Penny here - I actually wasn't a co-author for this fic (just a minor collaborator/sounding board/editor), but I'm trying to force myself back into writing and thought Plaything could use a 2nd draft. I'll still put all the necessary TW's at the start of relevant chapters. Please message me if you spot any spelling or grammar errors that slipped by me. Thank you!

TW: brief mentions of violence, starving.

Two shadowy figures could be seen in the distance, rifles accompanying their vague outlines. Sentinels - men of Bane's so called "resistance" who patrolled the streets and shot on sight. Evie quickly slipped into a nearby alley to wait for them to pass, praying they didn't decide to got though there too. The thud of a closing front door and another set of footsteps came from just outside her hiding spot - a more brisk walker. They stopped a few feet from her. A sharp click, the smell of cigarette smoke following. Evie cautiously poked her head out, not keen on seeing someone get shot (again), peering around the corner. A man leaned casually against the brick just outside, taking leisurely drags, watching the smoke he blew out mingle with the added steam of his breath against the cold air.

"Hey." She whispered urgently.

The man's head snapped toward her.

"It's past curfew." It wasn't an ordered curfew, mind you - just a reality that if you were out past a certain time you were likely to never return. "You should go back inside."

Though his features were largely hidden in the faint light of dimming streetlamps, Evie could tell he was smiling, as if he found her warning amusing. Not exactly the appropriate panicked response.

The footsteps were clearer now: she could hear the crunch of the snow under their boots. Exasperated, Evie reached out, grabbing the strangers arm and yanking him into the alley with her.

"Can you please die on your own time?" She whispered harshly, as it wasn't safe to yell like she wanted. Evie crouched back down and motioned for him to join her.

With the cigarette still between his lips, the man let out a muffled chuckle, the glowing tip reflecting in his glasses, and stepped back out onto the sidewalk. That. Bastard. The guards were right on top off them, and Evie froze as she heard them draw up their weapons. She braced herself for the gunshots, the blood.

"Evening gentlemen." The man said calmly.

The guards paused - something she had never seen them do before. "Crane?" One of them asked. "Holy shit dude, I was about to blow you away." Both of them lowered their weapons.

Evie's heart practically stopped. Crane. She knew that name - everyone in Gotham did. Especially now, where he was carving a new name for himself as a judge, sending the rich and the rebels to their deaths in the ice of the river.

"Which truck are you scouting for?"

"Three, sir."

"Well, I apologize for distracting you. Move along."

"Yes, sir." She watched, still in shock, as the men turned on their heels. Crane watched them go, taking one final drag of his cigarette before flicking it onto the snowy street.

"You can come out now." He said, rather softly.

She rose from her hiding place with extreme caution. "Thanks." The attempt at appreciation sounded hollow and she knew it. "For not...you know." Getting her killed or much, much worse.

"You don't seem like anyone worth killing."

An austere compliment, to be sure. "Well...thanks again." Savior or not, Evie wanted to get away from him as fast as she could. She started walking.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"Um, home?" Her mouth felt very dry suddenly. "I wasn't supposed to be gone this long, and, not to sound cliche or anything, but there's people probably worried about me, so -"

Crane interrupted. "Better to be worried than devastated."

"What?" She asked nervously.

"One of the bomb tanks is about to pass through here. A dozen men are guarding it, with plenty more ensuring the path, all with," he smiled, "rather itchy trigger fingers."

"Well, I think if I just stay in the shadows and stop trying to play hero from now on, I can make it."

Crane's odd smiled faded, and Evie found herself rooted to the ground as he took a few strides toward where she stood.

"Nonsense." He said. She could see his eyes now. Even in semidarkness they were a bright, clear blue - uncomfortably intense. "My 'home' is right here. Your 'people' will be fine for the night." He put his hand on the small of her back guiding her back across the street to the block of brownstones, up a set of steps covered in dead vines. Through the door, where Evie was met with real running heat for for the first time that season. Crane locked the door behind them.

The home reminded Evie of a professors office - all brown leather chairs and ambient lighting. Books on every surface, maps on the walls, interesting odds and ends decorating the place. She remained in the entryway until Crane gestured for her to go to the living room.

"Please, have a seat."

She obeyed, choosing a squishy armchairs and sitting on the very edge of it, feet flat on the ground, so she could get up quickly and leave at the first opportunity. "Was this your home before?"

"Before Blackgate, Arkham? No, it was not." Crane answered stiffly, removing his coat and placing it on a hook next to the door. He wore a rather disheveled suit underneath: the seams in one arm were completely ripped, frayed polyester and padding spraying out from the opening. That came off as well, folding it and placing it on the back of a nearby chair. "My home and possessions were seized and eventually sold when I was put away. I had thought to take it back, but," he joined her in the living room, choosing to sit on the coffee table directly in front of her, "I came across this place instead. It's nicely settled, near where I'm expected to be."

