Fall is grievy, brisk. Tears behind the eyes

almost fall. Fall comes to us as a prize

to rouse us toward our fate.

-from Dream Songs, by John Berryman

…

Perhaps they would drag her to some vile back alley and put a silenced bullet between those prying eyes. Take her to a place where no sun would shine. He knew there were many places like that in Gotham; after all, he'd grown up in one such lightless pit. She would die without a sound among the puddles of dark filth and piles of trash. She would be forgotten.

But maybe they would simply strangle her instead; that seemed quiet and quick enough. Beat her to death, perhaps, so the body would be broken beyond recognition. And then again, they might simply poison her food somehow—

Did anyone poison their enemies anymore? The concept seemed terribly medieval.

All he knew was that Carmine Falcone had said Ms. Dawes would die. And that he, Jonathan Crane, had been the one to ask for it.

The knowledge rankled Jonathan. Fear and insanity were nothing to him. The first was an art to be perfected, and the second a paying profession. Either of the pair sealed lips and wiped memories well enough for his liking. They were better than bribes and empty threats, and certainly better than murder. Death was messy, a last resort. Much as he detested the interfering assistant D.A., he had no foolhardy desire to needlessly smear his name with her blood.

Besides, he needed a sane experimental subject for his toxin, preferably sooner rather than later. If the precocious Ms. Dawes had continued to make a nuisance out of herself, he could have dealt with the matter personally, under his own terms. It would have been a pleasure to do so, one of those rare pleasures free of personal entanglement. No one would question the circumstances of her sudden insanity. Years of dealing with hand-wringing family members and sobbing spouses had taught him that almost no one had the gall to question madness.

He could have handled it himself.

The notion took hold and he caught his breath in a brisk irritation. The opportunity for scientific progress…and he'd been so spineless as to quietly weather her suspicion-laced yammering, tuck his tail between his legs, and opt for simple, bloody elimination. He knew that by now the issue of her impending murder was already too deeply embroiled in the city's networks of corruption to be revoked; he regretted ever bringing up it up in front of Falcone.

And he abhorred regret.

As he pulled his car to halt outside the Courtyard, the four-star hotel where the charity event was held, he glanced briefly at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Looking in any mirror was something he rarely did—he'd shunned the things in childhood and the habit had stuck—and he was almost surprised to see his likeness staring back.

Making eye contact with other people had been difficult for him to learn, after years of being violently taught that looking too long meant immediate pain. Now, it came easily. He could look even his bitterest foes in the eye and hold their gaze until they squirmed with discomfort. But with himself—the only word to describe the nauseated sensation that filled him was 'difficult.' It was just that. Difficult. Difficult to meet the eyes of the only person who knew his darkness.

Now, the bitter taste of remorse writhing in his mouth, he stared hard, daring himself to hold his own gaze.

The crueler names, the pranks and whispered threats, had come later, in high school and college, when they had grasped the fact that he couldn't fight back, the fact that he was so far gone inside his own head that he wouldn't fight back. The beatings had become rarer, thankfully, as he'd grown and passed with honors through prestigious schools, but when they did come, they had deepened in savagery, in hate. The malice became calculated, intentional—no longer the impulsive dislike of a child. But nonetheless, it was still those first, blunt epithets, and not the willful slights and appalling brutality of his higher education years, that cut to the bone.

Freak.

Skeleton.

Scarecrow.

The frozen blue eyes trembled ever so slightly, as if anticipating a blow. For an instant, they became something pained. Something animal and alive and hurting.

He didn't like that. Suddenly dizzy, he clenched his eyes shut, gripping the steering wheel. It unnerved him to see how much he savored his own pain sometimes.

When Jonathan opened them, his eyes were his again. Icy and shining like fish beneath the glassy surface of a frozen pond. The valet opened the door for him and he stepped out into the icy night air, ignoring the other man's jolly greeting.

Autumn was ending fast—October would be unusually cold this year.

He adjusted his sable-black bow tie and steeled himself for the swarm of high society that waited within the high-ceilinged ballroom within the hotel. Such affairs always set him ill at ease, but the unrest was anesthetized by years of such paltry events. He took them quietly now, like a patient benumbed to the touch of a knife.

…

The Courtyard was perched atop a hill on the outskirts of the Bristol Commons. Its mild altitude and many windows gave Jonathan a breathtaking view of the city he so loathed. There were the glittering skyscrapers, clustered like parasites at the mouth of the Gotham River. Veins of traffic linked together the small islands which the city comprised like the chain of some elaborate necklace. It all seemed so distant and faraway—a tiny golden kingdom in the gullet of autumnal night, masking its brutal streets and hardened citizens behind a glowing exterior. Even the Narrows, a dark tumor in the splendid metropolis, seemed disturbingly serene and remote from afar.

