Little Women/Batman Fic: Dark Scribe Begins, Ch 3 (Jo/Laurie)
I'm trying to work on this series a little more quickly-- thus the reason that chapter 3 is up so soon after chapter 2. It's a little shorter than the previous chapter but by god, we finally introduce more of the starring cast... including not one but two gentlemen who influence the story line for many arcs to come. If you're following this series, you can probably guess who I'm speaking of!
In any case, thanks again for reading and please do leave me a review if you're following the series. Special love goes to Ed and Elizabeth for helping me get over the hump of this chapter. You two are irreplaceable! And extra, extra love goes to Potix, who made me the bloody gorgeous banner for this fic. Thank you so much! ♥
Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 3
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.
***
By potix
(That's Fred, Laurie, Jo and Amy, from left to right.)
***
Last Chapter:
"With Maroni might come who knows who else to this affair," Fred was warning her now, even as they could hear their carriage ride coming to an end, and glimpse the lights of the upcoming party. "And despite your passion for justice, Jo, I'd very much like you not to paint a target on your back for the time being. So please, if you could simply decide to talk to Laurie and very few others tonight..."
"I'll be very, very good," Jo sweetly promised, though Fred only accepted as much dubiously.
"I hope you are," he murmured, "because it seems as though we're finally at the moment of reckoning. Please don't 'famous last words' me!"
"Lead on, good sir," she said and grinned wholly unwholesomely. "I shall be nothing more than your follower for the evening."
***
Which of course had to begin by Jo hopelessly losing sight of him thirty minutes into their entrance to the party.
For the first thirty minutes, she had kept her word, and been angelic enough to impress even Amy. Forcing herself to be almost unnaturally demure and charming, she had clung to Fred's sturdy arm like a besotted schoolgirl and been prepared to titter away the evening. Knowing her reputation as a hard-nosed reporter might well precede her, Jo had let expediency win over pride and batted her lashes for all they were worth, hoping that any of the men-- Maroni especially included-- introduced to her might think that she was a piece of overrated fluff after all, and one whose plain face could well be overlooked for others at that, although her cleavage might prove a little more titillating. (For which Jo still blamed Amy.) And so, though she seethed on the inside at how often the people at the party either overlooked her face for Fred's or (even worse) her face for her bosom, Jo had been prepared to let the evening pass with her gathering information and giggling inanely.
It was really amazing, Jo thought as she laughed brightly at something a businessman said as he stared into the depths of her dress, what some idiot men let slip when they thought a mere woman might be listening.
Of course, it didn't hurt that the half-hour she spent with Fred seemed to show no sign whatsoever of Laurie either.
Eventually, however, disaster struck-- in the most unpredictable way possible. Jo had simply stepped away from Fred for a moment to visit the powder room, while he had vaguely gestured at her and told her he'd be waiting in the hall for her once she finished freshening up to serve as bait for God knows what other lecherous old men.
Unfortunately, Jo had ending up spending a little more time there than she had assumed she would-- such were the perils of listening in on what appeared to be a young woman of Maroni's bodyguard's acquaintance whimper about him not having quite as much time for her as he promised. (Rumors of that impending drug war that she had been fed by informants on the streets were getting more and more worrisome as the weeks passed.) In fact, almost another half-hour was spent in the powder room, with Jo pretending to primp and preen uselessly as the younger woman had moaned about her husband or lover or whoever he was coming home nearly at the crack of dawn some mornings from the docks, sometimes half-drenched from his work and always in enough a foul mood to alarm her.
She didn't regret the half-hour she spent in the room, although her stern sister probably would after seeing what a mess Jo had made of Amy's carefully styled curls after they were subjected to Jo's clumsy hands after a half-hour. But once she finally got out after deciding the younger woman had nothing more to tell her... Fred was nowhere to be seen.
Fred was nowhere to be seen but as Jo waited in the halls impatiently in the falls for him and turned her head at the sound of wild burst of laughter from the ballroom just beyond, she could see that someone else was.
Someone unexpected.
Someone exquisite.
Someone... alarming.
Someone she had known in another life and who was now throwing the one she had made now into distraction once more.
Someone who made her breath catch and her knees tremble like the reflection of knees within water, for all that she had thought herself prepared for what what her eyes now took in as they widened almost painfully at the sight before her.
Wavy dark hair arranged upon a classical profile, slicked back from the brow in the Parisian style, shorter than it had been before. Piercing eyes that were dark and penetrating, their intensity palpable though they fell now on a trio of delicately pretty young creatures rather than on the frozen bystander who stared at him with her heart in her throat. A slender figure clad elegantly in fashionably dark apparel, taller than she remembered and even more graceful, with power and balance apparent in every gesture he made, no matter how extravagant or frivolous they might seem to be.
And a handsome face that she remembered-- oh God did she remember. In every dream, in every night, in every haunting that he had left her as he had fled her life so quickly.
Face bare, eyebrows thick, eyes dark, nose long, lips thin, cheekbones almost perilously high and sharp, looking almost strong enough to cut through the Mediterranean-dark skin of his cheeks...
He had to be almost thirty now, just as Jo was. But where age had only made her turn thinner and plainer, it had seemed to bring him even more energy and vitality, made him even more devastating to feminine sensibilities, had apparently broken him out of his once shy shell, had made him into--
("if you refuse me once more, i will never speak to you again. not ever, no. do you hear me?)
A stranger. A handsome, apparently still wealthy, but wholly unknown stranger. One with an entourage of swooning women and envious men that he never would have had were he still the boy that Jo had once known and loved, though she could not bring herself to accept his final offer to her, the one he had made to her as they had parted last with his hand over his broken heart.
The offer than even know she did not know if she should have accepted, even if she had known the exile on which a rejection would send him off.
But this was not that boy who had looked at her so long ago and offered himself over. This was a stranger, one who probably would look her over and wonder what on earth had happened to her over the years that he'd been gone, to turn a girl with so much hope and joy into such a cynical creature of the city and the dark.
