The climb up from Hell had been a slow and agonizing one, rife with more broken bones than even Jonathan Crane, veteran of a hundred Bat-shaped street-fights, knew what to do with. But he had come across his epiphany, and clung to it with the tenacity that only men of his mental calibre could manage. He'd realized that few people really understood the meaning behind the message that Dante had left in his Divine Comedy -- but it was so clear to Jon.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
It wasn't a warning. It was advice.
Because hope was the last thing they used to hurt you, because a man without hope, who never imagined a way out of his pain, could no longer be tortured. Not where it counted.
So he confined his dreams, and his hopes, to the nighttime, to sleeping fantasies where a black-winged savior skulked the edges of his subconscious and hearkened back to better days. With the injuries inflicted on him now, there was no way he was jumping rooftops with a Bat on his heels, hearing the snap of that cape in the wind and the breath he could imagine on the back of his neck.
He could barely walk.
All he did these days was what he was told. Break prisoners. Using only his words, he sat and calmly talked to them for hours, made them pliable. If the words didn't take, he prostituted his drug to them, and took sour comfort in every second of their screaming, and moved day to day like a man already dead where it mattered.
The Scarecrow hadn't whispered for months, and he sorely missed the company.
open;
It wasn't a warning. It was advice.
Because hope was the last thing they used to hurt you, because a man without hope, who never imagined a way out of his pain, could no longer be tortured. Not where it counted.
So he confined his dreams, and his hopes, to the nighttime, to sleeping fantasies where a black-winged savior skulked the edges of his subconscious and hearkened back to better days. With the injuries inflicted on him now, there was no way he was jumping rooftops with a Bat on his heels, hearing the snap of that cape in the wind and the breath he could imagine on the back of his neck.
He could barely walk.
All he did these days was what he was told. Break prisoners. Using only his words, he sat and calmly talked to them for hours, made them pliable. If the words didn't take, he prostituted his drug to them, and took sour comfort in every second of their screaming, and moved day to day like a man already dead where it mattered.
The Scarecrow hadn't whispered for months, and he sorely missed the company.