Aegri Somnia

Latin- A sick man's dreams (Horace)

VERY A.U-y NOLANVERSE

Author's long-ass note: Okay okay, before you all shoot me comic-book fans, I know the Batman franchise has a long rich historical tapestry and what I do know I've recovered from Google and my comic-book obsessive friend. This will probably have holes in it due to the fact I'm not monstrously into the DC universe. The following is written with the Batman live action Nolanverse in mind with elements pulled from the comics to flesh out a history that the movies did not include or did not elaborate on. Don't shoot me fellow nerds.

HarryxDr Crane. PrisonerHarry, Lemon, Yaoi & Adult situations etc.

Now, psychology students, please don't shoot me either. Just enjoy the show.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Batman franchise.

For his second session Dr. Crane found himself studying Harry, trying to get the truth out of him. It was surprisingly difficult and for the billionth time he cursed the fact it was impossible for him to scientifically create a truth serum.

Dr. Crane decided to watch security footage of Harry's cell in his office. The camera hadn't been switched on in that room until he decided to witness one of Harry's nightly episodes himself.

Harry thrashed, sweated bullets, sleep-argued, screamed. Every reaction raised a spark of interest when Dr. Crane played it over and took a few notes, then looked through audio-transcripts.

He stopped the audio tapes and grimaced as the video of Harry sweating and thrashing stuck itself on loop. Fixing up his glasses he scowled as he watched the boy writhe. He wasn't fighting invisible enemies but it seemed like he was trying to shake off something as if invisible bugs were crawling all over him.

Dr. Crane made a brief note to question Harry about his dreams and offer methods of dream recollection.

"—I'm not a freak," he accidentally hit the audio-player button as he reached for his coffee mug and sighed as he heard Harry's repetitive screams.

Then the sound of sobbing…

"—Uncle's going to pour bleach down my eye's Dud…tell him you broke the TV…"

He heard Harry say things like that too much and definitely ticked the box of "Childhood abuse," which he found himself adding to Harry's file.

Eventually Dr. Crane turned off the audio-player, the television and popped out Harry's security tape and threw them into a locked drawer. On the left of his office desk he had a blackened bag filled with canisters of Fear Gas and a rather torn up scarecrow mask that he had contemplated on bringing with him to his session with Harry tomorrow.

With a resigned sigh he took his coat from the back of his chair and put it on, carrying his black bag and stalking into the night-time rain, leaving Arkham Asylum for his own home not far from it.

Harry stopped writhing in his comfortably padded cell and eventually found himself having an eerily peaceful sleep. His dreams were not ridden with particularly gruesome memories of Voldemort's more animalistic past-kills, nor was it of the great betrayal he felt from the wizarding world for throwing him in Azkaban.

It was just feelings, feelings of having absolutely nobody and it hurt. It made his dreams fill with less intense, though hurtful little moments of his life where he felt abandoned. For a moment his dreaming-mind had forgotten where he was, maybe it was Azkaban with those Merlin forsaken dementors. Haunters of dreams, destroyers of mind, slayers of hope. Fear, embodied within their very being.

Every ounce of air felt jolted from his lungs in shock as he felt pressure all over his body. Hands, pulling, pushing, touching, tearing like he was a piece of cloth being chewed savagely by a dog.

"—No tranquiliser! No medication, you only put him on exactly what I say so get that needle away from him this instant! All of you get back to your stations and desist from manhandling him," came a barked order that even carried to Harry's ears and dragged him into consciousness. Harry's sleepy eyes blurrily made out a bunch of burly muscle-men –Arkham guards, moving away from him.

Someone was still holding onto him though, but not tearing him apart, just holding. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes he finally saw things that were in close range, clearly.

Dr. Crane could almost curse the Arkham guards out with a tongue-lashing for their stupidity. Then again perhaps he should have left specific instruction on how Harry Potter in particular should be treated, but he was still devising methods of non-medicinal mental-support for Harry's 'episodes'.

