Now comes what you all have been waiting for. Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Conquering Heroes

"My God," Jim Gordon choked, shaking his head in utter horror at the album book presented to him. He looked up from where he currently was to Jonathan and Edward. Jonathan gulped nervously in his throat. He was starting to wonder if going to the man who'd been the one to arrest him in his own asylum was a good idea after all, because he still had hard feelings for that. Some things were just hard to let go. But he felt a little better now that Farnsworth was with them, and safe to say he wasn't happy, either. His face was a mask of pure disgust and rage after seeing the whole book.

"How did you two get your hands on this?" Gordon asked.

Edward shrugged. "Let's just say, Commissioner, that Warner and the three of us have a bad past history going all the way back to Gotham State over a decade ago, before we were graduating. I met Jon there," he said with a nod to his friend. "Warner was our teacher, but I knew from the start that the guy was a monster, and a pig. He was inappropriately touching Jon and tried to come onto him, so I did the one thing I could do: defend my friend. You see…" He leaned in closer in his chair.

"Jon's been through a lot before college, so have I, and Warner had his sick eyes on him." Eyes turned on Farnsworth as he briefly sucked in a sharp breath. "Just because Jon was much better than Warner ever was."

"Forgive me for interrupting," Farnsworth spoke up, "but I called GSU regarding this situation, and they filled me in. There was a report on a case a few years before these two arrived as freshmen students, on the claim that Victor Warner was sexually harassing a young male student, but there was no proof of any kind."

Gordon looked at all three men with the same shocked expression on his face. Jonathan knew what he was thinking. How could a man like Victor Warner get away with the sexual abuse of Jonathan and the eight other young adults in the book - just so he could repeatedly satisfy himself with the memories and every part of them - and let the victims live on with endless suffering? "So, I take it, Mr. Crane, that this man was the reason you ended up being…?" He let the sentence hang.

"Yes," Jonathan answered firmly. "And I'm telling you now because I still have pride. I could have told anyone that he tempted me to getting my PhD sooner than desired, but I had no evidence, and he would have ruined my chances. I had no backup if that happened. And I never would have gotten the woman I love."

"Who by the way is on her way to get married to this son of a bitch at this very moment," Farnsworth said angrily, slamming his fist on the armrest of his chair. "Commissioner, this man loves her but that old psycho has had her in his grasp ever since the death of her grandmother, but I suggest we put him away for good this time."

"That's exactly what we're going to do," Gordon answered, standing and heading for the door. "I'll get a unit over to DeLaine Manor and issue a warrant for his arrest right now."

"See, Jon?" Edward nudged him in the side with a grin. "He's finally getting his just desserts."

Jonathan smiled in return. "I've thanked you for everything at State, my friend…" He placed his hand on Eddie's. "…so there's no exception for now."

~o~

"Iris?"

"What?" she answered, staring blankly at her reflection in the grand mirror of the room that was once her mother's private studio, now shaped into her wedding changing room, her hands folded silently in her lap as she beheld the sight of the woman in the billowing folds of lace and crystals. Alice knelt down beside her, her strapless, shimmering champagne dress.

"Iris, I received a message from Edward. He and Jonathan are on their way here, with Commissioner Gordon and a unit on the way. With a warrant for Warner's arrest."

"What?" Iris jerked her head up at the news. "For real?"

"For real," Alice whispered, taking her hand into her own. "This will all be over soon. He'll be in jail until he dies, and we'll all live happily ever after."

It wasn't long until Joan walked into the room. "Sorry ladies, but we have to finish getting you ready," she said to Iris, smiling herself as if having heard what they were talking about. "If I may ask, Iris," she said as she helped do the hair, "what do you intend to do with all of this after he's arrested?"

"I've been considering giving this dress away for girls who long to be showstoppers in their weddings, as Mother had been…" Iris replied, reconsidering. "…but I have a better use of it for Jonathan and myself."

"But you said this wasn't you," Alice pointed out as she got the jewelry assembled.

"True, but it could use remodeling."

