Redemption

Title: Redemption
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Jonathan Crane
Notes: This is totally movieverse (i.e. I'm disregarding almost everything I know of Batman that you can't draw from Batman Begins) as I'm rather petrified of going comicverse and violating canon in a horrible, unforgivable way. Apologies for any OOCness but since this is still early on in Batman's career, I'd hope it's forgivable. Also, I have no Word and no beta, so I'll quite cheerfully claim any and all errors as my own.
Summary: Dr. Crane comes to Batman for help. Bruce gets more than he bargained for.

***

When the time comes, he knows where to look. He always knows.

Time's passed but not too much - eight months, maybe nine? He's living in the city, in a palatial penthouse apartment right by Wayne Tower, while the contractors fuss over the house that won't be finished until well into the new year. He's not sure he likes it there in the centre of Gotham - he feels almost guilty for that, almost a traitor, because how can he save his city when living there makes him feel so damn dirty? It's the kind of dirt that clings tight, seeps into your pores until you can't scrub it away no matter how hard you try; it's the kind of dirty you feel from rubbing shoulders and clasping hands with the elite and corrupt and knowing it, really knowing it. He hates Gotham almost as much as he loves it, that he knows, but he'll never say Ra's Al Ghul was right. He can save this place, and he'll do it one person at a time if he has to. The way things look, he might just have to.

So, you see, to do what he does he has to believe in redemption. He has to believe that not everyone's lost in this mire of bad cops and bent judges and there's something, just a glimmer of something redeemable in everyone. In everyone. Because if he doesn't believe it then what has he got? He'd be just another vicious vigilante with no real purpose, no real drive beyond the instant gratification of his fist against flesh, the sickening, heartening crunch of a cheekbone under the heel of his boot. And he's more than that. He hasn't made himself more than a man to be no more than a thug.

That's why when Crane called, he didn't kill him. Once he might have killed a man for much less than Crane had done to him and his, but things had changed, places had changed, that wasn't him anymore. He didn't lay a finger on him, not one single little digit. He let him speak instead.

They met on a rooftop. It seemed fitting somehow, as he fired the grappler, heard the faint metallic chink of it fixing hard into place. He fairly flew up the side of the building and deposited himself on the rooftop in just a few short seconds, heart beating just a little too fast, Batman's glacial gaze slipping easily into place. It seemed fitting because in his head he had a picture of a restaurant, of a hotel, of a club, a bar, of a hundred different places where a man dressed as a bat couldn't meet a man dressed as a scarecrow and not expect a police escort for their exit, straight down to county lock-up. But Crane wasn't wearing his mask.

He was sitting by the door that led through to the stairs that led down to the building below - it was a hospital, incidentally, and that seemed fitting too - with his mask in his hands. He didn't look up as Bruce approached, just turned the mask over and over in his hands, picking idly at the rough seams with his nails. Bruce let him hear his footsteps crunching over the roof's thin gravel insulation. He didn't exactly get close though he had the antidote in his system; he stood back just far enough to seem logically cautious but not remotely respectful. And he waited, impatiently, for an explanation. None came. It was like he was lost in a world of his own, and he probably was for that matter.

"Crane," he said, and Crane looked up. He flinched.

"Scarecrow," came the correction, his tone matter-of-fact. He didn't look like a scarecrow, he still looked every inch the doctor - his suit was well-pressed, his shoes polished to a shine, clean-shaven, perfectly coiffed. He was even wearing his glasses and it was unnerving to see him so calm and collected, especially considering his state of mind the last time he'd seen him. Considering the mask in his hands.

"Crane," he said again, almost feeling like he was the crazy one but not putting his finger on why, exactly. "You called. I'm here. You're going to tell me what you want from me."

So he told him, and Bruce listened. He sat there looking up as Bruce towered over him and he talked, actually seemed quite coherent. If it hadn't been for the way he'd got in contact - Bruce had a feeling that sane people just don't leave freakish little scarecrow dolls lying around the city with coded messages stitched over their bodies - he might have actually believed he was sane. And in the end, when he'd finished his story, he didn't turn him over to the police as he'd planned to. He let him go. Considering what he'd told him, he didn't know what else to do.

It was something he'd overheard, something about arms smuggling though he wasn't so very clear on what, exactly. He was working as a makeshift MD for some reason that Bruce couldn't quite discern, working for what was left of the mob following Falcone's unceremonious exit, and from the sound of things this wasn't quite a shipment of slingshots and BB guns. It was something else, something big, something they might test and test on Gotham. So he didn't turn him in. He couldn't say why he took him so seriously, didn't know why he'd even turned up to meet him, but he did and he had. He could tell a lie from the truth, he thought, and Jonathan Crane, stark raving mad as he might have been, wasn't lying to him. Not a word of it was false, and so he let him go. He didn't turn him in. Apparently, he needed him.

After that, they worked together. It was a partnership that neither man exactly seemed to relish, though they shared a common goal and that was enough to bring Bruce back each and every night, even if he couldn't figure out exactly why Crane didn't just leave Gotham and head out to Metropolis or somewhere else that they wouldn't know his face. He asked once, on the spur of the moment as they met one night on the roof of Crane's mob-owned apartment, and Crane just said that he liked the place, didn't particularly want to see it go up in smoke if he could help it, even if he was still clearly a wanted man. He said there was too much to interest him in Gotham City for him to leave just yet and Bruce couldn't quite tell just what he meant by that or that look, that goddamn smirk as he said it. But he didn't really have time to psychoanalyse the psychoanalyst, so they just got on with the job. He didn't ask again.

And it took weeks, but it worked. No one in the gang believed that Crane could betray them - he was an even bigger nut that the rest of them put together, had already tried to bring Gotham down just a few short months beforehand, so why should he care about the loss of a few of their good citizens? Bruce watched him, sometimes directly through the skylight - right under their noses, so to speak - and sometimes via the video linkup that Crane had somehow managed to establish surreptitiously in his office, and in the end he came to the conclusion that either the good doctor was a spectacular actor or he really was a complete loon. The things he said, the nonchalant quips to his superiors that often earned him a backhand if not actual threats to his life, the way he once shoved a scalpel into one goon's thigh just to prove that he had nerve damage - Bruce had a suspicion that he wasn't faking. And he was getting worse all the time. It was a miracle that the operation succeeded when one of them skulking in alleyways dressed as a bat and the other was developing a nervous tic and a perverse sense of terribly inappropriate humour that was going to get him shot one of these days.