Harry groaned and looked through his black tresses of hair as he leaned back into whatever was holding him.

It was Dr. Crane.

The psychologist was very glad he'd chosen to come into work early today, if only to catch the Arkham guards before they did some serious harm to Harry. This easily helped the patient-therapist trust, because the fact it took so long to develop was something that had been eating at Crane for a while now. He hadn't had a patient with secrets that actually pertained to his interests and it practically gnawed at him that he couldn't merely force them out. Force. His favourite method.

"Perhaps, we should start your session early," said Dr. Crane, helping Harry up to his feet in his padded cell. The straight jackets had been on and off Harry in his time in Arkham; he kept somehow tearing them apart during his episodes, a surely impossible feat, but one he had done repeatedly. So every night he thrashed around violently and freely.

"Okay doc," smiled Harry as he very quickly came to like this muggle, one who may be able to fix him, stop his nightmares and after that the stupid block would go. The block, the thing inside of his heart that felt like it was stopping his magic, and then? No more Arkham, no more wizarding world, just happiness.

They were in the interrogation room, well, the therapy-rooms really but everyone in Arkham was criminally insane, resulting in a lot of police interrogations happening there.

Hence therapy room was more often then not an interrogation room.

Though for once it was used for its intended purpose, as Harry found himself sitting on a chair with undone belt-straps to hold the mad in place behind a desk where Crane sat behind it.

The time read as 8: 30am on Dr. Crane's wrist-watch, it was early; too early…Harry hadn't even had his breakfast yet.

"It's early, I take it you haven't eaten," Dr. Crane knew the answer to that but he needed a way to start the conversation.

"Yeah," Harry didn't exactly look forward to the rather poor quality of food served by the nurses of Arkham, but he was hungry and would eat it anyway.

"I know the food here isn't very nice," said Dr. Crane casually and then began reaching into a shopping bag beside a blackened one which he had brought in with him and placed under the desk.

"-and I'd prefer it if we didn't start off the session, hungry," he brought out some food be brought on the way to work that morning and then gave Harry a forced little smile. Harry found himself looking at Crane and trying to deduce what he was actually trying to do by sharing his breakfast with him. Trust. That was it, trying to build up a trust very quickly and haphazardly to try and withdraw whatever it was he wanted from Harry. He knew it had to be something; he always was a special case.

Harry found himself quite liking the cheese sandwich he was nibbling on though.

When the quiet moment of the two eating had finished, Dr. Crane asked Harry a few standard questions and received equally illusive or frustratingly mysterious answers. He'd also asked if Harry had consumed anything in his lifetime or had something enter his bloodstream that rendered most medicines useless on him.

Dr. Crane couldn't seem to get very much out of Harry despite the fact he tried to be cooperative. Harry winced as Dr. Crane had opened his briefcase and had withdrawn a syringe.

"Is it okay, Harry, if I could take a blood sample with me to the lab? Then perhaps we can find a medicine that can help you," he lied through his teeth. He wanted to run tests on Harry's blood and find out what made him so impervious to what was administered to him. It was a private experiment for his own purposes, but Harry didn't have to know that.

A blood sample later and Harry found himself staring at a little plaster on his upper arm.

"Meanwhile I think we should have longer sessions, to treat you," said Dr. Crane "-and then perhaps we can look at the possibility of discharge,"

"You're lying," said Harry suddenly, Dr. Crane stiffened up for a moment and looked at Harry over his glasses.

"What makes you say that?"

"When you mentioned me being discharged. This place is not for the mad, it says the criminally mad, isn't my time here like a sentence?" Harry looked at Crane resembling something very close to hurt and for the sadistic doctor he found himself wondering if still liked such an expression when it adorned the face of this particular patient.

"You misunderstand Harry," he said softly, it was all an act of course, for the sake of trust but it was working. He was even able to get away with putting a calming hand on top of Harry's, for a moment Harry looked at him like he'd grown an extra-head, then prodded him to elaborate when he decided Dr. Crane wouldn't have much reason to lie about that.

