After three days on the road - three days full of bad motel rooms, worse food, and mind-numbing stress - Crane caved. They ditched the car, and caught a flight out of North Dakota.
The house itself was larger than he remembered. Crane never actually stayed there long, usually dropping by in the middle of the night to store things away. He always perceived it as a cozy little cottage, but it really was a house. A very large, very old and run-down house. With no upkeep in the last decade other than winterizing the pipes, the neglect had settled the home into a pretty spectacular state of decay. The paint would be fixable, sure, but the roof looked unsafe to say the least. The porch looked like it might cave in at the thought of standing on it.
At that moment, neither of them could care. They could (and it seemed perfectly reasonable that they might) find a colony of raccoons living inside and find it preferable to another minute on the road.
The stairs creaked in a most unsettling way as they approached the house. Evie shuffled around on the porch while Crane dug around his bag for the keys, before spotting a plump older woman making her way toward them.
"Hello there! Can I help y'all?" She called from the sidewalk, expression barely veiling her obvious suspicion.
"Uh, nope." Crane called back, too worn to feign politeness. "Just trying to get in."
The woman started actually jogging up their pathway. "Is this your house?"
"Jesus, who just comes up on strangers like this?" Evie whispered.
"People who aren't from the city." Crane mumbled back, before calling out to the woman again. "Yes, it is"
"Oh!" She exclaimed, as she had finally reached them. The steps groaned ominously beneath her. "Well, isn't that neat. I've always been so keen to know who owned this beautiful house." She stuck out her hand, and Crane paused his key search briefly to shake it. "I'm Gladys Hopkins, I live down the road with my husband, Burt." She smiled widely, revealing a set of violently white, porcelain veneers. "Gosh, it'll be so nice to finally have people in this big ol' place."
Crane smiled weakly. "Yep, we're here. I'm Theo, this is my wife, Darcy."
Hearing "wife" from him made her feel like throwing up, but Evie smiled and waved.
The judgment showed in Gladys' weathered face. "I'd have guessed daughter." Damn, this lady wasn't about to hold any punches.
Just then, Crane finally located the key, immediately unlocking the door. "It was nice meeting you, Gladys, but we've had a very long trip and would like to get settled." He put his hand on Evie's back, shuttling her into the house.
He sighed. "This place used to be all summer homes. Guess they're retirement homes now."
Evie stepped past the entrance. It was bigger than she'd imagined, but it was...nice. The furniture was pretty dated, and it was a lot more oak than she'd thought she'd see in one place, but it was still much nicer than the outside had led her to expect.
"Well, this is...neat." She walked over to the windows, pulling the curtains aside to find they overlooked the frozen lake.
"Close those back up, would you?" Crane set down their things and had begun moving awkwardly around the room behind her, pushing furniture, stomping on the floor every few steps.
"What're you-"
He held up a hand to silence her, testing the spot her was on another time, and then knelt down. A knife was quickly produced, and he started going at the floorboards. Poor, defenseless, hardwood planks.
In no time, there was a hole just big enough for a person. Crane tossed Evie a flashlight. "Just shine this down there, please." She approached the hole as Crane began to shimmy into it, and crouched down, peering inside. It was just a lot of boxes, which he started hoisting up.
Theo Sinclair - the first alias Jonathan Crane ever created, based on a childhood fantasy - and the only alias that was never found. The first box contained his research: binders, and notebooks, and stolen file folders. All there, all they way up to his final incarceration. A smaller box contained certain specimens, containers of dried out flowers reminiscent of thistles, which he used to create the first in an ever-improving line of fear toxins. He was practically a kid, when the mysterious League had come to him with an obscure project, the flowers, and duffel stuffed with unmarked bills. The money piled and the requests got darker, testing him. Figuring out what sort of man he really was. How far was he willing to go? Could he truly help them fulfill their holy and violent task? It was the greatest journey of self-discovery Crane could have hoped to experience, and he didn't disappoint them, either. The cash bought a fall-back identity and a house, years before the involvement of Batman. The police and federal agents had did not investigate much further than the testing of the final product. They already knew the why's and where's. Crane had provided important missing links (that he had caused) in many valuable crime family cases. In short, there wasn't enough benefit to digging more.
Then came the money, in smaller, zippered bags. Hundreds of thousands of dollars stacked up around them. Evie took in the damning amount of documentation and blood money - years and years of it - having a hard time comprehending it all at once. It was deeply disturbing, to say the least. He handed her one of the pouches. "Set this aside. We'll go shopping first thing tomorrow. Food, clothes, furniture."
"Someone learned to save money like an adult." She said lamely, holding the cash in her lap, knowing neither the tact for this situation or how to mask her discomfort.
Crane didn't seem to pick up on it, though. "I was the head of a huge and grossly underfunded mental institution - I wasn't fixing to get noticed." Seeing that everything he stored was there and accounted for, he began to relax and look around. "Should've asked that woman about a repair man."
"I'm sure we'll get another chance." Evie shrugged. "Don't you think she'll be back with a pie or something? Whatever people in the country bring unsuspecting neighbors."
He looked back down at the flower container in his hands, then abruptly stood up. "On to the rest of the house." They left the gaping hole in their floor behind, into the next room. The kitchen.