But they brought them down. A gunfight out at the docks and a well-timed anonymous tip to the Gotham PD and the city escaped a particularly grotesque demise via the thoroughly modern wonder of chemical weapons testing. Bruce was sore for a month from the fight that night and he wasn't sure if Crane had got away for a start, almost thought it might be better if he'd ended up as tasty, nutritious food for the fishes. But then he got a call, or rather a calling card. Maybe he wasn't working for the mob anymore but the Scarecrow was still alive and Bruce suddenly understood why he'd agreed to help; he'd been busy embezzling funds from his less than illustrious employers, just enough to set himself up in a shady little warehouse way under the police radar and out by the docks. Bruce couldn't quite bring himself to feel betrayed by it, either; he was actually sort of impressed in a way, even if the words never once passed his lips. It really was impressive work for a man that clearly belonged in a mental asylum. And not as a doctor, despite his long list of qualifications.

And he didn't turn him in. He thought about it but he kept on feeding him such choice information; they developed a slightly more sophisticated method of communication over the next few weeks so that Jonathan could give up the freakish little dolls that Bruce had to admit sort of gave him the creeps, and he turned informer quite willingly. Sometimes Bruce would even stop by the warehouse where he lived and apparently also worked - he provided cheap back-room medical assistance of which Bruce couldn't say he wholeheartedly approved, and there was a lab... he didn't ask what he did there for a couple of weeks or more because he still had the Joker to deal with but when that mess was done with, such as it was, when he asked, Jonathan told him without reserve; it was cheap back-room medication for his cheap back-room clinic. Bruce let it slide. He figured he'd tip off the police about it at some point and see if they bothered to make a move. He never has and the police either don't know or don't care. In the meantime, he decided that if the homemade drugs happened to kill any of Jonathan's shifty, illegal patients, it probably wouldn't be all too painful a loss.

It turned out, as weeks turned to months, that they worked well together, even if Bruce was constantly watching his back. One day he found himself going to him for medical assistance and felt his cool fingers prying at his bruises for the first time, pressing at his broken ribs. He was never an MD as such, he's a psychiatrist, but he had had a rotation in the ER and it was only supposed to be a stop-gap measure before he went back out and into a fight. And besides which, he found he did good work - soon enough Bruce was going to him semi-regularly, if just for bandages and then the odd home-cooked drug. He was particularly fond of a rather potent truth serum of Jonathan's own devise that he coupled with a rather handy new injection system developed down in the basement of Wayne Tower, but there were tranquilisers too and eventually even topical painkillers for his own use. He had no idea when he'd started to trust him not to drug him into a stupor at the earliest opportunity, but apparently he did. And he didn't. He tried quite hard not to think about it.

And in return for his services, he'd occasionally send him orders of food - it wasn't as if he asked for anything in return, which was in itself quite suspicious, but Bruce had a feeling from the look of him that sometimes he'd work so hard that he'd forget to eat. He'd been slim to begin with, then practically wasting away, drowning in his own immaculate suits or sweaters or lab coats. A couple of months of Bruce's improvised care packages to the warehouse took care of that, however. Soon he seemed... fine, almost disturbingly so. He'd even stopped flinching every time someone walked into the room. He almost didn't seem scared anymore.

There were times when his fairly suspect state of mind still showed through more clearly, of course - like one night as he was stitching up Bruce's shoulder and casually suggested they should have dinner, as if he didn't quite understand why two masked men wouldn't exactly be welcome in the vast majority of Gotham's restaurants, or indeed any of the times that he wore his mask, as if this were perfectly normal behaviour for a grown man. But after each episode he'd seem to pull himself together; he'd smile a small, almost embarrassed smile that looked completely out of place on his essentially proud face, and then Dr. Crane would slip back into place. He might take a couple of pills, too, when he thought Bruce wasn't looking and as time went by, even when he knew he was. Bruce, ever-vigilant, had it checked out. He was self-medicating, some bastardised, concentrated anti-psychotic that should've been a high enough dose to floor a carthorse. So that was his secret. Medication, his specialty. It seemed he was trying to fight his condition and Bruce appreciated that somehow - perhaps he never let him close like Jonathan did him, but he did appreciate having an ally and he had to think that the pills were what made that possible. Perhaps the lab wasn't such a menace after all.

Time passed. Bruce started to feel like he knew him in a way, like the way he knew the cool touch of his fingers on his skin, the way he'd push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with one index finger as he frowned at Bruce's bruises. He stitched cuts, smoothed antiseptic over grazes, once stayed up all night to see him through a particularly heavy concussion. Jonathan's clear blue eyes would glaze and Bruce would remind him to take his medication. And when they were clear again he'd look at him intently as if just looking would unlock all the secrets of his mind. That amused Bruce, though he knew that all that had happened, the incident with Ra's Al Ghul, everything, hadn't dulled Jonathan's brilliant mind in the slightest. He was just as sharp as ever, on a good day, though he'd always be the first to admit that he wasn't necessarily... all there.

It was almost like a friendship. Almost, because they were never friends. They worked together from time to time or Jonathan tended his wounds, or he'd have something to tell him that might lead to an arrest. Bruce found he was amused by him; he tried to tell himself that he went back time after time to keep an eye on him, that he didn't quite trust him completely, but more often than not it was more to do with the fact that he enjoyed his subtle sarcasm. There were more verbal barbs tossed in his direction than he could feasibly recall and he wasn't sure why he took them so well, except that he understood that was Jonathan's way. He found himself thinking up ways to set him off, sometimes, just so he'd have something to smile about when he finally got home just before dawn. He needed something outside the violence of his nights, after all, and it wasn't as if he paid him more than one visit a week. They weren't close. They were acquaintances. The arrangement seemed to suit them.

Then one night Bruce came in late; he'd fallen from a balcony, somehow not managed to find his wings, and though Jonathan was far from being a trained chiropractor, he knew that he'd at least try to help. He knew that Alfred would disapprove of his choice but he was closer to that part of town than he was to his apartment or to the then newly-reconstructed south-east wing of the manor... he winced and made short work of the locks as he always did, letting himself inside the warehouse. Jonathan had never offered him a key but he suspected that was only because he was fully aware that he didn't actually need one.