A stranger, who she had nothing to do with and surely who would have nothing to do with her. Not when she had a city to try and safeguard and he had God only knew how many women to romance, in his new-found mantle of playboy that he had with no apparent effort donned on.
He was a stranger, alien to her and so unlike the lonely boy she had once befriended that the contrast to what stood flirting languidly before her now and what had fled her arms so many years passed almost seemed obscene. He was a stranger and she had been a fool if she had hoped to see once more-- even in the slightest way imaginable-- the boy she had once cared for, in order to make amends to him for everything.
Clearly there were no amends to make, if the lordy, self-satisfied look on Laurie's face as he was surrounded by swooning women and sycophantic men meant anything.
There were no amends to make and thus, no reason to speak. After all, interviews with the sort of millionaire playboy that Laurie had apparently turned into could be done by damn near everybody.
She wasn't needed here.
But even as Jo turned away to walk further into the darkness of the halls, to the exit doors to wait for Fred to eventually find her, she learned that even her exit strategy was not about to go in the way that she had planned-- just like everything else this evening.
For another man blocked her path, his eyes just as intense on her as Laurie's had once been, in another life and on another evening, left deliberately unvisited in her mind for so many years. And though he did not affect her quite as powerfully as Laurie did, the sight of the almost femininely pretty and angular face lurking behind dark glasses did strike a similar chord of loathing-- though this was a variety far more directed at him than herself.
After all, it wasn't every day that Jo found herself trapped in a narrow hall with no one but a corrupt psychological doctor who she suspected was torturing his patients and providing alibis for the mob and Salvatore Maroni.
When Amy had told her that she might as well make an impression on a man this evening, Jo was quite certain that this was not what her beloved sister had meant.
At any other time, Jo might have thought this a golden, if skin-crawling opportunity indeed. At any other moment, she might have thought that even if she had to be placed in severe discomfort because of this conversation, at least it had the possibility of raking up more than old emotional wounds for herself, such as more information on what the mob was planning. At any other evening, she might have grinned at the thought that the man who stood before her might very well underestimate her... which always led to a few good openings.
But right now, all she wanted to do was get away from this place as soon as possible. And all her usual calculations crumbled to dust as she tried desperately to figure out a way to extract herself from the present situation without giving away the source of her fear.
She couldn't afford to show her weak spots, let alone to the vermin before her. Not now, never again, and certainly not here. So she did her best to strand up straight and flash a curved smile at her interrogator that suggested everything was, as usual, absolutely under her control presently.
Men like him fed off of fear, she knew that much. So she needed to be severe.
"Hello, Dr. Crane," she said coolly, controlling the repulsion in her tone tightly. "Or should I say... Jonathan? What can I do for you this evening?"
***
In the line of the dangerous line of work that Jo had been actively engaged in for the last seven years, she had long since come to learn that there were only two types of men who actively sought out her company.
First there came the schemers, the wheelers and the dealers, the men who thought that either she herself or her link to the only half-way honest newspaper in New York was worth exploiting. She took no personal pleasure in dealing with these men, who seemed to multiply by the night, who seemed to take a little too much pleasure in seeing her subtly degraded on this night, and who usually treated her as though she ought to be barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen somewhere rather than trying to make the world a better place through her own deeds. And yet, even though the thought of these men made Jo roll her eyes on her better days and spit like a camel on her worse ones, they were far worse than the other sort of men who tended to flock to her...
Men like the ones who so often seemed to become obsessed with her and the bizarre bud of celebrity that sometimes alighted on her. Men who thought they could "save" her by taking her away from the necessary work she loved. Men who thought they could intrigue her by tossing bricks through her windows in order to make her seek them out in God only knew what dark corner.
And men who made her feel rather like a wild rat cornered and penned in by a force that mean no good to her whatsoever.
Men like the one standing right before her.
In response to her question, Dr. Jonathan Crane, the newest man in charge of what Jo considered the latest travesty in the criminal justice system-- New York's new Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane-- lightly lifted his frames from his elegant, sharp-boned face, fanned another hand through his sleek dark hair, and smiled in a way that might have made other women swoon but made Jo's stomach clench hard.
"If I had known," he began, the syllables rolling urbanely off his serpent's tongue, "that you would be featured at this party, my dear Ms. March, I would have engineered a meeting between us much sooner."
Jo unclenched her teeth long enough to flash a light, tight grin at him, one not in the least meant to charm. "On that matter," she replied coldly, "I have no doubt."
Crane actually had the nerve to throw his head back and laugh at that, as though she had inadvertently charmed him somehow. "And in turn, I have no doubts about your doubt! Tell me, Miss March... this persistent air of paranoia that you have about you... Does it only manifest around me and my projects or do you also gift other men with the suspicion you're subjecting me to now?"
Jo smiled again, only her years on the job giving her enough control over her emotions to keep from walking away and causing a scene in front of the crowd that milled just behind them... a scene that might bring eyes that she decidedly did not want to encounter on her. "Well, I do work as a reporter for the only halfway decent paper in the city, Dr. Crane. Wouldn't you imagine that a certain level of... oh, shall we say... antisocial alarm to the skin crawlers that populate our fair city be beneficial to keeping my skin on?"
And before his thin lips could even properly tighten into a frown, she lifted her hand to her mouth, gave a false little gasp and murmured, "Not that I'm referring to anyone in this gathering, of course. All the fair gentlemen and women in this manse surely wouldn't do little old me any harm."
From the glint of his eyes shining beneath the rim of his glasses, Jo knew that last sentence might have been overstating it. But before she could simper out another apology and move beyond him in search of a way out, Dr. Crane moved closer to her once more, blocking her exit, ignoring her attempts to flee, and bending over her to a degree she felt was wholly unnecessary.
Anyone who cared to duck into the hallway just then might have thought them lovers more than adversaries.
Anyone.
"Even if they did," Crane replied, his lips unfurling into a near reptilian smile, "I doubt you'd even find yourself overly alarmed. That courage of yours, madame, seems to find a way to rise up to nearly every occasion it's tested on."
