Post by rela on Mar 22, 2006 8:32:40 GMT -5
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of Batman Begins Characters.
Summary: Rachel Dawes is just returning a favor to Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Pairings: Jonathan Crane/Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne/Rachel Dawes implied.
Throwing Stones at these Glass Houses
Silence inserts its scarring blade.
No one, no one, is listening anywhere
my meager thoughts left standing, charred knobs
of trees, stubby teeth along a past wall
of fire.
Who’s there? My door is open.
Will you not come in?
By Pam Wagner
Epilogue - When I’m gone
“Hurry up! Come on!?” She shrieked at him repeatedly. But it seemed what ever had transpired here tonight in Gotham were of no real concern to him. So much that even his own safety didn’t seem to bother him momentarily.
After all, it was the long standing ‘plan’ of his that had set tonight’s events in motion.
Rachel Dawes Ex-ADA, bracing one broken arm in an unprofessional sling against her chest, with her good hand clutching Jonathan Crane’s arm deathly. Well, Dr. Jonathan Crane. Who was tall, pale, disheveled, bruised about the face and neck & currently, a hefty pain to drag along with her.
It didn’t matter how lean he looked to someone from a distance, he was just as hard to move as a strongly rooted plant, almost as if he were purposely planting his feet on the ground, ready to wrench himself away at the slightest tilt in the atmosphere and run back towards the burning, trembling city awash with sirens and cascading horrified screams from unsuspecting denizens watching mayhem spread across there equally hated and loved city.
She still risked turning back to see whether someone had followed them or not. The street lights shone remarkably bright…just like the exploding fires she ducked and ran from earlier.
No one had followed them.
She sighed with momentary relief and started walking on ahead again. There was no real need to be dragging him like that. It wasn’t as if he were the one physically hurt and lacking. She was the one with the broken arm and profusely bleeding leg, she should have been leaning on him. But ironically, as fate would have it, Dr. Crane had a dose of his own medicine. Literally, in his case his carefully created toxin and was now partially or fully insane.
Or not?
She wasn’t sure. She didn’t have time to figure that out yet. It didn’t matter much now.
Nothing did.
Once upon a time she knew would have been more than happy to see him like this …broken, helpless with his usual smug, satisfied smile wiped off of his face, his plans thwarted before they could reach full maturity… but now she almost felt sorry for him.
He kept seeing bats in every dark alley they passed waving at the air wildly until she consoled him with tight slaps across his seemingly strong jaw.
“Ms. Dawes?”
She glanced back at him wary and fearful suddenly because she thought she heard foot steps somewhere behind them. “What?” she snapped. He quickly looked away again like some kind of sheepish child whose just been scolded.
“Jon-…Crane? What is it?” She prodded again an octave higher.
“Nothing Ms. Dawes”
Something in her wanted to snap, explode and tear him into pieces. For being this lost and hurt, for dragging her into this, for destroying the meager list of morals she has hung onto for so many years in this ultimately hopeless town and suddenly let go by just helping someone like crane get out of the city he only accelerated the destruction of.
Just to return a favor she reminded herself again. Just to return a favor.
She just felt a little sorry for him. Sorry, because he was a strange, twisted individual and his morals re-molded by cruelties committed against him.
She had known him before Bruce, after Bruce, in high school and valiantly struggled unconsciously for years to avoid him but again irony struck with it’s pointed sharpness in the dark and a false promise of reflected light and threw her against him.
The man she had struggled to avoid, crush under her expensive legal boots, and sometimes hate because of the display of his maddeningly superior intelligence had somehow dragged her into to the grand scheme of things without really making her do anything against her will or morals but merely by his resilient silence towards her.
It wasn’t her hostility towards him that made him shrink away from her. He was used to it.
It was when she had killed a man in self defense and cold blood , then left him to die, Crane had somewhat willingly helped her by staying silent all these years about it and never hinting at her crime to gain an upper hand in any of the situations she had to encounter him.
She had been frightened to ask him for days, months, weeks, even a few years …why?
It’s when he had finally told her in his formal, clipped tone on the phone that her downfall didn’t affect him in any way and that there was clearly nothing she could do for him for which he should spend his time and energy trying to emotionally black mail her into being party to his deeds, whatever they were at that time. So he wouldn’t bring up the murder she had committed. He didn’t care.
He hadn’t wanted anything from her except to leave him alone.
It was when they had had a ‘moment’, 2 weeks ago, in her office by the open window, when they both were trembling, she with emotion and he with fear, while the sun was going down as if it was some sad testimony to the worlds ugly injustice and irony…she had stood on the tips of her toes for what felt like a brief moment, closing her pinkie finger around one of his fingers, shut her eyes and leaned forward while he stood stock still looking down at her with wide eyes, almost shrinking back from what he knew was coming but not quite.
