CHAPTER 9

In which three years have passed.

Jonathan Crane, soon-to-be MD and current intern at Arkham Asylum, used his most soothing, rational voice to try to convince the unruly patient to follow orders.

"Now, darling, the dinner is supposed to start at seven o'clock. It's four-thirty now, and you know you'll need at least two hours to get ready. So why don't you hop out of bed and pick out one of your pretty dresses to wear, and I'll have Emma draw you a bath."

The patient didn't argue, but neither did she move to obey. She simply lay in bed and stared at him blankly. If he didn't know better, he would almost swear she was catatonic. Finally she spoke. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Do I really have to go, Jonathan?"

At least she was speaking. Maybe he wouldn't have too hard a time with her tonight. "Darling, this is a very important dinner. I'm going to be receiving an award, and people will wonder if you're not there to cheer me on." He allowed a hint of pleading to creep into his voice. "I know you don't like going to these things. That's why I don't ask you to unless it's very, very important—like tonight." He almost had her, he could tell. So he went in for the kill. "You need to be seen out and about occasionally anyway, darling. You don't want people saying you're…mentally ill, or a recluse, or some such." He paused deliberately. "You don't want Lily to hear that kind of talk, do you?"

It worked. It always did. Katie heaved a huge, gusty sigh, and with great effort got up from the bed. "You win," she said wearily. "Can't have people saying my kid's got a crazy mother."

Even though she does? Jonathan couldn't help thinking, even though he was instantly sorry. Crazy was not a word for a doctor to use. And anyway, Katie wasn't really crazy. Depressed, yes. Introverted, definitely. Becoming entirely too dependent on various medications, probably. But not crazy.

And she wasn't always depressed, or introverted, or pilled out. When she was with the child, she was almost the same lively, exuberant girl he had known a few years ago. He was thankful for the child for that reason, even if…he shook himself out of his reverie and gave her an approving smile. "Thank you, darling. I'll have Emma come up and help you get ready."

As he went downstairs to find the maid he reflected on the past few years. Their hasty marriage had been the talk of Gotham. After all, he was not exactly known as a ladies' man, and Katie was known to be quite seriously involved with Jack Napier. But Jack Napier had seemingly vanished into thin air. When Katie's pregnancy became obvious, it was generally assumed that Napier had gone AWOL upon finding out about his impending fatherhood, and that Jonathan had stepped in to play the white knight and make an honest woman of the abandoned mother-to-be. Others speculated that Jack had caught Katie with Jonathan, and fled Gotham in heartbreak or disgust. Jonathan preferred the second story himself—it portrayed him as something of a stud, which was gratifying, and more importantly inferred that he was indeed the father of tiny Lily Katherine Crane.

Only a handful of people knew the real story, and even that handful didn't know nearly all of it.

Emergency workers had arrived at Jack Napier's apartment to find the place ransacked and virtually blood-soaked, and the man himself nowhere to be found. Of course that little detail never saw the light of day, nor the evidence that suggested Napier had been the Red Hood who'd been terrorizing the city at the time, nor the fact that he'd suffered a psychotic breakdown and carved his own face like a jack-o'-lantern. The Gotham PD had kept everything under wraps and out of the press. Releasing the information would have embarrassed the Wayne family, and no one wanted to do that. The Gotham police force knew which side its bread was buttered on.

So as far as the public was concerned, Jack Napier had either deserted his girlfriend and unborn child or slunk out of town after being cuckolded. No one had seen or heard from him for three years—not his mother in Atlantic City, not Alex Martinez, not the happy Wayne-Crane family. Jonathan assumed he was dead, that he had committed suicide or been killed by Falcone's men. He didn't know Katie's theory; after that terrible morning she had never spoken of Jack Napier again, at least not to him.

Even when she told him she was pregnant they had avoided the subject. He had simply asked her how far along the doctor thought she was, and she had responded "He said approximately six weeks". That told him all he wanted or needed to know: while the baby could have been fathered by Jack Napier, there was also a chance that it belonged to him, Jonathan Crane.

