Out of the Belfry, into the Fire

Courage

Slowly, almost lethargically, Jonathan lifted his eyes to Dr. Bartholomew.

It was the same. Nothing that man could do could he ever take seriously.

His round balding head always beaded with sweat even in the coldest of days with the heating system still acting up. His beady eyes behind his glasses, darting like a pair of field mice cocking their heads for the sign of the next owl, could hardly keep a steady enough gaze on a patient anymore to be called a psychiatrist. When he spoke his little voice quivered with those supposed calm, collected words he had learned from his schooling in how to speak to a crazy person as if he doubted the words himself. When he tried to sit straight and open, he was like a faulty popup tent ready to cave-in at any given moment. Jonathan could hardly look back at his pasty face and his grim puckered brows when he was trying to be serious anymore than his pale smile when he was meant to be encouraging. His smile looked like the expression would melt into jelly clean off his face when he dared.

Jonathan closed his eyes slowly before opening them again at the wall behind the good doctor as he held his hands together in his lap with a grimacing sigh.

But there was one thing he noticed. There was one thing that sent shivers down Jonathan's spine despite himself as he patiently waited through his appointment. As much as he noted, felt, anticipated, even tasted every twitch and whiff of fear and anxiety permeating from Bartholomew's weary body like a predator surveying potential prey, he did not feel hungry for it. He did not feel satisfaction. He felt more as though someone was force-feeding him high fructose corn syrup through a tube when he had already had too much to eat. It made him sick to his stomach. It almost made him gag, and he already felt so under par from the lingering aftereffects of his self-injections.

Bartholomew was the same as ever. There was not the slightest change in his behavior today from the last session he had— a short reentry session when he first returned from the hospital. Well, except for the minutest factors of Bartholomew noticing the changes in Jonathan Crane. In fact as Jonathan closed his eyes again slower than before, Dr. Bartholomew asked, "Are you feeling too ill today, still, Pr. Crane?"

"I..." Jonathan cracked.

He cleared his throat, but his mind had gone blank.

Anything he said would be written down for later. Anything he said would be analyzed by this unwell man who needed at least a vacation, if not true retirement. He was looking for something, searching desperately, but at the same time with very little hope that the change in Jonathan Crane was a good sign of things to come.

"I don't feel that I'm as ready for this session," Jonathan said honestly and unemotionally, "as I originally led you to believe."

"But it was you yourself, Professor, who wished to meet earlier than later," Bartholomew ever-so-gently pressed like some apprehensive schoolboy poking a stick timidly into what looked like a dead animal that had showed some signs of movement.

"I apologize."

"There is no need for apology to me, Professor, but you insisted that you could not wait, especially in light of the request for a visit."

"Perhaps it is unwise to continue with it," Jonathan said before he caught himself, because this too would be seen as something for analysis.

He had done it to himself. He knew that. The longer a person remained under the charge of Arkham Asylum and deemed mad, the less he was a person. The more he became a beast to be studied. The longer Jonathan remained, the less he was a patient to be cured or even a number to catalogue for the state and the more he was the Scarecrow to the eyes of all. The more he was as the Joker. Incurable. Something to be contained like a manufactured disease that could go viral. Not too long ago that pleased him that the staff were giving up trying to cure him. It even had amused him that he remained a subject of interest in the study of psychology. Perhaps it was to try to prevent people from becoming as hopeless as he was, perhaps curiosity, though more likely it was just to tell the state they were trying for fear of being downgraded in state funding again except for security measures.