Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Outside, it was hot. Dick hadn’t stopped talking about it for at least an hour now, actually.

Nights like this, when sweat ran places in your suit that you couldn’t reach, when you prayed for something to happen indoors somewhere, nights when Alfred would send you out with pewter dowels that had sat in the freezer overnight so that you could slip them under your gear against your spine and sternum…these were nights when she was actually almost happy not to be out in the field.

On nights like this, she was fairly content to sit at her interface, headset on, with an iced coffee and a bag of wasabi peas, scanning the security system of a refrigeration company’s headquarters for a way in.

“You couldn’t do this with your sequencer?” she teased her old friend on the other end of her line.

“Hey,” said Dick, “You know I don’t carry one anymore.”

“That’s right,” she laughed, “I forgot, the full utility belt ‘interrupted the lines’ of your suit, right?”

“Well, when you say it like that,” he said sheepishly, “Oh, sweet, the door’s opening.
Thanks, Oracle.”

“Any time,” she said before muting her mic. She took a handful of peas into her mouth, crunching as she opened her Tumblr.

She covered her ass online. Her usernames were unrelated, her passwords random strings of words. She never posted anything deep or controversial – mostly pictures of libraries and a few quotes – and bounced her trail through three different cities before ending with an IP address at the Daily Planet in Metropolis, a favor she cashed in from a friend.

She had a few followers, but nothing major. She didn’t respond much to correspondence unless it was someone she knew in person. She even thought she had turned off the function allowing people to message her anonymously…which made her all the more suspicious when someone did, almost as soon as she opened the page.

“I like your blog.”

It felt…weird. It just did. She couldn’t explain why. Still, she did the polite thing and responded with a private, “Thanks.”

“Hey, Oracle!” called Nightwing, “Can you pull up the manifest of a ship called the Cassiopeia?”

“Yeah, sure,” she minimized her page and pulled up one of her infinite databases, searching for a moment before she struck gold, “It made a run to Iran a few weeks ago. Special permission. Caviar. But,” she squinted at the screen, “It doesn’t add up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The cargo’s too heavy for the price. This much Iranian caviar should fetch almost half a billion dollars. It’s only valued at a few million.”

“Bingo,” he said with a grin in his voice, “Thanks, Barb.”

“Any time,” she repeated.

Any time. Of course. Reliability had always been one of her strong suits.

She had another message.

“You’re up late.”

Now she definitely felt uncomfortable, so she did what she did well. A click here, a drag there, a little bit of password-generation…

John Arlen. 24. Savannah, Georgia. Student, Master’s in Psychology.

The words might as well have been highlighted in red on the screen. John – same name tree as Jonathan. Arlen – there was a town called Arlen, Georgia, where a certain person had grown up, according to his file. And of course, psychology.

You’re overreacting, Barbara.

Maybe she was, or maybe he was trying something. Something that didn’t exactly make sense, unless yet another one of Gotham City’s famous villains was trying to use her to get at one of the men in her life.

If that was the case, and it was admittedly as likely to be as not to be, she needed to follow up on the possible lead.

“You don’t know that,” she replied, again privately.

“True,” said the anonymous icon, “If you were here, you’d be up late.”

What was that? Attempted cleverness? It was almost cute. This guy was a dork, she was definitely overreacting.

“Where’s ‘here?’”

“Savannah, Georgia.”

She waited for an excuse. Maybe to run out of coffee, or wasabi peas. Maybe for Dick to ask another question, or Tim to call in during a break.

When three slow minutes passed with nothing, she responded.

“Same time zone. So, yeah, I guess am up late.”

His next reply wasn’t anonymous. His blog was a good year and a half old, and looked at lot like hers actually, with fewer quotes and more links to analysis of old fairy tales.

“So what are you doing up so late?” he, ExtraStrengthPlacebo, asked her, OfArcAndAquitaine.

“Work, you?”

“Summer reading. Put it off too long.”

She kept digging through layers of cache and code. Everything seemed to check out. This John Arlen seemed to have a totally verifiable life, even if there were some bizarre coincidences that made him look like a really lazy cover identity for the Scarecrow.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Psychology and Religion, by Carl Jung. I confess it’s not my first time through.”

“Not a Jung fan?”

“On the contrary, I just can’t bring myself to re-read it right now. I was on Volume 9 in my own reading, this is Volume 11. I’ve finally accepted I’m not going to catch up on my own and have to skip Volume 10.”

“You should probably get back to that…”

“Probably should. Have a good night!”

“You too,” she said before closing the window.

It gnawed on her for the rest of the night, up until she brushed her teeth and went to bed. When the day came around, she didn’t give it a second thought; compared to everything else, after all, it just seemed trivial.

Chapter Text

A week passed normally. Breakfast with Dad on Sunday. On Tuesday, a date with Tim he had to cancel at the last minute to do something for Bruce.

Wednesday, another message.

“So, you like libraries.”

“Love them,” she replied.

“What’s your favorite?”

Well, then. Rather impertinent to barge in and start asking questions. But it was a good question, and an impossible one to answer.

“Oh, wow. You know, hard as it is to pick I’d have to say the Stadtbibliothek in Stuttgart. I just love the pristine whiteness of it, it really lets the books stand out.”

“I am the exact opposite,” he said, “I think I’d get a migraine in the Stadt. I like the John Rylands in Manchester. I had a chance to go when I was an undergraduate…I’ve never felt so spiritual as I did in a cathedral full of books.”

“Can’t get much more on the nose than that, huh?”

“I admit I appreciated the juxtaposition, as a man who has made knowledge my highest objective rather than nebulous enlightenment.”

“You’re an interesting person…?”

“John.”

“You’re an interesting person, John.”

A moment went by before he messaged back, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?”

No, of course not. Never in a thousand years. I don’t know you. How dare you?

“Barbara. My name’s Barbara.”

“Well, Barbara, I hope you have a good evening. I have a date with Jung’s Volume 10.”
***
Thursday, more shipments of suspiciously cheap Iranian caviar.

The sheer volume of the latter, and the nature of the supposed cargo combined with the fact that they were trying to nail down a weapons trader made her think Penguin was somehow involved.

She and Dick discussed it for a while before he dashed off to stop a mugging. In the lull of his absence, she decided to ask John what his deal with fairy tales was.
“What’s your deal with libraries?” he shot back.

“I…like them?” she replied.

“I like fairy tales.”

“You’re a grown man.”

“I’m pinching the bridge of my nose right now, I want you to know. It’s not as if I have a wall of Disney posters. It’s another Jungian pursuit. I’m fascinated by the stories we tell and retell as a species, the characters who appear across cultures. The tales we dream up to teach our children about the world are where we find the purest archetypes. It is within our primitive brains that the theory of the collective unconscious is most plausible.”

“I’m going to be completely honest, even though it’s trendy, the psychology wing of forensics and law enforcement has never been where I hang out.”

“Well, think of it this way. What’s the first fairy tale that enters your head?”

“Um…Sleeping Beauty.”

“Alright, Sleeping Beauty. A beautiful girl is tended by good fairies. An evil sorceress captures her. A handsome prince rescues her. Name another.”

“Cinderella.”

“A beautiful girl is mistreated by an evil woman. A good fairy helps her. A handsome prince saves her from her ordeal by marrying her.”

“Ok, right, but what does that have to do with psychology?”

“You tell me. What does it say about the Italians that so many of their fairy tales contain incest between a father and daughter? Doralice, Preciosa, Maria, the girl with gold teeth. Is there a connection between the attitudes in these tales and the strange case of Lucretia Borgia? And what fear drives the impulse to tell so many tales with the same events?”

“You’re interested in fear?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed.

“Fairy tales are often told to frighten children away from their natural instincts and toward a socially acceptable behavior. Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. Stay on the path…not a very subtle metaphor, is it?”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry, I just…some people can take the psychology of fear to the extreme.”

“No kidding. I read a paper once, peer-reviewed, in a journal, by a man who was convinced humans had no other motivation. Rather short-sighted, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. Actually, it’s a relief you don’t agree with him.”

“Who, me? No. One must give vengeance its time in the spotlight too, you know.”

“Lol.”

Ok, no foaming-at-the-mouth rant about the amazing implications of fear. That was definitely hard evidence for the “not Scarecrow” column.
***
On Friday, her night off, she thought it was the perfect time to dig a little deeper into what Penguin had been up to lately.

Nights off weren’t really her thing, anyhow. To be perfectly honest, all of her friends were off fighting crime in some capacity, so it wasn’t like she could go out unless she went by herself. And her days of solo dancing at the Iceberg while the boys sat around to brood pretty much ended when dancing did.

No, her time was better spent like this, setting up a few import databases to run through an exhaustive keyword search, and then, while that was compiling, making another iced coffee, according to her own perfected recipe – concentrate made weekly with freshly-ground Kenyan beans, poured into a huge cup of pellet ice, and stirred with a tablespoon of condensed milk and a dusting of cinnamon.

She had a kitchenette upstairs, but if she wanted to actually cook anything, she had to go down to the boiler room. If she didn’t have to be centrally located, and if the take-out in Chinatown wasn’t so good, she would’ve long moved to something with a nice, flat floor plan…sadly, though, even penthouses in Gotham didn’t have a lot in the way of extra space for giant servers.

Still compiling. Ugh. She loved Lucius, Bruce’s R and D guru, but she really wished he would listen to her when she told him they needed to upgrade their fiber-optics.

So she found herself online again, logging in to Tumblr, reblogging pictures of the General Library of Coimbra in Portugal – libraries with mezzanines made her stomach quiver – when she came across one of those stupid “ask memes,” where your followers send you a number, and you respond with the answer to the corresponding question.

It was unlike her. There was, after all, a risk that someone could ask something a little too personal, but then, she didn’t have to answer if she absolutely didn’t want to.

So she reblogged it, too.

She had been half-expecting a near instantaneous response, actually. A conversation with last week’s admirer could reveal more to either incriminate or absolute him of her suspicions, after all. So really, she was working on two things at the same time by doing this.

“7, 8, 22.”

Her forehead wrinkled.

“7: You’re kidding, right? What genre? Can I at least have a top five? 8: Favorite animal, hands down bats. 22 I’m not going to answer.”

It was a few minutes before she received a reply, “Ok. Top five, then? Also, bats are disgusting. And 22; why not?”

“Top five books: The Brothers Karamazov, Rosemary’s Baby, The Rubaiyat, A Room of One’s Own, and The Bloody Chamber. Bats are adorable. And because I don’t want to.”

“Ok, well…first, the books. That is an interesting assortment. If you lived in Georgia I would ask you to have coffee with me just to know the mind of the person who responds with that. Particularly impressed by The Bloody Chamber. I’m fond of Angela Carter myself. Second, you know bat guano can make a person go blind, right? To say nothing of the lice and rabies. 22, your biggest insecurity, fair enough. Would it change your mind if I went first?”

“I’m actually drinking coffee right now…and fine, I won’t defend bats to you. I really don’t get the whole corgi thing, so I guess I have no room to talk. And no promises.”

“What a coincidence. So we are having coffee. I don’t have much patience for dogs in general. Please, take some initiative to do something other than eat your own shit.”

“Okay that made me lol.”

“Good. Greatest insecurity...as an intellectual I’m loathe to admit this, but my physical appearance. I was ugly enough before I got attacked by a cougar on a camping trip, thanks.”

The sensation that sent through her was hard to swallow. Initial pity, empathy replaced by disgust with herself that she had even let her guard down for this long, fear again that she wasn’t talking to someone who was being honest with her.

No one had seen Scarecrow since that night on Arkham Island, but it wasn’t a stretch to think the incident messed up his face. Or was she still reaching, paranoid, desperate for an excuse to cut off contact and go back to her comfortable boredom?

And then, like a bolt from the blue, all the fear faded with another message. The first picture, a scan of a group of young men at a party, with a caption, “I’m on the left end.” High school was probably murder for him, he had thick glasses and remnants of bad skin, but it wasn’t like he was hideous.

“And tonight…” a second photo, a selfie. Clearly the same young man, but the right side of his face…

“I’m sorry that happened to you.” It was all she could think of to say. She couldn’t exactly add,

“Oh, and sorry I thought you were a deranged psychiatrist.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

She waited a few minutes, everything in her screaming to close the window. Except now, it wasn’t out of any kind of suspicion, but internal fear – fear of telling someone else, fear that if she said it out loud for the first time in three years, it would somehow make it true again.

“I hate my legs. They don’t work. I used to be a martial artist, and, you know, able to go down stairs? I work in law-enforcement…I got shot.”

She couldn’t believe she typed it. She couldn’t believe she sent it. She couldn’t believe the bastard was dead and she was still here, like this, taking off her glasses to dry her eyes.

“Oh, wow. I…I’m sorry. That’s awful. Is your age on your blog correct?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too young. I mean, any age is too young, but that…wow. Young to be in law-enforcement, and young to have something like that happen.”

“The worst part is it wasn’t even about me…but I don’t want to get into that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. If…If you ever wanted to talk, I’d be happy to.”

“Thanks, but I’ve been talking for almost four years,” it wasn’t entirely true.

“I’m not trying to say I understand, but…my leg is pretty screwed up now, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I have to use a brace.”

“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” she asked, “Neither of us can walk properly, we’re both ginger dorks, and we’re alone on Friday night, talking to each other on Tumblr.”

“Yeah, I guess we are.”

One of her other screens made a noise at her. Her search had finished. Finally.

“I have to get back to work. But…message any time.”

“Same to you,” he replied, “Good night.”

She took a moment to compose herself, take a sip of coffee and growl a noise of frustration into the back of her hand before she dabbed her eyes again and replaced her glasses, turning to her search.

“Okay, you ugly little bastard,” she said to Penguin’s mug shot on her screen, “Let’s see if we can get you.”

Chapter Text

It was becoming a game of sorts to Dr. Crane.

The whole grand scheme had elements of a game, of course. But it wasn't a game, it was far too serious.

