Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-10 22:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics, scarecrow |
Who: Selina and Crane
What: Extracting a teensy promise
Where: Arkham
When: Immediately after Eddie gives her the in here.
Warnings/Rating: Torture
The tranquilizer was strong enough that it was some hours after he had been locked in a new cell that Jonathan Crane finally woke up. The staff of the asylum had taken no chances when it came to the criminal known as Scarecrow after finding him trussed up on their front steps. He had promptly been admitted to the most secure wing of the facility, the cell padded, white walls and white floors, and the institutional straitjacket that he wore gave some assurance that the Scarecrow would not be troubling the staff anytime soon. It was a position that he was finding himself in more and more, and one that he was far past loathing. This was what trust got someone, it seemed, crossed and betrayed, deposited on the steps of Arkham without a single bit of warning. He supposed it was his own fault, really. He had thought Eddie would be true to his word, and honestly, Crane had had no intention of harming anyone when he got back into Arkham. He simply wanted something to do, something to pass the time that wasn’t hiding and wondering when the bat man’s black wings would beat down on him again. He could be productive, he could help people. Years of training had not been spent simply to be put to waste. Jonathan Crane had knowledge that could help people, provided that he wanted to.
But no, he was locked up once more, the Riddler be damned, and nothing more to do than pace the cell.
It took the kitty cat longer than it strictly had to.
She could have cut through Eddie's security system if she wanted to; after all, breaking into places was her area of expertise. No, it had taken longer, because she'd wanted to ask. See? The Cat knew when not to burn a bridge, and it wasn't time to burn anything with the little green man. Oh, she didn't trust him, but he didn't trust her either. But that was just how Gotham was, and it didn't mean she didn't like him.
Now Crane, Crane she didn't like.
She knew that by the time showed up outside his cell, walk and sway, all sleek black and a cowl, Crane would be completely lucid, and Selina very much wanted that to be the case. See, the kitty cat still had that itch, that hunger to control things, to dominate, to make things hers. She knew it was the Pit juice amplifying all those pesky feelings from her childhood - no mommy, no daddy, no money, no freedom, no control over anything, not even her own body. She understood, and she'd been mostly keeping it under wraps.
Until now.
And she wasn't going to kill him. No, she wasn't even going to hurt him to the point of breaking him. See, there was the unfortunate little matter of who he was in Las Vegas. And, really, that's why she was there.
She dragged a claw against his bars, and she smiled an enigmatic smile. "My favorite person," she purred, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "All trussed up. A present for the kitty cat."
And the nurses? And the guards? Nowhere to be found. Poor little Scarecrow.
The sound of footsteps outside his cell, the claw dragging against the bars, they both drew his attention as he turned towards their source, hardly surprised to see her considering everything else that had happened. The Riddler had already betrayed him once, watched him burn his mask before dumping him on the steps of Arkham, so really, was it so far-fetched to think that he would sell him out to the cat as well? “There’s no present for you in here, kitten,” Crane responded, crossing over towards her, though he kept his distance from the bars, his gaze narrowed in her direction. “Go on about your way or you’ll risk the good doctors trussing you up and throwing you in the cell next door.” He doubted that would happen, since the halls were void of any staff members that he could hear. Considering the cat’s presence, it was quite unlikely that they would be interrupted at any point in the near future, giving her more than enough time to play with her food before she ate it.
“I’m in no mood for your games, I fear,” he said slowly, evenly. “And you lost your chance for a meeting with me when you stood me up that night. I don’t do second dates when the first was a no-show.”
She laughed a twinkling thing of a laugh, almost more harmless kitten than clawed cat. "The doctors won't touch me," she promised the undoctor in the straitjacket. "Plus, you don't think I'd let them get in the way of this time between us, do you? It's so overdue, Jonathan," she said, his name almost a caress on her tongue, spoken as if it was being said to a lover, and not to the man owed her more of his hide than anyone else in Gotham. And here he was, vulnerable, helpless. In most men, she hated that. She liked the Bat's strength, the fact that he could hold his own against her. She had no time for weakness in the opposite sex.