Jo bit back a curse and the urge to look back, and see if anyone was moving toward them even as Crane wove valuable minutes of her life away with his inane patter. Instead, determined to look as composed as Amy at her finest, she simply lifted her chin up and smiled, as though speaking to the mob-controlled insect before her were not in the least a bother.
"Cowards don't make terribly long-lasting reporters, Dr. Crane. And they certainly don't tend to hurl around accusations that they believe they can't back up with a thorough investigation either. Which reminds me..."
And this time, it was she who leaned forward, her lips dipping to his ear as though they were engaged in a dance together, although the chill in her words would have belied any intimacy whatsoever.
"...Do tell me, doctor, how are your latest patients faring? It's amazing how so many men caught up in the underground muck of the drug trade somehow manage to fall into psychiatric disorders as soon as the law finds a way to catch them after all."
Some part of her had hoped that perhaps Crane's God Complex might ave become offended enough at her insinuations to finally move away from her. However, her hopes were doomed to be dashed, and instead of crawling away to lap at his wounds, Crane only seemed to come closer, necessitating a step back from her.
"I find it quite explicable, actually," he murmured, his eyes lowering as they caught on hers. "After all, men who fall into the criminal underworld don't tend to be all that stable in the first place... although one wonders what implications that holds for the people who then follow and report on them. Gaze not into the abyss--"
"--Unless you want to hear trite quotations," Jo snapped, cutting him off. "And if the people who report on them might be termed frightening, I wonder what we can say about those who medicate them. Especially with the heavy hand you use, sir."
The smile he now wore on his face made her blood run sour.
"My hand isn't always heavy, Miss March," he whispered, and how the hell did he keep slithering so close to her without her even realizing it? "I take pride in knowing when to use a soft touch."
Jo wanted to take another step back, wanted to look away, wanted to know if anyone was watching the two of them now.
She stood where she was as though rooted, her eyes never wavering from Crane's.
Men like him, they fed on fear. And she wanted to be strong.
"Oh really?" she said, throwing back her dark hair, feeling curl already beginning to loosen and fall. "Such as when you manage to get your judges to send each and every one of Maroni's men to Arkham Asylum instead of prison? Would that be a good example of as much?"
Crane clucked a tongue she rather wished she could detach permanently. "Such suspicion in the newspaper industry! I must say, dear Miss March, this is the worst interview I have ever taken part of."
"Oh, and it's been so entertaining for me," Jo sneered. "Truly, you've carried me away with your silver-tongued charm."
Then, as one last addendum before she stormed off, she gave a soft, mocking laugh and then leaned her neck forward a little, letting her hard gaze meet his languid one.
"Tell me, what does Maroni give you in exchange for you whoring your expertise out? All the drugs and whores and test subjects you could possibly want? What price is integrity in this city? And have you been paid well enough to leverage your soul right off?"
She meant to pull back after she whispered her words, and saw the top of Crane's elegant cheekbones grow red with heat and anger. But before she could move, she suddenly felt herself held fast to him with his wrists against her shoulders, clasping her tight with surprising strength, until she realized she couldn't buck him off without all too much effort.
And when she turned her head to angrily tell him to get his hands off her, the expression she saw in his usually blandly handsome face made her mouth dry out.
"Oh, you are fearless, aren't you?" he whispered, and the strange fervor in his tone could mean nothing good for her. "To come here, in this place, with these people before you... to come here and meet me and tell me all that you've done..."
She narrowed her eyes at him, her voice going arctic. "If you don't let me go in a matter of seconds, Crane, I am going to do something very unpleasant to you and your trousers."
Crane simply laughed again, and ghosted one of his thin, narrow hands across her cheekbones, watching with disturbing enthusiasm as she fought a shudder. "So much courage in you... and so little fear. Tell me, is it something intrinsic in you or something you had to build up?"
Jo swallowed a retort about what he'd have to build up after she was done with him and instead, attempted to jerk away, narrowing her eyes when he refused to let go. "I swear, Crane, if you don't stop man-handling me right now..."
"You'll what?" he said, and tilted his head, looking nearly curious. "Cause a scene? You could have done it as soon as you met me... and you probably would have, under most circumstances. It almost makes me think that that much vaunted courage of yours might well be evading something-- or somebody-- now."
Oh God, if Laurie came, if Laurie saw them together--
"You wouldn't, would you?" Crane said, almost wondering, and Jo bit back a frustrated growl. "You wouldn't because you're... you're evading..."
His eyes flicked to the corner of his glasses.
His smile grew a little wider.
"Is there something even the fearless Miss March fears?" Crane wondered aloud, his voice now carrying even as his damnable hand kept touching her face and fingers began working their way up her stiff jaw. "It makes me wonder if, somehow--"
But what Crane was wondering would have to remain a mystery for the ages, for Jo-- finally having had more than enough-- decided to take the opportunity to clamp one of her hands around her interloper's sadistic mouth, bring one of her knees up to slam against that spot on his trousers she had warned him again--
And then, as soon as he fell down with a whimper she brutally stifled with her palm, shake one of her fingers at his prone body as it went down with only a little more noise than she felt comfortable with.
"I'd like to say that hurt me more than it hurt you," Jo told Crane's whimpering body dryly, already gathering up her skirts for a good run down out of the mansion and into the stables. "But that would simply be a lie. I actually enjoyed that a lot."
And then, even before she could confirm whether or not there Crane really had been looking at someone lingering over her shoulder for the last few seconds, having discovered why she had truly wanted to flee from him, she took a step forward and was gone.
***
As Jo all but fled from the mansion the party was still raging on in toward the stable, only one coherent thought managed to emerge from the wild mess gathering in her mind.
And the thought was as followed.
Why, she wondered in despair as the ridiculous collection of ruffles that Amy had gathered around her at the start of the evening kept trying to trip her at her brisk pace, do all the mad men of the city seem determined to come after me?!
It wasn't in the least unheard of in the newspaper business, to be fair. Her fellow newsies, especially those who covered the world of organized and spectacularly corrupt and wealthy criminals as she did, often ended up having strange and sometimes quite demented stalkers on their trail. (Although they did have the advantage on her that being men, at least they usually only had to deal with giddy and largely harmless women-- and Jo knew more than a few of them took more advantage of than were preyed upon.)