After Katie had told him the whole story, Jonathan had suggested to her that she stay with him for a few days; after all, she was in a fragile mental state, and would soon be detoxing to boot. Who better to help her through it than a psychology student who was currently doing clinicals at Arkham Asylum, where he had access to medications that could get her through both? She had agreed.

The second night she had had another nightmare. Once again, he had gone in to comfort her; once again, he had ended up holding her while she cried; once again, he had felt the urge to smother her crying with a kiss. Only this time he had acted on the urge.

He was shocked, couldn't believe he was doing this, and he fully expected Katie to push him away in disgust. Instead she had returned the kiss hungrily, almost desperately. He knew it was wrong, knew she was in a bad way emotionally and he was taking advantage of that, of her, knew she was returning his embrace not out of lust but a need to feel safe and cared for and comforted. But even as the knowledge flashed in his mind his hands were sliding under and up her nightgown, and after that he stopped thinking, only doing.

They had been sleeping together regularly ever since. This meant, Jonathan reasoned, that there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that it was his child Katie carried. And even if it was Jack Napier's, Napier would never know. He was most likely dead, and even if he was still living he was insane. From what Katie had said, an alternate personality had emerged in him; he might not even remember her by now. At least, Jonathan hoped that was the case.

"What do you intend to do?" he had asked her. "Are you going to keep the baby?"

She had smiled then, a secret sort of smile, and he had noticed for the first time how well she looked. She had put on a little weight, and some of the healthy pink had returned to her skin. He had assumed it was getting off the amphetamines that had wrought the changes in her, but now he wondered if the pregnancy was part of it as well. She almost looked like her old self, unless you looked into her eyes. The eyes were very different—more gray now than blue, the impish glint in them irrevocably gone. (Only Lucius Fox realized that her eyes now bore a striking resemblance to Thomas Wayne, Senior's.)

"Oh, yes," she had answered him that day. Absently she had laid a hand on her stomach, as if caressing the life within. He didn't think she was aware she had done so.

"Well," he had responded with his usual icy controlled calm, though inside he was a nervous wreck, "if we marry now we can always say the child was premature."

She had looked startled. He knew marriage had probably never entered her mind. But he had her now, and he intended to hold onto her.

"My parents would kill me if I had a child out of wedlock," he had rushed on. "It wouldn't be easy for you, either. You're still very fragile right now. You need someone who can care for you, and for the child. I really think this would be the best thing, Katie."

And once again, she had agreed. He had hit on that very thing she needed most right now—to be taken care of. To be safe. He had known that would sway her.

And he was still taking care of her to this day, he thought as he told the maid that Mrs. Crane would like a bath drawn now. Taking care of her and the child. He had kept his promise. He had just never realized all it would entail.

They had married just a day after that fateful doctor's appointment, at a small chapel in Niagara Falls. They had honeymooned there, too. The only really clear memory he had of their wedding day was of filling out the paperwork before the ceremony. That was when they had discovered one another's middle names, or rather Katie's lack thereof.

"You don't have a middle name?" he asked when he saw that Katie had filled out the corresponding section with "None".

"I will in a few minutes," she had replied with a hint of her old wryness. It had taken him a minute to figure out what she meant.

"Who doesn't give their child a middle name?" he had wondered aloud. Even now he couldn't say why this bothered him, but it had.

"My parents were not the most imaginative of people, from what I recall," she had said matter-of-factly. "They named me Katherine in the hope that it would cut some future ice with my grandfather. Which it did, I suppose, but not in the way they had planned. I guess coming up with a middle name was just too challenging."

"Well, what did they call you when you got in trouble?" he had pressed. "I mean, every time I did something bad my mother would screech 'Jonathan Andrew Crane!' and I knew I was in for it."

She had grinned then, looking more like the Katie Wayne he had met a year and a half ago than she had in the past six weeks. "Well, until I went to kindergarten I thought my name was 'You little shit'," she responded. She had laughed, but Jonathan had felt a chill go through him. For the first time it had occurred to him that she never spoke of her life before her parents had died—and that maybe that was a good thing. Perhaps she had dealt with abuse at other hands before Jack Napier's. It would explain why she had stayed with him for so long.

