JMJ

Prologue:

That Thin Line Between

"The Joker…" seethed Tetch under his breath.

The television behind them had only but mentioned him briefly. He was already in Arkham and had been for a few days now, but, of course, the television had to mention him at least every other day. The Joker owned Gotham as much as he owned the asylum much to the denial and dread of Mayor Hill and Dr. Bartholomew alike. Fortunately, the Clown Prince allowed the staff at Arkham to have their way with him, for now. He was not allowed into the recreation room and was still in solitary confinement. It was where he should always be as far as most inmates were concerned— as far as most anyone was concerned if he had to be anywhere at all.

Even with the absence of the Joker, Crane noticed that Tetch spoke this quietly for gentle apprehension of anyone other than Crane overhearing him, but the little man's exasperation, his overall contempt and emotion, was overwhelming him as it often did. Fear and anger in their usual battle for supremacy in the aftermath of such an encounter as Tetch had had recently with the Joker would be enough for anyone to be beside him or herself, but Tetch's emotions always ran high.

Slowly, Crane raised a brow from the chess game. It was interesting that Tetch seemed to play chess better when tense and even nervous than otherwise. His next move was already putting Crane's queen in danger. As for Crane himself, he pretended not to take much note as he lowered his eyes again to the game and let Tetch vent a little more.

He was reciting more to himself than to his companion anyway,

"'How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spread his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!'"

"With what ease he takes what he wishes and makes fools of us all," muttered Tetch.

Crane mused over the board for another good move with a hand to his chin.

"It's curious enough," Tetch went on, "that the Penguin seems to think so highly of the Joker when he holds honor among thieves so highly and the Joker does not. The Joker himself has no regard at all for another's things. Not even his own girlfriend— it's little wonder that their relationship did not last long. But his treatment of her in itself makes him a beast worthy of the Jabberwocky. If only someone could take his head galumphing back…"

He paused thoughtfully…

— Pensively, Crane corrected.

Tetch's mind wandered for a moment, perhaps on his own pain with Alice, since he was so upset already and had begun digressing about women, anyway.

Crane himself had not though much of the union between man and woman as anything more than animalistic behavior of primal human instinct and beneath him since high school. Sentimental drivel at best when that instinct collided with human intellect and emotion, but he did feel the smallest bit of sympathy for the lovesick creature across from him.

Meanwhile, Crane noticed Pamela Isley glance at them briefly with a look of contempt herself for the Joker. Unlike most people, it was far more contempt for the Joker she felt than fear, if she feared the Joker at all. She looked away when her eyes met his. She did not care much for Crane or Tetch either and both pretended not to notice the way the guard glanced at them with suspicion.

With a sort of pout, she petted her plant and brushed ever-so-gently the fresh seedlings just beginning to sprout in its wake.

Then quite suddenly deciding that he had deviated from his original sentiment enough, Tetch sighed miserably rubbing his temple.

He said, "I still have a dreadful headache from being out of it for so long on my own circuitry. Using my work against me is one matter, but that's nothing compared to his using my chips for devouring his own fishes, so to speak."

"At least you can safely say that he isn't one to repeat himself," remarked Crane quietly.

"At least that is one thing that can be said about him," agreed Tetch. "The only thing, really… but I doubt you would be taking it as lightly had he done the same to you."

"I may not have had such a run-in with the Joker," Crane remarked, "but I have had plenty of chances to feel the humiliation and aftereffects of my own work used against me through the interference of an enemy far more mutual than the Joker."

"Ah, yes…" Tetch said with a roll of his eyes as he sipped at his tea getting rather cold. "As black as a tar bell, as he always is with or without induced terror, I suppose."

Crane made a move that saved his queen from Tetch's bishop.

"I will admit I do not envy you in that regard," Tetch said.

He made a face, which he often did, and it usually was not so much because of the lukewarm liquid, as it was for the quality of tea he had to put up with at Arkham. He had absolutely thrown a fit as a true Englishman about having to have something as bland and bitter as Lipton or Bigalow, but even what the Arkham staff did eventually get for him, was not what he preferred even if he did tolerate it. For Crane's part (also a tea drinker over a coffee drinker), even if he did not have much of an appetite at Arkham at all, he could not help but be pleased that his companion had managed that much and that he might take advantage of a better quality tea himself when he wanted.

But even had the tea been the finest tea direct from Qimen, Tetch might have made that bitter face as he thought of the reason almost every inmate in Arkham was here.

Batman.

And he seemed to be breeding these days. Several protégés with less civility and more energy than the last, and the latest one seemed to be the worst even if neither Tetch nor Crane had had the misfortune to yet run into her: Luna Bat, she called herself. Pretty new upon the scene.