Jo, on the other hand, was the sole female left in New York in her line of work, now that Nellie Bly had gone off to chase the winds of the world. And apparently, there were just enough lunatics left in the city that decided switching over from the far more aesthetically pleasing Nellie Bly to the plainer and even more abrasive Jo March was worth the 'taming of the shrew'-esque trade-off... hence the reason why a rock had apparently come sailing through her once pristine kitchen window a few mornings ago and why... why...
If Jo stopped on her frantic trip to the stables to take refuge from the night, it was only to shudder, grimace, shake her head and wonder how on God's green Earth she had somehow converted one of the most morally repulsive men she knew into an admirer.
Though truth be told, she decided as she rubbed at the jaw he had been groping just a bit earlier, maybe calling Dr. Jonathan Crane-- patsy for the mob and probably tormentor of all the genuinely sick souls in New York's Arkham Asylum-- an admirer was dulling the horror of what had just happened to her. More than anything, he had looked at her as though she were some shiny new specimen for him to toy with, as he had apparently toyed with so many of the poor inmates she had glimpsed as she had gone undercover for her last story on how illicit affiliations had specifically financed the building of Crane's personal playground. And that, more than anything, had wholly repulsed and unnerved Jo.
After all, if it had just been admiration glinting at her from beneath Crane's expensive frame, she would have been able to handle it. She'd thrown off unwanted admirers before, and she usually didn't need to resort to physical harm to accomplish as much either. She could have yelled or caused a commotion or-- or--
Or done something that would inevitably bring in bystanders. Bystanders who might ask what she was doing. Bystanders who might want to
(catch up?)
No.
Bystanders, she told herself firmly, her hands fisting by her side, who might think she was snooping around. Bystanders who might spread the word that she oughtn't be a guest in such fancy quarters. Bystanders who might think that she and Dr. Crane had had an... altercation, when she most needed to put a harmless front forward.
It was so much better that she had simply run from such an encounter, really. It didn't mean she was a coward.
But, some awful, mocking voice in Jo spoke up, that isn't exactly why you're running away from the party, is it? You're Jo March, after all. You didn't get into your current profession because you like to run.
No, the truth's a lot stranger, isn't it? You haven't been yourself for the last few days at all, have you? And you know why, even if you won't admit it.
It all boils down to one reason, after all.
One reason. One name. One man.
And one night where you destroyed a friend who never did you any harm.
(oh god)
By the time she finally stumbled to the stables to wait for Fred to eventually come and find her-- it had long been a rendezvous point for the both of them when they lost each other in one of these endless social events-- Jo felt far more exhausted than she ought to have. This evening had somehow taken more out of her than even nights when she had had to trail mob cabs around on foot as best as she could to make sense of where their increasingly frequent drug shipments were being moved around. Right now, Jo wished she could trade her finery and fancy surroundings for a decent pair of trousers and the good, clean muck of the streets, where the worst that would happen would be someone trying to kill her.
...Jo then replayed that last thought in her head, put her face in her hands and sighed.
God. When had she become such an idiot? And all for the sake of one man who had clearly-- very clearly-- gotten over that one impossible and utterly irresponsible evening that they had spent together before he had left her life for what had turned out to be far greater pleasures abroad?
Actually, that nasty voice in her head whispered again, you should really ask yourself if you ever stopped being one when he's around.
"Oh shut up you," Jo hissed aloud, paused, and then smacked herself across the face when she realized she had begun talking to herself. God help her if anyone caught her like this-- she might end up in Crane's clutches in Arkham Asylum after all.
It was thought enough to make her fall into a full-body shudder all over again-- although luckily, this time, she found herself being interrupted by the sound of faithful Fred's steady steps as he walked toward her.
Dear Fred. Dear, good, kind, honest Fred. She knew that all she'd have to do was tell him what had happened with Crane-- omitting the real reason she'd run-- and he'd do everything in his power to whisk her away. Thank God for Fred, in all his gentle, heart-broken kindness, as wonderful as any possible brother. Thank God he'd take her side in any confrontation, no matter how strange it might appear to others.
A gentle hand came down to rest on her shoulder, the grip a little more shaky than she remembered. Sighing gently, Jo closed her eyes and let herself rest for a second longer.
"Thank you for coming," she began sincerely, her weariness clear simply through her vocal chords. "I swear, you wouldn't believe what that hideous pus-rag Crane attempted on me, to my eternal indignation and horror! God, Fred, the horrors of memory I could subject you to in our carriage while we head off..."
A laugh rang out. A laugh she did and did not recognize, accompanied by a voice she had heard fading in and out of her dreams for the last decade, even before he had gone.
And even before Jo turned around, she knew she had ended up committing the most ridiculous mistake the night had in store for her now.
"I'm not Fred," Theodore Laurence said, and his long-loved voice was even deeper than she remembered, the voice of a man and not merely a boy on the cusp of something far darker. "And if anything, I ought to thank you for coming, and allowing me the first sight of something I had, for so many years, nearly thought lost. After all..."
And when he sighed himself, Jo found her treacherous head turning to gaze into eyes that were even darker and brilliant than she remembered from the night they had spent with one another...
Oh, she had been so right to run. How was she to know he'd be quick enough to catch up with ease?
"It's nice to finally feel as though I may be home again," Laurie said, and the smile that accompanied his words did not look harmless in the least.
***
Author's Note: Please do leave a review for your friendly neighborhood fanfic writer if you're reading this series. It really gives me motivation to keep my fickle self at work on Reporter!Jo and Bat!Laurie!
In any case, I cannot wait to get cracking on the next chapter. Thanks to my brilliant friend Madwomanpoems (who is co-writing a Newsies/Little Women crossover called Falling Up with me that puts Jack Kelly and Jo March together), it's coming together very, very nicely. Hopefully, it'll be ready for a public unveiling in another two weeks.
