I do not own any part of the Batman franchise, just simply a fan with some sort of plan c: So Please Enjoy! 3
It had been so long since I had actually walked down into the belly of the underground to stand at attention and weigh down my ankles by waiting for an anonymous train to rumble past. The subway tiles cracked and crumbled in every direction as the horrific smell of fluids invaded my senses. Jervis, it seemed, was already guilty of being partially prepared for his white glove disappeared into the same shade of an embroidered handkerchief that relieved him from the unholy torment of filth. I immediately turned green, whether from the scent or envy was indiscernible, and leaned in close to the chest of his sweeping coat. His hand was comforting as it laced around my shoulders, pulling me inwards to try and stop the cold that pulsated through my body.
Maroni's associates had rounded up pretty much every celebrating being from the nightclub and brought them along with us in a caravan comparable to Moses. The Boss himself fixed a spot opposite of Jervis and I on the block, a few feet above the tracks, and kept glancing downward to the face of his Movado. It was obvious he was beginning to grow impatient for the echo of his incessant tapping continued for what seemed like days as the crowd around us came down off their expensive highs. Any individual who opened their mouth to complain was quickly singled out and forced to help carry every container of Dr. Crane's fear toxin down into the station like a slave. Humourously however, it seemed enough men had already come to their senses to create a smooth operation, and soon every container was beside the armed men in only a matter of minutes.
I watched, intrigued, as Maroni's eyes darted from one tunnel opening to the next, presumably guessing as to which mouth would regurgitate public transportation. "What are we even doing here?" A woman yelled out form the center of the crowd of partiers with a voice comparable to that of a drunken piece of squealing chalk. Pressure increased around my shoulders as Maroni passed Jervis and I to speak privately with the third suited man that I had counted from the private room. His voice was low and rushed but it seemed his counter part understood every word for he gave the Boss a sharp nod and unleashed a few rounds into the already some-what caved in ceiling. My mind was curious to know what was being played out here, obviously devoid of a strategy, and slowly turned – abrasing my cheek on one of the coat's finely crafted peaked buttons. Maroni approached Jervis and I with a slightly more motivated manner, sweeping his right hand through his aged hair and bringing it back down into its respective pocket. "Here's our trip," he said slyly raising his uncovered hand in gesture to the train that bore a striking resemblance to one that had been tossed over the bridge that ran over the furthest, and saddest, outcropping of the tenements. Many of the darkened windows were either cracked or broken out completely, above the endless stream of rudimentary illustrations. When the doors opened two of the suited men escorted the three of us, obviously as the heads of the event, comfortably into the first car, which was quite a shock. Every surface gleamed with infancy and invited one in with a slogan of the utmost cleanliness. I watched as Jervis removed his hat and sat it beside him, lightly, while removing his coat to reveal an exquisite green shirt diluted with the most fabulous of grays. Then again there really was no reason to expect anything else besides the most interesting neutrals that hinted to something more Technicolor. In this city if someone felt a need to be bold with his or her colors there was always a varnish of darkness to put them in their place, or at least for the people I had come to know. In the business of wickedness there was never anything that popped besides perhaps something curiously grotesque.
Out of the window I could see the crowd of sickly faces becoming skeptical as they glanced over the sides of the cars following the one my companions and I had been secured in. The men in front refused to go on board until a bullet from the rear of the mass sent a cloud of orange into the contained air space. The evaporated toxin swirled about, converging with the unobstructed air into one swiftly moving shelf cloud that ran over the heads of the now frantic throng who broke all customs, running like a crazed mob onto the train to try and escape the orange mass now licking at their heels.
Maroni smiled upon me when our eyes met. The sudden contact brought a disembodied anxiety to perch a top my now quaking shoulders, and rain down nothing but question. Jervis stiffened with surprise when my head collided into his lap as the train launched itself down into the throat of a corresponding tunnel. The man driving the train looked increasingly familiar as my eyes traced his entire form, but upon reaching his feet I realized that every single container of fear toxin was latched inside of the compartment, wobbling and bouncing against one another with every twist and turn of the rails. That was when my mind finally connected everything together. This being the last train of the night that meant it's last port before being shut down at the yard was the prominent Astylar Building where most of Gotham's import and export business was settled. Most of the time the last train of the evening would run through the station under the Wayne Building, but I suppose with the Joker running around the mayor would be cautious about letting a potential bomb run through the building that housed, basically, the city's entire economic security. The man was in no way the sharpest knife but he was owed some praise, after all he had managed to get himself elected.
