Violeta27 - What can I say? Crane is a sentimental killer.

The Sacred and Profane - Yikes, I would try, but the only problem is I dislike alternate universe storylines...so I kind of avoid those comics. But perhaps some day, to try something different I'll take a whack at it. I mean, I enjoy a challenge! (And a good whacking! ...that sounded a lot dirtier than it was meant to be...)

Robot521 - Yeah, Crane and Lina have a little thing going on that I did not nurture in any way, shape or form, they just put themselves there. Like Magic! O_O WITCHCRAFT! *grabs a torch*

NURSE J0Y - I'm glad to see you're caught up! ^_^ Thanks for the reviews, you have some good insights.

Oh, snap! Here comes Sweden, everybody act cool! Don't embarrass me!

Spy [leans against locker]: Oh...hey baby...ah...is that a mirror in your pocket, cuz I wanna sex you up. Wait that's not right. Dammit!

The courtship continues...

Chapter Three: Warnings & Water

Day Six

**Fries**

In his arms, protected by the thick barrier of his suit, his son squirmed.

Victor Fries, proud as any father, carted the boy around with him across the lawns of the weathered Victorian house that he had occupied, heading for the greenhouse where Victor Junior's mother was puttering around with her other children.

Securing his boy with another strong arm, Fries smiled as the child slapped an uncoordinated little hand against his chest with glee.

Using his foot to gently nudge open the greenhouse door, he pressed on.

Because of his plant aided gestation, Victor didn't take poorly to the heat and humidity like a normal child would, but seemed to actually perk up in the climate of the greenhouse, cooing and garbling loudly to all the plants he passed like someone saying 'hello' to old friends.

"Pam?" Fries called out politely, giving the woman her space and privacy as much as a man could do for a woman living in a glasshouse.

Turning the corner onto the main aisle, he caught a glimpse of the red head, seated at her workbench, calmly chatting away with his beloved Nora in her chamber.

Fries smiled. He loved that Pam acknowledged Nora, that she spoke with his wife as though she were still capable of holding a normal two-side conversation.

"Pam?" He interrupted.

The woman glanced over her shoulder, pushing her glasses up into her fiery hair. "I thought you'd never bring him back." She said, holding her arms out for her son.

With a soft chuckle, Fries handed the boy off to his mother.

"I hope Nora isn't boring you with that fish story of hers," he said.

Pam beamed, cradling her baby to her chest. "Actually I think I was boring her with a weird story of my own. You know I went to the cemetery a few days ago," she began.

That alone had Fries' attention and he quirked his head. "Cemetery?"

"Ozzie told me where they had buried Eddie, so I went to gloat a little."

Quirking a non-existent eyebrow, Fries scolded her ever so.

"I know," she said, "not my finest hour…"

"So, you danced on the poor man's grave…"

"No." She sighed. "I couldn't do it. I hate the guy, but…damn my sense of good morals."

Fries chuckled. "Of course."

"I swear there was a man following me at the cemetery."

With a wrinkled brow, Victor Fries moved in closer to the woman. "Someone was following you?"

"Well…maybe, they were there and then gone. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me."

"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

Pam shrugged. "It's no big deal, Victor. I don't think it was anything serious. Probably a shadow." She laughed then, it was dark and seductive. "I was just telling Nora that I thought at first maybe I was losing my mind completely."

"Pam, if you think you saw someone, you very well could have." He stated.

She smirked at him over VJ's head. "Calm down, Victor. It was nothing. You're just going into defence mode."

Eyeing the woman, Fries was reluctant to merely brush the thought of someone stalking her off as casually as she did, still he gave her a single nod and with a farewell to his son and his wife, turned on his heel, heading back for the house.

**Crane**

He was injecting a batch of fear gas into the little grenades that he kept them in, when a cat leapt up onto the table he was at and sniffed around.

Furrowing his brow at it, Crane blew a puff of air in it's face, causing the feline to draw back in annoyance.

When the cat refused to budge from the tabletop, Crane flailed a bony hand at it.

