Al didn't leave the man alone until she figured he was on the verge of tears—shaking (with more than cold) and too infuriated to speak. Then she gave him an hour to brood.

Most people didn't understand the simple effectiveness of repeatedly poking someone who couldn't fight back. It didn't even have to be in the ribs. Poking his leg, the same spot over and over again, had made him angrier, though less twitchy.

Okay, so she was being a sadistic bitch. It was just fun to make him twitch like that. And besides, she wasn't doing him any real harm, just bothering him, and getting a good bit of enjoyment out of it, too.

She would have been a little more polite if he hadn't been trying so hard to show her an impenetrable mask. She wasn't stupid; she knew he was human inside, and she recognized the trick he was trying to pull. He was walking a fine line there, trying to seem harmless but not helpless. He didn't want her to think he actually needed her. He didn't want to depend on her for anything.

Well, tough titty.

She made a point to poke him every time he started to withdraw. She waited until he was visibly shivering before she asked him if he was cold, and then turned the heat back up in spite of his lack of a response. She asked him if he was hungry and ignored each "no," forcing food on him anyway—and it was rather telling that he ate everything she ordered him to, instead of just eating a couple of bites to shut her up.

He was a real stubborn bastard. She knew it, and she let him know she knew it, in hopes that he would give up and act something like civil. She would if he did. But it was probably for the best that he didn't. If he actually asked her nicely and flashed her those big baby blues…well, she might just let him go. At any rate, her heart would grow three sizes, and then where would she find another heart-measuring device this close to Christmas?

It was when she started thinking like this that she knew she was getting a little too bored, so she reached over and poked him. This time, instead of the violent reactions she had been getting, he just grunted belligerently and curled up a little, resting his head against the car door.

That was probably not good.

"Squishykins?"

"What?" He sounded tired. And…well, if she didn't know any better, she would have sworn he had been crying.

Surely not. Not the Scarecrow. Was he finally playing the pity card, trying to make her feel guilty for mistreating her poor, helpless captive? (Insert stab of guilt here.) Or was there really something wrong?

"Are you getting hungry?" she asked. He shook his head. "Cold?" Another shake of the head. What she could see of his face looked awfully pale. "Carsick?" she guessed.

"No."

"Depressed?" He finally raised his head and glared at her with that good old fighting spirit.

"No."

"Then what's the problem?" He made a rude sound that she only wished she were able to imitate.

"Aside from being stuck with the lovely and talented Miss Not-Really-Named-Al for what, for all I know, could be the rest of my life, I haven't got a problem in the world." Now she realized what that strange quality was in his voice.

"You're sick!"

"You're not the first person to say so."

"I mean with a cold, you douchebag."

"Mmm." Lulled by the lack of savage poking, he relaxed slightly, leaning against the car door again.

"Well, don't get overexcited, or anything," she snapped. "Don't lose your head. Wouldn't want to lose that, yet." He didn't respond. "Are you fixing to drop dead?"

"Highly unlikely."

She wasn't too sure about that. He was looking awfully tired, and…

Oh. Tired, of course. It finally occurred to her that he had not planned for this. Unlike her, he wouldn't have had the benefit of a nice, long nap just before all this began. Other than his few hours of drugged unconsciousness, he probably wouldn't have gotten any sleep in at least thirty-six hours or so. And of course he wouldn't want to sleep in front of her. He was vulnerable enough already.

Well, the sun was setting, and she was getting close to the hotel she had planned to stop at, anyway. He would feel better after a good night's sleep.

And even if he didn't, well, she would, and she would be better equipped to handle him.

She turned off the interstate for the last time that day, in some small town no one had ever heard of. If she hadn't been this way already, she never would have been able to find her way.

Judging by his glassy-eyed stare, he was fighting sleep with all his concentration. He wouldn't have the energy to look for landmarks.

This was just sad.

"Are you getting tired, Scarecrow?" she asked politely. If he was as tired as she suspected, the insolence would be lost on him, anyway. When he didn't answer, she reached over to pat him on the knee. He flinched. "Hey, don't do that."

"What?"

"Don't be afraid of me. I ain't going to hurt you." She winced as the ain't slipped out. "Yarrg," she added to divert attention from the hick word.

