Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to "Batman" or any of its characters, including Scarecrow, nor do I own any rights to the comics or the films. I own nothing save for any original characters I have created.

A/N: Again, I must thank M. Michele for her tremendous amount of help in writing this chapter. You can find a link to her profile and stories listed in my "favorite authors" section of my own profile.

Spite: Part II

2003

Crane stared down at Billy, relishing in the power he held over him. For years, Billy had tormented him, making his life a living hell to the point where Crane spent his nights wishing that he would die in his sleep just so that he wouldn't have to wake up and endure another torturous day at school. He had been at the mercy of Billy's contemptuous insults and hateful fists up until the day he graduated from their cramped, rickety school and left for Gotham—but no more. Never again.

Now Crane was the one in charge. He was the one in control. He was the one to be feared.

And Billy would fear him. Before the day was over, Billy would be a simpering, sweat-drenched puddle of a man, broken and horrified beyond sanity. While the rest of the town spent their mornings sipping black coffee and wiping the remnants of sleep from their eyes, Billy would begin his descent into unparalleled horror. Only then would his debt be paid, and only then would Crane feel the satisfaction that he had long craved and was owed to him.

The corners of Billy's mouth began to twitch—was he crying already? Coward. He hadn't even given him the toxin yet.

No. He wasn't crying. He was laughing.

Laughing.

Unbelievable.

"What is so funny?" Crane asked sharply.

Billy grinned up at Crane, revealing teeth yellowed by cigarettes and neglect. It was a grin that Crane was well acquainted with, and was often accompanied by a punch to his gut, a shove to the ground, or another act of bullying aggression. In spite of his obvious upper-hand, Crane's stomach turned at the sight of the familiar vile leer. But why? Billy couldn't hurt him—he was bound to a chair, powerless and unable to move. He posed no physical threat to Crane. He swore at himself inwardly, angry at his moment of weakness.

"I'm laughing at you, Ichabod."

Crane blinked in surprise, taken aback by Billy's mockery. He had always known Billy to make less-than-wise choices, but taunting the person who had tied him to a chair and threatened revenge for years worth of torment was an entirely different level of foolishness.

"What did you say?" His voice was dangerously quiet; a less-brazen and perhaps more intelligent man would have recognized his tone as menacing, but Billy Lee Walker was neither docile nor brilliant. Instead he choice to laugh even more loudly, taking delight in Crane's obvious growing anger.

"I said, I'm laughing at you, Ichabod."

Rage flowed through Crane, setting his veins afire and his heart into a blazing inferno of hate. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had bent down and spat right onto Billy's face. The crude display of animosity brought him no comfort or relief and only succeeded in making Billy howl even more loudly with laughter, his face wet with shining flecks of saliva.

"You've always been trash, Crane. You and that creepy hag you call a grandmother." He smirked. "Everyone thinks you did that pld crone in, you know. Did her in, then ran off to wherever it is you've been all these years. The only reason the cops didn't come looking for you is because no one gives a damn about you or your—"

"Shut up!" Crane slammed his fist down on a nearby table, sending a wave of pain through his arm. He winced at the throbbing ache in his wrist, then turned to face Billy. "Shut your mouth. You're not the one in control anymore. I am. And you don't talk until I say you can talk." He leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of the chair, and stared straight into Billy's face with eyes full of burning revulsion and scorn. "That's your problem, Billy. You don't know how to keep your mouth shut. It's why you were a stupid, dull brute in high school and why you grew up to become an even bigger and even more stupid and even more dull brute who spends his miserable life in either a drunken haze or inside of a jail cell." He smirked. "Oh yes, I know all about you, Mr. Walker. Tell me, how does it feel to be such a pathetic failure? Hmm? I would imagine that it doesn't feel very pleasant or satisfying, but then again you're the one with all the experience."

Anger flashed briefly across Billy's face before shifting into an amused smile. "As opposed to you, Ichabod? What exactly have you got to be so proud of, besides being an even bigger freak now than you were as a kid?"