He wordlessly let his face tilt down slightly to meet her lips. Slowly, she’s not sure which one of them parted lips trying to deepen the closed mouth kiss. But then the shrill ring of her phone had snapped them both out of it and the moment had gone just as it had come. And it took along with itself Jonathan Crane who had disappeared as soon as she had hastily; red cheeked picked up the receiver and answered it with tingling lips and loose hair.
It was when he had almost poisoned her with the toxin but had for some reason decided against it. And when he had come looking for her after breaking out of Arkham that she had felt it was imperative to ‘help’ him leave. Maybe if he left…it would be all normal again.
Maybe she’ll find the morals she worked so hard to keep.
The theory, was practically insane, she knew that. But she couldn’t imagine why else she would do something like this. It couldn’t be love for god’s sake! She knew that he knew that they didn’t feel any remote stirrings of such emotions.
Time and place had hardened them into working towards their goals.
“Oof!”
She had stumbled over some invisible obstacle on the street and had almost gone flying face first on to the rough ground; before she could actually crash down gracelessly, firm hands gripped her by the arms and pulled her up. She bit her lip at the explosion of white hot pain in her broken arm but righted herself while Jonathan Crane held her up and fixed his crooked glasses which were perched unevenly on the bridge of his nose. As if he had just come back to his senses.
Well it was about time wasn’t it?!
“You could come with me…” he said it without a shred of uncertainty, not deliberately forcing it on her but mostly dazed with awe and intrigue. He was staring at her as if she were some newly discovered species he couldn’t wait to take to his lab and start testing on.
Or not.
Rachel sighed loudly “Come with you? And what? Be your evil sidekick?” she allowed a humorless laugh to escape her lips as she struggled to find her footing and Crane narrowed his eyes at her disdainfully as usual.
“You don’t have a job anymore, there’s nothing to stay here for”
“Don’t be so sure” She snapped at his ‘sure’ tone. The way he just said that... As if he knew he was right. As if she was one of his patients.
“Idealists to the end are we Ms. Dawes?”
She glared at him; idealism had nothing to do with it. It was about the morals and principles she had vested in this city all these years that she was reluctant to turn her back on. But she wouldn’t waste time or energy she didn’t have trying to get him to understand. He wasn’t worth that much trouble.
Then why kiss him in your office? A soft voice reprimanded at the back of her head.
It was just some kind of morbid curiosity!, something in the air she mentally chided the voice for contradicting her as if she were some clueless idiot.
Finally shaking her head and looking back at his bruised face she re-strengthened her resolve and spoke without voice breaking “You should go now…before someone finds…”
She let it trail because somehow she didn’t think reminding him of the Batman at this point would do either of them any good.
He nodded curtly, his prim and proper behavior in odd contrast with his disheveled hair and clothes. “Good bye Ms. Dawes”
He was still holding her arm firmly, as if his actions and words couldn’t communicate properly with each other simultaneously …and then as if in slow motion his fingers touched her hair, tucking long loose strands behind her ear. She shuddered at the coldness in them struggling to read his wide, icy blue eyes that studied her with slightly dilated pupils.
All at once he pulled her closer, her breath caught in her throat as he murmured in her ear “When I come back…I’ll have to steal you”
It was said with such a secret clarity and quiet indecency that she almost gasped in fright. But she resisted wrenching her arm away to run and looked back at him giving her a predatory, half smile.
Obviously the toxin’s effect hadn’t worn off yet.
“No you wont…” she said softly voice breaking over the ‘wont’ part of it. He raised both his eyebrows superiorly, nodding both eerily and eagerly towards her “Oh yes… I will come back Ms. Dawes”
Her eyes started to brighten with traitorous tears as she repeated what she had said to herself “No you won’t”
“I’m not like you Crane…go find your equal” She was about to say evil but caught herself.
His lips twitched again into an almost smile before his gaze over her significantly softened “Remember Ms. Dawes with all this evil around you it’s impossible not to be affected by at least some of it”
She considered that…and then spat back viciously “I’m not incognito” It burned her that he could even thin of her like that…like she was the same.
“I hope so… for your own sake”
He tilted his head to a side and nodded gently at her bewildered form, then just as suddenly as he had pulled her to him he had let go, letting her stumble back a little, then turning around and walking away.
Rachel held her breath, something, she didn’t know what was almost vying to be a lose cannon and stop him from going in that direction, something grated at her eyes and let loose a few tears that spilled down with such shameless clarity that she hastily rubbed them away.
He didn’t stop walking expect for a slight pause in stride before he turned the corner and disappeared.
