Rumplestiltskin 7/10
Title: Delirium Trigger
Series: Rumplestiltskin 7/10
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still not mine
Notes: This has been far too long in coming out and my apologies to anyone who has been waiting for this.
Thanks to meletor_et_al, as always, for the beta.
Warnings: I’ve buggered canon!battime all to hell, but then again, so did the comics.
Parts 1-6 found here
*~*~*~*
The ride into the center of Gotham was a little tedious because for all that the Scarecrow seemed a lot tougher than Jonathan, he was still hurting and riding a horse probably wasn’t doing him any favors. Harley was forced to go slowly so he and the horse could keep up with her bike. She let her thoughts wander where they would - except towards the Joker because this evening was supposed to be fun - and stumbled upon the idea of writing imaginary Arkham reports for her cohorts.
Poison Ivy;
Ivy’s idea of a utopia sounds beautiful and lonely and I don’t think she’d know what to do with it if she got it. Is the kind of woman who would rip Gotham down and let the inhabitants be turned to mulch but who would offer asylum to fellow super-villains on the run from shitty relationships; whatever kind of woman that is. Ivy is probably totally nuts and treatment should include copious amounts of caramel ice-cream and nights out with the girls.
The Scarecrow;
Most likely a split personality of one Doctor Jonathan Crane prev. of Arkham. Most likely sociopathic. Freud’s dream patient because what’s with the scythe and the horse? Completely fucking nuts and should be treated by bringing back Doctor Crane because one) he’s much nicer and two) he doesn’t wear a burlap sack on his head. (Though the pants are nice)
Well, they weren’t quite the sort of report that Arkham would have considered appropriate for filing, but it amused Harley and it kept her from worrying about where exactly Jonathan had gone and if he was going to come back any time soon. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone with an obvious case of multiple personality disorder - only they were calling it something else these days, something like DID, because no one could prove that the personalities were separate people. Harley was pretty sure that Crane hadn’t been suffering from anything of the sort before he’d been gassed, because she’d read the reports in the news and in his files and he’d been bug-fuck crazy but Scarecrow had been a persona, not a person. The man keeping apace with her motorcycle on a horse and wielding a dirty great scythe was not Crane.
“Hey Scarecrow,” she called over the rumble of the engine. “Can I ask you a question?”
He turned to face her and she could see the brightness of his eyes even from behind the mask. “You just did,” he said, and turned away again. It might have been a joke, but Harley wouldn’t have bet on it either way.
She huffed out an exasperated sigh and tried again. “Where’s Crane?”
That seemed to startle him and his head whipped around to face her once more. “Does it matter?” The voice modulator built into the mask made his question sound more ominous then it otherwise might have been. The silence between them stretched out and then Scarecrow inclined his head slightly. “He’s taking a rest. Sleeping, if you will.”
“An’ where were you before now?”
The Scarecrow laughed and Harley’s skin crawled as though someone was walking over her grave. “Waiting.”
*~*~*~*
Bruce woke with a groan. He’d felt like shit in his day, more times than he could count, but this was something new. His vision refused to settle and the room looked a little bit fuzzy around the edges, though that might have been the fault of his concussion or the fault of the class-A headache that he had because of the concussion.
He pushed the blankets off himself and sat up. For a couple of seconds his stomach rolled over and his ears rung with an off tone note. Then the world stopped spinning and his stomach settled into an aching that matched his head. Slowly, so as not to repeat that wonderfully nauseating moment, Bruce slid out of the bed, eased himself to his feet, and then waited until he was steady on his feet before stumbling to the bathroom. Concussion, or not, he needed to piss and then he needed a handful of aspirin and to get his fucking head in order so he could go after Crane.
He’d just completed the first order of business, with only a little trouble thanks to the dizziness, but without mishap when the familiar sounds of Alfred bustling about the bedroom caught his ear.
“Master Wayne?”
Bruce popped two aspirin into his mouth, braced himself on the bathroom countertop and drank straight from the faucet. “In here,” he called in reply, and then wished he hadn’t when even just raising his voice slightly made his head spin. “I’m fine,” he added, preemptively.
Alfred’s disapproving face came around the corner into the bathroom. “You should have called me, sir.”
That made Bruce grin slightly. “I don’t think that’s included in your duties, Alfred.” He spared a hand to cup water and splash it over his face. He didn’t feel better after doing that, but it certainly didn’t hurt and he could almost pretend that it was helping his headache. “I need…” Bruce shut his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts. They didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “I’m going to need your help with this one,” he said finally.
“You need to go back to bed.” Alfred’s face was a picture of displeasure. “Gotham can survive for a few days without you.”
“Not with the Scarecrow on the loose,” Bruce muttered and made his unsteady way back into his bedroom. “If he’s got plans then…Gotham can’t survive without Batman. That’s why I created him.”
Alfred opened Bruce’s wardrobe for him and started laying clothing out on the bed. They were clothes for sitting around in, not for putting on under the Batsuit. “Are you sure it’s not Jonathan Crane you’re thinking of, rather than Gotham?” Alfred asked archly.
It was a low blow and from the look on Alfred’s face, they both knew it. Bruce leaned against the footboard for added balance and rubbed at his face with one hand. “He needs help, Alfred,” he said. “And he knows who I am, so it’s in my interest to catch him again.” Bruce sighed and shut his eyes. “Don’t…I know what he is. I know.”
There was a low murmur from Alfred that sounded a lot like, ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ but Bruce couldn’t be sure because the ringing in his ears had started up again so he didn’t say anything, mostly because he really wasn’t sure either.
“I’m going out,” Bruce said finally. “With or without your help.” He opened his eyes again to find Alfred staring at him with an inscrutable look on his face. “But I’ll get a lot further with it.”
Alfred looked away. “I’ll drive you to the batcave then, shall I, sir?”
It was a terrible idea, they both knew it, but what else was there to be done?
*~*~*~*
Gotham was in chaos, which was exactly the way that Harley liked to see it. She was grinning, she could tell, like she hadn’t done in days, as she spun her motorbike around, herding the panicked crowd. Ivy had disappeared for the moment but the sirens were still a few blocks away and from what Harley could hear over the screaming, there weren’t nearly enough cops to stop even one of them. Besides, Ivy had a way of reappearing dramatically at opportune moments and she was probably scrounging about in the dirt somewhere, planting and cultivating a botanical time bomb that would wreak havoc long after they had left.
The Scarecrow, unlike Jonathan, didn’t seem to have much scientific interest in the properties of the fear gas. She could almost have imagined what it would have been like if Crane had been in control that night in the Narrows; all hunched over his notebook, annotating and recording. It was kind of cute. Scarecrow was using the combination of his horse and the scythe to terrify the crowd into tight spaces where he would gas them and leave them to take each other apart. It was clever in its own way, but ‘Crow didn’t seem to have quite the same levels of control that Crane did and she wasn’t sure she trusted him to have her and Ivy’s backs.
Of course, even before the cops showed up the Batmobile roared onto the scene, weaving a little erratically, and nearly hitting a few of the panicked crowd. It was bad driving, even by the Bat’s standards. The Scarecrow’s horse reared back, screaming. Harley hadn’t ever heard a horse make a noise like that before, but the poor thing looked about as spooked and as crazed as Dr. Crane had, and it clipped a pedestrian with one flailing hoof before landing again.
Either Ivy’s talent with plants also came with some sort of precognition (which Harley was 100% sure that it didn’t) or she had a phenomenal grasp of timing. No sooner had the Batmobile screeched to a halt than a huge torrent of vines shot up out of the ground, tangling around the wheels and up over the windscreen as the Bat himself flew out onto the streets.
Harley giggled. “Better than a boot!” she called out to the Scarecrow. If he was amused by her traffic humor, it didn’t show.
