I do not own any part of the Batman franchise, just simply a fan with some sort of plan c: I also just wanted to tell you all that this is my first attempt at a FF. I used to have an account on Quizilla, but decided that it was time to put it here as well.
My heart pirouetted in my chest as the doors of the elevator closed, sending Lucas and I plummeting down into the garage. I could not bear the sight of worry that was painted across Dr. Crane's face as his eyes darted from the spots of red on my blouse to the cadet blue collecting beneath the small burn scars. I found myself most happy, however, that it was myself rather than his gorgeous pale face that had absorbed all of this rage. I do not even wish to imagine what his lovely eyes would look like if one of them were encased in a sweater of internal bleeding. I was used to this sort of physical appearance but that did not mean I wished it upon anyone else.
Lucas patted the top of the large wooden crate in the center of the lift to attract my attention to a simple Chanel day dress; a handsome navy blue cinched waist with a romantic finish at the neck, and sheer sleeves complete with structured cuffs. The softness of the fabric clashed with the coarseness of the wood grain, and I knew that it would clash with my now horrid appearance, as the navy would surely bring out the plum colour that I could feel appearing about my neck. Sadness filled my mind, not at my father's rage but for Dr. Crane. I felt completely ashamed for allowing him to see me in such an unladylike manner and so torn away from my customary monotone of pale white, for when he looked into my one eye that could still see his iced gaze I could tell that I had genuinely shocked him. I wished I could apologize, but the thought of being shoved into that heavy steel door, suspended in the fuming air by my father's beast-like hands made me smile with a crazed relief that I did not have to be held aside by his security officer while it was Dr. Crane being seized like a hound and thrown across the table of beakers and flasks, full to their brims with acids and Mercury. My smile grew to the point where Lucas caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. I could not hide it for it was such a new feeling to be so pleased that my worthless form was thrown across glasses filled with dangerous substances and MY face that was crushed inward, instead of my companion's. Hanging from my father's outstretched hands and being held into the gas fires that sprang up from underneath made a warmth fill my body, not from the heat of the fire, but rather from the notion that the man I found myself caring for was downstairs, safe, in that horribly overdone room and away from the uncontrollable fury that was a change in scheduling.
Lucas helped me change out of my ruined clothes, shaking his head as he tossed them aside and examined my slowly spinning body. "It doesn't look too bad this time around Miss." Although he smiled as he held out the Chanel for me to step into I knew by his tone that I was a sight far worse than the time before. It hurt like being prodded with a branding iron as I raised my arms trying to get the sleeves to their proper places on my shoulders, and when Lucas fastened the buttons that traveled down my back, each one of them found an incision and pressed upon a hidden piece of glass. He patted my shoulders ever so lightly, instructing me to turn about as his hand traveled deep into the Louis Vuitton messenger bag that adorned the side of his trench coat, revealing a small compact of concealer, which was nothing new. I leaned against the wall as he carefully patted the powder into my face, relinquishing pressure around my eye, and then sliding the applicator puff back and forth across my neck to try and disguise the noose like bruise that must have looked like a choker necklace above the navy blue of the collar. I knew that the film of white Lucas was liberally applying would be of negligible effect seeing as how the injury hadn't fully developed its plum and black colour, but I always appreciated the things he did to help me following events like these. After all he and I were delivering this order representing the Ryan Corporation, if the client phoned my father saying I looked like a wretch off the street I would be in for a whole entirely new world of hurt. However that did not occupy my mind at all. I had received a phone call from the hospital earlier this morning saying that Evee had been shot while she was at the bank and was in recovery. I was so worried about my best friend being mortally wounded, and then of Dr. Crane being killed that I did not have any spare worrying brain cells left for myself. Turning to Lucas I asked if we could go by the hospital after we dropped the order. He looked at me, with eyes almost as nocturnal looking as mine, and questioned as to if I thought I was in a serious enough condition that would require a trip to the hospital; I laughed to myself. "Evee is there," immediately after I enlightened him to this his tense expression subsided and the elevator rang out in victory as it finally landed on the basement floor. I helped, to the best of my abilities, to load the crate into the car but I admit I was more of a hindrance, and Lucas opened the back door for me to climb into. My hand caressed the leather of the seat and I found a sense of strange pleasure in the idea that I was on the side of the car that Dr. Crane had been on when I released him, a bit earlier than the police expected, from Arkham. I wondered what he would be up to this fine, storming morning.
