Rumplestiltskin 8/10
Title: And Then There was One
Series: Rumplestiltskin 8/10
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Notes: Over one year later since I started. Whoops. It's also a bit of a stop-gap but there you have it. Two to go.
Warnings: I’ve buggered canon!battime all to hell, but then again, so did the comics.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan woke up and wanted to die. It felt as though there wasn’t an inch of his body that didn’t ache and his head was thick with bad dreams, clotted blood and fear. The air around him stank of cloying rot and he gagged a little on the stench. His stomach turned over unhappily and he shut his eyes again to keep back the lights flickering at the edge of his vision and the moisture beading under his eyelashes. He ground his teeth against the pain and uncurled from his customary sleeping position. Jonathan woke up sore from sleeping that way most days, never mind after he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life.
Something warm and vaguely soft bumped up against his back. Every muscle in his neck and back rebelled against his glance over his shoulder but he wouldn’t allow himself to be bested by something as pathetic as his own stupid, weak body.
Behind him, face still splotched with greasepaint, was Harley, snoring a little. Her mouth was open and she looked young, too young. She opened her eyes a fraction and groaned.
“Go back to sleep, idiot. It’s still light out.”
He got his arms underneath himself and half pushed, half rolled into a sitting position. It didn’t improve the pain. “I need to get back to work before my symptoms get worse.” Jonathan grabbed onto a vine for support and hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll be in the lab if you need me.”
Harley sat up, abruptly awake. “Don’t,” she said, with a pleading note in her voice. “Don’t risk it.”
Jonathan gave her a truly scathing look. “Oh? And what would you suggest I do instead? I believe my options are to either cure myself or to turn myself in to Arkham. While I enjoyed working there well enough I highly doubt that I would find similar pleasure on the other side of the padded door.” He tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the slacks he was wearing. It was what one might call an exercise in futility, but he was grateful to at least have the clothing, wrinkled or not and was then incredibly angry that he was grateful. The straightjacket, slung over one of the plants, was stained with blood. It made him feel queasy just looking at it. Not because of what had happened, he didn’t care much about that either way; it was the reminder that his grip on his own mind was tenuous at best.
She got up, took a punishing hold on his arm and dragged him into the little bathroom, shoving him in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself! This is what your damn experimenting is doin’.”
“Get your hands off me,” Jonathan snarled. He shoved at her, turning his face away. “I don’t need to look, you stupid girl. I will take whatever I have to take to get my mind back. I’ve suffered bruises, broken bones, cuts, sprains, and humiliations, and humiliations, and humiliations. Don’t think this is something new in my life. It’s all immaterial. So long as I can get my mind back, none of this matters.”
He looked anyway and wished he hadn’t.
The whites of his eyes were red with burst blood vessels and there was dried blood around his nose and mouth. His teeth were stained with it and his face was purple and green, swollen with bruises. There was a cut on his forehead and a circle of bruises around his throat. Scratches lined his neck and cheek and when he looked down at his hands, they were gnarled and scabbed.
“It’s immaterial,” he said again, with much less conviction. “They’ve no idea of what I’m capable of. Once my mind is my own…”
Jonathan pushed past Harley and limped off. He wanted to make someone scream and if he couldn’t get his head straight, that someone was going to be him.
*~*~*~*
When Bruce woke up he found that the concussion hadn’t eased in the slightest. If anything, it was slightly worse after his night’s escapades. Between it, and the hangover effect of Poison Ivy’s je ne sais quoi, Bruce wanted to curl up in bed and have nothing more to do with the world. But just as Batman couldn’t shirk his duties, nor could Bruce Wayne. At least, not all the time. Instead, he dragged himself out of bed and, in a blur of dressing and driving, made his way across Gotham.
Driving whilst under a concussion was something he shouldn’t have done in the Batmobile and that thing was virtually a tank. Doing it in a flashy sports car was reckless endangerment. No one stopped him. No one ever did.
He staggered into the office and apologized to Fox for being late to the meeting, for missing the meetings the day before, and the day before that. The board members were staring at him like he’d grown a second head. Bruce couldn’t remember if he’d managed to match his tie to his suit, or if he’d remembered to even wear a suit. It took him a minute to realize they were probably staring at the bruises from where Jonathan had broken a glass over his head and then finished the job with a toaster.
Fox, in a very gentle voice, with none of his usual irony, told Bruce to go home. He asked where Alfred was and Bruce realized he didn’t know. He kept shaking his head and he was making his excuses, “Entirely my fault, I shouldn’t have trusted…” and Fox would cut in with, “Faulty ropes. Rock climbing. You should be more careful.” Bruce had no idea what rock climbing had to do with anything.
He was supposed to wait for Alfred, but he forgot a minute or so later and got in his car instead. Bruce drove to Wayne Manor to talk to the builders. He was sure that there was something he was supposed to talk to them about but if he’d missed that meeting or not, he was about as sure of as he was about what rock climbing had to do with Jonathan or where Alfred was. He felt like he was sleepwalking.
At one point, Bruce was certain his phone was ringing so he answered it. Only, his phone hadn’t been ringing and he was, in fact, only cupping his hand as though his phone was there when it was still in his pocket and he was having a rather animated conversation with his hand. There was moisture on his face and he couldn’t see out of his left eye. It took him a while to realize that his eye was watering which explained both phenomena.
