The plan has been set. Once Crane creates enough toxin, he'll call his dearest 'partner', and set up how they're going to gas the city.
Until that day comes, back to producing said potent fear toxin. Back to testing it. When Crane isn't in his office, which nobody is allowed in except for himself, he's walking around and he's not Crane, but Scarecrow, and he's a bitch to everybody. Does nothing but cut people down with cruel comments when he's in the off good mood, or make sure to be a real bastard to every living thing if he's in a bad mood.
Unfortunately enough, the closest living thing at hand is usually the easy-to-abuse Angelface. She wanders around in her own little Wonderland, dreamily, in her white dress that's beyond dirty and ragged; the thing needs to be washed thoroughly, but she doesn't have any other clothes and Crane sure isn't going to spend their precious (and low) amount of money on a shopping spree. So she remains in her one dress, her one set of underclothes, and tries to wash what she can. The Narrows apartment that they're using as a base is abandoned, and has no electricity, water, and heat, any amenities at all, and so her hair is oily and tangled and she can't remember the last time she took a nice, scalding hot bath.
She wanders around the apartment, the other nearby apartments, equally abandoned, and does what she can to pass the time. Crane is not a benevolent boss, not at all; his moods usually stay even, tempered, but when he's Scarecrow, he has extreme mood swings at little to no notice. Crane keeps Angelface away from him, because he doesn't want her to hover, which she does. Scarecrow sometimes seeks her out just to see if he can ruin her day to lighten his own mood. He never hits her, because he doesn't have to; that's not his game, that's Joker's. He just likes to drop her self-esteem to absolute zero, make her feel useless, treat her like a dog.
It's a great mood brightener.
Angelface sits on her couch, the ratted old thing in the living room of their base, reading an equally ratted copy of a good book. She's reread it three times. The thugs are either in the back or not here at all, and she has the living room to herself. The only light in the deeply shadowed room is the window at her back, where orange-tinted lamplight pours in and casts a sickish tone over her skin. The room is drenched in pure silence, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of engines so far away. A good deal of people moved away from the Narrows after Scarecrow's reign of terror; the only people still here are drug dealers, prostitutes, junkies, or people that just can't afford to leave.
With her fake blue eyes (her vision is starting to go; Crane was able to get possession of her old contact prescription and have it refilled for her, which was probably her Christmas present if he's even going to give her one, which he's not) focused on the words on the page, her knees pulled up to her chest and her book sitting on them, unabashedly (and unknowingly) flashing her panties at the opposite wall, as her white dress is a girlish little thing that only goes to her knees, she doesn't even hear the faint footsteps coming steadily in her direction, so focused on her book is she. And she fails to notice until he strides out of the hallway and into the room, his once-nice business suit now dirty and worn, blue eyes flashing and short, stylish black hair needing a trim and also in disarray, as if he's been running his hand through it over and over again. She lets her book fall flat against her lap, staring at him. He looks so tired.
"Dr. Crane?" She asks, tentatively, careful in what inflection she has in her tone of voice, and he casts her a stare that freezes her blood. It's so intense, so…blank. It's as if he's surprised to see her there. He has his glasses off; they're held limply in his right hand by the silver frames, and for a moment, he has an actual expression on his face aside from apathy. He looks so exhausted, so worn ragged.
Crane doesn't answer her vocally when she says his name, only stares at her a moment longer. He's been hit with another low point; depression comes now and then, it's just something he's become accustomed to. Lonely nights with nothing but reminders of what esteem you once held, how high you once stood; those things will do that to you. He watches her stare a moment longer, before setting down her copy of American Psycho and standing up, watching him. He notices that her eyes aren't glazed and blank anymore; they're focused, but not cold. When she takes steps towards him, bare-footed, as she doesn't wear shoes when they're at the base, he takes a step or two backwards. He doesn't want her to try and fix it, because it'll only make him feel worse.
"Crane," She says it quietly now, and for some reason, it sounds more focused than her normal speaking is. He doesn't like how clear her eyes are, for once. They're normally hazy, clouded by her unbalanced nature. When she walks towards him, tentatively, he takes a step back to leave; he doesn't need her, because he's never needed anyone. More importantly, he doesn't want her pity.
When she stops him by gripping the lapels of his suit, he sees the worried look in her eyes and feels disgust building in his chest. She pities him? The woman with a Glasgow smile to her ears pities him? He turns his head to break eye contact, now staring down the pitch-black hallway that leads back to his study, the little room he can isolate himself in and converse with the insidious voice in his mind.
