Disclaimer: Batman is owned by DC Comics and whoever else owns it. I in no way claim it as my own; I'm just borrowing. Any OCs are mine and some of the plot that isn't from the movies is also mine.
A/N: Thank you to my one reviewer! *round of applause*
As The Crow Flies
by Syrenia
Chapter Nine - A Chance Meeting
That night, Jonathan and his Scarecrow slipped out of the bed where Chelsie and her Crow still lie asleep contently.
They left the room, wandering out into the main room of the hideout which was empty, Jonathan sitting on the couch.
'Have you figured out what Crow was speaking of yet, doctor?' asked an impatient Scarecrow who'd been repeating the same question over and over ever since the subject came up.
'No matter our level of intellect, I'm afraid I'm not a mind reader, Scarecrow,' the annoyed ex-doctor replied, running a hand through his hair. 'The only way to go about the matter is to gather more information.'
Scarecrow scoffed; Crow would never let them ask enough questions to find a lead. He knew she was too intelligent to play into their hands so easily, and while that was an undoubtedly good thing in their shared view, it was also a very frustrating quality.
'We need to know one thing in particular,' mentioned the Scarecrow thoughtfully. 'One of us has to inquire as to why she chose Damian as a lover... unless you can see the reason in your infinite wisdom, doctor.'
Jonathan pondered over the reason silently, spending a good five minutes in deep thought.
Finally, his thoughts announced to his other half, 'I have no idea whatsoever.'
Scarecrow replied through an obvious mental scowl, 'Sometimes you're as useless as Maroni's imbecilic recruits. Must I do everything myself?'
Jonathan simply sighed audibly, understanding the Scarecrow's current temperament. After all, he shared the same anxiety; he wanted his Chelsie and her Crow to understand his feelings and return the sentiment. But Crow's mindset to love was that it was useless to her, and, being a part of Chelsie, that meant both halves shared the idea to some extent.
The ex-doctor needed to know their one key desire just as much as his counterpart, but he had literally nothing to go on. Whether she knew it or not, Chelsie/Crow was very good at obscuring his ability to analyze her as he could normally do to others.
When Chelsie was out, she held that blank stare - never cold or warm, nor soft or hard. Sure, he could now see emotions playing behind it, but even then, they were only emotions she was comfortable with showing on some level.
Yes, she was alarmingly good at containing anything she didn't want her body to express, and on the one hand, it impressed him as a man of psychological studies. On the other hand, however, it was frustrating - at times infuriating - when it clashed with his need to understand her.
Crow was much like Chelsie, only her gaze was full of animated mirth and mischief, the alter ego always excited by the world around her, even when everyone else was truly mundane. Her emotions otherwise were strictly guarded unless she wanted to convey them. Nothing escaped her visage to clue the doctor into her hidden feelings.
Somehow, he would have to clear the lines of communication between them so he could speak to both Chelsie and Crow about Damian.
He needed to know why Chelsie once chose the insipid boy as a mate.
The next morning, Chelsie woke up to the sunlight in her face from an open window, her eyes opening and squinting at the bright annoyance as she groaned.
Looking away toward Jonathan/Scarecrow's side of the bed briefly, she did a double-take to find them still lying there.
That much was unusual as the doctor was a morning person and would rise before her, moving along to check on his little toxin business and make sure Maroni's men were all working properly.
The brown-haired man was awake, she noted once the sunlight no longer blinded her.
His back rested to his pillows which were propped up against the wall, his fingers clasped behind his head, eyes turning to her slowly from their aimless stare somewhere ahead with eyebrows slightly raised inquiringly.
"Something wrong?" he asked casually.
She shrugged, muttering curiously, "Why are you still here?"
"I'm taking a day off," replied the doctor simply before looking away from the brunette.
Chelsie looked surprised; he never took time off of his work just to lie around. Something was obviously off, but the stormy-eyed woman decided she would rather not bother with getting to the bottom of the matter.