As luck would have it the client who placed the order for the 750 liters was a very old business associate of my father's and an old friend, Boss Rupert Thorne.
One look at my futile attempt to hide my father's rage and he understood everything, I did not have to even exhale. He sat behind his large Brazilian wood desk, very charming office furniture indeed, and pushed a small box towards me, as I was perched in the chair across from him to his right. "For you Eleanor," he spoke in his slightly gruff voice, screened by many years of smoking, "I know it has been a quite some time since your last one." His eyes watched my hands as I reached out to pull the small box to my lap. The expression he wore was visibly upset by the deep red gashes that I had collected together with surgical tape (that was luckily NOT pilfered by any kangaroos) to try and reduce the inevitable outcome of scars. I apologized for my appearance but he simply waved his hand from side to side and claimed it was all his fault for requiring that I be finished an hour earlier, and that he acted unforgivably. I smiled lightly as I pulled on the small end of a rather neatly tied bow, only glancing upward as his call-man brought in a cherry wood tea tray laden with a very impressive collection of glasses filled with wine of his own accord. He was a man of expense in that way, but in a more demure fashion, unlike the gotti stylings of my father who most likely would have demanded you drink the spirits he offered you. There were only two glasses upon the tray, one for himself and the other for Lucas. He was my oldest friend, next to Evee, and it was no secret to him that I never accepted alcoholic items, especially in the condition that ailed myself at the moment.
The room was on a higher level of comfort compared to my father's office, and I never once felt a twinge of Claustrophobia build up, like the amount caused by the hideous ivory desk and red walls of the room I was accustomed to. The walls that sheltered his office were a very elegant eggplant, and coordinated well with the dark wood of his Ethan Allen furnishings, which I always adored. His eyes followed my every movement over laced hands as I continued to release the small parcel from its glimmering bondage, excited about receiving something that I did not really deserve. Through my one, still functioning, eye I caught the glitter of small specks of red crinoline encased inside a molded glass sphere that sat a top carved Russian bears, each with one end of the Soviet flag tied to their paws. His face was beaming and I must have looked ridiculous with only half of my face able to curl up into the smile that was trapped inside, the happiness half from the lovely eastern snow globe and half from the fact that Lucas was suspended over the small table that separated us like a squirrel, trying to catch a better glimpse of the small trinket. I was so anxious to see what this one would look like when I placed it on the shelf with all of the others that Boss Thorne had bequeathed to me over the years that he had been a part of my life, the father I should have been given. He cared for me deeply, it was plain enough for anyone to see, even my father, and as I rose to thank him he simply waved his hand again beckoning me to resume my prone position in front of him, "Anything for the best chemist Gotham City has to offer." I became red at his kind words and told him that I must be taking my leave for I had a friend in the hospital. He understood, winking at me in a platonic fashion and turning around in his high backed 'Rajah' chair, as he liked to call it, while Lucas gathered his coat and opened the door for the two of us to pass through. I loved Boss Thorne like no other, and in my mind he was a father.
Back in the car, Lucas seemed to be in higher spirits for he told me to sit up in the front passenger seat with him so that the valet at the hospital could see that I was in the vehicle. I laughed shortly at his old-fashioned qualms and told him that Gotham General did not have a valet service unless you were seriously hurt, to which he simply replied by pulling down the interior mirror and questioning, in a mock reporter tone, as to how I received such a fantastic black eye. He had a comforting smile as I went to return the mirror to its original place, but it slowly faded as the sorry state of affairs that my hands were in hooked my attention, and turned them over slowly in my lap. They really were disgusting, especially since the white surgical tape now had a muddy colour to it after soaking up all of the stray blood that had continued to pour out from the embedded glass. I only hoped that when I walked through the hospital doors that no one would give me a second thought, so I would be able to make a straight line for Evee in the recovery ward, for that was all I cared about at the moment.
