When the night's coming and the last light falls
A weak child among lost shadows on the floor.
-from The Ancestors by Allen Tate
…
"Mother?"
A single word, needy, ancient.
She was there, in a narrow, dusty kitchen. The door squeaked behind him, a needling cry that was soon cut off. The wallpaper peeled, flaked, faded in the setting sun. Eleanor Crane. There, working quietly at the sink, her lank hair pulled up and off the white bones of her neck, her head bent in concentration. It was the desperate concentration of someone who didn't dare to look anywhere else, and so focused the mind fiercely on one mundane point. She took the dirty dishes and washed them in silence, then placed them on the opposite side of the sink, glistening.
The omnipresent little radio was silent as its mistress, and out-of-place in the quiet it pursued so industriously. The folds of his mother's worn dress were no longer crisp or bright; like her, they sagged and dwindled into nothing about her thin white legs.
He crawled to her as he always had, wounded, bewildered, a pilgrim seeking comfort that never came. This time, there was no external injury to dress or heal. This time, he was bleeding inside, in a place beyond flesh and nerve.
"Mother."
No response from the lean figure black in the late afternoon light. No answer from the weary elbows working rhythmically at scouring a place. No reply from the gatherings of veins faintly seen at the backs of her knees.
He sat quietly at the table, realizing the hallucination of it all. The tiles of the floor gleamed through their thin patina of grime, like hundreds of tiny faces watching him, waiting for his next action.
"I broke her heart, Mother."
The woman didn't move to help him. The dish gleamed like bone in her hands, the cadenced sound of the sponge a whisper that set his teeth on edge.
Nothing would move her. Nothing could change a memory, or make it less than it was.
"I broke her heart," he repeated to himself, and the microcosm shattered.
He was back in his cell, straitjacketed, alone, trapped.
Oh yes, and insane. He'd known he would go insane the instant his lungs had filled with that first shocked surge of toxin-polluted air. The Batman was no scientist; he'd overdosed his subject without hesitation and only Jonathan could know the results. The Batman had gone and ruined everything in one careless sweep of his black wings.
But the look in her eyes when she'd entered—! The pale lattice of horror which had meshed her face and then collapsed at the merest touch to anger, and tears. He smiled, allowing the self-loathing to fill him. Despite the failure of all else, he'd successfully managed to push her away to safety. The trappings of emotion had fallen, he was free once more. Here, he would recover. There would be only calm and containment and—
Fear?
He had never recoiled from himself so violently before. Had never known what it was like to sense the struggling of every cell in him, the fight to escape from his own softened, distorted reflection.
Where was the diversion of a memory when he needed one? The kitchen and his mother were long gone, swallowed up in the beating of his frantic, drugged heart. Other thoughts came to mind but soon passed away, with the short-lived intrigue of poorly-taken photographs. He was left with only a painful, bitter now that refused to warp into his latest moment of delirium.
No. It was all too real, all too real and horrid. He, Jonathan Crane, was afraid.
"Don't you remember her," he asked himself, the words cutting into him with the double poignancy of a blade and mirror. "Remember Amy?"
Weak and soft, a pale ghost in oversized cardigans and dresses that had seen their best days long before she'd owned them. The holes in the sleeves that she'd sought to hide just as assiduously as the bruises and cuts. A gentle voice that he couldn't recall with any clarity; a ragged smile made lovelier by despair.
Don't be afraid.
But he was. He had tried to block out the fear by refining his intellect, by keeping his feelings subdued in a stagnant childhood, but he could feel the weed of the emotion taking root inside him, violent sickness and debilitating weakness all in wretched one.
He didn't fear insanity. He knew better. He'd been a student of insanity for years, even before he'd left for the university. He knew it and could not fear it. By the time the true madness smothered him, the madness born of bleak imprisonment and the toxin snaking through his failing system, he wouldn't know the difference. The blindness of unthought would take him, and he anticipated the forgetting and the easiness with an almost-excitement.
He didn't fear humiliation. The courts would hound him and the newspapers would blacken his name. The case of People v. Crane would begin, with him a ragged, keening skeleton in the defendant's chair, watching with vapid, watery eyes as lawyers took his name and twisted it in florid speeches. The flashes of cameras, the shouts of reporters, the strong grip of policemen leading him back and forth each day, from asylum to courthouse, forsaking one cage for another. A strange, cruel fame, without respect or compassion. But nothing would compare to being shoved against the hard tile wall of the boys' bathroom and being beaten until his mind separated from his body with all the effort it took to turn the page of a book.