Plus, my lovely friend Potix, who made me that brilliant banner, also requested an AU smut fic between Jo and Bat!Laurie for this series, which I hope to also put up in a few weeks. So keep an eye for that... and let me know if you have any scenarios in mind for how that could play out. The kinkier, the better. ;)
In any case, thanks again for reading and please do leave me a review if you're following the series. Special love goes to Ed and Elizabeth for helping me get over the hump of this chapter. You two are irreplaceable! And extra, extra love goes to Potix, who made me the bloody gorgeous banner for this fic. Thank you so much! ♥
Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 3
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.
***
By potix
(That's Fred, Laurie, Jo and Amy, from left to right.)
***
Last Chapter:
"With Maroni might come who knows who else to this affair," Fred was warning her now, even as they could hear their carriage ride coming to an end, and glimpse the lights of the upcoming party. "And despite your passion for justice, Jo, I'd very much like you not to paint a target on your back for the time being. So please, if you could simply decide to talk to Laurie and very few others tonight..."
"I'll be very, very good," Jo sweetly promised, though Fred only accepted as much dubiously.
"I hope you are," he murmured, "because it seems as though we're finally at the moment of reckoning. Please don't 'famous last words' me!"
"Lead on, good sir," she said and grinned wholly unwholesomely. "I shall be nothing more than your follower for the evening."
***
Which of course had to begin by Jo hopelessly losing sight of him thirty minutes into their entrance to the party.
For the first thirty minutes, she had kept her word, and been angelic enough to impress even Amy. Forcing herself to be almost unnaturally demure and charming, she had clung to Fred's sturdy arm like a besotted schoolgirl and been prepared to titter away the evening. Knowing her reputation as a hard-nosed reporter might well precede her, Jo had let expediency win over pride and batted her lashes for all they were worth, hoping that any of the men-- Maroni especially included-- introduced to her might think that she was a piece of overrated fluff after all, and one whose plain face could well be overlooked for others at that, although her cleavage might prove a little more titillating. (For which Jo still blamed Amy.) And so, though she seethed on the inside at how often the people at the party either overlooked her face for Fred's or (even worse) her face for her bosom, Jo had been prepared to let the evening pass with her gathering information and giggling inanely.
It was really amazing, Jo thought as she laughed brightly at something a businessman said as he stared into the depths of her dress, what some idiot men let slip when they thought a mere woman might be listening.
Of course, it didn't hurt that the half-hour she spent with Fred seemed to show no sign whatsoever of Laurie either.
Eventually, however, disaster struck-- in the most unpredictable way possible. Jo had simply stepped away from Fred for a moment to visit the powder room, while he had vaguely gestured at her and told her he'd be waiting in the hall for her once she finished freshening up to serve as bait for God knows what other lecherous old men.
Unfortunately, Jo had ending up spending a little more time there than she had assumed she would-- such were the perils of listening in on what appeared to be a young woman of Maroni's bodyguard's acquaintance whimper about him not having quite as much time for her as he promised. (Rumors of that impending drug war that she had been fed by informants on the streets were getting more and more worrisome as the weeks passed.) In fact, almost another half-hour was spent in the powder room, with Jo pretending to primp and preen uselessly as the younger woman had moaned about her husband or lover or whoever he was coming home nearly at the crack of dawn some mornings from the docks, sometimes half-drenched from his work and always in enough a foul mood to alarm her.
She didn't regret the half-hour she spent in the room, although her stern sister probably would after seeing what a mess Jo had made of Amy's carefully styled curls after they were subjected to Jo's clumsy hands after a half-hour. But once she finally got out after deciding the younger woman had nothing more to tell her... Fred was nowhere to be seen.
Fred was nowhere to be seen but as Jo waited in the halls impatiently in the falls for him and turned her head at the sound of wild burst of laughter from the ballroom just beyond, she could see that someone else was.
Someone unexpected.
Someone exquisite.
Someone... alarming.
Someone she had known in another life and who was now throwing the one she had made now into distraction once more.
Someone who made her breath catch and her knees tremble like the reflection of knees within water, for all that she had thought herself prepared for what what her eyes now took in as they widened almost painfully at the sight before her.
Wavy dark hair arranged upon a classical profile, slicked back from the brow in the Parisian style, shorter than it had been before. Piercing eyes that were dark and penetrating, their intensity palpable though they fell now on a trio of delicately pretty young creatures rather than on the frozen bystander who stared at him with her heart in her throat. A slender figure clad elegantly in fashionably dark apparel, taller than she remembered and even more graceful, with power and balance apparent in every gesture he made, no matter how extravagant or frivolous they might seem to be.
And a handsome face that she remembered-- oh God did she remember. In every dream, in every night, in every haunting that he had left her as he had fled her life so quickly.
Face bare, eyebrows thick, eyes dark, nose long, lips thin, cheekbones almost perilously high and sharp, looking almost strong enough to cut through the Mediterranean-dark skin of his cheeks...
He had to be almost thirty now, just as Jo was. But where age had only made her turn thinner and plainer, it had seemed to bring him even more energy and vitality, made him even more devastating to feminine sensibilities, had apparently broken him out of his once shy shell, had made him into--
("if you refuse me once more, i will never speak to you again. not ever, no. do you hear me?)
A stranger. A handsome, apparently still wealthy, but wholly unknown stranger. One with an entourage of swooning women and envious men that he never would have had were he still the boy that Jo had once known and loved, though she could not bring herself to accept his final offer to her, the one he had made to her as they had parted last with his hand over his broken heart.
The offer than even know she did not know if she should have accepted, even if she had known the exile on which a rejection would send him off.
But this was not that boy who had looked at her so long ago and offered himself over. This was a stranger, one who probably would look her over and wonder what on earth had happened to her over the years that he'd been gone, to turn a girl with so much hope and joy into such a cynical creature of the city and the dark.
A stranger, who she had nothing to do with and surely who would have nothing to do with her. Not when she had a city to try and safeguard and he had God only knew how many women to romance, in his new-found mantle of playboy that he had with no apparent effort donned on.
