I've got two announcements before we get to the actual fic: first is for anyone reading who has written Red Eye fanfiction. Over in the Flight 1019 forums, we're going to be interviewing various authors about their fics. If you sign up, people are allowed to post questions for you for a week-long period, and you can answer them. It'll be a lot of fun, and a good way to get publicity. If you'd like to sign up, go to the Flight 1019 forum and post that you'd like to be put on the list.

I'm also signed up, so when my turn comes around, you guys can ask me any questions you like. I promise I'll answer any and all questions. However, I'm not going to give away future plot events or spoilers. Sorry!

The second announcement is this: I'm putting A Twisted Kind of Brotherhood or temporary hiatus.

Here's the situation: currently, I'm in the middle of writing two stories, this one and Did You Think You Were the First to Fight Back. As it is, I'm only three chapters away from completing Did You Think, and the chapters aren't even that long. With this story, I've got a bit more to go than that, and I really don't have a lot of time to work on both. College has left me with a lot less free time than high school did. I really don't have the ability to work on both at the same time. So I'm going to put this story on pause while I go finish Did You Think.

Please don't think that I'm giving up on this story, because I'm not. I've spent so much time and put a lot of effort into it, and I want desperately to complete it so that all those hours won't be in vain, and so you can all see the ending I've got in store. I just need this time off from it so that I can get my other story, and to get myself reenergized to write more.

The break is temporary. I promise I'm going to come back to this. We'll find out who raped Lisa, what happens in Iran, how Jackson escaped the police, the fates of all the OCs, all of it.

You've all been very patient with me, more patient than I deserve, and I'm insanely grateful. If you're upset, I can't blame you. I keep breaking my own promises about when I'm going to update and how long it'll take to finish this story. I thought this story would be done in June; obviously, that hasn't happened. Writing this has taken a lot longer than I originally anticipated.

In any case, I offer you about half of what was supposed to be the next chapter. It's not very long, but I hope you enjoy it. When I come back, I'll try to have a big, long chapter in store to make up for it.

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A Twisted Kind of Brotherhood

Insanity Can Be Comforting

The morning after the kitchen incident, Jackson awoke at about eight AM, while Jonathan remained blissfully asleep. Unsure as to what state his brother would be when he awoke, Jackson called Arkham and, doing his best Jonathan imitation, called him in sick. When he had done that, he made the fatal mistake of leaving the apartment to buy a newspaper and a coffee from the shop down the street.

When he returned, he found Jonathan setting the sink on fire.

Not bothering to ask what the hell his brother was thinking, Jackson rushed to the sink and, brusquely pushing Jonathan to the side, turned the faucet on and extinguished the flames. With a small sizzle, the blaze was gone, and a few wisps of smoke were all that remained.

Once the fire was out, Jackson, still completely baffled as to what he's stumbled upon, retrieved the fuel source for the impromptu barbecue. At the bottom of the sink lay the previous week's paper, opened to the article on Leon's death. Jackson could feel his stomach sink a little, and he turned to his brother, who was standing still and staring at him blankly.

"What…" Jackson started, not completely sure what to say. "Why did you do that?"

With perfect sincerity and innocent curiosity, Jonathan asked, "Do what?"

"Why…" Jackson tried to phrase as calmly as possible, "…did you set the newspaper on fire?"

Leaning a little, Jonathan peered at the blackened edges of the newspaper pressed between Jackson's fingers. "Oh!" he exclaimed quietly, as though surprised by what he saw. Then, wide-eyed and casual, he replied to Jackson's query, "It lied."

Jackson frowned. "What lied?"

"The paper," Jonathan stated, as thought it were the most obvious thing in the world. "It lied about Leon."

"What do you mean?"

"It said that he died." Jonathan blinked, his simple statement hanging in the air like a dead weight.

Jackson, bewildered, tried to wrap his mind around any scrap of logic he could deduce from that last sentence, but he came up blank. "What?"

"It lied. It said he died in a car crash."

"Ah." Jackson wasn't sure what to say next, not aware of how he should deal with someone who had clearly gone off the deep end.