She wasn’t entirely sure what kind of tricks the Bat would have up his sleeve but it was three against one and both she and ‘Crow had easily maneuverable transportation. And speaking of the Scarecrow, he and Batman were eyeballing each other from across the crowd. Harley hefted her gun thoughtfully as the Scarecrow wheeled his horse around in tight circles, waiting for Batman to make the first move. On one hand she figured a straight shot would probably take Batman down pretty quickly and she was a more than passable shot. On the other hand, the Joker would be pissed as hell if she shot Batman and he wasn’t there. It would certainly spoil all the fun they might have had later, and she was close to certain that he wouldn’t take her back if she shot Batman. On another hand again, Batman was standing kind of funny and he wasn’t making any sort of move.
Harley put her gun away and toed the kickstand down on her bike. “A vampire bat comes into his cave,” she said with a grin. “He’s all covered in blood an’ all the other batlings start askin’ where he got it. They set up such a noise that the first bat tells ‘em to follow him an’ he leads them out into the night.” She paused, one hand on her hip and winked at Batman. “You listening, sugar? Good. So the bat says, ‘You guys see that tree there?’ an’ all the other bats go, ‘yes! Yes!’ An’ the first bat says, ‘Good. ‘Cause I didn’t.’”
Excepting the screams of the panicked crowd there was silence.
Harley rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad a joke.”
Batman stared at her like she’d grown two heads, but he still didn’t move. It was a little unnerving. She would have made a run at him, but the fact that he was just standing there staring at her made her wonder exactly what he had planned and Harley decided that just barreling at him would probably be exactly what he wanted her to do. So she stayed put. It was possibly one of the least interesting fights she’d ever had with him.
The Scarecrow laughed and the mask’s distortion kicked in a second late so it echoed and spat static for a couple of seconds after the man underneath had stopped. “Oh, isn’t that just precious? How’s your head Batty-boy? Can you even see straight?” He brought the horse mostly to a standstill, though it snorted and stepped a little back and forth. “You should have stayed down.”
“Funny,” Batman growled, “I thought that’s where you liked it.”
As comebacks go, Harley wasn’t sure that one made total sense, but she got the gist of it well enough and she wasn’t so foolish that she couldn’t put two and two together and come up with the answer as to who had roughed Crane up. Their standoff was ridiculous enough, Harley thought a couple of seconds later, without her standing there gaping like a landed fish.
The Scarecrow laughed again, and she wished he’d stop doing that; it was making her skin crawl. He charged his horse straight at Batman as though he would simply trample the dark knight to death. At the last second Batman leaped out of the way, catching hold of one of the Scarecrow’s legs, dragging him off the horse. They both fell, rolling across the tarmac and Harley leapt for Batman before he could get to the Scarecrow. She didn’t care how good he was with his gasses and his scythe; he’d get his ass handed to him if it came down to hand to hand combat.
Harley tackled Batman, landing a kidney punch, though his armor deflected most of the blow and he rolled with it, sending her into a somersault to avoid being slammed into the ground. He came after her, leaving the Scarecrow to unload two canisters of gas into the crowd, though it had no effect on either Harley or Batman.
Ivy came out from wherever she’d wandered off to, accompanied by a be-thorned army of vicious looking plants that crawled over the street, raising her up on a mound of vines and sneaking out to snatch hold of the Bat. He vanished under the creepers and Ivy shook her head in disgust.
“That was pathetic.”
The Scarecrow limped over to them, holding his scythe. “He was concussed.”
Harley gave him a slantways look, but kept her mouth shut. If he wanted to talk, then he would talk. Until then, it was none of her goddamn business who Crane chose to… “You hit the Batman with a glass of orange juice?”
“Crane did.” The Scarecrow leaned on his scythe. “I would have hit him with his caravan.” He peered at the writhing mass of plants. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
Ivy tossed her hair impatiently. “Not dead, just trapped. I thought we would discuss what to do with him, since we all had a hand in his capture.”
It was about then that the vines burst into flames and it was like a hundred bonfires all at once as the Batman came out of the smoke, a little sooty about the edges, but otherwise unharmed. Ivy screamed as the pile she was standing atop of lit up underneath her and her plants burned and died. Harley dodged past the Bat to tackle Ivy out of the inferno.
Ivy lay on the ground, gasping. “Split up,” she wheezed. “He can’t chase all of us. We’ll meet back at HQ.” Harley shook her head no, so Ivy shoved her away and staggered to her feet. “Go! While he’s distracted with the Scarecrow. It’s not worth jeopardizing our plans for.”
Harley cursed and ran for her bike. She kicked it to life as she watched Batman take off after Scarecrow, the two of them making for a nearby parking lot. When she looked back to Ivy, Ivy was gone so she roared off back towards the greenhouse, cursing all the while.
*~*~*~*
Under the tangle of blackened plants, Ivy curled up around her burns. It was nothing she couldn’t heal, but it hurt and the sudden death of her babies had sapped her strength. Better that the Bat went after ‘Crow and Harley got away. They could always break the Scarecrow out of Arkham later if he got caught.
Ivy shut her eyes and concentrated on healing.
*~*~*~*
Batman stared across the parking lot at the Scarecrow. “Crane,” he growled. It wasn’t really Crane though, and he knew it. “I should have guessed you’d be with them after all. You never could manage on your own, could you?”
It had been a mistake to let the Scarecrow get into an open space. Before, with the street clogged up by plants, he hadn’t had a lot of room to maneuver but now he had room to swing the scythe and Batman was having trouble keeping his vision clear enough that there was only one of everything. His head was pounding and the ringing in his ears had started up again.
“Now, now, let’s not go pointing fingers,” the Scarecrow taunted. “After all, you’ve never fought me.”
Batman snarled though he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment so the world would stop spinning. “No, but I think if a DA’s assistant can beat you, I can manage it.”
“Sticks and stones, sticks and stones.” The Scarecrow twirled the scythe with what appeared to be a practiced hand. The distortion on his mask crackled and hissed, like it was laughing all on its own. “They say you can’t keep a good man down. But you’re not really a good man, are you, Bats? Poor little Jonny’s all in knots over you.” He tipped his head to one side and if Batman hadn’t know better he would have sworn the Scarecrow was grinning at him. “I’ll bet you’re almost as sore as he is, so let’s see if I can’t finish this properly.” The blade flashed in the garish light as it came to an abrupt halt.
Where the hell Crane had learned to handle a scythe like that was something Batman was going to have to investigate. He kept underestimating the tenacity of the doctor and all his little…quirks. He smiled grimly and clenched his fists.
The Scarecrow had the advantage of a longer reach with the scythe but Batman had the advantage of height, weight and years of training. They were both stiff and bruised and where Batman’s head ached and spun the Scarecrow’s vision was hampered by the mask and he was (hopefully) too crazy to think straight - not that Batman could rely on that.
They came together with a clash of scythe and gauntlets, Batman’s wrists crossed in guard so he could push ‘Crow back again and lash out with a kick. The kick went wide; he’d aimed at the other Scarecrow that was fading in and out of his vision. As soon as he was balanced again, Scarecrow struck out, blow after blow, and it was all Batman could do to keep up with the spinning blade. However, the scythe wasn’t sharp enough to cut through the Kevlar, so the only way that the Scarecrow could take him out would be by bringing the flat of the blade down on his head.
It was something of an impasse, as the Scarecrow’s breathing came increasingly heavily through the distortion in his mask and Batman’s tenuous balance faltered under the onslaught of blows. Sooner or later one of them had to make a misstep.
It was the Scarecrow. He came just a little too close and Batman grabbed hold of the end of the noose attached to the mask. It put him in danger of being cracked about the head with the scythe, but the Scarecrow didn’t react fast enough, didn’t bring his weapon around in time - his arms were probably running out of strength - and Batman yanked, hard, sending the Scarecrow stumbling in a circle and then down onto the ground.
The scythe skittered out of his grasp and Batman yanked on the noose again, crouching over him, pinning him with a knee to his back. He let go of the noose and pulled the burlap mask off, tossing it over his shoulder so he wouldn’t have to listen to the horrible hissing and crackling it was making. He traded his hold on the noose for a handful of the Scarecrow’s hair, pulling him back into an arch.
