shifted_logs | she beckons me shall i give in

Entry tags:

she beckons me shall i give in

Characters: Emil {

pactum} and Dr. Jonathan Batshit {

handfulofstraw}
Location: The Plane.
Time: ... Now? :D
Summary: Emil finally seeks the answers to who and what he is.
Warnings: LANGUAGE. Also spoilers. Will update as needed.

Emil waited until Marta was asleep in their camp to disappear to the Plane. He was tired, but his sleepiness had to wait. It wasn't as if he could rest anyway, not with Crane's words reverberating around his head. "Come see me when you're ready." It'd been a few weeks, he was sure, and only now did Emil find the time or the courage to go and see him.

He wanted to do it alone.

With a silent apology to Marta, he appeared on the Plane and made his way straight to the library. It was where he'd found Crane before... And that odd notebook he had written notes in-- those were concerning the books here, too. He also felt a strange sense of familiarity with books that only made him more uneasy, but he put that aside for now. The answer to that... probably entwined with everything else.

"Mr. Crane?"

Emil fidgeted with his armbands, then took a deep breath and put on a brave face. There was no going back. He was doing this not just for Marta, but for his other friends as well. He had to know the root of his fear... and the holes of his memory.

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Dr Crane was, in a rare moment, not reading a book but listening to one. His eyes were shut and his hands were resting on the book on his lap, Finnegan's Wake. Headphones were not something particularly familiar to him, but they were what they had.

As soon as he had realized that sight was enough to make him feel---some disgusting connection to others, some feelings of empathy---he had stopped it. It wasn't too awful. As always, he felt himself able to connect only by bringing fear into that other person. But the connection to others was too much, and he would have it in his own doses.

So, to spare himself any unfortunate accidents Scarecrow injected himself with a drug to temporarily blind him. It would pass in a few hours, and then he would test it again. He'd keep doing it until it was through if he had to, but until then, he was listening to an audiobook in the second floor of the library.

Emil continued to explore the library. He never noticed a second floor, before... Shows how much time he usually spent in a place like this. He crept carefully between the aisles. "Mr. Crane? Are you here?" Just when he was about to give up hope, he glimpsed a figure! Even with his headphones on, Crane might be able to feel the thump-thump of Emil's huge boots on the floor as he approached.

Maybe he was asleep. Emil frowned and reached out to tap his shoulder.

In the pause between the narrator's oftimes discordant tones, Dr Crane heard something. Opening his eyes, of course, was out of the question, so instead he removed his headphones, though he kept his eyes shut. He'd always had the odd fear that something would pierce his eyes when he was blind and he'd never notice.

At the touch, he stilled. He wanted to grab the hand to stop it, but he held back. In his patented calming psychiatrist's tones (guaranteed to calm down %50 of psychotics!), he asked, "Hello?"

Emil wondered why Crane wasn't opening his eyes. He stepped back, continued to fidget. "It's Emil. I wanted to... see you. A-- alone. I hope that's okay. I don't want Marta to know about any of this until it's over." He shuffled his feet once, twice, looked over the contraption Crane had in his lap. He could hear mumbling coming from somewhere, but he hadn't yet figured out that it was the headphones.

Mumbling was precisely the word for it. Finnegan's Wake, in retrospect, was not the best book of which one could get an audiobook. Scarecrow turned off the record, putting a hand over his face in his skeletal scarecrow sigh.

"Of course, Emil. I have to apologize. It seems I have lost my sight. But I don't need that to explain, do I?"

If Emil's other self popped up and tried to kill the Scarecrow, that would be very regrettable. Why did it have to be now? He ought to have grabbed himself the counterdrug when he was in his lab.

"Oh! You-- your sight? I'm so sorry! You're okay, though, right...? I-I mean... you don't seem to be hurt..." His paranoia regarding himself was shoved aside quickly in lieu of his friendmentorsaviorcreep being experimented on.

... He just didn't know it wasn't the Twins.

Scarecrow said, "I'm fine. This is superior to the alternative." It had slipped out. He hadn't been inclined to say what the superior was. Without missing a beat, he started to form a lie to wrap around that statement in case Emil chose to ask. 'I find empathy very uncomfortable' wasn't the best thing to say before he ended up revealed.

"Please, Emil," said Dr Crane, "take a seat. If there is one? You may have questions."

Emil tilted his head a little. What could the alternative be? He didn't press, though. Losing your sight was bad enough! Emil reached out dragged a little chair over near Crane. Its legs made an obnoxious squeaking sound on the floor, like nails on a chalkboard. "S... sorry," he murmured. The chair was as nervous as he was.

"Questions...? I have a lot of them. I don't know if you can answer 'em all but if you have any ideas, it's... important that I hear them." Emil took a deep breath, told himself this was a brave thing he was doing. Brave and stupid. "I... I want to know how to stop being scared and how to fight by myself. I want to know what I'm so afraid of... and I want to know why I keep having those weird dreams. Memories. It's like the more I remember, the less I know."

He was shaking at this point, not just in his body but in his voice. Emil was terrified of what he didn't know, and that was everything.

Scarecrow paused. He knew his delivery would be off. Fear of the dark was a lovely thing, but operating blind was irritating. He could not reveal this situation as he had wanted to. He almost - almost - smiled at the squeak of the chair. Perhaps he wasn't quite operating blind, even now.

"Then we'll start at the end of that list. I think it's the best place to begin."

