JMJ

Chapter Four

The Headless Hatter

"Do be careful," Jonathan said to Harley as she set off for Veronica Vreeland's from the hotel.

She kissed him a quick hard peck that made him smile despite himself. "Promise."

As they parted ways, Jonathan looked over his shoulder once at her old polka dotted trench and shook his head.

In trench coat himself and old-fashioned fedora to fit into the stubborn classic 50's look that this strange old city never shed, Jonathan thus made his way alone down into the windy spring of Gotham's streets.

One could hardly tell it was spring, really. It might have been autumn if one was not attuned to its subtle signs such as the smell of melted asphalt, sand, and salt, the way the sea breeze carried, the way dreary spring rain differed from dreary autumn rain, and the not so subtle chubby-faced Easter bunnies and neon eggs in the shop windows next to piles and piles of cheap chocolate that were more high fructose corn syrup than cocoa. No wonder it had been easy for the Scarecrow to have considered Gotham's spring as an extra autumn and not a time of the world's annual renewal.

In those days there had been no spring for Crane. Every day had been the decay of autumn. Every day was the Scarecrow's day. The overcast sky hovering heavily over the bank-gargoyles, the gothic spires, the art deco walls and the historic neon adds bigger than billboards along a highway, all looked so undead in the smog and the clouds and the thick, salty wind.

He pulled the collar of his trench coat against the damp breeze that gave him an all-too-familiar shiver, and he shook his head against it before hailing a cab.

As he climbed into it, he made sure the cabbie had nothing suspicious about him. He was not hiding anything from what he could tell except for the fact that Jonathan guessed there was beer in his soda can instead of cherry cola. That was just normal guilt, and it somehow made him more real anyway than someone too perfect in the streets of Gotham.

He remembered leaving Arkham for the first time legally and how bright Gotham had looked then and how full of life. Life in his small town in Maine had made him spoiled, he supposed. How bright a night light looked when one was used to pitch darkness! Now that he had been in full sunlight, how dark the night light looked, and the shadows— how much bleaker…

But it's more than that, his mind suddenly whispered. You're afraid of Gotham.

"Hmph!"

Yes, he was afraid of Gotham and with good reason. He had not realized just how afraid he had allowed himself to be of this city while he had grown accustomed to small-town life in a place that never knew him. In a place where he could start fresh, the shadows of Gotham had become exaggerated in his mind like the ghouls that emerged from empty branches with the smallest taste of fear gas, but one did not need fear gas to make something into something that it wasn't. He had not been in the heart of Gotham in a very long time. The mental clinic he had visited not too long ago had been more in a suburb of Gotham than in Gotham itself.

A police siren echoed in the busy streets beyond. His heart began to quicken despite himself as something deep in his mind was aroused from the old tension the Scarecrow used to feel, and he shook his head.

It was not shadows, pollution, or even criminals that Jonathan feared in Gotham, of course. It was the Scarecrow. He knew that it was irrational, but he had already built up in his mind subconsciously until now, the idea that he had left the Scarecrow behind in Gotham. That was not so bad in itself, but there was some unsettling part of his mind that coddled the idea that the Scarecrow could therefore be rediscovered in Gotham. Even though he knew it was stupid, his fears could not be shaken easily.

How unbridled emotions could be, especially in the atmosphere of Gotham City. The very air itself was so tainted by pollution from every Batman Rogue's toxic gas or other (aside from the normal every-day pollution) that they could be rifling up everyone's emotions one way or another.

Now that's irrational, isn't it? he thought dryly.

Oh, how could anyone hope that an emotionally unstable creature like Jervis Tetch could fight the emotional imbalance of Gotham!?

He almost had a mind to stop the cab and turn around, but he only shook his head and growled to himself.

That was just it.

Jervis did not have a chance, especially not alone.

His fear was of being alone. He should not have come to Gotham City in the first place, if that was what he had feared. He should have gone to someplace in Minnesota if he had wanted to be in a place where he would have a normal life. But even before he was the Hatter, Jervis had possessed high ambitions, albeit quietly so.

Jervis had done most of the talking in their old "friendship", and he had talked more than once about his old dreams as a college student with computer technology. How he was going to be a household name and whatever else he had been dreaming about before depression hit from how lonely Gotham had made him. He was sure London could not have been worse. He would have been better off there. At least London had not had the Joker, Batman, and Arkham Asylum…

It was to fight animal instinct to go back to that asylum now for Jonathan Crane.