"Where are the people who lived here before?"

He shrugged. "Maybe dead, maybe in hiding. Perhaps they were fortunate enough to be on vacation when everything happened. In any case, they weren't here when I took it, if that's what you wanted to ask."

Obviously, Crane looked older, and much more haggard than the pictures of him she'd glimpsed in the paper every now and again, and in her cousin Stephanie's psych and criminology textbooks she'd shared with her. His hair was greying, he sported stubble - but he did still retain the full lips and high cheekbones that made Steph swoon over his chapters, almost ignoring the crimes within them. Looks aside, there was a very strange quality to his behavior - as if her were high, but not quite that. Eccentric was the word, or close enough to it, Evie supposed. Crane easily caught her staring, giving her body a brief once over in response, causing her cheeks to burn up, and then frowned.

"I forgot to ask you to give me your coat to hang. Would you please?"

She nodded. This was not the time to test out the patience of a criminal. Looping out the toggles of her heavy coat, she unzipped and shrugged the thing off as unattractively as she could manage, before handing it over to Crane. He stood up and walked back to the entryway, hanging it next to his. She took her beanie off too, though she wasn't asked, as her head started feeling uncomfortable and itchy in the well-heated house. With all the effort it had been to stuff and keep all her hair into that hat, her dark blonde curls seemed to appreciate being free.

Turning back to her, Crane smiled, adjusting his glasses. "So," he clasped his hands in front of him, "what did you do before all this?"

"I went to school." She said plainly. Maybe if she was boring enough she could just leave.

"Gotham University? What did you study?"

"Haaa." Evie started to perk up a little. There was something she kind of forgot that might actually help her out of this situation. "High school, actually. Eleventh grade."

Crane's expression shifted. "I thought you were older."

Success. She might be legal in the state - not that government law was really a thing for Gotham at the moment - but in any case, a half-decent adult will always associate "high school" with "jailbait". Crane was definitely a creep, but not that kind of creep she expected to say "age is just a number".

Crane sat back down in front of her, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat under his steely gaze, hands bracing the armrest, preparing to bolt.

"So," she began slowly, "am I supposed to sleep in here?"

"There's a room upstairs you can have. It actually looks like it belonged to a teenage girl once." She had hoped to hear that she was free to leave, but the sweet, sweet acknowledgement that she was way too young for him made things a little better.

"Okay."

He glanced at the clock. "Barely eight thirty." He murmured. "Kind of early to turn in, considering there's no school."

"I don't want you to think I'm not...grateful or anything - really I am," Evie began to ramble. All she wanted was to go, and her mind just kept scrambling for way out. "but...I don't know you."

"You know of me, though, don't you." He leaned forward, those blue eyes burning right through her amber ones. "That's been all too clear since you heard my name. He smiled reappeared, growing wider. "You're scared, aren't you?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Fear was literally the name of his game. And drugging. And torture. And God knows what else. Evie swallowed down the panic that was quickly building up inside her.

"Fair enough. Do you have a name?"

Evie's mind was too frazzled to come up with a fake one off the top of her head. "Evie."

"I'll be very forward with you, Evie."Crane continued to stare her down."At the very least I was hoping for some honest conversion in exchange for saving you from almost certain death. Admittedly, I also hoped for a warm body to lie next to tonight, but, all things considering, I think not.

You don't need to look at me like that. I promise I won't hurt you - I only had a thought to live out my last days with a few...creature comforts."

Eager to steer the conversation away from Crane's "creature comforts", Evie blurted out, "Are you dying?"

"We're all dying, Evie." His smile receded into a knowing smirk.

She didn't need his cryptic comments. "I meant are you ill? Terminal?"

"I meant what I said."

"That's we're all going to die?"

"Yes." He stated. "And quite soon."

It took a moment, but she remembered outside, where he asked the sentinels about a truck. "You're talking about the bomb."

"Or maybe not. You understand the city has been building momentum toward hysteria. Shootings, lootings, murders, suicides - all have been astronomical the last few months." He suddenly rose from his perch on the table to stretch off on the sofa. "One way or another, this city is going to burn, folding in on itself, and we'll all go down with it. It's only a matter of when."

Like most Gothamites, Evie had hoped and prayed that everything would turn out fine in the end. Someone would save them: the government, the Batman - perhaps even the city itself would form up a counter-revolt against the "leader" who called himself Bane. The city couldn't go down like this.

Crane sighed. "Seems I have spoiled the potential for conversation. Maybe you should just go to bed." He sat back up, loosening his tie. "Can I offer you some tea first? Have you eaten?"