It drew back further, but hesitated at the edge, eyeing him with cold, yellow eyes.

Curling his middle finger up under the pad of his thumb, he directed his finger weapon at a projectile made from a spare trigger button that lay on the worn wood and let fly with all the power contained in his hand.

The button struck the cat in the neck and it leapt down with only a subtle 'fuck you' in it's gaze.

Crane smirked proudly to himself and continued with his work. He had another week before his self-appointed revenge date and he wanted to be laden down with enough gas to put the Joker into a complete and utter mental shutdown state. It wouldn't be as satisfying as taking down a fully aware man, but then again it was sheer lunacy to take on the Joker without an edge.

Sensing doom approaching (and quite possibly hearing the boots on the metal grating of the ships bowels), Crane glanced up and over at the door, waiting.

Eventually she poked her head in, cat ears creating a very familiar silhouette against the lights from the hall.

He smirked ever so and bowed his head back to his work.

For the longest time she didn't say anything, just slunk to stand across the table from him, easing into the shadows and blending in.

He could have sworn her purple eyes were so sharp, so bright that they blazed through the darkness and shone at him.

"You're dressed up tonight," he remarked. "Plans of world domination?"

"Working."

He quirked a brow. "Good for you."

"Here," she said, emerging from the dark to place a soft looking pillow on the table beside his work. "I noticed you don't have a pillow to sleep with. So I brought you one."

Poking at it with a long finger, Crane sniffed. "Really, Selina, you make this place any homier and I may begin to actually hate it."

She returned to her darkness quietly.

"You seem off tonight." He stated. "Have you returned to a life of sin with faceless men or do you just have your 'game face' on?"

Sharp eyes were the first warning he got from her. "I'm just tired, Crane."

"Then you should be at home in bed." He said.

"I thought maybe I'd come over here and sleep in your chair. It looked ever so comfy."

"Sarcasm is the sign of a weak mind." He replied.

She flashed her claws in the light and studied them. "Goodnight, Jon."

Watching the woman as she wandered back across the room and out into the hall, gave Jonathan the distinct feeling that she had finally stepped into the sixth stage of grief. Depression. He may not have held any care for the woman or her species, but he was curious.

Pushing up from his table, he moved off after her.

Catching her as she crawled into the small boat, he hopped in after her, perching on the wooden plank and tilting his head down to peer at her.

She ignored his presence, shoving off from the ship and rowing.

Crane, for the most part, studied her critically.

It was hard to do when one was wearing a mask, but he found it even harder in the near dark.

"So are you planning on sitting in your little boat until you decay, Gilligan?" She asked.

He gazed out over the water, watching the blue and orange of Gotham's lights leaping and rippling over the reflective surface of the water. "Of course not."

"When will you be ready to kill the Joker?"

The question caught his attention and he looked at her carefully. "Why do you care?"

"Because I'm going to kill him tonight." She said. "So you'd better get off your ass if you want a shot."

Crane smirked ever so. It was anger, was it? He could handle anger. "You won't kill the Joker, Selina dear. You're not that kind of personality type."

"I've killed." She argued.

"Not like that, I would imagine."

"It'd be doing Gotham a favour to kill that asshole." She said.

"I could care less about Gotham and so could you." He pointed out, observing her clenched jaw and the way she held herself. Like a coiled spring waiting to be sprung. "Leave the killing to one who has no moral restrictions, like myself."

"No offence, Doc, but I don't exactly trust your fighting abilities."

"And I don't exactly trust your mental state to make such a decision at this point in time."

Leaving the rowboat to drift aimlessly, Selina rest the oars across her lap and glowered at him. "I'm going to murder him, Crane."

"No you won't."

"Don't presume to know me, Jon."

Without a word, he leaned forward and gripped her upper arms hard, using her shock to his advantage, he half dragged, half threw her into the water, she didn't go peacefully, grabbing hold of his forearm with a sharp claw and dragging it down the length of his arm.

Blood bubbled up from the sliced flesh like an artisan well.