When he closed his eyes he could already see it on top of Arkham Hill beyond its wiry gates— that old castle that had fed Jonathan's gothic fancies to the point of driving him more insane instead of less. Arkham seemed to have that effect on everyone, really. But then it had not even been a native of Gotham who had written A Clockwork Orange, and he would rather not think about that tale right now— if ever, really.

He rubbed his temple again and thought how much he probably deserved this torture with how much he had tortured Gotham. He lifted his head slowly, and decided to sit up straight and take it. That was when he noticed a glint on a stain glass window.

He turned and looked. It was St. Joan's, the church in Gotham known for its charity work for the lost and forgotten of this strange city. It was not a great monstrosity like the gothic Gotham Cathedral, though it was in no way modern or minuscule. It was a pretty little place even with the windows that needed to be replaced from more than one attack and a fire to the narthex about two years before the Scarecrow had emerged from the deluded mind of Pr. Jonathan Crane.

That fire had been on Jonathan's mind when he had decided to attack the university— the church of science that had betrayed him for ethics back when ethics had meant so little to him.

He recalled for a moment as the car paused for traffic, the promise he had made in the hospital bed after waking from the nightmare that two out of three injections of his own creations had given him. He would make up for what he had done as the Scarecrow. He had felt his chance at a new life to be a miracle, and honestly, he could not explain it away as chance now either.

The statue of a young girl in armor on a valiant horse looked at him. Well, not literally, of course. He was sane. But he felt it just the same. If a young girl could lead armies with hardly knowing anything beyond raising sheep before, the once mighty Scarecrow could have courage enough as Jonathan Crane to face Jervis Tetch in an Arkham cell.

But not just yet.

"Stop!" he suddenly said.

The suddenness and desperation of that shout, scared the driver nearly out of his skin. Jonathan had theatrics in his voice that was difficult to control at times. The cabbie screeched to a halt like he had been sprayed with fear gas.

"What?!"

"Forgive me," Jonathan said. "Just for a moment. Please. I need to make a quick stop here at the church."

"Well, that's fine with me if you're willing to pay me to wait," shrugged the cabbie.

"Yes, I understand," Jonathan said shaking his hand carelessly. "Just a few moments."

The cabbie parked along the curb, and slowly Jonathan stepped out to look up at the French-styled pillars and the warrior girl between them. She had not done the feat alone. She had been guided. He stopped just about a foot away from the pillars' edge and craned his neck up to her.

There was a time that his family had taken him to church against his will. He had been baptized, after all, though his whole family he considered a bunch of hypocrites worse than the church and its pastor and all the rest, but ever since that day in the hospital, he doubted his atheism. In fact he doubted it so much, that he could not call himself an atheist anymore. Well, in the heat of his madness, he had been a devout worshiper of Fear and its patron god, the Scarecrow. What he was exactly now, however, he would not have been able to explain to anyone, but he could not explain away easily the feat of this young girl whose memory lived on to this day in more than the hearts of Catholics.

He bowed his head, whether in a sort of defeat against his fears or in honor of this woman or the Providence that evidently led her mission.

But France was not as vast an endless whirl as Jervis Tetch, he thought sullenly.

Was Jonathan going to continue to be his self-proclaimed namesake and never return from fleeing the Headless Horseman? Now that was a question he was determined not to go unanswered.

He returned to the cab.

"Please. To Arkham now," said Jonathan quietly.

"Now, you're sure about Arkham, right?" the cabbie asked. "I mean, it's none of my business, but seeing as you have to stop and pray about it or whatever… I'm just gunna say, I never brought anyone to Arkham before. Not ever. Even with the Joker gone. One of the guys from base told me that his friend brought some inmate's old companion to Arkham and she ended up believing she was a rotting banana peel and hasn't come out since."

"Never heard that one," Jonathan muttered who had been expecting the story to be a bit darker in nature.

"I'm just kiddin' you'," muttered the cabbie taking a sip from his can rather emotionlessly. "But still… You ever heard how the guy who runs the place is on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Now that one is real."

Considering the fact that I used to be his patient…, Jonathan thought back, but he shook his head.

He could be wrong, and he was not going to say anything, but it was possible, that this was not a sort of retribution against the Scarecrow that had brought him to Gotham City, if indeed anything about this was spiritual in nature. Whether true or not, this could be seen as an invitation to Jervis just like the one Jonathan had had at the hospital. He might just need a little push to give him his chance. Then Jervis would have to decide on his own.