He found him asleep in the back room, on the small bed in the bare, tatty little room that had probably once served as an office, albeit many years ago. Finding him asleep was strange enough in itself - Bruce was half convinced that Jonathan slept even less than he did himself and that was little enough - but he was wearing his mask, too, the fingers of one hand curling around a seam as if it comforted him somehow. Bruce didn't turn on the light; he just watched him for a moment in the relative darkness, eyeing that mask and unsure what to do, then he settled down awkwardly in an old second-hand armchair that was evidently just as worn as the mask. He fell asleep there quite by accident, still in pain, unwilling to move, just listening to the calm, regular rhythm of Jonathan's breath.

And he woke to brilliant light. He thinks that's what woke him, at least, and not Jonathan's hand at his shoulder; he woke with a start with the light bright in his eyes and he grabbed for Jonathan's wrist, not sure if he thought he was reaching for his mask or not. He still hopes not. But he had his wrist in his hand and Jonathan's eyes on him, bright blue from behind the dark mask. He stood then, wincing, almost groaning, and Jonathan steadied him, free hand at his waist just resting there before it snaked around him not quite cautiously, pulled him in closer. Bruce looked down at him and he knew this was a bad idea. He knew it. However, that didn't stop him, it just didn't stop either of them. He was just so utterly exhausted and it wasn't just his body but his mind... he saw the same exhaustion in Jonathan's eyes and it made sense somehow when they pulled at each other, when he let go of his wrist and Jonathan's slim fingers unclasped the Kevlar the way he'd taught him, in a way that should've seemed hurried but didn't somehow. He slid off the suit with something almost like care, piled it onto a chest of drawers, pulled off his own underwear and left them both naked. Then pulled him toward the bed and Bruce let him. He had no resolve left to say no. He didn't want to.

They kept their masks on. Bruce at least was acutely aware of just how ridiculous if not downright insane that was, but he said nothing - after all, he had no intention of taking off his own so he could hardly begrudge Jonathan his dual identities, even if they were both so obviously known to him. And the strangest thing of all was that it made sense somehow, their masks and their bare skin and the way they tumbled onto the bed in that haphazard way that made something in Bruce's back click back into place. He could almost have laughed at that; when he'd thought of asking for Jonathan's help, he really hadn't been thinking of this. But it was no laughing matter and he didn't laugh in the end, he just lay back and watched as his hips were straddled, as the skinny doctor splayed his hands over his chest and regarded him with that familiar cool, appraising look.

He tried not to think about how long it'd been since he'd last had sex. He tried not to think about countries where he'd been too hungry or tired or too drunk to fuck, about prisons and mountains and trust and betrayal. But he was giving nothing of himself to Jonathan Crane, nothing except his body, nothing that mattered. He didn't even show him his face, had never really felt like he could or he should or that he wanted to. So they wore their masks. Bruce didn't care to think that Batman was him, is him, always will be.

No kisses. How could there be with Jonathan's mouth covered up by his mask? But their bodies more than made up for that lack - Bruce slid his hands up over Jonathan's pale thighs to rest them at his hips, shifting up against him as their eyes met. Jonathan laughed and raked his hands over Bruce's chest; his nails left livid red marks in their wake but that didn't matter, to either of them. Bruce muttered something that might've been Chinese, might've been obscene, and Jonathan's hands moved down further as if his understood, splayed over his flat stomach and paused, thumbs brushing lightly by the base of his cock. And Bruce knew, knew, that he should stop it. He was supposed to be more than a man, more than this, not scarred and bruised and aching there in Jonathan Crane's bed. He should leave. He should get up and get dressed and he should leave. But he couldn't.

No foreplay. No cautious, tender touches, not a hint of hesitance as Jonathan's hand found Bruce's cock and stroked with a flick of his wrist that made Bruce hiss in a breath and bite down hard on his lip to keep from actually crying out loud. He knew what he was doing and what he was doing was turning the steel of Bruce's spine to the consistency of water, like liquid as he arched up against him. Bruce reached for Jonathan's cock with one big, callused hand, but found it batted away as Jonathan laughed again, disarming. He watched as he knelt up further, shuffling forward, guiding himself down against the blunt head of Bruce's erection. Bruce gritted his teeth and set his jaw, tilted back his head. His breath came harshly.

This was something Bruce understood as he found himself sheathed and lost in the almost unbearable heat of Jonathan's body. He knows savagery, the brutal nature of an act like this because this is the world he once chose for himself. He understands pain and he knows this, this act, but there was something different. Jonathan was tight around him as he moved, willing, bearing down on him as Bruce in turn pushed up against him, straining in such sweet, clawing agony. But there was something different. He didn't know if it was just Jonathan's slim body, all sinews and slight muscle under his smooth, pale skin, or those clear blue eyes that never once gave up his gaze. Maybe it was the situation, everything that had passed between them that Bruce had started to believe he could forgive if not forget. Even if he looked at him then, above him around him, and wondered if he'd ever be able to look Rachel in the eye again. Probably not. Oh God. Oh God. What the hell was he doing?

But he couldn't stop and he wasn't sure that he wanted to. Jonathan rested his hands on his chest and leant down; Bruce gripped at his hips until his fingers were white and they moved faster, harder, until the almost-panic he felt was almost desperation. He couldn't close his eyes, he had to look, had to watch the muscles work in Jonathan's slim body, had to watch as he reached for his own cock, jerked himself roughly in that strange sort of counterpoint. They weren't moving together anymore so much as against each other, Bruce's hands almost slipping against Jonathan's sweat-slick thighs now, the sound of skin on skin just audible over Jonathan's harsh breath and the pounding of Bruce's heart in his ears. The room smelled of leather and something that drifted in from the lab, like Bruce's cologne that never seemed to wash away and the blood staining his suit, like Jonathan's hair products and the wet, pervasive smell of the docklands, but it didn't seem to matter or maybe that grit added to it somehow - there were no niceties to it, no five-star hotel or king-size bed, just the two of them and the bed that wasn't big enough for the both of them, an industrial light above that was bright enough to bleach out what little colour there was in Jonathan's pale skin completely.

This was the only way it could be between them. No tenderness. No delicacy, though Jonathan's frame demanded it and maybe that was why Bruce couldn't, wouldn't, give it. There was just this. He'd wanted him since the first time he saw him. Just like this.