Are you afraid, Jonny boy?
The dark question echoes in his mind, and he shoves away the black whispers. Why did he even come out here? He wanted fresh air, though none of the air in the Narrows is what you could call 'fresh'.
"Jonathan," She says, urgently, and he feels her warm hands on his cheeks, gently turning his head so that he is looking at her again. Her eyes are soft, and she speaks with a firm but not unkind tone. Why she seems so lucid right now, Crane doesn't know, but he's more focused on the fact that she's touching him without his permission. He doesn't speak, just raises his arms and takes hold of her wrists, one in each hand, and begins to pry them off of his face, wanting to feel the cool wintry night air on his face and not her warm hands. She won't let him push her away that easily, and merely leans up, putting them face-to-face. She focuses on his eyes, and he stares at her scars. There's nothing romantic about their position, though it may look otherwise; Crane is disgusted by her apparent attempts at showing him kindness and is resisting the urge to do something violent, as Scarecrow is seeming to urge him to do, and Angelface is a highly unstable woman that's feebly trying to reach out to a man that she's devoted to only because of his misanthropy.
"Come on, Dr. Crane," she sighs, letting go of his face and instead closing her hand around his wrist, pulling him gently towards the kitchen. "There's a bottle of something alcoholic with our names on it."
He should pull away from her. He should probably slap her for trying to order him around, and then walk off to lock himself away in his study while Angelface sits out her, hand on her reddening cheek, chewing on her lower lip sorrowfully. But he doesn't. He just doesn't care tonight. And so he lets her pull him to the kitchen, and he sits down to watch her fuss around the kitchen and sit across from him at the table, finally, putting a bottle of whiskey in the center of this table, between them. Their eyes meet and she smiles slightly, nervously, and watches him stare holes through her.
After a long moment of silence, Crane reaches for the bottle.
By daybreak, the thugs under Crane's hire come back to check on him. He normally calls them when he wants them there, and he hasn't today. One in particular is shoved up ahead, and when he walks into the apartment, fearing the worst (a visit from the Batman and a double-cross by Joker come to mind), he sees nothing to indicate thus. And so he and the others do what they're paid to do; they get to work in creating the toxin.
Later, Scarecrow and Angelface reappear, as the thugs get back to work, and though neither will speak of what happened, they both reek of whiskey and sex. Oh, and they have massive hangovers; Scarecrow is a dozen times more vicious than normal, and instead of being her normal harmless childlike self, Angelface is a total bitch, screaming at the odd person that happens to be a little too loud next to her, and spends all day on her ratty couch, her head under a pillow and unresponsive.
Crane-slash-Scarecrow is/are pissed about it happening, or even letting her talk them into getting drunk in the first place. Crane's pride is shot; he was sure that he had more self-control than that. Letting a woman get him drunk and in the sack; it's almost laughable. He's the one that manipulates people; not the one that lets people get him drunk and do whatever they'd like with him. How long has it been since he's gotten drunk, anyway? He drinks...well, drank socially, usually only when meeting with important people, back in his Arkham days. Never drank just to get drunk. The throbbing headache reminds him why that was such a good idea.
Scarecrow is pissed because he has a hangover. He's perfectly fine with the sex; enjoyed it, himself, even if Crane won't admit that he did. The hangover sucks, though.
I told you that you needed to get laid, and when you do, you're all pissy. Can't fucking please some people.
'Shut up, Scarecrow.'
As Crane fumes silently, Angelface is equally pissy. Getting drunk with Crane was a horrible idea; why did she even think of it? Not to mention that she can't remember much of the night; not that she really wants to, anyway. She just thought that the man looked so despondent last night, so alone, and she couldn't help but reach out to him.
The night wasn't supposed to end in Crane's 'study', which turns out to be a little room with adjoining bathroom all to himself. It really wasn't supposed to end in his bed, or maybe on his floor, which is where Angelface woke up. Anyway, the only memory she has of it is being cold and incredibly hot at the same time, long pianist's fingers gliding up her back and then twisting in her hair to pull, roughly, her nails digging into and clawing down his back, her teeth sunk into his bare shoulder and the sensation of burlap scratching her face and neck.
Now, all she has is a headache and some embarrassing memories. Crane may be taking his hangover in stride, but Angelface has had to slip away, though 'stagger wildly' would be a better descriptor, to vomit outside a few times, since the bathroom's toilet doesn't work. She's in a horrific mood, screams at people that slight her in some small or imagined way and then lays down on the couch and hides her head. How long has it been since she's been drunk? It'd have to be way back, when she still had a first and last name. She can't even recall the last time she was really drunk. 'Sleep with your insane boss' sort of drunk.
