"When I'm alone"—the words tripped off his tongue

As if to be alone were nothing strange.

"When I was young," he said; "when I was young…."

-from Alone, by Siegfried Sassoon

…

The city had given him a decaying house that sprawled like a dead beast on the corner of a street near the school. A house with peeling paint and a sickly yard infested with weeds. A sun-bleached roof that wept each time it rained.

His classmates saw the house every day as their school bus rolled by, their noses pressed white to the dirty windows in rabid curiosity. They knew the scarecrow-boy lived there, and would watch the house slide past with a fascination made keener by their spite.

The city had given him a skinny mother who coughed too much and listened to opera on a battered old radio that gathered dust by the lemon-scented sink. He thought of her as a willow tree, always sagging, sighing, ailing. On some days, she would begin tending to the bloody noses and cut lips before she forgot what she was doing and absently draw away to half-complete some new task, leaving him sitting in the kitchen with a wad of bloody tissues and tears in his eyes.

And the city had given him his father. A father who didn't look like his son and wasn't really a father at all, just a man. A stranger who couldn't hold a job for more than a week at a time. Every day, the stranger would leave at six in the morning and return at five in the evening. The front door would open and close, and then the stranger would sit in a battered chair in their living room. He'd light a cigarette and stare vacantly out the window, as if something of his were missing.

Gotham had never been kind to him. But she could be cruel. Oh, yes, she could be cruel.

And she was clearly feeling spiteful today.

Eleven bruises and five scrapes on his knees and elbows. His preadolescent attackers had been neither coordinated nor inescapable. But they were extraordinarily familiar with the artless procedure of finding a deserted corner of the schoolyard where the freak could be antagonized on a daily basis.

When the last bell rang, he tried to slip away unseen, heady euphoria washing over him as he realized he was upon the threshold. Almost gone. But his hated, unnatural height quickly betrayed him, try as he might to disappear in his usual slouch.

The crunch and creaking scrape of their kittenishly small shoes echoed his own long, ungainly strides. They hadn't forgotten him. They were only a few bold steps behind.

He chewed a chapped lip, clutching his books closer to himself, as if he didn't know whether to protect their precious contents with his life or use them as his shield. The world before him was seen shattered through the broken lenses of a pair of nearly useless old glasses.

Goading whispers began once the classroom was behind them.

"Look at his clothes. They're all ragged and old 'cause his mommy doesn't love him."

"—doesn't love him because he's a nasty old scarecrow."

"Scarecrow!" Shrieks of laughter met the familiar nickname, flung like a dagger at his retreating, stooped form. He hung his head even lower, wanting to disappear.

"He can't 'ford new clothes anyways. The Cranes are poor. Don't have a penny. His daddy doesn't work."

"My mommy says that's not his real daddy. His real daddy's gone or dead or something."

"He's had those shoes since kindergarten. See his old socks sticking out the back?"

Giggles bubbled through the air. A boldly-thrown rock hit one of the protruding shoulder blades. He flinched in momentary pain, but pushed his slipping glasses further up the bridge of his nose and trudged on. He'd long since become accustomed to the routine, the cruelty, the unrelenting hate.

Her classroom was only a few dozen steps away. Don't let anything happen. Please don't let anything happen. He would die of shame to have her see him with fresh wounds.

"He lied when we wrote our essays about summer. Didn't go nowhere. Didn't make friends. Lying skeleton-boy."

"He lied about it 'cause nobody likes him, stupid."

"Nobody. Stupid know-it-all scarecrow."

"—so skinny 'cause he doesn't have money for lunch."

"Skinny like an ugly bag of bones."

Tears stung his eyes, and he tried frantically to wipe them away with the bony palm of a hand. Too late.

"Look! He's crying!" More laughter, as if his misfortunes were a cartoon carefully tailored for their amusement.

The classroom wasn't far now; the door was open and he could see inside.

He drew a heady final breath, as if about to submerge himself in water, and then ran towards the doorway, nearly tripping over his feet, disappearing into the warm, musty safety of the classroom.

"The Cranes are the poorest family in Gotham."

"In the world!"

That last barb was pitched just as she emerged in the doorway, arms folded.

Her gaze neither admonished nor accused the children. But they were struck dumb nonetheless by the immutably sobering presence of an adult. His once-vindictive classmates dispersed like a flock of birds, skipping homewards. Their merry chatter echoed like the sound of light rain, puddling and dripping behind them. Their malice was forgotten until tomorrow; now, there was homework to be done and cookies to be eaten and toys to be had.

Amy Lancaster watched them go, shaking her head before turning to look at the huddled mass of knobby elbows and knees behind her.

"How was your day, Jonathan?" She asked quietly, voice like the warm yellow heart of a rose. Her milk-white arms dropped gently to her sides, like wings.

