"Can you hear me Sir?"

Alfred's voice was it usual mixture of concern and sardonicism. He knew that Batman could hear him. What Alfred was really asking was "Are you listening?", and he certainly wasn't including the word "Sir" in the question.

"I can hear you Alfred." Batman answered. He was hanging from a narrow cord, forty feet above the main canteen of Arkham Asylum, above the floodlights that illuminated the enormous room. Below him, inmates shuffled in line to the mess counter before taking their cardboard trays and plastic cutlery to one of the bolted down benches to eat at the bolted down tables. It was lima bean night.

"Have you located the elusive Professor Crane yet Sir?"

"No. He isn't with the other inmates."

Batman moved easily a few feet up the cord and placed a foot lightly on one of the metal beams that criss-crossed the high ceiling, supporting the enormous lights. He unhooked his grapple from the small air vent above him and let the cord retract automatically into his belt before shifting his whole weight onto the beam. He drew his cloak around him and sank back into the shadows.

"Which means he's either in solitary.."

"Or he still has free reign of the asylum."

Batman did not reply. Static was the only sound between the two of them for a few moments. Alfred knew better than to speak during these moments, the moments when Bruce thought and planned, the moments before Batman acted. Finally, he spoke.

"The mood suppressants are doing their job. I'm going in."

"Be careful Sir."

It was three weeks since the Joker had been apprehended on top of the Gotham Plaza hotel. Three weeks since the Joker had been driven deeper into his personal labyrinth of madness and mania by an almost lethal dose of Scarecrow fear toxin. Three weeks since Batman had stood and watched helpless, unable to move, paralysed by his own fear. Three weeks since Batman had realised that he was infected with the fear virus and that he had been for some time. Three weaks since he had been able to admit, and confront, his failure.

It all made sense; his failure to capture the Answer, his failure to notice the facts, his failure to follow the clues that pointed back here. He had failed to confront the only man capable of creating the fear virus in the first place. He had failed to stop Jonathan Crane.

In the end, he had had no choice but to use the drugs. He hated it. Hated compromising his edge, hated to admit that he wasn't in control anymore. Everything was about control to him; in a way he was even in control enough to understand that about himself. Ever since his parents had died, it had always been about control. Controlling life, controlling death. Now, perched above a broiling mass of hatred and insanity, he had to confront a man that terrified him because of a stream of chemicals that had infected his blood and his mind. He couldn't trust the fear anymore, couldn't trust his own mind. He couldn't tell which doubts, which questions in his mind came from his mind and which from the drugs. It was doubts and questions and fears that had left him frozen with panic before. His only option had been to take more drugs, to counteract those already in his system. And now he didn't know which fears he should be having that he wasn't. It was as if someone had stolen his years of experience. He was fresh on the streets again, nothing more than a kid in a disguise without a plan or a thought. The soldier he had been before he had realised what the war was.

Batman reached up and opened the grill over the air vent. He reached inside and hauled himself up into it, his cloak slinking behind him, a black serpent that moved through the shadows. Below, the lunacy continued, mindless to his presence. He slid deftly into the narrow vent, closing the grill behind him with the tip of his boot. He moved forward, pulling himself up the shaft hand over hand. He stopped for a moment. His heart was beating fast in his chest, he could feel it pounding against the metal wall of the shaft. It sounded like a gong being struck again and again and for a moment he was sure that someone below would hear it, that they would know that he was here. What happened if they found him? What happened if they found him and he was stuck here; trapped in the dark tight spaces? What happened if ..

"Sir."

Alfred's voice in his ear.

"Sir, you're heartbeat has picked up by forty beats. Are you alright Sir?"

Alfred's voice in his ear, bringing him back down to Earth.

"Yes," he realised that he was panting, "Yes I'm fine thank you Alfred."

He had strapped the miniature heart monitor to his chest before he had left for Arkham tonight. He could feel it now, a small cold disk pressing on his pounding heart. He felt his breathing and his heart rate slow.

"Sir, perhaps this would be an opportune time,"

"No Alfred. No police. Not here. He's too dangerous this time. If they get infected.."

"Like you, you mean Sir?"

Alfred's voice again. The voice of reason.

"Alfred. This isn't the time. Batman out."

He began to climb again, up the narrow shaft, his pace faster and more determined. He reached the summit of his climb and began to descend down another shaft. He was heading for the office that he knew belonged to Jonathan Crane.



