A/N: Inspired by the song "Within My World", from the West End musical "Dracula", this is a glimpse into a love that serves as a testimony to the words of Friedrich Nietzche:
"There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness."
Title: Within My World
Summary: Within his world—despite the chains her world had tried to bind her with—she would belong to him. Forever.
Characters/Pairings: Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow x OC
Rating: M for sexual content
Within My World
Mindless cheers and exclamations. Drunken slurs. Wolfish yelps and cries of perverse pleasure and wanton lust. Crowds gathering, crushing bodies together. Man smothering woman in drunken longing. Women slithering, sliding all over each other to satisfy the devolved sexual urgings of their male partners.
There truly were things that time did not change.
Including the raging disgust he felt, observing this mess before him. Once, he'd witnessed it in civilian clothes, under a civilian name and title. Once, he had observed for no real purpose but that of obligation. One cannot so easily ignore what is thrust and thrown before your eyes. Blink, blink, and move on. That is how you survive. And back then, it was a test of survival. To operate without too much interference from simple-minded colleagues and incompetent students. To live day to day under the guise of normal…of sane.
But he had to suffer that indignity no longer.
He was free.
He was free to embrace the disgust, the loathing he felt for these young minds, wasted on pleasurable sins of the flesh. He was free to revel in the scorn he felt for their childish antics—these beings who were intended to go on to be fine, upstanding members of the community, of the city.
But more importantly, he was free to be consumed by the rage he felt. The rage, the hatred, the fury he felt for these weak, small people…those who had done him injury—physical or otherwise, it did not matter. Students or faculty, they were all the same to him. They had scorned him, humiliated him and ultimately exiled him.
They had thought him weak and pathetic…insignificant.
They would learn. He was still the teacher and they were still the students and they would learn.
But later…not now.
Right now…he was after something much better…something much more important.
He stepped over concrete, rock, pebble, and plant, moving along the shadows as though he belonged with them. As though he were one with them. And they were kind—kind as humankind was not—wrapping around his form, permitting him to slide across walls, around corners, and finally through a door.
He did not need maps or compasses or directions. The shadows, the darkness were his allies. All he had to do was seek their assistance.
All he must do was ask them to find her.
And they would.
And they did.
There she was, standing so utterly still beside the window. Black stain of hair streaking across the pale canvas of flesh; the night's cold breath exhaling against her gown of ebony silk, rippling it across her limbs—limbs sculpted with the vitality of ice. Her profile was intended to be cold, emotionless and blank. It served to encourage those rumors surrounding her name among her peers…whispered tales that she had no heart.
Oh, but she had a heart. She could not deny it…hide it from him—not he who knew her so well…who knew her beauty.
He who knew her true darkness. Yes…it was within that darkness that her true beauty laid.
It was time to unveil her…completely.
It was time to teach her once again. Teach her the true beauty that lingered within the darkness.
The shadows aided his quest, encouraging and supportive as he slipped closer to her on phantom feet. The distance between them swiftly decreased…each step toward her calculating and deliberate. He was so close…so very close…
His foot pressed down to the floor, and the boards responded with a loud creak.
Her agile reflexes were exquisite to behold. Truly, he regretted that he could not watch longer, perhaps even be the recipient of her swift reaction to an uninvited presence.
Alas…
His hand was faster, withdrawing the cloth he had prepared and stored away long before entering the campus grounds. With the speed and grace of a viper, his clawed hand pressed the fabric securely over her mouth and nose. She fought him—naturally, she would. How could he expect anything different? She was not submissive. She was not weak. And more importantly, she was not afraid.
In any other human being, he would be infuriated. In her…it was merely exciting.
"Fight me all this night, pretty little flower…" he breathed, burlap rubbing against her cheek, his breath a cold hiss against her skin, "You'll not escape me now."
Perhaps she recognized his voice in those brief, fleeting seconds before the drug took its toll. He thought, perhaps, he could see a glimmer of understanding within the fogged irises, clouded and distorted by the chloroform. Perhaps she understood, for a ghost of a moment, that her Master had found her. Perhaps she understood the boundaries of society and sanity could not bar him from reaching her.
He would find out soon enough.
Her body did not slump or collapse, like some inebriated co-ed. No…not her. She was a flower, and she fell as a flower would—wilting slowly into his waiting arms. Vaguely, inanely, he found himself wondering if she could recall how it felt to be in these arms, for she had let herself be wrapped in their embrace once before. But in those days, it had been arms of naked skin or thin, simple cotton.
No longer.
He slid one arm around her shoulder blades, the other bending through the loop of her legs. She was utterly weightless in his hold, limp and malleable from the drug. Her head lolled slowly from side to side, hair whispering against the burlap that clothed him.
A cold smile on his lips, he made his exit, fading into the darkness with his prize in hold. She had no place in this world—this filthy realm of hypocrisy and sanity. But she would always have a worthy place within the darkness.
It was time for her to know his world…and what awaited her within it.