A/N: OK, so today's chapter will be huge, I can promise you that. In terms of content especially because it's going to be dark and intense. You thought the last chapter was intense? Oh, this one is definitely that times five at least. Strap in your seatbelts. XD

Chapter 13: Session 11: Tortured

Amelia walked alongside Cate, eager for some diversion away from the case. Any relief she could find was very much welcome. Not because Crane had been austerely condescending last time but because he had masterfully unveiled earth-shattering family history. The unbelievably cruel irony that he'd become a phobia-obsessed man intent on showering Gotham with fear when he'd been born out of fear. What woman wouldn't be shaken to the core by a rape? Well, women along with men, but most victims tended to be the former.

Either way, fear started him, taking root and then manifesting itself within him. She also found it highly unlikely that his mother had even spared her son too many glances after she'd given birth. Who knew how much of his father he took after?

Expertly feigning that none of these heavy thoughts had crossed her mind, she asked Cate, "So, what's on the agenda for you today?"

Her friend drained what was left of her coffee and disposed the cup in a nearby trash can. "Well, we're going to be checking out some X-rays today, helping out the cops. We started yesterday and noticed that the victim's cervical vertebrae were broken. Fourteen of the vertebrae in his spinal cord were broken too, ugly stuff. We have an idea who did it."

"Who?"

"Killer Croc, naturally. He's notoriously brutal with his victims. Hardly any of them make it out alive…like in this poor guy's case. What about you? Gotten anywhere with Scarecrow yet?"

"Mmm…" Amelia didn't quite know what to tell her. "I have, yeah, more than I have been in the past two weeks."

Cate nodded, smiling. "You're brilliant, you know. If I'd been in your position, I probably would have caved. I don't like it when people use their high IQ's for evil."

"Yeah. Yeah, I understand your point. Well, I'll see you later, OK?"

"Sure."

How could she possibly deal with Crane today, given his fury? Then again, she'd seen him angry before, so she wouldn't bother with the anxiety. She only hoped that he would continue his story, for this promised to be the breakthrough she'd intended on wheedling out of him.

Crane's eyes were vacant, his mouth set in a narrow line. He frowned once those eyes landed on her.

She had the clipboard out, ready to write down what he would unknowingly dictate to her. "Are you ready to begin from where we left off?"

He had a discernible look in his eyes that implied he wanted nothing more than to humble her and put her in her place. But why seek out revenge on her? She'd done nothing but ask her psychiatrist questions, listen, and deflect his less-than-courteous comments.

After a while, Amelia noticed him nod. "Yes. I suppose you thrill to hearing the sordid details of my early life."

"Not so far, I haven't," she spoke honestly.

"But…But…No." He shook his head swiftly back and forth. "I thought that you'd enjo—but, I haven't arrived at that part yet. I'll have to shortly, though."

"So, my first question for you is what was growing up in Georgia with your grandmother like?"

"Hell," Crane replied curtly. "Absolute hell. We were isolated out in the country where we lived, out on the farm my family had held down for generations. It was a decrepit place by this time, however, with a broken-down barn and no animals. The nearest town was a ten-minute walk, and that was where I went to school."

"Did your grandmother drive you?"

He chuckled humorlessly. "No. We could hardly afford anything. Grandma depended on Social Security checks that came monthly and child support checks that never came."

Basically, the man who had been known to wear Giorgio Armani suits at the height of his career (so Cate had said) had been raised in total poverty. It was inconceivable. What was even more ludicrous was that he had sacrificed that career to focus on distributing fear, mastering horror, and getting terror down to an art. Amelia shook her head slightly.

She continued, "You grew up in poverty, you were shunted aside by both your parents—"

"That's putting it lightly. My father never submitted to a paternity test. I have never known his name. Just as well…"

"And you were isolated from your community," Amelia finished, summing up what he revealed to her so well. "How did your grandmother treat you?"

Because from the sounds of things, your childhood was quite bleak enough. If your grandmother only added to your anguish, I don't know how I'll take it, she thought emphatically for once.

She began to comprehend Crane in the revelation that he could be just as human as she was. Not all of him was ice-cold and heartless. Perhaps he'd had too much heart in his humiliating origin, and he'd opted to surrender it to save himself. But, he hadn't saved himself in her opinion. He'd damned himself by burying his capacity to love and accept. He could only shun, turn away, and snidely remark on others as though they were inferior to him. Had that sense of inferiority started with him?

He was quiet long enough before answering slowly, "Not very well."

"Oh…Then…What lengths did she go to in not treating you properly?"