This, however, was almost pure fun, a welcome distraction in between hours of distilling pulverized datura and checking up on his angry pup of a partner.

He needed to pace himself, however. As amusing as it was to work references to himself into their continued conversation, if he tipped the balance of her suspicion too far, she would panic, and a vital piece of his grand mosaic would be compromised.

The Arkham Knight, as he called himself, this impatient whelp with whom he had somewhat begrudgingly allied, would be very unhappy if he were to hear of this little game. The boy had quite a history with the Batman and his fellows - without him, Crane would never have known of Barbara Gordon's importance - but he refused to disclose the depth of his involvement.

Not that it mattered. Youth made him foolish, foolish enough to assume a highly-skilled psychiatrist wasn't capable of seeing through his metaphorical mask. It was clear that once upon a time he had been one of the many little brats the Bat shuffled about beneath his wings, siphoning their youth to use in his personal war on Gotham's underworld. Otherwise, how would he have known that the girl was a current power source? And of course, he insisted that while Miss Gordon should indeed be kidnapped as part of Halloween's events, he alone would be personally responsible for her.

Yes, in some way he loved her, cared for her or lusted after her. And that emotion became fear when the young man allowed himself to imagine what the Scarecrow could do to her.

But that fear made the boy manageable.

When the time came, Crane would do what he willed, with all of them.

He sighed as he turned to leave the kitchen. On his way to the stairs, he pushed a tray of food through a cat flap in the cellar door. The young man from Vermont within had gotten more than he bargained for when he signed up for a clinical trial. It was simply bad luck that he looked the most like Crane had in his youth out of all of the applicants.

It was too bad about his face, really. But then, he was being paid handsomely for his time. When he had worn out his usefulness, he would be dropped back in his home state, ten thousand dollars richer and with no memory of what happened.

And lest anyone think it was because the Scarecrow was softening, it was merely because a young man disappearing for a few weeks in the summer was a rite of passage. Should it continue into fall, there would be a missing persons investigation that would only add a layer of annoyance and complication to the already full timetable.

The necessary liability had finally stopped screaming and begging when he was awake. It was a shame, really, to be so taxed he couldn't even stop to enjoy the fruits of fear. They had even become annoying for Crane, until finally the boy realized his pleas were never going to move his captor.

It had been some time since anything like pity or empathy had stirred in Crane's soul. Years since he had considered anything but his research, anyone but himself.

Had there been any humanity left in him at this point, he couldn't deny he would've felt for Miss Gordon following their last conversation. A martial artist, she had said, in law enforcement. Clearly, she had been the "Batgirl" who had fought alongside Gotham's other defenders and disappeared so suddenly. The girl had possessed a wicked right leg…he had felt it on numerous occasions.

He was no stranger to the frustration of fettered movement...of former fluidity and freedom replaced with cumbersome struggle. He really couldn't walk without the steel brace currently fastened to his leg, and stairs were torture more than once or twice a day. Once, he had been able to defend himself, had even expressed his emotions with movement. And now…

All that power, all that youth, all that drive trapped in a body that made the most basic tasks of living difficult, even life-threatening...a younger version of himself would've been compelled to comfort her.

Ultimately, her greatest insecurity- and what is insecurity but a deeply personal, shame-filled fear - was his own. Their bodies, brutalized against their will, had been made into prisons, while their minds were capable of flight.

Yes, some time ago, he thought, meeting her might have broken his heart.

She was opening to him. Slowly. She didn't want to, but she couldn't help it. Clearly no one had extended their time to her this way, made her their sole focus...no one before now. The thirst in her soul for someone to understand her, for someone to see her outside of her identity as a part of Batman's syndicate...it was a powerful desire, and one that would make her his pawn.

On the night the Dark Knight fell, he would lose everything. His allies would betray him or die...and perhaps, if this little game worked, Barbara Gordon would be one of those to betray him.

If it didn't work, she would still be valuable leverage. But if it did, it would be another blow to the so-called hero's mythology, and a beautiful one at that.

And besides, what else was he going to do while he waited for that day, waited for the Knight to train his forces, waited for every little piece to lock into place?

There were certainly less agreeable pastimes than using his dirty fingers to poke around in such a comparably brilliant mind.

If only he hadn't had to sit there like an aged idiot for several days reading those books they print for grandparents to figure out how to use social media. That had honestly been just as painful as reshaping his mangled nose in the mirror.

He had a message from her.

"I only have a minute, but I just realized you never told me your top five books. Or your favorite animal."

Favorite animal? That was simple.

The raven perched on his shoulder screeched as he typed "horses, for the second question."

"Now, Nightmare," he reached up to scratch the back of the bird's neck, "That would just be too obvious. Besides, you liked Dread just fine."

The bird nipped his ear.

"Yes, Daddy misses him, too." The magnificent animal, a Friesian stallion who had never let anyone else ride him, was growing fat on some farm upstate from Gotham, where he had been sent following Crane's first incarceration.

Now for the first half of her question. As he sat there, impatiently tapping his fingers on the rotting desk, he realized she had been right.

It was nearly impossible to pick just five books.

Chapter Text

Later that night, Barbara replied.

“Horses, huh? I’ve never been around them.”

“Oh, they’re magnificent animals. I had one, a Friesian, terribly temperamental. He wasn’t well-treated as a colt; we had that in common.”

“Friesians are beautiful,” she responded, “Was he all black?”

A few moments passed, then she received a scan of a photograph, worn, and handwritten on the bottom, “Dread of Day.”

“Did you come up with the name?” she asked,

“I can’t take credit for it, sadly. Though I appreciated the oblique Kafka reference. His breeders were fine, but the family who bought him first…”

“I hate to hear that. He was beautiful…I’m sure you miss him.”

“I do. I haven’t ridden since before the attack, but someday I plan to again. Too much going on at present.”

She swallowed a dry throat, sad to think of yet another thing stolen as she typed, “I’ll probably never ride a horse.”

“Don’t be silly. You couldn’t ride alone, of course, but with a skilled partner…there’s no reason why not.”

“If only you and Dread of Day were here to teach me. You know, I lied. I actually have been around horses once.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. There was a fairly famous…and odd…man who lived here, he had a black horse as well. As I recall it looked like a Friesian.”

“They’re popular with showy types.”

“This guy was showy. Rode it obnoxiously all around town, whenever and wherever he felt like. Rode it down my street on Halloween night my junior year of high school. Panic ensued.”

“…I don’t know where you live, but it sounds a LOT more exciting than Savannah.”

She couldn’t believe she was actually going to tell him.

“I live in Gotham City.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. I grew up here. The horse incident was NOT the weirdest thing I’ve seen.”

“I’ve always wanted to visit, but, well…it seems dangerous.”

“I won’t pretend it’s not, but we’ve got plenty of people looking out for us. And all the architecture, the history, the sense of solidarity…and, it’s actually been pretty quiet lately, which is a plus.”

“Hmm. So maybe a good time to visit, you’re saying?”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“And if I’m not joking?”

“Then I would flip my lid because I could finally drag someone to all the libraries and museums who would actually want to go with me.”

“Well, maybe around mid-term break you could give me a tour.”

“I’d like that.”

“So would I.”

She let out a tiny squeak of happiness, and went to go refresh her coffee. When she came back, he had sent something else.

“I’ve got to admit, I’m still curious about the guy who rode down a random street on a horse.”

“He was a psychiatrist around here. People are divided on whether he lost it or he just liked messing with people’s heads. He was from Georgia too, actually. To be honest, I thought you might be him at first.”

“You thought I was a crazy horse-riding psychiatrist?”

“I didn’t say it made sense!”

“…You didn’t. And it does not.”

“This job makes you paranoid. Plus he hates my boss with a passion, so I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“You thought your boss’s nemesis was trying to…something…by chatting about books with you on Tumblr?”

“When you say it like that it sounds pretty stupid.”

“No, not at all! I just didn’t realize your job was so dangerous by association.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she laughed a bit as she typed, “And I’m only the IT department.”

“When you were shot…was that because of your boss?”

“Believe it or not, no, actually. That time, someone was trying to get to my dad.”

“So you’re constantly put in danger by the men in your life, by their actions, when you haven’t done anything?”

“Well, I’ve done plenty,” she inhaled, filling her chest a bit, “It’s not like I haven’t. I…I’ve made a few enemies, myself.”

“Yes, but, have any of the enemies you’ve made for yourself attempted to use you so?”

“No. You’re right, they haven’t. The only time it really hits the fan is when someone is trying to get to someone that they think is…more important than me. I’m always the catalyst, or the bait, or something.”

“That has to be frustrating. Especially for a woman like yourself.”

“It is. I feel like…like even the people that come after me, they don’t see me as a threat. They’re coming after me because if something bad happens, it’s going to upset a man.”

“Well, that’s just the foolishness of inferior minds. I know I would find you extremely formidable in your own right. The force of your intellect alone…‘terrible as an army with banners.’”

“Is that…did you just quote the Song of Solomon?”

“Guilty. Forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds…I assume you have a boyfriend.”

“It’s alright. I do, but I’m flattered.”

“Excellent. That was my intention.”

She blushed bright red, grateful he couldn’t see her.

“For your sake…and my own selfishness at not wanting to lose a conversation partner, I do hate that you have such a dangerous life. I have trouble feeling safe, myself, and I don’t live anywhere near Gotham.”

“I guess I don’t ever feel safe. Even at home. I mean, I was shot at home, so…”

“I always feel like I live in a house made of cards, or sheets of sugar glass.”

“And any minute, something’s going to happen and it’s going to fall down around your ears?”

“Exactly.”

“Me too.”

She tossed a pencil at the closest window, a massive round clock face, and crossed her arms, “I freaking hate it.”

“So do I. Have you ever read The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende?”

“Can’t say that I have, which is weird for me.”

“You should try and find a copy. It’s quite dark, but in many ways it’s about refusing to accept what fate has allocated to you. There’s more than that, of course; jealousy and revenge and classism and political unrest. But it spoke to me when I found it. My life the past few years has been nothing but working to get to a place where I feel like I can fully exhale.”

“My Dad’s a cop. I’ve never fully exhaled. Lol.”

“All the more reason to forge a life wherein you can.”

“True.”

She switched briefly to another screen to check the live feed from Blüdhaven’s harbor, looking to see if the Cassiopeia had moved at all.

“Ugh,” John had sent her another message, “I’d swear the first book for my Introductory to Behavioral Modification course was written by a fifth grader if I didn’t know for a fact it was actually by my 62 year-old professor.”

“Behavioral Modification?”

“One of the pillars of therapeutic or clinical psychology. No one likes to admit it, but cognitive behavioral therapy and allowances serve the same function as incarceration and willow switches; they create an incentive to change one’s behavior.”

“I can’t really argue with that. Is it the writing that’s bad or his approach?”

“Both. Poor styling, redundancy, and a fetishistic love letter to capital punishment in the introduction. Ah, the joys of higher education in the South.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Here, read this; ‘Furthermore, as for evidence, in many cases the firm hand is the only approach. Every member of society benefits from the firm application of the firm hand when it is called for.’”

“Oh, wow. That’s really bad.”

“I told you.”

“Well, hey. One day you’ll be the professor, and then you’ll be writing the books, right?”

“That was the idea. I’ve found I’m a bit more hands-on, though.”

“Therapy or research?”

“…Therapeutic research?”

“Well, you’ll probably discover something no one else has, and then you’ll definitely have a book on the required reading list.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“I mean it. Besides, at least you didn’t have my English Comp 2 professor. She made us read L. Ron Hubbard.”

“…Yes, that would be worse. Intolerably so.”

“Yep.”

“At least I’m not reading that. Although, speaking of reading…”

“Yeah, I should go, too. I’m actually getting a call.”

She was. Bruce, of all people. Good God, was he actually going to leave the house?

“Goodnight, Barbara.”

“Night, John.”

She closed her screen and pulled up her comms interface, “What’s up? Oh, wow. Suit on and everything.”

“I’m going to Blüdhaven,” Bruce said from behind his dark cowl, and there seemed to be some energy behind his words for the first time in months, “Poison Ivy’s tearing up a manufacturing plant. I don’t want Nightwing facing her alone.”

“Ok, be careful. I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks, Oracle.”

She closed her link with Bruce and opened one with Dick.

“He’s on his way.”

“Ok, good,” the young man said, “Whew. I don’t know what she got into, but she’s in rare form tonight. Leftover Titan maybe?”

“God, don’t even joke about that. I could go my whole life without hearing about Titan, Venom, or any other monster drug again.”

“Me too,” he said, looking up, “Here comes the Batwing.”

“Watch your back,” she smiled weakly as she closed that link as well.

There it was. The familiar knot in her stomach, settling in for another long night of hoping the worst wouldn’t happen.

Chapter Text

Two weeks after their meeting, John asked her the unthinkable question.

“What’s your address?”

“What?” she asked, “Why?”

“I have something for you.”

“John,” she replied, “I don’t know how comfortable I am telling you that.”

“Won’t I find out when I visit?”

“Probably. I mean, yes, but…”

“I’ve made you a gift, Barbara. I’d like to send it to you. That is, unless you’re worried your boyfriend will object.”

Her nose wrinkled, “He doesn’t get to object. Here, I’ll give you my work address, how’s that?”

They were one and the same, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Perfect.”

On Monday she received an expedited package, about five by three inches, stamped with the mark of a post office in a wealthy neighborhood of Savannah. Inside was a small bottle of faceted crystal, which held an amber liquid – a tiny glass wand attached to the stopper served as an applicator.

There was a note. Androgynous handwriting, practiced and perfect. “Datura – a delirious sweetness. Peach – a piece of Georgia. Saffron – dry as your humor. Do not use an atomizer – these are natural extracts, and the Datura could be troublesome if inhaled.”

Datura, in a perfume? It was pretty morbid. Creepy, really. Oh, but it smelled amazing.

Downstairs in her server room, she ran a few drops through a mass spectrometer Batman had given her. It contained all the extracts John had named in a standard solvent base, but there was something else.