The Scarecrow let out an enraged scream that set Batman’s teeth on edge and twisted about in Batman’s hold, trying to throw him off. Batman used his free hand to rip the belt strapped with canisters of fear gas off and then to punch the Scarecrow in the shoulder as he let go of his hair. The blow slammed the Scarecrow forward, face first into the asphalt. The Scarecrow pushed himself back up again, almost immediately, but there was blood on the ground and, from what Batman could see, it was coming from his nose and mouth. The sight of blood only incensed him so he hit the Scarecrow again, and again, until the ground was more red than grey. He grabbed hold of the Scarecrow’s hair again, and the Scarecrow went abruptly limp underneath him, then shuddered and groaned. Batman dug his knee into the Scarecrow’s back a little harder and yanked on the handful of hair he had.
“God, don’t…”
It wasn’t the Scarecrow anymore. Batman was sure of it; it was Crane again. Crane, who was shoving at the ground, trying to bend back to ease the pressure on his spine and hair, and Crane who was whimpering through a mouthful of blood but not struggling.
For some reason all that did was make Batman angrier. He wanted a fight and now that the Scarecrow had retreated to let Jonathan take the punishment he wasn’t sure he could keep one going. It was all a little bit Jekyll and Hyde for Batman so he let go of Crane’s hair and shifted his weight so he could roll Crane onto his back and pin him down by the throat. He didn’t press hard enough to cut off Crane’s air entirely so Crane still didn’t fight back, he just trembled, eyes huge and terrified, whispering his mantra of ‘it’s not real’ over and over.
Batman tightened his grip, just for a moment, to make Crane gasp uselessly for air but he still didn’t retaliate, only clutching at Batman’s gauntlets, tearing the leather motorcycle gloves and bloodying already bloodied hands.
“Fight back!” Batman growled, choking Crane enough that his eyes squeezed shut and his body thrashed about automatically. It wasn’t what Batman wanted though, even when moisture leaked out from under Crane’s eyelashes and he coughed up blood through his useless gasps for air. “Damn you, fight back.”
Crane’s struggles were starting to weaken, so Batman relaxed his chokehold on Crane. The doctor spat up more blood and even without Batman’s grip on his throat he seemed to be having trouble breathing. No surprise there, since his nose and mouth were a mess. Crane cracked a sickly smile, and though his teeth were as red as the ground it didn’t look like he had lost any. His eyes were fever bright and Batman hit him, just because he could. Crane took the blow with a soft cry and brought up his hands to protect his face, trying to curl up. It looked like the position he’d taken while he was sleeping.
Batman staggered to his feet. He didn’t want to know. He wanted to throw up from the pain in his head and from the pitiful sight in front of him. Yet still, somehow, Crane, though truly pitiful, even bruised and bloodied was oddly beautiful. “Get up,” Batman snarled. “Get up and fight me.”
Surprisingly, Crane did as he was told, uncurling with a groan and pushing himself half up before Batman caught him right in the ribs with his boot. He hit the ground hard but tried again, arms shaking with the effort. Batman kicked him again and Crane dropped with a groan.
“I can’t.” Crane’s voice was thick and still choked. His shoulders heaved as he panted for air. “I’ve played this game before, and I couldn’t then, and I can’t now.” He rolled over onto his back and wiped at his nose and mouth with the back of his hand, managing to do nothing more than smear the blood around. “So if you’re going to beat me, then just do it, and don’t make a production of it.”
Batman dropped back down to his knees again, over Crane’s thighs. Mostly because his legs weren’t doing a very good job of holding him up with the way his head was spinning. He put a hand on Crane’s chest to steady himself and Crane’s lashes dropped halfway to hood his eyes.
“Ah,” Crane said. He ran his hands up Batman’s gloves, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
They were in a parking lot. The police were only half a block away, probably trying to clear the crowd and probably looking for both of them. Crane arched one eyebrow, coughed and then made a feeble attempt at backhanding Batman. He didn’t make it even close to Batman’s face, rather, he got his wrist caught and slammed down into the ground.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Batman grated the bones of Crane’s wrist against one another until Crane gasped and writhed in pain.
“Fighting back,” Crane hissed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” He spat to the side in contempt and licked his lips, sneering at Batman as much as he could do with his nose a fraction away from broken and his face a mass of bruises. “So make up your mind. Are we fucking or are you going to hit me again?”
Batman leaned down and licked the blood off of Crane’s face. Crane went very still but his breathing picked up, labored as it was. Batman tore at the straps holding the straightjacket shut and at Crane’s pants as Crane arched up, hands clenched in Batman’s cape.
He fucked Crane using Crane’s own blood as lubricant. Too dizzy and disorientated by half, Batman leaned back against a cracked lamppost, Crane kneeling over his thighs in an odd reversal of positions. Crane’s knees scraped raw against the dirty ground, the straightjacket half off and Crane’s thighs and hips were scored with shallow cuts from Batman’s gauntlets. The pointed tips of the ears on Batman’s cowl raked thin lines against Crane’s neck and one bare shoulder and Crane’s mouth and nose dripped blood down his bruised, sweat damp chest. He had one hand tangled in Crane’s hair, the other leaving another set of purpling fingerprints on Crane’s hips until he came, biting down on Crane’s throat to keep quiet. Batman pushed Crane off him and roughly shoved two fingers inside Crane, twisting, using his other hand to stroke Crane off until he cried out and the blood that had dripped down to his stomach was tinted with pearlescent white.
Crane barely moved as Batman dressed him, shoving sweaty skin into leather, leaving the button on his pants undone and his thighs still slick with blood and semen. He didn’t protest when Batman cuffed him to the lamppost and walked away.
Batman had to find Poison Ivy; he knew Harley was long gone, but there was a chance that Ivy was still lurking around the area. His stunt with the explosives had worked better than he had anticipated, and no matter that he was covered in Crane’s blood, or that his spinning head was filled with the image of haunted blue eyes in a battered face. He had a job to do and justice, as twisted up as it was, didn’t get to rest.
He looked back once. Crane hadn’t moved.
Batman grit his teeth and carried on into the night.
*~*~*~*
Harley doubled back on herself and made her careful way around the area, incognito without her facepaint and dressed in stolen, albeit ill-fitting clothing. It was only luck that led her to park her bike in the parking lot where Crane was half sitting, half sprawled on the ground, one wrist handcuffed to a lamppost. She stood for a moment, staring until Crane - and it was Crane - snapped, “A little help would be appreciated.” Harley picked up his mask and the scythe and came to crouch down next to him.
“I guess it would be kinda stupid to ask if you were okay.” Harley set his things down, pulled out her gun and shot the cuffs. They’d still be on one of his wrists, but they could deal with that later. “Can you walk?”
Crane shifted slightly, frowning and wincing. “Perhaps.”
She smiled, though it came out crooked. “You look like hell.” She grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. He was white under the mess of blood and bruises and there was an unhealthy sheen of sweat on him, but even though he swayed and had to lean against the lamppost for a minute, almost doubled over entirely from the pain, he kept his feet and eventually straightened out, one arm wrapped around his ribs. He reeked of sex.
“Where’s Ivy?” Crane, leaning heavily on Harley and the scythe, limped slowly over to the motorcycle. “Batman just went after her.”
“At the greenhouse, I think. I didn’t go back yet.” Harley frowned. “Y’ know, I don’t think Mista J’d be real pleased with me, but I’ll shoot the Bat if you ask me to.” She helped him sit astride the bike, trying not to watch the way he winced and hissed between his teeth. “Put a bullet right in between his eyes.”
He half snorted, but blood came out of his nose and he started to cough. “Don’t be a fool. There are more important things at stake, like getting back to the greenhouse so you and I, and Ivy don’t spend all night wandering Gotham looking for one another. She’ll be there, and wondering what the hell happened to you.” Crane pinched the bridge of his nose to stem the bleeding. “Besides, I’m fine.” It was the most flagrant lie that Harley had heard in a very long time. He had the audacity to laugh at the expression on her face. “I’ve had worse, for less, from men not half as noble as our dark knight.”
