Fear Revisited [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

003

That was easier than we thought, wasn't it?

Jonathan declined to respond to Scarecrow's voice inside his mind, focusing instead on the task of meticulously folding and hanging his suit in the closet.

Over the years, he had learned how to control that side of himself to some extent. He did not have to respond, nor did he have to indulge the demon's every impulse.

But some were harder to ignore than others.

He shared the surprise at how easy it had been to worm his way back into Jane Corrigan's good graces. He had expected more of a fight after the ruthless way he had severed ties with her, but found the task to be much simpler than anticipated.

She missed you, Jonny. Did you miss her, too?

He grit his teeth at the playful taunting, exhausted from being so thoroughly human and sociable all evening. He was in no mood for jabs and glib remarks from what was essentially himself, just then.

There had been some unexpected change of plans in the middle of the conversation with Jane, when he realized that he had, in fact, missed her.

Of course, he rationalized his way through it, compartmentalizing those feelings for the good of his goal; he told himself many times that evening that he was simply experiencing an episode of nostalgia, compounded by warm memories of a person who had treated him very kindly.

Nothing more.

It was essential that there be absolutely nothing more, lest he feel more monsterous about what They had in mind for Jane.

She had been the only person to treat him kindly, that much was true. But she stood alone in a less desirable category, as well - she was the last person for whom he had once stifled the urge to introduce his other half, the last person who had come face to face with Scarecrow and walked away unscathed.

Sherry Squires had met her end when she was ejected from the passenger seat of Griggs' Mustang, another casualty of underage drinking and a lax attitude towards seatbelt safety.

Bo's promising career as an overpaid athlete had come to a screeching halt when he hit a tree, his spinal cord severed by a fractured vertebrae that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was then admitted to a psychiatric institution for a short spell after insisting he had been attacked by a walking, talking scarecrow weilding a pistol.

Those two, the unfortunate souls, had met Scarecrow and subsequently, the end of their lives or sanity, respectively. Jane, on the other hand, had met him intimately and continued on without any issue.

It took years for that thought to plague either Jonathan or his other half as a problem which needed to be solved.

We can't let her get away, not that easily, he had insisted. She doesn't even remember us.

After one too many nights filled with the same thoughts and a fortuitously timed invitation to East Gotham's ten year reunion, a plan began to form.