Once they were done with getting her prepared, she stood on the circular lift Maria once stood on many times before. If she were another, weaker person, she would have called herself broken, except she was far from helpless. The gown complemented her torso and translated traditional into a more effortless way, but the way it was all-white and clinging too much in the traditional sense wasn't her at all. Her hair had been roped behind her head and accented with realistic-looking white lotuses; the cathedral veil attached beneath the flowers on both sides of her hair was long and single-layered with scalloped edges. Her face was decorated with blue udju eye makeup and black liner and mascara that the female wearers treasured as a release of love and happiness…but not here. Her ears, forehead, neck and right wrist were draped with the same pearls and jewels on her gown in traditional Egyptian royalty. She carried a bouquet of white roses, blue forget-me-nots, and hydrangeas. This was not her…this was her mother's image, not hers…not the one that Jonathan would have wanted to see for their own wedding…

And Jonathan was on his way to her rescue. She was so in love with him for that - for many things - that it took every ounce of her sound of mind away.

Before she knew what was happening, she was led out of the dressing room, Farnsworth having arrived not too long ago and offered to walk her down the aisle as there was no actual father figure in her life other than him to do this honor. When she married Jonathan, she wanted him to do the same for her. Along the way, she glimpsed the reception in the dining room, where she saw the table removed for the day and replaced with an extended one for the guests, running with candles glowing in frosted cups and illuminating the six-feet-tall palm tree figures that also lined up like soldiers in the ranks, surrounded with blue, white, gold and orange flowers at the bases. The cake was there, too, in all its majesty. It had taken the bakers two days to create that masterpiece, resting on a royal blue "satin pillow" in the appearance of a golden temple too complex and perfect for words, accented with the blues of the lapis lazuli that Egyptian rulers and nobility would wear in ancient times. She, Farnsworth, and the bridesmaids - Joan, Alice, and a few other girls in the same dress - made their way to the ballroom, which had been set up in a day's time to look presentable for the occasion.

The far end from the entrance, where the ceremony would take place, was set up like the entrance of an Egyptian palace, with the pillars supporting a rooftop of stone, with two actual statues of jackals on either side - like this were her funeral and not her wedding, given Anubis was the god of the dead. There stood Warner on the altar, speaking a few words to the priest, no doubt telling him to skip the part "if there's any reason why these two should not be wed…" Well, Iris was going to let him think again.

And where was Jonathan?

After the bridesmaids took their places at the altar and waited for the bride herself to walk down herself. Iris nearly stumbled over herself - she really hated the heels that were also her mothers, being higher than she was used to - in those three-and-a-half-inch-high pumps of champagne gold silk studded all over in gold crystals, but lucky that Farnsworth supported her and guided her down the aisle easier. All eyes were on her, praising her with their expressions and smiles, but she only managed a forced smile while keeping her eyes on the altar, not making direct contact with the man she hated most besides her dead parents and Jonathan's own deceased grandmother.

Her luck changed when there were gasps of surprise and outrage, but it was not all on her. She stopped and turned along with Farnsworth to see the two men of her life standing there in the doorway. Glancing back, she saw Warner less than pleased - obviously - at seeing the man he'd locked up but had been looking for ever since discovering he'd gone missing. And then he saw the one who'd challenged him ages ago, who'd he succeeded in blackmailing so he could finally get the subject of his fantasies. "Edward."

"Jonathan!" Iris cried out, officially letting her relief and happiness pour out to the guests in the room, and to the man they'd been working so hard to rid their lives of.

She noticed how handsome he looked in his denim shirt and khaki pants, his hair slightly ruffled, and how his perfect face was full of determination. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said to the baffled - some enraged - witnesses, "I apologize for interrupting this beautiful ceremony -" Sarcasm laced that word "beautiful", before his tone changed to pure hero mode. "- but there is no way in hell that I'm letting the only woman I ever loved marry that piece of shit."

Shocked gasps rose from the audience, and the guests turned to each other to speak amongst themselves. Iris smirked first at Jonathan, then at Farnsworth, who gave her a crooked grin right back. They both turned their heads at Warner's voice. "You two fools have lots of nerve to interrupt my wedding."

Jonathan scoffed and threw his head back a little. "For reasons, Professor," he drawled. "Because it's a good thing we got here just in time, and it won't be long before Commissioner Gordon and his men break in after us and take you away in handcuffs." The mention of Jim Gordon, one of her closest friends and one of the last good cops she'd ever known, sent Iris abuzz with questions on her mind. How did they get him involved in this? Unless they presented him with that album book filled with the most horrific of secrets…Jonathan found the courage to reveal his darkest trauma. Part of her was shocked, but another was extremely proud of him. How else would they have gotten rid of him if there hadn't been proof all along?