'Jonny boy is actin' awful strange,' Crow mused as Chelsie walked their shared body to the dresser near the bathroom door.
Chelsie picked out the usual outfit - Crow's simple costume of choice - and then headed into the bathroom to change, shutting the door behind her.
'What Jonathan does on his day off is up to him,' she told Crow with a mental shrug of indifference. 'If he wants to tell me whatever is on his mind that made him take this day off, then I'll listen, but I otherwise see no reason to be nosy.'
'Well, Queen of Apathy, I'm still curious,' Crow retorted, bothered by the doctor's strange behavior. 'It's not like our beloved Scarecrow to let Jonny-wonny slack off, you know.'
'Then you can come out after breakfast and play your game of twenty questions with him, Crow,' assured Chelsie soothingly. 'I, on the other hand, want to have my Fruity Cheerios in a relative calm.'
'Sweetheart, you're about as boring as elevator music,' returned Crow with a cackle to her own joke, jovially sinking back into the darkness.
Finished dressing, Chelsie left the bathroom, briefly noting that Jonathan was still lying in bed as she picked up her hat, adjusted it atop her wild mane and pocketed Crow's beak.
She then took off out the bedroom door without a word.
Entering the kitchen that was connected to the main room without any separating walls, the young woman got out a bowl, a spoon and the pleasantly unexpired carton of milk in the refrigerator. (Normally, she found, thugs were not appropriate for the simple retrieval of groceries. That was to say they were slightly retarded.)
Many of Jonathan/Scarecrow's men were spread around, slacking off even worse than the doctor, some of them watching a late morning talk show as they sat on the old, black leather couch.
She then looked for the box of Fruity Cheerios, going through all the cabinets until she found it on the very top shelf beside the refrigerator.
Being not so very tall, and the box so very high, her feeble attempts to capture the colorful box were in vain.
"Havin' trouble, sweetheart?" asked a rough voice as one particularly lean, but muscular thug leaned on the counter separating him from the brunette.
Chelsie's cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she replied softly, "Yes, actually, I am."
He laughed, walking around the white counter toward where the shelves were.
"What's the magic word?" he questioned teasingly.
The little brunette bristled and turned a deeper shade of red.
"Please?" she uttered the word, looking hopeful.
He laughed again, easily gripping the box and setting it on the counter beneath the shelves next to her other items.
"Thank you," the woman said sincerely.
"So," the thug began, leaning on the counter with one hand as she poured her cereal, "we don't see ya much 'round here."
Obviously, he meant they didn't see much of Chelsie instead of her vivacious other half.
"I'm not normally out when Jonathan's around," she gave by way of explanation, pouring milk onto the colorful, round Cheerios. "And I'm not normally given so much freedom as to leave my room whereas Crow simply picks the lock."
She shoved the milk aside, picking up her spoon and placing it in her bowl, pushing it aside as well before hopping up to sit on the counter near the thug. Then she picked up the bowl, soon taking a mouthful of cereal as she watched the brown-haired, green-eyed man intently, her eyes guarded from revealing any emotions.
Idly, she realized thugs with green eyes were rare around the warehouse for some reason.
The thug remained where he was, seemingly determined to have a conversation with her as he spoke again, "So the Boss never takes ya outta the warehouse?"
"Unfortunately for me, that's a correct assessment," Chelsie answered with a pout before taking another mouthful of Fruity Cheerios.
She decided, as long as the mob-lent man was being friendly, she might as well keep the conversation rolling.
"I'd love to get out of this place once in a while," began the brunette thoughtfully, "but it seems the 'Boss' thinks I'd run away."
"Would ya?" asked the brown-haired man curiously before adding an afterthought. "Livin' in a hideout's no life for a pretty girl like yaself."
Chelsie contemplated his question, thoughtfully chewing her cereal. It wasn't as if she had a life to go back to, and if she ran away, the only place she could go would be her apartment. Obviously, Jonathan would look there first if he really wanted to find her.