He was getting close, could feel it inside as the heat snaked through his belly and down lower, spread and tightened until his muscles tensed just a shade too far, his fingers probably bruising Jonathan's hops. He didn't care and Jonathan moved faster until they both breathed in gasps and Bruce grimaced; he doesn't know how he kept his eyes open but he did, somehow, and saw it as Jonathan moved one hand, pulled off his mask and tossed it aside. He looked down at him, flushed, lips parted, and Bruce reached to touch those high cheekbones, his reddened lips. He came with his hands fisted in Jonathan's dark hair. And then he watched, breathless, as Jonathan stroked himself to completion. He came against Bruce's stomach with an almost-moan and a vague smile. It was over.

Quiet then, except for their breath. Jonathan rested there for a moment, looking at him still as he breathed in deeply, then pulled back and let Bruce slip from inside him; he sat down gingerly at the foot of the bed, rested his bare back against the bare wall and held his mask in his hands, pulled from where it had landed just on top of Bruce's suit. There wasn't really anywhere else for it to land - it was a tiny room, the paint cracking, a brighter spot and a nail in the wall where a painting had once hung and sun-bleached Venetian blinds hanging over a window that was nailed shut from inside. Bruce looked around, at the drawers, the faded rug, scuffed floorboards and a small desk piled high with medical texts, and he wondered how he'd lived before. He looked at him, pale and thin, naked and almost gaunt, almost a ghost within himself with only his pride and his fear left to cling to. Bruce wondered who he'd been before and realised that he'd probably never know.

Then Jonathan looked at him and just for a moment that look was unfamiliar, before the corners of his mouth quirked in that same old smile. He tilted his head, parted his lips.

"I can't stay," Bruce said, practically blurted, before Jonathan could say a word. His heart was still thumping hard in his chest but he had his breath and his near-panic, attacking again from nowhere or seeming to.

"I know," Jonathan said, and he shrugged. Somehow he managed to make even that gesture seem refined, elegant. He almost looked amused. "I didn't expect that you would."

It wasn't until later, in his own bed in his own apartment, that he wondered if Jonathan really had known. Because maybe that was just his way of dismissing him for his panic and Bruce didn't even really know why he'd felt like that in the first place. He barred an arm over his eyes to block out the early morning sun. Maybe he needed a psychiatrist.

Things between them were quiet after that, even quieter than usual and Bruce couldn't say that they'd ever really been at fever pitch. Two weeks passed and then three with just one visit and even then it was brief. Jonathan seemed busy. Bruce made it his business to keep busy. And in truth he did have plenty to occupy him - the house was progressing but not at all at the promised or scheduled rate, so he busied himself with contractors by day and with... other things by night. He even took out a few girls, had a scrape in one of his more expensive cars and attended a movie premiere, just to keep Alfred and the gossip rags happy. It seemed to work.

But then one night out came along that a bunch of serial armed robbers got the drop on him - he'd been distracted but he did win the fight and managed to disappear from the scene just as the cops arrived, but he was bruised to high heaven and almost positive that his wrist was broken. He could hardly go to a hospital in full costume and claim that he'd done it spelunking, so he went out to the docks. He let himself in and there was Jonathan at his table, working on his pills; he turned to him and Bruce could've sworn that alongside the clear look of I told you so, what he saw was genuine concern. He pressed his fingers to his wrist and told him it wasn't broken and then wrapped it securely and the whole time, every fraction of a second, Bruce was watching him. This time he made the first move.

After that, they didn't bother to pretend. They were lovers, that was all there was to it.

A week, then two. He saw him too often, so often that he had his blue eyes, the angles of his face, the seeming fragility of his fine wrists that he held in his hands as he moved in him, all stuck right there in his mind from moment to moment. He slept less to make time, justified it by saying that Batman was somewhat at a loss for crimes to fight and it was good for him to get out, see someone so he wasn't quite so achingly alone in his high, gilded cage. Still, in the end he knew, knew all along that they were lovers only in the physical sense and all that he was doing there was attempting to satisfy an urge he'd somehow suppressed for far too long. He didn't know if he was at all attached to him for anything above and beyond their sex and his intermittent assistance, though he did wonder if the fact that he hadn't got around to turning him in meant something or not. He turned a blind eye and got what he wanted in return, perhaps, or was it more? Maybe he didn't want to see him locked up in Arkham. Maybe he didn't think he needed to be locked up; he wasn't a danger anymore. He was a lab-rat, doped up to the eyeballs on anti-psychotics that he apparently had the wherewithal to administer himself, making a living from surreptitious treatment of gunshot wounds and the like. And even that wasn't so bad - after all, Dr. Crane's clinic had been a constant source of information since its inception. So, he stopped asking questions.

Then, after so many days and weeks of nights of dead-end investigations and petty thuggery, something new came up. Lieutenant Gordon came to him with it, quietly, on the down low because the commissioner was still all (self-)righteous indignation over Batman's antics despite the fact that the further Gordon explained the situation, the more apparent it became to Bruce that they needed outside assistance. Psychotropic drugs in the city's ecstasy. And that was fine, sure, of course, until the same substance turned up in the cocaine and the rich started to suffer. So, there they were or there he was, asking Batman's help. He didn't need the commissioner's official sanction to agree to it, Gordon's request and the knowledge that the cops had no knowledge even now, after the fourth death, were enough. But he had an awful sinking feeling...

"Is it you, Jonathan?"

Jonathan looked up from his reading and took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose; he'd been pretending to ignore Bruce's tirade but at the question and that tone in Bruce's voice he just tilted his head in that oh-so-familiar way, the way that fairly smacked of psychoanalysis, though he said nothing.

"I need to know if it's you."

He paused for a moment as if weighing the situation and then shook his head slowly, crossing his legs at the knee. "It's not me," he said, leaning forward on his desk.

"Swear it."

"I swear." He raised one hand briefly with the look of a witness in court. Which he had been, of course. "You do know that I've never had aspirations of large-scale harm, after all." He ducked his head slightly, an uncharacteristic gesture, and folded his hands on the desktop as he looked away. "Even if I've managed it regardless."

And Bruce had to concede the point. Perhaps what he'd done, the experimentation on inmates, hadn't exactly been a shining example of modern psychiatry, but he'd never intended to turn mass-poisoner. That was... someone else's idea. He believed him. He wouldn't ask again. He almost felt bad for asking in the first place.

