A.N.: (x) marks the spot. Yarrg.
Outside. Fresh air for the first time in months, and he couldn't smell it. He wanted to tear off his mask…but it was too soon.
Lexy took hers off. Fool, fool. Could she make it any easier on him?
"There's a car," she said. "Should I hotwire it?"
"Do you know how?"
"Theoretically."
She smashed the window and opened the door. He readied his can of fear gas. Driving with broken legs wasn't going to be easy, but it was better than walking. He didn't have to get far.
There would be no pain for her, and only a second or two of fear. It was a better fate than he had granted to most of his associates. She would survive, and he would finally be free. Alone.
The engine came to life. Lexy cheered.
"You've done well, Lexy." She ran around to the passenger side of the car, where he was waiting. "You've done everything I could have asked and more. Thank you."
She hugged him.
Scarecrow raised the spray can.
"How could I not help you? That's what friends are for."
He hesitated.
Friends?
She let him go and saw the can pointed at her. A look of fear crossed her face, followed by hurt.
(x)
He pulled the trigger.
She let out a single agonized wail before she collapsed, staring up at the night sky with glazed green eyes that saw nothing of the real world.
"I'm sorry," he said honestly, "but what did you really expect?"
Now he pulled off his mask, taking a deep breath of the cool Gotham air, heavy with the scent of too much industry and too much humanity, sharp with the undercurrents of fear and darkness that he had always loved so much. This was his city. He was back.
A gunshot from the roof broke the still silence, and he flinched as the bullet went whizzing uncomfortably close to his ear. Lexy moaned faintly, and he spared a fraction of a second to wonder what frightened her most about the sound of a gun, and why.
He didn't waste time looking up at the roof, when he knew he couldn't see clearly as far as his own feet. He rolled the wheelchair around to the other side of the car, putting at least that much protection between himself and the shooter. His movement was agonizingly slow, leaving him winded before he even made it halfway to his destination. It was going to take him an eternity to regain what he had lost, if he had that chance at all.
He expected another bullet to find him at any moment, but it never came. When he made it to the safe spot, he looked up at the roof just in time to see something fall. The indistinct form could only be one thing, of course. He knew the motions of a person falling to his doom. He knew the sound of mortal fear, no matter how muffled and distant it may be. The only question was, who?
There was a sickening crack as the body hit the ground. All detectable signs of life evaporated. It was too heavy to be her, not heavy enough to be the bodyguard. That meant that she was probably the one with the gun. He looked up at the roof again, wondering if she was up there now, looking down at him. Or perhaps she was running down the stairs, eager to take him at close range. He had no way of knowing…but he didn't think she was in good enough shape to run.
He waved, just in case she was watching.
"See you around, Al." He forced her real name from his mouth, not even the formal Alice but the familiar Al that he had never had any reason to speak before. She couldn't hear him, but if she had, she would have recognized his victory in that single short syllable. She would have been furious at the knowledge that she had lost her power over him.
He was himself again.
He wrenched open the car door and dragged himself painfully into the driver's seat. It hurt—everything hurt—but it was not unbearable. Not anymore.
He was back.
He glanced at the child passed out on the sidewalk, and his expression softened for just a moment.
"You are a good kid," he said, and if there was no guilt in his voice, there was a certain amount of tenderness that would have been utterly foreign to him a year ago. Perhaps he had learned something from her. She would almost certainly have learned something from him.
He wished her luck.
And then, trembling with exertion, he used his hands to move his foot to the gas pedal.
And he drove away.
Into the night.
Back to Gotham.
A.N.: This ending felt the most realistic. But I guess some vestige of my blackened little soul still holds some kind of optimism. I don't know why or how. Oh, well. I'll just go do the dance of happiness now, I guess.