He didn't fear defeat. The League of Shadows would worm him out somehow, even though he was beginning to prefer the solitude and isolation of his cell to the clamor of the world outside. But prefer as he might, revenge was becoming less of a choice. It was now merely fate and, insane or not, he would be drawn into it without any hope of escape.
He feared none of those things. But he couldn't stop himself from fearing the slight dark woman who had entered his room with her heart in her eyes. He did not fear her directly—it was more what she implied, what she meant, what she evoked. He feared losing her, feared repelling her, feared wounding her, feared saddening her—feared loving her.
He'd loved her on that Friday, during the walk in Robinson Park. He wished he had his scarf here, so he could remember it more fully. He'd felt almost normal then, passing under the leaves and sullen sky as if nothing would change. He remembered kissing her, feeling divided. It was interesting to realize—he knew his own malevolence, but she did not, and so he'd half-wished she would tear away and run, and stay pure of him forever. But at the same time the darkness would wish she wasn't noble enough to know what she embraced. He'd loved her then, but the fear for her had been there for months before.
Amy had been his excuse, his forlorn, sorry excuse for the softening he felt inside when he saw her. There was yet another of his crimes, one of the many that no court would have the insight to bring up, the shameless using of a guardian angel as a shield for his sniveling affections. He had nurtured Amy's memory for years with a quiet veneration, for she had been the one to instill in him the wisdom of a life lived without passion or fear, only to vandalize it now to justify his self-contradiction.
It had to end here. A decision had to be reached.
Darcy was gone now. She had fled him, as she should have. But he could not let the memories of two plague him forever. There was disorder in his life where there had been none ever before, things he could not rearrange inside this straitjacket. There could be no closure with her living free as a symbol of his vacillation.
Growing up as a child in a household without rhyme or reason, he desired and deserved control now. Symmetry above all else. He wanted to cage her for her safety, keep her near him. He would lay Amy to rest and he would forget. He would go mad gladly, knowing all was in order.
The door swung open, bringing his head up with a jerk. Delusion or reality? The two were the same at this point; he could merely entertain either with solemnity and hope for the best.
Shadows entered his cell, mumbling low to each other and approaching him on fast feet. His mask fell from above into his lap. It no longer grinned—its stitched mouth was stretched wide into a grimace, burning with powerless anger and urgency. The eyes were mere slits, unblinking and ruthless like the eyes of a snake.
Hands tugged at his straitjacket, loosening the arms, bringing relief to his aching muscles. He raised his hands in their too-long sleeves, ran his fingers through his hair and over his face. Painful sensation returned to deadened features and limbs.
I'm here. I'm real. I'm alive.
"Time to play," said a voice from overhead.
And I am Scarecrow.
He looked up into the white-hot intensity, clutching his mask with shaking hands, and as he stood shakily to his feet, he knew what he must do.
Author's Note
Apologies to my readers for both my delay in posting and my unusual silence in response to their reviews. Both can be attributed to a particularly wicked bout of the influenza, which rendered me bed-ridden and helpless for nearly the entirety of last week. I think my illness is also partially to blame for the unapologetic, disjointed schizophrenia of this chapter, but, since Jonathan is becoming a character of increasing mental instability, it lends itself well.
The next and final chapter, in which Darcy pays a visit to one doctor and is herself visited by yet another doctor, will be posted next week on Friday, December 23. I can't believe the end is approaching so quickly. Since I want to keep the tone of Chapter 20 unmarred by a perky Author's Note at the end, I will give my thanks and acknowledgements now.
(deep breath) I began this 'lovesick homage to Dr. Jonathan Crane à la Cillian Murphy' many weeks ago, hoping only for the best in a genre populated by many skilled authors who had already showered the region with their excellent stories featuring the selfsame villain. To my humbled surprise, Dark My Light was met and has continued to be met with only enthusiasm, kindness, and gentle advice. It has become one of the most successful—nay, the most successful—story I have ever written, with nearly 300 reviews and over 3000 hits. I owe it all to you readers and fellow writers. I consider each and every one of you a friend who deserves my complete respect and eternal gratitude. You know who you are. Thank you. Thank you so, so much.
Love always,
Blodeuedd