Disclaimer: Squishy not mine.

www. freewebs. com/ catverse

Nine days after "When I Have a Little Girl."

The baby had his eyes.

It was a frightening thought.

The Captain insisted that just because she could be reduced to a quivering mass of goo by the song "Brown Eyed Girl" didn't mean other colorings didn't run in her family. Her mother and three sisters were all blue-eyed (and blonde, all but the youngest, and as wholesome-looking and all-American as the Brady women, a rather striking contrast to their oldest sister, in spite of the way she had mellowed since becoming, of all things, a mother.)

That youngest sister (the Captain said) looked so strikingly Scarecrow-ish that she was afraid to let him meet her stepfather, lest he suspect her mother of some infidelity.

Crane had never actually met the Captain's family, so he couldn't judge the truth of that statement for himself. And he couldn't quite accept that as an excuse for why the child always seemed to be staring at him with those intensely blue eyes that he had never seen anywhere else but in a mirror.

Most of Gotham assumed that the child was his, and those eyes didn't help. (Nor did the fact that the idiot nurse, frantic to get them out of her hospital, had insisted that the Captain couldn't name her child "?" and proceeded to helpfully fill in the surname Crane, making the same assumption everyone else would. Of course, the fact that he had come with her to the clinic and threatened permanent damage to the doctors who were too afraid to admit a wanted criminal without calling the police first had probably reinforced her opinion.)

Very few other villains would have kept those three girls around, after all, without using them the way the Joker used Harley Quinn. And he'd had ample opportunity to do so. Quite a few people would have been surprised (and likely amused) that he had never touched them. Even more surprising (and amusing) was the fact that he'd occasionally had to lock them out of his room. He, Jonathan Crane, the last man anyone would have expected to have three women purring at him like cats in heat.

Male villains had been looking at him differently these past few months, with a kind of respect that had nothing to do with his brilliance or his toxin, or even anything that he had done to Batman. It annoyed him to no end that he was suddenly more of a man in their eyes because he had "proven" his virility by "fathering" a child that wasn't even his.

It wasn't as if she looked enough like her real father for any of these dim bulbs to make the connection.

Not that she looked like anything human now, bright red and screaming against her mother's shoulder. He had been standing there watching for a full ten minutes, and he wouldn't be able to swear that the baby had ever stopped screaming long enough to take a breath.

The Captain hadn't noticed him yet, although he was standing in plain sight. She was utterly preoccupied with the baby, pacing around the room, jiggling her slightly, patting her back, singing a lullaby…none of which had any effect whatsoever on the crying child.

"Si zhi shi shizi, shi zhi zhi shizi. Zhi shizi bu ke chi, shi shizi bu ke si," she sang desperately, bobbing her head up and down to accentuate the proper tones. "Four stone lions, ten paper lions. Paper lions cannot be eaten, stone lions cannot be torn."

Kitten screamed. The Captain tried another.

"Huimao tiao, huaniao jiao, huimao tiao qi zhua huaniao. Huaniao pa huimao, batui jiu taopao…stop crying!" She burst into tears herself. "Why won't you stop crying?"

"Babies cry," he said. "Did that never occur to you before?" She turned around to look at him for the first time, utterly wounded.

"But my baby hates me," she sobbed. "She won't stop crying. She hasn't stopped crying in nine days. She won't even sleep!" She was looking distinctly wild-eyed, and in spite of the enjoyment he knew could be derived from seeing her in such a state, he felt compelled to put an end to all this, if only for the sake of blessed silence.

"This might be easier if you got some sleep. Why don't you ask one of the others to babysit before you collapse?" She sniffled pathetically. Kitten wailed.

"They're asleep. I don't want to wake them up. They've been so great…helping me out…all this time…" She sobbed, and he took a step back, just in case she decided to throw herself at him and cry on his shoulder.

"You don't have to wake them yourself. Just get that little siren within a hundred feet of them; they won't be able to resist."

"Did she wake you up?" the Captain asked, anguished.

She had, but he hadn't been sleeping well, anyway. He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand.

"If you don't want to get them up, I will. Find a place to sit. Now," he snapped, when all she did was stare at him. She glanced back at the couch and wobbled slightly. He sighed. "Oh, for the love of—let me hold her." She looked alarmed. "Just until you get yourself comfortable. If I have to watch you pace around that coffee table one more time, I'm going to start tearing my hair out."

"You promise you won't hurt her?" she said dubiously.

"Why would I?" Aside from the fact that it's a screaming little monster that will probably relieve itself on my shirt the moment I touch it?

"Okay…just…be very, very careful."

She handed over the baby, who stopped screaming immediately.

"It…stopped," he said into the heavy silence. The Captain sank down onto the couch with a sob.

"She does hate me!"

"Don't be ridiculous, woman. She doesn't hate you. She's just a contrary little creature with a penchant for leaving everyone off balance. You should be flattered. She takes after you."

She gave him a watery smile and laid down.

"No, she takes after Aunt Al. If she took after me, she'd know that silence is golden. My mama said I never cried…"

He shifted Kitten to a more comfortable position and shoved a finger warningly at her face. She grabbed it with both hands and tried to put it in her mouth, which derailed his lecture quite handily.

"She's going to say the same thing about you one of these days," he told the baby. Then he gave up and let her suck on his finger. He could always wash his hands.

This seemed to make her happy enough, although he couldn't imagine her mother approved. He looked down, expecting a rebuke or at least an "I hope there's no toxin on your finger."

Her eyes were closed.

Uh-oh.

"Captain?" He nudged her. "Captain?"