Floundering in the water, she seemed unable to swim properly, gripping the side of the boat desperately, threatening to tip it. Her claws left long gouges in the wood of the rowboat as she panicked in the waters.

Crane eyed her studiously, as though watching a butterfly flit about on flowers.

It was when she began to really panic and her movements became even more erratic and nonsensical that he realized that either she didn't know how to swim, she wasn't a strong swimmer, or perhaps like all cats she just didn't like the water.

Amazed by finding a weakness in her, he grinned wickedly.

As she went under for what seemed like the last time, he finally managed to pull himself from his study and moved to the side with the oar, poking it into the water for her to grab a hold.

When he felt no movement against the wooden paddle, he began to grow just a little worried. Not over her death, but that he had perhaps let his one and only friend down by killing the woman he seemed fond of.

With slight hesitation over the temperature of the water and his dislike over the acidity of the salt in the water drying out his already sensitive skin, he dove over the edge of the rowboat and into the waters in search of the Catwoman.

Mild panic set in when he found no trace of her in the dark, blurry waters, so when his lungs began to burn, he returned to the surface where the bottom of the boat was seen thanks to the lights of Gotham.

Emerging near it, he had set one hand on the edge of the rowboat, when an oar came out of nowhere. It was the last thing he saw before his vision faded to black.

**Selina**

Growling to herself, she dragged the long, thin carcass of Jonathan Crane down the rusty grating, towards his lair.

She was cold and wet and the salt water burned her eyes like a bitch. There was nothing she hated more than swimming. Beaches and boats were for lounging on in a tiny bikini soaking up sun, not for swimming.

The crazy son of a bitch had caught her off guard and she knew she had made an ass of herself in the waters of Gotham Bay.

She didn't even really care if the oar he took to the head killed him or not. He had it coming.

Dropping his corpse unceremoniously in the middle of his lair, she left him in search of some dry clothes to change into. If she had to wear his, all the better, because really fuck Crane!

Yanking off her mask, she dropped it heavily on his work table and went about digging through his things. It wasn't until she had found an old pair of well worn brown tweed trousers and a white dress shirt and changed into them, that she even worried herself with Jonathan Crane.

She approached his body to find his thin chest rising a falling and scowled. Hooking her hands under his arms, she hauled his body off the cold metal floor and propped it against a bulkhead.

The best way to get back at him for being a bastard would be to undress him and tuck him under his blanket, if only to enrage him over the invasion of his personal space, but she decided against it.

Instead she opted to leave him.

However, at the door she turned and looked back at his body. The water stuck his white dress shirt to his body and through it she could see the bandages covering the wound on his impossibly thin stomach. She bowed her head indecisively, before turning back and walking towards him.

Kneeling, she carefully began unbuttoning his shirt, hoping to God he didn't wake. It would only make things worse.

Professionally, she undressed him.

He was so thin. It was hard to imagine that he was even able to hold his scythe in battle, when she found only the barest trace of muscle on his frame. It was as though he were literally nothing but pale skin stretched over narrow bones.

Of course she had notice he was thinner now that he was in hiding then before when he was with Harley.

Struggling to get him into the only other dry outfit she could find, his Scarecrow costume, she hauled his ass over to his chair and put him in it, off the cold floor.

Realizing he might be concussed, she grabbed his medical kit and eased onto the arm of his chair to poke carefully at his head wound, cleaning it with what she could find, before bandaging it up properly.

She then tended to the wound on his arm, wrapping it up like Christmas in the gauze provided, before carefully touching his undamaged arm and shaking.

"Crane?" She whispered. When she got no response, she shook him a little harder. "Hey, Jonny-boy, up and at 'em!"

He was still.

"I hope to God you're not in a coma, it'd ruin this magical night for me." She remarked darkly, eyeing him for a strategic spot to pinch. But since man was all skin and bones, there was no excess anything to grip.

Finally she settled on setting a hand on the side of his face.

"Crane? If you don't wake up, I'm going to throw you overboard." She smirked to herself as she slapped his face gently.