Jonathan, furthering his explanation, continued tranquilly, "Obviously, that's not true, so I thought I should get rid of it."

"So…you decided to burn it."

"Yes." Jonathan blinked innocently at Jackson, who was vaguely hoping that this was some kind of joke. When no punchline came, he sighed in exasperation.

"Scarecrow, just…do me a favor, alright? Don't set anything else on fire, okay?"

Jonathan nodded agreeably.

"Good." Somewhat satisfied, Jackson walked a few feet to one of the cabinets, where he started pulling out bagels for a much-needed breakfast. As an afterthought, he called over his shoulder, "And don't break any more glasses, alright?"

"Whatever you say, Leon."

Jackson froze for a second. Then, without turning his head, he asked, "What did you just say?"

A few seconds of silence passed. Then, slowly and lucidly, Jonathan replied, "I said 'Whatever you say, Jackson'."

Jackson considered this for a second, then resumed his bagel retrieval without another word. Inwardly, however, he wondered just how badly Jonathan had snapped.

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The next few days went by with various periods of calm, followed by ensuing periods of strange behavior. It became something of an erratic, bizarre routine, one that Jackson desperately longed to escape.

Jackson tried to give his brother time to recover by making him stay home from work for the rest of the week. Jonathan didn't really seem to care one way or another, seeming lost and unreachable. He wasn't at all acting like his normal self, a fact that Jackson was all too aware of.

Jonathan seemed to sway from mood to mood without notice. There were times when he was calm and lucid, where he would seem to be his regular self. Yet this never lasted long, and was generally followed by turmoil. Jackson once made the mistake of mentioning Leon's name during one such period, and the result was swift and sudden. Jonathan began trembling violently, sinking to his knees and muttering, "He's dead, he's dead…" in a hoarse whisper. For the next hour, he was unreachable, murmuring those words like a hymn or a prayer.

The most common mood for Jonathan, however, was a calm, peaceful state in which he wandered the apartment as though stuck in a dream. He would speak to Jackson when spoken to, but Jackson suspected that it was really Leon that he meant to answer. And it was in this state that Jonathan would do strange, unpredictable things. He would say completely random things out of the blue, responding to some unheard query. He would walk around the apartment aimlessly for hours, never seeming to reach his desired destination. And it was in such states that he usually had his outbursts of anger.

They were as unprovoked as they were explosive. The first was when Jonathan suddenly decided to punch the bathroom mirror, causing it to shatter into tiny fragments of glass. By the time Jackson had rushed into the bathroom, Jonathan had landed another hit directly onto the damaged glass with his other hand, leaving all of his knuckles in a considerably bad state. Once he'd pulled his arm back, though, he subsided into heavy breathing and wide-eyed staring at the destroyed mirror. Jackson was left completely bewildered, not sure what had sparked this outburst or why it had subsided so quickly.

There were more outbursts. The day after the mirror incident, Jackson could remember hearing the sound of the shower running for about five seconds before hearing a THOONK noise and a crashing THUD. Upon rushing to the bathroom once more, Jackson found a fully clothed Jonathan standing there casually, the showerhead in his hand as water shot out of the wall at an alarming pace. Thankfully, turning off the water knobs ceased the rush of water, and the showerhead easily fit back onto the exposed pipe. Still, the bathroom was left looking like a swamp.

On the third day came Jonathan's simplest, yet most bizarre outburst. In the middle of the day, he placed his glasses on the floor and crushed both lenses beneath the heel of his shoe. He then put the glasses, fractured glass and all, back on his face. He wore them that way for the rest of the day.

Jackson was continually perplexed by this behavior. He would do his best to clean up the messes and monitor Jonathan as best he could, but there was no predicting what Jonathan would do next. And to top it all off, Jonathan would call him "Leon" after every incident, seeming to truly think that Jackson was the deceased man for whom he mourned.

Jackson didn't know, of course, that this had all happened before, that similar behavior had been done on his behalf, that Jonathan had experienced similar bouts of madness when he'd disappeared to make a career out of murder. If Jonathan had been in a better state, he might have bitterly recalled how fervently he denied his brother's departure, how he deluded himself into thinking his brother would always be there for him.