Warner looked like he was struggling for the right words to respond, before his face became an angry mask. "What lies have you told that crooked cop department, you little man-whore?" More gasps sounded, but Iris snapped. She hissed angrily at him and unleashed the torrent from her lips.

"Don't you dare talk about my fiancée that way."

All heads were back on her now. But she wasn't ashamed, and the words were already spoken. Farnsworth looked at her with an almost fatherly look, Alice and Joan cracking their own at her and then sticking their tongues at Warner, but he ignored them and instead focused his attention on his "bride" with that same expression.

"You choose to be the whore to a monster than the wife of a professor?!"

"Ex-professor," Iris returned hotly, her pride swelling as she was finally opening up in front of all her friends and colleagues in the room. "And Jonathan is no monster. Everyone who isn't in this room branded him that way because they don't understand him like I do, like everyone else in here does. Especially you. He was called an object much like you treated him as a thing to your twisted pleasures. But I'll tell you straight out that my Jonathan is not a beast as you are. He's a man, more of a man than you or any of the other men in my life - my late father, Dr. Long - ever will be. He treated me like a person and helped me succeed in my field without subjecting me to the treatment you did to him - he actually loved me as much as he does today." She turned her attention back to Jonathan, smiling at him then and giving him a smile through her now-running, black-streaked face from mascara and eyeliner. He looked her on in return with the emotions of love and unbridled devotion in his eyes. She lifted her chin back at Warner, reaching to tug off the bling-of-a-ring that had been her mother's and throwing it at him with all her might, feeling the heavy burden lifted off her hand forever. She heard it clutter somewhere on the altar, not that she cared where.

"So yes, I'd rather be his wife than yours."

"And I'll be glad to take her as so," Jonathan spoke up, stepping forward and stopping until he was right in front of her, taking her arm and turning her away from the monster at the altar. He looked past her shoulder, though, as he spoke. "I suppose you are all wondering what he did to me that's given me a reason to go to Commissioner Gordon and issue this man's arrest." Everyone responded with nods and buzzes of words altogether that made it difficult to discern what they were all saying, but it was all agreement. "Years ago when I was still a student of psychology at Gotham State University, much like my Iris was under my tutelage, I had that vulgar old man right there…" He nodded at the fuming demon from his past. "…as my professor. And my good friend Edward Nygma was in the same class as me, as well as my roommate, and I was aware as much as he was to the fact that that creepy old man was harassing me and intended to do more than just help me excel in my field of choice. You see, I grew up in unbearable circumstances, having born out of wedlock, my father abandoning me before I was born and my mother leaving me with my grandmother, who cursed me for being born and even locked me in a dilapidated church full of crows. When she died of a heart attack shortly before I graduated high school, I was happy to finally move on with my life. And I was happy that I met Eddie, even though I could handle myself. But then he finally found it to extremely defend me against Warner there, but that didn't stop anything.

"You see, he always sought to get me under his oppression in late hours at his house. Used my dreams of being a psychologist after everything I went through growing up, and that includes forcing me to sleep with him if I wanted to achieve that goal…and forcing me to suck him off under his classroom desk with my clothes off during office hours."

Shrieks from female guests erupted, as did horrified gasps and disgusted expressions as the guests turned to look at each other after taking in the terrible details. Iris turned around to see that Warner was positively on the verge of storming over and blowing the hell out of him, but not on her watch. No one laid a hand on her Jonathan as long as she had anything to say about it. "I know I have no one to blame myself for what happened to the Narrows three years ago, but he and my grandmother both ruined my life. Had I lived differently, I would have been just as wonderful as my Iris beside me."

Farnsworth took his cue. "That's right, Warner. And everyone in this room," he announced, "this man was also involved with Sylvia DeLaine, this young lady's grandmother who passed away not too long ago, years ago before she married her husband, Andrey, but he was a suspected sex offender, except it was never proven. Now we have enough evidence given to the police department and a powerful case now."