By the time the night rolls around, the two are still ignoring one another almost completely, and the amount of toxin they need is almost done. A silent agreement passes between them; 'You don't talk, I won't either and it never, ever happened'.
So it never did. According to the two of them, anyway. Though Angelface's scalp still aches from having her hair yanked on and Crane's wincing from the scratches down his back.
The two of them still aren't talking with one another. Either it's embarrassment, pride, or a combination of the two, but either way, they're still not speaking.
Angelface, three days after waking up tangled with Crane on his floor (apparently, when he's drunk he doesn't automatically wake up at six AM like every other day) and the entire hellstorm that came afterwards, is sleeping on her couch in the living room. She's back to her ditzy, spacey self, a copy of A Clockwork Orange laying on the floor where she fell asleep and dropped it. She found some books on a shelf in one of the nearby abandoned apartments (though Angelface herself wasn't paying much attention to whether it was actually abandoned or not) and brought some of them back to keep herself occupied. Crane went back to his study, though he's probably not asleep since the house is very quiet and it's easy to hear his pacing footsteps on the wood flooring. The hired thugs are in one of the nearby abandoned apartments that Angelface has broken into and scoped out. In any case, it's very quiet, almost silent except for the faraway noises of Gotham.
There's creaking. Soft footsteps. Angelface opens her eyes, waking from her light doze, and then glances at the windows outside the apartment. Though there are ratty curtains covering them, she can see the outlines of people, and they're not the hired thugs, because the hired thugs (1) Don't come at night, (2) Don't need to sneak around, and (3) don't tote heavy weaponry.
Soft speaking; she can hear them talking, quietly. "Is the other team around back, in case they try to run out the back door?" One voice asks, lowly, and Angelface knows instantly who it is. She's already slipping to the floor, moving as slowly towards the hallway as possible.
"Yeah. Let's go in on three." A second voice suggests, and Angelface moves quicker.
"One." She's heading for the kitchen instead of the hallway now, knowing that if she runs back there then they'll be pidgeonholed into the rear of the house. Crane will hear when they bust in, if he doesn't already know they're here and have a plan.
"Two." She stops crawling and moves to her feet, sprinting on the balls of her feet towards the kitchen doorway.
"Three!" The door slams open right as her blond hair disappears through the doorway, and she can hear people rushing into the living room. "On the ground!" A man yells at her back, but there's no answer. When they make a move for the kitchen, weapons held high, gunshots ring out and they dodge for cover, as Angelface crouches near a hole in the wall that's been carved there especially for this purpose and fires her handgun at them. Though her shots aren't that accurate, since she's no good with a handgun, they're accurate enough to keep the men from moving forward. She sees that they're police officers, too, so one of their backstabbing henchmen must have tipped the cops off.
"Drop your weapon and come out with your hands on your head!" One of them yells to her, and is answered with a gunshot in his direction. They're shooting back at her now, and the firefight goes on for a minute or two longer before she snaps her last clip into the gun and aims it at them again. There's a loud metallic noise, a crack, as someone with exceptional aim shoots the gun out of her hand. She snaps her hand back into her little barricade, and she stares out the hole at the policemen as they try to decide whether or not to risk her having another weapon back there. She doesn't. After a half minute, they begin to move towards her hiding spot in the kitchen, intent on arresting her. Before they can, however, something rolls out of the hallway and into the living room.
"Is that...a can?" One of the cops asks, confused, before the 'can' explodes in a cloud of white smoke, the gas pouring out rapidly and right into the cops' direction. Angelface shoots up out of her hiding spot and dashes towards the hallway, where Scarecrow is waiting for her, and the two of them rush down the hallway as they begin to hear the cops behind them either begin to yell or scream or something like that. A couple of them seem to have evaded the blast, though, and rush down the hallway after them, firing at them as they give chase.
"In here!" Scarecrow grabs Angelface's wrist and drags her down into his study, locking the door behind him, though it's a weak door and it'll probably come open with a good kick or two anyway. He drags her to a window near the back of the room, while Angelface dashes off to the corner of the room and hunts for something. She comes back a moment later, in time to see Scarecrow, apparently in a panic from the sound of the cops twisting the handle to the door, kicks the window out; it's cheap, cheap glass, and cracks with a couple blows. He's wincing, though, when he sets his foot back down, and for a moment, his female accomplice wonders if he's broken something from kicking out a window. He'd better not have.
