Hello there lovely readers :)
I have an amazing story to tell you from my funky little brain. First of all, an original history of Jonathan Crane explaining why he's a total nut-job.
And secondly, a sequel to TDKR in which... well, you'll find out. Let's just say I've got an awesome story arc and brilliant character development ideas for Crane.
As for my OC Alice, she's a real firecracker. You'll love her.

I LOVE REVIEWS. I need reviews. Without them I lose faith in myself and stop writing. So please, please, just make that little effort to write me a line when you've read each chapter? I'll love you so much forever! Thank yoouuu!

'Science of Fear' by The Temper Trap.

There's a science to fear, it plagues my mind
And it keeps us right here, and the less we know
The more we sit still, my baby's stuck on a road
That leads to nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere.

Fear Will Find You

Something was finally happening to Gotham. Something bad.
Truth be told, anything that happened to the city nowadays was a bad thing. Occurrences, events, they all boiled down to one thing: a disruption of the system. The order that had been so painstakingly kept since Gotham's forcible quarantine was under threat. There were stirrings amongst the masses, like the ripples of a looming creature in murky waters. Rumours were spreading throughout the city, leaping and surging as only fire could. A rising fire. It crackled and whispered that a symbol had been seen, burning across the façade of a building against the inky black of last night's sky.

The symbol of the bat.

Doctor Jonathan Crane had continued business as usual despite the whispers. It was somebody scaremongering, in all likelihood. A foolish youth who didn't quite grasp the advantageous position that Bane had granted to this city, who preferred to rebel against their own liberty. So typical. So commonly obtuse.

Did nobody ever use their brains around here?
Nobody ordinary, at least.
That was alright. The ordinary were in the good hands of the elite. His hands.

As Crane wrapped up his seventh case of the day – the verdict being 'innocent' for variety's sake – the latest news burst into the kangaroo court, in the form of a wildly enthused citizen.

"The cops! The cops are out! There's a huge fight going on!"

Jonathan felt a cube of ice slip slowly, slowly down with a soft plunk into his stomach and settle there. Apparently this was going to be a difficult day for him. The only sign of his alarm, however, was a slight twitch in the corner of his mouth – nobody in this room was going to catch a whiff of fear from him.

Bane would have it under control. The cops were up against an entire city of criminals, old and newly converted. They were entering a world where money no longer meant a thing, where there were no laws to be upheld but the few rules of the multitudes. Multitudes who had no intention of returning to their former capitalist state.

Or did they?

Many of the crowd below him wanted to go out and join the fight, but nobody seemed willing to clarify whose side they would be supporting. He suppressed a smirk despite the uneasy heave of his gut that the thought produced. Funny, the psychology of the mob. They had been all too happy to condemn their superiors right here, in this court of thriving decadence. All too happy to play with their subversive democracy. Now that the law enforcers were up and about again, would they run back to the mother's apron strings? Would they cower, meek and repentant, honest and obedient?

Or would they join the forces that fed their freedom?

Crane's fate rested on their sway. If they joined the cops and swelled the uniform's ranks it would mean the breakdown of his carefully constructed order, and the restoration of their 'harmony'. It would mean jails and asylums and rounding up every last criminal in the city all over again. But if they supported Bane…

He opened his mouth to say something, to sow the seeds of doubt immediately in Bane's favour. Then he shut it again. Being caught out trying to trick them was a thousand times worse than staying silent. He would have to let them get the ball rolling, blend into the debate, the small voice at the back of their minds, until…

No ball rolled, however. Barely a word was spoken. For a time he was confused, and then it dawned on him.
They were afraid to go out.

He laughed to himself, low and long. How quaint. How very telling. They were too pissing scared for their own lives. After all this liberty they would still rather have decisions made for them. His lofty position, as always, seemed incredibly fitting. One of the shepherds gazing upon the flock.

Bane would handle the 'authorities'. They certainly weren't going to get any help from this quivering bunch.

Not half an hour had passed. Crane had initiated another series of trials to keep them happy, with death and exile sentences all round. They should remember his power here. His elected power.

He waited for the moment when another messenger would come. The cops are rounded up at Blackgate, Bane put them all in cells. We can get back to normal.

Just when he thought he couldn't wait any longer -

Somebody flung themselves in through the double doors with the force of a madman, hollering for attention.
A little overzealous for an announcement about return to order. Crane leaned forward in his chair.

"There's a big chase on! I just saw – outside – the trucks – they're chasing the trucks!"

Uproar ensued.
Chasing the trucks? Who? The cops? What did it mean? Was there danger?

The messenger's brow was slick with sweat, his eyes bulging. Just an ordinary middle-aged citizen, driven to near madness by the unuttered information still poised on his tongue. Crane called for silence with the gavel. It must be important.