Crane nearly rolled his eyes at the thought. She obviously was not afraid of being called insane, anyway, with a name like that. She would likely be an interesting subject to examine as most of the Bats seemed to be. What compelled them to do what they did baffled Crane. To want to be a hero was one thing, but to keep it up and follow in another's footsteps was quite another.

But he had no taste for speaking of the Bat family tree at the moment, and neither did Tetch, who took Crane's queen just at that moment rather sullenly.

Crane shrugged.

Maybe when Tetch was tense, it was not so much that Tetch was a better player but that Crane was distracted by Tetch's emotions despite himself. Although, Crane's focus was and always had been fear, his attention to other negative emotion related to fear was still part of his obsession. All negative emotion was, in part, due to some form of fear, anyway, even if it was only the fear of being burdened with more annoyance, but Batman was more than just annoyance despite how behind the walls of Arkham, the inmates all felt far enough removed from him to pretend otherwise— including himself.

Oh, well.

He cleared his throat.

"Another game, my dear fellow?" Tetch asked rather brightly.

Crane blinked from the sudden change as though a light bulb had suddenly turned on in a black space.

"Feel free to set it up," Crane responded.

As Tetch began to do just that, Crane's mind wandered to a more satisfying subject.

"I will say this…" Crane said; he glanced at the guard, but the guard was reading a newspaper and paying them little mind.

The only thing that would rouse the burly lout's attention, aside from rowdy or suspicious behavior would be the word "escape" or anything related, which words every guard was trained to pick up like a dog to a dog-whistle. Pleased, Crane continued as Tetch looked up at him with interest and a last sip of tea.

"I may no longer have to consider such consequences in the future," said Crane.

Tetch raised a brow curiously.

"I have been developing, mentally at present, ever since the Trial," he emphasized the word so that Tetch knew which Trial he meant, and it was the only trial that seemed worth mentioning of late. "Something completely different from my usual work."

"It is always good to keep one's art form going stale."

"My thoughts exactly," agreed Crane. "It is the exact opposite from my usual work, but then anger and fear always play hand-in-hand."

"As much as going right through the earth often is closer meteorologically than going down the longitude lines along the globe," remarked Tetch. "So you mean to cause anger in people instead to get out of control?" Tetch's expression revealed that he thought that his guess unlikely even as he spoke it.

"I plan to use it, not for the purpose of others so much— at least not at the moment," admitted Crane. "And it is not so much uncontrollable anger as the balance of it to cancel out a certain amount of fear at my leisure. At the moment the plans are to use it for myself."

The expressive face of Tetch betrayed that he was even more skeptical. "On yourself?"

"All in good time, but I would, in theory, become immune to my own toxins, much like…" Crane minutely nodded to Isley.

Tetch studied Crane for a moment. He did not look at Isley. Then he excused himself briefly to ask the guard for more hot water— "hot" meaning almost lukewarm to begin with, because even hot water could be used as a weapon and had been before.

When he returned and had gathered his thoughts, Tetch said, "I can't help but find myself recalling the Pigeon."

Crane winced, trying to remember the Pigeon in Alice in Wonderland. He had been meaning to read both of Carroll's books again since he had come to be a companion of Tetch's, but as yet, he had not gotten around it. He had been a child reading the classics from cover to cover the last time he read them in full.

"'Serpent, serpent!' the Pigeon may have cried, but as for poor Alice," said Tetch, "unused to her elongated, serpentine form 'her neck kept getting entangled among the branches'."

"There is an awful lot of transforming in general in your book," said Crane.

"And the moral of that is, be careful about such things," Tetch said. "It's no light matter turning from one creature into another. You may think yourself a caterpillar ready to turn into a butterfly but you may only be a turtle preparing yourself to becoming the mock turtle for the next mock turtle soup."

"I see your point," admitted Crane. "There is the Fly to consider, and one could even go back to the Jekyll and Hyde scenario, but I'm going about this as carefully as possible. There is no rush with this project. I have not even put much pen to paper about it yet, but I know it is feasible. Besides, I plan on having a test subject first."

"Even still, the human machine is arguably one of the most complicated of nature's design," said Tetch swirling his tea bag impatiently for it to steep. "It might react different to you than to another. It may even have long term effects unknown at the beginning if this is a plan for a permanent change."

"Says the man who puts electrical circuits to his temple every chance he gets," retorted Crane lightly. "I never found that such exposure was all too healthy in long-term effects either."

Tetch looked offended at first, but he nodded in defeat. He knew that he had offended Crane first and accepted it.

"Besides, constant exposure to my own work against me isn't going to bode well with me either," Crane remarked.

"I'm only saying that you may not like what a permanent change in the chemistry of your mind does to you after a while," said Tetch. "Or you may be too far gone to think anything. We were but a moment before speaking about the Joker, who is the genius of such effects in itself."

Crane almost smiled.