"This is for the criminally mad, but if you were to be discharged you'd face a parole hearing," explained Dr. Crane.

Harry froze up and his mind flashed back to the Wizengamot of wizarding Britain.

Would it be a wizard's trial? If so, then he was forever screwed, would it be a muggle trial? Then were would he go, Hell, would he be doomed to remain in Arkham Asylum with only Dr. Crane for good company amongst the criminally insane?

"Where...would... the trial be?"

That was an odd question, Crane frowned for a moment.

"Gotham, probably, though..."

"The powers that be, seem to not want you to ever get discharged. By that I mean someone is trying to make sure you say in some form of state care, I've been looking at your datafiles and before your stint in Blackgate Penitentiary you were in a place called 'Azkaban' yet I've spent hours researching and making phone calls about it,"

"It seems like this 'Azkaban' does not exist, Harry. So tell me, does it? If so, why is it that I cannot get any information with regards to it? I know that if you can answer the first question you can answer the second. I want the truth Harry," Dr. Crane's eyes came to slow narrow as the other male began to sweat and twitch nervously in the chair.

Pause. Silence.

"Yes. Azkaban exists, that's all I can say,"

"Why?" pressed Dr. Crane, impatience beginning to bubble through.

Harry leaned in and looked around as if wizards were constantly watching and listening.

"There's a Statute of Secrecy,"

It seemed the more he got Harry to reveal, the more he didn't actually answer and the more questions there was. There were a few names of the authority involved with Harry's incarceration mentioned within his datafile. None of them had reachable phone numbers, but they did have an agency that could contact them, it seemed Crane had a lot of work if he wanted to find anything out about Harry's past.

He was also barely any closer to finding out what Harry's nightmares sometimes entailed, he had some ideas of course, from the audio-transcripts but none of the ideas were developed on and elaborated on by Harry. He seemed unwilling to talk about his home life and his past, it looked very painful for Harry, more then once Crane found his hand griping into the black bag, squeezing the canister of Fear Gas as he wondered whether to give into temptation.

"C-Could I be discharged though and have my trial in Gotham?" there was such a painful amount of hope in his voice that was riding on Crane's shoulders now.

"You are a British citizen Harry, however they handed over all authority of you to the states when you were first transferred to Blackgate. I think we can get your trial in Gotham, but let's not look forward at your discharge yet, we have to make you better first," said Dr. Crane.

Harry's eyes lit up, he knew his magic was connected to his mental and physical health, if they could fix whatever was... 'wrong' with Harry maybe he could use his magic again! The idea of whatever was stopping him suddenly going away with his nightmares all through muggle hands was something that sent his heart thumping with hope.

He could get better, he could no longer be a haunted man, he could also face freedom.

"Okay..."

"I can make you better Harry," he leered and suddenly there was a sense of foreboding that wasn't there before as he pulled out something from his blackened bag.

"But first I want to try a little something with you, now, throughout our few sessions I have used 'transparency' with you in return for your cooperation. I have hid no notes, I've even let you look at your file, which, I should not have done. But I did anyway, do you know why I've used this technique with you Harry?" Dr. Crane asked calmly.

"To...build trust?" answered back Harry hesitantly.

"Yes, and because I believe whilst you are ill, you are stable enough to understand what I tell you. I have hid nothing from you and have used absolute honesty as much as I could. That is why I let you look at your datafile when authority actually forbids this. Patients are not supposed to have access to their file," explained the psychotherapist.

"I did this to learn some things about you Harry, and I figured the sanest prisoner of Arkham would not appreciate being treated like just another..." his eyes flickered to the side as if looking at an invisible mad patient.

"-crazy," the lack of professionalism with the term made Harry feel as if he and Dr. Crane's conversation had stretched out of the bounds of a doctor-to-patient and more of a person-to-person one.