"No," she finally answered defeatedly, "I guess not."
Unbeknownst to Chelsie, Jonathan was listening from the nearby hallway.
'She says she wouldn't leave, so perhaps a little faith in her would be wise,' the ex-doctor said to his Scarecrow. 'We should allow her to leave the warehouse for a while on her own.'
'As long as she knows she can't escape us regardless of being set loose in Gotham, I have no qualms with allowing her a taste of freedom, if that's what she desires,' Scarecrow reasoned sensibly, glad to have this small piece of information.
Neither, however, realized how close they were to the truth of that one thing Crow spoke of.
After her breakfast and small talk with the thug - whose name Chelsie now knew to be Anthony - the brunette was pulled aside by the doctor.
He told her his thoughts on allowing her loose from the warehouse, Scarecrow briefly reminding that if she tried to run away, he and the doctor would find her.
So it was soon decided that on her little venture out into Gotham, she'd also run a small errand of extracting the rest of her savings from her bank. Apparently, Jonathan thought it would be best to remove her money from any of Gotham's banks in light of the many bank robberies the city had endured; her money would be safer elsewhere, he told her.
Chelsie, agreeing with his logic, decided that would be her last task of the day.
And so, she left the warehouse that afternoon, foregoing the costume she usually wore for her old pairs of three sizes too big t-shirts, bell bottom jeans and simple white sneakers. A good chunk of money was also on her person that Jonathan had given her for her trip "just in case."
First, she visited her apartment and found the place was pretty much the same as she'd left it, though a light layer of dust had settled over everything already.
How long had she been gone exactly?
Or was the place always that dusty? She really couldn't remember.
She didn't even bother with dusting since she apparently didn't even own a duster as she concluded after a small search for one.
Satisfied that the place was still in one piece, Chelsie left the apartment and its nostalgia, heading to the bank.
Chelsie had just finished up at the bank when men in clown masks barged in, one shooting up into the ceiling, customers screaming as if they themselves had been shot.
"Alright, everybody! Hands up, heads down!" shouted one of the robbers.
Chelsie got down to the ground, hands up as instructed. Thankfully, she'd already withdrawn her last bit of money left in the bank.
"I said hands up, heads down!" he called out again, Chelsie merely relaxing against a desk, blocking out the rest of his annoying shouts.
'Lovely day for a bank robbery, I guess,' thought the brunette idly. 'Jonathan's going to flip when I tell him I got caught in one, though... He'll never let me leave by myself ever again.'
One of the clown-masked men was going around, she noticed, placing grenades in people's hands.
Crow laughed, 'This is my kind of fun! If only I could get in on it.'
'Don't even think about trying to intervene to be a part of the robbery, Crow,' Chelsie warned, unapproving of the mere idea. 'You know Scarecrow would have a conniption fit if he found you working for these guys.'
Eventually, the clown-masked man passing out those little "gifts" came over to her, placing one in her hands.
He stopped for a moment, however - the robber who had been pulling the grenade pins busy with others - his head tilted as he gazed into her vacant stare of stormy orbs.
She showed no fear, and he must have found it intriguing before he went ahead and fixed the grenade himself, as if he needed a reason to have still been there.
"What's your name, kiddo?" he asked the brunette, voice slightly high-pitched, though he practically was whispering to her.
"Chelsie," the woman replied in her contrasting equivalent of a speaking contralto, having no apparent qualms with offering her name.
He smiled to himself; she didn't seem to care about what was going on, or even how the other people around her were faring. Not even the grenade in her hands seemed to stir a reaction.
Too bad she didn't smile more.
"Do me a, uh... favor," the man said, patting her cheek roughly as she just stared back boredly. "Don't get yourself kill-ed."
Chelsie tilted her head with one fine eyebrow quirked, "I wasn't planning on it."
He laughed and left her there; although intrigued, he had business to attend to.