Author's Note: This turned out to be much darker than my previous stories. Believe it or not, I nearly cried when I wrote this!

Jonathan jerked upright in bed, gasping and drenched in sweat. Maniacal laughter rang in his ears.

"What is it, Jonathan?" The Joker wrapped his arms around Crane's skeletal frame as Jonathan shook his head helplessly and buried his face into the clown's neck, beginning to sob as Joker stroked his brown hair consolingly while murmuring "Ssh. . .ssh. . ."

Jonathan could still see it:

He was Scarecrow right now, though as to how he knew which personality - Jonathan, Scarecrow, or strangely both at once - occupied his consciousness at the time, he could not say.

He was in the interrogation room at Arkham Asylum, located in the institution's dank basement. His familiar burlap sack was pulled down over his head, and he stood before the Joker, who was bound by a straitjacket and chained at the ankles to the hardback chair in which he sat. (The process of how they had come to be in this situation was very simple: Joker was a masochist, and after he found out about the fear toxin Crane was developing, he had decided to make an "appointment" with the doctor himself. Knowing all too well that fear and pain go hand-in-hand, Joker had hoped that the compound would aid him in his desire for self-mutilation - classic torture had begun to bore him, and he had wanted to try something new.)

Jonathan thrust out his arm, and a puff of white smoke shot out of his sleeve. Unexpectedly, the toxin did not seem to strike fear into the Joker, who instead began laughing insanely, as if at some private joke - which Jonathan would later learn to be Joker's triumph at releasing Crane's Scarecrow persona.

In a sudden fit of rage, Jonathan tore off his mask and grabbed one of Joker's knives from the table next to them. He shoved the blade into Joker's mouth, over his tongue, and cut left to right, left to right, making ragged, stitch-like lesions through the skin and muscle. Impossible amounts of garnet blood ran down the victim's jaw and chin.

But Joker only laughed and laughed and laughed, increasing Jonathan's fury by tenfold, and so he cut and cut and cut and he couldn't stop. . .

Finally, Jonathan ceased weeping, and raised his head to peer up at his lover - though his lips still trembled. Taking the Joker's face between shaking hands, Jonathan stroked the ragged wounds with his thumbs. When he spoke, his voice was weak with emotions he could not name.

"I know how you got these scars, Joker." Fresh tears spilled out of his crystalline blue eyes.

"I gave them to you. . ."

END

I'm quite proud of this one, but please let me know if anything seems unclear! Could possibly expand on it.