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Crane sat in his office, a thick book resting across his bony lap. He read slowly, his eyes sparkling under the soft light of his desk lamp; his finger caressing each line of densely printed text. More books were piled on his desk, his leather and gilt bound harem. Crane's only love was his books; his only succor the wisdom contained within; his only enemies, the bullies who had ridiculed his lust for knowledge. The bullies had taught him his most important lessons though, the bullies had taught him all about fear.

Batman dropped soundlessly into the office behind Crane. He moved as something less than a shadow, a mere shade. He moved forward, looming forth out of the gloom.

"Good evening Professor Crane."

Crane leapt from the chair, knocking his book to the floor and scattering one of the taller piles. He turned, and the fear gave way to hatred in his eyes.

"Eugh. Batman.", Crane feigned a look of disgust. He stooped and began to pick his books up from the floor, handling them as gently as injured birds. "I hope you haven't come for my medical advise."

"I've come to put you back in a cell where you belong Crane." Batman took a step forward, one gauntleted hand reaching inside the folds of his cape, "But I want you to do something for me first."

Crane stood up, the last few books rescued from the floor.

"I'm not in the business of trading favours with masked lunatics. Ask the Riddler."

"I'm not in the business of asking favours of sociopathic murderers Crane," Batman drew a small vial of clear liquid from inside his cloak, "and I'm not making an exception in your case." He placed the vial on the desk. "I know what you've been up to .. Scarecrow"

Crane jumped back, "Don't say that name!"

"Why not?" asked Batman, closing the gap between himself and Crane, "That's your name isn't it? The Scarecrow .. Master of Fear?"

"I'm not the Scarecrow!" shouted Crane, backing away until he was up against the wall. "I'm Professor Jonathan Crane!"

"I don't know how you did it," said Batman, his eyes boring down into Crane, "I don't know how you made a virus that made me see you as The Answer, Scarecrow, but you left your dirty little fingerprints all over it."

Batman pointed at the vial on the table.

"After I analysed the fear virus, I knew it could only have been manufactured by you."

Crane picked the vial up from the table between two bony fingers.

"This? But that's .."

"You even dosed me while I was here Crane. Ingenious."

Crane dropped to his knees, the vial still held delicately in his hand.

"You aren't listening are you ?" he muttered under his breath.

"What?"

"I said 'You aren't listening.', you aren't listening to me. This isn't one of my mine. I didn't make this.", Crane's voice was weak, defeated.

Batman looked down at Crane. He looked small and pathetic, cupping the vial in quivering hands as if it were a new born child. "It's beautiful. But it isn't one of mine." Batman drew closer, a reached out with a heavy gauntleted hand to take the vial from Crane.

"It is one of yours. It's Scarecrow toxin. Refined ? Yes. Improved ? Immeasurably. But undeniably yours. You are the only one who could have manufactured this."

Crane snatched the vial away and scuttled backwards on his knees before getting quicker to his feet.

"I can't have made this." he said. He brought the vial close to his eye, letting the weak lamp light shine through it. "I'm not afraid of it."

"What are you talking about Crane?" Batman swept across the room and wrenched the vial from Cranes fingers.

"I told you when you first came here. I'm not the Scarecrow anymore. I can't be the Scarecrow anymore .. because I'm afraid of him. I'm terrified of him!"

"The fear gas?"

"Exactly. I created a Scarecrow toxin for myself, under Dr. Lucent's guidance. I discovered my greatest fear. My greatest fear was the Scarecrow."

"That doesn't prove that you didn't create the fear virus Scarecrow."

"I'm not Scarecrow! Not anymore! Why aren't you listening?". Crane slumped forward, his eyes to the floor. "I'm Jonathan Crane, and he doesn't know how to make fear toxin. Only Scarecrow knows that."

"Not quite."

The voice took them both by surprise. Batman spun around to face the door, his cape whirling around him, sending the small room into darkness for a moment as it blotted out the light from the small desk lamp. Crane yelped in surprise and tumbled backwards, scattering papers from the desk as he fell, then scrambled, away from the owner of that voice.

Away from the Answer.



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"I have to say that I didn't think the toxin would have such a profound affect on you Batman."

The Answer strolled across the room. His white jacket was splattered with dried blood, dark brown patches that flaked onto the floor as he moved. Half his mask was torn, revealing a pallid section of cheek.