#

Jervis was still shaking from a dream, but it was a dream he did not fully remember. He remembered the feeling and that would have been enough. But he also recalled a little more. He often dreamed like one reading and often found himself whispering quotes when he woke up. This time, he recalled them drumming through the air as though it was part of the air itself. When he was waking from it, he felt the quotes on his lips round and round. What he recalled seeing was looking across a gentle brook as a voice recited as on a stage clear and strong, "'The time has come' the Walrus said". Three spotlights shone from above like a living ellipses. The head beneath the lights at first did not face him. A golden head, as vibrant and nostalgic as a golden afternoon…

"Jervis," said the Voice.

Alice…

But it was not Alice Pleasance, he soon saw as she turned. It was an older Alice to Time than that.

In Time standing still, what place upon his threaded line mattered?

The golden hue of the hair became only that of the sheen of cherry blond locks. The face was hard to make out, but he knew whose face it was. The form was unchanged from the old games they used to share together. A wine-red party dress with white collar and a satin black bow tried behind her back. Her hair was set with a sparkly, plastic headband with a fake trio of blue roses. Mary-Jane shoes shone starkly over brightly striped stockings that did not really match the rest of the outfit. The form herself was that of a child, though Jervis was looking up at her rather than down.

The Form went on a little more, consuming him and vibrating through his heart. Though the voice was not deep or harsh, it staggered through him painfully disorienting him as though he was a hedgehog being walloped by the beak of a flamingo. It was a gentle voice. Small, almost frail, but it was not whiny or silly. It was clear and purposeful. He could not remember anything else she said except what already has been described, except what the voice said last of all, "Behind your sobs and tears…You've eaten every one…"

Upon slowly rousing from that spirally dream, his voice then had been the one repeating, "eaten every one…".He had finally startled himself into full consciousness as he realized he had expected a small boy's voice to come out from him.

#

His voice was rather light for an adult's, but it felt and sounded so gruff to him at that moment that it had sounded like the voice of an old crotchety Lion's or maybe it was the Unicorn's. Either way, it made him feel so very old and haggard, like a tree about to fall being nearly hollow in the inside.

As he considered the dream now, or nightmare, he felt as though he was still dreaming a dream where he was trying to find the dream and yet trying not to at the same time. Like a hunter in the midnight jungle hunting a tiger before the tiger hunted him.

He did not want Jonathan to come anymore. He did not want to talk with anyone, much less Jonathan Crane. He did not want to see the light of day. He did not want to leave the "comfort" of his cell.

When the door opened and Dr. Leland appeared with a burly guard on either side, he felt his teeth clench. He almost told her that he would rather be released so that he could hide somewhere in Gotham…maybe never come out again and live in the sewers like Alice in the hall between Wonderland and the Real World…forever. He did not have that kind of power right now, however. Not without risking something.

Her voice broke his thoughts like a train whistle interrupting a television program.

"It's time to get ready. You probably want to clean yourself up a bit before Pr. Crane arrives."

Jervis sighed, and then he groaned. He muttered some quote or other under his breath like an oath, but he followed the guards for a carefully watched shave and monitored shower.

He was determined about one thing. No Wonderland was allowed in the conversation with Jonathan Crane. If he was determined about anything, it was that. It was a frightening feeling, and one he hoped Crane would not notice even though he knew that he would, that he felt just as afraid of Wonderland at the moment as he loved it. He hated it just as much as he could not live without it. Like a drug. Like the drugs that he hated people comparing to Alice in Wonderland.

After getting ready, he waited in the little chamber with the little table and a pair of chairs across from each other. Minutes felt like hours, but it was not actually long before Jonathan Crane arrived. The door was opened with an ominous screech just like he would expect for an entrance of the Scarecrow, reformed or otherwise.

Jervis lifted his eyes and his brows knit tightly as he could not help but note how very different Jonathan looked wearing a trench coat and a fedora, but it was his eyes that made it the most different. He felt himself shuddering as he thought, What if he has accomplished what he had wished to with his injections, after all. What if behind his release, behind his calm façade, behind his supposed-reform, he has become shrewder and more menacing than before. Maybe he does not even need to wear a mask to do his work secretly behind the sight of all…

But what scared him more was something far deeper than that. Something that made him wish that his thoughts about the injections were the right ones. Something that made him feel so ill he could not help the involuntary lurch forward over the table as the vile taste of bile reached the back of his throat, but he found that he did not throw up.

#

When Jonathan first entered, his eyes met with Tetch's as he was sitting at the table. Those blue eyes quivered like they did whenever he was depressed. If anyone could mimic a cartoonish watery pair of eyes of some pitiful animated character, it was Jervis Tetch. The tears were suspended. They never actually fell. By the time he moaned over the table and looked away, his eyes were already dry again.