The driver's voice came over the speakers and alerted everyone that if they were parched from their draining rush on board they would have an opportunity to quench it via a trolley that would be coming down through the pathways housing an exorbitant amount of liquids - free of charge. This intrigued not only myself but Jervis too, for he snaked his arm under my weight and pushed my head upwards, to be at level with his shoulder. "Don't wrinkle your dress Eleanor," he said out of the corner of his mouth while accepting a rather questionable coffee from a man garbed in a most flamboyant caftan. It poked outwards at four corners with a Picasso type print of a 'jack' face card on his chest. I'm sure it would have been an even more foreign concept had I not noticed the circuit card sticking out from the top of his ear. "Jervis," I asked, as politely as possible while haste stabbed through into my spleen. But no contest, he held his hand to my mouth while sliding his elegantly stitched thumb back and forth across the rim of the steaming glass, glancing towards my no doubt surprised expression with an uncharacteristically thin smirk. "So," he spoke with confidence to Maroni while keeping his hand to my lips, "why play such a welcoming host to these parasites?" I could feel my brow collect together in consideration. The word brought nothing but horrid little visions of children with piercing needles for fingernails and nocturnal eyes – far worse for wear than my own. My brain had no doubt fallen from its velour seat in its melodrama theatre for my skull felt like it had dropped a boulder, and glancing to gage the Boss' reaction did nothing to help clear the feeling.
His demeanor was the same exact calm that rested on his features when my father decided to blow like Krakatoa, tranquility removing him far away from his actual location. He brought his left foot over the right knee in relaxation while requesting a martini from the personified playing card. "Listen," he said in his negotiating tone, "Obviously things aren't going the way you expected but think of it this way." His fingers found each other to form a tiny flesh planet that orbited around his fabulous tie. "What is the best way to calm down a raging crowd?" My mouth dropped quickly to answer but the man quickly changed it to one of a more rhetorical nature as he continued, "You offer them something that they like. And what is it that the citizens of the ghettoes love most?" Again with the rhetorical that I wanted so desperately to answer, his fingers separated and constricted the tongue of his tie while his eyes did not sway from my companion's. "Destruction," he said confidently while waving his hand about to catch the stem of the martini, "Dissolved in every alcoholic drink that's being served in these here subsequent cars is a very generous amount of one of your specialties." He raised his glass in toast to my vacant expression that only announced to everyone present my failing thought process. File cabinets that contained every memory were overturned, its papers sifted through in hopes of locating a hint.
The last thing that I had ever made for the man was an overhaul of Ecstasy, but that was redundant and trivial compared to all of the other tasks that were listed in that ominously oversized leather bound record book of my father's. My pale hand rose to relinquish the grip of Jervis' as he focused on his still interestingly off-colour coffee. "What you mean to say sir," I paused, as Maroni relaxed, "is that you are giving drugs to an overly hysteric crowd? For what purpose exactly?" The man's smile was too composed to be taken light-heartedly and when he shifted his height to better answer my question the mood of the entire cabin changed from calm to one of impending frivolity. "My dear girl," his laugh was silenced by a sip from his martini, "the easiest crowd to control is one made happy by hallucinogens, come now you've known this for years. Besides, drugs are cheaper than bullets and parties are much more enjoyable when a select few get restless…" His index finger twirled the tiny plastic sword within the liquid, which hypnotized me from paying attention to what he said next. The toxic scent of alcohol invaded my senses when Jervis leaned over and told me that I needed to sit upright or I would cause wrinkles to form in the dress he had given me. I scoffed silently as my chest flipped over in distaste. It was a gleaming tray of hypodermic needles, each with equal amounts of murky yellowing liquid. The suited man who brought the silver for Maroni to inspect looked incredibly entertaining in his waist apron that sported artistically arranged burn holes. My eyes fell backwards into the chasm of my empty skull when the Boss I had known for years hopped upward like an overly eager child and sent the man through the door and down into the viciously waving arms of the unruly passengers now continuing on their party rampage. Each car could be seen through the open door although the sight wasn't thrilling. Overhead the lights flickered, much like a strobe, and incredibly loud electronica swept from speaker to speaker as if the synthesizer had a venereal disease. The henchman didn't make it far into the intoxicated zoo before being rushed and beaten by men coveting the contents of the tray. The people were animals on a scale I had never seen before – clawing and biting at each other for anything that contained an illicit substance. It was just like the riots that broke out in the fourth quarter of the ghetto, in between St. Elmo Street and the old meat processing plant. If the Ryan Building had been seven blocks east it would have gone up in flames, shooting off like a Roman candle into the already polluted city sky.
