Chapter Text
The Bulldog Storage Yard is a sketchy place on the edge of town. Jason’s been here maybe five times and honestly, he’d be happy not to come back. But eh, criminals like it. It’s cheap and the owners don’t care one bit about what you put in the units.
He comes at night, evades the watchman and lets himself into the main office. Magnus Walker’s unit is now being paid for by--well, well, the plot thickens. David Wiggs. Hm. He files that away for later, takes note of which one it is, and slips out into the rain.
No one’s out tonight; the watchman and his yellow dog are tucked up on the other side of the lot and they don’t appear to be making any sort of rounds. He can’t say that he blames them, not in this weather.
The unit’s padlocked-not a problem for his lockpicks-and the rain covers up his hefting the shutter up enough to roll inside. He shoves a brick under it so he can get back out, shakes off the rainwater, and turns on his flashlight.
Well, Crane didn’t leave him any bodies, at least. He was expecting something like that, to be honest. But no, it’s just boxes and stacked-up furniture and hello, what are you?
It’s an open box of books, and Jason’s tempted to rescue all of them for their own good, but the one that gets his attention is a diary. He tries not to get excited, because it’s likely just got appointments and shit, but when he opens it up and sees written paragraphs, he has to resist the urge to hug it to his chest like a child’s stuffed toy.
It goes into an inner pocket, where it’ll be safe from the rain, and he moves further into the hot, dead-aired box. It smells like a rat died in here at some point*, and when he does a quick scour for any corpses, he does indeed see a dead rodent.
Something was removed recently; there’s a clean-ish looking square on the dusty floor. A box, probably. Okay. That’s not helpful right now, but it could be. It’s worth remembering.
What else, what else--bingo. Arkham logo.
It’s a duffle bag, and he doesn’t bother to look through it, just grabs it. There. He’ll let Clemmens know about this place tomorrow, but he wants to get home, go through his finds.
And, admittedly, get the hell out of this damn rain.
* * *
Jason takes as short a shower as he can stand, sticks his leftover cauliflower soup on the stove, and retreats to his couch with his prizes. He goes with the duffle bag first; less chance of becoming engrossed and burning his dinner.
The bag is orange, standard issue for inmates to keep their clothes and any personal belongings. It’s a little torn, little stained, but other than that it’s fine, even still got the label with Walker’s name on it. There’s not much inside, either. Spare jumpsuit, socks, toothbrush with the bristles half-chewed off...what’s that?
There’s a hidden pocket in the side of the bag. Looks crude, like Walker did it himself. It’s not bad, Jason supposes; between the darkness of the bag and the sloppiness of your average Arkham guard, it could go unnoticed easily enough. But there’s stuff inside, little things. A cocoon that Jason will bet will never open, a lock of human hair, and a...Scarecrow article?
Well, he says Scarecrow. The article predates Scarecrow as Gotham knows him, but it is about Arkham’s promising new director, Dr. Jonathan Crane, who specializes in curing people of their debilitating phobias. Even then, Crane looks...off. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on his clothes, but he still looks like he can see you through the photograph. Like he’s going to reach out and suck you in.
Brr. Jason’s always hated his eyes for that reason. They’re too wide, too blue, too unsettling , mask or no mask.
He sets the article (early sign of obsession?) aside and putters into the kitchen for his soup. When he comes back, he flips the paper over. Bruce may be fine with his lineup of lunatics watching him at all times, but Jason isn’t.
The rain’s really coming down now, fat drops hurling themselves against his windows. He adjusts his blanket around his shoulders, beyond grateful that he’s not out in this.
The diary, as it turns out, is, well...he’ll be frank. He’s seen Amadeus Arkham’s old cell, way back when he was Robin (he and Bruce and Dick had an all-hands-on-deck situation on the island). That cell is wall-to wall, floor-to-maybe-six-feet-up scrawls. Scarab etchings, Latin insanity, and, in the corner, the soft, neatly-scratched note of, ‘The Dog is dead’. This? This makes that cell look sane as can be. There’s rough scribbles of moths and what he guesses are cocoons. There’s random words-‘change’ and ‘metamorphosis’ being the most common-and, on the inside of the back cover, an ink drawing of a death’s-head moth. But there are coherent paragraphs, even if they’re not...normal. Mom used to keep a diary, before she got too sick, and he still has that. Or did, anyway. He’d had it at the manor. He’d never read it, not really, but after she died, he’d tried. Gotten through two entries before he felt too guilty, but those two entries were normal. Y’know, ‘Jason is learning to walk’ or something. Not this.
The first entry dates the writer-and it is Walker-at age fifteen. Fifteen. Christ. He remembers fifteen. Had a math test that he’d stressed about for two weeks. Got whammied by fear gas. Joker.
It wasn’t a good year. Even before Joker, he and Bruce had been fighting a lot. Bruce had thrown a fit over Jason’s shattering some pimp’s collarbone, for one thing. Whatever. Guy thought he was gonna carve up a girl’s face, Jason was just...intervening.
While fifteen year-old Jason may have gone a little overboard, fifteen year-old Walker was not well in any sense of the word. July twelfth, argument with the uncle, okay, typical enough...until the rant about ‘making him a new, better person’ starts. August first, more arguing, another rant, this time about ‘becoming something more’. And the paragraphs are intercut with frantic scribbles, some of which aren’t anything other than bold, jagged lines.
He hits paydirt on January ninth. Now sixteen, Walker writes about trying to ‘help’ a nine year-old girl. He doesn’t say how, but he gripes about being found by her parents. There are a few more entries, these ones disconcertingly standard-tests, hot days, et. cetera-before they suddenly stop. Jason will bet he went to Arkham around that time.
Jesus.
He’ll go back over Crane’s files, he decides, but in the morning. He also needs to see where Wiggs fits in; family friend? Secret grandfather? Stranger things have happened. But Crane first. Something triggered that obsession, and he wants to find out what.
*UGH. A mouse died under our kitchen sink once, and, like, decayed...took
ages
to get the smell out. Enclosed space, I guess, but bleh and also kinda sad.