The steady beeps of the alarm woke Becky from her slumber. Annoyed with its incessant beeping, she slammed her fist onto the snooze button on top of her alarm.

She yawned, stretching, before climbing out of her bed. Picking up her cane, she trudged to the kitchen. Grabbing her coffee, she sipped it quickly, but not before blowing on it to cool it down.

Now feeling awake, Becky hastily got dressed and poured herself a bowl of cereal, eating quickly as she gathered her books into her backpack, and locked the door behind her as she exited her apartment.

As she entered the subway, she remembered that she had to meet Crane outside his classroom for her job.

She checked her watch, and her eyes widened. Crap, I'm late, she thought, bolting out of the subway, dodging groups of people milling about as she made her way towards the University.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She found Crane waiting for her, leaning against the door to his class.

"I'm sorry for the wait, James, she replied, panting for breath. She had been running non-stop from the subway to the University, hobbling as fast as she could on her cane to get to her destination. She was just thankful she hadn't sprained anything. Lord knows she had a lot of problems with her legs.

Crane, however, didn't appear to notice her absence. "Nonsense, Becky. You're right on time," he told her, before he unlocked the door.

As Becky entered the room, Crane guided her to sit in the chair beside his desk.

"So, Professor Crowley, what am I supposed to do first?" Becky asked.

He smirked, before setting down a pile of papers in front of her that nearly reached the ceiling. "First, you need to fill out these forms."

Becky gaped at the vast amounts of paperwork in front of her, then looked at Crane. "You can't be serious!"

"Oh, Becky, Becky, Becky," he said sarcastically, shaking his head as if she were a child. He enjoyed her irritation at his tone. "You know I am always serious."

Becky let out a small bark of laughter. "Serious, my butt! You've been playing jump-scare pranks on the whole class this entire month," she accused, remembering some of the incidents that he had caused. Such as nearly causing one student to almost have a heart attack and another to wet his pants due to making the classroom look like a scene right out of the Exorcist.

He grinned. "Maaaayyybe," he drawled, looking slightly away from her in a gesture of faking innocence.

Becky sighed, rolling her eyes as she started on her paperwork, looking dubiously at the pile of papers that threatened to topple over onto her. She slipped one of the papers out of the pile, only to find that it was signed by another student.

"Um…Professor?"

Crane looked up, an impish grin on his face as he realized she discovered his trick. "Yes, Becky?" he answered with mock sweetness.

"Why is there someone else's papers in this stack?" she asked, holding up the paper in question.

He snickered. "Well, you did agree to be my assistant, correct?"

"Well, yes, but what does that have to do with-"

"It means that, after you sign your forms saying that you are officially my assistant, then you need to file those papers for me," he replied, answering her almost spoken question.

Becky rolled her eyes at Crane's attempts to get a rise out of her. "You have a cruel sense of humor, James."

Crane just continued to smirk as she finished her paperwork and began to file the papers away.

"So, how goes your project, Becky?" he asked, interested to see what his little mouse had thought up.

She pursed her lips, remembering what she had discovered. "Well, I have started to research the project, but all I've found is on how to alleviate fears, and not on what causes fears. There was a few websites that helped, but some of the things weren't real clear on the process of how they are acquired."

Crane frowned. He figured that, with the Scarecrow on the loose, people weren't brave enough to research how he did it. It was a shame. But then again, he thought, eyeing Becky with promise. "I see," he commented, his brows furrowed in thought.

"But I did find some files on the rogues, though."

Crane's ears pricked at the mention of "rogues". He raised an eyebrow, his mouth twitching as he heard her news. "Really?"

Becky nodded. She didn't think he would hurt her if she would give him some information. After all, he might not know much about his colleagues in crime. But then again, he very well could. She just had to take a gamble and hope for the best. "Yeah, though the website I found them on had the most ridiculous intro page."

"And what did it say?" Crane gently pried, luring her to tell him about the file. He was eager to see what she had uncovered. Something that confidential needed to be in his hands. Knowledge is power, and power is what he coveted almost above all else.

"Oh, some bullcrap about being a family friendly facility for troubled individuals or something like that," she snorted, remembering the article. Seriously, who would buy into something that absurd?

