred men insane. It would be a beautiful sight to behold, indeed.
Batman stepped away from the great roots of the plant that was used in the Venom-Titan formula, baring his teeth as he growled, "Don't do it, Crane!"
Oh, but I can, and I WILL! However, before he could say this, he heard a ferocious growl behind him and instantly knew Croc was here - and he was not happy that his watery lair was about to be tampered with. Or perhaps he thought it was a guard or someone else - he did not have time to answer that before the beast roared and sprung from the water and had poor Scarecrow in his grasp.
His hold lost on his precious bag, which fell to the ground, Jonathan screamed uncontrollably as he fought out of the grasp of Croc, whose jaws were wide open and ready to have their next meal...Aurora, I'm so sorry! Please, forgive me! I love you! So much left unsaid...!
Those deadly jaws never reached his side, or anything of Jonathan, because the next thing he knew, he was pulled into the water, his nostrils and mouth smothered and blocked from air. Now he knew he might drown - but not if he could at least try to get away from the reptile man...
He heard himself scream under water when pain ripped at his face, the searing in his skin and muscles coming to fruition, and he squirmed to get away from the beast. His plans were foiled once again, so there had to be one other solution, and that was to get away. IF he could. Crane howled, still underwater, the agony in his face lingering, and he could barely see in the darkness. He might as well die here, at thirty-five years old and lost of his ripe years -
NO! NO NONO NONONO! Don't think of death, Crane, you fool! Think of HER! You made a promise you'd return to her; honor that!
Honor it, yes. But first, he had to find means of navigating the sewers, but Croc had him still in his grasp. Never did he think he'd ever be in this predicament. Killer Croc was the story of nightmares, and how true it was. But he hadn't let his fear get the best of him since he was a child.
Suddenly, the feel of claws around him released, as it appeared that Croc's attention returned to the Batman in his lair. Relieved, Jonathan could breathe a sigh of relief - if only reality did not kick in and he was still underwater, as well as the fact his lungs were burning from the lack of oxygen. Willing them to hold on for a little longer, Jonathan began to kick and swim for the surface, only to hit his head against hard wood, groaning and realizing it was a plank. Floating forward, he eventually found freedom and gasped sharply as he was overcome with precious life air in his lungs -
- as well as the pain on his face again. Namely his nose and mouth, including his left eye, in which he assumed one of Croc's claws damaged an optic nerve. What damage had been done to him?
He looked around and knew that he could not stay here, that the Bat was sure to find him again - or worse, Croc. He had to hurry as well as keep quiet with his footsteps, given that Croc could find his prey based on vibrations of the planks, even from miles away. You never knew when he'd come. Crane would not risk going underwater again.
Thankfully, he did not wear shoes as it made it easier for him to glide over planks and water, turn direction after direction, ignoring the pain in his entire face, but upon looking down his bared torso as well as feeling his mask stick hotly to his skin besides from the smelling sewer water -
Blood.
By the time he noticed this, he found a cavern entrance and a place to stop from fleeing the Bat and the croc. He needed to catch a breath anyway - and to finally see what happened to his face. He reached to unstrap his glove of syringes from his hand and laid it on the ground at his feet, then reached to unfasten his hood before reaching to pull his mask off.
He could not remember screaming so loud in his life at the excruciating burst of fire in his system as he pulled the burlap from his visage and held it in front of him to see that it was soaked with his life's blood. Bits of flesh were clinging to it, too. My flesh and blood.
What was additionally worse: he could not see that well through his left eye. He was now partially blind. Perfect, just perfect.
There was no mirror, but the water in front of him would have to do, as there was some lighting enough for his right eye to bear. But when Jonathan leaned over and saw his reflection - what was left of it - his heart fell with what was left of his sanity, and he raised his fist to splash the water to ripple away that hideous reflection before throwing his head back and howling high enough to bounce off the cave walls - echoing his despair and shame.
He looked like a monster to his own eyes.
What would Aurora think if she saw him? What would she say?
Crane continued to scream and scream, falling to his side and curling up, forgetting who and where he was for the moment. Just the pain in his face as well as the pain in his heart as to how his wife would think of him when she saw him.
I never played the game, just watched it as a whole movie on YouTube. :) My boyfriend is the game player, and he also loves Scarecrow as much as I do. And no one needs to worry if this story will be abandoned. I ALWAYS complete my stories.
Anyways, read and review. Appreciated.