Summary: Rachel Dawes is just returning a favor to Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Pairings: Jonathan Crane/Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne/Rachel Dawes implied.
Throwing Stones at these Glass Houses
Silence inserts its scarring blade.
No one, no one, is listening anywhere
my meager thoughts left standing, charred knobs
of trees, stubby teeth along a past wall
of fire.
Who’s there? My door is open.
Will you not come in?
By Pam Wagner
Epilogue - When I’m gone
“Hurry up! Come on!?” She shrieked at him repeatedly. But it seemed what ever had transpired here tonight in Gotham were of no real concern to him. So much that even his own safety didn’t seem to bother him momentarily.
After all, it was the long standing ‘plan’ of his that had set tonight’s events in motion.
Rachel Dawes Ex-ADA, bracing one broken arm in an unprofessional sling against her chest, with her good hand clutching Jonathan Crane’s arm deathly. Well, Dr. Jonathan Crane. Who was tall, pale, disheveled, bruised about the face and neck & currently, a hefty pain to drag along with her.
It didn’t matter how lean he looked to someone from a distance, he was just as hard to move as a strongly rooted plant, almost as if he were purposely planting his feet on the ground, ready to wrench himself away at the slightest tilt in the atmosphere and run back towards the burning, trembling city awash with sirens and cascading horrified screams from unsuspecting denizens watching mayhem spread across there equally hated and loved city.
She still risked turning back to see whether someone had followed them or not. The street lights shone remarkably bright…just like the exploding fires she ducked and ran from earlier.
No one had followed them.
She sighed with momentary relief and started walking on ahead again. There was no real need to be dragging him like that. It wasn’t as if he were the one physically hurt and lacking. She was the one with the broken arm and profusely bleeding leg, she should have been leaning on him. But ironically, as fate would have it, Dr. Crane had a dose of his own medicine. Literally, in his case his carefully created toxin and was now partially or fully insane.
Or not?
She wasn’t sure. She didn’t have time to figure that out yet. It didn’t matter much now.
Nothing did.
Once upon a time she knew would have been more than happy to see him like this …broken, helpless with his usual smug, satisfied smile wiped off of his face, his plans thwarted before they could reach full maturity… but now she almost felt sorry for him.
He kept seeing bats in every dark alley they passed waving at the air wildly until she consoled him with tight slaps across his seemingly strong jaw.
“Ms. Dawes?”
She glanced back at him wary and fearful suddenly because she thought she heard foot steps somewhere behind them. “What?” she snapped. He quickly looked away again like some kind of sheepish child whose just been scolded.
“Jon-…Crane? What is it?” She prodded again an octave higher.
“Nothing Ms. Dawes”
Something in her wanted to snap, explode and tear him into pieces. For being this lost and hurt, for dragging her into this, for destroying the meager list of morals she has hung onto for so many years in this ultimately hopeless town and suddenly let go by just helping someone like crane get out of the city he only accelerated the destruction of.
Just to return a favor she reminded herself again. Just to return a favor.
She just felt a little sorry for him. Sorry, because he was a strange, twisted individual and his morals re-molded by cruelties committed against him.
She had known him before Bruce, after Bruce, in high school and valiantly struggled unconsciously for years to avoid him but again irony struck with it’s pointed sharpness in the dark and a false promise of reflected light and threw her against him.
The man she had struggled to avoid, crush under her expensive legal boots, and sometimes hate because of the display of his maddeningly superior intelligence had somehow dragged her into to the grand scheme of things without really making her do anything against her will or morals but merely by his resilient silence towards her.
It wasn’t her hostility towards him that made him shrink away from her. He was used to it.
It was when she had killed a man in self defense and cold blood , then left him to die, Crane had somewhat willingly helped her by staying silent all these years about it and never hinting at her crime to gain an upper hand in any of the situations she had to encounter him.
She had been frightened to ask him for days, months, weeks, even a few years …why?
It’s when he had finally told her in his formal, clipped tone on the phone that her downfall didn’t affect him in any way and that there was clearly nothing she could do for him for which he should spend his time and energy trying to emotionally black mail her into being party to his deeds, whatever they were at that time. So he wouldn’t bring up the murder she had committed. He didn’t care.
He hadn’t wanted anything from her except to leave him alone.
It was when they had had a ‘moment’, 2 weeks ago, in her office by the open window, when they both were trembling, she with emotion and he with fear, while the sun was going down as if it was some sad testimony to the worlds ugly injustice and irony…she had stood on the tips of her toes for what felt like a brief moment, closing her pinkie finger around one of his fingers, shut her eyes and leaned forward while he stood stock still looking down at her with wide eyes, almost shrinking back from what he knew was coming but not quite.