"Yarrg?" he repeated.

"Yar, it be a pirate word."

"Be ye a pirate?" he asked in a tone so earnest it could only be sarcasm. She laughed, mentally applauding his spirit.

"Yar."

"I suppose you learned that from your captain." Ah, so he hadn't missed that. Oops.

"No, the captain picked it up from me. At least, I think so; it's hard to tell sometimes. But, really, Captain is just a nickname for a friend, and yarrg is just a word I throw around for no real reason. Because pirates be cool." He looked like he had stopped listening, so she fell silent.

She stopped the car in the parking lot of her chosen hotel. It took him a moment to rouse from his semi-stupor, but when the still and quiet penetrated his fog, he was quick to sit up straight, giving every evidence of being fully alert. If she didn't know the signs of exhaustion and sleep deprivation so well, she might even have believed his act.

But it was an act, and nothing else.

She left him alone while she went to negotiate for a room. This was the most dangerous time—if he was going to get away from her, it was going to be sometime when she had to leave him unsupervised. Maybe she was overestimating her own ability to subdue him…but she really didn't think so. If she hadn't been able to take him by surprise, if she had to face him at his best, he most definitely would have been able to kick her ass. One didn't do what he did for as long as he had without picking up a trick or two for fighting dirty, and she had seen him take on people she knew would have handed her ass to her on a platter in seconds if she tried to take them in a fair fight. But now she had him at a disadvantage. The only way he was going to get away from her was to outsmart her, and while she had no doubts as to his ability to do just that, at least she was expecting it. And she had plans.

Now, her version of "negotiation" usually involved explosives, or shovels at the very least, but she was more than capable of playing by the rules and keeping a low profile. And really, she wanted to prove that to herself as much as to the one she was doing all this for.

The bored, middle-aged woman behind the front desk handed over a pair of electronic keys without interest. She didn't seem to care that Al looked a good bit younger than the twenty-five years her ID asserted (in reality, she was old enough to rent a hotel room, but not to rent a car, which was why she had gotten the fake in the first place. That, and she hadn't wanted the Scarecrow to get ahold of her license and learn her real name. The last thing she wanted was for him to escape and track her down later.)

When she got back to the car, the Scarecrow was clearly dozing—although when he saw her coming, he straightened and glared at her with some of that good old righteous fury.

Good job, Squishykins. You keep up that fiction.

She opened the door, nearly pulling him out of the car. Oops. Handcuffs.

"How are you doing, Squishykins?" she asked sweetly. He glared at her.

"Peachy."

"That's good, because tomorrow's going to be more of the same." She reached down to poke him while his hands were still trapped. He twitched, but didn't bother telling her to stop. Well, that was no fun anymore. "We have a hotel room now. You want to go in or stay in the car?" He stared at her. She just waited, arms crossed, this time demanding an answer.

"In," he muttered.

"What's that, sweetums?"

"I would like to go in," he growled.

Oh, good enough, she decided when she saw that he was shivering again. She reached down for the handcuffs.

And he pulled the door shut on her hand.

"Shit!" She tried to pull her hand back. He was having none of it. "Let go!"

"Give me the keys."

"No!" He shrugged and gave the door a sharp yank. Ow, ow, ow, ow—

"Fine!" She reached into her pocket with her free hand and pulled out her keys, dangling them where he could see them. "Open the goddamn door!"

"Nice try." He started to roll down the window. Damn it. Clever bastard. But maybe not clever enough. She let her eyes fill with tears and gasped in very real pain—and then did exactly what she probably would have done anyway, and dropped the keys.

"I'm sorry," she stammered as pathetically as she could manage. He looked annoyed.

"Stop that. And give me the keys."

"Are you kidding me? I can't reach!"

"Try."

"Asshole! My arms are stumpy!" But she reached down for the keys, anyway. And, as expected, she was too short to reach. And, damn it, this hurt.

But he did surprise her when he suddenly threw open the door, catching her in the side of the head. She went sprawling across the pavement, and if she didn't have a circle of little cartoon crows chasing each other around her head, it wasn't for lack of trying.

She was only stunned for a moment, but that was quite long enough for him to pick up the keys between his feet. She kicked out at his ankle, and they clattered to the ground. She knocked them out of his reach, and only then got up to deal with him.

