Gotham City was a disease. He had the cure.
Crouched over a trio of briefcases filled with the instruments of his will, Dr. Jonathan Crane listened to the chunks of trash and broken bottles batter against the bay. The water was dirty, unclean, filled with impurity. That its surface showed the reflection of the city was, to him, very appropriate.
Dr. Crane was sat huddled in a security lookout building high above Gotham Harbor, the ocean spreading for miles beneath him. The entrance to the small structure was appropriately booby-trapped. The inside of the lookout was little more than a square with barely enough room to house one man, the only interior feature being a wooden panel built into the wall. Dr. Crane had taken to using it as a desk, and it was on this desk that the cases were laid out. He didn't care about the size of the room. In spite of how it reminded him of the constantly-shrinking white walls of his cell, Dr. Crane had more important things to concern himself with. Security and isolation took precedent over comfort.
Doctor Crane. The phrase felt foreign to him now. And yet it was still accurate: no one had ever bothered to revoke his doctorate, strike him off the list of Gotham's licensed psychologists.
He had been holed up here for almost a month now. The better part of a year had been spent flitting from decrepit hideout to decrepit hideout, avoiding detection, perfecting his craft. The last thing on his mind was being carted back to Arkham, even if it meant living off of stolen pizza and fast food. No one would suspect Jonathan Crane, distinguished doctor turned harbinger of fear and one-time terrorist mastermind, of robbing a Burger King.
Crane ran a hand through matted, unkempt hair. Flecks of grey had started to appear recently, and his chin was covered in silver stubble. His glasses were cracked, almost bent out of shape. The gavel that had served him so well during Gotham's reckoning nine months ago still adorned his makeshift desk. Of all the things he could have kept from that time of panic and destruction, of course it had to be something utterly worthless. He had heard through the grapevine that his former patient Mr. Zsasz had made off with a couple of priceless artifacts from the museum.
Crane had nothing to show for living through Gotham's occupation. Abandoning his mangy business suit after a few months, he was currently clothed in a repurposed Arkham straitjacket and cloaked in rags. He had even been forced to fashion himself a new mask of late, from whatever materials he could find, an uninviting mixture of fabrics and threads. The patchwork one Crane had grown fond of so many years ago was long-gone, torn from him by the Batman, now probably rotting away in the sewers.
The Batman...
It was not long after Crane had been forced to vacate his makeshift kingdom in the panic that the rumours began: the Batman was dead. But Crane knew something that those who whispered and wheedled did not. He knew the Batman. And Batman would not succumb to something as petty and human as death. No, he was still out there, somewhere. Hiding. They were both survivors. If Crane could survive the chaos and violence of the masked man's onslaught, so could Batman. There was no doubt in his mind. The Batman would come back. He just had to be ready.
Adjusting his glasses, the Scarecrow inched his face ever closer to his new project, blood-stained syringe in hand.