The builders took one look at him and told him that it was all under control. The foreman said he wouldn’t make any decisions until Bruce was back on his feet again. They told him to go home, no problem, they had everything wrapped up tight. Bruce couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car and he decided that driving in his condition was a bad idea after all.
He decided to take the bus instead. The bus didn’t stop anywhere near Wayne Manor, so he started to walk. All in all, it wasn’t one of his brighter ideas. But, in the end, it was probably Jonathan’s fault and Jonathan had been his worst idea of all.
*~*~*~*
The phone call was untraceable. One of those little tricks that Harley had learned over the years along with how to use explosives and the art of harlequin makeup.
“Mista J. I’ve got something you want.” She tried not to let her eagerness come through in her voice. He’d take her back for sure after this.
“Harley, Harley, Harley, I’m still mad at you.” In her opinion, the Joker didn’t sound his usual jovial self. She hoped it was because he was missing her, but she wouldn’t have bet money on it.
She took a deep breath and put on a grin, even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “I’ve caught Bruce Wayne and I thought I’d save him for you, puddin’ but if you don’t want him, I’m sure the Scarecrow would be interested.” The Scarecrow, as things stood, was currently bottled up somewhere inside Doctor Crane and Jonathan was up to his elbows in chemicals, cursing and breaking down, in the lab amongst the mess of Ivy’s plants. She wasn’t sure that bringing him Bruce Wayne would improve matters in the slightest.
Besides, even if her suspicions as to what the prince of Gotham got up to at night were unfounded, the Joker would still be pleased with her. He didn’t want to know about who Batman was, and she was happy enough to keep her own ignorance, god knew that Jonathan wasn’t quite right anymore and could have been hallucinating, or just plain wrong. But, either way, she’d caught a nice, fat prize.
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone and for a moment she thought that he’d hung up on her. “Well, now that’s a whole new, shiny, kettle of fish, isn’t it?” And there it was: the glee in his voice that made her toes curl in her shoes and brought a genuine smile to her own face. “You’ve been a busy girl.”
She shrugged and stuffed the phone between shoulder and ear so she could prod a mostly unconscious Wayne with her free hand. He groaned and his head lolled back on his neck. She’d gone looking for him, on suspicion that Jonathan was right and she owed this man a good beating, just for being an asshole. Having found him, she’d been struck by the utter potential of the situation. And really, if he was just going to wander around outside Gotham, it was his own damn fault for getting kidnapped.
“You wanna talk to him?” She put the phone next to Wayne’s mouth and kicked him in the leg. “Say hello to Mista J.” Wayne let out another low moan and struggled to lift his head. She’d hardly hit him at all and he’d dropped like a fat man on a dodgy chair. Harley brought the phone back to her own ear. “Whoops,” she said jovially. “I don’t think he’s in a chatty mood.”
The Joker laughed. “And Ivy? And your new friend the Scarecrow?”
She bit her lip. “Ivy’s in Arkham.”
“Oh, pooh.” She could picture him waving a hand in dismissal. “She’ll be out in a week.”
Harley smiled, relieved. He was right. He was always right, wasn’t he? “Cr-” She paused. Doctor Crane wasn’t who the Joker would be interested in. “’Crow,” she amended, “is kind of…” she twirled a finger next to her head. “He’s kinda loopy right now. But you’re good at science stuff, you could help him out.”
Another long pause. “I don’t think I will, doll. You, me, and dear Mister Wayne will be busy enough. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun and taking care of an invalid isn’t much of that, is it?”
She mulled it over for a second. “I don’t think I should just leave him…” Harley thought of Jonathan, black and blue, but not beaten, not by a long shot. She couldn’t really help him. The Joker was still right. “No, you’re right, Mista J. He’ll be better off on his own.”
“Good girl.”
Harley beamed like all her birthdays and Christmases come at once.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan threw the beaker against the wall and it shattered, spraying the useless antidote all over the plants. They shifted slightly, leaving light trails behind them and he shot them a nasty look. “Have it then,” he said. “For all the good it will do you.” There were flashes at the periphery of his vision and when he looked back at his little lab, it was awash in static and haloes.
After the last disaster, he had no desire to relinquish his mind back to the Scarecrow. If he never saw that personality again, it would be too soon. What he wanted was to get rid of the damnable effects of the fear toxin. He wanted the flashes, the hallucinations, the nausea and the myriad of other symptoms gone. Part of him wished fervently that he’d never invented the damn thing. As it was, he would continue to frustrate himself with all the possibilities. What he wouldn’t have given for a few human test subjects. Hell, at this point he would have suffered for lab rats. Just so he didn’t have to stick the needle in his own vein.
He briefly debated the merits of going out and rounding up a few of the gas attack victims from the Narrows, but dismissed the idea as foolish to the extreme. Not only was he in no condition to round up anything, never mind terrified, dangerous human beings, but he had no where to store them while he worked on possibilities. Ivy’s plants might hold someone down while he worked, but, then again, they might just eat the person, and that was useless.