Crane sneered, his lips curling like a rabid dog's. "Where do I even begin? Doctor, we could be in this room all day, and I still wouldn't be finished. The crimes against humanity she committed and she, a God-fearing woman. A fanatic, a holier-than-thou type of woman. Perhaps if she'd actually read her revered Holy Book more closely, she would have practiced what she shoved down my throat!"

Jumping to his feet at that moment, he restlessly paced back and forth in front of the lounge chair. The trembling that she had witnessed in him in a previous session seemed to be more apparent. With that mask, his expression remained hidden from her.

She didn't have to wait long to discover what went through his mind as he suddenly ran toward a wall to punch it.

"Crane!" Amelia barked.

When he didn't heed to her warning, she slapped the clipboard down on her chair and rushed to him. Impulsively, she seized his elbow just as he reeled back his fist to punch again. Almost as soon as she touched him, he unclenched it and left his hand hanging limp. She heard his intake of breath and sensed him stiffen from her hands on his arm.

"Crane, stop it," she said firmly, boldly staring at him.

"Why should I?" he asked hoarsely, most likely sounding a great deal less threatening than he'd planned.

Amelia's eyes softened, somewhat approving of Crane's choice to express his emotions. Maybe he wasn't such a soulless monster after all. For the first time, he had actually displayed vulnerability.

She assured him, "I know how difficult this must be to tell me this. But, this is strictly between you and me. I won't say anything about it from here on out. OK?"

"Don't go soft on me," he scoffed. "Soon, you'll end up a puddle on the floor. And don't touch me."

It hadn't occurred to her that she still had her hands placed on his arm until he roughly shrugged them off. Pursing her lips in puzzlement, she returned to her chair, and he settled into his again.

Pretending that that little scuffle hadn't happened, Amelia proceeded, "As much as I hate to ask this, Crane, what did your grandmother do to you? You can give me a shortened version if you wish, a brief summary."

"I'm not weak, Doctor. I will tell you…I'll tell you what I remember. All of it."

Crane pressed on as though to get this portion of the story over with. "Every other day, she abused me in some form or another, if not daily. She would tell me that I was a walking abomination and, though she found the concept of abortion to be distasteful, that I should have been an exception to that opinion. I allegedly rotted with sin, and my mother had conceived a demon in her womb. I was supposed to be the child of Satan. I would be forced to kneel in front of her to pray to God and Jesus Christ for my soul to be saved on a daily basis. Though she told me in no uncertain terms that she was skeptical over even Christ the Redeemer ever redeeming me."

"And how old were you when she started this?"

"About six."

Six? Six years old and forced to listen to such fanatical babble stemming from extreme religious fervor that ended up being verbal abuse? Amelia couldn't fathom it.

"What else did she do, Crane?"

He sighed. "She would hit me with a wooden paddle while reciting Bible verses if I spoke in defense of my mother or if I caused an accident or didn't do my chores precisely the way she wanted them done. Cleanliness is next to godliness after all."

"In defense of your mother?"

So, there must have been a period in which Crane thought nothing but good of his mother. She wrote down that he used to have affection for her, probably before he found out the truth. Maybe he used to be wistful as a little boy, optimistic that Karen Crane would return one day and raise her son in that doting environment he had so desperately needed.

"Yes. I thought I could respect and love her despite her prompt abandonment of me and that all she'd done for me was labor, scream, and give me a name. As naïve and idiotic as I was, I used to long for her to go back to Georgia and fetch me with a motherly embrace." He snorted loudly. "I would have dreams about that nonsense.

"My grandmother kept trying to coerce me into hating my mother (which I very well do now, believe me, without her help). She'd call her Satan's whore. I was either Satan's son or bastard or both, depending on her fancy at the time. That still wasn't all she did, Doctor."

Amelia gulped uncomfortably. "What else?"

"This was how I came to be. At times, when she felt I was at my most wicked, she would put me in the suit. The suit actually consisted of old saggy pants that used to belong to my great-grandfather (whom I suspect she murdered by the way, as he hadn't attended church as often as she had back then) and a similarly matching shirt. It resembled a typical scarecrow's outfit. Now, she would pour a homemade concoction all over it before she had me change.

"I suppose this was from whom I'd inherited my superb chemistry abilities," Crane mentioned wryly.

His self-deprecation proved how much distance he was willing to put between himself and his family. And no wonder. His grandmother, if his story was to be relied upon, sounded horrifically twisted.

She commented, "I find it odd that a woman so engrossed in her faith would dabble in anything close to scientific."

"Oh, well, you wouldn't believe what lengths she would go to in order to torture me. She loathed me and didn't see me as her granddaughter's flesh and blood, much less family.

