Chapter Twelve: Everything is Perspective
Part One: Chorus of Angels

Jonathan saw Holly's silhouette in the full pale moonlight that flooded in from the windows of her kitchen; he'd come because he heard a strange noise echoing through her halls. Twinkling bits of glass now laid scattered all around the brick patio outside and the kitchen highchair used to smash it was dropped with a resounding thud.

"The hell you doin'?" A large gruffly voiced man had asked Holly. This large man was standing between them currently and facing her. It seemed there had been two men that entered her home and not just the one he found nosily searching the other side of the house like a common looter.

The woman pointed directly at Jonathan, "Getting away from that." A wry grin came to his face under his mask, he could feel it crinkling the corners of his eyes. The other man made a questioning noise before turning to look. Holly was ruthlessly smart in her decision; she had not allowed empathy nor sympathy a chance when it came to using this thug as a distraction to flee. Her form turned on a dime and sprinted out the broken back door into the dark woods.

There was no time to run after her, for there was a large man with a gun in his hand and the second he turned his head to look at what Holly had pointed to, the Scarecrow already had his arm extended out, "Boo." Nearly whispered in a delighted tone accompanied by the hiss of his aerosol toxin that was released into the kitchen.

A happy trigger finger shot the gun in the Scarecrow's general direction but it was sorely off its mark. The weapon falling from his grasp in the next second was swiftly kicked aside by the good doctor's foot. A concentrated dose of his toxin once breathed took a matter of seconds to affect the mind and this huge man easily fell to his knees screaming in horror at what he saw.

Truth be told Dr. Crane was surprised the man's mind did not break into a million pieces from the dosage, however, it became a pleasant surprise. Holly had been freed by these two inadvertently and now his patient was dashing through the woods on her way towards Gotham where it would be difficult to locate her again. He needed someone to take his anger out on. The pent-up frustration of having that woman as a patient was seeping out as well, she was difficult in a tedious manner, and the challenge to effectively diagnose and cure her while grand was just that. Challenging.

He wouldn't mind something easy for a change of pace over the next few hours. Perhaps they would provide him with, dare he say, entertainment value as well as an educational one.

Gabriel on the other hand was in a state of shock. His mouth was agape at the visage of this profusely bleeding Scarecrow lording over him, scores of bright red blood just pouring from the endlessly black eye holes and a twisted grinning mouth. The mask was morphing slowly. The stitches seemed to move on their own, wiggling like leeches as they grew quickly fat off the crimson liquid. He had a terrible run-in during his youth with leeches in a swamp – they covered his entire lower body and by the time someone had removed them all some of them had tried to burrow under his skin. He was reminded of this fact and suddenly started clawing at his legs as if he could feel them worming their way just under the surface of his flesh. He did not even realize he was screaming manically.

Scarecrow was quick to lock the man's clawing hands behind his back with a spare set of cuffs the moment he started tearing at his pants legs, the majority of his equipment had been neatly stored under Holly's kitchen island just before brunch.

Gabriel howled nearly unintelligently in anguish as he could not reach the leeches that were under his skin, "Get them off! Get that blood away!" The feeling was driving him mad. His whole body was writhing to scratch and the cool wooden floor his face suddenly hit – he'd toppled over from his own loss of balance – felt like slick blood. A light touch of something to his face sent him howling again thinking a leech had crawled on his cheek. His eyes shot open to try and look but they only found the bloodied figure of a large demonic leech creature standing over him, dropping smaller wiggly-slimy hissing leeches on his face. One by one.

In reality, the good doctor was hovering over the man, letting water drip from his fingertip sadistically smiling wide under that burlap mask. This was quite relaxing to him. Whoever this large man was his fear of blood was fairly intense, Crane had pieced together hemophobia from the words he cried out. When one screamed blood, it was rather easy to guess. However, 'them' was not much of a description. 'Them' implied more than one and likely many. Bugs were his first guess, some kind of small creature for him to have begun scratching so violently – oh, he thought. Perhaps they were crawling just under his skin? How delightful. Scarecrow feathered his fingertips over the man's cheek once the water was gone from them and revealed in the way this large man's eyes rolled back into his skull and he started convulsing.

Jonathan, however, sighed. The smile slipped from his features, there would be no fun if the man died now. Going through his things under her kitchen island he found what he was looking for, a sedative. Just as he was administering it he heard the floor creak in the archway behind himself.

"Gabriel?" Micky – Michael Peterson, had hazily found his way through the home following the sound of harrowing screaming. Michael saw the world in a blue hue of light, deep dark blues like an enchanting coral reef at night and his head was pounding. He'd been assaulted out of the darkness by some apparition and had not even the time to scream before having been scratched by something on his arm. Being pushed backward he'd hit his head knocking him unconscious for several minutes. Now he'd awoken only mildly being influenced by the toxin Scarecrow had injected.

Jonathan had meant to give that injection to Holly, the lighter dosage (at least comparatively to the now unconscious Gabriel) he'd shoved into the man's veins was simply what he happened to have on hand when they first heard the car pull up. It was no wonder the man could still stand and hobble around.

"What… what the fuck are you?"

Ah, but he was still hallucinating all the same. Jonathan stood up from the crouched position he'd been in. The cries of the man he was just torturing with water droplets falling silent and still to sedation, "How about you tell me? What do you see?" He had to be cautious. This one was not restrained yet.

The man took a shaky step backward, "Uah…" The low noise was of fear as if biting back rising panic, "Just, just stay away." He put a hand up between himself and what he saw. His other hand was searching his side finding the firearm in his holster, however, when he touched it he looked down in disgust. Snatching the holster and tossing it away himself – a lucky event for Jonathan, "Fuckin' gross… hey! I said: Stay back." His eyes snapped back to Jonathan (well it wasn't quite Jonathan he was seeing) and pointed at him, "Crawl back into the fuckin' cave you came out of."

Hm. That was a start, thought Crane.

It did not take Scarecrow long to subdue the second man. With all his brave posturing words in the end, he was a runner, and he was extremely slow at it. Hauling both men into the car they'd come in was the real problem. They were nearly twice his size each and weighed likely close to three times his own. One was shoved into the trunk ungracefully – he might have broken a finger of the man having to shut it twice - and the other was laid in the back with one of Holly's larger throw blankets covering him up. The car had dark tinted windows, even so, one could never be too safe when given the option. His equipment was packed into three black crates, closed up and tucked into the passenger seat. Two on the seat one wedged against the seat and the floor. A small plastic bag sat on top of the floor crate with all the medicine from her home he could find a use for and a microwave-safe container of leftover brunch.

He had roughly four more hours before either of those two woke up and that was being stingy as it could take longer. Jonathan moved through Holly's home, double-checking he had everything he required. Her journal was snatched off her bedroom dresser – the pages within it were distinct with their watermarks on the edges of each page. The contents were not very interesting the first time he read through it when he took a self-guided tour of her home upon first arrival. A little here and there in its pages she showed a higher understanding of philosophy but much of it was simply irrational writings to cope with daily tribulations. He tore a page from the back of it and left a note on her coffee table, one he knew she and no one else would understand. He wondered if she would go to Gotham's Finest or Mister Maroni?

As he slid into the driver's seat and removed the mask from his face a curious thought occurred to him. What had these men's names been again? He recalled one of them saying aloud: Gabriel and the other's ID read: Michael. How disgustingly biblical, he'd get to hear a chorus of angels screaming for the god of terror.

Jonathan put the car into reverse and started towards Gotham.