"And the files?" he needled, wanting her to get to the point. He knew she was wanting to distract him, keep him from the truth. But it was only a matter of time before he found out anyway. He always did.

She looked down, stopping her work to think of what she should say or what she shouldn't say. She didn't want to tell him everything that she recovered, but she couldn't outright lie and say she found nothing. He knew she had looked into the files, and she had to give away a little information to throw him off the scent. "Well, some were…interesting, to say the least," she answered nervously, before becoming more confident and saying, "But I did see some good references and materials." Good, he was at least taking the bait.

Crane chuckled. Yes, some of the other rogues were "interesting", especially to someone like Becky. But he was glad she had discovered the website. If her curiosity was enough, she could look into more information about the rogues and their pasts, and report back to him. But he needed to subtly persuade her to investigate herself, without his influence. She would start to act suspicious if he told her to go back and print out specific rogue files for him. He didn't need her to run away, now that he was so close to his goal.

But he also had to make sure she didn't do anything…stupid. "Have you maybe tried to interview one of the psychologists at Arkham Asylum? I'm sure they know a lot about fear, seeing as they work with most of the rogues gallery all the time," he asked. Outwardly, he appeared to be simply interested in her having more information. But the Scarecrow side of him was demanding that she not go anywhere near those hypocrites.

"Not yet," she replied, assuring him that she wasn't planning anything, while on the inside, she was planning on doing just that. "But I don't exactly have a good schedule to see them. Between work and classes, its hard to arrange these things," Becky responded, pushing the cabinet shut, her work finished.

Crane inwardly smiled. Good, she wouldn't be corrupted by those idiot doctors at the Asylum. He wanted her to see the truth, his truth, of the world, not the lies that society continued to feed people gullible enough to believe them.

A thought came to him. If he was going to get to know his plucky Becky Albright better, he needed to know where she came from in her background. He wanted to see if they really were similar, and not just a coincidence of fate or a flaw in his fear toxin. "Becky?" he asked, his voice becoming thoughtful. "What made you decide to study law?"

She looked away, sadness coming to her eyes as she remembered her bitter past. She was a little bit surprised, but knew it was inevitable. He would ask this question one day. She hadn't figured it would be now though. "Are you sure you really want to know that? It's a very long story," she said, trying to use her excuse to get Crane to drop the topic.

Unfortunately for her, he didn't drop it. "I have time. There's a good.." he checked his watch, "two hours until class," he replied nonchalantly. He wanted to know if she was like him or not, and he wouldn't be persuaded. This was his test. She would have to face her fears again, though this time it was more from bad memories than her personal fears. But if she told him, he could better understand her, and thus bring her over to his side.

Becky ran a hand through her unruly hair. She really didn't want to tell him her story. But if she didn't, she would prove that she could be broken by her fear. And she never wanted to experience that feeling of hopelessness again. And if that mean that she had to tell the Scarecrow her story, so be it. She would do it. She wouldn't let her fear of judgment control her.

Besides, I have a feeling that he would understand, her conscience told her.

Taking a deep breath, she started her tale with a rueful smile, "Heh, where do I start? I guess it started when I was small. My mother died when I was born, so I was raised by my dad. It was after I was born that the doctors diagnosed me with spastic monoplegia in my right leg. After my mother died, my father…was more worse for wear. He often blamed me for killing my mother, because if I hadn't been born, my mother would still be alive. He would often beat me for seemingly inconsequential things, like accidentally burning the eggs or wanting to buy a new toy."

Crane grimaced. He knew exactly what that felt like. His grandmother had often beat him just for wanting a book from the library or not dressing when she told him to. "And…how did that make you feel?" Crane asked, taking down notes of her reactions. She seemed pretty calm up until this point. He could see her struggling to contain the emotions that were bursting out at the seems, begging to be brought to the light.

Becky sighed, her face downcast like a rainy day, unable to look Crane in the eye. "Terrible. I always thought that it was all my fault that he beat me. I thought I wasn't good enough for his love."

Crane nodded. He knew exactly how that felt.

"It only got worse when I started school. I saw the other kids' moms and dads and how they treated them, and I envied their lives and family. They weren't struggling to eat, they weren't sick all the time or struggling to walk without a cane, and they had a loving family to go back to at the end of the day. It got even worse in High School. They used to bully me, torment me."