The chaos was like a horrible movie, I couldn't bring myself to look away. The behaviour contained within the steel was barbaric and yet they all had such broad smiles. Just like the expressions painted on the heads of the marionettes sold in the puppet shop Downtown, an equally as uncomforting. There was a cool breeze as Jervis got up and slowly shut the door on the piteously screaming henchman, and when he turned back around to face Maroni and I his mouth was plastered into the widest smile I could possibly recall. "And with that little show I'm certain the devil takes the form of a twenty-four year old woman," he quietly applauded while taking swift steps to lean over the back of the man so much older than he, "might I ask what you mean by 'restless' because from what we've all just seen I'd say this train would have to turn on its head before things could get any more exciting." I watched Maroni anxiously while my hands intertwined with each other; the whole situation was one that was obviously growing out of control.
Rain pounded on the roof of the briskly moving train, which became sonic after Maroni ordered the driver to increase the speed. The outcome of jettisoning off the rails became more and more believable when he enlightened us to the fact that he had bought some Heroin from a street urchin before retreating to the private room of the nightclub, some that would knock a German Panzer off it's rocker – well… if a panzer was an animate creature. Thinking back I remembered seeing an urchin with his head paved along the bricks of the opposite wall. It was obvious that the Boss had received the drugs free of charge, for even if he had paid the man he ended up reimbursed, perhaps with interest.
"Eleanor," he spoke to get my attention while he and Jervis looked over to my pathetic prone body gazing out of the window at the masses of neon that streaked by, "wash up and get ready."
"Ready for what sir?" I asked with a sincerely confused edge. Maroni motioned for a suited man to hand me articles that were all too familiar as Jervis' brow rose in contest. Within the package were yet another apron, loupes fixed upon eyeglasses, and a single rusted scalpel. It was unnerving seeing a tool so poorly kept but yet still in use. Not because it happened to most likely harbour tetanus but because with all of the rust crowding the blade any incision made with it would be horrible jagged and therefore insanely difficult to sew.
"Just because this isn't a house doesn't make it uninhabitable for a doctor," immediately it became obvious as to why I was really invited, "Now suit up my dear, and whatever it is that comes to be just imagine its your beloved psychotic psychologist and everything should go swimmingly."
The key word of course, as I examined the less than stellar scalpel, was should. There were many things that I should have been doing but instead it was this, which chances are I should not have been doing. Besides I would have stabbed this disgusting instrument through my own sternum before ever pricking any part of Dr. Crane. Lock Jaw was not something I longed to see him suffering from, if I ever would be graced with sight of him again.
For hours nothing happened. I rinsed my hands as best as I could with the quarter amount of Hydrogen Peroxide that managed to remain within the small bottle inside the case of items I had been given to work with and tried to scrape off as much of the rust from the scalpel that would allow itself to go. Unfortunately after two passes with Jervis' pocketknife it became apparent that the metal had rusted all the way through and if any more contact were made I would be slicing people open with plastic olive skewers. A most unpleasant task for all parties involved I assure you.
