Fear Revisited [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

020

"I love you, Jonathan."

He stared at her, eyes wide, as the impact of her words settled in. Though hs wasn't sure how it was possible to feel two incongruent sensations simultaneously, he felt both numb and electrified, all at once.

The idea of love was an entirely foriegn concept to him, something he was quite sure he had never experienced firsthand.

Out of all the people he had come into contact with in his life, not a single one of them had spoken those words to him.

Dear mother and father had been ghosts from the beginning, never having so much as spoken to him in general, let alone said those words to him.

Granny had certainly never claimed to love him, making it abundantly clear that both she and her God saw him as utterly unworthy of love.

Jane had been the only person to show any measurable affection in his life, and yet, he couldn't take that as empirical evidence.

Is she lying to us? he turned inward for perspective on the situation.

Not like I'd know any better than you, Jonny. But be careful.

He supposed that made sense; if Jonathan had not experienced love, it was a safe bet that Scarecrow was even further removed from the notion. Naturally, they both assumed the worst.

"If this is a joke at my expense, it is in very poor taste," he warned Jane, brows knit in an expression he intended to be anything but the vulnerable look it came across as.

Her anger softened slightly, arms dropping from their defensive position across her chest, face slowly but surely losing it's hard edge.

"What about this is supposed to be funny?" she asked almost inaudibly, taking measured steps closer to him until she had invaded his personal space enough to make his breathing uneven.

"I don't want this to be my life. I want a normal life, without having to even think about any of this, but I can't have that, now," she explained, tears that he didn't understand the nature of pooling in her eyes.

"And what's stopping you?" he asked, willing his voice to waver less than it did.

Her words did not comfort him. If she did not want what he brought to her life, then why tell him any of what she had told him in their present conversation? None of it fit a discernible, sensible pattern in his head.

"Even when we're not together, I can't even try to see anyone else without comparing them to you," she said with a shake of her head. "I watched you torture someone, and still, you're impossible to measure up to. You can walk back in after a month or ten years, and I'm still yours."

A note of jealousy strummed through him; he had never considered the idea that she had seen anyone else in their time apart.

How long had she waited to try and move on? Had she gone so far as to sleep with any of them? Who was -

You're missing the point entirely, Scarecrow put an effective end to the spiral of questions that flurried through his mind, honing Jonathan's focus in on the portion of her statement that had mattered.

You're impossible to measure up to, I'm still yours - these were the sentiments he should have been dissecting and overanalyzing.

It was too much, her there in such close proximity to him, saying the words that she was. It left him feeling uncomfortably unguarded, left open for the punchline he was still waiting to be blindsided with. He had not felt so vulnerable since he was but a boy.

"What am I supposed to do with this information?" he asked warily. He couldn't help the self conscious thoughts that swallowed him whole, wondering whether or not she could see the light tremble that had come over him.

"Whatever you want. It doesn't matter what you do with it, it isn't going to change anything," she explained, maintaining eye contact with him in an uncharacteristically bold move. She was always the first one to look away.

"I'm not going to change, either," he reminded her, as though she may have overlooked that all important fact in her flowery speech.

She smiled a bittersweet smile.

"I know you won't. And maybe it makes me crazy, maybe I'll end up like that Dr. Quinn or whatever her name was, but I'm not asking you to," she admitted, vaguely referencing what she likely heard on the news or read in a paper about former Arkham psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, current henchwoman to the villain known as the Joker.

He was filled with yet another emotion he couldn't account for. As a man of psychology, this inability to pin down his own feelings was beginning to worry him, a bit.

She was openly admitting that she knew he wouldn't change and she seemed to understand exactly what that meant for them both. There was a certain surreal quality to being freely handed something he'd long ago given up hoping for - acceptance.

"But, despite your feelings, you can't be involved in this, because...?" he prompted, already presuming the next words out of her mouth and still clinging desperately to the idea that something had to be amiss.

The fact that anything which was too good to be true was usually not was something he was quite familiar with.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?" she asked rhetorically. "There's no way around it if I want to be with you."

"And that's what you want? To be with me?" he clarified, still too anxious over possibilities to assume any meaning in her words.

"Haven't you been listening?" she asked softly, her hand finding the side of his cheek. He tried to suppress a flinch, to no avail.

"If you need me to spell it out so that we're crystal clear, yes. I want to be with you," she laid all her cards on the table.

His mood was indescribable, consisting of a thorough search of her eyes for any trace of dishonesty, and a desperate plea for Scarecrow to save him from the situation entirely.

Not in my skill set this time, Jonnyboy.

He wasn't accustomed to this type of tenderness, but he couldn't deny that some part of him craved it and always had. Giving into it was precarious, fraught with opportunities to be let down, but God, how good it would feel to be hopeful, just once.

"Okay," he gulped, nodding slightly.

---

'Okay'? What sort of an answer was 'okay'?

Jane tried not to pull a face at his response to her laying her heart very literally on the line. She supposed it was likelu the best Jonathan could manage, given that she could feel the tension rolling off of him in waves.

She presumed that the next words out of her mouth were not exactly going to ease that tension, any.

But she needed to understand, to really understand, if she was going to try and make a life out of what had been handed to her.

If she was going to go down that road, she saw no point in going only halfway, and the question had been building in her mind since she began spilling her metaphorical guts to him.

"But there is one thing I want to ask you for in return," she began hesitantly, watching as the suspicion returned to his expression.

"I want you to use the toxin on me."

---

How much do you guys hate me for the cliffhangers? ;) And what is Jane thinking, right now? Has she completely gone down the rabbit hole, never to return?

Let me know what you guys are thinking!