“John,” she asked him that night, “Why are there insects in my perfume?”

He was online; he was posting photos of the Biltmore library. But he waited almost twenty minutes to respond.

“You analyzed the perfume I sent you?”

“Why are there insects in it?” she asked again.

“You took my gift, and…wow.”

She sighed. “Don’t take it personally, John.”

“How can I not take it personally? I made you perfume and you ran it through a mass spec.”

“You made it?”

“I told you I did. Grew the Angel’s Trumpet myself, as well. Perhaps some bugs were hiding in the flowers I distilled. Send me back the bottle, and I’ll happily remake it to your standards.”

She had really hurt him. Her heart sank, “What? No! No, I love it, I just…”

He paused. She hated when he did that. “Why don’t you trust me?”

“It’s not you. I don’t trust anyone outside of work.”

“However do you survive?” he asked, even though he trusted no one, himself.

“Barely.” She wasn’t joking.

“What do I have to do,” he asked, “To gain that elusive trust of yours? Imagine if I had sent you chocolate, it would’ve been a disaster.”

The hair on her neck was standing up. Trusting him? She had to admit, she was already halfway there, imprudent as it was. He had been so forthright with her; she admired that.
And she felt terrible as she typed her response. What kind of person was she to ask this of someone?

Still, all of her bonds had been forged in pain and fire. This could be no different.

“You said you and Dread weren’t well-treated as colts. What did you mean?”

“Wow,” he replied after five agonizing minutes, “Right to the heart, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” it was the truth, “I wish I could trust you without you telling me.”

“It’s fine.” He took a moment before he went on, “I was raised by my Granny. She was…religious. Worked me like a man from my seventh year on. Whole fields of crops, all we had for income. She’d sit under a parasol and watch my starveling limbs shake in the sun.”

Her stomach was sick. Seven? “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I wish. And that was when I was good. When I was bad – and oh, how bad I could be, Barbara – she locked me in the family’s old chapel overnight.”

“Oh my God. How long did that go on?”

“She died when I was a teenager.”

“John…”

“What? It’s a miracle I can even function?”

“Well…yeah. I mean, it’s inspiring that you’ve decided to help people.”

“You wouldn’t find me inspiring if you knew me. You, you’re the inspiring one, still fighting crime in spite of your condition.”

“Thank you…but really.”

There was another pause.

“Do you like the perfume?”

“I love it,” she said, pulling out the stopper, “I’m wearing it right now.”

“Good. I should go now.”

“Do you have to?” she sighed.

“Sadly, yes. I have to start packing for the move back to campus.”

“Oh. I see. Well…I’m sorry for making you relive that.”

“As long as you won’t run anything else I send you through a forensic workup, it was worth it.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” she said, “Trust me.”

“Goodnight, Barbara.”

“Goodnight, John.”

She inhaled the scent of the perfume again. Sweet and dry, rich and strange, it made her stomach flutter. It was a very thoughtful gift, especially from someone who knew she was with someone. She was mad at herself for her gut reaction to it; she couldn’t shake the anxiety that she had done irreparable damage to their friendship by not trusting him.

Anxiety plagued him as well. Barbara Gordon was now the only person living who knew what he had endured at the hands of his great-grandmother. She trusted him now, felt that she knew him.

He hoped it would prove worth the cost.

Chapter Text

August became September, and Friday nights became like a therapy appointment to Barbara. She found herself looking forward to the earliest hours of the morning, to the ever-lengthening conversations they were now having on less cumbersome platforms than Tumblr.

There was a sort of unspoken structure. First, they unpacked the annoyances of the week, ranging from her job to her recently-begun online semester, to John’s professor, who was proving himself ever dumber. Then, they channeled the resulting cocktail of negative emotions into relentless sarcasm – they started calling it the “burn unit,” and nothing was safe. Heinous required reading, vapid pop culture, stupid little pet peeves, people who used the phrase “a whole nother.”

That always ended with her dissolving into hysterical laughter. And once the laughter finally faded, they would go through an ask meme and bounce a few questions off of each other. The night would conclude when they were both exhausted, and she would pull herself into bed feeling ready to face another week.

On Monday afternoons, she went to Wayne Manor, where she and Alfred would have tea and marathon a few episodes of whatever show they were currently making their way through. Lately, they had been watching Once Upon a Time, because despite all the terrible effects and the occasionally awful dialogue, they both had a soft spot for a number of the characters. Usually Alfred would theme things around their show, so this week’s tea was full of apple-based sweets just in time for the weather to change, subtly, from constant heat to hot days with crisp nights and mornings.

She was picking idly at a piece of Irish apple cake when the butler gave her something of a knowing smile.

“Is something, on your mind, Miss Gordon?”

“Alfred, how many times do I have to ask you to call me Barbara?”

“At least once more,” he smiled, but his eyes were expectant.

“Well,” she…oh my God, she actually giggled.

“Oh, dear. Are things finally going well with Master Drake?”

“What?” she blinked, “Oh! No, I mean…it’s not like that, it’s…”

“What is it?”

“I made a friend. Sort of. Online. It’s kind of like being pen pals, I guess?”

“Well, thank heaven, given how isolated we’ve all been of late. However did you meet this person?”

“Shared interests. Books, and being snarky, and we’re both living with disabilities.”

“It sounds like a perfect match.”

“Yeah, it really…it really is. He’s coming to visit next month, hopefully. He’s never been to Gotham before.”

“He?” Alfred’s eyebrows raised as he picked up his saucer, “I have to assume I’m the only one who knows about this, given what the others’ reactions would likely be.”

She turned a bit red, “We’re just friends. And I’ve triple checked his identity, and you know I can take care of myself. I promise I’m careful.”

He put his arm around her, “I know you are, my dear. I have a difficult time finding any problem with it. I do worry, of course, but that comes with the territory, and you are a very capable young woman.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, Alfred.”

“Just promise me, if you feel yourself falling for this…”

“John.”

“…This John, you’ll be forthright with Master Drake.”

“Of course!” she said reflexively, “I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

As he pressed play on the remote, however, she chewed her lip. She hadn’t really stopped to think if she might be developing feelings for John, outside of friendship. It seemed silly to feel that way about someone she didn’t even know in person.

Eventually she decided that she cared deeply for John. As a friend. A friend with whom she felt a very close connection, one for which she was extremely grateful.

But by Thursday, she wasn’t so sure. Bruce finally let Tim tell her what he had been working on; four people had been exposed to Joker’s infected blood when he snuck it into Gotham’s hospitals months ago, and only one was showing no symptoms. The others were behaving erratically, their skin beginning to turn chalky and peel, their hair growing in green. They sat in the hidden lab at Panessa Studios, staring intently at hematological reports, trying to find something, anything, that indicated why one victim was seemingly immune…but nothing revealed itself.

And as they sat there, brows furrowed, occasionally stealing glances at each other through the corners of their eyes, she found herself wishing John was there with them, or at least that she could tell him what was going on. What would he see, looking at the same things they were? They had been staring for so long, Tim especially. What would a fresh pair of eyes bring to the effort?

Of course, that would require telling Bruce about John, and that would NEVER go over well. As moody as he’d been lately, moreso than ever before, he might just go down to Georgia himself and give the boy a reason not to contact her again.

Being surrounded by men was not all it was cracked up to be. She missed working with other women, but she was too busy to take on yet another project.

When Friday came, she was looking forward to having good news to share. Tim had finally gotten a night off, and in preparation she made reservations for steak, blew out her hair, and slipped into an actual dress.

At their table, she raised a glass to her lips. The two young vigilantes smiled at each other across the table.

“Any breakthroughs?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Let’s not talk about work tonight.”

Her smile broadened.

“So what have you been up to?” he asked.

“Well, I just finished a book,” she said, “The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende. It’s hard to read, but it’s beautiful. It’s so raw and stark, you see this family in this real light, all the joy and darkness, the jealousy and love…it’s amazing.”

“Yeah?” he asked. Holy crap, he actually sounded interested.

“Yeah. I suppose it’s really about the cycle of hatred and revenge and the strength to overcome the destiny laid out for you. It’s gut-wrenching and uplifting all at once.”

“Wow,” Tim grinned as he shook his head, “You know, it’s really sexy how smart you are.”

She blinked at him, “Thanks.”

“Really. You know, it’s why Bruce always gets caught up with the girls like Talia and Selina instead of Harley,” his nose wrinkled, “Brains are hot.”

“Thanks,” she repeated, not really knowing how to respond. She pulled something from the back of her mind, “You know, this friend of mine and I were talking about the psychology of intelligence the other night…”
His phone began to buzz. “It’s Bruce.”

Of course it was. She flagged down the waiter and asked to have their orders, not even out to the table yet, boxed up.

In the car on the way back to her clock tower, she said the thing she had been thinking about saying to Tim since before she ever met John, but now felt compelled to.

“I think Gotham needs us. More than we need each other.”

He sighed and held her hand as he drove through Gotham’s winding streets, “I think you’re right, Barb.”

She sighed as well, squeezing his hand.

“Maybe someday,” he went on, “When we figure out the cure, and find out where Scarecrow went.”

“Yeah,” she said, staring out the window at the lights flying past, but inside, she could only think, ‘We’re turning into him.’

Still…Tim was smart. Perceptive. A spectacular detective…at work. For whatever reason he was completely clueless when it came to intuition or awareness in a relationship. It wasn’t as if she had a right to be surprised, though. Dick had been the exact same way, and why not? Most of their formative years had been spent learning how to fight from a man whose most stable long-term relationships were with assassins and cat burglars.

She left out some of the details of course, but it was earlier than she had hoped when she found herself typing all that to John, not expecting a response for a few hours at least. But as she was cutting into her somewhat cooled steak, she received a message.

“Have you ever dated anyone you didn’t work with?”

It didn’t take any time to search through her memory; she knew the answer. But it did take her a few moments to recover from the breathlessness, the feeling of a brick slamming into her stomach below her diaphragm.

“Oh, God,” she wrote back, “No. I don’t do anything that isn’t somehow related to work.”

“Well, you talk to me.”

“Well, but remember, I did think you were a psychopathic psychiatrist at first.”

“This is true. Barbara, I’m going to ask you a serious question.”

“…Ok.”

“When was the last time you felt like you had an identity outside of your work?”

She stared at the screen for a few moments, as if she had suddenly forgotten how to read and was piecing all the letters together. Then came the tears, flowing freely as the words.

“I just…I feel like a part of this computer. A piece of the machine. Am I a person or a processor?
My boss lives for this work, so this seems normal to him…and I lived for it, too, when I got to do what he did. But now I don’t take time off even when I can. What is there to do on my time off but sit here alone, while everyone else is working? Stare at pictures from before, feeling, thinking, being acutely aware of everything I can’t do?”

She went on,

“And the boys just make it worse. And my Dad, they’re all convinced I’m made out of glass. Tim treats me like I’m asexual half the time, but it runs deeper than that. I used to jump off buildings! I’m not fragile! Or maybe I am, I don’t know. I can’t stop crying.”

“Barbara?”

“Yes?”

“Were you Batgirl?”

She froze, then, through her tears, started laughing, “What?”

“Martial arts. Law Enforcement. Jumping off buildings in Gotham. Surrounded by men with no life outside of work. Up until four in the morning.”

She lied through her teeth as she typed, “I wasn’t Batgirl, John.”

“Ok, ok. But if you were…”

“…If I were, I wouldn’t tell someone over the Internet.”

“If you were,” he continued, “I would be even more confused why such a strong and intelligent woman was allowing herself to be so marginalized by men who clearly need her more than she needs them.”

He didn’t press her while she composed herself, and when she had, she replied, “John, I think you may be an angel.”

“Ha. You wouldn’t say that if you knew me.”

“I’m serious. Besides, angels can be masters of snark.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “I wish I knew what you sound like.”

“Compressed air through a crack,” he said, “To be honest, I only talk when I have to. My throat didn’t get off easy.”

“Oh.”

“I have an idea, though.”

“?”

“Hold on.”

She drummed her fingers on her desk, closing her to-go box on the fatty remains of her filet and reaching for her coffee. Five minutes passed, then ten. Eleven. And then, an audio file.

His voice was a strangled whisper, a painful rasp, “I hope you like this.”

His fiddle – the notes weren’t clean enough to be a classical violin – sounded worn. Maybe stored in a little too much humidity, probably hastily tuned. But it made the sounds from it seem deeper, truer. For nearly four minutes she sat listening, enraptured, as dissonant pain played out at dizzying speed, a beautiful, layered, nuanced screeching. Her heart ached, the hair on her arms stood, and a phantom pain ached in the bones of her kneecaps, causing her breath to freeze in her larynx.

Another message.

“I call it Delirium I.”

“John, I’m speechless.”

“Really?”

“It was beautiful.”

“Well…thank you. Very much.”

It was a strange sensation for him, miles away, as he packed the old instrument back into its case. Something pricked at his shoulder blades; he hadn’t played for anyone since he ceased lessons as a 19 year old. And, though he had never stopped composing, he had never let anyone else hear one of his original pieces.

A necessary show of vulnerability. And extension of his own emotion to strengthen the bond between them and further win her trust. That must’ve been it. Otherwise, he could not name the thickness in his throat, he, the most deft conductor of human emotion that ever lived.

Fortunately, it disappeared quickly, replaced by the best smirk his nearly lipless mouth could manage.

On Halloween night, Batman’s stalwart ally, ever long-suffering, ever self-denying, would betray him. And she would do so with ease, thinking the idea was all her own.

Chapter Text

On the fall equinox, the weather was perfect. Cool air blew in the slightest breeze, and the sunlight had the soft, golden cast it began to develop whenever the world tilted and the days were growing shorter. Pumpkin was in the air…and everything edible. She had even picked up some flavored syrup to add to her coffee at home.

“I love pumpkin,” John admitted that night, “I feel ridiculous, reacting like a stereotypical girl, but whenever I see a pumpkin muffin…or pumpkin loaf…or pumpkin pie…I really can’t help myself.”