Perhaps the bomb was going to be detonated. Perhaps Gotham's reckoning really was coming to an end.

"Speak," he commanded, voice reverberating around the hall like a small clap of thunder.
"I saw him. I saw his aircraft. He's here."

The timid breath of every person in the hall could be heard.

The warmth drained from Crane's cheeks as though his very blood had recoiled deep within him, into hiding.
That definitive, unique fear began to claw its way throughout his nervous system.
The only brand of fear that he both relished and abhorred.
Fear of the Batman.

If he got hold of that bomb – if Bane was defeated…

He scoffed, suddenly, loudly. Bane couldn't be defeated. Bane had broken the Batman, and he would do it again.

But in the same moment something else caught his attention. Something in the air, something insinuated.
The breathing. The breathing was getting louder.

Crane glanced slowly about the room from his mountain of desks, filing cabinets, reams of papers. His eyes travelled subtly along his cheekbones, chin tilted up in a perfect mask of authority. His knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair. He adjusted his glasses and saw his fingers shaking almost imperceptibly in front of him.

Batman was Bane's trouble – but just the notion of his return had sparked something in the people of Gotham. Different to the news about the cops. More powerful. Inspired. Real.

Perilous ideas were entering their minds.
A dangerous hope was beginning to fan their spirits.

"Bane will have the situation under control!" Crane spat, detesting his own voice, pitched just a little too high.
If they sensed the fear in his bones… Well. He was an expert on the hazards of fear and its effects.

"Maybe he's come to save us," came the coy suggestion from somewhere across the hall.
A ripple, unspoken but definite, rolled across the sea of faces.

Jonathan rapped the gavel on its sounding block. "Anyone so much as mentions his name, you'll be exiled on the spot. Bane doesn't tolerate insubordination!"

That certainly shut everybody up for a good few seconds. He eyeballed them, one by one, in the alert and disconcerting manner that only a lucid lunatic could pull off. Push the big buttons. Pull out all the big names. Nip them in the bud. He was practised in the art of intimidation, and he flouted it now, silver-tongued and sharp.

He could hold them off with words. He didn't need toxins to scare the living shit out of these miserable common wretches. He had the bulk of Bane to hide behind, the massive bulk of all of Bane's shocking public terrors. If he was going to hide behind anybody, it would be the man who snapped physicists' necks on the edges of exploded football stadiums. The invisible, huge outline of thick muscles stood beside him now, horrifying even as a memory.

But then another voice, cutting through the musty air with a cold blade of dread, piercing even Crane's skin.
"What if it goes off?"
"Well, then we die," he shot back, keeping his jaw tight.

Luckily nobody else seemed to feel the need to stay calm.

"We need to get to cover!"
"Underground! We need to go underground!"
"It won't make any difference," he tried to say, but the clamour was rising and people were shifting.
"We should go now. We should find somewhere."
"The cops are out of the sewers. There'll be a hole where they got out."
"They won't be deep enough! We need to get off the island!"
"How? Swimming? You fancy taking a mile-long dip in minus zero?"

Like the many limbs and joints of some giant insect, the company was beginning to jolt and flop haphazardly towards the doors, arguing and reprimanding and bickering along the way.

Crane felt a sudden keen pang of loss as he watched them, despite his overwhelming relief.
What if they never came back?
What if this really was the end of his reign in this arena? He had been so very happy here. So content.
It had been almost as wonderful as the first time he had worked under the League of Shadows. The same monumental sense of purpose. The only drawback was his fixed position – last time he had been able to stretch his mind, experiment with that incredible toxin and revel in his scientific progress. Ra's had been a worthy leader. Bane, meanwhile, already had a higher plan set out that did not include Scarecrow's brilliant mind. Only his hunger for strict authority.

Here he had taken a seat amongst the gods, wielding a weapon of fear that had nothing to do with chemicals.

Real influence was so much greater, more magnificent than its artificial counterpart. The hammer of Thor, was this gavel. The might of civilisations was inlaid into its handle. Its blunt wooden face was the face of Justice, brought down with a crash onto the sounding block of the disorderly, undeserving public.

He had read a copy of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised specially for his new role. It explicitly stated that the Chair should not lean on the gavel, juggle or toy with it, or use it to challenge, threaten or emphasize remarks. With boundless relish he had spent all the next day refuting every single one of Robert's silly instructions.

A man of real influence should have no rules, except for those he imposed upon others.

So Crane watched them go, the blundering foolish things, and almost loved them as they made their uncertain way out of his care, into a new world which may well turn out nicely for them, but which would undoubtedly go badly for him, however things unfolded.

He sat back and ran a hand across his brow, through his hair, exhaling tremulously.

