The north branch of the Gotham City public library was the sort of massive building where even the librarians could get lost within its walls. The labyrinth of older reference books and periodicals was one that a person couldn't navigate without a map; which is precisely why Dora liked it. The library was so large that she could easily lose herself--either figuratively or literally--in the stacks if she so chose. Shelving things in the darker, dustier parts of the city's book collection was like a miniature retreat. She could think there without fear of interruption from colleagues and all but the most scholarly of patrons.

Her co-workers didn't like the part of the library that she preferred to work in (there was talk of it being haunted--how terribly silly!) so if she were feeling particularly anti-social, she could ensconce herself in the archives and stay out of public view all day long until it was time to punch the clock.

This is not to say that she did this in order to slack off. In fact, far from it. She worked extra hard when she decided to isolate herself in the archive stacks because she felt it to be fair payment for the privacy the shelving there afforded her. She stayed there to think out everything that was going on in her life.

Before this past December--now almost six months behind her--she would think about things like her friends and family, the troubles she was having with boyfriends-- ex, current and possible--things like that.

Now, though, she spent most of her time thinking about…him.

It wasn't healthy, she knew that for a fact. This strange, pseudo-one-sided-relationship that she had formed with one of Gotham City's most fearsome (no pun intended) villains was far from healthy and even further from being sane. She realized it and accepted it. She'd become obsessed with a villain; not something a girl did every day, but it was a little too late to change it now. He couldn't be that bad, after all. He was a scientist. A scientist was a man to be admired, even though this particular scientist's methods were far from being ethically defensible.

They exchanged curt notes with the soup every other Thursday and every third Saturday--not love notes, certainly, but short, sentence long snippets of an ongoing conversation that was several months long--but that was as far as it went.

Often, during her work shelving in this abandoned part of the library, she thought out her next response to whatever he had said last, trying to come up with the wittiest reply; the sharpest; the one he would appreciate the most and bring her to a higher standing in his eyes.

It was stupid, but that's what she spent many of her work hours doing. She couldn't explain why, exactly, she wanted him to like her, but she did want him to and much of her mental effort went to composing clever responses to his notes.

It was on one such afternoon of heavy thinking, as she was carefully replacing 'A. Anderson' between 'A. Amison' and 'A. Apon' that a slender, underfed shadow emerged from the gloom, startling her into dropping the volume she'd been preparing to place back into its proper slot on the shelf.

Jonathan Crane--not the Scarecrow--in his worn tweed jacket with the patches on the sleeves stood before her, startling sky blue eyes staring at her from behind the gold wire rimmed glasses that she'd come to like so much from afar. In a movement much faster than she thought someone of his obvious ill nourishment would be able to pull off, he pulled her to him, one hand on the back of her head, the other clamped down over her mouth. She was crushed against his chest in such a way that she didn't dare bring her hands up to fight him off.

"Miss Theodore."

Dora's voice caught in her throat and came out as a little breathless wheeze. It wasn't anywhere near the droll, intelligent reply she had hoped would come out if she ever managed to be face-to-face with him again, but she figured so long as she hadn't fainted dead away, she was still pretty on the ball.

His upper lip twisted into a smirk and his eyelids dropped to half mast. "Startle you, did I?"

She stared stupidly for a moment before nodding vigorously. Probably more vigorously than was absolutely necessary because he increased the pressure on her head to stop her from nodding so hard her head popped off.

His eyes slid over her features, studying her carefully. "Startled, indeed…but not afraid."

Dora took a deep breath--a rather shallow deep breath, now that she was thinking about it--and shook her head from side to side as best she could.

"Why not?" he asked curiously, tilting his head and scrutinizing her as if she were a test subject and not a woman who had clearly fallen head over heels for him from a distance.

Dora had no answer to this question so she just looked at him, eyes wide and empty of all guile.

"You don't know?" This seemed to amuse him further, because his smirk grew and his eyes lit up in such a way that Dora's kneecaps seemed to disappear without warning. "How fascinating."

Fascinating. He thinks I'm fascinating.

"I'm the master of fear, you know," he said unnecessarily, a bit of forgivable smugness in his tone. "I am not accustomed to people not being afraid of me."

All Dora could manage was a couple of sympathetic blinks and a gentle nod of her head.

"I like it that way," he continued, his voice dropping an octave in the process. "I suppose you think it must get very lonely, don't you?"

She blinked again and the pleased look on his face increased tenfold.

"You've convinced yourself you love me, haven't you?"

She averted her eyes on instinct, color rising in her cheeks.

He chuckled. She felt it rumble through his chest, beneath where her hands had somehow situated themselves without her consent.

How did those get there?

"Well, I must say this has never happened to me before. I'm not the lovable type…"

Dora dared to glance up at him as the hand over her mouth loosened just a little.

"Then again, I suppose if the Joker can manage to garner fanatical devotion, it's not so far out of the realm of possibility that I may deserve the same."

His hand was removed in an instant and cold, thin, passionate lips clamped down over hers without warning. Dora's heart hammered away in her chest and her hands fisted in the fabric of his jacket in the realization of a six month old fantasy for a few moments before the back of her neck exploded with a sharp stab of pain. Her eyes flew open with realization as he pulled back and the world started to tilt and twist in front of her eyes.

A trick, nothing but a trick, he didn't want you to be able to scream while he injected you.

"The trouble is, my dear Miss Theodore," he said mockingly, even as her mind screamed at her and she fell to the floor at his feet, her breath coming in short, desperate pants as the drug pumping through her bloodstream making her skin crawl as though there were a thousand spiders under the uppermost layer of epidermis.

"I don't want your devotion," he sneered as she hit the floor, twitching and gasping for air. "I want your fear."

Six months, a voice in her head whispered as darkness started closing in around her, he waited six months just to lull you into a false sense of security…he's a scientist…he wanted to study you. Study your anomalous behavior...you're nothing but a lab rat. Stupid, Dora, stupid, stupid, stu--

Darkness swallowed the librarian whole.

She lay still.

The man in his worn tweed jacket stepped over her without care, as though she were nothing more than a piece of refuse at his feet.

And in Robinson Park, near a vacant park bench and a half eaten sandwich, a pigeon lay on its side, a wing outstretched toward the heavens…

Twitching.