The Scarecrow actually was feeling almost at ease. He didn't want to be, but he was. This Captain Nova woman must have some kind of superhuman powers. She must. He would not be this close to relaxed and at home with a normal person. He never voluntarily spent any amount of time with anyone except for the people he was experimenting on, and they certainly didn't give him hugs and chocolate.

Not that he wanted hugs and chocolate. Well, chocolate, maybe. She did make good icing. But no hugs.

She kept smiling at him, too. That should have been creepy. In his experience, a smile from a woman usually presaged something unpleasant. But so far, she hadn't done anything worse than shower him with affection and food.

It was very strange.

Charming the Riddler was easy. Even Al (still "that crazy bitch" in his mind) seemed to have done it. But taming the Scarecrow? He wouldn't have thought it possible.

And yet, here he was. Sitting in her kitchen. Drinking eggnog. Licking cake batter off a spoon. Making conversation. Not destroying her and everything she held dear.

Being polite despite his best efforts to remain aloof.

Good grief. Whatever she was doing to him, it was actually working. He was not as off guard as she probably thought he was, but he was far more relaxed than he knew he should be. He gave himself a mental shake and reminded himself that no one would go to Gotham City, kidnap an arch villain, and drag him halfway across the country just to wish him a merry Christmas.

"Don't be too hard on Al," she said. "Every mean thing she did to you was a sign of affection. Trust me, I know. She's like a sister to me, and I have the scars to prove it."

"Scars?" Now that was interesting.

"Well, just a couple. It's not like she tries to hurt people. She just has some kind of sixth sense, or at least that's what she always says. I remember the time they made me jump off the high dive—blindfolded, no less—and I panicked and let go of my rifle when I hit the water. I thought for sure I was going to knock myself unconscious and drown. I didn't, though, but I had a sore spot on my head for weeks, and I still have that pesky fear of falling, which makes it really hard to ride roller coasters, which sucks, because I've never been afraid of that. Anyway, Al developed this weird compulsion to hit me in the head—she didn't even mean to—and it only stopped when I healed up. Usually, she just pokes me. Here's hoping I never break my ribs." She looked sick for a moment. He stared at her.

"The swim team goes armed?" he asked slowly.

"Army. Aquatic PT. Sorry, I don't mean to babble."

"Oh, is that why she calls you Captain?"

"No. But it is why Roger calls me Sarge."

"Ah..." Roger? Sarge? He had the feeling she was doing her level best to confuse him, whether because she was afraid of giving away too much or because she derived some pleasure from keeping him off balance.

He sipped his eggnog.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "Everything's just about ready and, well, if Al doesn't make you stuff yourself, I will. So you might as well just give in."

"It would take a far braver man than I to fight you both," he said. She gave him a dazzling smile, and looked as if she wanted to hug him again. He raised his glass as a makeshift shield.

Fortunately, all she did was clink her glass against his.

"Here's to the holidays," she said, sounding a little choked up. Then she turned around and bellowed, "Al! Eddums! Get your asses in the dining room, now!"

No one in his right mind was going to argue with a summons like that. Of course, he didn't believe for a minute that anyone in that house fit the legal definition of sane, but that had never caused any problems before.

Well, not any insurmountable problems, anyway.

Well, no problems that had actually killed him yet.

They all gathered in the dining room, where a massive colonial-style table was laden with every kind of Christmas food he ever could have wanted. It was the kind of Christmas dinner he had secretly longed for as a child, but had never been able to afford. And once he'd finally had the means for a setup like this, well, he wouldn't have had anyone to share it with, so why bother? The closest he had ever come to a real Christmas celebration was the forced festivities at Arkham, and that had always been something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But this was…well, damned nice was what it was. He had no happy memories of the holiday season. He had only ever been depressed and lonely when he was young, and indifferent when he got older.

But this…was…nice, in a way that he had no words to describe properly.

All the others looked as if this was exactly how things should be. "Eddums," who he had never seen looking anything but completely awkward or snidely condescending, depending on the company, was now giving off the vibes of a pampered housecat. The young Captain displayed both misty eyes and a radiant smile. And Al was looking as pleased as if she had invented Christmas herself.

That young woman wore smugness very well.

"I thought you were making a turducken," she said with a sniff that was not at all unappreciative. The Captain laughed.

"Are you kidding, Number One?" she asked, stumbling a bit as if she had been about to call her friend by another name. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to stuff birds inside each other? I would have pissed myself off and turned it into popcorn." That set them both giggling, although he had no idea what it meant. "Speaking of popcorn, will you light the candles?" Still giggling, Al retrieved a book of matches.