Thankfully he began to stir ever so, his eyes fluttering under thin, grey lids. After a few more taps, his brow furrowed and he opened both eyes ever so. "Don't touch me." He mumbled.

She quirked a brow, but didn't stop.

A thin hand came up and weakly fought her off.

"Stop that," he complained.

"Do you feel concussed?" She asked, removing her hand.

"I feel like you whacked me upside the cranium with an oar," he shot back, eyes opening wide, peering at her with all the venom of an asp.

"Don't you dare try and tell me that you didn't deserve it." She said. "Maybe a good scrambling of your brains might work out for you in the end…"

With a slight scowl he shoved her off the chair arm.

Selina landed hard on her ass, but ignored the pain, she was just thankful that Crane wasn't dead.

Touching a hand to his wounded head, the Scarecrow sat up. "Why would you hit a man upside the head, you nasty little thing?"

She stood up at well. "Why would you push someone overboard, you gigantic ass?"

A cold, cruel smile twisted the man's features. "You're afraid of water."

"I think that oar knocked you stupid." She stated.

Wincing, Crane's smile died on his lips and he touched his hand to his head again.

Selina carefully approached him, knowing his propensity for sudden retaliation. "Do you feel like you're going to throw up?"

"No. I'm not concussed." He snapped.

"Here, I have a penlight among my gear," she said, moving towards her wet costume. "I can check your reaction to the light."

Crane quirked a brow. "Well, aren't you a clever little stray."

Fumbling for the penlight, she motioned for him to sit back in his chair.

Reluctantly he did so, grumbling the entire time as she perched on the arm once more to peer down at him, flashing the light into his eye.

"Your pupil's are reacting appropriately, follow the light." She said.

He did so, pale, crystalline blue eyes moving back and forth with the penlight.

"I think you'll be fine." She stated.

"Of course," he said, "you're the doctor."

Crane dropped his gaze and for a moment Selina could have sworn he was looking at her tits. Only when she followed his gaze that she remembered she was wearing his clothes and that his button up shirt revealed the cat pendant Eddie had given her. She closed the shirt quickly.

He frowned deeply, turning his eyes on his own lap.

"You undressed and redressed me, didn't you?"

"You were soaking wet." She growled, grabbing the blanket she had brought and throwing it over him.

"I would consider that gross invasion of my privacy a sexual assault of sorts." He stated.

"Oh yeah, I get off on seeing sociopaths in the buff."

"You're a filthy creature." He snarled.

"I'm sorry, did you want me to leave you cold and wet on the metal grating?"

"I would prefer that, yes."

"Fine, next time I won't do you any favours."

"Good. Keep your dirty claws to yourself."

"Jesus, you're an asshole." She scoffed, slinking towards the door. "I'll bring your rags back tomorrow."

"Selina!" He called after her.

She turned at the door, her soaking costume in hand. To find him looking at her without any of his previous malice.

"Don't go after the Joker alone." He said. "It'll take two of us to take him out."

Selina hide her victorious smirk behind a curtain of wet hair. "You wouldn't be thinking of using this poor little kitty as bait, would you, Jon?"

"It would make more sense to have you by my side than at my feet as an offering, wouldn't it?" He inquired.

"I would say so."

"Then why would I want to risk angering you when I can have you as back-up?"

"Give me a few days heads up when you decide to move." She replied, already heading down the hall, not giving him a chance to have the last word.

Her hands were travelling over his bare chest, putting into memory every dip and hollow of his lean muscles, memorizing the smooth expanse of his torso idly.

They were about to make love, or they just had, she wasn't sure. But they were on the sofa in his apartment, Eddie slouched low among the cushions, Selina straddling him.

Beneath her he chuckled and playfully tugged her hair.

"Where's my freckle, kitten?" He cooed.

She bit her bottom lip. "Behave yourself and you might see it again."

A gloved hand brushed her long, dark hair off her shoulder, sliding down to cup her breast, a thumb drawing over the sensitive nipple. "You put out so much body heat," he observed, still playing patiently with her breast, experimenting with it, testing her reactions to his touch. "Like a little space heater."