This wasn't something he could take to Lucius; he'd asked too much of him already, involved him just a little too deeply in matters of which he'd do better to have no knowledge, and now he was running the company it seemed an even larger imposition. He tried his hand at it himself, setting up a makeshift laboratory in the cave and poring over science texts and manuals as if a scientific epiphany might decent upon him at any moment. But it became frustrating all too quickly, that he was clearly more a man of action and had no one to interrogate, no one to haul up the side of a building through the use of his nifty company monofilament, because everywhere he looked was just another dead end. The clubs knew nothing. The dealers knew even less, pissed off though they were about their resultant bad business. The whole process seemed something akin to beating his head against a brick wall, only substantially less productive.

So, he went to Jonathan for help. He swallowed his pride and he asked for help.

Jonathan looked mildly dishevelled when Bruce slipped into the warehouse, almost cheerful if somewhat aloof amongst his benches and lab equipment and illegal medication that Bruce still wasn't sure was entirely harmless. He looked like he hadn't shaved since they'd last seen each other and that was mildly odd but as he didn't appear to be too far off his rocker, Bruce just dismissed it. He made his request as Jonathan toyed with a liquid bubbling through a ridiculous length of glass tubing; he seemed uninterested or perhaps just absorbed in his work but agreed to help and asked nothing in return, just as he never had. Bruce had to stamp down hard on a feeling that maybe, just maybe, Jonathan Crane felt guilt for all that most unfortunate business in the Narrows, maybe even for what he'd done at Arkham. But he was reading too much into it, of course. Far too much, and he knew it.

Still, working with Jonathan seemed simple. Alfred was rather vocal about his concern but Bruce knew what he was doing or thought he did, was sure that the situation was under control. It wasn't however; he'd catch himself peering down through the warehouse skylight some nights, just watching him as he pottered around his lab. He spent too much time with him, stared a little too often and got caught at it more than once. Jonathan would smile a knowing smile and lick his lips. Sometimes he'd turn back to his work then but sometimes, just once or twice, he stopped. He'd take off his white lab coat, pull off the gloves and his glasses and he'd look at Bruce, really look at him, before he moved in closer. The batsuit never bothered him, or maybe he liked it. And he never once reached for his mask. Never.

The nights were long. Winter now, the city veiled in dark clouds and rain never far away. Bruce was exhausted, wasn't sure how he'd make it though the investigation when his muscles ached right down to the bone and he no matter what he did he still had to drag himself from his bed every morning to begin a new day as Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy. He didn't know how to live in the real world anymore, not now that his life was split in two this way, the dichotomy of Bruce with his Lamborghini and champagne by the crate, and Batman on the streets and the rooftops with his bruises, in the rain. He couldn't exactly walk down the street to pick up a carton of milk in either of persona. For some reason, that struck him as unutterably sad.

He mentioned it to Jonathan one night, as he sprawled on his small, shabby bed and let him massage his broad, bruised back. He was serious but Jonathan just laughed, stretched out beside him and said he understood - how he could understand without the details, without knowing Bruce Wayne and not just Batman, was beyond him. But he said he understood and when he thought about it... Jonathan could barely leave the warehouse, maybe he did understand. There was nothing normal about either of them; it wasn't as if Bruce could just pick up the phone and give him a call, ask how his day was, and if he was honest then he wasn't sure that he wanted to, either. There was nothing normal about this relationship but perhaps that was the allure. And Jonathan could never understand completely, not unless he told him. He couldn't tell him, knew he shouldn't, but he did.

It was an accident, or at least that's how he rationalised it. It was the night he was supposed to end it, bring down the whole damn operation, but when Bruce got to the warehouse, Jonathan wasn't waiting. The lab was smashed to pieces, the clinic ripped apart, and he tore through the place with a rising sense of dread, following the blood through the glass across the tiled floor to the bedroom. He was unconscious and bloody when Bruce found him, unresponsive but alive - he knew that a hospital visit was out of the question for the both of them so he took him away from there, took him to the cave. He just didn't know what else to do. And after two days, when he still hadn't woken up though Bruce just couldn't see why, he took him up the lift and into the house. He told himself it was a calculated risk, that he didn't want him to die down there, that he had information that he needed and he couldn't die. And then, in the late afternoon of the third day, he woke up to Bruce and not to Batman. It was almost a relief.

Bruce managed a thin smile though he couldn't breathe as he passed him a glass of something like alka-seltzer, then he sat back in an armchair by the window to watch him put the pieces together. In the end, Jonathan just smiled placidly over the rim of the glass and said a cheerful little hello, Batman. It was odd because he'd never called him Batman - Bruce always thought it was some sort of bizarre psychotherapeutic technique, dissociating him from the persona so he wouldn't get lost in it the way Jonathan once had in the Scarecrow. Bruce thought maybe he thought too much.

They sat still for a couple of minutes, watching each other in the spartan room there in the unfinished manor. Bruce wondered what exactly Jonathan was thinking, if it made sense to him to find Bruce Wayne was Batman - if he was shocked then he certainly didn't show it. Then Jonathan sat up; he moved slowly, cautiously, his strength almost completely sapped, and he beckoned Bruce closer. So he left the chair, he went closer, he sat down almost gingerly on the edge of the bed. Jonathan was still smiling that vague smile, just the slightest quirk to his lips as his eyes searched the lines of Bruce's face and he reached out, traced those lines - his cheekbones, his jaw, his brow, the bow of his lips - with his fingertips. His hands were smooth, Bruce thought, and not for the first time. As if he'd never done a day's work in his life, as if he didn't scrub them every day between clients or between drugs. Like he'd never touched or been touched but Bruce let him touch him, let those smooth hands wander to his collarbones, gliding over them with his palms over Bruce's rumpled blue shirt. He let those hands move down to his chest where they lingered for a moment, warm right over his fast-beating heart, before taking his collar and pulling him forward; he could have resisted, could always have resisted, but he didn't. Jonathan's smooth hands messed up his hair but he didn't care. He pulled him into a kiss. The first. Maybe the last.

Then he pulled back. Slowly, almost trembling, he pulled back; Bruce watched him do it, watched his parted lips and his closed eyes, heard his breath, felt his palm slip over the pulse in his throat. Then Jonathan opened his eyes.

"Thank you for saving my life," he said simply.

Bruce frowned. "I don't know that I..."

"You did." Jonathan, weak and slight and almost drowning in a pair of Bruce's pajamas, somehow managed to seem authoritative on this. "You did. Thank you for that."

