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Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for!


Whatever diabolical torture the Scarecrow was cooking up apparently could be performed while he was seated. He dragged his chair—an office chair with wheels would have been so much easier to tote but it didn't fit the ambience—and positioned it just in front of Joe. The cabbie heard the chair scraping along the bare floor, and shivered. He had no idea what the Scarecrow was planning, but any plan had to be detrimental to his health.

Crane, as nearly any person he'd ever met or interacted with could tell you, was not a fan of human contact. He had hated being hugged at work by obscenely friendly coworkers, he disliked shaking hands, and he considered most of the human species as little more than boring habitats for bacteria. Not surprisingly, he wasn't particularly happy to see how close Scarecrow had pulled the chair. He wasn't going to protest because he did enjoy seeing the cabbie miserable, and what Scarecrow had in mind was masterful. He just wished all of Scarecrow's truly brilliant plans didn't involve getting blood on his hands.

Willfully ignorant of Crane's qualms, Scarecrow sat down. He was so close to Joe their knees were only scant inches apart. Between the two of them, torturer and tormented, personal space had no meaning

"You're not going to bite anymore, are you? I would sincerely hope not because if you ever try anything like that again, it isn't going to be your hand and it isn't going to be a scalpel," the Scarecrow warned.

Joe made no attempt to answer, nor did he bare his teeth and try to emulate Mike Tyson. He sat slumped in his chair, trying desperately to pool and conserve whatever energy he had left. His maimed hand continued to bleed and throb and sap his strength. It was difficult if not impossible to stay resolute when your mind played cruel tricks on you and it felt like your hand had been offered up as barracuda bait.

"I believe you have learned your lesson. However, your friend hasn't. Do you know what she tried to do?"

Joe knew well enough. His hearing wasn't as badly warped by the toxin as his eyesight and sense of touch were: the auditory hallucinations were relatively rare compared to the blinding light he saw and the awful sensations the Scarecrow's touch caused. He'd heard the 911 operator and the resulting duel for the phone. He knew she'd done everything in her power to save them. He was thankful for the effort, no matter how fruitless it likely was or how badly he was going to pay for it. At least she'd had the guts to try and had given him a reason, albeit an almost assuredly hollow one, to hope for rescue.

"I think you do know but you feel like being taciturn. I understand why you won't answer. Finally, you've realized that your back it to the wall. It's upsetting, isn't it, to realize you're helpless? You have no control over your life or your death. You're reduced to nothing but an expendable lab rat and you're terrified, aren't you?"

The cabbie neither confirmed nor denied. Scarecrow frowned. This constant refusal to even acknowledge him was getting old. It was time to make Joe sing like the wounded bird he was.

The Scarecrow's hand closed over Joe's bloody one. In a snap, the cabbie went from slouched to ramrod straight, every muscle tensed. Just the weight pressing down on the 32 cuts that marred his hand was painful enough; the texture of the alien hand touching broken skin was nearly enough to make him sick.

As though he was squeezing a stress ball, the Scarecrow tightened his grip on Joe's hand. The cabbie did the only thing his panic-stricken brain could instruct his body to do: he fought back. It wasn't a clearly formulated attack strategy—Joe was in no shape mentally or physically to take inspiration from Jet Li—but rather a cornered-animal desperate flailing.

Joe managed to reclaim his injured hand and struck out blindly with its unhurt twin. The short handcuff chain and the duct tape kept him from putting any sort of momentum behind his blows. His only advantage seemed to be pure dumb luck. One weak punch struck the Scarecrow's bitten hand and he hissed as the injury was aggravated.

"Keep your hands off of me! Goddamn it, don't touch me," Joe said. His voice was ragged and desperate and he was too frightened and disgusted to be ashamed of it.

"No, I'm afraid this is going to be a very hands-on experiment for the foreseeable future," the Scarecrow replied.

On the subject of hands, he looked down at the bandages that crisscrossed a sizeable chunk of the aforementioned appendage. Joe's random punch hadn't been strong, but it had been well-placed. The pain from the bite wound had finally been quieting down; now it was flaring like a fire given fresh fuel. The Scarecrow certainly wasn't going to let his guinea pig get away with striking him.

Joe kept whaling on empty air for a few more moments before realizing he wasn't doing anything but flinging droplets of blood all over the place. He stopped and lowered his hands, one of which was streaked with an alarming amount of red. His hands settled in his lap but were far from still. Tremors ran through them both, especially assaulting the stabbed hand; it trembled like a cold puppy.

Warier of randomly flapping limbs and careful to keep his injured hand well out of the way, Scarecrow made a second attempt at grabbing Joe. Since the cabbie's hands were lying in his lap, they weren't exactly difficult targets. The Scarecrow easily recaptured the hand he'd had a minute ago. This time, he instantly applied squeezing pressure, hoping to subvert any potential violence from the cabbie. It would be quite difficult for him to fight back if he was overwhelmed with pain.

"We are going to have a conversation, a little patient/doctor tête-à-tête," Scarecrow said. "I will ask you questions and you will answer them to the best of your ability. Refuse to answer, and your life becomes even more unbearable. Do you understand?"

There were no answers forthcoming. Joe was hardly in any condition to answer a questionnaire: his hand felt as though it was composed of jagged broken glass instead of flesh and bone and the fear toxin was screening private horror movies in his mind. Whenever he tried to focus on anything but the pain in his hand, awful images played. When he tried to focus on something aside from nightmares in his head, his hand demanded attention. There was simply no escape from the circle.

Scarecrow had no sympathy for Joe's position. He was, in fact, overjoyed to see the cabbie knocked off his high horse. Now it would only be a matter of grinding him down farther into the dust.