"He has that right." Iris gasped as she turned to the doorway where none other than Jim Gordon appeared, accompanied by a handful of his trusted officers, three of which stormed down the aisle and past the couple to where their enemy stood. Warner began to scream and protest as he was handed and cuffed.

"Victor Warner, we have a warrant for your arrest, and you have a right to remain silent," one of the cops said, roughly pushing him forward. "Anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, an attorney will be provided for you."

"Looks like Jon finally gets justice for the wrong you did to him. To the both of us," Edward sneered as Warner passed by them. Warner snarled back at him, but was jerked forward and out of the manor, never to be seen again. At least until court day, for they were sure to have to testify. "Looks like the wedding's off, Jon."

Jonathan laughed and slapped his arm playfully. "Thanks to you, too, my man." He turned back to Iris and looked down at her lovingly. She melted under the loving gaze of his crystal blues. They shared no spoken words as to what had happened, none that were necessary but the silence that said it all: they were free to be together now. The road to true love had many obstacles, but no ends.

Only beginnings.

~o~

The trial came and went after a couple weeks, and it was successful. Iris had attended to take a stand in the witness box, providing the court with the details - leaving out Harley and her insane plans - and then Jonathan and Eddie speaking up about the incidents at GSU over a decade ago, and then the album book presented to the court as proof that Victor Warner was a sex offender. Overwhelmed by the shocking display of evidence, but instead of being sent to Blackgate Prison, he was sent to Arkham Asylum in the hopes of rehabilitating.

This shocked Jonathan all to his core. Warner was being sent to the very asylum Iris was running instead of serving a life sentence in Blackgate. This was unfair even to him, even though he was being punished for abusing nine young adults in the past. He stood outside the court door, waiting for Iris to leave after speaking to the judge. While he did so, he watched as the large figure was led out of the courtroom in a vulgar orange jumpsuit - as he'd worn so long ago - with his wrists cuffed in front of him. Now he knew what it felt like to be degraded and lowered to the level of scum. He avoided Jonathan's sneer, simply keeping his eyes straight ahead. This man who cruelly and deceitfully taken his virginity and blemished his dignity would get what was coming to him, just as Iris had promised him if he got something other than jail time.

Now she departed from the courtroom, trailing behind the orange-suited prisoner in a teal silk blouse with an opened neck and the sleeves to her elbows, hair in her favorite bun, under a black vest and her slim black pants under heeled boots. When she reached up to rub her eyes as if to ward off an approaching migraine from the stress of the court case, he glimpsed the black diamond lotus ring on her finger…and smiled. She would be his wife in less than four months, just before her birthday, in fact.

Also, there had been something he noticed in her change of mood and behavior. Lately, she'd be sick in the mornings and craving for anything that was pizza rolls - the cheese kind - to White Castle to eggs on toast covered with syrup, paired with pomegranates and apples. Old habits from your days as doctor died hard, so it wasn't hard for Jonathan to discern what was wrong with his beloved…and it both scared and exhilarated him at the same time. But knowing her, she would tell him on her own time soon.

He took her hand and pulled her off to the side. "So, what do you have in mind, my love?" he asked, brushing his lips across her forehead. "How are we going to get him out of Arkham undetected?"

She chuckled then. "Oh, I won't break him out. I got a plan for Harley to cause a wreck with the transportation, and then when the cops come to the scene…they won't find Warner's body anywhere."

~o~

The feeling was exquisite. Seeing Warner bound unconscious to the chair with the device - namely mechanical arm and leg restraints that had been taken from one of the storage closets that the previous owners left intact before abandoning the place altogether - was a sight to behold. The restraints held his ankles to the bottoms of the front legs…but the wrist ones were another story in the fashion they pinned his hands down. They each had a nail that drove through flesh, bone, and tendon until it pierced the wood of the armrest.

The location she and Jonathan brought the prisoner to was the abandoned engineering factory known as Gideon's Gadgets and Gears, just on the outer side of Gotham. It would take the police a good while to track down the missing Dr. Warner, but how could they if they had no leads after the wreckage in which three people were dead - driver and two guards - but no sign of the prisoner being transported to Arkham? She scoffed. As much as she wanted to dominate him at Arkham, there was no way in hell she could make an exception among her patients. The asylum had been a better environment ever since she was put in charge, so no exceptions. Warner deserved proper punishment.