This time Bruce just nodded. He nodded and ran the pad of his thumb over a bruise on Jonathan's jaw, and he smiled; he smiled like a weight had just been lifted, a weight he hadn't realised he'd been carrying. Then he left. He went out for revenge; somewhere along the road the line between justice and revenge had blurred and he found he didn't mind much. He went out to end it.

Jonathan gave him the address, gave him the names and the details of who he needed to tie to it this time. Bruce had never heard the name and that was disconcerting - he'd been away for so long. But he'd had to go. He took the Tumbler, proved Alfred somewhat wrong by sticking to the speed limit even if he didn't exactly take the main road into town, and he wasn't exactly going into town anyway. The address on his GPS was a factory on the outskirts, long closed, a relic of Gotham's more industrious, industrial pre-depression boom. That's where he was going. Ironically, the former base of power of one of Wayne Enterprises' ex-competitors. There was something strangely poetic in that.

There was no one there. He parked the Tumbler a short way away and made his way on foot, through the trees and the rain, he swung up to the second level and when he got there, ready for whatever he might find be it Uzis or a room full of karate experts - strangely enough, the latter wasn't extremely uncommon in his line or work these days - and he found nothing. Nothing. He hadn't been ready for that. He left, confused, trudged through the mud back to his car. It was the correct address but there was no sign of life there except perhaps the odd empty liquor bottle left there by the homeless or underage drinkers - he sincerely doubted that underage students from the local university or a pack of pissed off Gothamites of no fixed abode were particularly intent on poisoning the city's population of recreational drug-users. He was at a loss. So, he went back to the manor, or what was currently standing of it, at least.

Jonathan was gone. Signs of a struggle - overturned chair, the food he'd asked Alfred to bring up for him spilled all over the floor. Alfred hadn't heard a thing. Security wasn't exactly fully-functional with the manor in its dishevelled state and there just wasn't a trace of Jonathan Crane so he went back out, checked the warehouse only to find it empty, of course, seemingly completely untouched since the last time he'd been there, still covered in Jonathan's blood. He'd lost him. He had no idea where to look. None.

Home again - the apartment this time. He couldn't sleep though it was coming up to dawn, not with his mind turning the way it was. He didn't know what to think and hadn't the patience to listen to anything Alfred said, whether it was his considered opinion on Dr. Crane or his sagely advice on a cup of warm milk to help him sleep. He'd probably regret being quite so brisk with Alfred in the morning but he pushed the thought away and turned off the lights. He didn't sleep - he needed to do something but had no idea of exactly what. In the end he abandoned the bed and moved to a chair by the balcony door, watched the sunrise in the rain. He ignored the niggling feeling that maybe Alfred was right, about everything.

Another day and no news - no ransom demands though he couldn't honestly say that he expected one, no news, only the seventh fatality due to the mystery drug mixed into a tablet of ecstasy and that was news enough. The commissioner was all fire and brimstone on the morning news and the cynic in Bruce had to wonder whether or not that had anything to do with the fact that the victim - a nineteen-year-old girl who shouldn't even have been in the club where she'd died - was the youngest daughter of a rather prominent Gotham City councilman. Honestly, he didn't doubt it for a second.

He spent the day overseeing construction, going through the plans with his site foreman just one more time just like all those other one more times and trying to stay interested, focused, undistracted. It was progressing, he had to admit - soon the kitchen would be done and they'd be able to use a stove or the oven instead of a portable camping affair set up in an as yet undecorated bedroom in the one currently liveable wing. He had to admit that he'd come to the point where tinned soup and omelettes had ceased to do anything for him and it was murder getting pizza places to deliver to Wayne Manor - no one seemed to believe that Bruce Wayne really wanted the ham and pepperoni delivered to his partially-reconstructed mansion house and he supposed that he could understand why. It seemed that Jonathan was right; he really wasn't meant for a normal life.

And then night came. Interrogations: he went for the dealers first with a new ferocity but they still swore blind that if they'd known who was busy fucking up their business they'd have killed him themselves. Then he hit the clubs - he fought his way into the back rooms of seven of them, eight, made with his new and well-polished vicious psycho routine and got no answers from them, either. He went to Gordon - they'd been keeping in touch, sharing information, but he went to him anyway and found out nothing new. Batman was having absolutely no luck. None at all, not even a name, not an address, a license plate, not a single word. And it was as this thought ran through his head that it hit him. It was a bit of a long shot, he had to admit. But maybe, just maybe, it could work.

Back at the manor, he took off the suit. Batman was getting nowhere fast but Bruce Wayne just might be in luck.

With a pair of European models on his arm and a smile tacked to his face, he hit the clubs. They started at the top, the exclusive places where the rock stars and the actors hung out, the places with the queues around the block even in the rain that night, but where just a flash of Bruce Wayne's wide smile (and perhaps a look at the girls or the startlingly yellow Ferrari) got them straight in through the door. They treated him like a superstar, like royalty, as if his family's money was some fabulous talisman that made him bigger and better than even the drunk actors and the models high on their own self-importance. But strangely, there were no drugs for sale. Or perhaps it wasn't so strange - no high-class club owner wanted an Oscar-winner dropping dead on the premises and the scare had really got to them. Bruce had to admit that he had to wonder if this was really such a bad thing after all, though for all he knew it'd be showing up next in the LSD or the weed or the damn lemonade. Or, God forbid, the water. Far-fetched as it might have seemed, he knew it wasn't exactly without precedent.

So, they moved on, club to club, getting lower and lower and later and later until the girls were complaining that their feet hurt and their ankles ached and the VIP rooms probably doubled as meat lockers or storage closets during the day. But that's where he found the very first dealer of the night, in a filthy little back-alley rave where the strobe lighting seemed to show the transaction in slow motion across the writhing mass of the dance floor. It was yet another long shot, the latest in a long series that had so far paid off, but the guy seemed to match the description of the dealer that had sold to the councilman's daughter. So he smiled a plastic smile and handed the keys of his Ferrari to one of the girls whose name he'd forgotten already. And when they were gone, he went after the dealer.