She spat in contempt. “There ain’t nothin’ noble in what he did.”
“Let’s not discuss this here.” Crane gestured at her bike impatiently. “I want a shower and preferably to stay out of Arkham…” he trailed off, looking confused for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and he snapped, “No. You can’t have it, it’s mine.”
Harley didn’t step back, though she wanted to. “Dr. Crane?”
“It’s mine and you can’t have it,” he said again, then moaned and clutched at his head. “Look what a mess you’ve made of me.”
She put a careful hand on his shoulder, but Crane seemed fully absorbed in talking to himself and so she eased him forwards on the seat, not trusting him to be able to hold on to her. Harley straddled the seat behind him, which wasn’t the best of ways to drive, with a crazy person between her and the handlebars, but she’d manage. She always managed.
*~*~*~*
Ivy’s cocoon of plants was ripped apart, half scorched again, weedkiller and kerosene set alight, smoking her out. She screamed and lashed out with what was left of her resources. Batman grabbed hold of her hair and dragged her out, into the putrid night air.
The Bat, normally an intimidating sight anyway, looked about half a second away from taking her head off her shoulders. His mouth and chin were smeared with blood and it wasn’t his blood. The same dark wetness stained his gauntlets and chestplate. Ivy, changing tactics, pushed as close as she could to the Batman, gripping his face with her hands so her hair, her scent washed over him. It hadn’t worked on Crane and it didn’t seem to have any effect on the Scarecrow either, but what were the odds that it wouldn’t work on Batman as well?
Her gambit paid off. His eyes widened, pupils expanding - though there seemed to be something slightly off about them - and his breathing hitched.
“Would you let go, please?” Ivy cooed.
Batman carefully set her right and even smoothed her hair a little. It felt as though he was getting blood in it, but at least he wasn’t trying to rip it out by the roots. Ivy took a deep breath and smiled seductively at him.
“There now, isn’t that better?” She took a quick peek at the smoking remains of her plants and decided that it was too late for them and she’d do best to just retreat, like she’d told Harley. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to hit girls?” The minute the words were out of her mouth his eyes narrowed, and it wasn’t in lust. She bit down on her bottom lip, wishing she could take them back. Of course the Batman had issues with his family, any man who dressed up like that and fought crime had to have issues coming out of his ears. Ivy backpedaled furiously. “See now, a man raised right, such as yourself, a dark knight, wouldn’t it be better to kiss and make up?”
He relaxed, but only a fraction. She was losing him. Ivy resisted the urge to stamp her feet in frustration. Damn Crane’s gasses anyway. The cure for it tended to lessen her own potency, especially, it seemed, in the face of such fury.
Batman shook his head a little, he looked like he was actually swaying slightly on his feet. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said politely. “But you’re going to have to come with me.”
“Oh, shoot,” Ivy said and tried for coy. “I was hoping…well…a lady doesn’t like to suggest such things.”
He looked confused. “You want to go somewhere?” Something wasn’t right with the Batman, and since Ivy had no idea what it was, she wasn’t sure if she could exploit it or not.
So she tossed her hair and shrugged a shoulder. “Isn’t that was what you wanted?”
How she kept finding the wrong thing to say, Ivy had no idea. It just wasn’t her night perhaps. Whatever it was she’d said, or how she’d said it, he didn’t like it. One hand grabbed hold of her wrist, twisting it up behind her back, the other clamped over her mouth.
“Exactly what he said,” Batman muttered, dragging her towards the flashing lights and the police cars that were swarming into this street en mass. Trust Gotham’s police force to arrive at the actual scene far later than around the area. He shoved her at the cops and immediately the resounding noise of guns being cocked overpowered even the sound of the sirens in the distance. “Put your gasmasks on,” Batman growled. “Something’s wrong with her.”
And then he was gone, back to the Batmobile, tearing it out from under her dying plants, roaring off into the night.
Ivy sighed and looked up into a forest of guns, all pointed at her, the cops still attaching their gas masks. “Well shit,” she said and put her hands up.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan stared at his reflection in the mirror in disgust. Harley was right, he did look like shit. On the plus side, none of his ribs were broken, his nose had stopped bleeding and Ivy’s salves and potions were keeping the swelling down on his bruises. So, all in all, it could have been much worse. He tucked his shirt into his slacks and limped out of the little bathroom to where Harley sat, fiddling with the reception on a beat up old television.
“Where’s the Scarecrow?” she asked, without looking at him. “Sonofabitch, don’t do that.”
Jonathan was about a second away from asking, ‘Do what?’ but Harley smacked the television and called it the bastard son of a breadbox, so he assumed it wasn’t he whom she was calling a son of a bitch. “He retreated when the Bat caught us and now he can’t get back in charge unless I take more of that serum.”
Harley turned to face him then. “Are you going to?”
He snorted and gingerly sat on one of the plants. “Of course not. My mind is my own, and no one else can have it. Not even my own…” Jonathan made a face. “Not even my own delusions.” He prodded unhappily at his sore wrist. “I’ll have to keep working on an antidote. There’s got to be a way to get rid of him.”
“Well isn’t he you?” Harley crowed in triumph as a static-filled picture came through, complete with tinny, tunneled sound.
“Perhaps.” Jonathan hoped not, but he wasn’t sure enough to say no. Not without proper research. “What are you looking for?”
Harley came over to sit next to him. “Ivy.”
The news report was the usual reporter’s jargon of ‘Is Batman Evil?’ and ‘Who’s Going to Clean this Mess up?’ and ‘What is the Government Planning on Doing About this?’ It was, unfortunately, followed by a broadcast detailing the capture of Poison Ivy and her subsequent incarceration at Arkham.
Harley turned the television off with a well placed throw of a flowerpot.
They sat in silence for a minute or two before Jonathan put his head in his hands, rubbing at his temples. “I know Arkham better than I know any other place in the world. All the exits, all the basements…” He trailed off when Harley caught hold of his hand and squeezed gently. “We’ll get her out.” Jonathan tipped his head to the side so it was resting on her shoulder and sighed. “And then I’ll get my mind back, and you’ll go home, and everything will turn out fine in the end.”
It was nice of Harley not to call him out for the terrible liar that he was.
*~*~*~*
“Sir, I’m not sure I want to ask where all this blood is from, since it is apparently not yours.” Alfred looked like he was about a second away from tapping his foot and demanding to know exactly what had happened. He looked worried sick.
Bruce downed a handful of painkillers and sank back into the pillows. “Then don’t, Alfred. You won’t like the answer.” He shut his eyes against the spinning and the high-pitched whine in his ears. “Consider it a bonus that I caught Poison Ivy and let’s leave it at that.”
Alfred started rearranging the tray, a sure sign that he was unhappy. “Is that her blood, sir?”
“No.” Bruce opened his eyes again when all he could think of was a fuzzy image of Crane, chained to the lamppost, staring after him.
“They didn’t catch him, you know. He’d escaped by the time the police arrived at the scene.” Alfred picked up the tray and the plates rattled slightly, as though Alfred’s hands were shaking. “Eyewitnesses say that the lady joker picked him up on a motorcycle.”
Bruce shut his eyes. He’d rather be haunted by Crane than have to look at Alfred’s disappointment. “Yes, Alfred, it’s Crane’s. I slammed his face into the sidewalk, more than once; is that what you want to know?”
“Don’t let this get out of hand, Master Wayne.” Alfred headed for the door. “If you go too far, there’s no coming back from it.” He shut the door carefully behind him so as not to jar Bruce’s headache any further. It made Bruce angry.
He clenched his fists in the sheets and groaned. “It’s already gone too far,” he whispered. Then the sleeping pills kicked in and Bruce gratefully let them drag him under. At least in such a comatose state he wouldn’t have to think any more.