Batman stood at the opposite end of the room, his back to the window. Weak light from it turned him into a black silhouette against the shimmering gray of the curtains. His eyes burned in the darkness and his cape did little to hide the flexing mass of muscle beneath it. He stared at the Answer.

He had been wrong again.

Crane wasn't the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow wasn't the Answer. He had made a mistake, he had made more than one mistake. In his desperation to find a solution he had returned here, searching for clues that didn't exist, a blind man groping in the darkness. He had finally lost. His city, his people, they would all pay the price of his hubris. It was over.

All that was left now was vengeance.

"You must be very, very angry right now." continued the Answer. He idly stepped over Crane's prone and quivering form and moved closer to Batman. "All those clues and you couldn't find .. the answer? Or is that The Answer?" The Answer snorted before turning away and walking back across the room.

"You see, that's your greatest fear Batman. Not the Joker, or Two-Face or Scarecrow," he looked disdainfully down at Crane. "You're greatest fear is failure, and it's been haunting you since the moment we met. And just like poor Professor Crane here, you've made it come true all by yourself. You've been defeated Batman, you've been beaten by a foe more maniacal than you ever can have imagined." The Answer all but took a bow as he glided around Batman. "And there's nothing you can do about it!"

Suddenly Batman's hand shot out, a black serpent cutting through the musty glow of the office. His fingers clasped the Answer's throat, the white leather of his mask creaking as Batman pulled him roughly towards him. He glared down, his eyes burning behind his cowl, spittle clinging do his lips spoke.

"They say that I'm not human". His voice wasn't the voice of Batman or Bruce Wayne. It was darker, a guttural voice that resonated in his throat and spat acid tasting phlegm up onto his tongue. "Did you know that?" The Answer opened his masked lips to speak, but only the faintest of gasps could escape. His eyes were bulging under his mask, dark red lines crisscrossed his bloodshot sclera. The Bat's fingers grew tighter around the Answer's neck. Something cracked in his neck as the Bat lifted him off his feet.

"They say that I'm not human."

The Answer's legs twitched in mid air as his hands flailed weakly against Batman's arm.

"You're killing him!" squealed Crane, tugging on the ragged leather hem of the Bat's cloak. "You're killing him."

Batman looked down at Crane.

"I know."

Batman turned his eyes away from Crane and away from the Answer. He blocked out the weight of the flailing mass at the end of his arm. He blocked out the distraction of the insistent tugging at this cape. His eyes focused out of the window, through a narrow gap in the curtains. He could see the Gotham skyline, a proud silhouette dotted with diamond points of light. It's gothic spires punctured clouds of smoke coughed up from ships at it's harbor. Fat lazy airships gliding over it, neon advertising blinking in the night. He almost hear the rush of the traffic, the hum of the city, the thunder of footsteps through it's streets. Could almost smell the acrid smog of rush hour, the mysterious spice of the night air.

Almost.

He couldn't hear anything except the screaming.

Couldn't smell anything but the burning.

Couldn't see anything except a city, his city, lost forever.

And a shadow cast over it all. The shadow of a bat wing.

"Sir? Can you hear me? Master Bruce!"

Alfred's voice. Grounding him again.

"Sir! The heart monitor Sir!"

Alfred's voice. As it had been in his childhood, as it was now. As it had been, after they had gone, after he had failed for the first time. He remember the words.

"Justice, Master Bruce, not revenge. If it must be; then that must be the way of it."

Batman's head swung away from the window and his eyes locked on the limp form of the Answer. It was a dead weight on his arm, limbs flailing no more. The Answer looked at Batman with faraway eyes.

"You've killed him."

Crane's voice. Insistent. Nasal.

Batman dropped the Answer. His body hit the floor with a thud. For a moment he was limp; lifeless. The room was silent.

The Answer gasped.

Batman looked down at the quivering, gasping, heaving form of the Answer. He looked so small now, shivering and wretching in the vast shadow of the Bat.

"Sir, what happened?" Alfred's voice again.

"Take off the mask Dr. Lucent."

The Answer rolled onto his back and peeled the white leather mask from his face with a shaky hand. Underneath, was Dr. Lucent, chief psychiatrist and administrator of Arkham Asylum. Still gasping for air, his back arched as his chest rose and fell with each greedy breath.