Tetch's use of the word "genius" only proved that Alice in Wonderland and its sequel were not the only books on his reading list in elusion to the infamous "genius of famine" both loathed and bound by Jonathan Crane.

It was not common that someone tried to understand him. It was even less common for someone to fear for his welfare. However, he could not expect Tetch to truly understand how Crane truly felt about being treated with his own fear gas time and again. He had not even attempted escape lately as much as some of the others and not because he could not. First, he did not like attempting such a serious feat as escape without a serious plan afterwards, but it was having to face the idea of failing, which also withheld him.

It was not a fear of being attacked with his own fear gas even though the terrors and tortures upon his mind from it were tremendous. Once it was over, much of it was forgotten as he always got more delirious than most of his victims as a result, much to his humiliation. But it was not even humiliation— it was more than that. Admittedly, having a true undeniable terror of Batman like the angel of death always waiting for him in the dark corners of Gotham did not help matters. It was, all-in-all, everything together in his failures: it was a reminder of his human frailty, and the Scarecrow could not function properly with that hanging over.

Crane was not so deluded that he did not know he was human and certainly would not have described the feeling as such, but he hated more than anything else in the world feeling weak and vulnerable— of looking like a victim, of looking like prey. His physical features already made him look like prey to others, and had been a detriment to him since he was a child, thus creating in him his first true terror of life within the core of his subconscious. This subconscious, which had been wired differently from other people's since birth, he knew full well. His awkwardness, his tendencies towards getting even, and his strange balance between shyness and mockery of others had been that much more to sever him from the rest of humanity.

Even being the Scarecrow had not been enough to free him from his fears, though. Batman proved that. The stupid situation with Lyle Bolton had proved that all the more!

More and more Crane was beginning to realize that his fear of torture, his fear of being the victim, or being prey, would eventually consume him if he did not act.

Back to the table in the Arkham recreation room, as much as he liked Tetch as someone to share the human need to repel the fear of loneliness, which was not nearly as strong as his fear of not being left alone anyway, he certainly was no one he felt the need to share his inner-most feelings with. It was no offense to Tetch. In fact, Tetch sometimes confided in Crane with deep thoughts and feelings that he was sure he told no one else. Tetch who was very socially needy at heart, which was his main problem, and Crane could not share the confidence. It was not that he did not trust Tetch. He just did not feel the need to reveal weakness to anyone.

The fear of being alone for his own form of oddness dominated Tetch more than anything. The fear of being misunderstood and unwanted…

Crane shook his head.

His analysis of Tetch was constant despite their relationship. Crane saw everyone as something to be studied. It was nothing personal. What bothered him was that it increasingly included Crane himself as though the Scarecrow was a separate being living alongside Jonathan Crane.

The only answer, he saw was to change himself. No longer could he sit between humanity and not— always clinging to that thin line between the air above the water's surface and the darkness of the depths beneath. He could not be a victim of his own analyses anymore. He could not continue. His fears would consume him, and he knew it, and his fears of being consumed by his fear would cycle it into a spiraling abyss of doom. He was a victim of himself. He was prey to himself. He could no longer be predator and prey at once!

It was the only way out— changing the chemistry of his own mind, and it did not matter to him how long it took or what he had to sacrifice.

All this was what he could not explain to Tetch, who despite his obvious mental and emotional maladies, was still more a broken human than not. He preferred his humanity over the monster that his own fears created inside him. He utilized it in a way that sometimes Crane envied. His problem might have been described as being too human rather than not enough, but Crane was only half human, he felt, and half something else as though two beings fought a constant battle for dominance.

This struggle was not multiple personality disorder like Dent and certainly not like Wesker. Perish the idea! But it was a more acute version of the two sides every person had. The animal versus the intellect. The animal needed the intellect to stay in control, but the intellect needed the animal to thrive and keep the whole being from being robotic. In his methodical way, Crane had separated it like a surgeon detaching two sides of a malformed organ. He stared at his half-finished work even now and did not see Tetch watching him with care.

Crane would not be the victim.

So he would give his human side the full strength of the beast within him until he was one being. Neither human nor beast.

The Scarecrow.

And like, perhaps, the Riddler who burned his past and emerged a new creature so would he be, except, as Tetch suggested, it would be more like a controlled physical change. It could be likened to a situation in which the physical change of the Joker from Jack Napier (or whatever his original name had been) was a controlled process instead of accidental.

"Have you lost interest in a new game, Pr. Crane?" asked Tetch.

Crane blinked back and shook his head.

For Tetch's sake he might as well play. After all, his full Scarecrow-self into which he would become probably would have little care for such things.

"Excuse me," said Crane with a renewed half-smile, "We may begin now."

The only thing he could not help within his mind, and perhaps what some might call his heart, was that part of him felt a little sentimental.

Maybe sad?