Jonathan rubbed the last of Ivy’s salve into his ribs and buttoned up his shirt again. It made the fabric stick to his skin, but he’d be worse than stupid if he sat about bare-chested whilst working with chemicals. The bruises were fading fast and the cuts on his hands and arms had scabbed over completely, but without the salve he would have to wait out the remainder of the healing process on his own.
Options, options, options. He could think of a dozen ways to make this antidote but only one of them would be likely to work. Some of them might kill him. Some of them might break him even further. He wasn’t quite desperate enough to risk it yet. So he’d sit, making antidotes, and possibilities, until he could think of something to do other than grit his teeth and pray. For all the good it would do him.
He got up and turned the television on. Nothing happened, so he slapped the side of it with his hand and it briefly grew and changed in size and color before turning back into nothing but a television. While hitting it hurt like nobody’s business and made him curse aloud, precious little else happened. He balanced precariously on one foot and kicked it. It sputtered into life and he squinted through the static. Of course, a soap opera. How helpful. He moved the antennae around, searching for something that even resembled the news.
“Bruce Wayne, last seen at the building site of Wayne Manor has been kidnapped by a man calling himself the Joker. Reports indicate that he is heavily concussed but alive. Police are working to get him back.”
Jonathan turned the television off and sat down on the moldering mattress. He took several deep breaths and then let himself flop back so he wouldn’t have to sit any more. So, Harley had abandoned him. Why not? At least she’d be happy with the Joker; for a while anyway. She couldn’t help him and, with Ivy in Arkham, their plans for teamwork had fallen through. Jonathan made it a habit not to rely too heavily on anyone as he’d found from past experiences that those were inevitably the people who either let you down, or let you down and then kicked you while you were there. At least Harley had the decency to just leave and not make a production out of it. She’d left him the lab, and a warm place to sleep, which was more than he could have asked of most people.
It seemed like far too much effort to get back up again, so Jonathan curled up onto his side and pulled the ragged, dirty scrap of fabric masquerading as a blanket over himself. His stomach growled, reminding him that his last meal had been almost an entire day ago and he was used to little food, but - especially in his condition - no food at all wasn’t going to suffice. He curled up a little tighter and shut his eyes. If he napped for a little bit, the hunger pangs and the aching might ease up and he’d feel more rested, and ready to get back to his experiments.
It was the fault of the gas that when he shut his eyes all he could think of was the look on Bruce Wayne’s face and the gentleness of his hands as he lied to Jonathan and pretended he cared.
*~*~*~*
Bruce woke up in a hijacked car, somewhere in transit. If his head had hurt before, this was a whole new level of hell. He bit back on a groan and cautiously opened his eyes.
“Welcome back to the land of the livin’.” Harley Quinn grinned at him through the greasepaint and took a sharp left. “An’ welcome to the first day of your kidnapping. Not sure a guy like you bothers to watch the news, but I’m Harley Quinn, and you’re about to meet my boss, Mista J. The Joker…” She beamed at him and spared a hand from the wheel to tug at the rope tying him securely to the seat. “So don’t be getting any fancy ideas there, sugar.”
He didn’t bother replying beyond letting his head tip back against the seat while he tried to gather his scattered mind back to himself. He wondered if this was what it was like to be Jonathan Crane.
Being tied to the car seat didn’t worry him overly much. Despite her strength and ability to tie a decent basic knot, knot tying obviously wasn’t her forte and he was pretty sure that, if he was careful not to attract her attention, he would be able to squirm out of the ropes. However, being the Joker’s captive in his current state was not something that he felt would be good for either his concussion or his general well-being.
Bruce tested the bonds on the hand furthest away from Harley and she smacked him, hard enough to set his head reeling again.
“Now, now,” she said sweetly. “None of that.”
Bruce tried very hard not to retch and waiting for the spinning in his head to ease. They pulled up to a warehouse before he was even close to ready to try again and through the mud-spattered window Bruce could see the Joker waiting for them.
He didn’t listen to what the Joker had to say, it was hard enough to stay on his feet, and when the Joker realized it, he had a closer look at Bruce’s face and his uneven pupils and declared his prisoner uninteresting in the extreme.
Bruce was certain he’d been in worse situations in his life. He could, offhand, think of over a good half-dozen of them. That said, he’d never been concussed while he was in them and it was a handicap he wasn’t prepared to deal with.
Harley Quinn and the Joker tied him up in a small, dank room to some pipes that leaked out, alternately, freezing cold water, and water that was scaling hot. He’d scraped his wrists raw trying to squirm out of the ropes and hadn’t gained any ground for his troubles. Without Batman, without his tricks and traps, Bruce Wayne was feeling about as useful as any other of the people he’d helped. Since he couldn’t escape without something to cut the ropes on he needed a plan but he couldn’t focus long enough to think of anything and despite his own predicament, Bruce couldn’t help wonder what had become of the Scarecrow.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan staggered to the bathroom, shuffling as the ground seemed to move beneath him, vibrant colors and creatures that weren’t there crawling over his feet. He dropped to his knees in front of the cracked toilet, gripped the side with one hand, held his hair back with the other, and vomited. The anti-toxin came up first, a sickly green color, mixed with blood. Even when Jonathan was only bringing up bile and spit his stomach continued to heave unhappily. He lifted his head and hit the flush with one hand. Nothing happened. Jonathan groaned and let himself crumple. He collapsed on the cooler tiles of the floor and pressed his face to the dirty ground trying not to scream when even the air felt as though it was trying to scrape in through his skin, infecting him.