He was so busy psychoanalyzing that for a moment he didn't realize Katie was asking him a question. "I'm sorry, darling, my mind wandered," he said. "What did you ask me?"

She had the oddest look on her face. "What did you say your middle name was?" she had repeated.

"Andrew," he had replied. "It's a family name. Why?"

She looked like she had seen a ghost, he thought. For a moment she didn't respond. Just when he was becoming concerned, she had relaxed and said, "No reason. Andrew's a good name. If we have a boy let's name him that."

"My parents will like that," he had said, and then the JP's wife had come out and said he was ready for them, and that had been the end of the conversation.

The little one had arrived in late February, just missing being a leap year baby by half an hour. When the nurse had handed Katie the tiny girl with the thin fuzz of reddish-gold hair, his wife's eyes had shone with love and something like triumph as she announced, "Lily. Her name is Lily Katherine…Crane."

He had spent the last two years and some-odd months convincing himself she had almost said "Wayne". But sometimes when he looked at the girl he couldn't help thinking, was she going to say Wayne…or Napier? He never knew where Katie had gotten Lily from, and he never asked. Several times he had almost Googled the name "Lily Napier" just to see what would come up, but at the last minute something always stopped him. You don't want to go opening Pandora's Box, Jonmy, he told himself. Katie's yours. The child is yours—at least as far as the world is concerned. That'll have to be enough.

But were they? Were either of them really his?

That was the question that haunted his thoughts; the question he feared would never be answered.

--

Emma worked her magic, as she had countless times before. At promptly six-thirty Katie descended the staircase, transformed from a disheveled semi-invalid into an elegant, stunningly pretty young woman of a certain station. He smiled at her with real approval as she came toward him.

As she came closer, however, he grit his teeth together, although the smile stayed in place. She had taken something. He knew that glitter in her eyes, that almost-imperceptible trembling in her hands. Damn it. He kept his office locked at all times; how did she keep getting in there? If he didn't know better he would suspect Emma or Lily's nanny, Mrs. Travers, but they were both well aware of "Mrs. Crane's troubles" and attempted to keep an unobtrusive eye on her. Well, at least she was getting it out of his office rather than on the streets; she rarely left the house these days. Still, he couldn't wait until he officially joined the staff of Arkham and received an office there. He would keep everything there then, and she could only get her hands on what he saw fit to give her.

"You're looking a little…hectic, darling," he murmured. His face and tone were as calm as ever, but he was undoubtedly pissed. She could read it in his posture, which was even stiffer than usual, and in his frozen smile.

"Back off, Jonathan," she muttered. "I'm going to this damn thing, just as you asked. You never said I couldn't take anything before I went."

"How did you get in there?" he snapped, keeping his voice low so no one would overhear. "What do you do, pick the lock?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," she replied without missing a beat. "The locks in this pile are strictly Mickey Mouse. If anyone ever decides to break in we'll be fucked. Tell me, Jonathan, why don't you change the lock if it bothers you that much?"

"What's the point?" he said disgustedly. "You'll just pick that lock too, or break the code, or start buying them off the street. God, addicts are so damn relentless."

He saw the anger flash in her eyes, but she didn't argue. She knew as well as he did that she was hooked on amphetamines. She didn't take them every day, not like she had before. But anytime they were going to something like this, even if she had resolved not to, she always found herself rooting through his desk, "running for the shelter of her mother's little helper" as the song went that she couldn't get out of her head at those times.

She drowned out the guilt and shame with her talent for rationalization. He knew how hard it was for her now, knew that some days she couldn't even get out of bed, not even for her daughter, who she adored. He usually understood, and very rarely asked her to attend social events with him. Why couldn't he see that she had to have something to get her through the few times she had to appear in public? Why couldn't he see that she needed to be on autopilot, to be able to function but not really have to think—because thinking brought back all the memories, all the wonderful memories that so quickly became painful? He gave her tranquilizers sometimes; he gave her antidepressants—why not something to get her up every now and then?