Boss Thorne's home was all the way out in the Palisades, near where the Wayne Manor used to be before Bruce burnt it down, and I always forgot how far away from the city the location actually was. It took ages for the car to even reach the outskirts of the city, and I knew that once I saw the sign for Saint Peters Street that it would be, probably, another twenty minutes before I even saw the light a top the hospital tower. A sigh escaped my lungs as I turned my head to catch a glimpse of the view out from the window – rain, rain, and more rain. Not that I thought it was depressing or anything, rain here is like sunshine in the idea that 356 days out of the year the city is blanketed in a layer of thick overcast. I rather enjoyed the lack of sunlight, due to the fact that I grew up with only the false light of sixty-watt bulbs. Droplets of rain sped past across the glass of the window as Lucas sped up the car to ninety-five miles an hour to try and pass a large semi-truck that had moved to the lane we had been in previously… men. I felt my good eye roll over in my skull as his fingers flexed behind the steering wheel and turned up the volume on the radio. Most of the stations were out due to the strength of the storm, but when he came across the Gotham News I was glad he stayed, for the topic of discussion by the faceless news anchor was most intriguing… not to mention it turned my face green with anxiety as I watched white drain down onto the navy blue ruffle at my neck line. Lucas' slightly more lively colour had fallen from his face too as he turned up the volume with the controls fastened on the reverse of the wheel. Neither of us dared to speak for we knew that if what this man said was true, that he and I were in for a universe of criminal tortures the minute we set foot back on one tile of the basement garage. To think I was already in bad shape as it was. I prayed the Associated Press were liars this day.
"It has come to the knowledge of the Associated Press that Gotham City Police have a suspect in the case of the escape of Dr. Jonathan Crane, also know by his alias 'The Scarecrow,' from Arkham Asylum a few days prior to today," it was in this moment that I hoped there was a God, "Reports say a slender woman had gone into the island fortress claiming to be Dr. Evee Hurst, a prominent Psychologist here in the city, and had convinced guards to let her pass by using said excuse. When questioned about his ideas on the topic, Commissioner Gordon merely replied that with Crane's long history of chemical fascinations that there would be only one feasible guess as to where he would have gone to following his escape," it was in this moment that I realized God was a jackass with a sick sense of humour, "The police commissioner replied that he sought to question the fortune 500 chemical company Ryan Corporation, most specifically he would be asking their scientific and research staff if they had any information as to the where abouts of this most dangerous man, for it was assumed by the Major Crimes Unit that if anyone in the city would be able to help Crane it would be the men and women in that specific field of expertise."
I wanted to cry. I probably would have if not for the excruciating pain that was now pulsating from my out-of-commission eyeball, as I tried to look to Lucas from the corners of my sight. He was in an even worse state than I had assumed for he swerved madly and almost crashed our car into on coming traffic. I tried my best to say what I could to calm him down but nothing seemed to work, he would say he was fine but then swerve and cut off a handful of cars in the lanes adjacent to ours, scaring the green from my face and leaving me a translucent corpse. After all when he and I returned home that is what I would become, for my father would be sure to drain every ounce of blood I had for plasma and lymph storage. I didn't even want to think what would happen to Dr. Crane if my father found him. The only thing my mind could picture was a fate similar to that of the intern that displeased his boss by bringing him the wrong blend of coffee. I have no idea if that poor boy made it through that fall down the sanitarium body chute that dumped into the marsh by the ferry dock, the one that backed up against the reverse side of the building. No one ever questioned the rank scent of rotting flesh due to the fact that the ghettoes surrounding the building smelt like decay no matter what time of year. The squalid shantytowns were a moat that way. I only wished it would be putrid enough to keep the police at bay until I got back.