“Experiment two,” he said, through clenched teeth. “A resounding failure. No psychological effects, but the subject, less than a minute after drinking the solution started vomiting. The entirety of the solution was brought back up. The subject may now be bleeding internally. The subject is still hallucinating and is experiencing all other previous symptoms including irrational panic.”
He coughed experimentally and spat onto the floor. It looked like his spittle was tinged pink with blood but he couldn’t trust his vision and he didn’t feel any worse than he had before he’d taken a second batch of antidote. Jonathan slowly pushed himself back into an upright position. His stomach churned, grumbling its disagreement at being so abused, but it was just another thing in a long list of physical complaints, so Jonathan ignored it and dragged himself to his feet.
It was a good walk to the lab, over vines and plants that still didn’t seem sure that they weren’t allowed to eat Jonathan. He couldn’t quite make it in his state, stumbling over the smallest of roots, one arm wrapped around his stomach, the other groping blindly at the air. Jonathan made it as far as the doorway before he collapsed, lying amongst the rotting leaves and debris of the greenhouse. He thought about getting up again, but it seemed like far too much effort, so Jonathan just shut his eyes and let the blanket of greenery cover him as he gratefully passed out.
*~*~*~*
Bruce got his one and only opportunity when the guard came to feed him and make sure he was still breathing. It wasn’t something he was going to be proud of later, but he wasn’t Batman now, he was Bruce Wayne, and it was simple enough for Bruce Wayne to buy his way out of the mess.
The thing he’d noticed most about henchmen was that they weren’t too bright at the best of times. The Joker might have had a Grand Plan, and Harley might have been on board, but the guard was a criminal because crime pays. A personal cheque - and the Joker hadn’t even taken his personal effects, that’s how capable he thought Bruce Wayne - for an obscene amount of money and the door was left unlocked, his ropes untied and Bruce could slip out of the warehouse and steal one of the many cars sitting around.
It was the least glorious escape he’d ever undertaken and Bruce, swerving wildly away from the Joker’s warehouse, felt a little ashamed. He called Alfred from the carphone and left a completely incoherent message which he also felt a little ashamed of. The whole situation was his fault and his head was so scrambled that the only thing he could think of to do was to find Crane, or the Scarecrow, or whoever else was inhabiting Jonathan Crane’s body, and fix things.
*~*~*~*
“Experiment three,” said Jonathan, crawling towards the mattress. “It feels like a failure.”
He paused to dry heave but he’d injected this batch of antidote and there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. Jonathan kept crawling, dragging himself over broken glass and fertilizer. It was not going to be a noble death, he could promise himself that much. Of all the ways that he hadn’t wanted to go down, in a dirty little greenhouse, half-starved and mostly insane, poisoned by his own failed, self-tested experiment, was rather high on the list.
“The subject might die here,” Jonathan said. “I think I might die.”
*~*~*~*
Bruce stared at the jungle of plants and felt, somehow, as though they were staring back. “I need to find Crane,” he said, stupidly. “He’s no good to you.” There was no reply and he felt foolish for half expecting some sort of reply. He started a slow stumble through the minature jungle. The plants moved when they shouldn’t have, but they left him alone. Only occasionally rising to trip him or to scratch and catch on his skin and clothing. Surface wounds, nothing he couldn’t brush away, but a subtle threat that he would be foolish to ignore.
Bruce tripped over the entryway to the greenhouse. It was so overgrown and he was disorientated enough that he hadn’t even noticed it. The air was so close that he thought he might retch from the pressure and the stench. Of all the places he’d seen villains hiding in, warehouses, fortresses, little bunkers and in the sewers, this had to be one of the worst. The rot and decay was overwhelming and under that was the reek of spilled chemicals, vomit and sickness. He put a hand over his nose and mouth and walked over the broken glass and damp leaves, further into Poison Ivy’s lair.
It didn’t take him long to find Crane.
Crane was lying half-on, half-off a filthy little mattress. It looked as though he’d been crawling to it when he’d collapsed. His face was pale and bloodless and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his face and neck that glistened unhealthily in the bad light.
Bruce put his fingers over the pulse in Crane’s neck and was surprised to find it. It was sluggish, and for a second that was jarring ; he was used to feeling rabbit-fast panic against his hands, and mouth and skin, but then it picked up again. Bruce looked up to see Crane’s eyes open, wide and terrified, a second before Crane’s head jerked back and he started to convulse, falling completely off the mattress, spine bowing back in a painful arch. The convulsions only lasted for a minute or so and Bruce was powerless to do anything but watch until they were done. He checked Crane’s pulse again and it steadied and slowed but Crane didn’t open his eyes again.
Bruce dragged him onto the mattress and laid him on his side, curling up behind him. He tucked one hand up under Crane’s shirt and slid the other arm under Crane’s head, curling around again to cover his head, as he usually slept. Bruce could feel the heat of Crane’s bruises against his palm, warm on his stomach, and Crane smelt of blood as well as chemicals and sickness.
“We’ll just wait here,” Bruce said, and then, when Crane didn’t reply; “I’ll look after you this time.”
