She waited on the sidewalk for over an hour despite the bitter cold and the drizzle that remained after the storm.
There was a nagging nervousness in the pit of her stomach, both due to the relatively dangerous nature of wandering any street in Gotham alone after dark as well as Jonathan's absence.
Her mind went wild with the possibilities of what could have happened to him at the hands of that wretched old woman, all because she'd seen the two of them innocently kiss that afternoon.
It had only been a kiss, but the pure ire in that woman's tired old eyes - one would have thought she'd caught them together without a stitch of clothing.
He should have been here by now, she thought to herself, checking her watch in the glow of the street lamp for the hundredth time. Something was wrong, she could feel it.
She decided to wait another ten minutes before attempting to check out Jonathan's house as surreptitiously as possible, just to be sure be was alright.
Ten minutes rolled by in what felt like year long increments as she paced beneath the streetlight until she could no longer stand it. She made quick work of the walk to his house.
The first thing she noticed was that the Lincoln was absent from the driveway - his grandmother was not home. The crumbling Victorian home was entirely darkened, not a sound coming from inside its walls.
But there was a sound.
It was faint at first, but definitely there - a shrieking caw emenating from somewhere behind the house.
It took all of her nerve to walk towards the noise as it grew louder, her hands trembling with imaginative fear of what might be causing the ruckus.
She tried to see through the dark as she looked across the backyard of the property, the sound coming from some dilapidating structure on the edge of the field. In the moonlight, she couldn't make out what it was.
She blinked at what she saw next, not believing her eyes. Something - someone was staggering their way through the knee high grass, movements uncoordinated and jerky.
It was Jonathan, and for the first time, she understood why they might have dubbed him Scarecrow.
Without hesitation, she ran towards him, growing more horrified as his form came into clear view in the moonlight.
He was in tattered clothes, the skin that was exposed bleeding. He shuffled forward with glassy eyes, unfocused even on where he was going.
"Jonathan," she yelped, rushing to help stabilize him, slipping her arms beneath his small frame as a support structure. He leaned into her touch almost imperceptibly but shook his head.
"Jonathan isn't here right now," he rasped hatefully, his voice not at all his own.
A chill ran down her spine but she dutifully ignored it for the time being, chalking it up to being put through whatever it was that wicked woman had done to him.
"We need to get you someplace safe," she told him, staggering awkwardly towards the edge of the field with the bulk of his weight on her. He was heavier than appearances allowed, his much taller frame awkwardly draped over her.
"I'll take you to my house. It's just two blocks up," she insisted. "My mother is away for work and we can get you cleaned up there."
He silently trudged along with her, limping and bleeding the entire walk to her house. She was surprised that he was able to maintain consciousness in his state, considerably less shocked at his inability to articulate what had happened.
The two blocks felt like an eternity as they barely made it together, Jane looking back over her shoulder, half expecting to see that horrible woman behind them.
Fortunately, that never happened. There was nary a soul on the streets as they attempted to make their way home.
Finally, she pushed open the door to her small house, attempting to deposit Jonathan as gently as possible on the living room couch. She'd worry about the blood stains later.
"I'm going to go look for a first aid kit," she explained to him, although she was unsure that he could even hear her at that moment. "Don't try to move, okay?"
He nodded weakly in understanding and she set about trying to find something. Why did they not have a proper first aid kit?
Drastically understocked on medical supplies, the best she was able to do was a few gauze pads and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. It would have to work. She grabbed him a glass of water and knelt beside the couch.
"Drink this," she insisted, tilting the glass up to his lips until he reached for it himself, downing the entire glass quickly.
In the light of her living room, he was a devastating sight to see - cuts and bruises covered his thin body, the white button up shirt he wore torn and soaked with blood and sweat.
It looked as though someone had joyfully made tiny, random cuts with a straight razor a million times over on the pale canvas of his skin.
"You're going to have to take off your shirt," she stated factually, attempting to make that sentence less awkward to say however she could. She was merely a seventeen year old girl however, and the sentence itself made her blush.
He wordlessly shook his head no, wrapping his arms more tightly around himself in a protective grip.
"Please, these cuts need to be cleaned," she insisted. She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. "I won't hurt you, I promise."
"He said no," that same strange, frightening voice tore from his throat, his hand recoiling from her touch and closing around her wrist.
It was not the soft spoken Jonathan that she knew, but a dark and emotionless affect that in no way belonged to the same person.
"Okay, okay," she placated him softly as she wrenched her wrist away from his grasp, attempting to swallow her fear. "Can I at least take care of the ones on your arms? They're pretty bad..."
The cuts and slashes on his forearms were the worst of them, as though he'd held up his arms as a sheild. At very least, those needed to be properly cleaned to avoid infection.
"Then fix us up already," he growled.
Her hands trembled as she dabbed rubbing alcohol gently over the contusions, silently making every effort to get together her bravery.
She knew had to ask the obvious question, but it seemed so daunting to do so.
"W-why do you keep talking like that, Jonathan?" she finally found the courage to speak, swallowing the lump in her throat as she tried to keep her tone steady and soothing as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
"Don't make me tell you again - Jonathan isn't here right now," he reiterated impatiently, face contorting in an aggravated sneer. "He had to go. Someone had to protect him from that old bitch."
Jane visibly flinched - Jonathan didn't speak this way. His language was overly formal, coldly practical, and she had never heard him utter so much as a vanilla swear word.
There was absolutely no logic to it, she knew - after all, she was very familiar with the lanky boy who lay bleeding on the striped pattern of her mother's new sofa - but at that moment, she couldn't shake the feeling that had come over her.
She truly was not speaking to Jonathan, anymore.
But if it was not Jonathan, then who?
And that, my lovelies, is how Jane first meets Scarecrow. We're slipping into the final leg of this story, though it does have a while to go and a sequel planned. It's been written more quickly than I anticipated, but it took on a life of its own. Thank you for sticking with me, so far!