A couple of frustrating minutes in the alley behind the club and he forgot his gentlemanly niceties completely. Up against the wall, Bruce's hand wrapped around his throat as he fairly snarled his questions and the guy was ready to sell his grandmother, never mind his supplier; he'd sold the girl the stuff but he didn't have a name for the one who gave him the gear, had never even met the guy, got the stuff from some guy in a black ski mask and his money cash-in-hand. All he had was a number, that the goon in the ski mask had told him - really emphasised - that he should only ever call in case of an emergency. A dire emergency. The guy had been just a little too terrified by the message to ever use the number - Bruce guessed that was the point - but he had it in his head, wrote it down on a napkin with a trembling hand and Bruce's platinum-plated pen. He pushed a little more after that, tucking the napkin into his breast pocket along with the pen, but when the guy broke down in tears and crumbled to his knees, he guessed he'd probably got everything there was to get from him. He left him there. He'd give his name to the Gotham PD when he had his evidence.

He left the club, caught a cab on the corner and went back to the apartment; there was a little black Porsche in the parking garage that he slipped into and pulled onto the rain-slicked road out to the manor. He called the number on the napkin from his cell phone en route, keeping to the speed limit and knowing that he shouldn't be on the phone though he had a feeling that this wasn't going to be a particularly long call.

"Arkham Asylum," said a rather chipper female, worryingly chipper for almost 4am. "How may I direct your call?"

His heart and his stomach sank. He hung up. All he could do was hope this didn't mean what he expected it did.

The Narrows will never be the after since Ra's Al Ghul but Bruce has an idea that they were never exactly the most shining, harmonious part of Gotham, even though maybe they're its heart. He thinks that could be. And that night he was back there - it wasn't as if it was the first time but it almost felt that way as he headed over the rooftops toward Arkham. It loomed large in the night sky and he wasn't afraid, he doesn't really feel fear these days, but there was something. Dread, maybe. Maybe regret, but it wasn't something he had time to name as he broke an attic window, cut the bars with a rather convenient welding torch appropriated from Wayne Enterprises courtesy of Lucius Fox. He slipped inside, dripping rainwater all over the floor.

It was dusty, everything was thick with it, all the packing crates and a newspaper from 1954. He rolled his eyes and moved on, found a door in the dark, forced the lock, let himself out into a dark little staircase that was just as dusty as the attic. The stairs creaked under his boot heels and he winced, went a little more slowly until he came to a door at the bottom and he forced that too, quickly and quietly. He looked around, eyes stinging briefly in the brighter light of what he quickly realised was a closet, all mops and buckets and shelves piled high with sheets and towels that smelled like bleach. He let himself out - yet another forced door - and into the bright hospital white of the ward.

The stairs were easy to find, marked in huge letters with a pretty little picture beside them just in case anyone managed to miss the STAIRS. He walked down the hallway just as brazen as can be since he had a feeling that a man in black would be rather remarkable no matter how stealthy he attempted to be and he let himself through the door - fortunately he checked and found it was unlocked or that would've been another forced door to add to the growing tally - and he dove straight down the gap in the centre; he was getting a little too used to that, he thought as he spread his manmade wings and landed, his ankles complaining just a shade away from violently. He moved off, half sure that someone must have seen him by now on a security camera somewhere in the building, though another part of him had to wonder if the guards weren't playing blackjack in the office or watching a late-night rerun of the football game. They probably were, considering the ease with which he made his way through the place, down the corridor to what had been Jonathan Crane's office, now occupied by the new director. During the day, at least.

There was no one there, not that he'd expected there to be. He rifled through the drawers perhaps a little half-heartedly, not really expecting to find anything of any practical use there, either; Falcone's file caught his eye but he really didn't have the time to peruse the broken mind of an institutionalised ex-mobster, entertaining though it could have been. So he moved on, back out into the corridor, down the back staircase to the next level. It wasn't something that he really wanted to do, especially as he was rapidly discovering that mental asylums gave him a severe case of the creeps, but he went down, turned the corner in the relative dark, and tripped.

It wasn't a tripwire, that was his first thought. He picked himself up in an instant, all swirling cape and beating heart, and he backed away just as quickly - it was a man, just sitting there, his back to the wall. He was... rocking. Bruce frowned. He really didn't like this place.

"Sir?" he said, not quite sure if the rather sturdy man on the floor with his arms around his knees was a guard or a patient.

He didn't look up, not even a glance, though his eyes were wide open. "Scarecrow," he said, and bit his lip, wiped at the blood with the back of one huge hand, smeared it across his cheek. "Scarecrow."

So now he knew. It was true. He should've known all along. Alfred would never let him live this down.

"Where is he?" he asked, fists clenching, but the man didn't answer and Bruce wasn't surprised, hadn't actually expected an answer so maybe it was more a question for himself. Still, there was only one way to go and he took it. Down.

It was dark down there and he had no intention of announcing himself by turning on the lights. He moved on, quiet as a shadow; the guard by the door was unconscious before he saw or heard a thing. He took his key, went on through - the men at the other side did see him but no one had a chance to call for help. Nine seconds, one broken arm, a dislocated shoulder and a bloodied nose later, the three goons were on the ground. His only regret was that none of them was left in any condition to talk. So he moved on.

The corridor was long and branched into two at its end; he checked one direction and found only a series of disused cells, some full of old beds, one that seemed to be a dusty restraint room full of packing crates around the bed and a rusty wheelchair in the corner. Somehow it all seemed oddly appropriate, he thought as he moved on, very fitting that Jonathan was down here amongst the old equipment and the dusty air that almost seemed heavy with memory. He turned back, took the second branch.

It was more of the same in essence except that by the end, tucked away behind an overturned bed, was a door that stood slightly ajar. The others had windows but not this one. He opened it. Inside was another set of stairs. Down. Again. So he went down.

The air in the sub-basement was stifling, stale, tickled at his lungs and made him want to hack it back out. It was hot down there and he realised why soon enough - the ancient monster of a boiler for the hot water system was down there, by the backup power generator. And the lights were off there but he could still see, looked around at all the old mattresses piled against one wall, a stack of chairs, a shelving unit covered with boxes full of files with yellowed, almost crumbling pages. There was a light coming from somewhere, not really bright but bright enough for him to look around, bright enough to attract his attention so he walked toward it. And at the back of the huge generator was a hole in the wall, just big enough to climb through. The light was coming from there. He climbed through.