Dr Crane did have a theory that there were three personalities, not just the two. He had a choice between explaining what he was certain about and adding what he was uncertain of, and he thought he would make the addition with the note that it was uncertain. Uncertainty is the water that feeds fear's roots.

Emil's fragile life was in Crane's hands. "... Okay." Perfect, perfect trust in the other. He had no reason not to trust him, of course. It seemed like Emil trusted everyone but himself nowadays. He didn't believe he was trustworthy himself; honestly, who could trust a coward like him? A coward who... apparently walked around and did things and talked to people without realizing he was doing it?

And the things he did even when he could remember. That dark energy coursing through him-- his hands wrapped around that soldier's neck, his blade pointed at Mu.

Emil's guilt followed him like his shadow.

"I've come to suspect, Emil, that you are suffering from a mental illness called dissociative identity disorder." The phrase still nearly caught him before he used it. MPD was how he learned to name it. "Have you ever heard of that?"

From what that other person with Emil's face - and, perhaps, Emi's mind - said, it was possible that he hadn't. Their sciences were of a different breed.

Emil shook his head slowly, but the mere description of it made him antsy. "N-- no, I... I haven't. I'm mentally ill?" Did that mean he was completely messed up in the head with no hope of salvation? Because it sounded pretty serious. "That means I'm really sick, doesn't it? I-- I knew something was wrong with me, but I didn't think I was sick. Not like that."

Scarecrow felt that itching sensation at the back of his mind, that strange new compulsion to feel close to someone. Without sight, however, it was easily pushed aside. It was the fear, he knew. Fear was his only way of empathizing, so the fear of others brought him closer to that terrible point. He had to be careful.

On reflex, he pulled his glasses down just a little. "I am afraid that you are. It is, however, treatable. There are things others say you have done but of which you have no memory, isn't it? This illness is the reason for it."

An illness could explain everything? The flashbacks? The anger that coursed through him and made him fight like someone else? For this long, Emil denied that his "Ratatosk Mode" was anything but some outlet of his rage.

But he'd known from the beginning. Even when their memory was exactly the same, he knew... something was wrong. Under no circumstances would Emil ever kill someone, but his darker side seemed to have no qualms with it. At the very least, he held up his oath to Marta when he fought.

"It's treatable?" With that word, he seemed to seal his fate.

Dr Crane smiled the comforting smile reserved for patients (and idiots), the smile laced with just a hint of foreboding. "Yes, but it is a length process. You have at least two, possibly three separate personalities. The second is aware of you, though I don't know if he's aware of the third. The third seems extremely ignorant of himself. And, of course, you're the primary personality."

It was one of the few DID cases Crane had come across since Gotham that actually fit the DSM profile well enough. Harvey Dent, Arnold Wesker, and Harleen Quinzel were never textbook cases.

... What happened to sticking to the facts, Crane? As he mentioned a third personality, Emil went completely ashen. "A... a third? But how—" He shook his head. The fear and doubt began to bloom inside of him once again, slowly overtaking the hope. But he swallowed and went on. "N... nevermind. Sir-- Mr. Crane-- I'd like to start the treatment as soon as possible."

He knew that it put Marta in a bit of danger, but after it was through, and if he rested on the Plane a lot, they would be so much better off. He was afraid that at the rate he was going, she wouldn't have a knight to protect her, even a fail one.

Facts are for licensed medical doctors and people with a sense of ethics. Dr Crane lost both of those years ago.

"To treat this illness we must first learn what has created these two personalities. We know how to trigger the first; fear is enough. We don't know what causes your third personality to appear."

Emil's lips formed a deep a frown. He wasn't sure about the third personality either. As far as he knew, Ratatosk Mode was triggered by anger. So... what? Was this other one triggered by happiness?

Ugh.

"Do you... need to test me again?"

"I would like to arrange it so I could have a safe conversation with your second personality," Dr Crane said. "We can wait before we address your third. In time, I'm sure he'll show up again."

He wished he could see Emil. Instead, Scarecrow had to rely completely on his hearing to analyse Emil's responses. It was such a limited sphere of involvement. Out of habit, he adjusted his glasses. He ignored the uselessness of it and stopped himself from picking apart his own action.

"Safe..." Not a word he really associated with his other personality. "But all I want to do is fight when I'm like that." How could he ensure Crane's safety? It seemed very risky, and that was even without the possible third personality involved.

It made his head hurt.

"You aren't completely able to control it. I assure you, enough years at Arkham Asylum will teach any psychiatrist how to protect himself. That is one fear you needn't concern yourself with."

He would rather not bring out Emil's inhibitions on violence. It could only be counter-productive. "Would you be ready for that today, or should we try again at a later date?"

Emil took in a deep breath, then let it out. "A... alright." He wondered vaguely what sort of people Crane usually dealt with. The question that followed made him pause. "We can do it tonight, but I... have something to take care of." He wasn't sure why, but he had a feeling that something big was going to happen. He wanted to leave something for Marta in case he didn't return for a long while.

"Hm..." Well, the attachment could do no harm, and he'd rather have his eyesight if he were to unleash that second personality onto the world. Dr Crane set his book on the arm of the chair. "Will you meet me in the ballroom, then? I suspect my blindness will have faded again by then. It comes and goes."

(Scarecrow had always found something incredibly satisfying in dishonesty that always tells the truth. It was so much more challenging than simple lies.)

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she beckons me shall i give in

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