Mmm. Banana chips. And Elizabeth. That's all I own for this chapter.
Chapter Twelve: "Scarecrow Know's Your Fear"
MONDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK.
Elizabeth walked into the room, and with only the chairs and a table off to the side to furnish it, it seemed far too large. Jonathan was already sitting, waiting for her, and he watched her avidly as she walked in. He could tell by the way she looked at him that she wanted to ask him something, and her continued silence filled him with certitude that the note had been found.
He waited until she was sitting across from him, and then nodded in the direction of the security camera.
"Think they're on today?"
She gave him a confused look, "Why wouldn't they be?"
Her answer swayed his conviction, but he continued anyways. "Care to test our luck?" He said softly, almost with a dangerous tone.
"What?"
"What is it you fear, Dr. Lee?"
Elizabeth sighed, rolling her eyes, which made her miss the malicious smirk that was creeping across Jonathan's face. "Why are you asking me this again? The answer is going to be the same."
"Maybe because I think your lying." He responded in a stage whisper. Elizabeth looked back at him just in time to see him lunge out of his chair with a speed she wasn't aware was possible, and before she could even take a breath, his hands were grasping each arm of the chair so hard his knuckles showed white through his skin. Suddenly she noticed she wasn't at the right angle in her chair, and realized with a start that he had shoved the chair backwards so that it swayed on its back legs, leaving her feet dangling, as if they were desperately searching for something sturdy to stand on.
He was bracing her weight on the chair, but he was by no means a weightlifter, and he didn't know how long he would be able to bear the weight. Still, he leaned forward into her until he could feel her breath on his face, warm and shallow and skipping with fear.
Jonathan stared into her eyes, but she couldn't hold his gaze, so she looked away. Those clear, icy blue eyes seemed to strip away every facade, every barrier she had built around her mind. They scaled it with fearful ease, as if it were no more than a pebble on a smooth path. But Jonathan didn't like her looking away. He took her chin and turned her face so she was staring at him again, and this time she couldn't break his gaze if she tried; she was drowning.
"What is it you fear?" He repeated, softly this time, as if the question was something intimate. Elizabeth refrained from answering, and it seemed as if she couldn't, the words lodged in her throat. He still had one hand on her cheek, and knew if he didn't stop this soon the chair would collapse beneath her, because he wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer. He drew back a little, "Don't answer, Lizzy, I already know." He chuckled, and slammed the front end of the chair down, so the legs met the floor with a jolt.
There were no security guards bursting through the doors-- the cameras really didn't work. Elizabeth didn't know how Jonathan could have been so sure, but she didn't hesitate to scurry out of the chair and head for the door, but Jonathan, with his long legs, overtook her. She was nearly there when his arm wrapped around her waist, halting her retreat. She opened her mouth to scream for help, but he seemed to predict her moves, and covered her mouth with his hand.
"Sh!" he commanded harshly in her ear. He waited a moment or two until her breathing slowed slightly, and then continued murmuring into her hair, which had fallen partly from the knot she had it tied in. "I realize this is a slightly absurd and cliched question, but when I let go of you, will you promise not to scream? Nothing is going to happen," he assured her.
Elizabeth didn't trust him, she was shocked and taken aback by his sudden show of violence, but she nodded anyways. After all, she didn't want to just stand there like that for the rest of the day. She felt him draw back, and finally, with small hesitation, removed his hand from her mouth.
Jonathan stepped back and returned to his chair, sitting down and looking over at Elizabeth, who still stood with her back turned. She was debating on what she wanted to do next, because she couldn't just sit back down and pretend like nothing happened.
"Don't go out that door." He warned.
"What makes you think I'll just do as you ask?" She asked spitefully, her nose crinkling.
"Because you need me, and that's quite an effective device for control," he chuckled. He watched her stand there, could almost see her mind churning as she considered doing it out of spite, and wondering what the repercussions were. After a moment she went still, and a breath later he could detect a small tremor that ran through her.
"What the hell was all that about, anyways?" she whispered as she asked, as if she were afraid of the answer, he could hear a small amount of emotion in her voice, the way you could tell a person had been crying, even though you were talking to them over the phone. She wasn't necessarily scared to the point of tears, but she was certainly shaken.
"I figured you found my note."
Elizabeth whirled around, finally understanding. "And that was the only way you could discern whether or not the cameras were off?" she demanded.