To leave the light of the surface forever was a little sad, but Crane felt that it was more the fear of the unknown which loomed heavily over him rather than sorrow over the death of his original form, and that was exactly the point.

They had not gotten far with their new game when the warden came to say that it was time to put the crazies to bed for the night. Crane and Tetch quietly picked up and bade each other farewell for now. Then they were led away. Under strict surveillance, they brushed their teeth and washed up for bed in the wash rooms. Then they parted ways in the corridor to their separate cells.

Crane glowered at the unhealthy light behind the clear casing of his cell that was so much like the casing for an animal at the zoo.

After the renovations and a few too many escapes, there was no room for any dark corner to be left unlit. Crane hated the personal invasion. Even other inmates could stare into each other's cells, but he knew that he could not care. He knew he should be beyond such things, but he was a slave of his own fears, as he already knew fell well.

Of never being left alone.

Here in Arkham, he was left alone less and less. Always watched, always inspected, and every once in a while some doctor thought he or she could change him and would bring up his past or give him drugs or scan his brainwaves and tell him how unwell he was.

There was nothing more at the core of Man's fears than what happened at an insane asylum. Being completely ripped of privilege, completely at odds with whether what one thought or did was sane or not, always someone's victim, completely helpless, completely alone and yet never, ever alone, and the doctors themselves were just as at odds with themselves , if not more-so, than the patients.

The cell door closed behind Crane.

He could not help the shiver down his spine.

Maybe he subconsciously did it on purpose. Maybe part of him liked to shiver.

Lately, he was beginning to find that he embraced his own fears like others embraced their childhood memories of Christmas and summer vacation camping trips.

It could not go on.

The lights dimmed for his repose, but they were not off. They were like the dim light of a home aquarium after the other lights were out, and every cell was the same.

Without another thought, Crane went straight for his bed. He had a small lamp that he was allowed to read under if he wished; for he had a few book and papers which he was allowed to keep as his own. He had a rocking chair too he was allowed to keep as long as he did not have it facing the back wall. But he was not in the mood.

The comfort of the rocking like a baby in its cradle was something that he should not need.

He lied there, stiff as a board upon his cot without pulling up his blanket. With hands behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling and thought, relaxing slowly as he did.

He thought very hard about his plan. He delved into the more scientific complications of it. The chemicals, the mathematics. Tomorrow he would probably work some out on a sheet of paper in a secret way that the doctors would not understand easily, but not now. He was actually rather more tired than usual, and he was drifting off into a methodical sleep in which he was dreaming of nothing but numbers and symbols flashing by like computer files over a scanning screen.

Then just as the depths of sleep took root, he heard a deep boom.

He opened his eyes.

There were many queer sounds in the old asylum. The foundations went deep beneath the earth to the caves. The inner beams were ancient and moaned like a forest of near-dead trees in the swaying howling wind that blew unhindered over Arkham Hill. The ventilation, the heating, and the electrical wiring of the place were as ancient as pea-green shag. Not to mention the moaning, sighing, laughing, crying, and other noises that the inmates sometimes caused.

But this boom, though muffled, was not an ordinary sound, though, he knew instantly as he blinked that it was the electricity.

Sure enough the dim light above him began to wink and buzz. It almost sizzled.

Then it went out.

So did the lights above every other cell.

As he lied there some moments in silence, it felt like the whole of Arkham held its breath before a plunge. Then he heard the first squeaking, screeching of a cell door, and it was not moved through the usual automation that had been installed to the doors. It was manual.

He sat up stiffly and had he a dog's ear he would have cocked it. Had he cat's eyes they would have intensely narrowed.

"All clear, boys!" shouted the careless gruff of Wesker's better half as personified in his puppet Scarface.

Then it was hard to say what came next, the alarm or the Joker's laughter. Either way, ready or not, Crane stood up and wrenched open his own door. He thought fleetingly of waiting inside and proving himself a good little patient by resisting the temptation and use that good reputation to escape at his leisure another time.

He was still too much a slave of his passions as much as he was a slave to his fears.

While some inmates raged for the guards and the staff, Crane slipped away more secretly like a rat under the fight of wolves, and he went unnoticed among the louder villains. Some of them risked getting caught before they escaped, but Crane did not look back.

The night was cold, the wind strong and howling, and the sky black. Snow crunched beneath him, and numbed his bare ankles, but he ignored it. He disappeared like a shadow in the direction of Gotham not caring for the moment to question deeply what had happened or why. That would come later— if he ever would care.

It was as if the fates were with him, encouraging him on his mission. But even if he had already changed the chemistry of his brain he still would need to get someplace warm for his body's sake. Once that was accomplished, he was free now to work on his next phase of life. Now only fear stood in his way, and he would not let it control him long enough to get in the way of what needed to be done for the insurance of his continued survival.