"You were right," Harry smiled at Crane, a real smile and for a moment the psychologist found himself surprised by it, he was wondering if what he was doing would shatter the quickly but solidly developed trust he'd created between himself and the patient who very much resembled a desperate child during their conversation of his previous stints in other facilities. A child who wanted to be saved, scorned by everything else and thrown into a place where he does not belong.

Dr. Crane could not guarantee a discharge or that he'd win his parole if he did get the discharge or even that it'd be a smooth trial in the states. Sure all of it seemed incredibly likely, but he would not place his guarantee on it, he didn't want to raise Harry's hopes and dash them. This said a lot, considering the man had long since abandoned most of his medical ethics.

"I would like your consent for something Harry," he said, wondering why he was even asking, he never asked. He was a psychologist turned psychopath, why was he asking? Yet he had a hand over a canister of Fear Gas and there was a feeling he could not quite pinpoint as his eyes stared into the scarecrow mask in his bag, hesitant to bring it out.

"Consent for what?" asked Harry, suddenly wary.

He was very aware that Dr. Crane had a lot of rumors surrounding him in Arkham Asylum, that he drove people mad just for his own sick studies, but he never asked when he did it. Apparently he would just unleash mind-bending torture on those he wished, leave them screaming in their cells, say they need anti-psychotics and move on. So far the doctor had done none of those things and was nothing but kind, of course Harry knew he had to be. It was a psychotherapist's job to accept a person no matter who they were or what they did and pry that person's mind open, help them, aid them.

Now he was sure at least part of it was a deceptive cover, and that he'd just chipped away at some of it.

"More insight to your nightmares, Harry, I want to see if I can make you scared. I cannot guarantee parole or discharge even if those things do seem incredibly likely, so in the case that it doesn't, I shall make your stay at Arkham easier," there was a look on Dr. Crane's face, like a mixture of pity and yet a twisted dark demented look that looked a bit out of place on his handsome features. He was used to seeing a stoic expression, smirks or small calming smiles. Harry nodded his consent anyway and watched as the demented muggle placed a withered sack over his head, like a potato sack.

Like a child slipping into his Hallo'ween mask.

Upon close inspection it looked a bit like straw was sewn into it, then it became apparent what the mask was.

A scarecrow.

"After all... Arkham is like a purgatory for the mad, but...Hell for the reasonably sane," if he could make Harry a bit more insane, who knows? It'd make his stay in Arkham Asylum easier, he'd actually belong there and no longer would he be tortured by the fact he was shoved in with the severely mad in the way that a child with a flu was suddenly dropped into a medicinal camp for lepers.

"I'm not scared at the minute Dr. Crane," said Harry quietly, who compared the image to one of a nose-less, pale, monstrous looking Voldemort which made the poor choice of mask look even worse in comparison.

Then Crane got something else out of the blackened bag, a canister, then dropped it on the desk like it was glass and it shattered open, sending smoky-gas into the air. Everything became distorted in Harry's vision, he found himself sinking into the chair for support and coughed at the gas. He looked hazily at Dr. Crane in his mask and suddenly it looked like he was staring at something a tad ugly, a real scarecrow that looked more like the animated remains of a straw-monster, maggots crawling out of it's mouth.

"I'm still not scared Dr. Crane," said Harry in a monotone, heck -he even sounded a bit bored by it though disturbed of the hallucinogenics affect.

He knew he should be scared yet he was not, he knew he should have had another biologicial reaction resulting in fear but he was not, he was only seeing the mind-altering side of the drug and very quickly after blinking it disappeared.

Suddenly it looked like Dr. Crane was wearing a completely non-terrifying poorly made scarecrow mask again.

"Everything stopped looking weird Doc," said Harry "-was that supposed to happen?" stuff shouldn't wear off that quickly.

There was a silence in the therapy room as Dr. Crane very slowly lifted the mask off of his head and put it in the bag, waving off the small remnant of Fear Gas in the air, his immaculate lightly curled-at-side combed brown hair looked ever so slightly out of place.