“That’s adorable,” she said, “I like it a lot, too. I don’t get people who don’t. It just tastes and smells like fall.”

“And Halloween.”

“You like Halloween?”

“Love it. One of the few times of year I can be myself, you know?”

“I guess so. See, around here something crazy always happens on Halloween. It sort of makes you dread the holiday.”

“That’s too bad! But you said this year has been quiet, right? So maybe you’ll actually have a chance to enjoy it this time around.”

“That would be nice. We have a massive parade and a few huge parties that I haven’t been to in years.”

“Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. What would you dress up as?”

“Oh, that’s tough. I’ve never really given much thought to it since the last time I went to a major party. I dressed up as Batgirl then. Maybe I could dress up in a replica of that famous Belle Époque bat costume,” she sent a picture along to illustrate, “That could be fun.”

“You and your bat fetish,” he teased her.

“What can I say? It’s a Gotham thing. What are you going as?”

There was a slight pause, “I usually go as the Headless Horseman. I’ve had a costume put together perfectly for a few years.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who obsessively searches for the perfect details. Do you know how hard it is to find canary-yellow leather wedge boots?”

“About as hard as it is to find boots that fit my scrawny calves, I’d reckon.”

“Ha! Yeah, I had to have mine custom-made.”

“Me too. And the costume itself is actually a modified riding suit from the late 1700s. Found it in Granny’s attic when I was a teenager.”

It was the first time he had ever mentioned anything about his family since the perfume fiasco.
She felt as if she shouldn’t press, but she did anyway, “Do you have other family?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She could sense it was a bad question to ask.

“Everyone else died. There was a big to-do, a million people who never paid us any mind while they were was alive suddenly showed up with goopy potato casseroles and cola cakes. I didn’t have to buy food for months. Gained ten pounds, but it fell off eventually.”

“What’s a cola cake?”

“Oh, you poor thing,” he said.

“What?”

“Never having cola cake. It’s the sort of simple, homely cake you’d expect at a church potluck. But damned if it isn’t good.”

“I guess I’ve never really eaten Southern food. I eat a lot of Asian food. And seafood. I could eat shrimp scampi for days.”

“I imagine the palette of a lifelong Gothamite is slightly more sophisticated than my own.”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I eat a lot of cheap fried rice and pizza.”

“I don’t feel so bad, then. I’m practically vegan; I only indulge in cravings for the cuisine of my childhood on very, very rare occasions.”

“I don’t know if I could ever go vegan,” she replied, “I mean, shrimp. And pepperoni.”

“It takes a very skilled cook to make me interested in meat.”

“I’m the same way with tofu.”

“Well, it seems we’ve found the one thing on which we’re not entirely compatible.”

“It does,” she said, something strange twitching in her stomach before she went on, “But hey, while you’re here maybe we can try some places I’ve never been. I know we’ve got vegan places.”

“That’s quite gracious of you, my dear. I would appreciate it.”

“I still can’t believe you’re coming to visit.”

“Believe it. It will have to be the last week of October, maybe even over Halloween. Would that be alright?”

“Of course! I mean, there’s still a chance that something crazy will happen, but if that’s the case, my apartment is actually pretty safe.”

“Then I won’t worry.”

“You sure?”

“Barbara, call me mad, but I can’t bring myself to be afraid of anything that stalks Gotham at night. Not at the moment, at least.”

“Awesome.”

They talked for a few more hours, in between bits of her work; it was a Wednesday, after all, and
she was still technically on the job. When John went to bed, she called up Dick.

“Oracle! Just the face I was hoping to see.”

“I’ve got something for you,” she said, “It’s nothing that would hold up in court, of course, but I think I’ve linked North Refrigeration, the company moving the cargo off the Cassiopeia, to Penguin.”

“I knew it. Who else would hide guns in crates of caviar?”

“My thoughts exactly. They’ve got to be moving weapons around.”

“I’ll track the trucks, then, find out where they’re going.”

“Let me know if you need anything else!”

“Will do. You know, it gives you more time to get things done when the nights get long, but…”

“But at the same time, it means a lot more hours.”

“You got that right.”

“Yeah. I’ve been feeling it too. Think he’d kill me if I turned in early?”

“I’m sure he’d understand. If not, I’ll give him shit about it.”

She laughed, “Thanks, Dick.”

“No problem. Goodnight, Barb.”

“Night!”

As she put her machines on standby and turned up her music, a bit of mellow electronic, she smiled to herself. After all, she might actually get a real Halloween this year.

She wheeled herself to the other side of her apartment, where she pulled down her murphy bed and hauled herself into it. The lights of the clock tower glowed gently, and the noise of the wind between the buildings mixed with the sound of Kauf, lulling her into a gentle sleep. Half-awake, she wondered idly if she should dress as Katrina Van Tassel from Sleepy Hollow, to go with John’s Headless Horseman. When she dreamed, she dreamt of them both, on horseback in the woods. Her legs were useful again. The roughness of John’s scarred cheek brushed against her own, his chest against her back.

Chapter Text

As October drew to a close, Barbara had a vital task at hand that could wait no longer; she had to go shopping. The first time John saw her in person, even if she had to be sitting in her stupid chair, she wanted to look spectacular. She settled on a top of charcoal jersey with one long sleeve, and a brown leather cuff on her bare wrist; she would wear it with jeans and a pair of lace-up boots that matched the cuff.

The night before his flight, two days before Halloween, she asked him, “Will you bring your fiddle?”

“Of course,” he replied, “I’ll even play you The Resurrection of Lazarus.”

She laughed, “Is that how you think of yourself?”

“Hard to look at? Yes. Put upon by fate? Yes. A genius? …Would you hate me if I said yes?”

“If the score fits,” she replied, still laughing, “But I don’t know if they’ll let you on the plane dressed like the Phantom of the Opera.”

“Yes, I’ll probably have to change upon landing,” he teased.

She thought back to her conversation with Alfred a month before. Was she falling for John? She couldn’t tell. Or maybe she could, she just wouldn’t acknowledge it. Whatever the case, she didn’t feel like it mattered. John was coming to visit, and she was beyond excited.

That excitement quickly turned to dismay, however, when the next night, the day before Halloween, while John was supposed to be in the air, the Scarecrow made his move.
Using only five ounces of toxin, he had turned a local diner into a circle of hell, full of terrified people whose hallucinations caused them to tear each other to shreds. Even Owens, a cop who worked under her dad, snapped and shot at civilians.

When he followed it with a warning that tomorrow would be worse, the city emptied like a dam had collapsed. Her father called her the instant it happened, insisting she go to the ferry terminal immediately for the “special assistance” evacuation. Of course, she told him she’d go immediately.

In reality, she wasn’t going anywhere. She had work to do, and worst of all, she still hadn’t heard from John. Why hadn’t she asked for his number?

It was Halloween afternoon when he finally contacted her.

“Sorry. As soon as the plane landed they bussed us to a stadium in some place called Bludhaven. It’s been hell trying to find an open outlet.”

“John!” she exhaled fully for the first time in hours, “You have to get out of there. Get the first flight back to Georgia that you can. It’s not safe here.”

“What the hell is happening? No one will tell us anything.”

“The man I told you about, the psychiatrist. He’s threatening to do something horrible. You have to get as far away from Gotham as possible.”

“And leave you in the middle of it? I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be fine. I told you, I’m in one of the safest places in town.”

“Well, then why don’t I just ride it out with you?”

“Are you serious? They’ll never let you through the blockades. All the bridges are up. And the city is crawling with rioters.”

“I can be extremely sneaky.”

“…I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

“Ok,” she sighed as she typed, “Come to the clock tower on Bleake Island. And John?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

Night fell, and with it, Bruce donned his cowl and prepared to do what he did best; protect the city.

Her father called just after sundown. She would never have left town, and he would’ve dragged her out himself if he knew she was still home. But she couldn’t help being resentful of Batman’s insistence that she lie to him…nothing was worse, not even her fear of what could happen to any or all of them that night.

Still, it was show time. She pulled up her full interface, weaseling her way into CCTV and surveillance networks across the city.

Tim was calling.

“You ok?”

“Yeah,” she said, “Just shaken up.”

“Me too,” he said, “I don’t know why he won’t let me help.”

“Tim, you can’t pout right now. He’s just trying to protect you. Dick, too.”

“I don’t need protecting,” he said, “What was all the training for, if we’re still not ‘ready?’”

She sighed, “I know, Tim. Hang on, something’s happening.”

One one of the monitors, a group of rioters were assaulting an officer beside his car.

“Oracle, I need the location of Unit 247,” it was Batman.

“Already working on it,” she said, hesitating before asking, “How’s my dad doing?”

“He’s holding up.”

“Somehow, he always does. Ok, I’m sending through the squad car’s location. Be careful. It’s not looking good out there.”

He closed the comm link, and she pulled up her messages. Nothing. She didn’t like having so many people she cared about in harm’s way. Maybe Batman would let her throat-punch Scarecrow when he caught him.

Dick called next. “You ok, Barb?”

“I’m fine, Nightwing,” she said with a weak smile.

“How’s your dad?”

“Holding up, like always.”

“Oracle!” Batman called in, “I need to track that military vehicle.”

She saw it, speeding through the streets, “A squad car’s picked up the pursuit. I’m relaying its location now.” Having a hard connection to the GCPD’s systems came in handy.

She watched as Batman ran the car off the road and went after the driver. He had been darker, more violent since the Joker died. It worried her. It worried all of them.

A message came in from Huntress.

“What can I do?”

“Stay on the mainland. You can help there…”

“You ordering?...”

“I’m asking. Find BC. Patrol the evacuee camps.”

She waited a second, then said, “H?”

“Yeah?”

“If you see a guy with a leg brace and a scar, don’t let him go anywhere, ok?”

“Weird. But ok. Be safe, O.”

Why did she always fall for the reckless boys?

“Oracle,” came Bruce’s voice, “Check the chemical analysis I’ve just uploaded.”

“Sure,” as she dragged it to the center of her touchscreen, her jaw dropped, “Is this what I think it is?”

“Scarecrow’s new toxin,” he said, “An uncontaminated sample.”

“You’re not kidding,” she couldn’t believe their luck, “I’ll prepare a full chemical breakdown on the Bat computer. What are you going to do?”

“Scarecrow’s got a safe house in nearby. I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“Let’s hope this is the break we’ve been waiting for,” she said as her fingers flew across her keyboard.

She tried to keep herself from being too impressed. It was a seamless marriage of otherwise incompatible compounds – if John made it…when, when he made it…she would have to show him a glimpse of what she dealt with.

John. She checked her messages.

“Trying to find a way across this bridge. Still fine. Be there soon.”

“Be careful,” she repeated, turning back to the task at hand.

Piece by piece, she was going to take this thing apart.

Chapter Text

Unmanned tanks began to roll into the streets of Gotham, taking over and seeking out Batman. In between giving him a heads up to their locations, Oracle began to extract the threads of chemicals that made up Scarecrow’s newest toxin.

He had been enhancing his formula. A selective serotonin blocker to decommission the brain’s natural defenses, a dopamine reuptake inhibitor to facilitate hallucinations. A norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor; no better way to help breakdown along than to force the symptoms of a panic attack. With it, his signature cocktail of tropane alkaloids derived from the flowers of datura stramonium, and a pinch of salvinorum A to bring up repressed memories and alter immediate ones. All nestled in a stabilizing agent that required the ph of the bloodstream to activate.

But this was different. First of all, there was a different extract here. It took some doing, but she was finally able to trace it to the naturally occurring toxins produced by Trigonogya Infernalis, a South American wood boring beetle.

And this souped-up toxin wasn’t sitting in the usual inhalant carrier Scarecrow had been using for years. This compound would allow the gas to penetrate clothing and reach the skin and eyes, where it would be readily absorbed…gas masks would be useless.

She shuddered when she thought about the poor subjects who had been forced to endure the testing process. Trapped like lab rats, or poor Henry Adams, the man exposed to Joker’s blood with no symptoms, stuck in a sterile cell to provide data for a cure.

Not that this was in any way similar.

Her watch beeped. With a sigh she closed her interface and rode the elevator down to the bathroom. She was busy when she heard him come in through the hatch in the roof, sliding down a shaft and landing on the floor. He was just going to have to be patient.

Eventually, she made her way back to the elevator, riding up to the top floor.

Seriously? Batman already had her interface open.

“Do I come in the Batcave? Start messing with your stuff?”

“You’ve managed to reduce the toxin down to its core elements.”

Pfft. He sounded surprised. Unfortunately there was nothing really trackable in the mix. The plant and insect extracts, maybe, but knowing Scarecrow he grew the plants himself, and everything was too far gone to try tracing things like soil or fertilizer or the beetles’ diet. Batman suggested tracking the manufacturing process itself, and off he went to Panessa Studios, to use the broadcast antenna to track down the radiation spikes caused when the chemicals were combined.

Tim was calling again. Another five minutes of whining about how Batman wouldn’t let him help…she was glad when Bruce interrupted him to tell her he had powered up the antenna.

“Great, I’m connecting now. I was just talking to Robin, I think you should too.” She patched them in to each other’s comms. Batman needed to deal with this.

Of course, Batman shot him down again. Damn it, why was Bruce always like this?

“He just wants to help, you know,” she said as he reappeared on her screen.

“Is the antenna ready?” All business, all the time.

“Yeah. But we’re going to need a microwave tower to triangulate Scarecrow’s location. There’s one at Falcone Shipping in the Cauldron. I’ve marked it on your map.”

And he was gone.

The night wore on with mounting tension. Occasionally, Batman buzzed in for something, but she sent a lot of time just listening in on his and Alfred’s comms. A message from John came in amid it all, “I’m on the island.”

“Hurry. It’s getting worse.”

Scarecrow, and these soldiers controlling the drones, led by some guy called the “Arkham Knight…” they would answer for the lives they had taken. All of them. Hell, she was already finding design flaws in their drones and network. Hopefully this would be a short night.