Series: Rumplestiltskin 7/10
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still not mine
Notes: This has been far too long in coming out and my apologies to anyone who has been waiting for this.
Thanks to meletor_et_al, as always, for the beta.
Warnings: I’ve buggered canon!battime all to hell, but then again, so did the comics.
Parts 1-6 found here
*~*~*~*
The ride into the center of Gotham was a little tedious because for all that the Scarecrow seemed a lot tougher than Jonathan, he was still hurting and riding a horse probably wasn’t doing him any favors. Harley was forced to go slowly so he and the horse could keep up with her bike. She let her thoughts wander where they would - except towards the Joker because this evening was supposed to be fun - and stumbled upon the idea of writing imaginary Arkham reports for her cohorts.
Poison Ivy;
Ivy’s idea of a utopia sounds beautiful and lonely and I don’t think she’d know what to do with it if she got it. Is the kind of woman who would rip Gotham down and let the inhabitants be turned to mulch but who would offer asylum to fellow super-villains on the run from shitty relationships; whatever kind of woman that is. Ivy is probably totally nuts and treatment should include copious amounts of caramel ice-cream and nights out with the girls.
The Scarecrow;
Most likely a split personality of one Doctor Jonathan Crane prev. of Arkham. Most likely sociopathic. Freud’s dream patient because what’s with the scythe and the horse? Completely fucking nuts and should be treated by bringing back Doctor Crane because one) he’s much nicer and two) he doesn’t wear a burlap sack on his head. (Though the pants are nice)
Well, they weren’t quite the sort of report that Arkham would have considered appropriate for filing, but it amused Harley and it kept her from worrying about where exactly Jonathan had gone and if he was going to come back any time soon. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone with an obvious case of multiple personality disorder - only they were calling it something else these days, something like DID, because no one could prove that the personalities were separate people. Harley was pretty sure that Crane hadn’t been suffering from anything of the sort before he’d been gassed, because she’d read the reports in the news and in his files and he’d been bug-fuck crazy but Scarecrow had been a persona, not a person. The man keeping apace with her motorcycle on a horse and wielding a dirty great scythe was not Crane.
“Hey Scarecrow,” she called over the rumble of the engine. “Can I ask you a question?”
He turned to face her and she could see the brightness of his eyes even from behind the mask. “You just did,” he said, and turned away again. It might have been a joke, but Harley wouldn’t have bet on it either way.
She huffed out an exasperated sigh and tried again. “Where’s Crane?”
That seemed to startle him and his head whipped around to face her once more. “Does it matter?” The voice modulator built into the mask made his question sound more ominous then it otherwise might have been. The silence between them stretched out and then Scarecrow inclined his head slightly. “He’s taking a rest. Sleeping, if you will.”
“An’ where were you before now?”
The Scarecrow laughed and Harley’s skin crawled as though someone was walking over her grave. “Waiting.”
*~*~*~*
Bruce woke with a groan. He’d felt like shit in his day, more times than he could count, but this was something new. His vision refused to settle and the room looked a little bit fuzzy around the edges, though that might have been the fault of his concussion or the fault of the class-A headache that he had because of the concussion.
He pushed the blankets off himself and sat up. For a couple of seconds his stomach rolled over and his ears rung with an off tone note. Then the world stopped spinning and his stomach settled into an aching that matched his head. Slowly, so as not to repeat that wonderfully nauseating moment, Bruce slid out of the bed, eased himself to his feet, and then waited until he was steady on his feet before stumbling to the bathroom. Concussion, or not, he needed to piss and then he needed a handful of aspirin and to get his fucking head in order so he could go after Crane.
He’d just completed the first order of business, with only a little trouble thanks to the dizziness, but without mishap when the familiar sounds of Alfred bustling about the bedroom caught his ear.
“Master Wayne?”
Bruce popped two aspirin into his mouth, braced himself on the bathroom countertop and drank straight from the faucet. “In here,” he called in reply, and then wished he hadn’t when even just raising his voice slightly made his head spin. “I’m fine,” he added, preemptively.
Alfred’s disapproving face came around the corner into the bathroom. “You should have called me, sir.”
That made Bruce grin slightly. “I don’t think that’s included in your duties, Alfred.” He spared a hand to cup water and splash it over his face. He didn’t feel better after doing that, but it certainly didn’t hurt and he could almost pretend that it was helping his headache. “I need…” Bruce shut his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts. They didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “I’m going to need your help with this one,” he said finally.
“You need to go back to bed.” Alfred’s face was a picture of displeasure. “Gotham can survive for a few days without you.”
“Not with the Scarecrow on the loose,” Bruce muttered and made his unsteady way back into his bedroom. “If he’s got plans then…Gotham can’t survive without Batman. That’s why I created him.”
Alfred opened Bruce’s wardrobe for him and started laying clothing out on the bed. They were clothes for sitting around in, not for putting on under the Batsuit. “Are you sure it’s not Jonathan Crane you’re thinking of, rather than Gotham?” Alfred asked archly.
It was a low blow and from the look on Alfred’s face, they both knew it. Bruce leaned against the footboard for added balance and rubbed at his face with one hand. “He needs help, Alfred,” he said. “And he knows who I am, so it’s in my interest to catch him again.” Bruce sighed and shut his eyes. “Don’t…I know what he is. I know.”
There was a low murmur from Alfred that sounded a lot like, ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ but Bruce couldn’t be sure because the ringing in his ears had started up again so he didn’t say anything, mostly because he really wasn’t sure either.
“I’m going out,” Bruce said finally. “With or without your help.” He opened his eyes again to find Alfred staring at him with an inscrutable look on his face. “But I’ll get a lot further with it.”
Alfred looked away. “I’ll drive you to the batcave then, shall I, sir?”
It was a terrible idea, they both knew it, but what else was there to be done?
*~*~*~*
Gotham was in chaos, which was exactly the way that Harley liked to see it. She was grinning, she could tell, like she hadn’t done in days, as she spun her motorbike around, herding the panicked crowd. Ivy had disappeared for the moment but the sirens were still a few blocks away and from what Harley could hear over the screaming, there weren’t nearly enough cops to stop even one of them. Besides, Ivy had a way of reappearing dramatically at opportune moments and she was probably scrounging about in the dirt somewhere, planting and cultivating a botanical time bomb that would wreak havoc long after they had left.
The Scarecrow, unlike Jonathan, didn’t seem to have much scientific interest in the properties of the fear gas. She could almost have imagined what it would have been like if Crane had been in control that night in the Narrows; all hunched over his notebook, annotating and recording. It was kind of cute. Scarecrow was using the combination of his horse and the scythe to terrify the crowd into tight spaces where he would gas them and leave them to take each other apart. It was clever in its own way, but ‘Crow didn’t seem to have quite the same levels of control that Crane did and she wasn’t sure she trusted him to have her and Ivy’s backs.
Of course, even before the cops showed up the Batmobile roared onto the scene, weaving a little erratically, and nearly hitting a few of the panicked crowd. It was bad driving, even by the Bat’s standards. The Scarecrow’s horse reared back, screaming. Harley hadn’t ever heard a horse make a noise like that before, but the poor thing looked about as spooked and as crazed as Dr. Crane had, and it clipped a pedestrian with one flailing hoof before landing again.
Either Ivy’s talent with plants also came with some sort of precognition (which Harley was 100% sure that it didn’t) or she had a phenomenal grasp of timing. No sooner had the Batmobile screeched to a halt than a huge torrent of vines shot up out of the ground, tangling around the wheels and up over the windscreen as the Bat himself flew out onto the streets.
Harley giggled. “Better than a boot!” she called out to the Scarecrow. If he was amused by her traffic humor, it didn’t show.