"I'm fine, thanks." Evie struggled more and more to be polite, feeling herself fail at her attempt to smile. "Where's the room?"

"Upstairs. The blue one." He stared down the table, selecting a book off the corner.

Evie finally go out of her seat, legs buckling for a moment, and went up the stairs. The room was at the end of the hall and, to Crane's credit, did look like a girl close to her age resided there. Difference was that these parents gave her a huge bed and a tv. It looked strait out of a magazine, complete with a clearly expensive matching furniture/bed set and twinkle lights, plus one of those little reading nooks in a window overlooking the street. She sort of wished the room were in the back of the house, though, with easier access to the fire escape, as it way a double-paned bay window that didn't open.

She picked through the dresser. Maybe this girl had also left her clothes and was her size. Or her sister Allie's size, at least. Dresser contained mostly sweats and yoga pants and shirts. These were all fine things to have, so she put them on the bed. She went to the closet - a walk-in, that spoiled girl. The girl also went to private school, judging by the ugly plaid uniforms, maybe a debutante too what with all the dresses, but she did also have a few pairs of jeans in Evie's size. Ones without rips in the knees or wear in the thighs, which was a pretty great score. Evie threw those just outside the closet to pack up later, along with a pair of sneakers that weren't her size but she could still sell, and walked back into the room to the vanity on the other side. There were lights around it, along with photos. She wondered which one of them this room belonged to.

Not for too long, though, before going through it as well. There wasn't as much of a market for makeup nowadays, no matter how luxurious (and there were expensive brands to be found in the drawers), but she did find a hairbrush. It wasn't really useful for her hair, but Allie or Mom could make use of it.

Evie looked in the mirror. She looked like shit, her features becoming more gaunt over the weeks, her lips were chapped and the lavender circles under her eyes seemed to grow darker the longer she stared at them. The hair...well there wasn't much to do about it without the ton of products and arsenal of brushes that she could no longer easily acquire.

There was another door off to the side. Another closet? Nope, a bathroom. Still, goddamn.

Now this was a score. New toothbrushes, pads, tampons, razors, and every kind of cleansing-toning-moisture-face thing she could want. Hygienic products were worth so much on the streets. Her family would be able to start selling and trading instead of scavenging with all this. Evie looked in the shower, spotting conditioner she knew for a fact cost almost $40 a bottle, before tax. Was there...hot water? The house had steady power and heat, so she didn't see why it wouldn't. Evie missed hot water showers. She had been wiping herself down with ice cold wash cloths and Irish Spring soap in lieu of real bathing for weeks. Turning on the tap, she waited. Eventually, it started steaming. If it weren't for Crane she would call this place Heaven.

Evie locked the bedroom door, and the bathroom door too before starting a shower. Once under the water, she fought against the urge to relax and worked quickly. She dumped the expensive conditioner on her head and let in set in while she shaved. She yanked the brush she found earlier through her hair. It hurt but there wasn't enough safety in the house to warrant real care or dallying. Even through the rush of her stress shower, she still felt a million times better when she stepped out. She put on new clothes and a pair of socks thick enough to muffle her movement, grabbed a pillowcase out her bag, and left the room.

The rest of the house was now unlit, but that did not ease her mind in any way. No doubt the darkness gave Crane a higher advantage than it did for her, but she kept close to the walls and tested each step down the stairs. A friend who used to always sneak out to parties told her to keep close to furniture because the floor is always more settled there and less likely to creak, so she did that too. She felt safe enough to turn on the light in the kitchen to see what he had. While there wasn't a mass abundance of food, it was still quite a stash - more than her family had. Definitely more than most people in Gotham had. Enough to where she didn't feel bad stealing all the canned tuna and chicken. Not only were small enough to fit along nicely with all her other finds, but it was better quality food than she had found in a minute.

This bastard even had muffins - where the hell was he getting baked goods in a time like this? It had been almost a full day since she'd eaten last, so she crammed one in her mouth and placed another on top of the cans in the pillowcase on her way out, turning the light off with her elbow.

Crane didn't cross her path on the way back to her room either, allowing her to scout out the location of the fire escape. The window was painted shut meaning she would need her knife to cut it open. If she didn't want to draw attention to her departure she would have to spend time on it too, ten or fifteen minutes at least. Not good. Evie walked back to the blue room, instinctively locking the door behind her. She would pack up her new things, wait an hour or two until she felt a little more sure that Crane was asleep, and then start working on that window.

Oh, but the bed felt so nice. She wished she could take even just a short nap in it, but that would be beyond stupid. Spending the night with the Scarecrow, in any way, shape, or form, was stupid, stupid, stupid. It didn't hurt to sit, though, while she started folding up the clothes.

Steadying herself, Evie looked out the window, willing the time to pass.