"Good day, Mr. Tetch," said Jonathan evenly as he removed his hat and gave it curtly to the guard.

He ended in handing his coat to him with more care. At first it was because of the way the guard seemed to growl without doing so, and Jonathan really did not want to cause a scene. Even as he was handing it to the guard, he felt his heart move with sympathy despite himself, however, and slowed his hand more in thought. He was sure he had looked little different than Jervis did now when Harley had first come to visit him.

"Hello, Pr. Crane," sighed Jervis wistfully.

He was straightening himself into a proper sitting position as well as he could, no longer slouching like a lonely monkey, but trying to regain some sense of dignity that could be had while still wearing that demeaning Arkham uniform.

That Arkham uniform was some strange cross between a prison suit and a set of mental hospital pajamas, which was difficult for even a well-poised beauty like Pamela Isely to pull off with dignity. For a person like Jervis Tetch, even on his most confident days, it was nearly impossible. But this was not one of his better days, despite how Jonathan guessed that he had looked much worse not too long before. He had evidently cut himself shaving in a couple spots, and there was a still a little straggling stubble beneath his chin, proving that he had not been doing so regularly for some time. His messy hair was recently washed but there was not the slightest hint of bright yellow dye anymore that the asylum usually allowed him to use. This left it in its natural dusty blond hue, and it was like a mop upon his head. His swollen blue eyes were sunken with sorrow and drugs, his skin was pale, his knuckles white as he clenched them with nervousness upon Jonathan's approached, and he swallowed hard on likely a sandpaper throat.

Jonathan found that his own throat was not exactly moist either as he sat down. He sniffed at the further suspicion of the guard as he backed up to guard the door like a good little mastiff. He knew, aside from the guard, that cameras were watching them too. More staff and Dr. Leland were in a room beyond this one. They were taking more precaution with Jervis than they had with him when Harley had visited. Maybe it was because Jonathan had never taken over the asylum in the same way Jervis Tetch had. Maybe it was just because they had believed in Harley's reform more than Jonathan's. Jonathan could not say for sure. Or maybe it was just because Jonathan Crane and Jervis Tetch were known accomplices and unpredictable together even if they had never had a full-out plan together as Scarecrow and Hatter.

Jonathan blinked slowly as he stared down at Jervis. He could not help the grimace when Jervis' eyes remained fixed on the table, on the empty cup in front of him. A plain metal tea carafe rested in the middle of the table and another empty cup.

Between the howling wind outside with its sprinkling of rain and the groaning of the old castle below and above and the silence in this little room, Jonathan sighed and rolled his eyes as he took the pot. He took the liberty of pouring himself a cup of Darjeeling, almost forgetting how lukewarm it was going to be before he leaned back in his folding chair for a sip.

He cleared his throat.

"Forgive my going straight to the point," said Jonathan when he could not stand the silence any longer, "but I believe I was told that you have something you wish to tell me…?"

Jervis lifted his eyes, but they did not stay long on Jonathan's in a timid sort of way. Jonathan had seen his eyes stare his own down more than on one occasion when they had both been inmates together, and even when Jervis had been the most depressed he had never looked upon Jonathan as anything less than a confident. He could veritably feel the invisible wall between them now. He felt not only shyness but a sort of intimidation from Jervis. A sort of fear. He could not hide it.

Jonathan frowned.

If Jervis no longer thought of him as a friend, then why did he want him to come here?

Jervis fingered his empty cup and spun it slowly around on its base upon the tabletop.

Already Jonathan felt his patience wearing thin, but he tried to keep his bristling down. What made it more aggravating, though, was that although Jervis was obviously very unhappy, he was far too alert and far too fidgety to be in the middle of a depressive state of one of his primary mental conditions. His hesitance was deliberate. One hundred percent deliberate. With depression no longer part of the equation, it was a true sense of guilt he was trying to ignore.

Rather more the behavior of a medically sane person that not, Jonathan had to admit.

"If you've changed your mind, I will leave you in peace," commented Jonathan, getting up to leave.

That made Jervis start. His cup fell over onto the table as his hand jumped from it in surprise. He looked so starkly hurt by the suggestion that his expression was like that of a child's with his small gasp.

Then he quickly pulled himself together.

"Please, forgive me, Pr. Crane," said Jervis emphatically. "I— I know my behavior must look childish, at best… Believe me, I don't wish to 'murder the ti…'—" He cringed and glowered to himself with grunt, "— to press your patience more than I know I already am and…"

Jonathan sat back down. It was the halting of the quote more than the begging that had him listen intently now.