The door flies open behind them and the two criminals hurl themselves at the window, and the glass breaks with the force of them both throwing their weight against it. They are also, unfortunately, on the second floor of a Narrows apartment, though the bottom floor is just the thug apartment building and the top is where the work gets done; as soon as the window breaks, they slide down the slanted roofing and towards a two-story drop to the grimy concrete below. Angelface tries to get a grip on anything, but the tiles she grabs break off in her hands, and she rolls helplessly towards the edge of the roof. When she drops off the edge and begins to fall, she looks up to see Scarecrow sliding down after her, though instead of rolling uselessly, he's in a sitting position with one leg held straight out for balance and the other bent at the knee, and when he gets to the edge of the roof, he grabs what he can of her; a fistful of her thick hair. She yelps in pain, as Scarecrow hooks his foot into the gutter to keep himself from rolling off with her, using it as support for his weight.
"Grab onto me, dammit!" Scarecrow snaps, the voice changer making it into a terrifying snarl, but Angelface doesn't mind it as she reaches up and closes her hand around his free one, and he lets go of her hair. There's more gunfire directed towards them; a bullet ricochets off of the brick wall in front of Scarecrow, as if the firer had been aiming at his head, and they both know that those two or so cops that escaped the gas are trying to gun them down. Another bullet ricochets off of the tiling beside him and Scarecrow loses his balance, and both he and Angelface go hurtling for the concrete. She lands on top of him, and after a second of not remembering where she was or what was happening, she recovers enough to stand up, shakily, since Crane took all of the impact.
She remembers this and instantly shoots to his side, pulling the mask up enough to see that he's still alive and still looking around, though he's coughing like he's had the air knocked out of him. Without time to spare, she helps him to his feet and puts his arm around her shoulder, and the two of them hurry away from the apartment as red and blue lights flash along the alley at their heels. Crane's mask is still hanging half off his face; he's still wheezing, trying to catch his breath, and his support, Angelface, is limping. That hitch in her hip is hurting her now, more than ever, and she's slowing down. The two of them duck down another alley and make a mad dash for the end of it, as they hear the noise of the cops dying down behind them, growing more distant by the moment.
They're almost at the end of the alleyway when a lone cop steps out in front of them, leveling his gun at Angelface's head, and after a moment, ignoring her and aiming for Scarecrow instead, before aiming back at her briefly. "Get back, I want this freak, not you." He tells her, gruffly. When she doesn't move he waves the gun threateningly. "Get on! I'll shoot you down if you don't get on out of here!"
Scarecrow feels her support leave him, and hears her walk away. Though he's still breathing heavily, he's coherent enough to know that she's abandoning him to save her own skin. Worthless.
This is why it's just you and me, Jonny boy, Scarecrow whispers inside Crane's mind, as he watches the policeman smirk and level the gun, aiming between his eyes. Don't trust anybody else. They're worms; they'll stab you in the back. You're better than them. We're better than them.
"Well," the cop says, smirking, as he presses on the trigger lightly and prepares to pull it and end Crane's life. "I guess it's goodnight, Crane."
"Guessed wrong."
The cop turns around just in time to see Angelface standing behind him, expressionless, holding out a small metal canister right in his face. He has enough time to blink before she sprays him with a face full of Crane's fear toxin, and begin hacking and coughing as she shoves him to the ground, grabbing his police-issued gun and running to Scarecrow, beginning to pull him past the cop and into a run so that they can disappear into the Narrows. He brushes her off and walks ahead of her, briskly, tugging his mask back down over his face again as he walks through the dissipating cloud of gas, hearing Angelface at his heels, like a faithful dog. The next thing he knows, he's being shoved into the wall as a gun fires, and whips around to see Angelface holding a smoking gun, the hallucinating cop dead on the concrete from a bullet wound to the head. She turns around, closing her eyes and shoving the gun into the waistband of his pants as she walks past him, limping still.
"He tried to shoot you in the back." She mutters, walking alongside him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and Scarecrow takes her by the upper arm and walks with her to speed her up, forcing her to walk faster.
"I assumed. Walk faster; this 'escape' needs to go off without a hitch, including the one in your hip."