Crane's eyes traveled towards his briefcase lying on the table. "I've kept myself busy," he replied coolly. "Which is much more than I can say for you."

Billy chuckled rudely. "Yeah, sure. And what is it that you do? Is creeping around in the dark and kidnapping people a daily thing for you?"

Crane narrowed his eyes. "If I were you, I'd be much more concerned about my own skin than asking pointless questions."

"Oh, give it a rest already. We both know you ain't gonna do anything to me. At the most, you're gonna maybe knock me around a bit with your dainty little fists before I get lose and beat the ever-loving hell out of you. Then I'm gonna walk right out that door, figure out where exactly I am, then find the nearest police station and have you arrested." Billy raised his eyebrows with in an exaggerated gesture of false excitement. "Hey, maybe they'll send you to the nut house! You'd fit in real good there, I bet. King of the freaks."

Crane clenched his hands into fists, roughly digging his fingernails into his palms. "I believe I told you to shut up," he hissed through gritted teeth.

Billy sensed that he had struck a nerve—a talent common amongst bullies, and a skill that Billy had fine-tuned throughout his lifetime. He ran his tongue across his teeth, that leering grin splayed widely across his face; Crane was reminded of a lewd version of the Cheshire Cat. "You think you're something special," he continued, "just because you got a good suit and good shoes and a nice city-boy haircut, but really you're just the same scared, weak kid I knocked the snot out of just for kicks. That's why I did it, you know. Not 'cause of anything you did, but just 'cause I wanted to and I could. What do you think of that, Ich—"

He did not get a chance to finish his cruel diatribe before Crane's fist slammed into his mouth, effectively cutting him off mid-sentence. Crane swung his arm back and connected with Billy's face again, this time scraping the back of his hand on his teeth. He punched Billy over and over again, the bone of his knuckles digging into cartilage and soft flesh. Warm blood splashed across his face and turned the white sleeve of his shirt a deep wet red; images of the scratches of dried blood on the floor of Killer Croc's cell and Quinzel's shiny red nails flashed through his head, and he felt bile rising in his throat. But he could not stop—it was as if his fist were a separate entity from his body and he was merely a horrified spectator watching from afar.

No, he could not stop, not even if he wanted to—and he didn't.

Only when his breath burst through his lips in ragged gasps did he take a step back, heart pounding and lungs aching, and surveyed the damage. Billy's face was a red mask of slick, bright blood, his nose bent crooked at an unnatural angle and his right eye swollen almost completely shut. Crane's own hand was covered with blood—both his and Billy's—and a collection of small cuts from where Billy's teeth had met his flesh; he turned it over, staring at it with sickened fascination. It was an astonishing vision—for the first time, he literally felt the blood of someone else on his hands. It was he who had been the perpetrator, the aggressor. He had been the one to inflict pain.

It was a strange feeling, and one that he was not sure if he liked.

A wad of blood and phlegm hit his shoe, and he looked up to see a grinning Billy; his chipped, jagged smile was gruesome on his bloodied face, like a perverse imitation of a Halloween mask, and Crane's stomach turned at the sight of it.

"Your grandma teach you how to fight, Crane? Is that the best you can do?"

Crane sighed wearily. He removed his blood-splattered glasses from his face and attempted to clean them with the end of shirt; when he placed them back onto his nose, his surrounding were still stained with pink smears. Like rose colored glasses, he thought, and sighed again.

He was unsure of what he should do next. The idea of giving Billy the toxin seemed tainted and wrong, as if it would be an overkill of sorts, and yet he knew that he could not simply untie him and part ways. It was perplexing—he had so often envisioned himself returning Billy's violence with punches of his own, and in his fantasies he had always felt powerful, strong, fulfilled. But the reality was much uglier, and brought him not satisfaction or joy. It felt cheap, unclean, not like the psychological purity that fear provided.

"Crane. Crane."

He turned to face Billy, almost hopeful that the man would offer a solution. "What?"