An instinctive anger rose in him as he looked out at the blatant lie of the gleaming skyline, but he swallowed his enmity. Now was neither the time nor the place. Slipping easily through the luminous, prattling crowds, he found a seat at a vacant table in the corner, content to try to forget the wastefulness of Ms. Dawes' death by watching the carnage of society and affluence from a safe distance. Gotham's privileged had long since given up trying to entice him into their games and maneuverings, and now they simply ignored him as he ignored them. Their too-white smiles and painted eyes slid over him like oil on water. They were two different species, they and he. They saw him as much as they saw the slow rot of their tainted city.

He felt rather than saw where Mike Laramie sat, chatting convivially with a couple of journalists and dark-suited men at a table nearby the piano. He clearly had them all listening with rapt attention, drawing them in with his resonant voice and warm laughter. Jonathan's insides convulsed, nauseated as ever at the sight of the man who had become his colleague by some cruel twist of fate.

Blinded by his single-minded dislike, he almost didn't notice Darcy Crandell until Mike Laramie playfully tapped the shoulder of the subdued shadow at his side.

Instead of joining the animated conversation, she shied away from Laramie's touch, clearly annoyed. Jonathan felt a smile tug at his mouth, as had become his habit every time he saw his intern vexed by a situation. He had no pity for her this time; she'd chosen to associate with the personification of odious ego and received her just retribution. He had heard their conversation only half a week before, when he'd returned from the trial of Victor Zsasz, the annoyance of Ms. Dawes' increasing persistence still shrilling in his head. He knew the decision to attend the event with Laramie had been hers. Thoughtless girl.

His amusement quickly subsided when he saw her mutter something to her escort and stalk off, heading for the very same isolated table that he already occupied, unbeknownst to her. Hurriedly, he tried to disappear like he'd done so many times before, fading ghostlike into the laughter, the piano, the candlelight…

And she saw him. He would blame it later on the suddenness of her arrival, the odd cold weather, the distractions, but somehow, bafflingly, she saw him.

"Oh, hello," she said in an oddly strangled voice, "Mind if I sit?" She seemed a little surprised to find him at the table she'd selected for herself, but at least she was determined to remain casual and unperturbed for decorum's sake.

"Not at all." He was too on edge to praise himself for his calm.

Clearly trying to conceal her discomfort, she sat, chewing her lip anxiously and fidgeting with her glass of champagne before asking, "Enjoying the evening?" She couldn't even look him in the eye, but Jonathan was very much accustomed to such treatment from the opposite sex and took it in stride.

"It seems to be going well."

She tried to smile through whatever gloomy mood she was in—an amusing thing to watch—but finally her face crumpled and she had to bury it in her hands. When she lifted her head again, her eyes were shiny and rimmed with smears of black makeup.

"It's not you," she insisted in a quivering voice, mistaking his curiosity for concern, "God—I don't know—he's just so…I don't know. I don't know."

"I presume you mean Dr. Laramie?" He asked mildly, the student in him intrigued by the sudden breakdown.

Sniffling, she nodded. "I don't know how I thought I could deal with him again—after—after—" She tilted her head to the side as if bewildered by her own unbridled emotions, wiping away a bright tear that coursed down her cheek.

"After what?" He pressed, nimbly adopting his persuasive, cajoling psychiatrist's voice. He'd almost forgotten he had such a voice in him—probably, he mused dryly, ever since the fear toxin's research had come to dominate his sessions with patients.

"Oh—we were engaged when I was in college and he was in med school. I broke it off; I always thought he was obsessed with creating this 'image' for himself, with inventing this false—life for him to live, and that he didn't feel anything for me at all, that he was just using me, using the fact that he had me at his side, to make him look better. I don't know," she repeated in a tattered voice. The subject clearly set her askew. Her eyes roamed the bustling room now with a hungry discontent, and her hands plucked and tugged at each other like warring swans.

"Engaged?" He echoed. Sometimes all it took was a single word to cement the perception of mutual understanding.

Recovering, she nodded meekly. "Yes. And—tonight, I just saw the worst in him again, when he was talking to the journalists and the police officers about his goals for Arkham and his own life and—I couldn't stand it. It was too much for me to think about—the fact that he hasn't changed, the fact I let him into my life again…" Her distress was clearly losing speed now, her pale lips trembling as she put a hand to her head, as if to stop the words that stumbled from her mouth. "I felt like he was my last chance for anything in this city. And—it made me afraid. To know I've fallen that far from—where I used to be. I just had to get away."

Jonathan said nothing to this; the question of why he was dissecting her with such industry had finally caught up with him, and he could find no comforting answer for himself.

His silence seemed to halt her release, to break the trance. Before it could be stifled behind her usual quiet composure, worry flared to life in her dark, naked eyes. "Please, Dr. Crane—I was just going on. I'm sorry; Mike can't know. I'm sorry—you're his coworker—I shouldn't have. I was just so—" She shook her head, trying to wake herself up. "Promise me you won't tell anyone."