Series: Rumplestiltskin 8/10
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Notes: Over one year later since I started. Whoops. It's also a bit of a stop-gap but there you have it. Two to go.
Warnings: I’ve buggered canon!battime all to hell, but then again, so did the comics.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan woke up and wanted to die. It felt as though there wasn’t an inch of his body that didn’t ache and his head was thick with bad dreams, clotted blood and fear. The air around him stank of cloying rot and he gagged a little on the stench. His stomach turned over unhappily and he shut his eyes again to keep back the lights flickering at the edge of his vision and the moisture beading under his eyelashes. He ground his teeth against the pain and uncurled from his customary sleeping position. Jonathan woke up sore from sleeping that way most days, never mind after he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life.
Something warm and vaguely soft bumped up against his back. Every muscle in his neck and back rebelled against his glance over his shoulder but he wouldn’t allow himself to be bested by something as pathetic as his own stupid, weak body.
Behind him, face still splotched with greasepaint, was Harley, snoring a little. Her mouth was open and she looked young, too young. She opened her eyes a fraction and groaned.
“Go back to sleep, idiot. It’s still light out.”
He got his arms underneath himself and half pushed, half rolled into a sitting position. It didn’t improve the pain. “I need to get back to work before my symptoms get worse.” Jonathan grabbed onto a vine for support and hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll be in the lab if you need me.”
Harley sat up, abruptly awake. “Don’t,” she said, with a pleading note in her voice. “Don’t risk it.”
Jonathan gave her a truly scathing look. “Oh? And what would you suggest I do instead? I believe my options are to either cure myself or to turn myself in to Arkham. While I enjoyed working there well enough I highly doubt that I would find similar pleasure on the other side of the padded door.” He tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the slacks he was wearing. It was what one might call an exercise in futility, but he was grateful to at least have the clothing, wrinkled or not and was then incredibly angry that he was grateful. The straightjacket, slung over one of the plants, was stained with blood. It made him feel queasy just looking at it. Not because of what had happened, he didn’t care much about that either way; it was the reminder that his grip on his own mind was tenuous at best.
She got up, took a punishing hold on his arm and dragged him into the little bathroom, shoving him in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself! This is what your damn experimenting is doin’.”
“Get your hands off me,” Jonathan snarled. He shoved at her, turning his face away. “I don’t need to look, you stupid girl. I will take whatever I have to take to get my mind back. I’ve suffered bruises, broken bones, cuts, sprains, and humiliations, and humiliations, and humiliations. Don’t think this is something new in my life. It’s all immaterial. So long as I can get my mind back, none of this matters.”
He looked anyway and wished he hadn’t.
The whites of his eyes were red with burst blood vessels and there was dried blood around his nose and mouth. His teeth were stained with it and his face was purple and green, swollen with bruises. There was a cut on his forehead and a circle of bruises around his throat. Scratches lined his neck and cheek and when he looked down at his hands, they were gnarled and scabbed.
“It’s immaterial,” he said again, with much less conviction. “They’ve no idea of what I’m capable of. Once my mind is my own…”
Jonathan pushed past Harley and limped off. He wanted to make someone scream and if he couldn’t get his head straight, that someone was going to be him.
*~*~*~*
When Bruce woke up he found that the concussion hadn’t eased in the slightest. If anything, it was slightly worse after his night’s escapades. Between it, and the hangover effect of Poison Ivy’s je ne sais quoi, Bruce wanted to curl up in bed and have nothing more to do with the world. But just as Batman couldn’t shirk his duties, nor could Bruce Wayne. At least, not all the time. Instead, he dragged himself out of bed and, in a blur of dressing and driving, made his way across Gotham.
Driving whilst under a concussion was something he shouldn’t have done in the Batmobile and that thing was virtually a tank. Doing it in a flashy sports car was reckless endangerment. No one stopped him. No one ever did.
He staggered into the office and apologized to Fox for being late to the meeting, for missing the meetings the day before, and the day before that. The board members were staring at him like he’d grown a second head. Bruce couldn’t remember if he’d managed to match his tie to his suit, or if he’d remembered to even wear a suit. It took him a minute to realize they were probably staring at the bruises from where Jonathan had broken a glass over his head and then finished the job with a toaster.
Fox, in a very gentle voice, with none of his usual irony, told Bruce to go home. He asked where Alfred was and Bruce realized he didn’t know. He kept shaking his head and he was making his excuses, “Entirely my fault, I shouldn’t have trusted…” and Fox would cut in with, “Faulty ropes. Rock climbing. You should be more careful.” Bruce had no idea what rock climbing had to do with anything.
He was supposed to wait for Alfred, but he forgot a minute or so later and got in his car instead. Bruce drove to Wayne Manor to talk to the builders. He was sure that there was something he was supposed to talk to them about but if he’d missed that meeting or not, he was about as sure of as he was about what rock climbing had to do with Jonathan or where Alfred was. He felt like he was sleepwalking.
At one point, Bruce was certain his phone was ringing so he answered it. Only, his phone hadn’t been ringing and he was, in fact, only cupping his hand as though his phone was there when it was still in his pocket and he was having a rather animated conversation with his hand. There was moisture on his face and he couldn’t see out of his left eye. It took him a while to realize that his eye was watering which explained both phenomena.
