Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any aspect of the Batman universe. I own nothing save for any original characters that I have created.
A/N: I keep saying this but I am very, very sorry it has taken me so long to update. I had some unexpected occurrences in my personal life that took time away from my fanfiction. However, I hope to now have more opportunity to write and do not expect to take such long breaks on this story again. My goal is to update at least once a week.
Enlightenment
The throbbing pain in her temples welcomed Teagan back to consciousness, her vision blurred and swimming in darkness between half-opened eyelids. She could not recall ever having experienced such a horrific dream before, and hoped to never have another like it again; its vibrancy had been terrible and all too real. She had felt every excruciating sensation the nightmare had inflicted onto her, from the screams of unbridled horror tearing from between her lips to the overwhelming suffocation as a haze of smoke filled her lungs and choked her throat.
And that face. That awful, impossibly-loathsome face that seemed to both slither and burn as it tore at her mind with its teeth and its nails, biting and clawing until there was nothing left but exposed nerves and raw fear.
A nervous giggle bubbled in her mouth, startled and relieved, and yet she was still too uneasy from the dream's events to dare let it spill from the brim of her lips. In the safety of hindsight, it was unsurprising that a nightmare had brewed within her subconscious—after all, hadn't she spent tedious semester after tedious semester examining the relationship between psychology and dreams? The usual stresses of college combined with her internship and nights spent drifting off the sleep with photocopies of Crane's research scattered across her lap had culminated into bizarre, overpowering dream that plucked the insecurities from her reality to warp into a psychological weapon.
And as embarrassing as it was to admit—even inwardly—it wasn't the first time that Crane had made in appearance in her dreams.
She sighed before immediately wincing as a fresh wave of pain rattled behind her eyes and throughout her forehead. Ugh. Clearly the headache wasn't going away by itself and would require that she get out of her tiny, cold bed and cross her tiny, cold room to reach her even-tinier, cold bathroom and retrieve a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet.
Ah, well. She probably wouldn't have been able to fall back asleep anyway.
Teagan fully opened her eyes and with horrified realization stared into the mold-covered ceiling of Arkham's basement cells.
No! No no no no no no no
A hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her screams and pinning her back onto the cell's mattress.
"Don't scream."
In the darkness Crane's voice spoke directly into her ear, so close that Teagan could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. She nodded, her eyes wide.
"If I move my hand, are you going to scream?" His voice was strangely—perhaps dangerously, she feared—calm.
Teagan shook her head quickly, her heart racing as frightened tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes.
"Good." Crane removed his hand from her mouth and fixed her with a small, good-natured smile. "Why don't you try sitting up? I've removed your restraints."
An ascertaining downwards glance at her body revealed that Crane had been truthful; the leather straps were gone, replaced with the red sting of raw chafe marks and a faint throbbing in her wrists and ankles.
The part of her that operated on rationality demanded that she scream as loud as she could, to push past Crane and run into the damp, suffocating darkness and up the slippery stone stairs until she had flung open the heavy basement door with all her might and stepped into the brightly-lit clinical safety of Arkham's ground floor.
It was the other part of her—the part that favored curiosity over survival, the part that felt a hot rush of a sensation that she could not name when Crane was near and brought a blush to her cheeks, the part of her that had a jolt of silent excitement in her stomach while walking through the hallway leading towards Crane's office and holding his notes close to her chest as if they were prized treasure—it was that part of Teagan that led her to weakly lift herself with still-trembling arms until she sat opposite of Crane, her body poised on the edge of the cell mattress and her feet dangling inches above the grime-coated floor, and gazed upwards meet the cold blue of his gaze.
Crane reached down, a crisp white handkerchief clutched in his hand, and began to gently wipe away the streaks of her dried mascara and tears; his fingers were light and soothing, more stroke than touch, and when he returned her glasses by carefully placing them on her face and brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ears Teagan felt her breath catch in her throat for reasons unrelated to fear.
