Fear Awakened [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

007

"What's the matter, Jane Crane?" the obvious second in command -- a dark haired girl named Melody Lowman -- piped up, stepping forward. "Can't take a joke?"

"Shut up!" Jane cried, rising to her feet with her hands in angry fists at her sides, "just shut up. It's not a joke, and it's not funny."

Melody giggled, bravely taking a step closer so that she was leering in Jane's face.

"And what're you gonna do about it?" she tempted, wagging her eyebrows as she gave Jane a small shove into the ketchup and straw covered mess.

Before she knew what she was doing, Jane's left fist was swinging through the air, colliding squarely with Melody's cheek.

As the other girl stumbled back onto her rear, Jane realized she'd made a terrible mistake. The crowd that had formed was effectively hushed by the surprise of the action, but there was no doubt that she'd screwed up.

She was smart enough to know that this would only guarantee that things would be amplified, that the worst was yet to come. What she had not been was calm enough to stop herself.

Day in and day out, she pushed down anger not at the way she was treated, but how they treated Jonathan. So far as she knew, it had never been provoked. They simply did not like him and were not at all shy about showing it.

"You're so dead," Melody spat, clutching her cheek and looking up at Jane, "you and that freak."

With that, and realizing that salvaging the locker was a forlorn hope, Jane turned and quickly walked away. The janitor would clean it up over the weekend, or she'd simply never use her locker again.

All that mattered just then was to get out of the situation, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

She blindly charged through the school and up the sidewalk into the rain that had begun. She eventually made it to where Jonathan was waiting, as he had been everyday for weeks. She was too flustered to stop or to slow her pace.

"You seem upset," he noted, easily keeping up with her. He eyeballed her stained shirt. "... Is that ketchup?"

"Melody Lowman and that cow, Sherry," she growled, still revved up considerably.

"What happened, Jane?" he asked, her vague answer obviously lacking any real explanation. She sighed and swiped away a few errant tears, hoping he would mistake them for raindrops.

"My locker. They filled it with straw and sprayed it with ketchup. All of my books, my papers, everything was ruined," she explained hotly.

"Melody was in my face, laughing and calling me 'Jane Crane', 'Mrs. Scarecrow'," she continued, embarrassed by the hot tears that continued to fall.

Jonathan was quite as she spoke, blue eyes stormy and unreadable.

"She just made me so mad. I don't know what happened exactly, but I punched her. Right in the face."

He remained silent, looking at his shoes rather than at her face. She was a live wire, in a total state of emotional upheaval, and in desperate need of some reaction from him.

He didn't say a thing, the look on his face almost vacant as she watched on, biting her lip inpatiently.

"Please say something," she urged, fidgeting with unspent energy.

"I told you what would happen if you continued trying to be my friend," he reminded her sourly. "I was not exaggerating."

"And I'm not complaining," she countered.

"That's incredibly foolish of you," he spoke in frustration that Jane did not understand. "They're not going to stop. If anything it will get worse, and for what?"

"We talked about this. I told you, I'm not going to let anyone tell me who go be friends with," she dismissed the idea for what felt like the hundredth time since the first conversation she and Jonathan had shared.

"I'm not going to let you be tormented because people have a mistaken impression of what is happening here," he spoke with that authoritative tone that played on Jane's nerves, as though he could enforce his will sheerly through arrogance.

"Can we not do this again?" she asked, growing more frustrated with him than she meant to be.

"We wouldn't have to if you would simply listen to logic," he countered with equal frustration. "We need to stop whatever it is that is going on here."

"Jonathan, don't," she warned him, stopping despite the rain to face him.

"Then don't be petulant. It's unbecoming," he sneered down at her.

They were locked in a true staring contest, neither of them so much as flinching under the weight of one another's heavy gazes.

The rain poured down, soaking them both. It was nothing like the rain that would be apropos for the moment in a movie, this rain cold and heavy.

He stood still as though he were a statue, unmoving even to breathe. She stared up at him with some fiery mix of determination and frustration in her dark eyes.

She considered using her words, telling him that she couldn't just walk away and pretend she had never known him. No one would forget that she had stood up for him, but most importantly, she wouldn't be able to forget, either.

He was better with words than she was however, and she knew it was not a battle she would be able to win. There was one tactic that she knew she could gain some ground with, though it was risky.

Without giving herself time to talk herself down, she acted. She leaned up on her tiptoes, a hand on either side of his face, and pressed her lips to his.

He was stone beneath her touch, every muscle tense, but she did not waiver. She kissed him with exactly the intensity she had been storing up for weeks.

When she pulled away, his blue eyes were wide, his hair matted down from the rain. His expression was unreadable and for a long pause, the pair was silent.

"Do you understand now?" she asked, half shouting over the roar of the rain and the spund of her own heartbeat

Hope you all are still enjoying! Leaving you with a cliffhanger as far as what Jonathan is going to think. Enjoy the nice fluff while it lasts -- things will get dark very shortly!

As always, please comment or vote if you're enjoying what you read. :)