Now here they were, and she had donned the garb of the Empress, waiting for the subject to awake so she and her fiancée could have their fun with him. She'd even brought her lucky scythe…which she never used unless for special occasions. Much like she used to butcher her mother years before.

"He's waking up." Like her, Jonathan was all in black leather to avoid leaving traces of DNA and fingerprints all over the place - gloves, jacket and pants, and boots - just like they both did to their abusive female superiors. However, over her costume, she'd donned a full-length, beautifully cut and tailored trench coat of black leather that graced her body nicely, but her mask wasn't needed this time. Warner would know who she is…but would never live to tell of it. She stood by Jonathan's side and waited, watching as their captive slowly stirred, groaning at whatever pain he was feeling at the present time, before snapping his eyes opened and screaming as he beheld his surroundings, then at his bleeding hands under the restraints, and then rested his attention on the leather-clad couple before him.

"You!" he cried, pointing the accusation directly at them. "You did this to me!" Iris laughed coldly and airily as if he'd told a humorless joke.

"No," she replied calmly, walking his way but moving past him, her heeled boots clicking with each pace. "You did this to yourself. Your beastly lust - your immoral actions - brought you to this place."

He struggled once more before succumbing helplessly. But that did not stop him from begging her verbally. "Could you give me time to explain, please?"

Iris stopped where she was behind a stack of iron shelves that offered her a view of him and much of the room, and eyed him with a raised eyebrow. "You hear that, Jonathan? He's begging for time." She laughed again, the plea a joke to her. "No, you old fool, I can't give you time. No one can. Time's an illusion."

"Look, look, dear Iris, I'm sorry. For everything. I'm bleeding, and can you please let me go so we can work this out?" He stopped speaking when both he and Jonathan heard a deadly slicing of metal in the air, turning their heads when they saw Iris draw one of her blades - this one was like the one Michael Myers was so fond of dishing out. It was meant as a warning that his pleas would not get him anywhere.

Iris chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, I forgive you, Victor. I do. Pedophilia has ruined your life and those of your victims. And you know…" She put the knife back to her belt, having drawn it only as a deadly warning like a snake rearing its head back to strike the victim. "…I could let you go." She moved over, heels clacking again, and stopped right in front of him, leaning forward so her face was inches away from his. "But that wouldn't serve you. If I let you go, you'd bring the cops. I would reconsider thinking it over given your current status to the press."

She reared herself back, standing straight up and smirking at the look on his face. Jonathan's face matched her own. "Tell you what I will do, though. We'll give you a tool and then an after-lesson that will reclaim your life…to discard the vices that have so corrupted your soul."

Warner groaned and threw his head back. He clearly did not care what she was saying to him. "I don't even have a soul."

"Maybe you will in the supposed next life, Professor," Jonathan said, standing from sitting on top of the table in front of his former professor. "Now then…" he began calmly. "…all we want is sweet revenge on both of our tongues, as it had been for the both of us twice before. Both my grandmother and her mother did not give us what we deserved, so they deserved what we gave them both - you are no different than Mariah Crane and Maria DeLaine ever were. You saw me attractive but couldn't find the right way to lure me into your bed, blackmailed Eddie as it was the light bulb to your mind of ideas. But you're also no different than Mariah and Maria when you didn't think it would eventually come to this moment now. But now, it's time to put the past to rest, isn't that right, my sweet little flower?"

"Oh, absolutely," Iris answered. She walked around Warner to the device hooked onto the machinery section facing the man's lap, and pressed the button on the outside facing her. The clamp installed shot out and latched itself hard where he used as a weapon on Jonathan and others. He screamed again.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"

"It's the tool," Jonathan responded, returning the twisted smile Iris was giving him. "The tool that's going to save your life." His voice took on a more menacing undertone that could easily belong to Scarecrow. "We want to play a game."

"Your life is a lie, Dr. Warner," Iris said knowingly, placing her hands behind her back as she circled him like a vulture flying over a dead dinner menu. "Now comes your moment of truth. As a rapist and a predator, you've preyed on the brilliance and exceptionality of the eager and brightest of young people to fuel your filthy carnal desires. Today we are putting that to an end, and bringing the ugly inside of you out into the open…to savor your final moments."