The builders took one look at him and told him that it was all under control. The foreman said he wouldn’t make any decisions until Bruce was back on his feet again. They told him to go home, no problem, they had everything wrapped up tight. Bruce couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car and he decided that driving in his condition was a bad idea after all.
He decided to take the bus instead. The bus didn’t stop anywhere near Wayne Manor, so he started to walk. All in all, it wasn’t one of his brighter ideas. But, in the end, it was probably Jonathan’s fault and Jonathan had been his worst idea of all.
*~*~*~*
The phone call was untraceable. One of those little tricks that Harley had learned over the years along with how to use explosives and the art of harlequin makeup.
“Mista J. I’ve got something you want.” She tried not to let her eagerness come through in her voice. He’d take her back for sure after this.
“Harley, Harley, Harley, I’m still mad at you.” In her opinion, the Joker didn’t sound his usual jovial self. She hoped it was because he was missing her, but she wouldn’t have bet money on it.
She took a deep breath and put on a grin, even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “I’ve caught Bruce Wayne and I thought I’d save him for you, puddin’ but if you don’t want him, I’m sure the Scarecrow would be interested.” The Scarecrow, as things stood, was currently bottled up somewhere inside Doctor Crane and Jonathan was up to his elbows in chemicals, cursing and breaking down, in the lab amongst the mess of Ivy’s plants. She wasn’t sure that bringing him Bruce Wayne would improve matters in the slightest.
Besides, even if her suspicions as to what the prince of Gotham got up to at night were unfounded, the Joker would still be pleased with her. He didn’t want to know about who Batman was, and she was happy enough to keep her own ignorance, god knew that Jonathan wasn’t quite right anymore and could have been hallucinating, or just plain wrong. But, either way, she’d caught a nice, fat prize.
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone and for a moment she thought that he’d hung up on her. “Well, now that’s a whole new, shiny, kettle of fish, isn’t it?” And there it was: the glee in his voice that made her toes curl in her shoes and brought a genuine smile to her own face. “You’ve been a busy girl.”
She shrugged and stuffed the phone between shoulder and ear so she could prod a mostly unconscious Wayne with her free hand. He groaned and his head lolled back on his neck. She’d gone looking for him, on suspicion that Jonathan was right and she owed this man a good beating, just for being an asshole. Having found him, she’d been struck by the utter potential of the situation. And really, if he was just going to wander around outside Gotham, it was his own damn fault for getting kidnapped.
“You wanna talk to him?” She put the phone next to Wayne’s mouth and kicked him in the leg. “Say hello to Mista J.” Wayne let out another low moan and struggled to lift his head. She’d hardly hit him at all and he’d dropped like a fat man on a dodgy chair. Harley brought the phone back to her own ear. “Whoops,” she said jovially. “I don’t think he’s in a chatty mood.”
The Joker laughed. “And Ivy? And your new friend the Scarecrow?”
She bit her lip. “Ivy’s in Arkham.”
“Oh, pooh.” She could picture him waving a hand in dismissal. “She’ll be out in a week.”
Harley smiled, relieved. He was right. He was always right, wasn’t he? “Cr-” She paused. Doctor Crane wasn’t who the Joker would be interested in. “’Crow,” she amended, “is kind of…” she twirled a finger next to her head. “He’s kinda loopy right now. But you’re good at science stuff, you could help him out.”
Another long pause. “I don’t think I will, doll. You, me, and dear Mister Wayne will be busy enough. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun and taking care of an invalid isn’t much of that, is it?”
She mulled it over for a second. “I don’t think I should just leave him…” Harley thought of Jonathan, black and blue, but not beaten, not by a long shot. She couldn’t really help him. The Joker was still right. “No, you’re right, Mista J. He’ll be better off on his own.”
“Good girl.”
Harley beamed like all her birthdays and Christmases come at once.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan threw the beaker against the wall and it shattered, spraying the useless antidote all over the plants. They shifted slightly, leaving light trails behind them and he shot them a nasty look. “Have it then,” he said. “For all the good it will do you.” There were flashes at the periphery of his vision and when he looked back at his little lab, it was awash in static and haloes.
After the last disaster, he had no desire to relinquish his mind back to the Scarecrow. If he never saw that personality again, it would be too soon. What he wanted was to get rid of the damnable effects of the fear toxin. He wanted the flashes, the hallucinations, the nausea and the myriad of other symptoms gone. Part of him wished fervently that he’d never invented the damn thing. As it was, he would continue to frustrate himself with all the possibilities. What he wouldn’t have given for a few human test subjects. Hell, at this point he would have suffered for lab rats. Just so he didn’t have to stick the needle in his own vein.
He briefly debated the merits of going out and rounding up a few of the gas attack victims from the Narrows, but dismissed the idea as foolish to the extreme. Not only was he in no condition to round up anything, never mind terrified, dangerous human beings, but he had no where to store them while he worked on possibilities. Ivy’s plants might hold someone down while he worked, but, then again, they might just eat the person, and that was useless.
Jonathan rubbed the last of Ivy’s salve into his ribs and buttoned up his shirt again. It made the fabric stick to his skin, but he’d be worse than stupid if he sat about bare-chested whilst working with chemicals. The bruises were fading fast and the cuts on his hands and arms had scabbed over completely, but without the salve he would have to wait out the remainder of the healing process on his own.