But this was different. He was a hobbled mouse, and this cat didn't mind in the slightest.
The tranq gun came out of her utility belt with a tiny flash of silver, and she smiled a lush-lipped, red, red smile. "Oh, didn't I tell you? It's not your decision." She pressed her lips together in a mock pout, and then she smiled again. "And such little space to avoid the needle. Oh, and the kitty cat brought back ups, just in case she misses.
The medicine in the needles was special. They would immobilize him, but they wouldn't affect his nerves, his pain centers, his voice, his mind. No, and wasn't that just the cat's meow?
She aimed for his neck. Zip.
Hearing his given name spill from those painted lips made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in response. She was danger all wrapped up in skintight clothing, and he was well aware of what she was capable of, and normally, Crane was fine with this. But restrained as he was, no place to escape to, not even the familiarity of his mask (a smoldering, smoking stain on a floor, now) to hide behind, he felt distinctly cornered. The look in her eyes, the mocking pout of her lips, and he damned the Riddler again silently for putting him in this situation.
Seeing the tranquilizer gun appear, Crane attempted to look anything but furious. He wasn’t going to try and run from her, because where was he to go? He could only hope that perhaps the kitten didn’t know as much as she believed about the drugs she was handling. “You don’t scare me, kitten,” Crane said, because perhaps if he said it aloud, it would come true. There was little time to say or do anything else before the needle of the tranq gun found a home in the side of his neck, a pinprick that blossomed into a sharper pain, leaving the crow to stumble back, turning his head to the side to try and rub against the shoulder of the jacket, trying to dislodge that pesky dart. But the drugs were fast acting, or maybe he was still weak from before, but it wasn’t long before Jonathan Crane was on his knees, the world spinning dizzily around him. The padded floor came up to meet him, soft against his cheek, but where darkness should have fallen, blessed escape from whatever it was the cat had up her sleeve, awareness stuck with him. That feeling of immobility, his arms and legs not his own, even unable to roll over onto his back, it settled like a lead weight in his stomach. “Dating a pharmacist, are you?” he managed to quip, his voice rough but still very much his own despite whatever it was she had pumped through him.
"Stealing from one," she said of the pharmacist, and she made sure to give the drug plenty of time to work, according to the instructions she'd obtained with her lips on said pharmacist's ear. Once she was sure he wasn't faking, she pulled out a little key and opened the cell.
Snick. Just like that.
And the kitty cat didn't trust the man on the floor. She wasn't even sure she would call him a man most days of the week, but she promised Eddie she wouldn't kill him, so she supposed that meant he was going to be elevated from straw and heartlessness for just a few minutes.
She pulled zip ties from her belt, and she rolled the immobile man onto his back, where she tied his legs together, just in case. The straitjacket took care of his arms, but the kitty cat wasn't taking any risks.
His muzzle came next. He could still talk through it, but there was no chance of him biting. Bad, bad crows. The kitty cat knew how bitey birds could be, and she dragged her claws through his hair in something that almost resembled a caress.
Once she was sure that there wouldn't be any accidents, Selina straddled his hips, lithe weight and sleek muscle beneath black, and she shoved her goggles up so that she could see him properly. She had no weapons in her hand, nothing save the tranq gun, which she was refilling with something new.
"Do you know why I'm here, Jonathan?" she purred.
There was something absolutely humiliating in being rolled around like he wasn’t even a thing, his ankles lashed together, and then the humiliation mounting even further when she went so far as to muzzle him. It was tempting to snap at her fingers in response, but he somehow managed to behave himself even as she straddled him, a solid thing atop him where her strength was no illusion. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, meeting her gaze as she pushed the goggles up atop her head. “I’m imagining you’re not here to seduce me with your feminine wiles,” he responded, giving a wary glance towards the tranq gun in her hands, the way she was loading something else into it. “Stole something else from the pharmacist?” Crane asked, hating the way he could not even shift beneath her, movement stolen from him in a way he was coming to detest. “I don’t believe you went to school to learn about any of that. Only trained professionals should handle drugs, dear.”