She was out cold. With a sigh, he picked up a blanket that had been discarded there sometime in the distant past, and draped it haphazardly over his unconscious henchwoman.

This wasn't the first time she had gone and done this to him. Just when he thought another minute with her would have to result in someone's imminent demise, she managed to leave him alone with someone even worse.

He tried laying the baby across her mother's stomach, figuring that now that she had stopped squalling, she would fall asleep, too. Kitten had other ideas. The moment she found herself out of the safety (as she considered it) of his arms, her face turned a very familiar shade of red, and she started making the distressed whining noises that preceded true crying. He snatched her up again, and she went quiet.

"You do take after them," he grumbled. She very happily drooled all over his sleeve. He glared down at the Captain. Oh, she was going to pay for this.

But he might as well get some work done while there was no one awake to disturb him.

Down in the lab, he had a single test subject, a middle-aged woman so fresh he had barely begun to chip away at the veneer of her sanity. The day before, she had tried to put on a brave front for him. This time, there was no such pretense.

"No!" she cried, eyes going wide with horror when she saw him. "No, don't! Please!" Kitten squirmed, disturbed by the noise.

"Keep your voice down," he warned. The woman shuddered. She must be so confused; the day before, he had encouraged her to scream for the purposes of recording. He enjoyed the sounds of terror more than any music he had ever heard. And now he was telling her to be quiet. How deliciously befuddling.

"P-please don't hurt the baby," the woman whispered. Jonathan looked down at Kitten and almost laughed. As if he were actually going to do anything to the rotten little creature. His trio of minions had been dangerously creative even before they had spent so many months learning from him. He suffered under no illusion that he would survive if he damaged their darling pet. They were all fiercely protective by nature, and not even their irrational devotion to him would grant him total immunity from their wrath if he hurt their baby.

And they weren't the only ones who would be unhappy. Edward would be upset by the loss of his daughter, even if he hadn't quite figured out what to do with her—maybe or maybe not enough to seek revenge, but certainly enough to sever the alliance that had somehow sprung up between them.

And there was Batman, whose inexplicable fondness for children would make him a very unpleasant enemy for a child torturer to have. The Bat took enough of his actions personally without adding anything to the list.

No, he wasn't going to hurt her, and she seemed to know it. But their guest didn't.

There were hours of entertainment to be had from this. It would certainly be better than his original plan, which had been to look through the woman's purse for some keys to jingle at the child while he organized his notes.

"Hurt the baby?" he said mildly. The subject moaned in delicious agony. He fought down a grin and surreptitiously poked the infant to make her cry out.

This was going to be…oh, why lie to himself? It was going to be fun.

--

"She's so cute when she's sleeping," Al whispered to Techie. The Captain didn't stir.

"Like a baby," Techie replied. "Speaking of which, I wonder where she stashed Kitten."

A familiar mischievous look crossed Al's face.

"I'll get the hippo," she said, and ran off.

Techie felt guilty about that, but only a little. Al had plenty of methods of waking her friends, most of them far worse than the laughing hippo flashlight. Waking up to find Al at the foot of the bed with a smile and a glass of water…now that was the stuff of which nightmares were made.

(On cue, she heard the old pipes clang and bang as, elsewhere in the lair, Al turned a faucet. Someone was feeling sadistic.)

"Hey, Cap?" The Captain's only response was to turn her face farther into the pillow, revealing a good-sized puddle of drool where her mouth had been. She was in a pretty deep sleep and Techie hated to wake her, but knowing what Al had in store, she had a feeling her friend would forgive her.

She took a few steps closer, one hand outstretched to shake the Captain awake. Whether she was reacting to the sound of the footsteps or some barely reliable form of ESP was never quite clear in these situations, but the Captain gave a sudden twitch and rolled away from the alien presence before Techie could actually touch her.

"Whuh?"

"Um—good morning," Techie replied. The Captain pushed her hair back from her face and reached up to the bridge of her nose to adjust a pair of glasses that wasn't there.

"Um. When'd I go sleep?" At that point, Al re-entered the room with a plastic hippopotamus in one hand and a glass of water in the other. The Captain gave no indication that she understood the significance. "'Za baby?"

"We were going to ask you the same thing." At that, the Captain sat up a little straighter and stopped scrubbing at her eyes.

"What? Oh, God, is it still the first week? Tell me I didn't really lose her in the first week."

"Or set her on fire," Al said helpfully. The Captain looked stricken.

"Jonathan! Squishykins has her." She gasped. "She is on fire!"

"She's not on fire," Techie said. That was all she had time to say before the Captain nearly bowled her over running for the lab. Techie followed close behind her, proof that she didn't really believe her own words. And Al was just behind her, proof enough that there was legitimate cause for concern.

But maybe not that much cause for concern. They all stopped short at the top of the stairs, gazing down at a sight that would make for amazing amounts of blackmail if they ever chose to utilize it.

On the floor was the middle-aged tourist they had snatched just a few days before. Whether she was alive or dead was debatable; either way, she didn't seem to be in much shape to pose a threat, as the Scarecrow had turned his back to her. That worthy gentleman was sitting in a chair facing his lab table, wearing an unconventional costume consisting of his burlap mask and a red plaid bathrobe (presumably with pajamas underneath.) Cradled in his lap was the baby, with her little head encased in a makeshift air filter that looked something like a classic science fiction space helmet, and something like a bunny costume. It seemed to be doing its job—Kitten was happy enough, reaching up to try to grasp the shiny canister of fear toxin that Jonathan was dangling above her.

And he was explaining his toxin to her.

In baby talk.

Silently, the three women turned around and left the way they had come. But not before they heard him ask, ever so gently, "Can you say digitalis?"