18When the darkness has taken over your mind and death cannot be your salvation, what is there left to do but seek asylum?
About the story, Disclaimer, Warning, Pairings: See Chapter 1
Author's Notes: Fur Elise, I think everyone knows that. You know, by Beethoven?
Random question time! If Harry were a Batman super villain, what would his alias be? Drop it in a review! Heck, go at it too with Hermione, Ron, Luna, Draco and just about any other Harry Potter character you want, whether an alias as a superhero or super villain. For some reason, I see Ron as a superhero named the Red Cannon, probably flying around on a broom and shit.
Burlesque Mistress 92: Nope. An author's duty is to write, in this case, a story. Giving Harry his happiness right away isn't the right thing for me, telling his story is, and he'll have to figuratively work for his happiness. Not all stories have happy endings… whether this particular one has one or not, well, you'll have to wait and find out. But yes, Crane is a downright git, I do not deny that, and yes, Nigma would treat him better. Also, I don't see a mega "hawt" three way happening; Crane doesn't like sharing and Nigma sure isn't sharing with him if he ever got his way. I hope you keep reading despite the fact that there is no guarantee of a happy ending though!
Thanks GrimCharmer and Sask for reminding me to update! I actually finished this a week ago but I never found the time to do a final proofread and upload it in the past seven days.
Hospital Bed Crawl
Chapter 4: Fur Elise
"Ra's al Ghul is dead. Who are you working for, Crane?"
He could feel the toxin coursing through his veins, doing as it was supposed to do. Taste of his own medicine indeed; he could not decide whether he should be elated and worried at having his own creation being turned against him. The Bat Man, as he was called, before him slowly but surely turned into a frightening sight although he had already been quite the menacing figure before; a dark creature with a mouth that spewed putrid bile and dark eyes that threatened to pull him into oblivion.
One could not blame him as he stared wide eyed, both fascinated and fearful of the being before him. And the fear, the delicious fear he could feel coursing through him, it was heavenly. If he wasn't so awed at the sensation, too busy with his mouth agape, he would imagine he would be laughing, giggling uncontrollably right now. Doctor Jonathan Crane really didn't feel fear as much as he did now and it excited him, enlightened him and it was too much. He could hear them pointing at him saying one word over and over again: scarecrow, scarecrow, scarecrow, scarecrow, Scarecrow.
Something in him snapped: "Doctor Crane isn't here right now. But if you'd like to make an appointment."
The next thing he knew, he was regaining consciousness and the side of his head throbbed as if he had been hit with a hammer or he had been used as one. Not only that, he was also strapped in something tight and constricting – a straightjacket – and was being wheeled down such familiar halls. And he could find himself both frightened and amused at every flickering shadow, imagining a bat hiding in them, ready to jump out. Crane tried to focus, tried to think of what was wrong with the picture, he was the doctor after all and not the loony, but the voices went on and on… scarecrow, scarecrow, scarecrow, Scarecrow.
Door after door in this godforsaken hallway, his focus wondered here and there until a flash of green caught his attention. Green eyes looked at him, wide in disbelief, from behind cell doors. "Doctor J?" the young man's voice called out, pulling him momentarily from the darkness and he could see the anger. "What are you doing to Doctor J? Where are you taking him?! Jonathan!" the one with peridot eyes screamed again and again, his words echoing inside Intensive Care. But the orderly kept on pushing him past them without even a glance in the man's direction and he could no longer hear him… the chanting repeated again – scarecrow, scarecrow, Scarecrow.
Harry was at a loss for words, unable to believe what he had just seen. He and Jonathan hardly spoke nowadays, he usually finding himself with no company as Mister E's visits became less and less. The doctor was busy with work and even had to go outside of the asylum so often and the latter... he did not know what the latter was up to. If he had company, well he didn't like them especially the bloke Victor Zsasz who was placed in the cell next to his. It's been months now and it was simply killing him on the inside.
And now that he'd seen Jonathan again, they were wheeling him away like he was some… some guy who was off his rocker; not Jonathan, it couldn't be! There had to be an explanation! He had questions and they will answer whether they wanted to or not. He paced around his cell for a while but his confusion turned to anger and there was no finesse when he was angry. He turned around, ready to blast the door open in a blind rage, only to stop at the sight of a man blocking his way.
The man was wearing a crisp black suit with a dark tie and shirt underneath, wooden cane in hand. He couldn't have been younger than forty or so, with a greying beard and moustache although his hair was a dirty shade of brown and green eyes that looked at him in amusement. Although an elderly figure, he felt… dangerous and powerful.