She wasn’t entirely sure what kind of tricks the Bat would have up his sleeve but it was three against one and both she and ‘Crow had easily maneuverable transportation. And speaking of the Scarecrow, he and Batman were eyeballing each other from across the crowd. Harley hefted her gun thoughtfully as the Scarecrow wheeled his horse around in tight circles, waiting for Batman to make the first move. On one hand she figured a straight shot would probably take Batman down pretty quickly and she was a more than passable shot. On the other hand, the Joker would be pissed as hell if she shot Batman and he wasn’t there. It would certainly spoil all the fun they might have had later, and she was close to certain that he wouldn’t take her back if she shot Batman. On another hand again, Batman was standing kind of funny and he wasn’t making any sort of move.
Harley put her gun away and toed the kickstand down on her bike. “A vampire bat comes into his cave,” she said with a grin. “He’s all covered in blood an’ all the other batlings start askin’ where he got it. They set up such a noise that the first bat tells ‘em to follow him an’ he leads them out into the night.” She paused, one hand on her hip and winked at Batman. “You listening, sugar? Good. So the bat says, ‘You guys see that tree there?’ an’ all the other bats go, ‘yes! Yes!’ An’ the first bat says, ‘Good. ‘Cause I didn’t.’”
Excepting the screams of the panicked crowd there was silence.
Harley rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad a joke.”
Batman stared at her like she’d grown two heads, but he still didn’t move. It was a little unnerving. She would have made a run at him, but the fact that he was just standing there staring at her made her wonder exactly what he had planned and Harley decided that just barreling at him would probably be exactly what he wanted her to do. So she stayed put. It was possibly one of the least interesting fights she’d ever had with him.
The Scarecrow laughed and the mask’s distortion kicked in a second late so it echoed and spat static for a couple of seconds after the man underneath had stopped. “Oh, isn’t that just precious? How’s your head Batty-boy? Can you even see straight?” He brought the horse mostly to a standstill, though it snorted and stepped a little back and forth. “You should have stayed down.”
“Funny,” Batman growled, “I thought that’s where you liked it.”
As comebacks go, Harley wasn’t sure that one made total sense, but she got the gist of it well enough and she wasn’t so foolish that she couldn’t put two and two together and come up with the answer as to who had roughed Crane up. Their standoff was ridiculous enough, Harley thought a couple of seconds later, without her standing there gaping like a landed fish.
The Scarecrow laughed again, and she wished he’d stop doing that; it was making her skin crawl. He charged his horse straight at Batman as though he would simply trample the dark knight to death. At the last second Batman leaped out of the way, catching hold of one of the Scarecrow’s legs, dragging him off the horse. They both fell, rolling across the tarmac and Harley leapt for Batman before he could get to the Scarecrow. She didn’t care how good he was with his gasses and his scythe; he’d get his ass handed to him if it came down to hand to hand combat.
Harley tackled Batman, landing a kidney punch, though his armor deflected most of the blow and he rolled with it, sending her into a somersault to avoid being slammed into the ground. He came after her, leaving the Scarecrow to unload two canisters of gas into the crowd, though it had no effect on either Harley or Batman.
Ivy came out from wherever she’d wandered off to, accompanied by a be-thorned army of vicious looking plants that crawled over the street, raising her up on a mound of vines and sneaking out to snatch hold of the Bat. He vanished under the creepers and Ivy shook her head in disgust.
“That was pathetic.”
The Scarecrow limped over to them, holding his scythe. “He was concussed.”
Harley gave him a slantways look, but kept her mouth shut. If he wanted to talk, then he would talk. Until then, it was none of her goddamn business who Crane chose to… “You hit the Batman with a glass of orange juice?”
“Crane did.” The Scarecrow leaned on his scythe. “I would have hit him with his caravan.” He peered at the writhing mass of plants. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
Ivy tossed her hair impatiently. “Not dead, just trapped. I thought we would discuss what to do with him, since we all had a hand in his capture.”
It was about then that the vines burst into flames and it was like a hundred bonfires all at once as the Batman came out of the smoke, a little sooty about the edges, but otherwise unharmed. Ivy screamed as the pile she was standing atop of lit up underneath her and her plants burned and died. Harley dodged past the Bat to tackle Ivy out of the inferno.
Ivy lay on the ground, gasping. “Split up,” she wheezed. “He can’t chase all of us. We’ll meet back at HQ.” Harley shook her head no, so Ivy shoved her away and staggered to her feet. “Go! While he’s distracted with the Scarecrow. It’s not worth jeopardizing our plans for.”
Harley cursed and ran for her bike. She kicked it to life as she watched Batman take off after Scarecrow, the two of them making for a nearby parking lot. When she looked back to Ivy, Ivy was gone so she roared off back towards the greenhouse, cursing all the while.
*~*~*~*
Under the tangle of blackened plants, Ivy curled up around her burns. It was nothing she couldn’t heal, but it hurt and the sudden death of her babies had sapped her strength. Better that the Bat went after ‘Crow and Harley got away. They could always break the Scarecrow out of Arkham later if he got caught.
Ivy shut her eyes and concentrated on healing.
*~*~*~*
Batman stared across the parking lot at the Scarecrow. “Crane,” he growled. It wasn’t really Crane though, and he knew it. “I should have guessed you’d be with them after all. You never could manage on your own, could you?”
It had been a mistake to let the Scarecrow get into an open space. Before, with the street clogged up by plants, he hadn’t had a lot of room to maneuver but now he had room to swing the scythe and Batman was having trouble keeping his vision clear enough that there was only one of everything. His head was pounding and the ringing in his ears had started up again.
“Now, now, let’s not go pointing fingers,” the Scarecrow taunted. “After all, you’ve never fought me.”
Batman snarled though he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment so the world would stop spinning. “No, but I think if a DA’s assistant can beat you, I can manage it.”
“Sticks and stones, sticks and stones.” The Scarecrow twirled the scythe with what appeared to be a practiced hand. The distortion on his mask crackled and hissed, like it was laughing all on its own. “They say you can’t keep a good man down. But you’re not really a good man, are you, Bats? Poor little Jonny’s all in knots over you.” He tipped his head to one side and if Batman hadn’t know better he would have sworn the Scarecrow was grinning at him. “I’ll bet you’re almost as sore as he is, so let’s see if I can’t finish this properly.” The blade flashed in the garish light as it came to an abrupt halt.
Where the hell Crane had learned to handle a scythe like that was something Batman was going to have to investigate. He kept underestimating the tenacity of the doctor and all his little…quirks. He smiled grimly and clenched his fists.
The Scarecrow had the advantage of a longer reach with the scythe but Batman had the advantage of height, weight and years of training. They were both stiff and bruised and where Batman’s head ached and spun the Scarecrow’s vision was hampered by the mask and he was (hopefully) too crazy to think straight - not that Batman could rely on that.
They came together with a clash of scythe and gauntlets, Batman’s wrists crossed in guard so he could push ‘Crow back again and lash out with a kick. The kick went wide; he’d aimed at the other Scarecrow that was fading in and out of his vision. As soon as he was balanced again, Scarecrow struck out, blow after blow, and it was all Batman could do to keep up with the spinning blade. However, the scythe wasn’t sharp enough to cut through the Kevlar, so the only way that the Scarecrow could take him out would be by bringing the flat of the blade down on his head.
It was something of an impasse, as the Scarecrow’s breathing came increasingly heavily through the distortion in his mask and Batman’s tenuous balance faltered under the onslaught of blows. Sooner or later one of them had to make a misstep.
It was the Scarecrow. He came just a little too close and Batman grabbed hold of the end of the noose attached to the mask. It put him in danger of being cracked about the head with the scythe, but the Scarecrow didn’t react fast enough, didn’t bring his weapon around in time - his arms were probably running out of strength - and Batman yanked, hard, sending the Scarecrow stumbling in a circle and then down onto the ground.
The scythe skittered out of his grasp and Batman yanked on the noose again, crouching over him, pinning him with a knee to his back. He let go of the noose and pulled the burlap mask off, tossing it over his shoulder so he wouldn’t have to listen to the horrible hissing and crackling it was making. He traded his hold on the noose for a handful of the Scarecrow’s hair, pulling him back into an arch.