Batman was at ACE Chemicals now. Why they hadn’t just checked there in the first place, she didn’t know. It made sense, you know, a massive chemical plants as the base of operations for someone planning to disperse a chemical weapon.

Wait, not disperse. Detonate.

Oh, God.

“You know he needs me, Barbara,” Tim said, “He’s never gone up against an army before. They’ve got tanks! I can’t just sit here taking blood samples while he’s out there in danger!”

“You’re right,” she sighed, switching over, “Batman. Look, I’ve been talking with Robin. I really think you should consider letting him help you. You’re up against an entire army! “

“She’s right,” Robin buzzed in, “We’re a team. This city needs both of us.”

“I can handle it, Robin,” Batman said. Of course. “I’ve told you what you have to do. Now do it.”

“This can wait,” Robin said, both pleading and tired of it.

“No, it can’t. You know what’s at stake. I need you to stay focused, or things will get worse. Much worse.”

Batman closed his screen, but he couldn’t keep her out of his ear.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on Tim. He only wants to help.”

“Don’t let your feelings for him cloud your judgement,” he said in a warning tone.

Feelings! If only he knew. It wasn’t affection for Tim driving her to say what she did, it was common sense. And if it was affection, well, of course she would always care about him. Like a little brother. But her “feelings” clouding her judgement? It had taken the surge of feelings brought about by John to show her just how anemic her “feelings” for Tim had been.

John. Oh, John. Where was he? No messages. What if something happened to him? What if she never got the chance to tell him…
They had to stop Scarecrow.

“Oracle. Scarecrow is preparing the bomb in the central mixing chamber. I need a way in and I need it now.”

“I’m working on it,” she said defensively, “But I’m going to need a couple minutes.” What, did he think she was just sitting around watching Markiplier?

“Find it, Barbara.”

“Patience is a virtue,” he was actually really pissing her off now, “You’ve heard that, right? …Guess not.”

He gave her all of three minutes before he buzzed again.

“Oracle, I need that route to Scarecrow. We’re running out of time.”

“You’re not going to like this,” she said as she stared at the schematics, “There’s only one entrance, and it’s been sealed from the inside.”

“What about the service tunnel?”

She pulled up another page, “It runs behind the main wall of the facility. I’ve sent you the location. What are you going to do?”

“Improvise.”

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, waiting.

Scarecrow and this Arkham Knight were talking about a strike team.

“What do you think they’re planning?” she said aloud.

“First we need to focus on stopping Scarecrow,” Batman said, “Then I’ll deal with the Knight.”

He was right. This was more important than whatever else those two were doing.

She pulled up the schematic of the mixing chamber. “Jesus,” she whispered to herself. With a chamber that size…

She pressed a few keys and pulled up a simulation of a blast. Her stomach hit her tailbone. Crane, the bookish professor, the thin little waif, was poised to turn a third of the country into a wasteland of terror.

“I’ve just run a simulation based on the mixing chamber capacity. He’s not bluffing, Bruce. I guess now we know why he evacuated the city.”

“He needed control of the plant,” Batman said as it dawned on him as well, “Only ACE Chemicals has the facilities to build a bomb of this size.”

“The fallout will be huge,” her voice was trembling. She was trembling.

“We played right into his hands. He didn’t care if everyone ran.”

“He knew that no one would be able to escape the blast radius.”

This was it. They HAD to stop him. There was no other option. If Batman failed…

Stop it, Barbara. He won’t fail. He’ll stop Scarecrow, and everything will be fine. We won’t all be dragged screaming before the self-proclaimed God of Fear and subjected like feudal peons.

Suddenly, Bruce was calling her.

“Have you found him?” she asked.

“Get out of there,” he growled, “Now!”

“Relax,” she said. What was he so wound up about? “No one knows I’m here.”

His image became static on the screen.

“Shit!” she said. What happened to his comms unit? A disruptor, maybe? She patched into
Wayne Manor, “Alfred, can you try to get in touch with Bruce?”

“Of course, Miss Gordon,” the butler replied, and she went to top off her coffee.

Things were quiet. Much too quiet. And quiet they remained as she stirred half and half and pumpkin syrup, too sweet for condensed milk, into her warm coffee. Still quiet as she wheeled back over to her interface and transferred the data she had on the drones to a flash drive, which she tucked into her bra, just in case.

And that was when the power went out.

Her hands immediately flew to the bag hanging on the back of her chair, and she pulled out two batarangs. The power flickered back on, and the elevator began to descend. Then it died again…and she heard the sound of a well-worn fiddle.

She exhaled, “Oh, Jesus,” she put her hand to her chest, dropping her weapons, “John that is NOT funny!”

She closed her eyes and let him serenade her, sensing the power return and the elevator climb.

She didn’t look yet; she didn’t want to take away from the sounds she was hearing by adding sight. A few plucked strings and a building background before the refrain began…it was ominous, made the hair stand on the back of her neck, but it was a pleasurable dread, and she was glad that John was safe.

Until she opened her eyes, and saw that walking corpse silhouetted in the light of the elevator.

“You!” she reached for her bag, to pull out her escrima sticks, but he was flanked by men who were pointing laser sighted guns at her chest. And as she raised her hands she looked at him, eyes full of venom, and asked in a low, threatening voice,

“What have you done with John?”

Chapter Text

“What have you done with him?” Barbara shouted it this time.

But Scarecrow only snickered, and he came toward her as he said, “Oh, my child,” his nails, jagged and infected, dragged their way across her cheek, “Search yourself. You know exactly where John is.”

Her face fell to shock, to dismay, and back into rage. The creature – no, the man, for he was just a man – before her had a clouded eye. His face was torn to shreds, his mouth sewn across with twine, and his opposite leg was held by a metal brace. She had known it all along, and yet…

“…And yet, you so wanted it not to be true. You wanted me to be him, the young man for whom you felt such affection.”

“If your goal was to make me hate you more than any living thing, you’ve succeeded,” she snarled.
Someone else got off the elevator, someone who looked like Batman, if he joined Daft Punk.

“Knight,” said Scarecrow, “Transport Miss Gordon.”

“With pleasure,” the man said in a metallic, disguised voice, and it was humiliating, almost enough to bring tears, when he leaned down and tossed her over his shoulder like dead weight.

She was caught off guard when she heard the Scarecrow say, “Is that necessary?”

“You got a better idea?” The Knight asked. He was almost as skilled at talking back as Barbara was.

“Very well. Film her at the safe house and then take her to the airship. And Knight?”

“Yes sir?”

“I plan to deal with Mr. Stagg myself.”

The Knight carried her to the elevator, and he and his strike team rode down with her. She shut her eyes, trying to pretend she wasn’t being held like a sack of potatoes. She felt a hand on her back; Scarecrow was gently stroking her shoulder blades, almost as if to comfort her, but she knew better. He thrived on causing discomfort; it was either possessive, or meant to scare her.

Outside, she was placed in the front seat of a military vehicle like the one Batman had tracked earlier, and the Knight sat behind her, one of his men in the driver's seat. Soon they were speeding through the streets, the Knight growling for them to go faster. There was something familiar about the way he talked, but even her memory couldn’t unmask a voice run through a synthesizer like that. Still, the more he egged the driver on, the less attention either of them were paying to her. Putting her in the passenger’s seat? That was the kind of a mistake a young man would make.

Whoever this man was, he was clever, and his soldiers were well-trained. But they weren't better than she was.

She had her backup disk over her heart; she was glad she had made it. The pepper spray was always in her pocket, of course. She was surprised they didn't pat her down, but hey, whatever. Rolling out of the car was going to hurt like crap, though.

She couldn't escape, she was painfully aware of that, and she hated the fact almost as much as she hated being held captive. But she could give Batman an edge, even as a hostage. So she sprayed the driver in the face and dove out of the car as it hurdled off the road and toward a pillar, sending the man flying through the windshield.

Poor baby.

She crawled away on her elbows as fast as she could. She had just enough time to toss the drive under a nearby piece of scrap wood before the Knight fired a warning shot near her head. It pinged off the cobblestones and made her cover her ears.

He picked her up again, like she was a bag of fertilizer, and carried her to another car from their convoy. This time, he put her in the back seat, climbed in beside her, and injected her hip with a sedative. She was dizzy for a moment, nauseous even, before everything went black.

As she slept, she dreamed, and her dreams betrayed her. John was still real in her mind, and together, they were at the biggest Halloween party in Gotham, dressed as the Horseman and Katrina. Her legs shook as he guided her around the floor in a Colonial minuet. It was like a fairy tale.

"Wake up, Miss Gordon," said a voice, and when she looked back to John, she saw he had transformed into the Scarecrow, and her own dress had become tatters.

"Inject her," the skeleton jaw clicked as he spoke. She felt a pinch at her hip as the real world came into view.

"Another dose."

"I'm awake, you bastard," she snarled.

"Good. Who is Batman?"

She sat up on a narrow cot and crossed her arms, "Ask him when he gets here."

"Thank you, Miss Gordon," that horrible mouth tried its best to smirk, "I was afraid that my preferred interrogation method would not be necessary," he held up his right hand, armored with needles, and moved his fingers fluidly, "Do you know why I wear these syringes on my hand?"

She was mad anyway, but whatever they had given her to wake her up just made it worse, "Because you're insane?"

"I usually disperse my toxin as an aerosol. It's efficient. But not pure. Now, the terror I can elicit with a concentrated dose, administered directly into the bloodstream, that is...beautiful to witness. The long-term damage is more severe, of course."

"Are you done talking?"

"I am, but you have barely begun. You'll be incoherent when my toxin dissolves the wall between your conscious mind and your suppressed subconscious nightmares. But as those fears slowly recede, they'll take this pathetic defiance with them."

She tapped her finger on the back of her other hand, "You're still talking."

"Very well," he said. He sounded tired.

"Get the hell away from her!" the Arkham Knight stood in the cell doorway, his metallic voice full of rage.

"Ah, there you are, Knight," said Scarecrow, "If you wish to be the one to interrogate her, do not let me stop you."

"Get out!" he said, "Get out and don't come near her again."

"As you wish," Scarecrow nodded his head in a sort of bow, "Good evening, Miss Gordon."

He turned and left the cell. She was angry with him, and it was natural. But the anger would pass. Besides, now he knew with complete certainty that the Knight cared for her, and he would indeed be using it to his advantage. The boy was a fool if he believed that he and Barbara both did not belong to him.

Yes, they knew one another. He could read her lips. "Jason," she called him.

His hand clenched in a fist as he saw tenderness in her face. No. This would not do. Besides, there was work still to be done.

"Knight," Scarecrow opened the cell, "You are needed on the other airship."

"Someone put a gag on her," said the Knight, "Anyone hurts her, they're a dead man."

He stormed off in the direction of the cargo bay.

"I won't be gagging you," Scarecrow said as he moved to close the cell door, "You're a prisoner, not a dog."

Silence followed the sound of the airlock. It was the first time she was alone with her thoughts, and she didn't like it.

How could she have been so stupid? There had been a hundred hints that John was really Jonathan...why had she ignored them? It made her sick how much she had trusted him, how vulnerable she had let herself become. The things he knew about her now...she had opened her soul to him, and he had used her, just like Joker.

And the photograph...what poor boy had Scarecrow kidnapped to be his surrogate? It was like Cyrano de Bergerac met Jack the Ripper. Well, the joke was on him. She had never been in love with John. Nope. Never.

The acid in her stomach dissolved her lie.

She turned toward the glass of the cell front, almost out of reach from her cot, but not quite. With a shout she clenched her fist and drove it into the wall, leaving a shallow spider web of hairline cracks, spreading out from the point of impact.

It only just barely hurt. The same couldn't be said for her emotions.

She lay down on her cot again, turning her back to the door. It was tactically stupid, but she didn't care. She didn't want anyone walking by to see her face as a handful of tears leaked out.

Scarecrow wasn't wrong. She had never felt connected to anyone the way she had to John. Of course she had wanted desperately for him to be real. Was this how Batman had felt about the Joker? Horrified at how well they understood one another?

But then, she and Scarecrow didn't understand each other. He had used his experience as a psychiatrist to manipulate her. It felt foolish, to cry for something that never existed. If it never existed, how could it be lost?

Still, she couldn't help herself. And eventually the residual presence of the sedative made her drift back into a half-sleep.

Chapter Text

She heard it first, the sounds of a resonant voice, tinged with gravel, singing.

“The sisters went walking by the water’s brim,
O, the wind and rain;
The elder one pushed the younger one in,
Crying the dreadful wind and rain.”

She kept her eyes closed, listening to the Scarecrow sing his murder ballad, his fingers and needles slowly combing through her hair, which he must’ve taken down out of its ponytail. Her back stiffened, but she gave no other signs of waking.

“He made a fiddle bow of her long red hair,
O, the wind and rain;
He made fiddle pegs of her little finger bones,
Crying the dreadful wind and rain.”

“Harp,” she said quietly. She was vaguely aware that the cuts she sustained when she dove out of the car had been bandaged.

He paused, and his voice conveyed annoyance, “What?”

“He made a harp of her breastbone. Her hair was golden, and he made it into harp strings.”

“Well, perhaps in the European variants of the tale. But whenever Granny deigned to sing me to sleep, he made a fiddle. As for the hair…” he twisted a finger around a few strands of hers, pulling them out.

“Ow,” she looked at him, “The Knight told you to stay away from me.”

“The Knight is not in charge, and he is occupied at present. Besides, when Batman falls, he will have outworn his usefulness…and when that happens, I look forward to playing with my new pet bat.” His voice had a slight pout in it, and his fingers laced more tightly into her hair.

She glared at him, “I’ll break all of your fingers if you call me that again.”

“Very well,” he stood and gestured to a wheelchair, “I have dinner waiting.”

“I’m not eating dinner with you,” she pushed herself to sit up, legs dangling off the cot.

“Perhaps you didn’t understand,” he held up his syringes, “I prepared shrimp scampi.”

“You…cooked?” her nose wrinkled.