"It feels almost trivial now that we've come to it," said Jervis. "Honestly, I didn't think you'd come."

"I just barely did," admitted Jonathan in full honesty.

Jervis nodded with a sigh, "I was not in the best frame of mind when I first wished you to visit."

He held hands together importantly, folding them over the table now with downcast face turning grave.

"I can imagine that."

"Yes," agreed Jervis. "I'll admit that I have been thinking of you…" he said this with the utmost care. "I've been wondering how you've been."

Jonathan raised a brow and leaned his chin on his hand with elbows on the table. Although Jervis now looked him in the eyes, Jonathan could tell it was with extreme difficulty.

"I…" he reached over the table and poured himself some tea from the carafe and muttered something that sounded very close to "tea trays in the sky…" but it was cut off short and he muttered something else more inaudible than before like some disgruntled badger before he took to sipping delicately from his cup.

"So this interview is without a purpose, you mean?" pressed Jonathan.

Jervis shifted a little on his chair so that his body was not directly facing the table. He crossed one leg over the other and looked cartoonishly nonchalant. He even reached up as though to adjust a non-existent hat before grumbling to himself again with his tea cup to his lips.

"Perhaps this may be considered forward of me," remarked Jonathan losing patience a second time as his curiosity waned, "but I have a hypothesis that this has something to do with the fact that you're tired of being alone in Arkham."

"Oh, is that really how boring of a guess that anyone can make," muttered Jervis more to himself than to Jonathan, and he took his next sip with his pinky lifting haughtily.

"It is part of it, there's no use denying it," Jonathan sniffed.

"Ah, but you feel there's more to it than that?" sniffed Jervis in return.

"Well, you're the one who's not giving my reason for being here plainly, and if you want to play games, I can match it," replied Jonathan a little more tersely than he intended to.

Jervis did not answer but closed his eyes and began to sip again.

"You're envious," Jonathan commented.

The swallow was a bit awkward, and Jervis managed to keep his cool only for a moment before he returned to the table and set his cup down. He fingered his dry messy hair and leaned his elbows on the table briefly. Lifting his head again, he let out a miserable sound that was not quite a sigh and not quite a groan, but it was vastly forlorn.

Stiffly, Jonathan lifted his cup and took a slow sip himself.

"You don't know how hard this is…" whispered Jervis.

Jonathan was unmoved.

"Plus it makes it even more difficult since we're…well…"

"Being watched?" suggested Jonathan.

Jervis stiffened in alarm, and it annoyed Jonathan even more since he felt some old, dull satisfaction from this mini leap of fear.

I hate Gotham, thought Jonathan. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew some darker part of me would wake up here to pester me.

He was not afraid of the Scarecrow resurging to the surface of his mind. Well, at least not that much, but he was afraid of having to deal with more therapy himself after this. He was surprised that Dr. Leland okayed this. He was even more surprised that Dr. Bartholomew did. Jonathan was not ready for this. He just wasn't. And Jervis taking his sweet time was making it worse. He did not want to upset the delicate balance of Tetch's emotions, but as he continued sitting there unmoved on the outside, Jervis was already beginning to weaken under Jonathan's façade of confidence.

His head dropped onto the table, and he moaned again loudly.

"It's hopeless," he muttered to himself. "Hopeless, hopeless…"

"You want to know what I think?" asked Jonathan.

Jervis began to sob as if Jonathan was not there. This made Jonathan say what he might have kept to himself otherwise, "I think you brought me all the way here for sympathy. You want to be coddled and reassured. Maybe you even wish to make me unhappy with you so that you have the satisfaction of not being unhappy alone, because you're afraid."

Jervis looked up from his arm-made nest, still choking on his sobs. He blinked queerly as though through a cloud.

"In the old days, I might have left my analysis at that or gone on about your fears of loneliness," Jonathan remarked and Jervis buried his head again. "But you're more than afraid. Maybe you're not even truly afraid at all. You're lazy. You want to be depressed because it's easier. It's easier than facing the world. I hate to use your own words against you, if only for old time's sake, and I don't mean us being Arkham inmates together, but the friendship you always wished from me: You're only crying Walrus tears."

The shaking stopped in an instant.

Jervis' head bolted upright. He stared hard at Jonathan with wide eyes filled with horror. And anger. Lots of anger along with other mixed feelings. But he had Jervis' attention and far more than the fear in Jervis' watery eyes as if he was staring at a ghost. The attention was soon all that satisfied Jonathan and that satisfied him very much.