The young man felt cowed for a moment until he remembered he wasn't some wizard's apprentice who was still learning spells and using a wand. It was merely his likeness to one Lucius Malfoy that had thrown him back to his much younger years; they had the same air, the same cutting and intimidating yet elegant presence about them, the Malfoy and the stranger. Then he remembered what was going on; what had earned his malevolence and angered him so much that he was ready to blow his cell apart if it weren't for the other person in there with him. It didn't even come to him to ask who the stranger was and how did he get in without him noticing – that was not important to him right now. "Stand aside, sir," he barely got out through gritted teeth.
"Mister Potter; a pleasure to finally meet you face to face," the man responded with a conniving smile.
He froze with a suspicious glare at the other person. But hot anger thawed the cold fear that ran through him; "The pleasure is all yours, of course. Now get out of the way or I'll make you," was his scathing reply.
"You know, there's nothing you can do for him Mister Potter. It's too late, I'm afraid he's rather taken a bad dose of his own medicine; turned into one of the very people he's supposed to take care of," the elder continued as if he had not been threatened at all. "Such is the manner of things; some call it karma I believe. I? I see it as justice, balance. A shame, we could had have more use for him and his skill and intellect; clever man, managing to weaponize the organic compounds in our blue flower to create a toxin that showed one's fears. But he should have fled when his opposition arrived; this wouldn't have happened if he did that. He couldn't handle his own creation and its driven him mad."
"…Ra's al Ghul. What do you want?" His anger returned and so did his confusion.
"Ah, you remember my name; I am honoured. What I want is simple; as a bringer of justice and balance, death is sometimes a necessity – so, my dear boy, why not court the Master of Death itself?" Ra's smiled with a cordial bow of the head. "You'd be quite the student, quite the heir for the League of Shadows. Imagine, offering thousands of corrupt humans to the Grim Reaper, won't he be pleased? Why, I'm offering the entirety of Gotham to you right now if you'd like… it is, after all, Doctor Crane's masterpiece. I do not see why you shouldn't be a part of it."
Harry hissed; "I am no murderer."
"Oh, why don't you tell that to Voldemort and the seventy that you killed to land yourself in here in the first place, Mister Potter. Why don't you think about it, Harry? Now, if you excuse me, I have a birthday party to attend to," the old man merely chuckled with a shake of his head before turning around to depart, leaving the door wide open for the young man. Outside were a few other men along with two wearing uniforms that bore the letters SWAT and the man took a step back with a sneer, thinking they would be stopping him from leaving his cell. But they merely ignored him and went the same way Jonathan did and he made to follow them, thinking they might hurt the doctor instead. That is until Ra's spoke up once more; "Oh, don't worry about them. They'll do you or Doctor Crane no harm – it is Batman you have to worry about, my boy."
"Batman?"
"Oh, yes, he's a... delusional man who dresses himself up as a bat. And it might interest you to know that he's the one that did this to Crane," he nodded with a smile and then left.
Batman... Harry shook his head and took off in the opposite direction of where Ra's and his men were headed to. He needed to get Jonathan.
"What was the plan, Crane? How were you gonna get your toxin into the air?"
Jonathan, for the lack of better way to describe it, was tied up at the moment. Confined in a little room but hardly noticed it as he was off in his own little world. A world where people were monsters and no one, no one was safe from the maws of fear itself. He had been frightened but it soon turned to fascination and he found himself joining their chants.
"Scarecrow... Scarecrow..."
"Who were you working for, Crane?" the nosy police officer asked, distracting him. In the police officer's was his face, why take his face from him? How cruel. The man was... Gordon, yes, Gordon was his name – he'd remember his face and his ugly caterpillar moustache.
Gordon wanted to know the plan, how they were going to spread fear in Gotham and who was his employer? He couldn't help but press his lips together, feeling a smirk come along although his attention was still half here, half there. "Oh, it's too late. You can't stop it now." It was too late to stop, Ra's and his men had been planning so long, infiltrating every level of the city's infrastructure. Nobody would stop them from showing Gotham true fear and gaining power through it.
His smirk widened when the man stood up and walked off in frustration, handing his face to the other police officer in the room. This one had an ugly caterpillar moustache too but, unlike Gordon, looked quite wary and scared of him. Oh goodie.