"You'll be contributing to the great body of scientific knowledge. For once in your menial existence, you'll actually be of some use. You should be eager to help my research," the Scarecrow said.

Somehow, despite the great honor of being tied to a chair and stabbed by a lunatic in a burlap sack, Joe couldn't find it in his heart to appreciate the grandness of the Scarecrow's work. Maybe he was too concerned with trifles like being alive and remaining sane to recognize the grandeur of Crane's experiments. A man with a stronger regard for the greater good would probably have understood.

"Still don't have anything to say? We can't have that. I want to know what you're seeing. Even with your eyes closed, I know everything isn't shut out," the Scarecrow said.

The only sound was Joe's sharp, rapid breathing. One exceptionally harsh squeeze on the cabbie's hand changed that a little. He bit his lip, his next breath hissing between his teeth.

"Tell me or I'll start breaking fingers."

"Russian dancing bear."

He couldn't be serious. But how did he still have the capacity for sarcasm? None of the Arkham patients or the homeless people the Scarecrow had experimented on had been able to give him bullshit answers after the second dose. Not one of them. Most had been able to articulate their hallucinations between whimpers and cries, but not a sole, solitary, singular one had matched the cabbie's dedication to stupidity.

"A Russian dancing bear? That's what you're seeing?"

Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe in his childhood, a circus he'd seen had featured a performing bear. Maybe the bear had mauled its trainer while the audience watched in numb horror. That could scar a young psyche.

"Tell me about this bear. Why are you afraid of it?"

Like a malfunctioning computer, Joe froze up. He couldn't talk about the bear because there was no bear. He couldn't reveal what he was actually seeing—his fears were too deadly a weapon to give the enemy—and the ridiculous bear ruse had been his only hope. It had taken every last iota of control he had left over his poisoned brain to concoct the lie, and he simply could do no more.

When Joe failed to come up with adjectives or a back story, Scarecrow knew he'd been lied to. He was not pleased.

The snap was brief and unremarkable, no louder than the crack of a breaking twig. The scream that followed carried a much greater impact.

It was too much. Danielle felt hot tears on her cheeks and swiped at them furiously. What right did she have to cry? She wasn't the one bleeding or having her fingers broken. She was the one responsible for all of this.

For all of it. The realization crushed her like a falling piano. All of it could be traced back to her. If she hadn't told Joe to speed, he never would have spooked the Scarecrow's horse. If she hadn't been so terrified of the lunatic, Joe wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself for her. If she'd only been braver or less concerned with saving her own skin, Joe wouldn't be in the position he was in now. She had a stock in every drop of blood he shed and every ragged breath he took.

The tears fell harder and each one was scalding and bitter. She tried to keep them silent and secret but it was like an emotional dam breaking. Unable to stop crying, she hid her face in her hands.

Scarecrow couldn't help but notice Danielle's distress. He smiled in satisfaction. She was certainly paying for her escape attempt. Her punishment was quieter, cleaner, but in its own way more insidious. Guilt, self-loathing, they were as good as if not better weapons than scalpels and bullets.

"Dislocation of the proximal interphalangeal joint. It hurts, doesn't it? Answer or I'll move on to your index finger."

"Yes! Yes, it hurts."

"That wasn't so hard, was it? Let's move on to another question."

Even as Scarecrow talked to Joe, his eyes stayed on Danielle. She was soft, a bleeding heart. Gotham devoured people like her with all the mercy of a threshing machine. The second she'd set foot on the dirty streets, she'd never really stood a chance. Her destruction was as certain as death and taxes. Especially death.

Sure his female victim would prove easy to snap, Scarecrow turned his full attention back to the evening's main entertainment. The cabbie was panting like an overheated dog. His head was tilted back and his salt-and-pepper hair was pasted to his forehead by sweat. Large portions of his face, shirt, pants, and hands were bloody. He was, all in all, a sorry sight.

Scarecrow knew just how to make him even sorrier. He'd purposely attacked Joe's body, and now that the cabbie was vulnerable, it was time to go for his mind. As Crane knew well enough, there was nothing like talking about childhood to mentally traumatize someone.

"Why don't you tell me about your grandmother? Pull up a picture of her, a vivid memory. Tell me about the influence she had on you as a boy."

"Oh, no, no, no. I won't-"

But he couldn't help it. He'd hardly heard the Scarecrow's words and the memories came against his will. It was like being tossed into a time machine and being sent back to a bad dream he'd escaped years ago. It was like digging a tunnel to escape from prison, only to be discovered with scant feet separating him from freedom. It was like climbing out of hell and, just as the stink of sulfur was fading, the ground collapsed and he was heaved back into the fire.

"Where are you? Describe the situation."

"The crazy bitch is dead. She'd been dead for 21 years. She is not real. Goddamn it, she's not."

"The past never leaves us. It's like a corpse we've chained ourselves to. It follows us, growing less appealing by the day," Scarecrow said.

"Get back in the hole they put you in! I saw them bury you. You were dressed in that pink dress that gave you a hippo ass."

"She's alive and I doubt if she'd be pleased to hear about her 'hippo ass'."

Joe shook his head violently. "She's dead, and none of this shit is real. I know it isn't. It's like being high, but bad."

"Prove it to yourself. Open your eyes and tell me that I'm nothing but a hallucination," Scarecrow said.

It would be like looking under the bed to prove there was no boogeyman under there. Joe had done it as a kid, and he'd do it again as an adult. Trying to ignore the scowling face of his long-dead grandmother that prowled around in his head, Joe opened his eyes.

He took one look at Scarecrow and promptly wished he was blind.


That was the only way I could think of to get the bear in. If it doesn't please you, I cry your pardon.