Amy was slight and thin, like him, but as short for her age as he was tall for his. Even on the odd day when she wore heels, she could barely look over Jonathan's head.

She wasn't terribly pretty, with wide, dollish eyes the color of weak brown tea and messy yellow hair always falling in wisps from its weary knot. Her clothes were old, and often too big for her skinny frame, but beautiful.

Hearing her speak, he uncoiled himself from his customary slump and straightened, a turtle emerging from his shell.

"Not very good," he mumbled honestly, quiet and ashen-soft, carefully setting his books on the nearest desk and arranging them so that their spines lined up in a perfect stack. He could make them perfect, if nothing else. He could leave the books alone here and not worry. No one would come to rip out pages or write mean words on the covers when his back was turned.

Amy smiled, as if he'd told her a subtle joke. Unlovely as she was, she reminded him of the sun. "Mine wasn't very nice, either." Her doelike gaze fell on the fastidiously aligned books.

"What are you reading now?"

"About birds. And that big one—the green one—is about—"

"Sociology?" She exclaimed aloud in surprise as she read the title.

The quiet boy nodded. "Got it from the library."

He carefully slid the book out from the neat pile, offering it to her, waiting for her approval. Eyes soft, she reached for the fat volume. The sleeve of her faded cardigan sweater pulled back, revealing a macabre bracelet of dark indigo bruises.

His eyes fixed on the marks immediately, emotionless but nonetheless pinioned to the spot.

Amy noticed. Suddenly, his teacher seemed frail, sad, all-delicate as a newborn bird. "Oh. That's—oh, well," she stammered lightly, "it's—nothing, nothing. An accident. He—just an accident, that's all."

She yanked the treacherous sleeve back down over her fragile wrist and turned away, glancing desperately over at her desk. But his impression of her weakness lingered like a stain.

"I—I have to grade some tests today, but you can erase the board if you'd like. You know I can't reach." A forced, quick smile was produced solely for him before she sat.

Accepting the task with silent sobriety, he walked to the chalkboard. He paused to adjust his perpetually sliding glasses, then set to work.

Here, his long arms and legs were an advantage, not another reason to trip and fall and be teased; he didn't have to stretch and strain to reach the top of the board like the other children did.

"Did you at least have fun in my science class today?"

He nodded gravely, looking sideways at her with those sad but oddly serene blue lavender eyes.

Once he'd finished cleaning the board, he gathered his books and made a mute departure.

Despite the silence, Amy Lancaster knew he was grateful. The thanks lingered like warm honey in the air.

The road home was now empty of other students, and it was safe.

…

One day not long after, the principal came to visit Amy. She was shelving books with Jonathan when the balding, middle-aged man entered.

A single look into his stern, lined face made her tuck some loose strands of hair behind her ear and whisper, "Perhaps you'd better go outside for a moment, Jonathan."

Unquestioning, the lanky child obeyed. He walked out to the playground, a bleak place cooked by the yellowish afternoon light, one ear turned toward the voices that carried over the warm, cracked asphalt.

"—parents have been calling me. Saying that their children have mentioned how you've been regularly allowing Jonathan Crane into your classroom after school," the principal was saying. His nervous, pale eyes roved the walls, the windows, the chalkboard. "They are somewhat concerned about the, ah, nature of your relationship. And since this has been brought to my attention, so am I." He shifted his weight nervously in the silence, tugging at the buttons on his jacket.

"Mr. Orrick, I see what is being implied here and I can assure you the 'relationship' is purely platonic," Amy replied coldly. She was the shorter of the two, but she'd always known how to make herself seem taller in a pinch. "The boy is incredibly bright. He could attend any college in the nation in—in just three or four years. His work in this science class is—"

"Ms. Lancaster." He raised a cautioning hand, and she reluctantly fell silent. "I'm not looking for an evaluation. I'm here for answers. I understand that you are fairly new to the field of education. As one educator to another, I advise you to refrain from favoring students, especially to such a questionable degree. Setting one of our children so far above the rest, even in a 'platonic' manner, is entirely unacceptable. The only reason that the Depression hasn't brought about the closure of West Gotham Elementary already is because of our untarnished reputation—"

Now it was Amy's turn to cut the principal off. She forgot her fear and the hidden circles of bruises on her arms and throat; her voice became as firm and cold as December ice. Jonathan listened with an empty heart.

"'Questionable?' Protecting a student from his classmates is questionable? Jonathan's peers fear his intelligence, and the only way they feel they can retaliate is to use physical and verbal violence. Is it wrong—is it 'questionable' for me to shelter him from their cruelty?"

They feared him?

"He is a prodigy, Mr. Orrick. A prodigy whose ideas and imagination are being cowed into silence by the disdain of his class. Who is there to show him that it's acceptable to be a thinker? To tell him that, in time, he is going to stand head and shoulders above these other children?"