The Scarecrow let out an enraged scream that set Batman’s teeth on edge and twisted about in Batman’s hold, trying to throw him off. Batman used his free hand to rip the belt strapped with canisters of fear gas off and then to punch the Scarecrow in the shoulder as he let go of his hair. The blow slammed the Scarecrow forward, face first into the asphalt. The Scarecrow pushed himself back up again, almost immediately, but there was blood on the ground and, from what Batman could see, it was coming from his nose and mouth. The sight of blood only incensed him so he hit the Scarecrow again, and again, until the ground was more red than grey. He grabbed hold of the Scarecrow’s hair again, and the Scarecrow went abruptly limp underneath him, then shuddered and groaned. Batman dug his knee into the Scarecrow’s back a little harder and yanked on the handful of hair he had.
“God, don’t…”
It wasn’t the Scarecrow anymore. Batman was sure of it; it was Crane again. Crane, who was shoving at the ground, trying to bend back to ease the pressure on his spine and hair, and Crane who was whimpering through a mouthful of blood but not struggling.
For some reason all that did was make Batman angrier. He wanted a fight and now that the Scarecrow had retreated to let Jonathan take the punishment he wasn’t sure he could keep one going. It was all a little bit Jekyll and Hyde for Batman so he let go of Crane’s hair and shifted his weight so he could roll Crane onto his back and pin him down by the throat. He didn’t press hard enough to cut off Crane’s air entirely so Crane still didn’t fight back, he just trembled, eyes huge and terrified, whispering his mantra of ‘it’s not real’ over and over.
Batman tightened his grip, just for a moment, to make Crane gasp uselessly for air but he still didn’t retaliate, only clutching at Batman’s gauntlets, tearing the leather motorcycle gloves and bloodying already bloodied hands.
“Fight back!” Batman growled, choking Crane enough that his eyes squeezed shut and his body thrashed about automatically. It wasn’t what Batman wanted though, even when moisture leaked out from under Crane’s eyelashes and he coughed up blood through his useless gasps for air. “Damn you, fight back.”
Crane’s struggles were starting to weaken, so Batman relaxed his chokehold on Crane. The doctor spat up more blood and even without Batman’s grip on his throat he seemed to be having trouble breathing. No surprise there, since his nose and mouth were a mess. Crane cracked a sickly smile, and though his teeth were as red as the ground it didn’t look like he had lost any. His eyes were fever bright and Batman hit him, just because he could. Crane took the blow with a soft cry and brought up his hands to protect his face, trying to curl up. It looked like the position he’d taken while he was sleeping.
Batman staggered to his feet. He didn’t want to know. He wanted to throw up from the pain in his head and from the pitiful sight in front of him. Yet still, somehow, Crane, though truly pitiful, even bruised and bloodied was oddly beautiful. “Get up,” Batman snarled. “Get up and fight me.”
Surprisingly, Crane did as he was told, uncurling with a groan and pushing himself half up before Batman caught him right in the ribs with his boot. He hit the ground hard but tried again, arms shaking with the effort. Batman kicked him again and Crane dropped with a groan.
“I can’t.” Crane’s voice was thick and still choked. His shoulders heaved as he panted for air. “I’ve played this game before, and I couldn’t then, and I can’t now.” He rolled over onto his back and wiped at his nose and mouth with the back of his hand, managing to do nothing more than smear the blood around. “So if you’re going to beat me, then just do it, and don’t make a production of it.”
Batman dropped back down to his knees again, over Crane’s thighs. Mostly because his legs weren’t doing a very good job of holding him up with the way his head was spinning. He put a hand on Crane’s chest to steady himself and Crane’s lashes dropped halfway to hood his eyes.
“Ah,” Crane said. He ran his hands up Batman’s gloves, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
They were in a parking lot. The police were only half a block away, probably trying to clear the crowd and probably looking for both of them. Crane arched one eyebrow, coughed and then made a feeble attempt at backhanding Batman. He didn’t make it even close to Batman’s face, rather, he got his wrist caught and slammed down into the ground.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Batman grated the bones of Crane’s wrist against one another until Crane gasped and writhed in pain.
“Fighting back,” Crane hissed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” He spat to the side in contempt and licked his lips, sneering at Batman as much as he could do with his nose a fraction away from broken and his face a mass of bruises. “So make up your mind. Are we fucking or are you going to hit me again?”
Batman leaned down and licked the blood off of Crane’s face. Crane went very still but his breathing picked up, labored as it was. Batman tore at the straps holding the straightjacket shut and at Crane’s pants as Crane arched up, hands clenched in Batman’s cape.
He fucked Crane using Crane’s own blood as lubricant. Too dizzy and disorientated by half, Batman leaned back against a cracked lamppost, Crane kneeling over his thighs in an odd reversal of positions. Crane’s knees scraped raw against the dirty ground, the straightjacket half off and Crane’s thighs and hips were scored with shallow cuts from Batman’s gauntlets. The pointed tips of the ears on Batman’s cowl raked thin lines against Crane’s neck and one bare shoulder and Crane’s mouth and nose dripped blood down his bruised, sweat damp chest. He had one hand tangled in Crane’s hair, the other leaving another set of purpling fingerprints on Crane’s hips until he came, biting down on Crane’s throat to keep quiet. Batman pushed Crane off him and roughly shoved two fingers inside Crane, twisting, using his other hand to stroke Crane off until he cried out and the blood that had dripped down to his stomach was tinted with pearlescent white.
Crane barely moved as Batman dressed him, shoving sweaty skin into leather, leaving the button on his pants undone and his thighs still slick with blood and semen. He didn’t protest when Batman cuffed him to the lamppost and walked away.
Batman had to find Poison Ivy; he knew Harley was long gone, but there was a chance that Ivy was still lurking around the area. His stunt with the explosives had worked better than he had anticipated, and no matter that he was covered in Crane’s blood, or that his spinning head was filled with the image of haunted blue eyes in a battered face. He had a job to do and justice, as twisted up as it was, didn’t get to rest.
He looked back once. Crane hadn’t moved.
Batman grit his teeth and carried on into the night.
*~*~*~*
Harley doubled back on herself and made her careful way around the area, incognito without her facepaint and dressed in stolen, albeit ill-fitting clothing. It was only luck that led her to park her bike in the parking lot where Crane was half sitting, half sprawled on the ground, one wrist handcuffed to a lamppost. She stood for a moment, staring until Crane - and it was Crane - snapped, “A little help would be appreciated.” Harley picked up his mask and the scythe and came to crouch down next to him.
“I guess it would be kinda stupid to ask if you were okay.” Harley set his things down, pulled out her gun and shot the cuffs. They’d still be on one of his wrists, but they could deal with that later. “Can you walk?”
Crane shifted slightly, frowning and wincing. “Perhaps.”
She smiled, though it came out crooked. “You look like hell.” She grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. He was white under the mess of blood and bruises and there was an unhealthy sheen of sweat on him, but even though he swayed and had to lean against the lamppost for a minute, almost doubled over entirely from the pain, he kept his feet and eventually straightened out, one arm wrapped around his ribs. He reeked of sex.
“Where’s Ivy?” Crane, leaning heavily on Harley and the scythe, limped slowly over to the motorcycle. “Batman just went after her.”
“At the greenhouse, I think. I didn’t go back yet.” Harley frowned. “Y’ know, I don’t think Mista J’d be real pleased with me, but I’ll shoot the Bat if you ask me to.” She helped him sit astride the bike, trying not to watch the way he winced and hissed between his teeth. “Put a bullet right in between his eyes.”
He half snorted, but blood came out of his nose and he started to cough. “Don’t be a fool. There are more important things at stake, like getting back to the greenhouse so you and I, and Ivy don’t spend all night wandering Gotham looking for one another. She’ll be there, and wondering what the hell happened to you.” Crane pinched the bridge of his nose to stem the bleeding. “Besides, I’m fine.” It was the most flagrant lie that Harley had heard in a very long time. He had the audacity to laugh at the expression on her face. “I’ve had worse, for less, from men not half as noble as our dark knight.”