The hospital corridors only reminded me of the test subject dormitory back in the lab, for each of the rooms I passed by had their doors open to reveal sacks of flesh hooked up to huge iron machines that were ticking like bombs. The smell of iodine and rudder gloves made me nauseas and I longed for the scent of Dr. Crane's Valentino coat. My mind swam in the small delight of remembering just how lovely it was, but delight turned to ash when I remembered that having his jacket covering my bare shoulders only made me long for the feeling of his hands pulling across my skin, the sight of pale fingers sliding across my collarbone and down my chest… good lord!
A swift collision with the ugly wood grain of the door to Evee's room brought me out of my unexpected and untimely sexual fantasy that I really did not understand as to why it manifested itself in such an awkward location. I mean people were dying a few doors away and the only thing I could think about was… oh heavens no. I pushed the door open to see Evee lying in the hideous little bed in that horrid hospital gown, with her arm bandaged up in a sling being kept company by whom else but the billionaire playboy himself, Bruce Wayne. Now Bruce was no stranger to me, we both ran in the same upper class social circle, or at least we did when I managed to be lucky enough to escape. My heart went out to my best friend, as I knew that she must have been waiting for any excuse to get him out of this small room and away from her. Her eyes pleaded with my one decent eye for an out and I had just remembered that a few moments remained to spare for coffee before heading back to the lab to prepare everything for when the police decided to show up. Bruce, in all of his boyish charm, tried to invite himself to join us, so as to get more opportunities to be Evee's shoulder to cry on, but the two of us eventually convinced him otherwise, although I was not too thrilled at the fact that I had to bring up my inability to bear children to relinquish ourselves of him.
Evee's sudden laughter following Bruce's swift exit caught me by surprise and I jumped like a hand-shy puppy, just as pitiful too. Her smile turned to a slight frown as I surrendered the clothes that I had purchased for her on the way. I really wanted very much to join her for coffee, but if the building was preparing for attack I knew that the best place for me to be was on the inside braving the apocalyptic rage of my father personally, rather than being hunted by the series of hit men that would no doubt be after me if Commissioner Gordon tried to get to the center of the maze, only to be greeted by the minotaur himself, and become the newest edition to my family of sub-human spawns. Not only was I now petrified for Dr. Crane but I was also prematurely grieving for the, exceptionally kind, police commissioner who had no idea as to what he was getting himself into. The only advice I had at the moment was for him to be sure he brought some golden thread, for without it there was no way he was getting out.
I walked with Evee to the coffee shop down the street a few blocks, where she got a frappuchino and I ordered a tea, for I did not want anything to heavy to be my last meal. When we sat down at a small table in a secluded corner under the collection of cups for sale the subject of men came about and I could not keep my lips buttoned about Dr. Crane, but as soon as I mentioned his name I felt a guilt cloud my unhindered eye. It was as though I had betrayed his trust, seeing as how the fewer people that knew he was staying with me the better, but Evee was my best friend, surely she would not give my secret up to the police. She smiled curiously as she told me about a man she had met named Jack and how she harboured a keen interest in him, for he was dangerously attractive. Happiness broke through the guilt and I wondered just who this mystery man was that had my lovely friend so enthralled, but unfortunately it would have to wait. Lucas had followed the two of us down the street and was waving to me frantically through the window at the front of the shop. My brow rose in suspicion as his behaviour on the walkway only confirmed my previous notion that he should be committed to Arkham, but when a parade of police cars stormed by I immediately knew that time was of the essence. Reluctantly I excused myself as Evee finally noticed the condition I was in. "Eleanor what on Earth happened?" Her voice was strong and not without concern. I felt poorly for being so impolite as to leave our date early but I knew that the situation on the home front was getting worse with every passing second. "Do forgive me Evee," I said smiling to her with only half of my mouth still able to curl upward, "it turns out I have to work late again tonight."