"The Captain's not allowed to play with fire anymore," she teased, probably getting back at her for that earlier crack about not being allowed in the kitchen. "Do you want to tell them why, or should I?" The Captain's face was a particularly vivid shade of red, but she looked determined to tell this story herself, perhaps not trusting the other to get the details right.

"I used to burn a lot of candles," she said. "One day, I...well, I found an old love letter, and I decided to feed it into the flame. It got a little out of hand, that's all."

"Tell it right," Al admonished.

"Okay, okay. So this massive pillar of flame shot up, and of course I totally panicked. I managed to put it out before anything else burst into flame, but not before the fire alarm went off—"

"—waking me out of a sound sleep."

"I said I was sorry. So, anyway, there I was, trying frantically to turn off the alarm—because in the apartment we lived in then, we weren't actually allowed to burn candles. I got the one in my room turned off, but the one in the living room just would not stop. And Al there didn't know whether she wanted to help me, hurt me, or just laugh her a—face off. We opened the door and all the windows, and turned on all the fans, and I even tried beating the thing with a towel, and nothing worked. This went on for hours."

"Hours," Al echoed. The Captain sighed.

"Aye. Right awful, it was." She seemed to slip easily into an imitation of a pirate, and slipped just as easily right back out of it, without ever having realized what she had done. "Finally, we gave up and decided to call the maintenance guys. By that time, our other roommate, Karli (the durff) had already come and gone. No chance she was going to stick around to help us. But she did remind me that I was going to get a hefty fine for burning the forbidden candle." She coughed, embarrassed. "So Al helped me cover my tracks. I never would have thought of it; I haven't burned anything in the kitchen since I melted the toaster when I was eleven."

"Yeah, yeah, we're all impressed," Al said with both obvious sarcasm and a genuine smile.

"'We could burn Easy Mac,' she said. 'How do you burn Easy Mac?' I asked. 'Just forget to put water in it,' she said. Now, I may be scatterbrained and accident-prone—" (she wiggled her fingers, showing off a band-aid on each finger) "—and I did once try to microwave a one-pound Hershey's kiss without unwrapping it first. It was pretty! But I told her I would never be quite dumb enough to forget to put water in my Easy Mac…" She let the silence hang.

"Twice," Al said. "I've done it twice, okay?" By now, the Captain had dissolved into helpless giggles. "Yuck it up, fuzzy."

"Hey, I'm not fuzzy. My hair's grown out. Anyway, Al told me to find a bowl I didn't like much. She didn't tell me exactly why…" Al coughed and looked away. "So I put it in the microwave, and we hightailed it out of there. And then, what was it you said, Number One? 'This is going to smell just like burnt popcorn'? And I turned to her and said, 'Well, why don't we just burn the popcorn?'" Now they were both giggling manically. "So we both raced in there to try to stop the microwave before it exploded. And it did smell like burnt popcorn…but then, so did the popcorn we burned…and believe me, when I set out to burn something, I don't do it half-assed. So the maintenance guys came up and just unplugged the damn thing, showed us how to hook it back up again, and told us if it hadn't stopped by Monday, to call them again." Al cackled.

"And after they left, she gave me this pitiful look, and said, all Han Solo-like, 'They didn't even ask me any questions!"

"So now, every time we set something on fire, we call it 'making popcorn,'" the Captain finished.

Privately, he wondered just how often they actually set things on fire. They spoke as if they were quite well acquainted with the joys of pyromania.

"Speaking of corn," Al said, "Captain, I can't believe you didn't know something was up when I asked you to make corn on the cob."

"Hey, I thought you were just trying to face your fears." She grinned at the Scarecrow. "She's afraid of corn." He blinked in surprise-corn?-as Al flushed.

"At least I'm not afraid of driving."

"At least I'm not afraid of using the phone," the Captain snapped back.

"Yes, you are!" Al said indignantly.

"Oh, shut up and eat your corn."

They bickered like a pair of sisters throughout the meal, treating each other, the Scarecrow realized, much the same way Al had treated him. More than once, one of them would reach over to poke the other for no apparent reason, and have her hand slapped away with a pointed glare and a creative insult. Neither of the two of them ever included either of their two dinner guests in the physical assaults, although they seemed to be fair game for verbal taunting. The Captain was a bit gentler than her first mate, as far as that went, but her quiet and easygoing exterior didn't necessarily match her interior. He suspected that she was more shy than sweet the first time he heard her tear into Al (with venom enough to do any Gotham villain proud.) His suspicions were confirmed when she said, in an offhand sort of way, "Al's always thinking of stuff to do to people, but I'm the only one who will actually go out and do it." Then she mumbled something about an umbrella, and giggled even as she seemed about to burst into tears.

