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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."
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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It sent shivers down Crane's spine and the other could only smile behind his mask, his sleeve still rolled up. Crane decided he enjoyed that growl--that annoyed, animalistic grunt that was so characteristic of soldiers. Of those trained to resist him.
Tillman would crumble, he decided, strapping a small device around his wrist.
"Then be a good soldier and point your gun at anything that threatens me. We're here, and I need to make a deal with the Chechens."
An empty parking lot with barking dogs seemed to be the meeting place, and Crane rolled down his sleeves, nodding for Tillman to open his door.
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"Ah, the Scarecrow."
"I believe you had a problem with something?" He asked. "I don't like my time to be wasted."
"Your drug."
In a matter of seconds, someone was pulled out of a van--a quivering, terrifying mess of fear and the moment he looked at Crane's mask he began to scream.
"I gave you exactly what you wanted."
"NO! I need repeat customers."
"Then find someone else that will deal under Batman."
"I heard he can fly."
"I heard he can disappear."
"The Bat is just a human," Crane stated, moving away from Tillman, noose swinging around his neck. The frightened boy began screaming. "And he fears just as much as any other person. Do you know what the man next to me fears the most?" He gestured to Tillman, smirk behind the burlap mask.
"Disappointing me. So I'd lower those guns."
The Chechen leader began yelling--something about the toxin, something about the gas, and Crane started to chuckle.
"See your problem is that you're letting the Batman strike the fear of God into you. It shouldn't be some masked vigilante.. It should be me."
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When Crane gestured to him, he raised the gun to his shoulder and came up on the doctor's left side like a well trained dog. He settled his sights on the leader of the little operation and waited for an order to proceed.
They were undoubtedly at a tactical disadvantage. Tillman was good, but Crane's confidence in his skill was borderline irrational. Perhaps Crane wasn't as smart as Tillman had first thought.
Despite the odds, his aim was steady, his posture confident, his eyes cold and murderous. Impossible odds pushed him to perform that much harder. Making a group second-guess themselves was generally a matter of not looking intimidated and behaving as if striking them down would take no more effort than brushing dust from a shelf.
Tillman could only pray that Crane would stop antagonizing them before things got bloody.
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"This isn't about my guard, Androvitch. This is about our deal. Do you--"
A rustle in the distance. A gunshot.
"It's the Bat!" There was screaming. Chechen being spoke and then another one. The police had arrived, it seemed--and one had gotten close to Crane in the combat.
He dispensed the fear toxin with ease due to the chamber he had slipped on his wrist, immediately causing the thug to howl in terror. Behind his mask, despite his odds, Crane was laughing.
"That's not the Batman," He assured, pressing his back into the van next to Tillman, looking more than amused. There was a laugh, there--an oddly displaced, oddly crowing laugh.
"That's NOT THE BATMAN," He shouted. More gunshots--the police had found them, it seemed. Sliding down the van, Crane continued to laugh as the spray hit the van. His laughter was cut short by a sharp pain in his shoulder, and Crane wound up coughing, clasping the suddenly wounded area and letting out a low grunt.
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It was like being at war again. The people before him became obstacles. His gun became a means of overcoming them. In the chaos and panic, it wasn't hard to pick off the retreating thugs in quick, mechanical succession.
He knew that he only had seconds before the police would catch up, but he leaned in close to the unfortunate drug user who had, by then, curled himself into a ball and hidden mostly under a nearby car. "Stay off the blow, kid. And if anyone asks you about tonight, assure them that the next person that messes with the Scarecrow is going to die screaming, got it?" The Scarecrow. He felt ridiculous saying it, but there was something about Gotham that warranted a touch of drama.
"Why aren't you in the fucking van already?" He spat at Crane, and only then did he notice the blood. Stupid, goddamn oversight. And he couldn't do anything about it for the moment, not with the police closing in. "Keep pressure on that," he ordered gruffly as he picked Crane up bodily and threw him into the back of the van.
It was a good thing for them that corruption in Gotham had infiltrated the police. They weren't known for their organization or timeliness and this allowed Tillman to slip out of an unguarded back entrance.
"Don't you fucking bleed out on me," he growled distractedly, intent on watching for signs that they had been seen leaving the building. If he noticed anyone following them, they'd have to ditch the tail, ditch the van, and hijack a new car, all the while not getting spotted for being suspicious men covered in blood by some nosy housewife watching through the blinds.
"Safe house. Directions. Now." Keeping himself alive and free in this situation would be simple. With Crane, it was a little more complicated. To make it worse, he didn't know Gotham at all, which meant that he was relying on someone who could go into shock at any moment. Already, he was formulating just what to do if that happened.
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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."
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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.
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"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."
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"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.
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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."
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"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.
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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."
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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?"
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The tweezers nudged deeper as he sought a place to grab the blood-slicked fragment.
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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."
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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.
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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..."