notmydiagnosis | (no subject)

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The smug smile was impossible to move off of Crane's lips as he lead his new found 'bodyguard' in. He'd wanted someone that could stand up to Batman, and he'd found it in the Slayer known as Tillman. Of course he'd need to research how, exactly, Castle got him to respond to commands in a just fashion but Crane had no intention of controlling the other. It would be a waste of time. No, he just wanted a guard that had hopes of keeping his business uninterrupted.

Crane's abode, like how he dressed, was purposely mute, drab, and intentionally simple. Crane didn't want to step out or be noticed--he spent most of his life trying to avoid it. Trying to avoid his vast intellect. He didn't bother to check if Tillman was coming in--he knew he was trailing behind him.

Crane had released Tillman, true to his word, the very next day. He'd silently driven the other towards his abode, saying very little but instead watching him closely. He didn't trust Tillman--and knew the other most likely distrusted him as well. If he was smart.

"Your new life begins. I wish I could let you rest in something other than a cell, but we have work to do."

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Crane was still laughing.

This was it--the adrenaline, the hair on the back of his neck. He was frightened. He was frightened and he was delighted about it, even though the pain in his chest was more than enough to sent a normal person spiraling into shock. It was sheer will, really, and he brought a hand up to take off his mask, smile wide. He had a feeling this was what the Joker felt, too.

"They thought it was Batman. He doesn't use guns, no--I have it on good authority he dislikes them." And still, he rattled off an address of a rather dilapidated building, laughter choked with a cough. Blood.

"Excellent. Excellent--do you feel that, Mr. Tillman? Your hair raising? Your breath quickening? It's fear. I'm scared."

Crane's continued laughter was disconcerting, but as long as he was laughing, he was breathing and Tillman took the joviality as the mixed blessing that it was. He tuned out the majority of what was being said. More ranting about the Batman. Babbled nonsense.

Tillman pulled the van into the indicated building and gave it a quick once-over before climbing into the back with Crane. The doctor's pupils were slightly dilated, but his eyes were bright and clear. Tillman pulled his knife out and knocked one of Crane's hands away so that he could slice through the material of his shirt to better examine the wound.

"You're going to be fine," Tillman stated calmly. "Ricochet. Do you have contacts in your operation that can treat it for you?" Tillman was a soldier and he had dealt with many of his own wounds over the years, but his brand of medicine lacked the niceties of a legitimate doctor's.

"I'm the wrong kind of Doctor," Crane murmured, and his gaze was unfocused but still staring at Tillman. The soldier was precise and knew how to act under pressure, and Crane's glasses safely in the breast pocket of his shirt.

"But I can make an assessment and my assessment is--yes. I appear to be bleeding." He blinked, long and hard, and then proceeded to look down at his own pale, scrawny chest. Immediately comparing it to Tillman's.

He'd watched.

Long before he'd even considered picking Tillman. When he just knew him as Kable. When word had got out to Gotham about Castle, when he curiously reviewed Slayers footage. It was Tillman's gaze that got him--the unflinching, determined glare he was currently giving Crane himself. No trace of terror, no glimpse of the inner psyche. And that blue, that gorgeous hue of his eyes that Crane had seen in more than just video view...

"You've passed."

Tillman folded a piece of Crane's shirt and pressed it into the wound. He grabbed Crane by the wrist and forced him to hold the compress in place.

"I meant your illegal operation. Someone that can stitch a bullet wound that won't report it to the police," Tillman amended, not phased by the sarcasm in the least.

Implication that he had passed some kind of test intensified his glare for a moment. If that little rendezvous had been a test and this was passing, he didn't want to see failure.

"We need to get somewhere with clean water and a first aid kit," was all Tillman said. He started the van and eased it back onto the street.

"There's a mosque run by Ra's al Ghul and his group. We're welcome there."

Crane gave the other directions, his free hand fumbling with his suit pocket to grab his glasses. It took him a little longer than usual, but he'd been preoccupied--far, far preoccupied with thoughts of Tillman, thoughts of pain, thoughts of fear...

"They're the ones responsible for your wife and daughter," he stated softly. "I wouldn't dare attempt to extract someone from Castle's clutches, I'm not that stupid."

Tillman glared out the window. He had feared that Castle might do something to them after he got locked away. The man had the resources to make Angie's life hell. He owed Crane for getting them out.

"Castle had them? What do you mean by that?" He invited the doctor to keep talking so that he would know if he passed out or fell into shock in transit.

"Your wife played another one of his silly little games and your little girl was adopted by him." And Crane, despite the pain in his chest (he was no super soldier, on the contrary, he was and always would be a tall and scrawny mess of a man), was interested in his reaction.