Jervis had finally given up on his off colour coffee, which was a relief on its own, and welcomed me back to the space beside him with a simple pat and devious smirk. His left hand found its way slowly down from my elbow and collected around the handle of the knife that had been secured within my grasp moments prior. I peered out the corner of my eye to try and watch Jervis' expression morph while he ran his fingertips up and along the now severely dull edge of his once lovely blade. Sorrow filled my mind and chest as the wisps of blonde tamed themselves, coated in a most lustrous espresso around fast paling ears and jaw line. Surely I couldn't be hallucinating, although there was a high possibility that the transportation situation of the barrels could bear witness to hairline cracks belching toxic fumes into the whole of the car, fast eating the oxygen and storming down all of our esophaguses and corroding our lungs with a thick puce tar. I could only feel the fierce stabs from underneath my own crawling skin as I watched Jervis' facial features slowly disappear behind a fastly advancing mask of that which I so desperately longed for.
Piteous was the attempt at happiness that I hoped it might spare me from having to amputate any partying limbs, but there was no such luck. Maroni simply assured me that all of these parasites partying, dancing, f*cking in the subsequent cars would be hard pressed to recognize the difference between a surgeon and a colossal squid after the hour that had gone by, that I should be thrilled to have practice on emergency conditions because it was that sort of skill set that would make me a wonderful wife. He smirked from over the brim of his martini as his eyelids slowly met and the liquid ran down over his tongue. "Is there something that I should know?" I asked, trying desperately to some how gain control over the horrible nervous twitch that had snaked its way into my vocal box. Maroni simply set his glass into the palm of an awaiting henchman and patted his moist lips with the corner of a handsomely embroidered kerchief. The lapel of his jacket had acquired some sort of white powder as he slipped his fingers back into the interior pocket, bringing out a small metallic cigarette case filled with most likely anything but an actual stick of tobacco. "Don't be so nervous Eleanor," his thumb pressed heavily upon the small clasp separating the lid from the base and revealing an equally shining razor blade a top mountains of a similar white powder, "you cut up people for a living, why should it matter if you're inside the confines of that lab of yours or in a hotel bathtub? Either way you're the only one I know who would be accepting of organ removal aboard a moving gurney. Which is why you're here. I love you dear girl but sometimes you worry too much." I knew Jervis bore the same shocked eyes as the two of us sat across from one of my favourite Bosses complete with a rolled bill shoved into his nasal cavity. I wish I could say I hadn't seen this before, but as one of the many sking of the underworld he couldn't help but acquire one bad habit or another. I just never assumed he would feel comfortable enough on a cruddy piece of public transit to potentially poison himself with an unintentional microbial assailant.
Gotham City was large but I knew that after an hour and half of high speed travel that the driver had passed by the targeted destination at least twice and was simply buying time for all of the passengers to plummet themselves into a state of euphoria in which death just sounded like a greater party to be in love with and tend to. Sickness docked within my abdomen as sorrow and a slight elation battled each other over the prized port below my stomach. The thought that I might be spared from having to do anything surgical while aboard this high speed hell hole was slowly boiling over, pushing my imagination to relinquish its hold over my perception of Jervis and return the man to his actual appearance. He must have known that I wasn't feeling wonderful for he coiled his arm about my waist and pulled me over to relax upon his lap, stroking my head much like a parent would do to an ailed child. The rhythm of breathing which pushed and receded against my scarred temple was one of fantastic ease for, even though it was just momentarily, the thought of hemorrhage escaped the screen of my mental theatre and simply flashed through snapshots of watching Dr. Crane's shoulders stiffen with irritation at the refusal of his experiment to work properly from across the lab table. I only wish I had been brave enough, or forward enough like Evee was, to journey over and fix the simple problem he could not see in his frustration.
Jervis' stroke patterns were organic and most irregular as he spun his index and middle fingers counter clockwise against my straining scalp. The feeling was unlike anything I had experienced, so hypnotic that I could not even hope to fight off the drowsiness that suddenly appeared as if poured into my skull through contact with this master of minds. I longed for incoherence. To sleep would be to forget everything that had happened and everything that was happening. If only I could surrender enough to allow even a moment's peace I could black out and awake to the exact moment I was meant to experience. Because there was absolutely no question that this horrific train ride was definitely not it.