"I'm sure he could manage to make the innovative discovery on his own someday, Ms. Lancaster." The principal's voice made it clear that he was already bored with the conversation. It sounded as if he were examining the pattern on a rug.

Amy heaved a rough, husky sigh, one slim hand going to massage her temple as she looked bravely up at her employer, eyes liquid but fierce.

"Mr. Orrick, one cannot exorcise his own demons alone. I am going to help this child. He will not be a martyr in the name of conformity just because I thought 'he could manage.'" Her lips pinched together, white. "I am going to help him."

The man shook his head, despairing easily. "Very well. But if you do anything—anything—to call this establishment's respectability into question during all this fuss, I will—" His voice trailed off into a murmur too low for Jonathan to hear.

When he left the room, he didn't even look at Jonathan as he passed.

Amy stood alone in the classroom for a moment, staring at the place where the principal had stood. Her fists were still and white-knuckled at her sides.

"Jonathan, you can come back in now," she said when he crept like a ghost to the doorway. Her limpid eyes didn't move, but he knew she saw him.

"Should I go home now?" He asked, staring at his feet. His face burned to think that she had caught him listening.

"You can if that's what you want."

"My mom might be worried." Or she might just be listening to another performance of Tosca on the radio, sobbing into a dishrag as the smell of his father's tobacco and misery filled the house.

"Can you wait? Just a moment?" Her voice was soft and forlorn, as if she were praying.

Startled, he hesitated. She came to where he stood. Knelt in a slow flurry of pastel-candy skirts, like a dancer. She gripped his shoulders, smelling of chalk and cinnamon, like she always did.

"Listen to me," his teacher said hoarsely, young eyes suddenly too sad to be young anymore. "Please listen, Jonathan. No matter what they will say, you are the most gifted person I know.

"Don't be afraid. Don't ever be afraid. I know you're afraid now. I—I know you're afraid every day when you come to school. But don't fear your wisdom, just because they tell you to. And they will. They'll tell you to condemn what you are because they're jealous and scared that you'll be better than them. Use your intelligence and you will go farther than any of them. Use your mind and you will win. Promise, Jonathan. Promise me you will."

She was trembling, and tears now coursed silently down her face. Her fingers on his bony shoulders were rigid, shaking, cold. But in that instant she seemed stronger, braver, lovelier than anyone he had ever known.

"I promise."

The indescribable, angelic something in her which had been drawn so taut before relaxed. Her grasp loosed and lifted, but the memory of it remained.

When she opened her eyes again, and rose to her feet, she was the same Ms. Lancaster. Just a small, tired teacher with fraying ideals at the end of a day.

"Well," she said briskly, a summery smile appearing on her face, "You'd best get along home before it starts getting dark."

…

The day that the city took Amy Lancaster away was a balmy and warm one, in late spring. Just before school got out. The weather of the week before had been beautiful; through the grime and smoke, even the dim stars seemed brighter.

His classmates were surprisingly merciful that day, too preoccupied with the lakes they would visit and the friends they would see over vacation to bother him much. But despite the lack of childish animosity or threat of bodily harm, he went to her classroom out of sheer, timid adoration.

"It's a good thing you came," she said as she saw his angular shadow in the doorway, "I have a bunch of things I need to pack up in my car. Can you help?"

He could. The days were getting longer, and the dull nightmare which he called home would wait. Mother would be setting the table with a snaillike lethargy, her arms pale and long and slow; the man would be sitting in his worn chair, leaden-eyed. The warm evening breeze would be rasping through the shattered front window that had never been repaired.

They carried box after box to her old car. Amy explained optical illusions and kinds of stars and the speed of light. He listened hungrily, asking questions only when he was certain that he would not interrupt her sweeping stories. She told him that he should take chemistry and biology in high school, but to avoid physics.

"Chemistry and biology add flavor to the mystery, but physics ruins it completely," she said.

"I want to study people," he told her warily, after a happy lull in the conversation, "I want to learn how minds work."

"An excellent idea," she remarked approvingly. A warm, buttery taste rose in him when he saw—saw in the curve of her smile and the lightness of her eyes—that she truly thought it was.

It happened as they were working together to carry a huge globe towards the waiting car trunk.

Amy stopped walking suddenly, her eyes fastened on a place he couldn't see over the curve of the giant world.

"Oh," she breathed softly. It was a ghostly, terrible sound, like the last breath from her body. Jonathan halted, the heaviness of the globe forgotten.

He heard a car pull up by the school and screech to an awful halt, motor still running. Amy set down the globe as someone shouted her name in a harsh, scraping-iron voice. Her face became white and beautiful.

And afraid.

"Run," she hissed at him, "Run! Don't come back."

Disappearing had always been easy. Loping into the shadows, he clambered over the nearby bushes and crouched behind them, frozen as the premeditated scene laid itself out before him.