It was what Evie could only describe as "denim blue", and absolutely plastered with sunflowers. Wallpaper, hanging pictures, and various tchotchkes like wind chimes and decorative plates, all featuring that one specific flower. Perhaps whoever had decorated the place wanted to make it feel like a garden, but Evie couldn't imagine they felt all this was just right.
"Wow, you've outdone yourself." Evie deadpanned. "I've never seen anything more terrifying."
"Yes it is pretty hideous." Crane nodded in agreement. He checked the fridge and stove to see if they worked. They did not.
The next room had wood paneled walls and built-ins, but was empty.
"Maybe a music room?" He suggested. "A piano by that window right there, and-"
A thought suddenly came to Evie, and she interrupted him. "Where are we sleeping?"
"There's space for you to have your own room."
"No, I mean, thanks, but - this place is kind of light on furniture. What's here is pretty...musty, you know?"
"Ah...fuck." There had been a plan to stop and grab some food and air mattresses to tide them over for a day or two, but in the excitement of being so close to their destination, Crane had forgotten. "That's a very good point. Guess it's back to town."
As much as Evie disliked the idea of sleeping on a dirty and decades old mattress or couch, she quite wished she had kept her mouth shut. She was beyond done with traveling.
Shuffling themselves back into the rental, the pair drove in slightly annoyed silence the forty-odd minutes back to the town they passed earlier, and parked in the nearly-empty lot of the first big box store off the road.
The exhaustion of their trek seemed to hit them full-force the moment they walked in. Wandering the aisles like zombies, lazily knocking whatever things into the cart that would ensure they wouldn't have to do a single, goddamn thing for the next few days. It wasn't until they pulled up to checkout Crane realized he had forgotten the one thing that forced them here in the first place - air mattresses.
"Just...wait here." He didn't want to push the cart round the store again for one more dumb item. "I'll go back, just...please."
Evie nodded groggily and leaned against the just had to stay awake long enough to get to the car.
"Evie?"
Her head jerked up before realizing that it wasn't Crane who called out her name.
"Evie!" The voice sounded sure of her identity now, but Evie didn't dare look around for the source. She felt a tap on her shoulder. "Evie, hey." Reluctantly, Evie turned and saw...someone. Brown hair, freckles, a vaguely familiar smile - but not a friend. A friend of a friend, maybe, or a friend of a friend's boyfriend, or, more likely, someone she sat next to but didn't ever actually socialize with.
She wanted to say "Darryl".
"It's me - Owen, from bio."
Ah yes, someone from class almost three years ago. Someone she certainly should have recognized immediately.
"I almost didn't recognize you without all your hair. Looks great though!" He prattled on.
"You have the wrong person." Evie was practically slurring words - even the jolt of almost being caught couldn't shake the exhaustion.
"Um, okay." He teased somewhat mockingly. " You aren't in trouble or anything, Eve. Gotham is back, you know."
That news was enough to wake her up, and she very nearly began pressing him for details. Gotham was freed? How? When? How?
"So, are you and your dad heading back?"
And that stopped her suddenly curious mind cold.
Evie had thought a lot about how she might get back home, and really, this moment could have been the closest, easiest route to freedom that would likely ever be presented to her - but at the risk of sounding cliche - at what cost?
Owen had seen Crane. Explicitly. He didn't realize who Crane was right now, but he would. Everyone would, once she admitted Crane was not, in fact, "her dad", and Owen alerted his parents, and his parents got the cops involved, and the cops looked at the store's security footage. That would get thrown into the news in the blink of an eye. Everyone would know. She wouldn't be able to say she had been sick or joined a gang or whatever other half-baked backstories she thought passable enough to tell her family and friends should she ever get the chance to resume a normal life. This pretty much ruined everything.
Leaving with Owen right this second would almost certainly mean having to tell everyone what happened. Where she had been. Who she had been with. What he had done. To the police, and her parents, probably various therapists. If Crane was caught, she would have to repeat the story to everyone in the judicial process. The press...Jesus Christ, she'd be wanted for every news special and talk show to kingdom come. They'd want to know every humiliating detail, ask why she didn't leave. Certainly there had been numerous chances for that? She hadn't been locked down in a basement, after all. If she didn't play ball they'd just wildly speculate, and every other day she'd see some rag with a front page claiming to have found a secret Scarecrow shrine on the rooftop of her apartment building.
"I'm very happy to hear Gotham is safe, but you have the wrong person." Evie sounded firmer this time around, and Owen backed up a few steps, dejected.
"Okay, sure. If you say so." He turned around, nearly knocking into Crane as he stomped away.
"Who was that?"
She quickly made up a lie. "Some guy asking for my number." Evie didn't want to push the situation. That kid wasn't going to do anything, what was the point of making it a whole deal? So they can turn around and run someplace else? No thank you. "Can we go back, now?"
"Um...yes." Crane looked at her strangely. She didn't think it was the sort of expression that conveyed he thought she was lying, but it was...different. He paid for their things and loaded the car, starting their long drive back up the mountains.
Gotham being free was certainly news to Evie. Did Crane know? She wondered what it would have meant for them if it happened when they were still in the city.
What did this mean for her now?
Suddenly, she didn't feel very tired anymore.