Crane leaned in closer. He knew where this was going.

"They used to snap my cane, and call me 'cripple' or 'broken' as I lay on the floor trying to get up."

"Scrawny Freak" "Scaredy-Cat Crane" "Ichabod" "Dirty Scarecrow." These words flashed in Crane's mind as he listened to her tale. He flinched at these words. Even to this day, as a full-grown adult, those words continued to affect him. It was part of the reason he had become the Scarecrow in the first place. To prove that he was not afraid of them.

"And I just accepted it."

Crane's pencil snapped. He couldn't believe that she just let them walk all over her. Why didn't she fight back? Why didn't she attack them? He would have attacked them if he had been in her place. She had noticed the pencil snapping and looked at him quizzically. He cleared his throat, smoothing out his tie, which still had a few wrinkles in it. Still, his thoughts plagued him with these questions. "But why, Becky?" he asked, confused by her response. "Why didn't you tell the teachers or hit back?" Crane asked.

He was taken by surprise again as her hands slammed down on his oakwood desk, tears falling down her face as her voice became full of despair. "Don't you think I tried?! I did talk to the teachers. But you know what they did? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! They just said that I brought it on myself."

Crane looked towards her, a slow smirk coming to his face as he saw her rage building as she became more and more upset.

Becky took a deep breath, trying to calm her rage, much to Crane's chagrin. "It was tempting, James. It really was. But you know what I did instead?"

"What was that?" he asked.

Her eyes still held the same fiery glow as she looked Crane straight in the eyes, their orbs burning with emerald flames, like a forest on fire. "I made a promise to myself. I promised that, if I ever got into a position of authority or had a say into changing the law, I promised that I would do better than they ever did. I would listen to those people who were hurt and I would do all I could to make sure that those who mistreated them were going to pay for what they did. So, I decided to study Law, and use that to help people who had little say in how things are run."

Crane smiled as she finished her story. It seemed that he was correct in assuming their pasts were the same. She had the same reaction he had when he discovered at a young age was from people in charge. She had the same hurt and pain and anger that he had lived and breathed on, and continued to. But she still lacked the anger. She had the passion for it, true, but she wasn't angry enough to go out of her way to make life a living hell for the people who had hurt them. But he could see it: that fire that wanted to burn out of control and consume her. It was only when she was consumed by this anger, this passion, that she would be ready to become his Mistress.

Her emotions spent, Becky slid down into her chair. "I'm sorry about going off on you earlier, James. It's been a bit of a stressful month for me."

He nodded. "It's an understandable reaction, given your circumstances," he replied, knowing this kind of spent reaction well.

Becky looked away, recalling memories of the Scarecrow's attack. 'It's an understandable reaction, considering my circumstances'. This gave her an idea. An awfully wicked, splendid idea. "What about you, James?"

Crane blinked, pointing at himself in a 'who, me?' gesture.

"No, I mean the green leprechaun in a bowler hat sitting on your left shoulder. Yes, I mean you," she said sarcastically, which just caused him to smirk at the imagery. He liked to play this little game with his mouse.

"Well, are you sure? After all, it's a very long story," he mocked humorously.

Becky smirked. "Oh, I have time. It's still two hours until my next lesson," she mocked right back. This type of banter was becoming more and more common the more time she spent around him. It was hard for her to actually picture someone like the Scarecrow acting like this. It was pretty funny, actually. But she still tried to remind herself that he was still evil, and that she should continue to stay on guard, though that voice was appearing less and less as time went on.

Crane sighed, rolling his spinning chair so that he faced away from Becky. "You're not budging on this, are you?"

"No."

Crane turned back around, his hand propping up his head on the desk. "My life…hasn't been the best. I'm not sure if I should even tell this to you. I mean, how do I even know you'll keep this to yourself?"

Becky looked down. He had a point. He didn't have anyway to know if she would tell his story or not. And from what she had read and gathered up about him in the three months that she had him as a teacher, she knew trust, to him, was sacred and almost considered mystical to him.

"James, I promise, I will not tell this to anyone," she said.

He only made a snort of derision . "Yeah, right. And how do I know you won't betray me the first chance you get?"