Although luck had abandoned me for right as I was on the brink of achieving my goal nerves sent pulses of electricity to the brain shooting my light headed body upright much too quickly. The barred door to the subsequent cars had slammed open, allowing a flood of blaring music and broken glass to fly through into our borderline demilitarized cabin, along with something I had been dreading the entire night. My sight directed my head as it swiveled atop my aching shoulders, glancing from Jervis' ghostly face that would harbor a competition against my own, over to the horrified face of Maroni who could not stop sniffing due to his violent cocaine nose job.
The remaining unwounded henchmen ran to secure the door before another barrage of delirious partiers could stumble into our midst and cause even more trouble. Unexpectedly my throat collapsed against the strain of the disgust that erupted and seared my tonsils. It was a simple man laying at my feet, no more than twenty, with pupils the size of pinheads. My knee found a home against the unpleasantly sticky floor as I managed to find a cause to his problem that I never expected in a million years. The soft flesh of his inner elbow was mutilated, as if Jack the Ripper had gotten off on men's arms instead of whores, with handfuls of amateur needle wounds complete with a white substance still being rejected by his body's blood stream. Jervis and Maroni both leaned forward to hover over the dying man's limp form and had to hold their mouths after I pulled my finger across the white, bringing it to my own lips to taste. "Milk?" I said with an honest confusion as I looked up to Maroni and then back to the poor leach, "injecting milk into the blood stream of an OD hasn't been documented since the 60's… what clever being came up with this champion idea?" Still confused I realized that this man was in no way going to survive depending on how long ago he had been killed by his fellow party goers, and every suspicion of the cabin was confirmed the moment he started to seize under my pathetic weight. Frantically I used the last bit of available strength to shove the stranger onto his side, for the two men above me weren't of much use once Jervis fainted. A yellowish white was what I could only hope to be discharged from the man's mouth but when a black sludge-like congealment seeped out from behind his lips and onto the now ruined apron of my dress I knew he was much too far along to be saved. Each henchman around the scene shouted their own personal form of cure but their words only dissipated into steam about my ears as I carefully lifted his shirt and found four bulging mounds.
"What's wrong with him?" I recognized the question as Maroni's for his nervous tone rang a distant bell within my eardrums. The lumps under the man's skin would not give to the touch which only meant his organs were expanding. Obviously it had taken most of the train ride for his fellow addicts to transport him to the head of the party for his body had been clinically deceased for at least forty minutes. Unfortunately for him there was nothing even I could do to save his disgusting wasted form.
"Hand me your glass sir," I petitioned to Maroni who buried his green face in his kerchief once the glass was broken and shoved into the man's bubbling stomach. "I'm sorry," I knew that this wasn't a scene for daytime television, "But if I don't relieve the pressure it wouldn't surprise me if he exploded." I tried to concentrate on the force of thin blood that spit out from the incision and, unfortunately, into my face so that I did not have to think about the two henchmen that had thrown up only a few feet to the left. With a quick pass over my tightly shut eyes the white skin of my left hand was tainted with black, and the juvenile dress Jervis had been too kind to give me was ruined. Sitting back, my viciously swaying height had to be supported by even weaker haunches as a newly awakened Jervis placed a shaking hand atop the crown of my head. "I think we have a bigger problem than that exploding biohazard my dear," he said in a tone that matched his convulsions. His grip forcefully entwined itself within what hair it could and jerked my head around so quickly that I half expected it to pop clean off. It was then I knew that the wish I had made a few weeks ago, the one where I wished to be dead because that was the only way I could possibly make anything up to Dr. Crane, was one that I really did not want to come true but had done just that without any sympathy for me. Through the freshly unbarred door everyone of us could plainly see partiers being tossed like rag dolls every which way as a muscled cloaked figure ran full speed to our location, finally disarming the remaining henchmen and seizing me about the neck, up and finally off of the now fully dead young addict.