The Batman. Bane. The Bomb. They coursed through him and mingled, confused themselves in a panic. Would Bane triumph? He must triumph. He must crush the Batman again. But what if he didn't? Would Bane detonate the bomb rather than have Gotham fall back into the wrong hands? Were they all going to die?

Was Jonathan afraid of death?

Now that the immediate threat of being eaten alive by his subjects wasn't clogging his thoughts - now that he was alone – he seemed to be facing certain death of one sort or another. Here he was, quite abruptly, at the end, for he felt that it truly was the end coming swift like a dark winged animal towards him. If the Batman was returned, involved, then nothing would withstand him, not the strongest pillar of the oldest building in the city.

One way or another, something had to break.

He sat in silence, clutching the gavel with his thin pallid fist that trembled when he moved it. So he sat in stillness too. He wondered if he had any regrets, apart from the last few moments in which he had suddenly and irretrievably lost his authority, his ability to dominate and terrify, the only thing that really mattered.

… He began to speculate whether he dared to breach the walls that he had so carefully erected between his controlling mind and his hibernating soul.

Should he begin the long descent to that basement of his heart?
Blow the dust from outdated photographs?
Ponder over boxed memories, dig up the remnants of a long-repressed history?

If this bomb really were to go off, shouldn't he go with it in true, undeniable knowledge of his own convoluted being, his psyche, his very essence?

He wished that he had his mask. He would have so liked to have gone out of this world as nobody but Scarecrow. Unafraid, uncomplicated, indomitable. Without the actual mask in his hands, he just couldn't quite do it.

He had only been frozen there for ten minutes, distracting himself from the impending inevitable, the slippery seconds.

There was a shudder, a tremor of the earth under him.
He closed his eyes and pressed his hands flat against his desk, breath rasping into his lungs and holding…
But nothing more happened.

Outside in the street he felt pulled harshly back into reality, into the city. The wind whipped at him, the smells surrounded him, the sun beat down on him. So many awful elements. But there – people were running, pointing, shouting. More fiery rumours were tearing through the streets. He could hear it swelling far off, the noise, like the drone of a hive.

Soon it would make real words and his torture would be over. Or rather, would begin.

Sure enough: "It detonated out over the bay! You can see, just around that corner!"
Then, running in the opposite direction: "Bane is dead! Batman killed him! Bane is dead!"

Why, why had the bomb not gone off at the heart of the city and blown him peacefully away?

He didn't have long to reflect. Soon he heard the tell-tale sounds of practised quick-marching feet, a squad of police closing in far too hastily for his comfort. He ducked back into the hall.

Of course he would be their priority, with the superior orchestrator of Gotham's reckoning already dead. Of course they couldn't wait to get their hands on him and throw him back to the vultures at Arkham – or worse, Blackgate, even if the Dent Act had been shot to hell.

He cursed as he veered about the empty hall. To run? Run where?
Away. To be hunted down like a dog, and probably shot like one too. Chaos was still rife. Nobody would bat an eyelid.

He stood in the shadow of his desk mountain and panicked at the sound of footfalls just outside.

"Search the whole place!" Gordon yelled as he scanned the room, waving his team in. "I want him caught and I want him alive, check upstairs, check everywhere! If this guy gets away we've got big trouble. Move!"

A full raid. Every cupboard in every room. The roof. The goddamn basements. Every corner and cranny and bare inch of South Gotham Courthouse scoured. And nothing. Nothing to show. Gordon ordered the troops to check the outside of the building and then the nearby streets, but it looked hopeless. The rat was gone, no knowing where, the only upside being that he couldn't get out of the city. Not unless he felt like exiling himself over that ice.

He'd catch the scrawny twisted bastard. If it was the last thing. The last thing.

Squashed in utter darkness, trying to listen over the rasping of his coarse breath and his hammering heart, Crane sweated under the shelter of a desk for five minutes more, before he finally pushed the filing cabinets aside and made room for himself to wriggle out, into the immense maze of wooden furniture that had once formed his seat of power.

Up he crept, up and out, until he was blinking in the brightness of the hall again, like a mouse from its networks of underground tunnels. And like a mouse he scampered to the door, peeked out, and saw that the coast was clear.

He collapsed in an ecstasy of terrified relief and laughed aloud, laughed at Jim Gordon's raging voice – Jim Gordon who was very much alive and not exiled, it seemed – and at the close call, so very close.

He laughed because he had never seen this coming. Bane's death, the bomb – and himself, Crane, still at large. He would never have thought he could outstrip Gordon so easily. The mindless forces in uniform, yes. That was all too simple. But Jim Gordon, failing to look in the most obvious of places!

The only question was – what was a poor old Scarecrow to do now?

If you've managed to get to the end of this looong chapter, a) I hope you liked it, and b) remember I live on reviews so leave a little comment!