He got himself inside the car and shut and locked the door. Even with the adrenaline still pumping through her, she had to laugh at the sight of him rolling up the window, as if that would help him.

"I hope you're proud of yourself," she said sweetly. "You almost made it. Maybe next time, you will." She gave him an encouraging smile that seemed to piss him off more than anything else she had done so far.

Well, she was no longer in the mood to be careful of his feelings.

Very calmly, she picked up the keys, unlocked the back door, and took out the two bags, and her CD holder for good measure. She was not about to leave him any possible weapons, not after this last performance. She also reached around to snatch off the blanket she had given him. There was no one around who would come close enough to see the handcuffs—any passersby might not even notice him in the car, in the dark—and she knew he wasn't going to try to attract any attention. If his own pride didn't stop him from asking for help, well, any kind of rescue would have to involve the police, and they both knew what would happen to him then. She didn't think he wanted to go back to Arkham if there was any possible way around it.

"See you, squish face," she said as she slammed the door. That surprised him, and she shot him a smirk before she picked up her stuff and walked away.

The weather was perfect up here, she reflected as she carefully breathed out a cloud of white vapor. The cold was already numbing the pain in her poor smashed hand, and while it was too dry for snow, it was more than cold enough. Wouldn't that be wonderful? She hadn't had a real White Christmas at home more than two or three times in her life, and the only one that really counted was the so-called "Blizzard of '93," which would have been called a "dusting" up here; it wouldn't have even been enough to get her out of school.

One of these days, she was really going to have to move north. Maybe not as far as Gotham, but somewhere with snow.

She let herself into the hotel room, which was almost as cold as it had been outside. This place didn't catch enough business to make it worthwhile to run heaters in the empty rooms, which was one of the reasons why she had chosen it.

She let the heater hum to life and went to the bathroom to run a little water over her hand. It was already starting to swell up, but she didn't think it was broken (and she was intimately familiar with the feeling of a stress fracture.) She would wrap it up, anyway. Better to keep it needlessly immobilized than to risk a repetition of the incident that had kept her in Das Boot for half a year.

She sat at the window while she tended to her hand, keeping a sharp eye on the Scarecrow. Not that there was really anything he could do. He looked considerably less than happy, though, so it was probably in her best interest to put off dealing with him for a little longer.

No problem. She had preparations to make, anyway.

The first thing she did was strip the bed and bring the sheets, blankets, and a pillow into the bathroom. The bathrooms were another reason why she had chosen this hotel. Bare, windowless, and with a door that swung out into the room, this was the perfect place to hold a captive. And it wasn't so filthy and run down that she would be afraid to go inside, which was more than she could say for some places she had seen.

When she had the bathroom arranged to her satisfaction and the room was starting to warm up nicely, she took another look out the window, figuring the Scarecrow would be in a more cooperative mood by now.

He was gone.

"Oh, damn it!" She grabbed her keys and ran outside. She was so screwed if she lost him now. There was no time—

She reached the car and gave a sigh of relief. He was still there; he had just curled up, down where she couldn't see him, with his hands clasped tightly between his knees and his face awkwardly sandwiched between his shoulder and the seat. She tapped the window, and his head came up. He stared at his like a deer in headlights, not even angry anymore, just chalk-white and trembling.

"Are you going to cooperate if I try to take you inside?" she asked. He didn't answer. Nonchalantly, she turned away.

"Wait!" She turned back expectantly. He wouldn't look at her as he said, "I'll cooperate. Please? It's cold."

At that, she felt a massive stab of guilt. She should never have left him out here so long. But she didn't tell him that, of course.

She got in on the driver's side and climbed over. His hands were like two little blocks of ice.

"You are cold." She didn't expect an answer; the fact that he didn't pull away from her as he had every other time was answer enough. Well, body heat was the best way to warm up someone with hypothermia.

"Y-you would g-get al-long with M-mister F-freeze just f-fine," he said, which was far more answer than she had expected.

"Don't die, okay?" she said as she unlocked the cuffs. He didn't bother to answer, and he didn't take the opportunity to fight her when his hands were free. He just tucked them under his armpits and looked so miserable, he couldn't possibly be faking it.