Batman crouched over him and withdrew a small vial from his utility belt. He placed one tapered end against Lucent's neck. "It's a mood suppressant Doctor, it'll help." Lucent nodded his consent. There was a soft hiss, and a small red light winked on on the side of the vial. Batman stood and turned of face Jonathan Crane.

"It's over Scarecrow."

Jonathan Crane stood up and walked towards the door, his head hung low.

"Don't bother," he said bitterly, "I know the way."

The door closed softly behind him, leaving Batman in the gloom, the only sound the gentle rasping of Lucent's breath.

"Thank you Alfred."

The voice of Bruce Wayne.



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Bruce Wayne sat in the Batcave, his eyes fixed on the giant view-screens which surrounded him. The cape and cowl lay discarded on the steel steps that lead up to the main computer terminals. Flashing past on the enormous screens were scenes from Gotham. The cave was painted red with the light from the fires that still burned in the dark city. Bruce watched solemnly as the GCPD scrambled units all over the city, maintaining order and delivering cases of fear-virus antidote to health centres throughout the city. It had come to this. After everything Gotham had been through, it had come to this again. Volunteers on the streets with food and medical supplies. Shelters for those whose homes had been ravaged by fire or seized by rioters. Nervous police on street corners.

He heard the familiar rattle of Alfred's tea tray behind him as Alfred descended into the cave, the familiar clack of leather shoes on the brushed metal floor. The familiar voice.

"Your medication Sir."

Alfred placed the tray on the arm rest of Bruce's chair. A paper cup, half full of water and a selection of red and blue pills. Alfred waited patient as Bruce scooped up the pills and swallowed them without water.

"Am I to take it that you will be dining in this evening Sir?"

"Yes. Thank you Alfred."

Alfred waited a moment longer before speaking.

"If I might be so bold Sir, I was wondering if I might ask.."

"About Crane?"

"Yes. And about the Answer Sir."

"Hm. When I first visited Arkham I was sure that Crane was the Answer. I presumed that he had abandoned the Scarecrow identity to throw me off the trail and used the fear gas to enhance the effect of his new costume. But when I went to Arkham, Lucent told me that the only person who had been exposed to fear gas since Crane had been allowed join the staff was Crane himself."

"The purpose of this being?"

"Crane created a variation of his fear gas that generated one specific phobic reaction in the victim. A mortal terror of the Scarecrow. When Crane exposed himself to this, he became terrified of the side of this personality that was the Scarecrow. Scarecrow became submerged under the Crane persona."

"And so he was cured?"

"So it would appear. The effect certainly convinced Lucent and the rest of the staff enough to let Crane join the staff on a provisional basis and to begin using his technique on the other inmates. He started with Harvey Dent."

Bruce reached out a took a sip from the cup of water.

"The whole treatment was flawed. Scarecrow was not an alternate personality for Crane as Two-Face is for Harvey. The hell that Crane put Harvey through is proof of that. When Crane created his phobia of the Scarecrow, he had no choice but to create a new persona to replace his sublimated Scarecrow persona. But the Scarecrow was not beaten so easily.

The Scarecrow persona didn't lay dormant in Crane's psyche .. it was active the entire time. At times when it was able to gain ascendancy, it began working on a new variation of the fear gas."

"Hence Professor Crane had no idea who had created the new fear virus."

"Precisely. He should have been terrified of it, just like he was terrified of everthing else to do with the Scarecrow. But he wasn't, because this had been created after he had supposedly destroyed his Scarecrow personality.

Scarecrow's plan was to use the fear gas to make Crane acknowledge him again. Scarecrow knew that just creating a new fear gas wasn't going to get him anywhere though, he would never have ascendancy long enough to subject himself to a dose successfully. Crane's fears were too potent for that. So Scarecrow created a fear virus, a variation of this fear gas that would be able to spread itself. This virus was the old fashioned type, designed to unleash the victims deepest fear. In Crane's case, the return of the Scarecrow."

Bruce stood up and picked up his cape and cowl from the floor. Alfred remained at the side of this chair. The view-screens had turned to scenes of paramedics and fire-crews pulling the dead and the injured from collapsed and burning buildings. Bruce fell silent for a moment, holding the edge of his cape in a clenched fist.

"By triggering this fear in Crane, the Scarecrow could actually trigger his own return."

"Most ingenious," said Alfred.