He enjoyed Tillman. They had only met briefly but Crane was not above researching his potentials. Watching him. Rewinding it, constantly. Waving off interns and saying he was studying Castle's work.

"It is of my.. professional opinion, that Castle is quite mad. I could throw a number of illnesses in his direction and have it fit properly. That's the beauty of psychology. So easily manipulated."

Tillman's jaw tightened until his teeth ground together. Castle had adopted his daughter. The madman. The animal. How satisfying it would be to gut him slowly...

He caught himself speeding and slowed. In the span of a breath, he readjusted his focus, funneled that intensity into the task at hand.

"Is that the beauty of it," he inquired, tone more aggressive than he had intended.

Their destination loomed ahead, dark and foreboding. "This is it? Are you okay to walk?"

"I think you'll find I'm hardly a fragile being," Crane stated softly, holding his shoulder. His pale hand was stained with red and his blue eyes were growing more and more unfocused--not too dangerous. Not yet. But he was getting there.

"It's a good thing to make friends with the League of Shadows," he murmured, and the moment the girl at the door saw who Crane was she immediately let him into the Arabic holy place.

"Keep your enemies..quite close." It was mumbled, now, and Crane's free hand grabbed on to Tillman's own shoulder, narrowing his eyes.

"I do believe I have to tell them about the Chechen's treachery."

The League of Shadows. Could this city get any more dramatic?

Tillman looked at the hand on his shoulder, at Crane's dulling eyes and pale lips, and fixed the doctor with a frown that dared him to protest. "You can tell them after this is dealt with."

Not five minutes later, Tillman and Crane were fitted with a first aid kit in a room that offered enough privacy to conceal any screaming.

"Move your hand. Let me see it," Tillman growled as he ran a lighter under a pair of tweezers.

Crane's grip was white, pale, a stark contrast against the maddening red. He grunted, looking over at him. There was no medic, apparently, within the League of Shadows that wished to aid him.

Funny, that--but then he wasn't technically a member, he supposed. Rather a hired thug. A glorified hired thug, but one who was rather powerful nonetheless. And now? Now his shirt was being ripped off by nothing more than a hired hand.

He couldn't help but grunt as the other forced his hand away, though his lips parted as he was grinning.

"There's nothing to fear but fear itself," He murmured, choking back laughter. He wasn't The Joker, but this... this was exciting. Fearful, even.

"Keep telling yourself that," Tillman growled back. There was no warning or preamble to him pressing the tweezers into the wound. Somewhere inside was a piece of a bullet, rather than the whole thing. Crane was fortunate that it was a ricochet wound rather than a straight gunshot, or it would have been deeper and more traumatic and beyond Tillman's narrow scope of medical knowledge.

Crane wasn't expecting it--the surprised, pained yell as his back arched, eyes closed shut. It tapered off into a whimper and then a low growl, body trying to jerk up despite the pain. Crane had never really been physically wounded like this. Beaten up, broken arms, and a rather harrowing experience with nearly drowning by a creek thanks to his great-grandmother, yes. But never a bullet wound.

After all, the Batman didn't use bullets.

He did, however, snap out of his rather odd state, pain blinding him more than anything. His bloodied hand grabbed on to Tillman's shoulder, grunting and expelling a snake-like hiss as he tried to push the other away.

Tillman felt metal scrape metal, but Crane's movements prevented him from getting a grip on the shard. He didn't waste his breath or concentration by attempting to reassure Crane. He seized the offending wrist, twisted it sharply to force the hand to release, and pinned it against the wall.

The tweezers nudged deeper as he sought a place to grab the blood-slicked fragment.

No matter how hard he jerked his wrist, choking out a yell despite the fact that, when all was said and done, he wanted Tillman to do this.

Blue eyes met the other blue ones, gaze sharp and unfocused, and he pulled full lips tight, pressing them thinly in an attempt to stop screaming.

"Just... get it out, Tillman."

"Good idea. I'll try that next," Tillman muttered. He stepped closer and pressed his body into Crane's, stilling a good portion of the pained squirming. He withdrew the tweezers and examined the extricated piece briefly.

Crane didn't look good: pale, shaky, with a fine sheen of pain induced perspiration. It was a wonder he hadn't passed out already. The next bit was going to be worse. Their current position would not be optimal, especially if the doctor did go limp.

"You're going to have to lay down," he instructed calmly as he threaded a needle.

"Cute," Crane remarked, but it was a weak retort as Tillman shifted their weight, causing him to nearly lie on top of him.

Crane was not a strong individual--he enjoyed the power of the mind simply because he would never be strong, he would never be what Tillman was the perfect, prime example of.

"Clinophobia. Clinophobia is the fear of laying down; of sleeping. Dikephobia..."

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