Who: Shiva and Scarecrow What: A rescue Where: Arkham Asylum and away. When: Recent. Warnings/Rating: None
Finding Jonathan Crane was not a difficulty. Shiva had bested the Bat once, when she was only a child, and she knew how he thought, this man who thought to invoke fear with a costume. Shiva invoked fear without need of a cowl, and there was little respect for this opponent. She considered him unworthy. Anyone who would allow themselves to be bested by a weakling like Jonathan Crane was beneath her concern. She questioned Ra's belief that he could be of use, but she was still loyal to the League, though perhaps that loyalty was beginning to shift. Like all masters, she would not follow someone she considered flawed. Ra's might still be in the right here. Crane might sing to his tune. It remained to be seen, but Shiva had voiced her doubts, and she had done so without reservations.
And now here she found herself, where the Bat had hidden the Scarecrow in plain site. She wondered if the other villains in Gotham did not care to rescue the man. What did this say about him, if even his own kind wished him locked away? But then Shiva knew fear sometimes motivated such things. She did not believe that was the case here. Scarecrow was physically unimpressive, and he used the same tricks over and over again for his own tiny pleasures. He disgusted her.
She entered Arkham in red and black, a twenty-something year old girl with the face of an angel and the carriage of death. She cut down two nurses inside the front door. Quick deaths. Merciful deaths. But necessary. She did not fear what must be done, and she prayed for them as they fell. It was nothing from then on, having a doctor show her to Crane's holding place, and convincing him to enter the code to free the man within. "You may go," she told him when the door opened, and the doctor ran with shaking fingers and urine trailing down his leg and into his shoe.
She threw the door open wide, and she looked into the darkness. "I am Shiva. You will come with me, and you will do as I say, or I will kill you with my bare hands, and I will eat the marrow from your bones."
Weeks spent in that tiny cell with very little human contact had given Jonathan Crane ample time to think, and thinking, for a man like him, was a dangerous thing to do too much. It gave him time to plan, to plot, to question the few people he had considered ‘associates’. He wasn’t so naive as to trust them, to consider them ‘friends’, but he had thought those like Eddie would at least reach out to him.
But he was alone, and in that solitude, Crane had found a certain comfort. There was little to do in the small cell, bound in the institutional-grade straitjacket, so between thinking and forcing his presence upon the girl in Las Vegas, Crane kept his mind occupied. So when the door cracked open and light bled into his otherwise dim cell, he had to admit a certain amount of surprise. Particularly at the figure that stood silhouetted in the doorway. Shiva. The name was familiar, but not intimately so to him. “Did he send you?” the doctor asked, straightening from the slouch he had occupied on his cot, head canted to the side. There was only one ‘he’ that he could be referring to, leaving the name left unsaid.
She nodded once. There was no need for words. There was no need for clarification when the one you worked for made men tremble without reaching out a hand. Ra's al Ghul did not need introduction. She moved aside, hoping the straitjacketed man in the cell would be able to walk on his own feet, without help from her. She would drag him if need be, though she preferred not to do so. This task was beneath her, but she would persevere if it was important.
Beyond the doors, the walk was clear and empty, fear making the nurses and doctors stay clear of the path the deadly woman would walk. She expected the Scarecrow to follow, to do so without trouble or complaint. It would improve her opinion of him slightly if he surprised her in this way. "You are not to remain here," she said of his beloved Asylum. "You will come with me." Where, hopefully, Ra's would put the man in his place. She did not like dealings with problems twice, and if he was to die, this Jonathan Crane, she would rather do it now and be done with it.
Whatever complaints Crane may have had about the unannounced rescue efforts he kept to himself, sensing it was better to hold his tongue lest he lose it. There was something hard about the woman in black and red, and he could tell that she was not one to be trifled with. So he got to his feet, stilled for a moment to find his balance without the use of his arms, secure in the knowledge that it had been Ra’s to send the woman.
Behind her he followed, pleased at the quiet nature of the passageway, all too eager to be free of that damnable cell to complain about the nature of his rescue. They were still too close, and it would be entirely too easy for her to push him back and leave him behind; he valued freedom more than he did a verbal spar right then. “I don’t believe they want me here,” Crane remarked as they moved. “Am I allowed to ask where it is we are going?” His tone was inquisitive, lacking challenge, a scholar looking for information. “And I must praise you on finding me. The bat man surely did his work well this time around.”
