Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any aspect of the Gotham universe. I own nothing save for any original characters that I have created.

Aftermath

Crane could not remember when he had first begun to see the scarecrows.

He remembered his father's toxin scorching through his veins as he lay prone among the hay bales and stared up into the burlap face of the field's scarecrow, and he remembered his first scream of horror when it began to writhe and glow with a fiery-orange rage. He remembered the stitched eyes and mouth contorting into an expression of pure loathing, as if the structure comprised of twigs and ragged fabric knew of Crane's participation in his father's experiments—murders, as the papers had referred to them, was a far too simplistic and degrading word to describe Gerald's work—and was disgusted with him.

You deserve this, a cruel voice whispered into his ear, and perhaps it was right.

Crane remembered being vaguely aware of the sound of gunshots and Gerald roaring in defiance, as fearless as he was foolish. He remembered hands gripping his own shoulders, shaking him in a vain attempt to wake him from his nightmare, and a man's far-away voice yelling his name over and over again.

"Jonathan! Jonathan!"

Crane later learned that the two officers who had rescued him from the scarecrow's hateful glare were the same men who killed his father. Gerald was dead. He deserved it, the cruel voice said, and perhaps it was right.

He remembered arriving at the hospital and being rushed to a room that was white and sterile and far too bright, and he remembered the blur of faces that followed; some were pitying, others were matter-of-fact, and all were intrigued. They brought with them an endless routine of needles and IV bags and charts and question after question after question, but they never brought him any peace unless it was in the form of a sedative. One night Crane overheard a pair of nurses gossiping in hushed, scandalized tones as they tended to his room, believing him to be asleep.

"And to think that his own father did this to him," one had said, clucking her tongue in disapproval. "Such a shame."

"You know they still haven't been able to figure out just exactly what he was poisoned with, even after all that lab work? Dr. Serling says he's never seen anything like it before. Says they may never be able to identify it."

"Such a shame," the other nurse repeated, and both shook their heads sadly.

Gerald would have been proud.

But while Crane remembered all of these events in vivid, painful detail, he could not recall when they had taken place. Had this all occurred within a matter of days, or was it weeks ago? Months? Years? He seldom knew whether it was day or night, but found that it did not matter—the scarecrows cared nothing for time. They arrived when they pleased and retreated only when he no longer entertained them, when his voice had become so shattered that he could not scream and he had no tears left to cry. But the scarecrows never truly let him be; even when he could not see them, they made their presence known. The smell of dry hay, the itching sensation of straw clinging to his hair and clothes, the sound of bullets tearing through his father's flesh—each terrible memory was a fine-tuned instrument for the scarecrows to play over and over again, tormenting Crane with his own mind even as he writhed helplessly beneath his restraints and pleaded for them to stop.

They only played louder.

More disoriented time passed, and eventually Crane realized that the scarecrows were beginning to change. Their mossy skin had started to wilt, the fiery abyss in their mouths now little more than a weak flickering flame. Even their power over his senses was fading; the field's organic environment had been replaced by the faint odor of disinfectant spray, and the sound of his father's dying breaths was drowned out by a succession of ringing telephones and the intermittent hospital intercom. A subsequent round of tests revealed that the chemical abnormalities in his brain were beginning to deteriorate at a quickening pace, and for the first time Crane's doctor smiled at him with something that resembled optimism.

It had been nice to see. He'd almost smiled back.

Without the scarecrows to distract him, Crane had begun to spend his empty days immersed within his memory. He had known true happiness once, during the precious years before the fire that killed his mother and destroyed his father's sanity. He had been dragged from their burning home and into the surrounding woods by a panicked Gerald, the iron-like grip on his protesting son's arm never wavering even as the boy dug his heels into the ground and begged for him to return for his mother. Abandoned to the merciless flames, Karen's agonized screams wailed through the trees as the fire consumed her; the soft blonde locks of hair that Gerald had loved to run his fingers through had become ash within seconds, the loving arms that had long ago rocked a younger Crane to sleep now whittled to blackened flesh and bone. The pair had borne witness to her final moments, one by choice and the other by force,

A guilt-stricken Gerald spent the rest of his life trying to eradicate the cowardice that led to his wife's death, only to die from his own fearlessness.

At night Crane would dream that he was home again with his mother and father, happy and laughing and whole, and he would often awake to a tear-soaked pillow.

The scarecrows had not allowed him to truly grieve his father's death, and in their absence Crane felt the crushing, painful realization that he was now truly alone in a world that he no longer understood. Gerald's lessons in fear had taught him that every human being possessed a singular fear that defined them, and he could not look upon anyone—be it the grim doctors in their white coats or the weathered social worker in a wrinkled blouse—without instinctively wondering what their most intimate, shameful phobia was and how it could be used against them. It was an unpleasant outlook, and yet one he did not entirely wish to change; it was all that remained of Gerald, the lingering remnants of a man who had loved his son even as he plunged adrenaline-laced chemicals into Crane's bloodstream to swim through his brain and rip apart his psyche. Fearsome enlightenment had been his father's burden, and now it was his.

Sins of the father, Gerald would have said.

Silent tears ran down his cheeks, and as he quietly sobbed Crane wondered if perhaps the scarecrows' torture was less cruel than his grief.

His first steps outside of the hospital doors had brought Crane with such an exhilarating sense of freedom that he had nearly wept with relief the instant his feet touched Gotham's asphalt.

He closed his eyes to savor her many gifts—the sunlight beaming through murky clouds of smog to warm his skin, the blended fragrances of garbage and food vendors and cigarette smoke, the blaring symphony of construction equipment and car horns. After months spent within the hospital's solemn confines, what most of Gotham considered to be humdrum mundanities and annoyances Crane instead found welcoming and exciting. He was vaguely aware of bodies walking past him on the sidewalk, brushing against his shoulders as they attempted to side-step him and grumbling in irritated unison; "move it, kid" a man in a Gotham Knights baseball cap snapped at him, yet Crane remained still and serene.

He cared nothing for their anger. It was their fears that interested him.

The farmhouse has been raided after Gerald's death, his serums confiscated and presumably destroyed. But as Gerald's obsession with fear grew, so had his paranoia; in a corner of their attic, shadowy and thick with cobwebs, a small leather case lay concealed beneath the dust-carpeted floorboards. Inside were three syringes containing the same dosage of toxin that Crane had been injected with on that fateful night.

One for the man who shot his father.

One for his partner.

And one to bring back the scarecrows.

They're what you deserve, the cruel voice whispered, and Crane knew it was right. As torturous and spiteful as they were, he needed them. Whenever he began to question the morality of his mission, whenever he began to grow weary and feel that he could go no further, whenever he began to show even the slightest hesitation over doing what needed to be done, the scarecrows would resume their horrible symphony to remind him of everything that had been stolen from him and everything that he stood to gain.

His mother was gone and his father was gone, but as long as he had the scarecrows Crane could never truly be alone. They were Gerald's curse and his gift, and now they belonged to him.

Sins of the father, Crane thought to himself. He smiled for the first time in months and began to walk.