"The virus inevitably got of his control. The first victim was Crane's closest associate - Dr.Lucent. It stands to reason that Lucent's greatest fear would be to loose his mind. Surrounded by madness every day, who wouldn't fear that?"

Alfred raised an eyebrow.

"Who indeed?"

"When Lucent was infected with the fear virus, it was he who created the persona of the Answer. The embodiment of this worst fears - himself as a madman, bent on spreading madness, not sanity, through the world. Somehow he got hold of some of Crane's formulas for the fear gas, then used some of Crane's old underworld contacts to get hold of the equipment to start manufacturing it."

"All the time spreading the fear virus wherever he went."

"Until the whole city was infected."

"And was it also Dr.Lucent who released the Joker?"

"I'm not sure. With Pat O'Hara dead, only the Joker knows. It might have been Lucent or Scarecrow, either one would have benefited from the chaos that the Joker created once free. On the other hand, I have a feeling that it might have been Crane."

"Crane?"

"I'm not sure that Crane was entirely ignorant of what was happening to him, Lucent and the other inmates. I think he may have felt the Scarecrow, felt him pushing on the boundaries of his mind. Perhaps he released the Joker to get my attention."

"Doesn't Arkham have e-mail?"

"It was too late of course by then for me to do anything about it," continued Bruce, ignoring Alfreds comments, "I was already infected with the fear virus."

"And your own fear of failure prevented you from putting all the clues together in time."

"I don't think so." answered Bruce. He ran his fingers along the edge of the cape and around the rim of the cowl. "I've accepted that there will be .. moments .. of failure in my career." Bruce's voice tailed off. His eyes and Alfreds were drawn to the glass case that held the last costume of the Jason Todd, the second Robin, slain by the Joker. Bruce had never forgiven himself for the death of his young partner, never let Jason's ghost rest. The wounds from the battle would never heal for him. "I've had to accept that. No, my greatest fear is that one day I might loose control. One day, one of them might push me so far, so long, so hard, that it isn't me that fights back .. "

"But the Bat?"

"Yes," replied Bruce, looking down at the hollow shape of the cowl, "The Bat. That's what stopped me from putting the clues together. That's what stopped me from rescuing the Joker. My every action was designed to create a scenario in which I might loose control."

"But you didn't Sir." said Alfred, slowly walking down the stairs with the silver tray under his arm. "You didn't loose control."

Bruce's mind whirled back across time and space to the office in Arkham. He could still feel Lucent's windpipe under his fingers, still hear the creaking of the soft leather as he squeezed and squeezed. He could feel the flailing that gradually grew softer and softer as the last breathes left Lucent's body. All the feelings, all the sensations that he had ignored when he was in that office where there now, bright and indelible in his memory.

"Didn't I?" asked Bruce. He dropped the cape the floor once more and trudged up to the lonely seat in front of the vast monitors. He tried to ignore the familiar sound of Alfred's footsteps as they followed him. He felt the familiar touch of Alfred's hand on his shoulder.

"Sir, I do believe that there is a problem in the docklands." Alfred pointed up a flashing red dot that hovered over a map of Gotham on one of the monitors.

"Alfred, I .. can't", Bruce pushed Alfred's hand aside as he offered him the cape, retrieved from the floor.

"You can Sir and, as much as it pains me to say it, you must. You are their hope Sir. Their guardian"

Bruce took the cape from Alfred. It felt so heavy in his hands now, as if every blow it had ever weathered had left it's weight upon it; every drop of spilt blood, every triumph, every failure.

"What if I loose control. I could kill someone. It doesn't need to be the Joker or Two Face or any of the others, it could just be some kid, some punk who gets mixed up in the wrong crowd and ends face to face with him". Bruce's eyes fixed once again on the empty eyes of the cowl.

"With you Sir," corrected Alfred.

"How can I take that risk Alfred? How can I take that risk with other people's lives?"

"And what of the lives that you might save? And the lives that you might change? The city needs you Sir. More now than it ever has before."

Alfred placed his hand once more on the shoulder of the boy whom he had raised after the death of his parents. The shoulder that he had watched move upwards until it passed his own as he had watched the boy grow into a man; a man more determined and resourceful than he had ever dared imagine that he might be. The man who he was proud to call master and friend.

"I will be with you, Master Bruce," said Alfred.

Bruce lifted the cape and cowl above his head and slowly slid them down. The mask closed tightly over his face.

"Thank you Alfred."

The voice of Batman.