"No," replied Dr. Crane "-that was not supposed to happen,"

Why did he just feel regret for bringing out the Fear Gas anyway?

The Joker liked a lack of order, he considered himself an agent of chaos. The way people get antsy at the sight of things not being the way they should be and spiked an unadulterated feeling of utter fear, The Joker liked that.

He liked that a lot.

It gave him an amazing amount of power over people and not the kind of power that you could buy, or that you blackmail for, no, it was the kind that had people running for their very lives and causing a chain reaction of chaos. Like when a fire spreads, and really, that's what The Joker liked the most. When chaos spreads like fire...then he knows he's done his job.

There were times when the established order did things wrong though and sometimes that could cause more chaos then The Joker was aware they were capable of. He was pretty sure the established order "The System" had made a mistake. A lovely, juicy, potentially chaotic mistake.

Of course he had heard the rumour while he was there, before he busted out.

There was a sane man in Arkham Asylum.

Sitting in an abandoned warehouse, propping himself on a throne of boxes, he licked the side of his lip and traced outward a bit to a scar that always made it look like he was smiling. Always smiling.

"Oh! This is just too good," he practically giggled, Gotham might be getting a higher class of criminal after all, and from what he'd heard, he was in the hands of Crane.

The Scarecrow.

The insane were all well and good, but to corrupt someone from the very start...well, that was just beautiful. Art, one might say. It takes something to bring another down to his level.

That was just one thing among many though, first, he was going to make the Batman start sweating again now that he was out and free and then, he may get around to visiting Dr. Crane's patient. Who knows.

It depends if he was feeling artistic.

"Gotham is quiet," said Bruce Wayne, looking through a huge glass window that had a good view of the city within Wayne Manor. There was nobody else in the large room save for a butler walking in to catch him say it. In the young millionaire's hands was a mask, a bat mask that had not been used in a few weeks, nearly a month.

"Gotham is never quiet Master Bruce," said Alfred, standing beside him and looking out at the bustling megacity.

"I know Alfred, that's why I'm unsettled," replied Bruce with a distant look on his face, as if troubled. Arkham was missing a detainee, yet things were quiet like a calm before a storm.

A newspaper lay on a rich sofa, seemingly untouched with one glaring headline.

"The Joker Escapes Arkham!"

Truth be told Harry felt fine after being gassed.

Was he fine though?

Dr. Crane hoped the action had not pushed him, despite if that if it did, Harry would have fit in Arkham easier.

He was doing his job for once, making someone better, not just experimenting.

Harry Potter meanwhile was stuck on what he felt for the muggle therapist.

On one hand he was the only person to be completely honest with him, even when it came to his deceptive cover. On the other hand he was a muggle with no idea how much the depth of his pain was centered in magic and the magical world. The muggle could heal his mind, not in the way a mind-healer or a legilimens would forcefully either, but through a method that had been neglected by the magical world. Talking. Emotional development. Recovering.

Not magic. Science, be it mental or medicinal.

Then his magic would be all better, it had to be.

Another side of the therapist, the one described by the rumors of Arkham as a psychologist turned psychopath... was shown when he put on the mask though. Yet Harry did not fear him, even in psychopath form, the man had remained honest. Asked for his consent. Demented as the action was, he could see a distinct point where he had chipped away at some part of his therapist.

"Our session is over now," said Dr. Crane, trying to pull himself together, shoving the mask into the blackened bag.

"Not yet...please," said Harry slowly, curiosity sparked in his green eyes. The muggle therapist had now gotten his attention in such a way that he had a burning curiosity to know things about him, after all, the man knew a lot about him.

"You said you'd be 'transparent' with me, so it's only fair," Harry gave him a lop-sided smile, in fact his face even felt a bit odd whenever he smiled a bit because the muscles to do so were used so scarcely for those actions since Azkaban.

"-That I get to know you too,"

Jonathan Crane was honestly surprised.