She stopped in front of him. Now it was time for the ultimate showdown. She clapped her hands together, and all the lights around them in the circle came on. Hanging from nearly invisible thread from the ceiling were the various photos from the album book, stolen from police headquarters just for the fun tonight. "As a voyeur, you've kept photos of those you victimized. Can you see the pain you have brought them? You have torn apart their lives. You have used your body as an instrument of abuse. Now we'll give you the chance to give up the one thing that is most important to you - your pride, which has caused those around you endless suffering."

She tapped the device with a gloved finger. "Just lean forward and press your body against the device to start it up. Press yourself into it like you would your helpless sufferers. Press hard enough and after you sacrifice your main tool, you'll release yourself from the arm and leg restraints that bind you. Press hard, though…" She bared her teeth in a wide, almost Cheshire grin. "…and you'll be free."

"You - you sick bitch!" Warner shouted. Iris backhanded him hard, silencing him to the point of glaring at her instead.

"Or you can sit idly and bleed out onto the floor," she added with a nod to his restrained hands, blood flowing out and dripping scarlet rubies onto the cold floor. She turned away from him to head Jonathan's way. "Live or die, Dr. Warner." Stopping beside him, she finished with a chilling smile, "Make your choice."

None of what happened particularly surprised her. She excelled in the study of the anatomy to know that the severing of the male genitalia would cause an immense bloodflow, but no death, as well as great agonizing pain for "poor" Warner in front of them both. But it wouldn't kill him just yet until one of them did.

Either way, he had not much time left.

The screams he made as the clamps tightened around the weapon he treasured above all others were music to her ears - she could hear Jonathan's heavy breaths as it seemed to have aroused him as much as it did to her. They would have expected the show to go on and savor every scream and every minute of it, but unfortunately, it had to end, because once Warner lost his special place down there, his binds were released, and he collapsed onto the floor, bleeding heavily and crying like the babe he'd been reduced to. Seeing him that way made Iris realize this was the opportunity they'd been waiting for. She turned behind her to where her favorite weapon laid on the table - her scythe. Long and gracefully curved, deadly all the same. But no, she wasn't going to kill Warner. She'd killed Maria with this, but Jonathan never once used this on anyone as far as she knew. He deserved this honor. Iris handed the weapon to him, smiling at his slightly bewildered expression.

"Finish him off, my love. Finish what you started."

She watched as he walked over to where the old man was still kneeling and whimpering like a child, much like the Rosenberg witch had been on the lab table. "This is ironic, isn't it?" Jonathan spoke to his enemy, wondrous and beautiful to her ears. "The scythe is a delicate but lethal farm tool - befitting for a scarecrow, is it not?"

"And it is the same weapon I used to finish off my mother - not long before I spent the last hours with her, giving her a taste not that different from what we gave you," Iris said, winking and tilting her head in the direction of the gory mess on the torture chair. "Now you felt exactly what she did."

"And how...satisfactory it was to see you have your last scream," Jonathan agreed, keeping his hands on the gleaming scythe. "I said before it should have ended that night after graduation, but then again, the fun as of late would not have been as sweet. But tonight, you can be rest assured the last good-bye is just as sweet." He looked at his bride from the corner of his eye. She nodded for Jonathan to finish the job. The blade hissed as he raised it high with all his might, and bringing it down before Warner could even scream one more time for the sake of it.

Blood splashed her exposed chest curves as well as Jonathan's face, which he had it in him to leave alone and savor the delicious coppery heat, instead focusing on the results of their victory.

The head of Dr. Victor Warner bounced away in the pattern of a basketball on court into the distance, vanishing into the darkness, his body collapsing with a heavy thud, gore pouring out into a black, red-tinted puddle before the stumped neck.

And now the Druid chorus sings their tune at the blood spilled from the dead enemy. :D

This chapter has been nothing short of fun especially with the great speech Jonathan gives when he and Eddie arrive at the wedding, which is exactly what Harold and Kumar did at the wedding near the end of "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay". The final scene where the happy couple tortures and eventually kill Warner was combined with two of the best scenes and wonderful dialogue from the fourth Saw movie, if anyone likes those torture porn films and that particular series.

One of Vytina's best artworks of Jonathan and Iris on deviantart, "Only Beginnings", has that incredible and true quote about the obstacles to true love in its name. :)