Now he could see the source of her shock: a burly man getting out of a black convertible, roaring vicious words and moving towards her with an unsmiling, predatory speed. Jonathan remembered the bruises and shuddered, huddling low and wary in the bushes.

She took a step back as the man advanced, one hand raised across as if to defend. But the fingers were wilted, without hope.

"Ian…"

"Why'd you leave me?" The man bellowed, gripping Amy by her pale throat, "Why'd you leave?"

Jonathan wanted to scream, to run, but he remembered what she had said. He would stay. She'd be all right. She would.

After all, she wouldn't have told him to stay where he was if she couldn't save herself.

Motionless, he watched as the man hit Amy again and again, shouting about broken promises and old fights and how worthless she was. Amy was quiet beneath his hands, eyes downcast, almost in reverence.

His heart thrashed about in his ribs like a living thing trapped. This was worse than his classmates, worse than his father's silence and his mother's indifference. This was evil. How had gentle, pretty Ms. Lancaster met this inhuman—thing?

She had finally found her voice and was screaming, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," when the man pulled out a knife.

Jonathan's knees buckled in raw shock and he had to grip the soggy dark earth for support. His stupid eyes were wide and horrified and seeing what he didn't want to see. The man gripped Amy's arm with his free hand, hauling her fiercely to her feet. She seemed drugged and limp now, resigned to the fate she knew would come.

In the knife went, and out, and in again, and Amy bled. She bled and died where the knife touched her heart.

The sun went away. But she shouldn't have. If what she had said only minutes ago about the speed of light and dying stars were true, he should still have seen her shine in the dark.

His breathing became jagged. His pulse thrummed angrily in his ears, fighting to shepherd sluggish, chilled blood through contracting veins. But his skin was cold and drawn tight over his bones.

The man straightened. He was nonchalantly looking at the crumpled body before him as he adjusted his dark jacket, running fingers through lank hair. So calm, as if he were about to say goodbye after a visit. He tossed the bleeding knife aside with a casual brutality that snapped the blade in two, then sped off in the black car that roared and bucked like a monster.

Tears came and came and didn't end. Somehow, Jonathan crawled home, keening softly like a creature in mourning, not looking back once. Afraid of what he would see if he did.

This was the only place that was safe for him now, terrible as it was, terrible and unfamiliar. He could hear an aria from The Marriage of Figaro winding its way towards the garish, pink-lit sky from the kitchen. It was joyful and made the house into something almost beautiful.

The city's laughter echoed, mocking and vindictive, in his ears.

I gave you something wonderful, she said with a careless toss of her cement-and-steel head, I gave you something wonderful and now I've taken it back. How do you feel about that, honey?

The bile rose in his throat, strong enough to make him cringe and squirm and tremble as if feverish. Surrounding himself in an eerie silence, he stole to his room without dinner and lay flat on the dusty rug. Dead, staring up at the stained and cracked ceiling. Everything in him felt dirty with hate, like poison.

"I hate you," he said through clenched young teeth, with all the single-minded vehemence a child can muster, hands turning into fists and then into hands again. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…"

In his mind, the city blackened, crumbled, perished a thousand times.

His mother, humming absently, forgot to call her son to the table for dinner. Disappearing had always been easy for him.

At exactly seven o'clock, he could hear the opera stop and the sound of the evening news begin to seep through his bedroom door.

A young science teacher, one Ms. Amy Lancaster, had been brutally stabbed to death in front of the elementary school where she worked. The murderer was presumed to be a former boyfriend, Ian Worth, who was also reputedly a member of one of the more violent gangs that lurked in Gotham's dark streets. Worth hadn't been apprehended yet, but the police force remained optimistic.

Jonathan knew Gotham was being cruel to him. He could smell the ridicule and mirth in the sweet, softening spring air.

That night, he promised himself that, when he was older and stronger and braver, he would be cruel back.

In a world beleaguered by AIDS, poverty, terrorism, and war, the last thing we need is another lovesick homage to Dr. Jonathan Crane à la Cillian Murphy. However, resisting the impulse to write such a tale has proved too vexing for me. So here's my two cents in this rapidly expanding genre; I hope you find the divine patience within yourselves to read and maybe even enjoy it, if at all possible.

Reviews, especially those featuring constructive criticism, are welcome.

Because I've only been running on what information I can glean from the newer Batman comics, books, and websites (regrettably, I wasn't around when Scarecrow first appeared in World's Finest #3), this first chapter is admittedly quite AU—everyone and everything besides Jonathan Crane himself are my characters and situations (with the exception of the Depression that is mentioned at one point—that, as we all know, is a concept derived from Batman Begins). While I can't make any changes to the text due to the restrictions generated by my plot, I'd love to hear whatever interesting details or snippets of information you may have to offer alongside your feedback.

Stay tuned,

Blodeuedd