"You're the patient," he reminded Harry.

"Just because you're at the other end of the spectrum of people that come into Arkham -the shrink, doesn't mean we can't turn the tables on their head," Harry smiled again, and Dr. Crane felt weird as he watched that smile on Harry's face. It was nice to see a non-demented grin but it was also strange, he was in Arkham, there was never legitimate smiles, just demented ones.

The smile suited Harry though, it suited his pale face and gave it life to match his bright green eyes, then Jonathan Crane violently cut off the train of thought.

Maybe he'd humor Harry Potter for a while.

"Okay, what do you want to know?"

There was a momentary pause while Harry sat in thought and stared out blankly, just trying to think of a way to make the session longer to stay in the presence of Crane a bit longer.

"What scares you? You ask me this a lot, it's only fair I ask it back,"

Crane told Harry that he had eliminated most of his fears, he disliked crows to an extent, he was attacked by them as a child. But he wasn't scared of them, he just didn't like them. There was something he feared to a degree, though not as Dr. Crane, but as The Scarecrow.

The Batman.

Harry wanted to learn a bit about Crane so it felt like they were on a level playing field, yet it seemed a lot of what he learned was what Crane thought of him and the things that he said at night.

"We'll end the session now then," Dr. Crane said eventually, exhausted along with Harry at their lengthy time together in room seven.

"I might see you sooner though, when I can get more of the truth out of you," the answer came to him when they had talked of dream recollection.

When Harry Potter was sleeping, he could try and extract the truth. It was when he was at his most vulnerable and when he was far more open albeit very disjointed about the past he would normally refuse to talk about.

He only talked about it when he screamed about it in his sleep, so Dr. Crane resolved to pay him a night time visit.

Harry looked at him oddly on the way back to his cell, not asking what Dr. Crane meant by what he said.

It became apparent to Dr. Crane that he was getting too close to Harry far too quickly. He should have stopped talking when he mentioned being teased a child, he only said it because his mind made him remember what he heard Harry scream when he listened to the audio-player in his office. Harry had been bullied. Tortured. Abused. Whatever.

As a psychotherapist, it was his job to open up with his patient and feel empathy, not sympathy or the pain they felt on the behalf of their patient would be so tremendous and it'd hinder them. He was feeling both, somewhat, even if it was to such a minor degree. But Crane didn't know what to feel when he watched Harry's expression shift as he gave a very brief over-view of his own past. Eliminating the murders and the darker stuff of course, just leaving what Harry could relate to.

This helped with the patient-doctor trust.

"Ichabod,"

"Scarecow,"

Dr. Crane refrained from scowling or reacting when Harry had repeated those words to him, the names the bullies used to call him. But he saw that Harry was murmuring them to himself then he had carefully studied him. The conversation had continued on the way to Harry's cell with the Arkham guard trailing behind.

"I don't see it," said Harry suddenly, they stopped at the door to his cell.

"See what?"

Dr. Crane was lanky, but to Harry he was merely tall, in his own eyes he thought his arms to be irregularly long since the children in his youth often pointed it out and teased him over it. Though in adult hood Harry would say he was proportionate, if only a bit thinner around the arms and legs, but not irregularly so. He was tall, slender, sleek even though broad-shouldered and generally quite handsome, at least in Harry's opinion.

"Why on Earth anyone one tease you about your looks?," with that, Harry went into his cell and left Dr. Crane standing there blinking owlishly and feeling a continued stare through the window-like viewing glass at him. Though his back was now turned to it as he began to walk to the lower floors and exit Arkham for a lunch break.

Harry definitely wasn't staring at his legs or arms anymore. Smirk.

During his lunch break, Dr. Crane found himself wondering about some of the books he had back in his home, maybe he'd bring some for Harry, he had two in mind.

The city of Gotham should not have put it's guard down though and the Batman never should either, they should wait in preparation for the darkness that always befell the city.

The Joker was feeling artistic.