"Oh, don't worry. The drugs aren't contraindicated," she told him, for all the world making the words sound like she was very concerned about Crane's wellbeing. "They won't kill you," she added, green eyes alight with mischief. "They won't even interact poorly with each other, so you'll get the most benefit possible out of both," she explained, her smile sweet as spun sugar, despite the great hatred lurking behind it.
She held the tranq gun up, as if she was concentrating very hard on where to shoot him. But, of course, her options were limited in the end. He was so very tied up, wasn't he? She put the gun to his neck, selected the lowest needle pressure, and cooed when the needle pierced his skin.
"This will only hurt for a second, Jonathan," she promised.
But it was a lie, of course, the second drug was the opposite of an opioid. A specially created venom, it cause excruciating pain by emulating natural toxins. It was burn and hiss and scream, and all without leaving any permanent damage behind. The kitty cat had been told it was unbearable. But Crane thought he was a tough man, didn't he?
She wondered how long it would take before he peed himself from it.
"Do you want to answer my question seriously, Jonathan, or shall I answer it for you?"
“You make it sound as though you know what you’re doing,” he began, not liking the look that shone in those eyes of hers, the dark mischief that promised nothing good would come out of this encounter, particularly for him. “But you didn’t even bother to ask if I had any allergies. Bad practice, kitten. You’ll end up killing your patients if you keep that up.” There were several things that she could have in the tranq gun, and he highly doubted any of them would be particularly pleasant. At least the light in her eyes wasn’t one that screamed murder; he would live through this, he felt, but he doubted he would enjoy it.
His eyes closed briefly as she pressed the gun to the side of his neck, only a small hiss escaping him when the needle penetrated, spreading its contents quickly into his system. The immediate effect was a burn, a fire that crawled through him, his breath catching in his throat as he squeezed his eyes shut tight in response. “You’re a horrible liar,” he said quietly, waiting for the pain to pass, though as the moments ticked by, each slower than the last, he was starting to realise that the pain wasn’t going to pass, and in fact, seemed to be getting worse.
“You’ve asked a question I can’t properly answer, given my current range of knowledge,” he responded, his words tighter than they had been moments before, the fire spreading, down into his arms, his torso, and it was something he couldn’t escape drugged as he was, and that made it worse than it might have been. At least with the ability to move, an attempt to escape could be made. Movement to try and ease discomfort, something to take his mind off of it, but trapped as he was, there was nothing more that he could do other than exist and suffer through it. “Perhaps you ought to explain it to me, dear,” Crane said a moment later, his eyes squeezed shut tight, sweat beading over his forehead.
"No one will hold an honest mistake against me," she said of any potential allergies she had and, really, it was true now, just as it had been true in her Gotham. Even if the Bat did decide she needed to be punished for being a bad, bad kitty cat, he wouldn't keep her in Blackgate long; she'd already called his bluff there on multiple occasions. He wouldn't put her somewhere like this, either, and so she wasn't worried. Intention was, after all, what mattered. Wasn't it? Her smile was serene with knowledge and certainty; no she didn't think he was allergic to anything, and she wasn't schooled enough to know any better, if things went wrong.
When he said she was a horrible liar, she just smiled, and she laughed when he said he couldn't properly answer her question. "And here I thought you knew everything. Isn't that what you pretend, Jonathan? That you're a god above men?" She leaned down close when he said she ought to explain, relishing the droplets of sweat on his forehead, all lean movement and silken grace.
"You see, Crane, I think the Pit's gone to my head, and I think it's made me less tolerant than before. Before, I wouldn't kill you because of the Bat, because of the little people in Las Vegas who might care if your pathetically sadistic self resulted in the end of someone they love. But now? Now the kitty cat doesn't care. Burned bridges, and no guilt. So, I'll say this once, and just once. You leave the little Las Vegas people alone, or you're going to end up dead, and I'll dance on your corpse, crow, and I'll scream to the skies." She took her claws, and she scratched a line along his cheek, deep and dragging blood and skin in the wake of the metal. "You're going to get worse and worse for the rest of the night. You're going to scream and scream, and nothing they give you will help. And in the morning, you'll remember, won't you, Crane? Stay away from me, leave your person in Las Vegas alone. Leave them all alone, and the kitty cat won't come near you again."