Harry ran as fast as he could through the halls, trying to see where they took Jonathan. He had come from Intensive Care so he could be in Penitentiary or Extreme Isolation, the latter harder to find than the first. He only knew that Extreme Isolation even existed because the doctor told him about the troublesome patients in there. Hopefully he wasn't there anyway and the man found himself running around plenty and vast corridors, checking rooms and blasting down doors as he came and went with no sign of his target.
Just then, an alarm rang throughout the entire building and all the doors opened. Criminals and criminally insane alike started flooding the halls and it took all self control he had not to just blast them aside. They all headed in one direction and gave Harry strange looks and some even called for his attention as he walked against the flow but he ignored them; they were a waste of his time.
Soon, another alarm rang out when an explosion rocked the building. Prisoners here and there made a run for it, through the hole in the wall and he saw by it was one of the false SWAT men. Harry ran to him and grabbed him by the front of his shirt; "Where's Jonathan? Where's Crane?!" he asked.
The man just shoved him off and shook his head; "He's playing." That was the only response he got when the man lifted something, a gas mask he realized, and snapped it into place before leaving the man without another glance. And then another explosion happened although it was unlike the first and then another, one after the other a few minutes apart each and a fine mist of... something spread through the air.
If it wasn't chaotic before, it was now. Chaos, anarchy, pandemonium... the land of nightmares; there would be no other way to better describe it. People were fleeing from their perceived monsters without a care if they trampled upon another person in their haste, some were fighting each other in defiant acts of bravery and the rest were completely paralyzed by their fear, usually huddled in a corner here and there.
The toxin did not affect him as much as it did the Muggles and he was focused, focused on finding the doctor. But Harry could feel it taking over his senses too and every shadow became a dementor and every unmoving body became the corpse of someone he knew: Sirius, his parents, Lupin, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape... He was thankful that he didn't see Jonathan among them.
Some of the corpses were real too and he could see the Grim frolicking about like a happy puppy but he paid it no real heed. Death is able to function without its master and has done so since the beginning of time; he had his own problems to attend to.
Then, he heard it: "Crane?" It was a woman's voice, curious and afraid. He turned around so quickly he must have gotten whiplash to see a man on a horse, his face hidden underneath a garish mask... a mask he recognized. He had seen that mask once, in Jonathan's desk but the doctor had told him to ignore it. It was nothing, he had said.
"No. Scarecrow."
That voice... "Jonathan!" Harry shouted but he mustn't have heard him as he went galloping along in the opposite direction. No, no, he wasn't going to lose him now that he's found him, he won't allow that. So he ran and ran, pushing his legs as fast as he could to keep up with the horse and its rider, barely managing to do so even with his magic because of the toxin in the air distracting him. What in Merlin's name was going on anyway?
He managed to catch up when they stopped at a dead end, Harry keeling over to catch his breath. Such a long time in the asylum has made him less fit then he was compared to when he was in the war and when he was an Auror. But Jonathan's voice calls him and he looks up, thinking he was being addressed as the doctor says: "There you are! There is nothing to fear… but fear itself!" But no, he wasn't even looking at Harry. Instead, there is a woman and a child and he couldn't help but jump to conclusions... were they the doctor's wife and son? "I am here to help yo-" the doctor even tries to continue, reaching out to the two of them until the woman takes out something.
A Muggle device and Jonathan suddenly seizes and jerks backward, almost thrown off his horse only hanging by the footholds. Sparks, electricity hits him in the face and the animal panics, running away.
Harry could feel his anger flare; how dare that woman hurt Jonathan when he was trying to help? He could feel his magic lashing out, to deal pain upon the bitch but Jonathan's pained screams pull at him, summoning him. He doesn't like it but dismisses the woman in favour of helping the other man.
It takes a while, the panicked horse running faster than before. But soon the doctor is thrown off his steed and is left writhing on the ground in pain, clawing at his masked face. Harry is quick to rush to his side and helps take it off; the tazer barbs are embedded into the man's cheek marring his beautiful face and his expression is contorted in anger and pain.
Blue eyes flicker about as they try to find that Dawes woman; he should have killed her. Instead, he sees green eyes and a warm hand finds its way to his cheek, a familiar voice shushing him and whispering comforting nothings. "I'm here Jonathan, I'm here... it's alright," the man hushes him, cradling him carefully and running his fingers through the man's brown hair.
"H-Harry?" he croaks out, unsure whether he was real or he had been affected by his toxin again. But the soft caresses and the smile on the younger man's lips make it real... those green eyes that nobody else could have, could not be replicated even in a dream reassures him.
Jonathan is safe. And Harry is happy.
For now.