He wordlessly let his face tilt down slightly to meet her lips. Slowly, she’s not sure which one of them parted lips trying to deepen the closed mouth kiss. But then the shrill ring of her phone had snapped them both out of it and the moment had gone just as it had come. And it took along with itself Jonathan Crane who had disappeared as soon as she had hastily; red cheeked picked up the receiver and answered it with tingling lips and loose hair.
It was when he had almost poisoned her with the toxin but had for some reason decided against it. And when he had come looking for her after breaking out of Arkham that she had felt it was imperative to ‘help’ him leave. Maybe if he left…it would be all normal again.
Maybe she’ll find the morals she worked so hard to keep.
The theory, was practically insane, she knew that. But she couldn’t imagine why else she would do something like this. It couldn’t be love for god’s sake! She knew that he knew that they didn’t feel any remote stirrings of such emotions.
Time and place had hardened them into working towards their goals.
“Oof!”
She had stumbled over some invisible obstacle on the street and had almost gone flying face first on to the rough ground; before she could actually crash down gracelessly, firm hands gripped her by the arms and pulled her up. She bit her lip at the explosion of white hot pain in her broken arm but righted herself while Jonathan Crane held her up and fixed his crooked glasses which were perched unevenly on the bridge of his nose. As if he had just come back to his senses.
Well it was about time wasn’t it?!
“You could come with me…” he said it without a shred of uncertainty, not deliberately forcing it on her but mostly dazed with awe and intrigue. He was staring at her as if she were some newly discovered species he couldn’t wait to take to his lab and start testing on.
Or not.
Rachel sighed loudly “Come with you? And what? Be your evil sidekick?” she allowed a humorless laugh to escape her lips as she struggled to find her footing and Crane narrowed his eyes at her disdainfully as usual.
“You don’t have a job anymore, there’s nothing to stay here for”
“Don’t be so sure” She snapped at his ‘sure’ tone. The way he just said that... As if he knew he was right. As if she was one of his patients.
“Idealists to the end are we Ms. Dawes?”
She glared at him; idealism had nothing to do with it. It was about the morals and principles she had vested in this city all these years that she was reluctant to turn her back on. But she wouldn’t waste time or energy she didn’t have trying to get him to understand. He wasn’t worth that much trouble.
Then why kiss him in your office? A soft voice reprimanded at the back of her head.
It was just some kind of morbid curiosity!, something in the air she mentally chided the voice for contradicting her as if she were some clueless idiot.
Finally shaking her head and looking back at his bruised face she re-strengthened her resolve and spoke without voice breaking “You should go now…before someone finds…”
She let it trail because somehow she didn’t think reminding him of the Batman at this point would do either of them any good.
He nodded curtly, his prim and proper behavior in odd contrast with his disheveled hair and clothes. “Good bye Ms. Dawes”
He was still holding her arm firmly, as if his actions and words couldn’t communicate properly with each other simultaneously …and then as if in slow motion his fingers touched her hair, tucking long loose strands behind her ear. She shuddered at the coldness in them struggling to read his wide, icy blue eyes that studied her with slightly dilated pupils.
All at once he pulled her closer, her breath caught in her throat as he murmured in her ear “When I come back…I’ll have to steal you”
It was said with such a secret clarity and quiet indecency that she almost gasped in fright. But she resisted wrenching her arm away to run and looked back at him giving her a predatory, half smile.
Obviously the toxin’s effect hadn’t worn off yet.
“No you wont…” she said softly voice breaking over the ‘wont’ part of it. He raised both his eyebrows superiorly, nodding both eerily and eagerly towards her “Oh yes… I will come back Ms. Dawes”
Her eyes started to brighten with traitorous tears as she repeated what she had said to herself “No you won’t”
“I’m not like you Crane…go find your equal” She was about to say evil but caught herself.
His lips twitched again into an almost smile before his gaze over her significantly softened “Remember Ms. Dawes with all this evil around you it’s impossible not to be affected by at least some of it”
She considered that…and then spat back viciously “I’m not incognito” It burned her that he could even thin of her like that…like she was the same.
“I hope so… for your own sake”
He tilted his head to a side and nodded gently at her bewildered form, then just as suddenly as he had pulled her to him he had let go, letting her stumble back a little, then turning around and walking away.
Rachel held her breath, something, she didn’t know what was almost vying to be a lose cannon and stop him from going in that direction, something grated at her eyes and let loose a few tears that spilled down with such shameless clarity that she hastily rubbed them away.
He didn’t stop walking expect for a slight pause in stride before he turned the corner and disappeared.
There were a few syntax and punctuation errors that I could point out to you if you're interested, but the meat of the story is intriguing. 