Selina felt a deep rumbling coming from her chest, a purr that only Eddie could draw out of her. Since they fell into a comfortable routine, his hands had become steady and patient on her body, moving over her flesh easily, testing new sensations all across her body. It would be a caress here, a sharp pinch there or sometimes he would deny her a touch that forced her to react.

"Let's play a game." He whispered. "If I can get you to say my name, you show me the freckle."

"And if I don't say your name, what do I win?"

"What do you want?"

"Let me use my claws a little." She said.

Eddie chuckled. "Alright. It's a deal." With that he bowed his head to her breast and nipped hard at the side of it.

"Jesus, Eddie!" She gasped in shock. "That's a delicate area!"

He sat up with a sly grin. "That was too easy!"

Despite losing, she laughed softly at him, hand still rubbing the spot he assaulted. "You cheated."

"I'm sorry, did we lay down specific rules with which to adhere?"

She pursed her lips.

"Where's my prize, kitten?"

Sitting up higher on her knees, she hooked a thumb into the right side of the waistband on her underwear and tugged them down, down far enough that she nearly put herself on wicked display for him.

There, in the tender area between her Pubis Mons and the joint where her thigh and hip met was that one, dark freckle among the sea of her pale, creamy flesh that Eddie had come to adore.

Touching reverent fingers to the area, Eddie smirked. "You should tattoo a tiny crook over that freckle and make it into a mark worth obsessing over."

She quirked a brow at him. "I could, but then if I tattoo a question mark on my body everyone would think I belonged to you."

Thin lips created an 'O', as Eddie reacted. "Or they'd think you have a very puzzled patch of flesh."

"Nobody likes a smart ass, Ed." She replied.

Violet eyes opened, heavy lidded with sleep, to the sound of sirens wailing under Selina's open bedroom window. She was dreaming. It was just another night in Gotham and she was dreaming of Eddie. But he was still dead. No dream would ever change that.

Day Seven

**Crane**

"You bring vermin like a plague brings death."

Across the room, beating the hell out of an old mattress wrapped around a support beam, Selina Kyle paused to wipe the sweat out of her eyes with the back of a bloodied, bandaged hand.

Crane smirked darkly at his work.

"What?" She demanded.

"The cats, my child." He stated, pointing a pen at the newest one currently offending him by tracking the very pen he was using to point at it with.

She ignored him, bending her toned frame to keep limber while she reached for the bottle of water on the grating at her feet.

Since he wasn't a saint and he was completely human, he found himself eyeing the view without any care of propriety. She knew what she was wearing and she damned well knew which direction her ass was facing when she decided to bend over.

"I didn't put it in the air for your benefit, Jon." She growled, standing up with her water. Glancing over her shoulder, she glared hard at him with sharp purple eyes over her bottle as she drank.

Crane quirked a brow. "I'm surprised your ass is still firm looking, considering you must be at least forty." He remarked, it was an insult that he tossed out, hoping she'd forget he had been looking at her ass to begin with by taking the bait and changing subjects.

Selina calmly set her water bottle down, mindful of the direction she bent when she did so. "You know, Crane, I've seen you in a fight, you might want to stop ogling me and get over here to get in a few practice hits too." She stated.

"A smart fighter should never have to lay a hit," he stated, returning to his chemical theory. He was hoping to have a new version of his fear gas perfected before the upcoming battle.

Selina chuckled. "You know it never works out that way when push comes to shove."

"That's what my scythe is for." He grumbled.

"And when that fails?" She demanded, thrusting her foot at the mattress, whipping around to give it another good kick.

"That's what you're for."

She took one last swing at the poor mattress, before spinning on him. "And if I fail?"

"You won't." He stated.

"You seem to be thinking highly of me today," she said.

"Hn?' He looked up from his work. "I'm sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. What were we talking about?"

"Maybe I should put my ass back in the air, that seemed to get your full attention." She stated.