"As I was saying, she would pour a chemical liquid on the suit. Once I changed into it, she would drag me to an old dilapidated church across from our gravel road. She would shove me in there, advise me to confess my sins, lock the door, and let…let the crows do the rest. They lived there, always in the rafters…"

Amelia managed to detect a nearly imperceptible tremor in Crane's voice. If she hadn't possessed her keen psychiatrist observational skills, she probably would have missed it.

He did have childhood fears then: his grandmother and the crows that flew from rafter to rafter, cawing away in their harshly unpleasant rasps. But, where was the punishment? In general, birds weren't predatory unless scientifically specified otherwise or provoked. Crows were scavengers, not birds of prey.

"I don't understand what the torture was, Crane. You were locked inside the church and…what? What would happen in there?"

Crane was struggling on how to respond. "They…They would…I can't."

"Crane…"

"I can't. No. I've gone on far enough. I have been a fool to admit to this much of my life already. I have no idea how to phrase it."

To her own surprise, Amelia murmured rather softly, "Out of the patients I've seen in my career, all of them have suffered some sort of trauma when they were young. Don't be ashamed, Crane. I have heard all sorts of intense abuse stories that didn't always involve a belt. Just tell me. I won't judge you."

He glanced up from his clasped hands in his lap, gazing at her with steely blue eyes that bizarrely were devoid of any emotion. And then, only for an instant that she swore it wasn't genuine, they very subtly softened.

Once that brief moment was over, he cleared his throat. "Very well. I'll admit to what happened. There was a chemical in the concoction, which was colorless as well as odorless to humans. To humans, not crows, so there was possibly a hint of blood from a hunk of raw meat in that mixture. And it would set them off in a fit of anger. Maddened by that coupled with my scarecrow-like appearance, they would attack me repeatedly, with claws and beaks. They would peck me all over my neck and arms, any place where I had exposed skin. I would be in there for two hours at a time before Grandma troubled herself to let me out, bleeding from my wounds. She wouldn't treat them and, after one instance, told me it was time for supper. None of what she did fazed her. She'd justify it in her own mind."

Amelia blinked back tears. How could anyone subject a child to that?

She inwardly groaned when she sensed a tear rolling down her cheek, but she supposed she couldn't help her feelings, her new-found empathy when it came to him. No denying that Crane had been injured, both physically and emotionally. Betrayed by the woman who was supposed to protect him. She couldn't imagine an elderly woman relentless enough to abuse.

With slightly shaky fingers, she wrote down a summary concerning this far too methodical abuse that his own grandmother put him through. This also served as a good side-track from crying.

"Doctor?"

Of course, with his own astute abilities, Crane must have sensed her lack of self-control.

"Yes, Crane?"

"You will not relate this story to anyone else," he said darkly, imperatively. "I know you believe I deserved it anyway, considering who I am today. I am the only patient you have ever been repulsed by, I am aware of this."

As Amelia shook her head in the negative, another tear fell down her cheek. "No one deserves that type of mistreatment, Crane, especially not you."

Inevitably, due to her built-up well of emotion that nearly overflowed, she had to suppress sobs. She glanced back at the desk behind her, worrying that she might have to wipe her eyes with the Kleenex.

"Forty-five minutes…," was all she could say, signifying the end of the session.

Crane, however, did not move. "You don't need these tears, Doctor. They are a waste. Keep in mind that I have no soul now. I might have once, but it's gone."

"Don't say that," she hissed furiously, eyes sparking when they met his.

A cynical smirk rose to his lips. "How humorous that you actually still have faith in me."

He walked away and, when Amelia's back turned toward that desk, his smirk lost its edge and became an infinitesimal smile.

A/N: Hope the ending wasn't too OOC of Crane, but then again, I mean that the smile was barely visible. As for the chemical mixture that his grandmother had made...Well, dang, that part was difficult. See, I'd been looking through a couple different sites for origin stories that would explain what exactly that mixture was. I'd decided that there had to be blood in there, that way the crows could detect it, because that's the only thing they can smell. Otherwise, the mixture would be odorless to humans because of other chemicals that would cancel the blood out. I had no idea how to explain it, as I'm not a science expert. Neither are comic book writers, apparently. XP

Yeah, I had them be too poor to afford a car. Probably because I would suspect that maybe the grandmother had to sell the farm vehicles and regular vehicles in order to keep up with her bills. That, and I don't think an 70-80-something-year-old would be working at this point, the average one anyway.

Anyway, I believe I made the grandmother terrible. Really, really terrible. I forgot to give her a name. I might fix that, even though there's no canon name for her.