It was a passageway, obviously quite old - Bruce guessed Wayne Manor wasn't the only place around Gotham harbouring secrets. There was an oil-burning lantern just sitting there on the damp, mossy floor, casting shadows over the old stone-bricked walls, and he frowned, wondered what exactly it was doing there and didn't have to wait very long to find out; a large man in a ski mask emerged into the corridor through a huge metal door at the far end, closed it behind him and then turned. They looked at each other for a moment and then Bruce moved - the guy started to yell in a surprisingly shrill tone that could probably have shattered glass, just as Bruce's boot connected with his jaw and sent him clattering against the huge stone bricks of the wall. He collapsed into a heap on the floor, the shriek cut off abruptly, and Bruce wondered if he'd have company. He decided not to wait to find out. He opened the door and slipped through it.

It wasn't the asylum on the other side. It looked like a warehouse, all metal catwalks and gantries and steps, crates, harsh fluorescent lights that left stark shadows across the floor. The next building. It was basically deserted, but for the man by the table across the room, the man by the glass bottles and the test tubes, and several bags of pills. The only one there.

"Jonathan."

He seemed surprised but only for a moment. He was wearing the mask - of course he was wearing the mask. He thinks he'd have been worried if he hadn't been wearing it.

"You found me."

"Because you wanted me to."

Jonathan clapped then, suddenly and loudly. He backed away from the table and Bruce stepped just a little closer, away from the door, but not far.

"I'm glad to find that you don't attribute your success entirely to your own prowess." Jonathan stopped then, tucked his hands behind his back. "After all, I've made this all ridiculously easy for you, haven't I? I'm surprised it's taken you so long."

He understood the game. Jonathan had always been rather vocal about his intellectual abilities, annoyingly so ever since roughly the fiftieth time that he'd mentioned that Bruce hadn't even finished college. In the beginning Bruce had paid it no attention but as time passed he'd come to realise that annoying as it was, even clearly out of his mind as he was, Jonathan really was the intellectual between them. Bruce sighed. It took this last betrayal to make him realise that he really was a genius. He'd been strung along from the start, every step of the way. He wouldn't be surprised if his "attack" had been a part of that, too.

He had no retort. He was at a loss. All he could say was: "Keep your hands where I can see them."

So he raised his hands, empty, looking at him. "There's no need to be so testy," he said. "And I wish you wouldn't look at me like that, Bruce. Jonathan didn't betray you, after all. I did."

Unsurprisingly, that made him feel not one bit better.

"I could make excuses for you, if you'd like." Bruce glared and Jonathan just tilted his head to one side. "I'm sure it would be easier for you if I'd drugged you, wouldn't it? But I'd do nothing so crass. You were simply easy to manipulate, though I will admit that it took more time than I anticipated." He paused then, straightening the cuffs of his lab coat, toying idly with the buttons for a moment as he shook his head just slightly. To himself. "If it's any consolation, I'm sure that all that time you spent away from civilisation didn't help at all. I think you wanted a friend. Perhaps you should have seen a psychiatrist."

He could've crumbled in that moment but he didn't, he wouldn't let himself. His gaze didn't falter for a second. What a brilliant time to finally find his strength. "You know I have to call the police."

Jonathan shrugged that perversely graceful shrug. "They're already on their way."

As the door burst open, all that Bruce had time to think was not again. Another hasty retreat, another escape for the villain of the piece. Jonathan vanished down into the sewers - an undignified exit for such a strangely dignified man - and Bruce was left there, staring down the barrels of twenty-something semi-automatics, Gotham PD's SWAT determined to get their man.

"There's nowhere to go, Batman." The loudspeaker almost hurt. Their spotlights were in his eyes. But there's always somewhere to go and a little trick of smoke and mirrors can usually get you where you want to go. He vanished in a fog of thick black smoke and a hail of gunfire. He didn't look back. He should've known all along. He had to wonder if maybe he had.

When the time comes, he knows where to look. Because he always knows.

They don't wear their costumes; Bruce swings onto the rooftop in a tailored suit. It's stupid, he knows, and it's dangerous in a sense that's more than physical, but it's what he has to do. And Jonathan’s there waiting for him, his mask nowhere to be seen but that's far from the point.

"Bruce," he says. He never calls him Batman.

"Jonathan."

"Touché."

Two months now since that night. Maybe three - he doesn't count, he doesn't want to know. It's perverse but he's missed him.

They step closer. He's not worried, he's not apprehensive, he's not even really cautious because he knows he could snap his neck with one hand tied behind his back. He could knock him out cold without breaking his glasses. And he does nothing of the sort though the thought that he could is comforting; he just steps closer and then stops, lets Jonathan come to him, his face all angles and shadows in the moonlight and it's almost like a mask he wears. They both wear masks, Batman and the Scarecrow, and Bruce understands their masks, that they're... they're Wayne and they're Crane and like this, missing their masks, without the bat and the scarecrow, they're as hidden now as they'll ever be. They can't hide that from each other anymore. They won't even try. And that's why he never called him Batman.

It's that same rooftop. He knew where to go.

He doesn't move a muscle as Jonathan comes closer, comes close, his hands finding his hair, the back of his neck. He lets him move closer, feels his slight frame against him in a way that's not quite as familiar as it should be, can't be familiar without the suit or his mask at the very least but he knows this, this proximity, the weight of him against his chest. It's a hundred nights when they shared a bed, it's those lips on his skin as he shivered beneath him. He doesn't try to stop him as he leans in, leans up, and brings their mouths together. He kisses him goodbye.

"The next time I see you," Jonathan whispers then, pulling back, "I'm going to kill you."

The only words he has are, "You can try."

Jonathan pauses, almost seems to consider this as he takes a step back across the rooftop, then another, brushing his fingers over his lips. "Thank you," he says. "I think I will."

And in the end, he lets him go. He watches him leave, just turn and walk away across the rooftop, open the door and walk away as he listens to his footsteps echo on the stairs until he can't hear them anymore above the traffic on the streets far below. He lets him go. Just once more, for old times' sake. Then tomorrow night, he'll start the search. He'll bring him to justice. It's all he can do. It's what he does.

To do what he does, he has to believe in redemption; he has to believe that there's something worth saving in everyone. And he can save them, he believes that through and through. But he's no redeemer, that's what Jonathan's taught him if nothing else. And he'll remember that. Always.

His eyes harden as he swings from the roof, heads out into the vast black expanse, the sprawling, shining, filthy mass that's Gotham City. He won't be tricked again, he thinks. Never again. Even if that means he'll always be alone.

***
End
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