Counter Point Café Chapter 11

I don't own anything, believe me when I say that I would like to, however I do not. They in fact belong to DC Comics, Warner Brothers Studios, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, and the late Heath Ledger. All elements of Gotham City are based off of Chicago, IL and are designed around blue prints and street maps I have of that area. Other elements are named for their original comic counterparts, as the back stories and basic personality traits are also based off of the comic counterparts. Read, enjoy, and review! Thank you!

Please enjoy and tell me what you think. I've sort of got distracted and lost my goal for this story, so I'm trying to re-hatch it out a bit. Ideas, comments, or just insight are always welcomed.

When he re-entered the cave, the first thing Bruce –Batman- saw was Crane hunched over the tiny fold out sink in front of the small divider that separated the entrance to the open room holding both the shower stall and toilet. At first it just appeared as if the nervous man was washing his hands, and regardless of mental delays or injuries, Bruce believed that the man would always retain the almost OCD-like tendency for cleanliness. But as he approached, and Crane shied away from his towering figure, he saw the red streaks across the sheets at his feet, and the baggy shirt that the man was still wearing.

And when he got even closer and was able to grab at Crane's hands from the still running water, he could see the extent of the damage the man had done to himself. The nails on both hands were torn up and bleeding from what looked to have been cause by teeth or raggedly and repeatedly scraped down the cinder-block walls. Either way, the fingers themselves looked bloodied, scratched, and bruised, which would most definitely need to be tended too. As well as getting Crane out of the bloodied clothing and into something fresh and somewhat more his size.

Because at the moment he was starting to live up to his name, and he didn't mean Crane either.

"I'll need to bandage those properly once you're done cleaning them." He said in what could pass for tenderness in a throat cancer patient's voice. "I can't let you leave them like that, or they'll become infected."

And he knew that Crane would probably continue to pick at them if they were wrapped up and kept from prying and picking fingers and nervous habits. He'd seen the man tear himself apart before just as a side effect of the delusions and hallucinations the lingering Toxin damage had caused. If he wasn't tended to properly the first time, then it was only bound to get worse.

"I also brought you clean clothing, so when we're done bandaging your fingers, you can change out of the bloodied ones." Bruce was really, really trying to be patient here. "I won't have you running about hurting yourself."

Though Crane said nothing in return to his remarks and un-arguable demands, he got the impression that the man was still scared stiff of him, something he would have approved of not a few months ago. But now it was like dealing with a small child, one who was a danger to themselves and others. And try as he might, Bruce just didn't have it in him to absolutely terrorize him into compliance. Not when the simple method of asking seemed to work just as well, if not better.

Bandaging Crane's hands took a lot more willpower then he would have originally suspected though, and every time he drew the man's hands towards him to disinfect them or wrap them, Crane would flinch and try to pull himself back and away. It wasn't like the disinfectant stung, he should know, it was the same kind he used on himself when men like Crane hurt him. And it wasn't like he was growling or being threatening, not on purpose anyways. Maybe it was that Crane was just terrified of him? Well, more terrified of him now than he ever had been before, even when he'd been hopped up on his own Toxin.

Once he was done with the first aid, he once again asked for Crane to take off the soiled shirt and replace it with one that he'd supplied for him. Crane had stared at the shirt for a good ten minutes before nervously glancing from him to the shirt and back before proceeding to remove the one he was wearing. Bruce was slightly startled that the shy man had chosen to do so while still in his presence, though the divider hardly gave anymore privacy to the rest of the room than once would expect, he'd still assumed that Crane would hide himself away as much as he could. The Crane he knew would have thrown a fit before stomping off to change, his arrogance and ranting covering the clear discomfort he would be experiencing.

But not this Crane.

It was like watching two separate people.

Bruce tried desperately to ignore the countless scars that littered the smaller man's body as the shirt was removed, a majority of them focused on his back and shoulders. He'd known from the medical reports and countless examinations done at both the hospital and at Arkham that the Crane was covered in the marks, though they were deceivingly well hidden from view, but seeing them for himself made them all the more real. All the more horrifying, especially when one realized that none of those marks could ever have been self-inflicted, and that they were very, very old. Some of them were even partially healed with age.

And it didn't help that Bruce knew exactly what made a majority of those marks.

Crane's Great-Grandmother had been horribly abusive, though no one, Jonathan Crane included, ever said anything of the sort. It was never documented, but like the bullying that was classic of the sort of mental break Crane had had, Bruce knew for a fact that it had happened. The way Crane never talked about his family or his life before his job as Arkham's prodigy Director was a major indication of this, but also the little signs such as the lack of photos or personal items in his original office and apartment. Even his home, sterile down to the very industrial styled carpet, was bland and un-personable, hardly giving anything in the man's life a lived in feel, which was a clear sign of disassociation with one's own life, as well as their past.

That and other children don't get the idea to hit another with belts, let alone the household tools that had been used to inflict pain and discipline upon this man as a child. And though Bruce knew that this man had gassed thousands in the Narrows, tortured hundreds of inmates and tested on countless mental patients in Arkham for treatment, he couldn't help but feel a sense of hopeless sorrow for the man. A true sense of absolutely dark hopelessness.

True, it was a far cry from pity, because Bruce didn't really have the ability to pity anyone fully, but it was a true case of a horrible childhood. Unlike his own, where he was well-tended by Alfred after the tragic and horrifying death of his parents before his eyes, he doubted Crane had ever truly known any sort of love from his family. He had told his doctors in Arkham that he was the unwanted mistake of a drugged-up mother whose own grandmother had given the orders to dispose of him in the garbage heap with the rest of the trash. But it wasn't the statement that had brought out the alarms, oh no, it was the deadpanned delivery of the statement that had caught the doctor's attentions.

They way that Crane had confessed that he was an unwanted being had made shivers run down all of the present practitioners' backs. It was almost as if he had detached himself from his own life when he said it, though you'd never have gotten him to confess to such a thing. But for a man who was always in control of his life to find out and tell others that he was a mistake, an unwanted child to a family who didn't even care to take him to a hospital after he was clearly born with health concerns, it was just bizarre and a little more than the word disturbing could cover.

Much like the man often was.

With every passing second, Jonathan Crane became more of an enigma…and a seemingly hopeless case.