He stared at her, transfixed. She was no longer the impassive, contrived intern he'd seen at work. In the shivering candlelight, she seemed tear-stained and vulnerable—

—as vulnerable as those thin wrists, vividly remembered. Every stark blue vein and rough purplish bruise intact in his aching head. The long worn hands clutched at his stooped, shrunken shoulders, painful with feeling. He didn't want to see those eyes again, but he saw them in his memories, watery and full of the sadness. Her words searched and stumbled, but the eyes told him all he needed to understand.

'Promise, Jonathan. Promise me—'

He fought off the illusion in a reflexive fury. He was losing himself again. The slips into his past were relatively infrequent, and never had he experienced two in one night. This was absurd.

She wasn't Amy. She…she was just on the verge of the uncompromising emotional honesty he knew so well in his patients—that was all he was seeing. His mind, already so bewildered by the tension and anxiety of the past month, was wrongly associating one person, one set of memories, with another. Not Amy. Gotham City had killed Amy Lancaster nineteen years ago, and she wasn't coming back. No matter how hard he wished, consciously or otherwise, the classroom would remain dark and empty. The education unfinished. A globe of the world lying forgotten on bloody asphalt.

He waited until he could answer without the sounds coming out in a sigh, a moan, a whimper. "I never break my promises, Ms. Crandell," he replied, choosing words carefully, "Those in psychiatry are familiar with being committed to secrecy."

Her lips quirked in sly, silent answer; it was painfully evident that she didn't trust him—perhaps the first display of real intelligence she'd shown since they'd met. Her feathery black lashes, gummed together with weeping, cast fragile but heavy shadows across her face. The silence quickly grew cumbersome, and she seemed to be searching for something to say.

"This must be a question you get all the time, Dr. Crane," she said at last, voice still thin but light, "But what made you decide to go into psychiatry?"

Oh, the delicious irony. The question fully brought him back to the present. Reminded him of the wall of unyielding hostility that a little boy had once built between himself and the world.

"It's not something I particularly care to talk about," he replied in his blandest voice.

Her friendliness thwarted—as she should have known it would be, he thought coldly to himself, still annoyed with the intrusion—she averted her surprised gaze to the tablecloth.

Safe now, Jonathan relaxed behind the protection of his mask. Ah, good. All was well.

It would have become an awkward situation not long after that moment, had it not been for the arrival of Mike Laramie.

"Hey, Darce," he said, voice quiet but still not lacking in its ubiquitous joviality, "Why'd you leave me? I had no idea where you'd gone off to…"

'Why'd you leave?'

She'd accepted the blows as if she deserved them, staggering and falling to the earth like a flightless bird.

His fretful mind fell easily into the pattern this time. He dug in his heels with the last of his resolve and struggled with the grief, tugging backwards, backwards to the real.

Why was everything so wrong tonight?

"Just wanted to be alone," Darcy murmured in an alto whisper. Jonathan looked up from his clenched fists and realized she was looking at him with an oddly intent gaze that didn't match her voice at all.

"Hey, Jonathan," Laramie said, following Darcy's gaze and seeing him, "How's it going? Want to come join us? Hobnob a little?"

"No thank you." He almost forgot to add the traditional tag of thanks to the flat refusal.

"Well, let us know when you do—have a good evening," the other man said with a shrug, guiding Darcy away, leaving Jonathan to flounder in his own darkening thoughts.

…

He couldn't let himself fall apart.

He got into the car and rolled up the window the valet had left down. He shut the night out and stared at the dim road before him as if he had just awakened. The darkness seemed new, bleaker, colder, pressing in upon the car's suddenly fragile windows. Things moved fast, too fast for him to catch or comprehend.

There was only one thought there as he drove out through the hotel's wrought-iron gates and headed towards the illuminated city. Don't fall apart.

So much depended on this year. So much would be avenged and finalized and put away forever. He needed to meet his ends—and those of Rā's al Ghūl.

He was just tired and confused; he would sleep tonight and wake with what he needed. The fortifications in his mind would still stand in the morning, as they always had.

He'd always prided himself on the icy distance he'd set between himself and others during the weeks after Amy's murder. By the morning after her death, his childishly defenseless emotions had been carefully locked away, like so many outgrown toys.

His classmates had known the change in him immediately. They had seen the hollow eyes of the no-longer-child in their midst and knew, but had had no name for the empty. They had feared him even more to see how he began to suffer their animosity with patience and inertia.

Just tired tonight.

So why was he revisiting a time, a place, a woman he'd hoped to never see again? The question was purely rhetorical. He knew why he was bleeding for the first time in twenty years. Oh, he knew.