He was a stranger, alien to her and so unlike the lonely boy she had once befriended that the contrast to what stood flirting languidly before her now and what had fled her arms so many years passed almost seemed obscene. He was a stranger and she had been a fool if she had hoped to see once more-- even in the slightest way imaginable-- the boy she had once cared for, in order to make amends to him for everything.
Clearly there were no amends to make, if the lordy, self-satisfied look on Laurie's face as he was surrounded by swooning women and sycophantic men meant anything.
There were no amends to make and thus, no reason to speak. After all, interviews with the sort of millionaire playboy that Laurie had apparently turned into could be done by damn near everybody.
She wasn't needed here.
But even as Jo turned away to walk further into the darkness of the halls, to the exit doors to wait for Fred to eventually find her, she learned that even her exit strategy was not about to go in the way that she had planned-- just like everything else this evening.
For another man blocked her path, his eyes just as intense on her as Laurie's had once been, in another life and on another evening, left deliberately unvisited in her mind for so many years. And though he did not affect her quite as powerfully as Laurie did, the sight of the almost femininely pretty and angular face lurking behind dark glasses did strike a similar chord of loathing-- though this was a variety far more directed at him than herself.
After all, it wasn't every day that Jo found herself trapped in a narrow hall with no one but a corrupt psychological doctor who she suspected was torturing his patients and providing alibis for the mob and Salvatore Maroni.
When Amy had told her that she might as well make an impression on a man this evening, Jo was quite certain that this was not what her beloved sister had meant.
At any other time, Jo might have thought this a golden, if skin-crawling opportunity indeed. At any other moment, she might have thought that even if she had to be placed in severe discomfort because of this conversation, at least it had the possibility of raking up more than old emotional wounds for herself, such as more information on what the mob was planning. At any other evening, she might have grinned at the thought that the man who stood before her might very well underestimate her... which always led to a few good openings.
But right now, all she wanted to do was get away from this place as soon as possible. And all her usual calculations crumbled to dust as she tried desperately to figure out a way to extract herself from the present situation without giving away the source of her fear.
She couldn't afford to show her weak spots, let alone to the vermin before her. Not now, never again, and certainly not here. So she did her best to strand up straight and flash a curved smile at her interrogator that suggested everything was, as usual, absolutely under her control presently.
Men like him fed off of fear, she knew that much. So she needed to be severe.
"Hello, Dr. Crane," she said coolly, controlling the repulsion in her tone tightly. "Or should I say... Jonathan? What can I do for you this evening?"
***
In the line of the dangerous line of work that Jo had been actively engaged in for the last seven years, she had long since come to learn that there were only two types of men who actively sought out her company.
First there came the schemers, the wheelers and the dealers, the men who thought that either she herself or her link to the only half-way honest newspaper in New York was worth exploiting. She took no personal pleasure in dealing with these men, who seemed to multiply by the night, who seemed to take a little too much pleasure in seeing her subtly degraded on this night, and who usually treated her as though she ought to be barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen somewhere rather than trying to make the world a better place through her own deeds. And yet, even though the thought of these men made Jo roll her eyes on her better days and spit like a camel on her worse ones, they were far worse than the other sort of men who tended to flock to her...
Men like the ones who so often seemed to become obsessed with her and the bizarre bud of celebrity that sometimes alighted on her. Men who thought they could "save" her by taking her away from the necessary work she loved. Men who thought they could intrigue her by tossing bricks through her windows in order to make her seek them out in God only knew what dark corner.
And men who made her feel rather like a wild rat cornered and penned in by a force that mean no good to her whatsoever.
Men like the one standing right before her.
In response to her question, Dr. Jonathan Crane, the newest man in charge of what Jo considered the latest travesty in the criminal justice system-- New York's new Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane-- lightly lifted his frames from his elegant, sharp-boned face, fanned another hand through his sleek dark hair, and smiled in a way that might have made other women swoon but made Jo's stomach clench hard.
"If I had known," he began, the syllables rolling urbanely off his serpent's tongue, "that you would be featured at this party, my dear Ms. March, I would have engineered a meeting between us much sooner."
Jo unclenched her teeth long enough to flash a light, tight grin at him, one not in the least meant to charm. "On that matter," she replied coldly, "I have no doubt."
Crane actually had the nerve to throw his head back and laugh at that, as though she had inadvertently charmed him somehow. "And in turn, I have no doubts about your doubt! Tell me, Miss March... this persistent air of paranoia that you have about you... Does it only manifest around me and my projects or do you also gift other men with the suspicion you're subjecting me to now?"
Jo smiled again, only her years on the job giving her enough control over her emotions to keep from walking away and causing a scene in front of the crowd that milled just behind them... a scene that might bring eyes that she decidedly did not want to encounter on her. "Well, I do work as a reporter for the only halfway decent paper in the city, Dr. Crane. Wouldn't you imagine that a certain level of... oh, shall we say... antisocial alarm to the skin crawlers that populate our fair city be beneficial to keeping my skin on?"
And before his thin lips could even properly tighten into a frown, she lifted her hand to her mouth, gave a false little gasp and murmured, "Not that I'm referring to anyone in this gathering, of course. All the fair gentlemen and women in this manse surely wouldn't do little old me any harm."
From the glint of his eyes shining beneath the rim of his glasses, Jo knew that last sentence might have been overstating it. But before she could simper out another apology and move beyond him in search of a way out, Dr. Crane moved closer to her once more, blocking her exit, ignoring her attempts to flee, and bending over her to a degree she felt was wholly unnecessary.
Anyone who cared to duck into the hallway just then might have thought them lovers more than adversaries.
Anyone.
"Even if they did," Crane replied, his lips unfurling into a near reptilian smile, "I doubt you'd even find yourself overly alarmed. That courage of yours, madame, seems to find a way to rise up to nearly every occasion it's tested on."
Jo bit back a curse and the urge to look back, and see if anyone was moving toward them even as Crane wove valuable minutes of her life away with his inane patter. Instead, determined to look as composed as Amy at her finest, she simply lifted her chin up and smiled, as though speaking to the mob-controlled insect before her were not in the least a bother.