"Well," he said in the resigned tone that told her the matter would be swept under the rug for the time being, "shall we head out?"

"I'm ready if you are," she replied. "Oh, wait, let's stop in to see Lily first. I promised her we'd come say good night before we left. You know she likes to see us all dressed up."

I think she likes to see you any way except flat on your back in bed, he thought, and as for me…I think she could care less whether she sees me at all. Once again, guilt flooded him immediately. He knew Lily's indifference toward him, like her close bond with her mother, was a direct result of his ambivalence about her. So he said, "All right," even though they were running late as it was, and they went to the nursery.

They were living in Jonathan's childhood home now. His father had died suddenly just before Lily's first birthday. His mother had remarried rather quickly and was now living in Paris with her new husband, a French nobleman. Until several months ago Jonathan, Katie and the baby had lived in the top floor of the Victorian. Sometimes he wished they'd never left that apartment; while not perfect, things had been better there. Katie had really started to go downhill after they'd moved into the house, for some reason. He had no way of knowing that the graceful three-story brownstone was exactly the home she and Jack Napier had once dreamed of.

The nursery was on the first floor, and actually consisted of a bedroom, playroom, and bathroom. All three rooms had been decorated in shades of lavender and pale green. Katie had supervised the decorating herself. When she got involved with anything these days, it was almost always something to do with her daughter.

Surreptitiously, Jonathan watched Katie enter the nursery. The change in her was immediate and profound. Her smirk relaxed into a genuine smile; warmth flooded into her eyes. Even her voice seemed to change as she said, "Hi, there, Curly Locks."

Lily Crane, aged two years and three months, instantly abandoned the tea party on the go at the child-sized French provincial table and flew to her mother. "Mommy, you're beautiful!" she squealed.

Katie swept the little girl into her arms, heedless of her silk dress. "And so are you," she told her. "You're also smart, and sweet. You're awfully short though."

Lily giggled as she gave the standard answer to the familiar exchange: "But I'm gonna grow!"

She was everything Katie had said she was, Jonathan mused, except short. Lily was actually tall for her age, with long, slender bones. Other than that, she was almost an exact replica of her mother. Seeing them together, Jonathan felt a faint breath of something not far from love.

As usual, his inner voice picked that moment to speak up: She's built just like Jack Napier, isn't she? And isn't Katie crazy about her? Would she be as crazy about her if she were yours? He winced. Why? Why he couldn't he get rid of these thoughts?

Mother and daughter took no notice of him as they laughed and babbled nonsense at one another. "Well, what all have you been into today?" Katie asked. "Have you been running Mrs. Travers ragged?"

The nanny smiled. "Oh, no," she said. "She's been a dear, as usual." Mrs. Travers had come to them when Lily was a newborn, while Katie was in the grips of a rather severe case of postpartum depression. Alfred had actually found her for them. She was the widow of a friend of his back in England. She reminded Katie of Alfred in a lot of ways: Mrs. Travers was reserved and inscrutable, but loyal, and above all she adored Lily. And the feeling was mutual. Katie saw a lot of her younger self and Alfred in their relationship, and she was happy that her child had two grandparent figures, at least.

Jonathan cleared his throat. "Katie…" he said.

Katie made a wry face. "Duty calls," she said to Mrs. Travers. She gave Lily a kiss before handing her back to the nanny. "Good night, Curly Locks," she told her little girl. "I won't be home in time to tuck you in, but we'll spend all day together tomorrow, how 'bout that?"

"Can we go see Alfred?" Lily asked.

"I think we can arrange that," Katie said. "Of course you just want to pop in and say hi, right? You don't want to go swimming or anything while we're there."

"I do too!" Lily's grin lit up her face. God, she was so much like her mother…at least, the way her mother used to be. Jonathan found himself hoping that nothing would ever happen to this child to take the laughter and life out of her.

