Fear Awakened [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

007

On any given day, Jane had grown accustomed to the verbal abuse that went hand in hand with keeping Jonathan's company.

It was only one small issue in her otherwise relatively easy going life.

She and her mother lived in a modest sized house in a low crime district of Gotham, although there was truly no such thing in the city.

They had moved from a few cities away, a three hour drive, when finally her mother had found the courage to rid herself of Kenneth.

Kenneth, the boyfriend who drank too much. The man had possessed a violent streak when intoxicated which, after two years of steady incline, was nearly all the time towards the end.

After a particularly nasty fight in which a lamp intended to hit her mother had struck Jane, the end came swiftly. They packed quickly and rented the first available home they could find in Gotham, where her mother was able to transfer her job.

And so, as fate would have it, she landed in East Gotham high, where she met Jonathan.

As she quickly discovered, he had no other allies before her arrival. Given the sudden way she became associated with him, people took notice. This newfound friendship -- and it was just a friendship, as she often reminded herself -- made her something of a spectacle.

Usually, she was able to fully ignore it. After all, she was a resilient, intelligent girl; it took more than a few off the cuff insults to get under her skin and she was generally able to realize that their opinions did not matter.

There were exceptions to this rule, however.

Melody Henderson was Sherry's right hand, second in command as far as the army of popular, affluent girls was concerned. Though Sherry enjoyed making sport of both Jane and Jonathan, Melody seemed to have a specific hate for Jane alone.

It was spirit week at East Gotham, just three weeks after Jane's introduction to the place. The halls were decorated in the blue and white colors of the school, festive decorations bearing their mascot littered throughout the building.

Not imbued with much school spirit, Jane's locker stood out like a sore thumb amidst the sea of others for being completely undecorated. It wasn't any sort of a statement, just a reflection of the fact that she had no desire to participate. On the plus side of things, it made her locker easy to find.

As she approached the locker at the end of the school day, she very nearly missed it. All the lockers on the hall were decorated, hers blending into the rest.

Upon closer inspection, however, her locker was decorated in an entirely different sense.

Mrs. Scarecrow was scrawled onto the grey metal in what appeared to be dripping red paint, giving the otherwise loopy handwriting a sinister feel. She gingerly touched a drip and realized it was ketchup.

She muttered a curse under her breath before pulling it open, only to be greeted by an avalanche of none other than straw, the interior of her locker decorated with ketchup, the same as the outside.

Straw for Mrs. Scarecrow.

"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned as the mess spilled onto the floor. It was everywhere inside the locker, bits sticking to everything that had been coated with the thick red ketchup, and ruining everything it touched.

A peal of laughter drew her attention behind her to where none other than Sherry Squires and her little army stood. Soon enough, others stopped to join in the laughter, watching as Jane tried fruitlessly to pick the straw out.

Her cheeks went hot and her eyes flooded with tears, despite her best efforts to prevent it. She tried to ignore the crowd as she did her best to salvage her chemistry workbook.