"Waugh," said Al. "But I notice you haven't managed to do anything about That Bitch or That Whore."

"You want to see my Squidward band-aid?" the Captain said sweetly, referring to the line of band-aids across the fingers of her right hand, a different cartoon character on each finger. He didn't know what a Squidward was, but he could guess which finger she was referring to.

"Who are 'That Bitch' and 'That Whore'?" asked the Riddler. They looked at each other with pained expressions.

"That Bitch—" Al began.

"That Whore," the Captain said at the same time. They laughed. "That Whore is our former roommate, Karli Crow. She stole my ice cream."

"Oh?" That didn't explain why she suddenly looked so furious, or why she was stabbing her broccoli so savagely with her fork.

"Never touch a woman's ice cream when it's the only thing keeping her from murdering you! The holy sacred Moose Tracks shall not be touched! Whore!" She threw her broccoli at Al.

"Hey, what did I do?" The Captain giggled.

"The Meaty Avenger strikes without warning."

"That wasn't meat!"

The Scarecrow waited until he was sure there would be no more food thrown about.

"Did you say Karli Crow?"

The Captain grinned as she suddenly got it.

"Yeah! Maybe we should introduce you two."

"Is it Karli with a K?"

"Yeah…do you know her?"

"We've met." Now both girls were staring at him, openmouthed.

"How did that go?" Al asked.

"I, uh…made popcorn out of her."

The last thing he expected was for the two of them to come over the table in their haste to tackle him. His chair rocked back and slowly tipped over, sending the three of them crashing to the floor. His head rebounded off the floor, a sensation he was all too familiar with (and if this was someone's idea of a joke, it had long since ceased to be amusing.)

For a moment, he panicked (again, damn it) wondering what he had done to anger them this time. Then, belatedly, he realized that his was not an attack; he was being hugged. Again.

That was getting old fast.

"You rock so hard!" Al said, giving him a hearty squeeze. The Captain snuggled up to him in a way he had never expected to experience with any woman.

"Is she dead?" she asked, almost hopefully.

"P-probably…"

Hastily, the Captain pulled away from him.

"Oh, God. I promised we wouldn't do that again, didn't I?" The two of them helped him up. (Manhandled might have been a better word for it.) "Damn it, Al, we both know better than to startle him."

"Sorry, Squishykins. Would you like a cookie?" asked Al, moving an acceptable distance away from him. She glanced at the Captain. "You did make cookies, didn't you?"

"Of course I made cookies! Do you want cookies? We could skip to dessert."

He tried not to flinch when they came near him. This love-and-fear routine was getting old, too. The next time anyone made any sudden movements, he was gone.

"Would you do that to me if I killed one of your friends?" the Riddler asked hopefully. They both grinned.

"I'll do it to you for less reason than that," the Captain said. Al looked startled.

"Captain? Is there something we should know?"

"We had to wait for you, Al. You were late. We had to do something to keep from being bored," she said with a shrug. Then she added in a stage whisper, "The man is a god." The Riddler's face went red, Al looked flabbergasted, and the Captain burst out laughing. "We played Lumines. Here I thought I was the Master of all Tetris games, but you should see him play." She smirked. "Pervert."

They disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the Riddler and the Scarecrow to stare at each other from across the table.

"So," the Riddler said awkwardly.

"So."

"Um…good pasta."

"Yes." He poked at what was left of his with his fork. "It…tastes like pesto."

"Oh, yes. Pesto." He cleared his throat. "That would explain the color."

"Yes."

The heavy silence dragged on. So much for small talk. He glanced at the door, considering the wisdom of just leaving.

"So, uh…how's business?" the Riddler asked.

"Oh, good, good—" He froze as the 'you've forgotten something important' thought that had been dancing around the back of his mind for the last few days suddenly burst into the forefront. "Oh."

"What?"

"I had an experiment going when she grabbed me." All ruined, now. And those test subjects were in no fit mental state to set themselves free. Unless Batman or the police had managed to trace them to his new laboratory, he was going to need some heavy-duty Pine-Sol and Febreeze when he got back. Damn. He hadn't intended to actually kill this batch.

Oh, well. With a shrug, he took another drink of eggnog.

And he wondered what Al would think if she knew about the experiment she had interrupted.