"Cowards don't make terribly long-lasting reporters, Dr. Crane. And they certainly don't tend to hurl around accusations that they believe they can't back up with a thorough investigation either. Which reminds me..."
And this time, it was she who leaned forward, her lips dipping to his ear as though they were engaged in a dance together, although the chill in her words would have belied any intimacy whatsoever.
"...Do tell me, doctor, how are your latest patients faring? It's amazing how so many men caught up in the underground muck of the drug trade somehow manage to fall into psychiatric disorders as soon as the law finds a way to catch them after all."
Some part of her had hoped that perhaps Crane's God Complex might ave become offended enough at her insinuations to finally move away from her. However, her hopes were doomed to be dashed, and instead of crawling away to lap at his wounds, Crane only seemed to come closer, necessitating a step back from her.
"I find it quite explicable, actually," he murmured, his eyes lowering as they caught on hers. "After all, men who fall into the criminal underworld don't tend to be all that stable in the first place... although one wonders what implications that holds for the people who then follow and report on them. Gaze not into the abyss--"
"--Unless you want to hear trite quotations," Jo snapped, cutting him off. "And if the people who report on them might be termed frightening, I wonder what we can say about those who medicate them. Especially with the heavy hand you use, sir."
The smile he now wore on his face made her blood run sour.
"My hand isn't always heavy, Miss March," he whispered, and how the hell did he keep slithering so close to her without her even realizing it? "I take pride in knowing when to use a soft touch."
Jo wanted to take another step back, wanted to look away, wanted to know if anyone was watching the two of them now.
She stood where she was as though rooted, her eyes never wavering from Crane's.
Men like him, they fed on fear. And she wanted to be strong.
"Oh really?" she said, throwing back her dark hair, feeling curl already beginning to loosen and fall. "Such as when you manage to get your judges to send each and every one of Maroni's men to Arkham Asylum instead of prison? Would that be a good example of as much?"
Crane clucked a tongue she rather wished she could detach permanently. "Such suspicion in the newspaper industry! I must say, dear Miss March, this is the worst interview I have ever taken part of."
"Oh, and it's been so entertaining for me," Jo sneered. "Truly, you've carried me away with your silver-tongued charm."
Then, as one last addendum before she stormed off, she gave a soft, mocking laugh and then leaned her neck forward a little, letting her hard gaze meet his languid one.
"Tell me, what does Maroni give you in exchange for you whoring your expertise out? All the drugs and whores and test subjects you could possibly want? What price is integrity in this city? And have you been paid well enough to leverage your soul right off?"
She meant to pull back after she whispered her words, and saw the top of Crane's elegant cheekbones grow red with heat and anger. But before she could move, she suddenly felt herself held fast to him with his wrists against her shoulders, clasping her tight with surprising strength, until she realized she couldn't buck him off without all too much effort.
And when she turned her head to angrily tell him to get his hands off her, the expression she saw in his usually blandly handsome face made her mouth dry out.
"Oh, you are fearless, aren't you?" he whispered, and the strange fervor in his tone could mean nothing good for her. "To come here, in this place, with these people before you... to come here and meet me and tell me all that you've done..."
She narrowed her eyes at him, her voice going arctic. "If you don't let me go in a matter of seconds, Crane, I am going to do something very unpleasant to you and your trousers."
Crane simply laughed again, and ghosted one of his thin, narrow hands across her cheekbones, watching with disturbing enthusiasm as she fought a shudder. "So much courage in you... and so little fear. Tell me, is it something intrinsic in you or something you had to build up?"
Jo swallowed a retort about what he'd have to build up after she was done with him and instead, attempted to jerk away, narrowing her eyes when he refused to let go. "I swear, Crane, if you don't stop man-handling me right now..."
"You'll what?" he said, and tilted his head, looking nearly curious. "Cause a scene? You could have done it as soon as you met me... and you probably would have, under most circumstances. It almost makes me think that that much vaunted courage of yours might well be evading something-- or somebody-- now."
Oh God, if Laurie came, if Laurie saw them together--
"You wouldn't, would you?" Crane said, almost wondering, and Jo bit back a frustrated growl. "You wouldn't because you're... you're evading..."
His eyes flicked to the corner of his glasses.
His smile grew a little wider.
"Is there something even the fearless Miss March fears?" Crane wondered aloud, his voice now carrying even as his damnable hand kept touching her face and fingers began working their way up her stiff jaw. "It makes me wonder if, somehow--"
But what Crane was wondering would have to remain a mystery for the ages, for Jo-- finally having had more than enough-- decided to take the opportunity to clamp one of her hands around her interloper's sadistic mouth, bring one of her knees up to slam against that spot on his trousers she had warned him again--
And then, as soon as he fell down with a whimper she brutally stifled with her palm, shake one of her fingers at his prone body as it went down with only a little more noise than she felt comfortable with.
"I'd like to say that hurt me more than it hurt you," Jo told Crane's whimpering body dryly, already gathering up her skirts for a good run down out of the mansion and into the stables. "But that would simply be a lie. I actually enjoyed that a lot."
And then, even before she could confirm whether or not there Crane really had been looking at someone lingering over her shoulder for the last few seconds, having discovered why she had truly wanted to flee from him, she took a step forward and was gone.
***
As Jo all but fled from the mansion the party was still raging on in toward the stable, only one coherent thought managed to emerge from the wild mess gathering in her mind.
And the thought was as followed.
Why, she wondered in despair as the ridiculous collection of ruffles that Amy had gathered around her at the start of the evening kept trying to trip her at her brisk pace, do all the mad men of the city seem determined to come after me?!
It wasn't in the least unheard of in the newspaper business, to be fair. Her fellow newsies, especially those who covered the world of organized and spectacularly corrupt and wealthy criminals as she did, often ended up having strange and sometimes quite demented stalkers on their trail. (Although they did have the advantage on her that being men, at least they usually only had to deal with giddy and largely harmless women-- and Jo knew more than a few of them took more advantage of than were preyed upon.)