They eventually do find a new place to hide out; they break into an apartment in another complex, and it seems like the last people that lived there only recently left, seeing as the water and electricity and heat still work. Angelface marches into the bathroom and then locks the door, doing something in there that Crane isn't paying attention to. He drops his Scarecrow mask on a small end table near the one bed, before sitting down on this dirty bed and sighing. He retrieves his glasses from his pocket and unfolds them, putting them back on his face. He sighs, exhausted, and runs his hand through his hair; a habit he's developed in times of stress lately, and one that he plans to break himself of sooner or later.
About an hour after they arrive, time in which Crane has been spending making sure that the mattress and floor don't have used needles there to stick them with. He's found three, but he's sure that there aren't any others. And now, he wants a shower.
"Open the door," He tells Angelface through the door, knocking on it. He still doesn't want to talk to her, mainly because he remembers more about their tryst than she does and whenever he looks at her face, he remembers the sensation of her nails in his back, but he will have to talk to her now and then. "Angel, are you listening?"
When he listens closely, he can hear pained whimpering on the other side of the door. Curiously, he pushes on the door, until the flimsy wood gives way and he sees what she's doing. The white dress she wears constantly is stained in blood and she's pulled it off and standing in her underwear in front of the mirror, holding the dress against her wound in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. She looks at him with wide eyes when he forces the door and sees her injured, and tries to cover her exposed chest with the dress when he walks in.
"Sorry," she wheezes, pained, "Just a nick."
Crane, not amused, walks into the bathroom and rips the dress out of her hands, examining the wound as she squeals in surprise and covers her chest, also covering the wound with her arm. Crane grips her wrists and pries them away from her chest, ignoring her nudity and focusing on the bullet wound at the edge of her chest, between the last two ribs. It doesn't look like it's hit any major organs, he notes, and when she tries to get her wrists free of his grip, he just pins her against the wall and holds her there anyway.
"Stop squirming. It isn't as if I haven't seen you naked before." He snaps, coldly, and she stops squirming and glares. He ignores this, coolly, and sees that the bullet apparently isn't in her either, and that the bullet wound seems quite superficial. He looks under the counter and finds a towel that the last residents abandoned, shakes it out for spiders or needles or anything else that might be on it, and then hands it to her, before digging around the bathroom and finding a needle and thread. "Do you know how to sew?"
"Can't you do it?"
Crane just stares at her, as if she were a moron. "I'm a psychologist, not a surgeon. I thought you might know the difference." He deadpans, and she drops the towel shamelessly and takes the needle and thread away from him, running the needle under hot water.
"Fine, smartass. I'll do it. So get out." She mutters, and then watches him leave in her peripheral vision. A moment after she shuts the door, or at least tries to, he comes back in and sets something on the counter.
"It was under the kitchen counter. Keep it down when you're working; I'm going to sleep." He deadpans, leaving the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter and then closing the door again. She snorts at him, muttering something insulting while taking a swig of the whiskey. She stitches it up as best she can, since it's a superficial wound (probably a scrape when it comes to gunshot wounds), and though the stitches are ugly and crooked, they seem to be fine. She pulls on her bloodstained dress again and walks out into the living room, seeing Crane still awake.
"Bathroom's yours." She tells him, wincing with every step, and he passes her by and walks into the bathroom, locking the door again when he walks in. She lies on the bed and tries to sleep, but the sound of the shower keeps her up and she decides to just wait until he's done and then go to sleep, even though she's tired. While waiting, she happens to notice the mask laying on the corner of the bed, and after five minutes of trying to resist the urge to play with it, she gives in and picks it up, looking over the ugly thing. Curiously, she puts it on, and finds that the burlap scratches her skin and the thing is hot and sweaty and dear god is it itchy. She starts talking to herself and playing with the voice changer, and it makes her sound like some terrible, inhuman thing. The door to the bathroom comes open and she looks at Crane for a moment, staring as blankly as he is, before pulling his mask off quickly and dropping it at the end of the bed again. He walks out in his entire suit again, despite how dirty the thing is, and walks up towards her. Angelface keeps her eyes focused down at the bed, like a child that knows she's been naughty, until he stops right in front of her.
"Angel…" he says, calmly, and she lifts her head to look at him with an almost naïve expression. He slaps her then, as hard as he possibly can, watching with satisfaction (hidden, but still there) as her cheek begins to turn red and she stares blankly ahead of her, the force of the slap snapping her head to the left. There are things he will put up with, and then there are things that he will not tolerate no matter the circumstances. Touching that mask is one of the most unforgivable sins in Crane's eyes. It's not just a mask or a tool to him; it's almost like a fragment of himself. It's also one of the last things he owns, other than his single dirty suit. Satisfied in seeing her punished, he leans down to pick up his mask and take it away from her, hide it, and instead feels a weight against his chest, and is knocked to the floor. She settles on him, straddling his stomach, glaring down at him with her bright blue eyes, even though the blue is false.