But she grabbed the back of his shirt anyway, before she opened the door. She wasn't fool enough to trust him completely, no matter how pitiful he looked.

He didn't get out of the car; he fell out, taking her with him. Fully expecting this to be some kind of trick, she managed to land on top of him, but all he did was gasp and draw away from the frozen ground.

"You okay?" she asked. He nodded. She couldn't see it, but she felt the movement of his head against her shoulder. "Okay, I'm getting up. You stay still." She got off him, moving very slowly, being careful not to damage him, but equally careful not to take her hand off him, even for a moment. "Can you get up now?" she asked when she was satisfied with her balance and her grip on his shirt. He moved very stiffly, but he managed to get to his knees, and then she dragged him to his feet. "Good. Now, you can either try running away again, or you can come inside with me. I really hope you'll decide to be practical. We both know you won't get very far on foot with night falling." She took a step toward the building, and he moved with her, offering not the slightest bit of resistance. "Thank you. I don't really have the right music for a chase scene."

Actually, she did have a song on one of her CDs that she had always thought would be perfect for a chase, but it was really only appropriate for zombies, and then only in a comedy. But this wouldn't be the time to tell him that, not when he was as cold and stiff as a walking corpse himself. Besides, she wouldn't have time to get the CD and play it if he took it into his head to run, and he wouldn't really get the proper effect if she just hummed it while she chased him down.

None of that mattered right now. All that mattered was that the room was warming up, coffee was brewing, and with any luck he would lose that pathetic look of his before her cold heart melted and she was forced to treat him to a visit from the Pumpkin Juice Fairy.

She herded him into the bathroom and released him, keeping herself between him and the door.

"Take off your shoes and get in the tub," she ordered.

"W-what?" Impatiently, she pointed out the little nest of blankets she had made up for him in the bathtub.

"You want to get warm? Get in." She didn't wait around to see what he would do. She just went out into the main room to get a cup of coffee. It was only decaf, which she wouldn't have touched with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole normally, but she wanted him warmed, not wakened.

When she went back into the bathroom, he had wrapped himself up in the blankets, but was still sitting up, shivering slightly and making a heartfelt effort to remain alert. So distrustful. She handed over the little plastic cup. He accepted it with a suspicious frown that might have passed for gratitude if she had squinted and lost both her contacts.

She was relieved to see that his color returned quickly, and he stopped shivering midway through the coffee. She left him then, reassured that he wasn't going to drop dead.

She waited by the closed door for any sound of movement, but she heard nothing. So she made her own noisy display by dragging the heavy bed over to block the door. Then she got out her laptop and ordered a pizza, wondering what he would make of her reluctance to use the phone.

She didn't consider it a crippling phobia. After all, she could and would use the phone if she absolutely had to. It was just that food didn't qualify as that level of necessity.

Well, her mother had been telling her to see a counselor about that.

Maybe she would talk to the Squishykins after all this was over.

(And maybe pigs would fly.)

She watched some TV while waiting for the pizza guy. There was nothing on, of course, but this hotel offered video games, which could prove interesting later. She channel-surfed for an acceptable amount of time before the knock at the door forced her up off the bed.

She tipped the guy and sent him on his way, and reclaimed her spot on the bare mattress.

"Hungry, Squishykins?" she called through the bathroom door. "I've got pizza. Get it while it's hot." He gave no indication that he heard or cared. Fine, if that's the way you want to play it.

While she ate, she watched part of a truly horrible science fiction movie that she had sworn never to sit through again; its only redeeming factor was the impossibly appealing lead actor. When one of the characters spoke the line that signaled the high point of the movie ("All our troubles are over!" Squee! Cue cheesy music!) she carefully moved the bed out a few inches, opened the door, and dropped the box of what was now half a pizza inside the bathroom.

"Food," she said, meeting his startled gaze briefly before she slammed the door on him.

She waited until she heard the sounds of furtive movements inside before she moved away from the door. Only when she was satisfied that he wasn't in some kind of shock, fit, or general malaise did she finally push the bed back to block the door again.

He would be fine. He had food, he had water, he had blankets, and she—

Well, her choice of an older, not-too-prosperous hotel had paid off. She had the original Zelda to keep her occupied.

It was with great reluctance that she finally put herself to bed.