"I do not require praise. There is no one I have sought that I have not found, and the Bat is not a worthy opponent," she said dismissively, not slowing her steps to make the disimpassioned statement. She could anticipate body movement, and her senses were keenly honed. Even behind her, as he was, she would sense the slightest closing of space between, the slightest hitch in his muscles. Should he attack her, even without that straitjacket, she would turn on him and break him before he even managed to close the distance between them. It was why Ra's had wanted her. Why he had broken her all those years ago. Why she had left him a child to raise without words. She was the perfect fighter. She was not a conversationalist, and she did not require praise. Praise only weakened those that required it for validation.
She stepped over the bodies of the nurses she had killed on the way in, and she did not miss a step or look down at what remained of them. "I take you Ra's. What he does with you is not my concern," she explained, feeling magnanimous in even offering that much explanation.
Outside, her car rumbled. A sleek black thing with windows so dark no one could hope to see in. She opened the passenger's door, and she waited for him to get inside. She could have entrusted this job to one of the members of the League, but she would not risk them not completing the job. Though, in truth, any man or woman in the League who was blindsided by this creature should be killed. Ra's had trained them all to anticipate, to know, and it was the sign of a weak mind to be trapped by someone small and without power.
No nonsense. That was the aura he was picking up off of the woman, so he didn’t bother to continue the line of thought about praise and whether it was needed or not. Instead, he kept pace with her, a glance given towards the corpses they strode over, his lips twitching slightly though he said nothing. Efficient killing machine. Rather single-minded. She was categorized in his thoughts as they walked, and upon the first step outside, Crane couldn’t help but glance up towards the dark night sky, a faint smile on his lips. Fresh air. A breeze. It hadn’t been that long in that tiny cell, but he still found himself grateful for this taste of freedom.
But there was still that damnable jacket. Crane wasn’t one for hugs, not even for himself. So as Shiva waited for him to step into the car, he inclined his head towards her, lips pursing for a moment. “Did Ra’s also ask that you deliver me to him trussed up like a gift? If not, would you be so kind as to free me from this jacket? I promise to keep my hands to myself.” Because he had no doubts that a hand out of place would be lost sooner than he would notice what was going on.
"Once we are away from this place," was her reply, and she waited for him to enter the car, fully prepared to push him should she need to. She did not know if he had loyal men and women here, and she would not discount it, though he did not seem the kind of man to engender respect or the appropriate amount of fear for such a thing as this.
Had she been taking Ra's from his own place, one filled with his workers, she would have needed to kill every last one on the way out the door. Ra's was a man who was beloved and feared. It was the reason Shiva followed him. The day she no longer felt that love, that respect for the man, she would walk another path. She had been told by the one called Tim that she would diverge, but the time had not yet come. Here, in this place, that time might never come.
She tired of waiting, and she shoved the crow into the car, her hand on his head and an unrelenting pressure that said sit, without need of words.
His displeasure at being handled like a common criminal was almost palpable as he was shoved in the car, that hand on his head forcing him down until he settled into the passenger seat, and while he balked, he was silent, his fury a quiet thing that he would keep bottled up until later. He held no faith in further freedom so long as he was in her company, instead sweeping his legs into the car without a single word, his gaze hard as it fixed ahead of him, through the windshield.
Shiva did not smile at having accomplished her desire. She merely considered it a success, and her jobs were lined with success. She rounded the car, keeping her attention on any potential movement from all sides, and then she joined him.
The car, already on, made no sound as it pulled out from the Asylum. There was no need for such dramatics. She would take him to Ra's, and she would cross to Vegas, where the woman she inhabited knew nothing of what had happened. It was not that she feared retribution, but she did not wish to kill everyone in Gotham. It would come to that, and she did not feel there was anything to win, despite Ra's insistence that decimating the Bat's family would further their cause.
As the car glided through Gotham, taking him to a destination yet unknown, Crane thought back on Arkham. His departure was something he could not have prevented, that he was sure of, but that did not mean that the good doctor was done with the asylum. Whatever plans Ra’s had in orchestrating his rescue, he would see those through, play the part of the loyal follower. But eventually, Crane felt, he would be Gotham’s nightmare once more.