She sat back, weight on his hips and a beatific smile on his face, the Pit hunger for control was bright and hot in her veins, and she felt calm for once, for now.
The pain that rushed through him, unrelenting and showing no sign of ebbing, made it hard to concentrate on the words she was saying. But despite it, he wasn’t about to simply lay there and let her walk all over him, not even pain would keep him silent for long. Another swipe of his tongue over his lips, his jaw tight with tension. “Not even gods can predict the actions of the insane,” Jonathan finally answered, a heavy breath escaping him, muscles cramping, a strict pain that had his breath catching for several long moments.
When his eyes opened again, he managed to focus on her words, his gaze unfocused though her words did not go missed. Of course she would demand that, and of course the Pit had gone to her head. Didn’t it do that to everyone? Immortality had a price, and few realised how steep it tended to be. He grimaced as her claw scraped over his cheek, another line of fire on top of everything else that seeped through his veins, the feeling of blood running down his cheek towards his ear; he could feel how deep it was, no superficial cut that would heal in a day. It would scar, it would serve as a reminder.
A haggard breath escaped him as she sat back on his hips, skin gone pale as he tried to hold his composure together, but every minute that passed, every second that the poison had to leak further into his system, control became something that was quickly slipping through his fingers. “Fine. Fine.” His voice was hard, full of breath as he tried to push through the pain, but it was as relentless as she was. He couldn’t escape it, couldn’t crawl away from it, and as she sat there, smiling down on him, the first sound escaped him, a keening whine that slipped out from a clenched jaw, his eyes squeezed shut tightly, chest rising and falling with the rapid pulls of air he was dragging in.
She liked the pain in his eyes in ways she couldn't explain. Her Bat had kept her from killing the men she hated most, the men she'd wanted most to crush beneath her boots, and she wondered if it would have been better than this, than watching that blood and pain blossom on his cheek, than watching the red ephemera drip onto the dingy white of the floor-dragged straitjacket. She didn't think so. She thought maybe this was best, the pain on his face, and his agreement.
The kitty cat was a greedy thing, and she sat back and watched, all solid weight against his lower body. He might have his little drugs, his mask that protected him, but she would always beat him in a fight. And it was his loss, really, that her conscience had taken a hit during the plague. Her mind was all Pit-green, guilt and anger and loss. She knew she couldn't go back, and she felt that as sharply as the claws that had dragged along his cheek.
She was quiet for minutes, just listening to his sounds of pain, to that aching breath that he dragged into his body to tolerate it, and then she leaned forward and pressed a lush lipped kiss to the muzzle that covered his mouth. Her claws traced their path on his face during the mockery of affection, catching on jagged skin and pulling on tissue. And then she sat back again.
She stood, and she walked around him, knowing the position would add to his vulnerability, knowing the height would make it all worse, then. At that moment, he was the representation of everything that had gone wrong. Lucky little crow.
"Remember your promise," was all she said, when she finally moved toward the cell doors. She jingled the little key, locking him up tight again, and peering in the bars, in case he wanted to tell her goodbye. She could be a polite kitty cat, sometimes.
By the time painted lips pressed against the muzzle that covered his mouth, Crane was insensible to the pain that he couldn’t get away from. There was nothing else besides it, nothing else in his world other than that hurt that stretched to every inch of his body. His eyes rolled up as she stood, looking as though he followed her path around him, though it was hard to say how much he actually noticed. Breath whistled between his clenched teeth, and in answer to the words that he couldn’t make sense of, the first of what would be many screams that night echoed in the cell. Pain lasted, pain lingered, left its mark upon a person, a mark that wouldn’t easily be erased. Death might have been easier, but this, this would be something he would carry with him long after the pain had eased.
"Now you know what it feels like in your patients' minds," she said, entirely serious, no humor or tease or taunt in her voice. "Have a goodnight, doctor."
She didn't look back as she left, though her step slowed once for a particularly piercing scream, before she used Eddie's in to get herself right back out.