Fear Revisited [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

001

Hello lovelies! I hope many of you have followed over from part one of this story (Fear Awakened) but I don't think it's absolutely a prerequisite for reading so long as you look at the context clues. Enjoy, and don't forget to let me know what you think!

For approximately the fifth time that evening, Jane checked her wine colored lipstick in a small compact mirror - still perfectly in place.

It wasn't the lipstick she was worried about, but fixating on whether or not it stayed perfectly in line kept her from fixating on anything else.

Given the butterflies that flitted nervously around her stomach, it was the preferable alternative.

She gazed out the window of her cab, admiring the cityscape of Gotham for the first time in years as it blurred by the window. The city was so much different than it had been a decade ago and yet, in a perfect cliché, so much the same.

"So, whaddya in town for?" the cab driver asked conversationally, a polite way of reminding her that she didn't look like she belonged there.

"Highschool reunion," she answered wistfully, smiling as she continued to stare out the window.

That effectively cured his curiosity, as the conversation dwindled back down to silence.

Not that she could blame him for it, in all honesty.

After all, curiosity was exactly why she was going in the first place. When the invitation had arrived in the mail initially, she had almost thrown it in the trash. That was, until curiosity got the better of her.

She knew how she was doing, a decade after leaving East Gotham behind - a moderately successful accountant at a firm the next city over, unmarried but somewhat attached, no kids and uninterested in them - but how was everyone else doing?

She couldn't help wondering.

Some less than noble portion of her mind wanted to see what had become of all of those people she'd left behind years earlier, though she could honestly say she was no more curious about one than the next.

She had spent so long trying to forget her high school experience, to block out each and every face that haunted those years of her life, that she had never stopped to ponder until the finely printed invitation arrived in the mail.

It wasn't as though she had anything better to do with the weekend, anyway; Stephen - the man who put the 'somewhat' in 'somewhat attached' - had yet another out of town business venture to secure, her mother was in Miami with Husband Number Three, and her best friend was currently over the moon in celebrating her new engagement.

Yes, there were certainly worse places to be spending her evening than in Gotham, nerves withstanding.

She tried to remind herself of that as her cab pulled to a stop at the curb, the familiar brick building looming against the night sky outside the window.

She swallowed her questions as to whether this was all a gigantic mistake and dutifully paid the driver, collecting her small clutch purse and stepping out.

Nothing to be nervous about. I can do this, she reminded herself as she took a deep breath.

It was exactly the way they portrayed it in the movies, a rush of nostalgia sweeping over her as she gazed up at the East Gotham sign; unfortunately, all she had to feel nostalgic about was one very short lived romantic relationship that had ended in heartbreak.