This hit Becky hard. It wasn't about whether or not she could keep her promise; that was not a problem. But it was the fact that he knew she would betray him that struck her hard. She couldn't help but feel sad for him, despite who he really was, or perhaps because of. She had a few friends, growing up. Crane had no one. No friends. No family. No one to care for. No one to love him or to give love to. It was any wonder he became a villain if all people ever did was treat him like one.

"James, have you ever known me to break my promises?" she reassured him,

Crane thought back to all the times he had interacted or seen Becky in the past. And he found, in all the times he'd known her, she would never break her promises intentionally. Sure, there was the accident here or there that sometimes prevented her from being where she was supposed to be, but that was life. But save those things, she had kept every word she had promised.

Rubbing his eyes, Crane made his decision. "Alright, as long as you promise not to repeat this to anyone."

She nodded.

He took a deep breath, and then let it out as he began his story. "Like I said before, my life…hasn't been the best," he started, his eyes drifting away from her to stare at one of the desks. "I was born out of wedlock to two teenage parents. They were disgusted with me. They never wanted me in the first place, and here I was, just a screaming infant that they had no idea how to take care or even wanted to take care of. So, they left me to die, shivering in the trash."

Becky gasped. "That's horrible! No person should be treated like that, even if they were an accident!" she shouted, angry for him. She couldn't believe that people could be so cruel as to just throw a live baby, one that had every right to live, into the rubbish like some discarded trash. She couldn't imagine that someone could be so unloved that they were abandoned by their parents and left to die out in the cold. She was thankful her dad hadn't abandoned her after she was born.

Crane chuckled. "It gets worse. Much worse, dear Becky." He continued his tale. "Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, depending on your viewpoint, I was rescued by my great-grandmother from the cold, and she took me in after my parents abandoned me."

"That's a good thing, right?" Becky asked. Surely his Great-Grandmother was much better than his parents, right?

Crane shook his head. "You only wish, Becky. She was a cruel woman. She despised me, just like my parents did. She was a devout Christian, but by her actions, you would more expect a devil than an angel. And yet she considered me the Devil incarnate, and regularly tortured me with either her words or her beatings. And when I did anything she considered wrong, she would dress me in my Sunday best, and send me to her atrium, where the crows would peck and claw at me."

"Were you scared when that happened?" she asked, her eyes showing sympathy and understanding. She could see some parallels of her past with his. Tortured by family. Unwanted. And if he was telling the truth, she could easily see why he became the Scarecrow. If someone was told that he was not wanted over and over again, it would only be logical that he would snap eventually.

Crane hesitated, unsure whether to admit that he had felt fear. It was against his nature to be afraid. He was the Master of Fear. He wasn't supposed to be scared. But he couldn't ignore the truth. He slumped his shoulders. "Yes," he said, in nary more than a whisper. "I was scared. I was only 10 years old at the time. I didn't know what I did was wrong or why she punished me in the first place. All I knew was that I was being punished. It didn't help that I was bullied in school, constantly looked down upon as 'scrawny' or 'crybaby' or 'scaredy cat'."

"And what did you do, James?" she asked, though in her mind she already knew what he had done. She had heard the account of Sherry Squires and Bo Grigs case during her research of Crane following his attack.

He only smirked. "Well, eventually I got my payback for their mistreatment of me. I won't tell you how, but it wasn't pretty."

I bet, Becky thought. She knew she should be horrified that he took such joy in it, but a second part of her, a darker and vengeful part, was glad he had.

"When I entered college, I decided to study Psychology and got my doctorate in it as well. But even though I had my degree, I was still treated just like I was in High School, except now they were talking behind my back, commenting about my clothes or my figure. I grew restless. I needed to do something to prove I was better than them. It certainly didn't help that the students never seemed interested in learning psychology as I was."

"And you thought firing a gun off a gun in class was a good way to get them to listen?" she murmured.

Crane blinked. He didn't think she knew that part of his life. "Oh, no, no. I merely…scared them a bit," he replied, before starting to nervously laughing. "I mean, me carry a gun? That's a laugh. I wouldn't even know what to do with it?"

Becky chuckled nervously a bit, playing along with his ploy. She was grateful that he hadn't suspected her of knowing his identity.

Becky got up from her seat as the other students started to file into their seats. "Thank you for telling me your story, James," she whispered, walking towards her seat.

He only nodded, and began to teach the class.