As it was, however, Jonathan had lost his mind.

All of the occurrences that troubled Jackson so badly were mere whimsies to Jonathan. In the aftermath of learning Leon's fate, Jonathan wandered through each day without caring or noticing what was going on around him. He could never remember what he was doing a minute ago, and he would sometimes stop and look around curiously, wondering what he was doing and where he was.

That period of time was one long, emotional rollercoaster for Jonathan. When he was feeling calm and lucid, he wouldn't even remember that Leon was dead, or that he'd spent a good deal or time mourning or in a deluded state. But he would inevitably remember, and then he was off.

If he was to acknowledge what had happened, he would start to shake as painful memories arose in his mind and as images of a wrecked car danced in his field of vision. If he were to enter a state of denial…well.

He had learned how to delude himself totally and completely when Jackson left him. Since he had honed that talent so effectively, it was inevitable that he'd use it when someone else dear to him was lost. And he did it so well. He would pretend Leon was in the apartment with him, turning his ghost into a third tenant. Without opening his mouth or moving his lips, he would "talk" to his dead lover throughout the day.

"Stop worrying. I'm right here," Leon would say with his usual grin, his face kind and kidding at the same time.

"I wasn't worried," Jonathan weakly insisted, knowing full well that his thoughts were transparent.

"Liar!" Leon laughed, his voice jaunty. Looking over at Jonathan, his face softened a little. In a measure of affection, he laid his head on Jonathan's shoulder and stared up at him with doe eyes. "You know I wouldn't leave you, right?"

"Of course."

"Good." A small smile crept onto his lips. "Can't have you getting all worked up, can I?"

It wouldn't occur to Jonathan during these deluded fantasies that he was deep in denial. That Leon wasn't there; that, as far as he was concerned, there was no Leon anymore; that Leon simply didn't exist anymore. What he had come to know as Leon was now an empty body, devoid of soul or emotion, now residing in one of the numerous six-foot holes in Gotham Cemetery.

When he did realize, that was when he broke things.

The mirror had been a surprise, even to him. He had been staring at his reflection, and he's come to focus on his eyes. Leon's had been the same icy shade as his, and for a fraction of a second, he thought his lover stood resurrected before him. When he realized that it was merely his reflection, a surge of emotion erupted within him.

By the time he noticed what his right hand had done, his left hand had gone in to finish the job.

The shower had been another knee-jerk reaction. He'd been in a daze when he turned the shower on, but the sound of the water pattering against the tile reminded him of the first night he and Leon had spent together. It reminded him of how the sound of Leon in the shower had alerted Jackson to what they'd done. The second he remembered this, Jonathan was overcome by the desire to stop the water, stop the noise, stop the memories. And how do you stop something? Get rid of the source.

The result had been a waterfall shooting out of his bathroom wall. If anything, it had amused him, as well as distracted him from his previous recollections. And the look on Jackson's face had been priceless.

The glasses were Jonathan's end solution to some quiet meditation on how to stop himself from being reminded of Leon's abrupt departure. The problem, he decided, was that no matter where he went or what he did, he would see things that reminded him of the deceased doctor. So in order to stop himself from remembering, he had to stop himself from seeing. And what allowed him to see? Well, his eyes, but he wasn't far gone enough to rake out his corneas. So he did the next best thing and shattered the lenses to his glasses. He spent the rest of the day seeing only strange blurs and bumping into walls.

Even as Jackson remained bewildered by his brother's antics, it all made perfect sense in Jonathan's mind. He was protecting himself with the same warped logic that had cushioned him from Jackson's departure. He lacked the ability to grieve, and insanity was his haven from pain.

It eluded both brothers, but there was a poetic, vicious irony to the whole situation. Jackson had tried to regain his brother's attention by murdering his lover, and the end result was the loss of Jonathan's sanity. Meanwhile, Jonathan had taken to deluding himself into thinking that Jackson was really Leon, when Jackson was the person that had destroyed Leon in the first place.

Fate's a bitch like that; she likes to bite you in the ass with her tricks.