“It’s simply chemistry,” he said, “Now, if you please, before it gets cold.”

She sighed, pulling the chair over and locking the wheels. He moved to steady it, but she shook her head.

“Please. I do this a lot,” and she hoisted herself into it with a slight grunt and unlocked the wheels.

He stood behind her, beginning to push her down a long and curving hallway. As they moved, she put her hair back up using a spare tie at her wrist.

“Where are we?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, merely brought her into a room that could accommodate dinner or conferences, and she gasped. One wall was almost entirely windows, framed in scrollwork – they were on an airship, tethered to a building and looking out at the city and the bay.

A man in the militia’s uniform placed a napkin in her lap as she moved up to the table and locked her wheels. Her captor took the seat at the head, to her left, and their makeshift waiter removed the covers from two plates of succulent shrimp on a bed of pasta and fragrant sauce.

She was so hungry it hadn’t even occurred to her, but he said it anyway, “If I meant to poison you, I wouldn’t have chosen such an elaborate method.”

She speared a shrimp with her fork, and said quietly, “You sound the same in person as you do online.”

He let out a quiet, dark laugh.

“Oh, wow,” she said as she took a bite, “This is…wow.”

“Chemistry,” he repeated, waving a dismissive hand.

She dug in. It was absolutely delicious…really, she’d never had anything this good, and she had eaten scampi all across Gotham. She paid no attention to her manners until she noticed he was staring at her.

“Sorry,” she slowed down, “I usually eat in front of a screen.”

“Don’t stand on ceremony for my benefit.”

When she remembered who she was talking to, she snapped, “I wasn’t.”

Ugh, it was so weird! On the one hand, talking to him was exactly like talking to John, and it was difficult to keep herself from slipping into their familiar banter. On the other hand, this was the freaking Scarecrow. How many people had he killed, tonight alone?

Suddenly, she felt the sensation of something black and heavy landing on her shoulder, and she jumped, turning her head. Sitting there was a glossy raven, gently holding on with its talons.

“Nightmare!” Scarecrow snapped, waving his hand at it, “Get off.” The bird only let out a soft, trilling rasp and nibbled Barbara’s ear.

“You have a pet raven,” her eyebrows raised, “Named Nightmare.”

In the same tone of voice, he said, “You didn’t call her a crow.”

“She has a breast ruff and nasal feathers, of course I didn’t call her a crow.

“She normally loathes strangers,” he sounded impressed.

“Well, I’m not really a stranger, am I?”

He didn’t respond. The bird was clearly reading his signals…but what were they? Was he somehow comfortable with her, or did he merely not feel threatened by her?

“Does she eat people food?” she asked.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch, which he slid over to her. Nightmare hopped down onto the table, ruffling her feathers and making another rasping noise.

Barbara opened the pouch and laughed. “You carry around chunks of raw beef?”

“She loves it,” he said defensively.

And she did. When Barbara pulled out a piece, the bird took it immediately, right from her hand.
Then she tilted back her head to swallow the perfectly-sized morsel.

“I’ve never fed a raven before,” said the girl as the bird took flight and landed on Scarecrow’s shoulder, “Wow, really enhances the effect.”

He gave her a look almost like her father did when he was unimpressed with her sense of humor.

“What?” she said, “I wasn’t being facetious.”

They finished their meal in silence, and the soldier who had acted as server removed their plates.
Scarecrow stood, his bird still perched on his shoulder, and moved to the window, where he surveyed the city he now called his domain.

She couldn’t keep herself from going over to where he stood and asking, “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said, “You worship him. He is incapable of doing wrong in your eyes.”

“No he’s not,” she crossed her arms, “Actually, a lot of the time he’s a real asshole, but this…the whole city…”

“My grandmother used to say God dreamt me in the dark,” he said, seemingly at random, “Not enough light in me.”

“She’s the one who sang you lullabies about murder.”

He laughed, “That she did.”

“Sir,” a soldier entered the room, “Batman is on the other airship.”

“Transport Miss Gordon to headquarters,” he said, “I will be with the Cloudburst.”

“The what?” she asked, but no one answered her, “Ugh. I can’t believe that after everything you said, I was just bait for Batman.”

“Barbara, you devalue yourself,” his familiarity with her made her hair stand on end. She winced as he placed his hand on her cheek, “I have no confidence in the Arkham Knight’s ability to build a network you couldn’t dismantle like a tower of blocks. I can’t afford to have you at work tonight.”

She wanted to kick herself in the stomach for the girlish way she asked, “Really?”

“Oh yes, my dear,” he snickered again, before turning back to the soldier, “If she has so much as one hair out of place when I see her again, you will breathe toxin with the rest of the city.”

“Yes, sir,” the man nodded, and he wheeled her into the hallway.

She shook her head as they made their way to the loading bay. John was no more, and no amount of accidental flirting with Scarecrow was going to change that fact.

Chapter Text

In the transport, Barbara didn't speak. She was too angry to for words now that she had a chance to think about what had happened. She wanted to scream, but she didn't trust the soldiers not to accidently fire off a few rounds in shock if she did. As the night wore on, they had become more jumpy, less self-assured...Batman was getting to them.

They landed on the roof of Killinger’s, a department store that had been under renovation for a while. Using an industrial lift, they took her down to the skeletal, open top floor. From there, they rode an elevator deep into the bowels of the earth. They placed her in a cell, a large one with a blank screen in the center of the far wall, and they left her. And there she sat, fuming, going over words in her head, rehearsing conversations.

It must've been over an hour later, maybe even two, when Scarecrow entered her cell, something like glee in his clouded eyes.

"Get ready, my dear," he said as he moved her to a spot where she could have the best view of the screen, which had come to life, showing a view of Perdition Bridge. "It's about to begin."

"Yeah, right," she crossed her arms, "Batman will..."

But as she spoke, she saw a smoky explosion on the screen, and the ground around them shook. She watched in disbelief as a noxious orange cloud engulfed the city at ground level, turning everything into a glowing hellscape.

"No..."

"Welcome to Gotham," he said into a microphone on his vest, and it broadcast across the city, "The City of Fear."

He shut it off and continued, speaking only to her, "Isn't it beautiful? The dregs of the city tearing each other to shreds...and when the morning comes, the Cloudburst will enable me to bring this horror upon any city I choose."

"You're a fucking monster," she looked at her hands, "I can't believe he couldn't stop you."

"Yes! Look, see it!" he rounded behind her, holding her chin up, "See how little the safety he provided was worth! See what I have accomplished while he desperately clings to the hope that Poison Ivy and a few trees can provide inoculation!"

She heard his voice, but not from him, "You prerecorded messages?"

"I'm growing weary of your cheek, Miss Gordon. I could put you under again if you like. But I much prefer to have you witness this, the ultimate failure of your hero."

She was silent, and he stepped away to continue taunting Batman with the public address system, "Ah, the anarchy of terror. Join them in the toxin, Batman. Stop fighting those fears."

He admired his handiwork for some time before placing a finger to his ear, responding to some unknown communication, "Nothing we know of."

Meanwhile, she listened to his prerecorded rants, "What do you seek in those tunnels, Batman? Hope? You will find none. I once searched for terror in chemistry. I thought perfectly arranged atoms could unlock the demons in a man's mind. You proved me wrong."

"Is this the narcissism or the megalomania, Doctor?" Barbara asked with a snarl.

"You will see," he looked at her, "You will all see. I am the master of fear...the lord of despair. Now I am become death, the destroyer of hope."

She almost wanted to laugh. She had to fight the urge not to tease him as she had teased John for his occasional grandiosity...but fight it she did, and successfully.

"How can the world know fear, true dread, when it had you? A stalwart knight, ever ready to slay monsters. Fear isn't pure biology, Batman, it's more than instinct. True fear is the absence of hope. And hope is the spread wings of a bat, shining on the clouds."

Barbara's mouth hung open, "You're going to kill him."

"The Knight may, but I prefer him alive, "He turned back to his microphone, "You promised that Gotham would be safe. Protected. But what does the world see now? My toxin choking its streets, blotting out the moonlight, poisoning the saplings you thought could stop me. And now, Dark Knight, I turn to you," he made eye contact with her as he half-whispered, "Don't be afraid. It's not your life that needs ending. It's your myth. The hope that you stand for. The hope that dies tonight."

And suddenly, she knew.

"You're going to unmask him."

He laughed, "Clever, my dear. Oh, yes. I will see him unmade tonight. And when nothing remains, when the myth is reduced to man, then I will have won, and my vengeance will be realized."

"You've completely lost it," she said, "You can't do this!"

"I'm already halfway done. Even now, you father is in the hands of my men. When the time comes, he will hand Batman over to me."

"Let my dad go!" she screamed, "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"He will not be harmed."

"Cold comfort from you."

She was about to continue, even to start begging him, when his finger flew to his ear, "What?" a pause, and then, "He's trying to overheat the Cloudburst. Leave. Now. You will have your chance at him," the last bit he muttered to himself, "Insolent whelp."

"That's Jason," she sighed.

"I knew he was one of Batman's weanlings...The Cloudburst is not bait, Knight. It is MINE!"

"Losing grip on your attack dog?"

"Do not test me, child. With him occupied there is nothing to save you from my fingertips." He brandished his syringes.

She shuddered. Did he realize how dirty that sounded?

She heard the sound of a distant explosion, and Scarecrow screamed in frustration.

"Batman! The Cloudburst was mine, my greatest weapon, my instrument of fear! I will exact vengeance for this, upon you and all your allies...like Poison Ivy. My toxin overwhelms her. She's paying the price for opposing me right now."

"What's happening to Ivy?" Barbara asked.

"She's dying. A consequence of staying connected to her plants as my toxin leeched the life out of them."

"Do you have to destroy everything?" she shouted, and before she could stop herself, it rose in her lungs and slipped through her lips, "I can't believe I loved you!"

He stared at her for three long seconds before turning away, "I never stay in tender thoughts for long. Dreamt in the dark, remember? Not enough light behind my eyes."

"I can't believe it," she repeated quietly.

"Oh, is it so hard to believe there might be something in me worth admiring?" he roared it with more venom than she had expected.

"It is now," she said, a tear running down her cheek.

"Oh, stop crying you stupid girl!" he snarled, but immediately he paused, "I...I didn't mean that. Of all that you are, the last thing is stupid."

"Stop it!" she cried, "Stop pretending you care, I'm sick of you lying to me!"

"I have NEVER lied to you!" he growled, leaning in close, "Not once!"

Barbara didn't respond. She was distracted by the dandelion-like pollen that was now drifting through the air in place of the toxin.

"What? No! NO!" he reached for a soldier, punching him in the face with his bare hand and knocking him out. His head hit the floor with a hollow sound.

"Stop hurting people! The only point you're proving is that Batman should kick your ass."

He ignored her, speaking into his microphone again, "You actually believe you've won, don't you Batman? Savor this fleeting delusion of victory. The Arkham Knight may have fled in terror, But now his army answers to me. For even as my toxin dissipates, it leaves behind a forsaken city, forever tainted by your failure. Tonight, the myth of the Batman dies, and Gotham dies with it."

"At least now you're lying to yourself, too."

"I never lied to you," he said again, more calmly than before, but he began to escalate, "I bared the truths of my soul to you, Barbara, to gain your trust. Every word I said was truth. Especially those regarding my disbelief that you allow yourself to be ordered around by that...that...carpetbagger."

She stared at him for a moment before she burst out laughing.

"What?" he asked.

She kept laughing. She sounded like she had taken a hit of Joker Venom.

"What's so funny?" he asked, clearly a little upset.

"Well, one, you called him a carpetbagger," she wheezed, "Two...the burn unit's open."

His laughter began as a few small, broken "ha's." But it became something terrifying in how hearty and disarming it was.

"I suppose," he choked, "You can take the man out of Georgia..."

They were interrupted by a soldier.

"Sir. The Bat's trying to rescue the old man."

"What? Oh..." he straightened up, clearing his throat and returning his face to inscrutable, "He will succeed. It is time we move to the roof.”

Scarecrow stood behind her in the elevator, resting his hands on her shoulders. The little skeleton syringes hovered over his fingers, keeping her still as he squeezed her collarbone gently.

On the roof, it was cold, the wind blowing her bangs into her face.

“Sir,” said a soldier, “Batman just took out the armed unit at the tunnel level.”

“As expected,” he idly pet her scalp, “Guard the generators. He will reach us on our terms.”

“You’re not going to stop him, you know,” her back stiffened.

“I have no desire to stop him. Merely delay him,” he slipped his hand around the front of her throat, not squeezing, but threatening, “Now hush. I’ve more to say to him.”

He did, more grandiose speeches and eerily perceptive taunts. The hatred dripped from his teeth; he was consumed by the need to break Batman, focused like a lens on the prospect of victory.

She hoped that focus would be his downfall.

“The Knight has him,” said a commander, “This’ll be over soon.”

“He hasn’t prevailed so far. What makes you think he suddenly has the strength now?” Scarecrow sighed as he crossed around to stand in front of her, “Keep her around the corner,” he leaned down near her face, “Be quiet for me, my little bat.”

Her eyebrow raised.

"You're probably going to have to gag her," he said.

"I'll be quiet," she said, "But only for my dad."

She didn't know what he was planning, and she hated having to wait around the corner. There, she was removed, an accessory, set aside, only barely able to hear that men were speaking over the wind. They waited endlessly in the cold for a signal she couldn’t see. At last, something happened, and the men pushed her back around the corner.

Chapter Text

As she rounded the corner she saw her father, looking a little worse for wear, but fine overall. Except for the fact that he was pointing a gun at Batman.

“Dad!”

“Are you alright?” he asked. He sounded tired, defeated, “Did he hurt you?”

No, he made me pasta. Wait, don’t say that. “What are you doing?” her voice shook.

“Call in the transport,” said Scarecrow, “We’re leaving.”

“Yes sir,” said one of his faceless men.

“It is time for the people of Gotham to see their savior for who he truly is. A man, just a man. Devoid of hope. Betrayed by his friends. Crippled by fear.”