Crane scowled. "Go back to making your bed."

"Actually, I should probably go home. I want to get some rest tonight." She stated, unwrapping the bandages from around her hands.

"I don't care what you do, just keep your mouth shut while you're doing it."

Dropping the wrappings where she stood, Selina scoffed. "Always charming, Crane."

"Yes, that's the result of a proper education for you."

"See you tomorrow." She said.

He flailed his hand in the direction of her voice.

After he was sure it was safe, he moved across the room to the porthole to watch her shove off in the little rowboat.

As he turned back, out of the corner of his eye, Crane caught a shadow slip out the door.

Worried about it being someone who shouldn't be there, Crane leapt back to his table, grasped his scythe and raced out after his guest.

Up above there was nothing. No sign of anyone.

Still, he gave the ship a once over, stalking what was no doubt just his imagination, but still being cautious.

Back in his lair, Crane secured the heavy steel door behind him to be safe and moved back to his table to finish his work for the night. He needed sleep. That was all. He was seeing things because his mind wasn't working properly.

"I can't say I approve," a clear, well spoken tone broke through the night coming from a dark corner of his home.

Crane's hand went immediately to one of his gas grenades.

"Oh, don't, please. I don't feel much like having a full on fear attack right now."

"Who's there?" He demanded, raising the weapon in his hand.

"I've been dead so long you can't even remember my voice? Now that's salt in the wound, Jonathan."

Then, as though he were only taking a stroll up top and had come back casual as you please, the Riddler emerged from the shadows in all his costumed splendour. Question marks both on the bowler and the tie, domino mask firmly in place.

Crane stood up, on guard and in shock. "Edward…am I hallucinating?" Once (though he never admitted it to anyone) Jonathan had gassed himself while setting a grenade and had a three hour-long session with his own sanity. A dead Riddler returning could be the result of some such incident, couldn't it?

"Yes, Jonathan, I'm the Ghost of Marley and you've been a very wicked boy, Ichabod." The Riddler exclaimed, sweeping his arms out. Strapped to his right arm was a strange device.

Crane scowled. If this wasn't a hallucination, dead Riddler was about to be put right back in the grave, because no one called him Ichabod anymore…

"Don't clench your hands, Jonathan, I'll take it as a challenge. I called you Ichabod so you wouldn't think me a mere copycat." Edward said, resting his hands heavily on the table between them. "How many others in Gotham's underworld know your pet name?"

"Copycat?"

"Who wouldn't want to replace me as the most brilliant of all villains? It has been done before."

Eyeing the shape before him, tall, lean, dressed in a clean, perfect three piece oxford suit, Crane was suddenly quite sure he was facing his old friend. "So you're alive, hn?"

"The devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he didn't exist, the Riddler's greatest trick is convincing Gotham he's dead." Edward replied with a broad grin.

"And so…?"

"And so, you need to do two things for me, Jonathan."

"Sounds an awful lot like a favour."

"Well, one is a favour, the other will be a very real threat." Edward replied casually.

"If it's about-"

"It is about Selina's ass, yes."

Crane smirked ever so. "Is that the threat or the favour."

"The favour is that you discourage her from getting involved in this death wish of yours." The Riddler said, blue eyes flashing from behind his domino mask, cane coming to rest pointedly on the table between them. "The threat is something along the lines - blah, blah, don't look at her ass again, blah."

"Can you blame me, though?" Crane inquired, glancing down at his array of grenades on the table before him.

Touching a hand to his chin, Edward smirked. "No, no I can't."

"So, where have you been keeping yourself, Edward?" Jonathan turned to his friend, only to find him gone.

The room around him was empty and silent.

Turning around, Crane looked about the room. "Edward?"

He was alone again. And once more, he wasn't entirely sure he hadn't been hallucinating the return of the Riddler. That was all. His damned mind conjured up some form of hallucination to deal with the mild guilt it felt over his eyes roaming Selina's rear end. Yes, it wasn't his insane mind or an actual ghost, but his sleepless mind playing tricks on him.