Driving alone wasn't much fun. There was no one to poke. And she kept getting the feeling that he must have gotten free by now, and the next time she opened the trunk, she would find nothing but the straitjacket and some dust.
So after a couple of hours, when the rhythmic thuds started up, she was almost relieved. At least if he was kicking, she knew he was still back there.
But the thump-thump-thump got old after an hour without stopping, especially since it was just slightly out of sync with her bass. And he showed no signs of tiring. If anything, he was kicking harder now.
What was he trying to do, break through the solid steel?
(Was it steel? Like she knew how a car was made.)
Thump.
"Stop that," she muttered, and glanced at the nearest sign. Thump. They were coming up on the place where she had planned to stop, but she couldn't very well take a break with him acting like this. Thump. Someone would be sure to call the cops if they heard these heavy thuds coming from an empty car in a parking lot. Thump. Damn it. Thump. Damn it. Thump. "Damn it!"
She took the exit anyway, and turned away from the fast food, driving down what seemed to be an abandoned stretch of highway. Good. She didn't know what she would find down here, but she was sure she would know what she was looking for when she found it.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Knock it off!" she yelled.
Thump.
Fine. This was deserted enough.
She drove off the road, narrowly missing a clump of trees. For lack of anything better to do, she gave the trees a dirty look, knowing that if he somehow managed to run out into the woods, she wasn't likely to find him very quickly. And that much lost time would be a disaster.
At least the sudden turbulence had put an end to the kicking.
She got out, breath steaming in the cold air, and threw open the trunk.
"What?" she demanded.
The glare he gave her now was more furious than all the previous ones combined.
"What do you think?" he asked with a jerky little twitch that probably would have been wild gesticulation if he could have moved his arm.
All this fuss over a straitjacket?
"Why should I?" she snapped, fully expecting his answer to involve the words 'slow and painful death for you and everything you love.'
"It hurts," he blurted.
"Oh." She stared at him. "It does?" He looked away from her, clearly humiliated to have to admit this out loud. She reached out to touch him, and then snatched her hand away, suddenly suspecting a trick. "What does it…feel like?" she asked lamely.
"When you wear a straitjacket too long, your hands go numb, blood pools in your elbows, and your shoulders stiffen." He spoke quickly, in an oddly flat tone. "It's unpleasant. Please make it stop."
Oh, how could she resist that? But, still, she hesitated.
"If this is just some clever ruse to escape…"
"It isn't."
"And how can I know that for sure? I mean, what if you try to fight me again? Then what am I supposed to do?" He squirmed a little, and finally looked up at her again.
"Please." His eyes were bright with something other than physical pain, and something in her screamed at her to stop torturing the poor guy, because eyes like that didn't lie.
But her rational side knew that he was a far better manipulator than any normal person, and she would be an idiot to trust him.
"Can you give me some kind of proof, or am I just going to have to take your word that you won't try to knock me out and run off?" The look in his eyes quickly changed to suppressed anger.
"Please. Let. Me. Out."
"Not if you're going to be all tetchy about it." She reached up as if to close the trunk.
"No!" His cry was so anguished, she actually froze in place, staring down at him in surprise.
"What?"
He resolutely refused to look at her as he spoke, so softly and hesitantly that she could barely make out the words.
"Lyle Bolton. He…hurt…"
"Okay," she interrupted. "Don't move." He flinched as she reached around to undo the straps. Trust him to come up with exactly the right thing to make her set him free. And now she felt terrible about prodding old wounds.
He wasn't making this up. From what she knew about Lock-Up, she would have been surprised if the poor (poor?) Scarecrow hadn't been traumatized somehow. What was more surprising was that it hadn't occurred to her already. (She didn't often develop strong feelings for other human beings, but for Bolton, she had—when she called him a bastard, it was not the term of affection it usually was.)
As she pulled the straitjacket off him, she had to remind herself that the Scarecrow was not exactly pure as the driven snow, and she had better keep her guard up.
The moment he was free, he did the last thing she had expected, and curled into a little ball, protecting his arms and hiding his face behind his knees.
"Do you…want to talk about it?" she asked. He didn't answer. "Okay, well…if there's anything you want to do while we're stopped, you might want to get up and do it." He still didn't move. She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, carefully, fully aware that he might be preparing to strike. He jerked away as if he had been burned. "Look, you're going to have to move sooner or later. I've got to tie you up or something before we move on." He moved then, shifting position just enough to let his vivid blue eyes bore into hers.
"You're very cruel."
She found herself momentarily at a loss for words, feeling oddly stung.
"I am not! You're out of the straitjacket, aren't you? Now, get out and drain your lizard. We're not stopping again." When he seemed unwilling to do anything but stare at her (perhaps unfamiliar with the term "draining the lizard") she took matters into her own hands and dragged him, inch by inch, out of the car.
The moment his feet touched the frozen mud, he slipped, throwing all his weight against her, and only some kind of Christmas miracle kept them both from crashing to the ground.
(Honestly, a miracle. Normally, she was as graceful as a three-legged gazelle.)
How she managed to catch him and remain standing, she would never know, but she suddenly found herself with her arms around the Scarecrow, exactly the punishment she had teased him with earlier. Their faces were just inches apart, and to the casual observer, they would probably look for all the world like a pair of lovers on the verge of an earth-shattering kiss.
He looked horrified.
"Wow, awkward," she said, and let him go. He fell, and she burst out with rather forced laughter. When she reached down to help him up, he jerked his hand away from hers. "Little bunny foo-foo, knock that crap off."
"What did you call me?" She rolled her eyes.
"Weren't you ever a child? 'Little bunny foo-foo, hopping through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head.' Then there's something about a fairy who comes along and tells her to knock that crap off. I don't know. The point is, you've got to stop acting like I'm fixing to man-rape you. I told you, I don't do that kind of thing. Now, I can give you an empty bottle, but I know that can't be easy to use in the dark, with your hands tied, so if you have any business to take care of, get up and do it now." He got slowly, painfully to his feet, ignoring the hand she still held out to him. "Good boy," she said, fighting the urge to pat him on the head.
Glare.
She grinned.
"Just keep your head in sight."