"Didn't you learn anything from me beating on you all those years?"

Crane lunged forward, grabbed Billy by the shoulders, and pushed. The chair hobbled on its back legs for a split second before tumbling backwards. Billy had just enough time to widen his eyes in surprise before his head struck the side of the table with a sickening thud and the chair hit the ground.

Then there was silence.

Oh my God, Crane thought, his heart pounding in his chest. He hadn't meant to do it, it had just happened—was he dead? Had he killed him?

Billy let out a low groan of pain and Crane breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't dead. But what now? Should he take him to the hospital? Could you help my friend here, he imagined himself saying to the emergency room attendant, I tied him to a chair, beat him mercilessly, then made him crack his head on the table—is there anything you can do? He was sure that would go over swimmingly with the hospital staff. He sighed again, this time out of tired despair, and walked out of the room, leaving Billy alone on the floor.

The morning sun warmed him as he walked through what was once Granny Keeny's blossoming vegetable garden; now all that remained was barren, old dirt, as dead as Granny Keeny herself. He remembered tilling the fields as a child, sweating pouring down his face and blisters forming on his hand as he worked beneath her vulturous gaze, a cold glass of tea in her gnarled hand. He remembered her clothing the garden's scarecrow in his old and now too-small black suit, the same suit he wore to church on Sundays before Granny Keeny decided that the clergy were a bunch of godless sinners and that they would no longer be attending services, and he remembered the way the tattered cloth fluttered in the hot breeze, a reminder of his forced solitude and loneliness.

The scarecrow was still there; its burlap face was now faded and featureless, and his suit had long ago been destroyed by nature's elements. But still it stood proudly above the garden, and judging from the lack of birds surrounding the garden it was still performing its silent duty. He recalled his vision in Arkham's basement, and for a second he considered reaching forward and checking to make sure that no horrors hid behind the burlap. But that would be foolish, and he'd already done enough foolish things this morning.

As he stood underneath the Scarecrow's shadow, he thought about Billy and how he had called him a failure. In truth, he was the failure. He had sunk to Billy's level—he had become violent and crude, using his fists as a weapon instead of his mind. Perhaps he was not as powerful as the thought he was; he had learned how to harness fear and use it to his own advantage, but still he lacked the self-control to successfully execute his plans—and he had so many plans, so many things he wanted to do with his new-found knowledge. But he would never be able to do that so long as he allowed primitive emotions and urges to overpower him; he was better than that, and he knew it. The anger he felt towards Billy was nothing compared to the disgust and shame he felt towards himself—he had sacrificed a rare opportunity. just for a few moments of brutality.

But it wasn't too late. He could still make it right. Yes, the effects of the toxin would be contaminated by his foolish actions, but it would work nonetheless; Billy would still be cast into his own personal Hell, and Crane would still be the creator and the master of his horror. The experience might no longer be pure, but it was something. Crane loathed waste, and he would be damned if he was going to waste his chance for redemption and retaliation.

He was calm as he walked up the stairs and towards the room where he had left Billy—no longer would he allow Billy to affect him with his vulgar, foul words, and he would no longer deign himself with uncivilized actions. All Crane had to do was remain stoic, and Billy's filth would soon be turned into sweet screams of terror.

He could do it. He was in control. He was the master.

"Rise and shine, Billy," he said coolly as he crossed the room to where Billy lay still on the floor. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the puddle of blood pooling beneath Billy's head, and his breath caught in his throat.

No no no no no no no

In a split second he was beside Billy, his fingers at his neck in a desperate search for a pulse. Nothing.

Billy was dead, and Crane had killed him. He would be forever deprived of his victory; Billy had won yet again, for the final time. Even in death, he had managed to defeat Crane.

"Dammit", Crane hissed, unable to hold back angry tears. He didn't know who he was more mad at—Billy for dying, or himself for allowing it to happen.

He sat beside his corpse, alone with his anger and his failure, and when the pool of blood spread towards his shoes he did not bother to move.