"It was the first thing that came to mind." He replied calmly, shrugging.
"Do you realize how much you were risking? For the both of us?" She was stomping closer to him, fear forgotten with the emerging anger.
Jonathan simply stared up at her, elbow draped carelessly over the back of the chair, and he could tell she hated it, hated that he could risk so much and stay so calm. "You don't give me enough credit, doctor."
"Why should I?" she asked calmly, finally composing herself. He felt like laughing; Oh, how little she knew.
"You have no idea how much I'm doing for you."
Now she gave him a look of surprise and great confusion, "You're right, I don't. What the hell is going on?"
He crossed one leg over the other, his right ankle resting on his left knee, like he was right at home in the sterile white room. "You know you're never quite fully aware of the amount of geniuses you have right under your nose until you become one of them."
Elizabeth was just lost now, "...Beg pardon?"
"I appreciate the effort to get me out of here, but you're going to have to admit to yourself that your endeavors are going nowhere."
Elizabeth had already known that part, but stayed silent while he talked, because to interrupt would probably break his train of thought, and she was already confused enough as it were.
"But I have more valuable contacts inside and outside this place than I ever did before. You think I've just been sitting around all this time?"
"Considering our agreement, I really hoped you haven't. But gee, I don't know what to say, I never knew the walls of those cells were that thin."
Jonathan laughed. "Look, what I'm trying to say is, I don't need your help anymore." He watched her face fall, saw the horror creep into those eyes, and admired it for awhile before he continued.
"But I will still help you. Only now, you need to do as I say."
It was nearly complete, but it's continuation of being under construction didn't stop the Joker from being there to loiter in his free time. In fact, even though it wasn't publicly open, many people still came to poke or mess around. And he had no problem with that, just as long as they brought their own booze and didn't drink any of his.
He was sprawled across a throne-like chair, one hand draped down towards the floor to lazily stroke the fur of Tweedle-Dum, one of his two pet hyenas. Tweedle-Dum yawned lazily and lifted his paw to scratch his neck, making the spiked collar rattle against its chain. Harley sat primly in a slightly smaller chair on the Joker's right, legs crossed and concentration on her nails; she had removed her black gloves to determinedly file her nails, while humming a pleasant tune.
Finally the thick metal french doors opened, just as he knew they would, and two buff men in identical black sleeveless shirts and black pants strode in. Each of them had a set of complex looking goggles around their necks. Anybody else in the room who had not known what was going on would probably have found themselves seeking a CAT scan the next morning, because the two bouncers looked like they were pantomiming carrying something rather large and heavy between them. Something that, strangely, could really talk. Of course it wasn't so much talking as whining and begging, but strange is strange.
Joker leaned forward with great exuberance, "Mojo! I had no idea you would come!" he lied, "What a surprise, what a surprise!" He laughed, and Harley joined in, even though hers was more of a nervous laughter, as she couldn't quell her heartbeat long enough to pay attention. The two bouncers let go of their load, and after a few moments a head with short dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a few freckles strewn across its nose unfurled itself from the shadowed, but empty, spot.
"Joker, please," the head begged, "Leave Kim out of this. She doesn't deserve this. She hasn't done anything!"
"Oh come now, Mo, what a stupid thing to say!" Joker snickered, "All you have to do is kidnap my girl and you get the girl that I kidnaped back. Now doesn't that sound logical?"
"Why are you asking me to do this?"
Joker rubbed his chin in theatrical pensiveness. "Well, I could simply strip the invisibility cloak off of your dead body, or just steal it, but," he clapped his hands and rubbed them together, "it's just so much more fun to use you instead!"
Despite the fact that the rest of Mojo's body was invisible, Harley could almost see him shaking, and couldn't help but turn away. She couldn't think about how horrible she felt, so she didn't. Everything was so much easier to deal with when you tuned it out and chose numbness instead.
"And the Batman?" Mojo whimpered. "He'll see right through me."
"Don't be ridiculous old boy," Joker demanded, waving his hand. "The batman is nothing more than a man that wishes he were me," he chuckled at his own statement and then continued, "I put a lot of effort into making sure the man who sold me those heat vision goggles wouldn't sell them to anyone else. In fact, I don't think he'll ever sell anything ever again!" Joker began to laugh, and it made even Harley shiver. She hadn't known about the man with the goggles. Tonight, she was finding out that she didn't know about a lot of things. And now she was in too deep for it to matter.