This masked man obviously had no direct idea as to who I was, otherwise he would have know that I had grown immune to threatening choke holds. His black mask formed against his face well, for each line could be made out without confusion but still left the full realization of his identity to the imagination. Either side peaked in viciously pointed ear-like appendages and the same points carried throughout his entire ensemble in a theme of menacing characteristics. The lack of oxygen to my brain really was not doing anyone any good, because I was well aware, among other things, that if he continued with me like this for another three minutes that my brain would be devoid of oxygen entirely and I would be dead just like I had so childishly wished for. Delirium had finally arrived to this little demonic party and the man's masked face began to distort and melt in the most bizarre of ways, as he seemed to speak to me through his eyes, which opened like mouths with thousands of ugly fat pointed teeth. "Where is the Scarecrow?" he demanded to know as he shifted his grasp to my left upper arm allowing oxygen to continue into my rotting skull. In a ridiculous fashion I told him at least four times that I had no idea what he was talking about, and also that his outfit was terribly inconsiderate for a birthday party to which he simply held me in a tighter vice grip. "If he isn't here than what is all of that?" He was considerate enough to aide me in turning around so I could see the barrels stacked up high and bouncing around, crashing into one another as the train sped out of control, the knobs and buttons covered in deep crimson from the suicidal driver. In a fit of silliness I simply shrugged my shoulders and told the man that they were a birthday present, which this whole entire scene was just a simple birthday party that had gotten a wee bit out of control. The last thing that I can coherently recall is telling who I now recognized as Gotham's caped crusader, the one Dr. Crane loathed, that the police should have been called at least an hour ago but it seemed that no one had a phone so it was not that big of a deal. I suppose that wasn't exactly what the Batman had been hoping to hear for he then asked what this whole charade was about because it would take more than a pathetic frail woman to come up with this whole master mind operation and stabbed a finger at an extremely irritated Jervis and a slightly more passive Maroni, still high off his earlier endeavor.
Silence filled the entire compartment but was quickly foiled as an extremely loud siren blared from the driver controls signalizing that before his death the man had set coordinates for the Astylar Building, as planned, and there we were not 500 feet from the mouth of the station, only moments before the great showing of frivolity and fireworks to the musical piece of equally great hilarity. The Weather Girls began to spread their eighties dance energy through the still rapidly partying train cars as the Batman lassoed my two still conscious companions with some rather silly little braided cord attached to a carved bat grappling and proceeded to shove my face, quite rudely, into his as my back once again suffered contact with the seedy train wall. "What is all of this for?" the bat demanded once again, louder as if I couldn't hear him the first time, "surely you must have bought all of this somewhere? WHERE?"
Over his heavily armoured black shoulder I could see a groggy henchman cutting Maroni and Jervis free as the siren blared in a more erratic pattern, signaling to the three of us that if we still held fast to our right minds we would deboard immediately. But the batman did not let go at the change in sound, he only held me in the same position tighter continuously asking the same question as if I was at fault with a lack of intelligence. I would have thought he might have changed up his mind a bit seeing as how a newly cut open men was being crushed under his heavy boots but that didn't seem to phase him in the least bit. After what seemed like another eternity of agony aboard this moldy train the Batman managed to ask one final time before Jervis fit his high ears with a mind control card and he was forced to unhand my no doubt already bruising neck and arm.
Maroni took hold of my hand and dragged my unwilling height along as I got as close as I could to the masked man's face as he stay fixed to his new position on the floor in the dead man's black sludge.
"Happy Birthday Dr. Crane," and with that Gotham's hero vigilante scowled, no doubt committing my face to memory, and disappeared into a vast cloud of flame and toxin that soared upward into the night sky. I am not positive as to if it was still my delirious mindset or reality but the orange mist the fed into the clouds, causing them to rain with Silver Iodide, bore an odd resemblance to the Batman's horrible mask, and I knew that he was in no way dead.
Although safe in the back seat of one of Maroni's town cars I knew that things were only going to get worse, with Gotham's hero or without, because I still had to return back home. Back into the mouth of the inferno, with my father at the reigns of the beast.