it was going to be considerably easy. with the lack of family members who'd need an explanation for y/n's sudden disappearance, all that he truly had to deal with was her job at the bookstore. jonathan couldn't just steal her away without figuring that part out. the minute she stopped showing up for her shifts, eyebrows would raise.
but for a man like jonathan crane, that wasn't a difficult obstacle to work around.
y/n had quit from arkham so suddenly, like sweeping a rug from beneath jonathan's feet. it's not at all outside the realm of possibility for y/n to take a sudden leave from another job. so impulsive.
he'd make quick work of a resignation letter to leave for her boss. he knew what he wanted it to say, but it had to be convincing. it had to have come from her.
he sat at his desk, and though he was at home by himself, his office door was closed, ensuring the most amount of solitude possible. the soft light coming from the lamp in the corner, the patter of keyboard keys; it's always quiet in his house.
in front of him on the desk was a stack of files ranging from y/n's first day at the asylum to her last. patient files, notes, anything he scrounged up from arkham that she'd written herself.
occasionally he referenced those files as he wrote the letter, his fingers working the keyboard at a meticulous pace. each word he typed, he could hear her voice.
it'd been in the works for days, needed to be perfect, no exceptions. jonathan had left work early just to get it done, finally set things into action.
the more he thought about her leave from the asylum, the more personal it began to feel. it was less like she'd left a job - the building and the patients she was seeing - and more like she'd left him.
a crazy, selfish thought. but one that bulged in his mind. over and over. something had to be done to satiate it.
the letter was finished, only after a double, triple, quadruple check. if this was really going to happen, it was time to start laying the ground work.
as he watched the printer spit out the paper, it became grounded, real. his obsession was guiding him, and he wouldn't try to fight it, he couldn't. it was really happening. this wasn't just a comforting contingency for him to fall back on when he missed y/n in the break room, or after work, longing to catch even a glimpse of her. it was real. the paper was in his hands, and then in his briefcase.
and then his case was grasped in his fist at his side. and then he was out the door and getting into his car. houses and buildings all went by slowly, jonathan focused on each moment passing by, every detail mattered. he had to take note of everything, couldn't be careless.
it was closing time when he arrived, the sign had already been flipped, the streams of people on the sidewalks had been staunched by nighttime's entrance. and with nighttime setting over gotham, jonathan could see in through the bookstore's front windows perfectly.
another paperback, not the one he'd seen her with when he'd stopped in, but a new one, sat on the desk, unattended. he scanned the rows of shelves, one hand still gripping the steering wheel, waiting for her to come into view.
around a shelf near the back, she carried a stack of books, shelving them in their respective sections. so mundane, yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from her.
she had tucked last book into its place, and she'd slipped her paperback into her bag; it was time to lock up and leave for the night.
for the last time.
YOU ARE READING
✩ SIT DOWN BESIDE ME ﹒ ʲᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ ᶜʳᵃⁿᵉ ˣ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ
Fanfiction 🦷 ⟡﹒ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞,﹕⊂⊃﹒﹢ jonathan crane x fem!reader september 8, 22' - ongoing ──﹒♡ 𝒕𝒊𝒍' 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒓𝒖𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚...