She spat in contempt. “There ain’t nothin’ noble in what he did.”
“Let’s not discuss this here.” Crane gestured at her bike impatiently. “I want a shower and preferably to stay out of Arkham…” he trailed off, looking confused for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and he snapped, “No. You can’t have it, it’s mine.”
Harley didn’t step back, though she wanted to. “Dr. Crane?”
“It’s mine and you can’t have it,” he said again, then moaned and clutched at his head. “Look what a mess you’ve made of me.”
She put a careful hand on his shoulder, but Crane seemed fully absorbed in talking to himself and so she eased him forwards on the seat, not trusting him to be able to hold on to her. Harley straddled the seat behind him, which wasn’t the best of ways to drive, with a crazy person between her and the handlebars, but she’d manage. She always managed.
*~*~*~*
Ivy’s cocoon of plants was ripped apart, half scorched again, weedkiller and kerosene set alight, smoking her out. She screamed and lashed out with what was left of her resources. Batman grabbed hold of her hair and dragged her out, into the putrid night air.
The Bat, normally an intimidating sight anyway, looked about half a second away from taking her head off her shoulders. His mouth and chin were smeared with blood and it wasn’t his blood. The same dark wetness stained his gauntlets and chestplate. Ivy, changing tactics, pushed as close as she could to the Batman, gripping his face with her hands so her hair, her scent washed over him. It hadn’t worked on Crane and it didn’t seem to have any effect on the Scarecrow either, but what were the odds that it wouldn’t work on Batman as well?
Her gambit paid off. His eyes widened, pupils expanding - though there seemed to be something slightly off about them - and his breathing hitched.
“Would you let go, please?” Ivy cooed.
Batman carefully set her right and even smoothed her hair a little. It felt as though he was getting blood in it, but at least he wasn’t trying to rip it out by the roots. Ivy took a deep breath and smiled seductively at him.
“There now, isn’t that better?” She took a quick peek at the smoking remains of her plants and decided that it was too late for them and she’d do best to just retreat, like she’d told Harley. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to hit girls?” The minute the words were out of her mouth his eyes narrowed, and it wasn’t in lust. She bit down on her bottom lip, wishing she could take them back. Of course the Batman had issues with his family, any man who dressed up like that and fought crime had to have issues coming out of his ears. Ivy backpedaled furiously. “See now, a man raised right, such as yourself, a dark knight, wouldn’t it be better to kiss and make up?”
He relaxed, but only a fraction. She was losing him. Ivy resisted the urge to stamp her feet in frustration. Damn Crane’s gasses anyway. The cure for it tended to lessen her own potency, especially, it seemed, in the face of such fury.
Batman shook his head a little, he looked like he was actually swaying slightly on his feet. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said politely. “But you’re going to have to come with me.”
“Oh, shoot,” Ivy said and tried for coy. “I was hoping…well…a lady doesn’t like to suggest such things.”
He looked confused. “You want to go somewhere?” Something wasn’t right with the Batman, and since Ivy had no idea what it was, she wasn’t sure if she could exploit it or not.
So she tossed her hair and shrugged a shoulder. “Isn’t that was what you wanted?”
How she kept finding the wrong thing to say, Ivy had no idea. It just wasn’t her night perhaps. Whatever it was she’d said, or how she’d said it, he didn’t like it. One hand grabbed hold of her wrist, twisting it up behind her back, the other clamped over her mouth.
“Exactly what he said,” Batman muttered, dragging her towards the flashing lights and the police cars that were swarming into this street en mass. Trust Gotham’s police force to arrive at the actual scene far later than around the area. He shoved her at the cops and immediately the resounding noise of guns being cocked overpowered even the sound of the sirens in the distance. “Put your gasmasks on,” Batman growled. “Something’s wrong with her.”
And then he was gone, back to the Batmobile, tearing it out from under her dying plants, roaring off into the night.
Ivy sighed and looked up into a forest of guns, all pointed at her, the cops still attaching their gas masks. “Well shit,” she said and put her hands up.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan stared at his reflection in the mirror in disgust. Harley was right, he did look like shit. On the plus side, none of his ribs were broken, his nose had stopped bleeding and Ivy’s salves and potions were keeping the swelling down on his bruises. So, all in all, it could have been much worse. He tucked his shirt into his slacks and limped out of the little bathroom to where Harley sat, fiddling with the reception on a beat up old television.
“Where’s the Scarecrow?” she asked, without looking at him. “Sonofabitch, don’t do that.”
Jonathan was about a second away from asking, ‘Do what?’ but Harley smacked the television and called it the bastard son of a breadbox, so he assumed it wasn’t he whom she was calling a son of a bitch. “He retreated when the Bat caught us and now he can’t get back in charge unless I take more of that serum.”
Harley turned to face him then. “Are you going to?”
He snorted and gingerly sat on one of the plants. “Of course not. My mind is my own, and no one else can have it. Not even my own…” Jonathan made a face. “Not even my own delusions.” He prodded unhappily at his sore wrist. “I’ll have to keep working on an antidote. There’s got to be a way to get rid of him.”
“Well isn’t he you?” Harley crowed in triumph as a static-filled picture came through, complete with tinny, tunneled sound.
“Perhaps.” Jonathan hoped not, but he wasn’t sure enough to say no. Not without proper research. “What are you looking for?”
Harley came over to sit next to him. “Ivy.”
The news report was the usual reporter’s jargon of ‘Is Batman Evil?’ and ‘Who’s Going to Clean this Mess up?’ and ‘What is the Government Planning on Doing About this?’ It was, unfortunately, followed by a broadcast detailing the capture of Poison Ivy and her subsequent incarceration at Arkham.
Harley turned the television off with a well placed throw of a flowerpot.
They sat in silence for a minute or two before Jonathan put his head in his hands, rubbing at his temples. “I know Arkham better than I know any other place in the world. All the exits, all the basements…” He trailed off when Harley caught hold of his hand and squeezed gently. “We’ll get her out.” Jonathan tipped his head to the side so it was resting on her shoulder and sighed. “And then I’ll get my mind back, and you’ll go home, and everything will turn out fine in the end.”
It was nice of Harley not to call him out for the terrible liar that he was.
*~*~*~*
“Sir, I’m not sure I want to ask where all this blood is from, since it is apparently not yours.” Alfred looked like he was about a second away from tapping his foot and demanding to know exactly what had happened. He looked worried sick.
Bruce downed a handful of painkillers and sank back into the pillows. “Then don’t, Alfred. You won’t like the answer.” He shut his eyes against the spinning and the high-pitched whine in his ears. “Consider it a bonus that I caught Poison Ivy and let’s leave it at that.”
Alfred started rearranging the tray, a sure sign that he was unhappy. “Is that her blood, sir?”
“No.” Bruce opened his eyes again when all he could think of was a fuzzy image of Crane, chained to the lamppost, staring after him.
“They didn’t catch him, you know. He’d escaped by the time the police arrived at the scene.” Alfred picked up the tray and the plates rattled slightly, as though Alfred’s hands were shaking. “Eyewitnesses say that the lady joker picked him up on a motorcycle.”
Bruce shut his eyes. He’d rather be haunted by Crane than have to look at Alfred’s disappointment. “Yes, Alfred, it’s Crane’s. I slammed his face into the sidewalk, more than once; is that what you want to know?”
“Don’t let this get out of hand, Master Wayne.” Alfred headed for the door. “If you go too far, there’s no coming back from it.” He shut the door carefully behind him so as not to jar Bruce’s headache any further. It made Bruce angry.
He clenched his fists in the sheets and groaned. “It’s already gone too far,” he whispered. Then the sleeping pills kicked in and Bruce gratefully let them drag him under. At least in such a comatose state he wouldn’t have to think any more.