"There. Isn't that better?"
"What..what happened?" Teagan whispered, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.
Crane smiled again. "Enlightenment," he replied simply, rising from his hunched position to stand above her. "Beautiful, agonizing enlightenment."
She stared at him blankly.
"I...I don't..."
"Come now, Miss James,.Even an inexperienced student like yourself should realize that most people spend their entire lifetime avoiding fear."
Crane began to pace the cell as he spoke, his voice rising from polite and conversational to a tone that bordered on excited reverence.
"They allow their fears to control them, to limit them, to crush them, simply because they're too scared to confront that which frightens them. They work at jobs they hate because they fear poverty, marry spouses that they don't love because they fear loneliness, swallow handfuls of vitamin pills and jog through Gotham Park and paint their graying hair with dye because they fear growing old—those same fears that they try oh-so-very hard to avoid are a constant in their every action. They surrender to fear and allow it to guide them through the dull intricacies of their lives because it's safe, because it's easy, and because they're too distracted and numb to ever truly notice just exactly how frightened they are."
Crane stopped in his tracks and turned to face her.
"I gave you fear in its purest form. I allowed you to experience it, to breathe it, to be consumed by it, and now there is nothing left to control you. You are enlightened. You are limitless. You are free."
Teagan looked into his eyes and remembered how they glimmered beneath the burlap face of her tormentor, blue and hungry and cruel, and shook her head sadly.
"I...I don't know what to do with this, Dr. Crane," Teagan said, her voice on the verge of cracking, "I can't...I don't know how—"
"Had I thought you not capable, Miss James, our present exchange would never have taken place."
"But why? Why me?"
Crane struggled to keep from smirking. "Why, I thought that was obvious, Miss James. It's because you're extraordinary."
Extraordinary. It was a clumsy, silly word, a term better reserved for works of fine art than a timid girl and one that he loathed to use even with insincerity, and yet the way he spoke made it sound like the highest of praise.
"No, I'm not." Teagan's voice was rushed, the sob she had been choking back now threatening to burst. "I'm a boring, unremarkable person who only got this internship in the first place because I spend all my time studying and never with family or friends, because I don't have any family or friends. I'm awkward, and I'm shy, and I..."
She paused and took a shaky breath.
"Sometimes I'm too afraid to ever take my eyes off the floor and look up because I don't want to see the expression of pity on everyone's face when they look at me. There's nothing extraordinary about me, Dr. Crane. Absolutely nothing."
She blurted out her final admittance with palatable shame and sadness, and as he watched her cry Crane felt the same bitter resentment that stirred within him whenever she reminded him of his own buried insecurities and self-reflective disappointments.
Why did she have to be so...so resigned? So feeble? So maddeningly pathetic?
She sickened him, and yet annoyance was not the only emotion she inspired; there was another feeling that he did not wish to identify, an inconvenient sort of warmth that made him uncomfortable and nervous and far too embarrassed to ever speak of or admit to possessing.
He resented her for that too.
Crane reached forward to cup a hand delicately beneath her chin, bending at the waist until his face was inches away from hers; Teagan blinked with surprise and confusion, taken aback by the gesture, yet made no attempt to move away from his grasp.
"You're extraordinary, Miss James, because you're like me," Crane whispered, and pressed his lips to hers.
Her body was stiff and anxious even as she returned his kiss, her own mouth clumsy and as inexperienced as he had expected, but when Crane slid his hand into her hair to gently tilt her head back and trail his lips down her neck he heard a quiet gasp and felt her soften beneath him. He allowed her a moment of gratification, smirking as she sighed and gripped tight handfuls of the filthy mattress, and when Crane pulled away he found her breathless and flushed pink.
Crane beamed with victorious pride, a smile Teagan mistook for affection, and looked into her awe-stricken eyes.
"Nobody will ever understand us, Miss James. We'll have to make them understand."
"Yes, sir," she whispered, and when he kissed her again Teagan James was lost forever.