As if sensing his thoughts, the little girl turned to him shyly. "Bye, Daddy," she said.

He forced a smile. "Good night, Lily," he said, stepping forward and planting a quick kiss on the child's forehead. Mrs. Travers watched the proceedings with her usual bland expression, but there was something in her eyes…Not for the first time, Jonathan wondered just how much the nanny knew, or guessed, about the family she worked for.

--

The dinner was a resounding success. Katie gave an Oscar-caliber performance, she was bubbly and charming and totally adoring of her husband. When Jonathan was presented the "Outstanding Intern of the Year" award, no one clapped harder or cheered louder. When he excused himself during dinner, he overheard several conversations about them on the way to the restroom. He was pleased that no one mentioned Katie's supposed illness or Jack Napier, at least not in his hearing. As far as the world was concerned, the Cranes were just another happy young married couple on the way up.

When they arrived home, Jonathan, flushed with triumph at the evening's success, wanted to make love. Katie wanted to preserve his jovial mood and avoid any further discussion of the pills, so she acquiesced.

He wasn't a bad lover, Katie reflected as she lay under him. He had obviously researched sex as thoroughly as he researched every other subject. But while he was good at the technicalities, he was…what was the word for it...uninspired. Yes, that was it. There was pleasure to be had in his arms, but no passion, no spontaneity. He wanted to do it the exact same way every time. Once, after Lily was born, she had suggested that they mix it up a bit—have sex in the shower, for example, or even better, he could rough her up a little.

Jonathan had been shocked at the first suggestion, outright horrified at the second. So she had dropped it. They continued to couple, when they did, in bed, under the covers, missionary-style. She was surprised he didn't want the lights off while he was at it. As time went on even these sheeted gropings became more and more infrequent, until she could count on one hand the number of times they screwed in any given month.

He was a prude, she concluded. You wouldn't think a soon-to-be psychiatrist would be sexually repressed, but he most certainly was. So most times they joined she did what she knew was a sinful thing: she closed her eyes and thought of Jack.

Not Jack as he had been at the very end, but the Jack she had fallen in love with, the one she had given her virginity to. That first time was the one she fantasized about the most. He had been so wonderful. She had loved him so much. But had he ever loved her at all? Had the seeds of his madness been blooming even then?

Obviously thoughts of Jack weren't going to work tonight, so she just laid there and hoped Jonathan would be done soon. Right then, by sheer dumb luck, he hit her G-spot, and she cried out and bucked underneath him. This capped off Jonathan's perfect evening and triggered his own climax.

Afterward, he went to sleep almost immediately. Katie wasn't so lucky. It was almost dawn before she managed to drift off.

--

It was the worst dream yet.

He was in the nursery—he was in the room with her little girl!

"Jack!" she shrieked. "What are you doing?"

He was drenched in blood. The gashes at the sides of his mouth were livid. "I came to visit my kid," he shrugged. "It wasn't very nice of you to keep her away from me, Katie-did."

"I did what I had to do," she retorted. "And anyway, she might not be yours at all. She might be Jonathan's."

Blood spurted from the cuts as he laughed. "Oh, my poor little delusional Katie," he said. "We all know who the chef was that put the bun in your oven! Jonathan knows—why else would he be so stiff around the kid? Why do you think he always remarks on how tall and skinny she is? And you see more than that, don't you? Everyone says she looks just like you…but you look at her and see my chin…my jaw…my mouth." He cackled riotously at this last.

Katie's heart stopped. "Jack," she breathed. "What have you done?"

Suddenly there was a knife in her hand, and just as suddenly the knife was plunged deep into his chest. "What have you done?" she screamed as he crumpled to the floor. "What have you done?"

"Mommy…"

Katie whirled, terrified of what she was going to see. But it was all right. Lily was fine. He hadn't hurt her.

"Katie…" came a strangled gasp from the man at her feet.

She looked down and screamed. It wasn't the mutilated madman who lay at her feet, but Jack as he had been when she first met him, whole and unscarred and sane. His dark brown eyes were filled with agony as he looked up at her. "Why?" he asked, blood bubbling at his lips with the word.