“Let her go,” her father growled.

“You both still have a part to play,” her captor said, and he came around behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. A shiver ran down her spine and disappeared where the nerves were severed.

Her father turned the gun on Scarecrow. Not only did she have no idea what was going on, she really didn’t like how this was making her feel.

“We had a deal,” said her dad. But three men held guns at him. Oh, Dad, don’t do anything stupid.

“Once I understood your greatest fear, controlling you was simple. You blame yourself for her condition,” Scarecrow was talking, moving to her left side, “You need to protect her, but buried deep down is the inevitability that you will one day fail.” He placed his hand beneath her chin, turning her face to his. He spoke ostensibly to her father, but his clouded blue eyes were facing hers as he purred, “And that fear makes you mine.”

Her father cocked the gun, and Scarecrow returned to stand behind her, “Think very carefully about your next move, Commissioner. Her life depends on it.”

He turned the gun on Batman, and her stomach turned as he fired.

“Dad! No!” she screamed, and Scarecrow’s men rushed him. Batman fell backwards off the building, and her father fought in the men’s grip as Scarecrow approached him. She had the same fear, the same confusion as he rounded on her father that she had when her father had pointed the gun at him.

“Did you think I wanted him dead? Did you think that would save your daughter?” he turned back to her, “Do you know what happens when a man refuses to be controlled by his fears?” He leaned forward. He smelled like death and mold as he began to push her chair backward, “He must face them!”

What was he doing? What the hell was he doing?

“No!” her father cried, “Take me. Please. It’s not her you want, take me!”

At the edge of the building, Scarecrow tilted her chair back over the open air, one hand holding her wrist and her armrest firmly. No, he wouldn’t. There was no way.

“You don’t scare me,” her voice shook as his face drew closer to hers. Maybe if he thought she wasn't scared, he'd stop dangling her over the edge.

“Shh,” he whispered in her ear, “It’s ok to be afraid.” It gave her goose bumps, but it was strangely soothing.

And then he let her go.

She was falling. Her chair fell out from under her, and she was just her, just her body, falling. Time crawled, and she could feel every lick of artificial wind as it pressed again her skin. The ground was coming ever faster. She felt like she could still see his eyes.

She was falling, and she was laughing. She hadn’t felt this in so long, the rush of adrenaline, the inability to predict the outcome. She was going to die a horrible, painful death…

And it was the greatest gift anyone had ever given her.

She would die, and be free of her legs and lower torso. Die and never run out of latex gloves again. Die and never have to look at another old photograph of herself, standing, or sticking a landing, or dancing.

And in her final moments, she would fly again.

She saw a black shape against the sky above her. Probably Nightmare.

With her last breath, she would whisper his name, “John.”

No, “Jonathan.”

But it wasn’t Nightmare. It was Batman. He survived the shot! Her relief quickly turned to frustration. He was speeding toward her. She felt him catch her.

She shed a single tear for the pain, the darkness and relief, that didn’t come.

“Are you hurt?” he asked as he set her against a short concrete wall.

“I thought Dad killed you,” she said, her red eyes and trembling voice easy to attribute to other things.

Batman plucked the spent bullet from the armored bat symbol on his chest, “He knew what he was doing.

“There!” she pointed to a Chinook flying away from the Killinger’s building, “Where are they taking him?”

The earth shook as a drone cannon shell hit the wall behind her.

Batman wrapped his arms around her as more cannons and guns fired on their position.

“Where’s the Batmobile?”

“Destroyed,” he said.

“WHAT?”

“Don’t worry. Lucius made a spare.”

She exhaled. Good old Lucius. She heard the Batwing swoop in, and could vaguely make out Alfred’s voice in Batman’s ear.

Her rescuer operated the car via remote, and she heard the sound of it ripping through the drones one by one. There must’ve been nearly two dozen.

“Scarecrow’s going to kill him, isn’t he?” she asked as Batman picked her up and carried her to the car.

“Not while he can use him to get to me.”

The rear of the car opened, and he set her down, “I’ll get you set up at the Precinct. We’ll find your father.”

Bruce was a terrible driver, especially in that car. Barely a minute in she felt like hurling.

“Barbara,” he said as he drove, “Scarecrow manipulated me. I watched you die.”

Really? Really, Bruce? What do you think fear toxin does?

“He gassed you, Bruce,” she said, a little exasperated, “You don’t need to worry about us. Or feel responsible. We’re fighting with you, not for you, ok?”

She’d said it to him a dozen times before, and this was the first time she wasn’t sure she believed it.

“It’s good to have you back,” he said.

She only half-heard as he spoke to Officer Aaron Cash over the radio. Her head was still swirling, her ears still ringing. Her mind hadn’t yet caught up with everything that had happened in the last few hours…and this car ride wasn’t helping.

***

He let her go.

He let her go, and she fell.

He saw the fear in her eyes, sweet fear, all his, and then…then he felt it himself.

It took the air from his lungs. It had been so long. No…never. He had never felt this kind of fear before, so potent, so primal. It was almost as if he was falling himself, but worse, much worse. Like being stabbed with a sharpened piece of ice And he realized.

He needed her.

Her peril was his terror. This was Gotham. All kinds of terrible things can befall a person. Not a day would go by he couldn’t worry in some capacity that something, either something awful and singular or something so mundane it was nauseating, would happen to her. Was this how her father felt all the time?

But she was falling. The ice twisted in his chest. He noticed that he and Commissioner Gordon were leaning forward with the same look on their faces.

And then Batman caught her.

His sigh of relief was enough to make those around him stare at him strangely. But no. Now she was with HIM and HE could undo all of Crane’s delicate work in a few brutish minutes if he didn’t get her away from him…to say nothing of what she could do to the drone network if she was able to access her servers.

“Send a squadron to the Clock Tower,” he said to none of his men in particular, “Destroy the network.”

He jerked his head and the soldiers followed him to the lift, hostage in tow.

“Where will they go?” he asked Gordon.

“GCPD,” he said with a laugh, “Good luck getting to them in there.”

As they boarded the Chinook, Scarecrow laced his fingers together. “The moment they arrive,” he said, “I’ll already be inside.”

“What?” the man squinted at him.

Ugh. Just because he couldn’t understand it didn’t mean Crane was obligated to explain it.

“Nevermind,” he looked at Gordon’s face, tilting his head as he studied it, “Don’t forget I can incapacitate you without killing you.”

Chapter Text

In the garage of the GCPD building, Batman came to a stop and picked her up carefully. It was only then that she remembered Tim.

“Where’s Tim? Is he ok?”

“I left him at the movie studios. He’s fine.”

“Ok,” but wait. He wasn’t the only Robin she had worried about that night.

“Batman! Jason! It’s Jason, the Arkham Knight is…”

“I know,” the man said, his rough voice shaking with sadness, “I tried.”

“W-what happened to him?”

“He’s around somewhere. I haven’t seen the last of him. But hopefully I’ve seen the last of him as the Arkham Knight.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat. Jason, poor Jason, held for so long…branded…broken…it was too much.

She understood why. Why he had chosen to do this. She couldn’t fault him fully for the terrible things he had done, not when he was so damaged. But she was glad that whatever had happened between them may have stemmed the tide of his vengeance.

There was too much vengeance in the air tonight.

The metal detector leading into Maximum Security beeped as they went through it.

“Barbara!” Aaron Cash beamed, “It’s great to see you!”

“Hello, Aaron. It’s been a while.”

“Barbara’s going to be helping out here,” Batman said.

“Whatever you say,” Cash said, “She work for you now? Hell, what am I saying? We all do, right?”

In a room off of the holding tank, they set her up with a computer, and she activated a few of her hard links to the PD servers so she had a base to work from as she tried to reestablish communication with her own at home.

Home, where Scarecrow’s men were already trying to destroy her server room. Did they know how much that stuff cost? Did he? Probably not. Jerk.

“You can’t go there,” she told Bruce, “They’ll be expecting you.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said. At least he seemed to have his mojo back after nine months of turning the brooding up to eleven. It had been a while since he had seemed to enjoy the work.

And there she was again. Sitting at a computer, left out of the action. As much as she hated to admit it under the circumstances, she had actually enjoyed being in the thick of it again. But now she had served her purpose. She was nothing to Scarecrow anymore.

And that was the worst thing of all, really. He had told her for months how smart she was, how ridiculous it was that she let Batman and the others boss her around, how stupid it was to play tech support to someone whose very connection with her put her in danger. He had been the first time since the incident that she had stepped outside of Oracle and into Barbara again, the first time she had started to live the rest of her life.

And it had all been based on a lie. It was all a lie, and she didn’t want it to be. She wanted it to be true that she was too good for this, too smart for this, that she deserved to have a life outside of this soul-sucking job, that it was okay to seek out companions who weren’t her coworkers, and that it was fine to date someone other than a current or former Robin.

And she wanted to believe that somewhere out there was a brilliant, hilarious, snarky, bookish, pumpkin-obsessed, Halloween-loving, vigilante-supporting guy who she was attracted to, who was attracted to her, and who would go to parties with her in overthought costumes and ride horses with her and drink too much coffee and overanalyze movies with her.

But he said he hadn’t lied.

Yeah, right. That could’ve just as easily been a lie too.

But what if it wasn’t?

What if he had meant every word? What if, somehow, he had gotten in over his head, and he meant all the things he said to her? What if in some other life, Jonathan Crane and she, in spite of a rather noticeable age difference, would’ve been at the Wayne Foundation Halloween Ball tonight, dressed up as Katrina Van Tassel and the Headless Horseman?

She couldn’t think about it. No. That could never have happened on a thousand alternate Earths. No, Scarecrow had used her. And he was done with her. And Batman would save her servers, and he would save her dad, and he would save the city, and the world would go back to the way it was before any of this happened. No life, no boyfriend, no John.

The sounds of shouting pulled her from her reverie, and she poked her head out of her little room.

“You can’t do this to me! I’m a member of the press! I have a constitutional right, an obligation to…”

“Okay, okay, fine,” she heard Aaron sigh, “Got get yourself killed. Fine by me.”

“What’s up, Aaron?” she called when he had walked back to his desk.

“Jack Ryder’s running off to the Lady of Gotham for some reason,” he said, shaking his head, “Idiot.”

She clipped her Bluetooth onto her ear. She could occasionally hear Scarecrow lecturing his men on the finer points of fear.

“We both use fear, Dark Knight. But only one of us understands it.”

She did it. She hacked their comms.

“Let my dad go, John,” she said.

“Well, if it isn’t Barbara Gordon,” his voice was in her ear, like it had been on the edge of the building. She shivered as she had then.

Some of her servers were down, but she could try to reboot them remotely. It would give her something to do while Batman was distracted by Ryder’s sudden death wish.

“Please,” she said, “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything, the girl says,” he snickered, “We shall see.”

Half an hour later, she heard the sound of Batman’s footsteps.

“Great,” she said, “You’re here. Scarecrow’s chopper flew out towards the bay before heading north. I tried to narrow it down further, but the data’s corrupted. They did more damage than I thought.”

Suddenly, the building trembled as if in an earthquake.

“What the hell was that?”

It happened again.

“Trouble,” said Batman.

Scarecrow appeared on her screen.

“Gallant police force of Gotham, I have a message for you. You are not safe. You are not protected. And you have something of importance to me.”

People looked at each other, she saw them from the corners of her eyes, but her face was glued to the screen.

“Send Barbara Gordon to the roof, and you will be spared. Try to keep her from me, and I will level this building and drag her from the rubble. As an added incentive, I’ll even return your beloved Commissioner in exchange.”

She looked at Batman.

“Do not test my patience," Scarecrow growled, "You have five minutes.”

Her screen flashed and turned into a clock, counting down the time they had.

“Oh, HELL no!” Cash yelled.

“I’ve got this,” Batman said, but Barbara put her hand up.

In silence she sat, thinking, wondering. She was disgusted with herself for being excited. What the hell was that all about? But she had a way to ensure her father’s safety. She could be the hero again, and she could get back in the action.

“I never lied to you,” he had said, “Not once.”

She remembered the sounds it made as he sawed his bow across the strings of his fiddle, the shiver it sent through her whole body. She remembered his file. When had anyone been kind to him? When had anyone given him the chance to be himself, to show them his secrets?

But she couldn’t get lost in wishful thinking. He was the Scarecrow, just as Joker had been the Joker and Selina was Catwoman. No amount of love can change a person’s core. She couldn’t fix Jonathan just by caring about him.

But why would she fix him? Why would she change the man who had given her so much these last few months? Especially tonight…at his absolute worst, he had presented her with his greatest gift.

She still had things she needed to say to him.

“I’m going.”

“What?” Batman growled, “Absolutely not!”

“Please,” she turned to him, “I have a chance to save my dad,” her eyes were pleading. You don’t grow up with a tough protector without learning how to get what you want from a tough protector type of man, “Don’t take this away from me.”

He sighed. He clearly didn’t like it, but her face left him unable to argue.

“Take this,” he said, handing her a piece of tracker ammo, “I’ll come for you.”

“I know you will,” she said, slipping the ammo into her shirt. She could always drop it on the roof.

He and Cash followed her to the elevator.

“You sure about this?” the officer asked.

“I am,” she said as she rolled herself into the cab. She gave them a weak smile of encouragement, and pressed the button for the roof.

When the door closed, the forced smile broadened into a genuine grin.

Chapter Text

What was she doing? What the hell was she doing? She was meaningless to him. He dropped her off a roof for God's sake.

And yet he came back for her. Traded her father for her. Why? She guessed she could ask him, but no. She wasn't going to talk to him, he dropped her off a fucking roof.

Eventually, she did ask him, "Why did you come back?"

"I knew he would catch you," he said, as if he knew what she was thinking.

She gave him a pointed look.

"I did it to prove a point. A point that needed to be made. In the process, perhaps I discovered that when I bring the Batman to his knees, I want you at my side."

She fell silent again. She couldn't think about what that meant, what he was saying without actually speaking the words.

