AN: Always know your villains. They can be evil for evil's sake, but know how evil they're willing to be. Also, thank you to EVERYONE who reads, follows or comments. Free gas masks all around, because Doctor Crane doesn't always like these going up for the public.
Jonathan Crane didn't like to think about Granny. He hated to admit it, but he was still terrified of her. If anyone could come back as a Christmas Carol ghost, it would be her. He could see her now, looming over him with that heavy cane in her hand, intoning that he was the devil's child, that she should have left him outside to die. No, he didn't like to remember her.
She'd left constant reminders, unfortunately. The scars on his body were a testament to her talents, and to this day she haunted his dreams.
"Devil's spawn, I should have known what you would turn out to be!"
"Did you know your mother never even held you?"
"I should have left you for dead!"
Oh, yes. She'd made sure he'd remember her, even though she was long buried in the chapel.
There was one memory that he would have liked to forget, unsure if it was even real. For all he knew, it was wishful thinking or a dream. But it stuck all the same.
He had been very ill as a little boy-pneumonia, if he remembered right. He must have been six or seven, and by the time his teachers noticed that something was really wrong, he been sick for about a week. He had probably assumed that Granny would be furious. He would have been wrong.
The next three weeks were a bit of a blur, but he recalled-or thought he recalled-that she had taken good care of him. She'd read to him from a book of fairy tales and brought him large bowls of homemade chicken soup.
Once he was over the worst of it, she had gone back to the untouchable terror that was Granny Keeney. He never knew if he'd imagined the whole thing or not. He'd survived, though, even though the doctor had been skeptical, so maybe it was real. She had never done it again, though.
He didn't like to think about Granny, and he didn't regret killing her, either. But sometimes he had to wonder what she would have been like if the circumstances were different.