Jo, on the other hand, was the sole female left in New York in her line of work, now that Nellie Bly had gone off to chase the winds of the world. And apparently, there were just enough lunatics left in the city that decided switching over from the far more aesthetically pleasing Nellie Bly to the plainer and even more abrasive Jo March was worth the 'taming of the shrew'-esque trade-off... hence the reason why a rock had apparently come sailing through her once pristine kitchen window a few mornings ago and why... why...
If Jo stopped on her frantic trip to the stables to take refuge from the night, it was only to shudder, grimace, shake her head and wonder how on God's green Earth she had somehow converted one of the most morally repulsive men she knew into an admirer.
Though truth be told, she decided as she rubbed at the jaw he had been groping just a bit earlier, maybe calling Dr. Jonathan Crane-- patsy for the mob and probably tormentor of all the genuinely sick souls in New York's Arkham Asylum-- an admirer was dulling the horror of what had just happened to her. More than anything, he had looked at her as though she were some shiny new specimen for him to toy with, as he had apparently toyed with so many of the poor inmates she had glimpsed as she had gone undercover for her last story on how illicit affiliations had specifically financed the building of Crane's personal playground. And that, more than anything, had wholly repulsed and unnerved Jo.
After all, if it had just been admiration glinting at her from beneath Crane's expensive frame, she would have been able to handle it. She'd thrown off unwanted admirers before, and she usually didn't need to resort to physical harm to accomplish as much either. She could have yelled or caused a commotion or-- or--
Or done something that would inevitably bring in bystanders. Bystanders who might ask what she was doing. Bystanders who might want to
(catch up?)
No.
Bystanders, she told herself firmly, her hands fisting by her side, who might think she was snooping around. Bystanders who might spread the word that she oughtn't be a guest in such fancy quarters. Bystanders who might think that she and Dr. Crane had had an... altercation, when she most needed to put a harmless front forward.
It was so much better that she had simply run from such an encounter, really. It didn't mean she was a coward.
But, some awful, mocking voice in Jo spoke up, that isn't exactly why you're running away from the party, is it? You're Jo March, after all. You didn't get into your current profession because you like to run.
No, the truth's a lot stranger, isn't it? You haven't been yourself for the last few days at all, have you? And you know why, even if you won't admit it.
It all boils down to one reason, after all.
One reason. One name. One man.
And one night where you destroyed a friend who never did you any harm.
(oh god)
By the time she finally stumbled to the stables to wait for Fred to eventually come and find her-- it had long been a rendezvous point for the both of them when they lost each other in one of these endless social events-- Jo felt far more exhausted than she ought to have. This evening had somehow taken more out of her than even nights when she had had to trail mob cabs around on foot as best as she could to make sense of where their increasingly frequent drug shipments were being moved around. Right now, Jo wished she could trade her finery and fancy surroundings for a decent pair of trousers and the good, clean muck of the streets, where the worst that would happen would be someone trying to kill her.
...Jo then replayed that last thought in her head, put her face in her hands and sighed.
God. When had she become such an idiot? And all for the sake of one man who had clearly-- very clearly-- gotten over that one impossible and utterly irresponsible evening that they had spent together before he had left her life for what had turned out to be far greater pleasures abroad?
Actually, that nasty voice in her head whispered again, you should really ask yourself if you ever stopped being one when he's around.
"Oh shut up you," Jo hissed aloud, paused, and then smacked herself across the face when she realized she had begun talking to herself. God help her if anyone caught her like this-- she might end up in Crane's clutches in Arkham Asylum after all.
It was thought enough to make her fall into a full-body shudder all over again-- although luckily, this time, she found herself being interrupted by the sound of faithful Fred's steady steps as he walked toward her.
Dear Fred. Dear, good, kind, honest Fred. She knew that all she'd have to do was tell him what had happened with Crane-- omitting the real reason she'd run-- and he'd do everything in his power to whisk her away. Thank God for Fred, in all his gentle, heart-broken kindness, as wonderful as any possible brother. Thank God he'd take her side in any confrontation, no matter how strange it might appear to others.
A gentle hand came down to rest on her shoulder, the grip a little more shaky than she remembered. Sighing gently, Jo closed her eyes and let herself rest for a second longer.
"Thank you for coming," she began sincerely, her weariness clear simply through her vocal chords. "I swear, you wouldn't believe what that hideous pus-rag Crane attempted on me, to my eternal indignation and horror! God, Fred, the horrors of memory I could subject you to in our carriage while we head off..."
A laugh rang out. A laugh she did and did not recognize, accompanied by a voice she had heard fading in and out of her dreams for the last decade, even before he had gone.
And even before Jo turned around, she knew she had ended up committing the most ridiculous mistake the night had in store for her now.
"I'm not Fred," Theodore Laurence said, and his long-loved voice was even deeper than she remembered, the voice of a man and not merely a boy on the cusp of something far darker. "And if anything, I ought to thank you for coming, and allowing me the first sight of something I had, for so many years, nearly thought lost. After all..."
And when he sighed himself, Jo found her treacherous head turning to gaze into eyes that were even darker and brilliant than she remembered from the night they had spent with one another...
Oh, she had been so right to run. How was she to know he'd be quick enough to catch up with ease?
"It's nice to finally feel as though I may be home again," Laurie said, and the smile that accompanied his words did not look harmless in the least.
***
Author's Note: Please do leave a review for your friendly neighborhood fanfic writer if you're reading this series. It really gives me motivation to keep my fickle self at work on Reporter!Jo and Bat!Laurie!
In any case, I cannot wait to get cracking on the next chapter. Thanks to my brilliant friend Madwomanpoems (who is co-writing a Newsies/Little Women crossover called Falling Up with me that puts Jack Kelly and Jo March together), it's coming together very, very nicely. Hopefully, it'll be ready for a public unveiling in another two weeks.
Plus, my lovely friend Potix, who made me that brilliant banner, also requested an AU smut fic between Jo and Bat!Laurie for this series, which I hope to also put up in a few weeks. So keep an eye for that... and let me know if you have any scenarios in mind for how that could play out. The kinkier, the better. ;)