Darcy Crandell. He hated her. Wanted to break her. But even if she lay dead at his feet, he knew he wouldn't be free. Even the sight of her lifeless form would only return him to a day when he'd crouched in the wet black earth behind a clutch of bushes, watching his only solace die before his eyes.

He told himself it was the mere, blunt symbolism of her. She was a figure abstractly connected to his past by his own confused psyche—nothing more. Nothing. Uncertainty bred error, but he had fought uncertainty off before this. He would sleep and wake and it would be tomorrow.

Jonathan Crane had never been given to sentimentality, even before Amy's death. He could only grasp the concepts of fear, of madness, of disease. He had cleansed himself of all else. There was nothing left in him to feel.

He would sleep tonight.

Only now he realized that not once in his bizarre and cruel self-education had he thought to prepare for the return of those soft, ludicrous emotions which had almost been his undoing in the first place.

He named them to himself as others would name vices. Compassion, happiness, delight, warmth. None but Amy had shown him that such tender capacities could exist in human beings. They should have died with her. Tenderness, trust, generosity, love.

Sleep and wake.

Author's Note

Not too schmaltzy, I hope? I've never really liked the last paragraph of this chapter; my apologies to you if you share my mixed feelings.

This author's note will be quite brisk, but a little bit is better than nothing, right? AP classes are harder than they look, people! I'm sure those of you who've experienced them will sympathize.

Arisa Mieko – Argh, college prep homework…you have my sympathy, darling. Keep writing, though!

Carpetbag – Aww! Glad you like! I LOVE CRANE TOO!

Dot – Sorry to hear about your Darcy-esque job. Like our lovely lazy Crane, I'm known to shrink from menial tasks like organizing and shift them onto the backs of others. I'm very proud of you to hear you swallowed your misgivings and did it, especially for charity. To do a charity event is always a noble thing. You have my admiration.

Dr. E. Vance – Eh, bubblehead girls are my specialty. I'm just glad that Sheila's taking the hit, not Darcy. Love ya! Keep the Cranetry (Crane poetry) coming!

Hikyaku – Oh, I absolutely love Sleepy Hollow! It's such a great little Tim Burton movie. Johnny Depp as Ichabod… (squeals with delight) And by the way, there is nothing wrong with sliding Crane into your daily life. A little more Crane is a beautiful thing, when it can be had.

hornofgondor2 – I don't think anyone can get enough of Cillian—he's why you're all deigning to read this story, right? Heh…in my opinion, 'enough' and 'Cillian' are oxymoronic unless the sentence in question is 'Enough strawberries and champagne, Cillian my darling…the fire is low and I believe it is time for us to retire!' I'm such a sick girl.

Kagerou-chan – Happy to know you appreciate the Ichabod reference. I too am surprised no one else has made the obvious connection between Batman and Washington Irving; Jonathan was called 'Ichabod' by his childhood tormentors in the comic books and I would have thought other people would have used it first. Guess I'm lucky.

Karina of Darkness – Iloveyoutoogladyou'reenjoyingthestory.:-)

Mizamour – Heh…Mike… ;-) POST A NEW CHAPTER SOON, PLEASE:-D

Skyler McAndrews – Of course Crane could kick Mike's rear any day! You'll see! ;-)

SpadesJade – Eeek! I seem to have confused some of my readers. I didn't intend for Crane's 'sadness' in Chapter 6 to be perceived as premature love, but many reviewers (believe me, not just you!) construed it as such. I meant for his agitation to be growing worry and frustration over Rachel's persistent interfering and believed that his reasons would become apparent in Chapter 7, but I guess I wasn't clear enough. And now that I reread over the part in question, it does seem terribly odd. Sorry! Crane's not that much of a softie, I promise, even though we'd all love him to be… Hope you keep reviewing regardless. (hopeful eyes)

The Nth Degree – Sorry about the lack of email thing on my profile—talk to my parents. THE SOUNDTRACK IS SO AWESOME! As for your (completely justified!) Mike-hate, let's just say that Crane will, ah, hurt Mike in a distant chapter…and leave it at that for now. No further comment. ;-) Thanks so much for reviewing! Je t'aime!

Vampire Naomi – Your review, what with its immediate reference to chocolate cake, makes me quite hungry for a slice myself…but I must focus. Lucky me! Being the fluff-loving writer I am, I must confess that I did, at some point or another, toy with both the 'Bruce' and 'cleanup discovery' ideas you mentioned; it's very fortunate that I ended up doing without both. Kudos for keeping my rampant fluffness in check and making this story the 'steamy sex and jealousy'-less story it ought to be! LOL. :-)

Winged Seraph – Ah yes, the ex. I'm like you—I'd be screaming and throwing things at him:-D

Well, that's all for now! All I'm going to say about Chapter 8 at this time is that a) someone is stabbed with a fork and b) we find out more about Darcy's odd reaction to the dark (as first seen in Chapter 2)!

Love you all!

Blodeuedd