It wasn't long before they had landed on the uneven ground in front of the Arkham Mansion.

"Of course," she said, "You would pick here."

Plants from the botanical garden had taken over. Seismic activity from the plants and explosions on the night of the riots and after had left everything in ruins. But the beauty of the place was only enhanced by the decay.

"Shall I carry you?" he asked.

"I can get up stairs," she said, "And the ground's not too bad."

"As you wish."

She turned herself around and grabbed as far up the railing as she could, pulling herself up one step. Then she slid her hand back further and went up another. It was only a moment before she had made it to the top.

"You'd think a hospital would be ADA compliant," she said.

There were more stairs inside, more than she was used to, and her arm was already tired. But he waited for her to say, "I might need you for these."

Outside, the Chinook started up again.

"Where are they going?"

"Don't mind them," he said as he pulled her chair up stair by stair, "They're acquiring an asset."

"Who else are you kidnapping?" her voice was dry.

"You'll see," he said as if it was some great surprise. At the top of the stairs, he stepped back and held the door for her.

Inside was even more beautiful than outside, Ivy's plants all grown through the manor's main hall, moonlight streaming through the windows. It had the look of a set piece from an opera.

"You were...impressive on the stairs," he said.

"There are definitely some cool things about being half tricycle," she laughed.

"It was the Joker, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she looked away.

"You know, popular opinion among those of us who once filled this place's cells is that he wouldn't have existed without Batman."

"Stop," she held up her hand, "I don't want to hear it, ok? It's not new and it's not true. He can be a dick, and he's reckless, and he REALLY shouldn't be allowed to raise children. But he's not responsible for any of you."

"Not responsible? He's the one who left me to be devoured by an animal! Look at me," he grabbed her push rings, leaning in, "Never handsome, perhaps, but certainly I was better than this! A living corpse! A walking death's-head!"

"It sucks, but it's not an excuse! Yeah, I wanted to kill Joker. Yeah, I was happy when he died. But I didn't start kidnapping and mutilating random people as part of an elaborate scheme to get back at him!"

"My stand-in from earlier this year should be able to fix his face with minor surgery," he sounded defensive.

"I'm sure that would be comforting to him if he wasn't dead," she crossed her arms.

"He isn't! I couldn't afford a missing persons case on the eve of this! I made him look pitiable, photographed him a few times, and kept him for emergencies until you trusted me."

She looked away, "I don't believe you."

Suddenly she realized how close he was, and looked down reflexively to make sure he couldn't see down her shirt.

He probably could. Her eyes were wide; she had forgotten to drop the tracker ammo. His eyes followed hers.

"Well, well, Delilah," he reached into her clothing and plucked it out, leaving her stunned, "At least it wasn't a snake." He dropped it on the ground and crushed it with his boot.

From outside, she heard the sounds of a familiar voice shouting, "You're not gonna like how this ends for you!"

"Tim!" she called out, "Oh, God, SERIOUSLY?"

The voice was inside the building now, "Barb? Is this where you've been all night? He told me you were fine..."

"Uh...sort of. How did they catch you?"

"Bruce locked me in his cell," he was in the room with them now, hands tied behind his back, four men escorting him, "He's the fifth, Barb. His blood's contaminated, too."

"He is? Oh, shit..."

"Yeah."

"I do hate to spoil the reunion, but we have work to do," said Scarecrow. When Barbara turned, she saw that he was pointing a handgun directly at Tim's head.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked. Asking men she cared about why they were about to shoot other men she cared about was REALLY getting old fast.

"Giving you a choice," he said. She could only stare.

"It's simple. Him, or me. Choose me, and the bird flies free, and you and I disappear into the shadows where we belong. Choose him, he dies...and I drag you with me into hell."

There were no words, and even if there were, her throat was too tight to speak.

Tim, of course, had no trouble, "What? Gross. Don't do it, Barb! It's...it's ok."

"Aw, how sweet," Scarecrow pouted, "Willing to die for principle, just like the one who trained him."

"I'd rather die than make her pretend she wants to spend another second with you!"

"Tim, don't be stupid!" she said.

"Listen to her, boy."

"Shut up, you moldy sack of..."

"I'll thank you to hold your..."

"Both of you stop it!" she yelled, and it rang in the cathedral rafters of the ceiling.

All of them, even the soldiers, turned to look at her.

"May I please," she asked, "Have a few moments alone?"

"Of course," the Scarecrow gestured to the hallways up ahead that branched off from the room.

She rolled herself in the direction of the library, according to her memory of the schematics. When she encountered stairs, she pulled herself up and went on.

It was so quiet. It smelled of age and neglect, and it was wonderful. Someone had to restore all this. It was a crime to let it rot.

There was the library, at the end of the hall. It really wasn't safe - Bruce had destroyed the glass floor of that story during the Arkham Riots, but the circular room was still beautiful. Pristine, in fact, not a spine out of place, not a piece of broken glass on the carpet. Even the chandelier he had used to crash through the floor had been hoisted back up, even if it was bent and the bulbs destroyed.

And, of course, most importantly, it was still full of Amadeus Arkham's collection of rare books on medicine, psychology, and philosophy.

It must've been twenty minutes later when she heard his footsteps coming near.

"You've been maintaining it," she said without looking at him.

"I have. It made me angry to think of the whole collection, left to decay."

"Me too," she turned to him, "What will they do without you?"

"I suppose I haven't thought of that."

"Come here."

He followed the edge of the room around, stepping closer to her.

"Have you made your choice?"

He was taken aback by the way she looked at him. In her eyes there was empathy, and tenderness, and...something he didn't recognize.

"Did you really think you had to give me an ultimatum like that?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I?"

He winced as she reached up and took hold of his hand. He began to slowly turn hers over in both of his, caressing the skin with a delicate touch. Every movement was full of anticipation that she would jerk it away, but she didn't. Nor did she when he leaned down and kissed it with his sewn and lipless mouth.

"You don't have to do this," she whispered.

“Don’t have to? It’s my right! This is my vengeance,” he gestured as he spoke, his hand at his chest, “I have longed for this. I demand my due!”

"Where could we go? Any of us? Not just you and I, but Two-Face, Penguin, Harley. Nowhere on Earth could be home but Gotham."

"But I..."

“And you. You told me once you had made knowledge your highest goal. Isn’t that a greater goal than this? Be selfish, by all means, but not like this. Take the life you want and wrest it from the hands of those who would deny you…but don’t do this.”

“I must,” he said, sounding somewhat sad, “You know I must.”

"'My revenge would just be another part of the same inexorable rite. I have to break that terrible chain,'" she was quoting The House of Spirits.

He laughed once, "You know, I found that book in this library."

"Please don't stay trapped in this vengeance. You want to humiliate him? Live. And live well. With me. Kiss me every night and let me make you eggs and lets just be Jonathan and Barbara forever, laughing at stupid people and bonding over books and being the only other people who don't treat us like we're broken."

She was crying now. So was he.

"You think I wouldn't in a heartbeat if I could? You can't undo the things I've done, Barbara. They'll never let me go, and even if they did, I could never stop being who I am. I am Jonathan. But I am also the Scarecrow."

She knew it. She knew he could never let this go.

She also knew exactly what to say.

"Then be the Scarecrow. You don't have to give it all up! Manipulate them, make them think they've cured you. With me helping you cover your tracks, no one could ever catch you again."

He looked shocked.

"You would do that...for me?"

"Come closer," she whispered.

He went into a pained squat; clearly it hurt his knee, but he wanted to be at her level, and she rewarded him by placing her hands on either side of his face.

And then she kissed him. She pressed her lips, soft and smooth, to that sewn-together flesh that framed his teeth. Her nostrils filled with his death smell, and she reveled in it. Then she placed her forehead to his, slipping her hand into his hood and resting it on the back of his neck.

"I know you. I know you're both at once, just like I was. Like I am. And I would never ask you to give up part of who you are. But please, consider what I've asked."

He nodded.

Back in the manor's main hall, her hair was standing on end.

"What's wrong?" he and Tim, sweet, clueless Tim, asked her simultaneously.

But before she could say it, Batman was on the floor beside Robin. He untied Tim quickly, and the two of them made quick work of the soldiers, even with their guns. Scarecrow sank to his knees, and placed his hands behind his head.

And Batman took out the dose of toxin he had confiscated earlier that night, grabbed Scarecrow by the throat, and injected the doctor with his own medicine.

"Bruce!" Barbara yelled. She was snarling, "What the hell are you doing?"

Batman dropped Crane, who screamed as he collapsed into a heap of bones on the floor.

Before the first man could react, Barbara had rolled in between them and locked her wheels.

"What are you doing?" she repeated.

"Rescuing you!" he growled in his most intimidating voice.

"He was surrendering!" she shouted, "I guess Tim was right. You are the fifth."

"I..." he looked down, "I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to!"

“Barbara, please…”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

Jonathan Crane heard not a word of what was said; he was far too distracted. Oh, fear! Sweet, blissful fear, waves and waves of it...and he had only to sit back like a child and enjoy its sensations, knowing he was perfectly safe.

For in between him and the black bat creature that had stalked his nightmares for so many years, was Barbara Gordon. And in his eyes, through the toxin, she looked like a giant, resplendent, shining white bat.

Chapter Text

Christmas Eve

It was a dark and snowy evening when Barbara made her way to Northern State Hospital. Gotham had essentially been renting a ward of the large Kirkbride building, a place to keep its strange and wild in the absence of a functional Arkham. She had finally convinced Bruce to back a restoration project, and the Intensive Treatment building was scheduled to be completed sometime close to Valentine's Day. But until then, her visits had to take place two hours north of the city...oh well. At least they had ramps.

The lobby was decorated with the sort of Christmas decorations they market to grade school teachers; cheerful, but stupid. She signed in on a sheet sitting in front of a window of shatterproof glass.

"Merry Christmas, Ms. Gordon," said the nurse manning the desk.

"Merry Christmas, Michael," she replied as they buzzed her through a set of doors.

Jonathan was already in the visiting room. Had been, apparently, for around a half an hour. She was a bit later than usual, thanks to the roads. The room was full of families visiting their acutely ill loved ones, and a handful of guards, just in case.

He was sitting at the only open table, a copy of Jung's writing on archetypes in one hand, his glasses perched on his newly reconstructed nose.

"Tommy did a great job," she said as she sat down, "The bruising's almost gone."

He nodded, "How are you?"

He hated all of the plastic surgery he was being subjected to, surgery from a heavily-supervised Thomas Elliot, who had been declared unfit for trial in the charges he had incurred on Halloween night and sent upstate as well. She didn't necessarily like it either; yes, it made him handsome, quite handsome, but at the cost of his true face...she had been spending her free time at home creating a mask from the mug shots taken of him that night, so that he might be able to wear that face again.

Still, they both agreed that accepting the surgeries offered was an important part of the plan to convince the hearing board that he had reformed.

"I'm well, you?"

"Well."

"They're inspecting your present," she said, "You know how they are."

He nodded, "How is Nightmare?"

"Very good. Just misses Daddy."

In this room they didn't dare discuss Nightmare candidly, or the notes she took back and forth for them twice every month or so, their private communications.

"And Dread?"

"The case is still being reviewed, but we're optimistic," she smiled, "I think it's only a matter of time before you own him officially. When that happens, I'll bring him down to the stables at Gotham Park."

He smiled at that, "And I can finally take you riding...eventually."

She nodded, "Has the food gotten any better?"

He shrugged, "They allow a vegetarian option now. I still hide my eggs in my coffee.

She cracked up, swatting his arm across the table, "Shh! You'll get caught."

"They can't force-feed me powdered eggs. Not with the advocate I named."

They shared a moment of warmth, their hands touching in the center of the table. It was strange to see his nails clean and filed...though they were still on the long side.

"Ms. Gordon," said the guard as he handed her a green bag with red tissue.

"Thanks, Charlie," she sat it on the table and slid it across to Jonathan, "Well, go on."

He blinked at it. It was the first real Christmas gift he had been presented, and he tried not to show any emotion regarding it. But as he opened it, his hands trembled slightly, and he gasped when he saw it...a copy of his beloved Collected Writings of Carl Jung, Volume I, bound in leather, stamped in gold, and imprinted with the words "Property of Dr. Jonathan Crane."

His voice shook as he thanked her.

"You're welcome," she squeezed his hand.

"Really," he said, running his thumb across her skin, "This...no one's ever done anything this thoughtful for me."

"Merry Christmas, Jonathan."

"Merry Christmas, Barbara."

He was smirking, and she knew that smirk.

"Uh oh," she said, "What's up?"

"Oh nothing," he said, looking over to Charlie, who nodded and left the room.

"What's going on?" she pressed.

"They've been allowing me to play a little in the laboratory," Jonathan said, "Under strict supervision, of course, as with Thomas."

Charlie returned with a cage, inside of which slept a large white rat, and a small black case that looked like it could be used to hold eyeglasses. He sat them both down on the table between Barbara and Jonathan, and the latter opened the little wire door and reached in to pick up the rodent.

"What's all this?" she asked with a laugh.

"This is Mortimer," he nuzzled the rat a little, "And he's like you."

He sat little Mortimer down on the table, and he began to walk around, dragging his back legs behind him.

"Oh..." she whimpered, holding out her fingertips. Mortimer came to her, nibbling her fingernails in pursuit of any remnants of the French fries she had eaten on the drive up.

Jonathan was opening the case, muttering to himself as he loaded a syringe with clear liquid.

He held the rat with one hand, his finger moving the fur away from its lower spine, just above its pelvis, where a small scar was. With the other, he held the syringe, pressing the needle between two of its vertebrae. At first, the rat began to shriek, loud enough that the rest of the room turned to look at them. Barbara turned red, looking around the room.

“Jonathan, this really isn’t the place.”

He let go of the rat and held up his finger, with a quiet, “Shh.”

For the rat had gone silent. And slowly, with the shaking timidity of a newborn, it placed its feel on the table, put weight on its back legs, and began to walk.