"Jack!" she cried, dropping to her knees beside him. "Jack, I'm sorry! I didn't know! Don't leave me…oh, God, please don't leave me again…"

It was no use. His eyes closed as his head rolled to the side. "Jack, I love you!" she wept, but he was past hearing her now.

She went to hold her daughter—their daughter, the one thing she had left from him. But the little girl backed away, those eyes so much like her own glaring daggers at her. "You killed my daddy!" Lily shrieked accusingly.

Katie awoke with a muffled cry. She hadn't been too loud this time; maybe she hadn't awakened Jonathan. But just then the bedside lamp clicked on, and there he stood with a glass of water and a bottle of pills.

"Another dream." It wasn't a question.

She gulped and nodded miserably.

"It must have been bad," he said, not sounding sympathetic or even particularly interested. "You were screaming and thrashing so I thought you'd wake the whole house." He handed her the glass, then shook one pill out of the bottle and held it out to her. "Here."

She took the pill, not even looking to see what it was. Valium, she guessed. He usually gave her Valium after one of her dreams.

"Thanks," she croaked hoarsely after she swallowed it.

"You're welcome," he replied as he got back into bed. "Katie…" She winced, knowing what was coming.

"This can't continue. I really wish you'd talk to somebody."

"Jonathan, I can't," she said helplessly. "I…just can't."

"I know you think…bringing it all up again would just make things worse. And maybe it would, for a little while. But I think it would help you in the long run. There's a new psychologist at Arkham, Harleen Quinzel. She's young, and she specializes in post-traumatic stress syndrome. I think you'd like her."

"I'll think about it," she promised, as she had countless times before.

She heard him sigh. "Will you really think about it this time?" he pressed. "If you won't do it for me, at least do it for Lily."

Damn, he always had to do that. "I'll think about it, Jonathan," she repeated, unable to keep the edge out of her voice.

"Please do," he said crisply. "You're getting worse, you know. I'd hate to have to involuntarily commit you, but…"

The Valium was already hitting her, and she was too drowsy to be alarmed. "You wouldn't do that," she mumbled as her eyelids slammed shut.

When he was sure she was out, Jonathan rolled over and gazed at his wife. She was right, damn her.

Katie might have been surprised to know that her husband really did love her in his way. Whether the knowledge would have helped their marriage was anyone's guess.

In the beginning he had been full of hope. He knew she didn't love him, that she'd married him on the rebound, but he'd been confident he could change that. With time, he had told himself, she would begin to heal, to move past the nightmare she'd gone through with Napier. He would be infinitely patient and loving with her during the healing process, and eventually she would realize that he really did care for her. Once she saw that he loved her and cared for her more than Napier ever had, she would grow to love him in return, and ultimately they would have a happy and successful marriage.

Jonathan smirked. Even a budding psychiatrist was capable of deluding himself at times.

Still, even now, he loved her. And even now, in spite of himself, he waited for her to come around and realize that this was so. The rational part of him knew it would never happen, and that she would most likely continue to deteriorate without professional help. But even if that came to be, Katie Wayne Crane would be safe from Arkham or any other psychiatric facility. Jonathan knew he would never, ever put her away. He would die first.

"I love you," he whispered to the sleeping woman who had captured his attention years earlier, when she bopped into the Behavior and Experience classroom at Gotham U with a Ramones T-shirt and an insouciant air…and who had captured his heart in blue velvet at a New Year's Eve ball some months later.

"I wish you could see that."

A/N: Sorry it's been so long between updates, but things have been crazy lately. I've been moving, work has been hell on wheels, and I've been battling a lovely summer cold. I'm jacked up on Sudafed right now, as a matter of fact, so if this chapter seems a little off you know why. Once again I'd like to thank my readers and reviewers and to let y'all know not to worry—Jack/Joker will be popping up very soon! He's going to have a few words for the not-so-happy couple, and none of them will be "Happy birthday". Muahahahaha…