"You listen to me, Crane," She snaps, hands flat on the carpet on either side of his head, balled into fists, "I'm not your punching bag, because I'm sick of it. I'm ditzy, and my thoughts are hazy and I talk to myself, and I even do everything you say, even when you're being mean to me." She's still in her childlike mindset, he notices through her vocabulary. But even children can be serious sometimes, and this is a thirty-five year old child. "But I'm not going to let you hit me when you want to. I'm done with letting people smack me when they feel like it. I like you, Crane; I like you a lot. Even if you're mean to me, I want you to be. Everyone that loves me dies. So please, hate me. But don't hit me anymore." Her anger fades into tears, and she rolls off of him, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, crying quietly. Childishly. Crane sits up, thinking over her words.
She loves you.
'Why do you say that?'
Look at her. She had a dozen chances to kill you, and didn't. She could've finished the plan herself, and wouldn't. She took a bullet for you, instead of just shoving you out of range. She loves you because you hate her, as we've discussed.
'The many close calls tonight might have awakened whatever emotions she was attempting to hide or deny. But that's an idiotic notion. She's very aware that I despise her.'
Then let her know. Use her. And tell her that you're just using her. Scarecrow rasps in Crane's mind, and the sensation of the voice is like nails on a chalkboard to Crane. He's far past used to it by now, though, and so isn't affected. Crane himself glances to Angelface, now standing up and walking away, and stands up too. He's very sure that some amount of Scarecrow's inherent sadism is slipping through and influencing his decisions, but right now that doesn't really matter much.
Her mind is already broken. Now break her heart.
A deep, dark satisfaction builds in his chest at the idea of such a sadistic game, and it blooms into a sick pleasure when he walks after her, turns her around, and grasps her chin with enough pressure to show that his words are true, but not enough to hurt her.
"I despise you," Crane tells her, and watches his reflection speak in her eyes. "You're worthless to me, lower than dirt. I don't love you, the Joker doesn't love you, not one person in this entire city loves you." He tells her, calmly, and watches with hidden satisfaction as the tears roll down her cheeks again. She doesn't look away from his face, though; she's spellbound by his hatred. "But you're useful, in some respects. You can offer as a distraction if I ever need it." He breaks her heart, word by word, and enjoys every minute of it. She tells him that she wants him to hate her, but she doesn't mean it. She wants him to love her back. It's a natural desire for a loving human being. Unfortunately enough, Angelface has had the ill luck of falling for a misanthropist that refuses to let himself love and doesn't even know if he can anymore. In either case, he hates her and he's going to let her know it. When she looks away, turns her head, he turns it back so that she's looking him right in his mesmerizingly vivid eyes, transfixing her with his impassionate stare.
"I don't, and will never, feel anything but contempt for you." Crane tells her, watching her cry. "But," He adds on, getting her attention again, and enjoys this hold he has over her. "Work for me, and I'll keep you with me."
That nine word promise is all it takes for Angelface to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him. It's a pathetic attempt to show him that even if he hates her, she still cares about him, and it's a way that she can make believe that he cares too. He's not going to love her, but she can pretend.
She moves at a wrong angle and her aching leg finally, finally gives out, and when she drops, Crane goes with her to the floor, as she's got her arms around his neck still. He moves to get up and she hitches her legs on his hips, keeping him down with her, though he's still leaning upwards and supporting himself with his hands on either side of her head.
"Don't leave me," She says, reaching for and taking hold of his Scarecrow mask, pulling his glasses off gently. She sets them on the floor, carefully, and pulls the Scarecrow mask down over his face, adjusting it just so, until she can see his eyes through the raggedly cut holes. "Don't go."
Crane sees no point in sex, but Scarecrow sees an opportunity.
Tell her you hate her. Tell her that she disgusts you. Tell her that you're only humoring her.
"Am I pretty?" She asks him, earnestly, and it's the one question that he's heard some variant of almost every day since she made her scars bigger, though she's never asked him, not directly. Crane narrows his eyes, slightly, as he shrugs off his suit jacket and pulls at his tie. His free hand covers her mouth, muffling anything else that she might say, because he doesn't want to hear her voice anymore.
"Shut up."