"So what do you say?" Joker asked Mojo.
"I say I really don't have a choice," he decided.
"Good boy. I would have really hated to have been forced to feed you to my puppies," Joker murmured as he reached down to pet the panting hyenas. "Get out of here. I don't know how much time we have left."
In sync the bouncers bent and scooped the invisible body of the floor, dragging him back from whence they came. Once left alone, Harley turned to look at the man she had somehow fallen in love with, but couldn't seem to find any words to say, so she returned to staring at the wall. Strange thing was, she wasn't afraid of him. She was afraid of leaving him, and she was afraid of the fact that the only time she felt out of place was in that monotonous office. But she wasn't afraid of him. Maybe she should have been.
The heels of Talia's boots thunked on the rock floor as she walked, sounding louder than it should have been because it echoed throughout the cave. Beams of weak yellow light from several flashlights held by people in front of and behind her arced back and forth across the walls, making her feel like she was walking through a light show. The walls and floor were unnaturally smooth, proving that the site had been tampered with years before Talia and her League of Assassins had arrived. Years before her father had been using it, even. The last time Ra's had been here his house had burned down, killing most of the members of the League of Shadows, and weakening him considerably. It would have taken months for him to heal, if it hadn't been for the Pit, and because of it, it had taken a mere week.
Now they were here again, but Talia didn't hold much faith that the Lazarus Pit would help her father this time around. They had never attempted to use it for death. Near death, yes, but that was still entirely different. But that did mean that at least there would be no fatalities for trying.
The Lazarus Pit entered the circumference of the pale circle of light, and the League of Assassins, renamed by Talia after her father's death, spread out around the Pit, which was about the size of a large pond. Two men passed by Talia, carrying her fathers still form between them, which was covered with a dark blanket. They set him down at the rim of the thick, bubbling liquid, which looked slightly blue in the flashlights glow, and began to peel away the material from his skin. She watched as her father's grey, still skin was slowly revealed, strip by strip, and throughout it all she remained calm and cold, like they were unwrapping nothing more than a note from an envelope. She loved her father very much, but the time for mourning had long since passed, and truthfully, the only reason it might take effort to look at his face was because of her odd romantic interest in their common enemy.
This was actually the first time she even thought about that certain state of affairs since she left. What did it mean that it didn't mean anything at all anymore? The air in the murky cave seemed far more clear than on those city streets, and maybe her father was right; maybe Gotham's time had come. He could always tell, like he could smell Death hovering over the population like a stifling hand, and there, she could certainly smell something odd.
"Lower him in," she murmured when the last of the sheet was pulled away. The two men that had been unraveling him dipped him into the goo, feet first, until he was completely submerged. They let him go, and he disappeared into the depths, invisible to their eyes in such a dark atmosphere. Silently they waited, and each moment stretched on intolerably, but nothing happened. Finally Talia sighed, and walked away from her men. The time for mourning was here again.
Between the three of them, the machines in the bat cave went up rather quickly. Bruce even had his own miniature laboratory, and a computer that was so large and complex he could probably enter it into the Guinness Book of World Records. He sat down in the thickly cushioned chair that he had recently purchased "for his office", and rolled himself over to the lab. He pulled the small blue flower out of his jacket, now tinged with brown and withered from age and lack of water or sunlight, and placed it under a microscope. When he had encountered the field in the mountains he had taken several, for they were plentiful, yet undocumented, which was a little too suspicious for him to let go. It wasn't long before he found himself thankful for his instinct, after finding out what they did.
Truthfully, he didn't honestly know what he was doing, sitting there with a flower under a microscope. He knew what the blossom did, and he knew how to make it do it, but he didn't know if it could do the reverse, or where to start to find out if it could. But one thing he didn't want was Elizabeth's dependence on Dr. Crane. He was a criminal and couldn't be trusted, and he knew how manipulative the psychiatrist was. Perhaps instead of sitting here trying to beat Crane to a cure he ought to be out there making sure he didn't wheedle himself out of Arkham. But he wasn't giving Elizabeth enough credit; he couldn't assume that she was that gullible or trusting, but it didn't harm anything to be prepared for the worst.
It was a little funny in retrospect how close he was getting personally to her, and to Lucius, when he had forbade himself to do so. Apparently, then, it was absolutely impossible to refuse outright any relationship. Shit happened, no matter how hard you tried to prevent them. Then again, you can't prevent what you can't predict.