Crane walked through the grounds of Arkham Asylum, hands in his pockets and thinking hard. "Would you please stay on the path?" snapped Poison Ivy, startling him. She was glaring at his feet, and he noticed that he was walking on the grass. "How would you like it if I casually trampled your babies?" she demanded.
"Sorry," said Crane, stepping back onto the path, heedless of the mud that stained his shoes. The mud that only got worse as he came around the back of the asylum, where the heavy rain had turned the yard into one giant puddle. Which didn't seem to bother the Joker, who was drenched from head to foot in mud and smiling from ear to ear as he held Edward Nygma's head under the water.
"Minute and a half, Eddie, that's a new record!" he shouted as Nygma struggled against him. "Keep going!"
"J, don't kill him!" growled Two-Face, stepping forward to separate them.
"You intellectually inferior brute!" gasped Nygma, sputtering and glaring at Joker. "I'll get you for this!"
"Yeah, whatcha gonna do?" asked Joker, grinning. "Ask me a really tough riddle and throw a hissy fit when I don't answer it?"
"I'm going to tell Dr. Leland!" he snapped, striding off.
"Yeah, that's right, chicken, go tell Mommy!" called Joker. "Can't settle this man to man. Always knew he was a coward…" he began, but Nygma suddenly turned around and rushed at him, leaping on top of him and shoving him down into the mud.
"Let go of Mr. J!" shrieked Harley, kicking Nygma back with a swift blow to the jaw. "Are you ok, puddin'?"
"Fine, pooh," replied Joker, grinning as he wiped the mud from his face. "But Eddie's gonna pay for that."
He grabbed Nygma again, shoving his face down into a muddy flower bed. "Y'know, it's a shame old Basil Karlo ain't here," he sighed. "He would love this!"
"He'd probably be pissed at you for throwing people in the mud, being mostly made outta it himself," muttered Two-Face.
"J, let go of him!" shouted Poison Ivy, rushing over to try to free Nygma. "He's going to crush my babies with his stupid face!"
"Wouldn't be the first guy to have choked in your garden, huh, toots?" chuckled Joker.
Two-Face punched him hard in the jaw, knocking him back into the mud. Harley shrieked and rushed at him, and soon all the inmates were in a fight, punching and kicking and throwing mud at each other.
Crane watched them from a slight distance, sighing. "Bunch of children," he muttered, walking away as the Arkham guards rushed to separate them. They certainly acted like children most of the time, but Crane felt too old to join in their stupid games now.
His childhood had never been a very happy one – the bullying he had suffered had turned him into the man he was today. A lonely, bitter, twisted shell of a man. A homicidal lunatic. He had always hoped that one day the shadow of his childhood would pass, and he would finally be able to move on and find something useful to do with his life. But moving on was an illusion. Nobody ever escaped their past, and Crane's childhood had haunted him his whole life. He was sick of it haunting him now. He wanted to leave it all behind and just grow up. But he didn't know how.
He sat down on the wet grass under the dripping leaves of an oak tree, leaning back against the cold bark and trying to think. He was startled from his thoughts by an unusual sound, a strange cheeping noise on the ground near him. He moved aside some leaves at the foot of the tree and saw a tiny black object squirming in the grass, cheeping desperately and trying to flap featherless stubs of wings. It was a baby bird, newly hatched, its eyes still shut, surrounded by the shell of its egg.
"You must have fallen out of your nest," murmured Crane, looking up into the branches of the tree. "Or been pushed," he thought, judging by the shells of the egg around the fallen bird. He stood up, studying the lower branches, and found the nest, where he saw an adult raven feeding a worm to the six other hatchlings in the nest, who were also cheeping. The baby birds nipped at each other, fighting to get to the food first.
Crane had read once that sometimes if bird eggs didn't hatch, or didn't hatch in time, the parent would assume it was dead in its shell and push it out of its nest to make room for the babies which had. And clearly the competition for food was fierce in this particular nest – the mother raven clearly had her hands full to feed her large and ravenous brood.
Crane knew that he should probably pick the fallen fledgling up and restore it to its nest, but looking down at its blind, desperate flailing, and comparing that to the fierce fighting in the nest, he wondered if it might lose out on the competition for food and starve to death anyway. After all, survival was for the fittest, not the weak and helpless. This particular baby bird had hatched late, was small and unfit and abandoned by its parents. Nature probably intended it to die. He should let nature take its course.
But some measure of sympathy and pity stirred in Crane's heart, sympathy and pity that he had long since thought he could never feel for any living thing. He bent down, shushing the little bird gently, as he lay down his handkerchief beside it. The bird slowly crawled into it, and he picked it up, wrapping it in the warmth. "Now you mustn't be afraid anymore," he murmured, as the bird's panicked cheeping gradually turned to sleepy confusion. He stroked a finger down its small, shivering body. "I'm going to look after you now."
The bird cheeped again, and then began to relax, the warmth lulling it to sleep. Crane smiled. He had never had a pet before, but he was already incredibly attached to this one. He hoped Dr. Leland would let him keep it, although he didn't see any reason why she would object. He was only going to take care of it until it was strong enough and healthy enough to fend for itself, and then he would let it fly away. Release it into the wild, give it its freedom. And the bird would go and be free and leave him, just like everything else he had ever cared about.
He shook his head. No good brooding over Jervis and his lost friendship now – something small and weak and vulnerable needed him. Perhaps that was how Jervis had felt when he held Alice's baby for the first time. Perhaps that was why he had cured himself for her. Well, this bird was not a child, but it was the closest Crane had to one at the moment. And he was going to do his best to help it.