Batman
kicks open the double door of Crane’s lab, desperately hoping it’s not too
late—the doors creak back and thud against the walls. The place has been
ransacked. “It’s too late,” he says to himself, sniffing at a variety of strong
chemical smells.
Batman
looks around; the lab is large and has a dome shaped roof. He notices a curled
up Crane, cowering at the feet of some wooden chairs in the center of the room.
A syringe is hanging off his neck, yellow and half-empty. Batman makes his way
to him, walking around broken lab tables and destroyed equipment. Crane is
still conscious but in a state of delirium. Batman kneels down to examine him.
There are bruises all over his body, likely from Nightwing’s escrima sticks.
“You
broke the deal, Crane,” Batman says, shaking his head. “Despite the warnings,
you’ve been synthesizing SCRO again.”
“You
were supposed to protect me!” Crane manages to utter as his eyes beseech for
light. “That
was
the deal. Instead you sent your boy after me.”
“I
didn’t send anyone. There was break in at—”
“I’m
aware,” Crane says, gradually gaining back his mental stability. “Your boy
delivered quite a monologue about it!”
Batman
helps Crane sit up and carefully removes the syringe. He inspects it, turning
it around in his hand.
“Anyway,
he had a theory,” Crane continues. “That the new batch of SCRO somehow entered
my system and reawakened the Scarecrow. In fact, he believed it to be true. He
even tried to extort an admission out of me, like… hearing me say it was going
to fix everything.”
“What
was in the barrel?” says Batman. He holds up the syringe.
“Oh,
you know,” Crane begins. “A highly concentrated doze of the toxin that
Nightwing made me prepare at stick-point. I did as he
demanded and offered the syringe to him, in hope of mercy—not my smartest move.
He stabbed me in the neck with it instead. Justice,
he called it.
"It
was actually too high a doze to turn
me berserk—quite a tricky drug, eh?—but there will be other dire
ramifications.” Crane vigorously rubs his eyes, frustrated at how long it’s
taking for his cognition to return and unsure if it ever will. “I’m done for,
aren’t I?”
Batman
is dumbfounded at the revelation. Could Richard really have gone this far? No,
he can’t waste time being in denial.
“I
need answers,” Batman demands. “Whoever caused mayhem at Arkham used the fear
toxin. There is no doubt about that. How did they get their hands on it?”
“I’m
afraid I have an explanation.” Crane sighs. “A dozen cartridges were stolen
last week.”
“What?!”
Batman says, frantically standing up, as if in a second he has lost all the
patience he had for the professor. “How could you let that happen? And why on
earth am I hearing about it only now, Jonathan?”
“You
know I couldn’t have reported it to the police,” Crane says, tentatively. “And
I couldn’t tell you, Batman, because then you’d find out that I went around our
deal. I had every reason to fear you’d act in the same way that your boy did!”
Overflowing
with rage, Batman feels a kind of need to let off some steam. It’s like he’ll
suffocate if he doesn’t. No… he’ll explode. He must break something or…
someone, and he has to do it now. There is no fighting this instinct, but he’s
Batman, so he tries anyway. It only makes his world take on a redder tint.
Screaming, he lifts the nearest chair and smashes it into the floor, wood
pieces taking off in every direction. There… that feels much better. He can
breathe again. His world retains its natural hue.
“Your
outburst is only proving my point, detective,” Crane says, his lips quivering
and his body cowering.
Batman
scowls in response. “Do you even realize how many lives were lost because you
couldn’t let go of one damned project?”
“I
dedicated my whole life to it! What did you expect me to do?”
“Clearly,
I expected too much, Jonathan.” Batman sighs and strides toward the exit.
“You’re done.”
As
Batman leaves the lab, he wonders, “For a moment there… I truly lost control.
That can't happen again.”
He
realizes another thing: Richard still has the Batmobile. God knows what he’s
going to do next.
***
“Why did I ever think it would be a good idea
to come back to Gotham?” Richard yells to himself. He is driving at full speed,
top gear. Or rather, his body is. His mind is too occupied to be bothered with
that right now. He doesn’t know what street this is or if he’s even in Gotham
anymore. He has been driving for a while now.
Barbara is gone. Just like that. He’ll never
hear her speak again. She is dead. She has ceased to exist, like an ice cube
that has sublimed away. It’s like there is this void in the world that will
never be filled. A void that has replaced her. It’s not supposed to be there.
It’s so wrong. It’s so wrong for this void to be there. It feels so wrong that
this is happening.
“God!” Richard screams, viscerally, his vocal
folds wincing. His whole body wants to burst into pieces rather than live on in
this reality. This is exactly how he felt when both his parents died in the
same night. All the pain he felt then and all the pain he is feeling now are
amalgamating, forming a fork made out of a thousand teeth and slowly digging
into his brain. It hurts. It hurts like hell. He bangs in his head against the
steering wheel and keeps it there, the horn going off like a buzz saw, daring
to match the raging noise of the car engine.
Why
did I ever think
it was a good idea? he wonders, his forehead still pressed against the horn
button. Maybe it would’ve hurt less if I
heard the news by letter or in a newspaper. But I don’t know that. I might have
felt that I could’ve done something if I was in the city … Well, I was in the city, wasn’t I? What was I able to do?
Nothing. I was this close to her. Barely a few kilometers away.
The car just banged against a fruit cart and
cracked it apart. The wheels loudly squash a load of raspberries and bananas on
the spot. But Richard, with his back still bent and head hanging by the steering,
doesn’t know that. From what he interprets as the sound of limbs being
flattened, he thinks he just killed or at least badly hurt someone. It gets him
to put his eyes back on the road. He really wants to stop the car and go back
to check but his body won’t let him.
Richard takes a long and deep breath. He lets
it out, slowly, as patient as ever. He takes a full breath again and repeats
the process, trying to calm himself down. The moment he start to get a hold of
himself, he gears down, decelerating the car, and takes a look around. From the
concentration of slums on both sides of the streets, he guesses that he is in
the Narrows now. Looking off into the distance, he spots a flock of crows flying
just above a drying canal, rare beams of winter sunlight glistening off of the water.
I
have to leave this place, he thinks. He also
considers staying till they catch Joker or hunt the monster down himself. But
if he gets the clown within his grasp, he knows he will do something he will
regret later. He has to leave. There’s no two ways about it.
Travelling can be
expensive, from the tickets he’ll have to buy to the rents he’ll have to pay
once he settles somewhere else. But Richard has an idea. He is in the Narrows
now, the base of Gotham’s black market. There is no reason why he shouldn’t be
able to sell the Batmobile for parts. He doesn’t even feel guilty considering
this option. After all, Bruce is as responsible as anyone for Barbara’s death.
Selling his precious car to criminals is the least Richard can do to him.
Points: 381
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