Options, options, options. He could think of a dozen ways to make this antidote but only one of them would be likely to work. Some of them might kill him. Some of them might break him even further. He wasn’t quite desperate enough to risk it yet. So he’d sit, making antidotes, and possibilities, until he could think of something to do other than grit his teeth and pray. For all the good it would do him.
He got up and turned the television on. Nothing happened, so he slapped the side of it with his hand and it briefly grew and changed in size and color before turning back into nothing but a television. While hitting it hurt like nobody’s business and made him curse aloud, precious little else happened. He balanced precariously on one foot and kicked it. It sputtered into life and he squinted through the static. Of course, a soap opera. How helpful. He moved the antennae around, searching for something that even resembled the news.
“Bruce Wayne, last seen at the building site of Wayne Manor has been kidnapped by a man calling himself the Joker. Reports indicate that he is heavily concussed but alive. Police are working to get him back.”
Jonathan turned the television off and sat down on the moldering mattress. He took several deep breaths and then let himself flop back so he wouldn’t have to sit any more. So, Harley had abandoned him. Why not? At least she’d be happy with the Joker; for a while anyway. She couldn’t help him and, with Ivy in Arkham, their plans for teamwork had fallen through. Jonathan made it a habit not to rely too heavily on anyone as he’d found from past experiences that those were inevitably the people who either let you down, or let you down and then kicked you while you were there. At least Harley had the decency to just leave and not make a production out of it. She’d left him the lab, and a warm place to sleep, which was more than he could have asked of most people.
It seemed like far too much effort to get back up again, so Jonathan curled up onto his side and pulled the ragged, dirty scrap of fabric masquerading as a blanket over himself. His stomach growled, reminding him that his last meal had been almost an entire day ago and he was used to little food, but - especially in his condition - no food at all wasn’t going to suffice. He curled up a little tighter and shut his eyes. If he napped for a little bit, the hunger pangs and the aching might ease up and he’d feel more rested, and ready to get back to his experiments.
It was the fault of the gas that when he shut his eyes all he could think of was the look on Bruce Wayne’s face and the gentleness of his hands as he lied to Jonathan and pretended he cared.
*~*~*~*
Bruce woke up in a hijacked car, somewhere in transit. If his head had hurt before, this was a whole new level of hell. He bit back on a groan and cautiously opened his eyes.
“Welcome back to the land of the livin’.” Harley Quinn grinned at him through the greasepaint and took a sharp left. “An’ welcome to the first day of your kidnapping. Not sure a guy like you bothers to watch the news, but I’m Harley Quinn, and you’re about to meet my boss, Mista J. The Joker…” She beamed at him and spared a hand from the wheel to tug at the rope tying him securely to the seat. “So don’t be getting any fancy ideas there, sugar.”
He didn’t bother replying beyond letting his head tip back against the seat while he tried to gather his scattered mind back to himself. He wondered if this was what it was like to be Jonathan Crane.
Being tied to the car seat didn’t worry him overly much. Despite her strength and ability to tie a decent basic knot, knot tying obviously wasn’t her forte and he was pretty sure that, if he was careful not to attract her attention, he would be able to squirm out of the ropes. However, being the Joker’s captive in his current state was not something that he felt would be good for either his concussion or his general well-being.
Bruce tested the bonds on the hand furthest away from Harley and she smacked him, hard enough to set his head reeling again.
“Now, now,” she said sweetly. “None of that.”
Bruce tried very hard not to retch and waiting for the spinning in his head to ease. They pulled up to a warehouse before he was even close to ready to try again and through the mud-spattered window Bruce could see the Joker waiting for them.
He didn’t listen to what the Joker had to say, it was hard enough to stay on his feet, and when the Joker realized it, he had a closer look at Bruce’s face and his uneven pupils and declared his prisoner uninteresting in the extreme.
Bruce was certain he’d been in worse situations in his life. He could, offhand, think of over a good half-dozen of them. That said, he’d never been concussed while he was in them and it was a handicap he wasn’t prepared to deal with.
Harley Quinn and the Joker tied him up in a small, dank room to some pipes that leaked out, alternately, freezing cold water, and water that was scaling hot. He’d scraped his wrists raw trying to squirm out of the ropes and hadn’t gained any ground for his troubles. Without Batman, without his tricks and traps, Bruce Wayne was feeling about as useful as any other of the people he’d helped. Since he couldn’t escape without something to cut the ropes on he needed a plan but he couldn’t focus long enough to think of anything and despite his own predicament, Bruce couldn’t help wonder what had become of the Scarecrow.
*~*~*~*
Jonathan staggered to the bathroom, shuffling as the ground seemed to move beneath him, vibrant colors and creatures that weren’t there crawling over his feet. He dropped to his knees in front of the cracked toilet, gripped the side with one hand, held his hair back with the other, and vomited. The anti-toxin came up first, a sickly green color, mixed with blood. Even when Jonathan was only bringing up bile and spit his stomach continued to heave unhappily. He lifted his head and hit the flush with one hand. Nothing happened. Jonathan groaned and let himself crumple. He collapsed on the cooler tiles of the floor and pressed his face to the dirty ground trying not to scream when even the air felt as though it was trying to scrape in through his skin, infecting him.
