Jonathan woke up, sweating, in the wee hours. He had not been sleeping well these past few months. He was probably the last person on Earth who deserved a good night's sleep, and he knew it, but the nightmares…constant…every time he fell asleep, he felt it again. His own death. He had not been able to sleep more than an hour at a time since the day he had woken up in the makeshift hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and in tremendous pain, wondering why death had not come.
The Scarecrow had not saved him out of the goodness of her heart.
Scarecrow. He could no longer apply the name to himself. He was not the Master of Fear. He was…nothing.
The darkness in his room felt alive, reaching for him with spidery fingers. He felt himself on the verge of a panic attack, and reached over to turn on the light, wincing as he stretched sore muscles that had stiffened during the night. He was not healing any better than he was sleeping.
Harsh electric light filled the room. It was Spartan: bed, table, lamp, wheelchair, and a book of poetry. No window. The door could not be opened from the inside.
He picked up the book and put it on his chest where he could reach it easily. He had done the same thing as a child when he had been woken up by bad dreams, using the stories to banish the monsters from his mind. He couldn't read now. He was so tired, his eyes wouldn't even focus on the page. Besides, the monsters were real, now.
There was a tiny portion of his mind that was still able to recognize the book as a symbolic protection, much like a child's teddy bear. But the part of him that was in control picked up the book simply because its shape and weight would put an end to the panic.
He wouldn't sleep again, not so soon. Very softly, he began to recite from memory.
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…"
As he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on his chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," he muttered, "rapping at my chamber door. Only this, and nothing more."
The Scarecrow entered then, as if she had been waiting for his invitation, as if she actually knocked out of courtesy.
Even without the mask on, he always called her Scarecrow now, even in the privacy of his own mind. That was how well she had trained him.
She stood over him, looking down with disgust in her blue eyes.
"Ah, distinctly I remember," she said, doing a fair impersonation of Vincent Price. "It was in the bleak December." She snatched his book away. Instantly, the room seemed to shrink to half its size. Gasping, he sat up, reflexively trying to grab it back. Pain shot through his broken legs when he moved. "And each separate, dying ember wrought its ghost across the floor."
Her eyes were red-rimmed. She had, it seemed, been weeping for the lost Lenore.
She was going to kill him this time.
"Please," he begged. "Please don't. Not again."
"Shut up, Jonathan." Since the day she had captured him, she had never called him by anything but his first name. Not Scarecrow, not doctor, not professor. It was as if all his accomplishments had been undone.
And to think, the first time he had taken it as a sign of affection. He had believed that she was saving him from Batman. Fool.
What he wouldn't give for Batman to show up now.
"Please," he repeated. She glowered at him.
"I said shut your fucking face." She dropped the book on his left leg, just below the knee.
He heard himself scream as the white lights exploded behind his eyes.
A second later, he felt her slapping him awake. He had broken into a cold sweat, his hair matted to the pillow. Pain rolled over him in waves.
"Oh, please." He couldn't stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks. "Please, just stop."
"Do you think I should go easy on you just because you asked so nice?" she demanded. "Did the so-called magic words ever once work on you?"
I never did this, he told himself. He had never kept them alive and aware this long.
"I'll do whatever you want. You know I will."
"Yes, I know you will. But I want you to have the right attitude when you do it." She put her hand on the book on his leg and applied a little pressure. He gritted his teeth against the pain, feeling the ends of the bone grinding against each other. "Can you do that?"
"Yes! Yes! Please, Scarecrow! Please, I'll do anything you say! Anything," he babbled.
"Then weep. Beg me to end your pathetic life. Know that you will never be rescued, because no one cares what I do to you. You are not missed. You are not loved. If I dumped your mangled corpse in Jim Gordon's office and signed my name in your blood, the police would not come after me. Batman might come here if I piss him off, but he would never come to save you. No one will ever come for you. You will stay here until you die, and if I have my way, even that won't end your pain."
She eased her weight off his leg. He was drenched in sweat, shaking uncontrollably. The tears ran freely. There was darkness around the edges of his vision, narrowing the world to a point that included nothing more than the Scarecrow's face.
So he heard, but did not see, her open Lucky.
"Don't…"
She placed the tip of the switchblade briefly against the palm of his left hand.
"I could cut off your fingers and send them to the police, one each day, and then move on to other things." The blade nicked his earlobe. He closed his eyes. "How many body parts do you think you would have left when they finally got around to looking for you?" He didn't answer. "How many, Jonathan?" she repeated, putting the tip of her knife to the hollow of his throat.
"One." His breath came in frantic, shallow pants.
"Really? You think so? Which one?"
"The part…you hadn't…cut yet." That seemed to amuse her. She laughed and took Lucky away from his throat.
"How about if I carved a ransom note in your chest? Do you think I would ever see the money?" She ripped open his shirt, and he flinched, wondering how many words she could do before he blacked out.
He had never been strong or healthy. Now his ribs stuck out as if they were trying to escape his skin. Breathing looked like too much exertion for his fragile body. His entire left side was a mass of bruises.
The Scarecrow closed her knife and put her hand to a greenish spot amid the purple and blue. He flinched again, although her touch now was oddly gentle.
"Oh, Jonathan, why didn't you tell me my boys had been beating you up again? If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times, they have to ask before they touch my stuff. First the toilet paper, and now this. Who was it? Tom again? Oh, never mind. I'll find out from the boys. Listen, Jonathan, you're going to make me a new batch of toxin tomorrow. I want it fast-acting this time. None of that 'slow descent into madness' noise. I'll save that for when I have him here."
"Who?"
"Rupert Thorne, not that it's any of your business, Mr. Nosy. His little gang is getting too powerful for the rest of us, so Stromwell and Falcone are paying me to take him out. I was actually going to do it anyway, but they don't have to know that."
"Why do you need me?"
"You make the toxin. What's the Scarecrow without his fear?"
"I'll teach you to make it yourself."
"What's the Scarecrow without his fear, Jonathan?"
"It's easy. You won't need me anymore."
"The Scarecrow without his fear is nothing. You know that better than anyone. And I like you better this way." She turned off the light and moved it just out of his reach, leaving him, shuddering, in the dark.