“Experiment two,” he said, through clenched teeth. “A resounding failure. No psychological effects, but the subject, less than a minute after drinking the solution started vomiting. The entirety of the solution was brought back up. The subject may now be bleeding internally. The subject is still hallucinating and is experiencing all other previous symptoms including irrational panic.”
He coughed experimentally and spat onto the floor. It looked like his spittle was tinged pink with blood but he couldn’t trust his vision and he didn’t feel any worse than he had before he’d taken a second batch of antidote. Jonathan slowly pushed himself back into an upright position. His stomach churned, grumbling its disagreement at being so abused, but it was just another thing in a long list of physical complaints, so Jonathan ignored it and dragged himself to his feet.
It was a good walk to the lab, over vines and plants that still didn’t seem sure that they weren’t allowed to eat Jonathan. He couldn’t quite make it in his state, stumbling over the smallest of roots, one arm wrapped around his stomach, the other groping blindly at the air. Jonathan made it as far as the doorway before he collapsed, lying amongst the rotting leaves and debris of the greenhouse. He thought about getting up again, but it seemed like far too much effort, so Jonathan just shut his eyes and let the blanket of greenery cover him as he gratefully passed out.
*~*~*~*
Bruce got his one and only opportunity when the guard came to feed him and make sure he was still breathing. It wasn’t something he was going to be proud of later, but he wasn’t Batman now, he was Bruce Wayne, and it was simple enough for Bruce Wayne to buy his way out of the mess.
The thing he’d noticed most about henchmen was that they weren’t too bright at the best of times. The Joker might have had a Grand Plan, and Harley might have been on board, but the guard was a criminal because crime pays. A personal cheque - and the Joker hadn’t even taken his personal effects, that’s how capable he thought Bruce Wayne - for an obscene amount of money and the door was left unlocked, his ropes untied and Bruce could slip out of the warehouse and steal one of the many cars sitting around.
It was the least glorious escape he’d ever undertaken and Bruce, swerving wildly away from the Joker’s warehouse, felt a little ashamed. He called Alfred from the carphone and left a completely incoherent message which he also felt a little ashamed of. The whole situation was his fault and his head was so scrambled that the only thing he could think of to do was to find Crane, or the Scarecrow, or whoever else was inhabiting Jonathan Crane’s body, and fix things.
*~*~*~*
“Experiment three,” said Jonathan, crawling towards the mattress. “It feels like a failure.”
He paused to dry heave but he’d injected this batch of antidote and there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. Jonathan kept crawling, dragging himself over broken glass and fertilizer. It was not going to be a noble death, he could promise himself that much. Of all the ways that he hadn’t wanted to go down, in a dirty little greenhouse, half-starved and mostly insane, poisoned by his own failed, self-tested experiment, was rather high on the list.
“The subject might die here,” Jonathan said. “I think I might die.”
*~*~*~*
Bruce stared at the jungle of plants and felt, somehow, as though they were staring back. “I need to find Crane,” he said, stupidly. “He’s no good to you.” There was no reply and he felt foolish for half expecting some sort of reply. He started a slow stumble through the minature jungle. The plants moved when they shouldn’t have, but they left him alone. Only occasionally rising to trip him or to scratch and catch on his skin and clothing. Surface wounds, nothing he couldn’t brush away, but a subtle threat that he would be foolish to ignore.
Bruce tripped over the entryway to the greenhouse. It was so overgrown and he was disorientated enough that he hadn’t even noticed it. The air was so close that he thought he might retch from the pressure and the stench. Of all the places he’d seen villains hiding in, warehouses, fortresses, little bunkers and in the sewers, this had to be one of the worst. The rot and decay was overwhelming and under that was the reek of spilled chemicals, vomit and sickness. He put a hand over his nose and mouth and walked over the broken glass and damp leaves, further into Poison Ivy’s lair.
It didn’t take him long to find Crane.
Crane was lying half-on, half-off a filthy little mattress. It looked as though he’d been crawling to it when he’d collapsed. His face was pale and bloodless and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his face and neck that glistened unhealthily in the bad light.
Bruce put his fingers over the pulse in Crane’s neck and was surprised to find it. It was sluggish, and for a second that was jarring ; he was used to feeling rabbit-fast panic against his hands, and mouth and skin, but then it picked up again. Bruce looked up to see Crane’s eyes open, wide and terrified, a second before Crane’s head jerked back and he started to convulse, falling completely off the mattress, spine bowing back in a painful arch. The convulsions only lasted for a minute or so and Bruce was powerless to do anything but watch until they were done. He checked Crane’s pulse again and it steadied and slowed but Crane didn’t open his eyes again.
Bruce dragged him onto the mattress and laid him on his side, curling up behind him. He tucked one hand up under Crane’s shirt and slid the other arm under Crane’s head, curling around again to cover his head, as he usually slept. Bruce could feel the heat of Crane’s bruises against his palm, warm on his stomach, and Crane smelt of blood as well as chemicals and sickness.
“We’ll just wait here,” Bruce said, and then, when Crane didn’t reply; “I’ll look after you this time.”